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The Parnas Perspective
Breaking: Republicans Erupt and Flee Washington as Majority Melts Down
00:20:58
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- [00:02]
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Political Commentator
We have breaking developments at this hour. The United States Senate Republican Caucus is melting down. That's a direct quote from Republican senators who have now been sent home this evening because the White House threw a wrench in their plans. They wanted to pass a massive spending package to fund ICE and cbp, but Donald Trump demanded that they pass a spending package that includes a billion dollars for a ballroom. That money is dead in the water, completely thrown out. And now the creation of this weaponization fund, the $1.8 billion to go to allies of the president's, including January six defendants. More than two dozen Republicans spoke up and spoke out against this fund in a private meeting. So much so that there is so much chaos within the caucus right now. The Senate Majority Leader says we don't even have the votes to pass this bill to pass any spending package. Everyone's going home. They sent them home at least until June. And one Republican senator says, quote, our majority is melting down and it's the White House is doing. I have the latest right now. Like comment, share, get the word out and if you can support my work as always, subscribe to my substack. Click the link below. I have an interview with California Governor Gavin Newsom at the end of this and I have a lot more coming soon, so you will not want to miss it. Remember, our paid subscriber only live is tonight on my substack at around 06:45, so subscribe and make sure to be there. Right now, the United States Senate is going home until June, leaving the reconciliation bill unfinished. All because the Department of Justice's Weaponization Fund has created so much chaos for Republicans. Many of them don't support it. So let me break this down for you. The reconciliation bill is a fancy term for a piece of legislation meant to pass more funding to give more money to ICE and cbp. Why do ICE and CBP need more money? Well, if you remember, the Department of Homeland Security was under a government shutdown. Democrats would not fund DHS following the murders of Alex Preddy and Renee Goode, along with the ICE enforcement that we've seen in communities across the country. Country. And so they got to a deal where they funded the majority of dhs, tsa, the Coast Guard, fema, but they left funding for ICE and CBP still on the table. So, technically, ICE and CBP are in this pseudo government shutdown. And so what did Republicans do? Well, Republicans said, okay, we'll just go through this process called reconciliation. Reconciliation is specifically limited to spending packages, and you don't need 60 votes to pass them. You don't need any Democrat support. You only need 50 votes. And so they were going to do that, and they were fully on track to getting it done. But then the White House stepped in and threw a wrench in their plans. First with the ballroom, the billion dollar spending package for the ballroom. That's been kicked out, that's dead in the water. But now the White House put forth this weaponization fund through this settlement agreement. There's a lot of frustration among Senate Republicans over the weaponization announcement, the decision to settle and announce this. Right in the middle of this reconciliation push, quote, the White House dropped a bomb in the middle of a pretty well planned out reconciliation to deliver on President Trump's priorities. That's what Senator Murkowski said. Senator Cassidy says, well, the administration put them in this spot. And today, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch went on Capitol Hill and tried to meet with Senate Republicans to assuage their concerns. While it didn't work, as many as 25 Republican senators spoke out, all in opposition to the weaponization fund. Republicans actively pitched ideas on how to essentially make sure you're not giving money to people who committed crimes against law enforcement. And as a result, they're sent home. There's no agreement, and the majority is melting down before our eyes. Republicans believe that Donald Trump has brought this upon himself, creating more, quote, free agents out of a selfish desire to purge Republicans not seen as loyal enough. And when asked about this fund, here's what the Southern District of New York U.S. attorney Jay Clayton had to say,
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Andrew
Pretend it's not the president. Pretend it's me.
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Legal Analyst
Yeah.
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Andrew
Why? And let's say you thought that I was a tax cheat. Why would you? I'm not saying that he was a tax cheat. I'm just saying, let's say you thought that I owed the government money. Wouldn't you want me to pay the money? Why would the government not want me to pay to pay the money?
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Legal Analyst
And we have two things going on here. We intentionally leak your tax returns to embarrass you in the public. You have a claim against us. There's an audit that we don't know whether there's money owed or not owed. To resolve that, we say, you know what, Andrew, we're going to drop the audit. We're going to move on, and you're going to drop your claim against us for trying to name and shame you. That's a deal. I think that, you know, is actually a pretty good deal for the government. If the government intentionally leaked somebody's tax returns, that's a horrible thing.
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Andrew
Do you think it's any different? I don't. Look, the leaking piece is. I agree with you 100%. The only question I have for you that relates to this is whether you think being in the position of being the president changes that dynamic at all.
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Legal Analyst
I do. What do you. Is the president supposed to say, you know what? You can do whatever you want to me and I have no recourse. And it was done when he was a private citizen. I don't think we're going to know.
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Andrew
I just, I just wonder maybe there
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Legal Analyst
should be a. I don't know if
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Andrew
it should be a third party that makes the decision or something like that.
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Legal Analyst
I don't think we're going to be talking about this issue in a week because the American people are going to say, look, they leaked his tax returns. They tried to name and shame him, they tried to destroy him. Okay, we resolved that in terms of the audit that had been going on for years with obviously, you know, no findings to date, that's gone. Let's look forward this. As I read the settlement, the audit going forward, the tax returns that are filed going forward are subject to the same scrutiny as anybody else. Just in the past. It's in the past.
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Political Commentator
And President and when asked today during this fraud hearing that they had fraud press conference about, well, Donald Trump's pardoned a lot of folks for fraud. Here's what the Trump Trump official had to say.
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Press Conference Moderator
Rosen. We'll do one final question.
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Political Commentator
Yes, sir.
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Press Conference Moderator
Maximilian Reformer. President Trump has granted clemency to numerous individuals who have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds. Can we expect Amy Bach or any of these folks to be shown the same mercy in the future? I'll take a different question as the final question.
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Political Commentator
Yes, sir, I'll take a different question. I don't want to answer it. That's where we're at right now. And I spoke to Governor Gavin Newsom about issues plaguing California, not about Trump I think he talks a lot about Donald Trump. I think it's time for him to talk about something different. Time to talk about how to lower costs, what paid family medical leave looks like, what free diapers look like, child care. I asked him all the questions. You guys want answers? You like Comment Share Please subscribe to my substack or upgrade your subscription to support my work. Link below my interview with California Governor David Gavin Newsom.
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Interviewer
Excited to be here with Governor Gavin Newsom from California. Now, Governor, there's a lot of talk about Trump, the White House. I don't want to talk about any of that.
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Governor Gavin Newsom
I want to talk to every viewer.
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Interviewer
I know, I know. I really do want to talk about some of the good things though that's happening in California specifically lately. The budget. You guys now have a balanced budget. What does that mean for someone who knows nothing about the budget?
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Governor Gavin Newsom
Well, it means it's not only balanced this year, it's also balanced next year. So for the next 18 months, we've left the next administration a balanced budget that does as much or more than any other state in America in terms of our universal health care, the subsidies for child care, brand new Grade TK for all, continue our investments as it relates to lowering the cost of prescription drugs, $11 insulin, allowing us to do these new and novel strategies around reducing costs to new families. We eliminated a few years ago taxes on diapers, but diapers still cost too much money. So now we're handing out 400 free diapers. We'll double the program next year. And we now have a budget that establishes the how to pay for it. And I think it's just a reminder for progressives you don't have to be profligate to be progressive. And while there are trade offs all the time, we're able to do that within the existing progressive tax structure, which is the most progressive in America. And it also I think our budget makes the case for progressive tax systems, not the regressive taxes you see in places like Florida, Texas and most of the red states.
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Interviewer
Now I don't know if you saw the Washington Post op ed, they put out a video about your free diaper program saying that essentially it's actually the consumers are paying for it in some way, shape or form. What is your response to a critique like that?
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Governor Gavin Newsom
Well, look, it's where we want to prioritize and make our investments. Consumers are paying for all of the investments the state is making. That's called a tax system. As representatives, we take the revenue that's generated and we make investments on after school for all, summer school for all, on two free school meals. In terms of the investments we make to lower cost as we just expanded the subsidies for Obamacare to people earning from 165% of area medium or rather poverty level to 200, that was a subsidy. And so this is a not dissimilar subsidy, but we're also driving down costs by going out getting these for about 15 cents each and a new distribution system that's outside of government itself so we could drive efficiencies. And ultimately the goal here is to test under our CalRx model which created the $11 insulin, our own naloxone. We'll be making another announcement in a few months. But we ultimately want to produce our own diapers so that we're not subsidizing the cost their argument, but lowering the cost to everybody.
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Interviewer
Now how are you going to, I mean I guess do this on a scale that's such a. You have such a big state, California, giant state, millions and millions of people right now. I read it's only about 25% of the hospitals in the state. How are you going to expand that to everyone?
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Governor Gavin Newsom
25%. And we'll focus on those most in need with high poverty levels. And, and so we'll be very selective in terms of where we target those investments. For the first 25 in the budget that I just submitted to the legislature next year, in the budget year plus one as we refer to it, that's balanced, we'll double it to 80 million diapers with the goal stated goal in our budget to get to 160 million free diapers a year which would cover all the folks in the Medicaid system medical in California that are having babies. And so it's one of many things we're hoping to do for new families. Part of what we call our parents agenda, that includes expansion to eight weeks of paid family leave. It excludes the expansion of wage replacement, something that's not talked about enough. You have a lot of paid family leave and sick leave that's expanded but you don't get the full wage replacement. And so we got it up to eligible workers to 90% which was a big deal. We expanded our paid sick leave to five days. We're making investments in prenatal care. We're making investments in our ACEs program. 0 to 3 a real focus 03 created a brand new grade TK for all fully implemented it. Brand new grade didn't exist when I got here and now we fully, fully funded it. Saves about $18,000 a year for a typical family. So you talk about child care, high quality, subsidized, including by the way, ratios for teachers. So we actually lowered the ratios. We're spending or investing a tremendous amount of money to make sure it's quality preschool as well. So all again part of a mosaic that we're advancing to address the affordability crisis, which yes, in California is as cute or more acute for working families than any other part of the country.
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Interviewer
Well, I want to ask you about that because I'm moving to California soon. I'm looking to buy a home in California to find a single family home in the Los Angeles area. You look on Zillow million bucks, get you a shed on the side of the street. How are you going to lower housing costs?
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Governor Gavin Newsom
Well, I just ran into Ezra Klein who's here at this conference, the cap conference, and I just once again thanked Ezra for helping us. I know it's become a buzzword, but this abundance mindset really shifted the conversation and sat Sacramento from playing in the margins, failing more efficiently on reforming the time to delivering projects, housing and permits to radically rethinking land use and zoning. It's zoning stupid. That's. I mean I if Carville were alive on the housing conversation. It's zoning stupid. Build, baby, built. And forgive the language except to say we have to be the party of builders again. And we failed in California. We were so process dominant. Paralysis of analysis and process and nimbyism. So now it's a yimby mindset. We created a Housing Accountability Unit. We just won a big lawsuit against Huntington beach just this last week. They're now going to face fines. They're going to have to pay fines to the state because of their obstinate of not building housing at all income levels. And we've increased, I mentioned on stage since I got here, by 59% the number of total units since I started and most interestingly, not necessarily most importantly, but we reduced the permitting time at the state level by 56%. Those are decent numerics. We got to significantly grow those further. But this is a crisis again, it's the original city in California going back decades and decades, but it's a growing crisis I across this country. It is a mindset and we have to focus on wages, mobility and housing at peril. Young men like you, next generation will never have a shot at the American dream.
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Interviewer
What about gas prices? I mean, yes, the war is driving gas prices up, but in California, gas prices were high to begin with before Compared to the rest of the country.
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Governor Gavin Newsom
What's interesting, when I did my budget a few days ago, these numbers changed daily. But it's an actual number. We were a $51 higher than when the war started. Nation was $1.55. 33 states actually saw higher growth in the cost of gasoline than the state of California. But you made an important point. We started from a high baseline that goes back to the 1960s. Goes back to our efforts to address the issue of smog in Los Angeles where Governor Ronald Reagan created the California Air Resources Board. And we started looking at different ways of regulating tailpipe emissions. Clean Air act under Richard Nixon in 1970 gave California a waiver that allowed us to move forward with a lot of novel strategies to clean our air and address health issues. And as a consequence our low carbon fuel standards was built off that work around cap and trade that have had some impact on the baseline costs of gasoline because of the unique blend that is provided to Californians because of our environmental footprint and because of our health concerns. So that's existed for decades in the state. It is definitely a burden. And that's why we focus on wages. $20 minimum wage which we did for fast food workers. 25 for health care workers. 1690 for everybody else. We indexed that to inflation. We doubled the earned income tax credit to allow working families to keep more what they are increased. One of our nation leading child tax credits extended to foster families as well. Looking at all these other examples I just provided and again a panoply of things. We have the most aggressive rent control at a state level in the country just cause evictions. 5% cap which for some is not enough. We also address the issue of down payments and security deposits in ways that most other states don't. Again, dozens and dozens of little ideas that we hope add up to a story that I'm happy to be able to tell of a state that's trying to combat the issue of cost and affordability. But the tectonic plate again is supply demand imbalance. And the only fundamental way to address the issue is we've got to build more damn housing at all income levels. And these zoning reforms and land use reforms we think are the most significant our state's history and and some of the most important I think from a national prism that have been advanced in decades and decades.
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Interviewer
Now I want to take this nationally. What do you say to someone who says paid family leave, free diapers. All this sounds great for California residents, but I live in Alabama or I live in New York or Ohio. And I don't feel like we can get this done for everyone across the country, all 50 states. Do you think you can do what you did in California and replicate it across the country?
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Governor Gavin Newsom
Success leaves clues is a power of emulation. And let me tell you why. I'm absolutely sure of that. And not just I don't even speculate. California is the size of 21 state populations combined already. So we've delivered it for 21 states. So by definition we can make this happen. What's exciting about California is the scale. If we can prove a policy, not just assert a policy, but prove it and it's sustainable and works, then we can replicate it everywhere. And so we talk about, you know, states or laboratories of democracy, cities, laboratories of innovation. We're both end city and county, city and state working together. This sort of innovative, iterative mindset increase the number of tries, very entrepreneurial construct. I mean sort of the Silicon Valley frame. But Silicon Valley didn't build all this abundance. It was American workers that built it. It was people hard work rolling up their sleeves was our education system. It's, it's around designing a formula for success where people cannot just survive but thrive. And so much of what I talked about in CAP a moment ago is the tax structure in order to achieve it, to answer your question, federally has to change. We've been able to do this because of our progressive tax structure. You've got an administration that continues to cut taxes, but for corporations and for billionaires, we need to reform the stepped up basis. We need to reform our inheritance tax, we need to reform the way we tax capital gains. We need to fundamentally change the way we do stock buybacks. So it's not just about bonuses and stock price appreciation. It's about R and D and it's about workers. We need to fundamentally address the issue of monopolization of capital. And that addresses some of the housing concerns around corporations, corporate interests, all of these concentrated issues, the real villains in our economy fundamentally have to be changed because the economy is about to detonate with AI and people are exhausted by incrementalism and are demanding something fundamentally new.
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Interviewer
Governor, thank you so much.
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Governor Gavin Newsom
Good to be with you.
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Political Commentator
Hey folks, thanks so much for watching. Feel free to add this podcast podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you watch for the latest breaking news and daily hits throughout the day. Make sure to follow. Subscribe. See you soon for more.