On this week’s episode of She Thinks, Kelsey Bolar chats with Elisha Krauss on why she’s not leaving California, her experiences defying mask mandates, and encouraging young girls and women to stand up for what they believe.
Elisha Krauss is a conservative host and commentator who homeschools her girls in LA with her husband Eric. Currently, she hosts the weekly Washington Examiner Newsmaker Series, featuring politicians, activists, business owners, and celebrities about the news of the day. She previously hosted a morning show in Los Angeles with her friend and former Daily Wire colleague Ben Shapiro. Prior to that, Krauss ran a congressional campaign, worked with PragerU, and produced the Sean Hannity radio show. She enjoys encouraging young women and young conservatives through speaking (digitally and in person) on America’s college campuses.
TRANSCRIPT
Kelsey Bolar:
Hey, everyone. It’s Kelsey Bolar, once again filling in for Beverly Hallberg while she takes some time off after getting married not too long ago. So welcome to She Thinks, a podcast from Independent Women’s Forum, where we talk with women and sometimes men about the policy issues that impact you and the people you care most about. Today we are joined by Elisha Krauss, a conservative host and commentator who homeschools her girls in LA along with her husband, Eric. Currently, she hosts the weekly Washington Examiner News Maker series, featuring politicians, activists, business owners, and celebrities about news of the day. She previously hosted a morning show in LA with her friend and former Daily Wire colleague, Ben Shapiro. Prior to that, Elisha ran a congressional campaign, worked with Prager U, and produced The Sean Hannity Radio Show. She enjoys encouraging young women and young conservatives through speaking, both digitally and in person, on America’s college campuses. Elisha, welcome to the show. I am so excited to catch up with you.
Elisha Krauss:
I know. I’m so excited. I feel like I social media stalk you, but we haven’t had a conversation in a while.
Kelsey Bolar:
Yeah. So Elisha and I are both young moms. Two of our children are the same age. I went through my first pregnancy, Elisha had a little bit more experience on that front. But we do live on opposite sides of the country. Elisha lives out in California and I’m in the Washington DC area. And that’s where I want to kick off this conversation. You are a conservative mom in a very blue state. I wanted to start out by asking: How do you do it? But I feel like I should just ask: How are you doing?
Elisha Krauss:
How am I doing is something I was just texting a pastor friend of mine earlier. I was like, “I feel like I’m just going to be brutally honest with people, and from the Christian faith perspective, have hope that this is the season I’m supposed to be in, but I kind of don’t like the season.” And I feel like I’m not the only American woman, red or blue state, who feels this way right now. I keep meeting women and dialoguing with women all over the country that are like, “It’s hard in general,” and I choose to have to wake up every morning and see the joy in educating my girls at home, even though it’s a decision that we were kind of forced into, and it wasn’t a choice given the situation here in the state. And I’m in a kind of stay and fight mode, and I hope that we end up winning not just little battles, but the overall culture and educational war when it comes to the future and the ideology of our children.
Sorry if that was a long-winded way to be like, “It depends on the moment, how I’m doing,” but in this exact moment, I’m very blessed to have a loving, supportive husband and three healthy kids, and be in the sunshine of a blue state. And I think that overall, people kind of maybe assume that things … In some ways, yes, obviously things are worse or more vitriolic in a blue state, but I have plenty of friends in red and purple states who are dealing with the same issues that we are here in LA.
Kelsey Bolar:
I can tell you as a mom who lives in Loudoun County, I have some pretty big concerns right now as well, certainly, I don’t live in a blue state, or in a red state. We’ll see what happens with the upcoming election. But you’re right, it’s not just California. I do want to ask though, you were homeschooled growing up, correct?
Elisha Krauss:
Yeah. I was one of the weirdos that was homeschooled all 12 years.
Kelsey Bolar:
So was homeschooling your own children a choice? Or was it you felt not really a choice, given where you live?
Elisha Krauss:
So previously, we’re nondenominational, but our girls had gone to a TK through eighth Catholic school here in Los Angeles. And I’d chosen Catholic education because I felt like it’d be easier to dialogue and teach our girls what we believe regarding our faith. And I knew that I wouldn’t have to deal with LGBTQ week and drag queen story hours and other issues. I liked how there were uniforms and no makeup and no jewelry, because I feel like that just … In that stage of life with kids going into puberty and interest in others, I just felt like it was kind of easier. Plus, Catholic high schools in the LA area are very good.
TMZ had reported when LeBron James was coming to LA, how he had actually been considering a couple of Catholic high schools. Famously, Meghan Markle went to a Catholic high school. But they’re really affordable, especially by LA standards. And I did some research and was like, “Huh, if I want my kids to be able to go on a trajectory where they can be at a good school with debate teams and golf teams and football teams and band, maybe this Catholic education route is a great route. And I have family members that are Catholic and lots of friends that are Catholic, and I felt like there was a mutual respect of our kind of core beliefs there, so that’s a long-winded way of saying, “Yeah, I was always open to different educational options because I’m a massive fan of school choice.”
And I think you’ll see this with baby number two, every kid is so different. Every pregnancy is so different. Every labor and delivery is so different. And every individual child is so unique and so different in their own beautiful way, that I never have thought that there was a one-size-fits-all in the forms of education, even within the three members of one family. And so we are in this season of homeschooling. When people are like, “What about next year?” I just say, “I don’t know,” because I never anticipated this being a place that I would be in our lives, and it totally has its pros and cons. I mean, the pros that my husband loves is that we can all “sleep in” by family standards, which is usually 7:00 AM, instead of rushing out the door to make it before the bell rings and beat LA traffic.
I like the flexibility of—I’m going to be in DC in a couple weeks for a work thing, and my husband and I are going to bring the eight-year-old so we can go do museums and like make her write an essay on it, right? If she were in public school or private school, that probably wouldn’t be an option, especially the older that kids get. But then we were just talking to some friends in Arizona last week, and they have teens, and then they have littles. And they’re like, “Yeah, we wish everybody would want to homeschool so we could have the flexibility of going on surf trips and work trips and family trips together,” but that isn’t always the right fit for every kid. So we’re kind of, I guess the COVID situation and the lockdown situation and the masking situation, and potentially, the vaccine situation, are forcing us to homeschool. But I am so blessed that we even have that option, and that we have the financial freedom and flexibility to do that.
Kelsey Bolar:
That sounds like a really healthy attitude, and an important one for parents to hear that homeschooling doesn’t have to be a permanent solution. It can be a temporary solution, a Band-Aid, as it’s potentially been for many parents during the COVID-19 pandemic, I do have hopes that because we’ve seen so many parents capitalize on that option, they will encourage more school choice. I know that’s something I would like to take advantage of if I had it in my state. But beyond homeschooling and the situation you’re in, I wanted to ask what you see for the future of California. I was really struck when, just a couple weeks ago, we heard Elon Musk say he’s moving his company headquarters to Texas. I mean, that alone is going to have a huge financial impact on California in terms of the state’s tax revenue. Of course, politicians out there downplay the implications of these types of decisions, but he was not the first, and he won’t be the last to leave. You’re standing your ground. Are you concerned or are you hopeful?
Elisha Krauss:
I am incredibly hopeful. I didn’t expect us to win the recall. But I actually am of the Kevin Kiley mindset of California and the Larry Elder mindset of California is worth fighting for. I am only 35 years old, but I’ve been a political nerd for my entire childhood. My mom is also one, was always very involved in politics. And I know enough history to know that unfortunately, conservatives have often fled instead of staying and fighting for far too long. And then now we’re like, “Oh, wow. How come the university and education system is so far to the left? Wow, how come big corporations are so woke and forcing unconstitutional mandates? Oh, wow. How come the church is moving to the left?” And now we have things like The Liturgist Podcast and CRT being taught even in private Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist schools, right?
The list can go on and on. And I’m actually hopeful that despite that recall law, look at what the candidates were able to do, specifically a candidate like Larry Elder with eight weeks and less than $9 million. Gavin Newsom—the thing that people don’t talk about—he spent up over $100 million to maintain his role as governor. That’s more than he’s ever had to spend in an actual gubernatorial race every time he’s run. It’s the most he’s ever had to spend in office, I think, for all of his campaigns combined. And I think that continually, people around me that would identify as to the left and to the center are recognizing really the importance of local government, of your city council races, of your county supervisor races, of who the heck is on your school board making decisions about your children. And I think that it’s been a wake-up call to people not only here in the state, but across the country. The president is what’s the most talked about on Headline News, and during Fox News, or CNN primetime, but they’re not all the end-all, be-all when it comes to things that are going to affect your life.
And I think that not just here in California, but nationwide, we’re kind of hearing classical liberal voices that are speaking up and saying, “Yeah, not okay with the way that things are going here.” Margaret Atwood, for example, JK Rowling, pre-COVID, the list goes on and on as people that are kind of waking up. And listen, I’ve long said, and we’ve obviously had friends that have left the state, everyone’s cost-benefit analysis is going to be different. And I want everyone to have the freedom to choose what’s best for them as an individual and for their families.
And for now, that’s my husband and I staying here and fighting because we think that there’s a lot to fight for. Jerry Brown, an awful governor, once infamously said, but it was the one thing that he did say that was right, that so goes California, so then goes the nation. And time after time, we have seen how policies here are implemented here. Everybody points and laughs and says, “Wow, that’s crazy.” And within 5, 10, 20 years, it’s happening in places like Alabama. So maybe it’s not so crazy for us to invest resources in a place that is going to have an effect on the rest of the nation.
Kelsey Bolar:
Absolutely. And there’s one issue IWF has been following very closely on that front, and that is the PRO Act, which started as AB5 in California, a law that…it didn’t even take long for it to go national. It has not yet been implemented at the federal level, but certainly, Democrats are doing all they can to try, including trying to sneak elements of it into President Biden’s massive reconciliation spending bill. But we know that’s a policy that has greatly impacted California. It actually received quite a bit of backlash. I’m sure most of our listeners know the gist of it, but it greatly limits the ability of Californians and potentially all Americans to work independently or freelance. And it was really interesting to see this example of clearly very liberal Californians realize the real-life impacts, the damages that these types of policies can have, and actually, see some of them speak up and fight back, and even reach across the aisle and work with us on issues like that. Are there any other examples you can think of where you’ve seen that happen?
Elisha Krauss:
I see a potential for an example, and I really wish that the California GOPs get their ish together. And can I say ish? Get their stuff together and work on this. I mean, polling has shown that hopefully there will be … We do ballot proposals in the state, and 9 times out of 10, they’re stupid and I just vote no on everything. Although, the Claremont Institute is usually very helpful in having a kind of voter guide of their breakdown of all the proposals that can be helpful. And I typically write about or post those when election time rolls around. But the school choice initiative has been something, and getting the dollars back to students, and getting the dollars back to parents, like a lot of other states are starting to do. Corey DeAngelis of course does way more profound work and it has great impact and research in that arena.
But it has consistently polled well in the state, across a massively blue state. School choice and giving moms the money back to take care of their children’s educational future, therefore helping their financial future, is something that polls over 60%, even among minority registered Democratic women. So I’m hopeful that if that is something that can get on the ballot, that the Democrats can try real hard, but it’s going to end up helping people because Zoom learning is just not the same as being able to send your kid to the best school for them, for an in-person education that is going to help their educational and financial future. And any mother on the face of the planet that cares about her kid would agree with that.
Kelsey Bolar:
Absolutely. And those poll numbers do give me hope, not just for California, but for the entire country. So shifting gears—this might be a small thing—but one of the ways you’re staying and fighting back is through peacefully defying some of these very strict California mask mandates. I’ve seen a couple on your Instagram feeds, I’m thoroughly entertained by it. You put together some fun reels. And I know that as a mom of a two-year-old, you understand the outrage that many of us feel over the idea that we’re supposed to mask their faces when they’re just learning to talk. They can’t even, not even close to being able to tie their shoes yet. So tell me a bit about your defiance in the mask arena.
Elisha Krauss:
I think that my defiance really started and I think if you see my Instagram feed, you also saw my tweet that I posted there that was like, “I was a virgin that married my first boyfriend, who follows all of the rules, and always wears my seatbelt, and goes to church, and does all these things.” But I kind of have had it, and my way of sticking it to the man is just not complying anymore. And I would encourage … And I get DM’s that are like, “Oh, my gosh, I don’t know. I don’t want to get yelled at.” Get yelled at, but let the person who’s yelling at you be the person that everyone else in the grocery store looks on with disdain, while you calmly and rationally just be like, “No, thanks.” Yeah, everything that I’ve put on my reels have been based on real interactions. Some people think I’m setting them up for the comedy or the joke of it, but no, they’re real interactions that I’ve had.
A girlfriend of mine, Bethany Mandel, who I’m sure your audience knows, was like, “Girl, I don’t know how you do it.” And I’m like, “I just do it.” And I think it really started a little bit in the spring, but more so after that June 15th deadline when Newsom lifted everything, and then he locked it back down. And then they started to double down with, oh, we’re going to do this in schools. And oh, we’re going to do this at large-scale events. And oh, we’re going to start a vaccine mandate now. I was like, “Oh, hell no.” And so my defiance comes through when I go places in LA and I won’t show my card and I won’t mask. And that’s just the way it is. And I’m nice to people when I do it.
I say, “No, thank you,” when a security guard offers me a mask. I honestly haven’t been forced to put one on in three months. I think I was at a Nordstrom Rack. And what was so funny is the way that they touched the mask multiple times, and the guy, like, even dropped it on the floor. I’m like, “This is more germy than me walking around just breathing.” And I will not mask my girls. I’ve never masked my girls. On flights, that’s it. I will not mask them. And even the eight-year-old, when she has been asked, told a lady very politely, “I’m sorry. You cannot tell me what to put on my body. You need to talk to my mom.” And in my head, I was like, “Yes, queen.”
And so it’s not even something that I talk about with my girls. They just witness what I do. And it is interesting how more and more people, as they see what I’m doing, will then kind of take down their mask and be like, “Is this okay?” And I’m like, “Yep.” Tell me why. It ain’t a law. It ain’t a law. It ain’t a law. It ain’t a law. I have friends that went to the Rolling Stones the other night at SoFi Stadium, packed out in Los Angeles. And there was zero mask enforcement. So I just get a little heated over the hypocrisy of how churches and schools and private functions and small businesses are being fined and reported and managed, but Vanity Fair Events, and red carpet events, and Marvel events, and Rolling Stone concerts ain’t, then don’t you dare tell me to put a mask on myself or my kids.
Kelsey Bolar:
I love your daughter’s reaction.
Elisha Krauss:
She’s got a little bit of me in her.
Kelsey Bolar:
It sounds like it. And yeah, I’m eight months pregnant, so I have not been flying since my daughter turned two. But I don’t even know what I’m going to do next time we go to board a plane because I can’t imagine even rationally explaining to her why she has to sit there with a cloth over her face. And it just baffles me that really no other country in the world is forcing two-year-olds to mask for hours at a time. And yet somehow, it’s perfectly acceptable, and I sadly feel like those of us with actual two-year-olds, there’s only so many of us who have two-year-olds in this very moment and understand what our government and what these private companies are asking us to do by putting a mask over their face, that we’re kind of voiceless.
And I know, you know, you and I try to do what we can to push back about this, and others, Bethany Mandel has done great work. But it’s one of those issues that I talk to my nonpolitical friends who have young kids, and they actually agree with me. When I say nonpolitical, I really mean lefty. They agree with me. And so this kind of reaches beyond the political spectrum, and yet, nobody’s doing anything about it.
Elisha Krauss:
And what’s happening though is you could say … I could say, “My lefty friends, my righty friends,” and then I also have middle-of-the-road and nonpolitical friends. And this is now an issue that parents are realizing, wow … I think Emily Oster, I was reading a study recently that talked about how the kids age five and below, 80% of their communication and kind of discernment and people judgment come through the face and expression and reading people’s lips, and being able to look into their eyes and kind of judge their face.
We have so many friends and family members that are in kinship and foster situations, and the level of connection and safety and trust that is built with foster kids and in kinship situations with a teacher, or a pastor, or a counselor, or a foster parent, that is now delayed and minimized and prolonged because on top of all the other things that these poor foster kids have to face, and the statistics that show their likelihood of not being able to have a quote, unquote, average or normal life, now we’re adding this element to it. I think it’s cruel. I think it is wrong. And I think it is increasingly unscientific to be doing this to the next generation.
Kelsey Bolar:
Absolutely. And it’s funny when I say my nonpolitical friends, when I actually have a conversation with them about anything involving politics, it’s pretty obvious that they’ve drank the Kool-Aid. They’re pretty far to the left, but they like to maintain that they are not political.
Elisha Krauss:
Oh, yeah.
Kelsey Bolar:
I’m sure you have many of those.
Elisha Krauss:
Yeah.
Kelsey Bolar:
Well, I want to end the conversation on a positive note. And I guess I want to use some of the news stories. I’m not sure if you’ve seen Meghan McCain is out with a new audiobook this week called Bad Republican, where she details really the emotional struggles and even the difficult toll sometimes that being the lone conservative on The View had on her, and how ultimately, the environment became so toxic that she could not work there anymore. She had to walk out, which is really sad. She had the one conservative seat on The View, which is dominated by liberal women, and they just made it so intolerable that she, one of the strongest women that I know, couldn’t last. And here we are talking to you, a strong conservative woman, who proudly lives in California, seems to very much enjoy your family’s life there. And I want to ask what your words are of encouragement for those of us who feel so outnumbered to the point where we’re asking, “Should we move our families to a more conservative area?” I mean, how do we survive these very toxic times we live in?
Elisha Krauss:
Yeah. I think Young America’s Foundation is who typically students are members of their group. And they request me to come to their college campuses or do digital speeches. And I consistently think that tough and adverse situations in life make you a stronger human being, man or woman, from any socioeconomic background or ethnicity, that you can choose to let it break you down, or you can choose to let it make you stronger. And I think some of the bravest women on the planet are young conservative women who are living out their viewpoints and living out their principles on America’s college campuses, especially in the last two to five years.
I’ve been in adverse work situations before, but never to the extreme of Meghan. And I think that the people making fun of her just disgust me, especially when they claim to be pro-women and tolerant. It just further shows the left hypocrisy of, they only like women when they can be the token woman for their ideals. And I’ve said recently, and I might perturb some people, or upset some people with this, but the left uses women as tokens when we do and say what they want. And I think that a lot of people on the right don’t even utilize the power of the female market enough, and the female voice enough, because I understand that we don’t want to just play on people’s emotions. But you can pull people in with emotions, like heck, how their kids need the opportunity for school choice, or how the she-cession increased during COVID because of small businesses getting shuttered, and how women own the majority of small businesses.
You can use facts that also kind of tug at the heartstrings to win people to our side, and I think that Meghan and other women like her in this situation to try to do so. And I’m really not surprised at the cattiness and the lack of professionalism by the other women over there. And it’s honestly quite disappointing, especially because a little behind the scenes, when I produced the Hannity Radio Show, Whoopi was always willing to come on. She was always super nice to Sean, even though they were combative and would debate. She didn’t use to be this way. And I feel like she’s representative of a lot of Americans who’ve just been made crazy by the political cycle in the last four to eight years. And I would like to think that there’s still a good person down in there that can have friends on all sides of the aisle, and religious and political spectrums. And I’d like to think that those types of people all over the country can be reached, but I don’t know. I try not to lose hope when I think about it too much.
Kelsey Bolar:
Well, Elisha, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your encouragement with us. Where can our listeners go to follow you and your work?
Elisha Krauss:
It is E-L-I-S-H-A-K-R-A-U-S-S on all social platforms. And then of course, over at The Washington Examiner News Maker series.
Kelsey Bolar:
Great. Well, thank you so much, and good luck out there in California. Keep fighting.
Elisha Krauss:
Thank you. Come visit. It’s nice and warm.
Kelsey Bolar:
If I figure out how to get my two-year-old on a plane without a mask, I would love to.
Elisha Krauss:
I just have to say, just do it. We’ve never … We’ve flown a lot with the two-year-old, even the four-year-old, never once masked them. It really depends. My dad’s a retired pilot. I think it depends on the flight crew and whether or not there’s a Karen on board, but that’s just … I mean, I also, I go unmasked in an airport until I’m asked. And it’s been longer periods of time, so you never know. Join. Do not comply.
Kelsey Bolar:
All right, listeners, well, if anyone else has a two-year-old out there and can give that a test run for me, let me know how it goes. You can follow me at Kelsey Bolar, and keep me posted. Elisha, thank you again.
Elisha Krauss:
Thank you.
Kelsey Bolar:
We hope you take away something from today’s conversation. And if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, or liked the podcast in general, we would love it if you could take a moment to leave us a rating or review on iTunes. This helps ensure our message reaches as many Americans as possible. Share this episode and let your friends know they can find more She Thinks episodes on iTunes, iHeart Radio, Tune In, Spotify, and all their favorite podcast apps. This is Kelsey Bolar signing off on another edition of She Thinks.