Transcript
Dan Harris (0:00)
Back to school is better With Family Freedom from T Mobile, we'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones, all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com FamilyFreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16128 gigabyte 8 $2009.99 Eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off earlier, cancel contact T Mobile hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier Po podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week we'll tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top notch scientists and world class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice. It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility and practicality. 10% have here is self help for smart people. Come join the party. I was so proud to hear from so many of my audience members that you are going to be out there protesting on October 18th and many of you were out there protesting this weekend. The crackdown on Washington D.C. from the Trump administration is backfiring and I'm taking great pleasure in it. I love it. I love to see this. They had the idea of a show of force. We're going to send more than 2,000 National Guard troops to Washington D.C. iCE agents, masked federal officers patrolling the streets. And this has become not only an example of of a total PR failure, but it has really become an example of a laboratory for protest techniques that actually work. Something I wrote about extensively in my book the Echo Machine. This past weekend, the We Are All DC March drew thousands of people into the streets. They were chanting Free dc. They were chanting resist tyranny anti authoritarian messages as well as Trump must go now. But to me, the real story is what's been happening every single day since Donald Trump's takeover, which is these decentralized, sustained creative resistance movements. Now in my book I talked about really why small, repeated actions will often outlast big one time marches and the reason why the ongoing, smaller actions often have more shelf life, is that they're harder to police. They can sometimes keep energy alive between major events. They can create like a constant flow of visuals and stories that social media can amplify. You do one big protest, which is great, which I'm in favor of, by the way, but you do one big protest, it'll get a little coverage beforehand, some coverage during, a little bit of coverage after. But it's basically like a really steep distribution curve, goes up quickly and comes down quickly. But here what we are seeing is that because it's one thing after another, and the people with the pots and pans we called in, it's funny because this is the origins of that. The origins of it are sort of in Latin America, including Argentina, the country that I'm from. Casa de la Source is what they're called down there. The banging of the pots and pans happening every night at 8pm the neighborhoods are erupting with noise. And this is designed to be impossible to ignore without requiring permits and without risking mass arrests, which of course, if everybody gets arrested, the party sort of comes to an end. Right away. We are seeing protesters dropping banners from bridges. I was driving around, in fact, and I saw some of these banners. Mobile billboards are being driven around Washington D.C. messages are being projected onto buildings. These are really high visibility, low risk activities. They bypass the traditional nodes of control from law enforcement. And it makes them really great for this sort of activism. In terms of organization, there's a lot to be learned here because we've seen residents use WhatsApp and signal to alert neighbors. There's a nice checkpoint here, there's a nice, a nice checkpoint there. There are masked arrests taking place here. And this really turns every one of these instances into a potential flashpoint to publicly shame those who are carrying out these arrests. D.C. flag flags, excuse me, you see in windows, you see a protest graveyards that say like due process on a, on a, a headstone. The implication being due process is dying. Here we have seen ICE heckled and jeered by crowds. We saw JD Vance and Pete Hegseth heckled at Union station in Washington D.C. and what we are seeing is that this is working. And interestingly, after declaring war on Chicago, when Donald Trump was most recently asked, when are you going into Chicago? He said, well, you know, we're figuring out exactly where we're going and when. He seems desperate. And instead of de escalating, Trump seems to be doubling down and making even more threats, Posting AI generated war images of himself renaming The Department of Defense, the Department of War. He is desperate to project dominance, but. But he is rattled. Your activism is working. Now, I like to look at history. If history and protest dynamics are sort of a guide here, the daily actions hopefully feed into something bigger. Now, I already told you that on October 18, we have the second iteration of the no Kings protests. Between now and then, the way I see it is every small act builds capacity. People learn that, hey, there are things going on. The networks and the safety protocols are learned and understood. So people know when no Kings day comes, how can I protest effectively? But how can I protest safely and legally as well? And the more Trump starts to beat it off, for lack of a better term, the more it's actually giving it oxygen. Now, the most likely scenario, eventually, no kings October 18, is an escalation by Donald Trump. We're going to see, I would guess, even more aggressive policing. We're going to see possible curfews put in place. We might even start hearing about preemptive arrests of the organizers, sort of like a pre crime minority report type of idea. But this could get risky for Donald Trump because if you keep protesting and you keep activating, it may turn moderate critics of what Trump is doing, who aren't necessarily dead set on getting out there. They might say, wait a second, look at all this activism going on. And look at Donald Trump using authoritarian tactics to try to stamp it out. I'm going to get out there as well. And we could see this expand to city after city after city. Chicago may well become the next front of this fight because Trump is targeting it and because the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois seem very much prepared to fight against it. So we are going to cover all of it. Unless something changes. October 18th could be the moment that this explodes into the biggest challenge against Donald Trump's presidency. I hope that's the case. But let's also talk a little bit about what's going on in the Democratic Party. Two very interesting things happened this weekend. California Governor Gavin Newsom made a post about January 20, 2029, and Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced he will not run in 2020, 2028. And so this is raising a very interesting question. Are we already seeing an effort to move pieces out of the way and to clear the path for Gavin Newsom to be the Democratic nominee in 2028? It's hard to believe that this is a topic under consideration in September of 2025. I get that we're not even at the 2026 elections yet. We still have special and off year elections for 2025 that haven't yet been resolved and will be in November. But let me go through what happened and then we're going to talk about what the implications are. Gavin Newsom's press office Twitter account tweeted an image from the Trump Rapid response account which was promoting Trump's new Rose Garden Club, I guess some kind of dining event in the new, very, very gaudy Rose Garden at the White House. And what the Gavin Newsom press office did is they added a little sticker over the image saying closing soon with the text 1, 2020 29. Of course, January 20, 2029 is the day that the next president is going to be sworn in. The implication here is that this thing will be shut down when Trump leaves office and that the person replacing Trump will be a Democrat and maybe it will be Gavin Newsom. So this is the first sort of major and direct reference from an official Gavin Newsom account to that date, the date that if Gavin Newsom is the nominee and wins, the date that he would become President of the United States. Now, at the same time, Democrats for once are blessed with a very deep bench of candidates. One possible candidate that I find super interesting is Maryland Governor Wes Moore. I recently saw Wes Moore speak in person in a relatively small group. He was phenomenal. If I had any criticism of Wes Moore, it's a similar criticism to that of Gavin Newsom, which is that Moore is such a good, natural and smooth public speaker that he can come off as almost too rehearsed. And sometimes when you seem too rehearsed, it can make you seem less authentic. Wes Moore is that smooth of a speaker that you start saying, is, is this authentic? But Wes Moore has now said he will not run in 2028. Before I let you go, you have not announced you're running for reelection. If you do, do you commit to serve a full term? Yes, I'll be serving a full term. I'm excited about reelection.