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 President Trump's approval rating among gen Z voters has fallen to a new low of twenty five percent, with sixty seven percent disapproving, according to the Latest Economist. Yougo falling, congratulations, Donald, We have such a
great show for you today. The Jim Acostas Show's own Jim Acosta stops by to talk Pam Bondy taking the stand to defend her indefensible handling of the Epstein files. Ben we'll talk to Princeton Samwang about his run for Congress in New Jersey's twelfth district. But first we have.
The news Somalia Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after eighty eight years. What do you think could have spurred this decision?
Is Trump sending Gallup to Gitmo? We need to know more. Probably not. The Gallup approval rating has for decades been among the top barometers cited by media outlets measuring public opinion of the president's performance. Trump has seen his ratings slip from the agency, peaking at forty seven percent last February, dipping to lower than thirty seven percent in December those
watching at home, that is ten percentage points. The change is part of a broader, ongoing effort to align all of Gallup's public work with its mission, which is who Knows. Asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback from Donald Trump's White House and if they were in fact being held hostage right now, the Gallop bravely said, this is a strategic, solid shift based solely on we are not being held hostage right now by the Trump administration,
So believe them, don't believe them? Who knows? Former President John F. Kennedy experienced some of the highest average ratings that Gallup had seventy one percent in January nineteen sixty one. Eisenhower too super popular, more popular than Donald Trump.
Yeah, fun stuff. Really great week or so for journalism in the last week. So in other news of where optimism, where our justice keeps holding up is in these grand jury indictments and a grand jury declined to indict Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to disobey legal Trump orders. This included a bunch of senators, including Mark Kelly, who, Pete Higsetth, decided to punish.
So a bunch of former service members who were in Congress and in the Senate made an advertisement together and in the video with a ninety second video clip, they said, if you are ordered to do something illegal, you don't have to do it. This would seem, in a sane world, to be not only not illegal, but just normal common sense. Right, somebody tells you to do something illegal, don't do it.
As someone who thinks that that's pretty good advice, military or not military, the whole idea that this would be illegal is insane. Here's what happened. Trump got really mad. The fact that Trump identifies this stuff as a being about him is almost a bigger tell. Like during the super Bowl, Trump was offended because Bad Bonnie talked about how hate was bad, and Trump was like, hey, hey hate, that's me. And with this, it's like illegal orders, but
I might want to do something illegal. So I think it's really important just to pull back and see that tel. But it's also important to remember that traditionally, grand juries have been so famous for their interest in indicting that there is that saying that you could find a grand jury that would indict a ham sandwich clearly, not because Senator Slockin, Senator Kelly and a bunch of members of Congress were not indicted in the district of Columbia, but
also because the first Amendment. I don't know if you know about this, it's not the one the Republicans love. That's the second one, that's the guns. The first one actually says that you can do videos like this because they are protected under the free speech clause of the Constitution.
I thought it was pretty interesting the analysis that senior officials would not take this up, but you know who would take it up. Judge Box of Wine.
Yeah, Judge Box of Wine. And one of the things I enjoy about her is that she is just about as bad a prosecutor as you would think. It turns out that being good on Fox News does not actually make you good at the law.
So Molly, you know, it is a basically like a red moon. It's so rare that I praise the strategy democratic leadership. I think this is quite smart that the House Democrats are going to do a ton of anti teriff votes to make it so that this albatross is tied to the House members of the Republican sides neck.
Yeah, so Democrats in Congress, and I really believe this. I think they're doing good stuff in there, even though they don't have the majority, though they only have a one seat minority. So here's what happened. The White House had wanted a rule put in with the rules that would say that like they couldn't do more questions or votes on tariffs. Remember, the White House is on the back foot on tariffs. And here's why the Supreme Court is looking at this big tariff case that might take
away Trump's emergency powers. Tariffs are not popular. We just saw this week some news that tariffs cost approximately one thousand dollars of family, that they're making things more expensive, they're inflationary, which we've talked about endlessly. So this administration is on the back foot on the tariffs. Republicans are nine months from a midterm. They have a very unpopular president,
and this is an opportunity for them. And one of the things that I want you to think about is like you will see Republicans behaving bravely at this moment. That is not because they are brave. Do you know why that is? It is because they can read polls and they want to keep their jobs. So you're going to see votes on tariffs. You're going to see them
break with Trump. You're going to see this stuff, and you're going to see it because these Republicans want to keep their jobs and they're worried about losing their jobs. And there's no reason to believe that these people have had a change of heart, and there's every reason to
believe that this is just craven opportunism. So what's going to happen now is we're going to have votes and members of Congress are going to stand up to this, and Trump may lose on some of these votes, though I think ultimately the Supreme Court will have the power they want to block the tariffs.
So a judge has dismissed for the third time this year, the DOJ's lawsuit seeking Michigan's voter role data. I wonder why the dog keeps going after this voter world data.
Yeah, because Donald Trump wants to fix the midterms and this is the only way he thinks he could do it. Thank god that he doesn't have the votes and the Save Act also we're seeing he doesn't have the votes when it comes to Save Act, which is good. He knows he's unpopular. He knows it's nine months to the midterms, he knows he's going to get impeaged, and he wants
to do anything he can to prevent it. So we're going to see a lot more of this kind of fuckorate when it comes to elections and what Democrats need to do, if they need to stand up for our elections and for the rule of flow. Jim Acosta is the author of The Substack, The Jim Acosta Show, and the author of the New York Times' bestseller Enemy of the People, A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. Welcome, Welcome, Jim Acosta.
Hi, Mollie, Hi, I'm at the airport.
Coming to me from la where he is the consummate professional.
The seventh level of Dante's Inferno, recording to you live.
That's right. I don't know if you saw that. Pam Bondy is Oh.
My god, she is not happy. What the hell?
How dare you? How dare you watch this hearing and criticize President Trump discuss.
I know, the greatest president of all time. I don't know that this may be too low browber of a reference for you, but she reminds me of Ricky Bobby's wife from Talladega Knights. You know when she says, I'm a racer's wife, I don't work, you know, that's what she reminds me of. I apologize for the lowbrow reference, but that is what I hear every time she opens her mouth. What a shameful performance just to get serious for a moment, like the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's stand up.
She won't look at them.
She won't look at them. They won't meet with them. The Justice Department has not met with these survivors and victims and their families. It's appalling.
So let's talk about this. Representative Ji Paul. You know, congressional hearings are so interesting because a lot of times there's just a lot of grandstanding, but occasionally there's really effective questioning. So Representative Jipaul to the survivors in the room, if you're willing, please stand, and if you're willing, please raise your hand. If you have not been able to meet with the DOJ. Please note for the record that
every single survivor has raised their hands. So what do you think about that?
How much worse is this going to get? How many more indignities are they going to have to suffer through these survivors and these victims. I know we've said this, we've stipulated this, that shamelessness is their superpower, but my god, this is like next level Jedi master shamelessness. I mean, it's just unreal to me. The only way to do
this is to keep the pressure on. When Rocanna went to the floor of the house and read those names out loud, that felt like, for a moment, the beginning of some sort of light at the end of the tunnel, some ray of hope that came into all of this, and I just think that, you know, they're just going to have to keep charging forward. My sense of it is is that at some point something the damn is
going to break. And when I saw you know, the FA restrictions going up Overell Passo this morning, I was like, are we going to def con you know one when it comes to Trump and the Epstein files. Is that what's happening here? The final chapters of this have not been written, And it just seems to me like when Howard Lutnik is like, oh, yeah, I brought my family. I brought my four kids and the nannies to Epstein Island, How has he not been fired? How is he still there?
Howard Lutnik has a really interesting dejectory. We see him on a podcast say that he went to Epstein's house in two thousand and four, thought Epstein was a creep, didn't want anything to do with him. Then we hear that's actually a lie. He's in the files endlessly. He did an LLC with Ebstein. He's got these emails from his wife to Epstein's assistant saying, we're gonna come. Here
are the kids. We have four kids, lists their ages, which if I were taking my kids to the home of a sex predator and my friend's kids, I would probably not list their I mean, I think listing their ages is the least of it. But yeah, okay, And then there's this weird email about the nanny. So the
Latnick nanny is going to meet with Jeffrey Epstein. Now there is some other nanny talk in other pieces of the file, emails and such about men getting nanny's from Epstein and they're not nanny's for the kids.
Right now, this is like, could it get any worse? Honestly, and to me, you know, Howard Lutnik, I was looking to see is he worth like threety billion dollars or something like that.
All these people right now are worth ten brillion dollars because they're totally grubbed.
And how many people in Donald Trump's orbit? I mean, first of all, he's in there tens of thousands of times.
Grump is in there more than a million times.
I heard Scott Galloway say that that Trump is in the Epstein files more than Jesus is in the Bible. I think, is that is that maybe him come up with.
Where Harry Poliner is in the Harry Potter books.
I mean, at some point, so we need to start asking the question, Donald Trump, how is it that you are in the Epstein files so many times? What the hell is going on? When are you going to finally offer a full explanation for all of this? And one of my friends in the press is going to grill his ass on this, I'm sorry, Molly. In any other administration, and any other administration, I mean, any other timeline, any other on Earth one, two, three, and four, he would
have been crucified over this ship. A president would have been crucified over this shit.
Aren't they scared of losing press room access?
Yes?
But who gives a fuck at this point, Go for the gold. It's the goddamn Olympics. Go for the fucking White House for Responsor Association gold. And Grill has ass on this. When he starts to insult, keep going, and the other recorders of the room keep going. How is it Howard Lutnik, the Secretary of the Navy, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon over and over again.
Kimball, Musk got girls from Epstein, Grill his ass.
I'm sorry, I just don't get it.
If you're a Tesla stockholder, your board has Elon and Kimball, both of whom have been I mean, like, the thing is, don't we want in the rest of the world where people are normal. They are firing people in the Epstein files. They are right leaving from government. They are talking about removing the Prime Minister of Britain, not because he was in the Epstein files, merely because he hired someone in the Epstein files. You know who is in the Epstein files, Donald.
The President, I know, And I just think that maybe this is just going to come down to a voter revolt in the fall, and that'll be where the accountability starts. But it just seems to me that I mean, Pam Bonnie the performance that she does anybody buy this? Does anybody see this as credible? When she gets up there and that this Kobookie Theater with Jim Jordan and the other Republicans on the can, it's just like that, no
one's buying this, it's all worship. They're covering this up and they're covering his ass.
But Pam Bondi only is performing for one person, and she is. It's funny because when I was watching her, I was thinking about Justice bred Kavanaugh. And you'll remember that when Justice Fred Kavanaugh got up there, the first day, he was normal and Trump hated it, and the second day he was insane and Trump loved it. And that's what we're seeing with Bondi is her whole thing is that she wants me Trump happy.
Well, and that's that's all well and good, and they can hit option to the faux outrage button and put on that performance for the audience of one. But I still think that these hearings are productive in that we are memorializing for all time the lunacy of what they are putting this country through. And it just seems to me this is creeping up further and further. And I know we've all banned. You know, we can't say the expression the walls are closing in or you know, this is it.
Because we did a year four years of it.
And you should be publicly flogged for saying so. But there is a there there with the Epstein files in Donald Trump, and until the public scratches that itch and gets to the bottom of this, his ass is still in hot water, it seems to me.
But I also think a really important point of this story is that, like, you never know what's going to come from hearings, and I'm thinking about Cash fatal during those hearings when he said Jeffrey Epstein never traffied anyone, unbelievable And I saw that and I thought, how what?
But it was really important because it showed that Cash Patau was lying to protect someone, because the head of the FBI getting up there and saying that, you don't say that unless you're trying to protect someone, and so it really does you know it's on the record.
Well, and Molly. The other thing too, is this is why Donald Trump surrounds himself with the kinds of people who really can't get these kinds of gigs anywhere else. He puts people in these jobs who know they depend on him for five star treatments. They get the private cars and the you know, the primetime appearances on Fox and Handity and so on. They don't get this without
cowtowing to Donald Trump. And that is why he gets away with this, because he surrounded in himself with I mean, the twenty fifth and that is just completely useless at this point, because he has surrounded himself with the kind of people who will never invoke the twenty fifth Amendment
or exercise the twenty fifth Amendment. Their livelihoods, everything that they hold dear is because of Donald Trump, and so we can't expect them to behave in any sort of fashion that you know, we would find normal in any other administration. And you know, to me, like Cash Bettel saying that that's going to have to go down, that's one of the worst lies ever in the presidency of Donald Trump first or second administration.
It is just shameful, and it is worse just pulling back and looking at how unusual all of this is. This is not how any of it's supposed to work. And I think this is particularly important is that the Epstein files have a number of places where other people have been redacted. And one of the things that we've heard members of Congress talk about is that there are
two sets of production. So there are the redactions, the dj already got files that were already redacted, and those redactants have not been taken away, and those were the Trump Protection redactions. So what we're seeing now are some other files that they felt were safe enough to release. So I wonder, like when we see stories like yesterday there was a story about how Trump warned the chief of police yeah in Palm Beach, that Jeffrey Epstein was bad.
And that Gallainne Maxwell was evil, you know all of that.
I'm very suspicious of that story. When I saw that story, I thought, that's the only story about coming out about Donald Trump. What do you think? I mean?
Yes, and Julie Brown has done some amazing reports.
Amazing Yeah, but it's the one file that was released that was easy to track down, that wasn't heavily redacted.
But there were there were members of Congress coming out of viewing these unredacted files who were, you know, singing like a canary, And there were some Republicans who were coming out of the look at those viewing sessions, absolutely
shell shocked. And there was the congresswoman from Vermont. It was Blint if I've seen the name Becker ballanced balanced, excuse me, and she's, you know, she's being asked by reporters about this, and she says that, well, the whole lie that Trump told about kicking Jeffrey Epstein out of the club is a lie. It's a lie, and so he's been lying repeatedly about this over the years.
Yeah, I'm really curious to know what she saw. The other one, you'll remember, Cynthia Loomis Senator from Wyoming not running for reelection, which I think is important to mention, says that she now understands after seeing the unredacted files, what a big deal this all is, which begs the question, what did she see? What did any of those people say?
I know? And why is it that they've released some of the files but not all of the files, and that some of the files are unredacted for the numbers of Congress And I have to say, like, why aren't there like career prosecutors going through this stuff and sharpening their knives and figuring out that they have some cases that can be brought against some real sick people who need to be put behind bars. I mean, this is
not how our Justice department. I mean, you could talk to all of the wonderful experts that you and I talk to Molly all the time on this subject. This should be a prosecutorial shopping spree here. You know, like you know, you get a conviction, you get a conviction that you know, and it's unreal and it's not happening.
Well, if the Trump administration wanted to solve these crimes, or even anyone else, not even the Trump administration, just like members of Congress, wouldn't one of the first people you would call to testify be Mornen Kombe, who was working on this case. I mean, there are so many points in which you see that these victims have really nobody cares about the victims.
It's all a shamp bringing in the Clintons, and the Clintons like, well, we'll testify in front of the cameras. Oh no, no, no, we don't want that. But they don't want Donald Trump to be the ghost.
I understand Bill, he's in the photos, he's in the files. Great, have Bill testify have him testify, have Trump testify, have all these men testified. But Hillary never was on the plane. She was never. I mean, I understand they're obsessed with her, but like it's a pretty good case of like where you say, this is just partisan hacker, Like get Bill, get Doug banned, Bill's body man, who got a feleip attack.
Watch right, right, right right.
Yeah, you get that guy, But like, get people where they actually are in the files. Don't get people where you are going to be able to you know, just grandstand.
And you and I have talked about this, and it should be said again, you and I, people on the center left, the sanity based world, we don't give a fuck if something bad happens to Bill Clinton and all of this. At the end of the day, we don't care. And so the same standard what's good for the goose
is good for the gander. And it seems to be it's a shrinking universe of people who are saying I stand with Donald Trump and why he's behaving when it comes to the Epstein files, the ice is cracking, their fissures forming I just think, faster your seatbelt. It just seems to me, and again we're not allowed to say the walls are closing in and so on.
They seem like they're on the back foot here.
It is not going in the right direction for the forty seventh president. Of you that experience, I'll just say that, yeah, and.
Quite frankly, it shouldn't be, because a lot of this stuff he's trying to get away with here is really unprecedented.
And maybe we start to use the word evil. I mean, I mean, some of this is just it's just evil. It just is.
And it's also just not okay. You are definitely seeing Republicans, some Republicans break with Trump on this. Do you think this is opportunism?
I think folks are starting to put their finger in the wind. And I talked to a long time Republican fundraiser just the other day who was telling me this is something I've known for years. In Washington, they're predicting
a wipeout. They are feeling at this point that they're just going to get wiped out, and that not just the House isn't obviously in jeopardy, that the Senate is in jeopardy, and that they could lose in places like Iowa and alaskap this is the doomsday scenario that people like you and I have been warning about for some time, that the chickens will eventually come home to roost. He doesn't get away scott free. That's not how this ends. I don't cook that that's going to be the case.
I think that they see what's coming, and you know, nature finds a way as a wiseman once set in Jurassic Park. And the Republicans are starting to figure this out. I don't know how they don't go Thelman Louise off the cliff with him at this point, kwant honestly, I don't see how do you make that pivot? I mean, just can somebody draw me that picture between now and November. They don't, They're right or die, so they go over the cliff.
Jim Acosta, don't miss your flight.
Thank you, Thank you so much. Owe you on.
Sam Wang is a neuroscientist and a professor at Princeton University and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for New Jersey's twelfth congressional district. Welcome too Fast Politics, Sam.
Oh, Mollie, good to see you.
So you come in to talk to us a lot about this jerrymandering, but today you are talking about something else, So talk us through it today.
I have something new.
So as you know, I've been looking for gosh twenty years on helping people be more powerful, fighting gerrymandering, you know, different ways to put my science to work. Today I am entering politics myself. I'm standing for office for Congress here in the twelfth District of New Jersey. So I'm throwing my hat in the ring. I'm trying to get the Democratic nomination.
Talk us through what the twelfth district in New Jersey looks like.
It looks like a lot of things. The twelfth District is one of the most diverse districts in the country. Princeton where I teaches, in the middle of it, but it stretches from Trenton and Ewing, which is in the southwest black and Hispanic populations, to Plainfield in the northeast, again black and Hispanic, and in the middle of highly educated Princetonian's Asian East and South Asian communities of Montgomery
and West Windsor and so Plainsboro and South Brunswick. As you can tell from the way I'm sounding, Usually we talk about gerrymandering like at a national level we talk about reform and the damage to our democracy. This is new. This is me getting into the specifics of a district. There's an open seat, and I think Congress someone who understands the science of what's gone wrong, and so I want to get in there and try to fix the damage and help make sure it never happens again.
So the history of this seat is it was a Republican seat, and then it was a Democrat seat. Right, it's been mixed.
Years ago, it was I think at one point a Republican seat, but let's say about as recently as fifteen years ago, it was represented by a plasma physicist, Rush Holt oh Cool Russia is a physicist, five time Jeopardy winner, and so he won a very very close race against a Republican. And then for the last twelve years it's been represented by Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Congresswoman.
Coleman's turning eighty one this year pretty soon, and so she's stepping down to a well earned retirement. And it's an open seat, and because of some regressive ballot laws that I play a small role in overturning, it's a free for all. Anybody can run and there's eighteen candidates it's.
A wild ride.
I want you to talk about the regressive ballot laws in New Jersey because a lot of states have this sort of weird low stuff. New Jersey had one that we discovered. I'd let me talk about it.
As an neuroscientist, I think of it as a cognitive trick. Most ballots you just have the office and then a list of candidates. But the ballot in New Jersey has this thing where candidates are listed in different places than the ballot, and there's this one column of names, and then one column of names is the party's preferred candidate for Congress, for president, for Senate, for local council. And
this is a thing called the county line. And so this funny arrangement has a lot of blank spaces on it, and it fools the eye, and it gives as much as a thirty eight point bonus to whoever the party elders, you know, who their preferred candidate is. So that was the law until a couple of years ago. There was a lawsuit in which a number of US brought evidence into federal court and we said, look, this is a trick that it gets played on voters. It's against free
and fair elections, and this judge overturned it. So at this point, the power of the party machine has gotten broken. Last week in the district north of US in the eleventh district, actually that district turned out very different. The party endorsed candidates in that district came in third and fourth.
The next congresswoman from that district is probably going to be Ana Lilia Mahia, and she came out of seemingly nowhere and ran a populist campaign and was not endorsed, and so you know, it feels like a new day in New Jersey for more equitable elections.
So that was a special election to fill the Mikey share All seat.
Yeah, it was a primary, right.
Special primary. Your primary is not going to be until June.
That's right, it's June.
Second.
It sounds like it's a pretty reliably blue seat, especially in the coming cycle where Donald Trump has ice agents occupying various American cities. So it is going to be really an election that takes place in the primary. Oh yes, so talk us through you know, these kind of primaries is kind of very crowded. Primaries make very interesting contests. So how are you campaigning in that primary? And you know, they're ultimately usually kind of a math, right, these primaries.
With eighteen candidates, I mean, is technically possible to win with ten percent of the vote. Realistically probably takes more like twenty twenty five percent of the vote. So the way to campaign, it's crazy because there's so many candidates, and the question is how to rise up out of
the noise. A lot of the candidates in our district are you know, the kind of people you might expect, Like, you know, people have done local service, a local assembly woman, several local mayors, people who are known to the small sectors of the district. So we have one outsider who lives outside the district who lost in the seventh district two years ago to Tom Kain Junior, and so she's moving closer to the district and so she's hoping to run.
It'll be her first time running for office. About half the people running our first time candidates who have never run for office before.
And I'm one of those people.
And yeah, how to stick out? I mean, I've made a career out of both neuroscience and also working on democracy reform, trying to empower people as an outsider, and I'm the only one in the race has done that.
Talk us through the ways in which you have tried to reform jerrymandering to make elections more fair and free.
Yeah, you know.
I use my science to try to find ways to equalize voter power. And I years ago started analyzing the electoral college to understand how voters are more powerful in some states than others. And I tried to use that to encourage people to go campaign and get out the vote and so on in places where they could make the most difference with their federal citizens. As you and I have talked about before, I work on jerrymandering at Princeton.
I've started the Princeton Jerrymandering Project where we've come up with a report card to grade offenses, and it's a non partisan report card that calls out offenses on both sides. And using that report card, we've discovered offenses all over the country. And that report card has demonstrated that there is a national law that if we enacted, it could stop this gerrymandering war that we see independent citizen commissions. And so our math and analytics show that independent citizen
commissions are the very best way to end jerrymandering. So that's the thing that I would like to do in Congress. And now I actually these days off campus, I have a nonprofit organization, the Electoral Innovation Lab, and the Electoral Innovation Lab again is trying to take all these ideas out of the academic halls and put them into practice, so help people bring about ranked choice voting, help people
defend elections where they're under attack. We've been doing analytics to show where attacks on elections might lead to the most damage, like in Minnesota, in North Carolina.
In Texas.
So again it's all my basic game has been trying to understand the whole system, find the weak points, stop damage this year, and build a better system so we never see this again.
Talk to me about ranked choice voting because I have questioned.
Yeah, ranked choice voting is when you have a lot of choices. So in a plurality election where whoever gets the most where everyone picks one candidate and then whichever candidate gets the most vote wins, that's called plurality voting. That tends to build two political parties. And one big driver of why we have two parties that are so far apart is choice voting and a really determined faction can take over one party and drive it over the edge and make them crazy, and you know we're living
through that. So ranked choice voting is a way to let you mark your first choice and your second choice in your third choice, and it's a way of counting those votes to find out who the consensus choice is, and it prevents the possibility of a really small faction taking over the whole system. So today, you know, Republicans and Democrats are each one third of the voters, About one third can take over one of those parties, and so one ninth of the voters can like completely up
end the system. And ranked choice voting is a way of preventing that.
I would love you to talk about your district and how you're going to win this primary.
So it has been interesting to me to take, you know, my broad knowledge as an outsider, as an analyst and say, okay, you know what, let's apply it to one district. So this district, which is in Central Jersey, is pretty diverse. It's fifty nine percent non white. The largest non white group is Asian American Pacific Islanders. And you may have noticed that I'm Asian, and so that's a community in
which they automatically noticed me. So my theory of winning is that Asian American voters are about twenty five percent of the voting age population of the district.
That's a lot.
And so these towns that I was reeling off before, Montgomery West windsor Plainsboro, South Brunswick, these places are close
to fifty percent Asian East Asians and South Asians. And so you know, I had this idea of like going and visiting these places because I've lived here twenty six years, and I thought, why don't I go to all these great restaurants and places in these towns, And I want to like basically go and like shoot like little TikTok videos of these cool places that have like Moroccan food and Chinese food and Korean food and Soul food and Mexican food, and just like say, look, guys, this is
a fantastic diverse district. We all need protection, we all need to thrive, and look, hey, here's some Moroccan food. So I thought maybe something like that.
You also are part of Princeton, which is a huge, incredible university in New Jersey that is involved in civic life, and your work for Princeton has been largely about improving civic life, right.
Yeah, And you know, Princeton's been a really wonderful home to me. They recruited me to do my neuroscience. It's led me to make discoveries and autism. They encourage civic engagement. I mean, I speak for myself and not for the university. I'm always my own person, and they encourage that. But they also they want me to be that I don't speak for the school. I speak for myself.
At a moment, though, when this administration is at war with universities, oh yes, and with funding for research, I wonder if you could speak to we've seen like war with scientific research, war with science just more generally, I'd love you to talk about what you have seen over the last year and what you think.
Here at Princeton.
Our president, Crisis Scruper, has fought back and stood up for academic freedom and for science. I think we've held up better than a lot of places. But look, everybody's under attack. And so first there was an attack to cut drastically overhead costs that we can't even keep the lights on.
Right. That was Elon Musk deciding that NIH grants should only be fifteen percent.
That's right.
And then the next attack.
One of the attacks is happening now is forcing NIH grants, which are the lifeblood of American biomedical research, to force these multi year grants to be paid out all in the current fiscal years. So if I get a grant from NIH and I get NH money, if I get an NIH grant for multiple years, all the money has to come out this year. And what that does is it spends down all the money this year, and it starves other laboratories.
Why are they doing it, well, lord.
I do not know why they're doing.
The charitable interpretation is not thinking about the impacts on American science. And the more sinister interpretation is to weaken American science because American science in some ways is considered a threat to building more equal society, and so because damaging science hurts that goal, therefore it's good to weaken science, you know, and also has the secondary consequence of hurting universities. I mean, I do research here, I teach my students. If I can't do my research, then I can no
longer be a leading researcher. I can no longer teach my students about what's happening. It makes for a worse environment. And this is you know, this is true at private universities like Princeton, public universities like Rutgers and University of California. But you know the deep why, I mean, why are all our systems under attack by a runaway executive branch?
So why we certainly see that, I mean not a lot, but some of this research is being picked up by other countries. Have you seen that in the field? And what does that look like?
Usually science is a team sport and it's international, and generation after generation people have come from other countries to study in the United States and sometimes they stay. I mean, I can't count the number of star graduate students and postdocs who have come to my lab, and then many of them I'm stayed in the United States. And that is a pipeline. I mean, look look at the CEOs of all these tech companies, like most of them actually
came from other countries. In the last year, it's become much harder to persuade scholars from other countries to study in the United States. I've had even people from countries that are not in the crosshairs, like the Netherlands or Spain, express reluctance about coming to the US to study. So it's hard on those grounds. I know people who are talking about leaving the United States. Only a few have done so. But people in the United States are looking
for ways to build their research careers. And you know, someplace like Europe is a more nurturing place for researchers now and China right, and China, yeah, and morale is down. I mean, I got to say, we've had town halls here where graduate students and post docs want to know, like, what's going to become of us? Is anyone going to protect us? And so yeah, it's actually a really tough time for scientists, and scientists who are usually not very political are starting to notice the problem.
I want you to say more about China because that blows my mind. I mean, how worried are you about a world where China is a better home descientist in America? And is it still not?
Really?
China science has gotten better and better. You know, it used to be not so many years ago that a lot of the work was not so high grade. But I've had friends who have visited China and seen great research institutions being built up there. There are some problems with Chinese research journals, some of them are kind of sketchy, but the best research coming out of China is absolutely
world class. And yeah, if we think of China as an adversary for the United States, then guess what that adversary is becoming pretty good at technology, pretty good at science, and you know, and here we are not cooperating.
I mean, I mean, we are making them when if we're an adversary of China, which I don't necessarily think we are, but if we are, there are scientists who are going over there because it's better.
Oh yeah.
Like I had one colleague who's driven out of his position, a leading research in New York City, and he immigrated to the United States decades ago from China, and then he got caught up in the what I think he was part of the China initiative, this thing to crack down on bad interactions, and he got investigated and he now is running a thriving lab in China, you know, and he's doing great work there. But it was hard on him and bad for us.
Yeah, it's sort of self inflicted anti science wound.
I mean, yeah, like my parents immigrated to the US in the nineteen sixties, and when I was born. In my baby book, my father said I want him to get his PhD in science by the age twenty five.
And I saw that.
I'm like, okay, Dad, But you know, he came wanting me to do this. And so immigrants make it possible for science to grow, including from China. Yeah, Like normally you talk about Jerry Mannering here, I was talking about my parents, and so there's there's sort of a candidate thing where people have to talk about themselves more and I'm kind of getting used to that.
Yeah, it's a differend to be to go from being a republic intellectual to a candidate.
Well, you know, I'm used to talking about ideas about how we can make democracy work better. And I'm just realizing that people are so oriented towards personality and individuals that I think that it's I can make more progress by getting out there into the fray and being the
person talking about it. And so for me, this is not just representing my district, which is essential, but also hopefully I don't know, there's people who are big thinkers like Jamie Raskin or Don Byer, and I'm hoping to be a junior partner to them and be right there to help out.
I love that so much. Talk about the gerrymandering wars, well just.
I mean, it's just continuing, right. It's weirdly that it's come to a bit of a stalemate, and it started in Texas, spread to California. Thankfully, a few states held back, like Indiana, and so you know, we did analytics showing that something like one out of three people in Indiana would be moved to a new district, and so a few states have hung back, Indiana and Kansas. That's good. Looks like Maryland's trying, but I think the Democrats there
might step back from the brank, so that's good. But now you know, looks like Virginia might move forward, and that's going to be a multi seat jerrymander for Democrats. Probably in the next few months. It's going to be Florida. So I would say right now Democrats are actually a head by a few seats. Once Florida jumps in the mix, it'll probably be even again. But in the end we're going to talk about it'll be like eight states.
But what about the Voting Rights Act? Isn't the Supreme Court won't they roll on the voting right to act?
Yes, the Calais case or however you sent, that case is going to possibly open the gates for racial gerrymandering. And so that case might make it much harder for communities of color to be represented in Congress, in legislatures, and like you know, in county government, like up and down the ticket, up and down all levels of government. That case could be a pretty big deal for minority representation.
And would that happen this year? Would it be for these midterms or for next?
I think a lot of that would be for next And so there's a few things that have already happened. Depending on how that goes, it's going to foreclose lawsuits in Texas, Louisiana, and upcoming Florida. But that's those maps either have been already enacted or will be enacted soon. There's a handful of seats that could affect in Alabama, Mississippi,
some other places. I think, honestly, at some level, as bad as that case is in the long term this year, it's already been priced in because many of those laws have already been enacted or there's not enough time. That's a long term problem, and so there might be time six, Yeah, could be fixed. We need a Voting Rights Act every twenty years or so. We need to renew that act. And so we need to put in racial protections. You know,
section two and section five. One of John Roberts's bits of logic is it only applies to states with a track record of racial discrimination, so therefore it doesn't treat all states equally. And of course this makes my head explode. But the way to fix that is, Okay, let us apply section two and section five to every state. Done,
and then we will have that. And so, yeah, new Voting Rights Act, if we can make it through this November's election, I think the New Voting Rights Act should be very top of agenda and hopefully can undo some of the damage that we've seen to voting rights from the Supreme Court.
Sam, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Thank you, Molly.
I have delighted to come back anytime next time, maybe as a nominee.
No normal, Jesse Cannon bid fast.
So Republicans, there's this whole brand for as long as you and I have been alive, that debt we have, Oh my god, it's the ruin of our country. This debt. We can't be standing for this. Yeah, I'm going to shock you. Under the physical responsibility of mister Deal's president, The federal debt has hit record levels and the Budget Office has sent to a stirred warding to mister Trump.
Yeah, you're going to be shocked to hear this. But Donald Trump, the man who is famous for having bankrupt numerous businesses, is not so interested in the debt. And I think there's a pretty good reason for that. Basically, Trump has tried to reshape the economy, but when it comes to budget, it's been a wash, and the country is still basically on track to borrow what economists consider an alarming amount of money in the coming years. Now,
there's a big problem here, which is the dollar. As the dollar gets less valuable, it gets more expensive to borrow money, and debt gets more expensive to service. And that is a big problem, and we are on track for that. Also, I want to point out Donald Trump spends like a drunken saler. The funding for ICE is like, you know what, four times most armies. I mean, it's
some eighty seven billion dollars, some crazy number. Buying of ware hases, I mean, the idea that Ice is not doing some sketchy stuff with all that money is I would be shocked if people were not profiting off that money. You know. Luckily you have Corey Lubandowski who's known to be very honest and a straight shooter and someone who's never ever, ever gotten in any kind of legal trouble in any which way. So he's clearly operating on the level.
Oh yeah, that sounds exactly right to me.
That's really to be a good actor. They actually don't even say sober as a judge. They say sober as a Lubandowski.
You know. They call him much how we've rebranded wife beaters two partner respectors. That's what they call him too.
Yeah, he's a big partner respector. And his boss, the very smart and intelligent Christy Nome, has this under control. So my guess is that they are not doing sketchy stuff with all that money, no doubt. 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 sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going Thanks for listening,