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 in not at all shocking news, Trump is pushing to have the document's case to be tried after the twenty twenty four election. We have a fascinating show today. We are going to take the temperature on the ground in two different states. The first, Michigan Detroit News is Craig malgre joins us to talk Michigan politics.
And Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Then we'll talk to Politico's Chris Cadigo about California and how the Democratic Party is repairing after their unnecessary midterm seat losses.
But first we have the host of Strict Scrutiny, Kate Shaw. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Kate Shaw, Molly, thanks so much for having.
Me, Professor Kate Shaw. I should be calling you, Professor Sugah.
You should not. You should calling Kate obviously.
Let us talk about the Supreme Court.
You wrote a really good piece in the Times this weekend about how much this Supreme Court values religion. I want to first talk about that because I think it relates to a lot of the cases that were on the docket. This second season of Trump's Supreme Court Destroys America.
Well, it's been three years since the three you know, Trump appointees have been fully in place. But I think you're right, it's really only the second season because they took a fairly cautious approach in that first season.
They never did that again.
It was like getting her wall hangings up and getting situated, and then as soon as she was fully in place, yeah, last term and then this one. And I don't think there's any end in sight. They are just going through broke.
They say they're textualists, or they say they're this, or they're that, but really religion seems to be kind of their number one hobby horse.
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean people sometimes refer to this court as kind of elevated religion to a sort of most favored nation status among rights. Right, the Constitution protects lots of rights, but the one they see most interested in protecting is the right to free exercise of religion. Then maybe the Second Amendment right gun. So those, I would say, are the two that this Court is
the most interested, conspicuously so in protecting. And yeah, I mean there were two big cases this term one you know, a blockbuster case three zero three creative, which was technically a speech case, not a religion case. So the argument was that this website designer, a Christian website designer who did not want to design websites for same sex weddings, had a right not to be compelled to speak, and she said having to provide a website upon request would
have been compelled speech. So it was a speech case, not a religion case. But the reason she objected, she said, was religiously grounded. Right. She basically said she believed that same sex marriages were false, that they were inconsistent with God's plan, and for that reason she objected to designing them for same sex couples.
I want to add an important caveat here, which is she hasn't ever designed a website for a same sex couple. This was a theoretical.
Case, absolutely, and I think that's a critically important point. So she had never been asked to design a website for a same sex couple. Unclear if she ever would have been had she even gone into business shapes. She wasn't even in the business of designing wedding websites at all.
This was just in case she decided she might want.
To and in case somebody tried to retain her services that she didn't want to provide. Right, there were so many kind of intermediate, speculative points in between her objection and any possible injury in the world. Even if you believe that this compelled speech argument is valid, it was entirely speculative that it would ever actually come to pass. And normally the Supreme Court doesn't decide cases under those circumstances.
It needs somebody who's either being injured or will imminently be injured by the law they are objecting to in order to actually get the Court to intervene. And I think I think that the Court was so eager to announce this broad principle of freedom from compelled provision of goods and services on a non discriminatory basis that it reached out to decide this case. And maybe if I could say one more thing, I think it really matters
that individuals who have been wanting to challenge laws like this. Remember, like five years ago, there was a very similar case also out of Colorado, involving a baker who didn't want to bake cakes for same sex and there the court actually didn't decide the case on the marriage, sort of took an off ramp. But actually there there was a dispute right there was the same sex couple who had gone into this bakery and tried to get a wedding case.
There was actually somewhat injured, yes, and.
They were definitely injured. I mean like it was a really traumatic event. So there was no question about standing the court who took a different off ramp. And in the five intervening years, the same people who brought that case have been really trying to find another case and
this is the best they had. And I think it's just it is meaningful in that there's not a lot of So if there's a lot of website designers out there, and there are obviously a lot of same sex couples getting married, it's just like it's not obvious that it's ever. If she is known not to give great services or something to same sex couples because she's a devout Christian and doesn't believe in same sex marriage, maybe she's not
going to get a lot of requests from customers. Maybe there'll be other website designers who provide the services that same sex couples are then going to be drawn to it. So I guess the point I'm making is institutional arrangements, sometimes in quiet ways, get made such that the Court doesn't have to sort of declare like sometimes things principles come into tension, right, non discrimination principles may sometimes be
intension with people's religious values. It's a pluralistic country. People believe all kinds of different stuff. And the point is, most of the time we have figured out ways to balance I think these competing imperatives. But the Supreme Court here is basically saying, you know, first of all, it is very much elevating religious belief above other values like equality. But it's also saying we have to get in the mix here when there isn't even an obvious conflict that
is live. And I think that's just part of the kind of hubris of this court that we were seeing on display in just a huge array of areas.
So I'm going to tell a personal story here, which I'm not known to do. But a friend of this podcast, George Conway, and I were fighting pretty hard on each other on this, and he was saying, this is a victory for the First Amendment you shouldn't feel you should be compelled to serve anyone you don't want to serve.
And I was saying.
That's and since we're not on cable news, I can use this word bullshit, that this is actually opening the door to discrimination, and what we're seeing already, right, it's been you know whatever a week two weeks the owner of a Michigan hair salon says she's refusing to serve some members of the LGBTQ plus community. Christina Geiger, who owns studio at hair salon and Travis City, says in a Facebook post she is exercising her free speech right
by allowing only certain customers. If a human identifies as anything other than a man woman, please seek services at a local pet grammer. So, I mean, I think we're seeing, besides being this person being a falling, that this is the doorway bigots had hoped for.
Absolutely, and I think there is. You know, I think there's debate already about kind of how broadly to read this opinion, and kind of understandably, I think they're litigators who very much want, and you know, I very much share this desire to have this opinion be a narrow one the State of Colorado stipulated that this was an expressive business.
And this expressive speech. Will you just I'm sorry to interrupt you, but will you talk for a minute about the difference between expressive speech.
Well, the court hasn't really told us that much, but the basic idea is something like, you know, it's just different to sell a good or a service where you are expressing something in the doing or the making. That distinguishes maybe these kinds of more artistic creative endeavors from
something like selling a pre made sandwich. Right, So maybe the argument is people who are engaging in the sale of something like this, something expressive where you know, their own voice is kind of inextricably linked up in the thing they are selling on the caremercial marketplace, that that's different in some meaningful way from just like, yeah, selling
a shirt, selling a sandwich, something like that. So that's a way to maybe limit or blunt the force of this opinion to only those businesses that can be characterized as expressive. You know, it wouldn't necessarily give license to someone who runs a bodega to deny service to somebody from the LGBTQ community or some other protected group. But a couple things. One the category of expressive I think is potentially really expansive. Right, so maybe a pre made sandwich,
Know what about a custom sandwich? Right, Like, a lot of things can be characterized that I think. So think about just weddings, right, like you interface if you have like a big wedding with tailors, bakers, photographers, calligraphers, potentially, I mean, and all those services could definitely be characterized
as expressive. If a web design business can be so, even if it's not literally everything sold on the commercial marketplace, it's a huge, I think swath of services that also often attached to life's really important events, right like weddings and birthdays and graduations. And if everyone who provides something in conjunction with those things can all of a sudden
refuse to participate. If we're talking about a same sex couple, or an interracial couple, or a couple in which one individual is disabled or both, I mean, this is just like taking a huge bite out of ordinary principles of equality and dignity and fair treatment that we have all become really accustomed to living under.
Right an anti discrimination Yeah, I haven't heard the specific case that George is making. But for sure, there are a lot of people in various places, I think on the ideological spectrum, not just like the far right, who are characterizing this as a as a victory for speech.
And I think that if you take just the narrowest possible view of you know, the assertion that this web designer would be web designer was making, Like, yeah, her claim was a speech claim, and that claim one I think if you zoom out at all and really take a broader view of what actually is at stake and what is imperiled, I think it's really enormous in terms of, again the ability of lots of individuals to be treated fairly and equally, like you said, just basic non discrimination values.
So let's talk about some of the other cases where the Supreme Court sort of went in there and we're like, you know, no, we're the legislative body now, bitches. I mean that was what I felt like, like we're talking about we're talking about like the EPA, that EPA case, the Clean Water Act, because I think that's such an important one too.
It's sort of like you see where they're going with us.
Absolutely, So that's last terms West Virginia Versus EPA case in which the Court strikes down the Clean Power Plan, also a case that arguably should never have been decided because the plan had already been overtaken. Like was we were already even past the Trump administration. We were the Trump administration had withdrawn it. The Biden administration then had
its own power plan. So the Court was opening in the abstract about this plan that was like seven years old at this point and had never gone into effect, but still held that the EPA did not have the authority to issue this broad I mean, the Court characterized it, I think, in maybe somewhat unfair terms, a really broad
role regarding carbon divisions from coal plants. And it's the logic of that opinion from last term, which was, as you just said, Molly, like the Court basically anointing itself like the key policymaker of the country, was exactly the same logic that was on display in this term's decision
striking down the Biden loan forgiveness plan. So the Court used this, i think truly invented doctrine that it calls the Major Questions doctrine, which is like twenty years or so old, and was a doctrine that didn't do much work in the early years, but in the last couple of years has assumed this enormous importance. I mean, Kagan and her assent in the Loan cases calls it the made up major questions doctrine, which I think is actually
just factually true. It's completely invented. It's completely invented very recently, and it just basically says, if an agency tries to do something that, in the Court's view is really big, major, and particularly involves an issue of vast economic or political significance, then the agency has to be able to point to crystal clear language from Congress authorizing the agency to take said action, or the action is unlawful. And that's just
like not how Congress ever, legislates, right, It doesn't. When it passes the Clean Air Act or this statute called the Heroes Act that gives the Secretary of Education the power to make changes to federal loan plans, it doesn't specifically say in the event of, you know, once in a century pandemic, if people end up like in real economic distress, you know, that's just not how lawmaking works.
And nor do these statutes from the nineteen seventies that give broad authority to the EPA to regulate like clean air and clean water, say with specificity how exactly they're supposed to do that. But this rule the Court has announced would require that degree of specificity in statutes, and
if it's not there, strikes these agency actions down. And it's just an unbelievably subjective and malleable test, and it is one that gives the Court a tremendous amount of power to decide just how how big is too big, how much is too much, what policies doesn't like, and to strike them down on that basis.
The three level of justices have kind of had enough of his As frustrated as we are, they seem matter.
Can you talk a little bit about the kind of like I mean, I remember last season on Trump's Supreme Court, we had Sodoma R. Saying the spurt will never survive this stench. This season, I feel like we had Kagan and Justin Jackson talking with much more kind of harsh language.
Can you talk about that? Absolutely?
I think it's right that these so we now have justice so to my or Justice Kagan, Justice Jackson, the three liberals. There are a couple of cases this term where you kind of saw them seeming to try to forge compromises, in particular with the Chief Justice John Roberts cases before they went on vacation.
I feel like they always like they wait until the very end to kind of kill us.
I know.
Actually, the one exception I would say is the Voting Rights Act case where Roberts surprised a lot of people in writing the opinion upholding the Voting Rights Act, you know, finding that it still has force and you know, does something meaningful in terms of protecting the ability of black voters to actually exercise meaningful political power.
Many of us were shocked.
Yes, it was a really surprising I think I'm still sort of processing that decision, but that really was kind of an outlier. And then and then, actually, the other I would throw in is a case in which the Court rejected a bunch of challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act.
And that's the Gorsuch has this sort of one group that he feels he can sort of have compassion for.
That's right, Well, I mean just evangelical Christians or Christians who discriminated against these things by generally applicable non discrimination laws.
I would add to the list. Yes, that's right.
Yes, that's right.
But yes, I think it's right that in the biggest opinions of the term, which were enormous six y three conservative victories. So that's you know, three or three creative which we were just talking about. That's the affirmative action cases out of Harvard UNC, that's the Biden loan forgiveness plan, the sort of the three that were the last, and there are lots of other big ones, but those were six to three. And these dissenting justices are done trying
to forge compromises or strike a faciliatory note. I mean, they were ripshit, I think in a lot of these descents, and correctly so. So Kagan I already mentioned her descent
in the loan cases. In addition to calling the majority like using this made up major questions doctrine basically says the Court violated the Constitution, which is something that that justices don't usually say about each other, Like their job is to decide who else violates the Constitution, but to say that they themselves can do it was a really
striking moment. But I think in some ways the most striking descent of the term was Justice Jackson's descent in the Affirmative Action cases, just the one she recused in the Harvard case. It was just the unc case. But the cases were consolidated in the opinion, and so Tomior had an incredible descent there as well. So they wrote
separately but joined each other's descents. They both really I think exhaust of and irrefutably recited the history of the fourteenth Amendment, the laws passed by Congress immediately after the fourteenth Amendment, and all of that I think makes just crystal clear that the idea that the Constitution has to
be understood as race blind is just preposterous. Like the drafters of that amendment that commands equality and the laws passed right after it, and their drafters everybody understood that in order to bring about conditions of meaningful equality you had to take race into accounts, like the creation of the Freedman's Bureau. Thomas in his concurrence in the Affirmative Action Cases says that was actually the category Freedman was a race neutral category, which is a truly laughable claim.
And both so Jamayor and Jackson I think, make that
really clear. And then Jackson, I think does a beautiful job documenting the profound and enduring racial disparities across like health and wealth and general well being, all of which is traceable to a history of both obviously slavery, but then formal legal inequality, and is the reason that these universities have tried to take raise into account measured way to build diverse classes in order to both open minds of students and to output a diverse class of leaders
to do things like serve diverse communities in the state of North Carolina where she's focused anyway, So those I think are great examples of just and then so Tomyour's descent in that three or three creative case, Like, she doesn't try to suggest this is a narrow opinion. She says the court has basically licensed discrimination and it's not clear what logical endpoint there is, and that this is
just an existential threat to principles of equality. So yeah, I mean, I think silver lining is a weird way to describe it. But I think in some ways, these full throated kind of articulations of counter visions of what the Constitution means, what our laws do, what the role
of the court is. We've seen those emerge from the pens of these three women in descent, and that I think has been really gratifying because sometimes we've seen them just try to sort of play nice and forged compromises, and understandably so if they think they can limit the damage. But on some of these issues, I think they've decided that it is better to speak clearly to the public about what this court is doing.
I had Stephen Bladock on this podcast and he was talking about there are ways in which Congress has authority over this Supreme Court, even though the Supreme Court doesn't believe it does. And I'm curious, like, do you agree with that or do you think there's some other mechanism or just you know, give us something to hang our hats on, because otherwise we're going to be depressed.
Yes, well, one is that you know, this is I think already starting to change. But the left just needs to pay a lot more attention to the court and needs to understand the Supreme Court is an important kind of voting issue, which there has been just this enormous obviously, you know, partisan asymmetry in terms of how mobilized people are around the Supreme Court, and I think Dobbs has really upended all of that, but you know, muscle memory has to be built, like the court has to be
central to every election for Senate, for president, and for voters on the left, and that I think kind of is a critical potential response to this. Now that's a long term one, right, like it takes time, but I think a really important one. And I think that Steve is right that Hungress has been asleep at the wheel for a long time in the context of the Supreme Court, and obviously in a divided Congress it's harder to do that. I mean, the opportunity to really pass any meaningful reform
has been squandered in the filibuster. It meant that, you know, doing things like actually expanding the court was never on the table, you know, in recent years anyway. But if you had enough Democratic senators to actually limit or abolish the filibuster, all of a sudden, a lot of just
straightforward statutory changes become realistic. So doing things like potentially adding justices to the court, you know, trying to do some kind of creative term limits that that I think is harder because there's an argument needs to be done by constitutional amendment. And if this court, you know, was in the position of deciding whether the term limit statute was constitutional, I'm pretty sure they would find conveniently.
Enough that it's not.
But adding justices is obviously constitutionally sound. No one questions that. And it's happened before, it's happened before it's you know, it has been a while, and it would be absolutely constitutional hardball. But so is Mitch McConnell just refusing to let President ob fill the vacancy that Scalia left. So also stripping the Court's jurisdiction over certain kinds of disputes, Congress could pass laws saying that Court can't decide cases
involving certain kinds of agency actions. If the Court continues to strike down important social policies that Congress or agencies sort of managed to pass, it could just you know, try to remove broad categories of cases from the Court altogether. So those are things that statutes could easily do. And actually just a few more democratic president and a few more Democratic senators willing to actually look at changing or again abolishing the filibuster. But all of a sudden, I
think open up all of that. But also internally, like John Roberts just needs to get that House in order, Like this these ethics scandals are I think they're not going to stop. But even the Times piece that just dropped this week about Justice Thomas and the Ratio Alger Association had all of these little nuggets in there about it seemed report trips that were a little mysterious. Still, and it just feels like there's a lot more reporting ongoing and more shoes to drop. We just cannot have
these public officials exercising all of this power. I mean, it's just an enormous amount of power with life tenure, with no real meaningful ethics constraints, internal or external. It's just not a sustainable state of affairs.
Kate Jaw, I hope you won't come back, Molly.
I'd be happy to you anytime.
Craig Magar is a reporter at the Detroit News. Welcome to Fast Politics, Crag. Just tell us a little bit about your beat and who you write for and what you do.
So you write for the Detroit News newspaper, which is a daily metro paper in southeast Michigan. I cover all of Michigan politics, campaign coverage, state government coverage, all the good stuff.
So what's happening in Michigan right now? Because this morning on Morning Show, they were talking about how Michigan GOP has gotten into fisticuffs.
Yeah, it's a little bit like trying to explain in the unexplainable, but there's a major, major rift in Michigan Republican politics. I mean, if you go back a couple decades, the Michigan Republican Party was known nationally for being one of the strongest gops in the entire country. There's a lot of establishment Republican money in this state. Many of your listeners have probably heard the name Betsy de Vos before. Yes, the Voss family, the members of a family are some
of the biggest Republican donors in the entire country. They're based in the Grand Rapids area here in Michigan. They give millions of dollars each cycle to Republican causes. There's a lot of other business leaders that are of a similar similar mindset that are our big donors here, and that has allowed up until recent years, the Republican Party here to be a very strong, influential political operation. Then came Donald Trump and a lot of that fell apart.
Okay, so let's talk about this. I feel like Michigan is a great example of a state where was a purple state.
Yeah, it really was a purple state. You have right wing that is as right as and you have the Michigan militia.
Yeah, what happened. Michigan is a state where there is a very strong libertarian saction. I think it's partly because of you know, the wilderness and there's a lot of rural areas of this state further to the north, and there's a strong you know, justin Amash's from here. There's a lot of libertarian minded people who call Michigan home. And this state has gone from during the Obama years. You know, it was a light blue state. I mean
Obama won Michigan pretty easily during his two elections. But there's something about Donald Trump that makes this state more competitives, I would say. I mean in the first election in twenty sixteen, when Trump ran, he became the first Republican to win Michigan since nineteen eighty eight. He's been able to win over some voter who either stay home during a lot of normal elections or who are Union voters who have kind of fallen away from the Democratic Party
for one reason or another. And that those kind of two factors allowed Trump to do just enough to make these races close. In twenty sixteen, he won the state by ten thousand votes. In twenty twenty, he you know, he lost by but he lost by three percentage points. It was one hundred and fifty four thousand vote margin. But it's something about only Trump. No one else in Michigan, right, no one else, no other GOP candidate has really been able to capture what Trump is doing and move the
ball forward. And Trump and his allies in the state have kind of been so divisive with how they have operated and how they've gone about their business that they've really damaged the state party apparatus. They've damaged the Republicans standing in the state legislature. So in twenty twenty two, all of the candidates Trump endorsed for governor, Secretary of State, and attorney general on this midterm election got the Republican nominations.
They didn't have a lot of money, they didn't have institutional backing, they didn't have campaign experience, and they all kind of fall sell flat on their faces with voters. I mean, this is a state that is a battleground state, but the Democrat, the Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer beat Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor, by eleven percentage points. The closest race at the top of the ticket in twenty
twenty two was nine percentage points for attorney general. Democrats won control of the state legislature for the first time in forty years. So now Democrats control every lever of state government. And you know, just you know, six years ago,
Republicans controlled every lever of state government. So this is left the Republicans in a state where they have no power, They don't have the money that they used to have, they don't really have anything going for them with initate recruitment at this moment, and they're kind of in the desert.
I want you to just talk for a minute about Tutor Dixon, one of my favorite Trump candidates. That was a candidate he just picked because he liked her, right, Yeah, I.
Think that was a lot of it. I think there was a hope that from Tutor Dixon's profile that she had kind of this profile where the people in the know on the GOP side were like, if everything came together, this is gonna be a great candidate. If all this potential that Tutor Dixon seemed to have. Her ability to you know, talk to people. She had experience in some level of broadcast conservative radio, and also movies, Yeah, doing
very low, low level horror films. There's a movie that you can find on Amazon where she's getting basically destroyed and beaten up by a zombie and there's blood flying everywhere.
Who among us.
So she's a very outsider candidate. No one had really heard her name before she emerged as a gubernatorial candidate, and it was kind of like Trump's people, people who were associated with Trump found this person that they thought they could throw out there and would be the perfect person to take on Governor Wimmer. That's what the Republicans kept saying. You know, we're getting our male leaders of the Republican Legislature are being made to look like fools
because they keep saying insensitive things. We need a female candidate to really take this weakness away and we can you know, start going after Governor Wimmer. That was the idea that they had, but it didn't work because no one knew or who Turner Dixon was. The donors were hesitant to give to her because they didn't really know who she was. The base of the party didn't really like her that much because they weren't sure she was
far enough to the right. The people who were the establishment didn't like her because they thought she was too closely tied to Trump. So kind of this whole package that they thought was going to come together didn't really fermit the way that they thought it would.
It's such an incredible unforced error to look at Tutor Dixon and just to see like how Republicans just kept screwing up. But there were also I mean, it just was sort of a plethora of craziness. So now we have this state.
Party that is like literally injuring each other. What is the blowback from that?
Because I read that there's going to be that the one guy is going to sue the other guy.
Yeah, it's just absolutely wild.
Do you have talk us through this?
So this is the encapsulation of where the Michigan Republican Party stands, and I think it's also captures where the state parties from what I'm reading, where they'd stand in some other battleground states. In February, the mischiganar Republican Party elected a new share and there were a number of people who are running who didn't have the political experience that usually the share of this party has to run
what is a multi million dollar business. Essentially, you've got to raise millions of dollars and you've got to figure out how to spend and spend wisely millions upon millions of dollars. The person the Republican delegates chose to do this is a woman by the name of Christina Karamo, who ran for secretary of State. Extremely aligned with Trump, has various conspiracy theory ideas about all sorts of things
that she has voiced in the past. She lost for secretary of State by fourteen percentage points to the Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Bencent. Trump did not even endorse her for party chair. Trump endorsed someone else, but Karamo still won with this race. So you've had this person as party chair who doesn't really know a ton about how to successfully run campaigns.
I don't think you really need that as party chair. I think it should be okay, yeah, no, I mean she's gotten in here. She had promised to overall ah the party operates. She had promised to make it very transparent. But now four or five months into her tenure is chair, a lot of the Republican insiders who loved her previously are now saying she hasn't made the party transparent. She's not telling us how much she's raised. There's a lot of questions if she's raised any money at all. She's
not really telling them. Also how she's spending the money that she has brought in. And the delegates and the insiders that chose her for this position are starting to become frustrated with what she's doing and they've demanded more transparency. So at this meeting that occurred in northern Michigan on Saturday, some a small group of Republicans delegates had shown up to this State Committee meeting where there's like one hundred people who are part of the State Committee. They get
a participate in the meeting. Definitely.
Usually the meetings opened up to other Republicans if they want to watch. They did not let these other Republican delegates in the room.
Why not.
Kromo's team is very worried that information they share is going to get leaked to people like me other reporters. Then they don't want they think it's going to be spun in some negative way. That's going to make them look bad. So they're very sensitive about how they give out information. That's the excuse that they keep using, so
they want to let these people in. This guy by the name of James Chapman had driven from Wayne County, which is in the southeastern part of Michigan, all the way up to Claire, which is in northern central Michigan, and he was infuriated that they would not let him into this meeting room to watch this meeting. He was outside the meeting room and he started at one point jiggling the doorknob of one of the doors is the meeting room, jiggling it up and down inside the room.
He's going to try to get in Netwig.
Yeah, I mean why not.
The Claire County Republican Party chair is at this meeting. He's inside the meeting room. He's standing there. This is happening in his county. He notices the doorknobs jiggling. He thinks it's a staff member of the hotel where they're having this meeting, so he walks over to try to open the door. As he's walking over to open the door, there's a small window in the door. Chapman gives him the middle finger through the window.
I can't love this story anymore.
Go on, yes, continue, the Young the chair sees this middle finger.
He doesn't know who's doing it. He told me that he thought it was a staffer of those when he was going to open the door to yell at this staff or why are you giving me the middle finger? He opens the door. Upon opening the door, he says he was kicked in the crouch by James Chapman immediately opens the door. He gets kicked in this. I love the story so much, sense of the Bavaria. And then as he's in pain, Chatman, according to De Young, charges him, picks him up, and throws him on a chair. Chapman
has a differing account of this. He alleges that the Young swung at him, and then once Deyong swung at him, he took his glasses off and was ready to engage in a knock down fistfight. So oh good as it ended, de Young had believed he believed. He went to the emergency room and said he thought he had a broken rib. He was telling other people that his dentures had been broken.
Wait is he old?
I don't know his exactly ask.
But I mean, I feel like denthers would mean that he is.
He's not a young person either. James Chapman is not a young person either.
Okay, all right, all right, so anyway, so but did his dentures break or now he.
Did not tell me about the dentist thing, but okay, to find out later. He had told everyone else who was at the meeting that his teeth had been broken in this fight and he was going to press charges. He's told everyone I want to see Chapman penalize arrested for this. There's been no arrest that we know of up until this point. The meeting went on, Chapman went to his car, the police came, and it all eventually
they separated and the meeting went on. We don't know what the Claire police are going to do about this, if they're going to do anything about it.
Jesse has a really good point that is not about the hilariousness of this. I want you to talk about what you are in Michigan on the ground, and Purple stayed likely blue at this point. But what are you seeing about national politics that the rest of us are not saying.
I hear people say that you know, they think that Trump is going to lose relatively easily, you know, that it's going to be a wide margin that they think he doesn't have much of a chance to win another term. But what I hear and see on the ground is that a lot of the people that have been with
Trump previously are still with him, right. No, I think that there is some undercounting from the national level of the chances that Trump does have to not only be the nominee because he has a large lead in all papolling there, but to give Biden an extremely close race. I mean, think about this that in twenty twenty, Trump
only lost by three points in Michigan. And you know, the question that I think is on the minds of a lot of these swing voters that I run into in Michigan is, you know, has Biden given them a reason to give him another term?
Right?
And that's on Biden at this point. I mean, the idea that they are gonna because Trump is simply on the ballot, vote for Biden, that is not what I'm hearing from people. I Mean, Trump was just here a couple of weeks ago, and there was a huge crowd for him in Oakland, County, which is an area he has not done well in. There seems to be within the GOP, this GOP that has suffered a lot of losses during his tenure in Michigan, they are not at
this point stepping away from him. I mean, it seems like they're still ready to jump on board with him. I don't really know what to make of that, but it's just something that I'm noticing.
I Mean, it definitely seems like from everything we're reading and reporting and seeing, is that Trump is going to be the nominee unless he gets struck by Lightton.
I think that's true. I mean, it's also people, I think discount the fact that, like in Michigan, the individuals who run these state parties, the people that are going to be in charge of administering all of these various contests that are going to decide who the nominee is, a lot of these people are Trump people, right, And that's going to help him as well. I mean, not only is there support for him to run again within the GOP, but the mechanism for deciding how these races
take shape is also in his favor. And there's so many challengers that it's just a really uphill battle for these people to try to make inroads.
I mean, he really installed his people.
He has been the dominant face of the party all the way back to sixteen basically maybe a little bit before that. And in the way these state parties work for them to change, it's delayed, you know, maybe four or funk years. So I mean for the next four or five years, the state party in states like miss Michigan and elsewhere are going to be dominated by people who are a lot of them got into politics because of Donald Trump. I mean, that's just the easiest way to put it.
That's really terrifying.
I want to ask you, like, Biden World has been really trying hard to sort of take their show on the road and show how their infrastructure spending effects normal voters.
Are you seeing that on the ground. Do you think voters understand that, get that, see that, appreciate that.
That's a great question. And how much are they grasping the connections between what is happening with various projects, what's happening with all the funding that has poured through state government offers and are they giving that credit to Joe Biden? Are they giving that credit to their state legislator or the governor of our state, where it is a very
well known governor. I mean, this is a governor. Everyone in the state of Michigan, Gresha and Wetbory knows her largely a lot of because of her actions during the COVID pandemic. She's become I'm just such a well known person here. I think she gets a lot of credit for anything that happens, especially among Democrats and people that are in the know. They credit her for some of the increased spending that has taken place, and I don't
know if they're crediting Biding. I mean that's the thing that one of the things from covering the twenty twenty campaign is Biden did not have large rallies. I mean, there were not rallies in Michigan. We don't know at this point what that looks like. I keep thinking about as I prepare to cover the next presidential campaign. What does it look like for Biden to have an event on the campus of University of Michigan or Michigan State University. Do students show up for that? Are we going to
see large crowds at those types of events? Are there going to be people you know, pooring out to go out doors for them. Democrats in the state say that because if Trump is on the ballot, that that's going to spur all these people to turn out and continue to continue to give because they want to stop Trump does That is at the same as being for Biden. I don't know.
Do you think your governor is eyeing the presidency in twenty twenty eight.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, because from the standpoint where I am, you know, I hear about this every day, and I have relatives that ask me about this all the time. You know, you look at the national polling and people don't know who she is. Still the average voter who lives in another state doesn't know much about her yet, maybe compared to like Gavin Newsom, who they hear about mores but it does, you know, you can see in her comments as it's gone along.
But now she's kind of opening the door to maybe in twenty twenty eight, maybe I would be open to that. It's difficult though, because at the end of twenty twenty six that will be the end of her second term as governor. What does she do in the time between when her second term ends, and when the race for the presidency unfolds, can she stay relevant in that time? She is very good at raising money, She's very politically savvy. Even the Republicans would acknowledge that she loves cam painting,
she loves the political game. Do I think that that's definitely something that she thinks about and would want to do if the opportunity provided I came forward. I think yes. Will that opportunity unfold in a way where it can happen? I think that's what remains to be seeing.
Thank you, Craig. I hope you'll come back.
Thank you so much for having me those fun Hi.
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Chris Cadego is Politico's California bureau chief.
Welcome to Fastpolitics.
Chris, thank you so much.
So tell us exactly what you do and what your beat is.
So I recently moved from Washington back to California. We were very excited to do it. Politico is doing a big expansion in the state, and I am the bureau chief in the state. So I cover politics, write about the intersection of politics and a whole bunch of kind of industries from the state capitol. Write a lot about Gavin Newsom. We have, of course the money folks in Silicon Valley and southern California, and you know, there's a
bunch of exciting elections coming up here. There's the possibility, I know folks are trying to shoot it down that the Republican presidential primary the California might matter in that one if Trump doesn't run away with it early. And there's a Senate race Diane find Side is retiring folks like Adam Schiff and Katie Porter and some others including
Congresswoman Barber Lee or in that race. So it's it's kind of a it's a real moment in California where some of these offices with older folks are turning over. Talk about Nancy Pelosi leaving the speakership and sort of a changing of the guard. There some younger leaders like Pete Aguilar stepping up and kind of creating relationships with donors. So it's an exciting time. I'm from here. I used to cover Jerry Brown before covering you know, Biden, and
folks like Kamala Harris. So it's there's not I mean, you guys know, journalism, while there's not a lot of opportunities when you can like go home and not be one of the seventy people chasing Joe Manchin around with your cell phone and recorder on and actually, you know, report on races and people where there's the space is a little bit less crowded. So's it's a lot of it's a lot of fun. We're happy to be back here.
So let's talk a little bit about Governor Newsom because he's really kind of captured the national spotlight. Is he just cooling his jets for twenty eight? Does do you feel like are you seeing him trying to make moves for twenty four? It also seems like he's sort of coming from the cold he was not a favorite and national Democrats, and now he's sort of moved that. There's a sense that he's a little more popular now. Talk to me about the evolution of Gavin Newsom.
Yeah, I think he's, you know, in the last year, there's a sense that he's become more of a team player. There was a time after we at Politico had broken the huge news on the overturning of Robi Wade and the Dobbs decision, where Newsom came out really called out a party. A lot of folks took it personally. Nancy Pelosi took it personally, someone he's known a long time.
She Jamie Harrison at the DNC, A lot of folks in the White House around Biden saying that this was all just kind of preening by Newsome, that he's trying to draw attention to himself. And Newsom's point at the time was like, this is going to be the fight of not only the twenty twenty two mid terms, but
the twenty twenty four presidential race and onward. And I think his thing was sort of you know, I mean, not to sort of overstate it, but they looked at it a little bit like a kind of Paul Revere moment, you know, for the party and for Democrats, and that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. There was not really a strong sense at the time. There's a
lot of complications for some Nationally. Kamala Airis is someone he's known and sort of grown up with in politics, and certainly they share a lot of the same donor base,
they share a lot of the same supporters. She obviously, you know, despite all her sort of troubles in the VP's office, you know, some of which are of her own making and some of which are just the nature of the office, she's still sort of in the in the you know, driver's seat, and you know, among this next generation of Democrats, and it would be harder for Newsome than it would other others in this next generation of Democrats to lead frog hurt just because there's so
many kind of tie ins to both of them. There was, you know, a lot of relief among Newsome and his folks when Biden when it was clear that Biden was going ahead and running, because it just kind of essentially took the question off the table for him. He was never going to primary Biden in any of these states.
It was just never going to happen, and so yeah, I mean basically this is keep your name out there, keep yourself fresh, you know, stay in the national spotlight, raise money, try to be a voice for the party, try to be a good soldier for Biden. And I think that's kind of where he's at right now.
One of the first things that happened to Gavin Newsom was that there was this recall election. That is one of the sort of weirdnesses of California politics is that you can have a recall election. It was a while ago, but I want to ask you, is there any residual, like goodwill or bad will from that? Did the recall election have any effect on newsome trajectory as governor?
I think, you know, you're seeing a little bit of a you know what, doesn't kill him, make some stronger effect from that recall. I think he's probably matured a little bit. There's there's obviously, like something humbling about having to run again so shortly after winning election. You're talking
about sort of like the depths of COVID. A lot of anger out there from businesses, from voters, a lot of people pointing the fingers, a lot of parents pissed that schools were closed, and so it was just like a really rough time for overall. There was some technicalities around the signatures at the time, they got a long extension to get the signatures which allowed that and be called to qualify. It didn't really look like he was
ever going to lose that. Recall, you remember, like Larry Elder was the Republican candidate who was you know, close to the sucking up to Trump and sort of running as as a maga Republican in California is not going to get you very far. But you know, for new some you know, you emerged from that, he was able to basically you know, the silver lining rays essentially an unlimited amount of money. And you go back to looking at like you know, Scott Walker in Wisconsin or any
of these folks who have faced it. Not to comment on where his career might go after the governorship, but I think it's it's sort of only strengthen his position in the state. Not a lot of pushback or equals to him in California when you're talking about lawmakers or any other players.
Today, let's talk about this Democratic Senate race.
It's a big one. It Schiff Katie Porter, Barbara Lay.
There are other candidates, but it seems like those three are the main What are you seeing?
What do you? Where does this go? When is the primary?
The primary is next spring. There's city unique possibility in California, fairly unique that two of these Democrats, if nobody coalesces around a single Republican, that we could see a rematch from the spring primary in November. Again, so conceivably it could be Adam Schiff and Katie Porter in November, in which case it would probably be sort of a very personal type contest because there's not a huge amount of
differences on policy. Obviously there's differences in personality. Right now, I would stay for the last few months since these folks got into race, it's been kind of the quiet work of gathering endorsements and mostly raising money. And we saw Shift raised over eight million in the second quarter of a year. Kitty Porter's numbers aren't out there yet, Barbara Lee raised another million, and so Ship is basically
built up this workshaest of nearly thirty million dollars. California is super expensive to run these campaign ads in over the last few weeks of the campaign or before the primary. And so he'll obviously need that money. But yeah, there's been a huge focus on shift nationally, given this censure in the House, and really given like Trump's sort of
resurgence amid all these kind of scandals. It reminds folks that shiff was there during the first impeachment, and that's like exactly what Ship wants is to be on a spotlight. I think Porter has been a little quieter, but you know, she's popular and she has a real following among folks with her whiteboard and it's a fun race in California. Folks for used to for so long Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. I mean really since the early nineties. It
just hasn't happened in a while. A news pointed Alex Padilla to serve in Kamala Harris's old seat. Her race was not very competitive in twenty sixteen, so this could be the first real competitive race in years.
Let's talk about this for a second. Katie Porter has a very purple seat. Democrats really need to win back the House if they want to get stuff done. And you know, really Democrats lost the House through California, Yeah, and New York very annoyingly.
Two Democrats in California New York. So do you see the party taking care of that seat?
Do you think that there is are there plethora of Porter like candidates running forward, or is that seat just gonna get thrown away?
Democrats are really gonna try to hold onto that seat. I mean, there's a legislator who's running there named Date Man, who's got a lot of parallels to Porter. They both come from UC Irvine, both the lawyers, and so he was kind of the early front runner there and still might be. He raised I think over four hundred thousand
dollars in the last quarter. A lot of folks point to this DUI he got a couple months ago, and we remember asking Pete Aguilar, who is kind of stepping in as the highest ranking California Democrat, about that and whether it's gonna turn Democrats or the leadership in DC off on Man. And you know, Aguilar's answer at the time, this is pretty recently, was like, you know, the filing period doesn't close for several months, so it was kind of a not all that subtle point he was making
that the party may not get behind Men there. And there's another candidate running named Joanna Weiss, who's a Democrat. That's the kind of seat where if you put your name down and you run kind of a credible campaign, the money will slow to you. It's just such a
competitive seat that you're in the position. And not taking anything away from Katie Porter, she was obviously a prolific fundraiser and really built kind of a brand around herself, but there is something to you being in these sort of purple seats that are highly contested, where, like I said, the money will come to you.
Oh see, that's very interesting and seems like an important data point. There are all these house seats in California. Democrats really did well in twenty eighteen with a lot of those seats, and they give them back now. Because we're not on cable news, I can say this terrible bad word that you're not supposed to say.
As the state party. Gutten it shit together? Or are we going to have you know what happened in New York.
There's been a lot of figure pointing about like who's to blame for that? And I think part of it is it's a mid terms, right and they sort of fought to a draw with Republicans. I think Republicans ended up picking up a seat, and there were some losses that you know, we're super close. In the Central Valley, Republicans have Kevin McCarthy. I mean, you know, regardless of what you think of Kevin McCarthy, he's from California. He has done over the years a pretty good job of
recruiting candidates in some of these districts. He knows the state well, he knows the Central Valley well. David Valadeo is a good example of someone who can kind of withstand being in one of these districts and is sort of locally connected enough and knows people enough that he can win. And so I think the question for Democrats is really how much is this road decision still going to reverberate and how much do they pick up from Biden at the top of the tip get, you know,
this being a higher turnout presidential election this time. When we asked Aguilar, I think I specifically asked him if Trump is the nominee, does that turn out more? You know, Republicans in some of these these swing areas. You don't think of these California Republicans, but there's a huge number of that state. I mean, just given the sheer number
of voters. There's a ton of Trump voters in California, right, Yeah, and now you are seem to think that Trump is a net positive for Democrats that basically the specter of Trump just turns folks out. They don't want Trump in there.
With the Republican controlled House, that is going to really stir turnout for Democrats, you know, in the last couple elections, you know, the specter of Trump, or at least in the mid terms, it's harder to kind of campaign as with Trump as the boogeyman when he's not actually on the ballot, with him potentially being the nominee, it does give Democrats a sense that they could rally around that. I know that's been the calling card for a few
years now. But between that and a board and a whole lot of other issues in the state, there's going to be a bunch of ballot measures and bonds and other things that could Democrats feel like could help turn folks out for various issues.
There's been a lot of like ballot initiatives, you know, sort of state legislation that has been to address the fall of row things like that. Can Democrats run on that are those winners for Democrats.
I mean, Democrats certainly think that they are California you know, gap venusom after that side of just a long, you know, big raft of bills to basically make this kind of an island, you know, a place that people could come from other states. They at one point they were putting up billboards basically saying, you know, you can come to California.
It's been a huge issue for so long. Like I can remember being these campaign things like so many years ago, and there were always these lines in the speech here about protect road way.
And all of that, and you kind of think back at the time and you're thinking, like, why are they even talking about that, Like that happened so many years ago, and it was just it was like it was so taken, you know, for granted by a lot of voters that the fact that that you know, is not a protection nationally.
Now, and the fact that you have Republicans out there, you know, from Pence to a whole lot of folks in this you know, live wire Republican presidential primary talking about nash Fan talking about all those things regardless of what's in the state constitution in terms of protections it does keep the issue really sort of front burner when you have people wanting to go further in the Republican party. It's a top line item among Democrats on the Republican side.
I mean, not to really change the topic, but in California, you know, there's a real issue with wages not keeping up with the cost of living. I mean, it's gotten super expensive. There's an issue with you know, homelessness that's gone on and made a lot worse by the pandemic. There's a lot of sort of quality of life. There's a report from folks last week and the AG talking about the rise and crime like that is real. You know, these are not just Republican talking points. Some of these
numbers are really up. The homeless count in LA was up, and so people look at that and I don't know that it's gonna you know, it's always taught for Republicans to pick folks off in California, especially sort of these voters who might be more in the middle, because they look at the national Party and they look at Trump and that's really what defines in their mind who Republicans are. And so it's not an easy choice for some of
these folks. But in somebody these swing districts, some of these older voters there, it can make a difference in these races that come down to a few hundred votes.
Chris, thank you so much. I hope you will come back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really hope you please have me back.
A moment Jesse Cannon, Maley Jong Fast.
The dumbest member of Senator, possibly the dumbest member of the whole entire body, Tommy Tuberville.
He he doesn't goofed.
Yes, he said that you shouldn't discriminate against voydetlist was the sort of nugget of it. That guy, you'll remember him, He went on CNN last night and in typical moronic Republican fashion, he went back to his usual doubling down. So that guy, Thomas Tuberville, perhaps the dumbest member of the Senate, the male Marsha Blackburn. He has been holding up all of the military appointments because he's mad at
Biden abortion. So Tommy Tuberville and his pro white supremacist views, he is our moment of fuckery, because why shouldn't you be. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.