What did you find? What is happening with the polls? Can we trust polls?

Right.

So in Wisconsin in particular, I mean, the polling was so off that Francesca Hong's main challenger, former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, dropped out because he said it was clear who the nominee was going to be, referencing Francesca Hong because she was so far ahead.

And she was ahead in particular in this poll called the Marquette Law School Poll, which is like the industry gold standard.

Over the past 15 years, over six cycles, it has gotten the nominees correct for the primaries.

And this was the first year that it was wrong, and it was really wrong.

So I actually, I called up the guy who leads the Marquette Law School poll, his name is Professor Charles Franklin, and I asked him what happened.

Irie, what is your reaction to this ad?

W- w- what, what did you find in her most recent attempt to address this stuff?

Right.

So I will say she has had to address this time after time after time.

You know, when she's, when she's been on this Get Out the Vote tour, it's mostly been from her supporters, but there are also some Democrats who are still undecided.

And at, I'm not joking, every single event that I've been to, one of them has asked her, "Hey, listen, you said that you wanted to abolish the police.

Republicans are going to attack you on that.

What's your response?" And, you know, she really says time and again, you know, "As governor, I cannot and will not abolish the police." She said she's moved on.

Ire, what do you think?

And so, I'm curious, how do you see Vance coming into this and can he make the pitch here?

So, Vance's superpower in the White House is that he is great at staying on message, and he has this Hillbilly Elegy background that he can use to talk about this.

So, I think the White House would consider it a win if the people in Georgia are not talking about cuts to Medicaid.

Instead, they're talking about manufacturing.

Vance wants to bring domestic manufacturing back.

We know that that's what he's expected to focus on.

He's also expected to focus on tax cuts, and he's also expected to attack Senator Jon Ossoff, who of course, is coming up against a pretty high profile midterm fight.

Take us into what you saw yesterday, and also where you think the vice president's head is at going from that to a battleground state.

So, right now university leaders are balancing a few different needs. There's the- the need to maintain strong relationships with the federal government for funding while at the same time defending free speech rights and protecting non-citizen students. Dartmouth has found one way of navigating that. Uh, how are they striking that balance and how does it differ from what we're seeing elsewhere?

So, I think it's important first to note that Dartmouth is the only school within the Ivy League conference that appears to have escaped the wrath of the Trump administration. And so, all of the other seven schools within the Ivy League are either under investigation or have had certain amounts of funding frozen or both over all of these sorts of culture war issues or allegations of antisemitism that has happened on those campuses, and Dartmouth clearly wants to keep it this way. And so, one pretty notable move that they made earlier this week was to choose Matt Roemer, who is the former chief counsel at the Republican National Committee, to serve as its general counsel. And he's not only gonna be the top lawyer at the college, but he's also going to serve on the Dartmouth president's leadership team, and he's also going to oversee the school's Office of Visa and Immigration Services, which is notable because in January, he publicly backed President Donald Trump's push to end birthright citizenship.

So, moving on to Manhattan, uh, Columbia University faces a deadline today to comply with the Trump administration's demands, and it looks like they're going to do so. Can you walk us through that? What are those demands and what is at stake here for Columbia?

Columbia had $400 million in funding frozen over these allegations th- that it failed to protect Jewish students on its campus during pro-Palestinian protests last year, and the Trump administration gave Columbia a list of nine demands that it needed to comply with in order to remove that funding freeze. Some of those demands are pretty staggering. It includes a total ban on students wearing masks on campus, um, except for health and religious reasons, in which case students have to show their student ID on their person. It would also include putting the Middle East, South Asian, and African studies department under outside control, which is something that universities really rarely do unless a department is just totally broken and- and the leadership sees it as untenable to move forward under its own direction. And so, you know, these are really big asks from the administration, but it's looking increasingly likely that the university is going to comply with them simply because it can't afford not to.

So start by reminding us a little bit about, you know, how the protests unfolded and how they did actually disrupt campus life.

Right. So pretty much immediately after October 7th, 2023, we saw a lot of protest activity on campus and also a lot of media activity, uh, covering those protests. And so basically from the beginning, uh, Columbia became known as the center of the student, uh, pro-Palestinian student movement in the United States. Then in April, um, we saw an intense escalation. So the same day as the university's then president, Minouche Shafik, was testifying before Congress about allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, um, a group of students pitched tents on a campus lawn and called it the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and refused to leave. And then over the next couple of weeks, um, it just got more and more intense, um, and sort of launched this movement across the globe where other college campuses also set up their own, uh, encampments.

Okay. What do you think the long-term impact of these protests, of the way Columbia University handled or mishandled them, has been on the university?

I mean, it's, it's been devastating. Uh, we saw this month that the White House announced that it was pulling $400 million in federal funding from Columbia over these allegations of antisemitism. Um, uh, last week, um, the Department of Justice said that it was considering opening terrorism investigations into Columbia. Um, and now, the White House has given Columbia basically this list of demands that it, uh, it needs to meet in order to get that $400 million back. Um, and those are pretty staggering. It includes a mask ban, so that no one on campus can wear a mask. Um, or if they do, they need to display their university ID on their person. It includes putting an entire academic department, the, the Middle East, South Asian, and African studies department under outside control. Um, and we're also seeing, um, you know, Homeland Security agents actually on campus. Um, two more students have been, uh, deported by Homeland Security since. Um, so it's been, it's really rocked Columbia.