Rick Wilson, Mike Hixenbaugh & Melissa Walker

is a good writer. These are terrible, terrible human beings who are the strangest, angriest, most egregiously obsessive. I mean, there are so many phrases I could use here, all of which would get you and me both canceled immediately.

the crowning irony of this. You ended up with the libertarians who believe that freedom is but a moment away from being utterly extinguished in this country, bringing the most authoritarian and statist presidential candidate running in twenty twenty four onto the stage, and let's remember he is surrounded by people who are backing the idea of Project twenty twenty five, which is not exactly what you would call a recipe

for limited government. These people are expansive in their power of the state and government.

If they cared about winning, they would name people to the top of their ticket who could what's the word win? And again, I have no sympathy for Donald Trump thinking he could persuade these people. But there are enough folks around Donald Trump, who are not stupid, who are not idiots. And I got to tell you, I think they must have been taking the weekend off, because he really got his head handed to him at this event. It was really ugly, folks. If you watch the video, it's out

there on YouTube, It's out there on CSPAN. If you watch the video, this guy he was really off his game, which I think is more and more of the case. I don't think he has the game he had in twenty twenty or twenty sixteen, and in a very hostile room, he was uncomfortable and I'm here for it.

the things they've done during this trial have seemed nonsensical, as if they were being told what to do by someone who didn't really understand the law, and so you have to wonder how much of that is also Trump trying to drive the Trump trains.

what's your next question? Moving on? And Michael Cohen, to his credit for the most part, was like, yeah, I was working for a very bad guy, doing very bad things at his orders and Finally, when they brought Costello to the stand. You know, that was also one of these things where I think Trump thought, oh, we can make a great defense argument from Costello, and Costello may

have single handedly torpedoed the defense's case. So all these things with Trump thinking he's smarter than the people who he's hired to do the things that he needs to do, whether it's the campaign or whether it's the legal stuff, he comes across over and over again in a position where he ends up being, you know, worse served than he would have if he just picked some body at random and let them do their job.

his own best image consultant. And while it works, sometimes when you see it confront reality, it doesn't work quite as well. It didn't work in twenty twenty. I don't think it's going to work the same way this time, and I certainly don't think it worked in court for him.

could go wrong? Because it's a misery. It's tough, it's a hard race, and the Biden campaign is starting to publicly say that they get it that they have to go more aggressive against the guy. They have to push harder, they have to be right up in his grill all the time. They get it. They're starting to get it, at least they're starting to get that. The messaging cannot be driven by policy questions. You're not going to win this election based on arguments about parts per billion of

carbon in the atmosphere. You are going to have to win this election based on convincing people the economy is not mad Max Healscape. You are going to have to win this election based on that Donald Trump presents a risk to American women that is so beyond and most people's understandings that when you tell them the story of what they want to do to American women, you will

split off a lot of them. When you tell Republicans, soft Republican voters that they're going to have to live with the consequences of their children growing up with Donald Trump as president a second time. See how that goes. They do rebel against Trump. There's a lot of ways to beat this guy, but you have to do them all because you don't know which one's going to work.

a lot of Senate races are overperforming. A lot of places where the Republicans felt very confident that they were going to.

That kind of represents what's been happening in America. So the goal with the book was, if you're sitting in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia or Georgia, in Atlanta, or outside Nashville, and you've seen angry parents packing school board meetings complaining about well, critical race theory or woke gender ideology or trying to ban books, that you could read the story of Souft Lake, Texas and understand why that's happening in your town.

runs through the school boards. And what he meant was, we're going to win back suburban white voters who were repulsed by Donald Trump by running hard on this anti DEI program through local school board elections. And so we'll retake school boards, but in the process we'll win back these voters, win back state houses, win back Congress, take the presidency, and save America. Right, you asked, is it working. We'll just skip to the end here.

school board elections. And so what you have now is national political consultants running really divisive campaigns in local elections accusing these local basically unpaid school board trustees of trying to destroy America, being sexual predators, trying to groom children change their genders. All this really ugly unfounded, divisive attack that you're used to seeing in like a congressional race

that's now standard and our school board races. And if you're a school district that was a Trump plus twenty district, well the anti crch folks are going to win. And if you're in a purpowl district where Biden did well, then you're going to beat the monster Liberty. So they're not changing hearts and minds, they're just tearing communities apart.

seen all over the country. School districts during the Trump years tried to reckon with racism in these communities and in their school districts. There was the blowback in twenty twenty, and so what South Lake Conservatives did led by this is a very affluent city, so there's people like Dana lash who lives there. It's the former NRA spokeswoman Stiva Southlake President. So she and others got together and put together a political action committee called south Lake Families Path

to Defeat a local diversity plan. In twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, they raised like two one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, put together a slate of conservative kind of form right school board candidates, including one candidate who was like the former clerk for Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas on this is a pre court, so like big name people on the right kind of getting involved, and they took over their school board by kind of launching

this attack accusing the other candidates of being on this mission to destroy America with woken doctrination. And what happened in the spring of twenty twenty one when Southflake Family's pack did that, their election was really the first one of these, and so their triumph in that election led to lord Ingram's program in May of twenty twenty one. It was a symbol to Republicans everywhere that oh, we can again do with Steve benn said, save America through

the school boards. And so what happened after that is South Lakes Families Pack style political action committees cropped up in communities all over the country. There's a Williamson Families Pack in the suburbs outside of Tennessee. Outside of Nashville, there's a Francis Howell Famili's Pack. On the west side

of Saint Louis. There's a Lakes Travis Stanley's Pack. Now outside of Austin, dozens of these political action committees riving the same strategy, trying to take control of school board words and ban LGBTQ equision policies, ban DEI trainings, make sure kids learn a patriotic version of America's history.

of race and racism. And so a patriotic history is one where you don't discuss the sixteen nineteen projects gramming that looks at the lasting legacy of slavery, and so there's literally laws that have been passed in Texas and in other states and at the local level saying well, if you can teach the kids about lavery, but you have to tell them that it is not reflective of America's true and good founding ideals, and that anytime you talk about these divisive subjects, their language is these are

divisive subjects. You have to present all both perspectives, all perspectives, and you can't teach kids that America was fundam mentally or systemically racist. And in Texas especially, they apply that also to the state history, and so you can't teach kids that Texas was inherently racist, that it's founding even though it's founding documents were really built around the idea of maintaining slavery.

or bigotry. And what was really interesting about that was that was happening not just in red states or school districts where monster Liberty style packs had taken over. Teachers everywhere were doing that, and in large part because they were afraid. All it takes is one parent forward to it, he's a teacher that this teacher is trying to sexually grow my child, or this teacher is trying to teach my white child to hate in South and hate America.

And so teachers got the message of the last few years. I think as a result, in many places, kids are getting kind of a distorted picture of what America, a distorted picture of America's history, especially when it comes to race, racism, and the idea that we're a pluralistic society where everyone's faith and views are welcome.

I give an example. As a journalist reporting on this's I got a little taste of what teachers are getting in this era when I reported on a story basically just documenting the kind of wave of anti LGBTQ book bands in the suburb outside of Houston called Katie, Texas. I spoke with a queer teenager for that story, and she shared with me how the school library was the one place where she felt safe and secure to read stories that reflected who she is because her parents weren't supportive.

After I wrote that story, a bunch of moms in Katie, Texas got a hold of my phone number and blasted me with text messages and emails telling me that they were going to the police, that me having spoken to the student was a sign of grooming, and that they were going to file a police report or soliciting a minor. And so Mollie. I know that you get nasty messages. You know, if you work in this space, you're a journalist, you get me emailed to get criticisms. I'm used to that,

got big skin. But this allegation from these parents. I'm a dad of four and they're saying, oh, you're a child sexual predator and we're going to tell the police. It messed me up and knocks the wind out of me. For a moment, was like, why am I doing this? Do I want to be a journalist?

Every student has a right to an equal shot at an education without being discriminated against a bully based on their race, or sex or now gender and sexual orientation under new guidelines by the administration. So that's enforced by

the Federal Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. There's actually an active eight cases in the district I write about south Lake that could end up forcing them to implement some diversity training and strengthening the student Code of Conduct, you know, the same stuff that they rejected as CRT a few years ago. But this is all on the ballot in November. Donald Trump has said his plan is to abolish the federal Education Department and send all of

that work back to the state. But the states handle education policy, including the civil rights stuff and Project twenty and twenty five. I know your listeners know all about this kind of playbook for detailing what a second Trump

term would look like. And they also want to abolige the Education Department and basically end the federal enforcement of civil rights laws by the Education Department, and so the net results will be, as we've seen in other areas, kind of two sets of constitutional rights in America depending on what state you live in, and that'll, you know, just like with abortion, and that'll, in their vision, be applied to education as well.

the Christian right is really steeping on this as an opportunity to not just remove DEI, but to impose conservative Christian worldview. So, like, there's all these laws to put up to ten commandments in public schools, to bring in Christian chaplains, to start praying at events, and to get

public funding for private Christian schooling. And it does not seem that most of these objectives are popular, probably with Americans, and so part of the reason I write the book that you know, I'm I'm not trying to tell people how to vote or what they need to do, but I think the more people become aware of what's happening, who's behind it, and what their goals are, people will make maybe better decisions.

they meant it, and that kind of stuff that when people pay attention, they they vote against this.

far right school board candidates. Now a year or two later, they're looking taking a closer look and seeing, wait a second, wait, what are they doing? And they're realizing it's first of all, the story that they were fed was untrue. It was just a strong man to get them routed up. And then they're seeing the policies that they're putting forward, removing books, bringing in chaplains, all these sorts of things, and they're saying, wait,

that's not what I wanted. I feel duped. And so I think there are people, even not just moderate Republicans, just you know, maybe even Trump voting Republicans who are tapping on this. And I've seen that in communities. I've seen I've seen school board members. There were one in North Texas recently. There's an article on who ran on this anti woke agenda. She's going to save the kids and get on the school board. And then she got on.

She took a look at the policies and the curriculum, and she thought, wait, this is just all they're doing is teaching kids to be kind to each other. There's no secret plot here. And so she's now come out and changed her cortunity is going public with that story. And so I do think it's just a challenge of telling people the truth about what's happening.

to be like, this is not real. And again, like American history, recent American history is lined with people who have who have been in red states, had Red senators and then been like this is too much like think of Kansas.

wanting criminal charges against board members. And I've been watching her on social media and as she's watched the school board kind of go into this, the Carrol School board in South Flake is just you know, they're all seven members are now from this faction that was anti CRT, anti DEI, and she's seeing the kind of Christian nationalism piece of it, and she didn't know that was going

to be part of it. And so this mom who was the most extreme is trying to like lead a recall effort forri Ki's board members that she she supported. She supported it. She's not progressive, she's not liberal. She's not even a modern conservative. She's very conservative. She's saying that's enough.

to the core of our democracy, voting rights, and of course jerrymandering, the drawing of the district lines that decide who goes to Congress, all in the hands of state lawmakers. And when I realized that, and I realized that I wanted to focus on it, I tried to figure out how I could have the biggest impact, and I really

started to organize my community in that direction. And six months later, Daniel Squadron resigned from New York State Senate to start the States Project, and I joined him there because I believed in the mission so much to change the balance of power in state chambers to elect majorities that are focused on improving people's lives.

races do not. So when I started to realize that there were these fifty mini congresses in our country that were deciding so much about how we live our lives and about the state of our democracy, and that it was like, actually cheaper to influence and affect these races than it would be to affect federal races, I understood that I had the power to gather rooms together, you know, backyards with ten people with sushi and beer, or you know, living rooms with eight people in pizza and wine and

talking about state legislatures. And once I started to learn how the right wing had focused on shifting power and state legislatures, I started to learn that if we could do it that way too, it would be incredibly impactful to flips of these states. So I started to form what I called the Giving Circle, which was just a bunch of people coming together and putting in whatever they could to pool resources. And we really learned a lot. So we learned things like from twenty ten to twenty sixteen,

Democrats lost nearly one thousand state legislative seats. As we stared at the White House and felt good about having elected President Obama, but in those states where their right toook power in state houses and state senate, they made people's lives bad. They defunded the education and put in right to work laws and got it environmental protections. But people didn't say that must be my state senator, my state house rep. Because most people don't know who goes

to their state capital for them. And once we started to see these power centers that had been operating in darkness and how little we needed to get together to help change them, we started to kind of walk through the world with more power by pooling our resources together with friends and neighbors and families. And that first year in twenty seventeen, right when Daniel Squadron resigned from Albany to start the State's Project, we went into Virginia with him.

It was twenty seventeen. Virginia has odd year elections for their state legislature. We were trying to help slip the House Delegates and there were ten candidates who we finished the funding for. Nine of those folks won their seats, and the balance of power in Richmond got so close, just one seat away from flipping that The next year, Virginia expanded Medicaid, and we felt connected to that policy

outcome and we wanted to see more change. So that's when I really stopped writing and started a Giving Circles program at the States Project to help other people organize their friends and their families and their neighbors to do this strategic political giving, because I think that sometimes we get really focused on the races at the top of the ticket, the things that are on the news, the people who are on MSNBC at night and on the front page of the newspapers, But the state legislators that

we are supporting in these tipping point seats in states where the balance of power can be shifted are folks that most people won't have heard of, They won't know their names, they won't know anything about them. But these are the people who are deciding whether a state abortion access, who are deciding the voting rights in the state, who are deciding on climate policy and healthcare and civil rights

and education funding. One big, shining example of this is in twenty twenty two, the State's Product was in Michigan to help whip the State House and the States Senate. We won both of those chambers by fewer than four

hundred votes to make one seat majorities in Michigan. Now, last year in Congress, they passed about thirty bills right in Washington d C. Michigan passed three hundred and twenty one with those new majorities, and they were able to codify the right to abortion in the state constitution and end those right to work laws so the unions can be strong again, and free breakfast and lunch for all school children, and the strongest climate bill in the country,

stronger than New York's or California's. In Michigan. So these are the types of foundational changes we can see when we focus here, and groups of everyday people who are coming together can really really move the needle.

of that change. So the Giving circles model for political giving is a really strong one because not only does it kind of help raise electoral dollars for the state's project to kind of focus and target this strategic way to shift power, but also because it brings communities of people together in connection, people with shared values coming together and gaping in backyards like we were in the other night, or living rooms or zoom rooms, and feeling the energy

of a community is an incredibly powerful way to walk through the world. I didn't know that I could organize that first year, our giving circle organized one hundred thousand dollars.

I had no idea that I could do that. But little by little, from donations from twenty five dollars to one thousand dollars at a time, we brought in enough people to make that math problem more And now I know that that is something that I can do, and it makes me walk through the world with more power, not only for this political venture, but also for my neighborhood, for my local school, for anything that I care about.

Developing those skills of bringing attention to resources to something that I care about has been a piece of me figuring out that I am powerful and I do not have to be a witness to what is happening in our country. I can be a part of fighting for our democracy. And the thing about plugging in at this level is I can really see the impact of your work. I just mentioned Michigan in those slim margins, but they

weren't the slimmest of twenty twenty two. We were also in Minnesota to try to flip the state Senate and we did that by one hundred and ninety one votes. So the trifecta meaning the governor's mansion and both chambers being in Democratic hands in Minnesota happened because of one seat in the state Senate one hundred and ninety one votes in Pennsylvania in an even slimmer margin, which in twenty twenty two, the state's project was there to target

twelve seats. We got all twelve, but the final one was won by sixty three votes. So what I said to every giving circle leader that had chosen Pennsylvania that year was that was you, because if every backyard end, zoom room and gathering hadn't happened, I don't know if we would have been able to win that majority. And shifting power in Harrisburg means we've elected the first black woman Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania and Billy has the gabble on policy and it has been incredible to

watch that happen. And it is because of people organizing their communities, and we all have that power when we bring our people.

work on a tie. We see a path to a tie there and we're also going to be in Nevada to try to build a supermajority against a right wing governor who vetos everything. So if we can build a super majority, we can override some of those vetos and get some good policies passed. And we're also in Kansas and North Carolina, both places to break a right wing supermajority.

Kansas has the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, whose veto has been overridden on a bunch of things, including limits on abortion, which the voters, as we saw, did not agree with, but the legislature passed them anyway. In North Carolina, where we just need to break that supermajority because there's an important governor's race, but even if Josh Stein, the Democrat, wins the governor's mansion, he will not have power unless

we break the super majority. So we're working in the state House there and the final state for the first time, we're going to be in Wisconsin because they have new fairer map thanks to Supreme Court race that was one last year with the help of a lot of activism. And in Wisconsin, those FARA maps mean that we see a path to potentially flipping the Assembly and certainly gaining ground there. So those are our targets for twenty twenty four.

like that's a tragedy. But Wisconsin has not been able to do those same things because of their state legislature.

that's really what giving circles are for. I tell every giving circle leader that starts one that they are turning on the porch light for strategic political gear, and that when they approach friends and family with the story of this effort, they are really giving people an opportunity to have an impact that they didn't know was possible. You know, when I started working at the State's Project, a friend

of mine said, oh, how's the fundraising gig going? And I was like, I'm not fundraising, I'm flipping state legislatures. And she said through fundraising, right, And I was like, oh my gosh, I guess I'm fundraising. But really, what I think I'm doing is walking into a room and saying to people, you can have a political impact that you didn't know was possible. At the foundations of our country. It's where the right wing's been building power for decades.

And I'll take my word for it. Ask the Kochs and the Melons and Escapes and the devoces like this is where the rubber meets the road on policy and on congressional elections and on the bills that are rising up to the Supreme Court. Right, it was a Mississippi law that took down Row. And if that one hadn't done it, there were sixteen other states that had keued up abortion vans. Yeah, and they queued up those bands specifically to rest of the Supreme Court to challenge Row.

And that was state legislatures that did that. And there is also a lever over the presidential here because not only does state legislators decide who can vote and when and how in their states, but also because the pack to steal the presidency in twenty twenty ran directly through state legislatures. It wasn't senators and congress people who Trump called into the Oval office in December of twenty twenty, it was state lawmakers from Michigan, from Minnesota, from Pennsylvania

and Arizona. He was asking them to change their electors and hand him their elect for or college votes, because state governments handle their elections. So it's this ultimate power center that can really be changed with a fraction of the investment that you would spend on a federal race. But it's hard for people to figure out, Okay, which are the potential tipping point seats in which states is

a power shift possible? So that's what the State's Project has done with a research team and a ton of data. But what giving circles do is they sign up at Statesproject dot org. They start their own pay which our team sets up, and then they've got a place to bring their friends and family and say, we are doing a strategic political movement here where we are helping the State's Project target these tipping point seats to shift power.

It's all been figured out. We choose our target state together, and then we march in there to these strategically chosen races where we will not have heard of these candidates, but they are the folks who are deciding these issues. I would say to her, think about starting a giving circle, Think about joining a giving circle. Checkout statesproject dot org and try to figure out if there's a way to plug in, because there really is, especially if you're someone

who wants to do this with friends and family. And I promise folks that when you start inviting people in, they will thank you. Because everyone is looking for a place to have political impact right now and it's not easy to find.

I mean, Virginia is the last southern state that doesn't have restrictions further restrictions on abortion post obs and we see that, you know, after this Florida ban, Virginia is the spot people are coming to like, this is really important, and not just for the state itself, but for our country. You know, this is our country. There aren't country borders between our states. We are in the United States, and we have to care about what happens in each of

these places. So I absolutely think it is a place. We stu a sign on our office store that said, not where the glamor is, just where the power is. And I really believe.

some mailers. Now this is not some complicated thing, but when we ignore state legislative races, we just leave the field. And that's really where the right wing's been building and we've been letting it go. So we're fighting back.

and be accepted. This is a flawed system that the Republicans, and believe me, I'm a former Republican, guys, I can tell you if we want to figure out how to game a system, we'll game the damn system.