Guests - Terry Gilbert, Scott Schara
A Pentagon in Lockdown, a Capital Being Reborn, and the Final Lesson from Grace's Dad
Thursday on Winn Tucson opened with breaking news from Washington and closed with something more quietly consequential: the final installment of an eight-week series by a father who turned the worst thing that ever happened to him into the most practical warning he could offer anyone who might one day need a hospital. Between those two bookends: a portrait of a changed city that neither guest could have imagined when they first came to know it, and the specific tactics of an advocacy model that might have saved one girl's life — and could save yours.
The Pentagon Lockdown: What Happened, What Was Known, and What It Means
Kathleen Winn opened the show with real-time breaking news: multiple floors and corridors inside the Pentagon — floors two through five, corridors four through seven — had been locked down following the detection of an air quality anomaly. The Arlington County Fire Department's hazardous materials team was on site. Police inside the building were reported in gas masks and full chemical protective gear. A shelter-in-place order had been issued.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed that systems had detected an air quality issue "necessitating precautionary measures until they determine its significance." Response teams were in place. The testing process, depending on what was found and where, could take one to two hours.
Winn connected the event to its broader context immediately.
"When we know that there's biological warfare, chemical warfare — you have to take these incidents seriously."
The Pentagon is not only a government building. It is a military command center that was a target on September 11th, 2001. That history informs the seriousness of the response and should inform the seriousness with which Americans receive news of any potential threat to it.
She also noted a personal parallel: when President Trump was campaigning at the Ronstadt Theater in Tucson, attendees on the left side of the stage reported eye burns and chemical sensations. No one on the right side of the stage — where Winn was standing — experienced the same. An investigation was opened. She never heard its conclusion. These incidents get taken seriously precisely because the alternative is taking them too late.
The Pentagon update that arrived before the end of the hour: corridors five and six were being actively scrubbed. Secretary Hegseth's office is on the third floor — confirmed safe, confirmed in a different part of the building when the incident triggered. The Arlington Fire Department's hazmat unit remained on site. The false-alarm claim circulating on social media was contested as premature — systems with this level of sensitivity do not produce false positives absent a detectable substance.
Terry Gilbert: Washington Is Coming Back, the Mayor Came Around, and There's a New Museum Under Lincoln
Terry Gilbert is a journalist, broadcaster, podcaster, and former Arizona resident — Salem Media Group and KFYI — who moved to Washington, D.C. approximately four years ago and has been watching its transformation from the inside. She called in the morning of the Pentagon lockdown on her way home from a meeting, briefly interrupted by someone she characterized as a random homeless person who screamed at her from the street. She made it.
The Vibe Has Changed — Completely
Gilbert's first and most sweeping observation: the Washington she inhabits now is not the Washington she moved to.
"Not only a different energy — total different vibe everywhere you go."
The context for what Winn had observed during her own Tuesday visit — seeing barely two or three homeless people, finding the streets clean, feeling safe everywhere she walked — is a deliberate policy change executed by the Trump administration in its second term.
Trump's formula: walk into D.C.'s home rule arrangement and say, plainly, that home rule had not produced the results the city deserved. Crime statistics had been fabricated — supervisors and commanders have since been placed on leave or terminated for cooking the numbers. The actual crime rate was significantly higher than what was being reported. Homelessness had metastasized from a human problem into a civic disaster. Drug use and disorder had penetrated every public space.
"All of that is gone," Gilbert said.
Meridian Hill: A Waterfall That Came Back
Ten days before the broadcast, Gilbert walked up to Meridian Hill — historically called Meridian Hill Park, renamed Malcolm X Park by activists decades ago, now restored to its proper name. The waterfall fountain there had been in disrepair for over 22 years. Weeds, graffiti, drug needles, trash, and homelessness had made it unusable. The surrounding neighborhood had long since stopped coming.
"Now it is back."
People are walking dogs, talking to each other, eating lunch, taking photos. The water is clean. The area is policed. The waterfall functions. The people who had taken over the space are gone.
The reflecting pool on the National Mall, equally symbolic and equally long-neglected, was nearing completion during Gilbert's visit. As of the broadcast day — June 11th — the fencing around it was expected to come down, the water operational, the restoration complete. Trump's birthday is June 14th.
Union Station: Columbus Is White Again
Coming out of Union Station, where the Christopher Columbus fountain stands, there had been graffiti celebrating Hamas, "Black Lives Matter" spray-painted on the statue, and the pavers covered in the accumulated residue of years of neglect.
"Christopher Columbus is white again. The flags are up. The Liberty Bell is shining."
Not merely restored — sandblasted to original condition. The path from Union Station down to the Mall now looks like the national capital is supposed to look.
Gilbert went into the Metro for the first time in years without bracing for the smell of urine and the sight of people jumping turnstiles. She found the handrails windex-clean enough to see her reflection in.
Mayor Bowser's Conversion
The political dimension of D.C.'s transformation involves a figure no conservative expected to champion it: Mayor Muriel Bowser, who in Trump's first term was loudly anti-Trump, had "Black Lives Matter" painted in massive letters on 16th Street, and ran one of the most ideologically left-coded municipal administrations in the country.
Trump's second term produced a different calculation. He came in and said, plainly: home rule isn't working. Crime is up. I'm sending the National Guard.
The left howled. The residents watched.
"Mayor Bowser goes: you know what, President Trump, you have... and I applaud you for it and I'm on your side now."
She cleaned up her crime statistics by removing the people who cooked them. She acknowledged the problem. She worked with the administration. She started cutting the city budget — recognizing, as she told the public, that D.C. had a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Bowser is not seeking an eighth term. On her way out, she is doing what she couldn't do while running for reelection: making choices that are right rather than choices that are popular. Gilbert's read: she's not done with politics. She will take a break, spend time with her teenage daughter, and return. In the meantime, the mayoral candidates trying to succeed her are being evaluated on how much of her current pragmatism they absorb.
The Republican Party has no mayoral candidate in Washington, D.C. Gilbert noted this with the frustration it deserves.
The Lincoln Memorial's New Underground Museum
The most logistically impressive development Gilbert described: starting June 25th, the Lincoln Memorial will open a 15,000-square-foot underground museum within a 43,000-square-foot bedrock space.
The structural history: the Lincoln Memorial, built in 1910, required 120 massive concrete pillars sunk 50 feet into the ground to support the weight of the structure and its statue above swampy Potomac-adjacent soil. That depth became the opportunity. The columns now form the labyrinthine walls of a subterranean museum of Lincoln's life, the Civil War, civil rights, and the history of the memorial itself.
Cost: approximately $69 million. David Rubenstein provided approximately a quarter of the funding; the rest came from public-private partnerships. The space opens to the public June 25th, temperature-controlled underground — a welcome amenity for D.C.'s summer heat.
"Lines will be around the block."
The Broader Lesson Gilbert Left With
Gilbert ended her time on the show with an observation about what D.C.'s transformation represents beyond its own ZIP codes.
She had heard from former mayors in other cities — their residents were watching D.C. come back and asking: can we do this? Why don't we demand this?
"This vibe of let's work together, let's get it better for the people — is maybe spreading across the land."
The formula is not complicated. It requires someone with the willingness to name what is actually wrong, the authority to address it, and the lack of personal political stake in maintaining the institutions that have been producing the wrong results. In D.C., Trump provided the first two. Bowser's lame duck status provided the third.
Whether cities like Tucson can replicate the process without all three conditions aligning simultaneously is the harder question. But the evidence that it can work — that it has worked, visibly and quickly — is now sitting in the fountains and the clean Metro handrails of Washington.
Scott Schara: The Final Session — Eight Practical Steps, and the Single Most Important Thing He Learned
This is the seventh and concluding installment of the series. Scott Schara is the Wisconsin father, researcher, author, and founder whose 19-year-old daughter Grace — who had Down syndrome — died in a hospital in October 2021 after a doctor placed an illegal, unauthorized DNR on her chart and staff refused to resuscitate her. His book, Is the Government Legally Killing Us?, and all related resources, are at ouramazinggrace.net.
A Summary of Eight Weeks
Scott Schara opened his final segment with a summary of everything the series covered before proceeding to the most practical material he had saved for last.
Session 1: Grace's life and death. The first and likely only wrongful death jury trial in the country with COVID listed on the death certificate. The 11-1 verdict in favor of the defense. Grace was 19. She had Down syndrome. She called him "earthly dad." She was his best friend. Her death was the beginning, not the end, of his mission.
Session 2: The population reduction agenda. 90% of Down syndrome pregnancies end in abortion — not by accident, but by design. A 1967 document laying out the official plan to depopulate the United States. The virology bogeyman, created in the mid-1800s, used through the present day as a problem/reaction/solution loop to sell vaccines. An AI-designed universal coronavirus vaccine passing its first human trial just the week before this session — the lie is still being sold.
Session 3: Creating the culture of death. Every business has a culture. The culture of American society is built on collectivism — the premise that the good of the population supersedes the good of the individual. God is an individualist. Collectivism is the modern eugenics. It produces the logical framework where the elderly and disabled become "low-hanging fruit" — and every one of us is one car accident from being disabled, and all of us will be elderly if we live long enough.
Session 4: Programming the medical profession. The opioid crisis was not an accident — it was a dress rehearsal. Doctors were financially incentivized to prescribe addictive opioids the same way they were later incentivized to use remdesivir. The pharmaceutical industrial complex has run the play before. The white coat was programmed to implement the culture of death, one reimbursement code at a time.
Session 5: The 14-step legal and institutional architecture built over 120 years that makes all of this lawful. From Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) through the Flexner Report (1910) through the suspension of the Constitution (1933) through Medicare (1965) through the PREP Act (2005) through the Modernization of the Smith-Mundt Act (2012). Every step documented. Every law publicly available.
Session 6: Programming the population. The 1968 Weekly Reader telling five-year-olds that having more than two children was irresponsible. The government school system. The food supply. The scarcity narrative. The Hegelian dialectic applied across three generations.
Session 7 (this session): What can we do?
Eight Practical Steps
Schara delivered his complete list of action items — ordered not by importance but by implementation sequence.
1. Durable General Medical Power of Attorney
The critical word is durable. A standard medical power of attorney only becomes active if a physician certifies incapacity — which requires doctors to agree before your advocate can act. A durable general power of attorney is active upon signing. No physician certification required.
"Your medical power of attorney would be able to step in your place without jumping through any hoop."
Winn noted that she had a durable power of attorney for Grace. Schara confirmed: they did. And the hospital violated it anyway — acting unilaterally, placing a DNR without authorization, refusing resuscitation when the family demanded it. The document did not save Grace.
"None of this that I'm telling you will protect you. Only God will protect you."
The document establishes your legal position. God determines the outcome. Both matter.
2. Medical Directives Document
A detailed list of what you want and do not want in a medical setting. A sample document — the one Schara and his wife use — is available on the website at ouramazinggrace.net under the resource tab.
The document should specifically address: no unwanted vaccinations, no remdesivir, no ventilators without explicit consent, no DNR without express written consent, no treatment decisions made without the advocate's approval.
His direct experience: he and his wife used a medical directives document in November 2022 when they intervened to rescue a man from a hospital in Green Bay. They sat with the doctor and went through the entire document line by line. One of the provisions: no vaccinations. Forty-five minutes later, a nurse arrived to administer a COVID vaccine — to a man who was nearly dead, who had already received three doses of remdesivir. They physically stopped her.
"That's what advocacy is about."
The hospital claimed the chart had not been properly updated. Schara does not believe it. At Grace's trial, medical staff claimed they had not reviewed Grace's chart and had therefore missed two overdoses of Precedex. "Of course, I don't believe that either."
3. Get Off the Donor List
Organ donation is not inherently wrong. The problem is structural: the organ donor registration you signed at the DMV is a contract. That contract supersedes your medical power of attorney's authority at the time of decision.
"They will determine you're brain dead to be able to harvest your organs. This is a multi-billion-dollar business in the United States."
Dr. Heidi Klessig, who appeared on his podcast, has devoted her career to exposing the brain-death fallacy. The solution Schara recommends: remove yourself from the donor registry now. Allow your medical power of attorney to make the decision at the time, with full information and without a pre-signed contract forcing their hand.
4. Tear Up the Advanced Directive
The standard advance directive — "if I am going to be a vegetable, I do not want to be kept alive" — grants doctors the authority to make end-of-life decisions based on their assessment of your condition. Given what we know about how hospitals incentivize certain outcomes, handing that decision to a physician in advance is not the protection it appears to be.
Decision authority belongs with your medical power of attorney, at the time, with full context.
5. Cancel Your Medical Insurance
Schara acknowledged this sounds extreme. He explained why it is not.
Medical insurance coding is how CMS — the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services — implements its standard of care regime. The standard of care, as he documented across previous sessions, is designed to maximize revenue, not to maximize health outcomes. When you are insured and receive a diagnosis, your first question is almost always: "Does my insurance cover this?" That question channels you directly into the standard of care pipeline.
His family moved first to a high-deductible plan — a $20,000 deductible when Grace was born, which meant they did not participate in any amniocentesis or standard prenatal testing schemes. They eventually transitioned to Samaritan Ministries, a faith-based cost-sharing organization that provides a safety net for catastrophic events without tying care to CMS reimbursement codes.
"I'm not promoting them, but that's just who we use."
6. Use Medicare Strategically
If you are enrolled in Medicare because you are receiving Social Security — which automatically enrolls you upon receipt — you cannot exit. What you can do is use it selectively.
Use it for objective, mechanical needs: an MRI to confirm a structural problem, a surgery to repair a documented injury. Do not use it for annual checkups that lead to diagnoses that lead to the standard of care.
"If you objectively need to get an MRI and Medicare will pay for it — that's a no-brainer. But if you're using Medicare for an annual checkup with your doctor or a colonoscopy, I would not recommend that at all."
The colonoscopy example was specific: the risks of the procedure itself, plus the treatment they will recommend if they find something, plus the standard of care protocol that follows — make it a significant net negative for most people, particularly older patients who are already in the demographic targeted by the system's resource-rationing framework.
7. Establish a Cash-Pay Medical Provider
Regardless of what insurance you carry, find a doctor who does not accept Medicare or Medicaid and operates on a cash-pay basis. This single change removes the CMS coding mechanism from your care relationship entirely.
"Join the Wedge" is one of the websites Schara links to on the ouramazinggrace.net resource page. It maintains a directory of cash-pay providers across every state who have formally opted out of Medicare and Medicaid.
8. Have an Advocate — and Know What Advocacy Actually Means
This is, in Schara's final assessment, the most important item on the list. Not the documents. Not the insurance. The physical presence of a person who understands their role.
"Advocacy is putting yourself in the position — which you should be — where bodily autonomy is number one. That means your medical power of attorney is in the leadership position."
The advocate is not a visitor. The advocate is not a comforting presence in the corner of the room. The advocate is the decision-maker. The hospital staff are vendors. The advocate's job is to say, clearly and early in any medical encounter: I am in charge of this person's care. Nothing happens to them without my express written consent.
If the medical staff comply, the relationship functions correctly. If they do not:
"Then you fire them. You hire them as a vendor. If they don't perform according to what's agreed, you fire them."
Winn's real-life illustration: she called her husband's doctor and told her she was taking him off a prescription after three days because the side effects were dangerous and visible. The doctor agreed — she had been seeing the patient from across the desk once every few months; Winn had been watching him every hour for three days. The advocate had more information than the provider. The advocate used it.
The doctor does not always know better. The doctor graduated from medical school. So did the classmate who graduated last in their class. They both have MD after their names.
The Most Important Thing He Learned in Four and a Half Years
With the last few minutes of their final session together, Schara named the single most important lesson from everything he had researched.
"Satan operates the world through the anti-Christ system of governments and the false prophet systems of religions through lies, deception, and fear."
If he had not fallen for the deception of COVID — and if he had not reacted out of fear — Grace would be alive today.
"Grace was a martyr whom God used to wake me up to this much larger agenda. But it is the fear that I felt trapped to — and that's why Grace is not here."
He drew the circle closed with Genesis 50:20 — the verse that has governed his mission since Grace died: What satan meant for evil, God meant for good.
Grace was lovable by nature. Loving her was easy. Easy love, Schara said at Grace's funeral, is not the hard thing. "The time you can do a great job is when you can love the unlovable — and you can't do that without God's help."
For anyone who wants to continue with the research, Schara's Substack — accessible through ouramazinggrace.net — contains the full series, the resource lists, the provider directories, and the ongoing work. The book, Is the Government Legally Killing Us?, is available through the same website via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. One hundred percent of proceeds go to Grace's Foundation.
"Thank you for giving me this time," he said to Winn as their time ran out.
The thanks, as Winn made clear, went both directions.
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
Scott Schara's complete series, resources, and book: ouramazinggrace.net
Terry Gilbert's reporting and photography from Washington, D.C.: follow her Facebook page for firsthand images.
Lincoln Memorial Underground Museum opens June 25th, Washington, D.C.
Primary voter registration deadline: June 22nd. Early ballots: approximately June 24th. Primary: July 21st.