Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump Loses on Birthright Citizenship as America’s 250th Celebrations Flop

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Got a question for Scott or Jessica? We're putting together a summer mailbag episode — send a short voice recording with your question to [e-mail]. We may feature yours on the show! Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway break down the Supreme Court's final decision day of the term, including the long-awaited ruling on Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship, plus decisions on transgender athletes and campaign finance coordination limits between parties and campaigns. Then, they head west: Colorado's state Supreme Court just struck down a set of Democratic-backed ballot initiatives that would have paused the state's independent redistricting commission. Today, Colorado holds primaries where several Democratic incumbents face challenges from their left flank, echoing the dynamics seen in New York's recent primary. Jess and Scott also check in on the current status of Democrats across the country in this year’s midterms.  Plus, thoughts on America's 250th birthday week, the sparsely attended “Great American State Fair” celebration so far, and reports that the White House may issue 250 pardons to mark the occasion. And finally, Scott and Jessica talk about the biggest and most urgent foreign policy story of the day: the World Cup. Will Team Sweden triumph over the French? Scott lays it all on the line. Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarloff. So don't forget, tomorrow and every Wednesday at 12 p.m. Eastern Time, Jess is joined by Aaron Parnas for our live Substack Exclusive, The Raging Perspective. It's another opportunity to Rage. You're welcome. God, that's fucking corny content. I mean, you also read it like you didn't want to be reading it slash.

Jesus Christ. All right. Well, do it better. Wednesday Substack show. Look, we have a mailbag episode coming in hot and want to hear your toughest questions. Just send us a short voice memo with your questions to raging moderates at Propgimeat.com. Again, that's raging moderates at Propgumee.com. Just let's light this candle.

The Supreme Court wrapped up their final cases of the term today. So let's dig into the results. The big one or the one that's getting the most attention is birthright citizenship, which is arguably probably the most important. And Trump on day one of his term put out an executive order to end birthright citizenship for babies born to parents who are in the U.S. illegally or on a temporary basis. He himself predicted he'd lose this one. The judges struck down Trump's executive order. Just what are your thoughts here? I mean, this was predicted, I guess, because they tempered the fact that they knew that it wasn't going to go their way.

It makes it less embarrassing. But you kind of think, like, why didn't you find some way to kind of, like pull it back after the oral arguments, which we were all, you know, listening to and thinking, like, oh, this isn't going so well. I'll be curious to see what they do with it going forward. I saw Mike Johnson making a comment saying, you know, like, yes, this is the textualist interpretation, which I thought is what conservatives wanted, right? The textualist interpretation. He's like, but I'm disappointed in the ruling and essentially the Constitution doesn't match with the facts on the ground. that's an argument that people would make about all sorts of issues. Like I would say that the,

you know, that the framers didn't know what we would be doing with guns in this country at this point, right? And we've seen rulings like in D.C., for instance, that have shown some malleability or ability to update your priors as to the ability, you know, the right to bear arms. But this thesis that the right is putting out there, that there are tons of people streaming across the border, they're only here for half an hour, they drop a baby here, and suddenly, voila, you have an American citizen, and by extension, you know, an American family people are here. It does happen, I guess, in some cases, not in just half an hour. But obviously, you know, people know that we have this policy. And it is a draw, I'm sure, for some.

But it doesn't change the Constitution. It doesn't change the facts on the ground or the facts more importantly that immigrants are such an incredible boon to the country, right, economically and culturally in a ton of ways. So I think it's, you know, good, not surprising, who was against it, Thomas Alito and Gorsuch. And yeah, I think it's a good one. The one, I mean, we're going to go through all of them. One, I think is an absolute fucking disaster on campaign finance and the transgender sports one I really want to talk to you about. So what do you think about birthright citizenship? Well, so the number is a quarter of a million or 250,000 babies year, roughly 7% of all U.S. births would have lost automatic citizenship under this

executive order. And what I'd love to see is what are the outcomes? I mean, what is the data? Are these a quarter of a million babies more likely to commit crimes? You know, what is the evidence around the data around justifying this at all? And unless it was extreme, what, I would suggest is that when you make citizenship about politics versus genealogy, it's not, the juice isn't worth to squeeze, and that is consistent laws are really valuable for America. And that is, for 250 years, we've generally made citizenship a legal question, not a political one. And so, you know, you want your country to compete on opportunity, not genealogy. And And once citizenship becomes something that politicians can selectively redefine, you're

introducing uncertainty into the most valuable or key asset of America, and that is the American passport. I mean, a straight line economic analysis is the following. We always talk about the secret sauce to immigration. Did it go too far, a quarter of a million people crossing the border in December and one month under the Biden administration and raising the right hand and saying asylum? Yeah, it went too far. And also, England and the U.K.

is struggling with this, the U.S. is struggling with this, and that is, if immigration gets totally out of control, sometimes you let in a large cohorts that, quite frankly, are just a strain on the social safety net and are not economically productive non-citizens. Having said that, I would love to see the analysis. I think someone who basically takes a risk and comes over here and drops a baby, I think that's probably the kind of DNA we want in America. I think a certain amount of, I think it was Milton Freeman talked about this. The most profitable part of immigration, he said at that time, was illegal immigration. It's the most flexible, profitable workforce in history because they kind of flow in when the crops are ready to be harvested or when their services jobs. The demand for certain services jobs cannot be filled by domestic workers.

They tend to commit crimes at a lower rate, tax the social safety net at a lower rate. They don't call the fire department. they pay taxes, and then oftentimes before they're around to collect Social Security, they return to their home country. So this is actually, we didn't wake up with tens of millions of undocumented workers and say, oh, well, my gosh, what happened? We all turned a blind eye to it, Democrats and Republicans, because it was economically advantageous for America to have undocumented workers. And birthright citizenship, I feel as if I would just like to see an argument around why this is worth going back on a really clean, elegant part of our nation, and that is birthright citizenship.

Well, because they don't like people from other places. I think that's why. But one element of this, and even when I first started talking about it, I mentioned this idea of, you know, crossing the border and having a baby, which the implication is right, you're coming across the southern border, probably from, you know, Latin America, South America, et cetera. One of the cases or you use cases of birth tourism that they've been using is the Chinese that are flying people over here to be able to get citizenship, which does feel not enough to invalidate, you know, a part of the Constitution, but that does feel a little bit different to me than, you know, a family coming here in search of a better life, right? And knowing that if you have a kid here,

that you're going to be able to, all odds, you know, they're definitely going to be a able to stay and that maybe you'll be able to stay too. So I know that that's a huge linchpin of their argument and my colleagues on the five were basically only using that test case, like talking about birth tourism as it relates to, you know, foreign countries who are also adversarial to the United States like a China. So the other big one that you referenced was the campaign finance case. This is a big one. Republicans were looking to loosen campaign finance limits. And in a six-three ruling, the court effectively removed federal limits on how much political parties may spend in coordination with their own candidates giving the GOP a win. It just seems like this has gone to just

no holds barred in terms of campaign finance. What do you think are the implications of this, Jess? Massive and it's a fucking disaster. Like, Citizens United has already basically agreed upon as one of the most egregious decisions, right, that ever came out of the court. If you watch a campaign ad by every denomination of Democrat and even a lot of Republicans, they're bemoaning the use of money in politics and that you can easily buy election. I mean, you look at Elon Musk, right? You spend a quarter of a billion dollars and suddenly your Dogemaster and for a good six months you actually got to have some input on things in the government. And this is happening in all of our elections. So this basically took Citizens United and

expanded it to the one important entity that didn't have the ability to funnel dark money into elections, political parties themselves. So this case was brought by the Republicans and we're saying, oh, it's a big benefit to the Republicans. But the Democrats are going to use it too. And why should you not go into an election, you know, with a hand tied behind your back, proverbially, right? And this is how we go down these downward spirals, right, where we meddle in elections. And we've talked about this before, you know, where either the Democrats or Republicans, they have a preference of who they want to win the election. Usually it's the most insane person available so they don't want kind of like the moderate in a swing district, for instance. So they'll

prop up either the far lefty or the MAGA candidate. This would be the Democrats doing that. This is how Peter Meyer lost his election, arguably a great congressman from Michigan. And this feels like, you know, an extension of that and then supercharged. I think it's really, really dangerous. I think we are losing hope at ever being able to get money out of our politics. I mean, people have fantasies about constitutional amendments. And I think there are 25 states so far or there are about that have voted for a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. But if you have a Supreme Court like this, right, like it's just not going to happen. So I think it's a really big deal and I think it's really, really bad.

Yeah, this is mostly cloud. There is a silver lining, but it's mostly cloud. And that is there's 900 billionaires in the United States. day, it's probably going to go to 11 or 1,200 after these IPOs, but they're responsible for about a third of all campaign contributions, and that numbers underrepresented in terms of the actual influence it has, because they can be much more targeted. If you're a, you know, the service employees union, you're just going to give money to whatever candidates you, I think, are pro-union. A billionaire can be very targeted with their spending. A billionaire can give Christian Sinema,

A private equity billionaire can give Senator Sinema $700,000 in exchange for her being the loan holdout for the infrastructure bill and demand that the closing the loophole on carried interest gets stripped out of the bill. So for $700,000, they save tens of billions of dollars and carried interest where basically private equity owners, the partners, get to treat it like long-term capital gains despite the fact they're not putting any of their own money at risk. This is essentially a commission that's charged as if it's a capital investment. So you have seen spending go absolutely out of control. I have said that the X factor around the midterms is I believe the fix is in, and that is Donald Trump agreed to figure out a way to lessen or put pressure on the SEC chairman or the NASDAQ 100 to include SpaceX early in the NASDAQ 100, thereby creating a ton of artificial demand for those shares. and if the stock went up 10 or 20 percent more than it would organically, that for him, he owns, I think, 40 percent of the company.

So what is that? That's like an increase in wealth of $100 to $160 billion for him. And why wouldn't he say to him, you know how I was able to influence the election with $250 million? What if I put $10 billion into the midterms? So the aggregation of capital by a small number of people, this happens throughout history. A small group of people, weaponized government. they allocate more and more advantage in capital to themselves, and eventually the bottom 99% picks up pitchforks and lanterns and goes after them, and then we start all over again.

But so I agree, this is a bad thing. The silver lining here, if there is one, is it increasingly we're seeing diminishing returns, and that is 10 years ago, kind of whoever raised the most money was going to win the election. That's no longer true. Look at the California race. Tom Steyer spent almost a quarter of a billion. And that is, money has gone from buying elections to just buying attention, which is key, but not necessarily the fulcrum of victory here. Federal races now routinely costs 10 to 20 billion per election cycle.

And in sum, the marginal return on political spending keeps falling. And billionaires are discovering that campaigns have the same economics as like a streaming service. The doubling your spend doesn't necessarily mean doubling your audience. audience. And so you could argue that democracy is being auctioned off. That's the cloud. But potentially, we're already beyond the point of diminishing returns. And every extra dollar buys fewer votes and more consultants. And this is sort of the full employment brought, you know, local news act. It's going to help podcasts. And it's sort of a way of, in a weird way, it kind of transfers money. I'm trying to think about it. Does it transfer money from billionaires back into the ecosystem?

So bad news continues to infect our politics, continues to buy disproportionate influence that creates greater income inequality. If there is any good news is that we're seeing diminishing returns on that extraordinary increase in spending. I'm going to go along with it. Yes, there are definitely cases that we can point to. I also think that there are a number of different places that folks are getting money from that we're not even aware of, right? And that the tail on that is long, right? That you find out that there were actually, like, the way foreign influence works in our elections or groups that we might not even be focused on or are, you know, covered in some sort of shell company, et cetera. So yes, people can still root out someone like a Tom Steyer who just

doesn't have it, right? He has all the money, but he doesn't have the connective tissue stuff, right, to make him an appealing candidate to people. I firmly believe, having worked on a British campaign, for instance, where the campaign season is six weeks, long, like, we can and should do a lot better when it comes to the way that we're conducting our elections. And it used to $10 to $20 billion, like, each election cycle. Crazy. It's just criminal.

Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. What's weird is, even though it's $10 to $20 billion, I've been struck by how much access you can get with very little money. But with a lot of listeners. That's a fair point. I mean, there are dollars signs, right? Like, that's why advertisers, you know, want to be on pivot, raging moderates,

property markets, conversations, all of it. And that's the kind of facet of the attention economy that actually means something. But all of those people are proverbial dollar signs to them. They want them to donate. Like, I interviewed Josh Turrick yesterday, who hopefully will win the Iowa Senate seat. And we had a great conversation. He had policies, by the way. I was thinking about you.

He, like, actually could tell you what his policies were. And, you know, of course, at the end, he has to say, like, please go to Joshchurch.com and donate, right? So, yes, the potting makes it better, I think. But at the end of the day, we're still part of this capitalist ropeadop. Yeah, I think I'm taking my silver lining here is like a silver dotted line here. No, I think I like it. I like the optimism. I think you're, I mean, the bottom line is Citizens United.

is maybe with the exception of gerrymandering is probably one of the most harmful things that's happened to our democracy. I mean, one of the things I like about the UK, which we're about to have our fifth prime minister in six years, so clearly things aren't humming along here. But the election cycle sort of starts and finishes in eight to 11 weeks, and we're not all obsessed with it and subject to the constant airwave battle. So I agree with you. This is, it is gone from out of control to totally fucking out of control. We should do the trans case. I'm Seth Matlins.

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Creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing from the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdom is company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. The average Americans spend $1,700 a year on clothes, and a lot of us are spending way more than that. But this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm breaking down exactly how to stop overpaying for your wardrobe without sacrificing your style. Because between the tracking pixels following you around the internet, the foam-mo drops, and the influencer halls, someone is always trying to get your money.

I'm sharing my best kept secrets for scoring designer pieces for less, why secondhand shopping is having its biggest moment ever, and the one rule I use before buying anything new. Plus, I'm answering your questions, including how to dress well when you have zero dollars to spend, how to upgrade your wardrobe for as little as possible, and what signs actually give away that someone is truly wealthy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. The Supreme Court also upheld laws in two states banning transgender athletes from competing in girls and women's sports. Around half the states have similar bans. Jess? So this is widely expected. Also a big deal. Six-three ruling has implications for 25 states

as of now that have similar laws. I guess two things that are interesting to me about these cases. The West Virginia case, the girl involved in it is called, for the purposes of the case, Becky Pepper Jackson, who did not go through male puberty. So started puberty blockers before that transition happened. And that's widely understood to be the point in which you start to get that competitive advantage. So that's a little bit different than someone, for instance, who completely went through male puberty and then started taking puberty blockers, which I believe is the case in Idaho. It also raises questions around gender verification testing.

So they do that now in the Olympics. But do you remember this with the boxer? I think she was Algerian. And what officials can do with young kids, right? Are they going to be examining what's in the pants of middle schoolers or grade school kids at this point? And I think, you know, the administration and SCOTUS as an extension of the administration, at least in this case, would be fine with that, right? You know, a strict policy where you get a full exam. But that is certainly not how I think a majority of parents are going to feel about it, that they would be comfortable with that.

And it raises questions around, you know, when does quote unquote competitiveness begin? Because there are scholarships on the line for young kids, right? or getting to go join that AAU team, go to X camp where a coach might see you, et cetera. So I think that this is a very big deal that will be affecting, you know, at least half of the country. So, again, I come back to one of my favorite statements from David Fromm that if progressives won't enforce the border fascists will,

if Democrats won't get somewhat non-fucking crazy around this issue, the void's going to be filled with people who demonize transgender people. And that's what's happened here. And that is, I remember getting pushed back. I think it was three years ago when I said that I thought it was ridiculous that a transgender woman who crossed the finish line in a bike race with cash rewards five minutes before anywhere else, or that a six-foot-five transgender swimmer shows up at a collegian meet, who was never a competitive swimmer pre-transition and now can dominate or I think won one-one race.

I think that's literally when Democrats lost their ship. and the middle of the country said, what the fuck has happened to Democrats? And then so immediately we had created an issue and a cudgel for Republicans to come in and then start banning transgender athletes in high school when there were none and start demonizing this community.

And what we do is we spend weeks debating questions that affect literally hundreds of people while ignoring housing, debt, and productivity. This is a great issue for Republicans because it takes us away from talking about the fact that they want to take, you know, women's bodily autonomy away from them, that they're out of control deficit spenders, that they have, that they're incompetent, that they have no housing plan. I mean, the issues that affect tens of millions of people get crowded out because we want to

split hairs and talk about when someone went through puberty or when they didn't. For me, it's a fairly easy solve here. And will, in fact, some people, will there be some injustice, probably? but whenever there's cash on the line or scholarships, sorry folks, the gender you're born with, that's the category you race in or you compete in. At the same time, I'm Republican on the fact that schools should have the right to say, and I think this is, you know, I was involved with my school, if a 14-year-old transgender girl can play on the volleyball team and it can help her with her self-esteem,

I think most schools are going to decide, yeah, that's fine. I, that's like, you know, there's no reason to demonize children or the transgender community. At the same time, the Democratic Party provides a layup in an absolute means of distraction from important issues by going fucking crazy and letting transgender women compete in women's sports. It's this, we constantly take the bait around this one. If there's money on the line or medals on the line, sorry, Apollo. I will never play in the NBA. I just wasn't born with those attributes, all right? It's not going to happen for me.

If you aren't, you have to be assigned in competitive sports where there's cash on the line. You're assigned to the gender on your birth certificate in terms of competition. Will there be instances where someone went on blockers before puberty? I'm sure some people, I'm sure at least a couple dozen people will find some injustice in this. This is not the beach we want to die on. think this really, really hurt us. And I'll get tons of pushback online, but we have much bigger fish to fry. A transgender girl who wants to play on her junior high school team, for God's sakes, have some humanity. Let her do that. Stop demonizing this community. Stop using as an excuse to

pass hateful laws that have absolutely no reason or efficacy or justification. But at the same time, on the Democratic side, let's get our heads out of our asses and recognize. that when you go through puberty, the superior, denser bone structure, faster double-twitch muscle creates a totally not-com. I couldn't get over why feminists weren't going fucking crazy.

The Democratic viewpoint three or four years ago was essentially going to lead to an environment where the only people winning scholarships and medals and Wheaties endorsements were going to be people born with testicles. And yet, somehow this got turned into a progressive movement.

Again, I think the Democrats have taken the debate way too much on this. I think that you're right there. I think that Democrats taking the bait. And again, this was years ago. The tone has shifted now, right? You have people talking more like Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, or Andy Bashir, who still seem like they have their humanity, right, but can call a spade a spade.

And I think that that's especially important if we want to be the party of fairness. Because this has implications across the board, right? If you come out there and you say the system's rigged against the little guy and we're for a progressive taxation system, that means that, you know, Warren Buffett shouldn't be paying less tax than his secretary, then that has to spread into all facets of American life. And the right has been very good at weaponizing this and seizing on it. I'm not saying it wasn't a mistake. But the amount of ads that they've run, of course, the they, them add from the election

about transgender surgeries for illegals in prison being the biggest case of it. And that just starts the ball rolling where you seem like the insane party, right? That you're in some way justifying this when there are people going hungry. And I want to be the party of feeding people and putting a roof over their head and getting them a good education for sure. And let's let kids be kids and be themselves and compete before it gets too competitive that it has very real implications and shows that we have a big error in judgment when it. comes to fairness. So I agree with all that. One group of people who probably had their dreams dashed by a court ruling, Colorado Democrats. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court there struck down a group of proposed ballot initiatives that would have temporarily paused Colorado's independent

redistricting commission and asked voters to approve new congressional map, a new congressional map for the 2028 and 2030 elections. There's not much time to mourn this, though, because primaries in the state are also today. Just three incumbents in this state, in particular, that are facing primary challenges from within the Democratic Party. Is this a place where the progressive and democratic socialist could continue to win following the New York primaries? Definitely, especially in Colorado's first district. The incumbent has been in office 30 years, Diana DeGette. Similar to Espelot and Goldman here in New York, very progressive. Right. So this isn't a DSA versus a moderate situation. It's more about how progressive denominations of lefty,

Israel also featuring prominently in this election as well. But it felt very much, and I've been watching some of the ads from the progressive challenger, Malote Kiros, she's 29 years old. It feels a lot about generational change. And I watched her launch video, which I actually thought was pretty great. And she said, I'm running for Congress to be a Democrat that delivers on the change we've been asking for. And you're seeing all of these folks who have been in office either for a really long time, like DeGat 30 years or even just a few years, relying on what they see as accolades or big wins that just don't resonate with people talking about DeGat as well as Goldman, talking about being an impeachment manager. Well, Trump won again, right?

Like he wasn't even convicted in the Senate for January 6th. And then he came back and had, I mean, in the size of the win, it is not what he said it was. but it was still historic that he was able to mount this massive comeback and put together a coalition where he picked off young voters from us, Hispanic voters from us, black voters from us. So I understand where people look at it and they just say, you guys haven't been doing much for us, right? And I'm willing to take a flyer on somebody else who seems passionate and to be talking about what Democrats used to deliver, right? Like in social programs, like social security, for instance. And people who you get the sense will really fight for Medicare for All, not just being in the Medicare for All caucus.

I know that we are out of step with some of our listeners in that way. But that's kind of the framing of that. And I expect her to win. And the narrative would be, you know, the DSA marches on, et cetera. And I wanted to bring this up yesterday. These internal fights between blue and cobalt blue, as Rahm Emanuel put it, very aptly, do not make a difference in whether we get to two-eaterally. which is the number that we need to have control of Congress. And Hakeem Jeffries and folks in leadership,

they go to sleep thinking about 218. They wake up thinking about 218. And the back and forth between the old guard and the new guard of the DSA and the ones who have been there forever, it spills over into other races. But the big story from last Tuesday was Kate Conley, winning in New York 17. She's the candidate that Mike Lawler doesn't want to face.

That's a seat we need to flip. Right. It was Ben Mick Adams. There are blue dogs all over the country that are running. She's a moderate, right? Can you say a little bit more about her? Oh, Kay Conley, yeah. She's a veteran. She's done six combat tours. Iraq and Afghanistan worked in national security for Chris Krebs. Remember him, the guy who actually said that the election was fair and then his life fell apart. Kay Conley is a total badass. I moderated a panel that she was on with big stars from our party, Rob Sand, who will hopefully be the governor of Iowa. Pat Ryan and Philip Jones, who's the mayor of Newport News, where we make all of our ships down there. So, you know, you can pick your narrative, right?

And you can say that everything that's going on in Democratic politics right now is about the DSA and their hostile takeover until they start picking off people who win in swing districts, which is what happened with the Tea Party. That's why the GOP suffered those huge losses because they were taking people off the board that could hold those districts. districts. Right now we're just talking about very blue places. Two other races for today in Colorado, Hickenlooper and Bennett both on the ballot. You know, if Hickenlooper soars through, then I think that narrative gets crushed a bit more. And you look at Colorado one as just saying to get had been there a really long time. It's Denver, super blue. And, you know, I'm hopeful for Hickenlooper and Bennett. But there are, you know, there are a ton of candidates all over the country that can flip districts. And Talariko, new poll out today, tied with Ken Paxton.

He's basically winning every group except white guys without college educations. The Latino vote is huge for him. Enormous gender gap. Platner is only up to 49-47 when Maine was Harris plus 11. You know, Susan Collins runs stronger than you would expect. But Sherrod Brown has been polling consistently over John Houston. He was up eight in the Fox poll. John Ossoff is like a revelation what's going on there.

I saw Lori Groot tweeted he's their new Obama. Yes, please. Totally cool with that. And the Cook Political Report keeps shifting seats in Democrats' direction like Nancy Mesa's seat that she's leaving in South Carolina, for instance. So choose your adventure, choose your narrative. I'm choosing 218. and trying not to get bogged down in this too much. Yeah, there's, and I'm guilty of this sometimes,

but we're, you know, the Democrats are guilty of, okay, you're my ally, but you're holding the gun wrong. You know, let's execute you at Don. We're very good at atomizing ourselves and attacking each other. The interesting thing about Colorado isn't who wins. It's that more than half of Colorado voters are unaffiliated. And it might be the future.

of American politics, if the parties remain this unpopular and that is fewer loyal partisans and more free agents, I feel like being in a political party is sort of like subscribing to Paramount Plus. You're there as long as they have landmen and then you give it up and you go, you know, you go to HBO Max or whatever. Also, Colorado, if people say they're politically homeless, Colorado is my political home. My three favorite politicians are all in Colorado. Senator Bennett, Hopefully, Governor Bennett is, I supported him for president in 2020. I actually had a fundraiser in my house. By the way, if I support you in any election, it's not a good sign. Don't tell them that because they won't come on our pod, but yeah. But I think the world of him. I think he's, you know, school superintendent, smart, super reasonable, moderate. I just, I'm a huge fan of the senators. I'm a big fan of Governor Paulus. I just, so just let's bring this back to me, Jess.

I started a company called Red Envelope, an e-commerce gift company, and our competitor was a company out of San Diego called Pro Flowers that is founder, Jared Paulus. And we were always compared to each other. Anyways, he's governor and likely a presidential candidate. I'm hosting a podcast. So something, I'd be curious to know what happened there. But we and he and I were competitors in the 90s. But I think he's just an incredibly pragmatic.

I love someone from a special interest group that doesn't lead with that. They lead with policies. Yeah, I'm also gay, but that's kind of not why I'm here. I'm here to govern. I think he's just this pragmatism and purpleness is literally my political home. And then hands down, my third favorite politician is Congressman Bober. I think she is who, I mean, come on. I mean, are you like a handjob guy?

Is that why you like Lauren Boehner? Oh, my God, you're stealing my thunder. Oh, I'm sorry. It's so much better than that. She takes you on a date to the Beetlejuice to play, jerks you off, lets you grow per vapes. And then when she gets kicked out, says, fuck you to the staff. Where was she when I was 17? She is every 17-year-old boy's dream date.

And I am here for it. Congressman Boberd, you are every 17-year-old male's fantasy date. And I think we should have one of those in Congress. So I say keep on, keeping on. Hands down, my three favorite. She used to be, she used to represent aspirin, which made absolutely no sense to me. But anyways, my. 36-year-old grandma or something like that.

I got to say on the Jared Polis front, I love your linked history of being competitors, but that he commuted Tina Peters's sentence who was like a J-6 law clerk disaster is so bad. And it is, if he does run, it's going to come up. So Trump pardoned her. And then it was ruled that he couldn't do that because it was state level conviction. But Tina Peters, no bueno. So that's my polis addendum. Plus, Lauren Bobert is arguably one of the sexiest grandmas.

I've been watching Margot's got money troubles. And Michelle Pfeiffer also a sexy grandma, though a bit older than Lauren Boehue. Yeah. I have that voice in my head saying, Scott, don't say anything. So let's move on. It's America's 250th birthday this week, Jess, and you're going to DC, so we all have to tune in and watch you down there. The celebrations so far seem pretty poorly attended. Let's get a taste of it.

There's the main stage up there. And it's because there's tons of people here. It's a huge space, and it's just going to get more and more crowded as the week goes on. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are Cirque Mechanics. We're all away from Las Vegas, really excited to be here with the National Endowment for the Arts. On the mall for the 250th. Quality. Quality craftsmanship.

It will get more crowded. It will not be what they said it would be. But also, like, why do you have to do it for 16 days? Right? Like, make it a four or five-day thing and get everybody to come. come at once. There are 10 states all with Democratic governors that are not participating. I mean, the big problem, well, the big problem is Donald Trump. But the second biggest problem is how Donald Trump's ego manifests in this. It's very wonky, I guess, or a little maybe to

inside baseball. But basically, there was the America 250 commission, which was established as bipartisan by Congress, right? And it has Democrats and Republicans coming together to figure out how we're going to celebrate our 250th anniversary. Then Trump launches Freedom 250 and tries to trick everybody. That's why all of those artists pulled out of performing at that concert. Like Martina McBride was like, excuse me, like I was supposed to come celebrate the country, not celebrate fealty to Donald Trump. And this is a Freedom 250 event.

And I think people just don't want to do it. And he's creating such a problem or like a fissure, whatever the right term is, for people who want to celebrate the country and celebrate the American experiment and your patriotism because he's making it all about him. And I don't know if you've been seeing these polls, but, you know, now just 27 percent of Democrats say they're extremely or very proud to be an American. And it dips a bit for Republicans during Republican administrations, but nothing like that. Right. Like this is just a total crash out in terms of feeling patriotic for our political comrades. Yeah, these images, it looks like the fire festival for patriotism. It's just,

you know, America has 350 million citizens, and it appears that all of them had better plans. And you could describe the crowd size that Trump rallies as his political capital. And if that's the case, then he's been downgraded to junk bond status. I mean, this really is an indication of his waning popularity. It felt less like a crowd and more like a focus group or you know, I mean, there's more people at like the Costco Tire Center on Wednesday. It just felt so sad. And I've been absolutely obsessed with the World Cup. By the way, Paraguay beat Germany last night.

And I think I have a good feeling about Sweden beating France. Anyone but France. That's my whole. That's your policy. That's my prediction. Anyone but France. I went to the England match on Saturday and we didn't get to talk about it yesterday. No.

Yes. in the rain sitting there. England. Team England. Yeah, they didn't care at all. They were thrilled. They were like, oh, it's just like being at home, but stickier, though they're having a heat wave. Anyway, World Cup continues to deliver. But yes, make this point, because I love this point. Did you enjoy the game? Yeah, I mean, it was slow.

It wasn't a great game. It was a great game. They scored their two goals, like, basically right after the half. Sitting in a poncho on top of another poncho to try to, like, keep my butt sort of dry was not the most fun that I had and took me back to living in London, but my husband, are you like a no umbrella guy? He's a no umbrella guy, even though he's American, and he was no poncho also, and it's just sitting there, and he's wearing a white t-shirt, too. And I'm like, this isn't like a World Cup porno. Like, you can't sit around like that. So that would basically meet up my desk. Essentially, a male wet t-shirt

contest. And I had colleagues there, so I was just trying to, like, cover him a little bit, because Fox has the broadcast rates, obviously. So there were a few of us out there. Yeah, no, I'm not an umbrella guy. I'm not leave the house when it's raining guy. But I think one of the reasons the World Cup is so successful is Trump is not involved. He's not tweeting about it. He's not shitposting about it.

He's not showing up at games. I feel as if the World Cup is the largest sleepover of cousins who love each other, but their parents are arguing and their parents are out of town, so they just get to have a good time. But think about it. One of the really key features of this World Cup is an absence of Trump. He's not showing up at games. He's not talking about it.

Stephen Miller isn't there. It's just America can be like the World Cup once Trump leaves the stage. Not in our face, not booing, not jeering, not weirdness, not narcissism. It just, it has been such a wonderful. I feel like the world needed so badly to like each other again, and the World Cup is delivering on that. And then this, in contrast, it feels so flaccid. It feels so, you know, like everyone, you know,

it's like a dress rehearsal, everyone forgot to cancel. It's just, you know, it was supposed to be a march on Washington, and instead it feels like a line at a CVS. It just feels kind of almost sort of sad. I usually like mocking these things. I don't know, 250 feels kind of weird to me, but I don't know. Are you excited about going to D.C.? No, it's going to be so hot, and our set is outside.

I'm excited to check it out. I want to go see what's going on with the algae at the reflecting pool. I will not be vandalizing anything, no matter what my colleagues tell you. So it's good to see it, but I'm also leaving before the fourth, which I think is good, right? So I'll just be there for a couple of days. But I want to say about the World Cup, because I totally agree with those sentiments. And I've been brought to tears several times listening to folks in places like Lawrence, Kansas, be interviewed about, you know, what it means to have had the Algerian team there. I know where I talked about that example, but it feels like the Trump administration made their big, you know, anti-immigrant push up front.

Remember, we were talking about the referee who got sent home, the African ref who got, you know, deported back to Turkey and some folks who couldn't get visas. And it seems like it's going well since then. And the patriotism, listening to folks from like this huge diaspora of places, right, who are now Americans talking about their chosen home and how much America means to them and the opportunities that they've been afforded because they moved here, but still also how much they love where they were born, right, and where a lot of their family lives. It's like all the best stuff crammed into one thing. I mean, I'm not a big soccer person myself, but just to be there for the experience, for the fun and the Riz and all of those things. And it's better for the Olympics than that because the Olympics, you know, there's some stuff you have to be quiet for, you know, obviously very precise skill sets, et cetera. Like with the soccer match, they're just like all going crazy all the time. And everyone wants to take pictures with each other.

And it's just got it all. So I've been thrilled with the World Cup. It's the best tournament in history. I'm not a sports fan at all, but I became an enormous football fan because my kids are into it. And I'm just a lesson to all dads. If you believe your kids are going to be into what you're into, you're going to be hugely disappointed. Your job is if you're blessed with children that are into something as mine are into football, it's your job to get into it and enjoy it. This will be our fourth World Cup.

But the whole world needed to feel better about each other. and the World Cup is doing what the UN was supposed to do. And first off, it's hilarious to see these tourists engaging in American culture. It's just a little. What is this, this waffle house? It's Wunderbar. I mean, it's just, it's so much fun to watch and the rowing of the Norwegian and the dancing of the Senegalese team. I got my heartbroken last night.

I think, so a great product drives the brand, right? I think the new electric Ferrari really hurts the brand, but AirPods really help the Apple. Great products drive, great brand. The best product as it relates to really enhancing the brand is Team Japan and what they do for the Japanese brand. And last night, I very rarely get emotional in athletic events. Fucking Brazil in a 96 minute scores the winning goal. Okay, good for them. I shouldn't say fucking Brazil.

I go there every year. love it there. But Brazil, anyways, I was, in what did the Japanese team and the coaches do after the loss, they go over to the Japanese fan side and they bow an apology. I mean, just so much grace, like so different than the American attitude of just doubling down all the time. But the coaches and the players went over and basically said to the fans, we're sorry. I mean, it's just like, I want to move to Japan. It's just... And that they've been cleaning up the stadiums.

I saw all these memes about the stadium workers that are going to have to actually do their jobs now because the Japanese are going home. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been fantastic. And just to end on, you know, what I think is absolutely pathetic is that Trump's genius comms team or whoever has decided

that he should grant 250 pardons to celebrate the country's birth. the Office of Pardons is an outstanding institution that has or used to have a lot of really thoughtful people that takes very seriously the notion that the crude instrument that is our legal system sometimes gets it wrong and they evaluate individual cases and then they present them to the president and say this person under three strikes you're out stolen antenna and has served 30 years of a life sentence that is what the pardon process supposed to do it's not supposed to be fucking pay for, you know, get a crypto guy out or make a donation or some sort of, the fact that he even assigns a number diminishes the whole validity and sanctity of the pardon process.

I've, this really triggered me. I found this just so embarrassing that he would pick a number. So the 251st person is not subject to some sort of clemency, but the 249th is. I just don't, what are your thoughts here, Jess? Well, if this comes to fruition, I think it's not going to be as bad as the blanket pardons for January 6ers, including those that beat up police officers. But it's going to be quite bad. And the quotes in that Atlantic piece from lawyers who say that they know that for about $2 million that you can get a pardon, at one point I think it was up to $6 million, I guess he's discounting because he's, you know, one foot out the door. it's just, it's gross and depraved and makes a mockery of the country. And I didn't love Biden, you know, pardoning Hunter after he said that he wasn't going to, etc. But when you look

at how these people operate, you understand why he was afraid of what Trump was going to do. And my expectation is that everybody who has so much has come within a few feet of Donald Trump is going to get a blanket pardon going forward. because in reality, I think a lot of them are just criming with each other. So. There you go. All right. Jess, let's leave it there. I'm making a prediction. And that is Team Sweden is going to beat France tonight. And by the time this comes out, it may have already happened. But this is, this, they have one of the, arguably one of the best striker pairings in the tournament. Alexander Isaac, Victor Jorkares, but Team Sweden. I guess.

I'm super excited about it. I'm calling it now, Jess. I think this is going to happen for us. I've always wanted Sweden to win. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. Tonight's my night. Tonight's our night.

All right, let's leave it there, Jess. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if.

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