No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - The Democrats' takeaway from the Big Beautiful Bill

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

The Democrats can take away from one main lesson from passage of the Big Beautiful Bill. Brian interviews Congressman Jamie Raskin about what made the conservative holdouts fold; Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor about the consequences for Republicans; and election analyst Kyle Kondik about what the landscape looks like for 2026 and beyond.Shop 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 the main message Democrats can take from the passage of Trump's one big beautiful bill. And I've got three interviews. I speak with Congressman Jamie Raskin about what made the conservative holdouts fold. Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vitor about the consequences for Republicans and election analyst Kyle Condick about what the landscape looks like for 2026 and beyond. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. So this whole episode with the Big Beautiful Bill these last few months culminating into this past week has made me think. about power, how the Democrats often refuse to wield it, and how the Republicans often refuse to limit their abuse of it. When the Democrats had full control of government in 2021, we had our own BBB, the Build Back Better Act, that we tried to pass with a razor-thin majority. And it had all

the big Democratic priorities. It had climate funding, child care, universal preschool, child tax credit, paid family leave, Medicare expansion, ACA subsidies, caps to out-of-pocket health care costs, all paid for by imposing a 5% tax on individual. individual incomes in excess of $10 million, and an additional 3% tax on those over $25 million, along with a 15% minimum corporate tax on businesses with profits in excess of a billion dollars, a grab bag of pie in the sky Democratic priorities. And we ultimately couldn't get Joe Manchin on board, and the bill stalled in the Senate and ultimately died. And along with it, Democrats' hopes of ushering through a massive legislative reform. Cut to present day,

Republicans introduced their own BBB, the Big Beautiful Bill, and that was the foil to the Democratic BBB. This was a grab bag of Republican priorities. They cut health care for 17 million Americans, food assistance for 3 million Americans, eliminated school meal access for 18 million kids, substantially raised health care premiums for seniors with ACA coverage, sent energy costs soaring, and added nearly $4 trillion to the debt, all to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and fund ICE to such a degree that if this was a military. It would be the 16th best-funded military on earth, more than Israel, Italy, and Brazil. Republicans, too, had raised within majorities like the Democrats did in 2021, but despite the fact

that you have Freedom Caucus members whose entire identity is predicated on reducing the debt, they voted for it. Despite the fact that you have frontline members who are going to bear the brunt of this aggressively unpopular bill in their House races, they voted for it. Despite the fact that you have members who represent districts with insanely high proportions of constituents on Medicaid that will get decimated by this bill's cuts, they voted for it. And sure, there were a few defections. There always are, but they always managed to get just enough to pass the bill, even if it's by a single vote.

The point is that even with majorities and legislation that's popular, the Democrats always seem to be like a vote away from getting it done. And yet the Republicans have legislation that could quite literally not be less popular. One poll, KFF, had this bill at net negative 29. support, they always manage to get it passed. The unfortunate truth is that Republicans are much better at wielding power than Democrats. The even more unfortunate truth is that Republicans will also abuse that power, refuse to accept any limits to that power, and even see that power as completely unchecked. The reality is that if we want to be able to compete against modern

day Republicans, we have to be able to fight like them, because this is it. This is who our opposition is. Insofar as I have any influence at all, my entire goal for the next 15 months, is to support Democrats who can fight. And they'll be on both ends of the ideological spectrum because the often inconvenient reality is that part of being in a big tent party is that we have to accept that it is a big tent. AOC is not going to win in Jared Golden's district

and he's not going to win in hers. And that's okay. Not everything has to be a purity test. Not everybody has to be 100% aligned with every position that we have. Not everything has to be an intra-party feud and not everything has to devolve into progressive versus centrist.

If we get to a point where, you know, God willing, we can debate Medicare for all again, then let's have that fight. But right now, we should be focused solely on defeating Republicans, the party that just took health care away from 17 million Americans. I legitimately do not care

which end of the ideological spectrum you fall on. If you can fight back against these people, if you can use every lever at your disposal against these people, if you can use your voice and rally thousands or tens of thousands of people, against those people, then I'll support you. I want AOC and Bernie pushing the party to the left. I want Marie Gluson-Camp-Perez and Jared Golden stealing seats away from Republicans and making their case to their voters. That's not our weakness. It is our strength. It'll take a little more

tolerance on our side to make it happen, but we have to make it happen because the alternative is a political party that has no long-standing principles other than a relentless, rabid pursuit of power, and worse, and understanding that politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. That's where we need to get and fast, because what they're doing with their power is killing people, killing this country, and killing our future. The pendulum is going to swing back. You'll see it in Virginia and New Jersey in November, and then midterms in 2026. Our job, though, is to make sure that A, it swings back as far as possible, and B, that when

it does, we are prepared to actually take advantage, that we're prepared to fight. and that we're prepared to wield power effectively enough that voters will see the virtue in actually giving it to Democrats moving forward. Next up are my interviews with Jamie Raskin, Tommy Vitor, and Kyle Condick. No Lie is brought to you by Strawberry.Me. We spend, what, about a third of our waking hours working, and yet so many people feel stuck in jobs that they've outgrown or never really wanted in the first place.

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I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Raskin. Congressman, thanks for joining. It's totally my pleasure to be with you, Brian. The first thing that I want to ask you about is I'm so sorry to have to drag you into the usual bullshit that Donald Trump, Donald Trump mires himself in. But I'm going to put the post from Truth Social on the screen. Representative Jamie Raskin, a third-rate Democrat politician, has no idea what is in our fantastic tax cut bill, nor would he understand it if he did. This dope has been consistently losing to me for years, and I love watching his ugly face. as he is forced to consistently concede defeat to Trump,

and tonight should be another of those nights. Raskin is a bad politician and a total loser. Congressman, your reaction to that screed. First of all, what set him off, Brian, was that I said he clearly didn't know what was in his own bill. And the reason I said that was because when the Republicans went over to the White House, he lectured them on how they should never touch Medicaid or Medicare. And there were Republicans in the audience who had to say to him,

Mr. President, you understand that we're slashing nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid, right? And so I said not in any kind of accusatory way, but just as a matter of fact, that he doesn't know what's in the bill. And yet all the Republicans are following him. So who's actually calling the shots here? And that's apparently what set him off. Some of parts of that are truly comedic. I mean, when he calls me a loser, first of all, I hate to bring it up, but I've never lost an election. He lost the popular vote in two presidential elections.

He's the only president who's ever been in that situation. And he was so incensed about losing the election to Joe Biden in 2020 by more than seven million votes that he incited a violent insurrection against the Congress and the Constitution and his own vice president, Mike Pence, if you remember him. I mean, that's what a loser does, right? That's what a sore loser does. So, you know, it didn't make me happy that. He called me ugly, but I guess that puts me in the same company as, you know, Zorn Mundani and Bruce Springsteen and about 50 beautiful actresses who he hates.

But he doesn't understand that, first of all, grownups really don't call other people ugly based on their appearances. His big, beautiful bill, is terribly ugly, and I think he's upset that people have been calling it ugly all week. And it's ugly because it's stealing 17 million people's health insurance right out from beneath them. And attacking the lunch money, the nutritional benefits of tens of millions of Americans. That's truly ugly. And, you know, that's what we've got to be focused on here. There were about a dozen Republicans in the House yesterday on Wednesday that, that, had come out and kind of defiantly suggested that they weren't going to vote for this bill.

And of course, by, you know, what was it, two, three o'clock in the morning, everybody had fallen in line. What was it, in your opinion, that ultimately got these people from nose to yeses? I mean, if you look at it historically, because I've been around the track with these people on big bills like this, for example, the last time that they passed this, you know, terrible tax break for billionaires. and rip off everybody else. It's just predictable that it's going to happen. The White House and Donald Trump just have too much power. And so they're able both to offer inducements to people.

We will get you campaign appearances, fundraising, and money. You know, back in the old days, Elon Musk will spend tons of money on your behalf. And they have too many sticks. That is, Elon Musk will spend against you. The president will tweet against you. the president will endorse your primary opponents. So just structurally, it's kind of built in that it's going to happen, which is why there have been Republicans in this process who've said,

I can't take it anymore. I'm not going to be part of this savage attack on people's health care, like Tom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina. But then he announces he's leaving politics because he doesn't want, you know, to go up against Trump's person. There are a handful like that. But basically, you know, they cave in. and they buckle under, some of them try to get something in the process, at least their picture

going over to the White House. But, you know, Senator Mikalski from Alaska was the one who said, well, you know, this bill is so horrific. There's nothing she can do to stop it nationally. I don't know why. I mean, she could have voted no, but she said, I'm going to just extract whatever I can for Alaska. Right. And even though, even what she was able to extract was, was crumbs compared to the, to the damage that she would, that this bill would wrought onto the people of Alaska. So it's, it's so bizarre to me to say, okay, well, at least I was able to offset some of the damage when you yourself also voted for the damage. Like, there's another option. It's just to not to vote, not vote for the bill, but apparently to stop it.

And this is something that Hakeem Jeffries has been pointing out with really, you know, powerful effect on the floor where he's saying, you know, all of these. Republicans from moderate districts were signing letters to the Senate, please change this and please take that and they're trying to show, we really support Medicaid and our constituents are in trouble. Take that out. And he's saying, wait a second, this passed by one vote in the U.S. House. Had you not voted for it, you would have been able to achieve your objective of saving people from these savage Medicaid cuts. Right. To that point, this idea that all of these people have ultimately caved, except for, you know, a few folks like Tom Tillis who, who didn't, but then also

had to announce his, his intention not to seek re-election. Republican lawmaker Derek Van Orden came out and said, the president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, okay? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites. Derek Van Orden, of course, would ultimately go on to vote for the bill. And he even posted on to Twitter, I'm standing with real Donald Trump and the OBBB, the one big beautiful bill. Once again, we have some pretendacons backstabbing President Trump, no bueno. So that was his tweet right after trying to suggest that they aren't little bitches, his words, for Donald Trump. So can I have your reaction to that? Well, they're trying to resurrect some integrity from a

process that has completely demolished any public reputation or integrity they have because they're willing to go with whatever Donald Trump tells them to support. I mean, if he's for tariffs, then they're for tariffs. If he's against tariffs, they're against tariffs. They will do whatever he tells them to do. So he says, oh, no, it's not that we're following orders from our cult leader. We would have gotten there anyway. This is precisely the bill we would have written, you know, which is appalling and ridiculous

because, you know, so many of them are saying, please save me. like, you know, the guy from California, David Valadeo, he's got more Medicaid recipients in his district than any other member of Congress. And he's writing all of these beseeching letters to people in the Senate saying, please take out these Medicaid provisions, please save us. And yet he voted for it in the House. Right. Because they all just line up like Lemmings and walk the plank for Donald Trump.

Can you speak about the implications for ICE here? There are, there's a lot of data going around showing that this would make ISIS budget bigger than the militaries of some major, major countries in the world, like Brazil and Israel. So can you talk about what this would mean now that ICE would have a bigger budget than, again, some of these massive militaries in other countries? Well, I mean, let's start with looking at it, not as a military exercise, but law enforcement. They are draining all kinds of law enforcement resources away from other levels of government. Talk about defunding the police. I mean, they cut out billions of dollars that was going to.

local law enforcement and you know rape and sexual assault survivor community organizations so on all of that is pulled away and it's put into ice same thing with money for the fbi money for the DEA all of that being pulled away and put into the ice budget so we'd never see anything like that and it does undermine law enforcement in other areas and that's so almost certainly what it's intended to do from the perspective of protecting us against maligned foreign actors like Vladimir Putin and China and North Korea that try to interfere in our elections and that try to trample the American national security and cybersecurity systems. But they started pulling the plug on that on day one. And the same thing with any efforts to target hate crimes and white supremacist extremist activity. They pulled the plug on that funding, and again, put it all into immigration. But it is scary from the perspective of militarizing the immigration function. It's just never been seen that way in America, which, of course, is a nation of immigrants

except for descendants of enslaved people and Native Americans. And yet they basically want to polarize society and militarize the offensive against immigrants right now. And finally, let's finish off with this. There was a report this morning from a clinic in Southwest Nebraska and Curtis Nebraska that announced that it would be closing down in anticipation of the Medicaid cuts. The CEO of the Medical Center came out and said, unfortunately, the current financial environment driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services,

many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years. That was Troy Bruntz in a state. today from Community Hospital. Can I have your reaction to the fact that even in anticipation of these cuts, cuts that, by the way, Republicans keep swearing up and down don't exist, we're seeing hospital closures already? It's estimated that we're going to lose somewhere between three to 400 disproportionately rural hospitals, but not exclusively rural hospitals.

There are urban hospitals which are equally dependent on Medicaid funding and other kinds of health care funds that will be cut. uh we're going to see the closure of community health centers and yeah it's going to be rampant across the country that's been very clear from the beginning because a lot of these rural hospitals are overwhelmingly dependent on uh medicaid funds to go in and that's why a lot of these rural district house republicans are freaking out because uh they they just lined up like good little soldiers behind uh donald trump and then they were begging the senate to pull them out of it and And it was too late.

You know, they're in for a dime. They're in for a dollar. And basically, they're being told by their, you know, Republican leaders, look, we'll find you the money you need for your campaign. And if you lose, we'll find you a lobbyist job. But you can't back out on us now. Otherwise, you know, you're just going to be completely shunned and expelled by the Republican party.

It operates like a cult. Yeah. Well, Congressman, I appreciate you fighting back against this and for your time today. Thank you, Brian. Hang tough. And please stay tuned. All right. No Lie is brought to you by Armour Colostrum.

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better performance and faster recovery. Colostrum bioactives have also been shown to reactivate hair follicle stem cells and activate collagen production, promoting hair growth and enhancing skin radiance. We've worked out a special offer from my audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armora.com slash BTC or enter BTC to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A.com slash BTC. I'm joined now by the co-host of POTSave America and Pod Save the world and the former National Security Council spokesman for President Obama, Tommy Vitor. Tommy, thanks for joining me. Brian, good to see you. So I want to talk about the consequences of this bill that was just passed by the Republican Senate and the Republican House. Already we have

seen, even before the passage of this bill, for example, one community health care center in Southwest Nebraska shut down, the CEO of that hospital, community hospital came out and said, unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services. And so we're already seeing an instance where one hospital is shutting down just in anticipation of this bill. And so in terms of the broader consequences, is this a situation where you think that Republicans are going to be able to skate by in very much the same way that they've been able to skate by with unpopular legislation in the past because of how quickly the news cycle is,

because of how they can obfuscate the reality surrounding it? Or do you think it's going to be impossible for them to escape the reality of this thing? I mean, I think it's our job to make sure they cannot. I mean, I was pretty frustrated yesterday to see how much, like, the cable news channels were focused on the Diddy Trial and then this murder case in Idaho. There was not a ton of coverage of the big, beautiful bill going through Congress yesterday. And so that's where I think, like, independent media outlets like you and, like, us over at Pod Save America are going to be critical. And also just the Democratic Party, like talking about this every single day until the midterm elections. Because to your point, I mean, that example you just raised, the Kaiser Family Foundation did a bunch

of polling on the bill and support for it dropped to 21% when voters were informed that it could decrease funding for local hospitals and lead to them shutting down. So if people hear that story, this is politically devastating. And that goes, that could get us beyond just sort of the 35 core targets the DCC currently has. Hopefully we can expand that. Do you think that we're, I mean, look, we're in a political environment where we do have short attention spans and we do have short memories. I mean, I was thinking yesterday about the fact that that when, when Roe was overturned, it felt like such a massive blow. And it was, but, you know, the next presidential cycle saw Republicans gain full control of government. And this is an immediate environment where

not only are there not major consequences, but you can actually get rewarded for doing the worst, most depraved things. And that's what we're seeing right now. And so do you think that we are too far away? And I know we have agency in this, but is there some concern that we're far away? we have over a year until the next election, and while this might be very much in the zeitgeist right now, that they can kind of escape by virtue of the amount of time that's going to pass. Yeah, look, I do worry a lot about that. I mean, you never know what could happen.

There could be some sort of exigent event, you know, sort of a terrorist attack. Right. I mean, look, in January of 2020, nobody thought that 60 days from then we would be in the midst of a global pandemic. So you never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to happen. Donald Trump always likes to fabricate like the latest caravan full of, you know, know MS-13 guys who have Ebola or whatever right around an election. So they're going to try

to change the subject to what they want. It's just incumbent on us to remind people what a piece of shit this bill is, right? Like $6 trillion in debt, according to the conservative Cato Foundation. Massive tax cuts for the richest people in the country. Throwing 12 million people off of Medicaid. I mean, this is like a cataclysmic event politically. It's going to harm real people. People are going to die. Like 50,000 people a year are going to die because of this bill. And we need to be the ones who tell those stories. Republicans will lie and spin and Trump will say, oh, no, I said no Medicaid cuts and there's none in this bill and just people are completely full of shit. We need to correct that. What is the polling showing right now in terms of how

much people actually know about what's in this bill? Just in terms of knowing how much work we have to do to get people aware of what's happening. Yeah, so like in polls that look at approval of the bill, it ranges from 19 points underwater to 29 points underwater. So it's wildly unpopular. But Priorities USA did some polling that found less than half of Americans know anything about the bill. And only 8% of Americans could name Medicaid cuts as a detail of the bill they have heard about. So the most unpopular part of this thing is barely talked about. Right. And I think that it's incumbent on us then every opportunity we have to let people know that, yes, there are 17 million people are going to lose their health coverage through Medicaid. 18 million kids are going to lose

their access to school meals. We have food assistance is going to be stripped away to the tune of $300 billion. We're going to see 300 rural hospitals close, including the one that I just referred to before. We're going to see the budget explode to the tune of, you know, it depends on the estimates, but the one that you just cited before was $6 trillion. That's in addition to the $8 trillion that Republicans exploded the deficit during Trump's first term for the exact same thing for these tax cuts. And it would blow up ICE's budget. to the tune of, I think it would be the sixth, if ICE was a military, they would have the 16th largest budget on Earth. It's terrifying.

They have a bigger budget than the militaries of a good portion of Western Europe, including countries like Brazil, Israel, Italy. And so that's what this bill does. And I think to your exact point, it's incumbent on us to make sure that people know it. But they have, I think one of the more insidious aspects of this is that they have included crumbs in this bill to be able to give themselves, messaging opportunities. And so they'll be able, they're, they're touting this idea that there's no taxes on overtime, no taxes on tip, and no taxes on Social Security. First of all, no taxes on Social Security does not exist. It is a figment of the Republicans' imagination. Fully made up is not in the bill. If anybody can find me that text, I would love to see it. And then as far as

no taxes on tip and no taxes on overtime, those are, those are minute provisions that are capped at $25,000 for tips and $12,500 for overtime. So these are still poverty wages that they're that they're allowing before they start taxing again. And the provision sunsets in two years. So it's just enough time to, while Trump is still in office, that he can beat his chest about that. The second he's out of office, those things go away. And look, if they likely know full well that if a Democrat, first of all, is allowed to win in the 2028 election cycle, But if a Democrat wins, then all of a sudden, even the minute, popular provisions of this bill go away so that Republicans can say, hey, weren't things better when Daddy Trump was in office and you had all these provisions? The daddy Trump stuff is so weird, man. Why are they doing that? Yeah, I mean, look, to your point, I mean, the people who are getting a tiny, tiny little tax cut on tips for their first $25,000 in income, they're very likely going to be losing benefits in the form of Medicaid or food assistance, right?

So those people are probably going to get harmed more than they get helped. Meanwhile, a married couple worth $30 million will no longer have to pay in estate tax. They'll just pass all that money down to their kids. So those are the people that are actually benefiting. But the other thing that's helpful here, Brian, is like there are district-by-district breakdowns of the impact of this bill already. Like David Valadeo, California 22nd District, 65,000 people in his district are going to lose access to their health care. 60,000 could lose access to food assistance. $3,612 energy jobs could be lost because it also guts tax credits for renewable energy.

So the impact is real. Yeah. And it's in these districts where, I mean, these frontline members, many of whom have predicated their entire identity on protecting those with Medicaid recipients, on making sure that the budget isn't exploded. These are the very people who ushered through this same bill. I mean, you have people like Lisa Murkowski who are trying to applaud the fact that she was able to make this bill less terrible by saying, okay, well, we were able to raise the rural hospital funds from $25 billion to $50 billion, but it's to offset damage that the same bill imposes. And so like if you're voting in favor of legislation that would strip $1.1

billion from Medicaid, but then also saying like, hey, we're able to get like a few percentage points of that funding back, you don't get credit for making the thing that you are voting for less bad when you had the opportunity to just not vote for it. I mean, the example I like to use is like, this is the equivalent of her basically saying, I was able to secure fire extinguishers in this bill that would set the forest on fire. She, like, did you see the video of her? I think she got asked by, like, Ryan Noble's, maybe NBC News about criticism of the bill and criticism of her vote.

And she just stared daggers into this. For 10 seconds. Like, 14 seconds. Just crazy. And then, and then was just like so defensive, like, she is the victim here. Right. Not the people in her state who are going to get thrown off their health. care. We're going to lose food assistance.

And I think the saddest part is, I'm going to read an excerpt from the New York Times. And this is, you'll be shocked about this, but this is Lindsey Graham speaking about Donald Trump. He likes hosting people. It relaxes him. He said that Mr. Trump told him he could go to the pro shop and pick out a shirt. So, like, this is who these people have debased themselves for. This is who they're occurring favor for. This is who they're so fucking afraid of that they will throw their own constituents. millions of their own constituents under the bus. This is who they'll strip lifelines, essential lifelines away from

so that they can suck up to a guy who might give them a free fucking hat from the pro shop. Lindsay Graham, there was a profile of Lindsey Graham a couple years back by Mark Liebevich where he just talked about how desperate he was to be relevant. And it just explains everything about Graham. He is for whatever's

happening. When John McCain was potentially going to be president and he was best friends with John McCain. When Donald Trump came on the scene, now he abandoned McCain, now he was a Trump guy. He's one of the saddest, most pathetic people in all of politics. What does he get out of this? I guess he gets a hat and he gets to talk trumpet to starting a war with Iran. Oh, that was fun. Yeah. What's happening to Ukraine though? Oh, actually, they just cut off deliveries of incredibly important weapons systems like interceptor missiles, like the Patriot missiles, that block Ukrainian cities from getting destroyed by Russian ballistic missiles and drones.

We just cut that off. So Lindsey Graham, you were the big Ukraine guy. You're the big, you know, You're welcoming Zelensky to Washington, fighting for the Ukrainian military, pushing money their way. Now, Trump's cutting them off. Right. I mean, it's the same thing as Elon Musk, who's complaining about the impacts of this bill as far as clean energy and EV tax credits are concerned. Yeah, dude. Yeah, buddy. You got these people into power. You bankrolled this party.

You dropped 300 million. You have somebody like Lindsey Graham, who's doing the same thing, who's, you know, bolstering the profile and cowtowing to a guy who is acting in a way that is completely antithetical. to all of Lindsey Graham's purported values. And I think that that's the sad reality of what Trump has done to so many people. He has basically gotten them on record showing that they stand for nothing at the end of the day. You have the House Freedom Caucus who pretends that their whole thing, their whole raison d'etre to be in Congress, is that they want to make sure that we don't explode the deficit and balloon the debt

so that future generations of Americans are not saddled with bills that we can't pay off. And yet they ushered it through, certainly bigger than anything, those communists on the left like Barack Obama and Joe Biden were putting through. And now their names are all over the thing. So what do you stand for at the end of the day if it's not the very things that you are in Congress to do? Well, maybe the number one example is J.D. Vance, who cast the tying vote that got this bill passed by the U.S. Senate. This is a man who came up as some sort of populist working man's hero talking about Mima and Pee-Paw. and, you know, he had his book. And now he tweeted, the only thing that mattered in the bill was the money for ICE,

that everything else, including, quote, the minutia of Medicaid policy is immaterial. So I guess by minutia, he means throwing 10 to 12 million people off of Medicaid. That's what he's, that's minutia now. Right. There was a quote from Republican lawmaker Derek Van Orden. He said, I guess he was getting defensive because people were accusing the Republicans of, of just basically being a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump. And so, I don't know, which I don't know where anybody would get that idea.

But Derek Van Orden said, the president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, okay? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites. I want to tell you, like, one of his next tweets was, I am standing with real Donald Trump and the one big, beautiful bill. Once again, we have some pretendacons backstabbing President Trump, no bueno. Jesus, crazy.

He is one of a bunch of members of Congress who all said they would absolutely not, under any circumstances, vote for something that included Medicaid cuts. Cut, too. Here we are. Yeah. I think there were two people who voted against it. It was like Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Massey. That's it.

Everybody else was perfectly content. And so now that people are looking at this, what is your, you know, look, you work at Crooked Media, host Potsave American, Pot Save the World. What is your focus now as it relates to this bill as we, you know, know, head toward midterms here, which, again, are more than a year away. Yeah, I mean, I think the insidious thing about this bill is that a lot of the impact is going to be delayed until after the elections. And so we just have to make sure people understand what was voted on and what was coming. And it's pretty frustrating that this is getting rammed through July 4th weekend, you know,

the people were more focused on the ditty trial than they were on what was happening in Washington. So it's incumbent upon us. To the Democrats' credit, the fact that Hakeem Jeffries was able to stand on the floor and speak for almost nine hours meant that the Republicans could not vote on this bill at 4.30 in the morning. It meant that they had to vote on this bill, you know, in broad daylight. And that's, you know, one, I mean, hardly a silver lining, but at a bare minimum, it's what we should be doing. Look, I appreciate the hustle. Good for him. I couldn't talk for nine hours straight. I'm glad we're talking about this thing in the middle of the day and not the dead of night. But it's going to be

a long time between now and the midterms. And we have to talk about this every day constantly and make sure that all these front line members own this thing. Yeah. And one step that we all can take in terms of making sure that voices like Tommy's and your co-hosts at Pod Save America are elevated in this ecosystem is if you're not yet subscribed to Pod Save America's YouTube channel, I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. These are the voices that we need to lift up so that when people come onto YouTube, come on to these social media platforms, looking for information that they are not immediately sorted to right-wing sources. So again,

I'll put that link on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Tommy, appreciate your time. Thanks, buddy. I'm joined now by the managing editor of Sabado's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Kyle Condick, thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. So I want to talk to you a little bit about some changes that we've seen with how you and your team have begun raiding these races as we head toward midterms. I want to start first and foremost with what you think the implications might be for somebody like Lisa Murkowski, for example, who was this crucial vote for the passage of the one big, beautiful bill in the Senate. Of course, she's not up in this term, but just the implications for somebody like this

who will obviously have, you know, a major role in the passage of this bill. Murkowski, I think, even though she, basically, she won her last race and races in the past with substantial crossover support from independents and Democrats, I think she is still fundamentally Republican. she was elected as Republican. Last time she was at one point elected as an independent way back in 2010 after she had lost her primary. But fundamentally, she's a Republican. While she does break from the party on certain things, she did come through for them on this big vote. Now, it wasn't without some price tag. I mean, there were some, there are pieces of this bill that are designed

specifically for her. But that's not unheard of. You remember the sort of the horse trading about the Affordable Care Act in the 2009 and 2010 range. You know, there are little provisions put in there, maybe significant provisions put in there to appeal to, you know, individual, you know, members for their, you know, individual districts or states. So, so again, that's not necessarily unprecedented, even though, you know, you sort of take a step back. You're not, you're not jaded about this stuff the way that I am. And you say, oh, well, that's, that's pretty distasteful. But, you know, it is what it is. What about the environment in Alaska? We saw Mary Peltola win in Alaska. She's since lost, but still it shows that

Alaska may not be as far-right Republican, solidly Republican as we might have presumed in the past. Yeah, the state has changed a little bit in that the Republicans are not quite as strong as they used to be there, although Donald Trump did still win the state. But I think it was maybe 12, 13 points in 2024. His margin was only about 10 in 2020. And you have, you know, Lisa Murkowski there, who again, you know, provided an important vote on this and is going to vote. with the Republicans most of the time, but she does have kind of mavericky sorts of votes here and there. The state legislature, this is down in the weeds a little bit, but state legislature often has these sort of like cross-partisan coalitions that govern things. And so it's just kind of a

quirky state politically. The state does have an open governor's race coming up next year. Tel TOLA is a possibility to run for governor. And if she did, as a Democrat, that might actually be kind of a legitimate toss-up race. Again, even though Alaska definitely has a Republican lean to it. Okay, so let's talk about another big retirement announcement or announcement not to seek re-election, and that is Tom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina. What are you looking at in terms of that race as we had toward 2026? Because that seems to be the biggest pickup opportunity for Democrats. Yeah, we had started that race as a toss-up, and we kept it there after Tom Tillis retired.

You know, Tillis is, in some ways, kind of a generic Republican in terms of his electoral performance. He's won really narrow races in both 2014, defeating incumbent Democrat K. Hagan and then holding off Democrat Cal Cunningham by a little less than two points in 2020. Tillis did have a little bit of sort of residual Republican strength in suburban Raleigh and suburban Charlotte, which helped him do about, I think it was got four-tenths of a point better in terms of margin that Donald Trump did in 2020. But they were pretty, you know, their overall performances were pretty similar in 2020. And as an open seat, you know, naturally, I think for any party, you'd kind of rather be running for an open seat if you're the Challenger Party. You know, all eyes are on Democratic, former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has thought about running.

I think it'd probably be a pretty strong recruit for Democrats there. You know, the Republican side, there are any number of people who could run, you know, maybe the most prominent person is the person whose last name is Trump, Laura Trump, who was a co-chair of the RNC, she's a Trump's daughter. law, and presumably if she ran, she would have Trump's endorsement. And, you know, the thing that I'm just sort of curious about here is that a lot of Republicans seem to believe that, you know, they need to sort of be Trumpy, I guess, to try to get as much of the, you know, midterm turnout as they can without Trump on the ballot. Well, you might have an instance where you actually would have someone with the last name of Trump on the ballot in North Carolina, despite it, you know, despite it being a midterm year and not a presidential race. I do still think generally the turnout

environment should at least be a little bit better for Democrats kind of across the board than it was in 2024. In a state like North Carolina, which is very close to competitive, although, you know, has a little bit of a Republican lean, just a little bit better of a turnout environment could, you know, could take North Carolina from being like a 50 to 48 Republican state to more of a 50-51, and then we'll see what the candidate contrast ends up being. But, you know, if Cooper doesn't run, if Laura Trump doesn't run, you know, you might have actually big competitive primaries on both sides, hypothetically. If we do see a Roy Cooper, who again, to your exact point, would likely be the strongest, at least as of right now, the strongest Democratic recruit, and Laura Trump on the

Republican side, is there any polling yet to suggest how that race would turn out? There hasn't been anything yet. North Carolina is a state that has just, it's polled pretty often. There are a lot of university polls of that state. Obviously, North Carolina has been a presidential battleground in recent years, so there's been some attention on it. But I've really seen anything lately, you know, Tillis himself would often trail Cooper in polling, although that's not necessarily predictive because one other thing about North Carolina is that it's not uncommon for Democrats to be kind of overstated in polling in North Carolina, which we've seen in, you know, in other places and in other kinds of races. So, you know, Cooper is the one

who would have the name idea as, you know, as the former governor who just left office at the end of last year, although, you know, Lara Trump is a Trump, so I guess she'd have name ID too, at least people recognizing her last name, if not necessarily knowing her all that well. You know, she was floated as a possibility to be appointed to the Senate seat that Marco Rubio left behind when he became Secretary of State. In Florida, obviously, that didn't happen. Trump, she has some connections to the, you know, Wilmington area in North Carolina, so she's not some sort of total stranger to North Carolina or anything like that. What about the always elusive main Senate seat in terms of Susan Collins' popularity?

Collins makes smart votes to break from her party from time to time. I think she just made another one in voting against the quote-unquote one big, beautiful bill. It seemed like Republicans were trying to get her support in certain ways, but she voted against it. But from a Republican perspective, with a 5347 majority and the ability to potentially hand out a, you know, who we'd all kind of a hall pass or two to vulnerable members. I mean, Collins is the only Republican senator who represents the state that Kamala Harris won. And so obviously she's the only one in that sort of situation is on the ballot in 2026. The situation with Collins is pretty strange and pretty unpredictable. She was a big underdog in the polls back in 2020. She ended up winning.

And even the polling now, there's wide disparities on what her actual images. Let me give you a couple examples. There's just some recent polling. So Pan-Atlantic, which is a main pollster, they have her favorability, 49% favorable, 45% unfavorable. That's not great, but it's also not bad. University of New Hampshire just did a poll, they had a favorability 14%, 57% unfavorable, and they also offer a neutral option, which is 26%. But you can see that's a huge difference. Right. I mean, one poll makes it look like she has no chance of winning, and the other one suggests that maybe she would be okay. We're still waiting to see who the Democrats get run there. There's a former congressional staff running, Jordan Woods, who's running. But I wouldn't say

that he's some sort of top-tier recruiter. At least he's an unproven person. You know, maybe he proves to be a great candidate. But I think Democrats are looking for someone else there. And there's a lot of focus on the outgoing governor there, Janet Mills, as a potential Collins challenger. And she reportedly is considering it. And we've seen that unpredictable polling play itself out in Maine as well. I mean, Sarah Gideon back in 2020, I believe it was. Was it 2020 or 2018? 2020. 2020.

There were polls that were showing her 10, 12 points up ahead of Susan Collins. And of course, to your exact point, Susan Collins was able to pull out a win in that race. So we've seen in an environment where it so often feels like polling is just is not working. Nothing exemplifies that more than the polling that we've seen come out of the state of Maine. I want to move over to the Nebraska Senate. an insurgent challenger come out in the last election cycle. That was Dan Osborne, who ran as an independent. Of course, he garnered all of the support of the Democrats as well. But what are we looking at in terms of the prospect of a Dan Osborne challenge again in the other open,

well, not open, in the other Senate seat in Nebraska? Yeah. So Osborne is exploring a run. I think it seems like he's basically going to run. Yeah. I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's official official. But, you know, this time, it's probably going to be a better political environment. You know, there's just the non-presidential party in a midterm. That's kind of when you want to be the opposition party, you know, running in an election. But Nebraska is also definitely a Republican-leaning state. And I think that Senator Fisher, who Osborne challenged last time, I think, she got, you know, kind of caught flat-footed a little bit. Senator Ricketts, I think, is probably, you know, paying closer attention to this and is ready for the challenge. So I wouldn't,

You know, I mean, the Democrats are going to need kind of a big upset or two if they won't have any chance of winning the Senate next year. Maybe Nebraska would be part of it. I think it's probably fairly unlikely. But it should at least be on people's radar screen. So what are you looking at big picture in terms of the House and the Senate? As of right now, if we were to do a snapshot in time, what we could expect if the election was today? In our U.S. House ratings, we have 209 seats, safe, likely, or leaning Democratic. 207 safe level, likely leaning a Republican and then 19 toss-ups.

So in terms of the ratings, we've got the Democrats a little bit closer to the magic number of 218 than the Republicans. I'd say the Democrats, just based on history, are probably bigger favorites to flip the House than what those ratings would suggest, although there are paths for the Republicans to hold on. One thing to watch coming up over the next month or two or three is that there's the potential for a new congressional map in Ohio that would maybe help the Republicans, get an extra seat or two there. There's the possibility of Texas Republicans going back to the drawing board on their map. Maybe they're able to squeeze a few extra seats out of that state. You know, that would make it harder for Democrats, although I think they probably would still be favored even in that event. But that would, you know, if the Republicans keep the House, that might be part of the story. But I do think Democrats are favored in the House. There was a really

big House retirement very recently, Don Bacon of Nebraska 2nd District, which is the only House District represented by a Republican that gave Kamala Harris more than 50% of the vote. That is now an open seat. Harris won that seat by about four and a half points. We now have Democrats as favored to flip that as an open seat, and that's reflected in that top line number I just said a minute ago. In the Senate, Democrats need to net four seats to win the Senate majority. It's 5347 Republican right now.

The Democrats also have some vulnerable seats of their own to defend. John Ossoff in Georgia, although Brian Kemp, the popular governor there, did not run. And so that was really good for Ossoff, open-seated Michigan, where the candidate field seemed a little bit fluid. And then, you know, Democrats have an open seat in North Carolina to target. Susan Collins in Maine is a target, although how good of one is we're still trying to figure out. But even if Democrats were to hold all their current seats and flip Maine and North Carolina, that would still be a 51-49 Republican Senate. And so to actually get the majority, they've got to do all that other stuff, then also maybe try to flip Texas, where John Cornyn is an underdog in his primary, Colin Allred,

the Democratic nominee there in 2024, former House member, just announced that he's running again, Joni Ernst maybe in Iowa, John Houston in Ohio, you mentioned Nebraska, but these are all states that Donald Trump won by double digits, kind of, you know, little teens in terms of the margins in 2024. So those are pretty heavy lifts in an era where the presidential results are pretty strongly correlated with the down-ballot results. So I do think the Republicans are pretty decent favorites in the Senate right now, but maybe something happens to sort of shake that loose as we move along here. Yeah, I mean, look, if ever there was an environment where something like that could happen, this is very likely it, but still, to your exact point, these are going to be heavy lifts

in these states that Donald Trump and Republicans have proven successful in election cycle after election cycle. I do want to dig in real quick to one race in particular. We've seen a lot of reporting that there have been discussions among Joaquin, Castro, James Telerico, Beto O'Rourke, and Colin Allred about who would run for the Senate. Obviously, you just mentioned that Colin Allred did announce that he's running for Senate. I don't think that that precludes the other three guys from either announcing themselves or deciding who among themselves would be the next candidate to run from that block. But do you have any indication of how these guys might perform against either John Cornyn or the more extreme Republican? I believe he's the current Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Is that correct? That's right. Yeah. And Paxton is the favorite in the primary as we're talking now. Which is better for Democrats. In a weird way, it's better for Democrats because he is a weaker general election candidate, but also worse for Democrats in the sense that if he does pull out the win, which it's Texas, definitely not off the table. Then you've got Ken Paxton, who's going to make John Cornyn look like, you know, look like John McCain. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think Paxton would still be favored in the general election, but I do think that the door might, you know, might be a jar for Democrats in that state. You know, remember back in 2018, you know, that was the last kind of big Democratic midterm year. And, you know, 2025 has felt a lot like 2017. So maybe 2026 will feel a lot like 2018, too. you know, better war came within three points of beating Ted Cruz that year. So it's not impossible.

And, you know, you do have already a primary in Texas because there's also a former astronaut. I think his name is Terry Vertz, who just announced as well. And, of course, we saw, you know, Mark Kelly as a former astronaut, you know, do quite well in Arizona and his Senate races. And so that's also a person to watch. But, you know, you could actually have a competitive Democratic primary. And usually you say, oh, well, primaries are bad because you waste money in the, you you know, in the primary or whatever, but I kind of wonder if in this instance, a primary

might not actually be the worst thing in the world just because Texas is such a huge state that these candidates might need a platform to sort of, you know, test themselves and to get their names out. Right. Now, you know, look, there would be, you know, a resource challenge in the general election, although, you know, a Democrat may be running against Ken Paxton in a blue-leaning midterm, you know, that would probably turn the money spigot on, at least in terms of, you know, small dollar donations and that sort of thing. So, I mean, look, Democrats are going to have to try to play offense in places beyond Maine and North Carolina, and there are several states competing for that role. Texas might be a part of it. And again, it may very well be hopeless

for Democrats, but it does bear watching, particularly with this primary situation on the Republican side. Kyle, where can folks who are watching and listening right now keep up with any changes that you guys make at Crystal Ball? Yeah. So center for politics.org backslash crystal ball. visit our website. You can see all of our ratings there. And you could also sign up for free to get our email newsletter. We should come out at least once and often, usually twice a week. We just had pieces this week about the Nebraska 2 with Don Bacon retiring and also the North Carolina Senate race. So we're trying to keep on top of this stuff. Well, appreciate all your time today and we'll definitely be speaking soon. Thank you. Thanks again to Congressman Raskin.

Vitor and Kyle Condick. 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, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more.