Work in Progress: Jay Inslee

drives home an unfortunate point. The climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more severe, and the climate doesn't care where you live, how you voted, or if you believe in science. Science is here. We are particularly heartbroken knowing that the current administration in the White House has slashed funding and aid response from FEMA and other organizations that were meant to support victims of the flooding and that were meant to warr them in the hours

before the flood's hit. Slashing the National Weather Service is in our mind, unforgivable, and we would just like to ask that if you agree or you feel similarly passionate about ensuring that people are safe, whether they're your next door neighbors or your neighbors a few states away, please look up relief efforts for those affected. Please look up local organizations wherever you live that are working to defend climate, because those are the groups that we need now more

than ever. And we are keeping everyone affected by this flood and the hurricane season to come in all of our thoughts here at work in progress. Thank you. Hello whips Marty. Do we ever have a wonderful big brain here with us today? I am so excited to be joined by Jay Insley. He served as the twenty third governor of Washington State from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty five and has been one of our most effective leaders on climate in America. He has proven that bold action

on climate change is also incredibly successful economic policy. He made climate a central focus of his administration and pushed for and then implemented incredible clean energy legislation, promoted electric vehicle infrastructure, supported aggressive carbon reduction goals, and under his leadership, Washington State passed one of the nation's strongest one hundred percent clean energy laws, aiming to eliminate coal power and

transition to carbon free energy by twenty forty five. It is so cool to hear him talk about how he did it, how he organized folks across the political spectrum and what it feels like when he meets with Washingtonians who get zero dollar energy bills. Now, I think it's probably why he's often called our gold standard for climate platforms, and now post his governatorial tenure, he is working with an amazing group that I am lucky enough to collaborate

with him on, called Climate Power. I got to be honest, guys, I can feel a little doom and gloom about where climate policy is going to go under today's leadership, and this conversation with Governor Insley really put me back in my hope. He reminded me of what we've accomplished and what's to come, and that this fight is absolutely not over. And I think that kind of inspiration is something we all need right now.

about nuclear energy and it was just fascinated by it. So that was my ambition when I was ten, also to learn to walk again, which was maybe a formative experience because I had to go through several months of procedures and it was a difficult time, but maybe an interesting one because I started to read. Maybe that's what caused my problems to make me go into politics.

has not put any constraints on your imagination yet. So last night I was sitting out on my deck out here watching the sunset, and I asked my two year old grandson, I said, how far away is the sun? Is that a long ways away or is it close? And he started like reaching out like he could try to figure out how far away it was. And then then he reached up to the sky and he says, I'm going to pull the sky down and make it

a blanket. And he reached up to the blue sky and it's like he's reaching up and he was going to make the sky a blanket. You know, and you get older, you wouldn't be able to share that imagination because people would look at you a little strange. But as a child, you're free to rome. And so that's a wonderful thing about that part of life.

going on in the nation. But the way I got involved in politics, that was a small town lawyer raising Hay and three Pharoh boys out in the central part of Washington State, and we tried to pass a school bond, Trudy and I because it failed five times and they were going to have to start double shifting our kids. We thought that was nuts. So he said, let's go build a new high school. And no one else with town would try because they failed five times. Wow, Trudy

and I and another couple took it on. We got it passed, and as soon as we passed it, though, the chatterheads and the legislature changed the funding formula and got our state funding in half. And I got outraged about that, went over and started to raise hell An Olympia in our capital. And eventually he said, well, if I'm going to do this, I might as well be in office. So I ran for office one in a huge upset, very very republican area against the city mayor

and had no chance of winning. Was in the legislature for two years and went to Congress. So that's my route, which was not preordained, predestined, or planned, And here I am.

serve the public. So it's nice to hear your story. When when you look around the landscape of you know, the world you work in. Why do you think younger generations seem so politically averse? You know, what do you think that is? Is it a is it a disillusionment or is it that frustration with some of that kind of grift that we see in the political system. Why do you think so many young folks are hands off.

you know, in life. You know, I hate to say it, but you do grow into things. And I don't think it's I don't I actually don't know the numbers, but I'm not sure it's changed dramatically. As far as voting behavior for young people, it's always been lesser than people, you know, over sixty. That's always been sort of the reality of this situation. I will say that the young voters that do vote and are active are so incredible, well informed and scientifically literate and inspiring to those of

us who've been around for a few decades. So we do everything humanly possible to get young people engaged because they're the smartest generation and they have the most to lose, right, So you know how many years have I got, I don't know, but twenty year old's got several decades. And if they lose the planet and a place to live in a health system that takes care of them, they get a lot more to lose. So we do everything

we do to encourage them. We do have a higher voter participation of young and old in my state because we have one of it's not the best voting system, because we vote by mail, it's very easy. We have same day registration. We make it really easy to vote. And it just drives me nuts when I see these other states, most of them run by the party that I don't belong to, that you know, make people stand in line for three hours to vote. It's just nuts.

So we do everything we can to increase voter participation, and we have one of the highest rates in the nation.

you're willing to blow up the filibuster. And I'm not a fan of the filibuster, if it was me, I probably would vote to end it, even though there's downsize when here's the minority, obviously, but that prevents a lot of progress, and it is you know, that is you know, a cleavage between the two parties. So the Democratic Party is for the last you know, one hundred and fifty years, has stood for increasing participation in our community decision making,

and the other party not so much. They have willfully in many occasions, tried to make it more difficult and continue these efforts even today in a variety of ways, with all kinds of tests and barriers, and you know, requiring you to go produce your birth certificate when you simply want to vote, which is a real headache, by the way, because a lot of people, like nine to fifteen percent people literally can't find their documents on occasions,

so it's a serious issue. It's very disappointing that both parties can't be in favor of broadening the number of people participate. To put a mildly, I'm disappointed in them, you.

to take care of our people. How did you come to really focus on climate as a core issue for yourself and what do you wish people better understood about it?

your kids what you've enjoyed is our highest duty. There's a lot of other duties in life that you know everybody'd want to ask your car in a longer vacation, but that's in my book, in my value system, that's the number one duty of any person in any realm, no matter what you're doing. So it kind of stems

from that. And I have six grandchildren and it is my deep, deep, purple passionate desire for them to have what I've had, which is clean water, to be able to drink and to swim in snow in the mountains, to ski on air, to breathe it's not contaminated with forest fire and smoke. And I want desperately, if I can use that word, to give my grandchildren those gifts,

and they seem simple because I've always had them. But they're not going to have those gifts of a blessed and healthy life unless people of my age act to build a clean energy economy. And this is a very optimistic moment. I know that sounds very strange to say, given what the Republicans are trying to do, but we have such capability right now to do this, to use our heads. Solar and wind energy is now cheaper than coal power electricity about ninety four percent of the United States.

We're building hundreds of thousands of jobs with clean energy jobs. If we just use our heads in common sense, we can tame this beast and help our economy. So it's both a moment to think of our grandchildren and a moment to think of the economic benefits of clean energy and to be frankly outraged at what the Republicans want to do, which is to slow down this emerging rocket

that's taken off in clean energy. And it's just so maddening as we speak that the Republicans are fashioning a bill that will you know, have already cost maybe ninety thousand jobs across the United States. I look at North Carolina. You know, Senator Tillis has a vote on this, and this bill is drafted, would cost something like forty five thousand jobs in North Carolina over the next several decades. Wow,

it's billions of dollars of investment. And here's a kicker, I think there's actually been an assessment of this could result in utility bills going up three hundred dollars a month for the people in Carolina because they no longer will have access to the cheapest source of electricity, which is electricity generated by renewable sources. So when they, out of ideology do this, it's really quite maddening given the

pace of technology that is now available to us. So it's a good moment for voices to be heard to stand up for cheap energy, cheap electricity, thousands of jobs and bonus, maybe our grandkids will have a place to live and breathe because the issue.

in clean energy. You know, there's a statistic I read recently that says three and a half million Americans have saved more than eight billion dollars thanks to energy efficient upgrades across the country and that if they continue, that savings will increase to thirty eight billion dollars by twenty thirty. So when you say that this bill, you know, this this reconciliation plan that they want to push through, this big awful bill, will destroy these things, I just think, well,

who would want to set thirty eight billion dollars on fire? Like, imagine what we could do with that money for you know, upgrades and infrastructure and kids. It's like, the the insanity of having a dirt to your world and wasting money just feels so ridiculous to me. So why do you think they've worked so hard to make environmental issues, clean energy, the literal evolution of an innovation in technology seem like it's a partisan thing instead of just what we should be doing as a global power.

powerful than the mediciese during the Italian period. So they're answering to their their bosses, if you will, Who are the people with the billions of dollars in an old, unfortunately dirty industry that they are answering to. Those are the people telling them how to vote. So that's number one. Number two, they've got a cult going on right now where they've got a guy in the White House that

somehow has a phobia about wind turbines. He says they cause cancer, but we know they don't cause cancer, they cause jobs, And he somehow he didn't want to see a wind turbine within sight of his golf course and decided he wanted to destroy this entire industry. It's nuts. But number three, there is a deeper reason. If I can and it requires a little more thought to think about. It's fear. Fear is very powerful, and in their case,

they are afraid that we can't solve this problem. They're afraid that we can't have a modern lifestyle by addressing this problem, and so they shut their eyes. It. It's like they want to put the monster in the in the closet, you know. They get the monster in the closet. They don't want to let it out because they're afraid that will lose all of the modern benefits we have of ev warmth in our house and food on the table, and electronics at our disposal. And they don't see a

vision that can allow us to live that life. I do, and so many thousands and millions, and the majority of Americans do because we're now experiencing it and the joy of this. It's the joy of clean energy. I remember talking to this woman. We got solar panels for a house. We have a thing called the Climate Commitment Act Washington State, and it generates money so we can help Washingtonians get access to clean energy. So she lives in top and it she gets up at three o'clock every morning, goes

picks apples. Top finished Washington, and I met she and her daughter right their front yard looking up at her solar panels, and she said, I am the best day of my month is the day I get my utility bills because it's zero, says I. Just it's like a gift every month. So we hear these stories of people getting heat pumps who've lowered their costs and have much more, you know, comfortable homes. And by the way, now heat pump now gives you air conditioning too, and we now

need that in Seattle. We never needed air conditioning until now, but now the heat domes are hitting us right and it helps on air quality in so many ways. And we've had a problem with air quality because of forest fires. By the way, you mentioned financial impact on this. One of the great things people don't think about are the health costs associated with this. We have an epidemic of asthma.

We have kids with neighbors that they don't know anybody doesn't have asthma, and it's getting worse because of forest fire smoke and also because of the particular matter that comes from burning fossil fuels. So the financial cost is not just losing jobs. It's not just losing industries. It's losing your health and the health costs have gone up dramatically because of that. So there's so many ways this makes sense. I've given you my best explanation as to

why this is. And it's very unique to America. You know, you go to other continents. This is not a debate between the liberal and conservative parties. You know, every country has a liberal and conservative party, and there's unanimity that we got to do something about this. And the rest of the world. It's a very strange thing in the United States and most bizarre because we're the most technologically adept people in the world. You know, we're the ones

that went to the moon. Yeah, and so why this has infected us is a little strange. But we need to do something about it, which is get out there and vote in March.

were just referencing. You know, the United States is really a leader on science and technology, and as we see these threats to you know, our research institutions, funding grants, all of these things It's not lost on me that if we, you know, knock the wheels off the bus of progress on environmental science, we're given it to other countries like we will forfeit our future as technologists to countries like China. And it's really important for us to continue to lead on this from a democracy.

You know, you're in a creative business, right and congratulations on your career, But science is a creative business as well, and by choking that creativity, this is really the economic powerhouse of the United States. The economic growth of the United States starts in laboratories, probably most, if not many, if not most, in university laboratories. That's where these ideas come from, where they start, that's where these startups come

out of. And right now that's choked off for reasons that really are difficult to understand because those researchers now are not coming to do research and projects. They are going to Germany and England and China, and that's where that research is going to go. Because these researchers, they have a passion for doing it. They're going to find a place to do it, and now we're telling them they can't do it, and it's so insidious. One old story. So we were when we marched last weekend. We had

a unique way of doing it. We did it on our ferryboat. So on the ferry from Bambridge Island to Seattle. We had two thousand people walking around the ferryboat deck in protests. And I met a woman named Ella and she is a freshman at Harvard. She is the pole vault champion in the Ivy League and she's also a medical device researcher at age like eighteen or nineteen, and she's doing research on using mechanical energy instead of electrical energy to power little devices that are put in your

body as a simpler way to do it. And she has a research grant, which is incredible, the eighteen nineteen year old person thinking about medical devices. Yeah wow. And her Grant just got canceled. Can't do it this summer. She was going to be trying to invent something that can help people of my age get through the aging process, and they canceled her. And that is so heartbreaking to see the ambition in her eyes quashed. Now she's resilient,

she's going to go on. So I told her, look, this may delay your work, but it's not going to stop it. So go pull vault this summer and we'll be back when Democrats get in charge of the House of Representatives at least, so we're hoping that'll happen. By the way, there's litigation on all of this too. Yes, we're hopeful. We've got you know, a dozen injunctions already against Trump's trying to stop this progress. So all is not lost here. So we've still got hope.

That makes sense because while you're competing with these incumbent old technologies, getting a little start, a little seed money really really helps. And it does so well. I started a thing called the Clean Tech Center or a testbed facility at the University of Washington several years ago and met these two young guys that had invented a way to increase the efficiency of a solar cell by kind of concentrating the light, changing the frequency, counturing some of

the frequencies of light. That was like four years ago. Well, now they've spun off their company, they've been acquired by somebody else, And it started with this little seed money from the university, from the State of Washington to start this clean tech lab.

of our world. And one of the things I think, and you can tell me if I'm correct here, one of the things I think I'm seeing is, especially with the extreme weather and the way things are changing, you know, since Trump got back into office, I do feel like I'm seeing people realize, you know, this is this is bad. The fact that Noah is changing, that he wants to absolutely you know, cut it down to basically be completely inefficient.

That signals to Americans that the president is essentially saying you're on your own. You know. Disaster warnings have not gone out on days they needed to since he took office, and people have died. Can you kind of walk us through a bit what Noah and the National Weather Service do and why they are so important to folks across the country.

related disasters. And it's very personal with me because I've seen what that trauma does when your house has been burned down. I remember this couple in WINACTI standing just in literally the ashes of their house, hugging each other, just trying to support each other. It's such trauma when you lose your house or your life. We had two whole towns burned down in forest fires, and of course our forest fires have almost doubled in the last several

decades because of heat. Because of heat and drought and dryness, these forests are just tenders waiting to explode now across the Western United States. There's no force on nature that can really totally solved. We can manage our forests, we're doing that, but you can't totally solve the problem when they're so dry. So I've seen this personal and when I've seen what Trump did, which was so callously indifferent,

it really does make my blood boil. This town called mal didn't burned down several years ago in eastern Washington. The whole town burned down. In fact, the fire engine burned down in the fire station. The fire is moving so quickly, and we asked, you know, the federal government for help, and Trump says, no, I'm not going to help. And when the Republican congresswoman said, why won't you help?

You know, this is a Republican district, and he said, because I don't you know, I don't like the governor. You know, he's not subservient to me, won't kiss my ring often enough. So he refused assistance to those families whose homes were in ashes, whose lives were severely compromised. And because the whole town, when you have the whole town burned down, you just don't have something to go back to. There's no city hall, there's no fire station,

there's no medical clinic. And so that is so devastating to a community. And to me, how I look at this problem, when I think about that couple standing in the ruins of their home, pleading with the president who was hired to help them turn his back on them. Literally, he's turning his back on these people their most desperate moment where he said that we're not going to help these people. I can't think of a more scandalous, abusive

thing for a public official to do. Look, we're not asking to go to the moon or cure cancer by next Monday. We're simply asking him to help these people who are in stress. And it's fires here, but it's floods too. I remember talking to another family. They got flooded out in the northern part to the state of Washington, and they took about a year to rebuild their home. They had a party celebrating rebuilding their home, and a week later, another flood came through and wiped out their

home again. And to turn your back on these people is just such an outrage, and we need to do something about it, which clearly is to vote and go help people that can get into office to stop this madness. Now he talks about it as waste, fraud, and abuse.

But I'll tell you what, when you see a family standing in those ashes and they ask you for a little bit of food to eat for a few weeks and a little bit of rental assistance so they can go to apartment for a few weeks while to figure out where're going to be, and maybe some assistance with jobs because you've lost your jobs because the economy has been destroyed in your local community. That ain't waste, fraud and abuse. That's human compassion. It's responsibility of what we

hire the federal government to do. So I'm hopeful this will turn this around.

So and unfortunately, this is something we've got to wrap our heads around. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The frequency of fires, a frequency of floods, the frequency of extreme weather events, just rainstorms. We've had rainstorms that destroyed Mountain International Park several years ago. You know, it doesn't dribble that we're now having these downpourds. This is going to increase in the near term because we didn't start this effort twenty years ago like we should have.

So FEMA and the federal government is going to be even more important. And it's important that the federal government get involved because when you have a local community that's hurt, you need to get these assets from multiple states helping out. And I've seen this people come from and bless the Red Cross, who has help, but they can't carry the whole ball here, No to help people with this.

I know a lot about hurricane season, and it was really painful for me, despite the fact that I don't live there anymore, to watch the President deny aid to the folks who were affected by Hurricane Helene in that state. It was hard to watch them deny aid to the tornado survivors in Arkansas. And as you said, a lot of those folks are his voters. And the whole point I believe in being a leader is to be a leader for everyone. And the bottom line is here, and

you mentioned this earlier. You know, there's a lot of people who make a lot of money on an old system. And while Trump is currently turbo charging the climate crisis to increased profits for all his oil and gas buddies, Americans, you know, red states and blue are paying the price. And so I think the first step is this moment, right, it's the informed conversation it's making sure people have the facts.

And then, as you said, it's organizing, and it's getting out and voting and making sure that all of us are able to say, hey, this isn't working, This isn't working for anybody, so we've got to do something differently. I know that can be hard, probably for some of the folks at home, because you know, we've got a year and a half till the midterms. It's scary to think that we have to keep fighting before we might

see a shift. So to try to inject a little hope here, I'm curious, as you are an expert in the space, what you think are some of the most promising things coming down the pipeline in terms of clean energy technologies and the job creation that comes out of those innovative spaces.

going on in my state. So my state, there are two companies, Celan Group fourteen. They've invented a new way to use a silicon anode battery that can increase the range of your car twenty or thirty percent and charge it much more quickly. They have manufacturing plants now under construction. These are real companies making real products that can have a quantum leap forward in the range of your electric car.

Right around the corner, literally like a mile from those two companies is a company called twelve that's making jet fuel out of carbon dioxide and water with no waste products, so that when you find your jet there's no you don't have a carbon footprint. If you will, you're using carbon free fuel. And they're building their manufacturing plant. Right

up the river. About oh twenty miles from them, is a company's going to build the first fusion energy plant in the United States, a fifty megawatt production plant using fusion, not fission. This is not fission that we know as the old nuclear power. This is a process of fusing atoms rather than splitting them. Goes back to that book I read when I was ten that actually they may

begin construction on in the next twelve months. Wow, you've got companies that are improving the performance of solar energy. We have the first marine battery manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Washington, and we're going to be building electric ferries. So now you won't be breathing in that smoke coming out of a smokestack of your fairies anymore. They're all electric and I've ridden them on them in Norway. They work. I've seen the biggest one in the world is now in Uruguay.

So the wind turbine industry is continuing to be more productive building solar like crazy. So everywhere I turn around there's an entrepreneur and skilled working people building news services and products that contain this piece and reduces our cost of electricity. I mean, think about this. What a blessing to have infinite energy fallen on our shoulders that we can turn into electricity to run whatever we want to run with no pollution. We don't have to dig a

hole in the ground. It falls. It's delivered free from nine million miles away from the sun and it falls right on us. I mean, this is a real blessing. Yeah, and now to see the continued improvement of those things is thrilling to me. But we want to accelerate the pace of that development, not retarded, and we can do that if we just don't go backwards in some of these policies.

gas fuel. It makes me think about the early days when COVID first began and granted terrifying time, but when everything really shut down and we started to see how quickly the planet could rebound if a lot of our pollutants ceased to be pumped into our air every day. What do you think or have you heard any of these scientists talk about what sort of healing we would see for the planet if entire industries did transform like this. Are they modeling any of that yet.

on that river. It's really astounding to see how salmon will recover. A little Piper's Creek where I grew up in the north side of in a suburban area of Seattle, which didn't have any salmon when I you know, at least when I was a teenager, and we worked to restore the community. It was really community led effort, little help in the state, I think. To restore the habitat, you know, you just make it so it spreads out, doesn't run so fast, you put woody debris in it.

Now you got this prodigious salmon run coming back, and the kids go back and so it's a huge community celebration. When you see that life really be restored. So we know that that things do come back. But there are some difficult realities that we have to face that auto not make us afraid of progress, but to inspire more rapid progress. And there are some systemic problems that we have that are going to be devilius for quite some time,

principally water temperature. So our water temperature has increased so much in the state of Washington that salmon literally can't get up some of our rivers. They can't survive. So we had a really great dam and run go up to Columbia River, hundreds of miles up the Clembia River, but stopped when they got to the mouth of the in Okanahan County because water is too hot. It couldn't keep going to spawn. Actually we got lucky they finally got up there because we got a break in the weather.

But this water temperature is your issue, is one that is difficult. That's why we need to double our efforts to improve habitat, for instance, to allow mother nature to do everything so that she can do. And we want to get back to work and give her a hand.

stuff is possible. What lessons did you learn about what it actually takes to rally folks to get ambitious climate policy passed.

So when I became governor in twenty thirteen, we had a Republican Senate and they refused to assist in any way to deal with anything and climate. That was very frustrating to me. You know, I wanted to have a bipartisan effort, so I started a bipartisan commission with Republican senators on it, but they basically just refused to participate.

So then we finally got a Democratic majority in our legislature, but I still had a couple of kind of folks that hadn't got the memo, even on the Democratic side, So I had to work for several years to get those last two votes, and there were some changes in the legislature. And what I found is frequently it is much easier to change the people sitting in the seats

than to change their minds. So we had some changes and who's sitting in the seats, And on year six or seven of my governor's term, we finally got the capstone of our multiple faceted effort, which is a capin invest system which generates three billion dollars by any m that we then turn around and get people with heat pumps and electric school buses and air filtration systems and everything else. Now we've done other things. We had one

hundred percent clean energy grid requirement. We have the best building efficiency standards in the United States. We don't waste energy. We have a low carbon fuel standard which basically gives people cleaner fuels in multiple ways. We have a Climate Core to teach kids the science of climate change. So we've done a lot, but the big most effective tool is this cap and invest system, and that came in in twenty nineteen, in year six or seven that we

then now have impact. And here's the really cherry on the top, the fossil fuel. You know, billionaires didn't like that, so they came in and tried to repeal this law, and they put it on the ballot and we had a knockdown, drag out fight, and the wise citizens of the state of Washington defeated them sixty two to thirty eight. I mean, that is the biggest landslide washing state history.

Because Washingtonians understood the economic benefits, the job benefits, the health benefits, and it wasn't even necessary to talk about rising sea levels alike, because they understood the first order of benefits that if you got a heat pump, if you get solar and wind, and it's cheaper if your kids don't have to breathe forest fire smoke. Our kids had to couldn't go outside for days at a time

two summers ago because of forest fire smoke. So people understood the first order of magnitude and funally gave us a blue Riven seal of approval. I think that you give confidence to politicians going forward, looking at the experience in Washington State. We bring companies here instead of them going somewhere else because we have this entrepreneurial culture exactly. We invest in them and then people support it. So people said this is not a winner politically, they're just

dead wrong. I've seen it firstand first off, I got elected governor running on this. Then we won sixty two thirty eight. Going away, this is a winning issue if it's properly framed and you talk about it in the right way.

forest fires have some system to help them. So I'm quite active. I'm active in trying to raise my voice on ferryboats, marching with people and letting them to know how important that is to help people on the electoral cycle as well. So I'm quite engaged in this effort, and I am as cited. I know it's easy to kind of get down in the situation and we're in, but I just believe we're going to succeed in this. I don't believe humans ultimately will be the cause of

their own destruction. I don't believe that. I believe that we will rescue ourselves. It's been delayed by this electoral cycle, but we've been delayed before I went through the Bush era. You know, I went through the second Bush presidency where he started a war in Iraq, and you know a lot of these wars are associated with access to oil, and he slowed down our effort. You know, he wanted to do cold based stuff that just didn't pencil out at all, and his presidency slowed us down by years.

But we came back during the Obama era. We pasted things going forward. We all became this close to passing a cap and invest bill. Then we got slowed down again by Trump. But then we got the Biden presidency where there's you know, a miracle of the Inflation Reduction Act and the tax cuts, which are now threatened again

got passed, and we've seen spectacular economic growth. Some of these companies that I told you about Washington, they got a little benefit to get going because of those tax benefits, and right now they're under threat again. You know, we talked about Senator Tillis. He could cause forty five thousand job losses and in state over the next couple of decades if he votes to get rid of these tax cuts or to make them less accessible to people. Now I've heard he's trying to make it. He's trying to

sweeten the deal a little bit. You know, he's trying to make it that you don't destroy the tax cuts till a little later. Well, that's like saying, hey, give me a benefit because I've delayed your hanging by a couple of weeks. That's not really an answer to this problem. We need Republicans to stand up and preserve this. My point is progress is not linear. Yes, you're going up and then you're stable. You're going up, then you're stable

a step by step. Martin Luther King was right, said, you know, the arc of the moral universe is long, Yes, but it bends towards justice, and it is long. This battle is long, and this is a moment of we got some headwinds, but the winds are going to change. We're going to be back in business and the genius that is in our country is going to be unleashed again. And we're going to get better, cheaper energy and healthier kids. Yes, and less climate change. And I believe that's going to happen.

I wish what happened.