Josh Marshall, Randi Weingarten & Amanda Litman

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall skewers the right-wing influence outfit Tenet Media after it was indicted by the DOJ. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, rebuts J.D. Vance’s attacks on her character. Run For Something’s Amanda Litman details the down-ballot races to focus on to ensure Dems win in November.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump has lost four billion
dollars in quote unquote wealth from Trump's media and technology
groups stock Crash. Oh well, we have such a great
show for you today. Randy Weingarden, president of the American

(00:22):
Federation of Teachers, robutts Jadie Vance's attacks on her character
and her lack of biological children. Run for Something, as
Amanda Littman tells us about the down ballot races to
focus on to ensure DEM's win in November. But first
we have talking points memos. Josh Marshall, Welcome back to

(00:44):
Fast Politics.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Josh Marshall, thanks for having me again.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
So I think of you as like the voice of Saturday. Okay,
and sorry, I apologize. And so you have written for
such a long time and covered views craziest election cycles?
Is this one the craziest?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I think so crazy? Is highly subjective and I had
to kind of go back through the elections that I've
sort of followed in some sort of adult professional sense,
and yeah, I think it has to be. And there
are just certain like objective ways. I mean, you've never
had a candidate drop out in the middle of the race.
People talk about the LBJ thing, but the system was

(01:24):
different then. He was really dropping out before the primary
race really started. It's different.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
You haven't having a candidate running to stay out of jail.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I mean, those are the relatively normal things. I mean,
I was gonna I was going to say that, I
can't think of the last time you've had a you know,
a serious assassination attempt during a campaign, let alone at all.
So there's just all of these things that are just
I would say almost any of those things are kind
of so off the charts they would make it the
sort of the craziest. So I don't think there's any question,

(01:55):
I mean, sort of any any campaign with Trump in
it has to be in the sort of the first
t right, So yeah, I don't think there's much question.
This is off the charts craziness.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, the craziness of it keeps getting badded down by
the conventional framing. I think something that really bores our
listeners is media criticism. But it does seem to me
that people are anxious to cover Trump as crazy as
he is because they're worried it'll make them look partisan, right.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
I mean, I think there's two things going on. One
is that it's hard to know how to deal with
Trump because if you just deal with him in a
common sense sort of like you're coming to after being
knocked out and you want to sound sane, you're gonna
sound kind of partisan. And that's difficult for a journalists
for all the reasons. We know about our friend Aaron
Rupar has this thing. I think he calls it, saye washing,

(02:50):
you know Trump's comments, And part of that is that
you have a certain toolkit when you're a campaign journalist,
and beyond the wanting to sound partisan, things like you've
got a toolkit and you know, you've got a Phillips
head screwdriver and a flathead screwdriver and those kind of
kind of weird multi prong ones they sell nowadays, and

(03:12):
you've got a tool for each one of those. But
if something is just like a kind of a piece
of protoplasm, what do you do with it?

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Right?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
You don't have any tool for it. And so there's
another thing, which is an effort to like you need
to get it down to something that can be handled
with the journalism tool set. If someone is saying something
about like batteries and shark or you know, kind of
like putting new boards against the wall and executing them.
You know, it's just you're kind of like, Okay, he
said something pretty anti abortion, because what else are you

(03:40):
going to say? Right, You're you're kind of you've got
to break it down into one of those, like I said,
sort of the things you can handle with the tool set.
And so there's that too.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
One of the things that Mary Garland has been busy
this week and he's found, you know, a bunch of
pro Trump influencers, Tim Poole, Dave Rubin, really the dumbest
of the dumb and maybe you know, and by the way,
Ben Shapiro's defense of them was like, how can you
be mean to them for not knowing that they were

(04:10):
just being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for making
one dumb video a week. But this is one of
those things where it's like there's been a lot of
normalization about the Russia collusion stuff, and you know, the
right is pretty much just four hundred k per month.
Jesse's it's quite a lot really per month.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, well, apparently you know, I was in a meeting
earlier today with some of my colleagues and I guess
it was like a hundred K show for weekly shows.
So yeah, they're like Seinfeld, Yeah exactly. This isn't just
like kind of like, wow, you were making some good money.
This is like totally totally that's like in the ballpark
of like what the sort of the prestige national TV

(04:51):
anchors get.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, And I mean if it were me, I would
be like, why does this weird company I've never heard
of want to pay me one hundred thousand dollars in interview?
And but not these people, as Ben Shapiro has said,
they just were tricked and it's very unfair and they're
the real victims.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Well, it's sort of like, you know, the cookie jar
snuck up on my hand and like grabbed onto my hand.
On a more sort of substance level. I was again
talking to my colleagues who are very good at this,
and from reading through the indictments, you know, the influencers,
the whatever you want to call them, have all been
out there saying, well, the Justice Department made clear we

(05:33):
are the victims. And actually what it says is that
some of them were victims, right, and some of them
were not. And so everybody's trying to kind of get
into that victim bucket. And you know is I've I've
run a digital journalism company for almost twenty five years,
and you've got to be pretty dumb to be that

(05:55):
outwitted by like, you know, the Russians, Like the Russians
tricked me into being paid by Russia. Like okay, and
as you say, those are just absurd sums. I was
stunned this morning when I was talking to my colleagues
about this, that I didn't realize that it was at
that scale. As you say, that's like for a TV
episode per episode.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Most people in our business do not make four hundred
k per year, let alone per.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Month, certainly not from podcasting alone. Podcasting is often a
lost leader for other you know, kind of you've got
a mix of stuff, Nick Koutremont, It's absurd, it's absurd,
it's absurd amounts of money.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
So elon Mosk who sits on a pile of government contracts,
who is about to rescue to astronauts that Boeing left
in space basically right, that guy has engaged with all
of these pundits a lot.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, it gets back to that thing you mentioned about
how we kind of treat this as a given now.
You know, we have a thing about like when do
the primary start? When of the first debates? You say, well,
when is the first Russian information operation happen in the cycle?
I tweeted about this a couple of days ago. It's
remarkable how we all treat this as a given.

Speaker 4 (07:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
The Republicans may like, oh, Russia. If they know what's happening,
they may say I think if you got them to
talk honestly, they would say, okay, look, yeah, that's happening,
but it's a bunch of fake news nonsense. It's not
really affecting anything, and who knows the impact. But we
just treat it as a given that. Of course they're
on Trump's side, and that's how it works.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Right, And it is kind of incredible that you have
people like Elon who has this security clearance and you know,
is very involved with national security in all different ways,
which all right, but it's very ideologically right wing and
has already endorsed Donald Trump. And then you have sort
of these other billionaires who really want a tax cut.

(07:49):
You know, some of them say it's about anti Semitism.
But I think that's bullshit. I don't think the guy
who has dinner with Nick Flantaz really gives a shit
about anti semitism.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
You think not, I think not. Yeah. The Times actually
had a great feature maybe a year ago, and one
of the things I was shocked to learn from them
is that Elon Musk's company controls and owns about half
the working satellites around the globe. That's stunning, not half
of the US, half of all of them. And even

(08:21):
normally we frown on like defense contractors being really kind
of tight with Russia, but there are even other things
that maybe shouldn't be such a big deal, but are.
You can't have those clearances and stuff and be like,
I don't know, snorting ketamine with like the Girl of
the week and stuff. You can't do that, all the
drug use and stuff for normal people. You're out when

(08:43):
that happens. Yeah, that's just and maybe that shouldn't be
the case, but it is the case.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
No, And in fact, I know people, not a lot,
but some people work in New Mexico in the labs,
and you know, if you get a DUI, you lose
your clearance. If you get a DUI, you lose your
security cleaner. So here's a guy. None of us have
seen him snort katamine, but it was alleged in the
Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and

(09:08):
you know, I mean they did alleg it, so you
would think that would be enough.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
He's very open and bragging about his drug use, and
I think more than just poddle of that's obviously his
kind of his brand. But even those things, I don't
know if they've loosened that a bit since since marijuana not. Yeah,
I don't think they do either. It's still there's this thing,
you know Biden did with the relisting. But the point
is that he on a million different fronts, he is,

(09:38):
you know, totally off the rails in terms of what
you are allowed to do if you are a government
contractor in the national security space. And I think part
of it is they don't know how to deal with him.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
But it's the same as Trump, right, I mean, Trump
has You'll remember that Trump gets away with stuff that
nobody else gets away with.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Of course, well that's you know, kind of birds of
a feather, you know, when when you're a billy, you
know they let you do it right, right, And I
think we've learned this. And even that's the funny thing
with Trump, even when you say you're a billionaire, they
let you do it most of the time.

Speaker 5 (10:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
It's a branding thing more than a net worth thing.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, or anything. As we go into the season, we're
in this sixty days run to the selection, where is
traditional punditry failing? For example, everyone in the world is
saying that this debate really matters, that this debate is
it now? Last week I was told that the interview
really mattered. I mean, do you think that that is right?

(10:34):
And also are you seeing this kind of like Solizit
style punditry other places? And what are you watching for?

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Punditry has always been pretty bad. If anything, I would
say it's somewhat better now than it was maybe twenty
years ago, because twenty years ago you had the people
on the panel shows and everybody else just yelling at
their TV, right, especially before the Internet. Now, obviously there
is endless crap on the internet in all the ways

(11:02):
we know, but it is I think somewhat better. I
don't know, you have a lot of people who just
repeat the same things they've heard and basically are kind
of taking and repackaging things they hear from the opposition
party and having that be the sort of the conventional wisdom.
I mean, the thing about the interview and stuff. This

(11:24):
is something that we've actually talked about inside our organization
kind of because we have seen not like we sit
around doing media criticism, but it becomes a practical issue
for us because you need to have everybody on the
team looking at the actual campaign as opposed to the
other punditry, right, because you get pulled along with it.

(11:44):
And I do think there's some ways that something has shifted,
maybe even in this election cycle, where it is just
more superficial than it was in the past, notwithstanding what
I said a moment ago. And one of the things
I have come up with is that, you know, journalism
is like any other profession. You're kind of acculturated in

(12:06):
your first years in the line of work, and then
you kind of carry that with you largely through your career.
And a couple things have happened in the last twenty
five years. One is that if you are kind of
early mid career journalists, now your kind of a culturation
period is like the early Politico era when that was
the dominant thing, and I think that makes a difference now.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Tiger beat on the Potoma.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, and it was more It was actually more like
that than it is now. Politico is in a lot
of ways better than it was then, but that was
the hot new thing.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
And the magazine is very very good. There's a lot
of good stuff there.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, there are lots of really talented people and a
lot of good stuff produced by Political I mean there's
a lot of fluff too, but that was in the
very early hardcore winning the morning kind of you know thing.
And so in some ways the ballast of a news
or organization is the editors and more senior reporters who

(13:03):
have that kind of longer experience can kind of keep
things on the rails. And I think that the people
now in those positions are people who, again that was
their formative experience. So that's one thing. Another thing is
is that we have been in a long term era
of buyouts, right, so a lot of more senior people
are no longer at these organizations, and so you have
a situation where I'm fifty five, where at a lot

(13:26):
of these organizations there aren't a lot of people older
than I am. One other thing I think that plays
in there is that because you no longer have many
people employed by the big regional papers or the DC
bureaus of the big regional papers, you don't have that
kind of training space. And what that means is you
have a lot of people at the big national publications,

(13:47):
the Times, the Post, whatever, who have gone right to
the big leagues without that kind of training. All those
things come together and they play into what you're seeing,
which is a very thin kind of political commentary, which
is complicated by the fact that you have a politics
that is, you know, hard to get your head around.
It is.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
It just is, Yeah, I mean it's super interesting and
that's right. And also those mid level papers don't even
really exist anymore, right, you know, the stop between like
hyper local, which also doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, No, it's it's absolutely true. I mean, you know,
most of them exist notionally, and in many cases there's
still people doing real journalism and good journalism there, but
they're so much smaller. When I was thinking about this
a little while ago, it occurred to me elite media
is much more elite than it used to be. And
what I mean by that is, if you were at
the New York Times, a Washington Post, you know, maybe

(14:42):
thirty years ago you would look at someone at the
Plane Dealer or the Boston Globe or Mimmy Harold and
you say, I'm a little higher on the totem P,
you know, than they are. But now it's just you guys.
Those places employ huge numbers of journalists and as you say,
the other the other places don't really employ very many

(15:02):
journalists anymore. So all of those things are different in
ways that shows up on the page as it were.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, it's so interesting and so important. Thank you, Josh Marshall.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well, thank you for having me.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
We have even more tour dates for you. Did you
know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have fast politics
BLEI jug Faster are heading out on tour to bring
you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape.
Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at
the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty
seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
We'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty

(15:40):
first of September and on the twenty second, we'll be
in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston
at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October,
we'll be in Affiliates City Winery, and then DC on
the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just
announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth
of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh
as we get through this selection and hopefully never hear

(16:02):
from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests
to help you laugh instead of cry your way through
the selection season and give you the inside analysis of
what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now
by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics
as Unusual dot bio.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winegarden.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
I am always so joyful and honored to be with you,
Bally so thankful.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Well, I'm always delighted to have you. It's funny because
it's like I'm one of those people that those people
hate too, So whenever I see them going after you,
I'm like, I both relate and also am like, you
got to be doing something right. So first we're going
to talk about Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. I want

(16:57):
to just say before we talk about this, that we
live in a city or I live in New York.
You live, Ink Jesse lives in New York. We live
in a city where there is the only really successful
local paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
So tell us about your experience with him.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
And what's said about that is that New York City
used to be a place where a lot of newspapers
were out there, and we should really at another time
talk about the importance of local journalism. But the reason
that the Post is so successful in the New York
Post is because of his sports pages. That's why people

(17:36):
actually buy the Post. And frankly, it's more successful because
the New York Times has actually walked away from doing
any coverage of local news. So it's not successful because
of Rupert's headlines. But what he does is he uses
it to actually, just like Musk is now doing, to

(17:57):
actually try to instead of engaging with people who have
a different perspective just to try to bully them and
silence them into submission. But I mean, I'm used to
him for I don't know, the last twenty years, thirty years,
bullying teachers, and I'm used to them ying. But this
time they went too far.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Tell us what they did.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
We're going to sue them for defamation if they don't
retract what they did. That's the bottom line. But what
they did was these six hostages that were murdered by Hamas.
There's a lot of us who know and are very
involved with obviously what's going on in Israel and Gaza
and who have been fighting for the release of these hostages,

(18:42):
and these young people were murdered by Hamas this weekend.
And so what happened was I, like so many others
who have been involved in tried to get to a
peace agreement, trying to get to a ceasefire, trying to
end the war, trying to get humanitarian aid for gosins,
trying to bring the hostages home. You know, I said

(19:02):
how heartbroken I was in a tweet that Hamas murdered
these hostages, and then said, but you know, anger also
must be placed at Nettunahu's footsteps for not conservating a
peace deal and a hostage release.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Right which he has had months and months and months
and months and months to work on.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Yes, and the Israeli public is on the streets for
the last five days. There's like two hundred and three
hundred thousand people who have been on the streets of
Tel Aviv and a Jerusalem, And I thaught it's the
equivalent of a fifteen million people in America were on
the streets. That's what the equivalent is given who's on
the streets, basically saying the whole thing, and the military

(19:43):
oparatus said the whole thing. They said that all of
a sudden, there's this new demand by Neptunahu, and once
he made that new demand and refused to consummate a deal,
this happened to the to the hostages. Now Hamas is
an evil terrorist orioization, but this is what happened. But
instead of actually saying and putting pleasure, I'm both the

(20:04):
loss Aaron Etchinau who to get to a deal, what
the New York Post decided to do is to say
that I was insane and I was appeasing Tomas. Now
not only was that defamatory, but what was the intent?
The intent is the same intent as jd Vance's intent
when he bullies people. It's the same intent as Trump's intent.
When they bully people. They're trying to separate out people.

(20:27):
They're trying to create fear, they're trying to create incitement.
So I just said this was too much, and yesterday
I sent them a letter, or my lawyer sent them
a letter saying, apologize and retract, or we're going to
sue you for recklessness and defamation.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
I think it's important to just add here, like we've
seen this playbook again and again. Right we've seen people
in the right wing media like Grouper Moroc, like the
New York posts, like Fox News. This hasn't happened as much,
but you know, you would see during the days, these
salad days of when Fox was getting five six seven

(21:02):
million people a night, which it's not getting anymore, you
could get targeted by them, and you would see your
inbox would fill up with You're a whore, you're a slide,
you're a you know, just the worst most misogynistic kind
of over sexualized attacks. Because Tucker Carlson had had called

(21:23):
you out or whatever. So you know, the goal is
to quiet the public discourse.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Right, that's part of the reason. Why would Pompeo, a
secretary of former Secretary State, someone who is the head
of the CIA, why would he added nowhere say I
was the most dangerous person in the world. Why would
band say, well, whatever she does, she's childless, and you know,
it just disgusts me or it makes me feel weird

(21:50):
or something like that. All of this is intended when
it comes to education. It's intended to try to signal
to parents, oh, you should fear those teachers or those
people who represent teachers. It's intended to disconnect the teacher
parent relationship, and in the bigger discourse, it's intended to

(22:12):
do exactly what you said to silence someone who they
actually want to say, no, mister Musk, you're wrong, No,
mister Murdoch, you're wrong, And instead of engaging, they just
smear and bully and do it in a way that
you just then get death threats and do it in
a way that is very much misogynistic issues.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, so let's talk about the childless cat lady insult.
That was. You know, the idea was that you could
not be a good educator if you didn't have biological
children and you are a stepmother, ergo, you are lesser
in some way than someone who has had their own children.
I have had many, many children, two of whom almost

(22:55):
killed me with a very dicey delivery. And the idea
is preposterous. But I also feel like it has roots
in both misogyny and in some ways in a kind
of anti LGBTQ. So talk to me about that.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
So initially, I think when Vance said it, you know,
you had Van, and you had Hot and you had youngkin.
They were all trying for the anti lgbt wrote. They
were looking to see which ways they could try to

(23:34):
polarize and divide, and you saw that in terms of
the book bands, and you saw that in terms of
what they were saying, and they did it very much
about educators and using terms like groomers and pedophiles and
things like that, and really re upping what we had

(23:54):
seen in the nineteen fifties to try to create this
division between people who are LGBTQ and people who are not.
They hadn't even started their transphobic media. And yet so
I say it this way, Molly, because there is an
intentionality behind everything that they do. And so when he

(24:15):
said it initially, you know, he just was really gross
about it because he said, oh, you know, if you
listen to the tone, and he does it in front
of what he thinks as a conservative Christian audience, and
he says, you know, how can anybody teach who's childless?
The tone is really really negative. What's been interesting to

(24:35):
me is that he reupted it when he's running for
vice president at the beginning of a new school year,
and how the reaction now has been completely different, because
the reaction now is it gets this.

Speaker 6 (24:48):
Man out of his mind because like, think about in
the Catholic Church, how many nuns. The nuns are the
backbone of the parochial Catholic school system.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
And last I heard, I thought they were all childless.
So and then you have all these new teachers who
kind of want to you know, they want to have children.
But you know, you try to recruit all sorts of
new teachers right at college.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
They don't want it because it's too expensive, they can't
afford it.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
We got to deal with childcare, We got to deal
with all of that. But it's like, if you look
at any schools. Every single student has had someone who's
a teacher.

Speaker 7 (25:26):
Who knows they have kids. I mean, it's like it's
so people kept saying, Okay, this is really crazy. So
what I said was I don't really care what he
says about me. And you know, I corrected the record
because I do have amazing grandchildren and amazing children. You know,
I am a mother by marriage, and great and amazing
nieces and nephews and great nieces and efforts. But it's

(25:47):
besides the point. The point is it's the beginning of
the damn school year. You want parents and teachers to connect.
You want them to connect to ensure that our kids
have a great school year.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
So the home deafness of him, you know, re upping
or redoubling the attack, just showed how disconnected he is
from what regular parents and regular teachers and people across
America are doing right this month, last month, and deaths
about So that's how disconnected they are that they don't

(26:20):
even think politically, Oh, we're trying to get parents to
vote for us, let's do it by fear instead of
actually rooting for their kid's success.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
But it's also like part of the larger issue, and
I think I'm particularly cognizant of this because Jesse and
I did this big project twenty twenty five YouTube series.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Which was great, Oh thank you, Just some props to
the two of you. I think your series was one
of the first ways that became accessible to people to say, oh,
this is really bad, So props to you.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, oh well, thank you. But such a fundamental part
of it is their war on the Department of Education.
And right again, because you have public schools in the
Red States get less money because you know, the state
taxes are lower, so they need more federal money to
even it out. And even still it doesn't necessarily work

(27:14):
like that, and it tends to be that the states
with the lower property taxes have less money for education.
So you really do see this like larger war on
public schools. And also the underlying thing here is a
push towards you know, homeschooling and religious schooling.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, I would say it's three things. It's a push
towards the fragmentation of society, the Balkanization of society because
if you think about the public school as a public square,
like think about everywhere in America, not just in New
York City, but everywhere in America. What other institution, what

(27:52):
other entity, what other organization is everywhere in America where
people gather it's the public school. It's now kind of
become public square. So if you basically say, oh no, no, no, no,
that shouldn't be, we're gonna undermine it. We're going to
create distrust about it. We're going to defund it. What
other public square do you have? What other place do

(28:12):
you have that everybody convenes together, particularly particularly in rural areas.
Think about Friday night lights, particularly in rural areas. So
Number one is there. They are going against not just diversity,
but democracy, the pluralism that undergirds America. They're trying to
tear at it. And the second thing they're trying to

(28:33):
do is they're trying to tear at the funding. And
they do that with bouchers and charters and saying to people,
you have better options, and then the money gets taken out.
And then they did the same thing in terms of
saying and Project twenty twenty five and by the way,
we're not going to fund all these things like Headstart
and Title IE and IDA, which is for kids with

(28:55):
disabilities or kids who need extra funding. But the third
thing they do is they actually have a war against knowledge.
If you think about all of this stuff, this is basically,
let's get rid of the ladder of opportunity for poor
and middle class kids. Because if you look at and
Steve Rattner did this on Morning Joe this.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Week, Yeah, he's really good. I'm kind of obsessed with
Steve Rattner.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Gone, yeah, me too, I'm obsessed with his charts. His
charts were Oh my god. The red states get more
federal money for education than the Blue states. But this
is my last point.

Speaker 8 (29:32):
They are fearful of our kids, and particularly their kids,
having real knowledge and being critical thinkers, and being able
to understand context and having friends who.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Are diverse friends of theirs. There is such a fear.
Not regular parent. I'm talking about the people who wrote
Project twenty twenty five. I'm talking about the billionaire crowd
who is trying to push this like the devices and
the assets. They are really afraid of children having real

(30:06):
knowledge and having the relational skills and the critical thinking
and skills to be able to navigate the world. In
fact less fact, the states that have been so aggressive
about universal vouchers, many of them are the same states
who have actually relaxed child labor laws at the same time.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Right, there are states where you can't get an abortion,
but you can have a young child working in a
factory and you know, and you can't get that kid
a free breakfast. But you know, the idea here of
pro life is pretty wild. I'm curious, now we're in
this sort of home stretchy selection, what do you think

(30:47):
of what sort of role teachers play. Tim Walls is
a great example. He's a teacher, Gwen is a teacher.
And I think the way he got into politics is
really interesting too. You know, he was in the Guard,
very upset about the Iraq War, decides to run for
office in a very red district, has his students like

(31:09):
canvassing for him. Talk to me about like the teacher
to politician pipeline and how in some ways people are
just sort of discovering that teachers make good politicians.

Speaker 4 (31:21):
You know, it reminded me, and I've never told this
story publicly, but it reminded me of when the students
canvassing for him that when I was in high school,
you know, there were budget cuts.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
I grew up outside of New York City, and my
beloved teacher was our head of stage crew, but he
was also a shop teacher and a driver's head teacher,
and there were many of us who can this the
public during that period of time. To try to save
his job and try to save several other people's jobs,
we went out, we can this, We did other things

(31:54):
because we didn't want our beloved teachers to be laid on.
And when I saw them talk about how the student
sudents were canvassing for me, I just remembered mister Munson
and how what the effect of mister Munson at on
my life and on the dozens of us that were
out there canvassing for him and or to try to
save his job. And that's the effect that, in some

(32:14):
ways teachers have on us as we're growing up. The
sense that Tim Walls was both the coach of the
football team as well as the coach of the Gay
Straight Alliance, The sense that teachers become our sounding boards.
They create a safe and welcoming environment so that kids
can be who they are and so that kids can thrive.

(32:36):
There's no linear direct relationship between you know, page and thriving.
We all go through lots of different bumps in the road.
And so teachers like when and like Tim and you know,
and high school, not just high school teachers, teachers throughout
there's a sense of how you help not only mold minds,

(32:58):
but how you nurture kids. And I love when he says,
you know, if I could do the lunch room, then
I can deal with the Senate. And he's absolutely right,
because think about it, how to manage I mean, in
a lunch room, by the way, claireboardon high school, you're
managing one hundred and fifty to two hundred kids. At
the same time, in a classroom you're managing fifteen to

(33:21):
thirty kids. So the fact that he wears his being
a teacher so proudly, what it's done throughout the country
is it's two things. It has. I've seen teachers just
sit up stronger and higher and more solemnly and say,
you know, I'm proud to be a teacher. And what
I'm also saying is that this parent teacher connection, which

(33:44):
is absolutely critical with the team that has to be
there for kids, it's getting closer again because it says
this is valuable and valiant work. And that's what both
Tim and Gwen bring to this ticket that that kind
of or the caring professions, the ways in which we
nurture children, that's on the ticket that sends a message

(34:08):
to Americans that nurturing the next generation, looking at the
future is really important to this.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Ticket, so important, and thank you so much. I hope
you'll come back soon.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Thank you, marth.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
awful Trump's second term could be? Well so are we,
which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
we have just released the final episode of this five

(34:41):
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John
Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you
are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
you can hit play and put your phone in the
lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
All five episodes are online now.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
We need to educate.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.

Speaker 9 (35:17):
Amanda Lipman always happy to chat. Molly.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
I would love you to just talk us through this
last bunch of primaries. I would love you to just
give a two second because a lot of people know
who you are and love you. Some people don't. Just
two second state of what your organization does and then
tell us how you guys did in that last batch
of primaries or in the whole primary season.

Speaker 9 (35:38):
Run for Something recruits and supports young, diverse leaders running.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
For local office.

Speaker 9 (35:42):
We work exclusively with millennials and gen zs running for
things like state house, state senate, city council, school board,
library board, and that kind of stuff. And it's worth naming.
There actually are a few more primaries this week. People
keep forgetting this, but we've got Rhode Island, Delaware and
actually run for something because a few special elections and
new I'm sure coming up on the tenth. So along

(36:02):
with being debate day, it is as every Tuesday is
election day, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Wait are those primaries or are they special elections?

Speaker 9 (36:09):
They are primaries. We've got primary folks, in particular the
Rhode Island State Legislature, and then Delaware has primaries. That's
how we're going to get our first trans member of
Congress or likely transmember of Congress and run for Something
Alongsiah McBride.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Oh wow, Yeah, tell us how the primaries have gone.
And also I'm hoping you could talk to us about
the school board.

Speaker 9 (36:30):
Yes, so our primary season has been incredible. You know,
Run for Something does endorsements both before and after primaries
this year at any given point, so it's hard to
say exactly what our win number has been over the
course of the year, but we still have more than
four hundred candidates who are going to be on the
ballot this fall out of more than five hundred we've
been working with over the course of the cycle, which
is so exciting. We've also already had about six percent

(36:54):
of our folks just be done. Like a thirty two
people are elected. They have won their election. There you
take office. I'm particularly pumped about some of the primaries
we had in Florida earlier this summer.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, will you talk to us about that, because Florida
had a lot of Ron Desanta's school board candidates.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Right, that's exactly.

Speaker 9 (37:13):
Right, and I think it was a big moment to
really hammer home one They're not going anywhere, but two.
They're not winning anywhere either. So Run for Something had
eleven school board candidates on the ballot in Florida. Ron
de Santas some Moms for Liberty had about twenty three.
Seven of our eleven either outright one or moving on
to the general election, because in Florida, if you don't

(37:33):
get fifty percent in these nonpartisan primaries, you move on
to the general and then it's a runoff. Ron de Santas,
I believe only six of them won outright and maybe
a couple more six five or six more are moving
onto the runoff for the general election. That is not great.
That is barely a fifty percent win rate. That's like
the equivalent of flip and a coin a bunch of times.

(37:56):
And Run for Something in particular, had some of these
candidates meet Moms for liber folks really meaningfully, especially down
in Sarasota where we had Liz Barker take on and
beat a Moms for Liberty candidate in a place that
they've been calling the Home for the mag American Dream
terrifying name, and it's really indicative of the fact that

(38:16):
when voters are given a choice, which they're not always
I think this is something we've talked about over the
years that you and I've been doing these conversations. We
don't always fight for these offices because it's not where
the Democratic Party has historically invested a ton of ton
kind of resources. But when we do, you know, as
Kamala says, when we fight, we win, and when we
run for office in these places.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
We can win.

Speaker 9 (38:35):
We're seeing that in Florida and we're going to see
it elsewhere across the country.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I want you to talk about So it seems
to me, and again this is you are way more
read in on these local school board races, especially in Florida.
Let me rephrase this. You know what you're talking about
and I don't in this topic. But it seems to
me from what I understand that the candidates don't the

(39:02):
Moms for Liberty candidates, the Disantis candidates, these school board
candidates don't do well in h normal districts. They only
really do well in like bright Red Maga districts.

Speaker 9 (39:15):
And even in those, they're not as universally loved as
you might expect. I mean, Sarasota, for example, is a
pretty Republican area. Yeah, but they weren't able to win
you know, Republican candidates in in Indian River County and Florida,
Republicans have a two to one advantage, but the two
school board candidates that were backed by disandas and Moms
Liberty fell pretty far short.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
They only won maybe I think a ten percent of
the county's precincts.

Speaker 9 (39:40):
Last I recall, these are not what Republican voters generally want.
They want sane functioning school boards and governments. You know,
the Moms for Liberty extremists who are talking about you know,
teachers performing gender transitsert schools and banning books like that
is such a waste of time and I think something

(40:01):
that they're Run for Something. Candidates and other incredible organizations
on the ground have been pushing We're not asking for
extreme things. We're asking for sanity. We're asking to make
boring again, and that the candidates who can really connect
on that are able to win.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
I mean, does Run for Something have candidates in some
of these very red districts.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
We absolutely do.

Speaker 9 (40:21):
You know, we are going to have candidates in November
on this ballet, and I think forty eight different states,
basically everywhere that there is a state or local election
we're only missing a couple That includes in deep red
areas in Mississippi, in Nebraska, in rural Georgia, in Utah,
in Idaho, in Oklahoma, as well as of course dozens

(40:41):
and dozens of folks running in the core battleground states
who will hopefully gin up turnout for the top of
the ticket. You know, our candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona,
North Carolina, and Georgia, as well as, of course are
some of our candidates in Nebraska who can help make
sure that we win thattical electoral College vote.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
There.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
All of them are.

Speaker 9 (41:02):
Going to spur turnout for the top of the ticket
in a way that I think is completely meaningful, especially
knowing that the Commonlay campaign you had to get a
little bit of a late start with some of this
volunteer enthusiasm, whereas our folks have been knocking doors in
some cases for over a year.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, talk to me about this idea. I truly believe
you're the first person to have talked about this, but
maybe not that running people at the bottom of the
ballot help the top of the ticket.

Speaker 9 (41:29):
Reverse courte tales is definitely an older idea than us
but we were the first one say thing, to really
popularize it in the last couple of years, and especially
to implement it as a strategy. At least the first
one's on the left, and I think that's worth naming
because the right has one hundred percent been using reverse codetails.
So reverse coat tales is the idea that when you
can test local elections and when you have candidates on
the ballot who are knocking doors talking to voters about

(41:51):
the issues they care about in a hyper local way,
it can increase turnout for the top of the ticket
anywhere from point four to two point three percent, especially
compared to a district where the Republican candidate ran unopposed.
That margin of victory can make up the difference in
a state like Georgia, in Wisconsin, in Nevada, all over
the country. This can really be the difference maker because

(42:13):
we know, even with all this enthusiasm, it is going
to be, unfortunately and infuriatingly, a very close election. So
these local candidates who've been knocking doors talking to voters,
they're the ones who are going to make sure that
we're not leaving any door unknocked, that we are leaving
every voter and giving every voter an invitation to show
up this fall.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
So talk to me about candidates that people don't know
about that we should know about.

Speaker 9 (42:36):
Oh I could do this for hours. I'm excited about
folks like Christina Hines, who is running from a Come
County prosecutor in Michigan. She's a community advocate, a lawyer,
a parent who's running against a Republican incumbent who is
aggressively anti abortion and also has a long history of
ethics allegations against him, sexual harassment, and sold allegations against him.

(42:59):
And she been knocking doors and talking to voters in
a really powerful way. I'm really excited about Alie Phillips
down in Tennessee, who's running for state House, really making
the case that her personal experience needing to leave the
state to get the abortion care she needed is what
helped her decide to run to take office. I'm excited
about Anna Thomas down in Pennsylvanians running in a very

(43:19):
competitive state house race. She has been an incredible candidate,
knocking doors and making her way through this cycle in
a way that will really, I think, move the needle
for the top of the ticket there. I had my
doubt Florida who's running for Allison. She used to be
at an escort for people seeking abortion care and a
great race there and was ready to be an advocate

(43:39):
for victims of sexual assault in the state legislative chamber
if she gets to.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Can you tell us about some of your success stories
and sort of how their candidacy has made a difference.
Just explain to us a little bit about like one
or two people like that.

Speaker 9 (43:56):
Yeah, So one of my favorite examples here in twenty
twenty three. Most recently we worked where we recruited again
named Justin Douglas to run for Dolphin County Commission. Justin
was a former pastor.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Where's Dolphin.

Speaker 10 (44:08):
It's like Harrisburg, It's around Harrisbony And he was running
in part because when we were reaching out to find
people to run for this position, which does things like
oversee election administration, you know, control the county.

Speaker 9 (44:20):
Jail system, he was like pretty wary at first. He
wasn't sure he was the right person. But as we
kept talking to him, we really encouraged him. No, you
like deeply care about the members of her community. He
was actually fired for being pastor of his church because
he was too welcoming to LGBTQ congregants. Gives you a
sense to the kind of person he is. He ran
this incredible campaign. He was outspent I think close to

(44:41):
ten to one. He knocked thousands and thousands of doors.
He really hammered home both the issues around democracy which
the County Commission had done. He had really dragged their feet
on things like ballat drop boxes. At some point, some
of them were accused of like harvesting things.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
You know.

Speaker 9 (44:57):
It was one of those types of counties, and in
particular in the county jail system, a number of inmates
had died under the care of the jail system imparted
you to neglect. So justin on this really strong campaign
whose outspend ten to one and knocked tens of thousands
of doors, and on election night he ended up winning,
but I think the final margin was maybe about one
hundred and fifty votes. His victory flipped control of the

(45:20):
County Commission for the first time in over one hundred years.
And one of the first things he did when he
took office was one begin to hold people accountable for
what was going on in the jail system, but two
expanded the number of dropboxes available for people to drop
off their ballots, and expanded the number of languages that
ballots were available in. And when I think about what

(45:40):
the importance of a state like Pennsylvania will be for Kamala,
this here having Justin and Democrats in control of a
county commission that is willing to make it more available
for people to cast their ballots. You know, if maybe
a couple hundred or a thousand people vote in Dauphin
County who weren't able to vote before, maybe didn't have
as much accessibility to the polls before, that could be

(46:01):
the margin of victory We're going to win in Pennsylvania
this year is because people like Justin Douglas won last year.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
So important and interesting, I mean, and I think that
really is the sense where if you elect someone that
there really are huge consequences to these little races, right.

Speaker 9 (46:19):
That's the whole idea that you know, the way to
win the big elections is to win the small ones
over and over and over again. You know, I'm thinking
as well about the white folks who've worked with in Arizona.
You know, Gabriela Cassares Kelly, who's the Pima county recorder.
We helped her elect her in twenty eighteen, she became
one of the first Indigenous women elected county wide in
the state. She's an incredible election administrator and one of

(46:42):
the things that she fought for over the last couple
of years and when she was re elected in twenty
twenty two, has continued to do is make it easier
for people living on the reservations to cast their bats.
Before they had to go two or three hours drive
away to vote early. She changed that and that again
could be the margin of victory both for Cola but
also for people like Reuben Diego running statewide.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Right. And also you'll remember that like in twenty twenty,
Native people were really you know, they got Democrats over
the finish line in a bunch of states.

Speaker 9 (47:15):
Absolutely right. And I think she in particular really embodies
the thing that we have kept talking about over the years,
which is that her lived experience as a woman who
grew up on the reservation as an Indigenous person, you know,
it shapes the way that she governs and shapes the
way that she leads. I means she's fighting for a
community maybe hasn't had a voice for them in power
it is so meaningful, and she's like, she's just an

(47:37):
incredible leader.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
I love her.

Speaker 9 (47:39):
I think she's really fun. She's these cool stickers where
she's like riding on a scooter. Anyway, she's great, and
I think it's doing an incredible job to expand access
to the polls.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
As we talk about this, one of the candidates, you know,
we have the first Native woman governor if Tim Walls
gets elected.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
That's right.

Speaker 9 (47:58):
Peggy Flanagan out in Minnesota, I think really embodies what
we've been talking about, you know, generally, which is that
you build the bench both because it matters today, because
great leaders need to take office in these local positions.
Peggy Flannagan got her starter on the Minneapolis school board,
which she was maybe twenty four to twenty five years
old fifteen twenty years ago, and now she could be
the next governor of Minnesota, the first Indigenous woman governor.

(48:20):
You build a bench for moments like this where they
can really rise and be transformative leaders.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
We're seeing with Tim Walls that teachers make really good candidates.
We have these very hot school board races. You know,
education has become a central conservative fight. You know, this
is sort of their Passion Project right now. Are you
seeing a lot of teachers in the mix here and
also are you still recruiting candidates and talk to us

(48:47):
about that.

Speaker 9 (48:48):
Yeah, so rounder something has worked on this year with
a couple dozen teachers. We've always work with teachers. There are
some of our favorite candidates. I'm really excited about Max
Tuckman down in Miami Dade, who's running for a school
board there. I'm really excited about No One Knowstrom, who's
a Spanish language teacher in Tennessee who's running for a
state house. I'm really pumped about Camilla Bywaters, who's running
against a mom's for a liberty candidate for school board

(49:09):
in Nevada. I think it's Clark County. She's amazing. Selina
LaRue Hatch, she's a member of the Nevada State Legislature.
We've been working with for a while and we're working
with her in her re election. She's one of the
top targets for the Republican governor to kick out of office.
She's an former educator herself. I think former teachers, especially
in these positions that directly oversee elections or that oversee

(49:30):
the education system, like Kristen Christensen in Nebraska running for
state Board of Education. They are most connected to the community.
They know the parents, they know the kids, they know
their neighbors, they know the problems, and they also know
the solutions and they've lived the impact of government. And
you see that now with Governor Tim Walls on the
national state. Now they are able to communicate. If you've

(49:51):
ever had to manage a classroom of thirty screaming eight
year olds or eighteen year olds, you know how to
deal with a rally or a political opponent or a
crazy Trump Republican like, there's basically the same maturity level.
So I think that it gives us a sense of
the kind of quality of Canada. And we are absolutely
still recruiting folks to run for office. And Ally, I'm

(50:12):
really glad you asked this because people, I think, and
then especially on the Democrats, get a little excited amp
pumped for election day and then forget that there's work
that happens after. Like the file of lens for some
of these races for twenty twenty five are going to
come as soon as December and January, so we're already
talking to candidates we're going to be running next year
for school boards down in Texas and municipal elections in

(50:34):
Wisconsin and elsewhere. And is the thing that I really hope,
especially the Democratic funding universe, doesn't forget and get complacent,
because the only reason that we are in this moment
now is because we kept our foot on the gas
for the last eight years. We cannot let it up now.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
I was hoping you could talk to me because you
have been in this race. How Harris has changed the
calculus of the race.

Speaker 9 (50:57):
If she has, oh, I absolutely she has. I think
she has given people a sense of energy and excitement
and a vision for what the future can be. We
often say, you can totally run a campaign on fear.
It's absolutely doable, and I think that's what we sort
of had to do under a Biden at the top
of the ticket. You had to make it about against Trump.
But a campaign on hope, a campaign on excitement, a

(51:21):
campaign that is built on what a better future could be.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
Now.

Speaker 9 (51:24):
Hope is a non renewable resource. We can sustain itself.
It can keep going and going and going. You joy
can keeping fueled for a much longer period of time
than anger can. And I think the thing that we
have seen nationally. It's also the thing that our local
candidates are experiencing. They're knocking doors and talking to voters
who pay Maybe weren't that excited to go vote this fall,

(51:46):
but we're gonna do it anyway for the school board
race because they knew that was important, and now they're
really excited to vote this fall and also really eager
to vote the full ballot. That is a really big
change and makes those conversations in that canvassing experience much
more joyful.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right and it's super important.
Thank you so much for joining us always.

Speaker 9 (52:11):
You know, one of my favorite things about going on
your show is every time I do, we hear from
so many folks who say, I never thought about running
for office before, but kel yes, yes, or i'd never
wear to run for something, and I want to give
you some money. So we're for folks who are able
to go to run for something that net and ship in,
sign up to run, volunteer, find a candidate. It all

(52:33):
helps and it's never been more important. So thanks to you,
and thanks to your entire community.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Well.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
I definitely think it's one of those places where a
little money could make a big difference, and you know,
these downballot races are so important and you're just so
right and I really appreciate you, so thank you.

Speaker 9 (52:52):
Thanks Smiley.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
No More went on Jesse Cannon.

Speaker 5 (52:59):
By Jack So Trump spoke to the Economic Club of
New York and they asked them policy questions.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
How do you think it went?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
So, I think it's really an important moment here is
you really do see why asking specific policy questions is
so important and also why following up if a candidate
doesn't answer them is even more important. So Donald Trump,
and again like the fact that we are so late

(53:26):
into this election cycle and that Trump has no policy
positions is not abundantly clear to everyone in the world.
Is a shanda, as my people say. So they asked
Donald Trump how he was going to make childcare more affordable,
and he said a word salad, which involved Marco Rubio,
Avanka and not much else. So it just is kind

(53:51):
of amazing. And there were other things, you know, he
said about the economy, why don't we have a wealth fund?
Other countries have wealth funds, We have nothing, right, We're
going to have a sovereign wealth fund. We're going to
put tremendous amounts of money in it. I mean, you know,
a lot of this stuff shows that he doesn't really
understand how the economy works. And this is the guy
that a lot of rich people want back in office

(54:13):
because he'll give them tax cuts, and he can't understand
how any of this works. And he was president already
for four years and he still doesn't understand it. So
that is our moment of Fuckeray. 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,

(54:37):
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
And again, thanks for listening.