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 Matt Gates says he may be attorney general if Trump is reelected. Well, there's a pretty good reason not to vote for Trump. We have such a great show for you today. Former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan joins us to talk about his new pack, We the People. Then we'll talk to Grist writer Jake Biddle about climate displacement and how climate change will change all
of our lives. But first we have NBC News correspondent Von Hilliard. Welcome to Fast Politics. Von Hilliard.
Hi, therek, Thanks so much for having me, Molly.
I am so excited to have you, and I want to tell the story of you know, I've watching you on television for a million years, and even though you're quite young, so it hasn't been a millionaires, but I've always been a fan.
It's turned into a million years, so I appreciate it. So acknowledgement that it has been more than a couple of years is actually appreciated.
Man. We were on Morning Joe together and I was watching you in the segment before me. It was like, actually, as I was listening to it, I was getting more and more upset and anxious, and I thought, oh my god, this is really really worrying and scary, and why are we not sounding the alarm on this all the time. And so I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about where you just were, who you just interviewed, and what they just said.
Right, I mean I was so, I was in New Hampshire just literally the night before. We were on listening Joe together. And this was Trump's first rally since the indictment on the federal charges related to that for sober turning last election. And one thing when I've been going to these I know you've been to them. I've been going to these now since twenty fifteen. And the thing that strikes me number one, how often there are number
one first timers at these events. Number Two, though in conversations with these voters repeatedly you hear very die type of descriptions. This this one woman I was talking to the other day, which talking openly about the Civil War. I mean, she's saying this on camera. This is not like passing comments. These people saying that they will openly go and defend another man and will go openly and go and defend Donald Trump.
They were to try to put him into prison.
But it's very violent, warlike rhetoric that these are otherwise normal people, normal Americans are talking. It's one person after the next. These aren't just one offs, and it's like that balance of do we want to promote them? No, but at some point we have to acknowledge that these aren't just a few random individuals. This is widespread across the country.
We talk a lot about media bubbles. There wouldn't have been so many donors so smugly excited about DeSantis had they not lived in a media bubble, right, I mean, because or even just met anyone in Florida who was like, the guy's kind of weird. So that is why I wanted When I was listening to I was thinking, because you know, I don't think of New Hampshire as Mississippi. I think of New I'm sure is a very mixed state, but it's actually been largely a bluestay. I wanted to
ask you. You know, you have been doing this since twenty fifteen, so you really have seen a progression. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how these attendees have changed.
Yeah, you know, I think Donald Trump actually said it best himself in New Hampshire the other day. From the stage, he said that the Maga bakes is more spirited than ever before. Spirited and passionate were his words that ever before. I turned to my producer to him, I was just like, he's absolutely right. It's maybe a smaller bax. Right, There's maybe some folks that have got off the Maga train, the Trump train, but those that are still in it
are more fervent and serious than ever before. In twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, it was the Trump Theater Show, right, it was laughing as he mocked the physical appearances of Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio drinking out of a water bottle. Right, But then that evolved into twenty twenty when we all lived through January sixth. But now, oh, you know, when he talks about revenge and retribution, like the people are listening to him, those aren't just it's not a campaign live.
I mean it is.
It is outside of an election that we are talking about. It is a fundamental effort to take back in their minds the government and like I remember, it was in October of last year, ahead of the midterm elections, just a couple of weeks before outside of Mesa, Arizona. And I mean, this is right Carrie lady quiz at the event, Mark beIN Shutta on the Secretary of state candidate who
was an election deny er. I mean, these folks. It was a ninety something degrees and this man came up to me after I had asked to talk to him on camera. He didn't say these were on camera to me, but he came up to me and he goes, you know, you seem like a nice guy, but you're with NBC, and he goes, I just want you to know, like the corporate media are going to be among the first to go. And it took me aback, I didn't even
know how to respond. Among the first to go. We know exactly what he was talking about, Molly, and this man I don't think he had truly was a bad man, but he was talking about very dire terms. Because that's how serious he takes this moment.
It's almost more dangerous because there are less of them and they are more worried right.
Right in Look, I mean, you just wrote it about this.
The Republican lawmakers that are otherwise supposed to be respected statesmen from their respective states representing them either at the state level or at the federal level, have legitimized or offer credit credence to Donald Trump in this movement and continue to stick by him. So I think the words of Europe's Weeper perfect because for these folks, right, it is worth sticking as part of this army, if you will,
this side until somebody tells them otherwise. And Rod DeSantis, right, the super back spend tens of millions of dollars at this point to promote their candidate. But it's it's not like you're seeing some wide spread, one hundred million dollar campaign from the right to lay out, you know, the flaws of Donald Trump.
Chris Christie is doing that.
But really, Chris Christi and Asa Hutchinson, they've only got so much firepower behind them and only so much legitimacy.
End that's Republican Party.
What are the ways in which or how could this be stopped? Like if you wanted to take the temperature down, if your question was, what would you think? I mean, now you've seen these people, you've seen this sort of look in their eyes. I mean, what do you think would do it right? Because they are living on earth too, right, I mean they think he won twenty twenty. I mean they're sort of so far down the rabbit hole they probably think what they're doing is the right thing.
Right.
Truthfully, I appreciate NBC for having me go to these events around the country consistently over the last several years, because I don't think that necessarily, even our politicians, who are some enablers or allies of Donald Trump, you're staying and the seriousness of it, I really don't. I thought January sixth would be able to wake up calling. It was for at least several weeks or months. But I still don't think that these politicians are necessarily having these
types of conversations repeat with folks about Sibil Warren. If they are, I'm not right there for every one of their combos in life. But if they are, then boy, they are complicit in something that is knowingly complicit in something that is increasingly dangerous. Because I don't know what the next January six is, but I think we're heading
to that point. And so what is the solution? Number One, It's Donald Trump telling people, you know, the violence and that you know that the legitimate justice system here in the country. But obviously he has shown that that is he's going to take the exact opposite measure. Otherwise it's going to be a united I think political frauct which we have not seen Republicans be willing to take a stand, and that's nine years running.
I don't know what honestly changes it.
Yeah, I mean, I do think that if you could get Republicans to you know, really, I mean, people like Macads, you know, instead of talking about immunity, to say, look, you know, we may not be happy with what, you know, how this is going. But there's been a lot of investigation in the twenty twenty election and it's clearly was a legitimate election.
He is successfully though, thrown so many of the Republicans that have signed away from him off the cliff and with no punishment, you know. I mean, Kim Reynolds is the latest, the governor of Iowa, and just because he didn't invite her to come speak at a recent event last month, suddenly Kim Reynolds is all but dead to him. And so, I mean, are is this going to prove again? And Tim Reynolds an even say anything bad about Donald Trump. She just didn't come and call it him to speak
before his event. So and maybe also when I spoke Aronda Santa's event. So, I mean, at some point Republicans have realized that Donald Trump has a very real sheet in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, if you were to win again, you would be in the White House for forty years, And so do they want to be a part of the political process. And that's what the calculation they're all making, I think right now.
I mean, so it is really an issue of self preservation versus preservation of democracy. I'm just curious, though, when you're in the spaces, when you're at these rallies, it doesn't seem to me like the rhetoric has changed all that much on Trump's part.
On Trump's part, the other day, it was the most defiant that I had felt him. And again that's why I wish that when I stand in these events, they were said everybody, you know, my family and other politicians and other journalists were all in that room there. Because you can see the way that people respond to him is increasingly you're cheering on your ball club in a way. That is you feel it in the room that people are following him and they feel like this is a fight.
It's religious and they're trying to frankly, keep their man out of Prinson. That is what this election is suddenly about in twenty twenty four. And you know, I've been to I don't know how many state fairs over the years, from Iowa to Nebraska to Kansas.
And it was a couple of years ago in Missouri at the state fair.
I remember talking to this woman and you know that she made me play of food. She was, you know, a sweetheart. And then we start talking though, and she was truly concerned. This is twenty eighteen. It turned into a very dark place, this woman who was veryncerned about the future of her country. And that is where Donald
Trump has led these people. And it happens over a period of time, you consume right wing media from a n Newsmax to Fox and it increasingly becomes a saving saving American deocracy in their way, you know, we're talking about saving democracy. They have a very different view of
what the effort to save democracy looks like. And it is the view of Donald Trump's that others are trying to take it away from him, and so it's very difficult, you know, trying to converse with voters these days to even understand and the way through the conspiracy theories because you know, why do they and by Donald Trump. It's complex and it's almost a decade worth of layers at this point to try to work your way through to wholly understand.
Can you talk a little bit about some of the sort of ways in which he attacks his enemy is because I was thinking about the sort of Fannie willis his attacks on her. They remind me of his attacks on Hillary right.
Frankly the other day at this New Yorkshire rally, I don't even want to repeat the specific claim, but he made a case about an alleged previous relationship she had had with a game member. These are the parts, though that people latch onto, you know, if you talk about Jack Smith's past, you know, family relations, and these people aren't booking though, generally for the actual truth, because Donald
Trump is their truth teller. Donald Trump is there, is their leader, and they are the followers of him, and what he says is truth. And so his attacks on Fannie will is, you know, he calls a racist at every single rally he calls le Titian James a racist. At every time he brings up the New York Attorney General symble case against the Trump organization, him and his
kids for just getting any details out of Utah. The man who died as the FBI was serving the arrest warrant for the serious threats that he made against the life allegedly of President Biden and Alvin Bragg, the district to turn in Manhattan. And we you know, watched earlier the spring Molly, right, we watched his attacks.
Incessantly against Alvin Bragg.
At one point, he you know, put on social media an image of Alvin Bragg next to Donald Trump with the base.
Yeah.
And you know, don and Trump may view this as a game, right where he can just you know, put social media posts out and go around the country and act like a rock star and lambasted his perceived enemies. But I can tell you that his followers they don't view this as a game or just politics. They view this as a as a fight to hold on to this country that Donald Trump is telling them that he's leading.
And where does this end. I that's the part that scares me the most. Molly.
I don't whether he's put in prison or loses another election. They know that there are millions of Americans who believe the consequences of either those two things are too dire
for them to not take a more active stand. Because I believe there's a great number of Americans that believe that going to the ballot box alone is not enough, is not worthy enough or enough on their part to stand up for this country, that it could very well take something much greater action than just about alone, and you know, to truly be their independence of Donald Trump and their country.
It's odd because it's so scary and it is kind of amazing that nothing has happened. I mean, I don't even want to talk like this because all any of us want is for there not to be violence, and they're not and people not to hurt each other. And in fact, the reason why you're talking about this is because you really I can hear it in your voice, concerned that this could happen.
I don't think a lot of people like that, even work with the Trump campaign, necessarily are inherently bad people, right, But I don't think folks are truly understanding in this country, right, Everybody else, a neighbor that is voted for Donald Trump work continues to support him. I don't think they're necessarily bad people. I just don't think by and large, we understand enough the gravity of just how much of a threat some people pose to elected leaders and even their neighbors.
What's fundamentally so scary and why I feel like it's so important that you're talking about this is that you're seeing something that you know, who even knows that people? I mean, certainly Trump probably sees what's going on, But I think there's something that's scary that you know a lot of people are not seeing, which is why it's so important that you talk about it.
Right This isn't about conservatism or liberalism. It is about the power grab that a great number of Americans feel like they must be a part of in order to know rightfully take back the White House that they believe was owed to Donald Trump. And if you are, if you're a patriotic American, then it is up up to you to do what it takes to stand by the man that you believe should rightfully be there.
And that's the way that so many of them feel it right and so much of our job and the media is really to prevent violence in any way we can. So the fact that you're talking about this because I think that a lot of people who are not like extremely tuned in to the political situation perhaps have forgotten about like these Trump rallies. You know, it's a very small section of the population that is so passionate, but that doesn't you know, many of them are very very well armed to do.
And I hope Donald Trump takes a violence seriously, you know, I'd like to believe good enough of another man to believe that they do not want a balo An outcome. The one part that gives to me pause, though, Molli, is the fact that at a great number of these rallies he has openly talked about pardoning January sixth defendants those who used violence in the past to try to stop a peaceful transfer of power. So he is already suggesting openly burdening folks who have used violence in the past.
That's the part that gives me pause. And I hope at some point Donald Trump and others around him say we must be a louder voice against this now. Despite whatever griev insince they have against the justice system. Because violence is a result that I have a hard time believing any other fellow American actually wants to see in this and they need to listen to those comments by
their own supporters. When they talk about civil war, they mean it, and they need to be more outspoken and say that that is on a path forward for this country.
Vaughan Hilliard, thank you so much for joining us and absolutely stark but really important message.
I appreciate Michael, thanks so much for talking it through. I appreciate it.
Tim Ryan is a former congressman and founder of We the People. You can find more information about We the People at We Thepeople two fifty dot us. Welcome to Fast Politics, Tim Ryan.
Thanks for having me.
First, we're going to talk. You've launched an action fund. Explain to us what it is and what it does, and then we're going to just get into Ohio.
Yeah. Cool, No, thanks for the opportunity. Great could be with you. It's called We the People two fifty Action Fund, and we're organizing this around the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States of America. And you know, it's a minor miracle we've made it this far, and you know those of us out here in the fight with kids. It's we want to keep it rolling, and this is going to be the home for the exhausted majority.
I mean, anybody who's been paying a lick of attention to the politics in the last decade plus here even more. It's exhausting and and you know my fear talking to friends back home, people are going to check out. They're saying, I'm not going to vote. You know, it's just gotten too toxic. And we want people to have a home with us at We the people to fight the anti democratic forces in this country, led by the MAGA movement, the Trump movement, but also we want to highlight the
really cool things going on in the country. There's a lot of solutions that are out there. There's a comeback of the steel industry, MDMA and cybin and these things are healing veterans from their post traumatic stress. There's amazing mindfulness programs and schools that are helping kids deal with
their trauma. The programs like inter Explore and others. We're going to highlight these things, build an organization that supports them, and we're going to start moving a needle in the country around some of these broken systems that have been broken for so long, and we need new ideas that we're going to fix these old problems. And that's what we're going to be doing it with the people.
So let's talk about Ohio. Big day for Ohio. On Tuesday, Republicans decided to run a special election. You guys have a special name for it issue, right, Yeah.
Yeah, they're called the issues and state issues to been the convolution yet right.
To raise the threshold to sixty percent in order to have constitutional amendments. They failed quite spectacularly. What does this mean? You know, we think of Ohio as such a red state now, and I'm sure you know, as a Democrat from Ohio, you think of it that way. But you know, if you look back on the most recent elections, you know, even though they did ultimately elect JD. Vance, it was very much he really underperformed. I mean, doesn't it seem to you like your state is changing?
You know, we have a Republican senator and we have a Democratic senator, Sharon Brown. It's still our senator here. I think Ohio is a toss up state, honestly, and I just think that, you know, the way the perception of the national Democratic Party in Ohio is not good. And I've you know, said that for year to year and years, and let me give you let me give you two good examples. One was what just happened on Tuesday, right,
here's a small cabal of extremists. Jim Jordan was leading the charge, and these guys that want to say, instead of fifty plus one for a referendum in Ohio to change the constitution, you have to move that to sixty percent of the vote, which is basically saying, you know, minority rule. They were taking rights away, and primarily around abortion. But there were a lot of libertarians, there are a lot of you know, pro choice Republicans, there are a
lot of Republicans. This is like, this is a power grab by the extremist and so it went down because there was taking power away from working class people. Set that next to what happened in twenty eleven when then Republican Governor John Kasik and the Republican legislature tried to take away collective bargaining rights. We had a huge campaign to put we put that on the ballot, had a huge campaign. We won that with sixty three percent. Okay,
so here's my point. Molly is that when this is a working class state with Midwestern sensibilities, it's not an extreme state. And what's happened is that the Republicans of gerrymander and redistricted their way into a supermajority. And that in conjunction with I think the Democrats getting away from the economic messages that play well to those ross belt towns down the Ohio River, Toledo, Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland like
these are working class pounds. They want to talk straight jobs and economics, pensions, infrastructure, building stuff, you know, manufacturing, and so if the party gets off of that and it's now seen as not into that, it hurts us. But when you put the straight issue on the ballot, we win. So we just got to we got to crack that code here in Ohio and I think a lot of their states and we should have a dominant
majority right now. I mean not to get completely on a soapbox, but I get frustrated because we are running against insurrectionists. We're running against really really, really bad people. It should even be cloth.
I just want to push back for a minute on this because I know that there is and look, I mean, I have you know, sat on many a panel with many a Democratic politician who is said, you know, like we're distracting from the issues should be manufacturing and not LGBTQ. But I think that more and more, and I think that may have been truer in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, but now we have a situation where the Republicans have really decided that they're going to target trans
kids and LGBTQ. I mean in a way that it's not even about civil liberties anymore. It's about like, are we going to protect these people from the very scary I mean, they're bullied, right, and I don't think you cannot address those issues like I think you know, they are really I mean some of them are really making a case. You know, they're they're quietly making overtures towards genocide.
It's really scary. And I would also add that their war on LGBTQ is part of a larger war against democracy, right, I mean the ballot iniatives and the you know, taking away choice and the you know, don't say gay laws are all sicknesses from the same illness.
I'm glad you just said that, because I think we're having conversations like this, We've got to be abundantly clear there. It is absolutely zero tolerance for that level of bullying and systemic bullying, and that all of this bullshit that these guys have been pushing, and you have to fight it aggressively. You don't, you know, you don't give an inch ever on those issues. The point I want to make, and I think this is a pro choice state in Ohio,
this is pro choice country. You know, I live in Cormbus, Ohio. Now, like the gay community here is thriving, right, thriving, and so there's a there's a level of tolerant in states,
you know, with a Midwestern sensibility. My point is that when you have people, if you go around Ohio, you go down the Ohio River routes Evan, and you see the loss of manufacturing, You see the communities falling apart, You see the addiction, the heroine and the fent and all you go and see to the industrialization that those folks are just trying to straight by. They're with us, I think on these other issues. If you're not talking directly to them about their job, their wages, their pension,
their the healthcare costs, their prescription drug costs. And I think that's what Sharon Brown does so well here, which is why he wins. He's one of the most progressive senators you know, in the in the Congress, in the.
Center right, but he has a populist message.
He does. He does, so we can do both, is my point. But you know, we just the working class folks. And here's what you know. Another point is, you know, we've see the numbers go down with African American learners. We've seen the numbers go down with Latino voters, even against even with Trump, who you know was mister Charterick Snell and in this are yanking immigrants you know from their kids at the border, Like how is he doing that?
And I think the answer to that is that those are working class people helpen to be black, happen to be Latino that don't see the Democrats as talking enough about the economic stuff. So that's just we could do it. Well, we have to because the alternative is not good.
I just want to sort of get into this for a minute. I think that's right, But I also I wonder how much of that is Democrats not I mean, for example, right now, the economic story is that Joe Biden managed to you know, like him, hate him whatever. He managed to really stem what was supposed to be a recession, and that we're going ahead towards a more
of a soft landing now whatever that looks like. It is a victory of policy, right between that and the Chips Act, where they're building you know, you know, they're building these trips in America for the first time, infuriating China.
But also you know, look, I mean, the part of the argument here is that there are people in the middle of this country who got up one day and their good jobs were gone, right, I mean, and they could not have the same level of living, standard of living that their parents had had, and they were furious as well they should be, because they hadn't done anything
and they had seen their jobs disappear. But as much in my lifetime as I've ever seen, Biden has actually moved a lot of these jobs, you know, has tried as much as possible. I mean, again, globalization cannot be undone, but the idea of bringing a lot of this manufacturing back to the United States is something that Trump would never have done. I mean, So isn't this a failure on messaging?
Yeah? It is. But I mean that's that's kind of like, like, you know, the point I was making earlier, like when you just put these issues on the ballot, we went on minimum wage. Know, you can look throughout the country. I think even in like Missouri they won like a collective bargaining thing a year or two ago. So there was just an issue on the ballot, you know. So
that's the point. If we can align our values, our beliefs, our message, and especially with everything that has been done, which has been amazing, like we finally have an industrial policy in the United States of America. I screamed about it for twenty years in Congress. We finally have one. We're making semiconductors, we're making batteries, we're making electric vehicles, we're making component parts to win in solar like we're doing it now. But if you ask the average American
you know, who did that, they have no clue. And so I think, you know, President Biden needs to have a very energetic grassroots campaign highlighting these things. You know, the comeback of the steel industry one of the things we're going to do it it we the people, you know, we're going to do a video about that. Because that's it's amazing what's happened here at places like Cleveland Cliffs, which are steel worker union jobs. So we have a lot to talk about. The President has a lot to
talk about. It's got to be done well because, as I said, like the fact that some of these polls are even remotely close to me is like we're right on most of these issues, but we've not yet figured out quite how to talk about it. And I think part of it too is that, you know, I think people are pretty frustrated. They don't see the government working for them. It is inefficient. We do to spend two and a half times more on healthcare than all the
other industrialized countries and get worse results. We need a preventative health care system, you know, we need trauma in form care in our schools. We need good healthy food. We need to bust up the industrial food call you know, industrial food systems here in the United States that are corporate dribbling. And now we got half the country with
diabetes or pre diabetes. We can do food as medicine and that's kind of you know, we the people think we want to highlight those things that are going on so we can get some oxygen and energy behind them, some money behind these things, and then let's take this, you know, all these initiatives and create in America two point zero. I think people are dying for it, and that's what we want to do with the people.
Yeah, explain to us a little bit about what it looks like on the ground in Ohio with the Democratic Party. I mean, you have Share Brown wildly popular running for reelection, but it has been a very tough state. I mean, do you think there's a chance now to kind of change the narrative in Ohio after this vote?
Yeah? I think so. We have a we have a good new party chair, Liz Walters. You know, she has not been in very long, but she she really understands what's going on, you know, so we're moving in the right direction. I think this was a huge win because it is going to give us some energy. You know, just any sports team, any anything you're doing, you got to get a couple wins, You got to get some points up on the board to get some energy and momentum.
And I think, you know, the basin is pretty excited now. So and we have all this economic development happening here that's directly connected to the chips program. Intel's coming here, Mollie. They're going to build I think it's ten or twenty billion dollars to put in a new chip campus to make chips. The jobs are going to pay like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. Han is putting
a new car plan here. We got battery plans going everywhere, you know, so like here in Ohio things we are benefiting directly from those policies that people don't know about. And I think having shared on the ballot here, he's going to be talking about it. We'll be talking about it. I'm sure the President will be talking about it. So I think there's really a real chance for us to flip this here.
Tim Ryan, so interesting. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back.
I would love to come back. Thanks for having me.
Hi. It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your cries.
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About our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the rescue puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Jake Biddle is a staff writer at gristcovering climate impact and author of The Great Displacement. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jake.
Biddle, Thank you so much for having me.
We're here talking about the Great Displacement, climate change, and the next American migration. First, I think if we're going to talk about this, we got to start by talking about Hawaii. We had to talk about the most current fire this fire season. Actually fire season hasn't even started. How is Hawaii link to climate.
Yeah, so I think it's still, like you said, it's very recent, so it's still a little bit difficult to say.
But I think that we know a few things right.
One is that the fire seems to have been started by an episode of high winds that was caused by a tropical storm that sort of passed near Hawaii that didn't hit it. Then there had been a drought beforehand, right, so that a lot of the non native grassland species are any very dry, which made it easier for the
fire to spread. And so even though the ignition itself, like, we don't know what caused the ignition, and we don't know to what extent, you know, this specific hurricane and this specific drought might have been caused by climate change, so they have to do attribution studies on those things. We do know that flash routs, right, and severe troup star wars both seem to be getting worse as the
world gets warmer. So I think that you know, what you can definitely say is that this is the kind of thing that we would expect to see more of all over the world, even though this specific thing, you know, scientists haven't quite done the studies yet, right, But.
Yeah, I mean I think all the elements here are related to climate.
Right, right, Yeah, I think it's like the way that I would say, right, it is like that there's a certain set of ingredients, there's a certain like cocktail of ingredients that climate change seems to make more common, right, And so this is a genre of eva that we've seen more and more of as the world gets warmer.
With WHAYI it's funny because it's like you're seeing already the schizophrenia conservatives are finding themselves in right, like you're looking at climate change, you're looking at enormous fire stuff that we have never I mean, I'm forty four, I have never had fire season is a new thing, right, Like that was not how it was twenty years ago. I think it must be hard even for them. I
mean they must at some point. And we saw this recent Fox News thing where they you know, there was an opinion hosted, a whole sort of opinion section, I mean, all of Fox News's opinion, but you know, they're covering the fire one minute, and then they're doing these long rants about how climate hysteria is taking over the left.
So I think you're starting to see it has become very difficult for some conservative politicians to deny that there's some role human role in the warming of the earth.
Right.
But I do think you still see a lot of certainly in the media right and then a lot of elective officials as well, we'll do their best to sort of pulk holes in the narrative of climate change or just in the general fear that people have about climate change, or the sense that like the world is waning rapidly.
That's you beings thought like I think that one example of this, right is like after there were fires in Greece earlier this year, it was recorded that initial cause of the fire was arson, right like, somebody set the fire, and a lot of conservative mediaulitis were it's not climate change, it's arson, right like, which is like obviously like an incredible category error, but it actually it is.
An unrelated But I think like with gun violence, right.
There's a desire and the conservative media to not give the left like a good example, right, so they do anything they can to show that an example of the problem actually isn't an example of that problem.
Right.
So the fires in Greace on climate change are arson, a gun violence event isn't because of two lacks gun laws, It's because of mental health.
Right.
So there's there's a way of like the reality seems to endorse the liberal position on climate change, and the conservative try to fight against that wherever they can.
Right, Let's talk about your book, Let's talk about migration. Let's talk about what you're seeing and why did you decide to write this book? What was going on in your brain?
Yeah, so I thought that it's when I started working in the book. This was like in early twenty twenty, it seemed that a lot of people were thinking, a lot of people in the United States were thinking about climate change is something that happens either you know, very far away, like in Southeast Asia or Central Anaca, or it's going to happen in the US, but not yet. You know, maybe in a couple of decades it's going
to be here for us. And by the time of the book came out, I actually think that it started
to change. But the reason why I wanted to write the book was to show people that, you know, actually, already in the United States and tens of thousands of people had lost their homes to climate disasters, had never made it back to their original homes, and they were already moving to some extent in an attempt to escape risk, but also just in the sort of chaotic process of getting bounced around and kicked out of homes and thrown
into new homes by these disasters. I wanted to show that because I thought that media coverage of disasters like wildfires and hurricanes tended to end, you know, right after the wildfire ended, and I wanted to show that there was a really long process of displacement and relocation going on that didn't tend to make it into you know, cable news segments or things like that.
I want to ask you about that because this relates to a sort of underreported but really important story about Florida, Everyone's favorite state that's going to be underwater.
That's where I'm from.
By the way, I apologize. Can you talk a little bit about what is happening there with insurance?
Right, Yeah, this is a really important point. So the climate change, it doesn't just cause physical damage to property when there's a hurricane or that certainly happened in Slower last year. It also stresses like pre existing markets and systems of distributing risks. So the housing market, you know, in places that's been hit pretty hard, sometimes home values
will take a dip. And then in the insurance market in Florida, like the cost of responding to these disasters and paying out claims on insurance has gotten so high that a lot of insurers have gone under, right, They've collapse, and the market can no longer allocate all that risk efficiently.
So what's happening like the two things. Right, Costs are going up quite a bit for almost everybody, and the state legislature which sort of a set of sort of pawns of the Santists, they basically do whatever he asked them to do. Has done a bunch of things to try to stabilize this market, right, So in effect they've come close to socializing it, right, Like they've injected a
lot of public support into the market. But basically it's become impossible to ensure all the property that's at risk from hurricanes at Florida, that there's just too many people living in places that are too vulnerable, and so a lot of homeowners at the lower end of the income scale are now finding that it's very difficult for them to afford the cost of insurance which they.
Need in order to keep the homes that they have, right.
And I think like one of the huge scandals of our time, which has been also underreported, is there is a government backstop to a lot of this insurance that benefits the wealth. Can you talk about that, right?
Yeah, So there's this thing called the National Flood Insurance Programs. Always very confusing, but like wind damage from hurricanes is covered by the private insurance market, but flood damage, like water is covered by a cteral program. Because it's like almost impossible for insurers to make a profit by selling flood insurance, so the federal government does it. And this
is kind of it's a really really broken system. Like the price setting is just very inefficient, and it subsidizes, Yes, it's subsidized because like Congress mandated that it be quote unquote affordable. It's not affordable to be able at the lower end of the income scale, but for people at the upper end of the income scale, like people who have beachfront mansions in Florida, it's really cheaper than it
should be. Right, So basically what's happening is that the taxpayers are subsidizing the cost of rebuilding homes on the water front of Florida.
Over and over and over again.
And it's essentially like a it's an unintended consequence of this law. It just hasn't worked out the way that the frameworks thought that it would. The fretwast is the law out of the constitution, and just like no one's willing to fix it, And what you have is like we've essentially bailed out people who live on these waterfronts of Florida and other parts of the country over and over and over again, and discouraged them. Yes, and the Hamptons too.
You know, these are rich people who live on the waterfront are getting a government handout.
Yeah, I mean twenty twelve when Congress actually they tried to fix it, and there was such a backlash from hangers, mostly in New Jersey and New York State, that they undid it. Two years later they said, I'm actually never.
Mind, which is exactly. One of the fundamental problems with some of this climate legislation is that we're throwing good money after bad, right, Like, this is money that should be going to you know, ev market or you know chargers or solar panels, and not to rebuilding rich people's houses when they're too close to the ocean.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I mean, I think that the problem is that historically people who live in vulnerable areas haven't borne the costs that they were incurring.
Right.
So another example is in California, right, like the US Forest Service and cal Fire those are taxpayer funded departments.
They front the cost of putting out the fires in vulnerable areas, so they're essentially subsidizing the cost of living in very vulnerable parts of the state, right, and so making people bear the cost that they are incurring is it's very unpopular, right because in a lot of cases, people who live in these places have a lot of political cloud but also because a lot of them didn't exactly know how much risk they or incurring.
So it's it's very difficult process of shifting.
That risk away from the general taxpayer, aren't to the people who are actually incurring it by living where they do.
Yeah, so, I mean, and I want to pull out for a minute with this idea and talk about what it means. So what we're seeing this is this Floridas or even just coastal wherever, coastal New York, coastal, the Hampton's coastal New Jersey. This is climate change making places that used to be safe to live unsafe to live. Talk to me about what that looks like in the rest of the world.
Yeah, so, I think in the rest of the world it's a much more advanced process.
Right.
So, after big hurricanes like in Nicaraguan, Honduras, like recent in Guatemala like recently seen like entire villages regions of the country be populated not only because the housing was destroyed, right, but because these are primarily agricultural communities and it's impossible to grow crops, find your whole town is underwater, like in Pakistan last year is how like almost a third of the country was underwater, and the same the ingredients
of displacement are the same, right, Like, you lose your home, you don't have the financial ability to build it back, then you have to go somewhere else. In the United States, because the housing market is so much more rigid, credits more available, people don't tend to end up in you know, massive displacement camps, so they don't tend to like flock to cities by the thousands and looking for some kind of refuge.
Can we just stop for a second. I just want to ask you a question about this. Could that actually lead to an American economic disaster the way that it did for us with the cheap mortgages in two thousand and eight.
Yeah, that's a really really good question. I think not
to the same degree. Like I don't think that you could see a global financial contagion, but there's certainly the chance that like smaller and more regionally concentrated baranks and lenders that that are more exposed to this would see like many of them could go under and like certainly a lot of individual homeowners if there were like a sudden drop in the value, like let's say a hurricane hits, right, and then suddenly everyone's like, oh my god, I don't
want to live there, like that was that was the last straw, like home values of plumber and people would be underwater on their mortage, just like millions of people potentially, and that would be a huge, like a systemic financial problem for the United States. But I don't know that it would lead to like a global recession the way
that the two does eight. But in part because they've tried to put safeguards against that kind of thing, like the media as they might have been, they might work in that.
Right, And I mean, it's just a weird side question, But continue on talking about what does a global migration look like?
Right? Yeah?
So I think I mean that probably a common misconception rate is that all the people who get displaced in you know, a famine event and Somalia, right or a flood impact stuff, they all go to the developed world. I mean, the vast majority of climate driven migration happens within an individual country, like it's people leaving flooded villages and heading to major cities, right and trying to find some way to adapt in that way.
But I think that you know, over time.
As this displacement that Coadu's you know, pronic, you probably will see growing trends of migration from the developing world to the developed world. In fact, like you could argue it's already happened because a lot of migration to Europe has been driven by droughts and famines. A lot of migration to the United States, like in nineteen ninety eight, Hurricane Mitch was like the main reason why there was
a ton of migration feminl Salvador. But like I think, the big question that I have, I don't know what the answer to it is is whether this migration driven my climate change will be understood in the developed world as climate migration right, as a climate justice issue, or whether it will continue to be routed through the politics of immigration and asylum, which is what happens now.
It's so funny because I think about for such a long time, my husband and I would always say like, well, eventually the science will be undeniable, and what we saw with the pandemic is actually they you know, they'll be taking the horse to warmer. Even when the science is undeniable, there will be no moment where they will come where the right. And that means, you know, all of those senators who are making decisions for all of us and congress people and you know Donald Trump will ever sort
of come to their senses. So it's really going to be a situation that fifty two percent of the American population is going to have to deal with.
It's become clear right that there's no way to make a scientific argument that's convincing, like in the political arena, right, and if you think about it, like climate change is one of the only issues where that's like the main way we tried to make the argument, right, Like nobody talks about racial inequality or like like those are like you make moral arguments right about like what's the right way to organize a society. That's not the way we've done.
The climate change is still like scientific facts show this, and so you should do that. I think that like the primary persuasive argument will probably end up being an economic one, right, Like even a Republican politician likes to show that they built a giant new levee in their town.
They want to stand there with the golden shovel. They also want to show, hey, there's a big EV battery factory in my town, Like, look, it got two thousand new jobs one just hoping in Marjorie Taylor Green's district, like she even praised it, right Like, so it's like
that's the argument that's going to make the difference. And I think that like the Inflation Reduction Act and Restarture Bill, like you'll see that Republicans don't want to run away from the results of that, even though they didn't vote for it. That's fine, I guess, right, Like the bill
was passed without Republican support. Yeah, yeah, like that's that's good enough as long as they don't stand in the in the doorway of the factory prevention from being built, Like it's we still get a little farther toward decarbonization.
But yeah, I don't know that there's any way of penetrating the veil of ignorance that's around the conservative women on the issue of climate science, Like it just doesn't seem just doesn't seem like it's been effective any of the scientific communication strategies that they've all failed, right, So I don't know.
I always think of Texas as one of the most fucked up states. But Texas had this summer of clean energy.
Yeah, yeah, I mean they yeah, I mean. And again, it's like it's an economic argument, right, like for any number of reasons, right, like the decline and cost of photovoltaics, and just the fact that Texas is like the it's a signing place obviously, and it's also like it's been called like Saudi Arabia of.
Wind right.
Insane, Like it's very very cheap to produce renewable power there. And so you know, even a Republican politician they might have a cultural or a stated cultural opposition to those forms of power generation, they're not going to sit there and say, I would really like my constituents to pay more and their energy bills. They already pay a lot, right, Like,
I'm not going to make it any worse. So because it's in many ways deregulated, right, Like there's nothing to stop people from building those facilities, plugging them into the grid, and then people save money on their power built right. So, like I think politicians in Texas have they've sort of said and threatened that they're going to stop this transition
way from fossil fuels. They certainly want to protect fossil fuel interests, but there is nothing they can really do short of, like you know, regulating the market altogether to stop clean energy from being built out in places where it's advantageous. And now the cost has fallen far enough like that ball is already rolling right that that's not the result of the inflation reduction. Ract that's just because
clean energy is good business. And as much as options like phossip fhels, they also like good business.
I guess well.
Also, the grid is very unstable, and during last year we saw that it's actually it can fail, and so you know, if it's a choice between green power and no power, these guys are going to go for it. It is that fundamental, incredible and strange disconnect where you have. So I just have like one more question, because we're almost out of time. One of my real interests is desalinization.
Why is America not further along with that. Israel has been a country that has a lot of very complicated stuff going on, but has been very good about using that.
There's a really really interesting debate going on among like water experts right now about the way out of the Western water crisis, right, And it certainly seems like even though desalination is desalinization, I actould know which one of them.
People see both.
Even though desalinization is it can be really expensive. And there's also concerns people from who live nearby wall often our lives, that the plants themselves are polluting. Like it certainly seems like in a targeted way, it could be very ivent heges for certain communities.
Right.
So, they've talked about it in southern California, they've moved along with a couple of them. Arizona really wants to build one in Mexico and then remove some SLF from water and import it or just trade it on the Colorado River.
I think that the reason why you haven't seen.
More of it is because right now it's very, very difficult to build large infrastructure projects of any kind, especially in the water arena, Like we built a ton of dams and stuff in the fifties and sixties that we
haven't done that a lot since. And I think that a lot of jurisdictions have found that it's actually just as easy to conserve water, like just to use less as it is to build facilities to get more so like Las Vegas, for instance, has almost doubled in size since two thousand, and they actually used less water now than they did in two thousand because they took out all the turf and stuff like they're just done found
a lot of efficiencies. So I think that anybody who is like an expround water would tell you that there's no one solution, and detounization is probably an item on the menu, right. But I think that so far it's been difficult to build those plants for like all kinds of permanent and political opposition.
Raise ends so interesting, Jake, I hope this wasn't too annoying, but you know, I had all these climate questions that I saved up, you know, in my head, and I feel like it's the summer and our country is our country, and the rest of the world is burning again, and we have to just cover this as much as possible. So thank you.
Yeah, it certainly seems like it's out of favorite pitch right now. Thank you.
The moment, ou Jesse Cannon, Mallie jung Fest.
These Trump lawyers, woo, they've gotten themselves in some trouble. What are you seeing here?
So this is incredible. Trump Allys attempted to access voting systems after the twenty twenty election as part of a broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president's baseless claim of widespread fraud. These guys, I just the vast the best. I am without speech except to say that these guys, this is not what lawyers are supposed to do and this is real fucking crimey. We call them the Gang that couldn't crimes trade for a reason. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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