Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Jasmine Crockett

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett isn’t pulling punches — especially now, as she fights a Texas redistricting plan that could erase her district and reshape democracy itself. The former civil-rights attorney opens up about the toll of being targeted, the fuel behind her fearlessness, and why she refuses to “play nice” when people’s rights are on the line. Find out what it really takes to keep showing up when the system keeps moving the goalposts... and what just might make Jasmine leave politics for good.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. The best dates happen when someone really gets your vibe, your niche references, your hot takes, even your reality TV obsessions. That's why it's so exciting to be partnering with Bumble. Dating feels easier on Bumble with prompts that show off your personality, shared interests that help you find common ground, and verification that gives you peace of mind that you're meeting someone real. So if you're ready to meet someone who really gets you in your energy, Bumble is the perfect place to start. waiting for download bumble and start your love story hi everyone it's sophia welcome to work in progress hey whipsmarties today we have one of my very favorite women on the pod not because she's an incredible congresswoman not because she is an accomplished civil rights attorney who defends our very

deals, not because she happens to be one of the most whipsmart people I've ever been in a room with and not because she's also one of the coolest people on the house floor. It's really for all of these things. Today we are joined by none other than Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. She didn't come to Washington to play nice. She came to defend a true and more gorgeous America. And right now, she is standing at the center of one of the most consequential fights, not only in Texas, but across the nation over redistricting, access to the ballot, voting rights, and whether communities of color will be silenced or heard. As many of you know this year, Texas Republicans drew a new congressional map that is designed to add five GOP seats, which has forced Democrats to sue in court

because they're drawing this in ways that would reduce the voting power of some Americans to one-fifth a full vote. If that sounds like an eerie ghost of history past, that we should be ashamed of. It is. And Jasmine Crockett is not going to take this one laying down. She's here to talk about local politics, national politics, what's going on with the government shutdown, what on earth is happening with the Epstein files, and why Speaker Johnson, frankly, keeps lying to us. She is here to defend a democracy under siege, and she does it with style. Let's dive in with Jasmine Crockett. My dear, my lighthouse beacon, North Star, human being that reminds me that we can speak truth to power, it feels like a weird thing to ask you how you are when 2025 is 2025ing so hard in more the project way than just the calendar year.

But how are you? I mean, you know what, I really am not going to complain. There is a lot that I could say, but every day that I wake up and I think about how pissed off I am, I also think about how fortunate I am that in this moment, unlike so many others that are sitting at home and feeling the same level of frustration, if not a higher level of frustration, I at least have a seat at the table. And so I am not really afforded an opportunity to kind of sit around and say, oh, pity me. I look at this as an opportunity. I look at it as an opportunity to give people hope. I look at it as an opportunity to take down the bad guys. And when I say take down, it's the traditional takedown, right?

So I am looking forward to the midterms. And I am trying to help other candidates right now because, I do believe we should have some oversight. I do believe that the American people deserve real answers. I do believe that it is our time to shine a light on all the darkness that has come forward. And the reality is that not everyone is in a position to do it. So as much as sometimes I wake up and I'm ready to bang my head against the wall, I then have that moment of reflection and I'm so incredibly grateful to be here in this moment and have the opportunities that I have. I really love that. That's beautiful. It's interesting, you know,

when I think about all the ways that I get the privilege, like you said, you have the privilege of a seat at the table. I have the privilege of being in some of the room sometimes where your seats are. And I think about the years I've been able to, you know, follow you. your work on the hill and also now over the last, I don't know, year in change, call you a friend, you know, see you out and about in the world, whether we're at a political rally or occasionally getting to have a very overdue meal. I think about who you are as someone who takes that sacred rage that I think anyone who really believes in community or the Constitution feels fired up right now and you do so from your seat as you mentioned you do so from your

expertise you know you were a public defender you became a civil rights attorney you are one of the people i look to in leadership as being the most well versed in what america is and is supposed to be versus how she behaves sometimes and i wonder i always ask everyone who comes on the show this question but i really am excited to ask you like If we got to, you know, be in a great Robin Williams movie and something happened and suddenly we were on the playground with eight-year-old Jasmine, like, would you see traits in your young self in that little girl that you carry with you today? You know, was she out there like standing up to playground bullies? What was her vibe? What was your vibe as a young woman? Yeah. It's so funny because I legitimately have some friends that I've had since elementary. And many of them are like, no surprise. We knew it. We always saw it, right? So I was always a smart girl. You know, I was always kind of testing at the top of whatever tests we had going on. And I was always like,

deeply caring. So yeah, if there was a bully situation, I probably would have been the one that stood up. Did not really have to run into it, thank goodness, on my behalf or anybody else's. But I also had a little bit of SaaS that may not have been appropriate during that time. So it's interesting because I only recently started sharing this story about when I was in the third grade. because people are like, oh, you know, Jasmine is all cosplay or, you know, they come up with all these random things. And I'm like, honestly, honey, I've been the same my entire life. You can go and find from me testing at the top with all the standardized tests from elementary on to me ended up

getting a scholarship to the private school that they love to talk about because of my academic achievements to me being at the top 10% of my class after my first year in law school. So I've always done really, really well with the studies. I've always had a bit of bite. So in the third grade, I got in trouble, which I guess is somewhere around the age eight, maybe a little bit older. I got in trouble for cursing out my art teacher. So, you know, listen, I mean, I want the kids to know. You can see. still be successful. I mean, you know, things happen. But like, I was, I was a bit of a smarty. And I didn't get in trouble very much. It was literally like what you see now where I am good.

I am smart. I'm on my own business. But that teacher decided to try me. And so that's what it was. And, you know, I got into trouble. But, you know, also the teacher didn't bother me. more. So I am pretty much the same. I probably was a little bit more outgoing back then right now because of just kind of the environment and how many people know me. Like I was always like the popular girl. Like everyone knew me, that kind of stuff. But like it was different because as a kid, you're not worried about much of anything. So you're just like hanging out. You're talking to everybody and it's, you know, a different world. And now it's like, you know, you. You know, I feel it's crazy.

I've never told anyone this, but because of the level of death threats that I get, when I'm out in public and people approach me if they walk up to me too fast, it makes me very nervous because I don't know if you're walking up out of excitement because you really like me or you're walking up because you feel as if you hate somebody who you've never met. And so sometimes I can kind of, you know, seem probably a little bit standoffish because usually there's security or staff around me that is trying to kind of understand like what you're trying to do. So obviously that has changed. And I wish I could go back to being the carefree little girl that I was that knew no hate and only knew love.

But unfortunately, that's just kind of a part of growing up. Yeah. I think it's also, it's a real symptom of a sick society. And while I am a great fan of the promise of this country and the ideals that it was founded on, I think much like you and many of the people we get to work alongside, I'm never going to pretend like America's been perfect at aiming for those ideals. And I think it's very, it's a very strong signifier of a sick society when intelligent women or women who stand for the political power of the masses or the working class are consistently targeted. And I don't deal with it in the way that you do,

but let me tell you what, what I do deal with as an outspoken, you know, volunteer for democracy has changed my movements in public. It's changed my constitution in a way. I gave a talk last week at World Mental Health Day, and we were talking about activism. And I said, you know, we can do all these things online. We're going to run this letter writing campaign. We're going to overwhelm the system with paper mail. And I cracked a joke. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to smooch every letter. I just need to find a lipstick called Kiss of Death. And then I was like, that's a joke, to be clear. Like, I don't need Breitbart to write another article that is going to result in like 10,000 more death threats for me. And I'm just like an actor who talks about

this stuff because I'm also a trained journalist. You are an elected official who really, really stands up against very dangerous authoritarian levers of power. And you're a woman and you're a black woman. So they really don't like you. They don't like anything about the amount of power you've amassed. But what's amazing to me as a, you know, a fan and a friend, whatever that combo word looks like. I'm like, am I a friend? Is that what I am? That's kind of cute. You know, you come at this. You come at this work, as I mentioned earlier, from your early career as a public defender, as a civil rights attorney.

Like, you know what the law of the land is, and you know the ways that certain ill-motivated rules or systems or laws or policies have been in. implemented over and over again as people who have not been given top power have amassed power. So whether that's women, whether that's communities of color, whether that's black Americans. Like, we see the gains made, you know, LGBTQ folks, anybody, we see the gains made see incredible pushback, but you know what is on page 67 and Clause 3C of every big. So how does your expertise and also your early career work before you ran for office? How does that all come together for you?

So this is such a great question. It's one of those things that I try to encourage our caucus to think about, right? Because typically people are upset with our communication or lack there of, our styles or our messaging. or our messaging and whatnot. People definitely have a long list of issues. It's usually not the substance. I will say that. It's usually not the substance of what it is that we are trying to push forward with.

It's just a matter of who all can understand what it is that we're talking about. And sometimes it can feel like we're just talking to one another instead of talking to the people that we serve. And, you know, there are those that are confused. Like, well, why does she sound this way over here? Why does she sound that way over there and that kind of stuff? As if I can't be a multifaceted person. And, you know, as a trained litigator, I would be doing a disservice to the people that were entrusting me sometimes to literally save their lives.

If I wasn't able to understand my audience. So as a business major undergrad who worked in marketing as I was working my way through law school, the emphasis on my business major was finance, though. One of the things that they always taught you in marketing classes was first determine your audience. So when I would walk into a courtroom, I would walk in and deal with a bunch of strangers and we would have to pick a jury and I'd have to trust that these people are going to listen to the law and just follow the law.

I would have to deal with the biases and do my best to kind of delete as many of the biases as possible while understanding that people are people and they're human and there's certain things that they don't want to tell you. But have I walked into a courtroom in Arkansas before and had multiple people admit that they were racist? I have because I've been able to make people feel comfortable enough to just be honest with me. And it wasn't so much about me as it was the system. And I would explain to them why the system mattered and why it was important that no matter who came through that system, you may not be the one coming through right now, but a loved one may be coming through or having gone through. And you would want this system to work for

everyone. And that's why we, so I would explain the why, right? And I would get people to admit things that you would never, ever think they would admit. And then, of course, I always knew that there were people that just wouldn't tell me certain stuff. But I also knew that it was important to build a rapport. And building a rapport didn't look like me using every form of legalese I could find because I'm talking to a group of people that come from all different backgrounds. The only thing for sure that they shared in comment is that they were number one citizens. And number two, they lived within whatever jurisdiction it was that I was trying this case in.

And that's it. Like you didn't know anything, but you needed to trust. these people. But they knew I was a lawyer when they got in there because I was standing there. I was presented as the attorney for the client. And ultimately, when I went in front of the judge and I would make arguments to the judge on behalf of my client as it relates to various legal arguments or motions that we were arguing, I obviously would use the terminology that mattered for whatever it was that I was arguing because the credibility needed to be there with the judge for the judge to say, oh, yeah, she knows what she's talking about because she referenced the right

thing. So I've never put that much stock really into my education to the extent that I sell people all the time. I went to law school because that was the only way that I could do the job that I wanted to do. If I wanted to be a plumber, then I wouldn't have gone to college at all, right? But that's not the job that I wanted to do. And so I've always been a big support. in the trades and everything because I've never been kind of this educational elitist. I went into law because it was a way, again, to help people and to protect people after I myself had become the victim of a series of hate crimes. And they brought in the Cochran firm to actually try to investigate and help us out. And so it was a feeling that I ended up feeling at that

moment that made me say, oh, God, I don't want anybody else to feel like this and like these are real superheroes. That was the only reason I went to law school. But with that being said, my training as an attorney, number one, taught me how to read the law. So therefore, we're talking about I now have a job where we write the laws. So I'm very clear on how the law reads and where there may be issues with the interpretation because it was my job to interpret the law. the legislators wrote all the time. In addition to that, I always understood my audience and who I was communicating too. I have dealt with hostile witnesses.

I know how to pivot in that moment, which also makes me a little bit successful when it comes to committee hearings as well. Yeah. And now for our sponsors. It's really interesting, you know, when you say that when you talk about hostile witnesses and I think about all of the you know the hearings that I watch you guys holding in government and just the blatant lying coming from the folks at the top and it makes me think a lot about the way that in the previous administration you know the our side the left progressive folks you know, folks who just want billionaires to pay as much in taxes as the rest of us

would be accused of things that were simply untrue. And now we know that there are things happening because they printed them in a 925-page manual and they're talking about it on camera, you know, in back rooms. And then when they come and have to testify, they say, oh, no, that's not true. Why do you think there's such a double standard for the requirement? of truth-telling and decorum? I think that when it comes to the left, we're just a lot more forgiving.

And so, you know, and as well as, as people, you know, like to talk about the left being elitist, and I don't believe, I don't buy into the fact they were elitist. I just know that, you know, they are able to get away with a lot of things because they take advantage of,

what people don't know, right? So, for instance, the people that are out there and are screaming for, yes, no due process for people that aren't citizens, like, that's constitutional. Like, what are you saying? Like, I mean, what are we doing? Right? Barfright citizenship. It's like, yes, take away birthright citizenship. Like, guys. How do you think you're a citizen, sir? Yeah. Yeah. And so it, so it is this thing, I think, for a lot of times, the left where they'll say, you know what, people will see that this is just idiotic or people will see that like, I mean, think about how we were when Hillary lost. We were indignant.

It was like, there's no way Donald Trump could beat Hillary. It's like, have you seen her resume? Right? Like, it was one of those shocks to the conscience. And so then people argue that we're disconnected and that kind of stuff. But it's like when it comes down to them doing certain things, I think to a certain extent we shrug it off and we imagine and we believe that people are going to see how it is not meeting the measure of what an elected should be. But I think that we at this point in time need to be pointing that out. I don't think we can take it for granted what people know or what people expect because it's been made clear.

that we've been wrong. That's just the bottom line. And I think, you know, even when we think about F-A-F-O, it's like, whatever, like F-A-F-O. And it's like, actually, we're all in this vote together and maybe we need to talk this through so that we don't end up here again. And I think that's why we ended up suffering and ended up with him again is because we felt like liberated when Joe Biden was elected. It was like, yes, finally.

See, we told you he was awful. right like it was like great now we can move on with life and we had this attitude of well people will just know that like that's not what to do instead of us actually digging in and working and making sure that we're constantly staying in this fight and in this thing so a little bit of it is a little bit of an attitude of clearly people see what we see right the other part of it though It's just that we're not bullies. It is why you don't see us going after any specific group of people. It is why I would put money on it that you will not find a group chat of young Democrats going off and calling black folk, everything but a child of God, going off and talking about Hitler, going off and talking about raping people.

you are hard-pressed. Like, I would be shocked. But when the young Republican chat was leaked, the fact that it was leaked, sound about right, number one. Number two, the fact that they ultimately said that this happened, it didn't surprise me.

It didn't surprise me at all. And the fact that the vice president decided not to denounce it did not surprise me at all either. And I don't think the president, at least at the time, of this recording has said a thing about it. And imagine if that was the Democrats. Yeah. They would be gone. They would be out. Oh, they would be impeached. Hearings. It would be bad.

It would be all kinds of things, right? And it would be attributed to the entire party. And here's the deal. I will and I am going to attribute what those young Republicans did to the entire party because they have facilitated an environment of hate and white supremacy. And they consistently fail to denounce it because that is a large part of their base. Like, they actually would probably have a lot more black Republicans if the Republican Party wasn't racist because so many black folk are so entrenched with church. Like, it is synonymous with who they are and the very kind of conservative beliefs that black folk tend to have when it comes to church.

But the one thing you can't change is your color. You can't change how you were born. So there's no way that, you know, most black people, they recognize that when they wake up that they are black are like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to go hang out with the racist. I'm, I'm going to go hang out with the people that I know are just going to use my vote to continue to push forward with the white supremacy agenda. Right. It is the one thing that in committee they never, ever want to address. It is why you have the president back then saying, proud boy, stand back and stand by. It is why we had to deal with the president saying there's good people on both sides when it came to Charlottesville.

It is why we barely could hear anything as relates to the black folk that were killed in Buffalo, New York out of him or the black people. We never hear from him when there is this travesty that is being perpetrated on people of color or on the LGBTQIA community because we know we've had the nightclubs, whether it was. Vegas shooting or whether we're talking about down in Florida with polls. Like we've had all these situations and the only time it seemed like the president really had anything to say was when it came down to Charlie Kirk. Don't seem like, I mean, he was, he'd been on mute for almost any and every other thing. And that's not what a president of the United States should be doing. He has not been a uniter whatsoever. He's been nothing more than a divider.

No, they're incredible dividers. And I think what was so frustrating to me, you know, when you talk about the communities he attacks, he immediately attacked the LGBTQ community after Charlie Kirk's murder. And the black community. And then, and the black community, you're right. Because they went to the HBCUs the very next day. Yeah. Death threats at all the HBCUs. And then we find out the kid grew up in a very MAGA family and everything went quiet. There's been no autopsy. There's been no reporting. There's been no ballistics confirmed. There's been know nothing, but they did use his death as a white power rally. And Stephen Miller literally stood up there quoting Joseph Goebbels while Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have the nerve to say, well, if the left wasn't calling everyone a Nazi, if you don't want to be called a Nazi, stop quoting Nazis. Stop quoting them. Stop literally quoting Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler and stop disappearing people into concentration camps. You can't tell us. It's like someone saying to you, you're not allowed to say the sky is blue, but it is. And meanwhile, this is happening at a time where the Orwellian, don't trust your eyes, don't trust your ears, what we're doing right in front of your face, we're not really doing, we see this power grab.

You know, they see how their numbers are plummeting. But what's really alarming to me now is watching. They're attempting to gut the Voting Rights Act. Well, what's left of it. They've already got it a lot of it. And the fact that they are trying to redistrict so many states, including your own, to establish a permanent Republican victory in our country, regardless of the will of the voters, including, my friend, in your district.

These maps that they're proposing literally would erase your seat. The seat you won, the seat you were elected to serve in by the district. the people in Texas, what the hell are we going to do? You know, you're in the halls. So, yes, we can write the letters and yes, we can call the reps, and yes, we can show up on No Kings Day, and yes, we can do these things. But what else do you believe is the most decisive action

the citizenry can take to push back against the literal theft of democracy? Because if we can't vote for our leaders, then we don't have anything. Then we do have kings. So, like, what don't we know that you know? Because I'm clearly very anxious and I know my listeners are too. Listen, I don't know much. I'm going to tell you that.

But I will tell you that they want you to feel helpless and hopeless. And that's the last thing that I want anyone to feel. That is when they win. We have to recognize that it is our power that makes them fearful. that is exactly why they are doing everything that they can to rig the system. But like this does present an opportunity to build back better, to build something that actually does with this country espouses to do, which is to be the land of free and land of opportunity and land of immigrants for all, right?

Like that is what, like we have the ability to do that. We have the ability to be a true democracy where everyone's voice is counted, right? We have the ability to do that once they break everything. we can fix it and make it better. Now, is it going to come back together better as quickly as it took to break it? No. So we will need people to do something that they normally are not good at. Be patient, right?

But like, give us a chance and know that at a very minimum, we are not trying to tear anything down, but we are trying to build it up. We are trying to fortify it so that we don't end up with another autocrat that decides that they are going to exploit every loophole that relies on the American people being able to, choose a leader that really believes in who we are. Instead, we have a crooked crook that is acting as if he is a gangster and a thug, right, who is robbing us blind in broad daylight, taking our

dollars and sending them to everything that doesn't help us, whether it is, you know, making Argentina great again by taking our dollars in sending it there while we are experiencing record bankruptcy filings by our farmers and basically saying, oh, we will boost the profitability of the farmers in Argentina while there's been zero out of almost $13 billion from soybeans specifically that had historically come from China as a purchase. of our soybeans, right? They're missing those dollars. And I know we're talking about the soybean farmers a lot because the whole

Argentina thing, but all of our farmers are struggling. And what people don't understand is that I used to serve on the ad committee and we used to say things like that it's a matter of national security. And it is. You know, I've had an opportunity to travel around the world as a member of Congress. And we've talked about how it looks when, say, you've got to rely on somebody else to feed your people. That ain't something that you want.

We need our farmers to survive for a bunch of different reasons, but one of them is literally a matter of national security. We cannot allow ourselves to be dependent upon other people to feed us. Because when you end up, say, in some TIF, they can just decide we're not going to sell to you anymore. We will go and diversify and sell somewhere else and starve us And yes, this has happened. There is a story.

I sat down and spoke with in a mirror. And, you know, the United States actually helped them out. It's a whole thing. But people don't typically think of food in that way, but we really need to. So while people may be upset with farmers because for the most part, we can say the average farmer voted for Trump. So you can be upset. But what I tell people all the time is that I need you to survive. That needs to be the refrain that we hear in our voices.

Every time we're looking at somebody and believing that they're the opposite of who we are, we need each other to survive. I mean, I need the farmer farming because no matter where you live, we all got to eat, right? So I say all that to say that if we don't start to pull together, whether it is over, you know, the farming issues or even just kind of, the capitulation that we've seen around the tariffs and the Republicans, right? They know that their policies are not policies that serve the masses. That is why they want to distract and divide. So long as they can keep us divided, then we can't pay attention to all of the corruption and robbing that is taking place. And so it is important that we say, listen, we may not agree on 90% of the things that we have to talk about. But the 10% those are foundational

things. We all need to eat and hopefully let it be healthy now that we have this crazy HHS secretary. We all need to have jobs and gainful employment as our jobs numbers are tanking. We all need an overall strong economy, one where costs are not going through the roof. which we're experiencing that because of the tariffs. These are like foundational things. Housing, food, education, jobs. Like, this is foundational stuff. And I don't really care where you fall on the political spectrum.

Like, that is the foundation. That is that 10%. We can disagree about LGBTIA. Hell, I will let you disagree on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Like, I will let you, whatever, right? But, like, right now, we don't have our foundation. things together. As people are saying that their health care bill is going from $200 a month to $600 or $800 or whatever it is that is going to, we're now fighting for a bare minimum by saying, hey, at least if they are receiving their health care on the marketplace, you know, we don't want the tax subsidies to expire as they are supposed to expire in December. No. They don't care. So a double whammy and I say double whammy because the price have already gone up and now you're saying take away the subsidies. But it's even more than that because we know that the job list numbers are going up as well. We also know that costs are going up. We know that wages are not. Like it's not even just a double whammy. It's like quadruple. I don't know. It's not sustainable. And it's certainly not sustainable in a country where the average American is one unexpected $400 bill away from basically.

bankruptcy. Yeah. And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy, and I think you will too. You know, it's interesting for me watching a lot of people, because I talk a lot about the fact that billionaires just aren't paying their fair share. And if they did the country be in a different place, I get a lot of, and I'm sure you do too, oh, you must just be jealous that you're not a billionaire. I'm like, bro, we are all so much closer, God forbid, to being houseless tomorrow than to ever in our lifetime or the next five lifetimes being a billionaire. Like, and it really makes me think about what you were saying. The core of what we're supposed to be has to be agreed upon. But I think what the Republicans are very good at doing is making us argue about

disagreements about things like you mentioned, whether it's LGBTQ rights, whether it's DEI, whether it's, I don't know, the fact that women are people and we should have autonomy over our bodies. Crazy idea, I know. You know, all of these things. And it's not lost on me that the party that fought so hard to pass a bill to harm Americans to help people who don't need it. Like, you know, the 218 or however many there are billionaires in this country don't need another jet. But all Americans need to be able to put food on the table. It's not lost on me. that they forced that vote through and told people they couldn't leave D.C. And now they've shut the government down and won't reopen it because, A, they don't want y'all to advocate for people's subsidies.

And B, they know if they swear in that new lady from Arizona that you're going to vote on the Epstein files. Like, they are shutting down the government to protect pedophiles and to protect the alleged kingpin of all the pedophiles who was, as evidenced and in his own words said the best friend of our current president like are are we going to get justice there? Do we just keep our feet on the gas pedal? Because I know that that is actually something

as people are beginning to really recognize the pattern of what's going on and they know that Mike Johnson's lying about why he won't bring people back like people of all walks of life and of all voting identities are saying we deserve to know how the people in power in our country

were connected to that man. You know, we want to know about the money. We want to know about the transfers. We want to know what happened. What do you think happens if and when those files come out? So you're right. They don't want to swear in Repi Black, Grahava. And I think that this is a really good lesson

and how far they will go to obstruct. And so how can you trust these people to govern when it seems like the only thing that it seems like they're good at is obstruction. right obstructionism got us the supreme court that we have and unfortunately that is the supreme court that is now hearing things such as what you were talking about earlier you know i don't think that they believe that they can even win even as they're trying to steal seats i think that they are nervous that they are still going to lose which has been my philosophy anyway because we can talk

about the masses that have been detrimentally impacted it's the very slim one percent that has been positively impacted by this administration. And so we know that the last time that Trump was in, it was a historic midterm as relates to the number of Republicans that were booted. It was maybe like 45 or something like that, Republican seats that were lost. And so that's why he started with this scheme. But he wasn't expecting for California to push back.

And so you have the Supreme Court now hearing, re-hearing a case as it relates to the Voting Rights Act and Section 2, and whether or not those seats, which I have a Section 2 seat, will be upheld in those of the seats that basically further codify what is laid out in the Constitution as it relates to the 14th and 15th Amendment. But right now we have white people saying that they are the ones that are being discriminated against by allowing black people to have representation. And the map that they have drawn in the state of Texas, unfortunately, reduces the voices of black Texans to one-fifth of their white Texan counterparts, as well as

our Latino brothers and sisters, their voices are reduced to one-third. So don't tell me that this is about equity because, frankly, if we can roll up and just kind of be equal on any given day, then great. Like, I'm good. Like, you can change section two. And you can do, yeah, but the problem is, y'all don't know what equity is. That is why you're currently in court and now trying to pretend as if you are the victims. So you've got all of this that is going on because they know that their bills are not popular. They also know that they are losing some of their Republicans. So besides the Epstein situation, once they swear Grohava in, I told you that the big ugly

bill only passed by one vote anyway. Well, now we have at least two new members that have been sworn in, two of the three that we were missing. So we're still down by one, but literally, just. just having one of them could have changed this trajectory. We've now seen Marjorie Taylor Green come out and sound like she's normal. We just going to pause there. But nevertheless, so we've seen Marjorie come out.

We've seen her taking this stance that is like what we've been saying, right, and going against her party. But also she is on that discharge petition that is being co-led by Rocana and Thomas Massey, Thomas Massey, also another Republican. So there's four Republicans on there, which is absolutely ridiculous for them to be in the majority and for them to be all about law and order, allegedly, and them not be, you know, running to sign on to this discharge petition because the refuser, the speaker refuses, he is a refuser, he refuses to bring this to the floor for a vote. He could just do the bill. We didn't have to do this, but this is the hard way. And this is such, like, I want people to understand how big and bad of a situation this is. We have discharged petitions and basically think of it as a ballot initiative. Not every state has them.

Unfortunately, we don't have them in Texas. Otherwise, a lot of things would be different. But it's like a ballot initiative, right? So your elected representatives are not doing what you think they should be doing. The people can come together collectively petition their government and change the all, okay? That is kind of like what a discharge petition is. The speaker is the only one that can put a bill on the floor. And if the speaker refuses to put a bill on the floor that the body collectively believe should be on the floor, which is represented by the 218 signatures,

then that's how we force it to the floor. We do it most of the time in a very symbolic way. This is like going to be the first time and I don't know when, like years and years and years. that a discharge petition actually is successful to basically override the speaker because most of the time people get in line behind the party leader and they're just like, you know, whatever. But it's not happening. So I believe that the speaker as well as the president are most likely working overtime to try to get some of the Republicans to come off.

But Marjorie ain't going nowhere, nor is Thomas Massey. So we'll see about the other two and whether or not they waver, okay? Wow. Once she is sworn in and we vote on this, this is going to be bigger than the subpoenas that have been put out by the oversight committee. It was a subcommittee that came together and outsmarted them and they were able to get a subpoena ordered out of committee when the speaker tried to kick us out of D.C. early to avoid a vote on the Epstein files. He didn't want any in this committee was already set up. and so they were able to do it so it was brilliant it worked kind of so then we get some documents but it's really nothing new right and basically at this point in time if you saw cash patel

testify he's decided what he legally can let out and what he can't and you know instead of going to a court and saying hey i have this lawful subpoena from the congress i don't believe that these items can be disclosed we need the opinion of the court he has not done that he is making his own opinions. And what we received was representative of somewhere between one and three percent of the entirety of the file. That is it. That is it. He is acting like the rest of it cannot come out. And that's just not true. And some of the things that we talked to the survivors with about is that they had made calls to the FBI. They had made reports. And obviously with people that experience trauma as they're going through and it's interesting because at least one of them

is actually like a trauma counselor at this point. You know, there's different mechanisms that people engage in to kind of like the human brain is going to protect you in different ways. It looks different for every different person. And so some of them really want to see like in that moment like what I reported like I want to see like and I want to see what they did after I made that report. I want to see who got involved, who followed up, who did what. They won't even allow them to see their own files. Their lawyers were like, can you just ask them to allow them to see their own files, to see what they were the victims that made reports. And they want to know what work if any was done. Like, they should have a right. And they don't even want to do that.

So I will tell you that I fully anticipate there are photos, obviously lewd photos. As we heard, you know, one of his cabinet members talking the other day about being his next door neighbor and talking about the videos that, you know, he anticipated existed to blackmail people. I anticipate there is some video footage. We know in our conversations or our inquiry with Alex Acosta about what took place in Florida in 2008, we know. know in talking to him that there definitely, like there's memos and conversations about video footage even back then. So we've not received any videotapes, anything like that. Can I ask you about that? Because there's a big GOP talking point that they don't want the files to come out because they would never publish material of sexual abuse. That is not what you're

talking about. You're talking about committee, like the people who are legally supposed to have oversight over this material, reviewing it. So what I would anticipate is we would go in to whomever is holding whatever and we would review there. And then what I would anticipate is the majority and minority would come together and report out what we saw. And or if the Republicans don't want to talk about it, you know, we would potentially do a minority report that lays out for the public exactly kind of what was depicted because we wouldn't want names and faces anyway, right? Like to be out there if they're not.

So, no, it would be about us safeguarding and even, you know, making sure, again, many of these women were girls when they went through this and there may have been video footage of them that they've never seen that may have been recorded without them knowing and so at least supporting them also an opportunity to go and sit

and see what all is in the file and that kind of stuff. Right. And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. Well, and I think that's a really important thing for the public to understand.

that all of you serve in a similar way to, you know, the things we've seen in film and television. You know, you become the Olivia Benson of SVU in a way. You review the materials and then you can testify on what's in them. But what's in them does not get released to further traumatize a victim or do harm. The report on what is in that material is entered into the record so the perpetrators can accurately be charged. And that's what we're calling for. And I just think it's a really important piece of information to give to people who are seeing a lot of, you know, clickbait, rage bait stuff on the internet that isn't actually true. Now, I'm curious, as we see them trying to hold on to power with dirty

tactics like staving off this vote, like trying to redistrict states like yours, you know, we see this power play happening in my home state in California. You know, I, appreciate that Gavin Newsom is really coming at it and saying, okay, you do this in Texas, we'll do this in California. Like, we're going to fight fire with fire. No more insane behavior on one side and decorum on the other. How do you feel about Prop 50? Do you support this initiative? Do you believe that this is a good way to fight back? Give us the inside baseball. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Prop 50. I raise money for Prop 50. I was just in California last week, both in the Bay Area and L.A., making sure that I could raise awareness and hopefully answer questions about Prop 50, especially as it kind of correlates to Texas.

And I want people to, you know, I know we're using the same word, so we're saying fire with fire. And it is a fight, but I will tell you that even in the way that California is fighting, there is so much more integrity in what they're doing. it is not the same. It is not insidious. It is in response, but it is not the same. We don't have an out-of-control legislature and governor that just rely, oh, here, this is what it is. Instead, they are taking a grassroots approach. They are giving it to the people. The people ultimately get to decide. And as they went through and they drew their lines, they actually honored the Voting Rights Act. They did not do things to minimize the voices of people of color. Whereas when we look at the map in Texas, the state of Texas is 61% people of color and 39% Anglo. But under this current map, over 70% closer to 80% of the seats out of Texas will be chosen by Anglos. They are given an oversight. voice in our government. And it is antithetical to our principles of equity. But we knew that this was

coming because they've been attacking diversity, equity, civil rights, right? And for people that don't understand, they are about to understand, like, how bad it is, like, those that have uniquely abled children. They are affected by civil rights issues, right? So this isn't just about black folk. It's not just about, you know, the LGBTQI community. It is bigger than that. And so by allowing them to attack certain groups and being silent, you know, it's like the saying goes. You know, they came for this group and I was silent and they came for the, you know what I mean? Like, ultimately, there's not even going to be anybody to speak for you, right? Like, you'll be all by yourself. So it is important, again, for us to focus on that 10% that grounds us, that unites us.

And even if 90% of everything else, we disagree on, those are small things compared to our foundational issues. And we are losing our foundation right now. And, I mean, you know, I will accept some of the blame, not that I was in office at the time, but Democrats should have been fighting harder. they should have been fighting harder earlier it seems like there was just too much goodwill that was given or expected of the other side and again us being goodwilled people expected that of the opposition and and the problem is they played us and we had the clues to see that they were playing us and they still did not adjust and fight back. We know that most people were introduced to me when I broke quorum

as a state representative down in Texas. And we were fighting for voting rights then. And we were ringing the alarms. And this is right before we went through redistricting. And we were trying to tell them. And we came to D.C. and they passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And they passed the Freedom to Vote Act. Freedom to vote would admit that you could not have an Elon Musk buy an election. Yes. It passed the House. We know that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act actually would replace the Voting Rights Act because they had started to tear it apart.

It would replace it and fortify it and it passed the House. But the Senate refused to go around the filibuster for something as foundational as our voting rights. And because we did not decide that it was that important. We now are stuck in this position because we could have a situation where the Supreme Court would have to bend over backwards to undo law that was written in and signed. We could be in that position, but we're not, right? We could have a situation where Elon could not have spent the amount of money that he spent in that election. We could have had a situation where every state was required to have online voter registration so that access to, your ballot looks similar, if not, actually it would have equalized it and been the same.

Because in the state of Texas, we don't have online voter registration. We don't have same-day voter registration. We don't have no excuse vote by mail. These are things that California has. So California is able to stay blue because they promote participation. But Republicans, for the longest, have been pushing voter suppression because that is the only way that they can win is if they minimize who it is that is able. to participate. But when we look at the state of Georgia, Georgia ended up with two Democratic senators once they increased their voter participation to something like 80-something percent.

Thanks to Stacey Abrams. Thanks to Stacey Abrams. Texas in 2018 had an opportunity to flip a Senate seat. Beto O'Rourke should have won. Beto lost by less than three points. But what most people don't talk about is that we only had 17% voter turnout. 17% and he only lost by a little less than three points. Imagine if we had gotten to 20 or 25%. I am telling you we could have won. We would win. I am telling y'all that we are a majority minority state and all they do is silence us and take our power. And that is exactly what we are experiencing now throughout this entire country, is that they want to have minority rule. We have minority rule in Texas. Not, I can guarantee you, if we had 85% voter participation, Texas would not be a red voting state.

We would be blue. I agree with you. And then you might not be dealing with the kinds of, you know, disasters with everything down to your power grid that you're dealing with now because you have people more interested in owning the libs than they do in serving their constituency. Now, I know I'm, I've kept you over, so I'm going to, I'm going to skip to the end. I always like to ask everybody this wonderful final question. I want to ask you 10,000 more questions, but like, you know, you have elected official business to do. I've never told someone what I want my work in progress to be before I hear theirs, but I'm like, I just, this isn't even about me. This is just me hoping, like work in progress on the pinboard of America

in Sophia's brain is please tell me at some point I'm going to get to vote for Jasmine Crockett for president what is your work in progress because that's mine I'm ready I'm like I'm tribute number one on the campaign but I want to know for you whether it's you know service oriented

oriented for the people or like even just something personal like sometimes I want to be like girl have you had a have you been able to go for a walk Do we need to get you a gift card for a massage? Like, you need a minute. So it can really, across the spectrum of personal to professional, what feels like your work in progress?

My work in progress is getting this country back on track so that I can get out of politics. I mean, I, you know, I promise you. I ask myself over and over and over. And then I get to go home. And I see the faces of the people that I represent. or even as I travel the country and the pure excitement and enthusiasm and hope that exists even in the eyes of some of the youngest folk that can't even vote yet.

The inspiration that makes people say, I saw you and learned that you're a lawyer and I decided I'm going back to school or I decided now that I want to be a lawyer. Like those are the things that keep me going, but I never woke up any day of my life saying, you know what? I want to grow up and be a politician. That is not what I did. And it is not where I stand today. But I truly believe that I am necessary in this moment. I don't want to be necessary. I just want to go out and do fun stuff. And yes, I'm a dork. So doing fun stuff means like, you know, practice in law, right? Like, I actually liked going into the courtroom and I'm pretty sure people probably read

that all on me when I'm in committee, but I would like a more low-key life, one where my friends and family get to see me more often, one where I get to take more trips because I always with someone, and I actually travel a lot. I mean, I travel a lot now, but it is not for pleasure. That's for work. It is all for work. And so, you know, I would like a more low-key existence. I really am a girl's girl.

You know this. You know, I love my friends. And I feel like I'm always cheating my friends because I put people that, honestly, a lot of them I've never met before seemingly ahead of them. but the great thing about my real friends is that they have drunk the Kool-Aid as well and they all believe in this mission that is on my life and so I get great support but it still doesn't stop me from being very human and feeling like I'm just not doing enough for the people that love me the most so yeah I would love to get out it seems like it's not going that way, but that would that would be my hope if I woke up tomorrow

and everything was right side up in this country, not perfect, but normal, I would probably resign. I probably would. I believe that this is a great honor and I've learned so much, but I also believe that I should make space for others to come behind me and for them to learn and experience as well. And so, yeah, I'm not tied to the title. I am tied to the mission. And it is my hope that the mission is complete soon enough and that, you know, God doesn't tell me, well, you're going to have to go to another level to get more done. I can't say yay or nay whether or not there will be another level, but I can't guarantee you that if for some reason Trump wakes up tomorrow and he hit his head and he fires everyone around him who has been engaged in all of the fraudulent and illegal activities that they are doing and he somehow wakes up, finds Jesus and decides that he wants to try to get into the pearly gates that he said he knows he is not. going to get into, at least he knows he's the devil. You know, listen, if he woke up tomorrow

and just turned a new leaf and became the president that we deserve, I would be out. I would be thankful and I would be out. I think when you are a really dedicated public servant, you can put your own life on the back burner. But the people that you miss and that miss you also know you're doing it for them too. And so no matter how hard it gets before it gets better, you give so many of us hope. And you fight with such love at the core of your spirit. And then, you know, you've got all the legalese to back it up. And I'm just constantly like this watching you on the TV. So thank you. I'm going to let you get back to the floor and all the things that you're doing. I love and adore you. I'm so proud to be in the same timeline as you, even if our timeline

sucks right now. And next time you come to New York, I'm taking you out. Okay. It's good to see you, my friend. You too. Thank you for your time today. All right. Bye. This is an IHeart podcast.