Chuck’s Commentary - The SAVE Act Degrades Democracy, Not Save It + A Completely Unserious Leader At The Pentagon

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We have a fantastic episode for you. My big guest today is Fiona Hill. You may remember Fiona Hill from the very first Trump administration. She was on the National Security Staff with the portfolio of Russia. She is not somebody you would call trumpy. I think she was arguably brought in by the hr Holdeman team and she was sort of part of that part of that group of

Trump staffers. In term one that was there to restrain Trump, if you will, I don't know if she would put it as starkly as I put it, but whether it's hr McMaster or you had John Kelly or even a Wright's prebus, and you know that there was a lot, particularly in the national security space, of making sure all the guardrails were there, and it was about keeping him from going too much off the reservation. Obviously, folks like Fienna Hill were not welcome back into a second Trump term.

But Fiona Hill's expertise on Russia in particular is no less important these days, and so we have a great conversation about how Russia may view Iran at the moment, how they view this war, where's this headed, but most importantly, where are we headed post Trump? What's the world going to look like? What is geopolitical politics going to look like. It's a pretty healthy exchange. And if you've ever spent time reading or hearing from Fiona Hill, I think you

will enjoy this conversation. We spend a lot of time in the war, it so in Iran and sort of the whether Trump fully appreciates what he has gotten himself into. And in fact, if you just look at the headlines

in the last twenty four hours. You know, what is happening is exactly what people like Fiona Hill and others would have warned him about and probably did warn him about in the first term, and did warn him when he made the decision to go after Solomoni, and did warn him when he made the decision to bomb Iran the first time, of what could happen. The fact that you may get an asymmetrical response. Well, we're in that awkward phase of this war where militarily it's a huge success.

There's no doubt the targets that we have chosen to bomb, we've been successful with it. So as a military operation, everything is going fairly well. But the problem is that the definition of victory for the Iranians now is simply surviving. Right, just like in some ways in Fiona Hill, well she makes this direct comparison. It's sort of similar to how

Russia viewed Ukraine. They thought it would be quick and dirty, they thought it would be easy, and then it wasn't. And then suddenly, even though maybe tactically Russia can make more advances into Ukraine and they're acquiring territory here, the fact that the Ukrainians haven't folded is in itself a

loss for the Russians. And when you make regime change the focal point, which the President did when he first began this effort, when he said the goal he hoped that Iranians would stand up and take their government back, wasn't as direct as what the Israelis want. The Israelis have made no secret about their goals in this war, and they actually have very clear goals in this war. It is to eradicate the threat of this Iranian regime that includes regime chains, and this is why they're trying

to eradicate as blood and right. So whatever, you may disagree with some of Israel's tactics, but unlike the United States,

they have a clear mission. They have a clear set of goals, and they're trying to execute a strategy in order to achieve those goals. Obviously, we do not have those same set of goals. What does that look like? And he is he has boxed himself in because the military success is not leading to a policy victory, right, and suddenly just the regime surviving is in and of itself a victory for the Iranian reas because they weren't knocked out. They weren't taken out by the big bad

Satan of the United States. Right, So he's got an energy crisis on his hands. And then if he wants to leave and I spend some time with her, it's like okay, Fiona Hill. He's going to want to get out.

He knows this thing is on. How does he do it?

he get tucked into ground troops. One would assume he wouldn't, but if he wants to achieve the goal of regime change, he would have no other choice. Does he just keep this up and hope that over time they just wear them down? That awfully costly, it's softly expensive. And then you get accidents like the US military targeting a girls' school rather than it was it was the wrong target. We are now admitting this. We'll see if the President

puts his own face behind this. It's unlikely he tried to say it might have been the Iranians that did it, using us stolen US weapons to somehow blame America for this. It is pretty clear that we either had old information targeting the wrong thing, but we are accepting the blame for this. The question is what you know, how how

do we behave? How does the president behave and actually put this information out or is it a typical Trump and he refuses to do it and makes egg Seth do it or makes General Kine do it, which is also a possibility. Few other headlines that you shouldn't miss

in the war itself. ABC News is reporting that the FBI let California sheriffs and other law enforcement officials know of a potential threat of Iranian drone strikes from the Pacific Ocean targeting California towns that would be and this is the fear of this war is that it essentially goes asymmetrical or horizontal, where they try to make the cost of this very expensive bombing ports, putting minds in

the straight of horn moves. There are sleepers, perhaps sleeper cells in western cities all over the world that get targeted with Iranian supported terrorist attacks. These are the concerns, and this is the metastasizing that's always been something that many a policy advisor to many a president who who is asked, Okay, what should we do here? Should we try to take out this regime has always been sort of pulled back by all of the potential fallout and how complicated.

And so it is we're we're He is in this. That's why I called it quicksand the other day. He's in quicksand now and it is hard to imagine how he's fully going to extricate himself from this without still doing a lot of damage to our alliances, leaving the Middle East in total shambles and screwing up the economy. Other than that, this is going really well. And again militarily it is, and it's and you know, I think

there's a noble goal here. Getting rid of the scourge that is this Iranian regime would be good for the region, would be good for the Iranian people. But is this the best way to do it? And are we blowing our credibility to a point where this stuff's going to get harder down the road, not easier. So, and we also learned that the initial drone attack that killed those first service members that died, it's a pretty vicious attack.

We've got seriously injured soldiers. This was a CBS News report that indicated this serious, seriously injured soldiers in that attack on an American installation in Kuwait. So the costs of this war are escalating and the actual cost of this war is going to be expensive, and it's going to be an extraordinarily tough vote in Congress that I can promise you. And Republicans already know this because they're

thinking about doing a reconciliation bill, believe it or not. Right, they can't figure out an electioneer agenda. They can't agree on anything. They just had their House retreat where half the members didn't even show up. Right, this is a House republ look and majority that kind of knows it's over right. The rank and file look like they've already pulled ripcord. Half of them didn't show up. Now some of them are probably among that one hundred plus that

didn't show up. A bunch of them are retiring, and a bunch of others are running for higher office and don't want to be associated with the House Republican brand

at this point. But this is a demoralized majority. They don't know what to run on, and the war in Iran has now complicated this, and they're going to have to figure out how to fund this war, and it's possible the only way they could avoid a potential sixty vote threshold to fund this war in the Senate is to do this under the rules of reconciliation, which means no filibustering.

and I think we know where that's going to come from. The other one other sort of extraneous war nugget that I wanted to get to is the boy this Pete hegseth Man.

him on the couch and go a lot of different directions, but he clearly that the fact that he's the guy in charge of this war at the moment. I'm gonna be honest, it's not very reassuring. You have somebody who's this thin skin, somebody who can't take any negative criticism at all, is supposed to be out there, you know, making the tough calls that are necessary when running a war. I mean talk about talk about not giving reassurance to

the American people. This guy cannot give any real and his his overt his religiosity or I don't know if it's even real. It may be, it may be real, Right, I'm not going to question his faith, but to to insert it into the public square. The way he's doing it is it's not a unifying thing to do, and it certainly makes those that serve who are who don't share his faith and don't share his belief system really isolates them. And uh and and I think makes it

that much harder to have a cohesive unit. So this is, you know, with a very serious war we're engaged in, and we have an completely unseerious and unprepared leader at the Defense Department. You know, look, he never should have been confirmed. A handful of Republican senators knew it, and they got They got extorted, basically. And when I say

they got extorted, they got threatened, right, I think it's pretty clear Tilla Scott and Jonny Ernst were both threatened to points. And I think there's a reason neither one of them are running for reelection. And I think it has a lot to do with the confirmation fight over Haigsith because it was clear he was unqualified for this job. It was clear Jenny Earnst thought he was unqualified. It

was clear Tom Tillis thought he was unqualified. They both ended up having to support this and they both decided not to seek reelection. That wasn't a coincidence, but we are now seeing why. And I'm sorry that they didn't have the guts then to stand up to what they knew it was wrong. They knew he was unqualified, and now we are paying the price for what happens. We have a very serious event here. Look, President made the decision.

How we conduct ourselves, how we unwind from this. You need serious leadership with the Pentagon, and we do not have it at the moment. It's very disconcerting, and I think we this is one of those things where there's kind of a bipartisan consensus that that knows this. Yet we know you have to stay silent apparently if you're on the Republican side of aisle, and that that is a considering that life and death. These are somebody in

charge of life and death decisions at the moment.

a little bit of time. This is a this is a request actually from from a few folks close to me, who I think there hasn't been a good explanation for what's this, This fight over the so called the Save Act, which is the Republican version of trying to deal with election integrity, and we had a Democratic version of this that was known as HR one back in twenty twenty one, and I thought it would be important to explain the

actual details and explain the philosophical debate that is actually taking place between the two parties, and then the sort of demagoguery aspect of this that Trump is inserted in that is blowing this whole thing up. And of course the irony is that the fight over this, the polarization and the partisan weaponization of this bill, could lead Republicans in the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. Now I'm skeptical, but now, John Cornyn, I mean, here's a reminder.

When you're desperate to win reelection, your principles are the first thing that go out the door. Apparently he is somebody that has been a fierce defender of the filibuster until it was got in the way of his need to get Donald Trump to endorse his runoff candidacy in Texas. And now he's flipped and he is willing to get rid of the filibuster if it is used to pass the so called Save Act. So maybe this is real. Maybe this is on the table. I'm skeptical the Republicans

have the votes to kill the filibuster. I don't think they do. I think, you know, we know the least trumpy constituency left in the Republican Party are Senate Republicans. You know, I don't believe Mike Grounds will do this. Okay, I don't believe Tom Tillis is going to do this. I don't believe Bill Cassidy is going to do this, of course, but I would have said two days ago, I didn't believe John Cornyn was going to do this.

But you know, everything is for sale in this version, in Donald Trump's version of the Republican Party, including integrity and principles. So thought I thought I would instead, let's lay out sort of the larger debate here over elect integrity and what are the true north stars of both parties. So the primary goal, right, I think this is an easy way to explain it. The primary goal of HR one Right for the People back in twenty twenty one

was expansion and access. Essentially, they wanted to federalize standards

to make voting easier. The primary goal of the Save America Act is security and verification. They want to federalized standards to make voter registration stricter. The Democrats and HR one wanted automatic voter registration right, they wanted to move the burden to the government to register you via the DMV. With the Republicans, they go the opposite way, and they wanted proof of citizenship and they are moving the burden to the voter to provide physical proof of citizenship in

order to get to vote. When it comes to the voter rolls. HR one wanted to protect purging to prevent

voters from being removed, whilst the Save Act wants to mandate frequent purges using DHS citizenship databases.

in ballot options. They didn't say how many dates or whatever it was, but you know, whether it's a week, two weeks, etc. What the Save Act would do in its current form, it would seek to end universal mail in voting, and of course Trump wants to even put more curbs on that, which that version of it would have to pass one more time in the House because that wasn't in this version. So let's dig in deeper

in here into the Save Act. There's a significant gap between the bill that cleared the House and the version that President Trump has been championing on the bully pulpit over the last couple of days. Here's what the actually

passed the House. The core of it is the documentary proof of citizenship. So to register to vote in this bill that passed the House, you need a passport, a birth certificate, or a so called real ID that specifically denotes citizenship on the ID. And it also requires states to submit voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for quote unquote scrubbing. Now, what Trump is advocating, he

actually is up the Annie. He said he's not going to sign any major spending bills unless this Save Act is gold plate it. So he wants the following additions that were not in the original House text. He wants a total ban on mail in ballots except for military

and disability. He wants a one day, one vote manday. He wants all voting on one day, and then he's got some unrelated culture war writers that he throws in their bands on transgender participation in sports.

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It needs sixty votes to overcome a filibuster, and Republicans have a narrow majority. They don't have the sixty votes, and they're obviously this is the moment we're in. They're having this quote debate about whether they should nuke the filibuster, and like I said, I don't think they have the votes to do it, and if they do, and I specially think they don't have the votes to do it. Now when the reality of Democrats winning control of the Senate is not a fantasy anymore, it is a pretty

realistic outcome of the twenty twenty six elections. Is it the most likely outcome? No, but it is not an unlikely outcome.

Republicans are the one to get rid of the Philipbuster, Democrats aren't going to be the ones to put it back. Now, let's talk about the core argument and what I think is a trap of this partisan power graph.

interesting is how similar the oppositional rhetoric is to both bills. Right, when Democrats try to pass HR one, right, the same thing that happened here. Right, they passed it in the House. I couldn't get it done in the Senate. When Democrats passed HR one, Republicans called it a federal takeover and

a power graph because it was written by one party to to benefit a their perceived base of younger urban voters. Well, we're sort of got a mirror image in the Save Act. The Save Act is seen by the left as a power grab designed to disenfranchise voters who lack easy access to birth certificates or who rely on mail in voting, like seniors and roll of voters. Now here's the problem. When the rules of the game change every four years based on who holds the power, the public will lose

faith in the results of the game. Right, It's like allowing allowing the University of Miami or Indiana University. If the University of Miami's a home team, they get to pick the officials, and if Indiana University's they get to pick the officials, right, they get to hire the officials.

doesn't trust that the other conference doesn't have you know, you want a neutral third party conference, right. I believe we had either big I think we had big ten officials doing the Miami Indiana National title game. He's not big ten officers, big twelve officials, I believe, or yes, it was big twelve officials. Then we had SEC officials I think for a game when we played Ohio State.

But the point was you had neutral arbiters because there would have been questions of legitimacy and concerns that there wasn't going to be fairness there, particularly since there's a

financial incentive for conferences to do well.

this election integrity war. It's a term, depending on who you ask, is either a shield for democracy or sel sledgehammer against it. So right now we are seeing a collision of two very different, very partisan visions of how you and I actually get a ballot. On one side, you have the ghost of HR one. On the other side,

you of the current battle over the Save America Act. Now, if you're getting your news from social media, you probably think the Save Act is just common sense or total suppression, right, depending on which algorithm you're fed. But let's be honest, the policy reality is a lot more complicated, and the

political strategy is even more cynical than itutlooks. So let's go back to twenty twenty one. Democrats wanted to federalize elections by mandating automatic voter registration. The idea the government should find you if you're at the DMV, you're on the rules. Well, fast forward to twenty twenty six. House Republicans pass the Save America Act, and it is the exact inverse. It doesn't just reject automatic registration. It makes

registration eight show your papers event. It mandates documentary proof of citizenship. We're talking birth certificates, passports, and specific real IDs that denote citizenship. So this is what actually passed the House last month. A requirement for documentary proof of citizenship to register. So you'd have to go and get a birth certificate, which could take days or weeks depending

on the jurisdiction you were born in. You need a mandate for states to purge voter roles using DHS databases controlled by people like Corey Lewandowski or once were you tell me whether you trust that a man who's bragging by the way that he thought he was bulletproof because no matter what he did, he'd get a pardon from Trump. That should make you feel good about DHS systems. And then there were strict voter idea requirements for both in

person and mail in voting. But there's a massive gap between the bill of the House actually sent to the Senate and what Donald Trump is actually demanding. Untrue social right. The President wants even more this bill, which means they'd

have to go back to the House and pass this again. Good luck doing that. But he you know, he told Senate Republicans not signing anything, effectively threatening a shutdown unless they add what he calls his non negotiables, total ban on mail in ballots except for the military. And get this, he wants to attach writers banning transgender women from sports and ending gender affirming care for minors, all in.

do you have a plan to get to sixty votes, whether it's HR one or the Save Act. We are stuck in this cycle of partisan electioneering. And here's the Here's important because we've had this game gamesmanship on elections before that were used to deny black people the opportunity to vote in the late nineteenth century, in most of the twentieth century, and there was and we know, when one party changes the rules, it is not there to

benefit everybody. It is there benefit only that one party. And there had been kind of an unspoken rule in the American democracy that you didn't change the rules of the game unless you had members of both teams agreeing to the rules changes. Democrats didn't bother to find Republicans or find a way to find broader appealing parts of their parts of the bill are very popular, just like parts of the Save bill for Republicans are very popular.

But they're parts. And here's the reality that the Republicans jammed this through. It's a political nightmare for them and actually I think will only serve as a get out the vote mechanism for the left and the less actually going to do everything they're going to have, you know, you'll see people on tic tac.

rid of the filibuster to do this, and it would you know, it's like it's like, it's like Trump and his absurd demand for partisan redistricting. Careful what you ask for. You might get it and it may end up blowing up in your face. Take the state of Virginia they're now going to who had them having a ten to one delegation on their bingo card a year ago? The answer is no one. Welcome to karma it So you know what, So now we ought to get to the

uncomfortable part. And there are parts of both people's agendas that are both popular, in parts that are not at all okay. There is a pretty big disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country on some of these bills. Because if you listen to the debate on the House floor, you'd think the Save America Act was the most polarizing piece of legislation since.

The voter ID concept is not controversial now. Most people are assuming it means the same, you know, same thing you do at the airport. You know, you just show your driver's license, that you should show your driver's license, your government issued photo ID right before you go vote. That has eighty three to eighty four percent support. That's not a Republican number, that's a consensus number. And there's even support for proof of citizenship for first time registrants

that clocks in it over eighty percent support. All right, eighty percent. That's a big deal. Now again, first time registrants, that is not what this is. So this is where you see a lot of partisan commentators claim this is enormously popular. The Save Act is enormously The Save Act is not enormously popular. One piece of the Save Act

is enormously popular. Right, this is friction versus the function functionality. So, and this is where we are having a debate over how much friction there should there be in the issue of voting. And right now, Republicans believe it should be

harder to vote, and Democrats believe it should be easier to vote. Right and the Save Act moves friction to the front end, and it says you don't get in the door to vote until you prove who you are with a birth certificate.

as possible to ensure no one is in who shouldn't be. Now, both sides claiming they are protecting the sanctity of the vote and the spirit of democracy, but both sides are actually trying to engineer the electorate.

doing exactly what the Democrats did with HR One. They took some popular ideas like ethics reform and ending jerrymandering, and they stuffed him in a seven hundred page bill that included federal funding for campaigns. Total non starter for the right. But this is a classic Washington playbook. You take one popular idea, you poison it with partisan must haves, and then you blame the other side when it fails.

It's a win win for the consultant community, it's a win win for your social media fundraising, but it's a lose lose for voter trust. And it brings us back to the larger point. You cannot save an election system by yourself. If the Save Act passes the Senate, by nuking the filibuster and getting fifty one Republican votes, half the country will view the twenty twenty six midterms is rigged before single ballot is cast, just as Republicans viewed HR one as a democratic coup in twenty twenty one.

Stability in a democracy does not come from a fifty one percent majority. And I know right now everybody's assumption is, well,

Trump is proving you can take a forty six percent majority and jamm through if you know how to use power or abuse power. But this stuff is not going to stick. There's a reason he can't couldn't get reelected once and he's yet to have a successful midterm. Okay, Stability in a democracy comes from consent, And when you change the rules of the game on a partisan basis, you aren't fixing the pipes. You're poisoning the well. And in twenty twenty six, the well is already running pretty dry.

So let's get out of the theoretical and into the real world. Proponents of the Save Act say this is about one thing, ensuring that only citizens vote, and they point to the eighty percent of Americans who say, yeah, that sounds reasonable. Only citizens should vote, By the way, it's already the law of the lay it. But if we look at the states that have already tried a version of this bill, we're going to see a very different picture.

vote for president and Congress. Thirty four thousand people. That's more than the average margin of victory in swing state Arizona these days. Right, These weren't illegals, by the way, They were citizens who just didn't have their papers in

a shoe box. And here's the kicker. Georgia, another swing state, conducted its own Remember this is a Republican controlled state, Georgia that its own massive citizenship audit in twenty twenty four, cross referencing their roles with every database they can find. How many non citizens did they find? On a voter roll of millions of people in the state of Georgia, not in a small state, mind you, they found twenty

two zero, not twenty thousand. Twenty out of those nine had actually voted over the span of seven years nine So eleven of the people they found never even voted. So the question for the Save Act isn't this bogus non citizen voting business that Trump claims. By the way, it's already a felony to vote if you're not a citizen. The question is is it worth adding a paperwork wall for twenty one million eligible Americans to catch nine people in the state of Georgia. In the policy world, that

would be called a disproportionate response. In politics, we call it a barrier to entry. But the Save America Act that passed the House goes even further than what the state of Arizona did. It isn't just one and done check if you move or if you change your name, say because you got married. The Save Act treats you like a brand new applicant to vote, so you have to produce a whole round of new documentation all over again, not just a birth certificate but a marriage license.

birth certificate. Under the strictest reading of this House bill, if you don't have a passport, you might need to produce a birth certificate plus a marriage license just to update your address. Now, I don't want to go and do a huge amount of deep tales on my personal life, but my wife went through this where her passport didn't match your driver's license after we got married, and they wouldn't let her on a plane. This is after nine

to eleven. We got married first, we got married just after nine eleven, less than a year after nine eleven, so there was you.

We eventually got it worked out. This is a this is this you know, we've already you know, we already make it harder for women in this country and a lot of things due to you know, catching up on

rules where we had sort of gender imbalance, whether it's for finances and all sorts of things. You know, wasn't that long ago then a married woman couldn't get a credit card without her husband's permission. So seventy million married people with a different last name. So in order to vote, if you just happen to move because your job transferred, you would have to produce a perth certificate plus the marriage license just to update your address. So we've moved

from voter ID. Okay, which is what all of these misleading right wing commentators shoved down your throat and their feet. They are knowingly lying to you. And there's some really people that I used to respect who are just bullshitting all the way on this stuff. This is not about voter ID anymore. It's a long way away from voter ID.

This is an entire elaborate piece of legislation just to make suthe Donald Trump's ego because he didn't win the popular vote in twenty sixteen, which he claimed is because

undocumented immigrants voted in mass numbers against him, and he claims that mail in balloting is the reason why he lost in twenty twenty, not the fact that maybe he just wasn't popular enough to win the popular vote in twenty sixteen, and maybe it's because people thought he was sucked was president during COVID and they wanted to change in leadership. And they've just they literally are writing a bill in order to make his bullshit seem like it's

a real grievance that should be fixed. So we've moved from voter ID which most people support, to voter paperwork, which most people will find exhausting. Do we really want to have the dmv afication of the most sacred right we have? I'll tell you though, Donald Trump terrible poker player, right.

His recent pivot here is very revealing. By adding his demand for a ban on universal mail in voting and cultural world writers to the bill, he signaled that he actually doesn't want to see this bill pass. He simply wants to fight, just like HR one was never designed to pass. They just wanted to fight to say, Hey, those guys don't believe in democracy. They don't believe in election integrity, and what Trump wants to be able to say to his base is I tried to secure the elections,

but the Democrats and the Senate Rhinos blocked me. So using a legitimate policy debate about citizenship verification as a trojan horse for a total overhaul of the voting calendar just to make his bullshit about what happened in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty seem like it was legitimate. So when you take a common sense idea like citizen should vote and you turn it into a twenty one million person hurdle, you're not protecting the system. You're testing the

breaking point. You don't want the democracy to succeed, You don't want more voters to the polls. If you do it without a single vote from the other side, you're telling half the country the only way to win is to change the rules so the other side can play. And Donald Trump actually said the quiet power out loud. He said, if we get this save bill pass the way I want it, Democrats won't win an election for

fifty years. I don't happen to think that's true. But the fact that he said it only poisoned the well even more and made it an even to me, an easier decision not to support that bill. But here are some fun facts here about the access gap. This is

just projections. In twenty twenty six, among total registered voters, fifty two percent do not have an unexpired passport. Among voters under the age of thirty, fifteen percent lacked easy access to a birth certificate. Among married women, thirty five percent have name match issues between their birth certificates and their ideas. And among low income voters, a disproportionate lack the one hundred dollars for a new passport and certified records.

But let me conclude with the most uncomfortable truth of all, one that usually makes some of my poly sized students, if they haven't realized this yet, it can make their head spin. If you scour the US Constitution from the preamble to the last Amendment, you will not find the phrase that says, quote every citizen has an affirmative right to vote, because it's not there. What we have is a list of things you cannot do to stop someone from voting. You can't stop them because of their race.

That's the fifteenth Amendment, their sex, that's the nineteenth amendment. Their failure to pay a poll tax, that's the twenty fourth Amendment, or because they're over eighteen, that's the twenty sixth Amendment. But as the Supreme Court famously reminded us in Bush v. Gore, the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the president of the United States. Maybe that is something we ought to change because the federal document, the US Constitution, is silent

on this issue. There are state constitutions actually aren't. Nearly every single state constitution Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona explicitly guarantees that quote election shall be free and equal, or that every citizen shall be entitled to vote. And this is where the Save America Act hits a massive legal wall. If it's somehow magically passed. By mandating federal show us your paper requirements, Congress is essentially trying to override state level

constitutional guarantees. Remember, the Constitution says it is up to the states to implement voting processes. So if a state constitution says a resident is entitled to vote and the federal government says not without a passport, you're not. We're looking at a pretty interesting tenth Amendment showdown that would make the nineteen sixties look like a warm up act. We actually already got a preview this when Kansas tried

to version the Save Act. The courts eventually struck it down, partly because it created a dual class system of citizens, just like we have in Arizona. Right you have state voters and federal voters. You can't have federal voters and state voters living in the same house but using different rules. It's a recipe for administration. So here's the bottom line.

When Democrats try to pass HR one, they were trying to use federal power to force states to make voting easier, and now with the Save Act, Republicans are trying to use federal power to force states to make voter registration harder. Both sides trying to build a national election system on a constitutional foundation that is frankly too thinner than it

should be. So if you want to fundamentally change how Americans vote, you can't do it through a fifty one vote yatcha bill or a last minute writer on a spending package. You need a consensus that transcends the next election cycle. Because right now we're not saving the vote. We're just turning the rules of democracy to a partisan weapon. And when the rules become the weapon, the only thing that ends up dead is the public's trust in the outcome.

So look, I hope I created a little bit of clarity of what this bill actually is, what the impact would be. I know I've been pretty dismissive. I am a hugely cynical about both of these bills because they were not designed to pass right. This is not about being a moderate a centrist. It is about me being an incrementalist, which means if you were trying to change the rules for three hundred and fifty million Americans, you better do it with massive consensus, not partisan demagogri Having

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is something you should really think about it, especially if you've got a growing family. Ass Chuck, all right, this one comes from Julie from Portland. Hey, Chuck, it used to be that we had a long time in between a major crisis, and now we seem to beginning several

every week since the beginning of the year. I can recall we've had Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota, and now we're with Iron.

Not to mention twenty twenty eight, appreciate your thoughts. Things Well, this is when you hear the word chaos, right, And this became a popular buzzword on the campaign trail in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty because it grew out of

a lot of good old fashioned voter focus groups. Right, And say what you will about focus grouping everything and things like this, I find voter focus groups pretty helpful because you do you know, you hear the words of actual voters, not you know, some posters interpretation, and what you're describing this is that it's you know, why you hear a lot of politicians, Hey, can we just stop the chaos? You know, can we just can we just

you know, put a halt to this. Look, Joe Biden won because he was the anti chaos candidate, and then I think the mistake he made is he brought his own set of chaos to governing right when really.

you say, what are the most important issues? You know, if I ask you that as a polster, you're going to give me issues. But it sounds like for you one of the most important issues to Can we just slow down?

and you know you're going to lose him. He's going to fall asleep. He's going to be distracted. He's going to take a call, he's going to ask for six die cokes. He is just not going to stay focused. He's going to order you in Floorsheim shoes if you're a guy, by guessing your shoe size. But he's he's he's not gonna and don't leave him something to read. He's not going to read it. This is going to

sound snarky and cynical. I don't believe he has read a book from beginning to end in thirty years, specifically, and certainly not his own books. That that has been proven, actually, but I would love to be proven wrong that he has read a book from front to back, just one this century one.

more bomb throwers. Like there's an exhaustion out there. There's an exhaustion from the partisan warfare, there's an exhaustion from the crisis to crisis governance that that Trump is comfortable in. You know, here's the thing. We're all on the same

roller coaster. He's just not thrown up and the rest of us are so I you know, this is why I spent a long time deciding to go deep on one issue, because I think I've glossed over some things because I moved from you know, I get a little too reactionary in the moment, and I think the thing that we can do best here in the independent space, in the podcast space, is to take the unlimited amount of time that I do have, unlimited amount of bandwidth

in theory that is here, and the meticulously explain something all the way.

thank you for the podcast that always calls it like it is. I appreciate you saying that, I know the war of the Ron and the Epstein files are taking up all of the attention lately.

the situation that will be. But you're you know, look, I one could argue that the the the more Trump handles Iran and Epstein, the more the easier for Democrats to focus on the House and Senate because you know what, Trump's not focused on affordability. What Trump's not focused on is what there's domestic issues, the issue of rising health care costs, the issues rising electric bills, the issue of

fear of AI job displacement. By the way, the most underreported number in the new NBC News poll is how unpopular AI is right now with the American people. What's interesting is how how cautious Democrats and elected office are at pushing back on AI. What they're really saying is they don't trust these Silicon Valley people to implement AI in a fair and equitable way. That's what this is telling me, right, the same people that brought you the

success that is social media and what that's done. Do you think social media has been a success or a failure for American society? My guess is, if you asked it that way, and I would like some of my poster friends to ask this question and as neutral of the way as you can, I have a feeling that the yes no would look a lot like the favorable unfavorable view when it came to artificial intelligencers. Right now

is upside down in underwater. So I take your point that everything looks like it's a distraction from a just from something else that ought to be the focus. But in some ways, it is that chaos that may actually serve as a voting motivator for some people who just want off the Trump roller coaster. All right, next question, I think it comes from somebody from Kansas, but I don't have a name, but let me.

since the last by wider and wider margins. Fact Check true, coupled with the law of diminishing returns, which says every additional dollar spent is less effective than the last.

Now you need to do whatever your television message for the week is, you need to do six or seven different versions of it so that one makes sense on TikTok, and one makes sense on YouTube, and one makes sense on YouTube TV, and one makes sense on cable television and one makes sense on broadcasts.

Crypto AI are the two biggest ones, right. I mean, you look at what's happening in the Illinois Senate race, and it's just like there's a super pack for each candidate that is funded by some interest group that is not actually debate having an issue debated in this primary, but they're trying to buy an ally.

We're not asking for super restrictions, but we've got to have some because what you know, the fact that crypto and Silicon Valley and AI have essentially hijacked Washington financially right now, and they have is it's unprecedented what we've seen. And the dirty little secret is every elected officials kind of grossed out by this, but nobody wants to offend the money people that support them. So that's why this

system isn't getting fixed. I mean, I go back to Chuck Schumer telling a closed door meeting of Senate Democrats to suck it up and get on board crypto because the fair Shake people had too much money to go up against. The Senate Democrats have been extorted by the

crypto folks is that the system we had in mind? Is that the system the founders had in mind?

threshold you set. But in Q four, one democrat running against Bobert raised a staggering two million dollars compared to Boberts one hundred and seventy four thousand, and that democrat has two and a half million cash on hand compared to Bobert's two in a nineteen thousand cash on hand. Should Bobert be concerned about that much money? Or is her district truly too Republican? Look, I don't think it's greally.

This is the sort of I think the old it's the old Wayne Allard's seat, That's what I remember it as. But it's like the fourth Congresion. The old fourth Congressional district up in Colorado was always sort of the conservative district that wasn't Colorado Springs, it was Greeley. It was always the center of it. I want to say Weld County, I think was the was one of the heart of that.

Fort Collins used to be a part of it. They've now moved Fort Collins out of it because I think Fort Collins became too liberal and it was diluting that district, making it more competitive.

cash advantage here. I think when you get to the twenty five to one with an incumbent member of Congress, because you're going to have outside groups that are going to come in for her. And that's the other part of this, right, A challenger might raise a bunch of money in a red leaning district, or a challenger might raise a bunch of money a Blue Republican in a

blue leaning district. But are the third party groups, the independent expenditure group's going to come in behind them and to spend money there or are they going to consider it a waste of money versus those that know that that seat is winnable on their side and they come in there. So where what happens is I'm sure Bobert

just knows because she's had this before. Outside groups are going to come in and save her if necessary, and outside democratic groups are likely not to spend their money there. There instead, and that it's specific in Colorado, they're probably going to spend money. I think they think they can flip the third district on the other side of the Rockies. They think maybe they can flip the Colorado Springs district, So I think they're more likely to concentrate their resources elsewhere.

So it is it is about whether is is your race competitive enough that the outside groups will engage, And in this case, I think that's why that isn't the case. But is there a rule of thumb? Like I said, that's a ten to one, and I wouldn't still view that as you know, look, in a bad year for Republicans, they're going to lose some seats that that are plus nine plus ten Trump maybe even lose a seat or two that is. But usually there's some other reason, right,

a scandal, lazy candidate, bad candidate, something like that. Now Bobert is not the best candidate, right, she doesn't always you know, runing come across as a conventional member of Congress, and she's already kind of a carpetbager. Right, it's not really from that area. She shopped that district. So I think she's being a little lazy here because I don't know.

she feels that security. Next question comes from Andrew d goes, this is a little dark, a byproduct of reading too many Grisham novels. Okay, you're right, Grisham has gotten a little dark. In some of his more recent books. Anyway, he goes what a right wing magazella or even more nefarious, someone in Trump's inner circle set off a catastrophic public bomb and claim it was an Iranian terror cell towards the end of summer, thus resulting in the government having

an excuse to shut down the midterm elections. Putin got where he is today doing the same thing, same type of thing in Chechia. I feel getting this out ahead of time could ruin the surprise intent of the people. Thank you PS Sunday's For eight years before my son went to college, was getting our breakfast cooked and ready so we could sit and watch me the press. Thanks for that routine, Andrew d Andrew, thanks for sharing that.

Uh love love those father son stories. Uh those are neat When I go to college campuses and people say they grew up watching me, and of course I know they mean it as a compliment.

just how the world works. I just I here's why I don't believe it's possible.

I would say, you're being crazy, Andrew. All Right, I don't believe it'll be and I don't believe that even Trump has enough support to pull something like this off without it, you know, without it sort of somebody whistleblowing. But that's life in a democracy that ultimately I count on somebody being a whistleblower, that at the end of the day, somebody's conscience gets the best of them.

crosses this line, I'm out. Welcome them, Welcome them to the bunker, don't lecture them for taking too long to

get there. Next question comes from Amanda, and she writes, I had to stop what I was doing during your March second podcast because once again I found myself shouting, why don't you run for president?

country needs. What president has successfully used fact driven clarity to to get a majority on their side. A sort of half kid. And the candidates that that scratch my itch are usually the ones that are at one or two percent.

But it's I appreciate you saying that. It's very kind of you, and I just I'll tell you why I've never even contemplated entering politics, because I think it would undermine.

constitutional amendments. It's pretty clear we need one on campaign money. It's pretty clear we need one on on some on some jerrymandering, and perhaps we need one and just a simple.

norm as a revenue stream. If that is the case, how does the country go about removing tariffs? How did we change course from the Willie McKinley days when he was pro tariff to the free trade that we've had most recently. Is it something that can be done like a band aid that's ripped off, or does it take

multiple presidencies and the building of goodwill to develop free trade? Well, I think it's going to be you know, I think goodwill is going to be one issue, right and we may have so many reciprocal tariffs that are impacting US. I don't think getting rid of the tariffs are going to be that difficult. I think what some people claim that will be difficult is giving how do you replace the revenue if it is bringing in so much revenue that it that if you get rid of it, then

you have to find a way to replace the revenue. Now, I've always believed what Donald Trump was and what proponents of his tariff strategy were really hoping. Trump has said this, he wanted to get rid of the income tax. He wants to repeal the sixteenth Amendment. He wants to get rid of the income tax. Most rich people do. Rich

people hated the income tax. The reason they put in we put in the income tax is because these industrialists were not paying their fair share, and the tariff system of taxation, which was the primary way the government raised money, made it so that essentially the working class and the working poor were actually paying more in tax than the wealthy work and so that's why we ended up with the income tax in the first place, and the property tax structure that we see some governors wanting to get

rid of today, which if you get rid of that, all you're going to do is get rid of government services that a lot of people like and find yourself on the wrong end of a pitchfork that I promise you. So it's the revenue, the potential for the lost revenue that I think has made some people think they'll be harder to get rid of, which is obviously what Trump is hoping to do. But terror's not going to be hard to get rid of, not if you really want

to do it. And it's but the problem, and I think now it's pretty clear they're not very effective, and they only seem to punish the American consumer, not the country we're intending to impact all right, Well, that does it for questions. It is It is perhaps the single

greatest four day period for college basketball that there is. I know we're supposed to say the NCAA Tournament. It is amazing. I love the nca Tournament. And next weekend, I mean, you know, it's going to be very difficult for me to be doing tapings and paying attention. I have a TV within eyesight, within my eyeline here, I don't have it on. I am taping because right now, what I love about this week and this weekend is there is basketball that starts at ten am Eastern time.

And there's basketball that I was watching last night Wednesday night that is Eastern Washington and I was watching that game and and uh and that was well past midnight one o'clock. And every game means something, right, everybody's got their own little uh march madness potential, right it is. This is it's it's funny, and it's like every other sport. You know, college basketball has a regular season problem, although I think this year was one of the better regular seasons.

And please more more interconference scheduling in February that is fabulous. We had a lot of I mean that seeing Michigan and Duke play, you know, in a non conference game in the middle of so called conference season. In fact, I'd love to see a flip right start the conference schedules earlier in November and December, go ahead and the first matchups then and you know those are on campus games and all that stuff, and then like have some

bigger games to start showcasing. Because one of the things we're learning about college basketball, I think in the NIL era is basically, if you're under six', five you now are more likely to, play and no matter how great you, are you're more likely to play for all four. Years and college one is it's just not a lot of appetite in THE nba for anybody under six.

and georgetown would have been An All Big east. Final Four, BUT memphis i think is the BACK then i think they were Known As. MEMPHIS state i think it Was The keith lee team broke through and it was three of. The four but the quality of college basketball in the mid eighties when everybody had to stay, three years three, or fourth so you'd have these incredibly sort of. Mature teams that was one version. Of it now IN the, Nil, era no you're not going to get maybe players growing

up with, each other solidifying over. Multiple seasons but you do see a big difference between the beginning of the season and the end of. The Season right i'm watching it. Very closely IN. The acc the hottest team IN the aec is not going to make.

and that's what's kind of, Fun. About right you can get hot in a tournament and suddenly you can find yourself in in the biggest of the biggest, of dances but enjoy. THESE matchups, I mean i just think we're we're going To have we're going to have as good Of an elite Eight and, sweet sixteen and these are going to be high. LEVEL matchups, i mean we are the depth of this year's. COLLEGE basketball I, Mean, Florida, Yukon, Houston, Arizona Duke. Saint john's, YOU know, i look i'd love

to SAY my I think. Miami is i'm Really hoping miami gets a. Sixth SEED My, gw colonials, You Know i'm i'd like to see them make. A splash i think they're kind of running out of, gas unfortunately but uh My Buddy chris capudo's had a. Great season we are, you know we're not gonna get, twenty wins, but.

you know that's been, a strength so we. Shall see we've got a pretty deep, receiver room but we have no first round draft pick. This Year That's michael parsons that's sitting on.