- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up, chaos at the Southern border, inflation skyrockets, and President Biden cracks down on ghost guns.

Next.

- [Announcer] Major funding for "Front Row" was provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

Funding for the "Lightning Round" provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/fontrow [intense dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back, joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai, with the John Locke foundation, Colin Campbell, Editor of the North Carolina Tribune, broadcast journalist, Jonah Kaplan, and Nelson Dollar, Senior Advisor to North Carolina Speaker of the House.

Why don't we begin with the crisis at the Southern border.

Jonah, kick us off.

- I've mentioned here on the program about the constants in life, death, taxes, antisemitism.

I think we can add one more and that is America's broken immigration policy.

And through the generations, there have been solutions that have been pitched, but never adopted.

And so we just have short-term bandaids.

And one of those is Title 42.

And when there's a rush of all these people at the Southern border, those especially who are seeking asylum, the Trump administration, in order to crack down on those potential rushes at the border said, if you're gonna seek asylum, you're not gonna stay here in the country while you await your court proceedings, you're gonna remain in Mexico.

And we're gonna stop those asylum proceedings because already, by the way, the court system is desperately just overrun and it is understaffed.

And because of COVID, the backlog is even worse.

- People just don't show up.

- Well, and that's a concern.

But the Biden administration, under pressure from some of the immigration advocates saying, well, it's cruel to keep them in Mexico.

They're living in tents.

They're living in these immigration, kind of, detainment camps on the other side of the border, saying, well, it's time to end it.

And May 23rd is the day that Title 42 is supposed to end.

So does this mean if you're apprehended at the border, you wanna seek asylum, are you gonna be held in the country?

Where?

The Trump administration kind of tried that, too.

And that didn't go over so well.

When there were- - Okay.

- All of a sudden assaults of cages at the border and things like that.

But we've got a real issue here with people coming to the country.

And what do you do with them?

And especially because, again, that court backlog is so overrun, people are then not gonna show up to their court proceedings and then they're in the country doing anything and they're undocumented.

- Nelson, are we losing operational control at the border?

I mean, they're now saying that when Title 42 expires, 18,000 people a day will come into America.

- Oh, absolutely.

I mean, we set a record last year.

We're looking to double the number of border encounters this year.

Biden and the progressives believe an open border policy actually helps them politically.

Now, you know, in addition to rescinding Title 42 the President's trying to end the remain in Mexico policy that Jonah talked about.

- The courts have ruled against them in that though, right?

- Well, the courts are holding back right now, the Fifth Circuit, but it's gonna be heard by the US Supreme Court, so we'll see what they do.

Biden's also, in his budget, stopping construction on the border wall, cutting ICE and US Border Patrol.

And they're also trying to increase money on that program to take immigrants from the border and spread 'em out all over the country.

And that's one of the reasons why in the most recent Harvard/Harris poll, Biden had just 32% approval for his immigration policy.

- Mitch, there's a lot of vulnerable Democrats, though, that are now pushing back and saying, hey, look, we got some tough races here.

Let's keep Title 42.

- Yeah, you're certainly seeing more and more Democrats who are in these vulnerable races talking about reversing this proposed Biden administration policy.

We see on the Senate side there's legislation that would deal with this.

A handful of Republicans, along with five Democrats, who are really leading this.

Not only Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who you might expect, 'cause they buck the Democrats quite a bit on policies.

But also, the other Arizona Senator, Mark Kelly, who's not seen as any sort of right-winger.

And a couple of others, Jon Tester, who see that, you know, this is not necessarily where we wanna go at this time.

- Congressman Cuellar, he's on the border, right?

He opposes that, too.

- Yep.

- He wants title 42.

- Yeah, and certainly, the folks you're seeing in the House, many of them are people who are in these border communities who see what's happening and see what is likely to happen if Title 42 goes away as planned.

- Colin, are we seeing some election year conversions?

- I think, potentially, you know, the more the polling looks bad for Democrats on this issue, the more you're gonna see the vulnerable Democrats, sort of, buck the party on that.

And that, ultimately, does make Biden look weak on this issue and I don't think it helps his cause that they're extending the mandate for masks on planes.

I've seen some Republicans point out to that because originally this immigration policy was a COVID thing.

It was a concern about, you know, the virus spreading across the border through these, sort of, you know, tightly closed-in containment facilities.

And if you're gonna keep one COVID policy in place, but relax the one that has immigration consequences, I mean, that's ultimately gonna open them to criticism.

- Mixed messages.

We gotta move on.

Bad news for the economy again this week, Nelson.

- Right, in March we hit another 40-year high for inflation at 8.5%.

And that's gas up, 48%.

Milk up 13%.

Meat is up 14%.

Electricity up 11%.

Along with clothing, rent, cars, houses, mortgages, everything is up.

And producer prices, also this week, were announced they're up a record 11.2%.

And Biden is trying to pass all this off as, you know, blame Putin, blame COVID, blame supply chains.

All of those are contributing, but also the real core causes are failure of the Federal Reserve to act last spring, and also the President's own excessive Federal spending, and a very much failed energy policy.

The gap right now, just to tell you the scope of the problem, the gap right now, the core inflation rate, that's without food and energy.

And the real interest rates, there's over an 11% gap there.

The last time that gap was in that neighborhood, or actually a little bit higher, was in 1975.

And it took eight years to correct that.

So that's the reason why you're seeing Biden right now, really, in sheer desperation.

I mean, when you're talking about putting corn in gas tanks with the potential for a global famine later this year, that's just surreal.

- Mitch, is Biden's energy policy driving a lot of this inflation?

- Well, certainly the energy policy could play a role.

Also the idea of pumping trillions of dollars into the economy which we've seen through the various COVID related packages, other stimulus plans, he still wants to do the build back better in some form if he can, which would be more money into the economy.

I mean, the key problem with inflation is always too much money chasing too few goods.

And we're seeing the results of that.

One of the things that's interesting to me about this is the levels of inflation we're seeing now, we haven't seen since 1981.

Those who were around then remember what it took to end that - [Marc] I was a child.

- And you remember what it took to end that and that was as having big interest rates and going through a forced recession, which is the only way that you stamped out inflation.

No one wants to see a major recession again but when you have this type of inflation, that's gonna be on the table.

- Jonah, low income families are really taking it on a chin, aren't they?

- Inflation is a tax on lower income families.

I mean, they're the ones and wages can't keep up.

And I think with respect to Nelson, who really laid that out methodically, explaining kind of the different statistics here, many Americans, they're not economists, and they're not mathematicians or statisticians and all of these factors and all these different things, they don't really have the patience to listen to it because they've gotta put bread and butter on the table.

They've gotta provide for their families.

And so while they're working in the fields and while they're working in the stores and they're doing things, they just wanna know, well, what happens next?

And yes, it's effective, obviously in the polling, to point fingers and to say this and that, and of course, when it's happening, politics is about perception, that's a big deal.

But I think at some point, Americans are also gonna lose patience if there's no solutions.

And if they do don't see prices coming down and they don't see things get back to somewhat normal, they're going to just find themselves either working even more jobs or relying more on the Federal government.

- Colin put this in context.

- Yeah I mean, that's the challenge.

Are people going to be driving less?

Are they gonna be vacationing less?

- [Marc] Great point.

- Impacting the economy.

Are they changing how much they're eating out?

And ultimately the solution's here, like Mitch said, they're raising the interest rate, but that has its own consequences because housing prices are already through the roof.

And it's really hard for home buyers to get in the market anyway, raise interest rates, and that makes things that much harder.

- Okay, I'm gonna come right back to you.

Talk to us about ghost guns.

The President wants to regulate them.

- Yeah, so ghost guns are the sort of new front in the gun control battle.

These are sort of homemade gun kits that you can buy or 3D print some parts and sort of put it together yourself.

But the challenge then, there's no serial number.

There's no registration requirement.

If these things get used in crimes, police have no way to trace who owns it, who's responsible, who should they come after.

And so Biden is sort of using the tools that he has within the Department of Justice to change the rules around this and sort of level the playing field between the types of traditional guns that you'd buy at a gun store with these kits that you can buy on the internet and build your own guns with the idea that it's gonna help law enforcement go after, there was actually a case in the last week in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, where one of these ghost guns was recovered related to a a crime there.

So it's happening, but this is where the Biden administration is really trying to... - Impact crime?

- Tackle gun control and impress their base that way, but without going through Congress because the appetite for gun control legislation through Congress is just not there.

- Mitch, AG Stein's weighed in on this too, right?

Attorney General Stein here?

- Yeah, he certainly has been in favor of this.

He's been working on this issue for quite a while.

And one of the problems that I see with approaching ghost guns, partly is the timing.

I mean, Joe Biden is talking about this to distract.

- [Marc] Is it largely symbolic, you think?

- In some ways it's symbolic, certainly in trying to fight crime, it is almost entirely symbolic.

If you look at what the gun control groups themselves have said in their studies about this, they looked at over a decade of data on this, found about 114 Federal cases.

So about 11 per year, dealing with ghost guns.

And most of the crimes that were tied to this were people owning the ghost gun.

They weren't using a ghost gun for something else, which if you're gonna try to fight guns in crime, why don't you fight the guns that are used by criminals in crimes, rather than just people who have these guns and that's the crime itself?

- Nelson, crime is a huge issue in the big cities right now, isn't it?

- It's exploding.

I mean, we were talking about, well over a year ago, the explosion of the murder rate that's actually impacting cities in North Carolina as well.

Murder rates are up, violent crime in general is up.

We're not really addressing the causes of violence.

So Biden, I think, looking at the midterm elections, he thinks that, hey, look, this checks the box for major gun control.

- [Marc] Well, his base wants him to do something about guns, correct?

- His base wants him to do something about gun control.

This is something where he can, like I say, he can check the box on that.

And obviously swing voters and not just swing voters, but most Americans, they want to see something to address the urban crime wave that we are seeing in this country.

And some of the police reforms like saying, okay, we're gonna defund police.

Biden's trying to push back on that.

And then you also have the issue of cash bail that's going around the country, trying to end bail, that's putting people back on the street much sooner and that is raising concerns as well.

- Put this in context, my friend.

- We're gonna observe the 10 year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Massacre this year and schools have been back, there have been some shootings.

There was also a mass shooting in Sacramento.

You don't hear much about that.

Gun control is kind of on the periphery, I think, of the American electorate right now.

- Is it being superseded by other issues?

- I think, and I think Americans are just being sanitized to it and they recognize this is kind of the reality.

- [Marc] So they're used to seeing these images on the screen of people getting shot in these mass shootings, you think?

- Oh, absolutely.

That's why you don't even see much coverage.

I mean, 10 years ago, Sandy Hook was everything.

Sacramento, how many Americans even know that that happened, that shooting?

And in New York City, what just happened on the subway?

We don't even know what kind of gun was used there and already they're kind of moving on from that.

And so I think for President Biden, who has a history of being there in terms of gun control and assault weapons ban, is this a way to kind of resurrect that?

Is it a way to distract from other things?

And with the 10 year anniversary of Sandy Hook, there's gonna be people who are gonna say, alright it's been 10 years, what has been done to crack down on illegal weapons, on mass shootings?

This could be something tangible that the administration is looking for.

- Colin, wrap this up in about 30 seconds, my friend.

- Yeah And I think like Jonah said it's a tangible issue.

It is something that can be done without Congress but you're right.

I mean, the reason that we're not getting through with getting sort of gun control in Congress even with the democratic majority, is that the appetite just really isn't there.

And as we were talking about earlier, you've got these moderate Democrats who are in tough elections this year.

They don't really want to touch this issue.

- Great wrap.

Let's go to the, oh, not the most underreported story of the week.

Let's talk about the key findings in the CBS YouGov poll, my friend.

- Yes.

CBS News.

- [Host] Jumped the gun a little bit there.

- Yeah.

- [Colin] That's underreported no longer.

[all laughing] - It will be reported now.

The CBS News YouGov poll, the latest one has President Biden's approval rate at 42% down a single percentage point from in March, disapproval at 58%, we'll go back to YouGov, but just as a highlight we also saw the Quinnipiac poll had him at 33%, so another low for President Biden, but back to CBS News YouGov, there's a lot of concern about inflation.

We've already talked about inflation, but 69% are saying they have concerns about how the President is dealing with inflation, 63% don't like what he's doing on the economy, in terms of whether he's doing all he can on gas prices, 61% of Democrats think he has, 93% of Republicans, no surprise, think he should be doing more.

Inflation has been proving to be more important in these ratings than the jobs picture.

So you're seeing the Biden administration say an awful lot about, hey, we're generating these new jobs.

This administration is created more new jobs than any other administration.

There's been some clap back that, wait a minute.

That's just jobs that have been restored since COVID, but no one's really paying attention to the job numbers because they're focusing on the inflation problem.

- [Host] Well, you know what I think this shows, I think it's these midterms are going to come down to kitchen table issues, don't you think, Colin?

- [Colin] Yeah, I mean, all the polling I'm seeing seems to suggest that these economic issues are really going to be the driver.

And when you see inflation at the level it's at right now, the odds that it comes down to a level where it's not the top issue by November just gets increasingly smaller regardless of, you know, what gets done to try to get a handle on it or fix it.

It's hard to recover that quickly between now and November - Nelson, jump in here.

- Well, I mean, it's, Jonah has mentioned it, Colin's mentioned it, more jobs don't matter when real worker wages have dropped four and a half percent.

People are not feeling it in their pocketbook.

They're worried about their bread, their milk, their bacon.

That's what concerns them and Biden right now is suffering from a fundamental lack of confidence by a majority of Americans.

And it goes back to last summer with Afghanistan, saying the pandemic was behind us when it wasn't.

And saying that no serious economist suggests there was unchecked inflation on the way.

So really, whether you're Carter or Bush or Biden when a president loses his credibility, there's almost no way back.

There's really nothing he can say right now about the war or the border.

- [Host] Well, do you think Quinnipiac poll is an outlier?

I mean 33%, I can't remember a president that low, not even Trump.

- Quinnipiac has been polling lower than the other polls, but if you've been watching it, they're trending down as well.

So it may not be a 33% approval, but the other polling is in that same neighborhood between around 33 and 40%.

And it bodes as potential potential disaster for the Democrats in the fall.

- Well, Jonah, do you think Democrats will campaign with Biden?

Ask him to come in?

- He did win in 2020.

So I mean, there is that, he is still the sitting president, now does he have that kind of popularity?

Does he have that kind of tenacity?

Does he have that kind of appeal that he had in 2020?

I don't know right now.

- [Host] Do you think so, Mitch?

You think they'll come in with, want him to come in?

- I'm not sure that many people will want him to, probably in blue states where they have a close race in a district maybe, but a lot of places, not only are you concerned about Biden being there with you, but what's he going to say, is he going to be seen to be on his game?

- What can he campaign on?

- I mean, I think he can try to argue that he was responsible for, you know, getting the COVID situation under control.

I mean, obviously Republicans will say a lot of that was in place, in motion before he took office but he may try to make that his signature issue.

- Okay.

And now we're going to the most unreported story of the week, Mitch.

- North Carolina gets a B in a new report card that was released about the state's responses to COVID-19.

This was from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the three researchers who put this together, all right of center researchers.

So you might be surprised that North Carolina gets a B.

Nine states got A's, including Utah, Nebraska and Vermont getting A+ grades.

The interesting thing, beyond that headline grade of the B, North Carolina ranks 17th among the states on the economy, 34th in education, largely because of all the school closings and seventh, a pretty good ranking on mortality.

One of the issues though, that the researchers point out is that North Carolina has been behind the curve in reporting deaths.

So as they catch up on those numbers, that ranking, and maybe even the grade will go lower.

- Colin, underreported, my friend.

- Yeah.

So this is definitely debate season in the Republican primary process.

And we've gotten one debate just this past week on WRAL, two more debates coming up in the next couple weeks and Ted Budd, who's by all accounts the front runner is so far not participating in any of them which is sort of unusual.

The front runner always wants to do fewer debates.

They often very rarely want to do zero debates.

And so you see Pat McCrory and Mark Walker hitting him and criticizing him on that issue.

- [Host] Will he pay a political price for not showing?

- I don't think so.

I think, you know.

- [Host] I mean, the only insiders watch this, now how many people actually watch debates?

- I moderate it, I hope someone.

- Yeah.

- That's what I mean.

- But in terms of how many people will see those TV ads that are running all over the place, funded by Club for Growth, versus the TV debates, I mean.

- I mean, what would you rather have, Club for Growth or do the debate?

Underreported, please.

- Well, and that's also going to be a precedent for maybe the presidential race too.

I mean, this is gonna be interesting.

Underreported, look, we've talked about obviously the crisis in Ukraine and the war, what's being underreported right now is Iran is getting involved.

And there's a report out this week that Iran is now smuggling weapons to the Russians.

So Iran is helping the Russians while America and Russia negotiate with Iran for a deal, potentially to curb.

- [Host] What's wrong with the picture?

- Nothing this, I mean, yeah.

Why not?

Nothing about this looks eerie at all, but that's I mean, look, there is a real, to borrow words from former President Bush there is an axis of evil here and you can see who's making friends and who's working together.

And I mean, God forbid, those weapons would eventually be used on American or Allied targets.

- Well, you know, this is the first I've heard of it.

And you brought it up off camera.

I mean, why aren't the mainstream media reporting this?

Candidly?

- I don't think it, it doesn't go for a narrative right now of multiculturalism, of this idea that there could be these axis of evil.

I mean, Russia clearly there's that narrative that I think everyone has kind of focusing on, but to bring in Iran.

And then, you know, if Iran also supports proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, and if they get involved in a war with Israel, then it gets muddy because.

- The media likes to portray Palestinians as underdogs, so they don't wanna call out terrorism.

They'll call them militants.

I feel like there's just a lot of politics there.

- Now what's in underreported?

- [Nelson] Underreport, and on that, the president, Biden has the deal on his desk.

Right now he's holding it, so it's gonna be interesting to see what- - [Man] What deal?

- The Iran nuclear deal, he has it on his desk.

Underreported, fertilizer.

Countries around the globe are facing soaring prices and critical shortages in three major fertilizers.

That's nitrogen, phosphorus and potash.

The results of less fertilizer on the fields will be lower crop yields, which really means whole regions of the world are gonna face food shortages and potential famine.

Russia and Belarus are the top potash producers, they're offline.

China placed an export ban last year on phosphates, cutting rural supply by 30%.

And soaring costs of natural gas is taking nitrogen offline.

Fertilizer costs are going to contribute to a global food crisis by the end of the year.

- Okay, let's go to the Lightning Round.

Who's up and who's down this week, Mitch?

- [Mitch] Who's up, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson.

A couple of recent polls, very good news for him.

The Civitas Poll looked at his favorability among Republican primary voters and it was 54 to 6.

You rarely see that, 54% favorability, 6% unfavorability.

Positive numbers from a WRAL SurveyUSA poll.

And it also showed that the news that he had paid for an abortion back- - And it's announced he's gonna run for governor?

- He had paid for an abortion back in 1989.

Didn't make much difference among those Republicans supporters.

My down, the Department of Public Safety.

A new audit from state auditor, Beth Wood, criticized DPS for not doing enough to make sure that Hurricane Florence relief money was used properly.

- Colin?

- Up, I've got, speaking of people running for governor in 2024 or likely will, Attorney General Josh Stein.

His people were down to legislature this week, talking about the 700 plus million dollars coming to the state in the form of opioid lawsuits settlements.

And Republicans were actually praising how his folks had handled this issue and got North Carolina all this money.

So, you know, you don't see that every day.

Down, I've got Bo Hines, who's the former football player, who's running in the very crowded Republican primary in the 13th congressional district.

He's got Trump's endorsement, but he's also got Johnston County Republican groups running full page newspaper ads against him, arguing that somebody who lives somewhere on that side of the state, not in downtown Winston-Salem, ought to be the Republican nominee.

- Do people really care what district you live in?

I've run a lot of candidates in the past, and it really didn't make a difference.

Go ahead, my friend.

- Ted Budd is up.

I think he's clearly emerged as a front runner in the Senate race.

And again, I think whether or not he participates in a debate, that's gonna be looked at by other candidates, in other races, even when we get to 2024.

Down is Durham Mayor Elaine O'Neal.

For months, she had been avoiding talking about the rising crime in Durham, the homicides.

She finally did an interview this week and basically said "I'm not God, I can't do anything about this."

"I can't stop crime."

- She threw in the towel.

Okay, who's up and who's down?

- [Man] Elon Musk.

He's toyed with Bitcoin.

He's conquered space.

Now, he's taken on social media, buying a 9.2% stake in Twitter.

Look for Musk to acquire controlling interest in Twitter.

- He just announced this morning, he offered 43 billion.

- 43 billion.

And the fireworks will begin when he begins to play with Twitter.

That's gonna be exciting.

- [Man] Down quickly.

- Down, economic growth will be down this year.

Expect a lot of political upheaval around the world.

Higher prices, shortages in food, fertilizer, fuel.

I would say a 90% chance of global recession by the end of the year and probably a 50/50 chance of recession in the US by the end of the year.

- Headline next week?

- Judge decides how much more money, if any, needs to be spent in the state, on education.

- You had to bring up Leondra.

- Yep.

- [Man] Headline next week?

- More out of state money coming into congressional and US Senate races in the form of ads.

- Is there a point where people just turn it off?

- I think we might be there already.

[everyone laughing] - Headline next week?

- The Club for Growth makes even more of an impact in North Carolina.

- Yeah, I think so too.

You know they've already spent what, about 15, 20 million Colin?

- Yeah and then there's other groups with different names, but similar donors.

- Headline next week?

- Henry Kissinger appointed Secretary of State.

Because that's the only headline that would actually start solving some of our problems.

[men laughing] - Great job gents.

That's it for us, thanks for watching.

Hope to see you next week on Front Row.

Have a great weekend.

[dramatic music] ♪ - [Man] Major funding for Front Row is provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by, [dramatic music] Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction and Helen Laughery.

[dramatic music] A complete list of funders can be found at PBSNC.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪