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 Rep.
Ronnie Jackson, who handed out drugs freely during President Trump's White House tenure, is demanding Biden take a drug test because shame is not a word in the MAGA dictionary. We have such a great show for you today. Senator Martin Heinrich stops by to talk to us about what he's seeing in New Mexico and how we ban bump stocks. Then we'll talk to the acl u's Deirdre Shippling about how they are fighting back against some of the worst
ruins in America. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Welcome back. It's Monday, so it's Rick Wilson Day.
Wally Jong Fast, I am delighted to join you once again in this vale of tears, this wood of woe, this eternal darkness.
So one of the things that everyone on the left is not happy about is that Donald Trump has closed the fundraising gap. My takeaway from this is a little bit different, and maybe it's wrong, but you know, yes, he's raised a ton of money. But my question is he had to spend one hundred million dollars on legal fees, So how much of that money And even like RNC money where his daughter in law is in charge, isn't necessarily going to nuts and bolts campaign stuff, am I right?
Correct? Look, he has gigantic legal debts. And let's also put this in perspective. Fifty million dollars this is from one weirdo. Yeah, okay, if teen million dollars is from one weird dude. And even though all the CEO types are drifting back towards Trump.
Some are, some aren't. Because remember that Andrew Ross Sorkin thing where he said he was in the room with them and they were all like, oh, he's completely crazy.
Yeah, But a lot of them that are writing checks are not blowing the doors off. They're writing that consolidated maxed out check which is to the campaign, the super pac in the RNC of nine hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars, which for these guys is rounding error. They have that in the cushions of their Gulf Stream six fifties. So yes, Trump raised a lot of money. I'm not surprised why are people surprised it's not a big deal.
He's gonna burn through it like a maniac. He has gigantic legal bills that are still running at a full tilt pace. He's gonna skim off a third of it for himself, for his own personal skim. You know. That's what happens here, guys, when it goes into Maga Inc. Or when it goes into the Trump campaign. If you drill through the reports, you're gonna find somewhere in those reports like the XYZ Political Development Company in Delaware, which is registered to another LLC in Wyoming, which is right
to another LLC in the Cook Islands. And that's Donald Trump's skim. He always takes a cut. He's taking. I will bet you a third of that money that comes out of this deal will go to Trump personally. It will not be spent in the campaign at all.
Right, A lot of it will be spent at his golf clubs and his right I mean, they'll be a fair amount of that, but.
It will also a lot of it will just go to him personally. They are skimming money out of the campaign at a grotesque pace. The second part of this is they've been hand to mouthing now for six months.
And Jesse pointed out that three million dollars of Trump money earlier in June went to a mysterious company with the post office box in North Carolina not registered in the state.
Sorry, go on, Oh really, and oddly, Laura Trump is from North Carolina. One, what a strange coincidence.
I mean, why assume criminality just because the guy has all the criminal exposure.
Just because he's a criminal surrounded by criminals who crimes all the time.
Yeah, I mean just because of the crimes of don't assume criminality continue? Yes, yes, sorry to interrupt you.
They are also about six months behind on actually doing the workout in the States. They haven't been average, they haven't been organizing. Biden is way ahead of that. He's been spending and investing the money. And look, who thought this wasn't gonna happen. Trump always raises a lot of money from his MAGA base when he's in trouble. And he's in trouble. He's about to go get sentenced for his thirty four felony convictions in about two weeks, rip pour one out. Steve Bannon will not be there to
host the war room defending Donald Trump. The day Trump is convicted and sentenced, because he will be serving in a federal prison.
Ourp scabby Steve Steve Bannon went up to hire the DC Court of Appeals. They turned it down, everyone except the Trump appointee. So Nasty Bannon really is going to jail.
He is really going to jail. That was apparently the last stop on this crazy train for Steve Bannon. And we've also learned that Steve Bannon will not be going to a club fed, he will not be going to the soft dorm room style prison because he's also a guy facing additional felony.
Charges in September.
So we're going to see that I think end very very ugly. And look, I'm not saying that I'm going to ship contraband to Steve Bannon over and over again while he's in prison. I'm not saying that I'm going to mail in things like hacksaw blades and say Steve, this is what you needed, or that I'm going to send him Japanese tentacle porn. But if it happens, I will be amused.
I just read that Steve Banner is going to go to the Supreme Court, and I don't think you know, what we see with Trump is Trump gets away with stuff, but his henchmen just to ask Rudy Giuliani how that.
Goes, that is it.
I think you're going to see a last ditch Supreme Court play. But the reality is the guy is this is not an easy case for Steve Bannon to get taken up by the Supreme Court.
They're not going to take it up. They don't protect Trump's people like I mean, if you look at Rudy and you look at you know, Trump's people don't get the same treatment. You look at the January sixth riders and you look at Jenna Alice, and nobody in Trump's orbit gets away with it the way Trump gets away with it.
That's correct. I go back to this over and over again. The number of people who have you not processed the fact that when Donald Trump gets sentenced, even if he gets house arrest or some sort of parole or some sort of modified sentence or a deferred sentence, he will not be allowed to associate with felons. That's the rule everywhere and everybody around this damn campaign. It's got a
higher felon to campaign operative ration. Than any campaign I've ever seen in history, and I've worked in some Republican campaigns, so I can tell you it's a lot.
It's funny because I was on Ari Melbourne Show with a parole officer and we were talking about like conditions of parole and he put up like a graphic that was all of Trump's people, and she's like, you know, you're really not supposed to have like a gang activity when you're on And I thought to myself, like, it really is kind of like a gang, like all of these people who are chalons. Felantastic, Yes, felantastic. I want
to talk to you about this Moody's. So on Friday, Moody's analyst showed that Trump is actually the worst possible candidate for the economy. Basically, the baseline is that Biden's victory will have no effect on inflation, and Trump's victory would increase inflation. So the baseline here is two point four Biden with the Democratic Congress two point four, Biden with a divided Congress two point four, Trump with a
GOP Congress three point six. Because the theory of the case here is that it is very inflationary to do the things Trump wants to do, which are tariffs, tax cuts, and mass deportation squad so tightening the labor market, making things more expensive, and then flooding the economy with you know, cheap cash from the tax cut.
The Moody's piece, if Trump could read, he probably would have, you know, issued some raging condemnation of it.
But those libtards at Moody's.
For serious people looking at that, there was a I think a very clear understanding that the models there that they're talking about there for the economy, everything that is alleged to be Trump's strength is actually the counter is true. The opposite is true. There won't be a sweeping economic boom under Trump because the things he wants to do will explode in his face.
Yeah, I'm shocked that someone who's an abject moron who knows nothing about anything would be so incredibly bad at stuff.
On Thursday of last week, he was tweeting about the Smoot Holly Act, the Smoot Holly tariffs that made the Great Depression into a raging economic bonfire from hell that nearly destroyed the American and world economy. None of it makes any sense, but it's a reminder that Donald Trump's not smart, That Donald Trump is not an intellectual, he's not a successful businessman. None of it's real, and it just it's crushingly stupid.
But there are still very rich people who support him. Maybe because they think they're going to get a tax cut.
That's the only reason that they keep supporting him. I wrote a piece on my substec last week saying, you know, if you were to do if you're a Wall Street private equity person or a venture capital person in the Silicon Valley and you're going about to invest in somewhere, you will do a risk assessment. You will look at this investment and say, is this going to have a return? What is the risk level to it? Is the risk
worth the return? And there's absolutely not one area of Donald Trump political more financial, regulatory legislative in a second term that wins for these people. They're not going to get their tax cut, and I'll tell you why. Let's just hypothesize from.
Moments they're going to get their tax cut, but we're all going to be on fire.
There is going to be a democratic House of representatives. Right This is a political certitude right now, given the current landscape in this country. It will be either a majority or a big majority. The Republicans have in the House, races are burning alive. The Senate is going to be a lot closer and may be a Republican, but it will not be a big majority. It will not be a healthy majority because they have also screwed the pooch and they're also experiencing everything Crump touches dies, and.
They have really terrible, terrible candidates, shit.
Tier, horrifyingly bad candidates at a level that we have to go back to. Like Christine O'Donnell, I'm not a witch to get to that.
Can I ask you just sidebar who you think the worst of these Republicans Senate candidates is.
Well, I'm starting to think Royce White up there in Minnesota might be right up.
To her.
One hundred child support. You don't clean that shit up before you run. What's wrong with your brain?
Yeah? I agree? But what about you know we got Carrie Lake Part ten thousand.
I was just about to get to carry Lake. Carrie Lake has not shall we say, learned and improved as a candidate, and she tried to keep it locked down for a few weeks and tried to stop like being overtly crazy on air. But you know what it's like, Margor Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and Carry Lake and Sarah Palin. The crazy always wants to come out. The crazy always wants to come out.
I think Dave McCormick taking his jet from Westport, Connecticut.
I love that he commutes from Westport to his multimillion dollar basically unoped you pied home in Pennsylvania. They use that house for parties. They don't keep clothes there. They bring suitcases to stay in their supposed residents.
Obviously, Dave McCormick has wanted to be a Senator from Pennsylvania for such a long time. This is his second run. He's so rich, Like, just move to fucking Pennsylvania. How hard is this?
There are lovely places to live in Pennsylvania.
I mean, or don't run for Senate from there.
There are extremely pleasant neighborhoods in Pennsylvania.
No, No, there's.
Plenty of beautiful places on the main line.
That you live.
Jesse's like New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Karinas, I think it's like, you know, he's a terrible candidate. The guy with the porn stash Hoofdy who lives in California but commutes to Wisconsin to run for Senate.
You know, look, the idea that people live where they run. It used to be something in America, where I believe. I've made these ads before, and they used to work. Shouldn't we have a senator for Wisconsin who really lives in Wisconsin. That's why we're not voting for a carpetbagger John Jones. I've made one hundred of those ads, right, They used to work, And now, especially for Magas, it's like we live in the universal manga nation. I just
I don't care. As long as he believes that Donald Trump is golden and his piss smells like a river of honey, I will support. They don't care anymore. I think it's an affront to a representative democracy if you don't live in the state you represent. I can tell
you one thing. Tommy Tuberville, who could just be confused. Okay, he's not smart, he could be confused, but he lives and pays taxes on his primary residence, which is homestead exempted, which means that's your primary residence at a beautiful house on thirty A down here in the Florida Panhandle. He literally flies into Pensacola, Florida, and drives to his house over in Destin. He doesn't live in Alabama. He doesn't own property in Alabama. He doesn't in a home, an apartment,
a shack, or anything in Alabama. He lives in Florida. And yet somehow in this country morons go Oh Tom A. Tuberville is the greatest Alabama in the history of Alabama. What the fuck?
Yeah, it's not even clear that Tuberville is a real person. Who even knows? Now, I'm just kidding, but he is quite stupid, and I think Alabama's probably better for not having him live there. Sorry, he really is a Florida man, no offense or anything. Oh truly, thank you, Rick Wilson.
You are welcome as always. Have a very fine.
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Martin Heinrich is this senior senator from New Mexico.
Welcome to Fast Politics Senator.
Himer, it's great to be here.
You've come to the Senate with a bump stock band after the Supreme Court overruled the Trump bumpstock band. Talk to me where we are and just sort of explain the craziness of all this. I feel like it's important to remember that this Supreme Court is really not normal at all.
No, I think that's that's a fair description of things. I started working on legislation to prohibit bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting. I sat down with Jeff Flake, former Republican Senator from Arizona at the time. We drafted
legislation and introduced it. But we also encouraged the then Trump administration to create an ATF rule prohibiting these things because they effectively turn a semi automatic firearm into a fully automatic firearm, which is something that we've all accepted for one hundred years now, has been prohibited under US law. So to see the Supreme Court reverse that was pretty shocking.
And to see so many at my Republican colleagues now take that on as if it is normal that we would allow fully automatic weapons under the Second Amendment is pretty shocking.
I mean, I was glad to see you guys doing this ban right away. Where are we with it?
Well, we tried to put it on the floor under a rule called unanimous consent. It's where you just go to the floor you ask unanimous consent to bring up a piece of legislation. And so that was objected to by one of my Republican colleagues. And now the next step is to try to get floor time to put it on the floor under the normal procedures, which would require sixty votes to overcome up a filibuster.
Are there sixty votes for that?
You know?
I don't know the answer to that question right now. There were a lot of Republicans who expressed support for prohibiting bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting. Many of them have now reversed horse When asked by journalists what their position is today, a number of them have said, you know, they support the Supreme Court's position on this, which is pretty radical.
So you'll try that. There have been a number of unanimous consent votes taken up in the Senate over the last couple months. Can you talk about a few of them, because I think they really kind of explain where Republicans are in there insanity.
Well, obviously a lot of the action in the Senate has been around things like birth control and IVF. We've just seen the Republican Party drift further and further to the right what used to be a debate that was really centered around abortion. I don't think it's fair to assume that today you can trust the modern Republican Party to protect things as fundamental as access to birth control or access to IVF for example.
Yeah, that's so crazy. One of the things that I am struck by with the overturning of the bump stock ban is that the Republicans on the Supreme Court, the Conservatives the majority, really they sort of made this like insane textualist case for machine guns. I mean, it doesn't hypocrisy kind of blow you away.
I was really shocked by this ruling. You have to sort of twist yourself in knots to not accept the fact that what these devices do. And we talk about bump stocks, but it's a number of these things. There are things called block switches as well, that you can print on a three D printer and use on a semi automatic pistol to make it fully automatic as well. They're just incredibly dangerous. I'm a gun owner. I've been a gun owner my entire life. I've grown up around firearms.
I grew up in a rural community where it was very normal to own firearms, and so in no way am I anti Second Amendment or anti firearm. You know, my kids literally grew up mostly eating wild game that we all hunted together, and that was that was literally how I fed my kids as they grew up. But it's shocking to me to see how you can take something normal and just take it to such an extreme because we saw the direct impacts of this in Las Vegas,
and there's just no legitimate use for these devices. Like there's not a self defense reason that you would need a bump stock or lolock switch. There's not a legitimate military or law enforcement use for them. They are kind of tailor made for mass shootings. They're not particularly accurate, but they're very good at making a normal firearm fire really really fast. There's no constituency for that. I mean,
that's only really good for honestly mass shooting. I find the ruling to be incredibly sort of contorted and just shocking at how out of step this Supreme Court is with reality much less the you know, political center of the nation.
So you you are from the great say of New Mexico, one of my favorites. You guys have fires going. There's zero percent contained as of now. What's going on.
So we've had a number of fires this spring, and most of them had been relatively manageable.
We were able to get on top of them.
These last few fires in southern New Mexico, it was evident within the first hour that they were going to be just terrible, terrible fires. And you know, it's a it's a combination of things, clearly driven by climate, but also these fires started in places that had not seen fire or thinning in recent years, and the conditions were just really extreme, lots of wind, very dry, and so we have thousands of my constituents out of their homes right now because of the impact of these fires, and
whole communities that are evacuated. It's a pretty challenging and extreme situation. We've asked for a major disaster declaration from the President and that process is moving forward. There are resources really pulled into New Mexico from all across the West to fight these fires. But they're very, very challenging. The fire behavior is very, very challenging.
One of the things we interviewed Governor pull Us from Colorado, and he said that because that's another state, very similar topography, has also a huge fire problem from climate change. He said that they didn't actually have their own fire planes because when you know, there's a big fire. The states that have the sort of the fire helicopters, I think they're helicopters are better off is you have a very low state tax, so you don't have the same kind
of coffers that Colorado does. Do you guys have structural problems.
Like that, you can really only effectively fight the scale of fires that we have in the West today through a national response. Most states do not have either the tankers which are fixed wing aircraft, or the helicopters to be able to put fire retardant for water onto these fires. So luckily I've worked for years to help base something called a very large tanker in Albuquerque, and so we have fixed wing aircraft in New Mexico that also serves
other states. They often go to Arizona or even to Idaho, but those assets are based out of Albuquerque, and so we have had a lot of resources, both from fairly locally based but also from across the West descend on this fire. We've got hundreds of personnel and they come from the hot Shot US and the other firefighting thrus come from all across the West. And so really it's a matter of the scale of the fires today requires a national response.
Do you think there's more that can be done like forest raking controlled burns? I mean, talk to us about what that looks like.
So the biggest investments the Forest Service itself does not have the level of staffing to go out and do thinning and fuel reduction and prescribe fire all by themselves. They typically work, oftentimes through contracts with other entities to do a lot of that work. The biggest investments we've made in that work recently were actually made in the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. We're starting to see the effects of that and we know that that
work really is effected. It's like, first you have to reduce the fuel loads. You have to maintain those fuel loads a low leveled through low level prescribed fire, not the kind of extreme behavior you see here. And you can only do that prescribe fire work under very sort
of narrow conditions. You have to be very careful today because the conditions have changed, and so the Forest Service used to set prescribed fires at times when you could just measure the relative humidity and the wind speed and know whether or not the fire behavior was going to be problematic. We've seen things dry out to the point to where sometimes a standing tree, like a living under us a pine, has lower water content in it than
a dried two by four at home depot. And so we have to be much more careful about when we use some of those tools today because they can get out of hand, and we've lost whole communities as a result of prescribed fire that even got out of control. The conditions on the ground in these western forests are really changing and it requires a much more aggressive response. It requires a lot more thinning. We have funded that at levels we've never seen before, but the need is
really acute. We have to find a way to protect these forests in a very different environment than we were in thirty or thirty five years ago.
New Mexico is a blue state, but it's a state with a large Latino population. Has one sort of swingy congressional seat in the state of your three congressional seats. I'm wondering if you could talk about what you're seeing on the ground, what people are concerned about. Are you seeing any Biden policy is like, for example, this citizenship for spouse's policy. Are you seeing anything that you think is helping the Biden admin and the Biden campaign and what it looks like on the ground.
In New Mexico, we've seen the same challenges that you know. When COVID really messed up supply chains around the world, it was inevitable that we are going to have inflation. That was really painful. I think that the Biden administration and our monetary policy has done a good job of finally managing that back. But those inflationary pressures are baked.
In now and they are a.
Real real stress for families in New Mexico and around the country. I think where the Biden administration where their real strong suit is, is that the policies that they put in place through things like the Inflation Reduction Act, are creating great jobs in New Mexico and around the country. Like we have seen a surge in manufacturing, both new manufacturing moving to the state and also existing manufacturing places like Array technologies that makes trackers for utility scale solar projects.
They're expanding as a result of those policies. The Chips and Science Act that reinvested in American leadership and semiconductors has led to Intel Corporate reinvesting in their factory in New Mexico. Those are the things that I think the Biden administration could really build a narrative around that is close to what people care about in my state.
When you talk to people and they're talking about, you know, a chips factory that's opened up, or semiconductor factory, I mean, do voters know that this is from bin AIRA policies or do they not necessarily put together where this is coming.
From across the board.
On average, most people don't realize that's a direct result of policy. But that's what elections are about. Like, we need to drive that narrative. We need to make it happen through the advertisements that both the Biden campaign and campaigns like mine do, and I certainly in New Mexico, I will drive that narrative and I will connect the dots for the voters because in our fragmented media environment today, it's really hard for voters to connect dods. We have to tell that story.
Do you think that Democrats will keep that congressional seed.
I'm optimistic about that congressional seat just because we have such a good candidate there, Gabe Vesquez is doing everything right. He is working incredibly hard. His opponent is very far out of the mainstream, and so you know, if anybody can keep that congressional seat.
It's gate That's really interesting. So I want to just sort of ask you, as you know we are in this like run up to the election, do you think I mean, Republicans have made a lot of threats because they're mad about Trump getting convicted. Can they really slow appointments? I mean, will they be able to mess up Biden's judges and what does that look like?
Can they slow things down? Yes, to be honest, they've been doing that for a long time. We will grind through those appointments and continue to appoint federal judges. That's or to the mission of the Senate. We're going to continue to do that.
Thank you so much, Senator.
Oh, it's been great to talk with you.
Dear dress. Chiefling is the ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer.
Welcome to Fast politics. Do you draw?
Thank you, thank you for having me.
What is your title at the ACLU.
My title is Chief Political and Advocacy Officer.
Can you explain to us what the ACLU does and what it used to do and just give us like a two second sort of who you are and what the ACLU is as an organization.
So the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, is an organization that's more than one hundred years old, and it actually started as a group of activists that we're organizing protests against overreach by the government to restrict free speech and restrict people's rights and liberties to express themselves. So
that was sort of of its beginning. It eventually became an organization that has affiliates in every single state in this country, so there's an ACLU in every state in addition to the national and it became known for being a very powerful litigation shop. It is known for being
sort of an activist law firm, if you will. But a part of the ACLU that may be less known but is increasingly a big piece of the work that the organization does is its advocacy and political work, and that is sort of going back to its roots kind of where it came from as an organization, and this part of the work is around trying to pass pieces of legislation that would protect civil rights and civil liberties,
both at the federal and at the state level. We do a lot of work around passing ballot initiatives and states where legislation is not possible, we do work to educate voters about the difference between candidates on civil rights and civil liberty so that they can make informed choices where a non partisan organization, we don't endorse, but we do do hard hitting, sharp and clear voter education work around candidates, and we do a lot of grassroots organizing.
The organization as a whole has over six million grassroots dues paying members, and we mobilize those folks to show up at state houses, to lobby their elected officials, to come to rallies at the Supreme Court, other actions that really show where the public is.
So I would love it if you could explain to us, For example, there is a Louisiana and its infinite insanity just past the law that says that the Ten Commandments must be visible in every school classroom. What do you do there?
Well, we are suing because it's a clear violation of the division between church and state in this country, which is long standing. Louisiana did that as a way to galvanize its base and kind of push envelope right, not expecting that it would actually stand. But I think, you know, this is part of a bigger trend of really trying
to reset the fundamental rules of our democracy. And you know, I think I don't know if you followed, but the you know, there's recently an expose on Samuel Alito being asked questions around this, around going back to a country that is oddly and going back to sort of a more traditional Christian country, and he admitted on record that that was what he wanted, which is caused such a huge public outcry because it really goes to the heart of what our country is supposed to be about, which
is freedom of religion, you know, freedom of action. Right. We're supposed to be a multicultural, multi racial country, and this really is challenging the fundamental compact that this country was based on.
Yeah, talk to me about another case you guys are working on, which is histalities.
And TALA is an abbreviation for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act which is a long standing federal law that requires any hospital with an emergency room that receives federal Medicare funds, which is most hospitals in this country, to provide stabilizing treatment to anyone who comes to the hospital experiencing a medical emergency. Right. So, the idea is, you don't let people die. Anybody comes into the emergency room gets stabilizing treatment. And so Idaho has decided to.
Exempt that you do let people die.
Right, exempt pregnant women from receiving this stabilizing treatment if that stabilizing treatment includes abortion. And so it is essentially they'll let women die in a parking lot law that Idaho has tried to pass. And the Supreme Court is considering this exemption of Idaho from Intella right now. Furthermore, the Supreme Court could have put a stay to this law with I could have said, keep providing stabilizing care to patients as they come into the hospital until we
make a decision. The Supreme Court decided not to do that to let Idaho go forward and implement this law, this quite barbaric law, and as a result, six patients already with pregnancy related medical emergencies have been turned away have had to figure out a way to go to a different state to receive the kind of emergency treatment that they needed. And medical experts estimate that this will be around twenty people by the end of the year. So this is a law that is actually having real
impact on real people right now in Idaho. And if the Supreme Court allows Idaho to discriminate against pregnant women this way, we expect others state we'll try to follow suit.
Do you think that people are coming up with crazier and crazier things because they know that the Supreme Court is willing to entertain crazier and crazier things.
Absolutely.
Will you talk us through what that looks like, because it seems as if some of this stuff, I mean, like the Louisiana situation, feels like they know they have a Supreme Court that's in the tank for them, and so that's where we're going.
Yes, I think so. And I think to understand the kind of race to the bottom, if there is a bottom that is happening right now, we also have to understand the attempts that are happening simultaneously to erode fundamental tenets of democracy, things like every person can vote as the right to vote and have their will be talented things like having fair districts that are representative, so that you have elected officials who are accountable to their voters.
Kind of basic precepts that we have based our democracy on, or that are our democracy is aspirationally based on being eroded. And when we erode those kinds of checks and balances, then we do see this crazier and crazier kind of race to the fringe, and we see politicians acting way
out of sync with the majority of voters. And I'll just draw your attention to a very recent poll out of Kaiser Family Foundation which found that out of all women voters, so Republicans, Independents, Democrats, at everybody, all women voters, eighty six percent of women voters support laws that protect access to abortion for patients who are experiencing pregnancy related emergencies eighty six percent. So it just is one example,
and there are a million other examples like this. Ninety five percent of Americans in our country support access to birth control. And yet right when Democrats in the US seidate brought the Access to Contraception Bill protecting access to contraception bill to the floor, just a couple of weeks ago, almost all Republicans voted against it, and we're seeing this over and over again. So it doesn't stop at abortion.
Abortion is just sort of the entry point the restrictions and the attempts to kind of roll back what I consider a fundamental equality, you know, the ability to make your own life choices, the ability to control your body, to control whether or not you become pregnant, when you become pregnant, how many children to have, like all of these sort of very fundamental life choices which are core to having a society where people are equal, where people
are free. This is all being attempted to being rolled back by the right, and it doesn't It starts with abortion, it extends to birth control, it extends to IVF, and I don't think there is any end point. There is no bottom. It extends no fault divorce, right, that's another
item that's on the list, fealing no fault divorce. You know, pretty soon we're going to be seen laws that you know, require women to get their husbands or their father's permission to do a variety of things that people are used to doing right now. So I do think there is no bottom to it, and that's why it's important to have a really strong representative democracy.
What else are you seeing that is on your radar that's freaking you out?
I mean, I think this idea of normalizing using the Comstock law.
Yeah, oh, talk about Comstock. I want you to sort of give us the uh Comstock history a little bit.
So.
Anthony Comstock was as zealot, a religious zelic who lived in the eighteen hundreds and was really focused on what he called anti obscenity, very focused on pornography and kind of you know, making it illegal to send pornography through the mail, making it illegal to disseminate pornography. That's what he was mainly focused on. So the Comstock Law was passed in the mid eighteen hundreds. This is a law that is now being raised by the right as sort
of a backdoor abortion ban. They are interpreting it to mean that it can cover any kind of medication, abortion, birth control, any kind of tools that could be used in an abortion, which, by the way, are the same kind of tools that one would use with miscarriage hair. Because this law is already on the books but hasn't been enforced in more than one hundred years. They are trying to resuscitate it and turn it into a legal architecture for what is essentially a back door abortion ban.
So what it would allow them to do is instead of actually just passing a federal ban on all abortion, which is what they want to do, they could just say, well, we're going to start we're seeing the Comstock law, and this is what that means. It means regulation of any kind of abortifations. Medication abortion is the most common way for people across our country to access abortion. It's been used for more than twenty years, been used by many
millions of people. It's extremely safe, and it is a way of accessing abortion that's very important for people, especially in rural areas or right now who live in states where it's hard to get care. And one strategy of the right is to use the Comstock Law as a way to prevent women across the country from accessing medication abortion.
And so that's something that I'm deeply worried about. It's something that the Trump campaign has certain advisors to the Trump campaign have been openly talking about.
And two Supreme Court justices right Alito and Thomas.
Exactly, so we know that this is not want a theoretical threat is this could be a very real threat, even though our position is there's no legal basis for it.
I mean, is there anything proactive you can do about the Comstock Act?
Well, there is an effort to repeal it. Tita Smith and other elected officials in Congress have introduced are introducing today actually a bill to repeal the Comstock Act. I do think in the kind of hyperpartisan environment that we're in in Congress right now, I think, you know, we'll have to see kind of what the path forward for that is. But I do think that eventually we want to be in a place where the Comstock Law is off the books.
Such a completely insane sort of country we're living, how else is the ACL you protecting our rights?
So, in addition to our litigation arm and we are suing on all kinds of things to protect rights and liberties across the country, we're also working to advance rights and liberties by passing proactively a federal right to an abortion. So we're working with coalition of organizations reproductive rights, health and justice organizations through a coalition to pass federal protections
for access to abortion. We're also working to pass democracy reform, specifically the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act. We're supporting filibuster reform so that we kind of remove that obstacle from passing the kind of proactive legislation that the American people want. The filibusters along been used as a way to prevent anything from happening, as opposed to using it in the way that it was intended, which is, you know, slow things down, discuss, but don't
stop all action. So those are two top priorities for us, our voting rights and democracy legislation and passing the federal right to abortion. The other area that we're really focused on is protections for transgender people. There have been more than five hundred pieces of legislation introduced in states across the country to restrict transgender people's access to healthcare, ability to participate in sports, ability to be part of society,
use bathrooms, you know, all kinds of things. And I think the solution for this is at the federal level to protect the right of transgender people to exist and
to access to health care they need. And then finally, we're really focused on shifting gears a little bit immigration reform, and really supporting legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for people who are already here as well as people who are coming, as well as the resources to manage the border in an orderly way, in a fair way, so that people are not waiting seven eight years to
have their asylum claims decided. You know, a better approach to border management and a better approach to providing a path to citizenship for immigrants who are here.
Can you just do one second on Trump's deportation squads, because that's one of the many completely insane things he has going is planning for.
Yes, So this is one of the many threats to civil rights and civil liberties that the future Trump administration has promised to enact, and that is mass deportations. So that would look like detention camps all over the country. It would look like deputizing states police forces to round up and deport immigrants, many of whom have been here for years and years, who have families. It would tear families apart, and it would violate people's civil rights in
all kinds of ways. It's a real specter of a descent into an authoritarian regime, which I think none of us want so Yes, that is one of the kind of very dramatic and drastic measures that the Trump campaign has threatened to do in a future Trump administration, which we are fighting to the now.
Thank you, dear tru Thank you so much a moment, Rick Wilson.
Yes, Molli Jong fast, are you prepared for the moment of fuckery?
I am prepared. I am prepared and prepared.
My body is ready for that moment of fuckery.
Le tire, baby, Mollie.
My moment of fuckery occurred in the isolated frontier province of the Islamic state of Louisiana, Stan, in which Imam Jeff Landry, the High Moa of Louisiana Stan, declared that the Hadith of the Quran would be posted in every single classroom in Louisiana Stan. Oh wait, I'm sorry, let me reverse that, because if it had been a Muslim in say, dearborn Michigan putting the Hadith in classrooms, Fox News would be burning the world to the crown and
Republicans would be rioting in the streets. But instead it was Governor Jeff Landry who, in the latest escalation of the culture War, decided that he was going to pass a piece of legislation through the GOP controlled Louisiana legislature to demand the unconstitutional and illegal posting of the Ten
Commandments in every public school classroom. They even picked the size of the posters and the font because they didn't want anybody playing any games with their sacred, with their sacred Christian commandments that were passed down in the Old Testament by Moses, a Jew. They don't understand the Constitution.
They don't for a moment understand why the founders of this country, and I don't mean the goddamn retroactively rewritten revisionist history Glenn Beck style founders who you know, if you listen to Glenn Beck, they all wanted to I ford mustangs and go to prayer meetings on Sunday. But the founders of this country, they believe that forbidding the establishment of a state religion was so important they put it in the very first paragraph of the very first
Amendment to the Constitution textullus. Yeah, this bullshit from Republicans. I'm a constitutional originalist and I believe with the founders what it is sacred. Apparently they don't believe that, because now you've got a lot of magas well. Of course we should be doing that. We're a Christian nation after all. I'm sorry people who say there's no Christian nationalism, there's
no culture war. There lying evidence is right in front of you once again in the Islamic extremeist state of Louisianastan.
My moment is this Ted CRU's documents dump, where you're found a folder of briefing documents on Ted Cruz donors in the Senate. He then shared the photos of those documents in seven posts, which were all removed from the platform owned by free speech absolutist Elon mush.
Why am I not surprised that the king of free speech doesn't like seeing free speed about the guy who's a senator from the state where boy Elon builds his rockets.
I'm shocked, Molly, not surprised, shocked.
I tell you.
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.