February 15, 2023 • 52 mins
Rep. Seth Moulton tells us about the progress congress is able to make in a Republican-controlled congress. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick talks about the case that could ban abortion medication across America. Plus, The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany introduces us to the latest Republican congressperson with a fictitious past.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Diane Feinstein will retire from the
Senate at the age of ninety. We have a fantastic
show today the Washington Post. Jacqueline Alimony will join us
to talk about the latest Republican congress person who has
(00:22):
a fictitious past. Then we'll talk to Congressman Seth Malton
about exciting things like high speed rail. But first we
have the author of Lady Justice Slates, Dahlia Lethwick. Welcome
back to Fast Politics. Dahlia. Hello, Molly, so excited to
have you back. You know, I'm a huge fan Dahlia. First,
(00:45):
let's talk about this idea. There's a lot of judicial
factory going on in the wake of over to It's
a very serious podcast. It's like MPR. Fuckery is in
the constant tuition, my friend is definitely in the Bill
of Rights. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of constitutional factory
(01:06):
around abortion on both sides, many people, good people on
both sides. And I want to talk to you about
these two pieces you wrote this week that are sort
of different sides of a little bit the same coin, right, Yeah,
I mean I think if you're going to play hardball,
which is the first piece, then let's play hardball, which
is the second. So I think you're right. I think
(01:27):
it's a little bit of when they go low, you
don't walk away. I think it's what you're describing. Yeah, exactly.
So the first piece I want to talk about is
this idea, and it's not an idea. It's actually happening
in Texas, which was the state that overturned Row. Before
Row was even overturned with SBA, they now have a
(01:47):
judge here who is I know you're shocked to hear
this wants to outlaw the abortion pills. The read on
it explain, that's the read. And it's not just that
he wants to it's that we are all waiting because
it's likely to come in the coming days, and I
think it's going to be much like s b A
(02:08):
where we're all shocked when it happens. But he is
now poised to decide a lawsuit that would, if he
does what we think he's going to do, create a
nationwide injunction for the abortion pill. And just for folks
who still think about Roe, v. Wayne in terms of
surgical abortions, right, the majority of abortions now happen with
(02:31):
medication abortion, and he is overseeing a challenge to the
first of the two drugs in the abortion Protocol. And
if the plaintiffs in this suit get their way, he
will be able to enjoin the abortion pill nationwide. So
I want you to explain this to me, because we're
going to explain this for my dad and also for
(02:52):
me because I don't quite understand this. Why does a
judge in Texas get to stop people from getting abortion
pills in New York State? Well, the fair minded answer
is that you can always seek an injunction, and if
you are in your ordinary kind of suit, when you
seek an injunction, the party that has to stop doing
what they're doing is the person who's on the other
(03:14):
end of the suit. Right. If you think back to,
for instance, the Donald Trump travel ban that also was
enjoined by a single judge, right, a single district court
judge initially, And so the idea is, when it's the
government that is doing something unlawful, one single district court
judge has the power to enjoy that project nationwide. That
(03:35):
really was the travel ban and maybe you know because
there isn't just like a guy to enjoin. Theoretically you
enjoined the whole federal government. But I think the real
answer to your question is why was this thing sued
in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas
that has no connection to abortion pills, is that they
(03:56):
knew they would get only one judge. Donald Trump placed
this judge on the bench, and he is the only
aim in town. And so he has been involved in,
you know, a whole series of like truly crazy crazy ruling.
He sees control over the entire border policy himself. At
one point, he has defied Donald Trump's decision protecting LGBTQ employees,
(04:20):
and he has single handedly taking it upon himself to
restrict the access of miners to birth control. So he's
going to just do He's like a slot machine, right,
you put in a quarter, He's going to give you
what you want. And if he's the only judge, then
you just keep going to him seeking relief. That's incredible,
I mean incredibleory. So they really have found a judge
(04:43):
who who's basically like the Supreme Court, right and and
then to boot it goes no, it goes up to
the Fifth Circuit, right, it goes up to the Federal
like even no matter what he decides, this goes up
to the Fifth Circuit, which is the most conservative federal
appeals corres, and then it goes to the U. S.
Supreme Court, who I suspect will have no problem saying
(05:04):
that abortion pills can be regulated. And so this is
kind of it's not just a slot machine. It's kind
of like Russian dolls of slot machines, where every layer
up continues to give you exactly the outcome you want. Yeah,
I'll say, I mean just incredible stuff. So the piece
that you wrote after that is a sort of the
(05:26):
more is a sort of more normal judge trying to
figure out how to deal with this judicial overreach. Can
you explain? Yeah, I mean, essentially, you know, just for
one more beat on Texas, this is you know, these
are plaintiffs who have no standing, right, It's a bunch
of doctors who don't have any reason to be able
(05:47):
to walk into court. But they're saying, someday I may
give someone an abortion pill and I may hurt them
because it's unsafe. Despite twenty three years of FDA approval
and so enjoying the whole program. Stop the entire FDA
approval right, every layer of that, three layers of insane overreach.
None of these things are plausible. They have no merit right.
(06:09):
So that's Texas. So exactly what you're saying, how do
you answer for that? What is the district court judge
on the other side who thinks maybe Rovie Wade shouldn't
have been overturned? What are they to do? So this
brings us to a Loane District Court judge in Washington,
d C. This past week who was like, okay, in
a in a case by the way, that has nothing
(06:30):
really to do with abortion rights, to be fair, but
to do with somebody who, in violation of the Face
Act blocked clinic access in Washington, d C. And was
being sentenced over That. Explained to my dad what the
Face Act is, because I am very well versed in
the Face Act, obviously as a judicial scholar myself, but
(06:52):
just for my dad and for my dad too, who
also it's not well versed in the Face Act. It
is a federal statute free of access to clinic entrances,
and it essentially is just a statute that says, don't
screw around with people seeking reproductive care. It was supposed
to be the mechanism to protect folks from crazy people
(07:13):
who were blocking clinic entrances and harassing patients at abortion clinics. Right,
So this is a bunch of people who go they
deliberately block access to a d C clinic in they
use rope and chain, they terrorize folks inside. They're indicted
in April of two for violating this statute that says
(07:33):
you cannot get in the way of reproductive healthcare. And
one of the defendants, Lauren Handy, somehow claims that because
Dobbs overruled Rope, there was never a right to abortion
under the fourteenth Amendment, and so the Face Act never
applied to her because she's in a time machine and
she can go back to and in her view, there
(07:56):
was never a protected, constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy. Okay,
So put aside space time continuum. Okay, because like you
and your dad are going to have to just deal
with the fact that she wants to say that row
was never decided in nineteen seventy three. But the real
issue here is that a judge, a Clinton appointee, is
like cool. Cool, cool. If you're going to claim that
(08:17):
the Face Act could never apply to you, let's go
ahead and look at Dobbs again and say, hey, they
only looked at it through the lens of the fourteenth Amendment.
I bet if we look at it through the lens
of the thirteenth Amendment, we could go ahead and fight. Right,
which is the anti slavery Amendment? Right, I mean, it's
the it's the amendment that was you know, that barred
(08:39):
quote involuntary servitude, as you said, and she said, since
this has applausible claim to also protect abortion rights, both
parties should just go ahead and brief for me why
the thirteenth Amendment doesn't protect abortion. So again, time space
continuum problem, right, doesn't doesn't really solve the problem of
somebody breaking the law in and then claiming it was
(09:01):
never the law. But notwithstanding, it's hardball, Molly, and it's
kind of cool. And what she does is she sort
of surfaces this non trivial argument that the thirteenth Amendment
really does for forbid force childbirth and that this is
a serious argument and if we can't locate protections for
reproductive freedom in the Fourteenth, let's go ahead and root
(09:23):
around in the thirteenth. Then you're right, it's hardball, right,
it's it's definitely answering like for like, But I don't know.
I think it's kind of cool. It's better than wringing
your hands right now. No, and look, if we're gonna
go into weird ship, let's you know that it's only
fair to do it that way. I want to ask
(09:44):
you about your podcast, guest. You have a Slate podcast
that talks about very fun, very good talks, but also
talks about the law, and you have on it a
state Supreme Court justice from the state of Wisconsin. Now,
(10:04):
the listeners of this podcast know that the state of
Wisconsin Supreme Court election is coming up in April, and
we are quite focused on it. So this adds another
element of excitement. So talk to us about what's happening
in this Wisconsin Supreme Court. Yeah, this was kind of
a cool podcast. We had Justice Jill Karovski. She was
(10:27):
as you know, there was a four three decision right
before Stop Steele, right before the January sixth Capital insurrection,
the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled four to three that they
were not going to throw out votes that the Trump
administration was claiming we're stolen and unlawful and blah blah
blah and fraud and they were not going to throw
(10:49):
away two seven thousand votes. And by the way, the
Trump campaign only wanted to throw out votes in Dane
and Milwaukee Counties, which were the of course most div
verse racially diverse counties. For three the Wisconsin Supreme Court
opts to say, no, we're not throwing out votes. They
hand the election to Biden, as it should have been
(11:11):
because that was in fact who won the election. And
then she spent and this is really heartbreaking Molly. First
of all, as she was hearing oral arguments in December,
there were armed guys outside her chambers terrorizing them. Right,
So she's hearing oral argument, Well, this is happening. We
think about Ruby Freeman, right, and election workers who are
(11:33):
being intimidated and chilled and terrorized. But it goes all
the way up to a Supreme Court justice in a
state and then once the decision comes down, she is
just hit between the eyes. And she said this on
the podcast with horrible misogyny, horrible anti semitism threats, and finally,
a complaint filed by Trump's lawyers that they thought it
(11:54):
was improper and she should be disciplined because during oral arguments,
as we've both just noted, she observed that it seemed
kind of racist to only throw out votes from the
two minority heavy counties, and she said that she thought
that smacked of racism. And later in the same moral argument,
she told one of the Trump's lawyers, this felt very
(12:15):
much in keeping with the Federalist papers, like they were
trying to protect a king or a monarch rather than
protect democracy. For that, they sought to have her disciplined
on the Federal bench, and that complaint process lasted for
sixteen months, so it was only just dismissed against her.
And you know, what you're talking about and thinking about
(12:36):
on the show, and what I'm talking about and thinking
about on the show, isn't just you know that these
races are consequential, that Leonard Leo at the Federalist Society
has millions and millions and millions of dollars being poured
into these state Supreme court races, right, but this effort
here is to chill and terrorize people. And I think
it's just really worth holding up, just as Rowski, who,
(13:00):
by the way, having been you know, having had to
pay out of her own pocket for lawyers to defend
against this frivolous complaint, Right Jesus Christ. The first thing
she does is say out loud, like, no, they cannot
terrorize judges. We have to be able to ask questions
in oral argument. We have to be able to use analogies.
That's how we do oral argument. If I can't say,
(13:22):
you're treating Donald Trump like a king, what the hell
am I doing on the bench? And so I just
think it is of a piece with so much of
the stuff we've been thinking about in terms of using
and abusing legal processes in systems to subvert democracy rather
than lift it up. Yeah, exactly, No, I mean, this
is just an absolute fucking nightmare. Excuse my friend. And
(13:45):
she's up for reelection in April. She's not up for
re election in this cycle because she was elected. Actually,
she was one of the people elected in the pandemic.
She's okay in this cycle. But I think one of
the reasons she wanted to speak out was to say, hey, world,
look at this election system, because we think we're electing
(14:06):
Supreme Court justices, but behind the scenes, they're being terrorized
for their decisions. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's absolutely right.
And that's what we're seeing again and again. Here we
are in this period. What is the Supreme Court doing
behind our backs right now? I mean the big story.
Sorry not to be paranoid, but you know they're you know,
(14:29):
getting you know, doing lots of crazy ship for June
so that they can leave it before they go on vacation.
I mean, look, there's two parts to that. One is
stuff we've talked about before, which is this is a
hugely consequential term. Right We've got affirmative action and higher
education that I think is coming down. We have the
Indian Child Welfare Act, I think, which is going to
get eviscerated. We have the Clean Water Act, which is
(14:49):
gonna get so like horrible things on the docket, nothing
good and no reason to believe. And I know we've
also talked about that independent state Legislature doctor in case,
which would in fact give state legislatures completely unreviewable plenary
power to set election procedure. It's all bad. So that's
one bucket, the it's all bad bucket. But the second bucket,
(15:12):
and I think it's important, is this ethic stuff that's
going on right now. Where we are finding out day
after day, week after week that like, oh, there was
an investigation into the leak, but they forgot to put
the justices or their spouses under oath, right, Oh we
don't know. Well, listen, it's certainly not them. I mean,
why would justices leak in opinion, especially one that they've
(15:34):
spent their whole careers focused on. It's such like big
Downton Abbey Energy right where the clerks and the elevator
operators and the cleaners are forced to sign affidavits and
get their phones searched like they're being shaken upside down
by the ankles for like evidence untild. Their careers will suffer,
and the justices are part of an iterative questioning process.
(15:57):
It was iterative, it must be binding. So there's a
lot to worry about in terms of why is Clarence
Thomas sitting on cases where his wife has material interest?
Why is John Robert's wife getting you know, lots and
lots of money to head hunt and place lawyers in
big DC firms that argue in front of it. So
all this stuff is going on, there is no reason
to believe that the court is going to adopt and
(16:20):
enforce a code of ethics as against themselves. And so
we have a court with like twenty something per cent
public approval writing and maybe that's where we started, which is,
what do you do in a country predicated on you know,
constitutional democracy and the rule of law when the institution
of the judiciary is just punching itself in the face
(16:41):
every single day. Yeah, exactly, wow, and punching us in
the face more specifically well when it comes to certainly
abortion and LGBTQ rights and punching not just punching us
in the face, perhaps setting us on fire. But yeah,
it's a problem, and I think, you know, at least
(17:02):
in my lane, it is the existential problem we're going
to have to pick our way through. But you know
it's important. Yeah, yeah, no, it certainly is. Thank you
so much for joining us. I am such a fan
and I feel like you're doing really important work that
I am not at all capable of, and just so
(17:22):
for that, I'm always just in complete all of you.
So thank you for joining us. Oh right back at you,
And I think that to your dad and mine, we're trying,
we're doing we're doing the best weekend to explain crazy
obscure technical ship and that too is in the Constitution exactly.
(17:51):
Jacqueline Alimony is a reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome
too Fast Politics, Jackie. Thanks so much for having me, Molly,
I was I did to see this story. So I
want to talk to you about the making of Anna
Paulina Luna. Um. So, this is such an interesting So
a member of Congress, she is newly elected. When did
(18:14):
you start to think like, perhaps this person is not
all she seems. Yes, so I have to give my
colleagues credit for that. Someone had gotten a tip that
we should look into her, but no one else in
my team really had the bandwidth to dedicate the time
needed for this kind of story. And I am, you know,
coming off the tales of covering January six, then needed
(18:38):
a new obsession. So happily picked this up and you know,
quickly googled her, read her campaign biography and pretty quickly
realized that her story was worth looking into. And from there,
you know, as my my colleague p K tweeted, sort
of dug into her her modern Dickens esque character that
(19:03):
she described, But she didn't end up being very Dickens,
did She not quite pseudo Dickens perhaps, yes, And I
know we're all trying to make sort of these George
Santos comparisons and her embellishments and the way that she
sort of stretches parts of her bio are George Santos esque,
(19:25):
but she's a bit more nuanced and subtle about it.
And so essentially, as her cousin told me, she takes
a grain of truth and makes a beach out of
lies with it. And so we sort of found this
pattern of her taking different parts of her upbringing her identity,
her experiences, and kind of weeding together a political persona
(19:49):
that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of these incidents and
situations that she gets into. She's not a person who
is a se real, fabulous, but she has one real
similarity with George Santos, which as a Jew myself, I
continue to find completely strange, which is she lied about
(20:11):
being Jewish. Yeah, and this is actually a whole other
story in and of itself, sort of this trend of
Republicans claiming to be Messianic Jews. These are people who
identify as Jewish and say they believe Jesus is the Messiah,
but are not considered Jewish by Jews. Jews, my actual
real Jews were Jewish. But yes, yeah, and you know,
(20:35):
I communicated extensively with Congresswoman Luna's mother about this, because
no one in her family were called her father dabbling
in Messianic Judaism, Judaism, any anything of the sort. Remember
him actually citing scripture from the Bible. And Luna's mother
herself said that he was a Christian that embraced the
(20:56):
Messianic faith. And she also said, you know, eventually down
the line he started attending a Messianic Jewish church in
Orange County. And I know it can kind of seem
like we're sort of tracy flicking this that, like we're being,
you know, a little bit nitpicky with the language here.
But all of these embellishments and sort of slight fabrications
(21:17):
they all add up. And and not only is she
was she not raised as a Messianic Jew, but it
actually turns out that there's sort of a big gap
in a part of her upbringing and her family history
that she's she has conveniently skimmed over, which is the
fact that her father's father, her grandfather, who actually played
a significant part in raising her before he passed away
(21:38):
because her father lived in his house when he couldn't
get on his feet, and lived in the garage where
Anna would come visit him. He was actually identified as
a Roman Catholic and immigrated to Canada from Germany nineteen
fifty four and was part of the armed forces of
Nazi Germany when he was a teenager in the nineteen forties.
Now he was a Nazi. But we need to again
(21:59):
provide a little bit of a nuance here. You know,
if you were a Roman Catholic born in that time period, right,
you probably didn't really a choice. You were forced to
enroll in Hitler Youth the you know, the moment you
turned a certain age. And then we obtained pictures of
him in his Warmont uniform that were provided by members
of Luna's family. We were told that he was actually
(22:20):
held in a prisoner of war camp for an extended
period of time and that this was a big part
of his life. I mean, this is traumatizing for anyone. Oh,
he was a Nazi held in a prisoner of war
camp after he was captured. Okay, I was like, oh,
he wasn't participating with the Nazis, but now he was
being held by the Americans. That is unclear. We were
(22:41):
told that he went into battle and was pretty soon
captured in France. And in these details we ultimately actually
did not include in the story because they're they're sort
of fuzzy. But what is not fuzzy is that he
was in Hitler's army. We also reviewed these other indications
of his family's associations and ties. You know, his mother
(23:02):
was awarded this Cross of the Mother award that we
reviewed that Hitler gives. Hitler gave at the time to
women who had a certain amount of children. So there's
there's no question about about that. I can only speak
to my own experience, but if I were related to
a Nazi, I would probably not lie about being Jewish. Yeah,
and you know, look, there are politicians who have dealt
(23:23):
with this before. You know, we should not bear the
sins of our ancestors, and no, exactly, we shouldn't bear
the sins of our ancestors. That said, you would think
you would be a little more sensitive if you are
related to an actual Nazi or sort of you know,
pullin Arnold Schwarzenegger and just get it out there, address
it and say that you don't affiliate with it, right?
(23:44):
What she did not do? I want to just get
a little bit on the background here. She is a
Turning Point. She comes up to Turning Point right. Yeah, exactly.
And for people like my dad who are not completely
versed on the culture of Turning Point, you us say,
can you explain to us a little bit about what
it is and how it has created these many celebrities. Yea.
(24:07):
So Turning Point USA is a conservative grassroots organization founded
by this guy, Charlie Kirk to sort of appeal to
young conservatives and disaffected white youth right and Kirk has
developed a track record for recruiting, successfully recruiting candidates um
(24:29):
and elect getting them elected to public office. And there
seems to be a track record of the sort of
a very specific type of candidate that he likes to recruit.
There are a few people that have come up through
Turning Point in USA, and like who I believe the
most recent person would probably be louren Overt. Oh wow, Okay,
(24:50):
so idiots, you can't say it, but I can. I
do think that, you know, there's been an interesting and
Jonathan Martin actually pointed to this out. I think you
can they're a lot of takeaways from this piece on
Anna Paulina Luna, but one of them could be sort
of there is a new crop of lawmakers who are
not you know, your student body presidents and valedictorians, but
(25:11):
rather these sort of people in the mold of of
influencers turned politicians like Candice Owens, who is a big
Turning Point alum, and Luna is is the most recent example,
and she was found by Charlie Charlie Kirk on Instagram.
You know, she was someone who while she was in
(25:31):
the military, she was doing a bunch of modeling. She
was the Maxim hottie of the week at one time.
She was trying to make a living off of modeling
while in their force. And eventually this sort of turned
into modeling with big guns a R fifteens and pulling
off these sort of gadfly photo shoots and Berkeley's school
(25:53):
campus and she she developed a legitimate following on Instagram
and it caught the attention of Charlie Kirk, who reached
out to her and ultimately brought her onto Turning Points
as the director of Hispanic Engagement. She Ispanic, she is Hispanic. Yep. Yeah,
But what we gathered in our during our reporting journey
(26:16):
about her was that she didn't really identify as Hispanic
while growing up, and actually her name was Anna Paulina
Mayer Hoffer, and when she signed on to work as
the as Turning Points as director of Hispanic Engagement, she
dropped her last name and eventually became Anna Paulina Luna,
which is her grandmother's maiden name, and her mother actually
(26:40):
just recently changed her last name to Luna as well.
This isn't a conversation really about questioning her Hispanic credentials.
That's she's definitely Hispanic, but it's not something that she
really publicly embraced and made central to her identity and
to her political persona until she started getting involved in politics. Right.
(27:00):
Did Charlie Cark have many comments on any of this.
We had enough sourcing and people that we were speaking
with it. We didn't speak with Charlie Kirk directly, but
after the fact he sort of added to the pile
on some of these extremists. I feel like the difference
between Santos, where there are just constantly everyday stories and again,
(27:22):
Anna Polina is not George Santos, right, Right, It did
seem like the right, nobody sort of took a break
and was like, oh, maybe this is not for us.
They all just sort of doubled down, and we're like,
she's our girl, and we're sticking with her. Yeah. And
I mean to be clear that people who were defending
her are not the most popular members of the House
(27:43):
GEOP conference. It was people like MATC. Gates, Thomas Massey,
Lauren Bobert who have caused some major headaches already for
the new House Leader, Kevin McCarthy. But what unfortunately happened
was we made one tiny or that we ultimately had
to correct about. We used, unfortunately an erroneous voter registration
(28:05):
database and had said that that that Luna was registered
as a Democrat when she was living in Washington State.
But Washington State obviously only requires voters to declare their
party affiliation when they cast a ballot in the presidential primary.
And we think that potentially this database that we were
using might have pulled some like predictive modeling. Anyways, we
were wanted to be extremely transparent immediately corrected it. Also,
(28:29):
it was not sort of the crux of the story
or essential to the story. I mean, we had multiple
people saying that that Luna what when they knew her
pre running for Congress, that that she was pro Obama,
pro choice, held liberal beliefs. But you know, this day
to give some people to sort of attack the article
(28:50):
in bad faith, including Luna, who just contined that we
said that we're going to retract the whole thing when
it's just not true. I mean, that is of corners.
Like the typical tact of the far right is that,
you know, a mainstream outlet will make a mistake and corrected,
and then the far right will say, see, this was
(29:12):
on purpose. There's never room for a mistake that's been corrected.
These people live on the internet and are quite good
at it. You know, they've come after me numerous times,
and like they kind of do that in the hopes
that you won't write about them anymore. I sort of
just tried to put my phone down and yeah, there
was really no touch of grating. But it's challenging when
(29:33):
I'm sure you understand this when you've worked on something
for a month, you've communicated extensively with members of her family,
including her mother, and feel like you really did your
best to be as fair and accurate as possible and
Essentially every single sentence other than the one stupid error
that we made, it has been fact checked to death.
(29:55):
You can't really control the rest of the way it
plays out after that, and so you know, I want
to of course clarify every single I thought intellectually dishonest
attack on the piece, but right, right, right, you can't
do that. I know that our readers they're smarter than that,
and they can have their ways. Look, this is the
far right playbook, right. They don't want anyone in the
(30:18):
mainstream media covering them because his scrutiny is, you know,
exposes the corruption and or even not the corruption, but
exposes the lawe. I mean, I think that ultimately is
part of the reason that they pushed back so hard.
And I know, I feel like I've gotten to this
debate with a few people, um where we can get
sort of cynical and feel like, well, you know, Luna
(30:41):
is not that different from any other member of Congress
who co opts certain part of her identity in order
to be more appealing to certain groups or to and
to win a seat and win over their constituents. I
think she's pretty different though, even though she's not George Santos.
I do think that voters deserved to know their lawmakers are,
what their qualifications are, what their backgrounds are, and whether
(31:04):
or not that is consistent with the person that they've
been presented, right. I mean I also think ultimately Trump
did this thing where he said, you know, you can
you know, you don't have to be governed by the
normal tenants of truth at all. And so I do
think it's really important for journalists to expose this kind
(31:25):
of stuff when it happens, because otherwise everyone in office
is going to be you know, some some shade of
a fabulous I think something that this story also sort
of raised with some of the gaps in local reporting.
I mean, the Tampa Bay Times did an excellent first
stab at this in when she first ran and ultimately lost.
(31:46):
But I do think this is, you know, the textbook
case for why local news is so important, because sometimes
these people just slipped through the cracks of national news coverage,
but it ultimately does affect those local communities. Yeah, and
also everyone because she is a member of Congress, do
(32:06):
we think that there will be any I mean, certainly McCarthy,
you know, with his five votes, is not going to
touch this do you think that there will be any
blowback that isn't just partisan. I think that GOP leadership
treatment of George Santos and they're very hands off approach
to him kind of I think says what we need
(32:28):
to know about the way that they would they'd handle
in a Paulina Luna, or whether or not they'll address
this in any way. But what I'm on the lookout
for now is sort of any follow ups to this.
Maybe sometimes these kinds of stories, as we saw with Santos,
people come out with more right. Yeah, the damn breaks
(32:48):
and other things about their either their campaign, fundraising practices
or other parts of their background get more scrutiny and
come to light in the aftermath. So interesting. I hope
you'll come back. Thank you so much for having me.
I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and
you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of
(33:09):
pieces of pundentry each week. This is why every week
I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles
on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love
having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up
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to join our mailing list. That's Fast Politics pod dot com.
(33:35):
Congressman Seth Malton represents Massachusetts sixth district. Welcome to you,
Fast Politics Congressman Seth Malton. That's great to be here.
We are going to ultimately dork out on high speed trains,
but first I wanted to ask you about a little
bit about what you know. You were marine, You have
(33:59):
done four tours in Iraq, you have a lot of perspective.
Let's do like two minutes on the Chinese spy balloon, alright,
because I hate myself and I haven't it just there
hasn't been enough Chinese spy balloon coverage. We got to
talk about the balloon. So it strikes me that the
sense here is that as long as Biden, I mean
(34:23):
Biden did say last Wednesday that he had said shoot
it down and that the military had wanted to wait
until it was over water, Republicans obviously have decided that
this is that he should be impeached. I mean, what
is your thinking here? My thinking is that the commander
in chief should follow the best military advice he's given. Right,
(34:44):
the last commander in chief used to go on Fox
and Friends and get military advice. This Commander in chief
actually listens to the Joint chiefs of staff and they said,
wait until it's over water to shoot it down. They
had to use a missile to shoot it down. We
don't need a missile falling on somebody's head, right, That
was my sense. It's twice the size of a seven
four seven. You don't want, if you know, if you
(35:04):
kill one person, game over. Actually someone said to me
is if you kill somewhere, if you kill one person,
it's like right out of Veep. But I feel like
VP isn't quite that dark. But the sense I get
is that the Chinese spy balloon, they have satellites that
can do what this balloon did. Well, we don't know
exactly what the balloon capabilities are. That's why we're investigating it.
(35:28):
That's why we're collecting the pieces to put it back together.
So we don't actually know if that's true. But we
do know for sure that there have been a lot
of balloons floating around for a while. So the idea
that leaving this up for an extra day or two
is really going to make a difference in their intelligence
collection just doesn't really hold water, right, And there have
been balloons during different administrations and also across different countries.
(35:52):
I want to talk to you about where we are
right now with China because it does seem like much
sort of more prepared, yes, than where we are with Russia,
and a certain way, well, I think they're both somewhat precarious.
Bows can be bad, but yes, both can be pretty bad.
Here's the problem with Russia. We're doing well in Ukraine.
(36:15):
Ukraine is pushing the Russians back, but we still have
trouble answering that big looming question, the elephant in the
room question, which is how does this end? How do
we defeat Pudent? So we never tries this again without
forcing him into a corner. So we does something really
rash and stupid. And that's why the next year in Ukraine,
This year could be much more difficult than the last,
(36:38):
even though I think we're going to see the Ukrainians
do well on the ground and have more victories city
to city. But with China, look, tensions have been escalating
for a long time, and for a long time, this
just has not been on our radar. Pardon the pun.
We've missed the balloons, but the American people have also
just missed this threat, Like, we haven't understood why this
(37:00):
is such a big deal. And yet if you spend
some time looking at the classified intelligence, you realize, oh, whoa,
this this is a big deal. We gotta watch out here. Yeah,
I mean, it's it seems like a very big deal. Also,
I mean, i mean, again, there's a lot going on
with China, but like, where are you with situations like TikTok. Well,
(37:21):
this is what's so interesting about this new China Select
Committee that was just stood up and I've been appointed
to it, is that we're not just looking at the
military side of things, the military deterrent side of things.
How do we tell China militarily you don't want to
have a war in the Pacific. We're looking at all
the economic implications as well. Uh. And we're looking at
(37:41):
social media all the different ways that we have daily interactions,
not just with China, but with the Chinese Communist Party.
Here's the problem with TikTok. If your kids are mine
are on TikTok, then the Chinese Communist Party is collecting
their information and influencing their behavior. I'm not sure that's
why I want for my kids. In fact, I'm pretty
(38:01):
confident that I don't. But we can't just ban TikTok
because then they'll be, you know, TikTok to uh next week.
So we've got to have a comprehensive policy here to
address this very real threat to the American people. But
that's not going to be something we figure out overnight.
That's why we've got some deliberations to come on this
special committee. I mean, now we're in this Republican House now,
(38:26):
I mean I watched the Weaponization Subcommittee hearing today. Some
of these Republicans don't seem very interested in like actually
finding solutions more just making content for Fox News, No doubt,
absolutely that's what they're there for. But fingers crossed. The
China Select Committee is actually different. They've they've appointed a
(38:47):
whole different crop of Republicans and we have a very
talented group of Democrats as well, who are going to
take a serious look at this in as bipartisan a
way as possible, because this is a massive national security threat,
and it's in that anomics security threat, it's across the board.
Competition with the Chinese Communist Party is a very real thing,
(39:08):
and we've got to have a better strategy to deal
with it. To make sure we win well. It does
seem like the Biden administration is pushing back a lot
when it comes to manufacturing and the chips America's problems
with China that aren't necessarily will China take Taiwan though
that is obviously an anxiety that I think most of
us have, but more problems of you know, like they're
(39:32):
beating America and manufacturing in ways that America can't keep up,
and so some of that is being addressed with this
Chips Act, which is in some ways is sort of
it's kind of I mean, it's kind of strange to
see that we now have two parties that are sort
of working on trying to sort of figure out trade
(39:52):
in a way that fixes America's deficit. I mean, isn't
it crazy and strange that two parties could work together
on the something like that? Right? I mean, because that's
where we are in our politics. But after the stuff
Ice today, I have a hard time imagine that these
Republicans are serious about doing anything. But I do hear
what you're saying, and the truth is both Democrats and
(40:13):
Republicans have a very similar are both on the same
page when it comes to China. Really ultimately, I mean,
Republicans will say like it's because Biden has some kind
of relations, you know, some kind of lie about Hunter Biden,
but ultimately, really they're quite aligned. I mean, let's not
forget that Trump also asked Sijing ping for help winning
(40:34):
his election so well, and Trump has a Chinese bank account.
There are a lot of problems with with Trump and
the extreme Republicans here, and you're not going to see
the extreme Republicans in the House be helpful on any
of these efforts. They're just trying to score political points,
for sure. But there are serious Republicans working with a
lot of serious Democrats on this challenge. And you're right,
(40:57):
it's so many different things. It's how do we deal
with TikTok, It's how do we deal with the fact
that we're trying to develop a green energy grid and
we seem to be buying all our green energy supplies
like solar panels from China. Doesn't make sense. I want
to be buying solar panels. They're manufactured in America. So
we've got a lot of work to do. There are
(41:17):
a lot of climate change implications, there are a lot
of economic implications. There are implications to how we live
our lives every single day on social media. It's a
real serious challenge, but there are also some exciting opportunities.
And and and I do think that there's at least
some hope that on this committee we can do things
in a bipartisan way. But we'll see. I mean, it's
(41:38):
interesting because there's such like an appetite for bipartisanship. And
one of the things Biden has really done is a
lot of passing, a lot of bipartisan administrator you know, infrastructure,
et cetera. The chips ack you mentioned, that's that was
toy bipartisan, right, But I know that the reproblicanveys loves
this kind of craziness. They do. Talk to me about
(41:59):
the trains. Let's do the trains. I want to hear
about the trains. I love the trains, big train person.
I took a train to die. It's crazy that we
don't have high speed rail in America. And look like
in the last few weeks we had six thousand, three
hundred flights canceled. I think flights were canceled on the
Monday after Christmas alone, Southwest canceled sevent of their flights
(42:23):
and Every country in the world is developing high speed
rail except US. Look at Morocco. Morocco has a half
a percent of our GDP okay, so they don't have
a lot of money to waste, and they just invested
two point two billion dollars in a two high speed
railroad because they get a better return on investment. It's
(42:44):
better for the environment, and it's cheaper, and it's less
weather dependent, all those things. Imagine, you know, So think
about this. The busiest high speed rail line in the
world right now is actually a pretty new one is
from Beijing to Shanghai. That's about the same distance as
Chica Ago to Atlanta. So imagine being able to go
from Chicago to Atlanta with never a weather delay, train
(43:05):
every thirty minutes, don't have to go through arduous security,
you don't have to wait in lines forever. Your seats
about three times as big as a seat on on
an airplane, bigger than first class on an airplane. How
long does it take? Four or five hours? Yeah, that's
pretty good. And not only is that great for Chicago
and great for Atlanta, it's great for all the cities
(43:25):
and states in between that are totally left out of
air travel between those two cities. High speed rail is
not just a better, faster, cleaner option for Americans as
opposed to traveling by plane. It's also a way to
knit together this country, right and we need that right now.
We need people in rural America to have access to
(43:46):
jobs in the city so they can get those jobs
if they want them. That We need parts of America
that are just in you know, what we call flyover
country to actually be connected to the coast. That's one
of the beautiful things about high speed rail. But a
lot of Americans just don't know how nice it is
to get on a train that's going to be smooth
and fasten Aurora and arrive on time. And in Spain,
(44:10):
if your train is thirty minutes late, you get a
full refund. Imagine that from any American airline. Imagine the
Southwest said, oh, you have any plane that's thirty minutes late,
You're gonna get a full refund. That's just unimaginable for
us today. Yeah, that's amazing. This is what we're missing.
I mean, is there appetite for this? There absolutely is.
I mean everywhere I go in America, people who have
written high speed trains anywhere else in the world say
(44:32):
we need this here. The problem is a lot of people,
a lot of my colleagues even have never been on
a high speed train, so they don't know what they're missing.
I believe that if we get one good high speed
rail line built in America, it will start to change
things completely. There was actually a lot of opposition to
building high speed rail in Spain. It's it's it's a
very provincial country. The provinces didn't want a tentacle from Madrid,
(44:55):
they called it. But one high speed rail line was built.
Every other province wanted one. So I think if we
get one good high speed rail line built in America,
it could literally set off a revolution. What is the
high speed rail line you're trying to get built right now?
I actually think that the best one to build. And
I'm biased here, I'll admit that because I worked on
this project in the private sector. Oh, I see where
(45:17):
this is going. Yes is Texas and good for you?
And here's why. The reason why it's in and and look,
I don't represent Texas in case you haven't figured that out.
But the reason why Texas is important is because all
the environmental approvals are done it's ready to go. It
just needs an infusion of capital, and it will show
America that this isn't just an East coast thing. This
(45:39):
isn't just a sella corridor thing. This is something that
can work in all parts of America, including Red America.
And once you get Republicans behind high speed rail in
Washington like Democrats already are, then you could see high
speed rail all over this country. That's totally fascinating. One
of my kids is very into the Marines and being
(46:01):
of service, and I'm just curious, are you tight with
the other serviceman Congressman. Yes, we have a great veterans caucus.
It's somewhat selected. We've actually kicked out some veterans who
were just two parts of it and were working across
the Yeah. So, I mean, it's not like a rule
that every veteran in Congress uh is a good guy
(46:22):
or or you know, a good woman. I mean, this
is it's a select group. But the veterans that are
part of this caucus we work together, we meet together,
we find places where we can come together, and we've
done some good things. I mean, it was my bill
to establish nine eight eight as the National Mental Health hotline,
and it's made an incredible difference. Calls are up. Forty
(46:42):
thousands of lives are being saved today that weren't being
saved a year ago because this hotline exists. And I
passed that with the Republican veteran with a veteran who
understands mental health issues because of dealing with friends and
colleagues who've had post traumatic stress as I have myself.
And so we got this past. We got it done,
and that's what Democrats and Republicans coming together can actually do.
(47:06):
That makes the different American people. So who got kicked out?
I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't say, Oh, you should
definitely say now, I don't want to say, actually I
had to ask, So anyway, that's fine. It's entirely up
to you to tell our listeners who was kicked out
of the Veterans Caucus. We will all just go online
(47:27):
and try to figure it out. You can probably figure
it out. But the point is to know that we're serious,
we want to work together, and we want to get
things done. Yeah. I mean, I've asked you this question
during our interview in a couple of different ways, but
I really do I just you know I was at
this event last night, this congressional event where Nancy may
escape this speech. She was funny. She was not fun night.
(47:49):
I am telling you I have now heard her twice,
and she may be a friend of yours. I know
she went to the citadel. I know she was of service.
But like the first time I heard her, I thought,
this will and is really smart. Like she may have
views I don't agree with, but this time I thought,
this woman is this is really inappropriate? Like there were
a lot of really inappropriate jokes. I thought. I thought
(48:11):
it was a little beyond the pale. Honestly, sorry I do,
but I was curious, like so I have just been
struck by and you know, Marjorie Taylor Green was there.
There were so many Republicans who who made their stick,
you know, the attack on democrats. I mean, how are
you guys going to be able to work with these people?
You don't work in Marjorie Taylor Green? Right, you don't
(48:31):
know When I first ran for Congress, I mean back
in the heavy days of which it feels like a
long time ago politically because things have gotten so much worse.
I ran on a platform of bipartisanship, but people would
ask me, Seth, like, how are you going to work
with Ted Cruz, And the answer is simple, I don't
work with Ted Cruz. I've never even met Ted Cruz
in in in eight years in Congress because he's not
(48:53):
interested in working with anyone across the aisle. And he's
frankly a jerk, to put it politely, and everyone who
knows them agrees with that. Right. I think he'd delight
in the descriptor he'd take that as a compliment. Yeah,
but you've got to find Republicans you can work with,
like Chris Stewart in Utah that I teamed up with
the PASS, Like Mike Gallagher on the Armed Services Committee,
(49:16):
fellow Marine veteran who I'm working with on the Select
Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. So there are Republicans
you can work with, but you've got to find the
ones you actually can. Republicans have until George Sandos gets arrested,
they have a five seat majority. I mean it's close, right,
it could be closer, and so that means that you know,
(49:37):
they kind of either just continue barely passing legislation that
means nothing and is obviously not going to go anywhere.
In the Democratic Senate, or they can decide, hey, Speaker McCarthy,
let's actually get something done. And that means they're going
to have to find some Democrats to come on board
and do things that are actually reasonable. So look, I
don't have a lot of hope. We all know that
(49:59):
McCarthy got elected by pandering to these extremists on the right.
But there is a chance, and if there's a chance,
it's worth trying because the American people need us to
get things done. Seth Malton, thank you so much, thanks
for having me on. It's an honor. Jesse Cannon. So
(50:23):
the Republicans would really really like to pretend that they
don't want to cut Medicare and fake out their voters,
but one Russia, Ron Johnson is not having it. He's
holding the line and saying, cut it, baby, cut it.
Let's take a listen again. It is a legal Ponzi scheme. Yes,
I got accused in two thousand and ten that I
called a ponzi scheme. I admitted it. Yes, it's a
(50:44):
legal Ponzi scheme. It operates the same way as any
other Ponzi scheme, except that this is sanctioned by the government.
But it's no, it's no more uh, it's no less
irresponsible than a Ponzi scheme. From that stampoint, I love
Ron and On. He is the dumbest member of the Senate.
(51:05):
And actually that two of her would like a word well.
And also, I mean there's a Cindy Hyde Smith who
once dressed in a Confederate uniform. So I don't wanna
leave out some of the other Republicans, but she is
really a stupid idiot. And Republicans have been pretending that
(51:26):
they don't want to cut social Security. After Biden said
they wanted to cut social Security, they went after him
and we're like, Biden is a liar, this isn't true.
We don't want to cut social security. Here's Ron and
Non saying that social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and
for that, that is our moment of fuy. That's it
(51:49):
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. And again, thanks for listening. M HM.
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 Diane Feinstein will retire from the
Senate at the age of ninety. We have a fantastic
show today the Washington Post. Jacqueline Alimony will join us
to talk about the latest Republican congress person who has
(00:22):
a fictitious past. Then we'll talk to Congressman Seth Malton
about exciting things like high speed rail. But first we
have the author of Lady Justice Slates, Dahlia Lethwick. Welcome
back to Fast Politics. Dahlia. Hello, Molly, so excited to
have you back. You know, I'm a huge fan Dahlia. First,
(00:45):
let's talk about this idea. There's a lot of judicial
factory going on in the wake of over to It's
a very serious podcast. It's like MPR. Fuckery is in
the constant tuition, my friend is definitely in the Bill
of Rights. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of constitutional factory
(01:06):
around abortion on both sides, many people, good people on
both sides. And I want to talk to you about
these two pieces you wrote this week that are sort
of different sides of a little bit the same coin, right, Yeah,
I mean I think if you're going to play hardball,
which is the first piece, then let's play hardball, which
is the second. So I think you're right. I think
(01:27):
it's a little bit of when they go low, you
don't walk away. I think it's what you're describing. Yeah, exactly.
So the first piece I want to talk about is
this idea, and it's not an idea. It's actually happening
in Texas, which was the state that overturned Row. Before
Row was even overturned with SBA, they now have a
(01:47):
judge here who is I know you're shocked to hear
this wants to outlaw the abortion pills. The read on
it explain, that's the read. And it's not just that
he wants to it's that we are all waiting because
it's likely to come in the coming days, and I
think it's going to be much like s b A
(02:08):
where we're all shocked when it happens. But he is
now poised to decide a lawsuit that would, if he
does what we think he's going to do, create a
nationwide injunction for the abortion pill. And just for folks
who still think about Roe, v. Wayne in terms of
surgical abortions, right, the majority of abortions now happen with
(02:31):
medication abortion, and he is overseeing a challenge to the
first of the two drugs in the abortion Protocol. And
if the plaintiffs in this suit get their way, he
will be able to enjoin the abortion pill nationwide. So
I want you to explain this to me, because we're
going to explain this for my dad and also for
(02:52):
me because I don't quite understand this. Why does a
judge in Texas get to stop people from getting abortion
pills in New York State? Well, the fair minded answer
is that you can always seek an injunction, and if
you are in your ordinary kind of suit, when you
seek an injunction, the party that has to stop doing
what they're doing is the person who's on the other
(03:14):
end of the suit. Right. If you think back to,
for instance, the Donald Trump travel ban that also was
enjoined by a single judge, right, a single district court
judge initially, And so the idea is, when it's the
government that is doing something unlawful, one single district court
judge has the power to enjoy that project nationwide. That
(03:35):
really was the travel ban and maybe you know because
there isn't just like a guy to enjoin. Theoretically you
enjoined the whole federal government. But I think the real
answer to your question is why was this thing sued
in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas
that has no connection to abortion pills, is that they
(03:56):
knew they would get only one judge. Donald Trump placed
this judge on the bench, and he is the only
aim in town. And so he has been involved in,
you know, a whole series of like truly crazy crazy ruling.
He sees control over the entire border policy himself. At
one point, he has defied Donald Trump's decision protecting LGBTQ employees,
(04:20):
and he has single handedly taking it upon himself to
restrict the access of miners to birth control. So he's
going to just do He's like a slot machine, right,
you put in a quarter, He's going to give you
what you want. And if he's the only judge, then
you just keep going to him seeking relief. That's incredible,
I mean incredibleory. So they really have found a judge
(04:43):
who who's basically like the Supreme Court, right and and
then to boot it goes no, it goes up to
the Fifth Circuit, right, it goes up to the Federal
like even no matter what he decides, this goes up
to the Fifth Circuit, which is the most conservative federal
appeals corres, and then it goes to the U. S.
Supreme Court, who I suspect will have no problem saying
(05:04):
that abortion pills can be regulated. And so this is
kind of it's not just a slot machine. It's kind
of like Russian dolls of slot machines, where every layer
up continues to give you exactly the outcome you want. Yeah,
I'll say, I mean just incredible stuff. So the piece
that you wrote after that is a sort of the
(05:26):
more is a sort of more normal judge trying to
figure out how to deal with this judicial overreach. Can
you explain? Yeah, I mean, essentially, you know, just for
one more beat on Texas, this is you know, these
are plaintiffs who have no standing, right, It's a bunch
of doctors who don't have any reason to be able
(05:47):
to walk into court. But they're saying, someday I may
give someone an abortion pill and I may hurt them
because it's unsafe. Despite twenty three years of FDA approval
and so enjoying the whole program. Stop the entire FDA
approval right, every layer of that, three layers of insane overreach.
None of these things are plausible. They have no merit right.
(06:09):
So that's Texas. So exactly what you're saying, how do
you answer for that? What is the district court judge
on the other side who thinks maybe Rovie Wade shouldn't
have been overturned? What are they to do? So this
brings us to a Loane District Court judge in Washington,
d C. This past week who was like, okay, in
a in a case by the way, that has nothing
(06:30):
really to do with abortion rights, to be fair, but
to do with somebody who, in violation of the Face
Act blocked clinic access in Washington, d C. And was
being sentenced over That. Explained to my dad what the
Face Act is, because I am very well versed in
the Face Act, obviously as a judicial scholar myself, but
(06:52):
just for my dad and for my dad too, who
also it's not well versed in the Face Act. It
is a federal statute free of access to clinic entrances,
and it essentially is just a statute that says, don't
screw around with people seeking reproductive care. It was supposed
to be the mechanism to protect folks from crazy people
(07:13):
who were blocking clinic entrances and harassing patients at abortion clinics. Right,
So this is a bunch of people who go they
deliberately block access to a d C clinic in they
use rope and chain, they terrorize folks inside. They're indicted
in April of two for violating this statute that says
(07:33):
you cannot get in the way of reproductive healthcare. And
one of the defendants, Lauren Handy, somehow claims that because
Dobbs overruled Rope, there was never a right to abortion
under the fourteenth Amendment, and so the Face Act never
applied to her because she's in a time machine and
she can go back to and in her view, there
(07:56):
was never a protected, constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy. Okay,
So put aside space time continuum. Okay, because like you
and your dad are going to have to just deal
with the fact that she wants to say that row
was never decided in nineteen seventy three. But the real
issue here is that a judge, a Clinton appointee, is
like cool. Cool, cool. If you're going to claim that
(08:17):
the Face Act could never apply to you, let's go
ahead and look at Dobbs again and say, hey, they
only looked at it through the lens of the fourteenth Amendment.
I bet if we look at it through the lens
of the thirteenth Amendment, we could go ahead and fight. Right,
which is the anti slavery Amendment? Right, I mean, it's
the it's the amendment that was you know, that barred
(08:39):
quote involuntary servitude, as you said, and she said, since
this has applausible claim to also protect abortion rights, both
parties should just go ahead and brief for me why
the thirteenth Amendment doesn't protect abortion. So again, time space
continuum problem, right, doesn't doesn't really solve the problem of
somebody breaking the law in and then claiming it was
(09:01):
never the law. But notwithstanding, it's hardball, Molly, and it's
kind of cool. And what she does is she sort
of surfaces this non trivial argument that the thirteenth Amendment
really does for forbid force childbirth and that this is
a serious argument and if we can't locate protections for
reproductive freedom in the Fourteenth, let's go ahead and root
(09:23):
around in the thirteenth. Then you're right, it's hardball, right,
it's it's definitely answering like for like, But I don't know.
I think it's kind of cool. It's better than wringing
your hands right now. No, and look, if we're gonna
go into weird ship, let's you know that it's only
fair to do it that way. I want to ask
(09:44):
you about your podcast, guest. You have a Slate podcast
that talks about very fun, very good talks, but also
talks about the law, and you have on it a
state Supreme Court justice from the state of Wisconsin. Now,
(10:04):
the listeners of this podcast know that the state of
Wisconsin Supreme Court election is coming up in April, and
we are quite focused on it. So this adds another
element of excitement. So talk to us about what's happening
in this Wisconsin Supreme Court. Yeah, this was kind of
a cool podcast. We had Justice Jill Karovski. She was
(10:27):
as you know, there was a four three decision right
before Stop Steele, right before the January sixth Capital insurrection,
the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled four to three that they
were not going to throw out votes that the Trump
administration was claiming we're stolen and unlawful and blah blah
blah and fraud and they were not going to throw
(10:49):
away two seven thousand votes. And by the way, the
Trump campaign only wanted to throw out votes in Dane
and Milwaukee Counties, which were the of course most div
verse racially diverse counties. For three the Wisconsin Supreme Court
opts to say, no, we're not throwing out votes. They
hand the election to Biden, as it should have been
(11:11):
because that was in fact who won the election. And
then she spent and this is really heartbreaking Molly. First
of all, as she was hearing oral arguments in December,
there were armed guys outside her chambers terrorizing them. Right,
So she's hearing oral argument, Well, this is happening. We
think about Ruby Freeman, right, and election workers who are
(11:33):
being intimidated and chilled and terrorized. But it goes all
the way up to a Supreme Court justice in a
state and then once the decision comes down, she is
just hit between the eyes. And she said this on
the podcast with horrible misogyny, horrible anti semitism threats, and finally,
a complaint filed by Trump's lawyers that they thought it
(11:54):
was improper and she should be disciplined because during oral arguments,
as we've both just noted, she observed that it seemed
kind of racist to only throw out votes from the
two minority heavy counties, and she said that she thought
that smacked of racism. And later in the same moral argument,
she told one of the Trump's lawyers, this felt very
(12:15):
much in keeping with the Federalist papers, like they were
trying to protect a king or a monarch rather than
protect democracy. For that, they sought to have her disciplined
on the Federal bench, and that complaint process lasted for
sixteen months, so it was only just dismissed against her.
And you know, what you're talking about and thinking about
(12:36):
on the show, and what I'm talking about and thinking
about on the show, isn't just you know that these
races are consequential, that Leonard Leo at the Federalist Society
has millions and millions and millions of dollars being poured
into these state Supreme court races, right, but this effort
here is to chill and terrorize people. And I think
it's just really worth holding up, just as Rowski, who,
(13:00):
by the way, having been you know, having had to
pay out of her own pocket for lawyers to defend
against this frivolous complaint, Right Jesus Christ. The first thing
she does is say out loud, like, no, they cannot
terrorize judges. We have to be able to ask questions
in oral argument. We have to be able to use analogies.
That's how we do oral argument. If I can't say,
(13:22):
you're treating Donald Trump like a king, what the hell
am I doing on the bench? And so I just
think it is of a piece with so much of
the stuff we've been thinking about in terms of using
and abusing legal processes in systems to subvert democracy rather
than lift it up. Yeah, exactly, No, I mean, this
is just an absolute fucking nightmare. Excuse my friend. And
(13:45):
she's up for reelection in April. She's not up for
re election in this cycle because she was elected. Actually,
she was one of the people elected in the pandemic.
She's okay in this cycle. But I think one of
the reasons she wanted to speak out was to say, hey, world,
look at this election system, because we think we're electing
(14:06):
Supreme Court justices, but behind the scenes, they're being terrorized
for their decisions. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's absolutely right.
And that's what we're seeing again and again. Here we
are in this period. What is the Supreme Court doing
behind our backs right now? I mean the big story.
Sorry not to be paranoid, but you know they're you know,
(14:29):
getting you know, doing lots of crazy ship for June
so that they can leave it before they go on vacation.
I mean, look, there's two parts to that. One is
stuff we've talked about before, which is this is a
hugely consequential term. Right We've got affirmative action and higher
education that I think is coming down. We have the
Indian Child Welfare Act, I think, which is going to
get eviscerated. We have the Clean Water Act, which is
(14:49):
gonna get so like horrible things on the docket, nothing
good and no reason to believe. And I know we've
also talked about that independent state Legislature doctor in case,
which would in fact give state legislatures completely unreviewable plenary
power to set election procedure. It's all bad. So that's
one bucket, the it's all bad bucket. But the second bucket,
(15:12):
and I think it's important, is this ethic stuff that's
going on right now. Where we are finding out day
after day, week after week that like, oh, there was
an investigation into the leak, but they forgot to put
the justices or their spouses under oath, right, Oh we
don't know. Well, listen, it's certainly not them. I mean,
why would justices leak in opinion, especially one that they've
(15:34):
spent their whole careers focused on. It's such like big
Downton Abbey Energy right where the clerks and the elevator
operators and the cleaners are forced to sign affidavits and
get their phones searched like they're being shaken upside down
by the ankles for like evidence untild. Their careers will suffer,
and the justices are part of an iterative questioning process.
(15:57):
It was iterative, it must be binding. So there's a
lot to worry about in terms of why is Clarence
Thomas sitting on cases where his wife has material interest?
Why is John Robert's wife getting you know, lots and
lots of money to head hunt and place lawyers in
big DC firms that argue in front of it. So
all this stuff is going on, there is no reason
to believe that the court is going to adopt and
(16:20):
enforce a code of ethics as against themselves. And so
we have a court with like twenty something per cent
public approval writing and maybe that's where we started, which is,
what do you do in a country predicated on you know,
constitutional democracy and the rule of law when the institution
of the judiciary is just punching itself in the face
(16:41):
every single day. Yeah, exactly, wow, and punching us in
the face more specifically well when it comes to certainly
abortion and LGBTQ rights and punching not just punching us
in the face, perhaps setting us on fire. But yeah,
it's a problem, and I think, you know, at least
(17:02):
in my lane, it is the existential problem we're going
to have to pick our way through. But you know
it's important. Yeah, yeah, no, it certainly is. Thank you
so much for joining us. I am such a fan
and I feel like you're doing really important work that
I am not at all capable of, and just so
(17:22):
for that, I'm always just in complete all of you.
So thank you for joining us. Oh right back at you,
And I think that to your dad and mine, we're trying,
we're doing we're doing the best weekend to explain crazy
obscure technical ship and that too is in the Constitution exactly.
(17:51):
Jacqueline Alimony is a reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome
too Fast Politics, Jackie. Thanks so much for having me, Molly,
I was I did to see this story. So I
want to talk to you about the making of Anna
Paulina Luna. Um. So, this is such an interesting So
a member of Congress, she is newly elected. When did
(18:14):
you start to think like, perhaps this person is not
all she seems. Yes, so I have to give my
colleagues credit for that. Someone had gotten a tip that
we should look into her, but no one else in
my team really had the bandwidth to dedicate the time
needed for this kind of story. And I am, you know,
coming off the tales of covering January six, then needed
(18:38):
a new obsession. So happily picked this up and you know,
quickly googled her, read her campaign biography and pretty quickly
realized that her story was worth looking into. And from there,
you know, as my my colleague p K tweeted, sort
of dug into her her modern Dickens esque character that
(19:03):
she described, But she didn't end up being very Dickens,
did She not quite pseudo Dickens perhaps, yes, And I
know we're all trying to make sort of these George
Santos comparisons and her embellishments and the way that she
sort of stretches parts of her bio are George Santos esque,
(19:25):
but she's a bit more nuanced and subtle about it.
And so essentially, as her cousin told me, she takes
a grain of truth and makes a beach out of
lies with it. And so we sort of found this
pattern of her taking different parts of her upbringing her identity,
her experiences, and kind of weeding together a political persona
(19:49):
that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of these incidents and
situations that she gets into. She's not a person who
is a se real, fabulous, but she has one real
similarity with George Santos, which as a Jew myself, I
continue to find completely strange, which is she lied about
(20:11):
being Jewish. Yeah, and this is actually a whole other
story in and of itself, sort of this trend of
Republicans claiming to be Messianic Jews. These are people who
identify as Jewish and say they believe Jesus is the Messiah,
but are not considered Jewish by Jews. Jews, my actual
real Jews were Jewish. But yes, yeah, and you know,
(20:35):
I communicated extensively with Congresswoman Luna's mother about this, because
no one in her family were called her father dabbling
in Messianic Judaism, Judaism, any anything of the sort. Remember
him actually citing scripture from the Bible. And Luna's mother
herself said that he was a Christian that embraced the
(20:56):
Messianic faith. And she also said, you know, eventually down
the line he started attending a Messianic Jewish church in
Orange County. And I know it can kind of seem
like we're sort of tracy flicking this that, like we're being,
you know, a little bit nitpicky with the language here.
But all of these embellishments and sort of slight fabrications
(21:17):
they all add up. And and not only is she
was she not raised as a Messianic Jew, but it
actually turns out that there's sort of a big gap
in a part of her upbringing and her family history
that she's she has conveniently skimmed over, which is the
fact that her father's father, her grandfather, who actually played
a significant part in raising her before he passed away
(21:38):
because her father lived in his house when he couldn't
get on his feet, and lived in the garage where
Anna would come visit him. He was actually identified as
a Roman Catholic and immigrated to Canada from Germany nineteen
fifty four and was part of the armed forces of
Nazi Germany when he was a teenager in the nineteen forties.
Now he was a Nazi. But we need to again
(21:59):
provide a little bit of a nuance here. You know,
if you were a Roman Catholic born in that time period, right,
you probably didn't really a choice. You were forced to
enroll in Hitler Youth the you know, the moment you
turned a certain age. And then we obtained pictures of
him in his Warmont uniform that were provided by members
of Luna's family. We were told that he was actually
(22:20):
held in a prisoner of war camp for an extended
period of time and that this was a big part
of his life. I mean, this is traumatizing for anyone. Oh,
he was a Nazi held in a prisoner of war
camp after he was captured. Okay, I was like, oh,
he wasn't participating with the Nazis, but now he was
being held by the Americans. That is unclear. We were
(22:41):
told that he went into battle and was pretty soon
captured in France. And in these details we ultimately actually
did not include in the story because they're they're sort
of fuzzy. But what is not fuzzy is that he
was in Hitler's army. We also reviewed these other indications
of his family's associations and ties. You know, his mother
(23:02):
was awarded this Cross of the Mother award that we
reviewed that Hitler gives. Hitler gave at the time to
women who had a certain amount of children. So there's
there's no question about about that. I can only speak
to my own experience, but if I were related to
a Nazi, I would probably not lie about being Jewish. Yeah,
and you know, look, there are politicians who have dealt
(23:23):
with this before. You know, we should not bear the
sins of our ancestors, and no, exactly, we shouldn't bear
the sins of our ancestors. That said, you would think
you would be a little more sensitive if you are
related to an actual Nazi or sort of you know,
pullin Arnold Schwarzenegger and just get it out there, address
it and say that you don't affiliate with it, right?
(23:44):
What she did not do? I want to just get
a little bit on the background here. She is a
Turning Point. She comes up to Turning Point right. Yeah, exactly.
And for people like my dad who are not completely
versed on the culture of Turning Point, you us say,
can you explain to us a little bit about what
it is and how it has created these many celebrities. Yea.
(24:07):
So Turning Point USA is a conservative grassroots organization founded
by this guy, Charlie Kirk to sort of appeal to
young conservatives and disaffected white youth right and Kirk has
developed a track record for recruiting, successfully recruiting candidates um
(24:29):
and elect getting them elected to public office. And there
seems to be a track record of the sort of
a very specific type of candidate that he likes to recruit.
There are a few people that have come up through
Turning Point in USA, and like who I believe the
most recent person would probably be louren Overt. Oh wow, Okay,
(24:50):
so idiots, you can't say it, but I can. I
do think that, you know, there's been an interesting and
Jonathan Martin actually pointed to this out. I think you
can they're a lot of takeaways from this piece on
Anna Paulina Luna, but one of them could be sort
of there is a new crop of lawmakers who are
not you know, your student body presidents and valedictorians, but
(25:11):
rather these sort of people in the mold of of
influencers turned politicians like Candice Owens, who is a big
Turning Point alum, and Luna is is the most recent example,
and she was found by Charlie Charlie Kirk on Instagram.
You know, she was someone who while she was in
(25:31):
the military, she was doing a bunch of modeling. She
was the Maxim hottie of the week at one time.
She was trying to make a living off of modeling
while in their force. And eventually this sort of turned
into modeling with big guns a R fifteens and pulling
off these sort of gadfly photo shoots and Berkeley's school
(25:53):
campus and she she developed a legitimate following on Instagram
and it caught the attention of Charlie Kirk, who reached
out to her and ultimately brought her onto Turning Points
as the director of Hispanic Engagement. She Ispanic, she is Hispanic. Yep. Yeah,
But what we gathered in our during our reporting journey
(26:16):
about her was that she didn't really identify as Hispanic
while growing up, and actually her name was Anna Paulina
Mayer Hoffer, and when she signed on to work as
the as Turning Points as director of Hispanic Engagement, she
dropped her last name and eventually became Anna Paulina Luna,
which is her grandmother's maiden name, and her mother actually
(26:40):
just recently changed her last name to Luna as well.
This isn't a conversation really about questioning her Hispanic credentials.
That's she's definitely Hispanic, but it's not something that she
really publicly embraced and made central to her identity and
to her political persona until she started getting involved in politics. Right.
(27:00):
Did Charlie Cark have many comments on any of this.
We had enough sourcing and people that we were speaking
with it. We didn't speak with Charlie Kirk directly, but
after the fact he sort of added to the pile
on some of these extremists. I feel like the difference
between Santos, where there are just constantly everyday stories and again,
(27:22):
Anna Polina is not George Santos, right, Right, It did
seem like the right, nobody sort of took a break
and was like, oh, maybe this is not for us.
They all just sort of doubled down, and we're like,
she's our girl, and we're sticking with her. Yeah. And
I mean to be clear that people who were defending
her are not the most popular members of the House
(27:43):
GEOP conference. It was people like MATC. Gates, Thomas Massey,
Lauren Bobert who have caused some major headaches already for
the new House Leader, Kevin McCarthy. But what unfortunately happened
was we made one tiny or that we ultimately had
to correct about. We used, unfortunately an erroneous voter registration
(28:05):
database and had said that that that Luna was registered
as a Democrat when she was living in Washington State.
But Washington State obviously only requires voters to declare their
party affiliation when they cast a ballot in the presidential primary.
And we think that potentially this database that we were
using might have pulled some like predictive modeling. Anyways, we
were wanted to be extremely transparent immediately corrected it. Also,
(28:29):
it was not sort of the crux of the story
or essential to the story. I mean, we had multiple
people saying that that Luna what when they knew her
pre running for Congress, that that she was pro Obama,
pro choice, held liberal beliefs. But you know, this day
to give some people to sort of attack the article
(28:50):
in bad faith, including Luna, who just contined that we
said that we're going to retract the whole thing when
it's just not true. I mean, that is of corners.
Like the typical tact of the far right is that,
you know, a mainstream outlet will make a mistake and corrected,
and then the far right will say, see, this was
(29:12):
on purpose. There's never room for a mistake that's been corrected.
These people live on the internet and are quite good
at it. You know, they've come after me numerous times,
and like they kind of do that in the hopes
that you won't write about them anymore. I sort of
just tried to put my phone down and yeah, there
was really no touch of grating. But it's challenging when
(29:33):
I'm sure you understand this when you've worked on something
for a month, you've communicated extensively with members of her family,
including her mother, and feel like you really did your
best to be as fair and accurate as possible and
Essentially every single sentence other than the one stupid error
that we made, it has been fact checked to death.
(29:55):
You can't really control the rest of the way it
plays out after that, and so you know, I want
to of course clarify every single I thought intellectually dishonest
attack on the piece, but right, right, right, you can't
do that. I know that our readers they're smarter than that,
and they can have their ways. Look, this is the
far right playbook, right. They don't want anyone in the
(30:18):
mainstream media covering them because his scrutiny is, you know,
exposes the corruption and or even not the corruption, but
exposes the lawe. I mean, I think that ultimately is
part of the reason that they pushed back so hard.
And I know, I feel like I've gotten to this
debate with a few people, um where we can get
sort of cynical and feel like, well, you know, Luna
(30:41):
is not that different from any other member of Congress
who co opts certain part of her identity in order
to be more appealing to certain groups or to and
to win a seat and win over their constituents. I
think she's pretty different though, even though she's not George Santos.
I do think that voters deserved to know their lawmakers are,
what their qualifications are, what their backgrounds are, and whether
(31:04):
or not that is consistent with the person that they've
been presented, right. I mean I also think ultimately Trump
did this thing where he said, you know, you can
you know, you don't have to be governed by the
normal tenants of truth at all. And so I do
think it's really important for journalists to expose this kind
(31:25):
of stuff when it happens, because otherwise everyone in office
is going to be you know, some some shade of
a fabulous I think something that this story also sort
of raised with some of the gaps in local reporting.
I mean, the Tampa Bay Times did an excellent first
stab at this in when she first ran and ultimately lost.
(31:46):
But I do think this is, you know, the textbook
case for why local news is so important, because sometimes
these people just slipped through the cracks of national news coverage,
but it ultimately does affect those local communities. Yeah, and
also everyone because she is a member of Congress, do
(32:06):
we think that there will be any I mean, certainly McCarthy,
you know, with his five votes, is not going to
touch this do you think that there will be any
blowback that isn't just partisan. I think that GOP leadership
treatment of George Santos and they're very hands off approach
to him kind of I think says what we need
(32:28):
to know about the way that they would they'd handle
in a Paulina Luna, or whether or not they'll address
this in any way. But what I'm on the lookout
for now is sort of any follow ups to this.
Maybe sometimes these kinds of stories, as we saw with Santos,
people come out with more right. Yeah, the damn breaks
(32:48):
and other things about their either their campaign, fundraising practices
or other parts of their background get more scrutiny and
come to light in the aftermath. So interesting. I hope
you'll come back. Thank you so much for having me.
I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and
you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of
(33:09):
pieces of pundentry each week. This is why every week
I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles
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having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up
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to join our mailing list. That's Fast Politics pod dot com.
(33:35):
Congressman Seth Malton represents Massachusetts sixth district. Welcome to you,
Fast Politics Congressman Seth Malton. That's great to be here.
We are going to ultimately dork out on high speed trains,
but first I wanted to ask you about a little
bit about what you know. You were marine, You have
(33:59):
done four tours in Iraq, you have a lot of perspective.
Let's do like two minutes on the Chinese spy balloon, alright,
because I hate myself and I haven't it just there
hasn't been enough Chinese spy balloon coverage. We got to
talk about the balloon. So it strikes me that the
sense here is that as long as Biden, I mean
(34:23):
Biden did say last Wednesday that he had said shoot
it down and that the military had wanted to wait
until it was over water, Republicans obviously have decided that
this is that he should be impeached. I mean, what
is your thinking here? My thinking is that the commander
in chief should follow the best military advice he's given. Right,
(34:44):
the last commander in chief used to go on Fox
and Friends and get military advice. This Commander in chief
actually listens to the Joint chiefs of staff and they said,
wait until it's over water to shoot it down. They
had to use a missile to shoot it down. We
don't need a missile falling on somebody's head, right, That
was my sense. It's twice the size of a seven
four seven. You don't want, if you know, if you
(35:04):
kill one person, game over. Actually someone said to me
is if you kill somewhere, if you kill one person,
it's like right out of Veep. But I feel like
VP isn't quite that dark. But the sense I get
is that the Chinese spy balloon, they have satellites that
can do what this balloon did. Well, we don't know
exactly what the balloon capabilities are. That's why we're investigating it.
(35:28):
That's why we're collecting the pieces to put it back together.
So we don't actually know if that's true. But we
do know for sure that there have been a lot
of balloons floating around for a while. So the idea
that leaving this up for an extra day or two
is really going to make a difference in their intelligence
collection just doesn't really hold water, right, And there have
been balloons during different administrations and also across different countries.
(35:52):
I want to talk to you about where we are
right now with China because it does seem like much
sort of more prepared, yes, than where we are with Russia,
and a certain way, well, I think they're both somewhat precarious.
Bows can be bad, but yes, both can be pretty bad.
Here's the problem with Russia. We're doing well in Ukraine.
(36:15):
Ukraine is pushing the Russians back, but we still have
trouble answering that big looming question, the elephant in the
room question, which is how does this end? How do
we defeat Pudent? So we never tries this again without
forcing him into a corner. So we does something really
rash and stupid. And that's why the next year in Ukraine,
This year could be much more difficult than the last,
(36:38):
even though I think we're going to see the Ukrainians
do well on the ground and have more victories city
to city. But with China, look, tensions have been escalating
for a long time, and for a long time, this
just has not been on our radar. Pardon the pun.
We've missed the balloons, but the American people have also
just missed this threat, Like, we haven't understood why this
(37:00):
is such a big deal. And yet if you spend
some time looking at the classified intelligence, you realize, oh, whoa,
this this is a big deal. We gotta watch out here. Yeah,
I mean, it's it seems like a very big deal. Also,
I mean, i mean, again, there's a lot going on
with China, but like, where are you with situations like TikTok. Well,
(37:21):
this is what's so interesting about this new China Select
Committee that was just stood up and I've been appointed
to it, is that we're not just looking at the
military side of things, the military deterrent side of things.
How do we tell China militarily you don't want to
have a war in the Pacific. We're looking at all
the economic implications as well. Uh. And we're looking at
(37:41):
social media all the different ways that we have daily interactions,
not just with China, but with the Chinese Communist Party.
Here's the problem with TikTok. If your kids are mine
are on TikTok, then the Chinese Communist Party is collecting
their information and influencing their behavior. I'm not sure that's
why I want for my kids. In fact, I'm pretty
(38:01):
confident that I don't. But we can't just ban TikTok
because then they'll be, you know, TikTok to uh next week.
So we've got to have a comprehensive policy here to
address this very real threat to the American people. But
that's not going to be something we figure out overnight.
That's why we've got some deliberations to come on this
special committee. I mean, now we're in this Republican House now,
(38:26):
I mean I watched the Weaponization Subcommittee hearing today. Some
of these Republicans don't seem very interested in like actually
finding solutions more just making content for Fox News, No doubt,
absolutely that's what they're there for. But fingers crossed. The
China Select Committee is actually different. They've they've appointed a
(38:47):
whole different crop of Republicans and we have a very
talented group of Democrats as well, who are going to
take a serious look at this in as bipartisan a
way as possible, because this is a massive national security threat,
and it's in that anomics security threat, it's across the board.
Competition with the Chinese Communist Party is a very real thing,
(39:08):
and we've got to have a better strategy to deal
with it. To make sure we win well. It does
seem like the Biden administration is pushing back a lot
when it comes to manufacturing and the chips America's problems
with China that aren't necessarily will China take Taiwan though
that is obviously an anxiety that I think most of
us have, but more problems of you know, like they're
(39:32):
beating America and manufacturing in ways that America can't keep up,
and so some of that is being addressed with this
Chips Act, which is in some ways is sort of
it's kind of I mean, it's kind of strange to
see that we now have two parties that are sort
of working on trying to sort of figure out trade
(39:52):
in a way that fixes America's deficit. I mean, isn't
it crazy and strange that two parties could work together
on the something like that? Right? I mean, because that's
where we are in our politics. But after the stuff
Ice today, I have a hard time imagine that these
Republicans are serious about doing anything. But I do hear
what you're saying, and the truth is both Democrats and
(40:13):
Republicans have a very similar are both on the same
page when it comes to China. Really ultimately, I mean,
Republicans will say like it's because Biden has some kind
of relations, you know, some kind of lie about Hunter Biden,
but ultimately, really they're quite aligned. I mean, let's not
forget that Trump also asked Sijing ping for help winning
(40:34):
his election so well, and Trump has a Chinese bank account.
There are a lot of problems with with Trump and
the extreme Republicans here, and you're not going to see
the extreme Republicans in the House be helpful on any
of these efforts. They're just trying to score political points,
for sure. But there are serious Republicans working with a
lot of serious Democrats on this challenge. And you're right,
(40:57):
it's so many different things. It's how do we deal
with TikTok, It's how do we deal with the fact
that we're trying to develop a green energy grid and
we seem to be buying all our green energy supplies
like solar panels from China. Doesn't make sense. I want
to be buying solar panels. They're manufactured in America. So
we've got a lot of work to do. There are
(41:17):
a lot of climate change implications, there are a lot
of economic implications. There are implications to how we live
our lives every single day on social media. It's a
real serious challenge, but there are also some exciting opportunities.
And and and I do think that there's at least
some hope that on this committee we can do things
in a bipartisan way. But we'll see. I mean, it's
(41:38):
interesting because there's such like an appetite for bipartisanship. And
one of the things Biden has really done is a
lot of passing, a lot of bipartisan administrator you know, infrastructure,
et cetera. The chips ack you mentioned, that's that was
toy bipartisan, right, But I know that the reproblicanveys loves
this kind of craziness. They do. Talk to me about
(41:59):
the trains. Let's do the trains. I want to hear
about the trains. I love the trains, big train person.
I took a train to die. It's crazy that we
don't have high speed rail in America. And look like
in the last few weeks we had six thousand, three
hundred flights canceled. I think flights were canceled on the
Monday after Christmas alone, Southwest canceled sevent of their flights
(42:23):
and Every country in the world is developing high speed
rail except US. Look at Morocco. Morocco has a half
a percent of our GDP okay, so they don't have
a lot of money to waste, and they just invested
two point two billion dollars in a two high speed
railroad because they get a better return on investment. It's
(42:44):
better for the environment, and it's cheaper, and it's less
weather dependent, all those things. Imagine, you know, So think
about this. The busiest high speed rail line in the
world right now is actually a pretty new one is
from Beijing to Shanghai. That's about the same distance as
Chica Ago to Atlanta. So imagine being able to go
from Chicago to Atlanta with never a weather delay, train
(43:05):
every thirty minutes, don't have to go through arduous security,
you don't have to wait in lines forever. Your seats
about three times as big as a seat on on
an airplane, bigger than first class on an airplane. How
long does it take? Four or five hours? Yeah, that's
pretty good. And not only is that great for Chicago
and great for Atlanta, it's great for all the cities
(43:25):
and states in between that are totally left out of
air travel between those two cities. High speed rail is
not just a better, faster, cleaner option for Americans as
opposed to traveling by plane. It's also a way to
knit together this country, right and we need that right now.
We need people in rural America to have access to
(43:46):
jobs in the city so they can get those jobs
if they want them. That We need parts of America
that are just in you know, what we call flyover
country to actually be connected to the coast. That's one
of the beautiful things about high speed rail. But a
lot of Americans just don't know how nice it is
to get on a train that's going to be smooth
and fasten Aurora and arrive on time. And in Spain,
(44:10):
if your train is thirty minutes late, you get a
full refund. Imagine that from any American airline. Imagine the
Southwest said, oh, you have any plane that's thirty minutes late,
You're gonna get a full refund. That's just unimaginable for
us today. Yeah, that's amazing. This is what we're missing.
I mean, is there appetite for this? There absolutely is.
I mean everywhere I go in America, people who have
written high speed trains anywhere else in the world say
(44:32):
we need this here. The problem is a lot of people,
a lot of my colleagues even have never been on
a high speed train, so they don't know what they're missing.
I believe that if we get one good high speed
rail line built in America, it will start to change
things completely. There was actually a lot of opposition to
building high speed rail in Spain. It's it's it's a
very provincial country. The provinces didn't want a tentacle from Madrid,
(44:55):
they called it. But one high speed rail line was built.
Every other province wanted one. So I think if we
get one good high speed rail line built in America,
it could literally set off a revolution. What is the
high speed rail line you're trying to get built right now?
I actually think that the best one to build. And
I'm biased here, I'll admit that because I worked on
this project in the private sector. Oh, I see where
(45:17):
this is going. Yes is Texas and good for you?
And here's why. The reason why it's in and and look,
I don't represent Texas in case you haven't figured that out.
But the reason why Texas is important is because all
the environmental approvals are done it's ready to go. It
just needs an infusion of capital, and it will show
America that this isn't just an East coast thing. This
(45:39):
isn't just a sella corridor thing. This is something that
can work in all parts of America, including Red America.
And once you get Republicans behind high speed rail in
Washington like Democrats already are, then you could see high
speed rail all over this country. That's totally fascinating. One
of my kids is very into the Marines and being
(46:01):
of service, and I'm just curious, are you tight with
the other serviceman Congressman. Yes, we have a great veterans caucus.
It's somewhat selected. We've actually kicked out some veterans who
were just two parts of it and were working across
the Yeah. So, I mean, it's not like a rule
that every veteran in Congress uh is a good guy
(46:22):
or or you know, a good woman. I mean, this
is it's a select group. But the veterans that are
part of this caucus we work together, we meet together,
we find places where we can come together, and we've
done some good things. I mean, it was my bill
to establish nine eight eight as the National Mental Health hotline,
and it's made an incredible difference. Calls are up. Forty
(46:42):
thousands of lives are being saved today that weren't being
saved a year ago because this hotline exists. And I
passed that with the Republican veteran with a veteran who
understands mental health issues because of dealing with friends and
colleagues who've had post traumatic stress as I have myself.
And so we got this past. We got it done,
and that's what Democrats and Republicans coming together can actually do.
(47:06):
That makes the different American people. So who got kicked out?
I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't say, Oh, you should
definitely say now, I don't want to say, actually I
had to ask, So anyway, that's fine. It's entirely up
to you to tell our listeners who was kicked out
of the Veterans Caucus. We will all just go online
(47:27):
and try to figure it out. You can probably figure
it out. But the point is to know that we're serious,
we want to work together, and we want to get
things done. Yeah. I mean, I've asked you this question
during our interview in a couple of different ways, but
I really do I just you know I was at
this event last night, this congressional event where Nancy may
escape this speech. She was funny. She was not fun night.
(47:49):
I am telling you I have now heard her twice,
and she may be a friend of yours. I know
she went to the citadel. I know she was of service.
But like the first time I heard her, I thought,
this will and is really smart. Like she may have
views I don't agree with, but this time I thought,
this woman is this is really inappropriate? Like there were
a lot of really inappropriate jokes. I thought. I thought
(48:11):
it was a little beyond the pale. Honestly, sorry I do,
but I was curious, like so I have just been
struck by and you know, Marjorie Taylor Green was there.
There were so many Republicans who who made their stick,
you know, the attack on democrats. I mean, how are
you guys going to be able to work with these people?
You don't work in Marjorie Taylor Green? Right, you don't
(48:31):
know When I first ran for Congress, I mean back
in the heavy days of which it feels like a
long time ago politically because things have gotten so much worse.
I ran on a platform of bipartisanship, but people would
ask me, Seth, like, how are you going to work
with Ted Cruz, And the answer is simple, I don't
work with Ted Cruz. I've never even met Ted Cruz
in in in eight years in Congress because he's not
(48:53):
interested in working with anyone across the aisle. And he's
frankly a jerk, to put it politely, and everyone who
knows them agrees with that. Right. I think he'd delight
in the descriptor he'd take that as a compliment. Yeah,
but you've got to find Republicans you can work with,
like Chris Stewart in Utah that I teamed up with
the PASS, Like Mike Gallagher on the Armed Services Committee,
(49:16):
fellow Marine veteran who I'm working with on the Select
Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. So there are Republicans
you can work with, but you've got to find the
ones you actually can. Republicans have until George Sandos gets arrested,
they have a five seat majority. I mean it's close, right,
it could be closer, and so that means that you know,
(49:37):
they kind of either just continue barely passing legislation that
means nothing and is obviously not going to go anywhere.
In the Democratic Senate, or they can decide, hey, Speaker McCarthy,
let's actually get something done. And that means they're going
to have to find some Democrats to come on board
and do things that are actually reasonable. So look, I
don't have a lot of hope. We all know that
(49:59):
McCarthy got elected by pandering to these extremists on the right.
But there is a chance, and if there's a chance,
it's worth trying because the American people need us to
get things done. Seth Malton, thank you so much, thanks
for having me on. It's an honor. Jesse Cannon. So
(50:23):
the Republicans would really really like to pretend that they
don't want to cut Medicare and fake out their voters,
but one Russia, Ron Johnson is not having it. He's
holding the line and saying, cut it, baby, cut it.
Let's take a listen again. It is a legal Ponzi scheme. Yes,
I got accused in two thousand and ten that I
called a ponzi scheme. I admitted it. Yes, it's a
(50:44):
legal Ponzi scheme. It operates the same way as any
other Ponzi scheme, except that this is sanctioned by the government.
But it's no, it's no more uh, it's no less
irresponsible than a Ponzi scheme. From that stampoint, I love
Ron and On. He is the dumbest member of the Senate.
(51:05):
And actually that two of her would like a word well.
And also, I mean there's a Cindy Hyde Smith who
once dressed in a Confederate uniform. So I don't wanna
leave out some of the other Republicans, but she is
really a stupid idiot. And Republicans have been pretending that
(51:26):
they don't want to cut social Security. After Biden said
they wanted to cut social Security, they went after him
and we're like, Biden is a liar, this isn't true.
We don't want to cut social security. Here's Ron and
Non saying that social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and
for that, that is our moment of fuy. That's it
(51:49):
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. And again, thanks for listening. M HM.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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