Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: And Rep.
Speaker 3: Ronnie Jackson, who handed out drugs freely during President Trump's
Speaker 3: White House tenure, is demanding Biden take a drug test
Speaker 3: because shame is not a word in the MAGA dictionary.
Speaker 3: We have such a great show for you today. Senator
Speaker 3: Martin Heinrich stops by to talk to us about what
Speaker 3: he's seeing in New Mexico and how we ban bump stocks.
Speaker 3: Then we'll talk to the acl u's Deirdre Shippling about
Speaker 3: how they are fighting back against some of the worst
Speaker 3: ruins in America. But first we have the host of
Speaker 3: the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. It's Monday, so it's Rick Wilson Day.
Speaker 2: Wally Jong Fast, I am delighted to join you once
Speaker 2: again in this vale of tears, this wood of woe,
Speaker 2: this eternal darkness.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that everyone on the left
Speaker 1: is not happy about is that Donald Trump has closed
Speaker 1: the fundraising gap. My takeaway from this is a little
Speaker 1: bit different, and maybe it's wrong, but you know, yes,
Speaker 1: he's raised a ton of money. But my question is
Speaker 1: he had to spend one hundred million dollars on legal fees,
Speaker 1: So how much of that money And even like RNC
Speaker 1: money where his daughter in law is in charge, isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily going to nuts and bolts campaign stuff, am I right?
Speaker 2: Correct? Look, he has gigantic legal debts. And let's also
Speaker 2: put this in perspective. Fifty million dollars this is from
Speaker 2: one weirdo. Yeah, okay, if teen million dollars is from
Speaker 2: one weird dude. And even though all the CEO types
Speaker 2: are drifting back towards Trump.
Speaker 1: Some are, some aren't. Because remember that Andrew Ross Sorkin
Speaker 1: thing where he said he was in the room with
Speaker 1: them and they were all like, oh, he's completely crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But a lot of them that are writing checks
Speaker 2: are not blowing the doors off. They're writing that consolidated
Speaker 2: maxed out check which is to the campaign, the super
Speaker 2: pac in the RNC of nine hundred and eighty nine
Speaker 2: thousand dollars, which for these guys is rounding error. They
Speaker 2: have that in the cushions of their Gulf Stream six fifties.
Speaker 2: So yes, Trump raised a lot of money. I'm not
Speaker 2: surprised why are people surprised it's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: He's gonna burn through it like a maniac. He has
Speaker 2: gigantic legal bills that are still running at a full
Speaker 2: tilt pace. He's gonna skim off a third of it
Speaker 2: for himself, for his own personal skim. You know. That's
Speaker 2: what happens here, guys, when it goes into Maga Inc.
Speaker 2: Or when it goes into the Trump campaign. If you
Speaker 2: drill through the reports, you're gonna find somewhere in those
Speaker 2: reports like the XYZ Political Development Company in Delaware, which
Speaker 2: is registered to another LLC in Wyoming, which is right
Speaker 2: to another LLC in the Cook Islands. And that's Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's skim. He always takes a cut. He's taking. I
Speaker 2: will bet you a third of that money that comes
Speaker 2: out of this deal will go to Trump personally. It
Speaker 2: will not be spent in the campaign at all.
Speaker 1: Right, A lot of it will be spent at his
Speaker 1: golf clubs and his right I mean, they'll be a
Speaker 1: fair amount of that, but.
Speaker 2: It will also a lot of it will just go
Speaker 2: to him personally. They are skimming money out of the
Speaker 2: campaign at a grotesque pace. The second part of this
Speaker 2: is they've been hand to mouthing now for six months.
Speaker 1: And Jesse pointed out that three million dollars of Trump
Speaker 1: money earlier in June went to a mysterious company with
Speaker 1: the post office box in North Carolina not registered in
Speaker 1: the state.
Speaker 2: Sorry, go on, Oh really, and oddly, Laura Trump is
Speaker 2: from North Carolina. One, what a strange coincidence.
Speaker 1: I mean, why assume criminality just because the guy has
Speaker 1: all the criminal exposure.
Speaker 2: Just because he's a criminal surrounded by criminals who crimes
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean just because of the crimes of don't
Speaker 1: assume criminality continue? Yes, yes, sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 2: They are also about six months behind on actually doing
Speaker 2: the workout in the States. They haven't been average, they
Speaker 2: haven't been organizing. Biden is way ahead of that. He's
Speaker 2: been spending and investing the money. And look, who thought
Speaker 2: this wasn't gonna happen. Trump always raises a lot of
Speaker 2: money from his MAGA base when he's in trouble. And
Speaker 2: he's in trouble. He's about to go get sentenced for
Speaker 2: his thirty four felony convictions in about two weeks, rip
Speaker 2: pour one out. Steve Bannon will not be there to
Speaker 2: host the war room defending Donald Trump. The day Trump
Speaker 2: is convicted and sentenced, because he will be serving in
Speaker 2: a federal prison.
Speaker 1: Ourp scabby Steve Steve Bannon went up to hire the
Speaker 1: DC Court of Appeals. They turned it down, everyone except
Speaker 1: the Trump appointee. So Nasty Bannon really is going to jail.
Speaker 2: He is really going to jail. That was apparently the
Speaker 2: last stop on this crazy train for Steve Bannon. And
Speaker 2: we've also learned that Steve Bannon will not be going
Speaker 2: to a club fed, he will not be going to
Speaker 2: the soft dorm room style prison because he's also a
Speaker 2: guy facing additional felony.
Speaker 4: Charges in September.
Speaker 2: So we're going to see that I think end very
Speaker 2: very ugly. And look, I'm not saying that I'm going
Speaker 2: to ship contraband to Steve Bannon over and over again
Speaker 2: while he's in prison. I'm not saying that I'm going
Speaker 2: to mail in things like hacksaw blades and say Steve,
Speaker 2: this is what you needed, or that I'm going to
Speaker 2: send him Japanese tentacle porn. But if it happens, I
Speaker 2: will be amused.
Speaker 1: I just read that Steve Banner is going to go
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court, and I don't think you know,
Speaker 1: what we see with Trump is Trump gets away with stuff,
Speaker 1: but his henchmen just to ask Rudy Giuliani how that.
Speaker 4: Goes, that is it.
Speaker 2: I think you're going to see a last ditch Supreme
Speaker 2: Court play. But the reality is the guy is this
Speaker 2: is not an easy case for Steve Bannon to get
Speaker 2: taken up by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: They're not going to take it up. They don't protect
Speaker 1: Trump's people like I mean, if you look at Rudy
Speaker 1: and you look at you know, Trump's people don't get
Speaker 1: the same treatment. You look at the January sixth riders
Speaker 1: and you look at Jenna Alice, and nobody in Trump's
Speaker 1: orbit gets away with it the way Trump gets away
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: That's correct. I go back to this over and over again.
Speaker 2: The number of people who have you not processed the
Speaker 2: fact that when Donald Trump gets sentenced, even if he
Speaker 2: gets house arrest or some sort of parole or some
Speaker 2: sort of modified sentence or a deferred sentence, he will
Speaker 2: not be allowed to associate with felons. That's the rule
Speaker 2: everywhere and everybody around this damn campaign. It's got a
Speaker 2: higher felon to campaign operative ration. Than any campaign I've
Speaker 2: ever seen in history, and I've worked in some Republican campaigns,
Speaker 2: so I can tell you it's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I was on Ari Melbourne Show with
Speaker 1: a parole officer and we were talking about like conditions
Speaker 1: of parole and he put up like a graphic that
Speaker 1: was all of Trump's people, and she's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're really not supposed to have like a gang activity
Speaker 1: when you're on And I thought to myself, like, it
Speaker 1: really is kind of like a gang, like all of
Speaker 1: these people who are chalons. Felantastic, Yes, felantastic. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about this Moody's. So on Friday,
Speaker 1: Moody's analyst showed that Trump is actually the worst possible
Speaker 1: candidate for the economy. Basically, the baseline is that Biden's
Speaker 1: victory will have no effect on inflation, and Trump's victory
Speaker 1: would increase inflation. So the baseline here is two point
Speaker 1: four Biden with the Democratic Congress two point four, Biden
Speaker 1: with a divided Congress two point four, Trump with a
Speaker 1: GOP Congress three point six. Because the theory of the
Speaker 1: case here is that it is very inflationary to do
Speaker 1: the things Trump wants to do, which are tariffs, tax cuts,
Speaker 1: and mass deportation squad so tightening the labor market, making
Speaker 1: things more expensive, and then flooding the economy with you know,
Speaker 1: cheap cash from the tax cut.
Speaker 2: The Moody's piece, if Trump could read, he probably would have,
Speaker 2: you know, issued some raging condemnation of it.
Speaker 1: But those libtards at Moody's.
Speaker 2: For serious people looking at that, there was a I
Speaker 2: think a very clear understanding that the models there that
Speaker 2: they're talking about there for the economy, everything that is
Speaker 2: alleged to be Trump's strength is actually the counter is true.
Speaker 2: The opposite is true. There won't be a sweeping economic
Speaker 2: boom under Trump because the things he wants to do
Speaker 2: will explode in his face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm shocked that someone who's an abject moron who
Speaker 1: knows nothing about anything would be so incredibly bad at stuff.
Speaker 2: On Thursday of last week, he was tweeting about the
Speaker 2: Smoot Holly Act, the Smoot Holly tariffs that made the
Speaker 2: Great Depression into a raging economic bonfire from hell that
Speaker 2: nearly destroyed the American and world economy. None of it
Speaker 2: makes any sense, but it's a reminder that Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: not smart, That Donald Trump is not an intellectual, he's
Speaker 2: not a successful businessman. None of it's real, and it
Speaker 2: just it's crushingly stupid.
Speaker 1: But there are still very rich people who support him.
Speaker 1: Maybe because they think they're going to get a tax cut.
Speaker 2: That's the only reason that they keep supporting him. I
Speaker 2: wrote a piece on my substec last week saying, you know,
Speaker 2: if you were to do if you're a Wall Street
Speaker 2: private equity person or a venture capital person in the
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley and you're going about to invest in somewhere,
Speaker 2: you will do a risk assessment. You will look at
Speaker 2: this investment and say, is this going to have a return?
Speaker 2: What is the risk level to it? Is the risk
Speaker 2: worth the return? And there's absolutely not one area of
Speaker 2: Donald Trump political more financial, regulatory legislative in a second
Speaker 2: term that wins for these people. They're not going to
Speaker 2: get their tax cut, and I'll tell you why. Let's
Speaker 2: just hypothesize from.
Speaker 1: Moments they're going to get their tax cut, but we're
Speaker 1: all going to be on fire.
Speaker 2: There is going to be a democratic House of representatives.
Speaker 2: Right This is a political certitude right now, given the
Speaker 2: current landscape in this country. It will be either a
Speaker 2: majority or a big majority. The Republicans have in the House,
Speaker 2: races are burning alive. The Senate is going to be
Speaker 2: a lot closer and may be a Republican, but it
Speaker 2: will not be a big majority. It will not be
Speaker 2: a healthy majority because they have also screwed the pooch
Speaker 2: and they're also experiencing everything Crump touches dies, and.
Speaker 1: They have really terrible, terrible candidates, shit.
Speaker 2: Tier, horrifyingly bad candidates at a level that we have
Speaker 2: to go back to. Like Christine O'Donnell, I'm not a
Speaker 2: witch to get to that.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you just sidebar who you think the
Speaker 1: worst of these Republicans Senate candidates is.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm starting to think Royce White up there in
Speaker 2: Minnesota might be right up.
Speaker 1: To her.
Speaker 2: One hundred child support. You don't clean that shit up
Speaker 2: before you run. What's wrong with your brain?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I agree? But what about you know we got
Speaker 1: Carrie Lake Part ten thousand.
Speaker 2: I was just about to get to carry Lake. Carrie
Speaker 2: Lake has not shall we say, learned and improved as
Speaker 2: a candidate, and she tried to keep it locked down
Speaker 2: for a few weeks and tried to stop like being
Speaker 2: overtly crazy on air. But you know what it's like,
Speaker 2: Margor Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and Carry Lake and
Speaker 2: Sarah Palin. The crazy always wants to come out. The
Speaker 2: crazy always wants to come out.
Speaker 1: I think Dave McCormick taking his jet from Westport, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: I love that he commutes from Westport to his multimillion
Speaker 2: dollar basically unoped you pied home in Pennsylvania. They use
Speaker 2: that house for parties. They don't keep clothes there. They
Speaker 2: bring suitcases to stay in their supposed residents.
Speaker 1: Obviously, Dave McCormick has wanted to be a Senator from
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania for such a long time. This is his second run.
Speaker 1: He's so rich, Like, just move to fucking Pennsylvania. How
Speaker 1: hard is this?
Speaker 2: There are lovely places to live in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: I mean, or don't run for Senate from there.
Speaker 2: There are extremely pleasant neighborhoods in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: No, No, there's.
Speaker 2: Plenty of beautiful places on the main line.
Speaker 4: That you live.
Speaker 1: Jesse's like New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Karinas, I think it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a terrible candidate. The guy with the
Speaker 1: porn stash Hoofdy who lives in California but commutes to
Speaker 1: Wisconsin to run for Senate.
Speaker 2: You know, look, the idea that people live where they run.
Speaker 2: It used to be something in America, where I believe.
Speaker 2: I've made these ads before, and they used to work.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't we have a senator for Wisconsin who really lives
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin. That's why we're not voting for a carpetbagger
Speaker 2: John Jones. I've made one hundred of those ads, right,
Speaker 2: They used to work, And now, especially for Magas, it's
Speaker 2: like we live in the universal manga nation. I just
Speaker 2: I don't care. As long as he believes that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is golden and his piss smells like a river
Speaker 2: of honey, I will support. They don't care anymore. I
Speaker 2: think it's an affront to a representative democracy if you
Speaker 2: don't live in the state you represent. I can tell
Speaker 2: you one thing. Tommy Tuberville, who could just be confused. Okay,
Speaker 2: he's not smart, he could be confused, but he lives
Speaker 2: and pays taxes on his primary residence, which is homestead exempted,
Speaker 2: which means that's your primary residence at a beautiful house
Speaker 2: on thirty A down here in the Florida Panhandle. He
Speaker 2: literally flies into Pensacola, Florida, and drives to his house
Speaker 2: over in Destin. He doesn't live in Alabama. He doesn't
Speaker 2: own property in Alabama. He doesn't in a home, an apartment,
Speaker 2: a shack, or anything in Alabama. He lives in Florida.
Speaker 2: And yet somehow in this country morons go Oh Tom A.
Speaker 2: Tuberville is the greatest Alabama in the history of Alabama.
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not even clear that Tuberville is a real person.
Speaker 1: Who even knows? Now, I'm just kidding, but he is
Speaker 1: quite stupid, and I think Alabama's probably better for not
Speaker 1: having him live there. Sorry, he really is a Florida man,
Speaker 1: no offense or anything. Oh truly, thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: You are welcome as always. Have a very fine.
Speaker 1: Week spring us here, and I bet you are trying
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Speaker 3: Martin Heinrich is this senior senator from New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics Senator.
Speaker 4: Himer, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: You've come to the Senate with a bump stock band
Speaker 1: after the Supreme Court overruled the Trump bumpstock band. Talk
Speaker 1: to me where we are and just sort of explain
Speaker 1: the craziness of all this. I feel like it's important
Speaker 1: to remember that this Supreme Court is really not normal
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 5: No, I think that's that's a fair description of things.
Speaker 5: I started working on legislation to prohibit bump stocks after
Speaker 5: the Las Vegas shooting. I sat down with Jeff Flake,
Speaker 5: former Republican Senator from Arizona at the time. We drafted
Speaker 5: legislation and introduced it. But we also encouraged the then
Speaker 5: Trump administration to create an ATF rule prohibiting these things
Speaker 5: because they effectively turn a semi automatic firearm into a
Speaker 5: fully automatic firearm, which is something that we've all accepted
Speaker 5: for one hundred years now, has been prohibited under US law.
Speaker 5: So to see the Supreme Court reverse that was pretty shocking.
Speaker 5: And to see so many at my Republican colleagues now
Speaker 5: take that on as if it is normal that we
Speaker 5: would allow fully automatic weapons under the Second Amendment is
Speaker 5: pretty shocking.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was glad to see you guys doing
Speaker 1: this ban right away. Where are we with it?
Speaker 5: Well, we tried to put it on the floor under
Speaker 5: a rule called unanimous consent. It's where you just go
Speaker 5: to the floor you ask unanimous consent to bring up
Speaker 5: a piece of legislation. And so that was objected to
Speaker 5: by one of my Republican colleagues. And now the next
Speaker 5: step is to try to get floor time to put
Speaker 5: it on the floor under the normal procedures, which would
Speaker 5: require sixty votes to overcome up a filibuster.
Speaker 1: Are there sixty votes for that?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: I don't know the answer to that question right now.
Speaker 5: There were a lot of Republicans who expressed support for
Speaker 5: prohibiting bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting. Many of
Speaker 5: them have now reversed horse When asked by journalists what
Speaker 5: their position is today, a number of them have said,
Speaker 5: you know, they support the Supreme Court's position on this,
Speaker 5: which is pretty radical.
Speaker 1: So you'll try that. There have been a number of
Speaker 1: unanimous consent votes taken up in the Senate over the
Speaker 1: last couple months. Can you talk about a few of them,
Speaker 1: because I think they really kind of explain where Republicans
Speaker 1: are in there insanity.
Speaker 5: Well, obviously a lot of the action in the Senate
Speaker 5: has been around things like birth control and IVF. We've
Speaker 5: just seen the Republican Party drift further and further to
Speaker 5: the right what used to be a debate that was
Speaker 5: really centered around abortion. I don't think it's fair to
Speaker 5: assume that today you can trust the modern Republican Party
Speaker 5: to protect things as fundamental as access to birth control
Speaker 5: or access to IVF for example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so crazy. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: am struck by with the overturning of the bump stock
Speaker 1: ban is that the Republicans on the Supreme Court, the
Speaker 1: Conservatives the majority, really they sort of made this like
Speaker 1: insane textualist case for machine guns. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: hypocrisy kind of blow you away.
Speaker 5: I was really shocked by this ruling. You have to
Speaker 5: sort of twist yourself in knots to not accept the
Speaker 5: fact that what these devices do. And we talk about
Speaker 5: bump stocks, but it's a number of these things. There
Speaker 5: are things called block switches as well, that you can
Speaker 5: print on a three D printer and use on a
Speaker 5: semi automatic pistol to make it fully automatic as well.
Speaker 5: They're just incredibly dangerous. I'm a gun owner. I've been
Speaker 5: a gun owner my entire life. I've grown up around firearms.
Speaker 5: I grew up in a rural community where it was
Speaker 5: very normal to own firearms, and so in no way
Speaker 5: am I anti Second Amendment or anti firearm. You know,
Speaker 5: my kids literally grew up mostly eating wild game that
Speaker 5: we all hunted together, and that was that was literally
Speaker 5: how I fed my kids as they grew up. But
Speaker 5: it's shocking to me to see how you can take
Speaker 5: something normal and just take it to such an extreme
Speaker 5: because we saw the direct impacts of this in Las Vegas,
Speaker 5: and there's just no legitimate use for these devices. Like
Speaker 5: there's not a self defense reason that you would need
Speaker 5: a bump stock or lolock switch. There's not a legitimate
Speaker 5: military or law enforcement use for them. They are kind
Speaker 5: of tailor made for mass shootings. They're not particularly accurate,
Speaker 5: but they're very good at making a normal firearm fire
Speaker 5: really really fast. There's no constituency for that. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's only really good for honestly mass shooting. I find
Speaker 5: the ruling to be incredibly sort of contorted and just
Speaker 5: shocking at how out of step this Supreme Court is
Speaker 5: with reality much less the you know, political center of
Speaker 5: the nation.
Speaker 1: So you you are from the great say of New Mexico,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. You guys have fires going. There's
Speaker 1: zero percent contained as of now. What's going on.
Speaker 5: So we've had a number of fires this spring, and
Speaker 5: most of them had been relatively manageable.
Speaker 4: We were able to get on top of them.
Speaker 5: These last few fires in southern New Mexico, it was
Speaker 5: evident within the first hour that they were going to
Speaker 5: be just terrible, terrible fires. And you know, it's a
Speaker 5: it's a combination of things, clearly driven by climate, but
Speaker 5: also these fires started in places that had not seen
Speaker 5: fire or thinning in recent years, and the conditions were
Speaker 5: just really extreme, lots of wind, very dry, and so
Speaker 5: we have thousands of my constituents out of their homes
Speaker 5: right now because of the impact of these fires, and
Speaker 5: whole communities that are evacuated. It's a pretty challenging and
Speaker 5: extreme situation. We've asked for a major disaster declaration from
Speaker 5: the President and that process is moving forward. There are
Speaker 5: resources really pulled into New Mexico from all across the
Speaker 5: West to fight these fires. But they're very, very challenging.
Speaker 5: The fire behavior is very, very challenging.
Speaker 1: One of the things we interviewed Governor pull Us from Colorado,
Speaker 1: and he said that because that's another state, very similar topography,
Speaker 1: has also a huge fire problem from climate change. He
Speaker 1: said that they didn't actually have their own fire planes
Speaker 1: because when you know, there's a big fire. The states
Speaker 1: that have the sort of the fire helicopters, I think
Speaker 1: they're helicopters are better off is you have a very
Speaker 1: low state tax, so you don't have the same kind
Speaker 1: of coffers that Colorado does. Do you guys have structural problems.
Speaker 5: Like that, you can really only effectively fight the scale
Speaker 5: of fires that we have in the West today through
Speaker 5: a national response. Most states do not have either the
Speaker 5: tankers which are fixed wing aircraft, or the helicopters to
Speaker 5: be able to put fire retardant for water onto these fires.
Speaker 5: So luckily I've worked for years to help base something
Speaker 5: called a very large tanker in Albuquerque, and so we
Speaker 5: have fixed wing aircraft in New Mexico that also serves
Speaker 5: other states. They often go to Arizona or even to Idaho,
Speaker 5: but those assets are based out of Albuquerque, and so
Speaker 5: we have had a lot of resources, both from fairly
Speaker 5: locally based but also from across the West descend on
Speaker 5: this fire. We've got hundreds of personnel and they come
Speaker 5: from the hot Shot US and the other firefighting thrus
Speaker 5: come from all across the West. And so really it's
Speaker 5: a matter of the scale of the fires today requires
Speaker 5: a national response.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's more that can be done like
Speaker 1: forest raking controlled burns? I mean, talk to us about
Speaker 1: what that looks like.
Speaker 5: So the biggest investments the Forest Service itself does not
Speaker 5: have the level of staffing to go out and do
Speaker 5: thinning and fuel reduction and prescribe fire all by themselves.
Speaker 5: They typically work, oftentimes through contracts with other entities to
Speaker 5: do a lot of that work. The biggest investments we've
Speaker 5: made in that work recently were actually made in the
Speaker 5: Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. We're starting to
Speaker 5: see the effects of that and we know that that
Speaker 5: work really is effected. It's like, first you have to
Speaker 5: reduce the fuel loads. You have to maintain those fuel
Speaker 5: loads a low leveled through low level prescribed fire, not
Speaker 5: the kind of extreme behavior you see here. And you
Speaker 5: can only do that prescribe fire work under very sort
Speaker 5: of narrow conditions. You have to be very careful today
Speaker 5: because the conditions have changed, and so the Forest Service
Speaker 5: used to set prescribed fires at times when you could
Speaker 5: just measure the relative humidity and the wind speed and
Speaker 5: know whether or not the fire behavior was going to
Speaker 5: be problematic. We've seen things dry out to the point
Speaker 5: to where sometimes a standing tree, like a living under
Speaker 5: us a pine, has lower water content in it than
Speaker 5: a dried two by four at home depot. And so
Speaker 5: we have to be much more careful about when we
Speaker 5: use some of those tools today because they can get
Speaker 5: out of hand, and we've lost whole communities as a
Speaker 5: result of prescribed fire that even got out of control.
Speaker 5: The conditions on the ground in these western forests are
Speaker 5: really changing and it requires a much more aggressive response.
Speaker 5: It requires a lot more thinning. We have funded that
Speaker 5: at levels we've never seen before, but the need is
Speaker 5: really acute. We have to find a way to protect
Speaker 5: these forests in a very different environment than we were
Speaker 5: in thirty or thirty five years ago.
Speaker 1: New Mexico is a blue state, but it's a state
Speaker 1: with a large Latino population. Has one sort of swingy
Speaker 1: congressional seat in the state of your three congressional seats.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you could talk about what you're seeing
Speaker 1: on the ground, what people are concerned about. Are you
Speaker 1: seeing any Biden policy is like, for example, this citizenship
Speaker 1: for spouse's policy. Are you seeing anything that you think
Speaker 1: is helping the Biden admin and the Biden campaign and
Speaker 1: what it looks like on the ground.
Speaker 5: In New Mexico, we've seen the same challenges that you know.
Speaker 5: When COVID really messed up supply chains around the world,
Speaker 5: it was inevitable that we are going to have inflation.
Speaker 5: That was really painful. I think that the Biden administration
Speaker 5: and our monetary policy has done a good job of
Speaker 5: finally managing that back. But those inflationary pressures are baked.
Speaker 4: In now and they are a.
Speaker 5: Real real stress for families in New Mexico and around
Speaker 5: the country. I think where the Biden administration where their
Speaker 5: real strong suit is, is that the policies that they
Speaker 5: put in place through things like the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 5: are creating great jobs in New Mexico and around the country.
Speaker 5: Like we have seen a surge in manufacturing, both new
Speaker 5: manufacturing moving to the state and also existing manufacturing places
Speaker 5: like Array technologies that makes trackers for utility scale solar projects.
Speaker 5: They're expanding as a result of those policies. The Chips
Speaker 5: and Science Act that reinvested in American leadership and semiconductors
Speaker 5: has led to Intel Corporate reinvesting in their factory in
Speaker 5: New Mexico. Those are the things that I think the
Speaker 5: Biden administration could really build a narrative around that is
Speaker 5: close to what people care about in my state.
Speaker 1: When you talk to people and they're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: a chips factory that's opened up, or semiconductor factory, I mean,
Speaker 1: do voters know that this is from bin AIRA policies
Speaker 1: or do they not necessarily put together where this is coming.
Speaker 4: From across the board.
Speaker 5: On average, most people don't realize that's a direct result
Speaker 5: of policy. But that's what elections are about. Like, we
Speaker 5: need to drive that narrative. We need to make it
Speaker 5: happen through the advertisements that both the Biden campaign and
Speaker 5: campaigns like mine do, and I certainly in New Mexico,
Speaker 5: I will drive that narrative and I will connect the
Speaker 5: dots for the voters because in our fragmented media environment today,
Speaker 5: it's really hard for voters to connect dods. We have
Speaker 5: to tell that story.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Democrats will keep that congressional seed.
Speaker 5: I'm optimistic about that congressional seat just because we have
Speaker 5: such a good candidate there, Gabe Vesquez is doing everything right.
Speaker 5: He is working incredibly hard. His opponent is very far
Speaker 5: out of the mainstream, and so you know, if anybody
Speaker 5: can keep that congressional seat.
Speaker 1: It's gate That's really interesting. So I want to just
Speaker 1: sort of ask you, as you know we are in
Speaker 1: this like run up to the election, do you think
Speaker 1: I mean, Republicans have made a lot of threats because
Speaker 1: they're mad about Trump getting convicted. Can they really slow appointments?
Speaker 1: I mean, will they be able to mess up Biden's
Speaker 1: judges and what does that look like?
Speaker 5: Can they slow things down? Yes, to be honest, they've
Speaker 5: been doing that for a long time. We will grind
Speaker 5: through those appointments and continue to appoint federal judges. That's
Speaker 5: or to the mission of the Senate. We're going to
Speaker 5: continue to do that.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Senator.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's been great to talk with you.
Speaker 3: Dear dress. Chiefling is the ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast politics. Do you draw?
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: What is your title at the ACLU.
Speaker 6: My title is Chief Political and Advocacy Officer.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us what the ACLU does and
Speaker 1: what it used to do and just give us like
Speaker 1: a two second sort of who you are and what
Speaker 1: the ACLU is as an organization.
Speaker 6: So the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, is an
Speaker 6: organization that's more than one hundred years old, and it
Speaker 6: actually started as a group of activists that we're organizing
Speaker 6: protests against overreach by the government to restrict free speech
Speaker 6: and restrict people's rights and liberties to express themselves. So
Speaker 6: that was sort of of its beginning. It eventually became
Speaker 6: an organization that has affiliates in every single state in
Speaker 6: this country, so there's an ACLU in every state in
Speaker 6: addition to the national and it became known for being
Speaker 6: a very powerful litigation shop. It is known for being
Speaker 6: sort of an activist law firm, if you will. But
Speaker 6: a part of the ACLU that may be less known
Speaker 6: but is increasingly a big piece of the work that
Speaker 6: the organization does is its advocacy and political work, and
Speaker 6: that is sort of going back to its roots kind
Speaker 6: of where it came from as an organization, and this
Speaker 6: part of the work is around trying to pass pieces
Speaker 6: of legislation that would protect civil rights and civil liberties,
Speaker 6: both at the federal and at the state level. We
Speaker 6: do a lot of work around passing ballot initiatives and
Speaker 6: states where legislation is not possible, we do work to
Speaker 6: educate voters about the difference between candidates on civil rights
Speaker 6: and civil liberty so that they can make informed choices
Speaker 6: where a non partisan organization, we don't endorse, but we
Speaker 6: do do hard hitting, sharp and clear voter education work
Speaker 6: around candidates, and we do a lot of grassroots organizing.
Speaker 6: The organization as a whole has over six million grassroots
Speaker 6: dues paying members, and we mobilize those folks to show
Speaker 6: up at state houses, to lobby their elected officials, to
Speaker 6: come to rallies at the Supreme Court, other actions that
Speaker 6: really show where the public is.
Speaker 1: So I would love it if you could explain to us,
Speaker 1: For example, there is a Louisiana and its infinite insanity
Speaker 1: just past the law that says that the Ten Commandments
Speaker 1: must be visible in every school classroom. What do you
Speaker 1: do there?
Speaker 6: Well, we are suing because it's a clear violation of
Speaker 6: the division between church and state in this country, which
Speaker 6: is long standing. Louisiana did that as a way to
Speaker 6: galvanize its base and kind of push envelope right, not
Speaker 6: expecting that it would actually stand. But I think, you know,
Speaker 6: this is part of a bigger trend of really trying
Speaker 6: to reset the fundamental rules of our democracy. And you know,
Speaker 6: I think I don't know if you followed, but the
Speaker 6: you know, there's recently an expose on Samuel Alito being
Speaker 6: asked questions around this, around going back to a country
Speaker 6: that is oddly and going back to sort of a
Speaker 6: more traditional Christian country, and he admitted on record that
Speaker 6: that was what he wanted, which is caused such a
Speaker 6: huge public outcry because it really goes to the heart
Speaker 6: of what our country is supposed to be about, which
Speaker 6: is freedom of religion, you know, freedom of action. Right.
Speaker 6: We're supposed to be a multicultural, multi racial country, and
Speaker 6: this really is challenging the fundamental compact that this country
Speaker 6: was based on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk to me about another case you guys are
Speaker 1: working on, which is histalities.
Speaker 6: And TALA is an abbreviation for the Emergency Medical Treatment
Speaker 6: and Labor Act which is a long standing federal law
Speaker 6: that requires any hospital with an emergency room that receives
Speaker 6: federal Medicare funds, which is most hospitals in this country,
Speaker 6: to provide stabilizing treatment to anyone who comes to the
Speaker 6: hospital experiencing a medical emergency. Right. So, the idea is,
Speaker 6: you don't let people die. Anybody comes into the emergency
Speaker 6: room gets stabilizing treatment. And so Idaho has decided to.
Speaker 1: Exempt that you do let people die.
Speaker 6: Right, exempt pregnant women from receiving this stabilizing treatment if
Speaker 6: that stabilizing treatment includes abortion. And so it is essentially
Speaker 6: they'll let women die in a parking lot law that
Speaker 6: Idaho has tried to pass. And the Supreme Court is
Speaker 6: considering this exemption of Idaho from Intella right now. Furthermore,
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court could have put a stay to this
Speaker 6: law with I could have said, keep providing stabilizing care
Speaker 6: to patients as they come into the hospital until we
Speaker 6: make a decision. The Supreme Court decided not to do
Speaker 6: that to let Idaho go forward and implement this law,
Speaker 6: this quite barbaric law, and as a result, six patients
Speaker 6: already with pregnancy related medical emergencies have been turned away
Speaker 6: have had to figure out a way to go to
Speaker 6: a different state to receive the kind of emergency treatment
Speaker 6: that they needed. And medical experts estimate that this will
Speaker 6: be around twenty people by the end of the year.
Speaker 6: So this is a law that is actually having real
Speaker 6: impact on real people right now in Idaho. And if
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court allows Idaho to discriminate against pregnant women
Speaker 6: this way, we expect others state we'll try to follow suit.
Speaker 1: Do you think that people are coming up with crazier
Speaker 1: and crazier things because they know that the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is willing to entertain crazier and crazier things.
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Will you talk us through what that looks like, because
Speaker 1: it seems as if some of this stuff, I mean,
Speaker 1: like the Louisiana situation, feels like they know they have
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court that's in the tank for them, and
Speaker 1: so that's where we're going.
Speaker 6: Yes, I think so. And I think to understand the
Speaker 6: kind of race to the bottom, if there is a
Speaker 6: bottom that is happening right now, we also have to
Speaker 6: understand the attempts that are happening simultaneously to erode fundamental
Speaker 6: tenets of democracy, things like every person can vote as
Speaker 6: the right to vote and have their will be talented
Speaker 6: things like having fair districts that are representative, so that
Speaker 6: you have elected officials who are accountable to their voters.
Speaker 6: Kind of basic precepts that we have based our democracy on,
Speaker 6: or that are our democracy is aspirationally based on being eroded.
Speaker 6: And when we erode those kinds of checks and balances,
Speaker 6: then we do see this crazier and crazier kind of
Speaker 6: race to the fringe, and we see politicians acting way
Speaker 6: out of sync with the majority of voters. And I'll
Speaker 6: just draw your attention to a very recent poll out
Speaker 6: of Kaiser Family Foundation which found that out of all
Speaker 6: women voters, so Republicans, Independents, Democrats, at everybody, all women voters,
Speaker 6: eighty six percent of women voters support laws that protect
Speaker 6: access to abortion for patients who are experiencing pregnancy related
Speaker 6: emergencies eighty six percent. So it just is one example,
Speaker 6: and there are a million other examples like this. Ninety
Speaker 6: five percent of Americans in our country support access to
Speaker 6: birth control. And yet right when Democrats in the US
Speaker 6: seidate brought the Access to Contraception Bill protecting access to
Speaker 6: contraception bill to the floor, just a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 6: almost all Republicans voted against it, and we're seeing this
Speaker 6: over and over again. So it doesn't stop at abortion.
Speaker 6: Abortion is just sort of the entry point the restrictions
Speaker 6: and the attempts to kind of roll back what I
Speaker 6: consider a fundamental equality, you know, the ability to make
Speaker 6: your own life choices, the ability to control your body,
Speaker 6: to control whether or not you become pregnant, when you
Speaker 6: become pregnant, how many children to have, like all of
Speaker 6: these sort of very fundamental life choices which are core
Speaker 6: to having a society where people are equal, where people
Speaker 6: are free. This is all being attempted to being rolled
Speaker 6: back by the right, and it doesn't It starts with abortion,
Speaker 6: it extends to birth control, it extends to IVF, and
Speaker 6: I don't think there is any end point. There is
Speaker 6: no bottom. It extends no fault divorce, right, that's another
Speaker 6: item that's on the list, fealing no fault divorce. You know,
Speaker 6: pretty soon we're going to be seen laws that you know,
Speaker 6: require women to get their husbands or their father's permission
Speaker 6: to do a variety of things that people are used
Speaker 6: to doing right now. So I do think there is
Speaker 6: no bottom to it, and that's why it's important to
Speaker 6: have a really strong representative democracy.
Speaker 1: What else are you seeing that is on your radar
Speaker 1: that's freaking you out?
Speaker 6: I mean, I think this idea of normalizing using the
Speaker 6: Comstock law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, talk about Comstock. I want you to sort
Speaker 1: of give us the uh Comstock history a little bit.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 6: Anthony Comstock was as zealot, a religious zelic who lived
Speaker 6: in the eighteen hundreds and was really focused on what
Speaker 6: he called anti obscenity, very focused on pornography and kind
Speaker 6: of you know, making it illegal to send pornography through
Speaker 6: the mail, making it illegal to disseminate pornography. That's what
Speaker 6: he was mainly focused on. So the Comstock Law was
Speaker 6: passed in the mid eighteen hundreds. This is a law
Speaker 6: that is now being raised by the right as sort
Speaker 6: of a backdoor abortion ban. They are interpreting it to
Speaker 6: mean that it can cover any kind of medication, abortion,
Speaker 6: birth control, any kind of tools that could be used
Speaker 6: in an abortion, which, by the way, are the same
Speaker 6: kind of tools that one would use with miscarriage hair.
Speaker 6: Because this law is already on the books but hasn't
Speaker 6: been enforced in more than one hundred years. They are
Speaker 6: trying to resuscitate it and turn it into a legal
Speaker 6: architecture for what is essentially a back door abortion ban.
Speaker 6: So what it would allow them to do is instead
Speaker 6: of actually just passing a federal ban on all abortion,
Speaker 6: which is what they want to do, they could just say, well,
Speaker 6: we're going to start we're seeing the Comstock law, and
Speaker 6: this is what that means. It means regulation of any
Speaker 6: kind of abortifations. Medication abortion is the most common way
Speaker 6: for people across our country to access abortion. It's been
Speaker 6: used for more than twenty years, been used by many
Speaker 6: millions of people. It's extremely safe, and it is a
Speaker 6: way of accessing abortion that's very important for people, especially
Speaker 6: in rural areas or right now who live in states
Speaker 6: where it's hard to get care. And one strategy of
Speaker 6: the right is to use the Comstock Law as a
Speaker 6: way to prevent women across the country from accessing medication abortion.
Speaker 6: And so that's something that I'm deeply worried about. It's
Speaker 6: something that the Trump campaign has certain advisors to the
Speaker 6: Trump campaign have been openly talking about.
Speaker 1: And two Supreme Court justices right Alito and Thomas.
Speaker 6: Exactly, so we know that this is not want a
Speaker 6: theoretical threat is this could be a very real threat,
Speaker 6: even though our position is there's no legal basis for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there anything proactive you can do about
Speaker 1: the Comstock Act?
Speaker 6: Well, there is an effort to repeal it. Tita Smith
Speaker 6: and other elected officials in Congress have introduced are introducing
Speaker 6: today actually a bill to repeal the Comstock Act. I
Speaker 6: do think in the kind of hyperpartisan environment that we're
Speaker 6: in in Congress right now, I think, you know, we'll
Speaker 6: have to see kind of what the path forward for
Speaker 6: that is. But I do think that eventually we want
Speaker 6: to be in a place where the Comstock Law is
Speaker 6: off the books.
Speaker 1: Such a completely insane sort of country we're living, how
Speaker 1: else is the ACL you protecting our rights?
Speaker 6: So, in addition to our litigation arm and we are
Speaker 6: suing on all kinds of things to protect rights and
Speaker 6: liberties across the country, we're also working to advance rights
Speaker 6: and liberties by passing proactively a federal right to an abortion.
Speaker 6: So we're working with coalition of organizations reproductive rights, health
Speaker 6: and justice organizations through a coalition to pass federal protections
Speaker 6: for access to abortion. We're also working to pass democracy reform,
Speaker 6: specifically the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to
Speaker 6: Vote Act. We're supporting filibuster reform so that we kind
Speaker 6: of remove that obstacle from passing the kind of proactive
Speaker 6: legislation that the American people want. The filibusters along been
Speaker 6: used as a way to prevent anything from happening, as
Speaker 6: opposed to using it in the way that it was intended,
Speaker 6: which is, you know, slow things down, discuss, but don't
Speaker 6: stop all action. So those are two top priorities for us,
Speaker 6: our voting rights and democracy legislation and passing the federal
Speaker 6: right to abortion. The other area that we're really focused
Speaker 6: on is protections for transgender people. There have been more
Speaker 6: than five hundred pieces of legislation introduced in states across
Speaker 6: the country to restrict transgender people's access to healthcare, ability
Speaker 6: to participate in sports, ability to be part of society,
Speaker 6: use bathrooms, you know, all kinds of things. And I
Speaker 6: think the solution for this is at the federal level
Speaker 6: to protect the right of transgender people to exist and
Speaker 6: to access to health care they need. And then finally,
Speaker 6: we're really focused on shifting gears a little bit immigration reform,
Speaker 6: and really supporting legislation that would provide a path to
Speaker 6: citizenship for people who are already here as well as
Speaker 6: people who are coming, as well as the resources to
Speaker 6: manage the border in an orderly way, in a fair way,
Speaker 6: so that people are not waiting seven eight years to
Speaker 6: have their asylum claims decided. You know, a better approach
Speaker 6: to border management and a better approach to providing a
Speaker 6: path to citizenship for immigrants who are here.
Speaker 1: Can you just do one second on Trump's deportation squads,
Speaker 1: because that's one of the many completely insane things he
Speaker 1: has going is planning for.
Speaker 6: Yes, So this is one of the many threats to
Speaker 6: civil rights and civil liberties that the future Trump administration
Speaker 6: has promised to enact, and that is mass deportations. So
Speaker 6: that would look like detention camps all over the country.
Speaker 6: It would look like deputizing states police forces to round
Speaker 6: up and deport immigrants, many of whom have been here
Speaker 6: for years and years, who have families. It would tear
Speaker 6: families apart, and it would violate people's civil rights in
Speaker 6: all kinds of ways. It's a real specter of a
Speaker 6: descent into an authoritarian regime, which I think none of
Speaker 6: us want so Yes, that is one of the kind
Speaker 6: of very dramatic and drastic measures that the Trump campaign
Speaker 6: has threatened to do in a future Trump administration, which
Speaker 6: we are fighting to the now.
Speaker 1: Thank you, dear tru Thank you so much a moment,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Yes, Molli Jong fast, are you prepared for the moment
Speaker 2: of fuckery?
Speaker 1: I am prepared. I am prepared and prepared.
Speaker 2: My body is ready for that moment of fuckery.
Speaker 6: Le tire, baby, Mollie.
Speaker 2: My moment of fuckery occurred in the isolated frontier province
Speaker 2: of the Islamic state of Louisiana, Stan, in which Imam
Speaker 2: Jeff Landry, the High Moa of Louisiana Stan, declared that
Speaker 2: the Hadith of the Quran would be posted in every
Speaker 2: single classroom in Louisiana Stan. Oh wait, I'm sorry, let
Speaker 2: me reverse that, because if it had been a Muslim
Speaker 2: in say, dearborn Michigan putting the Hadith in classrooms, Fox
Speaker 2: News would be burning the world to the crown and
Speaker 2: Republicans would be rioting in the streets. But instead it
Speaker 2: was Governor Jeff Landry who, in the latest escalation of
Speaker 2: the culture War, decided that he was going to pass
Speaker 2: a piece of legislation through the GOP controlled Louisiana legislature
Speaker 2: to demand the unconstitutional and illegal posting of the Ten
Speaker 2: Commandments in every public school classroom. They even picked the
Speaker 2: size of the posters and the font because they didn't
Speaker 2: want anybody playing any games with their sacred, with their
Speaker 2: sacred Christian commandments that were passed down in the Old
Speaker 2: Testament by Moses, a Jew. They don't understand the Constitution.
Speaker 2: They don't for a moment understand why the founders of
Speaker 2: this country, and I don't mean the goddamn retroactively rewritten
Speaker 2: revisionist history Glenn Beck style founders who you know, if
Speaker 2: you listen to Glenn Beck, they all wanted to I
Speaker 2: ford mustangs and go to prayer meetings on Sunday. But
Speaker 2: the founders of this country, they believe that forbidding the
Speaker 2: establishment of a state religion was so important they put
Speaker 2: it in the very first paragraph of the very first
Speaker 2: Amendment to the Constitution textullus. Yeah, this bullshit from Republicans.
Speaker 2: I'm a constitutional originalist and I believe with the founders
Speaker 2: what it is sacred. Apparently they don't believe that, because
Speaker 2: now you've got a lot of magas well. Of course
Speaker 2: we should be doing that. We're a Christian nation after all.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry people who say there's no Christian nationalism, there's
Speaker 2: no culture war. There lying evidence is right in front
Speaker 2: of you once again in the Islamic extremeist state of Louisianastan.
Speaker 1: My moment is this Ted CRU's documents dump, where you're
Speaker 1: found a folder of briefing documents on Ted Cruz donors
Speaker 1: in the Senate. He then shared the photos of those
Speaker 1: documents in seven posts, which were all removed from the
Speaker 1: platform owned by free speech absolutist Elon mush.
Speaker 2: Why am I not surprised that the king of free
Speaker 2: speech doesn't like seeing free speed about the guy who's
Speaker 2: a senator from the state where boy Elon builds his rockets.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked, Molly, not surprised, shocked.
Speaker 2: I tell you.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.