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, and Clarence Thomas took thirty eight quote
Speaker 1: unquote gift vacations paid for by people who had business
Speaker 1: in front of the Supreme Court. We have such an
Speaker 1: interesting show today. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson talks
Speaker 1: to us about how to secure elections, and then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to slat's Mark Joseph Stern about the Supreme Court's
Speaker 1: recent ghost gun surprise ruling and what it means for
Speaker 1: the dynamics of the court. But first we have the Bulwarks.
Speaker 1: Charlie Sykes, Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Charlie Sikes, Hey, it is great to be back. Too
Speaker 2: bad we don't have anything to talk about though.
Speaker 1: I was just saying we were talking about this piece
Speaker 1: that you wrote again, Churchillian, and it's funny because Darwin
Speaker 1: and I went to the war room, so we are,
Speaker 1: like Churchill is on the brand the Churchillian case against
Speaker 1: a Trump pardon. I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: that first because there's been big drama at the Bulwark
Speaker 1: in a good intellectual way about this idea of would
Speaker 1: a Trump pardon actually lead to more violence or would
Speaker 1: it perhaps sue the fractured nation what.
Speaker 2: You're describing as sort of the point counterpoint, JVL wrote
Speaker 2: a piece the Keynesian case for a Trump pardon. I
Speaker 2: beg to differ rather significantly with That's why I came
Speaker 2: back with you have canes. I'm going to go with Churchill,
Speaker 2: who knew a little bit about appeasement, who knew a
Speaker 2: little bit about you know, hoping that the alligator eats
Speaker 2: you last. Look, First of all, it's premature to be
Speaker 2: talking about a Trump pardon. But a Trump pardon as
Speaker 2: an idea, it is. It is mad, bad and dangerous.
Speaker 2: Because does anybody think that Trump would learn his lesson?
Speaker 2: Does anybody think that he would go away quietly? Does
Speaker 2: anybody think that this changes the incentive structure in America
Speaker 2: that has given rise to so many demagogues out there
Speaker 2: who are willing to undermine democracy. I mean, I understand
Speaker 2: that there's high risk in pursuing criminal charges. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm willing to concede that, But you have to weigh
Speaker 2: risks versus risk, and the risk of not prosecuting Trump,
Speaker 2: I think is greater than the risk of prosecuting him.
Speaker 2: But the idea of a pardon essentially confirming that the
Speaker 2: president of the United States is above the law, that
Speaker 2: they cannot be prosecuted while they're president, and after they
Speaker 2: leave the presidency, the criminal justice system is never going
Speaker 2: to hold them accountable. What a terrible precedent, and we
Speaker 2: would be living with that for decades. Terrible idea.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, this is the last time
Speaker 1: we will ever compare Lord Byron to Donald Trump. I
Speaker 1: think you would to anything Trumpian.
Speaker 2: Yes, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know is is
Speaker 2: Carolyn Lamb's description of Lord Byron, And yes, the similarities
Speaker 2: and right.
Speaker 1: There, right there, yes, But I do want to talk
Speaker 1: about this idea of how you stop people from doing
Speaker 1: bad things, right, because that's where we are now in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, right and in America as the country
Speaker 1: is how do we stop people from doing bad things?
Speaker 1: And the reason why this pardon and your pardon piece
Speaker 1: was so interesting, and you brought up this Nixon's pardon,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, in my mind, sort of the
Speaker 1: original sin and I think you sort of think that too.
Speaker 1: But Trump was number one thousand, I think five hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty three or something people who have been indicted
Speaker 1: on January six charges. Many many of those other people
Speaker 1: are actually like in jail.
Speaker 2: Right, the little people are in jail. And I think
Speaker 2: this was one of the sort of the festering injustices
Speaker 2: that the little people who listened to Donald Trump's call
Speaker 2: to come to Washington and be wild. They were arrested,
Speaker 2: they were charged, they were tried, they were convicted, they
Speaker 2: are in jail. But Donald Trump and his immediate circle,
Speaker 2: the people who instigated it, had faced no consequences. And
Speaker 2: there's just something wrong with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if Donald trum again, like this
Speaker 1: is a sort of unknown unknown, but like obviously there's
Speaker 1: a percentage of people who consider Trump to be a
Speaker 1: religious figure and who would do very dangerous things to
Speaker 1: protect him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's no question about it. I don't sense
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump is any quieter, and I don't sense
Speaker 2: that his supporters are any quiet I think that they
Speaker 2: are breathing menace every single day, and I think that
Speaker 2: it's becoming more menacing, it's becoming more dangerous. The threat
Speaker 2: of violence is in fact rising. So if you don't
Speaker 2: confront that, if you don't say the full force of
Speaker 2: the law will come down on you if you behave
Speaker 2: in this way. I don't see how you stop this
Speaker 2: bad behavior if you give Donald Trump and a pardon
Speaker 2: would be the ultimate get out of jail free card,
Speaker 2: essentially saying, Okay, you conspired to overturn the election, you
Speaker 2: conspired to have a coup, you obstructed beneficial proceeding, you
Speaker 2: violated the Espionage Act, and you engage perhaps in racketeering.
Speaker 2: But hey, you know, no harm, no foul go on
Speaker 2: normally in a pardon. I know this may seem a
Speaker 2: little bit quaint. There's an assumption that you have been rehabilitated,
Speaker 2: or that you are showing some sort of remorse. Right,
Speaker 2: this does not apply to Donald Trump at all. And
Speaker 2: you mentioned Richard Nixon, and I am old enough, of
Speaker 2: course to remember that, and I can certainly remember, you know,
Speaker 2: what I was doing, you know, on that day in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four when he resigned, and then when Gerald
Speaker 2: Ford pardoned him. At the time, I didn't think that
Speaker 2: it was a terrible precedent. I did, actually, I think
Speaker 2: I like a lot of Americans, I took a deep breath,
Speaker 2: and it was kind of a relief that we could
Speaker 2: move on from that, that we wouldn't be stuck in that.
Speaker 2: But in retrospect, it was a bad precedent and it
Speaker 2: did establish this this notion somehow that the presidency was
Speaker 2: this imperial king like institution that really, you know, was
Speaker 2: not held to the same standards as we lesser commoners.
Speaker 2: And I think that's fundamentally anti American. I think that's
Speaker 2: fundamentally anti democratic and against the spirit of the Constitution.
Speaker 2: So unfortunately, this is morphed into this notion that if
Speaker 2: you were a sitting president, you cannot be indicted. And
Speaker 2: even though Mitch McConnell and others said, well, you know what,
Speaker 2: even if we don't impeach the guy, you know, with
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system, you know, still will have jurisdiction,
Speaker 2: Well now you have the right going No, not even now,
Speaker 2: you know, we were against impeachment. We were against and
Speaker 2: we were against holding mccennabal when he was president. We
Speaker 2: supported him for another term. And now we think that
Speaker 2: it's wrong that that in fact he'd be charged with
Speaker 2: breaking the law that hundreds of other people who have
Speaker 2: been charged with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean Mitch McConnell again, don't cry for
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell. He has millions or billions of dollars, are
Speaker 1: quite rich, very powerful. But he did have this moment
Speaker 1: in Kentucky where they were booing him, which, you know,
Speaker 1: if your whole life is about this quest for power,
Speaker 1: I mean, that must have been at experience for her.
Speaker 2: In a reminder, the karma is a bitch. He had
Speaker 2: the opportunity to do what he knew was the right
Speaker 2: thing many times, but particularly in that second impeachment. Had
Speaker 2: he voted along with his colleagues to remove Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: that would have disqualified him from ever running, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: be here today. And he knew that Donald Trump was
Speaker 2: responsible for January sixth, he said it explicitly, but under
Speaker 2: our constitutional system, he had the obligation and the opportunity
Speaker 2: to do something about it, and he failed. I do
Speaker 2: wonder what goes on in his mind now as he
Speaker 2: looks back and you know, he's being booed and Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is tweeting it out and attacking him and vilifying
Speaker 2: his wife and throwing racial epithets at his wife, which
Speaker 2: by the way, should be a big deal in and
Speaker 2: of itself, but it's like now, it's like a footnote
Speaker 2: to page twenty eight of the terrible things Donald Trump does,
Speaker 2: and so Mitch McConnell very much reaping what he sewed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is incredible she used to be
Speaker 1: in his cabinet, right, Like I mean, imagine just even
Speaker 1: if you just back on Earth one, you had a
Speaker 1: president attacking a member of his cabinet, right, I mean
Speaker 1: on the internet. I mean, even that, you know, would
Speaker 1: have been just a complete scandal to end all scandals.
Speaker 2: Well, and among the many, many, many unprecedented things that
Speaker 2: we're dealing with, has ever been a president who has
Speaker 2: been denounced by so many members of his own cabinet.
Speaker 2: I mean, think of the list of people who had
Speaker 2: been named to these positions by Donald Trump, members of
Speaker 2: his staff, his chief of staff, his secretary of State,
Speaker 2: his secretary of Defense, his attorney general, one after another,
Speaker 2: all saying yet we work with this guy, we supported
Speaker 2: this guy, and we have to tell you he is
Speaker 2: unfit for office and should never be allowed back in
Speaker 2: the oval office. You would think, Molly, that at that
Speaker 2: point that with all of these show we think negative
Speaker 2: reference letters from his colleagues, that that would have more
Speaker 2: of an effect that it's having with Republican base voters
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: You really know the Republican Party or the pre Trump
Speaker 1: Republican Party. And it seems like even though look, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us hoped that these indictments might
Speaker 1: break the spell, that clearly did not happen. But it
Speaker 1: feels like to me, just viscerally, that the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: I mean, I still think they're going to go along
Speaker 1: with Trump, but it feels like the calculus has changed
Speaker 1: a bit. Do you agree? And what is the calculus
Speaker 1: and how has it changed?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, what is the Republican Party. We've
Speaker 2: been talking about this for a long time. The Republican
Speaker 2: Party or the Republican establishment or the adults in the
Speaker 2: Republican Party. Who the hell are these people? I mean,
Speaker 2: I think Judge Ludig, Who's right, There is no Republican Party.
Speaker 2: There's just this angry base. So if you watch some
Speaker 2: of the videos out of Iowa when the candidates speak,
Speaker 2: you get a sense of what you know, who they are.
Speaker 2: So Asa Hutchinson talks about the rule of law in
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice, crickets. Nikki Haley gets up and
Speaker 2: talks about why we should support Ukraine crickets. Vivic Ramaswami
Speaker 2: gets up and spews some sort of pandering demagoji and
Speaker 2: the place goes absolutely freaking wild. So what is this?
Speaker 2: What is interesting to me is that I think there
Speaker 2: are here, here's an oxymoron. Thoughtful Republicans understand what a
Speaker 2: disaster it is to basically lash yourself to a man
Speaker 2: who at the moment faces seventy eight felony charges, were
Speaker 2: facing four separate criminal cases next year. They understand this
Speaker 2: is I think this political malpractice on a scale that
Speaker 2: we have not even imagined before. And by the time
Speaker 2: the really heavy shit hits, they will have already essentially
Speaker 2: renominated him brilliant, real men of genius, and it will
Speaker 2: have an effect all up and down the ticket. To
Speaker 2: your question, there's a time in everybody's life, in every
Speaker 2: political party's life, where the id just runs wild and
Speaker 2: they can't help themselves. You know, he ask why are
Speaker 2: you doing that? Why are you know? Why are they
Speaker 2: decided to take that step? Why are they going with
Speaker 2: carry lake? And it's because it is it is kind
Speaker 2: of the ideological id or or to change the metaphor
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, they're scratching their ideological itch.
Speaker 2: It's almost like they can't help themselves to the extent
Speaker 2: that I can understand it, and a lot of it
Speaker 2: is hard to understand. I mean, honestly, my book was
Speaker 2: How the Right Lost its Mind. I mean, like what
Speaker 2: happened here, it's an invasion of the body s natchers.
Speaker 1: But part of what.
Speaker 2: Happens is sometimes you get caught up in the fight
Speaker 2: and the fight becomes about the fight, not about what
Speaker 2: you thought you were fighting about, not about anything. It's
Speaker 2: just like we're in a fight and we hate the
Speaker 2: other side and they hate us, and we have to win.
Speaker 2: We can't let them win. We can't lose. It is
Speaker 2: the fight. And you might look at the person saying, okay,
Speaker 2: remind me what we're fighting about, and not quite clear
Speaker 2: about that. You know, maybe it would even change, But
Speaker 2: you can be caught up in that us versus them,
Speaker 2: and sort of you see red. And I think in
Speaker 2: a sense that's what's happening. Is they've lashed themselves to
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. They have made so many compromises, so many
Speaker 2: rationalizations with with Donald Trump, the rule of sunken costs.
Speaker 2: They're in this deep. You know, once you've carved out
Speaker 2: eighty six percent of your soul. It's not hard to
Speaker 2: carve out another four percent, you know, and there is
Speaker 2: sort of a he's our guy and we're going to
Speaker 2: stick with him no matter what. And you know, some
Speaker 2: part of their brain deep down knows that this is
Speaker 2: perhaps not the smartest, wisest, most decent, prudent thing to do,
Speaker 2: and they just can't help themselves.
Speaker 1: But this is this fundamental problem. I argue about this
Speaker 1: with George Conway all the time, which is what do
Speaker 1: they become the whigs? I mean, right, like, play this
Speaker 1: out for a minute. They nominate Trump. Trump goes on
Speaker 1: and again, Trump could win. It's electoral college, he might win.
Speaker 1: You sort of underestimate him at his own peril, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be an uphill slog for him, and
Speaker 1: he's going to be in and out of federal court
Speaker 1: and state court during that time. So then is there
Speaker 1: a come to Jesus moment where they're like, look, the
Speaker 1: base loves scary fascism. But I mean, do they then
Speaker 1: go back to as I mean.
Speaker 2: No, Jesus has left the room. I don't know what
Speaker 2: to come to Jesus moment? Is if there was going
Speaker 2: to be a come to Jesus moment Jesus came lots
Speaker 2: of time to the Republican Party. I mean that moment
Speaker 2: came and they said, yeah, we're too busy. We'd rather
Speaker 2: go with the orange caligula. We'd rather go with Brobas.
Speaker 2: I mean, they could have taken an off ramp after
Speaker 2: the election. They could have taken an off ramp after
Speaker 2: January sixth, They could have taken an off ramp after
Speaker 2: he was indicted. They could mean, they're not taking the
Speaker 2: off ramp. There's not going to become this moment. My
Speaker 2: concern is that this culture has become so deeply rooted
Speaker 2: that even if Donald Trump, when Donald Trump leaves the scene,
Speaker 2: there's no return to normal. See, the tale of this
Speaker 2: is going to be extremely long. There are young people
Speaker 2: who are getting into politics now, for whom this is
Speaker 2: the new normal, this abnormal, bizarre world that we live in.
Speaker 2: This is all they know. This is the way you
Speaker 2: you rise, This is how you get celebrity. This is
Speaker 2: the way people talk with one another, This is how
Speaker 2: you deal with facts and truth and moral dilemmas. And
Speaker 2: those people will be around Molly thirty forty fifty years
Speaker 2: from now.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the sort of ron DeSantis dilemma.
Speaker 1: If we're going to talk about that, right, is that
Speaker 1: his staffers. You know, we saw this that he had
Speaker 1: a staffer who tweeted out a Nazi video. I mean
Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily a Nazi video, but it certainly had
Speaker 1: Nazi ideology. I don't know, I mean, was Nazi ish,
Speaker 1: it was Nazi adjacent. I mean I feel like once
Speaker 1: you start trying to qualify your Nazi experience. But I
Speaker 1: mean these young staffers are a large group of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and you know, why does this keep happening?
Speaker 2: I mean, why does it keep happening that you have
Speaker 2: your story every week like, hey, you know this this
Speaker 2: rising young right wing influencer turns out to you know,
Speaker 2: have all of these these all right, what white supremacist treats?
Speaker 2: Why does this happen? It's like, hey, why, you know,
Speaker 2: I've been swimming in this particular pond for so long?
Speaker 2: Why am I wet?
Speaker 1: That's true?
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, so this is looking They're not all like this.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is still this is still a minority.
Speaker 2: But there's a tolerance of it, and there's an escalation
Speaker 2: of it, and you can watch it on a regular
Speaker 2: basis I mean, I was just thinking. Today I did
Speaker 2: a podcast with Ben Wittis from Larfare talking about Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's latest attacks on Fawnie Willis. I'm sort of getting
Speaker 2: ahead of ourselves here, but I mean, look, you know
Speaker 2: that he's going to play the race card because she's
Speaker 2: a black woman.
Speaker 1: The newest Trump attack line is basically that Fawnie Willis
Speaker 1: has somehow dated a member of a gang. I mean,
Speaker 1: none of this is true. It's all like the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff he said about Hillary Clinton, but it's very
Speaker 1: sexist and also like very racist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and dated is a euphemism because that's not what
Speaker 2: he's suggesting. I mean, he's suggesting that she was basically,
Speaker 2: you know, having an affair with a gang leader. She
Speaker 2: was prosecuting. On one level, you goya, this is Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's going to attack all the people that come
Speaker 2: out against him. But wait, you know, part of what
Speaker 2: we're seeing now is that everybody needs a stronger and
Speaker 2: stronger dopamine hit. The shock wears off, so you need,
Speaker 2: let me switch, you know a metaphors once again. You
Speaker 2: need the more intense crack.
Speaker 1: You need to have the pure something.
Speaker 2: So Donald Trump is ramping it up he's going after
Speaker 2: her because she is black, because she is a woman,
Speaker 2: and he is whipping up this frenzy implying that she
Speaker 2: engaged in sexual misconduct with a gang leader. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's like all those you know, that constellation, and even
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump, recognize that he keeps upping the ante
Speaker 2: all the time. You know, you watch the social media accounts.
Speaker 2: They're upping the ante all the time. The rhetoric becomes
Speaker 2: more intense, it becomes more violent, it becomes more you know,
Speaker 2: it's one thing to be hair on fire, then you
Speaker 2: just keep setting your whole body on fire. This has mine.
Speaker 2: This is real constant. But I don't want to be
Speaker 2: the Cassandra that goes, hey, guys, guys, guys, you understand
Speaker 2: where we're headed here. There are crazy people out there
Speaker 2: with guns, like maybe this guy in Utah who listens
Speaker 2: to all of this stuff and he's got all these
Speaker 2: AK forty seven's and he hears that Joe Biden's gonna
Speaker 2: come to town and he thinks, hey, I'm gonna blow
Speaker 2: Joe Biden away. I'm gonna kill him, and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: kill FBI Aidens if they come to my house. This
Speaker 2: is not theoretical anymore. This is actually happening. We've had
Speaker 2: January sixth, We've had people go into shopping malls in
Speaker 2: Texas and kill people because they believe the great replacement theory.
Speaker 2: We have people who go into synagogues and kill Jews
Speaker 2: because they think that they are encouraging illegal immigration. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is happening. And Donald Trump looks at this and
Speaker 2: goes this chaos and the fear that it engenders, I
Speaker 2: can work with this, I can use this.
Speaker 1: That's really horrifying. Thank you so much, Charlie, really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Jocelyn Benson is Secretary of State the Great State of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics. Secretary of State Benson, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited and honored.
Speaker 1: To be here. We're delighted to have you, and also,
Speaker 1: more importantly, he is being a secretary of state of
Speaker 1: a swing state in twenty twenty four, perhaps like the
Speaker 1: most crucial job for the preservation of democracy. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: I mean voters have the most crucial job, always in
Speaker 3: preserving democracy, but in terms of a position to hold
Speaker 3: where one person can have the greatest impact, either in
Speaker 3: a positive or negative way around guarding democracy is it
Speaker 3: has always been the chief election officers in the states,
Speaker 3: particularly in battleground states, particularly in years like this where
Speaker 3: democracy will be hanging in the balance and will be
Speaker 3: directly impacted by the outcome of the elections and will
Speaker 3: be directly threatened by many individuals and entities, including individuals
Speaker 3: to likely be on the ballot.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about what that looks
Speaker 1: like in Michigan. You've written a lot about this, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's something I think I thought a lot
Speaker 1: about in the midterms. In a way, right now we
Speaker 1: have all of these swing states that have actually largely
Speaker 1: pro democracy people in the important jobs. So how will
Speaker 1: that affect things? And also what exactly are the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of you protecting democracy here?
Speaker 3: Well, we essentially have three roles. We have to build
Speaker 3: the infrastructure in our states to ensure that the trains run,
Speaker 3: that people can get their ballots, can return them, they
Speaker 3: that they're counted, that the security provisions are in place.
Speaker 3: That's priority number one. And then secondly, we have to
Speaker 3: tell that story, educate voters about the nuts and bolts
Speaker 3: are participating, and make sure everyone knows their options and
Speaker 3: how to have faith in the rescist so the election
Speaker 3: is an accurate reflection of the will of the people.
Speaker 3: And then our third piece of that is countering misinformation
Speaker 3: and anticipating proactively and dealing with it reactively in the
Speaker 3: midst of making sure that voters can have the confidence
Speaker 3: and the clarity as to how to participate and the
Speaker 3: certainty that when they do participate, their vote will count
Speaker 3: and that results will hold. So we've got the sort
Speaker 3: of three pronged approach to our jobs. And certainly it's
Speaker 3: important for people of integrity in battleground states, regardless of
Speaker 3: your political party, to be in those roles. And you
Speaker 3: also need a degree of competence because you've got to
Speaker 3: weather these battles. And it's not enough anymore to simply
Speaker 3: just run a good election. You have to not just
Speaker 3: educate voters proactively, but reactively address the lies that are
Speaker 3: out there and ensure they don't impact voter's ability to participate.
Speaker 1: Michigan is a pretty exciting state. You have three women
Speaker 1: really in charge there. I was hoping you could talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what Attorney General Dana Nessel did
Speaker 1: when it comes to the fake electors, because I think
Speaker 1: that that really does it does actually affect people's confidence
Speaker 1: when it comes to voting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean two things. I think certainly, it's important
Speaker 3: to make sure when as there was in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: you have this actionable, coordinated effort to overturn a legitimate
Speaker 3: presidential election, that there are consequences not just for the
Speaker 3: election itself and what happened, but to ensure from a
Speaker 3: preventative standpoint, it doesn't happen again. And then secondly, as
Speaker 3: we see everything play on in the national level and
Speaker 3: really start to understand I think as a country, the
Speaker 3: depths to which people stooped to collectively, nationally coordinate an
Speaker 3: effort to undermine the will of the people, none of
Speaker 3: that would have actually come to fruition had they not
Speaker 3: had people in the states actually executing the plan. And
Speaker 3: so to seek consequences for those folks who made the
Speaker 3: whims of the former president and his supporters at the
Speaker 3: national level actionable in the battleground states is critical because
Speaker 3: all of it was part of the broad coordinated effort
Speaker 3: to overturn the will of the people, and there must
Speaker 3: be consequences at the state and the local and the
Speaker 3: federal level for all of it.
Speaker 1: It is incredible that your state was one of these
Speaker 1: six states where they were just going and literally steal
Speaker 1: the bouts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's something that began to be apparent to us
Speaker 3: in the spring of twenty twenty as Trump's fire kind
Speaker 3: of zoomed in on us, in particular myself, the AG
Speaker 3: and the governor. I think in the span of one
Speaker 3: week in May, he had mean tweeted all of us,
Speaker 3: which I think he never fully grasped how that helped
Speaker 3: us more than it hurt us ultimately in terms of
Speaker 3: doing our job and getting attention on the work we
Speaker 3: were doing to protect Michigan, to protect democracy. But that said,
Speaker 3: it was really then where we began to see the
Speaker 3: unique role that being a battleground state and that being
Speaker 3: women running a battleground state was going to push us in.
Speaker 3: And yet after the election, we were every day surprised
Speaker 3: again and again it's just how far he and others
Speaker 3: would go to keep escalating this losing strategy without any
Speaker 3: evidence or any real winning opportunity at trying to overturn
Speaker 3: these election results where there was not again a shred
Speaker 3: of evidence that he had anything to base his objections on.
Speaker 1: I mean, just sort of an incredible bit of Trump
Speaker 1: as as we've seen it. So I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: now you have this crucial state, we're coming up into
Speaker 1: this insane election, how is your communication with other secretaries
Speaker 1: of state and are you guys read.
Speaker 3: Been in near constant communication with the secretaries in other
Speaker 3: battleground states with Georgia Pencil, Wisconsin newly appointed secretary of
Speaker 3: state there, Nevada, and Arizona.
Speaker 1: One of the.
Speaker 3: Things that we didn't do, or that we did serendipitously,
Speaker 3: perhaps too late, in twenty twenty was that coordination. I mean,
Speaker 3: we talked in general about sharing best practices, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't until after the election where we knew what was
Speaker 3: happening in Michigan would impact what was happening in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: and that georg Joe was getting the same calls that
Speaker 3: we were getting. That the need for us to all
Speaker 3: be talking and coordinating became really clear. So after that point,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two actually became about ensuring we had the
Speaker 3: team we needed and working together to make sure that
Speaker 3: we did in these respective states. And so you saw
Speaker 3: the election of secretaries of state really front and center
Speaker 3: in that cycle, or the appointment of secretaries was the
Speaker 3: case in Pennsylvania. And then now that we're here, we've
Speaker 3: got our team, we are already talking regularly and sharing
Speaker 3: even just you know, week to week, what is happening
Speaker 3: in our states, what we're finding, what we're challenging, what
Speaker 3: we're dealing with, because so there's far more in common
Speaker 3: than not. And you know, for example, when all of
Speaker 3: the clerks in my state get a Foier request for
Speaker 3: pole book results, it's likely that the folks in other
Speaker 3: states have gotten that same request, and so we work
Speaker 3: together to figure out where it's coming from and what
Speaker 3: the intent is behind it, as we you know, again
Speaker 3: grapple with this common enemy against democracy that continues to
Speaker 3: be present in all of our states.
Speaker 1: So can we have a two second conversation on Eric.
Speaker 1: We're going to get real nerdy here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eric is Election Registration Information Center and it was sort
Speaker 1: of the single best way to stop people voting more
Speaker 1: than once. Right, explain to us. I would love like
Speaker 1: your take on Eric, what it is and also why
Speaker 1: Republicans are now furious with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really a great and I mean it's an
Speaker 3: unfortunate window into how misinformation. If a chief election officer
Speaker 3: decides to respond to it and validate it can really
Speaker 3: harm democracy in a significant way. So ERIC is a
Speaker 3: consortium of states that started about ten years ago where
Speaker 3: we simply just shared information when a voter moved from
Speaker 3: one state to another. If you are a part of ERIC,
Speaker 3: shared that information in a very sort of both secure
Speaker 3: but also highly accurate way, so that we could assist
Speaker 3: that voter essentially in ending their voter registration at the
Speaker 3: state they moved from and becoming reregistered in the state
Speaker 3: they moved to. That was it, And we also worked
Speaker 3: with the federal government so when people passed away or
Speaker 3: moved and filed with the US Postal Service that they
Speaker 3: were moving, we got that information too, and we still do.
Speaker 3: I don't mean to talk about it in past tense.
Speaker 3: ERIC member states still have access to all of that information,
Speaker 3: but it's not really clear. It looked like, I think
Speaker 3: a sort of right wing blog began to attack ERIC.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was the Gateway Pundit in point
Speaker 1: I don't like named, but go for it. It's but
Speaker 1: I think it's worth just mentioning like they are sort
Speaker 1: of one of the number one places where disinformation originates,
Speaker 1: and it's also a favorite of the forty fifth President,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It's really extraordinary how when you have no interest in
Speaker 3: the truth, there's no limit to what you can do
Speaker 3: or say to harm the very fabric of who we
Speaker 3: are his Americans in our democracy itself. And that's what
Speaker 3: the Gateway Pundit has done. So that said, the story
Speaker 3: first emerged with a one secretary of state in Louisiana
Speaker 3: decided that he was going to lead gave ERIC as
Speaker 3: a result of just a barrage of lies about it,
Speaker 3: and as we peeled back the layers, it also appeared
Speaker 3: that there were some secretaries in conservative states like Missouri
Speaker 3: who started publicly saying they didn't want to be part
Speaker 3: of ERIC all of a sudden because they didn't want
Speaker 3: to have to register new voters through the system, which
Speaker 3: is one of the parts of ERIC is you contact
Speaker 3: all eligible but unregistered voters in your state and give
Speaker 3: them information on how to register. It's a simple thing
Speaker 3: which I think every state should feel responsible to do.
Speaker 3: But that sort of became this sticking point where after
Speaker 3: the misinformation was debunked, other secretaries started to hone in
Speaker 3: on this requirement that is a part of ERIC. You
Speaker 3: had to contact eligible but unregistered citizens and give them
Speaker 3: information on how to register to vote, and it became
Speaker 3: a lightning rod for secretaries suddenly saying they didn't want
Speaker 3: to do that anymore. The fact that they didn't want
Speaker 3: to do it coming off of the highest turnout election
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty in our lifetime is notable, And the
Speaker 3: fact that they didn't want to do it at a
Speaker 3: time when our country is becoming increasingly diverse is notable.
Speaker 3: I think part of the context here, but all of
Speaker 3: that conflagrated with a lot of different other noise to
Speaker 3: cause a lot of states to leave ERIC. And it's
Speaker 3: unfortunate because every state that leaves is simply saying we
Speaker 3: don't want to be part of this bipartisan interstate collaborative
Speaker 3: to help us collectively keep our voter roles accurate. And
Speaker 3: now also say, there's some scuttle butt that perhaps the
Speaker 3: conservative states that are leaving, and they're all led by
Speaker 3: Republican secretaries, that they may be starting their own ERIC
Speaker 3: like organization that will perhaps do the same thing. But
Speaker 3: there's a lot of questions about how it's funded and
Speaker 3: what it's actually going to do. So it's so an
Speaker 3: evolving story, but the bottom line is Eric's going to
Speaker 3: weather this moment, and as I'm optimistic that as we
Speaker 3: get through the next few cycles, we'll start to see
Speaker 3: it grow again in membership because it works. It's a
Speaker 3: effective way of us all ensuring the accuracy of our
Speaker 3: voter roles, and that truth, I believe, is going to
Speaker 3: carry the day long after the secretaries who are currently
Speaker 3: responding to misinformation to get out of it have left
Speaker 3: their roles and are replaced by people with greater integrity.
Speaker 1: I mean, here you are doing these kind of very
Speaker 1: nuts involved democracy stuff, and you have really one political
Speaker 1: party that no longer believes in democracy. Not everyone, but
Speaker 1: certainly a large margin. And you hear people on television
Speaker 1: saying things, right wing pundent saying things like what's the
Speaker 1: harm and wanting to overturn election? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: things like that. Are you hopeful that, I mean, Michigan
Speaker 1: has actually done a lot of really interesting things and
Speaker 1: is a state with real serious conservatism and trump Ism
Speaker 1: and maga. I mean, are you hopeful that the country
Speaker 1: is turning a corner?
Speaker 3: I think voters will determine, particularly in this election, whether
Speaker 3: we're going to turn a corner or not. And every
Speaker 3: time voters have been given that choice, and they were
Speaker 3: given it in twenty twenty two. They were to a
Speaker 3: certain extent, given it in twenty twenty they have chosen
Speaker 3: to turn the corner. And I believe that pro Democracy
Speaker 3: Coalition is going to grow into the future and that
Speaker 3: will actually emerge from this moment with a stronger and
Speaker 3: healthier and more robust democracy than ever before. And that's
Speaker 3: the subtext of what we're experiencing in Michigan because along
Speaker 3: the same lines, at the same time that we've seen
Speaker 3: these threats escalate, that we've seen these challenges emerge, that
Speaker 3: we fought these battles in our state and in others,
Speaker 3: we've also seen democracy get stronger because voters, voters are participating,
Speaker 3: voters are voting to change their constitution to give themselves
Speaker 3: a stronger and healthier election system where you can register
Speaker 3: on election day and have early voting. So what we're
Speaker 3: also seeing in this storm is a rainbow emerging of
Speaker 3: when voters decide to be a part of this work,
Speaker 3: democracy thriving. And as someone who's done this democracy work
Speaker 3: my entire professional career, going back decades, we've always struggled
Speaker 3: to get democracy and the importance of participating in elections
Speaker 3: to be front and center in people's minds amidst the
Speaker 3: political noise, and what we have now is a time
Speaker 3: where it is and the more we can keep ensuring
Speaker 3: that people understand the foundation of democracy leads to everything
Speaker 3: else that we fight for. And that's also, frankly what
Speaker 3: Michigan's demonstrating right now. The more we can have a
Speaker 3: healthy democracy that will coincide with this robustly diverse country
Speaker 3: that we are growing into and evolving into. And that
Speaker 3: gives me a great deal of hope that in the
Speaker 3: next decade, particularly with young voters stepping up and into
Speaker 3: the fold and more diverse constituencies claiming their power, that
Speaker 3: we will have a b right new day where democracy
Speaker 3: is thriving, at the very least is more aligned with
Speaker 3: the goals of its founders than it has been in
Speaker 3: the past.
Speaker 1: Michigan has been such a democratic success story in so
Speaker 1: many ways, led by through women, led by three democratic women,
Speaker 1: you know, even like Debbie Stabnaw stepping down and releasing
Speaker 1: her seat, it was a very sort of organized, you know,
Speaker 1: primary contest. It's still going, but there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of like harmony and working together and a lot of
Speaker 1: just sort of impress of state level staff. Is there
Speaker 1: a lesson for Democrats to take from Michigan and from
Speaker 1: the way you guys have worked together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the lesson is twofold one. Make it
Speaker 3: easier to vote in your states and put people in
Speaker 3: charge of elections. That will ensure people can have faith
Speaker 3: in the process and expand democracy. I mean that really
Speaker 3: what has preceded the policy changes in Michigan were changes
Speaker 3: to how we elect and how we vote and how
Speaker 3: we draw our districts. And that was the game changer.
Speaker 3: And I think when you look at states even like
Speaker 3: Mississippi or Missouri, or states that seem very deep red,
Speaker 3: or Ohio, and what Ohio certainly has shown is that
Speaker 3: when voters have greater access to their own power to
Speaker 3: govern and to hold folks accountable and to elect people
Speaker 3: who reflect their values, that's the game changer. And so
Speaker 3: you know, to me, Michigan went to a state where
Speaker 3: we saw you know, thirty to eight percent turnout in
Speaker 3: past midterm elections to a state where we see sixty
Speaker 3: percent turnout and seventy percent turnout in elections, and that
Speaker 3: really is the game changer. And it's gratifying for those
Speaker 3: of us who believe in democracy. We're like, oh, and
Speaker 3: more people are voting, you actually get a government that's
Speaker 3: more responsive and more effective and works better than before.
Speaker 3: And so that to me is the lesson and certainly
Speaker 3: the role that women have played and that people of
Speaker 3: color are playing as well in leading our state right now.
Speaker 3: It shows us also that when you open leadership to everyone,
Speaker 3: when anyone can run for office who has a story
Speaker 3: to tell on a contribution to make, then and when
Speaker 3: you have a more diverse governing coalition at the helm,
Speaker 3: you can get a lot of things done in a
Speaker 3: way that makes things better for everyone, regardless of whether
Speaker 3: they're a Democrat, Independent, or Republican.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Secretary of State Benson for joining us,
Speaker 1: and really appreciate thank you for taking the time. My
Speaker 1: pleasure honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Hi.
Speaker 1: It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for the
Speaker 1: first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now,
Speaker 1: is going to have merch for sale over at shop
Speaker 1: dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies,
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Speaker 1: Mark Joseph Stern is a legal analyst and Supreme Court
Speaker 1: correspondent for Slate magazine. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Mark, thank you so much for having me. Thrilled to
Speaker 4: be here.
Speaker 1: Well, we're very excited to have you, and we're going
Speaker 1: to start by talking about everyone's favorite, Amy Koney Barrett.
Speaker 1: Did I pronounce her name right? I don't even care?
Speaker 1: Fuck it Amy Coney.
Speaker 4: It's Amy Coney Barrett, that's right, Like, yeah, she I refused,
Speaker 4: I will say, I refuse to call her ACB.
Speaker 5: Yes, I just I can't bear it, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: as soon as she was nominated, I remember vividly Republicans
Speaker 5: were trolling liberals with the notorious ACB shirts, which then
Speaker 5: became like the contagious ACB after the super spreader White
Speaker 5: House event.
Speaker 4: But it's like Kaitanji Brown Jackson gets to be KBJ.
Speaker 4: But Barrett has certainly not earned the three letter thing
Speaker 4: yet and probably never.
Speaker 1: Will, except and again we're never going to say anything
Speaker 1: nice about her, because really she does suck. She made
Speaker 1: this very weird and we need to talk about it.
Speaker 1: So I want you to give us a little background
Speaker 1: on this because it's a Supreme Court decision coming down
Speaker 1: in August, which is not when we're used to them
Speaker 1: coming down. So explain to us what the fuck is
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is the famous shadow dockets, which listeners
Speaker 4: may have heard of. This all happened in the shadows,
Speaker 4: not on the Court's regular merits docket, but all as
Speaker 4: an emergency application. So that means that one party in
Speaker 4: this case, the federal government, went to the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: and said, something has gone horribly awry in the lower
Speaker 4: courts and we need you to fix it. And it's
Speaker 4: such an emergency that we can't wait for weeks or
Speaker 4: months or years. You need to do it now. And
Speaker 4: so that is why the Court acted now. It handed
Speaker 4: down this order, but notably did not produce any opinions
Speaker 4: either a majority opinion, concurrences, dissents. Nobody wrote anything. So
Speaker 4: we're going to have to kind of guess as to
Speaker 4: the motivations of the justices here.
Speaker 1: Remember, or that the shadow docket has dealt with lots
Speaker 1: of stuff it's really not supposed to deal with. Oh yeah, right.
Speaker 1: I mean there's sort of the hallmark of this Kavanaugh Court,
Speaker 1: if that's what it's called now, which I kind of
Speaker 1: think it is, is that they take stuff like Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade and put it on the shadow docket, right like.
Speaker 4: SBA totally and also a bunch of really important COVID
Speaker 4: cases involving religious liberty and the closure of churches. And
Speaker 4: you know, I think the important thing to remember about
Speaker 4: those crazy times is that the court was regularly changing
Speaker 4: the law over the shadow docket. So the court, you know,
Speaker 4: in the SBA case, allowed Texas to ban abortions at
Speaker 4: six weeks before it had formally overturned Roe v. Wade
Speaker 4: and so essentially use the shadow docket to overturn fifty
Speaker 4: years a precent. That is an abuse of the shadow docket.
Speaker 4: But there are also instances in which a crazy District
Speaker 4: Court judge, usually although not always appointed by Donald Trump
Speaker 4: issue is an opinion that's way the hell out there,
Speaker 4: that changes the law in a way that is alarming
Speaker 4: and radical, and inevitably the Fifth Circuit, which is the
Speaker 4: most conservative circuit Court of Appeals in this country covers Texas, Louisiana,
Speaker 4: and Mississippi allows that to happen because the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 4: is nuts. And so this was one of those situations
Speaker 4: where it's not really an abuse of the shadow docket
Speaker 4: because what the court did essentially was intervened to keep
Speaker 4: the law where it is and to halt this way
Speaker 4: out of line rogue decision that had come down some
Speaker 4: below or form.
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about this decision. The decision is five
Speaker 1: to four. You can't make ghost guns, right.
Speaker 4: So the Biden administration is very careful about this. They
Speaker 4: want you to know that you can make all the
Speaker 4: ghost guns that you want, Molly. You are free as
Speaker 4: an American citizen to purchase and assemble ghost guns, but
Speaker 4: you you have to go through an authorized firearms dealer,
Speaker 4: and the authorized dealer has to follow certain federal laws,
Speaker 4: including a mandatory background check and ensuring that there is
Speaker 4: a serial number on the weapon and keeping certain records
Speaker 4: so that if it's used in a crime, then the
Speaker 4: government has some chance of tracking it and you know,
Speaker 4: finding the person who committed the crime. The problem with
Speaker 4: ghost guns is that as they have been sold up
Speaker 4: until basically now none of those rules apply. You know,
Speaker 4: all of the federal restrictions on firearms, and there are
Speaker 4: only a few, like there are very very few. It's
Speaker 4: just like background checks and serrical numbers, basically, but those
Speaker 4: were not being followed because what ghost gun sellers did
Speaker 4: was sell these kits. And I'm using air quotes here
Speaker 4: because it is essentially like an almost entirely finished gun
Speaker 4: and you just have to like screw on one last piece.
Speaker 4: And they claim that because that was not a true
Speaker 4: firearm and that the user had to spend twenty minutes
Speaker 4: watching a YouTube video to finish putting it together, that
Speaker 4: they were exempt from all of these various laws. And
Speaker 4: that is what I think led to the proliferation of
Speaker 4: ghost guns and specifically their use in crime. Fewer than
Speaker 4: one percent of ghost guns have been tracked. They are
Speaker 4: essentially untraceable, and they are right now the favored gun
Speaker 4: of criminals who want to use firearms to commit crimes
Speaker 4: and murders because they have this great benefit that you
Speaker 4: can buy it with a prepaid debit card that you
Speaker 4: get at seven to eleven. You don't have to show
Speaker 4: any ID, you don't have to undergo any background check,
Speaker 4: and if you have access to YouTube, you can make
Speaker 4: this weapon and use it to murder someone in less
Speaker 4: than an hour did, just as.
Speaker 1: Handmaid and Hack. Did she in fact have a reasonable
Speaker 1: thought explain?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's what happened. So in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: the Biden administration and specifically ATF issued a new rule
Speaker 4: that essentially said ghost guns count as firearms under federal law,
Speaker 4: and that means they have to be sold by licensed
Speaker 4: firearm dealers and they have to go through the same
Speaker 4: very minimal process that all gun purchases do under federal law,
Speaker 4: like the background check and whatever. That was pretty reasonable
Speaker 4: because the statuted issue here says that a firearm is
Speaker 4: either an assembled weapon or a series of parts that
Speaker 4: may readily be converted into a weapon, and that is
Speaker 4: a perfect description of what a ghost gun is. I mean,
Speaker 4: you get the kit, it's a series of parts, you
Speaker 4: convert them into a finished gun, and then you shoot someone.
Speaker 4: And so it was quite sensible, I think for the
Speaker 4: Biden administration to come in and say, look, this is
Speaker 4: what the law requires, and we're going to start requiring
Speaker 4: that ghost gun dealers go through these processes and a
Speaker 4: federal district judge in Texas named rit O'Connor issued what
Speaker 4: we call nationwide vacator, essentially a fifty state bar on
Speaker 4: this rule, and said it's illegal, it's totally beyond the
Speaker 4: president's authority, and I'm blocking it all across the country.
Speaker 4: And the Fifth Circuit agreed with O'Connor and kept that
Speaker 4: block in place, and so the case came up to
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: So this was a Federalist Society judge.
Speaker 4: Obviously, this was a yes, one of the worst federalist
Speaker 4: scited judges. So you may remember rit O'Connor is the
Speaker 4: one who tried to strike down the entirety of Obamacare
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, so yes. As much as we like George
Speaker 1: Conway personally, this is likely a friend of his.
Speaker 4: This is probably a good drinking buddy. They have brandy
Speaker 4: after dinner. But rit O'Connor is a nutjob. And in
Speaker 4: addition to trying to strike down all of Obamacare, which
Speaker 4: got reversed seven to two at the Supreme Court. By
Speaker 4: the way, even Clarence Thomas said that O'Connor was wrong.
Speaker 5: He is.
Speaker 4: He has done a bunch of other crazy stuff like
Speaker 4: anti vax stuff like very far reaching anti LGBTQ stuff.
Speaker 4: He's a bad judge. And so as this case came
Speaker 4: up to the Fifth Circuit, it was like, of course,
Speaker 4: the Fifth circuit's also crazy, they're going to uphold Rite O'Connor.
Speaker 4: That leaves the question to the Supreme Court, well, do
Speaker 4: we step in. Do we go through the shadow docket
Speaker 4: to say rit O'Connor, you need to go to time
Speaker 4: out because the adults are back in the room. Or
Speaker 4: do we just let the lower courts continue to go
Speaker 4: hog wild and allow the proliferation of ghost guns to
Speaker 4: continue apace and basically be single handedly responsible for thousands
Speaker 4: more ghost guns being sold without any kind of licensure,
Speaker 4: background check or anything. That was the question for the court. Amazing,
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court ended up issuing an order by a
Speaker 4: five to four vote that put rite O'Connor on hold
Speaker 4: and allowed the ghost gun rule to take effect and
Speaker 4: said basically, Biden administration atf you guys are allowed to
Speaker 4: start restricting the sale of ghost guns while this case
Speaker 4: continues through the lower courts. Again, no opinions, so we
Speaker 4: don't know exactly what happened. But Amy Cony, Barrett and
Speaker 4: John Roberts joined the three liberals to create a majority,
Speaker 4: and Thomas Alito, Gorsich, and Kavanaugh all dissented. And that
Speaker 4: was a real surprise because Kavanaugh is the one who's
Speaker 4: kind of suggested in the past that he's not a
Speaker 4: Second Amendment maximalist, that he might agree with some reasonable
Speaker 4: limitations on firearms, but that was all absent from this case.
Speaker 4: He was gung ho, it seems, about getting ghost guns
Speaker 4: out onto the streets and into the hands of criminals.
Speaker 4: So I think Barrett in this particular instance, did have
Speaker 4: a thought that was more judicial than political or personal
Speaker 4: or ideological. You know, she seems to have believed that
Speaker 4: the Biden administration got this one right. She's also, and
Speaker 4: I have to give her a little bit of credit
Speaker 4: for this, she has expressed a lot of skepticism toward
Speaker 4: these single judge orders that apply nationwide that we've all
Speaker 4: become so familiar with. Right when one judge issues this
Speaker 4: decision that's universal, that applies to everyone everywhere, And she
Speaker 4: has suggested that those are not actually legal, that they're
Speaker 4: not authorized under the Constitution or by Congress. And so
Speaker 4: it may also have been that she wanted to send
Speaker 4: a message that she's not going to continue entertaining these
Speaker 4: sweeping orders that purport to cover the entire country when
Speaker 4: that's not a power that judges have.
Speaker 5: So this was.
Speaker 4: An interesting moment for those of us who follow Barrett closely.
Speaker 4: She's never ever before joined with the Chief and the
Speaker 4: three liberals to create a five four majority. This was
Speaker 4: a novel coalition. And I guess if you're like really
Speaker 4: desperate to look for optimism about the Supreme Court, like
Speaker 4: this would be the place to do it, because she's
Speaker 4: acting like a real judge and not like a partisan have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let us never give her too much or really
Speaker 1: any credit, but that is still pretty interesting. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about some of the other
Speaker 1: shit that's gone down. We have this pretty interesting blowback
Speaker 1: to the overturning of Row, which is that in Wiscon,
Speaker 1: in this very divided state, by a large margin, they
Speaker 1: elected a judge named Judge Janet. Talk to us about
Speaker 1: Judge Janet. I want to mispronounce her last name too.
Speaker 1: It's pro to say. It's oh easy, it rolls off
Speaker 1: the tongue. It's now Justice Janet. Yes, she's got a promotion. Yes,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about Justice Janet because this was a
Speaker 1: real upset for Republicans and we drank their tears. But
Speaker 1: it has really important meaning and let's talk about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it absolutely does. So, I mean to the point
Speaker 4: about abortion that has been such a topic of conversation
Speaker 4: around Wisconsin. I think very soon Justice Janet will probably
Speaker 4: cast the decisive vote that blocks Wisconsin's abortion ban and
Speaker 4: restores legal abortion in the states and holds that this
Speaker 4: very very old law that was passed exclusively by white men,
Speaker 4: like more than one hundred years ago is no longer
Speaker 4: good law, and that people are allowed to exercise reproductive freedom.
Speaker 4: So that's really great. But I actually think there's like
Speaker 4: an even more fundamental problem that she's eager to tackle here,
Speaker 4: which is the fact that wis consent is no longer
Speaker 4: really a democracy in any sense of the term. So,
Speaker 4: you know, Wisconsin Republicans in twenty ten drew the most
Speaker 4: egregious partisan gerrymander that has ever existed, and they managed
Speaker 4: to preserve it with the help of the Wisconsin Supreme
Speaker 4: Court in twenty twenty because the court at that time
Speaker 4: had a conservative majority, and the day after Justice Janet
Speaker 4: joined at the beginning of August and flipped the court
Speaker 4: and give it a liberal majority. Voting rights advocates filed
Speaker 4: a lawsuit against that jerrymander and argued that that Wisconsin
Speaker 4: legislature is so chopped up and horribly jerrymandered that it
Speaker 4: violates various provisions of the state constitution that guarantee the
Speaker 4: equal vote of every citizen, that guarantee freedom of association, expression,
Speaker 4: all of these kind of bedrock rights that political gerrymanders
Speaker 4: target by saying, well, if you vote for Democrats, then
Speaker 4: your vote's going to count for less. We're going to
Speaker 4: you know, stick you in this district where you'll never
Speaker 4: be able to elect your preferred rep. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: when the court tackles that, and it's going to happen
Speaker 4: soon because the case is already there. That I think
Speaker 4: helps to restore actual democratic rule to Wisconsin, you know,
Speaker 4: make it a representational democracy again for the first time
Speaker 4: in more than a decade. And at that point, we
Speaker 4: won't have to rely on Justice Janet to do things
Speaker 4: like overturn an abortion ban, because if the state legislature
Speaker 4: reflects the will of the people, it will either be
Speaker 4: very closely divided or democratic leaning. Because Wisconsin in recent
Speaker 4: years has been either in the center or a little
Speaker 4: bit to the left, and so that's like a big
Speaker 4: difference I think between Republican and democratic judges in some sense,
Speaker 4: Like what Justice Janet wants to do is return a
Speaker 4: lot of these issues to the democratic process and you know,
Speaker 4: let the people work them out. What some Republican justices
Speaker 4: on that very same court want to do is prevent
Speaker 4: the people from ever really exercising their rights through representative
Speaker 4: democracy because they're going to be toiling under a partisan
Speaker 4: gerrymander forever. And that is like a huge dispute in
Speaker 4: the legal world, and Wisconsin is coming out very much
Speaker 4: on the right side of it at this moment.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Like, whoever thought those guys would
Speaker 1: be leading democracy. Let's talk for a minute about Trump's
Speaker 1: legal troubles. Since you are a legal scholar of a sort, right,
Speaker 1: we're going to get a fourth indictment, maybe around the
Speaker 1: same time as the GOP first debate, I mean, what
Speaker 1: the fuck? What the fuck?
Speaker 4: Indeed, I've said all along, I think the New York
Speaker 4: indictment is weak. I'm not optimistic that that one's going
Speaker 4: to even get to a jury trial. I think the
Speaker 4: way that the district attorney tried to bootstrap this election
Speaker 4: crime onto a misdemeanor to get it into a felony
Speaker 4: range is just very legally questionable.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's also a state charge that somehow then
Speaker 1: would have to become a federal charge.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, exactly. You know, the accusation is that he
Speaker 4: violated federal campaign election laws and that the DA can
Speaker 4: like kind of couple that with a violation of state
Speaker 4: business records laws and magically transmography it into a felony
Speaker 4: under New York law. I'm not convinced. I would love
Speaker 4: to be convinced. I've read the best arguments.
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced by the way. He had a good case.
Speaker 1: He just decided not to go with that.
Speaker 4: Alvin Bragg did.
Speaker 1: Alvin Bragg had the lying about the valuation of his
Speaker 1: property's case, which I've known people to go to jail for,
Speaker 1: and Alvin Bragg decided not to go for it. And
Speaker 1: then the political bullback was such that he went for
Speaker 1: this lesser case.
Speaker 4: I think that's exactly right. And there was blowback within
Speaker 4: his own office too, and that pressured him to figure
Speaker 4: out a way to bring charges, and he just sort
Speaker 4: of brought the wrong ones. I think the mar Alago
Speaker 4: classified documents case is clearly the strongest on the law
Speaker 4: and on the facts, Like you not only have the
Speaker 4: obvious theft of these classified documents, which is in itself
Speaker 4: a crime, but you have this totally blundering obstruction of
Speaker 4: the resulting investigation into the theft of these documents, and
Speaker 4: this broader conspiracy with at least two other people to
Speaker 4: try to cover up the obstruction itself. You know, we've
Speaker 4: got apparently CCTV footage of people like secretly moving these
Speaker 4: documents out of the storage room where the federal agents
Speaker 4: are going to be tomorrow to look through them like that.
Speaker 4: You know, this was a crime where Trump got caught
Speaker 4: red handed. But the problem, of course, is that it's
Speaker 4: landed in the courtroom of Judge Eileen Cannon, who is
Speaker 4: is either maliciously partisan or extremely stupid or both. I
Speaker 4: really don't know which is which it is. But she
Speaker 4: already at a previous stage of this case ran interference
Speaker 4: for Trump, tried to halt the early stages of the
Speaker 4: criminal investigation into the classified documents at mar Lago got
Speaker 4: brutally reversed at the Conservative Eleventh Circuit twice, which accused
Speaker 4: her of creating different rules for Trump than everybody else,
Speaker 4: which is exactly what she did. And now she's handling
Speaker 4: the rest of the case, and she's already suggested that
Speaker 4: she's going to be pretty much in the tank for
Speaker 4: Trump and is forcing federal prosecutors to jump through hoops
Speaker 4: they should not have to jump through, delaying the schedule
Speaker 4: for no good reason. And so you know, if we
Speaker 4: assume the Canon is going to kind of throw this case,
Speaker 4: which a trial judge really can, that leaves us with
Speaker 4: the January fifth prosecution here in the district, and that
Speaker 4: has landed before brilliant Judge Tanya Chuckkin. She's an Obama
Speaker 4: appoint judge. Cannon is, of course a Donald Trump appointee.
Speaker 4: Chuckin is like a judge's judge, widely respected. I think
Speaker 4: that these charges are strong and legally grounded. But I
Speaker 4: also think the Republicans have done a good job trying
Speaker 4: to tend that they are just prosecution of political speech.
Speaker 4: That's bs to be clear, like that is absolutely not
Speaker 4: what's going on here. But I am worried about the
Speaker 4: ways that Republicans can manipulate the January sixth case to
Speaker 4: try to paint Trump as a martyr who's facing this
Speaker 4: witch hunt. Again, that's not the case, but that's what
Speaker 4: they're already trying to do. And that's why I'm I
Speaker 4: don't know, I'm still kind of worried, because ideally, you
Speaker 4: could just nail him on this massive criminal conspiracy at
Speaker 4: mar A Lago to trick the government, and that case
Speaker 4: has landed before maybe the dumbest judge in the history
Speaker 4: of the federal judiciary.
Speaker 1: I love the dumbest judge in the history of the
Speaker 1: federal judiciary, though. I think kas Merrick would like a word.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks anytime.
Speaker 6: Molly, no moment, Jesse Cannon, Molly Jung Fast that Matt
Speaker 6: Gate's always up to something to defend mister Trump.
Speaker 1: What do you see in you know, you may remember
Speaker 1: Matt Gates of being under FBI investigation for a long time.
Speaker 1: He's cooked up a plan to immunize Trump to get
Speaker 1: him off the hook for the federal charges he faces again.
Speaker 1: It all sounds like hooey to me. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.