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 Troy Jackson has officially been fit
Speaker 1: to challenge Senator Susan Collins in the great state of Maine.
Speaker 1: We have such a fantastic show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Latino Votes podcast host Mike Madrid talk to us about
Speaker 1: how MAGA is fracturing and how Latino voters are the
Speaker 1: new swing voters. Then we'll talk to the acl use
Speaker 1: Mike Zamore and Hattie Gassima about ICE's abuses inside New
Speaker 1: Jersey's Delaney Hall and other detention centers. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Maali, for some reason, we still have a White
Speaker 2: House Correspondence Dinner, and despite it being an absolute failure
Speaker 2: of an event as evidence by Friday Night's proceedings, are
Speaker 2: you just still crying in your pillow that you didn't
Speaker 2: get to attend?
Speaker 1: So I have always been like a little bit of
Speaker 1: a contrarian on the White House Correspondence Dinner. Basically since
Speaker 1: Trump has been president since twenty sixteen, there's been a
Speaker 1: feeling and it's grown over the last decade that the
Speaker 1: White House Correspondents Association. Well, they do good work, right,
Speaker 1: They do scholarships for students, they do public outreach. They
Speaker 1: also are not doing themselves or any of us any
Speaker 1: favors with the stupid dinner. So the point of the
Speaker 1: dinner is, or at least the historic point of the
Speaker 1: dinner was to raise money for scholarships, to highlight these
Speaker 1: scholar students, and to focus on the job of the
Speaker 1: White House correspondents. Over the years, and the New York
Speaker 1: Times haven't been allowing their people to attend for like
Speaker 1: ten years. I mean, you can go to cover, but
Speaker 1: you know, they don't buy tables or anything. Basically, the
Speaker 1: event has gotten more and more unpalatable. Now few thoughts
Speaker 1: on the White House correspondence before we get into Donald
Speaker 1: What Donald Trump did which everyone could have seen coming
Speaker 1: a million miles away, which is he gave a really
Speaker 1: really hostile speech that was embarrassing and I listened to
Speaker 1: some of it. I mean, it's really long, and in
Speaker 1: it he's just he's just mean and gross and mean
Speaker 1: to Caitlin Collins. But part of why it is, part
Speaker 1: of why I think it should be ended, is because
Speaker 1: it's not Look, when people report they have to have sources,
Speaker 1: and some of those sources are going to be in
Speaker 1: the White House, whether or not the White House is
Speaker 1: filled with or not, You're going to have to talk
Speaker 1: to those people if you're going to report on them.
Speaker 1: But that's just true. I mean, we may not like it,
Speaker 1: but it's true. So some of the optics coming out
Speaker 1: of that dinner, like Stephen Miller yucking it up with
Speaker 1: real reporters, that stuff, it just looks really the optics
Speaker 1: of it are horrendous. And then the other thing is
Speaker 1: that just the idea of this kind of like these
Speaker 1: cabinet members were clearly really I mean, some of them
Speaker 1: are doing some really sketchy stuff, and to have them
Speaker 1: sitting with the journalists who cover them and then having Trump,
Speaker 1: it's just so bad. This is my personal Piccadillo. I
Speaker 1: feel that the White House Press Association had more power
Speaker 1: than a thought and should have when Donald Trump kicked
Speaker 1: out the AP for not calling the Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 1: the Gulf of America, which was stupid, but it was
Speaker 1: a power grab, and what the White House Correspondence Association
Speaker 1: should have done was been like, Okay, we're done, we're out,
Speaker 1: because this administration needs the media just as much as
Speaker 1: the media needs to cover this administration. But they didn't
Speaker 1: do that, and so what happened was they ended up
Speaker 1: in this situation where they've just had the White House
Speaker 1: has taken almost all their power away. They decide who
Speaker 1: was in the press pool, things that historically were not true.
Speaker 1: They kicked out all the press pool at the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: Like they've just done a lot of stuff that has
Speaker 1: really limited press access, and all the while they've framed
Speaker 1: it as if the press was somehow the bad guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, like my husband don't necessarily like straight reporting,
Speaker 1: feel that a lot of times straight reporters give this
Speaker 1: administration the benefit of the doubt when they shouldn't. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Like the only way you're going to
Speaker 1: be able to hold power to account is with straight reporting.
Speaker 1: And there's a reason that these people are so obsessed
Speaker 1: with ending the media, and it's because of things like this,
Speaker 1: and like that is why the White House correspondence dinner
Speaker 1: is just so wrong for this moment, Like it just
Speaker 1: is wrong for this moment. You have people who are
Speaker 1: losing their lives that protests to have a genteel little
Speaker 1: dinner party with people like Stephen Miller, it's the wrong
Speaker 1: moment for this.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of wrong moments, wrong person for the job,
Speaker 2: We've been long complaining about Ken Martin, the head of
Speaker 2: the DNC, and it seems like this morning I woke
Speaker 2: up to d day for his reputation and people being
Speaker 2: chill about him staying on as head of the DNC.
Speaker 1: You know Adam Gentilsen, who has been on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but who can be you know, complicated and is I
Speaker 1: think a very good tweet about this where he said,
Speaker 1: you know, like, this is it. This is the end
Speaker 1: of Ken Martin's career. Like you like it, you don't
Speaker 1: like it. He's not going to be able to like
Speaker 1: because part of this job is just being able to
Speaker 1: fake it till you make it right, to raise the
Speaker 1: money that you need in order to get this stuff done.
Speaker 1: And he I just think he's run out of lock here.
Speaker 1: But here's what I would say about Ken Martin. This
Speaker 1: was always going to be a hard job, right the Well,
Speaker 1: let's just go back to what is the head of
Speaker 1: the DNC supposed to do? Raise for state parties. And
Speaker 1: by the way, one of the things that I do
Speaker 1: think Ken Martin did which was good, which was in
Speaker 1: this Times article was he gave an extra one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to Mississippi, and Mississippi was able to elect
Speaker 1: another state ledge and break a Republican supermajority. So that
Speaker 1: was good. But you know, you're going to need someone
Speaker 1: who has the faith of the donor class so you
Speaker 1: can raise some money, and Ken Martin clearly doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: and that is why this is probably the moment for
Speaker 1: him to resign. Look, it is very I think he's
Speaker 1: having a very tough time. And I understand that one
Speaker 1: of the nice things about Democrats is that they are
Speaker 1: very nice to each other. But I think at this
Speaker 1: moment it certainly seems like the floor has fallen out
Speaker 1: from under him. And again, so basically here's the story.
Speaker 1: He may have thrown a phone at an underling. It's
Speaker 1: not entirely sure if he threw it at a junior
Speaker 1: aid or if it scared the junior aid, or if
Speaker 1: he threw it at the desk, But whatever it is,
Speaker 1: he had to go to HR for it. And then
Speaker 1: Trump has uh the RNC has raised million dollars and
Speaker 1: Ken Martin has raised Right now he has the DNC
Speaker 1: is two million dollars in debt, which is pretty unfucking
Speaker 1: believable and so and he also at the last DNC
Speaker 1: meeting he made people sign NDA's which is a sign
Speaker 1: that he's not feeling very confident, which is which we'll
Speaker 1: transmit to donors. He also spent seven point I think
Speaker 1: it was seven point eight million dollars to buy Harris's
Speaker 1: mailing list, which was a way of settling her the
Speaker 1: case debts, which I guess is fine but also pretty
Speaker 1: seems a little bit shortsighted. He also did put the
Speaker 1: DNC up for collateral for loans, which seems kind of bad,
Speaker 1: though have done that historically. But then the other thing
Speaker 1: he did which a lot of people are upset about,
Speaker 1: was that he spent about a million dollars eight hundred
Speaker 1: and forty thousand dollars on fundraising committee and money to Guam,
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, places that do
Speaker 1: not elect a president or even members who have full
Speaker 1: voting privileges. This is not a good moment for Ken
Speaker 1: Martin and his time for him to resign.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think about a lot that when us an
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs talk that the heads of organizations really, what most
Speaker 2: people don't see is that there's just supposed to be
Speaker 2: a confidence man who makes it easy to raise funds
Speaker 2: from investors. This has lost all confidence.
Speaker 1: Right, either you can raise money or you can do media,
Speaker 1: which Ben Wicker can do both. You know, it's funny
Speaker 1: because when this happened, I was very like, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: Ben Wickler's an outsider. Ken Martin's an insider. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: better have an insider who knows. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be you know what, who even knows. Maybe these state
Speaker 1: party chairs know what they're doing. No, Ben Wigo would
Speaker 1: have been better, and Ben Wicco could get in there now,
Speaker 1: and it needs to happen. And you know, I know
Speaker 1: there are people who know this podcasts, who are involved
Speaker 1: in the DMC. It's like, it's time guys like this
Speaker 1: is you can be nice and then you have you know,
Speaker 1: if this is really about American democracy, which a lot
Speaker 1: of us absolutely believe it is, you got to get
Speaker 1: get going here.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to another horrible thing that happened, the
Speaker 2: One Big Beautiful Bill. Apparently more than one million children
Speaker 2: whilst to access to food benefits after it passed.
Speaker 1: So we always knew this was coming because we are
Speaker 1: because we read a lot of We read a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff and we read the bell right or
Speaker 1: we read enough of it to know what was going on.
Speaker 1: The goal of this was always to put new requirements
Speaker 1: on Medicare Medicaid SNAP, and children on SNAP was always
Speaker 1: going to be part of this. So this analysis finds
Speaker 1: that four million Americans lost SNAP benefits. That's four million
Speaker 1: from July twenty twenty five to March twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Like that is Doge in a nutshell. And this is
Speaker 1: because of One Beautiful Bill. So they were removed from SNAP.
Speaker 1: And part of how they were removed is they've tightened
Speaker 1: the eligibility rules for food assistance. They've increased screening requirements.
Speaker 1: So four hundred and fifty thousand Arizonas people who live
Speaker 1: in Arizona have come off SNAP. And they haven't come
Speaker 1: off SNAP because things are cheaper. They've come off SNAP
Speaker 1: because the state has made it and not the state.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration, the One big Beautiful Bill has made
Speaker 1: it so they can't stay on. Children make up a
Speaker 1: significant portion of those losing benefits worth more than one million.
Speaker 1: Children across nine in states no longer receive SNAP. In Louisiana,
Speaker 1: one in four children receiving SNAP lost benefits. In Massachusetts
Speaker 1: and Texas, one fifth of children enrolled in the program
Speaker 1: were removed. This is the legacy of Elon Musk, right,
Speaker 1: This is the legacy of Doge and Donald Trump. This
Speaker 1: is the this is the Big Beautiful Bill. This is
Speaker 1: tax cuts for people like Howard Lutnek. This is the
Speaker 1: America that Trump has ushered in. So if you think
Speaker 1: about a million hungry children, that's I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It's just like, just imagine these SNAP kids are not
Speaker 1: It's not like their parents are doing great. It's like
Speaker 1: their parents are barely hanging on and now they do
Speaker 1: not have food snamps to buy food so they can eat.
Speaker 1: And in a very inflationary environment where the economy is
Speaker 1: bad for workers, where wages are not keeping up with inflation,
Speaker 1: where things are getting more and more expensive, or gas
Speaker 1: is more expensive, this is what the Big Beautiful Bill
Speaker 1: has wrought. This is what Elon Musk, trying to and fraud,
Speaker 1: waste and abuse. The biggest beneficiary of government subsidy is
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, has wrought this.
Speaker 2: So the US Appeals Court has ruled Trump cannot implement
Speaker 2: mail and voting bends.
Speaker 1: So you know why this is important is because it's
Speaker 1: just yet another time where this administration just keeps losing
Speaker 1: in court, and this is one. So the federal appeals
Speaker 1: Court said that Trump can't implement twenty three states this
Speaker 1: executive order that titans mail and voting. By the way,
Speaker 1: none of this is about like, this is all bullshit, right,
Speaker 1: It's not about making voting safer. It's all about just
Speaker 1: because he knows his to lose. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: read you, as the District District Court reasoned, the executive
Speaker 1: order lays at a clear set of rapidly approaching deadlines
Speaker 1: in which states must cooperate. By the way, the idea
Speaker 1: that they're going to federalize elections, it's bullshit and it's illegal,
Speaker 1: and watching this administration try to do it is it's
Speaker 1: just so fucking corrupt. And I mean, we know how
Speaker 1: this goes, and we know that they're going to try
Speaker 1: everything they can, but just what, I mean, what a
Speaker 1: fucking disaster. Mike Madrid is a political consultant and the
Speaker 1: host of The Latino Vote podcast and the author of
Speaker 1: The Latino Century. Welcome, Welcome, Mike Madrid Ollie.
Speaker 3: Always great to be with you. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for having me back.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we could talk about I feel like
Speaker 1: we've seen splits a maga before, but I don't know
Speaker 1: that we've ever seen anything quite like this. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to refer to a political poll that we saw
Speaker 1: earlier in the week that showed that one in five
Speaker 1: self proclaimed magas want Donald Trump out of the war
Speaker 1: in Iran today do not care just over over, And
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about that because I think
Speaker 1: that's profound in the fact that it is just a
Speaker 1: complete Remember, like ninety percent of self proclaimed megas get
Speaker 1: all their news from Trump, so it means there's a
Speaker 1: real fracturing happening there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I look for many of us, I mean, the whole
Speaker 4: time that we've known each other, I've been kind of saying,
Speaker 4: when is the fever swamp going to be breaking? When
Speaker 4: does the cult you know start took fade away. I'm
Speaker 4: not going to suggest we're at that moment, but I'm
Speaker 4: also not going to suggest we're not. I mean, we
Speaker 4: are not seeing we have not seen to your point,
Speaker 4: twenty percent of self described maga disagreeing with the president
Speaker 4: on probably his most important issue at this moment, which
Speaker 4: is war. And what you're seeing is the Republican leadership
Speaker 4: reflecting that you can't get the Save Act passed, they
Speaker 4: pushback on funding this war, continuing this war. Those splits
Speaker 4: are there, they are becoming larger, and they're going to
Speaker 4: get more significant as we close in on the midterms,
Speaker 4: and especially after the midterms, Molly, that's when you're going
Speaker 4: to have to you know, Katie, bar the doors. Shit's
Speaker 4: going to get real after that. That's when the dynamics
Speaker 4: of the country's politics are going to change considerably.
Speaker 1: And so let's just talk about You do a lot
Speaker 1: of polling and a lot of work with Latino voters too,
Speaker 1: which I would love you to just explain to us
Speaker 1: what the Latino voting block looks like, how big it is,
Speaker 1: and also sort of how it's grown over the last
Speaker 1: ten years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's a great question.
Speaker 4: So the Latino electorate, as we call it, is just
Speaker 4: to pass the block community vote as the largest ethnic
Speaker 4: minority voter group in twenty twenty, and it's sitting at
Speaker 4: about eleven to twelve percent of the electorate. Things about
Speaker 4: that one is it's growing incredibly fast. It's picking up
Speaker 4: about a percent a year, which is it's not unprecedented,
Speaker 4: but it hasn't happened in probably eighty ninety years that
Speaker 4: a group is growing as fast, and perhaps more important
Speaker 4: is where it's at. Like, of the seventeen House races,
Speaker 4: something like fifteen of them have Latino populations that are
Speaker 4: well larger than the margin of victory is going to be,
Speaker 4: So Latinos will determine how that vote breaks.
Speaker 3: It's it's the only voting.
Speaker 4: Group moving molly in any meaningful way. It's like the
Speaker 4: last swing voter will determine the balance of power in
Speaker 4: the House, the Senate, and of course key gubernatorial races.
Speaker 4: So the fact that it is there, that it's large,
Speaker 4: that it's unmoored, it's unanchored. It's the least partisan group
Speaker 4: in America, and it will be determining the balance of
Speaker 4: power not just in this election, but in most elections
Speaker 4: going forward for the better part of our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: Now, So why you talk about Latino voters as a
Speaker 1: swing voting block Because Trump made crazy inroads with them,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean he gets to keep them right now.
Speaker 4: I mean, I argue he'd already lost them. But this
Speaker 4: is really important, I think for people to understand. If
Speaker 4: you're looking at Latinos as what they vote for, you're
Speaker 4: missing the point. Latino voters are voting against both parties,
Speaker 4: and they're historically moved away. As I wrote my book
Speaker 4: and predicted saying this shift is going to happen. Once
Speaker 4: it happened, I said, that doesn't mean that they're Republicans.
Speaker 4: There's no evidence saying that they're Republicans. That again has
Speaker 4: created the shift left which we saw in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five and were likely to see in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: But that doesn't mean that the Democrats are anywhere out
Speaker 4: of the woods. Yet they're rejecting Trump. They're not voting
Speaker 4: for the Democratic Party in the same way they were
Speaker 4: voting against Kamala Harrison, Joe Biden, not for Donald's Trump
Speaker 4: and both parties in this country really have a difficult
Speaker 4: time understanding that because that it is a unique voting
Speaker 4: block in that way, let me explain it a little
Speaker 4: bit more. The Latino community is the fastest growing part
Speaker 4: of the working class, and it is shifting by twenty
Speaker 4: points or more than many instances against the party in power.
Speaker 4: That's unlike black and white voter groups, black and white
Speaker 4: working class people do not move.
Speaker 3: They're not budgeting.
Speaker 4: Black voters are not becoming more Republican in any meaningful way,
Speaker 4: and white working cloud voters are not leaving the Republican
Speaker 4: Party in any meaningful way. Doesn't matter whether at war,
Speaker 4: whether there's a pandemic, doesn't matter there's economic collapse, they
Speaker 4: do not leave. Latinas are the only voters that are saying,
Speaker 4: we don't buy this nonsense from either of you guys.
Speaker 4: And that's why it's becomes so critical is as both
Speaker 4: parties are struggling to understand what it means. Both of
Speaker 4: them are struggling and failing to meet the economic concerns
Speaker 4: of this community. And Latino voters are rejecting whoever it
Speaker 4: is in powered that at any given.
Speaker 1: Time, Trump won those voters.
Speaker 4: How I would argue that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden
Speaker 4: lost those voters, then win them. He was winning votes
Speaker 4: despite himself, not because of himself. That's why he's losing
Speaker 4: those voters.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: The Democrats, there's nothing popular about the Democrats. They're at
Speaker 4: all time lows for a metrim election. They're not popular.
Speaker 4: They'n I'll offer a real alternative. They just are the alternative,
Speaker 4: and so anything but Donald Trump is the prevailing sentiment
Speaker 4: for the exact same reasons that Kama Harrison Joe Biden
Speaker 4: lost these voters. Nobody's addressing the economy. Affordability is off
Speaker 4: the charts. Life is getting more and more difficult for
Speaker 4: working class people, and both of these parties are ignoring
Speaker 4: it or pretending it's not happening, and doing nothing meaningful
Speaker 4: to address it. As long as that happens, that lack
Speaker 4: of loyalty to either party is going to be the
Speaker 4: dominant characteristic of this voter group, fast growing voter group.
Speaker 1: So let's talk this through because I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So basically, from my understanding of this, we had angry
Speaker 1: voters reject Trump in twenty twenty, reject Biden and Harris
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, and now we are cruising into
Speaker 1: a midterm. The question is they think things are too
Speaker 1: expensive because they are, and that the middle class is
Speaker 1: getting squeezed, which it is, right. I mean, like, for example,
Speaker 1: I live in New York. We have this mayor. He
Speaker 1: largely talks about affordability. That's like his thing, right, affordability. Affordability,
Speaker 1: You know, it's not so easy to actually deliver on affordability.
Speaker 1: But some of the things he's done is he's got
Speaker 1: a rent freeze going, which has made a lot of
Speaker 1: real estate people in New York furious. But you know
Speaker 1: that is something tangible if you live in those rented
Speaker 1: But I mean, what are the tangible deliverables you can offer?
Speaker 1: And actually, because part of what Trump has gotten into
Speaker 1: trouble with is that he said I'm gonna make everything
Speaker 1: cheaper and then he immediately did stuff that would do
Speaker 1: the opposite. But if you wanted to make things cheaper,
Speaker 1: I mean, is it so easy even to do that?
Speaker 4: Well, it can make three really good points. So the
Speaker 4: first is, yeah, Donald Trump's prioritization is.
Speaker 3: The real problem for himself.
Speaker 4: No one views, no one believed for a second that
Speaker 4: he's all focused on this the way maybe you know
Speaker 4: zoron Mom Donnie is whether your views is Mom Donnie
Speaker 4: are or not? Is at least trying to do something
Speaker 4: about it?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, again with politicians, who even knows, But he
Speaker 1: paints himself that way, paints himself the way.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Donald Trump is you know, raising the price of
Speaker 4: oil by losing the straight orfom moves.
Speaker 3: In a war that nobody wanted.
Speaker 4: So that's But the second is you ask a really
Speaker 4: important question is are politicians, through are traditional tools able
Speaker 4: to actually impact the economy and coomy that has changed
Speaker 4: so significantly and so substantially that our old tools of
Speaker 4: governance no longer work and no longer apply. That is
Speaker 4: a bigger question. I would submit that they do. The
Speaker 4: problem is what most legislators, policymakers, executives are gonna have
Speaker 4: to do is roll things back, not create a new
Speaker 4: law to do something. And by the way, the one
Speaker 4: thing that the Congress actually did do, this bipartisan housing bill,
Speaker 4: the President wouldn't sign because you want to say, so
Speaker 4: the one thing.
Speaker 1: And it did pass. I mean, yeah, go on, so.
Speaker 4: I'm saying, is the one thing he could have said,
Speaker 4: I'm doing something on the most critical issue facing Tino voters,
Speaker 4: which is housing and housing costs. He doesn't even get
Speaker 4: to take credit for, nor should he.
Speaker 1: Right, it's on the bill.
Speaker 3: So now, but even if.
Speaker 4: Pat housing, you know, housing is a twenty thirty year program, like,
Speaker 4: it's going to take a long time to get these
Speaker 4: things around. There's going to have to be efforts and
Speaker 4: we're seeing these in California to dial back a lot
Speaker 4: of these.
Speaker 3: Cumbersome rules and regulations.
Speaker 4: A lot of people don't like to hear it, but
Speaker 4: that's the way to do it. It's not the past
Speaker 4: more laws. It's to start unwinding things that we've suffocated
Speaker 4: the economy with. That's what has to happen in places
Speaker 4: like California.
Speaker 3: That's what the President's be engaged in.
Speaker 1: So okay, this is like my least favorite solve for
Speaker 1: a problem. So I want just because I love regulation.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a love basine liberal, right, so that's
Speaker 1: regulation is my favorite. So think this through with me.
Speaker 1: The question is how do you get more affordable housing?
Speaker 1: And the answers you build more housing. And the reason
Speaker 1: you can't build more housing in California. And I think
Speaker 1: we've all saw that photo from the San Francisco Community
Speaker 1: Board meeting where you had all the old people saying
Speaker 1: they didn't want them to build high rise buildings in
Speaker 1: San Francisco because it would mess up their view. I
Speaker 1: mean that that's what you're talking about, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, particularly in California. I mean, you know Texas doesn't
Speaker 4: have this problem. The Austin and Metropolitan area has built
Speaker 4: more housing every year in the last five years than
Speaker 4: California housing the entire state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's killed it. It's created a caste system budget.
Speaker 1: But I just want to push back for a second,
Speaker 1: because I do love regulation. Texas and Florida, and Florida
Speaker 1: especially are having wild in place with housing. Well, cost
Speaker 1: of living is humongous and it's not necessarily housing, it's insurance.
Speaker 1: But that is So that's another thing, right, so go on.
Speaker 1: But that's something that could be solved with regulation, the
Speaker 1: insurance stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Look, I'm not ideological about this at all. I think
Speaker 4: ideologues have killed the way to solve problems in this
Speaker 4: modern economy. That's the problem is everybody's ideological. If you
Speaker 4: love regulation for the sake of loving regulations, I don't
Speaker 4: even know what that means. It's is it better to
Speaker 4: have regulations and create poor people? Because California, manterfactured, is
Speaker 4: poverty better than anybody in the world.
Speaker 3: Like, I don't think that's a good thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: but I'm I'm not saying Texas and Florida are better.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying speaking they're different.
Speaker 4: But the question is, how do you deal with affordability,
Speaker 4: and both parties have done the wrong thing because we're
Speaker 4: using last centuries solutions for this century's problems, and so
Speaker 4: we go, well, do we regulate do we not regulate? Well,
Speaker 4: how about we stop beginning with that question and try
Speaker 4: to find the solution and work backwards regardless of whether
Speaker 4: it's ideologically a fit for my red or blue team.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm no, And I think that's actually really
Speaker 1: smart because but it is, like I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about the sort of big tenets of inflation housing costs,
Speaker 1: it's insurance, and then it's those food costs, and that
Speaker 1: energy costs, energy costs. Let's talk about energy for a minute,
Speaker 1: because like what's happened with trump Ism is like this
Speaker 1: broad deregulation, which you would think should theoretically, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that actually is how it works, but
Speaker 1: should make things cheaper, and it hasn't.
Speaker 4: Well, particular energy, you've got to create a war again,
Speaker 4: lising it within a few weeks, you can throw that
Speaker 4: whole framework out the window.
Speaker 3: I mean, the reason why gas.
Speaker 4: Is so expensive is because Iran is put a noose
Speaker 4: around the world supply as they should be, Like, what
Speaker 4: do we doing, you know, And so that's that I
Speaker 4: think is it's it's a uniquely incompetent, stupid effort that
Speaker 4: was done. That that kind of again is overshadowing everything.
Speaker 4: But look, our economy is it's it's a function of supply, chainge.
Speaker 4: Nobody's talking about the weakening currency value of the dollar.
Speaker 4: The dollar is collapsing right now of Trump's policies. It's
Speaker 4: not entirely his fault, but most of it is like
Speaker 4: this aggressor nation and you're forcing other nations to get off.
Speaker 3: The petro dollar.
Speaker 4: Our currency is going to do value ten percent less,
Speaker 4: worth less than when Trump took office. Ten percent increase
Speaker 4: in goods is directly correlate the Trump's foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. And
Speaker 1: there's clearly Donald Trump has made a number of really
Speaker 1: bad decisions that have made affordability even worse. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about Latina voters, we're cruising into this midterm,
Speaker 1: just give us sort of the places where Democrats can
Speaker 1: sort of pick up voters in the midterms, where you're
Speaker 1: seeing what you feel good about and what you're watching.
Speaker 4: I'm a little bit more bullish on democrats prospects than
Speaker 4: most pundits are. The reason why is I'm looking at
Speaker 4: more of the electoral results as opposed to things like
Speaker 4: the generic ballot and some of the averages.
Speaker 1: I think you're talking about the number of primary voters
Speaker 1: who show up right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, precisely, but also how they're behaving. Like nobody's polling
Speaker 4: was showing Mikey Cheryl winning New Jersey by twelve fifteen points.
Speaker 4: It's all saying, oh, it's the three or point raise.
Speaker 4: Everybody was saying spam Burger in Virginia is going to
Speaker 4: be a coin toss. It was anything, but it was
Speaker 4: a blowout. And it's that you know, you're seeing these
Speaker 4: twenty point shifts in Harris County, Texas where Tall Rico
Speaker 4: a third of Tall Rico voters had no vote history
Speaker 4: at all. Like, these are data points you cannot ignore.
Speaker 4: You can, you know, try to argue why it's happening,
Speaker 4: But the fact that it is happening and nobody's polling
Speaker 4: was bringing it up tells us that we're missing something
Speaker 4: in the voter models that we're using.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean.
Speaker 4: Polling is bad, but it does mean is that there's
Speaker 4: a lot more momentum the turnout models are volcanic for Democrats,
Speaker 4: and we're seeing a lower turnout model for Republicans combined
Speaker 4: with Molly. And this is the real kicker. Eighty percent
Speaker 4: of Independents are breaking away from Republicans. I've never heard
Speaker 4: of that, because it's never happened in my lifetime. Eighty
Speaker 4: percent of independence is on its unprecedented ground, you know,
Speaker 4: in elections.
Speaker 3: But that's where we are, and it's.
Speaker 4: Why I think we're going to be in a democrat
Speaker 4: plus eleven environment, which means that you're going to Seemocrats
Speaker 4: pick up over twenty seats in the House.
Speaker 3: I think the Senate.
Speaker 4: The Senate is very much in play again. I'm more
Speaker 4: optimistic about it, and I think that I think that
Speaker 4: that's going to fundamentally change the contours of the Republican
Speaker 4: electorate because Donald Trump will be more of a liability
Speaker 4: than an asset at a time when he's losing his step,
Speaker 4: when he's losing policy support, when the MAGA base is
Speaker 4: coming unwound.
Speaker 1: The D plus eleven number we did see this week
Speaker 1: a generic with a D plus eleven, which people said
Speaker 1: was an outlier, but I was saying, he's got that number.
Speaker 4: I said this back in January when you're the Prop
Speaker 4: fifty campaign in California. I was saying, look, this is
Speaker 4: not necessary.
Speaker 3: I get why people are doing it, but if you're.
Speaker 4: In a Democrat plus seven or eight environment, it doesn't
Speaker 4: matter whether or not you're the redistricyc thing.
Speaker 3: Is not going to matter.
Speaker 4: I said, we will be probably in a Democrat plus
Speaker 4: eleven environment. People said it was nuts then. I haven't
Speaker 4: seen that outlier, but my guess is that number is
Speaker 4: growing towards that double digit space, and there's every reason
Speaker 4: to expect that the economy is getting worse, not better,
Speaker 4: which means the Democrat plus eleven on the generic ballot
Speaker 4: is very very likely now, which I'm hoping people will
Speaker 4: come back and say that guy was right, but everyone,
Speaker 4: of course will say that they've been saying all along
Speaker 4: the way.
Speaker 1: And I want you to talk about these low frequency voters,
Speaker 1: because what you're saying in Harris County in Texas is
Speaker 1: that you're seeing ones and twos low frequency voters, non
Speaker 1: frequency voters, newly registered voters, the people who made Trump
Speaker 1: president and where Trump's polling, where the polling showed that
Speaker 1: Hillary is going to win, and actually it just did
Speaker 1: not pull those people. So is that what you're seeing
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side.
Speaker 4: Now, No, because what's happening is the opposite from what
Speaker 4: you and I have become accustomed to the Trump era.
Speaker 4: One of the most fascinating things that's defining the Trump
Speaker 4: era is the Republican Party is now the beneficiary of
Speaker 4: high turnout elections and Democrats are the beneficiaries of low
Speaker 4: turnout election right. So you correctly pointed out it's these
Speaker 4: low propensity, low information voters that put Donald Trump in
Speaker 4: the White House. These were voting Republican But now what
Speaker 4: we're seeing is in this environment is the Republicans face
Speaker 4: two problems. They're seeing defections from their own MAGA base,
Speaker 4: as you've been pointing out, and as marginal as it
Speaker 4: is twenty percent or so, that's very consequential in an
Speaker 4: election when you're having tough time in a low turnout
Speaker 4: election anyway. But more importantly, they carved seats, especially in
Speaker 4: Latino districts like Texas around along the Rio Grande, out
Speaker 4: for themselves based off of this false presumption that these
Speaker 4: low propensity Latino voters, We're going to not only be
Speaker 4: with them, but be with them in big turnout numbers.
Speaker 4: Neither of those assumptions are panning out. In fact, the
Speaker 4: exact opposite is happening.
Speaker 3: So there's dummy mander As people keep calling out.
Speaker 5: I think likely.
Speaker 4: So you could see these seats that Republicans carved out
Speaker 4: for themselves, the Republicans losing at least two maybe three seats,
Speaker 4: actually putting some of the seats that they in Texas,
Speaker 4: the seats they had to weaken outside of that to
Speaker 4: carve these stronger Republican seats. Yeah, if you went from
Speaker 4: a Republican plus seven seat to Republican plus four in
Speaker 4: order to give up those votes for another Republican seat
Speaker 4: in Texas, you're regretting that decision because nobody view is
Speaker 4: a competitive seat and you are now you absolutely all.
Speaker 1: And in a deplus eleven. So then make sense of
Speaker 1: the Mike Lawler seat because New York State has a
Speaker 1: few has a bunch of seats that are tight. I mean,
Speaker 1: Mike Lawler should be losing that seat, and he's actually
Speaker 1: I mean New York State may be weird, maybe different.
Speaker 1: We've seen that in other elections.
Speaker 4: There's only about five seats and two of them are
Speaker 4: like in Long Island, or New York area. The three
Speaker 4: are in like Orange County, California, North San Diego, where
Speaker 4: you have a high number of college educated professional class
Speaker 4: workers with blue collar workers. It's very very rare. Only
Speaker 4: in New York and California. Lawler is one of those seats.
Speaker 4: But like I said, the defections that are coming tend
Speaker 4: to be college educated Republicans. It doesn't matter whether you
Speaker 4: lose them in rural Georgia or Alabama, right Like, who
Speaker 4: cares whether or not if you're getting twenty percent of
Speaker 4: Republicans or fifteen percent of Republicans, you lose one in
Speaker 4: five MAGA voters in Lawler's district.
Speaker 3: And he's done. He's toast. This was a big part
Speaker 3: of our Lincoln.
Speaker 4: Project strategy in twenty twenty. Those seats particularly, we were
Speaker 4: focusing really on college educated Republicans. There are so many
Speaker 4: more now working class gettable Latinos that that is really
Speaker 4: the demographic where the focus on the balance of power
Speaker 4: is going to be.
Speaker 3: Does Lawler survive?
Speaker 4: Honestly, I haven't looked at that districts too much. My
Speaker 4: guess is probably not, depending on the credibility of the
Speaker 4: Democratic candidate, just because the place where Republicans are losing
Speaker 4: support levels of most amongst their own base are characterized
Speaker 4: by those Orange County, California, Long Island, New York districts
Speaker 4: like his.
Speaker 1: It would be malpractice if I didn't ask you about
Speaker 1: Tella Rico. It is in my mind, the least likely
Speaker 1: of those pickups, because I think Alaska, Iowa, Ohio more likely.
Speaker 1: But tell Rico is sort of an amazing candidate in
Speaker 1: Paxton is a disaster. So what you're thinking.
Speaker 3: There, well, it's exactly like yours.
Speaker 4: In order to win Texas, and Texas has always been
Speaker 4: sort of the holy grail for Democrats.
Speaker 3: I've always cautioned saying that this is Texas.
Speaker 4: This is you know, when you look at the numbers
Speaker 4: on the map, they're not telling the whole story.
Speaker 3: You need three things to happen in Texas.
Speaker 4: You have to have a remarkably good Democratic candidate, which
Speaker 4: you do. You have to have a remarkably bad candidate
Speaker 4: in Paxton, which the Republicans do. And you have to
Speaker 4: have a very sour mood for incumbent Republicans, which you
Speaker 4: also do. So if it's going to happen, it's going
Speaker 4: to happen in a year like this. I was saying,
Speaker 4: Betthrowurk is not going to win coolier jets.
Speaker 3: That's not a real thing.
Speaker 4: I'm a little less saying that, A little bit less
Speaker 4: now having said that, I agree with you, But listen
Speaker 4: to what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Listen what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Alaska is more in contention than a Texas. Iowa is
Speaker 4: more likely to go Ohio. The fact that we're talking
Speaker 4: about those states being in play mean that the battlefield
Speaker 4: is a lot bigger than people think it is.
Speaker 3: And it is.
Speaker 4: That's why I said, you're going to see some surprises.
Speaker 4: A lot of pundits I think are being very conservative
Speaker 4: right now. Can things change in the next three months, yes?
Speaker 3: Will they Yes?
Speaker 4: But there's also a good Likelihad, that it gets worse
Speaker 4: for Republicans, not better. And when you're seeing these states
Speaker 4: that should not be in play in contention, and Texas
Speaker 4: is a battleground state, whether you want to admit it
Speaker 4: or not, Republicans, that's telling you that the demographic collapse
Speaker 4: is widespreadish not with any one group, it's with all group.
Speaker 3: For Republicans.
Speaker 1: Mike Madrid, will you please come back.
Speaker 3: I would love to, Mollie. Thanks for having me I
Speaker 3: appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Hattie Gassima is a senior policy council on immigration policy
Speaker 1: at the acl You and Mike Zamore is a National
Speaker 1: director of Policy and Government Affairs at the ACLU. Welcome, love,
Speaker 1: gom Hattie and Mike, and I'm going to have you
Speaker 1: both in introduce yourselves. Mike tell us who you are
Speaker 1: and what you do, and then Hattie, will you please
Speaker 1: do the same.
Speaker 5: Sure. I'm Mike Theymore. I'm the National Director of Policy
Speaker 5: and Government Affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union and
Speaker 5: work with our team on the whole host of issues
Speaker 5: affecting our rights and our freedoms.
Speaker 1: And Hattie Hi, I'm Hattie.
Speaker 6: I serve as a senior policy council on our immigration
Speaker 6: policy team at the ACLU, and I lead our detention
Speaker 6: advocacy work, amongst a couple of other issue areas related
Speaker 6: to immigration.
Speaker 1: You guys are here to talk about a number of things,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that I am particularly interested
Speaker 1: in talking about because it's so close to where I
Speaker 1: am right now, is Delaney Hall. And you guys have
Speaker 1: been really writing about this, talking about it and also
Speaker 1: advocating right So I'd love you whoever feels the most
Speaker 1: comfortable starting us out on what's happening at Laney Hall
Speaker 1: right now and what the scou is doing.
Speaker 5: What we have.
Speaker 6: Seen in Delaney Hall over the past couple of weeks
Speaker 6: now is you know, I think emblematic of what we
Speaker 6: are seeing in immigration detention just across the country, which
Speaker 6: is that this is a system that has grown exponentially.
Speaker 6: It's growing with very little accountability, with an increase in funding,
Speaker 6: while the conditions in the facilities are deteriorating. And so
Speaker 6: what we're hearing from detained people in Delaney Hall is
Speaker 6: that the food is you know, inedible, there's little to
Speaker 6: no medical care whatsoever. There's been you know, instances of
Speaker 6: alleged physical abuse by guards at the facility. There's lots
Speaker 6: of pressure and duress to give up legitimate immigration claims
Speaker 6: and to you know, go for voluntary deportations. So we're
Speaker 6: hearing all these stances, and what we've seen last month
Speaker 6: and the month prior is that detained individuals, in order
Speaker 6: to shine a light into the terrific conditions that the
Speaker 6: facility decided to stage a hunger strike to bring light
Speaker 6: and attention. I think it's really important to also underscore
Speaker 6: that the reason why people would go to such a
Speaker 6: last resort measure as starving themselves to shine a light
Speaker 6: into their experiences and a detention facility is that we
Speaker 6: have so little access to these facilities. There is no
Speaker 6: sort of independent oversight body. Very few people can go in,
Speaker 6: mostly members of Congress, and we're seeing even that has
Speaker 6: become increasingly harder and harder under this administration.
Speaker 1: Maybe, Mike, you want to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: members of Congress who have gone to Delaney Hall on
Speaker 1: what's happened to them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's been a steady stream of effort to conduct
Speaker 5: oversight over this facility because the conditions are so squalid
Speaker 5: and the stories coming out of it are really horrific.
Speaker 5: And the most prominent controversial situation is one that happens
Speaker 5: a number of months ago now where the mayor of
Speaker 5: Newark was there to make a visit. As worse some
Speaker 5: members of Congress.
Speaker 1: Delaney Hall is basically in Newark.
Speaker 5: It's in Newark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, So technically these are his constituents.
Speaker 5: His city has responsibility for overseeing the conditions there, like
Speaker 5: any facility in the city. But ICE and the geogroup
Speaker 5: the for profit contractor don't want to let anybody in.
Speaker 5: There's like a big cover up happening at Delaney Hall.
Speaker 5: So we should be, you know, we should be clearly
Speaker 5: like what's going on here is that they are deliberately
Speaker 5: creating these terrible conditions. So, as Hattie said, people will
Speaker 5: decide that the path of least resistance is just to
Speaker 5: leave the country, whether or not they have a right
Speaker 5: to be here, whether or not the administration has valid
Speaker 5: grounds to support them. So they're trying to prevent people
Speaker 5: from getting a look inside. And so when the mayor
Speaker 5: went to go try to take a look, they first
Speaker 5: refused him, he left, and then on the direct orders
Speaker 5: of the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose confirmation will
Speaker 5: be next week in the Senate for the permanent job,
Speaker 5: the ICE agents waded into a crowd of protesters, created
Speaker 5: a big conflict, and coming out of this they ended
Speaker 5: up charging a US representative from New Jersey, La Monica
Speaker 5: mc iver. And so she's been charged now with federal crimes.
Speaker 5: That Carrie sentences of nearly a decade in prison for
Speaker 5: being in this crowd protesting.
Speaker 1: And she was kept in jail too, right, she was
Speaker 1: in jail.
Speaker 5: I believe overnight she you know, stupidentually was released but
Speaker 5: is still facing this frial. She's got a couple of
Speaker 5: appeals up at the third circuit now. But I think
Speaker 5: what's really striking is this is a sitting member of
Speaker 5: Congress doing her job to conduct oversight.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to do oversight on this. Isn't that part
Speaker 1: of their job?
Speaker 6: Yes, you are absolutely right. As I mentioned before, members
Speaker 6: of Congress are some of the only people who can
Speaker 6: have oversight and access into detention facilities.
Speaker 1: They have the authority to.
Speaker 6: Conduct announced or unannounced visits to any of these immigration
Speaker 6: detention facilities, because of course it is Congress that also
Speaker 6: funds the operation of these facilities. But what we have
Speaker 6: seen under this administration is a steady push to obstruct
Speaker 6: that oversight authority from you know, the earliest days of
Speaker 6: this second term. Their ice has had numerous policy changes
Speaker 6: around when and how and how much notice members of
Speaker 6: Congress should give them in order to be able to
Speaker 6: you know, do their oversight work. And members of Congress
Speaker 6: you know, rightfully so pushed back and in fact actually
Speaker 6: sued on their right to conduct these oversight visits. And
Speaker 6: again through that litigation. The courts have said very clearly
Speaker 6: over and over again that they have this right to
Speaker 6: conduct oversight measures. And what we're still seeing, you know,
Speaker 6: up until now with Delaney Hall, is that that oversight
Speaker 6: authority is constantly being obstructed. I mean, I think at
Speaker 6: the height of some of the what was happening at
Speaker 6: Delaney Hall, we had to have sitting members of Congress
Speaker 6: directly do outreach to the Secretary of DHS Mullen to
Speaker 6: again just respect their oversight authority to do their job
Speaker 6: and visit the facility.
Speaker 1: What happened Right now? Where are we now? Like Delaney Hall.
Speaker 1: I have some protesters text me pretty regularly. They told
Speaker 1: me that their's and again I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not journalists, so who knows. But they did tell
Speaker 1: me that there's facial recognition software that if you protest
Speaker 1: that eventually the police start to call you by name,
Speaker 1: and that's how you know you're about to get arrested.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about this and is that happening?
Speaker 5: This has been a pattern that's been expanding and accelerating
Speaker 5: over the course of the last eighteen months of his administration,
Speaker 5: where Ice is using the massive one hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: billion plus dollars that Congress has dumped in their lap
Speaker 5: to buy all kinds of tech that is used for surveillance,
Speaker 5: and then they're wielding that to try to intimidate, harassed,
Speaker 5: sometimes arrest, sometimes injure, or even as we've seen, kill
Speaker 5: protesters who are exercising their First Amendment right. We have
Speaker 5: a report that we put out just about a week
Speaker 5: and a half ago called Agents of Chaos and Cruelty
Speaker 5: that documents the extent to which the immigration enforcement actions
Speaker 5: of this administration are really rooted in violations of constitutional
Speaker 5: rights and in misconduct. So we looked at a data
Speaker 5: across eight states, found that in about a third of
Speaker 5: all of the arrest and enforcement actions there was this conduct,
Speaker 5: and there were abuses and affect children, affect the US citizens,
Speaker 5: people for some Venmoor rights, lots of injuries, lots of
Speaker 5: broken windows and things like that. So you know, this
Speaker 5: is not a few bad apples, right like, this is
Speaker 5: not where things are going wrong because they're moving back.
Speaker 5: This is the policy of Steven Miller's America. They want
Speaker 5: to inflict, you know, maximum pain and fear and create
Speaker 5: the conditions where people are afraid to protest. People are
Speaker 5: afraid to stand up for their neighbors. People are afraid
Speaker 5: to be here if they're not the right origins or
Speaker 5: even the right color. And we're seeing it both in
Speaker 5: the detention and the conditions at places like Delaney Hall
Speaker 5: and elsewhere where over fifty people have died in custody
Speaker 5: since the administration took office. Then we're seeing it in
Speaker 5: the streets where you have rampaging ice officers shooting and
Speaker 5: killing two people just in a lot of ten days.
Speaker 5: This is a pattern that is deeply alarming if you
Speaker 5: believe in you know, rights, freedom, rule of law.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the ice killings, because we had
Speaker 1: two citizens killed and then we've had now they were
Speaker 1: both murdered. Then we've had two other murders and also
Speaker 1: someone hit by a car.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, the last three that you just mentioned, we're
Speaker 5: all like in a span of five days. What we've
Speaker 5: seen in all of these instances is poorly trained, poorly
Speaker 5: vetted ice agents doing the thing that they have been
Speaker 5: encouraged and instructed to do. And you know, we don't
Speaker 5: have necessarily like you know, they're not being told like goho,
Speaker 5: smash a window and shoot somebody in their car but
Speaker 5: they are being given a clear message that the goal
Speaker 5: here is to inflict terror and harm, and that if
Speaker 5: anybody gets in your way, you break them. Stephen Miller
Speaker 5: said it from the podium in the White House, right like,
Speaker 5: you do not have any accountability and if anybody gets
Speaker 5: in your way, then you have a license to do
Speaker 5: your job. The message could not be clear, and the
Speaker 5: results are predictable. So what we've seen is people like
Speaker 5: Lorenzo Salgado Arao in Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine,
Speaker 5: both like upstanding citizens, killers of their community. Mister Arajo
Speaker 5: and Houston had been in distress for thirty years, rates
Speaker 5: three citizen kids who were all successful, and he had employees.
Speaker 5: He was doing all of the things that are the
Speaker 5: American dream. He was the American dream and he was
Speaker 5: shot dead for it because he happened to be born
Speaker 5: in Mexico. And Steven Miller doesn't like that. This is
Speaker 5: what we get when we build also that way.
Speaker 1: He was also clad right, he wasn't meant to be
Speaker 1: the stop.
Speaker 5: I mean, he wasn't technically the target like they wasn't
Speaker 5: like they were looking for somebody, and it wasn't him. However,
Speaker 5: let's be really clear that he was the target insofar
Speaker 5: as he was Mexican born. We've seen this administration doing
Speaker 5: these dragnet stops in city after city because they have
Speaker 5: a quota and a rest quota, so it's like, we're
Speaker 5: not out there. They're not really out there to get
Speaker 5: the particular people or to get the worst of the worst.
Speaker 5: They're there to hit their number two thousand arrests a day,
Speaker 5: and so they're picking up anybody who they hear speaking Spanish.
Speaker 5: They're going to neighborhood that are no immigrant, you know,
Speaker 5: immigrant communities. They're going to the parking lots where people
Speaker 5: look for work. And Brett kavanaughs that that was all okay.
Speaker 5: And you know, in a decision out of the shadow
Speaker 5: Docket from the Supreme Court, the racial profiling and kind
Speaker 5: of dragnet sweeps are the backbone of the strategy here
Speaker 5: to inflict his terror and drive up the numbers. And so, no,
Speaker 5: Misha was not the you know, he was not the
Speaker 5: guy his name was on the warrant. But yes, he
Speaker 5: absolutely was the intended target in the broader sense.
Speaker 1: When we look at Delaney Hall, are there other Delaney
Speaker 1: halls several more.
Speaker 6: In fact, I mean ICE has a sweeping network of
Speaker 6: over two hundred closer to three hundred detention facilities across
Speaker 6: the country. In fact, you know, we saw the hunger
Speaker 6: strike happen in Delaney Hall, and at that time, or
Speaker 6: you know, right around that time, there were about six
Speaker 6: other hunger strikes happening across the country in these immigration
Speaker 6: detention facilities, all highlighting some of the same conditions issues
Speaker 6: rancid food, medical neglect, you know, pressure and being under
Speaker 6: duress to give up immigration cases, other forms of physical
Speaker 6: in some cases, sexual violence and abuse. The other thing is,
Speaker 6: you know, to Mike's earlier point about the amount of
Speaker 6: funding and money that they have, this system is only expanding,
Speaker 6: and you know, they're pushing to expand it even more.
Speaker 6: They've attempted to purchase warehouses across the country, industrial warehouses
Speaker 6: to detain human beings in you know, it was largely
Speaker 6: due to a lot of I think local community organizing
Speaker 6: and push back and litigation that has kind of slowed
Speaker 6: down the process of those facilities, those warehouse facilities opening,
Speaker 6: But they're still at it with their expansion. And this
Speaker 6: is also I think it's important to name that they're
Speaker 6: also not only pushing to detain adults, but child and
Speaker 6: family detention is also increasing exponentially. The government is seeking
Speaker 6: currently to have a three thousand bad detention space for
Speaker 6: unaccompanied kids, and they're also poised to open a facility
Speaker 6: for families and children in Alexandria in a place that
Speaker 6: is on a military site excuse me, that is known
Speaker 6: to have like toxic materials and chemicals in the soil
Speaker 6: and in the land.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is just.
Speaker 6: To paint like a very clear picture of what this
Speaker 6: administration's immigration detention system looks like. It's one that is expanding,
Speaker 6: It's one that has gone unchecked. It's one that Congress
Speaker 6: has given a blank check too. I mean we're talking
Speaker 6: from the big beautiful bill forty five billion dollars specifically
Speaker 6: for immigration expansion, and this most recent reconciliation bill gave
Speaker 6: them about I think seventy billion dollars. It doesn't have
Speaker 6: a line item for immigration detention, but it does give
Speaker 6: that money to the agency again that is like running
Speaker 6: and operating these facilities in tandem with these private prison
Speaker 6: companies that are also making an astronomical profit off of
Speaker 6: this type of human suffering, you know, at a time
Speaker 6: when there's such an affordability issue in this country, at
Speaker 6: a time where the average American is struggling to you know,
Speaker 6: put food on the table, pay mortgages and rent, put.
Speaker 1: Gas in tax dollars.
Speaker 6: Yeah, are all being paid for with our tax dollars.
Speaker 1: Is there any sort of bright spot here?
Speaker 5: Well, one bright spot is that the American people are
Speaker 5: seeing this and are horrified. So yesterday a Fox News
Speaker 5: poll came out that showed that people trust Democrats more
Speaker 5: than Republicans than the issue of immigration for the first
Speaker 5: time and who knows how long. I think that the
Speaker 5: reaction in Minnesota. You had mentioned when the two US
Speaker 5: citizens were shot and killed up there, Alex Pretti and
Speaker 5: Rene Good, two separate incidents, and that came emits. I mean,
Speaker 5: that was the big headline story. But I think that
Speaker 5: the real story out of Minneapolis was the way that
Speaker 5: community rallied and people came and supported their neighbors and
Speaker 5: brought deals to people so they wouldn't have to leave
Speaker 5: their own that they was an incredible outpouring of community
Speaker 5: support for people's neighbors and friends and family who were
Speaker 5: being targeted by ice. And I think what we're seeing
Speaker 5: is a you know, we've been paralyzed as a country
Speaker 5: around immigration as an issue for a really long time.
Speaker 5: And what we're seeing is people are getting to see
Speaker 5: like Donald Trump's id version of immigration, which is like
Speaker 5: Stephen Miller unleashed terror, you know, kind of like you know,
Speaker 5: paramilitary fifty thousand person strong deportation force, wrecking communities, breaking
Speaker 5: up industries, workforces, locking up children, and warehouse sized facilities.
Speaker 5: And people do not like it. And so I think
Speaker 5: there's an opportunity now for us to really change the
Speaker 5: script here and talk about, Okay, well, what do we
Speaker 5: need as a country, Like, immigrants are essential parts of
Speaker 5: our communities. They make our communities stronger. We know this
Speaker 5: from all kinds of ways, and we're seeing now in
Speaker 5: places where they're missing what it means for everybody. So
Speaker 5: let's build a country that actually celebrates and builds on
Speaker 5: the strength that immigrants give us. We can write, you know,
Speaker 5: it's important that we have laws and enforce the law,
Speaker 5: that we have a form of legal immigration that's respectable
Speaker 5: of the need to do asylum right, that gives people
Speaker 5: a path of the citizenship when they've been here for
Speaker 5: a long time. And that manages immigration in a way
Speaker 5: that helps strengthen our communities, not in a way that
Speaker 5: is intended to be punitive and harsh and divide people
Speaker 5: and scapegoat certain parts of our population. And I think
Speaker 5: we are seeing that pivot in front of us, and
Speaker 5: we're certainly looking to capture this moment and create something
Speaker 5: better out of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Hattie, thank you, thank you, Mike,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank.
Speaker 5: You, Molly.
Speaker 1: No moment, Jesse Cannon, So my junk fast.
Speaker 2: One of the things we see every election cycle, ause
Speaker 2: it gets to be this time of year, is a
Speaker 2: bunch of bread states will try throwing out a bunch
Speaker 2: of voter roles and hopes that it'll make it so
Speaker 2: that less Democrats can vote, that they need to get
Speaker 2: provisional ballots, that they won't go through the trouble of voting.
Speaker 2: And this year we're seeing Alaska doing it because guess
Speaker 2: what Alaska Senate seat is looking like it's going to
Speaker 2: go down.
Speaker 1: Right, So this is such a This is such exactly
Speaker 1: what you think it is, right, Donald Trump wanting people
Speaker 1: not to be able to vote. This is the same
Speaker 1: as what it was with the mail in ballad. So
Speaker 1: Mary Patola is looking like she's pulling ahead of Dan Sullivan.
Speaker 1: And so Alaska has removed thousands of people from its
Speaker 1: voter roles, claiming they might not be citizens. You know
Speaker 1: how many non citizens are in Alaska. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's Alaska. It costs like ten thousand dollars to get there.
Speaker 1: It's miles and miles away from everything.
Speaker 2: I've heard so many tales of immigrants going all the
Speaker 2: way from Mexico up to Alaska because they love the climate.
Speaker 1: Right, They've just come for the cold and stay for
Speaker 1: the cold. The good news is that the director of
Speaker 1: Alaska's Division of Elections told state legislators on Wednesday that
Speaker 1: old data was the reason the mistake and that she
Speaker 1: wasn't sure why so many Alaska residents were labeled as
Speaker 1: non citizens. Obviously some kind of hopefully a mistake and
Speaker 1: not a not some kind of like doge getting in
Speaker 1: the machines. And she said, usually it finds like two
Speaker 1: hundred names that were tagged for extra strutiny. Now, the
Speaker 1: good news is this scrutiny. It seems like they're going
Speaker 1: to look at these these names and then make sure
Speaker 1: they're put back on. So the good news about Alaska
Speaker 1: is that they're primaries on August eighteenth, so they will
Speaker 1: I think people will be able to vote and it
Speaker 1: won't be a problem. Also, Alaska is really good mail,
Speaker 1: which is good, and they've had that for a long time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, it's just it's going to be
Speaker 1: a long hundred days, maybe more. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.