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#1649 Race in America and the Moral Clarity of James Baldwin (Transcript)

Posted by · August 17, 2024 10:05 AM

Air Date 8/17/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. James Baldwin's 100th birthday passed by recently and we're using the occasion to draw on his moral clarity and eloquence, while we assess the state of race in America.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today, include 1A, ThroughLine, Democracy Now!, The Thom Hartmann Program, Woke AF Daily, The Majority Report, and a speech by Cory Bush, then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more on Baldwin the Writer, Race in America, the White Lie, and Global Connections.

Celebrating James Baldwin's 100th Birthday - 1A - Air Date 7-30-24

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: James Baldwin is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century. He wrote novels, essays, short stories, poetry, even a screenplay. He's best known for his affecting prose, his depth of thought, and his clear moral vision for the country. He was also a bit of a character. In interviews, he's often smoking a cigarette with his legs crossed, [00:01:00] casually calling the interviewer baby with a grin.

But Baldwin is perhaps best known for his philosophies on race.

JAMES BALDWIN: I don't believe in White people. I don't believe in Black people either, for that matter. But I know the difference between being Black and Whiteness and, and at this time, it means that I cannot fool myself about some things, but I can fool myself about it if I were White.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: As an openly gay man, Baldwin spoke about sexuality in a time when it was unheard of for many Black men to do so.

JAMES BALDWIN: Homosexual is not a noun. It might be a verb, transitive. It is certainly an adjective, but it is not a noun. To ask the question means you don't know anything about human experience—where it can take you, what it can do.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Nearly 40 years after his death, much of what he had to say about the U. S. continues to resonate.

JAMES BALDWIN: The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as [00:02:00] bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives. It is entirely up to the American people.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: This week, Baldwin would have turned 100 years old. In a moment when democracy is at risk, when wars abroad are being protested at home, when race continues to shape American politics, what can we learn from Baldwin about a moment not so different from his own?

James Baldwin's Fire - Throughline - Air Date 9-17-20

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, so the lie is what I call the value gap. And that is the belief that White people matter more than others. And that belief evidences itself in our dispositions, our habits, our practices, our social and political and economic arrangements. And they're protected by the lies we tell ourselves.

You know, Baldwin in 1964 wrote an essay entitled "The White Problem", and he has this wonderful passage, it's so poignant, where he—and I'm paraphrasing here—where he says, you know, the founders of the country had a fatal [00:03:00] flaw, they said that they were Christian, they said that they were founding the nation on these principles, but yet they had chattel, they had us, and in order to justify the role that these chattel played in their lives, they had to basically say that these men and women were not human beings, Because if they weren't human beings, then no crime had been committed.

And then here's the line, "That lie is the basis of our present trouble". And so we tell ourselves this story that we're the redeemer nation, that we're the shining city on the hill, as Ronald Reagan said. And we tell ourselves we're the example of our democracy achieved, as if we didn't do what we did in Haiti, as if we didn't do what we did in Cuba, or what we did in Puerto Rico, or what we did in Hiroshima, or what we did in Nagasaki, right? So, we do all of that to protect our innocence.

So, Baldwin is insisting, you know, we have to confront the messiness of who we are, our ghastly failures, in order to release ourselves into being otherwise. And that, [00:04:00] at the personal level, also must happen at the societal level. So, we have to tell the truth about who we are and what we've done, but the lies get in the way,

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: You know, those lies that, as you say, we tell ourselves personally and socially—like, as a society we tell ourselves—on the one hand it's that sort of self preservation reflex that we have on both that sort of micro and macro level and it just makes me think, there's a certain vulnerability that it takes to own up to a lie and to look it straight in the eye and say this is not the truth

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah.

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: And so, in some ways, you know, that process of confrontation that you yourself, it seems, had to go through just to tackle this subject is also sort of a process of confrontation that Baldwin was saying the country needed to experience.[00:05:00]

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, you know, it's confrontation is also a sign of maturity, where we've grown into the resources requisite to do it honestly. He has this line, and I'm paraphrasing again, you know, is that the trouble we're in is deeper than you thought because the trouble is in us. You're so right to say that we have to confront it, it requires being willing to be vulnerable.

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: There is this personal versus systemic tension in Baldwin's writings, in that he deeply reflects on the personal impacts that America as a country has had on individual people in terms of what it does to their self confidence and that actually brings me to one of the quotes from your book that really stuck with me.

I want to [00:06:00] read it really quick for you if that's okay.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Sure.

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: [quoting Glaude] "America and its racist assumptions had indelibly shaped who Baldwin was. But he insisted, we are not the mere product of social forces. Each of us has a say in who we take ourselves to be. No matter what America said about him as a Black person, Baldwin argued, he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a Black man. Just as we must examine our individual experiences and the terrors that shape how we come to see ourselves, together as a country, we must do the same. The two are bound together". What I love is while it's deeply personal, it's very much examining the systemic, of the broader responsibility of the country, of its government, of its policies.

Today, there seems to be a real tension between those things for many people with the popularity of a book like Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, where [00:07:00] there is this very direct pointing at individuals, around individual kind of responsibility. What do you think Baldwin would have made of that tension today?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know, so one of the most powerful things about Baldwin is that he goes to the interior, not to stay there, but as the launching pad to go outward. So, the interior is the basis for moving to a broader form of social criticism. Some people will move from social criticism to the interior and you end up with this kind of narcissistic kind of account where it's just simply, you know, about the individual and their own pain and suffering, right? For Jimmy, that individual pain, as early as reading Notes of a Native Son, right?, where you end with him at the funeral of his stepfather with the birth of his youngest sister and him leaving to get ready to go to Paris, and of course the [00:08:00] riots in New York. So, there's a way in which the autobiographical is the kind of point of entry to the broader social context.

I think that's really important in our own moment because we live in a moment that's so driven by our own individual brands, right? You know, our social media platforms are micro reality shows, right? It's very difficult for us to move outside of our own selves into a broader understanding of our genuine relationship with others. You know, what would he make of something like White Fragility? You know, what would he make of something like How to Be an Antiracist? Look, they, those sorts of books have their place, but we're talking about something deeper.

DR. KENNETH CLARK, INTERVIEWER: Jim, what do you see in the recesses of your own mind as the future [00:09:00] of our nation?

JAMES BALDWIN: Well, I'm both glad and sorry you asked me that question, but I'll do my best to answer it. I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: When Jimmy says choose life, don't wallow in the illusion, don't settle for safety, that's not about a 'how to manual', that's not about a corporate strategy for dealing with difference in your midst. The point here is to choose life is a deeper existential question about who do you take yourself to be.

JAMES BALDWIN: Now the artist, no matter how he sounds, is by definition a religious man, believing that we can create and transcend [00:10:00] all our gods, that it is entirely up to us as the work of human being to make the world more human.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: We travel and we move around the surfaces, right? Because we're afraid of what's in the dark cellar. We don't wanna look the terror squarely in the face. But, you know, America's like Never-never Land. You know, we all want to be lost boys and girls, where we don't wanna be responsible or accountable. We'd rather be safe and secure in our innocence.

JAMES BALDWIN: One of the things that most afflicts this country is that White people don't know who they are or where they come from. That's why you think I'm a problem, but I am not the problem. Your history is, and as long as you pretend you don't know your history, you're going to be the prisoner of it.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: And, you know, it's that moment in Baldwin's The Fire Next Time where he says people either [00:11:00] don't know or they don't want to admit, in effect, what's happened to thousands of thousands of their countrymen. And he says you can't be innocent in the face of that. The innocence is the crime.

JAMES BALDWIN: When "White people" talk about progress in relation to Black people, all they are saying and all they can possibly mean by the word progress is how quickly and how thoroughly I become White. I don't want to become White. I want to grow up, and so should you.

“Justice for My Brother”: Sister of Samuel Sharpe Speaks Out After Police Killing During RNC - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-19-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, Representative Darrin Madison, if you could respond to this tragic incident and the fact that Black people in Wisconsin are nearly six times more likely to be killed by police than White people? If you could just say what specific measures you’re advocating?

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one, I want to uplift that community over there. There’s Repairers of the Breach in that neighborhood, which is a 24-hour-a-day shelter [00:12:00] that provides services for folks who are unhoused in that community, which — that’s why that encampment is there, and that’s why local law enforcement know a lot of the folks in the community and know how to navigate those relationships.

As it relates to the broader context of our local communities, you know, we — Black folks in this city have navigated police violence since the 1950s. That was one of the first killings of a Black male by the hands of law enforcement reported in our state. And that has only happened more and more times throughout history. In recent years, that’s happened a series of times, which has led to communities crying for real change as it relates to law enforcement procedures and practices to ensure that [00:13:00] folks can be safe in their own community.

Some of the bills that, you know, I’ve been working on over the past year have called for, one, police decertification for law enforcement when law enforcement officers are involved in these situations and they are found guilty. What often happens is, instead of being held accountable, a law enforcement officer will quit and then go work in another department in another community nearby, right?

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And you have, in the case of D’Vontaye Mitchell — and let’s just be clear, Sam was killed on Tuesday.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: D’Vontaye was killed — oh, it was June 30th. That was a few weeks ago. And he was held down not by police, but by security guards.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: By security.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And I have to say, yesterday, when we went to the Hyatt and I went to the different [00:14:00] police to say, “Can you tell me where exactly D’Vontaye Mitchell was killed?” they would say, “Uh, uh, uh, I don’t know. You know, I am from Chicago,” or “I am from” — and they named all these different places — “Ohio,” “I am from” — because they were all different law enforcement. And, of course, the local police, they also wouldn’t tell me.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: But these weren’t even police. They were security guards. That he was held down?

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Explain. And then talk about what you’re demanding, what police have responded in both cases.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah. So, in the case of D’Vontaye, what had happened was there was a — you know, the staff claimed that there was — he was being disruptive in the —

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In the Hyatt.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: In the Hyatt. It eventually led to them assaulting him in the space. Apparently, he ended up in a bathroom at some — a women’s bathroom at some point, and then was chased outside, in which he was pinned down on the ground by at least two confirmed security guards. The other two [00:15:00] folks, it wasn’t confirmed if they were security or they were Hyatt staff.

What we do know is that the Hyatt has fired that security team, as well as a few other staffers who worked in the space, for not being compliant with their own policies. What that tells us — and, you know, the lawyer of D’Vontaye’s family said it best — is that there is skepticism, at least from the Hyatt’s perspective, in that whole altercation.

When Milwaukee law enforcement arrives, they tried to — they found him unresponsive and tried to resuscitate him, and he, sadly, lost his life. One of his — what we know was his last words was “I’m sorry.” And often in these situations where folks are losing their life, they are pleading, with someone who has dominance, for their life. And they don’t respond and do anything. And that hurts.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And [00:16:00] the videotape in both cases is devastating. We only have 30 seconds, but, Angelique, we’re talking — this is our last segment here in Milwaukee. Outside the Republican convention, has the Trump team gotten in touch with you? Have your local police gotten in touch with you?

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They absolutely have not. And I don’t understand, you know, when we have evidence that Sam called home, that the shelterless community down there, by all accounts, of his character, and the character of the other person, it’s absolutely not making sense.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: What do you want right now, as you speak to a global audience? We have about 10 seconds.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Yes. I want transparency. We want not the clips of the video; we want full clips. We want the autopsy report. You know, we really want justice for my brother.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, we’re not going to stop here, even as we go [00:17:00] back to New York. I want to thank you both for being with us.

Why JD Vance and the MAGA GOP Do Not Represent the True Idea of America & Our Core Values - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 8-2-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: French President Emmanuel Macron got it right when he recently said "patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism". See, these guys are buying into nationalism and they're promoting nationalism. And patriotism is a very different thing. President Macron said, "Nationalism is a betrayal. By pursuing our own interests first with no regard to others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and what makes it great: its moral values".

You know, the French experienced the difference between patriotism and nationalism when Hitler flipped Germany into nationalism in the 1930s. And thus, the former, late president of France, Charles de Gaulle, put it very clearly. He said, "Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first, [00:18:00] nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first".

Abraham Lincoln made this distinction between patriotism and nationalism in the Gettysburg Address after having defeated the White Christian identity nationalist Confederacy movement. In the Gettysburg Address he said, "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. It is rather for us to highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

But then J. D. Vance comes along in the Republican National Convention in his acceptance speech, and says, "You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. But America is not just an idea. It's a group of people with a shared history [00:19:00] and a common future. Now, that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set of principles. Even though the ideas and principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. If this movement of ours is to succeed and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and citizens deserve leaders who put their interests first".

Now that's a perfect articulation of nationalism. You know, just reject the idea that America—and, I mean, this is literally the truth—America is the first country in the history of Western civilization that was founded on an idea, rather than on DNA, rather than on language, rather than on culture, and rather than on geography. Yes, you know, I would be the first to acknowledge that DNA, you know, [00:20:00] basically White men, played a huge role and controlled all the power at the founding of our republic. But every generation over these 240 plus years, every generation has gotten us closer and closer and closer to that founding mission statement, that founding goal, which J. D. Vance rejected in his acceptance speech.

Patriotism expresses love and devotion to one's country as a whole, including all of its people. Nationalism, on the other hand, focuses on a devotion to a specific ethnic, cultural, or national group within the country. Patriotism refers to our country. Nationalism refers to our homeland. Patriotism requires both tolerance and appreciation of other countries and cultures. Nationalism preaches superiority over other cultures, nations and, and groups. Patriots can accept criticism of their country [00:21:00] and seek improvements. Nationalism rejects criticism and says 'my leaders, right or wrong'.

In 1937 at the Nuremberg Rally, when Rudolf Hess—and, Sean, I'm going to play some audio out of my computer here—when Rudolf Hess introduced Adolf Hitler at the 1937 Nuremberg Rally, he switched from the traditional German patriotic Vaterland—Fatherland—and went with instead the nationalistic German Heimat. Heimat zu sein. Heimat is the German word for homeland. This is Rudolf Hess introducing Adolf Hitler in 1937: [Thom reads translation over German archival audio clip] "Germany will become a homeland. A homeland for all the Germans in the [00:22:00] world".

So, that was Hess introducing Hitler, introducing the word homeland into the German vocabulary. At that point, the Nazis stopped referring to Germany as the fatherland and started referring to it as the homeland. Now homeland, after all, invokes blood and soil. It's where your ancestors lived, where your family came from. It's the core of your religious, racial, national identity. We are not a heterogeneous... we're not all one people. We are a multiracial, pluralistic, multi-religious and secular and democratically governed nation.

Yeah, I lived in Germany in the 80s. I knew actual Nazis, people. You know, I knew a guy who had been at that Hitler rally in 1937, marched up and touched the blood flag as part of his initiation into the army. And in my entire [00:23:00] lifetime, until 2001, when George W. Bush started using that word homeland, I had never heard an American politician use that word. Have you? Never. Which is why when Bush came up with the word homeland and created the Department of Homeland Security, a chill went down my spine. And I wrote several op eds about it. It was one of the things that got me, that provoked me to start this radio show, frankly.

So now we've got this movement, this MAGA movement, this nationalist movement that wants to strip the history of African-Americans and queer people out of our history books. They want to pass laws to make it harder to vote. They want to trash economically marginalized and discriminated against people. They use the phrase DEI as a slur. They even ridiculed Biden, President Biden, when he said, this was last week, he said, "America is an idea, an idea [00:24:00] stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It is the most powerful idea in the history of the world. The idea is that we hold these truths to be self evident. We're all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Instead, J. D. Vance is telling us, no, no, we're just, we're just a bunch of White people here.

So, what is the, what is the Republican Party doing to impose their nationalist view on America? First, they're trying to break our ideals and credential-based bureaucracy by Trump's Schedule F. Right? Fire all the civil servants. Loyalty to country is replaced with loyalty to the leader in their party. Next, they're working to fully legalize political bribery. The Supreme Court took the lead on this one. Then they want to destroy our faith in the rule of law. The law is for thee, but not for me. And they're running a felon for president. And finally, they want us to [00:25:00] lose trust in our institutions, like the free press. Hitler called it the Lügenpresse, the lying press. Trump calls it the fake news. Our national motto, E pluribus unum, out of many come one, summarizes the idea of America. Trump's motto, "go back to your S hole country", expresses, to paraphrase President Macron, the exact opposite.

The work of our day, is to restore the idea of America, an egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic republic, and then help it realize its full potential after all these many long years. I'm signed up for it. Are you?

Truth, Privilege, and James Baldwin - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 10-3-23

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: I always loved the sentiment of him being a witness, you know?, to what is happening. And I think that good writers are. They're both a witness and a mirror for us to see the world through. And, you know, when you talk [00:26:00] about history and the importance of history being able to create empathy, we're at a time, Greg, right now, where history's being rewritten and erased, right?, where legislation literally has been passed to ensure White comfort.

GREG GARRETT: In my state of Texas, in Florida, across the South.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: In Florida, across the South. And so for you, right?, knowing that the purpose of history is just not to repeat it, it is to create a sense of empathy and understanding about the human condition, both our potential, and our detractions from ourselves and from our character and from our moral standings. And so, what comes up for you and what does it mean for you to be [00:27:00] putting out a book in this time when a Baldwin would have been banned, and is probably banned, and it is banned, right? Um, so please.

GREG GARRETT: Well, first, I have had this conversation with my students here at Baylor. And Baylor, of course, is a private school in Texas, so, I look at colleagues at the University of Texas, the flagship school of our state, who are starting to wrestle with these questions and these issues and I have said, I said to a reporter from Fox News not too long ago, if I taught at one of our state schools, it's very likely I would get fired.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah, a hundred percent.

GREG GARRETT: And so one of the first things, I mean, just directly to your question, which was actually posed like a historian. I don't know what your major was...

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Political science, but thank you!

GREG GARRETT: Ok. Well, my historian friends would say, Yay, she got the whole history thing.

When we don't tell the [00:28:00] truth about who we are, and this is personal, you know, I think about the former president who can't tell the truth about who he is as a human being and how detrimental that is not only to him, but to all of us. I think about people in my life. I mean, and I can't name names because like, you know, we're on the air. But I think about people who are unable to face who they are and be honest about where they come from and about their failures and about their mistakes and so are unable to correct them. And those people are trapped in the same way that Baldwin talks about White being trapped.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah.

GREG GARRETT: So, if, forever, Black people have been the way that you measure Whiteness, you know, and if the lost cause myth, for example, is partly built around, you know, however difficult your life might be, if you're a poor White person in the American South or [00:29:00] anywhere in America, in the Midwest, any place, at least you're notBlackk and you can set that Blackness as a lodestar. And so Baldwin asked his nephew to think about this. What would it be like if you woke up in the morning and you looked at the sky and everything was different, you know, the sun was out, but the stars were blazing, it would freak you out. And so he had this incredible compassion, you know, this recognition that asking people to be honest about their history is going to shake up who they are because it's going to force them to tell the truth and acknowledge things.

But one of the things, and I had mentioned to your producer a while ago that Robert Jones is coming to Baylor next week and we're going to do an event together here. Robbie's new book about the roots of White supremacy is so good at telling our historical truth. Like, I went to [00:30:00] high school in Oklahoma. We did not learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre. We didn't even hear it called the Tulsa Race Riots. We just didn't learn about it. And if you don't learn about it, then how can you correct it? And, it just, when you don't deal with history, particularly history that's uncomfortable, then it just allows the status quo to be maintained. And Baldwin talks about the status quo a lot and he says it's already hard enough to change the status quo. Because, you know, as Dr. King said, people who are in a position of privilege don't want to give that up.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Right. Right.

GREG GARRETT: But if you don't even tell the truth about it, and if you don't even say, Here are the reasons that people in privilege need to reckon with who they are and what they've done, then, then how can anything ever change? And that for me is the distressing thing about the legislation you're talking about and honestly why I feel not only do I need to write about it, but I need to speak, I need to preach, I need to get out there in every venue that I can [00:31:00] and stand there looking like me and say, Hey, people who look like me, we got to think about this stuff.

Celebrating James Baldwin's 100th Birthday Part 2 - 1A - Air Date 7-30-24

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: For fall of 2024, I'm teaching American History II, a course from the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the present, using the 14th Amendment as the story arc to provide a clarifying structure for the course content. While I was already a big fan of Baldwin's, I was unaware of the Baldwin and William Buckley debate in Cambridge in 1965.

I heard snippets of it this morning on NPR and have already included it in the syllabus. Thank you, NPR. It's a republic if we can keep it.

Let's play another clip from that 1965 debate between James Baldwin and conservative writer William F. Buckley.

JAMES BALDWIN: The ex attorney general, Mr. Robert Kennedy, said that it was conceivable that in 40 years in America we might have a Negro president.

And that sounded like a very emancipated statement, I suppose, to White people. [00:32:00] They were not in Harlem when this statement was first heard. And did not hear, and possibly will never hear, the laughter and the bitterness and the scorn in which the statement was greeted. From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barbershop, Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday.

And now he's already on his way to the presidency. We've been here for 400 years, and now he tells us that maybe in 40 years, if you're "good," we may let you become president.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Now, the first Black president wouldn't be elected until 43 years after this debate and now we're facing similar questions about Vice President Kamala Harris, who's the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

Professor Glaude, it's been nearly 60 years since Baldwin said this. If he were alive today, what do you think he would say about this moment?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You know, I'm always a bit leery of trying to anticipate Jimmy's [00:33:00] words. He has over 7, 000 pages of writing and we probably could glean something from, from that about what he would say.

I know what I've learned from him that will allow me to say something about this moment. And that is, how can I put this? No matter what or who resides, no matter who resides in the White House, if the nation refuses to confront itself honestly, it will continue to be monstrous, right? We can become the face of the empire.

We too can become monstrous, but unless the country confronts itself honestly about who and what it is and what it has done, it can't release itself into a new way of being, right? And so he, I think from what I've [00:34:00] learned, he urges me to be cautious. To understand, let me use this phrase, to understand the "fragility of hope" in this moment.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Robert, we have just, we have just about 30 seconds left here, and I want I want to make sure to bring you in because I want to know what you might say to Baldwin in this moment if your adopted godfather was here?

ROBERT JONES JR: You know, I don't know what I would say to him. I know that I would hug him and have to be pried away because I'm always thinking about the human being that Baldwin was not the writer, not the eloquent speaker, but the human being. And I think about his love for children right now. He has this quote, "The children are always ours. Every single [00:35:00] one of them all over the globe. And I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."

And that to me cuts to the quick of everything we're facing here and abroad.

US' Unconditional Support For Israel Making The World More Dangerous - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-2-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So, I would love your assessment of this. I think people think it's impolite—I don't really care about being impolite to Joe Biden because he's presided over a genocide—but I think people think it's impolite to ask this question. Has he been entirely manipulated by Benjamin Netanyahu because his brain is not seemingly working anymore and he doesn't know when Netanyahu is humiliating him on the public stage? Like, I'm only speaking about self-interest from a political perspective, about not getting humiliated, about trying to have some dignity. I mean, all these politicians have enormous egos. As, somebody who's been an advocate for Palestinians, you're a Palestinian-Canadian and of [00:36:00] course have been immersed in this for so long, like, what do you see here with the Biden-Netanyahu relationship that makes this so uniquely destructive and that Netanyahu has clearly taken advantage of?

DIANE BUTTU: Look, I think the big thing is that Biden has always said that he himself is a Zionist. And if you look at his record, his record of voting, he's always been on the wrong side of history, incidentally. But particularly on this issue, he's always stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel because he is a Zionist.

Now, since he authorized the genocide back in October, I think that he has not only continued to dig his heels in, but I think he's dug his heels in even knowing that this would eventually cost him the election. I think that it's a mistake to think that Joe Biden stepped down and isn't going to run just because of his age. But I think that there were other [00:37:00] factors as well, that when you look at younger voters and people who are of conscience, they're saying we're not going to vote for Joe Biden because he is Genocide Joe, because he's been the person who has presided over this genocide.

Has he also been played by Netanyahu? Yes, I think he has. And Netanyahu is somebody who has made it clear that he wants to see a Trump presidency, that he likes President Trump, which is why he went to Mar-a-Lago and so, for him, he liked having Republicans in office because it allows him to push his agenda even further.

So, he's trying to push this as far as possible until the next election, hoping that it will be a Trump win so that he can then continue the next phase of his plan, which is, not only the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza, but turning his sights to the West Bank as well. And we've already seen this. We've already seen him start in on the West Bank with more than 500 Palestinians killed [00:38:00] just since October.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And Smotrich being in charge of that and also basically removing military authority and just having the settler gangs that he's a part of being now the primary authority in the West Bank, a part of that as well. But yeah, I mean, it is just astounding to me, I guess, from a really 40,000 foot view, that Biden's emotional attachment to a Zionist project, which is a colonial project and one that inherently involves murdering, since 1967, since 1948, it's been about ethnically cleansing and ruining millions of lives. How one can rationalize that through racism and still have an emotional connection and idealize that project in the year 2024, that's the thing that I just can't put myself in that mindset. And even to tank your own electoral chances, knowing that it's this much of an emotional project for you and... I don't know. Uh, [00:39:00] Diana, your final thoughts there.

DIANE BUTTU: Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, I don't think that people realize what Zionism has meant for Palestinians and what it has done to Palestinian lives, to Palestinian land, to Palestinian bodies. When people try to downplay it and somehow talk of it in its nice version, or even they try to kind of say that it's like, Oh, it's got many faces. No, there's really only one face, and that's the face that I and so many others, so many other Palestinians, have lived with, which is a settler-colonial movement that aims to remove us from our land. And in the process of removing us and erasing us, it's violent on every single level.

And to somehow buy into this violence and think that this is okay, it's not even [that] troublesome is the word, but one would expect that in the year 2024 that there would be a wake up call, that [00:40:00] people would ask Palestinians, What's it like to live under Zionism? What is it like to live under this settler-colonial regime? And we can easily just point to what Israel is doing in Gaza, because that is what Zionism is about. It's about killing Palestinians. It's about erasing them. It's about destroying their homes, taking over their land and pretending that somehow everything is lovely. It's a project of Jewish supremacy at the expense of Palestinians who are the indigenous people. And it's terrifying and really must come to an end.

Raw video- Rep. Cori Bush concedes 1st Congressional District primary race to Wesley Bell - KSDK News - Air Date 8-7-24

CORI BUSH: So every time I stand on the House floor or I speak in the committee here, and you all know the first words that come out of my mouth: St. Louis and I rise. So I'm gonna get to my speech. [laughter, encouragement from crowd]

St. Louis and I rise to [00:41:00] say thank you to all the people who showed up and who support me and support this incredible team and the vision that we have for our future, a future that works for all of us. And so let me say to my Arab and Palestinian, our Muslim community,

I hope that the new member of Congress that will be taking over in January, you know, right before his trial starts. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jesus. I'm sorry. I... let me say this though, because I'm not here, we need to build the community back because [00:42:00] what just happened helped to rip the community apart. The thing is, I'm not, I don't want to feed into that because we have to be one St. Louis because we have to grow and so I just hope he actually takes the time to learn about our Palestinian and our Arab and our Muslim communities, that he actually speaks to you and that he sees the beauty in what we have created that transcends our ethnic backgrounds and our religions and the way that we have been able to do that. And so I just want to put that out there to him as some homework. This race, you all, was unlike anything St. Louis has ever seen. The flood of outside Republican money into this district, this Democratic district, was staggering. This was [00:43:00] the second most expensive congressional race in our nation's history. Nineteen million dollars and counting. And so that's how much they spent in this race. Mostly far-right-funded super PACs against the interests of the people of St. Louis, the people of Missouri's first, they sought to divide us. But we've always been clear that St. Louis is a vibrant and a resilient community, one that refuses to be undermined, one that won't be taken for granted. And together we will continue to rise and stand up against the far-right, Republican extremism. Oh, he don't know what he's about to have to deal with, but I hope you fight! [applause]

And the thing is, you up after me, so your fight got to be bigger and better than mine. And it's okay. If you got that, I hope you got that. Because the people deserve that. We'll switch from a fighter to a...

[encouragement [00:44:00] from crowd, someone shouts "take your time!"]

We'll stand. As a beacon of hope and light and human rights for all people, we'll keep doing that, I will keep doing that work, this team will keep doing that, we'll continue to fight for the rights of all people no matter the race, the faith, or the background, the ethnicity, the religion, the age, the occupation, the gender identity, we'll keep fighting for you, we will keep fighting, we will stand up for what is right no matter the cost, which we just paid a cost but actually it's going to propel us forward.

Always fight for our unhoused communities, our elders, our children, our families, our veterans, our, our... we will keep supporting a free Palestine, [00:45:00] a free Congo, a free Sudan, and keep opposing genocide and human rights abuses worldwide. We will always stand up for the safety, for the dignity, for the self-determination of all people, from St. Louis, to Palestine and Israel, to Bosnia, to India, and everywhere else. We will always keep it real, and we will always keep the truth.

And, I'm going to continue to act with the dedication that you all have seen over the years. I will continue to work to bridge divides and address your concerns and build a stronger, more unified community. And so St. Louis serving as your Congress member has been the joy of my life, and I'm not done yet. [00:46:00] [applause]

It's just that now I'm about to be outside-outside. And so, so, let me lastly say this. Let me lastly say this. You all have been what has undergirded me and what has strengthened me. And I want to say this to all the little kids that have come up to me over even the last week, the little Black girls that see themselves in me and all the little girls that see something in me. [00:47:00] Let me say this to you: We did not fail. You did not fail. You keep rising. You keep going after what God has given you to go after. You keep fighting. You keep, you hold fast to who you are and what you believe because this is only the beginning.

Note from the Editor on the need for national self-reflection

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with 1A introducing James Baldwin on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Throughline discussed the importance of confronting truth when lies get in the way. Democracy Now! looked at the police killing just outside the RNC. The Thom Hartmann Program clarified between patriotism and nationalism. Woke AF Daily talked about Baldwin's compassion with the understanding that asking White people to face the lies of Whiteness is very destabilizing. 1A discussed the need for the nation to begin to tell the truth about itself. The Majority Report looked at Joe Biden and the nation's [00:48:00] role in the Gaza genocide. And finally we heard part of Cory Bush's speech after she was defeated in the Democratic primary by a wave of right-wing money, including from the pro-genocide wing of the pro-Israel lobby.

Those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dives sections, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process. To support all our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly 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 podcast app. 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.

Now, before we continue onto the Deeper Dives half of the show, I have a few [00:49:00] thoughts to tie together. The first is something that I've been reminded of over and over again from James Baldwin's words and today's discussion. Just recently, I came across a parody of the Bible story, the "Parable of the Good Samaritan". It's called the "Parable of the Good Sociologist". And this was referenced in a Guardian article about the recent racist, xenophobic riots in the UK. In this version, when the traveler on the road to Jericho is assaulted, the first sociologist crosses the road and passes by on the other side. The second does the same. But the good sociologist rushes to the scene, cradles the victim's head and says, "Boy, the person who did this to you really needs help". And the connection I think is pretty clear. The fascists in the UK starting riots, they need some help just as people in the US, whether they realize they're racist or if they've just been steeped in the myth of White supremacy for [00:50:00] so long that they're like a fish who doesn't realize they're in water, they all need help. And I think I may have only said this on the bonus show for members, but it bears repeating here: Israel doesn't need peace negotiators or weapons sales so much as they need therapists. Palestinians aren't in the same position of power as Israel, so it's not an equal comparison, but the same basically goes for them.

The situation over there has been completely effed up for basically a full human life span. Of course, everyone who lives in the area has been completely messed up and warped by the conflict. And ultimately there is no way forward but to face the truth that's currently being obscured by lies. And there's one last thought related to all this: the Olympics wrapped up last week and the occasion of Simone Biles dominating the women's gymnastics again, gave the excuse to dig up an old quote from JD Vance about her. In the Tokyo games, Biles withdrew from competition for mental health reasons. [00:51:00] She had what she later explained as "the twisties", which is the phenomenon of a gymnast losing full awareness of their body in time and space while performing their physics-defined routines. As is now a well known story, Biles went through therapy and training to confront the problem she was having, and then, having overcome the twisties, she returned to the Olympics to win three gold medals and one silver this time around. Biles was praised by many, though not all, when she withdrew in Tokyo.

And the line, I would guess, is drawn between those who recognize the need for mental health, self-reflection, self-care, facing hard truths, all that kind of stuff, and those who think that the greatest sign of strength is to just stick it out. Plow forward. Don't ask questions. Don't look back. JD Vance being a sort of cartoon villain who praises his grandmother for not getting a divorce from her horribly abusive husband even though, as it turns out, she probably wasn't able to [00:52:00] because they had not implemented no fault divorce in her state. That's an aside, anyway. JD Vance is clearly in the second group. Stick it out. Plow forward. Don't ask questions, right? And this is what he said about Biles withdrawing from the Tokyo competition: " I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we tried to praise people, not for the moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments".

And that really lays it out, I think. If you equate therapy and self-reflection with weakness and as antithetical to heroism, then you're destined to always continue to make the same mistakes, likely hurting yourself and others in the process. The big picture argument that's been made over the past few years as Americans have argued over what kind of history we want to teach our kids about the country, is that teaching the bad stuff is akin to wanting to feel bad and wanting others to feel bad [00:53:00] about the country. So, the other side proposes the opposite, a sort of nationalist history that only tells positive stories so that kids can grow up feeling proud. But that's how you continue to cause harm by perpetuating a lie. Plowing forward, not looking back, not stopping to reconsider. But our vision, the vision of telling the truth, even though it's uncomfortable, as Baldwin said, "It'll be unsettling to rip away the lies, like it would be unsettling to be able to see both the sun and the stars at the same time". But our description of that vision, can't stop with the discomfort. We can't pitch the idea that things will be better if people feel bad about the country. No-one's going to buy that, and, by the way, it's not true. People need to feel good about the place where they live. The pitch is that by going through a period of self-reflection, a period of sort of national therapy, that we will come out better on the other side for having done the work. People cry and feel [00:54:00] uncomfortable during therapy, but they don't go to therapy to cry and feel uncomfortable. You do it to get better. That's what's heroic about it. That's what was heroic about Simone Biles in Tokyo, taking the time to stop, reassess, self-reflect. That's what opens up a better and healthier path forward. And that better path is the pitch the left should be making when debating how we talk about our history. It's about being factual, yes. But it's also about making the country, the policies it writes and the actions it takes, match our self-conception.

Right now, we basically have the twisties. Too many of us think we've overcome the ills of racism and sexism, but reality belies that claim. The vast majority of Americans think that we're the type of country that would stand up against genocide anywhere in the world. And yet we are the primary backer of the genocidal, far-right government of Israel. Our perceptions and our body politic are wildly [00:55:00] out of sync. It's time to do the heroic work of reassessing and self-reflecting.

SECTION A - BALDWIN THE WRITER

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, to continue that self-reflection with Deeper Dives on four topics. Next up, there's Section A: Baldwin, the Writer; Section B: Race in America; Section C: The White Lie; and Section D: Global Connections.

Brian Lehrer Weekend 100 Years of James Baldwin; Election Integrity and National Security; New York City Etiquette - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 8-3-24

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: . In this segment, since we're doing a hundred years of a hundred things, maybe we should go through it chronologically.

Start at the start. The title of your book is begin again, James Baldwin's America and it's urgent lessons for our own. So help us put Baldwin into context a little bit. What was his America specifically? What was New York City like where he grew up?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know baldwin comes of age in a sense, you know, he's he's the child of southern migrants So he's that first generation born after there's this mass movement his stepfathers from louisiana his his mother's from the eastern shore He's born in august of 1924.

So you can [00:56:00] imagine he's coming of age right against, you know, you can juxtapose the holland renaissance with You know, the Great Depression, uh, his family was profoundly poor, so, you know, he, he struggled. And you can see, you know, he's not, he's not, um, shall we say, uh, African American who comes from Sugar Hill, right?

He's, he's born and raised in the bottom, as it were. And so that distinction, you know, I think shows up in his voice. He's a childhood preacher. You know, um, father was an itinerant stepfather was an itinerant preacher. Um, and then he decides that he cannot, you know, engage in this, this lie. The stories are running around in his head.

He wasn't the best student in the world, but he was obviously brilliant. Um, and, you know, he had, Desires, you know, he was coming to terms with his own sexuality. You can imagine, uh, the, the [00:57:00] challenges of feeling what he was feeling on the inside and for others and having to deal with his father at the same time.

And so you get this young man who leaves and, and moves to the, to, to, you know, Greenwich village and, and there, when you, when he tells the stories of what he's, what he's What he experienced, he not only experienced a kind of freedom, but it's clear that he was haunted by sexual violence, uh, and then he decides to leave in 1948.

And he says that he, he could have gone anywhere, but Baldwin was lying at that point. He, you know, he goes to Paris, um, and he goes to Paris because there's this wonderfully rich expat community there. And it's in Paris that he does something extraordinary. He He literally wills himself into becoming one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And that writing has affected a lot of people. We're getting a lot of calls. I'd love to hear from some callers right now. Yeah, let's go to Chuck in Philadelphia. Hey, Chuck, welcome to the show.

CALLER: Hi, and thank [00:58:00] you, uh, Eddie, for all that you do and, uh, the great work that you do in the vein of, uh, James Baldwin.

Uh, let me just say, I love the fact that James Baldwin was a luminary in the realm of civil rights. And I, uh, admire the great profundity that he brought to humanitarian issues, uh, because civil rights is a humanitarian issue, and people forget that. But I just want to say, can people please read James Baldwin?

for the joy of reading James Baldwin. He was a prolific and beautiful writer. His words are painterly, and he is just, um, a wonder on the page. And so, uh, with all of the great things that he has done impacting our society, I think it's equally important to appreciate him for the tremendous writer that he is.

And [00:59:00] speaking of his time in Paris, if you're interested, there's a great little book called Giovanni's Room, and um, it takes many of his, uh, uh, experiences in Paris and puts them on the page in such a way that it And thank you guys for allowing me to just say this about him. Thank you.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Oh Chuck and so beautifully said too.

So thank you for that. Yeah, go ahead professor.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: No, he's right. I mean the first thing we have to understand is Baldwin is an artist. Right. And he's an extraordinary artist. I mean, Toni Morrison at her, uh, eulogy at her eulogy for Baldwin, uh, when he dies in December of 1987, um, she, she says that, you know, she found language in Baldwin, uh, the way in which he, How can I put this?

He takes the sound of the black preachily tradition, the black homiletic tradition. He takes the eloquence of, uh, the King James Bible. He, he, he's, he's, he, he's a student of [01:00:00] Henry James sentences. So when you, when you. Re Henry James is the ambassadors. You can see Baldwin inside those sentences. He's thinking with Proust.

He's, he is in so many ways, the inheritor of Emerson just on the other side of the tracks. So Chuck is absolutely right. We can never lose sight. Of Baldwin as the artist as the poet in the broadest sense of that word

Celebrating James Baldwin's 100th Birthday Part 3 - 1A - Air Date 7-30-24

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: In 1971, poet Nikki Giovanni interviewed, uh, he was 47 years old at this point, James Baldwin in London, in a conversation that's been widely circulated across social media in recent years.

We heard from Dominic who says, thank you so much for doing this show. James Baldwin had a profound impact on my life as he met me at the intersections of race, sexuality, civic duty, and democracy. I'd be curious to think about what it means to be out based on Baldwin's work. Additionally, I'd be curious to think about Baldwin's thoughts on misogynoir, given his 1971 conversation on black relationships with Nikki Giovanni on [01:01:00] soul.

Let's hear a little bit of that conversation. I

JAMES BALDWIN: have to smile all day and take out on the job at the foreman. I can't give a performance all day on the job and come home and give a performance all night in the house. Okay, so one of the performances will stop. Yes, so you say, and okay, I might be willing to go with it, but who's going to pay the rent?

The rent will get paid. Look, baby, I'm willing to play it your way, but you have to see my point of view. I see your point of view, but the rent will have to get paid. The price of the house. No, no, I don't want you prostituting yourself. I demand. I don't want you prostituting yourself either. One of us has got to work.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Now, Baldwin is often associated with his commentary on race, but Professor Glott, what were his views on, on gender? Ooh,

ROBERT JONES JR: you know, they're complicated. [01:02:00] You know, let me just say this. Uh, Notes was published in 1955 in Giovanni's room is 56. I want to be clear about that. Um, That exchange between Jimmy and Nikki Giovanni freed me to write Begin Again.

Say more. Because I was, I felt, I was drinking too much Irish whiskey. Baldwin's was, Baldwin was demanding a certain kind of honesty, uh, that threatened everything that I had built over a life lived. Um, and the way she said lie to me, Right? I can't lie to you. No, no, no. You lie to him all day. Come home and lie to me.

And that exchange where she, and she's young, she's brash, uh, she's telling him, No, no, no, no. We, together, you and I, in love, we could, we could pay the rent. Right? That's gonna get paid if we're in, if we risk ourselves with each other. [01:03:00] So she, she let me know that Baldwin could be wrong. Right? That you could challenge it, which freed me up to think about him because, you know, otherwise you just consent to the eloquence over and over and over and over again, right?

So, his, his views on gender are really, really complicated. You know he has a very complicated, you know, you read Here Be Dragons, you read, um, the stuff on, um, Uh, the early stuff on male prisons, you see Baldwin understands the constructed nature of gender, right? But you also see him inhabiting traditional gender roles and actually repeating them.

So if you, there's a moment where he's debating or having a conversation with Audre Lorde at Spellman. Oh my God, Audre Lorde handed him his behind, right? Because Baldwin was again, inhabiting a certain, a certain. a certain understanding of patriarchy and what this understanding of manhood distorts that if we're going to allow because the basic claim as I [01:04:00] understand it Is if we're going to deal with patriarchy, we're going to have to deal with the conception of men, right?

That distorts the very ways in which these folk understand themselves. And so he, in order to make that point, he's not going to make the feminist mode. He's going to, he's going to say, you got to deal with the way in which these men come to understand themselves and come to love. And so he's centering folk, men in a way, that, that gets in the way.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. But I would love to hear what Robert has to say about that.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Yeah, and I just want to note, Robert, you wanted to make sure this conversation wasn't just a celebration of Baldwin's legacy without confronting some, some of his flaws. So go ahead.

ROBERT JONES JR: You know, um, I learned as much from Baldwin's despair as I do from his love.

I learned as much about life from his triumphs as I do from his flaws, his [01:05:00] flaws. So when I look at his exchange between Nikki Giovanni and Audre Lorde, particularly the latter, I'm seeing somebody, as Dr. Glaude said, embodying the patriarchy he wants to dismantle as a performance to this is what men are.

How do we, how do we confront this? How do we undo it? Because he says to, um, to Audre Lorde at once, this is what men are. This is what they're going to do. Um, but he never realizes he's also embracing this thing as, um, not wanting to hear Audre Lorde saying, well, You know, I'm going to stop you from being violent toward me by any means necessary.

Just like you're going to stop Mr. Charlie from being violent to you. I learned a great deal about that, that pedestals are a small place to put somebody on and there's only one way down to be pushed. [01:06:00] And so here's the other thing about Baldwin that I learned from embracing his flaws is that unlike in the age of the internet, Baldwin can admit that he's wrong.

And he can apologize because if you read The Evidence of Things Not Seen, his last published work, there's an entire section on Black women. And when she says, basically, I got it completely wrong is the deal with black women. Um, something that's really rare today to apologize and to admit fault publicly.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Well, I've got to tell you, Robert, that pedestals are very small places to put people and there's only one way down to push them. That's going to be, that's going to be sitting in my head. in my head for a while.

SECTION B - RACE IN AMERICA

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Race in America.

Right Wingers Go FULL RACIST About Civil Rights - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-21-24

JEREMY CARL: Relook at how we've enforced civil rights laws. And again, I'm not saying that because I think we need to read litigate The wisdom of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was it was put in at a particular time [01:07:00] to solve I've criticized it Yeah, yeah Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm Chris Chris Caldwell is a colleague of mine and I think it's it's you know it's fine to do that, but I think just as a political strategy I think If people want to say, Hey, that was, there was, there were absolutely real problems that it was addressing, whether you think it did it in the perfect way or not.

But we're as far from that time right now.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I just want to, I want to stay on this segment for a moment because it's, it's a fascinating. Um, he is saying for political purposes, I don't want to engage in whether there should have ever been a civil rights act because the implication is to him that there shouldn't have been.

That. Things either weren't that bad or the fixes for this, like, I don't know. Guaranteeing the right that you as a black person could not be discriminated against at, let's say a hotel. [01:08:00] Or a restaurant. Or, I don't know, on a bus. Uh, where the civil, uh, vote, uh, the, the Voting Rights Act guaranteed that your vote, you cannot be dispossessed of your vote or disenfranchised.

He had problems with it, but he doesn't want to litigate that. He wants to pretend that it's solved everything and there's no racism now. So, uh, which is a just more terra firma, uh, in terms of, of, of the political argument, but

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: that's Carl's argument, right? Where like, yeah, that's Carl's argument, but Charlie's goes, Charlie goes farther in terms of basically, I mean, what has, what have his arguments been about the civil rights act?

Let me guess. It's just, it's process based or the federal government shouldn't be making these determinations, Well, the, uh,

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I, I, I, I don't know, I've heard him articulate it, although he says right there, he has criticized it, and I'm sure he has, I'm [01:09:00] sure the part of it is like, hey, if I'm, uh, you know, you can't, you cannot force a, um, a restaurant to serve black people, and I just know it's going to fail, that restaurant's going to fail anyways, um, if it, if it doesn't serve black people, of course, we've seen Uh, it's just absurd.

Uh, they, they seem to do okay anyways. Uh, you know, prior to that time, oddly enough, but here's the difference. Charlie Kirk has a, um, a, a radio show, and so he has to appeal to, um, adjust his audience. This guy, um, you know, uh, Jeremy Carl is at a, the Hoover, uh, is he at the Hoover? Is that where he is at? The, the, the Hoover uh, found institution, which is a think tank that may has to sound like it's somewhat reasonable.

Mm-Hmm. . And it's just too complicated to argue that the Civil Rights

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Act, it was wrong. We have a big tent over here between [01:10:00] people who, uh, think apartheid is fine and people think we should maybe do something to not be officially apartheid.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, just to clarify, sorry, that was, uh, Jeremy's first stop in the think tank.

He's, uh, space. He's now at the Claremont Institute.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, he's moved on to the full on theocracy, uh, theocratic, uh, racist, but.

JEREMY CARL: And Chris, Chris Caldwell is a colleague of mine and I think it's, it's, you know, it's fine to do that. But I think just as a, a political strategy, I think if people want to say, Hey, that was, there were, there were absolutely real problems that it was addressing, whether you think it did it in the perfect way or not.

But we're as far from that time right now. As they were from the Wright brothers. So there's a lot of things that have changed in American society We're not worried about people not being served at lunch counters anymore.

CHARLIE KIRK: Yeah, and the civil rights act though Let's be clear created a beast and that beast has now turned into an anti white

JEREMY CARL: Yeah, and that's and that's the reality.

And so we just need to fundamentally relook at a lot of our civil rights legal regime. And without that, even though I don't think it's [01:11:00] sort of the magic bullet, but I think without that there's limits to the amount of progress we're going to make. Let's talk about discourse

CHARLIE KIRK: and dialogue. This topic would have been even more forbidden four or five years ago, but it's now becoming in more and more mainstream circles.

Is that because the problem is becoming worse or, but our side is more courageous to confront it.

JEREMY CARL: I think it's both Charlie and I'm gonna commend you in particular and Tucker and guys like Matt Walsh. There's like three of us. Yeah, it's really, I mean, you guys are the people. You guys really, I just want to be clear

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: what they're saying.

We couldn't be this hourly racist before.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, but now we can. Just to put a time, uh, code on that, uh, Wired has a piece, How Charlie Kirk Plans to Discredit Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act. Uh, starts with two quotes. In 2015, Kirk called him a hero. Uh, in 2022, MLK was a civil rights icon. Now, you could say both of those things and still hate them.

Cause it's objectively true. He's a hero to many [01:12:00] people and he is a civil rights icon. But now Charlie Kirk is saying, you know, things like MLK is awful. He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe being the, uh, probably like don't care about the color of your skin or whatever.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I remember being at that, um, uh, 9 12 rally that, um, Glenn Beck had back in 2000. I don't know when it was 2008 maybe, or 2009. And, um, There was a guy there who was very angry at Glenn Beck for embracing MLK because MLK was a socialist and whatnot. And I'm like, well, he, he sort of was actually, um, but you should tell a lot of people that, um, but the, the, it really did take Trump and then just sort of like people trying to do, how do we do Trump without the racism?

And it took them to be fair, a couple of months to realize like, we don't. That's [01:13:00] not the formula. It's like, it's like, how do we do soda without sweetness? It turns out, eh, you need the sweetness.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Racism was just one tool in Trump's arsenal, but he won because he was synonymous in culture with the rich decider guy.

Yeah. Right.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I also, but I do like the idea of the fact that because Charlie Kirk is saying that, you know, maybe we have to be a bit more strategic on abortion and now, as you would say, Sam, the dog has caught the car. Abortion was what the right pivoted to after the Civil Rights Act. And so now they have to go to a return to form where they can try to galvanize their base based on.

Go back. Right. Right. Right. Vintage. Let's see if it works

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: this way.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Exactly.

Trump Questions If Kamala Harris Is Black in Hate-Filled Interview with Black Journalists at NABJ - Democracy Now - Air Date 8-1-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared before the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago on Wednesday for a sit-down interview with a panel of Black women journalists. The association’s decision to invite Trump had sparked outrage within the organization. On Tuesday, Washington Post editor Karen [01:14:00] Attiah stepped down as co-chair of the NABJ’s convention.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: During the interview, Trump repeatedly sparred with the reporters, insulted them, and also questioned whether Kamala Harris is actually Black. He claimed he was the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.

We turn now to excerpts from this interview with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, Semafor's Kadia Goba and ABC News' Rachel Scott, who began the event with this question.

RACHEL SCOTT: I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room, sir. A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today. You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswomen of color, who were American citizens, to go back to where they came from. You have used words like “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black [01:15:00] district attorneys. You’ve attacked Black journalists, calling them a “loser,” saying the questions that they ask are, quote, “stupid and racist.” You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So, my question, sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so — in such a horrible manner, a first question. You don’t even say, “Hello. How are you?” Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network. And I think it’s disgraceful that I came here, in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country. …

I was invited here, and I was told my opponent, whether it was Biden or Kamala — I was told my opponent was [01:16:00] going to be here. It turned out my opponent isn’t here. You invited me under false pretense. And then you said, “You can’t do it with Zoom.” Well, you know, where’s Zoom? She’s going to do it with Zoom, and she’s not coming. And then you were half an hour late. Just so we understand, I have too much respect for you to be late. They couldn’t get their equipment working, or something was wrong.

RACHEL SCOTT: Mr. President, I would love if you can answer the question —

DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s a very nasty question.

RACHEL SCOTT: — on your rhetoric and why you believe that Black voters —

DONALD TRUMP: I have answered the question.

RACHEL SCOTT: — should trust you with another four years.

DONALD TRUMP: I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.

RACHEL SCOTT: Better than —

DONALD TRUMP: That’s my answer.

RACHEL SCOTT: Better than President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act?

DONALD TRUMP: That’s my answer. And for you to start off a question-and-answer period, especially when you’re 35 minutes late because you couldn’t get your equipment to work, in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace. I really do. I think it’s a disgrace.

RACHEL SCOTT: Let me — let me just ask a follow-up, sir, and then we’ll move on to other questions here. Some of your own supporters, including Republicans on Capitol Hill, have labeled Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the first Black and Asian American woman to serve as vice president and be on a major-party [01:17:00] ticket, as a ”DEI hire.” Is that acceptable language to you? And will you tell those Republicans and those supporters to stop it?

DONALD TRUMP: How do you — how do you define DEI? Go ahead. How do you define it?

RACHEL SCOTT: Diversity, equity, inclusion.

DONALD TRUMP: OK, yeah, go ahead. Is that what your definition? Give me —

RACHEL SCOTT: That is —

DONALD TRUMP: Give me a definition, then.

RACHEL SCOTT: That is literally the words, DEI.

DONALD TRUMP: Would you give me a definition of that? Give me a definition of that.

RACHEL SCOTT: Sir, I’m asking you a question, a very direct question.

DONALD TRUMP: No, no. You have to define it. Define the — define it for me, if you would.

RACHEL SCOTT: I just defined it, sir. Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I can say, no, I think it’s maybe a little bit different. So, I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know: Is she Indian, or is she Black?

RACHEL SCOTT: She has always identified as a Black woman.

DONALD TRUMP: But you know what?

RACHEL SCOTT: She went to a historically Black college.

DONALD TRUMP: I respect either one. I respect either one. But she [01:18:00] obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then, all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person. …

HARRIS FAULKNER: As you were coming today, we really got to see that we were divided along the lines of race, along the lines of gender. And there is this question of, in this moment where we are, why come here? What is your message today?

DONALD TRUMP: My message is to stop people from invading our country that are taking, frankly — a lot of problems with it, but one of the big problems — and a lot of the journalists in this room I know and I have great respect for — a lot of the journalists in this room are Black. I will tell you that coming — coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs. You had the best —

RACHEL SCOTT: What exactly is a Black job, sir?

DONALD TRUMP: A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is, anybody that has a job.

HARRIS FAULKNER: All right. …

KADIA GOBA: [01:19:00] So, Sonya Massey, someone from Illinois, an unarmed Black woman, was shot the other day in her home by a deputy sheriff. The deputy has since been charged with murder. You’ve said police would get immunity from prosecution if you win. Why should someone like that officer have immunity, in your opinion?

DONALD TRUMP: Immunity?

KADIA GOBA: Immunity.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know the exact case, but I saw something, and it didn’t look — it didn’t look good to me. It didn’t look good to me. Are you talking — with the water, right?

KADIA GOBA: Yeah. Well, police —

DONALD TRUMP: It didn’t look —

KADIA GOBA: I mean, police unions are not backing this person, either.

DONALD TRUMP: OK, OK.

KADIA GOBA: But again, why would —

DONALD TRUMP: And they’re going to — are they going to be charging the officer? I guess they’re charging the officer.

KADIA GOBA: So, why should he receive immunity?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, he might not. I mean, it depends. It depends on what happens.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That’s presidential nominee Donald Trump being interviewed at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Chicago. [01:20:00] He was questioned by Fox News host Harris Faulkner, Semafor's Kadia Goba and ABC News' Rachel Scott.

Crowder Spews UNHINGED Racism During Harris ‘Comedy’ Bit - The Majority Report - Air Date7-31-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: How did her candidacy kind of, like, get launched online? Or have young people get interested? It was the memeing of the coconut tree anecdote, okay? That was a story she told about her Indian mother. So I don't think, know who they, and that's a phrase her Indian mother told her, and it was apparently an adage.

So I don't know who's hiding the fact that she's mixed race from anybody, or who the they is.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This guy just wants to make sure that we have a racially pure black person as president. Right? Is that what's going on here? Yeah, he loves, yeah, exactly.

CROWDER: Who trick you, the media, the legacy media into believing that Kamala Harris is fully black.

CLIP: Does she really identify as a black woman, or is she more Indian? What does Kamala Harris listen to?

KAMALA HARRIS: Definitely Snoop, uh huh. Oh, pause it, pause it, pause it. You ain't black.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: [01:21:00] Oh my god, this is really just stunning.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They did blackface.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They, uh, for folks just listening, they, uh, darkened her image, uh, and put a joint in her mouth.

And, uh, gold chains around her. Oh, right, I forgot,

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Mr. T style gold chains. And graffiti next to her that says, Black like me. What? Now,

CROWDER: That was Joe Biden, not us, we didn't say that. Just to be clear, I would not advise President Trump to focus on this. No. I would not advise politically to focus on her whore kingdom.

No. I wouldn't. But this is not a presidential campaign, and so we like to do it. So, the narrative right now, I told you this was coming, but it's very, very clear. And we have a montage for you, and you can share it on social. Just, just so you can cut people off at the pass. If you, if you don't allow it to happen in darkness, then it loses all power.

The line of attack from everybody and their dog on the left is if you [01:22:00] don't vote for Kamala or if you, if you actively oppose Kamala, if you certainly actively present her shortcomings as a candidate, it's because you hate women. I mean, black people, I mean, black people, I mean, women, I mean, black people or women, black women, but half black women, you hate all the people who are women or black or half black.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Pause it for one second,

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: and so I'll skip ahead for a little bit because it's a long montage

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This is the way that he's going to, uh, prove That you don't, uh, hate women or black women By assessing how black Kamala Harris is

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And encouraging Trump not to share this Don't run on this, no no no But all my fans who are all voting for Trump You share this stuff Because this is how right wing campaigns run.

They have to operate in some way with plausible deniability, so they have Foot soldiers who, I don't know, are really decreasing in terms of their view count, like Steven Crowder doing it for them. And [01:23:00] earlier on he said, uh, her whore kingdom? Did I hear that correctly?

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I'm not sure what that's about.

So, and

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: then he said then they're gonna try to say that everybody on the left will, and their dog, will try to say that, uh, criticism of her is because she's a woman and because she's black. You just said that she got to power via her whore kingdom, which, I'm not even sure what that means.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's a woman in power.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh,

CROWDER: gotcha. So, whore. Donald Trump, uh, has never been elected to anything. You

CLIP: have to be able to fairly critique the vice president of the United States without just saying it's the color of their skin or the fact she's a woman. But it is part of it. Sorry, is it just because she's black?

CROWDER: Yes. Okay. Yes. No.

Also. Sorry. Did that. Did that shriveled ladybug say that Donald Trump has never been elected to anything? Uh, sheesh. Hey, that's election, that's election denial. [01:24:00] Reverend, I am not familiar with that term, but I will get back to you. Sorry, election denial. Oh, like misogynoir, I heard that. Misogynoir. For the first time today, too.

Yeah. Misogynoir from that. Half ass house party haircut that you cannot do with that high of a hairline because it just looks like you've been green screened improperly. Oh no! Speaking of hairlines, are we gonna just graze over the fact that we had black Larry David at the end of that? I know. Little Barry David?

That's Michael, what up, Steele? When he was the RNC chairman, he was like, I got a new blog! What up, Larry David? Wow. He was the least effective RNC chairman ever. He's on a show called Curb Your Ebony.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, this is just, wow. Riffing. They're proving, they're just giving you ammo, um, um, young, aspiring racists, to head [01:25:00] off at the pass any critique that your problem with Kamala Harris is that she's black. That's all they're doing. Go ahead. Pretty,

CROWDER: pretty, pretty black. They asked him, they asked him when he was, when he was uh, uh, going to be the RNC chairman, like, hey, what do you think we need to do?

We need to be more effective on our messaging as it relates to strong American economy, jobs for the middle class. He's like, I think they need a what pie. We're gonna start a blog. Michael, what up, Phil? Like, you're the worst. I'll take it. Go away. I see your point. And I'll run your way. That's not even as cringy as they really get.

No. You're less cringy than they are. Well, here's what's even more cringy is, look, and I understand that she is biracial, okay? It's not lost. We will have her Jamaican father, Donald J. Harrison, in just a little bit. Yeah. However, she has tried to use whatever is most convenient that day, and because they [01:26:00] know we'll get to the polls that Kamala doesn't poll very well with the um, the Noirs, to quote that man.

At least I there now. They're now trying to make Kamala do more black things.

KAMALA HARRIS: What'd you get? So Do you know music? Okay, so First of all, Charlie Mangus.

CLIP: And then the Blackstreet Boys. community. She is a great asset to this team. Well, to say that the black community is excited about this potential nomination is an understatement.

KAMALA HARRIS: favorite albums of all time. Roy airs. Everybody loves sunshine. Pause.

CROWDER: If it's your favorite album, why are you buying it now on camera? Yeah, it's like she googled it. Yes.

UNKNOWN COMMENTATOR: You would have already had it.

CROWDER: Oh, I guess It's also

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: possible that maybe it's on your Spotify, but I mean You buy reissue

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I have albums that I purchased on vinyl to have as [01:27:00] collector items that I listen to also on my streaming service.

You like black music? You may have

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: had cassettes or something. You like black music? Name five of their albums. That's basically what they're saying. I mean,

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: but, but, I mean, this is like, this is, you know, This is all just, you know, full on, uh, politician stuff. Like there's no politician out there. You know, I'm going to McDonald's.

Really does, does Donald Trump go, Trump could do that. Does Donald Trump go in Philadelphia and get a cheese steak? I mean, gimme a, she made a

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: campaign stop at a record store and picked up some records that she liked. That's what happened.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I, this is, this is just like, this is just Nazi strain, gun level race, baby.

Yeah. Like, I mean, honestly I can full

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: on race babies. It

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: really is.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: All right, let's just uh, he's so pathetic

James Baldwin's Fire Part 2 - Throughline - Air Date 9-17-20

JAMES BALDWIN: What is it you want to me to reconcile myself to? I was born here almost 60 years ago. I'm not going to live another 60 years. You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father's time, my mother's time. My [01:28:00] uncle's not. My brother's and my sister's not. My niece's and my nephew's not. How much time do you want for your progress?

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: Did he come, come out of the civil rights? movement feeling hopeful because I, I, I look at the moment that we're in now and the, and there's a lot of potential for change. There's a lot of potential for a real kind of awareness of reckoning with our history, but there's also a potential for things to continue as they've been.

And I guess I wonder is, is, is the ultimate kind of takeaway From Baldwin, a sense of hope, um, in, in where the country's headed.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You know, that's a great question. And in [01:29:00] some ways, it's, it's a question that, that, that is in part the motivation for writing the book, because I focus on the later Jimmy Baldwin's.

I will focus on his later work for a reason, because He witnessed the country turn its back on the civil rights movement. You know, something, they murdered the apostle of love. They assassinated Dr. King. He collapsed, you know, tried to commit suicide in 69. He was despairing, disillusioned. But he had to pick up the pieces.

He had to bear witness. Because he also saw the country elect Ronald Reagan. And he, you know, Reagan for black activists during this period was as bad, if not worse, than George Wallace. And they were calling him the redeemer in chief. This was the man who, who, who led the hunt. You know, that destroyed the Black Panther Party.

This was the man who put Angela Davis in effect on the FBI most wanted list. This was the man who despised the poor. Um, in [01:30:00] California, as, as Baldwin put it, he was the, he would, he became the avatar of all of those who rejected it and resisted the great society and the civil rights movement. And the country elected him, this B list Hollywood actor.

He was their latest fantasy. Hmm. Sounds like an echo. We live in a moment similar. And so Baldwin, um, in that moment, said the country had turned its back on it, on, on, on the possibility of being otherwise. And so he had to figure out how to pick up the pieces so that we could push this damn boulder up the hill again.

In 1970, an Ebony interviewer came to Istanbul while Baldwin was trying to pick up the pieces and working on No Name in the Street. And he asked him about hope and Jimmy is barely keeping it together, although he's in a community of love offers the advice that I found in the ruins and in the rubble that I offer us today, [01:31:00] hope is invented every day, hope is invented every day.

And so I'll say this really quickly. There's no, there's reason to. To think that we are on the precipice of change, but there's no guarantee. But wherever human beings are, we at least have a chance because we're not only disasters, we're also,

we have to dare everything right now. We have to try to be otherwise. We have to risk everything to be otherwise. We have to figure out how to be together differently. I don't want to see another generation of Americans having to bear the burden of this lie. To use an image that Baldwin used, you know, we're all midwives [01:32:00] trying to give birth to a new America.

In the past, every time we came to the moment in which the new America could be born, white supremacy was the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck. And we let it snuff down.

Let's be better midwives as we try to be better people.

JAMES BALDWIN: This is the demand that the artist makes of his society, which society inevitably, unfailingly, and always resists. Resists because it knows that it could do it, but prefers to believe that what it can see and touch is more real. And what it knows and feels at that moment, for example, when the baby is born.

The role of the artist, or responsibility of the artist, is to make you respect that moment above all other moments. To recognize that there is nothing under [01:33:00] heaven, no creed and no flag. And no cause more important than the single human life.

SECTION C - THE WHITE LIE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: The White Lie.

Truth, Privilege, and James Baldwin Part 2 - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 10-3-23

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: You know, I think that it's so important, Greg, for white people like yourself to take on. The role of shepherd right in trying to corral Yeah in trying to corral people outside of their own self interest and privilege right because what I believe to be true is that the reason why we're at a time when History is being erased again where books are being burned again Where you're seeing this critical pushback in and our public education system being a battleground For social justice again is because of the notable progress that has been made The critical thought that has been [01:34:00] raised the uh, the the opportunities That we saw presented through the historical the historic election of the first black president right through, you know, through people from marginalized communities sitting inside as secretaries of, you know, of transportation as leaders in our government like this is why this is happening.

You wouldn't see a need for this kind of white lash and bigotry if in fact young people's minds haven't already been woke right to the fact that you know what? This system isn't just this place is not right. It isn't okay that by virtue of my birth and whiteness that I have more privilege and opportunity than my friend down the street or my neighbor, you know, or what have you.

And so, you know, my question for you, the last question I have for you is, you know, Baldwin's footprints on this country, on this world. Is, is enormous, [01:35:00] um, is cemented, is important, and what message do you think that he would continue to convey if, in fact, he was still with us in this moment of great hopelessness?

Right? Because that's where we are. We've had tremendous progress, but the pain that we are seeing right now and the cruelty that is being wielded by. Republican politicians is creating a sense of hopelessness. So what do you think his message would be?

GREG GARRETT: Oh, and Danielle, that is such a good question. I actually had a conversation with the BBC earlier today, and I was asked something similar and, and what I had said to them and what I confessed to them is that, you know, as I look at where the world is now in this post Trumpian reality, post Trumpian, please God, it feels darker to me than at any [01:36:00] time during my lifetime.

You know, and I'm 61 years old, you know, I was born in 1961, grew up in the 60s, was fairly cognizant of, of, uh, what was going on. And, you know, for all the excitement of Barack Obama being elected, I do really think that Ibram Kendi has it right. Which is, this is, this is not a, you know, like a, a triangle of narrative that we're used to.

It's, it's jagged, you know? And as you were saying, Barack Obama's. Election and a more inclusive society scared the crap out of a whole lot of white people. And so that's how we end up with, you know, what the Atlantic called Mr. Trump as, you know, the great white supremacist president. Yeah. Um, so here's kind of where I land on this a lot.

There are two late life. Works by Baldwin that I look at. Um, he was asked by Playboy magazine to go to Atlanta and investigate the Atlanta [01:37:00] child murders. And the essay that he wrote is kind of rambling. It's not by any means his most like successful literary work. And there are times in it where he seems to be so daunted and so lost and so hopeless.

And at the end of it, he comes back to the, that question of love again. Um, And he says, you know, I think about the church that I grew up in, where we were told to love each other. And he says, whoever else did not believe that, I did. And I think about that a lot, um, you know, in terms of like trying to bridge some of these chasms in our reality at this time.

Um, and then I also think about hopefulness in connection with the last work that he was writing at the end of his life, which was a play called the welcome table. And, you know, Baldwin loved black spirituals. He loved gospel music. He loved the blues. Um, I know that he was referring to, you know, I'm going to sit at the welcome table one of these days.[01:38:00]

Uh, which is one of the songs that I learned in the African American church that rescued me. Um, and the, the image that he had of the welcome table was one that he talked about throughout his life. Um, someday, he said, you know, and whether that's in this reality, please God, or not, but someday we are all going to come to this space where we can sit at the table and we're not going to see those received identities.

Uh, I'm not going to be a straight white Christian man. I'm going to be human. I'm going to be a child of God. You know, even as, as we might put it, and. We're going to sit together at the table. All of us are going to sit together at the table and we're going to be seen and known and loved. Um, and, and that's a central part of my faith.

And, you know, the crazy thing is that I think it remained a central part of Baldwin's faith, even though he fled the organized church as a teenager. Up to the end of his life, he still believed in that possibility. [01:39:00] And, you know, I talked about it, it's like, what do I need to get out of bed in the morning?

Um, I need to believe in hope, you know, I need to believe that change is possible, that we can do better. And I need to have some pragmatic ways to think about that, which for me is a white man is we've got to do some truth telling, we've got to do some repentance. We've got to create relationships with people who've been marginalized.

We've got to learn, um, who they are. And learn what they need and how we can move forward. Because I mean, another problem that white guys have is that we want to go in and fix things that we don't know anything about.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah. Yeah.

GREG GARRETT: What, what Baldwin has given me as a person who looks and lives like I do is all of these thoughts around love and hope.

And the idea that, you know, at the end of the day, we are so much more alike than we are. And that there is possibility. And, you know, I believed, I believed this so much more strongly when Barack Obama stood on the [01:40:00] steps

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: of the Capitol, and I

GREG GARRETT: do when I look at the Republican debates, I also just got back from Bill Clinton's presidential library and I was watching, uh, some of the video there and it was, I mean, it brought tears to my eyes.

Whatever it is, you know that you want to say about Bill Clinton, but that that phrase I still believe in a place called hope and that's what Baldwin gives me every time I read him, every time I hear his voice, every time I think about him, I hope that we can do and be better.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah, and I will wait. It was Bill Clinton that said there is nothing that is wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right by America.

GREG GARRETT: Yeah, that's and

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: that is and that's actually one of my favorite. That's one of that's one of my favorites that I that I still I still with my mustard seed of hope that I still hold on to.

Right Wingers Go FULL RACIST About Civil Rights Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-21-24

JEREMY CARL: I mean, I didn't write this book to de radicalize people. Okay. But I actually think that if people read it, they will understand, uh, if you're a white person and you're like, man, I'm just, [01:41:00] I'm at the end of my rope and I don't know what I'm going to do.

But that's where a lot of

CHARLIE KIRK: the young white men that we speak to on campus, I sometimes have to kind of bring them back into like, Free society, like let's, let's calm down because they say everyone's against us. We need to create our own identity politic group. And I actually don't think that's a good idea.

I, I don't think more tribalism is the answer to tribalism, but I see why they believe that. Pause it for one second. Incidentally,

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: if you are looking for a white identity group, uh, there is one. It is called the Republican Party. Younger campus Republicans.

CHARLIE KIRK: Sympathize with it. The media then says, how dare you sympathize with people that, you know, want to create their own identity group.

But can you speak to that, Jeremy? It's like, you can only push a group into a corner so much until they. They

JEREMY CARL: kind of say, I'm not going to take it anymore. Yeah. And I think that's what's happening. And I think that's, you know, you're seeing this ferment and that's the left kind of loses its mind because they refuse to deal with the consequences of what they've created.

I do think that there's an element in the same way that [01:42:00] Martin Luther King jr, who we talked about before the show, but he wasn't, you know, plus or minus. He wasn't kind of he wasn't a black nationalist in the way that early malcolm x was he was trying to organize black people However, without apology apology, I think in the same way like we've had a lot of airy appeals to equal rights And it sort of hasn't gotten us anywhere.

We need to organize people Not in a way to kind of create racial identity politics, but to show that like these are the people being discriminated against So they have to organized against it actively and

CHARLIE KIRK: it is without a doubt the only group in the country You That you're not allowed. To say that you're even part of that group, right?

Let alone that you're being mistreated.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: What would organizing white people look like, right? I mean, you

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: know, Republican Party.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, sure, but you could even if you want to organize it It's like you could have matching outfits, right? Like I mean so people know that you're a part of the same group. Could be matching armbands.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: A coordinated [01:43:00] step, rather.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Or, or What

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: about Fred Perry shirts? How about maybe race isn't the lines that we decide to organize along? How about maybe instead, these young people, I mean, look, maybe some of them are rich kids, uh, that are gonna be racist, but like, um, join a union. Um, join some of these, like, anti imperial causes that are on your campus that you're being told to hate by people like Charlie Kirk.

Like, there are other causes then. I need to be, because I'm a white man, I do not feel represented by either of these two absolute goobers there. And the idea that these guys are going to give anybody a sort of path to walk in life is depressing.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, the, the fascinating thing is, is that every other, in every other application, I Their ideology is all about the individual in every other application.

Good point. It is all about the individual. It is about, you know, personal responsibility and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and, um, unions are bad. Um, you know, any type of [01:44:00] activist groups are bad. Environmentalists are bad. Um, uh, criminal justice reform, bad, um, any type of activism. Outside of responding to the fact that, that we've gone too far in giving rights to non white people.

Every other notion of communitarianism, of organizing, of activism is, uh, bad, inherently. In its essence, is bad. Unless you're forced into, um, Organizing as white people to push back on what's going on here,

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: which is just the good news is that Charlie's very bad at it Um, you know charlie's not the dumbest conservative, but he's quite bad at organizing at least college students to his cause They failed miserably So focused, very laser, uh, laser focused on Arizona this last election cycle and, uh, Republican, uh, gains with young [01:45:00] people was one of the worst in any of the states that Turning Point USA even looked at, if not the worst there.

So that's the good news for us is that he takes a bunch of right wing billionaire or millionaire cash and doesn't do a ton with it.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Uh, is there any more to this? Let's just hear. Where these, these two guys are going.

CHARLIE KIRK: Right. Why do you think that is? Is it just that everyone's so afraid of being called a racist?

I, I actually think that simple explanation is the deep one. Yeah, I think that's right. It's that being called a racist is worse than being called a rapist in American society.

JEREMY CARL: Oh, absolutely. And you'll see even people, you know, who are, who would be considered very, very far to the right, and they will disclaim, you know, or they will, they will feel like they have been slandered if that is used against them.

Absolutely. And you seem to get over it because ultimately, if you're being effective in this world right now, you're gonna be called a racist by the left, but they don't even know what a woman is, so how would they know what a racist is? Oh! I get

CHARLIE KIRK: called racist every day, and it's easy to say, why are you so terrified of being called a racist?

But there is, there are huge consequences for being called a racist. Of course. [01:46:00] Unless you have your own stuff, and unless you're very unique and you're willing to punch through it, and punch through it, and punch through it, and punch through it, and then you come to the other side and you have intellectual freedom.

Purity and freedom, but that's, that's a small positive

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: incidentally. I'll tell you what that area is. It's when your audience is also equally as racist and they're okay with it and everybody has punched through it.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I know, right. Like they got over the initial shame of being called a racist and just set in, and it just set in the reality that they are racist.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I like the fact too that this guy was feeling loose enough to, um, just to slide off topic a little bit in terms of the only unprotected class that's out there to, uh, slag trans people. They peddled of that. Yeah, it's. It's, it's like, it is the white people who are oppressed and, of course, those people who are not trans.

Yeah.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's funny to have, like, something that you return to as a touchstone for, like, oh, this is the truth on our [01:47:00] side, and you're wrong about that, too. Exactly.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And what strikes me, too, is these conversations are so boring, because they're never specific. It's just like general feelings, general resentment, I mean, like they can never point to anything in particular because also when they start to go down that road, if Charlie wants to get a little bit more specific about his feelings about the Civil Rights Act, then he gets a little bit, he gets in trouble because for all of his protestations, right?

He knows that there's some lines that he can't cross if he wants to widen his appeal for his audience.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And we should just say, um The number of racists who are arrested for their racism, uh, versus rapists is really out of control.

Brian Lehrer Weekend 100 Years of James Baldwin; Election Integrity and National Security; New York City Etiquette Part 2 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 8-3-24

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: I'm used at the very beginning. Paradoxical, I think is a, is a wonderful counterintuitive maybe is also a, another word there. That idea that so much time has passed and yet the words ring so true still. That makes me professor want to go to the fire next time, which you brought up.

This one is two [01:48:00] essays. The first was written to Baldwin's nephew. Interesting little factoid here for listeners. This one was in 1963. We're celebrating a hundred years of a hundred things, 1963 itself, a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. How had Baldwin in the country's discourse evolved by, by that point, had it speaking to Nikita's point?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, remember, I mean, this is at the heart of, of the black freedom struggle. So Baldwin, you know, with the, first of all, with the publication of The Fire Next Time, he, he ascends as perhaps the most important black literary voice in the country at the time. But it's also, Uh, you know, you think about Birmingham, you think about, um, the, the movement in Montgomery, you think about, uh, what happened in Arkansas, what was going on in the South, what was about to happen in Washington, D.

C., the meeting with, uh, uh, Robert, Robert Kennedy. So he's in the throes of the black freedom struggle. Right and what's so important about it. Remember that the the [01:49:00] essays were published The year before right and one in the New Yorker and the other and in another in another piece So so he's he's the progressive he's thinking Right?

About movements. He's trying to, how can, he's trying to bear witness to what's happening on the ground and what's happening on the ground. Everyday ordinary folk are engaged in a revolutionary practice to change the very foundation. The very foundation of the country, right? To rip up this, this practice of Jim Crow.

And fire next time is this powerful articulation of that, but it's also this challenge because the country gets introduced to, to, uh, the nation of Islam. Cause this is what's so, what's so beautiful about Baldwin. Baldwin taught me how to love and to be angry, how to not let the rage overwhelm. Uh, you know, but if you're not angry, If you're not in love, you know, [01:50:00] they're experiencing a kind of righteous indignation.

What, what, what world are you living in? And so he's, he's giving voice to this in 1963. And remember, we don't hear the language of black power until two to three years later.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: You know, we're

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: already beginning to get a sense of it in his work

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: that, that, um, that idea of him being a precursor to a larger movement in that sense reminds me of a clip that we've actually prepared.

So it's great timing. In 1968, he went on the Dick Cavett show and talked about the state of race relations. Let's listen to a clip from his comments. I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to reflect on it, professor. Here's the clip. Sure.

JAMES BALDWIN: I don't know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only include what they feel from the state of their institution.

I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know that we have a Christian church which is white, and a Christian church which is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, that the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation.

It means that I can't afford to [01:51:00] trust most white Christians, and certainly cannot trust the Christian church. I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn't matter, but I know I'm not in their union. I don't know if the real estate lobby is anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto.

I don't know if the Board of Education hates black people, but I know the textbooks I give my children to read, and the schools that we have to go to. Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children, On some idealism, which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: There's this resolute moving poetry, I'd have to call it in the way Baldwin outlines systemic racism. It's also crucial here to remember that Baldwin is saying these things on television, on a popular TV show. That's really something, right? How do people react to that, to him in this medium?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Oh, no, remember, this is.

Baldwin in 68, many folk believe that he's [01:52:00] fallen for the siren songs of the so called young black radicals Folks believe that he's lost, you know, his his artistic edge in some ways, right? Uh that his anger has overwhelmed his pen Um, but here I mean he's responding to paul weiss. I mean there's this sense in which the philosopher from Yale, he's responding to Paul Weiss's expectation that black folk haven't earned a deep skepticism about the moral capacities of this country.

I mean, this is what this airs, um, just not too long after Dr. King has been assassinated. And what does it mean at this moment to expect of Jimmy, right? Some kind of moral, Uh, forgiveness, some kind of openness to the possibility that white America will give up the idols of its commitment to whiteness.

And you can hear the rage in his voice. How can you expect me to [01:53:00] risk myself and the people I love for something that is just an ideal that you refuse to live up to, you see? And so this part of this prophetic truth telling. Right. It's, you know, in that moment, Baldwin takes on repetition, that homiletic strategy, right?

He repeats and the rhythm of the repetition, right? Allows for the point to be brought home, not at the level of just simply a claim that's being made, but at the level of the emotion, the passion, at the level of the heart. And at that moment, right? He's, he's being something where he's being something really, he's doing something really special, you know?

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Yeah, there's the litany, the, the, not, not, I mean, maybe gospel in a sense, but based on his roots, but definitely that sense of, of resoluteness that you're talking about. Great writer, great orator, which I think is something really important for folks to remember.

James Baldwin's Fire Part 3 - Throughline - Air Date 9-17-20

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: throughout the book. Just to follow up on that, there is this feeling that. While [01:54:00] he holds that rage, as you just said, he's also capable. Of simultaneously understanding that the white citizens of the United States who are responsible for the state of, uh, play a major role and responsible for the state of racism in the system in America.

He also holds a deep love for, and a sense of. Uh, brotherhood and sisterhood for those people. And do you think part of the reason he was able to do that so well, beyond just his ability to write and think, was that he was a witness and not necessarily a participant in the sense that he wasn't an activist, he intentionally chose to be a witness, to bear witness, to document in a lot of ways, uh, what he was seeing.

What does that tell us about kind of where, you know, many of us sit? And do you think that was what really enabled him to? Kind of really be able to [01:55:00] balance those heavy emotions.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You, you know, I, I don't know, um, to be honest with you. It, it, it's hard. There is a sense in which, you know, Baldwin is, is the poet in, in the Emersonian sense.

Um, Baldwin never gave up on the fundamental sacrality of human being. We're all sacred. And then that line where he says, you know, I want us to do something unprecedented, and that is to create a self without the need for enemies. Oh my lord. Every time, I mean, That's just, I just love that line. So part of what he's saying, um, I know I'm going around in circles.

He's saying that what white supremacy does, it not only causes all of this hell for me and how I have to raise my children and live my life, it is literally deforming and disfiguring the character of the people who embrace it. [01:56:00] You, your character is fundamentally affected by all of this. Can't you see?

JAMES BALDWIN: I think that you and I.

We might learn a great deal from each other if you can overcome the curtain of my color. This country is mine too. I paid as much for it as you. White means that you are European still, and black means that I'm African, and we both know. We've both been here too long. You can't go back to Ireland or Poland or England, and I can't go back to Africa, and we will live here together or we'll die here together.

And it's not I am telling you, time is telling you. You will listen or you will perish.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: And what he's warning us is not to fall into the trap because if it disfigures them, if we buy into his logic, it will disfigure us. We can't release the trap, man. But we can't, we [01:57:00] also can't fall into this stuff of sentimentality either.

But anyway.

Jimmy.

SECTION D - GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Global Connections.

Cori Bush vs. AIPAC- Squad Member in Tough Primary Race as Pro-Israel Lobby Spends $8M to Defeat Her - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-6-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Today is Primary Day in Missouri. One of the most closely watched races of the year, Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush is facing off against county prosecutor Wesley Bell. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and an affiliated super PAC have spent over $8 million in an effort to defeat Bush, who has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war on Gaza. The election comes just weeks after the same super PAC, United Democratic Project, spent over $14 million to help defeat New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman in his Democratic primary here in New York.

Four years ago, Cori Bush won a stunning primary upset over the 10-term incumbent Congressmember William Lacy Clay Jr. in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District in the St. Louis area. Bush was a [01:58:00] leader in the 2014 Ferguson uprising over the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Prior to taking office, she worked as a nurse. She was also unhoused for a period of time with her children, an experience that led her to become a leading housing advocate in Congress, where she introduced the Unhoused Bill of Rights.

We go right now to St. Louis. We’re joined by Michael Berg, former political director of the Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club. He has a new piece for The Nation headlined “I’m a St. Louis Jew. Here’s Why I’m Backing Cori Bush. If AIPAC and its donors defeat her, we won’t just be losing one of Palestine’s staunchest allies but also one of the climate movement’s most effective champions.”

Michael Berg, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what’s happening in St. Louis now with this massive amount of money that’s being put in to defeat Congressmember Bush.

MICHAEL BERG: Thank you, Amy.

Yes, [01:59:00] if you’re in St. Louis and you live here, over the last several weeks, couple months, you look at YouTube, you will see an advertisement either against Cori Bush, a lot of them against Cori Bush, or for Wesley Bell. You go to your television, you hear that. You go to the radio. You get mailers. There’s been — I’ve talked to people who have had over 40 mailers, either anti-Bush or pro-Bell, coming in. It’s just this incredible infusion of money and resources in attacking Bush, in supporting Dell.

And it’s interesting because, as you mentioned, the money is coming from AIPAC, but the attacks have nothing to do with her principled stance for a ceasefire. They’re about other very, very misleading attacks on her coming in. And it’s all meant to push out someone who stands up for Palestinian rights, but who stands up for so many other [02:00:00] things. But it’s very duplicitous for this organization to come in and have the money for one reason, and have all these ads that are misleading for other reasons.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And, Michael, what’s been the stance of the existing Democratic Party machinery, which normally backs an incumbent?

MICHAEL BERG: Well, if you look at the national level, you know, Cori Bush is backed by Hakeem Jeffries and the leadership in Congress, the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus. I mean, you have Democrats in the state of Missouri, in the area, who are on both sides of this race. So I can’t say there’s a unified response, but there is a — you know, the union movement, most unions are supporting Bush. She has voted with the AFL-CIO almost 100% of the time. There’s trades have been on the other side, but the other unions have not. So, [02:01:00] I’d say there’s been people on different sides.

But the primary thing happening is just this incredible infusion of AIPAC money that’s sort of washed — like, just dominated the airwaves. And people keep hearing it, and people keep hearing it and seeing it. And I’ve hit a lot of doors, knocked a lot of doors, and it has its effect. Misleading statements about her record as far as the infrastructure bill, where she made a principled stance to hold out for — to make sure there’s a child tax credit, to make sure we had more climate provisions — a stance that was taken in 2021 where she stood up and she took a vote. And in the 2022 election, almost nobody heard about it. But here, in the 2024 election, just the airwaves and the mailers are just hammering, hammering, saying she didn’t stand up for your job, she didn’t stand up for clean air and water. And there’s nothing further from the truth. She was standing up many times as much.

And what I found is, you know, [02:02:00] I knock on doors, and people have heard these things. And you talk to them, and they say, “Oh, I don’t support her anymore, because she didn’t do this.” And when you explain that, no, she was holding out to get more resources for your children, to make sure we much more further confronted the climate crisis, and the only reason you’re hearing about it now is because she stood up for peace in the Middle East, for a ceasefire, for children to stop being killed with American weapons, and that because of that, you have millions of dollars coming heavily from the same donors who backed Trump, Vance and Senator Hawley. When you let people know that, and that you say, “Why are you hearing so much about this? It’s because people don’t want her there,” you flip the vote. People then support her again, but the problem being, you know: Who’s got the capacity to go to every door and have a 5- to 10-minute conversation? You know, [02:03:00] the barrage of misinformation works. And, you know, we’re hopeful. We’re hoping we can counteract it. But it’s been — never seen anything like it.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And what about Wesley Bell? He’s the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney. He previously served on the City Council and was instrumental in policy changes after the police killing of Michael Brown. What’s been the sentiment of voters toward him? But do people even really know him?

MICHAEL BERG: A lot of people know him. I mean, it’s different. St. Louis has confusing jurisdictions. So, St. Louis County is outside of St. Louis city. So, he’s the prosecutor for St. Louis County. The district, Cori Bush’s district, is about half the city of St. Louis and half parts of St. Louis County. People know him.

And I would say, you know, what is disturbing to me is he told Congresswoman Bush that he was not going to run. He told her that. He was running against Josh [02:04:00] Hawley, our senator, who is not very popular in this district. And he said he was running against him. And then, when he was offered a deal to get millions of dollars of AIPAC money, he did a 180 and decided to take on, you know, an incumbent progressive Democrat, who’s just been a champion, as I mention in my article, for the climate, for so many things that people care about in this area.

So, I would call him an opportunist who saw an opportunity to go to Congress, while Cori Bush is in it because she wants to represent the interests of ordinary people, the people who are suffering, people who are unhoused. Before she came into office, she was constantly on the streets helping folks who were unhoused, making sure people had resources, food and shelter, when need be. So, I see a clear distinction there.

Our Genocide Is Their Entertainment-- Israel's Disgusting Pro-Torture Justification - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-9-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, um, the only reason we should say [02:05:00] that these soldiers are even being detained is because or question is because of this international Pressure, um, and because, honestly, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government want to continue with the worst of the genocide in Gaza, um, and this also plays into their efforts to, I think, widen this war, to draw the United States into it, um, and to make it not about Gaza, but about how Israel is constantly under threat.

I guess we could get to that in a little bit, because I want to touch more. On the conditions here. Um, the there have been reports now for months that prisoners were being raped with metal rods, sometimes hot metal rods burning their anuses to the point where they no have longer had control of their faculties.

Um, and this is, I think, the detention. arm of Israel's categorization [02:06:00] of all Palestinian men, or a great majority of them, and boys, as basically combatants. Can you talk about that, that process, and how that has basically midwifed the wholesale detention of up to tens of thousands of Palestinian men, and we don't even know, again, the death toll?

Um, in Gaza, it's, I saw some doctors were citing a figure as high as 92, 000 at this point.

DIANE BUTTU: Yes, we don't know the precise, uh, toll. There's other, the Lancet came out and said that it may be 186, 000. Uh, friends who've been in Gaza on medical missions, say that the number is probably even higher than that. Um, but in terms of how it is that we, that we, that Israel continues to, to grab people, kidnap them, uh, detain them and keep them in prison.

It is because Israel has always had this system of what they, what it's kind of a misnomer, they call it administrative detention. It sounds so sanitary and it's anything but, uh, it's a very [02:07:00] violent process in which people are picked up, kidnapped usually in the middle of the night from their homes, children as young as 13, sometimes even younger, and then held without charge, without trial for a period of six months.

Where that trial then, that, uh, detention can be renewed indefinitely as long as they see a judge every six months. And it's through this system of administrative detention that we've seen roughly 40 percent of the male population be thrown in prison at one point in time. That's roughly about 20 percent of the entire Palestinian population has spent time inside of an Israeli prison.

Some administrative detention can last upwards of 11 years. A friend of mine spent 11 years of his life under administrative detention, which means without charge and without trial. Now, it's not just that, but it's the process of dehumanization that leads soldiers to be able to do what it is that they want to do with Palestinians.

And, um, [02:08:00] since, since November, I've interviewed a number of Palestinians who were kidnapped and then released. And all of them have described similar, um, torture techniques that have been used against them. And one thing, one strand that appears throughout all of these testimonies is that they say that the torture that is being meted out, um, by the Israelis It's unlike torture in the way that people normally think of torture, which by the way is illegal either way, but normally when one thinks of torture, they think of torture in order to obtain some sort of information.

In this case, there is no information that's being obtained. It's simply to exact revenge and to show superiority. And so we've seen people who have already been convicted. who, uh, who are serving sentences inside Israeli prisons who are also being tortured. Again, not because there's an attempt to extract information.

Once again, that's illegal, but simply because they're trying to show who it is, who is boss. And so [02:09:00] the methods that have been used are things that, that it's even so hard to describe because, um, It's just, it's some of the worst, it's the worst behavior of humans that I've ever heard in my, in my life of, of, um, raping, uh, raping people, of torturing them.

You know, one, one, uh, young man was telling me that, that at one point he was, his hands were shackled, his legs were shackled, he was put in the fetal position and blindfolded, and around him they drew, um, a circle in chalk. And, uh, and he was kept in that position for 24 hours a day for days on end, and if he moved in any way, if he spoke up in any way, if he crossed the chalk line in any way, um, that was a sign that he should be tortured, and he was.

And when they torture Palestinians, It's, um, a torture that is witnessed by others. The only time that the blindfold is removed is to be [02:10:00] able to see another Palestinian being tortured. And so the things that, the testimonies that we've heard of, of the ways that people are being held, the conditions under which they're being held, is, is horrifying.

And yet, it's not even moving the needle inside Israel because Everything is, is justifiable and because everything is justifiable, this of course is going to continue and that's why you see the riots that we see.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And in terms of it being, uh, broadly accepted, this kind of brutalization, uh, towards Palestinians within Israel, I'm struck by the fact that these break ins by these activists seem to happen quite a bit.

Um, whether it be along the border into Gaza. Wow, I don't know. Somehow security just seems to fail all the time. And these activists who want to starve everybody in Gaza to death are just able to block all the aid trucks. I mean, what could the people who are manning the border do or whether it be the [02:11:00] break in into this torture camp, um, uh, concentration camp, you could argue.

Um, the, the, It just seems like, oh, they're able to get in, um, what could we do? Can you speak to just almost like the tacit acceptance or almost appreciation that so many, uh, Israeli guards or people who are a part of the militaristic infrastructure there, um, their relationship with these activists who are at, uh, at the front lines of expanding Israel and, and wanting the genocide to ramp up and continue?

DIANE BUTTU: This is a great question, Emma, because I think people often, uh, make the mistake of somehow separating the Israeli security services, the police, the, the prison guards, the, the, the soldiers, the army from ordinary people. Uh, Israelis or from, you know, the extreme right wing. They're one in the same. This is a state apparatus and because it's a state apparatus, it reflects on the [02:12:00] state and it's made up of people who are members of the state.

Um, and so because of that, we see a synergy between the two of them. We see that, that if you look at the West Bank where where the Israeli settlers have been torching Palestinian homes. They've been going after Palestinians and killing them. That instead of the army stopping them, they're actually aiding them.

And similarly, as you mentioned, in Gaza, as the aid trucks are supposed to be making their way into Gaza. We've seen that these, these same security apparatuses are able, are allowing Israelis to set up, get this, bouncy castles in front of, um, these spaces so that they can jump on the bouncy castles, they can eat popcorn, and so that, um, Our genocide is their entertainment and this is allowed to happen.

And third, as you put it, as you already said, when it comes to state to man and the concentration camp or the prison camp that is there, that suddenly they have no means of dealing with crowd control or to [02:13:00] stop the, the, this, this riot from happening, but they seem to have those mechanisms when it's Palestinians who are, who are peacefully protesting, who are demanding an end to the genocide and so on.

And so the, the two are so intertwined. It is, these are, um, these are state, it's a state apparatus. And because it's a state apparatus, it's made of people who are from the state. And it's exactly reflective of Israeli society. So they're not going to go there. They're not going to poke a hole in the bouncy castle.

They're not going to tell people to move on and allow the eight trucks in. They're not going to use any method to stop the riots from entering into state to man, or otherwise, um, they're not going to stop the settlers from. From torching Palestinian homes. They're in, they're working together rather than opposed to one another.

Brian Lehrer Weekend_ 100 Years of James Baldwin; Election Integrity and National Security; New York City Etiquette Part 3 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 8-3-24

CALLER: Good morning to everyone. Good morning. Go ahead. Professor, there's always the same rewrite of Baldwin's life. And I don't know if anyone's done any [02:14:00] research, because he lived in France for so long, why he never spoke on, and did it move him in any way?

France's occupation of Algiers.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Amon,

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: thank you so

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: much.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, go ahead professor. No, that's a great question. When you read the 1972 text, uh, No Name in the Street, uh, It's really clear that Baldwin is not trading the American fantasy for a French one, right? He's clear about what what is going on in Algeria, right?

He he understands, uh, even earlier Uh, in the early works, I mean, Read Nobody Knows My Name, I mean, his, some of the early work around, uh, you know, the continent is really bad, I mean, his, you can see his politics evolving, but he's, he's clear that he's not, um, Um, trading the American disaster for the French, uh, you know, for the French ideal.

No, he understands Western Europe, Western civilization to be caught up, uh, in this nasty, [02:15:00] uh, belief that somehow the color of one's skin determines one's value. Uh, you know, at the end, at the end of the day, Baldwin is constantly trying to do two things at once. He's trying to keep track of the material conditions of our living, while also keeping track of the interior complexities on the inside of every human being, right?

So that's, that's, that's the beauty of his, of his writing and the insight, uh, that he,

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: that he provides us on the page. And Aman, we really appreciate your call and bringing that up. I'm looking at the clock, got just a little bit of time left, but I want to bring up your book. begin again, one of your concluding chapters is titled a new America, which is a great title because right now we're kind of celebrating a hundred years gone by and we're looking ahead.

And it's a lot of what you talk about as well in your most recent book. We are the leaders we have been looking for. So, you know, we've got about a minute in your mind as we look ahead to the next 100 years of new America, what's in element, multiple elements of Baldwin's work that you or I, or someone listening should hold close.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You [02:16:00] know, Baldwin is going to insist that we not find comfort in safety, that we run towards our fears, that we tell ourselves the truth about who we are. Uh, and I think, you know, based upon my reading, you know, for 250 years and remember the 250th anniversary of the nation is right around the corner. We have failed to confront who we actually are so that we could discover a different way of being together.

And so here we are always reaching, reaching for, for, for the possibility of the future, but not dealing with the ghosts of the past that have us by the throat. And so I think in this moment, in this moment here in 2024, we're still grappling with the tragic choice that's at the heart of this fragile experiment.

And the question, the question is, can we begin again? And that is, and, and, you know, begin again comes from the last novel, Just Above My Head. You know, and that is you can't, you know, don't abdicate responsibility, right? What does it mean to take on responsibility? Well, if you do, then you get, get up and you face the ugliness [02:17:00] and you try, try again.

It's Sisyphean almost, but you got to begin again. So we have to be honest with ourselves, Doc. We have to be honest with who we are. We have to be honest with what threatens democracy today. If we're going to release ourselves into a new future,

Credits

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And [02:18:00] thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

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#1648 Power Grabs, Elections Optional: The threat of minority rule through election denialism (Transcript)

Posted by · August 13, 2024 2:30 AM

Air Date 8/13/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Spirits among Kamala Harris supporters, Democrats, and anyone opposing Trumpism are at basically an all-time high right now. That is both fortuitous and crucial to the upcoming election. By the very nature of Trumpism, this election will be the most flagrantly contested in history, With far more Trump loyalists in place than in 2020 who are ready to throw wrenches in the works wherever they can. Nothing short of overwhelming victory for the Harris-Walz ticket is necessary to stave off a constitutional crisis.

Sources providing our Top Takes in under an hour today, include The Rachel Maddow Show, Legal Eagle, Democracy Now!, The Thom Hartmann Program, Justice by Design, and The Brennan Center for Justice. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more on five topics: Section A. The mechanics of [00:01:00] minority rule; Section B. The proponents of minority rule; Section C. The history of minority rule; Section D. A global perspective; and Section E. Activism.

Maddow points out frightening truth about Trump's lack of concern about votes - The Rachel Maddow Show - Air Date 7-29-24

RACHEL MADDOW: You probably heard this weekend that Donald Trump told an audience on Friday night that if they vote for him this November, if he's voted back into office this November, they will never have to vote again. He told an audience on Friday to, quote, "get out and vote just this time." He said, after this time, quote, "you won't have to do it anymore." You won't have to vote anymore. He said, quote, "In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good and you're not going to have to vote."

Now, this is not the first time Trump has told a campaign audience that they will never have to vote again once they vote him back in this time. And that is as alarming as it sounds for all the reasons that you immediately think it is, right? He's positing this like this is a happy thing. Oh joy, [00:02:00] never having the burden of voting again, right? The point of democracy is that we vote all the time. And we like it. That's how we decide what happens in our country. He's promising his followers that he'll end all of that. And it's exactly what you think it is.

But let me also point out something more strange, which has been happening at the same time and it hasn't had as much attention. The day before Trump made those remarks on Friday -- on Friday, he said, you're never going to have to vote again after you vote for me this one time. The day before that, on Thursday last week, he didn't say that people wouldn't have to vote anymore once he was elected this November. Now, the day before that, on Thursday, he told his supporters, not that they're not going to have to vote again, but that they don't have to vote this time. That they don't need to vote for him this November.

DONALD TRUMP: My instruction, we don't need the votes. I have so many votes. [00:03:00]

RACHEL MADDOW: My instruction, we don't need the votes. I have so many votes. He said that on Thursday last week. And it turns out this is something, when you look, he says this all the time now. Watch.

DONALD TRUMP: My instruction, we don't need the votes. I have so many votes.

We don't need votes. I tell my people, I don't need any votes. We got all the votes we need. I don't need votes.

We don't need votes. We got more votes than anybody's ever had.

You don't have to vote. Don't worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes.

RACHEL MADDOW: Don't worry about voting. Of all the weirdness around this campaign, this is a truly strange thing to tell people, right?

Don't vote. I don't need your vote. I don't want your vote.

I mean, all the surface level weirdness is, you know, worth noting. Having a new position on literally anything you can think of as soon as any random rich guy tells you to, that's a weird thing. Picking the eccentric billionaire's intern for your running mate, even though you apparently had [00:04:00] no idea who he was or what a disaster he is on television, all of this is weird.

But telling voters do not bother to vote for me, It doesn't matter if you do, I don't need your votes. That is a thing that should prick up your ears. Because what that means is that he doesn't think he needs to win the vote to win the election. He doesn't think he needs to win the election in order to take power.

He thinks something other than votes is going to determine whether or not he gets back in the White House.

At Rolling Stone today, they profile 70 different election officials who have been put into position in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, who are election denialists, committed election denialists, officials that have been put in place and all of those swing states to make sure that election results, no matter what they are, do not get certified in those states this year.

Quote, "At least 22 of these election officials have [00:05:00] already refused or delayed certification processes in recent elections." According to Democratic election lawyer, Mark Elias, quote, "I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election in November." Quote, "Republicans are counting on not just that they can disrupt the election in big counties; they're counting on the fact that if they don't certify in several small counties, you can't certify statewide results.

70 officials in place across just the swing states.

For all the surface-level weird behavior and language and strange choices and incoherence and odd donors in the Republican campaign, the serious core at the heart of it is that they are not planning on the vote being counted as normal. They are not counting on the election results being tallied as normal. They are not counting on the vote. And in fact, Trump is now repeatedly saying the vote will not matter. He doesn't even want [00:06:00] your vote.

The Republicans are counting on the election results not being certified, thereby creating chaos in Washington around the results.

Just like 2020, right? Just like January 6th, 2021. Except this time with no Mike Pence in the way, and with Republican officials already in place in multiple states saying, Yeah, you may not get any sort of official vote.

The weirdness of this campaign is astonishing, 99 days out. The dislocation from real campaigning, though, the dislocation from actually asking people for their votes, that means something. It means they are not trying to win this thing in a normal way.

So 99 days out, as Democrats stand up what by all accounts looks like a juggernaut traditional campaign under Kamala Harris, are they prepared for this level of weirdness after the votes are cast? Are they ready for [00:07:00] what's coming?

How Trump (Allegedly) Tried to Steal the Election - LegalEagle - Air Date 8-12-23

DEVIN JAMES STONE - HOST, LEAGALEAGLE: Prosecutor Jack Smith lays out a story that is as yet unproven in court, but is the most comprehensive look at the conspiracy to overturn and subvert the 2020 election to date. Now, this story takes place in two months between November 14th, 2020, and Joe Biden's swearing in ceremony on January 20th, 2021. The indictment says that the conspiracy started 11 days after the general election. Now, during that time, we got the worst gang of criminals to work with Donald Trump since Harry and Marvin Home Alone 2.

This cast of characters is enumerated in paragraph 8, starting with Co-conspirator 1 an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that defendants 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not. You guessed it, give it up for America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani.

Co-conspirator 2 an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the vice president's ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election. That is top Republican legal mind John Eastman.

Co-conspirator 3 an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the defendant [00:08:00] privately acknowledged to others sounded crazy. Nonetheless, the defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-conspirator 3's disinformation. You know her from shipwrecks of old, give it up for Sidney "The Kraken" Powell.

Then there's Co-conspirator 4, a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud. He was a lawyer in the Environment and Natural Resources Division until Trump offered to make him Acting Attorney General. Yes, this is Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey, "we'll call you when there's an oil spill" Clark.

Then there's Co-conspirator 5, an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct these certification proceedings. This is appellate lawyer and humorous name haver Kenneth Cheesebro.

Then there is finally Co-conspirator 6, a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct these certification proceedings. Co-conspirator 6 appears to be Boris Epstein, one of Trump's advisers, though this has yet to be [00:09:00] confirmed. Epstein is best known for writing Trump's controversial Holocaust remembrance day speech, in which he omitted any mention of Jewish people.

Yeah, this has not been a great day for the legal profession because all six of the co-conspirators may in fact be lawyers. These six co-conspirators could be indicted in the coming weeks or months, or they could be government witnesses. No one knows at the moment, and it may be up to them.

But the bottom line is Trump worked with this cast of co-conspirators to subvert the Electoral Count Act and stop Congress from certifying the election. The ECA governs the process of casting and counting Electoral College votes for President and Vice President and the statute sets forth a timeline for states to appoint presidential elections in November and for electors to cast their votes in December, and describes the process that Congress should follow when it counts the state's electoral votes in January.

These days, each state cast electoral votes based on their state's popular vote, and then sends their electoral votes along with the state executive's certification that they were the state's legitimate electors to Congress to be counted at an official proceeding. Now, the indictment says that Trump and [00:10:00] his cronies organized, "fraudulent slates of electors" in seven targeted states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, attempting to mimic the procedure that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow under the constitution and other federal and state laws.

The conspirators caused these fake electors to "meet on the day appointed by federal law on which legitimate electors were to gather and cast their votes, cast fraudulent votes for the defendant, and signed certificates falsely representing that they were legitimate electors." One day before Trump was indicted in D.C., 16 of these fraudulent electors were indicted in Michigan for participating in this scheme. And Trump also attempted to use the power and authority of the Justice Department to launch a sham criminal investigation into voter fraud that didn't occur. This apparently included sending a letter outlining false claims that the DOJ discovered massive election irregularities, and recommending that these states call a special legislative session to determine quote, who won the most legal votes, and consider appointing a new slate of electors.

Now, some of the most troubling allegations [00:11:00] involve Jeffrey Clark, the environmental lawyer at the DOJ who Trump wanted to appoint as attorney general in the waning weeks of his term. Clark met secretly with Trump on December 22nd, failing to inform his superiors of the meeting, which, is of course, DOJ protocol. Now it's obvious why he didn't tell them. Trump and his allies allegedly tried to get acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to sign a letter that made quote, "knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted States through a formal letter under the acting attorney general signature, thus giving the defendants lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the target States to replace legitimate Biden electors with defendants."

Now, apparently Rosen wanted nothing to do with this, And on December 26th, he told Clark not to meet with Trump again without notice. Clark said the meeting was an accident and he would abide by Rosen's directive. But the next morning he had a three minute phone call with Trump, And afterwards, Trump met with Rosen and the acting deputy attorney general and told them that he was considering replacing Rosen with Clark. "People tell me Jeffrey Clark is great. I should put him in." when Rosen [00:12:00] refused to say the election was corrupt, Trump told him to, "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen." And of course people are pointing to this quote as evidence that Trump actually knew that the election was not fraudulent. On December 28th, Clark circulated the letter Trump wanted Rosen to send.

And it's important to note here how insane it is that Jeff Clark, who was still officially assigned to the environmental department, was suddenly running point on Trump's maneuvers with the DOJ. He was sending his boss, Jeff Rosen, the same letter that Rosen had already refused to sign. Clark proposed sending versions of this to battleground states that Biden won. And here's the claims made in that letter, which the government says are false. false. The Justice Department had "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states. The Justice Department believed that in Georgia and other states, two valid slates of electors had gathered at the proper location on December 14th, and that both sets of ballots had been transmitted to Congress. That is, Co-conspirator 4, Jeff Clark's, letters sought to advance the defendant's fraudulent elector plan by using the authority of the Justice Department to [00:13:00] falsely present the fraudulent electors as a valid alternative to the legitimate electors.

The Justice Department urged the state legislature to convene a special legislative session to create the opportunity to, among other things, choose the fraudulent electors over the legitimate electors, but Rosen rebuffed Clark again and told him not to engage with Trump. On New Year's Eve, Trump summoned Rosen and other DOJ lawyers and told them he might have to change leadership at the DOJ.

Now, the Justice Department traditionally operates fairly independently from the White House. Presidents aren't supposed to order the Attorney General to make legal decisions, but here was Trump insisting that they send the letter. And on January 2nd, Clark continued his insubordination by asking his boss and others to sign the letter Trump wanted to send. He told them that Trump was considering firing Rosen and replacing him with Clark, but that he declined the job if Rosen would just cave and send the letter with false fraud allegations.

On January 3rd, Clark revised the fraud letter, changing its language about concerns to a stronger false claim that , "as of today, there is evidence of significant irregularities. that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states." Now that was apparently enough for [00:14:00] Trump to give him the acting attorney general job because the two met and Clark accepted the job. So Clark spent all day scheming with Trump and testing the limits of the new power. Now, apparently quote, "a deputy White House counsel tried to dissuade Clark from assuming the role of acting attorney general. The deputy White House counsel reiterated to Co-conspirator 4, Jeff Clark, that there had not been outcome determinative fraud in the election and that if the defendant remained in office, nonetheless, there would be 'riots in every major city in the United States'."

Jeff Clark responded, quote, "well, deputy White House counsel, that's why there's an insurrection act." Clark apparently then called his boss and told him that he was now the acting attorney general. Rosen "responded that he would not accept being fired by a subordinate and immediately scheduled a meeting with the defendant for that evening." But there was apparently a very strong push by the Justice Department attorneys to stop Trump and Clark from implicating the DOJ in overturning a valid election. In fact, Trump only gave up on his plan to install Clark as AG after, "he was told that it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department and of his [00:15:00] own White House counsel." Of course, mass resignations are not something that happened every day, and if the Justice Department lawyers resigned en masse, then it would probably have blown the whistle on what the conspirators were trying to do.

As Tension over Venezuelan Election Escalates, the Left Debates Who Won the Contested Vote - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-5-24

EDGARDO LANDER: There is no doubt that Maduro was overwhelmingly defeated by this elections. The electoral system in Venezuela, it’s — the technical part of the system is probably one of the best in the world. There’s hardly any possibility of interference with the results at the technical level. But there are many mechanisms incorporated into the system, including paper ballots, that are printed, and acts that are registered and signed by the witnesses at each voting booth that can be compared with the results presented by the totals of the Electoral Council.

All the steps [00:16:00] that secure the system that are checks established in the system were completely thrown out by the Electoral Council. They published a made-up data, so-called final results. They declared Maduro president before they had even finished counting. There were more than — almost 3 million votes that hadn’t been counted by the time they declared.

And it is a fact that the witnesses at the voting booths have copies of what actually happened at each voting booth. And it’s clear that these papers show that there was an overwhelming result. I directly know of several centers in — that had been radically Chavistas up to some short time ago where the results were against the government. This is really representative also of [00:17:00] a tendency where even the most Chavista centers in the country voted against Maduro. So there’s no doubt that Maduro lost this elections.

Maduro has now decided to ask the Supreme Court to check the whole process again in order to figure out what’s going on.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to Nina Farnia.

EDGARDO LANDER: It’s very clear that this is — this caused —

AMY GOODMAN: Edgardo, we’re going to get comment from Nina Farnia, legal historian at Albany Law School. You’re just back from Venezuela. You were an observer with the National Lawyers Guild. If you can talk about what you saw, and respond to Edgardo Lander?

NINA FARNIA: Well, thank you for having me on, Amy.

What we witnessed, by and large, was a free and fair election process, which explains why former President Jimmy Carter once called this system the best electoral system in the world. We were part of a large international delegation of election monitors that [00:18:00] included members of the African Union and the Latin American election experts, and we were quarantined with the rest of our delegation in a hotel that was separate from all the political activities. We attended days of trainings about the Venezuelan electoral system, about the laws that protect it, and then we were taken — prior to the elections, we were taken to polling stations around the country, where we saw the touchscreen voting machines. We saw the ballot boxes for the paper ballots. We met the directors of each voting center.

On the day of the election, our NLG delegation had the privilege of interviewing voters as they were going in and out of the voting room, and we also interviewed members of each of the parties that were there to monitor the elections, the polling stations. We also interviewed opposition voters. We didn’t hear any concerns from [00:19:00] any voters or observers. Every single person that we spoke with said that this is a free and fair process. They had faith in the system. And, in fact, what we saw was a ton of energy around each of the stations that we visited. People were proud to vote. They take that — they view voting as a pillar of the Venezuelan democracy and of the Bolivarian Revolution.

AMY GOODMAN: And your sense of what had happened before? The polls showed that González had won or was going to win by a landslide. Ultimately, what the Electoral Council announced was that — and, of course, we all know that polls can be very wrong — was that Maduro had won by 51%, Nina.

NINA FARNIA: Yes. So, exit polling is illegal in Venezuela, because it can — it has the effect of [00:20:00] altering votes. And also, a lot of the polling results that were used in the U.S. media, the polling predictions that were used in the U.S. media were discredited by Venezuelanalysis, a trusted news source in Venezuela, that has also been critical of the Maduro government.

We actually are very concerned by the claim that González has won. González was a diplomat in — a Venezuelan diplomat in El Salvador during the Salvadoran death squads. He was number two stationed there. He has blood on his hands. He has Salvadoran blood on his hands. And so, the idea that the Venezuelans would support a government, a president who executed U.S. foreign policy in El Salvador decades ago is shocking to us. It’s up, ultimately, to the Supreme Court to decide.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Edgardo Lander, you have said it’s clear that Maduro [00:21:00] lost. You are a leading left voice in Venezuela and, globally, one of the early leaders of the World Social Forum. Even in the United States, when they were demanding that the ballots be shown the following morning, they are not available, for example, in the United States, what happens, right after an election. In what way were these opposition shown ballots verified by anyone but the opposition? And what do you say, Edgardo Lander, to those fellow leftists who say this is a result of a longtime U.S. campaign to unseat Maduro, to destabilize his government with crushing sanctions?

EDGARDO LANDER: In the first place, the demand to have public access to the ballots [00:22:00] is not some weird demand that somebody made up. It’s part of the controls that are established in Venezuelan laws. According to Venezuelan laws, the Electoral Council has to publicly present the ballots at each voting center. And it has absolutely denied to do so. So it’s absolutely clear that they had presented a total result with no backing whatsoever, so the backing that’s expected and established by the law is completely absent.

The ballots that are in the hands of the González people are not the only ballots that are available, because different candidates and their witnesses get copies of the ballots at the voting centers. And all the ballots that are in the hands of this several other candidates show the same tendencies. They show the [00:23:00] tendencies that there was an overwhelming majority of people voting against Maduro.

I think that this is a test for the left internationally. If the left in many places of the world, in Latin America, in the United States, Europe, some sectors of the left, continue to call the Venezuelan government as a revolutionary leftist government, if this repressive, authoritarian, corrupt, extractivist government that is destroying the environment, and it’s in constant violation of human rights, is defined as left, if this is what’s presented as the offer for the future of humanity, then it’s clear that this left is contributing to increasing the [00:24:00] appeal of the right wing and the far right wing. This has ceased to be a leftist government a long time ago.

The conflict in Venezuela has not been in this election a conflict between left and right. It’s a conflict between a repressive government and a whole spread of positions in Venezuelan society that go from far right to left, that includes social democrats, that includes progressives, that includes liberals. It includes a whole spread of people who want to recover democracy, who want to recover the Constitution in Venezuela, which is completely violated by this increasingly authoritarian government. If this result is imposed on the Venezuelan society, this could be the nail on the coffin that will be the end result of these authoritarian tendencies that have been going on [00:25:00] for quite some time and establish a truly authoritarian government.

So it’s very important for the left in Venezuela to get as much solidarity from the left internationally in the recognition that this is not a U.S. conspiracy, that it’s not fascism. We reject U.S. intervention. The United States has no right to decide who won the elections. This is an issue for Venezuelans to decide. And the United States has been intervening in Venezuela for a long time. Sanctions have had a dramatic impact on Venezuelan society. The humanitarian crisis and almost 8 million people that have left the country because they see no future are basically the result of U.S. intervention and U.S. sanctions. So, it’s not in any way a support for U.S. position. We, from the left, reject U.S. intervention and insist on the fact that it’s not for the United States to [00:26:00] decide who won the election.

Why Millions Won't Be Able To Vote In 2024? - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 8-8-24

THOM HARTMANN: You're all familiar with this, how Republicans have been purging people off the voting rolls. For example, when the current governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, was Secretary of State, he purged about a half a million people off the voting rolls and Greg Pallas was able to demonstrate that over 300,000 of those people should not have been purged. They'd never moved. They just mostly happened to be Black people living in Democratically-voting districts. But so anyhow, I documented that last week and we talked about it. But those kind of things -- and this is happening in red states all over the country where they're just purging people like, left and right like crazy, particularly people who live in big cities.But that does produce some blowback. People get seriously pissed off when they show up at the polls and are told that the Republican administration, their state has removed them from the voting rolls. Now, at that point, it's too late to do anything about it other than fill out a placebo ballot, a provisional ballot.

And that's part two of [00:27:00] this story. Provisional ballots, they're counted a little more than half of the time, but a lot of the time, they're simply not counted. It varies from state to state. Provisional ballots came about as a result of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Bob Ney essentially invented them. Bob, who's been a guest on this program many times, a Republican congressman from Ohio. And, it was a good faith effort to make it easier for people to vote.

But here's the thing: your provisional ballot doesn't get counted unless you show up at the Secretary of State's office and prove that you are who you are. Even though you already did that the first time you registered to vote. You've got to do it all over again if you get purged, or, in the case of Texas, they've come up with this whole new scheme. I think you could call it passive aggressive voter suppression. Instead of showing up and being told that you've been purged from the list, which, like I said, just pisses people off, you show up and you're told that you've been put on the suspension list, or they call [00:28:00] it the suspense list, and you're given a provisional ballot. The problem, of course, is that provisional ballots are often not counted. And your provisional ballot won't be counted, unless you drive to the Secretary of State's office, which could be a hundred miles from you, and, present the ID that you originally registered to vote with and prove that you're residents and all that kind of stuff. Most people don't do that. Many people don't even know that they have to do that.

Now here's the kicker. Keep in mind, in Texas, most statewide elections are won by Republicans with a one, two, at the most three or four percent voter margin. Twelve percent, according to the Dallas Morning News, twelve percent of all registered voters in Texas are currently on the suspension list. Let that sink in. [00:29:00] Twelve percent.

Now, if they could just make it so that most of those people on that suspension list are Black or Hispanic or live in big cities and, we don't know because they don't publish the list, but I would be willing to bet money that's the case, then this is how Republicans maintain power in Texas.

Just put 12 percent of the voters on a list where their vote only gets counted if, after they cast their placebo ballot, their provisional ballot, they take a day off work and drive, within six days after the election, take a day off work and drive to the Secretary of State's office and prove that they are who they said they were and who they already proved they were when they first registered to vote.

This is just insane.

If you own a gun in Texas, and the state wants to take away your gun, they have to go to court. They have to prove that they have good reason to go to your house and take away your gun. [00:30:00] But if they want to take away your vote, if they want to put you on the suspense list or purge you all together from the voting rolls, they don't even have to tell you. It's just because you have a right to a gun, but you don't have a right to a vote? And this, by the way, these rules were established by five Republicans on the U. S. Supreme Court, in the Shelby County decision, I believe, was in 2012, Where they basically gutted the Voting Rights Act.

And, of course, in the recent gun control or, gun liberation decisions by these now six Republicans on the Supreme Court, in which they have established that you have a right to own a gun and you can carry it anywhere you want. And, you know, quack quack quack quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. quack So, uh, nearly 12 percent of Texas's roughly 18 million voters are on the suspension list.

This is how these guys expect to win an election.

In The Hands Of The Voters with Marc Elias - Justice by Design - Air Date 8-2-24

KIMBERLY ATKINS-STOHR - HOST, JUSTICE BY DESIGN: We have a candidate for president telling people, telling Christians specifically, [00:31:00] that if they vote for him, they never have to vote again. I know there is still some debate as to what he meant by that. I, for one, think it's as clear as possible, but can you respond to that, in helping our listeners understand, what is at stake here when we talk about the need to protect voting rights and protect our democracy?

MARC ELIAS: Sure, Thanks for the question. I think one of the biggest mistakes that has been made about Donald Trump in the last eight plus years is this notion that took hold in the 2016 campaign, that he should be taken seriously, but not literally. And I think that that honestly led to a culture in many parts of the media and society that his words don't matter. That he can say things that are completely outrageous and that somehow they are to be discounted. That he can denigrate democracy, he can engage in racist [00:32:00] statements, and that it doesn't matter because you have to discount the words.

But the fact is that what we have learned is that he means the words he says. So when he said he was not going to accept the results of a free and fair election, he didn't accept the results of a free and fair election. When he called on his supporters to go to the Capitol, they went to the Capitol. He tells us basically what he thinks and he means what he says. So when he says that there won't be a need for people to vote in four years, what he is saying is there won't be a need for them to vote in four years, in the same way that he said he wants to be a dictator.

Everything he is telling us is consistent. He does not believe in democratic norms and democratic institutions. He does not believe in liberal democracy, not liberal in the progressive sense, but liberal in the idea of freedom and the recognition of the importance of individual rights. He doesn't believe in any of that. He romanticizes strong dictators, because that [00:33:00] is what he believes he wants to be. And so we need to accept that not everyone in our political discourse starts with the same set of assumptions about the importance of democracy and free and fair elections, and he is one of those people who doesn't accept it. It puts democracy at peril. It is an existential risk to what happens if he is able to gain power. And it means that all of us need to be really, really clear eyed about what the stakes are this November.

KIMBERLY ATKINS-STOHR - HOST, JUSTICE BY DESIGN: I think that's exactly right. I get really frustrated, Marc, when people say, "democracy is not an issue that motivates voters in this election year. Democracy is amorphous and not something that people are really motivated by, that are really galvanized by." I think that's really selling Americans short, because I think democracy and the ability to vote is something that is so tangible because that's something that people do. Citizens vote, they know what that's like, and the idea of having barriers to that...

I talked a little bit about covering the Supreme Court [00:34:00] and covering the Shelby County decision in 2013, and at the time I lived in a community in Northern Virginia, and I remember in 2008, because I lived in a bluer part of Virginia, I waited in line in excess of two hours in 2008 to vote in the presidential election that Barack Obama was running in. And when I got into my polling station, there were paper ballots, but there were only four booths. There was no machine. It was a paper ballot and a pencil. They could have lined that place with 30 booths, but there were only four. And that was a choice made in Richmond. That was a policy decision to make people wait in line. A lot of people had to leave because they had to go to work.

And even in 2012, when they made early voting in Virginia more accessible, I voted early and still waited 90 minutes. Those are the kind of barriers that I thought of when Chief Justice John Roberts was saying, "well, you know, this isn't the 60s anymore. [00:35:00] Racism is in the past. You have to prove that there is racism today and Congress hasn't done that, so we're going to strip this whole section of the Voting Rights Act."

For people who don't understand the impact of the Shelby County decision and of the decisions that came after weakening, not just Section 5 but Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, explain to us in layman's terms, in terms of what it means to them as they go to the polls, what the Supreme Court has done to voting rights.

MARC ELIAS: First of all, I want to say something about your experience because, it's something I talk about all the time. The fact is that when we talk about voter suppression, we don't always correctly conceive of it, because people think of it as an on off switch, —either you're allowed to vote or you're not allowed to vote. What voter suppression really is, is about putting barriers in front of people in their real world lives that they lead. And the fact is that one of the biggest forms of voter suppression in this country that we see from coast to coast in red States and in blue, in red counties and in blue [00:36:00] are wait times at the polls.

So I sued Georgia after the 2020 primary, and here's what the data shows. If you were in the six metro counties in Atlanta, and by the way, a number of these counties run by Democrats, this is not partisan, if you were in those six metro counties and you were in a precinct where the voter registration was 90 percent or more Black voters, you waited in line an average of 51 minutes. If you were in the same six counties—same resources, same officials, —and you were in a precinct that was 90 percent or more white, you waited an average six minutes. 51 versus six.

It is time that the media stop celebrating people waiting in line as a commitment to democracy, Because one of the things I always ask audiences, particularly when I'm talking to affluent audiences, when I'm talking to older audiences, when I'm talking to whiter audiences I ask them, how long would you wait in line to vote? You don't want to wait in line two hours to vote. Those images we saw of the college students waiting in line six hours, [00:37:00] you probably wouldn't wait in line six hours to vote. And you don't have the challenges that many of these voters have.

The allocation of voting equipment is the kind of thing that doesn't get a lot of attention. It doesn't grab the headlines. But the fact is we see it in county after county in red states and in blue states. There are racial disparities in wait times. There are age disparities—college students almost always wait in line longer than the surrounding community.

These are endemic in our system, And if you're not willing to accept the fact that we have a voting system, from top to bottom, that has winners and losers, and the losers are almost always Black, Brown, and young, and the winners are almost always old and white. If you don't accept that, even if you don't agree with me that it wasn't intentional. —let's just assume that we're going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even if you assume that it was unintentional—that is the system we have.

You can look at absentee ballot rejection rates. In the state of Colorado, another blue state, in 2020, there were 29,000 [00:38:00] people who voted by mail who had their ballots rejected. Does anyone believe that there were 29,000 fraudulent ballots? How about 290? But when you look at who those people were, they were overwhelmingly young. In Washington state, another blue state, Black voters had a five times [higher] rate of rejection than white voters. That's before you start looking at states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, and Florida, and all of that.

So we need to recognize that our system of voting in this country does not accurately reflect a shared sense of democracy. On top of that now you put a U.S. Supreme court that believes that not only aren't there problems at all, but they don't believe that race is a problem. And look, my law firm brought lawsuits not 20 years ago, not two years ago But this year we won a case in alabama because black voters are being discriminated against in the drawing of districts Louisiana black voters are being discriminated It based on race in the drawing of districts. That's not my findings. Those are the findings of, by the way, in the case of [00:39:00] Alabama, three judges appointed by Donald Trump and a majority of the conservative Supreme Court.

So we have a lot of work to do on voting and that problem is still in front of us.

Resisting Minority Rule - Brennan Center for Justice - Air Date 5-30-24

ARI BERMAN: Wisconsin really became a laboratory for how Republicans wanted to govern after the 2010 election. I think this is so significant because, remember Natalie, this followed the election of the first Black president. And I think that was an electorate that was much more diverse and much more young, urban, progressive, and I think by changing the voting laws at the state level, the Republican party wanted to manufacture an electorate that was older, Whiter, and more conservative.

And the Brennan Center began cataloging this after 2010. I began studying this after 2010. And I think so much of the radicalization against democracy that gave birth to Trump happened first at the state level. And I think if we had been paying closer attention to what was happening in Wisconsin and those similar states after 2010, we would not have been [00:40:00] so surprised to see someone like Trump win the Republican nomination in 2016

NATALIE TENANNT - HOST, RESISTING MINORITY RULE: That's interesting. I mean, what do you think was happening and why there wasn't as close attention? I mean, and forgive me, I know you've written a lot, did you have a book about that? I was busy as Secretary of State trying to put in place the advancements that were coming along in elections and what would make it more accessible for people in West Virginia for rural areas.

So, you're right, I wasn't paying much attention to Wisconsin. All I remember are the pictures flooding into the capital and the union members being members in the capital. But that's interesting. While we weren't paying as much attention, and I was working on my aspect, they were continuing to make it this, you know... and you call it [00:41:00] a laboratory, either a laboratory of democracy or oligarchy. I often think, you know, has everything become an experiment or a tribe? But yes, it has. In a sense, it has. Because we're even watching, you know, 2020 to 2022 became a testing period for what might take place in '24 and even as election advocates and voting rights advocates were paying attention to what's happening in the primaries of elections in 2024 to be ready for it in the general election. So, um, go ahead, talk about that. I didn't mean to get off on election administration.

ARI BERMAN: No, but I know what you're saying, Natalie. I think, well, first off there was an economic crisis, right? There was one party in control of Washington. There were huge Democratic majorities in Washington, so all the focus was on that and big fights over things like health care. There was the rise of the Tea Party as a [00:42:00] reaction to Obama's election and to some of the economic policies, first of Bush and then Obama in terms of the bailouts and things like that. And I think people really weren't focused on what was happening at the state level.

But I think the Republicans looked at Obama's election and said, We don't want this to become the new normal. We want this to become an aberration as opposed to this becoming something that happens on a routine basis. Because remember, it wasn't just the election of the first Black president. Obama's coalition was called the "Coalition of the Ascendant". It was the idea that young people, moderate Whites, voters of color, this would be a new electorate that would push the country in a more moderate to progressive direction.

And so the elements of the Republican party wanted to fight a counter-revolution against this. And one of the major themes in my book is that often when there's moments of great progress, there's these significant backlashes against it. We see that during Reconstruction, for example, when we, after the Civil War, we elect the first Black office-holders in [00:43:00] the South, then there's a violent White backlash against it. After the Civil Rights Movement, when there's voting rights and things like that, that communities of color and African-Americans can enjoy for the first time, and then there's a "Southern strategy" to try to move conservative Whites against it. Then we saw that again after the election of the first Black president, that this is another moment of counter-revolution. And I think this begins to push American politics in a more radical undemocratic direction and I think starts to embolden the forces that later rally around Donald Trump.

NATALIE TENANNT - HOST, RESISTING MINORITY RULE: So, why aren't we seeing that from the other side? Why are we seeing, when we see positive reforms and positive steps being made, why don't we see it when there are not so positive steps? I mean, now, you're obviously pointing out and showing ways, pointing out what is taking place and showing the history of it, but not in the [00:44:00] same... it doesn't seem like the other side has been able to to keep that marching beat in a sense.

ARI BERMAN: Well, I mean, I think what's been interesting for me to watch as a journalist is there has been a steady erosion of democratic rights over the last decade. But there's also been a really robust emergence of a pro-democracy movement to push back against this, and you know this well from your work at the Brennan Center. But just take Wisconsin. I mean, the pendulum has swung dramatically in Wisconsin. There's a different governor now. There's a different state supreme court now. Gerrymandering has been struck down in Wisconsin which is such a huge thing because Wisconsin was a state where Republicans in this assembly in 2018 got 46% of the vote statewide, but 64% of seats in the legislature. I mean, that's inconceivable that something like that could happen. And that gerrymander has been struck down and there's actually going to be competitive elections in Wisconsin this fall for the first time in a decade and a half. I think that's really consequential.

I write a [00:45:00] lot about Michigan in the book, another really pivotal swing state that had a seemingly rigged state government. And beginning in 2018, ordinary people began putting initiatives on the ballot to do things like ban partisan gerrymandering, to do things like making it easier to vote through policies like election day and automatic registration. And this has transformed the politics of Michigan. And what's really fascinating, Natalie, and you know this from being in West Virginia, is so often when things are viewed through a D versus R context, right?, they become so politicized. Then you ask people directly, Do you want to ban partisan gerrymandering? Do you want to make it easier to vote? And there's overwhelming support for those kinds of policies. When they did those kinds of things in Michigan, even though it was close to a 50/50 state, these initiatives passed with about two thirds of the vote, meaning a lot of Republicans and a ton of independents also wanted to ban gerrymandering, also wanted to make it easier to vote.

So, if we could talk about things more in the context of whether it helps or hurts [00:46:00] democracy and less in the context of whether it helps or hurts Democrats, I think we'd be in a much better place when it comes to our democracy writ large.

NATALIE TENANNT - HOST, RESISTING MINORITY RULE: Yeah, you're right about that. And those are some of the words that I hear the president of the Brennan Center say, Michael Waldman. I mean, many times in 2018, when we talk about, and even in your book, the election for democracy and democracy won, that we have to show people what we are for and not what we are against. And kind of in that same vein, too, I've heard him say, you know, it took years and years to get the Voting Rights Act passed, and it's the same that we're seeing now with the Freedom to Vote Act or For the People Act. It died in '22. And, you know, there's still work being done on it now in hopes that something might happen in 2025.

So, you're right about that. And I think what I like about this book, too, Ari, is that it's like you're [00:47:00] reminding me of some of these things, and I think a lot of folks, a lot of people who are watching this and we're getting some questions, would be reminded like, Oh yeah, that's what happened in Michigan. And you said some numbers about Wisconsin, the same numbers hold true in Michigan. And from your book, I'll tell you, page 278 is one of my notes. And here's the book. They're going to put it up and tell people how to get it. But, you know, Republican state legislative candidates received 40% of the vote statewide and controlled, though, 54%.

So, anyone listening, it's hard to throw out numbers, but that one's pretty easy to see that, how was it so uneven? And with that, one of the other things that you reminded me of as I was reading, and I don't think that people, well, I can't speak for everyone [00:48:00] obviously, but I needed reminded [sic] about Flint and, I'll you talk about it since it is your book and you wrote it, but it's so fascinating how the governor of Michigan at the time, I think it's Rick Snyder, was able to make emergency appointments and there were more emergency appointments in the Black communities than there were the White communities. And one of them was Flint.

ARI BERMAN: Exactly. So, I think you talked about, what are the consequences of minority rule? In Flint, Michigan, the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, one of the worst environmental disasters we've had in recent times, was a direct example of the consequences of minority rule. Because Michigan had this ability to appoint emergency managers. And what was happening is the Republican officials in Michigan, who were largely White like the governor, were appointing these emergency [00:49:00] managers for these predominantly Black cities who would essentially control the city's finances. And this was viewed as something that was very undemocratic. And so what the voters of Michigan did was they actually repealed this emergency manager law in 2012. Then the state legislature stepped in, overturned the repeal of the emergency manager law, and basically made it impossible to overturn any laws the legislature had passed. Then it was after that that the emergency manager was appointed for Flint, Michigan, switched the city's water supply, and then we got the contaminated water in Flint.

And that made a lot of people really angry and it activated one of the activists I talk about in the book, Katie Fahey—who worked for a recycling nonprofit, she was very much an everyday person—she got really mad about gerrymandering and she said, What can I do to fix it? She quite literally Googled how you end gerrymandering in Michigan, realized they were one of about two dozen states that allowed citizen initiative ballot initiatives, and she got together a group, [00:50:00] started a whole new group, Voters Not Politicians, in 110 days she got 400,000 signatures to put an initiative on the ballot to ban gerrymandering. And I think it was an example of, a lot of times, Natalie, as you know, these democratic issues can feel really abstract. Gerrymandering, right? But when you connect it to things that people really care about—clean water, clean air, people's right to control their own bodies—then it becomes a lot more concrete and people can understand that a broken political system leads to broken outcomes more broadly. And so I think the crisis in Flint became a rallying cry of we need to unrig this rigged system and everyday people have the power to do it.

Notes from the Editor on the importance of happy warriors

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with the Rachel Maddow Show, laying out the threat of Trump and company planning to subvert the election rather than win it, LegalEagle recapped how Trump attempted to steal the last election, Democracy Now! looked at the post-election turmoil in Venezuela, the Thom Hartmann Program explained the mechanics of voter suppression. Justice [00:51:00] by Design explained some of the structural ways the voting system is tilted against would-be Democratic voters, and the Brennan Center for Justice laid out some of the dangers of minority rule and a call to action to unrig rigged systems.

And those were just the top takes, there's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often making each other laugh in the process. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly 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 Podcast App. 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.

Now, before we continue onto the Deeper Dives-half the show, just a [00:52:00] quick note from me about the, maybe, second or third most popular phrase to have suddenly entered the political lexicon of the past couple of weeks. Obviously "weird" takes the top slot, but another that's being attributed to Tim Walz rather than popularized by him—"happy warrior."

It evokes basically the exact image that Walz exudes—happy, even playful, but willing to fight to achieve their goal. I think he was a good choice for plenty of reasons, but the attitude he's brought to the campaign. Is high on the list. Real high on the list. I mentioned the idea of the "happy warrior" now to highlight that it's the ideal, that all rank and file people who want to see Harris & Walz elected over Trump, need to embody. The past few weeks has brought out happiness and joy on the left stemming from a long suppressed but newly found sense of hope, but it's not enough to be happy and joyful content to cheer on the happy warriors [00:53:00] like Harris & Walz. Each of us must become happy warriors and do our own part to whatever extent we're for just over two and a half months before the election, and during what may be a very current time immediately after.

It's the only way we'll get the job done, and fear not! We have some suggestions on activism later in the show.

SECTION A - THE MECHANICS OF MINORITY RULE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue with Deeper Dives on four topics. Up next, Section A - "The Mechanics of Minority Rule," Section B - "The Proponents of Minority Rule," Section C - "The History of Minority Rule," Section D - "A Global Perspective."

And then Section E - "Activism." If you want to skip past all the potential horror and get right to the part about avoiding it, just go there.

Minority Rule Is Threatening American Democracy Like Never Before - Mother Jones - Air Date 4-12-24

We need to save democracy! Democracy is on the ballot! This election is between democracy and authoritarianism! Here's the response I have. To hell with our democracy. And before you clutch those pearls, Let me explain. I'm not talking about democracy, I'm talking about [00:54:00] the over idealized and old as shit American democracy.

Despite all the lofty rhetoric of democracy, when our political institutions were set up in the 1780s, they actually were set up to benefit, in large part, a propertied white male minority. A very affluent white male minority, many of whom were slaveholders. And in fact, the public were largely excluded from choosing the country's leaders and far from encouraging majority rule, the founding institutions of our country facilitated minority rule instead.

Minority rule. Now that is American democracy. So many of our institutions are being controlled by this shrinking and radical conservative white minority that's opposed. By a majority of Americans, but has taken power by taking advantage of the anti democratic institutions of American politics, and then using new anti democratic tactics like voter [00:55:00] suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, the censoring of history, to make sure That their rule is indefinite.

That's Ari Berman, an expert who wrote the book on minority rule called Minority Rule. And it's this ploy still in place that is this ticking time bomb threatening to explode into something far more sinister for the future of our country. The founding fathers wanted to create A political system that benefitted people like themselves.

Intentionally built from the start, American democracy was never supposed to be for the people. Affluent white male property owners, many of whom owned slaves, most of whom owned a lot of land, they wanted to protect themselves from the masses. They viewed the public as something to be feared, and they viewed popular majorities as something to be constrained rather than encouraged.

And I think that remains the central flaw of American democracy, that the U. S. Constitution itself [00:56:00] was set up as something that was meant to constrain democracy rather than encourage democracy, and that legacy is still with us today. It's almost as if the Founding Fathers were a little scared of some revolution.

The fascinating thing about how the different branches of government were set up was that they were designed to prevent the public from having a major role in selecting the government's leaders. Yet despite the Some modifications and some reforms, pretty much all of the undemocratic features still stick with us today.

And that means that all of these protections for white wealthy people, they remain central to all of our institutions. Our basic governing institutions. How we elect our president, how we choose our members of Congress, how we select our Supreme Court justices actually aren't very democratic at all.

Let's go down the line here. The executive branch. Only three times before the 2000 election had the loser of the popular vote won the [00:57:00] electoral college, but it happened twice in the last 16 years. In 2000 Good evening. Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States.

In 2016, Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. It almost happened again in 2020. The Electoral College vs. the popular vote is just one part of what originated with the Founding Fathers to ensure that a conservative and white minority can stay in power even if a majority disagrees.

We have to stand against the tyranny of the mob. And the Founding Fathers understood that you have decentralized elections through the Electoral College and having states rights. The Electoral College is brilliant. The Electoral College has worked. It's one of the greatest firewalls against tyranny.

Which brings us to the next branch. Legislative. The level of inequality in the Senate today would have shocked James Madison. So, one of the things [00:58:00] that happened when there was these debates over the Senate, was that each state was given the same number of senators, which a lot of senators spoke out against about the time and war that would lead to minority rule.

Now to put it in some perspective, the first census was taken in 1790 and it named Virginia as the largest state in the country with a population of approximately 747, 000, which at the time was 12 times as many people as the smallest state, Delaware. Now, 200 plus years later, Delaware. The 2020 census confirmed California is the new largest state in the country, with a population of 39.

3 million people. That's 68 times the population of Wyoming, the country's now smallest state. And so because of how the Senate is set up, and because it hasn't been truly reformed since its inception, over time it's become biased towards those smaller, conservative, and wider states. And all of this leads us to the last branch, [00:59:00] The undemocratic features of the presidency and of the Senate have led to an unprecedented situation at the Supreme Court, where for the first time in U.

S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been nominated by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote. and confirmed by Senators representing a minority of Americans. So over and over and over again, the Supreme Court has created these situations where it's protected the rights of powerful white people while undermining the rights of everyone else.

That's a fascinating and very scary situation where a Supreme Court that is a product of minority rule has then issued radical decisions on topics like abortion and gutting control and voting rights that are opposed by a majority of Americans. For example, overturning Roe v. Wade with Dobbs, or gutting the Voting Rights Act [01:00:00] with Shelby County v.

Holder, and of course letting billionaires essentially buy our elections with Citizens United. I think we're at a situation today where the Supreme Court is a legacy of the anti democratic distortions in American politics. That court has turned around and made America less democratic as a result of its decisions.

If there's anything all these years of all of these SCOTUS decisions have taught us, It really should be that. There's been this struggle throughout American history between white supremacy and multiracial democracy. And that fight has reached a fever pitch today. Like all things Republican now, the road leads back to Trump.

Because for the first time in U. S. history, white people are going to be the minority in this country. And for a lot of conservatives and pretty much all of the Republican party, that idea has them running scared. So there's these, these biases that are built into the constitution and the biases over and over are [01:01:00] in favor of more conservative areas, wider areas, more rural areas, that's the same constituency that likes Donald Trump.

There's this over representation of Trump voters in the political system at the expense of voters. Trump, which over and over and over have shown to be a majority of Americans. That's why they've been scheming and working for all of these years to strengthen their grip on this country through minority rule.

This shrinking conservative white minority. is exploit the undemocratic features of American politics while doubling down on a whole wide new range of anti democratic tactics like voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, the censoring of history, to try to entrench their power. What they're really doing is retreating behind a fortress.

And while yes, Trump is definitely accelerating all of these anti democratic ideas, he's [01:02:00] also kind of the perfect product of an American democracy. Because our system is so anti democratic, it's so easily captured and diverted seamlessly into authoritarianism. Preserving the rights and freedoms we have today, which is what Joe Biden is largely campaigning on, democracy.

American democracy, and it's what the 2024 election is all about. We have to prove. But our model isn't a relic of history. It's not enough. It's incredibly important, but it's not enough. We have to reform the system that created Trump in the first place. Otherwise, we have these ticking time bombs that are built into American politics.

That bomb may or may not explode this year, as it almost 6th, 2021. It's just a matter of time before the anti democratic aspects of American politics explode. Get so bad that they're just somehow untenable. And I think that's the real risk here is that our political system itself [01:03:00] is a gateway in many ways to autocracy, to authoritarianism, to minority rule, and that the constitution far from protecting against a lot of those things.

Actually facilitates those kinds of things.

The Dangers of a Contingent Election with Beau Tremitiere and Aisha Woodward - The Lawfare Podcast - Air Date 10-30-23

Talk to us about this democratic deficit concern, the fact that democratic representation doesn't get channeled through the contingent election process. How does that true and what makes it maybe more concerning today than it may have been at the founding?

So representation and democratic legitimacy are key concerns here. In addition to the procedural issues we're going to discuss in a moment. I think people are accustomed to, to a degree, the way the Electoral College works. And there is, of course, a substantial criticism of the Electoral College that it's not representative and that it gives of the Electoral College.

More power to some states and less power to others. But setting aside that critique, the [01:04:00] contingent election system is shockingly non proportional. So, for example, think about California and Texas. These two states alone represent about 21 percent of the American population. And that's the, Almost exactly the same size as the 28 least populous states.

Uh, this sort of divergence in state population was, was not at all, uh, what we saw at the founding, I believe that the biggest and small states were at most, maybe a factor of six or seven apart. So there was not the sort of divergence and concentration of population. And so dividing up on state lines mattered much less at the time, but coming back to now, like, what does that actually mean?

How does that translate? So. In the Electoral College, California and Texas jointly have 17 percent of the Electoral College votes. When we move to the continued election process, where every state just gets one vote in the House, those two states have just 4 percent of all [01:05:00] votes. The 28 small states, again, which have the same population as California and Texas, have 28 percent of the votes in the Electoral College.

So, so more than the big states, but, but not a shocking amount more. But in a contingent election that goes up to 56%, so they control more than enough votes to determine the outcome. It's also important to think about Washington, D. C., which thanks to the 23rd Amendment has three electors in the Electoral College, but has no role whatsoever in House or Senate proceedings.

And it's also possible that based on the role adopted in the House, that Any number of states could fail to reach a decision and may not be able to submit a vote in favor of one or another candidate, which would effectively disenfranchise the people in those states as well. So I think it's really important to zoom out and think about those concerns in the moment where we are at [01:06:00] present.

We had an election in which tens of millions of people doubted the outcome when all objective observers were quite clear that Voting was done safely and securely and there was a clear victor. Uh, in this sort of scenario, there could be this enormous disconnect between how people in the electorate voted and how that's translated into the selection of a president.

And that is profoundly concerning given where we are in this democratic moment. So that's one bucket of concerns. I should tell us about the other bucket, the kind of procedural issues we're going to go through it in more detail in a minute, but give us kind of the 10, 000 foot view. What makes the procedural and technical aspects of this so challenging today?

So there are a few different ways, uh, in which this raises a number of procedural concerns and we'll get into them as you said, a little bit later, but let me sketch out some of the, maybe four buckets we would think about within this. specific area. The [01:07:00] first is the way in which a contingent election and the prospect of one, which would become really apparent soon after November 5th, 2024, would corrupt and potentially impact the election procedures that need to take place between November 5th and January 6th, 2025.

So that includes the convening of electors in their states and the possibility of faithless electors trying to throw their votes to sway the electoral outcome in some way. But that also includes the processes that Congress needs to go through when it convenes on January 3rd in 2025 and in joint session on January 6th.

Six to count electoral votes. And what I mean by that is that the house and Senate, um, but particularly the house, which is, you know, a new body every two years, we'll have to convene, select a speaker, seat members, establish rules, all of which in a narrowly divided house could open up the [01:08:00] process to.

Members being able to exert enormous influence on what might actually happen when the contingent election takes place that also feeds into another concern we have, which is about the actual rules that would be set up to govern the contingent election. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago, The Constitution and the 12th Amendment really only generally sketch out what the sequence of events should be, but give no real deep, substantive guidance on how the House and Senate are supposed to conduct these processes.

And you can imagine, for example, in the House, a real tension emerging between, um, uh, the who controls the majority of seats in the next house versus who controls the majority of state delegations. And if there's a difference in, in those two, um, answers, it could create some really scary, um, and challenging dynamics that members would have to navigate.

Uh, and similarly that the, how the Senate has its own, um, set of rules challenges, given the, likely applicability of the filibuster. [01:09:00] Another concern we have is around health and safety of both the members of Congress who would be called upon to conduct this contingent election and whose control of individual seats in this scenario would matter a great deal.

And given the, the way Beau has just sort of laid out how the, the process works and, and the, level of influence that small states have, which means small congressional delegations, any individual member, particularly in those small congressional delegations could face, uh, real concerns about, about their safety, but given the outsized influence they would have on this process, relatedly, the safety and health of the leading presidential candidates would be a concern.

And that is in part a concern. because of an issue we'll, we'll go into later on that makes it difficult to replace a candidate, if not impossible, um, if anything were to happen to them between a certain point in the electoral process in December and when Congress convenes on January 6 in joint session.

And [01:10:00] finally, the concern that we worry about. Related to all of these ones I just described is that because of the complexity of and, and opportunity for gridlock and, um, fighting over the process in January, it's quite possible that January 20th can roll around and neither the house nor the Senate will have been able to take action to fulfill their duty in the contingent election, which could trigger the presidential succession act.

Um, and there's a great deal of debate around this act. And while it's specific applicability to a vacancy on January. January 20th may be in less dispute, um, you could end up in a really unusual situation or even incentives to create a situation in which the Speaker of the House or the Senate, President Pro Tem, ascends to the presidency because Congress has been unable to act and fulfill its duty under the 12th Amendment.

Moore v Harper Democracy is Saved (For Now) w/ Eliza Sweren-Becker - Democracy Nerd - Air Date 7-9-23

Let's dig in to Morver's Harper a little bit. Let's start with the facts of the case and, and looking back a little bit, uh, even to a [01:11:00] 2019 case where the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts could not review, uh, partisan gerrymandered, partisan gerrymandered maps, but racially, uh, drawn maps were still under review of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Give sort of background facts that will be useful to inform the discussion. So that's right. In 2019, in a case called Rucho, the Supreme Court said that as far as partisan gerrymanders go, the U. S. Constitution has nothing to say about them, and the issue is non justiciable in federal courts. So essentially, the Supreme Court closed federal courthouse doors to claims of partisan gerrymandering, no matter how extreme, no matter how unrepresentative the matter.

At the same time, Claims that maps were drawn in a racially discriminatory way could still be brought in federal court. Um, including under section 2 of the voting rights act after the decision in 2019, um, [01:12:00] the North Carolina legislature drew new congressional districts in the state after the census and drew an extreme partisan gerrymander.

The litigants, the voting organizations, the voters in North Carolina said, Oh, hey, I know what to do. The U. S. Supreme Court told us what to do. They said in Rucho, we could go to the state Supreme Court and vindicate our rights. under our state constitution because in foreclosing federal court relief to partisan gerrymandering in Rucho, the court said, you have another answer.

You can get relief in, in state courts. And that's exactly what the litigants in North Carolina did. They went to their state courts. They said, this is an extreme partisan gerrymander. It's barred by our state constitution. You should strike it down. Ultimately, that's exactly what the North Carolina Supreme Court did.

They, the court struck down the partisan gerrymander and told the state legislators to go back and draw a new map. They drew another gerrymandered map, [01:13:00] um, and they were told that that violated the constitution as well. And so a new map was drawn at the direction of the court to be fair and representative of the people of North Carolina.

Rather than accept that outcome, um, Some North Carolina legislators asked the U. S. Supreme Court to bail them out, and they asked the U. S. Supreme Court to say that the state constitution and the state courts could not constrain them when they made rules for federal elections. And that is a profound and dangerous idea that the state legislators get to violate their own constitution, but that is precisely the idea at the center of the independent state legislature theory.

Independent state legislature theory sort of perfect chance to segue to that. What the heck is it? And I think I have some basic understanding, and my basic understanding is that they say what the state legislature says in a [01:14:00] state is primary, is ultimate, is the only thing that matters, unfettered by whatever a state court might say about it.

Uh, that's my sort of simplistic understanding of it. Give us a better understanding of it. And, and to the extent that simplistic understanding says anything, how the heck do they come up with that? So, yes. What is the independent state legislature theory? It is a seemingly benign collection of four words that all generally sound good and inoffensive, um, which I think is by design.

Oh, yeah, no, people like independent things. State legislatures, every state has them. What could be, we don't want a dependent, we don't want a tethered, we don't want a totally, uh, hidebound state legislation. We want them to be able to act independently, of course. Yeah, so it's a collection of words that sounds good that I think is meant to hand wave over the very, very dangerous, um, consequences that the theory would bring to bear if it were ever adopted.

Yeah. Um, [01:15:00] the theory arises from a, an interpretation of the elections clause of the U. S. Constitution, and that clause gives to states the power to regulate federal elections. Of course, that clause also gives Congress the power, the overriding power, to make or alter any laws that states make for federal elections.

and proponents of the independent state legislature theory. Read the word legislature as it is used in that constitutional provision to give state legislators near exclusive authority over federal elections. They believe that the elections clause would prohibit any other state entity. Like state courts or governors, or any constraints from state constitutions.

From placing checks and balances on the state legislative power. When the legislators are making rules for federal elections. The, that is a false reading of the constitution, but that is where the [01:16:00] idea comes from. How did they come up with this? Say more about where it comes from. When you say it's a false reading, make their case for them with or without a tongue in your cheek.

Sure. So the language of the elections clause reads the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed by each state and shall be prescribed by the each state and the legislature thereof. Excuse me. And so proponents say, Look, the elections clause uses the word legislature.

It has to mean legislature we all know what a legislature is. That's it. Of course. If you look at the rest of the provision of the Elections Clause, which also gives Congress to the power to make or alter those rules, nobody would ever say that Congress has the power to make rules for federal elections.

[01:17:00] Without any constitutional constraints from the U. S. Constitution or without needing to present legislation to the president for his signature or veto or without the possibility of review by federal courts, the word legislature, just like the word Congress. It's intended to be used as part of the ordinary lawmaking power in the state.

So just like Congress has to send bills to the president for a signature or veto, the state legislature has to send bills to a governor for signature or veto. The state legislature is constrained by their state constitution. The state legislature is subject to judicial review when it legislates on elections.

All of those things are equally true for states as they are for Congress. And when you look at the history behind the elections clause, it is absolutely unequivocally clear that the framers never would have given special unchecked authority to state legislators to make rules for federal [01:18:00] elections, the framers were deeply deeply distrustful of state lawmakers, and they were trying to figure out ways to corral and constrain them, not liberate them from the shackles of checks and balances.

The proponents of the state legislature. I'm gonna get to the roots. Who are these people? There are not very many. Um, and there are a handful of folks in academia who have advanced the independent state legislature theory. There are a handful of, uh, Supreme Court justices who have, um, expressed support for or interest in the independent state legislature theory.

And there were amicus briefs in support of the North Carolina legislators in the U. S. Supreme Court, but those briefs came from almost uniformly partisan entities, individuals. Um, and and and not from the historians, the election officials, the governors, the academics, the state [01:19:00] Supreme Court justices, the very many bipartisan folks who weighed in against the theory.

Any funding links to be aware of who's helping pay for the think tank. He's stuff to come up with this. There's, is it all coming out of the, the tower of the, you know, university or are there, are there more, as you would say, sort of partisan, uh, drivers involved. The theory really isn't coming out of universities or academic institutions and the entities that weighed in on in support of the theory are these partisan organizations that are, you know, right wing affiliated organizations, advancing, um.

Right wing political goals, so I don't particularly do research into the flow of money and how these things get advanced, but. This is not a theory that is. find support in the mainstream [01:20:00] or find support in academics who spent a lot of time looking into the history or reading language of the founders.

Um, this is really has been advanced in recent years by partisan interests, including, um, in 2020 by the former president and the RNC.

SECTION B - THE PROPONENTS OF MINORITY RULE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now, entering Section B - "The Proponents of Minority Rule."

Marc Elias and Ari Berman - The Al Franken Podcast - Air Date 7-15-23

On the legal front, on the voting rights front, what I'm worried about is That the left has in many quarters decided to move on from the threats to democracy, but it is the central organizing thesis of the Republican party.

So let me give you a couple of statistics around this and then tell you what I'm worried about for 2024. Democracy docket, which is a website that I, I created, it tracks all voting litigation, not just litigation I'm involved in, but all voting litigation. In 2022, there were, uh, [01:21:00] 175 separate voting lawsuits.

This is excluding redistricting in 2020, by the way, there were 150, so the, we went from 150 to 175, so there was more litigation in 2022 than in 2020. And of course, in 2020 you had 65 cases after election day. So it's, the real comparator is 175 versus 85. But of that 175 lawsuits, a majority of them were actually filed by Republicans and conservatives.

The reason why I start with that is that I think most people listening to this. Are unaware that there are any lawsuits against states saying that voting is too easy, but yet there are actually more lawsuits right now, California is under lawsuit, Illinois is under lawsuit by conservatives who say voting is too easy and trying to repeal statutes that make voting more possible.

The Republicans have brought litigation against North Carolina to make voting harder. They recently lost a lawsuit in the [01:22:00] state Supreme Court of Arizona to try to ban mail in voting. And so when you look at that and you add on to that, the fact that you have legislature after legislature passing new voter suppression laws and election subversion laws, in some instances, these are the second or the third law on top of each other.

You get some picture of what the conservative and Republican playbook is, which is. They know they can't win through a majoritarian election, so their goal is to change the rules of voting to disincentivize or to dissuade or to suppress. Or to subvert the votes of black, brown, and young voters. And that's their strategy.

And they are doggedly at, they are doggedly at it. And I worry that on our side, you know, there is kind of like a generalized concern that these things are happening. Um, but they are not nearly as closely. Paid attention to other than frankly, by people like Ari, who is constantly writing [01:23:00] about it. Yeah, I would just echo Mark's point, Al, and say that pretty much every Republican controlled state passed some kind of new restriction on voting following the 2020 election.

And many states have passed multiple new restrictions on voting. And this will be the first presidential election that these restrictions will be in effect for. And the presidential election landscape is different than a midterm, right? We're going to have much higher turnout. In 2024, probably than we had in 2022, and there's going to be many more infrequent voters showing up.

And that's the kind of people who might be targeted by these kind of restrictions. And I think there's a feeling that because Democrats fare relatively well in 2022 because a lot of the election deniers lost. That means that we don't have a crisis for democracy anymore. And I think that's really dangerous because these laws are still into effect.

They're going to try to recruit smoother election deniers and last time they're going to try to [01:24:00] recruit people that are a little bit more sophisticated in terms of how they might try to overturn or alter the rules of an election, but they'll basically have the same election denier playbook. They'll try to pass more sophisticated efforts to try to subvert the will of the voters.

I'll just give you 1 example of something that was really disturbing to me. And I know Mark to the Texas legislature basically passed a bill dictating how elections would be run. In the state's largest County, Harris County, the largest blue County in Texas, where the legislature fired the election administrator at Harris County.

It was the only County in the state where they decided to fire the election administrator. And they said, is this where Austin is or where Houston is? Houston. So there's, there's, there's nearly 5 million people. There is the third largest County in the country. It's the largest county in Texas, the largest blue county in Texas.

So it really, in many ways, determines the swing of Texas politics. And they decided [01:25:00] to A, fire the election administrator only in this one county. And then B, they said, that if there were any kind of violations, even minor things like a voting machine malfunctioning and preventing someone from voting, that could have then allow.

The Republican appointed secretary of state to take over election operations in that county again, only Harris County. So, I mean, you, you had a legislature essentially dictating. This is how elections are going to be run in the largest blue county in the state. And if we don't like it. We're just going to take over election operations altogether.

I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing we were worried about happening in 2022 with all of these election deniers being elected, but it got a fraction of the coverage of someone like Carrie Lake running for office, for example. So I think they've become more sophisticated in the kind of things that they're doing now compared to what they tried to do in 2020.

Are they continuing? Of course they are to go with the, the, There [01:26:00] was a lot of fraud with that myth. Are they, are they trying to Harris County? There were, there were some election problems in 2022 because it was the first election where they used a paper ballot system. They also had new restrictions.

They had to follow based on the voter suppression law that the Texas legislature passed in 2021. So that created some problems in Harris County, where some polling locations ran out of paper ballots, but basically Republicans They did what Common Cause Texas called it, the Texas version of the big lie, where they basically said that Democrats who ran the county intentionally took away paper ballots from Republican areas so that Republicans wouldn't be able to vote and they would lose close elections.

Now, ironically, that's exactly what's being done in black and brown neighborhoods for decades, but nonetheless. Um, that's what they argued and basically they said, you know, all of the elections were fraudulent in Harris County because Democrats intentionally disenfranchised Republicans. There was no evidence that that happened, um, but that's kind of the argument they were using.

So it was fraud, but it was kind of like a, [01:27:00] a more of an iteration of the big lie argument they were using. Al, Al, I, I think we'd be making a mistake, at least with respect to the House of Representatives in control of these. Legislatures to not also note that there is another way you suppress voters, which is by engaging in the kinds of outrageous gerrymandering that we've seen Republicans.

And that's not over. You know, um, we're going to see Republicans redraw maps in several states. in ways that would have defied common sense or defied even imagination a few redistricting cycles ago. North Carolina, they're going to, they're going to redistrict. Uh, as an example, DeSantis redistricted in the face of, of so called fair district amendments in a way that specifically targeted Al Lawson, a black member of Congress.

And so it's part of a larger ethos on the right. To try to use the rules to affect [01:28:00] the outcomes and, and when, when did the Supreme Court say we can't, we're not going to get involved. We can't get involved in any partisan gerrymandering in 2019, 2019 in the Rucho decision. But the kind of things that Mark is describing are such blatant racial gerrymanders.

That it's pretty amazing that those kind of things haven't been struck down, which presumably they can be involved in. But I mean, I think the fear is that the Supreme Court is, is very shortly going to also make it very difficult, if not impossible to strike down racial gerrymandering to leaving many fewer options here.

And I think it's just amazing if you go back and you look at. The, the landscape for voting rights before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and the landscape afterwards, it's just dramatically different. I mean, Republicans are doing things in states like Florida they would have [01:29:00] never considered before.

I mean, the fact that DeSantis tried to dismantle and did dismantle two majority black districts or districts in which black voters were able to choose their candidates of choice, that would have never passed muster under the Supreme Court. The Voting Rights Act as it was interpreted by the courts for nearly 50 years before the Supreme Court got it in 2013.

So I think Republicans are just going further and further to push the envelope here and they feel like they're going to get whatever they want from the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court has already said. We don't care about partisan gerrymandering.

Judge Warns That Trump's 2020 Coup Attempt Was Just A Practice Run - Farron Balanced - Air Date 4-30-22

Judge Lutig warns us. That what we saw with Donald Trump and the attempted coup regarding the 2020 election and all of their attempts to overturn it, as well as the nonstop string of lies since then Ludwig explains that that was just a dry run.

I mean, that's literally what he said. The, the last presidential election was a dry run. For the next, [01:30:00] and he says their actual objective is to execute successfully in 2024, the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election. If Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest, he's not wrong.

I mean, this is something I have said before as well, plenty of other folks have said this, but you know, coming from a former federal judge, I think it carries a little bit more weight than when I say it or when anybody else says it, because these are people of course, who are trained to recognize what this kind of behavior is, what it does and what it leads to.

And that's why this warning Is so dire, but think about it for a second, folks, what we saw and what we're still learning. I mean, literally just this past week, all of the revelations that have come out, all of the text messages, all of the new characters that were involved in this. Those are the people that Donald Trump is going to put in charge.

Next time he runs [01:31:00] for president. And that is why he is hyping up his pro Trump MAGA people in this year's midterm races, because he wants to make sure that he has enough of his loyalists to displace the anti Trump people so that if it came down to it and they were the ones having to, you know, certify the electoral college results, he would have enough people To possibly actually overturn it.

All of the plans start to come together. When you start to look at it that way, folks, this isn't just about Trump wanting to punish people like Liz Cheney. It's because he needs to get Cheney out so he can replace it with somebody that will do whatever he wants them to do in case he loses again in 2024.

That's the plan. That's why people like Steve Bannon have been pushing his audience, go and run for these election boards, go and run for secretary of state. [01:32:00] And that of course is why Trump has been so invested in these secretary of state races that we have going on, but he's pushing these people because he knows where he went wrong last time.

He saw the weaknesses, the weaknesses in his plan, basically that he didn't have enough people all over the country to make this happen. So he's trying to write those wrongs right now, 2020 was in fact a dry run and they're getting ready for the real thing in 2024.

(Election standoff in Venezuela; Campaign Ketchup with 'Driftglass' and Frances Langum, 'Pro Left Podcast') - The BradCast w/ Brad Friedman - Air Date 7-31-24

In Arizona, I'm happy to report there was absolutely zero fraud. And zero problems for any voter at any polling place across the entire state. How do I know this? Well, because 2022 Republican gubernatorial loser and, uh, mini me, Donald Trump election fraud, conspiracist Carrie Lake.

Well, she won her primary election on Tuesday to become the [01:33:00] GOP US Senate nominee. So obviously this election since Carrie Lake won. Had no fraud at all. Everything's fine. That's right. The only legitimate election for Republicans are the ones that they win. Now, uh, Lake will go on to face Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego, who ran unopposed on Tuesday, uh, this November, for a, uh, U.

S. Senate seat that will be critical to determining majority control. chamber of the Congress this year after the seat, uh, the Senate seat is being vacated by the retiring, uh, let's call her right wing, former Democrat, uh, Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Now, there is a whole lot of vote by mail ballots cast in Arizona, so it may take a number of days for all All of the results to shake out.

Uh, much of the action on Tuesday was on the Republican side where there was a bit of a free for [01:34:00] all in a number of races, sort of up and down the ballot as the party continues, at least the party's primary voters continue to move even farther and farther to the right, many of the, uh, Contested Democratic primaries were for U.

S. House seats in a number of swing districts that are currently held by Republicans, but where Joe Biden won back in 2020 as Democrats hope to flip those seats in the U. S. House this November, but Republicans continue to really sort of eat their own, particularly in Maricopa County. Where some 60 percent of state voters live.

That's Phoenix. And it's a County where until Joe Biden in 2020, as I understand it, no Democrat had ever won that County for a presidential race since Harry Truman in 1948. Uh, with that loss for Republicans then in Maricopa and [01:35:00] across the state in 2020, as you recall, there were, there were a lot of wholly unproven and, or just completely evidence free claims of fraud.

None of them have, have ever been borne out in the nearly four years since, even after that, you may recall that wildly flawed. To put it nicely post election hand count that was headed up by the far right group calling themselves cyber ninjas, uh, who if anything actually proved that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more votes than was officially certified.

But ever since then, the far right. In Arizona and in Maricopa has been blaming the Republicans who, by and large, control the county government in Maricopa, uh, control the government, control its election system for the fact that Republicans lost in 2020 there and then again in 2022. When [01:36:00] Democrats won almost all of the statewide posts from governor to secretary of state to attorney general.

And so to that end on Tuesday in Republican primaries in Maricopa, they unseated the Republican County recorder, the guy in charge of elections. They're a very conservative, by the way. But not insane in the least guy by the name of Steven Richer. He actually won the post as the county's election chief back in 2020, unseating a Democrat at the time, Adrian Fontes that year, who would then in 2022, he would go on to become Arizona's secretary of state.

And both Richard and Fontes have worked collegially together ever since. But Richer, who has defended the Maricopa County voting system and has been highly critical of the right wing election deniers calling out [01:37:00] Donald Trump for lying about the results, well, Richer was unseated by one of those deniers, State Rep.

Justin Heap, during the GOP primary on Tuesday in Maricopa. Richer accepted defeat in a social media post on Wednesday morning. He congratulated Heap. He noted on Twitter quote elections have winners and sadly losers and in this one It looks like i'm going to end up on the losing side of the column, but that's the name of the game Accept it and move on.

Seems like he's sending a little bit of a message out there to some of his fellow Republicans. I don't know. He will, uh, he, uh, he will now face Democratic attorney, Tim Stringham, who ran unopposed on Tuesday, uh, as many of the Democrats did, uh, he will face him in November. If, uh, Stringham ends up winning, of [01:38:00] course, that means Republicans will have given away a key post that they had held over the past four years.

On the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which is currently four to one Republican to Democratic, several of the top Republican officials there are retiring after facing years of death threats and harassment from, yes, Fellow Republicans after having overseen and standing by the 2020 election results there on Tuesday, election deniers were chosen by Republicans to take their place, though.

Now they will have to face several Democrats. Who yes also ran unopposed on Tuesday. And while there were a lot of interesting races, which is putting it kindly, and I don't have time to go into some of the details. There, there is one, uh, race for state Senate that I would like to quickly note here in Arizona's state Senate district one, former state [01:39:00] rep, Mark Fincham.

Fierce Trump loyalist. Uh, you may recall his name. Uh, he defeated incumbent Republican state Senator. And former Republican secretary of state, Ken Bennett for the GOP nomination in this otherwise reliably red district, uh, near Prescott Bennett, like the current democratic secretary of state, Adrian Fontes has been a guest on our program, and he has been working very hard in the state Senate in recent years for real.

Election reform in the state reform that would make it much easier for the public. Yes, including hard right conspiracy theorists to oversee election results to make sure that they are accurate. Fincham, on the other hand, who you may remember as having run out. And lost for secretary of [01:40:00] state as a Republican back in 2022.

Well, he was a prolific proponent of the lie that Trump lost his 2020 race because of fraud. Bennett, on the other hand, represented a more moderate choice for Republican voters. And yes, he was a real champion for election integrity. But now voters will have to choose between the far right Fincham and Democrat Mike Fogel, who ran unopposed on Tuesday in the, uh, in the general election this November.

Bennett, so far, appears to have been the only incumbent, by the way, in the state Senate to have been turfed out on Tuesday, though there is one other undecided race that there that could see another Republican tossed. Democrats will only need to flip one or two seats in the state Senate to take majority control from a very rabid far right majority in the chamber this November.

There are also a number of still uncalled races in the [01:41:00] Arizona state house primaries as well, where Democrats are also within, Just a seat or two from winning majority control this year in that chamber as well in which case You know if the election gods are with Democrats you could see a trifecta in Arizona of Democratic control of both both chambers of the state legislature along with the gubernatorial mansion with Democrat governor Katie Hobbs There right now.

SECTION C - THE HISTORY OF MINORITY RULE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C - "The History of Minority Rule."

How Minority Rule Threatens Democracy - Fresh Air - Air Date 4-22-24

Minority versus majority rule is complicated. I want to say I'm in favor of majority rule, but what about periods when the majority is racist or homophobic or patriarchal? Do you want that majority suppressing the rights of the minority? So it's kind of more complicated than it seems.

Would you agree? It is. And it's a fundamental Tension in a democracy, [01:42:00] which is how do you protect majority rule, but do so in the way that the majority protects minority rights? And that's something that the founding fathers struggled with 230 years ago, which is how do you balance? protections for different minorities with the idea that the majority should rule.

Now, the interesting thing is, is that when we think of the protection of minority rights, we think of vulnerable minority groups, right? Previously disenfranchised communities, for example, are those that have been persecuted in the past. What the founding fathers were concerned about was a privileged minority group themselves, basically white male landowners who were a minority within the country, but they wanted to protect them.

And what we see right now is the same kind of thing in which a privileged conservative white minority is trying to suppress the power of a much more diverse, multiracial governing majority. And [01:43:00] that's a very dangerous situation for American democracy. As an example of minority rule today, you talk about the Supreme Court and the conservative justices on it and how they were appointed.

Can you run through that for us? So, for the first time in American history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote initially and confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans. So the Supreme Court is a product of minority rule, and it's a product of two skewed institutions.

It's how we elect. through the electoral college and how we appoint U. S. senators, both of which are flawed because they both violate one person, one vote in the electoral college. We have a ticking time bomb in which a candidate can win the popular vote, but lose the electoral college and the Senate, we have a situation in which small or more conservative wider states have [01:44:00] dramatically due to Congress.

More representation than larger, more diverse, more urban states. And so the Supreme Court is a product of minority rule. And then it of course has issued very radical decisions in recent years on things like abortion rights. gun control, voting rights that are at odds with the majority of public opinion.

So we have a Supreme Court that is a product of minority rule that is then issuing decisions that deepen minority rule within the United States. And the two presidents you're referring to who did not win the popular vote were George W. Bush and, uh, President Trump. Yes, and those two presidents, George W.

Bush and Donald Trump, appointed five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, so a majority of the Supreme Court. And what we see is a decades long strategy by the Republican Party to use the courts to try to do unpopular things. And of course, they used very bare knuckled tactics to get that majority on the Supreme Court, including blocking Barack Obama from [01:45:00] filling an open seat on the Supreme Court eight months before that.

election and then appointing Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court just weeks before the election. So the Supreme Court really has been the epicenter of the Republican Party's drive for minority rule. Let's go back to the beginning. Some of the founding fathers wanted to curb the excesses of democracy.

What did they see as a threat? They were skeptical of democracy, both on the historical notion of democracy at the time, which was direct democracy in ancient Greece and places like that, which they thought had led to mob rule. But they were more concerned with America after 1776, when there were these quite democratic for the time state legislatures that were elected after the Declaration of Independence, when new state constitutions were granted.

And those state legislatures had a lot of power. Legislators were elected. Did annually, for example, they were very responsive to public demands, and the federal government, [01:46:00] in terms of the continental Congress, had very little power. It could not raise its own revenue, for example. And what happened was the states were passing populist policies that the framers didn't like, and there was a big economic crisis in the 1780s.

And what happened is states began to do things like debt relief and tax relief that benefited impoverished farmers for. example, but hurt wealthier Americans by leading to inflation. And basically, the framers felt like there was an excess of democracy in the states that were leading the country to the brink of collapse.

And that what they needed to do was they needed to create a strong central government and a strong central government that would not only restrain the people. Power of the states, but restrained the power of democracy more broadly. So instead of decisions being made by politicians who are influenced by the masses, decisions would be made by these elite white men that had a greater perspective and the greater public good at [01:47:00] heart.

Here's something John Adams said that you quote in your book. If a majority were to control all branches of the government, debts would be abolished first. Taxes laid heavy on the rich and not at all on the others. And at last, a downright equal vision of everything would be demanded and voted. Um, I was surprised to read that.

A pretty remarkable quote, right? I was surprised to read a lot of these things, too, because the Founding Fathers, as much as we worship them, were very honest that they were worried about what would Protecting people like themselves and that if we had pure democracy or a broader representative democracy, there would be these demands for things like equality, which the founding fathers didn't really favor.

They wanted to make sure the government first and foremost protected people like them. The founding fathers limited who could vote. What would you describe the limitations? Many states restricted voting [01:48:00] rights to white male property owners, which meant that poorer whites couldn't vote, of course women couldn't vote, African Americans couldn't vote, Native Americans weren't even considered citizens of the United States, so a majority of the country was excluded from voting at the time of the founding and after.

So there were restrictions on who could vote and you couldn't vote for all of the. People in the institutions of government, the president was voted on through the electoral college, like you voted for the electors who then voted for the president and that worked a little differently than it does today.

Would you describe, first of all, why the Electoral College was created? Yeah, and it wasn't even that you, you voted for the Electoral College. In, in most states, the state's legislatures just picked the electors. So the public had no say in terms of who the electors were. But basically, So who did you vote for?

You voted for I mean, a lot of people just didn't vote at [01:49:00] all. That's the big is that in the first election in which George Washington was elected, only 6 percent of Americans were eligible to vote. So most people just didn't vote at all. And then in certain states. Uh, but basically what happens is states nominated the electors and then the electors chose the president with very little input from the voters on who the electors were, who the president would be.

And why did the Founding Fathers want the Electoral College as opposed to a direct vote? Most of the founders were skeptical of the public's ability to elect the president directly. They felt like the best. The public would be uninformed, or it would be chosen by the largest states, or it would be chosen by free states in a way that would hurt the South.

One of the themes that runs through the book and runs through the founding is that these smaller minorities wanted protection. And when [01:50:00] I say smaller minorities, I don't mean minority groups. I mean the small states wanted protection. The slave states wanted protection. Protection and they felt like they would get that protection in the electoral college.

So they created this very complicated situation in which electors would elect the president instead of the people electing the president directly. Let's talk about the Senate. The Senate was created to counteract some of the Democracy of the House. Can you explain the debate over what the Senate should be and how the people in it should be chosen?

First off, senators were nominated by state legislatures and chosen by the lower house. So, senators were not directly elected by the people and there was basically unanimity among the founders. For that, but there were debates over who senators should represent James Madison and other prominent framers wanted the Senate to be based on proportional representation.

So they wanted to be based on population. [01:51:00] So larger states like Virginia would have more representation than smaller states like Delaware. But the smaller states rebelled. And there's this amazing moment at the Constitutional Convention where the Attorney General of Delaware gets up and he tells the likes of James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, if you don't give us the same representation, we're going to find a foreign ally who we're going to join with instead, and we're going to leave the United States of America.

And that was a stunning demand, the idea that they would go rejoin England or they would join France instead if they didn't have the same level of representation. meant that this larger states had no choice but to give into the demand of the smaller states to ratify the Constitution. But what Madison worried about is that it would allow what he called a more objectionable minority than ever to control the U. S. Senate. Because if the smaller states had the same level of representation as the larger states, that was inevitably going to lead to minority rule. And Madison worried that would get [01:52:00] worse as more states joined the Union. Of course, that's what's happened today, where the gap between large and small states is dramatically larger than it was back in 17 87.

How to Rig an Election: The Racist History of the 1876 Presidential Contest - Washington Post - Air Date 4-3-23

The most hotly contested election in our nation's history did not take place in the year 2000 or even 2020. It took place in 1876. The Civil War ended in 1865, but 11 years after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, America was on the verge of another outbreak of violence between the North and the South.

A deal was made. To preserve the nation, the price, the end of reconstruction, and the preservation of white supremacy. In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Railroads crisscrossed the country. Steel bridges connected cities. [01:53:00] Skyscrapers and ferris wheels.

Reached for the heavens. Electrical grids powered homes and businesses. Oil refineries fueled nationwide progress. The telephone and typewriter transformed communication. By the end of the century, we had coffee pots, escalators, elevators, cars, chewing gum, paper clips, and even jello.

New amendments to the Constitution created a land of promise and opportunity for many. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The 14th Amendment conferred citizenship on all persons born or naturalized in the United States, making formerly enslaved black people U.

S. citizens. And the 15th Amendment made unconstitutional. The use of race to prevent black men from voting. [01:54:00] Reconstruction, the effort to restore southern states to the Union, and incorporate 4 million newly freed American citizens into the United States, was working. Yet, the U. S. Army continued to occupy the South.

To enforce compliance with federal law, the country was united, albeit tenuously. In 1876, a centennial exposition in Philadelphia celebrated the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was also an election year. On June 17th, 1876, the Republicans, the party that guided the Union to victory in the Civil War, nominated Rutherford B.

Hayes for president and William A. Wheeler for vice president. Nine days later, the Democrats, then the party of racism and white supremacy, nominated Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks. As [01:55:00] returns came in on the evening of November 7th, the nation held its breath. In the early count, Tilden appeared to have the lead.

The next morning, Democratic newspapers proclaimed his victory. Then, on November 9th, Republicans announced a Hays win. But this game was just beginning. Tilden won the popular vote, but results in three states were in dispute. Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Neither side would concede. The nation was thrown into chaos.

The Florida governor reported that a special train sent out to get returns had been coup cluxed and thrown from the track. Amid reports of fraud and armed threats, Then President Grant, the former commander of the Union Army, sent troops to the capitals of all three disputed states. Just 11 years [01:56:00] after the Civil War, it looked like it could start all over again.

Congress passed an act authorizing a commission to decide the winner of the 1876 presidential election. The bipartisan commission voted to give the electoral votes of the disputed states to the Republican, Hayes. In exchange, Democrats got something they wanted. Hayes agreed to withdraw union troops from the south.

With that assurance, the deal went through. Beginning the end of Reconstruction. So, despite winning the popular vote, Tilden lost the election, with 184 electoral votes to Hayes 185. And on March 2nd, 1877, almost four months after Election Day, Rutherford B. Hayes became the 19th President of the United States.[01:57:00]

President Hayes made good on his promise to withdraw the troops from the South. He kept the union together at the expense of the rights of black Americans. The criminal legal system quickly became a tool to control black people. By 1870, the prison population of Alabama went from 90 percent white to over 80 percent black.

By 1880, elected officials in more than a third of U. S. states were black. Enacted felony disenfranchisement laws, taking the vote away from people convicted of crimes. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests were employed to keep black men from voting. When that wasn't enough, white supremacists used violence and even murder to prevent black men from going to the polls.

Elected officials in states across the South passed Jim Crow laws [01:58:00] enforcing segregation. In virtually every aspect of American life.

The election of 1876 ended with a compromise that ensured the continuation of racism and racist violence in our nation's culture and politics that has lasted to this day.

SECTION D - A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Coming up, Section D - "A Global Perspective."

Politics & Human Rights: With the Politics or Against the Politics? Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast - Air Date 7-31-24

In your book, Judiciary, the accountability function of courts in new democracies, published in 2004, you discussed the role of courts in holding leaders of new democracies accountable and the risks of the trend at the time, which was a global movement towards strong constitutional government, placing more powers in the hands of judges who are not held accountable themselves.

In the 20 years following this, How do you think these predictions have played out? That's a very interesting question. Um, in some ways I think they have played out really well. I think some of the things that we were seeing was that more and more was sort of encompassed within the constitutional domain [01:59:00] and more and more issues and more and more contested issues being judicialized.

And that a lot of politics would go to the courts in more countries than in the global South. And this for sure has happened. It has happened in new democracies and it has happened in old democracies, including in countries like Norway, where I come from, where politics traditionally were not very much judicialized.

Of course, what we were worried about was that this would make, courts more politically visible and more politically contested, and that it would be very tempting for the governments to rein in the courts. And, uh, this has also happened in many countries with very strong courts. I think one of the first examples that was a very clear example was Hungary, where there was a very strong, very ambitious court and that, uh, [02:00:00] then where the government really, um, made the courts.

went for the courts and made them very weak. Poland more recently, although we've seen a bit of a turn there, and of course it has happened in many countries in these 20 years that there has been attempt to rein in the courts more or less successfully, but I think that in some ways courts have been more robust and more resilient than we expected.

And that even. Where, uh, governments have, uh, appointed loyalists to the courts. Um, they have managed to sort of gain a certain independence back. But there is something about the institutionalization of courts across societies that have been more resilient in some cases than we expected. Okay. Yeah, no, that's wonderful.

Um, and following on, I guess kind of a little bit exactly what you were saying. Have we observed any [02:01:00] unexpected or more promising outcomes in terms of judicial accountability and restraint of executive power? So I think maybe, um, some, some developments that are surprising, but not promising, not positive.

And I think. One of the things that we in a way saw, but didn't really sort of see how important it would be, was that courts are being used much more by autocrats. They become part of the dictator's playbook, if you want, or not only dictators, but politicians who are seeking to strengthen their power, use And use law and it's well, I've, I've been using the term autocratic law fair that they use that they've been using courts for impression for strengthening their, their grip on power, using changes to the law as well using rights.

And, and I think we didn't really realize [02:02:00] how important that would be. Uh, in sort of both in countries moving from democracy, backsliding into autocracy, but also in them in democracies, uh, where that remain democratic, but where, where courts are also used. So, I think that is, that's a bit surprising, but also, on the other hand, I didn't think that we would, that would be also see is that courts or have become 1 of the main areas for democratic resistance.

So, um, civil society, political opposition also use minorities, also use the courts and they use the courts to a lot of effect. So I think sort of that, that, so I think that this sort of both, if you want both the autocratic law and the democratic law fair, if, if, if we look at it that way in the courts, how it become, uh, or in a way surprising to.

So I think, yes, some surprising developments, but [02:03:00] going both ways. It's funny you say that actually because, um, my dissertation is kind of looking at, um, I did a survey kind of, of, uh, Scottish nationalists, and part of that was kind of looking at the gender recognition bill that was opposed, like, um, blocked by the UK government, and being in Scotland it's been interesting to see that play out in the UK courts and they're ruling that it was, um, lawful of the UK government to block it, but just the tensions and the, um, sense of self determination within Scotland and how that's kind of channeled through the courts, that kind of political element and a sort of agenda being pursued in the courts at the same time, both on the UK government, like the Conservative side and the Scottish side.

It's really interesting to kind of watch play out in real time. That's really, really interesting. And I think what you also see is that the court process, since it takes time, it focuses attention. So it makes a lot of politics happen [02:04:00] during that process. It creates a lot of media attention. It creates narratives.

that are strong, in a way on both sides, but particularly for, in a way, opposition groups or, um, groups that don't necessarily have a strong voice always. It's, it has been, it's really interesting and helpful because even if in the end, The court ruling is not so favorable. Uh, politics is in a different place.

That's one thing that we didn't really foresee as much 20 years ago, but that has been become very clear. The political space around courts are really interesting in terms of moving politics only in many areas. So, uh, LGBT rights for sure. Um, uh, abortion rights in many different directions. Yeah. Uh, climate change.

A lot. Um, [02:05:00] climate policy, putting it on the agenda in different ways, even if the rulings necessarily are not necessarily that spectacular. Sometimes there are rights and ecosystems, but also indigenous rights. That's something that we see in Norway, but also around the world in many ways, that it sort of, it changes, it changes the discourse, it changes what people see as political issues.

Uh, this, there, there is a book called When Mis Poor by Alicia Yemen. Uh, the, the title is When Misfortune Becomes Injustice. That's a very, very strong mechanism if you want, when our ideas of when things are just unfortunate and when it's an injustice that needs to be politically addressed. That's one of the things that we've really seen in the last 20 years.

Oh, and lots of issues have moved into that space. That's so interesting. Um, so following on, uh, what lessons do you think we can draw from the past two [02:06:00] decades in terms of the judiciary's role and, uh, in democratic consolidation and safeguarding human rights? So in terms of the judiciary's role, I think, so to, to sort of appreciate.

the function that it can play. And that is, for instance, this function of enabling political discourse, enabling political contestation, but also in some cases really sort of safeguarding rights as well. But I think we also need to understand that courts in themselves, uh, are limited, that courts, when they try to do too much, In a context that, uh, where they don't have sufficient support, uh, are vulnerable and can, can be reign in.

And I think, so I think that to realize that they're super, they're really powerful and important and robust, but at the same [02:07:00] time, they are fragile in this sense, or they are, at least the power is limited. They need, they, they, they can provide leverage, uh, they can provide a lot of leverage, but, but they also need, need to have the support.

in order to make, to make that difference. But that, but sometimes when they're not, or sometimes you see the courts shy away from the really, really hard decisions. Like in some, in a few cases where like, for instance, in Malawi, the courts, several levels ruled the last presidential election, uh, on the not free and fair and ruled a new and then ordered a new election.

And there was a, um, and then you can do that one. And that is very rare because that is so close to power that is so difficult to, and courts, when they do that, for instance, in Kenya, it happened before it didn't result in a change of power. [02:08:00] And, and, and it did sort of, it's hard for the courts to withstand the pushback that then comes.

But even in the cases where they can't go all the way, even if they sort of don't cross that line of power, they can still provide a space for a lot of important, uh, civil society, activism, political, that can provide sort of political accountability at a different level.

Making Sense of Bangladesh - Amanpour - Air Date 8-5-24

After 15 years in power, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasinam, has resigned from her post and fled the country. The announcement from the country's army chief coming after these extraordinary scenes of people storming the Prime Minister's residence.

It's an incredible development and the culmination of deadly protests that have rocked the nation for weeks. At least 91 people dying just yesterday after demonstrators clashed with police. Now, this all started over new quotas for government jobs, but quickly evolved into a much wider anti government protest.

Someone who's been closely [02:09:00] following the situation is Mujib Mishal, the New York Times South Asia Bureau Chief, and he joins us now from New Delhi. Uh, Mujib, quite a historic day for a country, we should remind viewers, the size of Illinois, but with a population of 170 million. Talk about the significance of this development.

Well, um, on the one hand, uh, there is sort of jubilation on the streets of Dhaka because it is the end of what was increasingly, um, a very authoritarian rule. Uh, Prime Minister Hasina, uh, in her early part of her career, she was sort of associated with hope. Um, she came from personal trauma because her family was massacred.

In the 70s, but then she was a symbol of how this country could turn things around. She offered, um, economic upliftment to, to a lot of, um, you know, a country that was deeply poor. And she sort of tried to reign in the military that was, um, [02:10:00] long in the, in the practice of, you know, coups and counter coups.

So, so at one point in her career, she offered this promise of hope, but in recent years, she was deeply authoritarian. So the end of her rule, As created, you know, this jubilation on the streets of Dhaka, but at the same time, um, there are deep concerns, um, because the country, as you mentioned, the huge country of 170 million people.

Um, it is leaderless right now, um, the law enforcement that could contain, um, what is deeply entrenched political animosities between parties, um, that law enforcement is very discredited. Um, so on the streets, there are still reports of violence, but there's also fear that, uh, extremist elements. Uh could take advantage of this vacuum.

So right now it's a mix of jubilation, but also deep concern Yeah, deep concern about what could come next and the issue of stability In the country as we heard from the army chief telling uh [02:11:00] citizens there keep your trust in the army quote We will restore peace Peace in the country. Please cooperate.

As you noted earlier there, there was a large level of distrust between the military and its citizens over the course of the last several decades. And you mentioned a number of coups there. Uh, when you hear that type of messaging from the army chief now, how should it be interpreted? Well, yes, the army has had a history of coups, bloody coups, including a coup that killed Prime Minister Hasina's family and her father.

But in recent years, it has been a more of a disciplined army for a couple of reasons. One was that Prime Minister Hasina sort of stacked the leadership with loyalists and made sure they don't stage a coup against her. But another reason is that the Bangladeshi army is a big contributor to the UN peacekeeping.

Uh, the U. N. Peacekeeping missions abroad, and that's a very lucrative [02:12:00] business for the senior leadership of the army, the officers. So that keeps them away from coups and and sort of reigns in some of the abuses as well. So now at this stage, um, it feels like although the army is controlling the situation, it has signaled that it wants to to, you know, hand over power to an interim government, a civilian government that could then, um, oversee elections potentially.

I mean, what is not clear is that the country's parliament is not dissolved right now. So the prime minister has fled and maybe a lot of her MPs and ministers have fled, but the status of the country's parliament is unclear right now and the future of What kind of government formation it could be is unclear, but the army has not signaled that this is a coup or that they're taking over.

The arc of Sheikh Hasina's governance, as you noted earlier, is quite interesting because it's evolved from one where there was a [02:13:00] sense of optimism. Uh, about the change in stability she could bring to the country, uh, then obviously years, uh, of questions, uh, about the, uh, openness, right, uh, of legal, in legality of elections in that country.

And here you have her first question. I think it's really useful to get a sense of where she stood on that front here. Here was part of their exchange. I said, CNN. And other international organizations have not been allowed to come to Bangladesh as journalists to cover this story. They have put very draconian conditions on us.

No, it is not true. It is true. No, no, no, no. Yes, yes, it is true. No, no. Bangladesh is [02:14:00] a free country. Ah. We would hope that. Listen, in our country, we have private television. What? If, if, no, tell me one thing. If it is prevented, then why I am talking to you? No, because I'm not there, Prime Minister. I'm not supposed to talk to you.

Prime Minister, I'm not there. If we, if we prevent you, no, no, if we prevent CNN, then why I am talking to you? Beats me. Then, okay, you stop it. You don't publish it. You see her defiance there, at times really seemingly talking past Christiane, not addressing her concerns and questions head on. Now, that was, uh, 11 years ago.

Um, when you look back at that now and see where things have turned today, uh, what is your takeaway? Well, I mean, it is, I'm not surprised by that exchange. I, I met her last year for an interview and, um, what, what tells, what that tells me is that there were two Sheikah Sinas. One was sort of the image to the outside world, right?

of this sort of [02:15:00] sheik, um, secular Muslim woman, uh, who stood up against Islamic militancy, who helped lift up her nation and brought economic improvement. That was one image of her. The other one was what she was doing to her political opponents, um, the way she was concentrating power and turning the country into a one party state.

For the longest time, she had sort of juggled both. Um, and she had figured out a formula where she could Completely a marginalized, her organized political opposition in a way where they were not a threat to her. But what brought her down, what brought the end of her was not necessarily the organized political opposition.

It was the wider public. It was students, right? And it was, it was mishandling, her mishandling of what was actually a peaceful protest. And it was sort of using the same playbook, right? Of crackdowns of force that she had used [02:16:00] her organized opponents against the wider public, and that that's created a cycle of anger, especially the dead bodies, right?

That's what I was going to say over 300 over 300 believed to have been killed in the past few weeks alone. Yeah, most of the people most not affiliated with political parties, right? So this was the general public and containing that anger turned out difficult for her.

Muhammad Yunus to lead Bangladesh govt as India evacuates families from the country - DW News - Air Date 8-7-24

On Tuesday, citizens gathered at the National Parliament building after the legislative body was dissolved by the President, who called for the restoration of calm. A day earlier, protesters stormed the chamber Demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Now her official residence is awaiting a new occupant, after Hasina fled the country, ending her 15 year rule. Curious citizens wandered through the ransacked rooms where Hasina clung to power. As more than 300 [02:17:00] people were killed in protests, which were brutally suppressed by security forces. We sincerely hope everyone gets justice.

Every death must be accounted for. As Bangladesh mourns the many killed in the unrest, changes are flowing fast. Former opposition leader Khaleda Zia has been pardoned and released from house arrest, one of thousands of critics detained under the previous government. I think the next ruler of the country should take lessons from the students that if anyone becomes a corrupted trader and gets involved in unsocial activities or takes any decision against the country, they will face the same fate.

We want them to chart the future, keeping the country in mind. The burnt out office of the former ruling party shows how quickly Sheikh Hasina's legacy [02:18:00] has been turned to ash. Many Bangladeshis are celebrating and awaiting the start of a new era.

I spoke earlier to Zima Islam, a journalist with the Daily Star newspaper in Dhaka. She told me why the 84 year old Mohammed Yunus is the person the protesters wanted to see as head of an interim government. I think, first and foremost, there is the fact that he is nationally and internationally celebrated for his achievements.

And that is, I think, um, One of the major reasons why he was selected is that this person has proven that through what he has done in his life that he is a worthy person to lead this country. But beyond that, there's one other reason is that he isn't a political person. He has not been linked with any mainstream political parties as of yet.

And that was a big thing. Reason why people want him because we are [02:19:00] tired off, uh, the mainstream political parties and the way that they have been governing the country for the last many years. And last time we had a public uprising of this nature was in 1990, which Give rise to the parliamentary democracy that we currently have.

We want a fresh start. That's what we want. And India has reportedly evacuated all non essential staff and their families from its diplomatic missions in neighboring Bangladesh. That is after the weeks of unrest that forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and flee. Reuters quoting two Indian government sources saying that all Indian diplomats remain in Bangladesh.

So let's get more on this from our correspondent Shalu Yadav in Delhi. Shalu, give us an update on this story.

Well, Claire, there were about 19, 000 Indians who resided in Bangladesh before all of this unfolded over the last three days. And the foreign minister of India shared yesterday that 9, 000 of those were [02:20:00] students and they came back to safety over the last few weeks. But he stopped short of sharing the details of any other evacuation plans for the rest of the Indians.

Uh, that remained in the country. He in fact went on to say that, uh, he expected the, uh, host, uh, government to, to look after the safety of, uh, Indian citizens and its, uh, diplomatic staff, uh, in the country. But we also, uh, knew that until yesterday, the Indian Air Force was on standby in the, uh, bordering state of Northeastern Indian state of Assam.

And now we're hearing that the, uh, that all the non essential, uh, diplomatic staff are staff along with their families, uh, have been evacuated from the embassy and the consulates. Uh, but the main diplomats, uh, they continue to, uh, remain in the country and the mission is reportedly, uh, functioning clear.

And is it possible to give us some insights into the reasoning behind this decision?

Well, you see, India, as well as Indians, are seen as pro Sheikh Hasina. And that was the reason why we saw this kind of anti India sentiment during the protests [02:21:00] in Bangladesh over the last few weeks, because, you know, the Bangladeshis felt that Indian government did not do enough to stop Sheikh Hasina's authoritarian regime and the atrocities that were committed by her government.

So, naturally, there are legitimate fears around the safety of Indian citizens. Uh, who remain in the country as a law and order situation is still, uh, out of hand. Uh, we've been hearing reports of mobs, uh, you know, out on Rampage, uh, not just attacking, uh, uh, the homes of Indians, but also the minority community of Hindus who lives there, uh, which is also, uh, of concern to the Indian government.

Uh, the foreign minister, ESJ Shankar yesterday also expressed, uh, concerns around the safety of the minority community. Uh, living in Bangladesh. There have been reports. So for their homes being targeted, uh, their businesses have been looted and their places of worship have been attacked. Uh, clear Bangladesh is a country where Islam is the state religion and Hindus living in the country are viewed as the supporters of the secular party of Awami League, the party of Sheikh Hasina.

And so [02:22:00] they've been, uh, you know, targeted by the Islamic radicals time and again. This is not the first time, but we're also hearing reports of the young Muslims who are It's coming forward and forming a, you know, chain of safety around Hindus homes, as well as their places of worship, before, you know, there's a let up in the situation on the roads in Bangladesh, you know, and until there is a semblance of safety in the streets of Bangladesh, the Hindus, they continue to remain, you know, inside their homes, and they're locked up, and you know, the Indian government is closely watching the situation, Claire.

DW's Shadow Yarov. Many thanks for that update. Let's get the very latest from Zima Islam, a journalist with the Daily Star newspaper joining us today from Dhaka. Welcome. So 84 year old Mohammed Yunus is really a towering figure of Bangladesh. He's been called in to head an interim government. Why was he the person that protesters wanted to see in this role?

[02:23:00] I think first and foremost, there is the fact that he is nationally and internationally celebrated for his achievements. And that is, I think, um, One of the major reasons why he was selected is that this person has proven that through what he has done in his life, that he is a worthy person to lead this country.

But beyond that, there's one other reason is that he isn't a political person. He has not been linked with any mainstream political parties as of yet. And that was a big. Reason why people want him because we are tired off, uh, the mainstream political parties and the way that they have been governing the country for the last many years.

And last time we had a public uprising of this nature was in 1990, which Give rise to the parliamentary democracy that we currently have. We want a fresh start. That's what we want.

Bear Market feat. Jeff Stein - Chapo Trap House - Air Date 8-5-24

The United States by imposing an economic blockade on roughly a [02:24:00] third of the world is putting that third of the world into the orbit of, you know, like bigger countries like China, Russia, who can provide some sort of banking or can provide what the, you know, U.

S. Dollar backed Global market would have in the past. This is like, is it like, is it, is it like pushing these countries closer together? And I guess like in your article, you have like the, the countries that are on the, under the highest level of sanctions, which are Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, and Cuba.

Cuba has been under economic sanctions since 1962. The list of countries on that, I just want to read for a second, if you don't mind, the number of countries on that list, because like, I think just hearing it out loud is indicative. And this is not, this is an incomplete list of the number of countries under some form of U.

S. sanctions. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Yemen, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Burma, Libya, Sudan, Belarus, Lebanon, Mali, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That is a partial list of the number of countries we're talking about here. And like, so in [02:25:00] terms of like, let's say Iran or Venezuela, like what is the intended consequences of the sanctions regimes placed on those countries?

And then what are some of the unintended consequences that you're now referring to that? Like you mentioned in, in, in your piece, I think like the, the sort of the, the, the money paragraph. Paul quote, you say an occasion of a 2011 Hollywood, sorry, a 2011 holiday party at the hotel Harrington in downtown Washington, where Adam Zubin, then director of the OFAC saying the song, every little thing we do is sanctions to the tune of every little thing she does with magic

by the police. And I'm just wondering, you know, you know, you know, you see. When they're reworking the lyrics to popular songs to glorify their, uh, behavior and, you know, uh, justify their existence. I got this tip like six months ago, and I emailed this guy. I was like, hey, I heard you sang this song at the holiday [02:26:00] party.

Is it true? Can you confirm or deny that you sang? Uh, a version of every little thing that she does is magic, uh, at this holiday party. And he just didn't respond for months. And I was like, you know, every time you publish a big story like this, like you're very nervous that like, there's going to be something that you like may have gotten wrong or someone told you the wrong thing or the kind of detail off.

And this guy hadn't responded. And I was like, okay, I'd really like to know if he's going to contest that he's saying this song. And like a few weeks before the story published, he emailed me and was like, um, no, that's incorrect. I was like, okay, what is it? And he was like, no, no, no. You got the lyrics wrong.

I was singing every little thing they want to do is sanction. Not every little thing they want to sanction. I was like, okay, are you saying the song? I've noticed a lot of, uh, they really love song parodies in American interventionist foreign policy. It really do. I'm all, yeah. Everyone always brings up bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran.

That's the McCain one. Yeah. McCain and Lindsey [02:27:00] Graham were doing that one. That that's awesome. I feel like like that would be a fun. Um, I don't know in the presidential debate if we can get the candidates doing doing versions of that, but like, so like at the top of the list here, you've got, you know, Russia, Iran and Venezuela like, and you know, U.

S. Policymakers are attempting to, you know, You know, without using our military directly enforce compliance in some way. What like, so like from their perspective, what is the intended effect of these sanctions? And now what are some of the knock on effects that are actually leading to a point where like us policymakers are beginning to worry that we've actually sanctioned too many countries?

One of my, one of my favorite. Things about Washington. I know you guys don't live here, but people are always like, wow, this food is really good. You know, it's like, it'll be like some food from some foreign country. And then it'll be like Afghanistan. It's like, oh, there's a new Venezuelan place. And like not realizing that the people they work for may have had a role in like [02:28:00] the new restaurant down the street that they're really excited about.

Yeah. That's how fat America is. Even foreign policy is GrubHub. Um, but I think Venezuela is like a really sad and striking example. And I think also like to get back to Felix's earlier question about like, when did this take off? I think it's partly the fault of the media, partly the fault of just people's attention spans where, you know, every American knew about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Right. But like how many people know about the U. S. role in what happened in Venezuela? Like, I, I think it's probably, I mean, this is like totally made up. Like, I don't have any numbers behind this, but if you like, took the, even like my friends, like just average people, you were like, role did the U S have in Venezuela's economic collapse?

Like they probably wouldn't even know that much about like the Venezuela. Collapse generally, you know, and I think that like the way in which sanctions have [02:29:00] operated a lower profile than sending troops has enabled this whole thing to fly under the radar Venezuela. I mean, we did a whole separate story about this that came out right after our initial sanction story.

Um, we had, um, basically we broke the news that the Department of Homeland Security as Trump was tightening the sanctions on Venezuela, DHS was sending classified reports to the White House that were warning that the sanctions could exacerbate out migration in the region out out of Venezuela. And the mechanism there, of course, would be by impacting the economy broadly of Venezuela.

It would lead to more people having to flee the country and we've seen over 7, 000, 000 people leave Venezuela since the start of their economic collapse in 2014. Um, we reported, um, and I took some flack from a friend, uh, on the left who was, Disputing this conclusion. I think he's wrong about this. But, but what we [02:30:00] reported, it seems clear to me is that the economic collapse in Venezuela predates sort of the intense sanctions imposed by, by, by, by Trump starting in 2017 and through 2020.

That's really when we started squeezing their ability to issue debt on international markets, their ability to, um, to operate their number one source of revenue, which is Paravisa, the state owned oil company. Those sanctions really squeezed in 2017 through 2019, 2020, but to me, there's also very little doubt that those sanctions dramatically exacerbated this economic catastrophe, which I'm so staggered by, and even more staggered by the fact that there are so few people who know, seem to know about the extent of it.

We are talking about the single largest decline in, um, any economy in the modern era for any country not at war, and also larger than The economic contractions of some countries at war, including Yemen, Iraq in 2003 and Ukraine in [02:31:00] 2022. This is a 71 percent collapse of the Venezuelan economy, which is unfathomably large.

It's just enormous. And a lot of that seems genuinely to have started. I mean, you have inflation hitting over 600 percent before the sanctions are really tightened on Venezuela in 2016. But The sanctions, I mean, I talked to John Bolton, a top Trump White House advisor for this story, and he told me, like, the point of the sanctions was to hurt their economy and lead more people to leave in an attempt to get, uh, Maduro, the president to, to surrender and give up control.

Their strategy at the time was to basically say, we will target The Venezuelan economy in a way that leads the Venezuelan military to break ranks with Maduro and support why doe, um, who do you guys remember when Trump compared him to Beto O'Rourke? Yeah, yeah, that's what I knew was curtains for that guy.

Um, but that would be, that was, you know, what the conscious strategy was, was to make the economy of Venezuela [02:32:00] worse. Um, and our story reports that there were people at treasury at DHS were saying. If this doesn't work, you're gonna, you're gonna hurt a lot of innocent people and lo and behold, we now see a few years later that one of the top political issues, obviously, in the U.

S. is a surge of migrants across the U. S. Mexico border that didn't start until a few years after the sanctions bit. But this is, you know, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Of migrants from Venezuela fleeing an economic catastrophe that the U. S. had a role in exacerbating. So, yeah, I mean, that that's to me one of the most striking examples of an unintended consequence, and to state the obvious, Maduro is still in power.

But yeah, it seems to me, it seems like there is a self contradictory. core, uh, with sanctions where like the state department will, whoever they're sanctioning, they'll say, you know, whoever it is. And sometimes this is kind of true. Sometimes it's like a complete projection, but if we're sanctioning them, we're saying that [02:33:00] the leader in question is a psychotic madman and he will do anything to stay in power.

And he, he doesn't care about his own people. We love that line. He did X to his own people. Because it's fine to do it to people overseas, but God forbid you do it to your own people. But, um, okay, so we're going to put pressure on the economy. So that he'll be so ashamed that he'll step down. You just said he'll do anything to stay in power!

And I know, you know, you, obviously, like, they want either the military or the intelligence apparatus, depending on the country, to, you know, play a very active role in getting rid of that guy. But, that, how many times does that actually happen? Right, you're treating them as a rational actor, the guy that you're saying.

Um, I think to sort of, um, riff on what you're saying here, one of the things that like the academics who've studied this closely will point out that I think is really [02:34:00] interesting is that like the people who could be rational actors in some of these horrific situations, take Syria for instance, often those are the people that the sanctions hurt the most, right?

Like the, the, Rival power bases for authoritarian leaders are often sort of the middle class, the private sector, civil society, groups that operate independent of the authoritarian regime, and when you cut off economic activity broadly in a country, that sort of weakens the power of those leaders. Sort of parts of the society to do anything on their own on their own volition, and that creates a vacuum that tends to be filled by the authoritarian leader himself.

SECTION E - ACTIVISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And, finally, Section E - "Activism."

Trump gives shoutout to his ‘pitbulls,’ Georgia election officials he hopes will obstruct results - Deadline White House - Air Date 8-7-24

That state's election board approved a new rule having to do with Republicans latest attacks on our democracy, on our election systems, the [02:35:00] certification process. The rule establishes new criteria for officially confirming election results in the state of Georgia. The certifying happens, quote, After reasonable inquiry that the tabulation and canvassing of the election are complete and accurate and that the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.

Now, the New York Times explains what that actually means quote through seemingly innocuous, though, seemingly innocuous. The language implies that local election officials are awarded a level of discretion. in the certification process, a suggestion that runs counter to decades of settled Georgia law, delineating how results are officially certified.

State law dictates that officials shall certify an election, making the process effectively ministerial. Disputes over alleged fraud or major errors are typically left to recounts in courts. Now, attacks on certifying election [02:36:00] results have intensified since the 2020 election, and it is clear the ex president is gearing up to have certification questions play a major role this time around.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump called out the three Republicans on the Georgia State Election Board by name, who ended up voting for this new rule. I don't know if you've heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way. This is a very positive thing, Marjorie. They're on fire. They're doing a great job.

Three members, Janice Johnson, Rick Jeffries, and Janelle King, three people are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory. They're fighting. Fighting, fighting who? Fighting for what? Entire state election is administered by Republicans at the state level. Republican governor, Republican secretary of [02:37:00] state.

So again, why is he calling them out? And what is he talking about? What are they fighting against? Georgia passed its voter integrity law in 2021 despite the findings by Republicans that there was no widespread voter fraud in the state of Georgia during the 2020 election. That Joe Biden had legitimately won.

They did three counts. So, shouldn't they be bragging about the security and supremacy of their system? This fight isn't limited to Georgia. This may be the ballgame for Donald Trump this time. Reporting in Rolling Stone last week, I identified nearly 70 pro Trump election conspiracy theorists across several swing states currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results.

According to the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, since the 2020 election, members of state and local boards have voted against certification more than 20 times across eight states. Our friend and voting rights [02:38:00] attorney, Mark Elias, puts it like this, quote, with fewer than 100 days until the election, Republicans are building an election subversion war machine.

Protecting ourselves from that war machine is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. The aforementioned voting rights attorney, founder of the site Democracy Docket, Mark Elias is back, plus writer and editor for Protect Democracy, Amanda Carpenter's back, and New York Times reporter who has been reporting on this for years and specifically in a big piece with Jim Rutenberg in the last couple weeks, Nick Corsaniti is back.

Um, Nick, I've heard You've said this multiple times, but I think you've put the goings on in Georgia on the radar for us with your reporting there. Tell me what this board does to aid Trump in Trump's mind. He's calling them out at his rallies. Well, what they did yesterday is something that Trump and Republicans and his allies have been trying to do across the country, [02:39:00] and that is take the process of election certification, which, as we mentioned, and as you mentioned at the top here, is something that's always been ministerial.

And what that means is it's basically automatic. It's the law says shall, which means you must. Take election results. You, you know, you go through the normal process of checking them that you normally would, and then you certify them and pass them on. These county officials are not empowered by these ministerial duties to conduct their own investigations or insert their own opinions on the validity of these elections.

But a lot of Trump allies have been trying to do this across the country, as I reported a few weeks ago with my colleague Jim Bruttenberg, but they haven't been successful. They've been trying to do this through courts. That hasn't gone anywhere. They've been trying to do this through just having, uh, local officials refuse to certify and see if that gets them some precedent through a challenge.

That hasn't worked either. So what the State Board of Election did in Georgia yesterday was give that argument [02:40:00] its first sense of validity. You know, they are able to establish rules that local county officials all throughout Georgia are supposed to follow. They're not meant to be a lawmaking board. So it's highly possible that what they did yesterday is illegal and will be met with legal challenges, perhaps by some of the people also on on this panel, but they gave an opening to this idea that certification is indeed discretionary at the local level and what that could do if we were to rewind the clock.

Four years ago, when former President Trump was trying to overturn his loss in 2020. And, you know, he was calling election officials in Wayne County, Michigan County board members, excuse me, in Wayne County, Michigan, saying, please don't certify we were in an unknown about what that would do. Would that be able to forestall a loss?

Would that be able to change things? So they're trying to bring this back in an effort that, you know, to possibly short circuit a loss or anything like that. Bring this question of [02:41:00] certification into the realm of uncertainty. And that's what the Georgia State Board of Elections did yesterday. Mark Elias, I want to read what you wrote, but I, I just, for Trump, who's so obsessed with the size of his wins and, you know, wearing a superhero shirt when he survives COVID, it feels like this massive sort of.

telegraphing that he knows he's going to lose. Just talk about the tactic and what it telegraphs. Yeah, look, Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes. You know, every time someone would say Donald Trump won in 2016 and this is because of the American people. No, he won in 2016 because of the electoral college.

In 2020, he lost the popular vote by 7 million votes. Okay. He and the Republicans are running out of runway. They are running out of way to count on the electoral college and a bunch of other structural advantages that they have to, to counteract the [02:42:00] fact that more Americans want to vote for Kamala Harris than want to vote for him.

So what they are left with is two things. Number one, making it harder to vote, making voter suppression, which you and I have talked about. And then the second, which you and I frankly have been talking about for years now, it feels shorter, but it's been for years, is they want to be able to cheat after the election.

So they want to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat. And the way they are going to cheat, the way they tried to cheat in 2020, when I litigated against them and beat Donald Trump 60 times, 60 times in court. The way they tried to cheat is through what ballots get counted and what ballots don't get counted, and there's no better way to do that than through the certification process, which as, as, um, I was pointing, as Nick pointed out, they tried to do in 2020 in, um, uh, in Wayne County, uh, Michigan in 2022, they tried it again.

They tried in Arizona. My law firm, we sued Cochise County because Cochise County wouldn't certify the election results. We sued Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, because they wouldn't certify the election results. [02:43:00] And ultimately, we were able to win those lawsuits because this is a ministerial act. This is a ceremonial function.

This is not a opportunity for these people to conduct their own independent investigations. And what it says about Donald Trump is that he knows he's going to lose the popular vote. He knows he's probably going to lose the election if it is free and fair, but he doesn't care. He revels in the fact that it is an authoritarian, he admires the dictators and he is willing to do, and he has built a campaign and a party that is willing to literally do anything.

If they were willing to storm the Capitol to prevent certification on January 6th, what do you think they would do in a county in Georgia? What is the protection against that, Mark? So I think it's a few things. First of all, it is the great work that Nick and you and others in the media do who, who call attention to this.

It's one of the reasons why I started Democracy Documents, why we've written on this topic, because it is important for people to know this is going on because for [02:44:00] some of these elected officials or appointed officials, they have to live in these communities. They have to look at their neighbors and it is harder for them to do that if they're, if what they are doing is public rather than in the darkness of night.

The second thing is that there's a big obligation here for the legal establishment, you know, uh, lawyers like me, lawyers like, uh, like many others, like at Protect Democracy, you know, have a big obligation here. Every lawyer who swears an oath. to the law and the constitution has an obligation to fight against this kind of activity.

The First Step to Fixing the Electoral College - Robert Reich - Air Date 5-9-23

Should someone else's vote count more than yours? For 80 percent of Americans, that's exactly what's happening. Their vote for president isn't nearly as valuable as the vote of someone in a so called swing state. Most of us live in states that have become so predictably Democratic or Republican that we're taken for granted by candidates.

Presidential elections now churn on the dwindling number of swing states that could go either way, which gives [02:45:00] voters in those states huge leverage. The 2020 election came down to just over 40, 000 votes, spread across just 30 states. three swing states. 2016 came down to fewer than 80, 000 votes, also across three states.

In those elections, the national popular vote wasn't nearly that close. In fact, in the last five elections, the winners of the popular vote A popular vote beat their opponents by an average of 5 million votes. The current state by state electoral college system of electing presidents is creating ever closer contests in an ever smaller number of closely divided states for elections that aren't really that close.

Not only that, but these razor thin swing state margins can invite post election recounts, audits, and lawsuits, even attempted coups. A losing candidate might be able to overturn 40, 000 votes with these [02:46:00] techniques. Overturning 5 million would be nearly impossible. The current system presents a growing threat to the peaceful transition of power.

It also strips us of our individual power. If you're a New York Republican or an Alabama Democrat, presidential candidates have little incentive to try and win your vote under the current system. They don't need broad, popular support as much as a mobilized base in a handful of swing states. Campaigning to a smaller and more radical base is also leading to uglier, more divisive campaigns.

And it's becoming more and more likely that candidates are elected president without winning the most votes nationwide. It's already happened. Now, abolishing the electoral college should be the ultimate goal, but this requires a constitutional amendment, which is almost impossible to pull off because it would need a two thirds vote by Congress, plus approval by three quarters of all state legislatures.

But [02:47:00] in the meantime, there is an alternative, and it starts with getting our states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Now, don't let that mouthful put you off. It could save our democracy. This compact would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes nationwide without a constitutional amendment.

How does it work? The Constitution assigns each state a number of electors equal to its number of representatives and senators. As of now, the total number of electors is 538. So anyone who gets 270 or more of those electoral college votes becomes president. Article 2 of the Constitution allows state legislatures to award their electors any way they want.

So all that's needed is for states with a total of at least 270 electoral votes to agree to award All their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. [02:48:00] The movement to do this is already underway. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact, agreeing that once enough states join, all their electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner.

Together, states in the compact have 195 electoral votes. So we just need a A few more states with at least 75 electors to join the compact and it's done. Popular vote laws have recently been introduced in Michigan and Minnesota, which if passed would bring the total to 220. Now naturally this plan will face legal challenges.

There are a lot of powerful interests who stand to benefit by maintaining the current system. But if we keep up the fight and get enough states on board, America will never again elect a president who loses the national popular vote. No longer would 80 percent of us be effectively disenfranchised from presidential campaigns.

[02:49:00] And a handful of votes in swing states would no longer determine the winner. If you want to know more or get involved, click the link below to read about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If your state is not already a member, I urge you to contact your state Senators and Reps to get your state on board.

HERE IS THE PLAN TO REMOVE TRUMP, ELECT HARRIS. Steps 1, 2, and 3 - Rumble with Michael Moore - Air Date 8-5-24

So no more talk, no more yakety yak here. No more political rhetoric right now. We right now have only three months. From today before the election. That means that we must take, we all of us action every day. There's no way we're going to pull this off unless we do that. So I want to give you three quick things that you can do actually today.

All right, here's number one, go public, go public. You, yeah, I'm talking to you. I know you're not a public person, [02:50:00] but you have a few people in your life, right? You need to inspire them by proudly proclaiming that you're voting for Harris. And if we all do this, it may actually possibly save the country and change the world.

Again, it won't be the way you want it to be, but we're not voting for you. So let's get this right. Start it. So start by going public. And by the way, here's how you do it. You're online right now, right? Cause you're listening to me. Well, maybe you've got earbuds and you're on a walk. Okay. Well, when you get back home, but if you're on a computer right now, if you're on your phone, listening to me, then I want to ask you to do something right now.

I would like you to just pause this podcast and write a brief 20 word 50 word, maybe a hundred word, if you're like me, [02:51:00] your own thing that you call, let's just call it my declaration for president Kamala Harris. That's it. Just a note. And you're going to send it to 20 friends and family members. You need to tell them why, why you are probably not a political person necessarily.

And you don't usually send. Emails or texts like this, but today you've got to do it. You need to tell them why it's a new day in America for you. Why there's no more important job for any of us right now, from now until November 5th to stop Trump, to elect the first woman president of the United States.

Enough is enough. Make sure they feel that from you as you write these few sentences. Let them know we are not going back to the [02:52:00] 1950s. Our daughters will have complete control over their bodies and their lives. People in their 40s must no longer believe they will never own their own home. That is not the America I choose to live in.

Every American must have access to the care they need without having to consider the cost of it. Whether it's health care, dental care, mental care, elder care, child care, we need to stop living like this.

We are out of time. My friends invite these good people in your life that you're going to send this note to to join you in this, in this mission between now and November 5th. I [02:53:00] mean, seriously, and start a thread with them. Start a text thread with them. Right away. You can even name it. You can call it.

We're for Kamala, our Kamala crusade, hurry for Harris, whatever. I mean, just make up your own thing or have no name to it at all. Just start texting the, the 20 people, put them all on the thread. Most I think will join you. They love you. That's number one. Okay. You can do that right now. Number two today, make your own handmade yard sign. That's right. You're going to publicly declare you're for Harris. The usual ones, the campaign puts out because the campaign's only two weeks old. They're not ready yet, but they're printing them now. They say they'll be ready by mid to late August here.

We can't wait. [02:54:00] That's why you need to do one. You know, you need to get out a piece of cardboard and some magic markers. You're doing this because you're making the campaign yours. Now it's not just vice president Harris's or the party apparatus. It's you and me, you and me are going to make this happen.

You and me and a few million other Americans who are going to work their butts off, make this yard sign, make it festive, make it happy. Then go out and put it on your front lawn or, or if you live in an apartment building, put it in your apartment window, make a little ceremony out of it. You know, take the sign out in front of your house, bring your family out and invite a couple of neighbors, bring out your cats.

There's an unveiling ceremony taking place. Bring out a boom box, put on some Beyonce or Springsteen or whatever appropriate [02:55:00] music you think for the occasion. Because what you're doing. You're saving your democracy on your street, the very street you live on. And as soon as people in the neighborhood start to see this, you're going to find out friends you, you didn't know you had, will it upset a few people?

Yes. That's okay. You're not, you're not, you don't have an angry sign. You've seen the Trump signs as you've gone down the road, right? Take America back, make America great, make America great. Again, and again, and again, and again, big flags, angry flags using our American flag as a, as a way to be angry. No, that's not you.

You're going to put it out there. People are going to love you for it. And as soon as we get some bumper stickers, you're going to get a bumper sticker on your laptop and your car and your backpack because we have no [02:56:00] time to lose. Okay. So number one, right? First thing you're going to do. Is right to your 20 friends and family and tell them we're all in for Harris and we all need to get to work right now and sign up for this thing with Michael Moore because he's going to be sending us things for the campaign tool kit here.

Number two, you're going to go make a yard sign with your kids right now or make it by yourself. You know, I've already made mine. It's pretty bad. The nuns gave me a D in art. Unfair. I thought every year I thought unfair, but that's okay. They were good to me in many other ways. Um, that's number two, the yard sign.

Number three, you need to find out where the offices in your town, your neighborhood, uh, for the local Democrats, the local [02:57:00] democratic, uh, organization. Find out where that is. You probably can find it. Google it. And you need to go there today. Even if you don't have the time, just at least stop by there.

Pull up, pull in, walk into the place and announce yourself. There won't be Trumpets or anything just so when you announce yourself, you know, don't do it like you're, you know, Prince William or King Charles, you need to walk into that office and just say, put me to work. Now don't be too disappointed if they look at you like, who is this crazy person?

What are you talking about? Put you to work. We don't even know what we're doing here yet. That's okay. It's all early. All right. Um, but. Don't wait for them to say anything. Just go pick up a broom. There's a broom over there in the corner. Grab the broom. Start sweeping the place. Offer to make some calls.

Offer to make [02:58:00] some coffee. Make more yard signs. You already started that an hour ago. You're a pro at it now. I mean, trust me, my friends, just the doing the physical act of anything, something, whatever, it will feel exhilarating to you. Especially because you know that millions of others across the country right now are doing the same thing.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202)999-39912, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Mother Jones, the Lawfare Podcast, Democracy Nerd, the Al Franken Podcast, Farron Balanced, the BradCast, Fresh Air, the Washington Post, Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast. Amanpour, [02:59:00] DW news, Chapo Traphouse, Deadline, White House, Robert Reich, and Rumble with Michael Moore. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Aaron Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet. Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships.

You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/Support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast App. Membership is how you get instant access to our impressively good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion.

[03:00:00] 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.

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#1647 How to Eliminate Homelessness While Maintaining Our Humanity (Transcript)

Posted by · August 06, 2024 5:30 AM

Air Date 8/6/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left podcast. After the recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed governments to constitutionally purge unhoused people from public spaces, we are getting an immediate lesson in the difference between addressing systemic problems with solutions and using the police to clean up after governments that fail to act.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 45 minutes today includes Today, Explained, The Majority Report, Democracy Now!, Citations Needed, Factually!, with Adam Conover, Morning Joe, and The Thom Hartmann Program.

Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more on four topics:

Section A: The Supreme Court;

Section B: Demonization;

Section C: The Digitalization of Renting; and

Section D: Solutions.

Criminalizing homelessness - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-2-24

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: The decision is called City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. And Grants Pass is a city in [00:01:00] Oregon of about 38,000 people, about 600 of whom are homeless on any given day.

<CLIP> KPTV FOX 12 Oregon

Reporter: The City of Grants Pass claims it does not have enough space and shelters for their homeless population at the same time its laws impose civil penalties including fines on people sleeping outside on public property. If the fines are not paid they can become criminal charges

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: So some homeless people filed a lawsuit saying this is unconstitutional. And it is a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments. You're punishing us as homeless people. You're punishing homelessness, which, under a decision in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from a few years back, was determined to be unconstitutional. It's the largest of the circuits in the federal appellate court system. And so this is a [00:02:00] decision that applied to all the western states, which happened to be the states that have among the worst homelessness crises in in the country.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And so what happened here in this case, in Grants Pass?

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: There have been a number of claims since 2018 from homeless people living in various places on the West Coast, saying these ordinances are unconstitutional under the 2018 ruling.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: hmm

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: And this is one example that you can't ban public sleeping. And this is a decision from the Ninth Circuit that got up to the federal Supreme Court and what the court decided, 6 to 3, with all six conservatives on one side and the three liberal justices on the other, they decided that homeless people in Grants Pass do not have a constitutional claim, that the Eighth Amendment does not protect them from ordinances that criminalize [00:03:00] sleeping in public or in public parks.

<CLIP> KGW News

Anchor: the US Supreme court has sided with Grants Pass Oregon.

ABC7 News Bay Area

the high court’s decision is the most significant ruling on the issue in decades

<CLIP> KGW News

and it comes as cities in the west like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco have struggled to manage tent and outdoor encampments.

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: And basically, this gives cities everywhere in the West and across the country more tools at their disposal to address the homelessness crisis, but which the liberal justices thought was unconscionable.

<CLIP> Forbes Breaking News, oral arguments in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson

Elena Kagan: sleeping is a biological necessity, it’s sort of like breathing. I mean, you could say breathing is conduct too. But presumably you would not think that it’s okay to criminalize breathing in public.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So just to review, like before this case, if you were an unhoused person in the West, you had a pretty good legal case to say you can't criminalize me sleeping in public. But now it's going [00:04:00] to be a lot easier for cities and states around the country to criminalize camping outside. Can you tell me about the majority opinion? Who wrote it and how did they come to this opinion?

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: The majority opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was the first of Donald Trump's justices, who he nominated to the court when he first got into office. And Gorsuch begins by acknowledging that homelessness is a crisis, especially in the West. He quotes someone who says it's the defining public health and safety crisis of the day. But then he says, you know, it's not just a crisis for homeless people. It's a crisis for everyone. And that large public encampments bring with them a lot of crime and disease and drugs. And it's not the role of the Supreme Court to hamper the efforts of cities to try to address that crisis.

<CLIP>KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco

Anchor: He said that this is essentially a matter of local [00:05:00] control. Saying in part quote “a handful of federal judges can’t begin to match the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding how best to handle a pressing social question like homelessness” end quote.

STEVEN MAZIE [THE ECONOMIST]: The basic reasoning that Gorsuch summoned in this case is that the Eighth Amendment, when it bans cruel and unusual punishment, it's only banning certain methods or kinds of punishment. So he gives the examples of things like disembowelment and public dissection and burning people alive. Right. These are cruel and unusual kinds of punishment that the Eighth Amendment prohibits. So those things unconstitutional, but imposing civil fines on people for sleeping in public or ordering people to stay out of public parks. Those, he said, are not terrible. They are not painful. They are not cruel or unusual. He also makes a [00:06:00] point that the only argument on the other side involves. A position that criminalizing someone's status is unconstitutional. And there is one Supreme Court case that suggests that. But he says in this case, homeless people are not being criminalized as people. They're being criminalized for the things they do, which is sleeping in public with a blanket on them or with a pillow under their head. And then he says this: “it makes no difference whether the defendant is homeless, a backpacker on vacation, passing through town, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.”

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: Interesting. So basically, the unhoused people in this case, we're trying to say, look, you're criminalizing my status as a homeless person. You can't do that. But Gorsuch is basically saying, no, it's not - it's not criminalizing a status. It's criminalizing [00:07:00] the action of camping.

Sotomayor TORCHES Oregon Town Trying To Ban Homeless People - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-23-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Regardless, here is Sotomayor, in oral arguments yesterday, expressing that skepticism, questioning the attorney for Grants Pass, Theane Evangelis, Theeanne, and I don't know how to say her name, but, um, this is what Sotomayor was asking about.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: You're assuming it's there. It prohibits you criminalizing homelessness, right? So what you do is say only homeless people who sleep outdoors will be arrested. That's the testimony of your chief of police, two or three officers, which is, if you read the crime, It's only stopping you from sleeping in public if you, for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live. And the police officers testified that that means that if a stargazer wants to take [00:08:00] a blanket or a sleeping bag out at night to watch the stars and falls asleep, you don't arrest them. You don't arrest babies who have blankets over them. You don't arrest people who are sleeping on the beach, as I tend to do if I've been there a while. You only arrest people who don't have a second home. Is that correct?

THEANE EVANGELIS: Well...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Who don't have a home.

THEANE EVANGELIS: No, these laws are generally applicable. They apply to...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: That's what you want to say. Give me one example, because your police officers couldn't, and they explicitly said if someone has another home, has a home, and is out there and happens to fall asleep, they won't be arrested. Fall asleep with something on them.

THEANE EVANGELIS: Well, joint appendix page 98 is one example of a citation issued to a person with a home address. But more importantly, I think what we're getting at here is that these laws [00:09:00] regulate conduct of everyone. There's nothing in the law that criminalizes homelessness. I really...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: That's what, that's what you say, but if I look at the record and see differently...

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, she makes a very compelling point there, which is essentially that if you are clearly of a class that has a home and has private property or is a renter, you're like Sotomayor and you take a nap on the beach, or even, say, you're sunbathing in a public park in the summer and you fall asleep—I've done that—then am I going to get arrested in the same way that the person who's showing that they are visibly unhoused would be? Of course not. And the fact that this lawyer was trying to assert that there wasn't a double standard in this instance is ridiculous.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: To be coy. They're being coy. This is a lock up homeless people bill.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It is.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Own it.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Catfish James writes in: "Small correction on Grants Pass v. Johnson: there is a private homeless shelter there that requires church attendance and labor to use it."

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, that's wonderful. It requires [00:10:00] church attendance? Beautiful.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: That's why I didn't really include it because it's also, uh, categorized as a religious "transitional housing program". I wouldn't categorize that as a shelter, to be honest with you.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, George Orwell wrote, he did Down and Out in Paris and London, where he went around as he called at the time "a tramp", and went through the humiliation that unhoused people go through in religious contexts, needing to, like, put up with just bullshit to get fed.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I mean, right, exactly. It's, you have to show fealty to the religion. You have to basically be docile, and that's not a way to treat a human being. I mean, it's humiliating, and that's the kind of thing that... and there was also all these hoops to jump through and requirements often for testing ... first, the number one thing we need to be focused on is alleviating the exacerbating factor here, which is being unhoused, contributing to [00:11:00] mental health episodes tangibly, as well as active addiction, and then you can work on those issues and getting people back up on their feet. But, Mark Joseph Stern, as always, has a great write up in Slate and explains further what the Supreme Court is looking at here. "Since 2018, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the Constitution prohibits the prosecution of indigent people who sleep in public places when there is no available shelter space." That's the case that I referenced earlier in the Ninth Circuit. "Grants Pass gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn that rule and in the process roll back long standing limitations on cruel and unusual punishment. A majority of the court seemed inclined to do so based in part on a suspicion that the Ninth Circuit somehow is exacerbating homelessness," which, by the way, the implicit argument here—this is me editorializing—is [00:12:00] that it's incentivizing it? Oh, because you say people can sleep in public under a blanket, they're gonna all want to.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This is money, too, to prison systems.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yes. Yes. And Mark says, "Let's be clear, it isn't. And abolishing the Ninth Circuit's now ruling will do nothing to help people who lack housing or the communities in which they reside. The appeals court decision was rooted in the 1962 Supreme Court case called Robinson v. California. In Robinson, the high court struck down a California law that criminalized addiction to narcotics. The disease of addiction, the majority reasoned, constituted a status that the government may not penalize under the 8th and 14th Amendments, which proscribed states from imposing cruel and unusual punishments. The act of using narcotics could, of course, be prosecuted, but a person's mere condition as a drug addict could not. Based on this precedent, the 9th Circuit ruled that homelessness, like addiction, is a status that Grants Pass could not lawfully punish. And sleep, far beyond being a voluntary act like narcotics [00:13:00] use, is a basic human need that unhoused people literally cannot live without".

So, there's the second layer there that should undergird this reasoning and basically say that Robinson applies and that the Ninth Circuit ruling should stand, because sleeping is not in the same legal status as narcotics use, which is illegal. But addiction's not illegal. Homelessness is not illegal. The second standard beneath that should also, again, make this case stronger, but that's not seemingly what the conservative justices are alluding to.

"Advocates for homeless people were alarmed when the Supreme Court agreed to review the appeals court's decision, given the conservative majority's extreme hostility towards the Eighth Amendment. SCOTUS has torn down pretty much every safeguard against cruel and unusual punishment that it has come across, eviscerating the principle that the amendment enshrines evolving standards of decency into constitutional law. The real question in Grants Pass then is not whether the Supreme Court will side with the town. It will". This is [00:14:00] what Mark says. "The question is how much damage it will do to the 8th Amendment along the way."

So, Elena Kagan, Supreme Court justice also made the case that I was just making an oral arguments about how sleeping is not something that's voluntary or an action that you can take that should be deemed a criminal criminal activity. But to bring it back to what I said before, this is a way to further. push people in a cycle of poverty and into the prison industrial complex where they're going to have to pay fines over and over again for their own poverty and the conditions that society has set for them.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, yeah, I mean, I think Luke O'Neill's talked about this with regards to locking up, the police locking up people in Chicago. Like, if you lock up somebody from downtown Chicago, and they are transported to, like, a suburban containment facility, prison, that not [00:15:00] only means money to that facility, basically for caging humans, but also counts for them on the census. And I imagine this would probably play the exact same way, that, Okay, we sort out all the developers who want the police to remove homeless people, we get more money for prisons and count it towards the [unitelligible] on the sentence. Yeah, this is all part of the system.

Biden Proposes Major SCOTUS Reforms, Including Ending Lifetime Appointments & Enforcing Ethics Code - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-30-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: President Biden has laid out his plans to reform the U.S. Supreme Court, calling for 18-year term limits, an enforceable code of ethics and an end to presidential immunity. Biden’s plan comes a month after the Supreme Court granted former President Donald Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in office. Biden stopped short of calling for expanding the court. He outlined his plan Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, where he commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I’m calling for a constitutional amendment, called [00:16:00] No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It holds — I mean this sincerely. It holds that there’s no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our founders’ belief that the president must answer to the law, that the president is accountable for the exercise of the great power of the presidency. We’re a nation of laws, not kings and dictators. …

The second thing I’m asking for is we’ve had term limits for presidents of the United States for nearly 75 years, after the Truman administration. And I believe we should have term limits for the Supreme Court justices in the United dates, as well. …

Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: [00:17:00] That was President Biden speaking Monday. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson responded by accusing Biden of attempting to radically overhaul the Supreme Court. The House speaker said the proposals will be dead on arrival in the House.

We’re joined right now in Washington, D.C., by Jennifer Ahearn, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jennifer. Why don’t you start out by assessing President Biden’s proposals that he made yesterday in Texas as he celebrated the Civil Rights Act, and also how much chance they have of getting passed, now that we hear what the House speaker has to say?

JENNIFER AHEARN: Good morning, Amy. Thank you so much for having us. It’s great to join you.

I would say this is a pretty big deal for those of us who care about the Supreme Court. President Biden, I think, is somebody who sees himself as an institutionalist [00:18:00] and a champion of the importance of the rule of law and the role of the Supreme Court in upholding the rule of law. And so, if he believes that these kinds of changes are necessary, I think the public already believes this. And so, that he has come along and is lending his voice to this call is, I think, critically important for this moving forward.

I, you know, understand Speaker Johnson’s view, and I understand that this — that means this is perhaps a longer-term project that we are engaged in. And I think, politically, we have a ways to go before the views of the people and the commonsense reforms of these kinds can actually make their way through the Washington process. But I think this is a really important moment in that long process. And we’re just really grateful that the president has chosen this as one of the things to speak out on in his last hundred days in office.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Jennifer, [00:19:00] the commission that President Biden established on Supreme Court reform submitted its report in late 2021. That’s almost three years ago. Why did you think it took him so long to actually pursue some recommendations?

JENNIFER AHEARN: Well, I mean, actually, right, he specifically asked the commission not to give him recommendations, so it really didn’t give him even that list, which I think really goes to show sort of how much movement there has been in his thinking on this in the last few years, right? That he didn’t even want to consider recommendations in those early years of his administration. And so, I think that that is a sign of how far his thinking has come and how far, you know, more broadly, the public’s thinking has come on this issue. And so, I think that that really is why, I think, we are where we are today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about this proposed 18-year term limit? How would that [00:20:00] affect the court’s stability and continuity, if it were enacted?

JENNIFER AHEARN: I think it would put the court on a more sustainable path in terms of how it relates to the public and to public support for and views of the court’s legitimacy. It’s worth remembering that, really, the Supreme Court has nothing other than its legitimacy, right? There’s no — it has no army. It has no power of the purse. You know, in our constitutional system, the court’s legitimacy and the respect that we, as a country, have for it is really all it has. And so, something like term limits, that would bring the court more in line in a very long-term, sustainable kind of way with where the public is and where — and with the issues of the day, I think, is really important to the court’s overall legitimacy and putting it on that path.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, Jennifer, if you could more specifically address the points that [00:21:00] Biden is making? What would an 18-year term look like? And if there was an 18-year term, who would be off the court right now?

JENNIFER AHEARN: So, the longest-serving members of the court at the moment are Justice Thomas, Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. So, depending on exactly how you implement a reform like this — and there are lots of different ways to do it — you would probably see those folks rotating off first on the list.

You know, I would also say, in general, if you look at, really, big picture, what would this do, remember that the president, obviously, is the one who nominates Supreme Court justices, and so you would see the — whatever swings there are on the court, in terms of partisan who — the partisan who appointed the justice, that would more closely track how presidential elections have gone over time. And that’s really not what we see on the court [00:22:00] right now. We see the appointees from President Donald Trump having, you know, a huge — having appointed three Supreme Court nominees, which is more than any other president. So, you would see some of that smoothing out over time.

The New York Times also had a graphic this morning that showed that if term limits had been in effect in the past, we would see a 6-3 liberal majority at the moment as opposed to the 6-3 conservative majority that we currently see. So, that’s sort of how you might want to think of it generally. And, obviously, the specifics depend a little bit on how you actually put this into place.

News Brief Media, Billionaires' Attacks on Homeless People May Pay Off Big at Supreme Court - Citations Needed - Air Date 3-6-24

ADAM JOHNSON - CO-HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: I want to talk a bit about, if you could, media narratives around this. This is a media narrative podcast. There hasn't been a lot of coverage of this particular issue. For the most part, it's either, kind of, lurid, shocking tabloid local news stuff centering one's homelessness status in a headline. You know, 'homelessness person' [sic] stabbed so and so, or 'homelessness person' [sic] is caught doing such and such. But of course, we never see headlines saying 'house person' murders wife or 'house person' is arrested for, you know, [00:23:00] securities fraud, right?

So, it's either inciting violence, or it's this maybe, occasionally 10%, you'll kind of get this liberal hand wringing kind of personal interest stuff. Which is fine. I have no problem with that. But generally speaking, as we've covered on the show, there's a lot of demagoguery and misinformation around this particular topic. And like you said, it is framed in this kind of moral context as if it's just millions of people who are just either drug-addled zombies or just lazy. There's been a concerted effort fueled by VC money, real estate interests, and right wing and, frankly, Democratic politicians, I think we would be remiss not to point out where it's gotten more hardcore lately.

So, in the last two years, there's been an effort by the Miami City Council—it was voted on, but I think it was later overturned only because of, I think NIMBY concerns—they wanted to turn an Island off the coast of Florida into a homeless camp, effectively. And then there was an op-ed by former NBA all-star Bill Walton advocating a camp in the middle of the California desert for homeless people. Ron DeSantis now has just revealed a plan to build camps for homeless people.

Now, what they'll say is, is they'll say—and this I think is kind of a clever [00:24:00] marketing thing that I want to get your take on—they'll say, Oh, it's voluntary. But then when you read the fine print and you realize everywhere that isn't the camp, it's illegal for them to sleep in, by pain of jail or police abuse, and when anywhere but the camp is illegal to exist in, by definition, or to sleep in in any meaningful way, like you said, with the blanket or pillow, then it's no longer voluntary, then it is actually definitionally an internment camp.

So, if you could, I want you to talk about what these kind of fringe solutions—"solutions"—which, again, are always kind of laundered through this voluntary choice rhetoric, even though we all know that's bullshit, talk about the more extreme end of the spectrum, if you could, and how even like, I think, 10 years ago, this wasn't really even imaginable that as the housing crisis gets more acute and we see more visible poverty, the solutions really seem like they're becoming more overtly cruel and fascistic.

JESSE RABINOWITZ: Yeah, I want to say maybe three things. One is to note that Donald Trump is running explicitly on a campaign of throwing people experiencing homelessness into [00:25:00] internment camps. And that is terrifying. I don't think the things that you're talking about, these internment camp strategies, are fringe anymore. Cities and states across the country have passed legislation to do this. It's largely being promoted by the Cicero Institute, which is funded and backed by tech fund billionaire Joe Lonsdale. And this template legislation has generally four components. One is, camping is illegal. One is the creation of internment camps. So, if you do sleep outside, the only place you can sleep is an internment camp, which is not voluntary. Another part is the gutting of housing that ends homelessness. So, actually taking money away from proven solutions and homelessness. And the fourth component is the requirement that police are involved in homeless outreach, not to address people's needs, but to enforce anti-camping laws.

So, those components are extreme. I want to [00:26:00] talk about Kentucky, who's working on a more extreme version of this, that in addition to those clauses would enable people to enact 'Stand Your Ground' laws if there is a homeless person that's staying on your property. You could use force and even deadly force to remove a person experiencing homelessness from your property.

So, all of these things are extreme, but that is just unfathomable. And Arizona is working on—you know, I think states are trying to outdo each other—Arizona added a new provision that says if there's a hotel for people experiencing homelessness, or if there's a hotel where people are staying and also being used as shelter for people experiencing homelessness, you have to put a giant sign outside that says homeless people are staying here.

This continual desire to demonize and ostracize people experiencing homelessness is harmful. It's dangerous, and, most importantly, doesn't end homelessness.

ADAM JOHNSON - CO-HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: Well, that's the issue, right? Because, like, this reminds me so much of this, like, [00:27:00] so called border crisis panic, where it's like the existence of unwanted humans is seen as this thing that just kind of fell from the sky that has no root cause. It has no origin. It has no social solutions or humane solutions, that every solution we have is batons, bars and cages, right? Sort of it's cops and cages, but all the way down, no matter what. And you see this often when it comes to people talking about alternative solutions. So, your organization obviously tries to present that. And in many ways, maybe it's a bit of a, you know, you're kind of yelling into the void because, of course, the media largely presents this kind of anodyne, you know, it's like all the euphemisms we get, right?—secure the border, tighten the border—that obscure the human cost, just like cracking down homeless camp sweeps.

These anodyne terms necessarily make it look like these are kind of harm-free measures. And the human face is just completely obscured or diminished. I want to ask you from the advocacy work you do, obviously, there's a bunch of people working on housing solutions that are not punitive, obviously, on a state level, especially I know New York has [00:28:00] seen great strides or have made an effort. I know Washington, D. C. has tried to do that and obviously I'll work on that, and that has to sort of be an alternative to this punitive approach. So, from y'all's perspective, what do you find is the general, just talking to lawmakers in the public, what do you think is the kind of biggest misinformation or misconception that people have about the cops and cages approach versus like, Yes, this is not a moral criminal problem, it is a problem of not having sufficient housing.

JESSE RABINOWITZ: I think the biggest misconception that folks have is that homelessness is a choice and homelessness is an individual failing. But in reality, homelessness is caused by housing that's too expensive and wages aren't enough. But by continuing to individualize the problem, people think there are individual solutions, like a jail cell or punishment or a courtroom.

But realistically, we have to get to the root of this. And the root of this is that Americans can't afford to pay rent. I think Miami is a really [00:29:00] interesting counterexample to Grants Pass. Miami, until recently, was under a consent decree that basically said they couldn't criminalize people experiencing homelessness if there was no shelter available. So, instead of responding with jail cells, Miami was forced to respond with more housing and more shelters, and they reduced homelessness by half. This shows that another way to address homelessness is possible.

It's so disappointing to watch our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans, throw up their hands and say, There's nothing we can do, the only thing we can do is arrest people, when in reality, there's so much they can do. We saw during the pandemic that essentially overnight cities opened up hotels to house homeless folks. There's no reason we can't do that now, except we lack the political will to do so. We know that when folks are connected to housing and services, [00:30:00] they don't live outside anymore. And in DC, where I'm based, 95% of people experiencing homelessness in permanent supportive housing stay housed after their first year. This idea that housing doesn't work is simply not true.

Myths about Homeless People with Dr. Margot Kushel - Factually! - Air Date 5-8-24

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: But there is this myth out there that people don't want housing and, um, if that person exists, I haven't been able to find them. You know, like, housing, a house, you know, you probably don't need permission in your house to leave or come, you probably don't have like random strangers walking in, right? You get to do kind of what you want to do. Like, no one is door knocking on your house to say, did you, I don't know, open a can of beer, you know, they don't do that in my house. They don't come and ask me. And so once you offer that, everyone says, yes.

We did this other study a number of years ago in Santa Clara County. So most, this is like where Silicon Valley is, most expensive real estate market in the country, I [00:31:00] think. And, we basically helped them find about 300 people who were the most, um, or maybe it was 400 people, sorry, 400 people who were like the most challenging folks on their streets in the county. These were folks who were like in and out of jail, the hospital, the psych, emergency room, you know, really causing a lot of chaos. We basically found them and we were like, you know, we're not even going to ask them if they want housing because we're going to see them. Because the reason they're in this group is like, they're getting arrested or getting pulled into the ER all the time. So, we just kind of put a note in their chart, like we flagged their police record and everything. And we're like, if they show up, when you're ready to discharge them, can you give us a call?

So, the deal was that they had to give us a call. And we had enough units of housing for about half of them. And so we showed up at about seven in the morning and I'm actually not kidding. We literally showed up and we're like, Hi we know you've been up all night, like in the ER, you probably don't feel that hot and, um, you never met me before, but if you sign these [00:32:00] 20 pieces of paper, um, we'll give you a coin flip, a 50/50 chance of getting into housing. We approached 426 people. Two said, I'm really tired. I can't talk to you. Fair enough. One was eligible and said no. Every other person, 423 people were like 50/50 chance and all I have to do is like sign up and sign up to be in the study? Absolutely.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Wow.

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: We flipped the coin. The people who got into housing by the time we finished, 91% of them had been housed at the beginning, 86% when we published our study had been housed. These are like the "toughest to house" people, like lots of psychiatric disease, lots of [unintelligible]. And then once they got housed, they stayed housed. We followed them for seven years and over 90% of the nights on average, they were housed for the next seven years.

So, these were the folks who are like the public is most freaked out about, you know, these are folks who were in the psychiatric emergency department, you know, 10 times a [00:33:00] year, in jail five times a year, you know, in the hospital four times a year, whatever. Like, really, really folks who are struggling mightily. They all were like, sign me up.

So, this idea that people don't want housing, it's just not true. And what we found in the state study is people desperately want housing—desperately—but there were just so many things. First of all, they couldn't afford it. They were like, you know, when we asked them about the barriers to housing, it was a little bit of a hard question to ask them because they were like, looked at us like everyone sort of looked at us. Like, are you a literal idiot? The rent is too damn high. Like, they were literally like, what do you think? This apartment I can find is $1,500 a month and I only have....

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Yeah. why don't I have a Rolls Royce either, you know?

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: Yeah, right! Exactly. They were literally like... my poor staff would like text me and they're like, I feel kind of like an idiot to ask [00:34:00] this question. And people are treating me like I'm really dumb. But there are all these other reasons. Like people talked about, almost half of people talked about the discrimination they experienced in the rental housing markets. They're like, you try to go looking for housing if you look like me, they would say. You know, lots of discrimination, lots of people not having the paperwork. They're like, have you ever tried to rent a house where you have no clean clothes and no proof that you exist? Like, how are you supposed to rent a house? So, lots and lots of barriers.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: And in terms of why people are on the street, in terms of those barriers, we almost should have tackled this earlier because it's one of the biggest things that people say about folks who are homeless, is that they are either profoundly psychiatrically disturbed, or that they are addicted to drugs. And that's why they ended up on the streets is because of drug addiction. How much did you find that was true? How much did that cause their problems? How much do those problems exist and how much were they caused by homelessness itself?

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: Yeah, well, to [00:35:00] answer that, I'm going to actually, is it okay if I start with like a little analogy that I feel like helps explain this?

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: I would love an analogy. I live for them.

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: You live for them, awesome! So, my good friend Greg Colburn wrote this, with Clayton Alden, this amazing book called Homelessness is a Housing Problem. I was like, joke, like, you gotta love a book who's like, entire thesis—it's a great book, you should read it—but also the title sort of tells you the whole story, right? Homelessness is a housing problem. And they use this analogy that I've used a lot. They've used, it's a great analogy, which is analogy of musical chairs. So, you imagine like a kid's birthday party and 10 kids show up and there are 10 chairs and the adults plays music and the kids walk around. Adult pulls away a chair, turns off the music, and the kids scramble for the remaining chairs. So, you do a thought experiment, and little Tommy, night before, sprains his ankle at a soccer game. And Tommy shows up on crutches, he doesn't really know how to use and he, you know, shows up at the birthday party and they're playing this game. If you're a betting man, and they're like, who is still going to be [00:36:00] standing when there are only nine chairs? I think we would all put our money on Tommy, right?, who's like not going to be able to like dive bomb into the remaining chairs. Right?

But what if you ask a different question? What if you asked a question like, why is there a kid standing? Well, duh, there's a kid standing because you've got nine chairs and ten kids and either two kids are sitting in each other's lap or there's a kid who's standing, right? So, the same holds true for homelessness. Like in California, right now, we have 24 units of housing for every 100 extremely low income households. Extremely low income household are basically any household that makes less than 30% of the median income for the area they live in. So, that's like a higher income in L.A. than it is in Fresno, but you get the idea. And available and affordable means that it exists, it's habitable, it's not occupied by someone who makes more money, and that they can afford it on less than 30% of their income, 'cause if you're that poor and you pay more than 30% of your income, you can't really pay for it. And so the idea is [00:37:00] that we only have 24 units for every a hundred households. We're a million units short. We basically are playing this giant cruel game of musical chairs, except we have 24 seats and 100 kids.

So, a lot of kids are sitting on top of each other and then we have a lot who are standing. It is not a surprise that who's left standing are often people with behavioral—we call in the medical field—behavioral health disabilities, either mental health problems or substance use problems, because those are disabilities that kind of interfere with your function, interfere with your social relationships. You know, I'm a physician. Like, I don't think about those as moral failings. I mean, in the same way where I don't think having cancer or a heart attack or inflammatory bowel disease, like those are not moral failings, they're just, you know, complex problems that your interactions of like your genes and your luck and your environment. So, anyway, [00:38:00] yes, people who experience homelessness are much more likely to have substance use and mental health problems in the overall population. No, that is not why we have so much homelessness in California.

White House takes new action to lower housing costs - Morning Joe - Air Date 7-16-24

MIKA BRZEZINSKI - CO-HOST, MORNING JOE: Joe Biden will be in Las Vegas today to announce new action to lower housing costs across the country. According to a fact sheet obtained by NBC News, the action will include calls for Congress to pass a law requiring landlords to cap rent increases at 5 percent or risk loslng out on federal tax breaks

JOE SCARBOROUGH - CO-HOST, MORNING JOE: With us now, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Biden, Marcia Fudge. Today, she's officially joining the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign as a national co chair.

Thank you so much for being with us. Obviously, the affordability of housing is one of the greatest...

MIKA BRZEZINSKI - CO-HOST, MORNING JOE: Huge issue.

...greatest challenges facing, I was going to say young Americans, but young and old Americans alike.

MARCIA FUDGE: It absolutely is. And thank [00:39:00] you for having me this morning. I'm happy to be a part of the team. Um, housing is a crisis in this country and it has been for some time. I'm really excited about the fact that the President is announcing this in Las Vegas, where the crisis is particularly acute. Housing prices, especially rents, are going up 10-20% annually, and it is making it such that we have more and more people who need assistance, more and more people being pushed to the streets. I think that the president is saying to this country, I hear you. I see the problem. I know the problem, and I'm gonna do everything I can to solve the problem. And I'm really excited about what can happen when we try to make sure that every American has decent and safe housing and affordable housing. That's what today is about.

WILLY GEIST - CO-HOST, MORNING JOE: Secretary Fudge. Good morning. Uh, you obviously have firsthand experience in this and you've witnessed it from the inside as Secretary of HUD. What are the big challenges from the inside that you saw? You might have come in with an idea about how you were going to fix things. What are the challenges that face [00:40:00] anyone looking for housing, expensive, less expensive or otherwise in this country?

MARCIA FUDGE: Well, there are only really two things that we can do. One is build more housing because until we put more housing in the market, the market is going to continue to drive the prices up. So there has to be more affordable housing.

But secondly, as we're talking about Las Vegas again, one in three homes in various parts of Las Vegas are purchased by corporate buyers. Corporate buyers come in, they own almost one third of the recently sold housing in places like Florida, Las Vegas and other places. So they drive the prices up because they hold on to them. They don't sell them. They rent them and they raise the rents on an annual basis, and it has created a real problem because we have no control over how that is happening. That is why the president is saying it's time for Congress to do something, to act to make sure that people are not being gouged and that people can continue to expect to find something that they can live in that is affordable.

Can Homelessness Be Eliminated- One Oregon County Found a Surprising Solution - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 4-1-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: The [00:41:00] other story I want to share with you is just amazing that Washington County is a county here in Oregon, it's not, you know, a huge population county. It's not one of the remote, very, very rural counties. It's kind of in between. It's kind of close to us, isn't it, Sean? Yeah, it's next door to Multnomah County. It's the next county over. So, you know, it's got a pretty good sized population. And, uh, the tri-county area, this is called Metro, we've got this weird government, kind of an oversight government that raises taxes for all three of these counties. And they raised this tax a couple years ago as a 10 year homelessness services measure, uh, that only kicks in for people who are making over a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, and big businesses in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties. And what it did is it raised millions and millions of dollars. Well, Washington County took that money and literally ended homelessness in their county with it. "Over the past two years, the money has gone"—I'm reading from this [00:42:00] piece in Oregon Live, in The Oregonian, our statewide paper—"They built a homelessness services system from the ground up, they established 90 tiny homes at three locations, and built other shelters, which in turn allowed outreach workers to eliminate the county's seven large and medium sized encampments by moving those campers into the collective 380 new shelter beds. The county also experienced a near instant tenfold increase in housing vouchers to cover or subsidize unhoused people's rent for a few months, for any period of time from a few months to a couple of years, or even permanently. And this provides", they note, "a glimmer of hope regarding what many had come to feel as an intractable problem. Voters approved the 10 year homeless measure", I already told you about that.

So, they did it. They pulled it off, which proves that the homelessness problem is not, you know, yes, there are elements of, you know, mental illness and addiction, as there are [00:43:00] with many other problems we have, you know, the crisis in our prisons, for example. But the biggest part of the problem is housing is just no longer affordable in the United States. And in large part, that's because Wall Street, these hedge funds, and these private equity groups are buying as many as a quarter of all new single family, or all single family homes that are coming on the market, depending on the market, depending on where you are. In some towns, they're buying most all of them. And they're driving up housing prices like there's no tomorrow, because they're taking these houses off the housing market and turning them into rental properties.

And housing should not be a commodity that can become an investment, you know, outside of the investment that individual homeowners make in their homes. I just think this is wrong.

[You're listening to The Thom Hartmann Program. Call (202) 808-9925.]

This exploitation of housing as an investment is wrong. What's right is lowering the cost of housing and thus ending homelessness. [00:44:00] Good on Washington County of Oregon.

Notes from the Editor on the layers of problems and solutions for addressing homelessness

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Today, Explained laying out the background of the case. The Majority Report highlighted... Democracy Now! looked at Biden's proposed Supreme Court reforms. Citations Needed discussed the demonization of unhoused people. Factually! With Adam Conover compared the benefits of harm reduction programs with the alternative. Morning Joe looked at strategies to lower housing costs And The Thom Hartmann Program described the working solution taken up by a county in Oregon.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dives section, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here discussing all manner of important, interesting topics, often making each other laugh in the process. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, [00:45:00] through our Patreon page, if you like, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. And if a 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.

And now before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half, I wanted to look at the problem of government inaction, sort of layer by layer, using one story from Sacramento County in California, where I grew up. So, I just happened to come across this. In the summers, it gets incredibly hot there. I know that people who aren't from California think, first, of all the places with the perfect weather and the moderate temperatures, but those places are all on the coasts and maybe in the mountains, but in the valley where Sacramento is, it gets oppressive. They nearly broke the record this year for the most 100 degree days in a row, which included many days above 110 degrees. And I think they just had one that broke a record at [00:46:00] 116. So, on surprisingly people need a lot of water to survive in a place like that. Well, the county of Sacramento was delivering jugs of water to homeless encampments—not enough to thrive, not even close, just enough to stave off death by dehydration—until they just stopped in the past few weeks, coincidentally, as it turned out, right before that near record he'd wave.

So, why did they stop? Unsurprisingly, again, the funding dried up. So, when the contract that they were paying for expired and there wasn't a plan in place to replace it, the program was stopped. So it wasn't an active decision pursuing a desire to cut off desperate people from water, but it was the result of the failure to act, knowing that that would be the result. And this I think is indicative of the entire problem of homelessness we have in this country. So, when you dig deeper, you begin to see the layers of the [00:47:00] problem here. The reason that funding dried up is because it was part of emergency COVID funding from the federal government, which of course ended. Now to be clear, I am glad that that emergency money was being used for this good cause. That's not the problem. The issue is that this water delivery program was totally dependent on emergency funding, which was, predictably, a very fragile way to fund a critical program that helps prevent the near instant death of people who cannot access water in the summer in a place where it regularly gets up over a hundred degrees.

So, looking at the very bottom layer of this problem—insecure funding for water deliveries—one could argue that, Well, the solution is we need better funding sources to deliver water to people. But one layer up, there's another argument that came from an engineer who wrote about this problem and asked, essentially, why the hell are we delivering water [00:48:00] in bottles? Sacramento already has great plumbing infrastructure, so we just need to tap into it. The water delivery program costs $200,000 a year and only provides individuals with about six gallons of water per month. For the same cost providing taps where unhoused people are actually living would provide far more water than the delivery program and help prevent unauthorized tapping into the system, because of course, desperate people seeking water are going to do what it takes to get water. And so they have figured out how to illegally tap into the system, which then of course puts them at risk of further interactions with police and on and on. The writer puts it this way. "Our current method offends my engineer's soul. It is outrageous that humans are picking up, driving, and delivering plastic gallon jugs of water when we have plumbing right now. We have mastered delivering clean, [00:49:00] pressurized, on-demand water to our people. That people are dying of thirst in a place with complete water infrastructure is a sign that we have failed at decency"

Plus, just the, like nuts and bolts logistics of being unhoused, it is hard to imagine how hard it would be to ever be able to pull oneself out of homelessness if you have to spend significant amounts of time each day, sourcing water to drink. So, making it inaccessible, except for rare deliveries, just helps to perpetuate the cycle that keeps people living outdoors and perpetuates the fact that the government has to deal with those people and the problems that result from it.

Of course, as we're arguing in today's show, just like how you'd get a better result if you act on the bigger picture, like using built infrastructure rather than cobbling together flimsy insufficient band-aid [00:50:00] programs like water delivery, you'd also get better results if you'd zoom out even further. Start by providing people with housing. They come with water. And watch as that provides the foundation for people to get their lives back on track. Think what they could be doing to improve their situation, if they had a kitchen and a sink with as much running water as they needed.

SECTION A - THE SUPREME COURT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, for more of the problems and solutions, we continue with Deeper Dives on four topics. Next up, Section A: The Supreme Court. Followed by Section B: Demonization, Section C: The Digitalization of Renting, and Section D: Solutions.

Criminalizing homelessness - Today, Explained Part 2 - Air Date 7-2-24

Unhoused Woman: My biggest concern is that as much as we try, we might be stuck being in the car for a long time.

RACHEL: Just to put this in perspective: the fastest growing demographic of homelessness in America is people over 65.

<CLIP> CBS Evening News

Reporter: According to research, the number of homeless people over 55 is expected to spike to [00:51:00] 225,000 in the next four years nationwide, up from 170,000 in 2017. That's a 32% jump.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So, broadly speaking, how are communities handling this like record setting number of people who are unhoused?

RACHEL: Communities are pursuing, you know, a mix of different strategies.

SCORING IN <CEZ_CEZ_4209_00201_Strategies_APM>

Some are increasing funding for low income housing and passing these measures to make it harder for people to get evicted from their homes.

<CLIP> WMHT, New York NOW

Reporter: That's why New York's capital city of Albany recently became the first in the state to approve what’s called “Good Call” evictions. That makes it harder for landlords to evict tenants without a clear reason why

Council member: we have to protect tenants. There are 60% of residents in the city of Albany who are renters and we want to make sure we are protecting them.

RACHEL: Other communities are also looking for more of these sort of stop the tide measures, like investing more in emergency shelters. Some are banning outdoor camping broadly, but then saying, okay, there can be some places within the [00:52:00] city that people can go if they want to sleep outside, but they can't go anywhere else.

<CLIP> KVUE

Anchor: For the first time we're seeing dozens of locations, the City of Austin is considering to designate as homeless camping sites.

RACHEL: As you can probably tell, like these don't really solve homelessness. The real solutions just take time. So we're seeing a lot of communities do things that are sort of trying to deal with the problem, that might not necessarily solve the problem.

<CLIP> NBC News

Program organizer: Worker: we have housing navigation, we have employment navigation, and we have an outreach doctor, an outreach nurse that comes in, we have mental health professionals.

SCORING OUT

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So, Rachel, the Supreme Court just came down with this landmark decision. What do you expect to see from cities on the ground now?

RACHEL: Effectively, what the decision makes it easier to do is it makes it easier for cities to clear out homeless encampments, even if cities don't have actual, real other shelter options available for homeless people to go to. So it also means that it will be easier for [00:53:00] cities to enforce their existing camping bans, which could result in more arrests and fines for people experiencing homelessness. That said, I do want to stress it's not inevitable that criminalization will occur. We could also see states step up like we saw after the overturning of Roe v Wade, to enshrine new protections for people who are homeless.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So a big question at the center of this case has been whether the Supreme Court is going to make it easier to criminalize homelessness. How does criminalizing affect things on the ground for the people who are trying to solve the homelessness problem?

RACHEL: Criminalizing people experiencing homelessness absolutely makes it harder to get them into housing. Ultimately.

<CLIP> VICE News

Unhoused Woman: I got a warning ticket. They know I'm on a voucher. I'm waiting for, from HUD, I'm waiting for the apartments to be built for us to move into. And I'm still getting ticketed. They're gonna threaten to throw me in jail. If i’m going to jail. I lose my housing.

RACHEL: You know, there are just limits to how many people are willing to rent units to people with criminal records. And so this creates such a significant [00:54:00] barrier. Roughly 1 in 3 U.S. adults has a criminal record.

<CLIP> VICE News

Advocate for the unhoused: Where do you think that they're brought when they are released from jail? They're brought back to the street, right back to where they started from. The only thing that's changed is they have another barrier to housing.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: You've been covering solutions to the homelessness crisis from different angles, looking at ways cities are trying to combat homelessness. What are some of the more innovative strategies you find that communities are investing in?

RACHEL: So some states are investing in building more housing and shelter, which is really important. But as we've talked about, it just takes time. And a lot of people are really impatient right now. They want immediate solutions. Some of the faster things that communities are turning to are these things called tiny homes.

<CLIP> KCRA 3

Sacramento advocate for tiny homes: It's pretty basic, but it gives folks a place to have their own space: a bed, a little desk, some storage.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: Does that mean that cities are moving away from, like, temporary emergency shelters?

RACHEL: Not exactly. But there is this [00:55:00] greater recognition these days that many people who are sleeping outside in tents just do not want to go to these emergency shelters, which at least historically, have been places without much privacy.

<CLIP> Tristan & Robyn answer ‘Why don't you stay in shelters?’:

Tristan: Get your stuff stolen. People try to fight ya.

RACHEL: Where you can't really bring many of your belongings, your pets, sometimes your partner.

<CLIP> Tristan & Robyn answer ‘Why don't you stay in shelters?’

Robyn: If we were to go to a shelter, we would not be able to sleep beside each other. Chances are we'd be separated or monitored or treated very differently because we are a couple.

RACHEL: Some of these shelters have also had rules like mandatory church attendance. A lot of people have had traumatic experiences staying in shelters. And so rather than go back to one, what some people are saying is I'd rather just sleep outside.

NBCLA

Unhoused man in LA: I'm not on parole. Probation? I'm free man. I want to be treated like I'm free. You living in shelters like you living in jail.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And like beyond shelters, like, what about people moving, you know, off the streets into actual, more permanent housing like apartments? Is that an option realistically, from a cost perspective, for cities?

RACHEL: Yes, it's hard, but it is. So an approach to solving [00:56:00] homelessness that has had bipartisan support for nearly three decades is called Housing First…

… and its general model is getting people into permanent housing and offering them support services but the model has been coming under a lot of strain amid our housing shortage, because you can't really do Housing First without enough housing.

JULIA LONGORIA - GUEST HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: How did this idea of Housing First even start?

RACHEL: Well, it really reflected a shift from how homelessness policy in the U.S. had been handled for many, many years, which was this idea of housing readiness or this idea that before we give you housing, we want to make sure you have gone through job training programs, that you have stabilized all the other issues in your life, and then there basically begin a new way of thinking about it. You know, Republicans and Democrats who came to understand that actually, it's really hard to address other parts of your life that are not working well if you don't have stable housing to come home to

Biden Proposes Major SCOTUS Reforms, Including Ending Lifetime Appointments & Enforcing Ethics Code Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-30-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In July, Democratic Congressmember [00:57:00] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filed articles of impeachment against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito over alleged ethics violations. The news outlet ProPublica revealed Thomas failed to disclose millions of dollars of gifts from billionaires — in one case, accepting luxury trips virtually every year from right-wing megadonor Harlan Crow — without disclosing them. The Supreme Court justices have since agreed to a code of conduct. On Thursday, Justice Elena Kagan became the first member of the Supreme Court to make a public statement in support of adding an enforcement mechanism to the new ethics code. Kagan spoke at an annual judicial conference held by the 9th Circuit.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: I think that the thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them. And this one, this set of rules, does not. … I think, you know, both in terms of enforcing [00:58:00] the rules against people who have violated them, but also in protecting people who haven’t violated them, I think a system like that would make sense.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: For more on this, we’re joined by Andy Kroll, investigative reporter for ProPublica, part of the team who just won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism for its investigation into politically connected billionaires lavishing luxurious gifts on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, also the fact that they support organizations that have cases before the Supreme Court. Your response to President Biden and to Justice Kagan?

ANDY KROLL: I think the statement from President Biden, and especially the comments from Justice Kagan, show how much the conversation around Supreme Court reform has changed in just the last 12 to 18 months. I mean, thinking back to what Jennifer from the Brennan Center said just a moment ago, [00:59:00] the difference between when the presidential commission did its work and put forward its not-recommendations back in 2021 to where we stand today is pretty stark.

The fact that President Biden is using the bully pulpit, as a lame-duck president, to push for these reforms, to really drive this conversation, and then the fact that a sitting justice, in Elena Kagan, is saying this new code of conduct, a code of conduct that was issued in response to ProPublica’s reporting, is not enough, that it does not have enforcement, it does not have teeth, in the way that the code of conduct for every other federal judge does, I think, really shows how far this conversation has come in just a year. Obviously, it has a ways to go, given the politics of Congress right now and what we heard Speaker Johnson say, but we’ve never had this kind of conversation about Supreme Court reform in modern history, so that alone is a notable thing. It just shows the impact, one, of investigative journalism, but also the [01:00:00] impact of this decline in public trust for the U.S. Supreme Court.

SECTION B - DEMONIZATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Demonization.

Criminalizing homelessness Part 3 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-2-24

RACHEL: Donald Trump, on the other hand, has really been leaning into homelessness.

Our once great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares, surrendered to the homeless, the drug addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged.

He released a video in April, saying that if he were president, he would—

DONALD TRUMP: Ban urban camping. Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment.

RACHEL: He would create sanctioned campsites for treatment and send homeless people to jail who refuse to go. Now, to be clear, he does not actually have the authority to, you know, make all that happen. But he is campaigning on sending homeless people to jail right now, So I think to the extent that homelessness has been coming up, it's really been being leveraged by Trump as sort of this symbol of chaos and disorder and [01:01:00] democratic failure.

'Social cleansing' The Paris Olympics' war on homeless people - Edge of Sports - Air Date 8-25-24

Dave Zirin: UP

We should talk about your organization so people have a better sense of who you are. It’s two organizations in English. It’s Doctors of the World.

PAUL ALAUZY: Yeah.

Dave Zirin: People can see [foreign language] , and also The Other Side of the Medal. Yeah. Can you speak to us about both of those groups?

PAUL ALAUZY: Yeah. So Doctors of the World, they’re the ones paying my salary. I’m a project manager for them, so it’s been six years. I have an amazing team of doctors, psychiatrist, nurses, translators, social workers, and we go towards refugees who unfortunately lives and survive in the streets of Paris and its surroundings. It can be 10 cities, it can be squat in abandoned building that people occupy in order to be out of the streets. And then we have a great network of partners, other NGOs, activists with which we work. And so we organized a year ago and we created [foreign language] , The Other Side of the Medal because we started to just [01:02:00] suffer the effect of the Olympics.

And it’s not just the refugee community, it’s every homeless person, whether it’s a drug user, sex worker, a refugee, people from Eastern Europe. Everybody got affected. All the numbers of expulsions, harassment, even sometimes control and police violence got bigger, new practices started to develop. So we had to organize to shed light on this matter and also to offer solutions in order to avoid that.

Dave Zirin: Now there are attacks on homeless or unhoused people in cities, certainly across the United States and in major cities throughout the world. Do you think the Olympics have been an excuse for this crackdown, or do you think it is happening because of the Olympics?

PAUL ALAUZY: I think it’s a bit of both. I think for the states and the states in general, it’s an opportunity. Because when they do the social cleansing, [01:03:00] they’re going to push the population away and they’re going to replace the tent city with big rocks. They’re going to build new walls, they’re going to put barbed wire.

So I think for them, it’s not just about the games, it’s also an opportunity to transform the city and to select the population. And most unwanted population is the one in public space that they have to push away. So there is opportunity and then there is an effect. There is an Olympic effect, and I think it’s in the DNA of the games. They want to do the [inaudible] village. You have to clear out the streets of all the people you don’t want to so it’s a bit of both.

And here there is a lot of evacuation that you can link to the Olympic village being nearby the passage of the flame. Today it’s the bicycle. Bicycle.

Dave Zirin: The cycling.

PAUL ALAUZY: The cycling race happening today. So [01:04:00] they kicked a slum last week because it was on the tour of the bicycle. So there is a lot of things that you can directly link to the Olympics, but I think it relates to a more general spirit of big capitalist states being violence and mistreating the homeless population in general.

Dave Zirin: You mentioned about them being moved out, put on buses. Where are they going?

PAUL ALAUZY: That’s a good question. Yeah, so I heard a lot about the buses living at [inaudible] before the games, the buses living Vancouver before the games. And here we witnessed this. So it used to happen a lot in France to take the people in buses and send them somewhere else. But France, right before the games in March, 2023 created a new system. It’s called the SaaS system, and they created 10 spots everywhere but in Paris.

So it’s going to be close to [foreign language] transport in smaller [01:05:00] cities, like small cities, like with 5,000 inhabitants tops, in which people get taken in charge for three weeks. They have three weeks in a hotel or something. After three weeks, 40% of them they will have solution meets long-term solutions in that region. All the others, they are being sent to emergency shelters sometimes for nights, two nights, two months tops, and they end up homeless in another smaller cities where they don’t have the same community outreach and everything.

To give you a very concrete example, just today, two hours ago, I had some patients, they have guns. They’ve been living in the streets for a couple of months here. They just received a new guy. He is an Afghan, too. They know him. He’s been kicked out of Belgium. So that’s his first day in Paris because they’re in Paris called an NGO. I was able to give them a tent. I was able to give them sleeping bags, and they will [01:06:00] try to find somewhere to sleep because it’s very tense now with the Olympics, but at least they have this. You have a community and then you have a community that has a network. If you go to a smaller city to reach the states doesn’t give a dime to receive that population. It’s just going to be horrible for their health and dealing conditions.

Dave Zirin: Through the Olympic activism. Have you been able to meet new people who take this issue of the unhoused more seriously? Have more people gotten involved in the struggle for the rights?

PAUL ALAUZY: Well, the beautiful thing, the right side of the Olympic effects is the fact that everybody’s coming up together. We never regrouped that many association and NGOs working with so many different publics. Usually it’s going to be, oh, you guys work with refugees. You do your thing. Us, we work with the sex workers. We will do our things on the side. And now everybody come up together. Sometimes people with very different [01:07:00] positions. So that’s a good thing.

And then the campaign was crazy because when you have a subject of the homeless or whatever, usually people don’t care that much. If you add Olympics to it, then it blows out of proportion because then you have the BBC making inquiries. You have you coming to ask me questions. You have the international attention. So we really spread the world in a way I couldn’t even imagine. This year, we have media from every country in the world asking to make inquiries about this. And I think it’s not just the Olympic effect, but it’s also the ethic of journalists all around the world that want to not just serve the good side of the Olympics, but also do their job. And it’s nice to meet that many journalists from that many country taking their job very seriously to treat every side of that event.

Myths about Homeless People with Dr. Margot Kushel Part 2 - Factually! - Air Date 5-8-24

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: But what's so funny is that what you said [01:08:00] about, you know, drug abuse and uh, uh, mental health issues being diseases, not moral failings.

Yeah. Is true. And almost everybody in America, if you asked them, which those things are, they would say, yes, that's a disease. And yet there's this moral dimension that we always bring to it. I think all the time about this conversation I have with my neighbor. Um, we were talking about homelessness in our neighborhood and he said, yeah, well, you know, a lot of these people there, you know, they're addicted to drugs and alcohol.

And I was like, yeah, man, but so are we like, I'm smoking weed. I'm seeing your recycling, dude. You're bringing out, you're bringing out a lot of empty Jack bottles every week. You know what I mean? But the difference is you and I are in our homes. Exactly. And these people are not. So what is the actual difference between us and why would you say these people need to get clean before they have a home?

You have a home and you're not fucking clean. You're popping pills. You're, you're doing coke. Come on, man. I

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: know. I mean, it's really like, I mean, [01:09:00] I, I, for like a variety of reasons, don't like, I'm like the most boring human being in the world. I'm like the vegetarian, never smoke, never, never use pot. Don't haven't had a drink in like a million years.

You know, I'm like so boring. It's not even funny. And, um, And, and one thing about being nice, you look around and you realize like, oh wow, when you, when you don't drink, you realize how much people drink and as a physician, you realize how much people, people drink a lot, right? I'll be at these events. Like I do a lot of public events.

Where people are pretty hostile and like being really mad and yet they're all like, I'm like watching people and they're like, they're like, Oh, come to the event. We'll have like lovely wine. I was like,

MUSIC: yeah, guess what dude, like

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: you're drinking too, you know, but I think, I think also, you know, one thing is we don't walk into people's homes and, and check.

Right. If they're, if they're doing drugs and pull them out, that's just not a thing we do. Um, the other thing is, um, yes, if it winds up being a problem for you, [01:10:00] which it is for many people, um, it, it does interfere with your social functioning. In fact, you know, both mental health and, and substance use issues are actually sort of diagnosed.

Not by, for instance, whether you use, but diagnosed as an addiction if it interferes with your social function. So it's almost like racked up in it. You know, the difference is like, really a little neurotic and having a mental health problem really hinges on whether it interferes with your, with your social function.

So, of course, people who have a problem that interferes with their social function are more likely to be homeless, but, but there's so much we know so well that, um. That it doesn't interfere with the ability for people to be housed and furthermore as someone who does Tons of substance use treatment like it's so interesting for me now to hear this really horrifying backlash against harm reduction Um, and i'm like, dude, the opposite of harm reduction is harm increasing Like do you wanna do you actually want to increase people's harm?

And and I always wonder why people [01:11:00] don't seem to notice that all of us who are actually doing substance use treatment You Believe in it, right? We believe in it because I can't save the life of someone who's already dead. I can't, I can't help you kick your opioid problem if you're dead, it's too late, you're dead.

And, um, and yet what we heard time and time again, we heard some really interesting things about the substance use related to this. One thing we heard from people is people using it, um, what we would call instrumentally, which means that they're using it because they're homeless. And not to get myself in like a whole lot of problem with the law here, but if I were like that guy from Breaking Bad or something, if I were trying to design the perfect drug to survive homelessness, You know, meth meth is sort of it, right?

I believe that people use drugs to solve some problem in their lives. Like, you know, they use it to smooth, you know, they're like a little anxious. And so you drink a little bit and you feel less anxious. That's good. You know, whatever

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: reason I have always used any drug I have used is I got some benefit from it at the time.

I needed to sleep. So I fucking drank some Evan [01:12:00] Williams, you know?

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: Exactly. Right. That's why people use. Right. And so if you're homeless, we heard from so many people that the methamphetamines, um, you know, here they are, they're getting assaulted. Their stuff is getting thrown away. They're like, Hey, and they're hungry.

There's no food. They're hungry. What does meth do? Meth keeps you up. It keeps you alert and it keeps you from being hungry. It's not great. It does a lot of harm. We were really aware. It's not like people aren't aware. It's not like people are like, Oh, no way. I didn't know that this is bad for me. Everyone knows it's bad for them, but they're using it for a reason.

When we talk to people about quitting. We heard universally like absolutely, but I can't do it. Don't, don't take this from me now. Don't take it from me when I'm out here, I can't think about that right now. You get me into the housing and then I'll quit. Um, so that's one thing. And the other thing was really, I think one of the things that was really eye popping to me was that over a quarter of people [01:13:00] who either used alcohol heavily or use drugs regularly.

Told us that at some point since they became homeless, they had actually attempted to get into treatment and the door was closed, they couldn't get in. Wow. And one in five people told us that right now they were trying to get into treatment and they're like, there is no treatment. I go, I show up when I'm supposed to show up, and they tell me there are no beds or there's no treatment spots or there's nothing for me.

And, and I think that that's really important to keep in mind. Um, you know, as a physician, I can tell you that, um, substance use treatment, it takes many times before it sticks. That's just sort of how it goes. Just like, just like we don't cure leukemia in a day. We don't cure substance use in a day. Like it takes some, it takes some, you know, time and time again, and that's okay.

Cause people get there. Um, But the people who are most likely to benefit are the people who have made that mental model switch in their head. They're like, I'm ready. I want to do this. And what we heard is that one in four [01:14:00] people were like, had made that switch, and there was no place for them to get treatment.

You put that with the public dialogue now. If we've got to force people into treatment and I'm like, how about we use our, how about we increase our spots? How about we make it easier to use and come back and talk to me once everyone who wants it can get it. But like we are, and I, you know, as a physician, I can't tell you how much like I'm like calling around begging first, it's hard to get treatment spots.

And yet, and yet like there's this myth out there. That like we've got to force people because they don't realize that this is harming them. They are full well aware that it is harming them and a lot of them are ready for treatment and we are the ones who are closing the door in their face.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Yeah, because the, the, the beds simply aren't there, the rooms aren't there, uh, there's so many times that, you know, you'll see some elected will, will have cleared an encampment, you know, the, the, the cops come through everyone's stuff in the trash and they say, Oh, everyone [01:15:00] was offered housing.

Everyone was offered treatment. Well, what was that offer? Hey, you can get on a wait list. Here's a form to fill out. Here's a number to text. Okay. Just stuff in the trash, you know, like that's, it's not an offer. It's a, it's, it's a sign up for nothing. Um, And

DR. MARGOT KUSHEL: if, and if they're not taking, if someone is out in the 110 degree heat and they're not taking the shelter, you're offering them, maybe you should give some thought into what, what are you offering them?

And people are never offering housing. Like housing is just, you know, in San Francisco, They open up the wait list for Section 8. Section 8 is the voucher that pays, you know, that you use on a free market and it caps what you pay to 30% of your income. They open up the wait list for two weeks for the first time in a decade this fall.

For the first time in a decade, the wait list. They had two weeks. You have to fill out these extensive paperwork. 65, 000 people signed up. They only have about 6, 000 spots that will be distributed over the next few years. Um, People are not offering people [01:16:00] housing and they're turning it down. I mean, look at our study in Santa Clara.

Those were the folks we intentionally chose the folks who give the public the most headache, right? Who like, we were like, if these folks will take housing, everyone will. These are the folks with the most significant. Significant sort of behavioral health impairments and things. They all were like, sign me up, even though we showed up at arguably like the worst moment.

We generally showed up after people had been up all night in the, you know, ER or in the jail or something. And they were all like, 50 50 chance and all I have to do is subject myself to being in the study? Sign me up. So I don't believe that people are offering people housing. It just isn't true

SECTION C - DIGITALIZATION OF RENTING

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: The Digitalization of Renting.

The Eviction Economy w Mya Frazier - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-7-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, so your piece starts off in 2021 at a meeting for the, uh, Columbus Apartment Association, this landlord lobbying group in Ohio, and this is in the immediate [01:17:00] aftermath of the COVID eviction moratorium expiring. Uh, what did you see? At this meeting, this kind of conference that you went to, which, when, when I was reading your piece in Harper's, it gave me kind of chills down my spine, uh, about how, um, how corporatized and how automated, honestly, this process, um, of evicting people from their homes is beginning to become.

MYA FRAZIER: Um, yeah, I had started spending some time at my local eviction court during the pandemic from some previous stories I've been working on and Um, I started getting interested in this one law firm. He filed the most evictions in court and was trying to understand sort of the power dynamics within, uh, my local eviction court and, uh, and someone mentioned, you know, the main managing partner of this law firm that [01:18:00] files the most evictions in Columbus mentioned he was, uh, You know, headed to promote their services at this conference.

And so, you know, I headed out there that day, uh, and, uh, was, was really kind of intrigued by what I found because it was. It was a lot of these boosts that you would think. At an apartment association, you know, there were the normal boosts for cleaning up. You know, apartments that were messed up or landscaping and so on, but there was also just this.

Uh, Very, uh, all these booth tech booth. So it's almost kind of, you know, kind of like a bunch of startups and, uh, promoting a lot of services that would allow landlords to not even be directly involved in managing their properties. And so, uh, that was, that was very intriguing. Just the rise of prop. [01:19:00] Tech which is this industry that is just during that time frame was getting billions of dollars in investment

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, you have a sentence here that I thought summed it up quite nicely Two converging trends the automation of property management and wall street's consolidation of america's rental housing stock Had exacerbated the already uneven power dynamics of the landlord tenant relationship um, and that The, the symbolism of, of what, uh, you saw in that, in that particular meeting or conference seems to represent that.

Um, if you could just speak to those two trends in particular, and, and what you witnessed, um, and, and what you wrote about, uh, both the automation of, of property management as you touched on there, and Wall Street's involvement as well.

MYA FRAZIER: Certainly, um, sorry, now my, my own message is, um, certainly we don't hear it.

Don't worry. The, uh, [01:20:00] the interesting thing that I saw was that you, you, I was watching what was going on in eviction court. I was watching the efficiencies that this local law firm had there and trying to understand how is that possible. And so in understanding the growth of property management, you saw how They were able to prepare all all the documents, all the information that was necessary to start an eviction.

So there is almost like a triggering mechanism that's possible now within property management within the software systems where the. Uh, it's, there's just certain, uh, conditions they're able to put on, uh, the, the, you know, the inflows of rent, the, the late fees, the, what would trigger an eviction, and, and just the ease with which they're able to then port that information [01:21:00] to a landlord attorney and proceed with the eviction process.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's almost like artificial intelligence, AI, to a degree of. Uh, who, who meets this criteria, um, for eviction, and then they work kind of hand in hand with legal representatives. You, you highlight this powerful law firm, Willis Law, and they're, they're bundling of these eviction cases for the courts in Columbus, in particular.

Um, what did that look like, this law firm that, uh, Seemingly has made a, a bit of a, a, a specialty in, in representing these landlords in eviction cases in Ohio.

MYA FRAZIER: Um, yeah, so the, the issue with eviction court, depending on where you are, is whether or not you need a representative in court to proceed with an eviction and.

Uh, [01:22:00] you used to not have to have that in Columbus. Uh, there was a practice known as sort of eviction by affidavit where this law firm would take affidavits from the property manager and proceed forward with the evictions. Um, and, uh, it can be time consuming, like for a landlord to deal with an eviction to have to go to court.

Is time consuming now, there was a le, there was a legal fight where that practice was outlawed, but it didn't do much to stop this sort of batching of evictions on the docket. So the, the, the sort of brilliance of their business model, Willis Law, is they're able to go to their, their clients and say, we're very efficient.

You know, you can own you. You don't have to give up the labor time of sending your property manager. To be there all day or to go on multiple days, they're able to go say on one day and deal with, you know, 2030 [01:23:00] evictions at one time, which I witnessed quite frequently. You know, I spent a lot of time there and, you know, certain cases would be called up for a very specific property.

Uh, and they would just be taken care of very, very quickly. So, um, and out of the dockets, which often ran over 100 a day. Willis would dominate that. They would have the vast majority of those cases on an ongoing basis. And although I never was able to figure out how much they were making on each of those evictions, it's, you know, plainly a very, very profitable practice to batch and, and evict quite frequently.

Uh, for landlords at that level of efficiency,

Landlords Using Shady Algorithm To Raise Rents w Judd Legum - The Majority Report - Air Date 6-15-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: First tell us about ReelPage and then give us the timeline of what's been happening on that.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah. And, uh, and this was a story that was really broken [01:24:00] open by ProPublica a couple of years ago, um, about ReelPage, which is a, uh, software program that is used by many corporate landlords, particularly any large building with a bunch of units, that's really what it's optimized for.

And the landlords feed in all of the information well beyond what you could get, you know, on Zillow or publicly available information, vacancy rates, what they're actually charging, all the fees. Um, everything that there is. And then this program spits back out, uh, a recommended rent for that unit. But what's insidious about this process is that essentially so many corporate landlords are using it that they know that They don't need to go underneath that recommendation because the building around the corner is also using [01:25:00] real page and is also going to be using these prices.

And what we, what they found is since, uh, the corporate landlords have adopted this, uh, in large numbers, the rents have gone up and up and up and up. So that's, that's essentially how this, how the system works is that it's, it's. effectively collusion via software, where they can all, they're not sitting in a smoke filled room, uh, fixing the prices of, uh, rent in a given area, whether it's Atlanta or Seattle or wherever it is, but they're doing so via this software algorithm.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And I, I gotta say, like, I don't remember this element of the story until I read, uh, your piece on it. But if there's also sort of like a mafia quality to this, where they say, look, if you're going to use this software, you cannot undercut the price that we give you. Because then you're screwing up everything.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And [01:26:00] that seems to be a big giveaway.

JUDD LEGUM: Yes. They have people who are monitoring it, who are making sure you're in compliance with their recommendations. And actually if you price your, uh, apartments too low, uh, too many times you'll get kicked off. Uh, the system. And so we actually have learned a lot more, uh, in the last two years since that pro publica story came out because there's been a series of class action lawsuits.

There's also been lawsuits filed by the attorneys general in D. C. And elsewhere, too. So That process has started to, um, reveal even more information about how the whole system works.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, um, and you write that, um, um, uh, that it's deploying real paid software in, in one case, uh, in Houston, uh, resulted in pushing people out with higher rents, but ultimately increased revenue.

By [01:27:00] 10 million. So they're making a ton of money off of this, the landlords, but they're, I mean, that's the beauty of like price fixing, right? It's like, I know I can sustain this higher than market price. If everybody sustains this higher than market price.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, and it's essentially gotten rid of negotiation.

It used to be you could go to rent an apartment, they sell you, here's the price, 3, 000 a month, whatever it is. You go into the rental office and you say, you know, I'd really like to pay 2, 900 a month. Um, now part of that is there's a housing shortage, but the other part of it is RealPage has made it clear that you are not to negotiate these prices.

And they, and the corporate landlords can feel confident. Because before they might know, well, if I won't give these people 100 or 200 off, they're just going to go around to a corner to another nice building and those people will do it and I'll be left with an empty unit. But they know [01:28:00] if those people go two blocks down, they're going to run into the exact same pricing scheme and the exact same reluctance to negotiate under any circumstances.

So that's really what's driving the prices up. There used to be a say Get heads in beds, you know, when you, when you ran these big buildings, the idea is keep them full, but real pages kind of, uh, overturned that philosophy. And now they're, they're really holding the line on prices, even if they have to keep a couple of units empty for a little bit.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Uh, you cite in, uh, one of those hours, one of those lawsuits, this one in Arizona, that in Phoenix. apartments, 70 percent of multifamily apartments units listed in Phoenix, Metropolitan area are owned, operated or managed by companies that have contracted with real page. A lawsuit, DC, 60 percent of large multifamily buildings, 50 units or more set prices using real page software.

These numbers, I don't know. I mean, they may have gone up since then. [01:29:00] And we don't really know, I mean we can't, do we know, like. Can we look at Boston, at New York and at, um, the Dallas, the Chicago, I mean, do we have a sense of like just how ubiquitous this real page software is, or is it only piecemeal information?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, it's really piecemeal at this point because, uh, you, when the, when their suits filed, they can do discovery, they can get information about what's going on. Uh, there's, there's are some ways to sort of, to see. Uh, and to and people have tried to collect data, but we don't have a full sense. We don't know.

Um, what the full scope is. And by the way, there was a competing software company, uh, that had somewhat of a different approach to how it advised these corporate landlords to manage their properties. It was purchased by RealPage. So it's really the whole purpose of it and they even say this in their marketing materials is [01:30:00] You can charge more than the market price would bear otherwise Which is a pretty clear indication that you're doing something to subvert the actual competitive market um, and You know, this is in the context of a housing shortage.

So the prices would be going up anyway, but The level of price increases that we've seen, especially in major metropolitan areas, has far exceeded even the inflation that we've seen in some other, um, you know, uh, areas.

SECTION D - SOLUTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Solutions.

The Eviction Economy w Mya Frazier Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-7-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right. And so when, say, your rent gets increased 30%, you don't have anywhere to go, and you are evicted, but you're staying longer as you figure out your next move, um, that would be an example of why squatters rights would be important, or, uh, tenants rights, versus the right of a landlord to evict whenever they choose.

MYA FRAZIER: [01:31:00] Yeah, I mean, the, I think the challenge of the moment is, landlord tenant law is a very, um, Local matter. Um, it varies state by state. It can even vary city by city. And so a lot of the push on that I saw and talking to a lot of tenants rights groups and, uh, national groups that are studying this problem is that there's really no way out of this bind unless there's some federal federal Regulation on what's going on for the within landlord tenant law, right?

That's a challenging, uh, complicated, uh, uh, yeah, I mean, and how that unfolds. I mean, there's been some various attempts. There's been some really interesting proposals, but I think we're very early days on how to sort of address this gap between sort [01:32:00] of the legal context at the local level. The limits of federal intervention and to the housing crisis that, you know, I saw, you know, if it's even happening in Columbus, Ohio, where, you know, pretty much rents were mostly affordable and in my, you know, in my lifetime and have just in the last 10 years become just punitive to the point of impossible for most people, um, Yeah, the question of kind of how to solve that is, I think, remains, um, uh, you know, an open question.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Certainly. I mean, we're getting a little bit of a trickle out from the Biden administration that they see housing as a problem. I'd said a few months ago, Biden should run on a national housing initiative, but we haven't Uh, federally funded affordable housing, uh, since the 90s because of the Faircloth Amendment, um, and like these neoliberal practices.

Uh, we should be [01:33:00] have, uh, some sort of standardized national rent control in addition to building more housing and, and zoning practices so there can be duplexes and, and, and, and, and really though, I just can't imagine how in any just society, a 30% rental increase should be allowed. I mean, that should be federally regulated as an undue burden on the tenant, but we don't have tenants protections nationally in this country whatsoever.

MYA FRAZIER: Yeah, I mean, the push for a tenant bill, Bill of Rights, was kind of you know, was the blueprint, um, in January of 2023. Yeah, so we're, a year later now, what that's sort of been, uh, diluted down to is, um, A possible cap of 10 percent on rent increases for housing that's in, uh, that receives low income housing tax credits in the, in the US.

So that's an interesting proposal, [01:34:00] but it would only impact about 2. 5 million. House households, and when you think about there's 44M rental households, is that enough? And additionally. You know, the people I interviewed at eviction court, the people I spend time within, other reporting that I'm doing, a 10 percent increase is still impossible economically for most people.

Um, I mean, 30% is out there, but even having a 10 percent is, I mean, I mean, inflation rates of, you know, 4 and 5 percent put people under, what a 10 percent for one of your biggest monthly expenses is, Is impossible for a lot of people and, and, and can lead to them being displaced and, uh, and without housing.

So,

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: and, and as we, we wrap up here, Maya, what. In, in your, uh, observations, what was the, the, [01:35:00] the kind of, um, or what were the kind of people who were landlords, right, and what were the, who were the kind of people who were tenants? What, were, are you seeing this kind of rapid increase in corporately owned, uh, housing?

In Columbus, I mean, are the, you speak about this automated landlord system, but, um, for the kind of more existing structure in Columbus, what, what are, who are the landlords and then who are the tenants really?

MYA FRAZIER: Um, I mean, Thomas has seen a mass infusion of investment from out of state and a lot of consolidation into, um, it's not just that.

You have. Landlords who are, you know, Wall Street owners, but you have property management systems that operate for smaller landlords. So even this idea of a mom and pop landlord, you know, [01:36:00] maybe someone who in the past had 10 to 12 properties that they've managed personally, they're now turning that over to these property management systems.

either companies or software programs that really takes a lot of the human discretion out of that relationship. So you're seeing that on, I think, on a pretty rapid, um, it's, it's, it's almost a, a complete change in how that relationship works. Um, and so I've seen that here, um, where, uh, it just, you know, You know, people have kind of given up and just turned over the management of that to other companies.

So that's, that's a significant change and how, uh, tenants sort of interacted with, with their landlords. Um, I, I would say for tenants, I think the frustrating thing that I've seen from them is they, they just can't, Negotiate with money. It's very difficult to begin a conversation about, you know, I'm having an issue.

You [01:37:00] know, I, you know, I, I had my car break down. I can't make my rent this month and just a little lack of, um. Accommodation or grace within the system because of. The way that these metrics that are now being applied through property management software to making decisions about ensuring the landlord's.

Not just profitability, but perhaps excessive profitability

Rep. Katie Porter Lays Out Her Plan to Lower the Cost of Housing - Rep. Katie Porter - Air Date 6-28-24

REP. KATIE PORTER: My son Paul broke my heart with a question. He asked, Mom, will you come visit me when I grow up and live outside of California? Why would you want to live out of state? I asked. It wasn't that there's somewhere else he'd rather be. He was just a teenager, a teenager. already worrying that he wouldn't be able to afford to live where he grew up.

He's right to be worried. [01:38:00] We all face a big cost of living problem. Housing has become Too expensive and affordable housing altogether too scarce. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that there is a nationwide shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes. That's not just a problem.

It is a full blown crisis. Washington has bungled this for decades. And nothing is changing. Earlier this year, bipartisan House and Senate leaders promised Quote, the biggest housing investment in co in hou the biggest investment in housing that Congress has made in 35 years. Until the deal fell apart.

We're back to solving yesterday's problems tomorrow. Maybe. Washington insiders might not have a plan, but I do. Let's start with the easiest step. [01:39:00] Let's create a housing committee. We currently lump housing issues into the Financial Services Committee, a body focused on Wall Street, banking, and financial markets.

But housing is about so much more. It's about shelter, it's about well being, it's about opportunity. Not just about Wall Street profits. Housing should have a dedicated committee. And then Republicans and Democrats on that housing committee must work together to do three related things. First, increase the supply of housing.

Second, make housing easier to build. And third, make housing more affordable. Believe it or not, the supply part is pretty easy. Republicans and Democrats alike actually want to increase our housing supply. You don't have to take my word for it. Look at the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, which would [01:40:00] enhance tax credits to build 2 million homes over the next decade.

It is publicly supported by 111 Democrats. And 111 Republicans. So let's pass that! And then, why stop with tax credits? Let's unleash private capital for home construction by guaranteeing and securitizing the construction of 1 4 unit starter homes. Just like the government already does for big apartment buildings built by Wall Street real estate firms.

Those are the steps that we need to take to invest in our housing supply. But actually building those homes is still too challenging. And it shouldn't be. Stick and brick homes are expensive. Manufacturing costs have gone down in virtually every industry. Except home building. So why aren't we copying and learning from what worked [01:41:00] in other industries?

Imagine a home built, at least in part, from 3D printed materials. Congress can invest in this type of technology and reduce building costs by over 30%, just by thinking creativity. Creatively. And all levels of government should be partners in creative thinking. Congress should reward counties and cities that take steps to make their building and zoning requirements more flexible.

And the federal government should release some of its unused land so we can build homes on it. With these simple steps, we can build way more affordable homes and get those financed and built. Then, we just need to figure out how to make them affordable to own. One problem is that hedge funds have been scooping up all of the affordable homes, especially starter homes.

We need to pass the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act [01:42:00] and tax Wall Street investors that purchase hundreds of homes solely for profits. Houses should be for homeowners and mom and pop landlords, not Wall Street companies. Looking to drive up their profits and with the money we make from that bill, we can invest in down payment assistance for first time homebuyers.

Often the biggest thing stopping people from owning a home is not having the cash to pay up front for the down payment. Even if they can afford the regular payments on that mortgage. Down payment assistance will solve that. Folks, this is what a plan looks like. Congress just doesn't have one. The United States did not wind up with a shortage of nearly 7 million affordable homes overnight.

Our housing crisis is the gradual consequence of leaders in Washington [01:43:00] being asleep at the wheel for over 30 years. Well, Congress needs to wake up. Lowering people's housing costs isn't pie in the sky. We have done it before. We did it through the GI Bill for service members, and we can do it again for all Americans.

That's what we need from Washington, and I'll keep pushing to get it done.

Credits

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our [01:44:00] bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. 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.

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#1646 The Kamalanomenon and the Inevitable Misogynoir Backlash of Racism and Sexism (Transcript)

Posted by · August 02, 2024 5:30 AM

Air Date 8/2/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

The Kamala Harris presidential campaign has been on a wild ride since it unexpectedly began less than two weeks ago. Record fundraising, organic enthusiasm not seen since Obama, And the ugly pushback to match.

Sources providing our Top Takes in under 50 minutes today include Kate Abu, Bad Queers. The Majority Report, Pablo Torre Finds Out, Woke AF Daily, and Dateline: White House.

Then in the additional Deeper Dive half of the show, there'll be more on three topics:

Section A: Misogynoir Defined;

Section B: Misogynoir in Action; and

Section C: The Talk of the Town.

This Is What DEI Means (And Why Conservatives Get Super Racist With It) - Kate Abu - Air Date 7-29-24

KATE ABU: You might have heard the phrase DEI recently. It's the Right's new descriptor for Kamala Harris.

ARCHIVAL CLIPS: DEI got us Kamala Harris as a vice president.

She is a DEI candidate.

She has proven to America why DEI doesn't work.

KATE ABU: Now, [00:01:00] this kind of talk is nothing new for the vice president. Throughout Harris's career, she's been accused of sleeping her way to the top, playing the race card, and lacking qualifications because of her race and gender. She even has her own birther conspiracy theory.

But while those attacks might play well on Fox News or Steven Crowder's show,

STEVEN CROWDER: She's like a biracial werewolf.

KATE ABU: that kind of overt racism is a bit much for a general election. So instead, right wingers have taken to spamming their new favorite acronym when talking about Harris.

ARCHIVAL CLIPS: People get mad when you say Harris is the hood ornament of DEI.

The only reason Kamala is in the White House is because of the DEI deal Biden cut with Bernie to seal the nomination.

She very well might be the first DEI president.

KATE ABU: Now, even with the euphemism, Republicans know this isn't a winning message. In fact, GOP leadership told lawmakers to stop making race comments about Harris.

But even if they stopped calling her a DEI vice president today, the label has stuck in the current lexicon. And whether you heard it [00:02:00] from Newsmax, Ted Cruz or your boomer uncle, the implication is the same: DEI is black or gay or feminine or disabled or poor.

ARCHIVAL CLIPS: This woman who is literally a DEI hire.

KATE ABU: The point is, DEI is the Right's latest dog whistle, the alphabetical successor to CRT, ESG and SJW. When said to the right audience, DEI means replacing white men with Black women. Hardworking farmers with communist drag queens. It's probably gonna make your kid gay, or at least a Chappell Roan fan.

DEI is everything your estranged father is terrified of, but with a corporate-sounding label so he can say it in public.

ARCHIVAL CLIPS: What does that sound like? The witch trials, except they replaced drowning with racial justice. You die by DEI either way.

KATE ABU: Earlier this month, I talked about how the Right would struggle if Kamala Harris ran for president.

So this week for Mother Jones, I'm going to dive into what DEI actually is. Its real definition, what it means to Republicans, and how it's [00:03:00] evolved from previous dog whistles.

In reality, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It often refers to inclusion policies, like the ones you'd see at companies or at a school. These can relate to someone's gender, age, sexual orientation, disability status, and a ton of other personal identifiers, i. e. diversity. The goal of this idea is to create an equitable playing field by accounting for institutional discrimination and disadvantage to give everyone the same chance at opportunity. Of course, this would include every person.

Affirmative action was one of the first DEI-type policies. Title IX could also fall into this category. So while the term DEI is more recent, the idea is not. Simply put, don't discriminate against someone's race, gender, sexual orientation, or whatever else it would be dickish to hate.

So that's what DEI originally meant, or at least what it was supposed to mean. But now it's in the hands of right wing assholes. So like Pepe the Frog, fedoras, and the okay symbol, these losers have [00:04:00] perverted another innocuous thing.

Now to people like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, here's what DEI means.

Woke society has prioritized skin color and sexual orientation over actual skills. This means a lot of jobs are being filled by incompetent candidates, who are somehow always prioritized over straight white men. Funny how that works. Oh, you have a black surgeon? Yeah, you'll probably die on the table. A woman is piloting your flight? I mean, I'd be worried. Oh, and if your law school just fell in the rankings? Remember, it's the gay's fault.

The really convenient part about all of this is you can apply it to anything, for any reason, without any proof. Especially the bad stuff. Let's just say, totally hypothetical, a ship crashed into a bridge in a major American city, tragically killing six, and destroying a major route for highway and maritime traffic. Let's just say that happened. Sure, maybe it was because there was an electrical problem with the boat, so it couldn't stop. But what if we just blamed it on DEI instead? Wouldn't that be so much [00:05:00] easier? A train derails; DEI. Crypto bros crash a bank; DEI. Boeing spends years prioritizing profits over passenger safety; DEI.

But this tactic is nothing new. Remember three years ago when CRT was all the rage? Or two years ago when it was ESG? And "grooming" was pretty big last year. All of those words are synonyms for everything the Right hates. They're dog whistles, or phrases that mean something different, depending on who's listening to them.

You hear DEI and you probably think of your job's HR department. But for your QAnon uncle, DEI is an activation phrase to send the most unhinged memes in the family group chat.

ARCHIVAL CLIPS: You die by DEI either way.

KATE ABU: The Right loves to use dog whistles, especially as society advances and becomes more inclusive and less welcoming to bigotry.

A really good example of this is Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy. Republican strategist Lee Atwater once explained that by 1968, using the "n" word on the campaign trail would actually hurt you, for the first time in, [00:06:00] you know, the history of the country. So instead of having a less racist agenda, Republicans just had to use more abstract terms, like "states' rights" and "forced busing." They weren't saying the slur, but they still got the message across to their supporters.

These phrases have evolved over time. Welfare queens, globalist elites, Barack Hussein Obama. But they all evoke the same feeling: a hostility towards an "other." And DEI is just the latest addition to this long, shitty trend.

Because sure, you can hold six elected offices. You can have an entire law career before that. You can even be the vice president of the United States. But if you just add those three little letters, D E I, it is instantly invalidated by the assertion that every single one of your accomplishments is because of how society treats your race and gender, rather than despite it.

Political Plot Twists | Episode 219 - Bad Queers - Air Date 7-29-24

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: We're coming up on one full week of this Biden announcement and Kamala Harris stepping up. She's [00:07:00] secured all the delegates that she'll need to going into the Democratic National Convention, got endorsements from all the people who would really actually compete with her for this position. And it's -- ah! -- it's a breath of fresh air. We're all feeling great. I think we're all feeling great. The Trump administration is scrambling. They're trying to tell them to stop being racist. They're like, you can't say, they're trying to throw everything at Kamala. They're trying to slut shame her again, where it's, I'm sorry, she was hot. She was a baddie.

So, J. D. Vance, there's buyer's remorse already, cause he's bawling on his face.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Yeah. You heard that they're actually thinking of knocking him out.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: I see. I mean, they gotta do something.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: They were like, erh, we gotta go back. And so they were thinking of getting Nikki, Nikki Haley. Is that her name?

Oh, what's her name?

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Nikki Haley. You want that? Name change as well. I think her name's Nimrata, but all right, Nikki. All right.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Well, that's what they're thinking to help keep up with all of the things. Plus, with his recent speech where he tried to placate it as [00:08:00] we weren't going into a socialist nation, but we're not going into a socialist nation as a woman leading the socialist nation and he was just like, we don't want a female running this thing and we can't have a female running the socialist nation. And I was like, whoever thought about that part of the speech to try and be like, Oh, we're going to lead with socialist nation, but we don't want a woman and he started with "the woman" that wasn't going to lead the socialist station and I just, I said, sir, sir, the women already hate you. Yeah. They hate you.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Did you hear how many white women were on a call to raise the money? They heard what the Black women did and how much money they raised within a few hours and the white women said, we will double down and triple raise. So they came on and had like 140,000 of them and raised eight and a half million in 90 minutes. I was like, yes, white women. Put out those checkbooks. It was a lot. Take your monies. Do the things. Millions at least. Was it 8 million? It was millions. It was. It was millions. I checked this morning. I know they broke the [00:09:00] Zoom record. As of this morning. As of this morning. Okay. Eight and a half million dollars raised, but they had like 140,000 ish people on the call. Okay. Yeah.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: So, yeah. J. D. Vance, all of his soundbites are coming back to obviously bite him in the ass. But my favorite new one was, he's somewhere and he was trying to make a joke about him drinking Mountain Dew would be called racist. And the crowd was like [clearing throat] and there was one clap is like [silence] And I know Trump is like, who the fuck selected him? Cause you know, obviously Trump doesn't work.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: He's probably picked it out of the hat, honestly.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: They care less, right? 'Cause they were in cruise control.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: They really were. it was all in front of them. They had all this momentum. again. They saw the light. The assassination attempt was a boost for that side. At least again because the Democrats were fighting and we just didn't know how it was going to go and all that. And now it is just a completely different world.

Kamala in the polls, if you believe the polls, has made ground on him in a lot of [00:10:00] battleground states. Of course, the fundraising this one week alone has been record breaking. I think they're about to do a White Dudes for Kamala call. So we'll see what the white men raise.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: And yeah, it's just new energy. We haven't been this excited about a Democratic nominee since Obama. So it's been a while since we had that feeling. We've been in a loveless marriage with the Democrats, with them shelling out candidates that are like mm, yeah.

So it's been exciting and it's been exciting to see Kamala's work pushed to the forefront. She's ready for this moment. Beyoncé gave her rights to Freedom.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Like the fastest turnaround I have seen for Beyoncé. It's like Dr. Yvette Noel Sher, Beyoncé's publicist, knew what was going to be done. She probably already had a mini list to send to Beyoncé to be like, I'm assuming they're going to ask for one of these songs; how do you feel? Beyoncé's like, give them all to her. Give them, give them all. Yeah. Like quick, quick words. That whoever was the person that made sure to hit up like It was like they [00:11:00] knew and they knew who to call because Beyoncé doesn't approve things out of a timeline if she doesn't, but Beyoncé is also a political baddie and she does like to support folks. And I feel like as soon as she decided to give Freedom to the campaign, which also was hilarious because I realized how many of the white men in my life don't know the importance of that song. Like my manager was like, is that a really popular song to be able to go with the campaign? And I said, sir, I need you to go listen with the lyrics on.

Yeah. The closed captions. But to see that quick turnaround, I think that also pushed a lot of momentum because everybody was like, Oh, if Beyoncé is turning Freedom around in less than 24 hours, and then they made a campaign ad off of it, like we're off, we're out and ready to go.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: And people are like, Oh, I hope we could keep this momentum up. I absolutely think we can. We have like, at this point, I think close to a hundred days before the election. The Democratic National Convention is coming up August 19th through the [00:12:00] 22nd. It's going to be in Chicago. Are you going to go?

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: You know, I wasn't gonna.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Put your boots on the ground, but a wire --

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Might just go and just for the vibes.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: It's gonna be great. It's gonna be a show.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: I might have to make an appearance. I don't, you know, that wasn't anything that I was really interested in, but now, Might have to go download the app. I might have to go see what events I can attend. I might have to go and see some things because it's in my backyard.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: Yeah. If the RNC had Hulk Hogan and Amber Rose, like, can you imagine if, they've talked, obviously, let's just say Beyoncé performs Freedom. Kendrick Lamar is there. They've talked about a Taylor Swift endorsement.

SHANA, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: If Taylor Swift came out and said it on top of Beyoncé saying it, it's a wrap. It's a wrap. It's a wrap. It's over. It's a fucking wrap.

KRIS, CO-HOST, BAD QUEERS: And again, no one's been this energized since Obama because we just don't usually get candidates that are, A, younger, but B, just like [00:13:00] qualified to do the job. Obviously, Kamala's meme ability is skyrocketing. There's so many clips. And it's funny because the people like us who have been like, She's been working, are now seeing she's been working. these clips of her vice presidency. And then, you know, even back when she was in the Senate and I've seen some clips of her when she was attorney general here in California and a DA in San Francisco, she's just been doing the work. I'm seeing old Obama campaign photos and videos. Like she's been around politics for a while. She's not without her flaws, but people are debunking some of the stuff put out by the Russian bots that was prevalent in the 2020 election when she was running for president.

People are doing the work of seeing about her actual criminal record, which is she didn't lock thousands of Black men up and all this bullshit lies.

And yeah, and people are excited. Like, she's fun. I've seen her Make America Laugh Again stuff. I want a shirt!

Israel Furious With Harris Over This Speech - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 7-28-24

KAMALA HARRIS: I have met with the families [00:14:00] of these American hostages multiple times now, and I've told them each time they are not alone and I stand with them. And President Biden and I are working every day to bring them home. I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians. And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over two million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children, and desperate, hungry people fleeing [00:15:00] for safety, sometimes displaced for the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.

Thanks to the leadership of our president, Joe Biden, there is a deal on the table for a ceasefire and a hostage deal. And it is important that we recall what the deal involves. The first phase of the deal would bring about a full ceasefire, including a withdrawal of the Israeli military from population centers in Gaza. In the second phase, the Israeli military would withdraw from Gaza entirely, and it would lead to a permanent end to the hostilities. It is time for this war to end and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages [00:16:00] are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and self determination.

SAM SEDER: And I just want to correct something I think on your behalf, Emma. "The what the actual f", says Emma. "Do you really think her speech wasn't that much different from Biden's or the boilerplate Democrat, instead of talking points?" That was a reference to a response to the protesters. I mean this speech—and again, it's just a speech, or comments or however you want to call it —is definitely different rhetoric than Biden has been using. And, uh, that can only go as far as it can go. And it may not be sufficient for folks who voted uncommitted. There's certainly some uncommitted delegates in, uh, I think in Minnesota who have come out and spoken to [00:17:00] this. There are others who want, I guess, more explicit rhetoric and perhaps a pledge to condition military aid. And I think it will be seen if she will go that far in the coming weeks. She's been the candidate for five or six days. She's still a member of the administration. But the rhetoric has changed. That's sort of, uh, necessary, but insufficient. I know, Emma, you were looking at what Trita Parsi was writing.

EMMA VIGELAND: Yeah. Trita, we've had on the show a bunch of times and is quite critical of the Gaza policy by the Biden administration. He said, "Kamala clearly broke with Biden on Israel in terms of rhetoric and tone, but there was also a substance shift. Biden has disingenuously claimed that Hamas blocked a ceasefire deal. By saying that she urged Netanyahu to 'clinch the deal', Kamala [00:18:00] pointed to the real obstacle". And that is, these are the kind of subtleties that we're going to need to look for, as I was saying earlier, to indicate movement on that front. I wish she were going further, but she has to both balance her role in the administration, as I said earlier, and her campaign. I hope she meets with the uncommitted people. I hope she gives a more concrete answer on this. But this other news item was important too, that Netanyahu was reportedly pissed by her comments. Both her private comments to him, and what she said in public.

This was a report in Axios, Barak Ravid, uh, naturally. The quote is, "Two Israeli officials said Netanyahu's meeting with Biden was much more constructive than their meeting with Harris... than his meeting with Harris". I t's hard for me to see. The fonts kind of small. [00:19:00] But yeah, two Israeli officials said Netanyahu's meeting with Biden was "much more constructive than his meeting with Harris, but stressed the meeting with the vice president wasn't tense or difficult. The Israeli officials says Netanyahu and his team were caught off guard by Harris's on-camera statement and taken aback by its tone, which they said sounded much more critical than Biden's. Harris's statement after the meeting was much more critical than what she told Netanyahu in the meeting, one Israeli official claimed". Although at the same time, they're also claiming in that article that the meeting with Biden was more constructive. So, I'm not sure how you can have it both ways to that degree. So she's trying to signal, I wish she would go further, but I think the overall sentiments I want people to internalize is that we're in a better position than with Biden in the White House, to make meaningful changes in this genocide. Because the point is that she at least is showing [00:20:00] responsiveness to the outrage amongst the base about this and that's what we can hope for in terms of just, like, a practical reality right now.

So, in the meantime, Trump's taking like a hundred million dollars from Miriam Adelson to annex the West Bank, and then Kamala Harris here is better than Biden showing more willingness on this front, and with half of Democrats not showing up to Netanyahu's address, that means that there's a crack in the door with the party right now that hopefully we can exploit.

Share & Rizz & Tell with Mina Kimes and Dan Le Batard - PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT - Air Date 7-26-24

MINA KIMES: Looks, visuals, the importance of visuals to a campaign, to electability, and whether or not they do matter, I think is sort of the subject at hand here. I am talking about the election, but in a pretty narrow way. The two articles that I sent you guys are both about Kamala Harris being memed. One was in Vox by Rebecca Jennings. The headline: "Could [00:21:00] Kamala Harris's brat summer win her the presidency?"

PABLO TORRE: Can we test Dan on whether Dan knows what any of these things mean?

MINA KIMES: Dan, do you know what "brat" is? I know it only in the context of this article that you have sent me, which is that she memes well because she is of pop culture, but I don't know the specifics, no.

PABLO TORRE: That's a no.

MINA KIMES: Okay, so you don't know what it means to be "brat", or who "brat" is or... I think this, this, that actually, and we're not just, I'm not saying that to make fun of Dan. I think it matters to this conversation, which is...

PABLO TORRE: Yes! Absolutely!!

MINA KIMES: ...does any of this matter. It's a reference to Charlie XCX, who basically the same day that Kamala Harris was announced, or rather that Joe Biden stepped down or said he wasn't going to seek reelection and endorsed her, Charlie XCS, XCX, pardon me, who, Dan, is a young pop star who is very big this summer with this "Brat" album? Now, I sound like an old person. Anyways, she said Kamala Harris "is brat", [00:22:00] which is what sort of kicked this off. There's [an] article also in the New York Times by Amanda Hess called "The triumphant comeback of the Kamala Harris meme".

So, but, both these articles kind of get at the same thing, which is, over the last week—and this is all moving very quickly—Kamala Harris has been embraced by meme culture, by Zoomers, by TikTok in a way we have not seen with a Democratic candidate, certainly not the case with Joe Biden, was not the case with Hillary Clinton. And before we get into whether or not that matters, both of these articles kind of examine why it's happening. And I think what they get at, and I think this is really important, is the reason why it is happening, the reason why it is successful, is that it's ground up. Like, the Harris campaign, which has tentatively embraced some of these memes, are not creating them. These are [00:23:00] not focus grouped. None of it has been deliberate, rather it's young people on all these platforms seeing something in her—and this article kind of gets at what that might be—and deciding to make videos and dances and memes and jokes. She laughs a lot, there's videos of her dancing, she has certain qualities that lend themselves to the format, but I found that very interesting, Pablo, as a start because I think they do hit on something very important, which is you can't force a meme.

PABLO TORRE: Yes. I want to, before we get to whether this impacts the actual election, I think this very question has been something that Democrats have been thirsting for for so long. And I do want to take us all on a tour of just, like, what is happening. Because the multimedia part of this is, as Mina says, being done by, you know, effectively her subreddit, her fans, like, this organized online community that has suddenly come together...

DAN LE BATARD: Democracy. Online democracy.

PABLO TORRE: A grassroots campaign by people who tweet things like, "Why [00:24:00] did I stay up till 3am making a "Von dutch" brat coconut tree edit featuring Kamala Harris, and why can't I stop watching it on repeat?" And it sounds like this.

KAMALA HARRIS: You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

PABLO TORRE: And the thing that we need to remember is what previous attempts at this looked like. Because this is Kamala Harris crowd surfing on an online wave that she only incidentally created, right?, and this is what it looks like when Hillary Clinton tried to tap into viral meme culture.

HILLARY CLINTON: I'm just chillin in Cedar Rapids.

PABLO TORRE: So, you know, there's that.

DAN LE BATARD: This is interesting from a number of [00:25:00] angles to me, including because we have spent a lot of time over the last 12 days declaring this is over, both ways, right? Because the assassination attempt? Everybody said, Oh, the election is over. And now all of a sudden Biden doing what he chose to do and aging out, makes it so that Kamala Harris is in a position now—and I can't believe that I'm saying this—to not just be the young candidate by a lot, because this isn't just young and old, but for the Democratic Party to have a not boring candidate, a not stiff candidate, a candidate that is, if not more presidential, at least more human and, in the currency of the day, more entertaining than boring.

PABLO TORRE: Well, Mina, the thing about all of this is that Kamala Harris's main weakness had been retail politics.

MINA KIMES: Yeah.

PABLO TORRE: Her ability to relate and connect to people in an extemporaneous way. And this has been this [00:26:00] amazing gift from the heavens where she has become a figure that is likable through no actual intent of her own. Like, what she is being cast as essentially—this is a not my quote, I'll just I'll cite it though—she's your "xanned out aunt". And that somehow resonates with people who are like, Oh, I like her now.

MINA KIMES: Yeah, there's like a little bit of an ironic remove here because part of the reason she struggled back in 2020, some of it was what you talked about, the retail politics, the fact she wasn't great on the campaign trail. She just didn't connect with people in a certain way. But also it felt like, Ah, you know, she was kind of like the wrong candidate for the moment. She is perceived as being, well, her whole angle coming up, her career, was tough on crime, sort of center-left. Obviously, that's been changed. The view on that has changed now. And I think that what was a [00:27:00] political weakness at the time now seems to be actually those qualities make her a better candidate for this moment.

But what we're talking about here is not that. It's the fact, that despite that, this phenomena has allowed young people and the left to sort of enjoy her with, like, a level of ironic remove. If I'm reading this correctly.

PABLO TORRE: Yes

MINA KIMES: I think what we're seeing is some of it is due to her innate qualities, which you've kind of alluded to, the fact that she's just straight up more entertaining. But I think all of it is also, there's something strategic about it, or rather, I wouldn't call it "cope", but it's like a way for the young left in particular to embrace her without embracing her. It's almost like, it's not like earnest? Does that make sense?

PABLO TORRE: Right. No, it's actually key, Dan. It's key. And I think there's a parallel weirdly to like how you do your show, Dan, where it's like you're not entirely in [00:28:00] on the best jokes of your show. You're meant to actually be the subject of them, but also consenting to it. And I think that it's that ironic distance between a lot of people are talking about you and making fun of you, and it's helpful to what you do, and it makes you more likable, but you're also not in control of it. And when you begin to exert control, you begin to lose what feels like the whole point of this, which is that you are being laughed at and laughed with, is my diagnosis.

DAN LE BATARD: Oh, but it's what you have to allow in the differences between the generations, though, because what Biden is to this generation is a fossilized artifact. Kamala is still old, but old, kind of cool, except by younger people who are the ones who make everything popular. But they make everything popular, right? They decide, young people. I know that the demo that everybody wants is the money between 35 and [00:29:00] 54, but on popularity, young people decide, and I don't get to decide for them. No one my age does. No one Kamala's age does. And so that she exists in this in-between, between where Trump and Biden are ancient, she's the cool parent or something closer to a parent I can relate to.

PABLO TORRE: Pessimism is simply, this has all happened in the course of a week. And there is going to be another thing that feels seismic that is going to put this so far in the rearview mirror that we will have probably forgotten if we ever learn what "brat" actually means.

DAN LE BATARD: If this knocks off an assassination attempt in ten days as the 'it's over' on the election that everyone likes to shout, if it can be that flimsy, I expect it to change again in the next four months.

Black Women Lead - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 7-24-24

DANIELLE MOODIE: I was in a place of dark despair and hopelessness and just believing that we're done. [00:30:00] And we're done as a country. We're done as a democracy. My work as a independent voice for social justice, equity, um, it's done. And then Sunday. And folks, it is only Wednesday and just a handful of days since Joe Biden announced that he was stepping aside, fully endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. In one day, one full day of her campaign on Monday, she sealed the deal, got all of the delegates that she needed, raised over 200 million dollars, 60% from small dollar donors, first time donors in the 2024 cycle. She has gotten endorsements from [00:31:00] everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Governor Whitmer to Newsom to Shapiro to the Congressional Black Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, HRC, GLAAD, the list goes on and on. Jotaka Eaddy, the founder of We Win With Black Women, started a movement with 44,000 Black women joining a Zoom call to raise over a million dollars in but a handful of hours from the announcement. The following day, Roland Martin, Bakari Sellers, Michael Blake, and others follow suit with a Black men for Kamala Harris call, with over 50,000 men and raising over a million dollars. Now, you have organizers like [00:32:00] Shannon Watts of Mom's Demand and Everytown, organizing White women on a call. You have AAPI folks organizing a call. You have Queer folks organizing a call. Why? Because Black women lead the way, which is what I have been saying since the beginning.

Folks: a change has come. I cannot express to you how important hope is. And it's one of those things that you know, but until you find yourself truly in the depths of despair, hanging on for dear life, and then all of a sudden the wind shifts and you go from fighting against the tide to having the wind at your back—folks, it is a new day. It is a new day. It is a new day. And [00:33:00] I, for the first time in a long time, believe we can win. Because I see on social media, I am hearing from organizers, from organizations, and folks are rolling up their sleeves. 50,000 people, over 50,000 people have signed up on the vice president's website to volunteer to start knocking on doors. Folks, the energy is palpable. And when people are saying, including myself, that this is not even reminiscent of 2008, because, mind you, Barack Obama, it was like a slow tide. Do you know what I'm saying? It was like a slow rolling tide. Like it was growing momentum [00:34:00] with each month, with each day. It was moving. It was moving. It was moving. This, what we are experiencing right now is like a fucking tsunami. It is happening so fast. It is happening so vigorous. Like, people have been desperate for hope.

And now I see that it isn't enough to just have a candidate who has had extraordinary accomplishments. The Biden administration has done a lot. They were handed a pile of shit from the prior godforsaken administration, and they made the absolute most of it with a hostile House of Representatives, a weaponized Supreme Court, they've plowed forward, resurrected a spiraling [00:35:00] economy, tried to provide debt relief to hard strapped students, lower drug costs, add more jobs as we were hemorrhaging them during COVID, an infrastructure bill that was bipartisan. That's just a few things off the top of my head that the administration has done.

But the hopefulness was missing from Joe Biden's campaign. The energy was missing because Joe Biden himself was not exuding that. And the media was wholeheartedly against him. So, for him to step aside and to pass the baton to his 59-year old vice president, and say, Go get 'em—and if you listen yesterday, [00:36:00] Joe Biden was on a call that Kamala was doing and she thought that he had left the call and he said, No, I'm watching you kid, and I love you—the stark contrast between the dystopia that Republicans want to offer Americans, to the light and the freedom that Kamala Harris wants to offer, could not be more apparent. She walked out in Milwaukee yesterday to "Freedom" by Beyonce. "Freedom, freedom, I can't lose". It is the energy, the spirit, the hopefulness that we needed, and to have been over, my God, these last few years, [00:37:00] being on air to try and convince people how consequential this election is, why it is important to support Joe Biden, how hard it has been to want to support him given everything that is happening in Gaza. A genocide. Right? I was losing faith. I had lost faith. And I can't do my work without it. I've been telling you all for years now, that I carry around, what?, my mustard seed of hope. And I said yesterday, it has blossomed. Because I see hope on the horizon. I believe that Americans are waking up. I believe that people are gathering, that they are breathing, that they are rolling up their sleeves, that they are digging in, and in [00:38:00] whatever community that they find themselves a part of, are organizing. Over a million people in a day donated to Kamala Harris for President. In a day.

Republicans right now are losing their fucking minds, coming up with whatever childish bullshit to say, Oh, they don't care about democracy because this isn't a Democratic process. Miss me with your fucking insurrection January 6th bullshit. Okay? Ain't nobody over here storming anybody's capital, right? We're getting on Zoom calls and raising money, you know, what civilized people do inside of a democracy They're coming out with their "Oh, DEI candidate" and, you know, "cat lady" and you're listening to JD Vance talk to Tucker Carlson and all I can look at is how [00:39:00] pathetic and angry and miserable these men are because there is nothing that is more terrifying to White supremacy and patriarchy than a strong, powerful Black woman and woman of color.

‘It is a train that is never late’- Trump, GOP escalate racist and predictable attacks - Dateline White House - Air Date 7-24-24

ERIN HAINES, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, THE 19TH: You're seeing Vice President Kamala Harris already starting to define herself. And how is she doing that? She's defining herself as somebody who is ready to make the case against a second Trump presidency, casting him as a criminal and a threat to our democracy. She's telling, she's owning her own story.

That is happening as Republicans are resorting to that kind of familiar playbook that John mentioned, where, and especially for former President Trump, who, attacks women by calling them dishonest, questioning their intelligence, commenting on their looks. In some of our latest reporting for the 19th, we're already talking about the racist and misogynist disinformation that's already targeting Harris, and we're just a few days into her campaign, right? It's a train that's never late.

During the primary, Trump called Nikki Haley, former [00:40:00] governor and UN Ambassador, a bird brain. Hillary Clinton was crooked, right? He's maligned Fannie Willis and Antish James, black women prosecutors like Pamela Harris, has tried to paint them as corrupt or incompetent and accusing them of being the racist. These are not new attacks. And these attacks, when Republicans make them, whether it's former President Trump or people on right wing media or, Republican politicians, it always says more about them than it does about the people that they are talking about.

And while it may be a dog whistle to some number of Republican voters that this has worked on over the years, maybe in previous races, it is also a signal. How many women, how many people of color have heard DEI or heard suggestions that maybe they didn't earn the job that they got, or they shouldn't be the place that they're in. That kind of language also galvanizes them.

So I'm sure that Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Adam Kinzinger are trying to discourage Republicans from using that kind of language. Because what it does is it actually energizes folks [00:41:00] for whom that kind of language sounds familiar to get out and vote to reject that kind of language, to reject those kinds of politics.

NICOLE WALLACE, HOST, DEADLINE: WHITE HOUSE, MSNBC: Yeah. And let me just follow on to John's thread about McCarthy's beef with it, 'cause it is distinct from Kinzinger, and Adam Kinzinger had endorsed President Biden. He's been on some of the calls since Vice President Kamala Harris became the defacto nominee. He's Inside the tent, inside the pro-democracy coalition, calling it out the way he sees it. McCarthy, I agree with John, is calling it out because he doesn't think it's politically effective.

Here's a Republican attack on Kamala, on Vice President Kamala Harris. This was sent out by the Republicans. This is the Vice President talking about breaking barriers.

KAMALA HARRIS: So here's the thing about breaking barriers. Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier and you end up on the other side. There's breaking involved. And when you break things, you get cut. And you may bleed. [00:42:00] And it is worth it every time. Every time. And so too, especially the young people here, I say to you, when you walk in those rooms, being the only one that looks like you, the only one with your background -- you walk in those rooms, chin up, shoulders back. This is part of what's involved is that we have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won't. And then you need to kick that [bleep] door down.

NICOLE WALLACE, HOST, DEADLINE: WHITE HOUSE, MSNBC: That's the attack on her.

MAYA WILEY, FORMER ASSISTANT US ATTORNEY: Look, the attack on all of us. And what she just spoke -- and I'm sitting here wanting to grab Eddie's hand, Erin, if I could grab your hand, if you were on the set, I'd grab your hand -- we have been cut. When she says that, we have lived that cut. We live that cut as students at Ivy League schools. [00:43:00] We live that cut when we were lawyers standing in front of a judge that said, Where's the lawyer? when you're standing there behind the government table as an assistant United States attorney. We know that cut. I was the only black attorney in the civil division when I was there. The only one out of 50.

That, what she said, maps to what you just heard from Erin -- and the 19th has been doing excellent coverage on this. They have been telling us -- and I say "they" because I am talking about a certain group of people, a certain group of people who are victimized by fairness, who are victimized by competition from the competent, and who are upset because they have for so long gotten to be mediocre and rise. So those of us who have had to be better than mediocre to get cut are so many. And when we saw what [00:44:00] happened -- look, they just attacked Kamala Harris for being in a Black sorority.

So I wore my Delta Sigma Theta colors. Joy Reid might wear hers later. The Divine Nine has 4 million black votes. When you saw that $81 million in 24 hours, that was over 44,000 Black women, many of them Divine Nine. The brothers got together the next night.

I'm just telling you, when Erin said galvanize, exactly right. Because John's point as a point about average voters is true. But see, their foghorn is what's reminding folks that we are not in the America yet that lives up to its ideals. We haven't been, but we made real progress. And when they are showing us who they are, when they calling us colored. Fox News is talking [00:45:00] about colored. Sebastian Gorka called her, a woman, a colored. That's language nobody uses anymore and it's not a dog whistle. It's saying we're going to go back to when you were in the back of the bus. And we're going to tell you that we're going to put government resources to ensuring that white men get protected.

Well, to the extent that there's a grievance, let me tell you what the only grievance is. Anybody who says that this country shouldn't be its better angels, and that we shouldn't recognize actual qualification in a woman of color, and that this -- they have come for our vote. Yes, and I'm wearing my shirt because we at the Leadership Conference have a campaign called "And Still I Vote" because they've also been doing everything in their power because of the browning of America to make it harder for us to vote intentionally.

So instead of trying to get our votes, which is exactly what should be happening here, instead, they're [00:46:00] trying to make white people afraid -- of us. That is what we fought a civil war over and had the second Reconstruction over. And this is what's at stake now. And when she says we won't go back, she's saying, keep on cutting because we comin'.

Final comments on the power of excitement

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Kate Abu explaining the new racial slur DEI. Bad Queers took a moment to bask in the new energy and excitement of the campaign. The Majority Report discussed the difference between Biden and Harris on Gaza. Pablo Torre Finds Out looked at the phenomenon of Kamala being embraced by youth meme culture. Woke AF Daily talked about the importance of hope and Dateline White House laid out the brutal campaign ahead that we need to be ready for.

And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production [00:47:00] crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often making each other laugh in the process. To support our work and have these bonus episodes delivered seamlessly 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 if you prefer, or from right inside the Apple Podcast App. 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.

Now, before we continue onto the Deeper Dives half of the show, I just wanted to reinforce something that has already been touched on today a little bit, which is the importance of enthusiasm. I already talked a bit about the enthusiasm shift from Biden to Harris in a previous episode, but there was more to say that I wish I had already said. A lot of it came up when I heard James Carville—he's a long time [00:48:00] democratic strategist and going way back to the Clinton years—he was on TV last week warning Democrats to sort of temper their excitement a bit, not entirely, but just a bit to recognize the reality of the tough campaign that lies ahead. And maybe there's not actually that much daylight between he and I, when you really get down to it, and he understands that people being excited is good. It's not that complicated. But just in how he's so quickly put on his "realism hat" and adopted a tone of like, "Okay, now just settle down a little bit." It reminded me of one of the starkest differences between the parties.

For a long time now the Republican party has had very little in the way of policies they actually believe in. There's the policy of "we hate immigrants." And then there's the "tax cuts are good by which we mean mostly for the rich." And then, if you dig a little deeper, there are a few other policies [00:49:00] that they'll push for that involve hating or erasing other people like with anti LGBTQ policies or banning Black history, that sort of thing. But still, these are anti policies.

They're policies that revolve around being against someone or something. I really don't have much that they're for. And this is perfectly in line with their campaign strategy, revolving around hate and fear. You know, in George Orwell's 1984 they had the daily "two minute hate" as part of their indoctrination. Today, we have the same thing in conservative media, but it's 24 hours a day.

There is no shortage of understanding who they're supposed to hate and fear enough to elect Republicans who promise to punish or erase those groups of people. That's their version of energy, excitement, passion for the project that ultimately gets them out to vote.

Democrats generally go in the other direction. They try to get support through the old fashioned method of [00:50:00] attempting to run government so that it delivers for people. Then seeing that the government delivered good things with Democrats in charge. People will vote to reelect Democrats. That's the idea. Anyway,

So Democrats tend to campaign on their vision of policies they want to enact and whatever accomplishments they have had that they can brag about. But there's always going to be an imbalance of energy and excitement because some people like me and you might get excited about policy accomplishments. Even I could admit that they're less exciting than those more visceral feelings— whether they be hate and fear or hope and exuberance. The problem Democrats have always had is with underestimating the importance of excitement. Mostly because they don't really know how to generate it on purpose. The way the GOP does know how to push the button for fear and hate to get that predictable response.

Because Democrats don't know how to create excitement, they're also not very [00:51:00] sure what to do with it once it arrives. So here's my one piece of advice: don't tell people to settle down. Policy promises and victories might be convincing to someone who's thinking about how to vote. But excitement is contagious and will bring people in out of sheer curiosity, whether they were thinking about voting or not. A friend recently described some of her extended friends, sending messages, asking "Okay, so like, are we excited about Kamala?" To which my friend responded, "Yes! Yes, we are! Now go and spread the word."

Similarly, I read an article recently about black men who had been leaning toward voting for Trump. Who were then responding to the excitement of the black women in their lives—you know, mother, sisters, partners—and were being pulled back over thinking, "Well, if they're this excited, there must be something to it."

And that is happening across the country, across all groups. Excitement breeds [00:52:00] excitement, excitement breeds interest. and interest brings people in, strengthens the campaign, and converts to actual electoral victories. That's what excitement does.

And it does it, whether it's fully founded on cold logical reasoning or not. There's work to be done. There's no doubt about that. There's always the possibility of high energy, high confidence campaigns can perversely suppress voter turnout when people think, "Well, I, you know, I don't need to vote. It's in the bag." But we haven't had a landslide election in decades. There's really no such thing anymore. And for every person who might not vote because they think, "Well, yeah, how could she lose?" there'll be 10 more people who become volunteers to get out the vote. Who will get people to the polls who never would have gotten there without the extra push, the extra energy the campaign will be able to muster—all derived from the extra [00:53:00] excitement that's being felt right now.

So, if you believe in the importance of Supreme Court reform, if you believe in the importance of fighting climate change, if you believe in the importance of democracy itself, and you're saying "Yeah, well, you know, Harris is okay, but she really doesn't warrant all this excitement."

Look. You might be right, but you are not right for saying that. Right now. And the reason people think to say that on the left is because we don't know what to do with excitement. We don't know how to handle it. We don't know how to generate it. And when it's here, we don't know how to manage it. And we think, ah, but it's really just about the cold, hard logic and think about what's going to be done and think about like, "Yeah, she'll get into office, but we'll still have to fight her on this or that."

Yeah. That's all true. But that's not what gets people out to vote? Fighting for what we really want. That's what happens between elections. Fighting for the [00:54:00] chance to fight for what we want, as opposed to desperately fighting to not lose ground—that's what elections determine. And there's nothing irrational about being excited about Harris' chances of winning and giving us that chance to fight for what we really want throughout her term in office.

MISOGYNOIR DEFINED

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we will face some of those cold, hard realities and the campaign coming up with Deeper Dives on three topics. Next up, Section A: "Misogynoir Defined," Section B: "Misogynoir In Action," and Section C: "The Talk of the Town."

Misogynoir by Dr. Moya Bailey #Jubilee21 - Black Feminist Future - Air Date 12-11-21

So what is misogynoir? Misogynoir is a term I coined in 2008 to describe and better explain what I was noticing around the representation of Black women and gender expansive people in the media. In particular, social media.

The representations of Black women and gender expansive people that I witnessed was limited and negative. It was anti Black, racist, [00:55:00] and sexist, and an outright hatred of Black women and girls. It was so rampant that I coined the term misogynoir to address it. I defined misogynoir as the anti Black racist misogyny that Black women and people read as Black women experience.

So how does misogynoir show up in our lives and broader society? Misogynoir shows up through negative images and stereotypes that have devastating real life impacts on Black women. For example, You might have heard the term, Welfare Queen. The Welfare Queen was a term and stereotype promoted by the Reagan administration in the 80s to disparage Black women seeking government assistance.

The Welfare Queen was depicted as a Black single mother committed to taking down the government through her use of her power. of social services. The welfare queen stereotype successfully convinced the American public that Black women [00:56:00] were the primary users of welfare, hence a burden to society, even though then and now, white people are the primary beneficiaries of welfare.

Public policies to this day, like public housing, education, and healthcare, just to name a few, are created with misogynoir baked into the plans. Another example of misogynoir is the use of drag by black male comedians to portray stereotypes about black women. Tyler Perry's Medea, Flip Wilson's character Geraldine, Shanaynay by Martin Lawrence, and most recently, T.

T. by Blame it on Quay are examples. of this phenomenon. These different characters, while funny to many, are very problematic. Why? They inform ideas that we have about Black women, especially dark skinned Black women. These [00:57:00] characters suggest that dark skinned Black women are unattractive, loud, and Also, these characters have a disproportionate impact on Black trans women, because they imply that Black trans women are not real women, but only men playing drag.

It is a stereotype that leads to deadly consequences for Black trans women. Michaudinois shows up everywhere, in our lives, our families, communities, and communities. and broader society. So we must all commit to defeating it. But how do we do that? We do so by tapping into Black feminisms, by uplifting whole and healthy representations of Black women, girls, and gender expansive folks, and by interrupting moments in our lives where we see misogynoir showing up.

It requires the transformation of all of us. That we be different and transform our hatred of [00:58:00] black women, girls, and gender expansive people into respect, resources, and power. Black Feminism can show us how.

Digital Misogynoir - The Anti-Dystopians - Air Date 9-8-23

Black women have been raising the alarm on digital misogynoir for decades, highlighting how dangerous it is, both to people who experience it online and also because of the ways it motivates offline kind of white supremacist violence. But despite that, the majority of online safety research and policy continues to ignore it.

And it's difficult to find research that focuses not just on race and gender, but the intersections of them. and as a result of that, there is this dynamic where people, um, who experience misogynoir, so black women have to continue to retell their stories and often those stories aren't taken seriously.

So we wanted to create research that documents the prevalence of misogynoir online maps the nature of it. And and that's what the [00:59:00] report does fantastic. So you, you talked a little bit. I know about in the introduction to glitch. So I wondered if, in this report, and kind of in research more in general why is it really important to center race and gender while thinking about online harms and intersectionality kind of more broadly.

Yeah, definitely. I think just in, in case people aren't aware intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how multiple social identities. So things like race, gender, sexual orientation, uh, disability. Will intersect at the level of individual experiences and then reflect these broader interlocking systems of privilege at a macro level.

And it's, it's been introduced and discussed as far back as the 19th century by people like Anna Julia Cooper, but it was popularized in the 70s by American scholar, Professor Kimberly [01:00:00] Crenshaw. and it's incredibly important because if you look at online abuse and online safety through this kind of one size fits all lens, treating everybody as if their experiences are important, you miss a lot of how differently impacted people are and how abuse that is specifically targeted at an identity that's also marginalized by like broader systems in society is going to be more harmful and is going to just be different than abuse that's like generic.

And the responses likewise need to be different and need to take that into account. So, I wonder, so for this report maybe we could talk a little bit about the details. So what exactly, what, what exact platforms where the report looking at more broadly you know, specifically Twitter or Reddit, which is the ones we think about, or just the online overall, and then maybe about what were the harms that were documented and kind of the impact of the existence of this toxicity for black [01:01:00] women and how they, you know, You know, how is it how is it affecting black women and participating in online forums?

How does this lead kind of to online or real world air quotes violence or even kind of the radicalization of of white supremacists. Yeah, thank you for for asking that. So in the research, we analyzed the prevalence of the nature of hate against black women across five different social media platforms.

So three of those were mainstream platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, now called X, and then two smaller high harm platforms. GAB and 4chan. So for those who don't know, those are platforms. They're high end platforms that are known as havens for alt right and white supremacist sort of discussions.

So, we worked with the support of an AI company called TextGain and, and looked at the prevalence of and [01:02:00] misogynoir generally across these platforms. So we looked at almost a million posts, that were in conversation about women on these platforms and found that misogynoir and misogynoiristic misogyny more generally were very prevalent across all five of these platforms.

So both those mainstream platforms and also these high harm smaller platforms we found that 20 percent of the content that we were looking at was highly toxic which amounts to over, uh, a thousand highly toxic posts a day, so that was sort of one of our key findings. And the other sort of two that I'll highlight as well were about the hateful tropes, which Julia mentioned earlier.

So hateful tropes continue to be used to silence and harm Black women, so that's where we see the online and offline sort of effects of this sort of harmful content and this abuse. Uh, what we also found on the kind of flip side of that is that social media is used by and for black women to challenge abuse and to build community.[01:03:00]

So that's something that we saw particularly when looking, at content based on, you know, black women, but we didn't find in a more sort of broader kind of data set looking at white women, for example, or women in general. And then the third finding as well that we found was that misogynoir underpins hateful narratives like white supremacy, antisemitism, and great replacement theories.

We found that on the mainstream kind of social media platforms, so Instagram Twitter, and Facebook, we were looking more at the sort of dehumanizing language and, stereotyping, body shaming, the over sexualization of black women. And in contrast on the alternative platforms, we were seeing more white supremacy and anti Semitic themes.

in terms of, of what Julia was mentioning earlier, with harmful tropes used to silence and we've seen the dehumanizing language and stereotyping long critiqued within black feminist [01:04:00] scholarship. So, black feminist theorists like Dr. Patricia Hill Collins, Bell Hooks, and Dr. Melissa Harris Perry have shown these tropes or these controlling images as an attempt to delimit the potential ways of being a black woman in the world.

And then again, with, um, Dr. Maya Bailey, who we centre, uh, a lot in this, in this research. She brings out, uh, certain stereotypes that she talks about in, in her book, Misogynoir Transformed which looks at black women's digital resilience, which, again, we see mirrors in the findings of our research.

So, for example, the prevalence of the angry black woman, the, promiscuous, highly sexualized stereotype of the, the, uh, Jezebel the fatphobia that comes through the sort of mammy trope. And, in terms of what we saw as the most prevalent trope, it was, was this sort of angry black woman and often this angry fat black woman.

So you have this extremely harmful and often fat [01:05:00] phobic trope which often leads to both the dismissal and tone policing of black women's voices in public discourse, whether that's online or offline. Yeah. I mean, so one of the things you discuss going kind of back to that intersectionality part is , how these identities intersect and talking about black women, but not only just that, but also queer black women as well, and how this relates to the tropes that you were just talking about.

So I wonder if you could discuss more about How, like, the myths of white womanhood and, like, kind of the fat phobia and ableism as well and conforming to this, like, white cis het woman image is motivated or reflected in a lot of the online toxicity towards black women online and kind of how this manifests.

Yeah, absolutely. So, as Hilary said, we draw a lot on Dr. Moira Bailey's book, Misogynoir Transformed, uh, which is really excellent and I would recommend. And one thing that she does, which I think is really interesting, is she [01:06:00] challenges her readers to think of black women first when you see the word woman, and to think of queer and trans women first when you read the term black woman.

That's a call that we kind of adopt and repeat in the report as well. And I think what that does is really interesting because it subverts the dominant way of tending to equate womanhood with white womanhood. So this is something we saw in the data in the sense that a lot of times when people just say women, they're not thinking actively and not centering black women.

Black women were more, more, much more likely to be discussed in terms of their race in the data set than white women were. and I think a lot of racist and sexist abuse will sort of draw on an implicit understanding of white womanhood as a default and specifically kind of white, cis, uh, middle class womanhood.

And so when people deviate from that, they receive slurs [01:07:00] and they receive toxicity and all sorts of different kinds of abuse. this is something that Valencia Adarqua Fari has written about where Black women experience very specific beauty standards, which are often based on Eurocentric, Eurocentric beauty norms.

And if you don't fit within that standard, you're denied femininity and you're just denied respect. So a lot of the abuse that we saw was fat phobic. It would rely on tropes of, of black women as masculine and that's, I think also particularly harmful for black trans women, which are denied their femininity and their womanhood in this way.

MISOGYNOIR IN ACTION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: "Misogynoir In Action."

“Original Hawk Tuah Girl”- Right-Wing's Disgusting Attacks On Kamala Harris Are Going To Backfire - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 7-25-24

So, have you guys been seeing that the Republicans are, can't help themselves, and are attacking her as a childless cat lady because she hasn't, doesn't have biological children? Uh, they're such freaks. I don't believe you, Amber. I refuse to believe such a thing. I love, I love how much freaks they are, which is great [01:08:00] because, I mean, it's her election to lose then.

That's the other thing, like, Trump is such a terrible candidate, like, it's, it's crazy that Democratic Party was almost able to field two people he was going to beat. But like any Democrat would have, uh, would have beaten him besides the two that they had picked. That's really why Biden got out. Because everyone's like, wait, it wasn't just how bad Biden was at the debate.

It was also like, this guy, we're going to let this guy lap us? It's like getting, like I said, like getting lapped by a pinto. Right, exactly. And like they saw Bob Casey's up by double digits. You know, the, the Senate candidates that are in swing states are up by double digits. And Biden's double digits.

down by seven. Like, it's just insane. Um, well, I guess double digits, I guess. I'm staring in a race. Okay. All right. But thank God that national nightmare is over. This is what something I found funny. So this is a Katie Rogers in the New York times. She got a quote from Doug Emhoff's ex wife because, uh, they've been saying she's not a real mom.

This is like a sign [01:09:00] of like, Like, as a children of, uh, child of divorced parents myself, this is, I can't believe with my eyes, uh, This is what the ex wife of, uh, Doug, uh, Emhoff, uh, Kamala Harris husband had to say about her. These are baseless attacks for over 10 years since Cole and Ella were teenagers.

Kamala has been a co parent with Doug and I. She's a loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it. Now, It's interesting too, because she used to date, what's his name? Not Monty Williams, who I always, it's Montel. Montel Williams.

Montel Williams. Monty Williams is the coach. Um. Not the former, uh, Detroit Pistons coach. Not, not Monty Williams, Montel Williams. And he was like. Gotta clear your ram out, all this sports knowledge. I know, I know. You're probably the only one who would make that mistake. Everyone else would be like, Oh yeah, Montel Williams, the talk show host from the 90s.

And also not to be confused with Montel Jordan who [01:10:00] sang, uh, This is how we do it. Yeah, I was thinking Montel Jordan as well. Another layer to it. Montel Williams was tweeting, like, in defense of Kamala too, her ex, and, you know, people, they're spreading this, uh, the Willie, uh, God, what was his last name?

Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco. Willie Brown. So they did date, but it wasn't an affair. I think he was separated from his wife for years when they dated, and he came to her defense saying it's not an affair, we were dating after I was separated for quite a while. I don't know. Have we ever seen such vocal exes of a presidential candidate come out?

And show support for them like that. She must like actually Close out relationships quite healthfully and same with her. I like the republicans taking this line of attack Exactly trump with stormy daniels. We're going to talk about affairs alleged affairs with the with but it's just a way for them to Be misogynist and say she slept her way to the top but like you want to go down that road Let's bring up eugene [01:11:00] carroll.

Let's bring up Uh, Stormy Daniels. The settlement language or some of the testimony from Ivana Trump that was ultimately, you know, not admitted where she claimed that Trump sexually assaulted her before they got divorced, like, there's just a mine of, you know, Material. Of material from Trump, and obviously, you know, other luminaries, Rudy Giuliani leaving his wife who was sick, via press conference, Newt Gingrich, same deal, almost same exact deal.

Right. Um, And also just notably, William, William Brown's like 90 years old, like he really doesn't need to be making like statements to that effect, like good for him for being, being a chiller, even that. You know, the right wing conspiracy theorist though is gonna look at this and go, Oh, she's like Hillary Clinton.

What does she have on them? How is she blackmailing them? I mean, but the obvious thing is like, they don't view it. Like if a guy does it, obviously it's cool. It's fine. It's manly. If a woman, uh, does something of similar stature, she's a sly. That's just how they view things. I mean, you had one Fox guy go on Fox business and call [01:12:00] her the original hawk to a girl.

I could not believe that shit. They're losing their minds, yeah. Yeah, that's what he calls it. On air, on Fox Business. The guy, his whole gimmick is that he runs a fatherhood podcast. How do we Alright, let's let Brandon, we'll give you a chance to weigh in after we play this. Cause this is, uh, uh, Bender is unfortunately speaking truth.

Yeah, and then there's the DEI press secretary telling you that the DEI vice president is the future of the party here. And so the future looks kind of dim for the Democrats here, but this is no shocker either. Kamala Harris. She's the original hock to a girl. That's the way she got where she is. And uh, the party's going downhill if it's in her hands.

That was tough. That was, that was, that was harsh. Yeah. And then there's the DEI press secretary telling That's, uh, one way to put it. That's, uh, So, Fox Business contributor Alec Lace is his name. Never heard of him. Um, Ben [01:13:00] Shapiro was just like, He runs a, he runs a popular podcast called First Class Fatherhood.

Uh, like how to raise your kids as a good father. He's got four kids, apparently. Um, Yeah, I mean, gimme a break. Gimme a break. Those guys had Google. I hope he doesn't have any daughters. I hope out of his four kids. I mean, hopefully he, I mean his sons too, really. But man, imagine being a, uh, one of his kids.

And, uh, hearing this later on in life, what a, what an embarrassment, I'm sure. Uh, masculinity bloggers had, uh, the hak to, uh, uh, Google Arts set for the Hak Tua girl. Yeah, no, I mean, this is what happens when the, you know, the Republicans primary base is like divorced, divorced men in their fifties, 18 year olds who consume too much Andrew Tate and like bloggers, man bloggers, yeah, yeah.

Like, there's so many things wrong with this first, like. And I guess totally superficially, Kamala doesn't really have that kind of energy. Like she does not really have the kind of, you know, [01:14:00] sensual harlot energy that they're trying to project onto her. If you view every woman that way, she's very professional.

You don't see her as a siren calling you into the rocks, Brandon? No, I mean She's not Nancy Pelosi, I mean Yeah, right. She's no Dianne Feinstein. Sorry, sorry, I gotta, you know, I had to, you know, show my love for Pelosi. Uh, I mean These kinds of attacks are just gonna alienate. them from every other type of voter, but divorced dads who buy cyber drugs.

This is like, this is a totally like Elon Musk, uh, targeted ad. Uh, I'm surprised they didn't call her like a mulatris or something, something equally, just completely out of the blue and archaic and, uh, inflammatory. But yeah, I, I mean, they're floundering. I don't understand what they expected to happen when Biden did so poorly at the debate.

You would think they would have had talking points already ready for like, okay, when he drops out and it's Kamala, what are you going to say about her? Like the, [01:15:00] the whole, like there was no primary, she didn't win any votes thing. That's a good line of attack. That's fine. That's, that's, you know, true. Uh, and you could even go harder on that, this stuff about how she's like, you know, a loose woman, she doesn't have kids. Like everyone in America is divorced. Everyone has step to that blended family point, right? Like that is just So that is so relatable to 50 plus percent of people like who have, you know, divorced parents or have, uh, half siblings. That's a big part of America now.

Fox's Kamala Problem - Mother Jones - Air Date 7-12-24

Kamala Harris was Hillary Clinton in blackface tonight. As the, um, affirmative action vice president. But I would say that she probably gets more favorable treatment because of her race and gender. On paper, Kamala Harris is innocent. Everything the right hates. She's an intelligent black woman, second in line to the presidency.

Harris has an accomplished career as a senator and a D. A., she's earned multiple degrees, and maybe worst of all, she has no biological children. By all logic, right wing media should be painting Harris the same way they painted [01:16:00] Hillary Clinton, But worse, because you know, she's black. But outlets like Fox and Newsmax went a completely different direction.

For the last four years, instead of telling their audience that Kamala is some evil political sorceress, that she wants to ruin America with gay immigrants and trans windmills, they've been saying this. She kind of comes off a little Meghan Markle y. She is a really shallow, Uneducated and uneducatable person.

She's like a biracial werewolf. Like a vacuous, incompetent female vice president. They just can't sell one of Montel Williams hoes to the country. According to right wing media, vice president Kamala Harris is a joke. She's a punchline. She's a hoe. She's a DEI hire. That's one of those phrases where even if you don't know what DEI stands for, you know, it's racist.

And none of this is great. It's condescending and degrading and racist and sexist. But that happens to any woman the right hates. But after years of watching right wing media as a job, I've found they sort women [01:17:00] into two categories. Women conservatives don't want to sleep with, because obviously that's her life purpose.

And women conservatives desperately want to sleep with, but never will. One of those is irredeemable in their eyes, and I'll let you guess which one. Now, each of these categories has their own subsections. In the former, you've got your frigid bitches, your ugly lesbians, your woke nags. Villainization is the name of the game, and Hillary Clinton is the poster child for everything that idea stands for.

She's old and stale. She's an over educated bitch who'll castrate you if you let her. I heard she drinks baby blood and started ISIS. Honestly, at this point, I don't know. We should probably execute her. I never said she should be assassinated. What I said be, she should go in front of the firing squad for treason.

To anyone watching right wing media, Hillary Clinton is the antithesis of everything good and moral in the world. And you know she's dangerous. Because you don't get hard when you look at her pantsuits. When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my [01:18:00] legs. I cross my legs every time she talks. Do you really cross your legs when Hillary Clinton talks?

Oh, every time. But no matter what, the coverage usually plays out in one of two ways. Either overt sexualization, or a more subtle touch. Rather than constantly attacking her looks, the right will attack everything else about her. But you know they still would, because they don't constantly complain about her unfuckability.

The conversation is focused around condescension. She's more of a bimbo we can point and laugh at, rather than Hitler's successor. It's the stuff that makes men feel really big and cool. Camilla Harris has now become the jive speaking spokesperson So now we come back to the idea of a Kamala candidacy.

When Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, the stage had already been set. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and every right wing figure you can think of had spent over two decades making her into a supervillain. Hillary Clinton already had so much baggage that it had bled into normal discourse. In contrast, Fox News has had four years to focus on Kamala Harris.[01:19:00]

And the most sinister thing they've come up with is that she's a DEI vice president. Once again, even with no context, it just sounds like a racist dog whistle. Her candidacy would bring outrage. There is no doubt about that. Black women suffer a disproportionate amount of attacks from the right. There she is, acting all gangster.

But when it comes to the influence of right wing media on a Kamala candidacy so far, their only narratives that have truly penetrated the mainstream are her laugh and her ditzyness. She just wants to flaunt it. She just wants to flaunt it. And I think she wants to flirt a little bit. She's more ineffective than evil.

Total diva. Like many vice presidents, Kamala Harris has been a convenient drop off for the more complicated issues that the Biden administration doesn't want the president to be saddled with, at least publicly. This ranges from the border to abortion, and she's definitely been attacked on both of those fronts.

But for the last four years, Kamala has managed to stay clean from those major tabloid scandals that Fox salivates over. Even the latest right wing attacks on Harris have fallen short of their usual frothy barrage of woman hating. It's [01:20:00] very easy to make, say, a DEI higher, but it's almost impossible to do a DEI fire.

Ooh, yeah. You know? They're shallow, which is great if you want to condescend to powerful women, I guess. But if you want to truly influence the mainstream, influence those people who didn't like Trump but also didn't like Hillary, or maybe this time around aren't impressed with Biden, ditzy and cackling don't sound that bad.

I mean, if you're a center right baby boomer who's worried about losing their social security or military benefits to Project 2025, Kamala Harris may as well be the lesser of two evils. And that's something Hillary Clinton could never manage. Because the right strong point. is their long game. It's how Roe got overturned.

It's why we have to worry about Project 2025 in the first place. But when it comes to Kamala Harris, it feels like right wing media has been remarkably short sighted. By not hitting her seriously over the last four years, the national electorate isn't primed to turn against her with Pavlovian ease. They don't have a trigger phrase like Benghazi or a sticky nickname like Crooked Hillary.

Right now, there are already moves [01:21:00] being made to attack Harris if she's the nominee, but so much of this messaging is pushed by the right wing media. Those two parties are clearly not on the same page. At least, not yet. The whole cackling idiot narrative is the one that's stuck, but pundits are definitely going to go back

and look at their old lines of attack, sharpening their focus on her sex life or her woke policies or something new altogether. But they've got a lot of ground to make up. Even as Harris's importance in this race skyrockets, Fox is still struggling to villainize her properly.

Vivek Ramaswamy's Bold Prediction Blows Up In His Face - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-28-24

We anticipated this about a comma Harris that there was just going to be a difficulty in running against her. There was going to be a difficulty in running against any Democrat with only three or four months in which to build narrative. But in particular, in terms of, of Harris is going to be even more difficult because the Republican party and it's sort of media apparatus.

And by that, I mean, almost the Republican party, the, the, the, there's not a lot, a huge [01:22:00] daylight between, you know, there's a reason why like three of their senators have podcasts that are almost indistinguishable from, you know, Ben Shapiro's. Fox news is really, is literally like, you know, Sean Hannity is Trump's advisor.

I mean, there's, there's, there's not a lot of daylight here. And they're inclination is to call her a DEI candidate. I mean, they had to be when you're a leader of the House has to go to fellow lawmakers and say, guys, don't be overtly racist or misogynist. You know, you have a problem because they don't ever want to be saying that they don't ever want that reported that they had to say that, but they had to because not saying it would have been even more problematic for them.

And even Vivek Ramaswamy who himself is a person of color has to sort of like figure out like how do [01:23:00] I criticize her without raising this and it's sort of like, well, maybe I can just, keep talking about other black people maybe and that will scare here is a Vivek Ramaswamy on Hannity.

Spittin bars? Last night. Well, have some fun. See you on the trail. But guess who's gonna replace Kamala Harris? They don't know what to do here! So, look, I say this as somebody who, a year ago, predicted Joe was not gonna be the nominee. I'm gonna predict that Kamala Harris is not gonna be the nominee either.

And the reason is if they get one shot, they're gonna take their absolute best shot that they can. Who is it? That's totally not Kamala Harris. Who's that? This, Well, look, I think, I think there's a lot of open possibilities. I would not write off the possibility that it ends up being Michelle Obama. She checks off the same identity politic boxes, and it's going to be somebody who's maybe above the fray that doesn't create the same kind of infighting that could debilitate their party.

So Barack is The reality, Sean, though, is [01:24:00] The Brock is the is is literally leading the charge, trying to keep his, you know, keeping plausible deniability and then his own wife takes over. What do you call that? I think it's I think you call it realism, Sean. The reality is they're gonna take their best shot.

They waited till after the RNC convention. That timing is optimal for them because it gets closer and closer to the eventual election. They're going to drag this out. I predict through the Democratic nomination convention at the DNC in late August. I think Michelle Obama is not off the table. I don't think so.

What Democratic Party infighting is he talking about? I think it's honestly like they're just trying to pretend like there's a lot more dissent than I mean, no one No one could have predicted. I mean Into your credit you said there was going to be a lot of enthusiasm people are going to be so excited But I mean even still No one was going to predict a hundred [01:25:00] million dollars in, uh, you know, 36 hours or whatever it was, no one was going to predict zoom calls with 150, 000 people, 40, 000 people, 30, 000 people, nobody's going to, I mean, because zoom kept crashing.

Yes, because of the enthusiasm. And we should also say that if Michelle Obama does become the nominee at the convention this, uh, latest piece of news would have been a masterstroke because, of course, this is what's called lulling them to sleep. This is what you have to do when you're running a shadow campaign, right?

A shadow campaign for Kamala. even have the audio? Might even be worthwhile. Well, At least here we have the endorsement, office of Barack and Michelle Obama. This week we got to catch up with a friend, blah, blah, blah. We couldn't be more excited for her or more thrilled to endorse Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

And right after Biden [01:26:00] withdrew the polling from CBS showed that 79 percent said Kamala Harris should be the nominee, 21 percent said someone else. And that was July 21st through 22nd. So snap polls were now July 26th, so this was a 48 maximum hours after Biden had dropped out already nearly 80 percent of the party had wants her to be the nominee.

So they're just wish casting because they want to be able to say she's a man again or something like that. Well, I think, I think. Although they'll try that with Harris. They'll try that with Harris. They're, you know. And so, you know, their whole world view, or I should say their perspective that they've been telling their audience.

For years that, um, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama have been Marion netting. Joe Biden, Joe Biden's not in been the president. that's really been Barack Obama behind the whole thing. That [01:27:00] storyline just played out. It just finished. They failed. We don't need to play the video phone call I mean, it's sort of cringy to be honest.

Yeah, that's sort of that was my only opposition. It's it's kind of it's kind of We're not trying to dampen enthusiasm for kamala harris here, right? I mean, look. Barack Obama for many of us was a disappointment. and/or more in across the board. It is a different Democratic Party today.

But candidates are still going to if if there's a the West wing story line that they can do or character arc or that type of dialogue they're going to engage in it because it appeals to certain groups of people but. Vivek has been making this prediction about Michelle Obama for like a few months at this point So this is how he's trying to build up his podcast audience. He's not going to diverge until the the die is cast.

Matt Walsh is FREAKING OUT over Kamala Harris running for president -The Serf Times - Air Date 7-29-24

He's mad about everything getting too racist. You already have pledged democratic convention delegates have endorsed They're not racist enough. Kamala Harris who said Monday in her first campaign remarks [01:28:00] As a presidential candidate that she knows how to take on Republican Donald Trump.

Um, She, uh, Harris has been quickly consolidating support around her day old bid for the Democratic nomination for president. With seemingly all of her major potential rivals rallying around her less than 24 hours after Joe Biden announced he was bowing out. Okay, so Harris has locked up a majority of the delegates.

She has all the donors. She has all the endorsements. Um, All of her potential challengers have kissed the ring. So she's the nominee. You know, barring some unforeseen event, which you certainly can't bar, as we, as we have learned. But barring that, she's the nominee. You may remember all the way back to yesterday when Harris was claiming that she would do everything she could to earn the nomination.

Well, turns out that process took about 12 hours. When she said that she'd fight for the nomination, she meant that she would wait 12 hours and then announce herself the presumptive nominee. And now after a long campaign of half a day, uh, she's, she has it all sewed up the whole thing's a farce. Of course, it was a coordination from the very beginning.

Um, nobody of any note on Democrat side had the balls to say anything about it or challenge [01:29:00] it or in any way, you know, no one was going to throw their hat in the ring. But I suppose the good news now is that Republicans know that it's going to be Harris. They can play the game. They can game plan now accordingly.

And, uh, And boy have they ever. Especially the pundit class. I have just seen a outpouring of the weirdest and grossest shit. Just fucking fast and furious. So much of it happening so rapidly that like they actually had to have people step out. Like, you know, GOP fucking head executives coming forward and being like, Can y'all just tone down the racism?

It's, uh, it's pretty aggressive. Maybe the sexism too, a little bit. Yeah, obviously. I mean, I don't think they've realized that, like, you know. Vice President Harris emits mom energy and that mom energy is what a lot of people are tapping into for the whole mama law and the memes and all that kind of stuff like that.

Uh, it's really bizarre to try and take that and then turn it into, yeah, but she fucked and sucked her way to the top and that's why she [01:30:00] doesn't have kids and blah, blah, blah. And Laura Loomer being like, yeah, her uterus is broken and polluted and stuff like that. I was like, I mean, fucking, just keep going, you weird freaks.

Just, just keep going sicko mode. Just, again, unbelievably alienating, you know? Not, not just to half the population, uh, that you were denigrating, while you speak like that, but also, uh, to, you know, men who are, who are, Also disgusted by this who are also reviled by this constant dehumanization of women and wanting to police and control their bodies and remove their autonomy and all that kind of shit.

Like there's enough people who are just reviled by that very concept alone, that the fact that you are all lean into it, uh, I think will be disastrous for them. I think it's going to take a smart game plan to beat her. Like I said, the overconfidence on the right right now is, is very concerning We can make all the jokes about Harris that we want, and I've made plenty of them.

I'll continue to make them because it's fun to mock her. She deserves it. But it is going to be a challenge. And if you think that Trump is just going to [01:31:00] stroll easily into the White House now, then see, he's doing this a couple of days later, by the way, what happened initially was a bit of a panic mode and like Trump is still in that panic mode.

He's still tweeting about Joe Biden and being like, when is Joe Biden going to wake up and realize that like he has to actually run as the vice president and shit like that, because the playbook was pretty simple going forward. Joe Biden's way too old to be a presidential candidate. Uh, he is, uh, clearly, uh, in, uh, the middle of a cognitive decline.

And at this point, uh, you know, it's a disgrace that they're even trying to, uh, say that this man can maintain and continue to be the president for the next couple months, let alone for the next four years. Then when he drops out, the entire playbook is thrown out, and it's like, well, what do we have on Kamala Harris?

The cop stuff isn't gonna work because we're definitely not gonna be able to go to the left of her on crime. That one won't do it all good with our base. We could do the usual, just you know, birtherism, she [01:32:00] isn't a real American because she's not white, but people are a little more savvy to just the, you know, fucking outright racism of all of that.

Uh, we could go the sexist route, I guess we'll try that out. We'll play in that arena at first and You know what? Fuck it. Racism too. Racism and sexism. We'll just start smashing those buttons and see. And then it's like, okay, all right, y'all, y'all went a little too aggressive. Let's dial that back. It's not looking as exciting as it was before.

There seems to be this enormous groundswell right now, not only breaking historical U. S. fundraising records, I believe it was like 60 percent of people who donated the day of that historic day were new to the First time donos. So that's like, uh oh, that's, whoa, there's something else going on here. If you look at TikTok, it's like, well, it's somehow just complete, uh, I don't know, uh, Don over?

Donald over? Does that work? Don over? But either way, TikTok, it's cooked in terms of like, they are just outwardly pouring out all memes , and I know it doesn't really make sense [01:33:00] to the right, but like that, they've lost that. So what route do we go now? What's the next strategy? And I think you're delusional.

It's going to be, it's going to be a fight no matter what, and it could be a very difficult fight if the Democrats are smart enough to play this right, because they have a chance to rebrand Harris as she moves into the spotlight. This is, and there's been moments like this now on both sides where you have this.

Uh, historic thing that happens, and if you play it right, you can use it as a reset button and Kamala Harris more than anyone in politics needs a reset button. So this is a time to set the narrative for both Republicans and Democrats. There's a it's it's the whole race has changed, and so there's gonna be a new narrative.

Um, and and one side or the other is going to decide what the narrative is. That's the way it goes. And whoever sets it successfully will probably win. There are some concerning indications that the Democrats are concocting what might be, uh, an effective strategy. [01:34:00] So I'll play this one moment from Harris's address.

They're scared, you know? You can really feel how everything changed. The wind's completely transformed. Cause like, up until the RNC, especially after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, They were full confidence mode. Jack Bezeby aka Nwoken is too, right? Just straight up like replying to, you know, liberal, uh, pundits and stuff like, Your time is coming, get ready for the wall, kind of stuff like that.

Like, you could tell they had this in as a Sherlock. This, this was a done deal. There's, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Uh, yeah, I mean, J. D. Vance is a risky pick, but whatever. We have, uh, confidence in our fearless leader. I'm sure he won't lead us astray and pick some couch fucking weirdo. Let's get him out there and let's, uh, let's start this whole process.

And then after that week, it was only right wingers and far righters who actually really cared about the assassination attempt. Everyone else was kind of like, eh, on to the next thing. Uh, and now the fact that Joe Biden has stepped down. Completely taken all of the oxygen out of the room in terms of all their ability to really, you know, [01:35:00] maintain and push the narrative.

Now, the, the, again, the media has done what the media does, which is it follows the story, and the story now is of course this movement of hope. Of change. Kamala. Mamala. What's going on here? What are all these kids with coconut tree emojis in their names and why are they posting all these memes? And I don't quite understand.

What is this? Skibidi? Coconut tree? Well, uh, yeah. Sure. I mean, whatever, whatever it takes, right? At this point? Rest, we're campaign staff yesterday. Here's a line and you're going to hear this line 70, 000 times, so, you know, get used to it. But, uh, between now and November, you're going to hear it over and over and over again.

Especially because we know one thing we know about Kamala Harris is that is that when she stumbles on a line that she likes She will, even if nobody else likes it, but this is the strategy. You're going to do the same thing that the RNC did. Do you know that the RNC strategists are the ones that created the entire coconut tree pilled revolutions shit.

Like they were the ones that first put that clip out there. And [01:36:00] even before anyone even had like a hint that maybe Kamala Harris could change course and, and really change, uh, you know, us electoral history here and perhaps be way better than her predecessor before any of that kind of stuff came along.

I remember seeing that clip and just sharing it with friends and being like, You know, I hate Cop Mala, but I gotta admit, this clip's funny. Like, I don't know what she's on, what beautiful cocktail's taking place here, but I really hope that she shares it with, like, the world, you know? Just, just one of those things, because like, just like, not only is she having a great time, this seems like, you know, a post, uh, brunch mimosa moment.

Uh, it's, it's kind of endearing. I'm no fan of hers, but it is certainly endearing to hear her talking about, You think you fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context in which you live and all that came before you and you're like

Who talks like this? And who talks like this that is also very pleasant, who talks like this, right? Like, I can see someone who's just like, [01:37:00] deeply, deeply obsessed with philosophy to be sitting there and then being like, Did you know that you exist in the context of all in which you live and that which came before you?

And I'd be like, yeah, sure, um, I guess. I do want the fries with the burger though. Uh, but in this case, it's like, ah, well that's a slightly humanizing moment, right? And that slightly humanizing moment has been turned into an entire movement, an entire meme factory, and now they're doing the same thing.

TALK OF THE TOWN

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section C: "The Talk of the Town."

What's Kamala Harris REAL Political Record? - The Bitchuation Room (with Francesca Fiorentini) - Air Date 7-6-24

San Francisco has a reputation for being like a, tech dystopia nightmare, but don't forget people outside of San Francisco that were also corrupt, but we're corrupt in a stupid way.

Kamala Harris got elected as district attorney in 2003 in the wake of a corruption scandal called Fajita gate. I love that. Some cops had a fist fight. Some off duty cops had a fist fight over a bag of take out fajitas outside of a bar in the Marina District, which is one of the lamest, most bougie, [01:38:00] posh neighborhoods in town.

Yeah, they spent way too much on those fajitas. and then there was a cover up of the fight, and it was in that area. Somehow out of that scandal, we get Kamala Harris as DA. Locally, she was known as super smart, but like not a progressive reformer in terms of like issues around truancy of students You know, supporting locking of young people.

She was not sympathetic to the city's sanctuary policy and supported coordinating with immigration agencies around people who are undocumented, who got caught up law enforcement situations. But as she rose, she like, like they do sort of, you know, move to the main line of the Democratic Party and stayed with it, which, fortunately has for the most part, moved to the left over, over.

Well, one of the interesting things she did is she was endorsed by the police union when she was a DA, and then declined to seek the death penalty for a cop killer. Which is great. I mean, that's like a low, low bar in my opinion. I mean, we're leftists, that's a low bar, but still she [01:39:00] lost the endorsement of the police union because that, and they were incensed and that was a whole thing.

As also attorney general of California, she went after banks for their unfair mortgage practices, predatory practices, went after for profit universities, oil companies like Chevron and BP for illegal practices and environmental damage. Under her tutelage and her terms, California was the first state to adopt body cam policies in 2015.

She launched implicit bias trainings. And then also had like a database for, people who died while in custody She pushed for a moratorium on the death penalty later while she was in the Senate. So it's interesting. And this, I, I'm curious about your thoughts on it. Cause the whole like Kamal is a cop.

Kamal is a prosecutor. I understand that. And that's very true. And generally we don't like prosecutors. But. I do think that compared to a lot of folks, her familiarity with the justice system and the ways it does and does not work for most Americans, and particularly, obviously, black and brown [01:40:00] Americans, poor Americans, that I think could be a positive, like that could be a plus for her, right?

Considering what we've seen, which is, politicians who just say, you know, rattle off. Yeah, fund the police, fund the police. And I'm not saying she won't denounce, defund the police. That seems to be sort of like a barrier to entry of the Democratic Party if you're going to be in leadership. But I do think she has more intimate knowledge of that.

And so where Joe Biden has done fuck all around criminal justice reform, I could look to Kamala to actually do something much more broad sweeping, much more impactful. I mean, I know body cams and taking a database and, you know, implicit bias training, that's all like mealy mouth lib shit, but that was years ago in the state.

And so I, I actually think that would be helpful for her in the future, but I'm curious on your thoughts. You know, we can hold the contradictions, we can recognize that like, at the moment we have a, a better hope to have a united front to stop fascism and you know, clear eyed that the fucking job [01:41:00] of the president of the United States is to be a competent manager of a capitalist war machine.

Um, and I don't expect. the president of the United States to not be that. So I want to get the best version of that that I can get. And it's not like I'm not mad about the ways that they're not, but I also reckon, you know, it's like you know, California is a like Republicans are boxed out, boxed out of state politics.

and, you know, Republicans can't get above 35 percent of any statewide race. And yet we're still having, huge, huge challenges getting any kind of like, sort of squad type political challenger through the Democratic Party within California. So it's like, if we can't get a true, like, uh, Ilhan Omar type elected to Congress, from Oakland or, actually, actually, we may, we may be able to, we may be about to, because Latifah Simon is as close as it gets.

She's, she's probably. And [01:42:00] Latif is fantastic. But we can't get like in San Francisco right now, everyone, you know, people like people are running for mayor with different versions of pro cop politics in San Francisco. So it's like, it's disappointing that our politics are what they are, but I'm not going to be mad at the president when, we, we can't.

We can't, you know, contend for power at even at the most basic local levels.

Kamala Harris's Party, Divided Over Israel - Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast - Air Date 7-29-24

we're a week into this new race, Joan, how's that going? How is she motivating these, these specific, uh, groups of voters? Well, you know, Matt, I think she's been doing it for quite a long time. I, you know, I, I think that her, uh, trajectory really changed with the Dobbs decision. When she went, um, you know, she was the administration's Top surrogate on reproductive rights and, uh, really took to the campaign trail, uh, for the midterms, uh, really gets a lot of credit, [01:43:00] including from Joe Biden, as well as, you know, reproductive justice groups for, for leading the charge and for making sure that that midterm, uh, was not, there was no red wave.

Uh, it was an amazingly good midterm for the Democrats. So I think, I think a lot of it started there. Uh, and I think even before, uh, before my piece came out, I think Christopher wrote a piece showing while her overall poll numbers were lagging, you know, she was seeing a rising popularity among black voters, for instance, um, paradoxically or not, black voters had always favored Biden over Harris and that, and that had changed.

Um, she gets a larger share of, she's, she's, you know, the race is tied and it was always Practically tied with Biden, but he was doing worse in the swing states, but anyway, she's getting a larger share of the women's vote than Joe Biden was, uh, in, in the polls I've seen in the last few days, um, as [01:44:00] well as younger voters.

So, you know, all that was starting even before. Joe Biden stumbled and I obviously wasn't prescient, but, uh, I just saw that she was out on the campaign trail a lot. And I was really fascinated by exactly what she was doing, not just the repro justice. Stuff, but gun violence, you know, she, she's, she heads the white house office of gun violence prevention.

Um, you know, she's on the road touting the Biden Harris economic opportunity agenda, specifically talking to black voters, um, you know, in, in swing states, uh, she was already doing all of that. And then. Joe Biden had his disastrous, uh, debate performance. So, uh, you know, I was, I was very lucky to be basically writing that piece as, as he melted down.

So, right, right. Sort of transitioned us to this new moment, that piece. What about you, Christopher? You're, you're out in California [01:45:00] for Politico. Obviously you've been following, uh, the vice president for some time. Are you. surprised by how she's been received over the last week, this apparent bump in the polls, these specific voter groups that might be warming to her in a new kind of way.

Um, what, what's your sense over the last week or so? I'm not surprised. And the main reason for that, as Joan said, is it's very hard as, as vice president to kind of turn around older. Narratives about you. And I think, um, you'd talk to friends, you talk to people in the party, you talk to people who basically people who don't pay very close attention and they say, well, you know, I, I like the vice president, but I just don't see a lot of her.

And part of that is basically they're, they're, they're just not watching and vice presidents don't get covered in the way that, uh, in anywhere close to the way that presidents do. And she was, she was out there like three to four. Days a week. She was doing tons of [01:46:00] travel for the last couple of years. I mean, really the whole vice presidency.

And so a lot of that was just, it just took a while for, for some of that to set in and for people to, um, to notice her. And then obviously once you're, once you're the nominee, she was always the. By far the best positioned, um, Democrat to, to take over in an event like this. I mean, there, there really weren't many others who could do it, especially on such a short timeline.

And so, um, a lot of this is, is just people kind of seeing. Um, things come into fruition that have basically been happening, um, for months and months, um, maybe even years. And, uh, if you go back, I guess I'll remind folks that some of these communities that she's spent the most time campaigning to, um, those were folks that she was focused on even before, uh, Biden picked her.

Um, it was, it was sort of this, this summer of Floyd and there, there was a lot of unrest out there. [01:47:00] Um, The media she was doing during that veep steak, she was very much focused on, on, um, voters of color on young people. And so this has been, um, this has been a long time project. What about those older narratives on Harris, Chris Christopher, you mentioned vice presidents that aren't out there a lot.

So we don't. Here thing. So, you know, my memories of her in terms of the, the, the media chatter, the Twitter chatter, uh, was that she's at least from the left, the criticisms from love that she's a cop. And this is what we heard about her when she ran for president in 2020 called her a cop. Um, based on her background as a California attorney general, San Francisco district attorney is, is that, uh, as, as that criticism cropped up, uh, over the last week, this, this, uh, idea that she's a cop and that's a bad thing.

And, you know, if so, does that criticism still have the same sting to it that it might've in 2020? And is, is it even accurate based [01:48:00] on her record in California, Christopher?

There's a lot there to unpack. I mean, a lot of the criticism she's getting right now, and that's really starting up in earnest from the Trump campaign and from Republicans is basically that she was this very liberal, uh, DA and very liberal AG and trying to sort of lump her in with this sort of new class, new generation of progressive prosecutors.

Um, that's, A pretty inaccurate picture. Um, she was basically sort of ahead of her time in terms of re entry programs. Um, in terms of trying to sort of, uh, you know, she, she would always say she wrote this early book called smart on crime, so not to be tough on crime or soft on crime, but to be smart on crime.

And it was kind of her philosophy on, on approaching this and, um, you know, giving people a second chance. Um, and that. That was really kind of missed in the Democratic primary in 2020. Um, and now you look at [01:49:00] these criticisms from Trump and Republicans. They're basically trying to lump her in these, um, far, far more progressive, uh, DAs that have emerged really since her time.

Um, and she doesn't quite fit in, in any way really in that, um, category either. And so, it's, it's a difficult thing to sort of pin down. But I think you already saw around the selection, we wrote a lot. When she was picked as the vice president, some of the, some of the loudest voices at the time who were critical of her record, who thought that she was on the left, who thought that she's, um, uh, sort of.

Uh, too aggressive, too far right as a prosecutor had already dialed some of that back. Um, and, you know, we're really sort of coming to grips with her record even when she was chosen. And so the public is sort of catching up with that conversation now. One of the more critical things about this race, this presidential race might be Be how Kamala Harris handles the [01:50:00] continuing violence in Israel and Gaza, and now Lebanon.

Ah, that situation is shifting every day politically and her remarks and her actions are being analyzed to see if there's any space between her and president Biden. So last Wednesday, uh, prime minister. Benjamin who made a trip to DC dress Congress. The vice president skipped that address and we'll play a clip Uh, for speaking to reporters in just a second, but Christopher, how was that move seen?

And how just in general, did she handle that situation? BBs in town, Republicans, uh, are invited him and, uh, all of this, uh, is going on meanwhile over in Israel and Gaza. How did her skipping the address and then handling it out? And then what she said afterwards, how was that received? And how do you think she, she handled it?

Yeah, I think, um, this [01:51:00] is an, an example, I think, for, for months now that we've watched and, and certainly we've watched a lot closer in terms of how she will handle these major issues and how she might handle them, um, Maybe even in the margins differently than Biden has, um, what her approach might be. Uh, I would not expect her on the vast majority of policy, uh, to stake out much of a different, uh, position than Biden on the whole, but there is a difference in the nuance.

And I think her kind of handling or even, even sort of the, the approach and the body language and the way she, she, she looked at Yahoo. Yeah. Um, uh, in addressing him, um, in this gaggle with reporters, I think was, you know, parsed almost to ridiculous levels. Um, and so, uh, folks are looking at that. I mean, this is something that, uh, Donald Trump has taken [01:52:00] numerous shots at in his last couple rallies.

Um, he's, uh, said several things that are, uh, certainly not true that she, uh, you know, doesn't care about that. Uh, Jewish people, that she's, you know, a poet, anti Israel, all these, these sorts of things that, um, that are not true, and at the same time, as you, as you mentioned, she's gotten a lot of pressure, a lot of, uh, focus, um, from, um, from the other side here, and so, um, there has not been a great deal of distance, I guess there's, there's one sort of Uh, anecdote in the, in the longer, uh, view here of this story where, uh, she had a speech and came out and said, um, there should be, uh, a ceasefire.

And there was sort of a, a few second pause. And then she came in and, and sort of gave the, uh, conditions, which are pretty much in line with the, the administration's at that point. Um, and so it's, you know, we have to see where this goes, but I think, [01:53:00] um, you know, I think so far there hasn't been a lot of daylight, um, but, but people know, um, that she's, she's, she's conveyed her concerns, certainly for civilians, um, there, and she's tried to sort of, at least around the margins, rhetorically, uh, maybe is seen as, um, as, as showing, uh, more concern there.

Trump is Toast - The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich - Air Date 7-27-24

Kamala has been endorsed by who, who this week? Everybody. Yeah, everybody. Everybody. Olivia Rodrigo, who's a pop star. Teachers, teachers.

I mean, it runs the gamut. Well, all the politicians finally came around, the Democratic politicians. Uh, I was worried a little bit. But, you know, the big hero, it turns out, of the week is none other than Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi is the person who made the deal. I mean, she is the quintessential, talented, backroom, not in a negative way, I'm using the backroom in a positive way, politician.

She is. She's the whisperer. [01:54:00] She got Joe Biden to agree to step down. She got the Democrats to agree to endorse Kamala Harris. She, uh, she really is a champion. And President Biden's speech on, whenever it was, Wednesday night, what'd you think of it? I thought it was exactly what he needed to do. It was only 11 minutes.

So I was kind of, it was, it made me sad because here's a man who, Uh, has to, and had, has had to face his limits, his limitations, his decline, uh, and the fact that he just can't do the job anymore. And so Well, he can do the job currently. He just can't go on again. Well, he can do it, and he will finish his term, and he certainly has enough, uh, in his kind of memory bank and his, and his capacity to finish the term, but he could not do it Do another term of office.

I think that's the main Takeaway, and I thought he was gracious. Mm hmm. He was [01:55:00] gracious last Uh, last Sunday, uh, when he bowed out, uh, he's been extraordinary. When he called into the campaign headquarters, uh, that's really when it got to me. When he, when Kamala Harris was there in the campaign headquarters in Delaware talking to people, uh, giving them a pep talk and he calls in and he has COVID and he says, you know, that's the way to go and, uh, calls her kid.

Yep. Um, I mean, I, I was touched. It was very touching. He was on speakerphone and she was there. You know, reacting to him and very authentic and there was love, the word love was used multiple times. Well, I think they are not scared of using that word and I think it's genuine. Um, now how about Donald Trump and J.

D. Vance? Speaking of genuine. A lot of love between them. Yeah, it's been so fascinating. So that pick, do you think, I mean, we've heard a little bit this week. Was that, was J. D., I mean, was J. D. Vance the right pick? The answer is no, but was it the right pick for them for the reasons they think? No, I don't think so.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think they thought they were going to get, well, number one, [01:56:00] young, a young person. Yes, they got somebody who's half the age of, literally, exactly half the age of Donald Trump. Uh, they also wanted to get somebody who would be reinforcing the base, the message to the base. And that seems like what he does.

I don't see any new people heading their way because of him. No, he's not attracting anybody who's not already MAGA. He is sort of MAGA plus, MAGA on steroids. Uh, and that is a problem for them. I mean, how are they going to attract women? Hopefully they don't. The entire, you know, as we talked about before, at the entire Republican convention was a kind of macho, MAGA, man, you know, tough, wrestling, brr, hulk.

Uh, well, um, It's, uh, it, it turns out that with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, uh, this is a mistake because of, how many more voters are there in America who are women than men? Three million. Three million, uh, and I think they're going to be out in great force. Oh, I think so, too. [01:57:00] And suburban women matter in swing states.

And this is going to be big. Yeah, so J. D. Vance, you know, he would, it made sense, it made sense, I think, in their mindset where they thought they were going to trounce Biden. But this is interesting to watch. Whoopsie. Well, it's very, it's particularly interesting because Kamala Harris in her first week, the themes that she has been using, I am a prosecutor, she says, and I.

I'm used to dealing with people who have abused women and have broken the law and are, you know, felons and have cheated. I know his type. I know his type. She keeps saying. And this is, but this is really ingenious. And then she can move on to, she hasn't yet, but she can move on to women's rights over their bodies.

Uh, she has, it, it gives her a really strong platform, uh, in which she has a great deal of credibility. And J. D. Vance, all these quotes he's been saying that are coming out [01:58:00] that are truly horrific that say things like, you know, childless cat women out there. He called her a childless cat lady. Yeah. I mean, what kind of, this is, the Republicans, I mean, these two Republicans, Trump and Vance, let's call them Trump Republicans, they are digging a hole for themselves in terms of fear and anger, uh, and fear and anger will take you some way.

But as long as Kamala Harris and whoever she picks for Vice President are on the side of hope and joy and it's morning in America and, you know, we can do it and we're going to look for the future, uh, that's a winning formula. But it's so disparaging and it's so misogynistic. Uh, the, the Trump, Trump fans.

is, yes, it's misogynistic and it is also, part of it is, uh, is also isolationist, uh, in terms of foreign policy, uh, it's, uh, it's a, it's a kind of [01:59:00] xenophobic, uh, anti foreign, uh, I don't think it's, it's certainly not the future of America. Uh, and it's certainly not uplifting. Mm mm. And this anti people without children who haven't given birth to children.

This is echoed in Project 2025, by the way, which talks about men and women who have families as being Well, Vance has not given birth, I don't think. No. And Trump has not given birth. No, I think As far as I know A lot of the presidents that we've had, turns out, have not given birth. I don't think a single president we've had has given birth.

I don't think Well, let me think. Let me think. But so Washington Madison? Monroe? Monroe may have, no. No. Keep going. Dolly Madison? No. No. She's a stepmother, but I mean it is just so disparaging and they are leaning into this and it's disgusting to watch. This is the family, this is the evangelical right.

That's it. This is the whole notion that there is a right way to have a family. Yep. And if you don't do it the right way, then you are somehow sinning. Oh yeah. Yep, yep. Well, here [02:00:00] again. An aberrant. Well, this is again, this looks back. This is, this is America in the 1920s, 1930s. This is not modern America.

It's certainly not the future of America. No. And I don't think a lot of Americans want this. I don't think so either. But let's hope they do. See it see it for what it is and show up and vote accordingly. I think they will now again Let's go back to the notion. This is a hundred days starting tomorrow until the election.

Yeah These days these weeks that we are in now are critical in terms of Kamala Harris and her vice president defining themselves defining the Democratic Party, defining the future for America, uh, inviting people to join them even if they are independents. And as we know, there are more independents than there are Republicans or Democrats.

Uh, and so, uh, what they've got to do, and I think they are off to a wonderful start doing it, is painting the future of America in, uh, color. In a way that people say, yes, I [02:01:00] want that.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Black Feminist Future. The Anti Dystopians, The Majority Report, Mother Jones, The Serf Times, The Situation Room, the Brian Lehrer show and the Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks to everyone for listening.

Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet. Ken, Brian, Ben and Andrew for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting.

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#1645 J.D. Vance, Faux Republican Economic Populism And The Real Pro-Worker Policies We Need (Transcript)

Posted by · July 30, 2024 5:30 AM

Air Date 7/30/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast. The Republican party is making it sound like they're trying to transform themselves into the party of working people. There's a mountain of evidence suggesting that you shouldn't believe them, but there's also plenty of reason to sit up and take notice of the situation.

Sources providing our Top Takes in under 45 minutes today include Democracy Now!, Deconstructed, Parallax Views, The Majority Report, The Thom Hartmann Program, and The Real News Network.

Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more on three topics:

Section A - the Teamsters speech and false populism.

Section B - pro-worker legislation.

Section C - J.D. Vance and the center-right.

“He’s a Fake” Robert Kuttner on How J.D. Vance Disguises His Anti-Worker Views as Economic Populism - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-16-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Tell us who J.D. Vance is and the significance of Donald Trump choosing him, who would be the youngest-ever vice president if he were to win, at the age of 39, the former marine and venture capitalist.[00:01:00]

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, he’s a very dangerous fake. And his whole history, from writing Hillbilly Elegy to doing a 180-degree pivot from being a critic of Trump to being a loyalist to Trump, to pretending to be very favorable to working Americans, when in fact all of his votes have been the opposite, suggests both that he’s a fake, and he’s an attractive fake. He’s personally likable. I hate to say that. He’s an intellectual. He knows how to engage issues. He knows things that Trump is completely ignorant of. He’s young, whereas Trump is old. And when I wrote this piece yesterday morning, before Trump had made his selection, I wrote that if Trump is shrewd, he will name J.D. Vance, but I’m not sure [00:02:00] that Trump’s own narcissism will let him do that, because the risk for Trump is that Vance will upstage Trump.

And let me say a word or two about Hillbilly Elegy, because this was a classic case of bait-and-switch. So, the story is that he’s got a dysfunctional family, they move from southern Ohio to Kentucky, and supposedly the book is expressing great compassion for his kin and his neighbors, but the actual message of the book is that if you’re not doing well in Kentucky, it’s because of your own bad behavior. You’re taking too many drugs. You’re selling your food stamps. You’re not able to hold a job. You’re not doing right by your children. It’s the old conservative narrative that poverty is the fault of the poor. It’s all behavioral. It’s not structural. It’s not industry being outsourced or the coal mines closing. [00:03:00] No, it’s just your behavior is bad. \

The right-wing foundations invested in a guy called Charles Murray, who wrote a book in the ’80s called Losing Ground, which basically said that poverty is the fault of the War on Poverty, and poverty is the fault of the welfare system, and poverty is the fault of spoiling the poor. And in the review that I wrote of his book, I described Vance as “Charles Murray with a shiteating grin.” And when I met Vance at a conference the following year, he quoted that line back to me and engaged intellectually and was very self-reflective and thoughtful and likable. And I said to myself, “Uh-oh, this guy is really going to be trouble.”

And so, what they did last night, they repositioned the Republican Party as the party that’s pro-worker, even though this is complete nonsense. But because Vance [00:04:00] is so adept at these head fakes, and because he’s got this fake compelling life story, he’s the ideal guy to try and represent that. And they were so cynical, they even put Sean O’Brien on the program, who sort of threaded the needle between talking about what we needed to do to give unions a fighting chance, without quite mentioning that Biden was the one who was in favor of this, and it was the Republicans who were blocking this.

This is very clever on the part of Republicans to reposition themselves, at least for the purpose of the convention, and maybe for the campaign, from being the party of hatred to being the party that cares about workers. It’s nonsense, but Vance is a very good symbol of that. And that’s why he’s so dangerous.

Normally, it really doesn’t matter who the vice president is. You have to go all the way back to 1960 to point to a vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who really made a difference in an election [00:05:00] outcome—he helped Kennedy carry Texas and maybe won the election. But other than that, the vice president doesn’t matter very much. In this case, where you’ve got very closely fought races in Wisconsin and in Michigan and in Ohio—well, not Ohio, but Ohio where Sherrod Brown is concerned, anyway—and western Pennsylvania, Vance could actually make a difference.

The only silver lining—and I hate to call this a silver lining—is it makes it even more urgent for the Democrats to find somebody more effective than Biden who can beat these guys.

Trump, Vance, and the New Right at the RNC - Deconstructed - Air Date 7-19-24

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: So first of all, Emily, what would you call it. What is the name that people who are of the J.D. Vance variety prefer to call themselves? Or are there multiple names and we could pick from a couple?

EMILY JASHINSKY: As we're recording this, there was a new name, a powerful suggestion for a new name actually floated this morning by Saurabh Amari, who has been at the center of the discourse over what the new-right is, if there needs to be a new-right ever since he [00:06:00] wrote a viral article against David French, who was at the time a National Review columnist and has since been elevated to New York Times columnist, and said, "it's not the new-right, it's the new-center." And I find that very interesting because the new-right, I think, comes with a lot of cultural baggage. And I say that as somebody who's probably part of the cultural baggage, who's, staunchly anti-abortion and has deeply held conservative religious beliefs, and I think new-right has come with that.

And J.D. Vance is a convert to Catholicism. Like a lot of intellectuals in the right wing space are. He's a student of Rene Girard who is Peter Thiel's favorite philosopher and is big in those venture capitalists, Silicon Valley circles. So. What we saw from J.D. Vance at the convention, I think accurately describes as a new-center as opposed to a new-right, because when you attach Trump to the new-right, I think you [00:07:00] lose some of the cultural baggage.

And the new-right that just convened at the National Conservatism Conference a week before the Republican National Convention kicked off... and I also think the left should consider that because all of this fear mongering about it is missing that there are some genuinely interesting shifts on labor and on trade in these spaces, but perhaps it's incumbent on republicans and new-right movement people to figure out how to deal with that cultural baggage.

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: From a marketing perspective, trying to claim the center is actually quite smart. I mean, most people out there who are not politics junkies tend to think of themselves as in the center, whether they are or not. They think "my views are the sensible ones." That's why they hold those views because they believe they are sensible. And the directions of left and right almost by their nature are self marginalizing. So that is an [00:08:00] interesting attempt to gather people around this new-center idea. but what is the new-center? What would you say are the things that characterize it, and how does it rank its hierarchy of issues that it cares about?

EMILY JASHINSKY: That reminds me, one thing I like about what we get to do, Ryan, is that right before I started taping with you, I was interviewing Kevin Roberts, who is the president of the Heritage Foundation, a friend of J.D. Vance's, and asking him about Project 2025. And I asked him about Sorobomari referring to the new-center instead of the new-right. And he said, basically, I don't like labels. Kevin Roberts is somebody who has spoken at NatCon and said, I'm not inviting you into the conservative movement. I'm here as the conservative movement to tell you, you are the conservative movement. I think he and J.D. Vance, now that J.D. Vance is firmly ensconced in Trump world, would describe it as mostly in terms of populist economics, but would also probably bring into it the parents right movement that sprung up after Covid. You should have the right to know what's being taught [00:09:00] in classrooms. They probably wouldn't frame it in the terms of you hear a lot about pornography and you hear a lot about, LGBT issues. They would probably say parental rights. Glenn Youngkin is being here at the RNC. Everyone's very excited about that. So I think that's how they would attach cultural issues to the suite of economic issues.

For example, the 10%. tariff, or I'm sorry, the 100 percent tariff, right? What's Trump on now? I was just reading his interview with Bloomberg, but they would talk about protectionism vis a vis China. They would talk about industrial policy when it comes to chips manufacturing. When it comes to the defense industry, they would talk about ending forever wars. Foreign policy is a huge component of the new-right. There are basically no supporters left of the Iraq war left anywhere, but even in the Republican party, I went back and looked at the speeches from the 2004 Republican convention just last night. It was all about the Iraq war.

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: Oh, that whole thing was organized around "stay the course". That was Bush's entire argument, stay the course. [00:10:00] So where do the cultural issues that Republicans were rising on the last 10 20 years fit in, whether it's, trans issues, briefly you had this little reactionary move against marriage equality. Do those take something of a backseat there, despite the fact that Vance himself is a Catholic convert who, has a pretty strong personal views on abortion. Where do they fit in? is it more of an economic trade and foreign policy type of tendency, or is it married to the cultural stuff? How do we think about that? Do they want to put it in the backseat? Is it leading? What is the Positioning there?

EMILY JASHINSKY: I think that is the question that bubbled to the surface in the proverbial smoke filled back rooms this week when Donald Trump went full send and picked J.D. Vance as his Running mate and Vance wasn't someone who was at the top of the list. A lot of people expected Tim Scott or Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio was on the short list, but when he went with J.D. Vance, I think right now as [00:11:00] Trump is trying to figure out post assassination attempt, how to be a unifier, we've heard the word unity all the time at the RNC. What does that look like? Is that new-center or new-right? And that's why abortion has basically been absent from this RNC.

The trans issue has been front and center at the RNC, because Republicans feel like that is a real winning issue now, but you haven't heard a lot about pornography in schools. You haven't heard a lot about marriage. You haven't heard a lot about some of those really red-meat issues that even as they fell out of fashion with the broader public, were still very much in vogue with the Republican party.

The other huge component we're leaving out is immigration. That's big. And so right now, I think as we are speaking, people in the Republican party in the Trump circles are trying to figure out how to sell J.D. Vance's populism, and Trump's populism, honestly, as a unifying centrist message. And obviously there are some Pretty clear ways to do that. There's [00:12:00] a lot of consensus on immigration, but, being directionally opposed to the Biden immigration policy does not make you in favor of J.D. Vance's immigration policy, as it has been, articulated in the past.

So that I think is like literally in the process, like the sausage is being made right now as we're speaking.

JD Vance, Phony Populism on the Right, the Republican National Convention, and Democratic Party Messaging w_ Ben Burgis - Parallax Views - Air Date 7-22-24

BEN BURGIS: So what the PRO Act would basically do, most of it is just reversing some of the most egregiously anti-union parts of Taft Hartley. The existing structure of American labor law, as I'm sure most people are listening to this know, but just really quickly is just crazily tilted against workers trying to organize unions, go on strike, all that stuff. And when I say that, I don't just mean compared to my wishlist as a bright eyed socialist. Compared to Canada. Just compared to normal Western democracies, US labor law, graded on that curve, is tilted crazily against workers trying to [00:13:00] organize unions and go on strike and all that. You can have these captive audience meetings where workers , during their working hours, are required to go to meetings to be barraged with the anti-union propaganda, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure people know all this stuff.

So the PRO Act is just this very basic initiative to reverse some of the worst, most anti-worker part of existing American labor law, and the fact that Hawley and Vance and Rubio, these people won't even support that to me says everything. It's such a minimal standard. I saw that thing where J.D. Vance was giving his reasons for not supporting it.

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: I have it pulled up right here. I was going to ask you directly about it.

So Vance, this Saurabh again was the one to interview him about this. Vance says that he supports a regime of sectoral bargaining, like the ones that prevail in continental Europe, rather than shop-by-shop organizing bequeathed by the New Deal. He also noted that as it is the existing mainstream labor movement is [00:14:00] irreconcilably hostile to Republicans and that more trust building is needed before a comprehensive rapprochement can take place.

And that second part alone just says to me, this is just excuse making. If you want the Republicans to be more labor, they have to give something to labor, in order to get labor on their side, but they don't actually want to do that anyways. So to me, that's just excuse making, but go on.

BEN BURGIS: Yeah, totally. The second part really gives away the game.

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: And I'd say the same thing if some Democrats...

BEN BURGIS: Yeah, of course. The second part is just " they don't like us for some reason. We're not going to make it easier for them..."

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: I couldn't imagine why.

BEN BURGIS: Yeah, exactly. And then yeah, the first part, I think also

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: The sectoral bargaining stuff,

BEN BURGIS: it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously because I think it fits into a larger pattern with Vance, and this is a big part of what I was writing about in that 2022 article for The Daily Beast, which is that, Vance in particular, his party trick, is that he has really mastered the ability to come up with populist sounding ways to [00:15:00] concretely come down on the same side as the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

So my favorite example of this is when Vance was on Tucker Carlson's old show on Fox. He said that Medicare for All would be a giveaway to the professional class because the government would essentially be paying doctors. This is the perfect example of a J.D. Vance argument. You start to dig into it at all. It's nonsensical. It's Oh yeah. Weird then that the AMA doesn't support Medicare for all. I wonder why not. But in fact, doctor, salaries would probably go down a bit, if we had Medicare for all, which, I'm fine with, I think they're unusually high, by standards of comparable nations. If doctors could be making a bit less money and it would still be a very desirable career. If you paired it with free college, it would also be less of a big deal, but it's silly.

Oh, that's why you don't support Medicare for All, because you're just not willing to give anything to doctors because that's a middle class profession. There was another one where he described Universal free [00:16:00] daycare as class war against ordinary people on the grounds that there's polling where people who didn't have college degrees were more likely than people who did have college degrees to say the arrangement they would prefer most is one parent staying home with the kids while the other one works.

Although again, not even that dramatically, and I think not even an absolute majority, I think it was like 44 percent of non college people versus 35 percent of college graduates said that was their preferred arrangement. And of course, again, 10 seconds of thought should tell you that if the state is paying for daycare, that doesn't actually mean you have to take it. It just gives you more options. Nobody's going to come to your door and be like, "why hasn't your child reported to daycare? You're not allowed to stay home with them." But it's an excuse.

Again, he's coming up with a populist sounding reason to oppose giving people free daycare, and this is just the same thing that he's doing for the PRO Act, like with that first reason. He's saying "Oh, I don't like the PRO Act cause [00:17:00] I want to go even further." One, no, you don't. I see no reason to believe that you're serious about that. If a bunch of Democrats were out there pushing sectoral bargaining I don't believe for a second that, J.D. Vance would be on their side. And the reason I don't believe that is if he wanted to go even further, why wouldn't you support this? Because look, that's not normally how J.D. Vance decides his votes that it's like, "if it's less than the full thing that I want, I'm not going to support it." He supports all kinds of things that he thinks should go further. Every Senator does.

My last thought about this is just, I'm a little suspicious of if you do to believe for the sake of argument serious about this, I think any version of sectoral bargaining that J.D. Vance would support would likely suck. When you talk about sectoral bargaining in Nordic countries, for example, that's based on you having these incredibly strong industrial unions, that they're doing the bargaining. So I want to know who would be the representatives with the [00:18:00] workers' interests if he actually got this in this bargaining process, and if it's unions, then yeah...

None of this I think makes that much sense, but I think even trying to sort out the mechanics misses the point. The point is that he doesn't actually want to do anything that would upset Peter Thiel in policy terms, but at the same time, he wants to do his populist shtick even though anybody whose memory extends all the way back to 2016 knows how strange it is that he sounds like this now.

Teamster President’s RNC Both-Sides Pandering Fails Miserably - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-17-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: There's an easy litmus test as to whether they actually support unions, and that is things like voting for the PRO Act, which died because Joe Manchin, Kristen Sinema, and then all the Republicans.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: 48 co sponsors in the Senate of the PRO Act. They were all from one party. 48 co sponsors all caucus with the Democrats in the Senate.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Also, in the American Rescue [00:19:00] Plan, Biden administration included $38 billion that saved the pensions of hundreds of thousands of Teamsters.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: 350,000

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Hundreds of thousands of Teamsters. And do you know how many of the Republicans voted for that? Zero.

But, we get stuff like this. So we'll do the bad stuff first. Here is O'Brien. Now. I get it. You get up there. You want to say things that will make the audience feel you're on their side. It's called getting in the circle of trust before you deliver some of the harder stuff.

There's two audiences for this. There's the people watching the Republican convention, and there's Teamsters who are getting their information from their president about how to perceive the different parties.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But it [00:20:00] is funny, speaking of the audience that's in front of him, to see how Republicans responded in the crowd. They didn't really know how to respond.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Here's the first part.

TEAMSTERS PRESIDENT: I know that no window or door should ever be permanently shut. In my administration, the Teamsters reached out to eight Republican senators who stood up for railroad teamsters over our fight for paid sick leave. Josh Hawley was one of them.

We started talking. Senator Hawley changed his position on national right to work. Then we started walking. Senator Hawley walked a Teamsters picket line in St. Louis and a UAW picket line in Wentzville, Missouri. More than that, I want to recognize Senator Hawley for his direct, relentless, and pointed questioning of corporate talking heads, [00:21:00] lawyers, CEOs, and apologists.

He has shown he is not willing to accept they're pillaging of working people's pocketbooks. I know from a career in negotiating that you get nowhere by slamming your fist on the table. The first step is to listen. The Teamsters and the GOP may not agree on many issues, but a growing group has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that are funded by big money think tanks.

Senators like J.D. Vance, Roger Marshall, and Representatives Nicole Malliotakis, Mike Lawler, and Brian Fitzpatrick are among elected officials who truly care about working people. [00:22:00] And this group is expanding and is putting fear into those who have monopolized our very broken system in America today.

There are far too many people on both sides of the aisle still caught up in knee jerk reactions to unions who subscribe to the same tired clap trap that unions destroy American companies. Take a moment to consider United Parcel Service.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Pause it for a second. Alright. Aside from the fact that none of the people he mentioned, those senators, voted for anything, that was in any way pro-union. Nothing.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Hawley changes posture on right-to-work. That's the one thing he cited there.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: No vote. There was no voting to associate that, because there wasn't going to be.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: He did some performative questioning.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And we'll get to the, visiting the picket lines.

But the idea [00:23:00] that on both sides, there are still many people who have a knee-jerk reaction to unions. Is that true? Is that true on both sides? Okay, Joe Manchin, now is an independent. Kyrsten Sinema, now is an independent, not running for re election. Josh Gottheimer. Many people on both sides who are knee jerk against unions? No.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: No.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: No! That's just an undeniable fact. Do Democrats go as far as we would want them to? No. But, let's be clear, 48 co sponsors for the PRO Act. If Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema had co-sponsored that as well, we'd have the PRO Act. Jennifer Bruzio would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be appointed General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board under [00:24:00] a Republican, administration.

She would never, ever, ever, ever get past a Republican Senate. I'm sorry, this type of both-sidesism is just factually wrong. Now, I know that O'Brien goes to Donald Trump and makes a deal with him. When they had that meeting, whatever it was a month or 2 ago, and the deal was, you got to help us with Amazon. That's what it was. Is Donald Trump going to follow through?

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Who knows?

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, that's the tough thing. The immediate situation is, you said the election's close, O'Brien might be betting that Biden's lost. So what do you do as a union leader at that point is try to prepare for being under the worst case conditions.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: You got to protect your members.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Exactly. And like we talked about with Lainey Newman, Theda Scotchpaul, the book Rust Belt Union Blues, these unions, especially the folks who don't go into [00:25:00] them with college educations, are increasingly moving to the right. Now, I don't know if that justifies what O'Brien's doing here, but it is something in the political role that union leaders, it's something that they have to face and it's something to deal with.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, it's fascinating because I was talking to somebody who's, husband is an electrician and is in a union and his perception was that, he votes however the union tells him to vote and he was sad to see potentially Joe Biden step aside because he's been the most union president in his lifetime, he was saying, in the lifetime, before that as well. And that's undoubtedly the case, which is what makes this an odd decision here by Sean O'Brien, to say the least is because Biden. For all of his flaws has actually delivered on this front. whether it be through being, more aggressive and cracking down on union busting, whether it be through CEMEX, that rule that, makes it much easier for union elections to be held without there being, management or corporate [00:26:00] crackdowns that would be illegal under a Republican administration or even under Obama or Clinton.

In the past, perhaps you could have made this case more. I still would have been against it and disagreed, but it would have been a little bit more salient to say that there were issues on both sides. But the Democratic Party under Biden has, and I think it's probably the strongest feature of his administration, decided to be more pro-labor in both action and in rhetoric.

Why Hiking Tariffs Actually Protects Americans - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 5-14-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: This is amazing. As you know, those of you who have listened to the program over the last 21 years, I am a big advocate of protectionism, of economic protectionism, of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. I think America, but I think generally this is true of every country in the world, countries should be able to stand on their own two feet. If China cut us off tomorrow, we would be in a world of hurt. Every Walmart in America would be empty in a week. You wouldn't be able to buy half, literally, three quarters of the stuff that we buy right now, if China [00:27:00] cut us off. And China's threatening a war with us over Taiwan.

Anyhow, Joe Biden just slapped a 100 percent tariff on Chinese made cars, electric vehicles. Why? Because they're made with slave labor, they're heavily subsidized by the Chinese market. China's only capable of selling right now around 20 to 23 million electric cars a year in their own domestic market. But they're manufacturing over 30 million. Because, they're following Alexander Hamilton's advice to George Washington—become an exporting powerhouse.

Before Ronald Reagan came into office and imposed neoliberalism on America, we sold things all over the world. American toasters, American televisions, American computers, American cars, American clothing. They were sold in Europe. They were sold in Africa. They were sold in Asia. They were sold in South and Central America, Australia. All over the world american goods were the pinnacle, the best you could get. [00:28:00] And then, Reagan with the general agreement on tariffs and trade, and then George Herbert Walker Bush negotiating NAFTA, which then Bill Clinton signed into law. The three of them basically just blew a hole in American manufacturing. 20,000 factories moved to China and Mexico. Excuse me, 15,000 factories, 20 million jobs.

So anyhow, Biden is doing something about this. 100 percent tariff on the cars. He raised the tariff on lithium batteries from 7.5 to 25 percent, from 0 to 25 percent on critical minerals, from 25 to 50 percent on solar cells, and from 25 to 50 percent on semiconductors. On aluminum, steel, and personal protective equipment, the tariffs went from 0 to 25 percent. I see this as a good thing.

The citizen's trade campaign released this notice. "These tariff increases will help prevent cheap imports, which are all too often made with forced [00:29:00] labor, sweatshop labor, or under other unfair conditions from undercutting quality jobs and sustainable development at home and around the world. Diverse supply chains are critical to a rapid clean energy transition. As such, the Biden administration's latest efforts to fight the monopolization of clean energy technologies," by China "is the right move for working people and the planet. Allowing any single country or region to dominate the production of clean energies like EVs, batteries, and solars will eventually lead to higher prices, increased supply chain disruptions, stifled innovation, and a fracturing of the coalitions we need for ambitious climate action."

And basically Joe Biden is doing it. He's doing it.

Sean O'Brien faces criticism from Teamsters Vice President for RNC appearance - The Real News Network - Air Date 7-19-24

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: Now, I really don’t want to ask you to try to speak for everyone here—you guys are a big union with a lot of members—but what can you tell us about how the union is reacting right now?

JOHN PALMER: Well, in large part, the bubble of people that I speak to are very upset about this. People that are dialed [00:30:00] in — you don’t have to be an official, either. If you’re a job steward, working, you understand what happened during the Trump administration. Some of your rights as a job steward were stripped away by the board. You see the effects of this. Anybody that’s had to deal with the Labor Board knows how difficult it is.

What we need in this country, and you alluded to it, we’ve got two parties, and there’s issues with both of them. And I understand, we’re stuck with a two-party system, which I frankly think is problematic, because they’re owned by corporate America. There is a stark difference in the two parties, but change is going to come. Unions are agents for change, and that’s the very reason that we shouldn’t be doing this.

My position has been, as a veteran, as my dad is [00:31:00] a retired first sergeant , and every male member in my family served in the military. Everybody has the right to vote. People died that we might have that right. But as a labor leader, both on the international and local levels, I think it’s our responsibility to garner the facts and relate that to our members.

Now, people are going to do what they’re going to do, but if we fail to educate and inform people as to why it’s harmful to support Donald Trump and the Republicans as they are currently made up, that’s our fault, and we’re failing ourselves and our members. I think that’s where we’ve really failed.

We’re career politicians. Many of my peers on that executive board draw multiple salaries. They live a very good life. [00:32:00] Most of them are, frankly, removed from the life of, let’s say, someone at a meat packing plant in Colorado who’s exposed to all kinds of hazards, and contaminants. You can only imagine, I’ve seen that work.

Now, those folks aren’t making $300,000 a year. Those folks are probably making $50,000, $60,000 a year. They need our help. And they don’t need a party coming to power that’s made it clear in their Project, 2025 writings that the plan is to weaken labor unions and create faux unions in the workplace.

We’re just now making gains in getting on top of wages outstripping inflation. And that’s because the last few years, labor unions, including my own, have done a nice job of winning wages. But [00:33:00] we’ve got a long ways to go, and if they destroy the unions, and without unions, there’s nobody to pull the safety standards and the wage standards. And we all want to live that middle-class lifestyle.

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: I want to pick up on that point you made about educating your members, about what this is all really about beyond the surface level stuff. Because that’s all I’m seeing on mainstream media, and I’ve been watching it obsessively. It’s my job, which sucks, but every time I turn on the TV, so many mainstream media pundits and politicians out there, they keep talking about this election, and electoral politics in general, but this election specifically, as if it’s all just a matter of people with differing opinions campaigning passionately for different visions for the country’s future. But they never really talk [00:34:00] about what the real world consequences will be if and when these opinions become policy.

So let’s bring this down to the shop floor level, here. What would a second Trump presidency mean for your members and for working people in general on a real, tangible day-to-day level?

JOHN PALMER: Well, for one thing, I know that Sean was impressed with the election denier J.D. Vance and the insurrectionist Josh Hawley and their commitment to not supporting right-to-work legislation. First of all, I don’t know of any time that I’ve watched Donald Trump tell the truth, literally, and I don’t know of any time in my working career as a Teamster that the Republican Party did anything that would benefit labor. That goes all the way back to [00:35:00] Reagan, union busting, firing the air traffic controllers. So those are really emblematic of who we’re dealing with. You learn people after a while. I’m 65 years old, and I know who to trust and who not to trust. And there’s no reason to trust these folks. Based on their past behaviors, I would expect that first of all, right-to-work, unless something odd happens, I think it takes 60 votes in the Senate to get it. So that’s not our biggest issue.

Our biggest issue is getting rid of career people that do good work in places like the EPA, the DOL, the DOT, the National Labor Relations Board, all these places that are backstops for working men and women, [00:36:00] safe, clean drinking water. And then replacing them with lackeys, political lackeys, and people without any... … What was the guy from Bush’s administration, a horse judge or something that did the Hurricane Katrina relief thing? We might’ve learned something from that, I hope, but it’s really important that most of these people, like the people in our building at the International Union, these are career people that are there because they want to do a good job and they really don’t want to get caught in the politics.

But these are dangerous precedents, and they’ve made it clear what they want to do. It’s 900 pages, Project 2025. But if you just step back, and there’s plenty of places to summarize it, quoting much of the language. If you’ll read this, it will tell you what they intend to do.

And card check, [00:37:00] we should be getting card check neutrality, where, in many countries, if you get enough cards to sign workers up, they’re in the union. You sign a card, that’s part of your election process. And now they get beat up from us by a union buster. This union busting’s not going to stop. It’s only going to get more intense. And our rights are going to be more difficult to maintain in the auspices of the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act. By the way, you mentioned the rail strike, and that’s a very different venue, the National Mediation Board. The processes are very different. It’s very hard to get the right to strike. And that’s not fair to these workers. If people understood what they were really fighting for, they would sympathize with them.

And there we go. We should be educating the public about all the things that go on. So I don’t see anything historically that would give me any [00:38:00] confidence in these people as truth tellers and as advocates for labor. I mean, that’s just not the Party.

Final comments on the shifting political epoch toward pro-worker policies we're witnessing

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Democracy Now! discussing J.D. Vance and his claims to be pro-worker. Deconstructed looked at the concept of the new-center marketing term the right is trying to occupy. Parallax Views debunked the false populism of the right. The Majority Report broke down the speech given by the president of the Teamsters at the RNC. The Thom Hartmann Program laid out some of the ways Biden and Democrats have been delivering for working people. And The Real News Network interviewed the vice president of the Teamsters giving his perspective on the president speaking at the RNC. And those were just the top takes there's a lot more in the deeper dive section.

But, before we continue on I want to talk about what I think may be an epoch shifting moment we're living through regarding political party stances on economics, going all the way back from the New Deal Through neoliberalism and [00:39:00] now maybe to something beyond To start, I would say that any criticism of republicans for being insincere in their interest in promoting more pro-worker policies that's based on a perceived notion that they could never change may end up being right but for the wrong reasons. The fact is that political parties can and do change, and in fact, we should be hoping that both parties are in the middle of a shift toward pro-worker policies right now.

For evidence of this possibility of change, this from progressive commentator Jim Hightower.

Let's adopt the GOP's national platform - Jim Hightower - Air Date- 3-6-13

JIM HIGHTOWER - HOST, JIM HIGHTOWER RADIO: Well now, here's some unexpected news. It comes from what purports to be an official document of the National Republican Party. And wow, the policy positions it contains show that the party leaders really are serious about coming to their senses and rejecting the plutocratic extremism and far right wackiness that has stained their recent presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial campaigns.

Right at the [00:40:00] top, this 18 page manifesto proclaims that "our government was created by the people for all the people, and it must serve no less a purpose." All the people. Forget last year's ridiculous pontifications by Mitt Romney and others dividing America into virtuous creators, like themselves, and worthless moochers, like you and me. This document abounds with commitments to the common good. "America does not prosper," it proudly proclaims on page 3, "unless all Americans prosper." Shazam! That's downright democratic! And how's this for a complete turnaround? "Labor is the United States. The men and women who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country, they are America." Holy Koch brothers share the wealth?

Yes, and how about this? "The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Republican [00:41:00] Party." Eat your heart out, Scott Walker, and you other labor bashing GOP governors. The document also supports the Postal Service, the United Nations, equal rights for women, expanding our national parks, vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws, and raising the minimum wage.

New Enlightenment in the Grand Old Party! Hallelujah! This is Jim Hightower saying, Can all this be true? Yes, except it's not new. This document is the Republican Party Platform of 1956.

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now, I would argue that even back in 1956, Democrats were still the party of the working people, carrying on the tradition of FDR and the New Deal, while the GOP, influenced by the overwhelming popularity of those policies, we're willing to give lip service to unions and workers, maybe even feeling it somewhat genuinely, but never following through to the same degree as Democrats did.

For the past several decades, since the Reagan revolution, [00:42:00] the GOP stopped bothering to give lip service to workers and went all in on union busting and showering the rich with tax cuts, all while calling them job creators. That dynamic is what allowed Democrats to get away with only giving lip service to workers and unions while not really delivering all that much in the past few decades. Ever since Clinton, they've needed to keep good relationships with Wall Street and Silicon Valley to balance out the massive corporate fundraising the GOP is capable of from all the fossil fuel companies and every other anti-union business out there.

With the GOP pivoting to at least giving lip service to workers, Even though they will almost certainly not deliver on any of those promises, it puts pressure on Democrats to actually deliver, which they have just begun to do anyway. That, in the big picture, is a good thing. It'll definitely be a good thing for working people, but it may even be a good thing for the Democratic Party to regain some legitimacy in the minds of people [00:43:00] who have thought, for good reason, that Democrats have been more focused on pleasing their big donors than working people recently.

I would say that the Democratic lip service reached its peak when Barack Obama said, during his first campaign for president, if American workers are being denied their right to organize when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States." And that was proven to be only lip service when the opportunity came and he did not show up.

However, I would also say that sometimes lip service and broken promises may lay the groundwork for actual progress in the future. Joe Biden did become the first president to stand with workers on the picket line when he stood with the United Auto Workers, and there's actually been policy to back that up during his term.

Without getting swamped in details, here's one headline "Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR". [00:44:00] And the sub headline is, "President Joe Biden came into the White House intent on being 'the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.' Four years later, he has shown a lot of progress."

it hasn't been a spotless record to be sure, but i'll take that as a win and not just a win But a move in the right direction that we should expect and demand to continue That article points out that every president is limited by the context in which they are governing, they didn't just fall out of a coconut tree after all, and that Biden has been blessed with the most pro-union sentiment in decades—now it's at about seven in ten americans supporting unions generally—has helped in making the progress that he's been able to make. That has been the wind at his back, while at the same time Primarily GOP appointed courts have been ruling against unions. The article concludes quite rightly, "Historically, U. S. judges have had [00:45:00] at least as much say in determining labor rights as presidents." So, it's not just about who we put in office, it's about who sits on the bench.

So, the MAGA Supreme Court we have right now doesn't bode well for workers, but since we know the conservative justices are really just political hacks, that's all the more reason to hope that the sentiment among Republicans starts shifting back to being pro-worker, even if what they have to say about it is just pablum.

One last thing, though. If you do a search right now about how the Republicans of the 1950s really felt about economics, unions, and workers, it's not terribly easy to find. The reason is that those keywords will instead bring up all of the stories about how modern Republicans longed to return the country back to the 1950s.

Now, for those of us who know, we know that the big part of that, even if unconsciously, is envisioning a world in which women and people of color knew their places in the gender and racial caste system of the [00:46:00] country. But I think we'd be wrong to not also recognize that what they're longing for is actually the same thing people on the left have been longing for, an environment of political policies that empowers workers enough to demand wages in line with their productivity. I mean, that's not how they would say it, but the end result of those policies is what gave the 50s that glow that people long for.

And it was during the Reagan years that that connection between wages and productivity was broken. Before that, productivity and wages went up in basically parallel lines. After Reagan, productivity continued to climb, but wages flattened out. And then you add the globalization that kicked off in the 90s, and a realignment of the Democratic Party, and Influenced again, just like how Republicans were influenced by FDR, Democrats were influenced by Reagan and they ended up picking up the mantle of neoliberalism and converted into a party that only managed to give lip service to workers without much to back it up. [00:47:00] You take all of that and you've got a perfect recipe for widespread precarity and nervousness about economic insecurity.

That's where we are right now, and it's no wonder that people would look back to the 1950s and see an economic landscape worth longing for. It needs to be the job of the left to lean into this titanic shift in sentiment toward working people that we're experiencing right now and actually deliver on the kind of economic populism that people are starving for, all while leaving the white supremacy and patriarchy of the 1950s in the trash heap of history where it belongs.

Now before we get back to the show, this is your last reminder that july is our membership and awareness drive. If you get value out of this show, Let this be the time and there are just hours remaining to decide to chip in and help sustain the production of the show and tell some people about it, all while getting a discount. Of course, you're free to sign up for a membership anytime you like. When I say that we need your support, it's really not in the abstract. We [00:48:00] don't have big funders or any kind of institution or media outlet backing us up, so it's really just you, the listener, deciding to chip in and make the show possible.

As thanks, members get ad free versions of every regular episode and bonus episodes featuring the production crew in conversation. And this month, with just hours to go, memberships are 20 percent off. So sign up now. and keep that discounted price for as long as you keep your membership. Just head to BestOfTheLeft.com/support to grab that membership and then tell someone about us.

SECTION A: TEAMSTER SPEECH AND FALSE POPULISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, we'll continue with deeper dives on three topics. Up next, Section A, the Teamsters Speech and False Populism. Section B, pro-worker Legislation. And Section C, J.D. Vance and the Center Right.

JD Vance, Phony Populism on the Right, the Republican National Convention, and Democratic Party Messaging w Ben Burgis Part 2 - Parallax Views - Air Date 7-22-24

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: That's, uh, one of the big things that I've been thinking about a lot lately with, this is with regards to, uh, Democratic messaging, you know, a lot of Democrats are talking more and more about, um, Project 2025, the, you know, the Heritage Foundation, short of [00:49:00] agenda lists that they have, uh, for when Trump gets into office, and then Trump has, I think, Agenda 47, which is similar, but he's tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but what I find interesting is if you read Project 2025.

And I know Sarabha Mari, who I don't always agree with, uh, has pointed this out, but if you look at that heritage foundation wishlist, a lot of it's like deeply libertarian stuff, you know, it's all about getting rid of OSHA, hurting the workers, you know, letting, you know, companies do whatever they want, corporations do whatever they want, getting rid of like, Water safety.

They want, you know, it's, it's just insane, but that's not what anyone's talking about when it comes to the conservative agenda. I mean, I think we should be talking about immigration and, um, you know, LGBTQ rights, uh, abortion, but I also wish more people would talk about like justice clearance. Thomas just said he wants to get rid of OSHA.

You know, um, I wish more people would talk about the project 2025 stuff [00:50:00] about that would affect, um, you know, trying to. Deal with the forever chemicals problem because there's been a scientific American article on that and it feels like we're not really talking about what a Trump term would mean both for, uh, you know, just consumers and also workers.

Do you think that's an issue that Democrats should maybe, um, push on more, especially in light of the main topic we're going to be covering, which is the phony economic populism of J.D. Vance. Sorry if that was long winded. No,

BEN BURGIS: no, no. That was great. I absolutely, I mean, yes, the answer is yes. I think that it's, uh, it's crazy to me that.

They are kind of allowed to, um, change the subject as much as they are away from all of this, because, um, you know, Every issue that you mentioned is, is important. Uh, I, I would, you know, I think that, [00:51:00] um, you know, it's like, certainly it's terrible that, um, you know, that, that, that. Justices that Trump appointed, you know, essentially, you know, robbed women and, you know, many states of, you know, bodily autonomy, uh, during, uh, during, during pregnancy.

That's disgusting. Uh, but, you know, they, they're sort of, you know, on a strategic level, if you think about this, um, That I think that the I think that the stuff that you're talking about is is actually where Republicans are the most vulnerable because people kind of know that they're that they're anti abortion.

And in fact, I think Trump has has had, you know, in his sort of usual way. Uh, you know, he has this kind of good animal instincts, uh, to, uh, to, to sort of veer away from that a bit, right? Like he, um, [00:52:00] uh, you know, he actually really did this, like, sort of in a way, I mean, I guess, you know, it was kind of funny.

But like he, he did this sort of very Stalinist, uh, dictating of the RNC platform, you know, usually there'd be like a platform committee that would like, you know, that would like wrangle over all these different provisions and stuff. And he essentially said, now here are some thoughts I had in the shower.

This is the RNC platform, no discussion. And you know, everybody just kind of fell into line. Uh, and it really does read like that, like one of them is we should have a giant missile dome over the entire country and all, you know, made in America and it's like all caps. And, um, and, and in that, right, he, uh, he, he veers away from talking about abortion.

Uh, he, he, he very pointedly does not include a national abortion ban, uh, which, you know, I think he realizes would, would kill him in the election. He. Um, he's like, [00:53:00] yep, I did my job. It's up to the states. Uh, he veers away from saying that he wants to take away a gay marriage. Uh, the, he just has like, uh, the only sort of bone to the social conservatives is like, uh, this very ambiguous phrase about believing in the sanctity of marriage, but you know, which marriages?

is left, you know, is left open. But, you know, certainly like, you know, trans stuff, I could, I could definitely imagine very easily a, you know, a second Trump administration finding some ways to, to be really performatively cruel about that. But again, I think people kind of know that, whereas I think, you know, That they are like, for

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: instance, real quick, I just wanted to get this out there because I've been wanting to mention it.

So I have this scientific American art club project, 2025 plan for Trump presidency has far reaching threats to science and buried halfway in it. Is the project 2025 recommendations would also limit what is considered a pollutant or a hazardous chemical in particular, they make the call to [00:54:00] quote revisit the designation of PFAS.

Those air uh, the forever chemicals that people were talking about. Um, like this affects our drinking water, man. Like, and I just, I don't hear people talking about that, uh, or the OSHA stuff. And that's. I'm just frustrated that that's not because that affects everyone. So I think you can pull swing bars, you know, or whatever.

BEN BURGIS: Absolutely. I mean, this is the thing. And this is the kind of thing that we should actually be very confident that Trump is going to do. Right. So, yeah, because

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: it's

BEN BURGIS: deregulation.

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: It's the deregulation agenda. Yeah.

BEN BURGIS: Yeah, exactly. Right. Because this is like anything. You know, like anything that's about like stuff that he might do now that he's like promising to do now that he didn't do before.

It's kind of anybody's guess how serious he is about it, you know, this time around. But also Trump was president for four years already. Everybody seems to have sort of forgotten that. And, and we [00:55:00] know what he would do. Cause he, he did it right. And, uh, the, the first four years of Trump were this like nonstop orgy of, you know, deregulation, union busting, uh, you know, tax cuts for rich people.

He did, uh, Uh, I mean, like, I remember in, like, December 2020, seeing this New York Times piece about how there were these Trump officials who were sort of taking the opportunity of their last weeks in office to weaken safety regulations for long distance trucking, right? So it's like, yeah. Undermine workplace safety undermine, you know, environmental protection, make it easier for companies to poison the air and water.

I mean, like, that's the kind of stuff that it's like, that's just the given. That's the baseline.

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: Did you hear what just happened where I'm at in Florida? What happened back in April? What happened? Ron DeSantis, uh, got rid of, um, Any possibility of having like water breaks based based on municipalities. Oh yeah.

I remember when this was first coming up. Yeah. Yeah. [00:56:00] They're prohibiting municipalities from like forcing companies to allow for water breaks and shading for, uh, Oh, my lights just went out. Anyways, uh, they're, they're, uh, prohibiting municipalities from forcing corporations to, you know, allow water breaks, uh, shading.

It's like there's no, it's like contempt for workers that have, you know, uh, risks associated with heat exposure. Just, none of that matters. It's all just being ignored. They don't care about, like, the risks of heat exposure that some people have, no accommodations being made, and I mean, to me, this kind of thing is like, I mean, it's horrible, and if DeSantis is doing that, and if that's the agenda here in Florida, I mean, I think we know what the Republican agenda is nationwide.

Teamster President’s RNC Both-Sides Pandering Fails Miserably Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-17-24

TEAMSTERS PRESIDENT: We need meaningful bankruptcy reform. Today, corporate vultures buy up companies like Yellow Freight with the [00:57:00] intent of driving them into bankruptcy and feasting on their remains. The courts leave workers begging for crumbs as third tier creditors.

Labor law must be reformed. Americans vote for a union but can never get a union contract. Companies fire workers who try to join unions And hide behind toothless laws that are meant to protect working people, but are manipulated to benefit corporations. This is economic terrorism at its best. An individual cannot withstand such an assault.

A fired worker cannot afford corporate delays, and these greedy employers know it. There are no consequences for the company, only the worker. We need corporate Pause it for a second.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Now, now. Okay. He thinks he's at a democratic convention because that's where you would hear the screams. He's sitting there knowing full well there will not be a single [00:58:00] solitary even attempt to increase or reform labor laws in this country in a way that is positive.

For unions under a Republican administration, not, not in two years, not in four years, not in five years, not in 10 years, probably not in 20, maybe, maybe long after I'm dead. But it's just not happening. And he knows that. And he stopped for a moment anticipating an applause line and it's just some scattered stuff going like people.

What the fuck is he talking about? Hopefully we just get some votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. Go ahead.

TEAMSTERS PRESIDENT: This is for the company, Only the Worker. We need corporate welfare reform. Under our current system, massive companies like Amazon, Uber, Lyft, and Walmart take zero responsibilities for the workers they employ.

[00:59:00] These companies offer no real health insurance, no retirement benefits, no paid leave, relying on underfunded public assistance. And who foots the bill? The individual taxpayer. The biggest recipients of welfare in this country of corporations, and this is real corruption. We must put workers first.

What could be more important to the security of our nation than a long term investment in the American worker?

In 2021, Teamsters Nationwide elected me to fight for them, and that's precisely what I'm doing. Thank you. Something is wrong in this country and we need to say it out loud. I will always speak for America and the American worker, both union and non union.[01:00:00]

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Okay. Um, I mean, fun that this is being said, uh, in a Republican, uh, convention. uh, chance that down the road this plants a seed and some of these people realize like, oh, I'm supporting a party that is completely against just about everything he said. And maybe in the event that Trump wins, it helps with, uh, he helps with, uh, Amazon organizing.

But if it costs 5, 000 votes, 10, 000 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That may be a problem and let's just be clear again. Billions nearly 40 billion dollars saving the pensions of over [01:01:00] 350, 000 Teamsters

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: by Biden

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: by buying the

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Democrats. Yeah, there also is this myth. I think we talked about it like there are a lot of white working class people that support Trump.

That is a big part of his base. But the Washington Post did an analysis in 2016 that below the national median income in terms of white voters, yes, 58 percent, uh, support Donald Trump, um, but in terms of above the median, it's also 60, 65 percent in terms of percentage of, um, white voters who support Donald Trump.

So there is some, a good amount of working class support for Donald Trump. The people that stormed the Capitol, too, that were coming in on flights and things like that, they were business owners. They owned a pool cleaning company in their local town. They are, above the median income level, business owners with concerns related to that.

So it's just a bit of a different constituency and, uh, [01:02:00] than is sometimes always portrayed in, like, the media that was, in the wake of 2016, talking about how J.D. Vance is the whisperer to understanding this particular class.

Responding to Tim Scott & J.D. Vance on Poverty - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-16-24

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: So would it be right to say that you're trying to expand the definition of who is poor in America to many people who might be generally referred to in the media as white working class?

REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER: Exactly. Because that is one of the misdirection. I've been thinking a lot about how extremists, uh, and, uh, persons who call themselves conservative.

I really don't think that's a good thing. Good title, but certain politicians, whether it be J.D. Vance or, or, uh, Tim Scott, and they will say working class Americans and, but what they don't want to deal with is the 52 to 55 million of those working Americans make less than a living wage because the minimum wage is only 7.

[01:03:00] 25 an hour. And so they are working poor, they are low wage workers, and any of the best economists in this country will tell you, you have to measure that to talk about poverty, to deal with it, uh, and, and, and, and look at who else would be extremely poor if we did not have certain things, uh, supplemented.

I mean, in this country, the way we do our military spending, you have persons who have been in the military. And serve this country, who then have to go on food stamps. You just think about that for a second. They have to end up on food stamps. During COVID, we called people essential workers, but then treated them like they were expendable.

So you're essential, but we're not going to pay you a living wage. We're essential, but we're not going to guarantee you health care. Or we may guarantee to give you some Medicaid expansion during the high times of COVID, but as soon as it's over, we're taking that back. We may give you some child [01:04:00] tax credit and reduce child poverty by 60%, But as soon as we see that there's some ending of COVID, we're taking that back as well.

What we're saying is expand understanding of poverty and low wages. And we're saying you have to look at race and poverty, uh, not either or, but both. And this is not a way to dismiss dealing with the issue of systemic racism and policy racism, but as a moral leader, as religious leader, uh, servant leader, I cannot.

Go to Appalachia and East Kentucky and visit, say, white coal miners in East Kentucky, some of whom I've known who have died since we've been in this movement, who have watched politicians allowed their coal mines to be taken over by multinational companies. And, and do away with their union rights. Uh, I can't go in those areas and then ignore that, and we can't ignore it in [01:05:00] America either.

And when Dr. King, who actually started the Poor People's Campaign because of welfare rights, women came to him, and they were black, and they were white, and they were women of all different geographies and races, and they said, Poverty has to be listed as one of the three evils. We suggest today that systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial of health care, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism have to be seen as the five interlocking injustices that requires a multiracial movement to address them.

And the first thing we have to do. And stop lying about the reality of poverty in this country and deal with these facts. Over 135 to 40 million people are poor. Low wage poverty kills 800 people a day, 295,000 people a year. There are over 87 million people, either uninsured or [01:06:00] underinsured. There are millions of people every morning can get up.

And buy unleaded gas and can't buy unleaded water. And these are some of the realities that exist in this country that do not have to exist. And we could really be talking about abolishing poverty, not just adjusting poverty.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And to get explicitly to what we heard at the Republican convention last night in the clip we played from Senator Tim Scott, uh, I guess you've already indicated that You, uh, who came to prominence in North Carolina and Senator Scott from South Carolina have somewhat different takes on racism in America or the role of government and politics in lifting people out of poverty.

Where would you start?

REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER: Well, there's so much there. And, uh, you know, Tim Scott is an interesting, uh, person. Uh, he, he loves to talk about poverty. Being raised poor and being black, he even has talked about how he believes in the ideas of Dr. King. And the [01:07:00] thing we have to learn, though, in where these politics have learned misdirection is to unpack what they're saying.

Now, for instance, we had heard that they weren't going to be divisive. Well, what he just said was very divisive. And not only is it divisive, it's not true. It's just a lot of persons who have needed to be lifted up. Uh, through certain social uplift programs are not engaged in victimhood. They are trying to survive.

We live in a country that gives more corporate welfare to corporations than we ever have given to poor people who, who, who merely need some food stamps just so they can survive. I've met white women in Appalachia. Who work low wage jobs, who, who have to sell tacos on the side of the road during the course of the week in order to put a fund together to support one another during the course of the month.

That's not victimhood. Those are people that are victims of [01:08:00] policies because there's, they're senators in that same state and in that same, uh, or Congress. People like Tim Scott. On the one hand, tell people to vote hard, but Tim Scott voted against living wages. He voted against raising the minimum wage to a living wage of at least 15 an hour indexed with inflation, which would, which in 1963 at the March on Washtenaw, remember Dr.

King and all of the folk that gathered there, they wanted to raise the minimum wage to 2 an hour indexed with inflation, which if they had. The minimum wage would be about 17, 18 an hour today. So, what he's saying is, is such a mismatch of, of, of, he needs to be fact checked. The reality needs to be fact checked.

The programs that were put in place, uh, that help lift people up, like food stamps, like, uh, Public housing, uh, have actually, uh, reduced poverty or at least reduced abject [01:09:00] poverty in some major ways when we, when social security was put in place, it reduced our white poverty, you know, by a large, large percentage.

And you think about people like Tim Scott when they see things like, even like social security, they see that as social welfare program as rather than a nation being responsible, he comes from the south, but one third of all poor people live in the south. One third of all poor white people live in the south and you don't hear him in any way.

Talking about limited wages and union rights, and he's talking about cutting public education and not funding public education. So just because he happens to be black and stands up in an audience and says, Uh, America is not a racist country, you know, that's wordsmithing. America is It's like America as a country, the whole country is not racist, but there is plenty of evidence of policy racism, whether you look at it in terms of housing, whether you look at it in terms of [01:10:00] inequity, uh, in, in, in, in, in wages and equity in, uh, the way in which environmental injustices impact community, but even beyond that, yeah.

Beyond that, this is what I want to say to Tim Scott, you know, you get up and say that in an audience to get them applauded, but you're also dismissing the millions of white people, the hundreds of thousands of white people in your own state, who are the majority of the persons that benefit from what you call welfare.

And the fact of the matter that he would racialize poverty is again one of those mythologies that we live in and then would suggest that his mama taught him to not be a victim. But I would bet you if they were poor and you go back and really fact check his history. They benefited from government programs in some way or another to help them make it through life and to get where they [01:11:00] are.

SECTION B: PRO-WORKER LEGISLATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: Pro-worker legislation.

Surprising Reason West Virginia May Vote Blue In November w Troy Miller - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 7-25-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: My old friend, Troy Miller. Troy has edited several of my books. He was a producer for our television program for years and years. Uh, he's, he worked in our studio. He worked on this radio show. He's a great guy. All of us love him and he lives in West Virginia. That's where he's from. And, uh, he's a DNC delegate and a DN a member of the DNC platform committee.

And he also writes about, uh, West Virginia politics on his Substack, which is BlueRidgeBreakdown. Substack. com. Troy, welcome back to the program. It's been on Troy for West Virginia Day uh, Troy, F O R W V. com. Um, that's your, uh, campaign site, right, Troy?

TROY MILLER: That is my campaign site. I am also running, on top of all those things you listed, I'm also running for West Virginia House of Delegates here in District 98, which is our lower chamber, hundred district, single member districts.

And, um, we have a real chance to win this race for the first time and flip this seat for the first time in a decade, along with a [01:12:00] couple of other seats neighboring me. So it's a, it's a really exciting time to be a Democrat here in West Virginia. And, uh, it's a really exciting time to be a Democrat in, in the United States, I think.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. So,

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: so, uh, you just, you just had some significant influence, I believe, on your, uh, state party. You just, uh, came out, your state convention just finished. You guys came up with a pretty good platform.

TROY MILLER: We came up with a really good platform. Um, one of the things that really stands out from other platforms is it is designed as a slide deck.

It's uh, more like a powerpoint than anything else. Because we intended for um, people to be able to, party leaders to be able to use that in their counties to get people involved because I think one of the Things that, as Democrats, especially in rural areas, we've lost is sort of that, um, key thrust of who we are and what we're fighting for.

And one of the central things that we got, um, into our platform and started as a resolution with our executive committee last year, which was [01:13:00] reaffirmed again this year by the broader convention, and now formally codified into our platform, is the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights that Professor Harvey Allen Kaye and Alan Minsky, um, First sort of proposed as a unifying, a document based on FDR's 1944 second Bill of Rights or economic Bill of Rights, and it includes 10 very straightforward universal Um, uh, rights that we are aiming to secure and, um, those are the right to a job and a living wage, the right to a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining, uh, the right to comprehensive quality healthcare, the right to a complete cost free public education and access to broadband internet, the right to decent, safe, affordable housing, the right to a clean environment and a healthy planet.

The right to meaningful resources at birth and a secure retirement. The right to sound banking and financial services. The right to an equitable and economically fair justice system. And the right to vote and otherwise participate in public life. And that's not the [01:14:00] entirety of the platform, although I personally think it is.

Um, I think when you look at our platform and what is being drafted and will be proposed for the DNC's platform, even though this language is not formally codified in that national level, we'll keep and continue working on that, is that pretty much everything we're fighting for falls under one of these categories.

That is great. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: You and I are both going to be at the DNC, and we just have a minute and a half here. You and I are going to both be at the DNC, and I'm hoping you can drop by the show and keep us up to date, but you're on the platform committee. Do you have any insights? I mean, have you heard anything from your colleagues, your fellow delegates to the convention, about who the vice president might be, or what's going on, or what the process is going to be, or when we might even hear?

TROY MILLER: You know, that is still, um There's a lot of talk, and a lot of it is the same talk that you'll be seeing at the national media. I will say my personal preference when [01:15:00] I'm talking to people, I think, um, Governor Andy Beshear would be a fantastic, um, sort of antidote to J.D. Vance, and I think what we're seeing is Appalachia has really become a salient political force.

In, um, our American politics, whether you're looking at what the North Carolina Democratic Party is really achieving across their rural areas, including rural Appalachia, whether you're looking at Governor Beshear in Kentucky, what he's been able to deliver, um, and as these areas are living through the real impacts of climate change and having to transition out of a fossil fuel economy, an extractive economy, Um, we need people who are really leading on that.

Um, and so that process is, I think, going to look a largely like it will, um, the, the, uh, Vice President Harris will vet a lot of candidates and she will come forward with a choice. And I think we'll, we have a lot of great choices on that vice presidential picket. I will just say here and use the microphone I have with you and your [01:16:00] audience to say, I think, um, um, Governor Beshear would be a great choice.

And I think really investing in Appalachia and rural Democrats here and understanding that we are, um, we are real, there are a lot of us, um, there are people ready to join the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party can continue to stand for and build on the things that we, they've delivered on for the last four years.

Responding to Tim Scott & J.D. Vance on Poverty Part 2 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-16-24

REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER: Well, he's exactly right. Dr. King said in 65 at the end of December, the Mount Thumb remarks, the greatest fear of the greedy oligarchy in this country would be for the masses of black people.

with the masses of poor white people and form a voting block that could fundamentally reshift the economic architecture of the country, which is one of the reasons with these mythologies. One of the mythologies we talk about in the book is that only black people want change. Uh, uh, that, that, that uh, You only have commonality if you're of the same color, another mythology.

Uh, another mythology [01:17:00] is that poverty is just a black problem. All of these are ways of, of, of pitting people against one another. Uh, we talk about how in the book that oftentimes people have offered people whiteness rather than a cure, uh, for the issues of poverty and, and low wages. You know, J.D. Vance, he did that in his book when he, he, he talked about coming from.

Appalachia, but then he blames the problems of the hillbilly on their personal morality and not on the public policy that actually continues to extend poverty. But to my brother's point, we're in a place now. The flip side of those horrific numbers, 135 million, 140 million poor low wage in this country, 800 dying a day, 295,000 a year.

The flip side of that is that poor people now make up 30% of the electorate across this country and in battleground states where the marginal victory for the presidency was within 3% [01:18:00] poor and low wage. People make up. Over 43 percent of the electorate. So there is not a battleground state where if just 10 percent of poor and low wage people organized around an agenda.

And when we had that massive assembly on DC, we didn't come there with just a venting March. The voices you heard were poor and low wage people from across the country, not people speaking on behalf of them, people of every race, color, creed, and sex, rather, and they laid out a 17 point agenda. You can go to poorpeoplescampaign.

org and pull it to say that if you want these votes, they're for you. 87 million poor and low wage voters in this country, 57 million voting in the last election, 30 million were infrequent voters. We're reaching out to 15 million of them to say, it's time for you to demand to be heard. And you have the power to unite together around an agenda.

And if you vote in such a way, you can force our, uh, society to talk about right [01:19:00] now. You can have presidential debate at the presidential debate. One of the reasons we saw the debate, it. The reason for that as a failure was not the personality of the two candidates or who, uh, you know, maybe flubbed a word or who told a lie, was that the commentator didn't ask one question to them about how will you address this reality of poverty, the fourth leading cause of death?

How will you address the issue of living wages? What poor low wage people are doing in the movement are coming together and saying, wait a minute, we hold this massive voting bloc. We can unite together. In most places, if just 20 percent of poor low wage folk were mobilized around the agenda that happened voting in the last two elections, they could change the outcome.

For instance, in Michigan, in the last election, the margin of victory was about 10, 000 votes. There were over a million poor low wage voters. So less than, you know, a few percentage points organized could shift. In North Carolina. [01:20:00] Uh, that's how Obama won in 2008. We didn't endorse candidates with those issues in Kentucky when poor and low wage people that we met without an East Kentucky, Harlan County, uh, has the county heard the truth and organized and joined with people out of Louis, Louisville.

They took out an incumbent Republican governor who had cut healthcare, who refused to fight for a minimum wage increase, who fought against their union right. And they won in Kentucky. And we didn't endorse a candidate. We endorsed issues and several of the counties that were considered red counties or whatever you want to call them, go look at the voter map.

They flipped. So it is possible in a moral fusion movement, but what you have to do is deal with these mythologies up front, and then you have to recognize the power that you have. It's not about mobilizing everybody, but what we do know from the new data that's out, that that poor low wage people, let's stick that 50, [01:21:00] 000 a year or below and a family of four tend to vote progressive when they vote.

That's how, if you look at Georgia, for instance, the last election, if you pull out Poor low wage folk that voted for progressive ideas. Do you have a different outcome in Georgia, both in the Senate and in the presidential race? If

CALLER: you,

REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER: if you, if you look at, uh, uh, other places where you saw chapter, you look at it in Pennsylvania, pull out poor and low wage folk, but then recognize If it was in Pennsylvania, the margin of victory was about 40, 000, but some 2 million, almost 2 million poor and low wage infrequent voters didn't even vote.

In Wisconsin, the margin of victory was about 20, 000, but over a million poor and low wage voters did not even vote. This is the largest potential swing vote in the country.

SECTION C: JD VANCE AND THE "CENTER" RIGHT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section C: J.D. Vance and the Center-Right.

JD Vance, Phony Populism on the Right, the Republican National Convention, and Democratic Party Messaging w Ben Burgis Part 3 - Parallax Views - Air Date 7-22-24

No, I agree. And you mentioned O'Brien mentioning Josh Hawley, and I wanted to use [01:22:00] Senator Hawley as an example of, um, sometimes people like Hawley can say something that may sound Oh yeah, I, I, as a leftist I agree with that.

That sounds crazy, but for instance When he was pushing the copyright clause restoration act, I actually do think it's ridiculous that you can extend copyright, uh, like 95 years, come on, you know, uh, gone with the wind should be in the public domain at this point, right? But that bill would have only affected entities 150 billion, which means for practical purposes, You know, it's only intended to punish the Walt Disney Company, you know, so it's not really about truly changing the copyright laws, you know,

BEN BURGIS: which is kind of funny because in a way that's like, this is like the, uh, you know, this is like the stuff you expect from Democrats that they roll out something that sounds good and then there are like 100 caveats at the end of it.

[01:23:00] You know, it's like, oh yeah, we're going to forgive student debt for people who have. Operated small businesses and minority communities for at least three years and, you know, have one brown eye and one green eye. And, you know, like, it's like, okay, never mind. Right? Like, uh, it's very much like that. But it's like, yeah, look, Josh Howley.

has a few good votes in the Senate. Uh, but like to, to make this concrete, the AFL CIO puts out legislative scorecards where they, um, you know, where they, they give politicians, you know, percentages of like how many sort of pro labor votes, uh, they, uh, they did, like how many times they voted on the right side of issues affecting labor.

And, uh, Josh Howley's AFL CIO legislative scorecard is 11%. Which, granted, makes him Eugene Debs compared to most of the rest of his caucus, but like, it's 11%. [01:24:00] Like, that was like, pretty miserable.

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: Vance didn't get a good scorecard either, did he?

BEN BURGIS: Oh, Vance is actually 0%. So, uh, Vance is, Vance is doing worse than Ali is.

Uh, Vance is another one, by the

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: way, not to interrupt you, but you know, I looked at the real safety bill and I was like, Oh, that's good that he's working with, uh, Sherrod Brown or other Democrats to, to deal with real safety in light of East Palestine, Ohio and what happened there. But then I look into it more and Jacobin has a whole article about this, uh, by Julia Rock, uh, entitled J.D. Vance has weakened his real safety bill at lobbyist requests.

You know, so Republican Senator J.D. Vance quietly amended his rail safety bill to allow the same unsafe tank cars that leaked chemicals in East Palestine and Ohio to continue circulating through U. S. cities until as late as 2028, just as rail and chemical lobbies asked. So even though it seemed like he was doing something good at first, you know, then [01:25:00] he weakens the bill.

Also, by the way,

BEN BURGIS: like,

why is Trump's record on rail safety as president? Like not part of this discussion, right? Yeah, well, that's the

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: elephant in the room.

BEN BURGIS: You know, but yeah, yeah, exactly. Like even the stuff that's this good, right? Uh, like I always talk about rail safety is like doing some work at that. Then you look at the details and it's kind of like, uh, yeah, nevermind.

Um, and yeah, I mean, it's, it's in general, the van stuff, like, you know, you know, granted advances 0 percent is just for 2023. Cause that's the only full year that he's been in the Senate. Yep. Right. Maybe he could get that up to 11 percent over the course of a few years. But, um, uh, it's, it's also, you know, I think it's also meaningful that it's a 0 percent for 2023 and, and like, yeah, uh, people, people like Vance and Howley have, [01:26:00] have mastered, um, the art of, of sounding like populace, uh, when they talk about economic issues.

But then. You, you really start digging into the details and, and it's just ridiculous. Like, um, you know, even, even Josh Howley with his, a few good votes, right. Which is what you can honestly say about this. Um, that, you know, he voted against stopping the, the, the rail strike. There are a few, there are a few good votes, but like, um, but look.

You know what? He doesn't support the proact, which would, and

J.G. MICHAEL - HOST, PARALLAX VIEWS: neither does Vance and Vance has given reasons for that, that I'm not convinced by, but go on.

Trump, Vance, and the New Right at the RNC Part 2 - Deconstructed - Air Date 7-19-24

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: and Trump still has. Enormous number of oligarchs in his ear trump is susceptible to pressure whoever talked to him last What what have you?

So much depends on who trump picks as chief of staff. Let's say in a trump any trump presidency [01:27:00] Let's assume that for the sake of this question that he wins So much depends on who he picks as chief of staff and kind of how he staffs up and approaches things in the beginning what's your sense of what the trump circle is now and like where on the kind of The, the based scale, you know, uh, the door that on the J.D. Vance scale, his inner circle is how solidified is it?

How fluid is it? Like, what's your read of that? That world that has now had kind of 8 years. Eight or nine years to kind of develop an ecosystem that was nascent when it first, you know, shocked everybody, including himself by winning.

EMILY JASHINSKY: I mean, there was nothing and you remember this like there was a heritage foundation that was raking in money from big tech, um, alongside, you know, the American Enterprise Institute alongside this suite of Koch funded Koch brothers funded think tanks that were staunchly anti labor and had been the backbone.

Of the tea party movement. So there really was absolutely nothing. And now [01:28:00] what's sprung up are groups like American compass and a couple of others. Um, but what's interesting about those groups, and this is what's fascinating about Trump in general, is that it's a, it's a mix. Ideologically, because the primary litmus test ideologically is whether you're on board with Donald Trump.

And that sounds like a line that is like kind of tired and like elite media spaces, but there's actually some truth to it. Like they're doing this vetting process for personnel and a potential Trump administration and their litmus test is loyalty to Donald Trump himself. Nobody's looking for like what maybe you said about policy, you know, five years ago, you could be Anthony Scaramucci.

You could be, let's take our favorite example, Stephanie rule. And if you had been nice to Donald Trump and said good things about him, you could have those politics. You can be art laugher or Larry Kudlow and have Donald Trump's ear, uh, in the same way that J.D. Vance does in the same way that people in those circles, uh, Marco [01:29:00] Rubio, you know, it's, it's just really a mix because the primary litmus test is loyalty to Donald Trump.

Now, people who have loyalties to Donald Trump tend to be. Those people that are also on board with like the new-right policy agenda, um, you know, Peter Navarro, Bob Lighthizer, people who are sort of quote, based on trade protectionist on trade. Um, obviously you're not going to see John Bolton in another Trump administration, but you might see Mike Pompeo who is here at the RNC this week talking about.

How, you know, Trump will ultimately control J.D. Vance, I think is a quote that's I'm paraphrasing a quote he gave to RealClearPolitics, but like, it's just about loyalty to Trump and Trump is floating what Jamie Dimon as his treasury secretary. It's about him. Uh, and so, you know, that tends to be more new-right than not, but also a lot of the really powerful people in his ear, to your point, Ryan, are oligarchs or oligarch adjacent.

“He’s a Fake” Robert Kuttner on How J.D. Vance Disguises His Anti-Worker Views as Economic Populism Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-16-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: But, Robert Kuttner, if you could say how they’re against it? [01:30:00] Show, through their records — Vance, a senator, of course, Trump, former president, — how they’re anti-worker, because this right-wing populist appeal, the Teamsters president addressing, seeing the reactions of the presidential and vice-presidential candidate, was very powerful.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, you look at everything, from Biden’s executive orders that make it easier for workers to organize, to Biden’s executive orders requiring federal contractors to pay a living wage, to decisions by the NLRB on unfair labor practices, to raising the minimum wage, to defining Uber and Lyft workers as regular employees. I mean, you go down the entire litany of things that unions want, the Republicans have opposed every one of them, either in court or by statute [01:31:00] or in reported votes or Republican appointees on regulatory commissions.

And although Vance once walked a picket line with the UAW, he has not done anything to support the labor agenda. It’s all image. It’s all fakery. It’s all political stunts. And the more that comes out into the open, the more people realize that the Republican effort last night to present itself as the pro-worker party is nothing but posturing. And they need to be held to account on that. It should be a very major issue in the campaign. The more Republicans try and make their alleged pro-worker stance a high-profile posture, the more they need to be held to account.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: If people were just reading the script of Sean O’Brien’s speech, it could have been one given by, oh, [01:32:00] independent Senator Bernie Sanders. Are the Democrats at risk here of dismissing this level of right-wing populism? And can you talk about why it appeals so much, especially in the states, the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where we are right now?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, what’s truly dangerous about Vance, if you compare Vance with Trump — so, the Trump of 2016 posed as a populist, but it was cultural or social or racist populism — it’s all the fault of Mexicans, it’s all the fault of immigrants, it’s all the fault of, you know, DEI. This was a kind of an attempt to play into the feeling [01:33:00] of white working-class people that they have been disrespected. And it was a racist, nationalist, cultural brand of fake populism.

Now, what Vance brings to this is he tries to add economic populism: Not only are we going to seal up the Mexican border, but we’re actually going to help you earn a living wage. And Trump didn’t really do that, other than raising tariffs on Chinese goods and being anti-China. Trump didn’t follow through on that. It was left to Biden to complement the tariffs with a real industrial policy. Trump was opposed to that. Whereas Vance is much more effective at connecting Trump’s cultural and social and racist populism to what [01:34:00] looks like pocketbook populism, except it’s a fake, so that if you’re a worker in Wisconsin or Ohio or Pennsylvania, and your living standards have gone to hell, and you can’t send your kid to college because your child would have to go into debt, and you can’t afford to buy a house, and your health insurance is going down the drain — those are pocketbook issues. And to the extent that Vance talks a good game on pocketbook issues, that shores up Trump’s rather thin cultural populism. So, it’s dangerous.

And I come back to the fact that the Democrats have got to do better than Biden, if they’re going to contest this. I mean, Biden has done great stuff, but the number of Americans who think he’s too old, he’s too fragile, he’s too feeble, the fact that he can’t keep his lines straight, and the fact that Vance, by the way, is an excellent debater. [01:35:00] And we’ve got to do better than the current Democratic ticket, or these guys are going to win. And they’re cynical enough to carry out all their threats. And we really will cease to be a democracy, and you can change the title of your program to Democracy Then.

Credits

The additional sections of the show included clips from Parallax Views, The Majority Report, The Brian Lehrer Show, The Thom Hartmann Program, Deconstructed, and Democracy Now!. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show, and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show [01:36:00] co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today and get 20% off this month only at BestOfTheLeft.com/support or through our Patreon page. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes—all through your regular podcast player. 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.

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC. My name is Jay!, and this has been the best of luck podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com.

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#1644 State of Play: The RNC Cultish Clown Show, Continued Calls for Violence, and Biden Bows Out (Transcript)

Posted by · July 26, 2024 2:30 AM

Air Date 7/26/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

It's clear where the vast majority of violent rhetoric is coming from in this country. And it's clear which party is a cult of personality and which puts country before personal power. This is the state of play in our politics.

Sources providing our Top Takes in under an hour today include Democracy Now!, The Thom Hartmann Program, The Atlantic, The Weekly Show with John Stewart, and Today, Explained. Then in the additional Deeper Dive half of the show, there will be more on Biden stepping down, violence and violent rhetoric, the RNC in all its glory, and conspiracy for good measure.

Jeff Sharlet on Trump Assassination Attempt, Authoritarian Violence & Project 2025 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-15-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: You posted on social media, “Calling Trump a 'threat to democracy' is in no way 'violent rhetoric.'” Can you take it from there? I mean, you have this situation where Trump was injured, [00:01:00] his right ear grazed. He’ll be speaking at the Republican convention tonight. One man was killed. Another two are critically injured. The shooter was shot. It is unclear how the Secret Service, clearing the site, which was a large field, where only this building overlooked it, overlooked this building, even as spectators were pointing to him climbing up the side of the building and then on the roof, and saying, “There’s a shooter there.” This is before he opened fire.

JEFF SHARLET: Yes. And I think to connect that to the idea of calling Trump a threat to democracy is the depth of cynicism. And I’ll go and take up Senator Vance’s challenge, too. Trump is fascist authoritarian. That’s a threat he poses. Naming that doesn’t call for violence. It calls for a vibrant democratic response.

And I think, in some [00:02:00] ways, what’s dismaying is this kind of tit-for-tat. Was the gunman a Republican, or was he motivated by some delusional version of what he imagined were left ideas? The clear division line here for that gunman, for that kind of action, is between violence and democracy. An assassin is anti-democracy. He is pro-violence.

And Trump is speaking as a candidate for a pro-violent movement that speaks explicitly and frequently and openly — and I didn’t go to Butler, but I’ve been to plenty of Trump rallies, and the invocation of violence is a constant drumbeat there. So, the depth of the cynicism of the idea that defending democracy is somehow calling for violence is kind of a new low for the Trump campaign, and that’s saying something.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to play for you, Jeff, a recent comment by North Carolina’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who’s running to be [00:03:00] governor and is planning to speak this week here at the Republican National Convention. This is Robinson speaking at a church in North Carolina last month.

LT. GOV. MARK ROBINSON: There was a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield. And guess what we did to it. We killed it! We didn’t quibble about it. We didn’t argue about it. We didn’t fight about it. We killed it! … Some liberal somewhere is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad! … Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It’s time for somebody to say it.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: “Some folks need killing,” Jeff Sharlet. Robinson is expected to be speaking here at the Republican National Convention.

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah, I was thinking about him this weekend. I was thinking about Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana, recently elevated by Mike Johnson to the Armed Services Committee despite the fact that last year [00:04:00] he called for, basically, full-on militia resistance to the Biden administration. I was thinking about the megachurches that I encountered traveling in the country for The Undertow, that are forming militias, that actually are forming militias, that are armed. I was thinking about a church in Omaha, Nebraska, led by a prominent religious backer of Trump, where I was escorted out at gunpoint for asking questions.

So, I don’t like to do the thing like, “You did it first.” Instead, I think what we need to look at and sort of say is that the Trump campaign and this kind of authoritarianism is driven by not just the use of violence, not just the invocation of violence, but a kind of reverence for violence, a redemption through violence. You look at Project 2025, which we’ve all heard about now, and I think one of the things that hasn’t been talked about enough is it begins with four pillars, the principles that they’re moving [00:05:00] forward. Number one is protect the children, language that they’re taking directly almost from QAnon. The idea, it’s an invocation of innocence. And again and again at Trump rallies, in Trump’s rhetoric, you hear the idea of their innocence, which therefore justifies any violence in response. Calling that dangerous is not an incitement to violence. It’s an incitement to build a vibrant democratic culture that can push back against that nightmare dream.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, you raised the Project 2025. And not everyone may know what it is, this 922-page blueprint, written by the Heritage Foundation, for radically reshaping the federal government along what critics describe as authoritarian and Christian nationalist lines, the document proposing attacking unions, climate action, [00:06:00] universal healthcare, abortion access and more. Now, in recent weeks, Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, even though many of his advisers helped write it. He wrote on social media, quote, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” However, in 2022, Trump openly praised the Heritage Foundation’s work.

DONALD TRUMP: Our country is going to hell. The critical job of institutions such as Heritage to lay the groundwork, and Heritage does such an incredible job at that. … This is a great group. And they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for what exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save [00:07:00] America. And that’s coming. That’s coming.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, that was in 2022. It came. The Project 2025 is out. And even as we broadcast today in Milwaukee, one of the events that’s being held is by the Heritage Foundation. So, if you could talk further about that and compare that 922-page document to the much shorter, less than 20-page Republican platform that has just been put out?

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that Trump’s denials in saying, “I don’t have nothing to do with this document,” that several dozen of his senior former aides have put together, is absurd and silly. But on the other hand, we also don’t have to doubt that Trump is telling the truth in only one regard: He did not read a 900-page document. The document for Trump and the strongman authoritarianism, the document serves Trump; [00:08:00] he doesn’t serve the document. And I think that’s what he’s saying. That’s the message his people are getting.

And he’s even able to say some of it he finds ridiculous. One of the things that’s been called attention to is the document calls for banning pornography. Trump’s not going to ban pornography. He has Amber Rose, the founder of OnlyFans, as a speaker at the rally. He’s going to be introduced by Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting organization. Blood and sex is a part of the rally, right?

But if you look closer at Project 2025 and the way that document works and the way it creates a blueprint not for just his action but for what we think of, the thousands of little Trumps that trickle down from the top all through the administration, starting with the replacement of the civil service, which is one of the things that it outlines — you look at the banning of pornography. They’re defining pornography as transgender ideology. [00:09:00] So, oh, this is an attack on trans people. They’re defining it as librarians who distribute pornography, librarians who distribute regular books, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or Gender Queer. Suddenly those people are subject to criminal prosecution. Now we see the project, and we see how the project aligns with the Trumpist movement.

Who Really is Stoking Violence in America? - The Hartmann Report - Air Date 7-15-24

THOM HARTMANN: I just want to share my take on this, 'cause I'm not hearing this from anybody else, and I think we should, frankly.

This kid, he's a school shooter. He was the bullied loner in school who everybody hated, nobody got along with, and he was obsessed with guns. When he shot at Trump, he was wearing a t-shirt for a YouTube channel about guns and explosives that has 11 million followers.

And I'm convinced that this kid was probably preparing to shoot up his local school, and Trump comes to town. I mean, Trump literally came to his backyard. And it's like, oh, well, if I'm gonna go out and blaze a glory shooting up my school, [00:10:00] what better than to go out and blaze a glory shooting the president? Then they'll really remember my name.

Because, keep in mind, most school shooters are suicidal. They're essentially depressed, bullied, outcast, loner young men. And that's him.

So all this stuff about, oh, it's politics, no, it's Democrats. Well, first of all, you've got a concerted Republican effort going on right now, right across the board -- and this is what my op ed today at Hartmann Report is all about -- saying, "Democrats, quit talking about Donald Trump and violence." Quit saying -- there's a tweet by Joe Biden that says, Donald Trump is truly dangerous to America. And Republicans are retweeting that, saying, How come he hasn't taken this down yet? In other words, Democrats, damn well better shut up.

It's not Democrats who've been calling for violence. It wasn't Democrats who in 2016 said, Maybe my Second Amendment people will take care of Hillary Clinton. It wasn't Democrats who made fun of Paul Pelosi being beat with a hammer. It wasn't Democrats who retweeted on Truth Social a [00:11:00] picture of Joe Biden with a bullet in his forehead tied up in the back of a pickup truck. No, that was all Donald Trump.

And that's just the beginning. There's a list of -- there was one on Daily Kos over the weekend. Forty five times Trump has called for violence. Yeah, hit him, knock him hard, I'll pay for your legal expenses, everything.

You haven't heard Democrats do any of that stuff.

At the last CPAC, they had a plastic dummy of Joe Biden that you could kick. And people were in line to kick him.

This "both sides" BS that we're hearing in the media. "Oh, both sides need to tone down the rhetoric." I'm sorry, the Democrats have not done been promoting violence. They have not been. They have not been at any point. This has solely been the province of, not so much the Republican Party, because you're not hearing violent rhetoric from people like Mitt Romney or Mitch McConnell, but it's coming out of the MAGA movement, Trump's neo-fascist movement. Pure and simple.

And, that's what they're trying to do. By the way: [00:12:00] crazy bit of history. This is just nuts. 80 years ago this week, exactly to this week, 80 years ago this week, there was an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. And the only injury he sustained was to his ear. He was, for the rest of his life, he was deaf in one ear as a result of the explosion where they tried to kill him. They set off a bomb in his conference room. And, fortunately for him, the table that it was underneath was made of three-inch-thick oak or something like that, and it just absorbed the blast. But it blew out one of his eardrums.

So, is history trying to tell us something? I don't know. It's just that kind of falls into the category of crazy alert, of wacky stuff.

But, anyhow, in the Hartman Report today, the headline is, "How Trump and the GOP will use this opportunity to demonize and shut up Democrats." And it's already started.

This is very different, by the way, from how Reagan dealt with being shot. And I [00:13:00] think that's worth pointing out. Because, Republicans love to lionize Ronald Reagan. Well, let's look at what happened when John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan. It was quite some time before they figured out that it had anything to do with Jody Foster. For all they knew, John Hinckley was a Muslim terrorist, or a Democrat, or, fill in the blank of somebody who Republicans love to demonize. And yet, Reagan and his people didn't come right out and say, Oh, the Democrats caused this. In fact, what Reagan did is he said, and I'm quoting, He said, "Perhaps coming so close to death made me feel that I should do whatever I could in the years God has given me to reduce the threat of nuclear war." He woke up in the hospital, and there was a friend of his with him. There was a number of people there. And he said to this one guy, he said, "I'm going to dedicate my life to peace." And he did! Three days after he left the hospital, he wrote a note to Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, saying, again, a quote, "We would like to work together for a meaningful and constructive [00:14:00] dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace." That's how Reagan reacted to being shot.

Now, I'm no fan of Ronald Reagan, right? I didn't like his policies. But he wasn't trying to start a civil war. He wasn't encouraging Proud Boys to stand by and stand back. He didn't ask a couple thousand people to attack the Capitol building, hang the Vice President, and murder the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Donald Trump did all that. Okay, he didn't explicitly call for Mike Pence to be hanged or Nancy Pelosi to be murdered. He simply mobilized the crowd. But he watched TV as he could hear the crowd saying "Hang Mike Pence." He could see the video of the crowd going after Nancy Pelosi. He didn't do a thing for three hours. That's an endorsement of that kind of violence.

And they want Democrats to shut up?

J. D. Vance yesterday tweeted out, "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian [00:15:00] fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination." B. S., I'm telling ya. This kid who did this, who tried to assassinate Trump, this guy who tried to kill Trump, was a school shooter. He was the bullied loner who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and he was probably planning, with his dad's AR-15, he was probably planning on shooting up the local school, and then Donald Trump showed up and he thought, Hey, if I want to go out in a blaze of glory, this is a better opportunity.

And by the way, why aren't Democrats right now introducing legislation called the Save President Trump Act to ban assault weapons? The kid was able to get off multiple shots very rapidly because he had an AR-15.

The Long Simmer of Political Violence in America - The Atlantic - Air Date 7-15-24

Harris: So what does this most recent instance say about the undercurrent of political violence in America?

LaFrance: I think Anne is exactly right that the signs of a society becoming more [00:16:00] comfortable with political violence have been all around us for a while now, concerningly. It’s terrible. You mentioned the UC Davis study. They found a small but substantial percentage of Americans believe that lethal violence is justified to get to their preferred political ends.

You see more Americans bringing weapons to political protests in recent years, political aggression often expressed in the rhetoric of war, the building of political identities around hatred for the other or hatred of one’s political foes rather than articulation of whatever value someone might have.

So this has been in the air, in addition to the concrete examples that Anne provided of actual violence. Anyone who tracks this has been warning for years that we’re in it and that it’s getting worse.

Harris: And you mentioned something that, thinking about weapons and how guns factor into all of this—what is the sort of ramping [00:17:00] up of access to firearms meant for the forms that political violence can take in American society?

LaFrance: One expert who I talked to in recent years—you know, I had been asking about where we should anticipate there to be violence, because the nature of political discourse is so dispersed. Often you hear people invoke the possibility of another civil war. And for Americans, I think you think of the Civil War of the 19th century understandably. But the kind of fight we’re having politically is different today. It’s just the way society is organized is different. And this person that I asked—I had asked, “Where should we look for the threats of violence?”—and I remember more than one expert telling me that it’s likely to be in places where there are already militia groups emerging, where people who do disagree strongly with one another bump up against one another, where there’s heightened partisanship, and in particular swing states.

So the states that came up again and again in those conversations were Michigan, Georgia, [00:18:00] Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona. And so you know, I think guns are broadly available in America, generally, but with an incident like this, you have to ask about access to the weapon that was used.

Harris: And so as Adrienne mentioned, we often bring up this idea of a civil war, kind of around when we’re thinking about political violence, because that’s our sort of touchstone example. But is that the right way to be thinking about political violence in America?

Applebaum: It’s funny, I saw the movie Civil War, the one that came out recently, and although it was better than I thought it was going to be, it struck me as wrong. Because for those of you who haven’t seen it, there are sort of two sides fighting, and they have big weapons—they have tanks and helicopters, and there’s a literal war inside the United States with teams of people shooting other teams of people. And that doesn’t feel to me like what could happen here.

I think the better idea of what could happen here is something that looks more like civic breakdown, [00:19:00] and a really good example might be Northern Ireland. So Northern Ireland was a very, very bitterly divided community in which people literally had different identities. Some people felt themselves to be Irish; some felt themselves to be British. And that wasn’t reconcilable. You couldn’t find a halfway point in between where you were half and half. And what you had in Northern Ireland was a low-level, constant violence. So bombs, murders, assassinations, explosions. So the province was roughly ungovernable.

And over the years there were different phases—I don’t want to overgeneralize it. There was a British police force that tried to bring calm to the situation. There were many years of negotiations. But that seems to me the kind of world that we could wind up living in, or maybe parts of the country could wind up living in. As you say, maybe Pennsylvania. Arizona seems like a good possibility given how many death threats have been made to Arizona [00:20:00] election officials and other nonconformist Republicans in Arizona, some of whom I’ve talked to.

And that’s a model of a society that feels ungovernable, and people are frightened to go out of their house at night—not because of crime but because they might be assassinated by the other side, or even assassinated by their own side if they’ve been insufficiently partisan. Northern Ireland also felt a little bit like a gang war.

People who tried to reach out to the other side or who tried to become peacemakers could also become victims of violence. Anybody who was in the center, or anybody who wasn’t a participant, became a target. And that’s actually where I see the United States going, and in some senses, we’re already there.

If you hear stories, as I say, from elected officials and others in states where they haven’t conformed to whatever the partisan rules are, you hear them afraid of violence. I was actually in Tennessee a few months ago, and I [00:21:00] met Republicans there who didn’t go along with the MAGA version of Republicanism that’s prevalent in Tennessee, and some of them were afraid.

I mean, you can’t say it in public. You have to be careful how you talk in front of your neighbors. It’s even worse, of course, if you’re a Democrat. And people are afraid to participate in politics. They’re afraid to work for political campaigns. It’s very hard to get Democrats even to be candidates for the state Senate and legislature in parts of Tennessee because it’s so dangerous to be a Democrat.

And I think we’re already there in a lot of parts of the country.

Harris: What would that sort of chilling effect on people’s ability or willingness to want to go into politics—what does that mean for our broader democracy?

Applebaum: It means that, you know, politics become, instead of a forum for civic participation and a place where we can iron out our difficulties and our differences through dialogue, it becomes something that’s fraught with danger.

People want to stay away from it. Maybe people become [00:22:00] cynical and nihilistic. This is what happens in authoritarian countries—people don’t want to participate in politics because it just feels like everybody is corrupt, everybody is violent. The extreme language puts a lot of people off—not just from being a candidate but from participating in any way, even from voting or even listening to the political news.

And by the way, I’ve heard that a lot in the last few days, from people who are not journalists, or not in politics. You know, I just don’t want to hear what’s going on. I don’t want to listen to the news.

Harris: It’s almost like I just want to tune it out.

Applebaum: I just want to turn it off.

Harris: Adrienne, you’ve reported recently on the sort of rise of political violence in America.

One thing that you said you learned in your reporting was how other cultures managed to endure sustained political violence and how they ultimately emerged with democracy still intact. And I think that’s the thing that’s kind of on all of our minds, like, how do we keep this democracy intact? So what are the necessary next steps to ensure that democracy sort of lives on?

LaFrance: I think Anne hit on [00:23:00] it exactly. I mean you need people who are willing to participate in the project of self-governance, and that requires capable people to lead at all levels of society.

It requires, in my view, voters who are willing to say, Enough, we are not going to tolerate violence, and we are going to elect people who unconditionally reject violence as a way of governing or as a way of life. I mean, the tricky part is, the history is not tremendously hopeful, and there isn’t one blueprint. You know, when I set out to report the story you referenced, Anne and I actually talked about this a lot in the early stages of my reporting, in part because I wanted to hear from her about sort of what are the other countries that got it right, and what can we learn from conflict resolution in Ireland or elsewhere?

And the truth is, once you’re in endemic political violence, it can take generations to get out of it. I mean, I certainly hope that’s not the case for us here, but it’s the sort of messy, almost boring, day-to-day work of democracy that needs to be done, and that’s exactly what’s declining.

In “Unity” Speech, Trump Demonizes Migrants, Spreads Lies & Embraces Authoritarianism - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-19-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Donald [00:24:00] Trump accepted the Republican nomination on Thursday night, just five days after surviving an assassination attempt. Trump gave the longest acceptance speech in convention history, clocking in at over 90 minutes. He began by recounting what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday after a bullet grazed his right ear as he was giving a speech.

DONALD TRUMP: I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God. In watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was.

When I rose, surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead. And there was great, great sorrow. I could see that on their faces as I looked out. [00:25:00] They didn’t know I was looking out. They thought it was over. But I could see it, and I wanted to do something to let them know I was OK. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting, and started shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

CROWD: Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

NERMEEN SHAIKH: During his acceptance speech, Trump repeatedly demonized migrants seeking refuge in the United States. Trump vowed to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.

DONALD TRUMP: The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country. They are coming in from every corner of the Earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, the Middle East. They’re coming from everywhere. They’re coming at levels that we’ve never seen before. It is an invasion indeed. And this administration does absolutely nothing [00:26:00] to stop them.

They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. I — you know, the press is always on me because I say this. Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs? The late great Hannibal Lecter, he’d love to have you for dinner. That’s insane asylums. They’re emptying out their insane asylums. And terrorists are coming in at numbers that we’ve never seen before. Bad things are going to happen. …

That’s why, to keep our families safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Donald Trump was introduced by Dana White, chief executive of UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship. The evening also featured musician Kid Rock and the wrestling [00:27:00] legend Hulk Hogan.

HULK HOGAN: But what happened last week, when they took a shot at my hero and they tried to kill the next president of the United States, enough was enough! And I said, “Let Trumpamania run wild, brother! Let Trumpamania rule again! Let Trumpamania make America great again!”

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Hulk Hogan’s appearance at the RNC may surprise many, but he actually has something in common with Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance. Both have ties to the right-wing billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. Thiel reportedly spent as much as $10 million to help Hulk Hogan sue the website Gawker.com. The successful [00:28:00] lawsuit brought down the website. Thiel also spent $10 million to help J.D. Vance get elected to the Senate in 2022.

We’re going to begin with Maria. What is stunning, and it’s not just last night, Thursday night, when President Trump, the former president, hoping he’ll be not only 45 but 47 — which was on everyone’s baseball caps — it was not only his longest speech in convention history, but in almost all of the references of speakers throughout the week, if there was a theme, it was attacking immigrants every which way — as murderers, as drug dealers, the assault, the invasion from the border. Can you talk, overall — you were just in Milwaukee — about the significance of what has just taken place here?

MARIA HINOJOSA: [00:29:00] My god, Amy. You know, if I let it actually get into my heart, I would want to start crying, which I’m not going to do because I’m a seasoned journalist. But when you kind of lay it out that way, Amy, that’s the reason why I wasn’t tuning in every night, because it is all — and I’m sorry to say — but it is lies. Right? That’s ultimately what we’re talking about here.

What we do know is that the Republican platform under Donald Trump is very clear. It is, over and over and over, about attacking immigrants, refugees, migrants and travelers. What we don’t have on the other side, in terms of the Democratic Party, is a response to that, right? There isn’t a response to “build the wall,” which is precisely what we need.

In the case of the Republican National Convention, you know, having been in Milwaukee — which, by the way, is a hugely immigrant city. Milwaukee — I don’t know you, you probably haven’t had the [00:30:00] opportunity — has an extraordinary street food culture of tacos, very particularly tacos. They love their tacos in Milwaukee. And so, this notion that you have a Republican convention in a city that has a huge immigration population, undocumented and documented, but somehow everybody’s safe in Milwaukee, it does not jibe with the narrative, the constant narrative of what Donald Trump says about who we are.

And again, Amy, what we know — it’s not me. Of course, I travel across the country. I’m at the border. I talk to immigrants and refugees every single day of my life. But we know what the Justice Department has said. We know what the FBI has said, that crime over the past three decades has decreased by 49% in the United States. And meanwhile, what the Congressional Budget Office has said is that immigration and immigrants are [00:31:00] going to grow the American economy by $7 trillion over the next decade. You cannot have it both ways.

The role of the journalist is to not repeat the lies of an authoritarian. That’s why what’s happened at this Republican National Convention is so problematic for me as a journalist, because we cannot be the ones who are repeating these claims and then not doing the work of constantly doing the fact-checking. It’s impossible to do, with a convention that we have now seen is, essentially, specifically on the question of immigration, lying over and over and over again.

It’s — again, I’m sorry I got emotional. I hate when that happens. But when you kind of hear it one by one by one — and I’m just like, “Where do I live? What country do I live in?” Because if everything that he said is true, then our American economy would be tanking, right? And, actually, there would be rampant crime across the streets. That is not the truth. And even [00:32:00] Trump supporters can say that, because if they just open their eyes, they know that’s not the truth.

Jon Stewart on Biden 2024: It Is What It Is? - The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart - Air Date 7-11-24

TOMMY VIETOR, POD SAVE AMERICA: That was an ass kicking in the sense that Obama wasn't sharp, he didn't have his message down. He didn't seem like he came ready to fight and make a case against Romney. This was bad in that Biden struggled to speak coherently and get sentences out and make an argument. And that to me was chilling.

JON FAVREAU, POD SAVE AMERICA: It would have been like, if in that first debate with Romney, Barack Obama went out and said, Look, I wasn't born here, but let me tell you something -- I'm not from here. I'm not from this country, everyone who's been wondering.

JON STEWART: Bakari, I imagine you didn't watch the debate and think to yourself, he's killing it! But you had a very different response to what you were seeing. Do you want to talk about that?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: Yeah, no, I think he got his ass kicked up, down, left, right, and sideways. I also don't think elections are won in June. I think that there is a great deal of just over excitement by a lot of my friends on the left or over concern. I mean, it is what it is. People are talking about, people are engaging in this fantasy [00:33:00] fiction of this off ramp, this proverbial off ramp where there's not one. People are talking about this open convention where there's not going to be one. If in fact there is an opportunity for someone else to replace Joe Biden, the only person who has the infrastructure, the cash in order to do that or at least give us a chance to last four months would be Kamala Harris.

But I'm just very soberly saying we got our ass kicked in the debate. First and foremost, we can have all of these conversations about Joe Biden needs to do this and Joe Biden needs to do that. But after July 22nd, if I'm not mistaken, or 25th, whenever we have the roll call, he is our nominee. So then what are you going to do?

I'm resolved to the fact that we have three choices. We have Donald Trump, we have Joe Biden and the couch. And whether or not I was at Essence Fest or whether or not I was fishing with my good friend, Jared Lodehold off a dock in Orangeburg County last week, the people I talked to are all saying the same thing: let's just get on with it. We know what we're going to do. We know who we're going to choose and it is what it is. we have bigger things that we're fighting for other than going back and rehashing the fact that our candidate is 81 years old, probably eats [00:34:00] at Denny's, goes to bed at four o'clock and changes tennis balls on his walker.

JON STEWART: You just described my perfect weekend. Thank you, Bakari!

So I want to talk about -- because I think, Bakari, you bring up a really interesting mindset and I want to talk about that because I am of the opinion that democracy is not just under threat by authoritarians or by a Supreme Court that has decided maybe we shouldn't have left England in the first place and a monarchy is actually slightly preferable. But I want to talk about the phrase, "it is what it is." Because I think that that is a complacency that I've seen in the Democratic party for a very long time. That includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg not retiring on time. That includes Merrick Garland not going after Donald Trump for January 6th on time. That includes not being able to get Merrick Garland onto the Supreme Court. That includes allowing Amy Coney Barrett to get onto the Supreme Court. That includes not [00:35:00] being responsive to urgency and to new information and just saying, "It is what it is, guys" and shrugging.

And I think my point is, there is opportunity here. It may not be open convention. It may not be a new person to take on to the ticket. But there is a vibrant and I think ultimately positive at least conversation and acknowledgement to be had, that is not being had because "it is what it is", and "what are you going to do?" So I want you to respond to that.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: Yeah, I don't actually mind the conversation. I'm not somebody who wants to put you and Axe and Tommy and John and the guys and Tim, put you guys on an island and just ship you guys off.

JON STEWART: White guys' summer, white guys' summer!

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: White boys' summer! You and Chet Hanks. I know.

So I'm not somebody like, I appreciate the thoroughness in which you're having this [00:36:00] debate. I'm kind of looking beyond that. And to your "it is what it is," you're kind of a monologue there. Look, the fact that you can go back to Rahm Emanuel, not putting the impact on, or the emphasis on the judiciary as he should have and Barack Obama not doing what he should have done at the judiciary or codifying, uh, Roe v. Wade or whatever he could have done when we actually had the House and the Senate in 2008. Those type of things, we can go back and re-litigate those things under that mantra of "it is what it is."

What I'm talking about right now is very practically the choices we have before us. And so I am geared up trying to prevent project 25. I'm geared up trying to make sure that the things that we're talking about, the Chevron ruling, which I know that people are caught up on presidential immunity. Sure. The Chevron ruling, in my opinion, was more devastating to the fabric of democracy than anything we've seen in recent history.

JON STEWART: He's talking about the ruling from the Supreme Court, which made it much more difficult for federal agencies to regulate, whether it's the EPA or SEC or any of those agencies to regulate the people that they're charged with regulating, that they undercut those decisions, from the Supreme Court.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: And they did [00:37:00] what they did similarly in Dobbs, they overthrew decades worth of precedent, which the Supreme Court is not necessarily known to do, unless you're like Clarence Thomas and you're getting flowed out by your billionaire donors all over the country.

And so, yeah, I think there are a lot of people who sit in my seat and they have a very sober look at where we are practically and say, I cannot afford in November to go back any further. We felt like 2020, we were on the precipice of a third reconstruction and we missed that mark. And since that time, we've actually been going backwards. And I know that people just don't want to backslide anymore. And I feel like having --

JON STEWART: Biden is the President. If we're backsliding under Biden, you're saying we're --

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: No, but I can go through his list of achievements. But what we're talking about are the attacks on DEI. We're talking about the attacks on Affirmative Action. We're talking about how in Arizona, they passed an abortion bill from the 1800s, how they passed Dobbs, how we just went through presidential immunity. I mean, there are cultural and policy initiatives that firmly make me believe that we've gone backwards. I mean, look at Black home ownership.

JON STEWART: No, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying the administration is the administration right now. But Jon and [00:38:00] Tommy, I want you to address this because what Bakari is suggesting is that he's being strategic, that this isn't about noticing that the President may no longer be up to the job. This is about staying with the status quo because strategically, I guess -- and Bakari tell me if I'm misrepresenting this -- that gives us our best opportunity to win. And I think my point is, I don't know that that's the case. I think I would disagree that that's the best strategy, but, but what's your thought?

JON FAVREAU, POD SAVE AMERICA: I mean, you would disagree and literally all of the polling and data available would also agree with this position as well. But it's not fiction at all that Joe Biden could step down tomorrow. He could announce that you know what? I have a important job to finish. I'm doing two jobs right now. I'm President of the United States and I'm running for President, and President of the United States is too important and I want to focus on that. And I can pass it off to Kamala Harris, or we can have an open convention, whatever he wants to do. He could easily do that tomorrow, and the [00:39:00] idea that we cannot influence --

JON STEWART: Bakari, Bakari just got very sad.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: Well, no, that's not a real thing.

JON FAVREAU, POD SAVE AMERICA: It is a real thing. Bakari, why is that not a real thing?

TOMMY VIETOR, POD SAVE AMERICA: Yeah, why is it not real?

JON STEWART: Is it not a real thing technically, or is it not a real thing, you think, emotionally or technically it's not a real thing?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: I think technically, emotionally -- first of all, the way this works is, and I love the kind of land that we're living in where one can assume that Joe Biden can say that I don't have the ability to run for reelection, after I've already announced that I am, after I've done all of these things, raised all of these monies, have the infrastructure around the country, but yet I don't have it in me to finish this campaign.

JON FAVREAU, POD SAVE AMERICA: No, he can say I can't win. I can't win because all the polling says he can't win.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN: Yet I can still be president of the United States. So those things are not, those things don't fly.

TOMMY VIETOR, POD SAVE AMERICA: He can't win. One's a multi month job and one is auditioning for a four year job.

JON STEWART: I'm gonna also jump in and say look, nobody actually knows. Now things are looking dire for the President, but four months, I think any of us would agree in a modern media timeline [00:40:00] is for fucking ever. It really is. I think we confuse this idea. You know, we just saw France lose terribly in the parliamentary elections. Macron jumps out with a snap election. Weeks later, they've stemmed the tide of Le Pen. I mean, it can be done. And that's my point, Bakari. We are complacent. And that complacency sets in a cynicism with the American public. And I think you're giving us a binary choice that's not real. I don't necessarily agree, oh, Biden can't win or Kamala can't win. We just don't know. And the world changes so quickly and we don't know about those things.

But here's what I do know: it's not a binary choice. President Biden's defiance, I don't think is the right strategy. I think the idea of not acknowledging the progressive and degenerative nature of what he's [00:41:00] dealing with is gaslighting anybody who supports him. And this idea of have him going out there with bromides about "Joey, my dad said to me, Joey, it's not about how you get knocked down, it's about how you get up." And you're like, I don't know that you can get up, sir. I think that's really not the metaphor you want to go with. And there's no shame in that. We all get there. So I don't understand.

There is an opportunity here to have a more honest, adult, sophisticated, fuck the media, fuck whatever they're going to say. You are in control of how this goes down. And I think they're bungling even the response.

You did it, Joe - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-22-24

SEAN: Has anything like this ever happened before, Andrew?

ANDREW: You know, in one sense, this is unprecedented. Um, In the modern era, certainly no presidential party has changed its apparent nominee so late in the process. People point to Lyndon [00:42:00] Johnson choosing to step aside in March, 1968 as one precedent.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

ANDREW: But I also think of the way this played out as quite similar to something that actually happens pretty frequently, which is a scandal plagued politician begins hurting the party and then faces a tragedy. Pressure campaign that could be quick. That could take longer, but designed to force them to step aside. And you know, that's something we just saw it in New York with Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2021. It also happened with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Governor Elliott Spitzer. New York Democrats do this a lot. But The idea is that, you know, the primary voters had [00:43:00] their say, such as it was with the limited options they were presented with, in part because of the party elites falling behind Joe Biden. But there is a conceptual problem of what happens when the primary voters make their choice, but new information emerges after the primary. I think everyone knows that if a time traveler sent back a recording of how Donald Trump and Joe Biden's first debate of 2024 went, uh, back into 2023. I don't think he would have, uh, waltzed to the nomination with only token opposition. Uh, it was simply not well understood or accepted, uh, that he would perform so badly and he tried to, um, prevent that from being known by limiting his availability for high profile, high stakes interviews; for avoiding any debates in the primaries. And, uh, because of that, the primary voters lacked [00:44:00] some information that now the general electorate has. It's also worth mentioning that back during the primaries, many polls showed that a large majority of Democratic voters did not think Biden should run for a second term and they would prefer someone else. But nobody else who was significant and credible ended up running.

SEAN: Biden submits a resignation letter to the American people yesterday. In it, he does not lay out a path for his successor. Although he does then issue, I believe, a tweet in which he endorses his vice president, Kamala Harris. Why didn't he endorse her in the resignation letter? Do we know why there's two statements, essentially?

ANDREW: I have no idea. It's, uh, It's an interesting question.There was some uncertainty before this about whether there would be this rapid consolidation of Democratic support around Harris. Uh, this could have [00:45:00] been, you know, Biden's endorsement was a big part of this, but, you know, it wasn't. The deciding factor necessarily, uh, it's more indicative, all the endorsements we've seen rolling in, are more indicative of the mood in the party that they're kind of desperate for unity.

After the past few weeks of chaos, they don't want a big open process, uh, and the potentially other credible contenders who would, one might think, get involved in this process have mostly already endorsed Harris and said they're not interested in going for it this time. Now, this does pose the risk that Democrats are kind of repeating the same mistakes they made with Joe Biden's run in the first place in clearing the field and consolidating around someone whose strengths and weaknesses really have not been tested yet.

SEAN: If the candidate ends [00:46:00] up being Kamala Harris, do we have any idea who her, her Veep will be? Can she pick Joe?

ANDREW: Theoretically, she could. I don't see why she would, but, um, I think probably the platonic ideal is like white men in a swing state. This is what Democrats are thinking, not myself, but like they, they view this as, like, a good balance to Harris at the top of the ticket, and like they want someone who swing voters will perceive as, as non threatening and normal. Like, this is kind of said in a joking way, but also not necessarily so joking. But people point to Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Both of those are important swing states. Uh, also in the mix, Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky.

SEAN: What's Vice President Harris saying to potentially allay concerns in her party?

ANDREW: She said she's running. She says she's running to win and that she would like to earn the nomination. And, [00:47:00] you know, it's, it's a little vague about how these next steps will actually play out. We all know that the nominee will be put forward and confirmed at the Democratic Convention the week of August 19th and be, uh, technically chosen by the, uh, A couple thousand delegates who are attending that convention, but whether they will have a actual choice between multiple competing options, uh, who are are realistic, who have an actual shot, the reality is that it is entirely possible Harris will lock up the vast majority of party support well in advance so that there is effectively no real alternative and no realistic alternative wants to even, uh, try.

SEAN: Do we have any idea how those potential tickets stack up against the former president and Republican candidate, Donald Trump?

ANDREW: I don't think the polling right [00:48:00] now is worth very much, uh, particularly I don't think the Veep typically doesn't make much of a difference.

But we do have a fair amount of Harris vs. Trump polling, and that polling is not fantastic for Harris. It generally shows her losing. Just like Biden.

FOX 5 WASHINGTON: Now the Trump Harris poll is interesting. They have Trump at 51% and Harris at at 48%.

ANDREW: So again, Democrats are tremendously excited right now. They're jubilant uniting around Harris. The Democratic fundraising platform Act Blue had a record day raising an enormous amount of money yesterday. Clearly, the base is very excited about this historic pick and, and about Harris as a candidate. But if we look at the polling right now. She starts as the underdog. Their argument, she can turn it around, and, uh, sure, she can turn it around, it's certainly possible [00:49:00] she could win, but I would caution, you know, people not to get too carried away in, you know, assuming that she is a surefire winner when, when that is very far from the case based on the polling we've seen.

Final comments on why it's OK to have a bit of hope even if it's uncomfortable

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Democracy Now! differentiating between those actually calling for violence and those warning of fascism. The Thom Hartmann Program pointed out the connection between the assassination attempt and school shooters. The Atlantic took the long view on political violence in the US. Democracy Now! discussed the anti-immigrant vitriol endemic at the RNC. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart discussed the choice of Biden stepping out of the race before the decision was made. And Today, Explained looked at the situation in the wake of Biden's announcement to not seek re-election. And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section.

But before we continue on, I wanted to share a few thoughts about the discomfort you might be feeling right now. That [00:50:00] feeling, if you are experiencing it, may be related to the concept of hope.

If you're not familiar, you're not the only one, as we tend to focus on the negative things happening in the present and worrying about things that may happen in the future. Even during the 2020 election, I don't know that hope would have been the right word to describe anyone's feelings. Probably more like white knuckling followed by intense relief. But hope? There are probably people listening who are actually too young to have ever experienced the sensation. So if this is new to you or it's just been a while and you're not sure how to handle it, I have suggestions, thanks to a Daily Beast article I saw recently: "I feel hope right now. It's so embarrassing."

Near the top, it talks about how liberals tend to over emphasize our awareness that literally all politicians are egocentric weirdos who don't actually deserve our praise, even when we want to say something nice about them.

It's a signal that we're not naive, and, in this day and [00:51:00] age, we're definitely not cultishly devoted to anyone, least of all a weirdo politician.

And normally, we'd be talking about the problems Kamala Harris has too, not to tear her down, but to be part of the effort of pushing her to change her positions or, improve in this way or that or whatever. And the best case scenario right now is that we'll have the next four to eight years to do just that.

But for now, there actually is cause for some hope, and from the very limited amount we've seen of her on the campaign trail at the top of the ticket so far, she's sounding good. Her first speech didn't focus entirely on Trump, though she did go on a solid attack. She also laid out a positive vision beyond "stop the bad orange man" that people need to hear, and not just to get people out to the polls, but for people like us, who are political nerds to an unhealthy degree, and need to kindle some actual hope from time to time with a positive vision.

[00:52:00] And those are just the specifics of the tone she's setting for the campaign, but the general matchup of a prosecutor versus a felon and a crook, and the reproductive rights advocate versus the overturner of Roe vs. Wade, it all just sort of writes itself in a way that feels good.

And then here's the line from that article that stuck in my head. It says, quote, "If you're still reading, it's about to get worse, because I'm going to write a sentence that would look great on a decorative pillow. Yeah, I'm gonna live, love, laugh the hell out of this article. Here I go: 'Hope is a choice.' I'm going to make the executive decision to hope. Because why not? It's not like guacamole. It doesn't cost extra. And, contrary to popular belief, it won't hurt less if Harris loses because I get to say I knew it afterward."

So, we here at the show have also been giving ourselves permission to feel hopeful, at least for a little while. I mean, [00:53:00] after the past few weeks, not to mention the last decade, we deserve it.

Now, before we get back to the show, a quick reminder that July is our Membership and Awareness Drive month. If you get value out of this show, and I hope you do, let this be the time that you decide to chip in and help sustain its production and tell some friends about it to grow our base of support. Unfortunately, the decade that I just described of political horrors and, frankly, the lack of hope, I think has left a lot of people running from politics, and that has taken a real toll on our listenership, our membership, and the income that we're able to generate to keep everyone paid for the work they do keeping the show going.

So, it is up to you, the real hardcore political nerds, who are white knuckling it, slash maybe finding hope for the first time in a while, who we really need to step up. Because when I say that we need your support, it's not in the abstract. We don't have big funders or any kind of institution or media outlet backing us [00:54:00] up. It's really just you, the listener, deciding to chip in and make the show possible.

As thanks, members get ad free versions of every regular episode and bonus shows featuring the production crew in conversation.

For this month, memberships are 20 percent off, so if you sign up now, you'll keep that discounted price for as long as you keep your membership. Just head to BestOfTheLeft.com/support to grab that membership, and then tell someone about us.

SECTION A: BIDEN STEPS DOWN

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue with deeper dives on four topics. Next up, section A: Biden steps down. Followed by section B: Violence and violent rhetoric. Section C: the RNC. And section D: Conspiracy.

“Beating Donald Trump Is Vital”: Mehdi Hasan on Joe Biden Dropping Out, Kamala Harris, Gaza & More - Deomcracry Now! - Air Date 7-22-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: You kind of predicted what would happen, Mehdi. Earlier this month, you wrote a piece for The Guardian headlined “Kamala Harris may be our only hope. Biden should step aside and endorse her.” Interestingly, the piece begins, “I have never been a fan of Kamala [00:55:00] Harris.” Can you talk about how you came to your position?

MEHDI HASAN: So, very briefly, I criticized Harris a lot in 2019, 2020, when she was trying to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, specifically around her record in California as an attorney general and as a DA. She did some things — and I’ve outlined them in the past for The Intercept, when I was there at the time — to do with convictions and to do with criminal justice reform which I thought were pretty right-wing and pretty unfair, and I think there’s a lot of issues there with that record from a progressive point of view, although she also did some progressive things, too, and I applauded it at the time. But I wasn’t a fan of her campaign. And, you know, to be honest, I was right at the time. Her campaign melted down. She withdrew before a single vote was cast in the primaries. But then she got lucky, I think it’s fair to say, when Joe Biden decided to forgive her for attacking him on the debate stage and made her his running mate.

This time around, you know, we’re in a very different world — right? — four years later. For me, Biden stepping [00:56:00] aside was very important, because he clearly wasn’t up to the job of defeating Trump. And I know people talk about open conventions, contested conventions. I just think that’s not going to happen. I don’t think it’s helpful right now. I think there are lots of legal, financial issues with that. And for me, in early July, it was: Get Biden out of the way; there’s a perfectly good candidate who can beat Donald Trump. By the way, her polling — and that was at the beginning of July — it’s gotten better since. Her polling was showing that she was matching Trump. She was doing better than Biden with Trump. She was actually leading with independents, according to a CNN poll.

So, for me, it was a no-brainer. You’ve got a younger, more energetic candidate ready to go in the wings, already on the ticket, already won with you in 2020, might be better on Gaza — we can talk about that — than Joe Biden, although it’s not hard to be better than Biden on Gaza given how bad he’s been, and actually has a good record as a senator, as an attorney general. So, why wouldn’t you go with Kamala Harris, who is also, by the way, a history-making candidate, will bring enthusiasm from the base? And I was right about that. Look at the last few hours, Amy. There’s record-breaking [00:57:00] donations to the Democratic Party since she was endorsed by Biden yesterday. She would be the first Black woman president, the first South Asian president, the first woman president.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I think ActBlue reported something like raising, in a number of hours, $50 million. Now, you just mentioned that perhaps Kamala Harris is better on Gaza. Why don’t you go into her record and what you can discern, as she is the vice president there working with the president?

MEHDI HASAN: So, look, when I say — I just want to be very clear to Democracy Now! viewers and listeners. When I say “better than Biden,” I don’t mean that she’s going to become president and say, “Time for an arms embargo on Israel.” No, she’s not going to make major changes in policy, and that’s a tragedy. People are dying, Amy, even as we speak. The people in Gaza have not stopped being killed just because the media’s attention has moved on. And I think that’s important to say at the outset.

However — right? — with all these things, there are important [00:58:00] differences. One of my big criticisms of Biden has not just been his unconditional support for Netanyahu and the sale of 2,000-pound bombs, 500-pound bombs, etc. It’s the rhetoric, right? It’s the idea that he doesn’t even show empathy — the guy who’s known for his empathy — for the Palestinian people, since the beginning. There’s been an erasure of Palestinians. Remember, he put out a statement on the 100 days after October 7th, didn’t mention any Palestinian deaths. Remember, he questioned the Palestinian death toll. And I think that’s a problem.

And Kamala Harris, actually, if you look at the reporting since October the 7th, she was a voice in the administration trying to take a stance which humanized Palestinians a little bit more, tried to criticize Israel a little bit more, was dragged back by the White House. There was a lot of reporting about how the White House was trying to change some of her speeches to make them less critical of Israel. She was calling for a temporary ceasefire, at least, earlier than Joe Biden was. And I spoke to an official in the administration who’s been in the room for some of these conversations. They said, “Look, there’s no doubt Kamala Harris is better on this issue than Joe Biden is.” And I wrote that in The Guardian earlier this month.

And interestingly, Amy, Politico put out a piece last night quoting [00:59:00] some of the people who have quit the Biden administration, some of the officials and appointees who have quit in recent months in protest of Biden, and even they’re saying, “We’re cautiously optimistic that she might be better than Biden on this.” And as I say, it’s not hard to be better than Biden on this. But, look, I hope she comes out and says, “Reset, course correction, ceasefire now,” in a way that Biden never really has with his heart.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to turn to a voter in California named Faraz Rizvi, responding to President Biden’s decision.

FARAZ RIZVI: I am glad that Biden stepped down. You know, we’ve been really concerned about his policy towards Palestine and his, you know, full-throated support for Israel and the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians. So, you know, we’re really — I mean, I’m relieved to see another candidate that might not have the same policies and that has, you know, not backed the brutality against the Palestinians. You know, I think there are still a lot of questions on Kamala and what her policy is going to be, but I think, [01:00:00] for a lot of voters, you know, a lot of people in my community — I’m Muslim and Pakistani — this has been like the biggest issue, the singular issue that we’ve been paying attention to.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, Mehdi Hasan, if you can respond to that California voter?

MEHDI HASAN: I think he makes very good points. Look, we need to keep the pressure up on Kamala Harris, those of us who care about what’s happening in Gaza. As I say, she’s not going to come in and transform American foreign policy. Let’s not be naive or ridiculous. But at the same time, we can, I think, pressure her in a way that we failed to pressure Joe Biden to change his policies on this. I mean, Netanyahu is in town this week, Amy. He’s going to be speaking in Congress. He’s going to be meeting Biden at the White House.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: He’s going to be meeting with Kamala Harris. And it’s not clear: Will he be meeting with Biden at the White House, given that Biden is in isolation in Rehoboth?

MEHDI HASAN: Good question. It’s a good question. That was always planned for Monday. I don’t know what the latest is on Biden’s COVID. By the way, hilariously, Donald Trump has been posting over the weekend that Biden faked his COVID to get out of the race. You’ve got to love Trump’s posts.

Look, [01:01:00] to respond to the voter, it’s not just California. California at least is a safe blue state. Go to Michigan. I talked to a lot of people in Dearborn and Detroit, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, young Michigan voters, who are furious about Gaza — the uncommitted movement that came out of Michigan. And the question is: Does putting Kamala Harris at the top of this ticket instead of Joe Biden help the Democrats hold on to Michigan, for example? Do people say, “You know what? Our hate” — you know, the Abandon Biden — there’s a lot of hatred for Joe Biden personally from a lot of these constituencies over Gaza. It was called Abandon Biden. He’s called “Genocide Joe.” Whether you like it or not, the antipathy is very much focused on Biden. And I think just getting him out of the way allows Democrats to say, “All right, look, there’s a possibility of a fresh start.” But that won’t happen unless we keep up the pressure on Kamala Harris, make it clear what she has to do to win back some of those constituencies in order to take a state like Michigan, which is going to be so close and so crucial in November.

Fox News MELTS DOWN Over Kamala Harris - The Rational National - Air Date 7-22-24

Republican talking heads are losing their damn minds over the fact that Joe Biden has withdrawn [01:02:00] and endorsed Kamala Harris. So I have a few fun clips to share with you, and I'll get to my favorite near the end of this video with Sean Hannity.

Wait for that. He's got nothing. It's fun to watch. But first, Stephen Miller, who was on with Laura Ingraham, and is really, as I said, just losing his mind. They held a primary! People, they had ballots! They filled out circles! They went to the voting booths! They spent money on advertisements! And, as President Trump said, the Republican Party spent tens of millions of dollars running against Joe Biden!

Now they just woke up one morning and said never mind, we're cancelling the entire primary. We're getting rid of our candidate and we're pretending the election has never even happened, and we're going to let donors handpick a new nominee. They're publicly admitting that they are an oligarchy. They are not running a democracy.

They are not running a representative republic. This is an oligarchy controlled by business interests [01:03:00] and the democratic convention is the private corporation that represents those business interests. This is as full frontal and attack on American democracy as we've ever seen in the history of America's major political parties.

I really hope they go with that line. I really do because it will just continue the conversation That they were the ones that try to steal an election. Trump still to this day is denying that he lost an election. And you're going to try and claim that this is an attack on democracy. There wasn't even a proper primary.

They canceled some of the primary states. This was an incumbent president. Insane to try and argue this, but please continue making this argument as it'll just remind everybody that your candidate tried to steal an election. And on the point about, uh, Oh, this is the party of oligarchs. Are you out of your mind?

JD Vance, the VP pick for Trump was picked because of his connection to big money. Tech, this is from the Guardian, Tech Broligarcs are lining [01:04:00] up to court Trump and Vance is one more link in the chain. Peter Thiel has been close buddies with Vance forever. This what, this is exactly why Vance is in the position that he is in, despite the fact that he was talking shit about Trump in 2016 because he thought at the time that was the way for him to make it big.

But J. D. Vance chasing power realized after Trump won, hey, I could just go with this party. And lie my way to the top. And that's exactly what he did this. Look at this. Peter Thiel and Trump right here. Are you kidding me? Not to mention just last week, Elon Musk said he is committing around 45 million a month.

One guy committing 45 million a month to a pro Trump super PAC. The party of oligarchs? Right here. Unbelievable. Insanity. Let me get now to Kellyanne Conway, who is, this argument is rich. She had disastrous staff turnover as vice president. I check it on the [01:05:00] daily. Her public schedule, gentlemen, is Rarely has anything on it or one or two things on it.

She does not speak well. She does not work hard. All right Let me ask you and she should not be the standard bearer for the party. Yes, sir. The projection here is absolutely incredible Doesn't work hard donald trump spent almost an entire year Playing golf during his presidency 307 days of his presidency was spent playing golf What?

You're gonna complain about somebody else's work ethic? Not to mention here, this is Kellyanne Conway's ex husband, George Conway. Not everyone can express themselves as eloquently and with such exquisite turns of phrase as Donald Trump. That's, of course, to her argument that she, uh, doesn't speak well.

Like, why are you making arguments that are just reminding people about how terrible Donald Trump [01:06:00] is? Unbelievable. And in terms of the staff turnover, are you kidding me? Again, it's projection after projection after projection. Trump overall between Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush again, Obama, Trump. The highest year over year turnover.

And then, of course, when it comes to the cabinet, not even close. Clearly, the most turnover. You're gonna complain about somebody else's staff turnover? What? Insane. Let me get to the Sean Hannity clip now, cause this one is just, you gotta laugh at how ridiculous this is, because it is about laughing.

Here's just one reason that voters seem to detest Kamala Harris. You decide. And[01:07:00]

is that a socialist or progressive perspective? No. I thought we were supposed to conserve things. I couldn't reconcile it. Now I can.

Yes, you're giggling, Vice President. This is primetime Fox News. Sean Hannity is supposed to be making some strong arguments against Kamala Harris because that is his job as the Fox News guy in prime time. Her laughing? This is your central point? But Kamala Harris likes to laugh. is a person shows human emotion.

Un freaking believable how insane this is. And to bolster this point, [01:08:00] uh, you likely already saw this, but this is Donald Trump's nickname for Kamala Harris. From the moment we take back the White House from Crooked Joe Biden and Kamala. I call her laughing Kamala. You ever watch her laugh? She's crazy. You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh.

No, she's crazy. She's nuts. She's not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi. Crazy Nancy. I call her laughing Kamala. She, she laughs too much folks. She is too happy as a person. You're fucking minds. Oh my God. This is going to be a fun campaign. This is going to be hilarious. Uh, here's another one. This incredibly popular policy.

Single payer health care. She once supported it. As a senator, she co sponsored a bill with Bernie Sanders that would force Americans into socialized single payer health care, that kind of system. So Kamala Harris co sponsored a bill with the most [01:09:00] popular politician in the country, Bernie Sanders. This is 2017.

Still the most popular sitting politician in the country. She co sponsored a bill with this incredibly popular guy for an incredibly popular policy. This is your big argument against her. Please continue, continue making these arguments. It'll work out well.

SECTION B: VIOLENCE AND VIOLENT RHETORIC

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: Violence and violent rhetoric.

What Does "Turning Down The Temperature" Mean? - Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast - Air Date 7-15-24

When Biden and Mike Johnson call for people to turn down the temperature in our politics, what does that actually mean?

Is Biden doing that himself in a way you can describe? Are congressional Republicans doing that to heed Mike Johnson's call in a way you can describe? So what I will say is that in the immediate hours, Twitter was a dumpster fire of anger and blame. And. And it was not good. Um, and that then after that, Mike Johnson came out and [01:10:00] said, Calm the temperature.

President Biden spoke on the phone with former President Trump. We're told it was a respectful call. The DNC chairman called the chairman of the RNC to express condolences and also to talk about the fact that political violence is not acceptable in any forms and the need to turn down the temperature.

So I think that after this immediate call, Uh, burst of really bad social media. There has been an effort to calm things. Uh, former president Trump, uh, in an interview with the, um, the New York Post, um, is saying that he is throwing out his speech, which was going to be very tough and because of, uh, the experience that he had, this near death experience, he intends to, to deliver a speech that is more about unity.

What I will say is that former president Trump has through his career, often talked about unity, um, But his vision of unity is, is generally people agreeing with him. Um, and his vision of unity is that unity comes through success. [01:11:00] And once there's success, people will just fall in line. That has not proven the case throughout his political career.

And the country is more divided than it has ever been. Um, but, uh, if he is, Uh, you know, not if he if he is at least nodding to the idea of unity, then we don't know. We don't know what this convention is going to look like and what tone it is going to take. But I do think that there has been at least some shift in the rhetoric in these 48 hours in terms of President Biden, who I cover more closely.

He is, um, he canceled one event today that was supposed to be in Austin, Texas, but, um, he is still going to do his interview with Lester Holt on NBC News tonight. And then he is going to Las Vegas where he's going to speak to the NAACP convention and the UnidosUS convention. He also has, um, other campaign events that he's doing.

We'll see what the tone is like. Um, he is not, Um, shying away. The campaign has told me that he is not going to stop to stop talking about what he [01:12:00] sees and what what many Democrats and beyond Democrats see as a is a dire threat to democracy as we know it, uh, that is on the line in this election. Um, so that is still going to be part of what he is saying, but exactly how he says it and whether that is different.

I'm not sure because Friday night, um, he really He really changed his stump speech, and he was going directly at former President Trump in, um, pretty stark language, uh, in stronger language than he's used before, and I don't know what happens to that stump speech. Yeah. We may learn, uh, Trump's vice presidential pick today, and you're covering the convention in Milwaukee.

The three names mostly mentioned are Senators Marco Rubio or J. D. Vance or South Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Some people say Senator Tim Scott is also still on the list, and maybe none of those. But Vance's, Vance's post shooting statement was typical. He wrote the central premise of the Biden campaign is that president Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be [01:13:00] stopped at all costs.

That rhetoric led directly to president Trump's attempted assassination. Now. I don't think that's a direct quote of Biden. I don't think Biden ever said at all costs or by any means necessary or anything like that. Uh, or fascist for that matter. Oh, but a lot of people do say fascist, but I don't know. I don't think president Biden does.

Got it. Um, and I don't know if that counts what JD Vance wrote as turning down the temperature. We have You know, he wrote that before the calls to turn down the temperature. He hasn't taken it down, but uh, President trump's uh, former president trump's campaign, uh, Manager, uh, or i'm not sure his exact title chris la civita his lead Um advisor had also written a pretty inflammatory twitter post and then he took it down.

Why political violence and violent threats are on the rise in the United States - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 7-14-24

ALI ROGIN: This was a shocking event in a horrible tragedy for many Americans the first time that they've witnessed the attempted assassination of somebody who served as president. But of course, there have been many other acts of political violence in recent [01:14:00] memory, including the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, in 2022. There was the congressional baseball practice shooting that injured Congressman Steve Scalise and 2017 plus many other attacks against local officials. Why are we experiencing this uptick in political violence?

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Director, Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab: Well, first, I have to say it should be condemned. Of course, we have to condemn the attack on former President Trump. You know, one of my earliest political memories was the assassination attempt on President Reagan. I think we are back in an era in which political assassinations are becoming a tactic again of in which people seek a solution to what they think are their political problems.

And that's part of the rising violence that we're seeing across the board politically, and also part of the rhetoric that has been increasing on polarized lines that positions us versus them and existential terms, so that the [01:15:00] other starts to seem like a threat that has to be eradicated. So it's a problem at the elite level, and it's a problem among ordinary conversations as well.

And you mentioned the rhetoric, members of both parties have been coming out saying that both sides need to tone this down. How much of that is at issue here?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: The issue of political rhetoric that's divisive and even violent among elites is a huge problem. And it has been a huge problem for many years on both sides. However, I'm actually just as concerned about what I'm hearing from people I know and love even seeing on social media, things like you reap what you sow in response to this event. That's just as problematic.

You have a lone actor who is not only motivated by elites who mess up, but also by ordinary citizens who give up and who lean into the idea that violence is a solution to any kind of political ideas or problems.

ALI ROGIN: One of NewsHour polls found earlier this year that one in five respondents believe Americans [01:16:00] may have to resort to violence to get their own country back on track. That seems like a high number. What's your take?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: It seems high, but it's accurate. I mean, that's exactly the kind of data that we've been seeing. We're seeing increasing support for political violence and also increasing willingness to engage in it among ordinary Americans. And that's what I mean about everybody seeing this as a moment of reckoning for themselves and their own behavior, not just to wag fingers at the elites, and politicians who are behaving badly.

But to think about what you do across the dining room table, what you're doing in your classrooms, what you're doing with your colleagues and your neighbors. Because anytime you're justifying that kind of violence, you never know who's going to overhear that, or how that contributes to the overall climate in which violence is seen as a solution.

ALI ROGIN: And to that end, do you think that everybody has a role here in lowering the overall temperature that's got us to this very tense point?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Absolutely. I think everyone has not just a role, but an obligation to lower the temperature to see our [01:17:00] basic humanity to see that no one deserves to be shot, no matter how much you disagree with what they say politically. And to also take steps to kind of curb things like misinformation, stop retweeting it, I mean to be critical consumers, and good citizens about what you share. I think that's one of the big takeaways here is that people have a role to play and an obligation to do it.

ALI ROGIN: And in terms of response to this, this particular event, what are you concerned about happening in terms of people perpetrating potential violent responses?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Another thing that ordinary people can do is to be a little bit vigilant in the coming weeks and months, because unfortunately, an event like this does create the risk that you have both kind of militant groups who see now that they may have to step up, they think and protect this candidate, as we've seen in the past, and you also see the risk of reprisal attacks.

And so, this is a real moment for people [01:18:00] to pay attention to be vigilant, if you hear someone you know, saying something, tone it down, you know, try to correct their statements and their behaviors and steer them away from the idea that violence is a solution to anything.

SECTION C: THE RNC

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up, section C: the RNC.

After Trump assassination attempt, what's in store for the RNC? | The Take - Al Jazeera English - Air Date 7-14-24

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: On Saturday, July 13th, former President Donald Trump narrowly escaped an apparent attempt on his life while speaking at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

News Archival: Take a look at what happened. Down, get down, get down, get down.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: A witness at the rally spoke to Al Jazeera.

UNNAMED INTERVIEWEE: On his right cheek was a teardrop of blood right here. Then when he turned, you could see the right ear, from the top of the ear to the bottom, blood. Wasn't pouring blood, but it was blood.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: The suspected shooter is Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20 year old from Pennsylvania. Secret Service agents shot and killed him at the site. A [01:19:00] 50 year old man attending the rally was also killed, and two others were injured. Before being rushed from the stage, Trump raised a fist and addressed the crowd with three words: fight, fight, fight.

This week, Trump says, he still plans on joining thousands of Republicans in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the start of the Republican National Convention. He's set to be nominated as their candidate for President of the United States.

Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane is reporting from Milwaukee.

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: Block after block after block, barricades and fences assembled in a large ring around the arena where the Republican National Convention will be held. The Trump campaign insisting the event will go ahead.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: And some protesters, like Omar Flores, are there already.

OMAR FLORES: We're doing this because we don't want the Republicans here. We're fighting for immigrant rights, for reproductive rights, for Palestine. And ultimately, [01:20:00] they're just the opposite of everything that we want to see in this country.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: Isaiah Holmes is there too. He calls Milwaukee home.

ISIAH HOLMES: I was born and raised here. My family has lived here going back, I don't even know how many generations on both sides.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: He works there reporting on his hometown.

ISIAH HOLMES: I'm a reporter at the Wisconsin Examiner. I became interested in police interactions with the community and journalism and documentary film.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: Much like the rest of the country, he was taken aback by what unfolded Saturday evening. We first talked to Isaiah last week and checked back in with him on Sunday.

ISIAH HOLMES: So, in terms of the vibe in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin, it's not a good one. I mean, it really wasn't before this incident. It isn't now.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: Since we first heard from him, he's been preparing for Trump and tens of thousands of Republicans to arrive in his hometown.

ISIAH HOLMES: The U. S. Marshals just did a big warrant, fugitive roundup of folks, arrested [01:21:00] a bunch of people.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: And driving outside the city, Isaiah saw reinforcements on their way in.

ISIAH HOLMES: Your anxiety kind of goes up when you're driving on the highway and all of a sudden you see three Humvees drive past and you know where they're going. There's a lot of concerns about how police may interact with protesters or how Republican convention goers or people supporting those folks may interact with people within the city who don't agree with the convention being here.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: Isaiah knows the city, and its people, pretty well.

ISIAH HOLMES: Close to 70 percent of all Black people who live in Wisconsin live within the city of Milwaukee. Milwaukee also has the highest concentration of Native American people who live in Wisconsin. It's a democratic city, and it's also regarded as one of the nation's most segregated. There's definitely a very strange vibe in the city right now. And you can sense that buildup for sure. It feels like kind of the quiet before the storm. Hopefully there is no storm. [01:22:00]

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: Well, I will tell your listeners that for the very first time in my life, I am bringing a flak jacket and a bulletproof helmet to the Republican National Convention, because you will see people walking around with AR-15s.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: On Friday, before the shooting in Pennsylvania, and before Al Jazeera's Patti Culhane left for Milwaukee, she was making preparations as well.

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: I was like, Oh my God, I haven't had one of these on since Iraq.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: But there is business to attend to at the convention and an election ahead. So we wanted to talk to Patty about that, too.

So, Patty, this convention, or RNC, happens every four years and is a chance for the Republican Party to nominate their candidate for president, in this case, Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP: As the world can see, we are under the leadership. The Republican Party is bigger, stronger, more vibrant, and more united than ever, [01:23:00] ever, ever before.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: The Democrats will have their convention in a few weeks, and I know that you've been to a political convention before, but for those who haven't, walk us through the pomp and circumstance that comes with these four days. What's the atmosphere like, and what actually happens?

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: Well, it's really joyous. It's a coronation, it's a celebration. Unlike the Democrats, there's no question about who's going to be the candidate at the end of the convention. I mean, the people who go there are the true believers, the huge supporters. There's a lot of drinking, at least in the skyboxes, and where the media tends to go. And it's a chance for everyone within the party to network. It's also a chance for the rising stars, they get speaking time before the candidate actually comes up. And so there's speeches throughout the day. Then there's competition to see who gets the prime time, the nighttime speeches, and they're going to vote on the platform and [01:24:00] that's going to be their official document. This is what we stand for.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: We know that this RNC is a little bit different from most already. And that starts with who is putting it on. Several committee staff members were replaced, including the RNC chair with Trump loyalists. And one of the replacements--

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: The daughter in law.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: Laura Trump. Exactly. Now the co-chair, Trump's daughter-in-law. And according to a Washington Post report, staff at one point had a special screening test before they were hired. What do we know about the movings and shakings inside of the RNC?

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: This has been widely reported. The RNC denied it in couched language, but basically they fired a bunch of people. And then they made people apparently reapply for their jobs and they were asked if they believed the 2020 election was stolen. And some of the staffers told the media they felt like they had to say it was stolen, even if they didn't believe it because they wanted the job. So I think for your audience, you might be asking, Wait, how is this [01:25:00] possible? So you have a candidate who's been charged with 90 plus felonies. He's been found guilty by a jury of sexual assault and then defaming the woman who he sexually assaulted according to the jury. And he's charged with stealing classified documents, leading an insurrection on the Capitol to try and subvert the peaceful transfer of power. And he's their candidate. And he has 100 percent made the RNC in his image. They are a hundred percent Trump loyalists. I think John McCain wouldn't recognize the Republican party as it is right now. And it just, it is what it is.

MALIKA BILAL, THE TAKE: I wonder if people listening might think, isn't that what a party does? How unusual is that to try to stack this Republican National Committee, which puts on this convention with people who are loyal to the nominee?

PATTY CULHANE, AL JAZEERA: It's, well, look at the Democrats right now, right? Normally, there's back and forth. There's [01:26:00] people are saying Joe Biden can't be president. Joe Biden's camp is saying he can be president. There's usually some dissent and some -- it's not like a loyalty test to a person. It's a loyalty test to principles. And what we've seen in the past, I think Republicans would say this is normal.

Trump’s VP Pick Supported the Idea of Project 2025 BEFORE it Was Even Thing - The Humanist Report - Air Date 7-16-24

When it came to Mike Pence, you know, he was the establishment choice, the evangelical choice that kind of made up for the areas where Trump lacked or was vulnerable, whereas with J. D. Vance You know, Trump isn't accounting for any weaknesses. He's kind of just picking somebody who is the light version of him.

So it's arguably a risky choice. Although if Trump were to win, then that would benefit him greatly because, you know, he'll have a vice president now with the same brand of politics as he does, but who's much more loyal. Now, deep down, JD Vance doesn't actually care about Donald Trump or Donald Trump's MAGA agenda.

He's just playing a character for purposes of political [01:27:00] expediency. And I say this because his past comments about Trump, both public and private, they reveal what he actually thinks about him. And spoiler alert, he fucking hates the guy.

For example, in a leaked text, he said, I'm not surprised by Trump's rise. And I think the entire party has only itself to blame. We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower income, lower education, white people. And I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people something and hell maybe even.

to working class black people in the process, or a demagogue would. We are now at that point. Trump is the fruit of the party's collective neglect. I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad, and might even prove useful, or that he's America's Hitler.

Now those comments were obviously made before Trump became president, but it turns out the guy who said that would one day become the successor to America's Hitler. Now, he's not running to just be Trump's VP. Trump is essentially crowning him as the heir to the MAGA throne. [01:28:00] So, you know, when the Trump era is over, JD Vance is going to prolong the Trump era, or at least try to.

Now, the negative comments that he's made against Trump in the past, They've been long documented. You've said I've never, I'm a never Trump guy. Never liked him. Terrible candidate. Idiot if you voted for him. Might be America's Hitler. Might be a cynical a hole. Cultural heroine. Noxious and reprehensible.

So there's a lot there and Democrats tried to use those comments against him when he was running for the Senate to kind of prove that he's not actually loyal to Donald Trump, but all of those attacks fell flat because what they misunderstood is that when it comes to the MAGA cult, it doesn't really matter where you came from, what matters is where you're at right now, and so long as you're swearing fealty to Trump right now, You're in, right?

Now, regardless if J. D. Vance believes any of the shit he's saying, which he doesn't, Trump knows that he's gonna be a loyal soldier for him and he's gonna say and do whatever he needs to to [01:29:00] appease Trump and the MAGA cult. That's the one thing that Trump cares about. Loyalty. So if that's your only criteria in finding a VP, Trump made a pretty solid choice.

Also, in terms of galvanizing his own base, It's a great pick, but they were already on lock. There's not going to be a single Trump supporter in the country who says, um, I'm not going to support Trump because I disagree with the VP pick, right? So one would think Trump would really try to lock down the lead that he has right now over Biden by trying to pick somebody with more appeal to swing state voters and more suburban white voters, uh, like women who came out to vote for Donald Trump.

But He's not doing that, which kind of tells you a little bit about Trump's mentality right now. He's feeling good. He feels like he doesn't really need to pick somebody to account for his weaknesses and vulnerabilities, because he has a pretty comfortable lead against Biden. So he doesn't really feel the need to do that.

And he may be right. [01:30:00] With that being said, though, Vance does kind of compound some of the biggest issues that's already a political liability for Donald Trump, namely abortion. J. D. Vance is an anti abortion extremist for all intents and purposes. He compared abortion to slavery, and on top of that, he doesn't support exceptions, even in the cases of rape and incest.

Now, on top of that, he signaled support for a national abortion ban on his website, calling for an end to all abortions. And to make matters worse, he even signaled opposition to no fault divorce. And this is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that, like, well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy.

And so, you know, Getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they changed their underwear. That's gonna make people happier in the long term. And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I'm skeptical, but it really didn't work out for the kids of those [01:31:00] marriages.

So, I mean, what's the conclusion? Are women supposed to stay violent marriages for the sake of the kids? I don't think that that's a really healthy environment for the children either, but you know, he's not. policy prescriptions, but a rhetoric like that doesn't necessarily instill the most confidence in people, and you kind of get to see where he's at mentally.

Oh, he, he's very regressive, he doesn't actually care about choice for women in any regard, seemingly, and he's just kind of a piece of shit, right? So, you know, that's gonna hurt him among some people if they take stock of, you know, the vice president. See, Americans, they don't want abortion to be banned and Republicans have paid for Roe v.

Wade being overturned at the ballot box or battle box if you're Joe Biden. But putting that aside, you know, you know, it's a, it's a liability. But, JD Vance isn't gonna be the president, Donald Trump is. Having said that though, this is a bad choice from a campaign standpoint. But, if Trump wins, and this proves to not really be that [01:32:00] big of a deal, well, As I said, he has a loyal servant willing to implement his entire agenda, including Project 2025 on day one.

So it's a bit of a risk reward situation for Donald Trump, uh, but for everyone else, it's terrible news. Um, now, on the subject of Project 2025, J. D. Vance essentially endorsed the core tenant of project 2025 back in 2021. So, you know, what project 2025 aims to do is dismantle the administrative state, consolidate power in the executive, so that way the president can kind of implement his entire agenda unilaterally speaking.

Now, this is something that's been floated in right wing circles. But here's what JD Vance was saying back in 2021. I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left, right? We need, we need like a debathification program, uh, but like a de wokification program in the United States, right?

So like, let me give you a couple examples. So one of the things I've always been very sympathetic to is [01:33:00] this idea that we don't have a real constitutional republic anymore. What we have is an administrative state, right? The administrative state controls everything, right? So to the point that, like, when Donald Trump wins, he can't even sometimes get his people in core positions of authority in the administrative state.

It's like, well, do we have a constitutional republic? The Founding Fathers actually created a very powerful chief executive, a very powerful president, but if he can't even fire the people in his own administration, he can't even get his people in his administration. Like, is this really a successful republic?

Um, so, so, a lot of conservatives have said we should deconstruct the administrative state. We should basically eliminate the administrative state. Uh, and I'm sympathetic to that project, but another option is that we should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire all of the people.

I mean, I, you know, like I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think he'll probably win again in 2024, uh, and, and, and, and he'll win by a margin such that he will be the president of the United States, uh, in, in January of 2025, I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, [01:34:00] Fire every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people, and when the courts, because you will get taken to court, and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.

Because this is, I think, a constitutional level crisis. So Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but now he has a running mate who explicitly endorsed the hallmark of this entire agenda. So, yeah, there's that. Also, for marginalized people, J. D. Vance is horrible news, so let's talk it through.

As Aaron Reid reports, J. D. Vance is the primary sponsor of a national ban on trans healthcare done through a ban on teaching about gender affirming care in higher education, including medical schools. Now, to be clear, we're talking about a ban on all trans healthcare. Children, adults, doesn't matter. All trans people will no longer get the care that they need, meaning [01:35:00] they will forcibly detransition or they would be forced to forcibly detransition if that bill passed.

But if Project 2025 actually comes to fruition, Trump can do that via executive order. Trump also supports banning healthcare for all trans people. So, we're in a situation where you have two people, who are very, very hell bent on forcing all of us to live in their own dystopian reality. They don't actually care about the other half of the country.

All they care about is winning, and conquering, and crushing the opposition. Right? Now again, I don't know if JD Vance actually believes the bullshit that he's espousing, but it's really a distinction without a difference, because it doesn't matter whether he believes it or not. He's dangerous, and Trump choosing him as his running mate is a pretty big red flag.

"Normal Trump is batsh*t crazy" - Mehdi debates on the RNC speech - Zeteo - Air Date 7-19-24

In the wake of the attempted assassination attempt against Donald Trump, you published an [01:36:00] article suggesting that maybe Trump would have a change of heart, writing, A brush with death has at least temporarily ushered in a more reflective Trump. Um, he has been quick to praise God, saying that it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.

Um, you published that article, and then last night, Thursday night, uh, Trump, uh, Basically was back to usual Trump crazy Nancy Pelosi invasion at the border China virus. They cheated with kovat He didn't sound very reflective to me. Yeah. Well, I'll just note in that column I did say that this was a fantasy.

Okay, it's good for us to fantasize for a moment No, no, I believed it was possible, but I also just qualified and said I'm skeptical It's probably not going to happen. But anything is possible and You know, historically, we have seen how near death experiences can actually lead to mini conversions or even just people mellowing out a little bit.

I mean, he had a [01:37:00] near death experience before. COVID almost killed him. I will say that there was some change of tone, especially in the first part of Trump's RNC speech. We did see a more somber, reflective Trump, and over the course of the past week, he has talked about God. And again, I don't want to say that this is going to change his governing style if he wins and becomes president, but it is striking to me that he's talking about God with what seems to be real feeling in a way that we haven't seen before.

And again, I don't want to, I don't want to make this into more than it actually is. So just to be clear, where we stand today, Friday, you accept that Trump's RN speech, RNC speech on Thursday night, he didn't sound like a unifying or moderate or change man. He was the Trump of old for most of that 90 epic minutes that he kind of bored us with.

Yeah, but, but it is worth noting that when he was reading off the teleprompter, and that [01:38:00] shows that at least the Republican Party itself is trying to choreograph and like humanize Trump. But do you know, Charlie, surely you hear how you sound, at least when he was reading off the teleprompter for like 10 minutes of the 90.

Okay, but look, I mean in, in my column, I'm not, I'm not here to necessarily like, Advocate and say I'm not I want I'm someone who wants to explore questions around religion and politics It's a big part of what I focus on in my work. Trump is not a religious man. He never has exactly Yeah, but I mean that's what makes it interesting to sort of like spec, you know What how will this have an effect on him and what I did in the column I looked at past assassination attempts Erdogan, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in 1954, Reagan in our own country.

And assassination attempts can radicalize people and make them more oppressive and that's what we saw with Nasser and Erdogan. So there is still a chance that Trump will really go back to full Trumpism if he actually wins and governs and be more vindictive against [01:39:00] his enemies if he follows on those footsteps.

Reagan, though, did mellow out and did actually talk about dedicating the rest of his life to God. Maybe Trump will be somewhere in this nebulous in between. Who knows? But what I want to do, because I've been so despairing of our politics, I'm trying to kind of think more positively. And I don't think there's any harm in doing that.

And of course, Trump I mean, there is a little harm in that you're imagining things that aren't there. I mean, that's harm, right? You're saying, ah, Trump's maybe better than we thought he was, even as he continues to give speeches that are batshit crazy. Yeah, well, look, I don't think the speech, the speech in the RNC that he gave was batshit crazy.

It was just nor a lot of it was just normal Trump. But that normal Trump is batshit crazy. This is the mistake you're making. You're basically You're basically saying oh because he's denied the election before and said they cheated using covid. That's normal trump That's not a normal thing to say in any democracy that your opponent's cheated using covid to yeah You don't believe the 2020 election was cheated.

No, this is this is [01:40:00] true I mean, I guess what i'm trying to say is that trump is trump and it's a low bar And that's what we got to work. Well, some of us some of us are trying to raise the bar so After Trump's almost assassination, the editorial board at the Washington Post, which you're part of, put out a piece in which you all wrote, Every participant in our civic life needs to conduct some soul searching.

When I read a sentence like that, it feels to me, correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a bit of what we call both sides ing going on. As if, you know, Everyone in our political spectrum is equally responsible for kind of violent rhetoric, incendiary conduct, you know, ratcheting up the temperature, that the Democrats, the left are as responsible for incitement as the right, but they're not.

Like, factually, all of the extremist related murders in America in 2023 were carried out by the right. All of the extremist related murders in 2022 were carried out by the right. 75 percent of extremist related murders in the U. S. over the past decade or so, carried out by the right. 4 percent by the left.

I mean, the problem of violence and [01:41:00] incitement and incendiary rhetoric is a almost exclusively right wing problem in this country. Well, I would just, well, first of all, we, we didn't both sides in, in that editorial, but also in others. I mean, we didn't draw moral equivalency and we, we do always try to acknowledge.

that Trump and the Republicans are worse. Yeah, okay. When it comes to this kind of rhetoric and talking in vindictive ways about punishing their enemies and all of that. But I do think it's also important to look inwardly on our, on our own side, if you will. And to the extent that we are on the center, or those of us who are writing about the center, center left, we're not going to have a lot of impact with MAGA folks, but we can have impact.

With Democrats and left leaning people and I think there, there is necessity for reflection because I think when we E. G.? When we For example, what would you reflect on? Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, we as Democrats, we do talk, unfortunately, a lot about how Trump is going to destroy America and make America into [01:42:00] an authoritarian, fascist state that democracy is about to die.

And as you know from some of our past debates, I have been and still am critical of that kind of approach. I don't think that Trump presents an existential threat. I think if he wins, it'll be a pretty bad four years, and I'm dreading that. And that's one reason I've been so I went back to listen to our last discussion before this one, and I couldn't quite work out listening to you then, and I want to clarify now.

Is it your position, because you just said a moment ago, I don't think that's a, I think it's a helpful approach or right approach. Is it I don't, I don't know if I'm talking to a journalist or a politician activist, because are you saying that we shouldn't say these things because they're untrue, or we shouldn't say these things because they're received in a way that's not good for America?

Those are two different things. Both. I, on the level of truth, I don't actually believe that Trump is an existential threat in the sense that I believe America and our institutions that we're strong enough to and resilient enough to withstand the pressures that Trump will throw on us. And I, I think it's also [01:43:00] odd to say, well, American democracy is so weak, we have so little faith in our own country that we think Trump can topple our democracy in just a matter of four years.

Let's also be clear, Trump cannot run for a third term unless he changes the U. S. Constitution, which is basically impossible, because he would need bipartisan support for that. So we will So I'll come back to that in a minute. Where I meet you halfway is clearly It's not good for America if we're always talking about the end of democracy authoritarianism fascism My counter to that would be what am I supposed to do, as someone like you who explores these subjects writes about this stuff speaks about this stuff when that is what the available evidence is seems to be telling us, right? That's where I differ from you in that I agree that it would be great if in this country we all stopped talking about the end of the world.

It's not great for our mental health. It's certainly not good for my mental health. I wish I could talk about tax rates and minimum wage and not these existential questions. But I look at the evidence and I do see U. S. democracy under threat. And since the last time you and I argued [01:44:00] Oh yes, it might be under threat.

I just don't think it's existential. When we use that word existential, we're talking about It's a subjective word, existential, because again, what would you describe as a threat to democracy that was tolerable, right? So, when you and I discussed last time, that was 2022. Since then, we've And I just went through the list as I was thinking of this discussion with you.

Since we last spoke, Trump has called for the termination of the Constitution that you mentioned a moment ago. He said he wants to be a dictator. His words. For a day, of course. Only a day. Picked a running mate, J. D. Vance, who says he would have overturned the 2020 election had he been in Mike Pence's place.

He didn't need Ford. Yes. They could have done it on that day. And, of course, we have a Supreme Court that's literally given Donald Trump immunity for all crimes committed in office that are official acts. And, of course, he has a hand picked judge in Florida who just threw out his classified documents case.

And, of course, Project 2025, they're now saying, look, it's not just about Trump. We have a ready to go authoritarian roadmap.

Trump & The RNC Just Turned 'Idiocracy' Into Reality - News Dump - Internet Today - Air Date 7-19-22

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, a convention that Earlier this week, vowed to adjust their [01:45:00] messaging and promote peace and unity among all Americans.

And um, how's that going? He will arrest the criminal illegal immigrants and put them behind bars, send them back.

And then last weekend they tried to kill him and there he is over there alive and well. After four years of Joe Biden's disastrous America last agenda. Our country is more dangerous, vulnerable, and impoverished than anyone had thought possible. Under Biden Harris, America has fallen sicker, lonelier, and poorer.

That's some hope there, that not all college students have gone woe. And a whole army of illiterate, illegal aliens stealing the jobs of black, brown, and blue collar Americans. They put them right on your front doorstep. Wow. [01:46:00] I'm convinced. Everything has changed. They are the party of unity. No, it actually seems like the rhetoric coming out of the Republican Party is just as angry and divisive as it's ever been.

And they might not actually truly believe in the things that they are promoting publicly. We need to come together as a nation, except for the people we hate. Yeah. Also, the last guy that you saw in that clip compilation was Peter Navarro, who was part of the Trump administration, tried to turn over the 2020 election, was arrested and charged with contempt of Congress and was released from prison just in time to receive that wonderful round of applause from the so called Law and Order Party.

I mean, he literally left prison and came to the Republican National Convention. Yeah. To a round of applause. Also included in that clip, uh, that the RNC played during a promotional video Was a clip of an edited version of a longer video where a frat bro from the University of Mississippi mocks a black woman by jumping around and making ape noises.

The RNC played that clip [01:47:00] as a shining example of Not all college students going have gone woke. Yeah, some of them are racist just like us. Yeah So, you know, the kids are alright, I guess. Oh, but yeah, it wasn't all fire and brimstone Republicans still had plenty of time to publicly Embarrassed themselves with awkward appearances, false statements, so many lies, cringey humor, and a generally loose grip on reality as a whole.

And we showed a few clips in our most recent episode including, uh, Jim Justice. Governor of West Virginia and his bulldog Just perfect timing by the C SPAN producers And then we had Rudy Giuliani getting into a drunk driving accident while walking. Impressive But here's a few more clips taken from the past few days starting with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who attempts to persuade Gen Z into thinking that, um, actually it's pretty freaking punk rock to be a conservative these days.

Yeah, don't we [01:48:00] all agree? And our message to Gen Z is this. You're going to be the generation that actually saves this country. You want to be a rebel? You want to be a hippie? You want to stick it to the man? Show up on your college campus and try calling yourself a conservative. And I assume that the camera obviously missed him trying to do metal horns and instead doing this.

That means I love you. Hey, we all love rock, don't we folks? Well, there's nothing more punk rock than joining the Republican Party. It's like the scene in Inglourious Basterds where he does the three instead of the three. He's an ARC! Anyway, here's Don Jr. 's girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, claiming that the heroes that stormed the beaches of Normandy We're fighting communists.

It is no wonder that the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy

say country anymore. Hmm. [01:49:00] I'm gonna have to go back and fact check my, my World War II history. Um, didn't know that the Soviets had already captured France. Yeah. Pretty cool. Mm hmm. And yeah, if you're wondering what was weird about that clip, uh, yeah, the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy, they were fighting The Nazis.

Fascists. Yeah. Not communists, but you could understand why I guess she might intentionally switch the two based on the people she was addressing. Yeah. Who, I don't know, might have, uh, some sympathies towards the people who were on those beaches. They might not come out and say it, but they, uh, Demonstrably have aligned with a lot of those viewpoints.

Yeah. It's JD Vance, 2016. Trump is Hitler. JD Vance, 2024. Trump is Hitler. Yeah. As people have pointed out online, another Simpsons predicting the future where he's running against another kid and, and yeah, a vote for Bart is vote for anarchy. Yeah. Uh, of course we got, uh, we do have an update on Matt Gates looking very, very strange.

Clearly [01:50:00] having received some last minute cheek fillers and Botox. I mean, you know what, let's play at least one clip again because he just looks so bizarre and you definitely need, uh, to have your mind refreshed on this. Democrats have been hiding the real Biden for years. We saw people in the witness protection program more often than we saw unscripted Biden.

Under Biden, Harris, America has fallen sicker, lonelier, and poorer. Okay. Incredible eyebrows. Yeah. Now, after Matt Gaetz's speech where he looked like the plastic surgeon from Escape from LA, Kevin McCarthy joined CNN to comment on that whole speech, and he certainly did not hold back. You know, he looks very unhinged.

I mean, a lot of people have concerns about him. And I'm not sure if he was on something, but I do hope he gets the help that he needs. But more importantly, I hope the young women get the justice they deserve when it comes to him. Anyway, the final day of the convention. Brought out all the stars. [01:51:00] All the stars are here!

So obviously, obviously, you had Kid Rock performing. And lip syncing? Um, we can't play the audio obviously because it is copyrighted music. It's the worst song I've ever heard. But we'll show some a little bit later. It's the one about going platinum selling rhymes. Devil without a cause. And it just goes on for what feels like hours, but I think it's like two and a half minutes normal song length Yeah, so you had Kid Rock up there then you had UFC president Dana White and of course You gotta have Hulk Hogan when they took a shot at my hero

And they tried to kill the next President of the United States! Enough was enough! And I said, Let Trumpamania run wild, brother! Let Trumpamania rule again! [01:52:00] Let Trumpamania make America great again! He is a real American. And he will let you know that he picked up Andre the Giant Yeah, the first like, minute or so of his speech was a bunch of references that you would only get if you were a, uh, a WWF fan in a very specific period of the 1980s, otherwise it would just sound incomprehensible.

I would assume a lot of the people in the Republican Party, especially the ones who are attending the RNC, would find the entire concept of pro wrestling beneath them. And Kid Rock, like It was funny, Kid Rock singing that terrible song and just all these like, 70 year old, like, white people just like Arhythmically clapping and shaking their fists and it was just a strange scene and and obviously For the past 10 years at least everyone has been comparing the United States government and presidential elections and everything to idiocracy But I think we we did [01:53:00] it.

I think this might actually have beat the Idiocracy. Between Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan, I think we got more than even that movie could come up with.

SECTION D: CONSPIRACY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D: Conspiracy.

Trump’s Rhetoric Has Accelerated Violence And Conspiracy In The US - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-17-24

It has been, 72 hours since one person died, two people critically injured and a, uh, the Republican nominee was nearly assassinated by a difference of maybe an inch and a half. And it seems like it's become a sort of a backseat story. Um, I mean, we talk about how the news moves fast these days. Is there not a better example of this?

We're like, we're already kind of shrugging off. It seems like the assassination attempt on Trump, in part because the Republicans have no narrative against it. Because they're, they don't want to limit guns. They don't want to go down that road. And As we're going to get into here, the guy that [01:54:00] attempted the assassination was a white guy with, it seems like, many Republican and conservative leanings based on classmate accounts and based on reporting.

That's beginning to trickle out at this point. I can't, I can't find the number of the, what number it is, uh, this video. Um, this is a, uh, report. What number is it? Uh, this is a report from, uh, local news. In, uh, Pennsylvania, WPXI. Uh, news reporter, uh, who don't have her name, but they are at the Trump's, uh, Shooters Street in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

And this is what she reports. Investigators dressed in plainclothes as well as FBI agents approach this house. That's where the family of Thomas Crooks lives, which is right here on Milford drive. Then we started to see those agents going door to door, canvassing the neighborhood and speaking with people who live here.[01:55:00]

They're trying to get answers to the many questions that still remain. Crooks is motive is still unclear. Records show he is a registered Republican and neighbors today told us that they've actually seen it. Trump signs outside of the home over the course of the last few years. Investigators. All right.

And there's, you know, Uh, I don't think you need to be, you don't need to rely on conspiracies here to start to, uh, you know, ask questions as to like, why hasn't there been a little bit more diligent reporting on this? For instance, like. Where is the official medical report on Donald Trump going to the doctor?

I mean, I imagine that he went to the doctor, but like there were reports initially that it was the teleprompter that shattered and then it was that he was shot in the year. I imagine that's all relatively straightforward again. It appears like he was nearly assassinated in an inch or two. [01:56:00] Um, that's not something that you would in, in a million years.

If you're Donald Trump, say like, yeah, no, I trust you. Uh, just shoot two inches away from me. I'd be like, Hey, we're up by Joe. Maybe we don't do the thing where you shoot a bullet right next to my brain. But it is, and you know, they have been unable to find, uh, uh, social media accounts, uh, for this guy. It's also possible that he wasn't just, uh, doing too much social media.

I mean, he was clearly part of this, uh, YouTube gun, uh, community. And I think the head of that community, you know, was shocked and came out and I'm horrified by it, et cetera, et cetera. But um, there should be questions asked when the theme coming out of this assassination attempt is that people need to tamp down rhetoric.

There should be some legitimate questions asked. Like what was this guy's agenda? Because what has grown in this country since the rise of Trump [01:57:00] and concurrent with the rise of Trump, but in some parts because of Trump, but in some parts simply Trump was delivered because of a rise of this on the right.

Is this notion of a civil war that needs to happen in this country? And I think it's important to note that in the wake of having the first African American president, there was a lot of people who, uh, became angry at what was happening to the white majority in this country. And that anger takes a bunch of, uh, forms.

Some of it is, uh, racialized, much of it, but a lot of it is also becomes like conspiratorial and the idea of a one world order and, you know, Alex Jones, uh, type of territory, which a bunch of these right wingers are drifting into. Or accelerationism, which you hinted at yesterday. You get [01:58:00] organizations like, uh, the, uh, Boogaloo boys.

I think it's really important that we have a lot of people who are out there. Um, and hold sort of a myriad of positions. But all of them end up pointing towards what's going to create sort of a, um, a, a, a civil war and a reckoning that will ultimately bring us some type of, you know, quasi fascist libertarian, uh, paradise.

And so the, these things are all sort of like, you know, loosely connected. Do I think that, uh, that, that, that, that this guy was anything but, um, uh, a lone shooter? No. Um, but do I think it's possible that he was immersed in this sort of like ideology that says, uh, we need to, uh, create some moment where, you know, uh, the, the, uh, the civil war happens?

Yeah. It's possible. I mean, I think the most likely [01:59:00] explanation remains, uh, he was a guy who had suicidal ideation and thought this is going to be the most sort of like consequential thing I can do with my life ever and decided to dedicate the, the, the shorting, you know, the short remainder of his life to that point.

But, uh, These are important things to know because when the narrative is both sides need to calm down their rhetoric what we're doing is covering over a certain reality of what's going on in this country about a right wing Movement in this country That takes multiple forms but one of it is in the form of Peter Thiel and one of its in the form of you know, the Boogaloo boys and the it in in We're going to talk about this in terms of the RNC, but half the people who were involved in the, you know, the [02:00:00] accoutrements of the RNC last night, whether it was like, you know, saying the pledge of allegiance or doing other things, uh, were arraigned for trying to storm the Capitol and convicted for trying to storm the Capitol.

It's a problem. And, and we'll talk about the. The other half of that problem, which is, you know, we've got a guy who's holding on to, uh, who's driving this bus and white knuckled hanging onto the steering wheel and nobody can seem to get them out of the driver's seat. Even though he's careening down the highway.

So we can articulate these, these very real concerns and dangers, obviously. All right, we'll say, uh, just a quick, I ran Paul tweet from 2016. Uh, why do we have a second amendment? It's not to shoot deer. It's to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical. Yeah. I wonder where, where this comes from in the right.

The Conspiracy Theory Election - What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Air Date 7-21-24

Speaker A: In past elections, even very recent ones, social media companies invested deeply in content moderation.

But now, through ownership changes and a series of deliberate [02:01:00] choices, the Internet is a posters paradise.

Speaker B: There was a span of time that was maybe six to eight years, I guess, certainly around 2016 and the years after when the platforms were, they would at least try.

Sometimes they were aggressive, but they would at least try to really moderate content like this.

They would see a bunch of people spamming a certain hashtag or spamming a piece of content or photo, and they would try and moderate it.

They would employ people to watch the trending topics list.

We’ve had a big change in that on the platform level.

There’s been a couple different explanations.

One, you look at Twitter, which is now called X, its owner, Elon Musk.

So he specifically has said, I don’t want to moderate because moderating is against free speech, which is his argument, from my view, from spending hours on this stuff.

X was by far the main platform for people trying to lie to other people.

It was just [02:02:00] loaded with bogus B’s garbage.

There’s even been some research that found 5% of the content about this stuff that was actually wrong, had a note appended to it saying, actually, this was false.

Stuff was just going rampant there totally unchecked.

In the past, Twitter at least feigned to have some moderating capability.

But then you look at somebody like Facebook and Instagram, where they don’t have an Elon musk at the wheel, but they have their own reasons for sort of taking a step back.

The executives feel like, we tried this, it was expensive to moderate.

We were getting yelled at for moderating too much.

We were spending time and resources elevating news content and current events, and nobody liked us for it.

And so now we’re just basically going to sort of wave our, you know, just kind of shrug our shoulders and let it go.

Speaker A: Has that increased post January 6?

Speaker B: It has, [02:03:00] actually.

I mean, so January 6 was a really terrible event.

We saw how much of it was egged on by social media.

We had this Jan.

Six committee in Washington that basically laid out how central social media was to the problems there.

And after that, there were definitely some moves, like taking down QAnon posts and that kind of thing.

But just in the years since, you’ve seen some kind of superficial moves from the platforms, and you kind of do have to distinguish between an ex, where it’s like basically malicious dismissal of a desire for wanting correct content just because of Elon Musk’s personality, and something like meta, where they just feel like logistically, they would rather focus their attention on building audience, getting creators, making something like threads that’s really popular for fashion and celebrity news, but just totally backing off of current events.

And so in the [02:04:00] middle are just kind of normal people who are going onto these platforms and really not getting that moderated environment anymore.

Speaker A: Okay, let’s talk about the powerful people, not all of them named Elon, who were amplifying and in some cases, like, stirring the pot here.

What is going on with your power users who were running with not entirely accurate narratives?

Speaker B: I guess we’ll start with Elon.

I mean, Elon, very quickly after the shooting, said he endorsed Trump.

He was replying and sharing some stuff that was totally not supported.

And in one piece that I can remember, he basically called out the secret service, which, again, was not perfect.

We are still trying to figure out how they messed this up so badly.

But he said either this was just a giant mess up, or it was deliberate and he was starting to give [02:05:00] energy to this growing conspiracy theory that the Secret Service had stood down because they wanted Trump to get hurt.

Basically, he is somebody who has, I don’t know, 180 million followers or something like that.

His posts are basically algorithmically implanted onto everybody’s fees just by the virtue of him owning the joint.

And so everybody was seeing that.

And again, that coupled with the trending topics and with people trying to reply to him, sort of supporting them, it helped really juice that idea.

But beyond Elon.

I mean, on the right, you had, you know, people like Roger Stone, longtime Trump confidant, a big following all of his own.

Like, Trump is big on social media who was not just sort of buying into some of these, you know, conspiracy theories, but actually, like, sharing names.

Like, he gave a specific name and photo of this guy who he said, like, yeah, this is the guy.

This was the shooter.

And he shared a news story that [02:06:00] had the names and photos of these guys who had been, like, they were anti Trump protesters who had been arrested at a rally, like, years ago.

And I don’t know where he got these names from, but of course, they were totally wrong.

I mean, they were totally different from the prison law enforcement has identified.

And yet he was basically summoning a mob to attack these people by name based off nothing.

And for a while, even the name of that misidentified man was trending on Twitter.

But then on the left, I also have to say there’s been a rise of what my colleague Taylor Lorenz called Blue Anon.

These are people who are on left who evoke this conspiratorial view on the news in some of the same ways as QAnon was on the right, where they feel like Trump is also this secret mastermind.

And we’re [02:07:00] buying into a lot of these conspiracy theories and that the media is in on it to take down Biden and that Trump is just really getting one over on us.

And so kind of on that blue and on side, you had a lot of these, I would say, left wing kind of liberal influencers who were sharing a lot of stuff about, again, that this event was staged, that in some ways the media was in on it, that this was all to take attention away or really lock in Trump as not just the nominee, but as, like, the, the president and win the election for him.

And so you just saw a bunch of, like, muck.

It just kind of showed that conspiracy theories are not a single partisan phenomenon.

Anybody can buy into them because, you know, they make us feel good.

Speaker A: Well, there’s also this crossover effect, right?

It is not just fringe people posting wild theories or memes.

Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee, [02:08:00] now MSNBC talking head, basically went on tv and questioned the ear wound, where it feels like there’s a, I don’t know, some portal has opened between conspiracy world and real life, and we don’t know how to close it.

Speaker B: Part of this is, you know, there’s a lack of trust in the media.

There’s kind of a questioning among a lot of people in the public that, are we getting the full story?

Is the media paying attention to the things we want them to pay attention to?

Are they asking all the right questions?

They’re being too tough on our side, and both sides, quote unquote, will say that.

And so there’s a finite amount of information about an event like this, and our demand for it in a social media age oftentimes feels infinite.

And so you have people who have these giant platforms who are sometimes influencers or sometimes politicians or celebrities or whatnot, who are seeing all the same [02:09:00] information as us.

They have access to all the same information as us, but they’re perceiving it in different ways, they’re sharing it in different ways, and they’re using their platforms to share just bogus stuff.

And it’s really hard to fact check claims like this, because these conspiracy theories, as we know, I mean, they morph, they evolve over time.

They take on lives of their own to where any new piece of information or news can be either applied to that theory, to kind of, like, give it an extra wrinkle that, again, validates it, or it can just be totally dismissed.

Why people think the Trump shooting was a conspiracy - If You're Listening | ABC News In-depth - Air Date 7-19-24

The little brother of President Kennedy was following developments from his home in Virginia with the CIA director, John McCone. Parkland Hospital has been advised to stand by for a severe gunshot wound.

Bobby Kennedy picked up the phone, listened briefly, and then put it back down. He's dead, said Bobby. The two men sat for a moment, and then went for a walk in the garden. [02:10:00] Bobby's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was 10 years old. He told Fox News that he saw the two men talking, and heard what they were saying. My father was walking in the yard with John McComb, and my father was posing the same question to him.

Was it our people who did this to my brother? So it was my father's first instinct. That agency had killed his brother. This isn't just a story that RFK Jr. tells, by the way. There are multiple sources indicating that Bobby Kennedy asked the CIA director directly, Did you do this? Now, why would he ask that?

Bobby Kennedy wasn't just like getting the jump on the conspiracy theorists here. He was acutely aware of what the CIA was capable. He had, in fact, personally approved many of their operations and been briefed on many others in his role as attorney general. And once you've heard the details. of some of these operations.

You might also find yourself crafting a fedora out of [02:11:00] tinfoil. The CIA's primary obsession at the time was Cuba. Castro marks the second anniversary of his revolution with the biggest military parade ever staged in Cuba, featuring tanks and other heavy weapons from Russia and Red Czechoslovakia. The US government really didn't like having a heavily armed communist country 90 miles off their coast, and were hellbent on overthrowing the leader, Fidel Castro.

And yet Castro proved very difficult to get rid of. According to the Cubans, he survived more than 600 assassination attempts, including an exploding cigar and other bizarre plots. The Americans sent poisonous pills and cigars to anti communists or to the mafia or to Castro's lovers, with instructions to figure out what to do.

A way to get them into Castro's mouth. They developed a poisoned wetsuit and an explosive seashell. Apparently Castro liked diving. On the day JFK was shot, an American agent was handing a [02:12:00] poisoned pen to a high ranking Cuban official, hoping that it would be used to kill Castro. These things aren't conspiracy theories.

They are real plans that the CIA cooked up. All of the documents have now been declassified. None of these plans worked. Unable to take out the leader, the CIA cooked up a plan to create a pretext for an American invasion of Cuba. Fake a Cuban attack and claim that they were provoked into toppling Castro for America's own safety.

The plan was called Operation Northwoods and it's bonkers. They could blow up a US Navy ship or shoot down a US fighter jet. They could create a fake terrorist campaign in Miami or dress up in Cuban military uniforms and fake an invasion of some other nearby country. They could rig a dummy passenger plane to blow up over Cuba and claim that [02:13:00] Castro had killed American civilians.

It was a plan for a false flag operation to create the pretext for war. We have a bulletin coming in. We now switch you directly to Parkland Hospital. Then The President of the United States is dead. I asked the father, is Mr Kennedy dead, and he's quote, he's dead alright. Denied his agency had anything to do with it.

He was as shocked and confused as anyone else. So who did do it? The Dallas police arrested a suspect and they were pretty confident that he was the right guy. A reclusive, abusive, depressed, narcissistic, ex marine Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald. He was quite suspicious. He had tried and failed to defect to the Soviet Union.[02:14:00]

He had handed out pamphlets and talked on the radio about his sympathy for Cuba and Castro and had recently applied for a Cuban visa. The CIA has made monumental mistakes. And its relations with Cuba. The F-B-I-C-I-A and KGB all had files on him, but all thought that he was too odd to be either useful or a threat.

Oswald denied any involvement in the assassination of JFK. I don't know what this is all about. I killed a black guy. What time? I'm just a party president. But before anyone could really figure out whether that was true, Oswald was shot. Dead on live TV by a local nightclub owner. The basement floor of the Dallas City Hall, that's a scuffle on the basement floor.

The whole thing stank. Something must be up. You're trying to tell me that a lone crazy guy with connections to the Soviet Union and Cuba [02:15:00] shot the leader of the free world and then was killed in police custody? New President Lyndon Johnson knew that he had to get out ahead of the theories springing up about what happened.

And commissioned the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to get to the bottom of it. The Chief Justice asked that the work progress as rapidly as possible in the interests of informing the people and uh, anyone throughout the world as to what really happened. While the CIA promised to cooperate fully, they didn't.

At all. See, they had filing cabinets full of pretty questionable stuff. Those plans to assassinate Castro, with Wetsuits and seashells. Operation Northwoods. They really didn't want these to come out. So they gently steered the Warren Commission away from Cuba. Who cares, right? In their eyes, it wasn't relevant.

They couldn't find [02:16:00] any evidence that indicated that Oswald was innocent or part of a conspiracy and the commission was going to find him guilty anyway, so why air all their dirty laundry? They weren't alone though. The FBI and the Secret Service also weren't entirely forthcoming, hoping to cover up mistakes that both agencies had made which led to the assassination.

In the long term though, Oswald's It was a catastrophic mistake. The Warren Commission report was handed down a year after the shooting. The report found that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, had in fact slain President Kennedy. The report became an instant bestseller the world over. The full report, all 26 volumes of it, was 16, 000 pages long.

After its publication, a poll found that between 45 and 50 percent of Americans did still think that it was a conspiracy. The But that was down from 62 percent beforehand. Of course, there were folks out there doing their own research into the [02:17:00] assassination, but not that many. It was hard work without the internet.

Well, I've been at this now for more than three years. I've made many trips to Dallas, nine trips now. But cover ups, particularly ones that involve large groups of people, never hold together for long. While the US government almost certainly didn't cover up evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, they did cover up evidence of all sorts of other things.

With every year that went by, more and more information that was kept from the Warren Commission became public. And with each revelation, belief that the JFK assassination was part of a conspiracy, potentially a CIA conspiracy The CIA's actions a decade ago are a stain on our value and on our history.

Since then, the CIA has covered up all sorts of things. Drone programs, illegal arms sales, mass surveillance On American citizens. Torture. Detainees [02:18:00] being waterboarded. Detainees being hung by their arms for more than two weeks. One detainee was kept awake for more than a week. When you actually are doing illegal or immoral things and lying about it, who is going to believe you when you say that you didn't fake the moon landing, or a terror attack, or a mass shooting at an elementary school, or whatever this is?

I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin frogs gay! And when you've got a reasonably large proportion of your population with that level of distrust in the government, you've got a problem. In the last 20 years, Polls asking people about conspiracy theories have shown an interesting shift.

In a poll done in 40th anniversary of JFK's death, 73 percent of Democrats believed that the assassination was a conspiracy, compared with 58 percent of Republicans. Sort of makes sense. Kennedy was a Democratic president after. But by 2023, on the 60th [02:19:00] anniversary, after all of the classified files on the JFK assassination had been finally released to the public, it had flipped almost exactly.

Now, way more Republicans thought that the government was somehow responsible for JFK's death. That's thanks in large part to one of the most successful conspiracy theorists of all time, Donald Trump. It's really very curious as to what's going on with our president. It started with allegations that Barack Obama wasn't born in America.

Why doesn't he show the birth certificate? Then he said that his 2016 Republican primary opponent Ted Cruz's father was connected to the JFK assassination. His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being.

But it's gone so much further than that. He's promoted or invented conspiracy theories about his rivals for president, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. He says that climate change is a hoax. It's a hoax. [02:20:00] I mean, it's a money making industry, okay? It's a hoax. He's endorsed conspiracies about Muslims. Latin Americans and Jews.

He said that vaccines cause autism and wind turbines cause cancer. And of course, there's this. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. The biggest conspiracy theory of all, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. This is a major fraud in our nation. We will win this.

And as far as I'm concerned, we already have won it. That conspiracy has had Real world consequences. It's believers stormed the US Capitol, trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The master of calling everything fake news has spread more fake news than possibly any other American. Is it any wonder that when Trump himself was shot last weekend, both Republicans and Democrats immediately reached for conspiracy theories to explain what had happened.

In many [02:21:00] ways, The US government did this to itself. After decades of trying to cover up evidence of unethical government programs, they've created a movement of millions of Americans who only trust Trump, a man who lies. We still don't know what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot at Donald Trump, but I'm sure you have a theory.

Credits

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today and get 20% off your membership at bestoftheleft.com/support or through our Patreon page. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. 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.

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 [02:23:00] coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

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#1643 Extremism Comes in Many Forms: SCOTUS goes hard-right, Project 2025 in the spotlight, and Christian Nationalism unmasked in Assassination Nation (Transcript)

Posted by · July 20, 2024 2:30 AM

Air Date 7/20/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Extremism comes in many forms, and we live in an era in which way too many of them are on display simultaneously. But it's not a coincidence. The far right has been working toward an extremist Supreme Court for decades. Christian nationalists have similarly been trying to impose their rigid view of far-right Christianity on the rest of us for a very long time. The far-right Heritage Foundation now deems this to be the time to attempt to radicalize the federal bureaucracy, and far right calls for political violence and lax gun laws resulted in an environment where no one was really all that surprised about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

Sources providing our Top Takes in under an hour today include Amicus; Boom Lawyered; Today, Explained; The Readout; No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen; and the PBS NewsHour. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there will be more [00:01:00] on the Supreme Court, Project 2025, political violence, and Christian nationalism.

And just a quick note before we get started: once again, I have more thoughts on the current state of politics in the US as reports are beginning to fly that Biden stepping down as the Democrat's nominee is more a matter of when rather than if. But I'll save those comments for the editor's note in the middle of the show.

Opinionpalooza The Supreme Court End-of-Term Breakfast Table - Amicus with Dahlia lithwick - Air Date 7-6-24

MARY ANNE FRANKS: So listen, I want to gauge where everyone's head is at. We are taping this show on July 2nd, just about 24 hours after Trump immunity comes down. Most of us have probably read it through carefully at this point, once or twice. And I'm experiencing it as seismic, no more and no less, for many reasons, not least of which is that the president can now kill people if it's an official act, but also, not just because of what it allows a future President Trump to do to democracy itself, but I'm just sitting with what this decision signals about how [00:02:00] six members of this Supreme Court look at the Trump presidency, the events of January 6th, the threats that Trump speaks every single day, Project 2025, separation of powers. We got hyper focused, I think, in this media cycle on Donald Trump himself, but I would really like to talk about what this says about the court. Steve, do you want to start?

STEVE VLADECK: Sure. I think when we did this last year, we talked about how the word of the term was arrogance. I think we've gone from arrogance to DGAF is my term for the October 23 term, not just because of the Trump case, Dahlia, but just I'm struck by the message that the court has sent over and over again in almost all of its major rulings, that it just doesn't care about how half the country perceives it, that it just doesn't care.

In the Fisher case, for example, that its decision is going to be held out as some kind of massive victory and exoneration of the [00:03:00] January 6th defendants. And it just doesn't care in the administrative law cases that it's going back on things that has taken for granted for 30, 40, 50 years.

And it doesn't care because Dahlia just doesn't fear any retribution. It doesn't fear any consequences. Joe Biden's not running against the court in the election, he's running against Trump. And so the court is just, I think, doing what it wants, when it wants. And what's remarkable to me is sometimes the other five conservatives are going so far that it's too far even for Justice Barrett. When Justice Barrett is the one saying, why are we doing this?, I think that is quite a revealing and alarming signal.

MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, do you have a gloss on the DGAF court of 2023 term?

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: I think that that's largely right. But I think my take away mostly was when you look at cases like Rahimi and you look at cases like the FDA case about Mifepristone, you also see the court avoiding its own messes, right? So it's a [00:04:00] version of this, but it's saying: We basically created, through Bruen and through Dobbs, we've created all of this havoc, and then with the natural and entirely predictable consequences of that havoc start to appear, the court then says that's obviously not what we meant; clearly people are getting this wrong. We don't know where the misunderstandings are coming from.

So you see over and over again that this court has created these monsters. The monsters are coming home. And when it seems really bad for the court -- and what I mean by really bad is that it just seems to be unseemly. There's the domestic abuser who's involved in multiple shootings and he really wants to keep his guns. The court's embarrassed by this. Except for Thomas. He's never embarrassed. I suppose he's unembarrassable. But you have them really sticking to this idea that they're being consistent and they're offering something real and legitimate with this history and tradition idea. But you look at a case like Rahimi and that Thomas writes the Bruen opinion, and then you get a majority, the conservative majority [00:05:00] agrees with it. Rahimi comes up and it's a predictable consequence of Bruen. And really, if you apply Bruen, Rahimi should win. And you've got all of the justices now saying that's not how Bruen needs to be applied. And you've got the author of Bruen saying, of course it is.

So the idea that originalism, history, and tradition gives something settled for us, gives us something outside of activism or just judicial chaos monkeys should be something that we are now abandoning, but I don't know that we are.

MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, one tiny gloss on what you just said that I think is so interesting is I hadn't seen the through line until you just pointed it out, that the court's language in Rahimi, which is like, "I don't know why all the lower courts are getting this wrong. We were perfectly clear that we didn't mean what Clarence Thomas wrote in Bruen" is exactly the language they used when they adopted the quote-unquote "ethics code" this year, the unenforceable feelings ball ethics code that every jurist gets to decide for him or herself. And it was that same [00:06:00] language of "we've always had this binding code. We don't understand why the people are too dumb to understand that it applies to us." And by the way, it's also the vibe that they directed at the critiques of Steve Vladeck and other people who were pointing out the abuses of the emergency docket, which is like, "we don't abuse the emergency -- you guys must be too stupid to understand how scrupulously we apply our own procedures."

So there is this kind of persistent, persistent, not just like "cleanup on aisle four" vibe, but like, "why did you all spill the pickle juice all over aisle four?" when it's their stinking pickle juice?

Okay, Mark, your turn.

MARK JOSEPH STERN: I guess I sense that we are feeling the lack of any true swing justice in a lot of different ways that are speculative admittedly, but feel true to me at least.

There's no Justice Kennedy there who could sometimes moderate the conservatives. There's certainly no Justice O'Connor who could build [00:07:00] these bridges or give the conservatives reason to tone down their rhetoric or their positions to try not to alienate her. And Chief Justice Roberts looked like he was emerging as a swing vote toward the tail end of the Trump years, in part because there were a few cases like the census citizenship case, the DACA case, where he sided against the Trump administration, largely because of its sloppy lawyering and poorly concealed lies.

But now I feel like there really is not any justice, who sits in the middle, who can legitimately be won over by the liberal bloc in any meaningful way, and the conservative majority sees no reason to temper its goals and ambitions to try to limit the alienation that a swing justice might feel.

An example here is what's been happening with Barrett. Barrett, as Steve pointed out, has taken a somewhat more moderate stance in some of these cases, right? But she has still never joined with the Chief [00:08:00] Justice in a 5 to 4 decision where the liberals, the Chief, and Barrett are in the majority on the merits, and the others are in dissent. Every time she hedges in this way, it's to pick nits with aspects of the conservative majority's opinion, but ultimately sign on to some or much of it. That was true in the Trump immunity case where she said, well, I don't think it's true that we can't bring in evidence here in this particular discreet circumstance, but I'm signing on to everything else, cause I might not agree with the framing, but I agree with the bottom line. It was true in the Anderson case, where she said, I don't agree with the court's decision to answer this particular question, but I'm still going to sign on to the bulk of the majority's opinion, 'cause I don't think Trump can be removed from the ballot.

She is still, I think, spiritually very much in the conservative camp. And so the men don't feel the need to do anything to temper. their ambitions, I think, to win her over. And there's just the three liberals perpetually in dissent, increasingly refusing to pull punches, which I admire. I think Justice Sotomayor's dissent in the Trump case is one [00:09:00] of the most terrifying, brutal, blunt pieces of judicial writing I've ever come across. But that is just creating a growing chasm between the two blocs, and I'm not seeing anyone making any effort to build bridges, at least on the right. And that is leading to a court that's totally untempered by any internal dynamics that used to exist, that kept its most extreme temptations in check.

STEVE VLADECK: So this is Steve. I agree with all of that. I would just say that Mark's frustration with Justice Barrett, I would just direct to her ironically right at Chief Justice Roberts. Because I think the real individual story of the term is John Roberts is done trying to be an institutionalist.

Opinionpalooza This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 7-13-24

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So Lisa, welcome back. Thank you for making a quick return. And I wonder if we could just start by sketching out the field. Maybe, can you just give us like day one of admin law when you're trying to explain to [00:10:00] people the rise of the administrative state and regulatory agencies, and just walk us through what drove the rise of these agencies? What do these alphabet agencies do? And why do they do so much of the bulk of the regulatory work right now?

LISA HEINZERLING: Administrative law is all about the agencies. Administrative law is a subject that governs the work agencies do, and how they do it, and how they're supposed to come to their decisions. So it's a huge field. It governs all of the agencies in the United States. And so most people, even without ever knowing about administrative law or what an agency is, have run across the work of an administrative agency, in either the drugs they take -- that would be the Food and Drug Administration; the air they breathe -- that would be the Environmental Protection Agency; the investments they make, perhaps they buy stocks -- that would be the Securities and [00:11:00] Exchange Commission; and on and on down the line.

Agencies are basically used by Congress when it passes statutes to implement Congress's direction. So you'll often hear about the administrative state. You'll often hear that the president is going to go it alone without Congress or act alone or use an executive authority, but that actually almost never happens. That's very rare. What the bulk of agencies work actually starts with Congress. Congress creates an agency, like the FDA or the EPA; funds the agency; and gives the agency instructions about what work to do and the parameters for that work.

And so, administrative law basically governs that relationship. It also provides for court review, judicial review of agencies' decisions.

And so, the term that just ended [00:12:00] really continued a trend that's been going on at the Supreme Court for a few years now, which is, really, I think it's fair to say that the court is is either dismantling or destabilizing the administrative state. Certainly destabilizing it, but I think dismantling is a fair word as well.

And what the court's doing is it's taking aim at the structure of the agencies, the way that they interpret those laws that Congress passes, and the way they need to go about their work. So let me say one word about each of those.

On the structure of agencies, what the court is doing is it's trying to make the heads of agencies, and even judges at the agencies, more responsive, essentially, to presidential both appointment and removal, and so bringing the agencies closer to the political apparatus of the government. And that may sound kind of technical, but it's really important, because one of the [00:13:00] reasons we have the agencies -- think about the agencies I mentioned, the FDA, the EPA, the Securities and Exchange Commission -- those are given those jobs partly because they have experts on the subject matters they deal with. So that becomes really important in administrative law to, oftentimes, Congress will decide to make them independent of the president. And that's one of the targets of this Supreme Court. And that's effectively one of the issues in the Jarkesy case, is who has to decide whether someone violated the law. Can the agency do it with its own judges, or do the federal courts have to do it? And in that case, they said the federal courts have to do it.

The second big issue has been how do agencies interpret their statutes? They're given a statute that tells them you should clean up the air. You should make sure drugs are safe. You should make sure that the cars that people drive are safe. And they say that to the agency, that's your mission. And [00:14:00] here's some parameters for that work. And for so many years, for 40 years, and I would say longer than that, the courts really deferred to agencies. If they had an unclear statute, a statute that's just hard to figure out exactly what it meant, then the agency's view of that statute would prevail as long as it was reasonable.

And so this is the piece of the process I mentioned before, which is judicial review. If an agency makes a decision and says, we're making this decision based on this understanding of the statute, for many, many years, courts would say, all right, if the statute's unclear, then the agency really gets to make the call. As long as it's reasonable, it makes the call. And that's what went by the boards in the Loper Bright case you mentioned at the outset, Dahlia, which is that the court overruled that deferential principle, announced in a case called Chevron, and replaced it with a court-centered kind of [00:15:00] interpretation. The courts figure out on their own what the best interpretation of a statute is.

And then just the last piece, because there's activity here too: agencies alone among the institutions of the federal government have to actually explain themselves when they make a decision. And when they explain themselves, they have to do so in a way that people can understand and follow and understand why they did what they did. It's not remarked on a lot of times in public commentary on agencies, but it's a wonderful feature of the administrative process, which is that the agency explain itself to the public in terms the public can understand.

Now, if the courts drill down too much on the agency's explanations, it becomes just a way to undo a lot of agency's work. And that is a separate case this term, a case called Ohio versus EPA, in which the court rejected an EPA rule on interstate air pollution because it [00:16:00] thought that EPA hadn't explained itself well enough. And that tightening of that requirement of reasoned explanation I think is going to come back to make agencies work a lot harder.

And I think all this work is occurring, in my mind at least, as part of a kind of anti-regulatory campaign on the part of the justices and even some lower court judges. They don't like how much power those agencies I mentioned have, and they're taking it away.

Just Decide the EMTALA Case Already, You Cowards - Boom! Lawyered - Air Date 6-27-24

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: So immediately what happens in the EMTALA fight is that this case goes back to the lower courts for further proceedings. Like Amani said, the Supreme Court jumped in on this fight before the Ninth Circuit could even go into it. Okay. And in the short term, I want to be very clear: that is good, because the situation in Idaho, with the state being able to enforce its ban in the face of EMTALA was clearly awful. And our job is to help through humor shine some clarity in these moments, but we're not by any stretch trying to diminish [00:17:00] the healthcare crisis and suffering that's going on. It's bad.

There's also this terrible Fifth Circuit decision in place that deals with Texas's ban, and just logistically speaking, that decision affects millions more people. So, to underscore, and not to put the people in Idaho pitting them against the folks in Texas and the Fifth Circuit, that's not the point. I'm really just trying to underscore that this is a punt. It's not a win. And the Biden administration has appealed that Fifth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court, and they're just waiting. So we'll see what they do with that.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: And that can mean that this term, the Supreme Court says, yeah, we're taking up EMTALA after the election, let's say Biden wins, they're like, all right, I guess we got to do this shit again. And so they're going to take up this case and we're going to do it and hear it again. If Trump wins, as you said, we're in Project 2025 department of life territory, and none of this matters.

I would just like to take a moment to pat myself on the back. Because if you type in the words, "Fetuses [00:18:00] can't consent to healthcare" into Google -- and I went into incognito mode just to make sure it wasn't my cache playing around with me -- my article that says, "by the way, fetuses can't consent to healthcare" is the first article that comes up. That was an article that talked about specifically the Texas v Becerra case. This EMTALA case that's pending in the Fifth Circuit, which as you pointed out, has a lot of really gnarly personhood language. And as I already mentioned, with respect to the purposeful misreading of the statute as applying to a pregnant woman and her unborn child, as opposed to a pregnant woman or her unborn child, it doesn't even make sense. The Fifth Circuit and Sam Alito's reading of the statute doesn't make sense. Because there's no way that a fetus could tell a doctor whether or not they wanted to be terminated in order to save the life of the person carrying it.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Right.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: The healthcare decisions that are made under EMTALA are made by the pregnant patient. And sometimes that pregnant [00:19:00] patient will choose an abortion in order to save their own life, to save their organs, to save their fertility. That is their choice to make. Congress has allowed them to make that choice. It's not about what the quote, "unborn child" wants, no matter how much Sam Alito wants it to be.

So I just really want people to understand as we start refocusing on Texas v. Becerra and our good friend, Mattie K., right? Because that was a Matt Kazmarek decision. We're going to see the same, the exact same arguments. And I just need people to realize that these justices are willing to lie to get their way because they have an agenda and they are backed by billionaires like Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo and any other dark money group that is shoveling money into this court. So that's really, really critical.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: That point is so important. And I remember in the oral arguments in this EMTALA case, Solicitor General Preligar was so It's so good on that point, that the health care decisions flow through the pregnant person [00:20:00] and don't exist independently and autonomously to a developing pregnancy. And so thank you and congratulations, by the way, I wonder if she read your piece.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: I hope so. That would be amazing. Honestly, every time I write about Sam Alito, I'm using his full God-given name in the hopes that it shows up on his Google alerts--

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Because he's going to be at a speaking event in Rome and call out Imani Gandhi. Let's hope.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Fly to Rome and shake that man's hand and maybe slap him across the face real fast.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: No, please don't. The Secret Service will deal--

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: No, that's bad. I don't want to end up in jail.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: But, I keep complaining to you about this Department of Life. And I think maybe I want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about what the Department of Life is. Because when you say it to me, my mind, I know it exists, but my mind is like, Department of Life is ridiculous. And maybe our listeners aren't aware about how bad it could get if Project 2025 is implemented.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Really, truly. And the Department of Life sounds as dystopian as it is. Roger Severino, remember [00:21:00] that jamoke? He is all over this and the thing is with a potential second Trump administration, we're going to see everything old new again when it comes to their assaults on the ways that the federal government operates in this space. And we're already starting to see it in the way the antis are spinning the EMTALA decision.

But what they would do is just read EMTALA differently here. They would issue a different guidance. Cause remember, that's the fight is over the guidance that the Biden administration issued after the Dobbs decision.

And based on Alito's dissent, what we've seen in the Fifth Circuit, what they've said in the Project 2025 documents, that would use EMTALA to advance a fetal personhood framing, just like if there's a Trump administration, Project 2025, the Department of Life would be urging the FDA to repeal access to Mifepristone altogether.

So really, this is the path that the Supreme Court has carved for us at the end of its term. And it [00:22:00] is completely and entirely electoral. If there is a Biden victory in the presidency, then we will see these cases reanimated in some way, shape or form, and the Supreme Court will rule on their merits. If there's a Trump win, then he does their dirty work for them, and this all goes away via agency action.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Ugh. And just -- I know we're running out of time -- and just real quickly, we are waiting for a case, for a couple of cases about agency action, about who it is that is going to interpret ambiguous statutes regarding agency action.

And everyone, everyone that I know is expecting the Supreme Court to essentially pickpocket Congress and take agency power out of Congress's power and out of the power of the agencies and shuffle it to the Supreme Court, so that it won't matter if the Biden administration issues a guidance or any administration issues a guidance about EMTALA, because it will be the [00:23:00] Supreme Court that decides, ultimately, what the statute says and how it is any individual federal agency should be implementing statutes that create them. And that's a real problem.

What is Project 2025 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-11-24 (1)

NOEL: I’m Noel King, with Shelby Talcott, who’s covering the 2024 presidential election for Semafor. These days Shelby has been writing a lot about Project 2025.

SHELBY TALCOTT: It's essentially this massive, organized, multimillion dollar effort to establish an administration in waiting for Donald Trump.

SCORING IN <Crafty Sneakers [c] - APM>

It's headed up by the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank that has been really instrumental in conservative policies throughout the years. When I talked to the project's head last year for this, he said that what fundamentally unites our coalition is deconstructing the administrative state.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: Our common theme is to take down the administrative state, the bureaucracy and you're gonna, [00:24:00] um yeah. <applause> It's, it's not as easy done as it is said. The bottom line is that we need to have an army of conservatives ready to march in day one.

SHELBY TALCOTT: The way that they're trying to do this is through this multipronged, years-long initiative that involves vetting a number of staffers that theoretically could be in the next Trump administration. It involves making sure that those staffers know how government works, so training them. It involves this massive 800-plus-page policy book that essentially outlines the major conservative policies of today. And then the last prong is, of course, diving into this 180-day playbook that Project 2025 is currently developing to hand Donald Trump, should he win in 2024, that he could implement initiatives, executive [00:25:00] orders and policies, in his first year in office.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: We are gonna be prepared, day one, January 20, 2025, to hit the ground running as conservatives, to really help the next president.

SCORING OUT

NOEL: Who's in the coalition that you mentioned? You talked about Heritage. Who else?

SHELBY TALCOTT: Yeah, there's over 100 coalition partners. And actually they reached that number at the beginning of this year. So SBA Pro-Life America has signed on, the Conservative Partnership Institute, Claremont Institute, TP USA, which is Turning Point USA, which is focused a lot on younger voters. So most of the major conservative organizations in the country really are a part of this effort.

NOEL: How unusual is it for the Heritage Foundation to have a thing like Project 2025? Is this unprecedented?

SHELBY TALCOTT: It's not unusual for there to be some kind of organization. They usually have this Mandate for Leadership that they will give an upcoming conservative president.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: Heritage got on the book-, on [00:26:00] the marker as, as an organization by delivering the first Mandate for Leadership in 1980 to President-elect Reagan.

<CLIP>

Ronald Reagan: Heritage has transformed itself from a struggling and valiant coterie of conservatives to, well, a struggling and valiant coterie of conservatives -- [laughter] -- though today the influence and importance of Heritage is widely recognized in Washington and, indeed, by policymakers around the world.

SHELBY TALCOTT: But this scope and level of organization and the years that it has taken to plan and lay out this specific Project 2025 is really unique and really has never been done before. So in that sense, just the scale of this operation is unprecedented.

NOEL: Okay. But the Mandate for Leadership has been a thing in the past. Now, when Donald Trump was elected the first time, how much of their mandate for [00:27:00] leadership did he take?

SHELBY TALCOTT: He used a significant amount. So in early 2018, the Heritage Foundation came out with a press release saying that Donald Trump had, as of that moment, used over 60% of their policy proposals.

<CLIP>

Former VP Mike Pence: I mean, from right in the transition we went to work availing ourselves of the resources available from the Heritage Foundation. We laid out plans for this administration. We drew on the scholarship and the resources of this historic think tank.

SHELBY TALCOTT: And so that just sort of gives you an idea of, A, how influential historically the Heritage Foundation is, but B, how much Donald Trump may or may not, you know, rely on this Project 2025 and the proposals that they put forth this time around.

Project 2025 would allow Trump to target his enemies through the judicial system - The ReidOut - Air Date 7-10-24

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Melissa, anything I missed in there? Anything else we should be concerned about for the average American with that kind of DOJ?

MELISSA MURRAY: That was a really comprehensive list, and it really does cover most of the 900 pages of Project 2025, which is essentially the [00:28:00] authoritarian's playbook. One point that I do want to mention here, though, is that the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity, which was announced just a week ago, has really given a major assist to Project 2025.

One of the things that this decision made very clear is that when the president is communicating with the DOJ or issuing orders through the DOJ, because the DOJ is viewed as an extension of the executive—of the president—those actions are immunized. Project 2025 ramps this up, puts it on steroids, makes it impossible, essentially, to prosecute the president or indeed anyone working through the DOJ for those acts because they are official acts within the perimeter of those official duties. It takes the unitary executive theory and really amps it up and makes the president essentially a king. So the court has laid a foundation to make project 2025 not just palpable, but indeed something that will last and be lasting throughout our history of Donald Trump as president.[00:29:00]

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And Ruth, then how would we be any different from say Russia or China or any other authoritarian country?

RUTH BEN GHIAT: Not much, and you know the very definition of authoritarianism is when the executive branch overwhelms or politicizes or hinders from being independent the judiciary—the other branches of government.

And so, what's interesting is all the parts of project 2025 work together because you also have to have a compliant civil service, because fascists and authoritarians—they have to destroy to create. So they're going to take apart the DOJ as an independent body and make it into something else.

That something is a body that will protect the president and his cronies from investigations, from prosecution, but it's not enough for the president to have immunity. You have to have a compliant civil service. So there [00:30:00] we have the Presidential—the training academy that's going to create what they call an "army" (they use that word) of vetted conservatives to go to work on day one.

So all of these things have to come together and when you have a politicized civil service—and in the nazi context Hannah Arendt called these people "the desk killers"—the people who signed the orders to harass and repress people and, of course later, in the German, context to do the Holocaust. But, all of these things must come into play.

The last thing that you must do is turn the public against the press—against journalists—so that any claims they make about prosecution, things that might be worthy of prosecution are no longer believed by the public.

Donald Trump has already been able to do that.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah, and then maybe just start arresting members of the press. Let me play something that is, in a way, sort of funny and absurd, but actually deadly serious in another way. This is Stephen [00:31:00] Miller's America First legal organization. This is one of their advertisements.

STEPHEN MILLER: I am here today with an urgent message. America's biggest corporations and universities are illegally discriminating against Americans based on race and sex. These corporations and universities have adopted so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" policies that punish Americans for being white, Asian, or male.

If you or a loved one were denied a job, raise, promotion, or professional opportunity as a result of diversity quotas, equity mandates, affirmative action, or other racial preferences we want to hear from you.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Melissa. It's sort of a one part ambulance chaser ad and one part "NAAWP" Legal Defense Fund. Right? But what he's doing there is what the civil rights division of the Justice Department would change it to, right? A place where the whole mission would be [00:32:00] to defend white privilege.

MELISSA MURRAY: That's exactly right, joy. Obviously, enforcement priorities shift from administration to administration. And we've seen, for example, under Republican administrations, there's been less enforcement of voting rights, for example, or less prosecution of voting rights claims.

But Project 2025 explicitly says that the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education will be dedicated to dealing with what they call "reverse discrimination"—so DEI measures in corporate America and in public institutions and in universities and colleges.

Basically, the real racism to be fought is the racism and the racial injuries that are endured by white men, principally, and those who are outside of what they view as the affirmative action spectrum.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Let's go on to the sort of apologists for this—people who are sort of trying, Ruth, to make this sound like it's not that big of a deal.

So, Bloomberg is reporting that the CEO of Warner brothers, David Zaslav has said regarding the presidential election. Asked about the upcoming [00:33:00] presidential election, he said it mattered less to him, which party wins. As long as the next president was friendly to business. We just need an opportunity for deregulation, he said, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to do better.

So of course they want lots of deregulation, meaning they'd probably be fine with having Trump. But I just want to remind Mr. Zaslav and others the way that this works in a country like Russia, because you said we'd be no different from that. The Kremlin has said that Vladimir Karamazov is "stable in a Russian prison hospital," but we're not even sure that that's true.

A Russian playwright and theater director was sentenced to prison for writing a play that Putin didn't like, and Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Yulia Navalnaya, who is the widow of Alexei Navalny, who they killed or allowed to die in a gulag. That's how it goes, right? If suddenly don't like—Donald Trump doesn't like what David Zasloff has on his networks, he goes from being somebody who gets juicy deregulation and tax cuts to somebody who's living like the Navalny's.

RUTH BEN GHIAT: Yeah, but it's way beyond that because, he could say, "Well, I'm not a dissident," but Putin's state [00:34:00] is a kleptocracy as, to various degrees, most authoritarian states, they thrive on corruption.

By 2018, one out every sixth Russian business person, if their business was prospering, the state would come after it to either seize its assets or make money because they would, find some kind of new—fabricate some tax charge crime, and so they prey on businesses.

It's the same in Erdoğan's Turkey where, you know, the state has plundered and seized assets worth over $40 billion since the 2016 coup attempt. And so, authoritarianism is not good for business. It is often the small businessmen as well as big corporations that come in for the equivalent of hostile takeovers. Especially if they're in entertainment or the media.

That's what Putin did. And that's what every—and that's what Orban has done too. The media, including big [00:35:00] properties, is 85 percent domesticated now. So these people are misinformed and they're living in a world of illusions if they think that they're going to be safe with these plans at the scale at which Trump wants to enact them.

Republicans issue vile reaction to Trump shooting - No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 7-15-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: So, let me say first that violence is not the answer. It is never the answer, and part of why I, and I'm sure so many of you, are working so hard to prevent Donald Trump from taking power again is precisely because we don't want to validate the use of violence as a political tool, which Donald Trump has obviously done throughout his presidency.

Numerous times—from promising his supporters that he would pay their legal bills if they beat up protesters, all the way to the events of January 6th. Violence is not the answer. It makes this whole thing more dangerous for everyone, myself included, and it is not why any of us got into this. I've watched the responses to the shooting, and just as sickening as the shooting itself, has been the response to it.

There have been a number of Republicans who, without skipping a beat, have exploited these events to attack [00:36:00] Joe Biden or the Democrats. Mike Collins, a Republican lawmaker from Georgia, tweeted, "Joe Biden sent the order." Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, "We are in a battle between good and evil. The Democrats are the party of pedophiles, murdering the innocent, unborn violence and bloody, meaningless and endless wars. The Democrat Party is flat out evil. And yesterday they tried to murder President Trump."

J. D. Vance wrote, "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."

And of course, Lauren Boebert posted this:

LAUREN BOEBERT: I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today, Kyle Clark. An innocent supporter of President Trump, someone who loved President Trump and was there exercising their right to support him lost their life today. Everyone who has called him a fascist, everyone who has called him a threat to democracy, who said that [00:37:00] he should be put in a bullseye as Joe Biden said, they need to have some very deep reflection tonight before another tragedy like this takes place.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: First of all, the Democratic Party and Joe Biden did not try to assassinate Donald Trump. The shooter was a registered Republican. In fact, because that's inconvenient for the narrative, now conservatives are saying stuff like this.

JESSE WATTERS: Don't read too much into the political affiliation because James Comey—also a registered Republican.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: Apparently, political affiliation is only exploitable if it fits the Republican narrative. Otherwise, if it doesn't bolster Jesse Watter's claims, then it's suddenly a moot point. Do you think that Jesse would have been claiming that political affiliation isn't important if he was a registered Democrat?

And beyond that, reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke to classmates of the shooter, and they were very clear about the fact that the kid was a conservative. One passage from the reporting says that a classmate of the shooter recalled a mock debate in which their history [00:38:00] professor posed government policy questions and asked students to stand on one side of the classroom or the other to signal their support or opposition for a given proposal.

"The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side. That's still the picture I have of him, just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other."

So I wanted to make that clear right off the bat, because the right has a long, long history of scapegoating Democrats for things that Democrats have nothing to do with. Why a conservative would try to assassinate the conservative candidate in this race is beyond me, but certainly had nothing to do with Joe Biden or the left. But to J. D. Vance's tweet, this idea that calling Trump a fascist led to his assassination attempt, let's discuss that.

First of all, Donald Trump is a fascist. That doesn't mean assassinate him, but he is a fascist. He wants to consolidate power into the executive branch. He wants to use the military as a weapon to suppress dissent. He wants an army of loyalists to do his bidding. He wants to be a [00:39:00] dictator. He wants to suspend the Constitution.

Those are his words, by the way. Things that he said. So yes, he is a fascist, but Vance has unilaterally decided to reverse engineer a way to blame the left, and that is by pointing to the things that the left is absolutely correct and justified in saying, which is acknowledging the objective reality that Trump is a fascist and deciding that because that's now the cause of the shooting that everyone on the left who said it is suddenly responsible.

That's not only insane and dangerous, but it's just a bad faith way to absolve the people who are perpetuating the violence while blaming the people who have long since condemned the violence.

It's not the Democrats or Biden who told rally goers again to beat up protesters and that we'd pay for their legal bills. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who laughed at Paul Pelosi being bludgeoned with a hammer. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who called for military tribunals for Liz Cheney. That was Trump. It wasn't Democrats or Biden who called for General Mark Milley to be executed. [00:40:00] That was Trump.

It's not the Democrats or Biden who posted a baseball bat photo with Alvin Bragg and threatened "death and destruction" if he was charged. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who reposted images on the Truth Social showing Biden hogtied in the bed of a truck. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who laughed off a kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer. That was Trump.

We don't want Trump in power because we don't want violence. So let's not get it twisted. In fact, you want to see the difference on display? Here, for example, is the left's reaction to this shooting. AOC: "There's no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania. It is absolutely unacceptable and must be denounced in the strongest terms. My heart goes out to all the victims, and I wish the former president a speedy recovery." Chris Murphy: "There's no room in America for political violence. We should all condemn what happened today, and I'm hoping for the health of the former president and everyone else at the rally."

And Joe Bide:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: There's no place in America for this kind of violence, or for any violence, ever. [00:41:00] Period. No exceptions. We can't allow this violence to be normalized.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: Meanwhile, here's how the right reacted when it's a Democrat who's the victim. Paul Pelosi's bludgeoned with a hammer and Don Jr. posts, "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready."

Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene getting her audience to boo Paul Pelosi at a rally.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: Where Americans are robbed. stabbed, raped, kidnapped, carjacked and murdered. But only the only crime victim you hear about from Democrats in the media is Paul Pelosi.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: And of course, Trump himself poking fun at Paul Pelosi after he was attacked.

DONALD TRUMP: And we'll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco.

How's her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know?

And she's [00:42:00] against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house, which obviously didn't do a very good job.

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: So no, both parties are not the same. Let's not pretend that one doesn't immediately and unequivocally condemn violence while the other one holds it. The only difference is that the pearl clutching on the right only begins when the violence happens to them.

And therein lies the real difference here. The left doesn't want any political violence, while the right is fine with it, so long as it doesn't impact them. There's also the fact that, had the Democrats gotten their way, guns like this wouldn't even be available to the general public. It is the Republicans who block any and all efforts to ban assault weapons like the one that was used in Pennsylvania.

They did it at the federal level when Senate Republicans blocked the legislation, and Pennsylvania Republicans, to use this state for example, did it at the state level when a Democrat controlled Pennsylvania House committee passed a bill banning the sale of assault weapons against the unanimous opposition of Republicans on that [00:43:00] panel, only for the legislation to be tabled in the Pennsylvania Assembly once it faced opposition from the state's Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, the NRA.

In fact, Trump himself signed the bill revoking Obama era checks for people with mental illness. He wanted mentally ill people to be able to buy guns. Not the left. Not Joe Biden, but Donald Trump. So again, remember that if Democrats had their way, these guns wouldn't be available for sale, and certainly not to the mentally ill.

But Republicans ensured that this wouldn't happen. And so now, a clearly disturbed 20 year old had access to a weapon that he used to try and assassinate a politician from 150 yards away, All thanks to policies backed by the GOP and the very politician whose life was almost taken. I would hope that would serve as a proof point to pass common sense gun reforms that 90 percent of this country would agree with, but you and I both know that Republicans aren't interested in doing that.

So, I'll end with the same message that I started with. Violence is never the answer, and that is precisely [00:44:00] why we are working so hard to make sure that Trump and Republicans do not take power in November. It's because we don't want to validate the preferred tool of a party that for years has used it as a cudgel against the left.

Project 2025 would allow Trump to target his enemies through the judicial system Part 2 - The ReidOut - Air Date 7-10-24

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: We've talked about the embrace of religious fervor on the religious right—I mean on the American right—and why it is dangerous. The Republican Party in this era of Donald Trump has allowed a small fringe white Christian nationalist movement to control the way the party and much of this country operates.

And so now, proud Christian nationalists are having their moment. Not just creeping into the culture, but seeking to revamp and define it. Charlie Kirk, professional troll and founder of Turning Point USA, embraces Christian nationalism and says things like, "Christians need to view the election as a spiritual struggle to save Western civilization," and that "Trump is crucial to restoring morality in America."

Right. The convicted felon sexual abuser equals morality. It's the kind of stuff that makes your [00:45:00] brain hurt because it makes no sense. Then, there's the interesting choice by the New York Times to platform a far right Christian extremist's musings on why he doesn't vote, which is code for, hey, maybe you shouldn't vote.

Matthew Walther, editor of a right wing Catholic literary journal, writes, "Why does anyone vote? I ask myself. The answer cannot be that we believe that by doing so, we will influence the outcome in an election." No, actually, that's exactly why I vote and why everyone votes. As it turns out, though, the New York Times has since made a correction after internet sleuths pointed out that this op ed writer did in the two most recent election cycles—wait for it—vote.

Not voting, of course, means choosing a devastating agenda for LGBTQ people, women and girls, brown and black people, basically anyone who doesn't look like Charlie Kirk or Matthew Walther. That is exactly what these statements under the guise of Christianity or bad opinion headlines are really about.

These guys are everywhere writing creepy op eds about Taylor Swift [00:46:00] letting down America by not being married with kids and giving even creepier commencement addresses. But the scarier ones are those who would run this country. The ones with offices on Capitol Hill, like Senator Josh Hawley—insurrectionist, fist pumper, and Missouri Republican who assured the National Conservatism Conference that he is a Christian nationalist.

JOSH HAWLEY: I'm sure some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. And so I am.

And some will say that I'm advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: What a little phony. Marjorie Taylor Greene also said it during a Turning Point USA conference in Florida saying, "We need to be the party of nationalism and I'm a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

Lauren Boebert was more blunt saying, "I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk. [00:47:00] The Republican party is openly embracing the ideology and Project 2025 wants to make it part of the next administration. Politico reported recently that an influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump administration, is president of the Center for Renewing America, a leading think tank in the conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

He's also an advisor to Project 2025. The dangerous agenda we've been highlighting that would usher in one of the most conservative executive branches in modern American history. But he isn't even the one with the creepiest agenda. There's a Wisconsin pastor who is calling for churches to form militias, who says that being gay should be a crime and who defends the [00:48:00] murder of abortion providers.

Once so fringe, he remained in the background. His book is now being quoted by politicians and former Trump officials.

What is Christian nationalism and why it raises concerns about threats to democracy - PBS Newshour - Air Date 2-1-24

LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Brad Onishi is a former evangelical minister who once identified as a Christian nationalist himself. He left the church in 2005 and began studying religion from the outside, including extremism. He now hosts the popular podcast Straight White American Jesus, and is the author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next. I began by asking him what that term actually means.

BRAD ONISHI: Christian nationalism is an ideology that, uh, is based around the idea that this is a Christian nation, that this was founded as a Christian nation, and therefore it should be a Christian nation today and should be so in the future. According to survey data, Christian nationalists agree with statements like, "the federal government should declare the United States of America a Christian nation"; "Our laws should be based on Christian [00:49:00] values"; "Being a Christian is important if you want to be a real American".

LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Onishi tracks a number of subgroups and ideas under the umbrella of White Christian nationalism, including what's known as the New Apostolic Reformation.

BRAD ONISHI: Well, the New Apostolic Reformation is notable for a number of reasons.

One: it's built around the idea that Christians are called to a new transformation or reformation of the United States. These are Christians who want to revolutionize the way that our country looks and to make it "great again" in terms of being a Christian nation.

They also are deeply invested in the notion of spiritual warfare. The idea that we are called as Christians to fight a cosmic battle between good and evil and that it's our duty to be boots on the ground for God in that conflict.

What this has led to, some decades later, is the New Apostolic Reformation leaders—the [00:50:00] Apostles and the Prophets that are really at the head of this movement—were some of the earliest to support Donald Trump in 2016, and they've remained steadfast in that support. They were at the very avant garde of trying to get the 2020 election overturned in the wake of Joe Biden's victory and mobilizing folks to be at January 6th. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of new apostolic reformation Christians at January 6th, as an example.

LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: We know that two thirds of White evangelicals sympathize or adhere to White Christian nationalist beliefs. So, where do they fall within this larger movement?

BRAD ONISHI: I think White evangelicals are the group we think of when we think of White Christian nationalism, and for good reason. These are folks who, when we think about the Iowa caucuses. In 2016, Trump's White evangelical voters were about 20% of his share of voters in that cycle. Just a few weeks ago, in 2024, that grew to well over 50%. White evangelicals remain committed [00:51:00] to the MAGA movement, and one of the key indicators of why is Christian nationalism.

LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Are there leaders across these subgroups of White Christian nationalism that are tied to the former president directly or to his larger network?

BRAD ONISHI: Yes. For example, a group of New Apostolic Reformation leaders—Apostles and Prophets and others—were present at the White House a week before January 6th. Speaker Mike Johnson has direct ties to the New Apostolic Reformation. Speaker Mike Johnson is somebody who's sought the counsel and the friendship of Timothy Carscadden, who is a New Apostolic Reformation pastor from his home district in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Timothy Carscadden is a close associate with Dutch Sheets. Dutch Sheets is perhaps the most ardent Trump supporter in the New Apostolic Reformation. He's the one who may have done the most of any Christian leader in the United States to mobilize folks to try to overturn the 2020 election and to make sure to attend [00:52:00] January 6th.

One of the most frightening things, I think, about Mike Johnson is the flag he hangs outside of his office: An Appeal to Heaven flag. The Appeal to Heaven flag goes back to the Revolutionary War, George Washington, it was inspired by John Locke. But over the last ten years, the Appeal to Heaven flag has been popularized by Dutch Sheets.

Dutch Sheets sees the Appeal to Heaven flag as a symbol of Christian revolution. If you look closely at January 6th, you will see dozens of Appeal to Heaven flags. It may have a long history, but in the contemporary context, it has a very specific meaning. So, the fact that Mike Johnson has it hanging outside of his office, to me signifies how he understands his role as Speaker of the House in terms of being a Christian and being an American.

LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: In a statement to the NewsHour, a spokesperson for Johnson's office said, "The Speaker has long appreciated the rich history of the flag. Any implication that the Speaker's use of the flag is connected to the events of January 6th is wildly [00:53:00] inaccurate".

But Onishi says the concerning links go beyond the conservative politicians themselves. Last month, Lance Wallnau, a key New Apostolic Reformation figure, announced he was partnering with Charlie Kirk, the influential right wing activist who leads Turning Point USA.

BRAD ONISHI: They're going to be visiting and focusing on swing states: Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania. They claim they've already signed up 2,500 churches and they want to mobilize those churches directly for a political involvement and specifically to get Trump reelected. The two of them together signifies a crossover. It signifies a joining in a way that promises, I think, to be quite potent.

LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Meanwhile, some have mobilized around what GOP leaders have labeled an "invasion" at the southern border. I asked Onishi about a protest convoy, calling itself "God's Army", currently making its way to Texas.

BRAD ONISHI: I think the end goal for the convoy is to kind of play a part, or play a role, in what they take to be the [00:54:00] story that is unfolding in the United States. Christian nationalists understand themselves to be playing a character. They are drawn into a narrative that says, You are at the last battle. You have a chance to do something that is much bigger than you. Will you answer that call? Will you come to DC on January 6th? Will you ride with us to the southern border? Because these are the moments, these are the battles that will shape our country. This is the cosmic war between good and evil. Are you really going to sit on the sidelines?

Some of us can laugh that off, we can think that that's a fringe ideal, but January 6th was not something to laugh off. And some of the events we've seen since then, the SWATing of judges houses, the evacuations of capitals due to bomb threats, so many more examples, little fires everywhere, are not things we can laugh off. And so I think the trucker convoy has cosmic goals as it plays a part in a very earthly standoff between Governor Abbott and the Biden Administration.

Final comments on what should come next for the Democrats

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips [00:55:00] starting with Amicus breaking down several cases handed down by the Supreme Court. Boom! Lawyered discussed the interplay between the court and federal agencies looking to restrict reproductive rights. Today, Explained explained Project 2025. The ReidOut looked at the power Project 2025 is hoping to give Trump. Brian Taylor Cohen on No Lie discussed the assassination attempt and the broader scope of violent political rhetoric. The ReidOut described the religious fervor on the right driving the Trump movement and the GOP toward Christian nationalism. And the PBS NewsHour explained the dangers of Christian nationalism. And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive section.

But before we continue on to the deeper dives half of the show, I have continued thoughts on the process working itself out within the Democratic Party. This is an awkward time to be recording because, as I speak, all of the reporting is that Biden may be deciding exactly when and how to resign as the Democratic presumptive nominee [00:56:00] and release his pledged delegates to vote their choice in the upcoming Democratic National Convention. By the time you hear this, that may have already happened and, then again, it may never happen. But here are my thoughts on what I would like to see happen in the event that Biden willingly steps aside.

The process of finding a replacement candidate really needs to be an open process rather than some sort of coronation. I have no horse in this race. My perspective is that everyone should simply want the best candidates with the best chance of winning to take the top two spots on the ticket. And the only way to find the best candidates is to have a friendly competition in which people get to make their cases.

Any talk of loyalty and succession pointing to Kamala Harris as the heir apparent is the same kind of thinking that got the party into this problem in the first place. Plus, it will be widely seen as reeking of backroom deals and all of the seedier sides of politics that people dislike. The inverse of that is a [00:57:00] democratic process; as Biden's kingmaker, Jim Clyburn, described just after the Trump Biden debate, a "mini primary". He also said that he would support Harris, but thought it should be done through a scaled down primary process.

That sounds perfect to me. I have no problem whatsoever with people getting out in front and endorsing Kamala Harris. I've heard plenty of arguments for why she would be a fantastic candidate to meet the moment, Most prominently, people fantasize about a former prosecutor facing off against Trump, the convicted felon. Perfectly fine, sounds great, but do it in a democratic way.

Secondly, for those worried about the process being logistically complicated, I actually see that as a positive. People have been so sick of politics for so long, a messy last minute scramble for the nomination would be exciting in a way that would get people engaged and paying attention. Any effort to smooth and subdue the process by attempting to [00:58:00] coalesce around an heir apparent would kill all the fun and suspense.

Now, speaking of suspense and excitement, I just want to boost one story that I've seen, like, percolating up a bit over the past few weeks. First, it was just in an Arizona paper, so I didn't give it much weight, but I think the idea of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly being considered at least for Vice President is actually gaining traction and is sort of interesting. Like Kamala Harris having a particular background well suited to this moment, Mark Kelly is being recognized in a similar way, particularly in the wake of the assassination attempt. He's got built-in hero vibes from being a military pilot and astronaut, but his wife also happens to be Gabby Giffords, who was also shot in the head in a case of political violence. So, it's an interesting choice that could meet the moment in a way that others on the shortlist don't. Also, he's from a swing state, so there's that. That said, I haven't seen him speak much, which is why we need a mini [00:59:00] primary. We need to be able to analyze these people before the coronation.

And one last note on progressives like Bernie Sanders and AOC standing with Biden while criticizing those calling for him to step down, I suppose it's impossible to know their true thoughts, but I can share what insights I have. Immediately after the Trump-Biden debate, I saw an opinion piece calling on progressives to stay out of this fight, in essence, saying that it simply was not the proper role of progressives to attempt to influence Biden's decision. Instead, it's clear that they've been using what leverage they have, where they can, on policy. This is from a piece in The Nation on July 18th: "Under siege, Biden has become a born again progressive, perhaps even a leftist. Over the last two weeks, he's announced support for a wide swath of policies tailored to please left wing Democrats: new rules banning medical debt from being used in credit ratings and a [01:00:00] push for total medical debt relief, term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court, and new legislation limiting rent increases from corporate landlords to 5% per year, among other newly elevated proposals". And who's been giving credit for Biden's shift, Bernie Sanders, AOC and The Squad, and the Congressional Black Caucus, all those standing steadfastly behind him.

That's all great, and I support those policy proposals, but—although I would say that it's clearly too late to save Biden's candidacy—it's never too late to start moving the Overton Window. For all we know, this may have been the plan all along for progressives. And I don't mean to sound conspiratorial, [but] it's just, like, they may know where their power lies and where it doesn't. Knowing that they wouldn't be influential on the question of Biden's place in the race, they pivoted to a strategy of steadfast support combined with demands for progressive policies. [01:01:00] And just getting the conversation started and given legitimacy by the sitting president supporting things like Supreme Court term limits, will help boost them into the platforms of whichever candidate ends up taking his place. If that's how it plays out—in which case the progressives along with every other Democrat will wholeheartedly endorse the new nominee—they will have played their role to perfection and come out relatively clean on the other end.

Now, before we get back to the show, a quick reminder that July is our membership and awareness drive. If you get value out of this show, let this be the time that you decide to chip in and help sustain its production and tell some friends about it to grow our base of support. Unfortunately, the same sort of Trump resistance exhaustion that is causing so many to retreat from politics in general has also taken a real toll on our listenership, our membership, and the income that we're able to generate to keep everyone paid for the work they put in to keep the show going. So, when I say that we need your support that is not in the abstract. We don't have big funders [01:02:00] or any kind of institution or media outlet backing us up. It's really just you—the listener—deciding to chip in and make this show possible And as thanks, members get ad free versions of every regular episode and bonus shows featuring the production crew in conversation. And for this month, memberships are 20% off, so sign up now and keep that discounted price for as long as you keep your membership. Just head to bestoftheleft.com/support to grab your discounted membership, and then tell someone about us.

SECTION A: SUPREME COURTWhy Gay Marriage Will Be Illegal Next Year - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 6-25-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Like the Supreme Court justices are getting ready to overturn the Obergefell decision. That's the decision that granted the right to gay marriage to, uh, queer people all across the United States instead of just in the, uh, 15 or 20 or some odd blue states that had already granted that right to people.

And, uh, the clue to this, uh, came in the dissent written by Justice Sotom Sotom Sotomayor. Excuse me, Sonia [01:03:00] Sotomayor, uh, in the Department of State versus Munoz decision that was handed down day before yesterday, I believe, um, maybe it was Friday, yeah, it must have been Friday. Her, the first sentence of her dissent is, uh, literally lifted from the Obergefell decision.

Which is, uh, I, I think, uh, Sotomayor's way of, like, waving a flag, you know, a pride flag, but a flag, and saying, look out, this is coming. Now that, the Obergefell decision was a 5 4 decision. And at that time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the court, she's been replaced by Amy Coney Barrett. Which is a major change in the direction of the court.

And Anthony Kennedy, who is an advocate for gay marriage, even though he's a Republican appointee, he was on the court. He was the guy whose son signed off on a billion dollars worth of [01:04:00] Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump that I believe Donald Trump threatened to publicize or somehow otherwise harm.

Kennedy's son as a way of convincing Kennedy to retire from the court. Because Kennedy was in great health. He's still around. I mean, you know, he's just doing his thing. But he's gone now. Uh, replaced by Brett Kavanaugh. These were both, uh, members of the court. Who should not have, in my opinion, should not have been replaced.

I don't think Kennedy retired, you know, voluntarily, frankly. I think he was blackmailed into it. And, uh, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, you know, within weeks of the election. And traditionally, that means that that Supreme Court justice is going to be up to the next president. But, of course, uh, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump jammed Amy Coney Barrett through the, through the, uh, through the Senate.

But in any case, uh, she, she says, basically, this is, this is what's [01:05:00] coming. She says the, the majority could have easily disposed of this case, the Munoz case, by just saying, you know, the guy, Munoz got all the, all the, uh, due justice. Uh, excuse me, all the due process that he was due. Uh, she writes, that could and should have been the end of it.

Instead, the majority swings for the fences. In other words, what they're doing in this case is they're setting up the rationale to overturn gay marriage. Now, she writes, the majority made the same fatal error Dobbs, requiring too careful a description of the claimed fundamental liberty is interest. And, by the way, this is the same, uh, issue that, that had to do with Obergefell.

You know, basically, Sonia Sotomayor is telling us, this is coming. They are coming for gay marriage. Not this year, but next year. [01:06:00] And the Republican Party is with them. Aaron Blake writing for the Washington Post. GOP support for same sex marriage has declined from a high of 55 percent in 21 22 to 49 percent, less than half in 2023, and now to 46 percent In 2024, a nine point drop over just two years.

What has happened? Well, we're starting to see right wing hate media talk about the queer community in, in, uh, slanderous terms, in negative, in negative terms. We've had all this rhetoric about groomers and, and, uh, you know, drag queens, and trans people, and trans sports, and trans kids in bathrooms, and All this, you know, basic hate mongering that's been coming out of the right now as just a steady stream of hate for, what, the better part of a decade now in a big way.[01:07:00]

And I'm telling you, one year from now, gay marriage is no longer being, going to be legal across the United States, unless Congress and the President next year, next spring, Make some big changes in the Supreme Court, and I'd be astonished if they happened that fast. The number, the percentage of Republicans who describe same sex relations, not marriage, but just, you know, people having relationships, as, quote, morally acceptable, was at 56 percent ten years ago, it's now 40%.

Forty percent. Six out of ten republicans, three out of four republicans, no, what's that, three out of five republicans say it's, say that gay, gay relationships are morally unacceptable. I mean, you got the Don't Say Gay Bill down in Florida. You got all this talk about groomers. [01:08:00] You got all these efforts to restrict trans rights.

By the way, the Supreme Court just picked up a case that has to do with trans rights. And everybody is fully expecting that they're going to strike down the ability of, of, uh, trans people, particularly minors, to, uh, to become trans people.

You know, so much for small government. Right, so much for the Republican mantra that we believe in limited government. They want government big enough to fit inside women's uteruses, and they want government big enough to tell you what you and your children can do, and how you have to live, and who you can marry, and who you can have relationships with.

This is not limited government. This is not, you know, small government. This is not conservative government. This is radical, reactionary, hate filled Republican rhetoric. And it is [01:09:00] damaging the lives of people in the United States. We are soon going to be back to a point where one of the highest public health risks for the queer community is suicide.

I mean, we're, we're, we never left it, really.

Gay, trans, lesbian youth are more likely to commit suicide than pretty much anybody else. It's been that way forever.

Opinionpalooza The Supreme Court End-of-Term Breakfast Table Part 2 - Amicus with Dahlia lithwick - Air Date 7-6-24

MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, one of the big, big stories, Steve mentioned it, it was the theme of last term, but now it's like supercharged is the court's self aggrandizement this term.

And this month we've literally seen the justices weighing in on granular details about air pollution and how guns work and, you know, emergency room stabilization protocols for miscarrying women and homelessness, like there's nothing they're not experts on. If there were ever any doubt about it, the Supreme Court is the policymaker for all [01:10:00] policies in the country, and the conservatives are really comfortable just announcing that they're experts on clean water and air pollution.

Are we supposed to believe here that there's something scientific and methodologically sound that is happening when the justices do this? Or is this just, we all, you know, sort of legal realists. Now, this is just politics by another name. I mean, how do you, as somebody who thinks about the court, think about justices who have not just sort of structurally arrogated all this power, but feel, as Steve says, like no shame, perfectly comfortable in waiting in and telling us how we're going to regulate drugs now.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: It is an amazing move on the one hand that you have this degradation, uh, this contempt for actual expertise, right? In any number of fields, whether that's history or whether that's science or whether that's medicine. And at the same time as you're saying the court is also putting itself in the position to say, well, none of these experts know anything, but the court gets to [01:11:00] decide everything.

And it's been more embarrassing this term than most because of course, this has been the term where the justices have made mistakes about what chemicals are talking about. about and about, you know, how to even refer to certain types of procedures. They expose the fact that they don't know what they're talking about.

And here I should clarify the conservative justices because the liberal justices have been pretty good about saying we actually do think expertise matters. So yes, you can never get a consistency from the far right of the court except in the sense I always go back and think about the phrasing in 2016 when The election results were looking uncertain and Trump was asked, you know, are you going to respect the outcome of this election?

He says, I will respect it if I win. And I think that that just has defined this entire moment we're living in. It's where the conservatives say, I will respect whatever it is, science, expertise, law, whatever it is, if we win and that's it. And it's really depressing for me as a law professor to have [01:12:00] to confront that because it seems.

You know, as a professor, we like things to be interesting and complicated and not just naked power grabs. And it's a story about a bad, um, you know, the bad guy doing bad things. And it's such a boring and really depressing villain narrative, but it's really that clear. It's any rule that they want to set up is purely for the sake of can the far right in America use this to their advantage?

That is the rule that they will endorse. And as soon as it might be used by the other side, they will find a way to say that we didn't mean you guys. Um, and I just think that that's one of the most. incredibly depressing things about the cycle, even though we've seen it happen for some time. And of course, it was never the case that the judicial branch was free of this sort of bad motivation.

But it's so clear now to say, well, we are holding the courts hostage, and therefore we can just take all the power for ourselves. We can take the executive, we can take the legislative, we own everything. And we will make sure that we are the final arbiters of what gets. Caste is not just, you [01:13:00] know, law, but truth itself, all the time, over and over again.

And there's no shame about that. There's no shame of these justices saying, we can do this better than experts. We can do this better than scholars. We can do this better than scientists because we are somehow, you know, divine, I guess is what they're actually trying to communicate to us.

MARY ANNE FRANKS: I love what you're saying because it's a really crisp answer to the question everybody was asking on Monday, which is how is the same court that has fundamentally dismantled the administrative state creating an imperial presidency?

And your answer is no, in both of those moves, they created an imperial juristocracy, right? Like they gave themselves the power to both dismantle the parts of the executive branch and also, uh, uh, immunize others. And that's. In the end of the day, there's one player here, Mark. Did you, I feel like you had a thought or am I misreading your face there?

MARK JOSEPH STERN: I mean, I just keep going back to Neil Gorsuch in his opinion, blocking the EPA's plan to [01:14:00] limit ozone pollution, repeatedly mistaking nitrogen oxide. which is the pollutant that causes smog, with nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas, resulting in an opinion that repeatedly purports to limit the EPA's ability to regulate laughing gas in upwind states.

If you needed a clearer illustration of why the Supreme Court should not be seizing these deeply in the weeds policy decisions, let But for itself, like you couldn't look at a better one than that. I also think it's really interesting that Barrett dissented in that case, but joined so many of these other decisions that are awarding the judiciary more power and stripping it away from the executive branch and from Congress.

And I just think that goes to how she's so fundamentally conservative, but she has a limit for BS. This is the frame I always look at her through as like Professor Barrett, like sometimes when she's dissenting, it's like she's grading a bad student's. paper and like taking her red pen and [01:15:00] explaining all of the mistakes.

That was her EPA dissent. I feel like looking at Gorsuch and being like, Oh wow, you are a C minus student at best. Um, but when it comes to the broad stuff, giving the court all this power to keep issuing C minus decisions, blocking agency rules, she's on board. So it's like, she's still got one foot to go.

firmly planted in this camp of total judicial supremacy over the other branches. And the Supreme Court should be deciding every agency action for now and forever. But then when the court starts to get into the weeds, sometimes she's showing signs of rationality. I wonder if that is room for evolution for her, if there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance she's perhaps experiencing when the rubber hits the road and the court actually has to decide these issues and does so poorly, or if she's still just very much learning on the job and at the end of the day, Professor Barrett still can't see a C minus paper and let it pass without comment.

Opinionpalooza The Supreme Court End-of-Term Breakfast Table Part 3 - Amicus with Dahlia lithwick - Air Date 7-6-24

STEVE VLADECK: It's so much bigger. And so I actually [01:16:00] think the defining moment of the term, and you guys are going to laugh. Cause this is such a me thing to say was the court's unsigned, unexplained five, four order in January in the razor wire case. So just to remind folks, right, this was a dispute about whether the Biden administration could remove the razor wire that governor Abbott had placed along.

The US Mexico border in Texas and, you know, should have been an open and shut, straightforward case. The Fifth Circuit did a Fifth Circuit and made it messy. And what's striking is not that it was a five, I mean, it was striking was by four with Barrett and Roberts. Hey, Mark, there's one non merits example, right?

Joining the three Democrats in the majority. What was striking to me was the reaction. So by that afternoon, if not the next day, you had Chip Roy, Congressman from Texas, Ted Cruz's former chief of staff on Fox news, urging Governor Abbott to defy that ruling and that didn't get a lot of play nationally.

It didn't get a lot of attention. But that should have been a five [01:17:00] alarm fire for the justices that a prominent well liked at least in certain circles right wing member of Congress with a lot of sway is going on national television telling the governor of Texas to ignore this Supreme Court. That's the future.

And it's especially the future in a second Trump administration in those cases in which the court finds its backbone. And if I were a Supreme Court justice, I would be terrified that that became more than just an isolated event. So, you know, Dalia, to your point about sort of the court's view of itself and its relationship with all of the other institutions in government, that should have been an inflection point.

And everything that happened in the five months since has suggested to me that no one on the court seems to have gotten it. And certainly none of the six Republican appointees. And I'll just say, I really hope we never find out how much of a mistake that was and how short sighted it was on their part to not care more about their credibility, [01:18:00] even among those who don't usually agree with the court, because If you start having, you know, President Trump supporters in the second Trump administration saying, why do we follow this court that so many other people have already criticized?

You know, I'm not sure who's going to be left to stand up for the court at that point.

MARY ANNE FRANKS: I'm not sure if my heart can take two more answers to this question, but, um,

MARK JOSEPH STERN: Let me just try to infuse some, some fight and spirit into mine, and then we'll kick it to Marianne and she's going to make us all feel better, right?

Um, I think that what we've seen, especially over the last few weeks, shows how unfortunate it is that Democrats have chosen, by and large, not to run against the Supreme Court in 2024. Not just the president, but senatorial candidates seem to have decided that it's just too confusing and attenuated to run against the court and that they should run against Trump and MAGA instead.

I increasingly think that MAGA and the Supreme Court are one in the same, and that the Supreme Court is very much committed, as you noted earlier, [01:19:00] Dahlia, to implementing the Trump agenda, a kind of Project 2025, whether or not Trump wins, and that If somehow Democrats pull off, even say a huge victory in 2024, that they will be confronted with a Supreme court.

That's going to be living in an alternate world in which Donald Trump won and all of his powers were just sucked into the judiciary. There will be Trump appointees like Matt Kazmarek, all over the lower courts, blocking every single agency action before it can even be published. Right. There will be Fifth Circuit decisions that make the crazy ones from this term look reasonable.

And the Supreme Court itself will have five or six votes to frequently embrace these rather extraordinary, hardcore conservative decisions. And so I'll say like, for me, what I want. Progressives to do is look at the Supreme Court and recognize that it is restructuring government without any kind of mandate from the people, without any of those justices, obviously, ever getting [01:20:00] elected or winning a single vote, and realize that that is the most existential threat to democracy, that a single decision like The Trump immunity case is horrible and it's terrifying, but it has to be seen as part of this broader pattern of the United States Supreme Court restructuring representative democracy to make it less representative and less democratic.

And that is where the fight needs to be. It isn't there now, but there's still time left.

MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, I think I'm going to give you the last word with the caveat, two caveats. People are exhausted and they're sad. I am exhausted and sad, but I don't think anybody has. Help me understand better than you what happens in a world where the rule of law is dismantled and oligarchs and men with guns roam free, and there is no law protecting the rest of us.

And it does feel to me as though we tilted into further into that world this term. You don't [01:21:00] have to give us hope that Mark did a very good job reminding us that it's not the end. Ultimately, up to the court, whether this happens or not, but I would love to just have your thoughts on this question of what do you do when the court has become And An echo of the voice that wants to shrink government down to the size that you could drown it in a bathtub.

I mean, that's full on the language of this court now or the majority. I'm not

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: sure. And when I think about what could change the tide here, when I think about just how much shit. It has become obvious how cruel the consequences of these decisions, you know, how vivid these these consequences are, and it doesn't seem to matter, right?

The people who are responsible for them and the people who are supporting them are confident. They are absolutely confident that the cruelty will never come for them. So I guess one way of thinking about that. Thanks. Trying to change the path is what if people understood that the [01:22:00] cruelty will come for them.

Is there a moment where there is a popular understanding that when you have an unprincipled thoroughly untethered from any kind of rule of law, any kind of moral code, any kind of consistency, when you have that in place. Of a functioning democracy that no one is safe. Can people understand that, that, that they too, will not be safe at some point?

The problem I think right now is that when you have this power grab, this is the best version of the far right saying, we will make sure that they never have to worry about that. That they will always be kept safe. But you know, I think. No one should trust any form of government, right? That includes the courts, that includes the federal government, that includes the state governors, right?

Trying to locate some of that sense of suspicion that power concentrated in this way just purely on the whims of the powerful, isn't going to serve the people's interests and for people to understand that. The other thing that I think might happen, because so much of this is tied up with a certain kind of patriarchal resurgence, [01:23:00] is to understand that this is a position of weakness, this kind of theocratic.

Thoroughly partisan cruelty is weakness. So when you mentioned before about how there's this disparagement of the female justices as being emotional and hysterical and, and just responding to sort of feelings, that is in fact, of course, every accusation is a confession, right? That is exactly what is characterizing the far right right now.

They know they can't win unless they cheat. They know they can't win if the rules apply to both sides. So we're back to this statement, right? We're back to the Trump. Be in sentiment that I only respect the rules when I win. That's also another way of saying I can't win if the rules are in place. I would like to believe that there is some subset of conservatives out there that are actually quite angry about that idea that they can't compete, that if there's a fair chance.

That they would lose over and over and over again, and that they'll get angry enough about that that it will push them towards the concept of reciprocity [01:24:00] that that you and I talked about before with my my previous book in the Cult of the Constitution, because that's the only democratic principle, the idea that we have to have the same principles for everyone.

The same rule applies to everyone. And the fact that you're losing doesn't mean that that means the game is rigged. You might have just lost, and you should have lost. So will there be some attempt on the part of some conservatives to say, we don't want to be losers all the time, we don't want to have to admit that we're losers and have to change the rules every time.

We actually think we can compete if the rules are fair and the principles are real. I think that's actually our only chance.

Opinionpalooza This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought Part 2 - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 7-13-24

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: You started to talk about this, Lisa, but I'd love for you to develop a little further. I feel as though we've now inured our listeners to, uh, being afraid when I ask you a question about the Administrative Procedure Act. But you make the point, and I think it's really central to understanding, that the APA becomes the cornerstone of Chief Justice Robert's majority opinion.

LISA HEINZERLING: Yes, it's so important. So the court was asked [01:25:00] to hold that this Chevron principle violated the Constitution, that it violated the separation of powers, that is the division of power between Congress, the executive and the courts. And that's been an argument for a long time against Chevron, again, since, since about the administration of Barack Obama.

So. They could have decided that, and indeed Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in separate opinions said that they believed that Chevron violated the separation of powers. Now what would that mean? That would mean that even if Congress wanted to change the interpretive principle as the Supreme Court's side.

It wouldn't be able to. If it violates the Constitution for courts to defer to agencies interpretations, then there's no fixing it in Congress. And what the court did instead is it said, it starts with this long exegesis, this long discussion [01:26:00] of, uh, what courts normally do and always have done in its view with respect to interpreting statutes.

But that doesn't actually decide the case. It's this long kind of constitutionally, uh, inflected discussion. But when it comes to saying, why is it that legally Chevron was terrible? Why is it that Chevron itself was unlawful? It turns to the Administrative Procedure Act, which has said, is the default kind of governing framework for administrative agencies work.

And it turns to specifically one sentence in that statute, and that sentence is talking about how courts are to review agency actions of various kinds. And that sentence says, the reviewing court shall decide all questions of law. It has other things in that sentence, but that's the key point. That's the key passage.

The reviewing court [01:27:00] shall decide all questions of law. And the court thought, that, that means. And has meant for 80 years, since the Administrative Procedure Act was passed, that reviewing courts may not defer. Congress told us reviewing courts may not defer. They need to be the ones to make the interpretation, and, um, and they don't do that if they defer to an agency's view.

It's, that's, that's quite astonishing in a number of ways. It's noteworthy they didn't decide on the constitutional. It's also surprising that they would find that authority for them to undo Chevron in an almost 80 year old statute that has never been understood that way. It's never understood. that way.

And it's a little bit reminiscent, a couple of years ago, the court created something called the [01:28:00] Major Questions Doctrine, where it said that if an agency is making a decision of great economic and political importance and interpreting the statute to allow it to address an issue of that magnitude, um, Congress needs to have spoken really clearly, super clearly.

before the agency is allowed to address that kind of an issue. And the court said, we really think that if a statute's been around a long time and the agency has never exercised this authority, that's really a sign that it doesn't exist. Well, one could say that about the Administrative Procedure Act and the Loper Bright case.

This is a statute that's been around, again, for over 80 years. Nobody has understood, or almost 80 years, nobody has understood the statute this way. And it doesn't have to be. Understood that way. A court can decide a question of law about a statute's meaning and still give deference. It's still deciding that whatever the agency did fits within the broad parameters of the statute.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: [01:29:00] So this actually comes up at oral argument in January, where the solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogger, starts to warn the justices that if they overturn Chevron, and let's be clear, this is like Dobbs, that we've had lower court reliance on Chevron for a really long time, and what she warned at the time was that throwing it out could lead to having to reconsider a whole panoply of other cases.

As she said at the time, there's about 80 cases out there that need to be challenged if you're going to do away with Chevron. And we got a lot of like, they're there, but in practice, what was she suggesting is going to happen?

LISA HEINZERLING: Well, that's exactly right. There are, as like you say, approximately 70, 80 cases at the Supreme Court level.

That we need to think about. Are those still good law? And the court says, Well, we're not disturbing those cases because those cases will still be respected as precedent. But this is in [01:30:00] the middle of disrespecting the precedent that underlies them all, right? So there's a certain degree of like, really sort of, uh, do you mean it kind of attitude that that might inspire.

In other words, it's hard for them really to tell us to bank on stare decisis, which is the principle that you stay with precedent unless there's really good reason not to, that bank on that principle, um, in a case that is disrespecting that principle. Right. Also, the Supreme Court is only talking about, in those paragraphs, where it's saying, don't worry, this doesn't touch our decisions, well, okay, there are thousands of decisions in the lower courts that are relied on Chevron.

What happens to them? It will be up to the lower courts to decide whether to stay with them. And they might not. I mean, how solid can they be in sticking with their own precedent when the Supreme Court has abandoned its own precedent? So, that's a [01:31:00] big worry. I'll say even further, if I may, there's another context that I think is very much undermined Loeb or Bright.

In addition to the principle that courts are supposed to defer to agencies interpretations of statutes that they implement that are passed by Congress, there's also a principle that courts defer to agencies interpretations of their own regulations. It's a principle called Our deference, A U E R, if you want to imagine the case, that's the case, one of the cases it came from.

And I think that the lower propriet decision really undermines the basis for that kind of deference as well. So, because given the theory of the Administrative Procedure Act that the Chief Justice is working with, that reviewing courts decide all questions of law, That would equally undermine the principle of [01:32:00] deference to agencies interpretations of their regulations.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: Yeah, this is a piece of it that I think, uh, slid out in the initial reaction to Loeb or Bright, which is this is not just doing violence to Congress's ability to regulate. This does violence to the Agencies. I mean, it's really a kind of one two punch because it's irrigating power, both that is conferred upon Congress and that is conferred upon the agencies.

And that's a really good way of explaining it, that it sort of leaves open that the courts can just, you know, kind of push it. Pick through both statutes and agency interpretations of statutes. And really in, in both senses, the court is like, we're the decider, right? I mean, this is a huge, huge irrigation of powers that are conferred in other directions.

Opinionpalooza This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought Part 3 - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 7-13-24

LISA HEINZERLING: So, there are deadlines for filing challenges to agency rules, and statutes can set their own deadlines, but the review that takes place [01:33:00] under the Administrative Procedure Act, which we've heard about quite a lot so far, that statute says you need to file within six years.

of the time the action accrues. And the Supreme Court said that an action accrues not when the action becomes final, not when an agency issues a final rule, it's effective, and then you have six years to file a challenge. That's the approach taken by all the lower courts, and that's approach that makes some sense so that you can actually have some finality and know after six years, we know the legal status of this rule.

What the Supreme Court said instead is it accrues when a party is first injured by the rule. And in that case, it was a truck stop that was incorporated after the six year statute had passed, but was only injured when it became incorporated. And the court said, you can sue. And that sounds, again, may sound kind of arcane, maybe even a little dull.

It's hugely important. Why? Because the court has just [01:34:00] fundamentally changed the way courts must review agencies understanding of their own laws. And it said, and by the way, if you're newly injured, you can sue at any time, as long as it's within six years of your injury. So you can, as in court or post, incorporate a new company, for example, and then say, hey, we're injured now, and so we want to sue.

In those cases, it's just hard to imagine a court with a new lawsuit applying Chevron And so apply the new interpretive principle that the court has come up with in Loper Bright. And so even now, I know that industry lawyers are combing through the federal registers, that is the sort of daily newspaper, if you will, of the federal government with all the rules and announcements of rules in it.

They're combing through that. Going back probably decades to find rules [01:35:00] that they either didn't challenge because they thought they'd lose under Chevron or did challenge and the agency won under Chevron and thinking, you know what, we can file new challenges.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: How does that impact things like the MIFA Pristone decision?

Uh, well, there was no decision. They decided at the end of the day to not decide. But how does this changing of the statute of limitations affect MIFI?

LISA HEINZERLING: It's so interesting and troubling because in the Myth of Pristone case, as you know, the anti abortion parties had challenged even the original 2000 approval of Myth of Pristone.

And the only reason that didn't get brought up to the Supreme Court or wasn't an issue at that time is the Fifth Circuit said, no, you're out of time. It's way past the statute of limitations for that challenge. Well, it's not anymore, right? It's not anymore after Corner Post. And the same law firm that represented the [01:36:00] little truck stop in Corner Post has represented parties in cases involving reproductive rights.

And so I don't think There's any chance that they didn't know the relationship between those two cases, and I'll be surprised if there isn't a fresh challenge to that original approval of Mithra Pristone in the case that the court can cite in accepting it as corner post.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: You know, Justice Kagan has been sounding the alarm about what's going to happen to Chevron and the kind of hungry, hungry hippos approach to admin law.

In Loper Bright, Justice Kagan writes, quote, In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue, no matter how expertise driven or policy laden involving the meaning of regulatory aid. law. And then I think in the sort of gut punch sentence, she adds, as if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country's administrative czar.

And I always, in my head, I hear [01:37:00] the echo of Kagan writing in a 2019 case, where she really warned us that if this incredibly narrow view of agency authority were to be allowed to prevail. She wrote, quote, Most of government is unconstitutional. Can you sort of tie together this theme of judges as kind of free range administrative czars?

We saw it in the Ohio EPA case. We saw it, I think, in the Bumpstock case. You know, we're seeing it in the Mifflin Pristone case. All right. And all of these cases, you know, we mentioned jarcossi, we mentioned the Clean Air Act case from two years ago, Clean Water Act case from last year. It feels to me, and this goes back to your very first point, that if agencies have both the ability to be replaced electorally, right, that's the idea that if you hate what the EPA is doing, you can vote them out, but [01:38:00] also they have expertise and they can act nimbly.

And that, as you said at the very beginning, Lisa, they have to explain themselves. Now it just feels like this term in the aggregate is just a huge invitation for not just endless, infinite litigation, but endless, infinite judicial sort of supplanting. of information, of knowledge, of expertise, of science with kind of their own feelings and that that only ratchets in one way.

LISA HEINZERLING: Yes, that last part about ratcheting in one way is really important because Chevron itself could go both ways. It became more deregulatory in its later years, but it could mean that a president of either party could Really make a mark in terms of regulatory policy and their own, um, political agenda of either party.

Right. But today, the [01:39:00] combination of the courts being in charge and the courts being motivated by really an anti government That, that kind of theme and mood runs through these cases, this distaste of the so called bureaucrats, this distaste of the agencies, and underlying it less explicitly acknowledged but also true of this distaste of Congress.

So that they are really putting themselves in charge and putting themselves in charge not only citing some words in the APA or the Constitution for this proposition or this Power grab, but also really sending a signal with their attitude towards government. They don't like government very much, it seems.

They really are creating chaos in some of these decisions, but not allowing anybody to create order.

Just Decide the EMTALA Case Already, You Cowards Part 2 - Boom! Lawyered - Air Date 6-27-24

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: So it's another procedural ruling on [01:40:00] a big marquee abortion rights case that the court took up and then decided, You know what?

No, maybe we shouldn't be here right now, right? I think that's something. So while it's a procedural ruling, The court did give some pretty big hints as to how it's thinking about this issue of state abortion bans and their relationship to federal law, right? Let's start with the bright spots for a change on this podcast.

We're going to start with the good. That's Justice Jackson.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Justice Jackson did not come to play. No, she, she knows what's going on. Like she knows that she is, I can tell, I can tell I'm a black woman. She's a black woman. We have meetings that she knows that she is part of a corrupt body and she is writing opinions as if.

She's writing them for the future, right? She's writing them for justices in the future. So they will know what happened during this, whatever we're going to end up [01:41:00] calling this era, this period of time in the Supreme court. And so she called them out, right? She called them out. Basically she called them all bitch asses, right?

Like she agreed with, with Kagan and with Sotomayor about the fact that she, she agreed with them on the sort of the merits of it, but she wrote a separate opinion saying, I agree with them. But also we should not be dismissing this case as improvidently granted because quite, quite frankly, it was providently granted, right?

All of the issues have been laid out. All of the people have made their arguments. There are pregnant people who are still, still suffering as a result of this law and will continue to suffer as a result of this law as other states start passing laws that bring MTALA and their state abortion bans into conflict.

And she's absolutely right. And I want to read. A little bit of what she wrote. Yes, please do. So to be clear, today's decision is not a victory for [01:42:00] pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay. While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.

This court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty. To this tragic situation and we have squandered it. And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas, and elsewhere will be paying the price because we owe them and the nation and answer to the straightforward preemption question presented in these cases, I respectfully dissent, boom, that's a whole word.

That is, that is, that's what we Black folks like to call a read.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: It's amazing. And she's honestly emerging as one of the strongest writers on the court by far. I [01:43:00] mean, she's really giving Kagan a run for her money there. And I think, Not only is it clear, and I love that she brings Texas into this, and we'll talk about why that matters in a minute, but because not only is it so clear, but there's also such clear subtext in the passage that you just shared, because this delay and this dawdle is is an election ploy, right?

What we have is a Roberts court that has pivoted to full Trump campaign mode by the end of its term, if it wasn't already there in the beginning. And this is a coward's decision, right? Because if we do end up in a Trump administration, then As I have been sharing with Imani, we're gonna get a Department of Life.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: God, I hate when you say that. I'm

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: so sorry. It's not

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: my phrase. I know, but I, but you keep saying it at me. I know. You keep typing it in Slack at me. I'm so sorry for that.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: I'm so [01:44:00] sorry for that, but we need to look. Like, we need to look at what is a possibility pretty squarely in the face, and a Department of Life means an end to this particular EMTALA fight because it's full steam ahead into fetal personhood.

It is full steam ahead in letting states enforce abortion bans that have zero exceptions whatsoever.

IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Yeah. Yeah. And then there's Sammy the Leak Alito. There is. I really, I, I've been sort of apoplectic over the past 24 hours as I read the leaked opinion yesterday at how much this man is a liar. Yes. And if there's one thing that you should remember from this particular decision, it's that Sam Alito is willing to rewrite a statute to suit his agenda.

And that is concerning in myriad ways, right? Here's what he wrote. The government's preemption theory is plainly unsound. Far from requiring hospitals to perform [01:45:00] abortion abortions. Emtala's text unambiguously demands that Medicare funded hospitals protect the health of both a pregnant woman and. Her unborn child.

That's not true. And that's not just me being like, Oh no, you can interpret the statute a bunch of different ways. And I don't think it's true. No, it is a blatant lie because the statute doesn't say that Medicare funded hospitals are supposed to protect the health of a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

It says Or her unborn child, or, and, and are two different words. I don't know. Did you know that? That or and and are two different words. They are. So here's, and here's why it's a problem. Because the statute EMTALA was amended to add this provision requiring pregnant people in labor to be given stabilizing treatment, even if they themselves don't need the treatment, but their fetus does.

Yes. Because hospitals were dumping pregnant patients out on the street because their [01:46:00] lives weren't in danger, but maybe their fetuses lives wasn't. They didn't want to have to deal with that. With paying for all of that, it's expensive. They didn't wanna do, they were dumping pregnant patients just as Idaho has been dumping pregnant patients all year.

So this idea that the statute is supposed to protect both the pregnant woman and her unborn child is not born out by the statutes plain text norby the amendments, norby any of the legislative lead up to this statute. It is a lie and frankly. And later in his dissent, he actually, he actually relays what the statute actually says.

He relays that it says, uh, or her, excuse me, or her unborn child. He says that, but then later says, Oh, but it's an unambiguous that it's and her unborn child. So I just really, I just really want people to know that you cannot trust this man as far as you can throw him.

JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: No, and he's breadcrumbing, right?

Because, and we'll talk about the Texas decision too, the, that misread of the statute that you just described is the read [01:47:00] of the statute that the Texas District Court in Fifth Circuit is trying to emplace on Mtala. Bingo. Thank you. Please talk more about that. Well, I mean, it's what Sam Alito does. I mean, what he does is campaign from the bench, right?

And he uses judicial opinions, majority or dissent to call out for the conservative legal movement, what the next case should be, how it should be framed, and functionally how to get at least five votes. And to your point, you know, he is merging amendments to the statute and a sleight of hand to the statutory text and just privileging a read that gets to his political agenda

SECTION B: PROJECT 2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: Project 2025.

What is Project 2025 Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-11-24

NOEL: Okay. Now, it's worth noting that the Trump campaign could decide it doesn't want to do any of this. Right. So there's, there's nothing saying Donald Trump, if he were to be [01:48:00] elected president, has got to carry out this plan. When you talk to people inside of the campaign, do they want to carry out this plan?

SHELBY TALCOTT: I think it depends on who you talk to, honestly.

NOEL: Huh.

SHELBY TALCOTT: And what's notable is there was a slew of reports that came out earlier this year and, and towards the end of last year about, you know, Donald Trump's plans if he went into office again and they used a lot of people from these groups and from Project 2025, and the campaign very quickly came out and issued a pretty strict statement saying, we're appreciative of everything that Project 2025 and these other groups are doing, but they don't speak for the campaign. Donald Trump and the campaign speak for us. And these initiatives, if they come from Project 2025, are not coming from Donald Trump. And so I think that's notable. But I also do think it's important to remember that there are a lot of [01:49:00] former Trump officials involved in Heritage Foundation in general and in Project 2025. And last time around, Donald Trump used so much of their policy proposals. And a lot of these policy proposals that they're putting forth are pretty common policies and pretty popular within the conservative movement. So I would expect at the end of the day that Donald Trump uses this project in some form or another.

NOEL: Alright, so Shelby, how and when did the Biden campaign start responding to news of Project 2025?

SHELBY TALCOTT: They really took notice of it just a few months ago..,

SCORING IN <The Neck [Harpsichord Stomp]>

They started seeing videos coming out about the project and denouncing the project.

<CLIP>

thedevilsdaughter162: What’s Project 2025? It’s a nightmare. That’s all I can say. It is an absolute nightmare.

<CLIP>

caseyincontext: Anytime someone posts a video about Biden potentially losing in 2024, the top comment is always [01:50:00] about Project 2025.

<CLIP>

heathergtv: Welcome to part two of our series Project 2025: How Democracy Dies!

SHELBY TALCOTT: And so they saw that and thought, well, this is perfect. And that's when they started putting out their own videos, going after the project, highlighting the project.

<CLIP>

bidenhq: It’s all a part of their Project 2025 agenda, which is a set of extreme policy plans that they have for a second Trump term: things like banning the distribution of abortion medication, declaring that marriage doesn’t apply to same-sex couples, and undoing the historic progress that President Biden has done fighting climate change and forgiving student debt.

SHELBY TALCOTT: And it's interesting. There's TikToks sort of doing explainers. They have a TikTok where AOC is speaking about Project 2025.

<CLIP>

AOC: This is exactly what Republicans have been going for. You have the Heritage Foundation, you have lots of folks, who are on record…

SHELBY TALCOTT: Of course, that's notable because AOC is one of the younger lawmakers who often appeals to younger voters. And she has also [01:51:00] been critical of Joe Biden in the past.

<CLIP>

AOC: Not only do they want to go after abortion, not only do they want to go after reproductive freedom, they’re going after IVF, they’re going after contraception…

SHELBY TALCOTT: And so having her come out and talk about it and putting that video up on TikTok is notable. And I'm told that those TikToks are some of their best performing videos as well. So it is resonating with that sect of voters that, quite frankly, they've been struggling with in the polls.

SCORING OUT

NOEL: Okay. So the Heritage Foundation, this is not unprecedented, they ordinarily do have some sort of guidelines, things the Heritage Foundation would like you to do if you're elected president. Are you surprised this election cycle that this is getting so much attention?

SHELBY TALCOTT: I think I am a little bit surprised just because, again, it's such a dense DC type thing, right? 800 plus [01:52:00] pages. But for whatever reason, I think in part because of the drastic changes that this project is hoping to implement, it has really resonated with a group of voters that in a way I, I'm not sure it would have in years past.

NOEL: Lemme ask you about something I think when I skim these 800 plus pages. Donald Trump, during his first term, used to talk a lot about the deep state.

<CLIP>

Trump: Unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself.

NOEL: And people say, well, the deep state is just experts who are already in DC and they know what they're doing. I gather that the Heritage Foundation probably doesn't call it the Deep State, but does this 800 page book seem to speak at all to Donald Trump's idea that government itself is the problem?

SHELBY TALCOTT: Absolutely. And I think that goes back to [01:53:00] that comment from Paul Dans when I interviewed him a year and a half ago or so, where he said, what fundamentally unites our coalition is deconstructing the administrative state. And I think that goes back to Donald Trump, sort of one of his ultimate goals that he never really could fully do during his first term.

NOEL: So let's say Donald Trump is elected and he decides that he wants to take Project 2025 on full bore, right? He's going to go in on it. How much of this could a Trump White House actually execute, given that we have a Congress that could be split, that could be fully democratic, given that we have a Supreme Court. What do you think? How seriously should we take this?

SHELBY TALCOTT: I think this should be taken really seriously, just in part because it is such a big effort that has been going on for so many years. And because we've seen Donald Trump use Heritage Foundation in the past, and because there's so many former Trump officials [01:54:00] involved in this who still remain close to the former president. Now, the question of how much could actually be implemented, I think, really depends on what they're trying to implement. I do think that they anticipate that some of this will receive pushback, and they are also preparing for that. They're preparing for, you know, sort of potential legal issues and potential legal pushback. They're prepping for a long fight to get what they want done in government.

NOEL: And let me ask you lastly, so Democrats, at least some of them are freaking out about this, on TikTok and elsewhere, in opinion pages, etc. But of course, for Republican voters, this could be very appealing. ‘Hey, we've got a plan. And when we get into office, if you vote us into office, we're going to execute that plan.’

SHELBY TALCOTT: Absolutely. And that's really the ultimate pitch when this whole thing started.

SCORING IN <Meiji de Tokasu - BMC>

‘We're ready, we have the [01:55:00] money, get on board, help us figure all of these policy plans out so that we are never unprepared again, as we were in 2016.’ And so that's been the pitch to Republicans. And these are conservative policies that a lot of conservatives agree on. And of course, on the flip side, Democrats are going to be wildly upset about this. You know, these are policies that they don't agree on. And so we can expect that should Donald Trump take office again and tap Project 2025, that Democrats are going to fight with whatever means that they can to try to make it more difficult for these sorts of policies to be implemented.

What is Project 2025 Part 3 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-11-24

NOEL: SCORING IN <Neutral Irene - BMC>

SHELBY TALCOTT: There are a number of significant proposals. So one of them, they of course talk about abortion restrictions. They include in their policy book a reference to the Comstock Act, which is a long-inactive 19th century law that banned birth control and abortion pills by mail.

<CLIP>

Mary Ziegler: [01:56:00] Conservative groups are arguing that the Comstock Act makes it a crime to mail any abortion-related item…

SHELBY TALCOTT: Broadly, a number of their policies are aimed at expanding presidential powers while shrinking the executive branch. So getting rid of the White House Gender Policy Council, domestic climate policy, getting rid of the clean energy demonstrations in the Energy Department.

<CLIP>

CNN's Jake Tapper: He also would refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs he does not like, and he would remove officials he does not like from intelligence agencies.

SHELBY TALCOTT: So all of these efforts at, as they said, deconstructing the administrative state. There's also a lot in there about immigration. They want much stricter immigration proposals.

<CLIP>

Charlie Kirk: When Trump is president again as the 47th president of the United States, how do we deport 30 million people?

SHELBY TALCOTT: They'd like to bring back a failed effort from Trump to implement a citizenship question on the census. They want to mandate that the DOJ start legal action against local [01:57:00] officials who choose not to prosecute in part because of immigration status. And so there's all these sort of policy agendas that span across really every aspect of what conservatives are interested in.

<CLIP>

Ali Velshi: The radical plan calls for defunding the Department of Justice, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. It also aims to consolidate power by placing agencies like the Federal Communications Commission under direct presidential control.

SHELBY TALCOTT: And the last part of this that I would pull out as notable is, of course, their social policies. They talk a lot about getting rid of DEI. They want to stamp it out.

<CLIP>

Mike Gonzalez: The American people are waking up to this threat that DEI poses to our freedoms, to our way of life, to our peace of mind…

SHELBY TALCOTT: They talk a lot about anti-wokeness, critical race theory, gender ideologies in schools.

<CLIP>

Donald J. Trump: On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, [01:58:00] transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.

SHELBY TALCOTT: And so these are sort of just some of the overarching policies that this massive book is, and I do mean massive, is focused on.

SCORING OUT

NOEL: Okay. So 800 pages of policy ideas. One American president that they want to carry them out. Who's helping? Who, who are the people that would be involved in implementing Project 2025?

SHELBY TALCOTT: That is their second pillar. And that was sort of what they really first started working on was this LinkedIn for conservatives. But the goal is they'll have a number, 10,000-plus staffers that have been vetted by the Heritage Foundation, by Project 2025, that they can then hand to the Trump administration and say, these staffers are good [01:59:00] to go if you want to hire any of them. In addition to this LinkedIn for conservatives, they're giving the approved staffers the option of either online training, or if they're more advanced, in-person training on everything from the basics of governments to teaching them how to make sure that they can get into office and implement the plans that conservatives want.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: What we’re doing is systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.

SHELBY TALCOTT: When I talked to the leaders who are heading up this project, and when I spoke to Heritage Foundation on a number of occasions, they've always been quick to say this is in part because we were unprepared after Trump's 2016 win, conservatives did not expect him to [02:00:00] win. The country really didn't expect him to win. And so Donald Trump came into office and there wasn't really any sort of platform to help him.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: President Trump was an outsider. This is a very insular city. So it’s not going to be welcoming to outsiders. Outsiders have to come into this place prepared and know what the game is.

SHELBY TALCOTT: And so they've essentially said that they've taken a playbook out of Democrats’ past plans.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: We take a lot of exception with, with Joe Biden but the one thing I do credit his team with was being prepared. So they were signing things all week long the first week and we are going to be doing the same.

NOEL: And so the idea is day one, we've got our people. Our people are trained. Nothing in government ever works within the first 24 hours though, right? So like these, these are big policy proposals. How are they going to get done quickly?

SHELBY TALCOTT: Of course. I think the plan is some of them are going to be, right, executive orders that presumably the president could sign on day one, on the first week, on the first [02:01:00] month…

<CLIP>

Donald J. Trump: We love this guy. He says, ‘you’re not gonna be a dictator, are ya?’ I said, ‘no, no, no, other than day one.’

SHELBY TALCOTT: …but others are going to be guidance and regulations that presumably could be implemented within the first 180 days of Donald Trump's presidency.

NOEL: And is there any other kind of worldview behind this, underpinning this?

SHELBY TALCOTT: You know, as I was reading through, one of the things that stood out to me was a sort of summary from the head of the Heritage Foundation, and he noted that the authors of this book have broad consensus over four sort of pillars. And the first is restoring, – and I'm reading this as a quote – restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children's children. The second is, as we've talked about, dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people. The third, defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats. And the fourth is [02:02:00] to secure our God-given individual rights to live freely, what our Constitution calls the blessings of liberty. And so I think, if you read those four, you get a sense of the sort of religious undertones that are also making up a lot of these policies and a lot of this book.

<CLIP>

Paul Dans: I think of conservatives as focused on God, country, and family, not government. But progressives spend 24 hours a day redesigning government. Now we see that government is directed against God, directed against family, directed against this country. So it is our charge now to get back and take over the government.

SECTION C: POLITICAL VIOLENCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up, one clip in section C: political violence.

Long Legacy of U.S. Political Violence- RNC Begins in Milwaukee After Trump Assassination Attempt - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-15-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, if you can respond first to the attempted assassination of President Trump?

JOHN NICHOLS: It’s horrible. Look, political violence, when it occurs in any country at any time, is an awful thing. [02:03:00] And when it is in the context of a campaign, this has a real impact, because it causes people to question whether they might go to a campaign event — right? — whether they might participate in the democratic process. So, no matter what you think about Trump, no matter what you think about Biden or any of this, to have an incident like this occur at a campaign rally is a big deal. It’s a big deal for this country.

By the same token, I would tell you it’s not the first. This is very much something that we have seen really throughout our modern history and going backward. We’ve had four presidents assassinated, killed in office.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Name them.

JOHN NICHOLS: What?

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Name them, if you can.

JOHN NICHOLS: I certainly can. Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John Kennedy, killed while serving as president. We have had a prominent presidential candidate killed at a campaign event where he accepted his victory in the California primary in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy. We [02:04:00] have had major candidates killed or harmed in other settings. We have had candidates for president badly injured. George Wallace was shot on the campaign trail in Maryland in 1972, permanently paralyzed. And in this city, in this city of Milwaukee, in 1912, October 14th, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, the former president of the United States, was shot in the chest as he was coming out to campaign and deliver a speech, literally in one of the buildings adjacent to where this convention will be held.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In fact, where the Hyatt is right now, where we got our press credentials.

JOHN NICHOLS: That’s where he was shot.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That’s the new building that replaces the old hotel where he was speaking.

JOHN NICHOLS: That’s precisely right. And —

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: But he gave the speech anyway.

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah, it was a fascinating speech. In fact, I went back and read it over the weekend, because it was such an amazing moment. Remember, Roosevelt is a former president of the United States. He had already displaced the Republican Party. [02:05:00] They didn’t nominate him for another term, and so he was running as a third-party candidate. It was a very intense campaign. And he knew that Wisconsin was a big state for him.

And so, literally, he assessed himself. He knew he had been shot in the chest muscle, but he had had a 50-page speech folded three times in his pocket along with a glasses case. The bullet went through the speech, hit the case and then lodged in his chest muscle. He determined that he could make it through. He wasn’t coughing up blood, as he said. So he went and gave a 90-minute speech. And incredibly, it was about the incident. And he talked about violence. He talked about political violence. And what he said at the end of the speech was that, as a country, we have to learn to get over economic and social divisions so that we don’t have more incidents like this. It was really quite a remarkable moment.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I mean, he was a hunter, so he knew [02:06:00] biology well and said, “No, it’s not in my heart or my lungs.” And he had that bullet in him for the rest of his life.

JOHN NICHOLS: Rest of his life. He made it through a 90-minute speech, though. And if you read the speech, it’s chilling, because he literally said to the people, “Look, I’ve been shot. But, I want you to understand, that doesn’t mean a thing to me.” He was a tough guy. He was a strong character.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: “Bull Moose.”

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah. He said — in fact, that’s where — “A bullet doesn’t take down a bull moose.” But what he said was fascinating, because he says, “It doesn’t mean a thing to me because of the importance of what we’re talking about for this country and the importance of getting beyond violence, getting beyond the divisions in this country.” Remember, Roosevelt was running that year to the left of the Democrats and the Republicans in order to create what he referred to as a new nationalism, which was an effort to actually begin to address a lot of the economic inequality in the country.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And ultimately, though, Teddy Roosevelt did not win that campaign.

JOHN NICHOLS: No, he did not. And nor was George Wallace, who was shot on the campaign trail. It’s a very interesting thing. There is a tendency after a shooting like this to [02:07:00] assume it’s going to have a huge political impact — and it may. I’m not dismissing that. But what I will tell you is that there’s history that suggests that the country is horrified, the country reacts with sympathy, but it doesn’t necessarily say, “Oh, well, we have to elect this wounded warrior or this wounded candidate.”

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And interestingly, Teddy Roosevelt had replaced McKinley, who was assassinated when he did become president.

JOHN NICHOLS: Who was killed, absolutely. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt was one of those — it was a remarkable story there, because he was assassinated — McKinley, his predecessor, was assassinated shortly after becoming the president in the second term. And so, Roosevelt ended up almost with two full terms as president because of an assassination. And again, this is one of the things I think people need to understand. It is not a good thing. It is a deep tragedy. It is a horrific reality that assassinations, political assassinations, and attempts have been a [02:08:00] part of our history.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to read to you another columnist, Juan Cole, a piece that he wrote, the headline, “From 'Hang Mike Pence' to 'Paul Pelosi Hammered' to 'Shooting Trump' — Political Violence Is Deadly to Democracy.” He writes, “American politics has entered the most dangerous phase of its nearly 250-year existence. …

“Although the Right is blaming the political left for the violence, saying that its meme that Trump has dictatorial tendencies is responsible, the fact is that he did try to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, and some of his acolytes, at least, brought guns and ammunition to Washington, D.C, for the purpose, including the Proud Boys. It seems clear that the lives of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and others in the Capitol had been in danger that day, had security not whisked them to safety.

“The mob called into being by Donald J. Trump chanted 'Hang Mike Pence,' which was a call for an assassination. Insiders have reported that Trump expressed support for the sentiment.

[02:09:00] “As it was, a deranged follower of Trump came looking for Pelosi at her house in San Francisco and tried to kill her husband Paul with a hammer when he found she wasn’t there.”

And, of course, Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., mocked Paul Pelosi, as, ultimately, President Trump — President Trump has continually made fun of Pelosi around this.

JOHN NICHOLS: Mm-hmm. Look, I think the thing to understand is that after an incident like this, there’s often an effort to point fingers of blame, say, you know, that something Joe Biden said or something the Democrats said caused this to happen, and vice versa, right? This is the nature of our politics.

But one of the things that I think is important to understand is, we’re still very early in an investigation into what certainly looks like a security meltdown at that rally. Right? We don’t know what this young man was thinking. We don’t know much [02:10:00] about him. We’re starting to get a little bit of it. And so, I think it is the height of irresponsibility to try and say, “Oh, something somebody said caused this to happen.”

The much better response — and frankly, I’ll remind you that we’ve been through moments like this before. 1968, you saw Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in April, you saw Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in June. Imagine that moment that we were in. And you saw people — liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans — basically saying, “Hey, let’s try and chill this out. Let’s try and calm this down.” And I think that’s the right place to go.

What I will counsel, though, is, we are in a very charged moment. You just read through a list of realities of our moment, things that have been said, things that have been done. I remember on January 6th, I was in Madison — right? — and watching that, you know, those events play out. And you do, you know, say, “Where are we at?” I remember that chill of, like, “Wow! What is going on here?” And I think a lot of Americans [02:11:00] have been through that. In a sense, we have been through three years, or longer, maybe even 10 years, of incredible turbulence in our politics. This is an unstable period. And if we pause and think about that, you know, we ought to be careful about who we blame.

But this is one last thing I’ll say on this that I think is important, and that is that my sense is that the individual, the candidate, who can pull us back from this, who can actually say — as I think Biden tried to do last night — can say, “Hey, this isn’t who we want to be. This isn’t where we want to go,” has a real potential to connect with people, because I think people are feeling overwhelmed by the moment they’re in.

SECTION D: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, section D: Christian nationalism.

Project 2025 would allow Trump to target his enemies through the judicial system Part 3 - The ReidOut - Air Date 7-10-24

PHOEBE PETROVIC: So he comes from the anti abortion movement, the rescue movement of the nineties and, uh, early two thousands where people were blockading clinics.

Um, and he had, I [02:12:00] would say an international reputation, certainly a national reputation for that anti abortion militant, uh, militantism back, uh, Several decades ago, um, in 2013, he wrote a book taking up the 16th century Protestant doctrine and using it to argue, as you said, that government officials today in America have a God given right and duty to defy law, policy, court opinion, um, that they believe violates God's law.

Um, and since that book came out, the rise of the tea party, um, the rise of Trump and MAGA. Uh, he has been increasingly embraced by Republicans on the right from school board members to county commissioners, state lawmakers, governors, all the way up to former Trump officials and pastor Trella's goal. It's really important to note, um, is that he wants a theocracy and he wants a very particular type of theocracy under a strict interpretation of his interpretation of, uh, uh, biblical law that emphasizes [02:13:00] the Old Testament.

And so, as you said, death penalty for LGBTQ people. Um, and he tones down his message when he comes and talks to local county groups, county Republican parties, and he is not as extreme as he is in his writings, um, or in his church services on Sundays. And

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: he also doesn't believe women should be in politics at all, that women should simply, uh, be in the home and they shouldn't, uh, he sort of got a Taliban view of women.

Yeah.

GUEST 7: Women in government, to him, is sickening and perverse. Those are both quotes, almost as sickening and perverse as sitting under the headship of a female pastor. Um, and so when I started reporting the story, people were posting my screenshot or screenshots of my headshot saying, quote unquote, matriarchal hell, um, because I was a woman reporting the story.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Of course. I'll note that ProPublica, you're in your reporting. You've talked about former President Trump's National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, the one who got busted by the FBI messing with the Russians. He's praised Trujillo's book several times, extolling it [02:14:00] as a masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully reduce tyranny.

Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer, cited Trujillo's work as a solution to government overreach in her 2015 book calling for a biblical interpretation of the Constitution The polling is very clear. Republicans believe that the Bible should have a fulsome influence on the laws of the United States.

Two thirds of Republicans believe that. They think 33 percent a great deal. Some Democrats do not believe that. There's a sharp divide here. So this has become part of the mantra of the party, right? What he thinks is fairly normal in the Republican Party now.

GUEST 7: Well, I spoke to people, um, Republicans who were around in the nineties and two thousands for this story to get a sense of what.

What his reputation was back then, and some of them said, No way. Why are you reporting this story now? There's no reason you should be doing this. This guy sounds very fringe. And I would say to them, Waukesha County Republican Party has hosted Torello twice where he has talked about succession [02:15:00] openly and they post his book on their website and promote it.

And it says very clearly that the laws of the nation should reflect the laws of God. Um, and so, you know, Waukesha County is the heart of Republican politics in a very important electoral state in Wisconsin. Um, and so, uh, I think this reflects the sort of larger fracturing and infighting we see in the Republican party where there are MAGA folks and people who are openly embracing Christian nationalism and other folks saying that that doesn't quite mean what is, that's not quite what conservatism really means.

Um, but certainly he is far more mainstream than extremism researchers who started tracking him 30 years ago ever thought possible.

Is This the End of The Separation of Church & State - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 7-1-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Louisiana. The governor of Louisiana just signed legislation yesterday or the day before, I believe it was yesterday, that, um, requires every classroom in Louisiana to have a piece of paper that is in large enough type that every student can read it from their desk [02:16:00] that starts out, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto themselves any graven images. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. What does this have to do with American law? There are only two things in the Ten Commandments that are at law in the United States. Don't kill.

Don't steal. That's it. That's it. You can even covet your neighbor's wife. I mean, you know, look at this. Donald Trump has done it his whole entire life. It's not illegal any longer in the United States. So it's not like, Here's the 10 rules for, for, you know, being a good citizen. These are the 10 rules for being a good, well, originally a good Jew.

And then, you know, now today, a good Christian and I believe a good Muslim. I I'm not sure, but I, I believe so. Well, we'll find out when we talk to Dean Obeidallah today. And back in 1971 in Lemon versus [02:17:00] Kurtzman, the Supreme court said it was unconstitutional for the government to pay teachers in private religious schools in that they were, they were just.

You know, parroting, uh, James Madison's 1811 veto. Um, the court also applied what it called the Lemon Test. Government action has to have a, quote, secular legislative purpose. In other words, government can't do things for religion. And, uh, but here's Jeff Landry, the Republican governor down in Mississippi, or Louisiana.

He says, if you want to respect the law, you got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses. Well, you know, Moses, uh, it, it, it was not one of the founding fathers. And, uh, Landry says he can't, you know, he wants to be sued. He wants this case to go to the Supreme Court. See, the Kentucky case in 1980, uh, that was a 5 4 decision.

that schools can't publish, can't post the 10 commandments and you can't have public prayer. [02:18:00] But, um, the Supreme Court overturned that in 2022 to a large extent in that case of the coach, the coach who had his team praying on the 50 yard line. Remember? And the Supreme Court said, well, it's not coercive, so he can do it, which was nonsense.

As as the coaches, students would tell you. Um, so what we've got now is, you know, a bunch of people on the politicians on the Supreme Court who are hell bent on imposing their their Catholicism. Actually, I mean, they're all Catholics on all the rest of us, and I just find it terrible.

Why Trump Is Partnering With Christian Nationalists - Robert Reich - Air Date 6-25-24

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Donald Trump is portraying himself as a religious savior. He says election day will be Christian Visibility Day. Trump has repeatedly compared his criminal trials to the crucifixion of Jesus, promoted videos calling his re election, quote, the most important moment in human history, and that describe him as a divinely appointed ruler.

A shepherd to mankind who won't ever [02:19:00] leave nor forsake them. So God made Trump. He claims, to be a holy warrior against an imaginary attack on Christianity.

DONALD TRUMP: They want to tear down crosses, but no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you. He's even selling his own version of the Bible.

We must make America pray again.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Trump is playing to a rising white, Christian nationalist movement within the Republican Party.

LAUREN BOEBERT: I say it proudly. We should be Christian nationalists.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Christian nationalists believe that the law of the land is not the Constitution. But instead, the law of God, as they interpret it.

Trump supporters are increasingly overt in their calls to replace democracy with a MAGA theocracy.

LAUREN BOEBERT: The church is supposed to direct the government. And I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk.

CLIP: We're meant to be a Christian nation. We should be a Christian nation. Welcome to the end of [02:20:00] democracy.

We're here to overthrow it completely. We didn't get all the way there on January 6th. But we will, we will endeavor. To forget, to get rid of it and

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: replace it with, with this right here. That was a cross he was holding. The idea that the will of voters is irrelevant because God has anointed Trump was a recurring message in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Because

CLIP: it is not Joe Biden that rules this country. Jesus Christ is the king of everything in this world. Christ is king! Christ is king! Christ is king!

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: In previous videos, I've highlighted how MAGA Republicans have embraced core elements of fascism. The combination of fascism and Christian nationalism is called Christofascism, a term first used half a century ago by the theologian Dorothy Zola.

Fascists rise to power by characterizing their opponents as subhuman. Christofascists take it a step further by [02:21:00] casting opponents as not just subhuman, But actually demonic people like

CLIP: Nancy Pelosi, she's a demon.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Framing opponents as enemies of God makes violence against them. Not only seem justifiable.

but divinely sanctioned and almost inevitable.

CLIP: We are going to put on the armor of God.

Then maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us, just in case. When we take power, they need to be given the death penalty. And these people that are suppressing the name Christ. and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Christofascists want to strip away a wide range of rights Americans take for granted.

Former Trump staffers involved in developing plans for a second Trump term have called for imposing biblical tests on immigration, overturning marriage equality, and restricting [02:22:00] contraception. And MAGA aligned judges are already setting their dogma ahead of the Constitution. In his concurring opinion on the case that declared frozen embryos are people, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker cited God more than 40 times and quoted the book of Genesis and other religious texts.

Nothing could be more un American than the Christian nationalist vision. So many of America's founders came here as refugees seeking religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution were adamant that religion had no role in our government. The words God, Jesus, and Christ don't appear anywhere in the Constitution.

And the very first words of the Bill of Rights are a promise that, quote, Congress shall make no law. respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Christofascism, or any [02:23:00] religion based form of government, is a rejection of everything America has aspired to be. A secular, multiracial society, whose inhabitants have come from everywhere, bound together by a faith in equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.

Beware.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Amicus, The Thom Hartmann Program, Boom! Lawyered, Today, Explained, Democracy Now!, The ReidOut, and Robert Reich. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew, for their volunteer [02:24:00] work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today and get 20% off your membership at bestoftheleft.com/support, or through our Patreon page. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. 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.

So, coming to 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 twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

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#1642 A Tumultuous Year of Democracy: Left-Wing victories in the UK, France and Mexico with lessons for the US (Transcript)

Posted by · July 17, 2024 2:30 AM

Air Date 7/12/2024