3545 - Stephen Miller, Shadow President; Texas Redistricting Fight w/ Rep. Greg Casar

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: 3545 - Stephen Miller, Shadow President; Texas Redistricting Fight w/ Rep. Greg Casar
Release Date: July 24, 2025
Host: Emma Vigland (in place of Sam Seder)
Guests: Initially Gene Guerrero; Representative Greg Casar

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Introduction

The episode kicks off with host Emma Vigland outlining the day's agenda, which encompasses a deep dive into Stephen Miller's influence within the Trump administration and a critical discussion with Representative Greg Casar about the ongoing Texas redistricting battle. Additionally, Emma touches on international issues, including the severe humanitarian crisis faced by Palestinians and recent political maneuvers in Israel.

Segment 1: Stephen Miller – The Shadow President

Background and Influence

Emma Vigland initiates the discussion by highlighting Stephen Miller's significant role as one of President Donald Trump's longest-serving advisors. The conversation delves into Miller's instrumental role in shaping restrictive immigration policies, most notably the family separation policy and the intensified targeting of Latino, Muslim, and Middle Eastern immigrants.

Emma Vigland [20:41]: "Stephen Miller is like functionally, I think we've been talking about this kind of the shadow president, right? He is one of Donald Trump's longest advisors at this point."

White Nationalist Connections

The episode references Gene Guerrero’s investigative work on Miller, emphasizing his deep-rooted connections to white nationalist ideologies. Emma discusses Miller's early life in Southern California, where his anti-immigrant sentiments reportedly began in his teenage years, fostering a lifelong animosity towards Spanish-speaking individuals.

Emma Vigland [22:22]: "As we saw how LA was targeted by the ICE raids as the show of force... Gene wrote about how he was harboring hatred because he was now in a school not in the fancier part of Santa Monica... harassing students for speaking Spanish."

Matt Binder further underscores Miller's alignment with extremist ideologies, citing his admiration for European white nationalist literature and his active participation in right-wing talk radio.

Matt Binder [28:57]: "One of the books that he read... the Camp of the Saints, which is just explicit, like sort of European Nazi book about hordes of non-white people coming and overrunning Christendom... he is a Nazi."

Policy Implications and Recent Actions

The discussion transitions to current policies influenced by Miller, such as the administration's proposal to place GPS ankle monitors on approximately 180,000 migrants, marking a significant expansion of surveillance and control over immigrant populations.

Emma Vigland [21:38]: "The administration is currently floating this policy of putting ankle monitors on around 180,000 migrants... it's a massive surveillance expansion."

Segment 2: Texas Redistricting Fight with Representative Greg Casar

Current Redistricting Efforts

Representative Greg Casar joins the conversation to shed light on the aggressive gerrymandering efforts undertaken by Texas Republicans. The Texas Legislature is in a special session aimed at redrawing district lines to further diminish Democratic representation from 13 to potentially as few as seven seats.

Greg Casar [37:18]: "This is a five alarm fire for democracy... Trump has plans to rig the rules before the midterm elections even happen."

Impact on Democracy and Voting Rights

Casar emphasizes the threat these redistricting measures pose to democratic accountability, particularly concerning investigations into Trump's alleged corruption and criminal activities. He warns that without intervention, these efforts could undermine the Voting Rights Act and set a dangerous precedent nationwide.

Greg Casar [37:18]: "If Trump comes in and gerrymanders Texas even further, already extremely gerrymandered... it would require chopping up communities of color in ways that have been illegal for decades."

Strategic Response and Legislative Action

Casar outlines a three-point strategy to combat the gerrymandering crisis:

1. Buy Time: Utilize tactics like filibusters and quorum breaks to delay the redistricting process.
2. Mobilize Resources: Invest in campaigns to run against Republicans in newly vulnerable or "pinker" districts created by the gerrymandering.
3. Impose Costs: Encourage other states with independent redistricting commissions, such as California, to retaliate by redrawing their maps in response, thereby increasing the overall cost to Republicans of their gerrymandering efforts.

Greg Casar [41:51]: "We've got to buy time... recruit great candidates... impose a huge cost on them."

Legislative Initiatives and Advocacy

Casar also discusses his legislative efforts to ban surveillance pricing, addressing how companies exploit AI to manipulate pricing based on personal data. He calls for updated laws to prevent corporations from using such discriminatory practices.

Greg Casar [49:56]: "My bill bans the practice of corporations spying on you to jack up your prices or lower your wages based on your data... If you want companies to compete on improving their products, not on using AI to squeeze every last penny out of you."

Additional Discussions

Gene Guerrero’s Insights on Miller’s Far-Right Agendas

Although Gene Guerrero was scheduled to join the episode, technical difficulties prevented her participation. Emma fills in by summarizing Guerrero's book, "Hate: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda," which details Miller’s early influences, his progression into far-right politics, and his role in fostering discriminatory policies against various immigrant groups.

Ongoing Jeffrey Epstein Investigation

Emma touches on the persistent news regarding former President Donald Trump's connections to Jeffrey Epstein, mentioning recent disclosures and testimonies that continue to implicate Trump in Epstein's criminal activities. This segment underscores the broader narrative of elite corruption and impunity.

Emma Vigland [08:07]: "It's a story about elites that get away with unspeakable crimes... Trump is a part of that elite that is so widely hated in this country."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a strong call to action for listeners to engage in the fight against gerrymandering and to support legislative measures that protect voting rights and curb corporate exploitation through AI-driven pricing strategies. Representative Greg Casar emphasizes the critical nature of these battles in preserving democratic integrity and ensuring accountability within the political system.

Greg Casar [48:33]: "This is Trump trying to rig the election before we even have it... it's time for us to make very clear that this practice is illegal and banned."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Emma Vigland [20:41]: "Stephen Miller is like functionally... the shadow president."
• Matt Binder [28:57]: "He is a Nazi... Stephen Miller is running a giant Gestapo goon squad..."
• Greg Casar [37:18]: "This is a five alarm fire for democracy..."
• Greg Casar [41:51]: "We've got to buy time... recruit great candidates... impose a huge cost on them."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Stephen Miller's Role: As a central figure in the Trump administration, Miller's policies have significantly shaped the current immigration landscape, with deep ties to white nationalist ideologies influencing his legislative agenda.

2. Texas Redistricting Crisis: The aggressive gerrymandering efforts by Texas Republicans pose a substantial threat to fair representation and democratic accountability, necessitating immediate and coordinated resistance from progressive lawmakers and activists.

3. Legislative Solutions: Representative Casar advocates for strategic legislative measures, including banning discriminatory AI practices and enhancing protections against voter suppression through updated redistricting laws.

4. Call to Action: Listeners are encouraged to participate in advocacy efforts, support progressive legislation, and hold elected officials accountable to safeguard democratic principles and promote equitable governance.

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 3545, providing a comprehensive overview of the critical discussions surrounding Stephen Miller's influence and the urgent fight against gerrymandering in Texas. For those interested in the intersections of politics, policy, and democratic integrity, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable strategies.

Transcript

[Emma Vigland]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily. It is Thursday, July 24, 2025. My name is Emma Vigland in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live step from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Gene Guerrero joins us to talk about Stephen Miller, his background, the shadow president. And later in the show, Representative Greg Ksar will be with us to talk about Texas Republicans gerrymandering scheme and what Democrats need to do about it. Also on the program, Israel has starved over 100 Palestinians to death. Half a million Palestinians face catastrophic food insecurity that will leave lifelong health issues. When you're that hungry, your body starts eating its organs. The Israeli parliament overwhelmingly approves a motion on west bank annexation. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pam Bondi told Trump in May that he was in the Epstein files before the COVID up.

[Matt Binder]

Interestingly, sick of this conversation. Let it be.

[Emma Vigland]

Are we still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? The DOJ is going to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell today, by the way. Yes, that same DOJ led by Pam.

[Matt Binder]

Bondi to make a deal. I mean to get down to the bottom of the tree.

[Emma Vigland]

House Republicans join Summerlee's oversight motion to call for the release of the Epstein subpoena ahead of the August recess. But look over here. Tulsi Gabbard says she proved Obama engaged in treasonous conspiracy even though there is no shift in the intelligence assessment. It's just, you know, you gotta say what the dear leader wants to hear. Columbia University settles for $200 million in Trump's shakedown over false claims of anti Semitism. I'm old enough to remember when Colombia banned Jewish voices for peace in November of 2023 for anti Semitism. The Washington Post reports that ICE is moving to shackle 180,000 immigrants with GPS ankle monitors. A federal judge in Tennessee orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release from detention as he faces false, you know, trumped up charges about human trafficking. And a federal appeals court in California says Trump's efforts to repeal birthright citizenship are unconstitutional. Lastly, the Trump administration is striking down a decades long consent agreement decree that forced a Louisiana parish to desegregate just because, hey, we got to give a shout out to the Nazis and this and the Confederates. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Matt. Hello everybody. They reminded me of of your tweet that got covered in a Mediaite article because it was a very astute observation, but. Hello, Matt and hello, Brian. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. You figured this out, Matt. So they tweeted out this weird, like, Homeland Security painting. What was this?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, well, I didn't figure this out necessarily. A lot of other people did. I also just commented on it. But Homeland Security, you can put, put this up, put up a painting of, of John by John Gass called American Progress, which is actually the, the piece I used critically, I would stress as the COVID art for my podcast, Literary Hangover. But they also posted some text here. A heritage to be proud of. A homeland worth defending. American Progress, John Gast. Now, people pointed out that this is exactly 14 words, which is relevant because this is a secret Hitler signal by Nazis at Homeland Security. You'll notice the two H's are capitalized. That was the first thing I noticed. Oops.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And, but also the A and the D. A is the first letter. D is the fourth. Hs are the eight. 1488 is a Hitler. Sort of secret Hitler code, basically.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. Eight, eight is the H is the eighth letter in the Alphabet. So that would be two H's together, meaning Hitler.

[Matt Binder]

And you know, go back to Emma. Like, this is something that Department of Homeland Security was doing in Trump's first term. There was a press release where they said they lost track of for 1488 kids. And then they also did a. Had a sort of thread that was actually sort of explicitly invoking the 14 words pledged by white nationalists about securing a homeland for our children or whatever the fuck that tweets also. 14 letter words, exactly.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, which is a, you know, a white supremacist, domestic, like, terrorist slogan, basically.

[Matt Binder]

And, you know, some people might think that is a little bit far fetched, but I would suggest. No, it's not. It's something. It's a explicit pattern.

[Emma Vigland]

They've been doing this over and over again. And this is going to be very relevant to our conversation with Gene Guerrero about Stephen Miller and her work, you know, investigating his background. Because he's all, all over this stuff. This is, this is his language and this is probably at his direction or one of his minions across this kind of thing.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, I had a tweet in 2019. In light of Stephen Miller's white nationalism being documented, we should revisit stories like these, dismissed by many at the time as eerie coincidence. There should be more panic about Nazis in. I mean, this is Lori Voss in 2018. I think this. I wonder if they took this down. But you can still see in the.

[Emma Vigland]

URL, maybe the Biden administration did, but.

[Matt Binder]

The URL was we must secure border and build wall. Make America safe again. That is like the invocation of the we must. The 14 word slogan. There's another one here where HHS issued the number 1488 four months prior. Health and Human Services Department recently told Senate staffers that case managers could not find 1488 children. Again, this is 2019. And how that number arrived at they never decided to describe. And Stephen Miller is just a Nazi.

[Emma Vigland]

That was a wink and a nod to the white nationalists and to the Nazis that are paying attention.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, and there's emails that show Stephen Miller being a big fan of. I forget the sort of European white nationalist book, but there were emails that came out. He is conversant in this actual type of terminology. So this is just Nazis winking at each other. As you know, Border Patrol signs people up for six figure jobs with $45,000 signing bonuses.

[Emma Vigland]

And yeah, we'll be talking more about this in just a second because the depth and the extent of Stephen Miller's belief in far right ideas has been investigated by Jean and goes very, very deep. But let's talk a little bit about the top story, at least in the news right now, which is it's Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, this is fun for us here at the Majority Report to a degree. Not because we're trying to be flippant about the hundreds of.

[Matt Binder]

I need to just take a quick break. Cut to the new break here. Your video is stuttering like crazy. So we're gonna.

[Emma Vigland]

We are back. Sorry about that, folks. We're not sure. Hopefully my video isn't.

[Matt Binder]

The tubes aren't clogged up, but I think we're back.

[Emma Vigland]

A tube got clogged up. Yes. I mean, Al Gore's got to get on that with the Internet. But. Okay, so we're back. We're back, we're back. Let's just do this quickly then. So, yeah, the biggest story in the news right now is obviously the Jeffrey Epstein stuff and the fact that Trump cannot shake this story. And I maintain that it has such broad appeal because it's this very low barrier to entry kind of political story that has so many of the frustrations that are widely felt by the American public wrapped up in it. It doesn't need to just be the salacious, titillating way that the right kind of approaches it as. Or the anti Semitic way often that they engage with the Jeffrey Epstein story and the secret cabal of Jews that are pedophiles, basically, or Democrats or degenerates like, you don't need to be a QAnon person to find this story as compelling, even though honestly, when I hear kind of moderate or mainstream voices talking about it, they. They try to put it in that box. But it's not that. It's a story about elites that get away with unspeakable crimes and are, and have no, there's no recourse, seemingly. And that there's these people at the top of our society that are hoarding wealth, that are unfathomably rich. And most of the rest of us are living paycheck to paycheck and don't have the finance, any financial security. And these folks are robbing us blind. And even when they do something like have a pedophilic sexual assault ring, they don't get held accountable. That's why I think this story is so significant. And Trump, for years, because of the unorthodox way nature and because the Democrats frankly enabled this and because he was so uncouth, was able to position himself as this outsider who is outside of the widely reviled establishment of both parties. And this has been enabled by the Democrats appeal to these mythical moderate suburban Republicans. I mean, there are some of them that are going to vote Democrat, but not in the numbers that shift elections, as we saw in 2024. Instead of tying Trump to the Republican establishment, they pursued that strategy. But what I think this story does is it shows that Trump is a part of that elite that is so widely hated in this country. And more and more is coming out. CNN found some footage that they released from Donald Trump in the late 90s with Jeffrey Epstein showing how buddy, buddy, they were at this Victoria Secret fashion show. They also revealed it was K file at CNN that Epstein was at Trump's second wedding to Marla Maples. And now Midas Touch unearthed this video clip as a part of this drip, drip, drip. And of course, the big Washington Wall Street Journal article from last night showing that Trump was informed that he was in the Epstein files in May. Now we're seeing a part of Epstein's testimony. Here he is pleading the Fifth about his personal relationship with Donald Trump.

[Greg Ksar]

Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?

[Emma Vigland]

What do you mean by personal relationships? Have you socialized with him?

[Greg Ksar]

Yes, sir.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes.

[Greg Ksar]

Yes, sir. Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18, though I'd like to answer that question at least today, I'M.

[Matt Binder]

Going to have to assert my 5th.

[Emma Vigland]

6Th, and 14th amendment right. That's interesting. That's interesting. So he did answer more affirmatively about their relationship, but then pled the fifth about the girls who were underage. It's just so many different little coincidences here that are just stacking on top of one another.

[Greg Ksar]

I mean, remember Vice covering this, like, before this last election cycle? And I don't know why. It wasn't a campaign commercial.

[Matt Binder]

I'll tell you why. Exactly why. Because they ran Hillary fucking Clinton.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

This is the story you're talking about.

[Greg Ksar]

This is like this, this election. I meant.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, well, no, I mean, they were still. They sent people. Clinton went to Michigan. Michigan.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, you're right.

[Emma Vigland]

They were still trying to like, like, keep the Clintons in the fold, even though is the most obvious political prudent thing to throw them overboard with his turtle tongue.

[Matt Binder]

Just as we're like, I mean, this is ken Silverstein in 2016. The salacious ammo even Donald Trump won't use in a fight against Hillary Clinton. But he mentions this exact exchange somewhere. But there's. I mean, it's worthwhile to go into it, but you know that video was from 2010. Right. It was the 2008 primary where I first heard it, like on NPR or something, that Hillary Clinton had a liability because Bill Clinton had been taking flights on the Lolita Express. This is not suppressed at all, except by the political freaks who run campaigns.

[Emma Vigland]

And you know why? The fact that that information is out there and there are, like, people that are consuming this online. Right. This is the information overload age. And everybody is super online now. And the Democrats are so slow to catch up to that. But, like, what. Why it is a liability for them to continue to protect or not engage with the story. And why it was so egregious is the fact that it creates that credibility problem, too, because people are seeing this story, it's outrageous. Elites are implicated, and then the Democratic Party isn't talking about it. What do you. And it's like the stuff with Gaza. If you don't stand up on this issue, are you going to stand up on other issues? And obviously, it's different things and. But the reason why it's an issue that has staying power is because it's reflective of a populist anger in this country. In my view, that is entirely righteous. And the Epstein story is just a salacious way to expose the rot that is already there. So keep it up. It'll be interesting to see how this, this plays out. But I don't think this drip, drip, drip is going away, especially if, like, you know, the Trump administration is doing such a bad job at putting a handle on it. In a moment, we'll be talking to Gene Guerrero. But first, a word from one of our favorite sponsors. Hello, Tushy. Folks, you know you want, you want luxury in your house. Old school luxury, it's shiny, kind of wasteful, doesn't actively change your life. New school luxury is restorative, transformative, essential. Every day bidets are the new bling. Now, Sam has talked about how this has transformed his life. It's transformed his bathroom habits. I'm not sure I'm necessarily as comfortable talking about it as Sam. So I'll lean on his experience to say that he waxes poetically about hello Tushy. And well, I will say this. I was just in Europe and for my honeymoon and it's just infuriating that we don't have those things all across this country. We're just not refined enough. But you can, we can make it the reality. We can be refined like the Europeans by. If you decide to go with hello with Tushy. Aura is Tushy's brand new electric bidet with an auto open lid and seat, instant warm water that never runs cold and UV sterilization for next level hygiene. Ora by Tushy easily attaches to your existing toilet without the need for additional plumbing. Tushy pristinely removes 99% of bacteria while promoting protecting, I'm sorry, your natural skin barrier. Thanks to one natural ingredient, fresh water. The installation is simple. It takes around 10 minutes to complete. Literally anybody can do it. Tushy bidet gives you two in one benefits. Reducing irritation with soothing water and also just being easy to use. You sit, you cleanse, you dry using the built in air dryer. That's right, cleaning yourself after using the bathroom is now hands free. Isn't that nice? You don't have to worry about germs. Every hello Tushy bidet comes with a 30 day hassle, free return and a 12 month warranty. I'd like to thank Tushy for sponsoring this episode. Elevate your comfort every day for life. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off their first bidet order when using the code TMR at checkout. That's 10% off your first bidet [e-mail] with promo code TMR. Again, that's 10% off your first bideT [e-mail] with promo code TMR. We will put a link to this below down in the description. Hellotushy.com code tmr all right, quick break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Gene Guerrero.

[Greg Ksar]

It.

[Emma Vigland]

All right, folks, we are back. Unfortunately, I don't think our guest is going to make it. So we're having some technical difficulties to start the day, some guest stuff. But, you know, we forge ahead. That's what we do. But, you know, I guess I didn't want to not talk about Stephen Miller today. So let's talk about Stephen Miller today because Jean, it's unfortunate she couldn't make it. This book is good. You can listen to her. It's called Hate Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. You can read her, listen to her interview with Sam if you'd like, back in 2020, it was around, you know, two or three months before I joined the show where she speaks about this book. But I did want to talk more about Stephen Miller or revisit this material, especially in light of what we were seeing out of L. A with L A and Southern California being specifically a target of Stephen Miller's ire. And I have read parts of the book, too, so I can speak a little bit about what she wrote. Stephen Miller is like functionally, I think we've been talking about this kind of the shadow president, right? He is one of Donald Trump's longest advisors at this point.

[Matt Binder]

I've been saying the longest and no one's corrected me on that. I don't know who it would be if there's been a longer serving one.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, Bannon. But he's not in an official capacity, right? In an official capacity, Stephen Mueller is basically his, his, his longest adviser, which says a lot about Donald Trump. And he was the architect of the family separation policy in the first administration and is now responsible for the fascist rounding up of Brown, of Latino and also Muslim people, too, are being targeted. Middle Eastern people, Iranians or Persian people too, are being targeted by the administration. Basically, if you're brown and you're an immigrant or maybe a second generation immigrant, you're the subject of Stephen Miller's ire.

[Matt Binder]

Or if you're a white person and Palantir's AI has shown that you've tweeted about Israel or something, you might have a headache at the border as well. Not to the extent of maybe going to seek out like just some other people, but yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

And as I headlined, the administration is currently floating this policy of putting ankle monitors on around 180,000 migrants, and I think the number is like 25,000 currently have these ankle monitors. And it's because of like, you know, past dealings with the law and things like that. But, like, it's a massive surveillance expansion.

[Matt Binder]

And dhs, the good money for contract contractors too.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, for pal.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, whoever gets the deal, it's a good money.

[Emma Vigland]

Palantir probably, or someone else.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, there's a lot of this competition. That's the only place there is competition.

[Emma Vigland]

Right, exactly right. And. And so he, he's just explicitly a fascist and a Nazi. And his connection to Southern California is part of what I wanted to talk to Gene about, which is just that, like, since we saw how LA was targeted by the ICE raids as the show of force and with the deployment of the National Guard by Donald Trump over Newsom's objection. And the early part of this book talks about how Stephen Miller as a teenager would basically harass students in school for speaking Spanish. His father had some financial struggles and he then had to move to a more or less affluent neighborhood in Southern California. And that seems to be where he funneled his hatred because he was now in a school not in the fancier part of Santa Monica. He was in a school that, God forbid, had some fellow students that spoke Spanish. And the book talks about how there were multiple instances of him going up to kids and say, speak English in the United States. He also had a middle school friend who Gene interviewed for the book who spoke about how Stephen dropped him when he found out that he was, I think, half Mexican and had a call with him and they were good friends and would talk on the phone all the time about like, you know, movies and things, and that Miller dropped him because of his Mexican heritage. And Gene also grew up, I think around the same time in Southern California as Stephen Miller. So in the book she talks about how, like, the environment was explicitly very racist at that time too, towards Mexicans, towards Spanish speaking people in Southern California. And this is around the rise as well of MS.13, which is a gang that did not originate outside of the United States. It originated in prisons in particularly la, but in parts of the us. So you can see how all of these, this confluence of factors paint a picture of what the immigration policy has been. It sounds like it came from the mind of a little twerp Nazi who still hasn't gotten over the traumatic experience of having to be around Spanish speaking people at his new school. And I'm sure we've played this clip before, but for the sake of the posterity and the picture I'm trying to paint of this freak. Just a short clip of Stephen Miller and what he was saying to the student body in terms of, like, his pitch to them. I guess he was running for some sort of student office here in high school.

[Matt Binder]

He lost, by the way.

[Greg Ksar]

Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash? And we have plenty of janitors.

[Emma Vigland]

So plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us. That is him saying that we shouldn't have to pick up trash.

[Matt Binder]

And I've seen even people that went to that school on TikTok. I was looking for it, but saying everyone knew who he meant when he said janitors. It's not white people.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, yes, he gets off on the and takes great pleasure in and might even admit it, seeing people that he views are lesser than him doing work for him or doing work that he would describe as menial or probably in his way, degrading and forcing them to do it and not showing common courtesy. This tracks pretty well with the dehumanization of immigrants and the abject, horrible treatment that we're hearing about in both CCOT and then in these Florida facilities. There's more information that's been coming out now that the men that the Trump administration and Stephen Miller imprisoned in El Salvador have been freed in this exchange of prisoners that the Trump administration negotiated. One of the stories here I want to read really quickly. One night in mid May, some of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador tried to break the locks on their cells with metal rails from their beds. It was a futile gesture of rebellion. No one thought they could escape. Still, punishment was swift. For six consecutive days, the inmates were subjected to lengthy beatings. Three inmates told me on the last day, male guards brought in their female colleagues who struck the naked prisoners as the male guards recorded videos on their phones and laughed. The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings. And if the prisoners complained or cried out, they would start again. Tito Martinez, one of the inmates, recalled that a prison nurse was watching hit the pinata. She cheered. This is in an article in the Atlantic where that came out yesterday, where they interviewed some of the Venezuelan migrants that were deported to the El Salvador prison and then, of course, were kept there in unspeakable conditions for such a long period of time. This is also a part of the book. Good thinking here, Matt. The Southern Poverty Law center has all of these emails that Stephen Miller had when he was emailing Breitbart I guess with ideas and feedback. He was a huge fan of right wing talk radio, Larry Elder's show too. He would call in and that, that, that is a big. Yeah, a bit. A loser calls into Larry Elder's show. Cool. People call into New York sports radio. So Matt, what's this part here?

[Matt Binder]

Well, this is, this is just some of his emails and I mean actually this is their, their entire sort of collection on it. But one of the books that he read, the one I forgot was the Camp of the Saints, which is just explicit, like sort of European Nazi book about hordes of non white people coming and overrunning Christendom and that sort of thing. Like this is how this guy thinks. He's not trying to save people or make economics better for people in general. He's trying to do Nazi stuff. And that's all this is right now. And I don't know, it's pretty grotesque that he. People have been calling for, including Ilhan Omar, been calling for his resignation since this story came out where it's like, oh, look at this guy's, how deep he is into just white supremacist thinking. And nothing ever really happened of it. He maintained his position and now he's even back. But when people say he's a Nazi, it's not in the colloquial sense. It is in the objective sense that he's a Nazi and he is Trump's longest running advisor and he is running a giant Gestapo goon squad in Department of Homeland Security and ice.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, and there's another chapter here that says it's chapter five, There is no Palestine, which goes into his rabid Zionism and his hatred of Palestinians. That was kind of fleshed out in college. Stephen Miller grew up in a Jewish household, but Gene wrote about how he was more rejecting of like Jewish traditions and was wanting to embrace the idea of being an American and American values. Right. So you can see how Zionism and far right fascist ideology are connected. They're not to Judaism, but to his fury about Muslim people. Because this also goes into how, yeah, he was in high school, I guess in the 90s, but not when 911 happened. He was still a young adult. And that was the other motivating factor of hatred, which actually feeds in quite nicely to this video here. That, or maybe he was still in high school. I'm not exactly sure. I'd have to double check.

[Greg Ksar]

It says he was 17.

[Emma Vigland]

Okay, so he was 17 in 2003. So the God, he's not that old. This is him Talking about what we should do to the people of Iraq, to the issue of the Iraqi civilians. I think that as many of the Muslims should survive as possible because the goal of any military conflict is to kill as few people as possible.

[Greg Ksar]

But as for Saddam Hussein and his.

[Emma Vigland]

Henchmen, I think the ideal solution would be to cut off their fingers.

[Greg Ksar]

I don't think it's necessary to kill them entirely. We're not a barbaric people. We respect life.

[Emma Vigland]

Therefore torture is the way to go.

[Greg Ksar]

Because tortured people can live. Torture is a celebration of life and human dignity. We need to remember that as we enter these very dark and dangerous times in the next century.

[Emma Vigland]

And I only hope that many of my peers and people who will be leading this country will appreciate the value and respect that torture shows towards other cultures.

[Greg Ksar]

As he smiles, someone was reading Sam Harris.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, my gosh. Zoom out on me a little. I'm pretty. I'm pretty zoomed in. It's okay. That does sound like a little bit of. He probably was into that kind of thing, the Sam Harris new atheist thing.

[Matt Binder]

I think he's even to the right of that. He. He went to college with Richard Spencer. Richard Spencer is a white nationalist who famously was punched and the Internet celebrated back around 2017 or something like that. But they went to Duke together. And Richard Spencer is someone who, despite being a white nationalist, has expressed admiration for Israel at numerous times, saying he wants to do a white Zionism here, which is kind of what Cotton Mad and those folks were doing, too.

[Emma Vigland]

But they was not just manifest destination.

[Matt Binder]

Well, the racialized element, it was still kind of like Christianity. Then the race, the sort of white supremacy element developed over, like the, you know, 1800s and 1900s into fascism then. Now these guys find common cause. It's just two nationalists doing nationalism together. And so there's not a. There's not a big. Despite the surface level contradiction between Zionists and white nationalists, like, there's actually a through line of just nationalism.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, the. Exactly.

[Matt Binder]

And supremacist nationalism. I'll say.

[Emma Vigland]

And you'll. You hear the arguments directly from Nazis and white nationalists that are explicitly envious of Israel because they like the idea of a state being reflective of a specific ethnicity and then maintaining that demographic majority throughout domination and subjugation and violence. That is their vision, too.

[Matt Binder]

I'll just add, since they're litigious, that Stephen Miller denies what Richard Spencer originally said about him being his mentor at Duke. I don't believe Stephen Miller at all. I think he's a liar and a Nazi.

[Emma Vigland]

Yep. Well, that's exactly right. Okay, folks, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we will be joined by Representative Greg Ksar to chair the Progressive Caucus to talk a bit about what's happening down in Texas with redistricting and what Democrats are going to do about it. It's Sam.

[Matt Binder]

Back.

[Emma Vigland]

We are back. And we are joined now by Representative Greg Cassar of Texas's 35th congressional district, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Congressman, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Greg Ksar]

Emma, it's good to be with you.

[Emma Vigland]

Great to see you. This is a really important story and it's hard again with this fire hose of news to get a, get your hooks into anything in particular. But this is going to be the fight, it seems to me, over the next year or so with these efforts to gerrymander even more aggressively. The Republicans are trying to do this in Texas this week. The Texas Legislature has been in a special session basically debating this kind of thing. Texas currently has 13 Democratic seats and 25 Republican seats, which in my view doesn't already, already doesn't reflect the state's kind of diverse voting population, but they want to reduce the number of Democratic seats even more by five or six. Just tell us about what's happening down in Texas right now.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah, this is a five alarm fire for democracy and what's going on right now. Like you said, there's so many things happening in the news, but this is actually the really big one because if you ever want there to be any kind of accountability or check on Donald Trump's corruption or, or on people continuously being kicked off their health care or on immigration or on any of this, the typical line, and I've been saying it, and I've been, I think, naive, is around organizing for the midterm elections to build a majority that can hold him to account. But Trump does not have a plan for winning those midterm elections. He has a plan for rigging the rules before they even happen. And if he comes in and gerrymanders even further, already extremely gerrymandered Texas and gets away with it without cost. Trump has already said that he has plans to go and take this to state after state after state. So then once we're running in those midterm elections, it might be too late and we can't let that happen.

[Emma Vigland]

And, and the Texas redrew its maps in 2021 is my understanding. Like what is being proposed here that would even more aggressively gerrymander the state.

[Greg Ksar]

So Texas Republicans have already extremely gerrymandered the state, as you laid out there would be. Look, remember ted Cruz in 2018 didn't even get 51% of the vote in Texas.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Greg Ksar]

So we can be relatively close to a 50, 50 state in a wave year, but they've got us already two to one, Democrat to Republican. For them to gerrymander even further, and I try not to be alarmist with people, but for them to gerrymander even further would require drawing the kind of map that we haven't seen since before 1965. Because when people marched and bled for the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights act, those laws were passed so that you could no longer dry map like what Donald Trump is demanding in Texas. It would require to get five more seats. It isn't getting rid of five Democratic seats. It would require chopping up communities of color in maps in ways that have been illegal for decades, for longer than you and I have been alive. Right. And that's what they would do. And if they're able to get this Supreme Court to rubber stamp then end of section 2 of the Voting Rights act as we know it, then they could spread this all across the country. And that's what they're trying to do. And they'll put even Republican incumbents in danger while doing it. And usually you wouldn't expect them to do it, but these guys don't follow the law of their own political survival. They're just Trump's water boys. And so if you've got Republican incumbents that will do anything and potentially the end of the Voting Rights act, that's what Trump is trying to take advantage of here.

[Emma Vigland]

It also protects the Republican representatives from the, from recourse and from backlash from their own constituents. You know, so many folks were asking, well, there's all these Trump voters that are on Medicaid when they got the program and kicked 17 million people off their health care, isn't there going to be backlash from some of their constituents? How about these rural hospitals that are going to close in really, really red districts? The problem is, is that they're really, really red. And so they've been so aggressively gerrymandered that it not only it doesn't just protect Republicans from like a majority or, you know, in Congress, their numbers, it also, it seems to me, protects the existing Republicans from like democracy.

[Greg Ksar]

Well, that's actually how it traditionally has been. But here's the interesting thing, Emma, and then this we want to get to what people can do to fight back against for sure is that traditionally they've Kept them extremely red. But for them to go so far to carry Donald Trump's water and go for five Democratic seats, some of them may wind up in pink districts because there's just, you just can't disappear the millions of Democratic voters, especially in our cities, at some point they're gonna vote. And so that creates actually an opportunity to harness that backlash. And that's our opportunity for stopping these maps or at least imposing a huge cost on them for putting them in place. So we've got basically a three point plan for fighting this and not all doom and gloom here on your show.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes.

[Greg Ksar]

Point one is we've got to buy time so that we can execute the strategy I'm about to lay out. And Texans have a great tradition of buying time with filibusters, like Wendy Davis's filibuster against abortion bans here in Texas and quorum breaks. The Texas Constitution says that if the Democrats basically leave the floor and the House or the Senate, you shut it down. And so we need to buy time and national attention and national support for that strategy will be critical in Texas, but also your viewers here and listeners across the country. And step two, you like what, Greg? What will you do with that time? We can mobilize enormous resources to run against the Republicans, who will now be in much lighter red or pinker states. Because if Trump is demanding that they give up a bunch of their voters and move it around to get rid of Democratic voters, these Republicans could be newly vulnerable. We could recruit great candidates there. And then our third state is, we've got third step is we've got to impose a huge cost on them. And that's why I think it's really good that Governor Gavin Newsom is saying he could start redistricting in California so that Republicans reap what they sow. And if they think they can pick up a few seats in Texas, well, then we damn well better start looking at picking up seats in states with Democratic governors. This kind of strategy, buying time, bringing people together all across the country, running at the Republicans that won't stand up for their own constituents. That's the way that we stop this wildfire from spreading not just across Texas, but all across the country. We can't just let Trump run rough God, over the Voting Rights act, otherwise he'll just be totally unaccountable.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, and we should say that the Supreme Court has kind of enabled this level of racist gerrymandering with their previous decision, you know, striking down parts of the Voting Rights Act. But you mentioned Gavin Newsom and California and how they are, you know, talking about fighting back. Can you explain to folks the like the state, the state of these blue states and their redistricting process? Because Democrats have kind of long held on to this belief that while Republicans are going to be partisan and crazy, let's just maintain nonpartisan redistricting committees in blue states like California or New York. Some, like Illinois, I believe has done some of its own kind of will more partisan gerrymandering to fight back against Republicans. But our biggest, most populous states, that's not the case. So speak about that a bit more, if you don't mind.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah, look, I am for, deeply for getting rid of gerrymandering across the country. What I'm not for is letting Republicans follow their own sets of rules and have an authoritarian power grab while we are Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts failing our own constituents. So look, if California having an independent commission inspired Texas to have one, that would be great. But that's not what's happening right now. California having an independent commission is rewarding people like Trump and Abbott to come suppress the voting rights of millions of people of color in my state. So in my view, I think the actual progressive but living in the real world attitude should be California should have an independent commission that is triggered when Texas has one. New York's independent commission should only draw an independent map once Florida has one. That's how we actually get to a level playing field and get rid of gerrymandering across the country. Otherwise blue state governors protecting independent commissions is what enables there to not be independent commissions, especially in the former Confederate states. That's the reality. So we've got to be progressives living in the real world where people are suffering right now. And then hopefully we can elect a majority, a pro democracy majority in the Congress to just pass a law saying banning gerrymandering nationwide. I'm not saying that we get rid of independent commissions for a state legislature, for example, because there they all play by the same state's rules. But it doesn't make any sense for Texas to suppress voting rights and then California not to do anything about it because they've had this commission for a while.

[Emma Vigland]

And can you speak a little bit about Trump himself and his role in trying to pressure Texas to do this? You mentioned it earlier because he's worried about the midterms and he just wants to subtract seats. But it is unusual, to say the least, to have a president weighing in on this so publicly, so aggressively. And you're just assessment of what you Just described as authoritarian. And I would share your view.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah, look, Donald Trump, it's been widely reported, made personal phone calls into Texas to say, you are giving me five of your seats. I mean, these Texas Republicans who say that they're tough and independent are being told to completely redraw their own districts in order to allow a president to do continued cover ups. That's what's going on here. And remember, you know, Trump learned this lesson after the 2018 election where he lost the majority in Congress and suddenly there could be subpoenas and investigations against him and his corruption and his criminality there. Suddenly his legislative agenda could be blocked. He doesn't want that to happen again because his crime and criminality and corruption is like 10 times worse now. And so he is basically telling Texas Republicans, I don't care about you or your constituents or your seat. Trump only cares about him covering for himself. And now they've got the choice about whether they're going to stand up for themselves and their state or whether they are just, you know, Trump's boys. And that's the question that's before them right now. I mean, we just went through this devastating flood where people in the county that I'm in right now died and lost loved ones and family members and their children. We could be focused on relief and rebuilding. But Trump is telling Texas Republicans, no. Your focus is redistricting.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. What did he say when Epstein came up, when in the aftermath of that flood, he said, we have Texas to worry? He sounds like a bit of a desecration to bring up. I mean, what it might be, a bit of a desecration to not focus on the families affected and make it about your own power grab. But I digress.

[Greg Ksar]

Exactly. But the thing I really want folks to come away with knowing is that this is in many ways the ball game and that no matter where you are across the country, you can help call your governor, call your member of Congress, elevate this issue, because this is Trump trying to rig the election before we even have it. And so it is time right now. And those Texas legislators who get something like $6,000 a year for their job, I mean, them having to take the risks of fleeing the state or doing filibusters and this kind of work. They could really use your support fighting for our democracy right now. It's starting here.

[Emma Vigland]

Absolutely. We always have the congressional switchboard in our comment, in our description, but will direct people to that as well, so they can make those kinds of calls. And especially if you're in A blue state like New York, like California, start to say, you know, we want to fight fire with fire. And your representatives, they'll listen to that kind of thing. Let's move on to something else that you're working on here. You introduced legislation that would ban surveillance pricing. There was a great write up about it in the American Prospect that I'd encourage people to read. Of course, David Dayan's always on it. But if you don't mind explaining what this legislation is designed to do and what the problem is that you're identifying here.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah. Whether you know it or not, you could be getting your prices jacked up or your wages pressed down by companies that spy on you, take that data and run it through AI in order to basically jack you around. What my bill does is it bans the practice. Corporations doing this. Think about it like this. I think that it should be illegal that an airline knows that you googled a family obituary and then individually for you, pushes up your ticket prices because they know that you're desperate to get to a funeral. Or on the wage side, I think that we should ban the practice of a ride sharing app, for example, knowing that you recently visited a pawn shop because they know your location and they know you've hit hard times. And so then they start offering you a lower wage on doordash or lower wage for a ride sharing app because they know you've hit desperate times. These companies should actually have to compete on improving their products, not compete on using AI to squeeze every last penny out of you.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, that's an incredible story that Uber has been accused of this. In particular, reducing driver wages in real time based on their movements. That would indicate desperation. I mean, that's, this is, this is like extremely dystopian stuff here.

[Greg Ksar]

Well, some of what we've heard about is that some of these models could also be tracking your battery life. Right. Think about it. If they know how much battery you've got in your phone, of course that is trackable data, then they could offer you a more expensive ride because they know your phone is about to die. Right. This stuff is, is terrifying. And part of the problem is we don't know how much of this data is being used for this. We've got to bring these practices fully into the light. Delta Airlines, for example, just announced that they are going to start increasing surveillance, or at least artificial intelligence pricing. It currently price 3% of their tickets using AI. They just said now that they want to price 20% of their tickets using artificial intelligence. That might mean that competitors who may not even want to do this. Let's just give people the benefit of the doubt for a second. Let's say somebody didn't want to do this. There could be the competitive pressure for them to do it as well. You know, we want airlines, we want our products to improve, and that's why we would pay more. Not for them to figure out how desperate you are and then just squeeze every last penny out of you.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, how does this not violate price discrimination laws? This is textbook price discrimination. But just because they're using a fancy computer doesn't mean that they're not discriminating.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah, I mean, we've got to update our laws, right? As you know, the kind of common sense one is gas station should not be able to jack up your gas prices because a hurricane is coming. But with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, this is an area that has gone largely unregulated. And we know that when we try to apply our laws from 100 years ago, oftentimes these big lobbies go and beat us up in the courts and oftentimes win. And so it's really time for us to make very clear that this practice is illegal and banned. Look, artificial intelligence is going to keep on growing, but I want the government to set up guardrails so that that AI is being used to, say, detect early onset of lung cancer. I don't want that AI to be going and detecting, you know, how low my battery is and that they could charge me more or what I googled so they can charge me more or that I'm under hard times and they can pay you less. And basically, if you want to hear the industry defense here, Emma, say that this is okay. They say that they are. This is the industry term. They say that they are just using our private data to find out our, quote, willingness to pay, and that, you know, and they say, well, you know, if your willingness to pay is a little bit less, maybe we can charge you a little bit less. That's good for you. I mean, give me a break. Willingness to pay is just how much is the most we can charge you or the least we can pay you? And I don't want companies competing, spying on us. We want companies to actually have to provide a better product and pay people what they're worth.

[Emma Vigland]

I saw that some members of Congress signed onto this letter. Alexandria Ocasio, Cortez, yourself, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, et cetera, on enforcing the Robinson Patman act of, I guess it was the 1930s. Can you talk a little bit about your signage onto that letter and how that connects with this legislation you've introduced, if at all.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah, I mean, look, the set of laws that we created in the 1930s and in the 1940s, from Robinson Patman to packers and stockyards, the ways that we recognized coming out of the Great Depression, that massive consolidation of the economy, price gouging, and essentially the Elon Musk's of their day trying to buy the government helped cause the Great Depression. We've got to learn from that today in the modern day. And today in the modern day, we've got to be dealing with the fact that we don't want artificial intelligence jacking up our prices and getting rid of our jobs. We've got to be really careful with how cryptocurrency seems to be getting more and more deregulated or lightly regulated. We need to have learned our lessons from the 1920s about speculators and deregulation. So I think a modern progressive movement, and I hope a thoughtful, forward thinking Democratic Party should present to voters that we see the problems that are coming in this century and that we could be inspired by sort of the OG progressives and populists of the 1920s and 1930s. We could try to enforce those laws and we should. But dang, I think we also need the 2020 version and the 2000-30s version of solving these problems. A lot of them rhyme like with the problems we had 100 years ago. You know, oligarchy today rhymes quite a bit with oligarchy from 100 years ago. But we also need to recognize that they're using new tools and we need to propose new laws to deal with those very real problems. And people know it. I mean, you open up an app, it's immediately already asking you to accept terms and conditions for 50 different things. My legislation kind of answers the question for you of what are they wanting all this data for?

[Emma Vigland]

Right. Well, this is educational as well as like something where people should call their representatives and say, hey, support this legislation. I mean, this is the kind of thing that we want to say. We have a functioning Congress that should be being passed to protect people from these kinds of practices. Lastly, Congressman, before I let you go, I wanted to ask you a bit about because we're here in New York and Zoram Mamdani's victory has been just this like, enormously exciting moment for the city and the leader of the Democrats in the House, speaker or not, Speaker Jeffries hicking Jeffries, has not endorsed Zoramdani. What's your reaction to that and what has the reaction in Washington been within at least the or the reaction of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to his victory and what that signals about this kind of politics within the Democratic Party?

[Greg Ksar]

Look, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez recently had a big meeting for folks on the hill with Mr. Mamdani. It was a great meeting. I've gotten a chance to speak with him before his win and afterwards. It's impressive. It's, I think, a powerful message that he's been focused on every single day about loving the city of New York and making it affordable for everyday people and being relentless on that message to have achievable progressive goals that appeal to everybody, like buses being fast and free. I know that he had a meeting with Leader Jeffries recently. I haven't got an update on how that meeting went, but I'm encouraging everyone in Congress and across the Democratic family to endorse and support him. Because look, I agree that we do need a bigger tent that includes more voters and more voices inside of the party. And creating a bigger tent also includes the very progressive and further left parts of the party, along with voters that might be more moderate than Mr. Mamdani on a variety of issues. We need to build that big coalition. But oftentimes when we hear some of the more, in my view, some of the more cynical voices saying we need a big tent, they're talking about adding like big bank CEOs to the tent, but they don't want who inspired millions of people in the tent. Look, our tent should include the broad variety of voters and that includes leaders like Representative Mandani and the huge number of volunteers and activists he inspired. So like when we talk about building a big tent, which I do think progressives need to be committed to doing, that doesn't mean kicking progressive voters out of the tent. It does mean adding people on both ends of the spectrum. Now, does the tent include lobbyists that want to preserve the carried interest loophole? No. I mean that's not real voters, guys. But unfortunately I think some of those big money interests are oftentimes trying to drive negative coverage against Mr. Mandani. And I think that would be to the Democrats detriment to not include what Zoran is doing into our work.

[Emma Vigland]

And well said. My last real just follow up about it is it's not just to me you mentioned that. It's the message that breaks through. I think there's a lot of focus on like, like how can the social media team be as good as his and things like that where, like, I'm hoping that the Democrats are understanding that it's the policies that are driving the enthusiasm. And I know the Congressional Progressive Caucus understands that. But like, when we're talking about the bigger tent thing, the tacking to the suburban Republicans and constantly appealing to them, it hasn't worked out. We have Donald Trump once again. So, like, this is more of a. Not as much of a question. It's more just like, can you see your colleagues embracing that? Because I think it's really key for our democracy that they do.

[Greg Ksar]

Yeah. Increasingly, I think folks are. And, and I think that goes back to the actually including a lot more voters idea here. You don't have to go and have some watered down, means tested, corporate checked policy in order to bring in some of those. Some folks watching here might call like a normie voter. No buses being fast and free, as Mr. Mamdani said, is something that everybody can understand and everybody can click with. Certainly. I mean, his videos and social media are amazing. But like you said, it's not just the marketing strategy. It's actually the policy product that inspired a lot of people. Right. Like the freezing, the rent in those buildings where he can. And making buses fast and free is the kind of thing that can inspire millions of people. And what I'll tell you is in the meeting that Congressman Ocasio Cortez hosted for Mr. Mamdani in Washington, D.C. you had more than just the usual suspects there. Because I do think that if we want to defeat not just Trump, but Trumpism, we need ideas that are bold and universal and easy and simple to understand. Right. Donald Trump was lying when he said he was going to go support the working class. But when he says things like no tax on tips, it is bold. It is a universal idea. Of course, he ended up not really doing that and screwing over service workers, but we should learn from the fact that you don't have to be, like you just said, a comms superstar to be able to reshape the Democratic Party and Democratic politics towards something that, that everybody can understand and see themselves in. And I think we should be learning that from Mr. Mamdani's campaign right now.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, really appreciate you taking the time today to come on the show. Representative Greg Cassar, Texas 35th Congressional District Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and call your members of Congress about this redistricting fight. It's immensely important. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

[Greg Ksar]

Thanks, Emma. Y' all take care.

[Emma Vigland]

You too. All right. With that, folks, we're going to Wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun part of this program in just a second. This support, this show relies on your support, everybody. If you feel so inclined, please go to join themjorityreport.com become a member of this show. It helps us survive. It helps us keep going. Monday through Friday, we're getting you the news and that's because of our members. So jointhemajorityreport.com if you'd like to support.

[Matt Binder]

Us, the full two and a half hour plus podcast without ads.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

Taken out especially by myself. So most of the time I sometimes forget sorry members when I forget to take the ads off. But most of the time there can be no ads in there.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes. Join themjorityreport.com you can also go to shop. MajorityReportRadio.com to get our merch which is perhaps we could make this a little bit more uniform. But I digress. We Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?

[Matt Binder]

Left Reckoning we had Alex Salmon on talking about his piece on the Roosevelt Hotel and how it was briefly a Ellis island style processing center for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and then it was demonized by the right wing like the actual original Ellis island would be today and then shut down by Eric Adams because of some IMF loan stuff with the state of Pakistan. So kind of depressing that there's really no voice or no place in politics to voice like, oh, here's how we can actually like say, process the thousands of people that were driving out of Venezuela as asylum seekers because we decided to destroy that country's oil industry for political reasons. We can actually process people who seek asylum in like the commitments we made after World War II and the Holocaust require us to and but we just haven't really been doing that.

[Emma Vigland]

So.

[Matt Binder]

Patreon.com left Reckoning to get that conversation.

[Emma Vigland]

Check it out people. And we now have our friends Brandon Sutton and Hat Binder.

[Greg Ksar]

Binder. That's a good one.

[Emma Vigland]

I've never seen you in a hat.

[Greg Ksar]

Oh well, I'm wearing a hat.

[Emma Vigland]

Okay. All right. Hat on. Mat Matt.

[Greg Ksar]

Matt in the hat.

[Emma Vigland]

Mat in the hat. What's going on on your shows?

[Greg Ksar]

I did a stream Last night at YouTube.com Mapinder took calls, talked about the Trump Epstein, latest updates, a whole bunch of things. Check it out. YouTube.com Matt Bender and then of course tonight at that same YouTube channel, 8:30pm Eastern Time, leftist Mafia. I'm sure there'll be a lot to talk about, including this latest breaking news about Hulk Hogan.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, yes, I'm sorry for your.

[Matt Binder]

Fuck Hulk Hogan.

[Greg Ksar]

No, I'm good. I lost the Hulk Hogan that existed on TV many, many, many, many years ago. Decades ago. The, the guy that played Hulk Hogan is a horrible person, a bad guy.

[Emma Vigland]

Not a great. Not a great person for sure.

[Greg Ksar]

We can maybe, maybe we'll talk about that in the fun half. I don't know.

[Emma Vigland]

Maybe we will. Hello, Brandon, what's happening on the Discourse?

[Greg Ksar]

Well, today I mercifully spared my audience talking about Trump and Epstein, and instead I subjected them to a member affiliated rapper of the Wu Tang Clan, a Wu Tang affiliate, an adjunct associate professor of the Wu Tang University, debating flat Earthers about the shape of the planet.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, all right.

[Greg Ksar]

And so we'll be watching the second half of that debate if things are getting heated. A lot of accusations have been thrown around about Jesuits and things are getting heated. We're going to finish it tomorrow.

[Emma Vigland]

Briefly, what are the accusations thrown around about Jesuits? What do Jesuits have to do with this?

[Greg Ksar]

They invented science. And also misinformation.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, you gotta do both.

[Greg Ksar]

It was related to the Black Pope and the secret order in the Catholic Church that actually controls like the Catholic Church. And you know, obviously the Black Pope is immortal, but not a vampire, but control people's minds and is affiliated with the Illuminati, but did not commit 9 11.

[Emma Vigland]

That's at least. He didn't do 9 11. But can I ask how he manages to be immortal?

[Greg Ksar]

You.

[Emma Vigland]

And how does he, how he's. Okay, all right, he's immortal. Is he? But he's a pope. But he's not.

[Greg Ksar]

You'll have to, you'll have to tune into the Discourse to find out.

[Emma Vigland]

Okay, you're right. I mean, well, it has piqued my interest, to be honest with you. Clearly. So how could it not? I, I, I, I, I, I agree. All right, check out the Discourse and we will head into the fun half where we'll take your calls and read your IMs. It'll be fun. I'm gonna let go of the stress of our first guest not coming. I'm still, like, clenching.

[Greg Ksar]

Oh, you got stood up. Wow.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, we got stood up a little bit, but. Yeah, I know.

[Greg Ksar]

Okay, it happens. It happens.

[Emma Vigland]

I had to wing it.

[Greg Ksar]

Emotional breakdown.

[Emma Vigland]

I had to wing it. And I, I'm through it now. So. Anyway, Right, we'll see you in the fun house.

[Matt Binder]

You should have put up.

[Greg Ksar]

Okay, Emma, please.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.

[Greg Ksar]

Wait, look, Sam is unpopular.

[Emma Vigland]

I Do deserve a vacation at Disney World.

[Greg Ksar]

So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my.

[Emma Vigland]

Pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday.

[Matt Binder]

I think you need this improvement for Sam.

[Greg Ksar]

Yes, please.

[Emma Vigland]

I'm gonna pause you right there.

[Greg Ksar]

Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. So, was offered a tour, sushi and poker with boys. Tour, sushi and poker with boys. Who was offered a tour?

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Greg Ksar]

Sushi and poker with boys.

[Emma Vigland]

What?

[Greg Ksar]

Tour, sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigland]

Tim's upset.

[Greg Ksar]

Twerk, sushi and poker with turkey boys. It was offered with twerk, sushi and that's what we call biz T. Sushi and poker with the boys.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Greg Ksar]

Twerk, sushi and.

[Emma Vigland]

We're going to get demonetized.

[Greg Ksar]

I just think that what you did.

[Emma Vigland]

To Tim Pool was mean. Free speech.

[Greg Ksar]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him. I think you're responsible.

[Emma Vigland]

I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[Greg Ksar]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.

[Matt Binder]

Wow.

[Greg Ksar]

Sushi. I'm sorry. Losing my mind. Someone's offered a tour, sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Sushi and poker with the boys. Boy. Boy.

[Emma Vigland]

Twerk.

[Greg Ksar]

I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid.

[Emma Vigland]

Twerk.

[Greg Ksar]

I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Had this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. A little kid.

[Matt Binder]

Think I'm like a dick.

[Greg Ksar]

I'm losing my mind.

[Matt Binder]

Some people just don't understand.

[Greg Ksar]

So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the us should be combining me.

[Emma Vigland]

With a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here, all right?

[Greg Ksar]

It's not a fun job. Twerk. That's a real thing.

[Matt Binder]

That's real thing.

[Greg Ksar]

Willy Walker.

[Matt Binder]

That's a real thing. That's real thing.

[Greg Ksar]

That's a real thing. Real thing. That's a real thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan Logan has done it again.

[Matt Binder]

That's a real thing.

[Greg Ksar]

I think he might be blowing it out of proportion. Real thing. That's poker with the boys. That offered a twerk. That's a real thing.

[Matt Binder]

That's poker. Let's go, Joe.

[Greg Ksar]

Sushi and poker.

[Matt Binder]

Take it easy.

[Greg Ksar]

Twerk, sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and Poker.

[Emma Vigland]

Sushi.

[Greg Ksar]

You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Going on live YouTube.

[Emma Vigland]

Sam has, like, the weight of the world on his shoulders. Want to do this show anymore?

[Matt Binder]

Anymore?

[Emma Vigland]

It was so much easier when the Majority report was just you.

[Greg Ksar]

Let's change the subject. Rangers and Knicks are doing great now.

[Emma Vigland]

Shut it up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[Greg Ksar]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigland]

This is the pro Killing podcast.

[Greg Ksar]

I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatch.

[Emma Vigland]

Chin left his best trump. Violet twerk.

[Greg Ksar]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't. The way Emma has cucked all of these people. Love it.

[Emma Vigland]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[Greg Ksar]

She wrote an honest thesis. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now. You are to the right of the unfore policy.

[Emma Vigland]

We already fund Israel.

[Greg Ksar]

Dude.

[Emma Vigland]

Are you against us?

[Greg Ksar]

That's a tougher question I haven't answered. Incredible theme song.

[Emma Vigland]

Hi, bumbler.

[Greg Ksar]

Emma Vinland.

[Matt Binder]

Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually.

[Greg Ksar]

Not just in the game, like, period.