Politics Chat, May 12, 2026

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-20

[00:00:11]Welcome to Politics Chat in which I try to answer your questions about modern politics.

[00:00:29]Hey folks, today is Tuesday, May 12th, and I'm pre-recording politics chat today because I'm booked tonight at the usual time. And there's some things that people really need to hear about um that that people call my attention to over the last couple of days. But let me start in a place um that is not that so much as the main story in the United States. and and I would even argue the globe right now is that Trump is mentally not okay if you are following his postings on social media which you can do from a couple of websites that don't involve going to his own um social media site you will see he's posting most of the night and the stuff he is posting is lots of it is AI slob but there are certain patterns to it that are really quite interesting and one of those patterns is that last night for example example, he posted many, many, many times referring to the people who looked into the ties between his 26 presidential campaign and Russian operatives as being traitors and calling for their immediate arrest, including former President Barack Obama. This is interesting in a number of ways because the ties between his campaign and Russian operatives are very clear. Even the Republican dominated Senate Intelligence Committee said that there were ties and for the first time I think in its history, the only time in its history, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously agreed on that. So there is there you know this is this is actually quite well established but it's interesting that he is worried about it now and it may be in part because uh former director of the FBI James Comey is more in the news and you can see him more frequently than you could before Trump brought him back into popularity by getting his um Department of Justice to charge him criminally for posting a photograph of seashells spelling out 8647. seven. It may simply be um because he's seeing a lot of him and a lot of um other people involved in going after those ties in the news. So, he might just simply be reacting to that. But it is also interesting that sort of in the peripheral vision of the United States at least should be what's happening in Russia with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This weekend was Russia's May 9th victory day which marked its triumph over Nazi Germany and it is tend you know it tends to be a really major event in Russia and Putin had to do such a scaled down parade this year out of concerns about the reach of Ukrainian drones that it really made him look terribly terribly weak. And as a number of people who follow Russian politics say, there's one thing that any leader, but certainly not a Russian leader, can project its weakness. And so Rick Wilson, who is a never Trump or used to be a Republican, uh had a really interesting piece about Putin over the weekend and about what it looks like to watch Putin's rule start to deteriorate.

[00:03:48]And this is not to say he's falling tomorrow, but you can see that things are in real trouble in Russia for him.

[00:03:54]He's losing huge numbers of men and the front lines against um Ukraine for his uh 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Remember that he invaded first in 2014. Now again, we've got 20 the 2022 invasion which has now lasted longer than the Soviet war against the Nazis and the people that he's losing and that front line. Um, you know, he's lost more than 1.2 million Russian soldiers either to wounds or to death, which means that virtually everybody in Russia knows somebody who has been wounded or killed in that war for very little to show for it. And the economy is also collapsing in Russia. So Rick Wilson had this really interesting piece where he said you know when uh Putin collapses and he had a number of um scenarios for what the interregnum period will be between uh Putin's collapse and the rise of a stable a new stable government in Russia. But one of the things he points out is that when that sort of iron fist is no longer in the Kremlin, what you will see is different people trying to buy favor with other countries. And one of the things that we can expect to have happen will be the drip drip drip of information about the ties of the Trump organization and the Trump family to Russian operatives. And that may also be something that at least is in the back of Trump's mind because he has watched the fall of Victor Orban who was a close Trump ally and a close Putin ally who was just rejected from the leadership of Hungary by more than twothirds of the votes of the Hungarian people in a system that many people thought had been swn up for Orban. and he is also watching uh Putin's victory day parade sort of crumble and Putin basically having to go to him and ask Trump to get the Ukrainians to let him have a victory parade. Trump has to see that his strength on the national in the international scale on the international stage looks as if it is um not in the position that he thought it was going to be when he threw his lot in with uh Trump and I'm sorry with Putin in 2016 by doing things like changing the Republican national platform in favor of uh Russia away from Ukraine. And you know, I've written about that a lot. If anybody is interested, you know, when I say this stuff, you can usually search my old writings all for free either on Substack or I will say that Google and Facebook are better at searching those um those documents than Substack is and put in an unusual word. So if you put something like uh Republican National Platform 2016 along with my name, that material would come up if you're interested. All right. So, the first thing to that is really the overarching story here is Trump's mental health. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about how that affects us in a minute.

[00:07:01]But the really big story I wanted to get to today and make sure I paid attention to was something that three people have now written to me about. And I thank you because I confess it had not occurred to me that people were unclear about this.

[00:07:14]And that is with all of the stories in the news about the Supreme Court okaying these gerrymanders that get rid of black majority districts in the American South and with the idea of the Virginia state supreme court overturning the referendum that the Virginia voters passed a few weeks ago getting rid of the gerrymander that would have flipped a number of seats to Democratic. A lot of people are not sure that they can still vote. And a lot of people have written to me and say saying, you know, what does this mean?

[00:07:47]What does a gerrymander mean? Does it mean that I can't vote? No, it does not.

[00:07:53]No, it does not. Your vote is still your most important voice. And I would urge you to make sure that you and all your family members are registered and to check that registration frequently because a lot of people are getting tossed off those roles. And I may or may not talk about how and why that's happening today, but let me explain what's going on right now. So, the Republican party since at least 2010, 2010, not more recently, you know, not this isn't a new phenomenon, has been doing something called gerrymandering, which is a stupid word. It actually comes from um Elbridge Gary. I don't, you know, it's one of those things that's how you pronounce his name, but they call it gerrymandering. go figure um from Massachusetts in the very early days of the republic because he actually opposed gerrymandering but he put his stamp on it of approval when he was the governor of Massachusetts way way way back a million years ago. So it's got that weird name just because it's named for Elbridge Gary. I like I say, go figure. Welcome to English, right? But what it means is that when the state legislature divides up the the pieces of the state for the purposes of voting in these cases in voting for the House of Representatives, they gather voters in such a way that it maximizes the chance that voters will be able to put in this case Republicans into the House of Representatives.

[00:09:27]So what they do is called either cracking or packing. And what that means is that if you have, for example, in Memphis, Tennessee, a city that is predominantly black and predominantly votes Democratic, um, you break that up and you take, what they did in in Memphis is they divided Memphis into thirds and they took that group of black Americans and they put them together with white suburbs so that there would be more Republican voters than Democratic voters in those districts. And therefore, instead of there being a Democrat representing uh Tennessee, representing Memphis in the House of Representatives as there is now, there would there will be a Republican now. There'll be, you know, it's divided so that instead of there being a black district that has been divided, that has been cracked into three Republican districts. So those black voters, those Democratic voters will not actually be able to elect a Democrat unless something profound changes. And I'll talk about that in a minute. The other thing you can do is called packing. And that's when you you really really really work to get members of one political party or another into the same district.

[00:10:48]And they have done that again in at least one state. And off the top of my head, I don't remember what it is, by creating a district that is more than 200 miles long. And you can see this really dramatically in Ohio in the district that returns Jim Jordan to uh the House of Representatives because it I mean it just it goes all over the place. And what they've done is they've managed to pack enough Republicans together that they can elect Jim Jordan. Now again, districts ideally would reflect the people in that area. It doesn't mean that they would 100% be neutral in every election. In fact, in W u Michigan when they were recently doing a nonpartisan redistricting, there are a number of districts that do in fact lean Republican in that state, but they would be Democratic in other states simply because of the nature of the the demographics who are there and the industries that are there and the geology that is there, geography that is there. Um, you know, it it doesn't necessarily mean you would absolutely have 50/50 everywhere, but that the districts would reflect the people who were in them rather than being arranged in such a way that they managed to pack all of a series of voters into a a group so that the politicians who were already in power can stay in power. And what's happened with this um gerrymandering since 2010 is that fewer and fewer and fewer districts in the United States are actually up for grabs that you get a district like the one that Marjorie Taylor Green used to represent in Georgia. It was so overwhelmingly Republican that you could have an extremist like her get elected because there just so many Republicans packed in there that it just didn't matter who they put up. And what that does is it creates a situation where the general election doesn't really matter because you know who's going to win. what matters is the primary and certainly in the Republican primary. Uh of late the trend has been to go more and more and more extreme because you don't want to be um primared out by Trump. You know, he'll just throw money at that district and you'll get somebody who is a proTrumper. And so that what it's done is it's made the Republican party more and more and more and more extreme.

[00:13:13]So what the Supreme Court did last uh on April 29th with the Louisiana v. Cala decision was it um said that the provisions that the US courts and Congress had previously made to guarantee that this couldn't be done in the American South where there was a history of discrimination against black voting, black and brown voting. um the the attempt to make sure that you could district in those states in such a way that black Americans would be represented. They said that was unconstitutional and that I just have to say is so deeply problematic. I have promised you a real deep dive into this and I will get it to you, but uh I just I want to do it right and so far I have been doing other stuff and haven't really been able to do that. I'll I I've probably managed to do it this week. Um so what that is doing is it's enabling those southern states now the legislators in the southern states to redistrict those states in such a way that they are diluting the black vote to make it basically everybody in a white dominated district. But what that will do is it will create um they're saying between 12 and 15 seats that are Democratic in the American South now will become Republican and we will have once again what's known as the solid south and what the solid South is um comes from the re period of reconstruction in which only it's a one party region and the people who oppose that one party are not represented in the government and that matters. ers um for a number of reasons, not least because it means that those people in power don't really have oversight and they become unbelievably corrupt um even more so than they already are. But if you look at a number of states right now that are essentially one party states like Mississippi, like Louisiana, I'm sorry, uh like Florida, you can see that corruption already running rampant in those states. So when you when people talk about, you know, what happened and do I have the right to vote? Absolutely, you do have the right to vote. And let me be really clear, this gerrymandering does not apply to the US Senate. Senate votes are statewide, which is how you do things like you end up with Georgia right now having two Democratic senators and a Republican delegation from for the House of Representatives because they weren't able to redistrict in such a way that it would stop Democrats from being elected to the Senate. and it does not apply to the presidency because once again those are not that is not voted by district. So the the other piece you need to know about gerrymandering and about voting is that a number of the Republican gerrymanders, primarily the ones in Texas that have happened in the in, you know, since Trump insisted they do so because he's terrified of losing the midterms, um might be what we call dummy manders. And that's what happens when a legislature gerrymanders and it turns out they're wrong. And one of the things about the Texas gerrymanders is that they did those gerrymanders based on the idea that Latino voters in Texas would continue to support Trump the way they did in 2024.

[00:16:41]since they did the the gerrymandering in Texas, the redistricting in uh in the in last year, uh there have been a couple of special elections in Texas that show that Latinos have flipped from Trump in extraordinarily high numbers. So, if those people turn out to vote, those gerrymanders might be dummy manders, which means that rather than going for Republicans, they will go for Democrats.

[00:17:08]and the the Republicans have essentially thrown away those Republican votes which will help other districts in Texas. So, this idea that you shouldn't show up to vote is absolutely wrong. Now, one of the other things that somebody said to me that I think is so important that did not once again occur to me is when you go to vote, it can be really confusing.

[00:17:31]Not the process. The process is actually quite welcoming. um the the your polling place is um you know the people who are working there tend to want you to vote like a lot of people outside there don't but if you've volunteered to work at the polls generally you have a really committed sense of civic engagement and you know they're really friendly people um and they're trying not to make it difficult for you but the system in many ways does make it difficult because you get these ballots and they're long and and all of a sudden there's stuff in there that you're thinking I didn't know I was voting for uh I don't know what's one of the ones that used to show up on one of my ballots. I don't know, some office I didn't even know existed. And you can get really overwhelmed and not know what to do. Please remember and tell your your friends who are nervous about voting that you can go online and you can print out those ballots and you can read them ahead of time and you can look at what these different issues mean and you can even sit at home and you can you can decide how you're going to vote.

[00:18:31]Now, you can't bring in a filled out ballot, but you can figure out what you care about and what's going to happen.

[00:18:38]And I believe in most jurisdictions, you can actually take those papers in so that you can check against them um when you when you fill out your ballot. Now, check to make sure that's true, but don't feel like you have to make snap decisions there on things like who your local district attorney is going to be or whatever. It is also fine. Um, although I I discourage you from doing this. You don't have to fill out the whole ballot if you don't know who you want to elect for a minor office you've never heard about. Don't fill that out.

[00:19:10]Although, I will say that one of the big differences between Republicans and Democrats is Republicans fill out the whole ballot. Democrats tend to fall away and just do a couple of like a couple of races. And where your vote matters extraordinarily is at the local and the state level. So, I don't recommend doing that. But what I really don't want to see is people deciding not to vote because they're they don't quite understand if gerrymandering means their vote counts. Yes, your vote does count.

[00:19:37]It just it just means that you may not get who you want. Um or not or being afraid to vote because it seems really overwhelming when you get in there and all of a sudden you're like, I didn't expect to have to write more in peace here. You can look at the ballots ahead of time and go in prepared. Now, with the gerrymandering that the Republicans are doing right now, G. Elliot Morris of Strength and Numbers pointed out a few days ago that the Democrats will have to win uh by four points in the House of Representative across the board in order to have equal representation in the House, which is just not fair and one of the things that we're going to have to take on in terms of fixing our democracy. And that's the other thing I would say here is, you know, anything that the Democrats can do at this point to keep the playing field level is overdue. And I would urge you to to hold your state officials accountable for the end of gerrymandering and for and for all, you know, for God's sake, show up for elections for the state supreme courts. There's an election coming up on May 19th in Georgia um to because people are who care about supporting democracy are not turning out for Supreme Court, state Supreme Court elections and as a result the rightwing has taken over a number of them and they're the ones who are allows allowing uh the gerrymandering like we're seeing thanks to the Supreme Court in u in Virginia.

[00:21:09]So, in terms of should you vote, absolutely. Make sure you're registered.

[00:21:13]Make sure everybody you know is registered and make sure you turn up because you want to send a really strong message. Now, there's a lot more I have to say about voting and about gerrymandering, but there's a couple more things that I want to get into today.

[00:21:28]Um, oh, I also want to point out here on this front, uh, yesterday, I think it was within the last couple of days, the Supreme Court actually threw out, um, and and permitted Alabama to go forward with uh, they threw out a recent map and permitted Alabama to go forward in the upcoming elections with a map that in 2023 it found um, unconstitutional because it just it so obviously discriminated against black voters. I mean, essentially what we're doing here is we're reading black Americans out of the body politic and that um that has enormous political repercussions of course, but it is I think part of a larger project uh that the Trump administration is undertaking to rewrite our entire history to say we are a white Christian nation, which we have never been. And that's the sort of thing that makes my hair catch on fire. Not only because of the extraordinary fights that people have made throughout our history to guarantee that everybody in this country has a voice. And by having a voice, I don't simply mean being able to speak up and being able to have newspapers and so on, although that's very important. but also being able to vote literally to have a say in our society and erasing when I think about I have to say when I think about erasing the black vote the way that's going on right now there are many people I could think about but if you don't know who Fanny Liu Hamer is you should go look her up because Fanny Liu Hamer was a sharecropper in the American South in Mississippi who um just you know was she was a sharecropper she and she um picked cotton and she tried to register to vote. She actually took a bus to register to vote. And when she got home, her landlord said, "You got to you got to stop doing this or I'm going to kick you out." And she said, "I have a right to have a say." And so she didn't. She literally got thrown off her out of her home because she wanted to vote. And in the process of trying to get the vote for herself and for other black Americans, the law enforcement, the local law enforcement beat her almost to death. She never recovered from the injuries of the beatings that she took for that. But what she did is she went on to insist on the right of all Americans, especially black Americans, to vote. and she organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 that challenged the Mississippi Democratic Party, which was a segregationist party at the time, and was so vocal about it and so powerful about it that Lynden Johnson, who was president at the time and trying to keep the Democrats together, called a press conference to try and make sure that when she spoke, people didn't hear her.

[00:24:25]It didn't work. Actually, everybody heard her on replay later. And you think about the fact that this woman had the extraordinary courage and love for America that she not only lost her home but was beaten almost to death for that. to have these six individuals in black robes that barely cover the white robes under them declaring that black voting doesn't matter anymore is not only I think an affront to our history um and to our people but to the morality and the principles that have made America great. So that is the larger story of what's going on here. Um but again I'm I'm not going to focus more on that right now except to say my efforts are going to be as part of uh taking back America fighting that. But it seems to me there is a huge question here and that is why on earth are the Republicans going along with all of this? And by all of this, I'm going to start I'm going to go back to where I started with a president who is unhinged. He is simply unhinged. And and before you think about partisanship or anything else, just imagine if a president that you loved and you can think throughout our history did the sorts of things that Trump is doing, how you would react to that. And I think about um you know the anti-semitism of somebody like Ulissiz Srant which was uh you know a deal breakaker for a lot of people. I think about um you know you can you can think about individual things that presidents have done. None of them have been so insanely bonkers as this president is. And yet the Republicans are going along with it.

[00:26:34]And I think that that illustrates, you know, people take a look at the politics that it illustrates. You know, they're afraid he's going to primary them. They don't want him to twe tweet meanly about them. You know, they don't want to see it. They don't want the, you know, I've heard all kinds of excuses.

[00:26:49]But at the end of the day, I think what we are seeing is those Republicans who continue to cling to Trump at this point have given up not only on the idea of democracy, but have embraced the idea that any kind of uh representation by Democrats voted in by the majority of the American people is unacceptable.

[00:27:16]that they are convinced that their version of what America should be is the only one that can exist.

[00:27:26]And so they look at the vast majority of us because at this point Trump's underwater on everything. 70% of Americans disapprove of the way he is handling the economy as of this morning.

[00:27:39]70%.

[00:27:41]His job approval rating is in the low30s.

[00:27:45]They are looking at the fact that the vast majority of Americans don't want this and they're saying we don't care because we are the ones who should decide what America should look like.

[00:27:56]And that involves a number of things. I think for a lot of people it involves white supremacy. For others it involves Christian nationalism. But I think for a lot of Republicans it literally means a country where wealth is concentrated among a very very small group of people.

[00:28:13]because the Republican project since 1981 has centered has has moved about more than $50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90% to the top 1% and those top 1% do not want to give that money up. And so when I look at the larger story right now of the fact that the Republican party is at this point gleefully taking away the right of Americans to have a say in their government, taking away the ability of Americans to vote for Democrats to to have Democrats win.

[00:28:50]And they are saying to us, you no longer have the right to have a say in your government. Because what that will do is it'll mean we'll have universal health care. We'll have better education. We'll be able to buy houses. We'll be able to have enough economic security that we don't have to do what a very small group of people want us to do. And they don't want any part of that. And one of the things that the echoes that I see doing what I do is that this is the exact same argument we heard in the 1890s. It is the exact same argument we heard in the 1850s from elite enslavers. And that recognition that what is at stake right now is the ability of Americans as a whole, this is not partisan, but Americans as a whole to have a say in their government is at stake. And this is the time for all of us who want to have that say to recognize that we must band together or we will lose that ability. And one of the things that I always emphasize is there's a lot of nose holding going on right now. Finding yourself on the same side of an issue with somebody that you really don't like and that has perhaps caused you harm in the past is difficult. And I'm speaking for myself on that one. Um, but I think you can probably all empathize.

[00:30:18]Um, but I will point out that we are in such a period of flux. there are a lot of issues that are going to be extraordinarily important going forward where the lines aren't set. And so, you know, you look at things like um the attempt of the administration to buy these huge concentration camps, these warehouses for human beings. And the opposition to those is bipartisan.

[00:30:42]Now whether people are opposing it because they care about human rights or because they care about the water and sewer use doesn't really matter so much as that they oppose it in this at this point. Similarly, people are complaining now about data centers which have really been sprung on us and which really seem to be um detrimental to the lives of communities whether because of their energy use and their water use or because of their noise or because of the pollution that they put forward. And those are bipartisan issues. Bipartisan issues. Americans would really love to have healthcare. You know, they would really love to have clean water and clean air. And that's one of the places again you've got bipartisan agreement that we don't want the administration selling off our public lands to a very few very wealthy investors. So if you have to hold your nose now over issues that um that have long been near and dear to you in order to create a a coalition that will enable us to fight back against this moment and that will maybe take us out of this moment with different alignments. This is the time and and believe me if it's killing you in many ways it's killing me too but this is what we are going to have to do because it is all on the line now. And I will point out that um as we are looking at um the midterms coming up and the attempts of the Dem of the Republicans to commandeer the the midterms so that they can't lose them. What's really going on there is interesting because Trump is the one behind this because he is terrified of a Democratic House of Representatives because he thinks it's going to start u more hearings that actually the Democrats are already holding hearings by the way. It's going to have more hearings and they're going to have teeth in them. So right now, for example, the committee on uh oversight and reform is actually chaired by James Comr of Kentucky, a Republican who's now at this point saying that none of the people who are coming in to talk to it have to be under oath. Well, I've talked a lot about what it means to be under oath um when you're testifying in front of Congress. you know, you you that matters and the Republicans are masters at going out in front of TV cameras and saying whatever comes into their mouths without feeling like there's going to be any repercussions. Whereas once you're under oath it in front of Congress, it's a really different story and you can tell the difference there. Always pay attention to who's speaking under oath.

[00:33:12]The Democrats are going to insist that people are under oath and they're going to insist that people show up, which the Republicans have been letting go. So, um Trump doesn't want that to happen. Um but that's going to be really interesting because one of the things that the Republicans did under the um what they call the one big beautiful bill act, the budget reconciliation act of July 2025 was they set a lot of the cuts in that bill to happen after the midterms. So, I looked it up this morning and uh after the midterms and there have been a lot of cuts already, but after the midterms, there are dramatic cuts to the to limits on student loans there or dramatic limits on student loans. Um, and there are dramatic cuts on the supplemental nutrition assistance program and to Medicaid.

[00:34:02]Those things are were all designed to come into play after the Democrats took the House so that voters would blame the Democrats. But if the Republicans retain control over Congress, that's going to be a really hard one to spin. And it should be a hard one to spin anyway. So, this may be a case where if they do manage to shut the Democrats out of the House of Representatives, it ends up um backfiring on them. There is also um the the problem for the Republicans right now that Trump is demanding loyalty at a time when, as I say, he is extraordinarily unpopular. And just this morning, Republicans in the Senate have said they will back, can't believe this, that they will back the $1 billion demand for additional security investments in Trump's, I'm sorry, expletive ballroom. That's a billion dollars of your money and my money going into Trump's damn ballroom. The one that he uh is insisting he gets to build after he took a freaking bulldozer to the east wing of the White House. Now, that kind of thing is, first of all, I I a billion dollars is a billion dollars, right? Um, that kind of thing sticks with a lot of voters who might not necessarily paying such close attention to the actual percentage of the degree to which inflation is up. And I think this summer is going to be a a really big fight over what the Republicans are actually doing with our money. And and I will say if you look at where we are and and I actually spent quite a long time this morning doing it between the Iran war which is costing us more than a billion dollars a day and at this point has resulted in the US uh looking extraordinarily weak and Russ I'm sorry um Iran gaining uh real power now in the region it was in. It was actually a failing power before Trump decided along with Benjamin Netanyahu to get involved. Um, now it actually has control over the straight of Hormuz. And just this morning it's announced that that straight is a great deal bigger than the area it's claiming is a great deal bigger than just the straight. That has of course weakened the United States and dramatically empowered China. Um so in addition to that uh the the national debt is skyrocketing just skyrocketing because one of the things that the one big beautiful bill did is it extended uh the the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. You've got cuts to Medicare. You've got cuts to the supplemental nutrition assistance program. You're getting cuts across the board for things that Americans actually like. And I look at this and I think this is not a political situation that is going to end up in the long term benefiting the Republican party. I look at it and I think, you know, if you are paying any attention at all, even if there's an R by your name, man, it's time to speak up. If you care at all about the things that make your life sustainable, um we're looking at a summer and a following several years in which we're going to have to make this work for us or it's never going to work for us again. And I and I will point out on that front that not only do we have the example in front of us of Hungary and now of Ukraine, which has been on the ropes for a number of years and has turned that around with its extraordinary drone program, which is now pushing back Russians, the Russian incursion. We also have that history in our own past. You know, if you looked at America in the 1850s or in the 1890s or even in the 1920s, it looked like in fact that very small group of very rich Americans were going to win. And what happened in all of those periods is we got the people who caring who cared about democracy to begin to spread information in new ways to people who weren't paying attention, who just kind of knew stuff was off, but they didn't really get why. and maybe it didn't matter about voting because the system was rigged anyway and and all that. Once people started to pay attention and recognized in the 1890s, for example, that the railroads really determined whether or not you could get your crops to market or a very few industrialists decided whether or not you were going to have enough pay that you could keep your children from working in the factories.

[00:38:43]Once they started to realize that, once that news spread and they realized that they had the agency to vote and change it, in each of those periods, we got a dramatic reworking of American democracy that expanded rights for everybody. So in the 1850s, we get the rise of the Republican party. And then we get the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the United States, including the Department of Justice, I'm sorry, as well as the Department of Justice, 1870, and the prosecution of the Ku Klux Clan. After the 1890s, we get the rise of the progressive era and the calls all the way back then, not only for the cleaning up of the cities and the protection of America's lands, but also for expanded education and universal health care. She didn't get it. We got a call from it from a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt.

[00:39:29]Then in the 1930s, of course, we get the New Deal. We get the and what Eisenhower then calls the middle way is the Republican side of that. That's the idea that the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, protecting civil rights, and backing a rules-based international order that will stabilize the world and prevent another world war. So, I look at this moment here and recognize that we're in really deep dudu, but that that looks very much like the kinds of worlds that were being imposed on Americans in the past that they rose up and overcame uh to create a much more uh just, prosperous and fair democracy and that's our job going forward. So yes, you should register to vote. Yes, you should vote and make sure your registrations are uh are accurate going forward. Yes, you should stay ab breast of the issues, state, local, and national. Yes, you should print out those ballots and and and decide how you want to vote. Um, all of those things are true, but above all, yes, you must continue to speak up over this long hot summer with your voices, with calls to legislators, with attending meetings, with protesting in the streets. Now is our time. And what you don't want to do is wake up the day after the election and say, "Oh, darn it. I wish I had done more." All right, I got to run. I thank you for being here and I will see you again soon.

[00:41:21]If you'd like to tune in live, I record these chats on Tuesday and Thursday at 6 PM main time on both my YouTube channel and my Facebook page. If you want to hear more from me, I write letters from an American every night. It's available on Substack and on Facebook. And the audio version of the nightly letter is available the following day wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, on Saturday mornings, I talk with Dr. Joanne Freeman, the historian of the early republic, professor and dear friend about history and politics. We call our talks What the Heck Just Happened? and you can find them on YouTube.

[00:42:04]Politics Chat is produced by Lauren Westfall. Music by Andrea Vonampen.