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 Chuck Schumer said Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to fund another year of ice madness. We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project Zone Rick Wilson joins us to talk about ICE's second murder of an American citizen.
Then we'll talk to the Brennan Center.
Zone Michael Waldman about how we can stop this corruption right now.
But first the.
News, Smiley, the Democrats are threatening a government shutdown over ice funding. We were talking about earlier this week, how bad the it's going to age the Democrats who voted to fund ice in the House, and it seems that it's aging very bad, very very fast.
Okay, So last week Congress passed this cr which included another year funding for Ice. There were seven Democrats who voted to fund ICE last week, including people like Gared Golden who aren't running for reelection. The worst offender I think was Tom Swazi, who occupies the seat now that used to belong to everyone's favorite scary criminal, George Santos.
My personal favorite is Henry Quailar Trump curiously pardoned.
So seven Democrats voted with the Republicans to fund ICE. Well, that appropriation process continues. The ICE money dr is in the Senate this weekend after border patrol murdered a thirty seven year old nurse with a legally registered firearm that was not being drawn. The Senate has finally gotten the balls, so they are not going to rubber stamps Donald Trump's private Militia Cortes Mastow Jackie Rosen say they'll oppose DHS funding.
Important to realize Nevada is a state with a high Hispanic population, right, so they're probably getting a lot of phone calls from a lot of people who do not want to end up in these terrifying facilities, because remember, if you just look Hispanic, you can get swept up. And we've seen reporting from Florida that Cuban voters who thought that the Republican Party didn't mean them, well, they're getting deported.
At a rapid clip, just like everyone else.
Because this administration it's just if you don't look white, it doesn't matter where you voted, how you voted. A small group of Democratic Senators, led by probably the person
who should be the minority leader at this moment. Chris Murphy and Alex Padilla spent the last two days making calls to colleagues whipping against the dah test funding bill, according to a source familiar, So the job of whip is supposed to be Chuck Schumer's, but it's really important to see that when there's a power vacuum, Chris Murphy and Alex Badilla are in fact filling that power vacuum.
And so keep that in mind when Tuck Schumer says, you know, whatever wants to keep the job, we're really seeing whipping going from people who are not in leadership, and that I think is important. I says, money to continue its operations. You know, they have still a year left of money because of the BBB, the big beautiful bullshit bill. But I think that this may lead to
a shutdown. But I think that's a good thing. By the way, Trump advisor says, there's no way any Democrat can vote for the Homeland Security funding as it is, says one Trump advisor. It's a problem, by the way, if you're a fucking Republican and you're voting for this, and all of them will because they're cowards history. Maybe not all of them, Collins Murkowski, but history will judge you really badly. History will judge you really, really badly.
I mean, this is like our country has done this before. We did slavery. Where the country of slavery, where the country of Jim Crow or the country of Operation Wetback, Like we are a country that has done this to
people of color before. But it is a year twenty twenty six and you are doing this and so ultimately you will have to look at your grandchildren and your children and you will have to say, yes, I was involved in this second coming of authoritarianism in the country, maybe the third, and I was a part of it.
I was a willing participant.
Yeah. And the families of people like Renee Good and Alex pretty yeah.
And by the way, Alex Pritty's parents are not going quietly like they released a statement. They are furious and they know their son did nothing wrong, just like Renee Good. By the way, Renee Goods autopsy released this week showed in fact the shot that killed her was as she was driving away, turning the car through the side.
So continuing with that thought, Greg Bovino, a man who likes to coseplay in Fashions Circle of nineteen forty three. He has bragged their experts in detaining small children, and he praised the agent who killed Alex pretty.
Yeah for Veno.
He is just appalling. And this is the thing this administration does. We see this again and again and again. They brag about doing horrible things because they don't know right from wrong. I think what's important about this story is reports emerged Thursday that ICE had also detained at least four Minnesota children. One of them was a five year old preschooler, Liam Ramos, who was abducted by massed agents in his driveway shortly after his father arrived home.
ICE detained a two year old at a traffic stop in Minnesota just hours after, but Vino recounted his dystopian rather than feel good story about detaining children. Another report emerged that immigration agents grabbed a child. They also detained a family, including a seven year old girl, outside a Portland, Oregon hospital. The girl's parents had been rushing her to an emergency room. It's just appalling. These people are appalling.
There is absolutely no words to describe how appalling this is.
Another aspect of the Trump administration is they really love starving people out. We have an estimated half a million dead from USAID, and now we're seeing Venezuela, which we just captured the leader of starving out and Cuba starving because of the capture of oil.
In the region.
Yeah, you know, they went in. They kidnapped the president of Venezuela and his wife. They are now in jail.
The Maduro regime is very much still in power, as one would expect.
They're locking up people who are protesting or who have any connection to the United States. I mean, it's just madness and people are starving. I think you will absolutely not hear about this anymore. Right, I do not think you will hear any more about Venezuela because this administration has moved on.
Right.
I don't think they're coming back for Venezuela.
I think they have so many problems that they've just moved on, and so I think it's very likely that the carnage, the removing the president and then not really caring about what happens next.
I don't think we'll see any more of this.
Wouldn't be shocked Trump is pushing AI data centers. But it's very interesting. This is becoming one of the biggest divides and losing issues in American elections. We saw the Virginia New Jersey elections for governor make this a huge issue, and we're now even seeing an Alabama. This is starting to get very, very unpopular.
I think it's important just for a minute to put back and talk about this scale of these AI data centers. This one would be the size of eighteen Walmart. So it's this pristine inland outside of Bessemer, Alabama. The mayor, of course, probably a Republican, does not understand why people in this community would be opposed to the construction of a fourteen point five billion dollar artificial intelligence data center in the woodlands just outside of town.
Is this Kristen Cinema dressed up as the mayor?
It sounds like it, right.
A data center is probably the most unintrusive thing, and you'll enjoy paying more for your electricity. You know, it's just a big computer sitting in your backyard.
Wow.
Several residents whose backyards may soon adjoin a digital facility the size of eighteen Walmarts freely acknowledge their displeasure. This is as pristina forest as you'll find in the foothouse of the Appalachian Mountains.
Not for long.
You got a diesel mechanist and retired military veteran is trying to get them not to build a giant data center so that we can all have AI slob for days.
We'll see what happens.
Luckily, Alabama has Katie Brett, who is a real class act and often pretends to cry on television. I remain motivated to ensure that ratepayers are not fooding the bill for data centers.
Sure, sure, Jan.
Sure, Yeah. I love the trade off.
Everybody gets slop artwork in exchange for a dry to aquifer where they can't tap their will anymore.
Listen, man, everybody loves it.
Speaking of things, everybody just loves the Malania movie.
Yeah.
I heard there's a screening at the White House last night that You're really sad you weren't there for Yeah, I want.
To talk about optics because we talk so much about how disgusting this administration is, but this really feels like even for.
Them, really bad call.
So Saturday night we have the murder of thirty seven year old VA nurse. That night we have the premiere or a screening. I'm sorry a screening of the Milania movie. Now, I just want to point out they couldn't have it in the regular White House screening room.
You know why was it torn down in the ballroom Because.
Donald Trump tore down the East Wing because he doesn't think that Eleanor Roosevelt is hot. No, I'm just kidding, but if he knew who elevanor Roosevelt were, he wouldn't like her. So the people who came to the screening, Andy Jase, Amazon CEO, Tim Cook, Apple CEO, Eric eun Zoom CEO, Lisa Sue Amd CEO, the CEO of ge the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, Mike Tyson.
Tony Robbins is my personal wild.
Card, Tony Robbins, I mean the heartiest fuck that guy for Tony Robbins. Brett Ratner, who is an occupant of the Epstein Files and also a director Suir who was canceled because of.
Me too, because he's a creepy, creepy guy.
And photographer Ellen or With who took the photos. You should probably just protest all of them. There is no East Wing theater, so they had to set something up. Amazon paid forty million dollars to bribe the Trump administration. According to Matt Belanie, the studio has spent thirty five million dollars trying to get people to see a movie no one will see. But the good news is no, there is no good news. Protest them all. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host
of the Enemy's List. Rick Wilson Molly John Fast, I am without words about what has happened. So we have a second murder in.
Minnesota, Minneapolis.
This one thirty seven year old VA nurse. He was helping a woman across the street, yep, and they took his gun.
And just Molly, look, the anger, the anger of people are feeling is legitimate. Yeah, and I'm going to say this, I think there was no excuse for shooting Reney Good whatsoever.
And the autopsy shows right.
However, this murder is even more egregious in some ways because there were eight DHS agents mobbing, chemically sprang the guy in the face. They took his legally carried firearm, a firearm with a permit actually in Florida. I don't need the permit anymore, but you know I legally carried it when it was conceal carry. I had the conceal carry license is now no longer required in Florida, but there it was required. He was legally carrying his firearm in a holster. It was not out, It was not
pointed at the officers. It was not brandished at any point. They never saw it until they took it off of his body while they were beating him. While they were striking him in the head pistol, whipping him in the head over and over again. I don't know if it was a gun or a can of tear gas, but they were beating him in the head with it. He was down, he was restrained, both of his hands were free.
You saw there was no gun in his hands. They took his firearm away, walked away with it, and shot him over and over at least five times, some accounts say up to ten times.
I want to talk about the the witness test Stemony Yep where she said that they were not doing CPR.
They were instead counting.
They were counting the bullet holes. These people are fucking monsters and they are murderers, and they need to be arrested. And I'm sorry. Keith Ellison, as the attorney general of that state. You need to bring charges today. Yeah, you need to do it. I'm sorry, folks. And a guy broke out a tooth.
Yeah yeah, yeah. Keith Elsey needs.
To bring charges today today. Yeah.
They need to be charged with murder. There is no qualified immunity because they were not acting in the proper execution of their duties. They were murdering a man in the street. They are violent thugs, they are murderers, and they were and then they tried to cover it up. Then they tried to seize the scene and cover it up, just as they tried to cover up Renee Good. And to their credit, MPD said on not this time, pal.
Yeah, And I want to pull back for a minute and ask the question of why are they in Minnesota in the first place, because I think it really is important to sort of beg this question. I had long thought that they were in Minnesota because of the Nick Suurly YouTube video.
They said that for a long time.
Odd in Minnesota.
It was a video that was just a two second reminder. It was about fraud that had happened basically post pandemic or during the pandemic. These people were all charged by the Biden DOJ. Many of them went to jail. These people rediscovered this scandal because of the Nick Shirley YouTube video were furious that it wasn't covered to the mainstream media. Of course, it had been yet another sort of echo chamber situation from.
The definitional fake news. But they every one's faking the news.
Yes, there's a sort of new rip ball in this because of Pam Bondy.
Talk us through it.
Pam Bondy sents a letter to Minnesota basically saying, we hate you, you're terrorists, you love terrorists, you love illegal criminals, you love all this. But by the way, we'll leave if you'll just turn over your voter files to us. This gets to the nut of this thing. ICE is not a law enforcement agency. ICE is not an immigration agency. They are an arm of the political will of the Trump administration, and Pam Bondy at the head of a DOJ is equally a part of Trump's political operation. They
gave away the game. This is partly because Pam Bondy, I don't know if you guys know this yet, is stupid.
Yeah, then disciplined.
The one bit of good news here is these people are fugging more on but this is still a nightmare scenario if Trump's private police force occupying a stage until they give up voter rolls. Because Donald Trump is and well he should be, and we'll get to this in a minute, very nervous about the midterms.
He ought to be what's the play?
Just on the voter roll stuff. So you get the voter rolls, and then what happens.
Then they turn it over to a bunch of data analysis guys.
Right, who pretend palenteer types exactly.
Who pretend, oh my god, we found so much fraud.
Oh my god.
And just like they've done in other states where they claim there's massive voter fraud, they make a lot of noise for their people, and no massive voter fraud ever appears. It's not a scale problem. Voter fraud is not a big problem in this country. It's not a problem at scale. And they want to invalidate elections. They want to be able to say, well, we looked at this voter file.
It was fraudulent. Everybody in there is, every Democrat has registered twelve times, and they're all in egalaliens, they're all criminals, they're all blah blah blah blah blah, they want to do that because they know they're about to get their asses handed to them.
The professional races. Again.
I'm not a guy who like eats out ahead of time on the news of the Senate, but the Senate is looking very or increasingly less hospitable for the Republicans.
And you know you see it, right. I think a really good example is Ted Cruz. So Axios had a bit of reporting. You're so excited, a bit of reporting about my man, and quite frankly, he's none of our man, Raphael, And I think that I would love you to just talk for a minute as someone who knows the dark arts of how this reporting gets leaked to Axios, and then we'll talk more.
Look, somebody in that donor meeting either has decided that it's a really smart idea to preposition Cruise is a post Trump.
Conservative, That's what I think, which is.
My belief, or somebody got sour on Ted, And I will tell you the former is a much higher likelihood thing than the latter. This smells like a little bit too packaged to me to be some disgruntled staffer or disgruntled donor. And the messages Cruise delivered in that leak were a little too on the nose for twenty twenty eight.
So you think Cruz leaked this to Axios himself.
Yeah, that's or or a consultant or staffer or somebody. But yeah, I think this is a play. I don't think it's an accident. I think it's a play.
And I think what's important about it is that in it Ted Cruz or is reported by whoever in Ted Cruz's camp leaked it that Donald Trump said fuck you when Ted said you're now.
Honestly, who among us hasn't said.
Fuck you Ted?
Amazingly some of us to his face.
I'll never forget. In twenty sixteen, I remember being in this green room with Ted Cruz at the Texas trip Fest and he was just like, oh, you know, I Trump's gonna just I hate him so much.
I'm like, okay, we'll stand the fuck up.
Yeah we do.
What are you gonna do? And I have a photograph of that. Somebody took a picture of me and it's like Rick with his finger up and you know, giving it to Ted Cruz. But there are two types of people in the world, Ted Cruz and everybody who hates Ted Cruse, which is everybody else in the world.
So I'm going to read the secret recording just for a minute.
So we have it.
Matt A.
Cruise, You're going to lose the House, You're going to lose the Senate. You're going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week. Absolutely could not be more true. Trump's response, according to Cruz, fuck you, Ted.
Look, Cruise, god knows, I'm gonna probably get struck by lightning for this. The Cruise's analysis of why that was going to happen was correct, because he said, these tariffs are going to destroy the country, and they destroy the economy, and they have Remember this, this stuff was recorded last spring and summer, and so Cruise was correct. And Molly, this is one of those things where where you you see that hidden nature of the Republican Party of today.
These guys privately say to themselves, oh my god, he's fucking us. We're getting destroyed. He's gonna blow us up, We're gonna lose everything. They say it to themselves all the time, and their right to do so, because he is and they they don't seem to ever quite have that moment where they go okay, now the next step of this procedure is to break with the president. Yes, they know it's coming, they can't break the spell. Ted Cruz will still go out right now and try to kiss Trump's ass.
Now, let's talk about this because Republicans are seeing the writing on the wall and they are worried about losing in the midterms. But they all are cowards and traders.
So profiles and chicken shit, as I like to say.
Right, but this is an interesting piece and I want to talk about it. Significant step in the oversight front from the House majority that has done little Okay, Chairman Rep. Gambarino, who is a New York Republican, So that says all you need to know. Right, he knows he's going to lose his seat. I think it's important, has formally requested testimony from ICE, CPB, and USCIS in a full committee hearing. Congress is an important responsibility to ensure the safety of
law enforcement and the people they serve and protect. Talk us through why he's doing this.
This little crease, this little crevice in the wall of MAGA discipline, I think is extraordinarily dangerous. Here's the story that we have to understand. When Trump came in in February a year ago, his approval rating on his immigration policies was basically fifty nine to thirty. It's really good. People saw the rubber hit the road, however, and now it's about thirty to fifty nine people now hate his immigration policy.
And that was one before they killed that great.
That was, and that poll was taken this last week. It was yah, post Renee good but pre Alex pretty okay. It is not going to get any better that the dead fish doesn't stop stinking. It's gonna smell worse. It's gonna be worse. It's gonna be tougher for them to justify. So you're going to see them pull carry uh carry like Christinome and little little Greg Bavino and the rest
of these weirdos. Yeah, they're going to pull them in and they're going to have a hearing and they're going to say, I favor the president's immigration policies, and I want you to be able to do the best job ever, so so let's talk about how you're going to do better. They're not going to burn it down. They're not going to go against Trump. They're not going to say we got to get rid of ice.
But one of the things, it's a it's a crack in the wall.
And I will tell you this. My chats and emails were burning up last night from a lot of my pro gun pro two A friends, like like, I'm not going to go against Trump yet, but man, this is a really bad look a legal concealed carry permit holder not engaged in violence. And Baveno goes out and says, if you carry a gun around us, not pointing it at us, but if you carry it around us exercising your Secondmendment of rights, you're gonna get killed.
Yeah, that's a fault.
Line inside of MAGA right now that I don't think people have weighed in yet.
Enough on I want to point out something else though about this and why hearings are good and why getting these people to talk as much as possible is important. Yeah, because they're constantly lying, so they're constantly getting caught in lies. And already on Twitter, I've seen like four different videos that have you know, Bovino says something, the video says something different, Christy Noam says something, the video says something different.
Jd Vance says something, the video says something different, and even worse, I mean, Jadvans has spent so much time just defending everything indefensible that you literally have Jady Van's defending Kyle written, you know, and then trashing Alex Petrie.
So explain this.
Everything out of JD Vance's mouth. You should process it with. This is his twenty twenty eight campaign. He's going to be the biggest asshole possible to the victims of ice. He has to win in a race. They're going to be fifteen Republicans in that race. He's going to go into it on paper as the presumptive. But in reality, you know what MAGA wants. They want more blood, more ugly, more anger, more hatred, more screaming, more chaos. Vance is
all he's doing is setting up twenty twenty eight. He probably is laying awake at night going, oh my god, I'm going to get struck down by lightning.
Good Catholic there, JD.
But it's important.
I think it's really important to realize, like that is what's happening here. Jadie Vance is just defending the indefensible.
He has no principles, correct, Mary, That's exactly your point is exactly right. JD. Vance has no principles whatsoever. You know, he's a guy who's had four names. If he can change his name four times, he can change his principles even even more easily. And he's done so.
So the other thing that happened that I think is a big deal is that well they were I mean, this is why these guys are such fugging morons, is they're shooting a nurse while their funding appropriation is in the Senate. It had passed the House, yep, and last my Democrats had voted for it.
Go on Saturday night, you finally saw Mount Schumer erupt. You finally saw them say we're not going to vote for this. And look, the rubber's got to meet the road. He's got to whip his caucus against it. That's the test. Okay, not a humor can do it.
He could do it if.
You wanted to, and I hope you want to now, because if the Democrats vote for this CR that funds ICE, they.
Are now completely fucked.
They're complicit, and their base is going to go fuck you, stay home.
Yeah. I think their base is going to primary everyone. I think it's going to be like.
If you if you don't, if you don't vote to kill this c R. There's blood on your hands if you're a Democrat. And I and I mean, you know what, And and while John Fetterman is now functionally a Republican, yeah, the rest of those soft Democrats, y'all best get your act in gear because this ship does not work.
And also they're all going to get primaried. I mean like they're all going to get.
You're going to catch a primary. The ads are going to be brutal. It's going to be Senators John Smith says, says he believes in human rights and human dignity and the rule of law, but he voted to give Greg Bavino and Christy no more money to kill more Americans. I could write that ad in my sleep. I could write that ad in my sleep, and you'd watch it and you'd cry like a baby because it's so tragic
and rightly so. But these people if Chuck Schumer and I've been very hard on Chuck Schumer, which he deserves, which he's deserved, But if he does this, this will be a legacy moment for him where he will walk out of the Senate with his head held high, that fought the good fight at the end on something that was a gigantic civil rights issue, because that's what this bill really has become. It is a question of American civil rights or the power of ice to kill us.
And if Democrats do the right thing, the morally correct thing, and they vote against this cr which gives billions of dollars to Trump's pride and militia, then Republicans will be forced to shut down the government. And they should because this government is hurting its people.
Yep.
And there's already a little like buzz around some sort of compromise from Thune where he's telling people like, well, we'll do an ice reform bill that'll kick in in two years and da da da no uh uh, no deals, no negotiation.
That's it.
These people are violating our first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and tenth Amendment rights every single leek, steenth at fourteenth, Yes, ma'am correct, every single day. And as I was joking yesterday, at this point, I'm shocked they haven't did the third and forced people to quarter ice troops in their homes. Yes, this is madness to let this thing go even an inch further. And look, I think the Democrats need to also think about this as what the Republicans think about everything.
How do you engineer the spectacle. I want Preddy's family in those hearings. Yeah, I want Rachel Good's wife in those hearings.
And by the way, Pretty's family does not hear about his murder until the Associated Press calls the family.
Right horrifying and Pretty was by every account. And I don't know, folks, you've probably seen the YouTube video now of him saying last words over a veteran's coffin or a hospital bed with a flag draped veterans passing.
This was a good guy.
Are you crying?
Yeah, I'm upset, Molly, I'm fucking upset. I'm upset that a good person who was trying to do a good thing is now being vilified by scumbag worms like Steven Miller. Steven Miller is not fit to lick the shit off his shoes and immediately pops out domestic terrorists. I hope the family sues the ever loving fuck out of Steve Miller and Christy Nome and Greg Bavino and Donald Trump for defamation. This is a black and white defamation case.
You call someone a domestic terrorist with no evidence, with zero, zero evidence, and of course when they did it before there were any facts established in the case. They were domestic terrorists attack the police. Sorry, and they really should, because there is a civil legal exposure for these people
that that's been underestimated so far. And I hope and I pray that there are some junkyard dog lawyers out there on this side of the issue that are willing to go and burn this administration's leadership, that are saying these things to the fucking ground.
I drunk fast.
Michael Waldman is the President and CEO of the Brendon Center for Justice at NYU's School of Law.
Michael Waldman, Hi, Molly, Happy New Year. Too late. It's too late. You can't do that.
As we both know, you are out of the statute of limitations of New Year's according to Larry David. So you are the head of the Brandon Center. You guys have this really important new project which is nine Solutions for Political Corruption. I don't know why you're so focused on political corruption because everything is going great. First, I want you to explain how do you get to a place where the political corruption is so everywhere that you have to sort of narrow it down.
One of the amazing things to me, right now is lots of polls show that voters citizens name corruption is one of their top issues have for months and months. And given the fact that the traditional news media, which used to be the thing that told us when there was a scandal, you know, barely exists in some respects, my reaction is, how do voters even know that they basically are way ahead of the political system and seeing that the rot that is pervasive right now in government
and politics in Washington. You know, look, corruption is not exactly a new phenomenon in human history, fair enough to say.
And for a long time in our country there was personal corruption in public office if we think about Tammany hall boss tweet, people taking money, graft, that kind of thing, and then later on in the late twentieth century that was really supplanted in a lot of ways by the institutional corruption of something like the campaign finance system when money, big money became especially really important in how elections got run.
Now you see both of those things roaring back and combined, and we see a fusion of public power and private wealth in a way we just have not seen since the Gilded Age of the late eighteen hundreds, if that, you know, back then the robber barons had a big impact, but they did not have a situation where the world's wealthiest man, Elan Musk, paid for basically the winning presidential campaign, then moved into the White House, literally slept on a cot,
and was given prime ministerial authority for a few months to wreck as many agents ands as he could get his hands on.
You didn't back then have this thing.
You and I have talked about the unitary executive theory, which was is this notion that the president has the power of a king, that the rule of law doesn't apply. All of these things make the corruption really really significant. And if you want to understand why government doesn't work, if you want to understand why people feel the economic system is rigged, there's an affordability crisis, all these other things, they are rightly blaming this.
As one of the reasons.
So we thought it was important to start this Solution's series by looking at corruption. And you know, so it's a little presumptuous in a way to be thinking, well, what are the solutions, how can we fix things in the future When the wreckage is being cleaned up, aren't the barbarians at the gates of the city is this really the time to be doing, you know, urban planning.
We think emphatically yes, that we have to be thinking right now, talking right now about what would be the big changes that would actually make a difference to undo some of the damage but also do things better.
Right, And that's a really good point, because there's like digging out from the trumpest corruption, and then there's trying to have reforms like post NIX and like post civil war, the kind of things you must have in order to survive. So first let's talk about the campaign finance because that seems to be certainly the most obvious when you talk about Elon Musk.
Yeah, and we we do begin with the campaign finance solutions because that is so big, so pervasive, and has such an obviously such a huge impact on so much of what government doesn't have.
Billions of dollars being.
Contributed in American elections in a way that no other democracy does, and a lot of this is secret money.
In other words, it's called dark money.
It's undisclosed who gives the money, but billions of dollars coming in and very often from very very wealthy individuals or from people who have a big interest in how government contracts work and that sort of thing.
So the steps that need to be.
Taken, we think range from looking at the constitution itself, a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United which is now fifteen sixteen years old, just as of a few days ago, and actually other really bad Supreme Court decisions that wrecked the campaign finance laws and gave us.
This toxic politics that we have right now.
There's also a need for legislation to end dark money, to require disclosure of all this spending and contributions. And I think something that really makes a big difference that I've been fighting for for years and years, which is public financing of campaigns, the system that New York State has now and New York City too, where small contributions get a match. It boosts the power of small contributions and it makes it possible to run without just being beholden to the big money.
Those are some of the ideas. I'll mention one other that is a newer one.
I think there is not really right now an effective ban on campaign contributions from government to contractors in the government, and think of how much money is at stake.
Give us an example of what that means, because I think people might not understand exactly.
Government contractors make billions and billions and billions of dollars, and it's not like they're just skimming it off the top. They're providing services very often. But there's tremendous potential for waste and overcharging and all the things we're familiar with. And you don't want those billions of dollars of contracts going just because somebody contributed to someone's campaign or as
a political backer. There are laws on the books, federal laws that supposedly stopped up this kind of campaign contributions, but it's very narrow and so the executives of a company or the subsidiaries of a company aren't really covered. So you need to make the law real and tight and effective. And I think a lot of people on all sides of those transactions would be very happy because they don't really want to have to be doing this.
And if you look at how Trump is running the federal government, it's so clear that giving campaign contributions or to his library or to his ballroom is how you get stuff done. Is inaugural fund is very transactional, and it's just gets yeah. And for the pardons, all these kinds of things. Again that the Supreme Court has made the corruption easy. So we do start with the campaign finance system. It's very, very broadly popular with the public,
with Democrats and Republicans. The challenge is that the politicians in Washington and everywhere else, they tend usually to think of themselves.
As incumbents more than anything else. They don't really want to change this that much. But it's the big one, I think.
And government contractors. That's things like Boeing Right.
Boeing Defense contractors, the Pentagon spends in contracts trillions.
Of dollars over a decade.
Things are really expensive, and you want them to work, and you want them not to be based on favoritism or graft. You want them to be based as much as you can on it actually being the best value for taxpayers.
So publicly funded campaigns really annoys me, but I understand why they exist. But it makes me mad every time we talk about it. So let's talk about it. Very annoying, but let's talk about it.
You are now a loan you know, it's very often the people who are most upset about the current system who have the hardest time of this because it's like, why are we giving money to these politicians.
So they can spend it on?
Right?
But yes, go on explain why, Well, it's.
Better that the money come from taxpayers or some other fund like that than from somebody who wants a contract or something.
And the way to do it.
I think it doesn't get all private money out of politics, but it makes it possible to run a campaign going to voters, going to small dollar contributors. And you're seeing that in New York State, and it's been very successful in New York City over the years and really changing who gives money to campaigns. You're totally not alone in getting the hebgb's over the idea of spending the money this way.
You sort of have to raise a certain amount of money in order to get the matching fund.
We're not just giving money out to people, right.
You have to have supporters support you, and then their contributions are enhanced basically, and as you know, in New York City or New York State, it's a multiple match, like if I give ten dollars, then it might be worth eighty dollars to the campaign. And it does encourage the candidates to actually talk to people. It means that having a coffee clutch in someone's living room gets them as much money as having a private meeting in a real estate office. But it's new right now, but it's
actually not a brand new idea. We had a public financing system in the United States after Watergate, as you correctly said, when we have big scandals, when we have moments like this, that's when you get change.
Afterwards. It's not always what happens, but that's when it happens.
After Nixon resigned, Congress passed a public financing system for the presidential campaigns that actually worked really well, and it actually meant that Ronald Reagan when he ran for reelection, didn't do any fundraisers in the general election.
Think of that. It really was effective.
It just the money wasn't enough and it never got updated by Congress and it sort of faded away. That's why it's this dollar checkof on your taxes that no one really knew why it's there.
But the idea was originally from Teddy Roosevelt.
I want to talk about a monuments feels very apropos right now.
Well, that's the other side of this, right which is that if you think about personal corruption, the personal milking of the system that you might have thought about being in an earlier era. Of course, as we know from Donald Trump outward, it is very much happening in the federal government. And then what this publication is all about. The federal governments obviously not the only place that needs improvement.
The emoluments Clause is part of the Constitution. The founders when they wrote the Constitution really cared about all this corruption stuff, and it says that whoever's the president cannot take gifts from foreign governments or from domestic people basically without Congress's approval. They knew that there would be a chance that you would have corrupt presidents and that foreign entities would try to influence them with an airplane or
buying their crypto or coins. They might have thought of that or the airplane, but they were very aware of the potential for corruption, and the Constitution already bans it, but there's no statute, there's no penalties attached to that.
So one of the things we say that should.
Happen is there needs to be a statute, a law that actually enforces the constitutions and monuments clause.
There's other ways.
The president right now has a big set of loopholes in the federal ethics laws that really make it easy for a grifting president to grift. The ethics laws apply to everybody in the government except the president and the vice president in the Supreme Court.
That's a loophole that should be plugged.
We think, as we describe here, that there are to be a new ethics agency that has the ability to enforce these things all across the government. We shouldn't let Congress off the hook either. You know, Capitol Hill has always been a place where money talks in a variety of ways, and right now one of the things people are really upset about is the incredible amount of stock trading that seems to happen.
This is like my favorite topic, Congressional stock trading. I saw it on the list. I was delighted. So let's talk about this stock trading bill.
So members of Congress have a suspiciously high rate of success in the stock market. They are privy to all kinds of insider information, non public information. The way that insider trading laws are written, they don't really stop them from doing this kind of stock trading.
And you see their returns just way.
Above you know, standard and pores or something like that way, and again, it's just quite a coincidence. And so it's something where I think the public is really outraged about this, and Congress just should pass the law right away to stop it. The Democrats have been increasingly energetic about this. The Republicans, seeing that people care about it, they actually put forward a bill a couple of weeks ago. It was very weak, but that sort of started to get
the bidding going on it. I think there's a chance that this could happen even before twenty twenty eight, because it's so smelly and so there's a lot of things of that nature. And I think there's some things that go even deeper because one of the ways, as we now know, that this kind of personal corruption is happening, has to do with one of the powers the president is given in the Constitution, the pardon power.
Talk about this, there's an idea that pardons need to be taken away from the president, and that is because Trump is pretty amazing in the way he has used it, but that there really is no good use of a president with a pardon power.
Discuss I think presidents shouldn't have the power all on their own to do it. I think there's a roll for presidents in this. The Constitution is very clear the president has the power to issue pardons. It's one of the clearest grants of power in the whole Constitution to
a president. It comes from King George the Third was one of the things you got to do as a king back in the seventeen hundreds, and that was one of the things they kind of took cut and pasted into the US Constitution because the didn't really know what a president was going to be like, and the thing they understood was a king. And it didn't really bother them because George Washington was going to be the president. He was ault so, you know, well respected that they
just didn't think it all through quite as much. And it is really important that there be a place in the criminal justice system for mercy, for correcting mistakes.
You know, it's an unfair system.
It's very punitive, it's racially discriminatory, all of those things that we all know about. But in recent years, and especially under Trump, this unlimited power to issue pardons has become an engine of corruption. We see people giving big campaign contributions or big cash grants or other things to Trump getting pardons for family members the president of I never can remember the country. I don't think it's Ecuador, one of the other South American countries.
It was convicted.
Oh yeah, he just got pardoned drug trafficking.
Just as we were attacking Venezuela. He's pardoned. There's every reason to think that these pardons are being issued in a corrupt way. And it's important to note that Trump, of course has taken this to an extraordinary extent.
He didn't start it.
Joe Biden at the end of his term pardoning his son and other family members was also.
Problematic as blanket preemptive pardons.
And even the president I worked for, Bill Clinton.
Mark Ridge, Yeah, at the very end of his presidency pardoned Mark Rich.
As they say, fugitive financier Mark Ridge. That is his homeric epithet.
Who was a major Democratic donor too.
I don't know if he was his wife was.
But his wife was.
Yeah, he was on the lamb and it had never pleaded guilty or anything like that.
He was just literally a fugitive.
His wife was this Clinton supporter and gave money to the library that Clinton was getting ready to start building, and he gave Mark Rich to pardon and it was a huge outcry, as it should have been, and there was even a criminal investigation of it. In the end, Clinton was cleared because in fact, there were a number of people in the federal government who had urged him to do this pardon and the government of Israel had urged him to do it because this guy had been
helpful to the peace process. I mean, there were a lot of different things. There's a lot of reasons he did it. It was a bad idea and showed what could go wrong with the pardon power. And so in all the states, governors have pardon power, but there's also a board of Pardons or clemency that looks at the individual cases. There should be a constitutional amendment to address this.
How do you did this stuff pass the Supreme Court?
So, I mean, some of it, if you changed the constitution, they're supposed to follow that, although they don't always, but you're supposed to. And some of it are things where you can even now do things where the Supreme Court will let you do them. So this Supreme Court, which did Citizens United, has still allowed public financing system to go forward because they're voluntary and they boost speech. Just an example, they say they want disclosure of campaign money.
None of us should be under any illusions that this Supreme Court has done everything it can to make it easy to be a corrupt public official. They've narrowed what corruption means, all these other things. But there have been other times. You mentioned Watergate, you mentioned after the Civil War, when things get really bad, people rise up, and you had the Progressive era, which was a series of reforms
often in response to this very kind of thing. After Watergate in the nineteen seventies, you hit the same thing. So it's up to all of us. Do we want to just stand there at the end of assuming there is an end to all this, and look at the wreckage and see this wisps of smoke rising from the.
The embers, and just say, well, there's nothing we can do.
Or do we take this chance to build something that's a better system, that works better for people, that actually makes government serve them. I think it's actually going to be a major set of issues going forward. I think it's the campaign finance issue. I spoke to Selinda Lake, who's a major Democrat polster. She says she thinks campaign finance reform is the key issue for the Democrats, which is kind of an amazing thing.
That is an insane statement.
You know, it's not just dreamy eyed goo goo's like me. I think it's a real hardball political issue too wild.
Michael, thank you. I hope you'll come back.
I would love to thank you.
No moment, Rick Wilson clue.
So it is our moment of rockery and I have it today. It's a toy shop in Saint Paul, Minnesota called Mischief Toy Store and they were three D printing and giving away whistles right well, now they're being targeted
by ICE. It's a beho owns it. They say that two ICE agents went to the store to hand deliver an audit asking for federal employee forms, payroll records, and names of past and present employees, just hours after the daughter of the owner of the store spoke to ABC News about the ongoing Trump operation and criticized DHS.
I want to know what an ICE audit is? What is an ICE audit?
What audit power does ICE have in any universe?
They have given away thousands of three D printed whistles since Thanksgiving and they are being targeted by ICE for an audit. What does the Party of Small government say about such as it.
You know, this is a fascinating example of the Party of small government being in everybody's fucking business. In what universe does this store printing out whistles? And by the way, folks, if you do want to get a three D printer, they're like less than one hundred bucks. Now you could print the a tech death whistle, which makes these ice whistles sound like nothing. So it is the loudest was
terrified that you've ever heard. But look, this is the idea that they're going to use the power of the state to shut down a private business that's exercising the First Amendment rights of its owners. The correct answer to these guys is go fuck yourself, get a lawyer, come back with a real warrant. Otherwise we're calling the cops. And they should have called the cops to have these guys arrested for harassing them. Rick Wilson, oh I drunk, Fast Go mischief toys.
Go mischief Toys.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast. Please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.