Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast, and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: And Samuel Alito's wife claims that the upside down American
Speaker 2: flag was an international sign of distress.
Speaker 3: We have such a great show today.
Speaker 2: NBC's Mike Hickson Blasstopspy to talk to us about his
Speaker 2: new book, They Came for the Schools, One Town's fight
Speaker 2: over race and identity in the New War for America's Classrooms.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to the States Projects Melissa Walker about
Speaker 2: how they're helping Dems to win elections with giving circles.
Speaker 2: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
Speaker 2: the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Mollie John Fast, I join you. Much recovered from the
Speaker 4: pneumonia which had stricken me in our previous encounter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you sound really good.
Speaker 4: I am feeling enormously better. Gods modern medicine.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know who did not have a good night
Speaker 5: last night?
Speaker 4: That would be dipshit Trump at the Libertarian Convention. I
Speaker 4: wrote a piece about it this morning on Substack called
Speaker 4: Atlas Thugged he got his ass eaten.
Speaker 3: Ugh, I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. The Libertarian convention. I just
Speaker 1: want you to talk for a minute about you've been
Speaker 1: to libertarian conventions, you know this strange species. Explain to
Speaker 1: our listeners who they are and what they do.
Speaker 4: As I like to tell people, I have a kind
Speaker 4: of genial, small L libertarian streak in me. I believe
Speaker 4: that individual liberty is really important.
Speaker 3: I believe that.
Speaker 4: The state and the power of government over the lives
Speaker 4: of individuals should be as minimally invasive as possible and
Speaker 4: as minimally coercive as possible. I would sooner go into
Speaker 4: a weak, old dumpster behind old Uncle Tomaine shrimpshack than
Speaker 4: be a registered big L libertarian in the Libertarian Party,
Speaker 4: because those people are the biggest group of beardy, weirdy
Speaker 4: and cell crypto fuck bros you have ever encountered in
Speaker 4: your life. These are people who think Anne Rand actually
Speaker 4: is a good writer. These are terrible, terrible human beings
Speaker 4: who are the strangest, angriest, most egregiously obsessive. I mean,
Speaker 4: there are so many phrases I could use here, all
Speaker 4: of which would get you and me both canceled immediately.
Speaker 3: But this is weaponized autism and it's worst.
Speaker 5: See.
Speaker 1: I'm going to push back on you here because I
Speaker 1: am very friendly with nichol Aspie, who, while I don't
Speaker 1: agree with a lot of his beliefs, he's a really
Speaker 1: a lovely guy. And I think there are some very
Speaker 1: smart Libertarians.
Speaker 4: Yes there are. You'll notice none of them. What I
Speaker 4: said was that they were dumb. They're just weird, okay,
Speaker 4: and they believe in weird things. They believe in odd
Speaker 4: they have an odd belief set. And I'm going to
Speaker 4: tell you something, none of none of the people that
Speaker 4: are devoted enough to go to the Libertarian presidential nominating
Speaker 4: convention are normal people they believe in And look, here's
Speaker 4: the crowning irony of this. You ended up with the
Speaker 4: libertarians who believe that freedom is but a moment away
Speaker 4: from being utterly extinguished in this country, bringing the most
Speaker 4: authoritarian and statist presidential candidate running in twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: onto the stage, and let's remember he is surrounded by
Speaker 4: people who are backing the idea of Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: which is not exactly what you would call a recipe
Speaker 4: for limited government. These people are expansive in their power
Speaker 4: of the state and government.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think is interesting
Speaker 1: about this, and you're a campaign guy, so I'd love
Speaker 1: you to speak about this, is that this was an
Speaker 1: unforced error, like Biden was invited to speak at this thing,
Speaker 1: and he was like a normal Democratic presidential candidate, like
Speaker 1: no way. And the reality is like the fact that
Speaker 1: Trump did it is kind of bad candidate ness, right,
Speaker 1: bad campaigning, isn't it. I mean, you'll have this visual
Speaker 1: of him getting booed. What does that do for him?
Speaker 4: Somebody's getting fired over this one. Even if Trump said
Speaker 4: I want to go, I can convince them. Only I
Speaker 4: can convince them this was bad planning. They did not
Speaker 4: read the room properly well in advance, they did not
Speaker 4: read the room properly.
Speaker 3: On the evening of the.
Speaker 4: Event, they allowed him to walk on the stage. And folks,
Speaker 4: if you haven't seen the libertarian parties become ungovernable logo,
Speaker 4: I want you to think back to your trapper keeper
Speaker 4: in high school in nineteen ninety two, because that's the
Speaker 4: sort of scribble that you would have had on it.
Speaker 3: Become ungovernable.
Speaker 4: Okay, cool, But he's up on the stage. The room
Speaker 4: is badly let He's behind this horrifying logo. Folks, what
Speaker 4: I tell you, it's a terrible logo. Just google the
Speaker 4: damn thing. And he gets up on stage and he's
Speaker 4: getting booed, he's getting yelled at, he's getting called it
Speaker 4: a hypocrite, and all the crazies are holding their signs
Speaker 4: up in front of the cameras blocking the view of Trump,
Speaker 4: and the entire night was a train wreck.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 4: It was like the clown train to burning tire Mountain.
Speaker 4: This guy gets up there and starts saying I want
Speaker 4: you votes and your indorsement, and they're literally laughing at him. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it is an amazingly bad moment. He was flailing to
Speaker 4: He finally starts saying, like, I will give you more
Speaker 4: than two percent of the vote, three percent of the
Speaker 4: you want to be winners, come with. Here's the fundamental
Speaker 4: thing he's missing out on. The Libertarians don't care about winning.
Speaker 4: If they cared about winning, they would name people to
Speaker 4: the top of their ticket who could what's the word win?
Speaker 4: And again, I have no sympathy for Donald Trump thinking
Speaker 4: he could persuade these people. But there are enough folks
Speaker 4: around Donald Trump, who are not stupid, who are not idiots.
Speaker 4: And I got to tell you, I think they must
Speaker 4: have been taking the weekend off, because he really got
Speaker 4: his head handed to him at this event. It was
Speaker 4: really ugly, folks. If you watch the video, it's out
Speaker 4: there on YouTube, It's out there on CSPAN. If you
Speaker 4: watch the video, this guy he was really off his game,
Speaker 4: which I think is more and more of the case.
Speaker 4: I don't think he has the game he had in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty or twenty sixteen, and in a very hostile room,
Speaker 4: he was uncomfortable and I'm here for it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, the headlines from it say things like keep
Speaker 1: getting your three percent. Trump mock's libertarians in bid to
Speaker 1: win their votes.
Speaker 5: That's yahoo.
Speaker 1: No wanna be dictators, Trump booed at Libertarian convention. He's
Speaker 1: more delusional than I thought. Libertarians jeer Trump. During convention speech,
Speaker 1: Trump met with Booze asking libertarians for nomination. Trump tells
Speaker 1: libertarians to nominate him and a mock him with Booze.
Speaker 1: That's the New York Times.
Speaker 3: The don loses control the video. MAGA does not want
Speaker 3: you to see.
Speaker 5: Matt Drudge right, Wow, I mean, just incredible.
Speaker 4: He got a brutal, brutal reception there, and look, let's
Speaker 4: be honest, he deserves it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm hoping you could pull back and
Speaker 1: make another connection for me.
Speaker 5: So this is Trump being Trump.
Speaker 1: Right. Maybe there was someone who worked for the campaign
Speaker 1: who thought he should go to the Libertarian Convention, but
Speaker 1: it's very likely, well.
Speaker 4: Mike Lee clearly thought he should go. Mike Lee, I
Speaker 4: think might have facilitated this because Mike Lee went out
Speaker 4: and tried to pitch Trump, saying, you know, he's a
Speaker 4: great libertarian president.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I want to point
Speaker 1: out is like, so Trump has this legal case, this
Speaker 1: criminal trial in New York, the one that he was
Speaker 1: not able to punt, and it's going to wrap up
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, and during it, his lawyers have made a
Speaker 1: number of unforced errors, and you have to wonder how
Speaker 1: much you know, some of his lawyers are bad, but
Speaker 1: some of them, you know, are lifelong prosecutors, have had
Speaker 1: a lot of experience, Susan Hofstetter, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the things they've done during this trial have seemed nonsensical,
Speaker 1: as if they were being told what to do by
Speaker 1: someone who didn't really understand the law, and so you
Speaker 1: have to wonder how much of that is also Trump
Speaker 1: trying to drive the Trump trains.
Speaker 3: You could see at.
Speaker 4: A number of inflection points during the trial in Manhattan
Speaker 4: that Trump was directing the strategy of his own attorneys. Now,
Speaker 4: you know the old a lawyer or a doctor who
Speaker 4: has himself for a client is necessarily a fool. But
Speaker 4: a lawyer who allows Donald Trump to tell him how
Speaker 4: to or her how to handle their legal operations is
Speaker 4: equally a fool.
Speaker 3: And so that's why that's right. Essentially, you could see.
Speaker 4: That Trump when Stormy Daniels was on the stand, Trump
Speaker 4: was essentially saying, call her ahola, call her aha make
Speaker 4: or admit she's a hoola, you know. And with Cohen's
Speaker 4: on the stand, he wants them to punch him as
Speaker 4: you're a liar and a criminal. You're a liar and
Speaker 4: a criminal, you know. And Stormy Daniels, of course, very
Speaker 4: coolly and very smartly, just said, I'm an adult entertainer. Okay, next,
Speaker 4: what's your next question? Moving on? And Michael Cohen, to
Speaker 4: his credit for the most part, was like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: was working for a very bad guy, doing very bad
Speaker 4: things at his orders and Finally, when they brought Costello
Speaker 4: to the stand. You know, that was also one of
Speaker 4: these things where I think Trump thought, oh, we can
Speaker 4: make a great defense argument from Costello, and Costello may
Speaker 4: have single handedly torpedoed the defense's case. So all these
Speaker 4: things with Trump thinking he's smarter than the people who
Speaker 4: he's hired to do the things that he needs to do,
Speaker 4: whether it's the campaign or whether it's the legal stuff,
Speaker 4: he comes across over and over again in a position
Speaker 4: where he ends up being, you know, worse served than
Speaker 4: he would have if he just picked some body at
Speaker 4: random and let them do their job.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And I think that it is, you know, he has
Speaker 1: some really bad instincts places where candidate Trump actually really hurts.
Speaker 5: Well, now he has some.
Speaker 1: Good instincts because people like to see him and look,
Speaker 1: that rally in the Bronx did what he wanted it
Speaker 1: to do. It made other voters think he wasn't a racist, right.
Speaker 4: Well, the other part of it is he convinced a
Speaker 4: lot of reporters who absolutely knew better that tens of
Speaker 4: thousands of people were swarming to Unnald Trump. They love
Speaker 4: him in the Bronx and the Bronxes in play, y'all.
Speaker 4: If the Bronx is in play, it's the damn apocalypse.
Speaker 3: It's not in play.
Speaker 4: I find the whole conceit that Trump is somehow wiser
Speaker 4: and smarter and more capable than the people advising him.
Speaker 4: It actually makes me optimistic, because he does stupid things,
Speaker 4: and people like me can manipulate him into doing incredibly
Speaker 4: stupid things from time to time. And so I think
Speaker 4: that he is going to continue to believe that he
Speaker 4: is his own best lawyer, his own best political consultant,
Speaker 4: his own best image consultant. And while it works, sometimes
Speaker 4: when you see it confront reality, it doesn't work quite
Speaker 4: as well. It didn't work in twenty twenty. I don't
Speaker 4: think it's going to work the same way this time,
Speaker 4: and I certainly don't think it worked in court for him.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who listen to this podcast are
Speaker 1: really stressed about the elections and the polls.
Speaker 5: What do you tell them?
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty, we were confronted with a flood of
Speaker 4: polls constantly, Donald Trump is He's going to win?
Speaker 3: Donald Trump? Is this?
Speaker 4: Donald Trump? Is that we were confronted in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: The red wave is coming it's endless. Republicans have learned
Speaker 4: how to game the polling averages very effectively. Okay, they've
Speaker 4: learned how to play the game of dumping tons and
Speaker 4: tons of low quality polls and pushing the polling averages. Look,
Speaker 4: is Joe Biden where I wanted to be in every
Speaker 4: swing state survey?
Speaker 3: He is not.
Speaker 4: Does Donald Trump still have a significant hold over the
Speaker 4: g he does. Are there more voters in the wind
Speaker 4: than there were before? Yes, I am optimistic about that
Speaker 4: at a profound level. I have told people repeatedly this
Speaker 4: will never be an easy election. It was never going
Speaker 4: to be an easy race. It was never going to
Speaker 4: be a fun race. It was never going to be
Speaker 4: a race where you wake up in the morning and go, man,
Speaker 4: I wish we were running every election like this. What
Speaker 4: could go wrong? Because it's a misery. It's tough, it's
Speaker 4: a hard race, and the Biden campaign is starting to
Speaker 4: publicly say that they get it that they have to
Speaker 4: go more aggressive against the guy. They have to push harder,
Speaker 4: they have to be right up in his grill all
Speaker 4: the time. They get it. They're starting to get it,
Speaker 4: at least they're starting to get that. The messaging cannot
Speaker 4: be driven by policy questions. You're not going to win
Speaker 4: this election based on arguments about parts per billion of
Speaker 4: carbon in the atmosphere. You are going to have to
Speaker 4: win this election based on convincing people the economy is
Speaker 4: not mad Max Healscape. You are going to have to
Speaker 4: win this election based on that Donald Trump presents a
Speaker 4: risk to American women that is so beyond and most
Speaker 4: people's understandings that when you tell them the story of
Speaker 4: what they want to do to American women, you will
Speaker 4: split off a lot of them. When you tell Republicans,
Speaker 4: soft Republican voters that they're going to have to live
Speaker 4: with the consequences of their children growing up with Donald
Speaker 4: Trump as president a second time. See how that goes.
Speaker 4: They do rebel against Trump. There's a lot of ways
Speaker 4: to beat this guy, but you have to do them
Speaker 4: all because you don't know which one's going to work.
Speaker 3: And then look at Lincoln.
Speaker 4: We're doing our thing that we do talking to those
Speaker 4: soft Republican voters and messing with Trump. Those are our
Speaker 4: two lanes. I'm not trying to go out and get
Speaker 4: African American voters turn up. That's not where my area
Speaker 4: of expertise is people have to work their lane, work
Speaker 4: their skill set, push as hard as they can in
Speaker 4: their zone, and everybody's going to do a lot of
Speaker 4: work between now and the election day.
Speaker 3: This is never going to be an easy one. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 4: But he's beatable, Molly. He's beatable, and that means you
Speaker 4: have to beat him. Beata bull does not mean he's
Speaker 4: going to lose automatically.
Speaker 1: What states do you see a little bit of release
Speaker 1: to be optimistic that might not otherwise be on the map.
Speaker 4: I'll give you one right off the top, and that's Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: I've been seeing some motion moving in Biden's direction in
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania down ballot and at at the top line. You
Speaker 4: know what, And I will just tell you right now.
Speaker 4: I was not comfortable with saying this earlier, but I
Speaker 4: now feel like Georgia might be starting to be in
Speaker 4: play maybe a little bit.
Speaker 5: All right, I know.
Speaker 4: I'll be honest, I'm feeling a little less sanguine about
Speaker 4: Arizona because that seems to be slipping a little bit.
Speaker 3: But we are in a moment.
Speaker 5: Where anything can happen.
Speaker 4: Yes, a lot of externalities will obtain a lot of
Speaker 4: chaos is going to be pushing and pushing and pushing
Speaker 4: up against us, and a lot of it is what
Speaker 4: Trump will do. Trump will be the source of much
Speaker 4: of the chaos and much of the dissension and much
Speaker 4: of the insanity that's going to come out and end
Speaker 4: up harming him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely true. It's definitely true. That is the
Speaker 1: good news in a way and not the bad news.
Speaker 1: Just one more saying about these polls. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: how much Democrats down the ticket overperformed the partisan Yep.
Speaker 4: Look, that's the same thing we saw in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty and in twenty twenty two. And yes,
Speaker 4: people go, well, the Republicans took what the structural things
Speaker 4: in the House with redistricting and Jerrymander and all that,
Speaker 4: those are what they are. We're not going to be
Speaker 4: in the era where we have massive swings in the
Speaker 4: House anymore. We will have close splits there. But the
Speaker 4: Democrats in House races are overperformed. Yeah, the Democrats in
Speaker 4: a lot of Senate races are overperforming. A lot of
Speaker 4: places where the Republicans felt very confident that they were
Speaker 4: going to.
Speaker 3: Just roll it up.
Speaker 4: Are they are less confident than they were a few
Speaker 4: months ago. The negative quality of their candidates, the low
Speaker 4: quality of their candidates, is also becoming a significant burden
Speaker 4: on the Republicans. They've got basically one decent US Senate
Speaker 4: candidate right now who's got much need to spend that
Speaker 4: Stave McCormick, and even he is not blowing the doors
Speaker 4: off in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: And so we have a very interesting and very.
Speaker 4: Opaque political situation coming where if the Democrats in these
Speaker 4: states right now overperform, if they end up, you know,
Speaker 4: starting to open up some real range on the Republicans,
Speaker 4: you may find that that starts to impact the presidential race.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're we're looking.
Speaker 4: Right now at North Carolina because Robinson, the Republican governor.
Speaker 1: Canada, recently said women were to Mauley, right, he doesn't
Speaker 1: like Maldi women.
Speaker 3: They said women or two mouthy. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Look, he is the Doug Mastriano of North Carolina. And
Speaker 4: if you want to know why Josh Shapiro is in
Speaker 4: office in Pennsylvania, it's because Doug Masterano poisoned to the
Speaker 4: whole ticket. You wonder why Katie Hobbs is in office
Speaker 4: because Kerrie Lake and Blake Master's poisoned the whole ticket.
Speaker 4: We may end up with North Carolina being competitive in
Speaker 4: the presidential race because of insanity on the part of
Speaker 4: this guy who is I mean, he makes Doug mastera
Speaker 4: looked like Winston.
Speaker 5: Churchill Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Thank you, as always, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Spring us here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 2: Mike hickson Ball is a senior reporter at NBC and
Speaker 2: author of They Came for the Schools, One Towns Fight
Speaker 2: over Race and Identity and the New War for America's Classrooms.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Mike, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Delighted to have you so talk to me about the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the book is called They Came for the Schools,
Speaker 6: and it tell us the story of what's happened in
Speaker 6: the past few years in our schools as the right
Speaker 6: and then specifically the Christian right, have waged kind of
Speaker 6: an all out assault and an attempt to impose a
Speaker 6: certain worldview in our public school systems, and I tell
Speaker 6: that story through the lens of one town in North Texas.
Speaker 6: That kind of represents what's been happening in America. So
Speaker 6: the goal with the book was, if you're sitting in
Speaker 6: the suburbs outside of Philadelphia or Georgia, in Atlanta, or
Speaker 6: outside Nashville, and you've seen angry parents packing school board
Speaker 6: meetings complaining about well, critical race theory or woke gender
Speaker 6: ideology or trying to ban books, that you could read
Speaker 6: the story of Souft Lake, Texas and understand why that's
Speaker 6: happening in your town.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. What does that look like?
Speaker 1: I mean, is it working well?
Speaker 6: I think we all remember in twenty twenty one when
Speaker 6: we were suddenly seeing school board meetings leading national news
Speaker 6: coverage as parents were revolting against what Chris Rupo and
Speaker 6: Donald Trump had called critical race theory. At that time,
Speaker 6: Steve Bannon went on his national podcast TV show The
Speaker 6: War Room and declared that the key to saving America
Speaker 6: runs through the school boards. And what he meant was,
Speaker 6: we're going to win back suburban white voters who were
Speaker 6: repulsed by Donald Trump by running hard on this anti
Speaker 6: DEI program through local school board elections. And so we'll
Speaker 6: retake school boards, but in the process we'll win back
Speaker 6: these voters, win back state houses, win back Congress, take
Speaker 6: the presidency, and save America. Right, you asked, is it working.
Speaker 6: We'll just skip to the end here.
Speaker 1: Basically, the idea was save America from diversity, right from
Speaker 1: anyone who wasn't a white Christian man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And you know, really it was a Donald Trump
Speaker 6: back in office, really, and Steve Bannon's theory of the case,
Speaker 6: in Chris Rufo's theory of the case that these school
Speaker 6: board fights were going to be this major driver of
Speaker 6: electoral success Republicans, it hasn't really played out. Instead, what
Speaker 6: they've successfully done is they've taken all of just the
Speaker 6: ugliest divisiveness of national politics and just superimpose that onto
Speaker 6: what used to be pretty quiet non partis and local
Speaker 6: school board elections. And so what you have now is
Speaker 6: national political consultants running really divisive campaigns in local elections
Speaker 6: accusing these local basically unpaid school board trustees of trying
Speaker 6: to destroy America, being sexual predators, trying to groom children
Speaker 6: change their genders. All this really ugly unfounded, divisive attack
Speaker 6: that you're used to seeing in like a congressional race
Speaker 6: that's now standard and our school board races. And if
Speaker 6: you're a school district that was a Trump plus twenty district,
Speaker 6: well the anti crch folks are going to win. And
Speaker 6: if you're in a purpowl district where Biden did well,
Speaker 6: then you're going to beat the monster Liberty. So they're
Speaker 6: not changing hearts and minds, they're just tearing communities apart.
Speaker 5: Wow, So what does that look like? I mean, how
Speaker 5: do they do that?
Speaker 6: So the storytell again is focused on this town outside
Speaker 6: of Dallas and Fort Worth called South It's a very
Speaker 6: affluent suburb, and like a lot of suburbs, it's a
Speaker 6: place that was white by design, created in the nineteen
Speaker 6: fifties after Brownie Board, and for a long time was
Speaker 6: very white and for the last thirty years has gotten
Speaker 6: much more diverse. And so this is the community that
Speaker 6: really set off this fight that the same pattern we've
Speaker 6: seen all over the country. School districts during the Trump
Speaker 6: years tried to reckon with racism in these communities and
Speaker 6: in their school districts. There was the blowback in twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: and so what South Lake Conservatives did led by this
Speaker 6: is a very affluent city, so there's people like Dana
Speaker 6: lash who lives there. It's the former NRA spokeswoman Stiva
Speaker 6: Southlake President. So she and others got together and put
Speaker 6: together a political action committee called south Lake Families Path
Speaker 6: to Defeat a local diversity plan. In twenty twenty and
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one, they raised like two one hundred and
Speaker 6: fifty thousand dollars, put together a slate of conservative kind
Speaker 6: of form right school board candidates, including one candidate who
Speaker 6: was like the former clerk for Sam Alito and Clarence
Speaker 6: Thomas on this is a pre court, so like big
Speaker 6: name people on the right kind of getting involved, and
Speaker 6: they took over their school board by kind of launching
Speaker 6: this attack accusing the other candidates of being on this
Speaker 6: mission to destroy America with woken doctrination. And what happened
Speaker 6: in the spring of twenty twenty one when Southflake Family's
Speaker 6: pack did that, their election was really the first one
Speaker 6: of these, and so their triumph in that election led
Speaker 6: to lord Ingram's program in May of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 6: It was a symbol to Republicans everywhere that oh, we
Speaker 6: can again do with Steve benn said, save America through
Speaker 6: the school boards. And so what happened after that is
Speaker 6: South Lakes Families Pack style political action committees cropped up
Speaker 6: in communities all over the country. There's a Williamson Families
Speaker 6: Pack in the suburbs outside of Tennessee. Outside of Nashville,
Speaker 6: there's a Francis Howell Famili's Pack. On the west side
Speaker 6: of Saint Louis. There's a Lakes Travis Stanley's Pack. Now
Speaker 6: outside of Austin, dozens of these political action committees riving
Speaker 6: the same strategy, trying to take control of school board
Speaker 6: words and ban LGBTQ equision policies, ban DEI trainings, make
Speaker 6: sure kids learn a patriotic version of America's history.
Speaker 5: What does a patriotic version of America's history look like?
Speaker 6: Well, remember this is all watched like in the summer
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty when some of us thought we were
Speaker 6: having kind of be reckoning in America over the history
Speaker 6: of race and racism. And so a patriotic history is
Speaker 6: one where you don't discuss the sixteen nineteen projects gramming
Speaker 6: that looks at the lasting legacy of slavery, and so
Speaker 6: there's literally laws that have been passed in Texas and
Speaker 6: in other states and at the local level saying well,
Speaker 6: if you can teach the kids about lavery, but you
Speaker 6: have to tell them that it is not reflective of
Speaker 6: America's true and good founding ideals, and that anytime you
Speaker 6: talk about these divisive subjects, their language is these are
Speaker 6: divisive subjects. You have to present all both perspectives, all perspectives,
Speaker 6: and you can't teach kids that America was fundam mentally
Speaker 6: or systemically racist. And in Texas especially, they apply that
Speaker 6: also to the state history, and so you can't teach
Speaker 6: kids that Texas was inherently racist, that it's founding even
Speaker 6: though it's founding documents were really built around the idea
Speaker 6: of maintaining slavery.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so basically they don't teach real history, is what
Speaker 5: you're saying.
Speaker 6: Well, these laws are all worded in a very vague way.
Speaker 6: The net result of all of it has been teachers
Speaker 6: are afraid to touch this stuff. There was a survey
Speaker 6: by rand and Nationwide Survey Teachers that found two thirds
Speaker 6: of teachers nationally, so tens of thousands of teachers said
Speaker 6: they have been self censoring or holding back on discussing
Speaker 6: these issues or avoiding discussing issues around racism, LGBTQ inclusion,
Speaker 6: or bigotry. And what was really interesting about that was
Speaker 6: that was happening not just in red states or school
Speaker 6: districts where monster Liberty style packs had taken over. Teachers
Speaker 6: everywhere were doing that, and in large part because they
Speaker 6: were afraid. All it takes is one parent forward to it,
Speaker 6: he's a teacher that this teacher is trying to sexually
Speaker 6: grow my child, or this teacher is trying to teach
Speaker 6: my white child to hate in South and hate America.
Speaker 6: And so teachers got the message of the last few years.
Speaker 6: I think as a result, in many places, kids are
Speaker 6: getting kind of a distorted picture of what America, a
Speaker 6: distorted picture of America's history, especially when it comes to race, racism,
Speaker 6: and the idea that we're a pluralistic society where everyone's
Speaker 6: faith and views are welcome.
Speaker 1: Also, isn't there a problem where teachers are disappearing, like
Speaker 1: they're having trouble finding teachers to hire.
Speaker 5: I mean, doesn't this have a chilling effect.
Speaker 6: Tcha is a tough profession as it is, It's a
Speaker 6: lot of pressure, especially with the growth of the test
Speaker 6: and culture of the last couple of decades, and so
Speaker 6: this is just layered on top of that. And so
Speaker 6: I documented in the book several cases where teachers who
Speaker 6: are celebrating their communities like the loved by their students
Speaker 6: and librarians are saying, I can't keep doing this. And
Speaker 6: I give an example. As a journalist reporting on this's
Speaker 6: I got a little taste of what teachers are getting
Speaker 6: in this era when I reported on a story basically
Speaker 6: just documenting the kind of wave of anti LGBTQ book
Speaker 6: bands in the suburb outside of Houston called Katie, Texas.
Speaker 6: I spoke with a queer teenager for that story, and
Speaker 6: she shared with me how the school library was the
Speaker 6: one place where she felt safe and secure to read
Speaker 6: stories that reflected who she is because her parents weren't supportive.
Speaker 6: After I wrote that story, a bunch of moms in Katie,
Speaker 6: Texas got a hold of my phone number and blasted
Speaker 6: me with text messages and emails telling me that they
Speaker 6: were going to the police, that me having spoken to
Speaker 6: the student was a sign of grooming, and that they
Speaker 6: were going to file a police report or soliciting a minor.
Speaker 6: And so Mollie. I know that you get nasty messages.
Speaker 6: You know, if you work in this space, you're a journalist,
Speaker 6: you get me emailed to get criticisms. I'm used to that,
Speaker 6: got big skin. But this allegation from these parents. I'm
Speaker 6: a dad of four and they're saying, oh, you're a
Speaker 6: child sexual predator and we're going to tell the police.
Speaker 6: It messed me up and knocks the wind out of me.
Speaker 6: For a moment, was like, why am I doing this?
Speaker 6: Do I want to be a journalist?
Speaker 5: Well, that's the goal, right.
Speaker 6: The next thought was what's a teacher or librarian going
Speaker 6: to do when they get allegation? And the answer is
Speaker 6: some of them are quitting. They're leading.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that is really that's really what
Speaker 1: they're banking on. Is there any pushback? I mean, are
Speaker 1: these red state schools just descending into a kind of
Speaker 1: Fox News friendly fakeness?
Speaker 6: I mean, like I said that, there are groups now
Speaker 6: on the left. It's basically this coalition of progressives and
Speaker 6: moderate kind of Romney Republicans who are fighting back against
Speaker 6: this at the local level and districts all over the place.
Speaker 6: Lots of them are winning and beating moms for liberty.
Speaker 6: But the bigger piece I think that I'll call out is,
Speaker 6: you know, there's a certain extent some of these issues
Speaker 6: that are being debated are around student civil rights in America.
Speaker 6: Every student has a right to an equal shot at
Speaker 6: an education without being discriminated against a bully based on
Speaker 6: their race, or sex or now gender and sexual orientation
Speaker 6: under new guidelines by the administration. So that's enforced by
Speaker 6: the Federal Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. There's actually
Speaker 6: an active eight cases in the district I write about
Speaker 6: south Lake that could end up forcing them to implement
Speaker 6: some diversity training and strengthening the student Code of Conduct,
Speaker 6: you know, the same stuff that they rejected as CRT
Speaker 6: a few years ago. But this is all on the
Speaker 6: ballot in November. Donald Trump has said his plan is
Speaker 6: to abolish the federal Education Department and send all of
Speaker 6: that work back to the state. But the states handle
Speaker 6: education policy, including the civil rights stuff and Project twenty
Speaker 6: and twenty five. I know your listeners know all about
Speaker 6: this kind of playbook for detailing what a second Trump
Speaker 6: term would look like. And they also want to abolige
Speaker 6: the Education Department and basically end the federal enforcement of
Speaker 6: civil rights laws by the Education Department, and so the
Speaker 6: net results will be, as we've seen in other areas,
Speaker 6: kind of two sets of constitutional rights in America depending
Speaker 6: on what state you live in, and that'll, you know,
Speaker 6: just like with abortion, and that'll, in their vision, be
Speaker 6: applied to education as well.
Speaker 5: This is so bleak. Is there anything you can tell
Speaker 5: me that is less bleak?
Speaker 6: Well, like I mentioned, these things aren't broadly not actually
Speaker 6: popular right, which is important, and the division here isn't
Speaker 6: really a clean break left first right on these issues,
Speaker 6: and so, like I mentioned, like there's this growing coalition
Speaker 6: of progressive and moderate conservatives in these communities that are
Speaker 6: fighting back against this, and especially the element that's really
Speaker 6: uniting progressives and moderate conservatives is this next level where
Speaker 6: the Christian right is really steeping on this as an
Speaker 6: opportunity to not just remove DEI, but to impose conservative
Speaker 6: Christian worldview. So, like, there's all these laws to put
Speaker 6: up to ten commandments in public schools, to bring in
Speaker 6: Christian chaplains, to start praying at events, and to get
Speaker 6: public funding for private Christian schooling. And it does not
Speaker 6: seem that most of these objectives are popular, probably with Americans,
Speaker 6: and so part of the reason I write the book
Speaker 6: that you know, I'm I'm not trying to tell people
Speaker 6: how to vote or what they need to do, but
Speaker 6: I think the more people become aware of what's happening,
Speaker 6: who's behind it, and what their goals are, people will
Speaker 6: make maybe better decisions.
Speaker 1: You know, It's funny because it's like, it's so clear
Speaker 1: to me that in these elections when people too now,
Speaker 1: normal people lose, right the normal people to people who
Speaker 1: don't want their students indoctrinated into Christianity, who just want
Speaker 1: them to go to school, who don't want all this
Speaker 1: political ideology, who want to study history like normal history
Speaker 1: and not weird trumpy history that says slavery they didn't
Speaker 1: really mean slavery, like who cares, you know, of course
Speaker 1: they meant it, and that kind of stuff that when
Speaker 1: people pay attention, they they vote against this.
Speaker 5: But the problem is it's very hard to get people
Speaker 5: to pay attention.
Speaker 6: The other piece is not everyone's telling the full story
Speaker 6: to what's happening here, and so if not every media
Speaker 6: outlet is telling us. On Fox News, there's depiction of
Speaker 6: America's education system as this this way foreign left radical
Speaker 6: enterprise that is trying to get your kid to change
Speaker 6: their gender as part of this lot to destroy America.
Speaker 6: And so I've talked with people and there's more of
Speaker 6: these stories coming out who heard that message, were terrified
Speaker 6: by it and voted for some of these kind of
Speaker 6: far right school board candidates. Now a year or two later,
Speaker 6: they're looking taking a closer look and seeing, wait a second, wait,
Speaker 6: what are they doing? And they're realizing it's first of all,
Speaker 6: the story that they were fed was untrue. It was
Speaker 6: just a strong man to get them routed up. And
Speaker 6: then they're seeing the policies that they're putting forward, removing books,
Speaker 6: bringing in chaplains, all these sorts of things, and they're saying, wait,
Speaker 6: that's not what I wanted. I feel duped. And so
Speaker 6: I think there are people, even not just moderate Republicans,
Speaker 6: just you know, maybe even Trump voting Republicans who are
Speaker 6: tapping on this. And I've seen that in communities. I've
Speaker 6: seen I've seen school board members. There were one in
Speaker 6: North Texas recently. There's an article on who ran on
Speaker 6: this anti woke agenda. She's going to save the kids
Speaker 6: and get on the school board. And then she got on.
Speaker 6: She took a look at the policies and the curriculum,
Speaker 6: and she thought, wait, this is just all they're doing
Speaker 6: is teaching kids to be kind to each other. There's
Speaker 6: no secret plot here. And so she's now come out
Speaker 6: and changed her cortunity is going public with that story.
Speaker 6: And so I do think it's just a challenge of
Speaker 6: telling people the truth about what's happening.
Speaker 1: That is an amazing thing, because you know, I was
Speaker 1: on this show with Jordan Klipper and I asked him
Speaker 1: if people ever have this come to Jesus moment where
Speaker 1: they like listen to themselves, and he said they never
Speaker 1: ever do so, and that got me pretty depressed, so
Speaker 1: hearing that there are some people who are still intellectually
Speaker 1: honest or at least with it enough to be able
Speaker 1: to be like, this is not real. And again, like
Speaker 1: American history, recent American history is lined with people who
Speaker 1: have who have been in red states, had Red senators
Speaker 1: and then been like this is too much like think
Speaker 1: of Kansas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: In fact, one of the moms who was the most
Speaker 6: vocal voices pushing to take over the school board in
Speaker 6: South Flay. I mean this is someone who was like
Speaker 6: she would make the news when she spoke itscore meeting
Speaker 6: because she was so firery and over the top and
Speaker 6: wanting criminal charges against board members. And I've been watching
Speaker 6: her on social media and as she's watched the school
Speaker 6: board kind of go into this, the Carrol School board
Speaker 6: in South Flake is just you know, they're all seven
Speaker 6: members are now from this faction that was anti CRT,
Speaker 6: anti DEI, and she's seeing the kind of Christian nationalism
Speaker 6: piece of it, and she didn't know that was going
Speaker 6: to be part of it. And so this mom who
Speaker 6: was the most extreme is trying to like lead a
Speaker 6: recall effort forri Ki's board members that she she supported.
Speaker 6: She supported it. She's not progressive, she's not liberal. She's
Speaker 6: not even a modern conservative. She's very conservative. She's saying
Speaker 6: that's enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you, thank you, Mike.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks for doing this. Appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Melissa Walker is the head of Giving Circles at the
Speaker 2: States Project.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Fast Politics, Melissa, Oh, thanks so much for
Speaker 5: having me excited.
Speaker 7: To be here.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the States Project. Tell us why you
Speaker 1: decided to do this.
Speaker 8: I have kind of a funny origin story here because
Speaker 8: I was writing young adult and middle grade novels and
Speaker 8: working in teen magazines in the fall of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 8: but when Trump was elected, I really felt like I
Speaker 8: had to pause and find a way to put.
Speaker 5: Out the fire.
Speaker 7: And I was lucky enough to attend a publishing holiday
Speaker 7: party in December of twenty sixteen where I heard a
Speaker 7: New York State Senator, Daniel Squadron speak, and what he
Speaker 7: said really blew my mind and turned my world around,
Speaker 7: because I started to understand that everything I was worried about,
Speaker 7: and everything I cared about, was being decided in state
Speaker 7: capitals and not in Washington, d C. From education funding
Speaker 7: to environment policy, to healthcare, to civil rights to abortion,
Speaker 7: to the core of our democracy, voting rights, and of
Speaker 7: course jerrymandering, the drawing of the district lines that decide
Speaker 7: who goes to Congress, all in the hands of state lawmakers.
Speaker 7: And when I realized that, and I realized that I
Speaker 7: wanted to focus on it, I tried to figure out
Speaker 7: how I could have the biggest impact, and I really
Speaker 7: started to organize my community in that direction. And six
Speaker 7: months later, Daniel Squadron resigned from New York State Senate
Speaker 7: to start the States Project, and I joined him there
Speaker 7: because I believed in the mission so much to change
Speaker 7: the balance of power in state chambers to elect majorities
Speaker 7: that are focused on improving people's lives.
Speaker 5: What does that look like.
Speaker 1: I feel like there are so many people who are
Speaker 1: like I want to do something, they really feel powerless.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about what you do and how
Speaker 1: it's been meaningful.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely so. The sentence that really galvanized me that
Speaker 7: night in that at that holiday party was this one
Speaker 7: from Daniel Squadron. It is often cheaper to change the
Speaker 7: balance of power in an entire state chamber than it
Speaker 7: is to win a single competitive congressional seat. Right, Congressional
Speaker 7: races cost millions and millions of dollars, and state legislative
Speaker 7: races do not. So when I started to realize that
Speaker 7: there were these fifty mini congresses in our country that
Speaker 7: were deciding so much about how we live our lives
Speaker 7: and about the state of our democracy, and that it
Speaker 7: was like, actually cheaper to influence and affect these races
Speaker 7: than it would be to affect federal races, I understood
Speaker 7: that I had the power to gather rooms together, you know,
Speaker 7: backyards with ten people with sushi and beer, or you know,
Speaker 7: living rooms with eight people in pizza and wine and
Speaker 7: talking about state legislatures. And once I started to learn
Speaker 7: how the right wing had focused on shifting power and
Speaker 7: state legislatures, I started to learn that if we could
Speaker 7: do it that way too, it would be incredibly impactful
Speaker 7: to flips of these states. So I started to form
Speaker 7: what I called the Giving Circle, which was just a
Speaker 7: bunch of people coming together and putting in whatever they
Speaker 7: could to pool resources. And we really learned a lot.
Speaker 7: So we learned things like from twenty ten to twenty sixteen,
Speaker 7: Democrats lost nearly one thousand state legislative seats. As we
Speaker 7: stared at the White House and felt good about having
Speaker 7: elected President Obama, but in those states where their right
Speaker 7: toook power in state houses and state senate, they made
Speaker 7: people's lives bad. They defunded the education and put in
Speaker 7: right to work laws and got it environmental protections. But
Speaker 7: people didn't say that must be my state senator, my
Speaker 7: state house rep. Because most people don't know who goes
Speaker 7: to their state capital for them. And once we started
Speaker 7: to see these power centers that had been operating in
Speaker 7: darkness and how little we needed to get together to
Speaker 7: help change them, we started to kind of walk through
Speaker 7: the world with more power by pooling our resources together
Speaker 7: with friends and neighbors and families. And that first year
Speaker 7: in twenty seventeen, right when Daniel Squadron resigned from Albany
Speaker 7: to start the State's Project, we went into Virginia with him.
Speaker 7: It was twenty seventeen. Virginia has odd year elections for
Speaker 7: their state legislature. We were trying to help slip the
Speaker 7: House Delegates and there were ten candidates who we finished
Speaker 7: the funding for. Nine of those folks won their seats,
Speaker 7: and the balance of power in Richmond got so close,
Speaker 7: just one seat away from flipping that The next year,
Speaker 7: Virginia expanded Medicaid, and we felt connected to that policy
Speaker 7: outcome and we wanted to see more change. So that's
Speaker 7: when I really stopped writing and started a Giving Circles
Speaker 7: program at the States Project to help other people organize
Speaker 7: their friends and their families and their neighbors to do
Speaker 7: this strategic political giving, because I think that sometimes we
Speaker 7: get really focused on the races at the top of
Speaker 7: the ticket, the things that are on the news, the
Speaker 7: people who are on MSNBC at night and on the
Speaker 7: front page of the newspapers, But the state legislators that
Speaker 7: we are supporting in these tipping point seats in states
Speaker 7: where the balance of power can be shifted are folks
Speaker 7: that most people won't have heard of, They won't know
Speaker 7: their names, they won't know anything about them. But these
Speaker 7: are the people who are deciding whether a state abortion access,
Speaker 7: who are deciding the voting rights in the state, who
Speaker 7: are deciding on climate policy and healthcare and civil rights
Speaker 7: and education funding. One big, shining example of this is
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty two, the State's Product was in Michigan
Speaker 7: to help whip the State House and the States Senate.
Speaker 7: We won both of those chambers by fewer than four
Speaker 7: hundred votes to make one seat majorities in Michigan. Now,
Speaker 7: last year in Congress, they passed about thirty bills right
Speaker 7: in Washington d C. Michigan passed three hundred and twenty
Speaker 7: one with those new majorities, and they were able to
Speaker 7: codify the right to abortion in the state constitution and
Speaker 7: end those right to work laws so the unions can
Speaker 7: be strong again, and free breakfast and lunch for all
Speaker 7: school children, and the strongest climate bill in the country,
Speaker 7: stronger than New York's or California's. In Michigan. So these
Speaker 7: are the types of foundational changes we can see when
Speaker 7: we focus here, and groups of everyday people who are
Speaker 7: coming together can really really move the needle.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to have you on because I heard
Speaker 1: you speak and I've known about your project. I think
Speaker 1: we've actually had Daniel on this podcast. But what I
Speaker 1: wanted you to talk about was so the other day
Speaker 1: I was at the doctor's office and I ran into
Speaker 1: a woman who recognized me, and she said, I feel
Speaker 1: so powerless. I don't know what I can do. I
Speaker 1: am so worried about democracy. Please tell me what I
Speaker 1: can do. So tell her what she can do.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I mean I certainly felt that way for a
Speaker 7: little while until I found this. And what I have
Speaker 7: seen happen from the inside is these power shifts make immense,
Speaker 7: handible change, and gathering people together in community is part
Speaker 7: of that change. So the Giving circles model for political
Speaker 7: giving is a really strong one because not only does
Speaker 7: it kind of help raise electoral dollars for the state's
Speaker 7: project to kind of focus and target this strategic way
Speaker 7: to shift power, but also because it brings communities of
Speaker 7: people together in connection, people with shared values coming together
Speaker 7: and gaping in backyards like we were in the other night,
Speaker 7: or living rooms or zoom rooms, and feeling the energy
Speaker 7: of a community is an incredibly powerful way to walk
Speaker 7: through the world. I didn't know that I could organize
Speaker 7: that first year, our giving circle organized one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 7: I had no idea that I could do that. But
Speaker 7: little by little, from donations from twenty five dollars to
Speaker 7: one thousand dollars at a time, we brought in enough
Speaker 7: people to make that math problem more And now I
Speaker 7: know that that is something that I can do, and
Speaker 7: it makes me walk through the world with more power,
Speaker 7: not only for this political venture, but also for my neighborhood,
Speaker 7: for my local school, for anything that I care about.
Speaker 7: Developing those skills of bringing attention to resources to something
Speaker 7: that I care about has been a piece of me
Speaker 7: figuring out that I am powerful and I do not
Speaker 7: have to be a witness to what is happening in
Speaker 7: our country. I can be a part of fighting for
Speaker 7: our democracy. And the thing about plugging in at this
Speaker 7: level is I can really see the impact of your work.
Speaker 7: I just mentioned Michigan in those slim margins, but they
Speaker 7: weren't the slimmest of twenty twenty two. We were also
Speaker 7: in Minnesota to try to flip the state Senate and
Speaker 7: we did that by one hundred and ninety one votes.
Speaker 7: So the trifecta meaning the governor's mansion and both chambers
Speaker 7: being in Democratic hands in Minnesota happened because of one
Speaker 7: seat in the state Senate one hundred and ninety one
Speaker 7: votes in Pennsylvania in an even slimmer margin, which in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty two, the state's project was there to target
Speaker 7: twelve seats. We got all twelve, but the final one
Speaker 7: was won by sixty three votes. So what I said
Speaker 7: to every giving circle leader that had chosen Pennsylvania that
Speaker 7: year was that was you, because if every backyard end,
Speaker 7: zoom room and gathering hadn't happened, I don't know if
Speaker 7: we would have been able to win that majority. And
Speaker 7: shifting power in Harrisburg means we've elected the first black
Speaker 7: woman Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania and Billy has
Speaker 7: the gabble on policy and it has been incredible to
Speaker 7: watch that happen. And it is because of people organizing
Speaker 7: their communities, and we all have that power when we
Speaker 7: bring our people.
Speaker 1: Together, tell me what you guys are looking at in
Speaker 1: the fall.
Speaker 7: Every year we do a ninety nine state chamber analysis,
Speaker 7: and it's ninety nine because Nebraska is unfameral, so we
Speaker 7: take a look at where power shifts are possible.
Speaker 5: Wait, say more on Nebraska.
Speaker 7: So Nebraska doesn't have a state House and a state Senate,
Speaker 7: they just have one body. So that's why it becomes
Speaker 7: ninety nine chambers. Why it's just the way they like
Speaker 7: to do it, and it's a great piece of nerdy
Speaker 7: trivia for.
Speaker 6: A dinner party.
Speaker 7: But we are focused on the nine states where we
Speaker 7: think we see a path to the power shift.
Speaker 6: That we want.
Speaker 7: We're always looking for a power threshold. So our state
Speaker 7: focuses in twenty twenty four include, of course defending those
Speaker 7: new majorities in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, also trying to
Speaker 7: flip state chambers in Arizona, where we're just two seats
Speaker 7: away in the state House and the state Senate from
Speaker 7: a flip, and also in New Hampshire, where we will
Speaker 7: be working in both the House and the Senate, the
Speaker 7: House to work on a flip and the Senate to
Speaker 7: work on a tie. We see a path to a
Speaker 7: tie there and we're also going to be in Nevada
Speaker 7: to try to build a supermajority against a right wing
Speaker 7: governor who vetos everything. So if we can build a
Speaker 7: super majority, we can override some of those vetos and
Speaker 7: get some good policies passed. And we're also in Kansas
Speaker 7: and North Carolina, both places to break a right wing supermajority.
Speaker 7: Kansas has the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, whose veto has
Speaker 7: been overridden on a bunch of things, including limits on abortion,
Speaker 7: which the voters, as we saw, did not agree with,
Speaker 7: but the legislature passed them anyway. In North Carolina, where
Speaker 7: we just need to break that supermajority because there's an
Speaker 7: important governor's race, but even if Josh Stein, the Democrat,
Speaker 7: wins the governor's mansion, he will not have power unless
Speaker 7: we break the super majority. So we're working in the
Speaker 7: state House there and the final state for the first time,
Speaker 7: we're going to be in Wisconsin because they have new
Speaker 7: fairer map thanks to Supreme Court race that was one
Speaker 7: last year with the help of a lot of activism.
Speaker 7: And in Wisconsin, those FARA maps mean that we see
Speaker 7: a path to potentially flipping the Assembly and certainly gaining
Speaker 7: ground there. So those are our targets for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: The thing I'm struck by when we talk about these
Speaker 1: maps is that in Minnesota, the governor there has been
Speaker 1: able to do incredible things with free breakfast, free lunch,
Speaker 1: is you know, feeding hungry children, which for me, I
Speaker 1: feel like in a country this rich, we shouldn't have
Speaker 1: any hungry children. Now this, by the way, is it controversial,
Speaker 1: very controversial. You know, you could get there are Republicans
Speaker 1: who say, like, what if we feed a middle class child,
Speaker 1: like that's a tragedy. But Wisconsin has not been able
Speaker 1: to do those same things because of their state legislature.
Speaker 7: Right, that's correct, that's right, And Minnesota wasn't able to
Speaker 7: do that until we got the majority by one hundred
Speaker 7: and ninety one vote margin.
Speaker 1: Tell the person who came and stopped me at the
Speaker 1: doctor's office what you should do now.
Speaker 7: So I think there's a couple of options. If that
Speaker 7: person is someone who does like to gather people and
Speaker 7: organize a little bit, So maybe someone who has a
Speaker 7: book club or who always organizes the potlic or who
Speaker 7: hosts dinner parties, that is a giving circle leader, and
Speaker 7: there are a bunch of them in every community, and.
Speaker 1: One of them is quite a famous actress. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are people here who are doing this because they
Speaker 1: are worried, right.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, absolutely, And you know there's going to be so
Speaker 7: much wild emotional political giving that happens this year when
Speaker 7: people get panicked, when people get scared, and it's not
Speaker 7: going to be strategic. And I think anyone who's putting
Speaker 7: any dollars into political stuff this year needs to be
Speaker 7: strategic about where their dollars will have an impact. And
Speaker 7: that's really what giving circles are for. I tell every
Speaker 7: giving circle leader that starts one that they are turning
Speaker 7: on the porch light for strategic political gear, and that
Speaker 7: when they approach friends and family with the story of
Speaker 7: this effort, they are really giving people an opportunity to
Speaker 7: have an impact that they didn't know was possible. You know,
Speaker 7: when I started working at the State's Project, a friend
Speaker 7: of mine said, oh, how's the fundraising gig going? And
Speaker 7: I was like, I'm not fundraising, I'm flipping state legislatures.
Speaker 7: And she said through fundraising, right, And I was like,
Speaker 7: oh my gosh, I guess I'm fundraising. But really, what
Speaker 7: I think I'm doing is walking into a room and
Speaker 7: saying to people, you can have a political impact that
Speaker 7: you didn't know was possible. At the foundations of our country.
Speaker 7: It's where the right wing's been building power for decades.
Speaker 7: And I'll take my word for it. Ask the Kochs
Speaker 7: and the Melons and Escapes and the devoces like this
Speaker 7: is where the rubber meets the road on policy and
Speaker 7: on congressional elections and on the bills that are rising
Speaker 7: up to the Supreme Court. Right, it was a Mississippi
Speaker 7: law that took down Row. And if that one hadn't
Speaker 7: done it, there were sixteen other states that had keued
Speaker 7: up abortion vans. Yeah, and they queued up those bands
Speaker 7: specifically to rest of the Supreme Court to challenge Row.
Speaker 7: And that was state legislatures that did that. And there
Speaker 7: is also a lever over the presidential here because not
Speaker 7: only does state legislators decide who can vote and when
Speaker 7: and how in their states, but also because the pack
Speaker 7: to steal the presidency in twenty twenty ran directly through
Speaker 7: state legislatures. It wasn't senators and congress people who Trump
Speaker 7: called into the Oval office in December of twenty twenty,
Speaker 7: it was state lawmakers from Michigan, from Minnesota, from Pennsylvania
Speaker 7: and Arizona. He was asking them to change their electors
Speaker 7: and hand him their elect for or college votes, because
Speaker 7: state governments handle their elections. So it's this ultimate power
Speaker 7: center that can really be changed with a fraction of
Speaker 7: the investment that you would spend on a federal race.
Speaker 7: But it's hard for people to figure out, Okay, which
Speaker 7: are the potential tipping point seats in which states is
Speaker 7: a power shift possible? So that's what the State's Project
Speaker 7: has done with a research team and a ton of data.
Speaker 7: But what giving circles do is they sign up at
Speaker 7: Statesproject dot org. They start their own pay which our
Speaker 7: team sets up, and then they've got a place to
Speaker 7: bring their friends and family and say, we are doing
Speaker 7: a strategic political movement here where we are helping the
Speaker 7: State's Project target these tipping point seats to shift power.
Speaker 7: It's all been figured out. We choose our target state together,
Speaker 7: and then we march in there to these strategically chosen
Speaker 7: races where we will not have heard of these candidates,
Speaker 7: but they are the folks who are deciding these issues.
Speaker 7: I would say to her, think about starting a giving circle,
Speaker 7: Think about joining a giving circle. Checkout statesproject dot org
Speaker 7: and try to figure out if there's a way to
Speaker 7: plug in, because there really is, especially if you're someone
Speaker 7: who wants to do this with friends and family. And
Speaker 7: I promise folks that when you start inviting people in,
Speaker 7: they will thank you. Because everyone is looking for a
Speaker 7: place to have political impact right now and it's not
Speaker 7: easy to find.
Speaker 1: I think that's really important. You know, this is cheaper
Speaker 1: than a congressional race. It's cheaper than a mayoral race.
Speaker 1: It's cheaper than I mean, this is like the These
Speaker 1: are the races that no one is talking about. I
Speaker 1: know because on this podcast Jesse and I had We
Speaker 1: didn't have every but we had many, many, many members
Speaker 1: of the Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia State Senators
Speaker 1: on this podcast because it is so incredibly important.
Speaker 5: And these are such small marginal elections.
Speaker 7: That's exactly right, and I'm so glad you put a
Speaker 7: spotlight on that. I mean, Virginia was a state we
Speaker 7: were in twenty twenty three with the giving circles and
Speaker 7: able to help hold the state Senate and flip the
Speaker 7: House of Delegates to put a wall in front of
Speaker 7: Governor Youngkin's right wing agenda, and it's been incredibly important.
Speaker 7: I mean, Virginia is the last southern state that doesn't
Speaker 7: have restrictions further restrictions on abortion post obs and we
Speaker 7: see that, you know, after this Florida ban, Virginia is
Speaker 7: the spot people are coming to like, this is really important,
Speaker 7: and not just for the state itself, but for our country.
Speaker 7: You know, this is our country. There aren't country borders
Speaker 7: between our states. We are in the United States, and
Speaker 7: we have to care about what happens in each of
Speaker 7: these places. So I absolutely think it is a place.
Speaker 7: We stu a sign on our office store that said,
Speaker 7: not where the glamor is, just where the power is.
Speaker 7: And I really believe.
Speaker 1: That such a great line, and I agree, and I
Speaker 1: was convinced that Youngkin, with his fake moderate stuff, would
Speaker 1: be able to flip the state houses and ban abortion,
Speaker 1: and in fact he did not, and probably in.
Speaker 5: Some part due to you guys.
Speaker 7: We were the biggest national investor in Virginia with the
Speaker 7: help of giving circles. Really who put more resources on
Speaker 7: the ground in Virginia for this than the DNZ did.
Speaker 7: I mean, it was an incredible thing. To watch and
Speaker 7: it's you know, it's not three dimensional chess, right, it's
Speaker 7: connected four. These candidates need time to go meet their
Speaker 7: voters and knock on doors. They need digital ads that
Speaker 7: have been tested locally, they need TV ads, they need
Speaker 7: some mailers. Now this is not some complicated thing, but
Speaker 7: when we ignore state legislative races, we just leave the field.
Speaker 7: And that's really where the right wing's been building and
Speaker 7: we've been letting it go. So we're fighting back.
Speaker 1: As Amanda Littman says, you got to run for every seat.
Speaker 1: Thank you so so much, Melissa Walker. It's called the
Speaker 1: State Project. Just tell us one more time, absolutely, the
Speaker 1: State's Project at statesproject dot org.
Speaker 7: Check us out.
Speaker 3: No, no moment.
Speaker 5: Rick Wilson, do you have a moment of fuckery?
Speaker 4: I always have a moment of fuckery, Polly, And look,
Speaker 4: I know that this has been the story of stories,
Speaker 4: but can we just for a moment stop pretending that
Speaker 4: Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas are not completely political apparatics
Speaker 4: and not actual Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 3: Can we just for a moment the whole story with
Speaker 3: his multiple flags.
Speaker 4: It just strikes me that John Roberts, who people keep
Speaker 4: hoping and praying will stand up and take control of
Speaker 4: things and tell them that they have to stop with
Speaker 4: the appearance of partisan intentionality. I had hoped myself that
Speaker 4: John Roberts would stand up, But until he does, we're
Speaker 4: going to have a Supreme Court that Americans are increasingly
Speaker 4: divided about, increasingly frightened of, and increasingly in a situation
Speaker 4: where they have no credibility with the vast majority of
Speaker 4: the American people.
Speaker 1: So my moment of fuckery is that I think we
Speaker 1: should all just take a step back from this poll
Speaker 1: of palooza and just focus on what's happening on the
Speaker 1: ground in Biden world. And the reason why this is
Speaker 1: my moment of fuckery and it's not my moment of
Speaker 1: fackery every day, is because read this piece by Nate
Speaker 1: Cohen of the New York Times, who talked about how
Speaker 1: I no, No, this is smart, talked about how when
Speaker 1: they're doing these polls, they're trying to account for these
Speaker 1: hidden Trump voters who may or.
Speaker 5: May not vote.
Speaker 1: So maybe these people will vote, and maybe it will
Speaker 1: rain and they won't.
Speaker 5: So every single thing that is going to happen between
Speaker 5: now and November is what matters, not what happens in
Speaker 5: a poll of possible voters who might come out but
Speaker 5: have never voted.
Speaker 1: You know, those kind of quantifications and that kind of pulling.
Speaker 5: That is my moment of fuck break.
Speaker 4: May I offer a sub moment of fuckery on that
Speaker 4: there is a species of polster right now who believe
Speaker 4: so much in the polling averages. They truly believe that
Speaker 4: there could never be anything wrong with the polling averages,
Speaker 4: and that their weights that they've applied to the different
Speaker 4: polls in terms of their quality are universally a correct
Speaker 4: and be accepted. This is a flawed system that the Republicans,
Speaker 4: and believe me, I'm a former Republican, guys, I can
Speaker 4: tell you if we want to figure out how to
Speaker 4: game a system, we'll game the damn system.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Rick, that was so good. You're so smart anytime.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.