Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and a new report from CIVICUS downgraded US freedom to obstruct it whatever that means. We have such a great show for you today as the world churns.
Andy Leeby stops by to talk.
About impeaching RFK Junior, and then we'll talk to Senator Tammy Baldwin about the upcoming battle to keep your insurance affordable.
We'll say, but first we have the news.
Molly, their back. The Heritage Foundation now has a Project twenty twenty six. It's not looking good.
Okay, So Heritage Foundation got everything it fucking wanted with Project twenty twenty five.
So now, like the greedy.
Little children they are, they have a Project twenty twenty six policy vision. Part of this is because Donald Trump does not have any policy, right, he has no policy. His policy is make money and turn paint things yellow. And so the Heritage Foundation has decided they have some policies that they would like to enact. Some of them are pretty obvious. Some of them are stuff Trump would not get involved in. Maybe, so Number one, resisting the
communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party. These people are probably not going to be happy because Donald Trump just said he's going to sell Navidia chips to China.
Yeah, this is like the funniest one to be if a big hoddest as. I was reading this earlier because this is basically like saying like, could we just get Trump to stop being trump pud trade?
Yeah?
Exactly. So well, I mean he's in a trade war with them, so.
That's something basic.
Yeah, but the problem is he's busy in riching himself and contradicting it.
Yes, that is true.
Okay, so he has resisting the Communist Chinese Party. That's never gonna happen, and he shouldn't have sold them Navidio immigration restrictions, I'm I mean, for who, nobody's coming.
Here, but okay.
And then my favorite is election refinements. You know what that means, right, oppression? Yeah, my man is going to refine the elections so that he doesn't lose them.
But the detail in here is interesting that they're really not into rank choice voting, and some of that makes me think they saw the TikTok jahatas or on and they're getting real scared.
Rank choice voting. They don't like anything, Okay, reality check. Rank choice voting, now used in both deep bread and deep blue jurisdictions, has increased in popularity. Research shows the party neutral system can increase voter turnout and improve representation for women and people of color. Ara Ago, they don't want it.
This is sending real pro democracy to me.
Elimination of the Department of Education. Let me tell you a secret here. Team of course they want to get rid of that, and there's a reason for that, because of course they do. So they want to dismantle the Department Education. Trump is already trying to do that. He put Linda McMahon, everyone's favorite wrestling princess in there. So not surprising. I don't know how they would do that. I mean, I don't know how they could do that
more than they're doing it already. Fighting big tech. This is one of my favorite of these ideas.
Because this one's so funny.
Yeah, it is really funny. Let's talk about it. Big tech has interfered with our elections. Okay, yeah, but they have four Republicans, so whoa so I to groom and brainwash our children with perverted left wing ideologies?
FYI, Big tech is how our.
Children got to think that, Like Joe Rogan and Charlie Kirk were the you know.
Yeah YouTube pipeline, the gen z that voted for Trump down that pipeline by recommending videos after other videos were done on YouTube. Fat period paragraph.
Done right, right, right, right, So.
This is themating themselves of their own foot But hey, if they want common clause of regulating big tech, I just hope they get to know someone named Lena Khan and we can get it going. Yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not holding my breath though.
All right.
So we also have promoting traditional family values real shocker in here, and then my favorite one, supporting the Trump administration.
Yeah, so let's talk about supporting the Trump administration promoting traditional family values restore the nuclear family to the center of American life. Who better to do that than a man who is married to his third wife.
Yeah. Foundation also asserts that children should be born to a mother and father who are married, singling opposition to same sex marriage and efforts to eliminate related protections.
I don't know, I mean sure. Heritage says it will back trump efforts to reshape the federal government and restore efficient operations again Okay, I mean I don't know what that means. It plans to size the constitution separations of power and expand authority for independent agencies. That's what has been doing all this time. And also, and by the way, I love this, it wants to increase fossil fuel production.
Of course, So Boby, let's shift gears here away from this hellscape. We have a lot of good news. I have a prediction for you. I've been wanting to hear your thoughts about this. I think the word of the year next year is going to be dummy mander.
So, we have a Georgia Democrat flipping a state House seat in a district Trump won by double digits. We're talking about Tuesday's elections. We have a Democrat flipping the Miami Mayor's office win in control for the first time in thirty years. We have everybody moved to left, every election moved left on Tuesday twelve points, ten points, fifteen points left left left again not surprising if you looked at the twenty five cycle at the.
Governor's race in New Jersey.
In Georgia, none of this is surprising, but it is absolutely what we knew we would start seeing again Republicans. That's why Trump is now talking about affordability. Of course he's not, but it is affordability. Look, Trump isn't a problem here. This is a real problem. I don't know how Trump worlds, you know. I think they're going to try to cheat. I think that's going to be the move. But it is kind of fascinating to watch them just
lose and lose and lose. They still control a lot of the Georgia House, right, It's not like this slips the house, but it does show really where we are.
We're seeing a weather vane point where the wind is presently blowing. Let's hope it keeps blowing that way and harder and faster.
I mean, the question is more like can they stop it? And I just don't see a way they can unless they start to really cheat. And I think that's what we're going to see next.
So one of the more annoying things I do is when I talk to people who work in service, I often ask them about the business. And one of the things I keep hearing from people of New York is that there's no Europeans here anymore since Trump got into office, and our tourism has gone down and we've seen this in repeated study after study, so it's not just ancidotal news.
And it looks like mister Trump wants to decimate our tourism because now they want to mandate social media checks for five years of their social media history before coming to the country.
This is ridiculous. But also, who's going to even do this?
Like I don't mean to be the person here calling fucking bullshit on this, but Trump administration I don't know. I mean, were you gonna have TSA agents looking at people's Twitter history? I mean, I just don't think that's gonna fly. You know, like so much of this Trump world stuff is like they decide they're going to do autocracy from nothing, and like I don't. I don't think so. I mean, I don't think that's how this is gonna go. I mean it seems really dumb.
I think you're right like that. There's always these Republican policies that Contract Toddict their small government, low budget policies, like following every pregnant woman around till they reach the birth turb and like, you know, like they can't do this stuff.
Yes, even if they can't do it, like it's against their gestalt or whatever. It's also just a question of like who is going to practically look at people's cell phones?
Like this is the thing with so much of Trumpism.
It's like you were going to go from normal American democracy to autocracy in fifteen months. Like I don't think so, man. I mean, maybe maybe they're sub but you know, these Europeans are going to come TSA agent is going to stop them and be like, fuck you man, let me see your phone. No, that's not how it's going to work. I mean, I'm sorry, but no, I don't think that flies.
I don't think they can do it.
Over at our YouTube channel, we have some really exciting stuff.
Jesse and I have made a documentary.
It's called Project twenty twenty nine, A Real Imagining. It's a series about how democrats can deliver popular policies when they regain power. The first episode is up now. It's the first part of the series, and we're going to examine what went wrong with some of the Biden administration's approach to policies that may have prevented Democrats from being able to deliver the broad anti corruption legislation that needed to happen, and by the way that would have prevented
some of the corruption we're seeing right now. The first episode dives deep into the first step of fixing American politics. It may sound unsexy, but it's a big, important issue, and that big subject is campaign finance reform. For this episode, we talk to some of the smartest people we know, professors and academics, people like Lawrence Lessig, Tiffany Muller, Michael Waldman, and Tom Moore. Republicans were prepared for when they got
the levers of power. Democrats need that same kind of preparation. That's why we need to start the conversation on how democrats can do the same thing.
So please head over to our YouTube.
Channel and search Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and you'll find it there and help us spread the word and stay tuned for more episodes.
Andy Leeby is the host of As the World Churns.
Welcome Too, Fast Politics, Andy Levy.
Oh hey, Molly, how are you. I didn't see you there.
Yeah, I'm here, baby.
My favorite thing about RFK is that he lied and said during his hearing that he would not fuck up vaccine schedules, immediately gets in there, doesn't do.
Any thing but fucks up vaccine schedules.
Discuss I also am opposed to him fucking up vaccine scheduling. And look, we've now got articles of impeachment on the floor, I guess in the House, which obviously, look, they're not going to go anywhere because we have a Republican controlled House.
I mean controlled being the Yeah.
We have a Republican majority in the House. Yes, that's probably a better way of putting it. Look, Mike Johnson probably won't even hear about this for two weeks because he doesn't really keep up with the news. But I don't care if this is symbolic. I don't care if it goes nowhere, both of which are probably true. I think it's important. I think it's important to use the mechanisms that are still vaguely in place to hold people accountable.
And out of all the things that this administration is doing, I think the attack on health and science are gonna be the hardest to undo, or they're going to take the longest to undo, is I guess a better way of putting it. And I think everything we are seeing now with vaccines, with vaccines for babies and newborns and kids.
It's so like you read this and you hear about this, And first of all, my new thing now is I read the news every day, and every time I see a story, I'm like, well, there's another thing I can't post on social media because of terms, because I'll get banned for what I want to say about it. Like you look at this and you're like, what is your goal here? Because you're gonna kill You're gonna kill people.
So RFK is going to be impeached.
Now, we have a member of Congress, and we also have we have a couple members of Congress who are set up an impeachment fight. One of them is Haley Stevens. She's running for She's running not for governor. She's running for the Senate in Michigan in a very hotly contested Senate primary discuss.
Yeah. Again, that's why when I said I don't care if this is symbolic or performative, which I'm sure it is against both, Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, Stevens is fairly moderate. It's not like she's, you know, a super progressive member of the House who you would look at this and you would go, oh, right on, they're standing up for what they believe in. She's a moderate. So yes, I think this is very clearly a senatorial election ploy.
But again I guess I just I don't really care, only because I think it's the right I think it happens to be the right thing to do, whether that
was the intention or not. And I think, you know, one of the things that the Democrats have really failed at for me in this past year is in using whatever measures are available to at least put up a fight to hold them accountable, and to at least, like I said, use mechanisms that exist to hold them accountable, to hold you know, whether it's RFK, whether it's hag Seth, whether it's well, the list is you know, long but undistinguished.
But like again, as as you and I have talked about, as as a lot of people are talking about, it's the fighting versus rolling over, you know, and so versus CA. Yeah, and even if the fight is if in this case it's being launched for the most political of reasons and the most cynical of reasons, I'm still in favor of it because I think it's something it's a battle that has to be fought.
Yeah, so RFK Junior impeachment. By the way, if Den's went back the House, they could impeach RFK.
Junior and you know, you could see they could maybe remove them.
Look, anything is possible. And I mean as of now, as of the end of twenty twenty five, it looks like there is a decent chance at least of the Democrats taking back the House next year. Obviously a lot can change between now and then, but you know, we just saw this week in some elections Democrats again did well.
They didn't do well, they did breezy.
Well yeah, oh absolutely absolutely. But again that's why I think it's important to start doing this shit now and and get it on the record. And then if you gotta you know, if it gets dragged out, or if you got to do it again in another year, fine, but get yourself on the record as saying you know, you can't just put out a press release and say boo RFK Jr. And then go home and say, well,
I've done my job today. Like, you gotta do something, and even if that is quixotic and doomed to fail and whatever, you gotta at least you gotta show that there's a fight here speaking of members of the Trump administration doing absolutely crazy shit because they think they'll never be held accountable.
Let us talk about the Department of War and Peace. That Weekend anchor friend of yours, close personal friend of yours from your time at Fox News, hot guy with many many children from many different women. That guy he's doesn't want the second video of the bombs to be It's that second video that's the one that you're not to discuss.
Yeah, look, obviously I've been following this story and the one thing I feel like nobody is saying, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just missed it, but you know, we keep arguing whether this, Oh, is this a war crime? Is it not a war crime because we're not at war, and it's just it's murder like either way, horrible and dead. What I've started thinking is what it is is state sponsored terrorism. And if another nation did this to American boats, American civilians on boats, we would call it an act
of terror. We would call it state sponsored terrorism. And that's what we are now. The American state is is committing terrorist acts. We are doing this for political reasons. We are doing it to strike fear all the things that you say, you know, well, how do you define what terrorism is? And you know, those are two of
the big ones. It's obvious. You know. The latest news now out of the I think it was in the New York Times, is that the Pentagon is fighting very hard to keep the survivors from being brought to the United States because they don't want them to stand trial here, so they want them to go to be put in the same place in El Salvador, the same disgusting country.
Well, they've pitched that idea, and the State Department lawyers were like, what the actual fuck are you talking about. You can't send survivors of strikes to death camps. And they were like, yeah, yeah, we were just kidding. Like you could see how that conversation went from the time the reporter.
Yeah, absolutely, and look we know they weren't just kidding. And this, of course is also the reason why, as we see in those videos where they're trying their damn best to make sure there are no survivors, because dead men tell no tales, you know, and so they don't want survivors to be able to come out there and say, hey, we were a small fishing boat or whatever, and you know, a boat that wouldn't even be able to make it to the United States mainland, And it's terrorism to me.
And that's what we are now. We are now committing acts of terror. I'm not saying we never have in the past, but now it's just sort of, you know, that's who we are. That's exactly what we've become. It sucks, Molly, I don't like it.
Yeah, I want to talk about the first video for a minute, because Tom Cotton, America's favorite senator, said that the video showed that they were right to kill the survivors.
He saw that video, So what do you think the thinking there was.
Look, as we know, Tom Cotton is the same person who wanted US troops to be deployed against US citizens. I don't know the thought process of someone like Tom Cotton, and I'm kind of happy about that. Like, I don't want to be able to understand that, because I think that would that would it would be a character defect to be able to look at that and go, oh, okay, well, what he's saying, no, you know, what he's saying is he has no problem with murder being committed. He has
no problem with watching snuff films. I'm not going to get into any potential, you know, psychosexual issues that may be involved here, because that's not my expertise.
There's also a second video, yes, and so I guess there were This may have happened more than once. And in fact, we do know that because we killed like eighty seven people on these boats, which may or may not have been fishing boats, but whatever, but we've killed eighty seven people. So there's clearly some other video. Asked about whether or not they would release the video, they said they had.
HEG. Sas said he was reviewing.
This made Chuck Schumer, not known to be the toughest guy, pretty mad.
Look again, I have no desire to watch these videos because they are snuff films, but I do think that they should be seen. You know, if you're so proud of what you did, release the fucking videos. If you're so proud of what you did, let the survivors come to America, because if you're so convinced of your righteousness, you should have nothing to fear from them giving their
side of the story. You know, it doesn't take any moral courage whatsoever to order someone to push a button to blow up a fishing boat and with Pete Hegseth and people like that. They absolutely they lack moral courage. If you have the courage of your convictions, then release the videos. Let the survivors talk, and the videos may
end up being released, but I don't. I think in his heart of hearts, whatever little shriveled up thing there is in there, he accept doesn't want that video out because he knows I think what it's gonna look like to a lot of people.
Let's talk for a minute about where we go now.
So Trump is not popular. Trump not popular.
You know, these democratic results are just a complete disaster and every for Republicans, like you know, they're flipping seats that shouldn't be flipped there, you know, looks like dummy Mander's coming.
You're Donald Trump, what do you do?
First of all, I would like to shoot down any rumors that you are, in fact are allegations that I am in fact on the Trump right.
It's being John Macovich. But you're being Donald Trump.
Right, Exactly everything you said is true. Trump is unpopular. A lot of these MAGA policies, now that they're actually being put into place, you're seeing a lot of you know, as we keep saying a lot of people going that's not what I voted for, even though it is what they voted for. I do think all of this is going to change now that the State Department is changing their font So I do think you have to take
that into consideration that the popularity. I think we're going to see a big change and a big upward movement in the popularity. Donald Trump is Donald Trump, and it's not like he's going to change or is capable of change. I don't think he's been capable of change since he was, like, you know, fourteen, And I guess I think the bigger question is for the wanna be Trump's or the wannabe
next Trump's, the JD. Vance's of the world. So it's a question of are they going to look at this and realize that it's not working to a large extent, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, Vance, you know, seems he's a complete He's completely captured by basically the online right and the Peter Thiel type people who really don't I mean, you want to talk about living in a bubble. I don't know that he can change. So I don't know where this goes next. I mean, look,
we're seeing all this infighting now, Marjorie Taylor Green. You know, even Nancy Mace took a five minute break from the crazies to say that, you know, hey, this weird stuff going on.
Their problem is they feel like Mike Johnson is not treating them like they're grown ups, right, I mean, he treats women like children.
I don't know that that.
I'm not sure their problem is ideological as much as it's like, you can't treat us like children.
Well, I do think with Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean she's been and trust me, I have absolutely no interest in rehabilitating her whatsoever. She doesn't deserve it. She's done nothing to deserve it. She's a big part of the problem she's now complaining about. But there is some ideology
going on there. I mean, she's talked about the healthcare stuff, and a lot of MAGA right now is very anti populist in you know, whether it's getting rid of the healthcare subsidies, causing people's healthcare prices to increase or whatever. That's not what populism is supposed to be. Populism is, you know, for as much as the right wing populist hate socialism and communism. There's a lot of government handouts involved in populism. Government handouts is their term, which is
why I use it. Yeah, But so I do think with Marjorie Tayler Green and with some of the other MAGA people on the right, there is this sort of realization again whether it's whether it's real or just playing politics, but there's this realization that, hey, some of these policies are actually going to hurt our base. Whereas I I don't know that you know, that sort of intension with the we got to get rid of the healthcare subsidies Obamacare. It's Obamacare, we got to get rid of it. So
I do think there are some ideological tensions there. I agree with you one hundred percent that, you know, Nancy Mason, people like that. A lot of it is I don't know if they just woke up today and or that day and realized, oh, you know what, maggot, A lot of these maggid dudes don't like women and don't think we should be in Congress or in the workplace, you know, to begin with. But I don't know what Donald Trump
himself does. I mean, I mean, I guess we're seeing some of it where they want to, you know, sort of offset his tariffs that are hurting farmers and stuff like that. At a certain point, the lord willing people who have voted for Trump are gonna maybe realize that he's not actually fighting for them. It feels hard.
To be because.
We've had we've had a bunch of years of proof of that, and they still believe it. But I don't know. I think what Trump does is he just he continues to lie. He continues to say the economy is strong, and you know, prices are going down, and he just has to hope that there's enough people out there that continue to fall for it, even as they see their prices go up and their wages stagnate or fall. I guess the issue how how much longer can he get away with the lies? I think is what it comes
down to. You know what. That's on the electorate, It's on the media to be more proactive and stronger in saying that he's lying. But I don't know the answer. I mean, I think we are in sort of you know, in a sense, we're in uncharted waters with this administration and all the things we're seeing and all the rollbacks of stuff we thought was settled, you know, fifty sixty
years ago. I just I don't know what the final answer is, and I'm not sure that MAGA does either or the Republican Party, but I repeat myself, and I have to think that that's a little nerve racking for them as we get closer, well, first of all in the midterms, and then as we get closer to twenty twenty eight.
Andy Levy, if you had to rate yourself on the economy right now, how would you rate yourself?
Now, I'm just kidding, rate myself, like, how am I doing?
Yeah? Yeah, aa aa.
Plus plus plus.
Oh, oh, that's right. I forgot. We're doing letter grades these days. These days, God.
Week, come back? Oh well you come back? Will you come back? No? Come back, you monster?
After the way we treated today, you think I'm going to come back.
Sammy Baldwin is the junior Senator the great state of Wisconsin. Welcome to Fast Politics, Senator Baldwin.
I am so glad to join you. Thanks for having me.
Well, I'm delighted to have you.
And there's just so much to talk about in the Senate right now. First, I think we should talk about how these Obamacare premiums are just expiring. Like, get us talking about what where we are. I feel like we're on yet another affordability cliff.
There's no question that we are on the precipice of a cliff right now. So I'm going to bring you back to last summer where President Trump brought his signature legislation to the floor on taxes. It was a tax bill.
It's a tax cut for wealthy people.
That's right.
Exactly.
The point I'm about to make is that you would think the centerpiece of that signature bill, the signature tax bill, would be a tax break for working American families to be able to afford their healthcare premiums. But no, Instead there is this massive tax break that disproportionally benefits big corporations and billionaires and the wealthy. They pay for a little bit of it by cutting food aid and medicaid.
Right snap, and medicaid, that's.
Right, And that only pays for a fraction of this enormous tax break for the very wealthy. But they fail to address this imminent crisis back in the summer, and then we said, all right, you left something out, the tax break for working people to be able to afford their healthcare insurance, and so all year long we have been offering opportunities to our Republican colleagues to join us in some fashion to prevent people from going over this cliff.
So on December thirty first, this tax break for working families will end unless we act, and the open enrollment for Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act is from November first through December fifteenth. By my count, there's just a couple days left to people to shop for their insurance. When they go to healthcare dot gov to shop, they know what they were paying per month this year, and they're seeing what they will pay next year for their same insurance.
Then they can shop around and see if there's another offering that's a little more affordable. But most people are seeing double, triple, quadruple the premiums they were paying this year, and too many of them are thinking to themselves, I don't know how I can do it. I just can't stretch my budget that far. And so we're going to see. The estimate is four million nationwide will forego healthcare next year because of these tax breaks disappearing. We're fighting to
extend the tax breaks. We've been fighting to extend the tax breaks for the year. We knew they were coming to an end. And tomorrow we will get another vote on extending these tax breaks. It'll be a three clean extension. Okay, So what's happening on the Republican side. They have been saying for a decade and a half that they want to get rid of Obamacare. They want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. They're the same thing, by the way, I just people know them as different things,
so I always put them together. They're the same thing. So the Republicans want to get rid of it, and they have never come up with a replacement. They talked about repeal and replace for many, many years. Donald Trump said during his last election, well have a concept of
a plan. Nothing's come to fruition. And at the eleventh hour before we get this vote tomorrow on a clean three year extension, Leader Thuon in the Senate has put something on the calendar that has to do with health savings accounts.
And this is crazy, it's half baked.
It doesn't deal with the cliff, it doesn't deal with the crisis. So anyways, this is so avoidable. But yet here we are. We have fought so hard to give this relief to working families, people who are dealing with high costs of all sorts of things and can ill afford pun intended to have this increase in their healthcare premiums.
Suon is really an interesting guy because I feel like he's one of these Republican senators who's had to make a faustian bargain to go along with Trump. Is clearly he knows better. He's been in the Senate a long time. He's you know, I'm sure you've done bipartisan legislation with him.
Yeah, I wonder if you could talk.
About how if you're John Soon, I mean, what's the play here, right? Because you see your already is just hemorrhaging elections, right, you know that you could theoretically even lose the Senate despite the Senate map being so bad for Democrats. You have an impossible situation. But you know, Republicans don't want extend these subsidies, partially because I think they know that to step towards a government you know, it's a step towards single payer, really, and that's why.
And it's from the pandemic, and they're hoping that maybe they can reverse it and but I think I think the public sentiment is to you know, Obamacare is as popular as it's ever been. The recent polling showing it's you know, gonzo, So talk us through what you think is happening there.
Yeah, so as you reflect.
Polling suggests that huge percentages of Americans, including a majority a significant majority of Republicans, want Congress to extend these tax credits. I haven't seen the latest round of polling, but this is very, very sizable majorities. Trump has access to that polling. Trump maybe wants to keep both Houses of Congress and Republican control in the second two years
of his administration so he can enact his agenda. And so I think what might be going through Leader Thune's brain is, is this guy gonna throw me under the bus at some point when finally his holsters get his attention and say, we lose the House if you don't do something. I've got to think that he knows that. Right now, Trump's expectation of Senate Republicans is that they don't enact a democratic plan to extend the tax credits, the tax breaks for working families for three more years.
But what do they do as their endgame? I don't know the answer to that. That's just speculation. But he's got to be thinking about like when when is the president going to throw me under the bus? Because I think it's coming.
I mean, stefonic is such a great example of how you can go along with Trump and then just he has no loyalty to anyone, right.
Well, look at Taylor Green, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green.
Green is unbelievable.
I mean, that was on this topic, Like just think about she was so reflective in this particular instance of what so many Americans are thinking. I understand. She has adult children who got their notices that said this is what your health care costs. Now, this is what it's going to cost next year. They're young adults, new in the work world, and they're looking at these premiums, going mom, what am I going to do? And she's realizing that her constituents, you know, this is real, this is you know,
every number is a person and a family. And so she spoke up and said we should extend these And that's what happens when you stand up to Trump. As you've seen, she's not only not running again, she's leaving the house before the end of her term.
Yeah, because she's getting Danser, She's getting the thing that everybody gets when they go against Trump.
I mean, it's just wild.
So I know that Keem's camp has a sort of clean discharge petition on House Care.
God bless them for a minute.
As someone who's been a Senator for a long time, how shocked are you that discharge petitions are the new normal now?
Well, in this environment, if there are going to be checks and balances and Speaker Johnson is just going to be Trump's lapdog, it is the only tool that works, right, And so in some ways, you know, I hope that there are still a handful or more House Republicans who say, oh, by the way, we're the Article one branch of government, and we're supposed to actually make the laws and appropriate the dollars, not the president, and so we want to
actually exercise that. And the fact that it kind of played out with the Epstein files is interesting because that was not so much that we passed the laws we fund the government, but it was a very important exercise to say, hey, we're relevant as a Congress. So yeah, I mean, in this and viron, in this crazy environment, discharge petitions. I hope will become the norm if Speaker Johnson remains Speaker for the balance of this session.
It seems like he might not right exactly.
I've been reading bits and pieces here that suggests that there are folks that are unhappy. They're probably folks that are very unhappy that he put them out of session for seven weeks rather than face up to the discharge petition during the shutdown. I mean, what sort of cowardice. In any event, I used to be obsessed on the House. Now I'm I'm not as much anymore, Like I just want the Senate to do it stuff.
So talk to me about what Democrats are offering in the Senate.
So we have a clean three year extension for the tax breaks that working families rely on to bring down the cost of their premiums. Now, I have to just say, time is running out. We're talking days before the end of open enroll and if we were to secure passage of this legislation, they use a discharge petition to pass it through the House, comes to the President's desk, he signs it into law, we'd have to extend the open enrollment period. That's a lot of ifs though, really a lot. Yeah,
that vote happens tomorrow. As I was describing earlier leader thun plans on bringing this Republican plan of health savings accounts as a side by side, I don't believe he has all of his caucus on that plan. It's so half baked. I don't know how many Republicans we get to vote on our plan, But in order to pass it, we would need thirteen of them to come join us in that, which is a tall order in these very divided times. Not impossible. So please keep calling your representatives and senators.
Yeah, could you get thirteen? I feel like there are four or five that are reasonable.
Yeah, and many of them who are upper reelection. It's just a free vote for them to get well with their constituents. I voted for the extension of the tax credits, but it didn't pass, but I voted for it, so we'll see what happens. Look, there are probably a handful more than four that would vote for perhaps a shorter extension or with some modifications. But that's not where we wanted to start with our offer of like making all
the concessions to get like six Republicans instead of four. Right, we need stability in the insurance market, and we need to use that as a jumping off point for much broader reforms. Let me be the first to say the healthcare system is broken and we are just trying to prevent a crisis in the individual market. But we have a ton of work to do in broader reforms to make sure that our healthcare system is working for everybody, like most industrialized countries in the world, world do well.
Not to cite John Bayner, but didn't he say that Republicans have never, ever, ever, ever agreed about any saying when it comes to healthcare.
I don't remember that quote specifically, but I trust you on that.
I think recently he said something to that effect.
Yeah, he led the House when I was there, and he certainly experienced that both before and during the Affordable Care Act debate and after. The only thing that they really agreed on was that they wanted to repeal something that was nicknamed after the president who secured its passage, President Obama. That's the only thing that I think Republicans have really come to agree on. Healthcare is the issue I'm most passionate about because it is so personal to
so many. I have bold reforms that I want to see enacted. But I do see common ground with my Republican colleagues on some more specific things that you know, especially going after the little men and lifting the veil of all the secret stuff that goes on behind the veil that really adds costs to the system that are needless. It's just folks that are in the system preferring profits over patient care.
Right.
It's very unsurprising, and also it's really disappointing that the Doge crew was not at all interested in fraud, waste, and abuse for two seconds. There's so much carnage that Trump world has wrought when it comes to foreign aid, especially during the holiday season. We're thinking about all these children who are you know, starving to death or dying of preventable diseases, and then there's RFK Junior just running roughshaw over all of our vaccines.
Is there anything you guys can do.
As has sort of grown ups in the room, about any of the checks and balances on Trump's craziness?
There is? And I haven't given up hope that we might be able to pass all of our appropriations bills, because when those become law, we are going to be in a much stronger position to force somebody like Secretary Kennedy or in Education Secretary in McMahon to actually do their jobs and spend the money as we direct rather than spend the money as Doge or somebody else pleases.
And that's what we've seen, is that because we haven't passed the twenty fiscal year twenty twenty six spending bills, that they're just saying, well, if we don't have clear direction, we can do what we want. So we've seen funding to research cut, we've seen funding to disease prevention and vaccine research and initiatives cut, and we've seen the Education Department being dismantled before our very eyes. So why do I have hoped that we can actually pass these appropriation bills.
The reason is because there's been bipartisan agreement to sort of cueue them up for consideration. We've already passed three into law, which has stabilized the Veterans Anddministration, which has stabilized the US Department of Agriculture. But now we need to take the next steps and pass the rest of our appropriation bills for the Department of Labor, the Department of Health, the Department of Education, for the Defense Department
to put some guardrails in there. There's a possibility. I'm not going to say that I am one hundred percent sure that we're going to be able to do that, but we are making our way forward and I am hopeful that we'll be able to do that.
Thank you so much, Senator Baldwin. This is really great and really appreciate you.
Thank you for having me.
There all more secretly, Jesse Cannon.
So, Molly, as we know, the Trump administration has basically got two arms, one doing disgustingly cruel policies and the other is doing disgustingly corrupt policies. And this one falls into the disgustingly corrupt. But there might be some oversight.
Yeah, so again, there might be so some over So it's sad a US senator called for oversight of an insider trading inquiry over Trump donor buying twelve million dollars worth of shares. So you still liquefied natural gas firm bought twelve million dollars of stock after meeting with Trump officials, denies wrongdoing. Look, this is what keeps happening here with Trump world, is they keep doing things like they keep doing these kind of very kleptocratic moves. You know, you
got Jeff Merkley from Morgan saying that they're going to investigate. Look, people are doing a lot of crimey shit. Now eventually someone's going to get caught holding the bag. I don't know when that is. I don't know how that works. It could be anything. So I'll be curious to see how we can do this, how this works, I don't think again, and somebody who's going to get in trouble for all the crazy shit they're doing. It's just a question of when and who is left holding the bag and who.
Certainly a lot of.
People are going to get away with a lot of stuff, and we're already seeing that. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make.
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