No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Elizabeth Warren on using the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from running

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

Dangerous voter suppression bills are sprouting up across the country, and eliminating the filibuster is the way to fix it. Brian interviews Elizabeth Warren about those very issues of voter suppression and nuking the filibuster, along with eliminating $50,000 in student loan debt, and barring Trump from holding office again using the 14th Amendment.Written 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 some dangerous voter suppression bills sprouting up across the country and how eliminating the filibuster is the way to fix it. And I interview Elizabeth Warren, where we talk about these very issues of voter suppression and nuking the filibuster, eliminating $50,000 in student loan debt, and borrowing Trump from holding office again using the 14th Amendment. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So the most underreported and yet serious issue facing the U.S. today is happening in state houses led by Republicans

all across the country. And that is the spate of voter suppression bills being introduced. And they're being introduced by Republicans in response to claims of voter fraud that were started also by Republicans. So basically, Trump needed an excuse to try and steal the election. He told his voters that the election was rigged. Republicans

repeated those claims, their voters believed their elected officials, and then those same elected officials turned around and pointed to their voters' worries about fraud as a pretext to pass restrictive legislation. It's all borne out of this feedback loop where the GOP wills into existence whatever reality they need to help themselves politically. And so now we're seeing a bill in Iowa that would cut nine days of early voting and limit drop boxes

to one per county and block county officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters. In Florida, Governor DeSantis is calling for legislation to block election officials from automatically mailing ballots to voters who voted by mail before and making it easier to throw ballots away from minor errors. But nowhere are these impending restrictions worse than in Georgia, where Republicans watch two Democrats take the Senate. And so instead of, oh, I don't know, making a better pitch to voters, they've opted instead to make sure that the people who are less likely to vote for them just can't vote at all. So in Georgia, we're seeing a bill in the state Senate that would outright repeal no excuse absentee voting, which is vote by mail. Why? Because

out of the 1.3 million Georgians who took advantage of it, 850,000 of them are Democrats. Only a small percentage of those would stay eligible to vote by mail, including those who are out of town, disabled, or, of course, over 65 years old. And guess how that age group typically votes? And so those who do vote by mail would now need a witness signature on their ballot,

and they'd need to attach a copy of photo ID. All said, these changes would amount to some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country. That was the state Senate. In the state House, Republicans introduced a bill even more egregious, one that eliminated Sunday voting, which is a direct, blatant attack on souls to the polls, which is organized by black churches. So whereas black voters make up 30% of the voting electorate in Georgia, black voters make up 37% of Sunday voters in Georgia. So if there was a more obvious way to restrict the voting rights of black people, I couldn't tell you what it was. And of course, the House bill also includes restrictions for drop boxes, shorter periods to send out mail ballots, shorter periods to return mail ballots. I should mention, too, these laws were originally put in place by Republicans.

In fact, mail ballots help older and rural voters who might otherwise be more easily disenfranchised. It was only when Republicans saw that Democrats were also using vote by mail that they suddenly decided it was bad. Suddenly, a solution that they themselves knew it was an effective way to help people vote was bad because it was helping the wrong. people vote. Because the Republican Party isn't interested in supporting democracy, they are interested in entrenching their own power. That's all. Now, there is a way to prevent what are outright anti-democratic measures, and that's to eliminate the filibuster. The filibuster intact keeps it so that there's a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation in the Senate. And because of the inherent Republican advantage in the Senate, because remember, all of these rural states with a few

hundred thousand people have the same number of senators as California, well, it's unlikely that will ever have a 60-vote majority. But we don't need the filibuster. It's not in the Constitution. And historically, the thing's been used solely to block civil rights legislation. Again, because of the outsized influence of Republicans from states that are rural, sparsely populated, and mostly white. And we only need a simple majority to remove it. But a few Democrats have already come forward to oppose it, and that includes Joe Manchin

and Kirsten Cinema. Now, their rationale is that the filibuster would maintain the deliberative nature of the Senate and eliminating it would afford the majority too much power. Which sounds nice in theory, but that's not what's happening in reality. Because in reality, Democrats need to be able to pass H.R.1, which is the For the People Act and a Voting Rights Act, just to make it fair. Like, we're not trying to tip the scales in our favor. We're trying to balance them.

Look at the legislation popping up all around the country, eliminating drop boxes and early voting and mail ballots and taking voters off the rolls. That is expressly designed to stop people from being able to vote because we're Republicans know that high turnout equates the better results for Democrats. So by virtue of these moderate Democrats protecting the filibuster, what they're effectively doing is allowing these anti-democratic measures to stay in place, which will then set the stage for Democrats to lose power by allowing Republicans to rig the field. That is the actual result of keeping the filibuster.

This isn't theoretical and it's certainly not a way to preserve the integrity of the Senate as a deliberative body. Republicans might claim that's what it is, but it's not. its functional use right now at this very moment is to block Democrats, which is the party in power from enacting legislation that would actually allow them to function as the party in power, and it would allow Republicans to execute their voter suppression methods across the country with impunity. So these Democrats have a choice to make. You can either keep the filibuster and make the conscious decision to allow voter suppression bills to pass across the country,

which would relegate their own party into the minority, where they will have no power, or they can nuke the filibuster so that we can pass legislation that would ensure fairness so that people are fairly represented in government and so that we're not contracting every ounce of power to a party that rules from the minority and represents some dwindling faction of Americans and yet somehow constantly calls the shots. Like, the dichotomy between what Republicans, Democrats do with power is mind-boggling. And yet, if Democrats want to win another election,

then dear God, we can't be afraid to use the power that we have to show Americans why it's important to come out to vote. And if we don't nuke the filibuster and pass a voting rights act, then it won't matter anyway because Republicans will have carte blanche to pass every bill they can cook up to ensure that as few people vote as possible. And look, if Mansion and Cinema have beef with certain progressive legislation, fine. That's a different issue altogether.

And if they want to vote against that, then they can, and their votes will still wield a ton of power. But this is bigger than that. This is about stopping Republicans from legislating Democrats out of government, through voter suppression measures, through gerrymandering, through whatever they can think of. And that is an existential issue for democracy, and there is one solution, and we need to be able to use it. So at this point, I think the most persuasive argument is this. Eliminating the filibuster gives Democrats a chance beyond 2022.

Otherwise, not eliminating it is effectively welcoming Republicans to tilt the scale so far in their favor that Democrats won't have a chance to get elected anyway. This is not a difficult decision. Our job is to keep the pressure on because without voting rights, reforms, we could be looking at a fundamentally different country than the one that we're living in. Next up is my interview with Elizabeth Warren, where we talk about this very issue and more. Today we have the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Thank you so much for taking the time. Oh, thank you for having me. We're going to have some fun today.

So I want to talk about the issue that's kind of hanging over all of our heads here, and that is that Republicans all around the country are introducing legislation to suppress the vote, and they're using the disproven fraud allegations as a pretense to do that. So can you briefly talk about HR1, the Further People Act and what that would do? You bet. HR1 says we're going to protect democracy. And that's what it's all about. So it's about early voting. It's about access to the polls. It's about overriding state efforts to suppress the vote by protecting the vote at the federal level, repassing the Voting Rights Act. It's every piece of it.

And, you know, I just hope everybody stops for one second and thinks about how it is that one of the two major political parties in America thinks that the only way they're really going to be able to win over time is if they can keep American citizens from voting. Right. They know they are the minority party, the party that most people do not want to. be with. And so they're trying to figure out how to change the laws to make sure that they can stay in control and they can keep advancing, frankly, an out of the mainstream right-wing agenda as a way to hang on to power. And so would these federal protections preclude a lot of these legislation and resolutions that are coming up in Republican legislatures in the states? Yes, sir, they would. That is the whole point behind them. As you know, when there's conflict,

between state and federal law, the constitutional doctrine of preemption says federal law overrides. So, for example, if the federal government says there's going to be this much access to early voting and it'll be protected in the following five ways, don't make any difference what the states do at that point. Got it. You get that much protection as a federal floor. The states can go beyond that if they want, but that'll be the federal floor. Well, The follow-up to that, then, is that legislation like that requires a 60-vote threshold to pass unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster, and yet there's opposition from a few Democrats to doing this, with the irony being that unless the filibuster is nuked and this voting rights

act is passed, those Democrats are actually helping relegate themselves into the minority. So you're on the inside here. Clearly, these democratic holdouts must know that. What's the rationale here? Well, you know my view on the filibuster. and that is, it's time to get rid of it, if the Republicans are going to just try to use it to try to block everything that we were sent to Washington to do.

So here's how I look at this right now. We're going to take this one step at a time. The step right in front of us is trying to get the COVID relief package through. That we know we can do by reconciliation, which, as you know, means we only need 51 votes. And with Kamala, we've got, 51. Now, the fight in front of us on that is going to be minimum wage, which we can talk about if you want to, but let's just set that one aside for a minute. Then we're going to have to

start team up these really hard issues that you can't do through reconciliation, like protecting democracy, like creating a pathway to citizenship through our immigration reforms, like universal child care and universal college. So for those things, we're going to have to make a decision, and I say this week, as a party, does Mitch McConnell just get a veto over everything we do, or are we going to do the things that America needs in this moment, the things that we were elected to do? We don't have to have that argument in the abstract. My view is, let's have it in the very specific. We try to pass voting rights act. If the Republicans then try to block it, then it's time for us to have the real, gritty conversation about getting rid of the filibuster.

Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, what people are going to remember is not arbitrarily protecting an institution of the Senate. It's going to be protecting the right to vote and, you know, giving dreamers a path to citizenship and so on. Exactly right. People, didn't send us here to talk about the good old days and how procedures worked within the Senate. They sent us here to get things done, to get the things done that need to be done, to make our government work, not just for a tiny little slice at the top, but make it work for everyone. So let's move over to student loan debt, a really substantial number of Democrats support your resolution that would cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt, which I should

note that I'm in favor of also. The pushback to this, though, is what about the person who worked two jobs to pay off that debt only to see it get canceled for the next guy who didn't? So how do you reconcile this issue for those people? You know, I want to start by saying, when did we become an America that said, I'm only going to support a policy if I'm absolutely sure it's going to protect me in a tangible way right this minute. I contribute to taxes. federal taxes that support building highways in North Dakota. I haven't been traveling on any highways in North Dakota. But by golly, I support the idea that we built an interstate highway system.

And here's the thing. Overall, it's good for our whole nation, which ultimately means it's good for me. Same is true on student loan debt. Cancelling out $50,000 worth of student loan debt, obviously good for the people who've got student loan debt. But it's good for all of us. It's good for our whole economy. And here's the reason why. This is a data argument.

We started tracking the data the federal government has and starting to see that as student loan debt goes up, you see fewer people moving out of their folks home, fewer people buying homes, fewer people starting small businesses. You know, if you've got to make that student loan monthly payment, you can't, you're a lot more risk-averse about getting out there and rolling the dice on running your own business. How many really terrific businesses didn't get started last year because of student loan debt? Right. So we cancel out $50,000 in student loan debt.

That means we're going to wipe out student loan debt for about 85% of the folks who have it and really cut it down for the remainder. That's a whole lot of economic energy that we free up in this economy. canceling out student loan debt is the single best thing that the president of the United States could do all by himself to boost this economy and let millions more people participate in it. And that's good for you whether you have student loan debt or not. So let's move over to Trump. And I promise this will be the first and last time we talk about him during this interview.

So even though we saw the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history, it wasn't enough to convict him. But that doesn't erase the fact that his. His ability to run is dangerous. And people are going to claim that Democrats are afraid that he'll win. I'm not afraid that he'll win. I'm afraid of what will happen when he loses, which we've just seen. So the Senate had had 56 votes to convict him. Why not hold a vote under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which only requires a simple majority

of both houses where there's clearly support to bar him from ever holding federal office again? So I think the 14th Amendment idea is really interesting. And I've been looking at this talking with constitutional scholars and to store. about what it meant in context. Let me just offer, before we take that step, I was very interested in the fact that Merrick Garland has made clear that he wants to do a fuller investigation around the insurrection. Get a little more information, witnesses about what's happened,

and see where we are. It's not like we have to take that step tomorrow. That step is still potentially there in another week, another month. So I'd like to get Merritt Garland confirmed. I'd like to see us get a full team in at the Department of Justice and see what they start to uncover. Also, Nancy Pelosi, as you know, has set up a new commission and says we're going to do a 9-11 style. I don't want to wait years for this. That's not the point. But if we're in fact-finding mode in two different parts of government right now, It seems to me that the smart thing to do is see what else we learn about this and then make a

decision on what steps we want to take, including possible steps under the 14th Amendment. That's a great point. So let's move over to COVID relief. We have the $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan that's set to pass. Republicans have vowed to unify in opposition to it, despite Americans desperately needing this package to pass. So clearly they made a political calculation that refusing to give Democrats, this win takes priority over delivering this relief. So is it more important to obstruct for them

than to help people survive during a pandemic, like their own constituents? Evidently so. I mean, because that's exactly what they're doing. You know what really gets me here? We talk about bipartisanship. This COVID relief package has bipartisan support all around the country. The one place it does not have bipartisan support is on Capitol Hill. And by and byproducts, the way, these guys have the nerve to come in and say, well, they want to negotiate some piece of it and say, let's see if we can't water this down or weaken this. They want to criticize. They want to say, oh, it's not focused enough for them on this or enough on that. And yet, if you say, okay, we might be willing to talk about changing some parts of it,

will you support it if we do? The answer is no. Because ultimately, it's all politics all the time for Mitch McConnell. And that's what he's playing out now. And by the way, let's just cross-reference our earlier conversation about the filibuster. When you're up against somebody who's all politics all the time, when you're up against somebody who says, I'm going to block it no matter what, because I'm not going to let you have the win. We saw that movie when Barack Obama was president.

I don't want to see the remake while Joe Biden is president. People have short memories and they don't remember that there were all these concessions made for Republicans during the ACA negotiations and ultimately there were no Republicans who ultimately voted for it. So, you know, there's only so many times that Lucy can pull the football away before we stop kicking. Okay, so a good number of young people watch the show and listen to the podcast and they might be thinking about a run for office. So the question for you is for those people looking for some good advice. So let's say, totally hypothetically, that an Arctic blast devastated your state and the power grid failed,

what Mexican resort would you visit and would it be all-inclusive? Absolutely. You'd go for the weekend package, right? But you leave your dog at home. Golly. But I will say, the idea of running for office, I do have three words of advice. Yes, yes, yes.

Go do it. You know, I'm somebody who in, I never had a million years. thought I would run for office. I didn't sit around and nurture this little maybe, maybe. I was in on the policy end, the walk end, you know, the data nerd end, and always thought my job would be, and I'll give that to the people who are in public office, either the elected officials or the appointed officials, so they can use it in policy, and I'll try to help them on that. And then the moment came. When you kind of look left, look right, and think, why not me? Nobody else is going to do this. You know, it's kind of the little red hen moment of running for

office. You know, I guess I'll do it. And what I've come to realize is there are more hard problems to be solved than there are good people willing to get up and get in the fight. So if you even have a hint that maybe running for office is your, might be your thing, or helping somebody else run for office, do it. This is what makes democracy come alive. This is the part that gives us the opportunity, not just to nibble around the edges, but to make the kind of big structural change that not just we should make in our country, we should, but that we must make.

Given the kind of problems we face, we must make big structural change. And the only way that's going to happen is we get more people running for office who see that, who have the fire, and who are ready to go do it. Yeah. And that's never been more apparent than seeing the people that we have. You know, we have people validating the insurrection at the Capitol. We have people voting against desperately needed COVID relief. So, you know, if ever there was a time to take these people out and replace their jobs, this is it.

And you know, I should add to it, and that's true, whether you're in a blue state, whether in a purple state, or whether you're in a state that is so red that you're not even sure there's a Democratic Party there. Yeah. We need people everywhere running, and we need people running for Congress, you bet, and for governor, but we need people running for Secretary of State. We need people who are willing to challenge at the town level, at the city level. we need people to say this is an act of patriotism to step up and to fight for what you believe in well senator warren thank you so much for taking the time i really appreciate it it was uh it was great

speaking to you and let's do it again we got so much to talk about we got so much to do so much to do so let's do this again thanks again senator warren that's it for this episode talk to you next week 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 Tylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.