Modern Dems: The Greatest Socialist Threat Since the Cold War

Summary

The Josh Hammer Show

Episode: Modern Dems: The Greatest Socialist Threat Since the Cold War

Date: June 29, 2026
Host: Josh Hammer (Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large)
Guests: Steve Moore (economist, Unleash Prosperity), Rachel Bovard (Conservative Partnership Institute)

Episode Overview

This episode of The Josh Hammer Show tackles the leftward shift of the Democratic Party, framing it as the most substantial socialist/communist threat to America since the Cold War. Hammer provides a deep dive into the party's ideological transformation, delving into the historical context of socialism and its consequences, and featuring wide-ranging discussions with economic policy expert Steve Moore and policy strategist Rachel Bovard. Key themes include the alleged rise of socialist influence within the Democratic leadership, recent Supreme Court decisions affecting executive power, monetary policy, and election laws, and the legislative fight over the Save America Act.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Democratic Party’s Socialist Shift

• Opening Thesis:

  • Josh Hammer asserts that the Democratic Party has moved beyond the “woke” culture war issues and is now openly embracing “old-fashioned socialism—like actual talk about seizing the means of production.”
  • New leaders, especially Zoram Mamdani and newly elected DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)-backed candidates, are credited with pushing this shift.

• Historical Perspective:

  • Hammer invokes the failures of socialism in the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, and Maoist China as evidence of the dangers of centralized economic planning.
  • Draws parallels between the current moment and past episodes of socialist influence in U.S. history (Red Scares, Cold War, McCarthyism).

• Notable Moment:

  • Trump, at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Summit, intensifies the rhetoric by equating modern Democrats to “hardcore godless communists.”
    • “These are not social Democrats. These are hardcore godless communists. They're godless communists.” – Donald Trump, via Fox News (04:42-04:51)

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2. Zoram Mamdani as a Symbol of the New Left

• Leadership Shift:
  • Mamdani celebrated as “the indispensable man in today’s Democratic Party,” replacing Barack Obama as the touchstone for the party’s direction.
• DSA Endorsements:
  • Hammer highlights three new DSA or DSA-adjacent candidates: Darlisa Chevalier (“the next AOC,” Hammer claims), Claire Valdez, and Brad Lander.
  • Mamdani, in media appearances, frames the movement as rekindling a New Deal-era vision for working people (06:49).
    • “What these candidates offer is a vision that extends beyond the midterms... it speaks to a vision that goes back to a New Deal understanding of what working people deserve.” – Zoram Mamdani (06:49-07:09)
• Policy Breadth:
  • Mamdani does not shy from radical stances, such as abolishing prisons and open borders (08:17).
  • Hammer warns of Mamdani’s mainstream appeal and potential to rise even higher.

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3. The Enduring Allure and Failure of Socialism

• Critique of Socialist Ideas:
  • Hammer and Moore describe socialist rhetoric as “romantic notions... tragically result[ing] in privation, less freedom, less prosperity, and ultimately in a... declined standard of living.” (05:31)
  • Steve Moore, referencing Milton Friedman, underlines that “the most enduring lesson of the 20th century... is that free markets and free enterprise and freedom create prosperity and... socialism... create[s] misery.” (14:45)
• Youth & Education:
  • Moore blames the popularity of socialism among Millennials and Gen Z on failures in public education (17:46).

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4. Supreme Court & Federal Reserve Rulings: Executive Power in Flux

• Recent Decisions:

  • Trump v. Slaughter (FTC): The Court rules Trump can fire certain executive officials, a win for presidential power (12:13, 21:21).
    • “Our Constitution creates three branches, but only one president. The president is not all-powerful... but he is not impotent either. He and he alone is vested with the executive power of the United States.” – Chief Justice John Roberts, quoted by Hammer (12:13)
  • Fed Case (Lisa Cook): Contrary ruling—Trump cannot fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.
    • Hammer and Steve Moore critique the Court’s logic and institutional “circuitous” reasoning for Fed independence, referencing the passionate dissent by Justice Thomas (21:21, 24:26).

• Economic Context:

  • Inflation (4.2%) and the new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh are discussed as key backdrops to the “economy election” of November 2026 (12:55-13:45).
  • Moore praises Warsh for “want[ing] a dollar that remains stable... a path to prosperity” (22:16-23:12).

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5. Supreme Court, Defamation Law, and Election Integrity

• NYT v. Sullivan (Defamation):

  • Hammer laments the Court’s refusal to revisit the “actual malice” standard, which he sees as an impediment to legitimate defamation claims against media outlets (24:26).
    • “The actual malice standard for public figures, quote, bears no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution.” – Justice Clarence Thomas, quoted by Hammer.

• Mississippi Mail-in Ballot Case (Watson v. RNC):

  • The Court upholds the practice of accepting ballots postmarked by Election Day but arrived up to five days later.
    • Hammer (and Justice Alito in dissent) argue this undermines election integrity and faith in outcomes—an existential threat second only to political violence (26:42-27:49).
    • “If there is a second threat after the threat of political violence, it might be this. It actually might be the reality, or perhaps even just the perception of lack of election integrity.” – Josh Hammer (28:48)

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6. The Legislative Fight Over the Save America Act

• Context:

  • The Save America Act would require proof of citizenship and national voter ID for federal elections; Trump is pushing to tie this to other legislative priorities (housing, crypto bills) (38:21-39:29).

• Rachel Bovard’s Analysis:

  • Bovard criticizes Senate Republicans (notably John Thune and John Cornyn) for lack of will to pass a bill that is “overwhelmingly popular” with voters (39:29).
    • “There has been no effort made to actually try and pass this bill... The Senate can do things when it wants to do things. It's just that there's a clutch of senators... who have said, we don't actually want to do this, so we're not going to try.” – Rachel Bovard (41:43)
  • Both Hammer and Bovard argue grassroots pressure is needed to force Senate leadership to act (43:29).

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Notable Quotes

• Josh Hammer:

  • “The Democratic Party has veered off the communist cliff... shifting a little bit less on the woke issues and a little bit more on not so good but very old-fashioned socialism.” (00:41)
  • “How we counter that, that is one of the great questions that we on the right face.” (08:59)
  • “If there is a second threat after the threat of political violence, it might be this... the reality, or perhaps even just the perception of lack of election integrity.” (28:48)

• Donald Trump (clip):

  • “These are hardcore godless communists. They're godless communists.” (04:42-04:51)

• Steve Moore:

  • “Freedom causes prosperity, period. Hard stop.” (19:02)
  • “One of the ingeniousnesses of our Founding Fathers, is that they set up a system where the states would compete with each other. And that's a healthy thing.” (20:41)
  • “When they talk about equality, what they mean is that everyone should be equally miserable and poor.” (19:29)

• Rachel Bovard:

  • “The Senate can do things when it wants to do things. It's just that there's a clutch of senators... who have said, we don't actually want to do this, so we're not going to try.” (41:43)
  • “You want to sow belief in the outcome. The way to do that is to make sure every outcome is thought of and buttoned up. And I think mail-in balloting for a lot of people is a big red flag.” (37:32)

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Key Timestamps

• [00:30] — Hammer’s thesis: Democratic Party’s socialist turn
• [04:42-04:51] — Trump on Democratic “godless communists”
• [06:49-07:09] — Mamdani on socialism as “vision” for Democrats
• [12:13] — SCOTUS ruling on executive power (Trump v. Slaughter)
• [14:35-16:35] — Steve Moore contextualizes current socialist threat
• [19:02] — Moore: “Freedom causes prosperity, period.”
• [21:21-23:12] — Supreme Court and Federal Reserve discussion
• [24:26] — Hammer on New York Times v. Sullivan (defamation)
• [26:42-28:48] — Impact of mail-in ballot SCOTUS case, integrity concerns
• [35:40-37:32] — Rachel Bovard on Supreme Court’s “stink bomb” and election law
• [39:29-41:43] — Bovard: Save America Act, Senate GOP reluctance

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Conclusion

This episode weaves together fears of a radical Democratic shift toward socialism, historical context for these concerns, and real-time reflections on economic, legal, and political battles unfolding in Washington. Hammer and his guests emphasize the urgency for conservatives to push back legislatively and rhetorically against what they characterize as growing socialist/communist influence, while warning of the dual threats posed by election integrity challenges and political violence. Through Supreme Court analysis, legislative strategy, and movement activism, the show aims to chart a manifesto for the New Right as it approaches America’s 250th anniversary.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

America's two political parties goes full Communists? Well, nothing good. That's a short answer, but just how bad could it get? We address that and much more. I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer Show. The Democratic Party has veered off the communist cliff. That's been one of our recurring themes on the show for the past week or two. Zoram Hamdani is now the sine qu non. He is the indispensable man in today's Democratic Party. He has replaced Barack Obama and whoever else might have challenged a post Barack Obama, Democratic Party for that particular title. This is the party of the dsa, the Democratic Socialists of America. You might have thought that after the 2024 election, after Kamala Harris, who ran on a very woke intersectional far left agenda, you might have thought the Democratic Party would moderate towards the center. That simply is not the case. And perhaps arguably, arguably even more perilously, you see today's iteration of the Democratic shifting away on the margins a little bit from an emphasis on some of these wedge woke culture word issues. Issues like immigration, issues like transgenderism. Don't get me wrong, they are still hyper focused on issues like that, but on the margins they seem to talk and focus a little bit less on those issues and a little bit more on not so good but very old fashioned socialism. Like actual socialism. Like actual talk about things like seizing the means of production, all the claptra and the nonsense that you may not so fondly recall reading about in your high school seminar on Western political thought. Perhaps that seminar focused on the pitfalls of totalitarianism. To be clear, socialism has been tried any number of times, has been tried time and time again. It has here, there and everywhere failed. The Soviet Union is the not so greatest example of socialism being tried in practice. And don't let anyone tell you that the Soviet Union was not socialist because it absolutely was. They would set prices from a central planning committee sitting in Moscow. It was a true complete command and control economy. They did their best slash. They did really their worst to implement and to weaponize this Marxist notion of seizing the means of production and of controlling the economy from a central planning committee at large. It was the antithesis of freedom. It was the antithesis, as we approach America, 250 of all that this great country stands for. Vietnam tried communism to an extent that still, still trying it and fails. Cuba has spectacularly failed when it comes to socialism. Communism. I saw that for myself when I was there about seven years ago. It is an utter disaster. You go to Cuba and you feel like you were time traveling back to the 1950s or to the 1960s. Whether it's the famines and the Great Leap Forward and all the forced deaths in the struggle session of Maoist China. Time and time again America has faced this ideology. And it's not the first time, by the way, that the Democratic Party at the American left has emerged as a voice for socialism. This is not a unique phenomenon. It's not our first time around the sun. We saw this a little bit during the first Red Scare around the time of World War I and the Trotskyites and the Russian revolutionaries. And then we saw it to an even greater extent in the Cold War. This is when you had Senator McCarthy and the often blasphemed era of so called McCarthyism. If I'm being very candid here on the show, I think that McCarthy, Senator McCarthy gets a very bad name. In fact, one can make a colorable argument, I would argue a correct argument, that Senator McCarthy actually did not go far enough. We will save that conversation perhaps for another day. Donald Trump was speaking on Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Summit and he devoted large swaths of his speech to talking about the threat of communism. Donald Trump very deliberately calling these Mamdani DSA Democrats not just socialists, but actually outright communists. Here was a snippet a President Trump's speech on Friday, courtesy of Fox News. So they're turning communists themselves, becoming a Communist party. These are not social Democrats. These are hardcore godless communists. They're godless communists.

[C]

All communists are godless. They don't believe in God.

[B]

This is the most serious threat to

[C]

our country since its existence. In my opinion, 250 years ago.

[B]

This is a major threat to our country. It isn't something that's easily solved, but with a little love and help, some hard work. And it's going to take hard work, it's going to take hard work to defeat socialism. The reason that socialism has never fully died is that it retains among some people, among some quixotic people who are living in the land of unicorn farts and pixie dust and have never actually lived under a functioning common. It remains this allure. Why? Because of equality and coolness, Bahia and smoke the peace pipe and all of these romantic notions that here, there and everywhere tragically have resulted in privation in a shrinking economy, in less freedom and less prosperity, and ultimately in a remarkably, remarkably declined standard of living, declining human flourishing and in declining way of life. But that's where the Democratic Party is. We saw this most clearly last Tuesday in New York City where Zormadani correctly endorsed three new DSA or DSA adjacent candidates who are going to win their far left ultra blue districts and be same as a Congress come January 2027. Those are Darlisa Chevalier, Claire Valdez and Brad Lander. Darlisa Chevalier in particular has already emerged as the voice of this crew. She is the next it girl, the next Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, if you will. But Zoram Donny is, God help us, potentially the next Barack Obama because he is the leader of this whole cabal. And Zormadani was making the media rounds on Sunday. He was doing a lot of the Sunday talk shows, basking in his moment in the sun. We'll see if he flies too close to the sun, so keep your eye on that. Here was Zormadani on ABC's this Week talking about how socialism can and should be the future of the Democratic Party.

[D]

And what these candidates offer is a vision that extends beyond the midterms. It extends beyond 2028. It speaks to what makes so many of us proud be Democrats. It speaks to a vision that goes back to a New Deal understanding of what working people deserve. And I'll tell you that for too long, that kind of politics, you can only find it in history books. And we need to bring it back to the present day.

[B]

Yes, only in history books. What does it result in history books? Oh, yeah. Tens of millions of dead bodies, arguably hundreds of millions. Dennis Prager is fond of noting that communism is the deadliest ideology in the history of the human race, literally, bar none of even Nazism and fascism. And I'm a religious Jew. I don't take that lightly, to put it mildly. Even that pales in comparison to communism when it comes to the literal death toll. The Mao, Great Leap Forward, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Stalin and the Gulags, the Gulag Archipelago, as Scholz, Nietzsche famously said, on and on and on. It leaves destruction and death and suffering in its wake. The moment really is now for the right to Stand up against this. And these folks are not just socialists. They actually are full on communists. They're not running away from that label. Mamdani was pushed a little further in the same interview and he elaborated that his agenda is not limited to the economic issues. No, he's going full bore communism. Go ahead and listen to this.

[C]

But how does abolishing prisons or having open borders fit into that? I mean, do you see how that's. Those are ideas that a lot of your Democrats that are warning about what happened here say are toxic. Most of America won't go along with that. Are bad ideas that are dangerous ideas.

[D]

I think what the focus of her race was, what the focus of her candidacy was, was about the struggle that working people are facing. And I think that we can have disagreements on policy positions. What we have to agree on is what are we fighting for and who are we fighting for. She showed that in her race. And I think that many people will come to appreciate that in her leadership to come so we can disagree on

[C]

something as basic as whether or not there should be prisons.

[D]

They're not only your position, there are prisons. And what we're also showing in this city is that safety is not something that's up for debate.

[B]

You can see how glib he is, how at times polished and well spoken and well coifed he is. This is a man, God help us, who absolutely could go distance and become the President of the United States. Mark my words, there is a real chance that this man could become president in our lifetimes. I pray that that is not the case. But these toxic, toxic notions have timeless appeal to certain individuals. How we counter that, that is one of the great questions that we on the right face. And we'll be joined in just a few minutes by Steve Moore, who has thought a lot about these exact questions for most of his adult's life. Before we get to our conversation with Steve Moore, I do want to set the table a little more fully. So when it comes to the economy, we can't help but think sometimes of the Federal Reserve, which is the nation's central bank. And we've been awaiting the Supreme Court to rule on an issue when it comes to whether or not President Trump can fire Lisa Cook, who is on the Fed's Board of Governors and has been accused of mortgage fraud. And just this morning, it was a big morning at the Supreme Court. Tomorrow will actually be the last day of the term. So this is. This is it. Today and tomorrow are the last real days of the term. So there were some Split opinions this morning at the Supreme Court when it comes to this question as to whether or not the President has the ability to fire other individuals in the Executive branch. There was a huge win for President Trump in a case called Trump vs. Slaughter. This is a case pertaining to whether or not President Trump could fire Ms. Slaughter, who was a commissioner on the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, one of these New Deal era Alphabet soup agencies. And they said that ensured that the answer is yes because Congress does not have the ability to limit the President's discretion to fire these individuals. As we've argued time and time again on the show, that is the core of the executive power. As John Roberts writes for a 6 to 3 court, he wrote, quote, Our Constitution creates three branches, but only one president. The president is not all powerful, not by any means, but he is not impotent either. He and he alone is vested with the executive power of the United States. However, this morning at the exact same time, while the Court was overturning Humphrey's executor, this 1935 case that tried to limit the President's ability to fire people in Article 2 at the same time that they were overturning Humphreys, as some of us have called for frankly since law school, they had an unfortunate ruling against President John's power in the notion of the Federal Reserve. So this is a case involving Lisa Cook. And in deeply intellectually inconsistent fashion, the Court inexplicably says that while the President may fire in this case Rebecca Slaughter sitting on the FTC's commission, he can't fire Lisa Cook, even though she was credibly alleged of committing mortgage fraud. As one of the governors of the Federal Reserve, it was a mealy mouthed opinion. Whereas Clarence Thomas rips in his dissent, there are only a couple paragraphs of substantive constitutional analysis. Ultimately, the Court is trying to have its cake and eat it too. But all that to say that there is, there is so much in play now when it comes to the economy. The Federal Reserve has just been kind of sort of given this imprimatur of legitimacy when it comes to the Supreme Court. We have a brand new Fed Chairman right now in Kevin Warsh. He is tasked with trying to appease a President who is calling for lower rates to get the economy revving. But on the other hand, we have recent monthly inflation data coming in at 4.2%. We have a Democratic Party that's being overtaken by socialist radicals. We have a bipartisan housing bill. We have continuing questions of so called affordability. And there is just a lot going on in the economy more generally because do not be persuaded otherwise. This November will be an economy election. Most elections are. This November will not be any different. So we're going to go to a quick break, folks, and on the other side, we're going to be joined by Steve Moore to unpack all those issues and much more. Stay with us. We'll be right back with Steve Moore. I started Ornada in 2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I

[C]

think it would actually be the bicycle.

[B]

It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on shopify.com. Welcome back. So there's really no one, and when I say no one, I mean actually no one that we'd rather bring on to talk about the socialist takeover of the Democratic Party and much more than our first or two guests for today, and that is Steve Moore. So Steve Moore, you probably know him from seeing him all over media and all the books that he has written and the editorials he has signed on to. Steve Moore is the founder of Unleash Prosperity, former Trump economic advisor, longtime editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal as well. So, Steve Moore, welcome to the Josh Hammer Show.

[C]

Thanks so much for having me, Josh.

[B]

You bet. And Steve, you've spent most of your adult life, pretty much all of it, as far as I'm aware, arguing against exactly what we are now seeing happening on the left side of the American political spectrum, this notion that socialism is the path forward and not free markets, not private property, that hyperregulation and hyper redistribution. I mean, heck, Steve, frankly, some of these concepts seem actually positively moderate. Listen to some of this rhetoric about seizing the means of production. I feel like sometimes I'm in a high school seminar about Marx and Engels and the Communist Manifesto. So why don't we just zoom out a little bit? Can you contextualize in the course of your adult lifetime of writing and economic issues, have we seen this level of a socialist threat happening from the American left ever? Or is it at least since the Cold War? How do you contextualize it for us?

[C]

Well, certainly there have been times in our history when the Communist Party and so forth. I mean, communism and socialism are very similar. We probably should call them communists, but this is the idea to share the wealth that everybody, you know, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, and, you know, I guess in heaven that would be a great, a great way to govern. But of course, we are human beings and we're driven by self interest. And so, you know, as I used to talk to Milton Friedman, by the way, who would the greatest economist since Adam Smith towards the end of his life. And I remember he was sort of despondent when he died early in the 2000s at the age of like 94. And he said, look, Steve, the most enduring lesson of the 20th century, and he's exactly right about this, when you think about what happened from 1900 to 2000, is that free markets and free enterprise and freedom create prosperity and that, that communism and socialism and all these other isms create misery. And that's why we've had tens of millions of people who've escaped communism and socialism, whether it's in Cuba, whether it was in Korea, whether it was in East Germany, whether it was in all of these countries, Russians who came here because they wanted to escape communism and socialism. And so it is extremely disturbing that you have one of the major parties now. We only have two parties in the United States. We have Republicans and Democrats. And I'm not a, you know, a huge Republican apologist either. But, you know, the fact that one of the party has been taken over by a, what they call Democrat socialists is very disturbing to me. And yet, where are the Democrats? Where are the kind of moderate Democrats who are speaking out against this? They're, they're, they're afraid to.

[B]

Yeah, they're afraid to. And they're very few and far between. So, folks, you can follow Stephen Moore on axes. STEPHEN MOORE FOUNDER FOR Unleashing by the

[C]

way, it used to not be that way. I mean, that's what's so disturbing to me. When I came to Washington in the mid-1980s, you had a lot of moderate, you know, free market oriented Democrats, you know, people like the Dick parts and the Sam nuns and, you know, people like that. By the way, Phil Graham, when I first came to Washington, was a Democrat. So it shows you how changed times have changed. Of course he switched parties. But the radicalization of the Democratic Party is extraordinarily dangerous for our country. And when you have now three or four of the major cities in the United States that are now run by socialists, very scary. So you have New York with Mandani, and then you've got my home city of Chicago, which is run by Brandon Johnson, and then you've got what's happened in Seattle, Washington with a 28 year old woman who's never even had a job is another mayor in Los Angeles. So that is, you know, I love America's great cities. As I said, I'm from Chicago, I love Chicago. But these cities are being ruined by these really radical, mostly young people, by the way. That's another thing to be scared about is that the socialist ideology is most popular with, you know, the millennials and the Generation Z who I blame our public schools for this, that they haven't really taught our kids.

[B]

Yeah, there's a lot of plans to go around and I think education definitely is one of the leading culprits for that.

[C]

I agree.

[B]

So Steve, what is the right response? I think it's very easy to criticize the left and I agree with all you've said. The Democratic Party, frankly, sometimes it's hard to know what part of the Democrats public policy portfolio has radicalized the most over the past 25, 30 years. Is it immigration? Is it the so called cultural issues like abortion is economy? I think one can make a very clear argument frankly for all the above and much more. But it's very easy to rail about that. I think it's a little more difficult to think about what the right response should be. So President Trump gave this soaring speech on Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition summit where among other things, he decried the socialist communist threats. What should the right response be, the conservative response be, especially at a moment like this, Steve, where inflation is coming in a little too high, 4.2% in the most recent monthly reading. There's. What is the right policy response at this time? To meet the people where they are, but very much bearing in mind that the left is just going over the cliff when it comes to the socialism talk.

[C]

No, that's. I could talk for half an hour about that. But I would say just a couple things. One is that freedom causes prosperity, period. Hard stop. Freedom causes prosperity. The more economically free you are, the more prosperous you get and the more prosperous the least among us become. So that's point number one. If you want to see communism and socialism, you know, look at what happened to Cuba. Cuba was actually a fairly rich country before Che Guevara and Castro took over. And then it became the time, literally the time that the land that time forgot and they made absolutely no progress from 1960 through 2020. In fact, you know, the only cars on the road are the ones that were built in the 1950s. So we have so many. I'm just Using that as an example of how you can. When they talk about equality, what they mean is that everyone should be equally miserable and poor. And you look at the country, the United States, I mean, do we have a division of, you know, do we have a wide income gap? We do. But you know what? Median family income in the United States is closing in on 80 to $100,000. You know, even our, our middle class is richer than a lot of the richest people in other countries. So the direction is more jobs, more higher wages and salaries for American workers as we become more productive. And we have to protect those freedoms. And when we see it under assault, we all have responsibility as American citizens to try to thwart this. One other quick point. We are two countries right now. It's not a great, I'm not saying this proudly, but we are a country of red states and we're a country of blue states. And the blue states are being taken over, you know, one by one, systematically. New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, by leftists, whereas the Republican states are moving more in a free market direction. So I believe federalism will help solve this problem. We, you know, if New York wants to be socialist, okay, fine, guess what? They're going to lose. They're going to lose their millionaires and billionaires and business owners. And it's happening. You know, the red states have gained $2 trillion in income from the blue states. So we have to make sure that we maintain federalism. This is one of the ingeniousnesses of our Founding Fathers, is that they set up a system where the states would compete with each other. And that's a healthy thing.

[B]

Absolutely. Especially as we gear up here for our Big America 250 celebration this coming Saturday on July 4th. I think themes like federalism are very important to keep in mind. Steve, just about a minute and a half left before I have to let you go, but I do want to touch briefly on the Federal Reserve. So the Supreme Court just this morning released two opinions when it comes to Article 2 executive power. One was favorable towards administration, the Slaughter case. One was less favorable, the Lisa Cook case when it comes to the Federal Reserve. Long story short, Steve, it seems to me that the Court's trying to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to what the Article 2 executive power means. But when it comes to the Fed, they're clearly trying to bestow some institutional legitimacy upon the Fed. They're analogizing it to the first and Second bank of the United States going back to the American founding in descent. Clarence Thomas is deeply critical by the way of this analogy. But just briefly, what's your brief take on this and what is the proper response as to the quandary of the Fed?

[C]

Well, first of all, what do we want from our monetary policy? Why do we have a currency at all? It's to retain its value and to be a means of exchange. A currency loses its value if it's going up and down in value and inflation's going up and down. That's, you know, we want to make the dollar as good as gold so that it is the world reserve currency. And we are blessed by that. So then the question is because how independent should the Fed be? I believe we should have a politically independent Fed, but it also has to be accountable. I mean, look, we just had terrible Fed Chairman and Jerome Powell let inflation go up to, you know, 9.1% and it caused a lot of misery to people. So I think we need, incidentally, Donald Trump has made an outstanding choice for Fed chairman. Our new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh believes in exactly the things that I said. We want a dollar that remains stable. We want inflation down to close to zero. That's what we're going to get. And that's a path to prosperity, folks.

[B]

Follow Steve Moore on Xavan Moore, we really appreciate you joining Steve. Hopefully this will be the first many appearances here in Josh. Have a good rest of your day. You bet. Folks, we're going to go to a quick break. We'll be right back with more on the other side.

[A]

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[B]

and welcome back. I want to just briefly talk a little more about this question as pertains to the Federal Reserve. That's What Seymour and I were talking at the end of our conversation just there. So this morning the Supreme Court had this bifurcated situation whereby they gave President Trump the power to fire those who he wants to fire in the ftc, presumably the FCC or the NLRB or all these other FDR era Alphabet soup, quasi independent agencies. For some reason, the Court says that the Federal Reserve is different, that is qualitatively different, and that it is historically different. And their basic argument is simply that this was the reason that we did it. For historical reasons, as the court opinion says, they say that, quote, our nation's tradition of central banking is protected from political interference. What they're basically saying is that going back to the first and Second bank of the United States, the first bank goes back to the American founding. The second bank goes back to Andrew Jackson in the populist era, in the 1820s, 1830s. They're saying that there was a tradition of, quote, unquote, independent central banks. Well, first of all, there's really not. There's two examples, neither of which lasted a particularly long time. Second, most importantly, as Clarence Thomas argues in a passion and powerful dissent, one, the Federal Reserve, as currently structured, actually is very dissimilar from the old school historical first and second banks of the United States. The Federal Reserve today functions a lot more like an executive agency. They engage in quintessential executive functions. They can do, as Clarence Thomas argues, they can do some minute economic policymaking. They can even charge the fees for some credit card and debit card issuers. These are not independent notions. This is not a true borrower or lender of last resort in this case. These are real policy making apparatuses. And that is why he argues, I think correctly, that the Federal Reserve has to be within Article 2 of the Constitution. In other words, if the Federal Reserve is not in Article 1, it's not in Article 2, or it's not in Article 3, as we've argued here on the show, it is not in any article at all. The Court is clearly trying to have its cake and eat it too. We will see which way it unfolds. But an unfortunate decision there, albeit a clear victory when it comes to overturning conference executor, this 1935 case that purported to limit the President's ability to fire certain actors in the executive branch. Another unfortunate decision at the court this morning when it comes to Alan Dershowitz's lawsuit against cnn. So Alan Dershowitz had sued CNN for defamation. And what he was basically asking what his lawyers were asking was to overturn a deeply flawed case for the 1960s known as New York Times versus Sullivan from the very height of the Warren court back in 1964. So the Sullivan case from 1964 was the first time that the Supreme Court fabricated this legal standard when it comes to defamation. They said that if you are a public person, at first it was limited to public officials. Then they extended it to all public persons, which is in itself a very vague, broad, sweeping category. They said that if you fit into this category, then you need not just to prove defamation under classic defamation under the common law, rather, you must prove actual malice on the part of the person that allegedly defamed you. This is completely made up. It is not in the common law. It's not in the Constitution. The Warren Court just made it up. And conservatives originalists have been begging for years for the court to overturn this to make it easier to sue for defamation. Donald Trump himself, if you go back to his rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2016 and time and time again since then, has called for the court to do exactly this. Unfortunately, the court punted. This morning there was a noted dissent from Justice Thomas, joined, interestingly by Justice Gorsuch, the most libertarian of the justices. Clarence Thomas writing, quote, the actual malice standard for public figures, quote, bears no relation to the text, history or structure of the Constitution. I've been arguing myself the exact same for my entire adult lifetime. We'll have to wait, unfortunately, to see whether or not this case gets taken up in earnest. At some point. Perhaps it will, but I'm also not confident that it will either. Now we have to talk also about the final big case that came out this morning. We're going to go to our guest, Rachel Bovard, talk about this and more a little bit later on in today's show. So this is the end of this pre court term tomorrow looks like we are going to get birthright citizenship. And I'm expecting a loss, unfortunately, on that one. We will get some rulings on transgender athletic competition tomorrow. There's going to be some bombshell, bombshell rulings coming out tomorrow. Today the big rulings were these two Appointments Clause Article 2 rulings. One, the Slaughter case, which is a big victory with Trump, then unfortunately, the Federal Reserve case, the Cook case, which is a big loss for Trump. But the case is warning. That's really getting most of the attention and rightfully so, I would argue is a case out of Mississippi called Watson. This is Watson versus rnc, a pretty rare situation whereby the RNC Republican National Committee is Actually suing the state law for a deeply, reliably red state. In this case, it's the Magnolia State, the state of Mississippi. And the context here is that Mississippi has a law that says that if you vote in the federal election, so the first Tuesday in November, every four years, the presidential election, if you postmark your ballot by election Day and then the ballot arrives up to five days later, that's okay, says Mississippi. The question, the question that the court was facing in the Watson case was whether or not this is legal under federal law. Is there superseding federal election law that declares, because there is, Election Day, and you can't actually do this. So you can imagine just how emotional and how passionate people feel on this issue from all sides, especially those of us, I would argue, who have been concerned about election integrity for a very long time now, at least as far back as 2020. After all, if there are ballots arriving up to five days later when they're counted, you can easily foresee a situation in which those ballots would actually swing the election one way or the other. So here is a case of Amy Coney Barrett, who has been likely the most wobbly, the least reliable of President Trump's justice from his first term, of Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh. Barrett has been the worst of the bunch. None have been perfect. Kavanaugh actually was the one who went wobbly, incidentally, on the Lisa Cook case this morning, which I was actually pretty surprised by because he's typically a very strong Article 2 presidential powers kind of guy. That actually genuinely shocked me. But he did go wobbly on that. But Barrett is the one who seems to go wobbly time and time again when it comes to a lot of these issues. In fact, as many of us core watchers do, I was frantically refreshing the SCOTUS blog live blog this morning to check out the cases as they were coming in, and one of the bloggers had a morbidly hilarious comment talking about Elena Kagan, the noted liberal on the court, and Amy Coney Barrett. And, and, and the blogger wrote, quote, kagan and Barrett are becoming a pair, both former law professors, attentive to nuance and detail. Now, this blogger at Scope's blog is obviously a lib, and she, or he or whoever it is, is probably happy about the fact that Kagan and Barrett are teaming up conservatives. We should not be happy because this shows us that Amy Coney Barrett is unfortunately morphing into some Diet Coke version, if you will, of course. Amy Coney Souter Barrett. That's a reference of course, to David Souter, the infamous George H.W. bush pick in 1991, who immediately became a liberal darling and was one of the left's most reliable votes for his 19 years on the bench. That is not a flattering comparison to make. The dissenters in this case on Mississippi, led by Justice Alito, who wrote a very fiery dissent, correctly argue that this has the effect of sowing doubt in our faith in our elections. And as we approach our big America's 50 celebration this Saturday, this ultimately is one of the things that I am most concerned about. I am deeply concerned about the rise of political violence. Deeply. There is arguably nothing happening more on the domestic front than that that makes me wonder whether or not Ben Franklin will be proven right, that a republic must be kept. And unfortunately, perhaps it will not be kept. So political violence, to be clear, is definitely the number one existential threat to this notion of a we the people based consent of the government, Republican self governance, popular sovereignty, experiment in order to liberty. But if there is a second threat after the threat of political violence, it might be this. It actually might be this. It actually might be the reality, or perhaps even just the perception of lack of election integrity. Think about it. If you are voting in an election, then you are an engaged citizen. You care about the country at a broad level at least you care about the direction. You care enough to get off your butt and vote. What happens if you don't actually trust or have any faith that your vote is going to count? If you're worried about illegal aliens running roughshod over the franchise, if you are worried about fraud, if you are worried about late arriving ballots that just mysteriously seem to all cut in one direction, that's going to have the effect of undermining faith in the system. And we the people must ultimately have faith in the system, because without that faith, again, it doesn't matter whether the fraud is real or perceived. It does not matter because as long as there is this widespread sense of doubt in the system, that's not going to end well. That is indeed, per Ben Franklin, how Republics Die. It happens slowly, but then, as Hemingway said, it starts slowly and then seemingly it seems to happen all at once. Folks, we're going to a final commercial break. We write back on the Other side with Rachel Bovard. Stay with us. Folks,

[A]

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[B]

Welcome back. So we were just talking about this absolute stink bomb of an opinion from the U.S. supreme Court this morning in this case out of Mississippi, when it comes to the postmark dates for voting in federal elections and election integrity more generally. And no one better to join to discuss that and much more than our dear friend Rachel Bovard. Rachel Bovard, you probably know her by now. She is the vice president of programs at cpi, the Conservative Partnership Institute, one of the all around Senate sages and right thinking leaders of the movement in the nation's capital. So, Rachel, thank you as always for joining the show. I want to bring you on to talk about the Save America Act. We're going to get into that in just a second, but the timing for our conversation is pretty apropos because we did just get this opinion from the U.S. supreme Court this morning. This case that the RNC was litigating out in Mississippi, but a pretty rare situation where the RNC is actually suing a pretty reliably red state in this context for a law that allows ballots to be counted even if they arrive after election Day. Amy Coney Barrett, going Wobble Lee, as she has done every so often at times over the past few years, before we get into the actual legislation, the filibuster and all that. Rachel, what are your high profile observations over this morning's stink bomb at the U.S. supreme Court?

[E]

Well, it kind of just, as you mentioned, is a stink bomb right in the middle of a conversation, a national conversation that the right has been having about what does it take to secure our elections? You know, the left always tries to make it about, you know, untested claims of fraud. No, this is about basic election security. And one of the things that we learned from 2020 and the years ensuing is all of the changes that were made to the mail in ballot rules and laws all across the country in various states. It just creates a scenario where days and days after an election has actually passed, votes can still be counted. Not only does this open up, you know, an obvious opportunity for fraud, but it also just delays the execution of elections, which sows even more doubt about the outcome. You can, you can imagine scenarios in which a preferred candidate for various parties is leading in the polls, and suddenly a tranche of mail in ballots show up. You know, in this case, five days after the election, they're still allowed to be counted. And so I think a lot of people look at this and say, well, this just, it's not just about, you know, the fact of election security, which is very important, but you want to sow belief in the outcome. And the way to do that is to make sure that every outcome is thought of and buttoned up. And I think Mallon balloting for a lot of people is a big red flag.

[B]

And this is a genuinely shocking outcome even for those of us, like me and like you, Rachel, who are grizzled veterans of our judicial nominations fight. This was actually one where I thought we were going to get the correct outcome. Frankly, going back to oral argument, I did not see this one coming. And I have some expectations pretty low when it comes to supreme courts. Unfortunately, this one was even worse, perhaps than I had feared. So let's then take that and then translate it into this national conversation. So we continue to see President Trump push full speed ahead for the Save America act, which, as we've discussed, means. Hot on the show is this piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections as well as national voter id. These are overwhelmingly popular issues, no matter how way, which way you splice and dice the national electorate along partisan lines, ethnic lines, religious lines, national origin, whatever. Literally no one opposes this bill when you actually explain it to the voters. Nonetheless, Rachel, as you've covered, perhaps more than anyone, there is a concerted effort to push back against this bill. And we see the standoff that's happening right now when it comes to this bipartisan, bipartisan housing legislation that Trump is putting a pause button on because he wants to get this bill. So I could explain it, but you can explain a lot better. Where do we stand when it comes to Trump's effort to get the Save America act passed? And what is the additional impetus of this morning's opinion when it comes to potentially lighting a fire under the rear ends of John Thune? And various other leaders to get this thing passed.

[E]

So the debate as it stands now actually deals with two different iterations of the Save America act. One in which the President has requested, in addition to what you laid out, which is voter ID and citizenship verification at ballot register or voter registration, he wants to add a ban on MATL in balloting and a number of other issues. That bill has been put before the Senate and it's failed a number of times in different cloture votes. However, the original Save America act, which is what came over to the Senate from the House, is just those two issues. It's voter ID and citizenship verification. That that version of the bill has 50 Republican Senate votes. They voted on it multiple times. It can get the majority of the conference. In fact, the last time they voted on it, it got 51. And then Thom Tillis thought it would look too good if it got 51, so he flipped his vote. So that is sort of where things stand is John Thune will say, well, what the President wants can't, you know, pass. But in reality he has full conference support for this other vehicle. That is sort of where the standoff is and where it was when President Trump went to the Senate Republican Conference lunch on Capitol Hill last week and they talked about a number of issues, but this included, and Trump said, look, whatever version needs to pass, pass it. Do what you have to do to get it done. And everyone just sort of, they just sort of yawned and shrugged and looked at him and said, well, we don't have the votes. Now, I would point out that the only way that they've tried to pass this bill so far is they've put it on the floor, they've had a talk a thon, and they've had up or down votes. There has been no effort made to actually try and pass this bill. For examples of what I'm talking about, look at how hard they are working to pass yet another crypto piece of legislation through the Senate. You saw headlines today. John Thune said, well, Democrats have legitimate objections to this bill. We're going to try to work through them and come up with compromise vehicle. Oh, really? Is that how we legislate? Because if that's how we do things, if that's how we actually and how we should be passing legislation over when people have objections, let's try that with the Save America Act. But at no point has John Thune actually tried to pass this bill. At no point has he gone to Democrats who have said on the record that they support voter id, said what does it look like? Is there some amendment process we can have? What are, how can we address your concerns to get this very basic election security principle passed? Because, as you point out, you know, when you talk about this bill around the country, I think what makes it so shocking to people is that people think it's already the law. That's how, like, common sense it is. They're like, oh, wait, there is no voter ID in federal elections. And it's like, no, there's no, there's no requirement. Various states have it, but there's no, no sort of national requirement for it. So I think that's what the base is really asking for, is can you try to pass this bill just like you try to pass fisa, the ndaa, housing legislation, crypto? The Senate can do things when it wants to do things. It's just that there's a clutch of senators, including, it seems, John Thune, who have said, we, we don't actually want to do this, so we're not going to try.

[B]

Rachel Bovard is the VP of programs at cpi, the Conservative Partnership Institute. You can follow her on X at Rachel Bobard. So just to kind of zoom out a little bit and make sure that everyone here's on the same page. So this opinion comes out this morning from the Supreme Court that basically says that as long as your ballot on November Election Day is postmarked by election Day and arrives five days later, whatever the underlying statute says, then it is okay and it can be counted. That has the effect, I believe, I personally believe opinion here, as Justice Alito writes in his dissents, of sowing discord and undermining faith in the integrity of elections for very obvious, understandable reasons, going back to 2020 Pennsylvania, when this issue was kind of litigated. And Thomas and Alita want to deal with it then, too. And then the rest of their colleagues punted. And yet here we are, Rachel, five and a half, six years later, and we're facing the exact same thing all over again. So with this context and with this opinion coming out the way it is, what can we do? What can we, the people do? What can MAGA do? What concerns do to really just apply pressure like never before on the Majority Leader John Thune, on John Cornyn, your bff, your best friend, on any others, any other relevant leaders there in the Senate to make sure that Donald Trump gets his wish and this bill is actually passed?

[E]

Yeah, well, I mean, to your point, the Supreme Court, it's like my son's T ball game. They just Took the ball and set it up right in front of the Senate. And they're just waiting for them to take a swing because they are not going to solve this problem. The Senate loves when the court solves their problems for them. They are not solving it here. The Senate is now the only actor in America that can get this done. And I think the that is what the base has been asking for. You know, they've said they don't want another crypto bill. I don't think I have not seen the polling on this, but I just my hunch that that is not what they Senate to be spending time on. And so I think to the extent that people want this bill passed, they need to tell their senator they want it passed. They've been to. They need to start doing what they've already been doing. You know, you've seen Thune and now John Cornyn sort of brush this off as sort of astroturfed, you know, fake movement on X. But you know, in my experience, I don't think that's the case. You know, these senators, when they go out to their hometowns, you know, it's funny, even Donald Trump said this to them at lunch. He said, as direct a quote as I've seen, He said, look, look, nobody at my rallies cares about the housing bill, but when I mentioned the Save America Act, I can't get them to sit down. Right. This is something the base sort of very viscerally understands. They want it passed. They also actually want to see their Senate try. You know, I think the base has a pretty good forgiveness for a party that leans in, gives the full measure of effort, leaves blood on the field. Right. To use a sports analogy, and then they still don't win. Okay, you know, we saw what you did. We really give you a ton of credit for that. What they cannot stand is when they are told, sit down, peasant. You know, you don't know anything about this chamber. You don't understand what we know, which is that we don't want to pass this bill. We have much more important things to do. Like crypto legislation like that infuriates them.

[B]

Yeah, it's just not the way it works. And to your point, Senators can actually legislate when they want to. The question is whether they have the will to do so, whether or not they prefer to go home for an extended vacation or whether they prefer to campaign and legislate on other issues, but they absolutely can pass this. The notion they cannot do it is an utter lie that's being telegraphed to the American people by self serving interest. Rachel. Unfortunately, we are out of time. But folks, follow Rachel on X. Rachel Bovard, she's the VP of Programs for cpi. Always a great guest on our show. We really appreciate your time, Rachel, as always.

[E]

Thanks, Josh.

[B]

Folks, you have a great rest of your evening as well. We'll be right back, as always with another show tomorrow.

[A]

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