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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds, the podcast that fearlessly tackles the most divisive issues gripping our nation today. In this riveting episode, we are thrilled to host two guests whose expertise and perspectives promise to ignite thoughtful discussions. Congressman Andy Harris joins us first, shedding light on critical matters such as legal immigration and the urgent need for enforcing our border laws. He also delves into the world of IRS whistleblowers and Secretary Mayorkas, providing keen insights into these complex topics. With a unique background as a medical practitioner in Congress during the COVID pandemic, Congressman Harris discusses the federal government's handling of COVID. Later, the show takes an intense turn as Professor Brooks Simpson engages in a fiery debate with Sam Stone and Michelle Ugenti-Rita, exploring the state of Free Speech at Arizona State and Barrett College. Get ready for a gripping episode filled with candid conversations that will challenge your perspectives and broaden your understanding. Connect with us: www.breakingbattlegrounds.vote Twitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_Battle Facebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegrounds Instagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegrounds LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds The son of immigrants who fled communist Eastern Europe immediately after World War II, Dr. Andy Harris was as a physician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, a medical officer in the Naval Reserve, and a state senator before coming to Congress. Born in Brooklyn in 1957, he studied medicine at Hopkins, where he continued to practice as an anesthesiologist for nearly three decades. Andy specialized in obstetric anesthesiology. In 1988, Andy answered a recruitment call to fill a critical need for anesthesiologists in the Naval Reserve during the Reagan administration. He went on to establish and command The Johns Hopkins Medical Naval Reserve Unit. In 1990, his unit was called up to active duty in order to assist with Operation Desert Shield (and later Operation Desert Storm) at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Harris attained the rank of Commander (O-5) before leaving the Reserves after seventeen years. Unhappy with the status quo in Annapolis, Andy decided to take on the establishment and run for the Maryland State Senate in 1998, where he served for 12 years. Maryland's First Congressional District first elected Andy to serve in the House of Representatives in 2010. He is the is the current Chairman of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and related agencies subcommittee on Appropriations.He also serves on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee as well as the Homeland Security subcommittee on Appropriations. Andy was married to his late wife, Cookie, for over 33 years, and he is the proud father of five children, stepfather of one, and grandfather to ten. Andy lives with his wife, Nicole, and their dog in Dorchester County. In his free time, he enjoys spending time on the Chesapeake Bay with his family and repairing old cars with his sons. - Brooks D. Simpson is an ASU Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University, where he is a member of the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts faculty. A member of the honors faculty at Barrett, The Honors College, during the spring 2017 semester he served as associate dean (interim) at Barrett's Downtown campus. As a historian of the United States, Professor Simpson studies American political and military history as well as the American presidency, specializing in the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Note: Brooks Simpson speaks on his own behalf, not as a representative of ASU. His opinions are his own. - Transcription Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're going to be jumping right into it with our first guest today. We're very pleased to have on the line Congressman Andy Harris of the first Congressional District of Maryland. Congressman Harris was a physician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, medical officer in the Naval Reserve and a state senator before coming to Congress. Congressman, welcome to the program. Chuck Warren: It's good to be with you, Congressman. This is Chuck. I want to start with two questions. The first one is a little more practical. You're the only Republican member of the Maryland delegation. Is that correct? That's right. That's right. Yeah. Andy Harris: Hopefully we'll get another one. But I'm the only one now. Chuck Warren: Do they treat you this? The other members of the delegation treat you like a misfit toy or are they good working with you? Andy Harris: It depends on the issue. You tell me what the issue is. I'll tell you how I get treated. Chuck Warren: Well, how about this? Regarding constituent issues in Maryland, do they work pretty well with you? Andy Harris: Absolutely. No question. The senators work with me. Obviously, if we have a constituent who contacts my office from another representative's office. Yeah, they work. They work with me on that. Again, look, on some issues, on a lot of issues, we're going to disagree. But on the issues that are important to our constituents and where we have commonality, we agree. Sam Stone: Congressman, I'm glad we touched on constituent services because I think that's something that doesn't get talked about enough. How important is that to just doing your job the right way and how much can that separate, frankly, a good Congress member from a great one? Andy Harris: I think it's very important now, honestly, to be honest with you, it shouldn't be that important because the federal government should work without the intervention of representatives. But the problem is, is that it frequently needs it. Right now. For instance, passports are months and months behind. And if somebody has a trip coming up, you know, we have to we have to advocate on their behalf with the Department of State. It shouldn't be that way. I mean, you pay a fee to process a passport. It should be processed in a timely fashion. Sam Stone: Chuck and I have a good friend who is in green card limbo right now. And, you know, I mean, it's a constant problem. And you're right, they shouldn't need intervention by someone like yourself. Chuck Warren: With Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland. Congressman, so both your parents fled communist Eastern Europe to come to the United States. I find that background fascinating because I think it gives you a unique perspective on the immigration crisis our country faces now. How has that that giving you an outlook on immigration and what do you feel needs to be done? Andy Harris: Sure. No, My parents came from my mother's ethnic Ukrainian. It was, you know, fled Poland That was part of Poland, part of the Ukraine she was born in at the time. But it was again, the communists took it over after World War II. My father fled Hungary when the communists took it over. They, you know, met at a displacement camp in Austria, and they waited literally years for the legal pathway to come to the United States. They came they found the American dream for them and, you know, raised four boys here, all all successful, the absolute American dream. But they waited years in line to come in legally. And this is a great country. You know, we accept, you know, a million immigrants every year legally. And that's what immigrants should expect. They should expect to respect our process. And, you know, a lot of them don't. I mean, some do like my parents did. So we're a country of immigrants. I get it. But, you know, you can't start out your trip to this country, a country of law and order, by breaking the law. It's just not right. It should never we should never allow it. Chuck Warren: What are some things we can do to stop this crisis? You know, for example, we had a guest on the show months ago. Talk about that. If you don't come through a port of entry and there's 327 in the country, you're immediately denied asylum. Sam Stone: Former US attorney out of Yuma, right. Chuck Warren: I mean, is that the type of type of legislation we need to start getting this under control? Andy Harris: Honestly, we don't even need legislation. The laws are on the books. We need an administration that will enforce the laws on the books. The last administration did. This administration doesn't. And what we've seen is roughly a tripling of the number of illegal immigrants coming in under this administration. We have plenty of laws. We don't need laws. You know, the Democrats want to pass laws because they want to legalize everybody who came in illegally. They want to legalize people and make citizens out of people who came in illegally. Again, we just need to enforce our current laws. And it's a shame. It's a real shame that we don't enforce our borders. Sam Stone: Congressman, we recently had some hearings with Secretary Mayorkas on this issue. And one of the things I find so disconcerting with this administration is their officials will sit up there and flatly not merely deny the truth, but present a picture that is directly opposite. Of the reality. And I think a lot of folks in Arizona, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, California know the reality is not the picture he painted. Andy Harris: That's absolutely right. And you know, about a few months ago when there was that crisis in Del Rio where you had, you know, 10,000 people flooded and, you know, one of one of the one of the broadcast outlets, you know, had had a helicopter taking pictures of it. Americans realize there is actually chaos at the border. You know, I blame the media. The media should be you know, it's American media. It should be protective of our laws in this country. And it should actually expose the administration when they are not enforcing the laws of this country. Instead, you know, most of the media is absolutely complicit. Sam Stone: You know, one thing that came out in the media this week, Chuck, and Congressman Harris, that I almost swallowed my tongue when I saw it and the way they presented it, the media was talking this week about the Border Patrol keeping crossers in cages in this heat. They their entire talk was it's the Border Patrol that did that. Compare that to Trump when he was. Chuck Warren: Trump, it was the Trump administration that did it. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. Congressman, you mentioned that we just need to enforce the laws on the book. Let's do a tutorial for our audience here because I don't think a lot of people, as we've talked to people, they really don't realize what's on the book. It's sort of like these gun laws. We have lots of gun laws on the book. There always seem to be ignored. And then a mass shooter who wasn't convicted of committing crimes with them, you know, bypassed them. So talk about what laws we have on the book with immigration that you feel we need to enforce. Andy Harris: Well, one of the one of the first ones is, is that if you're if you're applying for asylum, you need to be detained until your asylum hearing. It's pretty simple. I mean, that's that's the law. The law is you're supposed to be detained. Now, when you when you allow, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people to cross the border, you don't have adequate detention facilities. The answer is don't allow any more people to cross the border instead of allow them across the border and then just release them into the interior of the country with perhaps the promise that they will one day show up for their asylum here and hearing years into the future, because literally we have a backlog of a couple of million cases. That's not the way it should be done. You know, you could interpret you could easily interpret the law to say you can't cross into the into the United States unless we have a detention facility that has a bed for you. And if we don't and that you get a prompt asylum hearing, we don't have enough detention facilities, we don't have enough judges. So we have a years long backlog with people being admitted into the interior with literally just the promise that, yeah, I'll show up, I'll show up for my asylum hearing. And of course the statistics are the vast, vast majority never show up. And of the ones that do show up, the vast majority are in fact denied asylum. Chuck Warren: Let's talk about a minute here about the IRS whistleblowers. What have you found interesting about the IRS whistleblowers that came out this past week? Andy Harris: Well, I think, you know, the 50,000 foot picture is it's amazing because when the whistleblowers, you know, two years ago, the Democrats loved whistleblowers. They respected it. Oh, my gosh, you can't say anything bad about a whistleblower because they were whistleblowers who were blowing the whistle on the Trump administration. Now you've got whistleblowers who I think any objective person would say, yeah, these are legitimate whistleblowers. They are, you know, some of the informants, legitimate informants, and yet they're supposed to be distrusted. Now, this is the hypocrisy of that is just is particularly stunning. I don't I think the average American has come to come to understand that there are two systems of justice, you know, one for Hunter Biden and one for everybody else in the country. You know, the judge the judge's decision yesterday to deny the plea bargain shows just how true that is. That here's a here's here's a man accused on a gun charge where if, according to the plea bargain, if he keeps his nose clean for a couple of years, doesn't even get doesn't even get a felony conviction on a gun charge on his record, that's pretty amazing. That's all I can say. And people and people that really bothers Americans. Americans, above all, would like to believe that there is a that, you know, Lady Justice wears a blindfold. But it's pretty clear that peeking out from under that blindfold for some people, especially if your last name is Biden. Sam Stone: Congressman, I agree 100% with everything you just said, the except that the American people really understand and know this. One of the things I keep having conversations with Republicans about is that when you're talking to your Democrat and independent neighbors who aren't watching Fox News and things to the right of Fox News, there has been no coverage of any of this. No, I mean, no coverage of the whistleblowers, no coverage of Hunter Biden, no coverage of the border hearings. There's no coverage anymore of anything that is detrimental to the left point of view. Andy Harris: Well, you know, but that's only the last in a long string of of incidents that tell the same story. So I think most people. And you'd ask most people that. Yeah. You know, if you went and protested at a school board. Yeah. The FBI actually began to open files, domestic terrorism files on you. I think people just understand that if you are part of the administration or agree with the administration, there's one way you're treated. If you disagree, there's another way. And the Hunter Biden incident is just the latest in a string. Sam Stone: How much should Republicans be really featuring this in all the campaigns coast to coast coming up for for next year? Because quite frankly, when you look at all of this, the level of corruption and incompetence, I can't point to a single area right now where the Biden administration is succeeding in their policy. Andy Harris: Look, I agree. I mean, you k…
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