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10 Minute Drill
Texas Redistricting fight escalates; The real reason for the outrage over Sydney Sweeneys Jeans
00:13:01
August 7 | TikTok Texans Implode, Newsom’s Gerrymander Grab, and the Truth Behind the Sydney Sweeney Outrage On today’s episode of The 10 Minute Drill: – The TikTok Texans’ redistricting stunt unravels as Gov. Greg Abbott moves to remove AWOL...
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Host 1
Checking back in on the latest with the TikTok Texans who have fled to other blue states to fight back against Texas redistricting. We're going to talk about the real reason behind the outrage against Sydney Sweeney and the American Eagle ad campaign. We're going to talk about the latest with Gavin Newsom. We're going to talk about the latest with Tim Waltz. That and so much more today on 10 Minute Drill.
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Co-host 1
Everybody get up. Get up.
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Host 1
The story of America is the story of an adventure.
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Barack Obama
I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. We are a nation, and I believe God intended for us to be free.
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Host 1
Yesterday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott began the process of removing from office the Democrats who have fled their state and left in the middle of their special session. Meanwhile, their media tour is running into some major speed bumps. First, here is Texas Democrat James Tallarico getting flummoxed over questions about what they are missing out on by skipping out on their special session.
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Co-host 1
That includes this bill for flood assistance for those Texans who were impacted by those devastating floods on July 4th. Are you concerned that all of this could ultimately be a mistake if that legislation also becomes a victim of this? This is a Republican talking point. But the reality is. But representative. The reality is the consequence of the decision, regardless of whether or not it's a talking point, is that this bill is not going to advance. Is that a bad thing if this bill doesn't advance?
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Host 1
You'll remember the tragedy of major floods that ran through Texas and left billions of dollars of damage in their wake. One of the things that Texas Democrats are skipping out on, besides voting on redistricting, is aid and relief for flood victims in the state. Another Texas Democrat caused quite a stir when she compared redistricting to the Holocaust.
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Co-host 2
And I will liken this to the Holocaust. People are like, well, how did the Holocaust happen? How is somebody in a position to kill all them people? Well, good people remain silent.
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Host 1
Or she later walked that back. That was a mistake and I apologize for it. Trump is coming from my community and I get emotional about it and make strong statements. But that was going too far. And I retract that comparison. Just as in 2021, this has become a comedy of errors because these Texas state legislators are not particularly good at communications and public relations. But it's not just the Texas Democrats. Other Democrats are having trouble defending what the Texas Democrats are attempting to do here. Here's JB Pritzker on the Colbert Report.
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Barack Obama
You already have some crazy districts in Illinois. Take a look at this. Look at 17 here it does that. Then it comes up here and it sneaks around there and goes all the way up here and then goes right over there like that. And look at, look at, look at this one kind of goes whoop up there. It's like the stinger on a scorpion down here. Is this common for all states to.
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Host 1
Do when Stephen Colbert is calling out a Democrat? You know, things have gotten pretty bad. But not to be outdone, here's another Illinois Democrat, Representative Mike Quigley.
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Co-host 1
You can't have unilateral disarmament. You have to fight fire with fire. Otherwise the Republicans will rig the election.
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Host 1
Now, as you hear Mike Quigley talk about the need to fight fire with fire, take a look at his congressional district up until 2023. Now, to me, that looks a little bit like a cartoon character's head hairline. Take a look at this. Now, after 2023, those lines were redrawn, and now it looks a little bit like this. I believe it looks a little bit like a snake. Another Illinois Democrat jumped into the fray. Former Democrat President Barack Obama. We can't lose focus on what matters right now. Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year's midterm elections. That is a power grab that undermines our democracy. But again, President Obama has never raised issues with this Illinois congressional map undermining democracy even outside of Illinois. Here is Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton have left us no choice. That's the reality when she talks about how they have no choice but to go further. You have to remember, maybe Maura Healey is forgetting the fact that they already have a nine to nothing state because their district lines are so gerrymandered that a Republican has not been elected in the state of Massachusetts for, for 31 years. But another key figure here has been Gavin Newsom, who appears to be using this flap to again try and push forward his presidential ambitions. He wants to undo California's independent redistricting law that was passed overwhelmingly by a bipartisan group of voters in 2010. But what he'd like to do is force the state legislature in the five days they'll have after coming back from August recess to push forward with drawing maps that gerrymander even worse than they already are. Because try and get public comment for it and try and write a ballot initiative for November. Now, again, we've talked about California. About 40% of California voted Republican in 2024, but Republicans are only represented in 17% of the districts in California. So that 40 to 17 disparity is far worse than what Texas is going to get to after they're redistricting. But again, Gavin Newsom's running for president and trying to break the law to forward his ambitions, but by gerrymandering the state even worse. You've likely heard some of the outrage about Sydney Sweeney in the American Eagle jeans campaign where she talks about her great jeans.
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Co-host 2
Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.
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Host 1
You see what I did there, right? But what you might not have heard as much about is the reason for so much of that outrage. And this goes back a number of years. You'll remember that when Bud Light featured Dylan Mulvaney in their beer ads, there was a lot of discussion about what could cause a company like Bud Light to be to make such a hard pivot to the left. What we eventually found out was about the influence of an organization called the Human Rights Campaign and their Corporate Equality Index. The Corporate Equality Index is a scorecard used to try and force corporate America to cater to the political left, rating workplaces on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer equality. Now, this scorecard specifically rates companies, particularly Fortune 500 companies, their advertising and how they feature members of the LGBT community, whether they feature gay couples, whether they feature transgender people. And if companies do not meet a certain score of featuring these groups, they call them homophobic, they call them racist, they call them bigots and run against them and try and hurt their stock prices. This is what Bud Light was facing. And as you look at the outrage right now against American Eagle, remember I A lot of this has to do with the fact that the left is furious that they're losing so much hold over corporate America, their advertising and marketing and their ability to use those to push their agenda on the American people. Politico reported this week that Gavin Newsom is scrambling to make up for the fact that two major refineries in California are leaving the state. Now, Gavin Newsom and California Democrats can't possibly be surprised by this when they've spent the last several years doing everything they could to drive or and gas companies out of the state. First with things like insane Lawfare, where they have tried to hold oil and gas companies accountable financially for things like weather events and things like the LA wildfires that we know oil and gas companies had nothing to do with, but also through policies that have driven up costs for oil and gas companies and made it more difficult for them to operate in the state, now they are taking cues and leaving. And Gavin Newsom has to face the fact that prices are going to go up for Californians to access energy, to do everything from drive their cars to heat their homes. And they're scrambling. That leads us to this incredible Orange County Register editorial. Californians sour on green policies. Now in this editorial they go through polling that highlights something that we've talked about quite a bit. The policies might sound good. At first glance, about 6 in 10 adults, 62% and likely voters, 60%, favor a state law that requires 100% of the state's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2045. It's not too hard to figure out why such a law sounds green. It sounds progressive. And in a state like California, such a combination can go very far without much scrutiny. This is an issue we talk about quite a bit. Things might sound good when they're just presented that way, but when you peel back some of the layers, some of the trade offs that it would require, support starts to wane quite a bit. Then came the follow up question and suddenly you get a very different impression of where Californians actually stand. And as described by the ppic, when asked if they would be willing to pay more for electricity generated by renewable sources such as solar or wind energy, majorities of adults and likely voters say they would not be willing. Indeed, just 40% of Californians said they were willing to pay more for electricity. As soon as the basic follow up question was asked, the sizable majority in support of California's green agenda vanished. This is a dynamic that we've seen across the country. Normal Americans, normal even rank and file Democrats are not nearly as radically progressive on climate issues as their elected representatives, whether they're in Washington, D.C. or in Sacramento. And Democrats are going to continue to find out just how unpopular the trade offs they've tried to force on the American people are. The Wall Street Journal editorial board had a very interesting piece about President Trump's most favored nation prescription drug policies, the political race for fewer cures Trump's MFN Most Favored Nation price controls on drugs will harm US Companies and patients. We all understand the motivation here. It is absurd that Americans are paying so much more for prescription drugs than people in Europe. Part of the challenge there is Europe has instituted price controls where they say we're only going to pay this much for drugs, and Americans have ended up having to foot the cost. One thing that the Wall Street Journal points out is this could have been a great opportunity to include in President Trump's recent trade deal with the European Union and Japan and other countries. They declined to do that. So the Wall Street Journal raises a number of concerns about this policy. First, it misses the mark on what's actually driving health care costs. The biggest driver of health care costs is hospitals. Medicare and Medicaid spent three times as much on hospitals as they did on prescription drugs in 2023. Patient out of pocket spending on prescription Drugs accounts for 1% of U.S. healthcare spending. One other issue that doesn't get a lot of attention is the very tight controls on the patent system for drug companies. So a company might make a lot of money when they create a new drug that's groundbreaking and has incredible results, but their ability to control the patent on that is very short by law. So within just a few years, other companies are coming in creating generics and similar drugs that drive down the cost for everyone. That is the market at work. And it works much more effectively to lower prices for people than price controls. There's also huge concern about China. Right now, China is racing at breakneck speed to try and take over America's dominance in the biopharmaceutical market. China has a lot of built in advantages. The fact that the government is basically funding the building of this entire industry, the fact that they can rapidly test their biopharmaceutical drugs on their population because their population doesn't have any kind of freedom or anything like that. Now, as China is trying so hard to take this over, people have to consider, do they want the country that unleashed the coronavirus pandemic to control so much of the drugs that they will eventually rely on both for day to day issues, but also the cures they're going to rely on to fight diseases for years to come? I think that the Wall Street Journal has raised a number of important points here that the administration will continue to consider as they drive this policy are you can't make it up. Segment today, a report from Just the News finds that China was reportedly very excited about Kamala Harris's selection of Tim Waltz as her vice presidential candidate. China is happy. New memos expose Homeland Security's concerns about Tim Waltz's CCP connections. This comes from a Freedom of Information request from Judicial Watch. And it's not Republicans. It's not the Trump administration that had these conversations about Tim Walls Waltz. It is the Biden administration's Homeland Security department that intercepted communications that suggested that China was pumped about Kamala Harris selecting Tim Waltz. A number of reasons for that. Throughout the campaign, it was highlighted that Tim Waltz had very strong positive feelings about the Chinese Communist Party. He was even quoted in a newspaper praising the communist system. The Dr. And the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provided housing and 14 kg, about 30 pounds of rice per month. They get food and housing. So as you hear Tim Waltz praise the lifestyle in China where government controls how much you make, they give you a little bit of rice to live off of. Consider the bullet that the American people dodged when Tim Waltz did not become the second most powerful person in the world. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us for our final on the road episode of 10 Minute Drive. Before back in the studio next week, please tell your friends, like, subscribe. Thanks again for joining us. Have a nice day.