No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Texas’ abortion ban poised to backfire

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

A Texas doctor gets sued for violating the state’s six-week abortion ban—which may actually be a good thing. Trump gets humiliated again by the results of Arizona’s sham audit. Brian interviews Senator Amy Klobuchar, one of the authors of the Senate’s new voting rights bill that was crafted with Joe Manchin - the Freedom to Vote Act - about what’s in the bill and whether there’s any indication that Manchin will support filibuster reform so that it could actually get passed. And Julie Oliver and Mike Siegel, co-founders of Ground Game Texas, join to discuss bringing new voters into the fold with a smart new strategy.Support Ground Game Texas here: https://www.groundgametexas.org/Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee 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 a Texas doctor getting sued for violating the state's six-week abortion ban, and why that may actually be a good thing, along with the results of the Arizona sham audit. I interview Senator Amy Klobuchar, one of the authors of the Senate's new voting rights bill that was crafted with Joe Manchin, the Freedom to Vote Act, about what's in the bill, and whether there's any indication that Manchin will support filibuster reform so that it could actually get passed. And I'm joined by Julie Oliver and Mike Siegel, who co-founded the group Ground Game Texas, who

we're bringing new voters into the fold with a smart new strategy. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. We're seeing some major moves out of Texas as far as the state's new six-week abortion bans concerned. Within days of the law going into effect, a physician based at a San Antonio, Dr. Alan Braide, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post admitting that he'd performed an abortion within the first trimester, but later than six weeks. And so he was practically asking to be sued, specifically so that this law could be

challenged on the merits. Because remember, the whole reason that this law, SB8, was allowed to go into effect was because it was specifically written to circumvent judicial review by deputizing ordinary citizens to be the ones to enforce the law. And so until a lawsuit is brought forward by one of those ordinary citizens, we won't actually get an answer on the merits of the case. But now, a former lawyer from Arkansas, Oscar Stilly, has filed suit against Dr. Brade, ostensibly to collect the $10,000 bounty. And so on its first, face, it looked like this would be bad because, I mean, look, we're watching a fucking bounty system play out where women and the doctors who care for them are being penalized for

exercising a constitutional right. But Stilly actually said in an interview, quote, I'm not pro-life. And so this really isn't about legitimizing the new law. It's about challenging it. What this does is force the courts to actually litigate the merits of this case. Right now, the practical effect of this law was the chilling effect that it had an abortion providers. Nobody knew if the law would actually stand if it was tried on the merits, but at the same time, like, who wants to be that guinea pig? Who's got $10,000 to gamble with? And so just the fear, the prospect of getting sued was enough to actually accomplish what this ban set out to accomplish, which was to stop most abortions in the state of Texas. But now, because this former

attorney Stilly filed suit against Dr. Braid, we'll see this issue litigated. And look, yes, the courts could rule in favor of the merits of the six-week abortion law, and that would be devastating, but they could also not. And the only way we get there is to actually challenge this thing, especially considering abortions may have well been illegal anyway, considering the chilling effect that this law is having. So really, at this point, we have nothing left to lose and everything to gain by actually getting this law into the courtroom and challenging it. And by the way, with all of that said, let's not forget that it doesn't have to be this way. Congress could pass the Women's Health Protection Act, which would protect the right to an abortion

at a federal level, codifying row, basically. We literally have enough senators to make this happen, but here's my broken record moment because a couple of senators have decided that the filibuster, a self-imposed procedural tool, is more important than passing legislation that would instantly

protect a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion in the U.S. a law that is so desperately and urgently needed? Well, now we're just stuck surrendering that question to some conservative courts. That's what Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema are doing. They are choosing to filibus over a woman's right to choose.

They're deferring to a procedural tool purportedly intended to make the Senate see compromise while simultaneously allowing Republicans to run roughshot over Democrats as they seek absolutely zero compromise. So while the perpetrators of vile laws like this one out of Texas are these far-right theacrats performing for Trump and his base, let's not forget that there are Democrats

who are consciously allowing this to happen. When you have the ability to stop something and yet choose not to, then you're complicit in what's going on. And that's by no means to absolve Republicans of responsibility because they're by no means stopping anything. But let's not pretend for a second that the Democrats who stand idly by and do nothing are any less guilty.

So look, there's still time for these Democratic holdouts to do the right thing and decide whether they want their legacy to reflect the fact that they helped protect the rights of women when they needed it most or whether they just allowed Republicans to tear those rights away because you can have one or the other, but not both. Next up, Arizona's sham audit has come to an end, and it turns out that even their results show that Joe Biden won the state of Arizona. Like, Arizona Republicans literally brought in the cyber ninjas, who are exactly as legitimate

as their name sounds, and almost a full year after the election came up with the exact same conclusion that the original election found, only it cost taxpayer $6 million. Like, breaking news, guys, the winner of the election did win the election. So I guess this caveat first, before we dig into what this means and what happens next, this was not a real audit. These results don't do anything to further validate Biden's win because Biden's win was already validated. Regardless of what this so-called audit showed, it changes nothing one way or the other because, again, this was not a real audit and Joe Biden was already the legitimate winner. Now, with that said, there is just something so incredible about an audit that was specifically designed to rel litigate. an already certified election still showing that Trump lost.

And not only that, but lost by a bigger margin than the original results showed. It had Trump getting 261 fewer votes and Joe Biden gaining 99 votes. And like I said, that's not to celebrate these numbers as if they're vindication for Biden because, again, this is not a real audit, but that even the sham process that was only created to help Trump only serve to just embarrass him further to show that he lost Arizona again is just so perfectly on par for this entire post-election litigation circus that Republicans insist on embarrassing themselves with. Now, with that said, while I do think it's funny that they couldn't even leverage this dumpster fire to help themselves, I do want to caution against thinking

that this helps Joe Biden or Democrats because it doesn't. The point here isn't and never was to overturn the election results. It's just not going to happen. The point is to sow doubt in the system. And I do think that for at least some number of people, just the existence of this audit did exactly that. And there's real danger in that. Because now, more people will have lost trust in the system. More people won't trust the results next time, regardless of what they say. More people will be predisposed to a violent response to unfavorable results like we saw in January 6th. That's what this does. The point wasn't to overturn the results in 2020. The point was to set the stage to make it easier to do so in 2022 and beyond. And the more that we're mired in these audits, regardless of

their legitimacy, it'll continue to serve its purpose of undermining trust in elections and attempting to invalidate Biden's presidency. And so it shouldn't surprise you that Trump's first move here in the aftermath of the Arizona audit was to then call on Texas to audit their election results, saying, quote, Texans no voting fraud occurred in some of their counties. And because the entire GOP is petrified of not cowtelling to their deity, Texas is Secretary of state's office did exactly that, like eight hours later, announcing a full and comprehensive forensic audit in Dallas, Harris, and Tarrant counties, all of which Joe Biden won. Of course. And then they threw in Collin County, which Trump won, because that'll make it nonpartisan.

Throw a little crumb to the Democrats by also including a county that Trump won, so now it's a legit audit, right? And so look, the results of this thing don't matter. Not only because this election is already certified and only God knows what bullshit processes the GOP is going to pull together, but because the whole point of this is expressly not the results. The point is sowing doubt. It is continuing the charade as long as humanly possible, in as many states as humanly possible, one by one, until as many people and as many states think there was something nefarious about the last election. And then they can use that as justification to continue passing these voter suppression bills like the ones already introduced in 48 states. They'll

continue eliminating drop boxes and urban voting centers that allow more people to vote. They'll continue doing away with early voting and weekend voting. They'll continue purging voter rolls. They'll continue enacting racially and socioeconomically discriminatory voter ID laws. They'll continue gerrymandering Democrats out of government. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is actually about relitigating the 2020 election. This is about looking forward to 2022. They're using lies about the last election being rigged to actually rig the next one. And the truth is that it's going to motivate people on the right who buy into these lies. And that's the goal. So our job is to match the enthusiasm.

That's it. If we let history be our guide here and allow ourselves to become complacent because that's what happens to the party empowered during a midterm cycle, then the GOP strategy will be validated. So don't let it. Everyone's got a responsibility to make sure your circle stays engaged and votes when the time comes. And if you want to help even more, you can also donate to the Don't Be a Mitch Fund, where we've already raised over $500,000 for voter registration and voter outreach groups in nine key states. The link to that fund is in the show notes of this episode or you can go to don't be a Mitch.com. And finally, you can keep the pressure on the Senate to pass voting rights legislation, which is a good segue into my interview with one of the

senators who's helping lead the effort to do exactly that right now, Senator Amy Klobuchar. Today we've got the U.S. senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar. Thanks so much for coming back on. Well, it's great to be on again, Brian. Thank you. So now you and a small group of Democratic senators, including Joe Manchin, have crafted the freedom to vote act. So what's in that bill? It's a good bill. It's got good reviews from everyone from Barack Obama to Stacey Abrams to the voting rights groups across the country. And the cornerstone of it is guaranteeing the freedom to vote. And it is firmly grounded in the Constitution that says Congress can make or alter the rules for federal elections. What it says is you've got to be

able to allow people to vote by mail, not make them get a notarized signature to get their ballot. Yes, that's what South Carolina does right now. They should be able to vote on weekends leading up into an election for 15 days. That is exactly what was outlawed by Georgia's law, which basically said during the runoff period, that's when Senator and Reverend Warnock and Senator Ossoff one last time, you can no longer vote on weekends. if you can imagine. But you can vote on weekends before that. The Georgia law also says you can register 29 days ahead, but guess how long the runoff period is? 28 days. It says you've got to put your birth date on the inner ballot envelope on the outside. So what the minimum standards do for federal

law is it says, look, you can't do that kind of crap that just tries to limit your right to vote. you've got to have early voting, same-day registration. It says the 14 states that don't require IDs, don't have to have them, and the rest you can use a utility bill, a student ID, you can just sign a sworn statement saying it's me. And so we basically got to the core of what's going to protect people's right to vote, as well as including the Disclose Act, so important to get the dark money out of our politics.

So we're pretty happy with the bill. And we have everyone signing their name on it, including Senator Mansion. Well, now, that bill is being billed as a pared down version of S1, the For the People Act. So what's been taken away from that bill to this one? Well, some of the changes are really good. The rural areas, it was going to take them a while to comply. We wanted to make sure that we gave them the time to do it. If they have the camp, maybe staff pulling place every weekend night, they can do it during the day.

did things like that that have been very accepted. The one thing that we added, which is really important, that was not even in the for the people bill, because people keep coming up with ways to hurt elections, is we made it so that you cannot get rid of a local election official, except for malfeasance or something bad. Right now, they're just replacing them in Georgia and letting the state legislature take it over. This was really, Senator Warnock's bill, really, really important and as well as preserving records and getting at some of these sham audits. So we're able to put things in the bill that's actually new. So I think one of the reasons you see it so well received is we kept the strengths of the bill and then focused on a number of the things that

really mattered with voting. Some of the ethics provisions that will be worked on. There's actually more bipartisan support for some of those. I think they'll be in a separate package. But we wanted to really focus on the voting and the dark money. As you mentioned, Joe Manchin was involved in crafting this legislation with you and a few others. He obviously supports it, but I mean, this is the question I'm asking, right? How does he intend on getting this pass with the filibuster intact? And is there any indication that he would support a carve out on the filibuster?

Because remember, McConnell came out almost immediately and dumped cold water on this bill. And even moderates like Susan Collins have come out against it too. Well, we're not done yet. Joe is still working with Republicans. I've been reaching out to some of them, and we want to make sure we have gotten to that point. And so, as we say, I said to someone the other day, well, we'll cross the bridge of the procedural changes when we get to it. And a radio host said, well, that'll be a really short walk. But in truth, we're still talking to them, and I think that'll take, you know, another, we hope to get that resolved in a week or so.

So we're doing that, seeing what they have to offer, and then moving on to looking at procedural changes. And I will say that Senator Mansion in the past has said he's open to the standing filibuster. And that would mean that the other side would actually have to be there, at least 40 of them, and speak the entire time like they used to in the old days, which would be a great improvement if they're going to put themselves in the way of legislation that in many of the provisions supported by 70, 80% of the people of this country, that's what they're up against. And so that's one way to do it.

You mentioned a carve out, another way to do it. And so we are just literally, we could not get anywhere if we didn't have the agreement on the substance. I got to tell you, maybe we minimized that before because we voted to allow debate on the bill and he did. But we really wanted to have airtight agreement on the substance. And we got that done, and in a way, that's very important. And by the way, he participated in those meetings as a former Secretary of State through the entire summer.

We must have 10, 15, I mean, over Zoom, in person, and he was there every single time and met with the Civil Rights Group. So let's hope that we can get some more support for the bill. If we can't, then we have to look at the procedural changes. But I am so devoted to this, it is becoming clearer and clear every day that we're not going to be able to move forward as a democracy if we don't protect the freedom to vote. What's been what happened in Georgia and Texas, they're trying all over the country. Yeah. And the part that I'm most concerned about is partisan gerrymanders, because Republicans will have the ability to effectively legislate Democrats

out of government and we can lose the house for a decade, which of course means zero legislation on climate change, for example, which, you know, is due or die for us right now. And that's not to mention abortion rights, health care, and on and on. After the Texas abortion decision, exactly. And And, you know, so this we put standards in place. Like you can't have partisan gerrymandering and went through that instead of managing exactly what the commissions would look like. And we actually, that was a broad agreement that that was a better way to go. But it would, it would solve the problem you're talking about. And it's also, by the way, when you raise climate change, immigration reform, it's another reason I want to abolish the filibuster.

Now, while you were crafting this bill, was the gravity of this situation, you know, especially the idea of being legislated out of the House for the next decade, was the gravity of that understood by everyone? Like, this is effectively our last chance to ensure the Democrats have any shot of a majority in Congress for the next decade? I really think it was, and it was one of the reasons that we did the field hearing in Georgia, for instance. So we could directly hear we, Senator Merckley, who led the Four of the People bill. He and I, just this week, did a hearing via Zoom remotely in Oregon. I went to Wisconsin with Tammy Baldwin. And by the way, heard about their law that luckily they have a Democratic governor that vetoed it. They would have allowed the

Republican legislature voted for only one drop box for ballots in the entire city of Milwaukee. And he had to veto that. And that's the place where people had stood in homemade masks and garbage bags in the rain just waiting to exercise the right to vote. So this is a plan. You know, when most parties lose elections, they reevaluate, right? They say, okay, should we change our candidates? Should we change our policies? Should we change our messages? That's gone on on both sides of the aisle for a long time. This time, sadly, the Republican Party, Donald Trump, still out there, decided, no, we're just going to try to change our voters. And because so many people voted in the last election in the middle of a public health crisis. And so that is not

democracy, and that's the case that we have to make. Yeah, well, you know, I, I interviewed Chuck Schumer a few weeks back, and on voting rights, he said failure isn't an option, which stuck with me, if for no reason other than, you know. It is a very memorable line. I repeated it myself. I heard it from him, too. You know, and we need some shred of hope to desperately cling to. So if, if that line is going to be that for us, then so be it. It's that, but it's also the substance. I mean, we have a really strong belt that we have a uniform agreement and agreement. agreement with our house colleagues and all kinds of things. So we really work this. I guess my question is, is failure an option here? And if we don't get a carve out for the

filibuster or some change to the filibuster, are there any other tools in our toolkit that we can deploy here? You know, they're just not the same. Oh, oh, okay, there is one that's good. That's the John Lewis bill. And Lisa Murkowski at least has signaled an interest in that. But the idea of the John Lewis bill is very important. It's just a different way of doing it. And what it would be would be that if you have a state that's proven to have had instances of discrimination, the Justice Department have to pre-clear or approve changes they make to their election laws. That's good. The problem is it's only moving forward, right? All this other stuff stays in place. And that's why both of them are important to do at the same time. The next thing would be funding

for elections and the like, tying into some requirements. You know, we've done some of that before, but it's not going to get us to where we need to do. I think it's important. I actually tried to do some of it with the reconciliation bill. But it's not going to be the standards that we need in place. So you've been heavily involved in getting a provision for Medicare drug price negotiation into the reconciliation bill. Can you just give a brief overview comparing the US to the rest of the world when it comes

to prescription drug prices? And what would be your message to those Democrats? You know, we've had a few Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee who actually blocked prescription drug price negotiation from passing. So what's your message to these Democrats who are presenting themselves as obstacles to this? This is our moment. And drug prices right now in the U.S., there's no country that pays more. That is absurd and should make everyone so angry. Why? It's our taxpayers that have invested in a bunch of the research. And right now you've got situations where, like, Lyrica, that nerve pain drug, it's gone up nearly 50% in five years,

Canada, for many drugs, they're two to three times less expensive than they are in the U.S. And so one solution, and I know for some of your younger viewers are like Medicare, but Medicare, 46 million customers in that program of seniors. And if we allow Medicare to negotiate prices, right now we allow the VA to do it, and that's good for veterans. We've got to keep that in place. But there is a ban on seniors negotiating. So Medicare can't negotiate.

the prices are set with the drug companies. We want to allow negotiation to get the prices down. That actually helps everyone, not just your grandma, not just your mom. It helps everyone because that is the biggest block. And if we bring those drug prices down, it'll help students afford insulin. It'll help kids get their epipans. And so that's why we're so focused on this. Something Bernie Sanders and I have been working on together for a long time,

including bringing in less expensive drugs from other countries. And I lead the major bill on Medicare negotiation in the Senate. And it brings in, at least one version of the bill, brings in over $500 billion. So this isn't one of those things where we're spending money. We can use this money to pay for other things. And also it helps individual customers with their co-pay and the like. And so that's the case that I'm making on the facts.

Over 90% of the public is with me. Yeah. Over 90% of Democrats and Republicans. So these arguments that they are making are wrong. The people know it. And I am making my case. This is it. Let's get it in this bill, what we call reconciliation,

which is all about bringing costs down, child care, housing, school, and let's do it finally for prescription drugs. Senator Klobuchar, thank you so much for joining. It's always great talking to you. Thank you. It's great to be on. Thanks again to Amy Klobuchar.

Now we've got two former congressional candidates and now the co-founders of Ground Game, Texas, Julie Oliver and Mike Segal. Thank you both for coming on. Thank you for having us today. So first off, let's start with this. What is Ground Game, Texas? One of the things that Mike and I collectively brought out of our campaigns was a volunteer network, a donor network, lots of infrastructure and lots of organizing. And we really do need year-round voter engagement in Texas. and what we found that there are some really important issues, very popular issues that outperformed

Biden last year when they shared ballot space with them, minimum wage increases, Medicaid expansion, and marijuana decriminalization. We call it workers' wages and weed, and we want to organize voters around these popular issues in the hopes of not only having some criminal justice reform on the ballot, but also in the hopes of getting at least 100,000 voters. out to vote who may not have been considering voting next year. That's awesome. So how do you connect those issues to the candidates? Because we saw in Florida that that didn't work for the Democratic Party, like the $15 minimum wage

won by more than 60% in that state. And yet 13% of those people who supported that Democratic policy position voted against the party that's actually pushing for it. Well, Brian, I think the key to our strategy that differentiates it is that we're going city by city. Now, part of that is because of necessity. In Texas, you're not allowed to have a statewide ballot measure. I mean, the Texas legislature itself can put something on the ballot, but there's no direct democracy tactic available. So what we're doing is going city by city. And the idea is that you put an issue on the ballot, and first, before it's on the ballot, you have this organizing

drive to gather the signatures. And in the process, you steer candidates to take a sand. And if they are in favor of a minimum wage increase, then this effort, this independent effort that we're leading will boost their candidacy. If they're against it, we're going to be getting out a lot of votes that are on the other side. And so what we're testing here is how popular ballot measures on issues like jobs, raising the minimum wage for local hiring and decriminalizing marijuana and stopping marijuana enforcement, how those can not only increase turnout, but also boosts in particular progressive candidates who are on the same side as we are. Now, what percent of the people that that you've registered were non-voters in 2018 or 2020. And what percent of those people

might have been Republicans in those previous elections who are now, you know, educated as a result of this outreach for Democrats? Well, it's interesting. You know, registered a vote as an initiative began in 2018. And it was a way to identify voters. So virtually, the majority of the registrations were people who were already registered to vote, but they moved. And they moved. and never updated their voter registration at their current address. And in Texas, you can be in for quite a surprise on Election Day because we don't have same-day registration. So if you move from, let's say, Dallas County to Travis County, where I live here in Austin,

and you haven't updated your voter registration for your current address, and you're honest with an election official, you are not going to be able to vote effectively. And you'll cast a provisional ballot, but when they see that you're not living at your registered address, the majority of your votes will be tossed out. One of the collateral benefits of this is finding a lot of people who are not registered at their current address or registered at all. And so we are going to be helping them get registered. And the majority of the folks signing our signatures are under the age of 35, which is really exciting. And by the way, this is this is by design, right? Like we know that in Texas there's an influx of people coming, not only just regular

people moving from one address to another within the state, but there's an influx of people coming from other states coming from places like California, places where there might be more liberal or democratic voters. And so, you know, by making it more difficult, by making it so that there isn't same-day voter registration, you know, this is just kind of a way for the Republican party by not expanding access to kind of entrench their own power in the state. No, certainly. I mean, in particular, the voter suppression tactics are designed to suppress the votes of poor people, right? People who do change addresses more frequently. People who can't get off to vote on election day. People might have harder time, you know, getting the specific ID that's

required under the Texas voter ID laws. And so voter suppression is a big part of what we're fighting here with ground game. I guess it was President Biden who said, well, we're going to have to out-organize voter suppression. And that's an uncomfortable frame for us to deal with. But that is the context we're in now. And what we think about this tactic of petitioning, going out and getting signatures. And Julie mentioned that a huge number of the people who are signing this petition. For example, in Austin, on a measure that would decriminalize marijuana, basically stop arrests and tickets for low-level marijuana fences. We've gathered about 30,000 signatures to date. And these are predominantly young people. These are, I think, over 60% of the people

who have signed so far are under 35. And these are people who are not frequent voters. And if we can get them out, by and large, these are likely to be progressive voters, Democratic voters. But the other thing we're finding is that one in three people who sign our petition is not currently registered to vote in the city of Austin. A lot of them are registered to vote elsewhere. So we've developed a secondary program that kind of builds off the petition drive, which is going to go get these 10,000 people, or hopefully a significant chunk of them, registered in advance of the next election.

So not only are we pushing this progressive policy reform, for example, marijuana decriminalization, not only are we engaging young people and getting them out to vote, but we're also adding voters to the roles and engaging people where they are because the people that we are getting to sign these petitions, we're finding them at concerts, at the parks, outside pools in the summer. These are not people that attend, say, a voting rights rally at the Texas Capitol with Beto O'Rourke. These are not people that are voting every election no matter what. But now we have their phone numbers and their e-dress and their email addresses and we have another way to get them out to vote. So we're very optimistic that this is going to be a tactic. Now, we're not saying

where the end-all be-all, you know, Julie and I aren't pretending to be the Stacey Abrams's of Texas. But this is one additional tool in the toolkit that combined with the other efforts of major Texas organizations, there's folks like Texas Organizing Project Move Texas and others who are doing great work. We feel like all of this together could combine to really creating this blue wave that so many of us want to see in Texas. Now, has the abortion ban that was just upheld by the Supreme Court, has that mobilized voters beyond your traditional messaging in Texas? I would say absolutely, yes. There's a, there's a real anger and disappointment and resentment. And I would say it crosses the political

spectrum. I remind people, and because I think this is important to know, that when our governor ran for governor reelection in 2018, he only won with essentially 9.2% of the vote of registered voters in Texas. He won 9.2% in his primary. He went on to win the general. He is catering to a super minority of ideology here in Texas. And I think that this is going to really harm his chances of re-election in 2022 next year. And I'm not sure that they thought that the Supreme Court wasn't going to at least delay enforcement. And of course, they didn't. They sidestep the issue. And now it's in the purview of the Justice Department that is suing the state of Texas. You know, this flies in the face of what has been constitutional law for 50 years. It crosses the political aisle.

It crosses, you know, the gender spectrum. People are really, really upset that our constitutional right was effectively taken away from us when Greg Abbott signed that law. Well, you know, I'm curious about how Republicans are responding to this. And I know it's early, but do you have any indication of how those on the right are reacting, you know, because this is an issue that 70% of Americans agree with in terms of keeping row, and that includes 68% of Catholics. So, you know, this isn't your regular litmus test issue, wedge issue on the right and left. This is something that a majority on both parties support, and that was, you know, taken away by by virtue of the Texas legislature passing this law and the Supreme Court upholding it. No, you're right, Brian. And I think

Greg Abbott is caught in a pickle of sorts because I don't think the Republicans actually believe they were going to win this one. The dilemma for the Republican leadership is on one hand, Greg Abbott is pandering to the most hardcore elements of the Republican base, the folks who actually vote in Republican primaries. And in some ways in Texas, we're beholden to Republican primary voters because basically once the Republican gets on the statewide ballot, there's enough additional Republicans compared to Democrats that they almost automatically win. And so on one hand, Abbott is just trying to, you know, kiss up to these folks, whether it's on abortion, whether it's on these mask and vaccine issues, on so many different issues, they're catering to this

hardcore base. But on the other hand, like you say, abortion access, abortion rights is something that a strong majority of Texan support across political parties. But what I'm hopeful is the different issues that have piled up in the last year and a half in Texas. You know, first, last February, it was this terrible freeze that was basically caused by the deregulated energy grid. that we have here in Texas. You know, then it's these attacks on voting rights. Then it's the attack on access to reproductive health. And then it's this school mask issue.

There's 80 school districts in Texas, including some in conservative areas, that are currently defined the governor saying, you know what, you have this statewide order that says no mask policies. Well, we need to save our kids' lives. We're going to have a mask policy anyway. I'm hopeful that all of these things together are going to add up to a real grassroots rebellion next year in the election. Well, with that said, how can we help?

We are a nonprofit, so we do rely on the generosity of donors. And, you know, our operation is lean, but it requires manpower. And, you know, we're finishing up our signature efforts here in our home city of Austin, but moving on to two other South Texas cities. We know South Texas is vitally important to the progressive base in Texas. And then moving to about 12 cities next year to, again, expand the electorate, pull people in to these ballot initiatives on popular issues so that they will turn out to vote and hopefully vote record numbers in November of 2022.

Then we need manpower. So if folks want to volunteer, they can sign up on our website. They can donate on our website. But if you go to groundgame, Texas.org, you can do both. Well, thank you again, Brian, for having us. I really love your show. I mean, to give your listeners a sense, for a $25 donation, we can have a very well-trained canvester, work for an hour, collect at least 10 signatures. And these are likely going to be

young people we can get out to vote. Three of those signatures are likely to be unregistered voters so we can then register and add to the roles. And so we are kind of developing this very strategic database that will help propel democratic causes around the state of Texas. And we're hoping that if we're on the ballot in 12 cities next November, that we're going to add 100,000 votes statewide. And we're going to help elect progressive representatives, whether it's city council, school board, county office, state house, and even statewide. So we're hoping that we're going to continue to snowball this effort and to join with other organizations to build a real movement for change in Texas. Awesome. Well, we'll have a link to Ground Game, Texas, and the show notes here.

Julie and Mike, thank you so much for coming on and for all of the work that you're doing down in Texas. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Brian. Thanks again to Julie and Mike. 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.