The Daily Beast Podcast - This Is the Most Extreme Presidential Ticket in American History

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

What does J.D. Vance offer beyond more of the absolute same? The New Abnormal is here to get to the bottom of it. Then, Rep. Jared Huffman joins The New Abnormal to get down to brass tacks as to what replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee would actually look like. Plus, a conversation with Professor Shawn Ginwright about his book The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves and what it means to react to this moment of crisis. 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 Campbell 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 Kedin, 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.

Congressman Jared Huffman is here to talk about what replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee would look like and to fill us in all about his newly assembled Stop Project 2025. Then Professor Sean Ginwright joins us to talk about his book, The Four Pivots, Reimagining Justice, reimagining ourselves, and how to achieve sustainable change for better activism and better community. But first, let's have some fun. Does anybody remember weekends? Like, remember, remember when there were times where you worked for five days, you took a break, and then you came back energized and, like, hopeful and light, and remembered it with summer? I miss those days. So fucking much.

So over the weekend, as everyone in the world at this point knows, that there was a shooting, at a Trump rally where the shooter was killed as well as, I believe, one of the rally goers was shot and killed. This has become par for the course in a country that has done nothing to stop mass shootings, has done nothing to make it less easy for people to get guns, has done nothing about the rise of political violence except to kind of shrug and say that it's par for the course. We've seen an escalation in political violence in this country over the last eight years. Paul Pelosi, Governor Whitmer, Mike Pence, and my fear is that it's going to continue to get worse. We're at a real boiling point as we learn more, as motives are looked for. For me, I'm not quite sure motives really matter

because mass shootings are happening everywhere and no place is safe. And that's kind of what I'm reminded of as we go into this week. Yeah, as far as the motive doesn't matter, believe me, I understand what you're saying. And the fact of the matter is that these things happen so often now, the public shootings in general, that like you could spend your entire life just discussing the motives of the various shooters. No. I think anytime someone takes a shot at a politician, you do have to think about motive. And in this case, as of our recording, the FBI seems to believe that this kid acted alone.

And, you know, if anything, the reports that we're seeing now is that he was kind of a conservative. So I think that stuff, unfortunately, is important because in the immediacy of the incident, you already saw pretty much everyone on the right reacting was almost gleeful in the sense that, boy, they could not wait to try to pin this somehow on Joe Biden or on Antifa or on whatever the bugaboo that they felt like ascribing this to. And of course, none of that is true. As far as motive goes, I do think it's at least important to point out that a lot of people are lying about the conditions that led to this. And a lot of people who are lying should probably be looking in the mirror and looking at the party that has a candidate for a governor of North Carolina

who said some people need killing. And the party that made a lot of jokes and spread a lot of falsehoods and lies when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked. What I'm afraid of And what we're already seeing is we're seeing calls to take it down a notch, to take the tone down a notch, as if this is a both sides problem. And it just isn't. I don't want to sit here and say that, look, I understand the Biden team pulling their ads down in the wake of this. That's what you do. They'll be back up soon enough. And we're four months out from the election. And it doesn't matter. What I am tired of seeing is people in the media who you would think at this fucking point would know better, but they don't. Talking about this as if this is a problem from both sides in terms of the rhetoric and the rhetoric of violence when it is damn near exclusively coming from one side. So again, when it goes to motive, I do think it's important to point out that whatever this guy's motive is, whatever mental illness he may have suffered from,

He was very much not a left-wing ideologue in the manner of the right-wing ideologues who have committed a lot of mass shootings over the past bunch of years. I don't know why we all have to have amnesia at this moment. Exactly. I, for one, have a really good memory on most days. And so I'm not going to feign amnesia over what has happened in the last eight years in this country because of what happened over the weekend. I really am not. I think to myself, I said, when Paul Pelosi was attacked in his home, the Republican Party not only made jokes, they made up costumes. I thought, how disgusting. Because there was a time, eight years ago, nine years ago, 10 years ago, that when there was any act of

violence, it was to bring people together and remind folks that you can have disagreements, you can have political parties with disagreements, but that violence was never the answer. Not only is it not the answer, it's also not a fucking punchline. And so I don't know why we always have to pretend over the last eight years that there hasn't been one party, one group

that has been stoking the flames of violence in this country, that has been telling people to stand back and stand by, right? That has said that white supremacists are good people. And now we see them marching all over the fucking place because they feel emboldened. So like I, I, for one, I'm not going to pretend like I'm going to join, you know, what just happened on MSNBC and say like, oh, well, we have to be better. Being better is about pointing out facts and connecting the dots.

We don't arrive at this moment out of fucking nowhere. Yeah. The credulity of the media after this, I have lost track of the stories about Trump had a spiritual moment and all of this stuff, and the worst possibly was from Axios on Monday morning. Credit to The Washington Post, Philip Bump, for pointing this out. In their morning newsletter, one of the things they said about Trump is he could unify America. Imagine he gave a speech featuring something he rarely shows humility. Imagine him telling the nation that he has been too rough, too loose, too combative with his language, and now realizes his words can have consequences

and promises to tone it down and bring new voices into the White House if he wins. Are you fucking kidding me? This somehow was not written for, like, Highlights Magazine. This was written supposedly by an adult for adults. And this is the crap? No, I'm sorry. I am not condoning what happened at the Trump rally, obviously. I am also not going to put my head in the sand and pretend that

This changes anything with regard to who and what Donald Trump is and who and what the Republican Party is in 2024. That's insanity. And for Axios to put that in a newsletter that's read by prominent people, it is absolutely unreal to me. And I think it might be the worst. But it would be one thing if it was just that. There was an article in The Spectator, British publication, with the headline, We Are All MAGA today, or today we are all MAGA. I, for the love of God. And I'm just looking at this, like, who are you?

If you're MAGA today, then guess what? You were MAGA yesterday. You were MAGA last week and you've been MAGA all along. There's absolutely nothing that happened over the weekend where you would say, today we are on. There's nothing that could happen that would make me say, today we are all MAGA. It's as idiotic as I think it was Van Jones who used to get made fun of a lot for saying today was the day Donald Trump became president.

Fucking God. It's like it's 2024. This guy, first of all, he's been a public figure for, what, 40 years, whatever? We know who he is. And he's been a political figure for over a decade now. We know exactly who he is. And no, he's not going to change. And to sit there and write these pieces, I just, I don't know, Daniel.

We've said this so many times on this show over the last couple of years. Corporate media is absolutely complicit. You should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. You should be able to report what happened on Saturday and report what Project 2025 is. You should be able to talk about the facts that incidents of violence have grown over the last eight years and tell us how we got to this place while also reporting what it is that happened. Again, it is, it's this willingness to forget. It is this willingness to ignore. It is this willingness to comply with whatever.

narrative is put out there so long as you are seen as quote unquote unbiased, non-biased, or just completely fucking ignorant. We're in this place right now where our democracy is hanging on by a thread because of the willingness of too many Americans to bury their head in the sand, because of the willingness of people not to recognize that we're in the midst of a crisis, that we are in the midst of a crisis that right now as we're speaking. What else happened today. Oh, Judge Alien Cannon down in Florida, who Donald Trump placed there purposefully, who her own colleagues have said that she should not be on the bench, right, does not have the resume, does not have the fucking range, has just dismissed one of the most robust cases

against Donald Trump. Because on top of what the Supreme Court did on July 1st, telling us that presidents are now immune and can do whatever it is that they want because they are kings, Now she comes down and says, oh, well, you know, hmm, who gave me the idea that the appointment of a special counsel was unconstitutional? Oh, Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas, who, by the way, has just been accepting gifts fucking left and right from right wing donors to do exactly what it is that he's been doing. And now people are saying Matt Gates posted a picture of Aling Cannon and said our next Supreme Court justice. They're doing this shit in broad fucking daylight. And we're sitting around, walking around on fucking eggshells.

And they are taking this country exactly as Steve Bannon said. State by state, village by village, fucking court appointment by court appointment. But please, let us spend another two weeks twiddling our fucking thumbs. Yeah, and let's talk a little more about Aileen Cannon and what she did with what you referenced with the Clarence Thomas thing. She cited Clarence Thomas three times. The three times she cited Clarence Thomas were from his concurrence in the presidential immunity case. Now, to be clear, what that means is she was not citing a decision that he wrote for the majority of the court. She was citing something he and he alone said.

So we're at the point now. And again, this to me goes right along with what we've been saying for a long time now that there's no quiet part anymore. they're not even bothering to cite Supreme Court, actual Supreme Court ruling as precedent. She is citing a concurrence, a concurrence that has no legal force whatsoever. But they don't care anymore. They have reached the point where they're like, we don't have to hide this. We don't have to pretend. And look, I think there's a good chance that I am assuming that her decision today will be appealed.

It would be pretty silly for it not to be. and as much as I'm not a fan of Merrick Garland, I do think he will appeal this decision. Willy, Andy? Well, I know. Sillyer things have happened, you know? For sure, sillier things have happened. It would be a fool to deny that. I have to think that this decision will be appealed, and I have to think that it will be

struck down and sent back either to her or, you know, at this point, it's pretty clear it should be going to a different judge. But that part I have no faith about. So it won't surprise me if this ends up right back in Judge Cannon's fully incapable hands. But again, it is just the extent to which they are not hiding things anymore on the right. And whether it's the members of the judiciary, whether it's members of Congress, whether it's presidential candidates, it's all out in the open now. And you brought up Project 2025 and that's all out in the open. They are saying everything.

And I am not sitting here and I know, well, I sense anyway that both of us maybe sound a little defeated today. I am not without hope. And four months is a long time. We forget things in this country very quickly. And I did see there were historians pointing out yesterday as sort of a response to the, well, this clinches the election for Trump saying, hold up a minute. There have been other cases like this.

Gerald Ford and another, where they did not end up winning their election. It's Teddy Roosevelt and then Reagan lost an eight-point bump post-assassination attempt. Yeah, so exactly. Look, there is a very easy tendency to sort of throw your hands up. It's the path of least resistance, literally, is to just throw your hands up and say, well, this election is a done deal now. That is not the case. And I think it's really important going into the next four months that we realize that that's not the case and that we keep pushing on ultimately. The Battlegrounds Senate polls are all showing that the senators on the Dem side are up by a lot of points.

That's a winnable strategy there. But what I do want to get from you to is a reaction because we now have proof that J.D. Vance is Trump's VP pick and I'd like you guys to say what you're thinking here. No, you don't. I was like, Danielle, go ahead. I don't fucking know. J.D. Vance of all the people to pick,

he's a racist with a full head of hair. So, bravo to him. What does J.D. Vance offer except more of the absolute same. Yes, he's in a battleground state. So I guess that that matters. He's a racist. He's a misogynist. He has lifted up Project 2025, congratulated them for the policies that would, you know,

ban abortion nationwide, that would do away with diversity, equity, and inclusion, that would target people of color and trans folks and LGBTQ plus people. He fits into the Maga mold. What are your thoughts, Andy? J.D. Vance, he love him? He's great. Yeah. Yeah, he's my favorite. No, here's my maybe silver lining thought on this. And I will say right off the bat, I'm not entirely sure I buy my own bullshit on this. But it's something I'm going to throw out there and I'm going to sort of cling to it. Well, two things. The first thing I'll just say off the bat, I think generally the vice presidential pick, I think historically doesn't make a huge amount of difference one way or the other. So there's that. But let's set that aside. I think maybe there's a chance here that in picking Vance, it's almost a little bit like taking a victory lap before the game is over. And what I mean by that is by picking someone who is, as you, as you said, is as MAGA as MAGA gets, at least, you know, in his current incarnation, as opposed to the one in 2016 when he was talking about what an awful little Nazi Donald Trump was.

But in his current incarnation, he is as MAGA as MAGA gets. And that may backfire. That's my hopeful silver lining here, is that you could probably make the argument, at least in modern America, that that is the most extreme presidential ticket that we have had. I think you'd have to go back a really long way to maybe find an example to the contrary. And I'm not, I'm not sure that works. And the other thing is, you know, as we've discovered in a lot of the midterm election, elections and in some local elections, et cetera. And in the fact that just in the last week, President Trump and the Republican Party have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025,

actual MAGA shit is not all that popular. It is Donald Trump, who, again, for reasons that, you know, mainly escape me, it is Donald Trump who is personally popular. And he pulls shit off that other Republicans cannot. And we saw that with Ron DeSantis. And we've seen it over and over again. The list is close to endless. J.D. Vance, as far as anytime I've seen him speak, is not a particularly likable guy. He doesn't come across as affable. He comes across as basically what he is, as a MAGA shill. And my silver lining of hope is that they counted their chickens. And they went too far. And they were like, we're going all in on MAGA. This is what, this is what's going to win the election. And I'm not sure they're right about that.

I wonder what Nimirata thinks. Jared Huffman is a congressional Democrat who represents California's second district, and he recently launched a task force to take on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, widely considered to be the blueprint for a second Trump term. He joins me now to talk about that and more. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Oh, it's great to be with you. Thanks. So before we get to the task force, obviously I need to talk about the elephant, or I guess it would be more apt to say the donkey in the room, which is, of course, President Joe Biden. A week ago, you told CNN, quote, we need a reset, we need a course correction. We've got to acknowledge that this wasn't just one bad night. So I'll ask you, where do you stand now? And did Thursday's post-NATO summit press conference move your needle at all? No, it didn't move my needle. I will just say this. I still think that we have a problem that needs to be acknowledged and understood and corrected for, because this election is far too big to do anything else.

And that's why so many of us are struggling with what to do. On the one hand, this is a decision that would seem to be entirely in President Biden's hands. He's secured the votes and the delegates to be the Democratic nominee if he chooses to be. And he says he's made the decision. He's made the that decision. On the other hand, most of us think that we're not on a winning trajectory right now and that the Biden team and maybe the president himself have not fully even acknowledged the problem, let alone offered a convincing course correction to explain how they're going to pull the nose of the plane up here and get us on the path to victory. So I am still very much in that place where I regard this as fluid, where I believe that President Biden, as a good,

leader has a responsibility to continue to assess new information and to reconsider decisions because sometimes decisions need to change. So one of your colleagues in the House told Politico's playbook on Friday that, quote, the super friends are assembling. There's a group of people who are going to make their case to whomever they can get to at the White House that he, President Biden, needs to step aside and we're going to get our asses kicked if he doesn't. Is that something that you have heard directly or that you have heard directly or that you, are part of, or was that just something you, like me, read in Politico? So I am not aware of any specific group or any specific meeting that's in the works.

I'm certainly not going to be invited to the White House for that kind of an intimate conversation with the president in his inner circle. But I do agree something like that needs to happen. And also on Friday, the New York Times reported that some major Democratic donors have told future forward, which is the largest pro-Biden super PAC, that pledges. is worth around $90 million are now on hold if President Biden stays atop the ticket. How much does that worry you? Well, it's worrisome when you look at the mountains of dark money that Donald Trump is bringing to his side of this race and the fact that the polls are not good for us right now.

They weren't good before the debate. We were losing in most of the battlegrounds and we were losing in most of the nationwide polling. So that was a time when Democrats were vastly outspending Republicans on the airwaves. So, you know, here we are. We've lost our financial advantage. We've spent a good amount of our war chest already just to be trailing in the polls. And now a lot of our donor base is saying that they're going to redirect their money elsewhere. That's not good. It's another reason why this course correction is so important. One last question on this. if not Joe Biden, then who? There are those, and I'm among them who believe that if the president steps aside, that at this stage in the process, it really has to be Vice President Harris.

But there are others who want to throw it more wide open than that. Do you have a take on this? I do. The first thing is, I think it's not right. I agree with Jim Clyburn and others who have said that, you know, we can't have a small group of party insiders just anointing someone. I think the delegates and the, you know, would not like that. I think the credibility of our ticket would suffer if we didn't have at least some modicum of process. And so I like the idea of, you know, what some are referring to as a mini primary. It would have to happen very quickly on a condensed basis.

But you could imagine a handful of town halls around the country where delegates would have access to anyone who wants to run for president who's credible. I think the vice president is far and away, the frontrunner, in that. process and I think she would win and I also would enthusiastically support her to win. I would endorse her and work hard to try to make sure she wins, but not a coronation. It would be her earning that victory heading into the convention. And then you would have a convention that got to play a role along with our nominee in choosing a vice president to round out a winning ticket. And that, honestly, I'm kind of excited about that scenario. It would reinvigorate this race.

It would change the narrative. It's all anybody would be. talking about for the next month. So when you talk about a mini primary, we're not talking about having voters go back to the polls, though, right? You're talking about the pledged delegates or the people who have volunteered to be delegates. We would leave it up to them. That's right. These are the people that are going to be going to Chicago for our convention and casting their votes to select our nominee. But we need to give them a little bit of a process to make that choice. That's what I'm suggesting. I just think Vice President Harris would have a tremendous advantage in that process, which is kind of obvious, right? She's next up. Yeah, absolutely, which is why I and I know others think that at this

stage in the game to nominate anyone else, if President Biden steps down, I think would be kind of foolish. Okay, so let's talk about the stopped Project 2025 task force that you've put together, which, and look, we've been harping on Project 2025 for a long time here on the new abnormal. So I'm so glad you're doing this. First, talk about why you think Project 2025 is so dangerous. Right. So thank you for seeing this for what it is. It's just important that everyone understand. First of all, this is Trump's Project 2025. It's not just some set of ideas that the folks at Heritage or spitball in as a think tank. Over 80% of the authors and editors and managers of Prop 2025, I've come right out of senior positions in Donald Trump's first administration. They are folks that

will surely populate similar positions in a second Trump presidency. And they have spent the last year boasting of how completely intertwined they are with Donald Trump and his campaign and how important their work is going to be in his next administration. And Trump has embraced this in a whole bunch of different ways as well explicitly and implicitly. So if you hear somewhere that Donald Trump is saying he knows nothing about it, that is not to be taken seriously. And it's one of the reasons why this is so dangerous because it is the war plan that a second Trump president's he would use. They didn't really have one the first time around. I mean, we all remember how slow and bumbling and aimless they seem to be. They have their plans together right now. And this is

embraced by not just heritage, but 110 other right-wing groups. Basically, the top groups in the MAGA extreme universe are all aligned behind this. And it's much more serious, much more strategic, much more specific than anything we've ever seen out of Trump and his allies in the past. So you got to take it seriously. You got also just marvel at how extreme it is because it calls for some draconian measures that at any other time in the history of this country would have just been unthinkable. Yeah, for sure. And absolutely, this is Trump's Project 2025.

It's also the Republican Party's Project 2025. And I think the more that we can get the message out that this is the Republican Party right now. This is not some offshoot. This is not some, oh, well, you know, oh, this is just a bunch of extremists. This is the mainstream Republican Party right now. And I said the other day on this show, I said it's not an exaggeration, in my opinion, to say that Project 2025 could mean the end of America as we know it. Am I being overly alarmist?

No, you're being a realist. That's what it's designed to do, to end democracy as we know it, to take away fundamental rights, to concentrate this unprecedented amount of power in the presidency. And remember, the president is now cloaked with this gift of absolute immunity from this terrible Supreme Court. So, you know, Donald Trump would have everything he needs to be that dictator on day one that he says he's going to be and he would have nothing to lose with absolute immunity. Project 2025 is a war plan for an aspiring dictator.

It really is. And, you know, I keep thinking that the scariest thing is we may end up looking back on the good old days when Bill Barr was the Attorney General. Well, right. There were individuals who kind of served as guardrails against Trump's worst impulses in the first administration, right? And, you know, the ultimate one was, of course, Vice President Pence, who actually honored his oath of office when the rubber met the road on January 6th. But the folks at Heritage and the folks in Trump's inner circle this time around are making it clear, they're not going to allow anyone like that to be in a second Trump presidency. There will not be a Mark Millie. There will not be a Dan Esper. There will not be anyone else.

And they're going to dig deep into that next level of federal personnel, the civil service, and just purge the hell out of every federal agency. Anyone who's ever been involved in a DEI, program. Anyone who's ever been working on climate science or anything that they regard is woke, fired. Anyone who's ever donated to a Democrat in any race at any time in their life, summarily fired. And then they're going to repopulate all these different agencies with trained and vetted MAGA loyalists from this project 2025 database. It is truly creepy. Yeah. No, it really is. And, you know, I said what I said because it really is, it's a complete remaking almost of the American political system. And as you've pointed out, it's almost explicitly anti-democratic, isn't it?

It is explicitly anti-democratic. I mean, they're using terms like post-constitutional. Yeah. You have folks at CPAC, you know, celebrating the end of American democracy openly, shouting the quiet part out loud. Democracy doesn't work for these folks. And I think that's important for us to understand. you look at this extreme right-wing social order that they want to impose, taking away women's rights, biblical definitions of gender and family, all of these rollbacks to some, you know, Christian nationalist mythical age. Most Americans want nothing to do with that. Yeah. They would, in a functioning democracy, this stuff wouldn't stand a chance. And so they have figured out that

functioning democracy is not for them. They're coming after it. Well, and that's the other thing. And that's something that I haven't been hearing enough. I think that this document and these people are Christian nationalists. And that is the rubric under which they want to run this country. Indeed. And we've got to get over this deference, this hesitation to talk about Christian nationalism. Because there is a Christian privilege in this country. I know we have a secular republic with, you know, no religious tests.

And there's nothing in the Constitution about God or Christianity or anything. like that. We like to think that we are completely secular. But the fact is there's been a very strong Christian privilege in this country for a long, long time. And anything that even includes the name Christian in it, like this Christian nationalist agenda, just is trusted inherently by a lot of people. And they're hesitant to call it out and criticize it. That's sort of how fascism is going to come to America one day. And that day may be like now. Yeah. I was going to say, I'm so glad to hear you say that, but not what you are saying might happen. I'm not glad to hear you say that, but I'm glad to hear you address the problem and call it what it is, because you're absolutely right.

Not enough people are doing that. The initial press release that you put out for Task Force Stop Project 2025 said that the aim is to stop Project 2025. Obviously, the best way to stop it is for Donald Trump to lose in November, and hopefully the more that people find out about it, the better chance there is of that. But if you put that aside for a second, how do you envision fighting against Project 2025 and achieving the aim of stopping it should he win? Well, first of all, I would add that even if we defeat Donald Trump, Project 2025 does not go away. It just gets renamed Project 29. Fair.

And all of these same MAGA extremists and dark money heritage type groups come back at it another time. They're not going to go away. This stuff is going to be an ongoing problem for us. And that's why the work of our task force will also inform some legislation that we're going to need to pass if we can do well in the election. And it's something that Americans, you know, people all over this country are going to need to take to heart and understand what's at stake when we go to.

the vote. This Supreme Court is going to be a problem for a long time to come. If we allow Republicans to have the Senate and the presidency, a 6-3 radical supermajority is going to become even worse, going to become 7-2 or worse. So, you know, understanding the stakes for the next several years has got to be part of it. Now, in the event that Trump wins and he is allowed to advance this agenda, the tools we have to work with are not great, to be perfectly honest, especially if we don't have at least one house of Congress. We're talking about, you know, a grassroots opposition, trying to marshal public opinion and stop things the way we did last time around, thankfully, with the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But will we be successful this next time around

against Project 2025? I don't know. Certainly the groups that are lawyered up and that, you know, are just badass litigators are going to be super important. State Attorney Generals, who I know are already thinking about this and already developing some litigation contingencies will be probably our front line of defense. Yeah, for sure. And of course, the other side is not particularly constrained by the Constitution and things like that that are supposed to govern how, you know, how this country is run and how this country operates, which makes the problem even greater, I would think. Oh, yeah. And there's no place to which they won't go to get what they want. They're talking

about circumventing Congress through the aggressive use of what we call impoundment, which is basically ignoring Congress's directives with federal funding and, you know, the power of the purse and just doing whatever they want with the money. What does that mean? Well, it means that if there's a blue state that, let's say, has a wildfire or a disaster, Trump could withhold federal FEMA money until they change their immigration policy or their abortion policy or whatever else he's mad at them about. He could at any old time withhold their federal education money. That would devastate a lot of states. Their federal transportation dollars, and it just goes right down the line. Now, when Nixon contemplated doing stuff like that back in the early 1970s, Congress passed an impoundment reform act

to prevent presidents from doing that. But the project 2025 folks want to test that. They think it's going to be held unconstitutional by this Supreme Court. And that puts us in a place where, one of the few points of oversight or leverage that even a Democratic Congress might have would be totally circumvented. Yeah, and the problem there is that they may not be wrong about this current Supreme Court. They may not be wrong, and they go even further. They talk about pulling a full Andrew Jackson, even if the court rules against them daring the court to enforce it. Right. Using the military to prevent enforcement. Yeah, you asked a little while ago, is it an exaggeration to say it could be the end of democracy, and I call it a roadmap to dictatorship. There's no other way to look at it.

That's exactly what it is. Obviously, I agree. I said it. I only have like a minute left. Who is on the task force with you? Yeah, the task force just keeps growing. We started out with some leaders from different caucuses in the political spectrum of our House Democrats, so the Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, the Equality Folks, the Women's Caucus. And now we have well over two dozen members and I get three or four every day signing on. So we're big and growing. And our work has been so successful and interesting to folks that it's kind of been taken up in the mothership. The Democratic leadership and our messaging arm have pulled this up and are working with us now. And it is becoming much more of a caucus-wide initiative. That's just excellent. And I'm so happy to

hear that. Congressman Huffman, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We live in interesting times, and I kind of wish we didn't. Yeah, here, here. It's great to talk with you about these things. Can I tell you one last scary piece of this that people don't understand? Please, please. You know, Donald Trump's kind of joke, not a joke, that he wants to be a dictator on day one. Yeah. People need to understand that Project 2025 is 920 pages of crazy that's deadly serious, but there is a whole additional part of Project 2025 that is too controversial for them to publish. it is their first 180-day action plan. It is the executive orders and the other immediate actions that they're going to take literally to give Donald Trump what he wants in terms of dictatorship on day one.

So as bad as it is, and everything we've been discussing is extreme and dystopic, there's an even worse part they won't show us. Boy, I'm sort of speechless because I am just, I'm so worried about the future of this country right now. Congressman Huffin, thank you for all your work on this. and for taking the lead in pushing back on this. And anything that can get the word out more and more about Project 2025 is so welcome and so important right now. Thank you so much, Congressman Hoffman. Thank you. Take care.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal thought leader and the author of, I think, a book that everyone and their mother and their mother's mothers should be reading the four pivots, reimagining justice, reimagining ourselves, by Dr. Sean Jenwright. Dr. Sean Jenwright. I read this book at a time of deep hopefulness, which is not where I find myself today. But your book offers, I think, a really incredible blueprint as to how we need to start thinking about social justice, thinking about movement building outside of the way that we have,

that it has been positioned for us, which is from a place of reaction, right? Where for so long movements, whether it is the LGBTQ movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, women's movements, have always been reacting to the oppression that has either come through policy, through politics. Talk to us about this reimagining

and why it's so necessary. Yeah, well, I wrote the book. Daniel, to really push up against, I think, a number of myths about what it really takes to change our society and to change the structures of our society. And I think even in my own training, I was taught to see the world changing as a function of what I did on the outside. That is, if I organized better, if I have the right allies, and to a certain extent, if I had access to the power of these institutions that I could create the kind of conditions that we need for our communities. But I realize that that is only half the equation. A lot of us in the movement are

wounded. A lot of us in the movement are hopeless. A lot of us in the movement are burnt out. A lot of us in the movement are not actually good for the movement because we're not good for ourselves. You know, the book is really trying to push us, man, to say that there are two sides of the equation of justice. And the other side of the equation of justice, we don't often talk about. We don't talk about the consequences of oppression in our own lives and what it's cost us for our own behavioral and mental health. We don't talk about the consequences of toxic racist, you know, racist public policy the way that it destroys our collective imagination. Like, we can't even imagine anything. And so I was, I'm really writing this book to push us to think about how we actually

engage the inner journey, which is just as important as the external journey. That's another undervalued aspect of justice and social change. We've seen headlines over the course of a number of years where frontline activists have either taken their own lives, died of heart attacks at very young ages, because we tend to believe that victory comes. through self-sacrifice, that we must beat ourselves into the ground and have this grinding, can't stop, won't stop, hustle mentality, and we can hustle ourselves to a place of freedom. Can you talk to us about what it means to turn the mirror on ourselves in a way that the inner work that we can do each of us is part of the outer work that is necessary for us to really

have sustainable change? Yeah, I use the metaphor of a mirror in the very first section of the book as a way to encourage folks to do the deeper self-reflection about what's happening in our lives, right? So much of us who are organizers and who are movement builders who run organizations, who try to bring good into our society, either through, you know, our politics or through the work that we do, focus so much on changing the stuff on the outside, without much focus on changing the stuff on the inside. So that the first part of that book is basically saying that we have to actually do some mirror work and mirrors a reflection about our own histories,

about our own traumas, about our own abuse, right? All of these things show up, Danielle, whether we like it or not in the movement work. But we don't pay it, we don't, we don't give that as much attention. So mirror work is essentially saying, how do I actually reconcile? and how do I actually ask myself questions about who I want to be? What do I need to heal from? What does joy look like in my life? All of these questions are self-reflection questions that sometimes in the justice work we just, we don't, we don't dive into.

And so in this first segment of the book, I'm encouraging mirror work to happen at three levels. One, individually. What are we grappling with and how do we hope and how do we dream and what do we need to heal from. Secondly, we need to look at it at our relationships, right? Like, how do we actually think about the people we work with, organizations we work with, the people we organize with? And then lastly, at the institutional level. You know, what does it mean to do reflection work as an organization? I was working with a foundation in philanthropy. And I, you know, one of my colleagues said that philanthropy is a mirrorless industry. In other words, there's no need for us to do deep reflection

about it as us as an organization. But how do you actually do mirror work as an organization about who we are as an organization, your mission, your values, and your impact? All of these things are just as important. When we begin to seriously take up the hard work of mirror work, I believe, and I've seen that it makes our justice work more fruitful. It makes our work for justice more deep because we are changing and transforming in that process, not just the laws, policies, and procedures. It's both inside work and outside work at the same time. Let me ask you this because where we are situated right now as a country. I knew you was going to get to this. You know, I tried to take it slow, but I said, you know,

I have to jump right in, which is we find ourselves situated in this country in a place of crisis. There is a crisis of identity around how some people have become conscious to the hypocrisy that America has offered as it pertains to democracy, who we are, how we see ourselves. We have seen ourselves, and I would dare say, these are my words, not yours, been indoctrinated into believing this false sense of we can do no wrong, that we are the purveyors of democracy around the world. Look at us. We are the beacon on the hill. And we have seen over the last, you know, several years, we've seen ourselves in a different light. And so I wonder, What does reflection look like?

What does reimagining look like when we find ourselves collectively in a place of crisis? Right? When we are in a place of crisis. And I say a crisis of identity because growing up in these United States, my family are immigrants from Jamaica, but growing up and my family coming to this country, they believe in the possibility of what this nation has to offer. And I think that black people in particular in this country fight so hard because they understand the possibility, even as imperfect of what this country has to offer. But when we're in crisis,

it is really hard to imagine something other than the crisis that you're in. Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask that in two ways. So you're right. Absolutely, we're in a crisis. And we've always been in a crisis, right? Particularly black and brown folks in this context of America.

This crisis, I think, is particularly unique because it's a crisis. It's an existential. crisis about our democracy. We are witnessing firsthand, real time, the whittling away of the DNA of what it takes to actually constitute a democracy. We're watching it actually unfold before us. So that's one response to the whittling away of the sort of DNA, the building blocks of what it means to be a democracy. We're watching that happen real time. You know, the second thing is that your question about how do we actually imagined in the context of crisis, I always respond to that question. And actually, my, my partner and wife said years ago that the crisis of Africans being enslaved did not erode their

dream for freedom. It still dreamed of freedom, even in the context of something that was deeply impossible, the hunger, the thirst for freedom still maintained. And so I use that as an example to say that that actually is the work for people who love justice. Is in the context of crisis, where's the spaces of how we imagine another way? And that's hard work. It's not easy. Because what crisis does and suffering does is it says focus on ending the suffering. Focus on ending the crisis.

We don't want to hurt anymore. And as a result of focusing on ending the pain, ending the suffering. we limit our imagination so that when we reduce the suffering, we call that a victory. That's largely because we haven't imagined beyond that. And I can give you example after example, after example of our movements who have truncated their imagination for victory that was made up of lower levels of misery. You know, I'm answering this in a long-winded way, but I think the second response to your question is that is the work of justice, is even in the midst of crisis, how are we continuing to push ourselves

to imagine something different, even in that context, and not give way to only thinking about ending the suffering, itting the pain, ending the oppression. We have to think and imagine beyond that. How do you do that? Well, one way to do that is to actually acknowledge when and how our thinking is connected to the suffering that we're experiencing. Like just one, just acknowledging that. Once we acknowledge that, then we could say, well, what else could it be? And we could actually begin to create the tools in our minds and our collective conversations about other ways of being.

Now, it doesn't mean that other ways of being erode. And, you know, it's not either or, Daniel. I'm not telling people to stop the urgency, addressing the urgency of ending suffering. We need to do that, you know. But what I'm encouraging folks to do is recognize that that's only half of the equation. We have to also create those spaces of imagination that cultivate sense of hope. One of your chapters is dedicated entirely to belonging and the need of connectivity, of community. I've read your book a couple of times now, and I find myself in different points when I'm reading it because of just how influx our world is at this time.

And I think about this need for belonging. that came out of this idea of community, what does community look like? How do we form community coming off of COVID, coming off of being locked down where, you know, screens have become the intermediary of human connection and how that is continuing to evolve even though people find themselves in hybrid work conditions. I think about belonging in the sense of what the Republican Party has created around belonging through the lens of, white supremacy and patriarchy where people no longer feel hidden on the margins for their anti-American, anti-democratic beliefs. Now they have a whole community and they actually

have a uniform, right, that they can be recognized by one another. So when there is clearly a thirst and a desire in this country to be a part of something. And without proper direction and guidance, you can fall into cult-like behavior. So can you speak to When you were talking about belonging and creating the conditions for belonging, what that means and what it can look like right now, particularly when people find themselves in a place of hopelessness, in a place where they are feeling listless about their participation in this project that we call democracy. Yeah. You know, I debated on that chapter a lot. And, you know, the way that I think about belonging and what you just described as belonging in the Republican Party is actually tribalism, right? And Daniel, the left and progressives are just as culpable.

There's tribalism as well, right? To me, that ain't belonging because belonging means that I have to try to do something that makes me uncomfortable that still. seize your humanity. Now, that shit is hard, Danielle, that shit is hard and necessary, right? And necessary. Without the capacity for us to see each other as human beings at the basic level, then all we have is tribalism that ultimately results in dehumanization. We know what the result of that is. So what I'm suggesting in this notion of belonging is a bigger umbrella, a bigger tent, which is, one, can we recognize the ways in which we engage in tribalism? Let's just put it on the table.

Like, my politics are progressive. My politics are left. I'm in the San Francisco Bayer from Oakland. You know, I don't apologize for that shit, right? I'm clear about who I am in my politics and what I believe is healthy for this democracy. But I also recognize that there are limits that other people don't see the world like I do. And in that chapter, I talk about, I think it was Ben McBride. It says, you know, when we recognize that how we see the world is not how the world is seen,

like, just sit with that. It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not, but how you see the world is not how it is seen. It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not, but the fact that others see the world completely different is a way, it's a small entry point, a small entry point to understand how you see the world. I believe, Daniel, and this is not a kumbaya bullshit. I'm not talking about this kumbaya shit, right? I'm talking about, I believe that there's a fundamental way

in which human beings have not created the spaces for me to see you as a human being because I see you through your politics. I see you through your vicious, racist narratives. I see you only in your dehumanization towards me. And that shit is hard for me to see you as human when you create suffering in my community. And now listen, and my work is someone who loves,

justice is still to try to find that humanity in you. So I don't know if there was a chapter where I interviewed in the book, self-proclaimed white nationalist. Hard as hell. I hope in the book, I wrote it in a way that demonstrated how hard that shit was for me to do. And in doing it, I haven't shifted. He hasn't shifted. His politics are the same and my politics are the same. But there was a moment when he told a story about his child being born with her heart on the outside of her body and he thought he was going to lose his child. There was a moment there of empathy. There was something that I could see disagree with everything he said. I felt him when he talked about I was afraid, man, I was going to lose my baby. Now, nothing can't change, but there are spaces. I believe

this, Daniel. There are spaces that allow us to see each other differently. And it doesn't change your politics. But if we can at least begin to cultivate those spaces, perhaps. It's just a It's a thesis. It's a question. Perhaps there's a way forward in us seeing us as human beings again. It's a provocative thought experiment. But I don't see any other way, right? Because I know the consequences of democracies and nations that did not take that path and then solidified through policies of the dehumanization of others, just like we have here, right? Just like we have in the United States, the way that black and brown folks are dehumanized and policies and practices. So anyway, I'm just kind of rambling here, sis. Now, we will have to leave it there today, but I just want to tell you that it is a hopeful book that you have written at a time when I think people need hope. They need guidance. They need a blueprint. They need to think about not just fighting, but dreaming. And that's what I took from it.

As people listen to this show know that I say that I walk around with a mustard seed of hope in my pocket. And some days it feels like it is just dust, you know? And other days I have the ability to plant it. So folks, the book is The Four Pivots, Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. Dr. Jen Wright, I appreciate you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. And I hope that you will come back and join us again sometime. Thank you so much, Danielle, really appreciate it. Andy Levy.

Danielle Moody. How are you kicking off this joy-filled week here in America where hope just is boundless? Yeah. With your fuck that guy. I'm going to go down to Nashville. A city I spent a little bit of time in and had a good time. A little too twangy for me in terms of the music after a while. But great music scene.

And apparently now a great white supremacist scene. Hmm. And as WPLN, which is Nashville's local news and NPR station, 90.3 on your dial. As WPLN reported for the second straight weekend in Nashville, a white. supremacist group carrying Nazi flags took to the streets. And this group is called the Goyem Defense League, which the ADL describes as a loose network of anti-Semites and white supremacists. And they basically, they stood out about 20 dudes wore shirts that said whites against replacement and chanted Sieg Heil did the little Nazi salute. And this is two weekends in a row. The weekend

And before that, it was another group called Patriot Front, which chose to carry Confederate flags as their symbol. All of this is of a piece with everything that we have been saying on this show for what feels like decades. And I think you even said it earlier this episode about how emboldened these people are. And they feel like they can go march in the middle of a major city and chant Sieg Heil and give Nazi salutes and carry Confederate flags. and we're in a bad place right now. And it would be nice if at some point we started to dig out from under it. So for now, though, I am going to say, oh, and in the spirit of Tony Down the rhetoric, I'm going to say fudge these guys.

I love fudge. Yeah, look, they feel like they are emboldened because they are emboldened. They feel like there are no consequences because there are no consequences. because there are no consequences. They're marching because they were told to stand back and stand by, and they did, and they are. And they're showing just how ready they are. This was the norm in America prior to the civil rights movement. We used to see the Ku Klux Klan, white citizens council all over this country until America decided

that it was going to embrace true democracy. And now that we are seeing democracy backslide, they are back and are rearing their heads. Donald Trump becomes president of this country again, and their force will be solidified. And that's all, I mean, that's it. It won't just be Nashville. It'll be New York.

It'll be California. It'll be this place. It'll be that place. Because their whole purpose is to create a culture of fear and subjugation. So vote accordingly. Yep. All right. Danielle, who is your frack that guy for today's Tone Down the Rhetoric Tuesday?

Yeah. Well, speaking of toning down the rhetoric, wow. Thank God for Mike Collins, huh? A Republican out of Georgia who basically minutes, mere minutes after the shooting at the Trump rally, this is what Mike Collins felt was a really good idea in that moment to go on social media and to tweet. And this is what he said. quote, Joe Biden sent the orders. That's what he said. There was absolutely no evidence to support that. No evidence, no facts, no nothing, except his deep feelings that when there is crisis, why not add more fuel to the fire?

Why not stir things up just a bit more? Because we're already not operating at a level 10 in that. this country. It is shit like this that should have people lose their jobs. But they don't. They just use these moments to increase their donations from people that are foaming at the mouth. We want to be the bigger people in the room. And I'm just like, when people show you who they are, treat them accordingly. Mike Collins is trash and should be treated accordingly. But I'm sure he got tons of applause and probably a good job from his buddies as they had to the RNC. So for that reason, Mike Collins, fuck you, fuck all y'all this week and every week. Yeah, I have nothing to add to that. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday,

and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.