May 22, 2025 • 52 mins
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick surveys the endless lawlessness we’re seeing as the Trump administration defies the courts. Former Congresswoman Katie Porter details her run for California Governor and how she’d handle the sea change happening in the state right now.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and the CBO says Trump's tax cuts
would add three point eight trillion.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Dollars to the national Dad.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
We have such a great show for you today, Slate
Dahlia Lethwick stops by to talk about the Trump administration
defying the courts. Then we'll talk to former Congresswoman Katie
Porter about her run from California governor and how she
would handle the sea change she sees happening in the
(00:38):
state of California.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Bi There's this guy, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House,
not very good at his job. There's this big beautiful bill,
one big beautiful bill, and it's hit a few bumps
in the road.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's a big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Mike Johnson got this job because he was to Trump,
not because he was good at legislating, not even because
he had spent a lot of time in leadership. He
got this job because he's sucked up to Trump. One
of the things that we see in Trump two point
zero is a lot of people got their jobs just
because they're just suck ups right that Trump likes them.
(01:17):
There are a lot of people in this administration who
Trump likes. They're not necessarily good at their job, they're
not necessarily smart, they're not necessarily anything. Right.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's affirmative action for sycoventcy.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right. If you're good at sucking up, you can go
far in this administration aka Mike Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
This creates a.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Lot of problems when you get to a moment when
you have Mike Johnson at George because now you have
someone who doesn't really know how to do this stuff
in charge of everything, and that is how we got here.
So we're about to see a lot of stuff go
down with this. We got the one big beautiful bill.
They're trying to get it. What's happening right now is
Republicans are a very small majority one two seats. So
(01:59):
you have the hardline Republicans who never vote for anything
because ultimately they think the best way to run the
government is to kill the government. That's like the you
know the Rand Paul types right in the House. That's
Thomas Massey, that's Chip Roy that crew. But they're never
going to agree to anything, right. They want to just
gut Medicaid, medicaid, all of it, snap everything. Then you
(02:25):
have the moderates who would like to win again and
would like to keep their seats. That's the Mike Lawler
than Nicole Mcatacos, that crew, Mike Tako's Michael Nicole Tacos.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
You.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, so you have that crew, those guys. You have
just different fractions here. The good news is they're gonna
So Trump came down this week. He went and said,
you know, come on, team, everybody, vote for what I want.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You'll remember that the last time we were in the
House of Representatives when Trump came down last time. So basically,
Republicans have only ever passed one other thing, which was
a CR continuing Resolution which kept the government from shutting down.
And during that time, the way that Republicans whipped votes
was that Donald Trump and Elon Musk called everyone and said,
(03:21):
if you don't do what we want, Elon's going to
primary you. Now fast forward, TESLA earnings have dropped seventy
one percent, and Elon is at least pretending, we don't
know if it's true or not, but at least trying
to create the appearance that he is going back to
Texas to run his fifteen companies and not fuck up
our federal government. By the way, he's gotten the data
(03:42):
he needed from DOJE, so he's out. Savings not happened. Fraud, waste,
and abuse. It happened, but not the way they said
it would. The question is now can they whip votes
without Elon and Trump? So Trump went down to Congress
yesterday up to the He went to the hill and
he said, you know, I want everyone to vote for
(04:03):
what I want. And then he was a little bit
mean about ship Roy and Thomas Massey and he said,
you know that they're whatever. But ultimately it didn't work right.
He wasn't able to whip votes that way. So now
we wait and we see and look, this was a
self imposed deadline. Republicans did two things to make this
all much more complicated than it needed to be, or
(04:24):
not even complicated, but a heavier lift. One is they
instead of two bills, they did one, and two is
that they said they were going to have it done
by this long weekend. There's no reason to have assumed
that either of these things would work. Just want to
say one other thing, which is all of this is
irrelevant because as soon as this Bill gets the Senate,
they're going to change it all anyway. Thune has already
said that. So again like this is a lot of
(04:47):
drama for nothing. Welcome to the United States Congress.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So by speaking of Congress, we unfortunately have a very
sad death here.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Rep.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Jerry Connolly has died at seventy five after his battle
with cam Sir. We send out our thoughts to his
family and friends. But this is a really telling thing
that I think the Democrats have to agrepple with is
that they are the sixth Congressman to die in office
in about a year and a half, all of which
have been Dems in three since Trump took office, and
two of those three have been in Republican districts. And
(05:18):
he is another one that is as a Republican governorship
who have been delaying the elections a lot when this
has happened.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
What are you seeing here, Jerry Connolly.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
You'll remember that AOC had wanted ranking oversight. It had
been given to Jerry Connolly because of his seniority, despite
the fact that he was sick with cancer.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Then like two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Connolly says, you know, I'm going to give up my
position and not run for reelection, and then two weeks
later he dies. This news cycle is literally all about
people getting sick in their seventies and eighties Democratic politicians.
One of the things that we love about the Democratic
Party is that they try to be nicer than Republicans.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
But nobody is.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Benefiting from this kind of weird, self destructive elevation of
people who are too old. That's what it is. So
I'm saddened by the death of Jerry Connolly. I think
we all are, but I think it's a really important moment.
We don't live forever, we do not have forever on
this planet. And if it is a real emergency, if
(06:27):
American democracy is in an emergency, if everything Democrats have
been saying for the last two years is true, then
we really need to see members of Congress who are
healthy and able to do their jobs. And I think
that this is another moment for us to think about
are we going to elevate people who are young and
(06:51):
can communicate, or are we going to elevate people because
they feel it is their time, it is their turn.
And I really think that Democrat need to look at
the way they do things. And I think that this
is yet another example. Look, cancer is horrendous. I have
this whole book about that's coming out about what it's
like to be in this world of diagnosises, etc.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
But the question is, if you are not well, is
that the moment to not take on what is a
really major fight to keep healthcare and keep things for
the American people that will affect millions and millions of people.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And I think that's a real open question, Samlly.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
One are the great signs that we're heading into a
really awesome authoritarian stat is when you have directors departments
under deer Leader giving their employees lie detector tests for
leaking to the Wall Street Journal. This really is the
when fascism goes stupid part.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Look, I love Christy Noan because she's funny. She doesn't
mean to be funny, but she is funny. She's inadvertently hilarious.
She is going to hook people up to a polygraph
to try to figure out if they're linking the press.
It's just like a satire of a Gymspond movie. It's
kind of brilliantly stupid. Let's just recap Christinome. She wore
(08:16):
the expensive watch, she took photos and Seacott. I mean,
she just at every point has sort of done like
the TV version of government, hooking people up to lie
detector tests. It's TV government, It's reality TV government, and
it makes a lot of sense because that is who
Donald Trump is, the reality TV president.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So I saved the scariest news for last. Diseases are spreading,
but the CDC isn't warring the public like it was
months ago before Trump got in office.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, well, you know, this is this whole Trump administration.
If you don't know what's happening, is it really happening.
It reminds me quite a lot of what they're trying
to do with the National Weather Association, right this idea
climate's not changing.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
If you don't know what the climate is, that's where
we are.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
If the ostrich haes its head in the sand, the
weather doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I mean, the one piece of good news here is
that remember when RFK Junior Swim and Rock Creek Park
wearing only jeans.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You don't, I have to say, you're kind of fixated
on this. What might think that you have a crush.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
No, I do not. I really don't have a crush.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But what I do have is like a fascination with
a person who is so incredibly focused on health theoretically
at least tends to be focused on health, but who
does such incredibly scary things like swimming in poop water.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We know that.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I mean, that's like the mystery of bird flu. Right,
it didn't go away.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah. I don't want to be conspiratorial, but many people
are saying, like, why do I see so many more
dead birds?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, well that's what you just said when we're before this,
But I haven't seen any other dead birds.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
But if there are a lot of birds, that will.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Be the horror movie that we were all hoping to apply.
Dalia Ltswick is a senior editor at Slate and the
author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and the Battle
to Save America.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Welcome back to Fast.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Politics, my friend, and also one of the smartest legal
minds we have going Dalia.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Him, Mollie, can I just also before we I know
we're going to like go go dark really quickly, but
I just also want to congratulate you on the book
before we do anything, because you're a freaking, like really
cool writer about things that are hard to write about.
So props.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Thirteen Days ordered on Amazon. I know that we don't
necessarily like Amazon, but Amazon has bought.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
A number of copies of the book.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
So if you want to support me Amazon or pull or,
I want you to start a little bit with Like
the last couple of weeks of Trump's Supreme Court. One
of the things that was really interesting is a different
between Trump one point zero and Trump two point zero
is he loses at the court, but he says he wins,
which he didn't do last time. So there have been
(11:08):
a couple of those happening. Can you sort of talk
us through that.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
I've been thinking about it this way, Molly, Like there's
been a sort of a split screen between what Trump's
lawyers will do and say in court and then like
what he and Steven Miller will say on TV right
and twin and like, yeah, the effort has been largely
because Justice Department lawyers like don't want to get sanctioned
(11:33):
and they would like job someday, and they don't want
to like stand up and flagrantly lie in front of
a court, and so like a lot of the just
bonker stuff that you'd hear from Steven Miller, like oh,
we won this case nine nothing you know, we don't
have to return deportees. Everybody agreed with us, like stuff
(11:53):
that is just wrong, Like that's not reflected in how
the Justice Department has been litigating the case.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Is there.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
They try to be careful and they try to be
precise and that to be clear, like it's total shell game,
Like I don't know, I don't understand.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Nobody told me.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
Like there's still an immense amount of like Calvin ball
going on, but at least I think they don't like
straight up dare the judge to like put them in
jail in contempt. And one of the things that has changed,
and this is very big Trump two point zero energy,
is now they're kind of like those two things are converging,
like they're starting to say stuff in court that they
(12:33):
wouldn't have said in court a couple of weeks ago.
And the best example there's so many, but I think
this is what you're tilting at, and it's important. Is
this like Kilmar or Brego Garcia. You know, the court
ordered like unequivocally like you have to facilitate, but not
effectuate bringing him home. And you know, the Trump administration
(12:55):
waved their hands around and said like, oh we don't
have jurisdiction over him, like he's in Sika nel salad
or there's nothing we can do. And now we're seeing
and this is really an important turn, and I think
you're right. It's so different from the first time. We're
not just seeing like the open defiance of what Steven
Miller says or what Trump says. We're starting to hear
(13:17):
like lawyers saying stuff like, oh, everything is a state
secret and we're just not going to do it. You know,
as you and I are taping, there's a hearing going
on about a bunch of folks who were just sent
to South Sudan over a judge's order last night, and
you know, the judge is just like, what the hell, Like,
I had an order, I said, you can't deport people's
(13:38):
third party country, right, and you're sending them to like
a war torn death trap, and like the lawyers are
just like, oh, shruggy emoji. So I think one of
the things you're describing is like what the lawyers were
doing a month ago, which is, oh, you know, we deported.
I don't want to say deported, I want to say renditioned.
There was no deportation. We sent a go Garcia to
(14:01):
Seacott by accident, it was an administrative error, and now
they're doubling down on the like, no, he's like a
sex trafficker. He's super vill you know, gang member, and
we can do whatever we want under the Alien Enemies Act.
And so I think what you're describing is this kind
of convergence of the cable news lawyering and the likepetual
(14:23):
lawyering court. And that's incredibly scary because I think we
thought the check on the Justice Department, on the Solicitor General,
on the Trump administration generally was going to be losing
in court.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And now again we're.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Kind of we're a little bit like creeping up on that.
They're getting more and more contemptuous, more and more apt
to blame the courts, you know, blame the Supreme Court,
and less and less respectful of judicial authority generally. So
that's like we're getting there, Molly. I don't think we're
quite there, although again there's been lots of lines crossed.
(14:58):
But I think that the idea that what we say
in court has to rise to some level of like
sobriety and like fact checkbility is starting to dissipate.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I'm making the scary eye face because it makes me
scared when you tell me things like this, and it's
just very worrying. So I want you to go back
to that Supreme Court case though the oral arguments last
week that was about birthright citizenship, but really wasn't not
all about birthright citizenship. I want you to explain what
(15:29):
that case is, explain what we saw happen there, and
talk about what it is about right.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
So this is nominally a case about you know, the
first day in office, Trump signs this executive order that
essentially says we're stripping birthright citizenship, which has been constitutionally
fourteenth men, fourteenth Amendment and in case law and by
statute multiple times. It's out.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
It's gone.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
If you're born in the United States and your parents
aren't either citizens or lawful permanent resident right, if they're
on a student visa, if they're here temporarily, they're out.
And this was enjoined by every single court that looked
at it, you know, every single court that looked at it.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Was constitution it's theoretically the boss yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Like dumb, dumb, Like it's very clear the court has
squarely reached this question and said, you know this is
you are a citizen, and every appeals court has agreed, right,
so this should be a slam dunker. And then the
Trump administration and this is sort of an example of
the thing you're asking about, does this really sassy play
molly where they go to the Supreme Court. It's been
(16:38):
enjoyed now, you know in all these lower courts, and
it's been upheld in all these appeals courts. It's still
where there's not been hearing, right, this is all in
emergency posture, And they go up to the Supreme Court
and say that we don't want to appeal the fact
that we've lost everywhere. We just want to appeel this
idea of nationwide quote unquote universal injunctions. No single judge
should be allowed to enjoin a nationwide And so the
(17:02):
court agrees to hear this case that's ostensibly about this huge,
crashing constitutional crisis that is going to if it's allowed
to go into effect pretty much going forward, say like
millions of babies born in this country are not citizens,
but we're not really deciding that. What we're deciding that
instead is the power of a single judge to say
(17:26):
you can't do this nationwide. And I think to be fair,
it's like, listen, Matthew kas Merik, our friend of the judge,
and enjoined MiFi pristone, right, the FDA's approval of MiFi
pristone nationwide. So judges on both sides do it. This
has been going on for a long time. We could
have a conversation about what the sort of like equities
(17:47):
and fairness of a judge pausing a policy for the
whole nation. This isn't the vehicle, because this is a
case that is going to if it goes into effect,
have this patchwork of you know, and and it came
up a lot of arguments Mollie where you know, you're
born in New Jersey and then you crusted Pennsylvania and
you're right, it's like Civil War type you know, horror.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I was listening to those arguments and it was just
mind blowing stuff.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
And the reason it's so important is like it's easy
to get bogged down in this hugely technical question about
whether judges have jurisdiction, you know, to set aside policies nationwide,
and you know, is this contemplated in the Constitution, and
you know, maybe we need to stop it. Right now,
and all that is like very arcane and like singularly important.
(18:38):
But the thing that it puts aside is it's another
way of sidelining judges. It's another in the like huge
arsenal of trump efforts to say judges suck. And what
was really arresting at the Oral Argument, among many things,
was language from people like Justice as Alito that are like, oh,
you know, look at these like, you know, high on
(19:01):
their own supply, power hungry, you know, article.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Through activists judges, and it was like, my dude, there
are people right now threatening to kill and murder and
docs judges around the country at levels we haven't seen,
and like terrorizing the families of judges in it pizza boxes,
the pizza boxes and congressional attempts to impeach judges right
(19:27):
who'd come out the wrong way, And you Justice Alito,
think this is an appropriate moment to go after you know,
political activist judges.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Okay, So essentially what I sensed from the court was
that I don't think there's an appetite for the Court
to do away with birthright citizenship. But that wasn't this case,
and what they weirdly got tangled up in is like,
we actually want to decide this case, and we want
a vehicle to decide it quickly, And it's like you're
sitting on one like.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
This is it, this is it.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
But instead they're going to decide this like readively thorny
ideological question of can a single judge anywhere in the
country block a policy? So I don't know how this
shakes out ideally. Well, I think on the actual question
of you know, universal injunctions, it was very hard to
(20:19):
read John Roberts. It was clear Amy Cony Barrett was
like listening towards the liberal side of the of the group.
You know, there were moments where Justice Kavanaugh seemed to
have problems with nationwide injunctions. There was moments where Justice
Gorsic suggested, like, you may win on this, but you're
going to lose on birthright citizenship. So there was a
(20:40):
few tells that suggested it's going to be a hard case.
And by the way, they heard this in May, which
you know, arguments to be done. They have to get
this resulved in the next five weeks to get it
done by the end of the term. But I just think,
like the the thing I want to really center here
that was important is that this is a court that
is being disrespected every single day, every single day by
(21:03):
the Trump administration, and their ability to not weld that
onto the dispute about judicial power is.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Like insane, crazy, insane, because they're ruling against them. Solves
this case will mean that they are ruling against them salts.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
They just get shocking to.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Me and the Solicitor General. It was interesting John Soer
was literally standing there saying, you know, we'll probably agree
to follow a Supreme Court precedent in this case if
you decide this case, but like, we are not really
bound to follow a district court or order we don't
agree with, and we're we're not even committing to being
(21:44):
bound by like if the Second Circuit decides it. Like
he was literally standing there taking a blowtorch to lower
courts and saying, you know, we kind of know what
the law is and if the courts don't agree, and
to have the justices on the court this is where
they lost, to despair it.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
But to have the justices be like, hmm, that's unreading.
Speaker 5 (22:04):
Maybe there's no rule of law anymore. It was really
an assault on judicial power and judicial authority and also
sort of blinkered about the ways in which there's nothing else,
like if the courts don't say no, we got nothing else,
and an almost complete inability to see.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
That, Oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Well I'm going to because it just made I was
hoping to feel better abaud things, and now I feel worse.
I want you to talk a little bit about kind
of where we are right now with the courts. There
are a number of cases that will come down in June.
They are pretty seismic. I don't remember. If you're the
(22:46):
person who has this theory that sometimes the court takes
stuff to rule so they don't look as bad as
they actually are, give us sort of your thinking on
what this term is looking like. And you don't have
I mean obviously, so I'm not asking you to predict
the future at all, and more just asking what with
the makeup of the cases that they have that are
(23:06):
going to come out in June, sort of where you think, well,
we are.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
I think there's two through lines. One is in a
normal year like any other year where you were and
I we're talking in the end of May. There's some
pretty big cases. There's two huge church state cases. There's
an incredibly important case about gender Firm and care Scermetti
that the court heard. You know, there's a lot of
(23:34):
important cases, voting rights case, there's a lot coming down,
and in any normal term like that would be huge.
It's also just like almost in contrast to the stuff
we're seeing suspension of habeas corpus, invocation of the Alien
Enemies Act, right, claims of that willy nilly, you can
fire half of the federal government, it feels almost like
(23:57):
small ball, right, because it's like they're on this trajectory
of just basically, you know, we're going to try to
you know, choke off voting rights. We're going to try
to do away with whatever is left in terms of
a wall between church and state. We're going to make
it harder for trans kids to get gender for me care.
Like all that stuff is hugely consequential and compared to
(24:19):
like the absolutely thermonuclear stuff happening on the so called
shadow docket, right on the emergency dock.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, what's happening on the shadow docket? Just the Garcia case,
this kind of the Abrago Garcia.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yea, it's these.
Speaker 5 (24:32):
Every day, it's the orders every single day, and you know,
to be clear, last Friday, the quarter, like the court
you know, late Friday afternoon, like smack down another you know,
in another immigration case. Yeah, it's Justice as Alito and
Thomas dissenting.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
So I say that remind me that case.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
What was that case?
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Again?
Speaker 5 (24:53):
That was the sort of part two of that ARP
case about whether they could be uh deporting people from
the Northern District of Texas. This was like the part
one was the April order where they're like, don't put
those people on those planes, right like that was that
was the one in the morning order where they didn't
(25:14):
even wait for Justice Alito to file his descent. They
just were like, no, you cannot. And we also the
video right of the buses being turned around. So this
was an extension of that saying still can't do that.
Still you know, angry descent from Justices Alito and Thomas.
But really, I think what you're sort of servicing here,
(25:35):
and it's really important, is that we are in this
just galactic game of chicken between the Supreme Court and
the you know, Trump dhs and the you know ways
in which Trump has continued to defy. Right, there's a
standing order about Abrego Garcia. They're standing orders about these
folks deserve you know, habeas corpus, They deserve due process.
(25:58):
You can't like shuttle them out with five minutes warning
without giving them a chance to you know, appeal. And
those are being violated sort of seriatum now. And so
I think what we're going to see happening on that
shadow docket is a court that is really aware that
Donald Trump is daring them, like he's basically in a
(26:19):
like staring contest with them. And I think that not
only is this all going to percolate on the shadow docket, Frankly,
I don't understand how a Supreme Court reporters are going
to get a summer molly, because I don't think this
ends on the last day of June. But I think
the other thing, I mean, this is how I'm starting
to think about it, is that last year, a year ago,
(26:39):
when the Supreme Court decided the immunity case, they kind
of created an imperial president, right, they said, we are
the Imperial Court, we decide all the things. They've been
doing it for years ago. Nar Yeah, and we are
creating a monarchic presidency, the executive branch. And by the way,
that case gets cited all the time for the preposition
that Donald Trump can do whatever the hell he wants so.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Now, and it's excited in his brain test.
Speaker 5 (27:05):
I mean, it gave him everything he wanted. Right if
the president does it, it's not illegal. And that's what
he says over and over again, and on these questions
of like on matters of foreign policy, like I'm the decider,
and I think that these gang members are like invading
aliens from Venezuela, and that's like nobody can check me
on it. So I think the way I'm starting to
think about what's happening, particularly on the shadow docket, which is,
(27:27):
as I said, just swamping the regular doctrine that's being made,
is this imperial off where you have the imperial president
and the Imperial court and somebody's going to have to win.
And so it's kind of like this like Godzilla, like
King Kong, you know, who's the big boss. And I
think they're both half trying to save face in front
(27:50):
of the country, and I think they're also both really
aware that this is coming, like it's only going to
ratchet in one direction, and so that's I think what
you're seeing these sort of in and out you know,
split the baby hypertechnical decisions from the court that are
trying to let Donald Trump say face. He won't even
take his wins. He's like, but I want more and
(28:11):
more and more. And then it's just really this fascinating,
like you can't have an imperial both. There's one emperor
in town, and that's going to get sorted. I think
over the summer.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
We have two minutes left, and because you and I
are actually friends, we get together and make each other
sad about American democracy. We get to have a moment
of hilarity, which is habeas corpus. Oh boy, by the way,
all of those hearings are like amazing, Every single one
(28:43):
of the hearings on budget are like the blockbuster must
see TV. So Maggie Hassen gets up there and says,
what is habeas corpus?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And here we go.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Christy Noms says, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that
the president has to be able to remove people from
this country.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Right, and some wegg on Blue Sky skeated that is
the wrongest, wrong answer about what I like, you couldn't
get wronger than that declamation and like just to be
and and it was explained back to her, but it
is literally the opposite of the president, the opposite disappear
(29:24):
whoever he wants. Habeas corpus, this ancient writ you know,
show us the body the government can't hold you without
giving you a chance to understand why. That's what it means.
It doesn't mean that, you know, president gets to like
rendition you to Seacot. Nobody asks any questions. But I think,
and maybe this is a little like sort of sad
(29:45):
face on the hilarity. They're they're conditioning us, right, this
is a way of getting American viewers to be like, oh,
habeas corpus. That's when the president can send people away
to other countries for life without any possibility of legal process.
And that is essentially, by the way, what Stephen Miller
was saying, right Brian, he was like to spend it. Yeah,
(30:07):
So like I think we have to simultaneously take it
like hilariously, which it is, and like, you know, it's
so dumb as a rock off out there right now.
Speaker 7 (30:17):
Like it is just and.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
The dumbness of the rocks. But I also think we
have to understand that this is an effort to message
something that is really perticious and dangerous, and like, yeah,
this is the world they want to be in, where
Habeas Corpus is upside down, or William the president gets
to do what he wants.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
They are not sending their best, but it isn't you know.
Thank you, Thank you, Dahlia.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
Congrats on the book. Mine.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Katie Porter is a former congresswoman and a candidate for
the governor of California. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Katie Porter,
so happy to be here with you. Let's talk about
your governor. Run California, fifth largest economy in the world,
complicated state in a complicated moment.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
I think that's the opportunity here for our next governor
is to really lean in and lead. And the Democratic
Party is clearly in need of leadership. And that's what
a governor's job is, and it's the job not only
to lead the government of California, but California's next governor
is going to need to lead the Democratic Party forward
in big and place. And I think I have a
(31:31):
really terrific kind of set of experiences there around both
being a champion on things that are really important long
term core priorities for Democrats, like fighting climate change, and
also being someone who ran and won in a swing
district who hung onto that seat in a swing district
and knows how to bring voters toward the Democratic Party.
(31:51):
And so we do need to grow our party. And
I think I have experience having done that right here
in Orange County in a really effective way. That could
make me an effective leader not just for California on
the policy issues, but for California on the political issues
in a way that will help Democrats nationally.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, explained to us what that looks like. I mean,
I think maybe we should start with the wildfires.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yeah, the wildfires are huge issues in California, and what
they illuminate is that we have a couple of different
crises coming together here to create affordability problems. So it
is already very expensive to live in California. We are
already dealing with a lot of the consequences of what
big polluters have done and the consequences of climate change,
(32:34):
and that is now adding to the risk of people
not having insurance or having insurance that is unaffordable. We
need to be doing that wildfire mitigation at the state
level so that rate payers, that consumers are not paying
those things, but we're getting the work done. The get
segnor is going to have to own this wildfire issue,
is going to have to own this insurance issue, and
we're going to have to do it in a time
(32:54):
when Trump is making things more complicated. I think it's
a very false choice that some demo crats are buying
into about whether or not we should a stand up
for Trump or be focused on affordability. They are one
and the same because it is Trump's exact policies right now,
whether it's tariffs or pulling funding to fight climate change,
that is driving California's affordability crisis, and the wildfires is
(33:17):
just one example of that.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
We are having wildfires in other states too, which is
what we thought was going Is forest management at all
to blame for what's happened with the wildfires?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
I know that also climate change.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Is the largest part of it, but like twenty years
ago California had stricter forest management, do you think that
is to.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Blame it all or now?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
So the solution here is going to be thinking about
how do we do forest management, how do we do
that in the context of where climate change has left us?
So when you have a year round fire season, what
appropriate forest mitigation looks like is different when you have
storms with really high winds, when you have have longer
(34:01):
drought seasons, then what appropriate forest management looks like. These things,
by the way, also change how you think about hardening,
how you think about construction rules, how you think about
rebuilding in places or building in places that are at risk.
So the effects here, and I think California is just
at the beginning of what a lot of other states
are going to be sadly having to confront is these
(34:22):
policies have to be revisited and our investment in these
strategies have to be reset in light of where we
are with regard to claimate. So I do think we're
seeing the governor and the federal government hopefully are going
to be able to come together and find strategies to
deal with this because wildfires are going to continue to
be a challenge. And I think we hear so much
(34:43):
in Congress about helping people with hurricanes, and it's always like, well,
there's nothing they can do with the hurricane, But yet
when it's wildfires, there's this effort to kind of put
blame on people. These are natural phenomenon that are being
driven and fueled and made worse by climate change, and
so we hones see the same support for mitigation and
the same support for responding and rebuilding for wildfire that
(35:05):
we see with hurricane because they are both kind of
driven by the same kinds of fueled by climate change,
made worse by climate change, but they're naturally occurring phenomenon,
So forest management definitely has a part of this. I
would also add that the federal government is the biggest
landholder in California, and so making sure that the federal
government is putting money into wildfire mitigation and the wildland firefighters,
(35:28):
the people who do that work. I fought very hard
in Congress for better pay, better mental health benefits, better
recruitment strategies for our wildman firefighters, and that is something
that I really hope Donald Trump will step up and do.
Rather than just casting aspersions, he will try to actually
be part of delivering solutions. So that I think is
(35:48):
really important that we point the finger squarely back at
the federal government. You need to be investing in wildfire
prevention and mitigation as well as California doing its part.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, I'm sure the federal government. I'm sure he'll be
hot to do that. As they disassemble FEMA. One of
the things that people are very critical of California for
is regulation. And in some ways, I think California has
some really great regulation, like you have your own organic
food standard, which is incredible, but it does take longer
(36:18):
to build there, it's more expensive to build there. So
talk to me about sort of why the regulation in
California is so complicated and why people keep butting heads
with it so much.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
So California should not back away from our core values
and goals, things like making sure consumers have information that
they need to make decisions about what they're going to purchase,
making sure that we're protecting our environment, making sure that
workers are safe, for example, in workplaces that are increasingly
hot or in jobs that are dangerous as the science
evolves about that. The values are there, and I very
(36:53):
much embrace them, and I know that's where California voters are.
The question is how do we how do we operationalize that,
How do we make those regulations right size to the problem.
And I do think there is a role for the
next governor to come in and say, the goal is clear,
the goal is protecting workers. Now let's look at all
the regulations we have. Is there a way to make
(37:15):
these fit together better, to harmonize these, to make them
more clear. And being more clear, by the way, doesn't
just make them easier to comply with, it also makes
them easier to do enforcement against those who break the les.
So what California has a very active, innovative, thoughtful legislature.
That is one of our strengths. The flip side of
that is they enact thousands of bills a year and
(37:37):
that can lead to a bunch of little things that
sometimes past year over year, decade over decade, don't fit together.
So our environmental quality acts SEEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act.
The principle there which is that we have to consider
the environmental impact of what we build. That is absolutely right.
The question is is that being used. Is that working
(37:57):
to actually protect our environment or is that being used
to allow for people to litigate, for things to be
slowed down, for people to drive up costs, for people
to say no in their backyard for desperately needed things
like housing. And if the answer is it's not working
to do the goal of protecting the environment, it's being
misused and even abused, then we have to be willing
to go back and revisit that. So we have a
(38:19):
terrific bill in the legislature right now that would exempt
from our Environmental Quality Act infill housing housing in areas
that are already zoned for residential. Right you're putting a
new apartment building between two existing apartment buildings. There's no
real environmental impact there. We shouldn't be adding years to
the cost and by the way, the dollars that come
(38:40):
with the years to the cost of building that kind
of infil housing. And we've seen the governor embrace that
bill now in his budget. I'm very excited about thinking
about how do we make sure these regulations are actually
doing what they tend to do. And I think there's
room to look fresh with fresh eyes at some things.
I'm out hot.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Talk to me about the homeless policy. It seems so
like that has not been a winner for news.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
So California has made actually tremendous progress on providing more
resources for people who are experiencing homeless and I've seen
this right here in Orange County where we are built
some new shelters. We have fought better about how to
create both short term and longer term housing options for
people who are homeless. But The reality is we need
(39:25):
every community in California to step up and do its part,
and that means every community needs to do its part
in helping people and getting people who are encampments in
places where there's a safety issue and a public health
issue into permanent support of housing. We also need every
community in California to build and use some of those options.
(39:47):
So I think we've seen some real successes here around
homeless policy, but it's very uneven across the state, and
I think that's something the governor has appropriately focused on,
looking across cities and across counties and saying we we
have some best practices. Now you all need to get
in the game. Nobody gets to be on the sidelines
with regard to making sure that every Californian has safe housing.
(40:10):
The governor is putting his money behind this policy and
has been providing more funding for localities, and we need
to make sure they're following through and delivering. I think
the biggest piece when there's a lot of room for
California's next governor to take action, is around preventing homelessness
in the first place. Once someone experiences chronic street homelessness,
the chances that they experience, even if they didn't have
(40:32):
any mental health or any substance use problems when they
became homeless, years or months living on the street very
quickly create these kinds of traumas and these kinds of
chronic health problems. And so working on thinking about how
can we prevent homelessness. And we've seen some really good
pilot programs around doing this for people who are veterans,
for kids who are aging out of foster care, for
(40:53):
women or families who are fleeing violence. Now we need
to think about how can we step up those programs
to apply. So there's a healthy tension right now in
California between different different mayors, different who are using different approaches.
But I think that's good. I think what the Governor's
trying to take aimap and I support him on this
is localities. There are cities who are just saying we're
(41:16):
not going to do anything that's not acceptable, and so
everyone is hurt by this homelessness problem. It hurts California's reputation,
it hurts our ability to use our public resources to
be safe in our communities, and so I do think
it's appropriate for the governor to put some pressure on
every single state, whether that's legal pressure, whether that's financial
strings that are attached to funding. I think it's appropriate
(41:38):
to push those places that haven't gotten in the game
of trying to help to do so because we do
have research back strategies that are working.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
California has all this money.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Trump is trying to use the federal government as this
sort of care and step With a lot of different states,
would you, if you became governor, think outside the box.
For example, in Maine, we saw Governor Jana Mills to say,
you know, I'll take me to court. He took her
to courity laws. That's you know, he tends to live
(42:09):
in court. But I mean, California is a big enough state.
So if you got your the elephant, are you open
to more aggressive moves against us, against the federal government
if it comes to that.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Well, so California has, as you point out, we are
really large, and we are really vibrant, and we have
an amazing economy, and we have amazing people and a
lot of them. We also with that comes we have
some really big challenges, right and I think california exceptionalism
has sometimes meant that we think we can do it
without the federal government. So when the federal government goes
(42:41):
a different direction than California, we sometimes say we'll go
our own way. I think what we need to do
is say we are big, we are powerful, and you,
the federal government, need to help. So one of the
things that really surprised me when I was in Congress.
One of the things that I want to change as
California's next governor is making sure that there are tight
relationship ships between our governor and our legislature in California
(43:04):
and our senators and congressional representatives. Housing is the perfect example.
This has been the biggest challenge in California for at
least a decade, but it has barely registered at the
federal level as an issue. Homelessness, huge issue in California,
has barely registered as a major issue that we're hearing
about in Congress. And MOLLI that has been true when
(43:25):
Republicans were in charge, but it's also been true when
Democrats were in charge that those issues like housing costs
have not been top of mind. And so I do
think you've seen this with environmental regulations. California will do
its own thing on omissions, on tailpiper missions and we've
made real progress there, but what we ought to be
doing is saying we've shown this will work. Now we
(43:47):
need the federal government to embrace this policy so that
California is on a level playing field with other states.
So I do think we need to be more like
think outside the boxes you said about what our role
is visa VI, how we relate to the federal government.
We're thousands of miles from Washington, and I sometimes think
that lets leaders in California kind of put Washington out
of mind or simply call out Washington for being wrong.
(44:10):
That's appropriate, but we also have to lever Washington push
for them, and I watched it in Congress. Very small states,
very small delegations lever their power in Washington very effectively.
And boy, California needs to start doing that at this
moment with Trump in charge more than ever.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
This is one of these blue state governatorial primaries.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
A lot of people.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Running, a lot of money. How do you run in
a primary like this? It's such a different environment than
running for Congress, especially you come from swing district. Talk
us through how do you differentiate yourself when you're all
from the same party.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
Well, so, governor is a leadership job right, We're all
going to have many of the same values. There are
differences among these candidates. We're seeing different approaches to climate change,
We're seeing different approaches to healthcare. But you're right, we're
going to share by a few values as Democrats. But
leadership and the quality of leadership matters. So I think
one of the things I bring to the race is
(45:07):
a level of impatience, a willingness to say we can't
just keep on in the same way that we have.
There is a need for Democrats to be more energetic,
to fight harder, to deliver faster on the goals and
promises that we make to voters. And so I think
temperamentally and kind of the moment that I came into
(45:28):
politics make me different that le like, Look, I decided
to run for Congress the first time because Donald Trump
became president, and now here I am deciding to run
for governor because guess what, Donald Trumps president. So having
spent my whole political career in this very polarized, very
frustrating political world, we're in very comfortable navigating in that.
(45:49):
I think we've seen some Democrats kind of be knocked
on their heels. What do we do, They throw up
their hands. I'm not part of that. And I look
at some of my colleagues, Abigail Spanberger, other people who
are running for governor or we understand what it means
to lead and push Democrats forward. With the forces of
Trump in power or certainly very present in our political environment.
(46:10):
I think the other thing you know is that our
next governor is going to have to think about how
to move the Democratic Party forward. California needs to be
the example of Democrats succeeding a thriving So how do
we grow our economy, how do we build more housing,
how do we deliver We need to have those examples
at the ready so that California becomes the reason that
voters around the country should vote Democrats, rather than being
(46:34):
offered as the counter example around the country. And I
think California has a lot to offer on that front.
And so thinking about that and really being conscious of
decisions we make have political consequences not just in this state,
but they have political consequences nationally for Democrats. And I
think I'm unusually situated, having been in federal office and
having run in a swing district to be able to
(46:54):
think about that so I will say when you hear
the candidates altogether, we just gathered together as good toil
candidates for our first kind of collective event. I think
there is a real difference in energy, Really is a
difference in how we feel about Trump. I think there's
a real difference in how we're willing to stand up
to powerful special interests. And I have always been a
person who said you cannot buy me. I don't care
(47:16):
who you are, what side of the party you're from,
whether you're Republican, Democrat, left, right, center, corporate special interests.
I'm going to do what I think best, and I'm
going to lead from a position of strength in doing
that because I can stand on my own feet and
say why this is right, Not why someone told me
to do it or pay me to do it, but
why it's right. And I think that Democrats need that
confidence in leadership right now.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
One of the things that we spent a lot of
time handringing about is how Democrats win right that In
the twenty twenty fourth cycle, we saw Harris. She did
a really good job, but she also you know, was
impossible situation, but she spent a lot of time with
people like Liz Cheney trying to create a permission structure
(47:59):
for white Republicans to join the Democratic Party. They did
not take that permission, and that did not work. So
a lot of people wonder if maybe having made more
overtures towards the people who were protesting the war in
the middle eightiest store that maybe if the party hadn't
(48:22):
been so you know, allergic to the left flank, that
that might have helped them put together a broad coalition.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
Do you think that's right? Just talk about that idea
for a minute.
Speaker 4 (48:33):
I can talk about it from the perspective of California,
which is that making really sure that we're leaning into
the policies that bring voters together. I think there are
those policies and those necessary I have not always necessarily
been top things that Democrats have leaned into. So one
of the things that I run on is through consumer protection.
For example, nobody likes to get cheated. You could win
(48:55):
every single voter talking about consumer protection, and that's something
that come at. Harris has an amazing track record on.
We heard a little bit about it in her presidential
but it's actually I think wouldn't say one of her
real strengths. And I got my start in public service
working on holding big banks to account who who had
cheated Californians during the foreclosure crisis. I think that the
idea that you know, anytime you're chasing only one little
(49:19):
slice of voters and you're having to choose dispatch of
voters versus that batche of voters, I think takes you
away from the fact that you need to be trying
to find what is the big tent message and what's
the message that's going to motivate people. And I do
think talking about economics, talking about economic anxiety, talking about
how people make ends meet, the cost of housing, the
(49:40):
cost of college, whether the United States is going to
be competitive globally for jobs in the future. I don't
know any voter who wouldn't care about that. Like I've
never had a voter say, you know what I'd like
is I'd like a worst economy send no voter ever,
Which means that issues about economics, issues about jobs are
issues that we can pull in every slice of the
(50:00):
population about. I think with voters who have more different
perspectives and some of those factions, sometimes it just means
being able to listen. You can't make everything at the
same level of issue, or nobody knows what you stand for, right.
So I'm very clear in this race that what I'm
really focused on is making California a more affordable place
to live so that we can grow our population and
grow our economy, grow the number of businesses that are
(50:22):
headquartered here. And I think having those priorities and being
really clear about them is helpful. I do think that
sometimes Democrats chase the swing voter of the cycle before, right,
So I think Joe Biden was really well situated to
think about that kind of sprit in Pennsylvania, you know,
not college educated, white working class voter that's not necessarily
(50:44):
the swing voter of the next election. There's a real
need to think forward about where the party's going, where
the movement's going, and not look backwards. And that's hard
to do because you don't have that data.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Right.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
It takes more intuition, It takes more intuitive leadership.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Thank you, Katie Porter, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
No, No, Jesse Cannon, Mai.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
Marco Rubio above the law, above any judge in this country.
According to testimony he gave just yesterday.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Oh yeah, Marco Rubio, this is the grown up in
the room. Okay, team, Like this guy is actually the
best they have, right, I mean I think that it is.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Would you put it that way? It makes it a
lot scarier.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Yeah, I mean, this is it. This guy's like a
real senator. He has not been on any reality television shows.
He flippantly says he doesn't have to listen to court orders.
By the way, I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Like JD.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Vance, you can see like he never really believed in
any of this, okay, and he wrote a book and
he was a venture capitalist sort of. But this guy was,
you know, a normal Republican and now he's a complete lunatic.
So he just basically said he doesn't have to follow
the law.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Both JD.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Vans and Marco Rubio are trying to be don Junior.
You know, they're just trying to, like out Internet troll
each other. I for one, am alarmed and concerned, concerned
and alarmed, alarmed, concerned, disturbed.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
That's it for.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend. And keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and the CBO says Trump's tax cuts
would add three point eight trillion.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Dollars to the national Dad.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
We have such a great show for you today, Slate
Dahlia Lethwick stops by to talk about the Trump administration
defying the courts. Then we'll talk to former Congresswoman Katie
Porter about her run from California governor and how she
would handle the sea change she sees happening in the
(00:38):
state of California.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Bi There's this guy, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House,
not very good at his job. There's this big beautiful bill,
one big beautiful bill, and it's hit a few bumps
in the road.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's a big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Mike Johnson got this job because he was to Trump,
not because he was good at legislating, not even because
he had spent a lot of time in leadership. He
got this job because he's sucked up to Trump. One
of the things that we see in Trump two point
zero is a lot of people got their jobs just
because they're just suck ups right that Trump likes them.
(01:17):
There are a lot of people in this administration who
Trump likes. They're not necessarily good at their job, they're
not necessarily smart, they're not necessarily anything. Right.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's affirmative action for sycoventcy.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right. If you're good at sucking up, you can go
far in this administration aka Mike Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
This creates a.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Lot of problems when you get to a moment when
you have Mike Johnson at George because now you have
someone who doesn't really know how to do this stuff
in charge of everything, and that is how we got here.
So we're about to see a lot of stuff go
down with this. We got the one big beautiful bill.
They're trying to get it. What's happening right now is
Republicans are a very small majority one two seats. So
(01:59):
you have the hardline Republicans who never vote for anything
because ultimately they think the best way to run the
government is to kill the government. That's like the you
know the Rand Paul types right in the House. That's
Thomas Massey, that's Chip Roy that crew. But they're never
going to agree to anything, right. They want to just
gut Medicaid, medicaid, all of it, snap everything. Then you
(02:25):
have the moderates who would like to win again and
would like to keep their seats. That's the Mike Lawler
than Nicole Mcatacos, that crew, Mike Tako's Michael Nicole Tacos.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
You.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, so you have that crew, those guys. You have
just different fractions here. The good news is they're gonna
So Trump came down this week. He went and said,
you know, come on, team, everybody, vote for what I want.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You'll remember that the last time we were in the
House of Representatives when Trump came down last time. So basically,
Republicans have only ever passed one other thing, which was
a CR continuing Resolution which kept the government from shutting down.
And during that time, the way that Republicans whipped votes
was that Donald Trump and Elon Musk called everyone and said,
(03:21):
if you don't do what we want, Elon's going to
primary you. Now fast forward, TESLA earnings have dropped seventy
one percent, and Elon is at least pretending, we don't
know if it's true or not, but at least trying
to create the appearance that he is going back to
Texas to run his fifteen companies and not fuck up
our federal government. By the way, he's gotten the data
(03:42):
he needed from DOJE, so he's out. Savings not happened. Fraud, waste,
and abuse. It happened, but not the way they said
it would. The question is now can they whip votes
without Elon and Trump? So Trump went down to Congress
yesterday up to the He went to the hill and
he said, you know, I want everyone to vote for
(04:03):
what I want. And then he was a little bit
mean about ship Roy and Thomas Massey and he said,
you know that they're whatever. But ultimately it didn't work right.
He wasn't able to whip votes that way. So now
we wait and we see and look, this was a
self imposed deadline. Republicans did two things to make this
all much more complicated than it needed to be, or
(04:24):
not even complicated, but a heavier lift. One is they
instead of two bills, they did one, and two is
that they said they were going to have it done
by this long weekend. There's no reason to have assumed
that either of these things would work. Just want to
say one other thing, which is all of this is
irrelevant because as soon as this Bill gets the Senate,
they're going to change it all anyway. Thune has already
said that. So again like this is a lot of
(04:47):
drama for nothing. Welcome to the United States Congress.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So by speaking of Congress, we unfortunately have a very
sad death here.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Rep.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Jerry Connolly has died at seventy five after his battle
with cam Sir. We send out our thoughts to his
family and friends. But this is a really telling thing
that I think the Democrats have to agrepple with is
that they are the sixth Congressman to die in office
in about a year and a half, all of which
have been Dems in three since Trump took office, and
two of those three have been in Republican districts. And
(05:18):
he is another one that is as a Republican governorship
who have been delaying the elections a lot when this
has happened.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
What are you seeing here, Jerry Connolly.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
You'll remember that AOC had wanted ranking oversight. It had
been given to Jerry Connolly because of his seniority, despite
the fact that he was sick with cancer.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Then like two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Connolly says, you know, I'm going to give up my
position and not run for reelection, and then two weeks
later he dies. This news cycle is literally all about
people getting sick in their seventies and eighties Democratic politicians.
One of the things that we love about the Democratic
Party is that they try to be nicer than Republicans.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
But nobody is.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Benefiting from this kind of weird, self destructive elevation of
people who are too old. That's what it is. So
I'm saddened by the death of Jerry Connolly. I think
we all are, but I think it's a really important moment.
We don't live forever, we do not have forever on
this planet. And if it is a real emergency, if
(06:27):
American democracy is in an emergency, if everything Democrats have
been saying for the last two years is true, then
we really need to see members of Congress who are
healthy and able to do their jobs. And I think
that this is another moment for us to think about
are we going to elevate people who are young and
(06:51):
can communicate, or are we going to elevate people because
they feel it is their time, it is their turn.
And I really think that Democrat need to look at
the way they do things. And I think that this
is yet another example. Look, cancer is horrendous. I have
this whole book about that's coming out about what it's
like to be in this world of diagnosises, etc.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
But the question is, if you are not well, is
that the moment to not take on what is a
really major fight to keep healthcare and keep things for
the American people that will affect millions and millions of people.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And I think that's a real open question, Samlly.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
One are the great signs that we're heading into a
really awesome authoritarian stat is when you have directors departments
under deer Leader giving their employees lie detector tests for
leaking to the Wall Street Journal. This really is the
when fascism goes stupid part.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Look, I love Christy Noan because she's funny. She doesn't
mean to be funny, but she is funny. She's inadvertently hilarious.
She is going to hook people up to a polygraph
to try to figure out if they're linking the press.
It's just like a satire of a Gymspond movie. It's
kind of brilliantly stupid. Let's just recap Christinome. She wore
(08:16):
the expensive watch, she took photos and Seacott. I mean,
she just at every point has sort of done like
the TV version of government, hooking people up to lie
detector tests. It's TV government, It's reality TV government, and
it makes a lot of sense because that is who
Donald Trump is, the reality TV president.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So I saved the scariest news for last. Diseases are spreading,
but the CDC isn't warring the public like it was
months ago before Trump got in office.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, well, you know, this is this whole Trump administration.
If you don't know what's happening, is it really happening.
It reminds me quite a lot of what they're trying
to do with the National Weather Association, right this idea
climate's not changing.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
If you don't know what the climate is, that's where
we are.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
If the ostrich haes its head in the sand, the
weather doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I mean, the one piece of good news here is
that remember when RFK Junior Swim and Rock Creek Park
wearing only jeans.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You don't, I have to say, you're kind of fixated
on this. What might think that you have a crush.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
No, I do not. I really don't have a crush.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But what I do have is like a fascination with
a person who is so incredibly focused on health theoretically
at least tends to be focused on health, but who
does such incredibly scary things like swimming in poop water.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We know that.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I mean, that's like the mystery of bird flu. Right,
it didn't go away.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah. I don't want to be conspiratorial, but many people
are saying, like, why do I see so many more
dead birds?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, well that's what you just said when we're before this,
But I haven't seen any other dead birds.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
But if there are a lot of birds, that will.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Be the horror movie that we were all hoping to apply.
Dalia Ltswick is a senior editor at Slate and the
author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and the Battle
to Save America.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Welcome back to Fast.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Politics, my friend, and also one of the smartest legal
minds we have going Dalia.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Him, Mollie, can I just also before we I know
we're going to like go go dark really quickly, but
I just also want to congratulate you on the book
before we do anything, because you're a freaking, like really
cool writer about things that are hard to write about.
So props.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Thirteen Days ordered on Amazon. I know that we don't
necessarily like Amazon, but Amazon has bought.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
A number of copies of the book.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
So if you want to support me Amazon or pull or,
I want you to start a little bit with Like
the last couple of weeks of Trump's Supreme Court. One
of the things that was really interesting is a different
between Trump one point zero and Trump two point zero
is he loses at the court, but he says he wins,
which he didn't do last time. So there have been
(11:08):
a couple of those happening. Can you sort of talk
us through that.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
I've been thinking about it this way, Molly, Like there's
been a sort of a split screen between what Trump's
lawyers will do and say in court and then like
what he and Steven Miller will say on TV right
and twin and like, yeah, the effort has been largely
because Justice Department lawyers like don't want to get sanctioned
(11:33):
and they would like job someday, and they don't want
to like stand up and flagrantly lie in front of
a court, and so like a lot of the just
bonker stuff that you'd hear from Steven Miller, like oh,
we won this case nine nothing you know, we don't
have to return deportees. Everybody agreed with us, like stuff
(11:53):
that is just wrong, Like that's not reflected in how
the Justice Department has been litigating the case.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Is there.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
They try to be careful and they try to be
precise and that to be clear, like it's total shell game,
Like I don't know, I don't understand.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Nobody told me.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
Like there's still an immense amount of like Calvin ball
going on, but at least I think they don't like
straight up dare the judge to like put them in
jail in contempt. And one of the things that has changed,
and this is very big Trump two point zero energy,
is now they're kind of like those two things are converging,
like they're starting to say stuff in court that they
(12:33):
wouldn't have said in court a couple of weeks ago.
And the best example there's so many, but I think
this is what you're tilting at, and it's important. Is
this like Kilmar or Brego Garcia. You know, the court
ordered like unequivocally like you have to facilitate, but not
effectuate bringing him home. And you know, the Trump administration
(12:55):
waved their hands around and said like, oh we don't
have jurisdiction over him, like he's in Sika nel salad
or there's nothing we can do. And now we're seeing
and this is really an important turn, and I think
you're right. It's so different from the first time. We're
not just seeing like the open defiance of what Steven
Miller says or what Trump says. We're starting to hear
(13:17):
like lawyers saying stuff like, oh, everything is a state
secret and we're just not going to do it. You know,
as you and I are taping, there's a hearing going
on about a bunch of folks who were just sent
to South Sudan over a judge's order last night, and
you know, the judge is just like, what the hell, Like,
I had an order, I said, you can't deport people's
(13:38):
third party country, right, and you're sending them to like
a war torn death trap, and like the lawyers are
just like, oh, shruggy emoji. So I think one of
the things you're describing is like what the lawyers were
doing a month ago, which is, oh, you know, we deported.
I don't want to say deported, I want to say renditioned.
There was no deportation. We sent a go Garcia to
(14:01):
Seacott by accident, it was an administrative error, and now
they're doubling down on the like, no, he's like a
sex trafficker. He's super vill you know, gang member, and
we can do whatever we want under the Alien Enemies Act.
And so I think what you're describing is this kind
of convergence of the cable news lawyering and the likepetual
(14:23):
lawyering court. And that's incredibly scary because I think we
thought the check on the Justice Department, on the Solicitor General,
on the Trump administration generally was going to be losing
in court.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And now again we're.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Kind of we're a little bit like creeping up on that.
They're getting more and more contemptuous, more and more apt
to blame the courts, you know, blame the Supreme Court,
and less and less respectful of judicial authority generally. So
that's like we're getting there, Molly. I don't think we're
quite there, although again there's been lots of lines crossed.
(14:58):
But I think that the idea that what we say
in court has to rise to some level of like
sobriety and like fact checkbility is starting to dissipate.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I'm making the scary eye face because it makes me
scared when you tell me things like this, and it's
just very worrying. So I want you to go back
to that Supreme Court case though the oral arguments last
week that was about birthright citizenship, but really wasn't not
all about birthright citizenship. I want you to explain what
(15:29):
that case is, explain what we saw happen there, and
talk about what it is about right.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
So this is nominally a case about you know, the
first day in office, Trump signs this executive order that
essentially says we're stripping birthright citizenship, which has been constitutionally
fourteenth men, fourteenth Amendment and in case law and by
statute multiple times. It's out.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
It's gone.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
If you're born in the United States and your parents
aren't either citizens or lawful permanent resident right, if they're
on a student visa, if they're here temporarily, they're out.
And this was enjoined by every single court that looked
at it, you know, every single court that looked at it.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Was constitution it's theoretically the boss yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Like dumb, dumb, Like it's very clear the court has
squarely reached this question and said, you know this is
you are a citizen, and every appeals court has agreed, right,
so this should be a slam dunker. And then the
Trump administration and this is sort of an example of
the thing you're asking about, does this really sassy play
molly where they go to the Supreme Court. It's been
(16:38):
enjoyed now, you know in all these lower courts, and
it's been upheld in all these appeals courts. It's still
where there's not been hearing, right, this is all in
emergency posture, And they go up to the Supreme Court
and say that we don't want to appeal the fact
that we've lost everywhere. We just want to appeel this
idea of nationwide quote unquote universal injunctions. No single judge
should be allowed to enjoin a nationwide And so the
(17:02):
court agrees to hear this case that's ostensibly about this huge,
crashing constitutional crisis that is going to if it's allowed
to go into effect pretty much going forward, say like
millions of babies born in this country are not citizens,
but we're not really deciding that. What we're deciding that
instead is the power of a single judge to say
(17:26):
you can't do this nationwide. And I think to be fair,
it's like, listen, Matthew kas Merik, our friend of the judge,
and enjoined MiFi pristone, right, the FDA's approval of MiFi
pristone nationwide. So judges on both sides do it. This
has been going on for a long time. We could
have a conversation about what the sort of like equities
(17:47):
and fairness of a judge pausing a policy for the
whole nation. This isn't the vehicle, because this is a
case that is going to if it goes into effect,
have this patchwork of you know, and and it came
up a lot of arguments Mollie where you know, you're
born in New Jersey and then you crusted Pennsylvania and
you're right, it's like Civil War type you know, horror.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I was listening to those arguments and it was just
mind blowing stuff.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
And the reason it's so important is like it's easy
to get bogged down in this hugely technical question about
whether judges have jurisdiction, you know, to set aside policies nationwide,
and you know, is this contemplated in the Constitution, and
you know, maybe we need to stop it. Right now,
and all that is like very arcane and like singularly important.
(18:38):
But the thing that it puts aside is it's another
way of sidelining judges. It's another in the like huge
arsenal of trump efforts to say judges suck. And what
was really arresting at the Oral Argument, among many things,
was language from people like Justice as Alito that are like, oh,
you know, look at these like, you know, high on
(19:01):
their own supply, power hungry, you know, article.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Through activists judges, and it was like, my dude, there
are people right now threatening to kill and murder and
docs judges around the country at levels we haven't seen,
and like terrorizing the families of judges in it pizza boxes,
the pizza boxes and congressional attempts to impeach judges right
(19:27):
who'd come out the wrong way, And you Justice Alito,
think this is an appropriate moment to go after you know,
political activist judges.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Okay, So essentially what I sensed from the court was
that I don't think there's an appetite for the Court
to do away with birthright citizenship. But that wasn't this case,
and what they weirdly got tangled up in is like,
we actually want to decide this case, and we want
a vehicle to decide it quickly, And it's like you're
sitting on one like.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
This is it, this is it.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
But instead they're going to decide this like readively thorny
ideological question of can a single judge anywhere in the
country block a policy? So I don't know how this
shakes out ideally. Well, I think on the actual question
of you know, universal injunctions, it was very hard to
(20:19):
read John Roberts. It was clear Amy Cony Barrett was
like listening towards the liberal side of the of the group.
You know, there were moments where Justice Kavanaugh seemed to
have problems with nationwide injunctions. There was moments where Justice
Gorsic suggested, like, you may win on this, but you're
going to lose on birthright citizenship. So there was a
(20:40):
few tells that suggested it's going to be a hard case.
And by the way, they heard this in May, which
you know, arguments to be done. They have to get
this resulved in the next five weeks to get it
done by the end of the term. But I just think,
like the the thing I want to really center here
that was important is that this is a court that
is being disrespected every single day, every single day by
(21:03):
the Trump administration, and their ability to not weld that
onto the dispute about judicial power is.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Like insane, crazy, insane, because they're ruling against them. Solves
this case will mean that they are ruling against them salts.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
They just get shocking to.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Me and the Solicitor General. It was interesting John Soer
was literally standing there saying, you know, we'll probably agree
to follow a Supreme Court precedent in this case if
you decide this case, but like, we are not really
bound to follow a district court or order we don't
agree with, and we're we're not even committing to being
(21:44):
bound by like if the Second Circuit decides it. Like
he was literally standing there taking a blowtorch to lower
courts and saying, you know, we kind of know what
the law is and if the courts don't agree, and
to have the justices on the court this is where
they lost, to despair it.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
But to have the justices be like, hmm, that's unreading.
Speaker 5 (22:04):
Maybe there's no rule of law anymore. It was really
an assault on judicial power and judicial authority and also
sort of blinkered about the ways in which there's nothing else,
like if the courts don't say no, we got nothing else,
and an almost complete inability to see.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
That, Oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Well I'm going to because it just made I was
hoping to feel better abaud things, and now I feel worse.
I want you to talk a little bit about kind
of where we are right now with the courts. There
are a number of cases that will come down in June.
They are pretty seismic. I don't remember. If you're the
(22:46):
person who has this theory that sometimes the court takes
stuff to rule so they don't look as bad as
they actually are, give us sort of your thinking on
what this term is looking like. And you don't have
I mean obviously, so I'm not asking you to predict
the future at all, and more just asking what with
the makeup of the cases that they have that are
(23:06):
going to come out in June, sort of where you think, well,
we are.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
I think there's two through lines. One is in a
normal year like any other year where you were and
I we're talking in the end of May. There's some
pretty big cases. There's two huge church state cases. There's
an incredibly important case about gender Firm and care Scermetti
that the court heard. You know, there's a lot of
(23:34):
important cases, voting rights case, there's a lot coming down,
and in any normal term like that would be huge.
It's also just like almost in contrast to the stuff
we're seeing suspension of habeas corpus, invocation of the Alien
Enemies Act, right, claims of that willy nilly, you can
fire half of the federal government, it feels almost like
(23:57):
small ball, right, because it's like they're on this trajectory
of just basically, you know, we're going to try to
you know, choke off voting rights. We're going to try
to do away with whatever is left in terms of
a wall between church and state. We're going to make
it harder for trans kids to get gender for me care.
Like all that stuff is hugely consequential and compared to
(24:19):
like the absolutely thermonuclear stuff happening on the so called
shadow docket, right on the emergency dock.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, what's happening on the shadow docket? Just the Garcia case,
this kind of the Abrago Garcia.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yea, it's these.
Speaker 5 (24:32):
Every day, it's the orders every single day, and you know,
to be clear, last Friday, the quarter, like the court
you know, late Friday afternoon, like smack down another you know,
in another immigration case. Yeah, it's Justice as Alito and
Thomas dissenting.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
So I say that remind me that case.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
What was that case?
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Again?
Speaker 5 (24:53):
That was the sort of part two of that ARP
case about whether they could be uh deporting people from
the Northern District of Texas. This was like the part
one was the April order where they're like, don't put
those people on those planes, right like that was that
was the one in the morning order where they didn't
(25:14):
even wait for Justice Alito to file his descent. They
just were like, no, you cannot. And we also the
video right of the buses being turned around. So this
was an extension of that saying still can't do that.
Still you know, angry descent from Justices Alito and Thomas.
But really, I think what you're sort of servicing here,
(25:35):
and it's really important, is that we are in this
just galactic game of chicken between the Supreme Court and
the you know, Trump dhs and the you know ways
in which Trump has continued to defy. Right, there's a
standing order about Abrego Garcia. They're standing orders about these
folks deserve you know, habeas corpus, They deserve due process.
(25:58):
You can't like shuttle them out with five minutes warning
without giving them a chance to you know, appeal. And
those are being violated sort of seriatum now. And so
I think what we're going to see happening on that
shadow docket is a court that is really aware that
Donald Trump is daring them, like he's basically in a
(26:19):
like staring contest with them. And I think that not
only is this all going to percolate on the shadow docket, Frankly,
I don't understand how a Supreme Court reporters are going
to get a summer molly, because I don't think this
ends on the last day of June. But I think
the other thing, I mean, this is how I'm starting
to think about it, is that last year, a year ago,
(26:39):
when the Supreme Court decided the immunity case, they kind
of created an imperial president, right, they said, we are
the Imperial Court, we decide all the things. They've been
doing it for years ago. Nar Yeah, and we are
creating a monarchic presidency, the executive branch. And by the way,
that case gets cited all the time for the preposition
that Donald Trump can do whatever the hell he wants so.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Now, and it's excited in his brain test.
Speaker 5 (27:05):
I mean, it gave him everything he wanted. Right if
the president does it, it's not illegal. And that's what
he says over and over again, and on these questions
of like on matters of foreign policy, like I'm the decider,
and I think that these gang members are like invading
aliens from Venezuela, and that's like nobody can check me
on it. So I think the way I'm starting to
think about what's happening, particularly on the shadow docket, which is,
(27:27):
as I said, just swamping the regular doctrine that's being made,
is this imperial off where you have the imperial president
and the Imperial court and somebody's going to have to win.
And so it's kind of like this like Godzilla, like
King Kong, you know, who's the big boss. And I
think they're both half trying to save face in front
(27:50):
of the country, and I think they're also both really
aware that this is coming, like it's only going to
ratchet in one direction, and so that's I think what
you're seeing these sort of in and out you know,
split the baby hypertechnical decisions from the court that are
trying to let Donald Trump say face. He won't even
take his wins. He's like, but I want more and
(28:11):
more and more. And then it's just really this fascinating,
like you can't have an imperial both. There's one emperor
in town, and that's going to get sorted. I think
over the summer.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
We have two minutes left, and because you and I
are actually friends, we get together and make each other
sad about American democracy. We get to have a moment
of hilarity, which is habeas corpus. Oh boy, by the way,
all of those hearings are like amazing, Every single one
(28:43):
of the hearings on budget are like the blockbuster must
see TV. So Maggie Hassen gets up there and says,
what is habeas corpus?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And here we go.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Christy Noms says, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that
the president has to be able to remove people from
this country.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Right, and some wegg on Blue Sky skeated that is
the wrongest, wrong answer about what I like, you couldn't
get wronger than that declamation and like just to be
and and it was explained back to her, but it
is literally the opposite of the president, the opposite disappear
(29:24):
whoever he wants. Habeas corpus, this ancient writ you know,
show us the body the government can't hold you without
giving you a chance to understand why. That's what it means.
It doesn't mean that, you know, president gets to like
rendition you to Seacot. Nobody asks any questions. But I think,
and maybe this is a little like sort of sad
(29:45):
face on the hilarity. They're they're conditioning us, right, this
is a way of getting American viewers to be like, oh,
habeas corpus. That's when the president can send people away
to other countries for life without any possibility of legal process.
And that is essentially, by the way, what Stephen Miller
was saying, right Brian, he was like to spend it. Yeah,
(30:07):
So like I think we have to simultaneously take it
like hilariously, which it is, and like, you know, it's
so dumb as a rock off out there right now.
Speaker 7 (30:17):
Like it is just and.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
The dumbness of the rocks. But I also think we
have to understand that this is an effort to message
something that is really perticious and dangerous, and like, yeah,
this is the world they want to be in, where
Habeas Corpus is upside down, or William the president gets
to do what he wants.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
They are not sending their best, but it isn't you know.
Thank you, Thank you, Dahlia.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
Congrats on the book. Mine.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Katie Porter is a former congresswoman and a candidate for
the governor of California. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Katie Porter,
so happy to be here with you. Let's talk about
your governor. Run California, fifth largest economy in the world,
complicated state in a complicated moment.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
I think that's the opportunity here for our next governor
is to really lean in and lead. And the Democratic
Party is clearly in need of leadership. And that's what
a governor's job is, and it's the job not only
to lead the government of California, but California's next governor
is going to need to lead the Democratic Party forward
in big and place. And I think I have a
(31:31):
really terrific kind of set of experiences there around both
being a champion on things that are really important long
term core priorities for Democrats, like fighting climate change, and
also being someone who ran and won in a swing
district who hung onto that seat in a swing district
and knows how to bring voters toward the Democratic Party.
(31:51):
And so we do need to grow our party. And
I think I have experience having done that right here
in Orange County in a really effective way. That could
make me an effective leader not just for California on
the policy issues, but for California on the political issues
in a way that will help Democrats nationally.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, explained to us what that looks like. I mean,
I think maybe we should start with the wildfires.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yeah, the wildfires are huge issues in California, and what
they illuminate is that we have a couple of different
crises coming together here to create affordability problems. So it
is already very expensive to live in California. We are
already dealing with a lot of the consequences of what
big polluters have done and the consequences of climate change,
(32:34):
and that is now adding to the risk of people
not having insurance or having insurance that is unaffordable. We
need to be doing that wildfire mitigation at the state
level so that rate payers, that consumers are not paying
those things, but we're getting the work done. The get
segnor is going to have to own this wildfire issue,
is going to have to own this insurance issue, and
we're going to have to do it in a time
(32:54):
when Trump is making things more complicated. I think it's
a very false choice that some demo crats are buying
into about whether or not we should a stand up
for Trump or be focused on affordability. They are one
and the same because it is Trump's exact policies right now,
whether it's tariffs or pulling funding to fight climate change,
that is driving California's affordability crisis, and the wildfires is
(33:17):
just one example of that.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
We are having wildfires in other states too, which is
what we thought was going Is forest management at all
to blame for what's happened with the wildfires?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
I know that also climate change.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Is the largest part of it, but like twenty years
ago California had stricter forest management, do you think that
is to.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Blame it all or now?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
So the solution here is going to be thinking about
how do we do forest management, how do we do
that in the context of where climate change has left us?
So when you have a year round fire season, what
appropriate forest mitigation looks like is different when you have
storms with really high winds, when you have have longer
(34:01):
drought seasons, then what appropriate forest management looks like. These things,
by the way, also change how you think about hardening,
how you think about construction rules, how you think about
rebuilding in places or building in places that are at risk.
So the effects here, and I think California is just
at the beginning of what a lot of other states
are going to be sadly having to confront is these
(34:22):
policies have to be revisited and our investment in these
strategies have to be reset in light of where we
are with regard to claimate. So I do think we're
seeing the governor and the federal government hopefully are going
to be able to come together and find strategies to
deal with this because wildfires are going to continue to
be a challenge. And I think we hear so much
(34:43):
in Congress about helping people with hurricanes, and it's always like, well,
there's nothing they can do with the hurricane, But yet
when it's wildfires, there's this effort to kind of put
blame on people. These are natural phenomenon that are being
driven and fueled and made worse by climate change, and
so we hones see the same support for mitigation and
the same support for responding and rebuilding for wildfire that
(35:05):
we see with hurricane because they are both kind of
driven by the same kinds of fueled by climate change,
made worse by climate change, but they're naturally occurring phenomenon,
So forest management definitely has a part of this. I
would also add that the federal government is the biggest
landholder in California, and so making sure that the federal
government is putting money into wildfire mitigation and the wildland firefighters,
(35:28):
the people who do that work. I fought very hard
in Congress for better pay, better mental health benefits, better
recruitment strategies for our wildman firefighters, and that is something
that I really hope Donald Trump will step up and do.
Rather than just casting aspersions, he will try to actually
be part of delivering solutions. So that I think is
(35:48):
really important that we point the finger squarely back at
the federal government. You need to be investing in wildfire
prevention and mitigation as well as California doing its part.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, I'm sure the federal government. I'm sure he'll be
hot to do that. As they disassemble FEMA. One of
the things that people are very critical of California for
is regulation. And in some ways, I think California has
some really great regulation, like you have your own organic
food standard, which is incredible, but it does take longer
(36:18):
to build there, it's more expensive to build there. So
talk to me about sort of why the regulation in
California is so complicated and why people keep butting heads
with it so much.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
So California should not back away from our core values
and goals, things like making sure consumers have information that
they need to make decisions about what they're going to purchase,
making sure that we're protecting our environment, making sure that
workers are safe, for example, in workplaces that are increasingly
hot or in jobs that are dangerous as the science
evolves about that. The values are there, and I very
(36:53):
much embrace them, and I know that's where California voters are.
The question is how do we how do we operationalize that,
How do we make those regulations right size to the problem.
And I do think there is a role for the
next governor to come in and say, the goal is clear,
the goal is protecting workers. Now let's look at all
the regulations we have. Is there a way to make
(37:15):
these fit together better, to harmonize these, to make them
more clear. And being more clear, by the way, doesn't
just make them easier to comply with, it also makes
them easier to do enforcement against those who break the les.
So what California has a very active, innovative, thoughtful legislature.
That is one of our strengths. The flip side of
that is they enact thousands of bills a year and
(37:37):
that can lead to a bunch of little things that
sometimes past year over year, decade over decade, don't fit together.
So our environmental quality acts SEEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act.
The principle there which is that we have to consider
the environmental impact of what we build. That is absolutely right.
The question is is that being used. Is that working
(37:57):
to actually protect our environment or is that being used
to allow for people to litigate, for things to be
slowed down, for people to drive up costs, for people
to say no in their backyard for desperately needed things
like housing. And if the answer is it's not working
to do the goal of protecting the environment, it's being
misused and even abused, then we have to be willing
to go back and revisit that. So we have a
(38:19):
terrific bill in the legislature right now that would exempt
from our Environmental Quality Act infill housing housing in areas
that are already zoned for residential. Right you're putting a
new apartment building between two existing apartment buildings. There's no
real environmental impact there. We shouldn't be adding years to
the cost and by the way, the dollars that come
(38:40):
with the years to the cost of building that kind
of infil housing. And we've seen the governor embrace that
bill now in his budget. I'm very excited about thinking
about how do we make sure these regulations are actually
doing what they tend to do. And I think there's
room to look fresh with fresh eyes at some things.
I'm out hot.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Talk to me about the homeless policy. It seems so
like that has not been a winner for news.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
So California has made actually tremendous progress on providing more
resources for people who are experiencing homeless and I've seen
this right here in Orange County where we are built
some new shelters. We have fought better about how to
create both short term and longer term housing options for
people who are homeless. But The reality is we need
(39:25):
every community in California to step up and do its part,
and that means every community needs to do its part
in helping people and getting people who are encampments in
places where there's a safety issue and a public health
issue into permanent support of housing. We also need every
community in California to build and use some of those options.
(39:47):
So I think we've seen some real successes here around
homeless policy, but it's very uneven across the state, and
I think that's something the governor has appropriately focused on,
looking across cities and across counties and saying we we
have some best practices. Now you all need to get
in the game. Nobody gets to be on the sidelines
with regard to making sure that every Californian has safe housing.
(40:10):
The governor is putting his money behind this policy and
has been providing more funding for localities, and we need
to make sure they're following through and delivering. I think
the biggest piece when there's a lot of room for
California's next governor to take action, is around preventing homelessness
in the first place. Once someone experiences chronic street homelessness,
the chances that they experience, even if they didn't have
(40:32):
any mental health or any substance use problems when they
became homeless, years or months living on the street very
quickly create these kinds of traumas and these kinds of
chronic health problems. And so working on thinking about how
can we prevent homelessness. And we've seen some really good
pilot programs around doing this for people who are veterans,
for kids who are aging out of foster care, for
(40:53):
women or families who are fleeing violence. Now we need
to think about how can we step up those programs
to apply. So there's a healthy tension right now in
California between different different mayors, different who are using different approaches.
But I think that's good. I think what the Governor's
trying to take aimap and I support him on this
is localities. There are cities who are just saying we're
(41:16):
not going to do anything that's not acceptable, and so
everyone is hurt by this homelessness problem. It hurts California's reputation,
it hurts our ability to use our public resources to
be safe in our communities, and so I do think
it's appropriate for the governor to put some pressure on
every single state, whether that's legal pressure, whether that's financial
strings that are attached to funding. I think it's appropriate
(41:38):
to push those places that haven't gotten in the game
of trying to help to do so because we do
have research back strategies that are working.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
California has all this money.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Trump is trying to use the federal government as this
sort of care and step With a lot of different states,
would you, if you became governor, think outside the box.
For example, in Maine, we saw Governor Jana Mills to say,
you know, I'll take me to court. He took her
to courity laws. That's you know, he tends to live
(42:09):
in court. But I mean, California is a big enough state.
So if you got your the elephant, are you open
to more aggressive moves against us, against the federal government
if it comes to that.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Well, so California has, as you point out, we are
really large, and we are really vibrant, and we have
an amazing economy, and we have amazing people and a
lot of them. We also with that comes we have
some really big challenges, right and I think california exceptionalism
has sometimes meant that we think we can do it
without the federal government. So when the federal government goes
(42:41):
a different direction than California, we sometimes say we'll go
our own way. I think what we need to do
is say we are big, we are powerful, and you,
the federal government, need to help. So one of the
things that really surprised me when I was in Congress.
One of the things that I want to change as
California's next governor is making sure that there are tight
relationship ships between our governor and our legislature in California
(43:04):
and our senators and congressional representatives. Housing is the perfect example.
This has been the biggest challenge in California for at
least a decade, but it has barely registered at the
federal level as an issue. Homelessness, huge issue in California,
has barely registered as a major issue that we're hearing
about in Congress. And MOLLI that has been true when
(43:25):
Republicans were in charge, but it's also been true when
Democrats were in charge that those issues like housing costs
have not been top of mind. And so I do
think you've seen this with environmental regulations. California will do
its own thing on omissions, on tailpiper missions and we've
made real progress there, but what we ought to be
doing is saying we've shown this will work. Now we
(43:47):
need the federal government to embrace this policy so that
California is on a level playing field with other states.
So I do think we need to be more like
think outside the boxes you said about what our role
is visa VI, how we relate to the federal government.
We're thousands of miles from Washington, and I sometimes think
that lets leaders in California kind of put Washington out
of mind or simply call out Washington for being wrong.
(44:10):
That's appropriate, but we also have to lever Washington push
for them, and I watched it in Congress. Very small states,
very small delegations lever their power in Washington very effectively.
And boy, California needs to start doing that at this
moment with Trump in charge more than ever.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
This is one of these blue state governatorial primaries.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
A lot of people.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Running, a lot of money. How do you run in
a primary like this? It's such a different environment than
running for Congress, especially you come from swing district. Talk
us through how do you differentiate yourself when you're all
from the same party.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
Well, so, governor is a leadership job right, We're all
going to have many of the same values. There are
differences among these candidates. We're seeing different approaches to climate change,
We're seeing different approaches to healthcare. But you're right, we're
going to share by a few values as Democrats. But
leadership and the quality of leadership matters. So I think
one of the things I bring to the race is
(45:07):
a level of impatience, a willingness to say we can't
just keep on in the same way that we have.
There is a need for Democrats to be more energetic,
to fight harder, to deliver faster on the goals and
promises that we make to voters. And so I think
temperamentally and kind of the moment that I came into
(45:28):
politics make me different that le like, Look, I decided
to run for Congress the first time because Donald Trump
became president, and now here I am deciding to run
for governor because guess what, Donald Trumps president. So having
spent my whole political career in this very polarized, very
frustrating political world, we're in very comfortable navigating in that.
(45:49):
I think we've seen some Democrats kind of be knocked
on their heels. What do we do, They throw up
their hands. I'm not part of that. And I look
at some of my colleagues, Abigail Spanberger, other people who
are running for governor or we understand what it means
to lead and push Democrats forward. With the forces of
Trump in power or certainly very present in our political environment.
(46:10):
I think the other thing you know is that our
next governor is going to have to think about how
to move the Democratic Party forward. California needs to be
the example of Democrats succeeding a thriving So how do
we grow our economy, how do we build more housing,
how do we deliver We need to have those examples
at the ready so that California becomes the reason that
voters around the country should vote Democrats, rather than being
(46:34):
offered as the counter example around the country. And I
think California has a lot to offer on that front.
And so thinking about that and really being conscious of
decisions we make have political consequences not just in this state,
but they have political consequences nationally for Democrats. And I
think I'm unusually situated, having been in federal office and
having run in a swing district to be able to
(46:54):
think about that so I will say when you hear
the candidates altogether, we just gathered together as good toil
candidates for our first kind of collective event. I think
there is a real difference in energy, Really is a
difference in how we feel about Trump. I think there's
a real difference in how we're willing to stand up
to powerful special interests. And I have always been a
person who said you cannot buy me. I don't care
(47:16):
who you are, what side of the party you're from,
whether you're Republican, Democrat, left, right, center, corporate special interests.
I'm going to do what I think best, and I'm
going to lead from a position of strength in doing
that because I can stand on my own feet and
say why this is right, Not why someone told me
to do it or pay me to do it, but
why it's right. And I think that Democrats need that
confidence in leadership right now.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
One of the things that we spent a lot of
time handringing about is how Democrats win right that In
the twenty twenty fourth cycle, we saw Harris. She did
a really good job, but she also you know, was
impossible situation, but she spent a lot of time with
people like Liz Cheney trying to create a permission structure
(47:59):
for white Republicans to join the Democratic Party. They did
not take that permission, and that did not work. So
a lot of people wonder if maybe having made more
overtures towards the people who were protesting the war in
the middle eightiest store that maybe if the party hadn't
(48:22):
been so you know, allergic to the left flank, that
that might have helped them put together a broad coalition.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
Do you think that's right? Just talk about that idea
for a minute.
Speaker 4 (48:33):
I can talk about it from the perspective of California,
which is that making really sure that we're leaning into
the policies that bring voters together. I think there are
those policies and those necessary I have not always necessarily
been top things that Democrats have leaned into. So one
of the things that I run on is through consumer protection.
For example, nobody likes to get cheated. You could win
(48:55):
every single voter talking about consumer protection, and that's something
that come at. Harris has an amazing track record on.
We heard a little bit about it in her presidential
but it's actually I think wouldn't say one of her
real strengths. And I got my start in public service
working on holding big banks to account who who had
cheated Californians during the foreclosure crisis. I think that the
idea that you know, anytime you're chasing only one little
(49:19):
slice of voters and you're having to choose dispatch of
voters versus that batche of voters, I think takes you
away from the fact that you need to be trying
to find what is the big tent message and what's
the message that's going to motivate people. And I do
think talking about economics, talking about economic anxiety, talking about
how people make ends meet, the cost of housing, the
(49:40):
cost of college, whether the United States is going to
be competitive globally for jobs in the future. I don't
know any voter who wouldn't care about that. Like I've
never had a voter say, you know what I'd like
is I'd like a worst economy send no voter ever,
Which means that issues about economics, issues about jobs are
issues that we can pull in every slice of the
(50:00):
population about. I think with voters who have more different
perspectives and some of those factions, sometimes it just means
being able to listen. You can't make everything at the
same level of issue, or nobody knows what you stand for, right.
So I'm very clear in this race that what I'm
really focused on is making California a more affordable place
to live so that we can grow our population and
grow our economy, grow the number of businesses that are
(50:22):
headquartered here. And I think having those priorities and being
really clear about them is helpful. I do think that
sometimes Democrats chase the swing voter of the cycle before, right,
So I think Joe Biden was really well situated to
think about that kind of sprit in Pennsylvania, you know,
not college educated, white working class voter that's not necessarily
(50:44):
the swing voter of the next election. There's a real
need to think forward about where the party's going, where
the movement's going, and not look backwards. And that's hard
to do because you don't have that data.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Right.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
It takes more intuition, It takes more intuitive leadership.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Thank you, Katie Porter, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
No, No, Jesse Cannon, Mai.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
Marco Rubio above the law, above any judge in this country.
According to testimony he gave just yesterday.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Oh yeah, Marco Rubio, this is the grown up in
the room. Okay, team, Like this guy is actually the
best they have, right, I mean I think that it is.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Would you put it that way? It makes it a
lot scarier.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Yeah, I mean, this is it. This guy's like a
real senator. He has not been on any reality television shows.
He flippantly says he doesn't have to listen to court orders.
By the way, I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Like JD.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Vance, you can see like he never really believed in
any of this, okay, and he wrote a book and
he was a venture capitalist sort of. But this guy was,
you know, a normal Republican and now he's a complete lunatic.
So he just basically said he doesn't have to follow
the law.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Both JD.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Vans and Marco Rubio are trying to be don Junior.
You know, they're just trying to, like out Internet troll
each other. I for one, am alarmed and concerned, concerned
and alarmed, alarmed, concerned, disturbed.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
That's it for.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend. And keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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