Factually! with Adam Conover - How to Save Our State Governments with Daniel Squadron

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Our federal government is clearly, visibly fucked on too many levels to count. Even scarier? Our state legislatures have immense power and far fewer eyes on them, making them even easier to sway. But this also means they’re attainable targets for us, the people, to organize and take back. This week, Adam speaks with former New York senator Daniel Squadron, author of The Fourth Branch: How State Government Can Save Our Union, about how a focus on our states might just be what we need to save democracy. Find Daniel’s book at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you. So much for joining me on the show again. Hey, why is America so fucked up? Well, you know, partially it's because of our fucked up federal government and our fucked up national democracy.

But, you know, there's a whole other level of fuck up in this. You're probably not even thinking about our state governments. And I'm not even talking about the governor. I'm talking about your state legislature. You know, a lot of you probably know you have a state legislature. in the abstract, but, you know, do you really know your state legislature? I sure don't. I mean, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to name who my state assembly member in

L.A. is, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I would, my brains would be splattered on the pavement. And I am more engaged in politics than most people I know. So that's my deal. How about you? But despite the fact that so many of us know so little about them and what goes on in them, state legislatures are incredibly important. In fact, they are more important than the federal government on so many issues that you probably care about.

From gun control to abortion to the social safety net to maintaining some semblance of a democracy. State legislatures have immense power and more change has been made there than on the federal level in recent decades. And here's the worst part. Because so few of us pay attention to our state legislatures and who can blame us, they're very boring. it is incredibly easy for right-wing interests, big money interests, or just the sclerotic Democratic Party establishment, to take control of those state houses and either make bad changes happen in our way of government or stop good changes from happening. State governments cost far less in terms of time and money to control than the Congress or the Senate in Washington, D.C. but that also means that there is an opportunity for us, the people, because that means it takes less organizing power and less fundraising

for those of us who want to make a good change to flip our state houses. If you ever feel depressed or disengaged from national politics, state politics is an area where a little bit of work and a little bit of money can go a long way and give you a far larger return on your time and investment. Well, this week on the show to talk about this, to talk about state government power and how we the people can win it back to save our democracy and our country. We have a fantastic guest. His name is Daniel Squadron. He is a former New York State Senator himself. But more importantly, he is the co-founder of the States Project, an incredibly impressive progressive advocacy group that is focused on winning state power. And he's the author of the smart new book, The Fourth Branch, How State Government Can Save Our Union.

Now, before we get into this interview, I want to remind you if you want to support episodes like this that we bring you every single week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover five bucks a month. Gets you every episode of this show ad free. We'd love to have you. And now, let's get to this week's interview with Daniel Squadron. Daniel, it is a thrill to have you on the show. Thanks. Great to be here. We were joking a little bit before we started about how gripping and hilarious the topic of state government is.

and yet you have decided to devote your time and your career to it. Why is that? What makes state legislatures so important that people don't normally appreciate? Well, you know, it's really the glamour and the riches, the gratitude that people give you when you spend your life working in state legislatures. It's none of those things, but I do when I speak to state lawmakers, start that way and say, you know, who's getting a lot of any of these things? and they, you know, not a single person who is their hand.

I was in the New York State Senate for nearly a decade. I resigned to co-found something called the States Project with Adam Pritzker about a decade ago. And the reason I've stayed there is not because it was my aspiration. I don't think any little boy or girl grows up and despires to spend their life in state legislatures. But it's because it really is where the power is in this country in a way most people ignore. And even more importantly, it's the place. where any dollar or minute you have to work on our democracy, you're going to have a much bigger impact than anywhere else. You know, if you think of any domestic policy issue people

care about, any issue within our country, states have done more harm or good in the last 15 years than the federal government has. Wow. So when you say you will get more return on your time, are you talking about the legislator? Are you talking about the citizen? Are you talking about, you know, someone who's trying to influence them or all three? Yes. It truly is all three. As a public servant, you know, and I speak to good friends who are now in other offices, and they say that they had never got more done than they did their years in the state legislature. You got about a citizen, you know, I think people are trained to, especially in this moment, feel helpless and hopeless, feel like the doom scrolling or the headlines that

they see are something they're an observer to, that they're an observer to the destruction of their democracy. But in states, even small numbers of people getting together to try to have an impact, regular people, can often make the difference because the cost is much, much lower than the federal government. And often races come down to literally a couple of votes. In fact, I've got a couple of examples in the book of races that were actual ties, a single additional voter would have changed it. And if you care about an issue and you want to advocate for it, That's where you go to have the biggest impact. This is the thing the right wing figured out about 50 years ago.

And they've been there in state legislatures having that impact while the rest of the country has been looking elsewhere for nearly a century. Well, so I feel there's two sides of this story. There is the outsized power of state legislatures, as you say. And then there's the fact that when you actually interact with state governments, apart from the governor's office itself, it often feels very like rinky dink and small, you know? even here in California when I've interacted with the state government. Let's talk first about some of those powers and some of the large impact state governments have had. So we get the, let's get the big stuff out of the way first. Let's do the fireworks.

Sure. Well, first I would say, look, I think that aesthetically it is often like veep in your cousin's basement on public access. So, you know, it's, you know, it makes Veep look glamorous. and high-minded often. But the big stuff is really big. So, you know, a lot of people care about energy and climate change. You know, this federal government has entered the Paris Climate Agreement, left it, entered it, left it, sort of wherever the president is, they chase each other around the mulberry bush. Meanwhile, states adding up to the second largest economy on Earth have set climate standards greater than the Paris Accords would. Texas, the state that is politically a lot

more conservative, creates more clean energy at a lower cost than any other state in the country. Wages, people care how much they get paid, the idea that a full-time job to be able to support you and your family. You know, the left on the federal government increased the minimum wage. I don't have an iPhone. I have an Android. But the iPhone came out. That's how long it's been. It's seven and a quarter to the federal minimum wage. But states have. have insured literal billions, tens of billions of dollars of income by increasing the wage to $15 or more around the country. There's more than 15 years since Obama Care passed, the Affordable Care Act, but its most

important provision expanding Medicaid up farther into the middle class is still not a reality for nearly 100 million Americans who live in states that haven't done it. And I can go on for an hour and a half or more. I wrote a whole book doing it, but with some stories. I just leave it to the last one. Some people care about the existence of our democracy. Are you one of those people? Yes, I would say that's an issue that concerns me.

Okay, and you're pro or anti? You know, TBD, I'm still weighing, still weighing my options. Generally pro, generally pro. Great. Well, either way, frankly, states are ready to look. Donald Trump figured that out in 2020. I think he's got a position on that too, but I'll let you and your listeners decide what it is. It depends on how it goes for, and that's what'll determine it.

Right. Well before January 6th, Donald Trump invited the leaders of both chambers of the Michigan legislature to the Oval Office, like to the day before Thanksgiving, and asked them to refuse to certify the election in Michigan because their state lawmakers, they had enormous power over the Michigan Board of Canvishes. One of them agreed to do it. If the other one had, the election dominoes would have started to fall. And that election's rightful outcome would have been called into question,

well before January 6th. A year ago, Trump got on the phone personally to a bunch of state lawmakers. You can imagine how that call went. By the way, this is a thing Democratic president has never done. I've asked speakers and Senate president from the country, how does the president call you? Democratic president? Zero times. But Donald Trump called a bunch of Texas state lawmakers and said, you have to change the congressional maps. I'm really unpopular. I'm getting more unpopular. And you need to help me win new congressional seats by redrawing the maps because state lawmakers are the people who draw congressional maps in our Constitution. They then followed along Texas in other states, Missouri, Alabama, and elsewhere. And of course, California tried to match that and recreate fairness.

Just two weeks ago, Donald Trump was on the phone with South Carolina state senators asking them to change their maps. They refused. But just imagine that phone call. On conference call in your caucus meeting, the meeting of your party in the state legislature, you type in the president onto speaker phone and you tell him, no, I'm not willing to do what you're asking. The reason he's so focused is he knows state legislatures are what's either going to preserve competitive elections or fundamentally undermine them. And the Supreme Court decision about gutting, you know, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, this is specifically allowing state legislatures even more power over drawing their districts, right? It's like removing the

federal role even more. Exactly right. It's it just supercharges the ability to draw very partisan districts without any regard to or sometimes specific goals to different communities of interest and whether they have a representation and a voice, both in their state legislature and in Congress. The Supreme Court has been supercharging the power of state lawmakers a lot. Some people heard of the Dobbs decision. It was a constitutional right to reproductive health care abortion. for about 50 years. That right wasn't replaced with a ban. It certainly wasn't replaced with federal congressional action on this matter. It was replaced with states being given the power to decide if that right existed or not. Supreme Court also did away with federal clean water

regulations. So now the water that comes out of your tap is much more heavily regulated by states. Roads, a lot of people spend a lot of time commuting listening to factually so they don't even mind the length of their commute. But the people who listen to other shows want a quicker commute and the quality of roads and bridges, transit, these are states. Yeah, that's part of why we try to make the show better and better all the time to improve our nation's infrastructure. And longer as the infrastructure collapses, right? Yes, people demand a longer show, the more they're stuck in traffic and the more they're waiting for a bridge to be rebuilt. And I have to say, you mentioned the $15 an hour minimum wage, which has been a very successful campaign by the labor

movement writ large to increase the minimum wage. I'm just noticing even apart from everything the Supreme Court has done, right, there was a strategic decision made by the various unions and other workers' rights groups that are trying to, you know, we're trying to push fight for 15. They went state by state, right? They didn't go to the federal government at all, really, and try to say, hey, let's raise the minimum wage, as far as I know. And that really strikes me as being out of step with, you know, the 20th century American history I grew up with, right, which is largely about

the federal government ensuring such and such a right over the resistance of the states. You know, the civil rights movement, for example, was aimed directly at the federal government. I'm sure they lobbied state governments as well. But it was, you know, the march on Washington to go, hey, Washington, you got to do something about these states. And so is this sort of a pendulum swinging back? Like, have states gained more power over the past, like, many decades? Yeah. So it's a really great point.

And I go into this in the book because, you know, it really is a story of power and how it's really working in this country. For much of the 20th century, as you point out, really going back to the compromise that allowed the Constitution to be. gratified that was the unacceptable compromise that also allowed slavery to continue in the first four score and seven years or so of the country's history. It became sort of synonymous with states' rights to have the idea of allowing racist laws or post the New Deal. So on the part of the 20th century you were talking about, it became sort of synonymous with state's rights to be against

the capacity of government to do good things. Ronald Reagan, you know, famously was for states' rights, talking about this in the book. He announced his presidential election in Neshoba County, Mississippi, the same place where only 16 years earlier, three young civil rights workers had been killed during the Freedom Summer of 1964. He had state lawmakers in the White House every year and said, you know, this is all about destroying federal government programs. But if you go back even a little farther, There's actually nothing about state power, what I call the fourth branch of a constitutional system, that is fundamentally about racist laws or degrading the power of government. In fact, the framers, Madison, who would have been a great Albany lobbyist, who was a quirky fellow

and really had a lot of the same qualities as Albany lobbyists I dealt with, I discovered in writing the book, made the point that states were a way to make sure there wasn't centralized autocratic power, that we could maintain our Republican small our system of government. And as we look at what's happened in the era of Donald Trump and as we look at sort of the way decentralized power can be really beneficial to everyday people now, we can really think of states as a source of power. So, you know, this country doesn't nationally have paid family leave. I talked about the fact that, you know, sort of among my cohort, kind of like, you know, like overeducated, you know, folks raising young families. You know, paid family leave. Wow, Norway's so great. You know, the truth is today more than 100 million Americans do have paid family leave because states have done it. It's actually a great, a great revolution that's happened in this country over really just the last 15 years or so, even less, 10 years. And so, you know,

we can use states for whatever goal. They're a neutral part of our constitutional system that we've just left to a part of our political system that I think gets the American promise wrong and some pretty fundamental ways. Yeah. I mean, you could look at states, the power that states have as being a bulwark against, you know, the rise of federal fascism in America. You know, when people say, oh, Trump is going to cancel the election, the first thing I say to them as well. He'd have to actually cancel 50 elections, which are run by 50 different states

separately. And then, of course, you have the question of can he lean on two or three of those states and how much of an effect he can have. But still, the fact remains, we don't have a federally run election system. And there's a lot of other systems that are not federally run as well. And, you know, abortion wasn't federally banned. It was, you know, kicked back to the states. And so there is a sort of moderating impulse maybe caused by the states. And yet it is only the right wing in America that has really focused on pushing their priorities through the state system or at least vastly outstripping the left wing or the liberals or even I would probably say moderates. It's a dedicated program on the part of the right as far as I understand. Why is that? Like if, if, you know, you sort of see the states could cut both ways,

why has the right specifically used them so much more with such great success? Well, again, you know, for a large part of this country's history, the extent to which states were allowed to have laws that discriminated on the basis of race, gender, other protected classes was a big fight because a group of states wanted to be able to do that. And after the Civil War, the post-Civil War, constitutional amendments didn't allow it. So that's a specific historic event that's of great importance to the country, but doesn't speak to the power of states. It speaks to which side of the political spectrum was more interested in wielding that power. And again, I would say, you know, not just the New Deal, but also Lyndon Johnson's great society,

things like Medicare and Medicaid, Voting Rights Act, which you talked about, were all developments of federal power. But, you know, I think there's another piece of this as well, which is if you think of politics as about, you know, kind of making yourself feel good or part of something, being part of a national conversation can be a little bit easier. If you think of politics as about delivering results by winning power, you turn to the states more. And I think this is something left of center that has kind of become real mixed up. You know, if we really believe in democracy, and I know you're on the fence, I'm very pro, as it turns out.

If you really do believe in democracy, then winning power where it matters is not selfish or inappropriate, it is practicing that which you believe it. It is being committed to convincing enough people to elect you. And once you start thinking that way, you start saying, well, where am I going to be able to do that? I bet a bunch of your listeners knew about the presidential race in 2024. I bet a bunch of them even made a contribution or went to a rally, maybe even knocking some doors or made a phone call. How many of them thought they were going to change the outcome of that race. Yeah.

But in a state legislative race, they could change the outcome of the race and power in the state. The Virginia state legislature in 2019 was a literal tie, a literal tie, not of districts, of voters, a single voter in another direction. It would have gone differently. The current Speaker of the Alaska State House, Bryce Edgerman, and an independent, was originally elected in a tied race. They pulled his name out of a hat.

I think actually in his case they flipped a coin. And speaker edgment is someone who will certainly correct me if I got it wrong. Hey, how much of your personal data do you think is online? Well, it's scary to hear, but it's probably a lot more than you think. Our entire world is online, even if you think you're not. And that means all kinds of your data, including your email addresses, phone numbers, names of relatives. It all exists out there on the internet just waiting to be grabbed by anyone who is looking to exploit you. And that is why I simply have to recommend delete.

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That's Shopify. com slash factually. Well, first of all, something I've been thinking about a lot is that the measure of how much you really believe in your own political or policy ideals, I think we should start measuring it by how committed you are to getting power for those ideals. And I sort of point that at the left because there's a lot of people who say, hey, you know, I want to vote for the thing I believe in, you know, whether or not it wins, right? And I'm like, well, if you don't care whether or not it wins, how much do you really believe

in the thing, right? Like, shouldn't the measure be putting the thing into power, right? Putting your idea into power, making people's lives better, or taking power for your ideology even, right? So I think that's a great point. And when I look at, you know, who's the person on the left who has done that most successfully in any jurisdiction in the past five years at Zora. I'm Donnie in New York where you are right now, in my opinion.

And I think it's really telling that, you know, this is a guy who specifically came out of the state assembly, right? He was an assemblyman. And then, you know, it became the mayor of a city, right? It's a local and state, it's coming out of there, right? It wasn't, Bernie Sanders didn't do it, right? Didn't take power with his ideas. He promoted them. He ran for a lower local office.

He had the exalted title of state lawmaker and then ran for a local office. Yeah. actually. But so that brings me to sort of another question, which is a lot of my impression, despite the great power of the states and the state houses, is my impression of the state legislatures is that there's sleepy places. There's sort of, you know, the one stoplight town of American government. And I've actually heard people say about Zora Mamdani. One of the reasons he was able to run successfully was because in the state assembly, I don't remember how many years he he was in that role before he ran for mayor, but he sort of didn't have a lot of duties.

You know what I mean? It's like, hey, you take a couple votes here or there. You know, maybe try to get a law or two passed. But like, for a lot of state legislatures, a lot of state legislators, excuse me, a lot of them are just sort of hanging out is my impression, right? And it is also, I have the impression that you can spend not a lot of money there if you're a lobbyist and get an outsized result. So despite the fact that they have so much power, why are they such sort of neglected, you know, sleepy places on the ground? Does that make sense? So, so I first, I was really pleased that May I, from Donnie helped launch my book, the fourth branch at the New York Public Library a couple weeks ago. But to your sort of broader

point, you know, it is, it is really a weird thing that you do have a lot of this type of thing. I have a chapter in the book in which I note more than a half dozen of my former colleagues who are referenced, who subsequently lived in federal prisons. And I don't even mention all of my colleagues in office at that time who are. At one point when I was in office, the entire New York State Senate shut down for 35 days. It was only because of my impending wedding that we were able to break the log jam in a really ridiculous story. So it is true that both they have enormous power and that they're really sleepy backwaters. And I think that you see that coming in large part because people don't realize how important they are. I was originally elected to the stage Senate against a 30-year incumbent and Democratic primary.

you were more likely in New York to be indicted or die in office than to be voted out in a contended election. It is possible because of the way our politics has developed to both be sleepy backwaters that, you know, public access show in the basement and also wildly powerful. But that is a fascinating reality of our country, isn't it? Yeah. That every image you have of the cliche of state legislators is worse than you think, for some of them. And yet, every policy you've looked at Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Barack Obama for

states have done more on legislatively, certainly, than the federal government has. Yeah. It's like, you know, I talk about the fact that, you know, my colleagues would sometimes come up to me. There's a bill I had wanted to pass at one point of small bill on auctions. And they'd say, you know, I'm against your bill. I'd say, why. They'd say, I don't know, but the lobbyist told me. Go talk to them. You know, the horse guys have a problem.

There's literal things said to me at some point. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm involved in California politics a little bit more every year. I've met some state legislators, right? And a lot of people kind of consider some of them chumps. You know what I mean? It's like, ah, here comes the state assembly member. This is not going to be the most impressive. person I'm going to meet today, right?

It's the jobs aren't very well paid. A lot of times it's like, oh, who even wants this job in the first place, right? That's the way we think of them. I guess, so why is that? One question that comes to mind is, I think about here in California, very prominent state legislator is Scott Weiner, past guest on the show, almost nationally famous at this point. He's the kind of guy who Ezra Klein might say his name.

or, you know, someone else like that every once in a while. But I can't think of many other state legislators nationally who have that kind of profile. That's like rare, right? It's, like, that's notable to me because of how rare it is. And you would think if there's many famous governors, right? I think people can name, we just, on this show, we just talked about, you know, the Texas, you know, governor's race for a while. And yet the

prominent state legislator seems to be a much rarer beast despite all of this massive power they have. Why is that? Well, first, the prominent former state lawmaker is very common. Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer,

Hakeem Jeffries. Right. Because they go on to do something bigger and that's part of what's going on. Like if you're a prominent one, yeah. Abraham Lincoln, both Roosevelt's. Exactly.

Got it. So that's one. But the second thing I'd say is like, it's really, it can be very hard to get attention. I talk in the book about having had a standard in my old office for an event. The first standard was have a real impact, get noticed, get mainstream coverage. That was rarely achieved. The second standard, the one that I really had. held the team to when we really tried to do was don't embarrass yourself.

But it's because that's the realistic standard when you're in state legislature. You know, it's a funny thing when like a celebrity comes to the state capital. It's not like two different celebrities meeting each other. It's like a bunch of folks on the street swarming someone who's actually prominent, even though prominent people come to the state. The Dalai Lama visited the New York State Legislature when I was in. Because if you care about some policy matter, you have to go through the state legislature. Both those things are true at once.

And I think for regular people, there's a lesson in that, which is if you get 20 friends together on an issue you care about, you can almost certainly get the attention of your local state lawmaker. And if you really push for a year, you can almost certainly make sure that issue is one of the major issues the state is considering within a year. At the end of the book, I have a little epilogue in which I describe how to have an action circle or a giving circle through the institution I co-founded the state's project because I just wish everyone understood with 50 or 100 people, you can have more impact than you ever imagine. But you've got to be willing to go up there

with the quirky, kind of shabby, often depressing folks who insist on being called by their title. Nowadays, I only require that my kids still refer to me as senator since I've been in office for nine years. But many folks carry those titles with them for the rest of their lives. Well, let let's talk more about what average people could do and what that game plan is more towards the end of the episode. you're trying to get the word out about the outsized impact that you can have to the public. I'll tell you who knows the outsized impact they can have is lobbyists and the people who employ the lobbyists, right? So tell me a little bit about that. Like how do powerful groups, corporations, organizations, ideologies, ideological groups,

how do they take power in state legislature? Often you'll see an example of a state where they're like, you know, this state legislature is controlled by labor. this one's controlled by corporations, this one's controlled by, you know, the right wing, you know, ideological groups. How does that happen and how easily can they do it? So I'd say it's pretty important, first of all, to remember that in a lot of cases, it is lobbyists and organizations that are pushing folks around, not because state lawmakers don't care, but because they face.

hundreds or even thousands of bills a year, often with little or no staff as part-time jobs. And a lobbyist on an issue is often the person who can make sure you have some information at all, even though they're also compromised. Right. I really learned about, though, the power of the right-wing network in state legislatures, not until I was in office for four or five years. A young Florida teen named Pravon Martin was murdered in Florida, and the person who killed him was not prosecuted because of a stand-your-ground law, so-called stand-your-ground law, which was really just a law about how you have to prove self-defense in a way that would help the bottom line of gun companies. But it was called stand-your-ground.

A great, great idea. You can stand-your-ground. I discovered that that bill had been pushed nationally by an organization called Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the most important civic organization in America most people had never heard of. I then discovered that there were dozens of bills in the New York State Legislature that my Republican colleagues had introduced that had been written by Alec as model legislation distributing around the country.

I then realized that one of my very own colleagues, Owen Johnson, the chair emeritus of the Finance Committee, the most important committee in any legislature, had chaired Alex for much of the 80s and had visited the White House eight times as a guest of President Reagan. There was no equivalent on our side. There was no path to that kind of support. We were like seagulls squawking away and they were like migrating birds in perfect formation. And so you have lobbyists in the state who have allies, sometimes ideological, sometimes just friends, sometimes because of campaign finance and their donors. And then you have national networks that provide expertise and support and ideological expectations. And that's actually how this all is driven. So on every issue, people ask,

okay, who's for this? And they don't mean regular people. Who's against it? What am I going to get if I pass it? What am I going to risk if I don't? And what you're describing is, and I've, by the way, talked about Alec in my own work before about about 10 years ago, when we did an Adam Ruins everything election special and I believe 2016 was the first time we talked about this about Alec, I said those words on stage. This is sort of like a federalist society for state legislatures a little bit, right?

Like they come up with policies that they want to see and then they have a network with which they distribute them. Hey, here's the easily digestible version. Hey, you should pass us in Tennessee. You should pass it in here. You should pass it in there. And that way they're able to get their policy priorities out there in this really focused way.

Why do you think it is that the right has these sorts of networks, whereas the left of Seder tends to lack them? Well, it's not an accident. I mean, I think just sometimes individuals have a big impact on history. The guy who founded Alec, a guy named Paul Wyrick, is the same person who founded the Heritage Foundation, same year back in 1972. The Heritage Foundation, of course, are the authors of Project 2025. Yeah.

And Wyrick was a really interesting figure because, you know, he had started like a lot of political operatives 1964, 65. He volunteered on a presidential campaign, Dary Goldwater's disastrous campaign, but, you know, very conservative. He hated the Voting Rights Act and lived on a great society. But the most important thing that happened in Paul Wyrich's life, according to him, between 1964 and 65, was that akin to the modernization of the Catholic Church. He had grown up a conservative campaign. Catholic. And those three things, he really felt he needed to rig back God's kingdom to earth through government. He worked for a moderate senator who was actually a member of the Civil Rights Coalition. And he realized there's an entire network that's pushing civil rights,

equal protection laws. And we need that for my worldview. He quit his job with the senator, got funding from the Corps family originally, eventually from the Mellon and the Ska family and and founded heritage. But simultaneously, Alex, here's why, though. So interesting. Not because he realized the power of state, but because he was trying to change the Republican Party. And the easiest place to do that wasn't in, you know, the center of everything where the winds blow stronger with the most powerful elected officials, lobbyists, donors, advocates, but in states, which are much easier to impact. But the progress they made, there was enormous, so enormous, that the Koch brothers, who only a couple years later, weren't even Republicans, right?

They found the Cato Institute to be libertarian. You know, one of them ran against Ronald Reagan's ticket as the vice presidential nominee in 1980s. I didn't know that. One of the Koch brothers? Yeah, I believe David. I didn't know that. That's crazy.

As a libertarian. As a libertarian, this is the point. So the same problem, though. They were trying to change. They decided, okay, this libertarian thing's not going to work out. We're not actually going to beat. beat Rethican here. So we got to change the Republican Party. Again, states are the place to do it. For them, they also had a set of industries that were heavily regulated by states. So there was a double bottom

line for them, both ideological and financial. All of this to the point that by 2010, Carl Rove can write an op-ed that's in the book in the Wall Street Journal saying, whoever controls states controls Congress, all of these big national Republican figures are going to fundraise for states. And they were able to flip, I think nearly 30 chambers to create, make of the 99 legislative chambers in the country, two thirds and 67 of them Republican controlled. Because they had been building that foundation because of folks who were trying to reform their own party and just new states were the easiest place. to doing going back to the early 1870s. That is wild. And it leads me to a question which is, you know, you hear about these movements in the right or the Republican Party to reform the Republican Party to push it in a particular direction and therefore to, you know, push the state legislatures themselves.

And, you know, guys like Wyrick and the Kochs who have done that very specifically and effectively. there's certainly people who are trying to do that to the Democratic Party, right? There's like the Berniecrats, right? Let's move the party in this direction. And yet the infighting in the Democratic Party is so strong that no movement ever gets made. Right. We're having the same tussle, you know, right now that we were in 2016, right, between the two halves of the party. And it might be a bigger question than you can answer unless you have an opinion on it.

Then we can move on to keep talking about states. But I'm just curious. Yeah, I actually think that you learned something from the Sanders movement or the DSA movement that's really similar to what you learned from the Kochs having started as libertarians, not as Republican operatives or Paul Wyrick starting with a feeling that his religion was being taken from him, referencing the Washington Roman Catholic dioceses as the loose leaf diocese because they were just rewriting it every week. what you learn from all three of those movements is they didn't start saying, what do I say to win? They started by saying, what do I believe? And how do I convince others to come along? By the way, in all three of those cases, to their credit and distinct from what we're hearing from J.D. Vance and Donald Trump recently through democracy, right? Disagree strongly with a bunch of them, but through democracy. In fairness, why Rick not entirely through democracy is most famous vote actually is I don't actually want the majority to vote. I want to suppress votes. He

actually said that on camera. So I shouldn't give too much credit, actually. I should be a little more careful. But if you're going to convince people through democracy, it helps to know what you believe. I actually think that one thing that's happened is in the Democratic Party, there's a belief system that is sort of was taken for granted as recently as 2012. You saw both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama on the debate stage in 2012 talk about the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence, the idea that all people are created equal with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that government secures those rights from the consent of the governed. That fundamental idea as a thing that was obviously the creed that held America together. But I think that was so

taken for granted that folks have gotten out of the habit of thinking about that as a belief system as well. I think it's the belief system that, you know, drove Frederick Douglass to say he loved the country, even in the speech roughly the slave of the Fourth of July for Abraham Lincoln, you know, defined the Gettysburg address and the battle that was going on, the actual dead that were being concentrated there, the suffragists who were looking to expand the vote to women, a century into the country's history. They were excluded from Independence Hall for the celebration, but their manifesto was about that very same idea. Francis Perkins, FDR's Labor Secretary, referenced the same concept talking about federal unemployment insurance. Of course,

you talked about the March on Washington before. That speech, I have a dream, isn't just a dream. It's a dream of making good on the promissory note of the declaration. And Obama referenced that shared creed in his famous speech in Boston in the summer of 2004. I actually think there's a real idea here. And here's the thing about fighting. I actually think fighting among ideas and beliefs within a party can be really good. I think you've seen the Republican Party bunch away above its weight with a conservative traditional view that's really very narrow of the role of conservative religious views in government. And an idea that government should get out of the way and just let whoever has the most money and resources do whatever they want, because they

fight internally on ideas so they can find coalition on ideas. In the 1970s, you know, if you both hate government and you love conservative religion, you hate communism together, right? That was an easy bedfelt. Yeah. I think that Bernie Sanders and his movement deserve a lot of credit for having a belief system. I don't think it can be the only belief system in the Democratic Party. And I think the one I'm talking about, a belief system in deep equality of opportunity, though not necessarily outcomes, the idea that markets and the free market has real value, but it needs to be regulated to be able to be used by everyone who depends on it,

would really help the Democratic Party, not because we were fighting less, but we were fighting about two sets of ideas that as they seeped through into the public, created some sense of authenticity and belief for the regular voter who's, you know, only has this crossing their path at its very end stage, but has a pretty good instinct for whether someone is just trying to get their vote or has a deep belief system they're trying to share with them. Right. And we'll move on from this, but that really rhymes the criticism you often hear about the

wing of the Democratic Party that's often running the national election. which is what do these people believe other than we want to beat the Republicans, you know? And what, I mean, that was, I could say that very much about Kamala Harris's campaign, right? For all the challenges it faced, you know, what's the, what's the central premise, you know, like they were feeling around for it. Whereas like, Bernie, at least you know, and it would be better to have two sets of ideas that were really clear that we could have battle and, and, you know, maybe, maybe meld. I really like that point.

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Doesn't seem like we've made a lot of progress on it, on, on, you know, getting these ideas more through the state houses. A, why is that? And B, how do people actually put together that, that small group of people that can make change like you're talking about? You know, look, it takes a long time to match a 50-year movement supported by some of the largest, wealthiest companies and people in the country. So it's step by step.

I do think that, you know, President Obama's talked about this. Nearly a thousand seats were lost by Democrats during his time in office. And that was a real, a real loss in that period that we need to recover from. That said, you know, I could not imagine in 2017. not much less of this book would be written, but that anyone would be involved in this. But I actually was inspired then, and I'll tell you how, in a way that I think is a sign that a movement is possible here. 27, 2016, actually, right after Trump was elected, I got invited to a holiday party in my district. It was a meeting of young adult authors, like kids lit authors.

And I didn't really want to go. It was a Saturday night and was my kid's third birthday. And there was no way I was going to leave before he went to bed. But I put him to bed and I went because I was a state senator. And as you point out, we are thirsty, thirsty folk. And I was invited to a holiday party and I was going to go. I didn't think they really wanted to hear for me a Saturday night holiday party. But Trump had just been elected and people really wanted to figure out what they can do.

So I went, I was a little irritated to get there. I was a little late. And I said, look, you want to know what to do? Stop tweeting at Chuck Schumer. He already agrees with you that Trump is a problem, I promise. And, you know, you can go knock doors in some district in central Pennsylvania, but you'll probably cost your candidate to vote. No one wants to vote for some Brooklyn kid lit off.

Yeah. Or with that. What you could do is you could come together, the people in this room, who raise $100,000, you could be the most significant funder to flip, not just the legislative district, but an entire state. You could help the candidates there get off the phone with donor and special and get on the doors, not get on doors and meeting people. None of you will do this, but if you actually are worried about Trump, he didn't come out of nowhere.

I served with people like him in the legislature going back years. You should do this. And I was ready to leave assuming no one would take me up on it. I'd made a similar speech probably 50 or 100 times before I was especially pissed off that night. But two women came up to me and blocked my exit, trying to get home before my wife went to bed. And one of them said, I think we can do this. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, here's my card. You know, maybe they'll have me in my campaign.

But that group, those two women became the core along with a few other kids lit authors. And they had raised $100,000 by the time Trump was inaugurated. Adam, I cannot tell you, having been in office, this was the most surprising thing sincerely that ever happened. I was really like the 28 against a 30-year incumbent, as I said before. That victory surprised me less than this bit. Wow. I told everyone I knew.

I don't believe that there's a moment here where people are actually willing to be strategic. They're so worried, ironically, that they're not going to just be reactive. Some people are going to be strategic. I was fortunate enough to meet Adam Pritzker, and he convinced me to resign office to start something called the States project with him, to try to build this infrastructure and an opportunity for regular people to have an impact. Those kid lit authors became our first giving circle. This is groups of people. Many of them actually happen to be women. Four or five people come together.

They create a giving group. They get their friends and neighbors. They become experts on states. 100% of the dollars they raise. We contribute directly into in-state state legislative campaigns. And, you know, they become hopeful. They go around and say, I know that elections won't. be canceled what you said before because we're going to make sure in Michigan there's not

a government that tries to cancel those really important elections. And they're now more than 200 of them. And the single most surprising thing to me in politics is that there's that many, but it is still true to your point that state legislatures, even though a single state legislative chamber can flip four or five congressional seats by drawing different maps, get less than five cents on the dollar of every dollar in politics. It's still a fraction and still true that I can't tell you how many conversations. This conversation is phenomenal, actually, because most conversations are, it's so great you do states.

Who do you think is going to win the U.S. Senate? Yeah. Well, and tell that to the three texts I've gotten from James Tala Rico today, right, asking me for money. By the way, state lawmaker James Tolarico, in fairness to him. He's an excellent leader. True, but he is running for statewide office, right? And, you know, these are not him personally sending the text.

It's like these, you know, fundraising organizations that it's a whole machine, right? But there's this phenomenon of, you know, here where I live in California, like, you know, rich liberal Californians donating to these sort of big, splashy MSNBC, excuse me, MS now races, right? the ones that draw all the attention, the beta O'Rourkes of the world, right? The sort of tilting at windmills. I mean, maybe some of these people have a chance, but they gain, they get so many of the dollars, not to mention the presidential election, right?

Whereas this is, I mean, how much further does your dollar go? They get 5% of all donations. That's a huge differential. Yeah, I mean, again, it is literally cheaper to flip an entire state legislative chamber than a single congressional district. In 2025 in Virginia, the House, it's an odd year election, the House was up,

the one-seat majority for Democrats. Virginia legislators passed a law to put it up to the voters, whether to change the congressional maps to change four seats. Here's the wild thing. The entire cost of expanding the Virginia majority, all of the money they spent, was less than the cost of one competitive directional seat. And yet they set in motion a process that could have changed four. Unfortunately, the Virginia Supreme Court nullified the votes of 3.1 million Virginians in an unprecedented move in a 4-3 political decision. But here's the wildest thing about

that. The reason there was a 4-3 majority that was willing to nullify the votes of folks to allow congressional maps to be redrawn was because in 2021, the Virginia House was lost by a single seat. One more election in the Virginia House, one more in 2021, and it would have impacted four congressional seats this year. So that cost is it doesn't make any sense at all. If you're a billionaire, I say this on the book, if you're Elon Musk, maybe you want to consider whether to spend $250 billion to try to get Trump elected or to do state legislatures. But you're probably not Elon Musk, even if you're listening to this pod. Daniel, Elon listens to the show. Don't give him ideas about where he should be spending his money,

okay? This is dangerous. I'll just pause for a second. Let the woke mind virus get anyone who is worried about it to turn off. Now that we're in a safer space, I'd say, your impact will be greater. But I don't need to tell you that. You know why? Because your listeners probably know something if they're being really honest themselves. Yeah. They know that their political action, they're doing because they feel worried and they want to do the right thing, not because they feel that they might actually change the outcome. That's not good enough.

In the democracy that's at risk, everyone needs to think rigorously with themselves about how their political action might change the outcome. So I talked about States Project Giving Circles, and I hope people consider those. But I also talk in the book about action circles. And this is a thing anyone can do without any organization. This is what is an issue in your community or your state you care about? What's a law you wish was different? You don't need to go run for office, though I talk about that too.

To your point, we could have a much better slate, forgive me, of state lawmakers around the country. But if there's an issue you care about, get together with four or five, ten of your friends. Get each of them to get a couple of friends. Dedicate your time, your expertise. I bet you have expertise. your network and whatever resources you have available, it doesn't need to be big money. For a year, commit yourself to changing that law. I talk about exactly how to do it.

It's very simple. It ain't three-dimensional chess. It's just connect four, four steps. You will, I guarantee, have your issue be a major issue in the state at the end of that year. It is really tough. Here's why it's hard. A, it's unappealing, as you point out, no glamour, as I said at the beginning. The, it's complicated, right?

99 legislative chambers. Because as you know, Adam, of course, Nebraska's your camera. 99 legislative chambers. You have a state senator and a state assembly member. You, they're in session sometimes, but not other times. Don't worry about any of that. Choose the issue you care about and start driving directly at the state capital to try to change it by convincing folks to vote with you. That's an incredible call to action.

And why don't you tell us where people can learn more about it? Tell us the name of the book and also where people can find you on the internet. Great. Yeah. So the book is The Fourth Branch, how state government can save our union. It's the good, the bad, and the bizarre from state legislatures, but mostly how you can understand power in this country and actually do something about it by looking at its least glamorous corner.

The fourth branch book.com will take you. to learn about the book, but also learn about giving circles and the states project as well. And I really hope people take that call to action to heart. And I mean, honestly, you're inspiring me. And I've, I have spent plenty of my political action time on less worthy causes. Normally, we end with this call to action. I just have one last question for you, looping back around to the federal election in November. Okay, we can do the call to action twice. I think that's a louder. We'll let you say it one more time at the very end.

I just want to know what is your, what do you think the state of the states is as, as pertains to November? How worried should people be and what can be done about it? Well, look, Trump is absolutely focused on them. He's posting about it on truth social. He cried to pass a bill through Congress that would weaken them. He is on the phone, as I said, with state lawmakers. Look, all of the same states that are important for the presidential race are. on the ballot in November and at risk.

In Arizona, it's possible to flip two chambers that have been Republican controlled that are now very Trump allied. In Michigan, you have split government. Just one seat is what won the chamber in 2022, and then it was lost in 2024. Minnesota, same story. Wisconsin has a once and over a decade opportunity to flip those chambers. The Pennsylvania House was flipped in 2022 by 63 votes in a single district. It's still a one seat majority and it's possible to bring the Pennsylvania Senate along.

North Carolina is interesting. Oh, we have a Democratic governor in North Carolina, Josh Stein, this great governor. But his power is being kneecapped constantly by a super majority of Republicans who are overriding his vetoes. So those states are both going to determine the congressional map in 2028, but they're also going to determine whether enough states have folks in power that want to have a competitive election in 28, that they're not predetermining the outcome ahead of time. If we have folks in states who believe in competitive elections, folks like Republican Rusty Bowers, who in 2020 gave up his career to

stand up to Trump or the Michigan Senate president that did the same, or Democrats, all of whom have done this, then we'll have a competitive election in 2028. If we have Trump's allies and sycophans, I worry we won't. That's not a question for Congress. That's a question for state legislatures. And all the more reason for people this pay even more attention to their state legislature and the legislatures of neighboring states. Once again, the book is called The Fourth Branch, right?

And it is the fourth branch.com. A fourth branch book.com. Fourth branch book.com. And is that with a four or with, are you spelling that out? You know, it's such a great question. I considered using the number, but I decided to write it out. It actually takes you to stageproject. That or fourth branch.

But I think fourth is kind of a nice word when it's written out. Yeah, fourth branch. All right, Daniel, thank you so much. There's a you in it. know. And that stands for you. It's not like set forth. It's not like, it's not like, yeah. Go forth, branch. Yeah. And that you stands for you and the impact you can have on your state government. Daniel, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been a fantastic conversation. And like I said, thrilling and funny in addition to being boring because it was

about state legislatures. Thank you so much. That's my motto. Thanks for being here. Well, thank you once again to Daniel for coming on the show. If you want to check out the States Project, and I hope you do, go check it out on the internet. If you want to pick up a copy of his book, you can do so at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com, slash books. And just a reminder, when you buy a book there,

it supports not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you want to support the show directly, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover five bucks a month. Get you every episode of the show. Add free for 15 bucks a month. I'll read your name in the credits. This week is going to thank Hayden Matthews,

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I want to thank my producer, Sam Radman and Tony Wilson. Everybody here at Headgun for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening, and we're going to see you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan.

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