John Bickley / assorted guest voices (Morning Wire & interviewee)

This alleged illegal gambling operation hustled unwitting victims out of tens of millions of dollars and created a financial pipeline for La Cosa Nostra to help fund and facilitate their organized criminal activity.

Victims were attracted to play alongside well-known professional athletes and coaches like Chauncey Billups, only to be unknowingly deceived through rigged shuffling machines, fixing the odds in their favor, as alleged and as you just heard from the U.S.

Attorney's Office.

I also think this idea that, like, New Yorkers are going to flee because of a 2% increase.

It's like, I've been everywhere else.

You're not going anywhere.

Bill Ackman's not going nowhere.

He's going to be in the Hamptons all summer.

One place to write those tweets.

New York City.

Exactly.

I don't think anybody's moving.

And I honestly feel that way.

And like, I'm in the tax bracket.

We're going to tax more.

Like, dude, if you're going to deliver all this for 2%, give it.

I'm 100% supportive.

It makes life easier for New Yorkers.

It's my one identity in my entire life is a New Yorker.

It's the thing I care the most about.

But...

What I will say is that I think that there are going to be people in government that are going to try to restrict you from doing that.

I'm worried about entrenched politics.

And I'm worried about the people that fund them, because they're the same people that have been fundraising against you.

And I'm worried about them bending to their whim.

And what scares me a little bit is there are going to be people that are incentivized for you to fail.

And then if that pendulum swings all the way the other way, how many more people get hurt?

And I guess my question is like, do you ever worry about that?

Or do you have to be so blinders on?

Well, I'm going to continue to stand up strongly for the Jewish community, of course, to uplift the special relationship that the United States and Israel continue to have with each other and lean in on supporting, hopefully, a path toward a just and lasting peace in Israel.

I'm thankful that all the hostages have been returned.

I'm thankful that humanitarian assistance is being surged into Gaza.

Well, as you indicated, Wolf, early voting starts in a few days.

And, you know, I look forward to saying much more about the mayor's race, as I've promised in advance of that moment.

I haven't gotten a chance to actually review the debate clips from last evening.

Hey, yeah, this is a major case.

It could be a precedent-setting case.

We'll see what happens with this.

In some ways, there's a real opportunity here, I think, for Christians and people that are just pro-freedom of religious expression, free speech.

So what's happened here is that Lydia and Heath Marvin, they're both Christians.

They're both foster parents.

They usually take on really special needs, medical needs kids under the age of four.

They've had eight in the last five years.

So what happened here is that their license was suddenly revoked in April.

The reason is, let me read the full, the LGBTQIA plus policy out of the state requires you to affirm the gender identity of the kid, also dress them in gender neutral clothing, as I understand it.

They said, look, this is a violation of our religious perspective.

These are deeply held beliefs.

We cannot sign this policy.

Suddenly their license is revoked.

Again, there have been a crucial family for the state, eight kids that most families could not actually take, would not be willing to take, could not take because of the special medical needs.

Suddenly they're taken out of the potential pool of families that can take in kids.

So what they've said is, look, this is obviously religious discrimination.

They're partnering with Alliance Defending Freedom, Alliance Defending Freedom, ADF, such an awesome organization.

We've talked about them a lot at Daily Wire.

They're taking on this case.

This is another case in Massachusetts.

There's actually something that happened last year, a similar case, Alliance Defending Freedom, again, stepping in on that one.

So they're claiming, again, religious discrimination.

And I think one of the big keys here is the timing.

So we have the Trump administration who is really leaning in on wiping out all kinds of anti-Christian, anti-religious discrimination.

They've gotten involved.

So this is where I think that we have an opportunity in the state of Massachusetts to really change the situation there.

There's tens of millions of dollars on the line, as we've seen from the Trump administration.

They're not afraid of pressuring major states like California to make sure that they're following their policies, that they're not discriminating in these kinds of ways.

So they're involved.

Already, we have some statements from the state that are pretty weak, kind of saying, hey, look, we're just trying to protect children.

That argument doesn't hold up when you say, well, you're also not allowing families that are actually taking real action to protect children's lives, raise children that have special needs again.

So major case here.

We're going to see where this goes.

But I have a good feeling that Massachusetts is going to be feeling a lot of pressure in the coming weeks.

Yeah, for sure.

And you might remember this.

I mean, there's a there's Supreme Court precedents that is set that specifically addresses Catholic adoption agencies out of Philadelphia.

So this was a situation I think it's 2021 Supreme Court decision Fulton versus city of Philadelphia.

And the city was discriminating against this Catholic.

They call themselves the Catholic Adoption Services Association.

They would not let them participate because they would not affirm, they would not allow in same-sex couples as potential adoptees because of, again, deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics.

And eventually the SCOTUS ruled against the city.

So there is precedent here that I think works against the state of Massachusetts.

Again, they might back down before this goes further.

If they don't, they could be in real trouble.

Trump administration's gonna lean in and SCOTUS, we've seen how they're already leaning on cases.

It kind of reminds me actually of some recent, we've seen some recent oral arguments where we've heard similar arguments

in the Supreme Court, and we've seen even some of the liberal justices having a hard time rationalizing some of these policies that are these, like, for instance, anti-conversion therapy, so-called conversion therapy arguments.

I think Massachusetts would lose and lose big if this goes up the chain.