No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Democrats finally notch a win in Texas

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

Democrats finally fight back with a major win in Texas, and Joe Biden actually called out some Democratic holdouts on the filibuster. Brian interviews a member of the Texas state House, James Talarico, who himself was part of the walkout that killed Texas’ voter suppression law. And Brian chats with Run for Something co-founder Amanda Litman about her reaction to the fact that a number of those Texas legislators were endorsed by her organization, and whether these voter suppression bills sprouting up are actually causing more Democrats to run for office.Donate to the Don't Be A Mitch fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchSign up for Indivisible’s Truth Brigade: https://act.indivisible.org/signup/indivisible-truth-brigadeWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Democrats finally fighting back with a major win in Texas, and Joe Biden actually calling out some Democratic holdouts on the filibuster. I interview a member of the Texas State House, James Tolerico, who himself was part of the walkout that killed Texas's voter suppression law, and I chat with Run for Something founder Amanda Lipman, about her reaction to the fact that a number of those Texas legislators were endorsed by her organization, and whether those voter suppression bills sprouting up are actually causing more Democrats to run for office. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

I never thought I'd see the day, but Democrats actually showed up and decided to fight back this week. And it may not be a permanent victory, but it was a victory nonetheless, so I want to highlight it. In the Texas State House, the legislative session was ending at midnight, and Republicans were trying to pass SB 7, which was their voter suppression bill, that I think is the worst bill in the country. More on that in a moment. But at the 11th hour, literally, I think it was 11 p.m., Democrats in the State House together walked out, breaking quorum needed to pass legislation, which requires two-thirds of the 150 House members to be present, thereby killing the bill. And I'm going to go into the specifics of this bill

and why it was so important that it doesn't pass, but first I got to say this. This is how you fight. They figured out of way and got it done. And for a party that so often seems afraid of its own shadow, holy hell was it nice to not only put up a fight, but actually win when the stakes were so high. Now, as for why SB7 is worth having this fight over,

it's because it's one of, if not the most restrictive voter suppression bills in the country. It sought to ban after-hours voting and restrict drop boxes and drive-through voting it would have limited Sunday early voting to between 1 p.m. and 9 p.m., which is as obvious an assault as you can get against efforts like Souls to the polls, where black and Latino communities would vote immediately after church, but well before 1 p.m. It would have made it illegal to send unsolicited vote-by-mail applications to people and would have barred counties from helping facilitate the distribution of unsolicited ballot requests, meaning that they can't work with any get out the vote groups. Absentee ballots would have required providing a driver's license number

or the last four digits of your social security number on both the ballot request and the return envelope containing the ballot, meaning that basically no one would want to do it, considering no one wants their social security number on that envelope. And finally, it would have imposed a $1,000 a day fine on local election officials who don't follow specific procedures to update the voter rolls, and criminal penalties on election workers who obstruct partisan poll watchers, poll watchers whose very presence would only serve to intimidate people casting their ballots. So when Republicans claim that these Democrats walking out with some abdication of their duties, you know, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatened to withhold

pay from these legislators for not showing up to their jobs, just know that this didn't happen in a vacuum. Like, complaining about these Democrats leaving the chamber without acknowledging why they were leaving is absurd. You don't get to claim they were being anti-democratic by doing whatever was necessary to stop a bill that was the epitome of anti-democratic. Now, with that said, already Greg Abbott's promised to resurrect this bill in a special legislative session, and I'm sure they'll be a little better prepared for Democratic efforts to stop this bill the next time, but the longer that we can stop this, the more attention that we can shine onto it, the better our chances of mitigating some of the worst impacts.

And I'll go into exactly that in more detail in my interview coming up, including one of the worst provisions that's already been removed thanks to the national attention that the fight over SB 7's getting. So again, thank you to Texas's Democratic state legislators for not only figuring out how to fight back against this power grab by Republicans, but showing the rest of the country that we don't have to take this lying down, that we don't have to wait for the courts to save us, or wait for federal legislation to save us, or wait for Republicans to start caring about democracy again. We need to make sure they don't even get that far, and that's exactly what Texas Democrats did in response to SB 7. And by the way, just seeing what these state

Democrats have to do, you know, the hoops they have to jump through to try and plug up this sinking ship, it's finally looking like Biden's feeling the pressure because even he came out this week with a swipe at the two Democratic holdouts for the filibuster, Joe Manchin, Kirsten, Cinema, considering we won't be able to pass HR1 with the filibuster intact. This was Biden at an event in Tulsa commemorating the 100th anniversary of the massacre in that city. I hear all the folks on TV saying, why doesn't Biden get this done? Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House

and a tie in the Senate with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends. And you should know, this is a big, big deal coming from Joe Biden, not just because he's the president, but because the guy's been an avid defender of the filibuster. He literally campaigns on keeping the filibuster before he took office. And even he's come around to the fact that the only way to pass anything, much less the transformational agenda that he's looking to enact, is to dismantle this relic of the past that Republicans are using to entrench the power of the minority. So look, I will spare you the filibuster lecture and give you at least one week of a breather here. But the point is

that from state houses to the White House, Democrats are finally understanding the importance of pushing back against this tired Republican playbook of obstructing popular legislation while they continue to whittle away at our democracy. We've got the mandate and we've got the momentum, so continue to keep the pressure up. Still coming up is my chat with Run for Something founder Amanda Littman about the Texas legislators involved in the walkout that were endorsed by her organization. But first, my interview with one of those legislators himself, Texas Representative James Tolerico. Okay, today we have a member of the Texas House of Representatives James Tolerico. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. So obviously the big story out of Texas

and rightfully so is that Democratic legislators in the State House walked out during a vote on the Republicans voter suppression bill. It's SB 7. And that deprived the House of a quorum and basically killed the bill. So first of all, you know, on behalf of everyone, thank you. Thank you for fighting. Thank you for getting it done. Well, it's an honor to do this work with my Democratic colleagues here in Texas. And as, as you know, there's a trend across the country where Republicans are trying to undermine our democracy and rig the rules of the game in their favor. And I'm proud that my colleagues and I decided to stand up to that effort and successfully kill SB 7. So walk us through the events leading up to the walkout. How did the idea come about?

You know, this has been a really terrible session here in Texas. The Republican Party after 2020 is emboldened in our state and has decided to push through some of the most radical far-right legislation that we've seen in this state, a heartbeat bill that effectively bans abortion in Texas. We've seen bills to discriminate against transgender kids in our state. We've seen legislation to pass permitless carry, which means that anybody can carry weapons of war on our streets without a permit. And so this voter suppression bill was really the straw that broke the camel's back. And breaking quorum is not a decision that we take lightly. It's only reserved for the most egregious abuses of power. And undermining our

democracy certainly meets that threshold. And so the decision was kind of made throughout the weekend And as the, as details of the final bill came to light and we saw how terrible it was going to be for so many of our Democratic constituencies. Now, did Republicans expect you to do this? You know, I think that Republicans knew we were, we were fed up with their, with their antics this session. I think they knew how much of an affront SB 7 was to, to not just Democrats, but really anyone who cares about democracy in the state.

of Texas. So I think they knew we were going to take some dramatic steps to fight the bill. I don't think they knew we were going to go all the way of walking out of the chamber, breaking quorum, and killing the bill in the final hours of the session. So we're going to see SB 7 again. Governor Abbott had promised to bring this bill up again in a special legislative session this summer. So how do you intend on blocking this legislation the next time? Well, you know, thanks to people like you, we are getting a national spotlight on Texas. Everyone in the country is talking about SB 7 and the Republicans attempts to really destroy representative democracy as we know it. And that kind of spotlight,

that kind of attention, I think will force Republicans back to the negotiating table. And hopefully, you know, I do think we're going to pass some type of voter suppression bill. But as Texas Democrats, our goal is to limit the damage that this bill will do to our democratic system, but in particular the damage it can do to vulnerable communities across our state, in particular our black and brown communities. So I'm hopeful that this renewed attention, this controversy that has kind of spread across the nation, across the world will allow us to negotiate a much better version of this bill in the special session. Just to build on that a little bit, you were speaking about shining a spotlight on it.

Republicans are now saying that the no voting until 1 p.m. on Sunday was a typo, a typo. Like, among us, right? Who among us hasn't accidentally targeted the entire black church community by accidentally blocking them from voting after church? My finger slipped and I accidentally suppressed an entire community. That's exactly right. Well, so two things. One, that does point to the process problem. This bill was changed dramatically in the final hour. of the session, and it was changed behind closed doors in the dead of night, and no one got to see kind of what it looked like in its totality until the very end of the session before we were going to vote on it. So, you know, a typo is certainly possible, but the reason I'm skeptical of

that excuse is that the senators in the other chamber who put that provision in the bill defended it on the House floor. Also, not only was it, you know, they say it was just changing 11 to 1, but you also had to change AM to PM. So it makes you skeptical that this was actually a typo. What I think is occurring is this new spotlight on Texas Republicans is forcing them to backtrack. And I hope that continues in the weeks and months ahead, as long as the rest of the country has our back. You had mentioned just prior that you do expect some type of voter integrity bill to pass. Is another walkout possible? Are there ways for Republicans to prevent? something like that from happening? No. I should say in Texas history, breaking quorum has only

happened four times. And when I was in high school, I remember a group of Texas Democrats not only breaking quorum and walking out of the chamber, but actually fleeing the state of Texas so that the Texas Department of Public Safety couldn't bring them back to the House chamber. And that lasted for more than a month. And so, you know, I think, Texas Republicans have a long memory and they know that a full quorum break like that is still certainly possible. So I'm hoping that that possibility combined with the renewed attention on this issue can help keep our Republican colleagues in line and help them pursue a more moderate path in this attempt to please President Trump and his big lie.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you guys end up fleeing Texas and you need somewhere to go, California. He's always always always happy to take you. Perfect. Anything to avoid going to Oklahoma. Yeah. Yeah. So assuage my fears here because it's often hard to imagine a scenario where they just drop their efforts altogether, right? So on the major most dangerous provisions of this bill, is failure an option here?

You know, I think it's your right to be realistic. You know, we live in a Republican-dominated state. They control the executive branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch. and their far-right Republican primary voters who they rely on to get re-elected are demanding that their Republican officials indulge Donald Trump's big lie and they demand these types of voter suppression methods.

You know, I personally am friends with a lot of my Republican colleagues in the House, many of them don't believe in the big lie, many of them don't want to pass voter suppression. Unfortunately, they lack the moral courage to speak about that publicly. But I'm hoping that we can take advantage of their hesitancy and we can at least push them toward more symbolic provisions in the bill and avoid some of these provisions that really do harm the ability of our communities, in particular, our black and brown communities from accessing the franchise. You know, if we can start to remove some of these criminalization efforts in the bill, that criminalize really simple mistakes in voter registration or in voting itself, that would be a big win.

If we can protect souls to the polls for our black churches in Texas on Sundays, that would be a big win. You know, if we can limit the powers of these vigilante poll watchers, that would be a big win. And so we need to be pragmatic and we need to be realistic and what we're trying to accomplish here. Killing SB 7 is temporary. I don't think we have we stand any chance of killing the bill in its entirety, but we can certainly limit the damage and protect our voters across the state. But I want to keep our attention on national Democrats because Texas Democrats did our part and we'll continue to do our part. We stayed united. We stood up to the bullies in our own chamber.

and we have to laid this bill to give national Democrats in the House, the Senate, and the White House time to pass the For the People Act to blunt any impact of SB 7. So I hope that Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema and Joe Biden will take a page out of the Texas Democrats playbook. Yeah, I mean, especially, you know, you're in the minority and still manage to just figure it out, do what was necessary to stop these anti-democratic efforts. National Democrats are in the majority and still aren't managing to, you know, to get their shit together right now. That's right. That's exactly right. And, you know, I think we were motivated by a deep sense of history. You know, we mourn the loss of John Lewis not too long ago. And to remember what he and other leaders in the civil rights movement went through to protect this sacred right to vote. you know, that, that motivated us to really rise to the occasion and do our part to honor his legacy. And it's shocking to me that national Democrats can't summon the same courage or the

same commitment to their convictions. But I hope that changes after what we've done here in Texas. Yeah. Well, hopefully Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema are listening right now. I'm sure they're avid listeners. A lot of people do listen. And I hope it gets to them. So I have a feeling that they are, they're starting to feel the pressure, along with President Biden, who I support, but he has got to know that this is a national emergency. Our democracy is facing a grave risk, and we're, you know, we are on the path of losing it entirely. So I hope that our actions here in Texas can shake their conscience and push them to act. So Abbott had also threatened to withhold pay for the legislature, but clear this up for me.

The legislature is majority Republicans, so wouldn't it move like that hurt mostly Republicans? And beyond that, assuming the legislators just want to get paid, couldn't they just override his veto? Well, you know, Texas legislators, unfortunately, don't get paid very much. I get paid a salary of $400 a month after taxes. But our legislative staff who really do all the work in this building, they're the ones, they're the unsung heroes who make this process possible. They do have salaries that they rely on to support their families.

And so Governor Abbott is playing politics with their livelihoods. And it's both foolish and embarrassing, but also really frightening. You know, these types of autocratic tactics that we saw from President Trump are being mimicked by Republicans across the country like Greg Abbick, like Ron DeSantis. And although it may seem funny to the rest of us, it really does represent a frightening reminder of the threat. that Trump Republicans posed to our democracy. So you're 32. As of two weeks ago, yes.

Happy birthday. Happy belated birthday. You're the, if I'm not mistaken, you're the youngest legislator in the House. That's correct. So your district had been long held by a Republican. Your predecessor was a Republican. What was your message for your constituents in getting elected? And what does that say about Texas politics more broadly?

Yeah, you know, I represent a district that within its current boundaries hadn't elected a Democrat since before I was in kindergarten. In fact, a Democrat didn't even run in this district in 2016. And so I threw my hat into the ring in 2018. As a first time candidate, I was 28 years old, former teacher had never run for office before. But, you know, I not only did I flip a Republican district, I'm also ranked as one of the most progressive members of the Texas House. And most of the time, folks think those two things are mutually exclusive, right? If you're going to appeal to moderate voters, you have to somehow have moderate principles or propose moderate legislation. And in my experience, that's not true. You know, Texans in particular like

backbone. They like someone who's going to stand up for their own beliefs, their own convictions, and not back down. And in my experience, voters, Republicans, independents, and Democrats, they want someone who's going to be honest with them. They're going to want someone who's going to stand up to bullies and they're going to want someone who's going to push for bold legislation that actually makes an impact on their daily lives. And so I hope that's a lesson Democrats across Texas and across the country can learn from. You don't have to water down your beliefs to win over voters. Yeah. I mean, more and more we're seeing, you know, these unapologetic progressives winning in places where you would think that progressives wouldn't stand a chance at winning

from you and your very district right there in Texas to, you know, the Katie Porter's of the world who flipped, I believe it's California's 45th, which had never voted for a Democrat in its existence. So, you know, more and more, we're seeing that we should be running Democrats anywhere and running on platforms that bring out our agenda, because our agenda, at the end of the day, you know, Democrats have this reputation of being afraid of our own shadows, but our agenda is popular. That's right. And Republicans don't have an agenda anymore. I mean, it's astonishing to me in the wake of the Trump presidency that Republicans have really abandoned any sense of fiscal conservatism. They've stopped fighting for lower taxes and less spending. All they have at this point

is culture wars and this kind of battle against wokeness. I mean, it's really the Republican Party is a shell of its former self, ideologically speaking. And so they have, they've left the field to us. Our ideas, I think, have won the day. And there is now a, a general consensus in the country that government can be a force for good and can improve people's lives. And that's a huge victory that we need to capitalize on. Well, we'll see if running on canceling Dr. Seuss is not going to do it for him. So that's right. So with that said, again, thank you to you and the Democratic delegation there in Texas. You know, I hope you realize how refreshing it was to see a Democratic delegation not only not shy away from the fight, but actually

actually win it, you know, for now. So just keep pushing. And you got a lot of people behind you, you know, you've helped to energize a Democratic Party that needed it. I just want to thank you. I know you're not from Texas. You don't live here, but the fact that you're using your platform to shine a light on our battle here means a lot to all of us. So we'll consider you an honorary Texan. Thanks. I'll take it. All right. Well, Representative Tolerico, thanks for taking the time to speak. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Okay, thanks again to James Tolerico. Now we have the founder of of one of my favorite organizations, Run for Something, Amanda Littman.

And Amanda, you actually know James quite well. Yes, Run for Something endorsed him in his first campaign. And we are so thrilled to see what he's done in Texas since he won. It's just the exact kind of candidate that we love working with and the kind of outcomes we love to see. Yeah. Well, the walkout that we saw in Texas included a number of Run for Something alumni. So what's it like to see people who ended up where they are in large part, thanks to your support, you know, accomplish something so massive.

Because even if, if temporarily they were able to fend off, you know, arguably the worst voter suppression bill in the country right now. I think what it does is reinforce me how important this work is. You know, it's sometimes when you're paying attention to national politics, easy to get very cynical and very disillusioned, like none of this shit matters, no progress will ever happen. But what we have seen over and over again on the local level is that when Democrats are willing to stand up, to fight, to push for what our values are, they can actually make a

difference, whether it's in reducing harm, like what the Texas Democrats did over the weekend walking out, or passing really meaningful legislation. Like at the same time, I assume James talked to you about the work that they did to cut the cost of insulin, that's going to make life better for so many people in Texas. So it's awesome to see, and it keeps me fired up and inspired to wake up and get to work every day. Was there any hesitation about, you know, moving forward with somebody so progressive in a district that hadn't even, I mean, forget, forget progressive. This was a district that had been represented by a Republican and then to have somebody as progressive as he has come in and be able to flip that district. Was there any hesitation about, you know,

moving forward with somebody like that? Not at all. And I think both that's because who he is as a candidate and who he is now as an elected official has proved that out and that he really does understand his voters. He understands the community he's representing. He's of that community, which goes a long way. But also, we have. have found that, you know, writ large ideology and voter preference do not always clearly line up. And often voters will give someone who might be more or less progressive than they might, we might think they would want a chance if it's someone who's willing to knock doors, make calls, and connect with them on a level that they can understand and can relate to.

You know, who the messenger is matters just as much as what that message is, you know? Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, so we're seeing, you know, so many. of these voter suppression bills sprout up all across the country from Texas to Florida, Arizona. Now, the purpose is obviously to help Republicans win, whether it's to, you know, to rig elections or what. But are you seeing an increase in Democrats at your organization as a result of this stuff? We're certainly seeing a continued interest in running for office. You know, so far, 2021 is on pace to your best recruitment year yet. What that to me says is that it was never really about Trump. It's about what the Republican Party is in 2021 and what they stand for.

And just as importantly, what Democrats have shown is possible when we win. You know, the voter suppression laws are horrific and dangerous and they should scare the living shit out of us. But we should also be a little bit inspired by things like what the Virginia Democrats have done and even what New York Democrats have done in expanding access to the polls. Virginia passed the first ever state-based voting rights act, which means no matter what, no matter who's in charge, there are some protection. for voters is sort of enshrined in Virginia law. That's awesome. And we should do more of that

where we have the control and make sure that we're guarding against some of the worst impulses of the Republican Party wherever we can. I mean, it's almost like the Republican Party's plan is backfiring in that sense. And we've seen that before, by the way. We saw it during the Wisconsin Supreme Court race when they tried to mandate in-person voting at the beginning of the pandemic to try to, you know, shoe in their Supreme Court nominee and they ended up losing that race. saw it at the Georgia runoff where Republicans leaned heavily on the big lie and that ended up backfiring on them too because that undermined trust in in their electoral system and Democrats obviously ended up taking those two seats. The lesson being that when you try to undermine democracy,

it tends to come back to bite you in the ass. Yeah, we shouldn't count on it though. And it came back to bite them on the ass because of the hard work people did to make sure it did. And that heartwork started years ago. One of my soapboxes lately is like, especially knowing how high the mountains are we have to climb, how hard it's going to be for our voters to show up at the polls. We have to do the work for much longer at a much deeper rate and a much faster pace than we've ever had before. And that sucks. And I'm, I'm as tired as everyone else. And that's what it takes to win. So that's what we got to do. Well, building on that, you know, run for something's a young organization. On the Republican side, how long have they been doing something equivalent?

Decades. You know, the most comparable organization we know to ours is this thing called the Leadership Institute, which has been around since I believe the mid to late 80s. They have about a $35 million a year budget. They do training for conservative operatives and activists. It's a 501 C3. And for context, that's more than 10 times bigger than the run for something budget, more than 10 times. We also know that they have a really deep network of state and local-based organizations, that their candidate recruitment has been more widespread for much longer. And they have, as we've seen, invested tons of money into state and local elections. I saw some stat recently that I think it was in 2016, the Koch brothers invested in 75 different elections in Texas alone

all the way down to a railroad commissioner. I can assure you, that just wasn't where Democrats were focused. So they've been doing this for a lot longer. They have a stronger foundation they're building on. We, it's, you know, when we first started, I used to say it wasn't just like apples to apples. It was apples to zebras. It was entirely different types of approaches to this work.

And it's now what makes it much harder. The Republicans are on year 40 of a 40-year plan to build permanent sustainable power. Democrats are on year five if we're being generous. And that sucks. Do you think it's going to get more difficult for your counterparts on the right to recruit, you know, young, new candidates considering that the people who are coming of age now overwhelmingly do skew democratic? I would say we have heard anecdotally that they are having a tougher time and that especially during the Trump era, they were having a tougher time because young people, unless you have like a Madison Cawthorn type, were really not eager to tie themselves to Trump and to the Republican Party as it stands. I do think, and this is something that's starting to come up in conversation now, what we have heard from researchers and pollsters is that the conversation around cancel culture,

around, you know, like, quote unquote, social justice warriors is actually the single issue that is engaging and converting, so to speak, young Republicans, or people to become young Republicans, and a particular young men to become Republicans, everything else. So basically every other issue, they are not aligned with. Trump, they're not aligned with the Republican Party on policies, at least not to the extent that the modern Republican Party is at. But I do think it's something for Democrats to keep in mind is that when we stand up for our values, they will often leverage that fight on our half, which I think is a good one, and use it to engage more young people. So it's a really

tough line to walk. Well, you focus on, you know, local races, state legislatures. We think that these national races with the House and Senate and gubernatorial races are a lot, but you're dealing with an exponentially greater number of candidates. So how do you keep up with so many races? How do you figure out where to allocate your resources? Well, part of it is when candidates need our help, we're there for them. So every person we've endorsed gets a one-on-one at first with one of our regional directors, and it's like an audit. What do you need? What problems are you having? How can we help you? And then we use that relationship with our endorsed candidates to build out the resources that we're providing both at large and one-on-one.

The nice thing about election days when you're working on local politics is it's always election day. So we have a pretty good sense of prioritization when and where people are. So, you know, like we're really focusing right now on our Virginia candidates or in a primary next week and then New York candidates who are in primaries the end of the month. But we're also thinking long term about the folks who have elections in November and into 2022. They just have different needs at different times.

So it's not like all 400 of our candidates. candidates are requiring all of our attention today. It's definitely hard, and it's something that I wish we had more staff to use to support, but we have found that, especially when we approach it from, hear all the things we can do, candidates know what they can ask for. It creates a little bit of a different dynamic. Well, speaking of, how can we help? How can you help?

Well, there's always three ways that you can help run for something. The first is to run for office yourself, and if you're listening to this show, you're the kind of person we need more in leadership. So you go to run for what.net, sign up. Right now, we're basically past most of the 2021 file like deadlines. We don't quite yet have 22 data, but you'll start getting emails and information about setting up your campaign and thinking about what you can run for in the future. Second, what you can help is obviously make a donation, run for something.net slash donate.

It goes such a long way to helping our work. We're very small and very scrappy and very tired, so every dollar helps. And the third is, since we're listening to a podcast, go subscribe to the first. Run for Something podcast. Get to know some of our candidates and electeds. They're amazing. And it'll be pleasant listening for your ears every week. Yes. If you liked James, who we just heard from, and you will, because the guy's a rock star, then, you know, more where that came from. So Amanda, with that said, thanks again for coming on to chat. It's always great speaking to you. Thank you for having me. It's always a delight.

Thanks again to Amanda. And by the way, I thought it was really important to have both James and Amanda on today because, you know, it might seem like there's some massive disconnect between politicians and the rest of us, but there isn't. The country depends on listeners like you getting involved, whether it's making a contribution or running yourself. It starts with groups just like run for something and people like James Tolerico and look at the difference it can make in a place like Texas. So if you want to get involved, it is a lot closer than you think. One quick housekeeping note, the Don't Be a Mitch fund had a huge week. We're already past $100,000, almost tripling our total from last week. I'm going to make an announcement.

about a new edition soon, but if you haven't yet donated, the link is in the episode notes. If you plan on donating at any point in the 2022 cycle, I would definitely recommend doing it now when your money could be put to the best use. Okay, that's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app, feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.