The Daily Beast Podcast - If Dems Lose These States in November, They’re Screwed

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, Aaron Kleinman, director of research for The States Project, spills on the key states we should be looking out for in the November elections. Plus! Investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica, Phoebe Petrovic, joins us to break down her recent article surrounding how a militant anti-abortion activist is influencing Republican politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

What a great show we have for you today. Aaron Kleiman, the director of research for the state's project, is here to tell us all about his co-organization's goals and break down the importance of getting Democrats elected in crucial state elections. Then, investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica Phoebe Petrovic joins us to break down her recent article, The Gospel of Matthew Chihuahala, how a militant anti-abortion activist is influencing Republican politics. But first, let's have some fun.

So, Daniel, we spent a lot of time on this podcast yelling at Democrats to do something. And it's on a bunch of different issues. And Democrats, a lot of times, seem really loathe to get out there and get their hands dirty. So we want to bring up something now where Democrats actually are doing something. And regardless of whether it has a chance in hell of actually accomplishing its stated goal, It's still good, I think, that they're doing it. And I'm talking about stuff that is concerning the Supreme Court. AOC, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as some of you may know her.

On Wednesday, she introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. In the charges, it accuses them of failing to disclose gifts from various benefactors and failing to recuse themselves from cases that were brought to the court. where it seems at least arguable that they maybe had a conflict of interest. We all know this can't get through the House. So you might be tempted to say this is a waste of time, it's showboating, whatever. I'm going to say no, it's not.

Because, again, we're all out there yelling for Democrats to do something. And this is AOC doing something. But more importantly, I think this makes the Supreme Court a much more visible campaign issue. It allows Democrats to get out there and remind people over and over again what this Supreme Court has done, what it's done for reproductive rights, what it's done by saying that the president is basically a god emperor, and just a whole host of other things that this court has done. It allows that argument to be made in the context of, and now there are, you know, there is a bill put forward to impeach two of the justices. So I say good for her and also good for Ron Wyden and Sheldon Whitehouse, who have asked the Justice Department to investigate Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito for all of these gifts. I mean, the fact is, is that, first of all, investigation should have happened at the first reporting on these elaborate gifts that they've received. I feel like on this show, Andy, we have talked about, I think the accumulation is roughly for Clarence Thomas in the $4 million range.

in terms of how much money he has received in gifts, whether they be private jet trips, yacht trips, luxury fishing outings, and et cetera, et cetera, the list goes on. The fact is that a special counsel should have been brought in to go in on the Supreme Court when Justice John Roberts decided that he was not going to respond to the quote unquote invitation from the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to come and sit before the committee to discuss the violations in their ethics and the need for ethics reform on the Supreme Court. So while we know that this particular action by AOC is not going to advance in a House of Representatives run by MAGA Republicans, I think that it is important to get on the record in addressing

what has been reported in the press for over a year now. These two justices are absolutely wayward. There are no ethics. There is no moral compass on this court. I mean, whether it is them being revealed to be Christophascist in secret recordings that are done by independent reporters or the upside down flag or what have you, we know that they are not interested in the law and order that has been decided upon by precedent in this country. They are just shooting from the hip and they're dangerous. Yeah, absolutely. I just want to correct something I said at the top.

The senators widen in White House are asking the Justice Department to investigate Clarence Thomas, not Sam Alito as well. But yes to everything you said, Danielle. And I just want to read a couple of sentences from the articles of impeachment that AOC filed. She said, by accepting but failing to disclose multiple gifts of luxury vacations and travel, Justice Thomas has undermined the impartiality and integrity of the Supreme Court in violence. of the public trust. His conduct has caused a reasonable person to believe that the gifts were offered and accepted in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. And from the same were different sources on a basis so frequent that a reasonable person would believe that he

used his public office for his own private gain or for the private gain of his donors. That's it right there. All of that is absolutely 100% accurate. At this point, I don't know that any reasonable person could disagree with what she's saying there. And, Like you said, it is so important to get this on the record and to get this out there front and center and make sure that people are really aware of what's going on. And like you said, it would have been great if this happened a long time ago. But I'm glad it's happening now. And again, as we enter these last four months of the presidential election or America and or America, I think it's so important to get people focused on what this court has been doing and the fact that it's going

be, even though this may seem unfathable, it's going to be so much worse if Trump gets a second term. And so good for her for getting this out there. Chief Justice Roberts has made it very clear. He does not give a shit about the ethics of the court. He has gone a long way from being the umpire who just calls balls and strikes and from apparently from considering his place in history as the head of the Roberts court because he has just signaled by, as you said, declining to respond to a subpoena. And by basically doing absolutely nothing, he has abdicated all responsibility for the ethics of this court. So somebody has to step up. And I'm glad that AOC is in the House. And I'm glad that Ron Wyden and Sheldon White House are on the Senate side. I mean, I just can't

stress enough that if in fact we were to actually see a shift in power in this election from, you know, if Joe Biden is able to hold on to the White House, House, if we're able to take back the House and hold the Senate. If those things were to happen, which is all based on the desire of people to vote and not allow fascism to take hold in the United States at the hands of Donald Trump and the Heritage Foundation, this is a possibility. Elections matter. And I think that people understand the consequences of them now, or at least I hope that they do. Because if we had had some thought around 2016, guess who wouldn't have had three Supreme Court justices to sit? We know, that Alito and Thomas want to retire. They're only going to do so under a Republican. But there's a

possibility to seat two seats in the next four years. At least. At least. What AOC created was an opportunity for Democrats to have a campaign talking point in centering the courts in the way that Republicans have centered the courts over the last 50 years, which is how we've gotten to this place. Democrats really need to start understanding the levers of power and where, power lies in this country and it isn't just in the vote. It's in who is sitting on these benches and understanding the power that they have to transform all of our lives for the absolute fucking worst. Yeah. And you know, we've talked about another big campaign issue that Democrats are at least slowly starting to glom onto, thankfully. And that's, of course,

Project 2025. I saw some people passing around on blue sky. If you look in Google for the number of searches like in the past week for Project 2025 and the number of searches for Biden's age, there are actually more searches for 2025, which I think is a really, really good sign that people are starting to pay attention to this. Some people who are not happy about this are people on the far right, people like little fascist Nick Flenties and insane boy Alex Jones, who are very mad at Trump for saying he didn't know anything about Project 225 and trying to disassociate himself from it, which as salon.com points out is a lie. And these guys know it's a lie, but they're still not happy about it. Trump has, and the people around him have at least

slightly better political instincts than obviously than Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones. And I think Trump is starting to realize that this shit could actually hurt him once people get woken up to what is in Project 2025. And so it's kind of funny. And so it's kind of funny. to watch now the extreme right get mad at him for pretending not to be fully on board with it. You know, and so here's the CNN article that just goes to show you again how Trump just lies. According to this article, six of his former cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown, and about 20 pages

are credited to his first deputy chief of staff. And they go on to say that, in fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025. But according to Donald Trump, he don't know these people, but he wishes them well as he yes, he wrote on Truth Social. And I'm just curious as to which part does he wish them well on? The banning of no fault divorce, the nationalizing of a ban on abortion, the gutting of the Department of Education, which part does he wish them well on? But the fact is, is that Trump is a liar.

And what he is seeing is that, guess what? The more people learn and Google and understand Project 2025, the more that they understand that this document is anti-democratic, anti-American, anti-freedom, and this is who is going to be running the show in a Trump second or indefinite presidency. And it's unpopular. Yeah. It's also interesting to look at what he actually said. He said, I know nothing about Project 2025. And then he said, I disagree with some of the things they're saying.

Well, it sounds like you don't know nothing about Project 2025. Like, make up your mind. I mean, the lies are just so obvious and so blatant. Look, it's a good sign that he's running from it because like you said and like we've been saying, the more people know about Project 2025, the more they realize this is not a good blueprint for a future democracy. It's so important to keep getting the word out on it. And I get really annoyed. I know we do this with the media all the time, but they keep doing it.

Like I don't want to see headlines that say Trump says he knows nothing about Project 2025. I want to see headlines. say Trump falsely says he knows nothing about Project 2025 or Trump lies says he knows nothing. Like stop repeating the words of Donald Trump and the words of any of his campaign people as if it's a he said she said situation and got to have both sides. We know that they lie. They've been doing it since day one. So to keep doing it's journalistic malpractice to be reporting this as if, you know, well,

but they say they don't. you know, I saw a headline Kamala Harris tries to tie Trump to Project 2025. She's not trying to tie Trump to 2020. Right. He is tied to tragic. Don't make this sound like this is just, you know, again, this is just, oh, well, this campaign is trying to do this. And this campaign is saying, well, that's not. Stop doing that.

Yeah. And here's the thing, too. This is a quote from a Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez who says, quote, team Biden and the DNC are lying and fear mongering because they have nothing. else to offer the American people in terms of what they're saying about Project 2025. And I'm like, they are literally copying and pasting things that are written in this 900 page document and smartly putting them into infographics so that people understand what is behind this ideology here. What is Project 2025? Well, it's a project to reimagine American democracy, right, with the theocratic

white supremac lens. Like, that's what it's doing. And so it's not fearmongering to. And so it's not fearmongering to say exactly what it is that you've written in your 900 page post that you were excited to have on the Heritage Foundation's website up until what? A week or so ago when Donald Trump says he doesn't know anything about it and now all of a sudden it doesn't exist at the Heritage Foundation anymore on their website. So it's just, you know, what is important here is for people to understand the stakes when folks say things like, oh, we can make it through another Trump administration. We did it one time before. One time before, it was a revolving door of clowns and idiots and people who didn't know how government worked. This is a 900-page plan with about 20,000 willing Trump sycophants to go

into agencies and gut them from the inside out. This is a plan that has names and people and places that are willing not to have an oath to our Constitution and to the Republic, but to Donald Trump. So all of those guardrails, all of those breaks that were in place that didn't have America in his first term screech off the side of a mountain will no longer be there because they found all of the right yes men to put in place. So like I just can't stress it enough. It's not a game and it's not fearmongering, it's the truth. Like, this is Gilead. This is their version of Gilead in a 900-page manifesto instead of a five-part series. You're right, because people keep saying, oh, we made it through a first Trump term. You know who didn't make it through a first Trump term? A million people who died from

COVID. And we want to keep forgetting that that happened. And look, I'm not going to sit here and say, if it wasn't Donald Trump, those million people would still be alive. Of course not. But the number of deaths above what should have been because we had a president out there touting hydrochloroquine and ivermectin and talking about injecting bleach into your body and all this stuff. We have to stop forgetting that. We have to stop forgetting that a whole mess of people died who probably shouldn't have died because this fool was in charge of a pandemic response. A hundred percent. As we're all constantly refreshing our screens or looking at breaking news alerts on our phones or opening up actual newspapers to read about the latest goings on with the presidential election.

It's important to remember that there are a bunch of elections this November on the state and local levels, and that particularly in these times, those elections will be crucial to the future of America. Here to give us more details is Director of Research for the States Project, Aaron, welcome back to the show. Hey, Andy, thanks for having me back. I'm glad I couldn't burn all my bridges the last time I was on. No, there's still a couple, still a couple bridges. still a couple of ways off the island. Before we get into particular states, refresh our listeners' memories about the States Project and your website, statesproject.org. What is it that you all do exactly?

States Project is a group of organizations that for seven years now, we've worked based on the assumption that state legislatures are the most important policymaking bodies that nobody pays attention. What we try to do is we try to work with state lawmakers to improve lives, and we try to engage the public in working to improve state legislatures getting involved in a number of different ways. And what are your giving circles? I keep seeing this popping up in various places. Yeah.

No, our giving circles program has really taken off in the wake of the 2016 election. People are looking for ways to get involved and kind of also build community. 2016 kind of really showed a lot of people just kind of how atomized we are. And giving circles were a way for people to really come together with groups of friends and friends of friends to work to, again, improve lives through state. legislatures. You know, it's groups of friends of raising money to go to state legislatures. And this program has really, over the, again, over the past seven years, sent millions of dollars to KNA Tune at the most and scored some massive wins in states where we were able to help elect

new majorities like in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, just to name a few. Yeah, for sure. And there's a really important point that's made at statesproject.org, Which is that in many cases, it's the state lawmakers who are crucial to Americans having free and fair elections, and that, as you all say, right-wing majorities in state legislatures are the biggest threat that we can still stop to ensure voters select the next president. So yes, voting in state racism is important for countless reasons, but I have to say, new, the top of the list is preventing magotypes who have consistently shown not only that they won't protect free and fair elections. they don't really want free and fair elections. Yeah, there's been a lot of bad news recently, so I want to get people some good news.

Please. Candidates who say that, you know, they are pro-January 6th or, you know, they don't think that 2020 was fairly decided. You know, there's a lot of evidence there that not only did they perform worse in 2022 than candidates who were able to keep their mouthshots on those issues at the very least, or even right-wing candidates who deigned to be pro-democracy, which there are a few of, though not as many as we would like.

But also, you know, forward-looking polling shows that those candidates will continue to do first once the public knows about them. But the key part of that sentence there is once the public knows about. Right. And these races, you know, it can be very hard to cut through the din. I mean, we're seeing that right now. This new cycle is absolutely dominated by, you know, national politics. So trying to find swing voters to be like, oh, by the way, you know, this person running in your swing district in the Detroit suburbs, trying to go to January 6th, you know, that can be.

difficult. And the opponent of that far-right candidate needs the resources to what the people in our district now, hey, democracy really is on the ballot, not just at the top of ticket, but on this race, too. Yeah, for sure. So the last time you were on, early voting had just started in Virginia for its 20-23 elections. And those ended up being pretty damn good with the Democrats taking control of the General Assembly. Aaron, I'm not saying there was cause and effect there, but I'm also not not saying it. And I knew I had to have you back on because as a great philosopher once said, a player on a streak has to respect the streak. So let's talk about 2024. What are some of the key states that y'all are focusing on?

Yeah, I know. I would love this to be like Wade Bogs eating chicken before every game and getting three days. Exactly. Maybe consuming other stuff. In 2024, you know, I think the states with competitive state legislative elections where, you know, either control of a chamber or a supermajority threshold is up really overlaps a lot with the traditional. presidential battlegrounds. So we're talking about states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, where in 2022, we were able to help win majorities that have been really passing a lot of great bills. You know, if you've been reading about Project 2025 at all, you go through it and they're

basically like, we're going to shut down the EPA. And if you look at Michigan and Minnesota, those are two states that really, since they've gotten democratic trifectas since the 2020 elections, really bolstered their environmental protection and climate initiatives. If you want to think about, you know, preventing backsliding, even when the presidential race looks a big grim, great places to start is state legislatures. And at Pennsylvania, similarly, we helped flip the House and they've been able to generate a lot of really great laws as well. And hopefully, in this upcoming cycle, we can maintain control the House there and hopefully get the Senate to kind of a time where we would have more leverage in negotiations across chambers. And then Wisconsin is another state that you may

be familiar with on the presidential battlegrounds. Well, you might have seen that the state Supreme Court recently ruled that their old maps were unconstitutional. They passed new maps that provide a majority for either party for the first time in decades in Wisconsin. And so we're really excited about the potential fair. Everyone thinks at the very least we can pick up a bunch of seats and hopefully threatened to actually win new majorities. Arizona is a state that has constantly, you know, there's been a one-seat Republican majority there for years. There hasn't been a Democratic trifecta in Arizona in decades, but one is possible this year. And so that's another state to look out for Nevada and North Carolina also presidential backgrounds.

Those are two states where there are actually supermajority thresholds at stake. In Nevada, there is a Trump-supporting governor, but you could actually elect a supermajority that could override his vetoes of things like protecting contraception. And similarly, in North Carolina, you have a very far-right Republican candidate for governor that a lot of people are focusing on and rightfully so. He's spoken about killing his political opponents. And of course, it's important that he loses. but, you know, even if he does lose, his opponent won't be able to govern if the far right maintains their super majority in that state, which they only hold by one seat.

Yeah, and then also New Hampshire, that's a state where there is technically a Republican traffic today, but they have a 400-member house in New Hampshire where each representative represents about 4,000 people. It's kind of very difficult to manage. And because Republicans really only have had effectively like a two-seat majority for most of the past two years, they haven't been able to pass a ton of far. all right bills. So we've been able to stop the worst of it there. You know, the governor shifts is up there as well. So there's potential, you know, maybe even for something, if not a trifect, just a lot more governing power there. And so New Hampshire State, we're also coming out. And then Kansas finally, if you're familiar with that, all they have a Democratic governor, but a far right supermajority in the state house. And we're looking to break that and hopefully

stop overriding to vetoes with things again, like a lot of overriding vetoes protecting the rights of that. So that's the battleground. So I don't ever. one's thought up. Talk a little more about Arizona because it seems to be, at least as far as national news goes, I feel like I hear a lot more about Arizona and the crazy MAGA Republicans than I do a lot of other states. What do you think we're looking at in 2024 there? I think they have the highest percentage of their caucus of any state refuses to believe that the 2020 election was, you know, valid. And so it's a product of the fact that it really is a very far-right caucus. And like those party members aren't just in the deep red seats. The closest house race in 2022, like the closest

Republican winner, is an election deny. And again, that's a state where if you can really let the people in, you know, those kind of moderate Tucson suburbs know, hey, I know that, you know, is there a lot of Republicans for a long time? But, you know, it's increasingly purple. And by the way, this is not like the Republican that your dad and your grandfather voted for. You know, you have the potential there to maybe even win a Democrat tri-ecta in Arizona, which was unthinkable for decades. but now is actually in the realm because, again, the state legislature there is just so far right and people need to be made aware of that. And in addition, in Arizona, the state Supreme Court is also far right. We implemented a few months ago a territorial ban on a ball abortion,

like criminalizing the protects itself, threatening that their doctors in jail. The right-wing majorities in the state legislature actually refuse to pass a fix on that a few times before sanity finally prevailed, but there still is a 15-week ban. And actually on the ballot this year, is, you know, a state constitutional right to protect reproductive health. And hopefully that really raises the saleys to the issue. And we have seen, you know, voters increasingly tune into the fact that really it is right-wing lawmakers at the state level that are the biggest threat to reproductive help right now. Just in talking about Arizona and these other states that you're talking about, I read a quote from Melissa Walker, who's your head of giving circles. She said, friends don't

let friends give non-strategic political donations. And she compared it to money. ball, which I can't say I've read the book, but just an absolutely perfect movie. Explain what she means there. Let's think about the money. It's like, I do not have the money to, you know, make a difference in the presidential election. But what I do have is the ability to, you know, help marshal the resources to make a huge difference in state legislative elections. And so we're basically trying to create that power in aggregate, like Brad Pitt talking to his

scouts in that room. You know, the presidential election, there's going to be billions of dollars spent there. You know, if you are a Mike Bloomberg, certainly I wish you would. to spend some money and stay listeners. But you know, you can make like a big difference at the presidential. But if you are, you know, Joe or Jane, new abnormal listener, I don't know if you have those billions of dollars. So if you do again, please contact me on Ayrnautstateproject.org.

Please contact me too. Yeah. How do you make a difference? Well, we give you a bunch of different ways where, again, a state legislative race, you know, a competitive state legislative election still only costs about 3% of a competitive federal election. You know, so even if you think of that, there's a good that you want to make a difference, but your money goes a lot further at the state level.

And again, you're talking about elections where, you know, in Michigan, the state house there, the district that was at the tipping point, it was a side by 660 votes. If 330 votes changed in a single suburban Detroit district, there would not be a democratic trade effect in Michigan. So you're just talking about these tiny, tiny margins. Again, you're talking about a presidential race that costs billions. I think in that race, they ended up raising, you know, maybe less than a million dollars between the two candidates total.

And it's just you and, you know, like your friends, if you really want to find a way for a group to be involved. We absolutely encourage you to check on our website and get involved in the Gaming Circles program. If that's kind of a bit of a lift for you right now, but you still want to make the difference, we also have our GivSmart program, which is also on our site, statesproject.org, where you can donate direct to the candidates. If you also want to check out, we have a partnering with this website called Oath.

Oath. You can check out kind of our candidate lists there as well for where you can make a big difference to GiveSmart. And at Oath, actually, they limit who, get to your email address. So if you're like, I love donating, but I hate spam. Yeah. I've received that complaint from a lot of people, so that's why I'm really excited to work to vote because they're a very like donor-focused platform. So you should check out oath. Got vote. That's something that would interest you. But also statesproject.org has everything else

as well. So you mentioned that you have links to give the money directly to candidates. I just want to be clear on this. The money that is given to you or whatever, that's what you do, right? You give the money directly to candidates. You don't give it to state party. and stuff like that, you give it directly to the candidates who you think have the best chance of making a difference. So, I mean, if you donate through like GIFMART, that goes direct to the candidates. If you do a giving circle and you work with us, there may be ways that we can spend money out the door that is not necessarily giving directly to candidates, but the money out the door doesn't fund our operations that's funded separately. It's all money out the door, but just it's money

that's spent on program in the States. It might not, but if you do a giving circle, that money might not necessarily go directly to a candidate, but it's still going directly to fund, you know, electoral activities to try to elect lawmakers that will work for the, you know, the people of the state. Gotcha. I read in the New York Times, so I assume it has to be true, that your plan is to spend $70 million this year in races in, I think, the nine states that we talked about. Is that accurate? Yeah. That's the hope. And so, again, if you want to be a part of that, again, you know, that $70 million is really just a tiny fraction. Again, again, if you think about spread across those nine states, spread across, like, you know, again,

it's most it's like dozens of races. That piece of the pie gets pretty small pretty quickly. So, again, if you're thinking about just how you can make the difference in those individual races, you know, it's really a state legislative candidates. Like I said, that one race in Michigan, the two candidates combined spent, I think, 0.01% or whatever, what the presidential is going to cost. So if you want to make a difference, state legislatures. Yeah.

And just before I let you go, I do want to hammer that point again at the, risk of repeating myself. These state races are so important. I know you all were founded seven years ago, which is, I think, perfect because I was going to say, like, maybe a decade ago, it was understandable why you would think, oh, those races aren't important. And what do I care living in New York about a race in Michigan? And then what we've seen over the past, you know, decade or eight years or whatever, are these far-right Republicans taking control in places like Florida, to Texas, too numerous to name and passing these obscene abortion bans and banning Mitha Pristone and throwing books out of libraries and doing all of this stuff. All of this stuff is done

at the state level. And what happens in one state easily affects other states. So I know I'm repeating myself, I just want to hammer home how important this is in 2024. Yeah. Just hammering at home. Project 2025, you know, if you look through that thing, a lot of it is passing federal power to state governments. And so if you want to be a bulwark against the far rights plans of this country, states are a place where you can make a huge difference. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. It's the states project. The website is statesproject.org. I just cannot encourage people enough to go there and visit it and see what you can do to help, whether it's by joining a giving circle or just giving money directly or getting involved in some other way, you know, if money is tight,

which it is for a lot of people, understandably. But like I said, this is so important, and you all are doing just absolutely great work. And thanks so much for coming back on. Yeah, thanks for the kind words, Andy. Thanks for having me. And hopefully you're our, you know, America's lucky rabbit. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal investigative reporter with Wisconsin Watch,

whose recent piece that was jointly published at ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch brings us behind the scenes of something that is even more sinister than what we usually discuss on the new abnormal about how Republicans are using right-wing, theocratic beliefs to solidify some of their most egregious policy ideas. And this is coming from one man, which you may not have known about. In a piece written by Phoebe Petrovic, the piece is entitled, The Gospel of Matthew Trujella, how a militant anti-abortion activist is influencing Republican politics. Phoebe, this was alarming, astonishing, and again, I'll use the word sinister. talk to us about Matthew Trewella and how he came to be on your radar. Yeah, so Matthew Trella is a pastor in the Milwaukee area, Wisconsin, who extremism researchers tell me is one of the most important thought leaders on the far right post January 6th that you have never heard of.

I started paying attention to him back in October of 2022 when Matt Walsh, who is self-described. Christofascist came to UW Madison's campus to talk about his propaganda film, What is a Woman? And there were protesters to that event, and there were counter-protesters to that event. And there was a whole media frenzy because one of the Christian counter-protesters got his Bible torn up. And so he was on the news everywhere. And I was the only reporter who actually walked over to them to have a conversation, like, who are you guys? Where are you from? What are you about because they were getting kind of misreported as UW students. They're not from UW. Most of them were homeschooled. And so I found out about the church and did a little digging and

noticed that there was this fascinating backstory. And then over the years, they just kept popping up more and more and more in context of protesting queer events. And no one was talking about this larger context, this history as an anti-abortion extremist. And then I started looking around and realizing that he was having an influence today. So in the 90s and 2000s, Pastor Matt Turella had a reputation as one of the nation's most militant anti-abortion activists. He was known for blockading clinics. Sometimes he and his followers would bring cars to park in front of clinics that they would then chain themselves to to disrupt people from getting the care they needed. He called for churches to form militias. He defended the murder of abortion providers as justifiable. And mainstream Republicans really kept him at

arm's length. We found that two, three state right to life chapters didn't want anything to do with them, said that he was too extreme. Fast forward to 2013. He self-publishes a book called The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates using the 16th century Protestant doctrine that was born out of the Protestant Reformation out of religious war. And he says, this is a tool that you can use today in America as a government official and it empowers you by the power of God to defy any law, policy, or court opinion that is deemed unjust or immoral under the law of God. And this came out at really the right time. It was the rise of the Tea Party movement.

Then 2016 was Trumpism and MAGA. And we've just progressively gone more to the right in our politics. And he's sort of been there in this moment really hustling. to get the word out about this teaching that he says is justified in scripture, justified in American history, and using it for really unconstitutional, undemocratic, and theocratic aims. And so we found that he has been on a speaking circuit, starting with the pandemic. And his profile has just grown. And we found him being cited by people as local as school board members all the way up to former members of Trump's administration.

So I just want to read folks a part of your piece where you write this and you're quoting Treuela a 2020 sermon that he did. And this is what he has said. When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effemant little squirrels, judgment is in the land. You go on to write Phoebe that last year he said homosexuality should be treated as a crime, noting that the Bible called for the death penalty for, quote, the filth of sodomy. This is crazy.

Like when I hear language like this, I think about just the idea that these people we've seen over the course of this year alone, at least two separate legislative bodies in red states have looked as far back as the 19th century in Arizona to be able to uphold. an abortion ban that was finally overturned in Alabama and in other places. And this man is not even going to the 19th century. He's going all the way back to the 16th century, where he is saying that women in government is something that is disgusting. Talk to us about his vision and the vision that Republicans, who at one time were considered, you know, normal policymakers, are taking from him and are showing up in legislative bodies, whether it be in school boards, school boards, state houses,

or on Capitol Hill. Yeah. Well, that's really the question, right? And one of the hopes with the story is that we connect his past and his to his present and his behind the scenes or what he feels more comfortable sharing to his congregation to what he's doing on a more public platform when he's speaking to, for example, the Waukesha GOP because he really does tone down his message when he's speaking to Republican groups. He spoke to the Montana state legislature in 2015. He's spoken with governors. He's spoken with county commissioners and county GOP groups across the country. And he is very specific in most of those instances to keep it to, there's this doctrine. It's a tool that allows you to defy laws, policies, court opinions that you disagree with, that you believe are

unjust or immoral, and he will cloak it in sort of this patriotic veneer of this is something the founders did and blah, blah, blah, which scholars that I spoke to push back against. But Turella's own ideas, and even the ideas that he does write about in his book, are far more extreme and explicitly theocratic. So he has a whole section of his book that says, the laws of the nation should reflect the laws and justice of God. So for him, The reason that people, government officials, which he calls lesser magistrates, should be using this doctrine, is because they need to take it up under their own volition to make sure that whatever law, policy, court opinion in the United States comports with God's law, which is his very particular strict interpretation of the Bible. We should know that Torella doesn't claim this title, but researchers have told me that this teaching in the 20th century and whatnot, it was really popular amongst a group of fundamentalists known as Christian Reconstructionists. And this is a theocratic movement that very explicitly wants to shape all of America under their interpretation of biblical law and specifically Old Testament biblical law, which requires,

requires the death penalty for all sorts of things. And so that's the goal. Like, that's the end game for him. When I'm listening to you, this is not just the end game for him. Because I've been wondering and I've asking everyone that I talk to, what is the end game for Republicans? What is the end game for Maga Republicans and what many have called for expressly Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation, the institutionalization of Trumpism? And when I'm hearing what you're saying, saying about Chuella, it harkens to what Justice Samuel Alito was caught on tape saying to another independent investigative journalist where he said that America is a Christian nation. And there are just some people that we, you know, our differences are too vast and there are some people we can't

live side by side with. So they are creating and reimagining this idea of what America should be through the lens of theocracy, through this lens of, putting women, people of color, LGBTQ plus people back in a place of oppression and subjugation. To that point, Phoebe, like, this is, it's fundamentally anti-democratic. Is it not? It is. It's very much my way or the highway. It's a super narrow interpretation of everything that privileges a certain sect of people.

And it requires buying into a myth about how this nation was founded, what our history has entailed, all of that stuff. And so that's something that the extremism researchers that I spoke to kept emphasizing to me is that there might be people out there who don't know any of his history, who don't know any of this, but the faith might be strong for them. They might really love America. And they're like, well, this sounds good. And they need to know that it's fundamentally contrary to the American project and to our constitutional order, to democracy, to disestablishment, to all of those things. And given that this man, until frankly, your article came out this week, has been operating, I would say, in the shadows of the mainstream, where this is not a name that we readily know like a Steve Bannon, like a Stephen Miller, like any of these that have been in the orbit of Maga. Do you find Truella to be more dangerous than these other men?

Or is it just, does his ideology present a different type of danger? I'll be honest. I don't feel qualified to make that assessment. What I can say is that he's very, when he's speaking in friendly crowds to his church, to far right media, he is very open about his desires and what the world should be. I don't know if other people that you've mentioned are as explicit out in the open. And one of the glaring things that I just come back to is he was so gracious to these women who would introduce him at county GOP events or when he was speaking to the Montana state legislature. And these are women who are working outside the home and who have been elected to a position within the party or office.

And then he'll go to his church and say that women in government is sickening and perverse. and then it's a sign of God's judgment. That's what I don't understand. I think that people weren't listening to the sermons. And so what I did was I listened to the sermons and reported on that. So that's one of my hopes of the story is that we can connect those things together because people have talked about this guy in Wisconsin. And they'll say, oh, yeah, he was extreme in the 90s.

You know, he doesn't matter now or whatever. And so I was trying to show what he's talked about in the 90s is what he's talking about today. And so he talked to the Walker Show of Republican Party. it's the heart of GOP politics in Wisconsin. And then three months later, he was saying that he was calling for the death penalty against, quote unquote, the filth of sootomy. So, you know, this is something that's still happening now and he's quite explicit.

But I will say there was this weird thing where I talked to a lot of Republicans for the story trying to get them to give me a sense of what he was like in the 90s or now. And so many distanced themselves and said, why are you reporting this story? We don't know anything about him. He's so fringe. That's so 90s. And I would say, okay, but one of the members of his church is the chair of the Fondalak County Republican Party. He's been to Waukesha twice. Wau, GOP has the book on the website. Like, you know, it's happening now. The evidence is to the contrary of what they were saying. So there was this weird kind of dynamic there. So I want to read this quote, too, you report on in your piece. This is from a sermon of his in 2015 where he said, quote, the federal government has already attacked and abridged liberty. They are now in the process of plundering the American people, he said. The phalanx of laws created by the state to invade our domestic affairs, disarm the people, seize our property, and harass our persons all point

to the growing tyranny in America. So not only is he calling for either the subjugation or criminalization of vast majority of Americans. We're talking about women. We're talking about black people, people of color. We're talking about queer people, the LGBT-Q-plus community. He's also talking about violence and violence being justified because he sees what? I haven't seen a gun taken away from anybody. I haven't seen a large turn-in of guns in this country.

I wish I did. But what he is saying is that basically our government, is an enemy of the people. Talk to us more about that. Yeah, so he has said in multiple sermons and speeches that the federal government and the state government is at war with the people. So he has used that term explicitly before.

One of the things that he always says or often says when he is describing this doctrine to people as he says that government officials have a right or duty to defy higher authority if it violates God's law, or if necessary to actively resist. And the history of the doctrine of the lesser magistrates is born out of religious war. When Christians and Catholics were literally, you know, fighting each other.

People were dying. And he writes in his book that there are times when men must redden their swords. And so violence is never too far afield when he's discussing this. This isn't a passive doctrine. And it's often kind of presented with if it gets too, point, this is justified. He had a sermon after January 6th, basically saying lots of other people are condemning this, look, sometimes we have to take matters into our own hands. That's an extreme paraphrase. He has another sermon called violence is a tool. It's not good or bad. It's just a tool. And so it's not a

peaceful doctrine. He says that pacifism is a heresy. And this is one of the reasons why extremism researchers, scholars, even conservative Christian scholars that I spoke to who otherwise might share some of these overarching principles or be kind of aligned said that this was very dangerous. I'm so appreciative of your expose that you've done to kind of bring this person and this ideology to light. Because I think that as we are seeing this country make hard shifts to the right at the hands of Supreme Court justices, of federal justices. We need to understand where it's coming from and to what extent, like, when will it be satiated? And the reality is that this sounds to me like their endgame, which looks a bit like Gilead from the Handmaid's Tale. I can't imagine Americans

being comfortable or willing to go back to that place, to go back to a place of religious zealots, and obscene violence and militias and that being okay. And so I just want to, you know, I want to close out by thanking you for this investigative reporting and letting folks know it's up now at propublica.org, the gospel of Matthew Trewella, how a militant anti-abortion activist is influencing Republican politics. Phoebe, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. And I hope that you'll come back and join us again soon. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

and I just want people to pay attention. And if they hear someone saying the doctrine of the lesser magistrates are invoking the authority of that, listen closer, ask tough questions of whoever is saying that because it's a clue to really tune in. Thank you. Andy Levy. Notorious D.A.M. Why do you do this to me? How are you closing out this Godforsaken week with you?

You're fuck that guy. We just had a really early hurricane barrel plowed through the Caribbean and then head into Texas. And leaving aside the fact that we should not be having hurricanes this strong this early in the year. There's one thing that hasn't gotten a ton of coverage. I mean, look, a lot of things haven't gotten a ton of coverage in the past couple weeks for reasons. But we thought it was important to make a note of this that when barrel slammed into Texas as a Category 1 hurricane. Greg Abbott, who last I checked was the governor of that state, was flying off to Asia on a nine-day trip. And he stayed on that trip. He didn't come home. He stayed in Asia.

There were definitely some people on social media who noticed this and compared it to Ted Cruz heading to Cancun when that horrible storm hit Texas several years ago. It just shows how little these people, and by these people, I mean Republicans at this point, how little these people, people actually care about others. And the fact that Greg Abbott couldn't be bothered to reschedule a trip to Asia, where he was supposedly, as a press release from his office, stated, driving forward progress in industries critical to the future of the global economy, which is double speak for I'm taking a nice trip to Asia. Meanwhile, a hurricane was hitting his state, the state of the people that voted for him, that put him in office. And he just doesn't care.

And it just, it needs to be highlighted again and again how little these people care about others. So we're going to keep doing it. You know, it may not have gotten the media coverage that Cruz's Cancun trip did. But I think it's important to highlight it and to give a hell and hearty fuck that guy to Texas governor Greg Abbott. I mean, the question for me is like, why do the people of Texas keep voting for people who don't give a fuck about them? Yeah, that is a good question. And yes, obviously, we cover voter suppression. we know all of the tactics and things,

but there is still an overwhelming amount of people that voted to reelect Abbott, that vote to reelect Ted Cruz. And I'm like, and these are people that have shown you time and time again during natural disasters or disasters that were built from their negligence in terms of like the electrical grid in Texas

that failed, that has failed during storms that have cost people their lives, that they just don't give a fuck. So I'm like, stop voting for people and putting people in office that show you just how callous and cruel they are. Because I'm not surprised that Abbott is in Asia. Like, I'm not surprised that he takes a vacation when other people are like, you know, fighting for their lives.

Because that's who they are. Fuck that guy. And all the fucking Republican politicians that don't give a fuck about the people who put them in office. Yeah. Before we move on, I just want to say there were people in Texas during this storm that were using the What a Burger app, What a Burger app, Wadderberger being a hamburger joint. But they were using that to track power outages.

They were using that to see which of the locations had no power and were closed because they weren't getting notifications from either the power company or from the state. And during all of this, the governor of that state was in Korea and other countries in Asia. So again, fuck these guys. DAM, close out this week. Who you got? Well, you know, we can't get enough of the Heritage Foundation, which has become just a staple on the new abnormal.

So my fuck that guy is going to be no different. But instead of saying fuck that guy to the Heritage Foundation, which I say into infinity, fun little story, which is that guess who was hacked recently? The Heritage Foundation suffered an online hack by a group of, quote, gay furry hackers. Yes, you heard me correct. A group of gay furry hackers, according to Newsweek, has targeted the right-wing think tank, releasing passwords, usernames,

and user logs of its users. The activist known as Siege sect posted approximately two gigabytes of data online that it says was retreat from the foundation servers.

The Heritage Foundation denied its servers were hacked. Look, I love a good hack. Right? Like, I love a good hack when it exposes bad people doing horrific

things. And the fact is that they wrote this, the self-described gay furry hackers wrote this, quote, Project 2025 threatens the rights of abortion health care and LGBTQ plus communities in particular. So, of course, we won't stand for that. The post included a screenshot of what appeared to be lines of foundation user data and a link to a database believed to contain passwords and full names of the Heritage Foundation website users, as well as information about the think tank president, Kevin Roberts.

I love this for them. I think that it's great. I say keep up the good fucking work. See what else you can take down. What was that show with Rami? Mr. Robot. Mr. Robot. Yeah, this gives Mr. Robot vibes.

I like that show. My number one of all time. Yeah, so fuck that guy to the Heritage Foundation, continue. And congratulations to the gay. for hackers. Job well done. Yeah. It's never bad to go after Evil Corp. Yeah. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the

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