Gov. Jared Polis, Sarah Longwell & Ari Berman

The Focus Group Podcast explains how Biden motivates Haley voters to go his way. Governor Jared Polis of Colorado examines how Democrats can win with marijuana by following his lead in Colorado. Ari Berman details his new book, "Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It."

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Episode Transcript

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 Donald Trump shared a video referencing
a unified Reich. We have such a great show for
you today. Colorado Governor Jared Paulus stops by to talk

(00:20):
to us about what's going on in his state. Then
we'll talk to Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule,
the right wing attack on the will of the people
and the fight to resist it. But first we have
the host of the Focus Group podcast, the publisher of
The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, Welcome back to Fast Politics. Sarah Longwoll, Hey,

(00:43):
what's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
We were just talking about what we're going to talk
about and my anxiety about American democracy. I think we
should start by talking about something that is actually really
positive for Joe Biden. We're still seeing Nikki Haley winning
between sometimes as little as ten, sometimes as much as
thirty percent of the vote in the Republican primaries. She

(01:08):
has not been in this election for a number of months.
It's like a zombie campaign. What do you make of that?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Well, the biggest coalition in American politics is an anti
Trump coalition, and I don't think it has anything to
do with Nicki Haley whatsoever. I just think voters are
when given an opportunity to vote against Donald Trump, there's
a highly motivated section of voters, many of whom are
in the Republican Party, who will turn out to vote

(01:35):
against Trump. And look, I've been saying this for a
while about the Nicki Haley voters. Some of those voters
are already voting for Joe Biden. Some of those voters
are going to come home to Donald Trump, and then
the rest we got to fight over because they are
the double haters.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Those are the people who they don't like Joe Biden,
they don't like Donald Trump, they don't want to vote
for either guy. A lot of them are RFK curious.
And this is the swing voter this time, is people
who are not happy with either person, which is why
it's going to be a super depressing campaign because it's
not about who anybody likes, It's not about anything affirmative.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
It is all who hates who more.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's one of the reasons that I think that Trump's
numbers are continuing to hold in a positive direction for him,
not the country is because look, Joe Biden is top
of mind for people, and so they reach for him
with their frustrations over inflation or crime or immigration. And
Donald Trump as he sits in a courtroom and talks

(02:34):
about a hush money payment that was made back in
twenty fifteen, people are looking backwards on Trump. They're not
looking forward about what he might do. And I think
that that conversation. I'm not saying that the cases are
bad for Joe Biden or that they're good for Trump.
I think a lot of people are saying, oh, this
is going to make people more motivated to vote for Trump.

(02:54):
Anybody who's going to vote for Trump because he's in
court was already going to vote for Donald Trump. And
I think that if he is convicted on the margins,
it has some negative impact on Trump.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Right, it doesn't have a positive impact. No, I think
that's an insane hill to die on.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, people get lost in the primary mindset, right, where
that everything that Donald Trump that's like weird about him
helps him, which is true in a primary, it's not
true in a general.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
It's not.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Also, like Republican primary voters who are still with Trump
are a completely different breed than anyone else voting in
this election.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah, I mean, look, I say this all the time,
as for me, as like a real bedrock of what's
happening right now, which is that the gap between what
Republican base voters want and what sort of moderate swing
voters will tolerate. That gap has gotten really wide. So like,
just let me give you one quick example. Town in
North Carolina. You got this guy Mark Robinson running for governor.

(03:51):
Dude is looney toots, right, He's a holocaust denier, says
gay people are filth, has some real weird views on women,
call the Parkland shooting kids prostitutes. So not a great dude.
And he won the Republican primary in a landslip. He
won by sixty five percent the Republican primary, but he's
polling in the low forties. And the guy Josh Stein,

(04:14):
who's kind of just a mainstream LIB running against him,
is just trouncing him and all the polling, and we
just did a bunch of focus groups on this, so
what's top of mind for me? But that, to me
is a good illustration of this gap. But I'll give
you a negative theory that I'm holding onto that I've
started formulating from the groups, which is one of the
weird things byproducts of Republicans nominating just absolutely batshit crazy

(04:37):
candidates like Mark Robinson, like Kerry Lake, like herschel Walker.
You know, there's a bunch of them in twenty twenty two.
Is that Trump starts to look less insane by comparison
because they're so out there and so like in North Carolina,
Trump is still in every average, winning by about seven
percentage points, which means there's a ton of people And
I just talked to this group of people, a ton
of people who for whom Trump is totally acceptable and

(04:59):
Mark Robinson is not.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
That's strange, but real. Why do you think that is?

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Some of its abortion people don't view Trump as extreme
on social issues. They think of him as sort of
a cultural moderate as a result of years of them
seeing him just in the media being well, they don't
think this is this guy of sexual morality, you know, right,
They think he's paid for abortions. People say that in
the groups all the time, and so like, they just
don't believe, which is which is one of Trump's superpowers, right,

(05:27):
He's able to weirdly hawk Bibles and hold them upside down.
And be like, see Christians on one of you, while
everybody who's more secular and moderate completely being like, yeah,
this guy's not a real Christian and he's not going
to do what the Mike Pence or Mike Robinson or
anybody else who's sort of deeply who's actually ideologically or
religiously committed to some of this stuff.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
So, look, there's a.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Lot of bad news I think, both in the polling
and the focus groups right now.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
So I want you to talk focus groups.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
I hate Paul's and I sure saying that's why I
do focus groups.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, where are you focus grouping? And what are you seeing?

Speaker 3 (06:00):
We're still it's early enough that we're still doing lots
of different places, but we're focused on the Swing states
more than anything else. We're talking to a lot of
these double haters, and we're also talking to a lot
of two time Trump voters who rate him very unfavorably.
Because we're trying to figure out who's gettable. The reason
I was starting with sort of the directionally bad news, like,
look I see in the double haters or swing voters.

(06:22):
So these are people who voted for Trump and sixteen
voted for Biden in twenty if you do a group
of those, you know, there's usually a few of them
in the group who are either going back to Trump
or who want to vote for RFK and not Biden.
On the flip side of that, though, there is a
whole new group of people. This is my most optimistic
thing that I've seen. There's a whole new group of
people who voted for Trump twice and will not vote

(06:44):
for him again. Now they won't vote for Biden. But
I suspect there's going to be a very large segment
of the Republican voting population that will leave it blank.
And a lot of those voters are kind of these Reagan,
Romney McCain Republicans who held their nose and votvoted for
Trump both times. But the insurrection, the lying about the election,
it was a last straw. And there's a lot of

(07:06):
these voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and I hope
Nebraska too. And also my other optimistic piece is that
in some of these tough states like Arizona's a tough state,
the slide with Hispanics is going to hurt in Arizona.
But Arizona's been trending toward Democrats. Carrie Lake is on
the ballot again, which is bad for Trump because she's
a nut.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
She's such a nut, she's the worst.

Speaker 4 (07:26):
She's the worst.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
And like there will be people who vote for the
Democrat in that Senate race and vote for Trump.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Insane. Yes, but here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
They're going to get a ballot initiative about abortion in Arizona,
and I think that's really gonna help. And so I
still think there's two keys to this election, to winning
it and saving democracy. One is I wish that RFK
wasn't in this race, because anything that splits up that
anti Trump coalition is bad. But if he's gonna be
in the race, and he's going to be on the ballot,
then everybody better figure out how to make these voters

(07:58):
understand Democratic voters that voting for him is a terrible
idea and help Trump voters understand he's their guy. And
I think making sure that he works as a as
somebody who can peel off Trump voters is going to
be essential. Like we're just going to have to play that.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Game, right, And he is anti vax.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
He's anti vax. He's also sort of anti establishment. And
because I've done a lot of groups around RFK. One
of the things that's interesting about Republican voters in RFK
is that there's nothing they love more than a Democrat
who turns on other Democrats, right, they love it, and
so he has a lot to offer them. They also
hate a regular politician, they love an outsider, and they

(08:35):
love an insider outsider.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's a really good point. So RFK has a lot
for those voters.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
And that's one thing you gotta do. You got to
make O RFK work for you.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
That's going to be just a strategic game that people
are going to have to figure out how to play.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
It's so interesting because clearly Trump has seen that Republicans
are RFK Junior curious, so he'll be less the guy
is a crazy liberal.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
You've heard that, right, of.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
Course, I've heard that.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know, Trump figured out a little belatedly that his
voters liked RFK. Now, some of Biden's do too, Like
there's just a lot of dams who are kind of like, oh, Kennedy,
he looks at a spry seventy, he looks younger than
Joe Biden, and then he likes the environments. There's some
of that and like you're just gonna have to that's
an education game. That is an affirmative education game you're
gonna have to do. And then here's the other thing.

(09:21):
There's the other thing that's going to win this race,
save democracy, reelect Joe Biden. Which is one of the
reasons I like focus groups and not pulling. Is it
gauges intensity. And the thing about the double haters, we
call them that because they're people who don't want to
vote for either guy, but they don't actually hate Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
They Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
They just are like about Joe Biden, like they just
make guttural noises about why this is their choice. Which
means that you got to run the hardest, toughest, relentlessly
negative campaign against Trump to help people understand what a
second Trump term's going to look like, the fact that
he's not gonna leave, the fact that he's going to
be a lunatic surrounded by other lunatics, and you gotta
go negative so hard every day, relent big saragate game.

(10:01):
I think that people are going to have to like
stop kind of wringing their hands. You know, you can't
roll up your sleeves when you're wringing your hands man,
and you gotta go hard.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's interesting what you're saying, because Biden has definitely got
He's got two big problems here.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
One is Hispanic support and.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
The other is younger Black voters and younger voters too.
But I always think of younger voters are kind of
an oxymoron, right, like, you're going to get some of them,
You're not going to get all of them. They're young.
But I know because I have a college kid who
I'm like, you have to go and fucking vote and
take as many people as you can. He goes to
a small college, but he told me there are two

(10:40):
people he thinks are going to go from his college
to vote, and I was like, oh Jesus Christ. But
the point is, I do think Trump is also hemorrhaging support.
I mean, I think this is going to be like
the opposite of twenty twenty, you know, a lower turnout
election where it's still tight.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
You know, yeah, I mean, I think I think that
is a entirely plausible scenario. I think that enthusiasm is
really down overall, and the lower turnout election in the
off season elections, it's really helped Democrats because the people
who reliably show up to vote tend to be these
college educated suburban voters who increasingly vote with Democrats. It's

(11:17):
why you saw in Wisconsin the Supreme Court election, the
Democrat pro to Saowitz win by like ten points in
a place like Wisconsin right off your election. And so look, yeah,
I mean you gotta hope that enthusiasm's really down for Trump,
that people either don't come out for him or they
leave it blank.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
So it could be.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Look, I don't know, and more importantly, we don't know
what's happening, and we just we know what we're seeing
right now more than you know one hundred and eighty
days from the election.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons it's super hard
to predict is when you have two functional incmbents running
against each other, people don't feel like they need to
tune in. I mean, this is the thing with the
focus groups, Like people are they know Trump's in court
for one of the cases, but like they're not following it.
They're kind of like these two choices. You know, I've
been saying to people, it's like the voters have been
going through the five stages of grief, where like the

(12:06):
anger that these guys were running again, like that anger
is those Nikki Haley voters. It's Joe Biden's low approval numbers.
There's the bargaining, which is the third party no labels stuff,
the RFK, the maybe Kamalo will step down, maybe Joe
Biden will still step down. There's like depression, which I
think we're in now.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And I want to fact check myself. It's one hundred
and sixty eight days to the election, not one hundred
and eighty.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Okay, cool.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Anyway, My point is just like we're still a long
way from acceptance, and when we hit that phase, I
do think like we'll see things move, but like we're
not there yet.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
I also do think like democrats.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
I was talking to a member of Congress today, one
of those members of Congress who's like a ranking member,
very smart, but not anyone you've heard of. And I
was like, you know, what's your taake on this right,
because there are so many members of Congress that have
the people no one knows who the fuck they are.
Excuse my friend, I, what's your tea this? And he said,
you know, I see Democrats overperforming, but I also know

(13:06):
that Biden world takes us all very very seriously. And
is running a very disciplined campaign, which is why they're
going to Pennsylvania and they're going to Wisconsin, and they're
going to you know, but it is going to be
just a miserable one hundred and sixty eight days.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
It is, and we're going to live with an extraordinary
amount of anxiety. But people want to know what they
can do. And some of it is like, you know,
be part of turning the vibes around. Go out there,
push hard for Biden, like there's no point in being depressed,
Like we got to do the work. Make sure you know,
Biden's most people's No, it's not their first choice, but.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Got to dance with the guy who brought you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
And I also would like to add that he wasn't
necessarily the first choice in twenty twenty either, but the
coalition got behind him, I think largely because there was
a feeling that he was very electable against Trump.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
That calculus.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
You know, he's a little older, I get it, Orgu's
foot whatever, but that calculus has not largely changed. I mean,
remember they tried an impeachment and it didn't work because
their their lead witness ended up in jail.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Republicans, Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be a
super downer. I do think running with a record in
an anti incumbent environment, which we are just like perpetually
in now, like incumbentcy has lost some of its juice
that it used to have. But I still think Joe
Biden can win this. I am like less optimistic about
places like Nevada and Georgia, but I remain pretty optimistic

(14:32):
about Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, you know, Nebraska too, and Arizona,
and I think, you know, you just that's I don't
think anybody's getting fancy with Florida and North Carolina, but
that's what he's got to Do's got to hold those
blue wall states.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's a tough Senate map, but it's a weird state map.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
What are you seeing?

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Do you have any hot takes on the Senate?

Speaker 4 (14:51):
You know?

Speaker 3 (14:51):
My biggest hot take is something we were talking about
on the focus group pod recently, which is politics is
changing quite a bit, and we don't have of a
lot of new examples sort of moderates being able to
win over the other party, like in these really red states,
like that's getting less and less frequent, where you've got
like a Democrat that gets elected in a super red state.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
But the places where it still happens or where.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
You can get a non Maga Republican elected is people
whose reputations precede the Trump era. And so when you
take a guy like Shared Brown or a guy like
John Tester, you just have a situation where their reputations
were forged before all of this stuff. And I think
that that who and I can give you like some
reverse examples of that, which is like a Mike the

(15:39):
Wine in Ohio who MAGA hates Mike de Wine because
he's kind of a moderate Republican, or even Kemp in Georgia.
You know, Kemp's been able to withstand it, and that's
because they forged their identities with their voters and their
relationships with their voters pre Trump. And I just think
that's true of Shared Brown, it's true of Tester.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Case in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah, in Pennsylvania. And so that I think is one
of the things that seems to.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Help Tammy Baldwin though that's a good one, But I
think Minnesota being on the map is bullshit, Like Trump
trying to get Minnesota, like that's just a dumb news story.
He's trying to bait people with Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
I don't think Trump's going to do well in Minnesota.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, they're smarter. They're smarter than that, I mean.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Sarah Longwell, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
Yeah, thanks for having me. Love doing it.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Spring us here and I bet you are trying to
look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store
with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
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(16:51):
Jared Polis is the governor of Colorado. Welcome to Fast Politics, Governor.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
Paulas Molly, could you hear your voice?

Speaker 1 (17:00):
You are the governor of Colorado, but you also have
a number of interesting things about you. You've been into
pot before pot was hot, Well not literally, Molly, not literally. Obviously.

Speaker 5 (17:15):
This is the biggest, you know, scandal I have as
governor of Colorado's I've never actually tried it. So that's
now that I never have to run again, I can
confine with you.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Pot legalization is now pretty much a thing.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
It kind of stems from like a basic value, bodily autonomy,
you know, choice, freedom of course, people should be able
to use marijuana recreationally just as they use alcohol. Doesn't
mean I'm pro alcoholic pro marijuana. These are choices people make.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
People make good.

Speaker 5 (17:41):
Choices, bad choices, and different choices. It's up to everybody
to live their own lives. Obviously marijuana is part of that.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
And you're right.

Speaker 5 (17:47):
I was at the pot party before it became the
popular party. I was always for legal marijuana back when
you know, Colorado was one the first date to do it. Actually,
I supported the ballot inshative.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Wait, so you're term limited out as governor, but you
still might run for something else.

Speaker 5 (18:02):
Well, two and a half years left, and I hope
my failure to try marijuana doesn't pull me down.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
But just because you can't run for governor again doesn't
mean you won't run for something else.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
Well, I mean, I not something I think about, LOLLI.
But if I do, I don't think the lack of
trying marijuana will be the end of it.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yes, well, I've moved on from the marijuana at this point.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
I'm glad.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
I'm glad. It was sort of a fling in your youth, Lolly.
You just had a brief like in college or something.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Well, No, I've been sober since I was a teenager.

Speaker 4 (18:31):
Good for you, good believe it or not.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
So I don't have any particular personal horse in the
marijuana stuff race.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
I'm glad you've moved on.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yes, I know that it's wildly popular, and I know
that you have these libertarian leanings despite being a Democrat,
and it seems like right now is a time when
there is a wide lane.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
For libertarians in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
Well, I would say probably in both parties.

Speaker 5 (18:59):
There's an opportunity for that because you know, anybody who
speaks the language of freedom, of choice, of empowerment, I
think that can be a winning message.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
On either side.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
It's one that's often not heard enough on either side either.
So it's certainly always been part of what I've talked
about as a member of Congress and now as governor.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Is it really available in both parties because like what
I'm seeing on the Republican side, certainly not maybe not
from a Mitch McConnell, but certainly from Madonald Trump is
a lot and the Heritage Foundation is a lot of
interest in regulation, whether it comes to IVF or birth
control pills or abortion.

Speaker 5 (19:37):
Oh no, absolutely, the main serare Republican party is very
much command and control or strict freedom. I'm talking about
folks like Justin Amash and back in the day, Ron
Paul Lesso, his son. But yeah, absolutely there's a lane there.
You see people doing it, but it's you know, it's
it's lonely on either side sometimes, but certainly in terms
of the bodily autonomy, personal freedom side, a lot better

(19:58):
time to be a Democrat to support Democrat. Republicans are
really trying to control everything people do through government.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
I mean you're saying that statement, I'm thinking about it.
It's such an insane time in American politics because that
maybe it was what they set out to do. But
I think the party's gone really far afield. You are
in Colorado. It has become a really reliably blue state.
How do you think Democrats have won hearts of minds
in Colorado?

Speaker 5 (20:23):
So, I think the important thing you know about Colorado
for you and your listeners is it's really an independent state.
The plurality of voters and actually, quite soon, Molly, it'll
be the actual majority of voters will be unaffiliated voters,
neither Democratic nor Republican, and they're on loan to the Democrats. Yes,
they're supporting Democrats, doesn't mean they're in love with Democrats,
but frankly, they're not Donald Trump Republicans, to be clear.
So the state they're waiting for, George Bush, mid Romney

(20:45):
ran strong here. Obama was also very strong, But this
is not a Donald Trump state. It's very well educated
and thoughtful Republicans. And you know, again, I think they
can win the independent vote, but not with the candidates
that they've been running lately, and so those inde bed
votes have been on owned Democrats, which is why right
now Democrats control both US Senate SA, it's both chambers
of the state legislature.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
You have gotten a bunch of Democrats mad at you
recently because six spills.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
You vetoed talk to us about that.

Speaker 4 (21:13):
What were year?

Speaker 5 (21:13):
I mean year, I veto some bills. I think last
year was the year I vto the most ten. But
keep in mind, I sign, you know, three hundred or so.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, I mean, I'm just curious.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
There are endless problems with legislation, and some of them
are sort of you know, just with the legislation being
badly written or I'm just curious with the.

Speaker 5 (21:32):
Yeah, I would say every year. It changes year to year,
but usually the majority the concept is okay, but it
just wasn't sort of fixed. The words aren't right, and
it has unintended consequences. So I feel it's better for
them to go back and work on it for another
year rather than you know, deal with the product that
could lead to the wrong outcomes. So that's probably seventy
percent of the time. The thirty percent of the time

(21:53):
it's one that I disagree with or just you know,
don't think it's a good way to go. So it
just sort of depends on the bill. But I every
single bill that reaches me. In the way our legislature
works in Colorado, Moley, each legislator gets five bills sixty
five and hours thirty five cent. That's five hundred bills.
There's a few special bills, but usually there's about four
hundred that reach me, or so three to four hundred
each one. I get a legal analysis, policy analysis, fiscal analysis,

(22:16):
make a decision, and that's how that works. So, you know,
like any executive, I don't have a formative role a
lawmake you know, That's what I did when I was
a member of Congress. But I do have a yay
or at a at the end.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, And what are the sort of things that you're
because you are, you know, seeing different voters than I am,
and you're talking to people and you really got a
good sense of the state. What are the sort of
things that people care about your constituents Right.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
Now, that's a number one in Colorado. Probably it's the
same across country as costs. Just costs have gone up,
and housing here is front and central, as it is
in not every market, but many markets, because part of
what drives it is interest in mortgage rates, right, so
that's been tougher everywhere. But on top of that, we've
had a significant run up in the cost of a hole.
But on top of it's groceries, it's gas, it's all
that inflation, insurance, right, all those things. So we really

(23:02):
focused our agenda around, you know, reducing cost, reducing taxes,
saving people money. That's a big part of what we
talk about. Housing reforums we might get into. We've done
a lot of that to build more housing. That's really
the number one issue right now, i'd say, followed probably
by public safety, and then you know, like always education
strong perennial issue. People care about their kids, in schools
and education opportunities.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
So you did sign into law House Built thirteen thirteen
in which is a zoning law basically helping build multi
story houses. These are the things that you have to
sort of push up against. How is that going? And
is there a lot of resistance?

Speaker 4 (23:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (23:39):
So you know, why is the cost of housing so
high in Colorado? The average home costs in the Denver
metro area is about six hundred thousand dollars, you know,
state state wide, it's maybe four eighty. So it's expensive.
And yes, you could be in southern California and say wow,
that's cheap, right, or in New York City, but like
for our standards, it's expensive, and compared to our neighboring states,
it's expensive. So why is it expensive? High demand? That's good,

(24:01):
people want to live in Colorado. Great place to live,
great raised to raise of family, outdoor recreation, all that stuff.
But supply has been artificially constrained. We simply haven't allowed
enough ones to be built to keep up with supply
with demand, and that's what serven crisis up. So we
focused our reforms on allowing more housing to be built,
not everywhere. You know, we don't want to sprawl further
out of more traffick and congestion ruin our quality of life.

(24:21):
We want to do it in a way that protects
our quality of life.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
And what does that mean.

Speaker 5 (24:24):
It means more housing closer to job centers and on
transit lines. And the bill you mentioned specifically allows multi
family along transit lines near job centers. And that's an
important piece of what we need to do to make
housing more affordable, more livable, and more sustainable in Colorado.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Do you get pushback from the I mean, is that
a delicate balance?

Speaker 5 (24:43):
Well, of course, we actually and you might have noted,
we actually did not succeed last year getting this through
the legislator.

Speaker 4 (24:48):
We did this year.

Speaker 5 (24:49):
We had kind of an omnibus housing bill for lad
use last year. It didn't quite make it. It made
it past one chamber or not the other. We broke
it up into six different bills. They all made it
to my desk, and we're going to build on them
all in the future. But it equals over like we
got rid of parking restrictions. We allowed accessory dwelling units
by right, so people can build it as long as
there are lots of certain size. A mother mother in

(25:10):
law and ready flat. So you know, these things add
up to a real solution broadly popular the people of
Colorado obviously, you know, doesn't mean it's universally popular as
people who post it, but majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and
Independence all are strongly supportive of these measures to create
more housing.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
What else can you do as a governor to decrease inflation?
I mean, and you know Florida has this crazy inflation
largely driven by insurance. Is there anything you guys can
do with the insurance markets and also just to lower
inflation those costs in a state like Colorado.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
Well, look, and we all know that inflation is really
a function of monetary policy, fiscal policy federally, they might
vary a fraction of a point between different markets. And
obviously a place with a hot housing market has like
Colorado has had, in Florida has had that drives inflation,
because that's one of the facts. But no, can we
affect overall inflation?

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Wait, I'm going to push back on you for a second.
In Florida, the housing market is hot, but you know,
the insurers have been monopoly and also climate.

Speaker 5 (26:09):
Change, Yeah, and their particular model, I know, is driven
out many private insurers and forced the government to do that.
I would say, first of all, look at an insurance.
Is it a problem here? Yes? Why because that we
thankfully out of the hurricanes, but we have a higher
risk of fire. So people's insurance rates across our state
in general have gone up more than inflation. Absolutely the
last couple of years. We had the Marshall Fire two
years ago, most destructive wildfire in the history of the state.

(26:32):
Destroyed destroyed over a thousand homes. So that drives insurance.
What do we need to do. It's not so much
that the insurance side has broken, but we need to
reduce the risk because you know, at the end of
the day, insurance is just actuary a. They compute the risk,
they add their profit and boom, you got it. So
we need to reduce risk, and we are leading into that.
We are doing fire risk mitigation. We're doing more proactive

(26:54):
and controlled burns. We've purchased several helicopters a fire HOWK
top of line helicopter, but all so several type two helicopters.
We used to rely on a shared air fleet with
neighboring states in the West. But what happens if there's
a fire in California, Arizona and Colorado at the same time,
we're not going to get that quick aerial response. So
we've made the decision to move towards having our own fleet.
We now do. It's continuing to grow. We want to

(27:16):
boom hit fires early when it matters, when we can
reduce them. That in the long run, of course, will
help equate to better actuarial tables and reduced insurance costs
for our homeowners.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Do you see stient typically that this kind of stuff
prevents larger fires. I'm talking about the control burns, the
kind of stuff you can do profilactively.

Speaker 5 (27:34):
Absolutely, so community defence perimeters that would be your control burns,
taking down vegetation in and around communities. So to prevent
fires from jumping doesn't mean we're not going to fires.
We always have fire smalling coolera. It's always to be.
Fires are part of nature. The danger is when they
threaten human civilization, people's lives, and we absolutely significantly reduce
that with community defense perimeters and yes, home defense perimeters

(27:55):
where we're equipping homeowners with the ability to do that.
As an example, we recently remove the ability of hoa's
to prevent fire hardening. Many of them are requiring different things. Well,
let's call it wooden fences that are trees that were
actually bad for fires. We now empower homeowners to take
the steps necessary. But beyond that, community defense perimeters meeting
areas with no vegetation that can prevent the spread of

(28:16):
fire absolutely a critical tool, as well as rapid detection
and response, including aerial response.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
Okay, so two questions now. One is I hate tariffs
good because I think they punish the consumer. Sounds like
you do too, So let's talk about that.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
Well, you're on hundred percent right, wellly, I mean it's
rare to get an issue that like pretty much every
economists degrees on like left right, cent are like saris
are regressive, they punished the receiver. Brit is regressive being
they're kind of like a sales tax. They don't scale
with income, think about consumer products.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
They are costly.

Speaker 5 (28:49):
They drive inflation. Absolutely, one of my suggestions for reducing
inflation is dropping tariffs, entering, having more free trade agreements
with more countries, no question about it.

Speaker 4 (28:58):
And I'm very critical of with.

Speaker 5 (29:00):
Parties obviously, particularly Donald Trump, who champions and talents even
more tariffs than Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
I encourage Joe Biden.

Speaker 5 (29:07):
I hope he is the second term to lean into
trade agreements with Europe with our allies. Our Senator Bennett
has the America's Act expanding the Free Trade Zone uspectually
Canada to other countries. These would be great tangible measures,
good for the economy, good for the consumer, and they
would reduce inflation.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
So you have an aibill. I spend a lot of
time reading Balwey media. I don't live in DC, but
I know that AI is sponsoring like almost everything right,
So clearly they are trying to get ahead of the
regulatory environment. I think it's interesting that you're doing this.
I think it's good explain to me how what you're
doing to regulate AI.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
And also, can we.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Just for one second, the lack of regulation is how
tech companies basically drove out local news. So I just
am curious if you have thoughts on that too.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
So I would say that our AI bill that I
signed a law. It deals with the potential discrimination of AI.
We also appeared deeply about privacy rights of AI. I
would say it's a conversation accelerator, meaning what needs to happen,
Molly frankly, is it needs to be done nationally because
I don't really support a system where there's fifty different
versions of two different states.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
It's undoable, Yeah, go on.

Speaker 5 (30:18):
It's undoable. But the way those things happen, Having served
in Congress, I've seen it is it takes a few
states to kind of mess around in this space and
then all of a sudden, you know, eight states, fifteen
states have done it, and then Congress wakes up and says,
we'd better figure this out. We better, you know, get
it reasonably right. And they can look at what the
EU's done, and they can look at other models and
create uniformity across the states. But I would say, what

(30:40):
what we're doing? You know, it doesn't take effect to
twenty six and hopefully it'll be you know, changed, or
Congress will take it up then. But it's a conversation
accelerator about how we approach AI and we should look
at it from a potential perspective of discrimination as well
as privacy rights and how it affects US.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
California got a complicated legislative record in my mind, though
I like a lot of the stuff they do, though
sometimes I think they get ahead of themselves is trying
to do something that will regulate tech companies make them
pay for content. God forbid, anyone should pay for content.
It's a sort of tax. I don't know if you
know the No, I.

Speaker 5 (31:16):
Don't, but I would just say something interesting about California.
So there is an alternative to Congress, because we all
know how notoriously slow they have been of late, right.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
And how uninterested in tech regulation they are.

Speaker 5 (31:28):
California can act and then other states can adopt something
similar to created the facto national standard. It could also
be Texas or New York, but a big state could
lead others. So I have a look at that. I'm
not talking about the tax or fiscal round there, Molly.
I'm talking about more of the regulatory realm. But we
have done a little bit of.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
That around evs.

Speaker 5 (31:43):
We haven't exactly imitated electric vehicles, that is, we haven't
imitated California, but because they've moved a certain way, it's
enabled us to move a certain way with manufacturers that
Colorado couldn't.

Speaker 4 (31:52):
Do on our own.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
Because we're, you know, tuber population of the country.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
It does seem to me that the only way we're
going to get protection for local news, which well, in
the end cause us to have better information as citizens
and prevent us from ending up in an autocracy. Maybe
we won't do it this time, but we will do
it at some point. If we don't, if our citizens
can't read the truth, could be on the state level. Right.

Speaker 5 (32:17):
Well, you know, I want to see where you're going
with this, Molly. It's obviously very dangerous for government to
mess with the press and freedom of the press in
any shape or form, like favoring certain lids or investing
or But I'm more.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Just saying that the idea that tech companies should have
to be responsible for either what is put on their
platform or have to pay for the content that they use.

Speaker 5 (32:40):
Well, look, our major media companies are also tech companies, Mollie, Right,
So I mean there's a blurring to a certain extent.
We have a great local press in Colorado, a nonprofit
called Colorado Sun, Independent, nonprofit, new model. We obviously, unfortunately
many of our newspapers are owned by hedge funds. They
have been gutted. That's not a good thing. We still
have fairly vibrant local television news. But I'm particularly proud

(33:02):
of these new models like Colorado Sun that have created
a nonprofit content generation model. I hope that occurs in
more cities and states.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
So interesting, you still have half a term left, but
you've been governor of Colorado for a while. What have
you learned?

Speaker 5 (33:16):
Well, a lot. I came from two different backgrounds, I
guess through three it away, so as private sector started,
several businesses started, a couple of charter schools, social entrepreneur,
and then I was in Congress for ten years. So
this is obviously the most exciting, fastest paced job I've
ever had, for sure. And you're really able to get
things done, unlike in Congress where you might have to work,
you know, six seven, eight years to finally get one
amendment into something that becomes law in your area of jurisdiction.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
We pumped stuff out quickly.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
We got universal preschool in kindergarten in the state one
of Michaels as governor. We've cut the income tax. We've
done a number of savings around healthcare to bring down
people's costs, especially in the healthcare exchange for those who
don't get it from work. We've protected the environment. We've
provided you know, rebates to accelerate electric vehicle adoption and
so many things. Just boom boom, boom, boom boom. It's
an exciting job. But of course we yes, we also

(34:01):
deal with crisis is, fires, floods, pandemic, you name it.
But despite that, it's fun to be proactive and get
a lot done at the state level.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Thank you, Governor, Thank you.

Speaker 6 (34:09):
Molly ari Berman is a reporter at Mother Jones and
the author of Minority Rule, The Right Wings Attack on
the Will of the People and the Fight to Resist It.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Welcome to Fast Politics.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
Ari Berman, Hey Molly, so great to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
So Minority Rule, The right Wing Attack on the Will
of the People and the Fight to resist it.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
I mean, it's like every fucking day.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Go tell us, tell us why we shouldn't just kill ourselves?

Speaker 2 (34:43):
No, no, tell us about this book.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Well, good to know we can swear on the podcast.
That's always a possi right baby, especially when discussing this topic.
So you know, I've been reporting on the issue of
voting rights for over a decade now, and as I
got deeper into reporting on voter suppression, I began asking
my self, why is the Republican Party doing this so aggressively?
Is it just to try to get an electoral advantage

(35:06):
or is there some larger purpose here? And what I
concluded is that the larger purpose here is minority rule.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Right, is to get the electoral advantage.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
Exactly, so they can have a minority of the population
but a majority of the power, which basically goes directly
against the idea of the consent of the governed that
democracy is based on the consent of the government has
laid out in the Declaration of Independence. So what I
did is basically two things. I traced it all the
way back to the founding fathers to show that there's

(35:36):
always been these anti democratic strains in the country. But
then there's essentially this new anti democratic movement layered on
top of it, which is voter suppression, gerrymandering, dark money,
all the things that Republicans are doing now. So we
kind of have this historical minority rule embedded in the system,
but it's gotten worse because the Republican Party has so
aggressively radicalized against democracy.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Right, and that is the Republican Party radicalizing against democracy.
I want to just do two seconds on that, because
you're a voting right sky among other things, so Republicans
have wanted to make it so people who are not
white can't vote for a long time. But what's happened

(36:20):
now is I think it's kicked into high gear in
a different way.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Discuss exactly I think that's true. So, I mean, you
can go back a long time, and I do trace
it a long time in the book about Republicans saying
that black people shouldn't vote. I mean they said it
during Jim Crow, they said it after the Voting Rights Act.
It goes back a long way.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Long and story tradition of racism, big.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
Part of Nixon's Southern strategy, big part of Reagan courting
white voters. But what I argue is it obviously got
worse after the election of the first black president, which
sort of crystallized the fears they had about the changing
nature of the country. And so in the kind of
modern incarnation of GOP voter suppression that the point is
after the twenty ten election, when Republicans get control of

(37:03):
all those key swing states like Wisconsin and North Carolina
and Ohio and Florida, and they start making it harder
to vote, to try to manufacture an electorate that will
be older, wider, more conservative as opposed to younger, more diverse,
more progressive that I think, in many ways lays the
groundwork for Trump, because the radicalization of the Republican Party
happens before Trump, and then it creates an opening for Trump,

(37:26):
and then you start to see voter suppression get much
worse under Trump. First he makes all these false claims
about stolen elections, and then he actually tries to overturt
the election and incis and insurrection, and then it's basically
voter suppression on steroids. They're not just trying to make
it harder to vote on the front end, they're actually
literally trying to overturn votes on the back end as well.
And that's the scary thing that's happening today is we

(37:47):
have not just laws making it harder to vote, but
we essentially have a Republican party in which the Big
Lie is now the central organizing principle of Trump's Republican Party.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
So what I think is interesting besides the fact that
these sentence the big Lie is the central organizing of
Trump's Republican Party, which I think is right and also
makes me so incredibly depressed about the state of democracy,
and also the intelligence of Republicans. What I think is
interesting is that Republicans, and I want you to sort

(38:18):
of talk us through this because I think this is
like they've gotten themselves an interesting place here.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
There's a lot of new polling.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
I think polls are bullshit, especially these polls, because I
just think they're hinky and I'm a cross tabs truther.
But I want you to talk about this. Republicans are
very excited about the possibility that they could win over
black and Latino voters. Now, I think this is very
overstated in the polls. But if they are trying to

(38:44):
do this, isn't everything they do to keep these people
who they are trying.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
To win now from voting.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Well, that's what's interesting is you've already heard the Republican
Party start changing there too. And I just heard Trump
said that people should vote early and vote by mail,
which well directly at odds with his message for many years.
I mean, I'm conflicted about the polling because I think,
first off, i think it's still the case that white
voters are the key part of the Republican Party and
certainly the key part of the Republican base. So let's

(39:12):
not fool ourselves that the Republican Party has undergone a
full Rainbow Coalition make over. I think it's still if
you went to most Republican meetings, I think you're going
to see a lot of white faces there, and certainly
that's where the energy is on the base. Secondly, I'm
not sure how much this is about the Democratic Party
or Biden per se. We didn't see in twenty twenty
two the Democratic Party have these fundamental problems with voters

(39:33):
of color, or young voters for that matter. My sense
is if Gretchen Whitmer, for example, the governor of Michigan
where the nominee, she would not be losing young voters
or voters of color. So I think some of this
is Biden centric to the extent it exists. But I
think the basic thesis that I have of that the
Republican Party is a largely white party that's concerned about

(39:54):
the changing demographics of the country is still true regardless
of whether there's some blips in the polling. That is
I think more specific to Biden than it is about
kind of long term trends in American politics.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
They put themselves in a fascinating situation here, but even still,
like if they are losing white college educated voters, which
if these polls are right, which again I don't necessarily
think they are, they show a real racial realignment for
working class you know, not necessarily black, but Hispanic voters
going more Republican, and then affluent college educated voters, like

(40:29):
these suburban Republicans all becoming Democrats. They would have completely
fucked themselves. I'm just saying, again, we don't know. It's theoretical.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
There is a realignment going on, certainly among white voters, right,
kind of the kind of classic suburban country club white Republicans,
many of them are now never Trumpers.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Ordem which is fascinating.

Speaker 4 (40:50):
You know, a lot of the Lincoln Project folks, of
those kind of people, and that then you have, you
know a lot of the working class whites that were
the core of the Democratic Party in a lot of
places for many years they now abandoned the Democratic Party.
And so I think there's this realignment, and I think,
you know, I think you can't make any kind of
sweeping predictions. That's why every time there's these books about
like emerging Democratic majorities emerging, they always go out of

(41:13):
date really quickly. But I think, you know, there's a
pretty consistent through line for many, many years of the
Republican Party relying on reactionary wheys. I mean, that's a
pretty solid through line that predates this election, you know.
I mean, and I trace it. I trace it a
long way. I mean, you can go back before there
were Democrats and Republicans, you can go back to the
founding fathers, and basically they're trying to protect elite white

(41:37):
power before there were political parties. And then, certainly that's
been a theme of the Republican Party since the Civil
Rights movement, and I think even more of a theme
of the Republican Party under Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
For sure. For sure.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Now let's talk about where we are right now with
this Republican Party and also just what they're doing to
make it harder to vote, and our Democrats sort of
add quickly addressing that or now.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
So, I mean, there's a few things they're doing. First off,
they changed in most Republican controlled states, changed the voting
laws in some way or another after the twenty twenty election.
So this was how they kind of weaponized the insurrection.
I called it the insurrection through other means because Trump
fails to overturn the vote. But then in Georgia and
all these states they changed the voting laws, and you know,

(42:22):
maybe they were fighting the last war, because a lot
of this went after mail voting, and we'll see how
many people actually vote by mail in the next election.
But certainly the laws have changed in meaningful ways in
a number of swing states. Then of course they've doubled
down on election sub version, so trying to contest election outcomes.
And we've seen local Republican Party officials, for example, fail
to certify elections, and we've seen that basically Republicans who

(42:47):
have said that the Republican Party should stop contesting elections
essentially get purged from the RNC. You know, Trump won't
hire anyone who says that the election wasn't stolen, which
leads you to believe that they're preparing for a more organized,
better funded effort to try to steal the election in
twenty twenty four, if it comes to that, because I
think there really was no election denier movement in twenty

(43:08):
twenty As you know, Molly, this was totally seated. Their
pass This was you know, the hair dye tripping down
Rudy Juliani's base. Four seasons total landscaping kind of election denial,
and now this is central to the RNC, it's central
to Republicans all across the country that they have a
much more organized, well funded movement that's bought into this.

(43:29):
And so I think if the election outcome is close,
I think we can expect very very aggressive challenges to
it in twenty twenty four, in addition to the laws
that they're passing to try to make it harder to
vote on the front end. What makes you hopeful, Well,
a few things, I think. First off, there's a lot
of really interesting organizing happening at the state and local

(43:49):
level right now. A key part of the end of
my book is about Michigan, and I had a New
York Times op ed about this, But basically, Michigan is
one of those states that was seemingly rigged. After the
twenty ten election. Republicans routinely got a minority of votes
but controlled the state legislature for a decade and a half.
And then what everyday activist did is they started putting
initiatives on the ballot to try to make the democratic

(44:11):
process more fair. They passed a ban on partison jerrymandering,
They dramatically expanded voting rights through things like automatic and
election day registration. They put on ballot initiatives that enshrine
the right to abortion rights. So they use direct democracy
to expand voting rights. And that's something that has happened
in a number of places. And then there's also other
places where people have changed in terms of Democrats have

(44:34):
focused more on local elections. Wisconsin, for example, there's a
progressive majority on the state Supreme Court that's struck down
jerrymandering there so that those heavily gerrymanded maps are no
longer in place. So if you look at the state
landscape and the battleground states, it's a lot more fair
than it was in twenty twenty. There is more democratic governors,
there is more democratic state legislatures, there's more democratic secretaries

(44:58):
of state, attorney general. And I have to say that
every Democrat is going to be good on democracy issues,
but these are people that ran on these issues that
made it a central part. So I think, you know,
if Trump would try to contest the election in the
place like Michigan or a place like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin,
you have a much tougher time doing it in twenty
twenty four than in twenty twenty. And so in that sense,

(45:19):
I think the system has been trump proofed a lot
compared to how it was last time.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
But it's also true that if you have democratic governors,
there's less chance to cheat, right there.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
Is, Yeah, exactly because a lot of those places, democratic
governors are in charge of certifying the election, right so,
democratic governor in Pennsylvania, Democratic governor Michigan, Democratic governor in Arizona,
Democratic governor Wisconsin. That means that they're going to have
a major say in certifying the election results, which means
it's harder to cheat. It's also harder to pass laws
that make it harder to vote in the first place

(45:51):
as well. And you know, in some of these places
there's a stalemate, right like in Wisconsin, where there's a
Republican legislature and a Democratic governor, they haven't really been
able to do much of anything, but it prevents bad
things from happening. And then in places like Michigan, they've
been able to do a lot of really proactive things.
And so basically what I'm saying is, I do think
we need a long term movement for institutional reform on
the federal level to reform the Supreme Court to reform

(46:13):
the US setate, to break some of these to break
up some of these broken structures. But I also think
that changing the state and local level happens a lot quicker.
And even if you live in a blue state Molly
like we do, there's a lot of swing districts in
New York.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
So I'm aware that's why Democrats lost the House.

Speaker 4 (46:32):
Yeah, exactly, they lost the House because of California and
New York. And I always hear people in New York say,
I'm going to Georgia, I'm going to Wisconsin, and I'm like,
you could just go to Staten Island.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
Yeah, well don't go to Stutson Valley, but you could.

Speaker 4 (46:42):
Go to Long Island exactly. You could flip the House there.
And so I mean, I think people need to think
more about organizing locally in general.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
And I think that's a really good point.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
I mean, the federal staff, I hesitate to say that
this Supreme Court has done something that isn't completely beyond
the pay. Explain to us what's happening in this congressional
district in the Great State of Louisiana.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yeah, so this is a complicated case, but basically the
good news is that the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana
has to use a congressional map for twenty twenty four
that includes two majority black congressional district Are you shocked.
I'm not shocked, only because the state of Louisiana took
this position. So I mean, like, black voters in Louisiana
are on the same side, which is very rare. The

(47:27):
state of Louisiana was forced into drawing a second black
congressional district, which is expected to elect a Democrat because
of lower federal court decisions. Now, what the Supreme Court
has done is it is upheld those lower court decisions
and that has been a rare bright spot for voting rights.
And that they did this not just in Louisiana. They
did it in Alabama too, which was very surprising. Now

(47:49):
we'll see how long this lasts to the sense that
there is support for voting rights in the court. It's
very tenuous. It takes five justices, obviously one of them
who is in the majority in the Alley Bama case,
Brett Kavana, also already said he's open to challenging the
constutionality of the remaining parts of the voting Rights Act.
So I'm not popping too much champagne here, but I
do think like, given this is a six to three

(48:11):
conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, so anytime they don't
do something terrible, you have to celebrate it, at least momentarily.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yes, how did they break Well, this is.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
The interesting thing. It broke six to three, which normally
six conservatives and three liberals assenting. Normally, you would think
that that would mean that it was a bad decision
on voting rights. It was a good decision on voting rights.
But the way they reached the case was basically in
voting this principle that said that you can't make election
changes too close to the election. Now, that was a

(48:42):
good thing in this case, but a lot of the
times the Supreme Court invokes the same principle to then
reinstate discriminatory voting. Yeah, exactly, so they it's mostly been
used for crappy purposes. So I think the three liberals
may view this as something of a pyrrhic victory where
they said, listen, the Conservatives are giving us a win here,
but they're about the fust.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
So do you think they see something coming?

Speaker 4 (49:03):
I don't know. If there's something coming. My guess is yes,
But I also think they're probably just worried about. Listen,
you expand this principle that is generally speaking been used
to curtail voting rights. You're expanding it in a good
way here, but then you could weaponize it in a
bad way further. So I think that's why they dissented.
So every victory on voting rights by the Supreme Court,

(49:23):
which is a rare in of itself, always comes to
some kind of asterisk, and I think that that's the
asterisk in this case. But you know, again, live to
fight another day, right.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Oh so interesting?

Speaker 1 (49:33):
So what's still on the docket with the Supreme Court?
I mean, besides the death of democracy? And they're also
going to fuck over the birth control pill staff, not
the birth control, the meth of pristone. Talk to us
about what else you see that's voting rights wise on
the Supreme Court docket.

Speaker 4 (49:51):
We're still waiting for them to issue a decision in
a South Carolina redistriction case, which is Nancy Mace's congressional district.
And the crazy thing here is that basically the lower
court struck down her district. They called it stark racial jerrymandering. Basically,
they took a bunch of black voters out of the
district to make it a lot more Republican. Mace has
become a lot Trumpier as a result. Remember she was

(50:12):
one of I think seven House Republicans who ousted Kevin McCarthy,
and so she's become very trumpy. And essentially this was
appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was told
to act by the beginning of the year. It's now
May and they haven't taken any action. And the lower
court that struck down the district was basically forced to

(50:32):
reinstate it because the Supreme Court had done nothing. So
it's kind of like the version of the immunity case.
They basically just ran out the clock to deny Democrats
having a shot at winning back another House seat. And
that's concerning because the House could be extremely close. I mean,
it could very well come down to one district.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
The Louisiana decision gives a seat to Democrats, right.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
Yeah, yeah, so basically, but I mean Democrats need more
than two seats. So right now, Democrats have picked up
seats in Alabama and Louisiana based on the court decisions,
they could have theoretically picked up another seat in South
Carolina that they're not going to pick up. The problem
is is that in North Carolina, Republicans drew a really
jerrymandered map that's going to get them three to four
new seats, So you've got to make up those seats somewhere.

(51:14):
There's some talk about whether they could pick up seats
in New York, but New York actually passed a redistricting
map that was very similar.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
It's so fucked up.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
New York passed basically a completely unjenary mandered redistricting map.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Yeah, I mean, I think that the conventional wisdom here
is that the New York Democrats feel like they can
just win seats outright on this map. But I mean,
they certainly didn't adopt in North Carolina tactics. And some
people would view this as unile or disarmament that basically
Republicans in North Carolina jerrymandered as aggressively as they could
and New York didn't. Now, maybe Democrats in New York

(51:48):
were worried about court striking down a map, but nonetheless
they add the power to jerrymander Moore and they didn't
and we can argue whether it's a good thing or
a bad thing that parties are basically just try to
jerrymander the fuck of things. I think that's ultimately bad
for democracy when they engage in like a gerrymandering arms race.
But I think it's also fair to argue that if

(52:08):
one party is doing it, then the other party has
no choice but to do it as well. But it's
a complicated argument, and I don't think it's probably very
good for democracy if that's where we end up.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Ari, thanks so much. Molly really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
No moment full Jesse Cannon.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Molly junk Fast.

Speaker 5 (52:29):
It seems like Donald Trump decided to do Joe Biden
a favor today.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
What are you seeing here? So? Donald Trump said on
an interview that he was looking at placing restrictions on contraception.
Let me tell you a little more about this. Trump
was asked by a local Pittsburgh TV station, do you
support any restriction on a person's right to contraception that's
birth control, and he said, we are looking at that.

(52:54):
I'm going to have a policy on that very shortly.
Sounds like infrastructure week. I think it's something you'll find interesting.
Trump says, you will be releasing a very comprehensive policy
on contraception within a week or so. Things really have
to do a lot with the states, and some states
are going to have different policies than others. That's pretty

(53:15):
scary stuff. I never thought that we would be in
this place in America. Really scary. That's it for this
episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense
of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.

(53:36):
And again, thanks for listening.