August 6, 2025 • 44 mins
Know Your Enemy’s Sam Adler-Bell examines why Democrats attack their best messengers.
NDRC President John Bisognano details Texas’s extreme gerrymandering plan.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this CBO, the.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Non partisan Congressional Budget Office, says the Republican megabill.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Will now cost four point one trillion dollars due to
higher borrowing costs.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
We have such a great show for you today, Know
your Enemy's own.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sam Adler Bell stops by to talk to us.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
About why Democrats attack their best messengers. Then we'll talk
to NDRC's John Visignano about Texas is an insane jerrymandering plan.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
But first the news Somali.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
We keep tracking these ICE arrests. We read a report
on the last episode that it seems it's gotten through
Stephen Miller's skull as odd as it's shaped, that they
can't arrest three thousand immigrants a day, and the ICE
arrests are actually declining amid the backlash.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So you'll be shocked to hear that. By the way,
there was photographs today of ICE agents carrying like little girl.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah yeah, it was horrifor was yesterday, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, yesterday, She's like four eleven, carrying her down the street.
They put her in a facility, in that Louisiana facility. Yeah,
let me tell you what's happening here. People are seeing
these photographs and they are horrified, and they're seeing these
videos and they're horrified. They're seeing the kind of stuff
that pro Publica reported. I don't know if ESAs, but
(01:34):
pro Publica had this sort of amazing and deeply disturbing
reporting about all of the windows that ICE agents have
broken in people's cars in order to arrest them. And
you have these women crying, you have pregnant women crying,
children watching in horror.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I mean, this is this is pretty bleak stuff. And
guess what what, voters don't like it.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
I know they don't. You know, ICE was actually on
my block the day before yesterday.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Ooh, what were they doing?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Well, you know, they were walking around making people scared.
And what you saw is a lot of people being various,
made in people figuring out how they're going to get
in their way, and they had a nice hiring sign
on the side of the truck and it was deeply disturbing.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
The average arrests it was twelve hundred daily arrests in June,
well short of what Stephen Miller's stated goal of three
thousand immigration arrests for day.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Here's one of those.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Things that Stephen Miller is about to find out there
aren't that many people to arrest. And also, this is
just going to I mean, it's going to derail the economy,
but before it does, it's going to derail the administration.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
And lots of it is in people's lives.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think it's important to say, like morally reprehensible, politically
very stupid, and we're going to see this play out
in a real way. I bet we're going to see
a play out during this twenty twenty five election cycle too,
I really do.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
We're seeing these town halls now. And I talked to.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
James Talarico, who is a Texas state legislator, or who
was a Texas state legislator.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
And is now thinking about possibly running for.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
The Senate, and he was talking about just how much
this world like people are really mad, Like he had
a town hall and he said that he had never
had so many people at his town hall, Like I
think we in the mainstream media may be missing this
story of these furious, furious, furious voters.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
And I saw it when I was on.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
My book tour talk about being a coastal elitist here,
but I did.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I saw people really mad.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And I think, you know, when we see this poor
polling for Democrats, it's not and we've talked about this before,
but I think it's important to just reiterate it. It's
not that Democrats have lost interest in other Democrats. It's
that Democrats feel that their party is not as mad
as they are. And I think that is the real
That's what explains those numbers.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Really, what you could see is you can contrust two
types of polls. Democratic policy is good, the elected officials
were bringing to fight for them.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Not popular, Yeah, not popular because they're not doing what
their voters want them to.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
That's correct. So one of the things I'm really obsessed
with is this Project twenty twenty five tracker. So we're
a little over six months into this Trump administration, meaning
one eighth of the way through it, Dear God help us,
and Project twenty twenty five is already forty seven percent complete.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, a lot of this stuff they wanted to do
in Project twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Five they are clearly doing right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
The attacks on institutions that making the DOJ and arm
of the Trump administration. There were a lot of opportunities
that the folks at the Heritage Foundation were able to
put it together to find, So I think this is
probably pretty accurate. I would say that it's just we're
(05:03):
just going to have.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
To do a lot of a lot of soul searching.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And a lot of regulation, and a lot of connecting
with each other and with voters, and we're going to
have to really start a kind of now, you know, reconciliation,
a kind of return to American normalcy, and it's going
(05:27):
to be a long process.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
But yes, it's here. We see it happening right now,
and it's bad.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Speaking of that, there is a new poll that says
most US adults are stressed by grocery costs. I noticed
my local grocery store just three weeks ago announced that
they have heard their consumers and they are doing everything
they can to find the ways they could cut costs
at the store because they see how enormously costs of skyrocketed.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
No groceries are really expected.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I go to a grocery store and I'm like, huh,
it's shockingly expensive. And part of that is inflation. And
part of that is inflation, and by the way. I
was told that Donald Trump was going to bring the
price of groceries down on day one.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
You know what day it is like one hundred and ninety.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Something, and the price of groceries they're not down, let
me tell you.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
But I like that.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
My favorite thing is he has it all.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
He's laser focused on bringing down the prices of things.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
That's why he's walking on the White House roof.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Boy, wait, he's walking on the White House roof.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Oh you haven't seen this. Everybody thinks it's a distraction
from Epstein. I actually think it's that he's losing his
shit with the de Bedsha.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
My favorite thing is that he is laser focused on
putting the big banks in the process. The President accuses
both JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America of discrimination
by refusing to take his personal business.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
You know, when you are.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
In a Banana republic, it's important that your monarch makes
lots of truly unhinged declarations, and this can be one
of them. He is going to direct regulators to penalize
anybody found who have dropped a client on political grounds,
including Donald J.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Trump. Incredible stuff, No notes.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Sam Adler Bell is the co host of the Know
Your Enemy Podcast. Welcome to Fast Politics, Sam Adler.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Bell, Hi, Molly, so happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Here we are.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Another day in paradise or authoritarian tilt towards whatever is
happening here. Tell me what are the things that are
keeping you up at night?
Speaker 6 (07:35):
Not out of fear, but out of just burning contempt.
This story, burning contempt, this story with firing the BLS
chief over the bad jobs numbers. I you know, it's
like the thing with Trump is you're always going back
and forth between like, God, this is a really scary
(07:55):
situation and God, this contemptible fool who is a narcissist,
who like just shouldn't be anywhere near a single lever
of power. Like you can't have a president whose first
thought when they get a bad set of jobs numbers
is to shoot the messenger. And it's just it's just
so pathetic. I mean, I can see the ways in
(08:17):
which it could be really bad. You know, right, people
stop trusting these numbers and they install you know whoever
they install after you know this interim director.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Mister wonderful, Yeah, mister wonderful.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
But even if they were just a person with perfect credentials,
people won't trust it. People on the left won't trust it,
and they and they have good reason that too, because
why do you get rid of the person if not
to install somebody who's going to fudge the numbers. And
I just so I can see the path to it
being ruinous. But at the moment, I just find myself
being like, how can anybody think this is okay? How
(08:50):
can you just be like, Yeah, that's my guy up there.
When he gets bad news, he fires the person who
gives him bad news.
Speaker 5 (08:56):
It's so pathetic.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I think you have really explained a fascinating phenomenon as
we round into a decade of dealing with Donald Trump,
which is it's scary, slash, it's stupid, and I feel like,
you know, the Venn diagram of like it's stupid, it's scary,
and they are like not quite a circle. So like
(09:18):
the Rose Garden redo is just stupid, Like who could
you know? I mean, obviously whatever, there's some historical president
for the Rose Garden, but it's largely just you know,
but Bureau of Labor Statistics trying to redistrict your way
into not losing the majority in the House. That kind
(09:39):
of thing is actually quite scary.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, stupid and scary, that's the mix.
That's the Trumpian stew at all times. And yeah, it
can be hard to know just how to calibrate your
own reactions sometimes. But I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty
fired up lately.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Really tell us why?
Speaker 5 (10:03):
Well?
Speaker 6 (10:03):
I the other thing Matt and I in my podcast
Know your Enemy we were talking about.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Explain, go on, you go ahead, now go.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
Just the sheer scale of the corruption in this administration
has really started to get to me because I think
it's the kind of story that's hard to keep in
your mind or kind of like it's it's just by
its very nature, would become numb to it and our
standards change, you know. But Matt was just reading to
me from, you know, a story from several months ago
(10:34):
about you know, the crypto people who you know, somebody
who invested twenty million dollars in Trump's personal crypto coin
and therefore got to go, you know, to the meme coin.
Meme coin, right, Yeah, I mean we how can we?
That seems like, you know, an age ago, But it's
still the case that any anybody, any individual in the world,
(10:55):
any rich person, whether they're an agent of a foreign
government government or not can give you know, fifty million
dollars to Trump in secret for whatever reason. I mean
these and you know, the fluctuations in the stock market
that allow his cronies to you know, basically insider trade
on the tariff negotiations. Like this kind of stuff would
have been the one big scandal in any other administration
(11:19):
that we would have talked about for weeks and weeks
and weeks. But I find myself just being mostly disgusted
by the fact that this administration is just like one
giant machine for Mafio, so you know, rackets, basically making
money for people that he's friends with.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It feels like you get here by allowing members of
Congress to continue trading stocks, by not regulating technology, by
some of the feelings, and you know, I think I
have old children because I had them when I was
very young, like a tea smarter, just kidding, not a teenager,
(11:56):
but pretty young. And they say I'm an neoliberal because
that is the biggest insult they can think of, except
my other kid, who's like, you're a communist, which again okay,
but but there are feelings of neoliberals that got you
like and you know, the sort of the sort of go.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Along to get along and the and.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I also think like trying to sort of emulate Reagan
in the yeah It's section to thirty.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, can we talk about that?
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Well, I mean I think that's true because I have
this thought sometime about like how do we get back
from this era where huge parts of the voting populace
thinks it's fine for the for the president to basically
make the presidency a personal project of his own wealth
creation and his family's own wealth. Like it's it's disturbing
(12:51):
that he does that. It's even more disturbing that it
doesn't seem to be a problem.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Is it the partisanship that has Like is it not
a part is it? Is it not a problem for
them because it's their team?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I mean, is that why?
Speaker 5 (13:04):
I think largely?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
But what I what I what I think about in
terms of your your question about like how we got here?
Is that I think in order for if there's ever
if a left party, say the Democrats, probably the Democrats
ever becomes a kind of like, you know, the kind
of cultural hegemonic leader in this country, it would be
(13:26):
because they've been able to credibly you know, point out
that it's wrong, evil, anti democratic for the Republicans to
just use the machinery of government to make money for
themselves at all times. And the reason that that doesn't
really happen, or it hasn't really happened, or that isn't
a winning issue for the Democrats, I think, is because
they aren't credible on that issue, exactly for the reasons
(13:48):
you're saying, because of insider trading, because of you know,
just like that that that has the kind of populist,
anti plutocratic message has been a minority voice in the
party and in fact, you know, to kind of talk
out of my own lefty book here, I mean, the
one person who everybody agrees is credible on this issue,
(14:09):
Bernie Sanders. Every time he got close to power, the
Democrats did everything in their power to prevent him from becoming,
you know, the leader of the party.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
I mean, not for nothing.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
And I hate to be like this kind of prototypical
millennial leftist and my feelings about this, but Bernie Sanders
is the most popular senator in America.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
And why is that?
Speaker 6 (14:30):
And he's including with independence, including with Republicans.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Why is that?
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Because he does represent this other side of the coin,
which is when Bernie Sanders says, I'm disgusted by you know,
democrats making money from the stock market, just as I
am about Republicans. I'm disgusted by Donald Trump using you know,
the office of the presidency to extremely increase his wealth.
You know, he seems credible, He really seems like he
(14:54):
hates it, and he's not himself some kind of secret
rich guy.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
The thing about Bernie.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Sanders, he's not the only one, but he is the
kind of prototypical figure who represents this credibility in his
anti plutocratic message is anti oligarchy message, and he's been
on that message, you know, since twenty sixteen, and it's
not a coincidence. I think the Democrats haven't been able
to adopt that message in a way that seems that's winning,
(15:22):
because they also have tried to marginalize Bernie, you know,
much less so than they did in Trump's first term.
Speaker 5 (15:28):
He's kind of on side now.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
But I just think in order for there to be
you know, in order for the Democrats to benefit from
the graft that this administration engages on a regular basis,
they need more figures who seem like they mean it
when they you know, as you know, Alex Koburn used
to say that their hate is pure, right.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Really, I think important and also true. I wonder though
it's so so what you're saying is something that I
actually spend a lot of time basically in my head.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I spent almost eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Of my day worrying about all of this, right, I
just like, you know, what's going to happen to d
And it strikes me that Mondani has successfully channeled this
populism in a way that is both the populism is
a real thing, and he has gone to voters who
(16:30):
are not the elites, who are the sort of because
like the mayoral ship is always decided not in Manhattan,
but really in the Bronx and Brooklyn, which are districts
that are not afful you know, they're a mix, right,
And so it strikes me that Mondani has managed to
(16:52):
transmit that to working people, the populist message.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
I think to a significant degree.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
I mean, I also think it's true as much is
I think it's tendentious the way that the right tries
to use it against him, that there is a huge
part of his coalition that is the kind of like
downwardly mobile, professional middle class, the millennial socialist types. But
I don't really have the same contempt for those people
as people on the writer in the center of the
(17:20):
party do because those are my friends.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
But that's not a huge But that's not I mean,
unfortunately for all of us. That's not a huge group, right, Like, no, no, no,
A huge group are working people. Like, if you're going
to win a primary in New York as a mayor,
you are getting voters that are working people from the
outer boroughs.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
No, absolutely, I mean, I think I think you're totally
right about Mom Donnie and the great irony contradiction. I think,
you know, embarrassment for the leadership of the Democratic Party
is that here's a candidate who ran on affordability, affordability, affordability.
If you look at his campaign website, there is basically
no single proposal that is not about lowering the cost
(18:05):
of living for New Yorkers, except for when people were
trying to goad him into talking about Israel.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
He only talked about affordability.
Speaker 6 (18:13):
He made that his whole project, and that was exactly
what the Democrats said was the reason they lost in
twenty twenty four. Yeah, because Trump credibly convinced people that
he was going to lower prices he was going to make.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Because he said that the lower prices, yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (18:27):
And so Mom, Donnie built his whole campaign around exactly
what the kind of Democratic post mortems said a Democratic
candidate should build their campaign around. And now look at
who has not endorsed the Democratic primary winner in New
York City. Well, both the senators from New York, who
one of whom is.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
The head of the Senate.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
As well as this as well as the head of
the Democratic House Caucus, also from New York.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
I find it. How are they going to I mean,
we know why they're not doing it.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
I think we can speculate, but I don't know how
they're going to go around saying, like, the huge problem
we have is that we can't appeal to working class
people and we don't have a credible message about affordability.
And then one when one candidate wins in a landslide
on that message, they don't endorse him. I mean it's
absurd or expected. Absurd or expected.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Jilli Brand really did cover herself in glory when she
came out and said that man Donnie was anti submitted
because what did she say he did nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I can't remember.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
She almost I mean, I think she said that he
had had used the word jahad or something like that.
She she got mixed up because she she you know,
she wanted to talk about globalize the Intifada, which of
course also Mamdani doesn't sing.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Did not say, but he must disavow it despite not
saying it, he must. No.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
I mean, it's.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
It's a really bleak it's a really bleak thing. I
was talking to my podcast produce, Sir Jesse.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
I also have one of those you.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Know that all podcast producers are named Jesse.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
But he was he was saying something interesting, which is
that it's the Democrats. You know, maybe the Democrats just
wish Mamdani was the same candidate without the position he's
staked out on the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
You know.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
But the thing is, you can't get you can't you
can't get that guy, that guy who has the credibility
with young people that he does, that would be able
to turn out all these disaffected young people if he
didn't have that message. I mean, the theory of the
case for Cuomo was that the older people were going
(20:40):
to be so scandalized by his my in my opinion,
principled stand about Israel and it's brutal siege, that they
were going to come out and he was going to
lose for that reason. But actually he won for that
reason because he was able to mobilize a group of
Democratic voters or potential Democrat voters who wouldn't vote for
(21:01):
any candidate who didn't separate themselves from the party's position
on that issue.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
And so it's all part of the same package.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
And I think that's a really, really, really important point
because Mondannie actually didn't win among Jewish voters. Now there's
an incredible tweet that has him not I don't know
if you saw that tweet if you're very online. There
is a tweet where the where like Americans for Adams,
shows who won what, and it doesn't have Mondani having
(21:33):
won Jewish voters, But he did, in fact win Jewish voters,
and he won this Jewish voter and he won it
because I believe that Nat and Yahoo's genie side of
the Palestinian people is not reflective on the many good
Israelis who are just minding their own business like we
Americans are, and.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That quite a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I don't know if he saw the cover of the
Wall Street Journal, the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal
today had pictures of Israeli's protesting net Yahoo. And I
don't think that any of us want to see any
more children and women and men in palist On being
starved to death or shot by idea like, I don't
(22:16):
think that serves anyone.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
No, I don't think so either. And I think that,
I mean, we are seeing somewhat of a changing tide,
a damn breaking this week, it seems. I think within
Israel you have a figure like David Grossman, who's you know,
basically the biggest literary celebrity in the country, coming out
and calling it a genocide. You have both the two
top human rights organizations within Israel calling it a genocide.
(22:42):
And then in this country, like you said, I mean,
you see, you know Marjorie Taylor gu.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Well, that's I think she.
Speaker 6 (22:49):
I think she has your dog's politics a little bit
anti Zionist and anti Semitic, but it's true that she
she has been right about what she said.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
What she said has been true, which she said is true.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
That you can say that October seventh was a disaster
and awful atrocity.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
And what Israel is doing now is a genocide. Marjorie
Taylor Voice of Reason. Marjorie Taylor Reason, Poice of Reason.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
She gave My favorite part of Marjorie Taylor Green moral
arbiterre is that she came to Congress onto or not.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
So this has really gone full circle here.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
It's true, It's true. Yeah, everything Jewish space lasers. Right, Yeah,
she is, I mean like anti she's I think she
very much probably is. And you know, but I do.
Speaker 6 (23:41):
I think that what you could say for Marjorie Taylor
Green is that she does seem to be uh loyal
to the people who put her there. That I think
that the sort of Republican primary voters in her district
who are, you know, effectively the people who put her
there workqan on people, are people who care about the
(24:02):
Epstein story and are people who have I think, in
principle in America first foreign policy view, which for which
to give them credit, it does not make sense that
our own foreign policy interests should be subordinated to a
foreign country, even if that country is Israel. And so
(24:24):
I think that's I think that's the stand that she's
taking and yes, she's probably an anti Semite, but she's
also a.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Member anti Semite.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Actually, I don't think she is. I don't think she is.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
She is.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
We can have fun, but yeah, but I think that's true.
I mean that she is loyal to her constituents. In
so far as you know her, probably her most loudest
constituents are those who think that she shouldn't be in
there to just do whatever Trump tells her to do.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
Either she should be in there.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
To uncover the Epstein files, to stop the pedophile cabal,
and to actually make America, you know, America first and
its foreign policy.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And so, Sam Adler Bell, will you come back.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
I'm waiting for the call from Marjorie's office. I'll take
a job anytime.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You'll be your speech writer. Can you imagine?
Speaker 5 (25:14):
Would be great? Yeah, Like I know where all the
bodies are buried. You know, Jewish space lasers.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Wise, that's right, Jewish space lasers.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Thank you, Sam Adler Bell.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Thank you, Molli. This was fun as always.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
John Bisionano is the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Welcome too Fast Politics, John Bisiano.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Thank you for having me, Mollie.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So Texas redistricting. Are you in Texas right now?
Speaker 3 (25:43):
No, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Tell us where we are with the Texas redistricting. Start
from the beginning, one state, yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Go for this.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Let's start with the Alamo. Yeah, exactly. Really, I think
the story of Texas, if you're going to look at
it from a full perspective, starts with the census after
twenty twenty. The census showed extreme growth in Texas, which
we all know now, and it showed but it showed
growth in the cities, and it showed growth with people
of color. And Texas then went and redrew the map,
(26:15):
dramatically decreasing the number of opportunity seats for people of color.
So immediately there were concerns with Texas's jurymannered map even
after twenty twenty, and we filed litigation after that. We've
been in court for the past three years or five
years now over that map. And now it's very clear
that Donald Trump, and he said it this morning on
(26:37):
TV that he felt entitled to five more congressional districts
for Republicans in Texas. No veil of reality around what
voters believe or care about. It's just simply partisan politics
for him and a hatchet job to the state. So
what we're now seeing in Texas is Donald Trump on
high handing down Governor Abbott a new map. Most of
(26:57):
the members sent, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
She said.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
In fact, the direct quote is, we are entitled to
five more seats.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yes, go on right. Entitlements.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yes. In China they love entitled. Republicans love entitle.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
I love them. So yeah. So now Governor Abbot has
this map. Most even Republican members of the legislature in
Texas hadn't seen it. Many of the members of Congress,
as I understand it, hadn't seen it. People are starting
to get irritated, I imagine on the Republican side. And
what we're now seeing happen is the legislature taking up
this map, blind to their own realities or the people
(27:30):
of Texas, but only through the will of Donald Trump,
seemingly sitting around a room at the White House and
telling people, Hey, I need to find more congressional seats.
Where can we go? And so Department of Justice issued
a directive to the state which is complete bogus legal language.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And that was Alida Haba, everyone's favorite parking attorney.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Right for sure, and she very eloquently and legally wrote
a letter that made no sense and had no legal
flegity to it, and then we found ourselves in the
place where we are now, where they are trying to
push through this map. They had public hearings for the
past two weeks in which people have been I think
it's been two weeks, man, it feels like a decade,
but where people have been currently flooding those hearings, making
(28:11):
their voices heard that they do not want this to happen.
And Texas is looking to implement this new map, which,
as I noted earlier, we've been in litigation over the
prior Texas map. This is a jurymander on top of
the git. I was looking for five seats, but this
is like really set or more than that as you
look at it from what a fair map would look like.
As I'm sure everyone knows now, the Texas state legislators
(28:33):
have left the state in protest over the reality that
they're being forced to take up this map as opposed
to focus on flood funding or any flood corrections. I mean,
that's something that I keep hearing is absurd with this.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Special session when it was brought in, when it was called,
was it meant to be about flooding or I mean,
they used the pretext of the flooding, but was it
always meant to be Abbot pushing a new.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I don't know the answer, only because I'm not in
Greg Abbott's head. But only Greg Abbott could look at
an absolutely catastrophic flood with hundreds found dead and say
this is an opportunity. So this horrific event is an
opportunity for political malfeasons and to try and force through
a jurymannered map. The part that's really horrifying about the
(29:21):
flood is, of course they're still trying to take up funding, which,
as I understand that Abbot could push through either way.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Right, he doesn't need a special session for the flood
for the flood funding. In fact, he's historically not done that.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
They're not doing things to fix future floods either, right
like that. People keep talking about the funding, right.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Their hearing has been all on redistricting.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's been all about redistricting. And but they're
talking about even funding reparations for the flood, but no
one's talking about fixing situations so that there's not floods
in the future. They're just pretending it's never going to
happen again, which is, you know, horrific.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yes, So there's this whole pretext that it's about flooding.
It's not about flooding, it's about redistricting. I want to know,
and this is a question I've now asked a bunch
of different everyone from Representative Kazar to Representative Crockett to
that Texas State Representative James Tellerco, which is, do the
(30:21):
people of Texas understand what is happening in their name?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Is this breaking through to the people of Texas?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I believe it is. I'd be interested obviously in their perspective.
They are closer to the ground as always than anyone else.
But the truth is, I do think people are trying
to understand. You're seeing that in the hearings, the volume
of people I couldn't have even anticipated. And you know,
at this point, I've been doing jury rendering work since
basically this organization started after Barack Obama ag holder Nancy
(30:53):
Pelosi and Terry McColls started at twenty seventeen, so it's
been quite some time. And one of our original principles
and driving factors was elevating the narrative around redistricting and jurymandering.
Maybe more people need to understand what this is. And
we've seen tremendous growth in many states where people understand
what it is more than they had before. It's still
wonky and hard, and I acknowledge that, but I think
(31:15):
what we're seeing right now in Texas is a dramatic
shift in the way that people perceive this process. And
I understand people look at Texas and see a red state, but.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It's really not. I mean, that's what this is a response.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
To, right right, That's why they're doing this. But the
important thing to remember, and as you look back at
that census data, and we now have more up to
date census data from five years of growth, which Texas
is still growing rapidly. The places Texas is growing still
are people of color and in urban areas. And so
Texas now is sixty percent minority, right, forty percent white, which.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Are very scary for the white Republicans.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, not pleased.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And that's just a truth.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Now.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
There's a lot of folks and Donald Trump, I think
is one of them that is living off this reality
of the twenty twenty four election cycle is what's going
to happen in Texas to move forward, and frankly, if
you look at Texas history, I think twenty twenty four
is a pre significant deviation from the way that you
look at political data. So they're drawing maps on with
the vision that they understand and are going to continue
(32:23):
to grow, specifically with Latino voters, and I think that's
not reality.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I think this story is complicated to cover when you're
on the side of democracy, as I am, because.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
There are two issues here.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
The first is the issue of Donald Trump is cheating
because he's worried about accountability, and that needs to not
happen because of American democracy and we want to keep
this experiment going. The second is they may be wildly
misreading what Americans are going to do in the midterms.
(32:56):
And if you jerry mander like this, it means you
have lower margins for your safe seats, which means that
in the sixty to forty state you may end up
actually just screwing yourself. And I think that's a really
important part of the story that I want to talk about,
especially because Trump was able to make inroads with Latino voters,
(33:20):
and those Latino voters are now watching their friends and
neighbors and children and whatever get arrested by Ice.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Not for any reason other than being brown.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Right, And in fact, the Supreme Court is saying, if
you want to pick up a person who looks like
they might be Latino, you're fine with it.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
So I would love you to talk us through that.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think we've already seen in the
past two months polling shifting. I mean, post the Ice
raids and the way in which Donald Trump's implementing his
vision of America with regards to immigration, We're seeing the
polling shift with Latinos across the country but also into
and so I think the way that you described it
is true. Now, I want to be honest about the
(34:05):
map that we've seen them, that they've produced in the
state legislature. There's a word called the dummy mander, which
people call when you jurymander so far that you end
up having a blowback on yourself. It's basically what you're describing.
I'm not sure that the way that they drew this
map looks like that is open to that. But what
I do see happening in this map is a lot
of the new Republican seats that this five in the
(34:26):
five window that they're describing. Not all of those are
going to be really safe seats. So there's a world
in which they're not picking up as many seats as
they claim to be, or at least pretend they are
in their minds, But.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
It is ultimately cheating.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, And the real big picture of what you're talking
about now is the longer term game. And so what
I'm describing is what I understand from political data immediately
for the twenty twenty six election cycle. But the way
that they drew these maps, I don't know what it's
going to look like in twenty twenty eight. With the
way that Texas is growing twenty thirty for sure, So
I do think they could be in an area the
(35:00):
dummy mander over time.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Right, But it doesn't matter because if you give Trumpet
blind check, who even knows that we'll have elections? I
mean right, Yeah, The idea that there's a long term
proposition for this is overly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I think. I think that's right. But I do think
you are very right, and I appreciate you raising it
because not enough people are talking about it that the
population shifts in Texas are happening very very rapidly. So
the second prong to what you're describing is actually running
really strong campaigns in Texas and registering voters that hadn't
been historically voting. That could change everything. There's a huge
(35:35):
population of people in Texas that don't vote.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
It's huge, right, it's fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, what you're looking at from a demographic perspective when
you're talking about elections in Texas is going to change dramatically,
and frankly, that starts with this process here, like more
people seeing this at understanding that their state is being
taken over by an authoritarian government in Washington. Like no
one in Texas wanted this. It's been thrust upon them, frankly,
to preserve or a House of Representatives that is completely
(36:02):
complicit and everything Trump's doing and doesn't want to do
oversight on anything. I understand he's scared of oversight in general.
I'm sure he's scared that some files will get released.
There's a lot to be scared of out there.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
What files could you mean? It's a mystery. I wonder
if you could talk us through the possibility that there's
other stuff happening in Texas at the state level with Paxton,
the age there's just been a ton of fuckery there.
Jesse wants to talk about New York redistricting in California redistricting,
(36:39):
but I actually don't because I think, fuck it, let
them do it.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
They have to do it. They have to play our ball.
So that's what I used to say, is that, I mean.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
If you have something you want to say, but I
think then God Governor Hokel and Governor Newsom are trying
to push back thoughts, questions, comments go.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Theater in general. You Holder, our founder and chairman, last
week put out a statement in which he was very
clear that he was comfortable with states for the first
time moving forward with measures that were reciprocal and temporary
to make corrective changes because of what we're seeing in
Texas and frankly because of what we're seeing in other
states now. This morning there were any reports of Indiana
(37:19):
contemplating this. Missouri has had reports of contemplating it. So
we can't just blindly walk into an authoritarian regime with
no recourse, and so watching and engaging in California and
New York is one of the ways in which folks
are engaging right now. And the one point I would
(37:40):
make that I've seen happen in the coverage over the
past week or so, there has been a pretty heavy
dose of it's harder for Dems to jerrymander in these
states or redistrict in these states than Republicans. And that
is true, that does not mean it's not going to happen.
And what I've seen in the past week is things
are getting very real, and I don't quite understand how
(38:00):
Republicans sitting in California and New York aren't melting down
and calling all of their friends in Texas, like these
are folks that were sitting in their comfy districts. They
had nothing to do with this. A couple of weeks ago,
Donald Trump thrust them up on Texas, and now they're
in the hot seat and they're about to get their
seat and redrawn, and they're not gonna be coming back
to Congress because of what happened in a different state.
So it seems as though he's comfortable trading members in
(38:22):
Texas for members in other states, and I would imagine
that doesn't sit well with some of the folks in
California and New York.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, let's game this out for a minute, because five
seats in California that could be gone, and Gavin wants
to do a special election. I am very happy to
criticize my man, Gavin Newsom, but this strikes me as
really both he and Hokel.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
I have been shocked by the level of like with it.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
And he is like a fighter, but Hokel often in
my mind, is kind of a coward.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
But this I thought was good.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I mean that in a very generous.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Way, obviously, but I've been really pleasantly surprised by both
of them. So some we'll do a special election in
November if anything like what we saw in that Mike
Flood town hall where people who were hundreds of people.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Were yelling vote him out.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
And again, I think like Nebraska is instructive in certain
ways because Nebraska is the state where Republicans tried to
take away that one electoral vote in Nebraska's first Bacon
has a has an electoral vote that tends to go blue,
and Republicans tried to take it away right before the
(39:36):
election in the hopes that it would help Trump. And
I do think like that kind of stuff. Like when
I was watching those that town hall this morning, I
had this thought, which was, like, there's like ten people
in the mainstream media now right, Like it's the New
York Times in the Wall Street Journal, and then I
buy the ft because I have nothing else to buy.
(39:56):
But like, we have no fucking clue what the rest
of the kind of is feeling. And like it was
so clear to me watching that town hall just how
removed we in the mainstream media are from what the
fuck is going on on the street, because these people
were so mad, and Republicans can tell themselves that this
is just like, you know, some kind of act blue cabal,
(40:19):
but they do that at their own peril because we're
still going to have a midterm election cycle.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah, it's real. The AG's adjustment last week is an
indicator of how serious I think things are. But what
you're described, like, we've done pulling over years, right, and
we've seen people always despise jurymandering. Redistricting's fine, they know
it has to happen, that's okay. The jurymandering component of it,
people despise it like it's normally seventy to seventy five percent.
(40:46):
It always almost always comes back at that level. And
I think Republicans now both feel extreme fear and frankly,
the way that they're handling the Epstein files shows that
more complicit in some kind of cover up than just
the president. You know, It's like there's a lot of
things that are happening here that they're becoming more and
more scared is going to become public if there is
(41:09):
House scrutiny over any part of this administration's agenda. So
I understand that they're concerned that the American people might
actually have a voice in the process that they are running.
This redistricting and jurymandering component of it has really bubbled up.
I think a lot of that anger because you can
feel it. Like I said, Republicans, they're not doing this
for voters. They're not doing this even for Republican voters.
(41:31):
No one's asking for this except for themselves. They're doing
this for a small cabal of congressional Republicans sitting in
the US House of Representatives to preserve themselves and maybe
cut out some of their friends in places like California
and New York.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
It's striking to me how this could all blow back
on them.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
So if you're listening to this and you're furious, what
should you do?
Speaker 3 (41:54):
You should text action to three six seven eight seven,
Join our fight, try and engage. We can support engagements
and new activism in places all across the country. So
join that we can get you plugged in. Will help
make sure that everybody has a place to volunteer, have
your voice heard, and make sure that you know when
and where town halls are being held, but also when
(42:14):
and where redistricting is happening.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, John, thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Great to be.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Here, No moment exactly, Jesse Cannon, my junk fast. So
FEMA disasteroid could now depend on if a state's policy
towards Israel is BDS or not. This is seeming like
when we talk about witness tests like the silliest one
(42:41):
I've ever heard and ultimate poor performative moronics.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Yeah, this is very, very very stupid. And here's why
it's stupid. Okay, you ready, because what.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
I mean, if you pay taxes, you pay federal tax
is to pay for disaster aid.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
I mean, this is so ridiculous.
Speaker 7 (43:03):
This is like another trumpy thing that he is cooked
up as a way to make it so that you
can't get disaster right if you need it. US states
and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal
aid for natural disaster preparedness.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Stupid, my man is having a war with FEMA. He's
trying to take apart the federal government. This is ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
It's ridiculous, especially with you know, a state like South
Dakota is estimated to have less than a thousand Jews.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
It's trying to control state legislature, and it's stupid.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
That's it for.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this CBO, the.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Non partisan Congressional Budget Office, says the Republican megabill.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Will now cost four point one trillion dollars due to
higher borrowing costs.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
We have such a great show for you today, Know
your Enemy's own.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sam Adler Bell stops by to talk to us.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
About why Democrats attack their best messengers. Then we'll talk
to NDRC's John Visignano about Texas is an insane jerrymandering plan.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
But first the news Somali.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
We keep tracking these ICE arrests. We read a report
on the last episode that it seems it's gotten through
Stephen Miller's skull as odd as it's shaped, that they
can't arrest three thousand immigrants a day, and the ICE
arrests are actually declining amid the backlash.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So you'll be shocked to hear that. By the way,
there was photographs today of ICE agents carrying like little girl.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah yeah, it was horrifor was yesterday, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, yesterday, She's like four eleven, carrying her down the street.
They put her in a facility, in that Louisiana facility. Yeah,
let me tell you what's happening here. People are seeing
these photographs and they are horrified, and they're seeing these
videos and they're horrified. They're seeing the kind of stuff
that pro Publica reported. I don't know if ESAs, but
(01:34):
pro Publica had this sort of amazing and deeply disturbing
reporting about all of the windows that ICE agents have
broken in people's cars in order to arrest them. And
you have these women crying, you have pregnant women crying,
children watching in horror.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I mean, this is this is pretty bleak stuff. And
guess what what, voters don't like it.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
I know they don't. You know, ICE was actually on
my block the day before yesterday.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Ooh, what were they doing?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Well, you know, they were walking around making people scared.
And what you saw is a lot of people being various,
made in people figuring out how they're going to get
in their way, and they had a nice hiring sign
on the side of the truck and it was deeply disturbing.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
The average arrests it was twelve hundred daily arrests in June,
well short of what Stephen Miller's stated goal of three
thousand immigration arrests for day.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Here's one of those.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Things that Stephen Miller is about to find out there
aren't that many people to arrest. And also, this is
just going to I mean, it's going to derail the economy,
but before it does, it's going to derail the administration.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
And lots of it is in people's lives.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think it's important to say, like morally reprehensible, politically
very stupid, and we're going to see this play out
in a real way. I bet we're going to see
a play out during this twenty twenty five election cycle too,
I really do.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
We're seeing these town halls now. And I talked to.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
James Talarico, who is a Texas state legislator, or who
was a Texas state legislator.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
And is now thinking about possibly running for.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
The Senate, and he was talking about just how much
this world like people are really mad, Like he had
a town hall and he said that he had never
had so many people at his town hall, Like I
think we in the mainstream media may be missing this
story of these furious, furious, furious voters.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
And I saw it when I was on.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
My book tour talk about being a coastal elitist here,
but I did.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I saw people really mad.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And I think, you know, when we see this poor
polling for Democrats, it's not and we've talked about this before,
but I think it's important to just reiterate it. It's
not that Democrats have lost interest in other Democrats. It's
that Democrats feel that their party is not as mad
as they are. And I think that is the real
That's what explains those numbers.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Really, what you could see is you can contrust two
types of polls. Democratic policy is good, the elected officials
were bringing to fight for them.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Not popular, Yeah, not popular because they're not doing what
their voters want them to.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
That's correct. So one of the things I'm really obsessed
with is this Project twenty twenty five tracker. So we're
a little over six months into this Trump administration, meaning
one eighth of the way through it, Dear God help us,
and Project twenty twenty five is already forty seven percent complete.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, a lot of this stuff they wanted to do
in Project twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Five they are clearly doing right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
The attacks on institutions that making the DOJ and arm
of the Trump administration. There were a lot of opportunities
that the folks at the Heritage Foundation were able to
put it together to find, So I think this is
probably pretty accurate. I would say that it's just we're
(05:03):
just going to have.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
To do a lot of a lot of soul searching.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And a lot of regulation, and a lot of connecting
with each other and with voters, and we're going to
have to really start a kind of now, you know, reconciliation,
a kind of return to American normalcy, and it's going
(05:27):
to be a long process.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
But yes, it's here. We see it happening right now,
and it's bad.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Speaking of that, there is a new poll that says
most US adults are stressed by grocery costs. I noticed
my local grocery store just three weeks ago announced that
they have heard their consumers and they are doing everything
they can to find the ways they could cut costs
at the store because they see how enormously costs of skyrocketed.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
No groceries are really expected.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I go to a grocery store and I'm like, huh,
it's shockingly expensive. And part of that is inflation. And
part of that is inflation, and by the way. I
was told that Donald Trump was going to bring the
price of groceries down on day one.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
You know what day it is like one hundred and ninety.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Something, and the price of groceries they're not down, let
me tell you.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
But I like that.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
My favorite thing is he has it all.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
He's laser focused on bringing down the prices of things.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
That's why he's walking on the White House roof.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Boy, wait, he's walking on the White House roof.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Oh you haven't seen this. Everybody thinks it's a distraction
from Epstein. I actually think it's that he's losing his
shit with the de Bedsha.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
My favorite thing is that he is laser focused on
putting the big banks in the process. The President accuses
both JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America of discrimination
by refusing to take his personal business.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
You know, when you are.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
In a Banana republic, it's important that your monarch makes
lots of truly unhinged declarations, and this can be one
of them. He is going to direct regulators to penalize
anybody found who have dropped a client on political grounds,
including Donald J.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Trump. Incredible stuff, No notes.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Sam Adler Bell is the co host of the Know
Your Enemy Podcast. Welcome to Fast Politics, Sam Adler.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Bell, Hi, Molly, so happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Here we are.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Another day in paradise or authoritarian tilt towards whatever is
happening here. Tell me what are the things that are
keeping you up at night?
Speaker 6 (07:35):
Not out of fear, but out of just burning contempt.
This story, burning contempt, this story with firing the BLS
chief over the bad jobs numbers. I you know, it's
like the thing with Trump is you're always going back
and forth between like, God, this is a really scary
(07:55):
situation and God, this contemptible fool who is a narcissist,
who like just shouldn't be anywhere near a single lever
of power. Like you can't have a president whose first
thought when they get a bad set of jobs numbers
is to shoot the messenger. And it's just it's just
so pathetic. I mean, I can see the ways in
(08:17):
which it could be really bad. You know, right, people
stop trusting these numbers and they install you know whoever
they install after you know this interim director.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Mister wonderful, Yeah, mister wonderful.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
But even if they were just a person with perfect credentials,
people won't trust it. People on the left won't trust it,
and they and they have good reason that too, because
why do you get rid of the person if not
to install somebody who's going to fudge the numbers. And
I just so I can see the path to it
being ruinous. But at the moment, I just find myself
being like, how can anybody think this is okay? How
(08:50):
can you just be like, Yeah, that's my guy up there.
When he gets bad news, he fires the person who
gives him bad news.
Speaker 5 (08:56):
It's so pathetic.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I think you have really explained a fascinating phenomenon as
we round into a decade of dealing with Donald Trump,
which is it's scary, slash, it's stupid, and I feel like,
you know, the Venn diagram of like it's stupid, it's scary,
and they are like not quite a circle. So like
(09:18):
the Rose Garden redo is just stupid, Like who could
you know? I mean, obviously whatever, there's some historical president
for the Rose Garden, but it's largely just you know,
but Bureau of Labor Statistics trying to redistrict your way
into not losing the majority in the House. That kind
(09:39):
of thing is actually quite scary.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, stupid and scary, that's the mix.
That's the Trumpian stew at all times. And yeah, it
can be hard to know just how to calibrate your
own reactions sometimes. But I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty
fired up lately.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Really tell us why?
Speaker 5 (10:03):
Well?
Speaker 6 (10:03):
I the other thing Matt and I in my podcast
Know your Enemy we were talking about.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Explain, go on, you go ahead, now go.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
Just the sheer scale of the corruption in this administration
has really started to get to me because I think
it's the kind of story that's hard to keep in
your mind or kind of like it's it's just by
its very nature, would become numb to it and our
standards change, you know. But Matt was just reading to
me from, you know, a story from several months ago
(10:34):
about you know, the crypto people who you know, somebody
who invested twenty million dollars in Trump's personal crypto coin
and therefore got to go, you know, to the meme coin.
Meme coin, right, Yeah, I mean we how can we?
That seems like, you know, an age ago, But it's
still the case that any anybody, any individual in the world,
(10:55):
any rich person, whether they're an agent of a foreign
government government or not can give you know, fifty million
dollars to Trump in secret for whatever reason. I mean
these and you know, the fluctuations in the stock market
that allow his cronies to you know, basically insider trade
on the tariff negotiations. Like this kind of stuff would
have been the one big scandal in any other administration
(11:19):
that we would have talked about for weeks and weeks
and weeks. But I find myself just being mostly disgusted
by the fact that this administration is just like one
giant machine for Mafio, so you know, rackets, basically making
money for people that he's friends with.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It feels like you get here by allowing members of
Congress to continue trading stocks, by not regulating technology, by
some of the feelings, and you know, I think I
have old children because I had them when I was
very young, like a tea smarter, just kidding, not a teenager,
(11:56):
but pretty young. And they say I'm an neoliberal because
that is the biggest insult they can think of, except
my other kid, who's like, you're a communist, which again okay,
but but there are feelings of neoliberals that got you
like and you know, the sort of the sort of go.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Along to get along and the and.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I also think like trying to sort of emulate Reagan
in the yeah It's section to thirty.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, can we talk about that?
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Well, I mean I think that's true because I have
this thought sometime about like how do we get back
from this era where huge parts of the voting populace
thinks it's fine for the for the president to basically
make the presidency a personal project of his own wealth
creation and his family's own wealth. Like it's it's disturbing
(12:51):
that he does that. It's even more disturbing that it
doesn't seem to be a problem.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Is it the partisanship that has Like is it not
a part is it? Is it not a problem for
them because it's their team?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I mean, is that why?
Speaker 5 (13:04):
I think largely?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
But what I what I what I think about in
terms of your your question about like how we got here?
Is that I think in order for if there's ever
if a left party, say the Democrats, probably the Democrats
ever becomes a kind of like, you know, the kind
of cultural hegemonic leader in this country, it would be
(13:26):
because they've been able to credibly you know, point out
that it's wrong, evil, anti democratic for the Republicans to
just use the machinery of government to make money for
themselves at all times. And the reason that that doesn't
really happen, or it hasn't really happened, or that isn't
a winning issue for the Democrats, I think, is because
they aren't credible on that issue, exactly for the reasons
(13:48):
you're saying, because of insider trading, because of you know,
just like that that that has the kind of populist,
anti plutocratic message has been a minority voice in the
party and in fact, you know, to kind of talk
out of my own lefty book here, I mean, the
one person who everybody agrees is credible on this issue,
(14:09):
Bernie Sanders. Every time he got close to power, the
Democrats did everything in their power to prevent him from becoming,
you know, the leader of the party.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
I mean, not for nothing.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
And I hate to be like this kind of prototypical
millennial leftist and my feelings about this, but Bernie Sanders
is the most popular senator in America.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
And why is that?
Speaker 6 (14:30):
And he's including with independence, including with Republicans.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Why is that?
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Because he does represent this other side of the coin,
which is when Bernie Sanders says, I'm disgusted by you know,
democrats making money from the stock market, just as I
am about Republicans. I'm disgusted by Donald Trump using you know,
the office of the presidency to extremely increase his wealth.
You know, he seems credible, He really seems like he
(14:54):
hates it, and he's not himself some kind of secret
rich guy.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
The thing about Bernie.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Sanders, he's not the only one, but he is the
kind of prototypical figure who represents this credibility in his
anti plutocratic message is anti oligarchy message, and he's been
on that message, you know, since twenty sixteen, and it's
not a coincidence. I think the Democrats haven't been able
to adopt that message in a way that seems that's winning,
(15:22):
because they also have tried to marginalize Bernie, you know,
much less so than they did in Trump's first term.
Speaker 5 (15:28):
He's kind of on side now.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
But I just think in order for there to be
you know, in order for the Democrats to benefit from
the graft that this administration engages on a regular basis,
they need more figures who seem like they mean it
when they you know, as you know, Alex Koburn used
to say that their hate is pure, right.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Really, I think important and also true. I wonder though
it's so so what you're saying is something that I
actually spend a lot of time basically in my head.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I spent almost eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Of my day worrying about all of this, right, I
just like, you know, what's going to happen to d
And it strikes me that Mondani has successfully channeled this
populism in a way that is both the populism is
a real thing, and he has gone to voters who
(16:30):
are not the elites, who are the sort of because
like the mayoral ship is always decided not in Manhattan,
but really in the Bronx and Brooklyn, which are districts
that are not afful you know, they're a mix, right,
And so it strikes me that Mondani has managed to
(16:52):
transmit that to working people, the populist message.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
I think to a significant degree.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
I mean, I also think it's true as much is
I think it's tendentious the way that the right tries
to use it against him, that there is a huge
part of his coalition that is the kind of like
downwardly mobile, professional middle class, the millennial socialist types. But
I don't really have the same contempt for those people
as people on the writer in the center of the
(17:20):
party do because those are my friends.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
But that's not a huge But that's not I mean,
unfortunately for all of us. That's not a huge group, right, Like, no, no, no,
A huge group are working people. Like, if you're going
to win a primary in New York as a mayor,
you are getting voters that are working people from the
outer boroughs.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
No, absolutely, I mean, I think I think you're totally
right about Mom Donnie and the great irony contradiction. I think,
you know, embarrassment for the leadership of the Democratic Party
is that here's a candidate who ran on affordability, affordability, affordability.
If you look at his campaign website, there is basically
no single proposal that is not about lowering the cost
(18:05):
of living for New Yorkers, except for when people were
trying to goad him into talking about Israel.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
He only talked about affordability.
Speaker 6 (18:13):
He made that his whole project, and that was exactly
what the Democrats said was the reason they lost in
twenty twenty four. Yeah, because Trump credibly convinced people that
he was going to lower prices he was going to make.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Because he said that the lower prices, yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (18:27):
And so Mom, Donnie built his whole campaign around exactly
what the kind of Democratic post mortems said a Democratic
candidate should build their campaign around. And now look at
who has not endorsed the Democratic primary winner in New
York City. Well, both the senators from New York, who
one of whom is.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
The head of the Senate.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
As well as this as well as the head of
the Democratic House Caucus, also from New York.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
I find it. How are they going to I mean,
we know why they're not doing it.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
I think we can speculate, but I don't know how
they're going to go around saying, like, the huge problem
we have is that we can't appeal to working class
people and we don't have a credible message about affordability.
And then one when one candidate wins in a landslide
on that message, they don't endorse him. I mean it's
absurd or expected. Absurd or expected.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Jilli Brand really did cover herself in glory when she
came out and said that man Donnie was anti submitted
because what did she say he did nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I can't remember.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
She almost I mean, I think she said that he
had had used the word jahad or something like that.
She she got mixed up because she she you know,
she wanted to talk about globalize the Intifada, which of
course also Mamdani doesn't sing.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Did not say, but he must disavow it despite not
saying it, he must. No.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
I mean, it's.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
It's a really bleak it's a really bleak thing. I
was talking to my podcast produce, Sir Jesse.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
I also have one of those you.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Know that all podcast producers are named Jesse.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
But he was he was saying something interesting, which is
that it's the Democrats. You know, maybe the Democrats just
wish Mamdani was the same candidate without the position he's
staked out on the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
You know.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
But the thing is, you can't get you can't you
can't get that guy, that guy who has the credibility
with young people that he does, that would be able
to turn out all these disaffected young people if he
didn't have that message. I mean, the theory of the
case for Cuomo was that the older people were going
(20:40):
to be so scandalized by his my in my opinion,
principled stand about Israel and it's brutal siege, that they
were going to come out and he was going to
lose for that reason. But actually he won for that
reason because he was able to mobilize a group of
Democratic voters or potential Democrat voters who wouldn't vote for
(21:01):
any candidate who didn't separate themselves from the party's position
on that issue.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
And so it's all part of the same package.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
And I think that's a really, really, really important point
because Mondannie actually didn't win among Jewish voters. Now there's
an incredible tweet that has him not I don't know
if you saw that tweet if you're very online. There
is a tweet where the where like Americans for Adams,
shows who won what, and it doesn't have Mondani having
(21:33):
won Jewish voters, But he did, in fact win Jewish voters,
and he won this Jewish voter and he won it
because I believe that Nat and Yahoo's genie side of
the Palestinian people is not reflective on the many good
Israelis who are just minding their own business like we
Americans are, and.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That quite a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I don't know if he saw the cover of the
Wall Street Journal, the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal
today had pictures of Israeli's protesting net Yahoo. And I
don't think that any of us want to see any
more children and women and men in palist On being
starved to death or shot by idea like, I don't
(22:16):
think that serves anyone.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
No, I don't think so either. And I think that,
I mean, we are seeing somewhat of a changing tide,
a damn breaking this week, it seems. I think within
Israel you have a figure like David Grossman, who's you know,
basically the biggest literary celebrity in the country, coming out
and calling it a genocide. You have both the two
top human rights organizations within Israel calling it a genocide.
(22:42):
And then in this country, like you said, I mean,
you see, you know Marjorie Taylor gu.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Well, that's I think she.
Speaker 6 (22:49):
I think she has your dog's politics a little bit
anti Zionist and anti Semitic, but it's true that she
she has been right about what she said.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
What she said has been true, which she said is true.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
That you can say that October seventh was a disaster
and awful atrocity.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
And what Israel is doing now is a genocide. Marjorie
Taylor Voice of Reason. Marjorie Taylor Reason, Poice of Reason.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
She gave My favorite part of Marjorie Taylor Green moral
arbiterre is that she came to Congress onto or not.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
So this has really gone full circle here.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
It's true, It's true. Yeah, everything Jewish space lasers. Right, Yeah,
she is, I mean like anti she's I think she
very much probably is. And you know, but I do.
Speaker 6 (23:41):
I think that what you could say for Marjorie Taylor
Green is that she does seem to be uh loyal
to the people who put her there. That I think
that the sort of Republican primary voters in her district
who are, you know, effectively the people who put her
there workqan on people, are people who care about the
(24:02):
Epstein story and are people who have I think, in
principle in America first foreign policy view, which for which
to give them credit, it does not make sense that
our own foreign policy interests should be subordinated to a
foreign country, even if that country is Israel. And so
(24:24):
I think that's I think that's the stand that she's
taking and yes, she's probably an anti Semite, but she's
also a.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Member anti Semite.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Actually, I don't think she is. I don't think she is.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
She is.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
We can have fun, but yeah, but I think that's true.
I mean that she is loyal to her constituents. In
so far as you know her, probably her most loudest
constituents are those who think that she shouldn't be in
there to just do whatever Trump tells her to do.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
Either she should be in there.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
To uncover the Epstein files, to stop the pedophile cabal,
and to actually make America, you know, America first and
its foreign policy.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And so, Sam Adler Bell, will you come back.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
I'm waiting for the call from Marjorie's office. I'll take
a job anytime.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You'll be your speech writer. Can you imagine?
Speaker 5 (25:14):
Would be great? Yeah, Like I know where all the
bodies are buried. You know, Jewish space lasers.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Wise, that's right, Jewish space lasers.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Thank you, Sam Adler Bell.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Thank you, Molli. This was fun as always.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
John Bisionano is the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Welcome too Fast Politics, John Bisiano.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Thank you for having me, Mollie.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So Texas redistricting. Are you in Texas right now?
Speaker 3 (25:43):
No, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Tell us where we are with the Texas redistricting. Start
from the beginning, one state, yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Go for this.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Let's start with the Alamo. Yeah, exactly. Really, I think
the story of Texas, if you're going to look at
it from a full perspective, starts with the census after
twenty twenty. The census showed extreme growth in Texas, which
we all know now, and it showed but it showed
growth in the cities, and it showed growth with people
of color. And Texas then went and redrew the map,
(26:15):
dramatically decreasing the number of opportunity seats for people of color.
So immediately there were concerns with Texas's jurymannered map even
after twenty twenty, and we filed litigation after that. We've
been in court for the past three years or five
years now over that map. And now it's very clear
that Donald Trump, and he said it this morning on
(26:37):
TV that he felt entitled to five more congressional districts
for Republicans in Texas. No veil of reality around what
voters believe or care about. It's just simply partisan politics
for him and a hatchet job to the state. So
what we're now seeing in Texas is Donald Trump on
high handing down Governor Abbott a new map. Most of
(26:57):
the members sent, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
She said.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
In fact, the direct quote is, we are entitled to
five more seats.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yes, go on right. Entitlements.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yes. In China they love entitled. Republicans love entitle.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
I love them. So yeah. So now Governor Abbot has
this map. Most even Republican members of the legislature in
Texas hadn't seen it. Many of the members of Congress,
as I understand it, hadn't seen it. People are starting
to get irritated, I imagine on the Republican side. And
what we're now seeing happen is the legislature taking up
this map, blind to their own realities or the people
(27:30):
of Texas, but only through the will of Donald Trump,
seemingly sitting around a room at the White House and
telling people, Hey, I need to find more congressional seats.
Where can we go? And so Department of Justice issued
a directive to the state which is complete bogus legal language.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And that was Alida Haba, everyone's favorite parking attorney.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Right for sure, and she very eloquently and legally wrote
a letter that made no sense and had no legal
flegity to it, and then we found ourselves in the
place where we are now, where they are trying to
push through this map. They had public hearings for the
past two weeks in which people have been I think
it's been two weeks, man, it feels like a decade,
but where people have been currently flooding those hearings, making
(28:11):
their voices heard that they do not want this to happen.
And Texas is looking to implement this new map, which,
as I noted earlier, we've been in litigation over the
prior Texas map. This is a jurymander on top of
the git. I was looking for five seats, but this
is like really set or more than that as you
look at it from what a fair map would look like.
As I'm sure everyone knows now, the Texas state legislators
(28:33):
have left the state in protest over the reality that
they're being forced to take up this map as opposed
to focus on flood funding or any flood corrections. I mean,
that's something that I keep hearing is absurd with this.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Special session when it was brought in, when it was called,
was it meant to be about flooding or I mean,
they used the pretext of the flooding, but was it
always meant to be Abbot pushing a new.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I don't know the answer, only because I'm not in
Greg Abbott's head. But only Greg Abbott could look at
an absolutely catastrophic flood with hundreds found dead and say
this is an opportunity. So this horrific event is an
opportunity for political malfeasons and to try and force through
a jurymannered map. The part that's really horrifying about the
(29:21):
flood is, of course they're still trying to take up funding, which,
as I understand that Abbot could push through either way.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Right, he doesn't need a special session for the flood
for the flood funding. In fact, he's historically not done that.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
They're not doing things to fix future floods either, right
like that. People keep talking about the funding, right.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Their hearing has been all on redistricting.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's been all about redistricting. And but they're
talking about even funding reparations for the flood, but no
one's talking about fixing situations so that there's not floods
in the future. They're just pretending it's never going to
happen again, which is, you know, horrific.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yes, So there's this whole pretext that it's about flooding.
It's not about flooding, it's about redistricting. I want to know,
and this is a question I've now asked a bunch
of different everyone from Representative Kazar to Representative Crockett to
that Texas State Representative James Tellerco, which is, do the
(30:21):
people of Texas understand what is happening in their name?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Is this breaking through to the people of Texas?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I believe it is. I'd be interested obviously in their perspective.
They are closer to the ground as always than anyone else.
But the truth is, I do think people are trying
to understand. You're seeing that in the hearings, the volume
of people I couldn't have even anticipated. And you know,
at this point, I've been doing jury rendering work since
basically this organization started after Barack Obama ag holder Nancy
(30:53):
Pelosi and Terry McColls started at twenty seventeen, so it's
been quite some time. And one of our original principles
and driving factors was elevating the narrative around redistricting and jurymandering.
Maybe more people need to understand what this is. And
we've seen tremendous growth in many states where people understand
what it is more than they had before. It's still
wonky and hard, and I acknowledge that, but I think
(31:15):
what we're seeing right now in Texas is a dramatic
shift in the way that people perceive this process. And
I understand people look at Texas and see a red state, but.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It's really not. I mean, that's what this is a response.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
To, right right, That's why they're doing this. But the
important thing to remember, and as you look back at
that census data, and we now have more up to
date census data from five years of growth, which Texas
is still growing rapidly. The places Texas is growing still
are people of color and in urban areas. And so
Texas now is sixty percent minority, right, forty percent white, which.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Are very scary for the white Republicans.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, not pleased.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And that's just a truth.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Now.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
There's a lot of folks and Donald Trump, I think
is one of them that is living off this reality
of the twenty twenty four election cycle is what's going
to happen in Texas to move forward, and frankly, if
you look at Texas history, I think twenty twenty four
is a pre significant deviation from the way that you
look at political data. So they're drawing maps on with
the vision that they understand and are going to continue
(32:23):
to grow, specifically with Latino voters, and I think that's
not reality.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I think this story is complicated to cover when you're
on the side of democracy, as I am, because.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
There are two issues here.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
The first is the issue of Donald Trump is cheating
because he's worried about accountability, and that needs to not
happen because of American democracy and we want to keep
this experiment going. The second is they may be wildly
misreading what Americans are going to do in the midterms.
(32:56):
And if you jerry mander like this, it means you
have lower margins for your safe seats, which means that
in the sixty to forty state you may end up
actually just screwing yourself. And I think that's a really
important part of the story that I want to talk about,
especially because Trump was able to make inroads with Latino voters,
(33:20):
and those Latino voters are now watching their friends and
neighbors and children and whatever get arrested by Ice.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Not for any reason other than being brown.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Right, And in fact, the Supreme Court is saying, if
you want to pick up a person who looks like
they might be Latino, you're fine with it.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
So I would love you to talk us through that.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think we've already seen in the
past two months polling shifting. I mean, post the Ice
raids and the way in which Donald Trump's implementing his
vision of America with regards to immigration, We're seeing the
polling shift with Latinos across the country but also into
and so I think the way that you described it
is true. Now, I want to be honest about the
(34:05):
map that we've seen them, that they've produced in the
state legislature. There's a word called the dummy mander, which
people call when you jurymander so far that you end
up having a blowback on yourself. It's basically what you're describing.
I'm not sure that the way that they drew this
map looks like that is open to that. But what
I do see happening in this map is a lot
of the new Republican seats that this five in the
(34:26):
five window that they're describing. Not all of those are
going to be really safe seats. So there's a world
in which they're not picking up as many seats as
they claim to be, or at least pretend they are
in their minds, But.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
It is ultimately cheating.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, And the real big picture of what you're talking
about now is the longer term game. And so what
I'm describing is what I understand from political data immediately
for the twenty twenty six election cycle. But the way
that they drew these maps, I don't know what it's
going to look like in twenty twenty eight. With the
way that Texas is growing twenty thirty for sure, So
I do think they could be in an area the
(35:00):
dummy mander over time.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Right, But it doesn't matter because if you give Trumpet
blind check, who even knows that we'll have elections? I
mean right, Yeah, The idea that there's a long term
proposition for this is overly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I think. I think that's right. But I do think
you are very right, and I appreciate you raising it
because not enough people are talking about it that the
population shifts in Texas are happening very very rapidly. So
the second prong to what you're describing is actually running
really strong campaigns in Texas and registering voters that hadn't
been historically voting. That could change everything. There's a huge
(35:35):
population of people in Texas that don't vote.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
It's huge, right, it's fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, what you're looking at from a demographic perspective when
you're talking about elections in Texas is going to change dramatically,
and frankly, that starts with this process here, like more
people seeing this at understanding that their state is being
taken over by an authoritarian government in Washington. Like no
one in Texas wanted this. It's been thrust upon them, frankly,
to preserve or a House of Representatives that is completely
(36:02):
complicit and everything Trump's doing and doesn't want to do
oversight on anything. I understand he's scared of oversight in general.
I'm sure he's scared that some files will get released.
There's a lot to be scared of out there.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
What files could you mean? It's a mystery. I wonder
if you could talk us through the possibility that there's
other stuff happening in Texas at the state level with Paxton,
the age there's just been a ton of fuckery there.
Jesse wants to talk about New York redistricting in California redistricting,
(36:39):
but I actually don't because I think, fuck it, let
them do it.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
They have to do it. They have to play our ball.
So that's what I used to say, is that, I mean.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
If you have something you want to say, but I
think then God Governor Hokel and Governor Newsom are trying
to push back thoughts, questions, comments go.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Theater in general. You Holder, our founder and chairman, last
week put out a statement in which he was very
clear that he was comfortable with states for the first
time moving forward with measures that were reciprocal and temporary
to make corrective changes because of what we're seeing in
Texas and frankly because of what we're seeing in other
states now. This morning there were any reports of Indiana
(37:19):
contemplating this. Missouri has had reports of contemplating it. So
we can't just blindly walk into an authoritarian regime with
no recourse, and so watching and engaging in California and
New York is one of the ways in which folks
are engaging right now. And the one point I would
(37:40):
make that I've seen happen in the coverage over the
past week or so, there has been a pretty heavy
dose of it's harder for Dems to jerrymander in these
states or redistrict in these states than Republicans. And that
is true, that does not mean it's not going to happen.
And what I've seen in the past week is things
are getting very real, and I don't quite understand how
(38:00):
Republicans sitting in California and New York aren't melting down
and calling all of their friends in Texas, like these
are folks that were sitting in their comfy districts. They
had nothing to do with this. A couple of weeks ago,
Donald Trump thrust them up on Texas, and now they're
in the hot seat and they're about to get their
seat and redrawn, and they're not gonna be coming back
to Congress because of what happened in a different state.
So it seems as though he's comfortable trading members in
(38:22):
Texas for members in other states, and I would imagine
that doesn't sit well with some of the folks in
California and New York.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, let's game this out for a minute, because five
seats in California that could be gone, and Gavin wants
to do a special election. I am very happy to
criticize my man, Gavin Newsom, but this strikes me as
really both he and Hokel.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
I have been shocked by the level of like with it.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
And he is like a fighter, but Hokel often in
my mind, is kind of a coward.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
But this I thought was good.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I mean that in a very generous.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Way, obviously, but I've been really pleasantly surprised by both
of them. So some we'll do a special election in
November if anything like what we saw in that Mike
Flood town hall where people who were hundreds of people.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Were yelling vote him out.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
And again, I think like Nebraska is instructive in certain
ways because Nebraska is the state where Republicans tried to
take away that one electoral vote in Nebraska's first Bacon
has a has an electoral vote that tends to go blue,
and Republicans tried to take it away right before the
(39:36):
election in the hopes that it would help Trump. And
I do think like that kind of stuff. Like when
I was watching those that town hall this morning, I
had this thought, which was, like, there's like ten people
in the mainstream media now right, Like it's the New
York Times in the Wall Street Journal, and then I
buy the ft because I have nothing else to buy.
(39:56):
But like, we have no fucking clue what the rest
of the kind of is feeling. And like it was
so clear to me watching that town hall just how
removed we in the mainstream media are from what the
fuck is going on on the street, because these people
were so mad, and Republicans can tell themselves that this
is just like, you know, some kind of act blue cabal,
(40:19):
but they do that at their own peril because we're
still going to have a midterm election cycle.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah, it's real. The AG's adjustment last week is an
indicator of how serious I think things are. But what
you're described, like, we've done pulling over years, right, and
we've seen people always despise jurymandering. Redistricting's fine, they know
it has to happen, that's okay. The jurymandering component of it,
people despise it like it's normally seventy to seventy five percent.
(40:46):
It always almost always comes back at that level. And
I think Republicans now both feel extreme fear and frankly,
the way that they're handling the Epstein files shows that
more complicit in some kind of cover up than just
the president. You know, It's like there's a lot of
things that are happening here that they're becoming more and
more scared is going to become public if there is
(41:09):
House scrutiny over any part of this administration's agenda. So
I understand that they're concerned that the American people might
actually have a voice in the process that they are running.
This redistricting and jurymandering component of it has really bubbled up.
I think a lot of that anger because you can
feel it. Like I said, Republicans, they're not doing this
for voters. They're not doing this even for Republican voters.
(41:31):
No one's asking for this except for themselves. They're doing
this for a small cabal of congressional Republicans sitting in
the US House of Representatives to preserve themselves and maybe
cut out some of their friends in places like California
and New York.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
It's striking to me how this could all blow back
on them.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
So if you're listening to this and you're furious, what
should you do?
Speaker 3 (41:54):
You should text action to three six seven eight seven,
Join our fight, try and engage. We can support engagements
and new activism in places all across the country. So
join that we can get you plugged in. Will help
make sure that everybody has a place to volunteer, have
your voice heard, and make sure that you know when
and where town halls are being held, but also when
(42:14):
and where redistricting is happening.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, John, thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Great to be.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Here, No moment exactly, Jesse Cannon, my junk fast. So
FEMA disasteroid could now depend on if a state's policy
towards Israel is BDS or not. This is seeming like
when we talk about witness tests like the silliest one
(42:41):
I've ever heard and ultimate poor performative moronics.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Yeah, this is very, very very stupid. And here's why
it's stupid. Okay, you ready, because what.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
I mean, if you pay taxes, you pay federal tax
is to pay for disaster aid.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
I mean, this is so ridiculous.
Speaker 7 (43:03):
This is like another trumpy thing that he is cooked
up as a way to make it so that you
can't get disaster right if you need it. US states
and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal
aid for natural disaster preparedness.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Stupid, my man is having a war with FEMA. He's
trying to take apart the federal government. This is ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
It's ridiculous, especially with you know, a state like South
Dakota is estimated to have less than a thousand Jews.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
It's trying to control state legislature, and it's stupid.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
That's it for.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!