The Gerrymandering War is Here (featuring Texas Rep. Greg Casar)
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Transcript
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the Find Out podcast.
We've got big, big topics today.
We're going to have Congressman Greg Kesar on later in the show talking about the shameful power play that Governor Abbott in Texas is trying to do with this ridiculous gerrymander effort.
But before that, we want to talk about something even more ridiculous, which is Donald Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner because she counted the jobs and then reported how many jobs we were gained in July, which was not many.
It was 73,000.
And I think the thing that angered him was the revisions for June and May or worse, going down 258,000.
So
Trump's economy is not doing too well.
And so his reaction was to fire the woman that literally was handed the number and reported it out.
Yep.
That's pretty much it.
And like, I want to just stress this.
In August of 2024, three weeks after Kamala Harris became the nominee, the same exact person, Erica McIntarfur, revised down the previous year for the Biden administration by 818,000 jobs.
If this woman was politically motivated, she did a terrible job for Biden and Kamala Harris.
Let's just start there.
And he said that, and he said that she did it to hurt him after the election, that like she had done something to help Harris.
And it's like, dude, you can't, like, the headlines
six months, seven months old.
They're right there.
We can all go see it.
You can't just rewrite history.
Like, I know that's what he's literally trying to do and firing her is, let's rewrite history.
But no,
the blade cuts both ways.
And he's, you know.
10 years into being president and not president and talking about the economy.
He still doesn't understand
that sometimes things happen that he doesn't like.
And
you can't just fire people and make bad things go away.
No, it's quote from 1984.
Their last final order was telling you to ignore what's right in front of your fucking face.
It's exactly what it is.
Yep.
There's no question.
And he had, I saw, what's his name, Kevin Hassett or whatever, one of his economic advisors was on MSNBC.
Like, and they're like, okay, so do you have any evidence that she manipulated the numbers?
And he's like, well, the number is the evidence.
That's not how it works.
The number being a bad person.
Right.
We know in our heart that the economy is doing well, and in our heart of hearts, I have a deeply, yeah, deeply held belief that the economy is thriving under Trump, and I refuse to understand
counting.
Guys, it's like vibes economy, it's like vibes economy, yampers, right?
Yeah, but how much do you like the job that you still have if you're lucky enough to have a job?
If you like it a lot, then you know it makes up for it.
So, like, everything counts as two jobs, then, yeah, so
like everything with Trump,
he is hope.
He is hoping to
play off of people's lack of understanding of how these numbers are counted to throw chaos into it so they don't believe it.
And so, that 800,000 did happen.
But, like, every month that they release numbers, they revise the numbers from the months before.
Because, guess what, guys?
There isn't a magic like I created a job form that everybody fills out.
It is based on.
Has no one considered that?
We should try that.
Yeah, you should just do that.
Yeah.
There's no way way that would ever work.
Just set up a Google form and have them fill it out.
Trump is just sitting there filling it out plus one, plus one, plus one.
No, he's got like the same thousand FBI agents that were
now doing this.
But but that's, but I think that's what he's, that's how he, you know, he's obviously, first of all, he wants no one to believe the numbers now because they're going to be bad.
So like he wants to do that.
But a lot of people don't understand because they're like, well, why'd they revise the other ones by 258,000?
I'm like, they do it every month because it is a survey.
It's a sample.
And so it is not, it is not a thing.
And then as it goes along, it gets better and they're able to revise up and revise down.
Every month, they release the jobs numbers.
Every Friday, the first Friday of every month, they release the jobs numbers from that month and the revisions for a few months back.
So this is literally what they do every month.
It's just that people, especially Trumpers, don't pay any attention to it.
So now they're like, well, why did they do it?
And it's like, well, that's how it works.
It's how it's always worked.
Everything is a conspiracy when you don't understand how anything works.
Right, exactly.
It's also
seasonally adjusted.
And so, especially in the summer and around the holidays, when you have these big swings and like a million or two million jobs, you don't want to just say the economy lost a million jobs in January because if the job, if the, if those jobs were just created in November at like, or like in like October at the Spirit of Halloween store,
that's not a cause for panic.
That is a normal cycle.
And so, but, but those things take a minute for smart people with really smart calculators to actually suss out exactly what happened.
And that's why they adjust up and down in the aftermath.
But again, you have to understand that hard things are hard and not that there's not just this like graph somewhere that shows you how many jobs there are in real time at all times
to understand any of this.
I hate.
I like to me, this is.
At least for like the area that I focus on in politics, this is the worst moment I've seen in a while for like Trump doing fascist shit.
Because like in the end,
he's going to hire somebody to do this job who is going to do whatever he says because nobody now is going to feel safe reporting the actual numbers because they're going to continue to be bad and the revisions are going to continue to happen.
How do you trust government data now?
It's an extremely difficult question.
You can't anymore.
And that's going to mess up so many different things.
It's impossible to, it's just, I don't even know how far it can go.
Well, we're going to have to, there's a couple of ways that you can kind of back into the number, I think.
One, the payroll company ADP releases their numbers.
So those aren't as good and they tend to be off a bit.
But the other thing is all publicly traded companies have to announce the hirings and firings that they make.
So like it is a pain in the ass to go through and like go through the Fortune 500 or whatever and like figure it out.
But like I'm sure somebody is going to figure out some way to like crunch the numbers.
And then the other piece of this that is really dumb, and let's be honest, most of what Trump does is really dumb is that he has to have a confirmation fight for this new commissioner?
So, he's all he's going to do is shine a because the Democrats are not going to go along with this, right?
And so, like, he's going to have hearings in which they're going to be all of these clips of him like putting up some idiot,
probably like I don't know, Dan Scavino or somebody as former caddy and social media guy.
Maybe he's going to go calmer for him now, like
that's what I want to see.
Yeah, I'm surprised she doesn't have billions and billions,
infinity trillion jobs are created
in July.
Yeah.
Libs of TikTok gets a job.
I don't know, but like, you know,
it's just stupid.
It doesn't serve him.
And like, we're going to get the numbers in another way.
So it's not actually helping.
All he did was show that he's scared.
Yeah.
Because that's what it is.
I think the biggest thing is going to be,
I was just verifying this.
There are over 2,000 people work at BLS.
Yeah.
And the person, the commissioner, believe it or not, is not the one sending out the surveys and tabulating the numbers.
They're just running the organization.
So you've got 2,000 people, most of whom are like PhD-level economists.
Are they all going to now agree to just lie about the data?
Like these are people who built their lives on data.
So the person at the top is either going to have to lie about what their employees are collecting,
or everyone has to lie, or this is just not going to work out for Trump, which is, I think, how it's going to go.
As somebody who worked in a political position in the federal government for five years at the Interior Department, like I did, we used to joke every time we sent an email from the secretary to everybody at Interior, which is 70, 75,000 people, that within five minutes, we will get called by the press because they will have leaked it.
Like, because that's, and I understand it.
Like, there is a mistrust on the career side of political appointees.
And in this case, very.
realistic, but even with us who tend to lean more in their way, like we did something they didn't like, they would tell the press.
So, like, these guys and women are not going to just sit on their hands and go, well, shit, my job's meaningless now, and I'm just making shit up.
No, no, no, no, no.
They are going to, they will find ways, and those politicals will have no idea how to find them.
Like, they're just good at this.
Like, they are there to protect the government.
They are not there to protect the political party.
So, if you start messing with their thing, they're going to mess with you right back.
Are you trying to tell me that some 19-year-old Doge like hanger on isn't going to be able to find one of the many thousands of federal employees who leaked to the press?
Like, you know,
is that what you're trying to argue?
As much as I, what is it?
As much as I think Big Balls, was that his name?
Yeah, Big Balls.
I expect these guys to put on fake mustaches and the glasses and they're going undercover.
Like, they just all of them are.
Well, they're like me, they can't true facial hair yet.
So they got to put fake ones on.
Yeah, I mean, Big Balls is actually closer to your age than my age.
But like, you know, he most of them are.
He's going to get a monocle and start reporting on economic jobs now.
Smoking out of the long cigarette thing, out of the corner of his mouth.
This is what happened on Park Place.
Yeah.
No, it's just there are, there are like a million or million and a half federal employees, like, you, or whatever, whatever it is.
Like, you, and there's only a few thousand political appointees.
It is not possible.
And also, these are smart people.
These aren't idiots
in the career side.
Like, you put like a 19-year-old kid who Elon has said, go run wild.
They will eat him alive.
Oh, yeah.
Like, it's part of the reason we have found out recently, last week, that Doge actually cost more money than it cut because of all of the benefits they had to pay and all of the like early termination stuff.
Like they didn't save us any money.
They just shifted it around.
Like it's so steep.
When do I get my $600 check though?
Because I'm pretty sure they had a check coming for me.
It's a Doge slash tariff rebate check.
Oh, this is some bullshit.
For those of you who are not on TikTok, there was all right-wing TikTok was a flutter about a $5,000, $5,000.
Oh, $5,000.
That's how it was.
$5,000 rebate check that literally no one announced.
And all of a sudden, it like spread like wildfire.
Like, Trump's going to give me $5,000 back.
And I'm like,
that was the dividend with your dividend.
That was from the dude that I used to have a podcast with.
That was the Doge dividend checks that he didn't like.
He came up with this number of like, if you do it this way, everybody can get $5,000.
And everybody just fucking exploded with that number.
But the math don't, the math goes insane.
The math doesn't ever matter.
Like 5,000 times 300.
It was based on if you exclude a ton of people and you only do certain, like households with certain tax thresholds, and we save $2 trillion of $100.
Yeah, but nobody heard that.
People heard
$5,000.
Because then that is the correct number, but all those things are impossible.
Well, the $500 or $600 check was because was the tariff rather than a terrorist.
They're talking about the tariff rather.
Which is paying people back
to what they paid.
It increased costs due to the tariffs.
So it's like you're not actually, I guess it is technically a rebate because you paid something and it is a back, but you're still down.
I got to applaud Trump for getting his own people who are, by and large, like
poor white people in red states.
Like, let's be honest.
Like, that's like the bulk of MAGA to
celebrate a tax hike on themselves.
What is it?
Like, $150 billion he's brought in or something?
$150 billion so far.
And they're like tariffs.
I like to call it revenue.
It's not taxes.
MAGA's love is that they're like regressive tax.
That means the opposite of progressive.
That means so fuck you, Libs.
You're going with regressive tax.
My wallet hurts, though.
They're just going to call it the regressive party.
It's going to be the progressive versus Elon.
I said that on fucking Thanksgiving that they should be called the regressives because they have no interest in conserving anything.
Definitely not.
Well, they want to conserve millionaire and billionaire wealth.
That's their thing, right?
Because you're like, Richie said,
not just our poor white people, but like the other end is obviously.
Doing the work for Peter Thiel.
Yeah, for Peter Thiel and you know elon and build those server farms
they're all just temporarily inconvenienced billionaires as soon as they invent that that that thing then they're gonna need those those those tax deductions on their their jets and their yachts it's just a matter of time
yeah that bill sucks was that twain that said that i think it was there's so much stupid around all that only more people could read mark twain and actually understand it
the second part of that is the key yeah
you can't just look at the words Yeah.
Too many people spark noted their way through high school, I think.
And now it's AI, so it's even getting worse.
Well, I think we, you know, I actually, for, I'm actually one of those nerds that get excited to see the jobs report come out at 8.30 a.m.
every Friday, like whatever, like, you know.
But I'm really curious about the ones in September because the other part that's no one really is talking about, we've talked about a few times, is like the fact that the summer is when all of the international travelers come to the United States, and those numbers have plummeted this year.
You saw Vegas was down 14% compared to last year.
Vegas is down 14%.
I believe New York City is down.
Uh, Mark Levine, the Manhattan Borough president, tweeted it.
I think it's we're down 12% pre-COVID numbers.
12%,
when you're talking about billions of dollars, is devastating.
Yeah, so I why would anybody want to come here?
Well, that's the well, no, they're literally afraid.
Yeah, like they're afraid.
You have valid reason to be afraid, of course.
And the Europeans who spend a lot of money, and the Asians, Japan, China, Korea, all of the, like, all, no, no one's coming from either side because they are afraid of masked men that don't show identification, throwing them in a van, and then they end up in Sudan, which is a good idea.
Tell me one video where that's actually happened.
That is not happening.
That is not the America I know and love.
There is no evidence anyone has been deported rightfully or wrongfully.
We're all celebrating.
See how easy it is to slip right into that?
That's why so many people cave and go to the right and sell out, I think.
It's just really easy.
It feels better to say the truth.
I've thought
like the ease with which it would be to lie.
Oh, yeah.
Well, it's so simple.
Well, we talk about Candace Owens, right?
Trump fucking gave Caroline Levitt a big, like, he was almost hitting on her.
Yeah.
It was fucking nasty.
And all that really comes out of her is lies.
She does kind of look like Tiffany.
Yeah.
I think her lips get a little smaller every time she lies.
Luke, tell people what he said about Caroline Levitev.
He was like commenting on her lips and
oh, the way she's.
You know, the way her lips are fucking gross.
Don't say, like, no upper lip, too.
Like, I'm telling you, that gets taller every time she lies.
Those lips and they move.
Oh, when they move, yeah.
It was like, I was like, are we in the 1940s, like crying?
I mean, he's living life like that.
That's what the dementia does to you, right?
You start acting like you did so long ago.
He probably watches the conferences on mute, you know, and just like watches her talk.
Yeah.
He doesn't care what she actually says.
Well, you know, and he rings his clammy hands.
He also, like, he likes the fact that she's married to a much older man.
I was going to say, she's certainly all all about control.
Not Trump age, not Trump age.
It's like a 25.
Yeah.
Well, she's 27.
Yeah.
Well, that for Trump, that bar is not very high, as we've talked about before.
Luke, did you just say you're old enough for Trump?
No.
In a roundabout.
I'm a little too old for him, I think.
Oh,
okay.
Well, I think we're going to, let's do the worst pivot ever.
Let's, let's go off of this.
The biggest story in the country right now is the situation unfolding in Texas.
What has happened is essentially because of all the storms that happened a few weeks ago, you know, the ones where some of those mega districts didn't buy the equipment to like find out when things are happening fast.
And it turns out one of the people that was supposed to be monitoring it was sleeping.
Anyways, in that state, they had a special, they opened a special session in order to provide funds and do work to help those communities.
But Greg Abbott, the governor there,
horrible human being,
decided with Trump that, hey, because the special session is open, we actually can redo the 2020 gerrymandering, well, or the redistricting, I should say.
Re-mm gerrymander the gerrymandering.
This time,
sure.
That's, you know, we have to redistrict every 10 years because populations change, you know, to make sure people have the relative representation based on population.
They've decided to do it early, and they are going to do the most extreme gerrymander.
These maps, they look more like rivers because of the way that they're like drawn so narrowly.
And they've actually said, and I spoke with Texas state rep,
I'm going to mess up her name, but I'm going to try.
Gina Inohosa, I think I did it right, on Friday or Thursday.
And she said, they've actually said one of the reasons they're doing this is to eliminate districts where brown and black people are in the majority.
So that,
so we're doing
racial gerrymandering.
Well, that's what I think is what they're trying to do.
do.
The Supreme Court threw out civil rights laws that used to federal legislation that used to stop the government, southern states, I should be specific, stop southern states from deliberately disenfranchising people according to their race.
Yeah, John Roberts.
Yeah.
John Roberts said that racism was over.
That's in his ruling.
He literally was like, that is past.
I mean, I'm not joking.
I can't anymore.
So I'm paraphrasing.
I was going to say, did he really say that, like, pervade him?
No, he basically said, this is not a problem anymore, so we don't need it.
Oh, cool.
Which is to say, there is no more racism.
Nice, that's great.
Yeah, don't look for it.
But I don't know if you guys know, and none of us are attorneys, but like this Supreme Court did overturn the Alabama maps in the last go-around and made them redo them.
So, I guess my question is: is the Supreme Court just going to be that nakedly partisan, which is definitely possible, and basically saying, Oh, well, that was different, and we're just going to let them take five.
It's five Democratics.
They will Democrats will lose five seats, including Jasmine Crockett's seat, if they are successful.
Like, you know.
Well, hang on.
But let's be very, very clear.
What they will do is they will cut the district so that it appears to be favored for the Republican candidate by five, 10 points.
Those, those people still have to vote.
You don't just get the seat.
And it doesn't just happen immediately.
Right.
There are a lot of things to like voters could.
potentially swamp this if they think, well, we're going to get this plus five because you got to cut it real thin.
If you're going to, if you're going to water down all your majority districts by five points or so, maybe 10 points, so they're not winning 60-40 everywhere.
They're winning how like
if you want the if you want all the seats, you got to be a little more risky.
If they think they're going to win 53, 54% of the vote in a district, that's a matter of a couple of people choosing to stay home or not, or a big momentum shift.
And it could potentially cost them more seats because they're spreading their safe Republican voters more thinly.
It's possible.
And the thing, though, that I think may
stop them is that, well, Gavin Newsom has basically said.
Well, he said, and like,
we have been critical of him in the past, but on this one, he was like, you know what, guys?
I can figure out how to draw maps that make all of our districts blue.
All of them.
And how many seats are there in, how many members of Congress in California?
52.
That's a lot.
And it's like 30,
15 or something.
And then New York, Kathy Hochul came out today and said,
game on.
I think she literally said game on or bring it.
And I was like, now New York's is different because they have to, um, they have to amend the Constitution and then there's a two-year period.
So like it wouldn't be for 2026, but it would be for 2028.
So between New York and California and Illinois, which already has pretty pretty Jerry Ninor districts in the blue favorite, but
and a couple other places, like you're talking about getting rid of a lot of Republican seats, plus the backlash, Rich, that you're talking about.
It could be a really stupid thing to do.
Because you've seen what there's that shit with the vote, right?
I mean, I'm sure you all did.
The Texas lawmakers flew off instead of voting.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So they, and we'll talk to Congressman Kaysar about this in a minute, but essentially, in order to break the quorum, you have to leave, which means that I think they're in session.
They have to leave the state.
Right.
And so all of the Democrats have left and they are all currently.
This is where having a governor of a state that owns hotels is really convenient, which is the Pritzker family.
They are all held up in Illinois right now.
And Greg Abbott is threatening to
arrest them and charge them with class two felonies, I believe.
Simple dog dare him.
Yeah, you want it.
Then he was talking about maybe avoiding their like, like basically like impeaching them.
It's like what?
They have no,
there's nothing they can do because it's not a crime.
It's not a crime to arrest them for.
I don't get it.
It is literally just a release of duty i think it is
but it's not a crime to break quorum like what they're doing is is very much not a crime and there's just nothing they can do about it the craziest cope i've seen about it from the right is i saw somebody that was whining about how expensive the plane was that they took that it was 17 000 an hour to fly them all to illinois And I have one fucking question.
Where's your fucking whining about Trump?
Because it's like $140 million in fucking golf fees so far.
What about the,
what is it, the billion-dollar gift that they're going to
spend another billion dollars to fix it.
Yeah.
And the thing that I don't know if a lot of people know this, but like the thing about Trump was when he goes to Bedminster or when he goes to Mar-a-Lago and he plays golf, the secret, I kid you not, the Secret Service, when they use the golf carts, they have to pay the golf course to use them.
It's not that they let them use them to keep him safe.
The government is paying Trump for the golf carts to keep Trump safe.
So the corruption, like people talk about the Bitcoin stuff, which is fair and like autocrypto and like all this, but like every time he goes to Bedmister in particular, he gets paid.
Like, great.
Yeah.
So he's like, I don't take a salary.
I'm like, you charged like hundreds of thousands of dollars in golf cart fees in your first term, which basically made up for the 400 grand that you didn't take as a salary.
And all these people are like he doesn't take a salary.
I'm like, yeah, there's a reason for that.
But no, I mean,
it's all the distractions.
But yeah, I would just looked it up to verify it.
And Newsom, they have 52 seats right now.
Democrats hold 43 of them.
So
they can get nine back.
And he drew out a 52 to zero map and shared it.
It's like, do you want to do this?
Do you want to have this conversation?
Because Illinois and New York, I just saw Governor New York has also
expressed interest or the willingness to throw out their their bipartisan redistricting commission or nonpartisan.
If we want to play that game and we want to swamp, you know, more people live in blue states than red states.
I don't think they remember this, but we can.
I know of a couple of New Yorkers who are actually
trying to organize this.
Oh, oh, well, yes.
Well, this weekend,
we started, I did, but we started a petition.
At first, it was to encourage Kathy Hochul to do this.
And now that she's doing it, it's to show her that we have her back.
And it's, uh, you can sign it and anybody can sign it.
You can sign it at gerrymandernewyork.com, gerrymandernewyork.com, all spelled out.
And we're going to deliver those petitions to her and say, we've got your back.
We want you to do this.
Because, you know, anytime a politician takes a stand on something that's like this, it can be a political liability, especially with the other side of the aisle.
And, you know, she, I think she's going to coast next year, but you know, you never know.
And so like adding adding your name and saying yes, because like we weren't the ones that started this.
We don't want to do this.
The Democrats are finally standing up and fighting back.
And I love it.
And Kathy Hochle, like, I, you know, I've said some critical things of her in the past too, but like, she is standing up and doing the absolute right thing here.
I don't like gerrymandering.
I think we should have a national law and like a national independent commissions to actually do the maps.
But if they're going to play this game, fuck them.
I think that we can do this
ethically.
Like, these democratic states can design trigger laws that are basically like, okay, when the other side starts playing, you know, by the old rules and norms again, we will too.
Right.
But you can tell then you cut a seat.
I'm going to cut your fucking seat.
Exactly.
We punish bad behavior and incentivize good behavior at the same time.
Right.
We are going to lead by example, not by giving up, which is kind of like what Democrats have historically done, being like, why won't they play by the rules?
Instead, we're going to say, we're going to punish Republicans by completely disenfranchising them until Republicans stop disenfranchising Democrats.
We're just going to play by the same rules that they are.
It's already having an effect because one of the Republicans in California who would lose his seat, Kevin Kiley, has
said that he's going to introduce legislation that would ban all states, including Texas.
Of course, he didn't say the word Texas in his statement.
He's complaining about Newsom in California.
But regardless,
it would ban all states from redrawing congressional districts in the middle of a decade.
So it always comes from
selfishness, of course.
It always is.
So if we want to have the rest of this conversation, let's actually do the thing and protect democracy.
And then let's go the rest of the way and maybe put in, you know, ranked choice voting, get rid of the Electoral College.
Like there's whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You're sounding pretty like a radical
lefty.
I woke up feeling especially beta soy today so you got up on the left side of the bed
you know how weird i do actually sleep on the left side of the bed but here's the here's the here's the message though it's work democrats have been told we have been telling democrats for years fight back yep and they're fighting back and they're getting results so this is the path folks like when republicans do something bad do it back to them.
I think that's the problem, though, is that like so many Democrats, especially like if you're raised in a pacifist family, like fighting back is like, I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to the editor.
And that is like how reasonable people fight back.
And I think we're finally understanding that.
You get kicked in the teeth.
You kick them back in the fucking teeth.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's the nuance is like, it's not so much fighting back to me.
It's playing dirty.
Because Republicans are playing dirty.
And Democrats have historically been like, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to be above the fray.
It's like, no, fuck that.
I will play as dirty as they're willing to play.
And I think this is a good step in the right direction towards what Democrats really have to do is set the fucking tempo.
They have not been setting the tempo.
Republicans set the tempo.
We're just learning how to respond to it.
We need to be the aggressors, the ones who start the feud the right way.
And we're not doing that yet, but this is a step towards doing that.
Yeah, this, this right here,
I think the way that Democrats are responding to the idea that maybe we should redistrict if
Republicans are going to do it, kind of goes into how popular on TikTok Suzanne Lambert is, right?
This, this, like, we're done being fucking nice to you thing is is not just good politics, but it's entertaining as fuck.
Like, I love Suzanne Lambert's
like taking down Nancy Mace.
Those are some of my favorite fucking videos.
And Mace just announced, I think, right?
That she just announced that she's running for governor.
I cannot fucking wait.
I hope that Suzanne Lambert, she is a comedian by trade.
I hope that she goes to Nancy Mace's state and just fucking does comedy shows
across the street from wherever Mace's fundraisers are.
Because they will fucking have tremendous crowds.
Everyone will literally be laughing so loud that no one can hear Nancy Mace screeching her anti-trans hatred.
And it will be a beautiful thing for more Democrats to understand.
You have to be mean to Republicans.
You can't fucking be nice.
Right.
And then we've got Lysandra, who was our first guest on this show, who does the Levitt.
And now she's doing Christy Gnome.
And she's branched out and her impersonations are phenomenal.
And I think she's just in Georgia.
So maybe she can
go up the coast and they can tag team.
Tag team it.
So
I did a video on the Nancy Mace thing yesterday or was that this morning?
She announced.
Maybe it was this morning.
I actually think
there's an opportunity because her district isn't that red.
So it opens up a potential door for somebody.
I think it's a plus seven.
So like that is fair game.
And I don't think having Nancy Mace and Lindsey Graham at the top of the ticket in South Carolina is going to like drive a lot of Republican turnout because frankly, both of them have completely changed their positions when Trump came into office.
Like if John McCain saw Lindsey Graham now, I don't even know what he would say.
Like it is just, it is completely different.
And our good friend, Mr.
Joe Walsh, who was on the show a few weeks ago, is
thinking, he said it.
He's thinking about that Senate race down there.
And man, would I love to see him go after both of them?
It would just, like, I don't, you know, and I think he'd, I don't, you know, I think he'd have a shot at least getting close, which if he's close in that Senate race, whoever runs in Nancy Mace's district will, will, the Democrat will win.
And that will be a flip.
Here's an interesting thing.
I was just looking it up and they just redistrict before she ran this race.
She won 56% of the vote in the current draw, but in the previous draw, she would have won less than 51% of the vote.
So, like, her, it's close.
It was super close.
Now it's like still close.
Pretty interesting.
It could be.
I mean, nobody like, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.
Yeah.
All right, guys, we're going to have to wrap here because we are about to go have a conversation with Congressman Greg.
Drich decided to go over there already.
He's so excited.
We are about to have a conversation with Congressman Greg Kesar, who is a representative from Texas and is also the chair of the Progressive Caucus in the United States Congress.
So
let's do that now.
All right, we are back.
I'm really, really excited to introduce our guest today.
Timing literally could not be more perfect for him to join our show.
We have U.S.
Congressman Greg Kesar from Texas with us today.
Congressman, thank you for joining us.
Good afternoon, everybody.
So everybody is focused on Texas at the moment.
The governor has, during this special session, is obviously trying to ram through this midterm gerrymander.
Can you tell our audience a little bit about just what exactly is going on and what he's trying to do and why that's so unusual?
Yeah, I mean, probably no,
nothing new here to your listeners that Trump is the most corrupt president in American history.
But then we've got Ken Paxton here, the most corrupt politician in Texas history.
And they have this corrupt scheme.
to change our election rules, radically redraw and re-gerrymander Texas so that they can rig the upcoming midterm elections before anybody gets a chance to cast a ballot.
And essentially, that's their way of covering up for Trump jacking up your prices, Trump basically taking your taxpayer money and handing it to his wealthy buddies in the form of ridiculous tax breaks.
He doesn't have a plan for winning the election, but he does have this plan for changing the rules before anybody gets a chance to have a say about it.
To give you a sense, I'm here in Austin, Texas, my home city, where he's connecting some parts of the northern Austin area out to Midland Odessa, think like far west Texas, and then parts of the South Austin metro area out to Puerto Ranzas.
It's like an eight-hour drive between those two places.
And what's worst about it all, as if that's not bad enough, is that the way he's doing it is by intentionally violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
He's drawing districts that were intentionally made illegal by LBJ signing that law back in 1965.
I mean, he handed the pen that he signed that law with to Martin Luther King.
That law of 1965 was meant to ban things like this.
Trump is purposefully doing it, hoping that a complicit Supreme Court will allow him to do it here in Austin and then spread that kind of practice across America.
Yeah, I mean, it's a really, it's really terrible.
And for our listeners, like mid, mid-term gerrymander or redistricting is not a thing that happens it is it doesn't happen yeah it's not supposed to happen you're supposed to do it every census which is like a few years ago i think it's yeah it's every 10 years it's congressionally mandated constitutionally mandated actually so this mid thing is and he's only able i think the shameless part of it that the part that really drives me crazy is that they were only able to do it if correct me if i'm wrong because they had this special session to deal with all of the flood response and then they decided to make this a big partisan game by trying to pull this nonsense is that right instead of doing flood relief for the folks right up the road from where I'm sitting, they're doing radical political redistricting.
And I think it's really shown that these Texas Republicans, instead of having a backbone, are just really Donald Trump's water boys doing whatever it is he asks instead of caring for their own constituents in the midst of a horrific disaster.
They're just over here trying to figure out how to cover for Donald Trump's electoral failures.
And what we're seeing, I think, is the way that they have proposed this, I think it would be the elimination of five congressional
districts that Democrats currently control, including Jasmine Crockett, I believe.
Is that correct?
Well, they've moved Jasmine Crockett's home, I believe, outside of her district.
Right.
But she believes that she could still, yeah, they moved most people outside of their own district that are Democrats, but they've essentially still,
I believe that Congresswoman Crockett would still kind of be able to run and win in a core central Dallas district.
But they have eliminated a Latino majority district in the Houston area.
They've eliminated a district of mostly people of color in the Fort Worth area.
And then mine in the Austin area, you know, Austin, San Antonio, central Texas area, eliminated
the Latino district in their proposal here and essentially are merging my district with Congressman Lloyd Doggett's district.
But at the end of the day, like the future of me or Lloyd Doggett or any other member of Congress isn't the biggest thing we've got to worry about.
I'm worried about the futures of millions of people in Texas who could have their votes essentially suppressed here.
And if they're able to do it here in Texas, they're going to, Donald Trump's already said he wants to go to Missouri next, then Ohio, then Louisiana or Alabama.
And so that's why I think it's so important that these brave Texas legislators are putting up the fight of their lives right now here in Texas.
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about that.
So in order to break the quorum on the special session, they had to leave the state.
And they are currently in Illinois, I believe.
How long can they keep that up?
And what can we do to help them?
Yeah, I mean, these Texas Democrats are heroes.
They're democracy defenders.
I know a lot of folks listening and watching at home have been searching for those Democrats that are willing to actually really put it all on the line in this moment of growing authoritarianism.
And that's what Texas Democrats are doing.
They're putting it on the line.
And I hope their courage inspires the courage of other elected officials because they can't be gone forever, right?
Their families and their jobs are back here.
And so they're buying us critical time.
But their courage, if it inspires courage from governors, like we're seeing the courage of Governor Gavin Newsom saying he will redistrict California in retaliation and show Republicans we're willing to fight fire with fire.
If we could spread that courage to Maryland and to Washington state and to everybody else listening at home to your governor, then I think this quorum break could lead to Greg Abbott taking a step back, slowing this down, maybe not passing this horrific map if Republican members of Congress and other states see that their job is on the line.
So that's part of why this quorum break is so strategic and why I'm so grateful to the Texas Democrats in the legislature that are doing it.
Those of us in Congress, we're mostly here in the state, organizing, pushing back with our constituents.
And it's our state representatives that had to leave the state and go to places like Illinois and New York and Massachusetts to be able to stand up for the rest of us.
So, I want to ask a question: What do you think the odds are that Abbott backs off here?
Because I agree with the strategy.
I think, like, what Newsom is doing is setting the right tempo and tone.
Obviously, they see that there's a lot of trouble ahead if they go down this road.
You know, Abbott, I'm sure, way better than this panel does.
So, I'm curious: you look at the situation, you see the fire ahead of them.
Are they going to walk through it?
Are they going to back off it?
Look, Greg Abbott is a craven and cowardly politician.
And when they get put in a corner, they start acting real crazy.
And that's what you're seeing from Governor Abbott right now.
Governor Abbott to this afternoon, you know, we are here on Monday, August 4th, is threatening this afternoon to unilaterally remove from office basically all Texas Democrats.
That's where he's at right now.
And I'll just ask...
everybody listening to just take a step back and imagine we're talking about another country where you have a corrupt president that is worried about losing an election.
And so he's asking to rig the election rules.
And then a political ally of that corrupt president then threatens to remove the entire opposition party from office in order to get it done.
You and I would probably say that that country's democracy is in really, really deep trouble.
That's what's happening right now in America, right now in Texas.
You have Greg Abbott saying he wants to create a single party state in Texas by unilateral action.
It's hard to not sound alarmist, but that's, I want folks to let that sink in, that that's where we are.
And
as he acts that way, acts more and more scared, we have to not act intimidated.
And I think that's how you eventually get a bully to back down is when they're act at their most crazy.
You know, let them continue to hurt themselves and hopefully bring people along onto our team.
I think the gambit that they're trying to take here is they're trying to provoke riots.
I mean,
I try to imagine being in the mind of these people as they are just like, we are going to
completely disenfranchise
basically most of the black and brown voters in the state of Texas.
I think that they are trying to provoke riots.
I think that a guy like Stephen Miller looks at
the summer of 2020 in the
racial reckoning that we had nationwide.
And he saw the way that Fox News and the rest of the right-wing disinformation networks covered what was happening.
And he saw in his base people frothing at the mouth for violence.
You know, we saw like Kyle Rittenhouse come out and how he became a hero for the right.
I think that as the Trump administration is moving
just insane amounts of money over to ICE and they are trying to do things like just completely rig future elections.
They are hoping that people feel hopeless and come to the streets and that violence gets provoked so that they can accelerate things.
That is, I think, the only like rational
the only rational way that I can imagine that they're looking at this.
They have to know that if they just completely disenfranchise an entire party and they try and do it across the nation, that people are going to freak out.
This is
the most direct and the most consequential attack on our republic, on our democracy that we have seen thus far.
And their plan that they've already announced is to continue taking steps forward.
Well, it's a classic authoritarian playbook to point to demonstrations and then any act of violence, whether it's actually, you know, people on one side or another, as an excuse for an even bigger power grab.
And so that's part of why we can't fall into Greg Abbott's trap.
We do need to make sure people can come together and publicly assemble and make grievances heard in the longest, most patriotic tradition that we have.
But we've got to look out for each other, stick tight, and make sure that we don't allow provocateurs to incite anyone because that is part part of what I believe a Stephen Miller, as you just described, would want.
And so today I'm calling for a picket, a classic labor organizing, peaceful, but pissed picket at Governor Greg Abbott's mansion.
And we're going to be there and we're going to make sure it stays organized and that our message is heard because we can't be scared.
and just lock up at home scared, but we also can't fall into their trap where where they want to be able to point out
any act
that might turn off the average viewer that isn't watching politics as closely.
We've got to make sure our message is really clear out there.
I think the way that you framed that as peaceful but pissed
is
perfect.
That is.
Well, I mean,
I just happened right here with you guys here on the Final Pod, just
made up right here on the top of my head.
We're going to have to make a t-shirt out of that.
Peaceful but pissed.
But I think you're 100% right.
And I think the thing that we have to remember is that Trump's nickname, new nickname is taco for a reason.
Trump always chickens out.
If there is a groundswell of
support across the country for Texas Democrats, I think we said, you said Gavin Newsom's like, well, if you want me to make all of the districts in California blue, I'm going to do it if you're going to play this game.
And we haven't mentioned Kathy Hochul yet, but she came out today pretty strongly.
Our situation in New York is a bit different because it won't be affected.
We can't do it in 2026, but we can do it in 2028.
She basically said, game on today.
And I think this is a,
this is a sign to Democrats, and I want to get your take on this, Congressman, but that people respond to strong leaders.
Like we have been saying, a lot of us on this side have been saying for a long time that like one of the Democrats' problems is that we're like, oh, well, it's the process and I can't like, you know, I don't want to mess with anything.
But like we're, I feel we are well beyond that.
I'm curious about your take.
Like I think people want fighters right now.
And I think fighters are what people, people want to follow fighters.
And I think people are tired of it.
And I think Democrats have, well, most Democrats are waking up to the fact that we can't just play the process game anymore unless we don't want to live in a democracy anymore.
Yeah, this is a moment where the Democratic Party brand is at some of its lowest ratings in recorded history.
But then I, you know, will be places hundreds or thousands of miles away from my district.
I was recently in Tucson, Arizona with Bernie Sanders and AOC, and we thought we were pulling up to the high school gym in six or seven blocks where we were going to have this rally, but there was a line just covering the streets.
So I said maybe to the cab driver, maybe we're already at the high school.
And he said, no, that's still on my thing way far away.
It was the line to get in.
25,000 people took over the entire football field.
It was the biggest rally in Arizona history.
And I think it's because people are looking for fighters, not folders.
And so the Texas Democrats right now, I think, are fighting so hard.
They're leaving behind their families.
They're leaving behind their paying jobs because the legislature sure isn't a real paying job in the state of Texas to fight.
And I hope that inspires more governors to fight.
I wish, but you know, I wish we were in a place where California having an independent commission inspired the Greg Abbotts and Donald Trumps of the world to do the right thing.
But we don't live in that world, right?
Where you show up as a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout and they just respect that, right?
Like, we are not in a Harvard moot court contest here, right?
Like it is a real fight to protect people's lives and people's ability to choose their own leaders.
And so I think that California should say California will have an independent commission when Texas does.
New York will have one when Florida does.
We've got to get to national.
ends to gerrymandering, not a world where Democrats confine ourselves to one set of rules that everybody agrees to, and then Governor Greg Abbott and Donald Trump can just run everybody over.
I mean, that's just, that's not a way that you deal with bad faith opponents.
No, and I think, look, like they've now tried to trample on democracy twice, right?
Like January 6th was a coup attempt on the, on our free and fair election in 2020.
And they all kind of just were like, oh, whatever.
It's just a peaceful protest.
And now we're seeing this.
this again with this midterm like unprecedented power play.
I, you know, and I think for our listeners, listeners, like we have a power, we have the power in the voice now, but like if we allow these things to happen, we won't.
Like we can have all the rallies in the world, but if our districts are like a piece of string across, like we won't have any electoral power.
You just can't make it happen.
Exactly.
So, and I know you're very busy and
you're off to another thing real quick, but I want to end with this.
Like, you know, we mentioned talking to your governors about, you know, looking at doing this gerrymandering.
What else should people be doing?
I know there's like, I don't know electorally if you could talk about this right now, but I know there's like a fund for these folks to make sure there are resources.
What's the best thing that people could do right now?
Yeah, you can check out the Texas Justice Fund.
That is an important place to be looking at.
You could also look for these Texas legislators online.
Just give them an online high-five.
Just amplify what it is they're saying because it's a lonely time sometimes for folks.
And so make sure they're not forgotten and help them out.
And then if we're going to do everything we can to stop this plan, if they're able to get it through, we can't let them get it through without a serious cost.
So we need to make sure that Democrats all over the country are paying attention to Texas because we need to run in these districts and make sure that these Republican members of Congress who may have thrown their own constituents in their own districts under the bus, all for Donald Trump, that they don't just get an easy path.
to re-election.
So we're going to be recruiting candidates in those districts, funding those candidates and making sure that we actually run again as Democrats up and down the ticket in Texas.
In my own area in central Texas, they've merged my district with my neighboring congressman's district.
We're not taking that lying down.
We're not letting Latino voters and black voters just be disenfranchised that way.
Who knows how they'll keep changing the districts moving forward here in the coming days or weeks of this battle?
But we're not going anywhere.
We're here in Texas and we need help from people all across the country.
Great.
Well, Congressman, thank you very much for giving us a few minutes of your very busy time.
Our supporters are with you.
We're going to keep on this one, make sure everybody is aware of what's going on and probably pressuring some of these other states to do the same.
So, Congressman, thank you very much.
And best of luck to you.
You're doing a great job and we really, really appreciate your time.
Thank you guys.
So grateful to you.
