Trump Is Falling. Are Democrats Rising?

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Welcome to Plot Save America. I'm John Favra. On today's show, we'll talk about how the Iran war has reignited as gas prices reach record highs, all while Trump's approval continues to crater with just six months left until the midterms. But could Democrats blow it? Of course we could. Uh we'll talk about all the reasons why, including redistricting hiccups, Republicans wooing John Fetterman.

and Ken Martin crushing it at the DNC. Then I talked with Strict Scrutiny's Melissa Murray about the appeals court ruling on Miffit Pristone, new threats to safe and legal abortion, and Melissa's new book Explaining the Constitution for you. The modern reader. Thank you. Uh, quick note before we start. If you are not a fan of right wing propaganda or podcast ads, do we have a deal for you?

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All right, the ceasefire in the Iran war has basically collapsed and oil prices are spiking again after Trump rejected Iran's latest offer to deal with the Strait of Hormuz before tackling the nuclear issue. Uh the president then announced Project Freedom. His expertly crafted plan to have the US military quote guide commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which almost immediately ran into the minor issue of Iran launching missiles and drones at said ships from small boats.

Despite Trump repeatedly assuring us that Iran's military capabilities have been destroyed. Iran also resumed attacks on the UAE in Oman. The US sank Iranian boats in the strait. Emirati officials said they're expecting imminent US and or Israeli attacks on the Iranian mainland. And off we go. Uh Trump, who continues to tell us that he holds all the cards, address the latest flare-up at a White House event on Monday.

Our country's booming now despite the fact that we're in a I call it a mini war. Can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. We had all new highs and I said we have to take care of business because we can't let that happen. So we did a little detour. And it's working out very nicely. Everybody was wrong. They thought that energy would be at three hundred dollars.

Right? Three hundred dollars a barrel and it's uh like at a hundred. They give me fake polls. They tell me about polls and this you know, it's it's interest I did a poll on the war with Iran and They said only thirty-two percent of the people like it. Well, I don't like it and I don't like war at all. They said thirty-two percent of the people are against President Trump. Well when you explain it Is it okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon?

It wouldn't be thirty two percent. But even if you said that, that'd be a thirty two percent because the polls are fake. We watched that in our office and it went on like that for about five hours, I think.

Just it was it was a drone, it was an intermittent speaking of drone attacks, I mean it was just like an unbelievable like monotone taking us through in and out, weaving back and forth between Iran and the economy and the weave level. I know I said it and I regretted it, but uh the the guy from Pawn Stars briefly showed up. Uh he was gone. So Trump keeps telling us he's holding all the cards. What kind of a what kind of a card game do you think he thinks he's playing? Mm-hm

Not a winning one. Yeah. So this plan, it it it's not that Navy ships are physically escorting other ships through the Strait or Hamoos. Guiding you sounds like we'll give you directions and wish you luck. Like what right based on what happened today?

Um they're calling it a coordination effort to guide ships with real-time information, safety guidance, and coordination. So like I don't know, GPS is what is this? So, but as we saw today, Iran is very willing to take shots at these vessels. They're willing to take shots.

at other targets in the region. The the Pentagon can't guarantee that the Strait of Hormuz isn't mined. So it seems like once again, more of a PR effort. They roll out over the weekend, ahead of markets on Monday, but it didn't work this time because the price of gasoline shot up again.

Uh the average price is at four fifty per gallon now in the US, but you've seen analysts say like there could be a break at some point pretty soon in the global economy and get us to seven or eight dollars a gallon. So he just seems stuck here. Um there's a lot of troops stuck in the Gulf trying to figure out what's next.

Iran is not going to backtrack. The bet seemed to be that we can create enough pain for Iran that they buckle and they capitulate. I still think that's a flawed strategy because the IRGC doesn't give a shit about their own people and they have all the guns.

Um, but yeah, yeah, in ten days Trump's supposed to go to China, which is by far the most important meeting of his entire second term so far. And now this is dominating the whole agenda, not the trade deal or anything else he wanted to get done. It seems like they're he's they're we're now begging China to help put pressure on Iran to open the strait, which is which is exactly where you want to be. Right. Um

Love it. He said also today in that in that thing uh in that event that we just saw, uh we're in what he's like, what is this? We're only in like the sixth week and it it is the tenth week of war right now. Yeah, well time flies when you're uh trapped in a a conflict you thought would last a few days because you have advisors who um uh like to drink in the morning. Uh the allegedly the w it w The Strait of Hormuz was open. There was a question around Iran's nuclear program.

Now the Strait Hamuz is closed and there's a question about Iran's nuclear program. I don't know what kind of card game you're playing where whatever number of cards you're holding, the situation keeps getting worse and worse all around you. I don't think it is. Right. Yeah, I don't and I also like I I you know, he's holding all the cars but he's playing Uno. The point of Uno is to have no cards. Yeah. Literally tweeted that.

The more cards you have, the worse you're doing. Also, if you're holding a bunch of wild Uno cards, the game's over, my friend. You've won. You've won the game of Uno. Play those cards. Yeah, the he's calling the blockade the greatest military maneuver or one of the greatest maneuvers in history.

Then he send a letter on Friday saying that we're actually no longer in any kind of a conflict. So don't worry about that. It's all resolved because we're saying that we haven't fired on each other in a while, but they're still sinking

ships. He's saying if you attack our ships, then we will then destroy you, but then Iran has to go around and then fire at the ships that are uh uh uh in the strait because they can't legitimize that threat because they have to prove that that threat is empty and we just keep doing this over and over and over. And also, again, so people know the the straight isn't like green light go, red light, stop. It like this requires confidence.

among the different commercial vessels that are going through the strait before they actually go through the strait. So Trump just shitposting or or telling everyone that like everything's fine and we're guiding ships and this and that. Like, what do you think happens when there's a few more explosions and boat even if even if we're knocking down some of the drones and we're bl you know, I apparently we sunk six boats today, small boats that we're doing this, even if we do some of that

What do you think that's going to do to the confidence of these uh these ships and the companies that own the ships going through the strait? They're still not going to do it. These are hundreds of millions of dollars of oil in a tanker. Like the scariest thing imaginable, having a an RPG shot at your giant tanker full of oil. Yeah. I mean there's no way these insurance companies are gonna cover it.

Where the captains are gonna go through. And also, yeah, Pete Hagseth last week was trying to claim that they were no longer in hostilities, so the War Powers Act didn't apply. Well, so much for that argument, pal. Yeah, also I just I I feel as though the Iranians are a bit like squirrels. Like I don't think they know where the mines are at this point. So it's like They have no idea.

Like w you know, you're you work on a on a commercial vessel. You're not in the military. You took a job, it had trade offs. One of the trade offs wasn't I'm gonna get blown up in the fucking straight o'hore moose. It's like uh I do this for money. I'm not I'm not in the the oil business for the love of the game.

And again, these ships have to be insured and who's gonna give insurance on these ships? Um It also doesn't seem like the Iranians are taking Trump's threat that they will be, quote, blown off the face of the earth very seriously uh if they target US ships.

No, I mean I I obviously they'd probably prefer not to get bombed, it wouldn't, but you know, I suspect most of the Iranian leaders feel like they took the hardest punch that the US and Israel could deliver and that they are still standing and that the world sees that. And that they survived it. And so the experts I've talked to, they're not really sure what

targets Trump could hit now. I guess we could go back to like the war crime bucket, hit all the power plants, hit all the bridges, maybe talk about a tactical nuclear weapon, but that's just gonna lead to mass civilian death and suffering and make the reconstruction harder. I don't think it's gonna material change the thinking of the RGC because again, they have the weapons, they're in control and it's existential. And they're willing to send, I mean

It is just despicable what they're all like what they are doing is despicable, closing the Strait of Hormuz. They are sending people on small ships to their deaths for the purposes of like extracting economic pain from other countries. Like that is what they are doing right now. Yeah.

Uh, and it's of course causing all kinds of havoc here at home. As you mentioned, Tommy, as you all saw over the weekend, Spirit Airlines formally ceased operations on Saturday. And I mean, that is a sort of a fancier term for just it just shut down. Just No longer there. Like not like we're not selling tickets anymore, like thousands of flyers stranded, everyone with a future spirit ticket screwed.

Um, they said in a court filing on Monday that quote recent geopolitical events resulted in a massive and sustained increase in fuel prices. Uh driving isn't much better. Average prices are now four hundred forty five a gallon or above six dollars in many places, highest level since the pandemic. all-time record high here in California and Washington State. And then experts are saying we could hit a national average of five dollars a gallon by Memorial Day. Um

I know some of you crass political types are trying to link these things to the new Forever War that Trump started. Uh but here's uh Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant uh trying to explain just how wrong you all are. To be really clear, yeah, uh fuel prices have gone up. This story was not written because of the Iran war.

Uh this story was written years ago because of what Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttig, and the DOJ under Biden, what they did to prevent uh the merger from happening. What do they want? A nuclear Iran? In the Democrat world the alternative is To have a nuclear Iran, I recognize that prices have come up, but they will start to go down to go down immediately once the straight uh issues are resolved.

That this short term blip up in prices uh is affecting the American people. But I am also confident on the other side of this prices are gonna come down very quickly. I think the Iranians are starting to believe their own propaganda. I just... I just love the argument now that they've reached which is like yes, yes, prices are high now, but just think of what will happen when the war is over.

It's amazing like the parallels to how like w when Trump's up there saying, like, my farm policy is not popular but actually if it was described properly, people would be more receptive to it, like he's doing Biden and then his people are out there going, actually

These are longer term causes of inflation. It's not because of this and it's not because of that. And it's gonna be okay. Uh look the the the ways in which they're out there trying to kind of spin this, just it's very, it's just amazing how much it sounds like uh the way Biden was spinning.

Yes. I also think for so long, um, there has been this this thought that, like, well, you know, it seems bad and people are saying it's gonna be bad, but you know, the the the prices of oil kind of gone up and down and then they had come down recently and maybe it is gonna be fine, but of course it seems like right now it's all catching up.

And it's not just the hostilities in the Gulf that have reignited on Monday. It's just like w the finally the supply issues for oil and and and not enough oil going through the strait for the last ten weeks. um is finally hitting oil prices and gas prices here especially uh really hard. I mean the price of jet fuel has nearly doubled in the last two months. Uh the FT reported that global airlines have cut two million seats from their May schedules in the past two weeks.

So you get planes increasing prices, the airlines are increasing prices, they're downsizing aircraft to be more efficient, the routes are all screwed up. And so I saw Delta cut.

three point five percent of its flights to save fuel. Luthanza cut twenty thousand flights between May and October. So like I I don't know, I'm no expert on like airline mergers. I know they're all blaming Biden for blocking this merger, but Even if you blame Biden for blocking the merger, Spear had gone into bank bankruptcy twice and they asked the Trump administration for a five hundred million dollar bailout, which they were denied.

Could have done that. Also, you see that Trump initially tried to blame it on Obama and said Obama blocked a merger with another airline that actually went out of business in nineteen eighty seven. Yeah. You feel the smoke on the plane still. That one didn't quite fly.

Spirit airlines sucks, like uh not my favorite to fly, but having them in markets was a really good thing'cause it pulled prices down and there's a study that showed that uh that markets with Spirit or discount airlines in them have twenty one percent lower fares as compared to markets without them. So This sucks for all of us.

So there were two mergers on the table. One was with Frontier, which is another ultra low cost carrier, and there was JetBlue. Uh JetBlue offered more money. The CEO of Spirit at the time Uh, we shouldn't do the jet blue one because it's not gonna get approved. And it wasn't gonna get approved because it was clear that if jet blue were to acquire spirit, all those ultra low cost routes would go away, which would eliminate something. Look look uh uh monopoly law, antitrust law has been really um

Uh, like neutered. Uh, but one of the ways it was neutered was to say it had to, you have to show what the effect would be for consumers specifically. And there's all kinds of other effects that haven't been seen as important. But Even Jeff Lewis on internal documents said this would cause costs to rise for c consumers. Their own plans were basically to stop to make.

spirit part of jet blue. If Frontier and Spirit and Spirit had merged, you'd have one bigger ultra low cost carrier. And there'd be problems with that, but you would still have the competition that Tommy's talking about. The the act like the CEO was aware of these regulatory problems. The judge who did it was a Reagan

appointee. This was just a clear cut case where the judge came in and said, uh the law is the law and this would hurt consumers. And there was a famous quote, if you remember from the time, which is like something I'm I'm I don't have in front had it in front of me, I lost it, but it was something to the effect of

Spirit may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it has customers who love it. And I don't know who those insane people are. Uh, but uh uh it served a purpose. And so when it didn't get approved, oh, one other point about this is Spirit could have said, Hey, if you don't approve of this merger. We're gonna go out of business.

And in fact, there's there's a provision in antitrust law that's called the the failing firm defense. And they could have said that at trial. In fact, at the trial Uh the CEO said the opposite, testified the opposite that we have turned around and things are going well in spirit now, and so didn't invoke the failing firm defense.

when they could've. So this whole repu this argument now made by Republicans and the fucking tech finance douches on Twitter, um, that like this was all Elizabeth Warren's fault and Pete Buttigieg and in the Biden DOJ that like if only JetBlue had been able to buy spirit, then they could have turned around this failing company and blah blah blah. Like that's not what the CEO was saying at the time, under oath.

And by the way, look maybe if the shareholders had not had dollar signs in their eyes and decided to merge with Frontier instead of Jet Blue would have been a bigger airline that could have survived this. Like stepping back.

You know, one way to prevent airlines from going out of business is just to have one giant one, one giant airline that you allowed all these guys to consolidate into. Bigger companies can weather financial difficulties more than others. Not saying that like a market with competition is not without

trade-offs, right? Like there are all kinds of examples of of of bigger companies are able to kind of weather financial difficulties more than smaller ones. The purpose of having antitrust law is you weigh the costs and the benefits on behalf of consumers in a market that's competitive. And by the way, there is more turnover and more abilities for some companies rise and some fall. That's the nature of having a free market economy in which you protect against.

monopoly. But in this specific case, it just doesn't apply because uh the judge who did it was a Republican and and the deck was stacked against it from the beginning. The other thing you don't see people pointing out is that like Jet Blue is also hurting and they've lost money now for the last six years in a row. They've cut routes. Um, there's a real argument that the merger could have led to two failed airlines instead of just one.

JetBlue would have taken on three plus billion dollars in debt if they merged with Spirit. They're having trouble right now. Like we don't know what would happen, but like it's not like it was a clear cut case where JetBlue buying spirit and taking on three billion dollars in debt as it's now cutting roots and losing money is like a big win for Jet Blue either.

Yeah. All their costs went up. I mean it's just like what's such a dumb thing we're even arguing about? Like obviously jet fuel costs is a huge driver here of the problem. What are we talking about?

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So all this comes as we are now officially six months out from election day, uh, and the political environment just keeps getting worse for Trump and Republicans. A bunch of new polling has Trump's approval down to the high or even mid-30s and is absolutely brutal on specific issues like inflation in Iran, which Trump himself acknowledged. Clearly he's been reading the polls uh as we saw in that clip.

But on Monday, Politico's Playbook reported on a few reasons that Republicans are still optimistic that I thought could be a useful frame for us to discuss whether we're getting uh too high on our own supply of hopium. Uh the first is the redistricting war, uh which we've been saying Republicans have basically lost. But maybe not. Uh after the Supreme Court's decision to further gut the Voting Rights Act last week.

in Calais. A few southern states are attempting to redraw their maps before the twenty twenty six midterms, even though it may require the legally dubious move of pushing back the dates of their primaries or filing deadlines. Uh, Ron DeSantis signed Florida's new proposed map into law on Monday, though that will also face legal challenges.

And even though Virginia Democrats won their redistricting referendum at the polls the other week, uh people are a bit nervous that the Virginia State Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled on whether it's constitutional. Um, where do you guys think the math stands at this point?

So if you look at the Cook political report, they basically have um a hundred and ninety-two seats that they marked as solid Democrat, eleven seats likely Democrat, fourteen lean Democrats. That's two hundred and seventeen seats that are probably gonna go to Democrats, then sixteen rated toss-up. But 13 of those are held by Republicans and three by Democrats. They're defending a lot more. That is...

Good for us, but it's not great. Like that's not mopping up. That's not an ass kicking. And then you're to your point, like the redistributing fight. complicate things. They'll probably net four seats from Florida. Um they could states that might move before the midterms include Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina, that would all create more Republican seats.

There will be lawsuits that complicate all of this. As you said, Virginia is up in the air. Um, you know, longer term to twenty eight, some blue states could redistrict in ways that benefit us back. But it just it feels um closer than it should be with Trump at a thirty seven percent approval rating to me.

Yeah, if you get the if you give the four seats from Florida, you get four seats potentially from this redistricting, and then you lose the four that you were gonna gain in Virginia. That's a twelve seat swing.

That you could potentially see, but nobody really knows. I don't know. I've seen like different people are nervous about the Virginia uh uh redistricting just because there's been no ruling yet, but at the same time they've ruled against some of the other objections. So I'm not sure if it's just Democrats are nervous or if there's a legitimate chance it gets thrown out.

So I'll go through the likelihood of sort of the some of the the recent developments that we saw. So uh Louisiana is like the most likely. where we're gonna where GOP will pick up some seats because Louise it was the case was about Louisiana, the voting rights case. Right. And so the most likely result there is the Republicans get one to two extra seats in Louisiana. That is pr there'll be lawsuits there, but that is the most likely since it was directly impacted by the Supreme Court.

And the governor literally declared a state of emergency and delayed their primary, which should be happening right now, and they've kind of kicked it to july fifteenth or until the legislature moves faster. So yes, that process is very much Rolling motion. So yeah, the only thing that could stop that is is lawsuits succeeding, but who knows, right? Um Tennessee wants to get a seat, wants to pick up a seat, the Tennessee Republicans, but they would basically be eliminating all Democratic seats.

in a a black district, majority black district that has existed for decades. Um and their challenge is they have a timing issue since the candidate filing deadline has already passed and the primary is August sixth. and and because they're dismantling the only black district that's existed for decades, it it under the the weird ruling in the Voting Rights Act, you could still have a a section two. Case there.

In in at the very least, you could have litigation that would take a while to play out. So like Tennessee's not a sure thing. Their special legislative session starts this week. It does. Yeah. They will also so they will have to change the primary date. They will also have to retroac the reason that it's more of a legal challenge there is they will have to retroactively change the candidate filing deadline that has already passed.

Um which Louisiana doesn't have that problem. Louisiana's just gonna move the whole primary. Louisiana has a problem which is some people have already voted. Right. Well that is that is yeah, so there's that. Alabama could get a seat, uh is gonna try to go for a seat. They have a bigger problem, which is they need SCOTUS to act on a separate case first and revert to old maps, not draw a new map.

So the VRA thing was like, Oh, if you're drawing new maps, whatever. This they would have to get then the s the the Supreme Court to act immediately Yeah, in lift an injunction and go back to a twenty twenty three map that the Supreme Court itself had already ruled was wrong. Was was wrong. So so they have a bigger hill to climb. South Carolina, very, very hard.

And it doesn't seem like the appetite is there, but they're gonna they're gonna try, but I think the timing issues for South Carolina are even worse. And in Georgia, um uh Kemp has already ruled it out. So Georgia is not gonna go. Um so here's the Virginia problem. The worry there, I was I was looking that I was looking into this. So the Virginia Supreme State Supreme Court is not like it's not partisan like other courts.

where it's not like elected directly. It's appoint the legislature appoints the seats on the court and they're for twelve year terms. So it actually has a slight conserv small c conservative lean right now, which is why everyone's a little bit nervous about how they're gonna rule. They did allow

the referendum to go forward in the first place. Right. But the but the the issues now is people are raising procedural issues in the legislature, not necessarily the referendum itself. It was procedural issues to like th there's some People are a little worried now because they're not it's not like a liberal court. If it was or and it's not a very conservative court. Like Florida, everyone thinks.

Even though this could be a blatant violation of the Florida constitution, the Florida court is right wing enough that like Florida's gonna just say sure and give Ron DeSantis his four seats. If it was like New York or California, we would probably the referendum would be fine, but because of the weird makeup of the Virginia court, I think that's why people are nervous. People are nervous about it. Yeah. Yeah.

That is that's what's happening there. So all all told, like if Virginia and Florida both survive, it's basically we net out at Republicans picking up three seats and the redistricting war uh next. And if you're not going to be able to You know, and then beyond three, you get like maybe five to seven, depending on whether you get Louisiana plus Tennessee plus Alabama.

So you're saying sorry. So it is net three across the entire redistricting fight we've just been fighting over the last If Virginia survives and Florida survives. arrives. And then there's a potentially plus four to Republicans through this the post VRA thing. Yes. So the So basically the floor is much worse for Democrats after this. The ceiling, uh, it all depends on sort of for And then if you go out to twenty twenty eight, a bunch of states go.

A real bad Illinois could decide to go nuts and be a seventeen zero Democrat state. Like California could redistrict again. You could crack a bunch of Democratic districts, spread those voters all across. You could do it New York, Maryland, New York's planning on Washington, Oregon. Um if they Republicans move in twenty twenty six, we can't move until twenty twenty eight. Yeah, I mean just the the just th I guess what I'm getting is the overall estimate for how much the Supreme Court

uh voting rights ruling will impact things. They're all over the place, depending on where you look. Like it's like from a dozen to two dozen seats could be impacted f to help Republicans. And then Fairfight, the Stacy Abrams group. Looked at a bunch of districts that Democrats could change to help us. So it's just like it's a mess. It's impossible to know what's happening. None of this is good for democracy.

No, I mean you ca so s someone just sort of posted this map as like a kind of a joke, I guess, but it's not really, which is You could end up by twenty twenty-eight or beyond where if it's a red state with a governor and a legislature that is majority Republican, there are no Democratic seats left. And if it's a blue state with a governor and a b then there's no red seat

Good. So that's that's just talk about polarization. Um on Louisiana, Trump posted on Sunday, quote, We cannot allow there to be an election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the convenience of state legislatures. If they have to vote twice, so be it. Uh any idea what he's actually saying there? So

Uh it's unclear if he who the who the they is there. Does he mean the legislatures have to vote twice as in approved new maps? Doesn't totally make sense. If this is because Louisiana is already voting and that's why there's some question as to whether the election could proceed, I think that's what it has to mean. Now

Like I who knows what the Supreme Court will do, but the idea that that look the Supreme Court, this court is a huge fan of unleashing chaos and then being like, We can't believe what's happening. We can't believe what your people are doing with our very obvious and simple ruling. Um, but I do think it's a possibility that the Supreme Court would would intervene in some way to say uh we cannot have a bunch of states.

throwing out their maps and having people re vote and all of this chaos in the we in the in the run up before an election is a tradition of of not disturbing a election as it's already begun. And I think that's what Trump is worried about. Yeah. And it does seem like they're even that's why I was I when I was talking about Tennessee, it seems like they would be more likely to do that in Tennessee even than Louisiana, because the Tennessee thing is really

Like throwing out the filing deadlines, doing a new primary, eliminating all the districts. It's like a re it's a pretty There's supposed to be a Supreme Court precedent. It's called the Pur Cell principle that says court you should not be changing elections or the election rules right before an election. Republicans often use that to screw Democrats procedurally. Yep. Uh hopefully it should protect.

everyone from like really terrible things happening right before an election or people getting disenfranchised, but I don't know. We'll find out, I guess.

Yeah. So Netnet I would say um I think however this ends up, I still think Democrats are favored to win the House, but you d this definitely could put a a uh a dent in the number of seats that we pick up, uh even if we do get a majority.

Um so that's the House Let's Talk Senate. Um we've been talking about how the path to a Democratic majority in the Senate has been getting more realistic by the day, even though it would require defending every Democratic seat and then flipping four Republican seats. But there is another potential wrinkle that JVL at the Bulwark and Jonathan Martin at Politico just wrote about, John Fetterman.

Uh specifically the rumors that Republicans are trying to persuade him to switch parties or at the very least become an independent, which would deny Democrats a Senate majority, even if they pick up four seats. Uh J. Mart reported that Trump has offered via Sean Hannity To totally get behind Fetterman and raise a lot of money for him if he makes the switch. Uh Fetterman told J. Mart he's quote staying a Democrat and that he'd be a quote shitty Republican. Um, what do you guys think?

Uh specifically, is there anything Democrats can or should be doing about this possibility? Just a ma like imagine the Democrat invit making this offer via Rachel Madison. It's so crazy. But I mean th this story, look, the the details are like Fetterman finds the online left really annoying. He's gotten close to center. We've all been there. Everyone's been there. He's close to his wife, Dita Pell, Goldman Sach executive, turned meta executive, and then Katie Britton, her husband.

As you said, Trump is offering him money and political support. It's not really clear what Fetterman wants politically. It's like nowhere in this article. Um, I think look, hopefully the best case that Fetterman knows this conversation gives him leverage to get something.

TBD. I don't know the guy. I like find it very weird that his thing is just like being super pro Israel now. And like that's fine on policy if you if you believe in Israel and his right to exist and his right to defend itself. But he seems to take pleasure in trolling people that are

worried about civilian casualties or the death toll. Like obviously this war is not good for anyone, not for Israelis, not for Palestinians. So but it's more than just Gaza. Like Fetterman also never seemed to criticize Trump. Um, which is an odd political choice when Trump's approval rating is rock bottom. He jumped out after the correspondence dinner to like start defending the ballroom, which again is even more unpopular and even more stupid.

So I I don't know, it's like some of this just sounds personal. Like Jonathan reported that Fetterman spend hours hanging out with Republicans in their cloakroom. Chatting them up. Um, I get that all personal, all politics is personal. I get that when people annoy you, you can get pushed out of their tribe.

Presumably you run for office because you have beliefs and you want to do things to like turn those beliefs into policy or law. Maybe he does not, but I just it it's terrible. It's a tough situation. I hopefully you know, I think we should. and I'll just... You know. It does. It does remind you that um constantly annoying the shit out of someone is not gonna get them to come your way. But that doesn't mean anyone needs to like not say what they believed in.

Yeah, there was a post by like the Monroe County Democrats that said he's a traitor to Democrats, traitor to Pennsylvanians, traitor to those who work tirelessly to elect him and Uh I've i that's a defensible statement, uh, on some of these issues, but according to Fetterman's you know, Fetterm by by Fetterman's count, he's n votes with Democrats ninety three percent of the time. He's pro gay, he's pro union, et cetera, et cetera. He's taking these heterodox views that I find

strange uh and he's doing it in a state that is not more red than uh an Arizona, for example, where we have people that have been much stronger against Trump. Now The the the the stat that that I saw that I found like I didn't I I first I couldn't believe it made sense mathematically. It was a Harry Enton posted this that Federman has had a 108 point drop among Democrats. I was like, What what do you mean? It means it's gone from plus sixty eight.

to minus forty among Democrats. Now I don't know if Vetterman's gonna run again in twenty twenty eight, but uh it's very clear that he will have a huge problem if there is a primary challenge and there almost certainly would be given how weak he would be in a Democratic The question is how to keep him on side until then. And I do think that's really, really important. Even the Fetterman says in that piece.

Um, if Democ if Democrats get to fifty one, who do you think the fifty-first vote would be? And he's referring to himself. So he's seeing what power Manchin had, what Kirsten Cinema had, and uh he clearly enjoys being at the middle of things in a way that sort of feels vaguely familiar. So I I don't think there's anything wrong with being incredibly critical of John Fetterman, but we have this way on our side of deciding that someone isn't on our side and then making it Tricky.

So yeah. And I don't know that it's a balance, right? Because it I like of course he should be criticized and of course he should face pressure uh to do the right thing when it comes to say like voting for on Trump nominees, for example. But uh I do think we would rather have Uh Fetterman caucusing with us if he ends up being that fifty-first vote, then we would rather have J.D. Vance making all the decisions.

Yeah, just like we'd I'm sure we would all Rather have Joe Manchin in the Senate right now still. Um, and now he he just retired. But like we have Jim Justice who's voting with the Republicans all the time. Joe Manchin pissed us off endlessly, but still voted with Democrats most of the time. If Joe Manchin was in the Senate right now, we'd only be needing t we'd be talking about picking up three seats and not four.

Um, we also wouldn't have had any of the investments um that Joe Biden made in the in the uh Inflation Reduction Act at all'cause it wouldn't have passed. Um I I do think there there's basically two points in the piece that I thought were worth it. One is that ninety three percent number and because uh Fetterman has been going around publicly and privately telling people he votes with the Democrats ninety three percent of the time, right? So i it that's on his mind.

And then you guys have been, you know, summarizing this, but I I I I loved the way J. Mart wrote it. He says he's like, I've seen this a million times. The more one drifts from their political tribe, the more they're scorned and mocked by that tribe, often in personal terms. This only prompts the person drifting away to accelerate their turn and adopt the language customs in some positions of the other tribe with an I'll show them determination.

Soon they're identifying somewhat or entirely with the new tribe, the path only goes in one direction. Now, you can say that that is incredibly immature, bad, whatever, like fine. It's life. We have this guide till 2028.

It's gonna be in the Senate till 2028. That's the deal. And do you want him to stay a Democrat after 2026 or not? Because if he stays a Democrat after 2026, then we have a Democratic majority leader. And that means we're blocking Supreme Court appointments, all this other kind of stuff, or at least we have a chance to do that.

If we don't have a Democratic majority, then we have two years of just John Thune as leader. Right. And so then then it's like, do you now, does that mean Democrats need to compromise their positions where they disagree? No, of course not. But like you don't have to be a dick to them at like just just for the fun of it and keep pushing them into the other side.

Yeah, it's w it's a strange balance. And it's like it's very clear from the piece and previous reporting on Federman that he's way too online and like reads all the criticism and like takes it to heart and gets pissy about it. The good news is

He says in the piece, he knows that Trump demands 100% loyalty. And he knows what will happen to you if you don't give it to him, like Bill Cassidy or Tom Tillis. The again, the weird thing to me is like in the olden days, John Fetterman would want a thing, an earmark.

for a bridge in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. Like, what do you want, dude? Very unclear. Do you just want to troll people over Gaza? Is that like your animating thing? I like I understand like sort of taking positions where you punch left and punch right sometimes and that could be good politics. It doesn't seem like it is currently in Pennsylvania for him, so I'm just sort of I'm just confused by that.

And again, we're not having a conversation right now about the twenty twenty eight Democratic primary in Pennsylvania and whether anyone should support John Fetterman. That's not what this is about. This is about from now till twenty twenty-six when he will be in office no matter what. Do you want to push him into the Republican Party or not? Yeah that's a Or do you want not to push him in, but do you want to do whatever it takes to stop him from getting into the Republican Party?

The fact that that he can see to being a Republican, he's already flirting with it in his mind, even though he's sort of publicly saying that he's not considering it at all, uh, but actually Trump's Republican Party is so like kind of unpleasant for anybody who's heterodox, should tell us a little bit about how we should be dealing with people like this. You know, stepping back also, like.

We hear all the time about how like we need to be a big coalition and that we don't have people have to have all the same points of views. Like we need to be a pop party that kind of like embraces all these That was just something we said, love it, after twenty twenty four when we lost and didn't seem like a lot of people mean that. And, and like, and, and, but, but, And it goes both ways.

It does go both ways. But part of it is like, okay, like he has taken positions that we think are wrong on immigration and ICE. He's taking positions that a lot of people in the Democratic Party view are wrong on, say, funding Israel's military. Like argue against those, fine, but let when people reach a different conclusion and don't vote with you 100% of the time, what happens the next day? And it can't be that they're all traitors. It just can't be because They're bad.

With that you're a bad person. Well I remember I mean, speaking of uh broadening the tent, we can bring up Hassan Piker, but I remember like the the the fight I had with Hassan on the pod, not the the last pod, but the one before the bigger fight was when he was like, Yeah, you know what Joe Biden should have done to Joe Manchin? He should have like

you know, threatened his daughter with an a a D. O. J. investigation and it's like whether or not you th first of all, you can you can argue whether or not that's a a good idea from a legal and and constitutional perspective.

But beyond that, like, do you think that would have scared Joe Manchin into voting the right way? Or do you think that would have maybe said to Joe Manchin, like, fuck you people, I'm leaving and I'm going to the Republican Party? Because it's human nature to be like, Oh, you're gonna yell at me more and Threaten me? Fuck you. I'm gonna go take my toys and go to the other party.

Yeah, also we we do know that in the Republican Party, if you um don't do everything Trump says, it ends with him telling a mob to hang you at the Capitol. So the downside risk is a little greater on their side. But you can see from the right. Dude compared to pencil. That's a really good point. Buttress that buttress that fucking uh what do you call it? What's the thing you hang people from?

You can see from the piece too, like Katie Britt and uh and what's his name? Uh Dave McCormick, they're like working overtime to be nice to Fetterman because they think to themselves, Oh, if we're nice to him then maybe he'll do It must be so obvious. Yeah. I thought you have one at lunch with me again. Okay, Katie. Yeah. No no Katie Britt loves me loves hanging with me. Great hang I'm John Fatterman.

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So uh in the category of Democrats being democrats, there's also some uh new concerns swirling about the DNC after Ken Martin's stellar performance on this very show last week. Um You threw him off that ship in the harbor like a Sam bin Laden's corpse. Is that okay to say? was a he was a bit testy, I think, about his decision to uh not release the twenty twenty four autopsy, despite promising to do so, um, as well as the state of the DNC's finances, which are not great.

Over the weekend, uh, Lauren Egan at the Bulwark reported that some DNC members have recently considered trying to force Martin out, but that effort was quote put on hold after members failed to identify an alternative candidate willing to step into the role. Sort of like uh sort of like trying to be the new Ayatollah, I guess. Uh but party members are also trying to force a resolution that would put constraints on Martin's spending and how he handles the budget.

Um I can confirm the bulwark reporting. I've also talked to DNC members and others uh around the the DNC who have talked said that there's real conversations. There's been real conversations about trying to potentially oust Martin. What do you guys make of how big of a problem this is? What is the thing? What do we want the DNC to do between now and November? Right. And it seems to me like at this point, this November. This November. We want it to raise a ton of money.

But very but but even then, the DNC has very little to do with the midterms so If we succeed in the midterms, Ken Martin's gonna say, see, you're all a bunch of bedwetters and I'm amazing, and look at what the DNC did. That's gonna be wrong because the DNC doesn't really have a lot to do with the midterms. If we fail at the midterms,

And people say, oh, this is why Ken Martin's off. That's also not doesn't really hold water because it's just the DNC plays the biggest role in presidential elections. So it this is a this is a 2028 issue, not a 2026. But

His performance in that interview was shockingly bad. And like obviously I'm biased here. I'm like w I'm a host of the show. I'm your friend. I'm friends with Ben Wickler. But like I didn't go into the interview feeling like, Oh, I I have beef with Ken Martin. I was just kinda like, What does this guy have to say?

And uh and I came away feeling like he was insulting my intelligence because like on the autopsy debate specifically, the twenty twenty-four DNC autopsy and why they haven't released it, nothing in that report could be as bad as the series of news cycles about spiking the report. Going back on your promise to release it. Nothing. Nothing. And despite what he said, like no one expected there to be a silver bullet in there. I did hope there would be.

uh a granular look at the efficacy of like voter contact, door knocking, phone calls, ad spending, like issues that in hindsight move voters Um, if vendors or like, you know, various individuals spent money poorly, we should name and shame them. But now we don't have any of that. And everyone is filling the void.

left by the lack of information with their priors, right? So the DNC defenders say, oh, it was all just inflation or Biden was too old. And the left says it was all Gaza. And we just argue in circles at infinitum and it just it sucks. It's a terrible setup. And

There was a DNC member saying on Twitter that the the truth is the autopsy report just never really got done or never got completed and never will be. And that's why it wasn't released. And if that's true, that shows a a lack of candor in previous statements and the interview with you.

that it's really bad and a problem. And so then the fundraising, like the fundraising is not good. There's a bunch of big donors on the sideline who will not give to the DNC. I know that from personal conversations with them and we can't pretend otherwise. So like Uh this process about pushing him out or selecting someone new, like I don't know how that would work.

I I also I don't think you can constrain like you pick someone to lead the DNC, you pick them to lead the DNC. You can't constrain how they spend money. If the if you're at that point, you should get a new person in there. This person needs to be able to spend money. So I just I came away shocked that like a political professional struggled that badly in just answering questions that I feel like were asked in good faith and could have been answered better, but just it was d the a mess.

It is now like accepted as a fact. that the DNC covered up the autopsy because it showed that Kamala Harris lost because of Gaza. That is like on whole parts of the internet. That is just an assump a known thing that we all know about the fact of this of this report. Now there has been reporting that that played a role and I would like to know what that information

is, but it just speaks to the damage done by either not finishing the report or not and like the way in which saying you're not gonna release the port and not finish the port go hand in hand is this thing kind of just sort of

slowly like kind of ends with a whimper. We're probably not gonna put it out. Like the the the work, you know, everyone kinda slows down, the meetings get canceled and all of a sudden there's no report and nothing to release. And so I like Part of the problem is there's no way to answer for that in an interview now because what should happen is go back in time, aggressively finish the thing and get it out the door.

What I have heard, um, and and like Tommy said, there was a DNC member on Twitter who said some of this, but then I've heard it from other people. tweet that Ken Martin um had his his friend Paul Rivera, um, who was unpaid, which is why Ken was telling me then he was like, Well, we didn't spend hundreds of thousands dollars on it and I was like, Oh, it's a free report and he was like, Well, so that he he he got this guy to do it.

The guy went around and talked to people, didn't even talk to all the right people. A lot of people weren't interviewed at all. Um, did a shitty job, and Ken the whole time was like just letting him do his thing. And then when he came back and didn't have any of the good information, then they just wrote up the report what they had. It was a garbage report. And they reali and then Ken realized they couldn't release it. And so instead of either saying like

This was a bad thing. I'm gonna try another we're gonna try another aftopsy, we're gonna hire someone else, we're gonna do it right, has apparently just decided to not be honest about it. Yeah. I've heard that from a bunch of people too. I can't confirm that it's true or not. It would certainly Well I've heard a we've heard from a lot of people who are like in the know. Yes.

But it certainly does a better job explaining why you would endure this torturous series of news cycles about a thing rather than just dump it out over Christmas or something and just like move on. I've also talked to um people who have raised money at the highest levels for Democrats for a very long time and they said that the finance situation is a disaster.

And they're like, he can talk about state investments and this and that. The problem is he is spending more money than he is raising. That is very simple and it is is a mismanagement of funds.

And so even if he was raising a lot more money and having more success there, if you're spending more than you're raising, it's still a problem. And to all of his talking points about investing in state parties, the portion that they're investing in state parties still E even if you take all that money, that does that nowhere near makes up

the the the large gap between the fundraising and the spending that's going on at the DNC right now. So there is a mismanagement. I since that interview I've heard from DNC members, from people inside the DNC, current and former officials. Um and uh heard from donors. Uh and then those people have told me they've heard concern from party leaders, former DNC chairs.

Who were very upset about this and no one knows what to do because I guess, Tommy, to your point, like the bylaws make it very difficult to actually oust Martin.

And so people are sort of wondering what to do now. And look, I think Amanda Lippman, um, our our friend who runs Run for Something, you know, she made a good point about this. She had she put a a video about this on her Instagram, but The real challenge here is building trust in the Democratic National Committee ahead of 2028, because what the DNC does ahead of 2028 is

They are going to set the primary calendar, which is obviously going to be very contentious because depending on which states go first, that's going to help different candidates. They are going to set the debate qualifications and who qualifies for debate. And so we are going to have a a raucous primary in 2028. And the, you know, the the supposedly the referee of that primary is supposed to be the DNC. And I do think that like it's incumbent on all the candidates.

who were gonna run in twenty twenty in their campaigns to like speak out publicly and get some transparency, more transparency than we've gotten from Ken Martin on what the rules are gonna be, how the process is gonna go, make it transparent, whatever happened to the fucking autopsy. And like, what's your plan to be financially viable in twenty twenty eight? Because it is important for the Democrat the DNC to have money ahead of the presidential election in twenty twenty eight.

Yeah. I guess the thing is I agree with all that. Right now, the most important thing is that like every conversation we're having about the Democratic National Committee, like it is important forward. But for right now it is like about

Democratic Party problems that ultimately will have no impact on what happens in 2026. And that doesn't mean we don't have to have this fight and this conversation right now. Um, the thing I Well yeah, no,'cause it's to that point, Love it, like the the folks I were talking to said like their biggest worry is twenty twenty six happens, we do well.

And then Ken Martin's like, see, you are all wrong, bunch of bedwetters and blah, blah, blah, and we're moving on. And then suddenly you're in the primary, in the twenty twenty-eight primary, which happens like right after the midterm elections. And by then it's too late to solve it. the problem. Right. The question, right, is the fight over who would be DNC chair plus the sending money all over the world.

combined with the refu the the either the inability or refusal to release the autopsy have together created this storm. And the question is, what are the those are due very specific problems, right? That like They may carry knock on effects into the next year, but they don't actually speak to whether or not he would be able to do those jobs, right? Like what he would do to run the party in the next year. But like what I took away from this is like when we saw him at that party.

I had always seen Ken Martin in these kind of like talking point mode interviews, which I found generally frustrating, but not more to or less than any traditional politician. But at that at that meeting, he was so intense and direct, like in a way that I'd never seen in a kind of

uh uh public facing way was like, oh, like there's the real guy. He's like an operator, like an actual kind of like hard nosed guy who's like pretty upset about bad coverage, pissed about it, thinks it's unfair, wants to argue about it, wants to make his case. And I thought like, oh, that's like an interesting

kind of version of this person that I hadn't seen because publicly he does a kind of more traditional democratic politician thing. And I think what I took away from the interview overall is like the era of that kind of talking point is over. Like don't talk down to people like this. It doesn't fucking work. Certainly not solving your problem.

It was direct but he's also very it's very defensive and what you've heard from DNC people and people in the Democratic Party is that the relationship building element of the job, which is also important for the Democratic national committee chair. is uh is lacking in a bit. And so it's very insular and he has not reached out to people, e or especially people who like supported any of his opponents in that in that pr in that uh race, you know, which is tough.

But also, like his whole point was like we're looking forward, not backwards. It's like, well, y none of us want to wallow in the past, but it's about learning from and correcting mistakes. And like Look at the Democratic Party right now. We have not learned from and corrected a lot of mistakes. Like, remember when voters were like, Hey, you have a gerontocracy problem? Have we solved that? Beyond Removing Joe Biden from the ticket? Absolutely not.

Sorry. But he's doing this like Bill Belichick, we're on the Seattle, we're on the Seattle thing. It's like we we we we wanna figure out what we screwed up last time and fix it and and uh like it just it was very And his very frustrating and his repeated point about lessons, where releasing the lessons, the lessons, I encourage everyone to go onto the DNC website and sign up for the two hundred page lessons report and see what it is because

It's not really a lot of lessons. It's uh there's some it a lot of it is lessons from success in twenty twenty five. And then like various case studies from different groups that are just sort of pasted into the document, like our friends at uh Swing Left who did a lot of that uh research door to door when they were yeah, which is great, we love it, but like that's not that's not an autopsy of twenty twenty four.

No, it's not. I whenever someone says like we gotta look forward, we can't look towards the past, and it's like Okay. Uh where do you learn from? Because I only I face the past. The future is but actually in a lot of ways behind me. I only find out what's gonna happen there when it becomes the past.

The present is infinitely small. So I tend to live in the this present that I can't really uh quantify. And everything I know, a hundred percent of it actually comes from the past, which is interesting. So I don't know how you're supposed to learn from the future as before you've gotten there. So I think Marty McFly thing. Yeah, pass is a good place to look to find answers. I find. I find.

Anyway, it's an issue. It's an issue. Looming over all these issues though, uh, is the fact that even though Trump and the Republicans are pulling horribly The Democratic Party isn't popular with voters either. Laksha Jane at the argument had a piece last week pointing out that the collapse in Trump's approval ratings has not yet resulted in Democrats gaining by a corresponding amount on the generic ballot. So basically

uh in in their analysis of polling. Um Trump has gone from negative sixteen to negative twenty two between July and April, but the Democratic generic ballot advantage has gone from plus six two plus six. Um, and yet some Democratic candidates are still polling quite well against their Republican opponents, so that's good. Even in purple states, uh, maybe the most prominent example here is John Ossoff in Georgia, uh, who has also gone all in on a corruption message.

Um here's his latest very good, very viral video. We're told a story. Play by the rules. And you'll thrive. who you are. Or where you start, the grind will be. But for two men. The story just isn't true. They represent the donors and special interests. Corruption is why things don't work for ordinary people. Fix it, we have to understand. It shows up in our daily life. Take prescription drugs.

So he goes on there to talk about how, you know, uh when Bush passed Medicare Part D, which is a pr prescription drug program in in two thousand and three, that's what uh stopped drug company or stopped the United States government from being able to negotiate for lower prices. with the drug companies, just like other countries do.

And that like mm I remember talking about this when we were like back in the Senate, Billy Towson, who was the head of the House Committee there, then left Congress to go be the lobbyists. The lobbyist pharmaceutical company completely displayed. And then, you know, he then he used that to tell the story of how

in the Biden administration, you know, he helped lead the fight in the Senate to um actually let uh you know, lower prescription drug prices for a lot of these for a lot of these prescriptions.

Which I thought was the way he told it was a more effective and better story than I ever heard from the actual Biden administration itself, even though they were very responsible for the win. Um, but what did you guys think of that video and also just whether Osof's message is uh should be a model for other Democratic candidates?

I mean, I I think the corruption message is really powerful because it's true and it also gives you a why to explain why things are so broken. You're not just blaming the other side, you're blaming something more tangible. And I think It also speaks to the moment, which is the voters are furious. They want to burn down the system. That was true in twenty sixteen. Trump effectively channeled that fury. Uh, I think he's lost those voters now, but

Uh those voters are probably even more angry, right? Because they're pissed off about prices and inflation. And so Obama ran against Washington, Bill Clinton winner ran against Washington. Um and also I think when you run Did too.

Trump did too. And and when you run on that kind of message, uh hopefully it creates a mandate to actually change some of the things that we're talking about in there. Um, but it also I does let us tell a story about Trump that it isn't just like he's bad because I think What Trump has done to like personally charge the corruption in government is so far beyond Billy Towson becoming a pharma lobbyist. It's like

Kids follow'em a around on foreign trips and they make real estate deals in foreign countries afterwards. Like we all watch, remember the Border Peace event? Yeah. It was something like uh Egypt when the the president of Indonesia was like, Hey Donald, should I call Don Jr. or Eric to cut a deal? Right? Remember this? Um They're making billions off their crypto interests. They even sold half of it to this Emirati back company. Eric Trump is is uh advisor to a robotics company.

'Cause he's a big robotics drone genius, apparently. He got a twenty four million dollar Pentagon loan and Rio Bardaroma was like, Hey, congrats, Eric. Well, well done on that. Uh Don Junior advises Calci and Polymarket, which these Trump officials are using.

to bet on shit they are doing with insider information. Jared Kushner is negotiating with Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, all these Gulf countries. Ninety-nine percent of the money he's raised in his investment fund is foreign. He's trying to raise five billion more. from mostly foreign interests. He was doing so at the sideline of an event at Davos. Um, he has not filed a personal financial disclosure for him. So like this story

It it's very real. It it tells itself if you have some time and you have the ear of the person. Uh and I think Osof has done a better job prosecuting that case than most because he's consistent.

And one thing he says in that video that we didn't play and I hear him say in the stem too is And look, both sides do it. Both sides do it which is the scale of it on the right and especially with Trump is Exponentially greater, but like it is important to voters to acknowledge that like, yeah, Democrats aren't fucking perfect on this either.

Yeah, I like I think there's two questions. I think it's like what is the source of America's ills and then what is the best message going into the midterms? I like the corruption message is great. I think this video is great. Uh Electing Democrat like Democrats are corrupted by the money in politics because we're all people and money corrupts and it it it it it has made it so that Democrats

uh uh when in power, do less, make less change, make more compromise. It takes more to get certain votes because those people uh are either uh either they're explicitly in their own minds trying to protect their donors or they've kind of

uh convince themselves they believe what it's financially best for them to believe. This happened when we were passing Obamacare. Everybody blames Joe Ma uh Joe Lieberman for killing the public option, but actually it was a bunch of Democrats in the Senate when we had sixty votes that stood in the way of having uh an option for people to get public health care like Medicare, uh, because uh of lobbying, because of fear of negative ads, because

Joe Lieberman had a bunch of insurance companies in his state. Um, but even even more uh after that, Joe Lieberman personally stopped. a Medicare buy in for fifty five plus that would have made a huge difference for everybody. And he did that because he had donors in his state. It was and even though he was retiring, he did it at their behest. So like these things do make a difference and it is both sides. But like

We're in this mess. Why is this corruption tolerable? Just because Republicans are excusing it. Barack Obama wins in 2008. He is punished in part because he is. paying for the consequences and economic fallout of the previous Republican administration, Joe Biden, and Democrats are punished because of this mismanagement of the pandemic and the economic fallout that came after that pandemic. But when we elect Democrats

They tend to do things that are that are more popular or more economically uh progressive. And when you elect Republicans, you end up with tax cuts for the rich and deregulation. It happens every time.

Most of what our politics is is about of obfuscating that for people. I think in a world in which people don't generally believe that instinctively and they come to doubt and mistrust Democrats for reasons having to do with economic mismanagement, but also because of uh a whole ecosystem that exists to make Democrats look extreme and silly and because some Democrats have taken stupid

and embarrassing and unpopular positions. I think it is smart to have Democrats making an argument like this. But to me, the goal is for each Democrat to make the best argument they can, tell the best story, because nobody votes for generic Democrat. They vote for the Democrat on their ballot. And then how we address our broader

uh uh problem with the electorate where people mistrust us, don't believe us on the economy, uh but they don't believe what that we'll do what we say on the economy and they still believe we'll do what we said in twenty twenty on everything else. Uh that to me is a fight we're gonna have to fight in the primaries in twenty twenty. Yeah. I mean to the to the broader question of that

lacture raises in that in that argument piece about like why Democrats aren't gaining on the generic ballot by as much as Trump's approval is falling. I do think there's a a probably a number of reasons. Oh definitely. But I do think that there is just a a a severe lack of trust in the Democratic Party, um and the Democratic brand that comes from I mean it c comes from decades, but it also comes like specifically from

everything that happened in in at the end of the Biden administration, Joe Biden running is part of it. Um, you know, Laksha points out uh the democratic position on crime uh is a big part of it, or at least what the perception of the democratic position on crime is, which was

unfortunately um hurt by the defund the police discussion, um which of course, you know, non you didn't have Democratic candidates saying defund the police, but enough activists were that the perception became that Democrats want to wanted to defund the police. But if you did. Few did, for you did, and those were the uh voices that were elevated by some b often by the other side. Yes. Um

I think some of the positions on border security and immigration um contributed as well. There's some cultural issues as well. So like there's there's a lot going on. And but I think I think even beyond all those individual issues, because I do think if you take an unpopular position

on an issue because you really believe in that position and you sell it and you say, I'm sorry that I'm not on your side on this, but this is just what I believe. That is one thing. There's a perception that Democrats are just like Maybe I'll be on this side of this issue, but then maybe I'll change if something's unpopular and the wishy washiness, which is another version of corruption that's not just money, it's it's it's power and

And and fame corrupting as well, right? Like I like my position of power and I don't want to lose it. And so I'm gonna say whatever I think is popular. There's lack of faith in the political system generally, which I think spreads to everyone. And I think on the Democrats to look inward, I think that

you know, voters had high hopes for Obama that they didn't feel were met, right? That's an area where we all look inward. On on the Biden administration, like this is why it's so annoying to hear see Hunter Biden running around and blaming everyone but himself for his father's political standing because he did more To nullify the Democratic Party's position on waging this corruption message against Trump than literally anybody else because of his scummy business dealings. And yes.

they're n nothing compared to what Don Jr. and Eric Trump do on a given Tuesday. But still he was a huge problem and that's why it's so like galling to hear him out there. But yeah, I mean I think there was a broader trust thing with Joe Biden where

We as a party were like, no, no, no, he's not too old, he's totally fine. And then he ran again and voters firmly rejected it. Then there were the pardon issues you were talking about. That said, I do think like like I'm worried about us not doing better in the generic ballot rating, but we have no leader. We have no standard bearer. That's a huge part of that.

Like we are yes, we are off sides where the electorate is on some issues. Like the Washington Post just had a poll out this weekend. It found fifty three percent of voters think Democrats are too liberal. But a a similar number thought the Republicans were too conservative, right? So like people just maybe don't like the other side. What gives me some hope for the midterms?

I think they're gonna be a referendum on Trump and the party in charge. I also think it's a turnout election. And if we can turn out our far more motivated base. then we will win. And then that same post poll, seventy three percent of Democrats say voting this fall is more important than previous midterms versus fifty two percent of Republicans. So our side is considerably more motivated to go out right now.

I I have now heard from a few people who've just like asked me advice on like who to support, what Democrats to support, where to put their money, their time and

And a thing that I keep hearing is, um, you know who I wanna support this time around because of the state of the politics and state of the party? First time candidates. Yeah. New candidates. And there is something and like The this is where like the the Joe Biden issue and the Ken Martin issue are somewhat connected because there is a like don't piss on our leg and tell us it's raining kind of thing where you look at Democrats and it was very obvious.

that Joe Biden was too old and then a bunch of people in the party were like, No, no, he's fine, everything's great. The debate performance was fine, no big deal. And then Kev Martin's like, Well, you we told us you would release the autopsy and you're not releasing the autopsy. And he's like, We are releasing it. We have been releasing it. You know, just like it's like

When you're when you when someone tells you something that is obviously seems dishonest, because we all have eyes and ears, like you lose a level of trust in that person and that institution that is hard to get back, you know? And I think that's that's part of the issue as well. Yeah.

The age thing is a stand in though for because like if you look at w who were the people that were the most behind Joe Biden, even towards the end, it was actually it was it wasn't ideological. Even like Bernie and AOC were the ones that like were behind. A lot of preparation. But but people really know what Bernie stands for. They really know what AOC stands for. And I don't think AOC or Bernie particularly pay a political price.

for that position in part because their deeper kind of values are so clear. And what Asif to me is doing with these kinds of anti-corruption mess with the story he's telling is he's trying to have a kind of an ideologically kind of broad story that kind of can represent a kind of vision for what Democrats stand for, what they care about. And to me what I worry about What does it mean to care about corruption? Because if we can win.

And then all of a sudden we're talking about whether or not to do hearings, right? There's gonna be a ton of pressure from polling when you because when you ask people, you know what the polling's gonna say? Do you want people to look backwards? Do you want them to look forward? Oh, I want people to go forward. Do you want people to investigate Trump or do you want them to focus on issues that are affecting your family? I want them to focus on issues affecting my family.

And I worry that that's a good idea. the kind of like simple reading of what the polls will certainly say will lead people to think, Oh, I we shouldn't we gotta just focus I'm not focused on what Trump did and we gotta that was bad and I hate it. You know I've always been against it, but we gotta focus on my plan. And I get that. But one way you prove to people that you really care about something, that you really stand for something, is you say, look, we got to get to the bottom of this.

for the future. We got to do this even if the polls say it's bad. We got to make sure we root out this corruption to protect our country from a future Trump, whatever it sounds like. But we have to be willing to actually like kind of put real kind of put our shoulders behind an actual anti-corruption agenda when we're in power.

All right, uh when we come back, uh I'll talk to uh strict scrutiny's Melissa Murray about uh the latest rulings on abortion medication, the Voting Rights Act, in her new book. Uh that's right when we come back.

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Melissa, welcome back. Thanks for having me. Congrats on your new book. Thank you. Um it's going to be coming out on Cinco de Mayo. I think the best thing to do to celebrate is to pour salt all over it, lick it, maybe do some body shots. I don't know. What do you think? Uh you know, people will be hearing this on Tuesday on Cinco de Mayo and I'm gonna be doing that then. That's why I'm gonna grab my card. I mean Taco Tuesday, Taco President, Cinco de Mayo, what's this is perfect.

The book is the US Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. Um, I wanna ask you a few questions about that, but first just wanna start with a little legal news. Um Specifically, the uh latest legal news on Mythopristone, uh, the abortion medication responsible for about sixty-five percent of abortions in the U.S. Can you walk us through um both what the Fifth Circuit ruled on Friday in the Louisiana versus FDA case and what the Supreme Court did on Monday?

Sure. So let me roll back a little bit. Uh some of your listeners will remember, and if they're strict scrutiny listeners, they'll definitely remember that there was a case a few terms ago in the court called FDA. Versus the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. And I had such a hard time with the name of this case because I kept saying Hippocritical Medicine. It's something of a Freudian I was gonna say, yeah.

Right. So these are a group of pro-life doctors that were challenging the FDA's approval of Mephapristone. And that case was argued before the Supreme Court. The court in an unexpected decision in advance of the 2024 election. said that there was no jurisdiction to hear the case because the doctors who were part of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine lacked standing, which is to say that their professed injuries because of the FDA's approval of Mifepristone.

were too attenuated to actually sustain federal court jurisdiction. So the case was thrown out, although the court obviously didn't answer important questions regarding the FDA's approval of Mifepristone, its authority to approve Mihopristone, nor did it weigh in on the absolute uh like ridiculousness of some of the claims that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine were making. In any event,

A new group filed a lawsuit this time in Louisiana. That was honestly the biggest surprise that they didn't go back to Amarillo and Judge Matthew Kesmeric to file this case. They instead filed it in Louisiana. And last Friday, the Fifth Circuit um her uh issued a decision on the case where they effectively Issued a nationwide ban on Niphapristone, basically saying that the FDA had not done what it needed to do in approving it and that there were questions.

regarding the FDA's approval of Mipris Mifepristone that required staying the distribution of the telehealth aspects of the restrict of the um protocols for distributing Mifepristone. So I just want to emphasize like the Fifth Circuit did this, but they got a real assist. From the Trump administration. So the Trump administration has been at great pains to stay out of abortion, likely because they recognize it's a really bad issue for them, the whole idea of women dying in parking lots.

It doesn't sell well even in the red states. So the administration has been pretty hands off on abortion and reproductive rights. But the FDA under Secretary Bear Juice, aka R F K Junior, has been making some statements about Mifepristone though, for example

Um, they've made they've challenged or questioned whether the FDA's approval of mifepristone was appropriate. They've challenged or said that some of the requirements for distributing mifepristone via telehealth or through the mails should be questioned or re-examined. So In making those kinds of statements and concessions about the efficacy and safety of Mifepristone, the administration basically laid the groundwork for the Fifth Circuit, and indeed the Fifth Circuit.

Cited many of these statements from administration officials at the FDA in making its decision. So they relied on those statements. So This wasn't issued by the Trump administration. They didn't put a ban on Miferpristone, but they certainly gave the Fifth Circuit a glide path for doing so. So the Fifth Circuit stay went or the Fifth Circuit basically m had this nationwide ban that went into effect on Friday. They issued it at around

four o'clock central time, five o'clock in the East, and it is a nationwide ban. And on Monday, the Supreme Court, um, through the circuit justice, who is assigned to the Fifth Circuit, and I this is Justice Alito, so Interesting. Yeah. Um, he stayed the ruling. This is obviously important because a stay means that Mifepristone is now available again on a nationwide basis. One of the things that our friend of the pod, Steve Vladik, noted in his Substack and on Blue Sky, is that Justice Alito.

will issue stays in cases where that come to him on an emergency basis, but in cases where he's more sympathetic to the causes, the stays are usually indefinite. For cases where he's not particularly sympathetic to the causes or the issues underlying the case, he makes the stay time limited. And in this case, it was a time-limited stay. So this sets up

Uh an argument a schedule for briefing and whatnot. And you know, this will be back before the court, but the stay will not be finite. There's going to be a timeline on this. So in this new case, I noticed the manufacturers of Miphipristone filed a brief that basically says Louisiana's standing theory is an even more attenuated version of exactly what the court already rejected. Do you buy that argument and and more to the point, do you think the court will?

Well, I do buy the argument. Um, again, the arguments that were made and rejected by the court and FDA versus the Alliance for Hippocratics. medicine, talked about, you know, like you have to like when people are using the Fepristone, the doctors are denied the aesthetic privilege of watching babies born. It was just like, oh, okay. Um

Really fanciful stuff. And I don't know that it's that much better here. I mean, they're basically arguing in in very fetal person forward terms that The state of Louisiana is prevented from protecting unborn life because Mifepristone is available nationwide and can be distributed via telehealth and through the mail.

Hard to make that as a specific injury to Louisiana specifically. Um, you know, there's also a discussion of the whole question of the safety of Mipropistone, and they note that there are two people in Louisiana who um suffered ill effects from the use of mipopristone, but they also say that, you know, over you know, thousands of women have been using Mifopristone since Roe versus Wade fell. in Dobbs. So I mean, make that make sense. You know, thousands of women are using it.

Two women experience ill effects, therefore it's a safety concern. And that's one of the predicates under which they're bringing this lawsuit. So I don't buy their claims of injury. I don't know that the court will be as skeptical this time of those claims as they were when this case first came or a case like this came before the court. Again.

When FDA versus the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine was before the court, it was right before a really consequential election. It was just after the Supreme Court overruled Roe versus Wade and Dobbs. I think the court knew that. galvanization of abortion fervor was not great for the court, also not great for the Republican Party.

I don't know if they're thinking that the same kinds of popular conditions exist right now. Um, the abortion question for a lot of people may have fallen to the wayside right now. Um, just because the administration hasn't done anything explicit or obvious as an overture toward abortion rights.

People are worried about other things, the economy, the war in Iran, on and on and on. This might actually be a moment where the court is like, you know, nothing to see here. No one's paying attention in the way that they were between twenty twenty two and twenty four. And this could be the moment. I mean, even if the court buys the standing argument uh this time around.

Uh, wasn't a big line of legal reasoning in Dobbs that the states must decide this, this cannot be a federal issue, and if they rule against Miffer Pristone here. Doesn't that make uh isn't that just a national, effectively a national ban on all abortion medications? Look at you making constitutional claims, John Favreau. Um it's almost like you read Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence, let the states decide what they want, federalism for everybody. Yeah, I guess. Um It it's true that this question

Certainly could be decided on federalism grounds. Like Louisiana has made a choice for itself. And certainly they could address the question of the. uh importation of Mipa Pristone into its borders for use by Louisianans. But the broader question of a nationwide ban, like that seems to be a question that's asked and answered by the whole concept of federalism, whether this court will do that. I mean, it it's basically the bottom line is will this court be principled?

about its prior stances on questions like federalism, the sovereignty of individual states, including blue states that may want to allow for access to abortion. And just Or whether they'll just do what they want to do, because they can and they have a supermajority of six. And when you have six, they let you do what you want. Let's say let's let's take the optimistic view and say that that SCOTUS does the right thing here. Um the Trump FDA is Are you Kate Shaw? Well. What's going on here?

Uh it's um don't worry. I'm gonna bring us back to bring us back to Earth soon. This is more of uh just an exercise. Um The Trump FDA, as you pointed out, um, is still doing its own review of Miphapristone, uh prompted by a you know, debunked Project twenty twenty five report. Um

So is there a case to be made that the legal fight is it may be beside the point at this stage? Like could we just see the FDA itself um, you know, l cause us to lose telehealth and mail order Miffipress don't either way? So any agency action, I'm sure, would be challenged by reproductive rights groups, reproductive justice groups. So certainly the a the FDA could move ahead of this case um and and and go forward and

Again, the whole question the timeline of this case may be upended, like whether this you know, this is an emergency appeal that was made to Justice Alito in his capacity as circuit justice, so that sort of while the litigation is pending. Um, but the next step for this litigation anyway would have been

the Supreme Court. So this is an initial stay. There's going to be a question about whether the court takes this up. Something could obviously happen at the FDA that possibly could moot this case, but I think anything the FDA does would likely to be challenged. But it does seem like this is a tricky one in which if they uh if the court rules um it for Louisiana, like what does that mean for someone in California or New York or Massachusetts trying to get a Mifapristone prescription?

I think it depends on how this decision writes. Um, you know, if this is a decision that take seriously the question of federalism as you alluded to earlier, then there is probably an opening for someone in California. It just may limit Um the importation of miprofistone to states that have very robust restrictions on abortion.

Um, it wouldn't necessarily depending on how it's written, it wouldn't necessarily prevent people from Louisiana from leaving the state unless Louisiana wrote a law that, you know, made it impossible for people to leave the state. Although I think that could be challenged.

On constitutional grounds regarding the right to travel. Brett Kavanaugh mentioned that in his concurrence in Dobbs as well. So there are a lot of open avenues. Um, I think one thing that is really interesting and deeply implicated by this. case and the questions it raises is what happens to physicians in blue states who prescribe mifepristone. And then the prescriptions are going to people in other places, whether it's Louisiana or whatnot. And those are big questions and likely to implicate.

The spate of shield laws that have been enacted in the wake of jobs that haven't really been tested at the Supreme Court yet.

Uh let's move to another cheery topic. Um the other big court ruling uh from the other week is um Calais, uh, which was about the Voting Rights Act. Um, it was a six three decision, uh, again with our friend Alito, uh, writing for the majority. Um, what did the court do there and what is the actual practical consequence gonna be? Uh, do you think over the next two, four, six years?

Well, what did the court do there? So what does the court tell us it's doing and what does the court actually do may be two very different things. And maybe we should parse that for a little bit. Um, the court in that case said that it was doing no more than realigning the terms of section two of the voting rights act of nineteen sixty-five with the jurisprudence that it has issued. Um

Anytime the court says it's realigning something, it it's pretty much either eviscerating it or overruling it. So they are presenting this as a kind of modest change or update. But as Justice Kagan said in her dissent, it is effectively the evisceration of section two of the Voting Rights Act. And to understand what she means by that, I think you have to understand the procedural posture of this case and what the case is actually about.

One thing to note here was that back in 2023, the court took up a very similar case called Allen versus Milligan. It was about Alabama's congressional map that was drawn in the wake of the 2020 census. Alabama essentially packed its black citizens into one district. That map was challenged as an impermissible racial gerrymander under section two. A lower court agreed it was an impermissible racial gerrymander and it ordered Alabama to draw a new map.

with more representation for African Americans. And so Alabama drew a map with two voter opportunity districts where minority voters would have the opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice. Fast forward to October term twenty twenty two, but June twenty twenty three when the court

mi issued its decision in Allen versus Milligan. The map that had been drawn, the second map with the two voter opportunity districts, had been challenged as itself an impermissible racial gerrymander because They were thinking about race when they were trying to remedy the racial discrimination of the initial map. Seems right. Like you have to think about race if you're trying to vindicate the interests of minority voters after the state has screwed over the minority voters with the first map.

And the court in that case said, this map is fine by a six to three vote. So they upheld the new map with the two minority opportunity districts. Subsequently, the same thing happened in Louisiana. So it's a virtually identical case. Uh Louisiana draws its maps after the census. It makes one opportunity district for black voters, even though black voters comprise about a third of the Louisiana electorate.

A court says it's an impermissible racial gerrymander, orders the state to draw two new districts. The state does that. A group of non African American voters challenge the new map with the two opportunity districts as an impermissible racial gerrymander on the view that in trying to remedy the discrimination done by the first racial gerrymander, the state has now engaged in more racial discrimination in the second round of racial discrimination

Is racial discrimination against white voters. And in the decision that was issued last week, Justice Lido said, Yeah, that sounds right. Even thinking about race in the context of trying to remedy past racial discrimination. is itself a racial violation. So this is basically applying to the context of voting rights the same logic that this court has used in the context of affirmative action. Like

The Constitution does not see race at all. If you're even thinking about race, even if it's for remedial purposes, that is suspect and should be invalidated. And if you are going to use race as a remedy, the only context where it will be applicable and permissible is in circumstances where you can prove intentional discrimination, which is really, really hard to do.

Especially in the context of voting, where, and especially in the South, often race and political affiliation run together. So most black voters in the South. are going to be Democrats. So if black voters say, hey, listen, you just totally diluted our voting power. This is a racial discrimination issue. It's a racial gerrymander. The state just has to say, no, we were doing this because we were trying to consolidate partisan advantage.

And that's probably true, but it doesn't mean it's also not racial discrimination. The court says, Full stop, you've got to have absolute proof that this was intentional racial discrimination. Most states are not dumb. Most state officials aren't dumb. They're gonna figure out how to do this without making it look intentional and they're gonna keep doing it. And that's really

The danger of this case. We're going to see more and more districts being drawn in ways that disadvantage minority voters and voters of color. We are going to see more and more states uh try to consolidate partisan advantage. Marcia Blackburn of Tennessee reportedly said that you know this decision leaves the state legislature of Tennessee free to make Tennessee a red state in perpetuity.

All of this is unbelievably anti-democratic, but it's also deeply, deeply anti-multiracial democratic, right? Like this is how you kill a multiracial democracy. So how did the court differentiate its ruling in the Louisiana case from its ruling in the Alabama case, where I believe Roberts and Kavanaugh voted with the liberals in that case?

Well, I think part of how they did this was that they created a new question to be asked. So the case, Louisiana versus Calais, was actually first taken up in October term 2024. There was oral argument. The court was expected to issue a decision by June 2025.

in June of 2025. It said, wait a minute, we're gonna hold this case over till the next term. They ordered another set of oral arguments, and then they instructed the litigants to answer a new question that the litigants didn't even ask. So this is a question the court was supplying. And the question was whether the use of race in the context of remedying this racial gerrymander violated the 14th and 15th Amendments. Nobody asked them to brief that. Nobody wanted that. The court wanted it.

And they wanted to get to that question. And part of how they're distinguishing is because of that question and then unique circumstances around that. Uh so that question was not even asked or answered in the Alabama case and this was just a way to Okay. Um, cool, cool, cool. If the goal was to just gut section two, which it functionally does, why dress it up? in the way that Alito did. Is that just his style or do you think there was a strategic reason to do that? Well

I think there's two strategic reasons. Um, one redounds to the benefit of the court, uh, the other redounds to the benefit of non-African American litigants. Um, let me explain the court benefit first. Um This is a court that for almost every year that it has had a conservative supermajority has overruled some precedent. So Roe versus Wade in twenty twenty-two, the affirmative action precedence in twenty twenty-three, chevron in twenty twenty-four.

I think if they had actually gutted the Voting Rights Act, basically overruled jingles, which was the jurisprudence that really laid out the factors for drawing these minority. m majority minority districts, uh, that would have raised some eyebrows from a lot of people who think this court is really on one and probably needs to be curbed. So

There's that issue. Um, I don't think the court could say, we're just completely throwing out the Voting Rights Act. And, you know, for understandable reasons, it would have really galvanized, I think, popular antipathy against the court. The other thing though that simply preserving section two does is that it leaves section two available. to be used by non African American litigants every time a state tries to remedy. So blue states trying to draw opportunity to trick

Now non-African American litigants can come in and say that violates my rights. So in California, for example. This new redistricting effort that is being done to counteract what is happening in Texas and in other red states. If non-African American voters say that the state has drawn this for the purpose of consolidating

racial minority groups, political power, then all of a sudden you have a section two claim that can be brought and that the court is probably going to look at. And they're probably not going to think that it's a an effort to consolidate partisan advantage, they're really gonna focus on the racial aspect of it.

Right, the happier news, your new book, which when people hear this will will be out. Um uh called The US Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. Uh obvious question first. There are a lot of books about the Constitution. Why this one? Why now? First of all, this is for the modern reader and Right.

I don't yeah, like I like think about it. Who are you? If you're a modern reader, this is for you. If you're Sam Alito, it's probably not for you. You're not a modern reader. Um Why now? Because I think we need to engage with the Constitution perhaps now more than ever. Right? This is a document that was meant to be read. It was meant to be debated. And if you ask most Americans,

I think very few people have read the constitution cover to cover. Uh in part because some of it's just really boring. Trust me. I I read it and I wrote about it and I was like, There were times I was like, Whoa Article one's really long, but I did it so you don't have to. And I go through and I explain what every single clause is doing, what it's for.

what they were animated by when they decided to include it. Um, there's all kinds of really fun stories about the Constitution that you probably didn't even know that are in this book and detailed here. ordinary people who make claims on the constitution and manage to effect constitutional change, like that's important to know right now. We live in a world where we act like the Supreme Court is the final word on our rights and

I guess that's kind of true, unless we take seriously the idea that we can be constitutional change makers in our own right. And in fact, there are people. in our history who have done exactly that and have changed the constitution and made it more responsive to we the people. Talk about the project of explaining the Constitution to a a general audience, the modern reader, if you will, um, in a uh in a moment um when its meeting is this contested.

This is not what I would have done on strict scrutiny. So, you know, one of the things my editor and I talked about at length was whether this was going to be as forthright about my particular take on things as we are on strict scrutiny. And we decided that maybe it was just better to sort of explain things, really focus on the history of certain things and do a kind of one group says this, one group does that.

in order to give people of all stripes the tools that they need to dive deeper, make their draw their own conclusions. And I think that was probably the right choice. I I think there are certainly some places where my own views come into play in shaping the book. Like for example, one of the things that I felt very strongly about was being absolutely forthright about all of the ways in which slavery is literally

all over the original constitution, even though the document never says the word. But there are all of these compromises, not just the three-fifths compromise, but lots of different compromises. about whether or not this is going to be a free nation or whether we're going to allow half the country to own people. And

That literally shapes this document. It shapes some of the amendments that we have, and it certainly shapes the way this country tries to knit itself back together after the American Civil War. So those are choices. You do such a great job of

making the constitution and the law feel sort of real and alive uh to people who do not have legal degrees. You do that on strict scrutiny, you do that on TV, uh, and now now in this book. Um what what one thing you want just a a regular lay person with no law degree, maybe like myself, um, to who picks this book up and reads it to to sort of walk away understanding about the constitution, both in what the founders intended when they wrote it and what it means today.

Well let me say two things. One for the reader like you who doesn't have a law degree and maybe one for the reader like John Lovett who thinks he has a law degree. Um Ha ha. And for you, John Favre, I'm gonna offer this origin story about the project itself. So there was a time, you'll remember this time, when I was in these Twitter streets quite a lot. And I really was. And Twitter was fun back then. It really was it used to be fun. Anyway, I was in the Twitter streets and

Luther Campbell, um, you may know him as Luke Campbell. I am from Florida and I grew up in the 90s in the dirty south. So I know Uncle Luke as the lead rapper of Two Live Crew, and he was out here in these Twitter streets. Talking about all of the things that Joe Biden should be doing. President Joe Biden should do this. President Joe Biden should lower the price of gas. He should do this. He should do that. And I was just reading this litany and I was like,

Wow, Uncle Lucas never read the constitution because Joe Biden can't do any of these things. Like, oh my God. And That was sort of the origin story of this project. I I think I wanted Uncle Luke to know what the president can do, especially now that he's running for Congress. I really hope he'll buy this book and and read it, because if he's going to be an elected official, I think this is critically important right now for him. He is the audience, he is the primary audience for this book.

Maybe not primary, tertiary perhaps. I mean, I think any I think this is a book for all Americans. This is the document that scaffolds our government and indirectly our lives. You should know what it says and what it doesn't and what it authorizes and what it does not. You should know that this is a trauma-informed document. When these guys sat down to write the constitution, they were going through it. They had

This period, this colonial period where England was literally on their necks constantly. So they wanted To have rights and they wanted to be able to have a society where they were free to do things. But then they'd also just had this revolutionary war against the biggest global superpower in the world. And they were basically trying to fight them with what what

Which was a government that was made up of like friendship bracelets. And they're like, we actually need a strong central government, but not one that's so strong that it becomes despotic. Like that's the tension. And they try to structure this. government that is limited. And we need to remember that. And this is now for John Lovett.

This is a government right now that doesn't feel that limited. And in being unlimited and even excessive in certain ways, that's not in keeping with what they were trying to do and what we have continued to try to do. And what this book reminds us is that there have been times where the people have just said, I'm not having it. I'm not doing this anymore. I want something different. And they've actually stepped up and they've made constitutional changes.

Fantastic. I'm excited to read this. Uh especially as we head into, you know, America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I think it's probably probably a good time to uh take a look at that constitution and see where we started and where we are now. I think the seventeen seventy six commission's gonna love it. You think you think Trump's gonna maybe hold it up at the White House in one of the at the the UFC celebration? You think that I mean? I think it might be in the gift bag. The swag bag.

Uh the book is the US Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. Everyone go pick it up, please. It is uh I I you know, know from talking with you and being a strict scrutiny fan that it's gonna be fantastic and you're gonna learn a lot and you're gonna enjoy it. So, uh, take a look. Melissa Murray, thank you as always for joining Podsave America. Thank you for that great wind up. All I will add to it is um we'll be wild. Thank you.

Bye. That's our show for today. Thanks to Melissa for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Podsave America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Faris Safari with Reed Chirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGrote, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis.

Cyril Pelaviv, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Sengle. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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