Bulwark Takes - Raja to Trump: Stop Building Ballrooms and Reopen the Government!

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Sam Stein talks with Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi about ICE agents going rogue in Illinois, racism stoked by far-right lawmakers, and how Trump’s shutdown is hurting Americans. They also discuss U.S.–China tensions, redistricting wars, and the strange new alliances forming in Congress.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullock. I'm joined by Congressman Krishna Murthy of Illinois in the great 8th District. I wanted to thank the Congressman for doing this. Appreciate it very much. We're here to talk about a host of different topics, and I want to start with what's happening in your state, which is it's become kind of the epicenter of standoffs between ICE, I guess Border Patrol, we should be more specific, and communities in and around Chicago. And we've had pretty testy court hearings. We've had incredibly tense

scenes from on the ground, a lot of civil strife. I'm wondering what your senses of the latest and what your fears are about the days and weeks ahead here. Well, my sense is that I think I hate to say this about a government organization, but they're acting out of control, Sam. They are, you know, I'll just give you one example. In my own congressional district, there have been multiple incidents recently, but one is where they actually snatched a U.S. citizen, 18-year-old woman from her car, tackled her to the ground, put their, the ice agent put his knee on her neck, even as she's screaming. I'm not resisting. She's basically saying she's a U.S. citizen. and they took her away.

Her parents don't know where she is for hours. And then she has to present her papers, and she's let go. And this has happened multiple times all over the place, not to mention that they use excessive force, tear gas, you know, where kids are located. They're, you know, Halloween's coming up. Parents are very scared. A U.S. District Court judge yesterday called for Greg Bovino,

the local incident commander to appear in her courtroom at 5.45 p.m. every day for the next week to explain the status. But it's kind of a situation where I think it's going to be a combination of litigation along with shining a light on the harm that's being done, along with, you know, obviously whatever legislation we can bring to bear on the situation, too, to kind of help change things. Yeah, give me a little sense of what it's like. to be an elected member of Congress in this moment when your community is dealing with ICE. What kind of interactions are you having with ICE officials or Border Patrol officials, the administration?

Obviously, we know where your state's governor stands in the stuff. But I am curious, you know, you're an elected official. You have some power. Obviously, you have some avenues of communication that other people don't. Do you actually ever pick up the phone and try to talk to the administration or to DHS or anything like that? It's funny you ask. The answer is yes. I'll tell you, like, two types of communication that I've had with ICE.

One is where I went right up to the Broadview Detention Facility, I asked to inspect. I actually got on the phone with the local commander to demand that I'd be able to inspect the facility in accordance with the appropriations law. There's a special section. It's called 527 that allows me to inspect without notice. and he formally refused access and, you know, basically gave me the talk to the hand type of gesture, which is really frustrating and it's illegal, and we're going to take further measures in accordance with what happened. The other type of interaction is where one of my constituents is actually detained, and we have to, like, communicate with ICE. and, you know, basically various authorities to help our constituent. So in this case, the constituent needs to take a certain type of medication.

She needs it on a regular basis, and ICE actually responded that she was given the medication that we requested to be administered to her, and that she is going to have that medication transferred with her wherever she's taken next. Now, our next question was, where are you going to transfer her, and that we don't get an answer to. So it's kind of a mixture of both different types of communications. They answer when they want to. But we continue to put forth our request. I'm not saying that there's another way to do this because I do think the administration is fairly hostile to congressional oversight. But I do wonder, I guess, if there were other avenues to try to get answers, explanations, or even some

insight, as it means of pushing back on what's happening. And my understanding from just talking to folks is, no, like, this is what they're going to do and they're going to amplify it. Unfortunately, kind of we're in that situation. I think that if we, I have a, I'll be bringing a subpoena to bring Christy Nome before the oversight committee to answer questions on your oath. I think that will be another opportunity to, you know, basically, you know, put forward very specific requests and questions to her. I actually think that there's a decent chance that she will appear before our committee. But aside from those tools right now, so litigation, public pressure, oversight, I think we should also ask our Republican colleagues to also step up and, you know, demand answers,

too, because they are similarly affected. I was talking to some Texas business people and they said that ice just randomly appears on work sites now and round people up and that disrupts local businesses. Well, have you talked to your Republican colleagues in the house about this? And are they beginning to get a little bit more discomforted by ice or are they just quiet about it? They're quiet but discomforted. You can see this, especially with my colleagues who are representing agricultural areas because it's affecting people showing up to pick crops. Now it's harvest season, right? lot of places in the Midwest. And so it is bothering them, too. You talked to a little bit publicly about how the ICE operations, the Border Patrol operations, have enabled the worst

kind of racism or racist acts and rhetoric that we see. And that you yourself have been targeted by this, a Florida lawmaker, I think, what was it? He accused you of, I don't know, being a foreign occupier. I wrote that down because it was pretty disturbing. Tell me a little bit not what else you've been subjected to, not that you're, no offense to you, not that you're the story here, but I'm just sort of curious, as a lawmaker, is this the worst climate it's been in terms of the racist vitriol that you've experienced? And what have you witnessed? Yeah, in the last decade that I've been in Congress, yes. Unfortunately, I think that what we're seeing is this kind of racial profiling by DHS and ICE has also encouraged people to kind of pursue their

worst impulses. So this Florida lawmaker, local elected official, said to deport every Indian or every Indian origin person. I then called him out on his racist speech. And then he came back at me and basically said the same thing. Echo this similar sentiment that he initially said about all Indians, called me a foreign occupier, said my name is unpronounceable. And then said I was from the planet Tatouine, Star Wars reference. Star Wars, yeah. We tweeted back at him and said, just call me Raja and I'll just call you racist. But like this is the kind of unfortunate set of exchanges that a lot of people are having.

I'm just the, I'm just one of numerous people at this point who felt the pointy tip of the spear in terms of racism and prejudice. It's just un-American, Sam. This is not proper for anybody, and we're kind of seeing it kind of amplify right now. Bullwark takes a sponsor by Soul, struggling to switch off at night, Sol's out of office gummies help me relax, quiet my thoughts, and help me fall asleep naturally. Just the right balance of CBD and THC to ease me into a restful night, and it doesn't get much more restful or cozy than these fall nights.

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One is foreign and the other is domestic. Let's start with the foreign. You sit on the select committee for the CCP. We're talking like as Donald Trump is in Asia and about to go have a meeting, I believe, tomorrow. I don't know what the timing is here, but soon with President Xi. We're at a very uncertain moment, I think, with respect to our relationships with China. I'm adversarial at times, not so much at other times. We have adjusting tariffs, and yet we're cutting deals for TikTok ownership.

How would you describe the current state of the relationship? What are your hopes for this meeting with Xi and what are your fears? I think that the current state of the relationship is very unstable. Not only is it unstable, but I think that we have lowered our deterrence to Chinese aggression, Chinese Communist Party aggression with regard to the economy, with regard to our security and our kind of technological relationship. And so the result is when you lower your deterrence, you invite aggression, and that could lead to conflict. So I believe this is my fear about the moment is that because of the kind of showing our weaknesses, we are going to actually heighten the possibility of conflict.

And as the American people have said in a recent survey, the biggest concern they have about the relationship is that it could go to war. And we can't have that. The American people don't want that anywhere, but certainly with this relationship. My hope in this kind of face-to-face set of talks is that the president uses our leverage to kind of get more than we give up in any kind of negotiation.

with them. The Chinese desperately want us to relax controls on our export of semiconductor chips so that they can continue to modernize their military and to use it in ways that counter our values, such as in the persecution of the Uyghurs, through the development of these large AI models for surveillance. They also want us to put Taiwan on the table, so to speak, and to walk away from our obligations with regard to Taiwan. On the other hand, we want the Chinese to end their economic aggression in terms of their dumping of goods on the world markets to kill their competitors.

We want them to stop the shipment of fentanyl precursors, which are fueling our fentanyl kind of epidemic here in the United States. We want the Chinese also to crack. down on, you know, basically other illegal practices that various actors are using in their country against us. So we have various issues. Ultimately, I think that we have a lot of cards to play, including market access. And I think that that is something that I hope that the president uses to our advantage. Yeah, but they have cards to play, too. I mean, you just visited a soybean farm in Illinois, where I think it was $1.4 billion of sales to China last year, $0 right now

is just crushing the farmers there. They have cards and they are playing them. And so I guess the question, again, is sort of on the spectrum, how adversarial is this relationship supposed to be? I think the relationship is adversarial to the point where I think that we have to change our course in the sense that we need to band together with our friends, partners, and allies to isolate the Chinese with regard to their aggression so that we can actually try to change their behavior. Right now, for instance, levying tariffs on everything from everywhere only leads to two outcomes. One is higher prices for everyone in the U.S. on everything. And then two, it reduces our leverage in terms of our ability to get our friends, partners, and allies to isolate

the Chinese. So I'm hoping that when we visit these different countries, whether it's Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and other places in the Indo-Pacific region, which the president is doing now, we actually bring them together with us in mounting a unified strategy with regard to the CCP. It sounds like you on a trans-Pacific partnership-type deal, which we scrapped because it was considered too free-trady. Let's switch to the domestic sphere because you're sitting here as a member of Congress. The House has not been back in session in, what, 40 days or so, it seems. I don't know when the last time you guys had a time in D.C. was, I guess, and you're also running for Senate. Juan, what are you doing with your time?

Because obviously, you're not being called into session. The House is not working. constituent work surely and being back at home is helpful. But what do you actually doing with your time? And then I'll ask you another follow-up question. Sure. I'm on podcast with the famous people for instance. That takes up a lot of time. A lot of time. I think that in all seriousness, yesterday we just actually did a press conference talking about how our office is open. Unfortunately, people aren't getting paid around here either. But our office is open for business and we just want to be there for people however we can. And we just announced that we've closed something like 14,000 cases now and just 120 in the shutdown alone. And people have real needs. And so we want to help them however we can. I've been traveling a lot to kind of shine a light on some of the harm that's being done by the tariffs, by ICE. You know, we're about to see. you know, people kind of on a food stamp cliff, snap cliff, if you will. I'm a product of food stamps in public housing myself, so this is personal to me.

But basically trying to do whatever I can to help people. I have servant leaders for staff. And basically they have tremendous ability to help people, and that's what they're doing as well. Well, let's talk about the cliff because it's two cliffs, right? One is the food stamp cliff, which is hitting really soon. And then the other one is the Obamacare subsidy cliff, which is hitting really soon. We're talking about days now. A lot of pain, a lot of suffering is about to happen.

And yet, I don't see a particularly swift end to this shutdown. Do you? I think that it's possible, but it depends on this. I think that the Obamacare tax credits, as you said, are about to expire. Those notices, by the way, for people's health care premiums on Obamacare are going out literally as we speak. I'm on Obamacare. My family is. So we're looking forward to seeing what the premiums are going to be.

But for 22 million people who receive those tax credits, they're going to see their premiums explode because the notices basically exclude the possibility of the tax credits kicking in. And four million are going to lose their health insurance. most of those people are in red districts and red states. I think that they're going to be calling in to their legislators' offices and saying, you know, WTF, you know, what is going on here, especially as we head toward the holiday season. My hope is that a lot of them, those legislators are going to start to echo even Marjorie Taylor Green, who has said, look, let's take this off the table. This is a very basic issue.

The status quo is not working. take that issue off the table, and then let's deal with everything else. Strange Bedfellows where you're not the first Democrat who I've talked to who's been praising Marjor Taylor Green in recent days. Never thought I'd see it. I've actually been working with her on the Epstein files issue, too, on the Oversight Committee. And I think that, you know, you can, there can be some bipartisanship even now, despite the state of affairs with the government. No, no doubt.

I'm a little bit skeptical that Republicans will get an influx of complaints from constituents around Obamacare and intern course because, frankly, Democrats have in turn course either around the influx of complaints from constituents about things like the possibility of Snap being ended or the federal workers saying, hey, reopen the government. It seems like both sides are pretty entrenched from my vantage point. I think right now, given the fact that, you know, tens of millions of people are going to be affected by the Obamacare issue, I think that there's just going to be a lot of pressure to, you know, take that issue off the table. And I think that that hopefully will produce the desired result. Although, as you said, there are other issues too. And, you know, I think right now my hope is that, you

know, my friends, my colleagues on the other side are going to prevail upon their president to come to the table, stop building a golden ballroom, and let's start opening the government. Let's work together on this issue. All right. I've taken up a lot of time. So my last question here is about redistricting, which, look, you've been very, I think, open-minded to it. The best way I can describe your position is you're not going to tell the General Assembly what way to vote. But you also have said that if Republicans are going to go down this route, that Democratic, Democrats should try to neutralize what they are doing.

Can you be a little bit more explicit about this? Would you like to seat Illinois redraw its districts? If certain other states go down the road of redrawing their districts, I think that Illinois won't have a choice. But haven't other states already done that? Like Missouri went after Texas. And North Carolina is going as well. And yeah, maybe Indiana might not do it.

But is your estimation that Illinois is tied to Indiana? I think that the minority leaders office is kind of viewing this as different states almost getting paired together. And I think that the General Assembly is looking at it that way too. Obviously, what Texas did started off everything, then California followed suit. We're seeing what's happening in Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, Maryland. And I think that, you know, people here are kind of watching those developments very carefully. Now, one thing, Sam, which is just a very practical issue in Illinois, is we literally filed all of our petitions on Monday. And we're like right in the middle of that filing period.

So there's just a logistical issue that has to be adjusted. But my hope is that my Republican colleagues see that here in Illinois, we're ready to also act. and it's just going to neutralize whatever they do, so perhaps they should not go down this road. Right. That makes sense. If they say, okay, well, Illinois will just neutralize us. We might as well just not, it's not worth it. We're not going to do it. But if they do do it, you expect the Democrats in your home state to act. I think that they would. And by the way, one very interesting thing is, you know, Texas, you know, they redistricted and they feel very confident that they're going to pick up five Republican seats and unseat basically five Democrats. But that's not necessarily the case. And we see, you know, public sentiment in some of those districts, whether it's Vicente Gonzalez

or, you know, Henry Quayar's district in Texas, they've really swung against the president, in part because, yes, the border is in order. But the way that ICE is conducting itself is completely out of control. And that really hurts public sentiment for the president in areas where he might have done better than expected in the last election. All right. We covered a lot. Representative Krishna Murthy, thank you so much. I do appreciate it.

And to those who stood with us and watched all of this 22 minutes of incredible conversation, thank you as well. Please subscribe to our feed. We appreciate your support. We get great conversations like this. Congressman, thank you. Good luck out there. Really appreciate it.

Hey, Sam. Thank you so much. All right, take care. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it weird sound? I've got a pro.

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