← The Joy Reid Show
The Joy Reid Show
Texas Dems Stand on Business Amid Voting Rights 911 | The Joy Reid Show LIVE! Aug 04, 2025
01:07:51
Loading summary
Transcript137 lines
- [00:20]
Joy Reid
Hey, Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Joy Reid Show. Okay, we are playing an away game tonight. Coming to you live from Martha's Vineyard. We are here for the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, which is happening this week. You can see Jason here is with me. We're all here on the way game. You can see Jason waving in the background. So thank you all for tuning in. Now, this week also marks the 50th anniversary of the national association of Black Journalists. That convention is actually happening this week also in the great city of Cleveland, Ohio. Wish I was there. But among other things that are happening in Cleveland, the new leadership of the NABJ is being elected. And I think it is no secret based on what you've seen all over my social media, that I am rooting for and already voted for the 19th Erin Haynes to be the next NABJ president. So wishing Aaron the best of luck. Roland Martin, Uncle Roland, also running for a spot in NABJ leadership. So we just love seeing independent media represented. So if you're an NABJ member and you haven't voted yet, you're running out of time. Hopefully you haven't run out of time. So please make sure that you vote. But I want to turn now to what's happening in Texas where the battle lines are being drawn over off census redistricting and also power and voting rights. Now, some of you read in my substack, which you can find@joann reid.com Donald Trump clearly knows that he's unpopular. He knows that his policies are deeply unpopular, even with some of his own base. The economy is spiraling downward due to all of the tariffs. Prices are up. Home sales are stalled. Tourism into the United States has collapsed. You see all these stories of Las Vegas casinos being empty, dead, not a lot of tips being given out so that no tax on tips thing doesn't even matter. We're actually looking at the worst summer tourism season since the pandemic. People don't want to visit Florida or California or New York or New Orleans from overseas because of Trump's militarized masked deportations and, and detentions. He pissed Canada off. That's one of our biggest sources of overseas tourism. They're not coming. And the tariffs have made everything, everything, much more expensive. It's the worst time to be a farmer in the United States in more than a generation due to Donald Trump's restrictions on things like usaid, which is a big source of income for farmers. And Trump, he's not going to be able to fire Enough bureaucrats in bean counters to cover up the fact that that unemployment is rising. And by the way, Trump firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics bureaucrat, the statistician, means that her last jobs report that you just saw is probably the last one you're going to be able to trust coming out of this federal government. So what's an unpopular president to do when he's got a narrow House margin and bad numbers? Well, in Trump's case, he demanded that his lackey, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, find him five House seats, much like he demanded that the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, find him 11,000 or so votes so that he wouldn't have to admit that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. But this time, he's got a compliant governor. And Greg Abbott is pushing to redistrict Texas outside the census to draw five black and Latino Democrats out of their seats to help Republicans hold onto the House next year so that they can't be punished by voters for all of the rotten things they've done on Trump's behalf. Now, I want you to listen to this quick news package on how Texas Democrats responded.
- [03:56]
Jason
Well, Texas Democratic lawmakers left the state yesterday to block a vote on a highly controversial redistricting map in their state. Most of the Democrats who left went to Illinois, others traveling to Massachusetts and New York. The lawmakers are looking to prevent the Texas state House from holding a vote today on new congressional maps that Republicans hope will net them several additional U.S. house seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Texas Representative Jean Wu spoke about their effort to stop today's vote.
- [04:26]
Sherilyn Ifill
Their attempts to disenfranchise Texans is being the tool they're using is a racist gerrymandered map. And Governor Abbott is doing this in submission to Donald Trump, searching and finding.
- [04:44]
Jason
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is threatening to remove the Democrats from office. He's also considering sending law enforcement to force them back to the state.
- [04:53]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Well, I want you to listen to the way that Texas Democrats are responding to those threats. Take a look at this. This is a post that includes their response to what Governor Abbott is threatening. Come and take it. A good little reference there to the kinds of things that people who are on the, the gunny side of our politics like to say. We're going to be speaking tonight with the exact perfect person that I wanted to talk to on this. And that, of course, is a civil rights legend and somebody who really knows about this. We're going to get to her shortly, as soon as she comes. But the bottom line Here is that what Texas is doing is attempting to backfill Donald Trump's slim majority in the United States House of Representatives. Because if Democrats were to be able to take over the House, suddenly all of the rot that they have put into the system, allowing these crypto schemes to go forward, some of which, maybe some of them might be investing in, allowing Donald Trump to gut the Department of Education, to fire endless numbers of bureaucrats in Washington, leaving unemployment higher, gutting the National Institutes of Health, allowing that to collapse, allowing research to collapse, allowing the United States to lose and cede its position as the number one source of Pulitzer Prize winning research all over the world, allowing that to collapse, allowing our national standing to collapse as we continue to back the genocide in Gaza, you name it, Donald Trump is doing his worst to the economy, doing it Fast, implementing Project 2025. And he's able to do it because he's got a completely compliant House and a completely compliant Senate. That's how in the United States Senate side he's been able to fill his Cabinet with completely unqualified people. He's been able to put Pete Hegsett, the guy from Fox, was a TV host, to be the Defense Secretary of the United States, somebody who's in a group chat with, posting classified information. But it doesn't matter. Complete chaos right now in the Defense Department doesn't matter because there's a United States Senate that will simply confirm the next rotten person to that post, Pam Bondi. We've seen the Epstein files controversy, but Pam Bondi is spending most of her time along with her subordinates, Donald Trump's former attorneys in his hush money case, who now all have jobs inside of the Justice Department. They're busy firing anyone who was involved in investigating Trump for taking classified documents that belong to the United States and not to him for the insurrection. Anyone who's investigated Donald Trump is either on their way out or waiting to be fired. There's also apparently now going to be a special counsel investigation of Jack Smith for doing his job and really honestly, during the former Attorney General's job of investigating Donald Trump's crimes. And so revenge and vengeance is all that's happening at the doj. And also inside the doj, the supposed Civil Rights division, which was designed specifically to try to protect minorities, particularly African Americans in this country, from civil rights abuses in the States. They are now reversing that entire purpose of that department. And it was the Civil Rights Division which claimed that the five seats that are going to be gerrymandered in Texas were actually illegally drawn to try to give black people too much power and brown people too much power, that they were illegally racially gerrymandered because they were trying, I suppose we're supposed to believe, to give black and brown Texans more power than they deserved. They're using this idea that it was a racial gerrymander in the first place to try to reverse those seats to. And give those seats to Republicans. And the way the gerrymandering works is essentially you just draw new lines to essentially look at the map, look demographically, look racially at the map, and add more white voters into districts that normally were majority black or brown. And when you mix those districts up, you just know by the math that if you add more white voters, you're going to make a more Republican district. They're also combining districts that had two black or brown Democrats putting them together in order to make one district that might be bluer, but that makes the districts next to it redder because you've taken black and brown voters out of there. Now, the Supreme Court has generally said that you cannot do racial gerrymandering, but what they have been willing to allow is political gerrymandering, meaning that you go to court and say that I'm not drawing these lines in order to give a racial group a preference. I'm doing it to give a political party a preference. And that the Supreme Court has been willing to allow. And we also have to remember that John Roberts, who's the Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, has never been in favor of the Voting Rights Act. He's never been a fan of it. You can go all the way back to his time as a recent Harvard Law grad when he worked for the Reagan administration as a young lawyer in that era of the Justice Department. He's been since then inveighing against the Voting Rights act, which he believes is unfair to the south and unfair to white Americans, because it presumes that there was racism in the application of voting rights laws, when in fact, the reason that there is an anti gerrymandering provision, the reason that these laws existed, like the Voting Rights act, are because people were literally being beaten, beaten to death or shot or killed by members of the Klan for trying to register to vote. You'll recall that the Voting Rights act, who, by the way, has an anniversary today. Today is actually the 60th anniversary of the Senate passage of the Voting Rights Act. It passed on this date in 1965, and then two days later, which would be Wednesday, will be the 60th anniversary of that, Lyndon Johnson signed it into law. And the reason that we needed a Voting Rights act is because the Civil Rights act of 1964 is had to leave voting rights out in order to avoid a filibuster. And that filibuster left voting rights on the table in 1964 to the point where you had in the state of Alabama. And it looks like Cheryl and Eiffel is coming up soon. In the state of Alabama, out of 15,000 Selma residents who were black who were eligible to vote, the only number who were able to actually register was something like 300 out of 15,000. And for that reason, we actually didn't have full voting rights for African Americans in the state of Alabama. So we ended up having a Voting Rights act because of that march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And that protest is what brought us the Voting Rights Act. Joining me now is somebody who is the perfect person to speak with about all of these things. A brilliant lawyer, the Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at the great Howard University, and the former President and Director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the great and glorious Sherilyn Ifill. Hello, my friend.
- [11:54]
Bobby Cole
Hi, Joy. How you doing? Sorry, I'm a little tardy. I got sleepy.
- [12:00]
Joy Reid
That is okay. It is summer. I want you to boost your audio as much as you can on your. Absolutely. So boost your audio as much as you can. Cheryl and I want to make sure that the folks can hear you.
- [12:09]
Bobby Cole
Problem before. Let's see. Let's see what I can do about that.
- [12:12]
Joy Reid
Absolutely.
- [12:13]
Bobby Cole
Tell me.
- [12:13]
Joy Reid
Just give us your Mac.
- [12:15]
Bobby Cole
Is that better?
- [12:16]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Or just. I'll be a little bit closer to the screen and then I think you'll be good. Perfect. And. And yeah, we'll ask you to just project. Use your mellifluent voice. Let's talk.
- [12:24]
Bobby Cole
I want my courtroom voice in here.
- [12:26]
Joy Reid
We want your courtroom. We always want your courtroom voice. Look, we want to. I would love to be a fly on the wall when you were in court arguing. I think that would be a seminal moment. I would love to be a fly on that wall. But let's talk about what's happening in Texas because first of all, I want to go back and talk about. We were just talking a little bit about the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, which I think in some ways has become the injustice department and the ironic Civil Rights Division, arguing that the five seats that are going to be at least if they can get a quorum in Texas gerrymandered, claiming that Those seats were illegally gerrymandered to give black people more power than they deserved in the state of Texas. Talk about that for a moment.
- [13:09]
Bobby Cole
Well, everything about this administration, and it's very interesting, Joy, if you. If you. I keep a stack of Trump's eos, you know, here in my office, and if you really start to go through them and you start to really try to write down all the different initiatives that. That Trump has engaged, you will discover that a disproportionate number of them are about race. Like, things that even don't seem connected to race. He makes them about race. Right. Or he throws in some DEI piece to cover it. And that's kind of the untold story of Trump 2.0, that the racism, which was always there, is actually really central. And it's interesting because that's not what it sounds like if you're watching the news all the time. It doesn't sound like that's what is central, but it is what's central because we have disconnected the idea of racial equality and civil rights from being core to democracy. So we're having lots of democracy conversation, but it's not focused on what Trump is focused on, right? So he wants five seats January 17th. He says it. I said this earlier. It's no different than him calling up the Georgia secretary of state after the 2020 election and saying, I just need 11,000 votes. Right? So now he's saying, I need five. And he directs, essentially, Texas to create five districts. And what is the theory? What is the. It's this. It's the theory of why a plane crashes over D.C. you know, it's a theory of everything incompetent that happens and every excess that he has to cover. The most convenient cover is race, is to start talking about race. What happens when the Epstein files, you know, are all the rage, and everyone's talking about them. Suddenly Obama. Obama. Right, right, right. The magic words, Barack Hussein Obama suddenly is treasonous, right? So that is. You have to look for that tell. The tell is always the race piece, what turns everything on its head. And Trump is like the king of bizarro world, you know, But. But this was ushered in by others, where everything that is about what we gained in the civil rights movement has now been flipped to try to tell the opposite story. And that's because those who advance white supremacy are destroyers and mimickers. They are not creators. So what, all they can do is take what we created and won and the theories that we develop and. And try to me to it. Right? That's how we ended up with reverse discrimination.
- [15:45]
Joy Reid
Right?
- [15:46]
Bobby Cole
That's how we ended up with affirmative action as discrimination against black people. And that's how we end up with redistricting. Let me just say something about Texas and redistricting, because my first round, when I was a young lawyer at LDF, I, I was there during the 1990 redistricting. I heard people earlier today were talking about the Eddie Bernice Johnson district. Yeah, that was me. And it's, it's thankless. The redistricting is awful. But in any case, Texas, since the state was included in section, the former Section 5 of the Voting Rights act in, in 1970, when states like Texas were added because of the language requirements, Texas has violated the Voting Rights act or the Constitution. In other words, they have engaged in racist redistricting. Every redistricting cycle since 1970. Do you understand what I'm saying? I don't mean like, oh, the bad 1980 redistricting. Every single one. 70, 80, 90, 2000. Right, every single one. So for Trump now to try to suggest that the creation of the map that exists. Right? And remember, you know, just for people listening, redistricting happens every 10 years. So if you hear Tech Texas pulling together a legislature to redistrict after Trump has said, I need five more seats, you should be asking why. That should seem weird. We redistrict after we get census figures. So every 10 years, we've had a redistricting for 20 for the 2000s for this decade. We don't redistrict again until 2030. And the only reason you might be redistricting is because you're in litigation. The like in the Louisiana case or the Allen vs. Milligan case in Alabama, when you have engaged in racial redistricting and you have been challenged by black voters or Latino voters who have found that you, in the drawing of your maps, purposely diminished the voting strength of racial minority voters. That's the only circumstance in which you're like doing some part of the map over because you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar and now you got to go back and fix it. But this idea that Trump can just wake up one day and say, I need five seats. You all need to redistrict. And Governor Abbott then calls together the legislature and how many seats does Trump need again? Five. So we'll do five, right? This is like among the most anti Democratic things we've seen happen over the last 10 years. Because this is literally about changing the representational map to suit the authoritarian. And why would the Authoritarian. Because the authoritarian folks is worried that he will lose the house in 2026. And I know a lot of people are saying, oh, there aren't going to be elections, there are going to be elections. And he knows it. That's why he said, I need five more seats. Because what Trump does not want is for the Democrats to take either the House or the Senate. Remember, if the Democrats take the House, it means they have the gavel. It comes out of Mike Johnson' tiny hand. And it, and all the committees, all of the committees are chaired by Democrats. And that means oversight and that means all investigations. Yes. And that means that Congress is now in a position to take back its rightful power. What are Congress's rightful powers that Mike Johnson handed to Trump along with the gavel? The power to tariff. That is an Article 1 power of Congresses. The power to appropriate. Congress makes decisions about appropriations to the government. The ability to actually create an agency like the Department of Education or the Department of Homeland Security. That is Congress's power. It is not the President's power. And the only reason the President has been able to do what he's done around the budget bleed out, agencies bleed out, aspects of the government decide that he's going to sunset the Department of Education, move forward with these lunatic tariffs is because the Republican controlled Congress has decided that they will not fight Trump for their power. For their power that is set forth explicitly in Article 1 of the Constitution. So the fear is that if the Democrats take the House, first of all, they start with all the hearings, the investigations, the investigations of doj, the investigations of all the departments, they, they, they run all of that stuff and they now assert their power back. You get no money, you get no ability to tariff, and so on and so forth. So that's what he's worried about. And that means he knows that his approval ratings are in the toilet and that he is likely, if there were a fair election, to lose in 2026, at least the House, the Senate obviously can't redistrict because everybody gets two senators. So that's why he wanted it. And Abbott was willing to acquiesce and do what he has done. And of course, the Democrats have left the state and denied him a quorum. They are allowed under the Texas Constitution to deny a quorum. The governor has now issued warrants for civil arrest. Civil arrest would only allow any Democratic representatives remaining in the state to be brought to the State House, where they would presumably stay at least until this session is over, which is August 23rd. And then he'd have to call a new one. So that's kind of where we are.
- [21:22]
Joy Reid
I want to unpack, I want to sit with just for a moment because I think it's so important. I mean, one of the reasons that we have challenges in the United There are many reasons, but one of them is a lack of understanding of civics. And so I want you all to really sit with this for just a moment. There's a reason Donald Trump cares in some ways more about the House. To restate what Sherrilyn said and Cheryl, please correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong. The House is where the money comes from. All appropriations, meaning all spending, simple way or appropriations, a fancy word of saying spending. The people who get to spend yalls money is the House. Everything has to originate. If it's a spending bill, it must originate in the House. The House has to generate it and then the Senate can vote on it. If Donald Trump doesn't control the House, people keep saying, how come Trump gets away with all this? Democrats can't do anything. How come Trump can do it all? Because the House is letting him. He can get rid of the Department of Education because the House is letting him. He can decide, I'm going to build a wall across the Rio Grande somehow, even though there's water. Because the House is saying here, Trump, he's take the money, do what you want. You can do tariffs if you want, but if a House, if the House didn't say yes, they could say, you can't do any of that. And if you try it, we're going to cut off your checkbook, like cutting off a kid's allowance. They could literally starve his administration of funds because the House controls the money. That's why he cares about that. In the Senate, what he's gotten out of them, because they're also compliant, is he can put the guy from the real world in charge of our Transportation Department. He can put the guy from Fox in charge of the Defense Department. If Democrats control the Senate, well, we hope he wouldn't be able to put those people in, even though they play ball way too much. But that's important, Cheryl. And so talk to me just right. Because the giving up the power of the purse and giving up essentially all their power, to me, constitutionally, it is a complete abrogation of their fiduciary duty.
- [23:19]
Bobby Cole
I need people to understand that I have said Mike Johnson is the most dangerous man in the country right now in that way. Right. Because Trump could not do this. I mean, that's why I keep, I keep trying to tell people in a republic, one man cannot take over the country and turn it into an authoritarian regime. He has to have the cooperation and the complicity of the other branches of government and of the institutions that are supposed to hold democracy. And so in some ways, Trump is uniquely dangerous. I'm not saying that he's not. I am saying that the people that we have the ability to influence and pressure more are the people who make it possible for him to do what he does, and that is the elected representatives in the House, the representatives in the Senate, the leaders of institutions that have capitulated to Trump. That's where the problem, that's the democratic crisis that we are facing. Trump is one man who is an authoritarian. He showed that, you know, quite some time ago. We have a problem with voters who think that's okay, obviously. But even, no matter what the voters want, your, your, the rules are not left to plebiscite votes. Right. We have a constitution. There's a, There, there is some framework, and that framework is non negotiable. You can't just decide that Article 1 doesn't count because you know how they keep saying he's doing what he was elected to do. Okay. If a majority of people elected him to do things that are illegal, that are contrary to the Constitution, that are contrary to our civil rights laws, that does not make them legitimate. So I think we also have to shift our thinking as a way of thinking about where to place the pressure. Right. Because the failure is of Congress and of the democratic institutions. And so when we see what the Senate has been willing to allow, when we see what the House has been willing to allow, that is where the problem is. They are supposed to protect us. And when we talk about the checks and balances and so forth, people put that all at the feet of Trump. You know, what if, if a president calls you any given governor, I, I just honestly believe that if Joe Biden had called Wes Moore, my governor in Maryland, and said, we need you to redistrict and find five more seats, Westmore would not do it.
- [25:51]
Joy Reid
No, of course not. Of course not.
- [25:54]
Bobby Cole
Right. So that's not like a thing, that's not like a normal thing, and people need to understand how outrageous it is. Right?
- [26:00]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [26:01]
Bobby Cole
And these people are the same people who talk about states rights, who don't, who say that President Biden must be contained, who say that states have to have the power. And as soon as Trump is on the phone, they give it up. Even the Secretary of State of Georgia wouldn't find him. 11,000 votes.
- [26:18]
Joy Reid
That's right. Brian.
- [26:20]
Bobby Cole
And Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger. But even he.
- [26:22]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [26:23]
Bobby Cole
He said no to understand. Like.
- [26:25]
Joy Reid
That's right. And by the way, Brian Kemp is anti democracy in every way possible. Prevented people from registering to vote or was snatching people off the voter rolls faster than they could get on. When he was secretary of state, and even he was like, I'm not doing that and, but I do want to.
- [26:41]
Bobby Cole
Then there are degrees of outreach.
- [26:42]
Joy Reid
There are degrees.
- [26:43]
Bobby Cole
And we should recognize that.
- [26:45]
Joy Reid
You know, we should recognize that. I want for very. Just for a moment because I want to go to the Supreme Court in a minute. But before I do that, let's talk about these state senators, because this is another thing, and I feel like this is so important for people who are feeling powerless to understand. If Donald Trump is all powerful, then why can a set of state senators foil him? If he is omnipotent, then why is he now at the mercy of a group of state senators who are chilling in Illinois? How can those two things be true? Is he all powerful or not?
- [27:17]
Bobby Cole
I always say leave no power on the table. This is why I talk about the importance of voting the whole ballot, of understanding the powers of different people on the ballot. We have been groomed in this country to think only about the presidency because that's the personality show and that gets the media hits and makes money. Right. We are not encouraged to think about the other levers of power that exists throughout our government. And even in your state government, it's not just your governor, it's your legislature, it's your state. Trump couldn't make the map himself.
- [27:50]
Joy Reid
Right, right, right.
- [27:51]
Bobby Cole
He actually called, and then even the governor couldn't make it himself.
- [27:55]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [27:56]
Bobby Cole
Convene the state legislature.
- [27:57]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [27:59]
Bobby Cole
Them do it. Right. So understand that there are levers of power. And the. The further down we get on the totem pole, the more power you have. You have more power. I raised this morning on a call that the state with the most black people is the state of Texas.
- [28:19]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [28:19]
Bobby Cole
You know. Right. Not percentage. Mississippi has the highest percentage. Absolutely. Nearly 40% from for sure. But Texas, because the state is so big in population, has the most black people. Four million black people.
- [28:31]
Joy Reid
It's like three times Alabama or more. Absolutely.
- [28:35]
Bobby Cole
So it's not New York. It's not Brooklyn.
- [28:36]
Joy Reid
It's not.
- [28:37]
Bobby Cole
It's not any of those places. It's Texas. Right.
- [28:39]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [28:39]
Bobby Cole
We need to be first of all, different conversation, asking Ourselves some questions about getting Texas organized and why Texas is not organized. But therefore your state representative is the person who you have the most influence over and your participation in those elections. And all black people in Texas don't live in districts necessarily with even black representatives, Right?
- [29:01]
Joy Reid
Yep.
- [29:02]
Bobby Cole
And there are a lot of white people in Texas who are against this.
- [29:06]
Joy Reid
And Latinos are the majority. It is a majority non white state.
- [29:10]
Bobby Cole
So. So I guess it's 20, 20 what, 5% Latino and 20% African American. Anyway, the numbers shake out that if it was organized.
- [29:20]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [29:21]
Bobby Cole
It would be a majority minority state. But in any case, the point is that you have power over these people. It's like, and you have to start figuring out. I, it's like I always tell people about, you know, races on the ballot. Like who controls elections in Alabama? The probate judge. Right. Nobody ever thinks about they're casting their ballot in the probate judge election. But when something is ornery, when I'm down, when I used to be down in Alabama poll watching and some shenanigans are going on. Right. The person I have to engage with is the probate judge of that county. By Alabama law. That's who controls the elections on election day. See, if you don't know that though, you just, you're on the ballot and you're voting for your president and your governor and your senator and you know, and you're voting for all the shiny stuff.
- [30:12]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [30:12]
Bobby Cole
If you skip that probate judge election, you are allowing them to decide who is going to control. We learned this with secretary of state elections.
- [30:21]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [30:21]
Bobby Cole
You're right. After the 2000 election and the, and the 2004 election. So we have to get serious about all of these and understand that the power actually is not as concentrated. It is only concentrated because of the abdication of responsibility of those individuals who are supposed to be the stopgap. And we have to start pressuring them. We have to start exposing them.
- [30:45]
Joy Reid
Indeed, when Medgar Evers was fighting for the right to vote, he and his brother, the fight they had was with the registrar.
- [30:50]
Bobby Cole
Yes.
- [30:51]
Joy Reid
That is the person that was standing between them and that ballot. The registrar.
- [30:55]
Bobby Cole
But you heard John Lewis talking about. We had to say, you know how many jelly beans were in the jar? Yes. Who were they saying that to?
- [31:01]
Joy Reid
The registrar. Not the governor.
- [31:04]
Bobby Cole
The person who wouldn't register. James Merritt at Ole Miss or Vivian Malone at University of Alabama. The registrar. In the educational context. Different registrar, but that's the, that's the title. Right.
- [31:16]
Joy Reid
So to the, to the point Sherilyn, Where? Where? The governor of Mississippi came down to the University of Mississippi and essentially made himself the registrar, because as governor, I mean, y' all put this in your mind. As governor, he didn't have the power to keep James Meredith out of Ole Miss as governor, but as the registrar, suddenly he could do it. I want to talk about this case, Louisiana versus Calais, because I always ask, quo vadis, right? Who benefits? Because if they're giving up their power in the United States House of Representatives and letting Trump run amok, because they're letting him entertain himself, enrich himself, commit crimes, do whatever he wants, there's something they're getting out of it, they're getting something for it. So everybody, we got to start thinking about what it is that they're trading us for and trading our essentially making us all poorer. They're getting something, right? But then we got the Supreme Court because they have also traded away a lot of their power and enriched the presidency with almost monarchical powers just for Trump. They wouldn't have done it for Biden. And they seem to be trying to get rid of the entire suite of Warren Court protections for people of color, for black people, particularly no affirmative action, no, you know, no race based anything. They're now coming after the Voting Rights act, which whose anniversary of Senate passages today, the anniversary of the signing is Wednesday. Do you believe that this case. First of all, explain this case, please. Louisiana versus Calais. What is it? And could it be the end of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act? And also, what is section 2 of the Voting Rights Act?
- [32:55]
Bobby Cole
So the Voting Rights act was passed in 1965. It has a number of sections, and actually people don't actually know a lot about how many sections it has that actually allow us to do lots of different things in terms of litigation. But the two principal sections were Section 2 and Section 5. Section 2 forbids jurisdictions from engaging in practices that dilute the voting strength of black voters. And the whole point is to ensure that black voters can cast votes, have, and have that vote count meaningfully. Section 5 of the Voting Rights act was essentially gutted by the Shelby county vs. Holder decision in 2013. That was considered the most innovative, powerful, effective part of any civil rights statute that's ever been passed in this country. Because that statute could get at discrimination before it happened. It identified a set of jurisdictions that had a history of voting discrimination, included those jurisdictions on a list, and required that those jurisdictions would have to get permission to change any voting practice, any polling place, any district lines, any reduction of officers the shift from elected to appointed, all of that would have to be pre cleared by a federal authority, either the Department of Justice or the federal court in the District of Columbia. And that existed from 1965 into 2013 when the Supreme Court struck it down. Supreme Court struck it down on the grounds that they believed that racism was over.
- [34:27]
Joy Reid
It's all done.
- [34:28]
Bobby Cole
And that sexual.
- [34:29]
Joy Reid
We had a black president. Sherilyn. There's no racism. What are you talking about? We're post racial.
- [34:33]
Bobby Cole
And that Section 5 was branding Southern states in a way that was unfair.
- [34:37]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Even though New York was also subject to it, by the way.
- [34:40]
Bobby Cole
Oh, for sure. There were counties in California, New Hampshire, New York, for sure. Three boroughs in New York.
- [34:47]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [34:49]
Bobby Cole
So. And of course, within hours you had jurisdictions like Texas deciding to re up their draconian voter ID law that had been denied preclearance when they tried to pass it originally. And we. And the voter suppression that now has, that people now recognize and see, and that is part of the lexicon really is a post 2013 phenomenon. I don't want to say voter suppression didn't exist because I started Voting rights lawyer in 1988. We've been fighting this like a real guard. But we had that tool, we had the pre clearance tool and we had the federal government with all their resources being involved even in Republican administrations in dealing with these changes that would happen to, in, in, in jurisdictions across the country. And so we lost that tool. And the jurisdictions that formerly had been under it felt like they were now. I think that the Florida Secretary of State said, we're free and clear now. And so they started this process. And then other jurisdictions that had never been covered looked at what these states were doing and said, hey, that's kind of nifty if we want to keep power. So Republicans in Wisconsin said, we want a voter ID law too. Right. And then North Dakota and so on. And so, so now we have a. What was a regional issue now became a national issue. And that's why we have a kind of national voter suppression piece. But what the Supreme Court said in that Section 5 case was, fear not, you still have Section 2. And Section 2 allows groups like the organization that I led in the past, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other civil rights organizations to sue for violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And Section 2 does not require intentional discrimination. It actually has a test that says that if the, if the, it's like a seven part test that would show that some practice, actually the effect of the practice is to discriminate against black voters. And there's a set of factors that you have to prove. So that was. That was supposed to be the tool that we still have. And I started out, you know, do all the first federal case I ever did is Section two. And that was really the bulk of the litigation that I did as a voting rights lawyer. Now we have redistricting. And redistricting is also subject to section two of the Voting Rights Act. In Louisiana, the districts had failed to take account of the increase in black population. And so black voters sued and it was. And their map was found to violate Section 2. So they now were going to create another black district. This had happened in Alabama last year. And in the case called Allen vs. Milligan, we picked up a seat, a majority black district in Alabama because their redistricting also was found to have violated the Voting Rights Act.
- [37:28]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [37:28]
Bobby Cole
In that case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the black plaintiffs and said indeed that this district had to be created, that this was a Section 2 violation. Justice Kavanaugh issued a concurrence in which he said we really should think about whether Section 2 is constitutional.
- [37:46]
Joy Reid
Oh, here we go.
- [37:48]
Bobby Cole
So here we are now in Louisiana versus Calais, once again, the. The districts were shown to have violated Section 2. They litigated the case. They prevailed in the case. They took the case up to the Supreme Court. They argued it last year. They had a three judge court below as required by law. And the three judge court upheld the finding of the section two violation and a new map that would provide this additional representation. The Supreme Court heard the case and then didn't decide it.
- [38:21]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [38:21]
Bobby Cole
And scheduled it now for the fall. And then suddenly last week issued an order asking the parties to brief and be prepared to argue the question raised by the state of Louisiana and their briefs on a certain. In a certain page. And that was the page in which they kind of raised an issue about section whether Section two was constitutional. They never really litigated it, but they raised it in the brief. It was not litigated below.
- [38:52]
Joy Reid
And so now that's where we are.
- [38:54]
Bobby Cole
And so now that we. So this fall we're going to face that issue as to whether or not the Supreme Court will find, will decide that creating a majority black district in order to comply with section two of the Voting Rights act violates. They said the 14th and 15th amendments.
- [39:11]
Joy Reid
Now we're of white people saying that's unfair to white voters to give black voters a member of Congress.
- [39:17]
Bobby Cole
Well, they wouldn't. Here's how they would put it. They would put it like the affirmative action cases like ssfa, the Harvard case, in which essentially what they said is that the 14th Amendment requires colorblindness at all times. In other words, you cannot consider race. Now, that may be the tact they're taking. And they may also now be saying that that's true of the 15th Amendment. Now, this is patently untrue. It was patently untrue in ssfa, though. Right. Right now it's impossible to create districts that. To remedy a Voting Rights act violation without taking account of race.
- [39:54]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [39:54]
Bobby Cole
The only way you could say, basically what they're trying to suggest is that the Voting Rights act is in conflict with the 14th and 15th Amendments. When the Voting Rights act was created pursuant.
- [40:06]
Joy Reid
They're the implementing legislation for the 14th.
- [40:10]
Bobby Cole
Power under the 14. When I tell you bizarro world, that's bizarro. I mean upending civil rights statutes authorized by these amendments and suggesting that the civil rights statutes do violence to the amendments by considering race. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were not colorblind. They were all about black citizenship and black equality. But this is, this is. So who knows what's going to happen?
- [40:35]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [40:36]
Bobby Cole
Know, there's nothing they've done that makes it look good that, you know, in terms of besides Allen vs. Milligan last year, in which, sure. They decided, you know, that Alabama had violated the Voting Rights act, but they're a little bit on a, on a run and they're kind of running the tables right now. So we will see. But that's what we're facing. And it's ugly. It's ugly and it's awful. And we have to keep up the drum beat of that. We cannot make it easy for them. I don't know what they do. We always have a chance. The litigators are excellent, well prepared. The briefs will be amazing. The argument will be amazing. But we create the environment.
- [41:12]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [41:12]
Bobby Cole
That lets the court know whether what they do is going to have blowback. Yeah. So we can't just say, oh, the Supreme Court. I see people all the time online saying, oh, they're never going to.
- [41:22]
Joy Reid
Fatalism. Yeah.
- [41:23]
Bobby Cole
So remember how people talk about not complying in advance with Trump.
- [41:27]
Joy Reid
That's right. Don't do it with the court either.
- [41:29]
Bobby Cole
Don't, don't. Don't make the court think that there's. That they're not going to be roundly condemned.
- [41:35]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [41:35]
Bobby Cole
Right.
- [41:36]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [41:37]
Bobby Cole
Believe it or not, it still matters to them. If people think that they are racist or call them racist, it still matters to them. And So I just want for us to be aware.
- [41:47]
Joy Reid
I will say it still matters to most of them, except maybe two of them, Sherilyn Hill, and I won't name those two. I think two of them.
- [41:57]
Bobby Cole
You may have me.
- [41:57]
Joy Reid
Two of them are happy to let you think that they don't like black people. And one of them is a very ironic one of those two people.
- [42:04]
Bobby Cole
We have enough time for me to raise one other thing before I jump.
- [42:06]
Joy Reid
Very quickly, because we have another guest coming in. But, yeah, go ahead, throw it in there real quick.
- [42:09]
Bobby Cole
I just want to. Because again, you got to be old to know this stuff. And so I'm sure your viewers don't know.
- [42:15]
Joy Reid
Yes.
- [42:15]
Bobby Cole
So I was there at Justice Alito's confirmation hearings. Right. Or at least I was watching it on tv. And we should always remember that. That Justice Alito had expressed opposition to the Voting Rights act when he was a young lawyer, and this came up at his confirmation hearing. John Roberts also was working with the 92amendments to the Voting Rights act before Congress, and he also was opposed to it. Alito's explanation for why he was opposed to Section 2 of the Voting Rights act was that his father's job. His father worked in the State House in New Jersey, and his father was the guy who did the maps for districting. And what he said, it was a completely ridiculous explanation. But what he said was the reason that he had felt some type of way about it was that now his father had to do over the maps and had to do all these things to comply. But I, I say that because so much of these. So, so much of what we see these folks doing operates out of these personal, primal incidents that they experienced as, as young people. And you can just see that they're not grown up. You see the, the Lindsey Grahams, the, the people who acquiesced, you can see who they were when they were, you know, 13. We can see who they were in their sophomore year of high school. Anyway, I just want to say that. That that's the. The mindset that he took in and was prepared to even say it at his confirmation here, which is just such a ridiculous thing. But just to remember how long these people have been broken, concerned, opposed. Right? And they see an opportunity, and that's what makes them sloppy. That's what makes them ride roughshod over precedent, because they see this is the chance, and it may be their chance.
- [44:02]
Joy Reid
Absolutely, yes. Stephen Miller is all about that. Cheryl and Eiffel, it's always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank You. We appreciate it. It's like we took a little class with you at Howard, and we appreciate you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
- [44:12]
Bobby Cole
Take care.
- [44:12]
Joy Reid
Thank you. All right, y'. All. So now, look, that is important information. You guys, take it in. Take it in. Take it in. That was gold. That was gold. But I first now want to make a little shift. I want you guys to take a look at this ad. Okay, Here it is. Watch the ad. We're going to play a little bit of the ad.
- [44:31]
Sherilyn Ifill
You've heard about bulls in a china shop. Well, that's what Greg Abbott's been doing to the people of the state of Texas. Tearing up everything we've built, kissing up to bullies and billionaires who are taking every last dime out of our pockets. Well, I don't give up that easy on farms or people. Weather, disease, inflation, and tariffs can make or break you. And as a young man, I was closer to broke than made. Like a lot of Texans, I. I needed a second job. For over 20 years, I fought fires, then drove 100 miles back home to work the cows. I've met people who've lost everything. Treasured possessions, homes, even their loved ones. I was honored to help them in their darkest hour. And I'm prepared to do it again for the people of Texas.
- [45:22]
Joy Reid
And joining me now is the gentleman that you just saw. He's running for governor of Texas against Greg Abbott. His name is Bobby Cole. Bobby Cole, thank you so much for being here.
- [45:35]
Sherilyn Ifill
Hello. How are you, Joy?
- [45:36]
Joy Reid
I'm doing wonderfully, thank you. That video is actually about two minutes long. I played about 57 seconds of it. It's fascinating because you're telling the story of being a very regular guy, a farmer, a firefighter. What makes you want to go from that to being the governor of the state of Texas?
- [45:55]
Sherilyn Ifill
Well, the easiest answer is, you know, I'm a husband. I'm also a father and a grandfather. And I'm really worried that, you know, the. The country you and I grew up in, the state I grew up in, it's sort of a legacy we're going to pass down to them. And I'm. I'm worried that. That. That's actually going to happen. So that's what inspired me to run.
- [46:22]
Joy Reid
And so we know that Texas is one of those sort of strange sort of states. It's a majority minority state, similar to California. The demographics are a little bit different, but similar. A very large Latino population, the largest African American population in the entire country. But a very low turnout rate among both of those Two groups, black and brown Texans vote at very abysmally low rates. And for that reason, Republicans pretty much win every seat they win up and down the ballot from mayors races up to the statewide races. It's very hard for Democrats to win. How would you change that?
- [47:03]
Sherilyn Ifill
Well, what you've got to do is Republicans have had a stranglehold on this state for 30 years. And it's really just sort of disheartened and really turned down Democrats in this state feeling that their voices matter. And predominantly it's been done through gerrymandering. And, you know, it's only getting worse, as you may know. But the first thing you got to do is I'm. One of my main campaign planks is that, you know, you've got to, you've got to show a different kind of leadership than what we've got now. And you don't, you don't think so. But leadership from the top matters so much, you know, far as common decency and common good and work, you know, advocating for the working men and women of the state. And I believe once you show that more and more people will get involved, especially if you elect a Democratic governor, I think the Democrats will come out of the woodwork and feel like they're empowered to, you know, make sure they're represented and get out and vote and start taking, taking their own destiny and their state back. And I think it starts from the top, setting a tone and that we're for liberties, we're for freedoms and we're for justice and we're for working men and women of the state getting a fair shot instead of the wealthy and the powerful because they're doing great and we're not.
- [48:34]
Joy Reid
You know, we saw Beto o' Rourke run a campaign that was similar to that. I mean, he went, you know, to every district in the country. He talked like a regular person. He's a normal sounding guy. Other than on guns, which he got hammered on because he is for some restrictions on firearms, he came like very close to beating Ted Cruz. And polls show that most Texans don't even like Ted Cruz. They still put him back in your governor. Polls show he's very unpopular. Your attorney general had criminal charges against him, was impeached by his own party. It seems to me that these very unpopular Republicans stay in power. And I wonder if in your view it's, is it all guns? Are Texans holding their noses and voting for people they can't even stand, all because of guns?
- [49:21]
Sherilyn Ifill
Well, I hate to keep going back to the same thing. But what's happening in Texas, I don't even think it's really about guns. There's a lot of common sense gun laws that, that gun owners and non gun owners and Democrats and Republicans support, support, but yet it never gets moved up the chain. And it all comes back to this gerrymandering because most of these officials are elected in the prime, in the primary process, which really only promotes extreme ism. And on top of that, all of this, all, all these Republicans campaign coffers are stuffed by billionaires with millions of dollars. And what, what these Republicans in this state have become used to is that they're unaccountable and they don't have to perform for the people of the state of Texas through gerrymandering and these campaign contributions that are really put in there as a form of legal robbery. And it really holds back progress.
- [50:32]
Joy Reid
Here in Texas, you guys, you have about a couple of billionaires that essentially control your state, right? As you said, they put a lot of money into Greg Abbott's pockets and the other Democrats, the other Republicans pockets and they also have some pretty extreme right wing religious views, et cetera. Do you get a sense when you're going around the state talking to people that people are aware of that they're being run by these billionaires? Because billionaires are not exactly popular right now. Is that something that people are aware of?
- [51:01]
Sherilyn Ifill
I think more and more they're becoming aware of the situation and what the state has been, I guess, been, I guess what the state's been sort of, I guess given to. And I think, I think here's what, here's what I, I believe is that the Republicans are very good at bully politics and intimidating people. But in the end it's going to come home to roost. The, the horrible policies they put on working men and women of the state, women's rights, immigrants, you know, not being treated decent, shortchanging our schools, not respecting working men and women of the state who build the state and drive its economy. It's these horrible policies and it comes all the way down from Washington by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott doesn't do anything to stand up for the people of the state. And we're told that most of the people in the state that have paid in earned benefits when they need them or have earned them in their retirement and their old age, that they're waste, fraud and abuse and this is really a sinister lie told from the top. And here's what I believe. Every time Republicans have total control of, they usually screw it up Very badly. And I think between all these things I've just mentioned, there's going to be a lot of people that voted Republican independents and maybe not extreme Republicans that are going to start realizing that the policies that's been forced upon this state are short sighted and not doing anything for them. And they're going to be open to a different message delivered from a little different perspective than than what they've had before. And I think they're going to be, I think they're going to be open to it and have an appetite for it.
- [53:16]
Joy Reid
What do you make of these Democrats that have left the state and gone to Illinois and New York, et cetera, to deny a quorum for this gerrymandering?
- [53:23]
Sherilyn Ifill
I think it's great and I think it's about time the, the Democratic Party take off the gloves and start throwing some hey haymakers. And I would like the entire Democratic Party nationally to take the opportunity not to sit and wait how this quorum break turns out for Texas, but to go ahead in California, Illinois and New York, follow through and go ahead and start securing more Democratic seats in those states because I believe it's an existential threat. If Republicans maintain control of Congress. We're going to be looking at a Trump third term and autocracy will be upon us. And so this is not the time for the meek and mobbed. You better come to the fight and you better be ready for a 15 rounder. And we need people that are prepared to do what it takes. Not necessarily what is fair, but what it takes.
- [54:37]
Joy Reid
No. One thing I have to say about Texas Democrats is that y' all are built different. I mean Jasmine Crockett different. You know what I mean? Joaquin Castro, James Talarico, who I've seen out here, really speaking about religion and faith in a way that you don't really hear Democrats talk about. And Texas Democrats definitely are, I think, trying to model for Democrats in the rest of the country a different way of behaving. And you're different. You know, I thought your video was interesting. Give a grade to the party nationally. What do you think is, is the Democratic Party is doing wrong that they can't seem to resonate? What can Texas Democrats teach them?
- [55:13]
Sherilyn Ifill
Well, I think, I think we get too involved in the culture war, you know, and fall into that trap. I mean we need to just be, speak to basic decency and everybody's right to be seen and not devolve into any more arguments on, you know, how many, how many trans athletes there are in the state. There's like four or five. That's not an issue we need to be arguing about. We just need to make sure that everybody's rights are protected and nobody's being denied. Okay.
- [55:48]
Joy Reid
Or are Democrats making that argument? Because it seems to me that Republicans keep making it. Democrats don't. See.
- [55:53]
Sherilyn Ifill
No, I don't think they're making our argument because what's important is that it's tabletop issues. It's about getting back to what helps people, you know, keep a roof over their head, food on the table, provide a future for their kids, and then be. Be able to in their old age, once they spend their entire life, you know, building on, building an economy. And their hips are broke down, their knees ache, and they can't sleep at night because they ache so bad. And their hands are, you know, riddled with arthritis. Arthritis that they can retire with some dignity. And that's what. That's what this state should be about. That's what our government should be about, is. Is, like I said, advocating for the working poor and the middle class. Because if we do, if we build that as Biden, you say from the middle out will have shoulders big enough. The billionaires and the big corporations are still going to do just fine. Okay, they. They've been doing fine with our current political setup, but there's a different way to. There's a different way to do it, and they're going to be taken care of either way. They're gonna. They're gonna make their money. But, yeah, we need. We need to restructure who we prioritize in the state and this country. And Democrats can do that. We've always been a working man's party. We just hadn't been great about really advocating for the working man.
- [57:27]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [57:29]
Sherilyn Ifill
Yes. And we've got it. We've got to start being fighters and telling everybody what we do for them. And that's really our job.
- [57:38]
Joy Reid
Yeah, for sure. I mean, Democrats talk very little about living wages, very little about, you know, raising wages, very little about things that, you know, people actually are trying to care about. One last question for you, Bobby Cole. And this, given the fact that we did see this deadly flood that took place in Texas, and then we found out that some of those local officials turned down $10 million in what would have been aid to try to get a weather warning system there, because the money came from Biden. They just didn't want that Biden money, and people are dead as a result. You've seen a lot of neglect in the state of Texas. Whether it's because, you know, after gun violence, whether it's your grid that doesn't seem to work, if you're the governor of Texas, what's your first hundred days look like? What are the things that you would do first if you were elected to be the governor of Texas following Ann Richards as just the next Democratic governor? The great Ann Richards.
- [58:27]
Sherilyn Ifill
Yes, the great first thing you got to do is, is. Is real. Realize when you go in there, you don't have all the answers. And you got to surround yourself with, with people that are not knowledgeable and understand the issues that are at hand. And you've got to gather those people together because none of us is as smart as all of us and you. And you've got to have assessments on, you know, warning systems or electrical grid. You know, just how. Where's our state of infrastructure within the state? Where is it at? And then you've got to you really, the first hundred days, you've got to put all that together and, and start forming a plan so that you don't misstep and you immediately go to doing what the state needs instead. Instead of a lot of performative political, political annex antics. And another thing you need to get a hold of is how are you going to secure the border and how are you going to document immigration? Because if you think this state can thrive and succeed without immigration, you're lying to yourself and you're believing the lie. Immigration is vitally important to Texas. It's vitally important to the United States. And Texas can be a leader in figuring out how we do that and do it for the benefit of all. And that's what I try to. That's the first thing you got to do is try to attack that in the first hundred days and then veto anything that doesn't, doesn't help working men and women of the state and violates freedoms and rights. You know, veto all that for sure. Put an end all that silliness.
- [60:20]
Joy Reid
You know what I like about you, Bobby Cole? You're a regular guy. And I feel like we need to promote the regular guy politician. I think that it's a refreshing thing to have somebody that's not a slick politician that's trying to get in office. Because I think that is the challenge, I think you've hit on it, is that regular people don't feel seen and heard by politics. They don't feel represented. They think that it's a game that has nothing to do with them, which is probably why a lot of people don't vote. Bobby Cole. Good luck the primary. I want to make sure I get it right. It's March 3rd.
- [60:46]
Sherilyn Ifill
Yes, ma'. Am.
- [60:47]
Joy Reid
The primary is March 3rd. The race, the actual general election is next November. But these elections are, as you said earlier, are decided in the primary. So it's too late. When you get to the general election, then you're going to complain that it's a lesser of two evil situation. So the thing you want to do is pick your person in the primary so that when the general election comes, you've got who you want. Bobby Cole, good luck to you. You're welcome to come back anytime. Thanks for being here.
- [61:10]
Sherilyn Ifill
Thank you, Joy. Pleasure being here.
- [61:13]
Joy Reid
Thank you very much. All right, y', all, that's Bobby Cole. You can find his website online. We'll put it in the beneath this show here. We'll put it in the notes so that you can find his website. He didn't give his website. That's how you know he's not a slick politician, because he did not give his website. Thank you all for tuning in. I think it's important to just hear from these candidates. I want to let you all know that there are probably other people that are going to jump in. We've heard James Talarico might jump in. There's lots of rumors that Beto o' Rourke's going to run, that Joaquin Castro might jump in. Anybody who's running for these offices, please come through, because we want to hear what you would do in office, what your purpose is, what you're thinking in terms of what your state and how your state can be better, elect better candidates. If you want a better country, that's the bottom line. We get the country that we vote for. And I think Sheryl and Ifill made a really important point. I want to reiterate two important points before we go. Point number one, there's a lot more power in these offices below the presidency than you think. These governors have a lot of power. The only person that could call a special session in the state of Texas to try to hand Donald Trump his five seats that he want is the governor. The only people who can give Donald Trump his five seats because he can't do it himself. He can't just take five seats in the House. He's not all powerful. It's state senators and state representatives. So it kind of matters who you vote for in these state rep and state Senate seats. You may not think about them a lot, but they're also where you get a lot of your members of Congress. Jasmine Crockett started as a member of the state House and state Senate. So the bottom line is who you're electing in these state smaller offices actually can determine whether Donald Trump can continue to run roughshod over a state like Texas. It's that state senator and state rep. And when you get to the US Rep, the House of Representatives, that's where the checkbook is. If you want to take Donald Trump's allowance away so that he can no longer gut and destroy the government and implement Project 2025. Yeah, he can fire all the bureaucrats, but if he doesn't have any money to do it. We remember ice before the budget was passed, the big ugly bill was running out of money. They were actually out of cash. They got the cash back because of the House of Representatives being obedient to Trump. So elect less obedient people and maybe we can start to slow Trump down so that we don't wind up with a Trump 2028 or Trump forever because they're willing to let him destroy the country and enrich himself and do what he wants. Because they want something. I'm gonna leave you with that thought. What is it? What is it that they want? And what do they think they're getting out of all this? Thank you all for tuning in. I want to make sure you guys hit like hit subscribe, hit share, and also hit that little notification button, the little bell thing. That way you can always know when we're going live. I want to note, you guys, that Friday of this week we have a really, really special program that we're going to play. We are going to be on a, in a taped program on Friday. And it's a really, really good interview with a journalist named TJ Raphael. And she's got a hand harrowing, scary, frightening story that is showing that there is an implementation of the Handmaid's Tale that's happening in real life in America right now. That TJ Raphael interview is going to run on Friday, a special program that you're going to see right here, 7pm Same that time, same bat station on the Joy Reed Show. So make sure you tune in for that. And in the meantime, we will see you again live right here again on Wednesday. Thanks for tuning in to the Joy Reed Show. Like subscribe and share support independent media, don't be a lurker. And we will see you on Wednesday. Have a good night. Okay?