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 this CBO, the.
Non partisan Congressional Budget Office, says the Republican megabill.
Will now cost four point one trillion dollars due to higher borrowing costs.
We have such a great show for you today, Know your Enemy's own.
Sam Adler Bell stops by to talk to us.
About why Democrats attack their best messengers. Then we'll talk to NDRC's John Visignano about Texas is an insane jerrymandering plan.
But first the news Somali.
We keep tracking these ICE arrests. We read a report on the last episode that it seems it's gotten through Stephen Miller's skull as odd as it's shaped, that they can't arrest three thousand immigrants a day, and the ICE arrests are actually declining amid the backlash.
So you'll be shocked to hear that. By the way, there was photographs today of ICE agents carrying like little girl.
Yeah yeah, it was horrifor was yesterday, Yeah.
Yeah, yesterday, She's like four eleven, carrying her down the street. They put her in a facility, in that Louisiana facility. Yeah, let me tell you what's happening here. People are seeing these photographs and they are horrified, and they're seeing these videos and they're horrified. They're seeing the kind of stuff that pro Publica reported. I don't know if ESAs, but pro Publica had this sort of amazing and deeply disturbing reporting about all of the windows that ICE agents have
broken in people's cars in order to arrest them. And you have these women crying, you have pregnant women crying, children watching in horror.
I mean, this is this is pretty bleak stuff. And guess what what, voters don't like it.
I know they don't. You know, ICE was actually on my block the day before yesterday.
Ooh, what were they doing?
Well, you know, they were walking around making people scared. And what you saw is a lot of people being various, made in people figuring out how they're going to get in their way, and they had a nice hiring sign on the side of the truck and it was deeply disturbing.
The average arrests it was twelve hundred daily arrests in June, well short of what Stephen Miller's stated goal of three thousand immigration arrests for day.
Here's one of those.
Things that Stephen Miller is about to find out there aren't that many people to arrest. And also, this is just going to I mean, it's going to derail the economy, but before it does, it's going to derail the administration.
And lots of it is in people's lives.
I think it's important to say, like morally reprehensible, politically very stupid, and we're going to see this play out in a real way. I bet we're going to see a play out during this twenty twenty five election cycle too, I really do.
We're seeing these town halls now. And I talked to.
James Talarico, who is a Texas state legislator, or who was a Texas state legislator.
And is now thinking about possibly running for.
The Senate, and he was talking about just how much this world like people are really mad, Like he had a town hall and he said that he had never had so many people at his town hall, Like I think we in the mainstream media may be missing this story of these furious, furious, furious voters.
And I saw it when I was on.
My book tour talk about being a coastal elitist here, but I did.
I saw people really mad.
And I think, you know, when we see this poor polling for Democrats, it's not and we've talked about this before, but I think it's important to just reiterate it. It's not that Democrats have lost interest in other Democrats. It's that Democrats feel that their party is not as mad as they are. And I think that is the real That's what explains those numbers.
Yeah.
Really, what you could see is you can contrust two types of polls. Democratic policy is good, the elected officials were bringing to fight for them.
Not popular, Yeah, not popular because they're not doing what their voters want them to.
That's correct. So one of the things I'm really obsessed with is this Project twenty twenty five tracker. So we're a little over six months into this Trump administration, meaning one eighth of the way through it, Dear God help us, and Project twenty twenty five is already forty seven percent complete.
Yeah, a lot of this stuff they wanted to do in Project twenty twenty.
Five they are clearly doing right.
The attacks on institutions that making the DOJ and arm of the Trump administration. There were a lot of opportunities that the folks at the Heritage Foundation were able to put it together to find, So I think this is probably pretty accurate. I would say that it's just we're just going to have.
To do a lot of a lot of soul searching.
And a lot of regulation, and a lot of connecting with each other and with voters, and we're going to have to really start a kind of now, you know, reconciliation, a kind of return to American normalcy, and it's going to be a long process.
But yes, it's here. We see it happening right now, and it's bad.
Yeah.
Speaking of that, there is a new poll that says most US adults are stressed by grocery costs. I noticed my local grocery store just three weeks ago announced that they have heard their consumers and they are doing everything they can to find the ways they could cut costs at the store because they see how enormously costs of skyrocketed.
No groceries are really expected.
I go to a grocery store and I'm like, huh, it's shockingly expensive. And part of that is inflation. And part of that is inflation, and by the way. I was told that Donald Trump was going to bring the price of groceries down on day one.
You know what day it is like one hundred and ninety.
Something, and the price of groceries they're not down, let me tell you.
But I like that.
My favorite thing is he has it all.
He's laser focused on bringing down the prices of things.
That's why he's walking on the White House roof.
Boy, wait, he's walking on the White House roof.
Oh you haven't seen this. Everybody thinks it's a distraction from Epstein. I actually think it's that he's losing his shit with the de Bedsha.
My favorite thing is that he is laser focused on putting the big banks in the process. The President accuses both JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America of discrimination by refusing to take his personal business.
You know, when you are.
In a Banana republic, it's important that your monarch makes lots of truly unhinged declarations, and this can be one of them. He is going to direct regulators to penalize anybody found who have dropped a client on political grounds, including Donald J.
Trump. Incredible stuff, No notes.
Sam Adler Bell is the co host of the Know Your Enemy Podcast. Welcome to Fast Politics, Sam Adler.
Bell, Hi, Molly, so happy to be here.
Here we are.
Another day in paradise or authoritarian tilt towards whatever is happening here. Tell me what are the things that are keeping you up at night?
Not out of fear, but out of just burning contempt. This story, burning contempt, this story with firing the BLS chief over the bad jobs numbers. I you know, it's like the thing with Trump is you're always going back and forth between like, God, this is a really scary situation and God, this contemptible fool who is a narcissist, who like just shouldn't be anywhere near a single lever of power. Like you can't have a president whose first thought when they get a bad set of jobs numbers
is to shoot the messenger. And it's just it's just so pathetic. I mean, I can see the ways in which it could be really bad. You know, right, people stop trusting these numbers and they install you know whoever they install after you know this interim director.
Mister wonderful, Yeah, mister wonderful.
But even if they were just a person with perfect credentials, people won't trust it. People on the left won't trust it, and they and they have good reason that too, because why do you get rid of the person if not to install somebody who's going to fudge the numbers. And I just so I can see the path to it being ruinous. But at the moment, I just find myself being like, how can anybody think this is okay? How can you just be like, Yeah, that's my guy up there.
When he gets bad news, he fires the person who gives him bad news.
It's so pathetic.
I think you have really explained a fascinating phenomenon as we round into a decade of dealing with Donald Trump, which is it's scary, slash, it's stupid, and I feel like, you know, the Venn diagram of like it's stupid, it's scary, and they are like not quite a circle. So like the Rose Garden redo is just stupid, Like who could
you know? I mean, obviously whatever, there's some historical president for the Rose Garden, but it's largely just you know, but Bureau of Labor Statistics trying to redistrict your way into not losing the majority in the House. That kind of thing is actually quite scary.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, stupid and scary, that's the mix. That's the Trumpian stew at all times. And yeah, it can be hard to know just how to calibrate your own reactions sometimes. But I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty fired up lately.
Really tell us why?
Well?
I the other thing Matt and I in my podcast Know your Enemy we were talking about.
Explain, go on, you go ahead, now go.
Just the sheer scale of the corruption in this administration has really started to get to me because I think it's the kind of story that's hard to keep in your mind or kind of like it's it's just by its very nature, would become numb to it and our
standards change, you know. But Matt was just reading to me from, you know, a story from several months ago about you know, the crypto people who you know, somebody who invested twenty million dollars in Trump's personal crypto coin and therefore got to go, you know, to the meme coin. Meme coin, right, Yeah, I mean we how can we?
That seems like, you know, an age ago, But it's still the case that any anybody, any individual in the world, any rich person, whether they're an agent of a foreign government government or not can give you know, fifty million dollars to Trump in secret for whatever reason. I mean these and you know, the fluctuations in the stock market that allow his cronies to you know, basically insider trade
on the tariff negotiations. Like this kind of stuff would have been the one big scandal in any other administration that we would have talked about for weeks and weeks and weeks. But I find myself just being mostly disgusted by the fact that this administration is just like one giant machine for Mafio, so you know, rackets, basically making money for people that he's friends with.
It feels like you get here by allowing members of Congress to continue trading stocks, by not regulating technology, by some of the feelings, and you know, I think I have old children because I had them when I was very young, like a tea smarter, just kidding, not a teenager,
but pretty young. And they say I'm an neoliberal because that is the biggest insult they can think of, except my other kid, who's like, you're a communist, which again okay, but but there are feelings of neoliberals that got you like and you know, the sort of the sort of go.
Along to get along and the and.
I also think like trying to sort of emulate Reagan in the yeah It's section to thirty.
Yeah, can we talk about that?
Yeah?
Well, I mean I think that's true because I have this thought sometime about like how do we get back from this era where huge parts of the voting populace thinks it's fine for the for the president to basically make the presidency a personal project of his own wealth creation and his family's own wealth. Like it's it's disturbing that he does that. It's even more disturbing that it doesn't seem to be a problem.
Is it the partisanship that has Like is it not a part is it? Is it not a problem for them because it's their team?
I mean, is that why?
I think largely?
But what I what I what I think about in terms of your your question about like how we got here? Is that I think in order for if there's ever if a left party, say the Democrats, probably the Democrats ever becomes a kind of like, you know, the kind of cultural hegemonic leader in this country, it would be because they've been able to credibly you know, point out that it's wrong, evil, anti democratic for the Republicans to just use the machinery of government to make money for
themselves at all times. And the reason that that doesn't really happen, or it hasn't really happened, or that isn't a winning issue for the Democrats, I think, is because they aren't credible on that issue, exactly for the reasons you're saying, because of insider trading, because of you know, just like that that that has the kind of populist, anti plutocratic message has been a minority voice in the party and in fact, you know, to kind of talk out of my own lefty book here, I mean, the
one person who everybody agrees is credible on this issue, Bernie Sanders. Every time he got close to power, the Democrats did everything in their power to prevent him from becoming, you know, the leader of the party.
I mean, not for nothing.
And I hate to be like this kind of prototypical millennial leftist and my feelings about this, but Bernie Sanders is the most popular senator in America.
And why is that?
And he's including with independence, including with Republicans.
Why is that?
Because he does represent this other side of the coin, which is when Bernie Sanders says, I'm disgusted by you know, democrats making money from the stock market, just as I am about Republicans. I'm disgusted by Donald Trump using you know, the office of the presidency to extremely increase his wealth. You know, he seems credible, He really seems like he hates it, and he's not himself some kind of secret rich guy.
The thing about Bernie.
Sanders, he's not the only one, but he is the kind of prototypical figure who represents this credibility in his anti plutocratic message is anti oligarchy message, and he's been on that message, you know, since twenty sixteen, and it's not a coincidence. I think the Democrats haven't been able to adopt that message in a way that seems that's winning, because they also have tried to marginalize Bernie, you know, much less so than they did in Trump's first term.
He's kind of on side now.
But I just think in order for there to be you know, in order for the Democrats to benefit from the graft that this administration engages on a regular basis, they need more figures who seem like they mean it when they you know, as you know, Alex Koburn used to say that their hate is pure, right.
Really, I think important and also true. I wonder though it's so so what you're saying is something that I actually spend a lot of time basically in my head.
I spent almost eighty percent.
Of my day worrying about all of this, right, I just like, you know, what's going to happen to d And it strikes me that Mondani has successfully channeled this populism in a way that is both the populism is a real thing, and he has gone to voters who are not the elites, who are the sort of because like the mayoral ship is always decided not in Manhattan, but really in the Bronx and Brooklyn, which are districts that are not afful you know, they're a mix, right,
And so it strikes me that Mondani has managed to transmit that to working people, the populist message.
I think to a significant degree.
I mean, I also think it's true as much is I think it's tendentious the way that the right tries to use it against him, that there is a huge part of his coalition that is the kind of like downwardly mobile, professional middle class, the millennial socialist types. But I don't really have the same contempt for those people as people on the writer in the center of the party do because those are my friends.
But that's not a huge But that's not I mean, unfortunately for all of us. That's not a huge group, right, Like, no, no, no, A huge group are working people. Like, if you're going to win a primary in New York as a mayor, you are getting voters that are working people from the outer boroughs.
No, absolutely, I mean, I think I think you're totally right about Mom Donnie and the great irony contradiction. I think, you know, embarrassment for the leadership of the Democratic Party is that here's a candidate who ran on affordability, affordability, affordability. If you look at his campaign website, there is basically no single proposal that is not about lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers, except for when people were trying to goad him into talking about Israel.
He only talked about affordability.
He made that his whole project, and that was exactly what the Democrats said was the reason they lost in twenty twenty four. Yeah, because Trump credibly convinced people that he was going to lower prices he was going to make.
Because he said that the lower prices, yeah, I said it.
Yeah.
And so Mom, Donnie built his whole campaign around exactly what the kind of Democratic post mortems said a Democratic candidate should build their campaign around. And now look at who has not endorsed the Democratic primary winner in New York City. Well, both the senators from New York, who one of whom is.
The head of the Senate.
As well as this as well as the head of the Democratic House Caucus, also from New York.
I find it. How are they going to I mean, we know why they're not doing it.
I think we can speculate, but I don't know how they're going to go around saying, like, the huge problem we have is that we can't appeal to working class people and we don't have a credible message about affordability. And then one when one candidate wins in a landslide on that message, they don't endorse him. I mean it's absurd or expected. Absurd or expected.
Jilli Brand really did cover herself in glory when she came out and said that man Donnie was anti submitted because what did she say he did nine to eleven.
I can't remember.
She almost I mean, I think she said that he had had used the word jahad or something like that. She she got mixed up because she she you know, she wanted to talk about globalize the Intifada, which of course also Mamdani doesn't sing.
Did not say, but he must disavow it despite not saying it, he must. No.
I mean, it's.
It's a really bleak it's a really bleak thing. I was talking to my podcast produce, Sir Jesse.
I also have one of those you.
Know that all podcast producers are named Jesse.
But he was he was saying something interesting, which is that it's the Democrats. You know, maybe the Democrats just wish Mamdani was the same candidate without the position he's staked out on the genocide in Gaza.
You know.
But the thing is, you can't get you can't you can't get that guy, that guy who has the credibility with young people that he does, that would be able to turn out all these disaffected young people if he didn't have that message. I mean, the theory of the case for Cuomo was that the older people were going to be so scandalized by his my in my opinion, principled stand about Israel and it's brutal siege, that they were going to come out and he was going to
lose for that reason. But actually he won for that reason because he was able to mobilize a group of Democratic voters or potential Democrat voters who wouldn't vote for any candidate who didn't separate themselves from the party's position on that issue.
And so it's all part of the same package.
And I think that's a really, really, really important point because Mondannie actually didn't win among Jewish voters. Now there's an incredible tweet that has him not I don't know
if you saw that tweet if you're very online. There is a tweet where the where like Americans for Adams, shows who won what, and it doesn't have Mondani having won Jewish voters, But he did, in fact win Jewish voters, and he won this Jewish voter and he won it because I believe that Nat and Yahoo's genie side of the Palestinian people is not reflective on the many good Israelis who are just minding their own business like we Americans are, and.
That quite a lot of them.
I don't know if he saw the cover of the Wall Street Journal, the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal today had pictures of Israeli's protesting net Yahoo. And I don't think that any of us want to see any more children and women and men in palist On being starved to death or shot by idea like, I don't think that serves anyone.
No, I don't think so either. And I think that, I mean, we are seeing somewhat of a changing tide, a damn breaking this week, it seems. I think within Israel you have a figure like David Grossman, who's you know, basically the biggest literary celebrity in the country, coming out and calling it a genocide. You have both the two top human rights organizations within Israel calling it a genocide. And then in this country, like you said, I mean, you see, you know Marjorie Taylor gu.
Well, that's I think she.
I think she has your dog's politics a little bit anti Zionist and anti Semitic, but it's true that she she has been right about what she said.
What she said has been true, which she said is true.
That you can say that October seventh was a disaster and awful atrocity.
And what Israel is doing now is a genocide. Marjorie Taylor Voice of Reason. Marjorie Taylor Reason, Poice of Reason.
She gave My favorite part of Marjorie Taylor Green moral arbiterre is that she came to Congress onto or not.
So this has really gone full circle here.
It's true, It's true. Yeah, everything Jewish space lasers. Right, Yeah, she is, I mean like anti she's I think she very much probably is. And you know, but I do.
I think that what you could say for Marjorie Taylor Green is that she does seem to be uh loyal
to the people who put her there. That I think that the sort of Republican primary voters in her district who are, you know, effectively the people who put her there workqan on people, are people who care about the Epstein story and are people who have I think, in principle in America first foreign policy view, which for which to give them credit, it does not make sense that our own foreign policy interests should be subordinated to a
foreign country, even if that country is Israel. And so I think that's I think that's the stand that she's taking and yes, she's probably an anti Semite, but she's also a.
Member anti Semite.
Actually, I don't think she is. I don't think she is.
She is.
We can have fun, but yeah, but I think that's true. I mean that she is loyal to her constituents. In so far as you know her, probably her most loudest constituents are those who think that she shouldn't be in there to just do whatever Trump tells her to do.
Either she should be in there.
To uncover the Epstein files, to stop the pedophile cabal, and to actually make America, you know, America first and its foreign policy.
And so, Sam Adler Bell, will you come back.
I'm waiting for the call from Marjorie's office. I'll take a job anytime.
You'll be your speech writer. Can you imagine?
Would be great? Yeah, Like I know where all the bodies are buried. You know, Jewish space lasers.
Wise, that's right, Jewish space lasers.
Thank you, Sam Adler Bell.
Thank you, Molli. This was fun as always.
John Bisionano is the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. Welcome too Fast Politics, John Bisiano.
Thank you for having me, Mollie.
So Texas redistricting. Are you in Texas right now?
No, I'm not.
Tell us where we are with the Texas redistricting. Start from the beginning, one state, yeah.
Go for this.
Let's start with the Alamo. Yeah, exactly. Really, I think the story of Texas, if you're going to look at it from a full perspective, starts with the census after twenty twenty. The census showed extreme growth in Texas, which we all know now, and it showed but it showed growth in the cities, and it showed growth with people of color. And Texas then went and redrew the map, dramatically decreasing the number of opportunity seats for people of color.
So immediately there were concerns with Texas's jurymannered map even after twenty twenty, and we filed litigation after that. We've been in court for the past three years or five years now over that map. And now it's very clear that Donald Trump, and he said it this morning on TV that he felt entitled to five more congressional districts for Republicans in Texas. No veil of reality around what voters believe or care about. It's just simply partisan politics
for him and a hatchet job to the state. So what we're now seeing in Texas is Donald Trump on high handing down Governor Abbott a new map. Most of the members sent, yeah.
She said.
In fact, the direct quote is, we are entitled to five more seats.
Yes, go on right. Entitlements.
Yes. In China they love entitled. Republicans love entitle.
I love them. So yeah. So now Governor Abbot has this map. Most even Republican members of the legislature in Texas hadn't seen it. Many of the members of Congress, as I understand it, hadn't seen it. People are starting
to get irritated, I imagine on the Republican side. And what we're now seeing happen is the legislature taking up this map, blind to their own realities or the people of Texas, but only through the will of Donald Trump, seemingly sitting around a room at the White House and telling people, Hey, I need to find more congressional seats. Where can we go? And so Department of Justice issued a directive to the state which is complete bogus legal language.
And that was Alida Haba, everyone's favorite parking attorney.
Right for sure, and she very eloquently and legally wrote a letter that made no sense and had no legal flegity to it, and then we found ourselves in the place where we are now, where they are trying to push through this map. They had public hearings for the past two weeks in which people have been I think it's been two weeks, man, it feels like a decade, but where people have been currently flooding those hearings, making their voices heard that they do not want this to happen.
And Texas is looking to implement this new map, which, as I noted earlier, we've been in litigation over the prior Texas map. This is a jurymander on top of the git. I was looking for five seats, but this is like really set or more than that as you look at it from what a fair map would look like. As I'm sure everyone knows now, the Texas state legislators have left the state in protest over the reality that they're being forced to take up this map as opposed
to focus on flood funding or any flood corrections. I mean, that's something that I keep hearing is absurd with this.
Special session when it was brought in, when it was called, was it meant to be about flooding or I mean, they used the pretext of the flooding, but was it always meant to be Abbot pushing a new.
I don't know the answer, only because I'm not in Greg Abbott's head. But only Greg Abbott could look at an absolutely catastrophic flood with hundreds found dead and say this is an opportunity. So this horrific event is an opportunity for political malfeasons and to try and force through a jurymannered map. The part that's really horrifying about the flood is, of course they're still trying to take up funding, which, as I understand that Abbot could push through either way.
Right, he doesn't need a special session for the flood for the flood funding. In fact, he's historically not done that.
They're not doing things to fix future floods either, right like that. People keep talking about the funding, right.
Their hearing has been all on redistricting.
Yeah, yeah, it's been all about redistricting. And but they're talking about even funding reparations for the flood, but no one's talking about fixing situations so that there's not floods in the future. They're just pretending it's never going to happen again, which is, you know, horrific.
Yes, So there's this whole pretext that it's about flooding. It's not about flooding, it's about redistricting. I want to know, and this is a question I've now asked a bunch of different everyone from Representative Kazar to Representative Crockett to that Texas State Representative James Tellerco, which is, do the people of Texas understand what is happening in their name?
Is this breaking through to the people of Texas?
I believe it is. I'd be interested obviously in their perspective. They are closer to the ground as always than anyone else. But the truth is, I do think people are trying to understand. You're seeing that in the hearings, the volume of people I couldn't have even anticipated. And you know, at this point, I've been doing jury rendering work since basically this organization started after Barack Obama ag holder Nancy Pelosi and Terry McColls started at twenty seventeen, so it's
been quite some time. And one of our original principles and driving factors was elevating the narrative around redistricting and jurymandering. Maybe more people need to understand what this is. And we've seen tremendous growth in many states where people understand what it is more than they had before. It's still wonky and hard, and I acknowledge that, but I think what we're seeing right now in Texas is a dramatic
shift in the way that people perceive this process. And I understand people look at Texas and see a red state, but.
It's really not. I mean, that's what this is a response.
To, right right, That's why they're doing this. But the important thing to remember, and as you look back at that census data, and we now have more up to date census data from five years of growth, which Texas is still growing rapidly. The places Texas is growing still are people of color and in urban areas. And so Texas now is sixty percent minority, right, forty percent white, which.
Are very scary for the white Republicans.
Yeah, not pleased.
And that's just a truth.
Now.
There's a lot of folks and Donald Trump, I think is one of them that is living off this reality of the twenty twenty four election cycle is what's going to happen in Texas to move forward, and frankly, if you look at Texas history, I think twenty twenty four is a pre significant deviation from the way that you look at political data. So they're drawing maps on with the vision that they understand and are going to continue to grow, specifically with Latino voters, and I think that's not reality.
I think this story is complicated to cover when you're on the side of democracy, as I am, because.
There are two issues here.
The first is the issue of Donald Trump is cheating because he's worried about accountability, and that needs to not happen because of American democracy and we want to keep this experiment going. The second is they may be wildly misreading what Americans are going to do in the midterms. And if you jerry mander like this, it means you have lower margins for your safe seats, which means that in the sixty to forty state you may end up
actually just screwing yourself. And I think that's a really important part of the story that I want to talk about, especially because Trump was able to make inroads with Latino voters, and those Latino voters are now watching their friends and neighbors and children and whatever get arrested by Ice.
Not for any reason other than being brown.
Right, And in fact, the Supreme Court is saying, if you want to pick up a person who looks like they might be Latino, you're fine with it.
So I would love you to talk us through that.
Yeah, I mean, I think we've already seen in the past two months polling shifting. I mean, post the Ice raids and the way in which Donald Trump's implementing his vision of America with regards to immigration, We're seeing the polling shift with Latinos across the country but also into and so I think the way that you described it is true. Now, I want to be honest about the map that we've seen them, that they've produced in the
state legislature. There's a word called the dummy mander, which people call when you jurymander so far that you end up having a blowback on yourself. It's basically what you're describing. I'm not sure that the way that they drew this map looks like that is open to that. But what I do see happening in this map is a lot of the new Republican seats that this five in the five window that they're describing. Not all of those are
going to be really safe seats. So there's a world in which they're not picking up as many seats as they claim to be, or at least pretend they are in their minds, But.
It is ultimately cheating.
Yeah, And the real big picture of what you're talking about now is the longer term game. And so what I'm describing is what I understand from political data immediately for the twenty twenty six election cycle. But the way that they drew these maps, I don't know what it's going to look like in twenty twenty eight. With the way that Texas is growing twenty thirty for sure, So I do think they could be in an area the dummy mander over time.
Right, But it doesn't matter because if you give Trumpet blind check, who even knows that we'll have elections? I mean right, Yeah, The idea that there's a long term proposition for this is overly optimistic.
I think. I think that's right. But I do think you are very right, and I appreciate you raising it because not enough people are talking about it that the population shifts in Texas are happening very very rapidly. So the second prong to what you're describing is actually running really strong campaigns in Texas and registering voters that hadn't been historically voting. That could change everything. There's a huge population of people in Texas that don't vote.
It's huge, right, it's fifty to fifty.
Yeah, what you're looking at from a demographic perspective when you're talking about elections in Texas is going to change dramatically, and frankly, that starts with this process here, like more people seeing this at understanding that their state is being taken over by an authoritarian government in Washington. Like no
one in Texas wanted this. It's been thrust upon them, frankly, to preserve or a House of Representatives that is completely complicit and everything Trump's doing and doesn't want to do oversight on anything. I understand he's scared of oversight in general. I'm sure he's scared that some files will get released. There's a lot to be scared of out there.
What files could you mean? It's a mystery. I wonder if you could talk us through the possibility that there's other stuff happening in Texas at the state level with Paxton, the age there's just been a ton of fuckery there. Jesse wants to talk about New York redistricting in California redistricting, but I actually don't because I think, fuck it, let them do it.
They have to do it. They have to play our ball. So that's what I used to say, is that, I mean.
If you have something you want to say, but I think then God Governor Hokel and Governor Newsom are trying to push back thoughts, questions, comments go.
Theater in general. You Holder, our founder and chairman, last week put out a statement in which he was very clear that he was comfortable with states for the first time moving forward with measures that were reciprocal and temporary to make corrective changes because of what we're seeing in Texas and frankly because of what we're seeing in other states now. This morning there were any reports of Indiana
contemplating this. Missouri has had reports of contemplating it. So we can't just blindly walk into an authoritarian regime with no recourse, and so watching and engaging in California and New York is one of the ways in which folks are engaging right now. And the one point I would make that I've seen happen in the coverage over the past week or so, there has been a pretty heavy dose of it's harder for Dems to jerrymander in these
states or redistrict in these states than Republicans. And that is true, that does not mean it's not going to happen. And what I've seen in the past week is things are getting very real, and I don't quite understand how Republicans sitting in California and New York aren't melting down and calling all of their friends in Texas, like these are folks that were sitting in their comfy districts. They
had nothing to do with this. A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump thrust them up on Texas, and now they're in the hot seat and they're about to get their seat and redrawn, and they're not gonna be coming back to Congress because of what happened in a different state. So it seems as though he's comfortable trading members in Texas for members in other states, and I would imagine that doesn't sit well with some of the folks in California and New York.
Yeah, let's game this out for a minute, because five seats in California that could be gone, and Gavin wants to do a special election. I am very happy to criticize my man, Gavin Newsom, but this strikes me as really both he and Hokel.
I have been shocked by the level of like with it.
And he is like a fighter, but Hokel often in my mind, is kind of a coward.
But this I thought was good.
I mean that in a very generous.
Way, obviously, but I've been really pleasantly surprised by both of them. So some we'll do a special election in November if anything like what we saw in that Mike Flood town hall where people who were hundreds of people.
Were yelling vote him out.
And again, I think like Nebraska is instructive in certain ways because Nebraska is the state where Republicans tried to take away that one electoral vote in Nebraska's first Bacon has a has an electoral vote that tends to go blue, and Republicans tried to take it away right before the election in the hopes that it would help Trump. And
I do think like that kind of stuff. Like when I was watching those that town hall this morning, I had this thought, which was, like, there's like ten people in the mainstream media now right, Like it's the New York Times in the Wall Street Journal, and then I buy the ft because I have nothing else to buy. But like, we have no fucking clue what the rest
of the kind of is feeling. And like it was so clear to me watching that town hall just how removed we in the mainstream media are from what the fuck is going on on the street, because these people were so mad, and Republicans can tell themselves that this is just like, you know, some kind of act blue cabal, but they do that at their own peril because we're still going to have a midterm election cycle.
Yeah, it's real. The AG's adjustment last week is an indicator of how serious I think things are. But what you're described, like, we've done pulling over years, right, and we've seen people always despise jurymandering. Redistricting's fine, they know it has to happen, that's okay. The jurymandering component of it, people despise it like it's normally seventy to seventy five percent.
It always almost always comes back at that level. And I think Republicans now both feel extreme fear and frankly, the way that they're handling the Epstein files shows that more complicit in some kind of cover up than just the president. You know, It's like there's a lot of things that are happening here that they're becoming more and more scared is going to become public if there is
House scrutiny over any part of this administration's agenda. So I understand that they're concerned that the American people might actually have a voice in the process that they are running. This redistricting and jurymandering component of it has really bubbled up. I think a lot of that anger because you can feel it. Like I said, Republicans, they're not doing this for voters. They're not doing this even for Republican voters.
No one's asking for this except for themselves. They're doing this for a small cabal of congressional Republicans sitting in the US House of Representatives to preserve themselves and maybe cut out some of their friends in places like California and New York.
Yeah, I think that's right.
It's striking to me how this could all blow back on them.
So if you're listening to this and you're furious, what should you do?
You should text action to three six seven eight seven, Join our fight, try and engage. We can support engagements and new activism in places all across the country. So join that we can get you plugged in. Will help make sure that everybody has a place to volunteer, have your voice heard, and make sure that you know when and where town halls are being held, but also when and where redistricting is happening.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, John, thank you, Molly.
Great to be.
Here, No moment exactly, Jesse Cannon, my junk fast. So FEMA disasteroid could now depend on if a state's policy towards Israel is BDS or not. This is seeming like when we talk about witness tests like the silliest one I've ever heard and ultimate poor performative moronics.
Yeah, this is very, very very stupid. And here's why it's stupid. Okay, you ready, because what.
It doesn't make any sense.
I mean, if you pay taxes, you pay federal tax is to pay for disaster aid.
I mean, this is so ridiculous.
This is like another trumpy thing that he is cooked up as a way to make it so that you can't get disaster right if you need it. US states and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal aid for natural disaster preparedness.
Stupid, my man is having a war with FEMA. He's trying to take apart the federal government. This is ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous, especially with you know, a state like South Dakota is estimated to have less than a thousand Jews.
It's trying to control state legislature, and it's stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
That's it for.
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