And, This Is Trump’s Attack on Voting Rights With Jasmine Crockett

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This is Gavin Newsom.

She's been called a rising star.

Donald Trump referred to her as the future of the Democratic Party.

Couldn't think of someone better to talk about what's going on in Texas and the gerrymandering, what's going on in Washington, D.C.

with the National Guard, then the one and only Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

Thank you for doing this.

I appreciate it

at this remarkable time.

So we'll just, we'll jump right in because I, you know, I can't even imagine.

You spend time in the Texas legislature.

I was watching last night a brief interview.

One of the members of the legislature, Nicole Collier, was in the chambers.

She's not walking out because she doesn't want to be assigned a member of law enforcement to watch every move.

And I just, I couldn't even imagine what that experience is like, but I couldn't imagine a better person to talk about it than you.

Watching all of this from afar, the impacts indirect to democracy, the direct impacts to you as a representative, watching your own district lines changing.

Give us a sense of what you're feeling right now, what this moment means to you.

So, I'm feeling overwhelmed.

And if you are paying attention, you should also feel that way.

This isn't about me as an individual.

This is about our collective democracy.

It's one of the reasons that I think the country has galvanized behind what California has decided to do because this isn't just about Texas.

It's not just about the representatives in Texas.

It's about the people.

And so, when you look at the lengths that they will go to decimate our democracy, that is when people should really have their hair on fire.

And I don't care what kind of state you live in.

And I personally don't care what your political affiliation is because we are setting a dangerous precedence, one that could forever dismantle

our democracy.

So here we are as a black woman civil rights attorney, and I'm looking at a

state that is taking state actions against a duly elected black woman to basically incarcerate her against her constitutional rights.

And everybody is just kind of like, ah, you know, Texas gets to do whatever they want to do because we have a minion for a governor instead of a governor for the people of Texas.

And so now, because he wants to do everything that he can to kiss the raggedy feet.

of Donald Trump, this is where we stand to the extent that he is disrespecting Texans over and over and over, whether we're talking about the map or whether we're talking about the threats that were waged against these members and their family members, or whether we're talking about a woman, a black woman, that decided that she wanted to be free in the year of 2025.

And basically, she had someone who decided that he wanted to act like she is on a plantation.

And so, therefore, she had to sign documents if it was that she was to have some semblance of freedom.

And look, I

appreciate how

you just laid that that out with vivid and clear lines.

I mean, a black woman being told she has to have someone

from a white governor.

I mean, you can't, the racial components of this cannot be overstated.

And as you say, people are kind of rolling their, I mean, shrugging their shoulders, rolling their eyes.

I mean, the fact that not everything is stopped in real time.

to sort of measure this moment, the fact that so much is being normalized in this country as we're watching democracy slip through our hands.

I mean, what do we need to do to create the proverbial pattern interrupt?

What do we need to do to wake people up to understand what's really at stake?

What the hell is really going on, not just in Texas, increasingly across this country?

I think we all have to collectively fight back.

And I think that we have to take it back to elementary school, where everything legitimately was black or white.

It was right versus wrong.

We right now are having a moral

catastrophic

you know combustion right like it is insane to see the lack of morality like this really isn't about whether or not you believe in you know the democratic platform or the republican platform this is truly about whether or not we believe that as americans

that freedom should be real that we should treat everyone as equals that we should not diminish our democracy because that is why we stand out and why we have been a beacon of hope around this entire world, not just in this country for people that are here.

The reason that we've had so many immigrants that have always decided that they want us to come to the United States is because historically we have been the land of the free and the land of opportunity.

We are slowly just losing our standing on the national stage, whether we're looking at a president that is rolling out a red carpet for a war criminal or whether or not we are looking at a governor that has decided that a woman would be stuck and could not leave because she had the audacity to think that her colleagues would engage in real debate and they would come back and they would fight for fair maps.

Not fair maps for her, but fair maps for the 30 million Texans whose voices deserve to be heard considering the fact that we are a majority minority state.

We're 60% of the people that are there are people of color, yet every single day they are so happy to take in people of color day after day to the extent that we ended up gaining two new seats in the last time that we did the census.

We took those seats from other states that were growing, and those seats were taken because there were black and brown bodies that came into the state of Texas.

Yet they then minimized their voices.

So, yes, they want their bodies, but they absolutely do not want to hear from them.

And that is wrong.

And again, it is why we applaud California and your leadership because you said not on our watch, two can play this game.

Now, should we be playing a game when it comes to something like democracy?

Absolutely not.

But can we afford to take the high road as they continue to take away more and more rights?

And we start to look more like a government that is run by Vladimir Putin than a government that is run by a respected and honorable president of the United States?

No, we should stand idly by.

And so you don't buy the argument two wrongs don't make a right?

No, I don't.

Two wrongs are about to make it right in two seconds.

That is for sure.

And I appreciate the level of thoughtfulness that went into this because

I think at the core of who we are as Democrats, regardless of what others may say about us, we really want to do what's right.

The question is usually whether or not we have the courage to push forward, even in the face of adversity to get it done and this is ugly this is messy that is for sure but it is the right thing if you're going to take away five voices in a state in which i have been engaged in litigation since 2021 over the current lines because we have argued that these lines were terrible and illegal And the state consistently argued for the last four years that they were racially neutral, that they were perfect and beautiful lines.

And then all of a sudden, they get a letter from the Attorney General of the United States.

Imagine that.

The Attorney General of the United States decides that instead of, say, building up the civil rights division that she decided to tear down,

the

Attorney General of the United States that is under pressure to release the Epstein files that are within her control,

she decides to prioritize going after Texas and telling Texas that they actually have not been race neutral neutral and they decide to act based upon her instruction.

And we know that her instruction came directly from him.

And so now we're looking at a situation in which no matter what happens, I can tell you that these maps are illegal.

The question is, will we have these branches of government continue to fail us?

Will we have a court that will strike this down in time and say, never mind, we're going to have to draw the maps because historically, when we've had all three branches working, that's what happens when one of the states does wrong.

And there's no way to say that the state of Texas is doing right.

You bring up 2021 and your efforts in relation to the maps, but you also, for those that may not be familiar, you really made a name for yourself nationally.

the last time when you were in the legislature, I think it was 2021, when you guys did a similar quorum break.

And that was on different issues, but related to voting access and the like.

I mean, how do you paint?

What do you paint as a contrast or the paint the picture?

Is this part of the same narrative?

Is this sort of the extended narrative from 2021?

Is this represent something that's more dramatic from your perspective?

Or is this the same thread that's being pulled?

No,

we absolutely tried to ring the alarms.

And unfortunately, we collectively did not ring those alarms loud enough.

When we left, we went to D.C.

When we went to D.C., we asked a Democratically controlled House, a Democratically controlled Senate that had a Democrat and the White House to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

particular bill would have replaced the current voting rights act.

It would have shored up everything that we lost in Shelby beholder, and we wouldn't be sitting on the edge of our seats wondering whether or not we would lose Section 2.

So for anybody that's listening, Section 2 just says basically we want to go ahead and further codify what is in the constitution as it relates to people of color being able to have representation and so i have a section two seat what we know um came out of louisiana and alabama for this last election was two section two seats because they looked at a state like louisiana and said hey 30 of the population is african-american and y'all only gave them an opportunity to elect one lawmaker to the federal level so they had to add one Same thing happened in Alabama.

So they had to add one.

So both states now have two seats where African Americans are allowed to choose their representation.

Well, what they are doing right now, they got rid of all of the issues around pre-clearance, which means that when states go through all of this craziness and they've had, say, a history of being racially discriminatory, such as Texas, Texas has been found to be racially intentionally discriminatory ever since the Voting Rights Act was passed, which is so wild for me me to think of considering the fact that it was a Texan that signed the Voting Rights Act into law 60 years ago.

So, to see that we basically were like, hey, we're ringing the alarms, pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and we wouldn't have to deal with this fight over redistricting.

Pass the Freedom to Vote Act, and we wouldn't have had to deal with Elon Musk being able to actually buy an election.

We were trying to throw up our democracy and scream to the top of our lungs at that point.

And unfortunately, at that time, the house did their part.

A democratically led house does their part.

Unfortunately, it was in the Senate where we did not have the support to go ahead and move past the filibuster for the purpose of voting rights.

And I think that if we don't have voting rights, we get no other rights whatsoever.

And so, I think if there's ever a need for a carve-out, it is on behalf of making sure that we can expand access to the ballot box for those that are eligible to vote.

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It begs the question of

your reaction to what President Trump said yesterday as it relates to mail-in

balloting, where he now is asserting that he's got his lawyers drafting an executive order and he's going after mail-in ballots, something that he is very well known for having used himself in Florida.

He was an absentee ballot, meaning he was someone who went and got an absentee, mailed that in, like millions and millions of Americans.

By the way, 80%

in the last big election in California folks used mail-in ballots, overwhelming number.

What do you make of this latest effort by the president?

Yeah, so first of all, I think that California, number one, is a direct target.

We know that California has expanded access to the ballot box in ways in which some of us get frustrated to the extent that you do have so many mail-in ballots and you definitely had some nail-biter congressional races that came down to you know the last batches being counted and we know that this postal service isn't necessarily the best run under the current leadership

and so yeah it is it is it can be frustrating because it can make it to where if there's tight races, it's going to take us a little time.

But I think that that is what democracy looks like.

It makes sure that you hear from everybody, no matter whether or not you're home at the time, no matter whether or not you are encumbered because if you leave your job, you have fear of retaliation, even though legally they're not supposed to.

Whether or not you are a caretaker for your children or your ailing parents, it allows you an opportunity to participate.

And what they have decided is that participating in elections should just be reserved for the privileged few.

They don't want it to be something that allows the masses to participate.

In we talked about 2021, but ultimately what it was is they were passing new voting law standards in the state of Texas because for the first time, they weren't going to have to deal with pre-clearance whatsoever and get the authority.

And so they decided to decimate access to ballot boxes, especially after COVID-19, which in the midst of COVID, you had even in states like Texas, you had very creative secretaries that were going out and they were saying, hey, we need to make sure that people can vote and be safe.

You should not have to risk your life to cast your vote.

And so they decided that they were going to expand hours in Harris County where they had 24-hour voting.

They had drive-through voting.

They did all these things to make sure that it was easier.

They had multiple drop boxes so that you didn't have to worry about putting it into the mail itself.

You could drop it at a Dropbox throughout the country country or throughout the county.

Well, they didn't like that because the numbers showed that working-class folk were absolutely able to participate.

And if you look at the platform, or if you just look at the actions of the Republicans, they don't have anything good, number one, for people of color.

And definitely, they don't have anything good for working-class people.

So, the things that they are trying to do is like, yeah, if you've got the luxury where you don't have to worry about losing your job, you don't have to worry about taking care of that kid, you You don't have to worry about taking care of your mom.

No, you can just go to the ballot box and just vote.

And they feel like those are the only people that they want to participate.

And so it is very intentional.

It is disgusting.

And it is one of the reasons that people are so disenchanted, in my opinion, with politics, because they'll say one thing and do another.

And I just want people to know that like, There is a difference between Democrats and Republicans, regardless of what it seems like.

Republicans will say whatever it is to convince you to vote.

They won't go out there and campaign and say, oh, yeah, we're going to lower the taxes on the super rich, the super wealthy.

At the same time, we're going to go ahead and take away your health care.

We're going to go ahead and take away your access to education, which is your pathway to upward mobility.

They're not going to tell you like the real story that they're going to take food off the tables of people that are hungry in this country while at the same time complaining about unhoused people and trying to shuffle them off their streets.

They're not going to tell you that they're going to decimate the economy as they always do.

And then we have to wait on a Democrat to come in and clean it up.

They're not going to tell you the truth, but they will go after the things that they really want to go after.

Now that is, now that is real.

But Democrats, we will tell you and we can give you a dissertation of all the great things that we want to do.

But we also have this inclination to do things and be like, well, we want to be bipartisan.

No, at the end of the day, if we've got the numbers and they don't want to get on board for not only taking care of our constituents, but frankly, a lot of times we're doing the hard work to take care of their constituents, a lot more work and heavy lifting than they're doing.

And so what people want to see nowadays, and I get it, is they want to see Democrats be just as aggressive as Republicans are when they are trying to introduce regression into this country.

They want us to be as aggressive, trying to make sure that we can actually uplift this country.

there's so much to unpack there.

And the word regression, I mean, it's about rights regression.

It's about rolling, putting America back in reverse, bringing us back to a pre-1960s world as it relates to voting rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights across the spectrum.

I don't think that's exaggeration, nor what you said about jobs.

And for folks listening, since 1989, the end of the Cold War, it's important to be reminded of this.

Bill Clinton made this point at the DNC in his speech.

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1.9 million jobs created in the last three Republican administrations, over 16 million in the Biden administration, just as another proof point to the extent you needed it.

But Congresswoman, I want to talk about another proof point on democracy.

We talk about gerrymandering.

We talk about what you guys did in terms of voting in the John Lewis Act, which was about an independent national redistricting commission, which the Democratic Party, Republicans were nowhere to be found.

The Democratic Party has supported and they're on record supporting.

We talked about what he's trying to do on mail-in ballots.

And I referenced the last election was 2020.

And you reminded me of that, where we were at 80%

coming out of COVID in terms of the vote by mail.

And the convenience and the opportunity and the security that exists, barcodes, requirements on signatures.

There is a process where you actually can track where your mail-in ballot is.

And once one ballot is cast, there is no other ballot that can be cast.

All the BS Trump is suggesting is a lie otherwise.

As it relates, though, to the National Guard, it seems to me all this stuff is connected.

It's not, none of this is in isolation.

Everyone has to pay attention.

These dots need to be connected.

You've got the National Guard being sent now, and you talk about what Republicans don't tell you.

Those governors didn't tell you they're going to send them from Tennessee, South Carolina, send them from all of these other states into Washington, D.C.

You work there.

You spend your date, you have a lot of your time there.

Tell me what it's like in D.C.

Tell me what you think this is really all about.

Tell me if you think this is a preview of things to come, particularly, dare I say, around election in the midterms and beyond.

Yeah, so it's very dystopian to see.

It's funny because I used to watch like The Handmaid's Tale, and I can't, right?

I never finished, and I can't watch it because it is too close to reality.

And so, what we're seeing is this militarization, and obviously, it started in your state.

That was kind of the testing grounds, going to your state, going to a black woman mayor's city first.

And now we are in yet another black woman-led city and taking over.

And to me, it goes again to the level of racism and hate that is constantly spewed out of this administration.

Now, they hate for you to call them what they are, but listen, I mean, if it walk like a duck, quack like a duck, then I guess it is a duck.

So, like, racism is racism, and you are specifically targeting these black-led areas.

But more importantly, when you start to connect the dots, one of the things that we didn't talk about as much when we were trying to push forward against the draconian legislation that was coming out of the state of Texas at the time, back in 2021, was there was this provision.

about having basically people be able to monitor you while you were voting.

And there was was like recordings that came out where these like groups had gotten together and they're like, we're going to go down there.

And they were talking about going into the areas that were predominantly people of color and monitoring them while they were voting.

And they were limiting the ability of the election judges and the election workers to actually remove those people, even if they were interfering with someone's ability to vote.

So it was like, nope, you got to give them one pass.

So they could break one law for free.

And then you could only get them out when they committed the second violation.

And at the same time, they were changing access to firearms.

And so essentially, in these locations, you could have all these rogue actors that are armed as people of color are trying to go in and cast their votes.

If nothing looks like pre-Civil War in this country, that does, like that imagery, right?

So now you have someone who believes in this type of philosophy, who now has control of our National Guard.

And so, you know, the idea that we thought January 6th was a problem and we thought, oh man, that's bad.

And, you know, his army then was a bunch of white nationalist races, whether we're talking about the Proud Boys or the neo-Nazis or whomever, those guys were the ones that made up his army on that day to try to pull a coup.

Now you're talking about a guy that every time he disagrees with something, he uses the power that he has because no one around him is checking him, whether we're talking about those in his administration or whether we're talking about the courts or if we're talking about the Congress.

That is one of the reasons he is so desperate to make sure that he can win.

in the midterms is because he knows that Democrats, it's not even about partisanship.

It's about doing what's right.

It's about doing the American thing.

And to be clear, you can wave all the flags you want to, but I am telling you right now that the most unpatriotic people that we have in this country are MAGA and this president.

We are the real patriots and it is time for us to take our flag back and show people what America is about.

You can't say that you love the Constitution while decimating it with every single stroke of a pen for an executive order, while decimating it while you are disrespecting our troops that have signed up to protect our freedoms not just here but abroad and then you're taking people's freedoms away using those exact same troops like i just don't understand you know it's funny as as people have been talking about what's happening with rep nicole collier and i've been watching some of the influencers online and people are asking what is the red line for you like what will be a bridge too far like why is it that people are still confused confused about what is happening?

And why is it that no Republican will publicly come out and just say, you know what?

I'm going to do what's right.

When it came down to Senator Tom Tillis, instead, he said, well, listen, I'm going to just go ahead and not run for reelection.

And I'm going to vote against your ugly bill.

But why is it that those that know that this is wrong, why is it that they won't just say that I never swore an oath?

to any wannabe king.

I swore my oath to the Constitution and I'm going to honor that.

Why is it that we don't have that happening right now amongst the Republicans in the House and in the Senate?

Congresswoman, do you hear privately things differently?

I mean, do you have casual conversations where people have at least have some courage of their convictions and a little bit of character and say, hey, you know, you know, I just, you know, I got to do this.

You know, hey, we're just, it's temporary.

We just, you know, we can't.

What, I mean, what do they say?

Oh, absolutely.

I remember right before he won, won,

because one of the things he did campaign on was tariffs.

Now, most people didn't understand.

And of course, he lied about who would be paying the taxes.

But he did actually campaign on tariffs.

And I remember walking into oversight of all places, and I remember a member saying, just so you know, if y'all end up taking the house, because they were nervous that they were going to lose the house.

If y'all end up taking the house, we'll stand with you against the tariffs.

Like, this is what a member said because that member remembers what happened to our soybean farmers, our soybean farmers who never recovered.

And ultimately, they ended up giving them a subsidy for all that they lost.

But once you lose your ability to participate in a certain market, it is gone.

Like, and we can't continue to just subsidize you to stay in existence.

They actually want to be able to sell their products and be able to profit in that way.

And so I'm like, this is so interesting.

You absolutely were against the tariffs.

And when given an opportunity to do what's right, because you know that this is going to directly impact, it impacts all of us.

But when you're talking about rural America that is already bleeding population so badly, when we know that we're losing farms consistently, and these are the people that have directly elected you, and then you're not going out front on that issue, that's been one of the issues.

They,

for sure, were struggling with the big ugly bill.

That is why we ended up, you know, they finally decided they wanted to try to pass it in the middle of the night.

They were struggling.

And I was like, listen, you guys have put out a memo saying no more town halls because you know that when you walk in, your constituents are mad at you.

Ours aren't mad at us.

Like, it's bad legislation.

But they were afraid about being primary.

They were afraid about money being spent against them.

And it is, it is one of the worst parts of having such gerrymandered districts because ultimately, they are having to go as far right as possible to end up making it out of their primary.

And ultimately, they don't have to worry about the general election because it is drawn to be such a far-right, deep-red district.

That is yet another

bad byproduct of doing gerrymandering.

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I'm going to get to you in a second because I'm fascinated by your approach to politics and how you've come on the scene

in such sort of

vivid ways.

And I say vivid, very complimentary, meaning you're a person of conviction.

You share your passion with action.

You call people out.

And I think this conversation only underscores as well your willingness to call balls and strikes, too, as it relates to not being about Democrat, not being about Republican.

You talk in terms of patriotism.

I love love Democrats.

How the hell do we lose this battle on patriotism?

Just because you put a flag on your lapel, all of a sudden you're patriotic.

Our party's not.

So I want to get back to all that in a second, but I do want to get just, you know, there's three legs of the stool as it relates to what's happening with the National Guard, what's happening with gerrymandering, what's happening vote by mail.

But there's also something that, speaking of vivid, came to us in very vivid ways last week where we were at the Democracy Center in California.

We launched our campaign to try to neuter neuter what's happening to you individually, what's happening to all of your former colleagues collectively, and what's happening to our country on gerrymandering in Texas.

But we are there at the site where people were being bussed in the 1940s to Japanese internment camps.

And at that exact site, at the exact moment of our press conference, Donald Trump sent what is increasingly being referred to as a private army, funded in unprecedented ways by the Big Beautiful Betrayal, Big Beautiful Bill, Big Beautiful Ugly Bill, whatever it's referred to, by those same colleagues you were referencing, that allows him to further resource Border Patrol and ICE.

And they showed up with the regional director of the Border Patrol as their PR flak at the exact same site that people were being bused

to internment camps in this country.

It was to me chilling in this respect that for me, it was obvious this is also a preview of things to come.

We said it about the National Guard when they were federalized.

4,000, I'll remind people listening and watching.

4,000 National Guard were federalized.

It was the first time that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, didn't do this in his first term, sent 700 active military, Marines, not overseas, but to a city in the United States of America.

The city, yes, you're right.

And I think it is absolutely legit, run by an African-American woman.

You start to find those dots, and they have a lot in common with what you were referring to and what he's doing across this country as well.

But I see a future where ICE shows up to those lines that you were referencing, to those voting booths, not just the National Guard being called out under a quote-unquote declaration of emergency.

Am I overstating that concern?

Or do you see tenants of that?

Are you concerned about that as well?

I think that there are no limits that ICE will not go.

I do feel like this is definitely his personal army.

We know that we've seen reports about January 6ers that have somehow been offered jobs within the Department of Justice and within various kinds of spaces.

I think that there may have even been some reports as it relates to ICE.

One of the reasons that, you know, I argue that they are hiding their faces is because these are people that should not be law enforcement at all.

In fact, I recently dropped one of my bills that was an amendment as we were going through the process of the big ugly bill

where I was trying to get an amendment in judiciary as it relates to homeland and what was going on as they were trying to increase the dollars going to homeland.

And obviously, ultimately, when the budget came out or when we got through reconciliation, they did increase the amount of monies going there.

But I basically did an amendment that said, hey, if you end up covering yourself,

then no, you don't get the monies.

Like you can't be out there.

You've got to be clearly identified.

And frankly, it is for the safety not only of the officers, but also of the general public.

As we've seen so many reports of people that are cosplaying as ICE, and they are then kidnapping people, they are then vandalizing homes and cars.

And so it is emboldening the bad actors to continue acting bad.

But the question is, how many of the bad actors are actually on the inside right now?

And they don't, because they're not, in my opinion, real law enforcement, so many of them, like we're not talking about the people that have been there for a very long time and understand how ICE works, because I'm like, honestly, the stuff that y'all are doing is crazy anyway.

Like people look at law enforcement or people with guns and badges and they think they're all the same.

But they are not trained the same.

Whether we're talking about our Marines, whether we're talking about our Army, army whether we're talking about our navy like whoever we're talking about right or whether we're talking about like our air force and whether we're talking about our local law enforcement versus ice they are not trained the same local law enforcement is always going to be your investigative group these are the guys that go out and find the criminals and i got news for you if you're a criminal they don't first determine your status and whether or not it's legal or whether or not there's some issues as relates to your documentation and then decide well you know what we only go after the citizens we don't go after the non-citizens ice does that that is wrong investigative bodies they do this work all the time if there is evidence of a murder if there's evidence of a rape a robbery a dwi whatever it is they look at the evidence they follow the facts and then they get to a perpetrator and it's only once that perpetrator is then in custody ice for the most part is nothing but a ride that's all they were supposed to do for the most part right It's like, you know what?

This person is undocumented, or this person re-entered the country illegally, all the things, and then they have an ICE hold.

And then ICE gets them so that they can then send them out.

That's all ICE is supposed to do.

Look at them as a fancy Uber driver for immigrants.

That's all they're supposed to do.

And now they're running into places and doing raids and they're falling all over each other, injuring each other.

Like we are a joke, but it is a bad nightmare of a joke.

And so I don't think that this president has any limits that he won't go to so i agree with you ultimately if there's something that he wants to accomplish he has you know i i don't even want to say her name but he's got her leading um the department of homeland security and again you know this is where our checks and balances failed us again because these senators allowed for these persons to be go through the confirmation process and they're not qualified.

Like there should have been more senators.

And you know, I will give love to the few Republican senators that refused to sign off on the confirmation of some of these appointees within this cabinet.

But this is yet another reason that we are being failed right now because we don't have someone that is currently over homeland and will tell the president this is a violation of people's constitutional rights.

Like the whole idea of due process, you don't even know what it means, and you are leading like homeland.

Like, this doesn't make sense.

So, um we've got a series of failures and frankly it feels like it was the perfect storm for him to come in at this time because people are just too afraid of him and they are bending the knee so i absolutely can see a scenario where ice does too much

well

if uh if you were referring to christy noam you may have been and I would suggest you should, and I hope you were.

This is the same Christy Noam, Governor Noam, that just last September, less than a year ago, was on Fox with Sean Hannity, outraged by the rumor that then President Joe Biden was going to federalize her National Guard.

And she was waxing on about the Constitution and the 10th Amendment and federalism.

And Sean Hannity was sitting there shaking his head as a puppy dog saying, boy, governor, isn't that true?

Fast forward to today.

It is a remarkable moment.

But I want to just, for a brief moment, talk again about you.

Talk about one doing your job.

I imagine a lot of people said you're new into Congress.

Your job is just to get along, sit back, be quiet, get to know folks, take your time, because time's really the currency in D.C.

Eventually, maybe 20, 30 years from now, you'll be chair of a committee.

I don't see that with you at all.

You didn't take any time to sort of just come out, just say like it is, call out people.

Is

just motivation, nature, nurture.

Was this mom and dad?

Was this who you were as a kid?

Or is this who, you know, life is sort of, you know,

is the world sort of creating your, I mean, are you sort of meeting this moment because you're so in, you're just, you need to be held to a higher level of accountability.

because you need to call out what the hell is going on.

Yeah, well, governor, you've been involved in politics for a very long time.

And

with that,

you have seen a lot of different types of politicians.

People enter this arena with different goals.

And I can tell you that I was not born into a family that was super involved in politics.

My parents voted for sure, but they never aspired to be politicians.

They never pushed me to be a politician.

I never took one poli-side class when I was in college.

I was not interested whatsoever.

And so I think every once in a while, you do run across some of those that have literally said, this moment calls for me to step up.

And who knows what will happen?

And ultimately, like, that's the story of me being involved in politics.

Even by the time I got to the state house, And I was so happy to be there.

It was the closest state house race.

I was the barely state representative in the state of Texas.

I always tell people I I was a thank you, Lottie, into the state house.

I won my election by a mere 90 votes.

I think that was the ultimate number.

And so I won by 90 votes.

And I was an underdog.

I was outspent five to one, but I was not outworked.

And I was able to convince about 300 volunteers to get involved in a state house race, which was unprecedented, but people believed in my vision and they believed in my grit and grind and it was only after one term in the state house that i was called up to the federal level which i had no intention whatsoever of going to that was not my aspiration even though so many people use these positions as stepping stones um to get somewhere else that they're trying to get to in fact i remember people telling me like oh you can't be a state rep you got to go be like city council first and i was like why i was like i don't want to do city stuff like i want to do the state stuff So why would I do that?

And to me, it does a disservice for the people that you're serving if you're literally just there trying to get somewhere else.

And so when I got called by my predecessor, along with the former ambassador under Clinton, and so many other people were calling.

And I tell people all the time that God has to yell at me to get me to move.

But they were like, you, you should, you should go to Congress.

And I was like, No, I was like, I just, you know, barely got out of this election.

I don't want to sign up for another hard one.

um and i knew it was going to be difficult because my predecessor is the only person that ever served um the district uh she was actually in the texas senate and she was on the redistricting committee when this seat was created and so she then ran for the seat and she served for 30 years on the federal level and so there have been people waiting for decades to run for this seat.

And so there ended up being 10 of us.

But I believed that for whatever reason, God was really saying, no, you've got to do it, even though you don't really want to do it.

And never did I imagine a scenario where I would be one of 435

and a freshman where anyone would know my name.

When you talk to the average person and you ask them, name, you know, five, name 10 members of the house, they can't do it.

So why would I think that somehow I would end up in this situation and as i told the story at the dnc about my encounter my first in-person encounter with the vice president i i was really struggling with whether or not i really had done the right thing i mean i had gone through a lot i won

i didn't really know that i was really fitting and i just didn't know And I still struggle.

I'll be honest.

I still struggle.

I don't struggle like I initially did because when I go home or even when i go other places

whether it is kids that have no ability whatsoever to vote but love me and are telling me that they're watching me and i'm like what is wrong with your parents because i sometimes say things that i shouldn't um you know but like them being inspired or whether it is how everything unfolded with the marjorie taylor green scenario and having like black women executives that are sitting in these rooms and these tables where the micro and and sometimes macro aggressions are so real with their colleagues, but feeling like, you know what, if the congresswoman could stand in her power, I can stand in mine.

Now, you know, the advice is not to call anybody a butch body or a big back or nothing, but

nevertheless, like letting them know that you want power because you know that you had to work so hard to get in those rooms.

And so, like, understanding my impact on the outside gives me my fuel to stay on the inside, but it's tough because, as you know, how these systems work, it is a matter of, well, you got to be here forever.

And that's how you'll get something done.

And I'm like, I'm not here to be here forever.

Like, I didn't know I'd be here at all, right?

So, I need to make the best of this moment.

And I think that it does a disservice to my constituents to say, well, unfortunately, since I just got here, nothing's going to happen.

Like, that's not full representation whatsoever.

So,

you know, I think if enough people

push against the system, then you can start to reshape the system.

But we still got a lot of pushing to do.

We love your clarity, your conviction, love your authenticity.

And Republicans have been watching, and that's why they have, you're, I mean, this, let's, let's, and we'll end on this.

They're trying to end your political career in Texas.

One of the five maps that they've put forward excludes your current district, right?

You would no longer be quote-unquote living in the district that they're redrawing.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, so what they did is they drew me out of my district.

But since it's federal, I can run anywhere in the state.

So, so long as there is a seat,

I could most likely run anywhere in the state.

But right now,

the seat that they drew me into is also a Democratic seat.

And then my old seat is still a Democratic seat.

So I feel confident that if I decide that I'm going back to the House, that I'll be able able to go back to the house.

The thing is, we have three Democrats that served the Dallas area, the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And now there's only two seats for Democrats to really kind of be able to run in.

And so I've got to have a conversation with my colleagues to figure out, you know, what are we doing and where.

Yeah, but I'm probably in.

to be honest, I'm probably in the best situation of the three of us

because both seats are easy enough for me to win.

And at least I live in one and I used to represent the other.

The other two colleagues that I have are both in Republican drawn seats now.

So they would have to run from outside of their districts or move

to make people feel comfortable with like them representing their areas.

And tell the truth, I, you know, I'd be remiss.

A lot of rumors about the United States Senate.

And I mean, just just you've had to have some conversations about it, right?

I have, I mean, I will tell you that there are always people that are, you know, yelling and screaming for me to go higher.

I will tell you, ever since I got to the house, they were yelling and screaming for me to go higher.

And I can tell you that even when I was a freshman, they did not want me to seek re-election, but instead go after Ted Cruz.

And I was like, I just got here.

I'm not going to do that.

And so obviously Colin Allred went after Ted Cruz and Colin Allred is now going again

after most likely Paxton

and Paxson makes the seat vulnerable but it would have to be I will tell you that if I were to run for Senate it would be because I am convinced of the data that my team not external data, but the data that my team is able to pull together that shows that I can do it.

And I think that anyone who believes that they can win the Texas Senate seat without expanding the electorate, they already have lost.

Because when we look at the electorate, it always goes one way.

And so you have to have the ability to expand.

And I also agree with Beto Arourke, who believes that we need an actual ticket.

We typically run and whoever is at the top of the ticket is like it,

instead of really having like a very strong ticket where different people people can bring together different constituencies, so there would be a lot that would go into it.

It is not impossible to do in Texas.

It is definitely a difficult hill to climb, but I just don't really know where we're going in this country when you know we've got a 34-account convicted felon in the White House and we've got

a guy who was impeached by his own party that is leading the way who was under felony indictment

for almost a decade and who had been under federal investigation forever.

And he's their leading candidate to be the next senator from the state of Texas.

It just seems like there is no low that some of these people just won't go just to say.

that they have a Republican versus looking at people's policies and figuring out who will do best by me, regardless of the label that is on them.

And I want people going forward.

One of the things that I said during the last campaign is: I want people to be selfish.

I want you to be selfish and decide that you're going to look at what somebody is going to do for you.

And if they don't have an answer about why you don't have health care in rural America, they may not be your candidate.

If they don't have an answer about where you are going to get new markets as they are cutting out government funding for things such as USAID with these contracts contracts where we were getting farmers to actually farm and then sell those items and then send them over.

Where we know that our free school lunches are about to be decimated as well.

And so many farmers had contracts with so many schools.

Or

I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

And so it is time for people to be selfish and decide that they, first of all, understand what government is supposed to do, which government isn't supposed to take you to church.

If you need to go to church, go find your pastor.

And I'm down for it because I love my pastor.

I ride with my pastor.

My pastor shows up for me.

I am not saying there's anything wrong with it.

But if you are seeking a good church and a good spiritual leader, go to church.

If you are seeking this thing that we refer to as separation of government and church or church and state, then you probably need to go find you an actual statesman who absolutely understands what it is to take care of us in this country and make sure that we've got a strong economy and that we are investing in our future so that we can remain that beacon of hope for the entire world.

I love it.

Well, it's faith and works, as they say.

As you pray, move your feet.

And we've been watching you and it's remarkable to see your success.

And I think everybody listening knows why you are quote unquote one of the rising stars, as most observers have acknowledged in the Democratic Party, and why Donald Trump himself, Congresswoman, yes, get over it, called you the future of the Democratic Party.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thanks.

Be honest, how many tabs do you have open right now?

Too many?

Sounds like you need close all tabs from KQED, where I, Morgan Sung, Doom Scroll so you don't have to.

Every week, we scour the internet to bring you deep dives that explain how the digital world connects and divides us all.

Everyone's cooped up in their house.

I will talk to this robot.

If you're a truly engaged activist, the government already has data on you.

Driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

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The song stands about an obsessed fan who's taking me too literal.

From Eminem and the producers of 8 Mile.

Never seen anything like Eminem fans.

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I do have an addiction to Eminem.

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Without Eminem, I wouldn't have the life I have right now.

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Stans, new documentary streaming August 26th on Paramount Plus.

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