No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Georgia Republicans finally pass infamous anti-democracy bill

Episode Date: March 28, 2021

Republicans pass a dangerous new voter suppression law in Georgia. Brian interviews Senator Amy Klobuchar about the filibuster (including how her own position evolved on it and whether she can help convince the Democratic holdouts to follow her lead), passing the For the People Act, the spate of recent shootings, and even how her relationship is doing with her campaign rival, Pete Buttigieg.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 Republicans' dangerous new voter suppression law in Georgia and my interview with Senator Amy Klobuchar, where we discussed the filibuster, including how her own position evolved on it, and whether she can help convince the Democratic holdouts to follow her lead, passing the For The People Act, the spate of recent shootings, and even how a relationship is doing with her campaign rival Pete Buttigieg. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. It took only eight weeks after Joe Biden was sworn in for Republicans. to codify the backlash to Georgians

electing Democrats to the Senate and Presidency. The state legislature has passed and the governor assigned into law SB 202, which I'm sure if you've heard anything about it, you know that it makes it illegal to hand out food or water to people standing in line to vote. Like, think about that.

It is now illegal to give water to voters waiting on lines as long as 11 hours, lines that were intentionally created by Republican policies purposefully targeting black precincts. And here's how you know that that those policies target black people because the average wait time in Georgia after polls were scheduled to close was six minutes in neighborhoods that were at least 90% white and 51 minutes

in places that were at least 90% non-white. And yet still, despite this disparity, the precincts with the highest percentage of black voters had polling places eliminated in the last election. Every step of the process is deliberately crafted to make things difficult for minorities because they overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. So when you hear people, say that this is Jim Crow 2.0. It's because these policies still, in 2021, target who else, but predominantly black people. And of course, the law does plenty more beyond making it illegal to hand out food and water. It allows any individual to file unlimited challenges to the eligibility of another voter. It limits the number of drop boxes. It applies voter ID laws to mail-in ballots.

It creates a fraud hotline so that people can issue anonymous tips about what they suspect may be fraudulent behavior, which, man, I would not want to work in that call center. But finally, here's the most insidious provision of the law. So normally, election issues in Georgia are adjudicated by county boards of election. But now, the state board of election can simply decide that these county boards aren't performing well, and they can replace the entire county board with an administrator that they choose at the state level. And the general assembly also now has more control over the state board.

For example, they've removed Secretary of State Board. state Brad Raffesberger from his role as chair and member of the five-person board, since he refused to humor Trump's bogus stolen election claims in the last election. And instead, the Republican-led state legislature now gets to appoint the third member of the board, meaning that they'll have control over the majority of that five-person board. In other words, the Republican state legislature now has full power to decide whether or not certain ballots will be disqualified if they decide that there's fraud. So whereas they cried fraud in Fulton County, which is home to Atlanta in 2020, and nothing

could be done because there were barriers to protect voters, Republicans have effectively made themselves the gatekeeper to those barriers now. The same people who were clamoring to arbitrarily disqualify votes just because the Republican didn't like that people were voting for the Democrat, now they'll have the chance to do exactly that. So if you want to know why S-1 or H.R.1, basically the same bill, the For the People Act, is necessary. This is why.

When you hear Republicans hyperventilate about H.R.1, it's needed because of them. It's because of this very bill in Georgia. We wouldn't need HR1 if Republicans didn't create a need for it. The bill focuses on partisan gerrymanders and reverses voter suppression efforts, along with reforms to campaign finance and election security and ethics, like, stop gerrymandering and you won't need a bill to ban partisan gerrymanders. Stop purging voters from the rolls and eliminating drop boxes

and making it harder for people to register to vote, and you won't need a bill to reverse all of those things. If Republicans had the sense to just not be so shamelessly anti-dise, Democratic, the entire country wouldn't be mobilized in favor of H.R.1. But because they can't help themselves, because they so brazenly try to grab power, well, then suddenly it's necessary. So when H.R.1 passes, however, Democrats ultimately get it to pass, the Republicans have themselves to thank. So look, it's all well and good that Donald Trump was defeated, but the reason that Trump was defeated is because we had an infrastructure in place to prevent

elections from being stolen. What Republicans are doing right now is systematically dismantling that infrastructure. All because that party is so incapable of winning an election on the merits, incapable of having a single idea worth selling. And so instead, their only option is just to rig the game. Instead of winning over the people they lost, they're just stopping them from casting ballots at all. I will say this until it stops being true. The Republican Party fundamentally does not believe in democracy. But look, these efforts will inevitably be challenged. Mark Elias, the Democrat's top election lawyer, who I interviewed a few months back, he's already filed suit on behalf of a few organizations, including the New Georgia Project and Black Votes

Matter. And of course, if Democrats can pull it together and reform the filibuster and pass the For the People Act, that would afford states like Georgia federal protections to counter these Republican efforts. But there is one more stopgap, and that is the people. By doing this, Georgia Republicans have just woken up every Democrat in the state. And there is no better way to make sure that someone votes than by trying to prevent them from voting. We've seen it time and time again from a Wisconsin state Supreme Court race when Republicans refused to allow vote by mail at the beginning of the pandemic only to lose that seat by a massive margin,

all the way to the state we're talking about now, to the very state of Georgia, where in the 2020 election, voters waited as long as 11 hours in lines expressly designed to stop them from voting. And that state elected two Democratic senators and Joe Biden for president. If you try to steal people's rights, they will work that much harder to get them back. So congratulations.

Republicans, you found a way to make sure that the entire country is paying attention. And I can promise you, we will always find a way to vote. Next up is my interview with Senator Amy Klobuchar. Okay, today we've got Senator Amy Klobuchar. Thanks for taking the time to talk. Well, thanks, Brian. It's great to be on your very popular, popular show. Thank you.

So you're the chair of the Rules Committee. You've just begun hearings on S-1, which is the Senate's version of H-R-1 for the People Act. I don't think it's lost in anyone how important this legislation is if for nothing else than the fact that it will stop Republicans from legislating Democrats out of government through political gerrymanders and voter suppression efforts. So how do we get it passed? We get it past, first of all. I still believe in old-fashioned legislation. And you get it passed by making very clear the facts are on our side. They are literally over 300 bills right now where they're trying to suppress a vote in almost every state in the country.

And here's the funny secret is that during the pandemic, more people voted in the history of America of nearly 160 million people. So guess what? We opened the door to mail and voting and not having to have a notary stand outside a hospital window while someone has COVID that actually happened to sign a ballot. We change things. And now what's happening is in the words of Senator Warnock, our new great senator from Georgia, some people don't want some people to vote. And I don't think you can just close that door. And what we're trying to do with the For the People Act, just simply make it so people can vote, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, or independents. That's why the former Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission actually testified for our bill today, Trevor Potter,

because he said, look, I'm just in the democracy business. I want to make sure people can vote. And also, big money drowns out the votes. That's another way. people drown out the votes. Ethics, corruption, ethics violations drown out the votes. So that's simply what this bill is about. And I think you can tell they are scared of this bill because instead of changing their messages, instead of changing their positions or reaching out to voters that parties usually do when they lose an election, they've doubled down on theirs and then decided, let's just lop off some of those new voters that voted last time. And let's see if we can still win. That's not democracy. Yeah, I agree. So in 2016,

you were one of 31 Senate Democrats who signed on to a joint bipartisan statement that was in support of preserving the legislative filibuster. So you've obviously evolved on this issue, along with a number of others in the caucus. And your position since then has been very consistent in terms of reforming the filibuster. So as someone who has evolved, you know, between 2017 and now, I'd imagine that you have clout in speaking to the Joe Mansions and Kirsten Cinemas of the party. Has that been a focus for you in particular? Well, I think, as you know, in the presidential race, I was a little more in the middle.

And I think it is helpful to have people across the spectrum of our parties speak out. And I think those senators will come to their own decisions without, you know, a bunch of lobbying by me. But the way I look at it is this. Look at the tragedies that just happened in Atlanta and in Boulder. vast majority of American people, 80, 90% favor background checks. A majority of Republicans favor background checks for guns, and except for the ones in this building.

So at some point, you don't use an archaic procedure to stop every bit of change that the American people want, American Rescue Plan. That wouldn't have gone through if we hadn't found some way to do it with 51 votes. It's called reconciliation, long story. wouldn't apply to a bunch of the things we want to get done on democracy reform or energy, climate change legislation or background checks. But we got it done because we had that deciding vote in Vice President Harris. And it just shows, were we going to wait along all summer and negotiate and run TV ads,

for and against things? Or do we want to get the vaccines and the shots in the arm? Do we want to get the aid directly to people? That's the issue right now. And this archaic procedure, which probably President Obama pointed out the best, when he said, you know, this is a relic of racism, basically, this procedure. And as Reverend Warnack said, are we more interested in protecting the minority rights of some guys sitting in the U.S. Senate or the minority rights of the people out there in the United States of America? Yeah. And to build on that, I mean, here's the part that I can't wrap my head around.

This issue is existential for the very senators who are blocking refocing. forms to the filibuster. Like I mentioned Senator Sinema. There's an attack on voting rights in Arizona. One bill would purge infrequent voters from the early voting list. Another one adds restrictions to mail ballots. So that would impact, you know, their own political futures and not for the better. So is there an acknowledgement of that from the Democratic holdouts? I think, first of all, in the past, a number, all the senators have been supportive of this bill, whether co-sponsoring in the past or staying there. So I wouldn't label these senators as being, you know, anti-democracy or something.

I think they want to see democracy. They far hard for democracy. They didn't vote for Donald Trump, right? Right. They supported the electoral college. And Center Mansion has, in fact, come out in cities for a standing filibuster, which would be a change, which means those guys would have to actually, if they want to object everything we do, whether it be minimum wage, I'm talking about the Republicans,

or whether it be background checks, they would actually have to speak through the night, like in the old movies and have to stand there and be there. That would be a major shift. So I give all the senators a moment to look at what the issues are. When we've got all these things mounting up, we have to get done for the people. And my big concern right now is the chair of the Rules Committee,

being able to have gaveled in the first hearing ever on this bill and the first hearing in years and years that was really real about something in the Rules Committee besides the ones we did on the interaction at the Capitol and basically say, you know, we had,

the other side's talking about chaos. I can tell you what chaos is. Chaos is five-hour lines to vote. Chaos is bills that one court have said discriminate against African-Americans with their own words, the judge's word, surgical precision.

Chaos is having one male drop-off box, ballot drop-off box in each county in Texas, including Harris County, Houston's County, 5 million people. Chaos is people in Wisconsin in homemade garbage bags standing in the rain waiting to vote. Chaos is the angry mob at the Capitol that we're trying to literally kill people to undermine our democracy. So I don't want to be lectured by them on that somehow this bill would create chaos. This bill will fix the chaos by allowing the people of America to vote. That was perfectly put. I do have a procedural question here. Let's say that Democrats put S-1 on the floor and it doesn't hit the 60 vote threshold to overcome the filibuster. Can you bring

S-1 back to the floor for a vote if the filibuster's then reformed? Well, again, first intention here, the hearing now we've had the hearing. Now I've got to mark it up in the committee. Looks like based on the questions today, but it's going to be an even vote. Now, because of Georgia and our wins there, Senator Schumer will be able to bring the bill to the floor. And that's when this will be decided. Senator Merckley, of course, is a leader on the bill, along with Senator Schumer and myself, and we'll work to see, can we get bipartisan votes? Then can we look at the procedures? How can we get this bill through? It has already passed the House, and it passed the House in a good number. And so now it's on us.

And you've got to look at all options. And as Senator Schumer has made very clear, failure is not an option. So you've said that now. And I interviewed Senator Schumer last week, who said the same thing, that failure is not an option. And I do hope that's the mentality and that, you know, that sentiment is encouraging because if S1 isn't passed, then the rest of our agenda won't matter because Democrats will be legislated out of government. So our entire future relies on S1 passing to even have a chance beyond 2020. 22. I couldn't agree more because, like I said, they're literally trying to choose the voters instead of letting the voters choose the elected officials. And they're targeting those states like

Georgia and Arizona, where we have two Senate race up, Markelle in Arizona, and Reverend Warnock is up for election again in Georgia, and they're trying to make it harder to vote, beginning, middle, in. So I want to switch gears over to, uh, to the issue of, of guns, um, you know, just as the country is beginning to reopen, we're now plunged right back into the usual spate of mass shootings. Now, Republicans had blocked common sense gun reform in the past, but now Democrats are in the, in the majority. And, well, the intention isn't to pick on Joe Manchin here, but Manchin has announced that he doesn't support either bill. That's HR 8, which is the universal So Background Checks Act or H.R. 1446. So not to beat a dead horse here, but knowing how small

our window is that we do have unified control of government, what's the plan to get this passed? Well, first of all, do remember that Mansion, while the bill was different, and I supported all these bills, he did lead the Mansion Toomey Bell, which would have brought back background checks. And so he was willing to take the NRA on in a big way and certainly lost his high rating from the NRA. So let's not forget that. So I think that you could well get some bipartisan support. I remember just being gut punched by the White House over and over for four years. So let's try it with a new president who could lead and has been very clear about it in Joe Biden because I sat across from President Trump after Parkland. I was in the

group because I have one of the lead bills that says that people who are convicted of domestic violence, which, by the way, has now gotten 29 Republican votes and all Democratic votes because it's part of in the House, because it's part of the domestic violence bill. It says if you've been convicted of domestic violence just because you're someone's dating partner, you shouldn't be able to get a gun. Or if you've been convicted of stocking, you shouldn't be able to get a gun. So I sat there across from President Trump to talk about that bill. And I literally still have the piece of paper where I wrote with hashtags a number of times, and it was almost 10, that he said, said he was for universal background checks. And then the next day, he goes, meets with the NRA,

and that's it. So we now have a new president in the White House who knows how to lead. So I just wouldn't rule anything out, whatever Joe Biden can do with executive orders he'll do, and then we need to do some major work in Congress. And the thought that just in the space of a week, we lose innocent people from Atlanta to Boulder. And these stories, when you look at the stories and you look at the pictures of these people and you say their names out loud, it becomes real. It could happen anywhere in America. And it has. I'm glad you spoke about the boyfriend loophole, too, because I was going to ask you about that. So I do want to switch gears finally to antitrust. And you've been a champion for antitrust reform. And that comes as, I believe it was

today we have reporting that Facebook and Amazon have officially become the top lobbyist in Washington. So does your antitrust reform focus on consolidation moving forward, or would it target the companies that have consolidated in the last decade or so that have served as basically a catalyst for this bill? Both. And you have seen consolidation across the board, whether it is online travel, you think you get some great deal. Two companies own 90% of all those names. You see Kayak, Expedia, whether it's cat food. John Oliver did a hilarious piece on this with ended with him. pointing out all the consolidation and transportation and cable and the like.

And he said, if this is enough to make you want to die, good luck, because there's only three companies that make caskets now. And actually, since that time, one bought the other, so there's only two. So what my legislation does and the work I does very dovetelling with the work that great work David Cicillini is doing in the House is to say, okay, so let's look at both things. One, we've got to go after current consolidation. That's the lawsuits that were brought by Republicans at the end of the Trump presidency,

and this is one good thing that they did, which was to take on Facebook and Google as gateway companies, but you're not going to be able to take on the biggest companies, the world has ever known, biggest lobbyists with duct tape and band-aids. So Grassley and I, Senator Grassley and I have a bill to add $130 million to these agencies by changing the fee structure. That is broad bipartisan support. I want to get that done now, and I think we most like. we can. Secondly, look at the forward looking at the mergers and change that standard for the

big mega mergers so that the companies have to prove that it doesn't hurt competition. And the third thing is what you're talking about. I call this my reply to Mark Zuckerberg's email, the email where he said, we would rather buy than compete. Okay, that's called Exhibit A. I'm a former prosecutor. Or the other one he sent when he said, you know, these nascent competitors, They may be small, I'm paraphrasing, but they're kind of in our brand. And they could be, this is a line, disruptive to us. That's what tech companies are supposed to do. They're supposed to disrupt things.

Competition is supposed to disrupt things. And in this country, Democrats and Republicans, Sherman Act authored by a Republican, we have rejuvenated capitalism over and over again. When things get too big like AT&T through multiple presidents, we broke them apart. And the chair of AT&T said they were a stronger company as a result of it. But what did it mean? Lower long distance rate and a cell phone market that took us out of cell phones that were the size of a briefcase as featured by Gordon Gecko in the Wall Street movie. Okay?

So that's what we've done. And we need to do this again. We are literally in a modern Gilded Age. And we've got to pass the laws, put people in charge with Tim Wu, Lena Khan being nominated to the FTC. I think you're going to see a major shakeup. and it's long overdue. And I'm excited to be chairing the antitrust subcommittee. And to be writing a book on this, by the way, Brian, that's coming at the end of April called

antitrust, which is hilarious because my friend and debate rival Pete Buttigieg's book was called trust. My book is antitrust, which we have discussed. Very fitting. Well, so that's a good segue into my last question here. And, you know, I want to be the person to ask this. So this will be the origin of this. this. But is there any hope for an Amy Pete talk show at any point in the future? Well, yes, we actually

appeared together on Kobe. Yeah. Virtually, of course. And what people don't know is that Pete and I got along before we ran against each other. We once had a very fun dinner in South Bend. And then we actually got along through the campaign. Of course, we were rivals. That's what you do. You debate. Friends can debate. But then out of the election, we spent a time together. And most notably, when Chaston was out of town and Pete was left with those dogs, and I was here last weekend, the two of us had a fun lunch. We went to Eastern Market and we took a long walk and I got to know the dogs really well. And Pete's doing great in his new job as Secretary of Transportation. So that's my little inside scoop for you, Brian. Thanks. All right, well, Senator, thank you so much for

taking the time. I really appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thanks again to Amy Klobuchar. 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 Wellsey, 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. Thank you.