The Daily Beast Podcast - This School Board Member Can’t Stomach Ron DeSantis’ ‘Insanity’

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Ron DeSantis’ war on public education is going national. At least that’s the fear of Jennifer Jenkins, a member of the Brevard County School Board, one of several Florida school boards that have undergone a rightward shift. The county’s highly accomplished superintendent, Mark Mullins, was essentially pushed out this month after candidates backed by the conservative group Moms for Liberty won election. Also in his episode, Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts magazine, which focuses on local government and local elections, reveals just how good this past election was for Democrats. And co-host Danielle Moodie breaks down Sen. Raphael Warnock’s victory over scandal-scarred Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate election. You can listen for yourself, but let’s just say she thinks “the force” was with him. 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 pretty 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 Cannon, 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 an excellent show we have today.

First, we're going to be joined by Jennifer Jenkins, who's a Brevard County, Florida school board member in District 3. She's going to talk to us about all the wacky stuff going down there with Governor Ron DeSantis. Then we'll talk to Daniel Nicanian, who's the editor-in-chief of Boltz magazine, about what he sees in the data after the mid-term election. But first, let's have some fun. Andy, it is not often that we have a good week in this country called the US of A. But when we have Herschel Walker, who first of all should have never, should have never been in a close race with Reverend Warnock in Georgia. But when we have him spectacularly defeated by the people of Georgia who have been inundated with elections, who have been inundated with tens of millions of dollars of television.

ads that have disrupted their day to day when they come out and stand in line for hours on end to make sure that the vampire v. Werewolf, abortion given, not coherent saying, propped up by white men having Herschel Walker does not become a U.S. Senator. Praise him. And he praise him. And by him, I mean the Almighty. And the Almighty, I mean the people of Georgia and Stacey. Yeah, definitely, obviously a good week when Herschel Walker doesn't become a senator. Sort of what you said at the top, though, the idea that it was close and that we were all kind of biting our nails for a long time, including a good few hours once the polls had actually closed. That's kind of scary. But I'm efforting, as they say, to be less cynical and more happy.

So I'm going to focus on the fact that Warnock is going back to the Senate. By the way, is it me or has he had to win like 23 elections in the last like two years? Like every time I look up, someone's voting on him. It's incredible. But we all like also history making, right? Because Reverend Warnock is the first black senator to be elected to a full term in the Senate in Georgia's history. And yes, the man has been doing Star Wars level battles in order to hold on to a position that anyone with a brain would vote for. this man for? I mean, my goodness, philosopher, businessman, reverend, like, what is wrong with him?

Absolutely nothing. Yeah. Say it again. So I was looking at the, like, sort of, I guess it was the county breakdowns the night of the election. And it was unbelievable. Like, the vast majority of the counties in Georgia went big for one of the two candidates. Like, there were very few, it seemed to me, that were close. And it was like, this county was Warnock plus 30%. This country was. Warnock plus 30%. This county was Walker plus 23%. And it just was absolutely amazing to look at how things are in Georgia. And look, it's not a hell of a lot different than New York. If you look at upstate New York and Long Island versus, you know, New York City. I'm not saying this is unique in America or anything like that, but it was wild to just look at it and see like you have these unbelievably red counties

and these unbelievably blue counties. I don't want to make assumptions about the racial makeup of those counties, but I think I probably can. Yeah. I think so. And I also, I mean, just to bring to everyone's attention, one point seven million people thought that Herschel Walker should be a U.S. senator. Yeah. 1.7 million people in Georgia thought that maybe he could represent me.

And I just, I mean, what that states about white supremacy in the state of Georgia, what that, I I mean, because if I were a Republican and thank God I am not, but if I was, I would feel so insulted and disgusted that you think so little of me, my values and my ideology, that this would be the person that you would lift up. They didn't even bring to the table somebody that was a worthy opponent, right? But I don't even know what a worthy opponent in the Republican Party these days actually looks like. but they didn't even offer that to Georgia Republicans. And frankly, 1.7 million of them said, oh, I don't really give a fuck. That's okay. I'll vote for that guy because he'll be propped up and be a puppet for all of the things that I think that I want and need.

Yeah, I guess the flip side of that, which is slightly better news, is that I saw some reports in the last couple days that, you know, the original thought was that, well, Republican turnout was down and Democratic turnout was up. And some reports in the last few days said, no, that's actually not true. Republican turnout was pretty good. It's just not all of them voted for the Republican. I guess the flip side of that is, yeah, even though the 1.7 million did, there were enough that haven't lost their sanity and we're like, yeah, this is too much even for us. At least some people have a line. They won't cross. I mean, and I guess that that is, you know, the werewolf versus vampire line of defense. I guess that that's what we'll call that. By the way, are we even disputing the notion that vampires would kick werewolves' asses every day of the week?

No team Edward Jacob on this podcast. Move on to Britney Greiner. Edward Jacob. What the hell is? I don't even know what that's about. Okay, Boomer. Fine. Back to politics. We have some other good news that was just hitting before we were recording this. And that is that Brittany Griner has been released from a Soviet, from a Russian war. camp. You could tell how old I am. She was part of a prisoner swap that involved us letting a notorious arms dealer go free, which obviously sucks. But you know what? To get this woman home, it seems to me well worth it. Yeah, I just will say that waking up to that news, as a black queer woman who has been fighting on the front lines in this country for LGBTQ rights, for racial justice,

and having to yell into the streets that Black Lives Matter and listen to Republicans, you know, uphold Putin's talking points and saying why she isn't worthy and why she is a criminal and should remain in a penal colony and to know that Joe Biden once again delivered for the people because this is what justice really looks like. Brittany Greiner had vape cartridges that were empty, that she had a doctor's prescription for,

and was being held as if she was some type of drug lord, all in this geopolitical game being played by Putin in the midst of his war against the people of Ukraine. And so the fact that Joe Biden, in this political climate, when Russia is at war, was able to get this done, I don't care who she was swapped for. Because the thing that really gets me, guys, is this. Brittany Greiner should have never had to be in Russia in the first fucking place. And that's a story that we actually don't really hear about in the mainstream. The only reason why she was in Russia is because we don't really pay women in this country equally.

And particularly female athletes are surely not paid on par with male athletes. We just saw a couple of months ago the women's soccer team be able to win their case for pay equity. And so the only reason why Brittany was there was to be able to provide for herself and her family in the offseason of the WNBA. But if she had been a man, right, she'd be relaxing in her off season, right? Right. So I just want people to hold that and remember that that she was there working. This was not like she was on vacation. And so the way to me that the right-wing media has treated her and has looked at this case is disgusting.

And I'm just so very, very thankful to Joe Biden and the Biden administration and all of the people who were organizing, who were holding vigils, who lifted this story up and lifted her up, a black queer woman who we know in this country we really don't give a damn about, even if you're able to handle a basketball in the way that this two-time Olympian can. To your point about the right-wing media and the right-wing people in general, that hasn't stopped. You had Donald Trump Jr. just tweeting absolutely awful shit about this swap. And there's a couple of things here. One is, do these people not understand that the reason we have to swap an arms dealer for an athlete is because we don't imprison athletes from other countries on trumped-up charges? Like, that's all we got. You know, if we have to swap someone, it's going to be someone like that.

This country is as far from perfect as it gets, but we're not quite that bad, you know, where we're just imprisoning athletes and entertainers from other countries as part of some geopolitical game. So, yes, we had to trade a bad guy to get a not bad woman back. But, of course, they have to portray her as a bad woman and they have to bring up drugs. And for the record, I don't give a fuck if she had full vape cartridges full pot. I don't give a fuck, honestly, if she had 50s. grams of coke on her. There is no reason for her to go to a Russian prison and then to a Russian,

basically a labor camp is where they put her. And none of that ever needed to happen. If Russia wants to say, well, these are our laws and you broke them, then expel her. Send her back to America. Like, none of that shit needed to happen. And anyone who is out there saying, well, but she knew the law and she broke it, these are Putin apologists, plain and simple. So yeah, the right wing is already making this about what a bad swap this was. And then the other big thing is, you know, like, oh, well, she knelt for the national anthem. And now we're freeing her. She better be much more into America when she gets home. Fuck you. I don't know what else to say to that, but fuck you. Just shut up. There's no even coherent response to that because it's not a coherent point. Like,

you're not allowed to protest things in America. No, Andy, don't you know that? I mean, and if you are going to protests, you should be using the flag as a weapon to beat police officers to death. Don't you know that? Like, that's the mob away. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's just, it's so frustrating. But, but look, you are right. This is fantastic news to wake up to and just be happy that this woman is coming home to her wife and is not in a, in a labor camp anymore. Yeah. It's an, it's an incredible day, an incredible week with Georgia and Griner, two and two for justice and democracy, I'm about this life. The other thing that I'm about is Trump's shitty week. I should just start drinking. But like, you know, for, but for good this time, like actually toasting, in a good way. Right. Because Donald Trump, you know, while he, unfortunately, I wish he was the prisoner swap, like we were sending him to Russia.

Donald Trump, his organization, found guilty on what was it? 17 counts, including fraud and deception, mishandling of taxes. We still don't know. I don't think what the outcome of this is going to be, but pretty much everything Donald Trump touches, including the candidates that he lifted up in this midterm election, turn to shit, turn to absolute shit like all of his businesses. and his fraudulent university. And so I don't know how much more Republicans need

because they just close their eyes and put their fingers in their ears and bury their heads in the sand, just waiting for him to rise again. But Donald Trump in the court of law is a fraud. He's a grifter. He is a criminal. And so is everyone around him,

including his spawn. Yeah, no arguments there. And as you pointed out in his big, endorsements for this last election. He was 2 and 14. 2 and 14. If you were the starting quarterback for a 2 and 14 team, you would be out of a job and possibly out of the league. We'll see if that happens to Trump, but the verdict is still out on that, obviously. But yeah, so you had the Trump org found guilty on all those charges. You had a whole bunch of other things, including we had Adam Schiff, Democrat who sits on the January 6th committee, saying that he believes that Trump had committed

prosecutable crimes on January 6th. And it sounds like when the committee makes criminal referrals, which we've heard that they're going to, that Trump may be among those. And again, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Criminal referrals don't have any force of law or anything like that. But it's still a nice thing. It's a nice thing that Trump has to put on his resume right under twice impeached. He has to put, you know, had criminal charges referred to Justice Department for actions around January 6th. So anytime there's bad news for Trump, there's good news for America. I hear that.

And supposedly the evidence that the January 6th committee is going to be offering up to the Department of Justice as to why they are going to be making these criminal referrals will be made public, as Adam Schiff stated, so that the GOP cannot do what we remember that Bill Barr did before the Mueller report came out, which was to lie and say that there wasn't anything. There were no impeachable offenses and there was no collusion. And there was none of these things. And so that the public has eyes on it and can make a decision for themselves, I think, is a really good move.

And also, we will get this, dear friends, before the holidays, because it's supposed to be coming out and released. The referrals supposed to be made by December 21st. And I think all eyes will be on the news when it drops. Because I hope that including Donald Trump, I hope fingers crossed, everything crossed, that members of Congress, like the Mo Brooks, who showed up in a bulletproof vest to the stop-the-steel rally because he knew something was going to go down, will also be a part of those that are referred to the Department of Justice, as well as Josh Hawley, who threw up his fist and then ran like a little bitch after they broke into the Capitol building.

Like others, that gave their reconnaissance tours on January 5th, I hope that those people will be referred to the Department of justice as well, because not only should it be the architects, it should also be the accomplices and not just the foot soldiers who are the ones that are bearing the brunt of these verdicts. Yeah, absolutely. And that's such a key point that you made about the fact that they're going to make all of the evidence public so that we can't get the cherry picking that we saw from Barr and others surrounding the Mueller report. We've been saying this for a long time now. And it's really no different than it is in actual war where, at least these days, where the generals, you know, they don't suffer the personal consequences. And that's exactly what's been going on with the Trump family and

with the sitting Congress people. And, you know, and look, he's not going to be part of this. But it's also people like Tucker Carlson, who uses his platform to encourage hate and at the very least, borderline encourage violence. And then sits back and goes, you know, goes home to his nice chalet afterwards and knows that he's not dumb enough to listen to what he has to say. And, you know, he's never going to get in trouble for it. So yeah, it would be nice if some of the higher-ups actually paid some consequences for fucking once in this country. And again, we know that these, you know, these criminal referrals to the Justice Department have no force of law. They don't mean that the Justice Department has to do anything with them. But

it's another bullet Merrick Garland's gun if he ever chooses to take it out of his holster, which hopefully he will. Yeah, we have our special counsel that he didn't need to appoint, but we have one, Jack Smith. So let's hope that everyone's eyes are open and everyone is paying attention. Folks, I am very excited to be joined on the new abnormal by Jennifer Jenkins, who was elected to the Brevard County School Board in Florida in 2020. And in 2021, wrote what can only be described, in my opinion as a harrowing account of what it was like to be elected to the Florida school board unseat a Republican during the height of COVID when we were in conversation and debate about masks and schools and how to change filters and social distancing and all of these things.

And what has happened since the COVID pandemic as it continues to persist, but as we have loosened mask regulations and now have moved into policies, particularly coming out of Florida. where we're not allowed to say the word gay, where LGBTQ children and their parents are facing backlash, harassment, curriculum is being redesigned in order to uphold the comfort and well-being of white people in Florida that is out of the mouth of Governor DeSantis, to be anti-woke, which apparently means to continue the gaslighting and the lying about the founding of this country, and to talk about critical race theory as if it's something that is taught in K-312 schools,

which we all know, those of us with brains in our heads, is not. Jennifer, thank you so much for making the time. Thank you for having me. I want to start in the past and then work our way to the present. I want to start with 2021, the article that you wrote, you're elected to the school board, and while you said in your piece that you were expecting, you know, push back and what have you, because you unseated an incumbent and you're a Democrat in a red county, in a red state, you weren't expecting the kind of harassment, labeling of being a pedophile, being referred to as a Nazi,

having your child, people reporting that she was being abused. And so you were visited by a child welfare officer. Paint the picture of what your experience was like when you penned this piece. in the Washington Post. Yeah, it's crazy to think that it has been almost an entire year since I had to draft that and reflect on the things that had happened to me. Yeah, I won my office in August of 2020. I wasn't sworn in until November of 2020. And I unseeded a well-known Republican incumbent, which, fun fact, went on to found Moms for Liberty. So I apologize to the United States of America for unseeding that individual and allowing her to create that disaster of an organization.

I unseeded her in a county that was, I believe, plus 17 points for Donald Trump. And I really won at the time because we were dealing with COVID and having conversations about mitigation strategies. And she was hardcore against basically any mitigation within our school system and very, very vocally against masking students and staff. And I made it very clear as an employee of this school system that I thought that was the wrong. choice and that's exactly why she lost, which is odd to think about, right? Because eventually it became the topic of choice for Republicans to become anti-maskers, but it was the only reason I won and I beat her by almost 10 percentage points here in this very, very red county. Right after that, she went on to found moms for liberty and that really was like the impetus of the harassment and

the threats and the targeting of me. When I first saw them inside of my boardroom, I actually referred to them as moms against Jennifer Jenkins because when they first showed up, you know, there really wasn't any like mission or agenda. They would just come do public comments and talk about me and complain about me, the things I said, the things I wore. They started to slowly escalate their behaviors by mailing postcards to my house, calling me a socialist and a Marxist, complaining about our teachers and our staff. Eventually they were mailing them to the district as well and they would get sent to me. They would approach my table. We weren't all on the dais at the time because of COVID, we were all separated. And there was one point where they came up to me after the meeting and they were

recording me without me knowing and they would mock me and post it on their Facebook page. And again, it was just this little organization that was really upset that their leader had lost. It just dramatically increased from there. You know, the real thing that made it really shift here in Bervard and get really ugly and take another level was in February of 2021. The founder of Momster Liberty, the one that I unseeded, she went ahead on her personal Facebook page and she posted a document called LGBTQ guidelines for administrators. And this was a document that was drafted a year before I was even on the board. She actually had seen the document herself when she was on the board.

She had one-on-one conversations with our superintendent. But let's not let reality get in the way of a good threat. You know, like let's pretend that she knows nothing and all of this is shocking to her. Exactly. And, you know, this document was just basically outlining what rights our students and our staff have as being members of LGBTQ communities and the laws that support those rights. And she went ahead and posted it

without the laws being attached, and acted like this was being done without parents being involved and being aware. And that's really what started the craziness here. Made the community come together and be outraged and emboldened the bigots in the community to show up to our school board

and have crazy protests. There was one day where I called it our own mini-insurrection, to be honest with you, we had groups of angry adults screaming at children, calling them pedophiles, telling them they're going to hell, that they deserve this. They created this like gauntlet that these kids had to go through in order to access our board meeting. The people who didn't have a ticket to enter were banging on the windows, screaming in officers' faces. Eventually, we had people who were arrested outside the building.

It was out of control and crazy. And that was when the first protest showed up at my house. And they were protesting our LGBT guidelines. There was a couple of people there still angry about math. as well. It just continued, man. I mean, the harassment was nonstop, whether it would be phone calls, text messages, emails on social media. They would drive past my home like the mornings after board meetings really slowly back and forth. They would park beside my home. I live on a corner in a small beach town. I would be at a board meeting and they would park beside my home just because I don't

know if they thought they were going to intimidate my husband. I'm not really understanding the concept behind it. They worked closely with a local Florida state house. representative who also has made it his mission to attack me, to defame me, harass me. He is part of hiring a private investigator to follow me around. I believe there's two of them now. They're not very good at it. He created a website saying I was having an affair with a friend of mine, disseminated that hundreds of times on his social media platforms, created vicious lies that I'm a child abuser. And fast forward through all of that, I mean, it never ended. It was just continuous. I get away from it all. In September, September 1st, 2021 was another protest outside of my home. It was

much larger. It was longer and it didn't end well. They were there for about three hours, I would say. And I kept it together. I was proud of myself, but I was reading my daughter a story at night. And again, I live on a corner. And it was probably about 8 o'clock. And it was dark out. And my daughter turned to me and said, Mommy, what are these mean people going to leave? And I just lost it. I am a New York City girl at heart. So I have a little hotheaded at times. And so I ran outside and I wanted to see them leave with my own eyes. They were parked at a church behind my house.

They turned around. They retreated. They came towards me. They swung a don't tread on me flag right in my face. Someone snapped a picture right when it was happening. It was like an inch from my face. One woman was coughing in my face saying she's going to give me COVID. And eventually law enforcement came and intervened and I went back inside.

And a ton of my neighbors from the community. I've never met before, like literally never met before. We're standing on my lawn because they were so outraged but what was happening in our little town. And they stuck around and they saw them brandishing their weapons to them like as an intimidation tactic. And I woke up the next morning to my property being vandalized. They had chopped a bunch of our plants down.

They had poisoned one of our magnolia trees and they had burned FU like probably like three foot letters in my grass. And so I had gone to the police station to report it. and I'm really glad I did because I met a really incredible officer and detective there who were so supportive and kind. And later that afternoon, they got a visit from the Department of Children and Family Services about a complaint that I was abusing my daughter. And so they very quickly intervened and said, this is absolutely having to do with what happened to her yesterday. This is not real. And they came and handled it with DCF as much as they could. And the DCF investigator was fantastic.

But I did have to take her to my daughter's play date. she had to look under my daughter's clothes. It's crazy. I'm really desensitized to everything that happened to me, but it was traumatic and it was nonstop, nonstop. First of all, thank you so much for reliving in order to share with the listeners what you had been up against and have been up against, because what happens?

What has happened in our society and our political climate over the last seven years of Donald Trump's reign as the leader of their appointment? Republican Party and Magadam and the disregard for, you know, compassion, thought, the fact that they have turned political opponents, they've turned Democrats into enemy, into enemies of the state, into enemies of society. They're going back to the days where LGBTQ people are looked at and called pedophiles, groomers, anybody who is considered an ally is that. And what we miss is that when we're looking at these headline issues and we're seeing this play out nationally, we're not having conversations about what is happening locally to people like yourself who dare to say, you know what,

I want to be a leader in my community. I want to run for school board. I want to run for city council. I want to be a poll worker. I want to do things that help better my community and the harassment and violence that you face because you're choosing to activate your citizenship, right? to activate what you feel is your responsibility to your community. And I think that it's absolutely reprehensible and disgusting. And it's the reason why, you know, I wanted to talk to you today because we're missing how this cancer has been able to spread into every point crack of our society.

The fact that you had your home vandalized, your daughter inspected, because of the overt terrorism that is being seen as normal political discourse is absolutely maddening. And when, you know, in your piece you said this and I just, I want to lift it up, that harassment like this is happening everywhere, not just in my Florida County. And there is plenty of evidence that the current school board battles are not the spontaneous actions of concerned parents who want to start. solve problems. Conservative organizations have held, quote, school board boot camps and sent leaders from out of state to speak at school board meetings. And I think that this, again, is really important for people to understand that when we are seeing incidents like the one that you described,

the mini-insurrection that you described, that these aren't spontaneous events. That it is more than likely that the people that are doing this don't even live in the frigging community and don't even have kids in the school, right? I want to talk now about what has happened since. What has been going on? And again, we understand it from the national level of what we have heard Governor DeSantis has done and policies that are being passed and how Florida is the petri dish of the Republican Party. If it is working there, then this is what they plan to nationalize if they manage to get their hands on the presidency in 2020. Yeah, you know, I appreciate you acknowledging that because I feel like I've been screaming that from the rooftops for the past two years. I feel like it started here and no one was paying attention and no one was taking those concerns seriously. You know, that protest in September in the evening, I went to a Ron DeSantis press conference that morning. And I was escorted upstairs. They knew who I was. They said, sure, you're allowed to come up. I sat in that press conference for about five minutes.

And then they asked me to leave. They told me it wasn't open to the public. Later on, I see the press conference and he's flanked by other local officials who are of course, Republicans. And that evening is when the protest showed up outside of my house. He came here to speak about his antibody treatments and how he was promoting them. And he also came here to start to berate our school boards that had put mass mandates in place. It's calculated. It was well thought out.

And no one was paying attention. And it's beyond infiltrated our legislature here in the state of Florida. You know, you've got the don't say gay bill. You've got the Stop Woke Act. And again, even when those were passing, national media was putting it out there. But then it kind of just went away. Nobody was really looking at how that was going to impact our students on a day-to-day basis. And now we're seeing the effects of it, right?

So just for instance, if we take a look at what Ron DeSantis is doing when it comes to civics education in the state of Florida, He is redrafting it completely. And it is rewriting the way government is looked at. It's rewriting history. It's insanity. It's absolute insanity. When it comes to book banning, you know, people think like, oh, that's not going to happen. Well, no, it's really happening.

The state of Florida has put together a war group in which there is a handful of parents who were invited to be a part of it. And they asked school districts to send people that they wanted to recommend. Well, three out of the five parents that have been identified. identified, we're not even on the list of any of our school districts. They all have some affiliation to Moms for Liberty, Mamas for DeSantis, or some right-wing book banning group that would send in their recommendation. And so now we have individuals up at the state level who have no educational experience, no education background, who are writing the training, the state-manded,

legally required training for our media specialists in order to decide what books they can and cannot have inside of their libraries. It's absolute instant. You know, I will tell you this. I'm a former educator. Masters is in early childhood education. I taught general education and special education for a couple of years in Washington, D.C., before I went into education policy and then would go on to do lobbying on behalf of kids in New York City, where I am, and around the country. And there is nothing more important than a robust K-12 education curriculum. there is nothing more important to developing a thoughtful, engaged, critical thinking citizenry without a robust K-12 public education. And that is the reason it's being attacked.

That is the reason why people like you are being attacked. That's the reason why thoughtful, empathetic and compassionate educators are being driven from the classroom or being threatened with jail time for accepting and honoring the dignity of all of their students. Because if you can assault the K-12 public education system and you can break it down, you can break down society at large. Because it is the majority of people that are sending their kids through K-12. There's only a small percentage of the very elite and wealthy that send their kids to private schools that, guess what, are woke as hell. They just have a price tag attached to it, right? I feel like people are awake and saying, oh, my God, look what's happening in Florida. Ronda Santos is going to try and take this to the national stage.

and I'm glad people are recognizing that. But I think people are missing a really critical piece. Not only has he weaponized public education, made teachers the target and the enemy, but his false narrative has grown so many legs that people really are genuinely believing it. And it's frustrating as someone who's living here watching it, knowing it's not true.

I don't think it's being addressed enough. And that narrative of his control on public education really being successful, especially here in the state of Florida, saying he had a red wave and he's flipping all these school boards with Moms for Liberty. I want everyone who listens to know

in the state of Florida, prior to Moms for Liberty and the Ron DeSantis nonsense that we have, 70% of school board members in the state of Florida were already registered Republicans. And over 80% of our school boards were already Republican majorities.

And so when Governor DeSantis makes statements like he's going to take his schools back, well, who exactly is he taking them back from. He's taking him back from the very people that are in his own party. And I think that's important for people to recognize because it's not a red wave. It's really a civil war within the Republican Party. They're pushing out their own who are not extreme enough, who have not pledged allegiance to their insane extremist agenda. And that is really the part where we need to be paying

attention as Americans, because that is what he will bring to his presidential campaign. People are buying it. And somehow we need to do a better job to kind of put a pin in it and say, reality check that ain't actually happening. Brilliant. Jennifer, I just, I want to thank you for remaining strong for continuing to serve on the board, even though there are people that are, have been trying to push you out and doing so violently and with terrorist tactics. And, you know, I hope that people will listen to this and recognize the power that they have to activate, right, to support their school board, to show up at those meetings. Again, whether or not you have kids or not, because this matters to all of us if we want to live in a progressive, thoughtful, caring, compassionate society where normal political discourse is something that we can uphold, not terrorism, and explain it away as normalcy.

So Jennifer Jenkins, thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for making the time to join the new abnormal. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Some people accuse me of being cynical and of finding the Republican cloud surrounding any Democratic silver lining. And to those people, I would say, yeah, you're right. But I decided with the holidays approaching and all, for once it would be nice to spotlight some good news for the Dems. And here to graciously help me do that is the editor-in-chief of Boltz, Daniel Nishanian. Daniel, thank you for helping me sort of reinvent myself here. It's great to join here.

So Bolts is a great website slash digital magazine that focuses on local government and local elections, particularly as they impact things like voting rights and criminal justice. And you say, Daniel, that this past election was actually pretty damn good for Democrats in a lot of those regards. Right. Well, first of all, taking a step back, I am not often accused as we run a website that's really focused on criminal justice, incarceration, voting rights, in a lot of places where they're very much threatened of being the person in terms of rosy stories. But I think the story you're mentioning is I did an analysis last week of how state senate and state assemblies shifted in November 8th, because that's really something that, you know, is happening state by state. Of course, there's many states, it's hard to get the full picture.

As a lot of people may remember, this really was where Republicans soared in 2010 and 2014. in the midterms under Barack Obama. In 2010, Republicans gained about 600 seats around the country in those state Senate and state assemblies. And that really set up years of extremely aggressive conservative policies on unions and labor, on voting rights, on gerrymandering, and a whole host of things. So going into 2022, the one big question was, can Republicans do that again? Can Republicans soar in those state houses and set themselves up for, again,

very aggressive changes at the state level that then will over the years, you know, expand and change the game. And they did. Is the takeaway. Overall, at the national level, if you add up everything, Republicans gained 22 seats, which is still a gain, but compared to 600 in 2010 or about 32014, it's very low. And what's even more interesting, Andy, is the gains that they did get were really focused, concentrated in states that are already very red, whereas Democrats gained seats in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and flipped four chambers across these three states. Those are actually the only chamber flips of the year. Republicans flip no chamber at all. And that is going to have a huge consequence going forward in the states where Democrats did well.

So one of the things you talk about in the piece that you wrote about this, the one you just mentioned, is the concept of trifectas. Before we get into specific states, just explain what you mean by that in a general sense? Certainly. So a traffic that is just a word that refers to one party controlling the three entities that they need to pass bills and have them signed. So, you know, it's the same as the federal level. The Democrats had a traffic for the past two years because they had the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, and the presidency. They obviously lost that traffic. The Republicans did flip a chamber at the federal level. I was referring to to state level earlier. And at the state level, it's the same thing.

To pass the law, you need a governor. You need the state senate and the state assembly. The two state chambers pass it and the governor signs. And that's something that people watch because it's actually much easier to pass a law at the state level because the filibuster often isn't there. The rules are different. The rules are easier. So you can see a lot of activity at the state level in a way that you didn't really see in the past two years at the federal level. And so in 2022, the GOP gained no new trifectives and actually,

I think lost one that they had in Arizona while the Democrats gained some. Is that correct? That's correct. So first of all, Republicans, if you had told them in January, maybe over the past few months, their expectations shifted. But in January, they had told them that in a midterm year, they wouldn't get a traffic that, you know, they would have been extraordinarily shocked and upset. They really had high hopes, places like Michigan, places like Pennsylvania, you know, big swing states. Republicans really went into 2020 thinking they were going to flip that. We know, we forget because Pennsylvania, things like that became such clam-dunks for Democrats in the final weeks, that we forget that that really wasn't supposed to be the case a year ago. Huge, huge, huge

wins for Democrats in those places that are almost like not even registering as that. But yes, Republicans gained no new trifecta and lost the one in Arizona. They actually controlled the state government in Arizona since 2009. That was a long stretch of control for the Republicans. Democrats, on the other hand, won four new trifectas in Maryland. in Massachusetts because they won the governorship in those blue states that Republicans had for eight years, but also in Minnesota and Michigan. And the most interesting of the four might be Michigan because Democrats haven't run the state governments of Michigan for 40 years now. And that personally makes me super interested to look at Michigan in 2023 because I'm interested in what

the bills, what the actions, what, what are the things that Democrats have been waiting to do in the state that they haven't run for 40 years, you know, in recent years, when shifts similarly happened in Colorado or other state that Democrats just really hadn't controlled for a very long time, the floodgates opened very quickly to a lot of bills like abolishing the death penalty and other things that Democrats had just kind of been waiting on for a very long time. Yeah. So first of all, kind of weird, but it was all four of those states you named are M states. Yes. Yes, I need Nate Silver or someone to explain that to me. So talk some more about those states, like what you were saying in terms of democratic agendas like Michigan and Minnesota,

what kind of things do you think the Democrats might accomplish there that they haven't been able to before they had these trifectas? The first things that come to mind really are things that Democrats have already campaigned on, have already tried to do. So let me start with the fact that in Minnesota, marijuana legalization is probably going to be on the agenda very quickly in 2023. What's sort of bizarre between Minnesota is that the reason Democrats didn't win the state Senate two years ago is that there's a party there called the Marijuana Party or something very, very close to that. And there was some reporting that Republicans were recruiting candidates to put on the ballot as candidates of the marijuana party to divide the vote that may otherwise have gone to Democrats and that had stumbled some candidates in 2020 and cost them the majority of the state Senate, which is a very, very bizarre series of events. So that this time didn't happen.

And as a result, strangely again, my marijuana might be top of the agenda. I'm always interested in looking at bills that relate to communal justice because that's sort of at the center of something we do at Bolt's in Minnesota, you know, is the state where George Floyd was murdered in 2020, where the BLM protests started again that year and then grew. And the attempt to pass bills around policing in 2020, 21 in that state didn't go very far. So that's something I'll be watching as well in that state in particular. The thing that I'm very interested in in Michigan is voting rights because Michigan obviously is a presidential swing state. It's a state that Trump really tried hard in 2020 to reverse the result or stall the results after he lost the election.

There's actually been a lot that's been happening through ballot initiatives in Michigan, both actually a few weeks ago in 2022, but also in 2018. There were ballot initiatives that were meant to strengthen voting rights. So those are very interesting because the state senate and state house were in Republican hands. So people went through the ballot initiative process. But what is really a game changer right now, and I don't think we see people expected, is that Democrats are going to be in charge of implementing those ballot initiatives. So these initiatives are going to allow early voting for the first time. They're going to strengthen protections against subversion, but those are off in the hands of people who implement.

And huge difference, if it's Democrats who implement those or Republicans. Clerks in places like Michigan or Pennsylvania have really been asking for easing the vote counting process, which sounds very technical, but if you remember, Trump loves to use the fact that voting shifts, that he was ahead first and then behind in the count, uses that to create conspiracies. And that in part is a constructed fiction because Republicans had refused to allow clerks to process mail ballots early enough to avoid that kind of bizarre count. So that sort of thing now is on the agenda as well in the state like that. In Maryland, in Massachusetts, the situation is a bit different because Democrat already had veto-proof

majorities that they could have used to override the vetoes of a governor. But I think anyone who watches those states will tell you that the Democrats run the chambers aren't the most progressive. They often, especially in Massachusetts, I would argue, like to use the fact that the V veto was coming to avoid scheduling votes on bills, for instance, to protect immigrant rights. That's something that has stumbled in Massachusetts for a few years and others. And so now I'm very interested in seeing how the dynamic internal to the party changes now that the governor is not an excuse to not schedule votes on really progressive bills. So that's going to be something interesting to us. That's really interesting.

So in addition to all this, what seems to be good news for Democrats, you something you mentioned earlier, you said that Republicans, that the gains that they did make, they gained 22 seats overall in the country. but those gains basically sort of just reinforced the advantages that they already had in red states. Yeah, the biggest gain for Republicans, the single biggest gain was in West Virginia. And, you know, that's important, too, because West Virginia, just 10 years ago, maybe even less, was a state that voted blue, that voted Democratic, that actually had a state Senate, I believe, that was at the time, Democratic just eight years ago. Now, just eight years later, it's going to be letting me check the numbers. is 30 to four for the Republicans and the House is going to be 88 to 12. So something there captures the erosion, you know, for Democrats in Appalachia and regions like that. We already obviously have seen that in 2016 and 2020.

We've been talking about that a lot. But just in the moment, does that change something for 2023? It doesn't know whether you have a majority of 80% Republican or 95% Republican might not necessarily change, change the dynamics. And we saw that in a number of states. maybe the exception, well, I think the very striking change was in Florida. So Florida was already very Republican. It already was entirely controlled by Republicans. So again, it doesn't change much.

But Republicans did gain a lot there in part because of the very aggressive gerrymanders that they just passed a year ago. So let's not forget in many of these states, the people we are talking about are the people who drew the maps that they were just elected on. Right. That's what we saw in Florida in part. And that's sort of the shifts that are happening. What's super interesting about the state of Michigan,

just to go back to what we're talking about, this was the first cycle that they were using independent maps. And oh, that's also the first cycle in 40 years that Democrats gained a majority. Right. Because they're not independent. Many times in the past 10 years, Democrats in Michigan had actually gotten a majority of the vote

across the state for these seats, but had not gotten a majority of the seats. And there was a new process this year of independent mapping. Lo and behold, Democrats want a majority of votes. and a majority of seats. So, you know, the fact that Michigan is so important to our conversation is really also speaks to the importance, obviously, of who draws these maps, especially when we're talking about the people who draw them, then being on the ballot. Funny that you brought that up, because I was going to move to gerrymandering and just sort of point out that, like, unfortunately,

that does seem to be a place where we have to sound sort of like a cautionary note because the news there doesn't seem overall quite as good for Democrats or, you know, for people who care about things like minority representation and stuff like that. And that seems to be a not so bright spot in the news at the local levels, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we see that at the local level and the congressional level. Yes. There's also been an asymmetry of at this point. And we saw at the level of Congress and what happened to the map in Florida versus the

map in New York versus the map of California, which is joining my independent commission. We see at the state level, the asymmetry between states doesn't matter. the fact that I did an analysis of the combined national number, you know, has no importance at the level of policy because not everyone's coming in the same room across these chambers. But one pattern that you just mentioned is that there was a called minority seats where pull of color our majority of the residents went down. It went down in 2022. And that's a concerning trend because it is a factor of intentional choices made by the people who are drawing the maps. And to add another note that might be concerning about the future is that the U.S. Supreme Court just heard a case that could empower state lawmakers further to do whatever they want when it comes to redistricting, when it comes to gerrymandering, and when it comes to other things linked to voting rights and not be subject to review by their state courts. You know, I mean, you could say in a place like Florida, it's not like the state courts really did anything.

in some places, you know, in some places the state courts have intervened. And even when when they don't, lawmakers still have a chip on their shoulder and maybe try and constrain themselves a little, just in case if they're too extreme. And we did see in some places like in North Carolina or Pennsylvania, where state courts have intervened. So if the U.S. Supreme Court, if the conservatives do side with plaintiffs in that case, it could just really, really increase every issue linked with the gerrymandering at the state level. Okay.

So I got to get my little cynical thing in there. where things aren't so great. But since gerrymandering aside, all this other news does seem pretty good, can you speak about all that stuff, what it signifies for things like abortion rights, like criminal justice reform, you know, things that we think of as sometimes think of national issues or issues of national importance, but that really operate on a state and local level. Abortion access should have been something I mentioned earlier, obviously extremely important in why the results are what they are, but also in what the Democrats are going to do with them

in the places where they won elections. I mean, let's start with a state like Pennsylvania, where Republicans had they taken the state. Pennsylvania would have been a state that may have had a ban on abortion. A Republican was certainly considering that, and they lost an election, you know, that protects the status quo in certain states. It will also allow Democrats in some places to strengthen abortion rights, potentially even help people who are coming out of states in a place like Colorado,

in a place like Minnesota, you know, places that are surrounded by states or have states around them where abortion is banned. It's going to be interesting now to see what a Democratic majority in Minnesota does when it considers that as an issue. That's an issue where the importance of maybe Minnesota flipping blue resonates outside of itself because states, again, that have banned just next to Minnesota. If the laws are strengthened in Minnesota, that could affect how easy it is. To keep having some sort of access, you know, I'm not suggesting. that's a panacea to be able to travel somewhere. You are, of course, but when we're thinking about the harm to people on these issues,

that's very important. On criminal justice reform, I mean, one of what's very interesting, and across the states that I discussed, Republicans were really focused on using crime as an attack against Democrats, again, maybe nowhere more so than Pennsylvania. And I say that because they staged this sort of theatrical impeachment against the reform the A of Philadelphia this fall, which didn't really have any particular purpose because it was sort of dead on arrival in the state senate because it didn't have the vote. But Republicans did this elaborate theater around Krasner's impeachment to really put the issue of crime on the

agenda and think that that was going to result in a tough on crime backlash. Obviously, that was also a huge issue in the federal Senate race between Federman and Oz, where that was really at the center of the attacks against Federman. And Federman won. And Democrats flipped the state house by gaining, I believe, 12 seats in the state house. And we saw that elsewhere as well, where candidates who ran on reform did actually quite well. And top on crime attacks didn't win the day in the way that Republicans expected them to. I think, you know, Andy, we're still stuck in this idea from the Clinton years that as soon as someone is attacked from a tough on crime, angle, they will lose the election because that's sort of like expectation that's been built over,

you know, many, many years of elections. And that just keeps not happening. You know, there are obviously cases where, where that does happen or reform or has lost, obviously. But this idea that like this is the kryptonite of an election or that reform candidates are going to lose just keeps not happening. And I think the expectations of what people think about these elections just haven't adjusted. So we keep saying, oh, Federman has been attacked on crime,

if you're really going to be the death and the national of the campaign, or the fact that people say in polls that they care about crime is taken to be synonymous with they want to vote Republican, when in fact, people like Federman or the reform candidate, for instance, who just won a prosecutor election in Minneapolis, their campaign message really is the status quo that is tougher on crime is what has failed safety, and that that's the message they run on,

and the expectations have really adjusted to that. Yeah, well, that's all good news. Daniel, thank you so much. is boltsmag.org. I highly recommend it for insightful and incisive looks at state and local politics and elections. And thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it. It was great to have this conversation. Thank you. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. So Andy, you know, we've had pretty much a good week. But in that week, there is always somebody to say, fuck that guy too. There's always a good place to pick from. So tell me, who is your fuck that guy?

So my fuck that guy is a Republican representative from Arizona, the name of Paul Gosar. He decided that after Donald Trump posted on his, as I seem to remember you referring to it, his busted-ass Twitter, truth social, that we needed to terminate parts of the Constitution because of his, you know, garbage election fraud theories. Paul Gosar decided to then tweet that he, quote unquote, supported and agreed with the former president. And he said, unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure. And he, of course, got piled on with people pointing out that that's kind of a violation of his oath, which is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,

a whole bunch of other things. And this is the part where it's almost, I'm almost more fuck that guy for this than for originally tweeting it. He deleted the tweet. And it's like, fuck you. Like, if that's what you think, then leave the tweet up. Let people see. Let people see that regardless of how many times the Republican Party wants to read the Constitution before they're sworn in to the next Congress, it's toilet paper for a lot of them. And let people know that. And to me, deleting that tweet. And look, I say this as someone who deletes tweets all the time, but who the fuck am I? But for a congressman to tweet something like that and then someone gets in his ear and says, you know what, you should take that down. People are roasting you on Twitter and elsewhere. And then to say, all right, let's take it down. You're a fun. fucking coward. Leave the tweet up. It's what you think. Nobody thinks that because you deleted the

tweet, you now don't believe that. You do believe that. And so leave the tweet up and don't be a coward and fuck that guy. Fuck that guy always. I just, you know, take the tweet down, keep the tweet up. I don't care. He's a piece of shit. So Danielle, who is your fuck that guy for today? Oh, okay. So Van Jones found himself at a U.J. a Federation of New York Wall Street dinner on Tuesday. And while he's been caught up in a firestorm for comments

that he's made on behalf of the black community directed toward issuing an apology to the Jewish community, he was misquoted by a reporter and people kind of ran with it. But I want to read this tweet by Mark Lamont Hill and then say

why Van Jones still remains my fuck that guy. So Mark Lamont Hill said, so I've listened to the audio of the Van Jones speech. While it is true that the reporter misquoted him, Van didn't apologize for black silence around Kanye's recent anti-Semitic actions. He did offer an apology for the black community's prior silent. And Mark Lamont Hill says, I strongly disagree. So here's the thing. I don't know who the fuck anointed Van Jones as the spokesperson for all of Black America, but let me as why, one of the members have said Black America stand up and say, you don't speak for me. So don't issue apologies on anyone's behalf because, frankly, what he has done in saying this is go ahead and uplift the longstanding stereotype and trope that has been used to divide the black

community and the Jewish community as if to say that somehow black people are more anti-Semitic than any other group and should be held to a certain standard and account. Black people have spoken out against anti-Semitism for generations, for centuries, for decades all the time. Do you know why? Because there is a wonderful then diagram that happens when you look at racist and anti-blackness and those who subscribe to that and those who also lift up anti-Semitism. They are the same group. They are the same people. So to make some type of distinction and to make some type of apology like Van Jones did is to assert that somehow there is something that is inherently wrong with the black community and our treatment of Jewish people, which is absolutely false. So, you know, Van has said a lot of hot shit over the years. Van has cried, you know, and,

and has called, I remember him sitting on CNN and referring to Donald Trump as, oh, he was presidential today because Donald Trump managed not to call somebody a rapist or a murderer or managed not to say shithole country or, you know, tweet us into nuclear war. Van Jones has become a caricature of himself. And I really do not want people to look at him

and say, oh, he speaks for any one group. The only person that Van should be speaking for is himself. And he should apologize to the rest of us for the shit that comes out of his mouth. He's my fuck that guy. Yeah. And I would just like to say, as the person who speaks for the Jewish community here in America, I don't need an apology from Van Jones for either himself or on behalf of the black community. I didn't ask for that.

And I don't want it. So he needs to, at the very least, check with me before he goes off and says shit like that. Because it's just, I don't. want it. Don't want it, Daniel. Yeah, yeah. And as the representative of all the blacks, it's okay, Andy. I'm taking it back. 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

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