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- [00:01]
Host
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off terms apply. Total havoc continues to break out in Texas and across the country. But I want to focus on Texas right now because I don't want the catastrophic flash floods to just be a one off story. And we don't talk about. We need to really focus on the systemic failures that took place and what is still happening right now. There's over 100 missing people still to this day in the United states of America. 13, 14 days out, 100 people are missing or more. Here's how the local networks are covering it. Here's Ken's five. Let's play it.
- [01:03]
Simone Simpson
And first at four, the search for those missing after the deadly Hill country Floods enters day 13. As we've seen, there's still a lot of work to be done before communities can return to looking normal. Guns 5 reporter Simone Simpson is joining us live right now. She's in Ingram in an area that was once full of RV trailers. Simone, what does it look like today? Hey there Sarah. It's a sad sight today. Where I am standing is Blue Oak RV park and as you can see behind me, the traces that are left behind after Mother Nature and those rapid waters swept through the area, there's not much left here. As you said before, this area was full of RV trailers just 12 days ago. Now first responders are continuing to work to recover those who are still missing. Kerr county Officials confirmed Tuesday 107 people are dead as crews continue searching for 97 missing people Monday. Volunteers were told to stand down in their efforts as heavy rain threatened more flooding. Only teams working under direction of Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command were permitted in the response zone. This came after all search and rescue operations were suspended Sunday due to heavy rain and street level flooding. Today we encountered road closure signs at the entrance of Hunt. Restrictions are in place for the public, but not for first responders. The San Antonio Police Officers association is in hunt today to deliver supplies and more. And the San Antonio Police Officers association will remain in hunt until Sunday. Coming up at 5, we'll hear from the president of that organization who will fill you in on the emotional, emotional toll their efforts has had on his team reporting in Ingram. Simone Simpson, Ken's five no.
- [02:58]
Host
And I think we all appreciate the work there by the San Antonio Police Officers Association. I just also want to know where everyone else is and what else is going on there. We know that while Donald Trump continues to have this trade war against countries like Mexico and say horrific things about or spread lies about the trade, trade agreements with Mexico, Mexico rescue workers are there in Texas. Let's show this.
- [03:25]
Simone Simpson
Of course, the recent rain created even more challenges for search and rescue crews in Kerrville yesterday, including a team from Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Amanda Henderson with our news partners in Houston spoke with them about their mission at the Guadalupe river in Ingram, Texas. Mountains of branches continue to line the banks. The site met with the sound of helicopters.
- [03:48]
Greg Casar
The condition of the river is easier right now than before, but it's still.
- [03:57]
Host
Hard to go into the river.
- [04:00]
Simone Simpson
Down in the Guadalupe river, you'll find Manelo Acevedo and his crew Protection Civil from Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Armed with ATVs, divers, boats, maps and search docs. They're searching the Guadalupe for those swept away in the deadly July 4th floods, only taking breaks when officials tell them to. What troubles have you guys had with the water today?
- [04:25]
Host
Well, we were working last day, but.
- [04:27]
Greg Casar
Today, yesterday and today we have to stop for the raining. The raining is causing the rivers comes up.
- [04:36]
Host
And it should just be noted that during the weekend where these flash floods were taking place, Donald Trump was just licking ice cream cones at his resorts and golfing and whatever. I want to bring in Democratic Congress member Greg Cassar. Congress member, it's great to see you. That's what we should be talking about in Texas. What's happening with the flash floods? What are we doing? You have Christine Ohm out there saying this is the greatest. This was perfect. This is what we want to see FEMA do more everywhere. This is the template, she says. But now Texas is calling an emergency session to deal with a completely different issue, stealing democracy and redistricting Texas so that during this tragedy, while people are still missing out there and while the governor says that you're a loser if you and we don't want losers in Texas. If you try to understand why certain things happened the way they did regarding the flash floods, they're doing emergency redistricting to get rid of all Democratic Congress members. That's what's going on in Texas.
- [05:45]
Greg Casar
It's tragic and it's outrageous. Right. We should be having a special session to deal with rescue and Rebuilding and relief, not with redistricting. Like, as you just pointed out, over 100 people have died, dozens of children dead, over 100 people still missing. And the governor is focused on doing Donald Trump's bidding and trying to make sure Donald Trump can't be held accountable in the upcoming elections. It's just so sad and so awful. In fact, the governor has the authority, or has at least shown that he believes he has the authority to move millions of dollars without even a special session. He did that essentially at Donald Trump's behest by pulling money out of the juvenile justice system and moving hundreds of millions of dollars over towards his medieval border wall. So he could be helping out places that you saw right there in those videos in Hunt and in Kerrville and in other parts of the Hill country right now. But instead, he's focused on trying to make sure Trump doesn't get held accountable. And a great example of why Trump and his administration needs to be held accountable is that they don't want to be held accountable, for example, for what happened during these floods. Whistleblowers at FEMA pointed out that Kristi Noem, who is the Cabinet Secretary for DHS above FEMA, waited 72 hours to approve search and rescue missions after the flood. That shouldn't take more than 72 seconds to think about. And we've got to be able to ask those hard questions. She refuses to come in and answer those questions for members of Congress. The way that we can require her to come in is to win a majority of people of conscience and Democrats in the Congress in the upcoming elections and then call her in so that we can respect the dead and protect the living by having accountability and asking hard questions. Donald Trump doesn't want that to happen. But Donald Trump doesn't have a plan to win the elections. He has a plan to rig them long before they ever happen, by suppressing the votes of people of color in Texas, destroying basically as many of the Democratic districts as he can, which are overwhelmingly districts that represent people of color, redraw the whole map and have Texas Republicans carry his water for him so that he can be unaccountable for his corruption, his crimes, and then his failures in places like Texas.
- [08:24]
Host
He shows up in Texas for a few hours. He describes the flash floods as something that even the best surfers couldn't surf. I mean, those are his words of.
- [08:38]
Greg Casar
Yeah, sorry, I'm, like, shifting in my chair just how gross it is.
- [08:41]
Host
Right? That's what he says. And then he said to the reporter, you must be a Real thing was a CBS reporter. You must be a really evil person to ask a question about what went wrong. You must be really evil. And then you had the maga, Republican Congress member Chip Royce. I agree with the governor. That's what losers do. And we like football in Texas. So then I guess they washed their hands of it. Donald Trump. I did that. I showed up. I think he even said, you know, I guess I had to come here. I'm the president Melania wanted to be. Or he made, he made some comment like that. And. And then now it's all about how do we rig the election in Texas and how do we redistrict it to get rid of the Democratic seats. To talk to us about this plan, the redistricting plan, at a granular level of where they're targeting and how they're trying to do it and why it's unlawful, and what are we doing to fight it back against it?
- [09:35]
Greg Casar
The radical racial gerrymandering that Donald Trump is ordering right now in Texas is the biggest political thing happening in America right now that you haven't heard about. It is a five alarm fire with the risk of spreading like wildfire all across the United States. And if I were to break it down about first, what's going on and then second, what we can do about it, what's going on is that Trump has ran through a bill to kill to knock 17 million Americans off their health care. It will kill people. He's given all of these benefits to his billionaire buddies, and he doesn't want to get held accountable for it. And so he's ordered Texas Republicans to target at least five districts held by Democrats in the state of Texas. The map right now in Texas is already illegal and it already violates the Voting Rights act of 1965. But Trump is saying, what if we violate it even more? What if we go and rip up every part of the Voting Rights act and radically suppress the votes of people of color? And the way they do that is they go into communities of color and break them up into four or five different congressional districts so they water down those votes and they hope to get rid of Democrats that way. And if they do five districts, as Trump is demanding, it will be so radical. And if they take that to the Supreme Court and Trump's Supreme Court rubber stamps this, then Trump has already said that he wants to take this to more states so that he can take over so many seats that if there's a giant wave of voters that are opposed to his agenda in the midterm elections. What if it's just too late? And we can't let that happen? So what are we going to do about this? I think in three steps. First, we have to delay this extreme and horrible plan. We need to support our Texas legislators who could filibuster this. We have a great tradition of filibustering. You can remember Wendy Davis's filibuster against the anti abortion laws in Texas. There can be quorum busts, which means if Democratic legislators walk out en masse off out of the Texas Capitol, it actually shuts down business delay first and foremost. Then we got to use that time well to make this a national fight. That's step two, because this isn't just about Texas. This is about not going to pre 1965 voting laws. We need to have a mobilization nationally like we had during the civil rights movement, because we're in the same fight right now. And if we have a national fight, then we have an actual chance. You can see how Governor Gavin Newsom is out there saying, maybe California is going to strike back and maybe California Republican members of Congress will reap what Texas sows. That kind of leverage, that kind of power all across the country gives us a fighting chance to beat back some of Trump's plan. And then third, if they do make sure that they get some part or all of this planned through, if the Republicans in Texas just wind up being Donald Trump's water boys and do whatever it is he wants, then we need to make sure that they have to pay for it. And we should be raising millions of dollars and fielding excellent candidates in these Republican Congress members districts. Because if they want to chop up Democratic districts and disempower certain communities of color by dragging, chopping them up and putting them in their districts, they make some of those Republican members of Congress more vulnerable. Because now they're representing a bunch of people who are pissed off. And we cannot let them, even if they ran through these maps or some version of them, we can't let them all come back and win. And we should be making sure that this boomerang's back on some of them so that they aren't encouraged to keep doing this year after year, month after month, to the point where they leave democracy and tatters in a way that we'll always regret.
- [13:46]
Host
The Voting Rights act of 1965 was passed on a bipartisan basis, 1965, to show you how far we've regressed. Right now in 2025, we've rewound in a pre 1965 world with the way the MAGA Republicans are treating this, I ask my law students and I do it in a nonpartisan way. I just say, how many here in my class, I have about 105 students. How many of you think that we could pass the Civil Rights act or the Voting Rights act again right now in 2025? Nobody raises their hand. I go, just think about that in 2025. The Voting Rights act and Civil Rights act you don't think could be passed right now in 2025. And it just seems that there's been this long term project to attack the Voting Rights act because the way it used to work was that these gerrymandered maps would have to get approval by an independent Justice Department or by a three judge judicial panel before it was even passed. But then the right wing Supreme Court gutted the formula and gutted the kind of predetermination rules that the DOJ and the three judge panel did. So now, I mean, I think what Texas has watched this right wing Supreme Court do is basically allow unlawful gerrymandered districts to exist through an election. You could have an unlawful Congress member in place and then just deal with it multiple years later because they cite this Purcell principle in the Supreme Court. We're too close to an election now. Nothing we can do. We'll just have to keep the unlawful map. And I think, I mean it's part of a broader plan, right? As your point is to bring this America into Russia.
- [15:28]
Greg Casar
And basically the what you have to, we have to understand how is it that they could do something even more radical than they did just a few years ago? And you just nailed it on the head. Donald Trump doesn't care about the Republican Party. He doesn't care about Republican members of Congress. He doesn't care about the Voting Rights Act. He just cares about himself. And maybe sometimes when he's done taking care of himself, he has a little bit of time for his billionaire friends, but mostly about himself. So he thinks that if he shreds the Voting Rights act, which could have generational impacts all across America, but he shoves it through in the dead of night with nobody watching because we've got so much other stuff happening in the news that it could save his skin for one more election or two more elections, bunch of these Republican members of Congress could get wiped out in primaries or in later elections because they drew districts that eventually included more Democrats than they wanted. Or those districts could be struck down someday by a court. But Trump wants to jam this through right you now because he doesn't want Democrats to win a midterm election and then be able to investigate his corruption, investigate his crimes, expose him. And I've been telling people, I know you've been telling people we've got to start mobilizing for these midterm elections. And I think where I've been wrong, and I'll admit that I was naive, was telling people that we've just got to focus on those midterm elections because what if Donald Trump rigs the rules of those elections before we even get there? And what I don't want is for you and me be on this show right after next year's November election. And Speaker Mike Johnson has just been reelected by one or two votes because we went and flipped 15 seats, but they went and rigged 16 or 17 of them because they got started in Texas in the summer months and people didn't notice. So people got a notice. You've got to speak up. Call your governor's office, call your state reps, call your members of Congress, Democratic and Republican, and say something's got to be done about this. Politicians should not be picking their voters and radically drawing districts to cut up communities of color. Voters should get to elect and unelect their politicians. And if you're in a blue state, there's something you can do and say about this, because we've got to stop bringing butter knives to a gunfight. I think that places like California should have passed laws that said California will have an independent commission and it will go into effect the day that Texas has one or that New York will have one. But it only goes into effects of the day that Florida has one because we've got to get rid of gerrymandering nationwide. We shouldn't be giving a free pass to wannabe autocrats.
- [18:12]
Host
I'm reminded of that scene in the movie the Dictator with Sacha Barra Cohen, which is apartment Today, unfortunately, where Sacha Barra Cohen is the slowest, not a good athlete, but he's playing in the Olympics of whatever country he's from and he starts running and he's got a gun. And everybody else, they're all shackled while they're running. And he turns to them and he starts shooting them and then he wins in first place. And it feels sometimes that that's the way the Republicans are playing this game. And they're looking back and you know, and we are and you know, the pro democracy's playing by the rules and let's be nice and let's be. And they're just keep on screwing us every time, and they're not aligned with the people. I'll throw this to you before we go. If you look at all of the issues, actually, America agrees on a lot of things. I mean, 75 to 80%, whether it's, you know, common sense, gun control, whether it's women's reproductive rights, whether it's the Democrats economic agenda. Americans agree with that stuff. Yet you don't see, don't see that in the outcome. And it's because of stuff like this. So it's, it's just fighting. I think it's just getting, you know, just saying enough of this crap. And I like that you're leading the way. Before we go, anything else you want to say to our audience?
- [19:26]
Greg Casar
I think you're spot on. This is something that I have had to change and learn within myself is that us being right and putting on the shackles of being right does not in and of itself win elections and let us do the right thing for the people. And so I think being a real progressive means actually saying, you know what? It's not good enough just to be right. We've got to beat back autocracy, inspire a large number of people, unrig the rules and get power so that we can do right by the people, because the current Trump regime and those folks in power are doing everything they can to dismantle our democracy.
- [20:13]
Host
Congressmember Greg Kasar, thanks for joining us.
- [20:16]
Greg Casar
Thanks a lot, everybody.
- [20:18]
Host
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