Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Donald.
Trump told billionaires he'll keep their textes low at his latest fundraising gala. We have such a great show today, Run for Something, as Amanda Littman stops by to talk to us about the local races to watch the selection year that we'll talk to the director of Georgetown University Center on Faith Injustice, Jim Wells about his new book, The False White Gospel, Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith,
and Refounding Democracy. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Hello, Rick Willson, Molly Jong Fast, A happy day to you.
It's a funny voice today here Fast Politics. Funny voices.
They're funny, Molly Jung Fast, not funny, very very very not funny. And in the new Europe Trump administration, I'm telling you.
Oh no, oh god, you're doing Alan Aldwin doing Donald Trump. We're going to end up all of us.
I'm so sorry again, We're all going to get about.
I was on this panel last week where the host asked me about Trump's plan to jail his political enemies.
Yay, that's us.
And I was like talking about how cash Batel had actually said he would also so like this was about members of the January sixth committee, But of course cash Batel had also was planning to reach out and grow that thesis to include the mainstream media. I mean, how are we living through this time? This is crazy?
Let me tell you how we're living through it badly. We're not doing well. We're not really prospering in this particular regard. And I'll tell you I have a pretty strong sense that no matter what you've read so far this week, when you finally get around to reading Isaac Orangsdorf's new book, Finish what we started, you probably won't sleep for a week.
Wait, so tell may.
I read it in one sitting last night.
Wait? Who is this again?
He's a Washington Post reporter and he's written a story, a history of the post January sixth hyper radicalization of the Republican Party and just how intentional they are about what they're going to do to this country if Donald Trump takes office again. Isaac Orangsdorf, I really recommend it. These people are as they always do, telling you exactly
what they're going to do. They're telling you exactly what they're going to do, and what they're going to do is all of the horror shows that you hear Bannon and Patel and Miller and others haha joking about with reporters like I'm gonna put you in jail, you son of a bitch.
Ha ha.
They mean it. They mean it. And here's the thing. A lot of these reporters in the mainstream media who go back to Steve Bannon over and over again because he gives good quote, are like, well, no, that's just there. They're just cosplay. They're just play acting. What the heck, it's all just silly fun. No, y'all, it's not. It's not They're not joking. They're not playing around with this. This is now what they believe is the best way, the best outcome for their version of America. And I
am sorry. We are not taking it as a country seriously enough. We are not taking this seriously enough. We are not treating this with the level of intensity and crisis that it demands. And honestly, I'm profoundly concerned about it.
Yeah, no, no, no, I mean I agree. And look, I mean the reality is they keep telling us. You remember that Fox interview with Sean Hannity where Sean Hannity is like, just make everyone feel better. You're not going to be dictator on day one.
Right, and Trump looks at him like, who the fuck are you talking to, bro?
Yeah, And by the way, the fake reason is he said, I'm gonna drill, baby, drill. We are the largest exporter of natural gas.
We're the largest producer of all forms of hydrocarbon based and fossil fuel based energy in the world, not only that, but in the history of the world.
So that is why it's so fucking stupid that that is his life.
You know.
Yeah, I'm gonna drill everywhere. And coal, no, you're not.
So there's a reason coal is out it. Coal miners don't have jobs anymore. It's because it's a terrible business. It's because natural gas is a zillion times cheaper and cleaner, relatively speaking. And all of these things that Trump talks to his audience about are echoes of a dead religion in a distant past. This is not a country anymore. And you can say this for better or for worse.
Okay, Yeah, because coal was so good for everyone. Just coal was just a big winner.
You're gonna have a Houli lyrics.
Great, Yeah, I mean, like, what are we even doing here?
It is really a silly on the one hand, but terrifying on the other spell that he casts on these people. And what I worry about is this temptation for this nostalgia that he talks about with his people, that it takes them back into this world that doesn't exist anymore. You know, mommy in the kitchen and no black people nearby, and dad working down with the auto factory. That's over. It's all gone. Whether you love it or hate it, it's all gone. But he has this ability to sell
his people on it. And look, the President is as big a guy about industrial American industrial might and industrial policy as you could hope for. And he understands it a lot better than Trump does. But he's realistic about it, which is which is difficult because realism doesn't sell in this country. Fantasy sells in this country, and so Trump
sells in this fantasy. And it's like, oh, the reason, by the way, you don't have that great union job, but the auto plan anymore is the black folk or the brown folk or whoever scary person in blah blah blah.
But what's interesting, I mean, the reason we got here. I always talked to Eddie gold about this.
I love Eddie Glod.
Yeah, he's amazing, And whenever I run into him, I'm We're always talking about this because this is really the theory of the case, right, is that this is this post reconstruction, last gasp of American anti democracy, right racism. This is the white races saying, you know, no, we can't have a multi racial democracy. We have to continue in this sort of you know, really untenable, not democratic system. And and you know it's they can't get their head
around the idea that in fact it's over. That world is gone, thank god. I mean it was not a great world.
This country is poised to enter a new era of prosperity, but it's not the one that involved turning wrenches on an assembly line. And it's not the one that a lot of people would love to go back to. In part would love to go back to because some of it now codes in their minds as the pre civil rights era, the pre civil rights posture.
But some of it is just nostalgia. Is an illness. I mean, nostalgia does not real ever.
No, nostalgia is a lovely and wonderful sort of ability in people's minds to return to something they never had to get back onto Trump for a second. And the reason it works that I still think is a danger in this campaign going forward is that a lot of the people that are listening to it are not sophisticated people. They are not people who understand that they're being played. And I worry about those folks turning up again. I worry about the fact that people will believe things that
are objectively not true. And I worry also that they're being pregamed right now, very heavily. They're being told, oh, well, they're going to steal the election from Trump again. They're going to take it the deep state, liberals, Jews, immigrants, gays, fill in the blank. They're telling the people right now that the election is about to be stolen from Trump.
They are about to take it from him. They are about to go and make your kids become you know, gay, Sharia married, or whatever weird fantasy conglomeration in their head cells for the fear mangers. I know, I sound a little more serious than usual today. But I have been really thinking about like the power of the delusions that he's able to induce and his people.
But now we need to talk about something really important. No labels has no candidates.
No candidate, no campaign, ain't got nothing. It's over. It's done. Stick a fork in it, roll it around on the grill for a while, wait until it reaches the correct internal temperature. And that is that this is a moment where nothing they said was going to happen happened. They never had a path to two hundred and seventy electric College votes. They never got on the number of states they claimed they would get on.
But they did get on a lot of ballot.
They got on nineteen ballots, of which eleven are what we call the easy states, the easy ballot states.
Okay, right, But they got on swingy states too, where they really fucked up Biden.
They got in a few swing states, and they really spent their money in a few of the swing states, like Arizona, where they really wanted to be on the ballot, because that's going to be a tight state. That's going to be one of the tightest states in the race. It's going to be so close there that they could have split off enough votes from Biden to give Trump the win, which is what they wanted to do.
Is RFK spoiler on that?
Listen, here's the thing about RFK. RFK is in a posture right now where yes, he takes some votes from Biden, but there's a rising sense of panic on the right. Then he's also messaging about the January sixth protesters being activists, talking about all this anti vax stuff and crypto stuff, and you know, and basically doing the rounds of the
kind of messaging that appeals to Trump voters. And there's a reason, you know that the Trump people are freaked out about r He was on you know, All In, and he was on all these other podcasts and all these other shows on Fox and everywhere else when he was in a position where he was running as a Democratic primary opponent to Joe Biden. What happened, though, was when he became a threat to Trump by taking up
Trump's messaging, That's when it all split. That's when they stopped doing this, That's when they stopped, you know, covering him. So what you're going to see here is he's going to end up drawing some out of Trump some out of Biden. I don't know what the final configuration of that is, but I do know that with No Labels off the radar screen, I have now plenty of extra time to torture the living hell out of him. I don't think I won't.
Will you tell us about no Label's last hell? Mary pass?
Oh my god? Look, they may have gone behind a Greyhound bus station and tried to find some guy with the shape drinking Sterno out of a sock. After this, with their last big play was to go to Asa Hutchison and say you're our last hope. And Asa just said, no, I'm all passed. That'll be fine, thanks for playing. They went to from what we know because for whatever reason, we have the uncanny, weird ability to get people inside
organizations to talk to us. And so we had four separate people inside the no Labels world at every different level like okay, here, here's what's going on. This sense among all of these people, these grassrootsy people that thought no Labels was this where we're just do gooders. We're moderate centrists who just want everybody to work together and sing Kumbaya in the pale moonlight as we dance naked before the idol of an ancient Assyrian god. Sorry about that.
The last parts of my parties, you've.
Really just moved on to that. I feel like you're doing great. Just keep going, doing great, Wilson, doing great. It's doing you going.
Those volunteers and those grassroots types, the people that became the delegates to the No Labels convention, they are so disheartened, they're so sad. They realized, you know, this is like the guy who's wired his last ten thousand dollars to the Nigerian prints hoping for the wire transfer to come in. These poor people they just got their shit handed to them and they don't understand why. They don't get it,
and it's really sad. It's really sad in a lot of ways because look, there are people in the country who would love for this world to be something different than it is. But it's not right.
No, it's a good point. And now what will Nancy Jacobson and Mark Penn do.
Well, Look, they're living in Miami most of the time now, Yami, and they've had their house in DC it was on the market. I think they're going to become naturally Florida residents. Now Mark is going to go to Trump. Bet me a dollar because you're going to see Mark Penn on Fox any day now saying, well, there's no way that
Joe Biden can win working class voters in Pennsylvania. There's no way Joe Biden because if you go back for the last couple of years and watch any clip of Mark Penn on Fox, he's like, yes, mister Trump, can I wash your car a second?
Toe? H?
Would you like a foot massage? Mister Trump? It is ridiculous how in the sack he is for Donald Trump? And it is ridiculous how deeply delusional people are.
You know who else I think is very trumpy?
Blank fronts.
I was going to say that weird guy with the pollster who pretends not to be trumpy but used to live with Kevin McCarthy still does. Yeah, what's that guy's name?
Frank Luntz.
Frank Lunz, They're basically the same.
Well, listen, Frank will end up next with RFK Junior.
Oh really you think so?
He will? I listen. I've known Frank. I've known Frank since the nineties. He will go wherever he can get, Like I'm gonna be like I caught a classic guy. I'm gonna be the one who tells you like it is, and it always is. It's always the worst person you can imagine, from Ross Parrot to RFK. It's a lovely arn't.
And here we are, Rick Wilson. Let's talk about Florida. Big news out of Florida this week, really interesting ballad initiative and also a very repressive abortion change.
So the Supreme Court upheld Rondasantis' six week abortion band, which moved it from the unreasonable fifteen weeks to the poison of six weeks. And by poison, folks, I mean Ronda Santis's own polsters, whom I know were in a room with him when he was going to sign the six week bill begging him, big strong polsters with tears in their eyes, begging him to not sign this effing bill, begging him okay, because they knew that if he got to the General by some weird miracle, this thing was
a kill shot against him. This thing was a radioactive waste pile on top of a burning tire mountain. It was every terrible potential political outcome. What they did was to go into the Supreme Court. They approved that it also triggered a horrible political pushback, and now we're going to have a ballot initiative to unwind the six week band.
Okay, so here's my question for you. We all know about the ballot initiative and two weeks. Really sorry, I mean we know that it is. It changes the calculus, It does a lot of things, and also ballot initiatives tend to overperform the partisan lean. But what I want to ask you about this is you grew up in Florida. So Florida has historically always been a state where abortion has sort of been okay, and it's been sort of the one southern state that's allowed abortion. That's a real
sea change for the state. You live in.
Florida always had a kind of of vaguely libertarian stance on abortion. It was always sort of like, yeah, you know what, we're not going to get too deep into the weeds on this. There were a few pieces that passed, you know, over the years, on marginal things. You know, some things about like regulating where doctors and had to be certified, but it was all small ball. Okay, Desantus comes along. They did the fifteen weeks. They moved the
fifteen weeks down to six. And what's happening right now in Florida is that vaguely libertarian take on it has now become one of the most restrictive in the country. And this is different than Mississippi or Alabama. First off, it's the third largest state in the country. This isn't going to be four or five or ten women a month that have an ectopic pregnancy that kills them or a medical emergency because they can't get care. It's going to be thousands. It's going to be thousands of women
the month. You are going to see a public health consequence to this in Florida that you would not see anywhere else. And DeSantis has decided he is going to be waging a big public war over this, which actually is kind of good for the initiative. It's kind of good for it because Desas is like the polar opposite of charisma.
Also, how is he polling well?
He is now upside down in his fave n faves, where he was about sixty forty last year, he's now about forty five fifty five with fifty five unfave. That's
headed south quickly, by the way. But look, I think that you are going to see that this is replicating a larger social moment in America on the question of abortion, on the question of how much do you want to have the white bro Republican dudes in Tallahassee or wherever you live, deciding on what birth control you can use or if you can have birth control at all, you know, whether you can have IVF or not.
We've gone too far, Rick Wilson yet again, once again, Too damn far.
That's the name of my a hit new show, Too Far with Rick Wilson.
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Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something.
Welcome back, too Fast Politics, one of my favorite on the ground activists bringing democracy, really bringing democracy back to some red states and doing like really cool stuff. That really is where democracy starts.
Amanda Lipman, thanks for having me, Molly So Amanda.
You you have an organization called Run for Something and many listeners on this podcast have heard about Run for Something, but I'm wondering if you could just give us like a quick TLDR on.
It, I would be delighted. So Run for Something recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for local office all across the country. We launched back in twenty seventeen and since then have identified more than one hundred and fifty thousand young people who raise their hands to say yeah, think about running for something like school board or city
council or state legislature. And we've helped a lot more than a thousand of them across nearly every state, mostly women, mostly people of color, who are remarkable and are doing real, meaningful stuff to make things better for people.
We just had a bunch of primaries. Talk to me about where you are right now?
Yes, so just earlier this week it was election day and a bunch of places. But for Run for Something, we had candidates in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Alaska and we're still waiting for that Alaska race. To get college. Other things are looking good for Carl Jacobs, our school board candidate in Anchorage. But overall, we had fourteen folks win their elections, which is a fifty eight percent win rate.
For the day.
And these winners are amazing. So do you want to hear about a couple of them?
Yes, talk about the candidates, but then also talk about your larger theory of the case and why a school board and Anchorage leads to a congressional seat, leads to a Senate seat, leads to flipping a state, or leads to change at a at a grassroots level.
Well, our school board candidate in Angridge, Carl Jacobs, is actually running against a mom's for Liberty candidate. His race really matters for the community of Anchorage. And we've seen
this over and over again. You know, in Wisconsin this week Kelly Leebold, who's a brain cancer survivor and a community leader and a young woman who really saw the need for youth representation on the Lacrosse County Board one against a guy who was the former and I believe still a party officer, the former Republican County Party chair who was a fake Trump elector one of the people who like try to submit his pledge to the Electoral College fraudulently. He was literally forced by a lawsuit to
acknowledge that Biden won the election. She beat him in a really critical role for help that helps oversee the county and in some ways plays the role in administering the election. Also in Wisconsin, Stephanie nez want a seat on the Kenosha County Board. She's a college professor of chemistry. I believe she's been a fierce advocate for inclusion in
the classroom. This is particularly important in Kenosha, where the county board was trying to make public libraries literally ban people under the age of eighteen from adult collections, which includes things like classics and research books and a whole ton of things that especially high school students should absolutely have access to.
It really matters research, folks. I mean, I shouldn't laugh because the stakes are actually real fucking high, but it is insane how much these people are just like not very smart.
No, they're really not. And I think it's compelling. You know, when we run, we can beat them. We just need to have kids on the ballot who can really make the case. You know. We had Sabrina Landry want to See on the Kenosha School Board. She was the one of the top three finishers, which ensured that not a single mom's for Liberty. Candidate won a seat in that office, which is awesome.
Which means that if you have a kid in public school in Kenosha, they are not going to be subjected to don't say gay laws. They'll be able to like just read normal books.
That's all we're asking for, just like keep it boring, keep it boring. Down in Arizona, we work with Casey Clothes, who's been a long time run for something. Candidate is our third time running and she want to see on the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, which is a very long name for what is one of the most powerful offices controlling one of the largest public
utilities in the country. So this is a big win for climate change because when you're controlling look utility company. One of the reasons that she ran is because she's a climate scientist and activist. She knows stuff here and one of the things they want to do is make the public utility carbon free or at least carbon neutral. That's really, really, really important. It's been so cool to see these folks run and win and then know that they're going to make a real difference for people.
One of the many reasons why I'm so obsessed with you. I'm so obsessed with run for something. Is because one of the things I've always felt like Democrats lack the ability to do is the like tiny nitty grit and it's not that tiny, right, Like these are actually big consequential positions, But it's a question of like finding the right person who wants the job and is willing to run for it and then can also do the job and is local and not you know, a carpetbager coming
in like all the Republican Senate candidates. I would love you to talk about your theory, the case about why having normal people on a school board helps the up ballot races.
Yes, we've done a bunch of research on this. No. Back in twenty twenty, we looked at state legislative racism in particular, because they're the easiest to measure, sort of apples to apples. We found that simply having a candidate on the ballot can increase turnout for the entire ticket, especially the top of the ticket, by anywhere from zero
point three to two point three percent. That's a meaningful margin of victory for Joe Biden or in twenty twenty for the Georgia set race in particular, we found it was instrumental, and we actually did a little bit more research this year, especially knowing some of the challenges that President Biden has with younger voters, especially younger voters of color, and we asked them, you know, eighteen to twenty nine year olds in battleground states, if there was a young
progressive running for state or local office in your community, how would that change your likelihood to vote? Sixty one percent of young Democrats told us that having a young progressive on the ballot would make them more likely to vote this fall.
Right, those are crazy high numbers, But I also think it's a question of like, do you have agency right? One of the reasons that we have trouble getting young people to turn out is because they don't feel they have agency right.
Totally right, and like they're looking at a federal government in Washington that is not or seems like it's not doing shit to make their lives better. And one of the things I think is the most obvious, the issue where it's often the most clear is housing, where it is such a revitalized issue and the experience of an eighteen to twenty nine year old or a thirty to forty year old in the housing market right now is wildly different from that of a fifty or sixty year old.
It's almost incomprehensible.
To you know.
I think about like my grandma to understand what it was like when I was trying to find a you know, a room in a house on Craigslist. But we've seen run for something along in California and Ohio and New York and Massachusetts and Arizona and Rhode Island and Michigan, you know, all across the country, just in the last couple of weeks, take really concrete steps to fight for affordable housing, to make it easier for renters, to increase ten of protections, to make it harder to get evicted,
to rezone communities. All of this makes people who like engage in these races feel the impact of them. It's like, you get to move into the apartment that the elected official you helped elect and made possible. You get to ride on the bike lane, you get to go to the restaurant, you get to send your kids to the school.
It's so specific and personal, and it like makes government feel like a net good, which I think is really, really important for especially for young voters who feel creative, disillusioned by the whole things.
Like I think so much about in Florida, where you have a convergence of like ballad initiatives, you have young people, you have a state party that is not killing it. You know, the Democratic State Party in Florida has not been great for a long time, but you have Nikki Friedez now is now running it, so that's new. And then you have some really great young progressives coming out of that state, like Maxwell Frost who's a member of Congress,
and Anna Escimani, right, who's a state rep. So talk to me about that Florida.
Yeah, I think Florida is a really good example of how young people are leading the charge there. An Escamani's a run for something alone. In Indo Ventries, Driscol who's the minority leader in the state House, has a run for something alone. Even we have an alum who's running for Congress down in Miami. She was previously on the
Miami Dade school Board. She was one of the fiercest advocates against some of the anti LGBTQ stuff that the DeSantis Master and we're trying to pass there and in some cases, did the leaders that you want I actually do. I say, for Florida, it is not too late to get on the ballot in Florida into a twenty four. The filing of the line is coming up, but it's
not too late. So if you want to be on the ballot, especially in a moment where abortion is quite literally there and until his amendment passes, there is a six week band that goes into effect next month, which I think is devastating for people seeking care in the state. Legal weed will be on the ballot. Good thing. And we know the same theory behind the case of like why do these ballot initiatives seem to drive turnout time to bring people out? Same is true with local candidates.
They can connect with voters on a different issue in a different way that maybe the top of the ticket just can't or doesn't be local folks, and these local issues really can And in Florida, there's an incredible opportunity this year to really further the case.
Yeah, I'm really so impressed with the way that these down ballot races do actually change things in states. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit one of the things that Moms for Liberty did was that it really showed us how important school boards were. Right, school boards had never been like a topic of like mainstream media focus, and all of a sudden, school boards are battlegrounds. And in Florida they really did. They were able to
take over some of these schools. And you do find, you know, librarians quitting and teachers with bookshelves with red tape on them you know you can't, you know, and books removed. So I'm wondering, what are there of these sort of smaller down ballot races do you think are important and where you'd like to see more people running or you'd like to see more attention.
I think it's you know, worth naming. There's no office that's unimportant, but there's some that I think are really underrated.
As we're sleeper offices, We'll say.
You know, in a lot of places you can get a library board. A lot of New York City I've looked into it. I was really love what in other places that you can run for a library board. And that's a position that often oversees the library budget and the community services that they offer, and libraries are often the primary only place people really the government. They are like a community hub and often the keeper of what it means to live in that place. It's really beautiful
and it's really important. And boy do Republicans love taking over libraries and underfunding them, destroying them and the like. So librares around foreigner is another one that's sort of under discussed.
Did you just say coroner? Sure did, I'm glad we've gotten to the coroner part of the interview.
Now. This is something really came up during COVID, especially when people who were anti vaccine anti trying to be like deceptive about the numbers. You would see corner candidates and corner like elected to try and undercount some of the numbers there. We also have seen this in particular with things like homicide stats around trans people, which are unfortunately like disproportionately present in those kinds of numbers, trying
to misgender people after death. All of this is abot a place where progressive values can really come to light if we allot people who really care. The third thing I think is really important that we don't talk about enough, especially as it relates to democracy, is these municipal offices. You know, elections are actually shared on the local level. This is a program run for something's been running for a couple of years now. We call it our clerk work
Clerk with an E, work with an media. If you're feeling sassy, the idea of being met local election administrators, people like county clerks, town trustees. In some places, it's even things like tax assessor or unfortunately sheriff as a holdover from when property taxes helped shape whether or not you could or could not vote, have a role to
play in administering the election. And we have seen the Republican Party and sort of the mag extremists over the last couple of years try and weasel their way into these positions to undermine democracy. No, we've helped been able to stop them in a number of places, but I think especially in twenty twenty four, you know it's going to be really really important to have pro democracy folks in these positions. Even if they win this November, some
of them are going to take office like December. First presidential and other races are probably not going to be done by them. So you don't want to leave any opening for a malicious actor or an incompetent one, or a combination of the two to jump in and try and undermine the life.
It's so scary. Let's go further on that and talk a little bit about like, aren't there some elected positions that are involved with elections totally?
You know, elections are administered in some places on the town level and some places over the county level. In other places it's by party, So it's a little bit messy depending on where you are. But we've been really intentional about recruiting pro democracy candidates for these offices, especially in places where we know the election is likely to be really close. And so for exactly we did a ton of this work in Pennsylvania, where the county commissions
actually oversee the elections budgets. One of my favorites isn't in Dauphin County, which is like around Harrisburg. We worked with a guy named Justin Douglas who's this incredible leader. He was a pastor, He worked with the homeless community there. He actually got fired from his congregation for being too welcoming to LGBTQ worshippers people who wanted to come be
a part of there. We sent out a whole bunch of text mesterses, and calls to folks in the area being like, Hey, do you want to run for office. Here's a county commission race. It's really important for democracy. And he was like, Eh, I don't know. Let we have a conversation. Maybe I know someone, And we talked to him into running and got on the ballot. He was outspent something like ten to one. He was knocking doors, talking to voters, reminding them about the stakes of this race.
Also talking really focused about the crisis and the jail system in the county which had let prisoners die out of neglect. In a way it was really heartbreaking. He was able to win his race, but I think ultimately the margin was about one hundred and forty one hundred and fifty votes. He helped flip the county Commission for
the first time in over one hundred years. And one of the people he'd beat, or the person he beat, had been a really active fighter against things like making it easier for people to drop off their ballots, hearing ballots after election day, even certifying the election. So his presence on the Dauphin County Commission in Pennsylvania and election we won in twenty twenty three is going to make it easier for us to win the big elections in twenty twenty four.
I mean, local is really how you a get people into politics and be how you get voters engaged, and also how you get young people engaged.
Right absolutely. I mean we've heard this anecdotally from people doing youth organizing four years. You know, they think about local politics as the gateway. Maybe if someone doesn't give a shit about who's their member of Congress or the president presidential candidates, they're never going to meet them, They're never going to hear from them. The issues they talk
about feel really abstract. But their city council candidate or their school board or candidate is someone they know, someone they meet, someone maybe they play basketball with at the gym where they see a school drop offline, or they went to college with, or work with at the local retail place, at the restaurant. It's someone they know. I
think that is a really powerful driver. In fact, political science research has shown the strongest indicator that someone's going to show up to the polls is a personal relationship
between candidate and voter. Everything else about it is meant to replicate that, try to recreate that intimacy but a personal relationship between candidate and voter is so powerful, and that's what local candidates can do in a way that's really genuine and authentic that the top of the ticket just can't, at least not the same way.
When you say this, it does sound like the Biden campaign is opening hundreds of field offices in these swingy districts. Wouldn't that be a way for the top of the ticket to try to connect locally.
Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it, And a lot of our local candidates work out of those field offices, and many places they'll be coordinated campaign offices. And our local candidates have already been knocking doors in many places for the last six months to a year to longer. I get report outs from our states team and our campaigns team every week, and they'll talk about, you know, Katerina has been out knocking. She's not ten
thousand doors. She's going through her universe three or four times. You know, Jose has been knocking doors since last summer. These are people who have really built relationships, So I think it all helps. No election exists in a vacuum. The doors that our school board candidates knock and our state legislative candidate's knock also help Biden and the ads that the Biden theme runs. The organizing they're doing also
helps these local races. The I think sort of thing that sometimes people forget but is the places that the Biden campaign is going to focus, which as they should strategically based on where they need to win, and the places where some of the most dangerous Republican local candidates are running are not always the same.
Right right, No, No, really important important point.
On like a very practical level. You know, it's going to be incumbent on the Biden campaign to for example, really engage voters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in some really targeted suburbs, and some of the worst Republicans in Pennsylvania are running in places that are just not going to make sense for the Biden campaign to focus as much any resources or energy. The same is true in
so many states across the country. And you know, especially when you think about some of the other races on the ballot like Shared Brown and Ohio and John Tester in Montana, it's going to be really really helpful that they have city council and school board candidates in those states knocking doors because it's just not where the national campaign is likely to be at all or as much as they need to be to help the rest of
those candidates. So all that's to say, you know, you invest in these small races, you can win the big ones and also make a difference in people's lives. It's such a win win win in terms of your investment.
Amanda, Thank you run for something. I hopefully will have you back a lot before the selection anytime.
Jim Wallace is.
The director of Georgetown University Center on Faith Injustice and the author of The False White Gospel, Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Jim Wallace, it's a blessing to be here for me.
Thank you.
Explain to us a little bit about this book you wrote, and I would love it if you could even it's called False White Gospel, but even before that, if you could just explain to us a little bit about your personal trajectory.
Well, I am at Georgetown now. I was a founder of Sojournals and for fifty years now I'm named after my mentor. I'm the our Bishop Desmond Tutu, Chair of Faith and justice a Jewish set, which is a wonderful name for my friend and mentor of Desmond Tutu. And we do faith and justice. That's what we talk about. And so this book is saying we have a test before us. It's a clear test, certainly a test of democracy,
as Molly you say so well and so often. It's also a test of faith, a test of our faith communities and whether they will stand up and speak the truth here. And it's talking about this white Christian nationalism, which the name spells the problem. First, the most welcoming inclusive gospel message in history is made white. But secondly
it's Christian. But if they don't mean love and sacrifice and service, I mean domination, control for power, and finally nationalism, I mean Jesus gave a great commission to his disciples go into all the world, making disciples of every nation, teaching them to go or whatever I have commanded you. So the book is about six iconic biblical texts, ancient texts. I rephrase and reframe them that can apply to people,
whether Christian or religious or not. I like Jesus saying you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. In John's Gospel. That means the opposite of truth isn't just less lying, it's captivity. And so truth and freedom are indivisible. So people are captive. So many people are captive to this increasingly religious talking, this false messiah. Now
it's quite incredible of Donald Trump. And so I'm trying to let Jesus do the talking here and let's get back to these things that we say we believe and not just say what's wrong, but say here's a way forward. A lot of people are hungry for a better, different conversation and what I call the faith factor. In twenty twenty.
Four, I mean, I really do think a lot about how former Vice President pens really did give evangelicals a permission structure to support Trump. Wasn't he sort of like a critical part of this whole organization.
Yeah, A naming hands gave assurance to a lot of evangelicals that this was it was okay, and then Pence broke with them at that constitutional moment and now is in supporting them or endorsing him. So it's very interesting how this choice we're making now is a faith choice and not just This isn't just politics, isn't democratic republican left or right. It's really about what kind of country, what kind of people, what kind of nation do we
want to be. So one of the texts that I have in this book that I love is imagine, while you and I are surrounded by political noise, the fact it's our vocation to listen to the noise and offer perspective.
Right, you and I?
Right, yes, it is. It happens to be in fact.
So the first chapter, first book of the Bible, Genesis one twenty six says, in the middle of illinoise, I like to think. Then God said, like me, quiet noise. And then I said, let us create human kind, all of human kind after our own image and likeness. So right there is the foundation for all of our earthly talk of human rights and voting rights is a theological foundation that divinely created equality between all of us. So in the beginning, you might say God created all of us,
all God's children, with God's image and dignity. And then beginning of the United States. However, it was a doctrine of discovery that led to the obliterating and the stealing of lands from indigenous people, then the kidnapping of Africans for slavery, So we were a slave holding republic. Now I didn't say democracy, and that is there, Molly. I think all that's coming to a crescendo now, a culmination what I call America's original sin is coming on the nation.
They're fighting this. This is their their last fight, and they'll use any means necessary, any means. The trajectory of politics of fear and hate in violence, that's their trajectory. So we have to counter that, not just with partisan politics or our own our own hawking points. This is going to be confronted at a deep level with this is let's call it idolatry. That's a word that some
of your listening quite know what it means. It means false worship, means working the nation and not worshiping God. He has a Bible he's selling for sixty bucks to pay his legal fees for his trials about a porn star, and on the front of the Bible says you bless Usa Bible in the front of the Bible. So and it's also heresy. Now that's a big word people will get scared by. Heresy is anything that draws us away from Christ. For Christians, draws us away well, this is
his vision. His values are literally anti christ and that must be said. There are black evangelicals who are pretty different. For white evangelicals. The word white evangelical, the real word they're the big word is not evangelical. It's white. White dominates the phrase white Christian. So that's what we have to change and be transformed by, because people are captive.
Yeah, what I'm struck by is this sort of like white evangelicals. Even though Mike Pence did break with Trump eventually and is saying he won't support Trump or not endorsed, which strikes me as a big deal, evangelicals are not breaking with Trump.
But again, let's let's clarify white evangelical right exactly. I was asking, why can Christians talk about race? I said, well, they they do. Black Christians do all the time. White Christians don't want to talk about that's so we've got to Really I'm from that evangelic tradition. I was raised in that, and I defined evangelical by Jesus opening Sermon
at Nazareth, which I call is Nazareth Manifesto. He quoted Isaiah and he said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has annoyed me to bring good news and the word for good news. There is evangel in the Greek good news to the poor. So any gospel that isn't good news to the poor is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's just period. That's a fact. So in the book I talked about how when Jesus says I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked,
I was a stranger. The word means immigrant there in scriptures. I was sick, I was in prison. And what you do to the least of these, he says, you've done to me. He's saying it was me that Matthew twenty five Gospel test with was my conversion text out of the student movement back in the day that brought me to faith. And that is the economics of Jesus, which turns our politics literally upside down. So I want to talk about what the real Jesus is saying and doing.
Jesus suffered identity theft on January sixth, with islands storming. Attackers lifted his flag and she like alongside a Confederate flag, and when they got to taking over the Senate, they shouted Jesus name in prayer. That's something that I, as a Christian, am not going to just accept that that's going to be directly fundamentally challenged. And so this book is an interrogation Molly of fate at a crisis time.
It's interrogation of faith. So what I'm finding is there real hunger out there, you know, a hunger out there for a different kind of faith factor, a different kind of faith narrative in the middle of this critical twenty twenty four election season.
So one of the things I've heard do you say when you're interviewed, is that this is actually a book for pastors. Will you talk to me a little bit about what that means.
It's for pastors and all their congregants, and it's also for at George and I Love my classes and their students who usually they're in the none of the above category. They signal out for religious hiliation, they don't know about their faith, they're struggling. It's for all the people outside the church who are struggling with these things too. But
pastors are facing literally molly. Pastors who want to say what they know is true are facing death threats, even from people in their own congregations.
This is amazing and.
Outdiede and others have totally politicized their gospel to be a Trump religion. So there's a battle going on. And the book hopefully provides for pastors or other congregational leaders, or just ordinary people in their small groups or Bible studies or community groups. Here are some texts, here is some language. Here is some way to apply ancient biblical texts,
whether we're believers or not through this moment. And I want to take them on with the texts, and I don't want to just take them on with alternative media or something. So the title of the book was going to be do we believe this or not? There's been a political taco of the white evangelical world, not the black churches, but the white evangelical world.
Yeah. One of the things that Trump did was Trump gave white evangelicals a permission structure for being significantly sort of their worst instincts in a way that you probably wouldn't have that permission structure for white evangelicals otherwise. Do you think that there's any way to sort of put that genie back in the bottle?
You've said now this word permission structure twice, So let's unpack at bit. It goes again deep riven politics. Every nation, every nation, Bullius, you know, has its better angels and its worst teamons. And Trump isn't just He's a marketer, not a leader. He's a market He's marketing not only racial grievance. I would say Trump is marketing our worst demons.
And those demons run very deep. And so what's at stake here is the integrity of faith communities, whether our demons in this nation will take them over, which is happening. And I call them mega mega churches, which are the big churches that are going for Trump. It's all politics now, it's all been politicized. So I want to challenge a lot of those Trumps surrogus to debates about the Bible. What does the Bible say. There's a lot of younger leaders,
even white evangelically younger ones who are really unsettled. They're sometimes appalled by what's going on and the book. I talk about maybe a new what I'm calling remnant church, which would be white believers, parchic younger ones who want to join with black and brown church leaders to create really literally a new American church in this country. Now, how many of those Evangelicals will break with Trump. I don't know, but it's not these angelicals as mainline Protestants,
as Catholics. The issue is whiteness, right white, and when whiteness has taken over, and that's literally an idolatry. So I want it, you know, as Jesus is saying about freedom, set people free from their captivity. As I've said that, you've heard me say, every every movement has to decide who they can persuade, but also who they must defeat,
and I mean violently, I mean the ballot box. But this book says that'll be a controversial lie in his book because I want to persuade people, and some can be persuaded, so I think, But I want to give people the tools to defeat these people, to feed them at the ballot box. The religious political power people who are just going for power and using religion. To use religion to go for power is blasphemous, to use a religious world.
So interesting, and also I would say, like so important what you're doing. One of the things that my husband, you know, we're both reform Jews. I grew up a Unitarian. My stepmom's a Unitarian minister. But you know, we raise our children reform jew but very liberal. We love our Rabbi. My daughter loves her so much because she did this whole asserment about how she doesn't believe everything happens for
a reason. Very progressive and groovy. But one of the things that we often talk about is how the right has gotten very like if you look at the Supreme Court, they put Catholics on the court and not Protestants on the court because I think a lot of the thinking in the republican federalist society world is that Catholics are more open to this very regressive legislation when it comes to a lot of the rights and I'm thinking reproductive rights that we in this country have had taken for
granted for so long. Do you do you think that Protestants have kind of gotten squeezed out of this Well.
That's interesting. I think people are put there for their it's sorry to say, for their political ideology the federal level, and religion can come along with that. But you know, Pope Francis continues to encourage and inspire me. He doesn't even in the single issue politics, a worship being the only issue he talks about. A consistent ethic of life, where the death penalty is a life issue, and poverty is a life issue, and supporting families is a life issue.
Nuclear weapons is a life issue. Has broader view which Renstance embodies is being narrowed and politicized in this country in some Catholic churches and some bishops. Some bishops are saying really powerful frances like things, and others are not. So the way they use ideology put together with religion. It's almost like the ideology of the America's original sin we've had for a very long time, and yet now
there's a theology underneath that's a false theology. And so that's ideology and heresy go together at the same time. So that's being put together. So how can we some you know people you and I know some feel that the best answer to bad religion is no religion. I understand that certainly in some days he says with trump Bibles and all the rest. But I think the answer to bad religion is better religion, or good faith or
true faith. The subtitle is the book is you know, it's rejecting Christian nationalism, reclaiming true faith, and refounding democracy. So I want to bring good faith, true faith into this and confront the bad faith on religious grounds and say, no, you got it wrong. Here's what Jesus said, Here's what the first book in the Bible, in Genesis says. Here's what the apostle Paul says in Galatians three twenty eight about breaking down barriers of race and class and gender
which are always there. And this Galatians text was a baptismal formula in the early Church in Christ. There's no ge or gentile, bonder, free male or female. They read that at every baptism. They were saying, literally, we're followers in the side tenor at brownskin Palestinian rabbi who has us that we have to overcome these pillars, these divisive factors which are always there, as you know so well, always race, class, and gender.
And they're saying, we're not.
Perfect, but it's our vocation to overcome those things, not extracurricular or volunteer time. So they were saying, so, if you don't want to be hoarded that kind of community, you better go somewhere else. Now imagine if American churches we're using that Galicians text in all their baptisms. That text by the way I learned in my research here was Galatians three twenty eight was banned taken out of all the white slaveholder Bibles.
We're out of time. I hope you'll come back, though. It's such a rich topic and I feel like we didn't even really scratch the service.
Well.
I like your voice when I see you personally, so I'm happy to come back. And I think I'm hoping this what can be a tool to use to the persuadables and even those who we have to confront and really defeat them in the narrative about what good faith really means. No moment o fuck, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong fasts.
Would you like a moment of fuckery?
Yes, I.
I've got one. I go Virginia. Republicans eat a giant sack of ass. You are not renaming Dulles International Airport after Donald Trump. Listen, if you want to name something after Donald Trump, it's going to be the laundry facility at the Florence ad X Supermax prison. It's gonna be it's gonna be a goddamn railyard in bumfuck as Crack, Oklahoma. You're not naming a goddamn international airport where people come from around the world after the worst president in the
history of the United States. I will burn my own ass down before I see this happen. It is unbelievable, Molly. Can you imagine like people will be like, I'm flying the Trump Trump, Where are you flying it to Washington? Oh? Oh? National? Now it would be humiliating for this country.
Okay, Now, Dulles is humiliating for this country. And it's also like two hours out of Washington. Honestly, I can't speak to Dallas because I've never flown through it.
Dullas is a very lovely airport.
You're welcome Dulles, and it's it's located somewhere near Washington, DC.
It is located somewhere in the DC metroplex.
Yes, I metroplex.
By the way.
Listen, you want to name an airport that no one goes to for Donald Trump? Maybe that's a good plan.
Anyway, Listen, a lot of people go there though it's a big international HUBY fly in and out of there all the time.
Yes, it is our moment of fuckery.
I'm sorry if people don't find this moment of fuckery as exciting as other moments of fuckery. But honestly, I mean they renamed fucking highway in Florida after Donald Trump. I won't drive on it. Fuck them not do it?
All right, Well, and that is our moment of fuckery. 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.