Air Date: 5-12-2026

Full Show Notes

[00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine the redistricting scramble unleashed by the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We'll hear how Southern states moved within days to crack majority-Black districts, how Tennessee banned public input to rush through new maps, and why every governor's race, state legislative seat, and secretary of state contest in 2026 is now a redistricting fight.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

PBS NewsHour

Boom! Lawyered

The Dean Obeidallah Show

Pod Save America

Southside

Ana Cabrera Reports

and Democracy Now!

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, THE RULING & THE LAW

Section B, HOW WE GOT HERE

Section C, THE STATES SCRAMBLE

Section D, WHAT COMES NEXT

And now, on to the show.

Immediately after that Supreme Court decision last week, which made it much harder [00:01:00] to challenge alleged racially gerrymandered congressional maps, we've seen a number of states make moves in their own territories. Let's take a quick look at the map here. Louisiana quickly suspended its House primaries, but early voting was already underway so lawmakers could approve new maps there.

In Alabama, there's a special legislative session today to redraw maps. Tennessee will have the same tomorrow. Mississippi considering the same move. For context, before the Supreme Court decision, the states shown here in red had already redrawn maps to benefit Republicans. States in blue had done the same for Democrats.

States were already considering changes in yellow there, though Florida was weighing a new map before the Supreme Court ruling. Amy, when you look at this whole picture, what maps are we gonna end up with? Who are they gonna benefit? Well, they're gonna benefit incumbents. We're gonna have fewer and fewer, , com- really, truly competitive seats because the goal here is to make as many safe districts for, for one party or the other.

Today, if you look at those seats that you mentioned in Louisiana, [00:02:00] Alabama, , and maybe Mississippi, but definitely Tennessee, the potential there is for at least three African American Democrats to be drawn out of their districts across those three states. If we think about this more broadly though, and get past the 2026 election- Mm-hmm

into '28 and '30 and beyond, I think the, one of the biggest questions now is in front of Democrats. Because what we're seeing is a war right now on partisanship. Who is going to come out ahead in terms of the number of seats they have in the House? How many Democratic seats? How many Republican seats?

Democrats can get into this, continue to do this tit for tat, but in order to get more seats, they have to take districts that right now are held by Black or Latino lawmakers who are Democrats- Mm-hmm ... and basically open them up, dilute those districts, move those Black and Latino voters into other areas of the state to make those more Democratic.

And [00:03:00] that's going to be a really big question mark for Democrats going forward because if they're defending, if what they're saying is the dilution of the influence of Black and Latino voices is a problem, and we need to ensure that those voices remain here, can you go into some of these states in order to get a partisan advantage by also diluting- Those voters Meanwhile, Tam- Those votes

you have been reporting on a Republican effort in Indiana where the Republican state senators there defied President Trump, did not redistrict there. Trump-aligned groups we know are now pouring in a lot of money to try to oust them. Tomorrow is the primary election. Here is what one of those state lawmakers, Senator James Buck, told you.

I represent Senate District 21. , I don't represent Washington's wishes. , If that's the case, , everybody after me would be looking over their shoulder, , "If I vote with my district, is Washington gonna try to crucify [00:04:00] me?" And, , you can't, you can't let that happen. You gotta, you gotta have a spine.

You gotta stand up for your constituents. You have to do what's right and let the chips fall where they may. Yeah. It's a fascinating dynamic, Tam. What's, how is this gonna play out? Yeah, tho- those chips are falling. We, we don't know how ultimately these races will turn out. We'll know late tomorrow night.

, What we do know is that people like Jim Buck and, , State Senator Spencer Deery and the other Republican state senators who are generally very Republican but just crossed the president on this one thing, they are facing the full weight of President Trump's political machine coming down on them, and it is painful.

It is... They are, they are facing- Millions of dollars in negative campaign ads. They are then raising money and trying to fight back. They're definitely, , being outspent in a significant way. And, , , this is a true test of President Trump's power of political retribution. And [00:05:00] one Trump advisor I spoke to said, , that these incumbents are headed for their, quote, "political slaughter."

When I pressed on, "Why are you spending money on Republican primaries in a red state?" Mm-hmm. , He said, "There is more than enough money to send a message in Indiana and then defend the Republican majorities in the fall." We're gonna continue to follow your reporting on that.

IMANI: So last week, the Supreme Court's conservatives shanked what was left of the Voting Rights Act right in the kidney. And I'm, I'm honestly gonna lose my mind. If I don't lose my mind in this segment, someone should send me s- cookies or something, 'cause this is just m- more than I can bear.

When I say the conservative jamokes on the Supreme Court shanked Section 2, I don't mean that in a vague, "Oh, this is bad for voting rights" kind of way. No. I mean that they took the core legal standard that has governed voter dilution cases for 40 years and just rewrote it. Conservatives looked at [00:06:00] the redrawn map in Louisiana that Black voters fought for, litigated, and won, and said, "Actually, nope.

Remedying racism in voting by accounting for race is itself racist." So let's get into actually what happened in Louisiana. Louisiana was forced to draw a map including a second majority Black district in 2024 pursuant to a court order. 

JESSICA: Mm-hmm. 

IMANI: Then a group of white voters got all in their feelings and sued to kill that map, not under Section 2, but under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

These white voters said that the map, which again drew a second majority Black district in a state where over one-third of the residents are Black, these white- ... voters said that that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. They claim that [00:07:00] Louisiana had used race too prominently in drawing the district, which if you think about it, makes no goddamn sense because how in the fuck are you supposed to draw a majority Black district without finding out where the Black people are at?

Right? We've 

JESSICA: talked about this. Where do we have 

IMANI: maps? You can't do it. You literally can't draw a map to remedy racism in districting without taking race into account. This is yet another example, as Jess mentioned earlier, of the 14th Amendment being rewritten to protect white people. I've talked about this a lot on the pod, on social media, to literally anyone who will listen.

JESSICA: It's true. 

IMANI: The same amendment that was ratified to protect Black people from state-sponsored racial discrimination was wielded by white voters to kill a majority Black district that a court ordered Louisiana to draw in order to [00:08:00] remedy discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It is infuriating.

JESSICA: Boom! Lawyered family, if it feels like you're on a hamster wheel right now, that's on purpose by the conservative legal movement. The court is saying that the fix for discrimination is actually the problem, right? That you cannot consider race when fixing racism. Because why would you? Why would you? 

IMANI: Yeah.

JESSICA: We don't need to know where the Black folks in Louisiana are. We don't. Just 

IMANI: vibes. 

JESSICA: It's just vibes. 

IMANI: Yeah. 

JESSICA: It's just vibes. And the idea that Clay is a 14th Amendment case doing damage to the Voting Rights Act, but a 14th Amendment case in line with all the other 14th Amendment stuff happening from this court right now is exactly why we talked about this [00:09:00] season as the deconstruction era in- Absolutely

the Roberts Court. 

IMANI: Absolutely. 

JESSICA: Just is. 

IMANI: Okay. So here's what was supposed to happen under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Congress amended Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 specifically so that plaintiffs did not have to prove racist intent on the part of lawmakers drawing those maps. Mm-hmm.

Because lawmakers learned a lesson. States aren't dumb, right? They don't walk into court twirling a mustache saying, "Oh, no, we did a racism on purpose." Right? They draw maps And they pass race neutral rules, and those rules just happen to dilute Black people's votes. They didn't do it on purpose, it's just, it just happened.

Who'd have thunk? Who'd have thunk? So Congress saw this- 

JESSICA: Yeah ... 

IMANI: and they amended Section 2 to be a results test. Why? Because Congress got tired of states [00:10:00] race neutral, yet still racist voting fuckery. 

JESSICA: Yep. 

IMANI: Right? Mm-hmm. They said you're supposed to look at a map and look at reality, and you ask if Black voters have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

And if the answer to that question is no, because their votes are being diluted, right, Black people are being cracked and packed into districts, right, you got a huge district and then you just split them up and you put Black people in this white district and Black people in that white district, and then Black people can never elect someone that represents them, that's a violation of Section 2 

JESSICA: I'm sorry, I was just chuckling at the idea that Congress was like, "Well, so look at reality, and if the Black folks aren't able to vote effectively, guess what?

That's voter dilution." And it is. And the other thing, this fix for Section 2 that happened is so important because it also put the VRA in line with other civil rights statutes that have an impact [00:11:00] analysis, right? So again, you don't have to prove anyone was sitting around and being racist, you just have to show that the system doesn't work the same way for Black voters.

It doesn't have to have an intent, it can have an effect. And that's how civil rights laws have treated systemic baked in discrimination historically, up until the conservative legal movement went on a project to rewrite those tests. 

IMANI: Imagine having a Congress now that's "Hey, let's look at the impact of racism on Black people and fix it."

Imagine having that Congress right now. 

JESSICA: Instead of a Congress that says DEI is racist. 

IMANI: Right. And if you're white, please sue your employer- ... because you've been discriminated 

JESSICA: against. Go to the EEOC website and it's like, "Are you white? Are your feelings hurt? Sue. Sue." Right. "Sue." It's just 

IMANI: absurd. 

And to be clear, it wasn't easy, right? The Gingles framework for Section 2 was not easy. Courts threw [00:12:00] out plenty of lawsuits, but it was possible, right? It was possible to succeed in these lawsuits. The thing that Section 2 promised, an equal opportunity to elect candidates of your choice, the Gingles framework told courts how to do it.

JESSICA: So that Gingles-Jingles framework is how courts have been analyzing Section 2 cases for decades. 

IMANI: For decades, precisely. That framework has been reaffirmed over and over, most recently three goddamn years ago in Allen versus Milligan in 2023. And when I say, I said earlier that that case is almost exactly the same as Louisiana v.

Cali, I'm not kidding. 

JESSICA: No. 

IMANI: Allen v. Milligan was a case about Alabama redistricting. Alabama, I think, is 27% Black. They had one majority Black district, right? And, and Alabama was required to draw a [00:13:00] second majority Black district after some map drawers proved that it could be done. It was the same issue: Black voters challenged a diluted map.

Roberts, Roberts wrote the majority. Kavanaugh concurred and said that the Gingles framework, quote, "effectuates the delicate legislative bargain that Section 2 embodies," right? Mm-hmm. Congress had never disturbed it, and stare decisis, which used to be a thing, right, the principle that you don't throw out your own statutory interpretation without an extraordinary reason, stare decisis counseled strongly against touching the Gingles framework.

That's what Roberts said, and Kavanaugh concurred. Now, would it surprise you that Alito dissented in Allen, proposing almost exactly what he just did in Cali? 

JESSICA: Mm-hmm. 

IMANI: The Court looked at Alito's argument [00:14:00] three years ago and said, "Nah, bitch." Right? Mm-hmm. And now it's three years later, and he's writing the majority opinion.

Nothing changed- No ... between 2023 and 2026, right? The statute didn't change. The Constitution didn't change. The fact that both Alabama and Louisiana are states with nearly a third population of Black people didn't change. The only thing that changed is who's holding the pen writing the majority. 

DEAN: There is a hostility that has long simmered by the white right. The year after the Voting Rights Act, the case did go to the Supreme Court challenging the le- the constitutionality. S- the State of South Carolina had brought a lawsuit right away, like, "How dare you allow Black people to vote?"

And that was, Supreme Court said, "Nope, it's legal," and it was constitutional. Yep. So then the group that took it back was the Shelby 

ELIE: County- 

DEAN: The, the year 

ELIE: before, in 1964, the year before the Voting Rights Act was passed, there were four Black people in Congress, right? Four. Right. , The year af- the, the 1968, so the Congressional election [00:15:00] after, , the Voting Rights Act ha- has been passed and is legal and is upheld, there were nine Black people in Congress.

So, like, you literally doubled the amount of Black representation in Congress- In a cycle after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and today there are 67 Black members of Congress. That's the highest in American history, and there are 56 Latino Americans in Congress. That's the highest in American history.

The other thing that the Voting Rights Act did, and a lot of people don't think of it 'cause they think of it as, as a purely racial act, but it also opened up the aperture for women to vote, especially Black women and Hispanic women, right? So before the Voting Rights Act, the 19th Amendment meant nothing for Black women.

The 19th Amendment was some white feminism that they were on that even the people who were, who... The white suffragettes who were fighting for it weren't really fighting for the rights of Black women to vote. But the Voting Rights Act changed then. , Cha- ch- change, changed the ability for women to represent themselves in Congress as well.

Before the Voting [00:16:00] Rights Act, 13 women in Congress. Today, 154. Wow. This has been the most important and the most successful piece of legislation in American history, and that's why they hate it. 'Cause it works. 'Cause it actually works. It actually gives political power to non-white, non-cis-hetero males, and that's why they hate it, and that's why they've, they've destroyed it.

DEAN: So , Elie, is it, is it overly simplistic to say that the goal of the white right on the Supreme Court and also in the GOP is the idea of taking us back to a time where white male Christian power was unchallenged? 

ELIE: Look at the maps, Dean. Look at the... , you, you, you, you... We were talking offline about The New York Times projection maps in the wake of this, this decision.

Look at the... Look at what the people who are in favor of this, this decision immediately wanna do. The first thing they wanna do is go through every majority-minority [00:17:00] district in the South and take it away. Take it away. So I don't s- I, you don't, some, you don't even have to believe me. You can just look at what they're doing with this new power that the Supreme Court has given them.

The first thing they did on the first day after their decision is put plans in place to take away Black and brown congresspeople throughout the South. 

DEAN: Mm-hmm. And, , going back to Shelby County versus Holder, the 2013 Supreme Court decision which was born from a case brought in Alabama a year and a half into President Obama in the White House.

Like, "This is too much. There's a Black guy in the White House. We have to do something." Shelby County, as soon as it's decided and they end pre-clearance, Texas and other states instantaneously, , apply voter ID laws and other things they could not do before. So it's the same mirror of that. So that, so, and they knew this was gonna happen.

The members- 

ELIE: Trump doesn't win in 2016 without Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. He just doesn't Well, Trump, Trump does not get elected [00:18:00] in 2016 without the Supreme Court helping, allowing white people to suppress the Black vote, thanks to Shelby County v. Holder. It is, it's, it's a linear progression here.

It's a, , you don't even, it, you don't have to connect the dots because you can just look at what they're doing and what they're saying. They're, they're not hiding the ball. They don't want Black people to vote, and every time they have a, they have the opportunity to deny Black people the right to vote, they do.

And then Republicans win. So it all works out for them. Like, they're not, they're not ashamed of it. And I, and I just, I haven't published this yet, but I, I wrote in my newsletter, , for this week, Dean, that the happiness from the Right about this, it, is, is the proof in the pudding. It is the proof of their racism, because even if you wanna say that they had a, a, a, a true legal reason to stand on, which they didn't, but even if you wanna give them [00:19:00] that, you're happy about this?

You're, you, you're, you're happy about the destruction of, again, the most important, the most successful civil rights piece of legislation in American history? You're gleeful about it? You're, you're, you're, you're high-fiving and, and back slapping and, and already putting out maps to take away people's, , , , representation.

Like, it, they're, they're telling on themselves, right? And what they're telling us is whites win again, and that's all they care about. 

DEAN: Another win for Whitey. That's what we're gonna call this segment. Another win for Whitey. I'm chatting with Elie Mystal. So E- Elie, let's go back for a second here. What leads up to the Voting Rights Act, and I went through yesterday the history of what took place with, you, I played Martin Luther King from 1957, give us the ballot, and, and all, but also during the era of Jim Crow, the efforts used to oppress Black people from voting, literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clause, and of course violence, rampant violence that was going on.

So the Voting Rights Act, a [00:20:00] lot of it was at that focus. Do you think there's any chance that with the Voting Rights Act being gutted now, that we see something like that? Now poll tax is barred by the 24th Amendment, that's the only thing. But could there be some new version of a literacy t- literacy test imposed?

Something by Repub- 'cause everything they do is go backwards. They're not original, they just look backwards and go backwards, and they're gonna try to find some new modern-day version of that, I think. 

ELIE: Literacy tests, these other things that you're ta- talking about, what the Supreme Court said as, as a legal proposition is two... There are two important things, and one doesn't even come from this case. One comes from a case a couple of years ago. Kagan laid this all out in her dissent, but one comes from a case a couple of years ago, , called Brnovich, , versus Arizona, or Arizona v Brnovich.

And what they said was that the Voting Rights Act couldn't be used to support basically an individual claim against, of discrimination. So I can't go to the court as an individual person who's been denied or had my vote oppressed or suppressed and say like, "Hey, Voting Rights [00:21:00] Act, that's supposed to help me."

No, no, no. Brnovich says I can't file that lawsuit, right? Now, with this decision on, on, on, on Wednesday, they're saying that the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to show what the l- lawyers call disparate impact, right? So disparate impact means, like, here's a law. It's facially race neutral, but it just so happens coincidentally, who can tell how, to disproportionately affect Black and brown people, or disproportionately affect poor people.

Doesn't say we hate Negroes. It just happens to only affect Negroes, right? Like, that, what the court said on Wednesday was that the Voting Rights Can't Act can't be used, , , in cases of disparate impact, right? So that to prove a violation of what remains of the zombie Voting Rights Act, you have to be able to show intentional discrimination, which basically means that the racists have to say, "We are doing this because we hate Black [00:22:00] people.

Ew. Icky." And if they don't say that, then guess what? You can't prove it, and you can't prove that they were trying to be racist in, in their law, right? So if you say there's a literacy test, and you say that that is facially racist, everybody has to take it. It just so happens- Right ... black people have to take it more, that that's, that apparently is okay now.

So tho- so at a legal level, what they've done is make racism unprovable, right? I can't sue for it, and even if I could sue, I can't prove that it, it exists. I can't prove racism unless Hulk Hogan, like, spray paints the N-word on a trailer. Anything short of that, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm SOL. And, and that is the...

That is going to be the going forward problem, not just in the, in the category of voting, but across all of our politics 

HOST 2: There's so much to say about this ruling, and I'll get to the political impacts in a second. But John Roberts, who has gotten a bit of a, [00:23:00] um, improved reputation over the years about some of the, the rulings in the tariff case, a couple other anti-Trump ones.

But long before Trump, John Roberts' main project as chief justice was the dismantling of the Voting, Voting Rights Act. Through these decisions, Shelby County versus Holder, there's Brnovich, there is now this one. This is destroying one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history.

Like, in this, all the headlines are like, they hollowed out, which I, I said here. They limited. That is, that is maybe true in the words that Alito used, but in actual practice, they struck down Section 2 as we understand it. The ability to... Like, what was left here is they allowed partisan gerrymandering as a principle in Shelby County.

Now what they have done is essentially said that The last possible way in which you could stop, prevent gerrymandering, which was designed and inherently always will dilute the power of Black voters, if you were trying to dilute the power of [00:24:00] Democratic v- voters in a state, the way in which you do that is you dilute the population that votes at 80, 90% for Democrats.

And so they say, they're now saying, "That is okay. That is what is happening here." It has dramatic implications. As you say, Louisiana, 30% of its st- of its population is Black. They're gonna only have one representative at best when this is over. In several states, like Arkansas- like Alabama and Mississippi, are gonna, after this is all said and done, at some point in the future, will have no Black represent- representatives, even though they have 30% of their population is Black.

They are going to eliminate the Democratic delegations in most Southern states because of this. They are going to cut down the number of Black members in, uh, places like North Carolina and elsewhere. And, you know, by some estimates, 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus would be gone if the Republicans push forward but to maximum advantage on a, uh, with gerrymandering with these new laws.

So the question is, in this midterm, what is the actual impact? [00:25:00] The Republicans are gonna get one more seat out of Louisiana. I think they're, the, we're gonna talk in a minute about the map in Florida, but this is going, this gives more legal cover to what's a pretty illegal map in Florida. And then in Tennessee, there are a handful of states, because this is coming so late in the cycle, there's limits of what Republicans can do.

Many, the filing deadlines have passed in all 50 states. Many states have held their primaries. Other states have held their, have not held their primaries, but early voting has already started. Um, and so it's very, like it would create mass chaos to do, to redraw the maps at this late stage of the game, but there are some places where they could do it.

Tennessee is one of those places. There is one Democratic district in Tennessee. Steve Cohen in the Memphis area, I believe, hosts it, or represents it. The, uh, Trump spoke to the governor of Tennessee today to get, try to encourage him to redraw the maps before the election. Marsha Blackburn, who is the senator from Tennessee who's running for governor in Tennessee, called for this.

You could see that happening here. They could do something similar [00:26:00] in Missouri, in South Carolina. I'm not sure they'll be able to do that. In Georgia, where early voting has started, it started this week, I believe, the, there are some Republicans calling for a special session to redraw the maps. Would Brian Kemp do that?

I don't know. But you can sort of s- it's gonna help Republicans in this election, but the longer term consequence is a House that's gonna be less democratic, small D, less Democratic, big D. It's gonna be much whiter, which one of my Substack subscribers said would be like adding white food coloring to mayonnaise.

So, which I thought was great. Very funny. Um- And not 

GUEST: aioli. We're not talking aioli. Yes, not, not- We're talking about Hellmann's 

HOST 2: Yes, we were talking about super white Hellmann's mayonnaise. Um, and it's just, it's, like this is terrible for democracy, and it's going to mean going forward a structural ad- advantage for Republicans in the House that is akin to the one they currently hold in the Senate.

Can Democrats take the majority under that scenario? Absolutely, and we might win enough seats this time to do that even under the, under a post-Supreme Court decision [00:27:00] map, but it's gonna b- you're gonna need a bigger wave every time to do it. It is... This is a, this is a very, very bad decision in the long run.

I don't think, it's not gonna cost us the House this election, but it's definitely, but it's gonna hurt in the long run. 

GUEST: Can I ask, I mean, 'cause I'm- Hmm ... a loyal Messagebox subscriber- 

HOST 2: Yep ... 

GUEST: uh, a paid subscriber as all true Americans should be. Yes, all true Americans. And as, a- a- and, and years, you said it, um, I'll quote you, Dan.

Oh, please. "Pretending we're still playing- Legal 

HOST 2: documents and Messagebox in the same episode. 

GUEST: Listen, I came with fucking receipts, dude. You did. What do you think? You think I'm gonna Favreau my way through this? It's- I show up when Dan Pfeiffer asks me to be his guest on Pod Save America. Yes. "Pretending we're still playing the old game is how we lose the House for a generation.

Every governor's race, every state legislative chamber, every secretary of state contest in 2026 is now a redistricting fight. Act accordingly." Mic drop. Okay, those are good marching orders. If you weren't fired up about a secretary of state contest in your, in your state, get fucking excited 'cause it matters.

And 

HOST 2: it's, and [00:28:00] this is gonna mean that Democrats across the country are gonna have to do what Democrats in Virginia and California did, which is they're going to have to redraw their maps to maximum effect. That's gonna mean Illinois, New York, Maryland, where there was resistance this time. In states that have redistr- anti-gerrymandering ballot initiatives or constitutional amendments, we should try to undo those if they were in blue states.

Like this is- Sad ... and look- The 

GUEST: high road, 

HOST 2: gone ... I, I think gerrymandering, gerrymandering is bad. 

GUEST: It is. 

HOST 2: But we have to do this up until the moment where we have enough power to pass a national ban on partisan gerrymandering. Like, and just worth remembering, every single Democrat voted for a bill that would ban national gerrymandering, and every single Republican voted against a national ban on gerrymandering, so.

GUEST: Can I ask something even more explosive then, Dan? Yes, 

HOST 2: of course. 

GUEST: I know you're looking at Republican, uh, state houses, but what about the Republican Supreme Court? Isn't it time to think about this body of... This body is so underco- I, I understand they are [00:29:00] constitutionally outlined to have these powers, but what the court is doing is so undemocratic, and I think Alito and Thomas, or Alito or Thomas could retire at the end of this, uh, court term and allow Trump to appoint two zygotes and solidify- Jesus

a conservative majority, six. Again, s- zygotes are, are human beings. Um, and like should there not be a conversation if Democrats retake power around court reform? 

HOST 2: Yes, 100%. I have, I thought that we should have undertaken that effort when we had power in 2021. Now, we didn't have enough- Uh, Democrats to get rid of the filibuster to do that, and there certainly wasn't support for court expansion.

But I- there, like this is one of those things that I don't think we need to run on, but when- once we do win, we should do it, which is, like there should, we should look at term limits, we should look at court expansion. There should obviously be a code of ethics for these corrupt assholes who are doing things.

Like, like yes, like there, this is a gigantic [00:30:00] problem. And long after Trump has moved on to, uh, work full-time on ballrooms and home reno projects at Mar-a-Lago, the, his legacy for decades afterwards is going to haunt us because of this court. And so every option should be on the table to deal with that.

HOST: So I'm here in Washington State in Seattle. Help me understand why this matters, this is a case in Louisiana, why this matters all the way up here. You wrote that once such horrible maps are in place, reversing them is extraordinarily difficult. Can you tell us why? 

STACEY: Sure. We live in a country of 50 states, and we have determined that we have bound ourselves in outcome, which means that part of the congressional makeup has to reflect the needs of all Americans.

When minority populations are isolated from power, it has an effect upstream, but also across the country. That means extremist legislation becomes easier to pass. It [00:31:00] becomes easier to rig maps everywhere else, and it limits accountability across the country. Often, it, the challenges start in the South, but we are both an incubator, but we are also a carrier.

And what happens is what starts in the South tends to move across the country. Hmm. We have to fight for the whole map because we have to fight for the entire country. This is not a Southern problem alone. The erosion of voting rights affects communities across the country. And when we diminish full participation in our voting, we diminish the pluralism of our democracy.

And so I would urge anyone, irrespective of where you live, to be deeply concerned when your fellow citizens are told their votes do not matter, and when politicians are allowed to draw the lines to cherry-pick their voters. 

HOST: And a, a quick question to follow that on what a map based on the ruling would look like.

Would they be blocks of [00:32:00] geography? 

STACEY: It would actually gut the members of Congress who currently represent communities of color. Hmm. So right now you have 67 members in the Congressional Black Caucus. Mm-hmm. And that has taken 60 years to achieve. Now, let's remember, Congress is f- 435 members in the House.

There are only 67 Black members. 65, I think 64 in the House itself. Under the new ruling, we know that up to 20 of those, 19 of those seats could be eviscerated. The Latino caucus could lose five seats, and then across the country at the state legislative level, the state legislators who draw those congressional maps could see 191 members lose their seats.

That means that if you care about affordable housing, if you care about healthcare, if you have any concerns about social justice in this country, if we lose those members of Congress, we also lose those [00:33:00] values being represented in Congress. Hmm. That's the problem for every American, that we're not just losing seats, we are losing political power for there being a debate in Congress about what's possible.

HOST: Hmm. To pivot a little bit, after establishing a national profile following your runs for Georgia governor in 2018 and 2022, you seem to have stepped back from the spotlight. Why? 

STACEY: Well, I would say this. When you're running for governor, especially when You have a candidacy like mine, which was unusual since I was the first Black woman in American history to stand for that o- to make it- Mm-hmm

that far in standing for that office. , The spotlight goes where it wants, but the work remains. And while the spotlight may have shifted, I have not stopped doing the work. I founded Fair Fight to fight for voting rights. I fou- founded Fair Count to fight for a census that fairly reflects America. I founded, , the American Pride Rises Network to defend diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:34:00] I recently launched the 10 Steps campaign to fight back against the authoritarian regime that is trying to strip us of our democracy. And to bring it back to the Callais decision, that is a pillar of doing so because when you can reshape Congress without having to actually compete in the valley of ideas, what you accomplish is a step towards what Viktor Orbán did in Hungary- Hmm

and what Russia does every day with its Duma. Hmm. When you can create any opportunity to limit the voice of the people, you are eroding democracy. And so while the attention may have shifted, the work has never stopped. 

Steve Cohen, the state's lone Democratic member of Congress, whose Memphis seat is on the line in this Republican redistricting push. Congressman, thank you for being with us. As your state lawmakers plow forward on redrawing Tennessee's congressional map, what's at stake if this Black majority district is broken up?

Well, it destroys what was some of the highlights of the '60s, one of the greatest [00:35:00] legislative accomplishments of Lyndon Johnson and Congress in the 20th century of passing the Voting Rights Act, with Martin Luther King and John Lewis there to fight for it, among others, , the people who died for that right to vote, John Lewis' march across the E- Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the march to Montgomery, and it's all wiped out.

This was to make up for years of slavery and Jim Crow, and give African Americans voting districts where they had the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. And they've done that in a wonderful way. Black people are very engaged in politics. It's an important part of their, of their livelihoods, and their success, and, and their advancements in America.

This is a great turnaround, and a turn back to Jim Crow-era politics of the '50s. And the southern legislatures, like the one in Tennessee that wrought the lines in T- in the South and all over the country, won't be able to raise e- racial arguments, even when they are obvious. Mm-hmm. It is obvious as the shoe on your foot that this is a racially d- d- d- ba- based [00:36:00] gerrymandering to eliminate the Black vote, which is a core Democratic vote.

But that's why they're being eliminated. This district was not a voting rights district, it was a district of compactness, of community of interest, of Memphians who live together. It's a large Black population, and they've had that district. I've represented it 20 years, and I feel like I'm going to my own funeral.

I, I, I, I hear what you're saying. Can you explain why you feel that Black voices and Black votes won't be heard or won't be counted in the same way? And what options, if any, do you and your Democratic colleagues have to fight back? African Americans have been a majority of this district, 61% in the general, , District 9, and in a primary, 80%.

80% in a Democratic primary where the candidate's basically chosen. And, and I've won that district nine times and reelect with 80% d- Black vote, and never lost a precinct. African American voters don't vote on race, they vote on the candidate who they want [00:37:00] to deliver services, to deliver to Memphis, and deliver constituent services.

And they've done it. With this district the way it is, divided Memphis in three different maps that stretch out up close to y- , to the Kentucky line and over towards Nashville, on the Mississippi line and, and towards Chattanooga, and then in the center going out, drawn for one particular man, a man named Brett Taylor, who's a House member.

He drew that map for himself. Those districts will make the Black voting population of Memphis a tail of a comet. They will not get any regards from the people who, who running in the Republican primaries who will be the winner, 'cause these are majority, big-time majority Republican districts, and the Black vote will not be sought, and it will not be listened to.

And there will not be offices in Memphis to deal with constituent services, Social Security, Medicaid, VA issues, whatever, and there won't be community projects that Memphis needs. Memphis is a big city, the second-biggest city in Tennessee, an iconic city in America. I have delivered. My predecessors, Harold Ford Jr.

and Sr., delivered. Nobody will deliver because it's [00:38:00] not gonna be an important part of that voting bloc. They will not get community projects. They will not get the needs they want. And one thing that shows how foolish this is, you have a baseball team, nine players. We have nine congressmen. You have nine players who play nine different positions and can help you different ways.

When we needed a bridge built across the Mississippi River, one of the biggest projects this state's ever saw, they came to me, the lone Democrat, to lobby Pete Buttigieg under, un- under Biden. I was able to get Buttigieg and the Biden administration to give $450 million, million dollars to this project.

There will be a new bridge built over the Mississippi River because the Republican governor and the Republican team came to the Democrat, the only Democrat they had who could deliver. They asked me to deliver, and I delivered. There's gonna be a Democratic president in 2028. There will be nobody to deliver.

They're doing all this for Donald Trump for one reason, to stop oversight of him in the Congress next term. We can oversee his [00:39:00] kleptomania, his cryp- cryptocracy and the money he's made, his emoluments violations, his pardon violations. They don't want that. For one man, the most heinous criminal man ever to hold the White House, ever, they're turning Tennessee around, they're turning Black votes around, they're turning Memphis around.

Killing a city- Congressman- ... a great American city. Congressman, Congressman Steve Cohen, I appreciate your passion. Thank you so much.

AMY: So put that, back talk, , against- The Voting Rights Act and what has happened with it. Mm-hmm. And, , for people who don't understand what exactly has happened, and if you can also talk about the Supreme Court finding that Louisiana's current congressional map is unconstitutional, - Mm-hmm

which followed Governor Landry suspending the state's primaries for the US House of Representatives. 

KIMBERLE: Absolutely. Well, , the Voting Rights Act was the [00:40:00] crown jewel of the civil rights movement, in part because it said, look, it doesn't matter the specific thing that you're doing to undermine the voting strength, , of traditionally excluded, , populations.

The Voting Rights Act protects against intentional or effective, , disenfranchisement of, , protected groups. Well, what this Supreme Court has now said is that if you take race into account in trying to address racism in the, , voting rights system, that you are the one that is guilty of creating, , a racialized system.

So what they're effectively saying is that if you draw a district in order to protect an incumbent, , that's okay. If you draw a district in order to maximize minority voting strength, that's not okay. Now let's be clear about one thing. , Incumbency is often the product of racial power. , Incumbency, particularly in Louisiana, i- is, is, is, , [00:41:00] made and reinforced by packing, cracking, stacking, , African American voters.

What they're basically saying is you, you, you have to take the baseline as is, , even though that's a product of race discrimination. If you try to r- if you try to remedy the racial discrimination that's built into incumbency, that's when you're being racist. That's the problem. So it's turning reality completely on its head and destroying the Voting Rights Act.

while they're doing so. 

AMY: Talk about what exactly intersectionality is, , and critical race theory.

Mm-hmm. And what it means today under President Trump. The- Yeah ... vicious attack, and how that was really the underpinning of DEI. 

KIMBERLE: Yeah. Well, intersectionality just refers to the idea, , that disadvantage, discrimination, marginalization, , often is based on more than one axis of inequality. Those often, , [00:42:00] overlap.

They reinforce each other. So I began to write in this arena when I was trying to understand how Black women who sometimes sued employers because they were subject to gender discrimination and race discrimination, , many times Black jobs were for men, and women's jobs were for white women, which meant that there was precious little space for African American women.

But courts couldn't really understand that. They were saying, , , "How can you claim race discrimination because we hire Black people? They just happen to be men. How can you claim gender discrimination? We hire women. They just happen to be white." And I couldn't understand what the courts couldn't understand.

So I, I was looking for a metaphor, a way that would allow judges to understand that discrimination isn't just a- along one axis or another, but just like intersections, they might crisscross each other. So intersectionality was a really a remedial [00:43:00] framework for judges that are supposed to be very smart, but they weren't that smart at all when it came to understanding what Black women were experiencing 

AMY: Hmm.

Can you talk about Clarence Thomas and the tensions around his confirmation as justice of the Supreme Court? Yeah. You write a lot about this. 

KIMBERLE: Yeah. So when, , , when Clarence Thomas was, , , nominated for- Mm-hmm ... , to take over the, the, the seat that, , Thurgood Marshall had occupied, the great civil rights giant, my initial thought was, "This isn't gonna work.

Everybody knows there's a difference between Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall." , And to my surprise and disillusionment, a lot of people didn't understand the difference between the two. , Eventually, there became a, a moment when it was known that there was someone, a for- former employee who, , had told someone that she'd been sexually harassed by him.

That person turned out to be Anita Hill. Turned out I [00:44:00] knew Anita. There weren't a whole, a whole lot of Black women law professors, , so I contacted her. I offered support. Before I knew it, I was on my way to Washington, D.C. to support her. , But the shocking thing that happened was when Clarence Thomas denounced the entire, , inquiry as a high-tech lynching, and what that did was it provided a metaphor for him to speak to the history of anti-Blackness, to place himself in the middle of that narrative, and to draw a support of large numbers of African Americans to his side, and she had nothing equivalent that she could say.

I 

AMY: wanted to turn to then senator, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden- Joe Biden, 

KIMBERLE: yes ... 

AMY: questioning Anita Hill back in 1991. 

CLIP: Can you tell the committee what was the most embarrassing of all the incidences that you have alleged? I think [00:45:00] the one that was the most embarrassing was his discussion of, of pornography involving these women with large breasts and, and ha- engaged in variety of sex with different people or, or animals.

That was the thing that embarrassed me the most and made me feel the most humiliated. 

AMY: Law professor Anita Hill testifying at the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas. , Professor Crenshaw, the lessons you draw from what happened there and what it means for today. 

KIMBERLE: , Amy, I wanna take you to the moment that Clarence Thomas was finally confirmed.

My, , co-founder of AAPF, Luke Harris, and I were sitting on the stairs of the Supreme Court. , At that moment I said, "This is gonna change the rest of our lives." Luke said, "All because they refuse to believe [00:46:00] a Black woman." , I call this a massive intersectional failure. , A coalition of, , civil rights groups, feminist groups, they successfully blocked Bork.

Clarence Thomas was basically an acolyte of Bork. There wasn't really much daylight between them. What was different was Clarence Thomas was able to wrap himself in a sympathetic, , framework as someone who was being unfairly treated by the testimony, and Anita Hill, partly because the history of Black women, the experiences that they've had with sexual harassment off, , really since we arrived here, and the fact that Black women were some of the first plaintiffs in sexual harassment cases, that just wasn't part of the common knowledge.

So she was framed as someone who was complaining about something that Black women, , don't complain about. There was a op-ed in The New York Times that said that what Clarence Thomas had done to Anita was just basically down-home courting. [00:47:00] So there was a cultural defense that was being made, , to block the significance of her testimony.

So what we often say now is when we look at some of the consequences of that failure, some of the, , long-term, , , results of that, we've lost, , campaign finance reform on a 5-4 vote. We lost, , , Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 5-4 votes. We look at all the 5-4 votes that were made possible by that failure to believe Anita Hill, and we have to recognize that this intersectional failure not only impacts Black women, not only impacts communities of color, it undermined the security and the democracy of the entire nation 

HOST: Democrats are often criticized for at least a perceived lack of values, for being milquetoast, poll-tested, boilerplate candidates, , reciting the party line, and that's part of why they're not winning.

What do you make of that [00:48:00] critique? 

STACEY: I, I would also remind folks that over the last 20 years, we have basically held power almost as often as the other side has. Hmm. The issue is what do we do with that power when we have it, and that's why I am so bullish about voting rights. They borrow our power.

Elected officials borrow power, but the people have to remember that it is borrowed, and we can take it back. Democrats have values. We believe in shared success. We believe that everyone has the right to do their best, but that we should remove barriers. The right has a similar set of conditionalities, but they have a different composition.

We are the most diverse party, which means we've gotta try to meet the needs of a broader coalition. But we can meet those needs by understanding and recognizing that identity matters and outcome matters. And if we are working on both of those things, fighting for a voting rights act that actually guarantees that your [00:49:00] identity does not diminish your access to democracy, but also delivering on affordability, delivering on the needs of the people to make progress possible in their lives, that's how Democrats win.

HOST: Stacey Abrams, what would you say to someone who thinks, "I haven't been able to vote, to individually vote the US out of an extremely unpopular war with Iran. My vote has not guaranteed my prices are going down. The structure of the Senate means that voters in more populous states have more diluted power."

My producer and I are hearing our, our friends and colleagues say, "It's just hard to even watch the news. , You wanna turn it off." What do you tell them when you ask them to lock in? 

STACEY: Because that's the point of what they're doing. The reason we have seen this aggressive destruction of our democracy is to create the sense that we can't do a thing about it, and I point to Hungary very intentionally.

For [00:50:00] 16 years, Viktor Orbán ruled a country that had emerged from communist rule in 1989, had finally come close to a functioning democracy, and then you had Viktor Orbán, who, , Donald Trump and JD Vance have lauded. This is a man who attacked the media and basically took control of public media. He attacked the legislature and basically sh- reshifted it and reshaped it so that only his party could be heard.

He attacked the judiciary and made them a puppet. He did all of the things we are watching happen in America. But what happened two weeks ago in Hungary was that 78% of the population said, "No more." They said after 16 years of watching their prices go up and their values be crushed, watching corruption run amok, they were refusing to do it any longer, and it worked.

They not only over, they not only removed him as the president, they flipped both chambers. They changed the [00:51:00] composition of their legislature, and now they are on the path to restoring full and participatory democracy, which is how we get the things we need. I am the daughter of the South. My parents were born During Jim Crow, my parents weren't a- able to vote.

, My grandparents were in their 40s before they were full legal citizens of this country- Hmm ... even though they were born here. And so I know how slow and plodding and hard it can feel, but I also know how we can win because we've done it before. Every time we win, they come back and they try to take more power.

We have to meet them on the battlefield of voting, on the battlefield of democracy, and believe more in our democracy than we believe in their right to deny it. 

We've just heard clips starting with

The PBS NewsHour examining the redistricting free-for-all and last week's Supreme Court decision, warning that fewer competitive seats and the potential erasure of Black Democratic districts could define [00:52:00] elections through 2030 and beyond.

Boom! Lawyered traced how the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, abandoning the results test they had unanimously reaffirmed just three years earlier.

The Dean Obeidallah Show connected Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 to Trump's 2016 win and the latest Supreme Court ruling, arguing the destruction of the Voting Rights Act follows a clear, linear progression.

Pod Save America broke down how the Supreme Court's latest Voting Rights ruling effectively legalizes racial gerrymandering, threatening Black representation in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and building a structural House advantage for Republicans.

Southside in two parts spotlighted Stacey Abrams pointing to Hungary's recent ouster of Viktor Orban as a direct answer to Americans tempted to give up on voting as a meaningful tool for change.

Ana Cabrera Reports hosted Congressman Steve Cohen, who called Tennessee's redistricting push a return to Jim Crow and a naked [00:53:00] racial gerrymander designed to eliminate Democratic oversight of Donald Trump

And Democracy Now! presented Kimberlé Crenshaw arguing that refusing to believe Anita Hill in 1991 enabled decades of 5-4 rulings that dismantled the Voting Rights Act and undermined American democracy.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, speaking of injustices of historical proportions, I’m just repeating the sad news about our new show, SOLVED! We’ve suffered a dramatic cut in ad revenue largely driven by widespread economic instability and we’re being forced us to put SOLVED! on indefinite hiatus. We were already stretching ourselves quite thin trying to build something new and so when Trump threw the world into chaos and marketing dollars dried up in response, we were extremely vulnerable to those shockwaves. Right now, I am getting back to basics and focusing on building Best of the Left to be the best it can be with the greatest reach it can. So, that’s where my [00:54:00] focus is going to be and I’ll be keeping you posted on our progress as it develops. 

Regarding members supporting the show, you really are more and more of what’s getting us through right now so thanks to everyone who is a member or has made one-time donations. 

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s important to remind you that each episode of Best of the Left takes about 25 hours of human labor to produce.

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or you can simply email me to [email protected]

As for today's topic,

The thing about being a progressive is that we’re very often [00:55:00] right too soon. On almost any issue you can name, civil rights, women's suffrage, marriage equality, healthcare as a basic human right, the position that eventually becomes the obvious consensus is the position progressives held a generation or two earlier, back when the moderates were calling us radicals for holding it. Which means a lot of the actual work of political progress in this country is the work of dragging people who would eventually agree with us along behind us. That takes years, sometimes decades, and the path to progress is always paved in injustice, sometimes in blood.

Given the makeup of our politics, the Democratic Party is the institution where this dynamic between progressives and moderates plays out, over and over again. So the question of how progress actually happens in this country keeps coming back to the question of how the Democratic Party gets moved.

Right now we're in the middle of a particularly [00:56:00] painful round of this. The Voting Rights Act is being dismantled in real time. The Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais, handed down on April 29th, basically eviscerated Section 2 of the Act, the part that lets voters challenge racially discriminatory maps. Justice Kagan, writing in dissent, said the ruling renders Section 2 "all but a dead letter." And the states moved within days, with primaries getting suspended, emergency redistricting sessions called, and Black-majority districts being eliminated across multiple Southern states, all of which this show is covering in detail.

We had a chance to defend voting rights against exactly this, four years ago. In January 2022, the Senate held a vote on a package called the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which would have restored the pre-clearance protections the Court gutted in the Shelby County case back in 2013 and set baseline national standards for elections that would have made Callais much [00:57:00] less catastrophic. Every Democrat in the Senate supported the substance of that bill, including Joe Manchin, who co-sponsored it himself. What they were fighting over wasn't whether to pass it, it was whether to change a Senate procedural rule, the filibuster, to actually let it get to a vote.

Two Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, refused. They both said they supported voting rights, they just couldn't support changing a Senate rule to pass them. The vote on the rule change was 48 to 52. Manchin and Sinema voted with all 50 Republicans, the carve-out died, the bills died, and five months later the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Four years after that, the Court handed down Callais.

But the real argument here isn't whether Manchin and Sinema made the wrong call on one specific procedural vote, it's that the filibuster itself is fundamentally undemocratic and shouldn't exist, particularly not in its [00:58:00] current form. The Senate is already the least democratic institution in the federal government by design. Every state gets two senators regardless of population, which means Wyoming, with about 600,000 people, has the same voting power as California, with 39 million. The Senate already heavily over-represents small, rural, disproportionately white states. The filibuster takes that structural tilt and makes it dramatically worse. Right now, 41 senators can block any major piece of legislation, and those 41 senators can represent as little as 11 or 12 percent of the country. So we have a body where a minority can already win most of the time, and on top of that we've layered a rule that lets an even smaller minority block whatever they want. That gives a small minority a veto over democracy itself, held by the same people whose interests are already the [00:59:00] most over-represented in the system to begin with.

The argument for the filibuster is that it helps force compromise and bipartisanship. It could still do that if it ran under the old rules that force senators to actually get up and speak to hold a filibuster. But when it acts as an effortless method to block nearly any legislation, it tips over from encouraging compromise to breaking democracy itself.

And this is a big part of what's driving polarization. When people can't actually get the legislation passed that they believe in, even when their side wins elections, they don't conclude the system is working. They conclude the system is broken or rigged, that the other side is illegitimate, that voting doesn't matter. Polarization isn't just a cultural disease, it's the predictable consequence of a political system that's been engineered to make sure majorities can't govern. The filibuster is one of the central pieces of that engineering.

[01:00:00] And in 2022, the undemocratic filibuster at the heart of our undemocratic system was used to thwart the best attempt in years to protect voting rights and return some modicum of power to the people and it has to stop.

So when Manchin gave his floor speech in 2022 about how curtailing the filibuster would "pour fuel on the fire of political whiplash" and tear the country apart, he had it backwards. The fuel on the fire is the filibuster itself, and every time it gets used to block popular, broadly supported legislation, that fire burns hotter.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the 2022 failure was a procedural failure, not an ideological one, and procedural failures are easier to fix. The Democratic Party isn't secretly opposed to voting rights, progressives already won that battle, the problem is an unwillingness, in a specific moment, to break one Senate rule to [01:01:00] pass them. 

And now the political conditions have changed too. The 2022 fight happened when redistricting was abstract for most voters, the consequences of Shelby County hadn't fully metastasized, and Callais was still hypothetical. That's not the situation anymore, since the redistricting battles happening right now have moved voting rights out of the wonk category and into the category of things people can see on the news actively affecting their representation.

And the state-level battles aren't just news to process, it's also an organizing pathway. State legislators in every affected state are fighting back and they could use help. Some states are running ballot measures to take redistricting out of the legislature's hands entirely and hand it to independent commissions. State supreme court races have suddenly become major battlegrounds, since that's now where voting rights cases get fought after Callais. Finding the local group working on any of this where you live and giving them time or money, or just showing up to a public hearing, makes a real [01:02:00] difference at a level where Democrats actually do have power right now.

The federal piece can't get dropped though, because the filibuster isn't going away on its own. Don’t bother asking Democratic candidates whether they support voting rights, because every single one of them already does. The question that matters now is whether they'll commit, on the record, to circumventing the filibuster on day one of the next Democratic trifecta in order to institute protections for those voting rights. Make that the litmus test every time you talk to anyone running for federal office, and get the commitment in a form you can hold them to later. 

Being right too soon means the work is making everyone else catch up, and there's no rule that says we have to be polite about waiting. The substantive answer on voting rights is already on the record, every Democrat supports voting rights. What's left between us and enforcing that with law is a Senate procedural rule that shouldn't exist in the first place. So make them answer for it.

Note that we've [01:03:00] begun putting my commentaries on YouTube so if you find them insightful, check out our channel and share them! Link in the show notes.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, THE RULING & THE LAW

Followed by Section B, HOW WE GOT HERE

Section C, THE STATES SCRAMBLE

And Section D, WHAT COMES NEXT

HOST: So in this opinion, joined by the other conservatives, Samuel Alito basically holds this. And, and what, what gets me isn't just the effect, it's the gaslighting. He essentially says, "Okay, no, we're not gonna strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act," which is something that they could have done.

They were considering the constitutionality of this section, which, as Joyce said, uses the word opportunity. The, the, consc- conscription, the, the, the... What the Voting Rights Act protects is f- that voters of color have an opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. Doesn't mean they [01:04:00] get it, doesn't mean there isn't all kinds of other shenanigans that keeps them from get...

Just enough critical mass in a district to even have their votes be as powerful as that of white vo- white, white voters, right? Leveling the playing field. Mm-hmm. So that's what we're trying to get to, and that's what Louisiana did with these two districts, right? Two out of six is a third, so that makes sense that they would do it that way.

So what Alito said is "Okay, well, that, that's not unconstitutional, and it's not even unconstitutional to have the remedy that if you find a violation of the Voting Rights Act, that a state has to redraw its maps. That's all okay. But if in that remedy you consider race, you violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits," wait for it, "discrimination on the basis of race."

And then he threw in another zinger. In the past, we have talked about, [01:05:00] gerrymandering for political purposes, right? Partisan gerrymandering. And we've talked about how the Supreme Court not only did not rule that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, they ruled that courts can't even consider partisan gerrymandering m- mandering challenges, right?

Partisan gerrymandering, A-okay. So Alito added in this that not only is it important to guard against the racial discrimination that takes place in rectifying racial discrimination, but especially it's terrible to do when you have, incumbents in Louisiana who may risk losing their seats based on this redistricting.

Excuse me, I did not know that there was a constitutional protection- ... of incumbent Republicans in Louisiana, but apparently Alito does. And how that consideration, protecting the incumbent Republicans of Louisiana, is more important than [01:06:00] the V- Voting Rights Act's 60 years of work in keeping voting suppression from hap- He...

They actually wrote that in the opinion, and five, count 'em, five justices signed on. And to boot, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were just like, "Yeah, we would've gone further," and just, said that you can never, allow for redistricting as a remedy for, for racial gerrymandering. Th- this is your Supreme Court, ladies and gentlemen.

HOST 3: I have deja vu all over again because w- where you started, Kim, it's so reminiscent of Shelby County versus Holder, where the court didn't say Section 5 was unconstitutional, they just gutted it by saying- Right ... the criteria that were being used to protect voters under Section 5 were unconstitutional.

We have that same monkey business going on- Yeah ... here with Section 2, right? 

HOST: And Brnovich, too. Brnovich, they did that, too. 

HOST 3: Like- With the- How- Yeah ... they just keep pulling the wool over most of Americans' eyes and thinking that they'll get away with it. [01:07:00] They will not get away with that stuff here at hashtag Sisters-in-Law.

We will- Nope ... call it out. Jill, how, how do you react to the majority's opinion? What are your views? 

HOST 4: Well, I would not say I was shocked because, as we all have said, we predicted that this would be, despite whatever hopes we might have had, that this was gonna be the outcome. But I am revolted. I am totally, I, I don't know what other word to use.

It's something, I, I'm the oldest of us, and I was definitely an activist during the Civil Rights Movement, and I never would have predicted that the Civil Rights Movement would be undone by the Supreme Court of the United States, and that's what's happened. Even though they said, "Well, we're not undoing it, we're just updating the requirements."

- 

HOST 4: Update No, they're not. That's- Need to 

HOST: update- Just 

HOST 4: in- It's time for an update. President- It is time- Voting Rights Act version 13.2 Turns and turns and keeps on going and update, right? Right. And it always makes me wonder- Turning to Jim Crow and 

HOST 3: update. I [01:08:00] just 

HOST 4: don't get it. The decision makes me wonder really how many ways MAGA has around the Constitution, especially when the court and Congress are doing nothing to stop it from happening.

But the Court, the Court is supposed to be the court of last resort, the court that will stop unconstitutional acts, and, it's, it's-- I wanna just say the Voting Rights Act was not only passed in '65, it's been re-upped multiple times, and it was amended to specifically make sure that you didn't need to prove intent.

All you needed to prove was that it affected your opportunity to vote. That's right. And now they've gone, "Eh, no, not so much." So they're completely obliterating the act and everything that Congress... if congressional intent ever meant anything, it would have ruled here that no, it cannot be undone in the way they have.

So I'm, I'm really, I'm just, I'm revolted and [01:09:00] upset and concerned about our democracy. 

HOST 3: I think that's all fair. Barb, what's your reaction to the majority opinion? 

HOST 2: Yeah, very much in line with what we've heard so far, but I think one of the things I, I wanna add is this distinction between intent and effect.

Right. I think it is so important here- Mm-hmm ... and in all other contexts about how we think about race in the law and in society. Keep in mind that in 1982, in response to a Supreme Court opinion, Congress specifically renewed the Voting Rights Act and clarified that it was enough to show discriminatory effect without showing discriminatory intent.

Because after all, who, what are, who are we thinking about here? The people whose rights are violated or the, the hurt feelings of those who violated them? And I really- Right ... think so much of the discussions around race come around to this. People say, "How can [01:10:00] this be racism when I didn't intend racism?

How can this be discrimination when I didn't intend discrimination?" It isn't about you It's about the people whose rights are being restricted. And that's the whole concept of systemic racism or systemic discrimination. It is that in Louisiana, where a third of the state are African American, of its six districts, only one is majority minority.

Right? I don't care if it was intentional, and frankly, it's hard to avoid concluding that it is, that it's not intentional when you end up- Right ... with five majority white dis- But be that as it may, it can be very difficult to prove intent to discriminate. Why do we need it? Congress said we don't. And if we're trying to improve and truly have a colorblind society, as Chief Justice Roberts likes to say, then why do we need to talk about whether there was this intent?

I hear this in conversations with white friends and white colleagues from time to time [01:11:00] about this argument that why should there be, a, a remedy if there's no intent to discriminate? That, that's what it is. It's because we want to equalize the playing field. And there's also, I think, this idea that the worst thing you can call me is racist.

Yep. I can think of some worse things that people are called by racists. Ah. Get over yourself, right? It isn't about you. It isn't about whether you intend it or not. It's all good. Whatever happened, we're all doing our best here, maybe. But regardless of what you intended, what matters is the outcome.

I also sometimes hear people say this: "Look, it's 2026. My ancestors came from, Yugoslavia, Poland," wherever it is. "I did not in any way, participate in racism or Jim Crow or any discrimination against Black people. Why is it being held against me?" It's not being held against you. You are benefiting from a system that favors white people.

We are trying to have a [01:12:00] system where all are equal, and that's this, this distinction between intent and effect that I think it g- gets missed so often by even people of good faith. And I most certainly don't think that Justice Alito is a person of good faith. Right. But that's what matters t- i-in my view, and I think that because it's so difficult to ever prove intent, that as a result of this case, it will essentially eviscerate Section Two of the Voting Rights Act.

LEEJA: But of course, white people weren't ready to go quietly into the night and accept that maybe they would have to cede some of their power. So the backlash against the amendments and against the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was swift.

And today, the common conservative argument against the Voting Rights Act and protections against racial gerrymandering is that being race neutral and color blind is the only correct non-discriminatory stance to take. In effect, by taking race into consideration at all, you are discriminating against me, the white person, and that is against the Constitution.

However, [01:13:00] unfortunately, we do not live in a race blind utopia where everyone has gained parity and the only difference in outcomes depends on how hard you work. If you can believe it, a few decades of laws protecting voting rights did not undo a few centuries of literal human bondage, and then 100 years of overtly racist anti-Black laws.

Black people continue to live with the consequences of overt racism in housing, leading to less accumulated generational wealth, concentration into the cities, and low affordable housing stock forcing them to live in less than ideal conditions and then be blamed themselves for the horrible conditions their landlords are responsible for.

Black people continue to live with the proven biases against them in hiring practices, violence against them enacted by police, not to mention the day-to-day racism they have to endure from infancy through to adulthood, whether it's the unconscionably high rates of infant and maternal mortality in Black populations compared to the rest of the population, or just the racist epithets thrown at people as they're trying to navigate the world.

Not to mention intergenerational transmission of trauma, but Lord knows that's too many syllables for your average racist to [01:14:00] understand. The point is, we have not arrived at a place where we can say race is no longer a factor and everyone is equal, therefore any consideration of race at all is racist against the other races.

You don't get to rig the game for 200 years and then claim, "Well, now we've stopped discriminating, so everything is fine. Now if we keep talking about how we rigged the game for 200 years, that's actually discrimination against me." But that's exactly how the MAGA movement thinks. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg quipped in an older case trying to gut parts of the Voting Rights Act, you wouldn't use an umbrella in a rainstorm to stay dry and then get rid of that umbrella because you're dry.

The Voting Rights Act was the thing allowing for some semblance of a pluralistic democracy in this country. You don't throw out the thing that's working. It hasn't solved the problem. It is the solve to the problem.

Next, Section B, HOW WE GOT HERE

JAMELLE: In thinking about all of this, I've also just been thinking about this Supreme Court, the Roberts Court, its larger jurisprudential agenda. And I don't wanna give too much credit. I think you can make a very good case that what [01:15:00] we're seeing is mostly just the actions of a bunch of Republican partisans, and they wanna make sure that the Republican Party does all right in elections.

They do have their particular idiosyncratic interest, and John Roberts and Sam Alito in particular seem, have always seemed almost aggrieved by the existence of the Voting Rights Act. John Roberts, the young lawyer in the Reagan administration, was very much opposed to the congressional bill that strengthened Section Two, and this recent ruling is basically Roberts and Alito, Alito similarly opposed to that, rewriting Section Two to be what they think it ought to have been to begin with, which is to say a nullity.

They've always had this grudge against the Voting Rights Act, always seen it as terribly intrusive, as unfair. Alito in particular is very much on this kick that it's unfair to accuse people of racism, that practically is as bad as racism itself. Not for nothing, Alito joined a group that opposed the admission of women and minorities to Princeton, so he might be a [01:16:00] little sensitive about this.

And so that's their idiosyncratic, right, own views. There is clearly an agenda with regards to aggrandizing presidential power, as I've said before. You have someone like Clarence Thomas, who is very much this, misanthropic figure with his own strange ideas. So that's not to... it's both the case that there are maybe more interesting things going on with some of the justices, and also true that in a lot of ways they're functionally Republican partisans.

But if you're so inclined, there is a story you can tell about what this court is doing. Before the Civil War, as I'm sure states in this country were really the locus of power. The federal government was not weak, and this is a common misconception, this idea that the federal government was exceptionally weak, didn't really do much.

That's not really true. But it is true that it was not nearly as large in its scope as it is today, and it is true that there wasn't the immediate federal supremacy or deference [01:17:00] that we experience today. Rather, the federal government and the states had overlapping spheres of influence, and a lot of the jurisprudence of the era is an attempt to kinda delineate where the federal government's sphere of influence dominates, where the state governments do, where the local governments do.

It's interesting stuff, but that's a general picture of federalism in this period. And the states really are extraordinarily powerful. And in particular, they have wide-ranging what's called police powers. The idea is that a state's police powers are its power to, to use the word, to police its internal affairs.

And police... And that's police in almost all senses of the word. That's police in terms of public safety and law enforcement. That's police in terms of who was allowed into the state to begin with. So plenty of states in the antebellum era had prohibitions on the migration of Black Americans into their states.

There's a great book by an historian, Kate Masur, about this, here it is, [01:18:00] that if you wanna read more about this dynamic, I really recommend it. States could forbid who comes in. They could explicitly forbid pauperism, right? Just being poor. States had control over citizenship, right? You were a citizen of your state first and foremost before you were a citizen of the nation, or rather, state citizenship was the dominant and most important form of the citizenship, and national citizenship was ill-defined.

And there are a number of great books about the quest to define national citizenship, which was really a product of Black Americans and abolitionists who insisted that there was a equal national citizenship and that it included people such as Black Americans and the enslaved. I'm gonna recommend a somewhat older book, just in the last 10 years, from my friend Martha Jones on the subject, as well as a very recent book by my friend Anna Law on the subject.

Highly recommend you check them both out. And most critically to our discussion right now, police powers involve the power to structure electorates, determine who had the right to vote and the [01:19:00] circumstances under which they did vote. What the Civil War did, and in particular what the Reconstruction Amendments did, by establishing clear prohibitions on certain kinds of voting restrictions, for example, the 15th Amendment says you cannot abridge the right to vote on the basis of race, and the 14th Amendment establishes the equal protection of the laws and due process of the laws for people in all states, as well as the privileges and immunities of citizenship.

What those things do is to create a minimum federal baseline, right? There is a- There is a floor beyond which you cannot go below when it comes to structuring the internal affairs of a state. In subsequent jurisprudence, especially in the twentieth century, the rights expansion of the '40s, '50s, '60s, and '70s further establishes baselines below which states cannot go.

And this is important because states were often not the laboratories of democracy, as the cliche goes, but laboratories for autocracy. That's what Jim Crow was, for example. [01:20:00] Chinese exclusion in the 1880s had its roots in efforts to expel and exclude Chinese Americans from Western states. So the Court in the twentieth century does begin to establish these floors for rights, a floor for a right to privacy, a floor for a right to an abortion, a floor for a right to an education, I think through Brown v.

Board of Education, a floor against harmful or invidious discrimination on the basis of race or sex or gender, so on and so forth. And one way you can look at this current court, the Roberts Court, this court which is the product of a fifty-year effort by the conservative movement to capture the Court and turn it into an engine for its own interests, one way you can look at this court is an attempt to tear up that floor, to eliminate that floor, to say that there is no longer a national floor for rights, and rather that the full scope of your rights, from your right to vote, from your right to get an abortion, from your right to travel and move [01:21:00] freely, all of these things are structured by the states and that the federal government cannot really intervene.

Now, I'll note that let's say you're a state and you wanna make sure that there's gender-affirming care for transgender youth, the courts might not be too happy about that. Let's say you wanna regulate gun rights. The courts may not be too happy about that. So this is not really a full expansion of police powers for states to do whatever they please.

Rather, it is establishing for the rights that the conservatives view as most important a minimum floor, and that's gun rights, right to property, a vision of free speech in which money equals speech and there are no limits on speech, and thus no limits on money, and a very narrow and exclusionary vision of religious liberty in which religious liberty means the right to discriminate against people on the basis of religion.

The Court wants to establish a floor for those rights, but then for anything that might enable human flourishing, [01:22:00] that might enable people's ability to live their lives as they see fit, which might enable people to challenge existing hierarchies, whatever it is, the Court is saying, "No more. No minimum floor."

And so if your state wants to obliterate, effectively, your ability to get representation, it can't. If the state wants to obliterate, effectively, your right to bodily autonomy, you can't. And your freedom, such that it is, is a freedom to move, right? If your- fortunate enough, affluent enough, capable enough, able enough to move to a place where those rights are a little more secure.

But then this interacts with the court's jurisprudence when it comes to the presidency. And so in addition to this, they create a situation where the executive branch, or at least Republican-led executive branches, can do whatever they want. And so it's a catch-22 if you believe in rights that extend to ordinary people and aren't just excuses for the wealthy and the powerful to dominate the rest of us.

DEAN: So if you haven't seen it, just breaking news a short time ago, they voted in the state legislature in Tennessee [01:23:00] because the Supreme Court said you can be as racist as you want when you draw your maps, but just don't say you're being racist. That's all they said. "You can't say you're being racist. Just say you're being partisan, and then you can do whatever you want," wink, wink.

In reality, the conservative GOP Supreme Court has legalized discrimination against Blacks, and against brown, and against anybody, but, , based on race, by saying it's just about partisanship. So what happened is the 9th Congressional District in Tennes- in Tennessee is Memphis area. It is the only Black majority district, and the Republicans wanted that to go away, and now they got their chance.

Donald Trump, after the decision last week, calls up Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee, and says, "You have to have a session to get rid of that seat." And sure enough, that's what they did. Now, they voted on the new map. They have a super majority Republicans in the state legislature in Tennessee, so Democrats can't do much.

They asked some questions yesterday. They were able to protest outside. But Republicans, and get this, not only did they go through at an [01:24:00] expedited process, they banned public input. They did not want the public to comment like they often do on proposed legislation. They banned it because they knew it would get really ugly as people start saying, "What you're doing is Jim Crow era bullshit."

They, so they banned it. No public conduct. So, but the public came, and they cheered, or jeered I should say, in, outsi- in the gallery and outside, and they were chanting, , "Hell no, Jim Crow has to go." People are talking about Jim Crow in 2026 because of the Republican Party. This is where we are. And they're so giddy about it.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who's a leading candidate for governor, she said about this redistricting, she goes, "This is what it means to be America's conservative leader. Let's get it done." So to her, being America's conservative leader is getting rid of the one majority Black district in the entire state.

And the way they fractured it, they broke members down to three different components. So now part of Memphis is also being represented by a, a new member of Congress 100 [01:25:00] miles away in the white, deep red areas, 'cause that's the only way how to do it. You can't keep Memphis together, 'cause it'll then be still a Democratic district.

You break it up, so you literally draw lines, so you connect part of Memphis and draw a line, and then you put it with a whole white, red district. That's how they're doing it. So their voice means nothing. They can vote, but they're not gonna have someone who represents them and their views on it. But a short time ago, I thought this was great, Representative Justin Jones, and he is a Democrat representing Nashville.

He handed to Republican majority leader William Lamberth a Confederate flag on a piece of paper, and he said, "Mr. Speaker, I just handed Representative Lamberth the Confederate flag saying, 'We will not go back,' 'cause you're trying to bring us back to the Confederacy." And, and I wanna get people's comments on this, because it, it really, it's deeply upsetting as we watch the right try to take America backwards in a very conservative, , concerted, strategic effort.

And it's not just voting rights. They did it first with Roe v. Wade. , In [01:26:00] 1973, women had a constitutional right to control your own reproductive freedom. Constitutional right, like any other right. That's what the Supreme Court re- re- recognizing that. Over the years, the GOP clamored to get that overturned, and finally in 2022 they did.

So now, and not coincidentally, the same states who wanted to redistrict right now and erase Black voters and Black members of Congress are the same ones that impose bans on abortion. It's the same right-wing, reactionary idea of racial and gender apartheid. That's what the right wants, racial and gender apartheid, where they control your race and they control your gender.

A- and they're men, white men controlling everybody else. And it's unreal. So you've got... I wanted to, I found this really powerful, and I wanted to read this to people. There was a publication in Memphis, The Capitol Press, and they interviewed Black voters over the last day or two, 'cause there's a primary on Tuesday And I-- [01:27:00] forget the law.

I'm a lawyer. We all know this is horrible. We all know the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress in nineteen sixty-five, the most important civil rights piece of legislation to end the electoral apartheid we had in our nation, as Elie Mystal made the point on my show last week. But what we have here is very human reaction.

That's what I wanna read to people. And these here... And I'll read the names of the people who told the Capitol Press this. 

Fred Doris, eighty-one, he was voting at the First Baptist Broad Church on Tuesday in the primary. They talked to him there. And this is very painful to read. He says, "I was here when we first fought with the Department of Justice to get this district drawn so the African American community would win it."

He says, "It hurts my heart at almost eighty-one years old to see us lose this again. It hurts my heart," he said. "The same fight we had then back in the late sixties and seventies, we are now fighting in twenty twenty-six. We have to pre-preserve it." Francine Wilson, who's s- in her seventies, voting at Glenview Community Center in the Memphis area, [01:28:00] told a reporter, "I don't like it because I come from the old school.

I feel like they're trying to wipe the Blacks out. I'm gonna say it like that. It's taking us back, way back to the Jim Crow days. I don't like it. My children have to come up behind me, and my grandchildren, and I pray that everything goes well for them, that they don't have to fight as we always have." And then she adds this.

Everyone goes back to The Color Purple, the famous book. She said, "I had to fight all the days of my life," quoting from the book. "I had to fight all the days of my life." Then she said, "So if we had to fight all of our days, why should we have to still continually fight today?" Now, that's the question. It doesn't end.

I'll, I'll read one mo- one more. Joyce Jordan, sixty-nine, voting at the Grace Missionary Baptist Church on Tuesday: "It's taken us back to where our leaders fought, where we as a people fought. People died for these rights, and now it's being taken away, taking us back to the nineteen sixties and beyond. I feel, I feel as though this is very evil, and it is wrong."

I read them because forget the law, I want people to hear the human impact of [01:29:00] people, the pain this is going to cause, how the Black community knows exactly their history, especially older ones who lived through the civil rights movement, saw people march in the streets, bleed- Cry, die for ensure representation.

And this Supreme Court, this GOP Supreme Court, last week gutted the last part of the Voting Rights Act. They get an assist in 2013 by the G Su- GOP Supreme Court, which took the heart and soul of the Voting Rights Act. They got rid of it in the Shelby County versus Holder case, which had to do with pre-clearance.

But now the last part of it is done. So once again, just so everyone knows, you don't need a legal degree to get this. What the Supreme Court said last Wednesday is, "You can redraw maps any way you want as long as you're not saying it's intentionally racist." Like, if you're saying, "We're just drawing this map for political gain," then you could do whatever you want.

You just can't say it's intentionally racist. So it's, again, wink, wink. Of course they're ra- they're gonna cut all... They're [01:30:00] gonna... It's called cracking. They crack the districts and dilute the voice of the Black voters. And last week I wasn't sure where this is gonna go. Now we know exactly where it's going.

It happened in Tennessee. It's gonna pass the Senate probably later today. It passed the State Assembly. Governor's gonna sign it. It's giddy. They get rid of the one Democratic district in Tennessee, in Memphis, so the Black voters have no more say in Congress whatsoever. Louisiana delayed their primary last week so they can get rid of it.

South Carolina, now their legislature's talking about it. Alabama, Mississippi, Florida. What do these states all have in common? All these states I just read to you, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida. What do they have in common? These were all Confederate states. These were all states that seceded from the United States.

These are all states that w- took a war against the United States of America. These are all states where their ancestors killed US soldiers. And then after [01:31:00] the Civil War, these are the same states that imposed a brutal, repressive Jim Crow to ensure there was no equality. 

Now, Section C, THE STATES SCRAMBLE

HOST 2: Well, Ben Aguiñaga is the Louisiana solicitor general who argued to strike down the state's majority Black congressional district, the one we're talking about here. He is speaking outside the Supreme Court after oral arguments back in October. 

CLIP: If Louisiana's story, that for the past couple of years, we have been struggling to find a map, a congressional map that satisfies the court's precedence.

It's been extremely difficult. We argued it once earlier this year. We're back here, and what I told the court at the podium is, "Look, at the, at the end of the day, we really need clarity. The states need clarity on how they're supposed to comply with the Voting Rights Act and with the Equal Protection Clause."

HOST 2: So, Kareem laid out the legal reasoning that Justice Samuel, Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, how the legal reasoning goes here. Carrie, the ripple effects of the court ruling here have [01:32:00] been significant. They've been swift. Alabama just today after the decision dropped, the attorney general therel- there, Steve Marshall, and the secretary of state there, both Republicans, filed emergency motions to lift injunctions blocking their 2021 map.

So jurisdictions all across the South are now moving to get rid of districts that before fell under Section 2 of the VRA. Give us a sense of, of, just how quickly districts could fall ahead of the midterms here. 

GUEST 2: Right. So that's a really complicated question at a chaotic moment. I think one thing is, in our reporting, I think what we've realized is states are going to move, as Alabama is, to try and redraw before the midterms.

It's very likely that some of that won't be possible. As you point out, Alabama's options here depend on some more court rulings and some things that are in play. They're gonna need a court to say that they can do this in some [01:33:00] cases. In other cases, states have already held their primaries. People have already voted.

Filing deadlines have passed. Candidates have filed to run under the current district b- boundaries. In some cases, early voting is underway. Now, what we saw in Louisiana was, as early voting was starting, Governor Landry, as, as you pointed out, issued an emergency declaration, said that votes for House candidates on th- this ballot will not count, and there will be another primary for House candidates after this redrawing happens.

There's currently litigation over that, whether he can do that. Either way, I can tell you that what's happening right now is incredibly confusing for voters. Louisiana voters are looking at ballots with House candidates on them, but getting told that if they cast votes in those races, those won't count, and there'll be another primary.

This is hugely- And 

HOST 2: some have already voted. 

GUEST 2: Some have already voted, and this is hugely confusing to voters who have done nothing at all wrong- Right ... show up and get handed ballots, right, or a different ballot. Well, but Carrie, 

HOST: what does it [01:34:00] also mean for those charged with seeing election processes actually happen and happen efficiently for voters?

GUEST 2: So that's a great question that's really important to us at Votebeat that we cover closely, and the answer is this is an enormously difficult question. When people file to be candidates, they have to meet requirements. Election officials have to make sure that that happens, that these people should go on the ballot.

And in addition to that, ballots have to be designed, proofed, printed, and there have to be a bunch of different ballot styles with the right races on there for each voter. Voters have to be assigned to the right district so that they get the right races on their ballots. This is a hugely complicated process that does not happen overnight.

HOST: Complicated and expensive. 

GUEST 2: And the other thing is, I haven't heard anyone from Louisiana talk about how they're gonna pay for this. 

HOST 2: So Kareem, from where you sit, to talk a little bit more about what Carrie is mentioning, there was a redistricting war [01:35:00] that was going on before the Callais ruling that we're talking about, before the, d- the dilution of Black voting power in Louisiana and the South.

Of course, Texas started it. Donald Trump started it when he asked Texas Republicans to give him five seats. They did. Then Democrats in California responded, and now we're off to the races. So from where you sit, where are we at in terms of representation and people's votes counting heading into the midterms?

GUEST: Well, it's important as we talk about this, to distinguish the discussion about partisanship as it's driven, as you describe The fight that has started by the White House asking Texas to jump into the fray mid-decade and all the other states pushing back from the conversation that, began with the Callais decision, which really is about racial fairness.

And while there is connection between the two, I think unfortunately, the Callais decision conflates it. But where are we right [01:36:00] now is, a really complicated question. I think, after Virginia, had its public ballot measure presented to the people and, narrowly passed it to change its districts, I think most people view things as more or less at a standstill.

So there was a lot of effort put into fighting in state legislatures to get these, new districts adopted with all of the confusion and chaos that it, likely will lead to for voters, and basically the numbers are pretty much even. However, now that Callais is on the books, I think there are a lot of states that are looking at this, and they're probably also looking at the nation's politics at present, and I think they're trying to get an edge wherever possible.

So we won't know for all of the legal reasons that were mentioned earlier where this is going to land, but I think at present, I think everyone is being energized to act, largely because of the interest in having, I think an outsized influence in Congress, and we'll just have to [01:37:00] see, after all the legal wrangling is over where things end.

HOST: Well, Kareem, I, I want to pull on this thread a little bit because you said you think people are conflating that, the Callais decision with this larger push to redistrict. And, and why do you think it's important to separate the two? 

GUEST: Well, it's important because the Voting Rights Act itself was always viewed as a bipartisan piece of legislation that was getting at something larger than partisanship.

It was, , trying to make good on America's commitment, long delayed, to g- give meaning to the 14th and 15th Amendment, that people should be able to have, regardless of race, a meaningful and equal vote cast, which would include the ability to be represented. And it's important to note, as much as, again, this is by some being viewed through a partisan lens, the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized was in 2006, and no one less than George W.

Bush, not viewed as the most flaming liberal on the planet, and a [01:38:00] Republican Congress, , a- authorized that act. It had been viewed as a consensus view of the American public. It is unfortunately now, , partly because of our politics at present, but also because I think of some unfortunate misreasoning, offered by Justice Alito, has been folded into a partisan framework, and I think in a very unhelpful way, most unhelpful with respect to the Voting Rights Act, to the very p- communities that the Voting Rights Act was designed to support.

HOST: I, I'm also curious to hear from you, Kerry, what you make of the, the, the speed at which the Voting Rights Act has been really torn apart. I did a little math and realized that my oldest siblings were born before the Voting Rights Act passed. So this is not a law that's been on the books for, , generations and generations.

This is still in, in the larger scope of history, a relatively new law. 

GUEST 2: That's [01:39:00] such an interesting point, and I think we've seen the nation change around the law and the way it thinks about these issues at an, at an incredible speed. And I think that there's more change yet to come. I, I think one thing I would say to that is, Justice Alito's decision really made me think a lot about an, a previous decision that the court had, had made on redistricting in, in a case called Rucho versus Common Cause, in which the court essentially said, federal courts really can't be deciding, and Kareem would, I think, put this more elegantly than, than I would, but federal courts really can't be deciding when partisan gerrymandering crosses the line into too much partisan gerrymandering.

Partisan gerrymandering is distasteful, and we don't love it, but we can't really step in and start arbitrating it. And I thought that the decision that Justice Alito wrote really treated partisan, districting decisions as if they were a much more legitimate reason to draw a district line. It didn't treat it i- [01:40:00] in quite the same distasteful way as the court had in Rucho.

It was recognizing it almost, to my reading, as if it was a legitimate thing for lawmakers to do, a legitimate reason for them to have. And so it, it elevated that, and I thought that it was somewhat reflective of the times that we lived in. To your point, I, I think about the speed at which this law has, has had its life cycle has come to this point.

I think that we're seeing the evolution of our thinking about a lot of things as a society and how that's shifted over time in these decisions and in how this law is being interpreted by the Court. 

HOST: Kareem, anything to add? 

GUEST: Yes. Thank you. I, I appreciate the point about, partisan gerrymandering. I, in a previous job, was, very intimately involved with trying to present to the Court an argument that it should act.

It chose not to. But in fact, it has not just, I think, allowed it to be a legitimate interest, it has incentivized in Callais the [01:41:00] attention to partisanship as a cure-all. That is, the concerns about race discrimination are less important than a state policy that says, "We are," let's just say Republicans, "and we like Republicans, and if we wanna have more Republican districts, and the cost of that business is that we ignore concerns by African Americans because they aren't Republicans, so be it."

That has to be a very anemic understanding of what the Voting Rights Act was intended to do. But for this Court that purports to be standing outside of the space of partisanship, they do a lot of work that seems to encourage it, and that's really unfortunate. 

HOST 2: Also on Wednesday, just to add to the bad news here, Florida advanced its aggressive new congressional map which could net Republicans four seats in the House.

There's been some speculation that this new map will be a, quote, "DeSantis dummy mander." What do you make of that? 

GUEST: , I, I, I, I meant to look, shit, I meant to look up Meatball Ron and whether that was his nickname, and I didn't do it. That, 

HOST 2: that, that was a- , so- It was a pri- I looked it up. It was a [01:42:00] private nickname that Trump u- was reported to use for Ron.

Oh my God. I'm not, I don't know if it ever made it to, through the social, but he, it was- I'm sorry, w- ... reports were reporting. 

GUEST: I expect all bad things to come out of Florida. Are you asking me whether, I, , like, do you think, do, do I think this is going to happen? Yes, I, I think this is going to happen. I think we should expect the worst, craziest shit to emanate from Ron DeSantis' Florida, so this is no exception.

HOST 2: Yeah. So a dummy mander is a term- Oh, sorry ... of art for when... No, it's okay. No, no, I'm happy to jump in here. Du- dummy mander's a term of art for when the new map performs worse than the old map. And so there's some question here, because most experts thought that DeSantis Could add two seats safely. , And once you add four seats, you're at risk of spreading the peanut butter too thin here.

So the math of gerrymandering is, or redistricting, is pretty simple. You have a static number of Republican voters. To make more Republican districts, you must move them out of safe Republican districts and put them into Democratic districts. Then you must take those Democratic voters and move them from Democratic districts and put them into Republican [01:43:00] districts.

And if you do that poorly, then you put a bunch of seats at risk. I don't know if this will be a dummy-mander, but the seats that, the way DeSantis did this is he did not shore up the two most vulnerable Republicans in the, in Southern Florida. And the four new safe seats are probably not even gonna be ranked as safe by the Cook Political Report.

They'll probably lean Republican at best, , or like, maybe likely Republican. But they're, they're gonna end up being about seats that Trump won plus nine in, , 2024. And that's within the realm of what is possible for Democrats. The other thing here that I think is just worth noting is the... We're using the 2024 results in Florida as the baseline for how safe these seats are.

The, Trump won Florida by, like, 13 points, and, but that was because, which is a huge margin, a gigantic margin in what was, like, the prototypical swing state for many, many races, [01:44:00] is Trump won because he won Latinos by 13 points in 2024. To give you a sense of how nuts that is, he only, he lost them by five in 2020, and he lost them by 27 in 2016.

So we're, we, there's a 40-point swing over the last eight years of, among Latinos in Florida. And there's a mountain of evidence, both in polling and in e- election results in Florida and elsewhere, that 2024 was an outlier in terms of Latino support. So if you really do s- and the Latino vote in F- Florida is mu- is incredibly complicated because it's very diverse.

, So it's not, you can't just look at numbers in other parts of the country and transpose them to Florida. But there is, there is risk here that if Latinos really are swinging back to Democrats, if not to 2016 levels, but close to that, then some of these seats Republicans are counting on may turn out to be Democratic.

So there's, there's some risk here for meatball. 

GUEST: [01:45:00] Me- meatball and, , and, and also Mike Johnson. Yes. Another meatball.

And Finally, Section D, WHAT COMES NEXT

JESSICA: Is there any path forward? How do we get out of this? 

IMANI: Well, I wanna agree with you there because at least after Shelby, we still had Section 2. 

JESSICA: Right. Like- Right? ... we don't have fuck all right now. We 

IMANI: have fuck all right now. We have nothing but hoping that legislators will be stupid and go on, Fox News and say, "Yeah, we don't want Black people voting.

That's why we're, we're cracking and packing these districts." They're not gonna do that. They're not that stupid. 

JESSICA: No. 

IMANI: So you asked me is there a path forward. Yeah, there's a path forward. Fucking court reform, man. Court reform. Every voter in this country should hold every Democrat who is running for election to a promise that they will support court reform, and not just bullshit court reform, expansive, wholesale court reform.

And, any time I'm given a chance to talk [01:46:00] about the Ellie Plan, which is basically what I call it now, the Ellie Plan, there are people who say, "Well, no, we should just add a couple more justices. We should have 13 justices to match the 13 circuit courts of appeal." No, no, no, no, no. The problem with these conservatives is that they are unified in thought.

JESSICA: Yes. 

IMANI: All of these Federalist Society judges already have their talking points by the time they reach even a lower federal court- Yeah ... much less the Supreme Court. The Federalist Society learned its lesson from David Souter after David Souter was nominated by a Republican, and then proceeded to vote with the liberals on a whole bunch of shit, right?

Yes. Conservatives are like, "We're not letting that happen again." And so that's how this extreme vetting of these justices began when it came to Republican appointees, right? 

JESSICA: Right. 

IMANI: So the Ellie Plan would say, "Let's add 30 new justices, and we can do it in a bipartisan way by allowing Republicans to have maybe five [01:47:00] or six more justices than the liberals would have."

So maybe you have, 12 liberal justices and 18 conservative justices, but the thing about those 18 conservative justices is it's going to be difficult to find 18 conservatives who all think the same way and can pass nomination, right, can pass the nomination process. So we can get back to a period where there were Republican or conservatives, Republican appointed or conservative justices, who all didn't think the same way, because there is a diversity of thought among conservative jurists.

Mm-hmm. It's just that we're not seeing it at the Supreme Court. So if you wanna issue a ruling that strips Black people of voting power, you gotta get 17 other justices to agree with you, and that's going to be a lot harder to do than getting five other Federalist Society jamokes to agree with you.

Right. Right. That's one thing. I was talking about this on social media, and someone was like, "Well, you're missing that if court reform legislation were passed, [01:48:00] then it would go to the Supreme Court, and then the Supreme Court could strike it down." And I was like, "Goddamn, that is absolutely true," right? So then I'm thinking to myself, "Well, how do we do that?"

And my suggestion, and I know you love when I bring up Marbury versus Madison- Love! This is 

JESSICA: gonna be amazing. 

IMANI: My suggestion is to send Marbury to the wood chipper, 

JESSICA: right? Amazing. 

IMANI: Marbury versus Madison is an 1803 case where Justice Marshall And the other justices at the time made the biggest power grab, the ballsiest power grab It's 

JESSICA: such a baller move, this 

IMANI: decision

in American history. They were like, "Fuck it, we ball." It- They... That's the case that invented, out of whole cloth, judicial review. Yes. Now, in the year of our Lord 2026, we just assume that it's the Supreme Court's job to review acts of Congress. That was not the case before 1803. In 1803, Justice Marshall was like, [01:49:00] "You know what?

We're gonna do this shit." Yeah. "You pass a law, and we're gonna review it to make sure it comports with the Constitution." Yeah. But the difference between the 1803 court and this court is that John Marshall believed in deferring to Congress, and almost always did. 

JESSICA: Mm-hmm. 

IMANI: This court throws up middle fingers to Congress and says, "You know what?

We're gonna take your power for ourselves," as they did in Loper Bright. "We're gonna take agency power for ourselves." This is a Supreme Court that is out of control. 

JESSICA: But we only get to Loper Bright via Marbury versus Madison. This is literally the first case that I read as a law student in constitutional law.

The very first one. 

IMANI: It's the first case every law student reads. I w- mine, too, in my con law ca- class, the first case. Because it established judicial review where there was no judicial review. There is nothing in the Constitution that grants the Supreme Court the right to strike down laws of [01:50:00] Congress.

JESSICA: Talk about a baller move by Marshall, too, because he's "Yeah, I know, folks in Congress, you're subject to elections. Sucks for you." Right. Right. Sucks for you. I am on board with all of this. I just have one little detail to add, which is whatever happens in this court reform vision and, on the podcast we've been talking about this for years under the guise of unpacking the Court, to your point, because it's been so packed with groupthink from the Federalist Society, is I want a real binding code of ethics as well.

I am really tired of these conservative justices es- especially taking in millions, tens of millions of dollars sometimes on the side, whether it's through gifts, donations to family members, businesses, whatever it is. It is just gross. It's 

IMANI: absolutely gross. 

JESSICA: And it's infected everything from Citizens United forward, and it's time that they just play by the same rules as everybody else.

IMANI: But [01:51:00] Jess, it was only a couple of years ago that the Supreme Court did come up with a code of ethics, right? This... They have a code of ethics, so I really think you might be being unreasonable here. 

JESSICA: Yeah. They, they have a code of ethics that nobody can enforce. 

IMANI: Yeah 

JESSICA: So it's a suggestion- 

IMANI: Yeah ... 

JESSICA: of ethics.

IMANI: Just a 

JESSICA: guideline. It's an aspiration- ... to be ethical. Just a whisper of 

IMANI: ethics. 

JESSICA: It is a vision board- ... for future behavior- It's a Pinterest- ... is 

IMANI: what it is of ethics. Oh, for Christ's sake.

ELIE: When you have critical numbers of non-white people involved in making the decisions that run our government, the government gets more fair, more equitable, and more just, and they don't want that to happen. So the way to stop that from happening is having an all-whites, , government. Like, that, that is the simplest way to make [01:52:00] sure that white interests are always protected if white interests are the only ones that can be heard.

DEAN: And so one Black president did all of this. It so freaked them out to this point. You know, I was just looking up while you were speaking, the number of, of the 500 CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies, how many are Black? And it's g- been going down. It's 10 now. Yeah. In this year, 10, 2%. So when they're the one ending DEI, and I was saying this yesterday, the goal of ending DEI to me is really going back to segregation.

It is really the idea, we don't even wanna see you in our workplace. We don't want to have you. We wanna be segregation today, tomorrow, forever. It is the George Wallace mentality. It has not changed among the white right. And not all white people, folks. The white right, the last time a Democratic candidate won, presidential Democratic candidate won the white vote, a majority, 1964, and that's not a coincidence.

You know, LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and that's it. Party realignment begins then in earnest. So [01:53:00] this is the situation. So let's get back to Democratic Party. I didn't wanna cut you off. I was kidding. So what, where did Democrats fail in all of this? 

ELIE: Well, when the Democrats took back, , the House and had the Senate and had, , Joe Biden in the White House, they tried to pass the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, the John Lewis voting rights bill, and Joe Manchin flummoxed it.

Joe Manchin wouldn't go for it. , They wouldn't... They, they were unwilling to break the filibuster to pass it over Republican object- , , objections, and it went nowhere. , That was an era. W- we ... That, that was the point to break the filibuster and break Joe Manchin's knees, if necessary, to pass the restoration of the most important piece of legislation in American history.

That was the time, and they screwed it up. They missed it, right? , Going forward, obviously the Democrats need to retake the House, retake the Senate, and I keep saying, even in the face of this, [01:54:00] this is the best chance, it turns out, that the Democrats are going to have to retake the House and the Senate because it's only gets harder from here thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling and thanks to the destruction of the Voting Rights Act.

So 2026 actually, against all odds, becomes your best opportunity to retake both chambers of Congress. So you need to do that, then you need to stop any further erosion of voting rights, then you need to beat these people in '28, and then if you're very lucky, you get, it, you get to, in 2029, where you were in 2021, which is with a Democratic president, a Democratic senator, and a Democratic House.

At which point you need to restore the Voting Rights Act, just like you should have in 2021. So you're gonna have to spend a long time trying to get back to where you were five years ago, but maybe four years from now or five years from now you'll get there, and then you [01:55:00] have to do what you should've done then.

DEAN: Yeah, and, and for people who don't remember, , the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives from 1994 when they won that election to 2006. So they're... It's not like now where it's flipping back and forth. They could hold the House for 10, 12, 16, 20 years. , Generations. , Right now...

So let's talk about the Supreme Court and reforming it, expanding it, whatever. We've talked before, it takes great urgency. I said yesterday and I'll say it again today, if a Democrat's running in 2028 will not commit to expanding the Supreme Court- I, I say expanding, but at least reforming it. , They have no sincerity, they have no credibility on any issue because this Supreme Court, they know it will overturn anything good that we wanna do.

So- Yeah ... what is your idea now after this decision? Yes, has it changed? We talked about the Super Court before- Yeah ... which I like Super Court. But has anything changed, and if not, what is your proposal? 

ELIE: No, I've always been on we need to expand the court. My current proposal is plus 20 members. I know that number sounds [01:56:00] large, but I've explained it before.

It's actually, , the, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has 29 just- judges. There's no reason the Supreme Court can't have 29 justices. So I am for aggressive court expansion. I think that is necessary, and I've been on that point since before Dobbs, but certainly after Dobbs. That, to me, that is the, that was the moment where court packing should have been adopted by the entire party.

Certainly after the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, again, y- you, you can't pass these laws i- in front of this Supreme Court 'cause they will just overturn them. Again, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. It was reauthorized in 2006, 98 to zero in the Senate under George W. Bush. Under George W.

Bush, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized 98 to zero, and the Supreme Court still said, "Yeah, dah, we don't like it." Like- Nobody elected them to do this. So if you [01:57:00] leave these Republicans on the Court, if you leave Republicans with a super majority, n- doesn't matter what you pass, you won't get it through.

But the other thing that I've suggested, Dean, and I suggested this in the article that I wrote in The Nation, is that this is actually the time where we, we need to do jurisdiction stripping. Jurisdiction stripping is the idea that Congress can, by legislation, prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on the constitutionality, , of certain pieces of legislation.

, I al- it blows people's mind who haven't heard me say, or haven't heard somebody say this before, but the word unconstitutional does not appear in the Constitution, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Supreme Court is the final and only arbiter of what is and is not constitutional.

Indeed, in most other countries, it is the legislative branch, the elected branch, that decides what is and is not constitutional, not some egg-headed justices that nobody elected sitting in an ivory tower, right? So the [01:58:00] idea of jurisdiction stripping is that Congress not only passes the law, but says, "We pass the law under this interpretation of the Constitution, and our interpretation of the Constitution is final, Mr.

Supreme Court," thus preventing the Supreme Court from overturning it. Now, I imagine that with this particular Supreme Court, they'll just say, "Actually, jurisdiction stripping," like, it, I, I imagine the Supreme Court- Right ... will resist that interpretation quite strongly. Which again leads back to court packing, which again leads back to court expansion.

You put ... You, you appoint enough justices that agree that jurisdiction stripping is constitutional and agree to stay ... K- k- keep their nose out of the- Interesting ... laws that Congress passes under this, under this, , idea. 

DEAN: Jurisdiction stripping is a really intriguing idea that I've got to do ... I, I saw you touch on it and I, and I have to do more research.

But look at Marbury versus Madison. , You've got the idea of judicial review of, of statutes going all the way back to the, the most famous, first [01:59:00] famous Supreme Court case. Would that ... , under Marbury versus Madison, the Supreme Court can go like, "Well, we can overturn this law that you ... says you have to take our power away.

We're the ultimate arbitra- arbiter." Isn't that where it comes from, that idea that ingrained in us that it was because of Justice Marshall, right? It was Chief Justice 

ELIE: John Marshall. That's the first ... Marbury versus Madison is the first use of judicial review, and all I'm pointing out is that judicial review is not in the Constitution.

That is a power that the Supreme Court- Right. Right ... gave to itself in that case. Chief 

DEAN: Justice Marshall, isn't 

ELIE: it? Right? So if the Supreme Court can give that power to itself, guess what? Congress can take it away, 'cause it's not written down anywhere. It's not textually written down anywhere that the Supreme Court has this authority, and Congress can take it away, and this is, this is the, this is the time where we should use that club in our bag.

DEAN: I- it's interesting, my friend. 

ELIE: So- But what would happen, Dean, what would happen in practicality is that you'd pass the law, , and then the Supreme Court would say, "We don't agree with that law. We don't agree with the jurisdiction stripping. We're gonna make a ruling." [02:00:00] And then the states, the blue states would say, "Well, no, the Supreme Court is out of pocket here.

We're not gonna listen to the Supreme Court." And the red states would say, "No, the Supreme Court actually is correct here, and we're only gonna listen to the Supreme Court and not Congress." And then, a- a- and that becomes the, the, the problem, because then who gets to win in that becomes who, where are you gonna send the troops?

Right? Yeah. Like that, that, that ... It, it, it quickly es- You see how it's, it's a little bit of the Ron Burgundy, it escalates quickly. , W- if the Supreme Court doesn't go for it, , you have a rift between red states and blue states. But I say to that, we have a rift now. The rift is- True ... already there.

We should try to win the rift as opposed to pretending that it doesn't exist.

Yeah, it- 

DEAN: Last thing- Would- 

ELIE: It's bad. Like the ... There, there, there are no g- And, and, a- and I guess, like, it's supposed to be bad. [02:01:00] There are no good solutions. Why should it 

DEAN: be good? 

ELIE: Well, well, , 'cause there are no good solutions when racists win. There are- Right ... no good solutions when racists are given power.

Um, if we wanted good solutions, we need to stop electing racist people. Since we seem unable to do that- We find ourselves in these situations having these kinds of conversations. 

That's going to be it for today.

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Further details are in the show notes.[02:02:00] 

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 5-9-2026

Full Show Notes

[00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine how political violence has always been woven into the fabric of American life and who gets to decide what counts as violence in the first place. We'll hear about presidential assassinations, the assassination of Fred Hampton, the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, and the long history of state-sanctioned violence. And I'll discuss the only real way to bend the curve back away from endemic violence in the US.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

Taylor Lorenz

The PBS NewsHour

Front Burner

The Chauncey DeVega Show

and Democracy Now!

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 5 sections;

Section A, The Framing Wars

Section B, The Long American Tradition

Section C, State Violence and Anti-Blackness

Section D, The Right-Wing Engine

Section E, The System and What Comes Next

And now, on to the show.

Speaker 46: When political leaders [00:01:00] and the media wring their hands about political violence, they're not actually talking about violence in any, universal sense.

They're talking about violence specifically against elites or people who look like them or people who maintain these existing power structures. The violence that is already a daily feature of life for poor, immigrant, Black, disabled, and queer communities is completely invisible to them. Police tear-gassing a crowd of teenagers demanding accountability for the murder of George Floyd is never deemed political violence.

Federal agents shooting pepper balls at medics in Portland is not seen as political violence. But the second a right-wing figure is harmed, it becomes a crisis for democracy on cable news This double standard, of course, has always been there, and it's why so many people, especially in the Middle East and other countries that we've inflicted horrific levels of violence upon, hate the American government.

But cell phones and social media have finally made this hypocrisy crystal clear to members of the American public. And I'm not even just [00:02:00] talking about atrocities abroad. After George Floyd's murder in 2020, millions of people took to the streets to demand an end to racist police killings. What they were met with, however, was an unprecedented wave of state-sanctioned violence.

The Department of Homeland Security deployed tactical teams into cities. Police kettled and beat and arrested journalists. Protesters were shot point-blank with less lethal munitions, losing eyes and sustaining permanent injuries. People died in protest-related incidents, but how many of those deaths were mourned by the mainstream media as martyrs of democracy?

None. And just months after the peak of Black Lives Matter protests on January 6th, 2021, a violent mob stormed the Capitol, calling for the lynching of elected officials and overturning the election, but their violence was excused. Those rioters overwhelmingly received lighter sentences than Black Lives Matter protesters.

Some even used the event to launch their careers as influencers. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges for shooting anti-fascist protesters dead, while peaceful [00:03:00] college students ended up in jail. And of course, none of this is new. You can look back at American history and see the state enact violence on our own citizens over and over and over again.

I think a lot of what happened in Standing Rock in 2016, the government, under Obama, mind you, sent armored vehicles and a militarized police force to attack indigenous people who were defending their sacred land and water. Protesters were blasted with high-pressure hoses in freezing temperatures. They had dogs set on them.

People got concussions and other injuries. The media framed the event as clashes, but thankfully, we were able to witness what actually happened as it was live-streamed on Facebook. When the COVID pandemic hit, violence against marginalized people was fully normalized. Immigrants, people of color, and the poor were and are currently being sent into deadly workplaces with no airborne disease protections.

Prisoners are being left to die of COVID-19 in overcrowded facilities with, again, zero airborne disease mitigations, even today. Joe Biden successfully convinced liberals and even [00:04:00] leftists to completely devalue the lives of people around them to the point that, again, even leftists today believe that it's morally neutral to infli- Infect and kill or permanently maim those around you by infecting them with airborne disease because you don't wanna wear a mask.

Killing and disabling millions of Americans by encouraging the spread of an airborne vascular disease is also violence. In Atlanta, in 2023, when activists protesting Cop City were stalked, arrested, and even killed, these pundits mourning political violence were nowhere to be seen. Manuel Teran was shot and killed, and the state labeled them a domestic terrorist for peacefully resisting a police project.

According to Mapping Police Violence, more than 1,000 people are shot and killed by the police every year, overwhelmingly people of color. When ICE raids rip apart families in the middle of the night- That is also police violence. Since January 1st, 2017, at least 70 people have died in ICE custody. [00:05:00] ICE detention facilities recorded 13 more deaths just in the first half of this year alone, and these figures are a massive undercount of the harm that ICE does.

ICE will also release people shortly before their death just so they're not counted as dying under ICE custody. Just last month, a man fleeing an ICE raid at Home Depot right here in Los Angeles was killed. The ACLU found that 95% of people's deaths under ICE detention were preventable. And then, of course, we have school shootings, which are completely normalized in this country.

Almost the exact same time that Charlie Kirk was shot, students at Evergreen High School in Colorado were running for their lives from yet another school shooter. Kirk defended these shootings and said that victims of gun violence were necessary casualties to defend the Second Amendment. But we've had dozens of school shootings over the past couple decades, resulting in hundreds of casualties and injuries to children.

Just last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report saying that school shootings were at an all-time [00:06:00] high and becoming even more deadly My point is that Americans are already exposed to unfathomable levels of political violence every day.

Speaker 4: complicated story of MOVE begins in the early 1970s. The organization followed the teachings of their founder, John Africa, who advocated a lifestyle rooted in nature. All members took Africa's last name and lived communally in West Philadelphia.

We must fight back. They were known for staging disruptive demonstrations and frequently clashing with authorities, protesting everything from police brutality and war to pet stores and zoos.

Speaker 5: MOVE is and was an organization that's very much committed to life in all of its forms, in whatever that looks like.

Speaker 4: Tommy Oliver is the director of 40 Years a Prisoner, a 2020 HBO documentary that traces the group's origins.

Speaker 5: They're committed to eating naturally, to living naturally, [00:07:00] to not being reliant on technology.

Speaker 6: We walked around naked a lot. As children, the, the organization did not... They believed in vitamin D from the sun.

They believed in allowing your skin to be tougher and stronger. And

Speaker 4: Mike Africa Jr.'s parents were both members of MOVE ...

Speaker 6: Yes, it was unorthodox and yeah, it was some things were strange to some people, but for me, that was life.

Speaker 4: That way of life often put MOVE at odds with local police and their neighbors, who accused them of creating unsanitary living conditions.

Speaker 5: Them trying to live in the way that they wanted to live didn't sit well with a lot of people. So sometimes the neighbors, sometimes the city, and it escalated pretty significantly pretty quickly.

Speaker 4: In 1978, more than a year after the city issued an eviction notice, Philadelphia's then mayor, Frank Rizzo, ordered an attack on MOVE's home.

Speaker 7: They're going to [00:08:00] go either easy or hard way. That can be standing up or laying down.

Speaker 4: The months-long standoff culminated in a shootout.

One police officer was killed and MOVE's home was demolished. While MOVE maintains that the officer died by friendly fire, nine of its members were convicted and sentenced to up to 100 years in prison, including Mike Africa Jr.'s parents.

Speaker 6: The mayor admitted that he believed my parents were innocent He believed that my parents were not in prison for the charge that they were charged with.

Speaker 8: Police are inside MOVE headquarters in West Philadelphia conducting an intensive search for weapons

Speaker 4: He says the media's portrayal of MOVE was often exaggerated, and he says the organization was misunderstood even among many African Americans.

Speaker 6: MOVE members are not the turn the other cheek type people, and a lot of people felt like m- pacifism was the answer, and MOVE members were not pacifistic.

[00:09:00] If a p- if a cop attacked them, they would fight back.

Speaker 4: Tommy Oliver says those early confrontations, including that 1978 shootout, are critical to understanding what eventually happened seven years later.

Speaker 5: You had officers and members of the police force who wanted revenge.

Speaker 4: In May of 1985, Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode ordered the organization to be removed once again from a home where they were living.

Speaker 3: What we have out there is war.

Speaker 4: And on May 13th, local news stations like WCAU in Philadelphia covered the escalating crisis throughout the day. The sporadic fire lasted about an hour Police would fire more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition into MOVE's row house before eventually dropping a bomb on it.

The city's police commissioner at the time, Gregory Sambor, defended his officers that evening.

Speaker 9: At no time did any police [00:10:00] position fire in an offensive posture. It was purely in a defensive posture.

Speaker 4: 11 MOVE members, including five children, were killed. While no city officials were criminally charged, a Philadelphia investigative commission later concluded the police actions were clearly excessive, and quote, "unconscionable."

Speaker 6: I don't think I'll ever recover or heal from what happened.

Speaker 4: Mike Africa Jr., who was six at the time of the bombing, is now working as the legacy director of MOVE. He's reunited with his parents, who were released from prison in 2018, but remain on parole.

Speaker 6: I've never heard of another case where a government has dropped a bomb on citizens in America.

This is not something that you can repair back to normal. You have to find other ways to cope, and that's what I've been doing for the last 40 years.

Speaker 4: In [00:11:00] 2020, Philadelphia City Council formally apologized for what happened, as has former Mayor Wilson Goode. But Africa Jr. says four decades later, he'd like the city to create a permanent memorial to commemorate all that was lost that day.

Speaker 9: In your opinion, why do you feel that so few Americans know about,

Speaker 4: the events that took place 40 years ago?

Speaker 6: I think the city of Philadelphia does a really good job- Of limiting the amount of exposure to what happened. I also think that MOVE history is a very controversial history that brings up a lot of trauma for a lot of people.

Black people were killed by law enforcement and, if you saw what happened to George Floyd, and at a certain point you're tired of hearing about the people that were getting killed by these police officers.

Speaker 4: But that doesn't stop Mike Africa Jr. from his mission of making sure the history of MOVE and the tragic event [00:12:00] that claimed 11 lives isn't forgotten.

Speaker 32: "Death in politics has long been a possibility in American public life."

And just flesh that out for me. What did you mean by that?

Speaker 36: While the assassination attempt on President Trump this past weekend was as harrowing as it surely was inexcusable, it's not an aberration in American politics. Over, a little over 40% of all American presidents, no fewer than 19, have been targeted by assassins.

Speaker 32: Wow.

Speaker 36: And following the failed assassination of Andrew Jackson in 1835, the time between the shooting of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump this past weekend is actually the longest period in American history where a bullet has not been directed toward a president, and that's a remarkable 43-year span.

Speaker 32: Why do you think that is? What do you think explains this e- era of relative calm?

Speaker 36: That's [00:13:00] a really good question. So on the one hand, the short answer is I don't think we have a really good explanation. The 1960s, of course, were a period of extensive political assassinations in public life in the United States, beginning in November of 1963 with, the killing of John F.

Kennedy. After Kennedy, Malcolm X, then to Reverend Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy in June of 1968, Fred Hampton in late 1969. And I think in American political discourse, the shift in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s was in many respects- That political murder or assassinations are something that happen elsewhere, but they're not necessarily something that happens within the life of the United States.

On the other hand, we do know that throughout the 1970s into the 1990s, that there are [00:14:00] ascertained plots to assassinate presidents and additional failed attempts. Ascertained plots against Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Presidents Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.

Speaker 32: Huh.

Speaker 36: Fortunately, in each of those incidents, the assassinations were shut down before, they could be pushed forward. So I think the relative silence can sometimes be misleading, because I think the failure of plots, quote, unquote, "failure of plots," can seem to suggest that the possibility of assassination goes away, and I actually don't think that's the case.

Speaker 32: political violence is a broad term that would include, as we talked about on the show yesterday, incidents Charlottesville, the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, Dylann Roof's assault on a Black church in South Carolina.

Speaker 37: The suspect is Dylann Storm Roof. [00:15:00] This Snapchat video taken last night shortly before the shooting shows the suspect in the church basement sitting at a table, part of a small prayer meeting.

He'd been with them about an hour when he stood up and, according to witnesses, said something like, "I have to do it. You're raping our women and taking over our country, and you have to go." And then he opened fire.

Speaker 32: But assassination as a specific phenomenon, I wonder when dealing with assassination specifically, what kinds of issues have we seen compel American citizens to try to kill their own leaders?

Speaker 36: So in the history of the United States, would-be assassins have often been, inspired by any number of ideas about rights, ideas about personal rights- Human rights, economic rights, social rights, state rights, and national rights in the belief that particular [00:16:00] presidents were causing an obstruction of the political rights of the people.

So when Leon Czolgosz, for example, assassinated William McKinley in 1901, he believed that McKinley was obstructing popular labor political rights, and one of the best way to address the negative impacts of capitalism on American society would be by removing, a president. John Wilkes Booth saw himself as removing a political tyrant and vindicating a secessionist South and its violent racial hierarchies.

Charles Guiteau believed that by murdering James Garfield, he was going to unify the Republican Party. And those types of incidents really ask us to stop and think about what are the types of inner historical arguments that assassins are making, to think about, political murder as a real possibility in public life.

Speaker 32: But it's interesting, right? Because [00:17:00] historically, and please correct me if I'm wrong here- They have these visions, but they don't succeed, right? is it fair for me to say that those two examples that you just gave, that, that, that didn't come to fruition?

Speaker 36: I think that's absolutely right, and I think that's a consistent theme that we see in the history of assassinations, that assassins may be able to control the time and space within which they pull the trigger, but at the end of the day, they have no control over the ultimate outcomes of their assassination.

Very briefly, I think a global or a larger example is more interesting, and that would be the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

When Gavrilo Princip pulled the trigger, he had in mind the unification of Slavic nationalists in Eastern Europe. Little could he have imagined that the pulling of that trigger would result in around 40 million casualties, the beginning [00:18:00] of the end of numerous colonial empires, the repartition of the Middle East, and the economic contexts for a second World War.

So I think you're right. There's a real disconnect between the vision of assassins, but what this actually brings about in ways that we really don't quite know, and I think that's also part of what makes the conversation with Trump really interesting, that very shortly after the failed assassination attempt on his life, political pundits and popular commentators were writing that this will secure the election in November, and there's really nothing the Democrats can do about that.

But we know in the past it also hasn't quite worked that way. Theodore Roosevelt was shot within a 10-minute walk from where President Trump will speak at the GOP convention in the coming days, and even after being shot with a bullet in his chest and giving an address for 60 minutes, he was still unable to secure electoral victory in that election of 1912.

So I [00:19:00] think even when it comes to talking about the failed assassination on President Trump, w- it's not quite clear how this is going to play out.

Speaker 32: That is such an interesting historical example. I did not know about that. much has been said since Saturday about what may or may not have been the motivations of the shooter.

But, one thing I wanted to ask you is, in terms of reverberations, in terms of consequences of what might come of the event itself, does it even matter what the motivations are? I

Speaker 36: think this is a very important point, and it's one that echoes back to the failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981.

We don't know Thomas Crooks' motivations, but let's just say they're not political at all. I think what the Reagan assassination attempt shows that, if any president had a bullet fired at him for non-political motivations, it was Ronald Reagan. John Hinckley's motivation was to prove his love to Jodie [00:20:00] Foster.

But even then, it had very real political outcomes for the next several decades surrounding the controversies of the Brady Bill, the regulation of gun reforms.

Speaker 38: Brady was wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. Afterwards, he became a crusader, along with his wife, for gun control efforts.

Speaker 36: So I think this idea that if somehow, it comes out that Thomas Crooks was motivated because he wanted to, win the love of Taylor Swift or something that, it doesn't matter. It's still going to play out in very real political

Speaker 96: let me begin at the beginning for me with this book, and it was through the killing of Philando Castile, and who was the Black man in Minnesota that the cops had pulled over. And when the police officer asked to see his ID, he alerted the officer that via NRA guidelines, that he had a license to carry weapon with him.

But he was reaching for his ID as the officer had asked, and the officer began shooting. Just killed him. And he wasn't [00:21:00] threatening the officer. He w- didn't pull out his gun and point it at the officer, none of that. He just merely had a license to carry weapon, and the NRA went virtually silent on the killing of Philando Castile, which then led pundits to ask, " don't Black people have Second Amendment right?"

And I went, "Ooh, that's a great question," because my research had been all about basically the fractured citizenship of Black people, how the lack of citizenship, how the struggle for basic human rights and civil rights, but this was a right that I hadn't looked at. And so I went hunting and ended up back in the 17th century, and what I saw was this inordinate fear of Black people and wrapped in the language of Black people as dangerous, as a threat, as inherently criminal, and that white society had to be protected against Black folk.

And that language of inherently criminal, inherently dangerous, as a threat to whites, as a threat to American society, that is the [00:22:00] anti-Blackness that is coursing through. And when I got to the Second Amendment and I saw the battles over it, the battles over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and it was the language of Patrick Henry and George Mason at the Ratification Convention in Virginia, who were arguing that the militia was absolutely essential to being able to put down a slave revolt, and that having the militia oversight put under federal control, which is what James Madison did, would leave them defenseless, would leave them to the mercy of these Black people.

And the role of that militia then became central to the way that you understood whiteness and the way you understood white safety and the way that you understood Black subjugation. And after the Second Amendment, one of the first things that Congress passed, one of the first pieces of legislation that Congress passed is the [00:23:00] 1792 Uniform Militia Act that says that all white men between the ages of 18 and 45 must join the militia and they must have a gun.

This is an act of citizenship. This is a definition of citizenship that is white, male, and a gun owner. Meanwhile, we've got laws just propping up all over the place that are about how Black people cannot have- Gun. And we end up with the 1857 Dred Scott decision that deals with whether Black people can be free.

If you're enslaved and you're then brought to free soil, does that make you free? And Chief Justice Roger Taney, in that horrific decision, wrote, "They weren't citizens at the founding of this nation. They weren't... If they were citizens, they'd be able to get a passport. If they were citizens, they'd be able to carry the mail.

If they were citizens, they'd be able to go from state to state, and if they were citizens, they'd be able to carry a weapon wherever and whenever they wanted to. [00:24:00] But a Black man has no right that a white man is bound to respect."

Speaker 94: And think about brother Philando Castile. What do we do with the fact that he was armed, borrowed from a right-wing propagandist, with his big, Black, scary self?

And he dared to have a gun. And

Speaker 96: so this is what I've been laying out in the second, that it is Blackness that is the designated threat in American society, the default threat in American society. So whether we're armed or unarmed, we are a threat. Having a gun only heightens that threat exponentially, but how many folks do you know who were killed who had a cell phone in their hand?

" I thought he was armed." Who were absolutely unarmed, "But I was afraid." I think of Jonathan Ferrell, who was the Black man who was in a car accident in North Carolina, and he went to get help. The woman was afraid, called the cops. He sees the cops coming, he thinks they're there to help him because he was in a car accident.

He's moving towards them going, "Oh, I'm [00:25:00] so glad you guys are here," and they shoot him down, "Because we were afraid."

Speaker 94: How do we think about that gun ownership and guns along the color line in terms of projection and fear?

Speaker 96: One of the things that became really clear, like I said, I went back to the days of slavery, was the fear that when Black folks rose up, it wasn't about freedom, it was about retribution.

It was that Black people would do to whites what whites had done to them. And that fear, so you had a combination of the fear of Black people, you also have this underlying guilt and this fear of retribution. Because when you have guilt, you have a knowledge that what you're doing is messed up. So when Thomas Jefferson says, I'm paraphrasing the quote, "I fear that God is just," when you fear that God is just, then that means that you know what you're doing is unjust.

Speaker 94: So how does the gun play in terms of the Black freedom struggle in our imaginary, in our struggle? And the imaginary's important in terms of the stories we tell.

Speaker 96: One of the key pieces [00:26:00] is that we get these stories of this completely non-violent civil rights movement as the hallmark of the way that Black folks should be protesting, right?

Now, the language of non-violence and the strategy was deployed as a way to discombobulate that narrative of a violent Black person. So that when the cameras were on, what you saw were Black people in their Sunday best getting the crap beat out of them by white people, and you couldn't get the default, " if only they had done..."

Because what you saw was that Black people were doing, and they were getting beaten for it. That language of nonviolence then elides over the role that, say, the Deacons for Defense played in providing protection for nonviolent Civil Rights workers who were trying to register folks to vote, and the Klan was trying to kill them.

The Klan was coming after people trying to register Black folks [00:27:00] to vote. That narrative of nonviolence becomes the kind of hallmark as a way to understand the appropriate way for Black folks to agitate for their freedom. But what we also know is that Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest the killing of Black people by the state, and the thing was, how dare he?

That was inappropriate. So it isn't the type of protest. It is in fact that there is a protest that becomes the problem in this society. It is the fact that Black folks see it. They see it. They see the fissures. They see the crack. They see the inequality. They see the injustice. They see that the narrative does not match up with the reality, and the protests are to make that reality match up with what the nation says it is.

Speaker 94: One of the areas of American history, social history in particular, I'm very fascinated by are the Red Summers. Black folks, World War I, we come back. [00:28:00] The hundred years of Tulsa, for example, for some folk, this was very provocative. The idea that Black people fought back, that these were veterans of World War I who were in the trenches.

These are some bad men, honorable men, gonna defend their families and their communities, that all across the country we've... Washington, DC, World War I vets forming blockades, building bunkers to protect their neighborhoods. We fought back against the Klan and other white terrorists during Reconstruction and afterwards.

We're always resisting, right? So you've got that narrative, and we make a simple statement. We have the same rights as you. We're gonna... Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We have inalienable human rights, and just like you, we're gonna pick up guns just like you would to defend our freedom.

Why is that, to this day, so frightening and provocative to some?

Speaker 96: When Black folk do self-defense, when they are engaged in self-defense, the response is just sheer raw anger that Black people have the temerity to believe that they have the right to self-defense, and that you then get inordinate state power [00:29:00] raining down on that Black community as a way to say, "No, you don't have the right to self-defense."

This is what we saw in Knoxville. This is what we saw in Elaine, Arkansas. This is what we saw in Colfax, Louisiana. This is what we saw in Hamburg, South Carolina. This is what we saw in Atlanta. No, you do not have the right to self-defense. And it is, again, because when Black is the default threat in American society, that threat does not have the privilege, the honor, the right of self-defense.

That threat must be neutralized. That's the power of anti-Blackness in this society. Basically, the modern day, looking at those kinds of standards for gun rights, stand-your-ground, the right to self-defense, the castle doctrine, the right to self-defense, and open carry, which is the right to bear arms, and looking at these examples of what happens when Black folks believe that they can stand your [00:30:00] ground, or what happens to Black folk who believe that their castle should not be invaded, and what happens to Black folks who believe that they can open carry.

The results are disastrous. The results are fatal.

Speaker 10: President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the suspected shooter was anti-Christian. This is Trump appearing on Fox News Sunday.

Speaker 12: The guy w- is a sick guy. When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians, that's one thing for sure. He hates Christians, a hatred.

Speaker 10: Jeff Sharlet, can you respond?

Speaker 11: It's, a startling and on h- his part savvy claim. He, of course, had access to what we believe to be, it's not even really a manifesto, it's just a statement of intent by this man Cole Allen, and was able to characterize it as anti-Christian, which was then picked up, across right-wing media and, across as well as legacy and mainstream media [00:31:00] declaring this as an anti-Christian, attack.

So when you come to read the document itself, it's startling to see that in fact, Cole Allen understood his mission in very explicitly Christian terms, and not just Christian terms, but terms, familiar, i- if you've ever read the manifestos of abortion clinic bombers, the idea that you can't turn the other cheek when it comes time to save the lives of the innocent, that the Christian imperative to turn the other cheek doesn't apply, i- if lives are on the line.

and he goes further than that. He goes into deeper specificity. he... and a list of five objections that could be made to his, his awful attack, he offers what are in his mind his justifications. and one of them is, "Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar's," and it's a paraphrase of a biblical passage that appears in the Gospels of, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

the idea of render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's. The, the Christians are called upon to defer to the authority of the land. He comes with an [00:32:00] argument that says, "Yeah, but that's not when the leaders of the land are breaking the law," because the land, the Caesar there stands for the law of the land.

And since, these administration officials, are in his mind breaking the law as they are in fact, that he sees this as justification. This is almost the exact same justification used by Vance Bolter, the assassin, the far right, the fascist assassin in Minnesota who killed state legislators.

This is the much the same rhetoric that you'll find and the old language of the Army of God, the, the militia that would attack abortion clinics. He's turning it to different ends, but the last thing you can say is this is anti-Christian.

Speaker 10: In a Sunday opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald headlined America's Burning With Political Violence: It's a Fire that Trump Keeps Stoking, a former White House staffer, Cory Alpert, writes, quote, "Political violence has risen sharply over the past decade, more so than any of the [00:33:00] five moments in US history where a sitting president has been shot, leaving four dead and one gravely wounded.

Donald Trump has been the leading accelerant of that rise, throwing fuel on the fire at every opportunity." Professor Sharlet, can you respond?

Speaker 11: yeah. it, it's indisputable and it's, in fact, the point that far rightists and fascists, make themselves, pointing to the number of assassination attempts he's survived, which is either three or four or five, depending on how you count it, and they can debate amongst themselves.

but I, I think what it points us to is, we're losing the, the usefulness of the term political violence. The better term is violence. As you opened the show, what do we call... I- This is violence. This was a... This was attempted murder, and we can oppose it plainly and simply as that.

what do we call, the boat strike, with which you opened the show, that was barely reported, yesterday? is that political violence? It's [00:34:00] murder. I think what Trump, Trumpism has done has given us a spectacle politics, that has gotten us far past. What we're hearing all these cries, "We mustn't normalize political violence."

That ship has sailed. It is normal, as evidence you can see the number of people who are boasting online, " I didn't really pay attention to this. I was watching something else. I was out being normal." this idea that this is just the humdrum, the boat strike doesn't need to be reported, the shooting in Indiana, as you mentioned, barely reported.

It's just the weather. And I think that is the spectacle of Trumpism, and Trump knows, that weather is good for fascism.

Speaker 10: And what about this issue of gun violence? You just heard Congressmember Khanna calling for a commission on political violence. where does the easy availability of guns, whatever a shooter's political views are, fit into this story, [00:35:00] Jeff?

Speaker 11: w- whatever the number, the latest number is 450 million, maybe 500 million guns in civilian hands in the United States. guns so readily available, such powerful guns. we know this is true, in sit- situations of domestic violence. If there's guns in the house, they're more likely going to be used, and there's gonna be murders committed.

If there's guns there, someone is going to take whatever logic, whatever grievance they have, and apply a gun to it. a gun in the the American vernacular is the cure-all for whatever pro- whatever ails you. I think, again, when you look at the manifesto of, this shooter, what's striking about it is that so much of it is fairly conventional.

People have been combing over his social media. N- nothing really stands out. He was a fan of very many popular liberal and, mostly liberal, some left, websites. and yet then there's that moment where he says, "Okay, but I'm gonna add a gun to this, because I've got a gun." and it, [00:36:00] even through the manifesto, you see him following the logic of his own gun.

He says, "Okay, I'm gonna try and not harm innocent bystanders," or whatever he says. But then at the end he says, "But I will go through anybody. I'll kill anybody to achieve this." Gun in hand, he lets the gun lead him. And it's, we saw it on video, this man charging like he thinks he's an action hero in a movie, with his gun into the ballroom.

A fool on a deadly errand.

Speaker 10: Very quickly, what is being made of, in social media, this, alleged shooter, saying, the man that they now are going to be arraigning today, he was going after Trump administration officials except for Kash Patel, the head of the FBI.

Speaker 11: I have no idea what his intention was.

but, what we're seeing... A- and I get it, the temptation is to read this as a, a joke, like he's owning Kash Patel. and, that's as much the normalization of political violence, of [00:37:00] gun violence, as, I'm thinking of T-shirts and bumper stickers by gun zealots with sexual innuendos around bullets that are too grotesque to say on the air.

To make a joke of guns is to diminish any possibility we ha- ever have of reducing their absolute prevalence, everydayness. They are normalized in our lives. So I think that's what's happening, and I think that's- That's the kind of... That's Trumpism, even if it's an anti-Trumper saying it. It's the idea that all this is just entertainment.

Speaker 10: last question. We just have 30 seconds. We're going on to Sister Helen Prejean responding to the Trump administration reinstating firing squad. But, the shooting took place at the Washington Hilton. The venue, was of course the venue of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. How does this shooting fit into what you describe as the slow civil war, that [00:38:00] you believe is occurring in the United States, Jeff?

Speaker 11: Yeah, I think the s- the slow civil war is best understood a- as almost like episodic. i- in the same way that what played out on Saturday night was, was, as my colleague Anthea Butler calls it, the story arc of the week in Trumpism. and it will be forgotten by next week.

That's why it's important to remember, to keep tally of all these violent incidents. And by violent incidents, I don't mean shooters, just shooters like this, although certainly them. but to put them in, one long list that includes wars in Iran and Venezuela, the, the, all the bombs sent to Gaza.

To understand that this, to put them into, a conversation with the war on trans folks. All those are part of this slow civil war. This is just one more episode.

it has been breathtaking to see how quickly the West has dismantled itself to sustain its own power and the power of its elites. That I wasn't prepared [00:39:00] for. I didn't really think they meant equality when they spoke about equa-- I didn't really think they meant democracy when they spoke about democracy.

I come from parts of the world where I've seen that not to be true. But I am surprised how phenomenally quickly they cannibalized their own society to protect power. And I think it's not just a dystopian moment, it's really a whiplash moment. We're living through unprecedented change and transparency and exposure, but really we're not built for it.

We're not built to have this level of whiplash every day. Very tough to keep up with it on a daily or hourly basis. What is the cost of this been to your mind and body? I have a friend/colleague doing this type of work about these subjects. He's had multiple heart attacks and he won't stop. He's "Somebody has to do it."

So what has the cost been for you to us? For me personally, I've suffered, I've struggled with anxiety really most of my life. I was a [00:40:00] very young girl. I would get debilitating stomach aches that were fear, that were anxiety and panic attacks really. I suffered them in college. I've really spent a lot of my time being afraid on earth.

And all the coping mechanisms that I spent decades cultivating and understanding and trying to incorporate into my life, they fall apart. They fall apart all the time, but I think that's normal. But I've been surprised by the extent to which, just two weeks before we're talking, I woke up with an anxiety so crushing, I went to my husband and said, "I think I can't breathe."

I said, "I've had panic attacks for years now. We're talking decades. I literally wrote a book about it." Very seriously telling you that I think I'm having a heart attack. He had to tell me, " maybe go to the doctor." And I went to a doctor and said, " I cannot breathe. I don't know this feeling. I'm really worried there's something wrong with my heart."

And the doctor, like I was a 17-year-old again, had to say to me, "I think this might be anxiety." and I [00:41:00] was convinced it wasn't. I was really convinced that I was dying. So I think a fear that is constant, that is unmanageable has been the cost to me. And on the other hand, it feels so ridiculous to say this when there are children dying of cold.

We're in the 21st century. We're talking oceans apart over a phone, a computer, and there's babies dying of hypothermia. I feel so embarrassed to tell you that I'm scared or that I have anxiety because it's nothing. What is it compared to hunger, compared to, a child that doesn't know if their parents are gonna be taken away from them from one morning to the next.

So it, it feels absolutely ludicrous to talk about me or I or us when we see the world as it is. But I do think if there's anything that the experience of talking in community and writing does, it's to build a link between our feeble- worries and puny sorrows to others, to people who are experiencing much [00:42:00] more than us.

It's to transcend divides and gulfs in order to make us feel for people that we might not think about otherwise. So I have to hope whatever we're all feeling, whether it's that heart attack or that nervousness or that worry or, I have to hope that it becomes a fuel, that it galvanizes us, and it pushes us towards some kind of action, some kind of collective action.

I don't know what shape that will take yet, but I know that without it, we're going to be lost. Let's have a moment of synchronicity here. We're not saying anything other folks are not thinking and sharing as well. We're channeling something here. How for yourself have you balanced the need to take care of oneself with feeling the pain of the world?

But on the other hand, I can say, "Boy, there are people being bombed out of existence. There are people who are suffering far more than me, but I'm still feeling what I'm feeling. I still got the fear I got." I think this is in a way a lot of the heartbreak and a lot of the grief that people all around us are feeling, which is we feel a kind of sorrow that is an act of compassion.

It is an act of empathy. It is an [00:43:00] act of suffering because you cannot stop something terrible around you. But at the same time, we also live with this crushing guilt that we are so lucky. We have it so easy, and I personally have never been very good at managing this. Again, it, I think it comes from growing up in an environment where the fate of the world was always right next to us it felt like.

I didn't feel I could say as a child that I was unhappy about something because it was very easy to remind me of the country I lived in and the place I lived in and the time I lived in, and I was lucky. So I didn't really have any reason to complain. But I do struggle. I just, yesterday I had a long day.

I had been a bit ill. I had to travel. I was a bit exhausted. Nothing any of us haven't felt, nothing special. But I was tired, and I was overwhelmed. I got into my bed at night feeling a little bit droopy, and I looked at my phone, and I turned on my social media, which used to be a place that I saw people's salads and summer vacations, and the [00:44:00] first thing I saw was a father mourning his fourteen-year-old boy in Gaza who had been shot by an Israeli sniper.

And I just thought, "What right do I have to feel overwhelmed by anything?" It really shamed me. I don't know, to answer your question. I know we feel what we feel, but I felt really ashamed to feel tired in the face of that kind of violence. And I do think in the end that part of it is a reminder to us that our fate is connected to each other.

Our fate is connected to the world, and what happens in Minneapolis or Minnesota or Ramallah or Pakistan or Greenland at the end of the day can very easily travel to us. Wherever we are. And it really bears remembering that in this moment we live in. It cannot be said enough that your privilege doesn't protect you, your silence doesn't protect you, your comfort doesn't protect you.

Nothing is gonna protect us unless we are willing to face this together. What advice would you give to [00:45:00] folk who are feeling things they never felt before? "I don't know what to do." I would say two things really helped me. The first is that whenever I would start to feel anxious, my body and my system and my teaching was to stop it, to immediately put up a defense against it, to try and confront it by pushing it away.

And with any force, if you are trying to walk into a hurricane, who's gonna win? Not you , the hurricane. Part of what really helped me was understanding that I cannot move a mountain with my hands, and if I'm feeling anxious, to just let that feeling come to me, to welcome it, and to say, "You're coming to me for a reason.

What do you want me to know? What do you want me to feel? I w- I will feel it." And to embrace it in a way. So if I start to get a panic attack again, and I speak as someone who their entire life has had, I'm in my 40s, has had anxiety, I still have to re- remind myself when the anxiety starts to come [00:46:00] to drop my defensive nature and just say, "I'm here, and I'm listening, and you want to tell me something, and you want me to feel something, so I'm gonna feel it."

And that act of surrender is very difficult. It allows you to experience something quite remarkable, which is that the anxiety is like a wave. It will hit you and then wash over you, and it'll leave you. And surrendering to it is part of what allows you to be separated from it. That would be the first thing.

The second thing I would say is what you alluded to earlier, is that you would be absolutely brain-dead and heartless not to feel anxiety at this moment, not to feel a kind of panic and a dread and a worry. And so part of it is to accept it and let it come to you and to embrace the feeling, but the other part is to know that you're not alone, that we are all feeling this.

Every single one of us is walking through their life thinking, "How do I go from here to tomorrow?" [00:47:00] And I think speaking about it, removing some of the stigma, some of the shame, does help. It does allow us to build links to each other instead of isolate ourselves from each other. I have met, 'cause I say hi to everybody, to strangers, to people I see in my daily walks and travels, so I say hi.

I may not know your name, I'll say hi to you, and I love this. You know all the animal people, so I know all the dogs in the neighborhood, all the cats, I talk to the squirrels, to crows. I know the dogs more than the people. The dogs are like, "There's that man. I'ma get belly rubs." And I had an experience about a month and a half ago, one of the few, warm days here, relatively warm here in Chicago.

I'm sitting outside on a bench, 'cause we're going through something, and I feel the pain of the world like you do. If I feel like crying, I cry. Gotta find a way to get it out. I'm sitting on the bench having a particularly rough day. I didn't- Think it was that obvious. And I'm just sitting there trying to meditate.

I don't think this would've happened under other circumstances. This older gentleman walks past me, older meaning late 60s, early 70s. He stops and he looks at me, and he says, 'cause I'm relatively younger than him, he says, "Young man, I can see you're going through something. I'm a very empathetic person, and I'm feeling it, too."

And he said, [00:48:00] "Whatever it is, it'll pass." And we s- ended up talking for 90 minutes, and now we text each other. I don't know if I would've had those types of interactions under better circumstances.

We've just heard clips starting with

Taylor Lorenz who drew a sharp line between the violence mourned by media elites and the daily state violence against Black, immigrant, and disabled communities that goes completely unnamed.

The PBS NewsHour revisited the MOVE bombing as a case where the government dropped a bomb on its own citizens, killing five children, with no criminal charges ever filed against city officials.

Front Burner traced assassination attempts from Andrew Jackson through Reagan to Trump, revealing that assassins consistently fail to achieve the political outcomes they envision.

The Chauncey DeVega Show explored how anti-Blackness embedded in the Second Amendment means that from Dred Scott to Philando Castile, armed Black people are treated as threats to be neutralized.

Democracy Now! challenged Trump's anti-Christian framing of the latest assassination attempt by showing the shooter used the same [00:49:00] biblical justifications found in anti-abortion extremist manifestos.

And The Chauncey DeVega Show also reflected on the crushing anxiety of watching the world's crises unfold daily while urging listeners to channel that pain into collective action rather than isolation.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, speaking of world crises unfolding daily, I’m just repeating some sad news about our new show, SOLVED! A confluence of events, which we think were largely driven by widespread economic instability, caused such a dramatic cut in ad revenue that it forced us to put SOLVED! on indefinite hiatus. We were already stretching ourselves quite thin trying to build something new and so when Trump threw the world into chaos and marketing dollars dried up in response, we were extremely vulnerable to those shockwaves. Right now, I have to get back to basics and focus on building Best of the Left to be the best it can be with the greatest reach it can. So, that’s where my focus is going to be and [00:50:00] I’ll be keeping you posted on our progress as it develops.

Regarding members supporting the show, you really are more and more of what’s getting us through right now so thanks to everyone who is a member or has made one-time donations.

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s important to remind you that each episode of Best of the Left takes about 25 hours of human labor to produce.

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or you can simply email me to [email protected]

As for today's topic, you know I like to begin with a story when I can.

In 1893, during the [00:51:00] economic crash, a wireworker named Leon Czolgosz lost his job at a Cleveland mill and was blacklisted for participating in a strike. Over the next eight years he was radicalized by the labor disasters of the era: the Haymarket bombing, the Homestead steel strike, the Pullman strike, and the killings of nineteen Slavic workers by deputies at the Latimer Mines in 1897. By 1898 he'd quit working, moved to his family's farm, and started reading anarchist literature. On September 6, 1901, he walked into the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and shot President William McKinley twice in the abdomen. McKinley died eight days later. Czolgosz was executed six weeks after that. His confession: "I killed President McKinley because I done my duty. I didn't believe one man should have so much service, and another man should have none."[00:52:00]

The political response to McKinley's killing came from two directions. The first was crackdown. Teddy Roosevelt, who became president upon McKinley’s death, signed the 1903 Anarchist Exclusion Act, the first U.S. law since the Alien and Sedition Acts more than a hundred year prior to question immigrants about their political beliefs. The second was structural accommodation. Roosevelt was already a known progressive when he became McKinley's vice president. In fact, the Republican party bosses had pushed him into that office specifically to bury him politically because VPs traditionally have very little power. Within a few years of being elevated to the presidency, Roosevelt was breaking up monopolies, signing the Pure Food and Drug Act, and intervening in a coal strike on behalf of workers in a way no president had before. He wasn't a labor radical, but the resulting deal raised wages by ten percent and cut the workday from ten to nine hours, defusing what [00:53:00] he feared could turn into "social war."

The historian Richard Hofstadter, writing in 1955, said Roosevelt and the broader Progressive Era reformers might never have been as progressive as they were if they hadn't been trying to fend off more radical movements coming up from below like calls for real socialism rather that just slightly less brutal capitalism. The reforms of Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive era weren't a moral awakening, they were strategic concessions made by an elite that understood crushing the radicals alone wasn't going to keep the lid on. The injustice was becoming too great to justify and the discontent was destined to spread.

When the political class reads that dynamic, they end up with two basic choices: structural accommodation to reduce injustice or build their own fortress to protect them from their own citizens.

When we look at the contemporary version, there’s plenty of injustice that’s being tolerated. Around [00:54:00] 45,000 Americans died from gun violence last year, according to CDC data. A 2020 Yale study in The Lancet estimated that universal healthcare would prevent about 68,000 deaths a year in this country. But those supporting injustice call the lack of universal health care and insurance claim denials market efficiency and the gun deaths are the price of freedom.

We already have a term that captures this dynamic. Stochastic terrorism describes public rhetoric that statistically increases the likelihood of violence without being predictably tied to specific actors. For instance, when Charlie Kirk argued that transgender people are mass shooters, he was statistically increasing the likelihood that someone, somewhere, would attack a trans person, even though no specific attack can be cleanly traced back to him. The same dynamic applies to structural violence. Economic immiseration, denied healthcare, eviction, untreated despair are all conditions [00:55:00] that statistically generate violent reactions over time. We can explain the pattern without endorsing or excusing any individual act. So, we’re anti-violence on this show but we can certainly help explain why it’s continuing to rise in predictable ways.

Now, to the immediate moment. There’s been a third apparent assassination attempt on Trump in less than two years, and his response on 60 Minutes the next day was to use it to argue for his ballroom. He told Norah O'Donnell that the Hilton was "not a particularly secure building," which is why he needed his own.

Nine days later Senator Chuck Grassley released the text of a $72 billion reconciliation package which contained $1 billion specifically earmarked for, quote, "above-ground and below-ground security features" of the East Wing Modernization Project, which is the formal name for Trump's $400 million ballroom. The security request alone is more than twice what the ballroom [00:56:00] itself costs. Grassley's office is arguing the billion isn't technically for the ballroom, while the White House's statement supporting the funding cites the Correspondents' Dinner shooting directly. The whole thing is moving through reconciliation specifically to bypass the filibuster so Democrats can’t block it.

This is happening five months after the same Congress let ACA subsidies expire on January 1, raising premiums an average of 75 percent for 22 million Americans according to KFF. It's happening on the heels of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, which the Congressional Budget Office scored as adding $4 trillion to the deficit through tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting Medicaid by more than at any time in the program's history. And it's happening less than six months after Congress put 42 million people through 43 days without reliable food assistance during the shutdown, because the administration refused to use [00:57:00] a contingency fund Congress had set aside for exactly that purpose.

Historically, there have been two release valves for these levels of injustice. One is structural accommodation, which means a system that actually works for ordinary people, with regulators that can stop the worst corporate harm and a healthcare system that doesn't kill tens of thousands of people a year because they can't afford to see a doctor. The other is bloodshed. The political class of 1901 made the structural choice partly out of strategic self-preservation, because they understood they couldn't keep crushing people forever.

Some of the wealthiest people in the country can clearly see the same dynamic playing out right now. The tech investor David Friedberg, who co-hosts a podcast called All-In with three other venture capitalists, said this recently. For context, his co-host David Sacks now chairs Trump's science and technology council, and raised $12 million for Trump's campaign back in 2024. [00:58:00] So this isn't a left analysis. This is a billionaire talking to his three billionaire friends.

[CLIP: David Friedberg][00:59:00]

A billionaire on a podcast that's literally hosted Trump in the Oval Office, whose co-host is now chairing his science council, just said out loud that wealth redistribution may be necessary to prevent civil war. We might be frustrated that people like him are only just now coming to this conclusion but it’s better late than never. He’s making the historical argument for accommodation to avoid bloodshed in real time and the fact that it’s coming from the billionaire class is a critical shift.

However, the political party his fellow billionaires fund is making the opposite choice, fortifying the ballroom while the floor underneath everyone else is allowed to crumble.

So, what does real accommodation look like? Most of what insurance companies and corporate landlords are doing right now to maximize profit at the cost of people's [01:00:00] lives isn't actually against the law, people are playing by the rules of the game that are designed to create structural injustice. So, laws need to make that kind of injustice illegal, with regulators funded to enforce them. Healthcare needs to stop being attached to employment, so losing your job doesn't mean losing your insurance. And the donor-funded political corruption needs to be ended so the people writing the rules aren't owned by the people who benefit from them.

But all of this requires people in power who actually want to do it, and in 1901 that's accidentally what we got, because Teddy Roosevelt was already a progressive when the assassination promoted him. There's no Roosevelt in the wings now. JD Vance would govern in essentially the same direction Trump has, and while Trump rode populist discontent into office, every move his administration makes intensifies the conditions producing it.

The only path that runs through accommodating people rather than fortification for the elite is electing and pressuring [01:01:00] real progressive reformers. Not every Democrat fits that bill, but the overwhelming concentration of people willing to do this work is on that side of the aisle. So the work is concrete: support politicians publicly committed to making healthcare universal and restoring labor power, and pressure everyone else in office to either get on that program or get primaried, because primaries are where this fight actually gets decided.

Czolgosz didn't have much when he shot McKinley. No union to support him, and nothing in the institutional landscape that might have given his rage anywhere to go besides violence. The Progressive Era happened, to the limited extent that it happened, partly because there were enough genuine reformers in 1901 to channel the moment when it came. Most of the people in power right now are choosing the fortifications instead but the fortifications plan is always temporary, they never hold indefinitely and so the smart money is always on helping to [01:02:00] make life manageable for people so they never want to grab their pitchfork and march on your fortified compound.

Note that we've begun putting my commentaries on YouTube so if you find them insightful, check out our channel and share them! Link in the show notes.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 5 topics today. First up;

Section A, The Framing Wars

Followed by Section B, The Long American Tradition

Section C, State Violence and Anti-Blackness

Section D, The Right-Wing Engine

And Section E, The System and What Comes Next

Speaker: By the time I stopped counting, I had seen more than 50 posts from across the Democratic establishment, senators, House members, governors, mayors, the operators around them, the talking heads who do the amplifying, all hitting the same five beats in more or less the same order: express thanks that no one was harmed, salute law enforcement, classify what happened as political violence, condemn political violence, invoke democracy.

Check your own feed right now. You're gonna [01:03:00] find it. The wording shifts a little. The priorities don't. They all got the same push alert. The first two beats are pro forma these days, like thoughts and prayers, but the last three are different. They're a choice, a particular choice, a coordinated choice, made before anyone could possibly know what had happened, all reaching for the same vocabulary at the same time.

What makes the forced consensus so jarring is how wildly disconnected it is from the actual public conversation. While the establishment locked arms around their script, the rest of the country's feed fractured instantly into two competing realities. The right immediately seized on the chaos to argue this is exactly why Trump needs his $300 million secure ballroom.

Meanwhile, massive segments of our public took one look at the breaking news and immediately asked whether the whole thing was staged. Those competing narratives, a reflexive grift on one side and the deep disbelief on the other, tells you a lot more about the actual state of our democracy than any coordinated social media post.

But here's something worth remembering about presidents getting shot at in [01:04:00] this country. The famous lone wolf cases of the last hundred years or so have mostly not been driven by anything you would call a coherent political program. The clearest example happened at exactly the same place. John Hinckley fired six rounds at Reagan outside the Washington Hilton in 1981, trying to impress Jodie Foster.

The pattern is not necessarily the absence of politics, but maybe the collapse of politics into fixation, pathology, parasocial obsession, and a grandiose belief that one person is the problem and removing them is the answer. The last point is what produces lone wolves. There's a studied psychology to it.

Individuals do not reach for it unless they've decided every other channel is closed to them. Not a- actually closed, but closed in their heads. They've reduced their world to a single face. Remove the face, fix the world. Nobody else is gonna do it, so I will. But as far as resistance history is concerned, it's also the worst possible form of anything you would want to call political violence, and it's not what political violence means inside [01:05:00] any serious resistance.

Lone wolf violence isn't resistance. It's what someone does after he has stopped believing in resistance and collective action. Real resistance understands that abuse of authority is structural, that removing one functionary produces a replacement functionary, that what has to be intervened in is the apparatus itself.

It's in the Declaration of Independence, the right of the people to alter or abolish destructive governments. Not alter or abolish people. Alter or abolish the structure. Direct action is intervention in the abuse, not violence as an outcome. It's making the mechanics of abuse costly, slow, and impossible for the people running it.

Escalation is a calculated tool used only when every permitted channel has been foreclosed. Isolated violence is not how serious resistance movements build the capacity to act at scale, to push back abuse operating at scale, like across a nation. Because it's a strategic disaster. It often triggers crackdown that damage the very movement trying to change the structure.

[01:06:00] Resistance organizers have learned this from history, particularly on the left, and they've learned it expensively. So when Democrats across the establishment reach for political violence within minutes of an event they cannot possibly have understood yet, they're accomplishing two things. First, they're inflating a lone act into a strategic threat that almost certainly was not its origin.

But the bigger point for resistance is the second one. They're flattening the entire spectrum of opposition. By characterizing an armed charge at a hotel checkpoint as political violence, the Democratic establishment creates a massive rhetorical umbrella, but once that umbrella is open, it becomes remarkably easy to sweep any unsanctioned, disruptive political action underneath it, anything they don't filter and organize and promote as their own.

They intentionally conflate the image of chaotic desperation of a lone gunman with the organized strategic escalation of actual resistance movements, the kind of patient structural work that has historically changed conditions in this country. So the intended effect is to preemptively discredit all opposition that isn't theirs.

[01:07:00] They are the legitimate opposition. They are the defenders of democracy. Anyone else, by definition, isn't. They get to call those shots and only them. Whatever anyone else is doing to oppose Trump and MAGA suddenly becomes the exact same thing under the exact same label, condemned in advance by people who have no interest in distinguishing them.

Trump might call it the radical left's political violence, but establishment Democrats don't necessarily disagree with that, because that's not them. They're not the radical left. So if all escalation not related to their election in November is immediately branded as synonymous with unhinged gun violence.

Legitimate resistance is treasonous even before it begins. It traps the non-establishment opposition in a perpetual defensive crouch. They're forced to spend their time joining in with the condemnations, publicly distancing themselves from whatever lone wolf whack job, as Trump called him, just snapped.

The establishment sets the terms, and the opposition is forced to waste its energy proving they aren't the monster. And that leads directly to what I think is the ultimate goal, chilling the opposition. [01:08:00] By demanding that everyone universally condemn the event under the banner of protecting democracy, the establishment aggressively polices the boundaries of what that means.

Anyone who tries to introduce complexity, discuss the systemic failures that drive people to those breaking points, or advocate for structural disruption is immediately painted as a sympathizer to violence. It's a trap. Don't fall for it. They use the fear of being ostracized, the fear of being lumped in with a shooter, to keep the opposition docile, compliant, and safely contained within the permitted channels that the establishment almost completely controls.

So, back to the hard question. Why are Democrats writing the administration's lines for it? Trump's people are reading from virtually the same script. The classification, the condemnation, the democracy invocation, law and order reinforcement. If your political identity and your electoral strategy is built around opposing Trump, wouldn't you pause before parroting language he's using to target the left?

But the Democratic establishment didn't pause. It went straight to it within minutes. [01:09:00] It's because the script serves them too. It centers the people reading from it as the heroes. It positions the security state law and order as the natural response to disorder. And it treats any disruption to the smooth running of the offices they hold as the enemy of democracy itself.

It makes the establishment and the administration and everyone occupying the rooms they are in as the thing democracy is. They might not be defending democracy. They might be actively destroying it. But as far as you plebs are concerned, they are democracy. So you better treat them right. One of the posts from Chris Coons closed with the line, fear cannot win.

Others work the same theme. Urgency, threat, condemnation, unity. And they drive the implication for you scanning it. Not hitting the like or share button makes you part of the problem. And that's deploying fear, not defending you against it. But fear is what makes all these scripts land. Fear is doing their work for them.

Fear is winning every time you repeat it. [01:10:00] Fear is what collapses lone violence, direct action, mass protest, and organized resistance to abusive authority into one category for you to condemn. And fear is what keeps you from asking the more dangerous question. Not about what happened at the Hilton, but whose interests are being served by naming what happened before we really know it.

Speaker 63: we had the terrible shooting at the Catholic school in Minnesota. We've had other attacks. Is there a sense in which... I don't mean Democrats, the left perhaps more generally. The radical left somehow has perhaps been told that Donald Trump is fascist and that Republicans are taking away people's rights and they're trying to destroy democracy.

Has that, do you think, fed this radicalization? Is there a problem, frankly, with some people, some very prominent critics of Donald Trump, who are somehow through their rhetoric perhaps radicalizing and actually encouraging people to go out and commit acts of violence?

Speaker 64: that's certainly a story from the right it's interesting in the episodes that you mentioned just now, you didn't even ask about the Minnesota lawmakers, the sitting [01:11:00] Democrats who were assassinated by MAGA extremists.

And of course, the president didn't ask if there was a problem on the right. The president didn't even bother to lower the nation's flags when these innocent people were, killed or tried to be killed in their homes. the statistics are actually very clear that there's more of a problem with political violence on the right than the left.

But as a Democrat, Jerry, I am not afraid to stand here and condemn whatever violence is coming from the left. I just wish I could hear that from Republicans on the other side.

I wish that even people like you would just say, in the wake of Minnesota, is there a problem with MAGA extremists trying to kill Democrats?

And does the rhetoric that we're hearing from people like Jesse Watters on Fox or the president in the Oval Office or J.D. Vance when he hosted Charlie Kirk's podcast, is that rhetoric contributing to this? there were a lot of polls after January 6th, for example. There was a [01:12:00] December 2021 poll where it said, 40% of Republicans said, quote, "Violence against government is sometimes justified."

Only 23% of Democrats agree. 33% of Republicans agree with the statement that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country. Only 13% of Democrats agree with that. So if we're going to honestly admit that there are problems on both sides, we have to be willing on both sides to actually go after our own base, to police our own.

That's where this should start if we're going to tamp things down. And while I'm a Democrat Unafraid to say that, yes, we need to stop violence on the left. I sure wish I would hear from some Republicans who would take on violence and incitement to violence on the right.

Speaker 63: Since you asked, I will respond and say 100%, I totally condemn.

I frankly hate this phenomenon of both sides, because it actually in the end it somehow is used [01:13:00] to, if not justify, then at least to somehow to lower the moral turpitude of people who do these things when people say both sides. But I think there is, I personally, I do think there's a problem on both sides.

I think that's extremely clear. I didn't mention the terrible murder of the Minnesota state senator because I was saying I think it is a problem on both sides, and I was talking to you particularly as a Democrat. But I think it is absolutely, I think it's a problem. I don't think any of my colleagues on the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been any doubt about that.

We've written about this, and I have certainly condemned on both sides. I think there absolutely is a problem on both sides. We saw the assassination attempts on Donald Trump last year. Whether there is something about the way in which people talk about what Trump is doing that actually creates this mood among a tiny fraction here.

And again, we need to be careful what we're talking about. We're not talking about mainstream Democrats or members of Congress or people like you. But whether or not this is ginning up the sense of a country facing an existential crisis, and when a country faces an existential crisis, people do extreme things.

And I wonder whether just some of that rhetoric from some on the left is [01:14:00] contributing to that.

Speaker 64: You preface your question by talking about the two assassination attempts really on the president. One was a registered Republican who expressed anti-immigrant views and a lot of things aligned with the president.

We don't really know why this is the one who was killed. We don't really know what his motives were. The other was a, an independent who had no clear connection to the left whatsoever, but also no clear connection to the right. So I guess the question I have is why in the wake of this violence, whether it's in the wake of the assassinations in Minnesota or the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Are Republicans unwilling to ask this question if there's a problem on the right?

Speaker 71: Do you think in America there's an overstated fear of political violence?

Speaker 72: I think that there is a dramatic overstatement in the threat that political violence poses to our country and the extent to which Americans actually support political violence.

So there, there are two things that I would say. The first is that the definition of political violence has become very fuzzy. [01:15:00] So it's not just violence committed because of partisanship or because of partisan affiliation. It's much looser. It's violence related to race or gender or other forms of identity.

And surely those are inherently political. There's certainly a political component to all of those, kinds of violence, but it's very different from an assassination attempt on a political leader. So if we're trying to cure political violence in the more, narrow sense, we want to target those who are, willing to attack members of the other party, who are willing to support those who might attack members of the other party.

But if we're to take a larger view of political violence, it might be that we're misdirecting resources. So if we want to stop hate crimes against Asians or if we want to stop hate crimes against African Americans, calling those incidents political violence lumps those acts in with assassination attempts and maybe [01:16:00] misdirects us to focus on the partisan component and not the, institutional racism or not the other factors that are driving race-based crime.

So I, I fear not only that we're overstating the problem, but that we're expanding the label to a point where we're absorbing and perhaps co-opting other really important divides in society.

Speaker 71: Yeah, that's something I hadn't even w- tried to focus on for this episode, and that's, yeah, that's an interesting point.

I, I was gonna... The main thing I was gonna focus on for this was going to be the many surveys and survey int- interpretations that have been shared pretty prominently in the mainstream media and by leaders and activists that state there's high support amongst Americans for political violence. For example, often see in the 20% to 30%, f- framing, but also even 40% sometimes in, in some framings of Americans who, sup- lend, have support for political violence.

But considering the work that you've done and some other work [01:17:00] by, for example, I think it's, Democracy Fund and then another, survey study that I just saw come out recently, tho- those show that it's more like 3%. And maybe you could talk a little bit about the discrepancy there and how you see that discrepancy.

Speaker 72: Yeah. So I think we have to just be very careful when interacting with any polling result that doesn't seem to match reality. So day to day, we don't see much political violence, but if we're to believe that nearly half of the country or a quarter of the country supports partisan violence, it's really hard to reconcile that with what we're observing.

So I think that's the first, real source of concern that I have with these results. But the second is if you actually look at the questions, they're almost designed in a way to inflate, the proportion of Americans who say that they might support partisan violence. So I'll give you a, a couple of examples.

So when we try to measure partisan violence, we try to use very concrete examples. So we're [01:18:00] describing an individual who has committed a crime. We describe what that crime is, and then we ask individuals do they support or oppose what that individual did. So it's very clear in the respondent's mind what they're being asked to evaluate.

But some of the more alarmist work leaves that information out of the question. So instead of describing a specific event, a specific scenario, a specific act of violence, they ask more general questions. "Would you be okay with your party committing violence if your party lost in 2024?" for example. If you think about that question, what does that mean, right?

So what does it mean for your party to commit violence? For some individuals, that might mean going and storming the Capitol. For others, it might mean saying, nasty things on Twitter. It might mean going to protests and really vocally attacking the other side. So by not defining violence, you're allowing individuals to [01:19:00] use their own imagination when they're answering that question.

And it turns out that if you use that very vague question, then you ask a very simple follow-up, "You said that you supported violence," if someone says they supported violence, "What violence do you support?" It's the case that almost 80% will say that they support something that isn't actually violence, right?

So they'll say that they support the examples I was just, I just gave. So saying something nasty on Twitter, or even more importantly, they'll say, " now that I think about it, I don't think I support partisan violence."

Speaker 71: They're venting the... Is it-- They call that expressive response or something like that?

Speaker 72: Yeah. It's expressive responding. So they're mad, and they wanna show that they're mad, and one way to do that is to, signal in answering a question that they're, upset with one side and they're loyal to the other. But the other thing that, that's going on with these questions is that a lot of them are not structured in a way that gets around people who aren't paying attention on surveys.

So if you ask a question [01:20:00] and the response scale or the way that you would answer that question ranges from never to always, and if someone's just, randomly clicking through the questionnaire, if only one option indicates you don't support violence and three options indicate that you do support violence, just randomly clicking is going to inflate the amount of, violence that we researchers are going to measure because three of the four options indicate violence.

So you have a 75% chance of indicating support for violence if you're randomly clicking. So it, it's partially due to the lack of detail, and it's partially due to just really bad methodological choices by some of these researchers. Now, to be fair, they have corrected, some of the, those researchers have corrected that last problem, and that does lead to much smaller estimates of support for partisan violence, though I still think the lack of specificity is in inflating their estimates.

So that takes us from a world where someone's saying 40% or 20% down to a world where they're saying that the actual support [01:21:00] level is around 10%, which I still think is too high, but it's much more reasonable and potentially more credible.

Speaker 71: And, y- I think you found, specifically your work, what was the percentage range you found, and do you think that's pretty accurate when you factor in expressive responding and all that?

Speaker 72: Yeah. So we've been doing this now for almost two years, actually just slightly larger, slightly longer than two years, with 1,000 survey interviews per week, and we're ver- we're able to very precisely estimate support for political violence at around two percentage points. Now, when I say that, it, it seems small, right?

2%, that, that's not something that we should be hugely concerned about. But I think it's really important to contextualize that. So I'm not saying that nobody supports partisan violence. I'm not saying that partisan violence is impossible or that there aren't individuals who are out there willing to destabilize our, who are willing to destabilize our country.

What I'm saying is that it's not the kind of problem where we want to [01:22:00] run massive PSAs during the Super Bowl trying to reach everyone, right? It's the kind of problem where we need to identify who these people are and in- introduce very narrowly tailored and specific interventions aimed at those groups.

So it's not a problem the country is facing. It's a problem that a small portion, a small but reasonably large proportion of the country is facing.

Speaker 71: Yeah, I think it's important too because some people listening to this might think we're downplaying fears of political violence, which, I myself am concerned about those things, especially a- as they can escalate in unforeseen ways too.

But I think the important thing to me is trying to get a realistic and not overstated sense of the problem because having an overstated sense of the problem can lead to its own forms of escalation in escalating fears and animosity and all of these kinds of things and

Speaker 72: yeah. I think something else that's really important to point out is that the kinds of people who are going to commit acts of political violence, are probably not the kind of people who are gonna be completing these surveys in the first [01:23:00] place, right?

So if you're someone who's, suffering a mental health crisis and you're going to go out and attempt to assassinate the president, you're in all likelihood probably not the person that's gonna be completing surveys. So when we're looking at these measures, we're probably not capturing, data from those who intend to actually commit violence themselves.

We're capturing data on those who would approve of someone else engaged in, an act of partisan violence, which also I think really helps to contextualize how bad the problem is. So we don't have 2% of the country that they-- that would be willing to go out themselves and shoot a politician or a, attack someone from the other side.

We have 2% of the country that would say, "You know what? I get it. That was okay," right? That they went out and-- or that someone else went out and did that on behalf of their party. So we certainly don't want to be in a world where that is, a common attitude, but it is important to note that this doesn't mean that we have 8 million Americans who are willing to go out and incite violence in the [01:24:00] streets, which is really important in suggesting that this isn't a group that's going to begin the next civil war.

This is a group that's gonna sit to the side and say, " maybe I would understand if some people, did something terrible."

Speaker 77: the bizarre thing about this is how routine it feels. Another day, another attempt on Trump's life. Have we become so deadened by what's gone on in the second Trump administration that nothing really stuns us anymore?

Speaker 78: I think we have. It is the third attempt on his life, and he likes to believe that it makes him stronger.

Unfortunately, events like this seem to contribute to his personality cult, to his idea that he is a martyr, that he is transforming America, and people who try to stop him are mad. I think a part of him, obviously, being shot at and someone trying to take your life is obviously going to be frightening for anyone.

But part of him, I think, also enjoys the spectacle. Fundamentally, he believes, I think, that attempts this make [01:25:00] him stronger, and it all takes place, of course, in a country that is in thrall to guns. There are over 600 mass shootings every year in the US. I think in 2023, nearly 47,000 people died from gun-related injuries.

It's one of the things about America that's, I think, very hard for us in the UK to grasp just how endemic gun violence is.

Speaker 77: For once, the extremist reactions online are in a weird form of agreement. The crazy left think it's a false flag so that Trump can overturn the block on construction of the ballroom by a federal judge, and the crazy right thinks it proves he needs the ballroom.

And the other bizarre thing is that it just feels for all of this, this shock and this spectacle and this horror, nothing is really going to change. Is it gonna do anything but just turn up the temperature with the crazy people?

Speaker 78: No, I, it drives people to extremes. Trump's personality, Trump's actions drive people to extremes.

And this morning, [01:26:00] the text of the manifesto, which- ... the shooter wrote has emerged via CBS, and it is, an, a quite logical explanation by the shooter as to why he carried this out. He puts forward various arguments against what he decided to do, and as he sees it, he rebuts them. It's quite literate. He, talks about Caesar in it.

He's a clearly pretty intelligent guy. He was a former computer science student at Caltech. But he has clearly been driven mad by what he sees in the Trump administration and by the fact that it's so easy to get hold of guns in the US. And this unfortunately, you can say that assassination has for a long, long time been a part of American politics, going all the way back to the 19th century.

It's always a risk in America. But Trump seems to have intensified this atmosphere of violence.

Speaker 77: A lot of the [01:27:00] reaction has been along the lines of, how could this happen yet again? But it does actually seem that the security operation in the room worked as designed. The protection team reacted within 20 seconds, got the president out, neutralized the attacker.

But the security system around it seems to have been very lacking. No airport security, measures, or rather very laxly enforced airport security, not much of a, of a kind of control area. But it does... weirdly, you're more concerned about what the conspiracists are gonna think than what the real world of rational-based, human beings are gonna think.

Does the fact that the system actually fundamentally worked quite well enable people to, next time you've got your crazy uncle at, Sunday lunch saying, "Oh, it was all staged," to say, "No, hang on. Look, this is very basic. The system worked, and actually it is unsurprising in a country so full of guns that something like this would happen"?

Speaker 78: Yes, it's completely unsurprising. Security did work, and if a president does want to be seen in public, as Trump obviously does, they can never be immune from these attempts on their lives, particularly when, as we discussed [01:28:00] just now, so many people in the US are packing guns at any one time.

Next, Section B, The Long American Tradition

Speaker 90: If you've taken any type of history class, K-12 education or university, you've heard the name John Brown. And before we get into the story as outlined in your book, here's something I'm curious about. Based on your research, what is something that people would be surprised to know about John Brown? If you look at more, traditional Civil War stories that are more pro-Southern, he's looked as really a lunatic or almost a jihadist.

Northern sources, the more contemporary one, looks on John Brown more favorably, but still see him as a bit misguided. And the most pro-John Brown sources or accounts would be someone Malcolm X, who consider hi- considers him a righteous among the nations for the, African American cause in the United States.

But there's different accounts on him, but what is something about John Brown that you think surprises [01:29:00] people that when they learn about?

Speaker 91: Scott, if you'd asked me this question twenty-five years ago, I could have given you a confident answer. And the reason I cannot now is that I have very much less confidence in what I know about what people know about history.

So you ask me, what would surprise people? To answer the question, I need to have an idea of what I think people know. And I've been teaching college students for thirty-five years, and I'll tell you that they tend to know less and less about history. Now, I don't blame my students. the teaching, the curriculum is different.

And I get a lot... I teach at the University of Texas, and I get a lot of international students. For whom, they may have had almost no American history before. But I will say this, that John Brown is this polarizing character. He is... I'm not gonna say he's as polarizing today as he was then, as nobody more polarizing than John Brown in 1859 and 1860 and 1861.

But I will say that there are differences of opinion [01:30:00] on, to put it very bluntly, was the guy crazy or not? And there were motives, there were incentives for people in his day to dismiss him as crazy. Southerners, whose institution of slavery was being attacked by John Brown, they, some of them wanted to say he was crazy, but in fact, that almost let him off too easily because many of them wanted to indict the North, and the Republican Party in particular, for spawning people John Brown.

So if the Republican Party, this is the line of many people in South, the Republican Party is this avowedly anti-slavery party. They're naturally gonna spin off people like John Brown. And you don't have to decide if you take this view, whether John Brown was a lunatic or not. But in either event, he takes up arms, and he tries to incite a race war that, if successful, will certainly [01:31:00] kill hundreds of people, perhaps thousands of people.

So people then, some they had mixed, but I should add that Abraham Lincoln, who's the co-star of my book, he didn't think John Brown was crazy, but he certainly thought John Brown was wrong, misguided, and counterproductive to the very cause that he espoused. Lincoln thought that John Brown was a net negative force in, on, on the, for the cause of freedom.

Because first of all, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry failed. It didn't start the uprising that John Brown wanted, and it didn't free any slaves, which was the point of all of this, and it got John Brown killed. But from Lincoln's perspective, the worst part of it was that it undermined the cause of moderate anti-slavery people Lincoln himself.

Because Lincoln believed, he certainly [01:32:00] hoped, that Southerners eventually, I'm speaking of white Southerners, even especially including white Southern slave owners, the political classes in the South, he hoped they could be persuaded to see that slavery was no longer in their interest, if not in 1860, maybe in 1865, 1870.

Lincoln had seen, he lived through the time when Northern states had abolished slavery. And they had done so out of self-interest, not because anybody else was hectoring to do but because their economies had changed. And Lincoln believed, and he certainly hoped again, that Southern economies would change in the same way, and Southerners would emancipate their own slaves.

Lincoln's belief was this was the only way it could be done constitutionally. It was the only way it could be done legally, and it was the only way it could be done effectively. So Lincoln was one who [01:33:00] he didn't have to decide whether John Brown was crazy or not, but he certainly wanted to distance himself from John Brown because he thought John Brown was a, an evil, an ill force for the anti-slavery movement.

Speaker 107: political violence is nothing new in America, is it?

Speaker 121: I think that's exactly right.

if you look at the full sweep of United States history, more often than not, violence was endemic to political culture. This was certainly never true more than in the 1850s when the contest over slavery, and particularly over its expansion into the western territories, became an all-consuming feature of American politics.

It really stepped up when Congress passed something called the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially abrogated a decades-old agreement that slavery would not be permitted in certain territories north of a certain, demarcation line. The situation in Kansas and in Washington became increasingly fraught and violent.

Ultimately, of course, this [01:34:00] concluded, as it almost seems in retrospect it naturally would have, in a civil war by 1861.

Speaker 103: And then Josh, it's Justin in London here. Can I move us forward 100 years, so to the 1950s, and focus not actually on violence itself, but on violent speech and the conspiracies that make people do violent things?

Because it's fair to say, isn't it, and I'm thinking about the John Birch Society, people who said Eisenhower was a communist, the people who said all peculiar things about life in those days. Long, long before social media, w- we did have conspiracies, didn't we, in the US?

Speaker 121: We had them in the 1850s, we had them in the 1950s, certainly.

And if you look at the years leading up to the Kennedy assassination in 1963, there was a very clear escalation of ultra-right, rhetoric and incitement against John Kennedy, against his running mate, Lyndon Johnson. there were, famously, the Birch Society put out posters, wanted posters that, purported to basically be a law enforcement wanted [01:35:00] poster, for John F.

Kennedy, wanted for treason. So that rhetoric obviously, heated the political environment, and, it, it would be hard, it'd be hard to make a case that it didn't contribute to some of the violent political outcomes in the 1960s in the US, from the Kennedy assassinations, plural, to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

Speaker 122: Good evening. Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. Police have issued an all-points bulletin for a well-dressed young white man seen running from the scene

Speaker 121: One point though that is worth making, and this brings us back to the 1850s, we can look at different decades and different periods when violence was a central component of American politics or when violence, polluted American politics.

What was different about the 1850s and what makes it such an interesting parallel to today is that militia violence was both sanctioned and in some cases egged on and led by elected [01:36:00] political officials or party officials. So what we see today is increasingly much more like what we saw in the 1850s or the 1860s and '70s where a political party has decided that it doesn't mind associating itself loosely with militia groups that are clearly seeking to, to bring violence into the political process, and that's something we haven't seen for some time.

Speaker 103: there are also of course, let's be blunt about it, an awful lot of guns around in modern America, and an awful lot of guns that can do a huge amount of damage. When you look at what's going on at the moment and you look at possibly a post next presidential election system where there is a real fight to be had, at least metaphorically, about whether the system has been fair and who the president is, et cetera, does it worry you the simple access that people have to, to the ability to harm each other?

Speaker 121: I think worry generally speaking about the simple access that Americans have to guns. We're a far more armed country, than we were in, in the 1850s, which raises the stakes. I would argue that there are [01:37:00] other countries in which violence is endemic to politics, but in the United States, you have a heavily armed citizenry, or at least a portion of the citizenry that's heavily armed.

It's extremely worrying.

Speaker 107: Now, we're talking about violent threats and violent acts that are coming from the right wing of American politics and being excused or, mocked and, encouraged by p- politicians on the right. And then of course, there are people saying, "Ah, what about the left? They're, they're not blameless.

There is violence that comes from the left as well." They'll point to, the shooting of, Steve Scalise in, 2017, five years ago, and that was a left-wing attacker.

Speaker 123: Emergency crews rushed injured House Majority Whip Steve Scalise into a helicopter after a shooter opened fire during an early morning baseball practice for congressional Republicans.

Speaker 124: Steve Scalise was on second base, playing second base, fielding balls, and, all of a sudden we heard a li- very loud shot. Everybody thought that sounds like a gun, and the gunman-

Speaker 107: Is there any real equivalence between the amount of violence we've seen driven by left-wing politics and those that are [01:38:00] happening on the right?

Speaker 121: in terms of volume, there's no equivalence whatsoever. There's certainly examples of left-wing violence or threats of violence. There's what happened to Steve Scalise several years ago. there was a left-wing, protester called a terrorist who threatened the safety of the life of Justice Brett Kavanaugh more recently.

And again, pointing back to the 1850s, I think the key question is that violence being done in concert coordination, or at least with the winking support of a major political party? And the fact of the matter is that you didn't have Democratic members of Congress rushing to defend it or call it fake news or argue that there must have been some other reason that Steve Scalise was shot, and we just don't know what that is, but we could speculate wildly about it.

That just didn't happen. And what you have today is a whole complex of conservative media, in- including con- new conservative media, and a rising generation of Republican members of Congress and other elected officials at the state level, the Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert caucus, who openly defend and support, the actions of people on the right [01:39:00] who've perpetrated violence in, in, in the political process.

There have been Republican members of Congress who've come out, and called the January 6th rioters and insurrectionists heroes. there was one Republican congressman who gave one of them a flag. I just don't see the equivalency and the ... where I do see a really clear comparison is to the 1850s, '60s, and '70s when, a political party became increasingly comfortable in its, coexistence with, violent white militias.

Speaker 90: I'd like to take the subject of your book and address a very large philosophical question, is the tension between those who want reform through non-violent violence Lincoln did originally and those who are willing to use violence to achieve their ends John Brown.

This tension has played out all throughout history. you could think of dozens of cases of Martin Luther and the Reformation versus the radical reformers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Gandhi in India versus, let's say, the IRA in Great [01:40:00] Britain, and on. some people say that violence is never justified by its nature, even if it is against an evil cause.

By using violence, you yourself have become evil. Philosophers would call this a deontologist. Others would say if it achieves the greater ends, then it can be justified, a consequentialist. And these questions are being addressed again in 2020 about protest for social change, where some would say that protests must be peaceful, they cannot be violent.

Others would say that violence can be used to achieve our ends. what does this story of the tension between John Brown and Abraham Lincoln do you think says here about the questions of using violence versus not using violence?

Speaker 91: Yeah. So this is an obvious question to pose, es- especially to John Brown or of John Brown.

Were his actions justified? And to come to a conclusion about this, you have to answer yourself, was a civil war necessary to end slavery in the United States? And I don't know the answer to this. None of us knows the answer to this question. A civil war [01:41:00] did occur, and slavery was ended in the context of that.

Would slavery have ended otherwise? I don't know. I'll just point out something for your readers and, for your viewers and listeners, and that is that in 1800, slavery was accepted, was legal in big- nearly every country in the world, and there weren't very many people who were questioning it. It was just something that had been around for thousands of years.

Okay? That's slavery. In 1900 Slavery was legal almost nowhere. A few remnant places in odd parts of the world, but world opinion had changed. Some of this had to do with, I could say maybe a rising level of awareness of what human rights might consist of, but a lot of it had to do with changing economies, and I was talking about a flexible workforce against a non-flexible workforce and so on.

But in this context, it was only in the United States of America, of all those countries in the world that had [01:42:00] slavery in 1800, and none of them had slavery in 1900, it was only in the United States that this massive war was required to end slavery. I have to make a partial exception for Haiti, where slavery was ended, but it was in the context of an anti-colonial revolution as well.

but anyway, that started in the 1790s. But leave aside that exception. So this certainly suggests that there was nothing inherent about slavery that said you have to have a bloodbath to end slavery. Everybody else figured out how to do it peacefully. Even Brazil, where slavery was a lot worse than it was in terms of the conditions that the slaves worked under than the United States, they managed to end it peacefully.

So that makes me think that if decisions had been made differently, then slavery could have ended peacefully. Now, those decisions weren't made, and it wasn't. But if you think, if you do think that slavery could have ended peacefully, then you have to handle [01:43:00] John Brown with real kid gloves because he helped bring on this, what I will now call this unnecessary war in which seven hundred thousand people died.

Now, in his final words, John Brown smuggled a note to his jailer as on his way to be hanged, and the note said that the sins of this country are so great that they cannot be purged except by blood. Now, once the Civil War came, and once the blood started flowing, John Brown seemed like a prophet. And even Abraham Lincoln, who began the war thinking that, this does-- this isn't necessary to end slavery, in his second inaugural address, he said it may be God's will that for every drop of blood drawn by the slaver's lash, another drop of blood must be drawn by the sword before this burden shall pass from us.

So Lincoln was coming around to [01:44:00] John Brown's view of the inevitability of all of this. If you think it was inevitable, then it's easy to embrace John Brown, 'cause you can say the guy was on the right side of history, and he helped move things along. And John Brown, abolitionists, defended John Brown as saying, "Wait, the war over slavery had already begun."

Maybe it began in Kansas. Maybe it began in 1619 when the first slaves arrived in Virginia, because violence was part and parcel of slavery. So for the first time, John Brown is one of the first who's fighting back on behalf of the slaves. So if you wanna like John Brown, and there's a lot to like here because here's a guy who was ahead of his time, and he certainly was on the right side of history.

Pretty much everybody today agrees that the cause of ending slavery was a good cause. But that still raises the question, in a good cause, are all tactics [01:45:00] justifiable? And I would say no. it depends very much on the circumstance, on the context. As a general rule, I would say if you live in a country that still operates under the rule of law, where there is freedom of expression, where there are free elections, if in those countries, then I think it's possible to make an appeal to conscience.

And so I happen to think that Martin Luther King was much more influential in the civil rights revolution in the 1960s than Malcolm X, because King understood that for Black people in America to get their rights, they're gonna have to bring white people on board. There simply aren't enough Black people in America to make the changes in the laws.

And Gandhi, his movement worked in India because there were elections in Britain. Would Gandhi's [01:46:00] nonviolent movement have worked as resistance to Hitler and the Nazis? No. He would've been killed the first time he stood up against the government. so it really depends on the situation. It also depends on how far things have gone.

And, I sincerely believe, and I certainly hope, that the racial tensions in this country and other tensions in this country have gotten us nowhere near the edge of a civil war. but we certainly aren't there yet, and I hope we never get there. if we did get closer to a civil war, then conceivably John Brown's example might be more germane, but we're nowhere near there.

And just one last thing. John Brown had no idea of the consequences of his actions. He wasn't trying to start a civil war in the United States. I hope that John Brown would have been appalled to know that seven hundred thousand people died in [01:47:00] partial consequence to the actions that he took. And if he knew that, and I have no confidence in saying this, if he knew that, maybe he would've, taken pause instead of starting this thing, start that ball rolling.

But nobody knows what the consequences of our actions are gonna be And we can't say, "Okay, time is gonna justify me, and therefore anything I do is fine," because there's a lot, there can be a lot of collateral damage along the way.

Now, Section C, State Violence and Anti-Blackness

Speaker 27: While I was interviewing the survivors, my partners went to the apartment, and when we gathered all the evidence, it turned out that the police had fired 90 shots into the apartment with a submachine gun, shotguns, pistols, and a rifle.

There was only one outgoing shot, and that came from a Panther who had been fatally wounded, and it was a vertical shot, after he was hit himself. So Hanrahan, who was, the police were assigned to the state's attorney, a [01:48:00] politically ambitious law and order prosecutor who wanted to get the political advantage of having attacked and taken out the Panthers, was on the p- on the TV that morning saying the Panthers opened fire.

It turned out we proved that quite to the contrary, it was a poli- it was a shoot in, not a shoot out. What we uncovered years later, we also filed a civil rights suit, after the charges were dropped against the Panthers. And in addition to proving, as I said, that it was a one-sided raid, that the police came in firing, the e- evidence also showed that Fred Hampton was in fact killed with two bullets, parallel bullets fired into his head at point-blank range.

He wasn't killed with the bullets through the walls. But what we uncovered was that the FB- that the FBI had obtained a floor plan of Fred Hampton's apartment. That floor plan was complete with all the furniture, including the bedroom where Hampton and Johnson slept and a rectangle showing the bed. And it turned out that this FBI informant, William O'Neal, and his [01:49:00] control took that floor plan and gave it to Hanrahan's raiders before the raid, so that they came in knowing the layout, knowing where Fred would be sleeping.

And when we looked at the directions of the bullets, in fact, they converged on the bed where Fred Hampton was sleeping that morning

Speaker 22: As I recall, many, a lot of the bullets were shot from the floor below as well? Is, they were-

Speaker 27: No, they were mostly, they were the front door and the back door, and then they took the, one of the machine gun and stitched the wall in the front, and that went through all of the bedrooms- Really

In the apartment.

Speaker 22: And the role of the FBI and of COINTELPRO, the, the FBI's, massive program against dissidents, in the United States, how did you un- uncover that as well?

Speaker 27: First there was a burglary at the Media, Pennsylvania FBI office in which some draft dodgers uncovered that there was this program that talked about, basically it was an attack, on the entire Black movement, and particularly on the Panthers.

And it talked about disrupting, destroy, and neutralizing the Panthers by [01:50:00] any means necessary. And one of their objectives was prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the Black masses. Fred Hampton at 21 was a tremendously charismatic and powerful figure in Chicago. He could talk to welfare mothers, gang kids, and he could talk to law students and college students.

He had the ability to pull people together. you got a little glimpse of that in, in the, in what, the clip that you saw. But he made people believe in themselves. He made people b- feel powerful, and that they could bring about change, and that was his real threat. And so we knew there was this program to, prevent the rise of a messiah.

We knew about the floor plan. Then we uncovered a document that they gave the informant a bonus after the raid because his inva- his information was invaluable to the success of the raid. So internally, the FBI actually took credit for this raid, for the results that Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed.

Speaker 21: Talk about Willie O'Neal.

Speaker 27: William [01:51:00] O'Neal was the... When we, he was uncovered because he became a witness in another case. And I guess, I, we all knew William O'Neal. He was a very flamboyant person, and I guess my idea of an informant was somebody who sits quietly in the corner and takes mental notes.

That was not William O'Neal. He was a provocateur. He built an electric chair that was supposedly to threaten potential informants in the party when he was an informant. He attempted to build what he called a rocket that would go from the Panther office to City Hall until Fred Hampton- Explain

Speaker 21: his position in the Black Panthers.

Speaker 27: He was the chief of security, and at one point he was Fred Hampton's bodyguard, and he was present the night of the raid and left. And there was evidence that Fred Hampton was drugged, and he's never admitted it, but some of that evidence suggests that O'Neal was the one who drugged him the night of the raid.

Speaker 21: I wanna- And- ... ask, just play for a minute a response, get your response to Cook County State's Attorney, Edward Hanrahan. After the raid, he repeatedly claimed the Panthers had [01:52:00] opened fire on the police. This is how he described what happened. The

Speaker 29: immediate violent criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers- emphasizes the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party.

So does their refusal to cease firing at the police officers when urged to do so several times.

Speaker 22: that was Ed Hanrahan, the Cook County State's Attorney. your response to him, and also what happened to Hanrahan, as you b- sought to pursue the truth of the murder of Fred Hampton?

Speaker 27: When we gathered the evidence, and you can tell which way a bullet enters from the smaller hole and exits, with a larger hole, and the wood splayed outward, it became clear that, as I said, 90 shots came in, and at most one, a vertical shot, went out.

The Panthers were smart enough to in- invite the community in. The police never sealed it. And the Black community, which had been divided on the Panthers, was not divided on the fact that a young man was murdered in his bed, a young leader, at 4:30 in the morning. So there was [01:53:00] a tremendous reaction, and Hanrahan became defensive and told the story that you just saw.

And later on, he even went further and said, " Fred Hampton personally was firing at the police," and he gave the Chicago Tribune a photograph. The photograph had two black dots on it, and he says, "These are the gunshots that Fred Hampton fired." We invited the press out there. It turns out those dots were nail heads, and I think that was the beginning of the end of, of Edward Hanrahan.

He never got elected to anything again. Even a Republican was elected State's Attorney of Cook County, which was unheard of. He ran for mayor, he ran for congressman, and basically, hi- his political career ended on December 4th, just at the time when I, he thought it would rise.

Speaker 21: Juan, I wanna talk about the overall context, with Jeffrey Haas.

But in 1969, you, you were one of the leaders of the Columbia student protests, one of the founders of the Young Lords. What was the effect 40 years ago today? Where were you, on this day?

Speaker 22: [01:54:00] I remember very well the news coming, about Fred Hampton's death. And of course, a- as you mentioned, his ability to unite people, very few people are aware that Fred Hampton was the original creator of the concept of the Rainbow Coalition- That's right

that Jesse, that a young Jesse Jackson then adopted later because he was building unity between the Black Panthers and the Young Lords and some, white, radical organizations in Chicago, and he called them the Rainbow Coalition, which is- That's right ... what Jesse then adopted, into, as his main, his main program.

But he had this ability to unite all kinds of different groups, r- as you say, racial groups, as well as across economic lines. and in terms of the, the legacy of Hampton, obviously Bobby Rush, who later became a, a congressman, in Chicago, still is a congressman, what has been in Chicago, the way that the political establishment has dealt with the reality of this assassination and of the historical impact, of Fred Hampton?

Speaker 27: I think for one thing it marked the independence of the [01:55:00] Black, political leaders in Chicago who had up until then had been pretty much lackeys of the mayor and the Democratic machine. And a young congress- a young state senator named Harold Washington spoke out, and Danny Davis spoke out, and Jesse Jackson welcomed Bobby Rush.

And all of a sudden you had an independent and much more progressive, Black political machine or part of the machine that w- that, that, was independent. And I think that group and white liberals were given credit for eventually g- electing Harold Washington mayor as Chicago's first Black mayor.

Of course, there's also the legacy that without a young leader, I think the West Side of Chicago degenerated a lot into drugs, and without leaders like Fred Hampton, I think the gangs and the drugs became much more prevalent on the West Side. He was an alternative to that. He talked about serving the community, talked about breakfast programs, educating the people, community control of police.

So I think th- that's unfortunately another legacy of Fred's murder.

Speaker 22: And Jeff Haas, you [01:56:00] talk in the book also about how you, a, a white radical raised in the South, ended up in Chicago that day as part of the People's L- Law Clinic there, working with the Panthers. Could you talk about your own trajectory, and how you got involved in this story?

Speaker 27: I grew up in the South. I came from a progressive family, but also it was a segregated South. And I think being a white person there, we all accommodated ourself in some way to segregation. I think it made cowards o- of us all. When I got to Chicago, I was influenced by what was going on nationally.

Chicago was the hub of all this political activity. You had the Democratic Convention there. Dr. King had marched there. You had the conspiracy trial starting. You had the national office of SDS. All the forces were converging, and I was very much moved by the Black Power movement, the civil rights movement.

So we wanted to be lawyers for the people. We wanted to be... So we started the People's Law Office in a sausage shop. And I think we started it with a sense of collectivity. So it wasn't just me. [01:57:00] There were four or five of us who, from the get-go, worked together. And our mandate was to expose the murders, who the killers were of Fred Hampton.

We did not know that it would take us to J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell and the seat of government. But of course, it, it turned out that way. And the more we dug and the more we uncovered, the more interested we got, and the more we realized that this was a, a national program. Some people have compared Hanrahan's group to a local hit squad and ordered but was utilized by the federal government and by Hoover.

And I think unfortunately, or not surprisingly, no one has ever done a day of time for the murder of Fred Hampton for that raid. So I think another legacy is to try to hold our government officials accountable. And interestingly enough, when the Church Committee in the '70s began to investigate COINTELPRO- We have 10 seconds

as well as Watergate, it was Dick Cheney and, and Donald Rumsfeld, Ford's chief aides, who opposed any kind of exposure of this illegality or any kind of restraint on the intelligence committees.

Speaker 94: In [01:58:00] your research and your other work, how do we explain to people what we know empirically from the research? About race and gun ownership and violence, especially stand your ground.

Speaker 96: What we know, for instance, with stand your ground, is that when white kill Black people, that they are 10 times more likely to walk under justifiable homicide than when Blacks kill white under stand your ground.

What we also know is that when white kill Black folk under stand your ground, that they are 281% more likely to walk than when whites kill whites. So when Black are the victims under stand your ground, there is an assumption that the white person was threatened, that this is part of what I call that narrative of Black pathology, that Blacks are vicious, Blacks are criminals, Blacks are inherently violent.

and this is the language we saw coming out of the 1740 Negro Act in South Carolina, inherently criminal. And so as inherently criminal, then you have the right [01:59:00] to protect yourself from these criminals. You have the right to be armed. And I look at it this way as well. We are in a society where we have mass shootings all the time, but you have to ask yourself, "Now, self, why haven't we moved forward in this?

Why haven't we done something about this?" And I really believe it is because of the power of anti-Blackness, the power of seeing Black folks as the threat so that you have to defend yourself from this ominous threat that is all around you. And I look at Jonathan Metzl's Dying of Whiteness, where he lays out that in a study that he's doing in Missouri with white families that have had gun violence in the family, and talking about gun safety laws, and they just are adamant, "No.

No. We have got to hold onto our guns because those people from St. Louis will come down here and try to [02:00:00] take everything that we have." It is that fear of being left defenseless. It is the same fear that George Mason articulated in 1788, being left defenseless before this mass of Black people who are the default threat in American society.

Speaker 94: Jonathan Metzl in that book, you actually hear folk in their own words explaining, I say, their pathology. You had the one white brother say he'd rather die than get Obamacare. Dying of cancer could save his life, and he said, "I'd rather die."

Speaker 96: Yes. That book is so powerful because you see the way that it operates in terms of maintaining the resources and the power for white, and being willing to die in the process for that.

That book, Dying of Whiteness, just lays it out, and that's what the mass of gun violence that we're dealing with really lays out to me as well.

Speaker 94: That point being, so on the right, their exclusive right, they're saying, "If we don't win, we can [02:01:00] use guns. We're white, we're powerful." We're gonna, to quote-unquote, "Defend this country as patriots."

But now you're seeing more Black and brown folks forming their gun clubs and anti-racists forming their gun clubs.

Speaker 96: Negroes with guns, that is the fear because... And now look at it this way. What we're dealing with is a fear of Black power. That is what leads to the massive disfranchisement efforts that we're seeing in voting right, and that is also what is leading to this sense of being willing and able to shoot down Black folk who are armed or who are unarmed.

It is understood that they are a threat. I juxtapose Kyle Rittenhouse, who is the white 17-year-old who crossed state lines to go to a protest march in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a Black man, Jacob Blake, had been shot in the back seven times by police. And Kyle Rittenhouse saw himself there not in terms of protesting with the [02:02:00] protesters, but protecting the property against these people.

And as he sashays up there in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the police see this guy with this AR-15, and they welcome him. They're like, "Oh, we really appreciate you guys being here. Hey, it's hot out here. You want some water?" Rittenhouse then goes and he guns down three men, killing two, seriously wounding a third.

He walks back towards the police with his hands raised as if to surrender, and they go right by him. They don't see threat. Meanwhile, you look at what happened to Tamir Rice in Ohio, also an open-carry state. 12-year-old playing by himself in the park with a toy gun. Now granted, it didn't have the orange tip on it to say, "Hey, I'm a toy," but Ohio is an open-carry state, and the law says as long as you're not pointing it at someone, threatening someone, you are legally able to carry that weapon openly.

Tamir Rice is playing by himself in the [02:03:00] park. Cops roll up, and within two seconds, they gun him down, and they're saying he was a threat. He was dangerous. Kyle Rittenhouse is not a threat, but Tamir Rice is.

Speaker 94: that's the old story of the adultification of Black children and the infantilization of white men.

They even talk about Donald Trump's 40-some-year-old sons as kids.

Speaker 96: Right? And I think about as well, Stand Your Ground, Trayvon Martin, whom they thugified. So you take the real narrative of the story, which is you've got a 17-year-old who goes to a convenience store during the NBA All-Star Game, the halftime, to go get some Skittles and some iced tea, and George Zimmerman sees Trayvon and says, "Oh, this guy looks suspicious, and these kind, they always get away."

And he pulls out his loaded nine millimeter, and he stalks this child through the neighborhood and kills Trayvon. The [02:04:00] story becomes Trayvon was this big, Black, scary guy, grilled up, hoodie up, thugified, dangerous, drug-dealing criminal, all of the language for thugification. They made him taller. They made him heavier.

They darkened his image, and it was like, "Poor George, what was he to do?" So what happens is that you've got a grown man who willingly stalks a child with a loaded weapon and kills that child, and that man walked because Trayvon is this big, Black, scary guy. That's what happens in these narratives.

That's what happens in reality.

Speaker 94: And on that note, thinking about poor Trayvon, and I got all these emails, comments when I did interviews, and I actually believe these people believe this, and I will assume they are white or folks invested in whiteness, "If he had just submitted. Why did he run? If he had just listened."

And I would respond to some of these emails and say, "Number one, he has no obligation to. Why do you have this assumption that someone minding their [02:05:00] business, walking down the street should submit to anybody?" 'Cause if he was white, that wouldn't be the narrative. But again, that assumption of white domination and Black submission.

Speaker 96: So think about Ahmaud Arbery here in Georgia, who was the Black man who was jogging and a group of white men followed him and stopped him and shot him dead. And the language, he was burglarizing, so they criminalized him, and the story that they told did not match up with the video of the killing.

The police had that video but did not move on arresting those men. And you got this, " they were trying to ask him a question. If he had just stopped and answered." Why would he have done that? What is... And this is the narrative, this is the DNA of the slave patrols coming through. The slave patrols had the right to stop Black people wherever they were and question them.

"Where are your papers? Why are you here? Who said you could be out?" The slave [02:06:00] patrols had the right to go into the slave cabin and look for contraband, look for elements of liberation, books, writing paper, weapons, and confiscate them, and this sense of whites having the right to question the presence of Black people wherever Black people are is a legacy of the slave patrols.

Moving on to Section D, The Right-Wing Engine

Speaker 52: two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were targeted and shot. One, former Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman, was killed along with her husband. The second, State Senator John Hoffman, was severely wounded, along with his wife. Odette, studies have suggested politically motivated violence like this is only increasing in frequency, right?

Speaker 53: Yeah. Elena, you, I'm sure, recall the discussions that we've had on this podcast and elsewhere about election officials experiencing an increase in harassment and abuse. We've talked [02:07:00] about members of Congress. We've seen, reporting from the Capitol Police about increases in harassment and targeting of, public officials.

For this one, w- the people that we know to have been targeted so far, these were state legislators and their families. And so I was able to speak with someone at the Brennan Center, for Justice. They did a survey back in 2023 of hundreds of state legislators to ask, if they were experiencing this harassment and abuse, and they found that across both parties there was a reported increase in threats and intimidation and harassment.

This is something that I think has just gotten woven, unfortunately, into the political fabric of America right now. The baseline level of threats and harassment that local officials, federal officials, and state officials have been experiencing in recent years has been really elevated.

Speaker 52: Is this [02:08:00] something that neatly fits into po- Party lines, along party lines, or is it more nuanced, Odette?

what are the political leanings broadly of the folks who have been targeted compared to the people who are suspected of these violent acts?

Speaker 53: when I spoke with folks at the Brennan Center, they said that there was no distinction in party when it came to people who were receiving this abuse.

both Republican and Democratic legislators were on the receiving end. But there was some really interesting nuance when it came to the source of those threats and the source of those insults. When I asked Gauri Ramachandran, she's the director of elections and security in the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, I asked her who was directing this harassment and abuse at those state legislators, and here's some of what she told me.

Speaker 55: We definitely, from Republican legislators in particular, heard about a [02:09:00] lot of intra-party, abuse. we talked to some folks who, pretty much expressed, I got into this 'cause I wanna cut red tape for businesses. I wasn't really planning on addressing these really hot button issues," or, "That, that wasn't really the core thing that drove me into public service."

but we did hear about this in particular from, a number of, members of the Republican Party as there's been some really more extreme elements, extreme positions, on issues like reproductive rights or gun control, gun safety. that, sometimes some of these more traditional Republicans really found themselves, being subject to abuse.

Speaker 53: And so I think, we don't typically think of political violence that way. we usually think of it one side being targeted by the other side. but, as Ramachandran's saying here, actually a lot of it is, happening just within the Republican Party.

Speaker 54: Yeah, and we've seen this for a while now with, Trump in particular.

this is 10 years that Trump has been on the political scene. He's done a full takeover of the Republican Party. He's really fractured the party [02:10:00] in a lot of ways. And with social media, with the anonymity that comes with that sometimes, we've seen a lot more bullying in general, in trying to purify the party's views and to really target and go after people who are seen as RINOs, those Republicans In Name Only, which now are really maybe should be TINO or something because they're Trump In Name Only.

Because they really feel there are a lot of people on the right who are standing in the way of what the MAGA movement wants to do.

Speaker 52: Odette, you've also reported on how a lot of recent political violence, i- including allegedly what we've seen in Minnesota, has religious undertones. what's the connection there?

Speaker 53: Yeah, so I think we have to look at what happened specifically in Minnesota over the weekend. what we've been hearing from Senator Amy Klobuchar, from federal law enforcement today indicate that there was a wider number of people that were supposed targets of this suspect. And that this included people who were reproductive [02:11:00] rights advocates and some women's health clinics.

And so we really ought to be thinking of this within the context of the extreme militant anti-abortion movement in this country, which has always been very closely linked to a far-right Christian militancy. And so what's been a very interesting thing to be learning about the suspect who's been arrested with respect to these shootings is that he appears to have been influenced by something that we refer to now as the New Apostolic Reformation.

And this is a network, a decentralized network of neo-charismatic churches across the country and even across the world. It's very fast-growing right now across the world, and it has been very closely linked as well with President Trump. Some of his innermost circle of advisors come from within this network.

But this is a network that really was on the fringe of the Christian right [02:12:00] up until Trump ran for president. Because they embraced him early, he embraced them and brought them into the center of gravity of the Christian right. Some of what we have seen with videos of this suspect delivering sermons on mission work in Africa suggests that this is the kind of theology that he is part of, and this really represents, a concerning development in terms of real-world violence by somebody who may be affiliated with that network.

Speaker 52: Another figure that has ties to this group is Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, right? Can you explain that?

Speaker 53: Sure, yeah. you'll remember, Elena, there was reporting soon after Mike Johnson was selected as House Speaker about the flag that was flying outside his house office, this white flag with a green pine tree on it called the Appeal to Heaven flag, which really has become a symbol of the Christian nationalist right.

He has said that it was a gift given to him by [02:13:00] Dutch Sheets. Now, Dutch Sheets is a name that is very well known within the New Apostolic Reformation. He's a leading voice within the NAR. And the fact that you now have the Speaker of the House who claims to have a close friendship with Dutch Sheets is quite significant in terms of, that network's proximity to power.

One of the people that is in Trump's, inner circle really is, Pastor Paula White-Cain, who is part of the fabric of these NAR leaders. And, she was appointed earlier this year to be part of the White House Faith Office. And so we're seeing both with House Speaker Johnson and in the White House itself very close proximity of leaders within the NAR network to federal leadership.

McVeigh, to the extent he's remembered, is often described as anti-government and a lone wolf, both of which I think are more wrong than [02:14:00] right. he was not anti all government. He was not an anarchist. He was not someone who was a true lone wolf, like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who was active at the same time, and whose story intersects McVeigh in peculiar ways.

McVeigh was part of a movement. McVeigh was part of the right-wing extremist movement of the r- of the mid-'90s He was someone who was a regular listener to Rush Limbaugh. He was a, a devoted listener to Bill Cooper, a shortwave radio, extremist. He was someone who read the publications of the right wing, the Sol- Soldier of Fortune, The Spotlight.

And perhaps most important, a- he was as motivated... a lot of people know he was motivated by his anger about Waco, but he was just as angry about something that happened on September 13th, 1994, which was Bill Clinton signing the assault [02:15:00] weapons ban. He was absolutely obsessed with fears that the government would, the federal government would take individuals' firearms away.

And the specific inspiration to bomb this building in this way came from this terrible novel called "The Turner Diaries," where, Ear- Earl Turner was the hero in nov- the hero a- and protagonist of "The Turner Diaries," in, in a frenzy of racist and antisemitic violence, sets off a bomb, a truck bomb outside the FBI building in Washington, which in turn sets off a rebellion against the federal government.

This is exactly what McVeigh wanted to replicate. That's why he set off a bomb, in the federal government. But the core of my revisionist view is that he was not some loner, not some anti-government person. He was a right-wing extremist. Okay, I want to ask you [02:16:00] about that. First, let me just say that perhaps the most amazing and important thing about the book is that you are, as you suggested earlier, you have access to these extraordinary records.

So you have the intimate communications, and there were lots of them between McVeigh and his legal team, lots of recordings and writings and the like. So you really are able to reconstruct, I think, better than we've known to date, a lot better. I'm not an expert on this, but a lot better what motivated him, 'cause he talked about it a lot.

But let me just ask you, not a lone wolf, but just to be, just to try to get a better handle on this, he also wasn't a leader of this movem- movement. He was clearly influenced by it. you show "The Turner Diaries," Diaries especially. He was clearly influenced by this right-wing revolutionary movement, but he wasn't...

I would, I came away thinking he was somewhere between a lone wolf and, he was definitely part of the movement. He considered himself [02:17:00] simpatico with the movement, but he seemed more or less to be acting on his own. he was, but that was not for lack of trying. o- one of the key differences between 1995 and let's say January 6th, is the existence of the internet a- and, social media.

McVeigh said to his lawyers in a quote that really stuck with me, is he said to his lawyers, I know there is an army out there, but I was never able to find it." And McVeigh did circulate at gun shows, which was, I think logically, a place where he could look for allies, but he didn't have the personality, the temperament to recruit other people.

He did recruit Terry Nichols. He did have a, a friend, in Arizona named Michael Fortier who was aware of the plot, although not a participant in it. But he didn't have the tools to, recruit others and find like-minded people. [02:18:00] That's the reason why the internet is so important. If you look at January 6th, if you look at the plot to kidnap, Governor Whitmer, which was organized over f- Facebook private chats, if you look at the extremists who shot up the Walmart in El Paso or the grocery store in Buffalo or the synagogue in Pittsburgh or Dylann Roof in South Carolina, all of them were radicalized and found allies, on the internet.

McVeigh didn't have access to that and I think that's the big difference. And, and you're right, he didn't have the allies, but he didn't have the tools that later people had. And yet he seemed to think, and I found this almost unbelievable to the point of crazy, but I'm not in this mindset. He seemed to think quite firmly or hope that this event would spark a revolution.

he literally believed, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this bombing, or he hoped that the bombing would, through some mechanisms which re- [02:19:00] remain mysterious to me, set off a revolution in the face of these things going on in the country that he detested. For- fortunately, he, he was wrong about that.

But there is no doubt, that he believed that and that came right out of The Turner Diaries because that's what happens in The Turner Diaries, is that the truck bomb at the FBI sets off this counter-revolution. I, I think Jack Mc- McVeigh was certainly not insane in any legal sense.

he was rational. He was someone who knew what he was doing. But he was evil and he was deluded and he was twisted and I think part of what happened In, in, in his own mindset is that the intricate planning for assembling the ingredients and choosing the target and, and figuring out how to make a bomb, the process took over for him, and the [02:20:00] ultimate goal and what might happen afterwards, I think receded some, somewhat.

But, I, I share your befuddlement that, how he thought this would lead to a counter-revolution, but he did. So you open the book, the prologue is called 1776, and you basically show that McVeigh and other right of center domestic terrorists, both then and since, including the ones who, invaded the capital on January 6th, were inspired by and invoke the rhetoric of 1776.

And there's no doubt you document that's true. I wasn't sure what to make of this. What are we to make of this? There's a wonderful book that, that just won the Pulitzer Prize by Jefferson Cowie, called Freedom's Dominion, about, rebellions against the federal government. He focuses on a specific area of Alabama, a county that turns out to be George [02:21:00] Wallace's home county.

And, a-and he talks about how the, the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers is something that ha-has been found to be useful to right-wing extremists, throughout, throughout American history. As for what we're o-obliged to make of it, I don't really know other than the fact that it's a real constant in this right-wing world that, it is not a coincidence that they all fly the Gadsden flag, which is that yellow flag with the snake that says, don't tread on me."

Tim McVeigh had memorized large portions of the Declaration of Independence, not just the famous part, the, the first few lines, but the parts where Thomas Jefferson is justifying violent rebellion against the British. Those lines, from the Declaration of Independence, not familiar to most of us, certainly not to me, were also invoked by [02:22:00] people on January 6th as part of their justification to a-a-attack the Capitol.

I, I, as you say, I don't know exactly what to make of it. Certainly, it doesn't discredit the framers of our country... the Founding Fathers, the framers, because their words have been misused, but their words have been misused in this particular way for a long time, and I think that's worthy of note.

And there is this central idea in the declaration, I'll quote from it, that- Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, basically the consent of the governed, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government. And I assume that's one of the lines that he was inspired by?

That's the main one. That's the main one. And, y- you hear that... A- and that one, again, was, invoked o- on January 6th. the perversity [02:23:00] of, I... it needs hardly be elaborated that, that line does not justify setting off a bomb in front of, with a building full of people.

Those words do not justify attacking the Capitol on January 6th, but they are malleable words that impressionable, already motivated people can use to their own ends.

Speaker 54: the problem is people feel their values are under attack, and when you feel your values are under attack, then it's something that's deeper than just, something that's politics and we can get over that. That's saying, "Fundamentally, these people are bad people who disagree with me."

When we're that highly sorted, we don't know a lot of neighbors who think differently. It's a lot easier to devalue them as human beings, and it's easier to accept what should be intolerable acts.

Speaker 53: I think there's also something very specific about the dehumanizing, rhetoric that exists within the anti-abortion discussion.

and I've spoken about this with [02:24:00] Carol Mason, who is a professor at the University of Kentucky who's studied the rise of the right since the '60s with a focus on anti-abortion violence. and she said that there has been a shift, over the last several decades.

Speaker 60: Opposing abortion used to be seen as a sin, like adultery or blasphemy, but over time it became not just a sin, it became evil, and to some it became the worst evil.

Speaker 53: You hear that language very commonplace right now in, anti-abortion circles on the far right that characterize abortion as a genocidal industry that is about, ritual child sacrifice to demons. this is not uncommon to hear. And so that shift in, the rhetoric around abortion specifically has been itself a radicalized ideology.

and so you get, more potential for people to, say they're gonna take it upon [02:25:00] themselves to stop what to be an un-Christian thing that's occurring.

Speaker 54: And I wonder how you see that thing differently than, for example, you'll hear a lot of people on the right talk about some of the Democratic lawmakers', rhetoric, in talking about, for example, Congressman Mfume, who had earlier this year called for street fights, to be able to push back against DOGE, which he was describing as the Department of Government Evil.

so it's the same term, but is that... Do we see this differently as that just being words as opposed to deeply felt beliefs, on this, more radical extreme right?

Speaker 53: So I think what is important to look at is data around the violence itself, and former, Director of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said this in testimony before Congress, "The most persistent and lethal threat has come from the right."

And we've been hearing, especially in recent weeks, about, anti-Semitism and how embedded it is on the far right [02:26:00] and on the far left as well. but the fact is, recent attacks notwithstanding, the most lethal attack on Jews in the United States happened at the Tree of Life, synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and that was somebody that was, on the far right who was motivated by anti-immigrant rhetoric that was happening at the time.

And it is absolutely true that you can see political violence from both sides. You can see dehumanizing rhetoric from both sides, but the body count is disproportionately a result of far-right violence.

Speaker 52: Mm. I wanna just end here a little bit broader. you're talking about this shift that we've seen i- in some of these views, and i- it's, very serious, but is there a way back, is there a way to lower the temperature, so to speak, or stem the tide of misinformation, that's fueling a lot of this violence?

Speaker 54: I think what's really important when it comes to this thing is [02:27:00] leadership, and you need people who are gonna say, "This is not appropriate. Violence is never appropriate," and to really mean it, right?

And to continue to be able to spread that message. we've seen different points of leadership on the campaign trail, in the past where people will stand up to their base and say, "No, that's not appropriate," but we really haven't seen it in the last decade.

Speaker 53: Yeah, I think that it's important that we did see President Trump condemn this violence, after these shootings in Minnesota.

We saw this actually across the political spectrum, that political leaders were doing that. I think, though, that, one of the tricky things about this particular example of political violence is that, you referred to it, Elena, as religious extremism. This more specifically could be referred to as Christian extremism.

And so I think that we need to look to the religious community that, this suspect was tied in with and see what condemnation they are, issuing [02:28:00] around this particular violence and, if there's any reflection about whether or how, the views espoused within that community may have caused it.

And Finally, Section E, The System and What Comes Next

American society normatively metabolizes a tremendous amount of mass death. And part of how we do that is by we conceptually silo it into a variety of categories. We apply narratives, throw blame or responsibility in this catalogic way.

Violence, which is understood to be a thing that is just abstract, though it can maybe sometimes be represented when someone says something that's too offensive or they make some gesture, in a metaphorical way, can be subdivided or exist in relation to this thing called political violence, right?

Which is an interesting thing to think about when we're if someone killing somebody else, if the whole idea of, if the essence of politics is our living together, then when is murder not fucking political? But also that we'll even go so far that, the violence of order maintenance, when cops kill people, et [02:29:00] cetera, gets erased even as a type of violence, or it's treated as non-political.

And, this can go in a lot of different directions, right? But- Because it's the state which is the entity with a l- monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. So even when the state says, "Actually, that cop did wrong," it's a deviation from the legitimacy rather than a, than violence coming from a fundamentally illegitimate actor.

Yeah. It's this odd paradox where, violence is both understood as being entirely necessary to the social order, but also it's the coin of the realm that the state operates, and, maintains the social order. But also we have to disavow its violence, and we understand that violence is continually exceeding its bounds of containment, whether it be in stuff that, police will, when they're, they turn bad apples do, or when they do when they get home, 'cause, we know about the statistics of domestic violence, or, the violence that people who are not enjoying the supposed monopoly in the Weberian sense on the legitimate use of force, right?

more broadly speaking, let's start with this idea of, what we call, gun violence, right? in a, a representative year, well [02:30:00] over 40,000 people are gonna die because of a gunshot. Now, that could be self-inflicted. That could be, immediate, literally they're DOA on the scene, or they die shortly thereafter.

But, in 2022, it's 48,000, of which more than half are gonna be suicides, which means that in a representative year, 18 to 20,000 people are gonna die in, homicides. Most homicides, we should say, are done by people who know the victim of the homicide. So murders by stranger are comparatively rare.

If you're killed by someone who doesn't, know you personally, there's a one in three chance that they're a cop, right? That's another data about this. So also we're just saying that, firearms deaths are- the leading cause or a leading cause of death now for kids, and that more broadly speaking, the toll of Americans who die because of, let's say, this word gunshot outstrips but has long time been on par with other types of death.

But we could see a glimpse of other types of normalization, right? This stuff called car accidents, right? As though they're acts of [02:31:00] nature or God as opposed to outputs of design or driver choices or how even how we build our cities to, quote-unquote, overdoses, right? which can be called deaths of despair, but we don't call them death by Sackler.

Th- but these three ways of killing ourselves and others are continually vying for the top, and gun violence is now th- the winner in that category if you want. So th- that's the broad thing to say here, too. By the same token, we could look at some data about December 4th in particular, and I can, encourage people to check out the Gun Violence Archive, which draws this data from, publicly available news reports.

You can generate your own charts and whatnot, and, per that, I was looking at it before we talked, there are 30 people who were killed by gunshot on December 4th, right? Of whom 24 are not the perpetrators of the incident in question. So in those other cases, the person either shot themselves or were killed by authorities, right?

So 30 people though dead gunshot, and then another 40 people are injured. It's also worth saying, just as a caveat here that the data on how many of those people were killed by, [02:32:00] necessarily by police or other police shootings, that, that's lagging by about a month behind that, so we won't know that until later.

We could get more granular about who shot who on this day, right? We could subdivide it into a variety of categories. A lot of them are domestic, right? They're intimate partner violence. There's a man killing someone who he's involved with generally, and then possibly himself, maybe his kids.

Most cases, yeah, could there-- If you wanna use a term a mass shooting, most of those happen inside, for example, American homes. You also get a couple events that are, let's call them exceptional relative to those more quotidian ones. It's worth saying this on December 4th. In Northern California, a gunman who, appears to have been extremely disturbed and articulated his motives, to whatever extent this matters in terms of trying to impose some child sacrifice on Seventh Day Adventists in retaliation or to deaths in Gaza of Palestinians.

Again, this is-- I'm not making any equivalency. I'm saying this happened on the same day, right? he shoots and injures a five and six-year-old before killing himself, right? This all happened on the same day. [02:33:00] Now, we could look at all these events, and we could probably be descriptively, if you're an alien orbiting Earth, right?

Or if you're tr- again, operating at some level of bracketing, this is a society where people get shot regularly, and it's a society where certain types of people seem to get shot more, and certain other types of people seem to do the shooting more, or at least a situation in which there are tons of guns that circulate, and there's a distinct stratification to how the gunshot fatalities and injuries play out.

Oh, yeah, and we could interpret that as reflecting certain val-values or hierarchies of the society in question. So we could say, for example, that, if someone's gonna go out with a gun and kill a bunch of strangers, probably gonna be a guy. Most likely gonna be a white guy, but not necessarily. If a guy's gonna shoot himsel- if a person's gonna shoot themselves in the den, overwhelming likelihood it's gonna be a man.

We could make-- In other words, read an entire actuarial calculus of relative value and [02:34:00] disposability, but also relative access to, the prerogative to wield a gun to end someone's life, whether your own or theirs, as reflecting, the hierarchies of American racial capitalism, right?

And its patriarchal f- foundations, et cetera. This is a system of generalized human disposability that reflects certain basic hierarchies, but also there are enough guns circulating that sometimes you're gonna get stuff this guy going into the-- breaking containment, going into that sc- that school and killing those two kids.

Now, again, I'm not trying to collapse these different shootings or different kinds of shootings into one or another, but rather to be to say it's striking that some of this gun violence gets understood to be political, some of it's understood to be not political, or some of it's understood to be just, personal, but has to be dealt with under the political discourse that we call gun control.

These are all these styling mechanisms. Now, there's-- I'm already engaged in an artificial distinction here, though, too, because this, in addition to being a problem of fatalities, is a problem of injuries that does also have an extensive rapport with the healthcare system, too, right? So let me just throw a couple-- a little bit more empirics about this, too.

And just think, forty people injured in that day. [02:35:00] Let's say in an average year between, two thousand and nineteen and twenty seventeen, we're looking at about eighty-five thousand emergency room visits from people who have been injured by a gunshot. At a minimum, and this is the Government Accountability Office, not including, physician fees and many other data, Americans are spending a billion dollars a year at minimum on hospital care in the immediate aftermath of a gunshot.

And what we should say here, though, is, again, this-- note this these-- the mental categories we think about these things. someone's shot, are they wounded or they're gonna get better? Are they killed? They're done, right? No, many people will spend their entire lives debilitated or struggling with gunshot injuries, right?

They don't go away. In fact, they keep re-encountering in the healthcare system, right? And then you have to start doing complicated costs involving-- And again, I'm not reducing these to costs, but I'm trying to give us one way of thinking about the enormity of this problem and its ramification.

The leading cohort [02:36:00] of, a firearm injuries are, young people. What's the cost of care if you're exposed to, say, if you're wounded as a child, right? How much is going to be spent, quote-unquote, "on care"? At that point The numbers can, if you extend to lifetime and you adjust for average life expectancy, et cetera, a human being can be, the object of expenditure or be on the hook for, depending how it cashes out for, $20 million.

If you start factoring in things lost work benefits, hours, et cetera, or people, who are paying this out of Medicare, taxpayer burden, et cetera, you get estimates of nearly $78 to $80 billion for firearms injury in any given year. Again, the causal links here and the data are hard to work with, but this one system of, human liquidation is also a system of, human debilitation and injury that intersects with this other system.

We call it care, but that is also about managing and [02:37:00] putting a price on the basic needs for people who have still res- who are s- for whom the trauma of their gunshot wounding is not in the past.

Speaker 98: One small state of the culture observation on last night. Shortly after leaving the Hilton, where a gunman attempted to enter the room in which the president, vice president, and several caval- cabinet members, congressmen, dignitaries, business executives, and hundreds of America's leading journalists were gathered, I went to a bar with a small group of colleagues to touch base, get our bearings, and ideally watch the news coverage.

When I lived in Washington a decade ago, bars like this one usually had at least one TV tuned to CNN or Fox News. These TVs were on a hockey game, and no one in the bar seemed aware of what had just taken place mere blocks away. We asked a bartender- Oh ... to change the channel to CNN so we could watch the president's briefing with captions, which they did.

But then a few minutes later, the bartender said he'd been informed by the manager that the bar had a policy against showing political content, and he'd have to go back to sports. I tried to imagine what this bar might have looked like on March 30th, 1981, an hour or so after Hinckley [02:38:00] fired shots at Reagan at the very same hotel.

I imagine every television would've been on CNN or wall-to-the-wall special coverage on the broadcast networks, and that passersby would've come in to watch as well. The media is giving this ample coverage it deserves, but it's unnerving how desensitized so many people have become to shootings, obviously, but also to political violence and the abnormality of the moment.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we just picked the wrong bar, but I doubt it. Pew Research recently reported that the attention to newes- news in the US has declined across all age groups since 2016, and that young adults have consistently the, had the lowest levels. Go, going on, he says here, "And I

Speaker 99: sup-" Mother, motherfucker, you made the sandwich.

Speaker 98: Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose this is how you find yourself in a bar in the nation's capital an hour after crouching behind a chair as Secret Service members evacuate the President of the United States from a room- Ugh, spare me ... being told that you have to watch Penguins versus Flyers. Yes, Dylan, you do have to watch Penguins-Flyers- Yeah

or Nuggets-Wolves, or any of the great NHL or NBA playoff action that's going on right now. Sorry everyone's so [02:39:00] desensitized to this, but, we've... As we've mentioned on the show, this is the third time someone has tried to do this. Nothing happened- No, it's

Speaker 100: the Fourth? It's technically the fourth.

Yeah, you're

Speaker 98: right.

Speaker 100: That's what I was gonna say earlier There was also a guy who went to Mar-a-Lago- Oh, yeah ... who was another former Trump fan turned- Yeah ... trump enemy, lovers to haters arc, w- that, that got blasted by Secret Service 'cause he walked up with a shotgun to Mar-a-Lago with, Molotov cocktails or something, like incendiary explosive devices, and we forgot about it.

That didn't even make a blip in the media because Trump seemingly is, on the verge of death by one of their, one of his former fans at any given moment. Yeah. literally anywhere he goes, there's If he sees, a weird-looking white boy w- who's just, looking at him strange, I would be worried if I was Trump.

Yeah.

Speaker 99: And that's talk about needle in a stack of needles. But I... by the way, I didn't think any article could be more pointless than that one we read about that fucking stupid conservative lady who goes to a restaurant and doesn't eat anything. This is even [02:40:00] worse. This is... oh, I don't know how people cannot be paying attention to the news when there's great articles like this.

... loser and loser friends go to bar, where CNN is gone. Yeah. How are they not... How is... how are people not spending $20,000 a year on subscriptions- But ... with content like this? But also, yeah, fourth assassination attempt. It's very fucking rich though, especially for the American media, to go, it's really fucking, unsettling how desensitized, people are to violence."

Speaker 98: Exactly. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 99: Oh, yeah. Yeah. By, by the way, that, hospital that g- got blown up, that was a Hamas missile. That, girl's school, that was an Iranian missile, and also, all the casualties are fake. Yeah ... only, Yeah, actually only, 50,000 people died i- in fucking Gaza, and they like it anyway.

Yeah. They like doing it, and have- Yeah ... more militants.

Speaker 98: We are o- obviously a culture totally awash in insane violence every day. And, for the most part, it doesn't really touch our lives. you go to this bar and people... He's "I was crouching under a table as Secret Service escorted the [02:41:00] cabinet out," blah, blah, blah.

Oh, poor you. And it's just, everyone in the bar is "Wake me when they actually kill this fucker, otherwise- Yeah ... we got Bruin Sabres on right now."

Speaker 99: Yeah, and it... By the way, that is, there is so much sneaky language in this. Yeah. But, "Half an hour after, I was crouching under a chair."

Speaker 98: No one

Speaker 99: cares. Because it's he knows if he said, "Fearing for my life"- ... everyone would just be Yeah ... "Okay, jerk off."

Speaker 98: Yeah.

Speaker 99: But, wh- okay, why is the bar supposed to put on the most boring... wh- where they put CNN on? Waiting rooms and airports because they want you to be, they don't want you-

Speaker 98: lulled into,

Speaker 99: Yeah

a

Speaker 98: passive-

Speaker 99: It's a- Yeah ... natural depressant.

Speaker 98: Yeah.

Speaker 99: It brings you down. It's if they played something exciting, if they played, if they even played, the Lethal Weapon with Keanu and Ivory Wayans, that series in waiting rooms-

Speaker 98: The TV series,

Speaker 99: yeah. Yeah, the, the scene from The Pit where the guy just clocks the nurse, that would happen every day-

Speaker 98: Yeah

Speaker 99: to every doctor. if they played it in airports, it would be the 1970s. Every plane's getting hijacked. But because these are they bring [02:42:00] you down, it, it, it, it makes everyone compliant. A bar is, that is a time for merriment and joy.

Speaker 98: Yeah.

Speaker 99: Not to be brought down, not to be treated as cattle.

There is no, there, there is no man with, transit- transition lenses that needs to touch your genitals at the bar. So you don't need to be brought down and herded like a cow with CNN, Dylan. get out of here.

Speaker 100: You brought this up already, but, it's ultraviolence everywhere. the American media is very clearly super comfortable engaging in military action, deposing leaders.

Speaker 98: Assassinations. Yeah,

Speaker 100: assassinations. Kidnapping. Yeah.

Speaker 98: Torture, rape.

Speaker 100: Yeah, all of that stuff. go down the list. Against- A

Speaker 98: Clockwork Orange shit.

Speaker 100: Against foreign heads of state- yeah ... including little children at school, and there's this, normalization of all of that violence. But then also on top of that, we have a very violent culture here in the United States as well, where, there's a mass shooting happening on a daily basis in this country.

there's school shootings that [02:43:00] take place so frequently it... and at this point, the average American is just "Yeah, I guess it's just a part of life." The only thing that's extraordinary about what's taking place when, Charlie Kirk is assassinated, is the targets. For the first time ever, if it's the, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson or Charlie Kirk- people are now deciding to go after higher visibility, higher priority targets, or trying to attempt a, an insane assassination attempt on the president, as opposed to murdering their immediate loved ones, right?

Speaker 99: Yeah,

Speaker 100: it- Which there's still a good deal of that happening on the background as well. We don't even care about it. Yeah,

Speaker 99: but it- it's it- it does, it's a companion piece. The, the problem that the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general has been having, where they can no longer reconcile this idea of "Okay, we can be horribly, viciously racist to everyone, except Jews," because they're they're, the- that's above everyone else that, that they are now running headlong into how unsustainable that is.

How, how you can just [02:44:00] not do that now. and maybe it was... it never was truly sustainable in any medium or long run. The same thing happens when, people who die due to the hyper-maximal profit- profiteering of the American healthcare system, the, the gears of the American empire, all these people are killed day in, day out, mass slaughter, thousands at a time.

it, it happens so much they just purely become numbers, and any change to that, any even small marginal reformist adjustm- adjustment where it's okay, I don't, I don't think that it should cost $150,000 to be in the hospital one day. I don't think that we should, we should have these fucking carrier groups all over the place, able to strike and kill thousands at a time at moment's notice.

No, we can't do that just because of the way things work. sorry. Sorry, there's no avenue for- Felix- There's no avenue for this in political change, and if you keep telling people that, eventually they're gonna go, "Oh, okay."

Speaker 98: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 99: Bing.

Speaker 98: That's what I said, [02:45:00] left, center in this country, everyone has just basically come to the conclusion that, all that's left to do is just fantasize about Donald Trump being killed or die- or dying of natural causes.

Yeah. But, that's the only solution to the problem of him being president. If you- And, to your point, Felix, Kelsey Piper in her attack on, Hasan here, she described the, the... everyone who was killed by the American healthcare industry, she described that as, quote, "suboptimal policy."

Oh. Good to know. It's that's the most... that, from the effective altruist, abundance lives, that is the most Stalinist thing you could possibly say. one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

Speaker 99: Yeah. i- if you keep telling people, "Yeah, sorry, there's just, maybe in 30 years- Yeah

it can get slightly better," what the fuck do you think is going to happen eventually?

Speaker 67: you and I started talking about, I can't remember, it might've been a year ago, maybe a year and a half, it was when the, Abe, the former prime minister of Japan, got assassinated.

And I had said we're entering into a territory where there's going to be not just more political violence, but probably targeted assassinations, right? So one of the things that I look for as a, as an analyst, I lo- I spend a lot of time reading [02:46:00] manifestos. I spend a lot of time studying people who carry out political violence, who are assassins, because they're very good signals of the political economy and temperature, right?

Who are they? Why do they do it? What background do they come from? How do they present themselves? Nick, Cole Allen, again, allegedly the, the attempted assassin. This was a 31-year-old man from California. He got degrees from Caltech. he was a NASA intern. He was a teacher. the manifesto that he published, he apologized to his friends, family, and colleagues and students.

He made a vigorous Christian argument saying, he, he considers himself a Christian. He said, quote, "Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I'm not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not a fisherman executed without trial. I'm not a school kid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.

Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppo- oppressed is [02:47:00] not Christian behavior, it's complicit-complicity." He also says, "Why did I do this?" Quote, "I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflect on me, and I'm no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, coat my hands with his crimes."

So here's the thing, Nick, and this is the larger conversation to have. This manifesto comes out. It seems written by a grounded, rational person who has a motivation and an ethical and moral obligation within themselves to do something. This person does not-- I have not heard anything about him being unwell.

Maybe we'll hear that he was very quiet and kept to himself. we... This is often how these things are done. On top of that, I don't see anything in here, to be honest with you, that seems some an extremist philosophy. It might be extreme within liberal democracy, but he's not wrong about the crimes that the Trump administration has committed and that normal people of conscience should stand up to it.

So [02:48:00] then that asks us a question, while it also makes it clear, it gives us a signal that the state of play that we're living in has changed, which is: What do you do if you are a person with ethical and moral obligations, if you are living underneath a violent, fascistic dictatorship, more or less, in which representative government is corrupted, there's not an opposition party that you can believe in, and every single day people are dying or suffering?

It then offers a question, which is a question every time it's asked in the United States of America in its history, it leads to massive change. So this being presented to us, I think, is a game changer of a situation that I don't think most people are wrapping their heads around the importance of

Speaker 68: I, I agree.

I, I think in a functioning democracy, what you're supposed to do is lobby for, change and get people organized- Yeah ... and use your vote. that's really what is supposed to happen. And it, in, in fits and starts that's been successful across the, our history of our country. [02:49:00] But, it's easy to see why, you could look around and say, "That's, that was just simply doesn't work anymore," and that's what he was saying.

And I'm glad that he brought, more attention to the detention camps. I l- I'm remiss that we don't talk very much about it either because it's a story that's just not being covered. Yep. What's going on right now with people who have been detained here, and immigrants who have been contained here, it's, it is torture, and nobody's doing anything about it.

And that is a, if you feel strongly enough about it, it's not hard to follow the path that he would've taken. whatever. that said, to at least to get to the point where it feels as desperate as he felt, clearly, and without it being any mental illness per se, right?

That's the difference here, right? Obviously there's gonna be something we have to discuss where he's willing to basically sacrifice his entire life for this. Yep. and that's, that is related to something. But, it's not foreign. I can follow that path pretty easily, and it's, it's frustratingly

Speaker 67: and I think there's a couple of things to talk about here, very large things. And, and for the record, I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you because you're not just my podcast co-host. You are my friend, and we're [02:50:00] moving through this political environment together.

We've been doing this for years now. One of the reasons that we do this is to make sense of these things- ... right? And to chart where we are and where things are going. I would argue that one of the main theses of this project that you and I have been embarked on is chronicling the fascistic growth in the United States of America with the decline of American empire and what that means for us.

Anticipating where things are going and hopefully finding places to get off of a certain track. I wanna lay my cards on the table, Nick. You just brought up these concentration camps that are being built around the country. If a story came up tomorrow that somebody set one on fire, I wouldn't lose sleep.

I, I wouldn't feel bad. I wouldn't be upset about it. I wouldn't get on here and be like, " private property is private property." That's bullshit. That's not how this works. If I heard that, somebody had I don't know, sabotaged a plane that was going to deport people and send them to El Salvador to some [02:51:00] dystopian hell camp, I wouldn't lose sleep about that, right?

When we get to this, a person who seems like it's not that they're unwell, it's not that they're a lone nut, when it is a pretty middle-of-the-road liberal who says- ... "I can't just stand by and let this happen anymore." And by the way, he didn't even mention this, Nick. Estimates are right now that the starving, starvation deaths after the dismantling of USAID are as high as 750,000 human beings 750,000 human beings- that have starved to death because USAID was, cut off. On top of that, listen, you and I don't like to give flowers to George W. Bush. In fact, the soul repels against it. But one of the best things that George W. Bush ever did, I would argue probably the best thing he ever did, was set up aid and HIV relief for Africa.

And what's happening right now since the Trump administration got rid of it, AIDS and HIV are blowing up in Africa. It's going to lead to God knows [02:52:00] how much suffering and how much death. At some point or another, the apparatus and system of liberal democracy, if it's not kept in check with regulation, it gets corrupted and it starts to die.

Why do we have a legal system, Nick? We have a legal system to keep people from perpetrating violence against each other. Why do we have representative government? In order to give people a sense that they are able to change things and have representation so that they don't give up on having agency. If you start to take those things away, and am I wrong that they've been taken away?

Speaker 68: They have.

Speaker 67: They've been taken away. The, our judicial system is corrupted. Our representative democracy is corrupted. You take all of those things away, you have fascists who are killing people and who are hurting people. All of a sudden, people of conscience will start asking themselves, "Is it my responsibility as a person with conscience to interact with that?"

And it appears that this Cole Allen person [02:53:00] allegedly made the decision with, it seems like mental clarity, that it's time for people with a conscience to- ... engage with this and to use physical violence as a means of trying to set the record straight. That is a massive change and a massive moment that we've only experienced a few times in this country.

And if that's where we are, then we are at a crossroads between, two very different futures.

That's going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

You can record - and re-record - a voice message by tapping the link in the show notes,

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

Resistance History

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People Who Read People

The Bunker

History Unplugged Podcast

Americast

Democracy Now!

The Chauncey DeVega Show

The NPR Politics Podcast

The Lawfare Podcast

The Dig

Chapo Trap House

and The Muckrake Political [02:54:00] Podcast

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Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

 

Air Date: 05-06-2026

Full Show Notes

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine how the U.S. war on Iran is producing an economic crisis with echoes of the 1970s stagflation era which explains why Trump is now less popular on inflation than Jimmy Carter. We'll also be exploring various element of the structure of our economy, including how GDP became a deeply misleading measure of welfare, why consumer spending increasingly goes toward things people don't want to buy, and how gambling and junk fees are literally counted as economic growth.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today include

All In with Chris Hayes

Economic Update 

The NPR Politics Podcast

The Brian Lehrer Show

THE DAILY BLAST 

and Pitchfork Economics 

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, The Pump and the War

Section B, Lies, Spin, and the Roaring Economy

Section C, The Boomcession

Section D, What This Costs Real People

And now, on to the show.

BRIAN: Let's start with Friday's inflation report for the month of March.

Do you agree with that Washington Post headline, Trump faces surging inflation report fueled by Iran Conflict. 

GUEST: I do, the numbers were very clear. We had a full percentage point increase in the headline inflation. And that's really unusual to get such a jump in one month. Moreover, if you look forward, we will get another jump in the headline inflation.

The other interesting thing is there's a second measure, as you know, called core inflation that tries to. Exclude the, the very volatile energy and food prices and that did not move very much. I don't think that's gonna last. So I think what you're gonna see going forward is not just headline inflation being driven by energy prices, but we're gonna start seeing a broader inflationary process take hold.[00:02:00] 

BRIAN: Why? 

GUEST: Because first it's way beyond energy, what the prices that are being disrupted, the supply. Lines that are being disrupted, speak to a number of other things. Fertilizers, which will, will speak to food prices, aluminum. So there's a set of other products that are being disrupted in terms of supply.

And second energy has a way. Of encouraging what economists call co cost push inflation, but simply your costs go up as, as a producer, as a restaurant, and you decide, i'm gonna pass that on to my consumers. I'm not gonna take the hit on my own. And if oil prices and gas prices stay high for a while.

More and more companies will pass on that, hit two households in different ways. 

BRIAN: How much do you think this is inevitable, what you were just [00:03:00] describing or already baked in? Even if, let's say they were to come to a peace agreement tomorrow, 

GUEST: Brian, there's an economic logic that is very, very clear.

When you get the sorts of supply disruptions associated with the war, the first thing that moves are energy prices and interest rates. So the average person pays more at the pump, and if you try to get a mortgage, the cost of your mortgage has gone up. That's phase one. That's done phase two, which we are in the midst of, and it is a done deal.

Is that you start seeing the increase in very selective things, energy and mortgages starting to spread through the economy, so you have a broader hit that takes longer to overcome Stage three, which thankfully the US is not in. [00:04:00] But Asia and Europe are looking, are staring at the face of it. 

BRIAN: Ah. Hold that.

Hold that for just a second because this is, this relates to the clip that I mentioned in the intro of your appearance on Marketplace that we aired last week, citing four stages of economic harm from the war. And you've just touched on the first two as they pertain to the United States. I wanna replay numbers three and four now, which sound more global and much more scary.

And then I'll invite you to expound on them. This is you from last week. 

GUEST: Parts of Asia unfortunately, have moved to phase three, which is not only do you get phase one and phase two, but you also get demand destruction. So you start worrying about economic growth. And of course, phase four, which I hope we never get to, would be financial instability, undermining the economy.

BRIAN: That's part of what made me think, okay, I gotta talk to this guy in more depth, in a longer segment on the show. So take us further into that. [00:05:00] What's happening in Asia or elsewhere that you're referring to there? 

GUEST: So in Asia, ships practically have come out of the Strait for about six weeks. And what they are looking at is not just high energy prices.

But a potential disruption in actual availability of fuel. And think a little bit of how you would react, Brian if suddenly someone tells you, you, it's not that you're gonna pay more at the pump, but it's not clear that the gas station will be open. That would, that changes behavior. We found that when you go from, from a price shock to a quantity shock, the risk of tipping points.

Increases meaning that you start seeing damage to economic growth to economic activity. And that is a much bigger hit to the economy. And the minute that happens, then you start weighing about default phase, which is financial [00:06:00] instability. There is a, an economic logic that. I suspect 99.9% of economists would tell you yes, that's absolutely the case.

The question is how quickly do you go through it? What are the tipping points and what are the circuit breakers? And that goes back to your question, what if the war ends to end tomorrow? Well, it will take us some time to restore production of energy in the Middle East. It would take us some time to get the ships in the right place.

It's not like a light switch. You don't switch it back on and everything comes on, it takes some time. Mm-hmm. But we would be stuck with the phase one and phase two, but we would avoid phase three and phase four. 

BRIAN: On this phase three that you said some countries in Asia have already moved into, I've heard a theory that that's why Pakistan was eager to broker these peace talks because their economy is being hit so hard by the war.

Does that sound right to you? 

GUEST: That may be a reason. It certainly also [00:07:00] explains the, the reporting why China pushed Iran to agree to the two week cease fire, fearing that there are worse things ahead. The rest of the world is really concerned. I think here in the US we are lucky beca because we have energy independence.

We are an exporter of energy. The rest of the world is mostly an import of energy, and I can tell you the, the extent of economic concern is a magnitude higher than it is here. 

BRIAN: What are the impacts on China that would've led them to pressure Iran to get involved in the talks? 

GUEST: So they are worried that they're gonna lose their second supplier of cheap oil.

The first one was Venezuela, because both Venezuela and. Iran are subject to sanctions. China has been able to buy oil from them at a significant discount estimated to about 30% of [00:08:00] the international price. India also has taken advantage of that, so they risk losing their second supplier, not just of oil, but of cheap oil relative to their alternative.

Now. As you know, the Chinese tend to plan, so they have one of the highest storage levels in the world. They've been accelerating not only the transition to green tech, but they've also restarted coal mines. So they, they have taken some steps to protect themselves, but they are looking at disrupted supply of oil and higher prices.

Of oil and it's sign significantly higher. And that's where the economic concern comes in over what's been going on between the us, Israel, and Iran 

It's like a mess of jigsaw puzzle, isn't it? What are the key interventions that need to change to create a circular shift in that market, in that city? How do we [00:09:00] finance that and how do we make the most of that opportunity and then become the challenges that we're seeing? What do you really need to get right?

What are banks doing? What are investors doing? What kind of innovation is being financed? What are the opportunities like? What's really growing? What is this concept? How do we grab the opportunity of it? Why are we not seeing a broader shift across the economy? As a whole, welcome to the Circular Economy Show.

Today I'm thrilled to be joined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Strategic Finance and Investment Team, Emily Healy and Joe Rogers. In this episode, we're asking why is it that despite the success of individuals circular business models, we aren't seeing a wider shift across the entire economy? We'll explore how systemic investing and capital orchestration could be the tools we need to take this transition forward.

And we'll be looking at where we are currently seeing this sinking brought into on the ground real life demonstration projects.[00:10:00] 

Well, thank you so much, em and Joe for joining me today and, for looking like you've just rocked up from the catwalks of Milan. For those of you who are just listening to the Circular Economy Show today, em and Joe present both the beauty and the Brainiac package for the foundation and we're thrilled to have them here now.

You guys have been working together. On finance and the circular economy for roughly four years. Em, you've been here eight, Joe, you joined the foundation about four years ago. Mm-hmm. You must have navigated some huge changes in that time. What are you sensing now as we move on? Well, thank you for embarrassing us.

I No worries. To start off, the colleague you can rely on, maybe, maybe helpful to start about how things have shifted over over the last few years. 'cause when we really started, when we set [00:11:00] up, our program on finance, it was in 2019 and the world was in a very different place. It was pre COVID. Mm-hmm.

It was pre a lot of the geopolitical things that we've seen and there was a real groundswell in the finance. Sector, circular economy was starting to, to, to become a more known concept. And it was a really interesting and exciting time to be thinking about it. And I think it was the reason we did start the program was because there was an, there, there was this interest from the financial sector and we kind of started by highlighting where is finance already flowing?

What are banks doing, what are investors doing? What kind of innovation is being financed? What are the opportunities? What's really growing? And, and then we sort of have seen it at that peak, that kind of excitement. And growth in, in financing peak at about 2021.

And then sort of go down slightly as it's become a more challenging economic environment. And it's obviously not true. It's not true just a circular economy. But, but sustainable investing in general is, [00:12:00] when, when people are, when it's harder economic times. The people shift to things that are more familiar and there's less willingness to take risks.

So I guess that's, we're seeing some of that. Yeah. You've literally ridden that financial rollercoaster. Well, and I think so much of the shift as well has been, has reflected in the, in the shift that the foundation's been through as well. It started about what is the circular economy, and a lot of the questions that were coming from, from the finance sector then was what is this concept?

How do we, how do we take, grab the opportunity of it? And over the last four years we've really seen that shift to going to, how do we finance that and how do we make the most of that opportunity and overcome the challenges that we're seeing? And I think in that past, we've seen a lot of those exciting opportunities come, be realized.

and that is reflected in the, in the business world and, and some of, some of the amazing, . Growth that's been seen around certain economy and specific certain economy businesses as well. Yeah, I mean, to date, I, correct me if I'm wrong guys, but we have highlighted successful [00:13:00] circular business models, fashion resale, the refurbishment of electronics.

So if these guys are manage managing to gain successful traction and finance. Why are we not seeing a broader shift across the economy as a whole? Yeah, I mean, I think, and as you said, we've seen those great individual success stories, and that's been realized from everything that we've always, always talked about with the CER economy.

consumers gaining access to assets and products at low value, those products existing in the C economy for longer, and then the benefits, um, from nature and climate as well. And, and that's a lot of the reasons why. Finance is attracted to certain economy. It's kind of got that economic value and then also the environmental impact as well.

and it's even to say those success stories come from, hard, difficult to finance opportunities. It's not like it's really easy. So, it's an, as you said, Emily, it's a difficult funding environment now, and a lot of those. [00:14:00] Circular business mo models and circular businesses require high, upfront investment.

often it's starting at a very small scale and needing to bridge to larger scales to really build that demand and that supply. Yeah. and so the, and then needing a lot of technical knowledge to, to make those successful. So while they've, Being, there's been those bright spots of success and they, and those individual stories, they still face an uphill struggle against the, a broader system.

Yeah. May maybe jump in and say, and no, we would've ex and I think something we would've liked to see over the last six years I've been focusing on it is just more of those examples and no, we've. Got some really strong case examples that we love talking about, but I think something that's become more apparent and, and, and we've heard that reflected through financial institutions that we've talked to, is that.

If individual success stories themselves are not, are not enough. If you invest in just, if you are looking at just one solution and trying to fund that, you're [00:15:00] missing the whole systemic perspective of circular economy that, that, you have. Circular businesses that are still trying to operate in a linear economy.

And that's always gonna be an uphill struggle. They're always gonna fa face potentially higher costs, lack of demand or, uncertain demand. Maybe an uncertain policy environment about whether those policies are going to create incentives for their no, create incentives for their business model or not In future.

There's a, a hope that that will happen, but it's not always the case. inter. policies that help internalize, carbon emissions would, would, would again, increase the, would, would enhance the business case for certain chronic business models, but it's. have to think about it in a system.

For example, if think about a recycling plant that's, it's downstream. It's not an example that we really like to give, but it is something that gets funded typically, um, as a yeah, absolutely. A second project that it does get funded, whether it's by, development finance, whether it's by public sector government funding, or it might be bank funding.

but that plant will never [00:16:00] be. If you're just thinking about, investing in that in, in, in one single facility, it will never be optimized. It will run at, at a lower margin than it possibly could. or, or, or potentially it would have to be subsidized 'cause the economics won't stack up if you aren't also thinking about where's the feedstock for that plant?

Like what now? Where, where's the materials? What quality? Do you have enough quantity? Where's it coming from? How complicated is the legit logistics? What cost does that add? Does that add, how well is it sorted? how well do, if you think about the whole chain, people in their houses, are they, is their education campaigns are they aware of, of what they need to do to, to help that?

That whatever their packaging or whatever it is, that they have actually be recycled at the end of the day. And then at the other end, on the demand side, you also think about someone's gotta use this material. who are the companies that are going to use it? Have they, have they is there commitments?

Is there certainties that, that someone is going to buy that recycled material? and no further down the chain for someone to. Buy it. [00:17:00] They also have to, to figure out how they integrate it into their products. Think about how their products are designed, think about their factories and their manufacturing processes.

Can they just substitute one for the other? Do they need to rethink how they do that? So it's, it's a, it's a really complex system and I think, that's why we're not seeing the broader shift is because there's too much focus on individual solutions rather than Yeah. Yeah. The whole, this whole system.

So if we were to think of it. I mean, it's like a massive jigsaw puzzle, isn't it really? If the system isn't currently designed to bring all those pieces together, which it's not at the moment, is there an alternative? Yeah. I dunno if you wanted to Jo jump. Sorry, Joe. No. Is there an alternative? I, we were looking at each other then I, I mean.

In many cases, the right financing does exist. to, as Emily mentioned in that example, we do see infrastructure being funded, but that the complexity which Emily [00:18:00] spoke about in that system is just down to one material stream, to one investment. And that is absolutely the mandate of finance.

finding those single point, solutions, and matching their return and risk expectations. but the sort of. Way to knit those things together. we're seeing, some really interesting emergent ideas in systemic investing. so this is the sort of concept that you can bring together different stakeholders from across the system, not just finance business as well, and, and, and policy.

and then actually starts to create, Interventions at all points. So upstream, downstream, and, and, and in the middle, to maximize that opportunity and get that multiplier effect. So to come back to the recycling plant example, if you have a really, well resourced collection and sorting system, then that is no longer a cost that has to be absorbed by that recycling plant.

and then you, then you on the, on the other side, you have a demand for the, for the product that's come, [00:19:00] that's coming out. So. It's something which is, that we, we see, this, this concept of systemic investing as a really good fit for circular economy. and, and an emerging idea that we are starting to, explore and understand more.

and we think there's a really great, great opportunity to bring those financial, stakeholders together and. Move beyond that single point of financing and start to really build, longer lasting systemic shifts. Yeah, I was, oh, sorry. Maybe, maybe if I jump in, I think it's, It feels like a really natural fit.

And in terms of the shift that we've gone through, initially it was f it was really trying to meet finance where they are and we're still trying to do that, un understanding what are their risk return expectations? what are the types of capital that they have available to allocate to circular economy, how does that align with.

The sector, geography, et cetera. And then highlighting the relevant opportunities, for, that's where circular economy was growing and that fit within our vision of a circular economy. 'cause I think that's a, a crucial piece of helping [00:20:00] the fi that we've done to date is help financial players understand what counts for circular economy and what's not.

What's actually gonna get us towards the, the system we're trying to build. But we've hit up against this wall of, of, that just ends up highlighting single point solutions and misses the systemic perspective. So this, no, so, so trying to bring the, the ideas of systemic investing, which is no. Lots of players have, have been really building on this.

we've been inspired by the Trans Cap Initiative in particular, over the last couple of years. and trying to think about how you bring a systemic perspective, not just to ha the changes we're making, the real economy, but also bringing the financial perspective. can I just take you back, what is the TransCap Initiative?

for those who don't know. So they are a not-for-profit and they are, I guess, a similar type of organization to us, but they are, developing and, communicating about the concept of, of systemic investing. Right. Okay. Sorry, just I'm, and building the field and, and knowledge base. Thanks. And highlighting case examples.

And I [00:21:00] think there, there are, there are some emerging examples that that, that they've highlighted of how systemic investing is being. Is being employed to help place-based systemic transitions in particular. I think that lines up really nicely with where our work is going, where we're really trying to demonstrate implementation on the ground.

Yeah. and, and when you actually talk about financing, if you want, if you're gonna get practical, it's, it actually has to be in a place what are you financing? Is it, is it. Is it infrastructure or is it a company or is it, Yeah. What is it? Yeah. So how is this showing up in our work at the moment?

I think for us it's really about trying to put the ideas into practice in the real life projects. Mm-hmm. And, and maybe something to say is that. We talk a lot about the financing of the real stuff in circular economy, like infrastructure, business models, and innovation. I guess being the three, the three design and innovation that we talk about a lot, but it's also thinking about a much broader [00:22:00] spectrum of capital.

Also thinking about how we bring in philanthropic capital and the typical, players that would fund. policy engagement and shifts or consumer behavior check campaigns or, or, or, shifts to understanding how you shift governance models to, to better suit a, a, a circular economy. So it's, it, it, it's, it's bringing the whole picture together, not just, not just the, the real things that, that, that money can go to.

Yeah. And I think to build on that, When we talk about bringing different types of capital together, and, and I think this is a, a lot of the conversation, blended finance is brought up a lot. And I think what the, the, the key thing to note here is that systemic investing in capital orchestration goes beyond just, bringing together public and private money in, in, in one, in one facility.

But it's also about how do you then engage, corporates to sign offtake agreements or as you said, philanthropy to provide grants for, so social programs that would also support these shifts in these systems. and I think that's like one of the early examples that we're [00:23:00] looking at is, working in Brazil on, on, on waste management infrastructure.

there was, again, as, as Emily said, building a place-based project around a city. Yeah. and bringing together all of those different three main players of business, finance and policy. but also still talking to philanthropy about how do we, Fundamentally change, the way that that waste streams are managed in one particular place and.

That also echoes that broader shift that we're seeing from like, what to how and we can actually start to get real in places and, and, and put numbers to, to these projects, which, allow, allow us to see this in, in a practical, sense. I think at the moment the, a lot of this work is, is, is just in the idea phase.

So we're really excited to be taking it from the end idea phase into actual real projects. Yeah. Maybe Yeah, I can I also jump in on that? 'cause I think it's, in terms of how the, the process like works in on those projects is we've typically brought no defined a vision for circular economy in [00:24:00] our key sectors.

SAR plastic packaging. Yeah. And brought business and policy around that. And that's still the, that's still the, the foundation. And that hasn't gone away. And the way we see it is that now when we're moving into specific places, you first need to understand. What are the key interventions that need to change to create a circular shift in that market, in that city?

And which ones are likely to have the biggest outsize impact? Mm-hmm. what do you really need to get right? Yeah. For all the other pieces of the puzzle to flow and follow, because it's really complex. You're not gonna be able to do it all. And then once you've identified those really key.

Intervention points. Mm-hmm. And how they connect to each other. playing that convening role, which we've always done at the foundation and with point business, with policy, with finance around the, this is the shift that we need to see. These are the interventions, but then the additional layer that we need to figure out, and this is a.

No, this is all, this is all new work for us, so it's exciting. But yeah, it will be very emergent. We're not pretending that we have all the [00:25:00] answers by any means. but, but I think But you are working towards them, right? Hope. Yeah. Hopefully. And I think there's, know that there's, there's a, now I think there's a growing community of practice Yeah.

Who hopefully we can learn from. Mm-hmm. And, and hopefully we can also. Share learnings from the, from our projects as we're coming out and as we figure out, what are the different types of capital that we think are needed and, and from, for that system shift in, for the, for the project in Brazil.

And, and, and the, where we're thinking about is, is, is ca can we, can we mobilize? Business and philanthropic, contributions to funds, to fund, that system to create the, make the business case stack up that then you can crowd in public and private financing like development, finance, also private finance, to, to.

Demonstrate. Yeah. well, working circular systems that whilst we also work on the, the, the policy engagement side. and no, it's, it's, it's, it's exciting but it's very new and I think we, over time we hope that we'll be able to. Replicate, develop our thinking and replicate that across other program [00:26:00] areas in crystal minerals and fashion.

Yeah. And other plastic programs set up a blueprint type of thing. Yeah. And share that pub and, and hopefully share that, more broadly. Hopefully we'll be back here in a year and have some real, some real, real things to share. Although this is obviously really long term work, we're talking about for this project is five to seven years.

Yeah. Just in, one place and, and, and hoping to replicate that in other major reasons in the global south. Joe, what's key to success? I think as a, as a, as Emily just said, it's really co it's really complex work and I, and I think it's, already key to highlight that. It's not there's a load of time and money sitting around waiting to do this.

This is, this is an extra layer of coordination, and of convening that needs to, come together around those specific systems and problems, and, and work together to, to maximize those and, and to, to find those out. So I, I feel like for us at EMF as a, as a, as a, as a foundation. Do [00:27:00] playing, playing that role of bringing those, key stakeholders and actors together, is a, is a really.

Key factor to, to, to providing that, that time and resource enable in being able to do that and building the trust and the confidence in this idea. Yeah. to, to showing that it's something that can work in, in the real world. I think also like-minded. no financial players. It's always, and I even know exactly the right wording because we're talking about such a, some, a spectrum from funders to financial institutions to no calls, different types of players, which means complicated, but I think we'll probably find a natural.

Fit, with financial players and stakeholders who already have, a, a systemic mindset, an ability to, to, ha have impact really embedded into their mandate. So philanthropic, no foundations and philanthropy who we already work very closely with, but also development, finance, and public sector finance who again, have a mandate to, to, to.[00:28:00] 

Yeah. To build that. Yeah. Create, create, yeah. Create impact and yeah. not, no, there's obviously, we've always engaged very closely with a private finance audience, but I think they will follow, no, they will things need, all the pieces need to line up for them to be able to engage. So I think there, in terms of working this through, we'll probably find a bit of a coalition of the willing with the, with the, with the stakeholders who are, who are already more aligned to our, to this thinking.

Absolutely. As we. Start on this journey. It's about learning together and understanding how this, these ideas and this theory land in the real world and, and the real challenges that need to be worked through. whether that's, the right governance, the right, d different types of finance and different types of projects.

but identifying those stakeholders and players that want to go a lot on, on that, journey with us and, and be that coalition of the willing. Thank you guys so much for joining me today, and if anyone can take on the challenge, I know it's you too. and I want you back in a year to report with your progress, please.

Sounds like we'd love to. [00:29:00] Good. See you later. Thanks so much to Emily and Joe for taking us through how in many cases, the right financing is definitely out there, but more thoughtful allocation and coordination could result in better and more resilient outcomes. As we discussed, concerted action within a system builds true economic resilience and through capital orchestration.

Finance doesn't just enable change. It can drive it. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a like or a comment and share with your colleagues and friends. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next time.

One thing that strikes me listening to these clips, these, these voters seem pretty read in on what's going on right now.

I guess, can you talk a little bit, as you watch these focus groups, uh, does it feel [00:30:00] like these are people who are reading and watching the news every single day? Or I guess how, talk a little bit more about the sort of information environment that these voters live in. Well, Iran has certainly broken through.

Mm-hmm. I mean, I, I wouldn't say that these voters listen to news 24 hours a day. There are a lot of things they don't know. You know, you show 'em pictures of their representatives in Georgia, they don't know who they are. Oh, that's interesting. But the war has broken through and that's also because the war is affecting their daily lives.

It's causing prices to go up. They understand that there's a connection between what's happening overseas and gas prices being high at the pump. There's an economic cost that people are being asked to pay for the war, and Donald Trump says it. He says, you know, it's a small price to pay. For, for making sure Iran doesn't have a bomb.

That's not something these voters agree with. Yeah, and in general they believe it's just not worth it. They don't think all the money and all the resources and the focus that Trump is putting into this war is worth the time. Uh, one woman, she's a Republican, she said this clearly, she's like, I don't think this is worth it.

Her name was Jia. It just doesn't seem like it's, [00:31:00] it has resulted in anything positive. I just haven't seen, I don't, I guess I don't have anything that's saying it's going poorly, but I have nothing that's saying it's going positive. And I don't think the cost is worth what they're doing. Yeah. So she's one of those voters who isn't, I can't, you know, like unlike Nick, she can't like tell you, I've been reading this in the New York Times and I see what's going on.

She's like, in general, I'm just reading the room and I get a sense that this isn't good for me. This isn't gonna help me in the future, and it's definitely not helping me. Now as I'm seeing oil prices rise, I mean, is that the economic connection completely? Is it just gas prices rising or is there something broader about this economic connection?

No, I think there's something broader. Joe talked about. How he feels about the economy and specifically talking about what Trump promised to do. He said day one, he was gonna bring the prices down on eggs and other things. Um, he's cut subsidies to health insurance, so that's gone up. Um, you know, I don't, I see my pocket, but.

Pocket book being hit and he's building a new ballroom for some reason that we don't need, you [00:32:00] know, how about you put some money toward us? How about you put some money toward us? I think that's the biggest takeaway. I mean, these are voters who were asked what are Trump's priorities and do they align with your priorities?

And that was his answer to that. In other words, no they don't. And um, you know, the problem is that Donald Trump promised to do a lot of things about. High prices and he's done the opposite. This war is so inextricably linked with the major issue that voters think is important right now, which is the cost of living.

I mean, just to say this again, because I think it was the theme of this conversation that these voters were having, which is it is distracting Trump, like Iran is distracting Trump from solving economic issues. It is not just that. We're spending all these resources, it's that if he's focused on this, he's not focused on these other issues that are only getting worse.

No one thinks any part of their budget is getting better in recent months and they don't think it's getting better in the future either. Well, that's what I was gonna ask. Is it trump's, it seems like [00:33:00] part of Trump's argument is this is short term pain. A lot of the, A lot of the what? I mean this is the same argument about the tariffs short-term pain for some sort of long-term gain.

Do voters buy into that idea that things are going to get better at some point? No, and actually there are a couple things that came up, especially related to AI that seems to be like a pressure point for them or, or at least a looming anxiety about the economy. One, they're seeing job losses. This has come up in every focus group now for at least the, the past three that we've seen in the past three states.

We've, we've heard from voters, they think that AI is gonna lead to more job losses than they have already. And uh, there were a couple questions in these focus groups about data centers. A lot of voters said that they're worried that the companies who run these data centers won't be taking on their fair share of energy costs.

So it's like a mix of like anxieties here, it's present and then future. And Trump, in their view, uh, seems pretty distracted. Every single one of these voters. Said that they feel more anxious now about the economy than they did when Trump came into office. And [00:34:00] again, the job of any president is to make voters, citizens feel safe and secure, not scared and anxious.

So now it's the war. It's Trump's behavior. It's the extreme posts. All of those things are making voters more anxious, not less.

And Maura, all the people we're hearing from are people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024. How do they feel or how are they engaging with the promises he made on the campaign trail? Now? Well, on some promises like closing the border, they feel pretty good about it, but on a lot of other promises, not only do they not feel that he's delivering, they feel he's doing the opposite.

Here's Corey, so his his priority with the war. Uh, in Iran, that, that is not anything that I approve of. Uh, I prefer to take care of home first. And Dawn said almost the same thing. I just feel like he made a lot of promises about our economy and, you know, make America first and be, you know, strong American drill, baby drill, all those kinds of things, just [00:35:00] domestic.

We've heard this now in multiple focus groups where folks who were. Explicitly voting for Trump because he did not sound like a warhawk. They feel particularly betrayed by that right now. It's come up at least two or three times now, which I think is interesting. But it's also interesting, you know, president Trump did also run.

Heavily on this immigration promise. Unauthorized crossings at the border are way down during no doubt about that presidency. No doubt about that. How much credit is he getting for that, or how much does that matter to these voters in terms of as they're weighing everything else? Well, this is the big question that we're gonna be pursuing as we get closer to November every month with, with these different focus groups, because they do give him credit.

They like what he did on the border. They're not crazy about what he did in Minneapolis. They like what he did on the border. The question is, is that gratitude going to. Outweigh their anxiety about the war and the economy. We don't know that. We don't know yet how their feelings about Trump will affect their votes for governor, Congressman, Senator.

Um, and that's something we're gonna be [00:36:00] drilling down on with the future focus groups. I think what we're seeing is their frustration with everything else overshadowing how. Maybe happy they are about what's going on in the border. You know, in other fo focus groups we heard, we heard voters say, you know, I'm really happy with the way that Trump is handling the border.

But I feel like the further we've gotten into this year, the closer we get to the midterms, I'm hearing more and more people say, I on the whole disapprove of the job that Trump is doing, even though I am happy with what's happening on the border, and you know, tell me if we're still gonna be at war. At the end of October.

Mm-hmm. Tell me what gas prices are gonna be at the pump. I mean, those are gonna be the important data points that people are gonna make their decisions on. I mean, it is clear also in public polling about that the Iran war is not popular with America. That is not, there's nothing in these focus groups that contradicts public opinion.

Polling it, illustrates it. It doesn't contradict it. But what. If, if, if they're unhappy with that. But what do they want Trump to focus on? I mean, I hear these kind of vague America [00:37:00] first, that domestic things. Are they more, no. They want him to bring prices down. That's what they say over and over again.

You said you'd bring, bring prices down on day one, but instead as. Our voters said, you're cutting, healthcare prices are up. You don't seem to be paying to attention to us 'cause you're building a ballroom for some reason. I actually think that could be a big difference is just even if Trump was attempting, making the show of caring about the economy.

'cause right now every conversation is about his political enemies as usual, but then also his now foreign enemies abroad. It is. A big frustration among voters that he's just not even talking about it. This is what they're talking about. This is what they care about. And they feel like the president, it's not even at the top of his list anymore.

And I did hear at least one or two voters say that at one point. 'cause part of the conversation that the voters had with Rich Thau, who was the moderator from Engagious who, who was, um, talking to these folks during the focus groups. The question was, what do you think his priorities have been throughout his administration?

And a lot of folks said, you know, I thought the economy and immigration was at some point, but now it sounds like [00:38:00] none of that is, is at the top of his list and that is where the rub is. That is what they're most frustrated with, is like they, they have these priorities and the president has seemingly different ones.

I mean, looking ahead to the midterms, is it fair to say like, it's so interesting hearing from these voters in Georgia. Is it fair to say in a state like Georgia that these voters, uh, you know, matter more than many other places? Well, the reason we pick these states is because they're battleground states.

They have important senate races or an important, uh, bunch of house races. Yeah, we've been to Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan This month we went to Georgia. Um, yeah, these, these are important states. This is where the house majority. Might be won or lost. This is where the Senate majority might be won or lost.

So these are important states to follow. Yeah, and they're also important in presidential elections. And these are states where elections are close and when you have close elections and all it takes is a couple thousand votes here and there for, for not just house races, but Senate races to swing it is important what even small subsets of voters have to say.

Yeah. And Georgia, just as a reminder for folks, has [00:39:00] a lot of statewide races on the ballot this year. Governor, Senator, secretary of State, attorney General,

WOLFF: For years, the Iranians said to anyone who would listen, if we get attacked again, we will close the Strait of Hormuz. That is a narrow passageway linking the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf. Here's something to know. 20% of the world's, excuse me, oil passes through those strait that strait, a higher percentage of the world's liquified natural gas goes through there.

70 to 80% of the food eaten by the people who live in the Gulf monarchies, the seven or eight countries that ring that part of the world. [00:40:00] Through the, in other words, fuel, oil, gas, and food depend on that passageway and Iran dominates that passageway. In every way, economically, politically, militarily, geographically, you name it, they're in a position to close the gulf.

Uh, Strait of Hormuz. And when the United States and Israel attacked them this time, they did what they said they would do. They shut it immediately. Huge amounts of oil and gas. Sitting on ships heading towards the Strait of Hormuz, couldn't get through. It was too dangerous. Insurance companies wouldn't write policies to cover the boats in case they [00:41:00] got hit by Iranians who said, if you go through there and we don't allow it, we will shoot you down.

By the way, is there oil that they do allow going through the, the, the straight Yes. For example, Iranian oil being sold to China, which is where most of it goes, has been passing through the Strait of Hormuz without a problem. China has paid for it with money that Iran can and does use. To fight against the United States and Israel.

By the way, when the Gulf, when the Strait was closed and oil sat on tankers and couldn't be delivered, the world suddenly experienced an oil shortage. And the price of oil, as I'm sure you all know, shot up 10, 20, 30%. [00:42:00] The longer the war lasts, the more the price of oil will go up. It makes countries that export oil like the United States richer.

It also makes the country of Iran the other side richer. And above all the largest exporter of oil in the world, Russia is making a fortune, which enables it to fight the war in Ukraine That much better. Was that taken into account? Who knows. It's just the economics that I'm telling you about. Also, when you bomb a country and you bomb its oil facilities, which Israel or the United States have done, you create spectacular pollution, huge quantities of burning oil.

You all know what that means, and it's blowing across [00:43:00] Asia. It will eventually get everywhere on earth. This is already an ecological disaster, which will have all kinds of economic costs. Here's another thing. It costs billions and billions of dollars to fight a war. Mr. Trump just finished spending billions to, to.

Take away the leader of Venezuela, and that's a crisis waiting to happen. He's threatening Cuba. That's an expensive armada, half of which frightened Venezuela and Cuba, and then was sent to frighten Iran. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Kind of hard to tell, but does it cost a ton of money? Oh, yeah. And so they gone to Congress and remember.

Congress has not declared a war, which the US Constitution says is the responsibility of Congress, but Mr. Trump is going to [00:44:00] Congress to get the money to fight the war that the Congress didn't authorize. It's not clear what's gonna happen, but he's asking $200 billion. And how does this work? Let's see. A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court said the tariffs which raised the $150 billion were unconstitutional, and there are lots of lawsuits demanding refunds.

So the 150 he thought might come in to deal with what? The fact that the United States is the largest debtor country in the world is not there, will not deal with him. Meanwhile, he's got an extra 200 for this war. And then he said for holding on to the empire, doing all those other things. He said, take Greenland.

Make Canada a 51st state. Take back the Panama Canal. I could go on. He wants to raise the defense, or excuse me, [00:45:00] war budget from 900 billion, roughly what it is now, to 1.5 trillion. That's an extra 600 billion, and then there's the 200 billion for the war in Iraq and the money not coming in from the tariffs.

We're gonna be not just the biggest debtor country in the world. We're gonna have one of the biggest deficits we've ever had this year, and who's gonna pay for all of that? What we're gonna borrow, it says the president, but the rest of the world doesn't wanna lend to the United States anymore. Let me quote to you, the Defense Minister in Germany, arguably our most important economic ally.

We didn't start this war. We weren't consulted about this war. We're not gonna pay for this war, and we are not gonna invest in this war. Whoa. That's a NATO [00:46:00] alliance fraying, and not just at the edges. The cost of this war is spectacular.

GOLDY: You talked about providing public options in a number of areas. One of the things you bring up, which seems to be a recurring theme on the podcast these days is sectoral bargaining. Uh, explain why that's important and how it would work. 

GUEST: Yeah, so one thing I argue for in my report is this idea from, of shifting from this liberal obsession with like delivering programs really well to taking a more sectoral approach.

And I mean that in two ways. So one is we should shift towards sectoral bargaining in our labor policy. Sectoral bargaining is the idea that instead of a union having to. Negotiate individually with employers that they should be able to negotiate at the sector wide level. And I think this makes pretty basic sense.

Like why would [00:47:00] nurses at one hospital, uh, have worse pay and benefits than nurses at another hospital a few miles away? We should be able to bargain at the level of healthcare workers. So I think sectoral bargaining is a really important way to rebalance power for workers. But I think a sort of additional idea is the idea of taking a sectoral approach to anti-poverty policy.

We know which sectors of our economy create conditions of poverty. It's like healthcare, childcare, utilities, groceries. These are the areas of of life that sort of dominate the affordability debate right now. Mm-hmm. But, you know, affordability I think is like this. It is sort of a sanitized way of saying that conditions of poverty are creeping up the income ladder.

And so I think instead of just delivering grocery assistance, we need a much more comprehensive approach to rebalancing power in the grocery sector. And so that sectoral approach would mean organizing the way the state engages in a [00:48:00] fundamentally different way than what we do right now. And as I mentioned before, there's this basic disconnect where the people who subsidize.

Markets often are like not in the same room as the people who regulate those markets, and that allows corporations to capture a pretty big share of public investments that are intended to counteract poverty. 

GOLDY: Yeah. If you think about it, if you think about, you know, obviously our I approach to market economies is that it's this complex adaptive system with various feedback loops.

You make one small change here, it creates another change elsewhere. It totally, it doesn't make any sense that we wouldn't bring these, uh, interventions together, that the regulators wouldn't be working with the people who are delivering the safety net programs, that we wouldn't be thinking of the tax system as part of, uh, this entire system.

Yeah, it's, um, it's a different way of approaching [00:49:00] it, but again, it is a lot more complicated and. Um, I think there's one benefit to our very complicated system of, or at least it has been our complicated system of delivering, uh, uh, safety net programs and uh, aid and so forth. And that is the more complicated it is, the harder.

It is to dismantle. Uh, it's one of my critiques of universal basic income when people tell me how much more efficient it would be just to give people money than to provide all of these services. And that's, well, once you've eliminated the social safety net and you've replaced it with a universal basic income, as efficient as that might be on paper now, all you need to do is erode the universal basic income and you've eliminated everything.

GUEST: You know, I have my own reasons for why I think universal basic income is not a silver bullet, but I don't think I agree with you that complexity [00:50:00] makes us safer. I think part of why Trump has been able to take a sledgehammer to the safety net is that it's so complicated that people don't really understand how it works.

It's so complicated that some of these programs. Just don't feel that good to receive, and so they are easier to attack politically. Notice how much harder it is to attack social security than it is to attack more complicated, fragmented programs. Social Security works because it's really straightforward.

You turn 65, you get your benefits and I think that we need, 

GOLDY: well, 67 now. 

GUEST: 67, yeah. Well, and fair enough. And, and actually we should, I think, be having a debate about lowering the retirement age, um, in this country, but we need more parts of our safety net to operate in that straightforward, accessible, guaranteed way.

GOLDY: Right. I can tell you. I'm 63 and so I've, [00:51:00] I started to investigate Medicare recently, and I gotta tell you, I was shocked. I just assumed that I would turn 65 and European style, socialized medicine. I'd suddenly, you know, no more premiums, no more deductibles, no more messing around with anything. Just one simple system.

Oh my God. Is it complex and it seems to be designed to drive people into Medicare Advantage where they can then take advantage of you. I think that's where the advantage comes from in the branding a 

GUEST: hundred percent. And just wait until you start getting calls from all of the insurance brokers who are gonna try to sell you a plan you don't actually need, because it turns out that they're taking kickbacks from Medicare Advantage providers to do so.

GOLDY: Yeah, 

GUEST: you touched on this briefly and I, I just wanted to sort of get it on the record because for a long time, giving people money was seen as the solution in, in various parts of the Democratic sphere. I know Vox was big into it, and I mean, we did [00:52:00] see some success, I think during the, the pandemic, during the lockdowns when we did send people money and it did, it did strengthen the economy.

But I was wondering if you could talk about why giving people money isn't the end all solution. Well, I think it's a big part of the solution, so I wanna be clear about that. I mean, cash is the most dignified, efficient way to help people who are struggling in our economy, and I think we would be in much better shape today if more of the safety net operated as cash-based programs.

But I think the challenging reality is that. If rents keep rising because we haven't fixed that marketplace. If healthcare costs keep rising because we haven't fixed that marketplace, then pumping more cash into people's pocketbooks is gonna get absorbed by broken markets. So I think cash. Is a floor that we should provide to more people, but it needs to be part of a much broader intervention into the economy.

I'm very skeptical that cash on [00:53:00] its own can do all of the heavy lifting for rebuilding an economy that is fair. 

GOLDY: So we're gonna put you in charge. No political constraints. You can fix the system however you want. What might it look like? The, uh, the next new deal that comes out of your report? 

GUEST: If I could sort of make one change today to the safety net, I would think about expanding social security for families with children.

We are such an outlier globally in our failure to provide a child allowance. Having a kid in this country is so expensive. Actually having a baby in this country precipitates a period of poverty for something like 40% of moms. That's ridiculous. We're the wealthiest nation on earth. Social Security has been one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in the country, and I think that a bold idea is that families with little kids need that [00:54:00] same kind of help.

Child tax credit showed us what is possible when we expanded it, uh, during the pandemic. We cut child poverty in this country in half in one year. That's remarkable. I think that there's no reason to believe that we shouldn't expand the promise of social security when people start a family. 

Donald Trump is in the midst of learning a political lesson that you would think he above anyone else would know, right? The lesson is that people really care about gas prices. Have you heard that one? Oil, natural gas, gasoline are the most important commodities in the world.

They are what modern civilization runs on. I think that's about to change because of how cheap and incredibly clean energy has gotten. But right now, you quite simply cannot run your society without fossil fuels. There's no other option. When the prices go up, people get pretty upset about it, and right now, prices are, as you may have noticed, way, way up because Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu started a pointless war in Iran.

A war that [00:55:00] killed 6,000 people, injured countless others. Displaced a million more has caused untold human misery and upended the lives of many, many people. It is also, as you might have heard. Happened to disrupt the global supply chain for the world's most important commodity. The thing, modern civilization runs on a disruption that continues day after day after day, to this very day, even with a seemingly indefinite seaside because.

As soon as the US started bombing, Iran started to control Strait of Hormuz. Something that was not the case before this war. Something that was long in this country, and they're pretty mad at Donald Trump for starting this war. Take a look at this chart. We, we, we were sort of marveling over this one today.

A lot of charts don't read on tv, but I think this one gives you the point. So that's from pollster G. Elliott Morris, who tracks Trump's approval on a bunch of different issues. And you can see there's a bunch of issues. They all go in the same direction. They all go down. But the one that's the lowest, the one all the way at the bottom [00:56:00] of your TV screen, the green line that is Donald Trump's approval on inflation and the cost of living.

Of course, that includes gas prices because not only is gas a major expenditure for nearly every American rising diesel costs in particular also make everything else more expensive. That doesn't even include the sort of inputs you get when you start getting into fertilizer and chemical products. And as you can see, Trump is just almost incomprehensibly unpopular when it comes to prices.

Literally off the chart. He is so underwater in fact, that he is off the chart. In fact, that chart doesn't go low enough to show his massive minus 40 approval on the issue. According to one analysis. This is an amazing historical tidbit. To give you a sort of sense of comparison, Donald Trump is currently less popular on inflation than that man on your screen.

Jimmy Carter. [00:57:00] Carter, the guy who oversaw stagflation, the guy who was in president during the 79 energy crisis, the guy with the sweaters and the Malaise speech. I mean, just ask any voter at the gas pump. It is bad, you know? Um, people gotta live, people got to eat, you know what I'm saying? And believe it or not, um, transportation is very, very important.

And you know, you have to choose whether you, uh, drive or eat, you know? So I mean, gas prices or are crazy. I mean, that was the whole thing that Trump promised everyone, that people voted for as they lower gas prices. And here we are. So. Yeah. Crazy low, lower prices on everything is what he said. Groceries, gas, everything.

I feel like everything is just more expensive. So now Trump is stuck. His shifting posture with Iran, I mean, we, we can hardly keep track of it. We're, we're, that's our job is to keep track of it and you almost can't and, and that sort of merry-go-round. He's [00:58:00] been doing negotiations obliteration, that's made any kind of deal to reopen the Strait exceedingly difficult.

We're, we're not currently negotiating as far as anyone knows. And none of this is winning over the American public, as you saw from the chart. So basically what they're left with is a strategy to just lie. The fact of the matter is that all of the cylinders are kicking. It is good news. You can even feel in our environment how good things are getting gas prices continue to come down, which means that your groceries will come down a little bit as well.

Okay, two things. First of all, I love the fact that they're showing the, the crypto stocks while he's talking like, yes. Wow, a crypto rally. Second of all, did you catch what he said? Gas prices continue to come down. Senator Tim Scott. That is simply not true and you don't need to go do a bunch of research to come to that conclusion.

It's plainly a lie in the most obvious [00:59:00] sort of inexplicably, condescending way. Nationally, the average price of gas, that's something we tabulate closely. It's four 30 at a gallon. Honestly, it might be even higher as of tonight, according to the live tracking data, because it's been going up by the hour, even the conservative number is up 30 cents from a week ago, up by, well over a dollar since the war started.

Again, that's just the average. Believe me, out west, they would be happy to pay $4 and 30 cents instead of over six bucks a gallon like now. Even if we just look at Senator Scott's state of South Carolina, the state he proudly represents the average price of gas. There is about $3 90 cents a gallon. It was $3 and 65 cents a month ago.

Meanwhile, a year ago, it was 2 83, more than a dollar cheaper now to bend over backwards, to be fair to the senator, we did find this one little nugget in the data. It does appear that the price of diesel in South Carolina is down slightly from the highest ever recorded average, which it hit. Three weeks [01:00:00] ago, thanks to Donald Trump, but come on, Senator as Petroleum Analyst, Patrick De Haan points out today, the price of gas is up in every single state compared to a week ago.

In fact, he says prices are going up so rapidly that the algorithms he uses to track them are having trouble keeping up. In fact, I'm gonna talk to him about that in just a moment. So while there might be some small fluctuations day-to-day, it is simply wrong to say that gas prices are down. That's not even spin.

Right. It's just a lie. Even the, the very Trump friendly CNBC host, Joe Kernan wouldn't let the Republican majority leader get away with lying about gas prices. People that will remember you go back two years ago, we were paying almost $6 a gallon for gasoline. Right now it's in the threes. Obviously we've seen a, a jump with the Iran conflict, but when were we, we paying six, it's still 50.

What is that? Well, two, two and a half years ago, I don't think we were, but if you look [01:01:00] at it, that wasn't the average price. Look at where we're now. We're, we're over 30% below where we were just two years ago. Today we are 30% below where we were two years ago. We must have been on vacation in California, I think, I think two years ago in, in April of 2024, we were at about 365.

So we're actually above. Uh, where we were then. Yes. Thank you. Now, there are ways one could spin the Trump economy of positive light. You know, there there is a difference about spinning and lying, right? Uh, and, and spinning is part of politics. I mean, you, you could, there's good faith spinning. You could talk about the stock market, which has been going up.

You could talk about massive and spiking business investment, which we saw in some of the numbers that came out today. That's real. That's happening. But if your message going into the midterms is to just plainly lie to people's faces on camera, right in front of them about gas prices, the price that they see every day driving around, I think voters are gonna laugh you outta office.

I mean, even Trump is simply trying to sort of [01:02:00] kick the can down the road. The gas will go down as soon as the war's over. It'll drop like a rock. There's so much of it. It's all over the place, sitting all over the oceans of the world, and it'll be, it'll go down. It's also not really true. Gas prices rise quickly, but they often take a long time to go down.

Plus, again, as we've covered now for two months, Trump has absolutely no plan to end the war. He can't even articulate what the strategic end he's trying to meet as it changes every day. Right, and just last week, remember he said he is no rush at all. His new big thing is he's gonna blockade the blockade.

Then today they're trying to get a coalition of willing to un blockade it.

If you are a Republican running for Office of November, and I suspect a few of you do watch this program, I would just say I would not hope for an assist from Donald Trump, especially because, and I think this is important, I would estimate he spends right now conservatively about.

[01:03:00] 90% of his waking moments thinking about his ballroom. In light of today's Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, do you want Republican states in the south to look at re uh, drawing congressional districts before the midterm? You have to tell me when did the ruling come out? I've been with the astronauts.

I've been. Contractors because we're trying to get the ballroom built. Yeah. Ahead of schedule. It's, it's right on schedule. It's ahead of schedule now. I want to keep it that day way. There's been some talks about changes to your security after what took place. Changing my security. Changing your security after what took place.

Well, they did a pretty good job actually. You know, they stopped. They NFL running back. I mean, he was like a running back. In fact, if you ever got out, they're probably gonna sign him. It's a pretty tough. Situation now, right outside, we have something that's on time, on budget, actually ahead of time and ahead of budget, depending on finishes.

You know, finishes is a big difference between marble and Onyx in price, [01:04:00] but it's right on budget, right on time. Do you see how like he go and then he comes back to the ballroom? And a question pulls him this way, but he comes back to the ballroom. Oh, the, there was a a huge, there was an attempt on your life.

Very scary. True. There was, let's talk about the ballroom finishes. For what it's worth, the ballroom, the thing they're pivoting to the things he's obsessed with. The thing that every Republican now wants to talk about is the central priority for America in the year of our Lord. 2026. That ballroom is also very unpopular.

Who to thunk it? Voters are actually against it two to one in the latest polling. Donald Trump doesn't care. He is literally measuring the golden drapes for his ballroom. I'm sure he's actually talked to the contractor about finishes for those instead of, for instance, trying to lower gas prices. And I don't think voters were gonna let Republicans off the hook for it.

It wasn't this high before he became president, man. Gas was was three something [01:05:00] B, barely $3. Now it's four. You know, it is. He don't need to be talking about ballroom man. You need to be trying to fix the economy. Better yet, you just need to retire and let JD Vance let somebody else run the country. Well, that's one vote for JD Vance.

GREG: this economy is largely the creation of one person, Donald Trump, and I want to get into that in a bit. Political reports on this new Republican memo that shows striking findings. It's from Americans for Prosperity, the Koch backed group, and that's its own story, which we'll get to. But for now, I wanna read this line from.

Our internal polling in several battleground states and one-on-one conversations with voters show that for the first time, Democrats are more trusted on the economy and inflation. Monica, that's striking. Other polls have shown this as well. Trump's 2024 victory was all about the economy and inflation and Democrats were in just terrible shape on both.

Due to what you talked about, the post COVID [01:06:00] inflation shock, how do you account for this turnaround? 

MONICA: Well, I think that, uh, Trump was riding a long term advantage that Republicans had on the economy for at least since Reagan, people have, American voters have tended to think that Republicans are better for the economy, largely because of their rhetoric on small businesses, on cutting taxes, and people tend to think that that's good.

So I think that he had, he came into office with a huge advantage on the economy that he really blew, um, that in the first few things that he did as president were to kind of squander that trust that people had, people saw right away that the things he was doing wasn't what. You know, they, the things he was doing weren't what they wanted from him.

And so I think that that has given an opening for people to think about the democratic rhetoric on the economy more and to maybe start trusting the Democratic Party more on what they say the economy needs. 

GREG: It's just kind of amazing because not only did [01:07:00] Republicans have this deep built-in advantage on the economy that you talked about, which is largely unearned, but goes back many decades.

Trump also had this big unearned advantage on the economy, and I was doing some reporting up in Reading, Pennsylvania about what happened with the Latino vote there in 2024, move towards Trump. And what I was struck by was how deeply this cultural picture of Trump as this. Crack businessman who builds big things and makes things happen and is an entrepreneurial spirit, how deeply that had taken hold with a lot of low information voters.

That that's just something that I think Democrats were un, were really unable to do anything about. And yet that's been pissed away too. 

MONICA: Yeah, that's right. And I think people forget that the vast majority of voters aren't reading the really long investigative pieces that show that Trump actually wasn't a very good businessman.

I mean, you can find all of the evidence. [01:08:00] You want to show that Trump inherited most of his wealth. He squandered it. His early successes as a builder or as a real estate person, really based on his father's work and, uh, he was never really the businessman he portrayed on tv, but people still had this idea, this really long held idea of him as a businessman.

That was his. Know public persona. That was really ingrained and I think that it was always gonna take a lot of work to try to chip away at that. I'm not even sure the Democratic party even really tried, and I don't know if it would've worked if they had, so, you know. People, just, a lot of people had an idea that he was a businessman.

They have an idea that the country needs a businessman or at least, uh, someone who thinks like a businessman to run it, which is really not how the country want runs. But that's a whole other story. And so, you know, he, it's kind of amazing that he really has squandered that in, um, just a little over a year.

But he ha But he has, people don't believe that about him [01:09:00] anymore. They think he's making the wrong decisions. 

GREG: And also the other cultural picture of him is as the guy who fires people, who just makes things happen really quickly, you know? And so, well, here's another line I want to read from the memo quote As it stands today, our view is that the Republican Senate majority is at risk.

Monica, I think the Senate map is still awfully hard. Democrats have to net four seats in some really tough states for them. But if there's anything that can get Democrats there, it's this kind of widespread economic distress. Can you talk about that? 

MONICA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we had talked about it a minute ago, but the truth is that there was a pretty substantial number of voters who thought, uh, at the end of the Biden administration, the economy is not where I want it to be.

Trump's a businessman and he can get us back. And so that was his huge advantage with a lot of voters in the middle, a lot of independents, a lot of, uh, swing voters to the extent that they exist. Um, and a lot [01:10:00] of people who were upset about Biden's economy and so who just. Didn't turn out to vote for Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris.

And so, you know, I think that, um, the fact that Republicans are in this position is completely attributable to Trump squandering that trust with voters. And I think it's really kind of amazing because Democrats always probably had an advantage in the house. The party that isn't in the White House has an advantage in the house, in the midterms.

Kind of one of the things you can take to the bank. For the most part, the Senate map is really difficult, but if the candidates are right, if the wins are right, if we are still stuck in Iran, if we're still stuck in a lot of conflicts globally, if tariffs are still bad, if the price of oil stays high, if people, if inflation is up, if people don't have faith that the economy is gonna get better, you really start to see where Democrats have an opening, I think.

GREG: So let's just talk a little more about that point you're making, which is that Trump created this [01:11:00] economy and Trump is the reason that Republicans are still in such bad shape on it. It really is a a, an odd situation because for the most. Presidents don't have that much control over economies, and yet Donald Trump managed to figure out a way to really damage it in just about every conceivable way.

Right. You, you mentioned the tariffs, which really had an inflationary effect for a lot of people. And then there's a immigration, which I don't think people usually connect to the economy, but that. Also had a negative economic effect. It had a negative effect on jobs by just reducing the number of immigrants in the country and so forth.

And then of course, there's the war as well, which you know, has really spiked prices and we're really stuck. He doesn't seem to be at all aware of the. That he doesn't really have a lot of leverage in this situation. He's just tweeting that he's got all the leverage and he's happy to wait for, I don't know, as long as it takes [01:12:00] until Iran finally realizes that he's the boss and concedes.

But I would, if I'm a Republican office holder, like a, a vulnerable and incumbent Republican in the house, I'm like, dude, you've got to stop this war already. We're just gonna get wiped out. It's just, can you talk a little bit about how Trump. Did this. 

MONICA: Yeah. It is one of the ironies of our time that people blamed Biden for the economy that wasn't, it was largely out of his control.

A normal president who is doing what the job of a president is, is trying to con create the conditions for a good American economy for people to share in economic growth. And is kind of hoping that private industry takes us the rest of the way because we're, you know, America's very, very much believes in its free market economy ideals, and.

What Trump has done is a number of things. He, uh, enacted tariffs unilaterally, which have had a really big impact both on, um, the price of goods global or [01:13:00] the price of goods in America, and also the impact. Of, uh, on our trading partners globally has had a, has had an effect as well, because people don't really know what's gonna happen next with Trump.

Um, some writers, uh, have called it the, uh, the tariffs, the Trump Chaos Tax, um, and you could call it the chaos economy because you know, businesses, consumers. Anyone who interacts with the economy wants to have some idea of where we're going. They wanna know if it's a good idea for them to buy a car this month, or if they're, if they should refinance their mortgage because rates are going down and they're gonna stay down.

And so, uh, you know, when you're making big decisions or even small decisions, you kind of wanna have a sense of where we are in the economy. And because Trump is so erratic, he announces policies on his. Social media platform. He keeps changing his mind about tariffs constantly. He just, uh, started wars in Venezuela and Iran kind of overnight without [01:14:00] taking his justifications to the American people.

All of those things have both real and kind of perceived effects that become real because it changes the way people interact with the economy. 

Speaker: We've just heard clips starting with

All In with Chris Hayes documenting how Republican senators are flatly lying about falling gas prices when the national average is $4.30 a gallon and rising.

Economic Update traced how closing the Strait of Hormouz turned an oil price shock into a potential quantity shock, a transition that economists say sharply increases the risk of deep economic damage worldwide.

The NPR Politics Podcast revealed that every single voter in Georgia focus groups said they feel more economically anxious now than when Trump took office, with no sense that things will improve.

The Brian Lehrer Show walked through the four stages of economic harm from the Iran war, warning that the U.S. is already in phase two as rising energy costs spread through the broader economy.

THE DAILY BLAST analyzed why the Republican Senate majority is now at risk, [01:15:00] with the Americans for Prosperity internal polling showing Trump's economic betrayal of swing voters has opened real opportunities for Democrats

Pitchfork Economics made the case for sectoral bargaining as a way to rebalance power for workers, arguing that cash assistance alone can't fix poverty when broken markets just absorb the money.

All In with Chris Hayes in part two of the discussion showed that Trump's White House ballroom project is itself polling two-to-one against, with voters on the street saying he should be fixing gas prices instead of talking to contractors.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, speaking of economic anxiety, some sad news about out new show, SOLVED! A confluence of events, mostly the recent, dramatic cut in ad revenue we’ve been dealing with, has forced us to put SOLVED! on indefinite hiatus. We love doing it and if we can see a viable path to bringing it back, we would love to. Right now, with the financial squeeze we’re feeling, we have to get back to [01:16:00] basics and focus on building Best of the Left to be the best it can be with the greatest reach it can. So, that’s where my focus is going to be and I’ll be keeping you posted on our progress as it develops. 

Regarding members supporting the show, you really are more and more of what’s getting us through right now so thanks to everyone who is a member or has made one-time donations. 

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s important to remind you that each episode of Best of the Left takes about 25 hours of human labor to produce.

So, if you get value out of the show and want to support all of the work that goes into it and get it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.

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You can message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01,

or you can simply email me to [email protected]

As for today's [01:17:00] topic,

Around the start of this year, the ad revenue that helps keep this show running started drying up quite suddenly. I’ve mentioned it on the show, and we’ve been asking listeners to become members to help fill the gap. As far as we can tell, what’s happening to us isn’t really about us. Marketing budgets are the first thing companies cut when they think the broader economy is about to turn. Companies will cut ad spend before they touch other expenditures, think about layoffs, or pretty much anything else. So when ad revenue starts disappearing across the small media ecosystem, a small show like ours might be the first to feel it but what we’re actually looking at is the leading edge of a serious potential for economic contraction that hasn’t fully arrived yet.

And someone with a lot of credibility has been telling us, in plain English, exactly what comes next.

We just played a clip from Brian Lehrer’s show featuring an economist named Mohamed El-Erian who walked through the sequence of shocks the Iran war is putting us through. [01:18:00] 

We’ve already moved through the first two phases he laid out: an energy shock, when oil prices spiked after the Strait of Hormuz closed, and an inflation shock, when those costs rolled through into everything else. 

The third is demand destruction, which is the moment when prices get high enough that people stop buying, businesses stop investing, and the economy stalls out.

The fourth is financial instability of the kind we last saw in 2008. 

This isn’t a force of nature. The war was started by Trump and Netanyahu, the Strait of Hormuz closed in retaliation, and the war keeps going because Trump keeps choosing to keep it going while all of the predictable consequences are playing themselves out.

Republicans in Congress have, with a few exceptions, been choosing not to stop him. When phase three lands, we’re going to know exactly who’s responsible. 

There’s an active legislative fight happening over all this. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has forced six War Powers Resolution votes in the Senate trying to [01:19:00] require congressional approval for further military action. The April 30th vote failed 47 to 50, but for the first time, Susan Collins of Maine voted with the Democrats. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been voting with them all along. 

In the House, Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie have a bipartisan version that lost 219 to 212 in early March. Meanwhile Trump keeps asking for more funding to keep the war going, refusing that supplemental is the cleanest way to starve the war.

If you want to channel pressure into those votes, many organizations are doing great work right now. Just to mention three coalitions comprised of dozens of organizations; The Friends Committee on National Legislation at fcnl.org organized a sixty-plus organization faith coalition against the earlier funding request and has been doing antiwar lobbying for decades. 

Win Without War at winwithoutwar.org is a progressive foreign policy coalition with active take-action tools on the War Powers Resolutions and [01:20:00] the supplemental funding fight. And the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee at adc.org has a single streamlined form that will contact your senators and your representative on both the Kaine and Massie-Khanna resolutions in about thirty seconds.

If you want to support direct action, About Face: Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace held a 62-arrest action inside the Capitol Rotunda on April 22nd, one of the largest veteran-led civil disobedience actions in years so check out what they’re cooking next. 

And the National Iranian American Council is the place to amplify Iranian voices in this fight rather than letting Iranians get spoken for by people who’ve never set foot there.

And while we’re pressuring people in Washington, we should also be getting our communities ready for what’s coming. Phase three doesn’t hit everyone equally. The people who’ll get hit hardest are the people already squeezed on housing and groceries and medicine, with the least margin to absorb a shock. 

Mutual aid [01:21:00] networks have been quietly building infrastructure for years that’s about to become a lot more relevant. If your city has a community fridge, a free pantry, a tool library, or a debt clinic, that infrastructure is going to matter when a recession hits.

Tenant organizing matters here too, because phase three usually comes with a wave of evictions, and tenants who are already organized weather that wave a lot better than tenants who aren’t. 

The Tenant Union Federation at tenantfederation.org can connect you with a tenant union in your city, or help you start one if there isn’t one yet. The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee at workerorganizing.org will help you organize your workplace for free, which becomes a lot more important when companies start using a recession as cover for layoffs they were already planning on. 

And The Debt Collective is organizing student debtors, which becomes a lot more relevant when interest costs start eating what’s left of household budgets.

When economic crisis hits, we usually figure out what hit [01:22:00] us afterward. This time, we see it coming and so we have a brief window to get ready and to make the people who chose this war and all the fallout from it bear the political cost.

And as another quick reminder, we here at the show are acutely feeling the impacts of this economic turmoil and, by far, the best way for us to gain some stability is to be able to depend more on members chipping in a few buck each month or annually so that we’re less dependent on the fickle nature of ad revenue. For all the ways to support us, go to bestoftheleft.com/support, link in the show notes. 

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, The Pump and the War

Followed by Section B, Lies, Spin, and the Roaring Economy

Section C, The Boomcession

And Section D, What This Costs Real People

Yesterday, white House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said this, rest assured to the American people their a recent increase in oil and gas [01:23:00] prices is temporary and this operation will result in lower gas prices in the long term. Once the national national security objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully achieved, Americans will see oil and gas prices drop rapidly, potentially even lower than they were prior to the start of the operation.

A lot there, including some promises from the press Secretary Domenico, what do you make about this messaging strategy on the gas prices or on the oil prices? Well, I think they're trying to keep their base, in line and, keep the poll numbers as we've seen them where, eight in 10 Republicans continue to back this president continue to back the war in Iran.

Right now, they're giving Trump a long leash and they've been giving him a very long leash for a very long time. But, if you've got. Oil and gas prices that continue to stay high, that is gonna be something that's gonna test a lot of people's patients, with this president, with this administration.

And I think what you're hearing there is a lot of pleading for trust and patience. It almost it. [01:24:00] Gets rid of any plausible deniability also from President Trump. He says right there that this was part of the expectation. He is basically telling the American people that, yes, I knew gas prices were going up, and basically this is a sacrifice you have to make.

Whether he really knew that or not, or if he's just saying that now because it's what's happening and he wants to make it sound like that was the expectation. He never sold that to people. Never told the American people, never readied them for that. Potential thing, especially considering a few days before he was touting how much lower oil and gas prices had been, since he'd come into office at the State of the Union.

I, it's not a big stretch to assume that an attack on Iran would result in higher oil prices. That, that it's, that's a pretty obvious, night follows day sequence. When Karoline Leavitt talks about. Prices coming back down. As soon as the national security objectives are met. We still don't really know what the national security objectives of this war are and how long, really would it take for gas prices to come down?

Because it feels like [01:25:00] they go up fast, but they don't necessarily come down quickly. That's usually the pattern up, up like a rocket, down, like a feather. And it's not just gas prices we we're. That's obviously the most, we see it when you're driving down the street on the signs, but there are a lot of other impacts of high oil prices, right, Scott?

Absolutely. For one thing, not only does a lot of oil and natural gas pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but a lot of the sources of the fertilizer comes from the Middle East and the, the Farm Bureau Federation was out just yesterday with a warning that this is coming at a very bad time for American farmers who are just getting ready to.

Enter their planning season and they're seeing their input costs go up again, as they already were because of tariffs. At the same time, their crop prices are down. So that's very tough on farmers. And then the other thing is not only has gasoline prices gone up, but diesel fuel prices have risen even more sharply, and that affects the cost of transporting everything that moves by truck or train, which is basically everything.

So if these high diesel prices are sustained. That is going to, again, put more upward pressure [01:26:00] on the price of goods and more upward pressure on inflation overall. How does this interact with the tariffs? It's kind of been hard to keep track a little bit. I know the Supreme Court paused some tariffs, but, president Trump end up promising more of them.

How, I guess, are these inflationary pressures we're talking about now interacting, or could they interact with where we've landed on tariffs? Well, it was important that the Supreme Court a couple of weeks ago struck down about half of the tariffs that President Trump had ordered, but he did move quickly, as you say, to replace them with other import taxes using different statutes where the President's authority is a little bit more clear and and spelled out by Congress.

So the overall tariff rate. Today is a little bit lower than it was before the Supreme Court ruling, but it's still a lot higher than it was before President Trump went back to the White House. All of that has had a meaningful effect on inflation and prices. It's not been outrageous because it, it only affects imported goods.

It doesn't affect. Homegrown goods, and it doesn't affect services, but it's been meaningful. You [01:27:00] can see the price of imported goods is higher than it would otherwise be. The other thing that's happened is last week the Court of International Trade said that the government has to give back the money that it collected illegally from those tariffs that were in place for the better part of a year.

And that's a pretty big refund. It's gonna be $166 billion that's gonna go back to the US businesses that paid those tariffs. Another key component of the economy, Domenico, is the labor market, which you mentioned a second ago. This was something that Trump was aiming to bolster with his tariff policy by getting, American companies to be motivated to build factories in the US and and hire people.

What have we seen on the labor market front during his second term? Well, I think it's been pretty stunning. When you just look at the. Numbers for the jobs reports that have come out. There's been a softening really in the labor market, which has not gotten as much attention. And remember, if you wanna buy things, that are going up in price, then you need a job to be able to do that.

And there are real warning signs there. Just in the past year during the Trump [01:28:00] presidency, we've seen five months where we've seen negative jobs, reports where the country's reported losing jobs. Before that there were four straight years. Of, positive jobs reports except for January of 2025, which was partially Biden and partially Trump.

And, we've talked about cost of living and high prices being the things that, make it difficult for people to feel like the economy's going in a good direction. Well, if the labor market softening. You need a job to pay for those things. Yeah. And this really creates a headache for the Federal Reserve because, when, when the job market is weak, the Fed would like to lower interest rates and kind of go the economy.

But when inflation is high, the Fed wants to keep interest rates relatively high to, to bring prices under control. And right now they're really caught in this, this tug of war between, on the one hand, a very weak job market. We saw a net loss of 92,000 jobs in February and. Inflation that's moving in the wrong direction and it's moving in the wrong direction [01:29:00] faster as a result of tariffs and now this war with Iran.

Yeah, it's interesting to see this impact people differently, but when the cost of debt goes up, you see credit card debt increases and that really impacts low income consumers. But Scott. We're also seeing a pretty substantial drop in the stock market, which we know impacts high income people. The people who own the majority of stocks in the us.

We've seen the S&P 500 drop something like two and a half percent in the last month. Do you have any sense from investors on why that is or how that's connected to all, everything we've been talking about? Well, a lot of that is also connected to the war. We've, we've seen a bit of a sell off since the war began.

Businesses are worried that, if people are having to spend more money at the gas pump, they're gonna have less money to spend on everything else in their lives. Corporations are, are feeling the effects of this, both the, the. Cost increase and the, the weakening demand for, for other products?

I will say that the, the stock market remains volatile. We saw a big jump, earlier this week when the president seemed to suggest that the war was almost over. Investors, lept at that opportunity and, [01:30:00] and, and bought stocks. But then there were hopes were dashed when the president elaborated more and it wasn't really clear how much longer the war might go on.

But investors are, are watching all this with some nervousness for sure. I do want to get into how this is all gonna play out politically too, because this does seem to put Republican candidates in a little bit of a bind. President Trump ran on the idea of lowering prices in 2024. He has not really sold this war to the American people.

Domenico, how do you think Republican candidates are going to talk about cost of living issues? Because it seems unavoidable, ahead of this year's midterms. Yeah, I think that those, those Republican candidates in those house races, in swing districts, they're in a real. Bind because, Trump has proved toxic with independence in the past year.

They are a key group in trying to win those districts. He kind of has been trying to sell to them to talk about culture issues, whether it's, being against trans rights or talking [01:31:00] about immigration and how to change talking about immigration because his deportation tactics are also unpopular.

There's only 40% approval. On immigration in our poll for Trump. And we've seen majorities say that federal immigration agents have been going too far and been too harsh. So overall, I think Trump again believes that the core of why he was elected was things like immigration and culture, and he wants Republican candidates to continue to stress those things.

The problem is those things don't play in. Swing districts as well as the economy does because that is the top concern and that's where you see this persuasion as, something that's, that's possible where we've seen fewer and fewer persuadable voters, and we know two of those groups, Latinos and independents, have heavily moved away from the president in this past year.

We've been talking on the podcast for the last couple years about how Americans are struggling with rising prices all over the economy.

I'm thinking about housing [01:32:00] and energy costs, medical bills, everything. How do we have any sense on how people are receiving now yet another price increase? Well, they're not happy about it. I don't know who would be happy about going to the pump and, paying more. And it's certainly, something that affects people who make less money more, right?

Because everyone pays the same at the pump. And look, the economy and prices, like you said, have been the top concern for people for years at this point. And people say Trump is not focused enough on it. In polling, majorities are saying that in our latest N-P-R-P-B-S news, Marist Poll, 35%.

Only give Trump a positive job approval rating when it comes to his handling of the economy. That's the worst we've ever seen, and that was something that was always seen as a, as a strength of Trump's in his first administration. And you've got a majority of people, 56%, saying that they're against this war in the first place That.

The administration didn't make a huge case for getting into this war. And now people are paying the price at the pump. The longer this goes on, and Scott can tell you better, [01:33:00] the more prices are likely to go up and the angrier people are gonna be, the clock is only ticking closer to the midterm elections.

Yeah, president Trump campaigned on a promise that he was gonna lower prices. For the most part, the cost of living has continued to creep up on his watch. Gasoline had been one of the few things he could point to and say, look, gasoline prices are lower than they were. Before I came into office, and that was true for, for most of the last year.

So for most of the last year, relatively cheap gasoline has been a counterweight to the overall inflationary trend. But now gasoline prices are higher today than they were this time last year. So gasoline is actually pushing inflation up. And if these high prices that we're seeing at the pump right now are sustained, they're gonna push inflation back above 3% by the end of next month.

I also feel like, the president doesn't have complete control over every aspect of the US economy, but Domenico, because he has been so personally involved, in the decision to go to war in Iran, do you feel like [01:34:00] Americans are really going to pin, the gas prices issue on him more than maybe, other things like the stock market?

Well, I think that. He's already been suffering the consequences for, higher prices, and people not having a good outlook on the economy. Just overall people's feelings about the economy have been very negative. The labor market has been softening, and people's views on how they feel they're paying more at, grocery stores and all that hasn't really.

Abated since the COVID Pandemic. And they blamed Biden pretty heavily when he was in office. They're blaming Trump while he's in office and they're saying that his policies Trump's policies, a majority are saying are making things worse. And that's in particular because of those tariffs. Scott, is there anything the Trump administration can do to bring down the price of oil?

You know, it's a, it's a global energy market. It's, it's, it's very difficult for the president to do anything in the United States that's gonna have a meaningful effect on the global energy market, when there's been a disruption of the scale that [01:35:00] we've seen as a result of this war. And yeah, you can talk about how inflation went up on Biden's watch and whether.

You know, additional spending by Congress was played a role in that. Whether some of the policy choices that, president Biden made contributed to higher inflation, there's no question about who's responsible for the rise in, in oil prices and rising in gasoline prices. This was absolutely a. The president's decision to go to war with Iran that has, has caused this spike at the pump.

And presidents often get more blame and credit than they deserve when it comes to the economy. But on tariffs and on oil prices, these are two things that people can clearly point to Trump as the reason for seeing those things, be more problematic. And it has to be really destabilizing for Trump because.

It during his first term when he left office, he had a 50%, approval rating when it came to his handling of the economy, and it was never below 47% in our N-P-R-P-B-S News Marist Poll. So this is a totally new position for him to have to try to figure out how to deal with, and his party are gonna be the ones [01:36:00] who are gonna deal with the.

With the political consequences 'cause he's not on the ballot. Those frontline republicans in swing districts are. That's so interesting because basically what you're saying is his numbers on the economy were outpacing his overall approval rating always in in, always. Whereas now they're actually lower than his overall approval rating.

Is that right? That's right. And when he came into office, by April was the first time we started, polling on his economic handling because he was starting to implement those tariffs, it was already at 39%. So he has been below 40% on his handling of the economy, all the way back to April of last year.

Well, Scott, the president and the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, everyone in the administration has insisted this is not going to be a forever war, that this is all gonna be over, at least. From the United States' involvement in the next few weeks, will the price of oil just come down after that?

You know, if hostility in the Middle East ends, it's certainly possible that oil prices could go back down to where they were. That won't [01:37:00] happen overnight. It, it will take some time. Oil prices tend to go down more slowly than they go up. Same thing with gasoline prices, but look. Right now you have countries like Kuwait and Iraq that don't have a lot of, onshore oil storage capacity.

And because the tankers that they would usually rely on to carry that oil away to, to markets around the world are not making their usual passage, some of those countries are having to actually shut in oil production. And once they take that step, then we're talking about at least a, a matter of weeks, if not longer, to restart that production.

So. Even if hostilities were to cease tomorrow, you wouldn't see oil go back down to the $60 a barrel range overnight. It would eventually come down. But, but the damage is gonna be done. And you're gonna see American people asking, what did we gain from all this? If, if at the end of the day you say, okay, we have a more stable and more peaceful Middle East, maybe that's worth a month or two of higher gasoline prices.

But if you wind up with [01:38:00] an Iranian regime that is. More or less the the same regime, just a generation younger. If you wind up with the Iranian revolutionary guard that's still in place and calling the shots, then I think people are gonna say, what? What did we spend all that extra money for? We saw Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, for example, on CNN yesterday, saying that, people might have to make sacrifices.

Well. I think that a lot of people feel like they've been making sacrifices for years when it comes to the economy, and they're certainly not looking to make sacrifices, on having to pay more at the pump without knowing what the goals are long term or what they're gonna get out of, in Iran where the administration, again, never made a case to the American people for getting into this war in the first place.

WOLFF: When the price of oil goes up, all kinds of adjustments are made, and people should understand that those adjustments are not all reversible. In other words, what that means is after you adjust [01:39:00] to something suddenly becoming much more expensive.

You can't or don't want to go back to how things were, even when the prices, if they do come down. Let me give you some examples. China is helping Cuba. Cuba has been suffering from an embargo impose imposed by the United States for the last 70 years, but. But more recently, no oil could get in to Cuba, and they've suffered blackouts because they can't generate energy since they used to rely on oil.

Well, what did the Chinese ship them? Solar panels. To remind you, China is the world's foremost producer [01:40:00] of solar energy. They've invested huge amounts of money, huge amounts of scientific research and personnel to developing solar panels to harness the energy of the sun. Cuba, as you know, is an island in the middle of the ocean.

And he is therefore blessed with sunlight, an enormous amount of the time. They need, they should have had solar energy all along, but now between the embargo of the United States, Mr. Trump wants a victory in Cuba and the rising price. Even if they could get oil. Cuba solves a longstanding problem at the same time that it solves an [01:41:00] immediate problem.

It becomes energy independent in relationship to oil and gas. It will use the sun, and China is in a position to do that and China.

And the United States cannot at least not yet intervene and block the Chinese because if you're having trouble winning a war against Iran, please think long and hard about a war against China. Right. You understand that just as much as any general or admiral or anyone else in the military. [01:42:00] So you, Cuba will never go back to buying oil the way it once had to.

That's the irreversible change. Let me give you another example. Petroleum is the major source of fertilizer. It's a long, complicated story, but if the price of oil goes up, so does the price of fertilizer and as the price of fertilizer goes up, the economics of farming collapse. Much of farming around the world is a low margin enterprise.

You don't make high rates of profit. You barely make it. Well if you're barely making it on a farm somewhere in the world, and suddenly the price of the fertilizer zooms up because it depends on [01:43:00] petroleum. You're done. You throw in the towel, you don't plant the corn or the wheat or the soybeans or the vegetables, and you take a job in a town nearby, as for as your forefathers in the farming business have been doing for decades.

Anyway, that's not reversible. When the price of oil and maybe even fertilizer comes back down, will they quit the city job and resume farming? Some will, but many won't. It's not reversible. And you know what it means? Rising food prices. But we knew that anyway, didn't we? Because since food has to go by truck.

From the farm to the wholesaler to the retailer, so you can buy it in the store. [01:44:00] That truck depends on diesel fuel. Before the war in Iran began, it averaged three 50 a gallon. It now averages five and a quarter a gallon. You understand the price of food was gonna go up just to help. Pay for the transport, but now it'll have to pay for the rising price of food because food is going to become scarcer, 'cause of the cost of the fertilizer You understand? We live in a world now where everything is intertwined in this way, and the therefore the cost of the war in Iran is, excuse me, far beyond just the cost. Of the ships and the planes and the bombs and the missiles of all the people directly involved.

Speaker: Next, Section B, Lies, [01:45:00] Spin, and the Roaring Economy

BRIAN: And before we get more into the blockade, professor Ian, let's just stay on the Friday inflation report a little bit more. You wrote that consumer confidence has dropped to a record low, further illustrating the widening gap between Main Street and Wall Street. How would you describe that gap 

GUEST: if you start with Wall Street?

Stock prices are. Basically unchanged for the year, and they are back very near where their level at the beginning of the war. So if you, if you had just gone to sleep at the beginning of the year and woken up, you wouldn't have thought that there's a major war going on that's disrupting oil energy, that is pushing energy prices higher, that is risking, what's called stagflation, higher inflation, lower growth.

You don't see it in the stock market, but go to Main Street [01:46:00] and you see a few things. You see, of course, people worried about higher gas prices, which hits the most vulnerable households particularly hard. You see young people now staying at higher mortgage rates than they had before. And you see a significant loss in confidence.

The University of Michigan issues every month, surveys of households, and they ask them two questions. The first has to do, how confident are you about the current economic situation and the outlook? And second, what are your expectations for inflation? And what we saw in the report issued last week is the fall to a wicked low.

In terms of people's confidence driven, both by how they feel about the current situation and how they feel about the future. And on the inflation side, we've seen a [01:47:00] big jump as as to what people expect inflation will be in the next year. Now I have to add two qualifiers. One, there's nothing automatic about the link between the surveys and how people act.

Yeah, normally you would expect if you are that worried about the future, you would stop spending. But that link is pretty weak. And the second link, the second qualification you will hear is any other survey is impacted by the politics. And the polarized politics that we're in right now. So when you break down between Republicans and Democrats, you get very different results.

BRIAN: Presumably Republicans are more optimistic about the economy than Democrats. 

GUEST: I would put it slightly differently, Brian. They're less pessimistic about the economy than Democrats. Ah, the worry about the economy is clearly there is the extent of the worry. 

BRIAN: Are you [01:48:00] saying though, that when we hear these reports in the news about consumer confidence level levels and we get them every month, that they're really just a measure of people's feelings and they are economically meaningless?

GUEST: Meaningless is a strong word, I would say. They provide you some insight, but no one should act on them alone. They have to be combined by actual indicators. Not of what I say, but what I do. Because the translation between what I say and what I do is not perfect. And we've seen this historically over and over again.

BRIAN: You mentioned stagflation. Which is slow growth coupled with high inflation. Usually inflation is, something that's produced by rapid growth. A bad side effect of rapid growth, though growth is good generally, when the economy isn't growing and inflation is. Ballooning. Anyway, that's stagflation.

And our first caller has a stagflation question, [01:49:00] George and Riverdale. On line one on Stagflation, George on WNYC with economist Mohamed El-Erian. Hi, 

CALLER 2: good morning. Gentlemen, Mr. El-Erian, I've been following your career ever since you ran one of the world's great bond funds, before you went on a present career and always been storied, and I've always enjoyed listening to you.

My concern is, of course, the possibility that the Fed will face its worst horror, which we know is stagflation. Last time we had it was in the late seventies. Where you had a stagnant economy, then a high inflation, and the feds supposed cures, worked against one another. What is the chance of our running into the same kind of stagflation again, obviously we don't know what ultimate decisions are going to happen or what's going to happen with the current war in Iran, but what would you assess are the chances that such things could happen to create stagflation?

BRIAN: Thank you, George. 

GUEST: Thank. Thank you, George. Thank you for your kind words and, and [01:50:00] you're absolutely right. You called it the worst horror, and it is the worst horror for central banks. So, as, as George, hinted, the Federal Reserve has what's called a dual mandate. It is designed to deliver price stability, so low inflation and maximum employment.

When you get stagflation, both your mandates are threatened, and yet the solution is very different depending on which mandate you wanna respond to. As George, pointed out, if you wanna respond to high inflation, you raise interest rates. If you wanna respond to a threat to employment, you lower interest rates so you can get stuck.

In these competing claims on your policy tools and end up either paralyzed or making one or [01:51:00] other mistake. So, so right now if we continue, if the war continues and its economic effects, start multiplying. George is absolutely right. It will be the worst horror for the Fed. We get indications of what the Fed is thinking because they.

Publish the minutes of the deliberation and right now, while they worried, they're worried about the uncertainty. While they would completely agree with George that that both mandates are threatened, they are more inclined right now and this may change, but they are more inclined if they have to respond to respond to the employment side, then to respond to the inflation side.

And because of that, the market is pricing. One weight cut this year. Not a weight hike, but a weight cut. But as George says, if we continue down this road of disruptions to energy prices, broader inflation [01:52:00] growth, starting to get threatened. Then it, it is gonna be a really tough situation for the Federal Reserve.

All this in the midst of a major leadership change to make life even more complicated 

BRIAN: You, you said earlier, you mentioned the widening gap between Main Street and Wall Street. Why do you think Wall Street has been so resilient? If people on Main Street are beginning to take these hits that we feel in our lives, wall Street hanging near its record highs, is that unrealistic optimism or a calculation that even if consumers' pockets get hit, corporate profits won't or something else?

GUEST: Yeah, and, and Ryan, there's a number of things in play here. One is yes, the stock market is inherently optimistic. Compare the stock market to the bond market. You'd think that their biases would be similar. They're not, the bond market is not back to where it was at the beginning of the war, but the, the equity market.

Is virtually there. [01:53:00] So, so there is some inherent optimism, some inherent biases. And it's of course helped by the fact that if you're optimistic and you sound optimistic, you attract more investment dollars, that you get paid a fee on this. So, so, so there's a whole structure that supports, that optimism 

BRIAN: until a bubble bursts, right?

GUEST: Correct. And, and you have the classic, classic quote by the, who was a then the CEO of Citigroup, in August of 2008, just before the global financial crisis. And he, he, he gave the following image. He said at some point the music will stop and it will be problematic, but as long as the music is playing, we are dancing.

Okay. And that, and, and of course he lost his job a month later when, when the music stopped. Ah, the second argument is that what normally mitigates risks in a [01:54:00] portfolio, the bond prices gold, the risk mitigators have not worked. So the typical manager says, well, if the risk mitigator isn't working, I might as well stay in equities because I get the upside.

And then the third argument. That, that we see is this notion that investors are paid to take risk. And if you had done that, every single dip in the last 10 years has been a buying opportunity. So what we've seen is we've seen this conditioning become so deep that the dips are less frequent. And smaller in magnitude because people see it not as it's signaling a yellow light.

Be careful. They see it as signaling a buying opportunity, and that's why you get this incredible decoupling of the financial markets, the equity markets in particular from the rest of the economy. 

GOLDY: And as you point out in the [01:55:00] report, it's part of an integrated system, or at least was initially intended to be part of an integrated system. And that we've lost those other parts and we treat them all separately.

It's not just that it's market failures that create the conditions of poverty, it's actually the market working how markets work. 

GUEST: That's exactly right. I think the argument I'm making in this report that I think is likely to ruffle the most feathers is an argument that the safety net is sometimes inadvertently subsidizing the same corporations that are creating economic precarity in the first place.

And I know that this can feel uncomfortable because millions of people rely on these programs every day, and their lives are made better by these programs every day. Mm-hmm. But I think when we take a big step back. The safety net functions as an inadvertent form of corporate welfare, and I'd like to point to a couple ways that that happens.

One is that the safety net lets some companies offload their costs onto the public, so when wages are insufficient and jobs are insecure. People still [01:56:00] need to eat. They still need healthcare. They need a roof over their head, and it's public programs that are filling that gap. And effectively what that means is that employers get to offload part of the cost of sustaining their workforce onto the public.

It's this hidden subsidy for low wage and high precarity business models. And I look at a place like Walmart. One in four SNAP dollars are now spent at Walmart. They are an enormous corporate beneficiary of the program. And at the same time, Walmart itself is one of the most prevalent employers of individuals who use food stamps to make ends meet.

And at the same time, Walmart has a long history of preventing union organizing among its workers. So SNAP is doing a lot of really helpful things for Walmart, and I don't think that that's the way we want our anti-poverty programs to operate. 

GOLDY: Right. And it's not just Snap, of course, the earned income tax credit, that is a direct subsidy to employers.

You only get it if you have a poverty wage job. You have to be working at a job that doesn't create an income sufficient to support you to get it. So it's [01:57:00] people that that work at low wage employers like Walmart, who. Qualify for the EITC? 

GUEST: Well, there's a long and spicy history of debating whether the EITC subsidizes low road employers.

I think the argument I wanna make is it's not just in the context of the labor market, that the safety net is providing these subsidies to corporate actors who are really creating economic precarity. Let's look at Medicare Advantage for a moment. 

GOLDY: Mm-hmm. 

GUEST: Medicare Advantage was created under the argument that the private sector could deliver healthcare more efficiently than the government could.

And, we were approaching a, a place where a majority of Medicare recipients, are actually receiving benefits through Medicare Advantage rather than through direct Medicare. But in 2024, Medicare paid over 80 billion more to Medicare Advantage Insurance for the cost of coverage than if those same seniors had just been enrolled in traditional Medicare and at the same time.

Medicare Advantage Marketplace has become completely [01:58:00] concentrated. There are just two insurers, UnitedHealth and Humana, that now carry 40% of all Medicare Advantage plans. And these same Medicare Advantage companies are being investigated by the DOJ for engaging in really egregious anti-competitive practices.

So I think we have to ask ourselves funding that is supposed to. Meet the needs of low income people or economically precarious people is really being siphoned up by corporate actors in our economy who have found ways to make their interactions with the safety net very profitable. Part of your critique is that there's been a divorce between, social policy and market policy in terms of the safety net, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that means and why it's important that they not be divided.

I think one of the things neoliberalism has taught us to think is that markets are natural and they're inevitable, and then social policy should come behind those markets and do a little bit of cleanup for anyone who's fallen through the cracks, but that's a political construction. Markets are shaped by rules.

And I think [01:59:00] what's happened over the last several decades is that we really systematically deregulated and restructured markets to favor capital while relegating social policy to this compensatory model. And this shows up in really basic ways in the way we organize policymaking. So. Federal and state systems that provide subsidies into a marketplace through safety Net programs generally don't coordinate or share strategies with the regulators of those same marketplaces.

So for example, an employer who has been found to have engaged in wage theft against their own employees can still receive federal workforce training investments. That disconnect between social policy and market policy, I think is making the safety net really much less effective than it could be if we had shared market strategies and social policy strategies that we were bringing to bear in the sectors of our economy that create conditions of poverty as opposed to focusing on regulations and programs as these separate functions of the state.

So the title of the report, it's very catchy from from Safety [02:00:00] Net to Power Base. Could you talk a little bit about, about what the difference between a safety net and a power base is? Part of my argument is that if we look back historically to the origins of our safety net, we find many of these programs are built in the New Deal era.

And the New Deal is really, it's not just a set of new programs, it's a power rebalancing project. FDR uses market regulations. Public options where markets had failed and social insurance programs. He uses these tools together to create counterweights to concentrated economic power. As that framework eroded as New deal liberalism gets replaced with neoliberalism, we really lost the idea that governments could actively shape markets in the public interest.

And so I think part of our task is to really restore the power balancing promise of the New Deal, but for the conditions we face in the 21st century. And I think there are a couple ways that we could start thinking about how to make this shift. The first is. In so many [02:01:00] contexts, private subsidies into unregulated markets is not working, and we should be building strong public options.

So some of the most impoverishing parts of our economy are the care sector, childcare, healthcare, elder care. These are just crushing families budgets, and I think we've learned time and time again that the markets are not really capable of serving the interests of low income people. In care sectors, so we need public option childcare.

We need public option healthcare, we need public option elder care. I think one of the biggest sectors where we need a public option is actually in financial services. James Baldwin famously observed how extremely expensive it is to be poor, and that's true. Poor people get hosed by credit card fees and overdraft fees, and we need public options, public option banking to give people a better option for financial services.

I think another way that we might shift from a safety net to a power base is to really build towards a system that is capable of planning and making investments. So instead of a [02:02:00] reactive safety net that catches people if they fall, we need a safety net that is actively monitoring the economy for disruption and planning ahead.

And I just think about the magnitude of disruption that may be on the horizon as ai. Raises the potential for job displacement. Our safety net has almost no tools to proactively mm-hmm. Manage and transition this potential disruption in our economy. That's a real problem and it makes people very vulnerable.

GOLDY: Right. Well, one of the things we, we've known for a long time is coming, for example, is long haul trucking. Is going to be eventually, it's not yet, but it's going to be displaced by autonomous vehicles and there are millions of truck drivers in this nation. It's one of the largest job categories in many states, and we know it's coming and we are doing nothing about it.

From the perspective of the workers who are going to lose their jobs. 

GUEST: It's exactly right 

GOLDY: and that's what you mean when you talk about our system being too passive, 

GUEST: right? The way our system would work today is, [02:03:00] let's say tens of thousands of long haul truckers start losing their job because of the adoption of autonomous vehicles.

What we have available for them is unemployment insurance, which is time limited. It's a system that is already struggling to keep pace. Just a huge number of unemployed people cannot actually access unemployment insurance. That's especially true for gig workers, and we have very few tools to help people transition or upskill or participate in another part of the economy.

And this idea that. We should just wait for people to get hosed by economic transition and then offer them piecemeal support. The rate of change in our economy, I think demands something that's much more active. You actually make the case that when you strip people of economic power, it creates the conditions for an authoritarian state, purely hypothetically.

Of course. And I was wondering if you could, if you could talk a little bit more about that link, how that, how the one feeds into the other. I think this relationship is just so basic. If people's primary interaction with the government. [02:04:00] Is trying to get safety net assistance and the safety nets treats them with disrespect and it's hard to get the help you need and you feel like your social status and your economic status is diminishing and the government is not there to help you.

Why would you continue to have faith in that system? So, I argue that feelings of economic powerlessness really are a breeding ground for right-wing populism. And there's actually really compelling evidence that when people feel like they're experiencing regional decline or a loss of economic standing, they're more likely to support anti-democratic movements because those movements promise to tear the system down and to restore people's sense of pride and prosperity.

But I think the other connection here between wealth inequality and threats to our democracy is just that we've wrongly treated. Money, like speech in this country. And so, wealthy people just have more power in our democracy than poor people do. And that's a pretty frontal threat, I think, to longstanding democratic legitimacy.

[02:05:00] I think that it seems to me that this economy is amazing for rich people, people who have a lot of capital. And in fact, we can see in 2025, billionaire wealth grew three times faster than the average rate of the previous five years. And wealthy households hold a massive portion of the nation's wealth and.

This, I think is the tipping point that our economy actually faces right now. And I can tell you that in Minnesota, a lot of people are telling me that it is harder and harder for them to afford the basics. They aren't rich, they don't have enough money to pay their bills, to pay their doctor's bills. So I wanna look at this with you for a few minutes and I wanna, I wanna start with inflation.

So. Last week, president Trump said that gas prices are, quote, not very high, and quote, we're having some fake inflation because of the fuel. So understanding what you've been saying about data and measurement and all of that, let me just ask you, do you think that gas prices going up [02:06:00] 20% is fake inflation?

Senator the gas prices, beef prices, eggs, milk, and the rest they move. And when they move in the wrong direction, American people are hurting by, it's, there's no question about it's, that's right. American people feel it. It doesn't, it's not fake to them, it's money that they don't have in their pocket because gas is up.

20%. I think my, my constituents would say that that inflation is real and not fake. Okay, so let's look at unemployment. At the state of the Union, the president said, quote, the economy is the roaring economy. Excuse me, this is the quote. The roaring economy is roaring like never before. So do you agree with that statement?

Is that how you see the economy that is roaring, like never roaring before? So, so Senator, if I can clarify two things. One, there's a difference between the change in prices and inflation. The change in prices happen in a market economy when inflation moves up. That's 'cause the Fed had something to do with it.

Now on, on the state of the economy, [02:07:00] I would say that the broad contours of the economy are improving the potential of the economy. The real results of the economy are improving, but I think it can improve more. And I think, in the years ahead, I think the economy's potential is strengthening. So, the reality is that the economic data, understanding what you're saying about economic data being not imperfect, that there was almost zero job growth in 2025.

And so that looks to me like not a roaring economy. It looks like a weak economy, which is what my constituents are telling me back in Minnesota.

GREG: Well related to all this, one of the things that's interesting in this memo is it calls on Republicans to focus much more on the economy. But everyone knows at this point that Trump isn't mentally capable of focusing on anything really, except for maybe the ballroom, but he certainly doesn't have much of an interest in the economy.

You can just visibly see that at these events that they try to set up where Trump's supposed to, refocus everyone on the economy and you just can't do it. But even if he were [02:08:00] able to, he. Couldn't do it effectively. 'cause of what we're talking about here and what's just so amazing to me about this is that Republicans all know that Trump is no longer a credible voice in the economy, but they just have to pretend not to know that.

They have to say, we really want the president to talk more about the economy, even though they know it wouldn't do them any good. 

MONICA: Yeah, I, I don't know, why they, I feel like they still are relying on Trump to be kind of this magic, interlocutor with the American people, that he has some ability to kind of sway them.

But, and, and some of this too, is the inability of the Republican party to come to terms with the ways that their other. Policy priorities do clash with the economy. I, you mentioned before, and I, I didn't comment on it before, but I, should, is that a, a lot of the immigration policy is hurting the economy.

There was just an American tax fairness report that came out today that a lot of the industries that rely on Latino labor, that employ a lot of Latinos are suffering because [02:09:00] immigration enforcement and immigration policy is so draconian and up in the air, and so. All of the things that Republicans have concentrated on that they wanted Trump to concentrate on are also hurting the economy.

And so at some point they have to say, we are actually doing this. Our president is doing this, and we are doing this with our policies. It's not just a. A side effect, or it's not just circumstances, it's, it's our policies. 

GREG: Right. And I think the, the, the report you just talked about on immigration is really important because it highlights how Trumpism as an ideology is getting us here as well.

Because for Trump and for Stephen Miller and for the anti-immigrant nativists around him and so forth, they think that having fewer immigrants in the country is an inherently good thing. It's intrinsically good, even if. The negative effects on the economy persist right to them. It's worth it. It's so important to have fewer immigrants in the country that they're willing to have lower job growth as a result.

They [02:10:00] actually kind of almost say that openly. And so there you have the ideology of Trumpism having a directly negative impact on everybody's material fortunes basically, right? 

MONICA: Yeah. And I think the fact that they say it openly that the effects of their policies are having such an obvious impact on impact on people's lives.

People are seeing it in their local economies. Local business owners are having trouble because their, employees are disappearing. Or, people aren't buying because they're, worried about what's gonna happen down the road. That makes it clear to voters in a way that nothing else.

Possibly could have, and I think that that's, gonna be hard for Republicans too, because they were trying to do doublespeak for a long time before just to say, oh, we need, immigrants are taking your jobs, which was part of the rhetoric from the Trump campaign at least since 2015.

It's been core of his identity. I think people have to see now that that's not true. 

GREG: Yeah, that [02:11:00] has certainly been disproven. So just to go big picture and talk about your reporting, there's this nugget in the memo that I wanna bring up. It hails Trump's tax cut as a landmark piece of legislation, and then in the next sentence, admits that people's economic concerns are really profound.

Of course, that tax cut represented a massive upward transfer of wealth, which is exactly what Americans for Prosperity the, the authors of this memo. Wants, right. And so what that tells us is that people are struggling under the economy that the plutocrats want. It seems like there's a big opening for a more populist economic program from Democrats now.

Right. You, you did some reporting on this. Is there a way that Democrats could talk about a new direction entirely? 

MONICA: Yeah. I did reporting on earlier this week on a report from Way to Win. It's a, a left-leaning strategic group that does polling and strategy for Democrats. And, one of the things that they [02:12:00] found was that messages that concentrated on, a populist economic message saying, we need to.

Tax corporations, we need to make, the economy fairer for the working class. Messages that really did sway people and people are open to that messaging because they can see now I think they can feel and see that there's an economy. Right now where the wealthy are looking out for each other, the tax cuts are helping the wealthy that some of Trump's billionaire friends are benefiting from the most from this economy.

And in the meantime, people are drowning in debt just tr trying to pay their energy bills and trying to pay their grocery bills. And so I think that. There's an opening to say that we need to tax corporations. More corporations are treating working people unfairly. Those, there's a lot of polling even in swing states, even in states that are more approving of Donald Trump's presidency than the nation as a whole.

Those states. Voters in those states, voters that are getable [02:13:00] voters that need to be persuaded to vote for Democrats, they're swayed by messages that that say, we need to re-sort our economy and refocus our economy. 

GREG: It seems like there's really a a, an opening in another way too, which is that everything is really in, in flux to an unusual degree, I think.

Right? Because if you think about the trajectory from Reagan to now, all of a sudden everything's up for grabs and up in the air. The debates are in a way, we had the COVID shock and the inflationary shock of that, and that was a really profound. Experience for a lot of people. I think it was really disorienting and dispiriting and shook people up a lot.

It allowed Trump to swoop in and do this amazing comeback or whatever, but then you have a, a right-wing populace to put it in polite terms, right? Coming in and actually doing the stuff, doing the agenda of right-wing populism, tariffs, in immigration restriction is [02:14:00] America first pissing on our alliances and so forth, and that's a disaster.

So is there a different opening now to take charge of people's understanding of these big questions that maybe wasn't there before? 

MONICA: Oh yeah, I think so. I think, there's a new hunger from voters and especially younger voters who don't remember Reagan, to focus on workers to think about worker power, to focus on, government provision of expensive services like childcare.

A lot of millennials now are the youngest millennials I think are. In their thirties almost, or in there already. So, these are people who are ready to buy homes and start a family, and they're seeing, the long-term effects of the Reagan era policies that, concentrated, power among a lot of bus big businesses, that diminished worker power, that diminished wages over time.

And I think that there's a new. Opportunity then to tell us a [02:15:00] different story about the American economy, which is, one that allows for thinking about building the economy from the worker up to think about the kinds of institutions that can be countervailing forces against big corporations.

To think about refocusing political power on the working in middle classes. I think there's a lot of people, but especially young voters who are very hungry for that. Yeah. And, 

GREG: and the younger voters are among the constituencies that move to Trump, just like the non-white working class and. So to those voters, maybe the right wing popula stuff sounded somewhat credible, right?

It's anti elite, it's about workers, it's about power, it's about worker power in some way, even though we know that it's a sham. And so has it been sufficiently discredited? Has, has Trumpism, has right-wing populism? Have those things been discredited enough to create an opening [02:16:00] to do something new?

MONICA: I think so. At least right now, a lot depends on what happens in the next year or the next, two years. And a lot probably depends on what happens on how the Democratic candidates and the Democratic party as a whole take up the story. Because there was a lot of the things that Trump said that did sound good to people and he's.

Putting his money where his mouth was. He's not, he's not fulfilling that. And so I think, and the people around Trump are traditional Republicans doing traditional Republican things. And so, tax cuts to the wealthy, concentrating power, taking away rights from women, taking away, away rights from minorities, immigration enforcement, that's draconian and not in accordance with American ideals.

And I think that that. Just really does give an opening for the Democratic Party to potentially solidify those young voters as their voters for life. Because they're getable I think in a lot of ways now still. 

Speaker: Now, Section C, [02:17:00] The Boomcession

Well, Matt, mostly, today we wanted to talk to you about this really fantastic piece you wrote called The Boomcession, right? why Americans Hate What looks like an Economic Boom. I thought was incredibly well written and really interesting and pointed to some things which are non-obvious, but probably should be.

Right. Those things that, that become obvious after they're pointed out. Yeah. Yeah. So just, just briefly take us through your argument and the evidence that you marshaled to substantiate it. So there's this dilemma that I think a lot of people have today in, in elite circles where the economy looks like it's doing fine.

Okay? Or at least it, it was, let's put the Ira Iran thing aside for a second. Since the COVID crisis. The economy GDP growth, which is the way that that policymakers measure how the economy is doing. It's an aggregate of all transactions in the economy. You know, when that goes up, typically [02:18:00] people are happy.

It means there's more economic activity going on. People are richer, they have more stuff, houses, cars, whatever. This weird thing happened in really in 2021, where the economic growth GDP growth. And consumer sentiment diverged. So people were less and less happy even though the economy was doing well.

Typically, people are unhappy when there's a recession, which is the economy is the amount of stuff that we're creating, is going down, but they're happy when we're in a, a growth period. And, and the weird thing is we've been in a growth period. But people are unhappy, and so this was a dilemma for Biden because Biden was trying to figure out what do I do?

All of the buttons I'm pushing to improve the economy are working, yes. Inflation was high in 2022, according to this other index called the Consumer Price Index, but it's coming down right, 20 23, 20 24. It's returning to normal and GDP growth is up and [02:19:00] wage growth is up. Why are people so mad?

And the political consultants were saying, well, you gotta tell people that they're actually getting a bad impression from the media, or, so you have to tell them that things are good or you have to sympathize with them, or all of these pieces of advice that we're resting on this. Fundamental thing we haven't seen since, before we started measuring economic statistics, which is, is that the economic statistics and the public sentiment are just have diverged.

And that did not change when Trump came into office. So in the first term, in Trump's first term, people were happy with the economy. They didn't necessarily like him. They thought he told dirty jokes, but they're like, whatever, everything's funny when I'm making money. Right? That was the, the general vibe.

But they, they reelected him because they thought. At least I was richer when this guy was in office. But in his second term, not only did he not quote unquote improve the economy of consumer sentiment is actually lower than it is under Biden. It is actually at a, I think probably, let's see here. I have a chart.

Public Satisfaction with the Economy by President [02:20:00] was on since we started measuring it. It was the lowest ever under Biden. And Trump in his first term, was the third highest ever. You can go back to JFK. He was the third highest ever in his second term. He's actually lower than Biden, right? So this is this phenomenon I call the I call a boom session, which is traditional stats look like they're doing well, but people are really unhappy.

They feel like it's a recession. There we go. That's the argument. It's interesting. So decom, but decompose it a little bit more. you said a couple of really interesting things in that. Piece, they're related, but separate. One of them. In 1934 when we cooked up the idea of GDP, right? It was, it's just worth noting parenthetically that the people who did cook it up Kuznets and others insisted that we not use this as a measure of welfare at the time.

Right, right. Just to be clear, they said, this is not a measure of welfare. Never use it as a measure of welfare. We ignored their pleas and now we use it as a measure of [02:21:00] welfare. But in 1934, it was almost certainly true that when the economy produced more. The majority of that was useful to people, ordinary people, right?

That that there was a connection between GDP going up and your lives getting better, and that connection has become more and more tenuous for a variety of reasons. And the second point you made, which I think is really important, is that consumer spending may be going up for middle and working class people.

But all of it is devoted to shit they don't wanna buy in the first place. Right. Paying more interest, paying higher healthcare to you, whatever it is. Right. So they, they may be spending more, but their, their lives are getting crappier at the same time. Yeah. So, to me those were two things that you said in that essay.

I thought that were pretty, pretty cool. There's a number of reasons that. Explain the [02:22:00] sentiment that people don't like what's going on. And the first one that you pointed out is the idea that just the production of more transactions, the more stuck goods and services that are sold in the us, is that necessarily something that people like?

Right. It more, more of, yeah. The GDP in 2025 is that. Translating into what makes people happy? Well, to give you a sense of the kinds of things we were making in the 1930s and forties and fifties was things like toilets. A lot of people didn't have toilets and then they got toilets. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah. That's a big change. So, it's a big deal, and, and electricity, that's pretty solid. You don't have electricity. Yeah. And then you have electricity. A, okay. Right. I was struck by this stat, which I can't totally remember now, but it was in Mississippi, in the, the 1930s, very few people had toilets and by in 1960, most of them did.

And it's just like a huge change for people's welfare. Things like washing machines and refrigerators and stuff [02:23:00] that, that's, that's a really big deal. And a dollar spent on that is a really high return in, in terms just in terms of people's welfare, but. Not, it wasn't just that there was more basic stuff that people didn't have that we could create.

It was also that, we banned things like gambling. Yes. Right. So, so we, and we regulated markets in a much more aggressive way. So we just the financial sector was not a significant part of the economy. It's only like 2% of the economy today. It's 9% of the economy. I don't think that having more options for credit cards makes people happier, but it might increase the amount of GDP.

Yeah, that's a reg. Like what we've, what we've done is we've essentially said we're gonna. Stop trying to regulate for a moral economy, a moral economy being the, that kinds of things that people want more of or, or even a useful economy. A useful economy might be, might be a a, yeah. One way to put it, moral economy, however you wanna characterize it, but the second largest segment, the second fastest growing segment in the economy from [02:24:00] 2019 to 2024 was, is, is actually gambling.

Right. So GDP growth in gambling is going up and you par some part of that, 2.3% or whatever the GDP growth last year in the US economy as a result of more people clicking on DraftKings and Kalshi, right? Yes. Which doesn't, which makes their lives worse. It's not like, yes, introducing a toilet, it's introducing a guy that steals their time and money and attention, right?

Yeah. So on a, on a broad macro level, and this doesn't explain the, the, the post COVID thing, but on a broad macro level. We do have this problem where. In the 1930s, even though Simon, 'cause it didn't, he said, don't use this as a measure of welfare. You could use it as a measure of welfare. Yeah. And it was not unreasonable to do that.

It wasn't terrible. No. No. Yeah, 'cause, 'cause we regulated on a micro level, to make sure that products got better and were more useful. Overtime, right? Yeah. First it was cars, then it was better cars, then it was cars with seat belts, and so on and so forth. So now, it's just whatever, man, it it, [02:25:00] if you can make money doing it, if you could make it, it, it, it's by definition good and righteous.

Right. So, so Kalshi and Polymarket being canonical examples. Yeah. Right. And that's right. And so. Like Live Nation, Ticketmaster sells a ticket for more. It's like a higher GDP. Is that really like making your life? Is that better? Is that better?

So we've, again, we've, we talk a lot about how GDP is a terrible metric, and now you're telling me that consumer spending is a terrible metric because it's not actually making a distinction between discretionary spending and things which essentially behave like a tax.

So something you have to pay whether you want to or not. What should we be measuring? I think we should start with, consumer sentiment. I, I actually really like, there's this whole weird thing where for years people have said, well, the, the public is unhappy. But, but we need real hard data, not soft data, and soft data being consumer sentiment numbers.

And I think we should start with the soft data. So if people are unhappy, we [02:26:00] should try to figure out why they're unhappy. Instead of starting with harder data, which is just pricing and, and stuff like that, right? Where, 'cause the pricing can be all, can be gamed, right? But if you just ask people how are you feeling?

You can, obviously it's it's feelings and that's all soft. But if they're mad, they're mad. Right? So I, I, that's where I think we should start. And, and I don't think that consumer spending is a, is a terrible metric or GDP is a terrible metric. I just think it's limited. The interpretation that we're using doesn't work anymore.

So, I wouldn't necessarily stop collecting that data, but I might. I might start trying to understand how do we measure consumer spending that for things that people want to get? How do we start to measure things that don't increase people's happiness like. I, I don't know exactly how you would do that, but you could presumably find, take things like gambling and, figure out what people value and what they don't value, [02:27:00] and create different metrics based on what they value, what they don't value.

I think just studying, changing the way we collect pricing information could be really useful. I know that the BLS sends Bureau of Labor Statistics sends people out to just go and look at price tags. And it's a lot of companies now, they will show you one price in the, in the aisle. They'll say, oh, this drink is a dollar.

And then you go to check out and it turns out it's a dollar 20. And a lot of people don't notice. Well, if the BLS person is, and that, that's fraud. But a lot of companies do it shockingly. But the BLS looks at it and says, oh, it's a dollar. And then they, they say it's a dollar, but then the actual thing that people pay is a dollar 20.

There's also all, all sorts of reward programs. Pricing games and rebates and all this other stuff that it's hard to put in there. So I would, I think I would just try to understand, try to collect pricing data differently and then try to divide up consumer pricing into things that people, that make people happy and things that, that are at are non-discretionary, that [02:28:00] are tax, like we don't include taxes in CPI.

Yeah. Like healthcare and, right. Yeah. Right. So do, do you know in. I would also just ban in other countries, I would, I would ban price discrimination. I would just say, yeah, it was better in the thirties when people pay the same thing for the same item. Right. I'm curious, Matt, do you know in other countries where, a lot of the things that we talk about that are essentially like taxes.

Like healthcare, right? College education. Yeah. Childcare, daycare. You have to pay it whether you wanna, you want it or not. In a lot of other countries, those are provided by the state. So in those countries, those things are not counted as part of consumer spending. I don't know the answer to that.

If you look at the OECD's, AIC index, which is actual income. Consumption or something like that, which nets out public goods. How, how the US ranks [02:29:00] changes for, for example, changes radically because, well, USA is, I dunno, top three or four in GDP per capita. If you, if you normalize for all the things that other societies provide for free that don't go, that, that therefore don't go into GDP, the picture changes dramatically.

Dramatically. And I think that's a big part of the problem in the United States is that, there, yeah, people earn higher wages and stuff like that, but it all goes to pay for this stuff that is escalating in price faster than the wages are going up. Because those are private markets where the objective is to make the prices go up, right.

Where the whole point is to charge people more money every year. Right. I just, I told, Nick, I just had surgery. Two hours, less than two hours in the operating room. One night in the hospital, they billed my insurance company $82,000. There is no way that if I was in Germany [02:30:00] or France or any European country without insurance, and I went and and did the same thing, that my bill would be $82,000.

No, it would be a fraction of that just as somebody who was uninsured. Yeah. Yeah. So it would've been $3,000 or something like that. Yeah. And, and I, just to be clear, the US does have a lot of public goods. Like we high school, we have public schools. Which we didn't use to have public schools.

People, we pay taxes. And you can, there's a lot of, there's roads and there's lots of stuff that we, that we do that, where we, we don't think about election infrastructure. We talk about, oh my gosh, there's so much money and, and politics that's terrible, right? Which, yes, it is terrible, but we don't expect donors to pay for like voting machines, right?

So there, there's all sorts of infrastructure that we just don't think about that is public and paid for with taxes. That is not the case in in a bunch of other countries. It's just a matter of how we choose to characterize these things as taxes or not. And it has significant political impacts [02:31:00] because there in a lot of Democrats and Republicans who just absolutely would never raise taxes, but they don't think it's a tax when your healthcare premium goes up by 7% or 8% or 9%, they just think that's sad.

And yeah, it's, it's crazy to think about the world that way, but it does feel like our, our economic statistics. Point us to that framework when when that price goes up, 7% GDP goes up, which is good, right? And yeah, by definition versus, versus when your taxes go up. Like there's all sorts of dead weight loss.

But that's bad. Bad by definition. Yeah, no, it's bad. Oh, see, the other thing that I think I wanted to I'll put in in here about the consumer price index. This is the one time Larry Summers has quoted me. Which is funny. Not sure if it's good or bad, but go on. Well, it's only once since it's, since it's virtuous to me.

I'll, I'll say that he, at the, at the, at that, that five minute period when he decided to quote me, he was brilliant. Other than that monster, right? No. The, the Consumer price Index, right? Reagan made a [02:32:00] couple of changes to the consumer price index. They effectively said that the price of money, the interest rate does not.

Does is has nothing to do, is not included in the, the inflation rate, right? So what that means is if you is, if you buy a car, I remember seeing 2023, I was like, why is this, why are people so mad about inflation when, when the CPI is low? And then I saw people striking the UAW had a strike about, the auto industry went on strike.

You remember that? And, and. There were people saying, I can't buy the cars that I make. Right? And I was like, huh, that's interesting. And I looked at the price of cars. And the price of cars was flat from 2022 to 2023. They had increased dramatically in 2022, but it was flat. And I thought, that's interesting.

It didn't actually get more expensive. But then I realized, oh, people don't buy a car, a sticker price. They buy. They lease it or they, or they, pay with, with a, with auto financing and financing costs increased dramatically. The [02:33:00] Fed raised rates from whatever it was to. 0% to 4% that year or 3%.

And that drama that increased. Yeah, the cash amount that people pay massively. So people, the CPI looks at it and says, oh, cars did not increase in price. But actual normal people, the amount they have to shell out Yeah. For cars is much higher from 23 2 to 2023. And that's true for in somewhat similar for housing.

And so if you look at it and you're like, wait, the cost of credit cards due, debt, housing and cars are not included in. The CPI. That's weird. They always do CPI and they call it core inflation, which is the inflation without food and energy. So if you don't buy a, have a car or a home or eat anything or use energy, then the CPI is perfect, right?

But other than that, it doesn't actually reflect the lived experience of normal people. And I think there's a moment for. Congress and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to go in and start to say, okay, how are we gonna [02:34:00] actually. Create, an inflation metric that reflects the lived experience of normal people.

You could do it in a lot of different ways. You could just get rid of price discrimination and then measure. You could also just measure what it's like to be, for different baskets of people. They, they do have urban consumers. They do have a CPI for elderly people. You could look at a CPI for poor CPI for rural, if you wanted that.

That gets complicated. But there are ways to go in and look at this basic things though, like the price of money that should be in there. Food and energy that should be these, these things. We need to stop at these games. It's, it's absurd.

JANINE: Well, media talk about companies as not just successful, but as evidence that profit driven capitalism and the deregulation that enables it really is the best thing for everyone because look, they're providing a product or a service.

They're creating jobs. So really any criticism is. Wrong. And, and, and maybe just jealousy, your, your [02:35:00] new report is not about a small ancillary thing that companies could improve on. It really drives a stake through the heart of this mythology. So, so tell us, what did you look at and what did you find?

GUEST: Yeah, well, just continuing with the Walmart example, you mentioned that the CEO made $27.4 million in 2024. So yeah, if we criticize that, then sometimes people will say, oh, oh, you, you're just envious. You wanna make that amount of money, and it doesn't have anything to do with you. So why? Why should you complain?

Well, it does have to do with all of the rest of us because for one thing. Walmart and many other large US corporations are really based on a business model that extracts wealth from low wage workers and funnels it up to guys like Doug McMillon and they are paying their low level workers so little.

Many [02:36:00] of them have no choice but to rely on public assistance. And so that's what our report looks at, is we looked at the 20 largest US corporations, with the lowest median worker pay, and we found that the vast majority of them have median pay that's so low that a worker at that level. Would qualify for Medicaid for a family of three.

Most of them would qualify for snap food, aid benefits. And what that means is that not only are workers getting the shaft from this business model that it's all about. Keeping wages at poverty levels at the base to overpay their CEOs. But the rest of us are affected because it's our taxpayer money that is going into those public assistance programs that these companies are using to make this model workable.

And I think that this is a big part of the current affordability crisis that so many [02:37:00] people are talking about as they struggle with the rising cost for things like housing and. Groceries and there's a lot of focus on how can we bring these costs down. But we've also gotta look at why do people have so little money in their pockets in the first place?

And that's because of wage suppression by companies like Walmart. 

JANINE: Well, I just wanna say, if we can say poverty wage business model like 10 times, I just, I want that to enter the lexicon, but I feel like. Some media feel like they found a hack. The Washington Post had a thing a few months back, why you may not want lower prices as much as you think you do.

And I get it. They're saying prices are one factor and we have to look at other factors. But if you just report it that way, oh, you're so dim. You want prices to go down. You don't understand how the economy works. Mm-hmm. It's like, it's like giving the ball score [02:38:00] Yankees four. There are other elements of course, at work here, and, and this is in a context as the report lays out, it's in a context of cuts to benefits, union participation, stock buybacks.

There's a lot going on here that is part of the affordability crisis. Yeah, absolutely. 

GUEST: And, and the companies are saying, oh, it's rising. Cost for so many things. We have to pass those costs on to customers or we have to cut jobs. There's no other way to find money to, 

JANINE: mm-hmm. 

GUEST: To, cover these things when, if you look at what they really are spending money on these 20, companies altogether have been on a massive stock buyback spending spree.

All together. Let's see, I think it was, over $200 billion over the past 20 years. Some companies are just completely outrageous examples, like Home Depot spent 38 billion on [02:39:00] stock buybacks over the past six years. And every dollar that's spent on stock buybacks, first of all, I should explain what they are.

This is when companies go out and repurchase their own stock on the open market. And when they do that, it artificially inflates the value of their shares because they're reducing the available supply. And what that. Also does is it inflates the value of their CEO paychecks because CEOs get most of their compensation in some form of stock-based pay, and every dollar that's spent on those buybacks is a dollar that's not spent on worker wages.

And so at Home Depot, if they've taken all the money that they spent on buybacks over the past six years and instead gave it to their workers, they could have given every one of their 419,000 US employees. A $15,000 bonus every year for those six years at Lowe's Home Depot's competitor and the home improvement field, the the figures [02:40:00] are even more insane.

I think that they could have doubled the level of median pay at that company if they had spent money on worker wages instead of stock buybacks. So it's not that these companies don't have the resources. To be paying, something other than poverty wages. It's that they're choosing to use their resources to enrich those at the top.

JANINE: It's so important to indicate that these are choices, when you read mm-hmm. Economic reporting, it's often like they had to pass the cost on to customers like they had to, like, no, these are choices. Priorities that are being made. Yeah, we could talk about them that way. 

GUEST: Absolutely. They also say, well, of course pay is low at these companies because, the workers are mostly part-time.

Well, again, that is a choice to have a business model that's based on an overwhelmingly part-time workforce, which comes with all kinds of costs. It [02:41:00] tends to. Contribute to higher levels of turnover and people not feeling as in invested in their workplace. And so there's all kinds of business arguments as to why it might make more sense for them to have more full-time employees with benefits.

But, it's a choice. They want more. Part-time workers so they don't have to pay benefits so they can keep their labor costs down. So it is a choice. It's not just, something like the weather that just happens out of our control. 

JANINE: Right, right. And it's a storyline. It's such an old storyline.

We don't need to pay fast food workers, livable wage because. It's, they're teenagers and they're just getting to pick up money to go to the movies, and it's so outdated. It's so outdated and, and unrealistic, and I just, I have such frustration with the. The unending power of these narratives.

GUEST: Exactly. There's such a large, the, these low wage workers are [02:42:00] parents, many of them single parents who are really struggling to make ends meet. We've talked about our country's largest private sector employer, Walmart, but if you look at Amazon too, we were able to get. Data from a, a handful of state governments that report how many employees big companies have on public assistance programs.

And so with Amazon, the, the state of Nevada actually is the only one that reveals this information from Medicaid and Amazon had 8,900. Employees in Nevada on Medicaid, and that was 48% of their whole workforce. So imagine that they're the second largest private sector employer with, a, a gazillionaire founder and Jeff Bezos.

They're, generating enormous wealth for people at the top, and yet 48% of their employees in this one state are on Medicaid. 

JANINE: Okay. I'm gonna need to talk to you more about this, I suspect, but for [02:43:00] now, I just would ask you what could happen today, tomorrow, policy-wise? Legislatively, what? What could happen that could start to address this situation?

GUEST: Yeah, there's a lot that could be done. First of all, raising the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at 7 25 an hour for 16 years now, we could strengthen our labor laws so that workers like the ones that Amazon and Starbucks that have voted to unionize of four years ago now, but still don't have a first contract because our protections for union rights are so weak and these companies have just used.

Every trick in the book to undermine the desires of their employees, to be members of unions, to bargain collectively for for better pay. And then I'm very excited about efforts to also use the tax code to address this issue of, overpaying CS and [02:44:00] underpaying workers. And this year there are ballot initiatives moving ahead in both.

Los Angeles and San Francisco that would raise local taxes on businesses based on the size of the gap between their CEO and their worker pay as an incentive for them to either, narrow those gaps by lifting up worker pay or bringing down CEO pay. Or if companies refuse to do that and wanna.

Stick with the status quo of having really large pay gaps, then they would pay more taxes into public services and infrastructure that is so needed by so many states and cities because of the federal cutbacks in funding. 

Tech companies are rushing to trade their people, meaning workers, including the highest skilled workers. For more chips, some of those companies might come to regret the exchange. That's the Wall Street Journal, and then they go through Microsoft and [02:45:00] Meta and the other companies that are laying off tens of thousands of workers, significantly reducing their workforce.

And again, there's none of the AI investment, whether it's in data centers or anywhere else. That's showing its quote profitability, which of course is the only real metric that matters for capitalism or in the capitalist economic model. And so the Wall Street Journal's warning, you're getting rid of all of these high skilled workers, massive cuts massive layoffs, all to replace them with ai, and the AI thing has yet to prove itself.

Anyway, as an economist and as a Marxist, I want to get your take on this. Well, there are a number of issues, and I'm sure they're all in your mind, Brian, which is why you bring this topic up as well. You should. Let's start with this. The question about whether AI is or is not a successful capitalist [02:46:00] investment.

You're quite right. The way we handle technological inventions in capitalism means that the technology is immediately interesting if and only if it is subordinated to the profit, calculus of capitalists, they will buy the equipment, the software, the hardware, whatever it is. If and only if it will save them on labor costs.

That's what this is about. And AI is a perfect example, but computers were an example. Electricity was an example. the jet engine was an example and, and many others. But let's stick with ai. The promise of AI is that for a capitalist, he can do or she can do the following, fire, the worker. Who costs a wage or a salary, whatever that might be, and replace him or her [02:47:00] with a machine or with a piece of software or however you understand ai.

Alright. The question is, is that true? The problem for the capitalist is it costs money to have ai. It costs money to get the AI and it costs money to run the ai, very heavy cost of electricity, for example, to operate the data centers, that they're creating, and they're worried because the investment is made now.

To build the AI's, the data center, to build and to buy the machinery to set up the electric supply to worry. For example, these days, will there be oil or natural gas fuel for producing the electricity that ai. Because of course they're worried not just can we get the [02:48:00] electricity, but what will we have to pay for it?

Because that goes into the cost of the AI and there goes the comparison with the worker you just fired. So here's what the Wall Street Journal and many other financial documents these days are worrying about. The money is being invested now, but we don't really know yet. How many workers of what kind earning, what salary will actually be dismissed by the capitalist if it isn't that many?

And if it isn't the ones that you're saving money on because they're high paid, you may be very sorry that you made this investment. And that's not just bad for the capitalist to invest, but much of the money being used to build out artificial intelligence is money [02:49:00] borrowed from the biggest banks in the United States.

We, you and I, when we put money in the bank may not understand it, but the bank lends that money to the AI companies. And if the AI companies have made a mistake, they won't be able to pay that money back and the banks will then be in trouble and then they will shift the burden onto you and me. So we are at risk.

Without knowing it, we are at risk. Without controlling it. And we are in the hands of people who think only in terms of the profitability. If this isn't profitable, they won't pursue it beyond a certain point. And the truth of it is, if you are honest, we don't know yet. And by the way, this is very typical.

If you remember back in the early year 2000, we [02:50:00] had something called the.dot-com collapse or the.dot-com crisis. Why? Because enormous money was being spent on computers because they were gonna replace all of these workers who used to sit there with their pre-computer technology, and that turned out to be a hype.

And the banks went down and all kinds of other companies collapsed. That's the real risk here, and I wanna make clear the capitalists are making the decisions, but we are all at risk. If they're miscalculating, if they're overshooting, whatever the benefits of AI are, we will all suffer. Probably more than they will, and they're at least in charge, and they will know before we do that.

This is a bust and they will get out of the business. [02:51:00] They will sell, they will declare bankruptcy. They'll use all the normal tools of capitalism that protect them when they screw up and leave us out there with the risk. But before, even on that one more thing, which is an older Marxist understanding. If it is true, let's, let's be real simple.

Let's assume AI can make some or all workers twice as productive as they used to be. So what does the capitalist do? He fires half his workers and buys ai. Now the remaining half working with AI can produce just as much as the full compliment of workers used to do, and our capitalist is very happy because with half the workers, he saves on half his payroll.

He doesn't have to pay the [02:52:00] workers he fired. And that money, which he still gets, 'cause he's producing as much as he did before selling it, as he did before. Let's make it simple at the same price as he did before. So the money's coming in, but half of his payroll, he doesn't have to pay out to workers anymore.

He gets to keep it. That's the profit incentive to buy ai. But now let, let me give you an idea. What would a socialist collective of workers do if they were running the company? Would they not be interested in ai? No, no, no. They'd be very interested in ai. And if AI could make each worker doubly productive, here's what they do.

Would they fire anybody? Absolutely not. Everybody stays working. Everybody gets the same wage. But everybody works four hours a day instead of a why. Because in four hours with [02:53:00] AI, you can do it twi. In other words, the technology, instead of en enhancing the profit, transforms the lives. Of the vast majority, the employees who now get four hours a day to pursue their political interests, their passions, their hobbies, their family life, their, their physical and mental health, and all the rest of it.

That's what technology is often undertaken for. That's what, if you ask the inventor who comes through with something, that's what he or she is hoping for to really improve life. Capitalism doesn't do that because it subordinates the technology to the profit game, and that is good for those who already have a business.

That's already our richest people and not good for the average person, and that's why capitalism isn't so good. 

Speaker: And Finally, Section [02:54:00] D, What This Costs Real People

YouGov poll finds inflation is the number one issue, and that between his war and his tariffs, Trump is 35 percentage points. Underwater on inflation. That is his approval to disapproval gap is that high. When asked about the inflation on Fox business last week, he could only muster this much optimism about the effects of his own policies.

The question came from Fox Businesses Maria Bartiromo. Do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections? I hope so. I think so. It could be, it could be, or the same or maybe a little bit higher. I think this won't be that much longer. Maybe even a little bit higher.

Trump on Fox Business and on the Alliance with Israel in this war. A headline on Vox says, Israel's critics are winning the battle for the Democratic party, democratic voters. Turned against [02:55:00] Israel. Now their politicians are following that from Vox, and that follows a Pew poll last week that the times of Israel broke down this way.

60% of US adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel. Only 37% view it favorably. It continues about. Percent of Democrats and democratic leaning independents express unfavorable views of Israel 80%, while 58% of Republicans and Republican leaning adults view Israel favorably overall. So a big partisan split there.

However. The Times of Israel summary of the PU poll continues, however, majorities under age 50 in both parties now rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively again, that on the Pew poll from the Times of Israel now. This all has major implications for the midterm elections here in the United States where the primaries are already well [02:56:00] underway.

And of course the midterms have major implications for how much Trump can keep up the pace of right-wing and culture war change that he's been on, and whether Democrats can reverse the government's course and enact any kind of agenda of their own if they do take the Congressional majorities. Our focus for this conversation.

Will be what some of this means politically in this country with Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political report with Amy Walter among his recent articles, five Ways 2026 looks like 2018. That was Trump's other midterm elections and Five Ways it Doesn't. Dave, thanks for joining us.

Welcome back to WNYC. Good to be with you, Brian. Thanks. I threw a lot of numbers out there. So in words, how would you begin to describe how the public ranks inflation as an issue now and how the president is doing on that issue? Well, inflation is still voter's top issue, but it's really a series of issues.

It's [02:57:00] healthcare, it's the cost of groceries, it's the cost of gas, and up until. The launch of the coordinated attacks on Iran, it appeared that Democrats messaging in the midterms would be centered around the reconciliation bill and Republican cuts to the social safety net, particularly Medicaid, the premium spikes associated with the Obamacare cliff, and the expiration of enhanced subsidies.

These were unpopular measures under. Unified Republican control of government that, Democrats were going to exploit and they still will. But now there's this, additional aspect of an unpopular war and the supply chain disruption and higher oil and gas prices that come with it. And it has compounded Republicans problems politically because, president Trump.

Won over independent voters in [02:58:00] 2024 by promising an economic golden age, extracting America from for foreign conflicts and not really making broad changes to entitlements, Democrats can now capitalize on all three of those. You heard the Trump clip from Fox Business. I heard a TV analyst say, this is the same playbook that President Biden failed with when he was running for reelection.

Don't worry, this inflation is only transitory. It'll calm down on its own. Trust me on this. Do you see a parallel? Well, the stimulus spending under, the Biden administration didn't do much to improve his standing with voters who were facing higher prices. And, I think one difference between, where we are today politically and where we were eight years ago.

Back then, voters still had generally positive views of life under the Obama years. Today, voters are cross pressured [02:59:00] because they don't view the Biden years favorably. They view them as, the, the, start of in this inflationary environment. And so they are having a hard time trusting either political party to make their lives better.

Question from a listener who writes the Times, had a front page story last week, questioning Trump's mental stability. Has that issue made an impact on the public? I. Every time Democrats have sought to, run ads that focus on, the president's mental state or on fitness for office, they are typical.

They're reaching, they're preaching to the, their own choir. And it kind of makes Democrats feel good to, to diagnose the president with, a mental disorder and, and try and rally their own troops that way. But what we've seen in focus groups and in polls is that [03:00:00] that argument doesn't really change, the, the preexisting ways in which voters see the president doesn't change many minds.

Instead, what, what has hurt Republicans is the. The argument that the president's policies have negatively impacted their pocketbook and their outlook in terms of their healthcare coverage, their ability to, to, to pay for their housing or their car, and. Some of the, the changes that we've seen, under the, the one big beautiful bill won't take effect until 2027 or later, but the threat of hospital closures or Americans losing insurance.

Is a rallying cry that, that has moved votes in the past. In [03:01:00] 2017 and 18 when Republicans embarked on repeal and replace, it didn't even, it didn't even pass. They didn't succeed in gutting Obamacare, and yet Democrats barrage of ads when it came to preexisting conditions helped them win the midterms by a wide margin.

So first of all, if I may call you Steven, thank you very much for your time, for joining us to talk about your book. So let me, it's a, let me begin. Would you say that sickness is an individual problem or a social problem when you look at the United States? Whether you look at the United States or other countries, it's always a social or political problem.

Rudolf Virchow the father of Modern Cellular Pathology, said in 1848, all diseases have two causes. One. Biological and the other political, so trying to understand that politics is the, [03:02:00] the most important factor in producing health in a society is quite challenging, especially for Americans. All right, let me, let me draw you out.

Tell me why that's true. Why is it, especially for Americans, are we. A, a, sick people, and B, is our politics playing a role in creating that situation. So as an emergency physician, the easiest diagnosis I could make in the ER was that somebody's dead hard to fake. So I filled out a death certificate, that was then linked with the birth certificate, and we could calculate.

Mortality rates, who died at what age? Add them up all together. And you get a number called life expectancy. And that's the average length of life. If, mortality rates stayed the same from year to year. So I like to use this as a measure of health for a country. Basically, you can't [03:03:00] be healthy if you're dead.

So it's a measure of how long people live. So. If we, if, if we look at life expectancy, we have to ask what's a normal life expectancy? Because, if you go to the doctor, they'll take, take your blood pressure and decide whether it's normal or not. For a country, you can take the life expectancy measure and ask, is this normal?

Well, normal should be, what the best achieve the best countries achieve. And we're about seven life expectancy years behind the longest lived country, which has been Japan since 1978. Well, if we, so how important is that seven year difference? You might think of it as a few more years drooling in a nursing home, but in fact, our leading disease killers are number one, heart disease, number two, cancer.

And number three, unintentional injuries. [03:04:00] Those three will kill roughly half of our, population, about 3 million deaths a year. And if we eradicated our three leading killers as a cause of death, we would be right up there with Japan in terms of length of life. So taking my measure for length of life, some 50 countries have higher life expectancy than we do.

Now to, then why, the question you asked. Well, medical care, we spend about half of the world's medical care bill in the United States. It's about, $7 trillion. It's, a sixth of our total economy, and we are less healthy than. 50 other countries. So just by simple logic, medical care cannot have a big effect.

So what else matters? Well, studies show medical care can avert about 10% of mortality in the United States. [03:05:00] So that leaves 90% attributed to other factors. And, but Americans. When you poll Americans on what's most important for health, they put medical care first. And guess what? They put politics last.

So we have to, we have to, dissect what's going on here. Medical care isn't that important. I have to say that, I worked clinic clinically as a doctor and I taught doctors and I have to reflect and say, gee, what I did and taught wasn't really that important. So what really matters, studies show that the amount of inequality in a society is very strongly associated with its health.

Say, measured by life expectancy. And you were talking earlier about the vast increase in economic inequality in this country. And we are, certainly among the [03:06:00] rich countries, the most unequal country among them, and we have the worst health among them. And the two are actually linked causally. So mostly we say, well, an association between inequality and health does not imply causation.

But if you ask, how do you decide that something causes something else? The relationship I've just mentioned between inequality and health can be proven to be causal. And I use the criteria, that the Surgeon General's report in 1964, linking smoking in bad health. They laid out the criteria for saying smoking caused worst health, and that's what I use to make this link right.

I, I make the link and there are many other researchers that verify that. So inequality kills. How does it do that? Well, [03:07:00] inequality produces a lot of stress in society and the, and we in the United States are, one of the most stressed countries in the world. So how do we cope with this stress?

Well, not in very, healthy ways. I mentioned unintentional injuries, being, our third leading cause of death, and so we kill ourselves with opioid overdoses. The, the fentanyl, issues that, are, are, big time in this country in many other ways and. So that's one way consuming opioids.

Another way is, well, there are a lot of dysfunctional ways of, of trying to cope. Some, some perhaps better than others. Walking the dog gets you out on the street and maybe talking to other people, but so highly stressed society caused by the inequality. That we willingly choose. In other words, and this is a tough thing to, to, to recognize.

[03:08:00] We have a so-called democracy and, and so we choose policies and what you were describing in the previous part of, today's, session was the inequality. And we seem to have. Chosen through our political process to have less so the rich can have more. So that makes us responsible for the poor health that we're having.

So suppose we decreased inequality, what would we do with the proceeds? Well, besides inequality being so important, the other factor is attention to early life. As we go from the erection to the resurrection, roughly half of our health as an adult has been programmed between conception and your second birthday.

That's called the first thousand days. And. Studies, many studies show that that period is critical for [03:09:00] how healthy you become as an adult. So who's responsible for that period, that first thousand days? Well, we, we think family values should make the parents responsible for creating healthy conditions for that period, but.

Fam, a poor, a a, a poor family, a family struggling to make ends meet, to pay the electricity bill that you described. They're just trying to survive. And if, if you want them to stay home and raise the child. To be healthy. They can't do that. There's only two countries in the world that don't give a working woman who's pregnant, paid time off after she has her baby.

One is of course, the United States. We say we can't afford that. The other country is Papua New Guinea, half of a big island, north of Australia. So we don't. Have a national [03:10:00] policy of providing time. Pay for a woman to, for a mother to, spend time with her child. And so our, our young people, our infants and toddlers are raised in very dysfunctional situations.

Take a healthier country. Sweden, there it is mandatory to take 480 days of paid. Parental leave. The father's gotta take some too. And that's at your full pay. So, then in your, when your child is, is put in a, when your child is two or three, you can put 'em in a daycare center and in Sweden it costs $160 a month for Swedish daycare that's run by the government.

We have nothing like that. So we have chosen because, we've decided that. It's too expensive for the United States [03:11:00] to have, to support early life. And, so we are in a sense making the political choices so we have poor health and die young. I don't think if most Americans really realized that the political choices they make.

Lead to an early death and before dying, much more disease than we should be having, considering we're the richest and most powerful country in world history, although that is fast declining.

RALPH NADER: You do say in your book that industry will be anxious to advance a popular narrative that holds individuals responsible for the systemic problems.

It creates itself industry. So you talk about the retirement pension industry, you talk about the health insurance industry, you talk about the credit industry, you talk about the cigarette industry, and as you mentioned, the renewable energy versus fossil [03:12:00] fuels. Can you run us by several of these to make your points more specific?

GUEST: Yes, absolutely. So I think the framing here is that I think the, the key bit of psychology is that it's very hard for us to see a problem from more than one point of view at a time. And so many social problems. We could potentially think of them from both from an individual perspective. So I need to change my behavior to reduce my carbon, to save for my future, to, to smoke less or not at all, or to reduce my intake of fatty foods and so on.

So I can think of it as a problem for me, the individual and everybody else's individuals, or I can think of it as a problem of the system. The political system is working. There's incentives. We have regulations, lack of regulations, international agreements. So the, the trouble is that given the way we're, we're wired, if we think about things from an individualistic perspective, we tend not to think about the system.

For example, if you take obesity, say we, we know it's clear that obesity has been increasing rapidly in the US and UK across [03:13:00] many parts of the both Western world and developing world. You might think, well, from a political campaigning point of view, it's clearly obvious that one of the forces that's driving that.

Is the massive growth in high energy, dense foods and the gigantic marketing campaigns which are, pushing those foods at large numbers of people. But that's the, the systemic frame, the system frame. But the individual frame is focusing on individual, weight loss, individual control of our diets and, and the amount we exercise and so on.

And the crucial bit of psychology, as I say here, is that these frames tend to mutually block each other. So this means that if I'm thinking about my own obesity as an issue of self-control and an issue of my own responsibility, then I tend to defocus on the systemic forces that are causing obesity at at large.

So this means that it's really attractive for industry in, in any domain where these sorts of issues arise to push what the sociologists have termed an agenda of responsible. So it is very helpful for industries who want not to be regulated very heavily [03:14:00] to tell people it's an individual problem. You have to worry about your own weight, you have to worry about your own carbon emissions.

It will help you do it, but it's really your problem. Similarly with you have savings, it's up to you to put the right amount of money aside and so and so on and so on. And you see that all over the place. So. Many of your listeners will be very well aware in, again, in context of climate, the idea of an individual carbon calculator, so we can each monitor our own carbon footprint that was both created and propagated by bp, which is one of the world's largest oil companies.

And it was not done, of course, with the intention of particularly helping reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. What it's doing is individualizing the problem, saying, it's not our problem, it's your problem. Each of you systems needs to take up that problem and solve it yourselves. And if you are, if we're all worried about that.

Then we're worried about both ourselves, but about other people. We can start blaming each other. We can start vilifying climate scientists for flying to conferences, and we can just generally get into a tangle in which we're wondering which individuals are to blame. And that [03:15:00] distracts us away from the big question, which is these big systemic forces.

Similarly, with litter, the big campaigns, the Crying Indian campaign and, and, and onwards in the US are funded as, again, many of your listeners will know. They're funded by the packaging and drinks industry. So that, again, the ostensible story is, we're very, very worried about littering and plastic waste, and we're gonna help with this helpful campaign.

But of course, what it's really doing is individualizing the problem. It's saying, this problem of all this plastic leaking into the world's ecosystems is a problem for individuals lit more carefully in the trashcan rather than, well, hang on. Why is it possible to create such vast amounts of, of non-recyclable or non recycled in practice plastic?

Same. I think another great example that you mentioned was every retirement's savings. It's not so long ago, of course. That the start of retirement savings was a fixed, a defined benefit scheme, which allowed people to be sure of what they would, get when they retired, and that would be allow them to live reasonably well that has [03:16:00] been deemed to be unaffordable by businesses in the pensions industry, where unaffordable means it would be cheaper to do something different.

And what the cheaper thing we've got is the shift to defined contribution schemes, which are essentially, as you understand, we very familiar with, you have your own, you have your own pile of money and you just try to invest it as best you can. So that, of course, is it doesn't share risk across people. It doesn't give you any way of, of dealing with the risk, about uncertainty, about your own lifespan and so on.

And indeed, usually the performance of these schemes is, is not particularly good. But the respons trick, as we think of it as Leigh of hand, is to say, well, if you are having trouble with your financial position in it retirement, it's really, it is your own problem. You've gotta put more money aside or should have invested it more wisely.

And the fact that we've shifted from a scheme, which was actually pretty advantageous for most workers who had those schemes, clearly one could always have had them on a larger, broader scale. And we've shifted to a totally different scheme, which is essentially makes the problem well now impossible for most of us.

RALPH NADER: One of the subtext [03:17:00] is Nick, is you're attacking the whole concept of consumer education in our schools, for example, and all the self-help books that come out, all the articles in the New York Times and Post, and how you can maneuver to minimize your exploitation by banks and insurance companies and credit card companies, consumer advice columns.

Now, you've heard this probably many times, it isn't an either or is it? In other words, if people start trying to control their own garden, so to speak, what they can control because they can control what they eat and what they expose themselves to. Bad food, for example, or drugs that aren't working and so on that they hear about over the counter drugs.

That if they focus on their own deficiencies and try to self-correct and self-improve, they become more aware of how they're being exploited systemically and therefore move from simply consumer [03:18:00] self-improvement, say, or worker self-improvement into the arena of advocacy for systemic change, which of course you talk about in your book, you indicate in some parts of your book you're sensitive to that, that it isn't really an either or.

It's a attempt to get rid of the zero sum relationship that basically it doesn't matter what you do individually on climate change, it's what the government does to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind power and conservation of energy. Can you elaborate the plea by a person who says, look, I'm way overweight.

I know why I am overweight. I don't exercise, I eat fatty food, I can reduce my obesity, and now he's telling me it's really the fast food and ultra processed foods fault. 

GUEST: Yeah, I think the key here is exactly the problem that psychologically we do find it very hard to hold these two frames in our mind.

And they do tend to compete, but they [03:19:00] absolutely needn't do. So I think you're absolutely right that it's a perfectly rational and probably the most rational perspective, to think well clearly that there's more obesity across the world and the reason there's more obesity in some countries than in in other countries.

These are driven by systemic forces. The reason that I myself are more obese than I used to be, say that's something that is about my own recent behavior. So there are certain things I can control, but what what's dangerous I think, is that if we get sunk into thinking about the individual perspective, if we do that, we can get sucked away from we, we can start to think that, oh, it's my problem and everybody else's obesity is their problem.

In fact, we've all just gotta take responsibility for our obesity problem. And that means that the industry doesn't really have to take responsibility at all. So I think that the synergy that we do want is, and that can happen as as you integrated, and I think in cigarette smoking, actually it's probably a good example.

We can get a situation where people who are themselves, for example, trying to give up smoking, are often become quite keen advocates for anti-smoking measures just [03:20:00] across the board. 'cause one sees oneself as. As a vixen or at least pushed around by powerful forces which are not working in one's interest and one wants to stop that happening to other people and and to oneself.

And I think that is in principle possible. I think what's actually happened, at least looking at what's happened. This is to go back to the mea culpa point. What's happened with academic research, or at least mine, is that given the amount of attention and budget you have to devote to it, if one starts to focus on these individual questions, your mind just gets captured by how can we solve the obesity crisis by helping individuals pull themselves together, as it were, and does a dangerous direction.

I think to be going in, 

RALPH NADER: you would add grief, wouldn't you? Mothers Against Drunk Driving that led to much tougher enforcement against drunk drivers pressure on the alcohol industry to stop promoting in their ads, ways to get people, young people especially to drink. You'd include that, the grief. 

GUEST: Oh no, completely.

No, absolutely. And I think one of the interesting reactions when terrible tragedies do happen is that it does galvanize many people into [03:21:00] campaigning mode and those campaigns are very, very powerful. So I think, and this is hardly, hardly news in the context of your career in this show, but I think seeing one of the most powerful things that each of us has is the ability to propagate our own perspective and to to campaign and to.

Argue for change. And this is really, really crucial. And I think the, it's very different from a inward looking perspective, which is saying, well, I'm gonna look after my own garden, but not worry about anybody else's garden. But they've got to look after their gardens. I'm just gonna look into my, and look, stay in my parochial patch.

I think the getting people pulling together and pushing for change can be of course, and you've, you've been more of a part of this, almost anyone can be incredibly powerful. So seeing ourselves as, as citizens who are actively able to have our voice, make our voices heard, I think that's where the real power lies.

And I think that that, campaigners have, say political activists and so on have always known this. And of course also big businesses also known this too. And they certainly don't want us to be doing too much of that. They want us to be [03:22:00] focusing quite, quite the opposite. They want us to be focusing on our own gardens and not worrying about the, the big picture.

They don't want organized opposition. 

RALPH NADER: Before we get into the systemic change in civic advocacy and lobbyists and role of congress in parliament, there's one area that didn't seem right to me, and it is, you have this distinction of the I-frame trap, and you say to believe that the issue also includes the matter of evil business executives is to fall into the iframe trap.

The iframe, meaning it's blaming the individual, blaming the victim. But there are evil corporate executives. Let's face it, some of 'em are evil by conventional standards. They're actually corporate criminals, killing, injuring, stealing, lying in all directions. So how can you ignore the issue of evil personalities, fraudulent personalities, running entire corporate [03:23:00] enterprises?

GUEST: I think the I-frame trap, I think doesn't in, in any way cut across that point. 'cause I think it's absolutely true that the variety of people in charge of powerful organizations, including governments from a moral perspective, is extremely broad and it makes a huge difference. I think the thing we're trying to caution against is the line that if people seem like decent folk and they love their families and they seem, they, they don't seem inherently monstrous.

There may be cases where this isn't true, but there are clearly quite a lot of regular business people who are, they're not unusually virtuous or venal lab. There's regular people, but the logic of their organization just demands. The logic of the demands that they maximum for bit shareholder returns and so on, just forces a particular kind of direction of travel for, for the decisions they're going to make.

So of course it's absolutely true that beyond that there can be all kinds of violations of the law and immoral behavior by any standard, and many clearly happens. But even if you don't have that, [03:24:00] then you can still have organizations which are, inherently going to be pushing against, essentially trying to push, pushing against consumer interest and citizen interests.

I suppose I'm slightly, I'm just wanting to defend against the thought that what's wrong with the world is it's just, it's the wrong people. I think it was probably David Hume had this line that we should be designing our political systems to defend against knaves. Not, not assuming that everybody is a knave, but we have to have a system which is knave proof.

And we certainly don't have that at the moment. So, so I think it's absolutely true. There are, knavess, but it's also true, I think that even morally relatively neutral people inside an organization, which, where the incentives are all wrong and the the regulations are all wrong, they'll just be doing things which are building, well here I am, I'm, I'm marketing chocolate, I should be trying to sell as much chocolate as possible.

That's what I'm here to do. And if I don't do that, those dereliction of duty, and then I'm gonna be you telling people that they reason to eat so much chocolate is due to a lack of restraints and I need to, need to improve their efforts to restrain themselves. And so that, that all these, these, these patterns can, can arise even without [03:25:00] the additional layer.

And then that expeditional layer may be very, very important in some cases, additional layer of, of active, of advice at the, at the top. 

Speaker: That's going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

You can record - and re-record - a voice message by tapping the link in the show notes,

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The NPR Politics Podcast

Economic Update 

The Brian Lehrer Show

Pitchfork Economics

PBS NewsHour

THE DAILY BLAST 

CounterSpin

The Socialist Program 

and the Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 4–29-2026

Today we explore the extraordinary clash between Pope Leo XIV and the Trump White House — a feud involving military threats, medieval papal history, and an American-born pope who refuses to back down. We'll hear why analysts say MAGA's religiosity is pure aesthetic, and what that hollowness means for the millions of Americans still taking their faith seriously.

Full Show Notes

#1787 Full Episode

[00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we explore the extraordinary clash between Pope Leo XIV and the Trump White House — a feud involving military threats, medieval papal history, and an American-born pope who refuses to back down. We'll hear why analysts say MAGA's religiosity is pure aesthetic, and what that hollowness means for the millions of Americans still taking their faith seriously.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

Democracy Now!

The Holy Post

The PBS NewsHour

The Kavernacle

Conspirituality

SWAJ 

and Man Carrying Thing

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, Trump and Company's Love/Hate Papal Relationship

Section B, Anti-Catholic Sentiment in America

Section C, The Pope vs The Trump

Section D, Some Misc. Historical Context

But first, a reminder to check out [00:01:00] our new show, SOLVED! on the Best of the Left YouTube channel! We're really proud of the show we're making, and think you'll get real value out of it. Plus, you checking it out will help us find new viewers on YouTube so thanks in advance for your all your views, likes, subscribes and comments. That's all on the Best of the Left YouTube channel, linked in the show notes.

And now, on to the show.

Speaker 113: the New York Times gathered data from two dozen diocese, Catholic diocese, including some of the country's largest like Los Angeles and Phoenix, as well as some very small ones like Gallup, New Mexico, and Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Each reported a significant jump. They do, new. New members at Easter, it's, it's a big deal. It's an annual thing, and that's coming up. So they're getting the numbers on how many people are signed up to become, members of the Catholic church. And it's off the chart, what it's been. Years ago, respondents pointed to a range of possible reasons, including the desire for community, social and political instability, outreach to young people and technological change, but they really don't [00:02:00] know.

And then our friend Ryan Burge reports that, Hey, guess what? Everyone for the third consecutive year, the share of Americans identifying as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular has declined for the third straight year dropping to 31.8% in 2025, A level not seen since 2017. The decline is statistically significant and consistent across multiple large scale surveys.

The de decreases observed across all three categories. So atheists have declined in America, agnostics have declined in America, and those saying none. None of the above. Have also declined in America. So we're getting more Catholics. We're getting less atheists. Yeah. 

Speaker 112: Yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 113: One, one other piece I wanted to bring up that the number of, this is from Washington Post, the number of, right wing political [00:03:00] influencers that are converting to Catholicism and using lots of religious language. Mm-hmm. Their comment that the new religious right is distinct from the one that was once led by evangelicals and the new one.

Mm-hmm. Is led by. People like Candace Owens, for example, who attends the Latin mass and spins anti-establishment and anti-Jewish fantasies while sitting in front of an ornate crucifix and a gothic reliquary containing a stone associated with the cult of St. Michael, the Archangel, Megyn Kelly, another Catholic has grown more demonstrative in her piety as she's grown more critical of pro-Israel Jewish commentators.

In December, she announced to the world that she was about to pray the rosary quote, like virtually all Christians do. Go through a list of similar talking heads that don't talk about scripture much, but they, they use the imagery of yes. Of particularly of the Catholic church.

And asking the question, [00:04:00] are we moving into a Christian identity? Politics? Politics? Mm-hmm. That's more about images and symbols and less, of course about theology. Yeah. In scripture. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to put all this together. More people, it'd be great to know all these new Catholics.

Mm-hmm. How many are, are politically liberal? How many would qualify as, as progressive? And what are they attracted to about the Catholic church? How many would qualify as very conservative and what are they attracted to about the Catholic church? There was another article that I was gonna pull up, but didn't about how this year, the US bishops are speaking out on issues that code left much more than they're speaking out on issues they did in previous years that coded.

Right. So they used to speak out most loudly about abortion, about sexual ethics. This year they're speaking out about, immigration and, and the war mm-hmm. In [00:05:00] Iran. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And things that typically make conservatives cranky with them. So I, and so are, are liberals being attracted to the Catholic Church mm-hmm.

Because of Pope Leo and Pope Francis? Or are, really far right. Conservatives being attracted because of Candace Owens and JD Vance? What's going on, Caitlin? You get to answer that question, and then after that thank you. We'll see what chat gpt thinks. 

Speaker 115: Right, right, right, right. I My impulse is to say none of that is true.

I really, I really wonder if the vast, well, not all, not 

Speaker 113: none of, not none of it. You say none of what I just said is true. 

Speaker 115: No, I think what might be going on 

Speaker 113: now I have, now I have social friction with 

Speaker 115: you. I, I know. Well, it might be going on. I wouldn't be surprised. I don't have any data to back this up or anecdotes, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the very public expression of this, Candace Owens and conspiracy theories and Right, right-leaning interest in Catholicism and the Catholic Bishops making [00:06:00] statements about immigration and left-leaning interest in Catholicism are what's animating online conversations amongst people who write op-eds and are on Twitter and think about things in that way.

But that might have very little to do with. People on the ground who might be more interested in Catholicism for the reasons we mentioned earlier. Looking for rootedness, looking for community, looking for tradition. I, I just had a conversation this week with a bunch of people who were, who all went to seminary or some theological education, and we were all expressing just like disbelief sometimes at the number of people we know in our lives that don't have any theological education who will switch between churches or traditions with an ease that we just are like, mm-hmm.

What do you, you are at a Presbyterian church and now you're considering becoming Catholic. Mm-hmm. Like, how does all this work together? Mm-hmm. And we kept coming up against the fact that most people make decisions about church. Sometimes it is about politics. We've talked about this in the past. It's more about political, social leaning, but honestly, a lot of people aren't even queued into that register.

They're just like, there's a church nearby. Someone was nice to me. [00:07:00] Mm-hmm. Or I would like to be in a small group, or I would like to, I'm attracted to when it comes to Catholic and Orthodox churches, I'm attracted to the history and the tradition. I don't know that I could really articulate for you some of the other things that are going on.

So I just wouldn't be surprised if some of the, we should figure out if it's the right or it's the left is just what talking heads do. 

Speaker 113: Yeah. 

Speaker 115: And most people on the ground. Whatcha you 

saying 

Speaker 113: about me? 

Speaker 115: We are talking heads. Oh no, I'm so sorry. We have no bodies under this. I'm body 

Speaker 113: entity. 

Speaker 115: I just wonder if the people on the ground are oblivious for the most part at the Candace Owens versus Catholic Bishops fight.

Speaker 113: That's probably true. I think that's probably true. 'cause I, I will say I follow the news a lot more than you do. Most people. Partly 'cause it's part of what I do for work. Mike? 

Speaker 112: Thoughts? I thoughts? I actually, and Caitlin, I adore you. 

Speaker 113: Don't, don't go chat. GPT on Caitlin. 

Speaker 112: Caitlin, I had that exact same.

Inclination to say, I don't [00:08:00] know that it's politics that's driving it. I think it's disenchantment and people trying to find re-enchantment that's driving it. Because I don't think, if we, if we adapt those frames from Charles Taylor, I don't think the evangelical church re-enchantment anything.

Yeah. We're part of the de disenchantment of, we, our buildings aren't unique. Our worship services are blend. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's just the, and so I think there's something about, we don't even expect orthodox get 

Speaker 113: healed anymore. 

Speaker 112: No. Some do, but 

Speaker 113: Yeah. Well, yeah. 

Speaker 112: There, which is why Orthodoxism is 

Speaker 113: growing.

Speaker 115: That's true. Yes. There's some 

Speaker 112: enchanting 

Speaker 115: there. 

Speaker 112: I just think, I just think, I think that the evangel, the standard evangelical church cannot ree ch anything. 

Speaker 115: Mm. 

Speaker 112: And I think these historic traditions, they, they appeal to the senses. They appeal to. Aesthetics, they appeal to smells and sights and sounds differently.

And I, I, my personal opinion is, I think that's, [00:09:00] if I had to guess, I would say it's that I think people are just done with warehouse churches and cookie cutter music and self-help sermons. They want something that feels deeper, richer and truer than that. 

Speaker 115: And Mike, to your point, I, this was buried in the, the article about Roman Catholic, observance, but the Roman Catholic Church requires a pretty robust.

Program before you're confirmed. Mm-hmm. S good. Like there's a lot of study and obligation and like really making promises and knowing what you're getting into. And as much as the evangelical church spent many years in the seeker sensitive vein saying like, let's get rid of all of them.

Come just as 

Speaker 113: you are, 

Speaker 115: right? Like this is a performance or it's a product, or it's, yeah. And I think if you're feeling unrooted and lonely and you're like, I'm done with this AI chat bot, that's really not fulfilling my need anymore. If you show up to an evangelical megachurch where you can sit in a not a pew, usually you can sit in a chair every week and not have anyone talk to you.

And you can become a member by coming for like one meeting and signing a [00:10:00] paper. But then the Catholic church, not only to your point, Mike is beautiful and rooted and engages the census and also says, well actually. Belonging to us really matters. It will ask things of you. Mm-hmm. And so actually you have to go through this whole process of learning and, and I'm, I've been doing all this research on the early church process of this.

There would be a moment Yes. When people were joining the early church. Yes. Where not only would they have had to learn all of this theology and make sure they knew what they were signing up for, but their sponsor, the person who was like helping them enter the church, would have to be able to tell the bishop, I've seen them feed the poor.

Or like I've seen them sacrifice for their neighbor. I've, and that real buy-in, even though it will filter out a lot of people who do wanna just still come and see a performance every Sunday is attractive to a lot of people, especially in a world where no one else is asking anything of them and then giving them nothing in return because they're not being asked of anything.

Speaker 36: Over the last 10 years, Pope Francis has gained the adoration of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world for his humility, care for the poor, and for steering the church to reform its stances on some social issues. [00:11:00] While the most recent polling from 2021 shows, Francis has the support of the majority of Catholics in the us, conservative clerics and lay people in America are some of his most vocal critics.

In November, the Pope moved against two of his loudest detractors, Bishop Joseph E. Strickland and Cardinal Raymond, Leo Burke, both Americans. Last month, Strickland was removed as a bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas. Then a few weeks later, Cardinal Burke was stripped of his Vatican privileges, housing and salary.

David Gibson is the director of the Center of Religion and Culture at Fordham University. David, thank you so much for joining us. Let's talk first about the type of Pope Pope Francis has been. What reforms and changes to the church has he focused on? 

Speaker 37: Pope Francis is really focused on being a pastor, being providing a more pastoral, inclusive, merciful church, going out to the peripheries, those who are in suffering.

So that's been his signature, is really going out and [00:12:00] helping those of the poor, the homeless. The immigrant, the refugee. So he's seen as this very merciful figure. What? He's not terribly. Merciful towards are the elites in the church, the powerful, those who have all the privileges and all the perks. And we've seen how he's moved against some of them in recent months.

Speaker 36: And is it that the American Catholic bishops leaders who have criticized him, are they considered elites in church standing? And why is it that they seem to have been among the most vocal critics of Foote Francis? 

Speaker 37: Well, the opposition to Pope Francis is very loud and it's very influential, but it's really very small and very much located in the Anglosphere, especially in the United States.

There's a lot of big money behind this conservative movement, so they have this great profile. And a, again, a certain degree of influence, but they're [00:13:00] relatively small, but they have a certain approach that kind of tracks the political trends in the United States, and they don't like what Pope Francis is doing.

He's really upending. All of the customs and all of the privileges that these bishops and cardinals were used to, and they really don't like that. If you step back from the disagreements over politics, over doctrine, over ideology, a lot of this is simply the fact that these are bishops and cardinals who had the inside track under the previous Pontificates, John Paul II and Benedict XVI for over 35 years.

Now you have a Pope who was elected 10 years ago who upends all of that. He's the first Pope from the Southern hemisphere. He's from Argentina. He's not going to play favorites in the way that the other popes used to. 

Speaker 36: And what does it say about the state of American Catholicism that Pope Francis [00:14:00] enjoys relatively high approval ratings among the majority of American Catholics, and yet he's coming under criticism from, from some American leaders.

Speaker 37: Well, what those high approval ratings say is that Catholics always like the singer, even if they don't like the song. It also indicates, again that this conservative opposition to him is really vocal opposition to him based in the United States is very small. That doesn't mean it's not influential and it's not damaging.

You have to remember that the American Catholic Church is just 5% of the global 1.2 billion. Member church. So we tend to forget that. And even within the 60, 65 million member Catholic church in the United States, these real conservative, elements are a minority. 

Speaker 36: We mentioned these two Catholic leaders in the United States that Pope Francis has punished.

Can you tell us a little bit more about them and what they've said about him that elicited [00:15:00] this response? 

Speaker 37: Well, these two cases, one Bishop Joseph Strickland in Tyler, Texas, diocese in East Texas, and Cardinal Raymond Burke, who's lived in Rome and also in Wisconsin. They're, they're, they're distinct, in the sense that, they're both been longtime critics of Pope Francis, but Bishop Strickland.

His diocese really was not being well run. Pope Francis has been extremely patient over 10 years with his critics like Cardinal Burke, who's been a long time thorn in his side, and even with Joseph Strickland, who's endorsed some of the most virulent attacks against Pope Francis. But. In the case of Bishop Strickland, his diocese, the morale was, was, was down.

The diocese is divided administratively, it's a mess. Pope Francis finally said, you can't be a bishop of this diocese. You remain a bishop, but we need to replace you. In the case of Cardinal Burke, you've got a 75-year-old Cardinal who's living in a [00:16:00] 4,500 square foot apartment in Rome with a $60,000 a year stipend.

He spends. No one knows, maybe a month total in Rome. He has no job there. He's got all these perks and privileges. The Pope finally said to him, look, you can still be a cardinal. You can still vote in the next conclave. You could even be elected Pope. After I leave the scene, but we, the Vatican are not gonna give you a stipend anymore, and we're not gonna give you a free apartment.

You can keep the apartment. You just need to pay for it. 

Speaker 36: In terms of his response to these critics and, and what you've laid out as inefficiencies in their diocese, what does that tell us about the type of pope that Francis is and the type of leader and the type of human that he is? 

Speaker 37: Pope Francis has really been patient.

He's resisted moving against some of these critics. Again, the criticism against Francis is of an entirely different category than the dissent was from the left against John Paul II [00:17:00] and Benedict XVI. These, bishops and Cardinal. Aren't just disagreeing with the Pope. They're saying he's not a legitimate teacher of the faith.

Some of them are even saying he's not a legitimate pope. It's almost like accusing the president of Sedition. Any bishop in a sense can be his own Pope. In the social media sense and Francis has not wanted to create other rival voices out there, but at a certain point he has to lose patience. 

Speaker 17: on their recent feud, obviously Donald Trump took to true social to write this.

After Pope Leo has been criticizing the US War in Iran, Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy. He talks about fear of the Trump administration, but doesn't mention the fear that the Catholic church and all Christian organizations had during COVID when they're arresting priests and ministers and everybody else for holding church services and even going outside and being.

10 and even 20 feet apart. I like his brother Lewis much better than I like him because [00:18:00] Lewis is all maga. He gets it and Leo doesn't. I don't want a pope who thinks it's okay for Iran to have nukes. I don't want a pope who thinks it's terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a country that was sending massive amounts of drugs into the US and even worse emptying their prisons.

Into our country, and I don't want a pope who criticizes the president of the US because I'm doing exactly what I was elected to do in a landslide. He wasn't on any list to be Pope and wasn't, and was only put there by the church because he was an American, and they thought that'd be the best way to deal with the President Donald Trump.

If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the V. And unfortunately, Leo's weak on crime. Weak on nuclear weapons does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets of Obama Sympathizes. Leo should get his act together as Pope and use common sense and Leo responding. I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.

We are not politicians. We don't deal with foreign policy with the same perspective. He might understand it, but I do believe in the message of the gospel as a peacemaker. And then he also tweeted [00:19:00] after this recent feud, hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are immersed in extreme poverty, yet disproportionate wealth remains in the hands of a few.

It is an unjust scenario in the face of which we cannot fail to question ourselves and to commit to change things. There is no lack of resources at the root of disparities, but the need to address solvable problems related to a more equitable distribution of wealth to be achieved with moral sense and honesty.

So clearly a more left wing Pope who, American conservatives are generally not liking, but it seems to be. The American Christians who hate Leo and are backing Donald Trump are the Zionist ones, where the other ones who are either. A bit apathetic to Israel or don't like Israel of of course our backing Pope Leo, despite him being more left-leaning pages like this.

Grab the Greg, the GR put Pope Leo needs to excommunicate JD Vance from the Catholic Church. And this is, symbolic of a lot of the far right backing Pope Leo against JD Vance, who is as Catholic [00:20:00] convert, who is backing all Israel's terrible crimes on Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine. So there's an account called Trad West, which is a Catholic.

Twitter account with 500,000 followers. So I want to use this to show you how even on the far right they are embodying what Chris Pratt was saying, they act like politics and supporting Pope Leo because he is the pope is completely separate. So this page was celebrating Chris Pratt for putting a massive cross up.

I missed this. They're celebrating Henry Cavill, which is really funny. They're celebrating things like was cast as Geralt in the Witcher. Writers try to modernize and ruin the law, and he leaves the lead role of a massive franchise because of his principles. Moves to Warhammer 40 K and refuses to allow them to push modern agendas unfathomably based.

And no one ever said conservatives understood the media they love because the Wi the Witch one is funny because. Out of all these fantasy franchises, obviously Lord of [00:21:00] Rings is like super pro Catholic 'cause it was written by a bit of a Catholic zealot in Tolkien. The Witcher is actually like the opposite of that.

One of the running themes in the Witcher is a massive criticism. Of the Catholic Church and its role in just Polish history and Polish nationalism. There's a church called the Church of the Eternal Fire. They're nearly like a one for one standin for the Catholic church, and they're like fanatical racists who burn non-humans and witches at the stake and ally with these witch hunters who are like the one of the most evil factions in the game.

Right? The witch is criticizing a lot. Polish history and contemporary Polish Catholicism. It's funny if Henry Cavill was not backing down on the source material to say that's a good thing for Catholicism generally, because it definitely isn't like if, if he didn't back down on. Putting in the Church of the Eternal Fire into the show, which I don't think they're in the show, would this Catholic page be happy about that?

But also the Warhammer one's funny. I've only played Space Marine two, so I dunno the law too much. But even playing that and how like [00:22:00] religion is depicted in that, I wouldn't say that Warhammer probably. Has the most rosy outlook on Catholicism, especially considering the things that are inspiring Warhammer, like the Dune series and stuff.

But that was a funny thing I thought I'd talk about and remember, Pope Leo has just talked about redistributing wealth and Trad West posts. Many think communism. It's just political theory. It's not. It's a spiritual weapon of the devil designed to enslave souls, destroy the church and erase God from the hearts of men.

This is why the saints stood up to it. Why is communism demonic? Because communism begins with atheism and it denies God in his church. Man is reduced to a number in the collective, and the state becomes God. The church becomes the enemy. This is just not political. This is not just political theory. It's Satanic and yes, like with the Chris Pratt thing, a lot of these posts seem to be written by AI as well.

You have stuff like this, mosques in Germany. Versus churches in Saudi Arabia, Reconquista 2.0. Soon the Crusades were awful. Europe without the Crusades. So I don't have time to talk about [00:23:00] this, but yes, the, defensive war narrative around the crusades is absolutely bullshit and stupid. I'll throw up, a thumbnail of the video I've made on this, so if you care about this.

And you've always wondered why Catholics always say shit like this. Like we were defending Europe from Islam. That would've taken over the whole of Europe. It's just so stupid. But again, they love it. And they're talking about Reconquista too, so. Assuming they're talking about like doing violence to Europe's Muslim population.

So saying stuff like this, after careful consideration, I've decided to become more extreme in my political beliefs. Think about everything I've just read you. It's all far right? Garbage. It's all fanatical far, right? Catholic garbage. So who would you think these people would support if it's a mashup between Donald Trump and Pope Leo?

Who would they support? This is why it's so surprising, but that's why I had to play that Chris Pratt clip where he says, I don't care about politics enough. I don't care about politics enough to take a stand, but I will take a stand in my faith. So here's what Trad West writes about. Leo Pope Leo [00:24:00] walks into the collapsing moral landscape and doesn't flinch.

Immediately sets a tone. No ambiguity speaks about truth like its objective. Reminds the world that Christianity is demanding openly. Challenges the culture of convenience and excess. Calls out spiritual laziness pushes for larger, stronger families. Warns that demographic collapse as a spiritual issue, confronts modern ideologies without dressing it up diplomatically names, enemies of the church without hesitation, emphasizes prayer.

Not as a symbolism, but as a necessity. Constantly redirects attention back to God, not institutions. Rejects. The idea of adapting doctrine to modern trends. Insists truth, shapes the world not the other way around, and draws a clear line between truth and error. Forces people to choose where they stand and doesn't seek popularity popular anyway.

And then here's another one. Pope Leo is a Catholic. Why are people shocked when he takes Catholic stances? Liberal. Pope Leo is woke Republican. Pope Leo is not woke. Pope Leo. I love God in his church, and Jesus saying, I love you too. [00:25:00] So just one more, A page called Catholic for Catholics, which is an, again, an American conservative Twitter page.

They wrote a statement saying, president Trump's attack on Pope Leo. Was disheartening and merits an apology. The attack on Pope Leo is primarily a reaction to the Holy Father's courageous calls for peace amidst the Iran War and Israel's bloody destruction of Southern Lebanon. It's a war that is highly unpopular, especially among Catholics who sense the immorality of the whole conflict, let alone the net lost for America.

Israel has pulled us into the war and continues to threaten the peace with their insatiable desire for territorial expansion. The role of the Catholic Patriot in America is more crucial than ever. Our faith gives us the freedom to never be sheep that follow blindly, a political leader or even a pope.

We are sheep, but sheep that follow the good shepherd, Jesus Christ. So again, I find that interesting because like I said, so many of these Catholics are absolutely fanatical. Far right. Racist who hate Muslims, who idolize the [00:26:00] Crusades, talk about wanting to do another one, and here they are. Backing a lefty liberal pope against a far right, president because of things like Israel.

And why I find it interesting is it is, it's not even about consistency. It's not like the Catholic church has an allied with war mongers like Donald Trump. The Catholic church historically backed so many fascist dictators. The Catholic church doesn't mind war. The Catholic church doesn't mind a whole host of, of terrible things, but maybe that's the good sign sometimes that all these American Catholics who are right wing, they're being influenced by a left wing pope who is saying that these things like the Iran War is bad.

And that's even making them go against Donald Trump, who the majority of them supported for president in the first place. But yeah, like I was saying, I find this interesting, but also really, really bizarre that these people who have such fascist politics can still be influenced by the Pope. But I think part of this is also.

My ending point. So many people who love Catholicism, they love the history, they love the element of the [00:27:00] Roman Empire, and they like Pope Leo because they view him as a king. He's like the king of the Catholics. And no matter what you think of the king, he plays a spiritual role. He plays a leading role.

You have to show him deference. And I think that plays such a role in it. Like these people are very, very conservative. They secretly yearn from a monarchy and that's why they show this man respect, even though they massively disagree with him. And I think because Pope Leo is an American, he gets even more of that because I don't think these same people would be saying this about Pope Francis, like they're saying it about Pope Leo.

Speaker 30: We saw this clip of Pope Bob giving a brief audience to convert Tra c JD Vance, possibly the most annoying convert in the world, uh, with Usha standing beside him in a black mania. Jeanette Rubio's in Amenta as well.

Marco is very stiff. He's holding his breath. He always looks constipated. Vance has this ubic manner that I think [00:28:00] belies all of his boot licking aggression, and he hands the pont of an oversized envelope, and he says that it's an invitation from Donald and Melania to a White House dinner. Pope Bob smiles guardedly as he takes it, and without looking at it, sets it on his desk saying quietly.

I'll read that at some point. And Vance Sputters of course. Of course. And then they give him a Bears Jersey signed by their kids, even though he, he's a baseball guy. And then they pose, I don't know if you saw the photo, but Yeah, it's a very awkward photo. There's like eight inches between them all and they're standing quite stiff, I don't know, like on a wedding cake or something.

Mm-hmm. The scene sums up the church state tension of whatever phase of global fascism we're now entering. I think and marks a high point in our consideration of the religion of politics. Here come these shit heels jailing students, rendering immigrants and blueprinting the Trump Gaza Resort, and they shuffle into the Vatican with hats in hand to meet a fellow [00:29:00] American who is nothing like their boss, and they're asking for pats on the head.

And we have this enigmatic response from Pope Bob that I think sums up where we all are as we read the incense swirls for whether he's gonna keep steering the world's 1.4 billion Catholics against the tides of late stage capitalism, somehow Francis style. And will he do it while seeking common ground with conservative movements around the world on the key points of anti wokeness?

Speaker 62: Senator thing In recent weeks, your party has come under fire for supporting an unpopular and many say unwinnable war in the Middle East. Care to comment. Look, we wouldn't be doing this unless we 100% had to. As a recent convert to Catholicism myself, I know how important it is to protect the world with our bombs.

Pope Leo the 14th commented indirectly about the Iran War. It's not a war, it's just a thing. Can I play you the Pope's comments, 

Speaker 63: Leo? Our Chicago boy old deep dish, Leo? Yes. Yeah, just show me 

Speaker 62: I think, war is, bad. Like I don't [00:30:00] think only we should, people should do war

care to comment.

I have never struggled with my faith as much as I have today. Didn't you hit someone with your car once to process my rage. I wrote some complaints I'd like to address to the pope one. No more wokeness. No more. Two, sorry. How many complaints do you have? 

 

Speaker 62: 95.

Speaker 123: I applaud the pope for his courage. To say what his position demands him to say, as a leader of faith, as someone we look up to, to speak through truth to power and to call for a vision of peace, and what we've witnessed is actually two versions of Christianity.

One represented by the Pope, shaped by the ethics of Christ, shaped even by all Testament prophetic tradition that emphasize justice, care for the poor, for the oppressed. And as I said, shaped by the vision, the ethics of Jesus. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are those who are thirsty for righteousness and peace.[00:31:00] 

At the other hand, we see another version shaped by Christian nationalism, shaped by even a fascination of returning to the days of the crusades. That by Pete Hegseth, and many Christian Zionists. I'm grateful that, the Pope is bringing back sanity and trying to reclaim, as I said, the ethics of Jesus into this conversation.

Our God is not a God of war, and this is really frightening to have this. War framed, as a religious war, even as a Holy War. Ironically, they accused the Iranian regime of invoking religion into their politics. And now we have the same thing done by, the American, secretary of War. So I'm grateful for, the voice and courage of Pope Leo on this matter.

Speaker 118: Mm. I also wanna ask you about what's happening in Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli police. Stop the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Palm Sunday to celebrate mass [00:32:00] due due to Israel's ban on gatherings at religious sites during the Iran war. The Latin Patriarchate said it was the first time in centuries that the heads of the church were prevented from celebrating Palm Sunday mass at the site, calling the incident a grave precedent.

Following the backlash, prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Latin patriarch would receive full and immediate access to the church. Now, interestingly, I think probably the most powerful response for Netanyahu were the people you refer to as the Christian Zionists, like the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz.

If you can link these two. 

Speaker 123: Yes. Well, first of all, we must emphasize that. The actions of Israel stopping, the patriarch from going to the church has nothing to do with safety and security. So let's be clear. They were four leaders going to pray in the church [00:33:00] alone. The church has respected every security measure of attempt for safety, and the number of people allowed to gather.

If Israel is really concerned, they would go to the. Israeli Jewish neighborhoods and stop people from gathering. But let's be clear again. If Israel is concerned for our safety, they would stop the settlers from attacking us in the West Bank. They would not kill us in mass numbers committed genocide, in Gaza, this is about control.

They stop them on the way to the church. They want to emphasize who's in charge of Jerusalem. This is what it's all about. And you mentioned the response of Prime Minister Netanyahu, saying that now he's kind enough to allow us to go and pray on our churches. Do we really need permission? From an occupying authority because let's remember Jerusalem.

Israel does not have, sovereignty over, should not have sovereignty over Jerusalem. It was annexed illegally, and now he comes across as someone who's allowing Christians to worship in the church, go knowing that we have been worshiping here for centuries, uninterrupted, this is what it's [00:34:00] all about.

And I think. The backlash shows sometimes that Israel does some missteps when it comes to its image. They're always concerned about their image, so they've seen the backlash to the extent that even. The biggest cheerleaders, the Christian Zionist, had to interfere. And I find it troubling that only now they come to the defense of Christians, given the great numbers of violations against Christians by Israel that we have articulated, that we have said, Christian Zionists are big danger to our region, at the Bethlem Institute for Peace and Justice.

We do our best to counter that theology because we think it's a theology of war of virus. What's needed at this time, is to reclaim the, teachings of our religions, of our faith that promote justice and peace, not the idea of a tribal God. Of favoritism. So, as much as we were surprised by the comments of, the, ambassador Hakai and Ted Cruz at the same [00:35:00] time.

Let's not kid ourselves. They are not really on the side of Christians, in the Holy Land. This is all about the image, of Israel in the West. 

Speaker 118: Your final thoughts as you speak to us from Ramah, from the occupied West Bank in this Holy Week, your trajectory from Christ in the rubble in 2023, and then writing the book about it to finally where we are today with the war on Iran.

Speaker 123: Yeah, sadly, things are not that much better since, I made that sermon. Or wrote the book, let's not, be under the illusion that the war on Gaza has ended, or the genocide has ended. The siege is not, lifted yet. Aid is not entering, people are still suffering as a result of,

ruthless decision makers who have total, no regard, to human, lives. And, on Good Friday, we're reminded of this, idea that Jesus himself became [00:36:00] the victim. Of the violence of empire and religious extremism. And although things will look many times dark, silent, there will be, times in which even we doubt.

Where is God? Jesus himself on the cross, cried, my God, why have you forsaken me? We cannot lose faith that justice will ultimately win. Resurrection is about the victory of life. In these dark moments when millions are. Displaced not from Gaza. Now, now even in Lebanon, are displaced in which we see children pulled from under the rub.

In Iran, we see, more and more, embrace of the culture of death and violence, even celebrating death. More than ever. We need courageous faith leaders to say, what the pope said, that God takes sides with the victims, with the poor, with the marginalized, and that God is looking for. Voices of peace, voices of sanity, voices that elevate human dignity and life above every national [00:37:00] religious ideology.

And I hope this is the message that is preached from pulpits around the globe, in this eastern in which we celebrate life and the resurrection of Jesus. 

when this is coming out, it's easy to see this in the context of condemnations, of hexes behavior at the Department of Defense to see this in the context of condemn nations of Iraq.

This is the context to that, right? We are now going back and getting a better sense of where the conflict is coming from and the way that an American threat about the papacy needing to back American military power threats and violence has backfired so much that Pope far from bending to, to their will has taken this as effectively the challenge.

Like I am the I am Christ vicar on birth, I will use my megaphone to tell you exactly what I think of your genocidal campaigns. I. Rarely loved a Pope more than I love having this background effect, which is, which is a threat, which is a fundamental threat to the safety of the papacy. [00:38:00] The response to this being, I I you and what Army, and their response is the America covers is like, I have God.

It's great. This is, this is actually a beautiful moment, you then get little bits and pieces of not only the threat, the military threat aspect. The side comment by some other anonymous US official of Avignon papacy, which is a truly insane thing to bring up in this context, but is why all the medievals are losing their minds.

And then what it means when you have, especially within the context of the Pentagon and how weird the Department of Defense is. Under Pete, he Rain. How you piece this together with all the other parts. So what we have are, are two reports. One coming from the Free Press, one coming from Christopher Hale, letters from Leo.

These have been picked up. They are now all over the place in terms of mainstream media, legacy media and so on. But in those reports there's a mention that an American official, it does not seem, and I'm happy to defer to you here, Thomas, that it was Elbridge Colby my, it was someone else who we don't know yet [00:39:00] mentions the Avignon.

So. We need a decoder ring for that. Why? When you hear that, does that signal a threat to the living Pope Pope Leo? So Avignon, this fascinating moment where for most of the 14th century, the popes who are considered canonical now are no longer in Rome, but in the modern day French city of AV at the time.

It's within the kingdom of a, which is part of the Holy Roman empire. But it's a series of seven French popes who are moved into an area much closer to French power. It comes about because the conflict between Boniface VIII, thei, and Philip IV. BFIs and Philip have fought over papal authority over money over.

Really who's in control of the French church and the assets of the French church. It's a fairly long form fight. There are some excommunications back and forth, and it ends with the fourth sending his agents into Rome where they attack Boniface. They beat him. They imprison him for [00:40:00] three days and then.

They withdraw, but he dies a month later from a fever that is almost assuredly as a result of the kind of beating and abuse and imprisonment. So the threat of an Avignon papacy starts with the idea of a recalcitrant pope who does not acknowledge the temporal authority of the King of France. That the response to this is the, the effectively the beating to death of the Pope.

And afterwards you get the fairly aggressive pressure after the death of the next Pope Benedict XI, you. A King of France who pushes the conclave to elect the Archbishop of Eaux, who's a friend of his as Pope. Clement V, Clement refused to move to Rome in 1309, he moves to the papal enclave at Avignon, and for the next 67 years, it stays there.

We talk about this as the Babylonian captivity of the papacy, which. Maybe hyperbolic, but there is a degree to which you have a specific plate where the King of France has a much more direct hand in the control of the church with armies across the Rome that could be brought [00:41:00] in if they ever needed to.

It's worth mentioning that Clement V is also the guy who bans the, the Knight's Templar. It's like the end of the night's Templar. We all get really weird with like, oh, it was heresy, and were they worshiping demons and are they still around? Like that's all French revolution, fanfiction conspiracy rod, and like people should get offline.

It's also like this is the Pope who as soon as he becomes Pope and the king of friends, like, hey, at that time I was at war with all of my neighbors and I asked to like tax the church. What if we tax the Knight's Templar out of existence too? And the Pope was like, I would like to not die. Sure.

There is an actual there. This is a language of a metric of state capture of the Catholic church. Does it make sense in American context? Absolutely not. These are people who are deeply brain rotted. It is a actual active threat. Let me translate and see if you agree with my, I'm an, I'm your student. I'm, I'm in an oral exam.

I'm, I'm spitting this back to you in office hours. You tell me if this [00:42:00] holds up in like common parlance. The United States in January is trying to get the Pope to come home for the 250th anniversary of the country. The birthday, the Semiquincentennial, the Pope is the first American Pope. He's the only Pope.

Who's ever eaten a, a hot dog at a ball game? At least as a kid, at least as a, an 8-year-old, the only Pope who knows how good corn on the cob taste on 4th of July, and he's like, not gonna happen. Just we're not doing it. And things get worse and worse. He's actually fairly critical starting around the new year in January of the Trump presidency foreign policy.

And it goes from, Hey, Leo, do you wanna come home? Seek a centennial? Maybe we'll get you eating a hot dog. Ball game. I don't know, downtown Chicago. What do you think? To, alright bro, if we need to, we'll capture you, put you in a castle and beat you until you're no longer with us, and then we'll pick our own Pope.

Is that sound like [00:43:00] the weird, bro, culture threat that was made or what? What did I exaggerate? I don't think, here's the thing, I don't think you exaggerate the thing. I don't think anyone said the last part out loud. I think we have to go with like, it'd be a real shame if something happened, happened to you.

Exactly. The, the mafia implication. But that's the only, that is the only difference I would make is that it's the mafia implication. It's like, it's real dangerous in these parts around Avignon, if you know what I mean. Don't you wanna come home for the 4th of July? You, you've been to the south side of Avignon lately.

Hmm. Have you? Yeah. Eats. That's insane. But these are also, these are both deeply unserious people who also just have killed a lot of people in this year. And that's the problem. Right? It's, it's the two parts. It's the stuff that seems like clown fodder, but also you have the death tolls of what are, what the US military is doing all around the world.

Yeah. So like that's the problem. You are going from [00:44:00] the actual Sears per because. Elbridge Colby is as serious you would be regardless of the politics. He, he's a grownup. We have a direct quote from him. The direct quote that we get in these stories is that America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world.

The Catholic church had better take its side. That's a very particular argument. And then the account is that one US official, and they don't name which one invokes the AV papacy. So you have one person who's making the very serious argument that. We have the military power to do whatever, which is a threat, but it's also a call for the Catholic Church to align itself with a dominant temporal power, and, and Elbridge Colby is Catholic.

This is not necessarily, and I have not done a deep dive into his life because I don't need to be sad about everything every day. This could be an argument of like, surely my church will support me in this. The other one is then like, sure, surely you wouldn't want an accident to happen at two o'clock on a Friday.

That's, that's the combination. It's the, it's the. Bad cop and cartoonish villain [00:45:00] cop.

We've just heard clips starting with

Democracy Now! contrasting Pope Leo's call for peace with the Christian nationalism used to justify the U.S. war on Iran.

The Holy Post dug into rising Catholic membership numbers and asked whether the growth reflects a hunger for tradition and belonging rather than the right-wing Catholic influencers dominating online conversation.

Going back to the previous Pope, The PBS NewsHour unpacked why Pope Francis, patient for ten years with critical Cardinals, finally stripped them of privileges, framing it as a clash between reform and entrenched church elites.

The Kavernacle explored the strange split among far-right American Catholics who back Pope Leo over Trump on the Iran war despite sharing little of Leo's left-wing politics.

Conspirituality examined J.D. Vance's Vatican visit, where Pope Leo's cool response to a White House dinner invitation framed the tension between the new pope and Trump world.

SWAJ dove into the history of the papacy to explain the bizarre [00:46:00] attempt at a mafia threat against Leo

And Man Carrying Thing satirized a Republican senator's crisis of faith after Pope Leo said "I think war is bad," with the senator vowing to file 95 complaints

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

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As for today's topic,

The first [00:48:00] American pope has spent the past year publicly fighting the most Catholic White House in modern history, and the constituency hit hardest by that White House's policies, Latino Catholics, moved harder toward Trump in 2024 than any other group. That's the situation, and the interesting thing is what made it possible.

To get there, you have to start with what neoliberalism did to American working-class life over the last forty years. Unions gutted, wages stagnant relative to productivity, pensions replaced with 401ks, healthcare tied to whether your boss feels like keeping you around, and the civic and religious infrastructure that grew up around stable working-class employment basically dismantled along with the jobs themselves. People are squeezed, and the institutions that used to give working-class life some ballast, like unions, religious communities and the neighborhoods where people actually knew each other, got hollowed out alongside the wages that sustained them. Democrats spent decades [00:49:00] treating that vacuum as background noise, as if people would just absorb the disruption and find new sources of meaning on their own. They didn't, and the vacuum got filled by other things. We're now living with the political consequences of pretending it wouldn't.

In 2024, Trump won 41% of the Latino Catholic vote, the highest share for any Republican presidential candidate in modern polling. Latino working-class families got hammered by inflation, watched a Democratic administration that had passed real economic legislation completely fail to communicate any of it, and noticed that on Gaza, the same administration was funding a campaign that Pope Francis was openly condemning. So, if you're a Catholic voter for whom both economic conditions and the Pope's moral authority matter, the Democratic Party's pitch in 2024 was basically asking you to ignore both. 

Now, in this face off with Trump, Pope Leo is practically sounding like a progressive, but he isn't. He's a centrist [00:50:00] within Catholicism, pro-immigrant, anti-war, anti-inequality, broadly aligned with Catholic social teaching on workers' rights. He's also not progressive on women's ordination, LGBTQ inclusion, abortion, or contraception. So, Leo is a coalition partner with real disagreements rather than a fellow traveler and that’s an important framing.

The version of "the left needs to get faith back" that you usually hear is basically a translation argument, where progressives just need to learn to speak Christian-ese so we can pull religious voters back into our camp, but that’s a tough ask for a lot of people with no interest in joining a religion. What we need is better coalition building skills. Many religious people are regular people whose politics already line up with the left on a lot of things. And just as the mainstream left isn’t great at translating ourselves into religious communities, being a religious member of a coalition shouldn't require you [00:51:00] to translate yourself into the dominant cultural register of secular progressivism in order to be heard.

Real coalition-building means a Catholic social teaching tradition, a Black church tradition, a labor tradition, and a secular progressive tradition can all be authentically themselves and pull in the same direction. Pope Leo speaks Catholic social teaching fluently, and he's been making sharper anti-imperial, anti-inequality, pro-immigrant arguments than most elected Democrats have managed in years. The pope is making many of our arguments in his own voice that’s capable of reaching people that we’re not. And Catholic voters whose politics already fit in the Democratic coalition shouldn't have to convert to MSNBC-speak to be treated as full members of a coalition.

So when Pope Leo tells the Trump administration that treating immigrants who've lived here for fifteen or twenty years as criminals is "extremely [00:52:00] disrespectful," and the response from elected Democrats is mostly silence, that's a strategic failure as much as a moral one. Hispanic Catholics outnumber or match white Catholics in the electorate in California, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona. The 2026 midterms run through those states. PRRI's polling shows Trump's approval among Latino Catholics has dropped from 31% to 23% over the last year. So, the opening is real.

What meeting that moment looks like isn't another round of scolding ads about Trump. It looks like showing up in parishes that have been part of these communities for generations, running candidates who don't have to code-switch when they walk into a working-class Latino neighborhood, and backing the immigration position Pope Leo is articulating with actual legislation rather than vibes. It also means understanding the fact that real coalition is uncomfortable, because it requires people who don't share your worldview to be welcomed at the [00:53:00] same table while still being themselves.

The first American pope is saying out loud what a Catholic political tradition has been saying for over a hundred years, and Catholics recognize it because it's theirs. Pope Leo isn't doing anything especially clever or strategic. He's just speaking to people in the language they actually use about issues that matter to them. The Democratic Party should be taking notes.

Note that we've begun putting my commentaries on YouTube so if you find them insightful, check out our channel and share them! Link in the show notes.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, Trump and Company's Love/Hate Papal Relationship

Followed by Section B, Anti-Catholic Sentiment in America

Section C, The Pope vs The Trump

And Section D, Some Misc. Historical Context

Speaker 106: one of the major theological advisors at the second Vatican Council, a major American Catholic theologian, John Courtney Murray, was, the Kennedy people were soliciting his advice, asking for notes, essentially on this [00:54:00] major speech, a former Commonweal editor, John Cogley, I think was another reader of that speech.

So there's not just like the timing's, not just fortuitous or providential as you might view it, but actually there are links, very particular links in terms of. People that were connected to both, one John's reign, the Pope John his reign, and President Kennedy, his reign. There's actually material, personnel based links between them in very interesting ways as well.

Speaker 105: Yeah, it is a really interesting parallel because Vatican II was, as you said, the Catholic church, the oldest institution in the world, like stepping into the 20th century. And I think the JFK presidency was seen as such as, well, because he was young, because he had young children. 'cause he had this new sensibility, the new frontier.

Speaker 106: He's a little like Zorro in that sense. Like it's a little hard to make the bigoted attack stick because you look at him, right? This handsome guy in Kennedy's case, right? The cute kids running [00:55:00] around in Zorro's case, lovely guy, beautiful wife, et cetera. It's a little hard to make the bigotry stick when that's who you're saying is this odious, nasty person.

It just is a little, I think Kennedy's appearance and the marketing around it and the youthful, yes, new, fresh. This isn't Adlai Stevenson running for the third straight time, right? That merely mattered in terms of shedding, I think, or at least repelling some of the anti Catholicism. But there's a line I wanted to share about.

This in particular that I thought was really interesting, and it was by Peter Steinfels, who's another former editor of Commonweal. And after that, the New York Times Religion reporter for a couple decades. But he published a book in 2003 called A People Adrift, the Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America.

But he formulated the Kennedy moment in an interesting way, and I'll just read it. Here's Peter Steinfels. He says, suddenly, between 1960 and 1965, all the residual stress points between Catholicism and America's public ethos [00:56:00] seemed to collapse. The campaign of John F. Kennedy for president had first revealed how much of the old suspicions remained alive, but Kenny's victory rendered all that anachronistic.

The liberating effect on American Catholicism was enormous. And I like that formulation that the Kennedy candidacy at first revealed how much of this bigotry remained. But then once he won, how much it seemed to put that behind us in a way as a country. Now whether, how much that actually happened or not, it's interesting, but that formulation, it's true.

I mean you can look at Eleanor Roosevelt dipping her tone to the water of anti Catholicism a bit. 'cause she wasn't sure Kennedy was a good liberal or good enough liberal. Right. Anti Catholicism was said, oh, this is the last acceptable bigotry. In a way, conservatives like to say that, especially, which it's not true.

Yeah. But like the fact that you could be well into the middle of the 20th century and anti Catholicism be an a live issue in a campaign. Right. That was true. It really was a problem for Kennedy. He worried about, his advisors, worried [00:57:00] about it, and as I mentioned, took him going down to Texas of all places in front of these Baptist preachers and saying, the Pope ain't gonna tell me what to do like that was it.

I think he did have to do that actually. It was his, Obama's, Jeremiah Wright speech. 

Speaker 104: Well, I was about to say, the quote you read has such clear echoes of Obama's election in the sense that the most optimistic possible narrative at the time was that the election exposed all the racism that still existed, but his victory.

Transcended that, and officially we are in a post-race America. And much like JFK, he was also young. He also had young kids. The parallels are quite striking just in the sense of the mainstream media narrative. I think there's totally many other differences otherwise, but, 

Speaker 105: right. 

Speaker 106: And how quickly that narrative collapsed.

Think about it. So Kennedy is assassin, assassinated. He's elected in 1960s, the first Catholic president, 1963. He's assassinated. 1973 is Roe v. Wade. Right. Like, yeah, Catholic says, well, we got this thing [00:58:00] settled, religion, politics, we got it. Everything's fine. And then within a decade right of his assassination, an issue that was seen as a Catholic issue, abortion, right.

Becomes a major, major flashpoint in the culture. Wars were the onset of the culture wars even. Right. And it was suddenly, yeah, maybe assuming there's a little too easy relationship between your Catholicism and secular liberal democracy in the United States, those celebrations were a bit premature.

Speaker 105: We have only had one Catholic president since JFK. 

Speaker 106: That's true. 

Speaker 105: This is so crazy. And I wanna say, I do not think these two are. Equal comparisons, but we have one more Catholic president than we have had black presidents. 

Speaker 104: Yeah, I, I have a friend whose favorite party question is, do you think we will have an Italian American president or a gay president first?

And I'll just leave that, I'll just leave that with the group. I wanna say before we get it, I know we're historically now we're post JFK victory, but before we keep going, I do wanna talk a little bit about. The [00:59:00] election itself and Sure. The Catholic question, 'cause I think the Kennedy's dealings with both the church itself and Catholic groups during the election really have defined the relationship they would have during the rest of the dynasty to this day.

And so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the specifics of the anti-Catholic attacks, both from Republicans and Democrats and people running against Kennedy. What did that look like? Because it's the type of prejudice that I think people in our age group didn't grow up with. So it seems very foreign to us.

Like I know there were accusations of him having a dual loyalty, like what were the attacks like at the time? 

Speaker 106: Yeah, that's a good point, George. It seems a bit quaint in some ways to haul out arcane theological slurs, and that's, that's your nasty contribution to public discourse. But I think it is essentially a dual loyalty charge that the Pope was, and especially this was more true this.

In the years preceding Kennedy's running for president before the second Vatican [01:00:00] Council where the Pope was considered a monarch of sorts, not just like an authoritarian in a neutral sense of that word, like leader of the church, the decider in the Catholic church, but literally a monarch who had terrestrial power, right?

That the papal states, and then when that was taken away from him, he was holed up prisoner in the Vatican. They called it that period of time until the latter in treaty, which created Vatican City. Right. That's why the Pope is the head of the Vatican City. For decades, he wasn't, he was essentially stuck in the Vatican not knowing what to do.

So he was a monarch in the fullest sense of the word for much of the Catholic church's history, at least in the West and in Europe the past few centuries, millennia, whatever. This was a religion that supposedly didn't believe in liberty of conscience, right? As a Catholic, you couldn't have the same relationship to your faith that certain kinds of Protestants did a freethinking religious liberty.

You can't dictate what someone really believes deep down inside thing. It was the dual lawyer charged that the Pope would essentially the Pope who was the John f [01:01:00] Kennedy's real dictator, right? The real person telling him what to do. He would be taking orders from the Pope, if not literally directly then.

Indirectly in the sense of implementing Catholic teaching or being unbound by it in a certain way. And yeah, so it was, it was a dual loyalty charge that he would be unreliable. That he wouldn't be the liberal. 'cause this is the period of time too when liberals in the Democratic party really are surging, right?

This is post Hubert Humphrey's intervention in the 1948 convention, right? This is, after Adlai Stevenson had already run twice a champion of a certain sort of liberalism as the party is coming around on civil rights and the freedom struggle of African Americans, right? All this is happening, and suddenly the sky as the democratic parties, like embracing its liberalism, this is the guy who has some ties to the old world, stodgy, authoritarian religion that's out of the mainstream of American public life.

It just, it was, I think, not just. Vestigial or lingering anti [01:02:00] Catholicism or the anti Catholicism that prevailed, especially before the Second Vatican Council. It was a Catholic running at this moment, not just in our history, but in the Democratic party's history and where the trends were going in the party at that time.

Its liberalism. It's more progressive and embracing more progressive positions. Kennedy's Catholicism was considered a problem and precisely in relation to that too. And that's why someone like Eleanor Roosevelt wanna mention her, dipping her toes into, I think people eventually just came out and said it.

Yeah, I'm a little suspicious of this guy 'cause he is Catholic. Yeah. And not so many words perhaps, but that was behind so much of it. I'm pretty certain 

Speaker 55: it's still amazing to me that we have an American pope. 

Speaker 48: Yeah. 

Speaker 55: Right. And Trump said he wouldn't be there without me. That could be true. That could very easily be true. I, I'm a Catholic, and when they mm-hmm. 

Speaker 48: As am I, 

Speaker 55: I did not know that I'm, and. I just felt like that was such a gift when he became the Pope.

I just couldn't believe it. It was like such a, it felt like a really generous show, for the College of Cardinals to, show like, Hey America, but we don't [01:03:00] all think you're like him. And also it's just such a power play, unbel unbelievable power play. Like, Trump thinks he knows how to like, play these political games, but it's like, do not mess with the College of Cardinals management they're doing.

Don't 

Speaker 48: play with the Cardinals. 

Speaker 55: Totally. 

Speaker 48: And, 

Speaker 55: and the other thing that like sets a stage for this that I think is, in terms of power building is because after Pope Francis. We had Benedict, it was the, the more conservative, if I can like generalize, just get in trouble for this, but like more conservative popes and then Pope Francis, more liberal pope.

And you thought, okay, are the college of, they were, taken surprise by how active Francis was. Are they gonna swing back? But of course what had happened is a lot of the Cardinals had been replaced by Francis and just like the judiciary in the United States. 

Speaker 48: Right. 

It was like the inverse of the Federalist Society only.

Speaker 55: Yeah. The Catholic 

Speaker 48: church. 

Speaker 55: Right, right. Fascinating. But it [01:04:00] is a, it is, it is a little lesson in, in, in power building. And then you see, I, Leo. Didn't seem to want this political fight. Right. And he took a year to get really into it, but now he's so direct and the thing that I found so amazing about, it wasn't necessarily where he said like, I don't fear Trump.

He said that. But when he said somebody asked about truth social, he's like, just look at the title. Ironic, isn't it? So he's speaking really plainly now. Yeah. 

Speaker 48: Yeah. 

Speaker 55: I don't know. I don't know that it moves Catholic voters that are hardcore Trump voters, but it, it's another, I think anytime there's moral leadership that opposes Trump, it's like another drop that is at that, that I think particularly now in 2026 after Alex Prety, after Renee.

Good. That is meaningful. So I, I don't know that it just, that it means it's isolated to how Catholics feel about Trump. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or that it's gonna move, gonna move, [01:05:00] Catholic voters that support Trump. But it's a, it's a high moral voice coming out to say no. 

Speaker 48: Let's talk about the Catholic vote, because I think people, yeah, it's the Catholics in America, not just Alex Wagner and Jen Palmieri.

And I'll say, I wish I went to church more often. Sorry, Pope Leo. But I love, and, and, and, and it really is a, a, a, a true restatement of Catholic values to be so opposed to this war, so opposed to Trump. I think it's a very good move strategically for the Catholic Church, which is rightfully under fire for the sexual abuse that happened for decades and the covering up of that sexual abuse.

But, the Catholic vote in the United States is 20% of American voters, one in five. It's, 

Speaker 55: it's amazing. That's a huge, it's making that high. That high. Yeah. 

Speaker 48: And they used to split, they're swing voters. They used to split pretty evenly between a Republican or a Democratic presidential candidate, but 56% of them backed Trump in 2024.

These numbers aren't [01:06:00] firm 'cause they're exit poll data. And about 42% com voted for Harris, which I think was like between a 10 and 20 point swing from the previous election with Joe Biden. Right. I agree with you that I don't think the PO the President going after the Pope is gonna be maybe enough to swing all of them back.

Speaker 55: Right, 

Speaker 48: right. But you do take into consideration the way the Pope is framing this, this conflict. Yeah. And the one with Trump, which is about a moral question of war. Yeah. It is about the administration's treatment of immigrants and the most vulnerable in our society. And what you have is a suite of arguments in favor of like the basic foundational values of Catholicism and the values in contrast to the values of the Trump administration.

So maybe it's not like the tweets that will get Catholics. Right. But I don't know. Jen, I wonder how you think as a Catholic in the US as a strategist, as a political animal, how the bundling of all these issues. Is a potent mix to move Catholic voters away from a Republican in 2028. [01:07:00] 

Speaker 55: The other piece of it is that a lot of those Catholics are Hispanic voters.

Speaker 48: Yes. Hispanic Catholics I think are moving in greater numbers away from Trump. Yeah. Because the deportation rates hit harder. And also the economic pain is very, very real. 

Speaker 55: And I saw, I saw recently a, a focus group with, Hispanic voters and it was, most of them are Catholic too. And what was really interesting was one of them said most of them have voted for Trump men, Pennsylvania.

I used to look at the US as bright. 

Speaker 58: Hmm. 

Speaker 55: And like full of light. And now it feels full. Now it feels very dark. And I wonder like where the bright colored America went, because that's 

Speaker 48: devastating. 

Speaker 55: Isn't that, isn't that really, isn't that really something that, that, and they said, a lot of 'em said they, how do they felt about, just like, they felt like, but how do you feel about life in America right now?

And they use words like scary, [01:08:00] unsettled, afraid. And, I think, I think that that ice deportations hanging over their lives in a way that maybe sometimes people don't even want to acknowledge because it's too scary. Mm-hmm. Very concerned about Iran and what America was getting into there.

But the, the, but the notion of things being dark, as opposed to moral and light struck me. So I think if you, I think what's more likely to happen is. The fight with Leo, Leo standing up and being a moral voice, the way people who were unexpected stood up to be, moral voices to condemn, the killing of Alex Preti and Renee.

Mm-hmm. Good. I feel like, what are we doing in Iran with no certainty and, no, direct, objective. All of that wears on people and becomes baggage for the [01:09:00] Republican in, in 28. And I think it leaves, in, leaves the demo, it leaves people open to hearing something else from a Democrat that is more, that has a, that has a moral voice, moral authority has, is like, and, and, and, and is willing to.

To share that and, and talk that and inspire people to a, a place that we, where we can go. But it sure does feel like people are worried and are ready for that when they're talking about America. You seem to be bright and now it's all dark and black and white. 

Speaker 48: Can I say on that note, I would love it if Democrats and Progressives could find a way to bring religion back into, onto the left.

Not to, not to say let's make the left a religious party or a Christian party for that matter. Right. But to not let the right co-opt the values. I'm speaking as a, as a Christian, as a Catholic, to co-opt the, the, the, the, some of the values of, of Christianity, which, when you look the, the, the rights embrace of [01:10:00] Christianity, and we'll talk about JD Vance in a second, is such an abomination given the clear values that, that that party has.

Established for itself. And in the same way that it's like you don't get to have the flag and you don't get to have the church. You're probably the least patriotic party in the modern era. And you're certainly the least moral. And I think it's, it's okay. And maybe even high time for progressives to say we can be religious and have religious values and also embrace progressivism.

Just like we can feel patriotic about this country, but also in our patriotism find fault where it exists in our institutions.

Speaker 3: Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of Defense. He calls himself Secretary of War. But as I like to remind y'all, that cannot be changed by Executive Fiat. The name of the department remains the Department of Defense, and thus Pete Hegseth remains the Secretary of Defense.

Our Secretary of Defense is doing one of his regular, now religious devotionals at the Pentagon where he. [01:11:00] Calls on the Lord to bless his various murderous campaigns against people in the Caribbean, against Iran, and so on so forth. Bless his love of war crimes, his blood thirstiness, his desire to be some medieval crusader.

And during his latest such worship session, whatever you want to call it, he quotes a Bible verse. He quotes Ezekiel 25:17. Now there is a book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible, and there is an Ezekiel chapter 25 verse 17. It is the conclusion of a story in which the Lord is getting his vengeance on one or another of the groups of enemies of the Israelites.

Typical stuff for the Hebrew Bible. But what Pete Hegseth quotes isn't from the actual Ezekiel 25 17. Pete Hegseth said this. What he said was a prayer given to him by an aviator. 

Speaker 4: The path of the downed aviator is [01:12:00] beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of comradery and duty, shepherd the loss through the valley of darkness.

For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon the with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy one, when I lay my vengeance upon me.

Speaker 3: When I was reading that I was really trying to not invoke the rhythms of Samuel L. Jackson's delivery because Samuel Jackson delivers. That San Sands, the aviator stuff in Pulp Fiction. It's a very famous scene from Pulp Fiction, and the [01:13:00] thing about this Ezekiel 25:17 is that it's not in the Bible. In fact, it's Tarantino quoting, as he often does in his films.

Another movie, A movie from the seventies, a movie from the famous Japanese Action Star. Sonny Chiba, which begins with the narration of this constructed, made up Bible verse, 

Speaker 5: who poison and destroy my brothers, and they shall know that I am Sheba the bodyguard when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

Speaker 3: What it isn't. Is, anything, from, the Bible? It's not that at all. I find this very funny. This is very funny to me. That Pete, Seth who went to Princeton, right? Like ostensibly he has some smarts about him, but I think he's made himself and to, I think he's made himself into a Tite. So it's funny that he would c sip this, and it [01:14:00] also gives lie to the ostentatious religiosity, the Christian nationalism of he accept and its fellow travelers.

I failed to mention that at the podium at the Pentagon. He had a Jerusalem cross. He had some crusader slogans. He's, this is really a big part of his personal identity. And it goes without saying, it is an affront to the separation of church and state to the notion that ours is a secular government because it seeks to represent people of many different faith traditions or no faith traditions at all.

And before some commentary is like, well, excuse me, separation of church and state isn't the constitution. The First Amendment prohibition against an establishment of religion is like a clear nod to the idea in circulation at the time, very much part of the proceedings that no, there isn't gonna be any state-sponsored religion, in part because these are people who are not that far for far removed.

Historically speaking from disastrous wars of religion that killed millions of people in Europe, like they. Very much are aware of the past here. They're aware that they're trying [01:15:00] to create a nation full of all kinds of people of different religious beliefs, right? Different Christian denominations, even some Jews, even some Muslims.

They didn't like Catholics too much, but, but that's how it was. They wanted the government to be for everyone. So outta here with it, that nonsense. But beyond it being an Aron to the separation of church and state, it is just a remarkable display of ignorance, remarkable display of ignorance.

And what's been weird about this week, in fact, is that this display of religious ignorance has been like the theme. Of course, at the beginning of the week, president Trump shared an image of him as Jesus blessing some unnamed figure who, to me looks suspiciously like Jeffrey Epstein, but Trump as Jesus blessing some figure.

You have Trump beefing with the Pope. You have JD Vance lecturing the Pope, JD Vance, who just became a Catholic seven years ago, lecturing the actual Pope. This administration, [01:16:00] again, leans on these ostentatious displays of religiosity, but also pumps out foe religious slop. Some of it literally made by AI and shows no particular knowledge or consideration for, or even respect for the religious traditions.

They're constantly referencing it's religion, it's Christian religion in particular as a pure aesthetic, completely disentangled, completely removed from any possible substance, simply a cultural signifier, a tribal signifier. Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary Bo, these big garish crosses while she's justifying any manner of cruelty towards innocent people.

The substance isn't there anymore. It's all tribal signifier. A way of saying you belong in the in group. And of course the principle thing actually connecting you to the ingroup isn't religious belief. It's a political commitment to Trump, [01:17:00] right? It's politics. It's a set of cultural signifiers. And so thus, the Pope who is, Protestants have no particular allegiance to him, of course, but he's still the leader of the Catholic church with, well over a billion followers worldwide.

And most previous heads of state presidents recognize that you gotta, you respect the guy, right? But the Pope. Because he is not submitting to Trump to this cultural identity, to this political allegiance, is now outside of this sphere of concern. He's not really a Christian to these people. And the same goes for Americans.

The Pope isn't American, but the same goes for Americans who belong to any number of Christian traditions, which are non-evangelical, which are not politically conservative, which aren't committed to the Republican party. Thus fall outside the the ingroup. It's something like the end stage of a trend that began over 20 years ago under President George W.

Bush of Christianity as a political and cultural signifier first and foremost, and I'll note [01:18:00] that it's really no accident that in the 25 years since. Bush first entered office. There's been a steady decline in church going and Christian identification, and I don't think it's because Americans are less spiritual or whatnot.

I don't even think it's because Americans no longer want what religion has to offer. I think it's really because of the extreme politicization of Christianity and evangelical Christianity in particular, and how that has come to color so much of American religion. But I'm now just putting my religious sociologist hat on.

Maybe we'll talk about this in a different video for now. Hi, Seth. Dumb guy. Trump blasphemous. And one thing I'm interested to see is if the final stage of all of this of MAGA is something like a religious cult, are we gonna see relics blessed by Trump after his death? Maybe an [01:19:00] AI Trump offering his blessings to whomever hopes to claim the mantle of the Republican party.

That sounds frankly terrifying, but given how these things develop. It, it wouldn't surprise me all too much to see that that is where all of this ultimately leads the Lord. 

Speaker 6: When I lay my vengeance upon the.

Speaker: On the night of the 2024 US election, Donald Trump told his supporters that God had saved his life for a reason. Alluding to the assassination attempt on his life a few months earlier. In the latest edition of Too Long, we explore how faith fueled populism from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin has slowly been reshaping modern democracy.

That's just one of 72 pages in the magazine. Because as always, there's more to too long than you'd expect. Purchase your copy by clicking the link in the description. So the key thing to understand here is that while it was hardly [01:20:00] unforeseeable, the reason falling out between the Vatican and the US will nonetheless come as a real disappointment to the Trump administration and the American, right.

More generally, the Trump administration really didn't get on with Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, who is a relatively outspoken critic of Trump's immigration policies. But were apparently optimistic about engendering better relations with the new Pope. Despite the fact that, as you might remember, Trump was posting AI generated memes of himself as Pope while Leo was being elected.

Anyway, to this end, barely two weeks into the new papacy vice president JD Vance invited Leo to celebrate America's 250th birthday at the White House on July the fourth. 2026. However, and this was probably the first sign, that relations between the White House and the holy seat weren't going to be smooth sailing.

Leo apparently wary of becoming a political PA ahead of the midterms, quickly poured cold water on the idea and delayed his first trip to the US indefinitely. [01:21:00] Instead for July the fourth, the Pope has scheduled a trip to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island in the Mediterranean that serves as a gateway for migrants coming from North Africa to Europe, and which has seen its fair share of migration related disasters, including the capsizing of a migrant boat in 2013 that led to over 300 deaths.

It's hard not to read Leo's decision to shun the White House for Lampadusa as anything other than appointed criticism of the Trump administration's hardline immigration policies. It's also worth noting here that Leo's first major foreign tour is actually going to be an 11 day trip around Africa, including a number of countries affected by Trump's US aid cuts.

Anyway, things didn't get much better in the second half of 2025. American bishops became increasingly vocal in their criticism of Trump's immigration policies, especially after the widespread deployment of ice towards the end of the year, culminating in a rare special message. From the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, their first in 12 years, and with [01:22:00] overwhelming support amongst the bishops expressing sadness at quote, the vilification of immigrants and advocating for a meaningful reform of our nation's immigration laws and procedures in late September.

Leo himself who'd previously been quite cautious with his own rhetoric, describe Trump's immigration policies as inhuman provoking. What was perhaps the first public spat between the Holy Sea and the Trump administration? When asked about the Pope's comments, white House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back and suggested it was really the Biden administration who had pursued an inhumane immigration policy.

This didn't deter Leo, who came out swinging against Trump's immigration policies again in November, calling for deep reflection on the treatment of migrants in the US, and later claiming that at least some immigrants were being treated, quote in a way that is extremely disrespectful to say the least.

In December, the Pope even took the unusual step of criticizing Trump's foreign policy. When after meeting with Vladimir Zelenskyy Leo said, Trump's remarks about [01:23:00] European leaders being weak. Were trying to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance today and in the future. However, relations properly created in January, 2026 after Leo's first annual state of the world address, which was given just a few days after Trump's operation against Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela.

In that speech, Leo made a number of thinly veiled criticisms at Trump's foreign policy warning that a diplomacy that promotes dialogue is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force and lamenting the decline of post-war multilateral institutions like the un. According to that free press report we mentioned in the intro, it was this speech that really drew the ire of the White House with Elbridge Colby hauling the Vatican's then ambassador into the Pentagon, the first recorded visit for a Vatican official to the Pentagon ever for a verbal dressing down.

After this meeting, relations continued to deteriorate at a rapid pace. Only a couple of days later, the head of the [01:24:00] military archdiocese in the US said that it would be morally acceptable for soldiers to disobey an order. After Trump threatened to invade Greenland in February, the Vatican pointedly refused to join Trump's board of peace.

A decision that leave it described as deeply unfortunate. In March, soon after Trump's assault on Iran began, Leo called for dialogue instead of war, and one that God ignores the prayers of leaders who wage war and have hands full of blood and apparent rebuke to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who prayed for quote, overwhelming violence against America's enemies during a public Christian worship service for military and civilian workers in late March.

More recently, Leo directly condemned Trump's threats about ending an entire civilization as truly unacceptable. So you get the idea relations between the White House and the Holy Sea have truly collapsed. Usually this wouldn't present too much of a political risk to the president. After all, historically America and the Vatican have had a pretty complicated [01:25:00] relationship, but it's more of a risk for Trump, not just because he fared remarkably well with Catholics at the 2024 election.

But also because his administration is dominated by Catholics and has lent heavily into Christian nationalist themes in recent months with Hegseth repeatedly invoking religious rhetoric to justify the war in Iran and Trump himself holding bizarre prayer sessions with evangelical pastors in the White House. 

Speaker 67: defense secretary Pete Hegseth had hosted a prayer meeting at the Pentagon. In which he repeated the prayer offered by the commander of the raid that had captured Nicholas Maduro. Here's part of that speech.

Speaker 70: Let Every Round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation, give them wisdom in every decision. Endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be [01:26:00] executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back and wicked souls deliver to the eternal damnation prepared for them.

For the wicked F Flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. 

Speaker 67: So Leo, whose name of course means lion, responded saying, quote, brothers and sisters, this is our God, Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.

Your hands are full of blood. And then Leo pivots into a full on Liberation Theology Register, which will characterize the rest of his Holy Week appearances quote, as we set our gaze upon him who was crucified for us, we can see a crucified humanity. In his wounds. We see the hurts of so many women and men today.

In his last cry to the Father, we hear the weeping of [01:27:00] those who are crushed, who have no hope, who are sick, and who are alone. Above all, we hear the painful groans of all those who are oppressed by violence and are victims of war. Christ king of peace cries out again from his cross. God is love, have mercy.

Lay down your weapons. Remember that you are brothers and sisters, so that's. Palm Sunday. On Thursday, he's back on Twitter with this extraordinary tweet, which I'll spend some time on. The cross is part of the mission. The imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within the violence that until now has been the law is unmasked.

The poor, imprisoned and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death. Yet, in so doing, he brings a new creation to light. And I'm gonna take some time with this because I think it's extraordinary, but I'll start by saying that every once in a while [01:28:00] something lights up the social channels in a way that shows what people are otherwise hiding.

The number of respondents to and sharers of this tweet in particular, who revealed their post Catholic or. Collapsed Catholic or gutter Catholic selves lighting up was amazing. These are people who never talk about their heritage because it's private and they're suddenly overcome with the need to gesture to point at and wonder.

And my favorite among hundreds of responses, was from Nora Loreto, who's a, an independent leftist journalist here in Canada, who does a lot of great work covering the NDP, but also right-wing extremism. She retweeted the Pope with a quote, tweet. Quote, be right back. I'm just pouring contempt on all my pride and she's remembering a hymn that we all sang on Good Friday quote.

When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count, but loss and pour contempt on all my pride. This is written by the [01:29:00] English non-conformist and father of English Hymnity Isaac Watts, who published it in his hymns and spiritual songs in 1707. But my favorite aspect is that Laredos quote tweet is expressing humility not toward the cross, but towards Leo's capacity to intervene on Twitter, which is a cesspool of pride.

So as to the tweet itself, since Leo the 14th is highly educated in and fond of liberation theology. I read it through a Marxist lens because to my ear, it's a powerful description of the development of liberatory consciousness through contradiction. So he starts by saying the cross is part of the mission, and it's an opening that sets the stage for a meditation on transformative conflict.

So the cross of history can be seen as the symbol of a horizontal flow of events interrupted by vertical revolutions. And also in liberation theology. The cross is the instrument of state torture, which is [01:30:00] ongoing and suffered by all bodies under capitalism, especially those in the global south. Also, I think the meaning of mission here is close to the German, zen or the, the idea that workers in the poor are sent to transform the unjust society.

He goes on the imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within. Come on. I see two braided meanings here. So first, capitalist imperialism always contains the seeds of its own destruction and the form of class conflict. And the crises of inequality. Secondly, the microcosm of this is one's own conscience.

As one contemplates, the ways in which one and everything, one loves are exploited and one can no longer pretend it's okay, one's heart becomes disruptive. The violence that until now has been the law is unmasked. In Christian terms, Leo is likely referring here to, a very old covenant of patriarchal control that's [01:31:00] undone by the innocence of the human child.

But through Marx, we can think about how genocide and immoral war and extreme exploitation of the poor are not only permitted, but encouraged, incentivized, made to seem normal and inevitable. He goes on the poor, imprisoned, and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death. And here I see that the worker must experience her labor as alien, her working conditions as hostile.

Her social relations is transactional. She has to feel the full weight of what capital does to human life, and then things will become clear. Lukacs, said that the worker is both the product of capitalist relations and the only agent of its transformation. And so a dissent into full alienation is the condition for seeing through it.

There's no way out but through, as they said, in and or, and what kind of death are we talking about? In liberation [01:32:00] theology, this is the death of the naive self that thinks it is free, that thinks it is an autonomous individual who owns its labor and enters contracts voluntarily. The self who believes it's a frustrated millionaire or who thinks that power will bless you if you are polite and follow the rules.

In short, it's a self that believes its freedom is real, its suffering is deserved, and its liberation will come individually. And once that false self dies, here's Leo's last line quote. He brings a new creation to light

so Trump had to delete the AI slop icon of himself, but that's not gonna stem the tide. About 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and a large portion of them are Christian Zionists. Catholics were much more split in their vote, roughly 50 50 or 60 40 on partisan affiliation, and that voting block is teetering.

And adding [01:33:00] fuel to the fire. We have far right Catholic converts like Candace Owens, who are actively inflaming the Catholic Evangelical split by framing opposition to Israel as a distinctly Catholic position, while consistently lashing out with antisemitism. JD Vance for his part is trying to quell tensions between Trump and the Pope, but he is also telling the Pope, Hey, you should stick to church stuff.

There are also reports of quiet quitting among Evangelicals and Catholics alike. And what this looks like is, pastors and priests avoiding political sermons, but at the same time helping folks disengage from maga, particularly over images of federal agents arresting immigrants near churches and schools.

The Trump administration's decision to lift bans on ice operations inside churches, jolted a lot of those who supported him back in 2024. So here we are with at least [01:34:00] three deepening freres. First, the Vatican Trump feud over Iran and immigration now personalized through an American Pope. Secondly, a deeper evangelical Catholic theological split over Israel and Christian Zionism.

That. Trumpism has just tried to paper over and third, a grassroots disillusionment among moderately religious voters, horrified by immigration enforcement, atrocities, and really bad memes. So it's all very volatile at the moment. And my personal hope is that the progressive churches throughout the US of whatever denomination are strategizing hard currently to think about how they're gonna provide spaces of welcome for the inevitable flood of refugees that will stream out of this impending Trump MAGA church implosion.

As somebody who's done a lot of journalism on cults and people recovering from cultic dynamics, I know that there's gonna be a lot of people who. Need a place to [01:35:00] land. 

Next, Section B, Anti-Catholic Sentiment in America

Speaker 11: obvious fake fraud.

Catholic, JD Vance, who's pretending to be Catholic, 

Speaker 10: be careful when talking about theology. 

Speaker 11: You don't have to be careful when you talk about childless cat ladies. But you do have to be careful when you're the Pope, and you've spent your entire life. Working to be the Pope. 

Speaker 9: You don't have to be careful with your words when you're alleging that certain, residents of a town are eating pets.

You don't have to be careful with your words then. Ooh, 

Speaker 11: yeah, of course not. 

Speaker 9: Anyway. So the Pope, as he tends to do tweets like war, don't do, war. The everyone needs to not do war. He, he doesn't, he's not like lambasting, the Trump administration saying the United States 

Speaker 10: of America. Yeah. 

Speaker 9: It's hard to avoid because of the war that.

They just started. But anyway, he, he tweeted, the Pope did. God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the prince of peace is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. [01:36:00] Yeah, so JV pretty good message. JD Vance thinks the Pope is wrong about that.

At a, turning point, USA event which was attended by people, 

Speaker 11: Canceled. Erica Kirk had to cancel. Erica Kirk 

Speaker 10: had to cancel. 

Speaker 11: She felt 

Speaker 10: unsafe. 

Speaker 11: So Erica Kirk had to cancel due to, security concerns. So instead they got the vice president? 

Speaker 9: No, the 

Speaker 10: vice president. 'cause she didn't actually cancel.

He 

Speaker 11: was already gonna do it. 

Speaker 9: He was already gonna be there. He was going to be in conversation with her, her team. They say got like word of some security thing and they said, well, she can't go now. And so the vice president's like, I'll just talk to some other guy there. According, I'm sorry, it's sorry for me gentlemen, 

Speaker 11: because 

Speaker 10: It's okay.

For, according to Candace Owens, according to Candace Owens, and I didn't listen, this is just, I've, I've osmosis this information according to Candace Owens, that's bullshit. She didn't go 'cause ticket sales were so low. 

Speaker 11: A, that I would believe. But Candace Owens, I am pretty sure doesn't [01:37:00] believe in like dinosaurs or like the moon or something.

So I, she 

Speaker 9: believes the dinosaurs are here 

Speaker 10: now. None of these are sentences I wanna be talking about. I'm just saying to your point. Erica Kirk didn't feel safe, but Okay. The president, vice President of the United States. Oh 

Speaker 11: yeah. It, it's so silly. It's, 

Speaker 9: it's ridiculous. So, but, so that's funny. Yeah, it's a 8,500 seat, arena.

Maybe 2000 people were there. It was less than a quarter full. It appears. It didn't 

Speaker 11: look great. 

Speaker 9: It didn't, it didn't 

Speaker 11: look great. But, 

Speaker 9: and so the vice president is talking with, I'm sorry, some guy, I don't know who, he's asked about the Pope, he can't just say like. The pope's a pope. Of course, the Pope wants peace.

Who wouldn't want peace? Mm. And then move on. He has to defend his boss. Do we wanna watch his? Sure. 

Speaker 12: I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. And I think that one of these issues here is that there has been, 

Speaker 11: sorry. Stop, stop, stop. Sorry. Pause, pause, pause.

We're pausing. So 

Speaker 9: there's a heckler 

Speaker 11: as 

Speaker 9: well. That's also 

Speaker 11: good. There's a heckler as well, which complicates [01:38:00] things. JD. He is, he is careful about it. He's the pope. It's like this bizarre, this bizarre world where, first of all, JD has apparently appointed himself like arbiter of everybody's behavior.

It's not his role or job. And he like again, is like one year senator and now he's like, I actually should be in charge of telling. Everybody how to act. I'm gonna tell people to say thank you and how they should dress up and how the Pope should talk. It's absurd, but it's like he thinks that like the pope was chosen gives a shit what he says via like lottery.

Like no, he's actually quite studied, in theology and knows what he's talking about because he became the fucking pope. It's not like a random guy. It's somebody who. Wanted to be the pope probably and has like spent his life like studying this specific thing. We're gonna continue, but I just like, it's, 

Speaker 10: well, I just wanna [01:39:00] say, I wanna piggyback off of that 'cause it's, blows my mind.

Look, I'm not religious, I'm not Catholic, but I actually do feel offended to a degree about this. The, the audacity of the 

Speaker 11: audacity, 

Speaker 10: this Rube, who just. Found God, so to speak, 

Speaker 11: this fake 

Speaker 10: fucking 

Speaker 11: Catholic 

Speaker 10: piece of shit. Fucking asshole. Like he's out here saying, I would tell the Pope to be careful when talking about theology.

The fuck 

Speaker 11: He's dumber than 

Speaker 10: dog shit assholes. It's beyond just like beyond. Anyway, that's 

Speaker 9: why it's like, it's easy for us to say, it's like he is the pope. You can ignore him if you are. The thing JD Vance is if you are like, 

Speaker 10: you're not supposed to ignore the Pope 

Speaker 9: a Catholic, right? It's that's the pope you're talking about.

Speaker 10: It's just so condescending. 

Speaker 9: All right. He is gonna, he's going to yell at this heckler and then keep going 

Speaker 12: is again, hey, random dude screaming. I told you I'd respond to your point. I just wanna respond to this question first. But [01:40:00] I, I think one of the issues here is that if you're going to opine on matters of theology, you've gotta be careful.

You've gotta make sure it's anchored in the truth. 

Speaker 11: This weird, like. Stay outta politics. He's just saying war is bad. First of all, he's saying peace is good and blessed be the peacemakers and all that, all that jazz. You talk about religion all the time. You try to bring religion into the political conversation constantly.

Your boss father is likening himself to Jesus Christ. On the regular. So the idea that like, if you're gonna like, be the Pope, don't get into politics. Fucking shut up jd. 

Speaker 24: I was very fortunate to be guided here by one by generations, really have wonderful historians who have, especially historians of English Catholics who really devoted a lot of time to understanding what does that mean to be a Catholic, in a Protestant country. And what his have, what I. To be a [01:41:00] Catholic under those conditions means that you have to find a way to translate and transfer some of those essential processes, encounters into a domestic context.

You cannot celebrate the mass in a church with the priest, but you can try to find a way in your own home by either dedicating a room in that house to be the place where you and your family gather on a Sunday. To, you cannot receive communion, at the hands of a priest in that room, in your home on a Sunday.

But you can read together the Catholic missile or, or, prayer book, and you can imagine it's, receiving communion. It's a ma, it's a act of imaginative, reception. And you can try to think about that. There are other people doing this at the same time in their homes that you don't necessarily know personally, but you have a sense that there is a community out there.

So this domestication a ritual. The domestication of the experience of the mass was. The biggest innovation that [01:42:00] colonial Catholics and English Catholics made in this time, and it had really far reaching consequences. For one thing, it meant that women assumed a really central role. Women were in a sense, the priests of the, of the Catholic community, and that they were the ones who gathered the family together.

They were the ones who kept, the. Essential, the, the missiles, and the, and the bread that you might try to pretend is a, is a wafer, and organize these events and presided over these events. And they were the ones who kept the feasting and fasting schedules of the church. So, so two things are happening.

One is that the, the a. Experiences that would take place in a church are taking place now in a home, in a much attenuated, much modified form, but also other rituals that were not centered on the church, become more important. And this is where, for instance, the calendar of feasting and fasting becomes absolutely central to preserving a Catholic identity.

The Catholic, calendar, liturgical calendar is [01:43:00] full. Something like. Two thirds of all days. I may be exaggerating. Two thirds of all days on the Catholic liturgical calendar. Someone is, you are supposed to either fast, fast or feast. By feasting they really mean receiving communion. That's what they mean by feasting.

They don't mean eating an as sumptuous meal. And there are many rules about fasting, but that's the thing that a Catholic household could maintain without fear of exposure, right? No one's peering in at dinner time to see whether you're eating. Meet on a Friday or not. No one's peering in unless you invite neighbors to join you for dinner to see whether on a day of obligation, holy day of obligation, you are as stewing all meals except for one meal, in the middle of the day.

So those are the kinds of rituals that families could continue, and preserve, and be relatively safe from exposure. And again, it meant that that other, that women in particular are stepping up to be the guardians of this faith, in ways that, were not as true, in other communities and other households.[01:44:00] 

Speaker 22: Religious identity, of course, is not the only identity that people have. And so you talk about interesting situations where an enslave is Catholic, maybe is okay with their enslaved workers being baptized, maybe marrying, but it, it, it gets complicated, right? Because they're also part of other communities.

Could you talk some about that interplay and how complicated it is? 

Speaker 25: Yeah, 

Speaker 24: that was something I really spent a lot of time on trying to figure out. It was one of the biggest challenges of this project. It was very important to me to incorporate people who might be considered Catholic, by one measure or one metric into a story that had largely been told.

About a community that was only English and white. So the usual story of colonial Catholicism is that outside of Maryland, one, Catholics aren't, don't, aren't to be found. And two, that those Catholics that are there are very specific community. They are wealthy. White represents Englishmen and women planters [01:45:00] who came and settled in Maryland, the one colony founded by a Catholic proprietor where they could.

Live their lives relatively untouched, untroubled. But it was so important to me to understand that that was not the sum total of the Catholic community. And this was a, a, a bit of a fi a surprise finding for me. I should have known as a colonial historian who'd been studying this field for 30 years.

There were many, many Irish Catholics in the colonies that there were many enslaved African Catholics and many indigenous, converts, in these communities. I think I knew it at some level, but had never really focused on it. So in understanding what it meant to be an enslaved Catholic was something that I really struggled with.

At a certain level, we will never know. Right? We will never know. What did it, what did baptism at the hands of ones enslavers, often under forced conditions mean to an African man or woman laboring in the household of an English planter. Those are, those are questions we, we will never really understand and the answers to, but what?[01:46:00] 

Research reminded me was that many of the enslaved Africans who were brought as captives to the English colonies were, in fact, came from areas of of Africa that were in fact Catholic, that had been the Kingdom of Congo, had been a a Catholic country since the 1490s. Angola was a Catholic country at this time, nation at this time.

So there was a whole stream of, of migration, forced migration from Africa into these households that consisted of people who, in their own mind and their own lives would've considered themselves Christians, specifically Catholics. There was also another steady stream of, of captives into English households from various Spanish, French, Portuguese islands in the Caribbean where Africans would, from wherever they part of Africa they had come from, had been forcibly baptized upon their arrival in these colonies, and then sold, either sold into English households, captured by English priers, and then taken into English households, a variety of methods that brought them [01:47:00] into English households.

So really a challenge for me is to think about do we, one, should we even consider someone who has been forcibly baptized against their will under terrible conditions, right of, of duress as Catholics and I tried to keep an open mind without prejudging the issue. I, I think it is fair to say that most Africans who had been forcibly baptized did not consider themselves Catholics.

It was that their baptism was a marker of their enslavement. And it was something that was imposed upon them and it was something that defined them in ways they would never have defined themselves. I think that's absolutely fair to say, but I was really intrigued by the very clear evidence that for at least some of these captives, Catholicism was something that they had embraced at some level.

We have evidence of Africans fleeing South Carolina, fleeing the North American South. Into Florida, which was a Spanish colony, and seeking out a Catholic community to [01:48:00] rejoin, seeking out Catholic marriages for themselves and their and their spouses, seeking out baptism, seeking out the other sacraments of the faith.

So we do know that, at least for some Africans, that there was a sense in which Catholicism was an identity. Took on for themselves under whatever, regardless of the circumstances in which they were first introduced to that faith. And of course, I, I was really intrigued by what it meant to be a, an enslaved Catholic living in the household of, an enslave.

And the English MA manners and plantations in Maryland were the best place to explore that dynamic. The Jesuits, which was the religious society that served the English colonies, the only priests who were allowed really to, to operate at all were themselves slaveholders. So the English, the Jesuit community in Maryland owned hundreds of slaves themselves, and they became, they were they tutored.

Their English followers, English white Catholic [01:49:00] followers, and how to be a Catholic household with enslaved peoples living in it. It was a source of tremendous contradiction, right? The record of Catholic Slave Holding is as brutal as you would expect it to be. There was no attempt to protect families, marital husbands, and wives when it, when it came to selling their property, as they would've put it.

But there was an effort to incorporate enslaved peoples into this, into the sacraments of the household. I found that very intriguing. So baptism and marriage. Interestingly enough was in fact a sacrament that enslaved Africans and and indigenous people had some access to. On the other hand, the bonds of marriage were not respected when financial trouble came and English households decided that for whatever reason they needed to sell their property, they didn't hesitate to separate husbands and wives.

So it's a very mixed record and trying to parse out. How to, how to make [01:50:00] sense of that record was a challenge for me. Should I be more impressed by or more drawn to the evidence that suggested a sacramental fellowship between black and white Christians within these households? Or should I be more impressed by how fragile, whatever the evidence of that spiritual fellowship was when, when life hit?

And to this day, I, I remain conflicted by this and I think it's one that readers will have to make their own choices about. I tried to present the evidence on both sides, the evidence both for fellowship and the evidence for Christian hypocrisy and Christian exploitation. And I think it's going to come down to how you read that evidence.

Speaker 73: let's talk about these anti-Catholic fears for those of us, who were born after, JFK, John F. Kennedy became president. Talk to me a little bit about. The, the fears in this country of, of Catholics. 'cause it just seems amazing to me this fear of a, of a [01:51:00] Catholic takeover takeover by the Vatican of this country If a guy like JFK became president, but, but this is all very real.

Tell me a little bit about this history. 

Speaker 78: Yeah. And, and in that moment, 1960 is really a high, long remark of it in a lot of ways, or a culmination of it. It, it often can seem like something 19th century, something really distant. Phrases like papists and, and those very, those, those much more.

Archaic ideas, but as, as recently as, as half a century ago, there was a pretty sustained debate in our mainstream political media, body politics from multiple organizations of the genuine concern on behalf of many of those entities that any Catholic. Including John F. Kennedy, the candidate for president would, would owe a first allegiance not to anything within the United States, not to America, not to the American government or the American people, but to that entity, to that foreign scary place and entity that was [01:52:00] the Vatican and the Pope and the Catholic Church.

And there really was quite a bit of debate, again, on, on every level of our political and social. Conversations in 1960 about that question. Could Kennedy be trusted to answer to America, answer to the American people, or would he always first be a Catholic first, be answering to this foreign body? And so, and that was, as I argue in the piece, the culmination of centuries of such attitudes, but was just as strong, I think in 1960 as it had ever been.

It was just a central park. Of these debates in a serious way and in a widespread way in 1960. So that recently, it was very much a question of whether we could trust Catholic Americans to be a part of our city rather than owe to a different one. 

Speaker 73: And, and was there as, as we heard from Ben Carson, recently.

Republican, almost the leading Republican candidate, I guess he's now in, in second place in, in most polls behind Donald Trump, calling for any such candidate who, who, who would be Muslim and who would, who would [01:53:00] want to become president that they must first quote unquote, renounce Islam. Were there similar calls, to President Kennedy, I guess, to candidate Kennedy, before he became president that he must renounce.

The cast Catholic church E Exactly. How did that, how did that play out? In the campaign and in the years leading up to his presidency? 

Speaker 78: It were, there definitely were, from. Political parties from churches, evangelical churches from newspapers. There were explicit, statements that such pledges would be needed, that Kennedy would need to pledge his allegiance, adu as if he were not already a part of our society and body politics to, to doubly pledge his allegiance to America rather than to the Vatican or the Catholic church.

And he even did as, as I guess any candidate does have to respond to even the more outrageous. Perspective. He, he responded and, and made the case. This campaign overtly made the case that, that when it came to political decisions, when it came to [01:54:00] national policy, he would be, thinking of America, not thinking of this foreign, perspective that was being defined and feared and, be told his audience, in a 1960, speech, for example, September, 1960 speech 

Speaker 79: mm-hmm.

Speaker 78: That it in America, where the separation of church and state is absolute. Where no Catholic prelate would tell the president, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote. We know that the latter is not always true, but he was making the case for the former overtly that a Catholic, a cardinal of relay or the Pope would never tell the president how to make policy and he felt the need to, to state that.

So he did in a way even offer up such a, mm-hmm. Pledge of allegiance in response to those fears. So they were certainly there and, and he engaged them as like, if he had to in order to, to be a part of that campaign. 

Speaker 73: Yeah, he, he was forced to do that. And, I guess that also parallels what we saw with Barack Obama before he became president.

He had to come out and make a similar speech, a similar, Kennedy esque speech about his own [01:55:00] background and, the, the. The black, liberation church that he had spent so much time in all of those years and he had to put that to rest. But I, I, I, I'm wondering how analogous this all is and the current fear of Muslims, which of course, I think is.

Absolutely ridiculous and absurd. And you cited the story of Ahmed Mohammed. That just, frankly, idiocy, but I wonder still how, how analogous it is. At the time that this nation feared. Catholicism feared a, a proxy takeover of the nation by the, by the Pope via a president. You, you didn't have an extreme, at least to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Ben Ton, but, you didn't have an extreme, fringe element.

Of the Catholic, religion actually at war with a number of countries. And we do have that in, in Islam, with radical Islam in a number of countries crossing extraordinary [01:56:00] violence. Of course, Catholic, church was involved in its own share of violence over the years. But is it, is it exactly analogous?

In other words, isn't there a. An actual real justified fear that some people may have of Muslims, of of Islam that wasn't really justified when it came to Catholicism. 

Speaker 78: I I certainly think any historical comparison, any, any use of history for analysis of the present needs to be able to be nuanced about both things.

Present and to be specific to them and to not try to act as if they ever are, are one to one equivalents. Mm-hmm. I agree with that and, and I certainly in the piece tried briefly to at, to acknowledge those, those differences and, and aspects of our specific moment. So I, so I agree with that and I don't think that it's either or.

I certainly don't think that we should try to pretend again that there's an equivalence that is absolute or that we can ignore present. Realities and situations. But on the other [01:57:00] hand, I would say a couple things. One thing I would say is many of the fears to my mind that are directed at Muslim Americans and Muslim communities are directed at the idea of these communities and their, their customs and their beliefs themselves representing an internal.

That is present here in the us. Which to my mind is a different argument from saying, fighters for ISIS on the ground in Iraq are, at war with, with the entities around them and with mm-hmm. With other nations that are present there. 

Speaker 79: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 78: And so I do connect that to, for example, in the piece, I talk about this book written by Harry Beecher's father, Lyman Beecher, where he argued the Jesuit priests in the west of the, continent at the time who were practicing their Jesuit religion were in fact creating past.

Strongholds that were aimed to take over the country and to make Catholicism the law of the land. A, 

Speaker 73: a 

Speaker 78: papist 

Speaker 73: a papist takeover as they called 

Speaker 78: it. Exactly. Yes, exactly. And I see that very much like the fears of, building mosques in places like Tennessee or [01:58:00] of building a Muslim. Cultural center in New York City.

The fears that somehow would be active doing that is, is not simply a group of people, a community, embodying parts of their customs and their beliefs and their communal identity, but represents a threat in, and in and of itself, just the existence of these communal practices or these communal spaces.

Mm-hmm. And so I think that would be an example where. Where that part of this particular set imperatives are not to my mind, directed at at radical terrorists or radical fighters in a foreign country. They're directed at an American community and the idea that that community. Practicing its identity is itself a threat is itself doing something that constitutes a internal danger to us.

I think we can think both. I think, we are able to, to see actual threats and external threats and engage with them in, in the ways we should. And also recognize on the other hand that we have this wide variety of communities here as we always have, [01:59:00] and that they are all. Developing their identities within this American setting.

So, so I would say that's one thing is that, we can do both. I think we can think both about our specific present situation and recognize some of these patterns of how we treat communities within the United States as they are, again, embodying their identity, creating their identity, becoming a part of this nation, in their own way, each of them in their own way.

Now, Section C, The Pope vs The Trump

Speaker 7: Leo says, much of the coverage has been commentary on commentary, which is an elegant way of saying that the press and political class have been feeding on their own noise. That is a deeply papal move. The office of Peter is damaged when it starts to look like a permanent rebuttal unit. The Pope who spends his days batting back at the presidential insults starts to look smaller, not larger.

Leo seems to understand this. He's preserving hierarchy, not in the sense of earthly domination. But in the sense of spiritual [02:00:00] order, Trump posts Rans boasts imposes. Leo continues. His pilgrimage continues. His liturgies continues speaking of peace, justice, eternity, and the duties of conscience. He declines the bait, but keeps the principle this matters, especially because Leo is on a major African tour from the 13th to the 23rd of April across Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea.

Vatican and agency reporting describe it as one of the most complex trips of his pontificate so far with four countries, 11 cities. While Reuters notes, his visit spans four countries and 11 locations. He's trying to keep the trip centered on Catholics in Africa, interfaith dialogue inequality, peace building and pastoral presence, not on the vanity storms of Washington.

In his own words, he came to Africa primarily as pastor and head of the Catholic Church to encourage and accompany African Catholics, and this is where Leo's [02:01:00] grace becomes clever. He doesn't retract the truth. In order to avoid conflict, he refuses conflict in order to project, in order to protect the truth.

It's harder anyone with a temper can trade blows. Far fewer people manage the older Christian art of Measured rebuke Leo Rebukes the threat to Iran. Leo Rebukes the idolatry of power. Leo Rebukes tyrants. He doesn't let Trump decide the frame. That is a form of mastery. And secondly, Leo's grace does not mean neutrality.

It means moral seriousness without narcissism. This is the key point some people will hear, not in my interest to debate Trump and assume the Pope is rowing back. He's not the same Pope who now avoids a personalized feud as the Pope who won the 7th of April. Condemned threats against an entire people is truly unacceptable.

He is the Pope whose bender speech on April the 16th declared that the world is being [02:02:00] ravaged by a handful of tyrants and who warned that billions are spent on killing while little is spent on healing education and restoration. These are not the words of retreat. These are the words of a man who thinks war has become morally degraded, spiritually corrupting, and economically predatory.

And Amanda Leo's language was rich and precise. He spoke of masters of War who destroy in a moment what a lifetime cannot rebuild. He spoke of those who rob lands of their resources and invest the profits and weapons creating an endless cycle of destabilization and death. This is larger than Trump. It includes war profiteers, cynical states, regional elites, and all who manipulate religion and patriotism for gain.

So when Leo later says the speech was written two weeks before Trump's remarks, he's not offering an excuse. He's reminding everyone that the church's criticism is older and broader than one American president, and that universality is [02:03:00] important. And I should also add that, Leo is speaking in Africa, having started his pilgrimage at the place where Saint Augustine was raised.

And Saint Augustine is the person who defined the just war in the first place. Whatever JD Vance may want to say about it, Trump wants to personalize everything. Leo Universalizes it. Trump says, you are attacking me. Leo replies. No, I'm speaking about a pattern of sin in the modern world. Trump speaks as though criticism of war is disloyalty to America.

Leo speaks as though criticism of war is loyalty to humanity and to God. And this is why the Pope's position has a certain calm force. He doesn't need to win a news cycle. He needs to keep intact to moral vocabulary, which politics has almost destroyed. There's also a theological dimension. Trump has repeatedly wrapped his [02:04:00] politics in religious imagery and the Jesus like AI figure deepen that tendency into self parody.

Reuters reported that the image showed Trump in a white robe with a glowing hand over a sick man before it was deleted, after backlash. I posted a copy of that picture the other day. A Pope faced with that kind of material has two options. He either enters the carnival, denouncing each grotesque flourish one by one, or he quietly refuses to dignify it while continuing to preach peace, justice, and fraternity.

Leo has chosen that second path that was wise. A ponti shouldn't be reduced to the critic of memes, and yet Leo has not hidden. On the 18th of April, he said that he would continue preaching peace. That's today. Earlier he said that he had no fear of the Trump administration and would keep speaking out loudly against war.

So the pattern is plain. [02:05:00] He doesn't fear Trump. He doesn't chase Trump. He doesn't flatter Trump. He doesn't live inside Trump's orbit, he speaks, then moves on. That is grace with a backbone. Thirdly, and finally, this episode shows why Leo may prove more formidable than Trump expects. Trump's instinct is always the same.

He assumes public authority works by dominance, humiliation, and narrative capture. If he attacks hard enough, he expects one of two outcomes, either the target submits, which flatters him or the target lashes back, which gives him fresh material. Leo has offered neither. He has not submitted. He's not lashed back.

He has done something more irritating for Trump. He has placed the president below the level of the papal mission, and that is why this feels like grace, but also like judgment. Leo is in effect saying that the office he holds is too serious for this sort of circus. He's not too frightened to reply. He's too occupied to perform.

That [02:06:00] distinction matters. Trump's own conduct has made the contrast sharper. His attack on Maloney over her defense of the Pope widened the dispute beyond Washington and Rome and, Maloney called Trump's comments on Pope Leo unacceptable. And Trump then lashed out at her as well. So the president has matter, has managed in a matter of days de Quora with the Pope and with one of Europe's leaders most disposed to work with him.

That isn't strength, that is self-indulgence and stupidity. Lu by contrast, has looked larger because he has looked less needy. He praises Cameroon's welcome. He meets Imams. He speaks of Saint Augustine African wealth and the unequal distribution of that wealth. He denounces war extraction and false peace.

He carries on with the work. Trump keeps trying to turn the weak into a feud. Leo keeps turning the weak back into a pilgrimage in political terms, that is [02:07:00] message discipline. In ecclesial terms, it is fidelity to office, there is to a deeper lesson for the church. Modern politics, rewards speed, vanity, and instant retaliation.

Christianity at its best offers another grammar, patience, witness restraint, truthfulness, and the refusal to worship force. Leo has not been passive. He has named Evil, named War, named Tyranny, named Injustice. But he has done so without accepting the degrading terms of modern political showmanship. That is what gives his intervention weight.

He's not louder than Trump. He's steadier. He's saner. So the Pope's grace to Trump is not indulgence. It is not weakness. It is not an apology. It is a deliberate act of superiority, moral superiority, institutional superiority, and in some sense psychological superiority. Leo is [02:08:00] granting Trump something.

Trump has not earned the chance to be treated as a personal enemy, but he is also withholding what Trump wants most, an equal competent on the world stage. The Pope has condemned the threat. To Iran. He has condemned the waste and the cruelty of war. He has spoken of tyrants. He has kept faith with the gospel of peace.

Yet he's also refused to become a character in Trump's drama, and that I think is the heart of it. Trump wanted to fight. Leo has offered a rebuke, a prayer and then distance, and in the present climate that counts as grace. I think it also counts as power. 

Speaker 90: talk about. How Catholics were, were, introduced into the United States, during like the settling period of the nation prior to, prior to the revolution. [02:09:00] 

Speaker 91: Absolutely. So Catholics enter what would become the United States through, a, a number of different empires, right?

The, the French Empire, in northern New England, mainly in Canada, but in including parts of what would become the United States, the Spanish Empire, right? The Southwest California. But also, and I think this is what most surprises people, in, in parts of the 13 colonies. Where they mainly met went was Maryland, which was founded in great measure as a refuge for, for Catholics.

The, the Calverts who were a convert family, chartered the colony. So there are Catholics in Maryland from the very beginning. They lose control of the colony fairly early on politically, but they're always socially and economically powerful there. And in fact, part of that tradition was a fairly, tolerant, plural approach [02:10:00] to religions, because Catholics in that context understood that they were not going to successfully be a state religion.

And so work to create a colony in which, a variety of forms of Christianity, right? Not all religions, but forms of Christianity could find a home. So they, they are there from the beginning. They actually participate in great numbers in the revolution. If you, if you wanna move ahead to the American Revolution, Catholics in Maryland, and by that point, they'd moved into Pennsylvania, parts of what would become Kentucky and so forth tended to favor the cause of independence.

Speaker 90: WW was there a, a hostility, towards Catholics? I know in New England in particular, the Pope's Day, November 5th. Yeah, the anniversary of Guy Fox, what they would call Guy Fox Day. Talk a, so in New England. We think of the pilgrims, we think of John Winthrop. We, we think of the Massachusetts Bay, colony, Congregationalists, this really [02:11:00] Puritan, part of the country.

They didn't like the Catholics. Right, 

Speaker 91: right. No, Catholics were, everything that the British, did not want to be, did not really want to have in their territory. It was this remarkable antithesis, of everything British and that, that transferred to, to the colonists, to most of the colonists who were, as you absolutely correctly, point out, overwhelmingly Protestant.

So Catholics were. Thought to, lack the independence of mind, that, British, people considered an element of, of Britishness. They were thought to follow their priests through their pope, and that not only made them not good individuals in this view, but it also made them unpatriotic because the argument went that their first loyalty was always to, this guy in Rome, not, not to whomever their, their [02:12:00] leader was.

And so this is a political argument. It's a spiritual argument that Catholics do not have an individual relationship to God, but only an individual through clergy. And it's also very much a geopolitical argument. So that Catholics were thought to be this potential fifth column that who would align with the French or the Spanish, or really anyone who came by who was, who was speaking to harm British interests.

Speaker 90: And, and, and it didn't help in that part of the. Of, of the country because you had, Canada was French Canadian. Yeah. And it was, it was not far away. It was only hours away from Massachusetts, so 

Speaker 91: it was not, yeah, it was not far away. And it came closer, in raids. Right. This is, this is not simply an imagined threat.

There, there, there actually were French alliances with indigenous peoples, in wartime. And sometimes there were, there were [02:13:00] raids on, new England colonies. So, so there, there was a real component to what was also a, a set of cultural attitudes. 

Speaker 90: I would have to, recommend to our listeners, John demos, the unredeemed captive.

If you wanna get an idea of the tension between Catholics and Protestants and this time in American history, that, that, that is a great historical narrative to go to. So let me ask you about Pope's Day. I, I love telling my friends about Pope's Day because, me and my son, we go out and we play, we shoot basketball, we play horse, right?

Or, or, or, or we try to play go fish, me and my kids and my wife. But on Pope Day in New England, the kids played a game called Break the Pope's Neck.

So maybe just as a way to, emphasize this host, this Protestant Catholic hostility, maybe tell our listeners a little bit [02:14:00] about the, what would happen in Boston on November 5th before the American Revolution In the years, prior, yeah. AB yeah, 

Speaker 91: absolutely. And so the, the reference was to this effort to blow up the British Parliament, which had failed and was connected to, what the British felt very strongly was a a, a broad Catholic conspiracy.

So Pope Day is the annual celebration of that failure and of the fact that the British were not Catholic. In addition to these children's games, adults would, make effigies of the pope, pope puppets, and march them through the streets, burn them publicly. There would be all kinds of toasts, some of them rude.

And after you do enough toasts, everything is rude, right? Again, attacking the papacy and attacking Catholics and this, this went forward, through the revolutionary period. George Washington, as I recall, actually was uneasy about these celebrations during the revolution, right?

Because when you're fighting a war, you do not [02:15:00] want denominational divisions, among your troops and. Washington in, in general, made a point throughout his career, also as statesmen of reaching out to the Catholic communities. But this was, this was absolutely part of the fabric of, of British life and of life, of life in the colonies.

If you were British, you were not Catholic, you did, make fun of the Pope burn the Pope in effigy. That was, that was just absolutely unquestioned. 

Speaker 30: we also looked at the anti-abortion movement. How it has its intellectual, but not quite. Its activist roots in Catholicism because US Protestants and evangelicals didn't take it up as an issue prior to the enactment of a lot of the civil rights statutes that took away Stax tax status privileges for their non-integrated Bible colleges in the 1970s.

And at that point, US event [02:16:00] Evangelicals had to find a political cause that would reestablish their power but not appear to be racist. They needed this other issue. And saving fetuses was an obvious choice. They turned to the Catholics for the moral and theological arguments that they needed about, you know, when does life start and the status of the woman's body.

The Protestants really weren't interested in any of that. They didn't have that sort of hammered out, and this forged an alliance where previously enmity towards Catholics was so severe that it was like a big obstacle to the presidential bid of JFK. 

Speaker 31: My enemy's enemy is my friend. I got really fascinated with Opus Dei, which is this deliberately secretive and Machiavellian association founded in Spain from within the Catholic Church in 1928 by this priest named José María Escrivá, who claims as many people do, to have been guided by a vision from God.

It has had an absolutely shameful alliance with the fascist government under Francisco Franco, who ruled for 36 years [02:17:00] and Opus Die Opus Day, excuse me, amassed extraordinary wealth and power via its strategy of recruiting very rich and influential members through this sort of multi-tiered organization where some are priests and some are laypeople and, and some live together in these, in these dormitories under very sort of austere conditions, and others are out in the world making money and donating tons to Opus Dei.

They're estimated to be worth $3 billion and they've had this uneasy but largely conciliatory relationship with the Vatican. 

Speaker 30: Yeah. 

Speaker 31: Their founder, Escriva, who I mentioned was even canonized as a saint by John Paul II. Politically, the group has very reactionary conservative puritanical policies and practices according to the reporting of Gareth Gore, who's this journalist who wrote, in some ways the Definitive Expose book, which is controversial about them, but they've been accused by him of enacting cult-like demands and controls over members.

They have been charged legally with human trafficking and labor practices that verge on [02:18:00] slavery. In terms of our current American political landscape, though, what's interesting is that several prominent figures are actually involved or alleged to secretly be involved with Opus Day through actually some pretty reasonable educated guesswork.

These include former Heritage Foundation President and Project 2025 Architect. Wouldn't you know it, Kevin Roberts former Ag Bill Barr. Uh, Supreme Court alumni Scalia and Thomas and Alito, and the man who is himself behind the conservative Catholic takeover of the Supreme Court, Leonard Leo. This is all consistent with Gareth Gore's book about the group characterizing them as seeking totalizing worldly power for their particular religious ideology.

The group has publicly refuted Gore's bombshell reporting, but he stands his ground on it. Now, Benedict XVI was very supportive of Opus Dei, but then perhaps surprisingly so too, was Francis. He even said about Jose. José María [02:19:00] Escrivá the founder, that he was a precursor to Vatican two, due to how his organization called non-Res into a life of sanctity.

And Francis would go on to Canonize Rivas successor, a man named Alvaro del Portillo. But there are some complexities here because he's also made some changes to Canon law in 2023 that seemed to be designed to limit Opus Dei's power. 

Speaker 30: Yeah. 

Speaker 31: So now Pope Leo, following on from some of Francis' recommendations seems set to go a step further.

Speaker 30: Well, they're more than recommendations. They were, they were ordered changes to Canon law that actually would take away Opus Dei or to to, to, um, name its own bishops. It was gonna put all of the administrative and financial sort of oversight, uh. Over Opus Dei and shunt that all to the Vatican, which is significant.

And you know, we're gonna talk about the money in a moment, but Yeah. You know, just reviewing that this is an organization that's [02:20:00] estimated to be worth $3 billion. That's one fifth of the estimated asset holdings of the Vatican itself. If, yeah, the Vatican is estimated to be worth 10 to $15 billion, there's a thing about like priceless artifacts mm-hmm.

That we'll get into in a moment. But like, uh, you can see what kind of line these people have to walk with. Not only this very sort of. Conservative, uh, and reactionary organization, but this very wealthy and politically connected organization that could very easily, uh, become a parallel church, right?

Speaker 32: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Speaker 30: So last in our, our list of Catholic threads is, is a more sort of, um, I, I guess, frayed thread, which is that every other man flu out there is getting baptized these days and talking about the Latin mass and mobilizing theological arguments of against birth control and why women should stay at home.

There is an intense level of manosphere, fetishizing of [02:21:00] trica ideology being used to justify misogynistic backlash, uh, against feminism and to construct these romantic and fascist visions of authority. When these guys really get agitated, they rehash the Satanic panic themes with their own versions of Q Anon and they, they elevate their own MAGA style Pope figures like Bishop Strickland to oppose the woke corruption of the Francis Church.

Now we have the arrival of Pope Bob, uh, and the world I think is going to get exposed to. A slightly different side of Catholic modernity that Francis started to pull the veil back on. Now his choice of the name Leo the 14th has implications that, you know, we'll get into in a bit. But overall, his arrival, I would say, is a break from the fairly cursed lineage that we've so far been [02:22:00] chewing on on this podcast.

He does not come out of the Satanic panic. He is not strongly linked with anti-abortion and activism that way. He is anti-abortion. But this is a standard position. This is not his, this is not the thing that he rides or dies on. Uh, he has nothing to do that we've seen so far with Opus Dei uh, he's formed by monastic community and experience and, and then on the ground ministry in the global south with some political activism under his belt as well.

So I think he's giving people exposure to a different. Church on one hand, like a futuristic and aspirational non-European movement that's marked by its receptivity to post Vatican II radicalism, as radical as it can be. But on the other hand, he's also through his name choice. He's referring back to a church of the late 19th century that realized that massive political and economic [02:23:00] changes were reshaping what it meant to be human through the industrial revolution.

And so, you know, at that point, Leo the 13th has this choice about becoming either more politicized through his church leadership or more cloistered in response to this. Set of conditions. And the 13th Leo headed up a politicized Catholic response to unbridled colonial capitalism on one side, and also positioned himself as resisting communist materialism and atheism on the other.

And through that sort of third way passage, he is seen to have inspired a lineage of left-leaning socialists, sometimes even Marxist Catholics from Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers Party to Daniel Berrigan and the anti-Vietnam War movement. You know, these figures who had pretty outsized impacts here in the us.

Speaker 31: So you're suggesting that his, his choice of name telegraphs. At [02:24:00] least some of this in terms of his, his affinity for this figure 

Speaker 30: 100%, like Leo the 13th is said to be the father of Catholic social teaching. Mm-hmm. Uh, which is part of its modernization move, uh, at the, at the end of the 19th century.

​

Speaker 43: do you think it's true that Donald Trump was watching 60 minutes and that's what, 'cause it was around that time and he may well have been catching, watching catch up.

Speaker 44: It may have, it may have had something to do with that. I also noticed that he mentioned David Axelrod. 

Speaker 43: Yes. 

Speaker 44: You know, Obama's Chicago fixer. 

Speaker 43: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 44: And I think the fact that the Pope, for reasons that nobody can quite work out, made time in his diary to see Axelrod at this time of, you know, heightened sensitivity, clearly infuriated Trump.

Because one of the things he mentioned in his quite extraordinary truth, social. Post. And if I could just mention that [02:25:00] just this morning the Pope was on the, on the papal plane on either on the way to or back from Algeria. And uh, he just made a joke to, you know, they call it truth social, said the Pope Guffawing.

Speaker 43: It is a very strange name actually. Uh, the more you think about it. But I, I think there was, there's a lot of things going on here. One is this sense among a lot of Republicans, not just Trump, not even just pro-Trump Republicans, that there is a sort of democratic. Stop going on to peel off. Catholic voters who voted the majority of Catholic voters voted for Trump in the presidential elections at the midterms coming up.

There's a lot of disgruntlement about the economy, about the Iran more and so on. Particularly among that swing group of voters that is Catholic voters, I realized the American Catholic vote is very complicated to talk about, but it is, does seem that there is some sort of, there are democratic maneuvers, which is why Axelrod would've reached out to meet the Pope to try and get the Pope on side or get the Catholic church on side.[02:26:00] 

The build up to the midterms and that's generated this angry reaction. 

Speaker 44: It's possible. It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me. The Pope has never been particularly associated with the Democratic party. I think I'm right in saying he was a registered Republican and we know that his older brother Louis, who was very flatteringly mentioned by the president, is, uh, paid up maga or was at least until the president attacked his brother of the Pope.

I think the, um, the operation to peel off. Catholic Republican voters seems to have been led by one Donald J. Trump because his, his tweet was really perfectly designed to alienate those, uh, Catholic voters who were never maga, but you know, automatically voted Republicans simply because they were so horrified by the, you know, the wokeness of the Democratic agenda.

And clearly there's a danger for Trump. You would've thought he would see it coming would be that they, you know, they'll sit on their hands in November, not that they'll vote Democrat, they just won't turn up. 'cause [02:27:00] they'll remember the insult to the Pope and it was insulting to the Pope. 

Speaker 43: Mm-hmm. Well, let's get onto how insulting was to Pope Stoke.

But then as you say in your piece, he then decided to potentially, Trump then decided to potentially offend Protestants too by posting this picture of himself very obviously as Jesus. 

Speaker 45: Yes. 

Speaker 43: Um, and then saying completely, uh, unashamedly. Just obviously lying that this is not an image of Jesus. This is me as a doctor, and nobody can believe that unless Trump is so capable of self-deception, because of the power of positive thinking or whatever it is, that he can actually convince himself that yes, he, he, he just thought he was a doctor.

Speaker 44: Well, I think he put your finger on something there. The power of positive thinking. Norman Vincent Peale's Church was attended by Trump. And, you know, years before that by Richard Nixon, very much a, a message beautifully tailored to, you know, um, Republican business. Tycoons and politicians. [02:28:00] Also don't forget that Trump has appointed as his spiritual advisor, the appalling Reverend Paula White, who represents the Prosperity Gospel in its.

Crudest form. And who has been telling the president that he, you know, he has been chosen by Jesus to do this and that he is being persecuted much as Jesus was persecuted. Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 46: And Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused.

It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. But it didn't end there for him and it didn't end there for you. 

Speaker 44: It's probably not difficult to plant that particular sort of thought in the president's head, and it seems to have worked 

Speaker 43: well. 

Let's 

Speaker 44: talk or not work. Shall we say 

Speaker 43: a bit more about Norman Vincent Peale?

stuff because it does seem that it is Trump's [02:29:00] religion and it, it has absorbed an element of Christianity at some stage. Paula White or Paula White Cain, which she sometimes called. Uh, she seems to be a kind of semi positive thinker. Televangelist, 

Speaker 44: absolutely. Yeah. 

Speaker 43: Um, uh, slightly prosperity gospel.

Speaker 44: Oh, more than slightly prosperity gospel in flagrantly prosperity Gospel. 

Speaker 43: As in you pray hard enough, you riches will come to you. 

Speaker 44: Yes. 

Speaker 43: And that's very much what. Trump thinks, you know, if you're positive enough, if you refuse to back down on everything, riches will come to you. 

Speaker 44: Yes. I'm not sure that praying is a particularly important part of his modus operandi, but nonetheless, you know, if you have to be, if you have to pray for anything, then praying for money probably makes sense to him.

Speaker 43: Yes. 

Speaker 44: Um, she's, I mean, she really is an absolutely dreadful figure and how he managed to choose her as his spiritual advisor. I do not know. 

Speaker 43: He does seem to have, have a, had a sort of spiritual moment after the attempted assassination. Uh, 

Speaker 44: where, but they, they go back, they go back years and years and years.

Paula White and [02:30:00] the president, I think she has, I, I know a similar role in the, in the first Trump administration. 

Speaker 43: You, you are actually right, but I'm saying sort of Trump's spiritual journey. I think he has. Certainly he went through the sort of straight, and some of his advisors were quite worried that he'd become too good and placid, and he was saying kind things about his enemies and things like that, and they thought, what's going on with Donald Trump?

Speaker 44: He has allayed those fears. 

Speaker 43: He has allayed his fears very successfully. But he thought that God, and he said so in his inauguration, God saved me to make America great again. 

Speaker 47: Just a few months ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason.

I was saved by God to make America great again.

Speaker 43: And this is certainly what Paul White is feeding him all the time. And if enough people tell you that, if I was to tell you, Damien, that you know God had [02:31:00] chosen you to come on my Americano podcast. Then you would eventually feel that, uh, that maybe he had, if enough people said it to you? 

Speaker 44: Well, you know, feel free to try the experiment is all I can say.

I think what one of the things that doesn't delight me, but d amuses me about this horrible sort of train wreck of a situation is that you have the president whose ideas about theology are rudimentary, shall we say, and, and whose advisor is Paula White. And then you have the vice president, JD Vance.

Influenced by, you know, the, the cleverest Dominicans in America converted in 2019, so powerfully affected by the writings of Saint Augustine that he presented the the City of God. And another book, I forget which it was to the Pope. When he met him, I would've thought the Pope having been head of the Augustinian order, could say, thanks, I've already got it.

I already read that one. But the theological sophistication [02:32:00] of JD Vance has, I think, bitten him in the ass, as it were. Mm-hmm. Somewhat. Um, because he thought, so my contacts told me. That he had the specialist theological knowledge to manage the relationship the of the second Trump administration with the Vatican.

But in fact, things had already got off to a bad start before Leah was elected because Leah had clashed with him on Twitter over basically his interpretation of the ot of and of, and of Saint Augustine. Then there's this meeting, uh, news of which was leaked last week that there had been. A very, um, free and frank exchange of views at a meeting in the Pentagon between various officials and the Popes now retired Ambassador Annun to the United States Cardinal Christophe Pierre.

And, um, it, it was that moment that it became, you know, the whispers that have been circulating for months. You know, were generally recognized to be true that [02:33:00] relations have been steadily deteriorating between the White House. And the, um, Vatican, even before the Iran venture, and the, perhaps the main reason for this was the Don Doctrine because.

Could remember that after the disaster of Francis Pontificate, it was generally accepted that they, you know, the Catholic church wouldn't have a, another Latin American Pope. But it kind of has, because Leo has spent, you know, actually a majority, I think of his, his, um, career as a, as a priest in Peru. He is now a citizen of Peru.

He particularly objects to the idea of United States, exercising, you know, economic and political, he over the Western hemisphere and that, you know, the, the knowledge that he would oppose. That was probably one of the reasons that the Latin American bishops as a lobby pushed him so hard and very successfully in the conclave of last year.

Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 43: Well, that's, I mean, that's why I wanted to go back to what Trump actually [02:34:00] said in his rant. He said that if it weren't for me. Being in the White House, he wouldn't be in the Vatican, meaning Pope wouldn't be there. And that's like as Trump, you know, everything Trump says. Shocking. Vulgar, probably true.

Speaker 38: Living out the Pope's words might be difficult, but reading them, it's pretty easy. In chapter one, polio sets the stage with what he calls essential words, laying the foundation for a discussion on poverty in the church, which naturally begins with love, it is Jesus who loves the poor and loves those who love the poor.

Even the smallest acts of kindness to the downtrodden do not go unnoticed by him. Unfortunately, our world has and continues to mistreat people forcing the poor to cry out to God for help. It is those who hear their cry and respond to it, not only serving the poor, but changing cultural mentalities that lead to poverty.

Who will be close to God in this opening chapter, Pope Leo exhorts us to not let our guard down when it comes to poverty. That we must be aware of new forms of emerging poverty and resist false ideologies that suggest that people are poor because of chance, or blind and cruel fate. The poor [02:35:00] exists, at least in part.

Because the wisdom of the world that does not cherish them as God does. Lest we make the same serious mistakes, we must go back and reread scripture to see how God treats them. In chapter two, pop Leo offers a brief but sweeping look at how God relates to the poor throughout scripture In the Old Testament, for instance, God uses the prophets to denounce the injustices committed against the weakest and exhorts Israel to renew its worship from within.

Because one cannot pray and offer sacrifice while oppressing the weakest and poorest, particularly in Amos and Isaiah, he points out. We hear of a God who hears the cries of the poor and inflicts punishment on those who cause them to cry. This is of course, because God has chosen the poor as his own going as far as to identify with them in his own human experience as Pope Leo reminds us, God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, not as a rich king in a palace, but as a carpenter.

Someone who was rejected, excluded, and died and outcast. He preached good news to the poor and the beatitudes and exhorted his followers to always care for them. In fact, in one of his final discourses, he told them that when they care for the [02:36:00] poor, they do so for him and that those who neglect the poor will be condemned, not exactly a passage to take lightly.

St. Paul builds upon these teachings in his own writings, helping the early church understand that those who show generosity to the poor do so, not only for the benefit of those with little but for themselves as well, stating that God loves a cheerful giver. And so it was because of this, that the first communities of Christians were known above all, not for their liturgies or their theological treatises.

But for how they treated the poor. A commitment that has defined the church ever since. Thus, in chapter three, a Church for the Poor Polio moves beyond Scripture to highlight the many works of charity the church has exhibited throughout its history in all its varied forms. For instance, in the early church, there was a clear link between martyrdom and the poor, as witnessed by St.

Lawrence, Polycarp, and St. Justin, all men who gave up their lives defending the poor. People like St. John Chrysostom made sure that the church's worship was always tied to the life of the poor. Famously admonishing his people that if the faithful do not encounter Christ in the poor, who stand at the door, they will not be able to worship him at the altar, [02:37:00] and that the church must feed the hungry first and only afterward adorn the altar with what remains taking seriously the words of the prophets.

The early church understood that charity was a requirement for true worship. Of course, poverty involves much more than just the lack of money, and so throughout the history of the church. Faithful Christians have served the poor in a variety of ways, such as the early monks who welcomed outcasts into their community.

The Daughters of Charity, the Hospital Sisters, and Little Sisters of Divine Providence, among others who founded hospitals and cared for the sick orders like the Trinitarians who worked to free people from prisons and slavery, the mendicant orders who challenged both clerical, opulence, and the coldness of urban society.

St. Joseph Calasanz, the Marists, and others who founded free schools to offer education for all, regardless of wealth. And those like St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who dedicated their lives to accompany migrants, welcoming, protecting, promoting, and integrating those living in a foreign land. From the very beginnings of our faith, until today, Christians have been known by how we care for the poor and vulnerable, providing charity to those in need.

But as Pope Leo points out in chapter four. The Gospel compels us to [02:38:00] do more than just charity. We must seek justice as well. In chapter four, a History that continues, the Pope picks up our story in the late 19th century when a new focus begins to emerge, rather than just seeking to help the poor, the church started to ask why the poor were poor in the first place, and what needed to change in our world to ensure an equitable society.

This concept called social justice. Is encapsulated in Catholic social teaching and began with the Pope's namesake Pope Leo the 13th from 1891. Until today, popes have been looking into the signs of the times and asking the question, how does our society reflect the values of the gospel when they're at odds?

The Pope's call for change, such as in Rerum Novarum, the first social encyclical in which Leo XIII called for safe working conditions and a just social order in Mater et Magistra St. John XXIII advocated that rich countries could not remain indifferent to the suffering resulted from poverty around the world.

They were obligated to do something about it. The church at the Second Vatican Council identified itself as the church of all. In particular, the Church of the Poor [02:39:00] reaffirming the universal destination of goods God destined the Earth and all it contains for all people. Justice tempered by Charity John Paul II continued in this tradition tackling issues related to the progress of peoples and dignity of laborers.

And more recently, Benedict XVI advocated for the more equitable distribution of goods and the preferential option for the poor. Building upon the work of his predecessors, pop. Leo concludes the chapter with a number of profound and desperately needed exhortations. First, that we need to consider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture rather than objects of charity on the part of others.

The poor are not, therefore, our benefits, and they're not entirely dependent on us. They have agency and worth in themselves. Second, their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see. For this reason, society needs to listen to them. Not only are they subjects capable of determining their own lives, but their very experience of poverty provides them with insights into the world that most others will never know.

While [02:40:00] lacking in wealth, they're rich in other things. Leading ultimately to this crescendo drawn from Pope Francis. In light of this, it is evident that all of us must let ourselves be evangelized by the poor and acknowledge the mysterious wisdom, which God wishes to share with us through them as rich and as educated as we may be.

It is not the poor who always need to learn from us, but often we who need them to understand God because God has identified with them. We must identify with them as well if we want to be with God. For polio, it is only in our closeness to the complaints of those who suffer hearing their cries and experiencing them ourselves.

That we can accept the challenge God has for us to simplify our lives. But this is not the only challenge. Chapter five, A constant challenge calls us to action. Putting it all together, pop. Leo concludes with his purpose for writing. We must never forget who we are and why Jesus has loved us. We must also identify with the poor to love.

The poor is not just something the church does. It is the catalyst that sparks all [02:41:00] renewal Throughout our history, every movement of growth has been associated with people who give preferential option to the poor. And so the task of the church is before us. We must feel bound to invite everyone to share in the light in life born of recognizing Christ in the faces of the suffering and those in need.

It is how we will renew our church and how will we bring about change in our world. We do this first of all, by teaching the world that the poor are not a societal problem. They're a part of our family. They are one of us. Because of this, it is our responsibility to reject the indifference of the world that would prefer to overlook their suffering and all that causes it.

It is up to us to offer alms taking from our surplus to care for those who have little or nothing, but also to challenge our governments and markets to act justly. Those with power have a responsibility to care for the poor and to act justly. Yes, you heard that correctly. And no, this is not new. The church has advocated for more than 130 years that it is the right and responsibility of leaders to ensure the common good of all.

And Finally, Section D, [02:42:00] Some Misc. Historical Context

​

Speaker 8: For almost two millennia, the Pope has been a figure of supreme spiritual authority for Catholics around the world. But in the late 14th century, Catholics found themselves with not one, not two. But three popes, where did this plethora of popes come from, and who among them was the genuine article? The origins of this papal predicament began in 1296 when Francis King Philip IV decided to raise taxes on the church.

Given the clergy's political power, this offended Boniface leading him to write the unum san a radical decree asserting the Pope's total supremacy over earthly rulers. But King Philip struck back. [02:43:00] He declared Boniface a heretic and tried to have him arrested in a violent raid. Bonos survived the assault, but died soon after.

And following a short-lived successor, Pope Pope Clement V, a French diplomat seeking peace in the war between England and his homeland. Clement wanted to stay close to the conflict. And escaped the demands of Rome. So in 1309, he moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon a city close to France, but owned by a vassal of the church.

The papacy remained here for the terms of seven popes until the reigning pope finally returned to Italy in 1376. But just several months after his arrival, he suddenly died. This shocking development. Meant a new Pope had to be elected immediately [02:44:00] and in Rome where there hadn't been a papal election in over 70 years.

The Romans were determined to elect one of their own and restore Rome as sec seat of Western prison. Them local officials pressured cardinals to choose an Italian poop while rowdy mobs raided the conclave and plundered the papal wine cellar. Amidst this chaos, the Cardinals elected the Neapolitan Archbishop of Bari to become Pope Urban VI.

Initially, urban was seen as a safe choice, but he quickly proved to be a reformer who sought to limit the Cardinals finances. Desperate to maintain their luxurious lifestyles. The Cardinals declared the recent election illegitimate since it was decided under pressure from the Roman mob. They denounced urban as a usurper and held a new conclave [02:45:00] to elect Pope Clement VII.

Clement attempted to excommunicate urban, but he refused to recognize the authority of Clement or his greedy cardinals urban, named new Cardinals to his court and entrenched himself in Rome while Clement and his supporters. Return to Avignon, the schism had officially begun. Western Christendom now had two capitals, Avignon and Rome, each with their own Pope and Court of Cardinals.

As popes from each line died, their cardinals appointed successors continuing the crisis for decades. This strange situation didn't impact most ordinary Catholics as there were no significant doctrinal splits. Instead, the drama played out in the diplomatic realm. [02:46:00] European rulers were forced to choose sides as both popes V for spiritual and political supremacy only a Pope had the authority to call a general counsel to officially resolve the issue, and both sides refuse to take this step.

So in 1409, a group of cardinals from France and Rome took matters into their own hands. They claimed that since both popes were disputed, Cardinals did have the right to call the council. And at their gathering these cardinals depose the pretenders and elected a new Pope. Unfortunately. Both Avignon's Pope and Rome's Pope refuse to recognize this council.

So instead of solving the crisis, the number of popes rose to three. This unusual arrangement lasted five more years until the [02:47:00] Council of Constant. In 1417 here, the Popes from the Roman line and recently created third line, resigned and agreed to unite the church under a new Pope Martin V undisputed, Martin swiftly excommunicated the only person still against him.

The Pope of Avignon and finally ended the schism after 39 years.

Today, the church's official records say the Roman line was always the true papal power. But regardless of how the schism ended its existence proves that even those who are supposed to be pious are prone to petty power struggles. 

Speaker 24: I had spent a lot of time reading about the rhetoric of anti Catholicism ca you know, Catholics were the great bug [02:48:00] bears of the, of the 17th century and 18th century.

They embodied everything that English Protestants detested. They were disloyal. They were overly emotional. They were obsessed with ritual and materialism rather than with true doctrine and true ideolog. They were feminized because they were so emotional and so sensual. So they embodied everything that English Protestants despised.

And so anti-Catholic rhetoric is everywhere in Colonial records, but in fact, I had found very few examples of actual violence against Catholics. So there was this sort of glaring gap between the rhetoric, which was so hateful and so persecutory, and the experience, which seemed to be one of sort of benign neglect or indifference.

So I was very curious about that. There's one episode in part, and that's sort of the exception to the rule. Pitched battle between armed Protestants and armed Catholics in Maryland in the 1650s where the Catholics were routed by the Protestants and the loss of [02:49:00] some 20, 20, 22 or so lives. But that was the total exception to the rule.

So I was interested in how it was that colonial Catholics sort of occupied this space between heightened rhetoric and a kind of lived neglect. So that was what. Sort of led me into this project. 

Speaker 22: How did you go about actually finding anything, you know, the, these are people who, as you said, were flouting the law, they don't leave a lot of trace.

In some cases you're talking about some that are servants or enslaved. So what all did you have to look at to go about to put this story together? 

Speaker 24: Yeah, that was the real challenge. How do you find people who don't wanna be found in the archives? Archives that are created by colonial administrators who are, have one set of objectives and one set of motives and aren't particularly good at detailing and narrating the lives of ordinary people who don't otherwise come to their attention.

So [02:50:00] it was a, it was a scattershot approach. It required me to be a lot more creative than I think I'd been in, in, in other books to look beyond the documentary record for one thing. To look at the material record. I'm, I'm certainly not an archeologist, but I ended up reading a lot of archeology over the course of this book to sort of discover and find what are the material remains, that had been left by individual Catholics or individual or Catholic communities.

So, and that, that revealed one set of sources. There were scattered examples of. Rosary beats, discovered in archeological pits. There were stray references to a crucifix here and there found in probate records or in inventories, of people's households. So the material record gave me some clues. The material record is always.

Ambiguous. You, you, you can, I can know that a, a crucifix was owned by a particular person. I have no idea what that meant to them. Was this a relic of a, of a, of a grandmother, right. [02:51:00] Perhaps as someone who holds on very dearly to the, the rosary that my mother left behind, but does not consider myself in any way, a member of that community, that rosary, I own it.

And if you were to look at my probate interest story, you would see it, but it couldn't tell you much about my own personal beliefs. So, so objects are very difficult to decode, and to the meaning of them. But then nonetheless, they do offer us one clue. The other way to find Catholics, in addition to what they've left behind in their material possessions, is to read about the accounts of encounters with them from the people who were opposed to them.

And that is often true of minority groups, right? Who are persecuted, what we know of them. Is left to us by their prosecutors, by the law, by the colonial authorities in many cases, minister Protestant ministers who took it upon themselves to try to identify and convert or at least oppose the Catholic settlers that they found in the midst of their congregations.

So reports by Colonial Anglican [02:52:00] ministers were a great source always with, always keeping in mind that they are writing from a very. Particular viewpoint that they, they're trying to find these people in order to expose them, either if they're more generously minded to convert them or somehow incorporate them if they're less generously minded to prosecute them.

Wills were another, great resource. Colonial wills, like many wills in the early modern period, often began with a preamble that sort of lays out a statement of belief much different than Wills not, well, I'm not sure that they're that different than Wills today, but nonetheless, their, their preambles tend to be quite theological.

And so even someone who might have hashed their whole life, as a, as a secret Catholic, who wouldn't have been known to be Catholic from their, to their neighbors or to their larger community might in their last will and testament the last time someone has to sort of make a statement about their lives and their beliefs might lay out a kind of theology of what it meant to be a Catholic.

So I [02:53:00] read a lot of wills and looking for those theological cues in the preambles. Read a lot of, and at the point when newspapers become available, which is not until the 18th century, really 1730s on looking for any stray references on the Catholics, I did have to learn to, when I was using more digital databases to use the term papist and not Catholic, papist was far more.

It was the term that was most commonly used in this period of time to describe Catholics. It is a term of insult. It's a term that suggests that these are people who still owe their political loyalty to the pope. So therefore our papists. So it was really a scattershot approach to looking for evidence wherever I could find it.

Often being very mindful of fact that most of this was coming from people, institutions, organizations that were hostile to the people I was trying to understand. 

Speaker 22: I was raised Catholic and a lot of what it meant to be a Catholic as I was growing up was going to church every week [02:54:00] and being baptized and being confirmed and, and all of that.

What does it mean in this colonial period when there are by and large not Catholic churches when there are maybe not a whole lot of priests around? What does it mean to be a Catholic for these colonists? 

Speaker 24: That is the most important question. That is the essential question. What does it mean to be a Catholic when you don't have access to the sacraments, which are the building blocks of a Catholic identity in a Catholic life when you don't have access to priests who are the only people authorized to perform those sacraments to perform, most importantly, the miracle of the mass?

The, the, the, the fundamental central ritual of Catholicism, which is the turning of. Bread and wine into body and blood. So, and, and churches, and there are no churches in which to gather and celebrate these sacraments, these moments of transformation and transcendence as a community. That is the most essential question.

And I was very fortunate to be guided here [02:55:00] by one by generations, really have wonderful historians who have, especially historians of English Catholics who really devoted a lot of time to understanding what does that mean to be a Catholic, in a Protestant country. And what his have, what I. To be a Catholic under those conditions means that you have to find a way to translate and transfer some of those essential processes, encounters into a domestic context.

You cannot celebrate the mass in a church with the priest, but you can try to find a way in your own home by either dedicating a room in that house to be the place where you and your family gather on a Sunday. To, you cannot receive communion, at the hands of a priest in that room, in your home on a Sunday.

But you can read together the Catholic missile or, or, prayer book, and you can imagine it's, receiving communion. It's a ma, it's a act of imaginative, reception. [02:56:00] And you can try to think about that. There are other people doing this at the same time in their homes that you don't necessarily know personally, but you have a sense that there is a community out there.

So this domestication a ritual. The domestication of the experience of the mass was. The biggest innovation that colonial Catholics and English Catholics made in this time, and it had really far reaching consequences. For one thing, it meant that women assumed a really central role. Women were in a sense, the priests of the, of the Catholic community, and that they were the ones who gathered the family together.

They were the ones who kept, the. Essential, the, the missiles, and the, and the bread that you might try to pretend is a, is a wafer, and organize these events and presided over these events. And they were the ones who kept the feasting and fasting schedules of the church. So, so two things are happening.

One is that the, the a. Experiences that would take place in a church are taking place now in a home, in a much [02:57:00] attenuated, much modified form, but also other rituals that were not centered on the church, become more important. 

Speaker 104: That was one of the number one things, the relationship of the Kennedy men to women. Obviously people know that JFK had affairs and that there were rumors, whatever, but I, I don't think I had realized how like cults, like the environment was, I mean, they were raised to believe the JFK generation Joe's children were raised to believe that women are like objects to be passed around.

Joe would wanna participate and sort of be involved with his son's. Girlfriends and lovers. I mean, it really was way more crazy than people realize. 

Speaker 106: It's just deranged. I don't think people recognize just how much sex there was. Like yes, right. To say John Kennedy had affairs, JFK had affairs really is not even scratching the surface of what he got up to.

It seemed like some of the people around him, like Secret [02:58:00] Service members, his aides, procuring women, was almost a full-time job for them. It seemed like a different one almost every day, seemingly, or that would've been the dream, you know? I think some of them stuck around more long-term affairs. Right.

But I mean, the number was just insane, frankly. And there's a lot you could say about, you know, what was John f Kennedy's? Personal faith as a Catholic or what was Bobby's? What was Teddy's? What was the dad's? And we can talk about all of that. But I think in some ways, as I was thinking about some of this, again, to me it's always the Catholicism of the Kennedy's is most fully expressed in the people you don't see in their mythologies, which is the women.

And I do think that is a function of their Catholicism in a profound way. I mean, wills talks about Rose Kennedy as almost being in Alister within a nunnery convent within their domestic arrangements, sometimes even at their vacation home, right? Having her own little cottage on the beach she would go to and live in almost by herself.

So there's a way in which I think the most conspicuous elements of the [02:59:00] Kennedy's Catholicism often do relate to women. But the people in the Kennedy family, you don't know that much about, or you don't hear that much about are the women. And I can't think that can be separated from their Catholicism, frankly.

Especially that era, that vintage of Catholicism, pre Vatican, two very old school that was very much in play. 

Speaker 105: Totally. I was actually talking to George about this right before we started recording, which was, it seems like a lot of times when we talk about the Kennedys, we are just talking about the men.

Speaker 106: Yeah. Three or four of them. 

Speaker 105: Yeah. We're talking about Joe, Jack, Teddy, Bobby, but in terms of. Their relationship to Catholicism, it seems like the ones who were most strictly held to the principles of Catholicism, it was the women in the family. 

Speaker 98: Yes. 

Speaker 105: In a way that the men just simply were not, and that I'm sure was both a function of the time.

A function of this particular family itself? Yes. This was just a very [03:00:00] patriarchal, in the truest sense of the word family. And it's funny because Joe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but Joe's relationship to the Catholic church was entirely political from all accounts. It seems like he had no real spiritual interior life and treated Catholicism, the way that he treated women and the way he treated anything else, which was as a political pawn, as a means to an end.

And I, I thought that was really interesting. But yeah, the women who were held to the highest standards of being good Catholics, quote unquote, were the women 

Speaker 106: and and often were held to that standard by themselves. Yes. Like they did. Their duty would've been, I think, the language, right. And mm-hmm. That duty, they understood it in terms of the obligations imposed upon them as women, mothers, wives, by the Catholic faith.

Speaker 104: I'm just thinking about the times we have talked about Catholicism on this podcast. We had an episode on Kathleen Kennedy and it was such a big controversy within the family that she ended up marrying a non-Catholic. And [03:01:00] depending on who you ask, people say she was disowned by the family.

Other people say that's exaggerated, but the point is that there was a real fracture in the family and it's so. Crazy to imagine what a big controversy it was that she wanted to marry this man, that she, by all counts, loved. And meanwhile, as you're saying, there's a team procuring various loose women for JFK to have affairs with inside the White House.

And that is not seen as contra to his faith. But Julia mentioned Joe KI wanna start kind of at the beginning. I wanna start at Joe Kennedy. So to me it's interesting that the Kennedys are so synonymous with the Catholic church and the American imagination because from what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, Joe initially really wanted to assimilate in WASP culture.

Like I, so much of his initial thirst for power was because he was in his mind, rejected from the country club set. Well, literally, yes. Yeah. I mean, I think there was a point in time where he wanted to [03:02:00] join the beach club, you know, where people would summer, you know, when summer's a verb and not a season, the kind of elite.

Speaker 106: Rich person, but therefore mostly protestant club. And he couldn't. Right. And like that was a chip on his shoulder. There's a story of him going back to his college reunion, right. And being kind of booed or his stat, like these little slights to him, whether it was his college reunion or joining the elite social clubs, beach clubs, those kinds of things.

He didn't get what he wanted. Right. And this was a man who got what he wanted most of the time. And wanting one of his sons to be president is a kind of elaborate revenge fantasy on his part for all the slights of the high society types, the Boston Brahmins, who wouldn't accept him. Mm-hmm. And his Irish Catholic clan.

That's a major factor in the whole story of the Kennedys, is we've come to know it. 

Speaker 105: And I think, as George alluded to, it's so funny that this is the most famous Irish Catholic family in America in the last a [03:03:00] hundred years. And Joe. So badly wanted to distance himself from that because he saw it as like a personal hindrance and only became to embrace it when it became politically useful to him.

But exactly as you were saying, he was rejected by the WASP in Cohasset, Massachusetts. He was denied the position he wanted in the Roosevelt administration. Yes, the Secretary of the Treasury. And then his second choice was ambassador to England, which is again, as an Irish person. What's a bigger stab in the back?

Speaker 104: Yeah. 

Speaker 106: Yeah. Uhhuh. 

Speaker 104: Well, the relationship with England is funny because there was a part in the Wills book in the very beginning where Willis is saying that the children thought of Joe's. Relationship to sex as very English or something. It was, I'm trying to remember the exact phrasing, but it was like, it was very Randy.

Yes. It was something about how it's ironic that the IES are considered this iconic Catholic family because he always thought of himself as having a [03:04:00] very sort of English disposition. And I do think that was also part of him wanting to be this cosmopolitan, worldly connector of people who was above specific ethnicities and religions.

But in terms of Catholicism in America, because obviously if we fast forward to the JFK election, a huge hindrance for him was the so-called Catholic question. And people fa, he has some sort of dual loyalty to the Catholic church and to America. But before that, what in your opinion, was the status of the Catholic church in the American imagination sort of leading up to that?

Like from the forties through the sixties? Like yes, there was prejudice against Catholics. What were the stakes? 

Speaker 106: Yeah, in some ways I mentioned already, you can look at the particular face of any individual Kennedy and see what's going on there. But I think the more interesting questions are about the moment that the Kennedys and their Catholicism met with the history of [03:05:00] our country, and especially the history of Catholicism in it.

One of my favorite lines of Gary Wills is the reign of the two, Johns, meaning John the 23rd, who was the Pope who called the Second Vatican council. We've described that a little bit already, but one of the phrases associated with it is throwing up the windows of the church, throwing up, open the windows so that the, the church can look out and the world can look in.

And it was at the Second Vatican Council where, again, religious freedom, religious pluralism, human rights, liberal democracy, how the Catholic church related to the Jewish people, right? Or were all reformulated and reworked and. Adapted and updated in a way in the Second Vatican Council, which was, you know, we're talking late fifties, early, early sixties.

So as America is electing, its first. A Catholic president, uh, the Catholic church is literally calling the bishops and cardinals from all over the world to convene on Rome and deliberate about the very matters I was just discussing among others. So it's a [03:06:00] very interesting moment and the phrase, the reign of the two johns, I've always loved that.

That's going to be it for today.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

United States of Kennedy

Runaway Country 

Takesâ„¢ by Jamelle Bouie

TLDR News Global

Conspirituality

Some More News

Unsung History Podcast

The BradCast 

Professor Tim Wilson

The Road to Now

The Spectator

Breaking In The Habit

and TED-Ed

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show and co-starring in SOLVED!, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes including her co-starring on SOLVED!, thanks to our editors and and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships

You'll find that link in the show notes along with a link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion. [03:07:00] And don't forget to follow us on all the social media platforms! We're on Bluesky but we're also making the move to video on Instagram with our new show, SOLVED! So please support us there.

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 4-24-2026

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. Today we explore how Viktor Orban spent 16 years transforming Hungary into a blueprint for 21st century autocracy, how that blueprint traveled directly to the United States, and what Hungary's stunning defeat of Orban can teach Americans about fighting back against authoritarianism. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 95 minutes today includes Radio Atlantic, The Majority Report, Last Week Tonight, DW News, Stay Tuned with Preet, Takes by Jamel Bowie, and The Dean Obadiah Show. Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in three sections. Section A, Origins, Section B, Tactics, and Section C, International. But first, a reminder to check out our new show, Solved, on the Best of the Left YouTube channel. We're really proud of the show we're making and think you'll get real value out of it. Plus, you checking it out will help us find new viewers on YouTube, so thanks in advance for all of your views, likes, subscribes, and comments.

That's all on the Best of Luck YouTube channel linked in the show notes. And now, on to the show.

Back overseas in a major defeat for President Trump's closest ally in Europe. Hungarian voters ousted longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was also close to Russia's Vladimir Putin. I was on the streets of Budapest. I was in the middle of the mass. I'm sure that you saw the pictures that thousands of Hungarians were dancing and celebrating and crying on the streets, hugging each other. which itself was a really really interesting experience because the Hungarian society is quite closed in a sense that it's really hard to see people to dance and to hug each other and it happened I was 11 years old when the system change happened in 1990 and I still remember that the adults were really happy but it was like uncomparable on the streets of Budapest on Sunday night because I was walking with my microphone, talking to people, and I got so many hugs from people who I had never met.

It was really something. Everybody was crying, and it was a really, really one-of-a-lifetime kind of experience.

So you're just walking around the streets and people are just like dancing and hugging and crying?

Yes, that's correct. It was a festival feeling. There were children and dogs and elderly people. So yeah, it was like a really big happy festival. Even the future government members themselves were dancing while they were announcing their winning. There is this viral video of your health minister dancing, and it's totally out of contact for us. We just see him sort of dancing across the stage. Yeah, but basically he was reacting, I think, for the vibe that he was seeing from the thousands of people in front of him. But at the same time, he is a dance king, right? So our future health minister appears to have these very good moves.

One day, 16 plus years ago, Hungary was just a democracy and Veronica's life was pretty much like any journalist working in a free society.

Then it was very similar, like the American journalists experience, like when we ask questions, the leaders of the authorities or the politicians or the hospital directors answered. I did have all the important phone numbers in my phone as a political reporter, and I haven't got any problems to get into a press conference or asking questions and getting answers for it. And that started to stop after 2010. That was the year Orban came into power for a second time. He had blamed the media for his previous loss. So when he was elected as prime minister again in 2010, this would be the start of his 16-year reign, he was determined to do things differently. First, the ministers started to stop answering their phones and even answering any questions by email. So generally speaking, access to information became extremely hard. And the second thing was that they started to bolt up media companies.

They bought up media companies, people with a lot of money who were very pro-Orban. It was not like a red phone that they put some loyalist in every independent newsrooms and they called on the red phone and said that you should always write nice things about Orban. But they basically bolt up the whole company. And actually that was what happened with me. Veronica worked for 18 years at Index, which was one of the biggest independent news sites in Hungary. She was then its deputy editor-in-chief. A new management came and the new management started to restructure our independent operation. And they fired my boss, the editor-in-chief. Last month he publicly raised the alarm over political interference in the outlet's operations.

of 2020. More than 80 journalists from the country's most read news site called Index have resigned from their jobs. It was a very, very sad moment. It was the easiest and the hardest decision of my life. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who once branded it a fake news factory. One of his allies... Now, years later, Veronica saw Orban's defeat on Sunday as a lesson. As much as Orban wanted to control the narrative. He wanted to own the media, wanted to reshape the information provided about reality itself. He just couldn't do it anymore. The people had had enough. Enough inflation, enough corruption, enough division, enough distorted reality. And I think it is a valuable lesson for every political leader, every autocrat, that propaganda and democracy are incompatible. You can have one or the other, but never the both. It does seem like a beacon of hope for liberal democracies around the world that are worried about tipping into illiberal democracies.

Does it feel that way to you?

I believe so that it is a crucial moment for other similar populists or autocrats because even 16 years of ruling can be demolished in a day.

It's a very good message for the other populists that people will raise their voices, especially new generation will raise their voices if they don't like what they see. it seems that hungarians started to feel that they need to raise their voices they need to step up for themselves on a democratic way casting their votes and sending out the autocrats from the country so i think the biggest lesson is if you slightly not agreeing to the politics or it affecting your life badly, don't stay silent. Be critical and step up for yourself. I guess what I'm asking is, I mean, if someone was to ask me, like, how did we get Trump? I would say it's a combination of anemic growth after the financial crisis and the sort of like maybe the sort of the offshoring of industry and the hollowing out of cities. And then I would also say co-mingling with a long history of racism in this country.

And and those two things sort of like came together and it ignited on some level. And that got us Trump. I mean, you know, he didn't win with all the votes, but but, you know, he had enough at that point. Was there other factors in Hungary? Yeah, no, I don't think there's, I don't think that those worldwide, I don't think there's one single explanation for the rise of global fascism. I think, you know, to tell that story of economic decline and failure of institutions globally, you'd have to explain the Sweden Democrats' rise, the rise of the Swedish fascist party, one of the first or second most popular party in Sweden, by saying Sweden's economy failed or nothing like that happened in Sweden. So it's not the global. There isn't one single global explanation. Hungary, Hungary was, you know, was was a struggling Eastern European country that was in the EU and was rising slowly.

So it wasn't like there was, yes, the financial crisis hit. But I don't think that was that was a significant. Just general frustrations that Orban figured out. Here's how we exploit that. And what cultural it was cultural politics and scapegoating. It was the attack on the attack on woke. It was it was latent anti-Semitism. It was it was telling people it was true. when I got there in 29, 2010, it was all about like the loss of greater Hungary. You know, so we talk about the Nazis rising with the Great Depression, but you've got to remember that it was also the Treaty of Versailles. And the Treaty of Versailles in the 2010 election was front and center. It was trianon. It was the loss of greater Hungary. It was those very classic fascist themes. It was anti-Semitism and Trianon and the loss of greater Hungary.

Those were the themes. And so it was, we're going to make Hungary great again. That's literally what he ran on. So it was literally the mythic past of fascism that we were once great. And then immigration, then he vilified, this was well before the Syrian war, but he vilified immigrants, He talked about white Christians being the most persecuted group on earth. He pioneered the cultural politics that is Trumpism. But isn't it also true that these ideas only have a salience with a certain population if there is a failure economically? And that's what history tells us. I would posit that, you know, well, we could we could go back and forth on that. But just where those issues become more politically powerful, it seems to me like in 2010 and after the Great Recession, there was a failure to adequately address class politics in general. So then you have a more simulated politics of keeping immigrants out, even though Hungary never really had an immigration issue prior to this, you get a convenient scapegoat.

And Orban can go in there and rail against globalists, of course, with the anti-Semitic undertones, but blame a gesture towards an economic system of kind of global cooperation or cooperation with other European countries as the failure, as opposed to, you know, say, broader capitalist forces being the failure. Yeah, I mean, I am, Emma, I'm very sympathetic to that explanation in the United States. I would say it's some, I do think the financial crisis played a role in Hungary, without a doubt. But the EU was helping Hungary. So, you know, the globalist structures were, Hungary relies on EU money. And this isn't just 2010. This is four straight elections that Orban won with this politics, all the while while other European countries were economically rising and leaving Hungary way behind. And generally, I think Sweden is a good example to look at. I think, you know, Swedish fascism rises because of sort of purely cultural vilification and racism.

So Hungary, I don't think one can turn away from the fact that Hungary has a deeply socially conservative Christian base that's rooted in the old right and horty. Remember, Orban is bringing back the structures of Hungarian far-right nationalism very explicitly. So I don't think, you know, I'm not sure how much, you know, Hungary had a rich base for anti-Semitism. Hungary had a rich base for this cultural politics. And remember, Peter Meigar is right wing and conservative. Right. He's not he's not like some type of progressive. I was just about to say, like he replaced a sort of a fascist with like a just less fascist guy on some level. he's a social conservative. And so you have to, you know, you have to, and he ran completely on corruption on saying, I'm dropping all the anti-LGBTQ stuff, dropping all the Islamophobia and just saying, look at what that was covering up for. And so, you know, I think that we have to accept that on some level, there is a percentage of the population, at least in the West, I mean, probably everywhere, that is like just really open to scapegoating segments of the population.

OK, when did Bannon so Bannon sees this and this is also the era in the years that follow before Trump runs is the era that Breitbart, uh which bannon um was a partner of with breitbart goes international and uh they start like trying to like they're adopting in many respects there's sort of like a symbiotic relationship going about both ways um with uh i think breitbart opened up in europe and then you know all around the world in those like five years after uh you know from like 2010 maybe to 15 or something like that. And Bannon brings back these ideas. Is that right? Well, I think that Orban ran, if you look back at the 2010 campaign and you look at the world's reaction, which was horror, people were like, wow, this is like really explicitly fascist and anti-Semitic. And now you look back at that campaign and you're like, wow, that's just Trumpism. So, you know, attacking Soros going after private businesses for essentially DEI, pro-LGBTQ policies like DeSantis did with Disney. But Hungary became, Hungary, this inconsequential, small, poor European country, becomes the kind of global center for the global fascist project.

They used taxpayer money at the Danube Institute and government-funded think tanks to bring in conservatives, Rod Dreher, journalists, right-wing, far-right intellectuals. He was the crunchy – what was he, the crunchy conservative at one point, that guy, Rod Dreher?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he moved to Budapest as a fellow. So they were like Tucker Carlson. Everyone's visiting. And they're using government money to support this global network. And they're exporting Bannon's, they're exporting Orban's techniques. So what we're living through in the United States, and it's national humiliation for us, because Hungary is not a country you want to emulate, destroying the country using scapegoating and, you know, and targeting, destroying universities, destroying all the great institutions, using anti-wokeism as an excuse, and then pocketing profits while everyone is chortling over the suffering of the scapegoats and the cultural elites. So this was the buying of the media. So 80% of the Hungarian media is owned by Orban's allies. The government sort of forced that. This government pressure campaign on the media that we're seeing in the United States. Larry Ellison buying the media. That's all the Orban's tactics.

And obviously the attack on universities.

Part of the way he's won over the Hungarian public is through his control of the media. After returning to power, his government created a new agency to impose heavy fines for coverage that it considered unbalanced or offensive, as well as founding a new state media organisation called MTVA, overseeing all public media across TV, radio and the internet. Listen to one anonymous employee there explain just how much editorial control Orbán has. Every single thing connected to domestic politics is restricted.

You can't write anything bad about the government.

For example, if something is politically sensitive, I get instructions.

In some cases, I have the whole ready-made article, so I don't need to do anything, no editing, just Ctrl-C, copy and paste, the whole article, really.

It's unimaginable, to be honest. Yeah, those conditions clearly aren't ideal for a news outlet. There is a reason they typically don't give out the Pulitzer for excellence in control V. A study of one public TV nightly news show found that over six months there wasn't a single instance of governing party politicians appearing on screen in a negative light. Literally zero seconds of negative coverage, which just should not be possible. Politicians attract negative coverage about everything they do, whether it's about their offensive fashion faux pas or their court-ordered liability for sexual abuse. to pick two equivalent examples. And Orbán's reach goes well beyond state media, as his allies brought up tons of private independent outlets and then centralised many of them under a single foundation. According to the investigative journalism outlet Adlazzo, since 2010, allies of the Prime Minister have been buying up numerous Hungarian media outlets.

Men like former Hollywood producer Andy Viner and old-school friend Lawrence Meserosh are among a group of 14 Orbán allies who've collectively bought 11 radio stations, 20 television channels, and close to 500 online and print organisations. Wow. A far-right leader's friends and allies just buying up all the media outlets in the country and turning them into conservative sycophants. Can you imagine that? I sure can't. That's definitely not something I've had recurring nightmares about for the past month. And the result of all this has been Orban's party currently controls roughly 80% of the media market. And this level of influence over laws, courts, elections, and the media has allowed Orban to reshape Hungary virtually unchecked. On the international level, that's meant being a constant thorn in the EU side, especially when it comes to dealing with Russia. Orban's consistently had the friendliest ties to the Kremlin in the European Union.

In fact, he's long weaponized Hungary's veto power at the EU to block Russia-related sanctions, tie up financial aid to Ukraine, and repeatedly stall urgent EU decisions. And it says something that even a decade ago, this is how the then-president of the European Commission greeted Orban at a summit. The dictator's coming.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. And while I do not condone violence, there are a few scenarios where I think it's fine to slap something. When you're trying to revive them, when you are Cher and you really need Nick Cage to snap out of it, and of course, whenever you have the chance to hit an authoritarian in the face. Meanwhile, domestically, Orban's reshaped Hungary into what's basically a theme park of reactionary talking points. For instance, he's railed against Europe becoming a mixed race society and opposes allowing asylum seekers into Hungary, despite EU and international laws. During the migrant and refugee crisis a decade ago, Hungary was accused of unlawful detention and violence against asylum seekers. And he made a big show back then of being openly hostile toward them, even going so far as to build an electrified border fence, which inevitably got this rave review from Tucker Carlson.

Hungary began building the fence in June of 2015. By September, it was done. Well, they're serious about the border, though. It's not a high-tech border wall. It's a double fence with a road in the middle. But the difference is they're willing to protect it. They're not kidding. It's their border. They control it because they're a country. It's also really pretty. Pretty? Look, there are three things you can rely on in this life. Death, taxes, and if you build a fence to keep out immigrants, Tucker Carlson is going to want to fuck it. Although, if he really does want to kiss some electrified barbed wire, who am I to stop him? Love is love. But even as migration to Europe has declined, Orbán has continued to fear monger about how, if it weren't for him, Hungary might be forced to accept millions of refugees, who he has falsely characterised as disease-ridden threats to public health, extremists planning terrorist acts, and agents of a plot to replace native Europeans with foreigners.

All while reaching for a now familiar scapegoat suggesting George Soros was masterminding a nefarious plan to overrun Hungary with refugees, and posting billboards and full-page media ads with the caption, Don't let Soros have the last laugh. And it wasn't just billboards. Orbán's government also passed a law officially called Stop Soros that made it illegal to help asylum seekers even just with their paperwork, and led a campaign to shut down the Hungarian university that Soros founded. Though what is a little strange about Orbán's anti-Soros vendetta is that back in 1989, he actually received a Soros-funded scholarship to study at Oxford University, where I presume he majored in irony. But immigrants at Soros aren't Orbán's only punching bags. His government's also gone after Hungary's LGBTQ community, something that he bragged about at CPAC. To sum up, the mother is a woman, the father is a man, and leave our kids alone.

Full stop, end of discussion. We decided we don't need more genders, we need more rangers.

Less drag queens and more Chuck Norris. What? That doesn't make any sense. The number of genders has nothing to do with the number of rangers, and the number of drag queens has nothing to do with the number of Chuck Norrises, especially because the most Chuck Norrises you can have is one. And that number went down to zero last week. And if this is how you are finding that out, surprise!

But it's not just rhetoric. Orbán's government officially redefined family, which meant an effective ban on adoption by same-sex couples, and banned trans people from changing their gender on their IDs. In 2021, Hungary even passed a law banning depicting or promoting LGBT plus content in schools and the media. And if that sounds at all familiar to you, it may be because just nine months after that, Florida's Ron DeSantis signed his version of it, focused on classroom instruction, the so-called don't-say-gay law. But perhaps the policy that sums up Orbán's obsessions the best, from Christian conservatism to panic over migrants, is his relentless focus on Hungary's low birth rate. He's tried to increase it by introducing incentives like tax exemptions and interest-free loans of about $30,000 for parents, which then get cancelled if they have three children. And that's a pretty good deal, but does make giving kids the talk a little more complicated.

Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much, but also get a sick, low-interest loan from the Hungarian government, that's how babies are made. Orbán's framed the need for Hungarians to procreate as an existential crisis, because to hear him tell it in this ad that his government posted, the alternative is for the country to be overrun by migrants.

[Viktor Orbán speaking Hungarian]

Okay. Obviously that's yet more great replacement fearmongering. But as for "you can make fish soup from fish, but you can't make fish from fish soup" — is that folk wisdom or is that just how soup works? I'm just saying if your nana pointed at a bowl of soup and said you can't make fish out of that, you'd be looking at retirement home brochures that afternoon. Also for what it's worth, that metaphor cuts both ways because I've found with fish soup, as with countries, when you add more ingredients, it tends to taste better.

Otherwise, what you have is hot fish water. But Orbán is serious about this. He spent about 5% of Hungary's GDP on programmes incentivising families to have kids, but it hasn't worked. Hungary's fertility rate recently dipped to the lowest in a decade and their population is still shrinking. And that might be because people just don't feel optimistic about raising kids in Orbán's Hungary, a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as bad, or where even the Conservative Heritage Foundation has put his government at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity. And that is the thing about Viktor Orban. For all the fear-mongering he's done, all the fences he's built, and all the laws he's passed to protect Hungary from the threat of migrants, gays and George Soros, he's fundamentally failed when it comes to the basics of good governance.

Funding for school and hospitals there has gotten so dire, he had to sign an executive order to ensure medical facilities were stocked with toilet paper. Although, to hear his health secretary tell it, Any complaints that people had about that were completely unreasonable.

In an operation as big as the Hungarian hospital system, which is three million square meters and has tens of thousands of people visiting every day, I consider it a mathematical impossibility that there should be toilet paper in all hospital bathrooms at all times. To this day, I maintain that this is a mathematical impossibility.

I've heard some bad talking points in the past, But it's mathematically impossible for our hospitals to have toilet paper is right up there. I'm really only surprised that he didn't go on to suggest hospitals just hang a sign in every bathroom reminding people that using their socks is always an option. And it's not a great sign for Orban that some of his heaviest-handed tactics now do seem to be backfiring.

Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz, he says that Mogyar's victory shows right-wing populism suffered a heavy defeat in Hungary. Is that the right way to look at it? Yes, I think this is the right way to see it. Actually, the Hungarian government of Prime Minister Orban has been a vanguard of autocratization and illiberal politics, both in the European Union, but lately also at transatlantic stage. And now the 16 years of illiberal rule was put to an end by a landslide election victory that we can also categorize as a sort of democratic revolution on the part of the Hungarian society. I mean, that's quite a strong statement to lay out there, that this is a democratic revolution. You know, Peter Magyar used to be part of Viktor Orban's Fidesz party. So I'm wondering how much of a break in political tradition does he really represent?

We can focus on the person of Peter Magyar, but just to support my claim with potentially two arguments. Yesterday we have seen the highest turnout ever in the history of democratic elections in Hungary. And actually we can observe much more than just a change in the government. Because Hungary has been evolved to a sort of authoritarian regime. Now a start of a redemocratization somehow equals to a regime change. But of course you are entirely right. Peter Magyar has been socialized in the Fidesz party and actually has been part of that power structure in the second and third ranks. But notwithstanding this, I think even that phenomenon is not so different. So how, for example, regime change happened in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, 1990, where at least in Hungary, former members of the ancient regime, so the previous regime, also played a very crucial role in the democratic transition.

But with regard to the ideological characteristics of Peter Magyar, of course, he's a right-wing and conservative person. But first and foremost, I see him as a very successful political entrepreneur. And I think his main motivation will remain to keep actually this track record of astonishing political success, what he just created with the opposition party Respect and Freedom over the past two couple of years. And I think what we will see from him is much more very pragmatic, output-oriented policymaking than anything that's really ideologically influenced. So you're describing a champion of democracy, not necessarily a champion of liberal democracy, it sounds like. I mean, do you think we're going to see Peter Mogliar rolling back these Orban policies that we've seen in the last couple of years? I'm thinking about the restrictions on LGBTQ rights, for example, in Hungary.

I think he got a mandate to redemocratize the country, and his political future depends on delivering on that mandate. In his victory speech, he referred actually to the equal right of every Hungarian citizen to live and love as he would like. So we have certain promises that he might also address the issue of the discrimination of the LGBTQ community in the country. On the other hand, as a rather realist political analyst, I expect that the focus will be on the non-divisive issues in the next couple of months, which primarily relates to the anti-corruption fight and the legislation in the country, bringing back the frozen and suspended EU funds and potentially normalizing the relationship of Hungary with the European Union and in a broader sense in the Western alliance system. How is he going to do that? Because we know that Hungary is still dependent on cheap, very cheap energy from Russia.

How is he going to square this circle? Because you know that Brussels, the European Union, will be demanding that Hungary fall in line and cut those energy ties to Moscow.

I absolutely agree with you. And this is a very good question. I think we can start at the point that the new Hungarian foreign minister nominee, Miss Anita Orban, who shares the same family name with the past prime minister, but they are not related, she stands with all of her professional career actually for the diversification of Hungary's energy supply and the phasing out of Russian fossil energy. So I think this is a credible promise that she might deliver on the fight. But I fully agree with you that because the Orban regime hasn't been working on the diversification in the past four years. Actually, Hungary's dependency on Russian fossil fuel is bigger now than it used to be in 2022. This will be a large challenge. And personally, I don't think that the phase-out deadline at the end of 2027 set by the European Union is feasible for Hungary.

It can be with regard of crude oil. Their alternative supply routes exist. the Adria pipeline via Croatia or the Odessa Brody pipeline on Ukrainian territory. But if we take a look on the natural gas supply to the TurkStream pipeline system, then I think the task is much, much bigger. And against that background, what I would expect is potentially a deadline extension request that might come sooner or later from the Hungarian government. And obviously, also a phase-out requires in some way the constructive and predictable behavior of Russia. So if I need to describe the potential future relationship of the Hungarian government with the Kremlin, I think that will be a cold but slow divorce. What about Hungary's relationship with the U.S.? During his visit in Budapest, J.D. went and fazed that the United States will see every potential Hungarian government as a partner. And honestly, if we put the ideological connections between the MAGA movement and FIDOS aside, At least our government is much better aligned with United States' interests than FIDAS, particularly when it comes to China.

And also the energy cooperation agreements that were signed between the Trump administration and FIDAS, and which also serve actually the phase out of Russian energy, can continue actually in a very smooth way between the two administrations or two governments in the future. So I don't think that this change in the government will put an end to a closer cooperation that just a couple of days or weeks ago by the Hungarian government was highlighted as actually the golden era of transatlantic relationship between Washington and Budapest. a couple weeks ago on your substack you wrote something called the next coup attempt and talking about the problem that trump faces you know an uphill battle electorally at the moment quote some variant of terrorism is trump's best bet and so one should be preemptively now skeptical of Trump's account of any future terrorist attack. We can be sure, that's pretty strong, we can be sure that whatever its true origins and character, Trump will provide a self-serving account meant to serve a coup and a dictatorship. It is utterly predictable that he will attempt to pass responsibility for any act of terror to his domestic political opponents and discredit or undo elections. Really? I think that there's the presumption in favor of something like that is much, much stronger than the presumption in favor of if there's a terrorist attack in the United States, Donald Trump will suddenly revert to something he's never been before, which is a person who cares about the interests of the United States and its population.

That I certainly agree with. Or that Trump will do something that he's never done before, which is generate a foreign policy response, which comes from the interests of that country or those people. Look, I mean, I realize our default in the media is that we would like for the president to be the president, and we'd like to imagine that in a drastic circumstances, he would revert to some kind of type, but Trump has never been that type. There's no reason to think that he would react the way we would like for him to react. And so we have to imagine how else he'd react. And that's my version. Second point is that it is totally normal for US presidents actually to take advantage of terrorist attacks. That's what the Bush administration did in the war in Iraq. That was taking advantage of a terrorist attack. He took advantage of a terrorist attack in the way that conformed to his character. Now let's ask about Trump's character. Trump, you know, if you think through that analogy through, what Trump's character is about is preserving personal power for Trump. That's what he cares about. And I don't think he's making any illusions about that.

And the final thing I want to point out is that, and again, this isn't meant to be a doomsane prophecy. This stuff can be beaten and it can be counterproductive. But the final thing I want to point out is that this just happened in Hungary. It just happened a week ago. Orban just generated a false flag terrorist attack. He just made that up. It's not exactly the same because nothing actually, I think happened. But Orban said, we have uncovered a terrorist attack on our pipeline, and it was our enemies who did it. He claimed it was the Ukrainians, and he associated the Ukrainians with the Hungarian opposition. Now, why didn't we hear a whole lot about that? Outrageous though it is, because it didn't work. And why did it not work? Because the Hungarian opposition ahead of time said, it's pretty likely there's going to be some kind of electoral terrorist stunt and we can't let Orban take advantage of it, right? So what you and I are doing right now is that same kind of inoculation. There are two desperate moves that a leader like Trump can make. The first is fight a foreign war. Check. That's happened. And the second is to generate or take advantage of, generate a terrorist attack, take advantage of a real terrorist attack, or take advantage of a fake terrorist attack, something that never actually happens, right?

Those are very, very different things. That's what I was trying to get at. Yeah, sure. The difference between one and two are vast. Taking advantage of politically, as you say, has been done many, many times before, including a 9-11, of a, you know, quote unquote, legitimate, actual, genuine terrorist attack versus concocting one or generating one are huge, hugely different. And you're saying we have the possibility of both. These things, look, I just want to normalize all this because it happens all the time. How did Putin come to power? Who are the two people Trump and Matt? Who do we think Trump admires in the world? Putin and Orban. How did Orban try to stay in power? By inventing a plot which probably didn't happen and blaming domestic enemies for it. How did Putin come to power? There were several elements to this, but one of the elements was that the Russian secret services quite literally bombed a series of Russian apartment buildings and then blamed it on Muslims.

This happens in the world, right? And it's done by the people who Trump admires. And as Americans, we just can't do this thing, which we keep doing, which is saying, oh, there's some things that happened in history or they happen in foreign countries, but I would like to reserve the right to be very surprised when they happen in the United States. No, we cannot reserve the right to be very surprised when these things happen in the United States, because if we're surprised by them, our surprise becomes the political resource that other people use. Yeah, I totally get that. the only thing that gives me the heebie-jeebies a little bit is when you speak from a position, as you do and I do and many other people do in good faith, about being wary of conspiracy theories and evidence-free hypotheses about things, whether it's landing on the moon or who did 9-11 or what happened on October 7th or anything else, to suggest, and I know you don't mean to do this. To put out there in advance, without anything having happened, if something happens, you must immediately doubt it. To me, you know, a little bit gives grist to the conspiracy theorists who we've been trying to fight intellectually and politically for a long time.

Does that make any sense? No, no, I totally take that point. But what I said in the piece, and I stand by it, is that one should not take seriously what Trump says. I'm not saying what You shouldn't take seriously what local police on the scene say. I'm not saying you shouldn't take seriously what reporters say. I'm saying that one in that, precisely in that situation, where something very frightening has happened or seems to have happened, precisely in that situation, one has to pull back the impulse to trust a leader, especially when you have a leader like Trump. Because what we know of history is that these things get taken advantage of precisely on people like Trump. I take your point. there will be authorities on explosives. There will be authorities on the relevant political parties who might be involved. There will be local investigations. All of those things are serious, and all those things should be taken seriously. I'm afraid what's not serious in that circumstance is what the President of the United States says. Yeah, no, I think that's an important distinction.

I'm going to stick to that. I just don't want us to be doing what they do. If I had more time, I would go through each one of the 20 lessons in the 20th century in your great slim volume on tyranny. And I had not looked at it in a while and I had forgotten the order in which they appear. And I literally went to go look for it over the weekend to see what number your lesson was entitled, do not obey in advance. Cause that's the one that seems to be quoted the most. That's the one most relevant sort of in my professional sphere. Why'd you put that first? And how are we doing on that? It goes first because it's the first thing you have to do. if you fail to do that then the lessons two through 20 don't matter really nothing matters when something surprising happens like you know somebody you didn't expect to win an election or somebody who wins an election and they try to change the system you have to not obey in advance you have to have your own sense of what is normal and follow that because if you if you don't do that then you will normalize which we're all very good at but if you normalize then you're not going follow the rest of the lessons. That's the main reason why it's first is that psychologically, morally inside of us, it's first. There's another reason why it's first, which is that, as you probably noticed, if you're flipping through it again, the lessons go from in a way, least severe and least demanding to most severe and most demanding, right? They're following a trajectory of how the regime changes. Number 20 is be as courageous as you can. That's the tall order. Yeah. I mean, it is. But remember the nice people we're talking about in Hungary, who just won this huge election.

They were afraid that they, I mean, independent journalists in Hungary were being investigated by the state. The leaders of the opposition movement were legitimately afraid of prison if they failed. Like people were being courageous. And I mean, Hungary is just one example. So how courageous we can be, depending upon whether we're like, you know, middle-aged white guys with tenure or whether we're undocumented people, like people can be differently courageous. But I think without that little element, without that little moral vector, I don't think we're going to go anywhere. which gets to my next point and we're looking for ways to minimize both the significance of the election and minimize the authoritarianism of orban and this the second point i want to make is that the one big reason why orban's defeat is so significant is that orban was this nexus connecting the international far-right, the fascism international.

He funneled money and support to far-right groups and individuals in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in France, in Italy, often money coming from Putin's Russia. He convened those individuals and their parties and so on and so forth in Hungary so they could meet each other and share ideas and strategies. The Conservative Political Action Committee here in the United States has held multiple of its annual conferences in Hungary, and according to the new opposition leader, Orban was directly funneling money to it. And in turn, reactionaries here drew inspiration from Orban. Ron DeSantis' attack on higher education, on LGBTQ people, on critical race theory in Florida, directly inspired by Orban. Really an attempt to make Florida like Hungary on the Atlantic. The Trump administration, similar assaults on DEI, on gender ideology, on higher education, on universities and federal research, on everything that could be an independent base of knowledge and resistance to the administration, directly inspired by Orban. Russell Vogt, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, who destroyed USAID, among other agencies, inspired by Orban. There are real connections here. And so removing Orban from power is really removing a critical node in the dissemination of ideas and money and influence between the international far right. It's significant. Now, here are some things that might be useful for us in the United States. The first is that the opposition campaign, although it did focus quite a bit on what we might call affordability, on cost of living, on making life better for ordinary Hungarians, also focused a great deal on corruption and connected the two, connected the gross and rampant corruption of the Orban regime. And the Orban regime more or less was just a sophisticated ideological gloss over naked theft from the Hungarian people funneled to Orban's friends and cronies and supporters, connected that corruption to the poor economic prospects for ordinary Hungarians. And that's a strategy I think needs to be replicated here. The Trump regime is extraordinarily corrupt. They are raking billions of dollars. They're betting on outcomes. They're betting on decisions of life and death to make money. This corruption is egregious. And it's a simple, really political task to connect that corruption to the way that so many Americans are feeling left behind. That the corruption, the impunity is the reason why our economy is so tilted against ordinary people. I think that's a winning message. And people just hate corruption.

They really hate it. And this administration is, again, extraordinarily corrupt. It will, of course, rely on Democrats to also crack down on corruption in their own ranks, ban stock trading, right, that kind of thing among lawmakers. But I think that's worthwhile, and I think this is a winning message against the administration. Part of the corruption messaging in Hungary was also the promise of accountability, the promise of bringing in justice people who have committed crimes. And that is, I think, an especially critical message to have here in the United States. No more will the people in power be able to commit crimes, to steal, to violate a sacred trust, to violate the public trust without consequences. And if that means actively prosecuting people, if that means Congress using its subpoena power and also its power to arrest people who refuse subpoenas, that's what it means. This might seem like escalation, might seem like norm-breaking, but I think this is precisely the kind of norm-breaking necessary to bring the system back into equilibrium. No more escaping consequences because you happen to have a little money in your pocket or know the right people.

Final thought here is that, and this is actually a lesson from Orban, which is that the strength of Orban's regime came in part from its international connections, from the attempt to build an international community of right-wingers, of fascists. This used to be very much a part of the American left, right, of building connections internationally. This is something to emulate for those of us on the broad American left. When I say broad left, I'm not getting into stupid debates over liberals and leftists. I'm talking about the broad community of Americans who are left of center, from socialists to social Democrats and left liberals like myself to ordinary liberals. Building connections between our counterparts around the world, not just in Europe, but in South America as well. Trading ideas, lessons, strategies for pushing back against the far right. I think this is going to be a necessary part of both responding to the far right in their own country and helping push back the far right worldwide.

So yeah, Hungary, very significant. Not because Hungary is a great, important country, no offense to Hungarians, but it's a pretty modest small place in the middle of Europe. Part of why it was so odd that American conservatives became obsessed with it, but that's a different video. But Orban's defeat is significant nonetheless.

So what is the lesson that we take from Peter Majer that applies to us here? He went around corporate media. Because in America, we have corporate consolidation as well. We have the Ellisons owning CBS News. They're about to own CNN. We have more and more of the corporate media bending the need of Donald Trump the same way these do, the way they did in Hungary, because he used the government to fine people the same way Trump has done. So what did Peter do? He went around the media by using one, independent media, because there was still some beneath the surface and doing events that get press coverage that were unlike things people had seen before. And I have some examples here from, I was reading a lot of articles from him in the last two years, because Peter Meijer came out of nowhere two years ago.

He was part of the Fidesz party, which is Victor Arbanes. He was married to a woman who was one of the top ranking justice ministers, but he broke from them two years ago. In fact, he got divorced from his wife. And he said partly for political reasons, because he could not stomach she was part of the Fidesz party anymore. But here's some of the things he did to get media coverage. He did a tour of the country that no one had ever seen, visiting literally every municipality before the European Parliament elections in June 2024. So he did something, just toured every municipality in Hungary. Again, a smaller country, but the idea is no one had seen this. It gets press. It gets attention. It gets buzz. Also, he used social media all the time because he had to. Because corporate media was owned by Viktor Orban and the Fidesz party, which smeared Peter with lie after lie after lie.

But it didn't get traction because people were used to the propaganda. And so it became noise. So he's reaching people's social media. That's important. He also did a symbolic gesture. In May 2025, Peter walked 250 kilometers from Budapest to Romanian city of Oradea to win support of the Hungarian minorities living there that used to vote for Fidesz. So again, here's a young guy in his mid-40s doing these things like walking hundreds of kilometers, whatever that means in miles. It's a lot to get press coverage. It reminds me here in New York was Zora Mondani during the campaign walked the entire borough of Manhattan at one point. It got a lot of press. The point is, and this lesson for us is corporate media is going to get more and more consolidated. For Democrats, it's not throw your hands up and go, well, there's nothing we can do.

The lessons here are twofold. Social media, go right to the people, independent media, social media. Second, come up with creative ideas that people have not seen before that get attention, that excite people, that inspire people. That's what Peter did. It's also what Zoran did. It's what other Democrats have done in the past. Barack Obama did things that we take for granted now. Massive rallies, hundreds of thousands of people. Victor did that. Peter did that as well in Hungary. Those are the kind of things. Three, leaning into the fight against corruption. Usually in America, running against a political party, you know, with Democrats, Republican party, running against the GOP and their corruption, I'm not sure how much traction it would get. But I think it will now. And it did in Hungary. What Viktor Orban did is very much like Trump. It was not just Viktor Orban who got wealthy.

His family got wealthy. His inner circle, his son-in-law got wealthy, just like Jared Kushner. I'm not exaggerating. Literally copying the same playbook where Trump watches Orban, goes, why can't I do it? One of the things that really got a lot of attention was not too long ago, there was drone footage of this massive estate. And who owned this massive estate with manicured, I'm reading right from a beautiful pool, underground garage, manicured gardens. It was Victor Orban's father who didn't do anything to have this. But on the property, there were zebras. Yes, zebras, like at a zoo. He had zebras. That became the avatar for corruption. People at the anti-Orban rallies would bring little stuffed zebras. zebras. They put images of zebras on the billboards in the government, on their billboards, a little zebra, and people will know that was a form of protest. The idea being that, in this case, corruption and running against it actually, I think, is relevant. We've never seen the corruption of Donald Trump. Donald Trump put the New York Times and his family last year took in more than $1 billion in the White House. More than $1 billion. We're talking about crypto investments from the UAE, Qatar giving Trump a plane. U.S. media outlets, and let's not forget, because sometimes it's not reported that well.

When Trump got money from CBS to settle a lawsuit, millions of dollars, that went to Trump personally. That was not DOJ. Those were personal lawsuits. When he sued other many outlets and they paid millions of dollars, that was to him. That was a shakedown where Trump, that's just corruption. What I like here, what Peter Mujar has done is he ran on zero corruption, but more than zero corruption. He ran on the idea of holding people accountable who are involved in corruption. Yes, folks, holding people accountable, not hiring Merrick Garland, I'm sure, to be AG. In fact, he's going to rejoin the European Public Prosecutor's Office instead of a national office. I'm reading right from it, from Asset Recovery and Protection. They will go back looking for 20 years at all the members of parliament, ministers, and the prime minister for corruption. Now, Viktor Orban was in charge for 16 years.

You get the idea. They're not turning the other page. They're not saying, we're going to let bygones be bygones. He leaned in on these people are getting rich. You're struggling. Look at, and even Victor Orban had the, I think called the Orban Versailles, a walled off estate with mansions owned by prime ministers by his family. Another big issue that Peter ran on. So the point was he leaned in on not just anti-corruption, but holding people accountable. And that's what's so important. I'd like to see Democrats, I think it will resonate. It will show a different side to Democrats saying, when we take power, we're going to do oversight of the corruption of Donald Trump and everyone in his administration. Kristi Noem's family who got the campaign contracts for the ad she did. Just go down the list. Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner. And that when we get the White House again, we are going to prosecute these people.

Talk about this. Don't be timid. The stakes are too high, my friends. To me, that's lesson number three. Lesson number four is people power. People power. They had huge rallies in Hungary. It's almost embarrassing for us. except for no kings, which was remarkable. In a country of 10 million, they'd have rallies with 100, 200,000 people on the street. In Budapest, unbelievable. In fact, they had Victor Orban, because he is this right-wing Christian supremacist, ban the LGBT annual march. Well, 100,000 plus people marched this year at the annual pride parade in Budapest, far more than ever before to stand up to Orban. And it was so many, he couldn't do anything about it. Now, the lesson there is our no kings protests are great. And I hope we see another one in the spring. I hope we see others leading into 2028. But that's another lesson.

People power, it becomes contagious. It makes people in a nation like Hungary, which is quasi-autocratic. It's not a true autocracy. It's not Putin's Russia. It's somewhere in between. It makes people feel less fearful. It's great books like Timothy Snyder's book, Jason Stanley's book on fascism, even How Democracies Die by Stephen Levitsky. talk about. When people see others in the street and they are not crushed or shot or put in prison, it inspires others to take a chance and go forward. So we take it for granted still. But in Hungary, there were some around the edges where Viktor Orban was going against dissent. But in this case, the people came out in huge numbers and they couldn't do anything about it. And the final lesson is this. Number six, the economy. It's still the economy. The winning argument, when you read about it, was all these issues I went through, including bringing democracy back to Hungary.

But people are struggling. People, economic, they said there's sputtering economy, stagnant economy, poor health care, prices rising. So you have this whole one bucket of prices rising, health care, unaffordable, all sound familiar, folks. Inflation going up, sound familiar? And at the same time, the split screen, Viktor Orban and his inner circle getting richer and richer and richer. and just talking about himself and building things to honor him. Sound like America? It is. I'm telling you, Donald Trump and the GOP has copied Viktor Orban. They've loved Viktor Orban. They had CPAC in Hungary. They've invited Viktor Orban to speak at CPAC here in America. Trump has invited him, called him one of his favorite strongmen. They admire it. So the economy is still such a key issue.

We've just heard clips starting with Radio Atlantic featuring journalist Veronica describing the jubilant Budapest streets after Orban's 16-year rule ended. The majority report traced Orban's 2010 Make Hungry Great Again campaign as the blueprint for Trumpism. Last week tonight walked through Orban's consolidation of Hungarian media, anti-migrant fear-mongering, and LGBTQ crackdowns, while noting his government failed basic governance, including keeping hospitals stocked with toilet paper. DW News described Magyar's election win as Hungary's highest turnout Democratic vote ever, signaling a regime change. Stay tuned with Preet featured Timothy Snyder warning that Trump will exploit any future terrorist attack to consolidate power, drawing direct parallels to Orbán's recent fabricated pipeline plot and Putin's apartment bombings. Takes by Jamel Bowie laid out why Orban's defeat dismantles a critical node of the international far-right and drew direct lines from Orban's influence to DeSantis, Trump, and Russell vote. And The Dean Obadiah Show outlined six strategies, including bypassing corporate media, creative campaigning, and prosecuting corruption for Democrats to counter Trump. And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive sections. But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get this show ad-free as well as early and ad-free access to our other show, Solved, including a members-only backstage segment, all via podcast. We've also launched Solved on the Best of Left YouTube channel, but episodes are delayed there. The show features our team of producers discussing a carefully curated selection of articles and ideas to then solve some of the biggest issues of our day. It's important to remind you that each episode of Best of Left takes about 25 hours of human labor to produce, and Solved isn't too far behind.

Plus, I need to mention that we are currently experiencing a serious adpocalypse situation here at the show. Ad revenue has dropped by more than half compared to just a couple of months ago, and we're finding ourselves suddenly in pretty bad financial shape and could really use your help at this particular moment in time. So if you get value out of the show and want to support all of the work that goes into Best of Left and Solved and get both delivered ad-free to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com slash support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app. Members are always appreciated, but it's particularly appreciated when people step up to support us in times of need like this one right now. But still, as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

If you have a question or would like your comments included in the show, you can record a voice message re-recording until you're happy with it by tapping the link in the show notes. You can message us on Signal at the handle bestofleft.01 or you can simply email me to jay at bestofleft.com. As for today's topic, a quick story. In 1985, a federal prosecutor in Buenos Aires named Julio Cesar Strasera stood up to close the case against the leaders of Argentina's military junta. The men in front of him had overseen the disappearance of tens of thousands of people. Union organizers, students, journalists, priests, pregnant women whose babies were stolen and given to regime loyalists. It was the first time in Latin America that a democracy had put its former dictators on trial. Strasera ended his closing argument with a phrase he borrowed from the Argentine people themselves, Nunca más, never again.

Five of the nine defendants were convicted. Two got life. The courtroom erupted.

Four years later, a different Argentine president pardoned them all. So the story is either a triumph or a tragedy, depending on where you end. But in reality, the story still isn't over. Human rights groups kept pushing. The grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo kept searching for stolen children. Lawyers kept filing cases. In 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court declared those previous amnesty laws unconstitutional. The trials resumed, and as of this year, according to one of the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo speaking on PBS, more than 1,200 people have been convicted of crimes against humanity in Argentina. Forty years in, the trials are still happening. The grandmothers are still identifying stolen grandchildren. But the story's not over. The current far-right president and Trump bromance friend, Javier Mille, is right now cutting the budget of the National Genetic Data Bank by more than half, shutting down the investigative unit that searches for the disappeared.

And as of a few weeks ago, he suspended the DNA identification kits that Argentine consulates abroad had been using for 20 years to help identify the stolen children. Argentina is 40 years past defeating an authoritarian government. Hungary is a few days past. In Hungary, Orban built a laboratory of authoritarianism that the American right imported wholesale. And now he lost. That's huge, but we can't treat this moment like a verdict that will stand untested. We want a finish line, but there isn't one and there never really will be. Argentina in 1985 said never again, but not as a verdict or a conclusion. It's a commitment to a practice that has no end point. And every thoughtful person watching American politics has understood for years now that we are going to be cleaning up after Trumpism for decades to come, regardless of what happens to Trump personally.

Any future prosecutions of Orbán's or Trump's governments will matter, but they won't resolve the matter. That's what Argentina figured out a long time ago. So the question is, who carries out the work of rebuilding the institutions that make accountability mean something decades after the prosecutions are done. It should go without saying that prosecutions are needed because we know what happens when we choose to forgive and forget. In 2009, Barack Obama came into office and said repeatedly that he wanted to look forward, not backward, on Bush-era torture. The Brennan Center's Elizabeth Goyton told Roll Call at the time that Obama should have looked forward a little further to a future president with a different attitude toward torture. Seven years later, Donald Trump was campaigning on bringing back waterboarding and, quote, a hell of a lot worse. Obama wasn't wrong just because he declined to prosecute. He was wrong because declining to prosecute was the whole policy.

There was no parallel project to rebuild the machinery that had failed. The Office of Legal Counsel that wrote the torture memos, the CIA chain of command that carried them out, the oversight committees that didn't stop any of it. Both things got skipped at once, and that's a pretty direct line from 2009 to January 6th. The version of this that actually works needs an institution carrying the load over decades in alliance with organized civil society pushing from outside. In Argentina, Alfonso signed the decree ordering prosecution of the junta three days after taking office, and the grandmothers had already been organizing since 1977. In Hungary, Magyar ran on corruption as the organizing frame, and the institutional rebuild will be the follow-through. He's agreed to join the European Public Prosecutor's Office, which means EU investigators will have jurisdiction over Hungarian corruption cases. That's a politician voluntarily giving up some of his own power in the name of greater accountability for himself and future leaders. In the United States, the institution that's going to be on the hook for this work, whether anybody likes it or not, is the Democratic Party. Nonprofits can't do it alone, and civil society pressure alone can't do it either. A party apparatus has to carry a project this long, with the rest of us pushing them to do it and do it right.

A couple of weeks ago, the House Democrats launched what they're calling the anti-corruption and Democracy Reform Task Force, chaired by Joe Morrell, with Jamie Raskin, Robert Garcia, Greg Cesar, Brad Schneider, and AOC all on it, plus a couple of dozen other members. Progressive Caucus leadership and moderates and the Oversight Committee heads all at the same table. That's the right instinct and the right moment, and I'm genuinely glad it's happening. It's also, as currently scoped, nowhere near big enough. The public reporting has the task force focused on things like a stock trading ban, a congressional code of ethics, Supreme Court term limits, and highlighting the Trump family's business dealings. All of which matters, but it's a small fraction of what anti-corruption has to actually mean if the work is going to match the scale of the damage. Rebuilding the civil service that's being actively hollowed out, restoring independence to a Justice Department that's being captured in real time, protecting inspectors general and whistleblowers, reforming a Supreme Court that granted the president immunity for so-called official acts.

It's hard to imagine the current task force left alone scoping to all of that, which is where everybody listening comes in. A lot of us have real ongoing fights with the Democratic Party, health care, housing, labor, genocide, foreign policy. Those fights are legitimate and they're not going anywhere. But anti-corruption is one of the rare spots where the Progressive Caucus and the Moderates and leadership are actually aligned. The membership of the task force itself proves it. So on this, we need to show our support. We don't drop the other fights. We just notice where the party can show some collective strength, and we lean in there. We can keep arguing about Medicare for All, but right now, the sign says stop the corruption. And the follow-through is to rebuild the civil service, protect the inspectors general, restore DOJ and penance, reform the courts. Bring that to your town hall.

Donate to candidates running on institutional restoration. Call your rep and ask specifically what the task force is going to recommend on civil service protections. Without pressure, they'll scope this too narrowly. But with pressure, they can be moved. None of it ends with Trumpism. Prosecution doesn't end it. a blue wave doesn't end it, a 2028 landslide doesn't end it. The movement, the judicial appointments, the personnel networks, the permission structures, all of it outlasts Trump personally by decades. And I'm not saying that as a bummer. I'm saying it because the alternative is pretending there's a finish line coming. And pretending that makes people quit when the finish line doesn't show up. Argentina didn't finish in 1985. They're still working on it 40 years later with a far-right government actively trying to roll back the memory infrastructure, and they're going to keep working on it because that's what having a democracy actually is, something you keep doing. The Democratic Party is the vehicle available to us for the American version, flawed as it is, and the job for us is to push it to be stronger than it currently wants to be. Note that we've begun putting my commentaries on YouTube, so if you find them insightful, check out our channel and share them. Link in the show notes. And now we'll continue to dive deeper on three topics today. First up, section A, origins, followed by section B, tactics, and section C, international.

The reason I want to talk about Hungary is it's set for elections on April 12th. Voters there will choose a new National Assembly, their parliament, which in turn will mean either a new prime minister or the re-election of their current one, Viktor Orban. He's been in office since 2010, with an absolute majority in Hungary's government for the entire 16 years of his tenure. He's actually the longest-serving current head of government in the EU. And if you want a quick taste of what kind of leader Orban's been, take this testimonial video that he posted, featuring a real who's who of people I've called arseholes on this show, including Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen, Javier Millet, and a fourth person that I'll let you discover for yourself. Security cannot be taken for granted. It must be one, and I think Viktor Orban has all those qualities. He has the tenacity, the courage, the wisdom to protect his country.

It is thanks to leaders like Viktor that the camp of patriots, defenders of nations, and sovereign people is winning in Europe. I fervently support Prime Minister Orban and the Fidesz party. And I want to congratulate him, and also to encourage all Hungarians to continue to move forward to protect your great culture and your amazing country. Yeah, it's none other than Academy Award-watching actor Rob Schneider. And that is a pretty weird cameo there. It's like if the Avengers movie starred three Avengers and also Rob Schneider. But it's not just those celebrities and also Rob Schneider. Orban has a close relationship with many conservatives in this country. He's not only been invited to speak at CPAC, CPAC itself has been holding a satellite conference in Hungary for the past few years, where numerous U.S. conservatives have shown up, arguing that America really should be taking a lesson from Orban's work.

There are many conservative members of Congress who, like me, want to see Hungary as a beacon in the West. Hungary's immigration policy should serve as a model to the United States. One place where Hungary clearly has led Europe is in reasserting its national identity, specifically with regard to rejecting mass migration. Little did I know I would walk into Budapest and basically see all of the policies that we dream for in Arizona. Okay, well first, based on that blouse, I don't think Carrie Lake came from Arizona as much as from 1987. But also, if you love Budapest so much, please know that you can and should go live there. The point is, Republicans love Viktor Orban. He's even been officially endorsed in this upcoming election by Trump, who once praised him like this. You know, I was very honoured as a man. Viktor Orban, did anyone ever hear of him?

He's probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He, uh, he's the leader of... Right? He's the leader of Turkey. No, no, no, he isn't. Close, though. You are thinking of the right planets. though in Trump's defense, Hungary and Turkey are both in the same region, both ruled by an authoritarian, and both words that a caveman would say while ordering a sandwich, so you can see why his brain went there. And the love fest between Orbán and American conservatives is a two-way street. In fact, just last Saturday, he spoke at the latest CPAC Hungary and outlined exactly how he sees himself fitting in to a global conservative movement. Since President Trump's win, the Western world has become a better place.

Gender propaganda and woke ideology have been pushed back. People can proudly embrace Christianity as the foundation and sustaining force of our civilization.

What's happening now is the largest political realignment in Western civilization in 100 years. The epicenter of this change is the United States, and its European forward base is Hungary. Wow, there is a lot there, but citing the West's largest political realignment in 100 years is pretty striking, given, you know, what started happening in Europe around 100 years ago. That's right, Winnie the Pooh was first published. I don't know what you were thinking about, but you should know, things in Hungary aren't actually going great. on Orban's watch has become one of the poorest countries in the EU. So it's frankly no surprise that in recent years, there have been plenty of protests against Orban's government like this one. There are two of them.

Freaking dirty.

What's up with the zebra? What does the zebra symbolize?

According to the rumors, Orban has an estate in the countryside where zebras were spotted. The sign back there? that's kind of the center of this, as Hungary is a dictatorship.

And then I'm being told O1G means Orban is a sperm.

Orban is a sperm. Yeah. Orban is a sperm. Which I assume is an insult and does just mean that he tastes slightly better when you eat pineapple. Also, that rumor about zebras being spotted is amazing if true, as all the zebras I've ever seen have been striped. Boom! Yeah! Boom, boom! I got that guy so good! This show is your only source for animal puns and jokes about drinking semen in, frankly, too rapid succession. Orban's Fidesz party has actually been trailing by double digits in most polls ahead of this election. But they may well still win anyway for reasons that we'll get into later. So, given Hungary's election is just around the corner and just how invested in Orban conservatives here clearly are, We thought tonight it might be worth taking a look at Viktor Orban. And let's start with a little history. I'll skip past the stuff that we all learned in school about Hungary, like how it, say it with me, was part of the Soviet bloc for much of the 20th century, where it operated under a communist dictatorship.

Exactly. We're all on the same page, thanks to America's famously thorough and globally curious education system. But when the communist bloc began to crumble, began to crumble, Orban was in the right place at the right time. Here he is in 1989 as a 26-year-old, calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and free Hungarian elections. And while I am no fan of Orban's later work, I will admit, he was a late 80s snack.

He's like Mel Gibson there. He's got the hair, the intensity, and the looming sense that things will eventually take a dark turn.

Now, after the fall of Soviet communism, Orban took part in talks that eventually led to Hungary's democracy. And at the time, he and Fidesz were actually a relatively liberal youth movement. In fact, early on, only people under 35 could even join the party. Just look at one of their early 90s campaign ads.

Here and something different.

A blank slate.

A new democracy.

A new Hungary.

Vote for Fidesz. Király.

That ad has got everything 90s kids loved. Maps and Orange, Domino's, and a bunch of guys who look like they're running for the president of a college radio station. There was Viktor Orban, Hungarian Anthony Michael Hall, a steakhouse waiter on his smoke break, and, of course, Virgin John Mayer. Back then, Fidesz campaigned on adopting Western European economic and political standards and limiting the role of the state and the influence of religion on public life. But after Orbán was elected to Parliament in 1990, he started moving the party to the right. He eventually became Europe's youngest prime minister in 1998, only to lose after just one term. And in his years out of power, he continued moving to the right, amping up nationalist populist rhetoric and starting to wrap himself in religion. And as he tells it now, he developed a pretty stark philosophy. In order to win, it is not enough to know what you are fighting for.

You also have to know how you should fight. My answer is, play by your own rules. Now, on the surface, play by your own rules is a pretty banal sentiment. It's the live, laugh, love for people who haven't been divorced yet. But Hungary soon found out what he meant by that in a political sense. Because in 2010, after the global financial crisis and the scandal in Hungary's ruling party, Orbán was swept back into power with a two-thirds supermajority, and immediately began tampering with the rules to make sure he never lost again. As he put it, we have to win once, but then win big. Essentially meaning if he ever gained power, he'd use it to fortify his position indefinitely. And we only have to win once is one of the more ominous things to hear from a leader. It's right up there along with, trust me, you're gonna love the Kool-Aid.

Open the gates, Papa gotta get a closer look at that big old horse. And no smoking, what is this? A blimp for dorks? Pass me my lighter. Sure enough, once back in power, Orban moved swiftly to solidify control. In his first year in office, the government rushed through hundreds of new laws and ushered through a brand new constitution that was drafted behind closed doors and debated in Parliament for only nine days. There were also big changes to Hungary's election system, including gerrymandering maps to stack the odds heavily in Orban's favour. As a result, in 2014, his party won 45% of the vote, but 91% of the districts. In fact, thanks to that and other tweaks, independent observers have deemed Hungarian elections since then free but not fair, which is an interesting combination. You are free to vote for anyone you want, whether it's Orban or whoever inevitably loses to him.

And while changes like those could theoretically have faced legal challenges, Orbán's also co-opted Hungary's court system, packing it with loyalists and passing a constitutional amendment that removed the court's power to evaluate any new constitutional amendments. And when he's taking all of that together, as this scholar points out, it was basically a coup, but a very 21st-century one.

Can you make explicit this concept of soft authoritarianism and why does soft authoritarianism always turn into hard authoritarianism? And why did some start at soft and then go to hard as opposed to hard and hard? Great. I think the concept that is super useful here is my colleague Lucan Way's concept of competitive authoritarianism. Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way's concept of competitive authoritarianism. So they look at a country like Russia as just an authoritarian, hard authoritarian country in your terminology. terminology. So competitive authoritarianism is when you've got gerrymandered seats, control of the media. Control of the media is so powerful in Hungary because Hungary is a much less educated country and most people just speak Hungarian. So if all the Hungarian media is owned by the Orban's allies, then most of the population who only reads Hungarian can only read that. So it becomes really important to have presses outside the country who publish in Hungarian.

For instance, my book, How Fascism Works, that sold very well in Hungary, published in 2018, was translated into Hungarian and sold in Hungary. It was published by a French press that translates Hungarian stuff, stuff into Hungarian and sells it in Hungary because it's harder for a Hungarian press to do that. So competitive authoritarianism, we do things like that. You buy up the media. You put pressure campaigns on presses. So the elections are not free and fair. Democracy isn't just majority vote. You know, the people of North Korea are going to vote for their leader every time because the press is not free. You need a free press to have a democracy. A competitive authoritarian system is when you don't have a free press, you have pressure on the election systems, the ruling party controls the election apparatus, but you still have elections. And so you can beat an autocrat in competitive authoritarianism, but you have to have an overwhelming win like we saw just now in Hungary.

You can't beat an autocrat in competitive authoritarianism with a 2% or 3% win. You need a 10 percent, a 15 percent win. And that's what we saw in Hungary, a win so overwhelming that, you know, Hungary would be ejected from the European Union if they tried to to do anything about it. So that's what we need here. I want to ask as to as to why that happened in a moment. But yesterday, I think I think it was yesterday, it was revealed by Peter Magyar, the I guess the prime minister elect, that Hungary has been bankrolling CPAC. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I said. Hungary has been banked. That's what I referred to earlier, that Hungary has been the bank account for the global fascist right. That's why these far right journalists and intellectuals can go to Hungary and get paid. They've been using Hungarian taxpayer money. And remember, Orban is in Putin's pocket.

So, you know, he explicitly is in Putin's pocket. So CPAC has been bankrolled by Putin's lackey.

What's just stunning is like, you know, we've spent the past couple of weeks mocking Dave Rubin. I don't know if you're familiar with these names. I hope you're not. You're not just for your own sake. But Dave Rubin and Rob Schneider, maybe you know him as the copy guy from Saturday Night Live, all of whom would just return from from Hungary. You know, also J.D. Vance. You've heard of him. I mean, all of them going to Hungary ostensibly to sort of, I guess, help or bond or just to visit or to, you know, I think I can't help but think like that. also sort of like when when tucker carlson went through that period of time where you sun your your anus uh red light under your testicles or something to that effect all sort of like hardcore fashion hardcore fascist politics right hardcore fascist so what so and and i get the idea of like you need to have a 10% or 12% win here. We have that same dynamic, you know, in various gerrymandered States across the country. And there's going to be, you know, Trump is going to deploy more and more things that are going to make it, make the actual will of the people muted in some fashion in the way it shows up in the votes. We don't know exactly how, but it might make it harder to vote in some places, might shut down certain polling places.

I don't think they know exactly how yet. I think they're in the planning stage now. They're trying. They've moved so fast. I think they think we're going to shut this midterms down in some way, but I don't think they've totally figured out how yet. What was it that got that 10, 12 percent to vote against Orban? Was it just that they got tired of Is there a natural sort of like or was it that the nature of of an Orban is so corrupt that there that Orban's agenda doesn't really have time to placate the people because he's running out of time. He wants to live the good life, I guess, after office. I mean, is that what it is? Because I feel like that's what's happening with Trump on some level. I mean, no, I don't think, or I think Orban's going to continue because he has, he has stacked the courts. He has, you know, I think he might, he will try to come back and I don't think he's going to walk off into the distance. I might be wrong about that, but that's just my prediction.

I think that it was I think it was a 14 percent win. I think it was that finally, and Magyar was very effective here. People saw like like Orban ran on, you know, it was all great replacement theory. We're going to build up the white race like white Christians are under threat. We're going to build up the Hungarian family and Hungary collapsed. All these fascists like Trump is destroying the United States. They destroy their own countries. And, you know, the Hungarian birth rate was at its lowest ever last year. And fewer live births than in modern history, I believe. 20,000 less than when he was elected. So people saw, I think, and this is what Magyar just relentlessly focused on rather than his socially conservative beliefs, that all the scapegoating is just there to rob the nation, to build giant villas for Orban's family, to enrich himself, his family and his friends.

And it just became more and more obvious that the cultural politics was just utter rubbish, that the cultural politics just was a meaningless way to, it was meant to sort of, people got sick of owning the libs. They finally saw through owning the libs. They're like, wait, maybe maybe I actually want a country more than I want to see some, you know, lower middle class college professor squirm. You know, maybe I want a future for my children. It just became so obvious that Orban's kids and his son-in-law and family were packing their bank accounts with Hungarian taxpayer cash and state contracts that people finally saw through it. They finally saw through that the cultural politics is just a smokescreen.

I wanted to comment real quick with a little more substance on, I think, the big political event of this week, which is simply the successful ouster of Viktor Orban from power in Hungary, the Hungarian people. After years, Orban was in power for 16 years. After years of hard work and perseverance, we're able to assemble the kind of commanding electoral supermajority necessary to oust Orban and his party from power and win enough seats in the legislature to really begin to undo so much of Orban's twisting of the political system to keep himself in power. The opposition candidate, Peter Majar, which I think I'm saying correctly, assembled a center-right coalition, admittedly, but a broad coalition of opponents, pro-European integration, supporters of democracy, to oust Orbán. And it really is a remarkable success. And huge congratulations to the Hungarian people for doing it. I think that this election does have a few lessons for Americans.

But before we get to those, I want to talk about some of the significance of this, beyond just the significance of removing from power a real-deal autocrat in a European country. The first, and this is more of a response to some commentary sense, is that, yes, Orban's Hungary, authoritarian country. It absolutely is. You may ask yourself, well, how can it be authoritarian if you can remove people through elections? I will note for you, first of all, that we have plenty of examples of uncontested. We all agree these are authoritarian countries or authoritarian regimes that had regular elections. Elections were regular in the Jim Crow South. And it was theoretically possible, right, to remove Jim Crow politicians from power through elections. That's in part why Jim Crow politicians did everything they could to reduce voter participation, to put hard barriers to being able to participate in the political system, not just for blacks, but also for whites who might not be on board with the entire Jim Crow program, specifically the Jim Crow economic program of gross exploitation of labor.

Apartheid South Africa had elections, regular elections, and theoretically, again, it was possible to remove them, remove the apartheid regime through electoral means. But the apartheid regime, like the Jim Crow South, like Orban's Hungary, relied on malapportionment, relied on gerrymandering, relied on hard barriers to keep itself in power. And then we can look at authoritarian regimes in Chile, under Pinochet. Again, we all agree this was authoritarianism removed through elections. So the idea that the ability of Hungarians to remove Orbán through elections therefore proves that Orbán's Hungary wasn't authoritarian, in addition to being a literal example of begging the question, assuming your conclusion in your premise, just doesn't fit with what we know about authoritarian regimes. They have been removed by elections. There is an argument that, oh, of course, in every democracy, winning parties try to entrench themselves by bending the rules and such. And this, too, is a canard.

In mature, stable, healthy democracies, do winning political parties attempt to hold on to power through patronage? Yes. Do they try to hold on to power through finding ways to strengthen their electoral coalition by delivering benefits to the people who support them? Yes. Do they even, here in the United States, for example, engage in tinkering on the margins, right, with the boundaries of districts and so on and so forth? Yes. But do they outright try to disenfranchise their opponents? No. Do they leverage the weight of electoral laws against their opponents and let things for their supporters slide by? No. They don't do these things. These things represent backsliding from democracy. They are not a normal part of democratic contestation. And the assertion that they are, again, is a canard. It's coming from people who are ideologically sympathetic to Orban, who might have even supported Orbán's regime, whether you've even taken money from Orbán's regime.

Viktor Orbán seems nervous.

This was the scene at a recent rally in opposition's stronghold Dürr, when he responded to heckling from opponents with a tirade against those who wanted a pro-Ukrainian government to take power in Hungary, he said, and send Hungarian money to Ukraine.

In the last few days before the election, allegations are swirling of Kremlin interference, fake assassination plots, burner phones to call Moscow during EU summits, all of which the Orban government denies. Viktor Orban may seem on the ropes, but some analysts argue he spent years engineering a political system that is unusually resistant to change, from a redesigned electoral map that favours his party to a media landscape now largely aligned with the government. Taken together, it leaves the opposition facing a far steeper path to unseating him than headline polls might suggest. But whichever way this vote goes, leaders throughout the region will be watching closely, especially Andrei Babiš in the Czech Republic and Robert Fyczo in Slovakia. Martin Poliacik is a former MP and political consultant affiliated with the opposition Progressive Slovakia Party. The biggest threat to Russia is free, independent and democratic Ukraine, because the Russian people would see that this is possible.

Very similar pattern is between Slovak pro-FITSO people and Orban. The biggest threat for FITSO is a pro-European Hungary, because then the Slovaks would see that this is possible, that he's not going to be there forever. I would assume that the new government in Hungary would come up with all the information about corruption and what's been happening since Orbán was in power. And Fico would lose his closest ally and also his diplomatic representation towards both Trump and Putin. Robert Fico has already threatened to continue blocking the EU's 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine if Viktor Orban is no longer in a position to do so. Martin Poliacik is in fact sceptical that Fico really has what it takes to become the new Orban. He's rather tired, he told me, and also lacks the diplomatic backup that Viktor Orban enjoys.

Here in Prague, Jindrich Šidlo, a leading political commentator and satirical journalist at Seznam Spravy, will be watching the election closely. The conventional wisdom is that a loss for Orbán will be a loss for Prime Minister Andrei Babiš and his plans to unpick the stitching of the Czech Republic's liberal democracy. But Jindrik Szilo says it's a little more nuanced than that.

I think Andrei Babiš realized during his first term that he can't run the country like Viktor Orbán.

That's because Orbán has been in power much longer, has completely different electoral results, there's no Senate in Hungary, and he was able to effectively write the electoral law to suit himself. Babiš may well aspire to this, but I think he now realistically understands it isn't possible. You can't do that in the Czech Republic. Even changing the electoral law requires agreement. You can't push it through by force. The Senate and the Chamber of Deputies both have to agree, and that doesn't happen easily. So in that sense, he's a much weaker version of Viktor Orban. Szydl says that Andrei Babiš is so good at politics that whether Orban wins or loses, he'll spin it to his advantage and will soon establish contact with Petr Madjar if he does indeed emerge victorious. He's a pragmatist. But if Orban does lose, there will be something of a reckoning. A lot of dirty laundry will be aired, and that could have consequences, says Andras Ledere, head of advocacy at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.

In the case of the urban regime, you have an unimaginable amount of financial resources available supporting like-minded regimes. The effect of these resources on assisting like-minded regimes is, I think, unreasonably under-studied and explored. That Hungarian pipeline of support for other illiberal governments could be turned off virtually overnight this weekend. Or perhaps Viktor Orban will defy the polls and win this election, and the flow will be strengthened. There's a lot to play for, and no one's ready to write off Europe's great survivor just yet.

Next, Section B, tactics.

Orbán's been around for a very long time. I mean, he's been a fixture on the political scene in Hungary since the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 80s. But here he is with a very credible opponent in the election. When did you first come across this character, Peter Magyar? Well, I think he generally rose to prominence with the 2024 European parliamentary elections, and his party did very well in those elections. And again, using the shorthand for the EU Brussels was cock a hoop, because they thought right here, there is a credible opposition to Viktor Orban. Peter Magyar used to be in Viktor Orban's party. So we're not looking at a totally different political frame of mind. He is in that big group inside the European Parliament, the Conservatives, the EPP. But he probably fits very much to the right of that group. So we don't really know how much his policies will differ once he's in government.

Because if you have a look at how his party votes in the European Parliament, when it comes to migration, when it comes to these hot button issues in Hungary, they tend to vote with Viktor Orban's party. And otherwise, they'll often abstain. Might they be different when they get into government? We don't know that. They promise, at least on a foreign policy point of view and from Brussels point of view, to be interested in working with the European Union, interested also in working with the United States, but not to change the policy towards Ukraine. So what will that mean exactly? And definitely in Kiev, if not in Brussels as well, people are kind of wondering, OK, even if you move the blocker in chief, is this going to be a mini blocker? Or, you know, who is Peter Magyar really going to be? It's also been quite a spicy campaign. What can you tell us about the spicy parts of it? So Peter Magyar, who's the leader of the opposition, he said that there was possibly a sex tape out there. Now, Fidesz, the party of Viktor Orban, so they didn't know anything about it.

And we haven't seen this. I don't know if you've seen it, Tristan. It has not appeared yet. It has not appeared. But that was brought up. But it's a pretty nasty campaign as well. Peter Magyar certainly made an accusation at a big rally that there were sort of top Russian agents that were helping run the Orban campaign. And actually, I'd like to just pause there, if you don't mind, Tristan, just to say it about something about Orban and Russia, because I think this is key. He is seen as the closest to Russia. That is not what Hungarians would vote for. The way he sells it at home is that it's a pragmatic relationship with Russia. Why would you have a relationship? Well, because Russia is the place to get cheap energy from. And Hungarians would like access to cheap energy because they'd like to pay less. So it's less, I love Russia, and more Russia is a very useful partner for Hungary. It's in Hungary's national interest. Viktor Orban's also painted Russia as a reliable partner, unlike Europe that has strings attached. He's not passionate about Russia. He plays that very, very carefully. But his critics say he is in Russia's pocket. It's got to that extent that we have certain meetings inside the EU where other countries will say, let's not include the Hungarians because they're worried about leakage. And all of this has been refuted. So yeah, it's become quite nasty and personal and yeah, and the allegations of this sex tape as well. So I would say that there is a case that the spicy sensationalist aspects of this election campaign are actually germane to the coherence of the future of European politics, because these suggestions that Russia is now might be a player that interferes in elections, as some people have suggested is the case in Hungary, is going to become a regular occurrence in European politics. What would you say to that? Those allegations are nothing new, the idea of Russia misinformation or disinformation. And sometimes there's been proof that's been kind of presented by European governments. And in other cases, it's allegations made and assumptions made because the way that Russia operates is plausible deniability. I don't think this is a big secret or is it a scandalous or an outrageous thing to say that Russia is involved in what we call hybrid warfare. And so that is not getting the guns out and it's not getting the tanks out, but it can be sabotage, subterfuge, espionage or or disinformation, misinformation. So I think there is nothing new about that. Is it paranoia?

Part of it is paranoia. But paranoia, you could argue, is a very useful weapon as well for Russia if it wants to destabilize, which it seems to want to, and reduce coherence amongst European Union countries. Interestingly, critics of the Trump administration would say exactly the same thing, that China, Washington under Donald Trump and Russia seek to weaken ties between European countries because they're more easy to manipulate if they are separated rather than working as a force together. What we do see with the Trump administration that you can point to directly is direct interference in European politics. You quoted Donald Trump yourself speaking out in favor of Viktor Orban winning this election. Last year, when there was a presidential election in Poland, he had his homeland defense secretary fly over to Poland to speak out in favor of the Trump friendly candidate. And I mean Trump friendly. So in the, you know, in the crowd, people were wearing their MAGA hats and so on and so forth. Steve Bannon, who is very vocal in European politics, has spoken out in favor of Viktor Orban and his playbook and why his victory will be so important. Should we be shocked and appalled that even the campaigning of one J.D. Vance didn't turn it around for him? I'm trying to unpack the levels of irony of that question. There are about four levels. Unpack one to three, if you would like. I'll try to go upwards in terms of level of difficulty. I mean, for one thing, this was a domestic election, right? And so we Americans shouldn't think that everything is all about us or that an American turning up is going to make much of a difference one way or another. Second, this domestic Hungarian election was largely about grift. And we are the grifters. J.D. Vance is a candidate of grift. He is backed by billionaires.

The people immediately around him are grifters. So he can come and talk about God as he did, but that the resonance that the Trump administration has for most folks outside the U.S. is that it's a collection of mad grifters. And mad grifters are what Madhyar was campaigning against. And then the final thing one has to realize is that J.D. Vance doesn't actually know anything about democratic politics. I mean, he won the race in Ohio when he was backed by Peter Thiel. He was carried along as vice president. But the idea that you're going to send Vance off on a mission to get votes, whether it's in Peoria or whether it's in Budapest, is a little bit silly. But I mean, I'm just going to add this, though. I was also offended by what he did. I mean, I just don't think we have any right to be going to other countries and telling them how to vote.

And we certainly don't have any right to go to other countries and tell them that we know how God thinks they should vote, which is what Vance did. Because it looks kind of bad now because God was wrong for Vance, right? It's kind of bad on... Although the other thing that I wasn't going to mention, but it seems apropos of your remark, Trump is Jesus. Did you see this? Yeah. No, it is very much off-repos because they are self-deifying. They're in the self-deifying phase of their politics. How many phases are there? How many phases are there? How many post-deifying, self-deifying phases do we have to live through?

Well, in the case of the Roman Empire, the deifying habit, you know, expanded until the whole thing collapsed. Are we penultimate? I just wanted to say penultimate. Yeah. No, who can blame you? Are we penultimate or are we anti-penultimate? I think whether we're penultimate or anti-penultimate, you know, depends on, I mean, not to make the easy point, it depends on us, right? So the lesson of Hungary is, to return to where you started, is that you can beat these aspiring authoritarians in unfair elections. And you can beat them badly. You can beat them so soundly they know they've been beaten. But you have to do it. You can't just observe the stages of development, right? It is interesting that Trump is right now, he's not in a beef with Leo. Yeah, the Pope. His problem with Leo is that Leo believes in God. That's his problem with Leo.

And for Trump, there's no God but Trump, right? Trump's whole Christianity is about worshiping himself. So it's interesting to observe. But this kind of decline and fall, it may have a dynamic of its own. But where it goes, that depends on what people do. That depends on what we do. So the election in Hungary, as far as I understand, as you say, was a domestic election and it turned on grift slash corruption and also the economy. It did not turn on these broad issues of authoritarian rule and the supposed dismantling of the judiciary and the independent functioning of various institutions in Hungary. All these things that we rail about, some of the things that you've written about, were they at the center of the election defeat or not? Or were they indirectly? That's a really great question because I think it speaks to something important about how you have to run on the issue of democracy.

Because I don't, I mean, I care deeply about democracy. I really think the idea that the people should rule is the best idea we've had. but that word democracy doesn't rally people and i think it's understandable because people at least americans they'll associate democracy with this thing that they've got and the thing that they've got is pretty flawed it could be a lot better the way that it works and the way that it did work in hungary is to connect the issue of abuse of power with the things that people feel in their everyday lives. So in Hungary, you have independent media, not the big media, but the independent media that remained revealing scandals. And those scandals, one of which interestingly was also a sex abuse of minor scandal, but those scandals then connect the issue of abuse of power with people being poorer than they ought to be. And I think those dots have to be connected. If you just try to run on affordability as the Democrats, some of the Democrats want to do, you're aiming for a conventional victory and you're also not preparing yourself for dramatic things you have to do after you win. You can't just say affordability. You also can't just say democracy. You have to say abuse of power, grift, oligarchy, making everybody poor. It's only going to get worse.

What's the particular grift or corruption or abuse that is the winning formula as a matter of of street politics for Democrats in this country. I mean, I'm going to speak to that, but I just want to point out the converse. Since we're talking about Hungary, and I think this is related to your question, one of the things that the Hungarians who won didn't hesitate to say before and after the election is that there will be legal consequences for abuse of power, right? It's one of the things that Maduro said in his victory speech. And I think that Democrats have to be ready to say that too. What does that mean? It means that there are people committing crimes in the United States right now who are not being prosecuted and who are not afraid of being prosecuted. And if you want to deter further abuse, especially around the November election, you do have to make it clear that on the other side, there will be prosecutions.

Well, are you talking about Donald Trump? Is Donald Trump one of those people? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment. So we've been down this road. There was a first term of Donald Trump. People said there will be accountability. There were two impeachments. There was a special counsel investigation. And there were prosecutions. There were four indictments. And some, you know, not insane people will say whether that was right and proper and just and backed by the evidence or not, it fueled the comeback of Donald Trump in spectacular fashion. Do you have a reaction to that? I don't think that was a big campaign issue either way in the summer and autumn of 24. But I mean, I think regardless, you're paying a long term price if you don't prosecute the big criminals. And in the case of the second Trump administration, there are lots of them.

And if they attempt to rig the elections in some of the ways they've been talking about, there will be many more of them. So, no, I think in normal democratic countries, like France, like Italy, heads of state or heads of government get prosecuted on a regular basis. And this American notion that we could just make an exception, and I mean, forgive me, you're an expert on this and I'm not, but the way we went about it with Trump was pretty half-hearted. And I think that is the mistake and not the actual prosecution of him. But I don't want to personalize this because it's not personal. And this goes to your question about what the winning message is. One of the reasons why Americans are upset about the economy is because they understand that some people are doing extremely well and they're not. And they're coming to understand that some of those people are the people, you know, like the Witkoffs, like the Kushners, who are personally around the Trump administration, that the economy is being rigged in this very particular way.

You know, that's the way you make a reckoning. Like a reckoning is both an economic reckoning, it's a policy reckoning, but also there are going to be cases of people, I mean, I don't want to overdo this point. I just think you can't actually win an election without it. I think if you say, we're going to keep kicking that can down the line, then people think that you're cowardly. And, you know, what's the point?

You've been reporting on Orban's Hungary for years. You called his election loss a real turning point. What do you mean by that? A turning point for what? Although Hungary is a very small country, under 10 million people in Central Europe, it came to have, under Viktor Orban, an outsized significance. And that's because Orban, although democratically elected, although the leader of a member of the European Union and NATO, set out to build what he himself called an illiberal regime. So he became the first leader of a European democracy who said, I want to have a different kind of state. And he then began to export this model. In other words, to say, this is the way to do politics going forward. He had a particular form of propaganda that he used to justify it. He told Hungarians they were under threat. They were in great danger.

initially it was from immigrants who were supposedly diluting the blood of the Hungarian nation. Later, it was from the degenerate gender policies of the West. And he created this idea that he was fighting against some kind of modernity. And that model of doing politics spread and was copied and was emulated by a lot of other people, including by a lot of Americans. Right. So how did it influence the U.S.? I remember you wrote a story, I think it was last year, America's future is Hungary, which is a very strong statement. So what similarities were you noticing? I think that was in March. So that's about a year ago. The influence was very direct and specific. Hungarians came to Washington and Americans went to Hungary to learn how they did it. The leader of the Heritage Foundation described Orban not just as a model, but as the model for going forward.

And many aspects of what the second Trump administration did were copied from the Hungarians. And so, for example, the most obvious one is the takeover of the bureaucracy, the firing of state employees, the conversion of state employees from neutral people who are promoted based on merit to party hacks, which is part of what Trump and his people are trying to do, most obviously in the Justice Department and the FBI, but in all branches of government. This was a direct copy of what Orban did. And so they see him as a model and they talk about him as a model. It's not a kind of secret or underground movement. I mean, he was an open source of ideas for the illiberal and even autocratic part of the American MAGO movement. I don't think I realized the degree to which Orban innovated some of these ideas, like even the term illiberal democracy, because it's not exactly autocracy as we have in our imagination.

It's something in between. Like we spoke to a Hungarian journalist who described it wasn't exactly like a takeover of the Hungarian media. It wasn't literally controlling what people can and can't see on the Internet. A lot of it was more rich allies buying up media companies. Because I think when you understand that gray zone, you start to see the similarities between what's happening here more closely. Absolutely. I mean, and the media is another area where they are, I am 100 percent certain, they are directly copying what Orban did. They're using their friends in business to buy up media, whether it's CBS or whether it's CNN, in order to shape it so that it's more aligned with what the Trump administration wants it to be. That's the Hungarian model. And you're right. I didn't know that Orban was the very first to do that. In some ways, it's not that different from what Putin did.

But he was the first person to do it from within a democracy and to do it while bragging about it. So let's move on to the campaign. I remember this phrase you called Orban's campaign the first post-reality campaign. What did you mean by that? Orban, as I said, tried for many years to create some kind of scare, some kind of threat, something, an existential fear in Hungarians that was so important that it would justify his attempts to overthrow or change the political system, the political order. By this year, he'd run out of threats. And so the threat that he was using this year was the threat of Ukraine, a Ukrainian invasion, Ukrainian sabotage, some kind of Ukrainian influence inside Hungary. But the idea that Ukraine was going to invade Hungary was crazy. So Ukraine is not going to invade Hungary. Ukraine is fighting a war with Russia.

Ukraine does not want to invade another country. And so in order to create this idea, they built this whole world of AI videos with Zelensky snorting cocaine on a golden toilet. Also posters of him all over Budapest, all over the country with the headline, don't let him get the last laugh, sort of sinister versions of him and Ursula von der Leyen, who's the leader of the European Union, with Peter Magyar, who is the leader of the Hungarian opposition, you know, they're the risk, you know, Fidesz, Orban's party, we represent safety. In other words, they were building up this huge threat. And if you took one step back and thought about it for five seconds, you realize that this was nuts. It was not a real threat. It was invented by Orban. And so when I was there a few weeks ago, the real question that people were asking was, will people believe in it? I mean, can you invent a completely fictional threat online and in your rhetoric and in your political campaigning? And by the way, he was using the institutions of the state to do it as well. So he sent Hungarian soldiers to guard Hungarian energy installations, supposedly against Ukrainian sabotage. So they were using the state, they were creating these actions in order to make people afraid. And the question is, would people believe it? And now we know the answer, which is that they didn't, or at least not all of them did. Then we see the news that Orban loses the election and concedes to Peter Magyar, which is, you know, not inevitable.

It's certainly not the way it happened here in the 2020 election so smoothly. What did you think when you saw that? I was extremely surprised. Even on the day of the voting, people around Orban in the government were warning of terrorism. They were talking about threats. They were talking about violence. They were talking about the election being stolen. They were preparing verbally and in terms of propaganda to announce that the election was false or would be falsified. And that was another topic that came up a couple of weeks in advance of the election as well. People were ready for all kinds of different outcomes, you know, that the election would be challenged. And there were lawyers who were prepared for that. I mean, just like in the U.S. People were prepared for a challenge and they were prepared to fight it. I mean, my guess is that Orban resigned because the gap between the parties was so large and the number of seats in parliament that the opposition won was so uncontrovertible that there was nothing to challenge and that he would have lost, he thought he would have lost by challenging it. And my guess is that he and his party will try and make a comeback in other ways. I mean, that's another, maybe another conversation.

Right. OK, this has been implicit in a lot of our conversation. Now I just want to make it explicit, which is what does this mean for the U.S.? How does this reverberate over here in a country which, as you said, has used Orban as a model? I mean, J.D. Vance went to Hungary. Trump supported Orban. Do you have a sense of what this might mean for their project of cultural overhaul, which is modeled on Hungary? I think this offers an important corrective. They believe that what they are doing is inevitable. In other words, they will win and then nobody will be able to challenge them again. And what the Hungarian election shows is that these systems can end and they can be overthrown by enough people voting, enough people caring, enough people being involved. And I think that will inspire people who dislike what Trump is doing to the American state, whether those people come from the center right or the center left.

It shows that these changes don't have to last forever. It's a reminder that nothing is forever. You don't get to change the American political system and say, right, we won. It's over. Democracy ended. And now we run the show indefinitely. And the Hungarian election, I think, reminds people of that. And that will affect both people in power. And I think it will affect people who are campaigning in the midterms this year and in the presidential election a couple of years down the road. What about at one level broader, the momentum? I mean, one way to tell the story is this election kind of halted the momentum of what seemed like a fast growing, you know, rise of autocracy, a liberal democracy. What do you think about that? I think this election absolutely halted this sense of forward motion that you had from the European far right as well as the American MAGA movement.

They were acting like this was their time and their moment, and it was just a matter of days and weeks or months before they took control and before they changed everything. I think that Trump's war in Iran was a breaking point for a lot of them. It's very, very unpopular in Europe. Suddenly it made closeness or proximity to Trump or to MAGA seem less attractive to a lot of European leaders, including on the far right. And this will serve as a further reminder that you can get too far away from the ideals of democracy and the rule of law that people still believe in in Europe. And I think it will definitely have a chilling effect on the language and maybe even the political momentum of the European far right.

And finally, Section C, International. Voters in Hungary have ousted the country's longtime prime minister, Viktor Orban. The TISA party of center-right candidate Peter Mogiam won the election in a landslide victory, garnering the two-thirds majority required to enact constitutional reforms. As you see right there in Budapest, Mogiam's supporters celebrated his victory deep into the night. And European equities, they surged on the news of the election of a pro-European candidate.

Peter Moglia just wrapped up a long three-hour press conference. Let's take a listen to part of what he said.

We'll do everything in our power to ensure that this truly marks the beginning of a new era. For the Hungarian people did not vote for a mere change of government, but for a complete regime change. It's all change at this metro station in Budapest as Hungarians celebrate the beginning of a new political era.

The overwhelming victory of centre-right newcomer Peter Madja after 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán's nationalists has come as a welcome surprise for many. Genuinely unbelievable we had Fidesz ruling for so long. I'm only 24. I essentially grew up with Fidesz. and now there is a glimpse of hope that we have a chance to change everything. We weren't part of the European Union that much and I really want to be part of the European Union. So, yeah, I mean, I travel a lot, so it's very important for Hungarians, I think. Many Hungarians hope Orbán's defeat will unlock billions of euros in European Union funds that had long been frozen over concerns about Hungary's democratic standards. For me it's very important that we work intensively with the new Hungarian government on funds that have to be delivered, reforms that have to be delivered, but funds then that can be delivered because the Hungarian people deserve it.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the clear election result highlights the resilience of democratic societies.

Right-wing populism suffered a heavy defeat in Hungary yesterday, and this does not only concern Hungary. A very clear signal is being sent out from Hungary against right-wing populism throughout the world. Orban's defeat by his former colleague turned opposition challenger has deprived Moscow of a strong ally. The Kremlin's initial response was muted.

Hungary has made its choice, and we respect that choice.

We expect to continue our highly pragmatic contacts with Hungary's new leadership. We've heard statements about a willingness to conduct a dialogue.

Obviously, that will be beneficial for both Moscow and Budapest.

Respect and freedom is the full name of Peter Madza's Cisapati, and hopes are high, both within and outside Hungary, that that's exactly what it will deliver.

We have team coverage of this election. I'm joined now from Budapest by DW correspondent Ferenc Gahl and from Brussels, DW correspondent Rosie Burchard. To both of you, it's good to have you with us. I want to start with you, Ferenc. Voter turnout in Hungary's election was the highest since the collapse of communism back in 1989.

What issue or issues brought the voters out?

I think the single biggest issue we need to focus on here is the economic one. economy has really been on people's minds on voters minds here not only because wages have been stagnant and low here in hungary but also because inflation has been high the cost of living has been rising over the past months and years and there are several other issues like of course also um you know health infrastructure here has been underfunded for a while that has bothered a lot of people but especially the economy has been so important because for a long time people felt they were doing well under this government, even though there were accusations of corruption. There have been accusations of corruption for years. But a lot of voters seem to be putting up with that, willing to put up with it, because they felt economically they were also benefiting.

This seems to have changed now. And another important factor we need to keep in mind is that Peter Madja really managed to mobilize so many people also by campaigning heavily in rural areas, traveling the country, sometimes with five, six, seven stops a day, different villages, and targeting areas that had been Fidesz strongholds in the past. So this certainly also helped him to get this victory that has been such an impressive landslide that we've seen. Rosie, we know also that this anti-corruption message, we know that it resonated with voters in Hungary. It was a message that European Union leaders in Brussels were more than happy to hear, wasn't it?

You bet it was. There is a hope among many EU officials and diplomats that I've been speaking to press and that I've been speaking to that this is now the beginning of the end of the era of Viktor Orban as the EU's obstructor-in-chief. And I really cannot count how many EU meetings I have stood outside, reported on, where we have been covering Orban blocking some EU decision or other, whether that's with regards to sanctions against Russia, decisions on the European budget. Orban has been at loggerheads with Brussels on all sorts of issues and has regularly blamed the EU for all sorts of problems without, of course, thinking of withdrawing from the European Union, which is something that he could have done should he have wished to. Now, what's really striking is the enthusiasm that EU officials really seem to be willing to share. We heard Ursula von der Leyen saying that Hungarians are reclaiming a European path.

But, of course, it's worth noting that there are many people who are disappointed by this election result. Viktor Orban has plenty of allies within the European Union and I think many of those members of that populist right wing or far right grouping will be looking at this election carefully and perhaps drawing some lessons. One of them may be to give the US Trump administration a wide berth because how extraordinary was it to see US Vice President J.D. Vance jetting into Budapest, throwing his political weight behind, trying to get Viktor Orban re-elected. And it was a failure. Orban lost in a landslide to his rival, Peter Magyar. So, Rosie, briefly, if you could, what is the European Union now expecting from Hungary?

Big anti-corruption reforms, and they've asked for swift progress. Given that Magyar has this supermajority, there will be expectations that he can deliver on trying to improve, for example, judicial independence, then unblocking some of those things that have been held up by Hungarian vetoes, the likes of a major 90 billion euro loan for Ukraine, which has been on the table and blocked by Orban, and also a new round of sanctions against Russia. There are some other things. Orban had been blocking, for example, sanctions against some members of the Israeli government. Peter Magyar was pretty mealy-mouthed when asked about this today, and that's something I would say we don't really know what his foreign policy orientation will be and what this means for Hungary's place in the world. Yeah, Veric, you know, the euphoria of this election, some are saying, will soon be replaced by the sobering reality that Peter Mogliar is not so different from Viktor Orban.

Some are even saying that Peter Mogliar is Viktor Orban 2.0. Is he? of course at this point in time it is hard to say what we know that he shares a past that is not dissimilar to that of Viktor Orban which is that he has of course been a Fidesz insider he was part of that inner circle of that party he was married to a former minister in the Fidesz government and for many years he was just part of this whole system within and around the government Now, there is also parallels if you look at that it's not a party that has very, very different views from Fides' original worldview. It is still a conservative movement and it is very strongly focused on him as a person. But really, the main similarity, you could also say, to, for example, Fides in the early days is that it is such a strong grassroots movement as well.

So there have been so many organizational units throughout the country where people have volunteered to join this party. So it really has a very strong voter base across the country, which is a parallel also to Fidesz in its early days, which was a young democratic movement after communism in Hungary. But then, of course, now with this two-thirds majority that Peter Magyar got, it is a massive chance, but it also carries a lot of responsibility and frankly risks, of course, because as you mentioned earlier, it could enable him and it does enable him and his government to institute constitutional reforms. And that, of course, you know, just simply carries risks. And this is where the fears come in that he might turn out to be a politician that also takes advantage of these risks. We don't know simply at this stage, but this is certainly something that some people here in Hungary and also outside of Hungary fear and we'll have to keep an eye on it, how things develop.

European Union's longest-serving leader has conceded power, and there is now a new prime minister in charge of Hungary. Peter Modja has been greeted like a rock star in the Hungarian capital after the party of the opposition leader won a landslide election victory. It heralds sweeping change in Hungary. after 16 years under Viktor Orban, with ramifications across Europe. The outgoing PM is a friend of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and had often been a thorn in the side of Brussels, repeatedly blocking funding for Ukraine, which he accused of trying to force his country into war with Russia. But now Mr Madhya, a former Orban ally who became his fiercest critic, has started a new era with his TISA party. He told a huge crowd in Budapest that the country had been liberated from the Orban regime.

We did it. The teaser and Hungary have won this election. Not by a little, but by a lot. In fact, by an awful lot. Together we brought down the Orban regime. Together we liberated Hungary. We took back our homeland. Thank you. Thank you all. The congratulations from other EU leaders have been effusive. Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called it a historic moment for European democracy. Our correspondent Nick Thorpe sent this report from Budapest.

As the news broke that the Orban era was over, the Hungarian capital erupted in a sea of celebrations. People laughed and shouted and sang and danced in the streets. To the surprise of many here, Viktor Orban conceded swiftly, almost gracefully.

The result of the election is painful for us, but unambiguous, he told his shocked supporters. The possibility and responsibility of governing was not granted to us. I have congratulated the winning party. We will also serve our country and the Hungarian nation.

Reaction in the huge crowd lining the shores of the Danube opposite the parliament was instantaneous. Young people who were toddlers 16 years ago could hardly believe that Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party could be defeated. I've been waiting against the Fidesz Parliament for forever, so I'm really happy that there is finally one person who is strong enough to actually challenge him for this wealth. I hope it means that we are getting closer to Europe and I don't know, it means more democracy, just more freedom for people. Hungary is European, Hungary is part of the West and not the East. And we believe that those are the countries we should make and establish and nourish our alliances with. Peter Madja fielded phone calls from some prominent European leaders, among them President Macron of France, Kier Starmer from the UK and Ursula von der Leyen on behalf of the European Union.

Then he came on stage.

The TISA party and Hungary won this election, he told the cheering crowd. Not a small victory, a huge, enormous victory. Together we toppled the Orbán regime. Together we liberated Hungary. We took back our homeland.

Before the election, I asked András Baka, former president of the Supreme Court, what a TISA victory would mean for Hungary, and how difficult the task facing a government led by Peter Madja would be. Hungary definitely needs a new constitution. It takes time to formulate, but it's not impossible, I think. But it requires a two-thirds majority, requires a serious judicial work and taking into account the law of the European Union, which is obligatory to Hungary too. So we have to change the system. And changing the system is exactly what the Hungarian people gave Peter Magyar a mandate to do by electing him with a two-thirds majority on Sunday.

After the celebrations, an immense task faces Peter Magyar as Prime Minister. On Sunday night, he held out an olive branch to Fidesz voters, inviting them to work together to rebuild the country. All those who've stolen the national wealth, however, he warned, will have to face justice.

Nick Thorpe with that report from Budapest. So how will the election result affect Hungary's relations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, a close ally of Viktor Orban? Here's our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. This is clearly very bad news for Vladimir Putin. To explain why, let me use the kind of language that Donald Trump uses about cards. Who's got the cards? Who doesn't have the cards? For years, Viktor Orban was a super strong card in Vladimir Putin's hand. A sort of Trump card, if you like. This pro-Moscow, pro-Putin leader of an EU country, of a NATO member state, who opposed further sanctions against Russia, who opposed the idea of further assistance for Ukraine, who opposed the idea of Ukraine's accession to the European Union. This is why he was so useful for Russia. And I think the Kremlin saw him as a destabilising force inside the European Union.

Having said that, I'm sure we'll see attempts by the Kremlin to try to reach out to the new administration in Budapest. Also, I think the Kremlin probably reckons it has a few other cards to play regarding Hungary. The country over the last few years has become heavily dependent on Russian energy. That isn't going to change overnight. Neither will the Russian authorities' attempts to destabilise the situation, I think, inside the European Union. Although, from what Russian commentators have been predicting in recent weeks, if the economic situation in Europe gets worse, if the energy situation in Europe gets worse, then destabilisation could be unavoidable. I've already read some comments on pro-Kremlin websites suggesting that Ukraine will get more assistance from the EU. Hungary, under Viktor Orban, had been opposing tens of billions of dollars of additional aid for Ukraine. So that might now go through. And, as I say, these pro-Kremlin commentators were suggesting that the war will continue.

First of all, Katja, we'd like to share with you a video from mid-January, Viktor Orban posted on X. I'm going to show it to you. Could you talk us through it, please? Hi, this is Rob Schneider. Dear France and Hungary. Cher Patriot Hongroi. So what we have here is Viktor Orban posting a video where you see the great and the good of the right and far right, largely in Europe, but also beyond. We've got former Polish President Morawiecki, known also to be very much on the right, sharing this idea of an anti-immigration stance, a pro-Christian stance, very Eurosceptic. Alice Weidel here of the AFD, the far right party of Germany. Giorgio Meloni, Italy's prime minister. We have a guest starring appearance of Javier Millet of Argentina, a real close ally of Donald Trump's, for example. Interestingly here, you also have Benjamin Netanyahu. We even have Rob Schneider there. He is a US comedian. And all of these figures saying, vote for Viktor Orban. He stands for the right values and he is absolutely necessary to lead Hungary. So it's sort of support for Viktor Orban ahead of his election and trying to show that although he has many opponents in Europe, within the European Union, this then was a video for him saying, look, I have loads of friends, loads of supporters, leaders of political parties and big figures in Europe and beyond. Well, all of this was followed up by praise from the Trump administration. Marco Rubio visited Hungary in February and he said, President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success. Then last month, President Trump himself appeared in a video shown ahead of Orban's keynote speech at the CPAC Hungary conference, which is a kind of conservative action committee conference, which happens regularly in Hungary.

I also want to send my best wishes to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who I am endorsing, as you know. I am endorsing his election, which is coming up pretty soon. What does it mean that all these figures on the right are so explicitly endorsing Viktor Orban? Why is it that they are all coming out in support of him? So I think with Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, there was a particular message sent, actually. because when did he go? So Marco Rubio had just been to the Munich Security Conference and he gave a gentle-ish speech to the Europeans there, but with a very clear message. We see you as our allies, but only if you adhere to our value system. Now, who adheres to the Trump value system? Viktor Orban. What are we talking about there? Traditional family values, they would say. Christian values. So when they say his success, as in Viktor Orban's success at the ballot box will be our success, that is seen as a success for their vision for Europe. And it is a vision that Viktor Orban shares, that in his 16 years in government, but particularly in the last years, he has been outspoken about. It's also curbing woke expression, as they would see in society, you know, getting control in academic institutions over NGOs and so on and so on and so on.

That is the Orban playbook. And it is a playbook that he would say inspired Donald Trump in his re-election campaign. And certainly Donald Trump mentioned Viktor Orban on that re-election campaign. And you do have to think, I mean, I remember thinking at the time, why you mentioned Hungary? I mean, Hungary is this tiny, tiny European country. Even for so many Americans, they see, you look at Europe as it's a tiny place made up of tiny countries. Well, even within the tiny countries, Hungary is a really, really small one. And yet Viktor Orban punches above his weight on the world stage in the eyes of Donald Trump, but also here in Europe. And the reason you saw all of those right wing figures in his video is for the same reason.

That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. You can record and re-record a voice message by tapping the link in the show notes. You can reach us on signal at the handle bestofleft.01 or simply email me to jay at bestofleft.com. The additional sections of the show included clips from Last Week Tonight, The Majority Report, Takes by Jamel Bowie, Inside Edition, The Global Story, Stay Tuned with Preet, Radio Atlantic, DW News, and Global News Podcast. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Dion and Aaron for their production work for the show and co-starring in Solved. Thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, including her co-starring on Solved. Thanks to our editors and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion.

And don't forget to follow us on all the social media platforms. We're on Blue Sky, but we're also making a move to video on Instagram with our new show Solved, so please support us there. So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, D.C., my name is Jay and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.

We'll see you next time. Thank you.

Air Date: 4–18-2026

Full Episode Notes

Welcome to this episode of the Award-Winning Best of the Left Podcast.
Today we examine how the US War with Iran has exposed the deep structural rot at the heart of American power, the global economic catastrophe quietly building beneath the surface and the cuts felt at home in order to pay for it all.
For those, looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 45 minutes today include DwightT Eisenhower, the Briefing, Paul Krugman, the Independent Drop Site News, democracy now, Brendan Miller and LBC.
Then in the additional deeper dives, half of the show there will be more in six sections, section A, Lebanon under attack, section B, the world D idolizes, section C, world Economy in peril, section D, the moral rot of war profiteering, section E, the damage our military does, and Section F making China great again.
But first, a reminder to check out our new show solved on the best of the left YouTube channel.
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Plus you checking it out will help us find new viewers on YouTube.
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That's all on the best of the left YouTube channel.
Linked in the show notes and now onto the show.

A burden of arms draining the wealth and labor of all peoples, a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system, or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
Every gun that is made, every worship launch.
Every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not theft.
Those who are cold and are not closed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants each serving a town of 60,000 populations.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat the best way of life to be found on the road.
The world has been taken.
This is not a way of life at all in any 2 cents under the cloud of threatening war.
It is humanity hanging from a cross of island.

Before I play you this next very instructive clip, I wanna note that the only reason we have it is because the White House seemingly accidentally posted a live stream of it, which they then tried to delete, but not before the internet saved it for posterity.
And just for context, Donald Trump starts by referring to the head of the Office of Management and Budget, the Christian nationalist author of Project 2025 Russell Vought.

We can't take care of daycare.
We're a big country.
We have 50 states.
We have all these other people.
We're fighting wars.
We're we can't take care of daycare.
You gotta let a state take care of daycare.
And they should pay for it too.
They should pay, they have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it.
We have to take care of one thing.
Military protection, we have to guard the country.

All right, all these little scams that have taken place like that, little scam daycare.
Joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland, member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator, good to see you.
Thank you for being with us.
Lemme throw some numbers out at you.
Apparently the Penn Wharton budget model says we, this war has cost $65 billion so far.
White House is asking for $200 billion for it.
The tomahawk missiles alone are $3 billion.
They take a year to two to build per missile.
We've, we've spent $3 billion on them.
This is in a country where we had doge ripping apart the government last year.
We had people not getting their food stamps.
We have people not getting their, Their Obamacare subsidies, but we're spending somewhere between 65 billion and $200 billion on a war that no one is able to explain.

Well, Ali, that's right.
And we should all remember that during the campaign candidate Donald Trump promised that he would keep us out of foreign wars and focus instead on trying to make things better right here at home.
Instead, he is, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu started a foreign war.
Prices are going up.
And now he says, well, we've gotta pay for this war in Iran by cutting back on federal investments.
You played the clip with childcare, but there are also other points in that speech where he talks about cutting Medicaid, cutting Medicare.
So the bottom line is the President who said he wouldn't start a war now wants to pay for it by cutting deeply into American healthcare programs and other, other programs that help American families here at home.
But that's not that surprising, is it, Senator?
I mean, you go back to the history of wars that America has started.
One group tends to benefit from this very well either oil producers or, or or, or munitions makers.
I mean, that's just, that's the nature of the game.
It becomes too much money that we have to pay for a war.
So you're gonna have to cut it from the people who can least afford it.

Well, that's, that's exactly right.
I mean, you've got defense contractors who are gonna be raking it in and other folks who are close to the president are gonna be raking it in.
But the American people will suffer.
And of course, this comes on top of what Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington did last year, right?
They passed their so-called big beautiful bill, which was beautiful.
If you're a billionaire, you got really big tax cuts.
But to partially pay for that, they cut Medicaid, they cut food nutrition programs.
So now comes this year and Donald Trump goes off and starts a war and says, well, we're gonna have to cut back on Medicare.
We're gonna have to cut back on Medicaid.
We're gonna have to cut back on our efforts to make childcare more affordable.
At the end of the day, he is screwing the American people and doing exactly what he said he was going to avoid.
He said he was gonna focus on things here at home, keep us out of foreign wars.
He's done exactly the opposite.
I was talking to Ben Rhodes about this a minute ago.
I wanna play it for you.
Something that he said about gas prices in the Oval Office.
Let's listen.

Gas prices today, they hit $4 and we have $4.
Yeah.
And we have a country that's not gonna be throwing a nuclear weapon at us in six months, of course.
But Americans are feeling the effects in the interim of, and they're also feeling a lot safer.
What is the plan to bring them back down?
All I have to do is leave Iran and we'll be doing that very soon, and they'll become tumbling down.
We're not gonna have a country that's gonna be throwing a nuclear weapon at us in, in six months.
That's just nonsensical talk.
There.
There was, there there's no I mean, These things you're on, you're on serious committees in the Senate.
There was no you discussion about Iran throwing a nuclear weapon at America in six months or six years.

It was a complete and total lie.
Ali and the president himself told the country last year that he had decimated, obliterated it.
Iran's nuclear richen program.
Obliterated it.
And then his DNI, Tulsi Gabbard testified publicly the other day that Iran has made no effort to try to reconstitute, That nuclear enrichment program.
And so that was just a complete and total lie.
And as you and Ben Rhodes discussed, I mean, they're nowhere near any kind of ballistic missile that can reach the United States.
So this was all a fabrication by the President of the United States to try to justify his actions while Americans are here hurting here at home, we've lost 13 of our service members.
Hundreds wounded, as you discussed, thousands of civilians killed in the region.
We're paying $2 billion a day.
We the American taxpayers, while gas prices are going up.
And now Donald Trump says, well we've gotta cut back on other investments that are important to the American people.
This war should never have started.
We should end it.
Now, Donald Trump is talking about asking for another $200 billion, and I can tell you, Ali, I won't vote for one more dime for this illegal war of choice.
I think we're gonna find a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who are gonna say, no one has given us an explanation as to why we need to be spending another dime on this war.

The story keeps changing.
We're either going to apply force and devastate Iran, or our job is done, and it's up to other countries to reopen the strai of horror moves because we don't rely on it as the President.
Which is first of all, it turns out not to be true.
The, the United States does not import significant amounts of crude oil coming through the Strait of Horus.
But we do import fertilizer, which I didn't, wasn't aware of.
Lots of things that are coming to light now that we're facing the crisis.
And the reason we are getting fertilizer mostly from Qatar is that the fertilizer is made, urea and some other things are made from natural gas.
Natural gas can be exported, is exported in large quantities from the Persian Gulf or was until this war began.
But That's expensive.
You have to super cool it and liquefy it and ship it out through special terminals and special ships and it, it can be done and it's become really critical to a large part of the world.
But the other thing you can do with the natural gas that's available in, in the Persian Gulf area is converted into fertilizer, which is a lot easier to ship.
And so a lot of the world's fertilizer turns out to come from that area and normally get shipped through the strait.
And the United States we're a great agricultural nation and we do import significant amounts of fertilizer.
We import a large share of our fertilizer and some of it from the Persian Gulf, a significant share of that.
So this is having a direct impact on US farmers.
The price of urea is way, way up.
And there's something that I recently been alerted to.
They're just quite scary.
The planting season is coming up, says somebody who has no idea what agricultural life is like, but that's what I'm told.
And the farmers have long since contracted for their fertilizer.
They, they already they, they, they've already paid or at least signed the contracts.
The prices are locked in.
But will there actually be fertilizer available?
It's not at all hard to imagine that the suppliers will declare a force majeure say there's a war on which is normally a, a valid excuse for backing out of contracts and simply fail to supply the fertilizer.
That would be a real catastrophe.
By the way, there are other places where that's going to matter.
The airlines quite often, Airlines cancel flights all the time and sometimes they declare force majeure and cancel flights and don't even compensate.
Although that I think is less of an issue right now.
But Jet fuel.
The price of jet fuel has risen at last.
I checked 88% since the crisis began.
Airlines they're already talking about it, Cutting back schedule.
It's not about canceling well, it's not entirely clear.
And for the mo, my, I'm as insulated as anybody can get from all of this.
But Robin and I do have, Some travels planned starting in, in late April.
And the mixture of, of pleasure and business and some of it we really need to be in certain places seems entirely possible that flights will be canceled.
We may or may not receive compensation, which I don't really care about, but the, but just not being able to get to the places that I have promised to be would be a really serious disruption.
Now, this is trivial compared with farmers are facing potential financial ruin.
But this is just an illustration of the disruptions, and of course, at a fundamental level, saying that because the United States doesn't buy its oil from the Persian Gulf, That therefore we are insulated.
This doesn't matter to us.
I mean, take a look at your gas station.
Gas prices are up about a dollar a gallon since the, since the war began.
Wholesale gas prices are up about a dollar 20 a gallon.
So this is gonna get worse.
Diesel is up even more.
So this is the fact that the United States actually produces more oil than it consumes is pretty much irrelevant.
If you want to ask our how does the US economy get affected?
Well, the economy is people like soil and green.
I mean, the economy is people, and most people in the United States are significantly adversely affected.
By the spillover from this war.
Now oil companies particularly oil refiners who seem to be seeing a big explosion in their margins, they're doing well.
But what good does that do?
The rest of us, it's not as if the US has any fiscal measures in, in place to capture those gains.
So this is, in fact, hitting the United States is hitting all of us quite hard.
And it may be actually kind of catastrophic because plans, plans to travel, nevermind.
But plans to plant crops may be seriously endangered by all of this.
Has anybody told Trump about this?
From everything we're reading?
The answer is probably not.
Basically we're in a situation where the, the court here is don't tell the the emperor that he has no clothes and don't tell them that.
Actually warn the Persian Gulf really hurts the United States a lot too.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it launched its heaviest ever strikes across Lebanon hitting a hundred targets in just 10 minutes alone.
That's killed more than 250 people and injured over a thousand others.
According to the Lebanese authorities footage taken from the ground in places like Beirut to the East in Bakar and in the South was horrifying.
We were speaking to witnesses, including the wounded from their own hospital beds, and they described the bombardment like a ring of fire and an earthquake.
Now, this all happened just a few hours after Pakistan announced that it had successfully brokered a truce between the U.S.-Israel and Iran.
A truce it said included Lebanon.
This was refuted immediately afterwards by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Since then, Israel has been continuously bombing Lebanon.
The concern is that this is not only going to exacerbate an already existing humanitarian catastrophe in Lebanon that could actually scupper those peace talks, which are due to start in just a few days in Islamabad.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the conflict in the Middle East has had an unprecedented impact on the world.
We've already seen the worst disruptions to global energy supplies in history.
We've seen major transport hubs like the Doha and the Dubai airports close.
All of us have felt this.
Our energy bills have been soaring over the last few weeks.
Everything is dependent on those talks which are due to start imminently.
The hopes for these torques actually resulting in a workable peace plan are already pretty slim.
There's massive differences between what all sides want out of it, including who's gonna control the straight of M.
What's gonna happen to Iran's nuclear program and its ballistic missile capabilities.
Putting any external pressure onto those talks is going to make that job even harder.
And so the fear is if Israel keeps bombing Lebanon, those talks won't be successful, and the hopes for peace for the region and for the world will only be further away.

The Iranians in the statement from the Supreme National Security Council, that was Iran's first.
Official response to this.
That's the highest decision making body when it comes to national security issues.
And it operates directly under, Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader of, of Iran.
You can take that to the bank in terms of it being the policy of the state.
And what they said was that they do not trust the Americans at all, that their assumption is that the US will not abide by anything that it publicly states that it agrees in.
And the Iranians for many, many weeks have been told, telling us that the, that any deal must apply to all fronts of resistance.
And they also mention Palestine as well.
And we'll be talking later to Abu Ubaida, but the Israelis are continuing to carry out sporadic but heavy and lethal attacks inside of Gaza.
One, one thing this is, is related in a sense, but we understand that the this interim governing committee that is supposed to be entering Gaza is being blocked by the representative in charge of the implementation of this from Trump's so-called Board of peace.
So the Iranians represent the most significant military force within the axis of resistance.
What Maz, I think is a hundred percent right.
I've heard a lot of frustration expressed by Iranians that there hasn't already been a swift response to the fact that Netanyahu just killed several hundred Lebanese, most of them civilians, including small children.
And and I think that the Iranians are being very, very serious when they say that this entire deal may be blown up.
Now, it's also possible if you study the track record of Trump and Netanyahu and so-called Ceasefires, it's possible that the Trump administration has let loose some leash on this for Netanyahu, have given him a certain amount of time where they feel like he can push it so far get his last kind of massive attacks in before they have to take a two week break and try to see.
If they can get more interceptors to the region they still, I think, are deluding themselves into believing that the Iranians are gonna capitulate in some format.
From the Iranian perspective, again, they feel even though they've endured this massive bombing, that they have greater leverage right now.
And an ability to call for a lifting of sanctions in a way that never was possible prior to the, the, the start of these wars.
And they're not going to just simply abandon that on this issue of Trump saying that he was gonna bomb, you know, bomb their civilization and he was gonna hit their energy plants, et cetera.
It's very interesting because many thousands of Iranians, including some prominent people who are known for being critical at times of the Iranian government, vowed to create human chains around Iranian infrastructure.
And they went out and they, they did this.
And I think there's been a real unifying force that has set in as a result of this US Israeli bombing.
Trump recently said out loud that the US gave a tremendous amount of weapons mm-hmm.
To to people inside of Iran, To who, who tried to engage in some sort of an uprising, Or rebellion in, in January.
People who were saying, who were pointing this out at the time and saying that Iran is not lying when they talk about their being for an influence.
They were derided as regime apologists and, you know, massacre denialists.
And the fact is that now the president of the United States has openly stated what Mike Pompeo implied at the time.
Mm-hmm.
What prominent Israelis close to Netanyahu implied at the time that the entire thing was that, that Netanyahu sold Trump on the idea that there was some kind of gonna be some kind of color revolution and you just needed to, to, to light the spark.
And the reality is the opposite has, has set in.
And if the US had done this to Iran.
If they had started to attack major power facilities, I believe that the Iranians would've made good on their promise to just absolutely light up the the Persian Gulf.
Mm-hmm.
To hit infrastructure in an unprecedented way across that region.
You would have Ansarallah then close the Bab el-Mandeb, the US economy.
The world economy would've gone into a total free fall, and there would've been utter panic among the Gulf allies that have been cultivated as business partners by Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Yeah.
And I, I know you have to go on a moment, so I wanted to ask you about this another comment that I saw, I think it was from Mohammad Marandi as well, it, but the, basically he was saying, you know, there's a possibility here that you could see a situation develop, Where we reach in a, we reach a, an agreement with the United States for a ceasefire, but Israel refuses to recognize it, and that we continue our conflict directly with Israel.
And you described that as sort of a kind of best case scenario now from Israel's perspective, that what I would imagine be somewhere in the ranks of worst case scenarios.
But, and this, this is what I, I wanna ask like, is, is that, is that something that's being discussed?
Is that a potential strategic outcome for the Iranians out of this?
And from the Israeli perspective, like, what are they thinking?
Because that possibility seems, Pretty like a pretty awful outcome for them.
Is it related to the fact that this, this current outcome is devastating for Netanyahu?
Like if, I think that if it stops at this point, I, I mean, I think there's a couple levels on which we need to think about this.
Fir first.
I, I get the sense, and I think this is borne out in the public statements of Iranians for many, many years.
That Iran believes that it is going to remain in a perpetual state of war against the Zionist entity against Israel.
And that nothing that happens right now is going to fundamentally change that.
I think that primarily the Iranians are looking for a non-aggression pact with the United States.
Remember in the ceasefire that was signed between Ansarallah and the Trump administration, Ansara Law often referred to as the Houthis in Yemen it was a bilateral agreement with the United States, but Ansarallah did not agree to stop attacking Israel as a result of its ceasefire with the United States.
And so I, I think that the Iranians and, and actually the late leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, would frequently talk about this in his speeches on who's actually controlling the levers of power.
Is it the United States or is it Israel?
And I think that what, what the Iranians recognize is that they've sent a very serious message about the endurance capacity of the US military presence in the Persian Gulf region in the Middle East.
I think many people across the Arab and Islamic world believe that Israel has set in motion events that ultimately could lead to the total destruction of the Zionist project.
And so, I, I wouldn't I wouldn't assume that Iran is calculating that if a deal is reached to end this war, even in a long-term sense with the United States, that it means that the war with Israel is going to come to is gonna come to an end.
Israel may think that it's winning and running the deck right now, but, History has a long arc.
And, and I think some some years from now we will look back and recognize that when Netanyahu and Israel decided to wage the genocidal war against Gaza, they set into motion events that then spiral beyond their control and potentially will cause the entire collapse of the leaning Tower of Zionists.
On

why launch a war without a clear objective or plan and it won't even help you politically at home?
Well, I think I have an answer, and it lies with a series of essays by a French thinker titled The Gulf War did not take Place.
This book with its confusing title was about the 1991 action against Saddam Hussein and caused a lot of controversy at the time.
But I believe it gives an insight into how Donald Trump views war.
One that not only explains this conflict, but helps predict what he might do next, and that also reveals the flaw at the heart of Trump's thinking word that Iraq has invaded neighboring state of Kuwait with fighting reported along the border.
The residents say that they were awakened by machine gunfire and heavy artillery saying the Gulf War didn't take place.
Obviously seems mad.
It was after all a real war with bombs, violence, death, and so on.
So what did he mean?
Well, at this point, I should admit Jean Baudrillard, like many such thinkers is stimulating and interesting, but also elusive.
There are essentially, on my reading of his essays, three things he sang.
First, Baudrillard was saying that the Gulf War was such a one-sided conflict that to use the label war with its sense of uncertainty and drama was kind of a disgusting fiction.
Second Baudrillard was reacting to the way the Gulf War was the first live TV war, CNN broadcasting 24 hours a day full of videos of laser guided bombs hitting their targets for Baudrillard.
One of the reasons the war did not exist was that it was grotesquely, sanitized and clean.
One where the public saw the missile hits, but not the violence or death that followed.
Third, and this is the strangest part, he was arguing these images didn't just represent or misrepresent the war.
They were the war.
In other words, the videos, tv, all these images that represented reality had come to almost replace that reality.
As Ian Leslie, who wrote a great essay on this, puts it everyone, politicians and generals included, was lost inside the simulation.
The spectacle had swallowed the reel.
Baudrillard's word for this statey.
A state where the representation of something becomes more real and more important than the thing itself, almost to the point where there's no difference.
Now, I think Baudrillard was wrong about the Gulf War.
Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and threatened the world's oil supply.
And George Bush senior's action had real world consequences, even for the Americans watching it on tv.
But what if you had a president who wasn't like George Bush?
What if you had a president who didn't just see how the media can shape the experience of war, but who saw the war on TV as the reality you would have seen what happened?
I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show, the speed, the violence.
They say that the speed, the violence they use that term.
It's just, it was an amazing thing when I made my video on the Venezuela attack.
I examined various theories about Trump's motivation.
I asked whether it was a reverse domino strategy to topple the regime in Cuba or part of a Monroe Doctrine, where the US would focus on the western hemisphere or maybe an imperial project to get the country's oil as Trump claimed.
But all the theories fell short.
Even Trump's rationale about getting the oil was scoffed by oil execs saying the project wasn't viable.
But when you think of the conflict as a TV show, shaped by a desire to maintain and keep tension.
Then it makes a lot more sense.
You notice how important it was for Trump to post that iconic photo of Maduro.
You notice the weird video set to a Vietnam era protest song, or the way White House photos of the operation showed that the largest screen visible in the room was open to X, seemingly so the administration could monitor how the campaign was going on social media, and when you considered that, the operation started with promises of huge change.
So we are gonna stay until such time as we're gonna run it essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place, but ended with the same regime in place and the whole incident.
Now basically memory hold.
It really does feel like you could say the Venezuela War did not take place finishing this fight.
Yeah, and when it comes to the Iran conflict, it feels like once again, Trump is in hyper reality where the war exists mainly as videos and images.
This explains the endless flow of videos mixing up clips of the conflict with popular culture.
Time to find out maximum.
It explains the administration's obsession with media coverage.
Trump administration is threatening to go after US TV networks for their coverage of the war with Iran.
FCC Chair, Brendan Carr threatened to revoke their licenses over the coverage, accusing the media of running what he called hoaxes and news distortions related to the war.
For example, a banner or a headline, Mideast war intensifies splashing on the screen the last couple of days.
What should the banner read instead?
How about Iran?
Increasingly desperate?
And it explains the grotesquely unserious way in which Trump seems to think about this war repeatedly calling it an excursion.
Answering a question about whether Americans should worry about Iranian attacks at home with the words, I guess, or talking about how the US has totally demolished much of Iran's key oil island before adding.
We may hit it a few more times just for fun.
If you understand Trump as living in hyper reality, just seeing war as a TV show, it makes sense that the objective of the war is always changing, that the operation was so badly thought out, and that there is an ever changing timetable.
It makes sense because the objectives, plans and timetable don't matter if this is just a TV show.
And the quote that really sums it up was in an interview with ABC's Jonathan Carl saying, I hope you are impressed.
How do you like the performance?
I mean, Venezuela is obvious.
This might be even better.
How do you like the performance?
It's similar to something he said in that interview about the Venezuela attack I played earlier.
Yeah.
And don't forget, I've done some pretty good ones in in other parts of the world.
Okay.
I've done some pretty good ones, but I've never seen anything like this.
I was, I was able to watch it in real time and I watched every aspect of it.
Some good ones.
I mean, it really is like he's a TV producer whose job it is to put on some good episodes for the audiences at Home Flash.
The Pure has just received a post card from a friend vacationing abroad on.

Now obviously media has always been part of war, but the way I see it, this was media used to sell a war.
War that was happening for a real reason.
But Trump's wars feel different.
Sure, there are definitely key people involved who have reasons.
Marco Rubio seems to want to regime change his way through Latin America.
And Netanyahu wants, I suspect, to create a failed state in Iran that will weaken it as an adversary.
But these are not the motivations of the person at the top.
He's running the TV Trump show, and if you bring him storylines that will gather attention of viewers, then he's happy to say yes to them.
Alright.
I think we've seen enough.
What do you think this is?
This is gonna be great television.
I will say that once you notice this aspect of Trump, you see it everywhere.
The way he retreated on ice once the TV pictures went bad, the way he focuses on ratings when he insults people, his appointment of TV pundits rather than actual serious people that could get things done.
And it's clearly an obsession that is lifelong pursuing tabloid coverage and celebrity even once pretending to be his own PR person so he could impress a reporter.
He's somebody that has a lot of options and frankly you know, he gets called by everybody.
He gets called by everybody in the book in terms of women.
But if Trump was happy for this war to be a TV war or a meme war disconnected in this hyper real world.
Well, the reality is turning out differently.

Four months.
The question hanging over the Middle East has been simple.
Are we heading towards a deal or something much worse?
This weekend, we got our answer.
After 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, the most senior direct engagements between Washington and Tehran in decades.
For now at least it's over.
No deal, no breakthrough, no path forward.
And with that, we're back to where we started, probably because strip away the noise, the threats, the strike, the war, the talk of regime change from the Trump administration and the basic reality before the war is the same as now.
It hasn't changed at all.
What the last five weeks has proven is that the United States cannot force Iran to abandon its nuclear program down the barrel of a gun, or at least guns wielded from the air alone.
If war is politics by another means, it has not worked.
This politics, arguably both sides are now further apart than they were before this war began.
In fact, you could argue that the war has made things worse.
Iran now has more leverage, not less sitting a stride.
The strait of M able to squeeze the global energy markets without ever having the need to even build a bomb.
And the Americans, well, they've expanded their demands from nuclear limits to missiles, to regional proxies.
Turning what was once something of a narrow deal with a narrower set of aims into something almost impossible to agree.
So here we are, no regime change.
In fact, a regime which is more hard line, less theocratic state, more standard issue military dictatorship than before the Iranian state still standing.
The nuclear ambitions still there and diplomacy back to square one, which leaves an uncomfortable conclusion because however much politicians may dislike it in Washington, however toxic it sounds, under President Trump, the only deal that has ever worked, even imperfectly, is the one we already had a version of the nuclear agreement, a version of the JCPOA as it's called, the one abandoned that, the one that Trump abandoned.
But in effect, he must now try and recreate with a regime stung, yet feeling empowered in a ous shaped driving seat.
The JCPOA Obama era wasn't perfect, but at least it had some effect because it recognized a basic truth.
You don't get everything you want from Iran, you settle for less than that, or you get nothing at all.
And right now, right now, we've got nothing.
We've got worse than nothing.
And the question of what comes next is, while nobody in Washington or Toran seems ready to answer or even able to answer,

the blockade is being forced according to centcom by 10,000 US troops, over a dozen warships, dozens of aircraft.
Can you explain exactly what's happening and for the geographically challenged the difference between the Strait of Horus, the Persian Gulf, and how it's extending beyond to the Red Sea and the sea of Oman.
Okay.
Thank you very much for having me on.
And yes, sadly, this is a terrible way for my area of expertise to actually be of relevance.
So for first the geography of the area.
The Persian or Arabian Gulf sits between Iran on the north, sliver of Iraq on the west, and then the various countries that, that are known as Emirates or kingdoms of the Gulf, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates around the southern shore of the Persian Gulf at the narrowest bit where the Persian Gulf meets the Gulf of Oman on the other side that's the Strait of hormones, which, Depending on how you measure it, it's Around 25 to 30 nautical miles.
So the Gulf the, the, the Strait of Hormones lies in the north between Iran and the North, and, The Musandam Peninsula, which is an extension of Oman in the South.
So in fact, the water of the Strait of Horus is divided between those.
There is no high seas.
There is, this is not, this is, this is territorial waters divided evenly between the two countries.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is that of course the whole the Iran has basically lies on the entire northern shore of the Persian Gulf, but also the Gulf of Oman.
So it does have capacities.
In fact, one of Iran's big ports in which India invested Chabahar is, In the eastern part of Iran in the northern shore of the Gulf of Oman.
Red Sea is on the other, the Red Sea is on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
So the Red Sea lies on the western shore of Saudi Arabia.
And the way that Iran can disrupt, Trade in that in the Red Sea is through firing missiles.
For example, as it has done already to the Port of Yanbu, which is a oil lifting port for South Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea, but also through possibly having its ally the Ansarallah of, Yemen, which are otherwise also known as the Houthis disrupting trade there as they did during the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
But there are a couple of things about that blockade question that I think is really important to note.
First of all, the US claims to have stopped completely and totally the trade of oil out of Iran.
Or indeed that has blockaded any kind of ships going to or from Iran.
In fact reporting from shipping companies that actually track this stuff, comes back that in the four days since the blockade has started, somewhere between 14 to 15 ships, Have gone through the straight of formers, at least half of them to Iran.
And the way that they have done so is either through route that obviously the US is incapable or of or not particularly good at policing through spoofing their, Automatic identification system.
Spoofing is this process where the automatic identification system is essentially presented as somebody else's, Either system indicating a different country or different flag, country for the ship.
And or ships have gone dark, which is something that ha happens all the time.
In fact, when I traveled on a freighter many, many years ago 10, 11 years ago, one of the things that was most striking when going through the Red Sea the Gulf of Aiden and indeed the Persian Gulf was the extent to which warships, particularly US or the eu warships actually turned off their a IS and went dark.
So this is a practice, although a lot of people like to present it as some kind of a nefarious thing if we are gonna think of it as nefarious.
In fact, a lot of ships take take part in this, in this practice of going dark including especially the United States.
In fact, this is in the case of us.
Naval ships has resulted in all sorts of in all sorts of problems collisions indeed with US Navy ships.
Now, in terms of the actual blockade and the effects it's having, I was just looking at the Bloomberg today and forgive me as I read this out, because it was really striking to me.
Bloomberg, which is of course one of the most reliable financial reporting sites anywhere in the world, reports that we are moving from short-term jolt to long-term shock as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market takes place.
So this is what's happening, and obviously the blockade continues because before the war, before the US and Israeli war on Iran started on the 28th of February somewhere between 140 to 170 ships a day were crossing the Strait of Hormuz.
Now it's only 50 14 to 15.
And one of the things that this has meant is that about 10, 10 million barrels per day of oil supply has been lost.
This includes, although of course, the primary people being punished by this, shortage of oil.
Are the economies in Asia.
In fact, it actually also affects the United States because, Some of the last ships that left the Persian Gulf before the war started were actually, Delivering their supplies now.
So we are going to see the effects of the blockade in the coming week or two.
And apparently one of these ships actually arrived in California because unlike the rest of the United States, California actually does receive oil from the Middle East.
And it it's refineries, Use a medium sour oil a kind of a medium grade and sour meaning high sulur kind of oil that comes specifically from the Middle East.
So the effect of this are of course, being felt incredibly widely.
Another really striking statistic was that an, an actual real world barrel of oil was sold in Sri Lanka at a more than $280 a barrel.
That is double what the price is going elsewhere in the world.
And so, so the effects of this are incredibly, incredibly striking.
What the blockade might mean of course, is that the US will start firing on ships that it assumes are Iranian or carrying oil from Iran or other cargo to Iran.
But of course, if it does so within the context of the ceasefire, it is violating the ceasefire.
And if it does so outside the context of ceasefire, Iran can interpret this as a belligerent action because of course, a blockade is exactly that, Particularly as it is blockading Iran in its territorial waters.
So the state, the, the state that we're in is that of course, we're not getting any reliable or credible kind of reporting from the Trump administration whatsoever.
And the state of play in the region, of course, is that Iran is going to defend itself against this imperial imposition and how it's going to do that remains to be seen.

There is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.
A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses, development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture.
A dramatic expansion in basic and applied research.
These and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration, the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy.
Balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future.
Good judgment seeks balance in progress.
Lack of it.
He eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have in the main understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face.
Of threat and stress,

but threats, new and kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mentioned two, only a vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment.
Our arms must be mighty ready for instant action so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peace, time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments.
Industry.
American makers of plowshares could with time and as required make swords as well.
But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.
We have been compelled to create a permanent armin industry of vast proportions.
How to, to this?
Three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporation corporations.
Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.
The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government.
We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved.
So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must car guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex, the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial military posture has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, re research has become central.
It also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly.
A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by or at the direction of the federal government.
Today the solitary inventor tinkering in his shop has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields In the same fashion, the free university university, his historically, the fountain head of free ideas and scientific discovery has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research.
Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.
For every old blackboard, there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet in holding scientific research and discovery in respect as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become.
The captive of a scientific technological elite is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time.
As we peer into society's future, we, you and I, and our government must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.
We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.
We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent fan of tomorrow.

We've just heard clips starting with an excerpt from President Eisenhower's cross of Iron speech in 1956 describing the trade-offs when investing in military buildup.
The briefing examined a leaked Trump video dismissing daycare alongside Senator Chris Van Holland's case that the Iran war was justified by a complete fabrication.
Paul Krugman discussed the global economic fallout that's likely to unfold threatening global farming and energy costs across the board.
The independent described Israel's unprecedented bombing campaign across Lebanon, killing over 250 people and cautioned that continued strikes could derail fragile peace stocks.
Drop site News warned that Iran's demand for any ceasefire to cover all fronts of resistance, including Palestine, makes a workable deal with the US and nearly impossible while Israel keeps bombing Gaza.
Democracy now traced how Iran's proposal to trade oil in Chinese Iran threatens the Petrodollar system, one of the fundamental bases of the US Imperial order since World War ii.
Brendan Miller drew on Baudrillard's essay

to explain Trump's Iran and Venezuela conflicts as hyperreal TV spectacles showing that he cares more about imagery than real objectives.
LBC traced how five weeks of conflict proved that military pressure failed, leaving Iran more hard line and the US holding expanded demands that made any nuclear deal nearly impossible.
And finally, that was Eisenhower's January, 1961 farewell warning against the military industrial complex and its potential to seize, unwarranted influence over government liberties and democratic processes.
And those were just the top takes.
There's a lot more in the deeper dive sections.
But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get this show ad free, as well as early and ad free access to our other show solved, including a members only backstage segment, all via podcast.
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As for today's topic, you just heard excerpts of two of Dwight d Eisenhower's most famous speeches.
In 19 53, 3 months into his presidency, a five star General who led the allied invasion of Europe stood in front of a room full of newspaper editors and said that every gun, every warship, every rocket fired is a theft.
From people who are hungry and cold, and he did the math one.
Bomber costs you 30 schools.
One destroyer costs you 8,000 homes.
This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
He said it is humanity hanging from across of iron.
Then in 1961, on his way out the door, he warned that the military industrial complex would consume democratic governance if left unchecked.
Both things happened, and Trump just said the quiet part out loud.
On April 1st at an Easter luncheon at the White House, Trump told the room, it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things we have to take care of one thing, military protection.
In the budget he released, two days later, he proposed the largest increase in military spending as a share of the economy outside of a ground war in modern American history, one and a half trillion dollars for the Pentagon.
Next year, a 44% increase to pay for it.
His budget cuts the Department of Health and Human Services by 12.5%.
Slashes medical research funding by 5 billion cuts the CDC by a third.
Eliminates the program that helps low income families pay their heating bills and guts.
K through 12 education funding by almost 70%.
And this comes on top of what they already did.
The one giant ugly bill cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next decade since it passed over 800 healthcare facilities across the country have closed cut services or are teetering on the edge.
One third of all rural hospitals in America are now at risk of shutting down and the new budget goes further, eliminating programs specifically designed to stabilize rural hospitals.
Meanwhile, the war operation Epic Fury, the Joint US Israeli military campaign against Iran cost $11.3 billion in its first six days.
According to Pentagon.
Briefings to Congress has been running at hundreds of millions of dollars a day since then.
The Penn Wharton budget model estimates the total could reach 47 billion through April alone with broader economic damage, potentially reaching 210 billion, and that's assuming it stops Six days of bombing Iran costs more than the entire proposed cut to medical research funding.
The daily cost of this war is roughly what it would take to keep multiple rural hospitals open for a year.
But things are more complicated now than in Eisenhower's time.
The direct costs are devastating enough, like the trade off between bombs and hospitals that Eisenhower described.
But we've spent the last 70 years building a global economy, so interconnected, lean, and optimized for a profit and efficiency that a single reckless act can set off a chain of consequences.
The people who started it clearly don't understand.
Now, I'm not an expert on global food systems, but here's who is the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United Nations Trade and Development Agency, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, and they're all sounding the same alarm.
So here's what they're saying.
About a third of the world's trade fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.
Basically, the bottleneck for a huge share of the world's energy and fertilizer.
Since the war started and Iran effectively closed the strait shipping through, it has dropped by over 95%.
The price of a nitrogen fertilizer essential for growing wheat, corn, and rice jumped roughly 50% in the weeks after fighting began.
Countries around the world have reserves of oil, but almost nobody does that for fertilizer.
China's the exception, and they've been drawing down their stockpiles while restricting exports to protect their own farmers.
Beyond that, no strategic reserves, no alternative pipeline, no emergency buffer, and it's because fertilizer is worth less per ton than oil.
So it gets less protection, less infrastructure, less political attention.
We built the global food system, the way we build everything under capitalism, as lean as possible, maximum efficiency, maximum profit, and just hoped nobody would be reckless enough to break it.
This disruption hit right at the start of planting season in the northern hemisphere, which is the worst possible timing.
Farmers are making decisions right now about what's to plant, how much fertilizer they can afford, or whether they can get any at all.
The president of the American Farm Bureau wrote directly to Trump warning that this is a threat to both food security and national security.
Countries like Sudan, Tanzania, and Somalia, which were already struggling, are among the most exposed.
So here's where Eisenhower's accounting falls short, because the globalized economy is the real domino theory, and we are about to put it to the test.
In 1953, you could calculate the cost of a bomber in schools and hospitals.
The trade off was direct.
In 2026, the costs cascaded.
A war launched by two leaders, both trying to stay outta prison, one who treats military operations like television programming, has closed a shipping lane that disrupts the fertilizer supply, that could reduce crop yields, that could drive food prices higher across continents that had nothing to do with the conflict and the system that's supposed to prevent that from happening.
Strategic reserves, stockpiles, international coordination simply doesn't exist for the commodity that actually feeds people.
Now, I'm not predicting famine.
I don't know enough to make that call.
And neither do the people launching the missiles.
That's sort of the point.
The consequences of this war extend so far beyond anything the decision makers considered or are apparently capable of.
Considering that the rest of us are left reading reports from the UN and the Carnegie Endowment trying to figure out how bad it might get.
Eisenhower a five star general looked at this dynamic 73 years ago and called it a theft from people who are hungry, from people who are cold, from children whose futures are being spent on weapons.
He was right in 1953 and he was right in 1961, and the country ignored him both times.
The military industrial complex he warned about didn't just survive.
It won.
It captured the budget, it captured the legislature, it captured the media, and now it has a president who will stand in the White House on Easter Sunday and say out loud that taking care of children is not the government's job, but dropping bombs is the direct costs are a choice.
Someone made a hospital closes in rural America, so a tomahawk missile can launch in the Persian Gulf that part Eisenhower could see coming.
What he couldn't have seen is that 70 years later, the missile would also threaten the fertilizer supply that feeds a billion people because we built a global economy with little margin for error and then handed the controls to people with no interest in understanding what they're breaking.

Note that we've begun putting my commentaries on YouTube, so if you find 'em insightful, check out our channel and share them.
Link in the show notes.
And now we'll continue to dive deeper on six topics today.
First up, section A, Lebanon under attack, followed by section B, the world D idolizes, section C, world economy in peril, section D, the moral WR of war profiteering, section E, the damage our military does, and Section F, making China great again.

It took just 10 minutes for Israel to carry out the biggest atrocity that Lebanon has seen in almost 40 years.
In just a little over 600 seconds, Israel struck more than 100 sites across Lebanon.
On Wednesday, raining 1000 pound bombs down on a densely populated residential area in Beirut in southern Lebanon.
The result was carnage with over 300 people killed, and we knew well over a thousand people.
Residents, as well as Lebanese officials have said that the majority of those killed in injured with civilians, including children and the elderly, the country's prime minister.
Nawaf Salam posted this while we welcomed the agreement between Iran and the United States of America and intensified our efforts to reach an agreement for the ceasefire in Lebanon.
Israel continues to expand its aggressions that have targeted densely populated residential neighborhoods, claiming the lives of unarmed civilians in various parts of Lebanon, particularly in the capsule Beirut.
He list of all regional and international efforts to stop the war, not to mention its utter disregard for the principles of international law and international humanitarian law, which is never respected in the first place, and all friends of Lebanon are called upon.
To help us stop these aggressions by all available means sky News as Alex Crawford spoke to first responders on the scene in Beirut on Thursday.
What did you notice as soon as you arrived here?
It was a devil.
Mm-hmm.
It was a devil.
People is burning as real in what you saw as you arrived, which sounded like a scene no one would want to see.
First I was realizing I arrived to za or to the route.
Mm.
In the same point.
It was the same as a disaster.
Yes.
As, as you put a a, a a piece of burger on a grill, people was grilled.
Really?
The, the, as I tell you, it's not like you see people was grilled.
The one who I pick him up, up.
I, I take him bones.
Bones, all around here, all around here are large residential blocks.
How, how would you describe this area?
Because you are hearing the Israeli military are saying they were specifically targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, command and control centers.
I want to tell all people, all, all world, this world that will tell us there is Hezbollah here in Hezbollah, no Hezbollah as we are a child of, of pirate.
We are not Hezbollah and we are not including for Hezbollah.
And we're not with Hezbollah.
Well, they, there clearly are some Hezbollah elements in the capital city.
If now, if now they tell me that as a Jewish people here and you need our help, we will help.
Mm-hmm.
Our message, it's peace and humanity.
But, but what happened here yesterday, this area, it's food and beverage containers and as we know, as we see it's forec closes container.
Mm-hmm.
There's no military here buried.
Not bay.
It's under.
Community under under government yeah.
Mm-hmm.
But don't take this big for war, that Hezbollah and in Beirut, no, Hezbollah is not in Beirut.
Israel's narrative of targeting Hezbollah in Beirut came under further pressure on News Night.
Nada Maucourant Atallah is a correspondent based in Beirut for the UAE paper, the National, and she began by telling News Night the impact of the brutal Israeli assault.
What it means concretely on the ground, it means that until now you still have people looking for their loved ones.
It means that people were just frantically calling everyone, calling their families because these tracks, they happen in like residential building.
They happen in densely populated area.
And they came with no warning.
They, they did not happen in, Hezbollah affiliated areas.
They did not happen in, in areas, in neighborhoods where the group is influential.
It happens in, in the central in the central of, of Beirut, in, in areas.
You have lots of shops, you have lots of families.
I visited myself, three of those strikes, and there were all residential buildings that were almost completely collapsed, and they all had many victims.
And and rescuers still looking for survivors or just human remains.
Now, Israel claims that it was targeting more than a hundred Hezbollah command centers, and that most of it was inside civilian areas as a part of the hezbollah's strategy of using human shields.
So this all sounds pretty familiar, as do the kinds of sites Israel struck yesterday, including such deadly military centers, such as a funeral, a mosque, a traditional bakery, and even a car wash.
Israel also said it did everything it could do to mitigate harm to civilians.
Atallah was asked if she seen any evidence of that at all.
And they're not providing us with any evidence so they can say whatever they want.
What I see on the ground, I see a family terrorized.
I've seen videos of family jumping out of balconies because they were so scared.
I've seen videos, pictures of of children injured by Shrapnels young, young girl trapped under the rubble.
And this, this is also my city.
I live here.
I've, I've walked on the streets countless time.
I had friends who lived in the very same building one of the very same buildings that wa that was targeted.
So that they should be providing evidence.
And as the fact that the strikes came without warning and also during rush hours.
So it means that the streets were packed.
It has really increased the, the number of, of casualties and especially also the fact that all the strikes came at the same time.
Dalia, when it comes to these strikes, of course, Israel have said, as we mentioned before, they were specifically targeting Hezbollah military command centers, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, for people who dunno, home, there's a thing called the DIA, which is Israel's military strategy of deliberately targeting civilian structures to try and lower the morale of the people.
They're attacking so low that it forces them into capitulation, essentially.
What do you think is more likely the former or the latter?
I mean, that's exactly what what I was gonna, was what I was gonna talk about, the the DIA.
It is the.
Core principle of Israeli military strategy that obviously we saw unfold in Gaza, but it actually originated in 2006 in Beirut.
There's a, an area of Beirut called Dahieh.
And this is when we first saw these, the, the indications of this as a new military strategy by the Israeli state, which is, as you mentioned, Helene, you know, traditionally in warfare, in modern warfare, there is a sense of you have civilian infrastructure, you have hospitals, you have universities, You have residential areas, and you have military infrastructure.
And in a war military infrastructure is vulnerable and is up for being targeted.
And civilian infrastructure in civilians is supposed to be sacrosanct.
Now, the DIA doctrine represents a complete inversion of that, where in fact, you hammer the civilian infrastructure more in fact, than you hammer the, the military infrastructure in order to, as you say, that Helena create, destroy, Civilian morale to force.
There's some kind of bizarre idea that if you cripple a population, then they will be more likely to overthrow their government.
Well, obviously if people are sort of rebuilding their lives from the ashes of nothing I don't think that, you know, forming some kind of organized political force to take over a, from a, an organization that has been in power for, since like the eighties is really gonna be what they have capacity for.
But I also think part of it is a sense of trying to, 'cause one of the issues that Israel has had in Gaza is that no matter how many times they killed Hamas operatives, HAES was just able to replenish itself cons several times over the ranks of Hamas were never actually weakened numerically and.
So I believe Israel makes this calculation where they say, well, look where is Hamas?
Where is Hezbollah able to draw them, their personnel from?
It's from the society.
It's from the community.
And so what we'll do is we will just destroy that society, destroy that community, so that there is no one to draw from.
Now, obviously that is tantamount to genocide and that is what the Dahieh doctrinee is.
So what we have is an incredibly powerful military that is has as its, as its.
Named military strategy, a genocidal one that is specifically targeting the breaking down of a civil society.
And we are not just seeing it in Lebanon, obviously we saw it in Gaza.
We're also seeing it to an extent in Iran.

These strikes happened on, on, on densely populated areas.
They targeted, they happened all across the city.
The Israeli military said they conducted over a hundred strikes.
They happened on the southern suburbs of Beirut, but they also took place in central Beirut in areas, Such as Raya or or Raya.
These are areas that are spread out across Beirut, where, where that are densely populated, where, where tens of people live.
And by the Israeli military's own admission, they were constructing strikes on, on areas populated with civilians.
But under the laws of war parties to a conflict are required to take all feasible pro precautions to protect civilian harms.
But there was no effective or advanced warning ahead of these strikes.
And, and the damage that was done to civilian could be felt on the streets with continuous ambulances stream, I mean into hospitals with chaos as people tried to find their missing loved ones, as people struggled to pull people out of the rubble with children still being stuck in the rubble.
It was, it was it was a disaster that was felt across the city.
Across the country.
I wanted to go back to that quote of the Belgian Foreign Minister.
His name is Maxime Prévot.
He had just arrived in Lebanon.
He wrote on X just before I was commending President Aun for offering to open official negotiations with Israel towards a ceasefire.
Israel launched with no previous warning, one of the most massive strikes since the beginning of the hostilities, allegedly causing hundreds of civilian victims.
We were at the embassy with my delegation, just a few hundred meters from where the missile struck.
This must stop.
The Belgian foreign Minister said the ceasefire between the us, Israel and Iran must include Lebanon.
He said that was the Belgian foreign Minister Ramsey.

I mean indeed all of that took place and I think that.
Well, we, what we witnessed yesterday in terms of the large amount of civilian suffering of the attacks happening on densely populated areas coming without warning, the scale of it was massive.
It was the most it was the, the most deadly day, Since March two in Lebanon.
But the patterns that we've seen the Israeli military follow in their conduct in Lebanon as Inza is not new.
For two and a half years, human rights watch and other rights groups have documented repeated unlawful attacks, war crimes, committed in Lebanon, crimes against humanity, committed in za and acts of genocide, committed inza.
And while all of this was happening, states that were funding Israel, or that continue to funding, Israel continued doing so, arms kept flowing and transiting through countries that continued to provide military assistance to Israel.
Other states such as Israel's allies such as the United States, the uk, Germany, the eu, they have real leverage to stop these atrocities from happening.
These statements of condemnations that are, that are typically issued by, by states after such horrifying days, they, they, they have no effect on the ground, but there is real leverage that states can, can, can, can, can levy, they can immediately suspend armed sales and transfer and military assistance to Israel.
They can levy targeted sanctions against Israeli officials, credibly, implicated, and abuses.
The, the eu, for example, could suspend the trade pillar of its association of its association agreement with Israel.
But we haven't yet seen any effective measures being taken to stop these atrocities.
In fact, the silence of states and the continued flow of weapons has only emboldened Israel, where they're not only continuing to commit unlawful acts, but in fact boasting about it.
In saying that they intend to commit further atrocities.
The response from the international community has been limited to words of condemnation, but no effective action has been taken yet in order to stop these.
Atrocities from happen.
Can you talk about the number of medics who have been killed in Lebanon?
Do you believe medics are being targeted?
What's the number?
Over 50?
Yes over 57, but we don't have the full, we don't have the full number yet because we don't have the, a detailed list of number of medical workers that have been killed yesterday.
But as of the day before that, over 57 medical workers have been killed in Lebanon and Israeli attacks since March two.
If we add that to the total number of medical workers killed since October, 2023, and we're talking about over 250 medical workers killed in Lebanon, These medical workers have been killed in attacks on civil defense centers, on medical vehicles, on hospitals as human rights watch.
We, we and others have documented, Apparently deliberate and repeated attacks on medical workers in their vehicles, in their civil defense centers at hospitals that we found amounted apparent war crimes.
In our investigation, in Amnesty's investigation investigations done by international media outlets such as the Guardians, we didn't find evidence of any of these healthcare facilities, Being used for for, for military purposes in a way that would strip them of their protected status.
And this is a claim that has been repeatedly made by the Israeli authorities without evidence.
The toll is high.
And the, the, the, the, the damage that is conducted by by Israel when it strikes medical workers, isn't just limited to the personnel that are tragically killed.
It has compounding effects on the rest of the country as access to medical access, to aid to healthcare becomes increasingly more limited.
Since March two in Lebanon, six hospitals are, have had to shut down their operations for various reasons.
Three of those hospitals are located south of the Litani, where I mentioned tens of thousands of people live.
And so, increasingly, we're seeing in some places that access to healthcare is being limited, not only by by, by Israeli attacks.
But also because strikes on Bridges are limiting the abilities of hos of hospital of hospital staff to get easy and, and predictable access to medical supplies that they need.
We, we were in Sour last week, last week, and we spoke with the an hospital official at Jal El-Dib, one of the main hospitals in the city.
And they've told us that essentially in order to get supplies after bridges are, have been struck, they've had to take their own cars, drive across the Litani, go to the city of Sidon, which is several kilometers away, I think approximately 30 kilometers away get supplies and come back to, to the hospital, often having to, to do it at night, at great risk to the staff themselves.
Paramedic workers have told us that in order to send supplies into the area south of Litani, they typically wait until injured people are carried into Beirut, across the Litani, so that they send, can send back in those transport vehicle medical supplies that are desperately needed by paramedic staff and, and And, and other healthcare workers.
And so the, the, the strikes on medical workers are taking place.
We've documented, repeated, apparently deliberate attacks on these, on these medical workers.
But there's also an increasing, Increasing attacks that are, that are significantly limiting the ability of people to access healthcare in Lebanon and with the attacks yesterday, I mean, we, I, we saw hospitals quickly becoming overwhelmed with people being rushed in as ambulances streamed into them following the, the scale of the, the attacks and the number of injuries with over a thousand people injured.

As of now, just to throw out some numbers, there's been 1079 deaths in Lebanon, killed by the Israelis at least 118 children.
There's an invasion, an attempted invasion taking place in the South.
They're attacking civilian infrastructure, including bridges, And medical facilities. 128 of them have been attacked, at least 40 medical personnel, though I'm sure that number is a little bit higher now, have been killed by the Israelis.
Many of them in double tap strikes.
I mean, I can go on and on about the horrific destruction they're meeting out against this country right now.
But I think a good place to start would be maybe the basics for our audience.
As you know Hezbollah sort of entered this, this broader regional war with Iran after months of Israeli attacks and ceasefire violations over 15,000 of them.
So I'm curious, Kareem, from your perspective what, explain your perspective of why Hezbollah entered, why now?
How much of it is tied to the broader war with Iran?
How much of it is tied to sort of the domestic problems in Lebanon?

Yeah, no, I think you laid this out very well in terms of introducing how things are in Lebanon.
I think basically this discussion about why Hezbollah started or I, I wouldn't say started the war, I would say escalated because there was a war.
And I think it just, I think the proper term is more that they escalated when they did.
And that's, there's, I think a couple of big reasons.
I think the proximate cause and just in their own words even was, yes, it was after HOWI was, was assassinated in Iran, but really also in terms of militarily and tactically, they wanted to take the initiative because it was fairly clear that the Israeli government had taken a decision.
To themselves launch what they call a preemptive attack on Lebanon, on, on Hezbollah, basically.
So they decided for military and tactical reasons to initiate this before the Israelis were fully prepared to do so.
And, and that's the kind of proximate cause I think as to why Hezbollah entered when it did.
But there's, I mean, I think we can discuss it, but there's of course a much deeper issue here, which is that in the end, the way I see it is that you have a resistance project and you have sort of an Israeli Zionist project an expansionist, settler colony that's there.
And these two projects simply can't coexist in the long term.
They, they're, they are, at least as they have been for these past decades, mutually exclusive projects.
So this business of there being this much larger war that we're seeing today, Is something which I think a lot of people were thinking would happen and maybe thought had happened last year in 2024 and, but, and had finished.
And clearly it hadn't, Hezbollah had been preparing themselves for this war.
And, and perhaps this is that this, the, the the so-called final war, I mean, it would seem like it, it seems like to an existential war for many actors, including Iran, and, and we can get to to, to that in a bit.
But I, I think also it's interesting to see all these sort of think tankers and analysts, Chime in, especially from DC.
Because, and I maybe I was guilty of this too, in a way.
I think there was a perception after 2024 that Hezbollah had been severely degraded.
And I mean, you look at what happened, right?
They, the Israelis killed the entire senior leadership and the organization came out of that 2024 war.
Seemingly defeated.
It, it was a loss.
It was a loss in many ways.
All that said, I think watching now what's taking place, we're seeing Hezbollah behave and respond to the Israelis in a way that definitely challenges that perception of them as having basically been defeated.
So I guess from your perspective, you know, do you look at what's happening and do you see Hezbollah's have, having been rebuilt and how do you think their capacity now as, as we're watching this war play out?
How does that compare to what we saw in 2024?
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's absolutely fair to say that most people in Lebanon, and it seems that in Israel as well assume that Hezbollah had been defeated in the kind of, in the big sense of being able to pose any kind of threat to the Israelis themselves as opposed to a kind of internal force where still they they had influence within the country itself, but not as an external threat to the Israelis.
And certainly not in any kind of, that they had no deterrence vis-a-vis any kind of Israeli attacks.
I think that it's fair to say that most of us, and most people kind of assume that it's clear that what happened since that November 2024, not even a ceasefire, cessation, hostilities agreement that took place we, we saw that on the Israeli side, there were 15,000 recorded violations by the UN and by the Lebanese government.
It's, it's clear, and on our side or Lebanon side, there was literally zero violations across the border from Hezbollah or the Lebanese side.
Towards the Israeli side, there was zero violations as opposed to over 15,000 violations.
In the meantime, the the idea of the, the main, let's say, responsibility of the Lebanese government was to, and, and Hezbollah, was to say, okay, we're gonna disarm and remove at least the heavy weapons and most of the weapons south of the Litt River, and at least move it to the north and then north of the Litani River, there would be a second phase.
Or that would be negotiated and there, you know, there'd be some kind of discussion.
The reality is that for the most part, for the most part, the Lebanese army, which did deploy to the border areas and to, to most of South Lebanon and did take control over a lot of the, the key kind of points that Hezbollah had their bases on.
They there there was disarming.
In other words, the vast majority of Hezbollah's weapons were removed from South Lebanon.
That seems to be clear.
The Army had certified that, that the vast bulk of them had been removed, except in areas that Israelis retained control.
Because remember, Israel was supposed to have withdrawn as part of this agreement.
Mm-hmm.
They were supposed to have withdrawn from all of the occupied land, and they didn't, they retained several points that they said they were going to keep obviously strategic locations that they were going to keep.
They did not allow, I think there's around 60,000 or 60, at least 60,000 you know, civilians from returning to their villages, which is what they were supposed to have done according to this agreement.
So they were, they were clearing out, they were not going to allow in this, in a 2, 3, 4 kilometer zone.
Along the border.
The Israelis were not allowing people back.
They were not withdrawing their, their, their forces from the key points that they had taken.
And so what Hezbollah was doing in this period, which was around 15 months or so, was on the one hand, according to what they own, say they were giving the Lebanese government a chance to negotiate the withdrawal of the Israelis and a kind of more permanent agreement.
On the other hand, in reality, they understood that would not happen.
So they were preparing themselves and preparing themselves for this war that has now come, and it's very clear that they have prepared in a way that has taken everybody by surprise.
The level of professionalism.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
The level of professionalism, the level of weapons that they have the, the way in which they prepared the tactically militarily, they're, they're doing a job, which I don't think anybody would've expected.
And I, and this is what we're seeing today, and I think the Israeli response.
Which is what they always do.
It's just to say, okay, we take something.
And since we can't really understand what's going on immediately, we're just gonna destroy everything in our zone.
We're gonna threaten by saying, we're going to put 450,000 soldiers and reservists and whatever, at, at at the border.
And we're going to invade Lebanon up to the Litani River, if not even north of that, and we're gonna destroy everybody and we're gonna depopulate the entire country.
And basically, literally say that they're going to create sort of Gaza type conditions in, in chunks of South Lebanon.
But in reality, that's not gonna stop Hezbollah now.
And, and this is connected to the larger regional war that Iran has.
That includes Iran.

Next, section B, the world de idolizes.

Chinese vessels have reportedly been permitted to pass through the strait.
China imports about 40% of its oil from the Middle East and has been one of the largest buyers of Iranian oil.
There are also reports that the Iranians are suggesting they'd consider allowing a small number of oil tankers to pass through the strait if the oil cargo is traded in Chinese Yuan rather than US dollars.
If you could comment on that.
This is really fascinating because of course we know that the fundamental basis of the US Imperial Orders since the end of the Second World War has been on the one hand petroleum.
And on the other hand, the US dollar the the, the Globe's production and finance worlds are dependent on the petroleum that the US has guaranteed the flow of since the end of the Second World War.
And which until the nationalization of oil in the 1970s and eighties basically controlled something like 60% of the the world's oil reserves after nationalization, that percentage dropped dramatically.
But the US dollar continues to be on the financial channels that the US has crafted, continue to be a very significant bolster for the empire.
So the fact that Iran is actually looking for alternatives to the dollar in order to challenge the Petrodollar regime, which is as I said, one of the fundamentals of the US empire is a really interesting and quite clever, Indication of how the Iranians are hoping to influence the crafting of a world post this war or a new world order, post this war where there is a multipolar financial system where, for example, the dollar is no longer a single currency that rules the world, and the US is the only channel that control, or the only power that controls financial channels because of course, the US has used this this inordinate power to strong arm various states to institute sanctions to make it difficult for its enemies, for example, to purchase oil as, and, and of course to, to, it has used it to coerce a lot of countries as we see, for example, in the case of Cuba or Iran or indeed Russia to to do its bidding.
So the fact that Iran is calling for Petro Yuans to.
Come become an alternative to petro dollars is actually quite significant.
Also in indicating that the Iranians are well aware of how extensively the US has used its course of sanction capabilities through its control of the financial channels and through its, Mastery of the petrodollar and are trying to erode that power.
And Professor Khalili the US is now the world's largest oil producer, but because oil is a globally priced commodity, the price goes up in the US if the world market price goes up, but that's right.
How important do you think this might be in Trump's calculation?
Because another consideration, another aspect of this may be that as oil supplies diminish from the Middle East, the US could benefit because it is the world's largest oil producer and the price of its oil will go up and the demand for its oil.
Absolutely.
What a fantastic question because in fact, we have seen that when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began and, The Nord stream gas, natural gas pipelines to Europe were sabotaged.
We now there, there are now indications that this may have been done at the behest of the US and its Ukrainian allies.
But nevertheless, when that sabotage happened, it actually translated into massive gains for us natural gas production.
The thing is that there are a number of reasons why oil is not, why the US cannot become the sole oil producer for the whole of the world.
One is the question of proximity, for example.
The second is the question of capacity that the US has in order to actually replace, for example, the oil that is produced by Saudi Arabia or by Iran, or indeed by Russia.
But the third factor, and I think that this is the one that I think we should look out for, is that in the last 10 or 15 years, China has actually begun generating a, an alternative set of fuels sustainable fuels and developing technologies particularly of electric electric and battery technologies that will allow for, for example, solar or wind energy to displace, fossil fuels.
And the more that the price of oil goes up, which of course we have seen that happen, as you mentioned earlier.
And in fact this also translates into major windfall.
For US oil companies, this oil prices going up, benefits Chevron, it benefits Exxon.
It doesn't benefit the average, US citizen at the petrol stations, at the gas stations, but it does benefit the oil company.
So it definitely does, that does happen.
But the higher the price of oil goes up, the, the, the relatively cheaper it becomes to actually have sustainable alternatives, which of course that means that it benefits China in a major way since China is way ahead of the rest of the world in, Producing these technologies and in producing them cheaply.
So the solar panels that are being produced in China are a fraction of the price of solar panels that were being produced something like 15 or 20 years ago.
And I think this shift is actually, Is, is a major long term concern for the oil companies.
So in the short term, they're taking all the windfall that they can get.
But this again, is that the kind of a post-war order that we will see will likely also have major implications for the kind of energy people are willing to use.
Actually,

for 80 years, the United States sat on the throne of economic power as the world's reserve currency and hegemonic superpower.
I mean, look, others have grown.
Some have even kind of closed the gap.
But so long as the world's business is done in the universal language of the US dollar, we are an immovable force.
We're part of everything inexorably intertwined with global trade, whether people like it or not.
Now, holding onto this exorbitant privilege as it's referred to, is literally the easiest thing to do.
I mean, to lose it, we'd have to turn on our allies.
Start unprovoked wars, cut off the flow of immigration to the United States to take an extremely xenophobic stance, withdraw from trade deals and alliances and global organizations, place egregious tariffs on every country in the world, even if they're only inhabited by like penguins, right?
You'd have to eliminate poverty and health funding to developing nations, hoard wealth and resources, and kind of generally go out of our way to piss off everybody from Canada to Japan.
But it would do that, right?
I mean, what country would literally self-sabotage to this degree?
What citizens of said country would vote for somebody who promised explicitly to do all of those things?
I mean, it wouldn't happen.
It's all, it's all hypothetical.
It is a big theoretical exercise.
Just that would be, whew.
Oo.
Oh God.
But you know what?
For shits and giggles, let's just game it out.
So we've talked about the BRICS before, right?
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
These are the original five economies who banded together because they saw this writing on the wall.
Now, Indonesia is the most recent entrant, but there are others who are affiliated, who are quickly filling in the map like Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE Now taken together, they represent more than half of the world's population, and they've been quietly and methodically building an alternative to the Western dominated financial order.
And another thing that these nations have in common is that the United States has now placed aggressive tariffs on every single one of these nations.
That's not a coincidence.
It's a pattern.
And it's not just adversaries like Russia and China.
We're talking about India, a natural ally and a country with deep historical ties to the West, and they're absolutely livid at the Trump administration's trade posture.
And India just took over the Bris chairmanship from Brazil for 2026.
And what did they do?
Immediately?
They unveiled their agenda.
Now, forget about climate initiatives or cultural exchanges.
This is about payment systems, financialization, deep economic coordination, the kind of boring technocratic technical infrastructure that most people tune out, but literally runs the world.

So that brings us to December, 2025.
What exactly did they announce in this extremely pivotal month?
The unit, not Randy Johnson, not a euphemism, but a digital currency backed 40% by physical gold and 60% by a basket of bricks currencies.
So the al, the Yuan, the rupe ruble, and the rand all weighted equally in a basket.
So if we think back to some of our other coverage from last year, this might sound like a stable coin, but it's not exactly that.
It's stablecoin adjacent, let's say.
But a normal stable coin like tethers, USDT or circles USDC promises you redemption.
You can always swap your token for actual dollars because they're backed by dollars one to one.
And that redeem ability is the whole point.
It's the anchor.
The bricks unit is explicitly non redeemable.
You can't just walk up to a window and exchange your units for gold bars or rubles.
It's designed to track that basket of assets to provide a stability relative to those reserves, like what is the quantifiable value of the transaction, but there's no redemption mechanism.
Think of it more as John Maynard Kane's Bank or idea that got overruled, that Bretton Woods.
It would be a unit of account used for international clearing.
So everybody has the same notion of what the value is.
So the gold and the bricks currencies stabilize the valuation, but they don't create a direct redemption channel.
So this is a wholesale settlement asset, not a retail token.
Banks and governments will use it to settle cross-border trade payments, but individuals won't be using it to buy coffee.
But here's where it gets really interesting.
Every Bricks Nation already is independently moving toward digital transactions internally.
So in India's UPI, which is Unified Payments Interface, is revolutionizing how money already moves within the world's most populous country.
We've talked about China before and how they've been piloting a digital yuan for years.
Every one of these countries has something similar to that inside their own infrastructures.
Now to be clear, these aren't just payment apps.
This is fundamental infrastructure, and the unit is designed to sit on top of all of them, creating a unified rail system that connects these digital ecosystems together.
So BRICS Pay is the messaging and the settlement network that links all of these national systems with a decentralized messaging layer.
This is their answer to SWIFT, the international payment Transfer System built on the dollar.
These nations, some of our allies included, are building an alternative to SWIFT, not tomorrow, not in some hypothetical future.
Right now,

Iran is now directly challenging the most powerful tool of the US Empire, which is the global dominance of the US dollar.
The fact that the United States is the only country on earth that can print dollars, which is the global reserve currency, gives the US an exorbitant privilege so the US can maintain massive deficits with the rest of the world.
The best way to measure this is to look at the US balance of payments, and in particular, the current account, which looks at transactions between the US and the rest of the world.
And the US maintains enormous trade deficits with the rest of the world.
The US current account deficit is around $1 trillion every year, $1 trillion.
The reason that the US does not face an inflation crisis like many global south countries with chronic current account deficits such as Argentina or Pakistan.
The reason that the US doesn't face the massive depreciation of its currency and high rates of inflation is because it has this exorbitant privilege of printing the global reserve currency.
And every other country on earth needs dollars in order to pay for imports of oil, which is the most important global commodity.
And almost all oil is traded in dollars, at least historically, until quite recently.
Along with other important commodities.
All these other countries need to get access to dollars, which maintains this artificial demand for US dollars.
And Iran recognizes this.
This is why Teran is now directly challenging the Petrodollar system, which is an important pillar of global US dollar hegemony.
In the past few years, the D Dollarization movement has been picking up steam.
More and more countries have been seeking alternatives to the dominance of the US dollar, and even major western media outlets, especially the financial press, have been warning that as the Financial Times put it, great power conflict puts the dollar's exorbitant privilege under threat.
And a big reason for this is because the US Empire has weaponized the dollar.
The US has imposed illegal unilateral sanctions on one third of all countries.
And in 2022, with the proxy war in Ukraine, the US and European countries crossed the Rubicon.
They took a step way too far, and they seized $300 billion of dollar denominated and Euro denominated assets belonging to Russia's central bank.
These were the reserves of Russia and this scared countries all around the world and central banks all around the world because they said, wow, if the West can seize the reserves of Russia, which is a major power, a very powerful country, then they could easily seize the reserves of much smaller countries.
This has led to an acceleration in the de Dollarization of the foreign exchange reserves held by central banks around the world, especially in global south countries.
And now even Western media outlets are warning that the dollar is losing its credibility, and central banks are instead buying more and more gold.
This is why the price of gold has been absolutely skyrocketing.
It has tripled since 2023, and gold has in fact become the biggest asset held in the reserves of central banks around the world overtaking US Treasury securities, US government debt, which is going to cause a lot of problems for the US government.
Because a smaller and smaller share of US government debt is being bought by foreign investors.
In 2015, about one third, 34% of US treasury securities were held by foreign investors.
A decade later, it's now around 24%.
And over time, it's secularly decreasing, which means that it's likely that borrowing costs for the US government are going to increase the yields on US.
Treasury securities will likely increase over the long term.
But now let's bring in the question of the petro dollar of global oil sales in dollars.
Because still the dollar is used in 80% of global oil sales.
It's not 100%.
It used to be close to 100% just a few years ago.
But due to the Western sanctions on Russia, and Russia is a major oil producer, and now Russia is selling its oil to other countries in other currencies, not the US dollar.
This meant that in 2023, about 20% of global oil sales were in other currencies, not the dollar.
And now Iran is demanding that countries that want to send tankers through the straight of Horus have to sell their oil in Chinese Yuan.
So what will the figure be in 2026 or 2027 or the years that come?
Will it be 30%, 40% that is sold in other currencies, not the US dollar?
Let's not forget that 20%.
Of the global oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
So if Iran succeeds in de Dollarizing, even half of that, that is 10% of the global oil trade.
That is massive.
And that means that there will be less demand for the US dollar by other countries, which will increase inflationary pressure in the US and cause interest rates to increase, it'll cause yields on US treasuries to go up, which will put more pressure on the central bank, the Federal Reserve, to raise interest rates or risk higher inflation, which could cause a political backlash.
This is precisely why the US government is so afraid of de dollarization.
This is why Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Bris countries and said, if they try to challenge the global dominance of the US dollar, he will punish them with 100% tariffs.
Trump has repeated this threat many times, and he did put 50% tariffs on Brazil and India.
Two founding members of Bris and Trump also at one point threatened tariffs of 145% against China.
Another founding member of Bris and the US and Russia basically don't have trade with each other due to the Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
So this is not just empty rhetoric.
Trump has threatened all of these countries.
He also threatened South Africa with high tariffs and other measures.
But in reality, what all of this is likely to do is to accelerate de Dollarization and Iran has been at the vanguard, at the forefront of de Dollarization for well over a decade.
Back in 2012, the Iranian government announced that it was selling oil to China in Renminbi, in Yuan not, and US dollars.
This has been going on for well over a decade now.
Moreover, China and Russia have d Dollarized, basically all of their bilateral trade.
And China is buying oil and other commodities from Russia in a mixture of Chinese Yuan and Russian rubles.
D Dollarization in China has been picking up steam in recent years, especially after the Western sanctions on Russia in 2022.
And now a slight majority, a bit over half of the cross border transactions in China are conducted using its own currency, r and b, not the US dollar.
And this trend is only going to continue in the upcoming years.

Now Section C, world economy in peril.

The reason why the US, of course not to do what kind of imperialism 1 0 1 here, but it's the reason why the US is so powerful is primarily because of the fact that they have this global reserve currency, which is the dollar.
You see a dramatic shift away from that.
So the dollar petro dollar becomes central in us.
Asserting its global.
He hegemonic power.
You're seeing an active and a passive move away from that.
So you're seeing an active move away from that in the fact that Iran says, we will trade it in non-US denominated currencies, the Chinese r and b.
And so you're seeing that already beginning and you're seeing the fact that if the oil doesn't circulate globally, and so the Americans have come out and said we will protect our oil.
And the Russians have come out and said that we'll protect our oil.
And, and, and so what that does is slowly move us away from that kind of global world order.
And it's also the fact that the American bases are being destroyed and those likely won't be rebuilt or rebuilt to the same capacity because the whole deal was you provide this protection and we'll allow you to have bases and lots of power here.
So in both regards, you'll see a weakening of that power that begins the reduction of, of economic power.
So there's that at the kind of hegemonic level.
But at the practical level, it's not just, we're not just talking about oil, we're talking about fertilizer.
We're talking about a lot of different products that that need to be circulated, that won't, that will also affect the Americans.
Of course, we're also talking about global inflation.
Once oil reaches, let's say 1 50, 200, let's say let by April, may, June, who knows, that affects inflation everywhere.
So that inflationary costs will be baked into every country, and that will be baked into the American economy as well.
So the American economy of, of all the economies is the most global of the economy.
So the idea that it'll somehow be in inoculated or insulated from the impacts of this is just, is, is fantasy.

I think that's such an important point.
And I think we can see it from the White House is Iran is, is totally destroyed every single day.
There's phantom convoys that are being declared that are gonna be moving people through the straits of horror moves.
I mean, seemingly try to manipulate markets through these various things, but all of it seems to be a little bit of an illusion.
I mean, I'm no military expert, but, You hear Iran's missiles were totally destroyed, and then there's like four boies of missiles towards Israel, like the 15 minutes after they say that.
So, I mean, it does seem that whether they underestimated them or not, that, It's, it's a, a false dawn, this idea that somehow Iran is like, Imminently collapsing here.
Yeah, no, of course.
Look, we know the kind of munitions that exist in the Gulf States.
We know what the munitions that exist in many different contexts because they're directly done by the US and they're kind of public contracts, et cetera.
There is no idea the missile capacity in Iran.
Right?
What we know right now is that Iran hasn't sent a single cruise missile.
And the CIA report alone says that they have over a thousand cruise missiles.
We know that.
We know that they have, and this is the CIA report between 40 and 80,000 Shahidrones, they have sent, sent out less than 3000.
So the capacity here is in question where people misunderstood, and I think certainly the Americans did.
I'm not so certain that the Iranian, The Israelis did as much.
They try to rope the Americans into this potentially.
But is that during the 12 day war, they gave forewarning and they sent in older models.
None of the new ones that we're seeing ha be sent out right now.
And so that might have misled or a given the west a sense that they could just dominate.
And so you see this come out even in the way that Trump speaks.
He says, oh, we'll take control of the straight of war moves.
You can physically go there.
You can't take control because it's not a military that you're taking control because the missiles are the ones that cannot be necessarily controlled.
It was the same kind of rhetoric that happened during Yemen when the Red Sea blockade happened.
Biden and Trump said, oh, they, we'll go there and take it over.
But the missiles kept coming and because the missiles kept coming, no shifts could cross because the liabilities are too high.
So private companies aren't going, even if they were insured by the Americans, even if they could get an escort by the American military, they couldn't, they wouldn't do it.
So the idea that somehow they're gonna use conventional weapons, they're gonna use conventional fleets and and somehow overwhelm them.
Well, the preponderance of evidence shows that they're not able to do that.
It's a new form of war.
And the missiles and the, and the, and the drone swarms keep coming.
And there, it, it doesn't seem like there's any end sight.
And you also had local production.
It's not just mosaic structure that they, that we're talking about with Iran, where different, different groups have different sections, have different forms of autonomy.
It's also that they were producing domestically using sort of domestic products locally in underground tunnels.
So there's no way of knowing for the Americans and the Israelis to know where, where, and how this will stop.
And that's one of the reasons why they've kept going back and, and asking for negotiations just to restart.
That doesn't come from a place of confidence.
It comes from a face place of fear.

Let's say the war ended today.
I mean, I wish it would, right?
But let's say it ended today.
How much damage has already been done?
Because we're looking at, you know, I think we're hearing estimates of like at least three more weeks.
And I mean, that could be longer, but at least three more weeks already.
In just three weeks, a lot of damage has been done.
So walk us through like what the damages so far, and then how much worse can it get if this goes on another month, months?
Okay, so there's two things.
I think the first part is around the, the amount of infrastructure and American bases that have been destroyed.
Those bases, I think will potentially, some of them will be rebuilt.
Some of them won't be rebuilt, but they won't be built to the same capacity.
The second part is the infrastructure that's been destroyed, that leads to massive disinvestment because the potentiality of another attack is always looming.
Before this, it was just threats.
Iran was making threats and people felt like there wasn't, there weren't necessarily concrete now and into the foreseeable future.
That risk has been baked into every decision that'll be made in the Middle East.
Certainly when we talk about Dubai, for example, it was seen as a safe space, a place where people can go and invest and, and get some nice sun.
And it was just, that is gone.
There's, there's very little likelihood of that, despite the best efforts of the UAE to try and change the narrative.
So that, that's the first point.
The second one is around the US military.
It will be very difficult for the foreseeable future for the Americans to lead a large scale conventional war.
This is especially at the weakened position they're in.
I mean, this is precisely why Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary just today came out and said, well, Russian oil we're unsanctioned it and we'll potentially unsanctioned, they might have just unsanctioned Iranian oil.
Let's see.
What does that tell us?
Partly it tells us that, that, They're terrified of the prospect of global shortages.
And not only the, the effect on the economy, the reaction to the Americans, I mean, Israelis, you know, the, the negative reaction will be a long-term impact.
But also they are trying, and I believe this, I don't know if it's, but I suspect that it's kind of a massive fig leaf to the Iranians to say, okay, this is on the table.
We will potentially, we're serious about getting rid of sanctions against Iran.
I imagine that's what it is.
And so I think that the long-term impact of this is both at, again, at the hegemonic level, but also at the very practical level.
You have to understand that these, these oil tankers get to the US after two weeks.
So they're not even seeing the impacts of this necessarily.
The Americans, they make sweet cr, they, they produce sweet crude, but they transport that.
They take crude from, from from Canada, and, and they refine that and they take it from Venezuela and they refine that.
So there, it's not like they're producing the US and necessarily selling the American markets.
So the, the impact on it, even if the America is, if even if America is a producer, again, they're not gonna be insulated from this, they're still gonna see an impact.
The question is will it, will it continue for three weeks?
If it happens, continues for three weeks?
There's no telling what'll happen.

This is where modern monetary theory was supposed to be comforting because MMT tells us that a sovereign that issues its own fiat currency can never quote, run out of money.
And under the MMT framework, the true economic constraint isn't debt to GDP.
It's inflation deficits are manageable as long as you're not pushing the economy beyond its capacity to produce.
And should inflation eventually show up.
You can use things like taxes and regulation to cool things off.
But Trump's deregulatory and tax cut regime serves to starve this solution.
And the biggest inflation driver is oil.
So even MMT economists are crystal clear on one thing.
Printing money or running deficits becomes inflationary once you hit real resource constraints.
When there are no more, let's say, skilled workers or spare capacity, like no more barrels of oil to allocate, because in that world, extra spending just bids up prices.
Well, welcome to that world.
Not even MMT can save us now.
So to stay inside the MMT guardrails, the US would have to offset war spending with big tax heights or spending somewhere else, and it would have to clamp down on private demand with things like rationing or price controls or forced saving like explicit war bonds that soak up purchasing power.
In other words, we'd have to act like a serious wartime state with a mobilization economy and shared sacrifice instead, where a fiscally dominant, politically fractured empire that spent the past decade convincing itself deficits don't matter, and that every war can be put on the credit card forever.
Now, gaming this out, let's get more concrete about how this plays.
The obvious risk is an oil shock with immediate inflation at the pump, and it eventually works its way into the goods economy.
And this kind of shock shows up literally everywhere.
This scenario can be found in all post Britain era conflicts.
The difference here is that this is more than a disruption with time limits on it because Iran is going after core oil and natural gas infrastructure.
And why is that?
I don't know.
Maybe because we murdered their supreme leader and a building full of school children.
A scorched earth economic response shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise.
Now, under normal circumstances, the Fed could jack rates to crush inflation like Volcker, or it could slash them to cushion a recession like they did under Greenspan, but in a period of fiscal dominance, we're kind of damned if we do or damned if we don't. 'cause keeping rates high would make borrowing costs explode precisely.
By the way, at the time when the private credit market trouble is beginning to boil over into the real economy, because a lot of these shadow banking deals are variable rate deals that are tied to market rates.
So this would force seismic defaults throughout the entire economy.
Now, on the other hand, cutting rates like Trump has been pushing for since day one, further anchors inflation above target, which in turn crushes consumer demand, and there's no guarantee that it positively impacts the borrowing and financing activity.
Given the amount of uncertainty and volatility surrounding this administration's actions.
Just because you loosen up some requirements and lower rates doesn't mean that banks are automatically going to lend if they think that there's too much of a risk premium in the market.
And what you went wind up with then is a hesitant whipsaw Central Bank with no clear path forward.
So you kind of take them out of the mix.
Meanwhile, the treasury is stuck with an expanding deficit financing issue with higher rates on the short end of the yield curve.
Without meaningful tax heights hikes, which is anathema to every administration in the past 50 years.
Like Trump is not special in this regard.
He's just extreme.
It means that a flood of new treasury issuances into debt markets that are already beginning to question US economic hegemony.
So again, if we game this out, the administration will likely have to incentivize IE pressure banks to hold more US treasuries and maybe even engage in yield curve control.
To keep the long end of the yield curve from running away, the Fed will have to expand use of its repo facilities to backstop liquidity in the market.
And these responses are all well and good in terms of providing market stability in the banking sector, but it does nothing to address the concerns in the real and consumer economy because it leads to inflation and a tighter credit environment.
And those two things always never not lead to a deep recession.
The balance sheet of the United States is in a completely different position than it was during prior wartime periods.
That's the whole point here.
And the fiscal and regulatory stance of this administration means that the consumer is the one who will ultimately be on the hook.
And no amount of energy, independent supply and increased stockpiles of oil at home will matter to global crude and natural gas prices.
Because oil is fungible, it's traded globally now.
War is stupid under nearly every circumstance.
In fact, Trump from one year ago, and pretty much the rest of his professional life would tell you the same thing.
And in the past and in theory, we had the top minds in the military and the administration to help us navigate war efforts.
That still resulted in inflation, recessions and financial crises.
So what chances do you think we have with this collection of MIS grants?
Fools and Sants, they're not even wearing shoes that fit as it was.
Those cycles played out in a world where US hegemony was unquestioned and the debt interest dynamic wasn't yet on a knife's edge.
Today's circumstances are totally different.
Any recessionary plunge triggered by this conflict will likely be deeper and harder to climb out of because of fiscal dominance, because of diminished faith in the US dollar, and a desire to break ties with a country that elected a madman, not once but twice, this could go down as the single biggest self-inflicted wound of any US President.
The moment when Washington in defense of an already fragile hegemony triggers the very chain of events that ends it because the world isn't just gonna sit idly by while the United States shuts off one fifth of the global fucking oil supply.
I mean, China's building a blue water Navy and deepening economic ties across the global South.
Russia, despite its own disasters, is still at the grownups table with nukes energy and diplomatic leverage.
Europe finally learning that the US is now a rogue undependable partner, willing to weaponize everything from payment systems to shipping lanes.
So the end state is easy to sketch.
The US is reduced from global spanning hegemon to a regional hemispheric power first among equals in the Americas.
Maybe while new and old players China, a bruised but resilient Russia and increasingly autonomous Europe and a more assertive global south.
Cobbled together a more multipolar order, not because they beat us on some imaginary battlefield, but because we blew a hole in our own economic hole and theirs at the same time, and they finally decided that they had enough.
That's how this ends, and the process in between here, and that is a very painful one where we find ourselves in second, third, maybe a lower place.
Are you prepared for that?
Is anyone?

This is the global oil supply.
It's all sold in one big market, and that means all the producers sell to that same global supply.
And then all the oil consuming countries buy from that same supply.
You could also call these exporters and importers.
It's the same idea anyway, the Iran War cut off one fifth of global supply.
So when delivery stops showing up at those countries, we talked about they can't actually buy from other producers, but they've got to do it by outbidding, whoever would've bought that oil otherwise.
And that pushes up the price for everyone.
And that's even hitting places like the US where we are still receiving oil from before the war started.
Countries whose shipments ran out are creating this big surge in demand.
So anytime you go to the pump or pay your power bill, you are bidding against them and they are bidding against you.
And all of this is going to get significantly worse when China and Europe start running out of shipments too.
And surge demand to replace.
Which is really close to happening.
But all of this raises a question.
If these shortages are just days or weeks from reaching everywhere, then why are we on a lull?
Every government in the world can see that same map that I showed you earlier.
They know catastrophe is bicycling their way.
So why doesn't it feel like it?
This is Trump.
A couple of weeks into the war, sir, could you first see a deal in Iran this upcoming week?
I do see a deal in Iran.
Yeah.
Mr.
President could be sued when he said this.
The price of oil dropped right away.
Wars ending, right?
Everything back to normal.
Except he'd been saying the same thing for weeks.
We have had very, very strong talks.
We'll see where they lead.
We have points, major points of agreement.
I would say almost all points of agreement.
Iran has said that there are no talks and Trump is making it all up.
Iran's foreign ministry says you're not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations down end the world.
They're gonna have to get themselves better public relations people.
He's been doing a ton of this like a few days earlier he'd posted the US was very close to meeting its objectives in the war and might soon start winding down.
So why does he keep doing this?
Well, to understand, go back to that graphic of the global oil market.
We left something out before.
A lot of oil gets bought up by speculators who sell it secondhand.
This all takes place through something called an oil future.
It sounds scummy, but it actually serves a pretty useful function in stabilizing prices.
It doesn't matter how it works.
The point is those speculators set their price by what they think oil will cost in the future.
Which means if Trump comes along and says, peace in our time, speculators conclude prices will drop and sell their oil futures for cheap, which helps to balance the price rise in the regular market.
That's part of the lull.
Even though econ 1 0 1 says oil prices should be going up way more than they have like.
Crisis level, six, $7 a gallon territory.
All of this market manipulation is tamping those prices down.
But that sounds good, right?
Except that it means that the global economy is consuming oil and gas as if they were still priced and flowing.
Normally, it's like if your city were running out of water and everybody in town decided to take two showers a day.
And there's another thing propping up this weird artificial lll that we're in.
IE countries have unanimously decided to launch the largest ever release of emergency oil stocks in our agencies history.
Remember earlier when I said that all countries keep oil stockpiles while a bunch of those countries got together recently and agreed to sell off 400 million barrels from their reserves?
That's like if 200 of those oil super tankers suddenly materialized outta the Bermuda Triangle all at once.
And then on top of that, the US also agreed to allow Russia, and this is kind of hard to believe, Iran to sell off some of their sanctioned oil and releasing these stockpiles has added oil to the market equivalent to about half of what was cut off by the war, which has helped to balance out supply and prices and all of that.
But here's the catch, and it's a big one, the stockpile release and those speculator games, these are both one-off tricks.
They only work for a few weeks and when they're used up, they're gone.
Man, that artificial lull that we have been holding up, it is gonna come crashing to an end just as those last shipments of Middle Eastern oil dry up the final, Vessel carrying jet fuel into the United Kingdoms gonna get here in 48 hours and there's no more after that.
So when that oil shark hits.
Is going to hit us all at once.
Okay, so now we understand what that oil shock is, how it's gonna get here, how it's forming, what is it gonna look like.
When people picture this, they tend to talk about it in terms of rising prices. $200 barrel oil, $8 a gallon at the pump, a thousand dollars domestic flights.
But this misses something much larger and much more consequential that is already starting to happen.
To understand what that is, imagine if instead of talking about energy supplies, we were talking about food.
Now if I told you that one or 2% of the world's food supply was going offline, you probably worry.
You might see food prices go up, some, some hardships on the margin, but you would think it's basically survivable.
But now, if I told you the world was losing, had already lost 20% of its food supply, you would think, well, we are about to have fewer people on earth.
The name for this is demand destruction.
It's when the supply of something drops so severely that whoever or whatever relies on it, the demand permanently withers away.
And that is what is going to happen to any global economic activity that uses energy, which is like almost all of it factories, technological development and production, car and airplane travel, air conditioning, building homes or cities.
I'm not saying that those things are going to go away, but there is going to be a lot less of them, like about 20% less.
Once things really bottom out.
The economic shocks caused by this war will be with us for months.
How we emerge from this crisis will define us.
For a generation.
Let me give you a few specifics that are already starting to manifest.
Airlines say they cannot afford to operate and are shutting down many of their flights, so it'll be harder to explore the world.
European governments are telling their citizens not to travel for vacation this summer.
There's just not enough fuel for it.
A number of factories are already closing worldwide, especially in Asia.
Semiconductor factories in particular are closing both for lack of power, and because semiconductors use helium, which is a byproduct of natural gas production, so is also going away, importers expect it to become prohibitively expensive to ship some things abroad, so we'll have fewer foreign goods, less off season produce, and we'll export less too.
So fewer jobs, construction supplies like lumber are getting too expensive to harvest or import, which means fewer homes getting built, which means existing homes getting more expensive and harder to afford.
Many of the essential components to fertilizer also come through the Persian Gulf.
Things like phosphorus, there are already fertilizer shortages in Asia, so yeah, there will also be less food in the world.
All of these things also contribute to inflation.
Prices go up harder to afford things.
Our standard of living goes down, and the thing is, even if the wars today, this process, this demand destruction is actually gonna continue.
It's because American, Israeli and Iranian missiles have left much of the region's energy infrastructure and ruins things like refineries, gas terminals that will take years to rebuild, which means years before that oil and gas comes back online this winter is probably gonna bring the first big wave of hardship.
Right now, spring and summer is a time of year when countries are usually stockpiling oil and gas so that they can get their people through the cold months.
But instead, those countries are burning their stockpiles down to zero.
That means December and January are likely to bring a whole new oil shock when a billion people across Europe, Asia, and North America go to turn on their winter stoves or heaters and find that there is not enough gas to go around.
Now look.
I'm not saying all this because I wanna scare you and we are not on the verge of some great collapse.
I promise you that Mad Max is gonna remain a thing that you watch just on your TV and not out your window.
And I'm telling you all this because the architects of this war want you to believe that this the way things are right now, today, that that's the worst of it.
That we just have to write out a few weeks of high gas prices and we're gonna come out the other side of this war basically unscathed.
But what's happening right now is a trick.
This lull is, it's fake.
It's hiding the real consequences of this war, which are coming.
The people in Iran and in neighboring countries who go to sleep under falling bombs are already living under this war.
The thing is, is that, I'm not saying it's the same, but pretty soon we are going to be living the consequences of this war to

over the past 50 years since the peak oil panic, we've made extraordinary advances, for better, for worse.
I mean, fracking technology unlocked the Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin.
Offshore deep water drilling added enormous reserves.
LNG became globally traded and ubiquitous.
So Hubbert's prediction curve was essentially dead.
Oil and gas are fungible commodities that are traded on global exchanges.
So when prices go up anywhere, they go up everywhere.
India now buying Russian crude at a 50% higher volume than February just to compensate for the Gulf disruption.
Those prices are still tracking global benchmarks.
There's no escape valve.
And listen, we see it because it starts at the pump, right?
Gasoline prices are already spiking, and every American with a car or a commute feels it immediately and viscerally.
That part's obvious, but then the cascade begins.
Trucking costs rise because diesel is a fuel input.
Rail shipping, maritime freight, last mile delivery, all of it reprices.
The cost of transporting every good in the economy goes up, which means the cost of every good in the economy goes up next, agriculture.
Fertilizers and petrochemical derivatives and farm equipment that run on diesel.
Food prices were already elevated and now they get a second wind.
Then manufacturing inputs are embedded in almost every industrial production process.
Steel, aluminum, plastics, chemicals, all of them feel the burn and all of that reprices with a lag.
So it shows up first in the PPI, which is what we're looking at now, and then eventually in CPI and by then it's too late.
So this is just one of the things that makes this war insane.
I mean, completely batshit insane, but if we were gonna have one, if he insisted on bringing us into this war, he absolutely needed it to be short, not protracted like it's headed for short, because the damage, once it gets into the economy, it just doesn't go away.
The longer the oil stays at triple digits, the deeper the inflationary wave.
And Trump has catastrophically underestimated the Iranians.
He thought this was gonna be quick, but now they hold all the cards and they know it.
This is an A skirmish, it's an endurance contest, and the American economy, quite frankly, isn't built for this.
So the thing about the PPI data that we just got is that this is before the Iran War.
This is before the Strait of HOR moves closed.
This is before WTI and Brent went past a hundred dollars a barrel.
So by the time we get March's data in mid-April, it's gonna reflect a 40% shock and an increase to energy prices built into the numbers that are already the worst.
And here's why.
Economists fear inflation above every other metric, above unemployment and deficit spending.
Even interest rates.
Inflation is the great leveler.
It levels every playing field.
It doesn't care if you're a developing agricultural economy or the most diversified industrial economy in human history.
Doesn't care if you're Japan, almost entirely import dependent and extraordinarily exposed to commodity price shocks or the United States.
With our trillion dollar consumer market.
Inflation hits everything everywhere, and it causes enormous collateral damage in the form of job losses and a recession eventually.
And it erodes purchasing power.
It punishes savers.
It destroys fixed income budgets for anyone on a pension or a salary.
And every time a central bank tries to tame it aggressively, they break things.
But my biggest concern right now, the Boulder, in my opinion, that's sitting on the edge of the cliff, is private credit.
Now, we've been talking a lot about this because it's starting to percolate into the mainstream now.
Morgan Stanley dropped the note on Monday forecasting that default rates in direct lending could reach 8%.
That's like COVID era high.
Other analysts that look at the business development companies, the BDC space, say that these publicly traded vehicles that lend to small and medium sized businesses are projecting defaults in certain software heavy portfolios as high as 15%.
Now, this BDC sector has already declined by 23%, and you have a ton of business that's coming for maturity.
In 2026, BlackRock, TCP Capital saw its net asset value drop. 50% in one year go capital just cut its dividend by 15%.
So now throw inflation into that picture.
Higher input costs, squeeze the EBITDA of private credit borrowers who are already leveraged to the HILT coverage ratios, which is the measure of how comfortably a company can service its debt.
Wind up compressing, defaults accelerate.
And then you're in two, 2007, 2008 territory where structural parts of the broad economy start quietly collapsing in ways that are invisible to the average person at first until the big domino falls publicly.
And that domino probably looks like one of the big banks announcing a significant pullback from private, private credit lending.
So like one of the large BDCs reporting devastating earnings that trigger a wave of redemptions and a run in both the equity and the bond markets that are attached to that sector.
That kind of contagion can't be contained.
It spreads.
It always spreads through the interconnected tissue of the financial system that no one's fully mapped.
By the way, this is why inflation is the most feared of all metrics.
Not because it raises prices.
It's not a one-to-one relationship.
It's because inflation actually is the pin to pop whatever bubble is out there.
It finds any overinflated over leveraged and overexposed area of the economy and pops it.

Moving on to section D, the moral rot of war profiteering.

Hello Coffee.
My name is Nick.
I'm the CEO of Bubblemaps, which is an on chain analytics company.
So you guys just analyzed a series of Polymarketaccounts, which seemed to be related to each other financially.
And can you just tell us about the kinds of bets you saw them making related to wars?
Their accuracy and just some of the timing things.
Obviously it's very hard to prove definitively who this is without having the internal documents, but just, just tell us some of the red flags you guys saw.
Yeah, for sure.
So to give you some context, recently they've been, somebody got arrested in Israel for insider trading and it wasn't fully market.
And it, in the article, which was not fully disclosed, there was a lot of secrecy around this news.
We learned that somebody that was in the military personnel of Israel was using this privilege information to do insider trading, and he got arrested.
And so this inspired us to look into this in more depth was this an in isolated incident or is there more of this insiders who are benefiting from privileged military like information?
And so we looked into more of this Polymarket, war bets and war markets, and we find, we found that in fact, There was plenty more insiders or potential insiders.
I'm gonna be very careful with the wording, as you said, we're never sure, but more of these very suspected or suspicious trades that were happening on this markets.
And on this particular post that we, that we shared today, it was seven accounts on Polymarket that were, for the most part, betting on US and Israeli military operations with a 93% success rate.
Pretty good, pretty good, pretty good.
Decent.
And, and let's, and let's be clear, these, they weren't betting on events that were already like 90% gonna happen.
Some of their bets were on actually very unlikely events, right?
At the time.
The the, the mainstream aca, the mainstream consensus was that these were unlikely events, like 80% not gonna happen.
They would bet the yes or 80% gonna happen, they would bet the no.
Right?
Isn't that what y'all found?
Yeah, for the most part, for the most part, at least for the trades that made the most money, of course it was mostly trading at like 20 cents.
Meaning that the consensus were was 80% not gonna happen and they traded against it.
So not only the amounts were suspicious in the sense that it was very unlikely events, but also the timing.
So as you said, the timing of this bets occurred, I don't know, maybe one or two weeks before the resolution of the event, which was the strikes from the US and from Israel in Iran.
And we've seen this network of accounts that were betting dating all the way from 2024 to 2026.
So it's been two years of successful trades.
And then the part that is insane is the fact that they're connected on chain.
Without getting into too much specificities, they were sharing MXC deposits, they were sharing by bid deposits, they were wiring profits to the same deposit address.
Sharing funding address was very obvious pattern of clustered Polymarket accounts.
What do you think this means for the future of these prediction markets?
I mean, obviously there's a claim that the, this is not allowed.
Insider trading's not allowed Polymarket's gonna go after them.
Kalshi, they're gonna shut it down.
The one thing that occurs to me is it's actually very hard, even if you know the identity of the person to prove that it's insider trading.
Because for example, yes, if they are like a lieutenant colonel in, in the Americans are armed forces, yes, you can go, okay, that's obvious insider trading.
Right?
But let's say it's the like, like step cousin or something who just got the intel from somebody and they insider traded it.
Are you gonna know, like even if you're a poly market, how can you say for sure that's insider trading?
It seems to be just the fact that these markets are there, is presenting the opportunity for all sorts of insider trading, that no matter how much information you have on chain or even the KYC, it's gonna be very hard to prove.
When we talk about military insiders, most of the time people intuitively point towards like high level government people or like high level general or lieutenant as you said.
But it can be anyone.
It can be troops on the ground, it can be people that are fueling the jets.
It can be logistics, it can be intelligence.
Like there's so many people that are involved when it comes with military operations.
You can even, as you said, potentially can be the dad.
The son is calling him the day before saying, look dad, I'm gonna be away tomorrow.
Stay safe.
Love you.
It can be the wife.
She's aware too.
I mean, technically.
So there's, there are thousands of peoples who are, who are aware ahead of time.
So this makes it very hard to track and to know who are, who are gonna be the insiders.
They can be outside of the us potentially outside of like the US jurisdiction.
And yeah, this is, this is tricky, but like definitely prediction markets are opening a new layer, a new category of, of potential insiders.
Military personnels, big tech, employees policy, Medicare, Central bank employee.
Like all those people, they know information ahead of time and a couple of years ago they couldn't do anything about it or with it.
And now they can make a quick three x anonymous.
It's, it's great a hey future of finance.
No, it's actually reminds me a lot of the Pelosi stuff.
People go, oh, Nancy Pelosi's such a great traitor.
They forget it's Paul Pelosi that's placing those bets, her husband.
Right.
And that's always been the plausible deniability of the whole thing is.
Well, I can't obviously trade.
That is gonna be up to my husband.
My husband's just interested in the market, right?
And that's all, of course, what you can say here too is like, oh, man.
Well, of course, as an armed service member, I wouldn't trade, but my wife got really interested in poly market war betting.

Despite the influence weapons companies have over us, politics and the trail of destruction, they've left around the world.
There's been very little in the way of accountability.
So I'm about to meet a former prosecutor who's trying to change that.
Brad Wolf spent his career as a government's lawyer for the state of Pennsylvania.
Over the past couple of years, he's led the Merchants of Death Walk arounds, tribunal.
What is the Merchants of Death?
So the merchants of Death is a people's tribunal and people's tribunals have a longstanding tradition, such that when the courts refuse to act and hold people or corporations or governments accountable, the citizenry has to act.
This tribunal was meant to hold accountable US weapons manufacturers for knowingly producing products that kill innocent civilians in very large numbers Across the, across the globe.
We interviewed international attorneys.
We interviewed military officers.
We interviewed award-winning journalists.
We interviewed victims.
We interviewed doctors, human rights workers, and put all the information together in video documents in order to present it to the judges, but also to present it to the public because we wanted this to be a a, an educational tool as well.
And what did you conclude?
So after eight months of presenting evidence to our judges, the judges deliberated and they found the four defendants, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the drone maker, general Atomics.
Our 10 judges found them guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide as defined by the Rome statute of the International criminal court.
The companies, they say, we just make the weapons.
We're not in charge of what happens with the weapons or who's dropping it or who's using it.
How do you respond to that?
Well, they're not just making the weapons.
What they're doing is they are creating a narrative with their dollars, and that narrative is in the halls of Congress.
Through lobbying, they're able to lobby individuals in the Pentagon.
They're able to employ retired officers from the Pentagon, put them on their board of directors for large sums of money, and then have them go on television shows like CNN or M-S-N-B-C or Fox, and tell the American public that it's necessary for military action, which of course means more contract for that legends maker.
Iran is back on their heels.
We have an opportunity to finish these guys once and for all, for their malign and an aggressive behavior and destabilize in the Middle East.
So they create a narrative to sell products that they know are killing innocent people.
There were some people who will say that at the end of the day, this tribunal doesn't have any legal jurisdiction.
We've heard over and over again how powerful military industrial complexes is there a way of holding it accountable within the legal framework that we have.
Yes, there is a way to change this.
The tribunal, the judges, outlined a number of recommendations in their final verdict.
So for instance, if you would have a ban on weapons makers, lobbying members of Congress who are approving contracts for these weapons makers, that would be a step in the right direction if you would prosecute the CEOs of these companies and hold them accountable for war crimes.
That too could have a, have a big impact.

Decades of lavish spending in Washington have created the largest military the world has ever seen with a network of roughly 750 foreign bases and troops stationed in more than 160 countries.
In US foreign policy conflict is a permanent fixture.
Since 1945, the US has bombed or invaded at least 28 countries, causing the deaths of millions of people.
Don't kid yourself.
You do have a military industrial complex they do.
Like war.
President Trump presents himself as the antidote to this status quo.
One of the first meetings I wanna have is with President Xi of China, president Putin of Russia, and I wanna say, let's cut our military budget in half for a moment.
The president's talk of budget cuts had the Big Five on edge.
We are seeing defense stocks pretty much all lower right now.
You got Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman all losing investor money today, but Trump's actions speak louder

within just six months of taking office.
Trump's administration bombed three countries, Yemen, Somalia, and Iran American military capabilities were on display with Operation Midnight Hammer, some 75 missiles launched, including 14 GVU-57, massive ordinance Penetrators, also known as the bunker Buster bombs under the pretext of what the Pentagon calls great power competition.
Trump has proposed a Pentagon budget worth more than what the next 10 military powers spend on their armed forces combined.
Highest budget we've ever had in history for military, $1 trillion.
And we're getting the greatest missiles, the greatest weapons.
And I hate, I hate to do it, but you have to do it because we believe in peace through strength.
The forecast for the US war industry, once again is looking good.
Whatever the wider cost the arms industry has now in infiltrated almost every part of our federal government to the point that civilian control of the military is at times in question.
This great power competition lens is so ambiguous that the strategic end is completely unclear, which is perfect for contractors because that means that there's never gonna be enough to win a great power competition.
No empire has ever maintained its dominant role in the world forever.
We have seen that in history over and over again.
Yet the United States somehow thinks that it is special or different, and that it will be able to maintain global dominance forever.
And now the United States is poised to spend itself into oblivion in an attempt to maintain this global dominance.
And that will come to the detriment of democracy, to the quality of life for Americans and probably to the detriment of peace in the world.

Deadline that President Trump has set 8:00 PM Yep.
Has threatened to destroy a civilization.
How does an investor process that?
Is it, is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk?
This video is such a good illustration of just how cannibalistic today's economic system actually is because, what do you mean?
These are like serious, professional people discussing the best way to approach gambling on the outcome of a potential genocide for personal profit and society treats this practice very seriously, right?
As if it's actually contributing in some kind of meaningful way.
They're not creating value, right?
They're just moving value around.
They're reconceptualizing and recontextualizing what value means in order to siphon some of it into their own pockets in the process.
And they siphon it outta the pockets of the people at the bottom of the mechanical totem pole, whose job it is to make sure that the cogs stay greased and keep turning.
They package the mortgages of poor people into giant balls of conceptual debt and then make bets on whether or not they think poor people as a whole are gonna be able to pay their bills.
And then when the poor people can't pay their bills anymore, when the debt goes sour, they use their pre-purchase.
Pawns within the government to use the poor people's tax money to bail them out of the repercussions.
They use their pawns in government to give them control of the retirement funds of the population, and then use that money as leverage to invest in a way that manipulates geopolitical and local political outcomes that serve their interests and hurt the population.
They weaponize your own retirement money against you.
This cancerous system goes all the way to the very core of how our society operates today.
What is the number one thing that is prioritized in the way that giant corporations operate?
Right?
It's not profitability, it's shareholder value.
It's making sure the bet pays off.
Amazon wasn't profitable for many, many years after it was founded.
They were losing money on purpose in order to drive small businesses into bankruptcy in order to dominate as much of the market as possible in order to profit more later on.
So the company was losing money, but the size of the company was growing dramatically, which, if you're a shareholder, is extremely profitable, which is why this is what's prioritized most in the system.
This is where the rich people keep all their money.
They also just openly straight up fix the bets Mafioso style.
Like the other week, somebody made a $1.5 billion bet that the price of oil was about to come down a little and the general market was about to stabilize.
Literally, minutes after that, Donald Trump posted on truth social that negotiations with Iran were going fantastic, and the Strait of Horus was gonna open any minute now, and that didn't actually happen, but it did temporarily stabilize the market and bring the price of oil down.
Whoever made that bet made hundreds of millions of dollars.
In minutes is not just a Donald Trump problem, right?
It's a global politician problem.
Really.
A member of Congress gets paid $174,000 a year as a salary.
Meanwhile, the average net worth of a member of Congress is $6 million.
The United States Congress consistently outperforms the most successful investors anywhere in the world by a pretty big margin.
They literally profit from things like war and genocide.
It just happened to all start buying shares in defense contractors right before a massive conflict starts just happened.
To know when to sell at just the right time, right before the market takes a hit.
This is not just insider trading, it's not even just market manipulation at this point.
This is what the system is.
This is what it's for.
People have been convinced that this giant, self consuming casino is an actual, feasible, sustainable economic system, and the people that they're voting for to protect their interests are the gangsters who are fixing the bets.
This is madness to, its very core, it's madness.
It's a sick, broken system where the parasites have completely overtaken.
The host,

right before I was about to record this Polymarket's, announced that Palantir will now build the integrity monitoring system to catch insider training happening on the platform.
So the same guy profiting from government intelligence contracts is now also about to fund and monitor a platform where people with government intelligence are allegedly making millions.
Poly market also receives funding from the Intercontinental Exchange.
The company that literally owns the New York Stock Exchange and just recently they put $2 billion in.
So point is they have the biggest names and surveillance in Wall Street all in.
But the thing is, even with all that money, it can only go so far. 'cause when the Pentagon Project can even be shut down, you also need someone to make sure that doesn't happen.
Well, good thing Donald Trump Jr.
Is not only an advisor to both poly market and Kalshi, but his venture capital firm has also invested millions in a poly market.
But the family web goes deeper.
I didn't even know this, but President Trump's own media company has also launched his own prediction platform called Truth.Predict with crypto.com.
So the point is, the Trump family has a vested financial interest for the platform to succeed, but also to politically protect these prediction markets.
It's exactly why when the DOJ under Biden rated poly markets CEO's home and seizes devices for letting Americans bet on the platform to VPNs in 2022, charges were immediately dropped once Trump came into office.
But no amount of protection is guaranteed until you put the right guy in charge of writing the rules.
Trump's Pick to lead the CFTC, which is like the agency that's supposed to regulate these sorts of markets, is a guy named Michael Seelig.
And before he got this job, he was this lawyer who represented crypto client.
And the very first thing he did when he got the position was recruit executives from Poly Market, Kalshi crypto.com.com, DraftKings and FanDuel, to advise his agency on how to write the rules for their own industry.
But I'm laughing because it sounds ridiculous, but soon after he killed the rule that would ban political and sports betting contracts.
And he did this by classifying prediction markets as commodities, not gambling, because commodities have way looser rules.
So now states that were trying to sue poly market and Kalshi for violating gambling laws, can't touch them anymore.
And oh, like by the way, he's doing this all by himself.
All four other commissioner seats that were previously taken are now empty.
So it's just him writing these rules advised by the very companies that he's supposed to regulate.
So that's the funding, the political connections, and the captured regulators.
But remember how I said that I didn't expect where this all led to because if we're really gonna follow the money here, none of it really works without one thing.
And that's you before those who profited from the war were only the insiders.
But now every time you place a bet on war breaking out or someone getting unli, the uncomfortable truth is that makes you a war prophet or two.
And so you can blame the others and the big guides.
But $1 billion has already been bet on this war alone.
And congrats if you win.
You just bet on human suffering.
And even when you lose out on your bet, your money is what?
Lets insiders cash out half a million dollars this same week.
Everyone's gas goes up.
So just like defense contractors may not want it to end the prediction market, business model also doesn't need them to end either.
Because longer the crisis, the more uncertainty and the more uncertainty, the more people trade.
And the more people trade, the more the platform makes.
And you are funding it too.
But the thing is, the real cost of all this goes beyond money.
Because what nobody's talking about is what happens when the people placing the bets are the ones influencing the wars themselves.
And this might be the most dangerous consequence of what's happening right now, because remember that Venezuela story I've been talking about?
Well, there's a part of the story I didn't even tell you when that bet was placed.
The OZ on poly market spiked because people watching this knew this wasn't just some regular Joe.
And what that means is that that spike was visible to anyone on the platform, which means it includes the very people the operation was targeting.
An analysis in the irregular warfare journal calculated that from the moment that BET was placed, Maduro's security detail had precisely 40 minutes to relocate him before the US Special Operations team arrived.
So now really think about that.
What I'm telling you here is that probably the most important asset and warfare, the element of surprise was almost blown by some dude chasing bands on a betting platform.
And that was just one bet on one operation.
But now there's 213 of these active markets on this war.
So what happens if foreign intelligence catches onto that same pattern?
The consequences are different.
That next week may not just end in a compromise Mission, but if we start sending ground troops, that means compromise American lives.
And again, the craziest thing of all this is that the poly market, CEO, knows this and encourages it, allegedly because a poly market, CEO doesn't just go on 60 minutes and call prediction markets the most accurate thing we have as mankind for no reason.
The access is what they're selling.
And it's exactly why C-N-N-C-N-B-C and the Wall Street Journal have all struck deals with prediction markets.
If the thing you and I can agree that new sources know better than anyone that closer the source, like the more valuable information.
And I don't even have to say allegedly because it's, it's happened.
Two people in Israel were charged with security offenses for using classified intelligence to bet on the June, 2025 strikes.
So what I'm telling you is that what he's really selling here is access to people who already know the answer.
And that's what really worries me because what happens when people with the power to decide when the US strikes another country is also invested in a market predicting when the US will strike that country.
No one's been caught doing that yet officially in America.
But the thing is, they don't even have to be that corrupt to make a bunch of money now.
And that incentive that exists wasn't there two years ago.
So I guess we can just thank God that this incentive didn't exist during World War II because it could have been a lot worse.
But now the question becomes how far does this all go and lead to, well, Polymarket has already answered that.
After the US has struck Iran, people started noticing something.
They noticed that Polymarket has been quietly running a market for years now on whether nukes will be detonated by the end of 2026, over 650,000 have already bet on it.
And after the strikes, enough people voted yes, that Oz reached as high as 22%.
So what's clear is that there is really no line because the only reason they pulled it was that enough people started getting pissed.
So what we're clearly seeing here is this new reality of war right in front of our eyes.
When someone in Teran is sheltering from bombs and an American soldier's family is waiting for news, just becomes this other side of someone else's odds.
What's pretty clear is that war now isn't just being fought, it's being influenced, traded and profited from in that system that makes that possible is only getting and going to get bigger.

Continuing with Section E, the damage our military does.

Let's start with that $1.5 trillion budget which doesn't include, let's be clear, funding for the current Iran war that will come in a further supplemental.
So it's a vast amount of money and ultimately leveraged against the US debt.
We are spending our children's money to take the lives of other people's children.
That's what it boils down to.
It's just a vast amount of money, In a way that is reckless by an administration that is corrupt.
When we look at this new weapon sales, these new weapon sales to Israel, 20,000, 1000 pound bombs coming out of, let's be clear as well US stocks a lot of these weapons are not going to be built afresh.
They're gonna be transferred out of, The US stocks and then President Trump will, if he gets it, spend this money from the taxpayer and from our national debt to recuperate or to reup ourselves for that.
It is another burden, Certainly on the American people, but also on the world.
At the end of the day it is not just these bombs.
There are also other weapons we have provided to Israel, including bulldozers that are being used to deri to destroy Palestinian homes in act of collective punishment.
Senator Sanders will be bringing a vote next week to the floor of the Senate against the bombs, against these bulldozers.
And I think it is vital that we see as many democratic senators as possible, Vote to block those weapons and ideally Republicans as well, because this is no one's interest whatsoever.
And Josh, you said that the foreign military financing, or FMF serves almost as a gift card for Israel to spend on weapons.
You talk about the disproportion in military aids, specifically to Israel that the United States has had historically compared to other countries in the world.
So, Israel has always been by far the largest recipient of US military grant assistance in President Trump's budget request.
The provision to Israel of US funding comprises 63% of the global available total.
People keep asking, why do we keep getting pulled back into wars in the Middle East?
What about this rebalance to Asia?
Well, when you're spending the majority of your global funding in Israel and in the region in the Middle East, of course you're gonna keep getting pulled back.
We are not getting pulled back to the Middle East.
We are anchored to it as a function of our own funding to Israel.

I wanna bring, oh, go ahead, Juan.
Yeah, I, I, yeah, I just wanna say last month the State Department approved potential arm sales to three Middle East countries worth more than $23 billion.
Talk about this age to countries like the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan.
So this isn't aid, this is sales, but the Trump administration used an emergency authority.
These cases were already sitting under Congressional review and Congress had questions both about the armed sales to Israel and about the armed sales to the UAE, the UAE, of course, being involved right now, or supporting the genocide that is occurring in Sudan.
The administration, I think very cynically used the current war with Iran to essentially say, okay, we're declaring an emergency.
We're not gonna answer any more questions from Congress about these human rights abuses, about these risks.
And we are just going to move these forward.
So a very cynical, very disturbing use of of the existing authorities.
And before we go to Rob Weissman, I wanted to ask you four astronauts are part of the NASA Artemis two crew became the furthest humans from Earth and all of history officially, as they began their trajectory, which they just finished around the dark side of the moon, Trump's budget plans to cut 23% of NASA's budget, $3.6 billion, cut to the agency science unit, which could cancel 40 programs.
Can you talk about all of these budget cuts across federal agencies and how it's a path for further privatization of the federal government?
Yeah, so first of all, I think we can all think of a few of four other people that we would rather be the furthest they could be from the earth.
So what Trump is doing is essentially creating an opportunity for SpaceX in particular and for other major companies that have close relationships with the White House, To essentially privatize space, to continue to advance through the defense budget, president Trump's, as he sees it, national security role and to militarized space.
But then to cut the civilian side of the funding in order to allow profit seeking companies, the private sector essentially to build up its role there as well.
So it's a lose lose both for science and for humanity.

Someone needs to count the dead.
Of those babies.
And so I think that those are the stories that are gonna change minds.
They're gonna rewire brains.
And so it is of course, important to synthesize the data.
We need to have that, we need to be armed with the facts and be confident with the truth.
And now let it be known because you guys, you guys have known how bad this is.
You probably already knew in your heart this information.
We've all been watching genocide for three years.
Nothing's worse than that.
And in fact, when making the documentary, I was so worried, why would people care about the earth if they don't care about children being blown up?
No one's gonna give a shit about this.
But it's the opposite.
It's the opposite.
I was, I was beaten down into that dystopian kind of pessimism because of just the way that the system berates you and makes you think that everything is just worthless and, and pointless.
But, but once you get out and you're in the community, you're like, no, no, no.
The vast majority of people agree with this.
The vast majority of people get it.
They're empathetic and it, and it's very motivating actually.
And so I think yes, numbers numb and they can be completely overwhelming, but you can't let the system paralyze you.
That's what they want.
They want us to be terrorized.
This is a full fledged assault on our minds, on our bodies on reality.
So if you just reclaim reality, right?
You reclaim your feelings, let yourself feel, because this is fucking crazy.
None of this, none of this is, is normal.
Genocide is not normal.
That's not the status quo.
That's not the world that I wanna live in.
I don't wanna open my phones and see children being murdered every day.
That's not okay.
We can feel, we can have emotions.
We can talk to people, Hey, have you been watching this too?
Hey, it makes you sick.
Let's talk about it.
These are the conversations we need to have.
And the numbers only take you so far.
Darn.
I think we've seen that in the way that people kind of deal and process information.
I don't think we're meant to.
Process the information like we are now.
We're not meant to see every horrible thing that happens in the world within five seconds.
And it's really traumatic and we have to get, and that's why I'm doing this tour in person, to kind of unpack the trauma of what they've done to us together, because it's a lot, it's a lot.

I, I really appreciated the attention in this documentary to the Superfund sites, the sacrifice zones here in America.
And I, as someone who goes around to sacrifice zones, interviewing, working class people who live there, like it's horrifying how massive this problem is and how ignorant most of us are to how poisoned we already are, let alone the fact that the majority, not the majority, but like the largest single polluter source for Superfund sites is the Department of Defense.
Mm-hmm.
That's more than any one corporate polluter.
And I would be remiss if I didn't, Like mention that we're just days away from the three year anniversary of the bomb train derailment by Norfolk Southern and East Palestine.
I'm gonna be there next week.
Right.
I mean, there are towns like East Palestine all over this country.
You mentioned the coal donna that comes outta West Virginia.
Dr.
Nikki Fabrican, are you in the audience right now?
Where does that coal come through?
Yeah, Baltimore, south Baltimore.
It comes through car after uncovered car daily through South Baltimore, 20 minutes that way people are breathing that in for generations.
People over there just 20 minutes from where we're sitting are walking around with oxygen tanks and it's just normal.
We've accepted this unacceptable reality as.
Normal, and we're not learning the lessons like from East Palestinian, Ohio, red Hill, south Baltimore.
But like, I, I really am thankful to you for, for highlighting just, just how serious this problem is, particularly when it comes to the Department of Defense and the government run sites that are poisoning us.
The question that I wanted to throw is one about perspective, and like you said, like so much of this is knowledge that maybe we already had, maybe we had learned at one time and pushed it under the rug because it was too uncomfortable to, to face.
And I'll be honest, my, I have had trouble facing this for many years as an individual who's well aware of what we're facing.
I kind of gave up on the future.
I basically accepted that like, The, the future's no longer a thing to plan for.
Just do as much good as you can while you're here.
Now.
That changed when I became a father.
Mm-hmm.
And I tear up watching the scenes with, with you and your family, your children.
I wanted to ask like how, how you would sort of impress upon folks like the need for that perspective change on what we think we already know and how vital that perspective change is to getting somewhere we haven't been before.
Yeah, it's a, it's a great point.
And yeah, I kind of had a similar trajectory when I had a kid, even though I, I've always maintained revolutionary optimism because I, I kind of have to have like this militant current of hope.
Otherwise I'd be too sad.
But.
But I think my, my sheer love for humanity and nature has always driven and motivated me, and it continues to double down my motivation.
The second that I meet someone who is invigorated or has had their minds changed by my journalism or anything that I've done in the past.
And so it continues to make me more committed.
When I had, I always felt like I had no choice.
Being just an American, we are born into the system.
We're in the imperial core, it's on our shoulders.
But when I had a kid, it was like, okay, now I really, I am all in.
We are, we are completely invested in this, and we have to do everything with every fiber of our being because we have no choice because we have to fight this, right?
Even if we don't win, even if we're standing on the shoulders of giants for generation, even though it's been a centuries long struggle, the arc of justice is very, very wide.
It, it's not gonna happen tomorrow, and it is a huge, seemingly insurmountable fight, but that's not why we do it.
And yeah, you take breaks for mental health.
You have to do what you can.
You give whatever capacity and talents that you can, but we have to fucking do it because I'm not gonna let these parasites rob our future without a fight.
And this is just one tool in the arsenal.
This is just one tool in the arsenal.
And I, I, I would recommend it's a beautiful thing to have this internationalist lens, right?
That that's first and foremost orienting your perspective internationally.
This is an international system.
All of us are impacted by it.
This is a very clarifying thing.
Let the truth liberate you and free you.
Right.
Reclaim the truth first and foremost. 'cause they're gaslighting us every day.
So that's the first thing to kind of build the foundation upon and then realize the agency that you have as individuals.
Of course all of us can do our part, but we have to have that collective unity and agency.
We have to build organizations.
We have to build big tents around pushing back the data centers because the richest people in the world who are controlling our algorithms and curating our reality, they don't want us to see the success stories.
They don't want us to see how people have beat these in their communities.
How 35 data centers last year got canceled across the country.
Divestment campaigns hugely successful across the country.
None of these are known because they don't want us to see that.
They want us to be despondent, paralyzed, terrorized.
So it's about getting out of that, getting out of that and saying, I'm not gonna accept the state of reality that they're pushing on me and beating me down.
I'm not gonna succumb to the darkness.
I'm gonna have militant hope because we have to.
Because if we didn't, then what's left?
We're gonna succumb to the billionaires.
We're gonna succumb to Elon Musk.
No, no.
We're not gonna give up our planet for Jeff Bezos to have another yacht.

We are living in a time where an Islamic Republic, Lego wrapped video dis track isn't even the strangest thing that I've seen that feels like years ago already, IRGC was putting out Lego video rap dis tracks.
And I just like saying that out loud.
I feel like I'm having a stroke, it doesn't make sense.
And those words coming outta my mouth.
And that's not even like.
That's only the start of when my, my, My week has gotten really weird.
And this has been a tremendously weird week.
You have me on. 'cause if your listeners don't know, I am Iranian.
I'm a physician, and I have a podcast, but I'm also Iranian.
I talk about that a lot in the show as well.
And as I'm sure everyone knows at this point, we almost, or we are at war and our president, I woke up on Tuesday to a truth social post from the president of the United States, the country in which I live in basically threatening to annihilate, well, no, not basically exactly threatening to annihilate the Persian civilization, A civilization that is over 2,500 years old.
A country of 90 million plus people has contributed to the sciences, the arts, history, agriculture, medicine, you name it.
Culture and culture.
I gave, I gave you guys me.
So I mean I mean, be grateful.
And, and and it's just so hard.
And, and it was, it really, it messed me up really bad.
I have to, I'm not gonna lie.
I'm sure it did.
We should ground this a little bit and, and talk about it.
And it's not the, the most super fun, but it, it is like in today's media ecosystem, things move so fast and we're already kind of moving on to all the other insane stuff that's happening.
But I, I gotta tell you, Tuesday, I, I literally at, at Tuesday night, I had a crick in my neck here because my whole day I was just like, over my phone.
I'm like, how am I supposed to work?
This is, this is insane.
Like, I is, is this really gonna happen?
I didn't really think he was gonna drop nuclear bombs, but you have to take the president seriously when they say that.
And even if he didn't mean a nuclear attack did this mean like a lot more bombing, a lot more injury, a lot more civilian death?
So yeah, it was.
It was bad.
This has been a bad week, and the specific was destroy every bridge where people were standing with the, the Iranian flag and every power plant to put the entire country into darkness.
The stone ages as, The secretary of.
War defense.
I can't, I just don't war the heck Seth said.
And how they, it's how they talk.
It's, it's still just like so disgusting and for him to say he's going to genocide an entire people I don't like, even if, oh, it's a negotiating tactic, I don't care.
You can't be saying that kind of thing.
No, it's, yeah.
Even if our food wasn't the best food in the world, you shouldn't want the Iranian people to be annihilated.
And this whole art of the deal thing that people are, this is the, his, the art of the deal this is, it's absurd.
It is demeaning to the office.
It is insulting.
It makes us look terrible on the world stage.
It hurts us in terms of soft power everywhere.
It hurts the United States directly.
There's this whole what I would like to see, I don't know if you played basketball when you guys were younger, but do you remember how like every time, like you would like do a fade away, you'd be like Jordan, or you, or now kids would be like, Curry, Kobe, three point Kobe.
Yeah.
Kobe, whatever.
Yeah.
I've always been, I can't bring that.
Can't.
Yeah.
Totally kidding.
And I, I would like, every time you just throw up a brick, the thing to be like, someone just yells out art of the deal Brick.
Yeah.
Or like every time you stub your toe Art of the deal.
Art of the deal.
I would like that.
To me, it's so crazy that people actually think that this three dimensional chess myth is, is a real thing.
It's just, it's so funny to me.
Still.
I have to laugh about it.
Even if even if Trump had never done or said any of the things he's said and done over the last 10 years, writing quote, A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again is disqualifying.
Absolutely.
Even if you, even if you never intended to do it, and I'm not a hundred percent convinced of that.
I'm not.
Right.
I think I, but.
No.
He needs to be impeached and removed from office.
He should not be the president right now.
And just bring it back to what, I think we talked about this last week, earlier this week.
I don't know, I'm so fucking sick of it.
Reality TV show president that just has the entire world sitting all day waiting to see what mm-hmm.
He's actually gonna do.
This is madness.
Like it's some, yeah.
Like it's a reality TV show where people's lives are like, we're murdering people, are civilizations.
Entire, entire civilizations.
But even without that, let's be real Lebanon, we're gonna talk about this more is under bombardment.
It's a massacre.
Gaza a massacre, Iran a massacre.
So many people have died already.

And finally, section F, making China great again.

Have they clearly defined our reason for being there?
No.
No.
I mean, now we have a very clear reason, which is to reopen the straight of war, which wouldn't have been closed if we hadn't gone to war in the first place.
In that sense, yes, we had, we created a clear war aim by starting a war.
I think the important thing is to go back to the first day of this war and to realize, regardless of how many times Trump denies it, this was a regime change war.
Hmm.
It was meant to be a regime change war.
We're seeing that now.
There was this piece from the New York Times that was very detailed and was kind of a minute by minute explanation of how the administration went to war.
It was clear Trump said, we're gonna hit them really hard, and then the regime's gonna fall.
And to their credit, and boy, how, how rarely do I say this about people in Trump's orbit, but to their credit, people like the CIA director said, I believe the word he used to describe that scenario was farcical.
But Trump didn't want to hear it because remember, Trump wish casts, I mean, I say this every time we talk about him, he tries to manifest things into being.
He's like, yeah, yeah, I know it's a problem, but if we just do it, it will happen.
If you build it, they will come kind of thinking.
And he launched the war, expected the regime to fall, and it didn't.
And when that didn't happen, everything went to hell.
He didn't, they didn't know what to do next.
So he just said, general, have you got more operations?
Yeah, we can there's, we can hit plenty.
There's, Iran is a target rich environment.
We can bump stuff all day long.
But as I as I used to teach at the Naval War College years ago, operational successes without strategic direction don't get you toward victory.
What does the military do when they don't have that strategic direction?
And when they're pulling all of these different threads, right?
This if this is a regime change, like you're, you're going to do a specific thing for regime change as opposed to I'm doing a specific thing for liberation of people, as opposed to I'm doing specific things to open up a street that wouldn't have been closed otherwise.
So how do they plan when there is no strategic direction?
That's not their job.
Their job is plan operations.
The very senior military leaders are supposed to ask that question.
Now, what is it?
We have these packages, we have these target sets, we have these objectives we can achieve.
What is it you want us to do, Mr.
President, where are we supposed to be going with this?
And in the absence of that, they do operations.
They say, okay, well we can destroy some more factories.
We can blow up some more airfields.
We can take out some more boats.
We can do that all day.
At least until we start running out of ammo.
So in the end, it's the people that are supposed to know that are the kind of people that Pete Hegseth has been firing left and right.
Look, we, this is one of the most war game scenarios in American modern American history.
We have been war gaming scenarios about fighting with Iran for almost 50 years.
Mm-hmm.
They've got tons of operational plans sitting on the shelves about everything.
But if the president just kind of wanders into the candy store and says, gimme one of those, gimme one of those and give me one of those, the military salutes smartly and says, yes sir.
Can, can I jump in, Adam? 'cause I Tom made so many great points and I wanna just build on a couple of them.
Yeah, absolutely.
The firings, we've had a lot of generals and animals fired, including the head of the Army during this conflict.
Now, usually when a general admirals file during wars for the conduct of the war, that didn't appear to be the case in this instance.
This was personal animosity.
A secretary who was micromanaging personnel decisions in the Army, looking to put his own stamp on that service.
And while this was largely a war from the air and sea, the Army had an important role.
The air defenses that you heard about the Patriots and the THAAD, those are army operated system restocking.
The munitions that were used for them, it falls on the Army chief of staff.
And he was fired during this conflict.
And so I think that's important to note, just the pace at which these, these personal changes were happening.
The other thing I wanna point out is.
For all the reasons that the United States gave for conducting this war.
Iran was very consistent throughout.
They wanted to survive as a regime.
They wanted compensation for the damages to their country.
And so I think to Tom's point, when one side doesn't have clear strategic aims and the other does, no amount of firepower can resolve that.
And what you saw the Iranians do is take that strategy and marry it with an asymmetric warfare approach to take away the advantage that the United States had with much stronger munitions training, planes, weapons, ships.
And so that's where the strategy, I think, sort of, or lack thereof, Played out on the battlefield.
Two quick points, the, the other thing about Nancy's point about the army, the army took casualties.
Hmm.
We spent a lot of time on watching television with the Air War.
But when some of those bases got hit, those were army people that we lost.
The other is, this looks a lot like Ukraine.
Hmm.
It was exactly the same imbalance of interests.
Putin went in, thought he was gonna just knock the Ukrainian regime over in a day, or three days, or four days.
But also when that didn't happen, Putin didn't have a clear set of goals.
It was just throw more guys and more bodies and blow up more buildings.
And just like the Iranians, the Ukrainians had a strategic goal, survive and control the territory and the government of Ukraine.
And they did.
They have,

the US China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
And it will help define the century.
It's in the hands of two very different leaders.
It's hard to imagine two people with more different approaches to leadership.
President Trump is brash.
He's impulsive.
You don't have the cards right now.
Xi Jinping is guarded, methodical, someone who plays the long game, not the Twitter game.
Chinese policy makers see Trump as someone who's transactional and pragmatic who likes to make deals.
They also realize that Trump is very unpredictable.
President Trump makes a lot of threats.
What the markets have realized is that he doesn't execute all of those threats.
A lot of them are just quietly forgotten, and the internet, as usual, has found a name for it.
Taco Taco, taco Taco.
As you would call it, Trump, always chickens out.
The term is actually pretty popular on Chinese social media too.

On Chinese social media.
People love Donald Trump.
He actually has many nicknames.
Another really popular nickname for Trump is transient, which actually means Trump the nation builder.

It's not praising Trump as a nation builder for the United States.
It's more like a Trump helping China to become a superpower.

We're seeing she's basically just sitting back to enjoy the benefits as a flurry of Western leaders coming to Beijing, Mark Carney meets Xi Jinping in Beijing.
It's vital that we build a more sophisticated relationship.
They know that China, like all nation states, will act in its own self-interest.
What they are seeking and signaling is a hedge against the United States, which they now view as an unreliable partner.

And China has learned this the hard way.
China was really caught off guard by Trump's first trade war because it was launched just months after his first visit to China where he received a lavish welcome.

So since then, it has been preparing itself.
In China, there's a famous saying, learning is like sailing upstream pause, and you're pushed back.
And this mindset now shapes Beijing's strategy.
In the second trade war, president Trump tried to deal a knockout blow to China.
What the US wasn't expecting was that China would hit back China retaliated on the US with tariffs of 125%.
China has learned how to play this game, and president Trump knows that this latest headline coming in from the Supreme Court, global tariffs struck down.
China says it is assessing President Trump's second tariff investigation.
This week, as the US continues its effort to rebuild the key trade policy, the rollercoaster has had an impact.
Last year, China's exports to the US fell about 20%.
But if you look at India, they jumped 12.8% to southeast Asian countries.
They rose 13.5% and to the eu up 8.4%.
But trade flows are just one arm of China's strategy.
Explicit export controls on rare earth magnets, rare earth materials is the Trump card.

China imposed export controls on seven types of rare earth minerals and magnets made of them.
These export controls are really inflicting pain on the US manufacturing base because these rare earth magnets are used in everything from iPhones and EVs to big ticket weapons like fighter jets and missiles.
The pain goes beyond us.
Manufacturers since producers around the world are impacted by these controls, and although these measures could backfire as countries explore ways to lessen their reliance on China, those efforts will take time.
China dominates the supply chain mining over 60% of the world's rare earth's and refining.
Over 90% of them rare earth by themselves are not big deals.
The entire category, the market cap was not even 10 billion US dollars.
As a result.
Other countries, they have pretty much given up on rare earth production and refinery process.
China had its own advantages.
Its labor cost is really low, and its environmental standards are pretty lax.
The rare earth industry has been considered strategic for decades.
China has the world's most complete industrial catalogs, but despite the trade wins against Trump, China has issues.
Its industrial success.
Can't fix.
Beijing said a GDP growth target of 4.5 to 5% for the year.
That's the lowest since 1991.
China's economy has a lot of really serious problems.
Local governments, businesses, real estate developers, they borrowed too much and they used those borrowed funds to build too much capacity.
Bridges to nowhere.
Steel mills producing more steel than anyone could ever need, ghost towns of empty property.
As a result of that over capacity, China now has a deflation problem.
For years, China's economic rise has been fueled by its booming exports and investment.
But last year we saw China's fixed exit investment declined for the first time on record.
So it's really just the exports that keep the economy going.

Chinese workers are seeing their pay cuts or even getting fired and struggling to find jobs.
Some of them choose to go into the gig economy, which doesn't really provide a sense of job security.
What a lot of the country realized was that China was actually exporting its deflation overseas.
Whatever they couldn't dump to the United States, they were dumping to Southeast Asia, Latin America, or Europe.
That complicates the relationships.
China is forging even as more countries engage China to hedge against an unreliable us.
China has been keen to assert its economic strength for political influence, but is not willing to get entangle in military conflicts far from home seizure of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.
Iran continues to attack its Gulf neighbors.
China certainly has never committed to put troops on the ground to defend Venezuela or Iran.
There's a lesson there, which other friends of China are gonna take away from that.
For Iran and Venezuela, China is their most important economic lifeline.
But for China, these two countries are ultimately not that important.
Iran accounts for about 13 to 40% of China's oil imports, and Venezuela only accounts for 4%.
So this is not a small number, but it is replaceable for China.
But the bigger problem here is Strait of Hormuz.
If Iran continues to close down the Strait, then China will have a problem sourcing nearly half of oil imports.
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital lifeline for 20% of the world's gas and oil flows.
The reduction in traffic increases the threat of an inflation crisis and global recession.
If this war drags on and spread to other countries, then China's economic interest can be threatened.

So for now, China seems focused on only fighting the trade war, an arena where it holds more advantages.
The United States is the world's biggest economy.
It has the world's most powerful military.
Is China quite the equal of the United States?
I think the answer on that, at least for now, is still no, for nations caught in the middle.
There's really only one way forward.
Hedging will be the key word for 2026 or 2027 when two superpowers are having this historical fight.
They want you to take sides, but no one wants to.

We really are, for some reason, actually trying to stop China from executing.
Its probably potentially at least most dangerous base road initiative to our interest.
Now that assumes that it is, it is inimical to our interest.
I think we have made that assumption.
That road would come up through Iran and trace Alexander the greats route all the way up through the, what would be the 1,875 or so miles of shoreline on the Persian Gulf on the eastern side and all the way up to the caucuses.
It would link China's Pacific ports just as the other three base road initiative railroads do through Russia and the caucuses with Europe in a way that would reduce its shipping time from something like a day and a half to two days, depending on which way you go to about 16 hours.
Trains have already applied these railroads, including the one going through the southern part of Iran.
If that happens, then all maritime nations leading of which is the United States, of course the protector of the seas will no longer have seas.
Really worth protecting in the sense of commerce because commerce will be basically landlord.
At least 60% of it will come out of Asia and go to Europe and elsewhere on the land.
You'll have to get on some kind of boat to get to South America, I guess.
But nonetheless, this is a monumental change and it's one more fighting tooth and nail.
Whether Donald Trump knows any of this or Pete Hegseth knows any of this, I have no idea.
But that is, I think behind a lot of what we're doing.
It's also behind Ukraine because Ukraine stopped the very central railroad, which was already making 16 hour trips into the heart of Europe, going all the way to Bremerhaven and Le Havre and other places like that, critical to European trade if it were not a dumb braided as it were by the war going on in Ukraine.
So, and and think about that for a moment as to why Joe Biden and others blinking and Sullivan might have had some reason for doing Ukraine, as it were, rather than what they've been telling us or what they did tell us.
This is all about China and it's all about stopping China, which is to say, I'm not sure that any of this administration that is functioning in front of us every day knows anything about this other than that their masters have told 'em to do this.
And we can talk about who their masters are back in the shadows.
But I think that's ultimately what we're looking at.
So it's much more consequential in this struggle between the rising power and the declining power, and there's no question about that Now then people think or no.
And so it has these ramifications that make things that look tactically and even operationally stupid at the moment, and yet are tied to this much bigger tapestry of geopolitical and geostrategic reality.
Declining power, rising power.
Where's Russia gonna go in all this?
Russia has a choice.
She's both maritime power and land power.
Pri principally.
The latter is Mackinder made clear.
But she does have a formidable maritime capability now growing every moment by her Arctic coastline and the receding ice in the Arctic.
So she's got a choice to make, and she hadn't made it yet.
It, it looks like she's going with China, but, hmm, there's this relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which is kind of strange really, if you think about it.
Unless you understand what Putin wants, which is a better relationship with Washington and maybe even a helping hand, not to Europe, not to nato, not to the transatlantic link.
He's destroyed those or is destroying them, but to Washington because he sees there's something left there worth being friendly with.
So we gotta work all of that into what we're talking about right now, and what we're talking about right now is throwing a sledgehammer into that.
That is awesome because what Iran is doing is upsetting everybody's plans.
To the tune of Mohammed bin Salman being so incredibly insulted by Donald Trump in Southern Florida recently, that now he's thrown his lot in with Zelensky and has changed his routing of his pipelines and other things to avoid Israel and to go through Syria instead.
I mean, these are monumental changes that this hugely, hugely wealthy sovereign wealth fund is making almost overnight because of the insults that Trump hurled at MBS.
And then you've got Iran and what Iran can do to this whole business.
I've just talking, I've been talking about in Southwest Asia, which is if it executes its second tier of targets, the first tier, back up a little bit.
The first tier was so devastatingly done and so indicative of fine intelligence that it was unbelievable to many of the regional powers.
They hit Bahrain and destroyed the Fifth Fleet headquarters and destroyed the largest oil refinery in the Gulf.
Been there for years and put the Barran, Bahrain royal family in fleet flying away.
They hit Erbil where they had hit a number of times before in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.
They had hit, hit it before with minor missiles just to let the Israelis and the CIA and MI six know that we, that Iran knew they were there.
They hit it this time and just blew it out.
They hit our embassy and Baghdad.
We were operating on only emergency personnel there now.
And oh, by the way, in Bahrain we sent 2000 people back with a suitcase, a kit bag to Norfolk that have now landed in Norfolk.
That's how Marco Rubio did his in neo business, so incompetently and now the citizens of Norfolk and Chesapeake and other areas, Hampton Roads are having to, Support these people who've come back with nothing, no shirt on their back other than the shirt on their back and nothing.
Just the kit bag.
That's what they were told, and they were gone because Bahrain was struck so fiercely.
Well, all to say they have a second tier of targets or maybe a third.
But the second tier is much more devastating.
The first tier of targets was essentially, as they said, we're not gonna hit you if we don't have to.
Prince Sultan Air Base.
We're not gonna hit Saudi Arabia.
We're gonna hit the US Al-Udeid, we're gonna hit the us.
We're not gonna hit you.
Qatar.
They had some incidental damage.
They even apologized for a lot of it this time.
That's not a criterion.
This time they're gonna hit it to devastate it, to devastate the region, to devastate Saudi Arabia, to devastate the Emirates.
All the other countries maybe will, mine will be spared.
I suspect it will.
But this would be a devastating blow to the global economy because we're talking about places like Ras Tanura and Saudi Arabia, where it's 650,000 barrels a day.
Or like Abqaiq, where it's 7% of the world's best supply of best oil. 7%.
This is a huge blow.
And we've already talked about things like urea and helium and other things.
Taiwan maybe got about 15 days left.
And Taiwan is not included in yes, China, you can go through the strait.
Taiwan cannot go through the strait.
So this could be depression producing on the globe if they hit these other targets and they shut down.
And at the same time, the Houthis renew their vigorous pursuit of closing the Red Sea to most traffic that is not supportive of taking out the Israelis, if you will.
Then we've got two of the most important waterways in the world.
Red Sea even.
And the Bab el-Mandeb even more important than the straight of Horus, than the Persian Gulf taken out a commission.
We could have a global, Not just recession.
We're close to recession right now, two quarters in a row.
We could have a global depression that would impact a lot of the world.
Even ultimately Russia, which looks like it's sitting in the catbird seat right now, but might not be if all of a sudden things turn sour for them in this global economy that is not gonna be operating anymore.
All to say this is a much, much more serious struggle than anyone in the Prima Fascia team leading this country.
America seems to understand.

That's going to be it for today.
As always, keep the comments coming in.
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You can reach us on signal at the handle.
Best of left zero one or simply email me to [email protected].
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From best of the left.com.

Air Date: 4/14/2026

Full Notes Page

 

#1784 Full Episode

JAY - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine the legal battles shaking the foundations of American citizenship and voting rights as Trump's legal team uses the courts as a weapon against democratic participation — and how advocates are fighting back. We'll hear about the three-D playbook of deceive, disrupt, and deny used by authoritarians and being deployed by Trump ahead of the midterms, and what ordinary people can do right now to protect their votes before your podcasts. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

The NPR Politics Podcast

Strict Scrutiny

Democracy Now!

Legal AF

The BradCast

and Stay Tuned with Preet

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 3 sections;

Section A, Birthright Citizenship

Section B, Election Interference

Section C, Mail-in Voting

But first, a reminder to check out our new show, SOLVED! [00:01:00] on the Best of the Left YouTube channel! We're really proud of the show we're making, and think you'll get real value out of it. Plus, you checking it out will help us find new viewers on YouTube so thanks in advance for your all your views, likes, subscribes and comments. That's all on the Best of the Left YouTube channel, linked in the show notes.

And now, on to the show.

DOMEN: For more than two hours. The Supreme Court discussed if all babies born in the United States, regardless of their parents' status are automatically granted citizenship. US Solicitor General D John Soer began by laying out the thrust of his argument, 

clip: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, the citizenship clause was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile Here.

It did not grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens who have no such allegiance. 

MILES: Through. Throughout the arguments though, justices [00:02:00] returned to that concept again and again with skepticism. Justice Neal Gorsuch pressed the matter in exchange with sour 

clip: whose domicile matters.

I mean, not the child, obviously it's your, it's the parents you'd have us focus on. And you know, what if, is it the husband? Is it the wife? What if they're unmarried? Who, who's domicile? Well, in, in the executive order, it draws a distinc between the mother and the father, and it's really the mother's domicile.

I think that would matter. Well, 1868 matters You're telling us. So what's, what's, what's the answer? The 1868, sources talk about parental, I'm not aware of them, drugging a secret between mother or father, but they say the domicile of the child follows the domicile of the parent. 

MILES: In her argument, Cecilia Wong, the National legal Director for the ACL U, said, the Trump administration's interpretation would upend the constitution and the lives of millions of people.

clip: The executive order fails on all those counts. Swaths of American laws would be rendered senseless. Thousands of American babies will immediately lose their citizenship, and if you [00:03:00] credit the government's theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans past, present, and future could be called into question.

All of this tells us the government's theory is wrong. 

MILES: One of the biggest moments came when Chief Justice John Roberts directly rebuked the government's argument. 

clip: We're, we're in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out, to where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a, a child who's a US citizen.

Well, it's a new world. It's the same constitution. 

MILES: I wanna bring in now NPR Supreme Court correspondent Carrie Johnson, senior political Editor and correspondent Dominico Montero. And joining us from the Supreme Court is NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. Hi to you all. 

clip: Hi 

KERRY: there. 

MILES: Hi. Hey, so let's start with the main takeaways.

Nina, let's start with you. 

KERRY: Well, you know, the, the, with the president of the United States for the first time ever, as far as we know in the courtroom, and sitting in the audience, I thought the court actually went out of its way to. It, it [00:04:00] not beat the crap out of any of the council and the to ask very probing questions without completely tipping their hands.

At the same time you heard this constant refrain of this is pretty clearly what the Constitution says. I know it may has problems today, policy problems, but it is what the Constitution says and that is sort of. The way the court, because this is a very originalist court, it doesn't think it's a living constitution.

And in the same way it believes, for example, that there are. St quite restrict, severe restrictions on, on what kinds of regulations there can be of firearms, uh, of guns. And that's the second amendment to the Constitution. But it's also an amendment to the Constitution, much like the 14th Amendment was a.

An amendment to the Constitution. 

MILES: Tell me a little bit more, [00:05:00] one of the most unprecedented aspects of these arguments is the fact that the president was actually there. Can you tell me a little bit more, about his reaction throughout all of this or how that impacted things? 

KERRY: Well, I have to tell you, in truth that sitting in the press section, I don't think any of us, except maybe one or two people on the far end could see the president at all.

And, the White House had. Imposed a new restriction on, on how we cover the court, which is they told us to sit down before the court started. The proceedings started, the, the guards told us to sit down and I very clearly said, you know, this is our job is to look and see what's going on in this courtroom, at least before, the proceedings begin.

And they said, well, I'm sorry. This isn't our decision. This is a new rule that the White House imposed on us. So I didn't see. Anything of the president, but part of that is of course, also that I'm short. 

MILES: Okay. Well, getting into the arguments, Carrie, I want to go back to what we heard from the Chief Justice, this moment where [00:06:00] he says it's a new world, but it's the same constitution.

That was a moment where I found myself, my eyebrows raised when I heard it. What was your reaction to that? 

KERRY: Yeah, a number of the justices at the center of the court from the Chief Justice John Roberts, to Neil Gorsuch and another Trump, a Trump appointee to Elena Kagan. An Obama appointee raised some questions about the Trump administration's case.

Roberts said, they, their arguments in some ways were quirky and idiosyncratic. Kagan called them esoteric. Gorsuch talked about how the, solicitor General John Sauer was reaching to sources in Roman Law to make his argument that the 14th Amendment didn't mean what it says. And, I think all of those things were significant Also, you know, the Trump administration has been advancing this argument that people are coming to the US people from Russia and China to have babies here, and that could pose some kind of national security threat or a threat to allegiance to the United States.

Roberts basically said. And, you [00:07:00] know, we may have a new social problem here in that, but we don't have a new constitution. And that's an issue that other justices came back to as well. Justice Kagan in particular basically said, I understand the policy considerations this, that this administration, is putting forth, but

it's not maybe enough or we would need a tremendous magnitude of evidence and argument to turn away from birthright citizenship, which this country has basically understood to mean something for 160 years or so. 

MILES: Yeah. Let's listen to a little bit more of Chief Chief Justice Roberts talking about the skepticism of sours argument.

You obviously put a lot of weight on subject to the jurisdiction thereof. But the examples you give to support that strike me as very, quirky, you know, children, of ambassadors, children of enemies during a hostile invasion, children on warships. And then you expand it to, the whole class of, illegal aliens are, [00:08:00] are here in the country.

I'm not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples. 

MILES: Dominica, what did you make of how the justices received the solicitor general's argument? 

IAN: Yeah, I thought it was interesting that you had a, a, a majority of the Supreme Court's justices peppering, the solicitor General John d de Jon Auer, with really skeptical questions about the Trump administration's.

Position about birthright citizenship? I mean, I'm gonna be watching some of these justices for what they think specifically, you know, what their interpretation winds up being specifically on things like, bloodline versus, born in the country soil. Justice, Amy Coney Barrett specifically was saying, well, why didn't.

The Justice, why didn't the framers, you know, make it more so that it was about parental dissent as opposed to being born on the soil of the United States? Justice Kavanaugh, for example, also asked about the language differences between the 1866 Civil Rights Act. And the [00:09:00] 1868 14th amendment, which is really what's at issue in this case, talking about the language that, in the 1866, act, saying that they didn't want people to be citizens who are, quote, not subject to any foreign power.

Right? So that difference, the, the Alus attorney, Cecilia Wong noted was because of, the exceptions to, to the, to the birthright citizenship, which is traditionally thought to be things like, uh, ambassadors in the country and not having those babies born given citizenship, which they're not allowed to.

Right. And Kavanaugh seemed to acknowledge in the second round of questioning to Wong when he was pressing her on this, that, 'cause she said that the intent was the same for the 1866 laws, the 1868 law. That, well, if the language was different then history might be different. 

KATE: can you talk about how dramatic a break with existing law, you view the Trump's administration's arguments here to be 

GUEST 2: the Trump administration's arguments are.

Radical and wild. Yeah. The Trump administration's arguments are [00:10:00] completely at odds with the text of the 14th Amendment, the history of the 14th Amendment Supreme Court precedent, statutes, and decades of executive branch practice. The 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship clause is clear that all persons born in the United States are citizens, subject to certain very minor exceptions, and there is.

More than a century of uniform Supreme Court precedent on this point, starting with Wong Kim Ark from 1898. There is also legislation both from 1940 and 1952 that codifies birthright citizenship into US federal law. There are decades of executive branch practice, and then there are the reliance interests of generations of Americans who have come to believe based on our nation's.

Foundational principles after the ratification of the 14th Amendment that all babies born in the [00:11:00] United States are US citizens. It's part of the history and tradition of this country. 

KATE: Yeah, and I'm glad you used the term radical because there has been this, I think, concerted effort to sort of generate a rushed body of scholarship, um, that is designed to kind of create the impression that there is sort of a reasonable debate about both the history and the kind of original understanding of the first sentence of the 14th amendment.

And I just think that it's wildly dangerous to seed that ground. There is a very recent and manufactured debate against this very long backdrop of settled understanding and the sort of the break that the administration is seeking would be a truly radical one. So you mentioned Wong Kim Ark, um, which I think is an enormous problem for the administration, you might say, an insurmountable obstacle.

And look, of course, lawyers argue about the meaning of cases, the grounds for decision, right? The kind of how to read particular phrases and, and lines of reasoning in Supreme Court opinions. But it does feel to me like a [00:12:00] pretty audacious, and you know, I'll just say frivolous argument that the administration is making that Wong Kim Ark is not only kind of an insuperable obstacle to their arguments, but actually supports them.

So can you talk about why that argument that they're, I think with the straight face offering to the Supreme Court is just so wrong. 

GUEST 2: Kay, I agree with you. This argument that the Trump administration about Wong Kim Arc is fringe. It's radical. It's frivolous. It makes no sense. So what the Trump administration is trying to argue is that the Wong Kim arc holding was premised on.

Wong Kim Arks parents being domiciled residents of the United States. And this is a sentence from the administration's brief that I'm quoting. They're arguing that children of aliens lawfully domiciled in the United States fall within the citizenship clause because their parents owe primary allegiance to the United States, not a foreign power end quote.

So the [00:13:00] children born to those who are not what they call lawfully domiciled. So what they would say are people who are temporarily in the United States or here without documentation, their children should not be born as US citizens. And that is just not the correct understanding of Wong Kim Arc Wong Kim Arc is very clear.

That the citizenship clause should be interpreted to include all children of foreign nationals without regard to parental domicile with certain ex, extremely minor exceptions, and those minor exceptions are for. Children born to foreign sovereigns ambassadors, children born on warships and occupying armies.

But everyone else born on us soil is a US citizen. 

KATE: Okay. I'm glad that you offered that rejoinder. And I, you know, we'll see exactly how the justices kind of talk about one kmar in the, argument. I wanna maybe take you to something else that you [00:14:00] mentioned. The kind of litany of reasons that the administration is so wrong here, is that there's not only the kind of constitutional obstacle, but there's also.

The statutes that Congress has enacted. And those statutes I think are important for kind of a couple of independent reasons. One, they're just additional evidence, like the kind of executive branch practice that you're talking about that we have all always understood really since the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution, that birthright citizenship was the law of the land, but they're also just independent legal commands, those statutes from the forties and the fifties.

So this is not the primary argument that the respondents, right, the individuals challenging the executive order are making or relying upon. But I think it's actually a really good and important independent argument, which is that maybe sort of, you could put to one side kind of resolving in an kind of ultimate way what the Constitution means.

But you have these statutes enacted in 1940 and 1952, and the clear meaning and understandings of those statutes preclude this executive order even if you didn't have a first sentence of the 14th amendment. So can you talk a little bit about [00:15:00] that argument? And I'm curious if you have a, a theory about why it's not more foregrounded in the briefing in the case.

GUEST 2: Sure. Kate, I agree with you. I think the statutory arguments are extremely important, and it's worth noting that in the legislative history for both the 1940 and 1952 statutes, the drafters of those statutes expressly rejected any domicile requirement by the Executive Branch committee that drafted those bills and then testified in its support before Congress.

So the very arguments that the Trump administration is now making about Wong Kim arc have been rejected in Congress and via these statutes. You know, I think that this is not. The primary argument that is being made by the individuals in this litigation because the constitutional question is so core to who we are as a nation.

And if the Supreme Court decides this case based on statutory grounds [00:16:00] alone, that gives Congress the opportunity to rewrite the 1940 and 1952 statutes, and that might be disastrous for the future of our country. So it is, I think, better strategically to make the argument on constitutional grounds, which are so clear, and it's shocking that this is in dispute and before the Supreme Court right now.

KATE: So as the two Kavanaugh clips that I played a couple minutes ago make I think quite clear, the court is uneven in its articulated concern for the consequences of its rulings, but I think it's important that people appreciate what it would mean on the ground for Trump to win here.

This is something I've heard you talk about before, but like I think it can't be emphasized enough. So what would that look like 

GUEST 2: if this executive order goes into effect? It would affect. Every person giving [00:17:00] birth in the United States, every family giving birth in the United States and every newborn in the United States, every time a person is in the hospital giving birth, the mother, the father, the parents would have to prove whether they are lawfully present in the United States, whether they're US citizens, whether they're lawful permanent residents, or whether they have some other kind of immigration status or no status at all.

Hospitals are not equipped in the delivery room to be checking people's passports, to be checking people's birth certificates, to be checking people's immigration paperwork. These are not easy, straightforward questions. It is complicated to figure out what a person's status is. 

KATE: Yeah, so that I just. It really drives home that this is not a ruling that will be sort of cordoned off to kind of affecting a subset of the population.

If you give birth, if you have family members who give birth, if you know people who give birth, if you have [00:18:00] any professional or other dealings with hospitals, this could be absolutely to kind of return to the idea of radical, a radically transformative kind of intervention in ways that I think people don't fully appreciate.

Just a lot kind of rests on our settled understanding of birthright citizenship and sort of, not only do hospitals not have the kind of processing capability that you were just alluding to, but you know, that's. Assuming people even have with them the paperwork that would be required to even set in motion some kind of verification process.

And a lot of the time they won't.

Democrats and voting advocacy groups have filed three separate lawsuits against President Trump's sweeping new executive order to limit mail-in and absentee voting ahead of this year's midterm elections.

Trump's order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a state citizenship list. It also directs the US Postal Service to mail ballots only to. Verified, quote unquote, voters [00:19:00] voting rights experts have decried the executive order as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to seize control of election administration from the states and Congress.

Plaintiffs who on a lawsuit said, quote, attempts to end voting by mail are part of the Trump administration's larger strategy to undermine elections and subvert the will of the people. Trump's attack on mail-in voting comes just days after he. Fended, his decision to recently vote by mail in Florida.

You know what? Because I'm president of the United States and because of the fact that I'm president of the United States, I did a mailin ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being, in the beautiful sunshine taking. But you were in Palm Beach served the last few weekends.

That's right. And I, yeah, and I decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn't be there because I had a lot of different things. We're joined now by Arizona's Democratic Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, whose blasted Trump's [00:20:00] executive order is disgusting overreach from the federal government.

Arizona's among several states. The Trump administration sued in order to access sensitive voter data. The state was also at the center of Trump's false claims of election fraud in 2020. Secretary of State, Adrian FTAs. Welcome back to Democracy. Now, why do you Sri describe the President's actions as disgusting and explain Arizona's mail-in vote system?

Well, thank you for having me first, and I call it disgusting because it is first and foremost. Article one, section four re reserves the power to establish the time, place, and manner of elections to the states alone and gives Congress a role. Now, the president has previously issued an executive order that he got shot down on the rule of law now in the country is he doesn't have a role in administering our elections, and yet he tried again.

This is a lawless. President, and that's why this is a [00:21:00] disgusting overreach. He's already been told by the courts, this is not his business, and yet he's trying to do it again. One of the other reasons that I called it that is because this is clearly an attempt for the president to pick his own voters.

He doesn't really care about the, the real voice, of American voters. Which would mean that he would expand the franchise. He would ask more and more ways, to, to find more voters, to be voting, qualified as they are, but to make sure that everybody had access, to make sure that all voters had convenient ways of casting their ballots so that, the governed could give their consent to the government.

That's the rule that we have been established by. So, but for both of those reasons, I think it's discussing now. Mail-in voting in Arizona is, what's kind of classified as a no excuse absentee system. You don't need an excuse to vote by mail. It was created by Republicans in the early 1990s. It has been promoted, by them and kept them in power here in Arizona for quite some time.

[00:22:00] And it's convenient. And what's also very important, lemme give you an example. My own 80 something year old mom. Does not need to stand in line and be kinda pressured to fill out a two page long ballot in some elections with up to 85 different elections on that two page ballot, which we have seen in Maricopa County, Arizona.

She doesn't have to feel rushed. She can do it at the convenience of her home, at her kitchen table, on her couch. Look up the propositions. You know, do research on the judges. Our no excuse absentee system. Our mail-in voting system in Arizona is robust. It is secure, and not only in 2016, but in 2024, it elected Donald Trump as president.

So what we're we have here is I think, some confusion on the part of the president about what's effective, what's secure. And, and, and really I think the maliciousness behind this, is, is, is, is been sh has been shown bare, on its face. He's trying to pick his own voters. And, [00:23:00] secretary of State fontes, you mentioned that, the, the, the mail-in voting system in Arizona dates back to the 1990s.

Had there ever been complaints, previously about the system, before the Trump era? Well, the one complaint we had about the system was that it, it used to be where, the registrar, voter, the county recorders, would mail a postcard to every voter, every single election, and the voters would say, yes, I want a ballot by mail and send it back.

Then they would send the ballot. So that ended up getting stopped and we had what was called a permanent early vote list. So you would sign onto it and that increased the vote by mail numbers year in and year out, without exception until these election conspiracy theories and lies about vote by mail started.

The list is no longer permanent, because of the prior governor and legislature, made it so that it is now called an active early vote list, and it's easier to get dropped off that list, although you're still [00:24:00] registered and you can still vote. So the complaints have only really started, under when, Donald Trump was the president.

And he spread his lies either, before an election, just in case he lost, he'd have an excuse. Or after an election because he felt like he should have won unanimously or some nonsense like that. I'm not even sure about how that works. Now, earlier this year you introduced statewide legislation, the Voters First Act.

What does that do and how are you trying to safeguard the integrity of the 2026 midterms in Arizona? Well, the F Voters first act had 10 different components in it, and unfortunately under the Republican leadership and the legislature, it no longer, I think is gonna see the light of day. But it really made a whole bunch of different spaces in our elections, much more secure.

It gave us. Funding for the E system. It made vote centers a part of the law, which means any voter in any county can vote anywhere in their county no [00:25:00] longer, allowing for precinct based voting only, which has shown to increase provisional ballots, which isn't always great. And it, it did a variety of other things that helped access, it helped convenience, it helped voters and it put a good chunk of money into, the election budgets for our counties, which, because Arizona is a bottom upstate, the counties really do a lot of the work.

I'm more of like a commissioner in a major sports league. We establish the rules. We certify the officials, we certify the equipment. It's the counties that do a lot of the work. So we were trying to bolster what they could do and really make it, better for the voters, because that's really kind of where the rubber meets the road.

HOST 2: Let's read from the petition page seven and eight, and I'll post it here on Legal af Substack, for paid members to read themselves.

This case presents an unprecedented constitutional emergency that demands swift action from this court. Article five of the of California's charter provides the attorney general with [00:26:00] authority to exercise direct supervision over every sheriff in all matters. Concerning their duties. That constitutional power is reinforced by the Attorney General's statutory authority to direct the activities of any sheriff relative to the investigation or detection of a crime.

But in the last month, the petition continues. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and the Riverside County Sheriff's Office have claimed the authority to disregard. The Attorney General's directives fundamentally altering the constitutional allocation of power between the state's chief law officer.

That would be Attorney General Banta, and its subordinate. Law enforcement officers in the sheriff's view the power to direct and take charge of investigations now belongs exclusively to him and not the attorney general, but that is incompatible with the state's constitutional and statutory structure that then goes on to describe what he did on page eight.

The importance of the dispute is only magnified [00:27:00] in this case because the sheriff rejects the Attorney general supervision to pursue an unprecedented investigation into purported election fraud. He has seized hundreds of thousands of ballots. I think the number is 650,000, which by law should have never been taken.

From the custody of the elections official, the integrity of those ballots is now at risk. And because the sheriff's misguided investigation is, is, is pre predicated on baseless claims of election irregularities, the sheriff's actions threatened to jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary.

That would be midterm and general election elections around the state. Effectively, Bianco just refuses to, to comply with his constitutional, he took an oath, constitutional requirements and statutory requirements. In fact, here's Chad Lo, Bianco, basically, inviting the California Supreme Court to find him in contempt to play the clip.

Good morning, California, [00:28:00] Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. I am in Sacramento. Today, we are fighting some, some horrific public safety bills and trying to get some other good ones through. Our public safety committee as a side note, is not really a public safety committee. It is anti-public safety committee.

But that's a whole nother story. The real reason why I'm here today is to talk about the elections case, technically. We are very happy with the ruling. This morning from the California Supreme Court that they're going to take this case. They are, siding with us in what we have done so far, and we will have arguments presented to them, for the merits of our case and for them to basically, eventually what we are very confident they will allow us to continue this investigation despite the Attorney General's attempts to cover it up.

So, unfortunately we are status quo. We are still at the hold of a court, so we are not allowed to progress with the counting of the ballots. And, we'll just continue fighting for this for you, and we'll make sure that a investigation, like any investigation is completed and not swept under the rug [00:29:00] like our attorney general would like to happen.

So, stay tuned. We'll keep you posted. So what they're looking for. First they started in, procedurally in a couple of other courts. One court told the attorney General, this is the wrong court, file it in an appellate court. They filed it in an appellate court. The appellate court, had scheduled a hearing on it, but in the meantime, they skipped a step and filed it and lodged it with a direct appeal, a direct petition to the California Supreme Court under some, provisions there.

That give direct, jurisdiction to the Supreme Court in, in certain unique matters. Certainly this one, when you have an out of control sheriff who's not listening to the Attorney General, who is his boss, you need a mandamus in order to protect the public interest, and that's what we have here. The good news is that after.

This has been kicking around since the beginning of March, where finally the Attorney General has a clear line of sight to a [00:30:00] resolution in his favor, and with the California Supreme Court, not only taking it seriously, but deciding that they're going to decide this case, this petition and ordering Sheriff Bianco.

S recent posting, notwithstanding not to destroy anything in his possession as they get their arms and jurisprudential minds around this case. What I like about. Reporting about this case is to show you, 'cause I get questioned a lot by our audience. Are the attorneys general ready for the worst things that could happen, uh, concerning their vote?

I think voting is one of the major concerns of our audience. What happens to their vote? Making sure their vote is protected and who's out there to protect them? Who are the firemen to run or the fire people to run into the burning building? But Rob Banta, the other 23 Democratic Attorneys General, the American Civil Liberties Union, democracy Forward, and groups like the naacp, they are [00:31:00] immediately running into court and getting stay orders.

Blocks, temporary injunctions. And yes, they are doing tabletop exercises of what is the worst thing that they can imagine, even beyond their wildest imagination, Donald Trump and maggot to do about voting, about funding, about civil rights, about, you know, a federal takeover of states. And they are ready.

They have many of these. Petitions in draft, ready to go at a moment's notice. That's why they get into court so quickly. Even I who have handled emergency hearings in my own career, I'm even impressed by the velocity at which these organizations are getting into court and getting great results.

Sometimes we focus too much. On the United States Supreme Court and the handful of decisions, as devastating as they are to our way of life, to our constitution, they are, they are [00:32:00] important. I'm not minimizing them, but we have to focus on the thousands of other cases and the success rate of up to 90%.

That the, that the, these groups are having, including Rob Bonta, attorney General. I mean, we're gonna have a monsoon. I'll give him a major pat on the back. He is, these are hall of fame numbers 90% of the time, winning percentage. And that's where justice gets done primarily in America, at the lower court level, at the federal district court level.

At the first level of appeal, not even getting to the United States Supreme Court, at the state Supreme Court level, at the state appellate court level. I mean, if you add up the total amount of cases that a Supreme Court will decide in a year. You know, actually on, on the merits or procedurally, you're talking about a low hundreds, maybe a hundred with the emergency docket, right?

Thousands and tens of thousands of cases are going on right now about the Trump administration's actions or those who are adjacent to [00:33:00] them. Every day there's a judge somewhere, federal or state appellate or trial that is dealing with a Trump or Trump related constitutional or statutory breach. We are prevailing.

That's why I'm so glad to be here to support people like Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Democratic Attorneys General. I promise you I'm working this week to get Attorney General Bonta on to speak to you directly in the meantime for follow ups on this case, and it's a fast moving case. 

Can we just set the context here, which is that Mississippi is one of about 20 states that have provisions like that which permit ballots, that are casted and postmarked by election day. Put in the mail, but then received in the case of Mississippi up to five days later, it permits the state to count those votes.

And among the people who make the most use of this sort of a safe harbor provision, some states have separate laws that that govern this [00:34:00] are members of the military serving away from home. So it seemed almost unthinkable to me. This, sort of law would not pass muster, but, and look, and maybe we can talk about it.

The chief justice certainly played his cards close to the vest yesterday. Yep, yep. It was hard to get an accurate vote count beyond, you know, the three conservative justices, Thomas Alito and Gorsuch, who seemed to not have a lot of use for this statute. And of course the progressive justices who seem to believe that the law means what it says and, and that it worked well.

Who knew? I know, right. Well, let's talk about it. Let's talk about your impressions first. 

IAN: Just two quick points. So the first is, it's interesting because service members actually have their own statute. There's a statute called UO Ova, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. And you know, Joyce, it's possible that you could split the difference between U Ova, [00:35:00] which is a federal statute, and therefore would not run the same preemption concerns that Mississippi's law would versus a state saying, we will take any late arriving mail-in ballot if they're postmarking times.

So, you know, I think it's possible if a bit cynical that the court could find a way. To block Mississippi's law without messing with foreign service member overseas vote and overseas voting. What I found so galling about the arguments, Joyce, and especially, I mean you mentioned Thomas Alito and Gorsuch, these are, you know, supposed textualists and so much of the oral argument was like a parade of fake horribles.

That one would only really have a sense of if one spent all their time consuming right-wing media. You know, sort of concerns about election fraud and concerns about just, I mean, justice Kavanaugh at one point talked about the blue shift. 

clip: Professor Pildes and others have said that late arriving ballots open up risk of white might [00:36:00] destabilize the election results.

If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode the longer after election day. Any significant changes in vote totals take place. The greater the risk that the losing side will cry, that the election has been stolen.

End quote. And my question is, my questions one, is that a real concern? Two, does that factor into how we think about how to resolve the scant text and the maybe conflicting or evolving history here? 

IAN: It's like that's 

PREET: not, has you ever watched a baseball game? Sometimes a team, right? It's bad. Is leading. In the early innings and takes over the leader, 

IAN: but it's pretty, it's worse.

It's worse than that. Yeah. I mean like that, that's the, that is the, I think most superficially obvious analogy, it's worse than that because there is, it's not like we vote one inning at a time. Like the order in which ballots are counted doesn't change the [00:37:00] fact that as long as they're all cast by a date certain, they're all valid.

PREET: So, can I ask a question? 'cause it's sort of legal slash. Philosophical slash sort of metaphysical question was, when does one consider a ballot to have been cast? Right? Is it when you fill out the thing? Is it when it is received? Is it when you pull the lever? Is it when you know, could someone take a photograph of your filled out ballot at home before you mail it?

And could that suffice talk about why that was an issue, what was important about it, and what the conclusions were? Because it seems to be. Kind of a little bit, you know, how many angels dancing on the head of a pin? Was it that or something more, more substantive? 

IAN: A little bit of both. Preet. I mean, I think the, the best you can do for a textual argument in support of the fifth Circuit's position is that a ballot is cast when it is received.

And that receipt in this context can mean different things. So when those of us who vote in [00:38:00] person go to the polls and we press the button, and we put the little piece of paper into the machine. That is, I think, the obvious moment at which we have cast our vote because we have given it to the election officials.

They have received it. Obviously, mail-in voting increases the, the real and metaphorical space between the voter and the voting official. And you know, I think the question is, is it fair to say the vote isn't actually cast until it's in the hands of the state? In which case, maybe you are making an argument that even a postmarked, you know, by election day ballot is still coming in late.

I guess it just, it seems to me that that's inconsistent one with how we think about the post office, right? It's inconsistent with what in contract law is known as the mailbox rule. And it's inconsistent with what I think voters would think, which is I think a voter would think that they've cast their vote, not when someone they've never met opens an envelope, but when they've taken the last act over [00:39:00] which they have control to submit their ballot.

PREET: Tax day is coming up. Tax day is coming up. Just to use that analogy. Yeah. For a moment. 

IAN: Yeah. 

PREET: Quickly. I mean, people file their taxes electronically mostly now, but am I right that that mailbox rule applies to your taxes? Sure does. Which are very, very important. Yep. You don't have, it does not have to be received by April 15th, just postmark by April 15th.

Right. 

IAN: It's also how the Supreme Court operates just to, you know, just to take one potentially relevant example, right? A, a brief is timely filed in the Supreme Court if it is postmarked on the day it is due, not if it's received by the day it was due. And you know, that is because all of these rules recognized in different ways, but for the same reason that it would be unfair to the person who is compliant with a deadline to lose control over when their compliance takes place.

HOST 2: Justice Gorsuch has an argument though. He says to Mississippi's solicitor General. Well, I've read your law and your law. [00:40:00] Would permit someone to pull their ballot back out of the mails. Right. And so it's actually not received until it's been opened and stamped and they're about to count it. And Mississippi's solicitor, general protests, no, no, no.

Justice. That's not how our law works. And Justice Gorsuch reads the statute to him. 

clip: You could admit, my hypothetical could happen, but you say it can't happen in Mississippi because recall's not allowed. I couldn't find that anywhere in Mississippi law. In fact, what I did see was a statute that says, that you, you, that the Secretary of State can promulgate rules and regulations.

That's 23 15, 637 3. And then I went and looked at the regulations and rule 2.1. Says that an absentee ballot is the final vote of a voter when the ballot is marked accepted. That doesn't preclude recall, [00:41:00] and in fact, that allows recall. I, I, I don't, I respectfully don't agree with that, your Honor. I mean, what, where, where does it say recall's not permitted?

I couldn't find that Anywhere in your statutes or the rule. And I think by providing the ballots are final when cast under our statute. No, it doesn't. It says they're, they're final when marked accepted. That's the regulation, your Honor. Yeah. Yeah. And it's your regulation. Yeah. And, and it allows, recall. It does.

I respectfully, it does not allow Recall, your Honor, the ballot. Show me. Where would you read to me the provision that precludes it? 

HOST 2: Do you think that that argument, that Justice Gorsuch tried to make there this sort of bizarre, textual reliance on something that doesn't make any sense using a wild hypothetical and he, he does.

He comes out with, well, what if a candidate, what if it comes out the day after the election that he committed sexual impropriety and his opponent tells people to go and. Claw their, their ballots back from the post office and they do. And it swings the election, right? I mean, we are in crazy [00:42:00] town. But do you think this argument might get some traction with Five Justices 

IAN: choice?

Maybe. But you know, even if that is an argument against traction, my understanding is it's pretty specific to Mississippi. And so, you know, then you might have the Supreme Court saying there's a problem with Mississippi's law. Only because it allows for that claw back, which is where, you know, whereas states that don't, don't have that problem.

And that gets back to the point, which is, you know, to what extent are the justices actually trying to solve a real problem here? 

PREET: Yes. 

IAN: And to what extent are they, you know, sort of playing political conspiracy theory just because they want to? I mean, you know, o obviously the court had to take this case once the Fifth Circuit said the Mississippi law was preempted.

I guess I just don't understand why the court thinks this is something it ought to be doing, you know, and why it's something it should be spending capital on 

MARK: one reason why so many states have these laws is that military and overseas voters yes, have long [00:43:00] struggled. To get their ballots in by election day, understandably. Right. Have you ever tried to ship something abroad?

It's not easy. Mm-hmm. If you're stationed on a military base, if you're living abroad, there are all kinds of logistical difficulties in getting these ballots back. So there are a lot of states that actually enacted these laws specifically to help military and overseas voters. Mm-hmm. And when Congress came in a a few decades ago.

Issued these new rules about, milit military and overseas voters. It specifically deferred to the state's ballot deadlines. So Congress knew at the time that some states were allowing these ballots to come in late, as long as they were sent by election day, and Congress deferred to those laws in those statutes.

And yet now we have, you know, these Republican politicians, these republican lawyers. Claiming that Congress somehow wanted to ban states from counting late arriving ballots. The opposite is true to the extent that there is any federal law on this. It's Congress saying, yes, states, you can [00:44:00] count these late arriving ballots.

We're deferring to your ballot deadlines. So this is, in addition to a completely absurd fantastical legal theory just flying in the face of support our troops. Because what this. Theory would do in practice is ensure that a whole lot of service members who are serving in un uniform abroad would not be able to have their votes counted in elections.

BRAD: I'm, I'm old enough to remember Republicans making a whole lot of noise about that. Back in 2000 when the, when the presidential race was ultimately decided in Florida. 537 votes, and Republicans were attacking Democrats for not allowing, late arriving mail ballots, from the military to show up.

Yep. Now, we should note Democrats actually did allow for late arriving military ballots to be included in the final totals. The fight was actually in that case about ballots. I think, that were not postmarked that could have been sent at any time. Even after the election, but the Democrats allowed it to, you know, [00:45:00] allowed those to be counted as well at the time as Republicans insisted, would an adverse ruling here in Watson, VRNC actually block those late military votes from being counted?

As well. 

MARK: Yeah, absolutely. And Justice Sotomayer brought this up. She said we might have had a different president if this rule had been in effect in 2000 because of the issue of late arriving mail ballots from overseas from military voters, which Republicans fought tooth and nail to count during Bush v Gore.

Because they suspected they would be disproportionately democratic. You didn't hear them say back then that Congress had secretly banned late arriving ballots. Like this is a very novel theory that was concocted only after Donald Trump's campaign against mail voting created a partisan split. In mail voting that ensured that these ballots would be more likely to be cast by Democrats, meaning that any attack on mail voting would disproportionately hurt democratic politicians.

BRAD: I, I gotta tell you, I mean this whole case and, the arguments [00:46:00] that we heard seems just like a no brainer. I mean, it seems incredibly stupid to the question of, of why this is even being heard before the, before the high court did the, the solicitor general, the Mississippi Solicitor General, as noted a Republican do an effective job in no rebutting these things.

MARK: So this solicitor General Scott Stewart has appeared once before the Supreme Court, before these arguments, and that was to defend Mississippi's abortion ban in Dobbs. This is a very conservative Republican who probably hated being put in the position of having to defend this law, and my sense was that his heart really was not in it and that he, I don't think he threw the case, like I don't think that he lost it on purpose, and I don't know that he lost it at all.

But he didn't raise the most robust or forceful defenses of the law that he could have. And by the way, there was a lot of reporting on these arguments that said, oh, it looks like Mississippi's gonna [00:47:00] lose, and all these, these, state laws are gonna be thrown out. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think that impression was created because the Mississippi Solicitor General did such a terrible job.

Mm-hmm. And the justices were really beating him up, and he didn't have a particularly good response to Gorsuch's question. It took him a while to get to the point where he just said. By the way, recalling your ballot in Mississippi is illegal. You can't do it. And no one has ever done it before. He didn't have the right kind of responses to keep the arguments moving in his direction.

And so I think that frustrated the justices and when that happens, they tend to all kind of gang up as as occurred here. Mm-hmm. But I think there's still a chance that Mississippi could prevail and that these laws could survive because you know, the early voting issue is paramount and there is no.

Defensible way to separate out late ballots from early ballots. And if the Supreme Court is going to crack down on early voting too, I mean, it's going to disrupt voting in every single state, 150 days before the midterm elections. That seems like an unwise move now. The [00:48:00] court has made unwise moves before.

BRAD: Yeah, 

MARK: but even for this scotus, I think it's a bridge too far. 

BRAD: Well, I'm glad to hear you say that because I wasn't able to watch the, the hearings. The, the oral argument live or listen to it when it happened, I started seeing a lot of headlines about, you know, court seems inclined to, to overturn late mail-in ballots from a lot of outlets.

I'm glad to hear that you, you are at least not, quite as certain about that. Let me, well, I'll get to that in a moment, but just a few more points here. If this were to be overturned, mark. It would also mean that postal workers, if they wanted to, I guess, could purposely affect elections by slowing down delivery of mail.

There was a recent case that it was, decided that you could not sue a, a postal worker specifically for, trying to delay your ballot. And I, I don't believe that postal workers at all would do this as a whole, but if I had a, but they've 

MARK: done it before, 

BRAD: but they've done it [00:49:00] before and. If I have fears about them doing that, mark, isn't that enough to, to do something about it?

Just my fears alone. 

MARK: Yes, it should be. It's an excellent point. I mean, I, you know, I have story, 

BRAD: do we respect story, do need to go on Fox News and, and, and promulgate this fear so that people have it so that then we can get a, a decision from the Supreme Court on it? 

MARK: I think so. I, I think that's a great move, because surely the Supreme Court will be justice as solicitous.

Of, of progressives concerns about mail voting as, as, yes. Re Republicans concerns, you know, I respect our mail carriers, but the reality is that it only takes a few bad apples to seriously wreck bail voting for entire communities. Yep. You know, think about how many parcels and pieces of Mail one carrier delivers.

There have been instances in just the last few years in which individual postal workers have destroyed or delayed, or refused to deliver hundreds of mail ballots. Mm-hmm. Which in a close election could be 537 votes. How about that? Could make all the difference. And I think this was like the [00:50:00] worst possible time for the Supreme Court to take away our ability to sue the postal service for damages when this occurs, because the, the postal service needs to be on alert.

It needs to have incentive to guard against this. It needs to know there will be serious consequences. If postal workers do this, and the Supreme Court just put a shield around the postal service and made it impossible for anyone to sue for damages when their ballot is illegally withheld or destroyed, that is bad news, and it's part of a much broader assault on mail voting that we're seeing from the conservative justices at this moment.

Speaker: We've just heard clips starting with

The NPR Politics Podcast reporting on a skeptical Supreme Court grilling the Solicitor General over Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship

Strict Scrutiny laid out why the Trump administration's birthright citizenship arguments are "radical and frivolous," contradicting the 14th Amendment, Wong Kim Ark from 1898, and statutes from [00:51:00] 1940 and 1952

Democracy Now! spotlighted the Arizona Secretary of State blasting Trump's mail-in voting restrictions as an attempt to "pick his own voters,"

Legal AF walked through the California Supreme Court's decision to take up Bonta's petition against Sheriff Bianco, who illegally seized 650,000 ballots under the pretense of investigating election fraud

The BradCast traced the Republican reversal on late military ballots from 2000's Bush v. Gore fight to today's Watson v. RNC case, calling the new theory a partisan invention tied to Trump's war on mail voting.

And Stay Tuned with Preet examined the Supreme Court's oral arguments over Mississippi's law allowing mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted up to five days late

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get this show ad-free as well as early and ad-free access to our other [00:52:00] show, SOLVED! Including a members-only backstage segment, all via podcast. We've also launched SOLVED! on the Best of the Left YouTube channel but episodes are delayed there.

The show features our team of producers discussing a carefully curated selection of articles and ideas to then SOLVE! some of the biggest issues of our day.

It's important to remind you that each episode of Best of the Left takes about 25 hours of human labor to produce and, SOLVED! isn't too far behind.

Plus, I need to mention that we are currently experiencing a serious ad-pocalypse situation here at the show. Ad revenue has dropped by more than half compared to just a couple of months ago and we’re finding ourselves suddenly in pretty bad financial shape and could really use your help at this particular moment in time.

So, if you get value out of the show and want to support all of the work that goes into Best of the Left and SOLVED! - and get both delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the [00:53:00] show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.

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or you can simply email me to [email protected]

As for today's topic, I like to start with a story.

In December 2019, a woman identified in court documents as C.M. got into an argument with her boyfriend, Zackey Rahimi, in a parking lot in Arlington, Texas. When she tried to leave, he grabbed her, threw her to the ground, dragged her to his car, and shoved her inside so hard [00:54:00] her head hit the dashboard. When he noticed a bystander watching, he pulled out a gun and fired at them. Then he called C.M. and told her if she reported any of it, he'd shoot her.

A Texas court granted her a protective order. It found Rahimi had committed family violence and was likely to do it again. The order explicitly prohibited him from possessing a firearm. He kept his guns anyway. Over the next year, he threatened another woman at gunpoint, and then between December 2020 and January 2021, he was involved in five separate shootings. He fired into someone's house after a drug deal. He shot at another driver after a car accident. He fired a gun into the air in a residential neighborhood. He shot at a car on a highway. He shot up the parking lot of a Whataburger because his friend's credit card got declined.

Police searched his home, found a rifle, a pistol, and a copy of the restraining order that said he couldn't have any of it. He was convicted under a federal law [00:55:00] that bars people under domestic violence protective orders from owning guns, a law that had been on the books for decades, upheld repeatedly, and never seriously questioned.

Then the Supreme Court changed the rules. In 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in a case called New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said that for any gun regulation to be constitutional, the government has to prove it's consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation in this country. Not whether the regulation makes sense. Not whether it protects people. Whether there's something like it from 1791.

So the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals took another look at Rahimi's conviction and threw it out. Their reasoning was straightforward: in 1791, there were no domestic violence restraining orders. There were no domestic violence laws at all. Wife-beating wasn't a crime in any American [00:56:00] state until 1850. Women couldn't vote, couldn't own property in most states, and had essentially no legal personhood independent of their husbands. So there was no historical analogue for a law protecting C.M. from a man who beat her and shot at people, because the men who wrote the Constitution did not consider C.M.'s safety a question worth asking.

The Supreme Court eventually reversed that decision, eight to one. But the fact that it was a question at all, that a federal appeals court looked at a man who assaulted his girlfriend, threatened to kill her, and then went on a shooting spree and said the Constitution protects his right to keep his guns, that's not a glitch in originalism. That's originalism working exactly as designed.

And the same logic is running through everything right now. The question in the birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court is who gets to be a citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment's text is about as [00:57:00] clear as constitutional text gets: all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. The Supreme Court affirmed that in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Lincoln's own Attorney General wrote an opinion supporting it during the Civil War. And yet the Trump administration issued an executive order challenging it, and justices on the Supreme Court entertained the argument. In the mail-in voting case, the question is who gets to participate in elections. The Constitution says Congress sets election day. It does not say states can't count ballots that arrive after that day, and for over a century nobody read it that way. But now conservative litigants are arguing that the word "day" means something it never meant before, and some justices seem interested.

Every one of these cases is ultimately asking the same thing: who is a legitimate member of civil society? Who's [00:58:00] protected? Who gets a voice? Who counts? And in every case, the answer is being filtered through a methodology that defaults to the judgment of people who excluded most of the population from membership.

That methodology is called originalism. And here's what doesn't get said enough: it's not an ancient legal tradition. It's a forty-year-old political project.

In July 1985, Attorney General Edwin Meese stood up at the American Bar Association's annual convention and announced that the Reagan administration would pursue what he called a Jurisprudence of Original Intention. Before that speech, originalism as a formal legal theory barely existed. Steven Calabresi and Gary Lawson, who co-founded the Federalist Society and worked in Meese's Justice Department, wrote in their 2024 book The Meese Revolution that someone in 1983 looking for a theoretically sophisticated defense of originalism would have [00:59:00] found, in their words, literally nothing.

The Federalist Society, founded in 1982 as a conservative student club at a few law schools, became the distribution network. They identified promising young lawyers, mentored them, credentialed them, and built a pipeline that fed directly into judicial appointments. Within forty years, at least five current Supreme Court justices are current or former members. Chief Justice Roberts served on the steering committee of the D.C. chapter. By 2010, even liberal Justice Elena Kagan felt the need to say at her confirmation hearing that we are all originalists now.

That's not a philosophical breakthrough. That's a marketing triumph. And the product being sold is the idea that these enormously consequential questions about who belongs and who's protected are really just neutral questions about what words meant in 1791. But they're not and they never [01:00:00] were.

Aziz Rana, a law professor at Boston College, published a book in 2024 called The Constitutional Bind that traces how Americans came to worship the Constitution in the first place. And his central finding is that this worship is itself a relatively recent invention. For most of American history, the Constitution was treated as a practical framework, not a sacred text. Populists, labor organizers, socialists, even a young Woodrow Wilson openly called it a hobble on democracy. The reverence we take for granted, the idea that the Constitution is the embodiment of American identity and the ultimate source of justice, that consolidated in the twentieth century, partly as a way to justify American empire abroad and partly as Cold War branding against Soviet totalitarianism.

The reason that matters is that originalism could only succeed in a culture that already worshipped the document. [01:01:00] Liberals built the altar. They championed the Warren Court, celebrated the civil rights amendments, treated the Constitution as a story of freedom unfolding over time. And then conservatives showed up and said: if this document is sacred, then its original meaning is the only meaning that counts. The left had no answer to that, because they'd already conceded the premise. They'd made the Constitution into a creed, and originalism was just the more disciplined version of that creed.

And this is where we should be honest about what originalism actually is versus what it claims to be. It claims to be a constraint on judicial power. The idea is that judges shouldn't impose their personal views; they should follow what the text meant when it was adopted. That sounds reasonable until you watch it in practice. When the original meaning supports the outcome conservatives want, they invoke it faithfully. When it doesn't, they get [01:02:00] creative or ignore it entirely. The Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship clause is textually unambiguous, historically documented, affirmed by the Supreme Court over a century ago, and conservative justices still entertained a challenge to it. In Trump v. United States, the conservative majority invented sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, a protection that has zero basis in constitutional text or history. Justice Sotomayor's dissent made that plain. On voting rights, justices who insist on the plain meaning of words suddenly find ambiguity in the word "day" that nobody found for a hundred and fifty years.

As the Constitutional Accountability Center wrote after reviewing the 2024 term, this is a court that is transparently selective in its application of text and history. Originalism isn't a constraint. It's a costume. And it consistently answers the question of [01:03:00] who belongs, who's protected, who counts, in the narrowest way possible, because the historical record it draws from was written by and for the narrowest possible slice of the population.

Now, to be fair, originalist reasoning has occasionally produced outcomes progressives like. And the left's problem isn't just that the right has a methodology and they don't, it's what Rana identifies as the deeper trap: as long as you treat the Constitution as sacred, you're playing on a field that’s perpetually tilted toward the past.

So, as a counterpoint, maybe we should live by the idea that the living should not be governed by the dead. That a document written when wife-beating was legal and most of the population couldn't vote shouldn't be the final word on questions its authors never asked. Not because the Constitution is worthless but because treating any document as sacred means someone gets to be the priest, and the question of who gets to [01:04:00] interpret the text is always a question about power.

That brings us back to where we started. The question running through the birthright cases, the voting cases, the gun cases, every fight in front of this court, is who gets to decide who belongs. For most of American history, that question was answered by the powerful on behalf of everyone else. Originalism just gave that arrangement a scholarly vocabulary and a veneer of neutrality. The alternative is straightforward but genuinely radical: let the living decide. Let the people who are actually here, who actually have to live with the consequences, answer the question of who's protected and who counts. Not because the founders were irrelevant, but because they were human beings with human limitations who built a framework, not a gospel.

C.M. needed protection from a violent man. The Constitution's framers had nothing to say about that, because they [01:05:00] didn't consider her a full participant in the society they were building. Two hundred and thirty-five years later, a federal appeals court agreed with them. That's not fidelity to the Constitution. That's fidelity to the limitations of the men who wrote it, and calling it principle.

Note that we've begun putting my commentaries on YouTube so if you find them insightful, check out our channel and share them! Link in the show notes.

And now we'll continue to dive deeper on three topics today. First up, section A, birthright citizenship followed by Section B, election interference and section C mail-In voting I.

HOST 2: the chief argument that has been made against birthright citizenship was made, by Randy Barnett and Ellen Worman. Barnett is a law professor at Georgetown and Worman is a law professor at the University of of. Minnesota and they cited Edward Bates, who was Lincoln's Attorney General who, and they quote from Bates and they say, quote, the [01:06:00] Constitution uses the word citizen only to express the political quality of the individual in his relations to the nation, to declare these, a member of the body politic and bound to it by reciprocal obligation of allegiance on the one side, the protection of the other.

So all they cite. From what Bates writes, and they cite that as their originalist basis for opposing ci birthright citizenship. This is a ized version of what Bates wrote, that, falsies its meaning. As well as its historical context, in my forthcoming volume four. Wait for it for, you might have to wait more than a year and a half.

I've dealt with this at length in terms of dealing with the, development of the Emancipation Proclamation. Wonderful. So the Bates respon, writes this [01:07:00] as, Akhil you note in your amicus brief on November 29th, 1862. This is a very important date. It's about a month before the final Emancipation Proclamation is issued in January 1st, 1863.

So it's, and Bates is very much part of this discussion that's going on about it. So it is organically part of the development of the, of Emancipation Proclamation and Salmon Chase, who's an original abolitionist, is Secretary of the Treasury, and he asks a question of Bates, which triggers this, about a revenue cutter in New Jersey that's detained be, because it's captained by.

Quote, a colored man, 

GUEST 2: right? 

HOST 2: And is the per, and the question is, is he a citizen of the United States? And that's the question. Yep. And Bates responds that the people born in a country do constitute the nation. And as individuals are natural members of the [01:08:00] body politic. If this be a true principle, and I do not doubt it, it follows that every person born in the country is at the moment of birth.

Prima faci, a citizen, and he goes on and on like this. And he also says in his decision that birthright citizenship, which is what we call it, also belonged to quote. Bates aliens or quote, foreign born, through naturalization, making them quote like the former. So this is all established in Bates and it is inferred, it is implicit.

Emancipation Proclamation. And then it is expl explicit in the 14th Amendment. So this whole matter is as Steve Loick of Georgetown Law has written today in his newsletter, a, a real question of bad faith. As [01:09:00] well as, bad and distorted originalism, and this is the most, solid basis. For the Trump argument, and it is bogus.

GUEST 2: So we, we, we are Sears scholars. We three historians. We want people to read books, but we want people and the special ed students to just read the primary sources for yourself. Bates writes two things. He writes a, a memo to Seward. Okay, in a passport context, and he writes a response to Chase. They're online.

The internet is amazing. They're not that long. You can read them for yourself, decide whether mirror making stuff up or they're making stuff up. So just look at these sources. I want you to know one of the thing audience members, especially in the memo to Seward. He cites a very important case. It's a northern, state court case called Lynch v Clark.

That's, and it's actually, cited as very authoritative. Chancellor Kent, you [01:10:00] know, who is a very great commentator, relies on this, and Lynch v Clark. On its facts is all about a child of foreign sojourners, you know, people who are just traveling through, and it goes all the way back in certain ways to English law, common law, because in England, going all the way back to Calvin's case under, my, my Lord Coke, CO 

Oh, 

HOST 2: Edward Coke.

Yeah, 

GUEST 2: sorry. Edward Coke. The idea is. Even if you're, you know, French people traveling through the realm of, of England, we didn't quite have Britain yet. If you pop out a kid, that kid is an English subject by birth. Now subject is different than citizen and it was lifelong. And Britain, it was more futile system.

But when America comes and Republicans, all of that, they're building on. Coke and Calvin's case and Lynch v Clark comes along and says, even if your parents are foreign sojourners, you're a birthright [01:11:00] citizen. And Bates quotes all of that in talking to. So, because Seward needs to know when he is dealing with foreign countries, you know, whether they're, foreigners traveling in America, whether those kids are Americans or not.

So Bates two different things that you could read from Bates and Seward and. Salmon P. Chase, and they're all as one. And they're talking not just about children of slaves. And Dred Scott, they're talking about foreign travelers as well and their children. And the biggest point is I'm not the same as my parents.

And by the way, if I were. What happens if my mommy is one thing and my daddy is another? Okay. If it had been about your mommy and daddy, they would've had to specify which one. There are mixed marriages. Oh, they would've had to talk about foundlings. What happens if we don't know who the kid is? Right.

Oliver Twist Moses, you know, Tom Jones. And they didn't say any of that. 

The Supreme Court hears arguments on birthright citizenship. Later this week, a Trump administration executive order says the children of migrants born in the US are not [01:12:00] automatically citizens changing what was thought to be long settled law. So far, that move has been blocked by lower courts. Nearly 60 religious groups have weighed in supporting birthright citizenship.

Joining us to talk about those arguments is NPR Religion Correspondent Jason DeRose. Jason, good morning. Good morning. So let's start with the brief from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. What did they say? Well, Michelle, the bishops make historical, legal and religious arguments to support birthright citizenship.

They quote the 14th amendment, which says, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. And they say the idea of birthright citizenship has its origins dating back to both Roman law. English common law, but what are the bishop's religious arguments?

Well, they write that birthright citizenship is consistent with Catholic church teaching. That every human has inherent dignity, and they say the church teaches that public authorities, in order to be legitimate, must affirm and [01:13:00] protect that human dignity. The bishops also say that the government should help smaller, more immediate communities, particularly the family and denying citizenship to.

Children born in the US strips parents of the right to secure their children's place in society. That increases the chance that children will become stateless, meaning they're neither citizens of the US nor their parents' home countries and Michelle. So many rights derive from people being citizens of somewhere.

But Jason, you were telling us that there's actually been some pushback against the bishops, right? Some say the bishops should not be making religious arguments to the Supreme Court. Among them is Michael Fragoso at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is a conservative religious think tank. Those questions of Catholic theology and Catholic philosophy do not necessarily have the same applicability in the courts.

I think there's a misconception that everything that happens in the courts is really just. Policy with legalese thrown on top of it. Fragoso points out [01:14:00] that the bishops cite the Bible and theologians such as Aquinas and Augustine, far more than legal cases or the US Constitution. In their brief, and some others have argued that what might be going on is that the bishops are writing specifically to the six Catholic justices appealing to their religious beliefs rather than legal arguments.

And other religious groups have weighed in on this case as well. What have they said? Well, a broad coalition of 57 religious organizations, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others also filed a friend of the court brief. Their argument revolves around what they call the universal value of welcoming the stranger.

They cite the Torah, the New Testament, the Quran, the Vedas, other religious texts, and they argue America has long been a haven for those seeking to practice their religion freely. Many of the people who migrated here, Michelle, during the colonial era, Catholics, Quakers. Puritans did so to escape religious oppression back in Europe, and they cite recent data from the Department of Homeland [01:15:00] Security that shows one of the top reasons people migrate to the US is that they're being religiously persecuted elsewhere.

So this brief ties the idea of birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment to the idea of religious liberty found in the First Amendment. 

JAMELLE: You might say the case Trump v. United States really is revisiting of the Supreme Court's holding and Wong Kim Ark in 1898. Court held first after doing a comprehensive review.

Of birthright citizenship in the Anglo-American common law tradition. And after unpacking the relevant phrase of the citizenship clause, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, which the court found in this common law tradition to refer to everyone who was obligated to follow the laws, which was everyone other than the children of diplomats or diplomats, and invading soldiers for obvious reasons, the court held that, look, we have this.[01:16:00] 

Tradition. The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment codifies to this tradition into the constitution. The drafters of that amendment were very explicit that they did not view it as limited by race or nationality or really anything. The drafters of the amendment even contemplated the prospect of the clause bestowing citizenship on immigrants, and they didn't have a problem with it.

So the court says it's very straightforward, the words. Mean and what they say. We can go through all this history. We can go through all this legislative record, which mind you, this is 1898 and so the legislative record is just 30 years prior. A bunch of the justices almost certainly knew the people involved, right?

The court says the sum total of all of this is that Wong Kim Ark is a citizen. He was born here. It's that straightforward, I should say that the chief descent. In this case argued that [01:17:00] US citizenship was based on a consensual relationship. The existing citizens had to agree that the prospective citizens could be here, and that because through legislation they had said that they did not want the Chinese in the country.

The Chinese could not be citizens. The majority responds to this by saying, basically, yeah, we know they passed this law, but the constitution supersedes law. But the other thing I would add, and this notably, is an aspect of the Trump administration's case against birthright citizenship, this consensual view of citizenship.

I would add additionally that that consensual view is essentially the view expressed by Roger Taney and Dred Scott. And one thing we know for certain that is incontrovertible is that the 14th amendment was meant, or the citizenship clause was meant to repudiate Dred Scott. And so one way to look at this is how I look at it, is your interpretation doesn't repudiate Dred Scott.

It doesn't work. It might be logically plausible. [01:18:00] You might be able to play a, a fun word game, fun language game to make the word say what you want them to mean. But if it doesn't do that, it doesn't work. Now I'm writing about all of this to be able to read it and the New York Times on a Wednesday, but the big reason I wanted to make this video is to make an observation, and the observation is this.

So Wong Kim Ark is decided in 1898. If you know your Supreme Court case history that year should sound significant or sound like a significant year, and that is because in 1896, the court decided Plessy v Ferguson, the same court, this exact same court decided Plessy v Ferguson. And Plessy, as you might know, is the case which sanctioned Jim Crow segregation.

Which turned the 14th Amendment on its hedge, the 14th Amendment has this equal protection clause. All persons shall [01:19:00] have the equal protection of the laws. And Plessy v Ferguson says, listen, equal protection of the laws does not mean the Constitution has anything to say about social hierarchies. Some people might belong to a subordinate race, and if they belong to a subordinate race, there's nothing against equal protection that prevents states from recognizing that in their law.

And besides, yes. The laws say that blacks cannot be in the same train cars as whites, but it says whites can't be in the same train, train cars as blacks, and that's equal. That's fair. Now, I think this is specious and idiotic, and plainly subversive of the meaning of the 14th amendment, which was meant to instantiate equal citizenship.

And if you're allowing states to designate subordinate races, you are by definition not in instant equal citizenship. But the Plessy court didn't agree. I bring up Plessy because it's striking right, that the same court that validated Jim Crow [01:20:00] segregation also held that the citizenship clause did not permit the country or states to create a subordinate class of people without citizenship.

There is no love lost for Chinese Americans among the members of this court. But even they couldn't massage the citizenship clause into meaning something that it simply didn't say. That everything, the history, the record, the plain meaning of the words pointed to the same answer, that if you were born on American soil, then it doesn't matter who your parents were.

You are an American unless you are the child of a diplomat, you are a child. Produced on territory captured by an invading army or until the 1920s do you belong to certain native tribes? So words they, they mean what they say.

And even the court that said Jim Crow segregation was akay. [01:21:00] Even the court that looked at state laws actively subverting the purpose of the 14th Amendment and saying, it doesn't look like anything to us. Even that court. Agreed that the words said what they mean. And so when you're looking at, this current case, at this current Supreme Court, one question you have to ask is, is this current Supreme Court less scrupulous, more partisan, less committed to the text of the Constitution than the court that affirmed Jim Crow segregation?

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to that. I think it could go either way. But all of this is a reminder that the outcome of this case isn't really about the law. It isn't really about a question in the law. The holding in Wong Kim Ark held for the next 127 years. There was no dispute about this. And during those 127 years, it's not as if the United some paradise for [01:22:00] for immigrants.

26 years after the Supreme Court decided Wong Kim Ark. Congress passed the Johnson Reed Act of 1924, which was, or is one of the most nativist laws ever produced by an American legislature. It put harsh restrictions on immigration for basically everyone except those from Northern Europe and especially work to exclude people from Southern Europe, from Eastern Europe exclude Jewish people.

Exclude Asians, exclude Africans, certainly exclude Africans. It was just an amazingly harsh piece of legislation. And even in the midst of all of that, what was actually a nativist panic. No court disagreed with Wong Kim Ark. The 14th Amendment said what it meant. I'm sure there are people who wish it didn't, who wish they could redefine it, but it just, the words say what they mean.

This case is about politics and it's [01:23:00] about power. It's, I think about whether the justices believe that Trump is some kind of avatar of the American people, that Trump does represent some essence of the United States, and that his commands as wills is decrees, ought to be written into the Constitution as a kind of sovereign act.

If the court has that view, which will never be said explicitly, but I think it's sort of implicit in the way that it's treated Trump and the way that it's treated his claims to executive authority, then he wins on this. If the court has at least a little fidelity to the text of the Constitution, then I don't think he does.

And all of this is why it is important to engage. An active political contestation of this administration, including mass protest. Mass protests show that the public is not with Trump, that his claims to representing or embodying the public are bunk or nonsense, [01:24:00] and that the court should probably think twice before it goes and allows him to invalidate a critical piece of our constitutional heritage.

I don't think I look, but some people think I do. This is Norman Wong. He's a retired carpenter based outside of San Francisco. I'm wearing this Bruce Lee shirt. He's the great grandson of this guy Wong Kim Ark Wong. Kim. Mark, what do you think I look like in. They say, look at this amount.

And I said, okay, whatever. And this guy is a big reason why you're unequivocally a US citizen if you were born in the United States. But on April 1st, the Supreme Court takes up a case based on a Trump executive order that could fundamentally change birthright citizenship as we know it, hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason.

Trump wants to redefine our 14th amendment on birthright citizenship, such that unless you have one [01:25:00] parent that is a proven US citizen or a lawful permanent resident, you are not a US citizen, even if born on US soil. So I wanted to talk to Norman about his family history because Norman's family has lived both sides of what's at stake here.

The fight to claim their constitutional right to citizenship and the reality of watching it fail. Let's start with Norman's dad's side. My father was born in China. Norman's father was born in China. His grandfather was born in China, but his great-grandfather Wong Kim Ark, was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents living in the us.

In adulthood, he went to China and upon returning to the US he was denied entry. They wouldn't let him in. They basically said, you're not a citizen because you're of Chinese descent, and we're going to apply the Chinese exclusion act to you, nor we're not gonna let you back in. And they detained him for month.

He was a, a, a cook of very limited means financially. This is Alicia Ponzi. She's a former Navy nurse turned professional sculptor of over 20 years based in San Francisco. She's making a [01:26:00] bust of Wong Kim Ark. The citizens of Chinatown got together. They hired lawyers, very well respected lawyers to fight this case for him.

His case went all the way to the Supreme Court where his lawyers argued that Wong was a citizen under the 14th Amendment, which had been ratified just a few decades earlier in 1868 in order to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people. So the citizenship Clause says All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to this jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United.

States and the state in which they reside. It's really straightforward. You know, jurisdiction means you are subject to our laws, and so the only way to sort of muddy the waters and complicate this is to suggest that jurisdiction doesn't mean jurisdiction. Those illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

In Wong Kim Ark case, the fundamental question at stake was this. Are children born in the US to alien parents, US citizens, are [01:27:00] they subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? Or not because their parents not being citizens are subject to a foreign power. And the Supreme Court said, no, it doesn't matter that his parents were subject to China.

He was born here. He's a citizen. He stood up for his rights as American. He wouldn't let his citizenship be denied. With Wong Kim Ark, the 14th Amendment was clarified. Anyone born in the US is a US citizen with the very small. Exception of if your parents are ambassadors. His victory in the Supreme Court was really a victory for the citizens of Chinatown.

And I wanted to create, a tangible sort of reminder symbol of this story of Wong Kim Ark. For his hometown here in in San Francisco's Chinatown, and even with this historic win, he faced issues with his citizenship. Not only was he detained years later by officials accusing him of being an illegal immigrant, his son born in China, was unable to move to the US despite having [01:28:00] citizenship through his father.

He tried to come to America around 1910 and was denied. Wong Kim Ark still wanted his grandson, Norman's dad to come to the us, but his son refused to try again. So Wong Kim Ark did it, and made my father a paper son. Basically, this man who helped legally enshrined citizenship for millions of Americans in their descendants had to fabricate papers for his own grandson.

I never knew Wong Kim Ark, my father, never talked about him. I think that those paperwork discrepancies that made them quiet. Now time has passed and I have citizenship through my mother. But not everybody, may get the same immunity, so to speak. Norman's mother was also born a US citizen. Wong Kim Ark's made sure of that.

And it still wasn't enough. My mother was born here. She's Japanese American. She's [01:29:00] part of the Nisei, generation per generation. Went to the, internment camps. This was during World War II when President Franklin Roosevelt issued executive order 9066, which forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, over half of whom were American citizens in concentration camps.

When they rounded up all the Japanese in 1942, the Japanese were forced to abandon or sell their property for nothing, and they lost it. Japanese Americans were US citizens on paper, but not in practice. That part of the family didn't talk about their experience in the camps. As much as my father didn't talk about his experience growing up in America when he was young, the government has actually gone through a shameful period of citizenship stripping in the past, and there's nothing to say it wouldn't do it again.

So the ability of millions of people to [01:30:00] live here, work here, vote here beyond juries. It would become destabilized and over time you would have a growing population ultimately reaching millions of people that constituted a permanent underclass, a, a permanent class of people without the benefits of citizenship.

And that is so not only cruel, but destabilizing. To a society, dateless children have absolutely no rights. They won't have any paperwork. They won't be able to go to schools. There'll be a a a hundred percent under class for Norman's family. This isn't an abstract legal debate, citizenship and the rights that come with it is something his family has experienced as hard won and easily violated.

I don't think Wong Kim Ark did that. So he could elevate himself. All he wanted was what was his, I'm going to think back to when I was small and I was growing up as an American, we believed that [01:31:00] you could rise that, that every everybody had a fair shake. I think that is in jeopardy more than ever.

Jane: So besides Justice Alito, what were the key takeaways of the debate on Wednesday? 

ANTHONY: Well, so one thing that stood out was it seemed that at least some of the justices were just a little shellshocked at having to even parse this question and. Yeah, same relatable content, because I too was surprised that in the year of our Lord 2026, we were literally debating whether we were going to strip citizenship from people whose parents were from another country in this nation of immigrants.

So Justice Sotomayor, for example, just seemed. A little put out that we were even talking about this and, and [01:32:00] again, the text of the 14th Amendment is so clear. The history of the 14th Amendment is so clear. This argument that the Trump administration is offering is so fringe. I mean, it was off the wall five years ago.

And through careful stewardship, they've managed to make it happen. I mean, it's a little bit like jeggings, like, you know, like we never would've thought about it five years ago, but you just keep wearing them and eventually you wear it down and. All of a sudden, you know, jeggings, they're happening. Mm-hmm.

That's what kind of happened here. They just kept pushing it and pushing it and, you know, now it's in the US Supreme Court. So that was one thing that really stood out to me. It seemed that the justices on the main were quite skeptical of the administrations. Position. I think Justice Alito was wide open and a little receptive, justice Thomas May have gone either way.

Some of his questions indicated that he might be receptive to the administration's faux originalist argument. Justice Kavanaugh was also a little hard to read, but, I, I took [01:33:00] great pleasure and I. You might have as well, when Justice Gorsuch seemed to literally struggle with the fact that John Sauer, the solicitor general, was making inane arguments and couldn't seem to understand how his argument would relate to the children of Native Americans in the United States at this moment.

Jane: Yeah, I, I was really struck by that moment because. No one on the court cares as much about how the law can impact Native Americans as Neil Gorsuch. That's his sweet spot. It, I, it always has been. 

ANTHONY: I mean, it is literally like going to the Supreme Court and arguing before Cookie Monster and being shocked when he's like, do you have a cookie?

Jane: Yes. Like, and then to have the solicitor general not know how to respond to would Native Americans be citizens? I was like, dude. Did, what are we doing 

ANTHONY: here? Sorry. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, and like, you know, to be clear, they just don't roll into court, or at least to my knowledge, they don't just roll into court.

Maybe this administration is doing a different thing. You know, there are serious moots and practice sessions where they think about every [01:34:00] question that might come up, and so to my mind it was just incomprehensible that no one thought to ask this question that seemed obvious that he would ask. 

Jane: This term, the president's apparent strategy has been to use the Supreme Court as a free pass to do whatever he wants, but the Jos, even the ones he appointed and then screams at more recently, have shown a willingness to disagree with him sometimes.

How will this ruling either for or against the executive order impact the president's relationship with the Supreme Court, which seems he seems to think it really is a mafioso. You know, nice court, you've got shame if something happened to it, kind of agreement. 

ANTHONY: So I don't know how it'll affect his relationship with the court.

I think it's very likely that he will lose before the court, in part because the argument is so outlandish and the text and history is so obvious. But with that in mind. I think it needs to be made clear to listeners that when [01:35:00] the court rules against the president on this issue, we should not be big uping this court because.

This will not be, I think, a unanimous decision. I think there likely will be some defectors from common sense here, and that will be a travesty because this is such a straightforward, obvious question. There is precedent on the books. There are acts of Congress that are consistent with this understanding of birthright citizenship.

This is the way we have always done it, and the history bears that out, so this should be unanimous. The fact that it won't be is a travesty, and you should remember that when. All of the other media are talking about how great this court is for standing up to Donald Trump. Like this was amazing. Like they did this.

They stood up to him and they dealt him a loss. Of course, they dealt him a loss. This was the easiest question in the world. The second easiest question was tariffs, and they gave him a loss there too. And while we're talking about all. The losses that they've given him two big ones. We aren't talking about all of the wins that they've given him, the wins that have literally facilitated [01:36:00] him as he's dismantled the Department of Education as he's encroached upon Congress's prerogative to disperse funds for federal programs as he's dismantled the administrative state.

That's the stuff we should be thinking about. The winner here. Is this court, this court that gets to burnish this patina of independence that is undeserved that we will all talk about surely, but is totally undeserved given the way they have literally midwife this administration into dismantling our government.

Jane: Next up is Section B election interference.

If they kill your vote, they kill your wage, your healthcare and your future, turn on your local billionaire funded right wing media. It's ubiquitous after all, pretty much any day of the week. And you'll hear a similar rant uttered with the same grinning certainty. Ice is gonna surround the poles this November, and there's nothing you can do about it.

They're not floating it as an idea or something up for debate. They're not raising it as a question of [01:37:00] legality or even practicality. They're promising it, celebrating it, and daring those of us who believe in democracy to try to stop them. Steve Bannon says it nearly every broadcast. Hatemonger Jesse Waters applauds it on Fox News, so-called news in primetime.

Professional victim, Ben Shapiro calls it reasonable Newsmax owned by two billionaires in Shake salt and binge Ja Alani hosts commentators who treat it like a done deal. They've decided in the open and on camera with a swaggering confidence that no Republican will dare stand against them. That armed masked thugs will stand at the entrance to your neighborhood polling place this fall, just like the Klan did in our great grandparents generation in the south.

Especially if you live in a neighborhood with a lot of black and Hispanic voters, and if you or some of your neighbors are frightened enough to turn around and avoid the building or even simply stay home. Well, that's precisely the point of this awful echo of some of the [01:38:00] worst of America's history. The 150 plus billionaires who bankrolled Donald Trump's return to the White House now own the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, and enough of our nation's media to make their threat feel like it's simply inevitable.

As I've pointed out before, they've spent decades and billions of dollars building a media and think tank infrastructure to keep working people confused, divided, and willing to believe whatever bullshit they're fed. But what these wannabe fascists don't own yet, at least not completely, is your right to vote.

And looking at the prospect of a blue tsunami. That's exactly what hard right Republicans are working to fix before November. You're damn right, we're gonna have ice around the polls come November. Bannon announced on his podcast back in February and he is been repeating it in variations ever since Fox so-called news as Jesse Waters thinks it's a splendid idea.

Ben Shapiro is fully on board. News Mag hosts, [01:39:00] Newsmax hosts have been cheerleading it for weeks. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump's criminal attorney, stood at CPAC and asked with feigned innocence, why would anyone object to armed masked goons, menacing people by standing outside polling places?

You know, just like in the 1920s and the 1840s in the deep south. They've wrapped the whole scheme and the claim of election integrity, which is the same language every authoritarian in history has used. When he decided the wrong people were voting too easily, it was the underlying logic and rationalization for Jim Crow in previous generations.

The real target of the obscene scheme isn't some mythical army of illegal voters. As the Heritage Foundation discovered. They literally don't exist in any meaningful way. Their real target is you, particularly if you're not a straight white man, and the tool tool they're planning to use is raw, naked fear.[01:40:00] 

And it's not like they don't know exactly what they're doing. The Heritage Foundation's own voter fraud database assembled by people who have every political incentive to find a crisis has documented exactly 68 cases of non-citizen voting. Going back to the 1980s, 68 cases across four decades in a country of 330 million people having cast billions of votes.

And when Trump's own Department of Homeland Security conducted an internal review specifically to build a legal and political case for this emergency, they came back with the same answer. There is no evidence of widespread fraud. None. The crisis Republicans have been using to justify making it hard to vote since the 1960s is entirely fictional.

The emergency was cynically manufactured by right-wing operatives, including William Renquist and proclaimed in 1980 by Heritage Foundation, co-founder Paul Weyrich. But the armed thugs they wanna plant at [01:41:00] your polling place will be very, very real. And their effect on who decides to show up and vote will be very, very real too.

What they're proposing is also not incidentally, a federal felony. Title 18 of the United States Code Section 5 92. A law written in the aftermath of the Civil War by horrified legislators who'd personally watched armed and officially deputized members of the Klan threaten black voters with nooses and at gunpoint makes it a crime punishable by up to five years in prison to deploy armed federal personnel to any polling location anywhere in America, whoever being an officer of the Army or Navy or other person in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States.

Orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed member at any place where a general or special election is held. Unless such force is necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States shall be fined under this title or [01:42:00] imprisoned, not more than five years or both. And disqualified from holding any Office of honor, profit, or trust under the United States.

That law has been on the books for more than a century because the people who wrote it understood that the moment we let the government sanction terror of voting locations, we no longer have a real democracy, which of course is exactly the point of these right wing fascists. The cruelty of the scheme becomes even clearer when we consider how closely what ICE has been doing resembles previous generation's experience of the Klan.

A 2025 Supreme Court Shadow Docket ruling written by Pillsbury Doughboy Imitator, Brett Kavanaugh in Nome versus Vasquez. Perdomo says ICE can profile Americans based on how dark their skin is, where they work, or how they talk. The so-called Kavanaugh stops and what's followed has been a wave of well-documented harassment of brown skinned US citizens.

A 20-year-old American citizen named Moshe Khali [01:43:00] Hussein, for example, was stopped by masked ice agents from walking. While walking from work to lunch in Minneapolis, shackled and violently dragged off to a federal building, as he repeatedly protested that he was a US citizen and carried in his pocket, the proof of it before being threatened, humiliated, and ultimately released.

He repeated, I'm a citizen. I'm a citizen the entire time, but the agents hungry for their bonuses and high on functional vice president Stephen Miller's racism. Didn't care. A ProPublica investigation found more than 170 cases of US citizens detained at raids in protests, and that's probably just the tip of a very large, very deep iceberg.

According to the Cato Institute, 73% of people booked into ice detention since October 20, 25, had no criminal convictions whatsoever. You don't need a scientific study to know what happens to Latino voter turnout when an ice thug is the first thing you see when you walk up to [01:44:00] cast your ballot. The Brookings Institution found around 75% of Latinos across the country can speak Spanish well enough to be flagged under ICE's Kavanaugh Stop profiling criteria.

Making enormous numbers of Latino citizens vulnerable to harassment and detention based on nothing more than how they sound. Not to mention that Brett Kavanaugh's dicta allows for harassment and arrest based on the color of their skin and they know it. That suppression of the vote isn't an in incidental side effect of this geo pan p plan.

It is the plan.

KATE: Arizona voters notched sweeping back to back victories. Friday after the state Supreme Court declined to hear three separate challenges backed by Republicans and right wing groups. In three orders issued Friday, the conservative leaning court refused to take up appeals. In cases that sought to restrict how mail-in ballots are verified.

Allow counties [01:45:00] to hand count ballots and weaken rules governing early voting and election certification. One case was a challenge from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club targeting how the state verifies signatures on mail-in ballots. Under Arizona law, election officials can compare the signature on a ballot to ones already on file to confirm identity.

The plaintiffs argued officials should only be allowed to compare signatures to a voter's original registration record. A second case brought by Mojave County supervisor Ron Gould, attempted to upend how ballots are counted altogether. Gould argued counties should be allowed to abandon voting machines and conduct full hand counts of ballots.

A process election experts widely agree is slower, less accurate, and more vulnerable to human error. The third case was a sweeping challenge led by Arizona Senate President Warren Peterson, and former house speaker Ben Toma, targeting the [01:46:00] state's 2023 election procedures manual. Taken together the high court's rejections mark a significant victory for voting rights in a battleground state that has been at the center of repeated efforts to reshape election rules since 2020.

ANTHONY: There's a couple things to unpack here. The, the bill you're talking about is, is called the Save America Act, which is, election law reforms that Republicans want to pass. And some key provisions of this are a, a nationwide mandate, for ID in order to cast a ballot and also.

A requirement that whenever you register to vote in this country, you have to prove your citizenship either with a birth certificate or a passport. It bans voting by mail, except in certain specific cases like military, overseas or illness, it also. Prevents you from registering outside of a a, a voting office, a a government office.

So, you know, you, you see these [01:47:00] voter registration drives on college campuses where people, register voters who are walking between classes or at malls. All of that would end. 

JUSTIN: That's very clear. That's what, Trump wants. Why is it that the Democrats feel so strongly about this? Why is it that they can't come to some kind of a deal?

What is it that they feel is so important about the act, not par? 

ANTHONY: I, I think they view it as, a bar to people voting. I mean, you would have to get a driver's license, you have to pay for that or get a passport, a hundred and something dollars to get a passport just to register to vote. There's also concerns that, people whose names do not match up with their birth certificate, could have problems.

Registering women who, changed their names when they got married would have to take an extra step, essentially to, to prove that they are who. Their birth certificate says they are. And, and this is all just adding on to kind of the onerous, owner's kind of, requirements to, to, to be able [01:48:00] to exercise a constitutional right, which is to vote now, now to get back, the reason why they're blocking this Homeland Security bill in the first place is that they want greater regulation, greater oversight.

Of immigration enforcement officials, they want things like a mandate that if a immigration official, comes to, to try to interview someone or to detain someone, they have to have a warrant to enter the premises. They want body cameras for, immigration enforcement officials. They don't want them to be able to wear masks.

They want 'em to have IDs on them. That's why they block this Homeland Security bill. What Donald Trump has said is that. Well just to pass the bill now, not only do you have to vote for funding ice, you also have to vote for this, election regulation law. Well, and in addition, he's tacking on, a requirement that there's a ban on, transgender surgery for children, and a ban on any transgender athletes, in college sports.

So he is kind of bundling a bunch of things in [01:49:00] here into this one bill, and demanding that. No negotiation. Democrats have to sign off on this, or the Republicans have to find a way to pass it without any kind of a democratic support, which would require playing with the parliamentary procedures in the Senate in a way that hasn't happened in decades.

clip: I'm suggesting strongly to the Republican party, don't make any deal on anything.

The most important thing we can have is what's called the Save America Act. Don't make any deal on anything unless you include voter id and you have to be a citizen to vote. You have to show citizenship to vote. Very easy to do. The Democrats are fully to blame with the struggle of the great. American public is going through at the airports.

They're going through a big struggle right now, and we just put ice in charge and they're helping TSA, the agents and, they're working together so far very well. 

JUSTIN: One of the things Democrats say, isn't it, is that, that it'll affect minorities [01:50:00] in particular and and disenfranchise whole groups of people, to which the White House would say, really? Why do you assume that some people are less capable of getting access to government?

Id. Than others. I mean, it's available to everyone who is a US citizen. And it's fair to say, isn't it, that, I mean, there's a division, isn't there? I'm not sure this act is particularly well supported when, in, when people are specifically asked about the act, but the idea that people show some sort of ID to vote actually is quite popular, isn't it?

ANTHONY: Yeah. If you, if you see polling, I mean polls add, you know, 60, 70, 80% public approval, because as you mentioned. Americans, most Americans need their ID to do a lot of thing. I'm gonna have to show an ID in order to get on a plane, later today. So it's not that that big a deal actually in a lot of states do require identification, to cast a ballot Virginia by.

My home state right now, I have to show an ID to cast a ballot. Now, mind you, there are ways of getting around that. If you don't have an [01:51:00] id, you have to sign an affidavit, that sort of thing. But there are cases on the margins where people just don't have IDs. People don't have a driver's license.

People don't have a passport. Only like 50% of Americans have passports right now. I mean, I can think of my, my 88-year-old mother, she doesn't. Drive anymore. Her pa her driver's license is expired, her passport is expired. Someone would have to help her get to, A-A-D-M-V, a Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new picture ID made in order to be able to, to comply with this law.

And there are other people, the elderly, the infirm, the people who, just don't drive 'cause they don't have a car. I mean, that's, those are all obstacles, right? To, to being able to exercise. What is a fundamental. Constitutional right. And I think that's the democratic criticism here, is that it shouldn't be harder for some Americans to cast a ballot than it is for others.

And as soon as you start putting these requirements up, it gets more and more so that certain people, [01:52:00] are pushed to the margins and are made less likely to be able to, to cast their ballots. 

JUSTIN: It's a really interesting one, isn't it, Anthony? It just seems to me that it could be, that it puts out of business in the ability to vote some elderly people who might well be minded to vote Republican.

It also has an impact on people who just can't be bothered, actually. Just think, oh, what the heck? And who do those people tend to vote for in, in recent, recent years, it tended to vote for Donald Trump. It's he's, he's got people out of their shacks and into the voting. Booths in a way that people never managed to do before.

And I just wonder, obviously there are minority groups that there Democrats have traditionally depended on, particularly black voters who they feel will be impacted. And that then goes to the heart of, of that question the, that actually the Democrats think it probably will be their people. But I think, I think it's entirely right actually to suggest, Anthony, you can't know, can you, [01:53:00] how this will play out?

ANTHONY: We have seen Donald Trump's done really well with low propensity voters, in recent elections. So, and this could adversely affect Republicans as well as Democrats. There's no guarantee that this will red redo to the benefit of, of Trump unless, there, you know, is this massive group of undocumented illegal aliens who.

Who have been casting ballots, which Trump may seems to, to believe. But like I said, there hasn't been real evidence. And I think the State of Utah did an audit of all of the ballots cast, recently, and found only a handful of cases. I think maybe only one or two that had. As someone who was not a US citizen voting.

So, you know, we're talking about, what is probably a relatively small number, of undocumented people who, who might be restricted by this, but a much larger number, of people who, you know, we don't know what their, their partisan affiliations are. And you know, it almost makes me think, Justin, that.

Donald Trump, you know, maybe this is cynical, but you know, doesn't care [01:54:00] so much about getting this passed, as finding a way of saying, well, there's fraud and that's why the Republicans aren't gonna do as well in November. I mean, we saw when he lost in 2020. We saw when he won in 2016, but didn't win the popular vote.

He said, he blamed voter fraud for those results. He blamed undocumented migrants voting for those results. So in theory, this could be another effort to set up, that sort of, of an explanation if the Republicans take it on the chin in November. 

Research from the Economic Policy Institute documents how the states with the most aggressive voter suppression are also the states with the lowest wages, the weakest worker, labor protections, and the highest rates of poverty. Red states with aggressive voter suppression have in fact the highest rates in the nation of spousal abuse, obesity, smoking, teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion.

At least before Dobbs. Now, it would be called [01:55:00] forced births. Bankruptcies in poverty, homicide and suicide. Infant mortality, maternal mortality, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, dropouts from high school, divorce, contaminated air and water, opiate addiction and deaths, unskilled workers, parasitic infections, income and wealth inequality.

COVID deaths, unvaccinated people. Federal subsidies to states the so-called red state welfare, people on poverty, child poverty, homelessness, spousal murder, unemployment, deaths from auto accidents, people living on disability and gun deaths. That's not a coincidence. And for social scientists, it's not a mystery.

When working, people can't vote. Union rights evaporates. So corporate bosses don't have to negotiate with their workers. When working, people can't vote. The minimum wage stays frozen. Healthcare gets stripped, unions get busted, and social services are cut to pay for tax cuts. So the morbidly rich keep all the money they've made from the labor of the people at the bottom.

Research from Equitable [01:56:00] Growth has gone even farther, showing a direct causal link between higher voting rates and higher minimum wages. More generous state support programs and lower income inequality overall, which is why blue states consistently have the highest standards of living in the country.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 by breaking down barriers that kept black workers from the polls actually reduced the black white rage wage gap. When five corrupt racist Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted key provisions of that act in, in 2013, the racial wage gap got worse. Again, the ballot box isn't just a civil civic ritual for working people.

It's the democratic lever that moves everything else. It's how you get a raise. Keep your healthcare, and make the people who write the rules answer to the people who must live under them. That's why what Bannon and his billionaire backers are doing is so nakedly corrupt. They know that if black, latino and young voters along with hourly workers and people in the [01:57:00] community's ISIS currently terrorizing all show up in November, the geo people experience an electoral blood bath when their congressional allies lose their majority.

The billionaires in Trump crime families looting gets interrupted. Two years of ruin his tariffs. Medicaid cuts tax giveaways to the morbidly rich and the demolition of every federal agency designed to protect workers rather than owners. All face a reckoning. Trump's Lick Spittles, including his Attorney General Face Prison, just like over 40 of Nixon's a and his attorney General did.

That's what they're afraid of. That's what armed masked thugs at the polling place are designed to prevent. I've spent enough time studying the history of authoritarianism, both in literature and in countries I've visited or worked in. To recognize what this moment represents every Putin, Orban and Trump style strongman who's converted a democracy into an authoritarian state started by making certain people afraid to participate.

Today's Republicans aren't even [01:58:00] original and they're obscene threats of implied violence at the polling places for almost a century. After the Civil War, this was completely normal in the previously Confederate South. And as the Klan taught previous generations of Americans, intimidation doesn't, also doesn't need to be legal to work.

The chilling effect lands the same way. Whether or not the statute books say it's permissible, which is exactly why they're planning this in open defiance of federal law and exactly why we have to name it for what it is. An attack on our constitutional right to determine our own leaders, thus our nation's future.

Call your member of Congress at 2 0 2 2 2 4 31 21 and demand that they go on record opposing any deployment of ice or other armed Trump goons to polling places. Let them know it's a federal crime that should be enforced, and any federal official, including the president who pushes it, must quote, be disqualified from Henny, from holding any office and lose their job.

Check your voter [01:59:00] registration right [email protected] and make sure nothing has changed since the last time you looked. Particularly if you live in a red state, then bring every person you know to the polls this November because the people trying to scare us away from the ballot aren't just doing it for fun.

Like previous generations in the South, they well understood the vote's power better than most of the people who take it for granted. It's well time, past time the rest of us caught up.

Jane: And finally, section C mail-in voting.

ANDREW: So right now, I think a lot of people who are listening to this are thinking. I have early voting in my state, and I can go and I can either cast my vote in person beforehand, or I can send an absentee ballot beforehand, but they also are thinking I can send an absentee ballot. And as long as it's postmarked by election day, meaning the sort of final day by which you have to have cast your vote, as long as it's postmarked [02:00:00] by, then it can be received afterwards within a certain limit.

So there's that spectrum of ways to vote. Mary, what did Mississippi do and what's the federal law on this? 

MARY: Yeah, so I'm gonna do these in reverse order. Okay. The federal law, we start with the Constitution, and the Constitution has a role for Congress in a couple of ways. Even though elections are largely administered by the states, there is the electors clause, right, which is a clause that allows for.

The states to appoint in a manner that they decide the number of electors, right? Electors. These are in presidential elections. This is what becomes the electoral ballot. The electoral college ballots, right? This was what was such a big issue in 2020 when we had alternate slates of electors. So the states can determine how they're gonna appoint electors, but Congress has the power under Article two.

Section one to determine the time of choosing the electors and the day on which they shall give their votes. Now, that day, the electoral college day is not [02:01:00] the date of the election that the rest of us vote in, but that's relevant, and I'll tell you why in a minute. There's another section of the Constitution in Article one, section four that says, the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof, which sounds like a state can decide.

What day is the election? Right? But the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations accept as to the places of choosing senators. In the early years, the states did choose different dates, but then over time, Congress decided it would exercise its authority to choose the election day.

So first came in 1845. Congress instructed that the electors of president and vice president shall be appointed in each state on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November. Right? That was the first statement of election day. 

comm: Right? 

MARY: And that is a date that the electors are appointed.

[02:02:00] It's not the day that they then meet to cast their electoral college votes. That's a different day. But that's the day that they like become the electors. And we all know that that's how it works, because. When we go vote, we're actually voting for the electors in our state, not directly for president.

It's kind of a weird fiction, but it's not a fiction. 

ANDREW: That's our system. 

MARY: And we know the popular vote does not always win the electoral college vote, 

ANDREW: right? 

MARY: All right, so that was the first time Congress fixed that date, but that date was just for the choosing of electors for president and vice president, and after the Civil War in 1872.

Congress extended the rule to the House of Representatives setting the same date, right? The first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of November. So now we have 18 45, 18 72, 19 14. 

ANDREW: Can I just say, so one of the things you can imagine why Congress would be interested in setting some uniform dates when it comes to something like President is so that you don't have, well, Mississippi's gonna choose.

People on X date, but New [02:03:00] York's gonna choose them on Y date and New Hampshire's going to choose it on Z date and they can all see what's happening in other states. 

MARY: And it could influence the election. Right, 

ANDREW: exactly. And so it's sort of like everyone has to vote together. 

MARY: That's right. And that last dot on the map is 1914 when they extended the election day to also the elections for senators.

Right. So we have Congress three times saying, here's election day. All right. That's just the beginning of the issue though, because the question here was what does election day mean and the delta between the parties, and this is the state of Mississippi through their solicitor general. Defending their statute, right, which says if your ballots are postmarked or delivered to an election official, it could be through the mail, but they're postmarked or given to a common carrier, FedEx, whatever.

By election day, they can still be counted even if they are not received by the election officials until up to five business days after the [02:04:00] election. As we indicated at the top, there are 30 states that allow mail-in ballots. Many states have different numbers of days after the election day that they will still count the ballots so long as they were postmarked or the decision made by election day.

So it's all came down to. Does election day mean the date that you make your decision as a voter and cast that ballot, or does it mean the date that it is received by officials? That's what the entire argument was about, and it came down to, did Congress in those three statutes I mentioned 18 45, 18 72, and 1914, by setting an election day, did that mean they have preempted states?

From counting ballots received after election day, even if the choice was made by election day. 

ANDREW: And so here, that backdrop is so important for people to understand because, and I hope you agree with me. This is where I thought Justice Jackson just [02:05:00] put her finger directly on the issue, and I thought your history points to the same thing, which is.

You've got the Constitution saying, the states get to do what they want and get to decide this. Absent Congress saying you cannot, and preempting the field. So it alls a question of. We know what the states are doing. We know what here, it's a question of Mississippi, but the court asked lots of questions about other states and other state practices.

So we know there's all these different state practices. But the question is, was that somehow preempted by Congress? Did Congress say anything that this is not allowed? That they directly said, no, we are preempting this and not allowing the states. To have votes counted after the election date if even though submitted as required [02:06:00] by the state in whatever fashion it is.

By election day, but they're not received, or as many of the justices focused on the issue of voting ahead of time, and there were a lot of justices saying, well, if we're gonna go down this route of reading all this stuff into this imagined congressional statute that doesn't say anything about this issue specifically, and we're gonna start reading stuff in.

Where do we stop? This issue is really one of, let's look at the congressional statute, and if the congressional statute isn't barring what the states say, then we've got a Constitution to follow. And as everyone knows, the constitution is the top law and Congress is less than that. They can't override the Constitution.

The default is the states get to do it. Absent Congress having said no, you cannot.

BRAD: you, you argue in your peace at Slate last night, that quote, what makes all of this even more disturbing is the fact that [02:07:00] so many justices proved, eager to embrace a legal theory that is incoherent, dishonest, and rooted in paranoid hostility toward mail voting.

Alright, I'll bite. What is that legal theory and how did they embrace it? Mark? 

MARK: The legal theory is that Congress somehow prohibited states from counting these late arriving mail ballots when it sets the federal date of elections. So just to be clear. At no point has Congress ever passed a law that says that states cannot count late arriving ballots.

Actually, there are very few laws that even govern mail voting. All that Congress has ever done is said that the first Tuesday, after the first Monday is election day. And the legal theory in this case, I'm not joking, is that the words election day. Contains some kind of implicit prohibition on states counting [02:08:00] ballots that are mailed by election day that arrive shortly thereafter.

That's the plaintiff's theory. They've got nothing better than that, and yet here we are talking about arguments, which obviously went very well for them. An indication that this court is, as we've discussed, as you know, better than most. Extremely eager to interfere with free and fair elections, extremely hostile toward mail voting, and very, very, I think, sympathetic to Donald Trump's persistent claims that our voting system is rife with fraud.

BRAD: So, is is that why this notion that, that congress, I guess 150 years ago or whenever it was, declared that the first. Tuesday after the first Monday in November would be election day. That was election day. Is that why Alito was arguing? That election day as defined by Congress could only be on this one single day and everything else therefore is not election day.

So ballots may not be cast or counted, on any other day when. When, Alito [02:09:00] said, and I quote, we have lots of phrases that involve two words. The second day of which is Day, labor Day, Memorial Day, George Washington's birthday. That's three days. But, three words, but okay. Independence Day. Birthday.

That one got two mentions, I guess, and election day. He said they are all particular days. So if we start with that, if I have nothing more to look at than the phrase election day, I think this is the day in which everything is going to place. Did I read that quote correctly, mark? Is that the argument that he's actually making?

Because it has the word day in it. That's the day. Therefore, nothing else can happen on any other day. 

MARK: So look, you articulated the argument correctly. I, I think that you're leading to just by stating it all the reasons it's wrong. And if I could just get a head start there. Of course the reality is that we do not all vote on election day [02:10:00] and our ballots are not all counted on election day, and that has been the case.

For a very long time. So if the plaintiff's theory is correct, and if Alito is correct, that the day is the day that there is this 24 hour period where everything has to happen, then early voting is illegal, right? Mail voting is, is illegal, and no ballots can be counted after midnight on election day because it's the day and you know, if it's not your birthday after midnight.

It can't be election day after midnight, and there has to be a timer that goes off and every ballot that hasn't been counted just needs to be set on fire because the day is over. That's the implication of his theory, 

BRAD: right? I, I mean, it, it seems like it would, it would kill early voting and, any kind of vote by mail, because obviously that has to be done.

Prior to the election in advance. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, did, did that come up as, an argument was that an effective rebuttal to this claim? Because that claim about election day seems to be at the heart of this case. It was as [02:11:00] it was originally decided, I guess by the, the far right, fifth Circuit Court back in 2024 when they, initially blocked Mississippi's Law on this, on these grace periods.

MARK: That is correct. I mean, the problem for the plaintiffs was so obvious that it came up over and over again, and remarkably, to my mind, they didn't really have a very good argument against it. So even Chief Justice John Roberts, who I think is like a major swing vote in this case. He kept asking, well, if your theory is that it all has to happen on the day, then how could you possibly think early voting is okay?

And the answer given by Paul Clement who was attacking the Mississippi law was basically that early voting is just different. It just is. It's different because, it is, and the chief made fun of him. I mean, the chief made fun of the solicitor general too. John Sauer, who is. On behalf of the Trump administration also attacking mail voting and, and basically said, you don't have an argument.

It's completely circular. You're just [02:12:00] saying that, you know, early voting is different and, and late arriving ballots are, are different, but you don't have a reason why. And I think Justice Amy Coney Barrett was, to her credit, concerned about this as well. I mean, if you take these theory seriously, it means that the way that we have conducted elections in this country.

For, for a very long time. I mean, actually going back to the Civil War Yeah. Which we can talk about, has been unlawful and nobody knew it until now. Congress secretly smuggled in this ban on early voting, and nobody figured it out until the geniuses on the Fifth Circuit did in 2024. 

BRAD: It, it's just, I mean, I guess by, by that notion, Donald Trump, I think on Monday, violated the law by, voting by mail.

Correct. In, in Florida. So, somebody really needs to, to round him up for voter fraud. I guess this argument mark, about the, the threat of. Appearance of fraud. Concern about that, that being just as dangerous as actual fraud, as [02:13:00] absurd as that may sound, which was another argument that made its return in these, in these arguments.

This has actually been around for a long time this, from this right wing court, specifically to argue that though there was. Virtually zero evidence of polling place impersonation fraud. The fact that people feared that it might happen, believed that it could, believed that it did, because folks on Fox News and on the right claim that it does that.

That alone, that fear. Of it actually happening was good enough to allow states to mandate strict voter id, restrictions at the polling place, even though millions of Americans might lose their vote. That's an old argument, but it came back. It's an oldie but goodie mark it, it worked before. So why not now?

Is that a sort of, how they treaded this thing out again? 

MARK: That's it. And, and of course, you know, it cannot be said enough. There's no evidence of, of voter fraud on any mass scale in this country. [02:14:00] It, it, it's random incidents that are often actually committed by Republicans. This is not, to the extent it occurs, which is like once in a blue moon.

Mm-hmm. Something that Democrats seem to be doing to try to swing elections. But there. Is a circular logic here as well, which is that Republican politicians can claim there's voter fraud. There isn't, they can't prove it. But then they use the fears that they have whipped up about this phantom fraud, right?

To justify cracking down on the franchise and to justify new measures to suppress the vote. And that's what Justice Alito was doing. That's what Justice Kavanaugh was doing. They were saying, don't you think we should take into account fears of, of voter fraud, the appearance of fraud. Use it to justify striking down Mississippi's law.

And I, I guess I just wanna take a step back and say that this is not, and barely pretends to be a legal argument, right? Because this is not like a, a legislative body deciding whether it's [02:15:00] wise. For states to count ballots that are postmarked on election day, but arrive shortly thereafter, 30 states and the District of Columbia have in some way, shape, or form enacted these laws.

Okay? It's not the Supreme Court's job to decide whether there're wise. It's the Supreme Court's job to decide whether Congress. Quietly prohibited these laws. When it used the words election day and day of the election in federal statutes enacted in the 19th century before there was widespread mail voting or early voting.

And the answer of course, obviously is no. So what are these questions about voter fraud doing in these oral arguments? I, I mean, all I can really say is that it seems like these guys have forgotten what their jobs are. And they've been watching too much Fox News. Mm-hmm. And they are trying to impose Donald Trump's anti-bot agenda on the country in the guise of judicial review.

I mean, look, there is a bill, the Republican support, it's part of this sort of save act suite of bills. Mm-hmm. [02:16:00] That would prohibit states from counting these later arriving ballots. But it hasn't passed and it's probably not going to pass because it can't survive the filibuster. And this case is just an effort to smuggle that in to law.

Make Donald Trump very, very, very happy and disproportionately disenfranchised democratic voters because we know Democrats at this stage are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. So that is what's going on here. There's very little law 

KATE: if the danger, as we've been talking about, of this case is at least in part that it reveals and kind of might further baseless narratives around early voting and fraud. It also clearly connects to broader themes regarding the upcoming midterm election. And as I mentioned, upfront protect democracy just came out with a pretty alarming, but I think really important report on that.

So can you just talk about that for a little bit, Ian? 

IAN: Yeah. I mean, look, we're living in an era, a moment where authoritarianism is on the rise around the world. Obviously we're experiencing it here at home. And what you see is a very clear pattern across the world where [02:17:00] autocrats do seven things everywhere to dismantle democracies, right?

They politicize independent institutions, they spread disinformation. They aggrandized power in the hands of the executive. They quashed assent, they scapegoat vulnerable populations. They stoke violence. And then of course they corrupt elections, right? They hold elections, but they tilt the playing fields that elections are no longer free and fair.

And they basically guarantee a predetermined outcome of entrenching, the autocrats in power. And we've obviously seen attempts at that here in the United States, right? January 6th, 2021, where Trump refused to accept the results of an election and cited a violent insect insurrection on the capitol.

And there's a pattern here to how Trump, does this. And I think we should anticipate that that is gonna play out here. And that pattern is to invoke Sesame Street. In the letter of the D, the letter of the day. The letter of the day is D. Okay? There's three D's here. It's deceive, disrupt, and deny. And that is the president's playbook.

And you know, we saw in January. And we saw in 2020 was when the [02:18:00] president lost that election. He tried to deceive people with the big lie into thinking that the election was stolen, right? That they were, they were stealing the election in Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Detroit. He had a shut down vote counting, but he actually only persuaded.

About 28 to 32% of the population with his big lie immediately when he said it, according to snap polls taken at the time. Now, on the one hand, that's actually an large, really large number of people, but on the other hand it wasn't enough because in our decentralized system where there's no national election authority, a president can't steal an election on their own.

Thanks to the, you know, the founder's vision. We have thousands of elections around the country, and if the president wants to steal an election, the president needs accomplices throughout the system. The president needs secretaries of state governors, members of Congress, judges, county election clerks.

And after 2020, when the president claimed the election was stolen, tried to deceive people into thinking that, and reached out to all these accomplices, Brad Ensberg or the Republican leaders of the state assemblies in, you know, the blue wall states, the federal courts. [02:19:00] All of them, with the exception of 147 Republican members of Congress said, yeah, no, yeah, there's no, we're not gonna do that.

Mm-hmm. And so the president understands that he's gotta up that number of people who think that there's something corrupt going on in order to get accomplices willing to actually join him and try to steal the election. So he's gonna engage in deception. He is gonna try to convince people that there's something wildly un toward you.

He's gonna, you know, they're seizing ballots in Fulton County. They're gonna come out like the sixth sense and see, we see dead people on the rolls. You're gonna see Nicholas Maduro cop some plea saying Venezuelan interfered. You're gonna see all, you know, releasing of, you know, tulsi Gabbard conspiracy theories saying, you know, there's, there's dead Chinese voters on the rolls.

All this stuff that's gonna be to convince people there's something wrong. So you can enter the disrupt phase, which is where the president's gonna try to get these accomplices to change rules, to tilt the playing field. He's trying to do that. With the RNC in the case we just talked about, they're trying to do it by getting the Senate to pass the save act.

He's gonna lean on states around the country to [02:20:00] change their voter role and voting practices. That's the disrupt. And if that doesn't work and the election still turns out the way the president doesn't like, then the deny phase happens where the president is gonna basically try to deny the results. So that's the three Ds.

Deceive, disrupt, deny. We should expect that to play out over the next couple months, but there's a fourth D and this is the good news. The fourth fee is defeated it, which is what we're gonna do because we've done it before, right? The president tried this in 2020. We defeated it. There was a, a microcosm of this, as you may recall, in North Carolina in 2024 where there was a state Supreme court race.

The sitting Justice Alison Riggs won by about 725 votes. And the loser, Jefferson Griffin tried to say, yeah, that's not the result. He actually said the ru the rules that were in place that we all agreed on were actually not the right rules. We should change them. It's, I, I coached like six little league teams and three different sports of like five-year-olds and nine-year-olds, and not once as a kid on one of those teams at the end of a game that we lost [02:21:00] said.

Actually the rules were wrong. We should go back and change the rules. If we changed the rules, we would've won because even a five-year-old knows that you can't do that. Yeah. But Griffin tried to do it and we defeated it there too. So the president's gonna try to deceive, disrupt, and deny, and we all are going to defeat him.

KATE: Okay. So then I'm gonna ask you one final question. You know, there was a, obviously a note of optimism and I wanna ask you to kind of elaborate on that and take a sort of broad view for our listeners of kind of where you think we stand 14 months into this administration in the fight between democracy and, you know, call it autocracy or authoritarianism.

IAN: Yeah. I mean, look, here's the thing. In order for an autocrat to take over a democracy, particularly one as robust as the United States is, they have to consolidate power before they become unpopular, right? Because with our division of powers, the separation of powers at the federal level, the federalist separation between the states and the federal government, a president can't just take total control like that because the founders.

Built a system that was designed to check exactly that form of tyranny. So the president needs to co-opt all of these other branches, [02:22:00] all of these other actors as part of his project. And you know, the president had a real opportunity to do that after the 2024 election, even though he won a very, very narrow victory.

You could feel it in the air in early 2025, that the general direction was, oh my God, this guy is all powerful. The country's going that direction. And you saw all these institutions basically just hand him the keys and say, we will do whatever you want. And he had this opportunity to consolidate power and I think he fundamentally squandered it.

He basically. Interpreted a victory that was not even a majority of voters in 2024, he, he would've lost the election, but for 230 votes in three states. And he acted as if he had a 60% majority mandate. And he just did things that were wildly unpopular. And he actually became unpopular before he had finished consolidating power.

And as we said earlier, according to that Wild Fox News poll, he's wildly unpopular. And so you are now starting to see the institutions say, yeah, we're not gonna go along with it. I mean, the Senate right now is refusing [02:23:00] his demand to pass the Save Act. At the time that we're recording this, the Senate has basically funded all of DHS except for ICE and CBP.

They're just no long. The institutions are no longer doing on mass what the president wants. He has become unpopular before he consolidated power. And that is the death. No, I think for NCA trying to take over. So fundamentally, I think. We, and by we, I mean the forces of democracy and freedom. We are gonna win.

We are gonna win this battle for democracy in this country. I fundamentally believe that we're gonna win it because we're right. We're gonna win it because the facts and law on our side, we're gonna win it because freedom is a natural human condition that people want and we're gonna win it because the autocrat here is pretty incompetent and made the mistake of becoming unpopular before he consolidated power.

But you can track this. You're gonna wanna know if this is true tomorrow we just put something up on our Protect Democracy website, the Authoritarian Action Watch, which is like kind of the weather app. If you wake up in the morning, you're like, what's the weather today? It's a new, it's a new thing on the site where you can check like, what's the [02:24:00] weather today in terms of weather, democracy, or authoritarianism is ascendant.

So go on the protect democracy.org website and book market. And if you wanna get even nerdier about it, and I know all of our strict scrutiny listeners wanna do that, you can subscribe to our newsletter if you can keep it.org, where our team is updating you on this battle between democracy and authoritarianism on a regular basis.

And you can hold me to my word. We're gonna win. 

DAHLIA: That's, gonna put an enormous amount of weight on this question that I wanna return to, which is, that means it cannot be a close election.

If this is a close election, it gets a lot harder and I want you to. Kind of go back to your executive override report, which as you noted it, it, it focuses a lot on a very simple playbook and the threats to the election. But it ends on this note that I think is really important for listeners to hear, which is, what should we be doing to make sure that this election, isn't, a squeaker and what [02:25:00] should we be doing?

Not starting the first week of November, 2026, but starting like. Let's say today. 

ANTHONY: Well, it, you know, and the reports got good advice for sort of every different kind of sector of society, right? So on the deceive front, we need everyone with a platform and voice to call out these lies, right? Our elections fundamentally have been remarkably resilient over a long period of time.

They've never been perfect. We have had all sorts of horribly corrupt problems in this country. Voter suppression, Jim Crow. We, we've lived through electoral autocracy in the United States, the American South, for much of our history. And yet in recent years, elections have been remarkably resilient. And every, you know, really independent, honest assessment of whether there are wild amounts of people voting illegal in this country is found That's not true.

I mean, look at Utah. Conservative state of Utah just looked at whether non-citizens were voting in their election. Found, you know, I think single digits. It might have been Montana recently had a report. I think it [02:26:00] found 23 people who, 23 Now, Montana's a small state, but it's not that small. Right. 23 would, these elections are not being changed by people unlawfully voting.

And by the way. When you'd find those, like eight people in Utah, or 23 people in Montana, it turns out oftentimes it was like, oh, it was like the chief of staff to the president. It was like Mark Meadows. It was like, you know, so you need to talk about that. You gotta get that out there. Two, for those people who are gonna come under pressure to disrupt the election, which are gonna be the accomplices out there, oftentimes they're gonna be Republican electeds in states, secretaries of state, legislative leaders, county clerks.

What we've found over the last couple of years is that there's just strength in bringing people together, collectivity, right? That the more people feel like they're not alone, the easier it is to stand up to this pressure. And so for communities around the country, get the backs of your local clerks.

They're doing incredible work. They're being incredibly brave. Now they're facing a lot of threats. Show them support, show them they're not alone. [02:27:00] Go volunteer to work with them or just send them a letter or a note saying thank you. That actually makes a huge difference in people's willingness to stand up and do the right thing because they feel like the people have got their backs.

But yes, power, the polls.org. You can volunteer to be a poll worker. What a wonderful way to serve your country in this moment of crisis, to go and help people vote. And then when it comes to the deny phase, this is where, at the end of the day, if there is, to your point, Dahlia, a close election. If the elections a blowout, the president may still try to deny the results.

He won't succeed. If the election is close, then the president will try to deny the results, and then it's a little bit dicier. And in that moment, yes, there will be legal cases, but now here's a place where the courts won't save us. This will come down to where all the political power and leverage is when the Congress is seated on January 3rd, 2027.

And the historical analogy I think of for that moment is the haze, Tilden. Election of the late 19th century. This [02:28:00] was a presidential election, which three southern states living under reconstruction Union Army down there trying to enforce reconstruction, make it unclear who the electoral college ballots for those states has been cast in favor of the Republican Rutherford Hayes, the Democrat, Sam Tilden.

And there's a real question as to who's won the election, and it ultimately is a brokered solution based on where the leverage lies. And it's a very tragic outcome as you know where the deal is. The Republicans get their president from the North Rutherford Hayes in exchange for withdrawing the union troops ending reconstruction and subjecting the south of Jim Crow for the next half century.

And that was a brokered solution based on who held political leverage at the time. And so if we end up in a situation where it's a close election, the president tries to deny it. There's a fight over what should happen, it's gonna be who holds the leverage. And here, I think. Our North star, our touchstone, our model is what the people of Minnesota recently did because the people of Minnesota basically came out in a moment in [02:29:00] which the president was trying to assert authoritarian control and said, no, we will not accept this.

We will not allow this to happen. It started with the bravery of people like Alex Pretty and Renee Goode, who modeled what it looks like to stare down fear in the face and to not be afraid and made the incredible sacrifice for this country to show other people that if they could do it, other people could come out and get their backs.

And the people of of Minnesota did that. So amazingly, 70,000 people coming out in negative 14 degree weather, hundreds and thousands of families taking their kids outta school businesses closing down the entire state, shut down and said, we will not allow this to proceed. And they forced the president to withdraw and to retreat.

And that is the model we need to follow. And so this is the last piece that I think we should leave everybody with, which is the greatest protection of the elections. Number one, participate. Overwhelming participation. And number two, people need to be organizing now to be able to insist [02:30:00] that the actual truthful, lawful real results are honored.

People need to come out and begin modeling now what it looks like to show up for our democracy. And Dahlia, as we sit here, people are going out today across the country in the millions for the no Kings marches. If you're not out there, get out there. If you're out there, thank you for being out there. This is the practice run because if it comes down to an autocrat trying to overturn the election, it is ultimately gonna be the final backstop, the first three words of the Constitution.

We, the people who say no, just like the people of Minnesota did not on our watch. And if that political leverage is there, then the Congress will have no choice but to sit the actual lawful and rightful winners. And, and you know, I think it's kind of fitting and poetic that for all the protections in the constitution, for all the checks and balances and all the division of Powers and Federalist system, and it is indeed quite brilliant and it really has worked to this point as a check against tyranny, which was fundamentally what the founders were trying to do.

At the [02:31:00] end of all of that, the final backstop protecting democracy is exactly where they started. It's we, the people, it's ultimately up to us and we have been able to do it for 250 years. We've overcome so many imperfections, challenges, tragedies, corruptions to get here. And I think, you know, as we approach the 250th, I'm actually, to get back to the beginning, I am quite hopeful that we will see to the next two 50 that we are being tested.

We will come through this challenge. We will be stronger for it. Every crisis is an opportunity. On the other side of this, as we've talked about before, I think is actually something even better. We've had, you know, political historians talk about having had three foundings in this country, right? That we had our first founding that the Revolution produced, the Union and the Constitution.

We had our second founding after the Civil War, the three reconstruction amendments to the Constitution. We really had our third founding after the Great Depression, two World Wars. We had the new Deal, we had the civil rights movement. But each of those [02:32:00] foundings came through a crucible of crisis and conflict before them.

And I think this is following that pattern. We're going through an incredible crisis now. And on the other side is the fourth founding where we build a democracy that is more inclusive, it is more resilient, it is more equitable, it is more perfect, for the next 250 years we're being tested. But I, I fundamentally believe that we will pass this test.

And so to those who are out there on the streets today, you're modeling that. Thank you and look forward to seeing everybody celebrating the two 50th and delivering this country into the next great era of our democracy. 

JAY - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today.

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