Raging Moderates: Trump’s Military Occupation Comes to DC (ft. Shane Goldmacher)

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0:01:53 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:54 I’m Jessica Tarlove.
0:01:58 Scott Free August rolls on, but we have a fantastic substitute.
0:02:02 I’m very excited to have Shane Goldmacher here with me, national political correspondent for
0:02:03 The New York Times.
0:02:04 Shane, how are you?
0:02:05 I’m pretty good.
0:02:06 How are you?
0:02:07 I’m great.
0:02:08 How’s your summer been?
0:02:10 Summer’s excellent.
0:02:10 Yeah.
0:02:13 I like the off year better than the on year.
0:02:15 I’m not surprised by that, though.
0:02:17 Everything now feels like an on year.
0:02:22 Probably not as much for you who would actually have to be out on the trail, but there seems
0:02:24 to be no rest.
0:02:29 It feels more on than it should, but it is less on than the actual election year.
0:02:29 Definitely.
0:02:35 Probably a Trump effect, though I’m thinking last summer we were in Chicago for the DNC at
0:02:36 this point, which was way more on.
0:02:39 And the RNC was the most on with the assassination attempt.
0:02:43 Crazy what has happened in the last year of politics.
0:02:44 All right.
0:02:46 I’m going to get into it.
0:02:47 Thank you again for joining us.
0:02:53 Can’t wait to talk to you about all the things, starting with Trump’s crackdown of D.C., the
0:02:58 latest on the redistricting wars, which you’ve been leading the reporting force on, and how
0:03:01 both parties are building their strategy going into the midterms.
0:03:06 So first up, on Monday, Donald Trump held a press conference.
0:03:12 He had been saying for a couple of days that he was going to be federalizing the D.C.
0:03:15 Metropolitan Police, and he really went for it.
0:03:21 He’s bringing in 800 National Guard troops, plus 120 FBI agents who are going to be reassigned
0:03:22 to night patrols.
0:03:26 Local leaders, including the mayor and the police chief, say that they weren’t given a
0:03:28 heads up even about the announcement.
0:03:33 Trump claims the city is overrun by bloodthirsty criminals and roving mobs.
0:03:38 But D.C.’s own numbers show violent crime is at a 30-year low and down another 26 percent
0:03:39 this year.
0:03:43 A Washington Post poll from the spring found that while crime is down, it’s still a big
0:03:47 concern for residents, over 50 percent, say it’s a very serious problem.
0:03:51 But 71 percent believe Trump is getting too involved in local issues.
0:03:53 I would definitely be in that 71 percent.
0:03:59 The idea of a full federal takeover of D.C. is concerning to people across the board.
0:04:03 The D.C.’s attorney general is calling the move unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,
0:04:05 setting the stage for a legal fight.
0:04:09 So, Shane, he’s doing this under something called the D.C. Home Rule Act.
0:04:14 How much authority does he actually have to do this?
0:04:21 I mean, the short answer is he has a ton of authority, that Washington, D.C. exists under
0:04:24 the thumb of the federal government for the most part.
0:04:29 A few decades ago, the federal government gave D.C. a lot of power to rule itself, but carved
0:04:33 out exceptions to basically take things over when they want to on a short-term basis.
0:04:38 And so not only is he talking about deploying the National Guard, he’s literally taking over
0:04:42 the police department or having his federal government take over the police department.
0:04:48 And as you saw with the sort of somewhat relaxed reaction, all things considered, from the
0:04:49 mayor, he has the power to do it.
0:04:50 Not forever.
0:04:52 There’s a time limit on the takeover of the police.
0:04:55 It’s about 30 days, I believe, once you notify Congress.
0:04:55 There’s some steps.
0:04:59 But in the short term, he absolutely has this power.
0:05:00 Yeah.
0:05:04 So it’s 30 days and then they would need congressional authorization.
0:05:11 My concern as, you know, I think a reasonably minded but definitely partisan person is that
0:05:15 Republicans have been rubber stamping absolutely everything that Donald Trump wants.
0:05:17 So this could go on in perpetuity.
0:05:20 And he is threatening to do this to other blue cities.
0:05:26 We saw it in Los Angeles during the time of the immigration raids when they started going
0:05:32 after Home Depots and picking people up from, you know, when they go to get their kids from
0:05:32 school.
0:05:34 And he’s what did he cite?
0:05:39 You know, Oakland, Baltimore, which I think has halved its murder rate in the last couple
0:05:39 of years.
0:05:49 I’m torn about this because on the one hand, I believe to my core that everything that he
0:05:54 does is a distraction from the fact that he is not getting the results that he expected
0:05:57 to like his trade wars are not going well.
0:06:01 They can talk about the billions of dollars in revenues, but the American public has him
0:06:05 severely underwater when it comes to that immigration policy also underwater.
0:06:09 And then there are the Epstein files of it all, which seems like the one thing that
0:06:10 he can’t escape.
0:06:12 How do you see it?
0:06:18 Like, he obviously wants to be doing this, but do you think that he’s playing a game of
0:06:21 diversion more than anything or he’s just walking and chewing gum?
0:06:28 You know, I think that sometimes we assign some more strategy to some of Trump’s decisions
0:06:29 than there is.
0:06:33 Look, I thought some of the comments he made yesterday were revealing of what he’s thinking
0:06:39 and some of the comments from people who are working around him, which is he is ferrying
0:06:41 himself around or being ferried around Washington, D.C.
0:06:43 And he is seeing homeless encampments.
0:06:45 He is seeing coverage of crime.
0:06:51 And he talked about, you know, the dirty kitchen at a restaurant is a bad or the dirty front door
0:06:53 is the bad sign for the kitchen is something his father taught him.
0:06:55 He doesn’t like the way D.C.
0:06:57 looks when he’s going around the town.
0:07:00 And so he wants to talk about crime in general.
0:07:01 He’s always wanted to talk about crime.
0:07:04 He’s been talking about urban crime for 40 years.
0:07:06 He wants to talk about immigration in general.
0:07:09 And he’s enamored with the police powers of the presidency.
0:07:14 He has been since his first term where he was often more resistant to using them.
0:07:19 And as you mentioned, some of these examples, he is using policing authorities through the
0:07:24 National Guard repeatedly over the objections of blue state mayors and blue state governors.
0:07:26 And so I think it’s a continuation of that.
0:07:32 I don’t know that this is a grand strategy as a diversion or a new topic as much as he is
0:07:32 seeing something.
0:07:35 He has power here to act upon it.
0:07:36 And he’s acting upon it.
0:07:37 I think that’s right.
0:07:40 And it also it’s in the 20 project 2025 playbook.
0:07:44 And it’s kind of amazing how they spelled everything out.
0:07:47 And Democrats had a moment like a couple of months where it was actually resonating with
0:07:47 people.
0:07:53 And then Trump took control of the narrative back with the Butler assassination attempt.
0:07:55 And then we kind of didn’t hear about project 2025 again.
0:07:57 But it’s definitely in there.
0:08:03 He wants to play mayor and sheriff, sometimes more than an American president and to be in
0:08:04 charge of all of this.
0:08:07 And obviously, red states are going to go along with whatever he wants.
0:08:13 There’s been all these Republican dreams of taking D.C., which has been sort of a liberal
0:08:17 playground for policy and ideas for a long time, say, you know what, Congress controls
0:08:18 Washington, D.C.
0:08:19 They control the Persians.
0:08:21 They have all of this authority.
0:08:26 They there’s been chatter for years ago about charter schools, attempting all kinds of things
0:08:30 that the Republican Party is a goal and say, you know what, while this is a liberal city,
0:08:34 it’s actually sometimes under Republican control because of Congress.
0:08:38 And so, yeah, as you mentioned in Project 2025 and just in general, for a long time, it’s
0:08:40 been one of those dreams.
0:08:45 Hey, this is a place where we actually have real authority in an urban area in a way that
0:08:49 the Republican Party generally doesn’t because cities in America in general have been progressive
0:08:49 or Democratic.
0:08:50 Definitely.
0:08:52 That’s a really good point.
0:08:58 And there’s also something that I noticed about Mayor Muriel Bowser’s response.
0:08:59 And you said it was more muted.
0:09:02 It was definitely more conciliatory than I expected.
0:09:06 If a president who I don’t support politically on top of it came in and said, basically, I’m
0:09:08 taking control of everything.
0:09:11 She looked incredibly defeated, right?
0:09:13 That’s the idea that you can’t do anything about this.
0:09:19 But she has really done her best in the first, you know, seven, eight months of the Trump
0:09:22 administration to stay out of his way, right?
0:09:29 And to pacify him as much as possible and enjoyed when she can get a little bit of adulation.
0:09:31 You know, he made an announcement himself in May.
0:09:35 He got up at the podium and talked about the drop in violent crime in D.C.
0:09:37 And he wanted to take a victory lap on that.
0:09:42 Kash Patel yesterday, even the FBI director, was talking about how the murder rate is so
0:09:42 far down.
0:09:46 So it’s strategic, obviously, to make sure that she doesn’t inflame him.
0:09:51 But she also said, maybe this more police isn’t such a bad thing.
0:09:58 And that really stuck out to me because there’s this constant back and forth, I feel like, amongst
0:10:04 liberals more like me, kind of like a liberal elites that live in nice neighborhoods and
0:10:09 don’t worry about day-to-day crime or the carjackings or whatever it is.
0:10:12 And that’s not the totality of the city.
0:10:17 The experience at different parts of we’re both New York City-ites in other neighborhoods is
0:10:18 much worse than that.
0:10:22 And she is acutely aware of the fact that while violent crime might be down and the murder rate
0:10:26 might be down, that there still is a carjacking problem and there is a huge homelessness
0:10:28 problem in her city.
0:10:34 And you continually hear from police chiefs and people of color that they’re not necessarily
0:10:37 upset at the idea of there being a larger police presence.
0:10:43 I mean, you see in New York, the current mayor, Eric Adams, that’s how he was elected four years
0:10:44 ago, right?
0:10:47 He ran on a former police officer background.
0:10:53 He was saying, I’m a black leader who worked in the police and thinks we need more policing.
0:10:57 Look, I think that you see the arc of this in Muriel Bowser, right?
0:11:04 It was in Washington, D.C. after George Floyd’s murder, where they painted the streets just
0:11:05 outside the White House.
0:11:09 While Trump was still there, the Black Lives Matter plaza, right?
0:11:13 There’s this thing that was yellow and black lettering all up 16th Street.
0:11:16 And it was there for four years.
0:11:21 And when Trump came back in, Mayor Bowser had that removed.
0:11:24 And so that lettering is no longer there.
0:11:27 There was a push on Black Lives Matter.
0:11:32 There was a sort of a related push by some progressive activists about defunding the police
0:11:38 that really didn’t gain traction in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, but was really successfully
0:11:40 used to attack Democrats.
0:11:46 You know, I think Joe Biden gave a speech not long in late 2020 in the campaign, late in
0:11:50 the campaign, saying, you know, do I look like the kind of person who wants to defund the
0:11:50 police?
0:11:54 The Democrats right away were trying to push back against that label nationally.
0:11:55 But it stuck.
0:12:01 It stuck because activists can be loud and activists have some influence and they can have an echo
0:12:02 chamber online.
0:12:07 And so we sealed Bowser and Eric Adams and a whole slew of Democrats, frankly, saying
0:12:10 that is not our actual goal.
0:12:15 You know, as some folks said at the time, both of them defund the police, abolish ICE was a
0:12:21 predecessor, is if the end goal is accomplishing your slogan, which is that there would not be
0:12:26 a funded police department and that is not actually your goal, then the slogan is not serving
0:12:27 a good purpose, right?
0:12:31 Like you want people to hear your slogan, follow it to the finish and be like, yes, that is in
0:12:32 fact what I want, right?
0:12:36 You can contrast that with other people running, you know, if you’re Zoran Mamdani running for
0:12:37 mayor now, right?
0:12:38 Free buses.
0:12:39 OK, end slogan.
0:12:41 It’s like people be OK with free buses, right?
0:12:42 Freezing the rent.
0:12:43 They could be OK with freezing the rent.
0:12:43 Defunding the police.
0:12:46 People are like, no, actually, I don’t really mean all the way that.
0:12:48 And I think that was from the get go.
0:12:54 One of the struggles with the slogan, which is if people actually take it at face value and
0:12:58 say that’s exactly what I want and it’s not popular, then you probably don’t have a good
0:12:58 slogan.
0:13:04 No, I think James Carville said it last week to me that he thought defund the police were
0:13:08 the stupidest three words in the English language, especially tied together.
0:13:11 You know, Jim Clyburn tried his best.
0:13:17 A lot of the kind of dons of the party to say you absolutely may not run around saying things
0:13:17 like this.
0:13:21 There’s a way to talk about racial justice and social justice and the murder of George Floyd
0:13:22 without using that kind of language.
0:13:24 And it’s haunted us.
0:13:30 Mom Donnie doing his best to kind of backtrack at this particular moment in advance of the
0:13:31 election in November.
0:13:38 I’m curious as to and I’m just spitballing this because I’m not going to end up mayor of
0:13:38 D.C.
0:13:40 But if I were mayor of D.C.
0:13:41 Yes.
0:13:43 Or I were part definitely not.
0:13:46 That would be serious carpetbagging and it seems not good.
0:13:48 I don’t know what city I would want to be mayor of.
0:13:53 It’s too hard here, but it would be hometown fun, I guess, to be in New York.
0:14:04 But it feels like there’s always an opportunity with Trump to at least present a rational pushback.
0:14:08 You’re not necessarily going to get him to agree with it, but there’s there feels like
0:14:15 there are proposals or things that you could say that could make him look as absurd as I
0:14:20 believe that he is and that this is all part of Project 2025 and he wants to take over every
0:14:21 single facet of American life.
0:14:24 We see this with the universities, with law firms, et cetera.
0:14:26 He wants to control as much as possible.
0:14:32 And the Republicans, for instance, they cut a billion dollars from the D.C. budget.
0:14:34 Why is no one talking about that?
0:14:35 Or U.S.
0:14:36 Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
0:14:39 I can’t I’m not adjusted yet to calling her U.S.
0:14:40 Attorney.
0:14:41 I should say Judge Pirro.
0:14:45 But she got up there and gave a fiery speech, as she usually does.
0:14:50 And she’s talking about the laws that prohibit her from locking up juveniles, even
0:14:53 juveniles that are running around with guns and committing terrible crimes.
0:14:57 And that’s something that Democrats and Republicans agree upon.
0:15:00 Joe Biden talked about that as well and how the D.C.
0:15:04 Council was actually way over its skis and had to change the laws.
0:15:06 And Congress has a tremendous amount of control.
0:15:11 So why do you think that we’re not seeing that conversation going on right now?
0:15:17 I mean, I don’t think that the action you saw yesterday from Trump is about a specific set
0:15:18 of policies, right?
0:15:25 It is about a sense of control, a framing of a conversation around power and policing.
0:15:27 And it’s an exertion of power.
0:15:31 I mean, I think that a lot of these things are about showing his supporters.
0:15:32 It’s a show of force.
0:15:34 Yeah, it’s a show of force.
0:15:39 And I think that, you know, there are places where Democrats and Republicans can come together,
0:15:40 frankly, on some of these issues.
0:15:42 You just mentioned one about some juvenile justice issues.
0:15:45 But that wasn’t the sort of tone, right?
0:15:49 Like if you wanted to work together with the city of D.C., you would have been more collaborative
0:15:52 up front and in advance and given the morning, right?
0:15:56 This was a, you know, there was reactions to, you know, some violence against a person who
0:16:00 would work for Elon Musk that Trump had posted about and Musk had posted about, right?
0:16:05 This is a reaction to things and an exertion of power more than a specific set of policies.
0:16:11 There are people around the president and around Republican politics who do have specific
0:16:15 policies in mind and outcomes that are policy oriented.
0:16:20 But I think this is him saying, I can take control here.
0:16:22 I want to show that I’m taking control.
0:16:28 So much of Trump’s, you know, first six, seven months almost now has been about action, giving
0:16:34 his supporters a sense of action, giving people who didn’t like him a sense of action and saying,
0:16:35 oh, you are really on the defensive.
0:16:41 And I think it’s just, I think it’s, it’s important to think of this as a continuation of that.
0:16:44 I think, you know, there are two parts to this, right?
0:16:50 The first part is he’s taking over the police of DC for a month, well within the formal
0:16:52 powers, even if it is in fact unprecedented.
0:16:57 The other thing he is doing is activating the National Guard and activating a slew of other
0:17:00 federal law enforcement officials and saying, you too are going to be part of this.
0:17:02 And I think of that as different.
0:17:08 I think you can think of a bunch of examples where Trump has taken the National Guard or other
0:17:12 armed forces and brought them into the political fray.
0:17:13 You have it at the border.
0:17:16 Certainly you had it in Los Angeles, probably most strikingly.
0:17:18 You had the parade.
0:17:22 I think a lot about trust and voters’ trust in our political system.
0:17:29 One of the last remaining institutions that have the trust across partisan lines has been
0:17:29 the military.
0:17:38 And it is a slow creeping that instead of 99% of the country, 85% of the country seeing troops and
0:17:43 thinking positively of them, they’re going to be seen less positively if you’re in a blue
0:17:48 state and these troops are being sent against your wishes to impose a policy that you don’t
0:17:48 support.
0:17:53 I don’t think that’s a reaction that’s going to happen quickly, but we’ve watched the erosion of
0:17:59 trust in the media where I work in almost every institution, churches, media, schools, universities,
0:17:59 right?
0:18:01 All of these things are eroding trust.
0:18:05 And the military has been one of the last places where that’s not happened quite as severely.
0:18:12 And I do see each of these steps in totality adding to a real strain on the left’s trust
0:18:13 of the military.
0:18:18 Yeah, the term for what happened in Los Angeles that was battered around that there was an
0:18:22 occupation, essentially, and an occupation where they were doing nothing.
0:18:25 I mean, there were thousands of troops that were just sitting around.
0:18:33 They were forced to be sleeping and living in substandard conditions because LA was not set
0:18:36 up for those folks to be sent in.
0:18:40 And I would imagine we may see a similar fate in D.C.
0:18:46 I mean, the numbers are going to be less so far, but how do you think it actually will
0:18:48 look on the ground once everyone is there?
0:18:53 Like last night, we saw there were some random stops outside of Howard University.
0:18:54 I saw some footage from there.
0:18:58 Patrol cars, there were DEA agents walking along the National Mall, which is strange.
0:19:01 I don’t know how much crime is really occurring there.
0:19:06 But how do you think it actually physically manifests whatever is to go on in the next 30 days?
0:19:08 That’s a really good question.
0:19:09 And I really have no idea.
0:19:13 I mean, I lived in D.C. for a number of years and because there’s so many different
0:19:19 government agencies, there are often people who are, you know, armed services of various
0:19:22 branches doing things and controlling the city for some different purposes.
0:19:26 They’re not controlling the city in that sense, but you see them out and about at various moments.
0:19:30 So, you know, will 800 people feel or look different?
0:19:31 I don’t frankly know.
0:19:37 You know, if you take 800 National Guard troops and you take people from a bunch of other agencies
0:19:41 and you have DEA and FBI, there could be something different.
0:19:43 But it really, we’re in uncharted waters here, right?
0:19:45 They’ve taken over the police force.
0:19:50 It’s important to note that these are trained professionals, but not trained for these jobs,
0:19:50 right?
0:19:52 It’s a different set of training.
0:19:56 And so if you’re a National Guardsman, I don’t believe you have arresting authority.
0:19:59 And so, no, they have to call the local police.
0:20:01 They can essentially detain you.
0:20:03 And then they call in for backup.
0:20:07 And Trump even admitted that there were technically enough cops on the street that should be able
0:20:12 to be executing the job to get it to the point where when he rolls around, he feels like it
0:20:17 looks like a nice TV set versus a graffiti laden homeless problem.
0:20:23 But I think that that graffiti laden homeless problem, I feel like, is a big part of it,
0:20:23 right?
0:20:25 He brought this stuff up repeatedly.
0:20:26 It wasn’t just the violent crime.
0:20:28 It’s the visual crimes, right?
0:20:33 The things that make you think you’re less safe or that you think look dirty.
0:20:37 You know, the line to me, I mean, I said this earlier, but the kitchen thing was just so
0:20:39 fascinating about a restaurant.
0:20:42 This is the psyche that he has about it doesn’t look good.
0:20:47 We want to make the Capitol look good so people trust our country, so people feel better about
0:20:48 our country.
0:20:49 It’s a visual thing.
0:20:52 And can you make changes on the visuals in 30 days?
0:20:54 You probably can.
0:20:59 You probably aren’t going to substantively change the crime dynamics of a city.
0:21:02 If you have a short term, potentially something changes.
0:21:04 But like these things go up and down.
0:21:08 And as we heard from all the people in D.C., crime is at a low.
0:21:09 It has been going down.
0:21:15 And so, yeah, I think it really is an open question of what this will end up actually
0:21:18 looking like in the streets of D.C. in the coming weeks.
0:21:20 Yeah, it’s I mean, he’s a visual person.
0:21:23 He’s a TV person and he knows what looks good.
0:21:28 And we’ve seen liberal leaders clean up in advance of big events like Gavin Newsom cleaned
0:21:33 up San Francisco pretty well in advance of the China summit that took place.
0:21:34 Was that two years ago now?
0:21:41 But he’s making a crime case and it’s about, you know, started, well, years ago, but the
0:21:47 attack on big balls or what he’s the nickname is called the Doge employee was really the catalyst
0:21:49 for moving forward with this.
0:21:54 But it’s interesting to me that this is both the crime issue and also these quality of life
0:21:57 issues, which is where the homeless conversation comes into play.
0:22:00 And the administration has said we’re just going to get them all out.
0:22:04 And that’s something that we’ve heard for here in New York City and in Chicago.
0:22:12 And people have suggested a wide range of solutions like, you know, putting more people in mental
0:22:18 institutions, which frankly has a decent amount of bipartisan support, that there are a lot of
0:22:23 people who need mental health help and are on our streets to shipping them elsewhere.
0:22:28 I don’t really even know what that means because they might be homeless, but this is still their
0:22:29 home, right?
0:22:32 It doesn’t mean that you can send them to rural Wisconsin.
0:22:38 But you do so much work in talking to voters and kind of reading the pulse of what’s going
0:22:39 on electorally.
0:22:46 And I do think that the argument that Democrats have failed to take good care of these blue cities,
0:22:52 which are the crown jewels of the country in a lot of ways, is very salient with voters and
0:22:56 that they would listen to Donald Trump say, you can’t have homeless encampments all over
0:22:56 the place.
0:22:59 You can’t have open air drug markets.
0:23:05 You can’t have your kids walking by, you know, prostitution or we shouldn’t have graffiti on
0:23:06 the walls there.
0:23:07 And that that resonates.
0:23:08 Yeah.
0:23:12 I mean, I think everything you just said are 80-20 issues, right?
0:23:14 80% of people feel that way.
0:23:21 And so if you’re a politician, and I think this is maybe, you know, example of Trump’s
0:23:25 sort of instincts is take the 80, right?
0:23:28 Like, you know, say like, we don’t want open air drug markets.
0:23:29 Okay.
0:23:32 And nobody really wants open air drug markets, but then act like you’re the person solving
0:23:33 the problem.
0:23:38 I mean, this is, this is one of those things where you can pick all of those topics and
0:23:42 say, yes, okay, Democrats have failed in this place.
0:23:44 He’s going to say the Democrats have failed, whether there’s improvements or not.
0:23:49 People are still unhappy with the state of cities and homelessness and cities all across the
0:23:50 country.
0:23:55 And so it is one of the challenges, I think, for Democrats is they think about how to present
0:23:58 a face for their own party into the future.
0:24:02 How do you solve those problems and do it in a way that matches sort of your progressive
0:24:10 ideals and not see the topic of being against rampant homelessness, right?
0:24:16 Like you can’t be the party that is comfortable with people living on the street because that’s
0:24:18 not popular, right?
0:24:20 So you can be the party of getting folks services.
0:24:21 You can get folks into housing.
0:24:26 You can do things that are policing, but you don’t want to be the party that is just for
0:24:30 people living on the streets because, again, you don’t want to take the 20 in general of
0:24:32 an 80-20 issue and be successful politically.
0:24:34 No, absolutely not.
0:24:40 I was talking to Congressman Richie Torres who’s saying how hard it was to get an open air drug
0:24:46 market in the South Bronx closed because there were all of these, I don’t know if stakeholders
0:24:51 is even the right term to use for this, but the people who were opposing the move to just
0:24:53 shut it down, eventually they did.
0:24:53 And guess what?
0:24:58 His constituents are thrilled because there isn’t a drug market that’s open there.
0:25:05 And it kind of boggles the mind of, I think, any sane Democrat to see these kinds of forces.
0:25:09 And it’s not about, you know, being unkind or saying, like, to your point, we want people
0:25:11 to get the treatment that they need.
0:25:14 But you wouldn’t send your kid through there.
0:25:16 And then you get into this whole NIMBY debate, right?
0:25:20 I mean, the successful politicians show the voters they care about the issues they care
0:25:21 about, right?
0:25:23 Chiefly, that’s been the economy.
0:25:25 But for cities, it can also be homelessness.
0:25:28 It can be affordability as a cause of homelessness, right?
0:25:30 You can tackle some root causes along the way.
0:25:36 You know, San Francisco is a city where the former mayor was ousted last year and was replaced
0:25:42 by Daniel Lurie, who has been, you know, on his own, not nearly as viral, but his own
0:25:47 sort of social media campaign to show that he cares about the places that have been some
0:25:48 of the worst parts of the city.
0:25:52 And, you know, he goes and he’s not saying things are perfect, but he’s showing people
0:25:53 that he cares.
0:25:58 And I do think that, like, telling constituents that you care about the issues that matter most
0:26:03 them is, like, the most obvious thing in politics, but it’s often a forgotten thing.
0:26:05 Yeah, I love his videos on the trolleys.
0:26:06 I think he has such a…
0:26:07 All of you love.
0:26:08 Yeah, it’s great.
0:26:14 You can, you know, go to Union Square and say, it’s still problematic here, but retail is
0:26:19 coming back, and I feel safe walking around here, and you should come down and do some
0:26:19 shopping.
0:26:22 I want to ask you, it’s kind of a wrap-up about this.
0:26:27 So, Democrats immediately, and I was part of this, so maybe I should mea culpa a little
0:26:32 bit, like, I think that Donald Trump is freaking out about the Epstein files to a level that
0:26:37 we don’t even really understand, or that the words in the English language can’t even meet
0:26:39 the moment of how panicked they are about this.
0:26:45 And it’s multiple people in his administration who have staked their reputations on this issue,
0:26:52 which is obviously about, you know, a pedophile and sex trafficking, but also about transparency
0:26:55 and this idea that we’re on your side, right?
0:26:59 We’re not on the side of the cabal of elites that fly around on private jets to go to islands
0:27:01 and hang out with 13-year-old girls.
0:27:03 And so, I think that that’s a major issue.
0:27:10 And I think, as well, you know, Donald Trump’s authoritarian streak is important to continually
0:27:12 bring into the consciousness.
0:27:18 And, like I said, there are ways to work with Muriel Bowser and the police chief to make
0:27:24 sure that you can clean up D.C. or get to your end result without sending in federal troops.
0:27:28 But he wants to do that because he wants to be, you know, a sheriff, essentially.
0:27:34 But we’ve seen over the years that making the argument that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy
0:27:36 is not resonant, really.
0:27:37 The people have moved past it.
0:27:39 They’ve made their decision about him.
0:27:44 And a lot of the folks who didn’t vote for him in 2020 turned around and voted for him
0:27:44 in 2024.
0:27:52 So, could you talk a little bit about how salient you think those kinds of arguments against
0:27:55 Trump and the Trump administration actually are?
0:28:00 Or are we just really in a full, like, bread-and-butter, kitchen-table issues political moment?
0:28:07 I think that they are important issues, but they’re often not front of mind for folks.
0:28:12 And I think you could even think about the conversation we’ve just had about D.C.
0:28:18 and taking over the police and not talking about one of the most violent episodes in recent
0:28:24 years in D.C., which was the storming of the Capitol, where Trump could have sent in National
0:28:24 Guard troops faster.
0:28:26 Yes, apparently he does have that power.
0:28:26 Who knew?
0:28:28 Yes, he certainly does have that power.
0:28:34 And so, you know, that was this sort of—it felt like a searing moment that you wouldn’t
0:28:34 forget.
0:28:38 And here we are talking about this for a few minutes, and it hasn’t come up right away,
0:28:38 right?
0:28:40 As we’ve talked about federal authority in D.C.
0:28:44 I think it is a potential—you know, I think something else we’re talking about is redistricting.
0:28:49 I think that people don’t like to feel like their democratic powers are being taken away from
0:28:51 them, their right to express their vote.
0:28:55 And I think that that’s a real concern that voters do have.
0:28:57 But I don’t think it’s the first concern, right?
0:29:03 If you are concerned about the state of American democracy, then you probably have enough food
0:29:05 for you and your kids, right?
0:29:09 You’re probably not concerned about whether you’re going to pay your rent the next month.
0:29:15 And if you look at the economic statistics, a lot of Americans have real concerns about
0:29:18 if they missed a paycheck, if they could pay their bills.
0:29:22 And so until that problem is solved, it’s part of the conversation.
0:29:25 But I don’t think it is the centerpiece.
0:29:29 And that’s why you don’t see Democrats chiefly running on this all across the country, right?
0:29:30 It was part of the last campaign.
0:29:33 Voters gave their verdict on that question.
0:29:35 They said, we saw Trump as president.
0:29:37 He didn’t end our democracy in the first term.
0:29:40 We don’t believe he’s going to end our democracy in the second term.
0:29:42 And he is back as president again.
0:29:47 And so Democrats, it’s a hard argument to make when you know that the voters have
0:29:48 pretty soundly rejected it.
0:29:53 I mean, it was it was a centerpiece of the 2024 campaign for Democrats, not the only piece,
0:29:55 but it was a big piece, especially in the Joe Biden era.
0:30:02 And so looking forward, I think the party’s looking at other messages to put at the forefront,
0:30:06 not to ignore these issues, but to not center them.
0:30:07 I think you’re right.
0:30:10 And I’m not bringing up January 6th.
0:30:14 I realize how conditioned I am as well from working in media and especially conservative
0:30:18 media, because they just they turn off completely.
0:30:22 If you bring up January 6th, which seems like a pretty important historical event and something
0:30:29 that says something very clear about Donald Trump and what he thinks about power and his
0:30:34 control over truth and people’s understanding of truth in this nation.
0:30:40 And I just roll your their eyes at you and they want to move on to Hillary Clinton’s emails.
0:30:43 And it stuns me on a daily basis.
0:30:45 And I’ll go do it again this afternoon.
0:30:48 But I will lead with January 6th because of that.
0:30:49 All right.
0:30:50 Let’s take a quick break.
0:30:50 Stay with us.
0:31:03 I’m Jesse Dave Fox, scene narrator at Vulture and host of Good One, a show with the best
0:31:05 interviews with your favorite comedians ever.
0:31:12 And this week on our podcast from Severance, the Meet the Parents movies, Zoolander, Cable
0:31:14 Guy, Ben Stiller.
0:31:16 Yes, the Ben Stiller.
0:31:22 The believability of the world, I think I care a lot about that whatever reality you’re creating,
0:31:28 there’s enough of, you know, a grounding in some sort of identifiable reality that you
0:31:29 believe it.
0:31:34 You can watch Good One every week at youtube.com slash Vulture or listen wherever you get
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0:31:38 Have a good one.
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0:32:53 My name is Sean Ramos for today explained.
0:32:57 I’m outside the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. with one question.
0:32:59 Do you think we should go to Mars?
0:33:02 I don’t think you should live on Mars, no.
0:33:04 I don’t know why just Mars.
0:33:09 I think as Earthlings, we are a nosy group of people.
0:33:12 And I really don’t think that we have any business going to Mars.
0:33:19 Our knowledge about the solar system and the universe will grow substantially.
0:33:26 I think maybe we should just leave Mars alone, just stay with Earth.
0:33:29 Like, so many innovations are going to come out of it because so many different companies
0:33:32 are going to be fighting to get, you know, that first ticket to Mars.
0:33:34 So I feel, I feel like we should.
0:33:37 But at the same time, we should solve some problems here first.
0:33:40 I think we need to expand what we, what we know, what we see.
0:33:41 Honestly, for our own benefit.
0:33:43 We should go way beyond.
0:33:47 Today explained from Vox is taking a summer sojourn on Mars.
0:33:48 Join us.
0:33:51 Welcome back.
0:33:56 Shane just mentioned this, the redistricting war, and I want to get into it more in depth.
0:34:00 Texas lawmakers are still locked in a high-stakes game of political chicken.
0:34:04 For the second week, House Democrats remain out of the state to block a GOP redistricting
0:34:08 plan that could hand Republicans up to five U.S. seats in 2026.
0:34:12 Governor Greg Abbott says he’ll keep calling special sessions and arrest Democrats if they
0:34:13 come back.
0:34:18 The fines are piling up, lawsuits are flying, and blue states like California are threatening
0:34:20 to redraw their own maps in retaliation.
0:34:25 Shane, you were great on The Daily last week about what’s going on with the redistricting
0:34:26 wars.
0:34:27 What is the latest?
0:34:32 I mean, the latest is it’s just expanding state by state.
0:34:39 You know, we’ve written about the idea that the Trump team is pushing this and Texas is
0:34:40 not the end game.
0:34:42 It is the beginning of the game.
0:34:47 There are a slew of Republican states that are at various states along the process.
0:34:50 You have Texas, where they’re talking about potentially five seats.
0:34:55 You have Ohio, which has to redraw its maps already and hoping to carve out one or two
0:34:55 seats.
0:34:59 They’re talking about Missouri, a seat, Indiana, a seat.
0:35:05 And now Florida, where Ron DeSantis is and the attorney general there, who’s DeSantis’ former
0:35:09 chief of staff, are talking about tearing up the map there and carving out even more seats.
0:35:11 And you have the Democrats talking about retaliating.
0:35:18 But the complexity of this issue in blue states, where Democrats have adopted commissions, nonpartisan
0:35:23 commissions to draw these lines, makes it harder for them to gerrymander these districts back
0:35:28 at the same ease and speed with what Republicans are threatening to do.
0:35:32 Even if Texas Democrats have fled the state and stopped them for now, most folks don’t think
0:35:37 that the Democratic lawmakers in Texas are going to stay out of their state forever if Greg Abbott
0:35:40 continues to call special session after special session.
0:35:43 So the idea of them making it to December.
0:35:49 So I think that’s kind of the drop date, right, where the map has to be finalized.
0:35:53 And so if they can stay out until December, then they can avoid this.
0:35:59 I mean, my view of when things have to be finalized is always a little bit loose, right?
0:36:02 Deadlines aren’t really deadlines because there’s always another deadline, right?
0:36:07 If Texas has some of the earliest, usually I think the earliest primaries in the country
0:36:11 at the beginning of March, it sort of kicks off the national primary season.
0:36:14 Well, they could move it back if they wanted to, right?
0:36:17 Like if they’re changing all the laws, what if they move their primaries to September,
0:36:20 which is when like New Hampshire tends to have their primaries?
0:36:21 That’s six more months.
0:36:25 So yes, I think that December is one of the current drop dead dates.
0:36:30 Again, these are legislators who have families and who have left the state.
0:36:35 And have other jobs and have other jobs are facing $500 fines, right?
0:36:39 I mean, so it is logistically complicated to stay out.
0:36:43 And, you know, I think the hope, frankly, and I think they’ve been successful in this,
0:36:47 which is draw national attention and draw blue states into a fight and say,
0:36:50 hey, maybe Republicans don’t want to do this in Texas because
0:36:53 California Democrats are going to retaliate and it’s going to wipe it off.
0:36:56 And maybe we all just back away from the table and put away our weapons
0:37:00 for drawing voters out of having a say in their own congressional membership,
0:37:02 their own congressional representation.
0:37:05 That doesn’t look like what’s happening, right?
0:37:09 Republicans aren’t backing away because California is threatening to retaliate.
0:37:11 And we can get into some of the specifics of California and why
0:37:16 they could, in some ways, draw even more seats for the Democratic Party.
0:37:19 But it is a much more complicated process.
0:37:23 But there is no sign of Republicans backing away in Texas.
0:37:27 The attorney general is trying to get some of these lawmakers thrown out
0:37:31 of the legislature entirely, basically saying they’re derelict of duty.
0:37:34 And so for now, Texas is at a standstill.
0:37:38 But other states are advancing and advancing pretty quickly.
0:37:41 And this really does look like increasingly,
0:37:48 these congressional districts are going to be drawn for maximal party partisan gain
0:37:53 and not for like, what makes sense for a community or a district that might be able to flip if
0:37:56 the president or the leadership of either party is unpopular.
0:38:00 Yeah, it’s the YOLO approach, right?
0:38:03 It’s always the Trumpian take on politics.
0:38:05 I want it and I want it now, right?
0:38:08 The Veruca Salt of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
0:38:12 I would like to talk about California a little bit.
0:38:16 I know that you covered the Schwarzenegger administration in Sacramento.
0:38:21 He is out talking about this, has released a statement,
0:38:24 big proponent of the independent commission approach,
0:38:27 which they have in California and also in New York.
0:38:29 And I don’t think Kathy Hochul will be able,
0:38:31 she’s talking a very big game.
0:38:32 And I don’t know if you saw the recent polling,
0:38:35 but has boosted her popularity, double digits.
0:38:37 And she seemed to be in a lot of trouble.
0:38:41 And we were all saying like, oh, you know, is Richie Torres going to run?
0:38:43 Like, does Delgado have a chance?
0:38:46 And Kathy’s keeping it together at this point.
0:38:52 But yeah, can you talk a little bit more about what California could actually accomplish?
0:38:54 I know that there’s a Republican lawmaker.
0:38:55 It’s Kylie, right?
0:39:00 Kevin Kylie, who has a proposal that he thinks Mike Johnson is going to take up,
0:39:04 which is utterly ludicrous to say that we should actually do this the fair way,
0:39:09 because everyone is just in this gunfight essentially at this point.
0:39:12 But be a little nitty gritty with me about California.
0:39:13 Sure.
0:39:16 So California has 52 congressional seats.
0:39:20 And right now, Republicans, I believe, have nine of those seats.
0:39:28 And the Democrats are looking at a map that can wipe five of them out just as the same number,
0:39:31 potentially level with Texas, just as to level with Texas.
0:39:36 But the reason why I say it could do more is not only would they take those seats,
0:39:41 they’re potentially take four incumbent Democrats who are in swing districts.
0:39:46 These are some of the most contested races in the country and shore up a handful of Democratic
0:39:48 seats to maybe four more Democratic seats.
0:39:51 The maps have not even been shared with with the lawmakers.
0:39:56 These have been sort of people have been briefed on what these maps look like and people have
0:39:57 described them to me.
0:40:03 But you’re looking at a potential like eight seats, nine seats that move solidly in a more
0:40:03 Democratic direction.
0:40:08 So that’s the sort of, quote unquote, good news for Democrats who are trying to match Texas.
0:40:09 They can even get more.
0:40:11 They’re shoring up vulnerable incumbents.
0:40:14 Republicans don’t have any vulnerable members in Texas to shore up.
0:40:16 They’re just drawing new seats.
0:40:22 The challenge is that the legislature and the governor can’t just pass a law and sign this
0:40:27 because, as you mentioned, Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned for and got the voters of California
0:40:34 to rewrite its constitution to allow only a nonpartisan commission to draw these maps.
0:40:39 And so what Newsom is talking about is getting the legislature to pass a constitutional
0:40:45 amendment with maps tied to it and ask the voters for a one-time dispensation.
0:40:48 Please, please vote for this.
0:40:50 Adopt these new maps temporarily.
0:40:52 This new commission goes back into place in 2030.
0:40:56 This is just going to respond to Trump and the Texas Republicans.
0:41:01 Voters might get into their partisan camps in California on a ballot measure and the Democrats
0:41:04 put on their blue jerseys and they might pass a ballot measure like that.
0:41:09 But if you are telling voters you need to go vote for gerrymandered maps instead of a nonpartisan
0:41:11 commission, that’s a tricky proposition.
0:41:18 You add in if Arnold Schwarzenegger starts running ads or being featured in ads, he’s improved
0:41:21 his standing among independents in the years since he left the governor’s office, right?
0:41:24 He became a Trump skeptic, a Trump critic.
0:41:26 He doesn’t look like a partisan Republican.
0:41:30 He or he would be saying, this is a thing I care about as a statesman, as your former governor.
0:41:35 And then you thought about the number of seats there, five Republican seats could get basically
0:41:40 wiped off and four Democratic seats could be bolstered.
0:41:43 An expensive congressional race costs 10, 20, 30 million dollars.
0:41:49 The size of the budget that the Republicans could spend to torpedo this ballot measure could
0:41:50 be really enormous.
0:41:55 And big, big money on California moves voters.
0:41:56 I covered California politics for years.
0:42:00 If you want to win a big campaign in California, you need a big check.
0:42:03 And Trump’s political operation is sitting on a lot of money.
0:42:09 And Republican donors know that losing all of those seats, it would be better to spend a
0:42:13 huge amount of money trying to win this ballot measure than not even be able to compete in
0:42:15 a number of seats over three election cycles.
0:42:17 That’s so interesting.
0:42:23 You know, ethically speaking, I wish none of this was happening at all, right?
0:42:28 And frankly, that none of some of the behavior that regularly happens even after the census.
0:42:34 And it, you know, this is extraordinary circumstances to be doing it mid-cycle and at the behest of
0:42:39 a president that has also asked, you know, for someone to find him 11,000 votes when things
0:42:41 are going the wrong way in Georgia.
0:42:48 But how effective of a messenger do you think Governor Pritzker is on this?
0:42:55 For instance, it was, you know, all over the Sunday shows and the Illinois map looks terrible,
0:42:56 right?
0:42:58 It’s a severely gerrymandered map.
0:43:00 It’s a total partisan gerrymander.
0:43:01 Right.
0:43:01 Exactly.
0:43:08 And, you know, I kind of feel like you should be fighting fire with fire and that we Democrats
0:43:13 have spent too long letting Mitch McConnell or whoever, you know, push us around.
0:43:18 And that when you have the opportunity to do that, you should, is it ideal to do it the
0:43:22 way Massachusetts did, where you had a GOP governor that signed off on a bipartisan commission
0:43:23 plan?
0:43:27 And, you know, Donald Trump’s railing about how there are no seats, Republican seats in
0:43:28 Massachusetts.
0:43:30 But it was Republicans that signed off on it.
0:43:32 That is not the case in Illinois.
0:43:37 And so who do you think is winning the messaging battle about the redistricting?
0:43:42 Or does that not even matter because it’s just about seats and everyone’s got to be cutthroat
0:43:44 and get as many as possible?
0:43:47 I mean, I think that just in order, a couple of those things.
0:43:48 Yes, J.B.
0:43:53 Pritzker is not an ideal messenger because Illinois is a partisan gerrymander.
0:43:57 Now, his defense is we follow to the law, which is to say they did it once a decade.
0:43:58 And that’s true.
0:44:03 But that doesn’t make a difference for voters who saw competitive seats wiped off the map.
0:44:10 I do think that this fight has really helped position Gavin Newsom politically and frankly,
0:44:11 other Democrats.
0:44:13 And Kathy Hochul is an example as well.
0:44:17 You know, I’ve been spending a lot of my time this year covering Democrats and this sort of
0:44:18 attempt to rebuild.
0:44:21 And what does the party need to do next?
0:44:25 And there’s been a lot of talk and a lot of navel gazing and a lot of frustration that
0:44:26 the party is powerless.
0:44:31 This is a thing that the party is proactively talking about doing, right?
0:44:37 Cory Booker got a huge amount of praise for giving a long speech that didn’t have a specific
0:44:40 outcome other than that he showed that he was in the fight.
0:44:45 This is Gavin Newsom showing he’s in the fight and actually doing something.
0:44:51 And what I’ve heard from from pollsters, people who do focus groups and voters themselves is
0:44:55 the party is craving someone who’s actually fighting, not just talking about fighting.
0:44:59 And this is a real rare moment where he is actually doing the fighting.
0:45:03 And look, he may be doing the fighting on something that ends up being unpopular, right?
0:45:07 Voters don’t like the idea of politicians drawing their districts.
0:45:10 This isn’t a popular concept across the country.
0:45:13 But you saw the same thing you mentioned about Kathy Hochul and her polling numbers, right?
0:45:19 She is showing gumption and fight and a willingness to engage that voters are just Democratic voters
0:45:20 are desperate to see from their leaders.
0:45:24 They see Trump and they see all those exertions of power that we were talking about.
0:45:28 And they see Democrats looking feckless and unwilling to engage.
0:45:34 And so in all of these cases, you see these political leaders taking the opportunity to show fight.
0:45:39 And I think in Newsom’s case in particular, to actually deliver something potentially.
0:45:41 Now, it’s risky.
0:45:42 There could be backlash.
0:45:46 But as a political moment, he’s doing something.
0:45:47 He’s not just talking about something.
0:45:50 And this is a party desperate for more doing.
0:45:58 Yeah, and he’s been able to, with his approach, to get folks that are really against partisan
0:46:02 gerrymandering, like even Eric Holder, has come out and said that he’s supportive of it
0:46:07 the way that Newsom is proposing it because it only exists for a couple of years, right?
0:46:08 And then you will go back to normal.
0:46:14 But if we don’t treat the Trump era as the aberration that it is, we are doomed to fail
0:46:20 and then pay the consequences for decades afterwards once there are all of these extra GOP
0:46:21 safe districts.
0:46:26 And I mean, we’ve seen how much they’ve accomplished with just a three-seat majority.
0:46:32 I mean, Mike Johnson and I had, you know, I’ve said that I think Mike Johnson has been very
0:46:37 successful and I’ve gotten very respectful pushback from a number of elected Democrats.
0:46:43 You know, Jared Moskowitz was like, well, this is the laziest Congress in American history.
0:46:44 We’ve basically passed nothing.
0:46:47 And my point was, well, you pass the stuff that matters, right?
0:46:51 There’s very little that Donald Trump could say I wanted and I didn’t get.
0:46:56 And isn’t that the mark in the modern GOP of what success actually looks like?
0:47:01 I mean, Mike Johnson has been successful by ceding his authority to the White House,
0:47:02 right?
0:47:07 Like the Congress used to be a separate branch with its own set of prerogatives and priorities,
0:47:09 and he is deferred to Donald Trump.
0:47:15 And that has allowed him to pass legislation with votes from people who had not voted for
0:47:16 such legislation before.
0:47:20 So, yeah, I mean, in that regard, there’s one number in the Congress that matters.
0:47:21 There’s 218.
0:47:23 Can you get 218 votes on anything?
0:47:29 And Mike Johnson has been able to get 218 votes because he has deferred to Donald Trump.
0:47:31 So has he been effective to that?
0:47:31 Yes.
0:47:32 Is he a powerful speaker?
0:47:34 Absolutely not, right?
0:47:37 Because power is having your own set of priorities you’re pushing.
0:47:42 And I couldn’t identify his priorities separate from the Trump administration’s priorities.
0:47:45 And that’s intentional that, you know, they’ve made that.
0:47:50 I want to go back to one thing you said about Eric Holder and whether this just reverts in
0:47:51 a few years with Newsom.
0:47:55 I mean, I think the challenge here is that I don’t know that anybody thinks that any of
0:47:57 this stuff gets unrung, right?
0:48:03 Once you bring the bell that everyone is going to remap everywhere, you end up, everybody’s
0:48:06 got a gun pointing to each other all across the country and nobody’s going to holster.
0:48:10 You’re not going to get 50 states holstering simultaneously unless there’s a federal law.
0:48:13 And Democrats had tried to do that and they were unable to pass such a measure.
0:48:18 So I don’t think that we are looking at this sort of being unwound quickly.
0:48:23 And while, you know, I cover national politics and I’m really focused on control of Congress
0:48:27 where these really narrow margins, this is why these districts potentially matter, right?
0:48:30 The Congress has been controlled by just a handful of seats.
0:48:36 But there are other factors here, not just for Congress, but state legislative seats that
0:48:36 are drawn.
0:48:42 Where there is no counterbalance, where there’s not a blue state to counteract a Texas remap.
0:48:47 At the state legislature level, just one party can exert total control and wipe the other
0:48:52 party out of control in a state with no other recourse.
0:48:58 And so, you know, I do think that there’s some small D Democratic concern about redistricting
0:48:59 at the state legislature level.
0:49:05 At the state legislature level, where if you’re Texas and you decide to make the Democrats
0:49:08 a permanent minority, there is no countervailing force.
0:49:10 There is no California inside Texas.
0:49:15 So blue states and red states could have this arms race and basically wipe out minority parties
0:49:17 within state legislatures all across the country.
0:49:24 All small D democracy conversations are depressing these days, but we are going to soldier on
0:49:25 and talk about the midterms.
0:49:27 So we’re going to take a quick break.
0:49:28 Stay with us.
0:49:37 What’s a Kennedy doing in rural America?
0:49:38 I was in West Virginia.
0:49:40 Met with this young organizer.
0:49:44 That young man said, we’ve got an idea of what we want to do.
0:49:46 Help us realize it.
0:49:48 Don’t tell us what we’re doing wrong.
0:49:49 Don’t denigrate us in this process.
0:49:50 And he’s right.
0:49:52 I’m Preet Bharara.
0:49:57 And this week, former Congressman Joe Kennedy III joins me on my podcast, Stay Tuned with
0:50:02 Preet, to discuss the Democrats’ condescension problem, his controversial uncle, RFK Jr.,
0:50:06 and why he’s going to deep red states to build a movement from the ground up.
0:50:08 The episode is out now.
0:50:12 Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:50:15 Hey, what’s good, everybody?
0:50:19 It’s Cam Hayward, seven-time Pro Bowler and defensive captain of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
0:50:21 And your host of Not Just Football.
0:50:26 The NFL season is right around the corner, and that means it’s time to get locked in.
0:50:30 On our show, Not Just Football with Cam Hayward, we’re bringing you everything you need to know
0:50:31 about the upcoming season.
0:50:33 We’ve got some incredible guests lined up.
0:50:36 Former teammates, current players, and legends of the game.
0:50:38 We’ll give you insights you won’t hear anywhere else.
0:50:43 We’ll be here every week with game breakdowns, player spotlights, and all the stories that
0:50:45 go beyond the box score.
0:50:48 Because football is about more than just what happens on Sundays.
0:50:52 So be sure to listen and subscribe to Not Just Football with Cam Hayward on YouTube or
0:50:54 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:50:56 Let’s get ready for another incredible NFL season.
0:51:05 For a long time, in order to prove your age online, all you had to do was input your birthday
0:51:08 or click a box that says you’re totally over 18.
0:51:09 That’s going away.
0:51:14 This week on the Vergecast, we’re talking about age verification and how the internet is about
0:51:15 to get a lot less private.
0:51:21 Plus, some huge new announcements in the world of AI, including the newest model for ChatGPT.
0:51:28 Finally, Miyasato interviewed the CEO of Blogilates and the athleisure brand PopFlex about what it’s like
0:51:31 to have your designs get knocked off all over the internet.
0:51:33 That’s this week on the Vergecast.
0:51:37 Welcome back.
0:51:42 Before we go, Shane, you recently wrote about how the Democrats are heading into the 2026 midterms
0:51:45 with a big push to recruit military veterans to run for Congress.
0:51:48 It’s a strategy that paid off in 2018.
0:51:49 We had the camo wave.
0:51:54 A lot of those stars are currently running for big positions like governor of Virginia and New Jersey.
0:51:56 The idea is pretty simple.
0:51:59 Veterans can often connect with voters who might otherwise lean Republican,
0:52:04 especially in rural or swing districts, and their service record can help them sidestep
0:52:07 some of the partisan baggage tied to the Democratic brand right now,
0:52:09 which is like the heaviest baggage of all time.
0:52:13 So Democrats had real success, as I said, with this approach.
0:52:17 What’s different about the political landscape in 2026 that might make this
0:52:18 more or less effective?
0:52:19 What’s your read?
0:52:24 I mean, I think that it has been effective basically for most of this century for Democrats.
0:52:30 They did it in 2018, and they did it back in 2006, too, when Rahm Emanuel was at the DCCC,
0:52:33 and they recruited a wave of veterans, not just for the House, frankly.
0:52:35 They were at other levels of governor and senator.
0:52:40 The reason the Democratic Party keeps returning to this strategy is something you just said,
0:52:45 which is people start to make presumptions about what a Democrat is and looks like,
0:52:49 and they make different sets of presumptions around military veterans.
0:52:55 And that allows you, maybe if you’re knocking on doors, a little extra time to make your case.
0:53:00 If you’re running a TV ad, it allows people to see you not just as a Democrat, but something more.
0:53:03 Look, military veterans are not guaranteed to win these races.
0:53:08 I could give you a whole laundry list, and Republicans certainly have, as I’ve written this story,
0:53:11 of big spending Democrats who got the party all excited,
0:53:11 who are veterans.
0:53:14 Amy McGrath comes to mind, who ended up losing.
0:53:18 I literally was going to say, how much money did I give to Amy McGrath,
0:53:20 thinking that she could beat Mitch McConnell?
0:53:20 That she was the solution, right?
0:53:28 And so, you know, at the same time, it’s hard to run in a Trump area, if you’re a Democrat,
0:53:32 and be, what is the brand you want to affiliate yourself with, right?
0:53:35 Most people are not going to run, I’m a Joe Biden Democrat anymore.
0:53:39 People are not going to run and say, I’m a Kamala Harris Democrat in these districts.
0:53:40 These are districts that she lost.
0:53:45 And the Republican Party and the Republican sort of conservative media are going to call
0:53:47 everyone an AOC Democrat, right?
0:53:51 And so, how do you carve out your own brand when you’re running for Congress for the first time?
0:53:52 You don’t have a party brand.
0:53:54 You don’t have probably a voting record.
0:53:59 Maybe you worked in the legislature, and voters aren’t paying super close attention.
0:54:02 So, what can you do to get yourself in the door and have a chance?
0:54:05 And so, this is a tactic that the party has turned to over and over.
0:54:09 And look, at this point, I think, and there’s literally more candidates since when I wrote that
0:54:14 story, I think you were at like 10 or 11 of the most competitive seats that the Democrats have
0:54:16 a military veteran running.
0:54:18 Now, some of them have to clear their primary first.
0:54:23 That’s a huge portion of the House battleground map to have a military veteran.
0:54:29 It shows you the degree to which they think that this is a chance to widen the playing field.
0:54:30 Those are the most competitive seats.
0:54:32 Then there’s the reach areas, right?
0:54:36 The places that you probably aren’t going to win, but like maybe in a year that, you know,
0:54:41 if the tariffs go poorly and voters are unhappy about the state of the economy and Trump is
0:54:43 overreached and there’s a backlash we just talked about, right?
0:54:47 Republicans in Congress have not pushed back against Trump on almost anything.
0:54:51 If you want to check, maybe they reach into even redder areas and maybe that veteran helps
0:54:53 you put those seats into play.
0:54:55 So that’s definitely part of the strategy.
0:54:59 But I think when I think about this, I think there’s two parts of the Democratic Party’s
0:55:02 future that I think about differently.
0:55:05 Part one is how is the party looking in 2026?
0:55:09 The answer is like probably pretty good by almost every historic measurement, right?
0:55:15 Trump’s popularity is going down and like his popularity moves in a pretty small bandwidth
0:55:19 because like Republicans have continuously liked him.
0:55:24 But on some other key metrics, his popularity is down, on the economy, he is less trusted
0:55:25 on the economy today than he has been.
0:55:30 That has been one of his superpowers since he was the host of The Apprentice.
0:55:36 The presumption of voters was he was a smart, decisive businessman who knew the economy and people
0:55:41 are less confident in him on that issue, which is probably the most important issue last year.
0:55:45 And so 2026 looks like it’s moving in the Democratic direction.
0:55:46 These veterans could help.
0:55:51 The longer-term project of the Democratic Party feels very different, which is, you know,
0:55:56 if you did an open-ended word cloud poll of voters, what do you think about the Democratic Party?
0:55:57 And pollsters do this.
0:56:00 The words don’t look good, right?
0:56:02 Like the words you get back, they are not positive words.
0:56:03 People don’t like Trump.
0:56:06 They might not like all the power he has.
0:56:08 They might want to put a check on it.
0:56:11 But when you’re thinking about longer-term, the next presidential election,
0:56:15 you need to have something that people are buying into.
0:56:21 And yes, that will come with a particular candidate, but you don’t want the brand itself to be a hindrance.
0:56:23 You want the brand to be helping, right?
0:56:30 The average Republican in Congress today chooses to run as a MAGA Trump Republican because that
0:56:32 is not hurting their chances to win.
0:56:39 The average Democrat in a competitive House district is not trying to run as a run-of-the-mill Democrat
0:56:45 because running as a run-of-the-mill Democrat is not currently a path to victory in most of those seats.
0:56:47 Yeah, I’m definitely noticing that.
0:56:52 Even the conversations that I’m having, like I had Mallory McMorrow on the podcast last week,
0:56:56 and one of the first things she said was Chuck Schumer’s got to go, right?
0:57:01 And that has had a huge impact on our campaign, and she’s fundraising like crazy.
0:57:06 And Haley Stevens, who she is running against, feels more establishment-y to people.
0:57:11 And I don’t know how the race shakes out, but you can see that candidates are trying to carve
0:57:17 out space for themselves to run against the party when it’s convenient.
0:57:24 And Nancy Pelosi was an utter queen in so many ways, but she was great about this, where she
0:57:28 always said, you know, if you need to call me the devil, call me the devil.
0:57:32 If you need to call me and you want me to come campaign with you, I’m there.
0:57:39 And it doesn’t feel like folks have that kind of freedom, I guess, anymore.
0:57:46 Like, it’s almost like we’re just scratching the surface of the reputational problem.
0:57:52 And people obviously have gestured towards issues that we’ve had, and there’s a media problem,
0:57:56 and there’s a connectivity problem, and there’s, in some cases, a patriotism problem.
0:58:00 But mostly there’s an effectiveness problem.
0:58:04 And this goes back to all the conversations that we’ve had, right, about what Trump is
0:58:08 trying to do in D.C. and blue state governance, even in the question about what we’re going
0:58:10 to do in the redistricting wars.
0:58:12 Like, how are you going to get shit done?
0:58:15 Because that’s all that Americans want at this point.
0:58:22 And in your conversations, are you feeling that folks that are running or who are already
0:58:26 in elected office as Democrats are understanding this moment in that sense?
0:58:28 I think it’s a mixed bag.
0:58:30 I don’t think that there’s a full understanding.
0:58:34 And I think there are different approaches on what they want to get done.
0:58:41 And I think that a lot of the fight right now, look, because there is so little power that
0:58:44 Democrats are holding right now, it’s created a real vacuum.
0:58:51 And so what I think you see right now is these sort of early skirmishes to fill that void and
0:58:56 show that different ideologies or different approaches are actually going to be the way to go.
0:59:01 You know, I think that Bernie Sanders is, you know, you know, stop the oligarchy tour has
0:59:02 been important, right?
0:59:08 He has showed that his message is still able to get a huge crowd all across the country.
0:59:12 You know, if you look, you know, I’ve covered campaign finance stuff for a long time.
0:59:16 If you look at the most recent first six months of the year at blue, which processes most of
0:59:21 the most of your past donations to Amy McGrath, I presume most of the online donations,
0:59:30 just the number of actual contributions to AOC was about the same as the DCCC, which is a huge
0:59:34 staff of people, which is a national party arm raising money for house members all across the
0:59:42 country. People are on the left excited to give to AOC. People on across the spectrum are showing up at
0:59:48 these Bernie Sanders and some of them with AOC rallies. You know, on the other hand, right,
0:59:55 you have moderates trying to reassert themselves and say, that’s great. But like those campaigns
1:00:00 and those messages don’t work in red states and you will never have a majority without us.
1:00:04 And so there’s a lot of fighting. Fighting is maybe not even the right word. It’s like positioning.
1:00:12 There’s a lot of positioning to say, you know, one of these things is great. We want the energy that
1:00:17 Bernie Sanders is getting, but like we don’t want the positions he is taking if they’re going to cost us
1:00:22 in particular races. And this is a big fight that’s happening less about the midterms. Although
1:00:26 there are a bunch of democratic primaries, Michigan is one Minnesota is another is going to be a big
1:00:32 primary in Iowa and Texas for Senate races. These are more democratic primaries than we’ve had big
1:00:38 open democratic primaries in big states in recent years. But I think that this is all, there’s all
1:00:43 like the appetizer to an open primary for 2028. We now know Kamala Harris isn’t running for governor.
1:00:49 It seems less likely that she’s going to run for president again. You know, that’s as wide open
1:00:56 a race as we’ve really had in a very, very long time without a clear front runner, without even a clear
1:01:02 like front pack. Right. Like if you had to say here, the top four, that’s a tricky thing to do. We don’t
1:01:07 know yet. And so that’s the fight that’s going to define the party of the future. But a lot of this is
1:01:11 happening now is sort of the set the stage for what the table looks like when people get there.
1:01:17 Yeah. I want to talk about 2028 a little bit, but I won’t go back first to what you were saying about
1:01:24 AOC and the battle with the moderates. I think folks like Pat Ryan have done a very good job of straddling
1:01:32 all the areas or the factions within the party. You know, an ally of AOC, also a moderate himself and
1:01:39 a veteran, which to go back to your initial point helps a lot. But I think Mom Donnie is going to be
1:01:46 a huge reputational factor, at least for the party for the next year, year and a half. My expectation
1:01:53 is that he’s going to win the mayoralty in November. And you’ve seen moderate representative, Democratic
1:01:57 representatives like Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen running away from him. He doesn’t have all the
1:02:04 endorsements that you would expect someone who won the primary so handedly to have. Can you talk a
1:02:07 little bit about what you see the Mom Donnie effect being on the party?
1:02:13 Yeah. I mean, I think that he won that primary and, you know, there’s been a lot of stories and
1:02:18 reporting and essays about like he won for this one reason. I think it’s pretty clear he did not win for
1:02:23 one reason, right? He won for a confluence of reasons. His ideology was an important part of it and
1:02:28 one that probably wouldn’t work in other parts of the country, but does work in New York City.
1:02:34 But he also won because he was relentlessly focused on the things that voters care about in New York
1:02:41 and probably most countries, which is it’s expensive, right? Like if you were any New Yorkers aware of the
1:02:46 price of living in New York, and that was the overwhelming focus of his campaign. And yes, he made
1:02:54 good social media. Yes, he is sort of an appealing, charming, charismatic figure, right? That works
1:02:58 all across the country. You know, charming, charismatic, focused on what voters care about.
1:03:02 Turns out that that’s a really good formula, regardless of what the specifics you’re standing
1:03:07 for. I don’t usually think that a single local office will come to define the party nationally.
1:03:12 I think it’s hard to take one person and say, yes, Democrats all across the country,
1:03:18 especially if it’s a mayor, are going to be identified with this person. I think it’ll
1:03:21 have spillover. And I think the two examples you gave are in the New York media market,
1:03:26 hopefully, right? Like Tom Suozzi and Lauren Gillen, they get New York media coverage. Those
1:03:32 are the people who are going to be likeliest to be affected. But there are other people who in
1:03:39 November who win, who also, if they do win, will be faces for the Democratic Party going forward,
1:03:43 which is the Abigail Spanbergers and the Mikey Sheryls who are running for governor of Virginia
1:03:48 and New Jersey. And again, talking about that skirmish, which side gets to claim the future
1:03:55 in the face of the party, right? What do those races look like? It’s possible that Spanberger wins
1:03:59 comfortably, right? There’s been a lot of Democratic conversations trying to not tamp up enthusiasm,
1:04:03 but people feel very comfortable and confident about that race right now. If she has a very big
1:04:10 win in a state that was, you know, this century, a battleground state, it has become a bluer state,
1:04:15 but it is a state that has a Republican governor. If she flips that governorship by a wide margin,
1:04:19 it’s possible she becomes a really big part of the conversation. And she was an important part of
1:04:25 the conversation about the party’s left lurch during the Biden years. She was trying to yank the party
1:04:31 back to the center. She’s not a hidden centrist. She’s pretty unabashed about it, right? So I think
1:04:36 Momdani is someone that Republicans will absolutely campaign against, but they’re going to, the
1:04:39 Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party is basically only campaigning against Trump
1:04:43 for like a decade at this point. Republicans have switched, right? There was a brief moment,
1:04:48 I remember campaigning, I remember being on the campaign show in Pennsylvania, where all of the
1:04:52 Republican voters at Trump events were talking about Ilhan Omar. She was the centerpiece of the
1:04:57 Republican sort of message machine. It’s possible Zoran Momdani becomes that. But if he doesn’t,
1:05:05 somebody else will be. And I’m not sure that he is the single best person to define the Democratic
1:05:09 Party, or if he’s more effective than using AOC as that foil for the right.
1:05:14 Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. I’m curious. So you said, you know, historically
1:05:20 speaking, it should be pretty good for Democrats, barring, I guess, that Republicans redraw all the
1:05:26 maps and they suddenly have, you know, 10 new seats, but they only have a three-seat majority right now.
1:05:31 What races are you paying particular attention to as potential Democratic pickups? I mean, I’m
1:05:38 definitely tracking the Medicaid recipient numbers in all of these districts, like David Valadejo
1:05:43 on California, Mike Lawler here also in New York, who seems to be putting his foot in it left,
1:05:46 right and center. What races are you watching closely?
1:05:51 I mean, you mentioned the Democrats would only have to flip three House seats to take the majority
1:05:58 before any of these gerrymanderings. The Senate is actually harder, which is crazy. They actually have
1:06:04 to flip four Senate seats to win the majority. So I’ve been tracking the efforts for the Democrats to
1:06:09 like expand that map to give themselves possibilities because on its face, it is not a good map for
1:06:15 Democrats in the Senate. But they have been working very aggressively to find new places to conceivably
1:06:21 compete in. You know, there’s been an aggressive push by Chuck Schumer to recruit Sherrod Brown to run
1:06:27 in Ohio again, whether he can win. That was the most expensive Senate race in the country. That would be a
1:06:32 huge stock of resources. Texas, which has become the sort of center of the political universe.
1:06:38 I know. I just it’s like it is it’s a state where the Democrats have have I think the Democrats are
1:06:44 unlikely to invest so much money. Well, mostly to Beto O’Rourke, like for anything that he says that
1:06:49 he’s going to do. And I love Colin Allred. And it seems like James Tallarico is is going to get in
1:06:56 though. Allred. I don’t know if he feels more like the pulse of where Texas is. But anyway,
1:07:02 can these guys actually be defeated? Well, I guess it matters who’s on the Republican side.
1:07:09 I would put the Cornyn or Paxton. I think about Ohio and Texas not as terrific Democratic pickup
1:07:15 opportunities, but money holes for a Republican Party. If Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee in
1:07:21 Texas and Sherrod Brown is the Democratic nominee in Ohio, you’re talking about Republicans looking at
1:07:26 probably having to spend five hundred million dollars between those two states that could allow
1:07:31 Democrats to try to reach in some smaller places that are a little less expensive. Look, it’s very
1:07:36 hard to flip four seats for the Senate, period. There are not there is only one Republican senator
1:07:41 in a state. The Democrats have won, which is Susan Collins. There’s a second open seat in North
1:07:46 Carolina. Roy Cooper, former governor, a Democrat, is running. Those are the two best pickup opportunities
1:07:53 for Democrats. Three and four is like tough to see. That’s the landscape right now. But they are trying
1:07:58 everything they can do to stretch the map for Republicans. And, you know, I have this sort of
1:08:02 strange analogy that I have in my head. I’m not even sure I’ve said it out loud yet. So, you know,
1:08:08 first for you, you know, I think that. Try it out. Yeah, try it out. Let’s just do it live. The for years,
1:08:14 I think Republicans had a media disadvantage, right? They had to work harder to get their story,
1:08:19 they felt in the mainstream media. And so they had to be more creative about coming up with ways to get
1:08:25 their story out. And I feel the same. And there was sort of a complacency for Democrats in getting
1:08:29 their story out at the same time. I actually feel like the Senate map is almost the same thing in
1:08:35 reverse, which is the Senate map is so bad for Democrats year after year after year. They have
1:08:40 like a real creativity on like, how are we possibly going to make this a thing that we can compete and
1:08:45 even win in? And Republicans have this complacency because really, they just have to win the red
1:08:51 states and then that gets them to 50. And so I see, you see cycle after cycle, a real effort for
1:08:55 Democrats to come up with interesting and different ways to like expand the map. And on the Republican
1:09:00 side, you haven’t seen that. There’s an occasional candidate, but, you know, they’re really either
1:09:04 reach campaigns and some of which are successful have mostly come from Democrats in these Senate races.
1:09:09 Well, quickly, and I know that you’re deeply embedded on the Democratic side, but do you have
1:09:16 any views on what the future of the Republican Party looks like in a, I’m not even going to say
1:09:21 potentially post-Trump era? He’s not allowed to run again. Let’s say for the purposes of this
1:09:25 conversation, he’s not running again. But I was talking to Kellyanne Conway about it, and she was
1:09:31 pretty blunt. She said the Republican Party is Donald Trump. I don’t know what it looks like. And he is
1:09:38 openly said, like he doesn’t really even know about J.D. Vance, right, as the heir apparent to this,
1:09:44 which seems strange since he’s your vice president. But what’s your feel about what Republican life looks
1:09:45 like going forward?
1:09:50 Yeah, I mean, I think that I expect Trump to try to maintain his hold and control on the party as long
1:09:58 as possible, which means not announcing who your successor is or anointing that person. Look, he is,
1:10:03 Kellyanne Conway is correct. He is a singular figure, not just in Washington, all across the
1:10:11 country. Are state legislatures excited in all of these states to do these remappings? Not
1:10:15 necessarily. There have been signs out of Missouri and Indiana that these state legislators, they don’t
1:10:20 necessarily want to do this. But guess what? If Donald Trump wants to do it and you know a single
1:10:26 truth social post from him against all of your primary opponents, you know, there’s a real willingness
1:10:33 to listen, Texas, all of these places. I mean, we have not seen a president with this much control over their own
1:10:41 party in a really long time. And I think it’s important to think it’s not just that the politicians are scared of
1:10:51 Donald Trump. His power comes from voters, Republican voters like Donald Trump. Republican voters overwhelmingly
1:10:58 picked him again in 2024. They were drawn even further into his camp with the indictments.
1:11:05 Right. So until there’s a break with the public, Trump’s power is going to continue. And I agree.
1:11:09 I don’t know what a post-Trump Republican Party looks like. It doesn’t look like the old guard of the
1:11:15 Republican Party. But whether it looks more like J.D. Vance or more like Marco Rubio, you know,
1:11:21 I think it still just looks like Donald Trump until Donald Trump isn’t isn’t leading it. I really it’s
1:11:25 hard. It’s hard to see what it looks like after him because he’s such a blot out the sun dominant
1:11:32 figure. Yeah. And then my real anxiety is that the kids take over and we have to pay homage to
1:11:41 Don Jr. and Eric. On that uplifting note, Shane, thank you so much for your time. It was great to have
1:11:45 you. Thanks for having me on. All right. That’s it for this episode. Thank you for listening to
1:11:49 Raging Moderates. Our producers are David Toledo and Eric Jenny Kiss. Our technical director is Drew
1:11:54 Burrows. Going forward, you’ll find Raging Moderates every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to Raging
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