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 George Santos's campaign has refunded more money than it's raised. L By the way, would like to add that George Santos tweeted yesterday that Kellyan was right about me. Oh I bet she was. And I would like to say rent free in Kelly in Conway's head. That's where I live. We have a star studded show for you today. Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl updates us on the
chaos in the House as the GOP props up. Congressman Jim Jordan Ben We'll talk to the Atlantics and Applebaum about the rare good news coming out of Poland's recent election. But first we have the host of the new podcast, Contempt of Court, The Nation's Ellie Mastaal. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Ali, Hey, how are you?
I am very excited to have you here because I'm a super fan, and also because we have these conversations and sometimes I think about them months and months later, which is usually like I have a brain, like I said so, and usually everything just goes right in and out, but for you, for some reason, the last time we talked, you told me so much stuff that sort of like permeated and was kind of going around my brain for months and months.
Yeah, it's kind of you Ever read the Greek myth of Cassandra, right.
Yes, you feel you're a Cassandra.
Yeah, there's a bit like I feel like Apollo actually an assaulted me and now I am cursed to know exactly what the Supreme Court is gonna do, but has some difficulty getting, you know, especially the Democrats in Congress and running for office, to realize just how terribly screwed we are when it comes to the six Conservatives currently ruling the rest of the country.
There are new cases this season, season two of the real Supreme Court justices of the Trump administration. I feel like the shit they did last season was like almost like now they're just taking it a little further.
Well, the way that I would put it is this, the Supreme Court over the past two years has completed its generational goals.
Right.
Yes, they wanted to end reproductive rights and send women back to second class. That is, they've done that. They've wanted to end affirmative action and make colleges and universities safe for mediocre white children. They've done that.
Yes, Dianu. As my people say, from.
Now, we're in the kind of spiking the football portion of the thing where they're not doing things that they have spent a generation doing, yes, saying that they were going to do. Now they're on their stretch goals extra credit.
So if you're a domestic abuser and want to have a weapon, this Supreme Court is for you.
This is the time for you. One of the biggest cases that they will hear later, I believe that scheduled for November now. It's called US v. Raheemi. That is a case where a person who was under a restraining order.
Raheemi, not a good guy, not a good husband, and had you.
Know, not only a restraining order for abusing his ex girlfriend, but was involved in multiple shootings over the course of his criminal career, including I think most hilariously and frighteningly shooting is gun into the air at a what a burger. Yes, when his credit card was declined.
This is a person you should give more weapons to.
Right, So they took his guns away, which makes sense. He said no, no, no, no, taking my guns away just because I have a domestic violigions training order is a violation of my Second Amendment rights. And the Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals said, yes, yes it is. And there was a concurrence from a judge named James Hoe, who is my pick for probably the worst possible person running to replace Cli Exladus, where he wrote a concurrence that was basically like, yeah, restraining orders, that's women are shrews. Just use for training orders to you know, as illegal, he said, as a tactical advantage or spurned lovers.
Is this originalism?
This is the winning argument? Molly like, I'm laughing because if you don't, you just cry cry.
Yeah. I just want you to explain to our listeners the thing that they're doing now, which is this idea that if the founders did not conceive of it, it is not real.
Yeah. So the current Supreme Court president on guns comes from ruin the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, which Clarence Thomas decided, you know, right after Dobbs, and that says that if you have a gun regulation, it must be sourced in a gun regulation that existed at the time of the founding. In seventeen eighty seven.
Right, right, we're seventeen eighty seven when women were property and right.
So it's yer old George or Washington. I'm not making that up. If General George Washington and his merry band didn't come up with the gun regulation, you can't have it. If Lynn Manuel Miranda did not rap about it as
Alexander Hamilton, you cannot have a gun regulation. It is ridiculous, right to say, just as many people will point out, the simple march of technology suggests that we might need different gun regulations than what we needed in seventeen eighty seven, where it took you know, ninety eight seconds to reload your super shop musket.
Again, I want to point out, we are laughing because it keeps us from crying, because this is absolute and zanitay.
And that's where we are. And you know, quite frankly, if we're if that's the standard, well you know what, I'm gonna tell you something. They were not taking away guns from domestic abusers in seventeen eighty seven.
Right, because domestic abuse was kind of just.
Merit, because domestic abuse was on a crime in seventeen eighty ses, we'rever I said this before but let's remember mental rape did not become a crime in all fifty states until the seventies.
Yeah. No, it is unfucking believable, and this Supreme Court is ready.
Look, I actually think still think there's a chance that the Supreme Court overturns the Fifth Circuit on Rahimi. I don't think Raheemi is a completely lost cause yet for two reasons. One, the president that you can take guns away from domestic abusers is very long standing, right, Yeah, so Roberts doesn't like overturning long standing precedents.
Except when it comes to we're.
Talking about a woman's toho ha in which case.
Right, in which it's an open season, then.
It's open season, right, So that's somewhere. Number two, Remember, a domestic violence of restraining order is a legal adjudication. It's not a mere allegation. It's not the same as an indictment or a charge. The law is not you've been indicted, so you can't have a gun. You've had a due process right. And so if they're saying that after a legal adjudication, you cannot have a fundamental right taken away, well, you know what they like to do.
They like to take fundamental rights away when they are voting rights for people who have had legal adjudication against.
Yes, So let's talk about this. This is like, I feel like Republicans' new favorite thing is taking away. It's not their new, it's their favorite. It's a time honored Republican tradition of taking away the voting rights of people who probably aren't going to vote for you, right.
Because the only way that they can win. Republicans have long unders that they can't win in a free and fair election, Like if everybody who wants to vote does vote and has their vote count it, Republicans can't win. They're a minoritarian, sectarian regional party at this point. They don't have massive popular appeal and they know that, and so one of their key or should they electoral strategies is to depress and make it difficult for people who
don't like them to vote against them. So that's kind of a longstanding thing Republican party. What's kind of new at the Supreme Corps ish at the Supreme Court is there the Spring Court is one hundred percent all in on it and is doing things to make it harder for basically puts foot on the gas and allowed Republicans to jerry mander away minority voting power in any state that is controlled by Republicans. So we've already had an oral argument in a case brought by the South Carolina
Chapter of the NAACP about South Carolina's District one. Now, according to the Federal District Court, South Carolina's District one is an unconstitutional racial jerrymander. They drew the district right through the city of Charleston, and they basically took all the black people that should have been in District one, which right now is Nancy Mace's district.
The best you'll remember her from wearing a skin tight T shirt within a on it for adulterer when she was parading through Congress.
Yeah, I only remember her as the person who could not get through these spark notes on Nathaniel Hawk authorne Scarlet letter right after the first PARAGRAPHIC, that's right, that's District one in South Carolina. District six, which is the other district that has part of Charleston, is Jim Clyburns DISTC. Yeah,
which is already majority minority. And so what the Republicans did is basically take all the remaining black people that lived in District one and shoved them into Clyburn's district, creating a kind of super black district for Clydeburn and creating a very say white district for Nancy Mace.
Right, well, she needs it, man, because she's not great.
They said they were not doing this because of the race of the voters they were moving. They said they were doing a partisan jerrymander. They were only trying to move Democrats out of Nancy Mace's district, not black people. That's an important legal distinction because in twenty nineteen, John Roberts, with the help of his conservative buddies, said that you can politically jerrymander to your heart's content and the federal
courts can't stop you. He called political jerrymander is non justicable by the Supreme Court, which basically means states do whatever you want. But he said that in the twenty nineteen a case is called Rucho be common Casts. He said that racial jerry manners were still totally bad. Well, obviously, and I said this in real time and functionally every
single day's sence. Functionally, that makes no sense because all that's going to happen is that the people who are being racist are going to say, no, no, no, we were just being political.
Right.
You know something about racists that I've learned in my travels is that they don't often say, hey, I'm doing this the peoples, except.
Sometimes in Maga world, but largely no, I agree.
Trump does it. That's why they love them. But the ransom them, they don't. Right on their maps, I'm doing this to predact people, not much downright.
Except they did in Alabama, which is why they lost, by the way, right exactly.
But here in South Carolina, they just oh, no, no, we're just doing this politically. The district courts factually said that that was just wrong. One of the ways that we know they were doing it racially not played is that they left white Democrats and Nancy Mace's district right right. They didn't move them out, they moved out black Democrats, and so yeah, but the Spring Court, we had oral arguments on that two weeks ago. Feels like a lifetime ago.
But two weeks ago I listened to them and it was just, there's no way that South Carolina NAACP is going to win this case. John Roberts is basically like, how can we know racism even exists? You didn't say they.
Were racist, again laughing to keep from crying. Not laughing, because any of this is fine.
And alleged attempt at rapist Brett Kavanaugh, he invoked his black friend Jim Kleiber because Cliber, I mean, and you can kind up be a I can criticize Cliburn for this a bit, but like I also can kind of understand it. You just told Jim Clyburn was told you're gonna your district is going to be unlosable by a
black person, and Clyburn was like, yes, please, Yeah. So Clyburn, you know, tacitly signed off on the racist map that South Carolina used, and so then oral Argus Bett Capitol is basically like, well, Jim Cloyd weren't think it was racist.
Right, and he's my best friend and best buddy.
Oh, it's just it's a it's a bad scene. And what it's going to mean is that, as I have predicted in twenty nineteen after Rucho, any racial jerrymander can just be called a political jerrymander, and these idiots on the Supreme Court will fall.
For Yeah, so let me ask you, right, And they're idiots, they're useful idiots, right, they're not really they want to fall for it.
Idiots is given is being too kind them exactly.
Anyways, the last time you were on this podcast, and now I remember something you said, which, by the way, we do eighteen thousand interviews a day. So the fact that I remember something you said is I think it's the first time this has ever happened. But you said to me, Amy Cony Barrett is actually really smart yep. And I remember thinking to myself, really, you said, you hear, what are her oral arguments? And you hear, this is a person who is very smart working things out. Yeah,
So here's my question for you. Yesterday in Colorado, she said there needs to be an ethics code. We're all in on an ethics code. And then she declined to say why they hadn't had an ethics code before that. So she's playing three dimensional chess here, right.
She understands, as I do believe John Roberts does, if you gave him truth zero, that the ethics concern are the only things that can interrupt their project, right, because I said, they're in the process of spiking the football.
Right, and the only thing that's.
Going to decrease their ability to spike the football is if people feel like the Supreme Court is corrupt, which it is, right. It's one of those things like, if you're winning, you don't need to commit a foul. You're winning, right. It's only if you start following the other teams and getting penalties and giving them free opportunities to score that you got any danger of losing. And that is what
Keny Barrett is trying to say. She's all in on ethics because first of all, she's probably not nearly as corrupt as her colleagues, right, I mean, the bar.
Is pretty fucking low, But yeah, she hasn't been zipping along on somebody else's jack.
Nobody's buying her RV. Right, So there's probably that. But there's also the idea that, like, it's only through corruption can they lose their generational majority right to do whatever they want. And the thing about the and ethics reform that is led by the Supreme Court is going to be necessarily a lot easier, a lot more forgiving than an ethics reform led by kind of an angry Congress
in twenty twenty five. If things don't go Republicans' way in the next election, right, and again, this is what I'm saying. She's a smart lady. It's wise to get out ahead of this in fairness Elena Kagan, who is actually the only justice I believe is incorruptible. So I've got like I got Kegan stories. I had her for law school, and she was the dean of my law school eventually the year that I graduated. So one of my stories is she used to be a smoker. I don't think she has anymore good.
We need her healthy.
I a smoker. So I was in a store buying cigarettes and she was behind me, and I offer to buy her a pack of cigarettes, and she looks at me as she goes mister listall, would you offer any person in this store a free pack? Is not sure? There are people who would like to have a free package? Or are you only offering me a pack of cigarettes because i'm your.
Law school dan m And the answer is yes.
I think you have to examine your conscience, so why you would do that? And I was like, yo, right, I.
Don't think Clarence Thomas is having that conversation. Okie, are you just flying me on your jet to talk to your donors? Because I'm a supreme Court justice with seemingly unlimited right.
I was educated that day. Elena Kagan famously will not accept free locks on her Bagel okay, so she is uncorruptible, and she has also been out there in favor of ethics reform. We know why it's not happening because Clarence Thomas makes too much money off of it. And he's not the only one. He's the most kind of greedy and least tactful one, right, But Corsa is making money off the lands deals. Alito's getting a flown all around the country. Roberts, you know, we say that he maybe
you don't give the money directly to him. But Roberts's wife is a big time legal recruiter. All she has is move lawyers from one firm to another. Makes millions of dollars doing that. And you know, one might ask, who, I wonder if you would be as successful of that
if your husband wasn't on the Supreme Court. If you're a legal recruiter, you come to my prayers like I've got three lawyers that you should totally hire, and my practice involves you know, repellant law, and from the Supreme Court, I'm going to listen to you John Roberts's wife, right, So most of them have dirty hands. And then there's the question of like, what's the actual punishment going because you can't have ethics reforms without ethical consequences, right, right,
what's the punishment? First of all, who gets to decide that ethics have been violated? And once there is, what's what's the punishment for judges who violated ethical guidelines or refuse to accuse themselves from cases? Right now, it is up to each individual justice to consult their own conscience about whether or not they should sit for a case. Any real ethics reform changes that. That's where the fight is, right because like, who gets to tell Clarence no, you
can't sit on this case? Is the ballgame?
That's right? That's right?
Absolution that way, I think it should be an independent panel of retired judges. I think that that's the simplest, easy, easiest, and most bear solution. You get a three judge retired, you can do a retired handle. The former Supreme Court justice is right, there are many of us are alive. David Suitor, Anthony.
Kennedy, Oh, that's an amazing idea.
David suit Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, all still alive. Put them on a panel, have them decide who asked the recuse move.
Salved Ellie, I hope you will come back.
Y, absolutely will. The world isn't completely on fire.
Right, Yes, it's so crazy.
We still have things like radio programs. Then yes, I'll have.
Congresswoman mikey Shall represents New Jersey's eleventh congressional district. Welcome back to fast Politics, Congresswoman.
Thanks for having me back.
You're coming off these votes. What is happening with your branch of government?
Wow, it might basier to track what's not happening in ibras government. I turned to back in January when we were having vote after vote after vote to get a new Speaker of the House, and it was sort of a historic moment, and I turned to a friend of mine on the floor and I said, you know, just once, I'd like to start a Congress not in a historic moment, because, as you recall my first session of Congress, we were facing the longest government shut down our nation had ever faced.
Trump was in office. It was the first federal election after he had taken office, and so that was really an historic moment, and then sadly, the next time I got sworn in several days later, it was January sixth. It was horrible. So that was a historic moment. And then we had the speaker McCarthy vote a historic moment and she, my friend, turned me and said, I said, you know, I'd like to not be in a historic moment. She looked at me with this very skeptical look and
she goes, really, and I said, no, not really. I mean that's why, right, we're in the transformative times. I believe a lot is on the line for our country, including at times the democracy itself. And so I'm really proud to be here and doing this kind of work. It is really, really troubling as you try to find the best way forward for the country. And I can tell you with utmost confidence that Jim Jordan is not the best pathward for this country.
I feel like that's the understatement of the year for the people who are like keeping track at home and who for whom this is not their entire lives. Jim Jordan decided that he was going to be the nominee despite having less votes than Steve Scalise.
Right, So my sense is that there are people within the Republican Conference who are incredibly worried about the institution of Congress. Not worth to actually, you know, work with Democrats at this point and get a new speaker elected.
But nevertheless, certainly not.
You know, I think that there were people that were supporting Scalese who just really looked at the numbers and said, look, we're not going to make this happen. I think Jordan was putting out that he had more votes than he did and there were twenty thoats on the floor after the last vote that would not support him. I believe he can only lose four. You know, it's hard to
see him closing that gap. I'm not saying impossible. I often complain that many of my colleagues seem to end up doing what I would suggest is the wrong thing for the country after suggesting they wouldn't. So we don't know, but at this point it doesn't look like he'll get that. So some of the things we're contemplating is whether or not it makes sense to empower Speaker pro Tem McHenry getting him.
More power, and that could happen, right, yeah, but it is.
It is really interesting because you know a lot of people were shocked at the twenty people who didn't support him. I was shocked at the over two hundred who did support him, or the almost two or two did support him.
He has this history, I mean, even as far back is when he was a wrestling coach, kind of turning a blind eye to what kids on his team said were reports that they had reported to him of sexual assault, and then not passing any legislation in the seventeen years he's been in Congress, which oddly got some applause on the floor of the House from his colleagues, which I
didn't understand. It just kind of showed you the chaos and the almost pride in not governing from some quarters of the you know, kind of the extreme members of that conference. But I guess we should be somewhat happy that he has not been effective, because he's also the chief author of the national abortion Bill with no exceptions, he's started numerous investigations that continue to lead to dead end.
So he's just waiting a lot of taxpayer dollars, which you know, of all people, he should not be because he won't vote to fund the government, tries to and really you know, not pass the budget. So with all this as his record, it's hard to see that anything good would from having him as the speaker. Again, I would say another Underfaid, not sure.
So let me ask you about this. The world is on fire right. We have mega crisis in the Middle East, we have mega crisis in Ukraine with Russia. I mean, it's just really perilous moment. Tommy Tuberville is still holding up the appointments.
Yeah, it's shocking, it really is that he is now really imperiling some of what's going on in what we call SENTCOM, which is the Middle East Area of Operations, as we have seen those horrible attacks and we're attempting to support Israel in the region and get humanitarian aid into Gaza. We have military members who are now going to be statutorily required to leave in that area. And these are complicated issues that we're facing. We know that
he's held up. I think by the end of the year, over two thirds of our flag opsters, which are admirals and generals, will be satutorily required to leave their posts. And you know, again, I think this is just tied to the chaos that you see on the far right and the fact that their constituencies do not hold them accountable.
I think is the.
Toughest pill to swallow, because you know, what I often say is, it's not the fact that Marjorie Taylor Green is in Congress. It's the fact that in a district of seven hundred and fifty thousand people, she's the person that they want representing them in Congress. That's what kills you about the whole thing, is that there are people that are so cynical that that's the representation that they want.
Let's talk about the sort of possibilities here they're going to be. I think they recess, they'll vote more, They'll just keep voting until people completely run out of ideas. I mean, where does this go.
I've heard we're going to go back and vote again in a little over an hour, which is a little bit surprising. Again, I have a hard time believing that in this show short period of time, he's moved the numbers. But maybe you know, here's what's different. Sometimes you move numbers on speaker votes because people want People hold out because they want to be named to a powerful committee, or they want some agreement on legislation that is very
important to them, and so they negotiate. I am not getting a sense that some of the holdouts are holding out because they want anything from Jordan. I'm getting a sense that they're holding out because they specifically do not want Jordan to be the Speaker of the House, and that's different. So it's hard for me to see him moving the numbers very much. But we're going to go back and try again in about an hour, and then
I'm not sure. I mean, I have heard from a Republican colleague that they need to hit rock bottom before they've murmured.
It's like the craziest thing. I need to hit rock bottom. It's like your junkie cousin.
Why don't we think we're there?
You know, like, what is what is it about this situation that doesn't scream rock bottom?
You can get Jordan elected to the speakership that could be in many ways rock bottom right there.
Right, you know. I just I remember when I was in the Navy, there used to be these performance reviews, and sometimes people would put snarky things in performance reviews, and one of them was this person it doesn't seem to have a real grasp of the matter, has hit rock bottom and continues to dig and that's sort of I keep thinking we've hit rock bottom, but we continue to dig.
Is what is the plan here?
So I do think though, that maybe it's time to really consider empowering mckenry so that we can just continue to run the government until the Republicans have a better path forward, because I really don't think that barring working with Democrats. And I'm not just saying this as a Democratic, I don't think any Republican can get the votes that they need right to become speaker in the Republican Conference, which is, you know, a remarkable thing to say.
By the way, I love Republicans blaming Democrats for this that.
Came out in nowhere right Kevin McCarthy, and it was the Republicans only it was some Democrats telling me about this. But suddenly McCarthy goes from being one of the worst speakers the House has ever known, you know, I mean, his appeasement strategy got weirder and weirder because he kept giving up governance to trying to appease the Freedom Caucus. And then he finally says, you can start an impeachment inquiry,
but he got nothing for it. That's when I knew we were at the beginning of the end, I'm like, well, if you're going to appease somebody, you know. I thought he was saying, you could do that and you then have to vote to fund the government or vote for a cr or something. But he just sort of gave that away and didn't ask anything in return. And I thought, you know, now we have somebody who's trying to be worse, who's trying to like out Freedom Caucus the Freedom Caucus.
So things were going in a really, really bad direction. I know, his conference was furious with him, Moderates in everyone they thought he was really I mean, obviously, and then Democrats were furious with him. He you know, less than a week after he made a deal with the President of the United States, he then abended the deal and didn't follow it. So he was sort of at
an all time low. And I said to a friend of mine and said, wow, we must just really love an underdog, because the minute that guy's out, suddenly everyone kind of reviews it and decides he should be speaker and Democrats should make him speaker.
It was a really weird.
Twist, and I've said to some people and a lot of the people that were most upset by this were members of Republican moderates. A lot of them were in the problem Solver's Caucus, and you know, they were furious.
And I said to a friend of mine and said, you know, they have so convinced themselves that somehow, by doing every single thing they're far right extremist and base tells them to do, and just by doing that and just staying in their seats, that somehow they're doing the Lord's work and that they're the heroes in this narrative,
and somehow we Democrats should now do that too. We should all just do whatever the Republican base needs us to do so we can stay in our seats because and this is what I hear all the time, because if I wasn't here, someone worse would be where I'm like, if you are voting to not fund government, if you are voting to you know, have a nationwide abortion ban, if you are voting not only if you are not voting on gun safety measures, but if you are voting
to make guns more dangerous with pistol braces, for example, then why is that not the same as how the Freedom Caucus is voting. It is you know, that's no better. You're not making a difference. You're not moving this country in a good direction, and you're certainly not moving the Republican Party in a good direction. And we need the
Republican Party to reform itself. We are two party system, and we can't have one party be the party that's trying to take down the government of the United States of America.
I mean, that is the fundamental thing. Is like when people were like a Jim Jordan's speakership will be so much worse, part of me was like, really, because Kevin McCarthy held impeachment hearings, he had a cr that cut the government by thirty percent. I mean, these moderates are not really very moderates.
I think it's interesting because when people ask me who would Democrats support, there's a lot of members I think of the Republican Conference that Democrats would be willing to work with. And these aren't moderates. The bar has gotten so low. They're just people that I think a lot of us would term reasonable human beings, people that want to keep government open, people that want to support our
allies across the world. It's really fascinating because in other times you would think that if Democrats were in any way going to you know, be helpful here, they would ask for the world right pro choice legislation, and gun safety legislation, assault weapons ban, and you know, different priorities
that we have that we feel passionately about. And yet at this point, all we're trying to do is find a pathway towards keeping the government open and getting some really key bipartisan by the way, I mean, these are things that the Senate, you know, with almost with a very slim slimmer majority. I mean, the Senate passes on a routine basis, even though they have a filibuster. So we're not asking for anything that's not hugely bipartisan. We're just trying to get government to work. And I think
that's a really important thing. And that's why, you know, when somebody called me to talk to me about Scalis, who I certainly not my first choice. But so the reason I'm having this conversation with you is because I really care about the House of Representatives, I really care about this country, and we've got to find a path forward here.
And right now, you know, there just aren't.
Serious people in the Republican Conference working to that end. And I hope they will soon because the country needs it.
Talk to me about childcare, because you're working on childcare and this is a crisis for all of us who have children. Let me say, though, my children are too old for that now, but you probably remember what a debaclet was. Yes, it's a disaster. It's so hard. It was a disaster.
And even if your children are older, I've got some really bad news, if you can believe it, it's worse now. So I remember with horror and all kinds of ajuda and stomach aches, and this when I think about trying to get childcare for my oldest, my daughter who is now eighteen, and the struggles I had with my other children.
As you know, I kept trying to find quality and affordable childcare, and there were times when I was paying more than my paycheck to have my kids in childcare, which is crazy and doesn't make short term economic sense, which is why we see so many parents off in women dropping out of the workforce. But it doesn't make
long term economic sense. And so making sure that you know people have access to good childcare is critically important for their economic wellbeing, for their children's economic wellbeing, for their future, for their retirement. But it's also really important for the economy, which is why certainly the New Jersey
Chamber of Commerce has talked to me about this. But I think there's you know, in Kentucky, I was reading about a group of businessmen coming to the state to say, really, you know, now that we've gone over this childcare clip, you've really got to support investment in childcare. I mean we have you know, we have workforce issues, and if we don't figure out childcare, we will continue to have them. And it's holding back the economy right now.
Oh yeah, no, for sure. And also we have a labor issues. But no one ever will fix immigration.
It's interesting because that is certainly a huge concern right now, is border security. I hear that from my collegues across the aisle all the time, and as we address that, we have to have comprehensive immigration reform. And get asked all the time about immigration and what's the solution. And the striking thing is I could have told you the solution five years ago when I started running for Congress. It is the same solution I have today, which is
very rare. Right, normally that conomy changes the facts on the ground change. I am telling you we need security at the border. We need a pathway to citizen and ship for people who are here for GPS for Dhaka. We need to address some of the foundational reasons for immigration, which in some parts, like in the Northern Triangle area, can be international criminal syndicates. I think we're seeing shifts across the world now that are going to also cause
huge immigration trends that we have to address. But this is not news, and I'm telling you I hear about the problems in our immigration system. I told you I was on the committee for Strategic Competition with Chinese Communist Party, so we talked to some really high end CEOs and technology who are lamenting our problems with high skill labor.
And I can also tell you that the Republicans wanted to pass a huge anti immigration built and we're having, you know, just huge problems with it because their rural communities were concerned about immigrat I.
Mean, people to work there. So it's been gamut.
It is up and down the economic spectrum and it is harming our economy. And I would suggest to it's just contrary to the values of this country the way we treat people involved in this system.
And it's also just like counter to capitalism, right, they just want to punish people. They need people to do the jobs. You have this population that is not growing, and I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.
And yet instead of having a thoughtful approach to this, where we can determine the type of immigration that we need, how to have an orderly processing system, how to have people apply for legal immigration, instead we now have a severely broken system where we have people arriving and flooding different towns and areas that have no ability to handle this. So you know, this is across the board. We need
more people involved in how to process people through. We need to determine with asylum seekers how to best handle that because again, this is the reason we have these asylum laws is in large part because we failed people fleeing the Holocaust during World War Two and you know Jewish people fleeing the Nazi So this is a huge
issue that we've got to solve. It's a moral issue, it's an economic issue, and the way we are avoiding solving it now because it's a politically difficult issue for many members is really leading to worse and worse outcomes.
Thank you, Congresswoman.
Well, thank you.
And Applebaum is a writer for the Atlantic and author of Twilight of Democracy. Welcome back to Fast Politics, and Applebaum, thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to have you because this is a period in American life where everything is just so incredibly depressing and bleak, and you have a tiny sliver of hope, no pressure.
Yes, and I write a lot about the bleakness, so I know what you're talking about. But part of my life is spent in Poland. I've lived here on and off for thirty years, as well as living in America and being an American. My husband is Polish. He's a politician. He was in the former Polish government, and we have just had an election here which was an emphatic rejection of an autocratic, populist, nationalist, far right political party, and
it's really good news. Many of us were convinced that it wasn't possible that they had captured the state to such an extent. They controlled the judiciary, they controlled a lot of the media, they controlled the civil service, they controlled, you know, so many aspects of life that we weren't sure whether a free election was still possible and it turned out that it was that there was enough still left in the of democracy, in the system and of
the people counting. The votes were carefully monitored by a big civil society project and so on, and we had a really big turnout. It was seventy four percent in the whole nation, which is very high for Poland. That seems crazy high for anywhere. It's crazy high. And actually in the city of Warsaw it was eighty four percent. And I have a friend outed in one district, in one particular Warsaw neighborhood, and at his polling station the
turnout was ninety one percent. And that tells you how mad people were and how much they wanted the government out, and how worried they were that if they didn't get them out, that Poland would be an autocracy and there would be no more free elections. And that was really what was on the ballot here, you know, that was this was at the center of the conversation. There are other issues here too. There were a lot of women's
rights issues. That we have a horrifically strict abortion law here that's resulted in the deaths of several young women, and so that was of course part of the conversation too, but it was also can we take back the country, can we have you know, normal institutions again, you know, can we avoid this process of state capture? And it
turned out that we could. I mean, there's actually still a long way to go, and we haven't had the change of government yet, and the president who's from the or former far right ruling party, may try and block things, but this is a parliamentary system and hopefully sooner rather than later we will get a government. But we have a clear majority for the three democratic opposition parties, which all want to return Poland to democracy, and so that's good news.
Could you sort of talk us through what the landscape is there, and also can you talk about your husband's experience a little bit, just because it shows what a sort of authoritarian bent and how insidious the far right was.
So there are weird parallels between Poland and the US that for a long time what were just in my head And then when I wrote a book that was partly about this, and I realized that many of the patterns were the same. The Polish right was a kind of anti communist, you know, sort of vaguely Thatcherite, Reaganite right,
you know, once in a potime. Then it essentially split and part of it went further to the right, became very extremist and became very and began this process of attacking Polish democratic institut much as Trump does in the United States. So if you think about attacking the media, attacking the cords, attacking the political system itself, that's what
they wound up doing. We were at a funny position here because we knew some of them, because some of them had made this journey from the center to the far right, and that's something I've written about before. And when they took power, they immediately set about trying to undermine the state. So they immediately began to take over
all the institutions. One of the things they took over, for example, with the security Services, the Prosecution Office, and one of the things they do is financial investigations of people, which are essentially a former harassment. You know, they will, you know, if you're somebody who bothers them.
Like an audit, right, like an audit, or.
Worse, you know, a bit nastier than that. They actually have the ability here to come and arrest you and put you in jail before you're indicted Jesus. It's happened to some of the people who got in their way or they who they didn't like. It happened to a colleague of my husband's who was a lawyer who had uncovered a really big corruption scandal to do with the ruling party and its leader.
It's pretty scary.
And these are things that are supposed to be for you know, terrorism or organized crime or something like that. And they began to you know, they exist in the in the system as a kind of emergency thing to deal with, especially dangerous criminals. They began using it a little bit against their political enemies and so and that
became a thing that people were worried about. They used a form of spywaar called Pegasus, which I'm sorry to say is Israeli, which again is sold to be used against terrorism and sol and you could put it on people's phones and then you can hear everything they say, and they can use the phone as a recording device
and so on. And that happened here too. And you know, we had the phenomenon in Poland that is reminiscent of the olden days when Poland was a communist country that you know, you would leave your phone in a different room when you would have a conversation that started wow here. I wouldn't say that it was everywhere you know, or that it was I don't want to overplay it, but certainly if you were in politics, if you were someone who had a big public profile, you became very nervous
about what the state could do to you. We hope that this election brings that to an end. But it's also a kind of warning sign. I mean, when you have a party which is that unscrupulous taking power, and when they have access to all these tools that modern states have, you know, investigations and wire tapping, it's on. It's not like it's unknown in American history, but it's essentially what the Nickson administration was right. And when you have access to all these tools, you know, they have
a lot of ways to harass people. So pushing back against them, and as I said, this really big turnout was an important sign that people don't want that. I should say my husband was not a candidate in this election, but he did campaign on behalf of the opposition.
And he was in the parliament before.
Yeah, he was in the problem before. He was the Foreign Minister for seven years from twenty into twenty fourteen. So he has a you know, he's associated and the person who's just was the leader of the opposition, he's very closely associated with his Donald Tulsk.
Tusk was involved in the EU.
Yeah, so Donald, So the current leader was prime minister of Poland until twenty fourteen. He was appointed to a big European job. He was Chairman of the European Council, which means he was he presided over the body of prime ministers that meets periodict, which is a real leadership of the EU. And he did that for several years, and then he made a kind of momentous decision to come back to Polish politics, which was for him a real gamble because he could have gone off and you know,
worked as a consultant or worked for a bank. There were a lot of lucrative jobs he could have had. And he decided to come back partly because of this fear that the name of the ruling party was law and Justice, and the fear that this party would take over the state and make Poland essentially into an autocracy.
And so he believed very much in fighting back against that, and he came back and he reorganized the party and he you know, they ran a great election campaign, and I said, a lot of it was focused on getting younger people to vote, getting women to vote. A lot of it also they created these organizations to monitor elections. They got people to sign up and sort of work on behalf of democracy. I mean a little bit of that happened in the US in twenty twenty as well.
Yeah, it sounds a lot like the Biden coming back because he felt that it was you know, yeah, there's some parallels.
I mean to a slowly younger than Biden's I think he's six six, but the feeling that the election is existential, that it's about the nature of the country. I think a lot of people did agree with that, and the ruling party did absolutely everything they could to twist the election to do with funding and media, but also the way in which seats were proportioned, so you know, it's basically easier to get elected in the countryside, which is where their base is in rural Poland.
Like jerry mandering.
It's not exactly jerry mandering, but it's like j so you would find much of it familiar. I mean, it's like the politics of Tennessee. Frankly, how do you fix the system so that you don't lose? And they really did try to do that, but eventually they lost, and it was mostly thanks to this very large number of people who voted.
Clearly, there's a lesson year for American politics.
Yeah, I mean it's not a precise lesson. Some of it is stuff we sort of know. But giving people something to do instead of everybody feeling hopeless, you know, the forces of darkness are coming. I can't do anything. Who am I? What is my one vote? You know, giving people a task, saying you can organize, you can be an election observer, you can run, you know that,
And that I think was a really important element here. Also, the other thing that was really important was that the language of the opposition was a kind of civic patriotism, you know, against right wing nationalism. You know, we are Polish. All their big rallies, people waved the flag, everybody dressed in red and white, which are the Polish colors. Everyone talked about Polish history and Polish tradition and you know, and we're part of it.
You know.
They tried to take this idea that you know, only the real Poles are the you know, the right is somehow the real nation. They tried to end that mythology. You know, we are modern, forward looking Polish patriots who want our country to be great. But in a different way. There's some kind of lesson there. I think for Americans there are ideas particularly, you know, it works even better in America in a way. You know, there are ideas that we can unify around as Americans to fight against
this kind of American nationalist extremism. You know, I think that's the way to beat it. Give people something to join, give them something to do, and give them, you know, a big, important, unifying national message, and that's the best way to fight the far right.
The far right in America and awesome in Poland rode into favor because of a certain kind of frustration among the voting public and maybe also racism and xenophobia. Did this sort of solve that problem or was there just a sense like globalization is happening? I mean, did people get less racist in your mind? Was there a sea change there or did people just decide that the darkness was too much for them?
Here?
The issues were never exactly economic. A lot of it was cultural, you know, there was sort of a part of Poland that felt left behind, not so much economically, but culturally. You know, the world that we grew up in in which everybody went to church is changing, and our young people are moving to the cities, or they're
moving to Paris, or they're moving to London. And there was some sense of cultural loss that I think was was actually real, and the far right kind of echoed that and amplified it and then turned it into this often very racist language about immigration. You know, actually Poland has no big immigration problem. They're basically they know there are a lot of Ukrainian refugees here and Biel Russian refugees, and there's just this you know, smattering of people from
outside Europe. And ironically, and that's a whole nother story. This government, the far right government, turns out to have let in quite a lot of them because they were selling visas.
Oh wow.
Well, another thing that happens when you have a government that pushes back on the rule of law, undermines the judiciary, and takes over the police is that you get corruption.
Yeah, that'll do it'll this.
And so there's there's always this link between autocratic populism and corruption, and that's been you know, and we had that here as well. And here, I think it was the combination of, first of all, seeing that some of the hysteria around immigration wasn't real. It's not happening, it's not it's not a real thing. I think some of it was, you know, as I said, this creeping sense of them taking over everything. Some of it was the corruption scandals. Some of it was I think, you know,
they almost overdid their propaganda. You know, their language about that. You know, they basically described task because you know, he's just a German agent and you know my husband is a Russian agent, and everybody's foreign. That of course, is so in contrast with reality. Whereas you know, doesn't speak German, he speaks Polish. You know, he was prime minister here. Their extremist propaganda hit some reality measure at some point.
I think it was part of that too. You know, there was a combination of you know, they went too far, they did too much, They became to corrupt, They weren't good managers. They screwed up a lot of you know, projects and investments. Things aren't working very well here. That healthcare system is beginning to fall apart. You know, the whole series of oh education, you know, they wanted patriotic education. You can imagine what that was.
I cannot and don't want to You don't.
Even want to know. And people his kids were in school who came home complaining about stupid things they've been taught. I mean, it's a cumulative effect of a series of not very well fought out plans and projects that they did that failed. That I think also helpful. You know, it's important or they still have a big base of support. I mean, third of the country still voted for them, so crazy, and they will still be there and they're still they're still running all the institutions and getting rid
of them is going to take a long time. You know, it's going to be a big project. I mean it's almost comparable. I mean, I don't want to overdo it is almost comparable to when communism fell in Poland in nineteen eighty nine. You know, then there was a big project of reform. You know, how do you unpick that regime? And this isn't quite at that scale, but I mean there's you know, we have to somehow undo the illegal judges they appointed. You know, they tried to politicize the
court system. You know, have to undo all kinds of things. It will take a long time. I mean, By the way, one of the interesting parallels for Americans is one of the things Trump has said he wants to do, and I think some of the people around him even have pretty concrete plans about it, is fire all the civil service and replace them with loyalists.
Yeah. The Heritage Foundation put out a thing about that, the Heritage Foundation, which I used to think of as evil, but in a different, more traditional way, right traditionally.
Well, that happened here, and let me tell you it was a real disaster. Think about it. You know, do you want people measuring the pollution in your water who are actual experts in science or do you want them to be someone's cousin don junior or got the job because you know he's related to somebody. And we had like the wholesale replacement of the civil service, right down to weird things like the Forestry Service, which is a
what does that have to do with politics? And various state institutions were taken over by the party by this it's called the law and justice parties, I said, and destroyed. Poland is a smaller place and there's maybe less damage you can do. Imagine that happening in the United States.
What kinds of catastrophes there could be. I mean, you know, the people who are in charge of burying nuclear waste, or the people who run I don't know, funding for you know, underfunded schools, or there are all kinds of programs that are run by the federal grav that if you destroyed them by destroying the civil service, you could do a lot of damage. Michael Lewis wrote a good book about that. Actually at the time of the first
Trump administration, it was called the Fifth Risk. But we had that in Poland and there was a you know, and there was this series of you know, calamities, you know, screw ups in one institution, in one area of life after the next, and it was it was going to get worse.
Yeah, it's just incredible stuff. And Applebaum, I really appreciate you joining us. So interesting and so important and also you know, hopefully a model for what happens here let us pry, yeah, or what continues to happen here.
Yes, thank you, No moment, Jesse Cannon.
My John Fast I think you want to talk about the man that we're all laughing at today.
Jim Jordan, listen. It turns out that math is not just a woke construct. You need votes to win as speaker. Jim Jordan is not convinced, and so he will again and again do votes until everybody goes home. When you listen to this tomorrow, very very very very likely Jim Jordan will not be the Speaker of the House. 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.