The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump's Hush-Money Judge Has Already Made Some Good Rulings

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie take a deep dive into the first week of Trump’s historic trial in New York. Plus! Former White House Social Secretary Deesha Dyer is here to talk about her new book and reflect on her time in the West Wing. Then, Mother Jones’ national voting rights correspondent, Ari Berman, joins the show to discuss his new book—and how the 1787 Constitutional Convention still affects us today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

What a great show we have for you today. Former White House Social Secretary under President Barack Obama, Disha Dyer, is here to talk about her new book, Undiplomatic, how my attitude created the best kind of trouble. Then Mother Jones, National Voting Rights Correspondent, Ari Berman, is here to tell us all about his new book, Minority Rule, the Right Wing Attack on the Will of the People, and the fight to resist it. But first, let's have some fun. Well, friends, it has happened.

The trial of the century, or at least one of the four, have kicked off with opening statements for Donald Trump's, what we were referring to as the hush money trial, started today with opening statements. And Andy, for the love of God, like, you said before we started that I wish that this was televised. You know, because of all of the courtroom sketches that we have seen of Donald Trump. fast asleep and a nice slumber and being told to sit down, you know, like a good dog from the judge because he doesn't know how to follow anybody's procedures but his own, let alone that of a judge. It would be a sight to see, I think. But we also know that because, like we said last week, these judges need to deal with Donald Trump as if he were John Gotti, as if he were a mobster. And the safety and security, I think, of those inside of the courtroom have to be put forward first above, I guess, the transparency to the public.

I, you know, I don't know. But opening statements. And we start out with David Pecker is the first to take the stand, who is the former head of the inquirer. and the Trump team apparently wasn't alerted to the fact that David Pecker was going to be the first witness until 3 p.m. on Sunday, according to CNN. He has full immunity that he was given. So, you know, all bets are off, I think. Yeah, and he's just begun to testify because they had to shut the trial down today at 1230. I think because a juror had some, I don't know, maybe they had a doctor's appointment or something so they couldn't have the trial on Monday afternoon. But the opening statements, and I mean, I don't know that there was a lot today. There were some good rulings from the judge, basically, that if Trump takes the stand in this trial, which I don't see any way on God's earth, he does. But if he does, then Judge Merchant ruled that the prosecutors can ask him about the E. Jean Carroll cases, that it can cross-examine him about the civil fraud verdict that was recently given against him here in New York. And that stuff. is, you know, that's all good. And then, yeah, Pecker got up there and he basically just described his job at the National Enquirer. But what this is about is the catch and kill thing where, you know,

if they're going to run a story or if there's a story out there, then sometimes they will pay, and this is where the hush money comes in. You know, there can be payments made to kill the story. So the thing here is that the National Enquirer, I guess the allegations are that the National inquirer had the story about Trump paying the money to Stormy Daniels and that David Pecker helped, he got the story and then, you know, was part of the idea or part of the process of paying Stormy Daniels to kill the story. So they paid her off in return for her signing a thing like a non-disclosure agreement saying she wouldn't talk about the story. And as you said, Danielle, Pecker has been given immunity. So he can, if he testifies truthfully, he can spill all the beans on this. And again,

I think it's important to remember that we keep calling this a hush bunny trial, but it really is an election interference trial because the whole purpose of this was to keep the story buried and to kill it so that it didn't get out during the run-up to the 2016 election. That's what's really important here, I think. I really do wish this were being televised. I don't think the jurors should be shown on TV, but I think there's obviously ways to do that with just where you place the cameras. But the way Trump has been behaving during this trial, I think, you know, it would be great for. America to be able to see that and not to just have to depend on courtroom sketch artists. And, you know, to see the judge, as you said, ordering Trump to sit down when Trump, for some reason thought he was going to leave the courtroom before it was his time to leave the courtroom.

I just think stuff like that and just the expressions on his face and he is so clearly pissed off and angry about all of this and we can get into it a little bit if we want to hit the rants that he's been posting on truth social. But yeah, I really wish this had been televised. You know, and I think that it's important, though, like as we have a, you know, and I say we, but I mean like folks in the media have abbreviated the reason behind this trial as the hush money trial. But in the opening statements, prosecutor Matt Matthew Colangelo said to the jury, quote, this is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover up. because that is why there are 34 counts in this case, is that this wasn't just, oh, I had sex with a porn star and I paid her off.

It is the how, the why, and the when of it all, and with what money you did it with. You know, what's funny, Andy, is that I've been thinking about this for a while, which is you had the Access Hollywood tapes come out in October of 2016, and you have Donald Trump on there talking about grabbing a woman by the P, he's a star, all of these things. And I'm like, why was that able to come out? But this they did a kill for. Do you think that it was the belief that in combination, he had sex with a porn star while his wife had either was pregnant or just given birth or what have you, plus the fact that here he is

bragging about grabbing women wherever he wants, like, did they think that the combo effect would be his undoing and that just the one people could look away from? If my memories is okay on this, I think it's simply that I don't know that the Trump team knew that that Access Hollywood tape existed. And then it was, was it, was it Billy Bush who leaked it? And I just think they didn't know about that, that he even had it, let alone that he was going to leak it. Or I do think they would have done exactly. what they did with Stormy Daniels, where they basically, at least in her telling of it, and I have no reason not to believe her, they basically made her feel unsafe and made her feel unsafe, her family

unsafe, you know. And so she accepted, you know, this whole idea that she took $130,000 to then keep quiet about it. But she was basically intimidated, again, at least in how she tells the story. I have no doubt they would have done the same thing to Billy Bush. And look, God knows what other stories we don't know about because they did them as well. And we just never learned about them. I find it hard to believe Donald Trump's life was clean other than those two things. Yeah, that would be hard to believe. You know, and it's funny because in, you know, in, again, the opening statement and the Trump attorney, Todd Blanche, you know, said, quote, President Trump is innocent and that none of this was a crime. And there will be plenty of reasonable doubt. and I'm just like not sure that there's going to be a lot of reasonable doubt here.

They have never said we didn't pay this woman off. What they're saying is we paid her off, but it's not a crime. That it's not a crime to say like, oh, she was paid off because, oh, we didn't want Melania to know. That's kind of the spin that they've put on this. It's not, it's not his defense attorney saying, oh, no, like this never happened. It's like, no, it happened. We're just saying that the reason that it happened is not the reason that the prosecution is

suggesting and it had nothing to do with the election. It had everything to do with keeping up appearances with his, oh, very happy marriage, apparently. Yeah, it just happened to happen, what was it, like a month before election day? I mean, that's the only defense they have because we know what happened. We know that from Michael Cohen, who granted is an inveterate liar, but we do know from his testimony and I get, you know, from documents and whatever that he did facilitate the payment to Stormy Daniels and that he did it on Trump's order. We know all of this. So yeah, it is going to get down to, you know, and again, that's why I say, that's why I don't like that it's being short-handed as a hush money payment because, you know, I don't know that it's illegal to pay someone money

to not tell people something. That sounds like just in a vacuum, you can do that. And people do that every day and people make deals every day that aren't illegal. But if you're doing it to materially affect the outcome of a presidential election, that probably runs a foul of some laws. So obviously, I hope they can prove it. It's 100% certain that that's exactly why they did it. I don't think it had anything to do with Melania. But yeah, I mean, can they prove it? That's what we'll find out. Well, Donald Trump on his way outside of the courtroom, complained, as one does, as he does all the time and he said, quote, it's very unfair what's going on and I should be allowed to campaign. We did nothing wrong. And then he went on to say that he's being indicted over bookkeeping,

which is a, quote, very minor thing compared to all of the, quote, violent crime going on outside. I love the fact that for Donald Trump and Republicans, it is always like, oh, this is white collar crime that should never be prosecuted because very rich white, cis straight men should never be prosecuted because there's violent crime that is happening. When in fact, like, I guess we never look at the damage one that financial crime causes, but also the fact that Donald Trump was able to become president because of all of the lies that were told and the criming that he did while he was inside of the White House. Because what? He didn't wield a hatchet and instead of pen? Like, that makes the crime less problematic to them? Yeah. Again, their argument is that. And then it's also,

you know, it's some variation of everybody does it. And it's like, well, it doesn't matter if everybody does it if it's illegal. And it's a problem that everybody does it. And, you know, that's something that should be stopped. But they don't look at it that way. They look at it as, oh, this is the way the world works. This is how real men get things done. You know, that's basically their argument. That's the thing that has to go. And, you know, that's why a, One of the many reasons that a guilty verdict here would be great and to maybe send a message to people less powerful than Trump, you know, but who are still pretty powerful, that we're going to start keeping an eye on this stuff and not just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's just the cost of doing business. That's how America runs for so many of these things, which is what we've done for, you know, decades, centuries, call it what you will. And, you know, but that is in effect their argument. And I guess I sort of alluded to that earlier when I said, you know, this is the kind of thing that is probably done every day.

The difference here is, again, that I do think there are ways to do this that probably are legal and it's just a straight transaction. I'm going to give you money and you're not going to say anything about this. I mean, he wasn't what he did to Melania aside the actual act, the sex act or whatever, is not a crime. So he wasn't asking her to cover up a crime. And that's basically, I guess that's the defense argument is that, you know, hey, but what he did with Stormy was not a crime and that therefore giving her money to keep that thing quiet is not a crime. And again, I think in a vacuum, that might be right. But not when it's done because there's a presidential election coming up. So again, we'll see what happens. And Trump is just losing it. I don't know that we have time to even get into this, but the Washington Post has a good piece. about how Trump has just been going off the rails on truth social. And even today, I mean, I think they said he's been averaging like 29 posts a day this month. Your average content creator doesn't post that much. Right. Exactly.

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, who the fuck has that kind of time to be posting 29 times in a day? Like, that is ridiculous. Some of them are just, you know, they're like his little one word witch hunt, I guess two word, you know, little posts or collusion or whatever. But then he also has these long, unhinged rants. It's unreal. And he really was going off this morning and talking about the protests at Columbia. And he's mad that there aren't similar protests around the courthouse, I guess. And he's claiming that that's because his supporters are being forced to be kept quiet, which is completely not true. There's actually an area set up

for them to gather. It's just that there ain't nobody there. Right. Just really quickly, we should talk about, as you said before, the cost of doing business. Because the cost of doing business for Donald Trump is becoming extraordinarily expensive. In Rolling Stone, basically Trump is running out of money, right? And I think that we probably touch on this every week. But his legal defense is incredibly expensive. And just to give folks like an idea of what is happening, it's basically like a shell game. Like basically Trump is playing three card Monty with all of his packs. And it's like you have to find out where the money is or where the money is coming from for his defense. So according to Rolling Stone, you have the latest campaign finance records, the Save America Leadership Pack, right?

Which is one of the packs spent $4.6 million on legal bills for Trump and his associates in March, just in March, while only bringing in five. million dollars the month prior. So they spent close to the exact amount of money that they brought in. Right. So then they go to his other pack, right, which is like they have the Save America pack and then you have like the MAGA pack. So so far this year, the funds that he has spent and this year folks is only, we're only four months into it. They have spent $16.7 million have gone towards Trump's legal bills. And the PACs still owe another $900,000 to legal firms. And then it says in total, Trump has expended approximately $86 million total in legal fees,

according to the Washington Post. The amount of money, the RNC ain't given any money to down-ballot candidates. We talk about Laura Trump and the fact that they're like, it's all going to Trump. Trump is trying to charge folks, which we told you last week, for use of his pictures and or likeness or any of his phrases by Republican candidates because they need to now tied at minimum 5%. Why? Because he's fucking broke. Because every bit of money that is coming in is going to his lawyers. So I'm like the people that are making out like bandits here are all of the firms that are representing Donald Trump because every time that they're, try and kick these trials down, that they try and do these bullshit appeals, it's just more money that they're bringing in. And he don't have it. Yeah, Bloomberg News is reporting that, you know, as you mentioned, he spent all these, what, $4.9 million in March or whatever. He only has $6.8 million left in those accounts, the accounts that he's been using to fund his lawyers, according to Bill

Allison at Bloomberg. And there are a lot more trials to come. So he has got to find, more money and find more money pretty quickly. As of now, the RNC claims it's not going to pay his legal bills. We'll see how long that holds up. But the RNC has been horrible at fundraising too, which is what we've seen. The DNC is way out fundraising them. And so this is legitimately going to become a problem. I mean, you know, he still has to pay Eugene Carroll. You know, he's got that $150 million, was a $150 million bond that someone is covering for him while he appears. in the fraud case. He is at the point where however rich he is or claims to be,

it's starting to feel like he ain't that rich. Mm-mm. He don't have no money, okay? Like, we know this. When you're out front hawking bibles and gold sneakers and now you're putting a price on Republican candidates running for office that have to struggle to raise their own funds, it's blatant.

You don't have anything. And so I think that it'll be really interesting in the next couple of months if none of his products, his hot goods are selling, like where he's going to get this money from. Because I think that his cult is eventually going to tap the fuck out. Well, they're going to tap out because they're going to be tapped out. Yes, that's what I mean. Not tap out because they are not still fanatic. You're talking about people that don't have bottomless pocketbooks. Maybe Harlan Crow will give him money.

Folks, I am so excited to welcome to the new abnormal. Disha Dyer, who is a philanthropist, award-winning strategist on the ground community organizer, and y'all, she served as the White House Social Secretary in the Obama administration, which is the most coveted job ever and was like my dream job. So I'm just so excited to talk to you. She is the author of a book that drops today. Undiplomatic, how my attitude created the best kind of trouble. Disha, welcome. Thank you so much.

I'm so happy to be here. And I did not know that you had dreamt of that role. Oh, my God. Who doesn't dream of that role? Like, who doesn't want to do the parties? Yes. First of all, this is what I will say. I live in New York now.

But prior to that, for 15 plus years, I lived in Washington, D.C. I worked on Capitol Hill, you know, was a lobbyist, did all the think tank and the Hill and all of that stuff. And the Obama White House, going to the Obama White House, whether it was for meetings or for events, was the honor of a lifetime. And I have such fond, full memories, which I said to you before we started taping have now faded from my mind as we deal with an apocalyptic doom day in and day out. but it was the golden time in my personal political career. So I want to open up with just what is it like now so many years kind of removed from that time to write this beautiful book, this story, and kind of reflect on those years? I mean, I can't even tell you. I feel like sometimes I'm not even conscious or I haven't reconciled all that happened during those years.

It went so fast. You know, I was there from 2009 as an intern, then got hired and then ended up staying to the very last day, the worst day, the transfer of power. And I just feel like I yearn for those times. We weren't perfect by any means, but it was a time where, like, we really did have community. And we really, I mean, like, I have no idea what the hell is happening now. I mean, every day is something different and somebody falling asleep at a trial. And it's just like what happened to the days of just like welcoming people in like actually talking around the table, actually everybody listening. And again, we weren't perfect. But I think that being removed from it now, I'm thankful that I had those years I did because I don't think my health for real. I don't think my blood pressure could manage now. I just don't. Like I just don't think I could be healthy and actually work in administration right now. Like absolutely not.

You know, trust me, I think about it every just reporting on it. Yeah, just reporting on it on a regular basis. I visit doctors often and meditate. But one of the things that I think struck me, and for those people who have never worked in and around Washington, D.C., there is a level of, a deep level, I should say, of privilege and prestige that comes with working on the hill, that comes with working in the White House. It is and has always been a city about who you know and who knows you. you. And at 31 years old, you were a student at a community college and decided to apply to be a

White House intern. And I will tell you, how did I get to the Hill through the Congressional Black Caucus Fellowship program? Like that was my entree onto Capitol Hill because, again, it is about outside of that, the faces that look like ours are few and far between. Very much so. Right. And if you are not wealthy and you didn't go. to the certain private schools and what have you, those doors are heavy and they're hard to push open. So what made you decide at 31 as a community college student to say, I'm applying for this White House internship? Definitely. And I do want to say too, not only are our faces very sparse, but also some of our faces that are in government aren't really for us. And so sometimes, you know,

even if the faces are there, you got to make sure they turn around full way. But I think that for me, I was very captivated by, like the whole country was, by then Senator Obama, you know, and Mrs. Obama. And I was just, you know, I had never really been interested in presidential campaigns. Or, you know, I voted, of course, my family, we always voted. But I never, you know, I just voted automatically Democrat. You know, it was like, oh, that's what you do. And so once this person named Barack Obama came on the scene and started doing these speeches and coming to like West Philly where I lived and, you know, started appearing everywhere,

I mean, I got caught up. I mean, Danielle got caught up in the next. I was just like, I am fully invested in this. I don't know who this person is. I don't know how this works. I'm not about no electoral college. I knew nothing. But I was like, I do all this community work at home.

And I'm a community leader here in Philadelphia. I've been a community leader for years. And I work with youth. And I was like, I have to find a way to like get in somehow. I didn't have any money to donate. And I didn't have any time. I had like three jobs. And I was in school.

So I couldn't like, volunteer on the campaign. And so I just was like, let me just like figure this out somehow. And then when the White House internship application came across my desk, I thought that because I'm older, because I'm in community college, that I would be disqualified. So when I wasn't disqualified, like, I didn't say anything about that. And I was like, oh, I have to write a good essay and be in school and I have my taxes clear. Like, I was just like, oh, I can do that. And I was a hip-hop journalist at the time. And so I'm a good writer. So I was like, oh, I know how to write. maybe not like political right, but I can write.

And so for me, it was really this electric, you know, and I know you remember, but like sometimes I'm young people, they don't remember. They were so young. But it was the electric thing in 2007, 2008 that was just like a wave. And I was just like, I'm going, I'm getting in. Like, I'm getting in. So when I was chosen, it was complete. I was like, wait a minute.

Wait, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, I thought I could do it. But like, but now it's become real. And so I think that that's when it's. all like just happened and I cannot still believe it. I mean, even reading my own story back to the audio book, I still was getting emotional because I was like, I remember that night, November 4th and we were all in the street and we were like everybody was playing Gap Band and

dancing and people brought out. It was amazing. It was amazing, right? It was just like, and that I think I never let go of that. Through the eight years, I never let go. So even working close with them or whatever. I was very, I never got confused that we were best friend. I was just like, I'm here to do a service. Like, I'm here to continue riding that wave, you know, and it took me all the way to the top. So yeah. Oh, my God. You just gave me chills. It's memories that are there of that moment when he won. And we all ran out into the street. I was in Washington, D.C. Pots and pans. And I mean, it was beautiful mayhem. It was. Talk to us about now you get this gig.

You walk in. It is the first. I mean, you are living history. Like, when do you start to realize how big it is the path that you're walking? How historic it is. It hit me probably when I got that. I was an intern. I got to fly on Air Force One on the way home from the president and first lady were at the

memorial in Fort Hood when there was the mass shooting. and they set me down to advance the trip with a couple other people. And I was like, I'm an intern. Like, isn't there somebody else? Should we be doing this? I mean, that was kind of my thought process the entire time. Like, I, hi. But they were like, you know, you have life experience.

Like you, you know, you did social work. You did all these things. So sending you down to be with the families and be at the base to prepare for the president is fitting. And I was like, but I'm an intern. So I think that on the way home when they told me I was flying Air Force One, because I kept asking, how am I getting home? Because I had no ticket. And I was like, I'm not saying here in Texas what's going on?

I think that's when it hit me because I just, I was on Air Force One and the president and first lady came by and they were asking me about the food I wanted to eat. And, you know, I didn't grow up with a lot of money. So I'm thinking, do I got to pay for that? Like, I was like, I don't want to eat because I can't afford it. I'm an intern. I can't afford this food, you know? And so they were like, no, you're okay.

Like, you know, we bill you later. But it's like, it's not as much as you think. whatever, it's $10. I was like, okay, I can do that. So I think that's when it hit me, right as I was taking as much stuff as I could from the plane that I, you know, because I was like, I've got to take this stuff home. So I was taking toothbrushes and everything else. And I think that's what it hit me when I got off the plane. And I was like, I just flew on Air Force One with the first black president and first lady. And like, I was scared to take pictures. I think I took two pictures, actually. And I'm so happy I got the nerve up because now I have those pictures. And

like, you could see in my face to like, I can't believe that I. I'm here, that's when I think it hit me. Like, I was like, what is going on? That where I was and, you know, and this great responsibility that I had and how I was so happy to go back to my community and tell them the story. I was always ready to run back and be like, y'all will not believe what just happened, you know? So yeah, that's when I realized it.

What struck me about your book? And I want to talk about the cover because I want to talk about gold hoop earrings and what they mean to black women, which is a lot. probably about as much as red lipstick does and a nose ring and this black face superimposed over a city landscape with your title undiplomatic because it hits so hard and so right in all the places because I think that people don't understand we I think have tried to express it so many black women in so many high places in so many spaces and industries have tried to talk about the tightrope of being nice but not too nice of being assertive but not a bitch of being you know of having

to be all the things but then recognized as nothing so what does it mean to say that your attitude what was told to you as being too much essentially would be the thing that would carry you and what does that what does this cover what do you want it to express to young black girls young black boys, young black people that see it. Definitely. And thank you for saying that because I, because, you know, the cover was a, it was a battle as all books are. But I think that for me, as you had mentioned about black women and, you know, everything that were told and the mental mind game. I think about every day Dr. Bailey at Lincoln, who, who, you know, left us, you know, because of the harassment and the bullying, this amazing black woman, right? And I think about her all of the time, almost every day.

And then I think about the young people that, you know, that I, that I, you know, I'm with. And they say, you know, they start crying. And, you know, I try to do the right thing. And they don't like me in my office. And it breaks me. It breaks me. And I think to myself, I have a chance to be like a little bit of a light to be like, I did not allow.

I mean, people broke me. I will not, I will not lie. But at the end of the day, I was not compromising. And the cover for me, especially with the gold hoops and the nose ring, when I became social secretary and I went to my, you know, you're very familiar with the nice little socialite parties here. You know, and I became, and I went,

you know, someone pulled me aside, you know, an older white woman and she said, you know, you would, you know, be taking more seriously, you know, if you did not wear that. And I thought, I mean, I wanted to punch her in the fuck of a face, but I was just like, you know, Disha don't do that. You make the president look bad. But I said to her, I was like, excuse me,

because I almost didn't believe, you know what I almost didn't believe. Yep. And I was just, like, excuse me? And she said, then I said, well, I got hired like this. The president and first lady are very aware that I wear what I wear. And they hired me for this job. And she's the same woman that also tried to give me her old purses to make me, you know, and I was like, I'm good, thank you. But I think that for me, I want black people to know whether they are young or

whether they're my age 46, young and hard or even older than me, that we do not have to give up who we are to succeed. It is not worth it. I understand how it looks. I understand how it looks great to, you know, let's conform and let's do X, Y, Z. But if you have to compromise yourself in a way that you don't no longer recognize yourself in the mirror, it's just not worth it. But you have to be able to deal with the consequences.

Like, I knew, I knew, I knew that, like, I'm labeled. Like, I'm labeled and I have a reputation. If people got to know me, I am very nice. I will definitely, I'm from Philly. I will definitely fight. I am the first person to be like, no, no, no, no. That's not, mm-mm. Like, I'm not a good peacemaker.

I'm not, I'm not very good at that. And I admit that. But my whole thing was is I was willing to say, fine, I don't belong to this group anymore. Or fine, I'm not being invited to these happy hours. Or maybe people look at me and they sigh and just like, here she comes, talking black this, like that. And I was like, yes, that's what I'm going to do. And back then it was a big, it was like, you know, now we're like, yes, stand up.

speak your mind, say what you want to say. That person's a leader. But back then it was like, here you go with your attitude. Your attitude, your tone. You're this, you're that. And I'm just like, do you have anything to say about my work? Or is it just about my appearance and my tone? Like, how's my work?

Because I see you dancing at my parties. You having a good time at dinner. There ain't no complaints about my work. So all you can attack me for is like my voice or like, you know what I mean? So I think that I'm hoping that they get the message that I understand how hard it is. It was very lonely. a lot of times on my journey. But at the end of the day, Daniel,

I can stand very firm, very firm in who I am and say, I would not do it any differently. I would not. And I still wear my hoops. I mean, come on. I'm so appreciative of that because I think that that white woman who came up to you at that party

has come up to all of us in some place, shape, or form, has stuck her head over the cubicle, has pulled you aside at the counter, has, you know, said to you in some form or way, that we are too much. I have locks and was told that I would never be taken seriously in a professional setting with locks. What was beautiful and what continues to be beautiful is this reclamation that black people have had and have always had. There's always these moments where whether it is, whether it is a

natural, whether it is piercings and adornment, whether it is just like the fullness of ourselves and taking it back. And so my last question for you is that this book, now comes out at a time, Disha, where we are so far from the Obama years and in a space that I really don't know how to describe and explain, but I know that it is dark. I know that it is not golden the way that it was at the beginning of the 2000s, and it seems very dark for black people and people of color in particular. Where do you find hope and where do you want to lend hope for those for whom the Obama years are almost like a figment of their imagination? like you said that they were so young or it's just been covered with so much darkness that it's

hard to remember. That's a great question and that's a hard question to be honest with you. I would say that, you know, where my hope is is really in community. Like it's always been. Like literally it's always been. I've been raised by my community. So for me, these community organizers, the community care, the mutual funds, the mutual aids, like the people who just, you know, start organizations out of their living room, you know, with their grandparents. and this, that, and the third, that's where my hope is because that is who controls things, right? And to me, you see a shift in politics where everybody's going to the community organizers now and, you know, they want to be down with the, you know, what special sauce do you have?

Because community has a lock. You know, we have a lock on the people. We know the issues. We have never left. Like, even, you know, when I was at the White House and I was there and I was working in this obviously beautiful, you know, white building or whatever, I still was very connected to Southeast D.C. I still was very connected to formerly incarcerated women in Alexandria, Virginia, houseless people. I never lost that. Like, I made sure that I volunteered or I brought them to the White House or whatever, because that is where my hope is. My hope is in our community care and our love for each other. I think that my other hope is really in some of these folks that are, you know, they are not following the lines of the establishment and running for office. And they

are willing to accept the consequences of not being like or anything else. there's not enough of them, but there needs to be. And so part of my book, I'm hoping that people take from this is I want somebody to read it who says, I never thought I had nothing to give in politics. I didn't think I had the right pedigree, the education or whatever, but I feel passionate about this candidate or this issue or whatever, and I'm going to go for it. Because I think that the issue is that too many people think that they're not qualified to be in politics.

They don't understand it. I get it. It's just confusing. Like, I don't be able to be. understanding half the fucking time. And I worked here. So I'm hoping that my book gives hope to those who are like, I'm going to enter this race. I'm going to get involved. I'm going to do X, Y, Z. I'm going to sit at this table because I think that for too long, we've got the same people following the same formula being elected. Here we go. It's like a hamster wheel. You know what I mean?

And it doesn't even have to be politics. Anything that somebody feels like they're not qualified for. Like, we're looking for the non-traditional. We need the non-traditional. We need the different kind of educated. We need the you were incarcerated now you doing X, Y, Z, or you dropped out of school. We need that because the people that's following the path, the shit ain't working. It's not working. Yeah, I know that's right. That's what my hope is. My hope is in the non-traditional, the people that have come up different ways and are not afraid, but also the people that are going to say, like, I also need to protect my community and love my community and go back to my community, consult my community. That is where my hope is. Amazing. Disha Dyer, incredible, incredible work.

an incredible path, incredible story. Folks, the book is undiplomatic, how my attitude created the best kind of trouble, and it is out now, so go and cop it. Disha, really appreciate you, and I hope that at some point you will come back and join us again on the new abnormal. Yes, I definitely will.

Thank you so much, Danielle, for who you are, what you do, and having me on. Gerrymandering and the erosion of voting rights by Republicans, our judicial system, and even the founding fathers themselves all come under fire in my next guest's excellent new book. Ari Berman is Mother Jones's national voting rights correspondent and the book itself called Minority Rule, the right-wing attack on the will of the people and the fight to resist it, is out right now. Ari, thanks so much for joining us.

Hey, Andy, great to talk to you again. Thank you. So the book gives a great overview of how the seeds of much of what we're seeing from today's Republican Party and the seeds of minority rule in general were actually planted way back. in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. As you note in the book, out of this convention came the composition of the U.S. Senate, the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifth Compromise, and the bane of my existence, the Electoral College. Even though, as you also say in the book, the Constitution was a remarkable document for its time, it's also fair to say that it was and is sort of the original sin as far as America's anti-democratic bent goes, isn't it? That's right. I mean, far from me to

go nuclear on the founders, but after seeing Hamilton multiple times, they just had had enough. And it's true that the Constitution is as close as we have to a civic religion in this country. And the founding fathers are always, you know, the heroes dressed in their powder wigs. But the fact is, there's this contradiction that the democratic institutions that were created by the founders weren't actually that democratic. And even though we've reformed some of them, like there's no longer a three-fifths clause, A lot of them haven't been reformed all that much. We still have an electoral college where you can win the popular vote but lose the electoral

college. We still have a Senate in which California has the same representation as Wyoming, even though California has 68 times more people. We still have a Supreme Court that's a product of two broken institutions in terms of how we elect senators and how we elect presidents. So a lot of anti-democratic remnants of our system remain. And I wanted to connect the anti-democratic institutions of 230 years ago to the anti-democratic institutions of today and suggest that maybe we're not as

democratic as we'd like to think we are. Yeah, and we always, you know, we hear the phrase a lot, well, the founding fathers could never have envisioned whatever, but it feels like, and certainly in the way you lay it out, they knew exactly what they were getting themselves and us into, didn't they? These systems were expressly set up to dilute democracy and promote oligarchy. That's right. They wanted to protect the power of a very specific minority, which was, elite white landowners like themselves. They were concerned about the masses and the amount of power that people had after the ratification of the Declaration of Independence and the first state legislatures and democratic institutions that were set up after 1776. And the very purpose of

the Constitution was, in the words of the founders, to restrain the excesses of democracy, to restrain the fury of democracy, to create a representative democracy, which the people would largely be shut out of governing the country. Because the people only elected the House of Representatives, which was one house of one branch of government. The people didn't elect the Senate, people didn't elect the president, and they didn't choose, of course, Supreme Court justices. So the public was largely frozen out of our democratic institutions, and I think that laid the groundwork for minority rule to become a fact of life. And the other interesting thing is that there were a lot of debates about this among the founders.

So when you quote the founders, you have to be very specific about who are you quoting and when? because, for example, even though James Madison is largely thought of as the father of the Constitution, he hated the idea that each state would get the same number of senators. He said it would allow the most trifling minority ever to control the federal government. So, I mean, if you're going to make an originalist case for the U.S. Senate, you at least have to say that, hey, the godfather of the Senate himself wasn't really too crazy about what they created. Yeah, absolutely. And you show example after example of that in the book.

but I want to jump ahead to John Calhoun because he becomes, as you write, the first major figure in the generation after the founding fathers to develop an ideology of minority rule explicitly designed to protect white supremacy. That's right. So John Calhoun basically held every possible position other than president of the United States. He was Secretary of State. He was a senator from South Carolina. He was vice president. I mean, he basically held them all. And he basically moves the conversation from class to race. So the founders took things like slavery as a given, but they were mostly concerned with protecting the power of themselves, which was basically an elite property to upper class. Calhoun basically says, I just want to protect white people, whether they're rich or they're poor. I want to protect them because the South is now outnumbered and population had shifted in America so the North had more population than the South. And Calhoun foresaw a time where the South would be outnumbered. And he predicted correctly that new rights would be extended to formally disenfranchised communities like African Americans after the Civil War.

And so what happens is Calhoun develops this ideology of minority rule that's specifically designed to protect white power. And that becomes very influential, for example, during the civil rights movement, when white Southerners are looking back at a philosophy to use to try to prevent blacks from voting. And they say, hey, oh, look, there's John Calhoun. He specifically argued that minority rule was acceptable as long as, it's protecting white power. Yeah, he was absolutely not shy about it at all. But now I want to get in my TARDIS and jump way ahead to Pat Buchanan, because it feels like when we're talking modern day right-wing efforts to harness white anxiety about the influx of people of color to this country,

and the sort of overall philosophy of make America white again, it feels like he is kind of the founding father of that. Exactly. And in some ways, he's the modern-day John Calhoun, because Calhoun is worried about white southerners becoming the minority one day. And Buchanan's worried about white people broadly becoming the minority one day because the 1990 census shows for the first time that whites will one day be a minority in the country, that there'll be a majority minority future by 2050, and actually that's coming in 2045. And so Buchanan basically argues that immigration has made America a much more diverse country, and that's a bad thing for the country, but it's particularly bad for the Republican Party because the Republican Party is a largely white party. So he runs for

president first in 92 and then in 96 on this platform of opposition to demographic change. And what's so influential about Buchanan is he mixes opposition to the civil rights movement, which he had done ever since he worked for Richard Nixon with antipathy towards demographic change, which was a relatively new argument within the Republican Party. And he basically says, white America is under siege, not just from African Americans, but also from Hispanics, Asian Americans, other new immigrants and they're forming this multiracial coalition that is going to one day make the Republican Party extinct if the Republican Party doesn't do something about it. And that's very Trumpy in terms of its orientation, but this is, of course, 20 and 30 years before Trump becomes a

major political figure. Yeah, but Buchanan, as you point out in the book, I do believe he was a true believer in these things, but he also, he knew that all of the things you're mentioning, the rise of rights for people of color, along with the sort of influx. of people, I guess non-white immigration, we can call it. He knew that there was going to be a backlash to all of this and that there would be a not insubstantial amount of Americans who would rally as part of that backlash. That's right. And he had experience with this because he helped develop the Southern strategy for Richard Nixon, which was the white backlash to the civil rights movement. And he argued correctly that once African Americans were granted new rights

in the South, that would spur a backlash among white Southerners. and they would leave the Democratic Party and join the Republican Party. And he urged Nixon to aggressively move in that direction by opposing what he called, quote-unquote, liberal issues like housing and education and voting rights. And then when Buchanan runs for president, he sees this is the next new battle, that the battle is going to be about globalization,

and the battle is going to be about schools, and the battle is going to be not just about politics, but about culture. And he starts to understand that many political fights are actually cultural in nature. And so he starts defending and talking about what he calls the emerging white minority. And he starts saying that white Christian America is basically under attack and tries to mobilize

this backlash vote. Well before Donald Trump, and of course, he never wins the Republican Party nomination, although he does win New Hampshire in 96, and he does get a keynote spot at the Republican Convention in 92. So he's not an insignificant figure, but he never comes close to winning the nomination. And he's basically run out of the Republican Party. But the thing that I found fascinating was that as his views become more extreme, they actually become more popular within Republican circles.

And first through the Tea Party and then through Trump, this whole America first platform that Buchanan's running against becomes a lot more popular. And even though Buchanan himself doesn't see it through, Trump largely does what Buchanan has been advocating for. Yeah, 100% agree. Let me jump off that and move ahead again and talk about basically what's been going on in the last decade or so, or really, I guess, since a black man was elected president and broke a lot of people's brains.

I want to start with Wisconsin because you talk about that state a lot in the book. Is it fair to say that Wisconsin in the early 2010s while Scott Walker was governor sort of became the blueprint for modern Republican gerrymandering along with other methods to suppress voters and effectively disenfranchise people? Absolutely. So what Republicans did is they said, how can we fight back against the election of the first black president? What they realized is they could take control of all of these states.

And that happened after the 2010 election when they got power in all of these key. swing states like Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, etc. And they made the states their laboratory for oligarchy. And they made the states their laboratory for suppressing democratic participation and rigging institutions in the GOP's favor. And Wisconsin became the blueprint for that. Not only because Wisconsin was a pivotal swing state, but Wisconsin had been a state that was known for good governance and was known as kind of a progressive laboratory. It was a state that gave rise to things like social security and collective bargaining rights for unions and unemployment insurance, all these progressive ideas. And so they felt like the national Republican

party and the national conservative movement felt like if we can turn Wisconsin, we can kind of flip anywhere. That's a battleground. And so instead they decided, let's gerrymender, let's pass new voter suppression laws, let's go after collective bargaining rights for unions. Let's go after all these progressive ideas that not only defined the politics of Wisconsin, but defined the culture of Wisconsin. And then let's export it all across the country. And they were for over a decade, they were very successful at doing it. And so I think that's kind of the linkage between what I was talking about earlier with Buchanan and what they did after, because they basically said, okay, when we get power in all of these places, we're going to try to protect the rights of this elite white minority.

And we're going to try to use it to counter the power of this more diverse multiracial majority that Barack Obama's election represented. And this is what we're seeing to this day. What we're talking about, obviously, there's the gerrymandering or the extreme gerrymandering, which, by the way, it should not escape note, and as you do point out in the book, that the Republicans used, I guess you could call it a very clever tactic in sort of ghettoizing the black vote and creating these, quote unquote, black districts, which instead of spreading the black vote out among different districts, in effect, just put them into maybe, let's say, four or five districts, which you then sort of concede as those will be Democratic districts, but it increases the Republican

numbers in these other districts. So they do that. They do voter ID laws. They curtail voter registration drives, all this stuff. And that's what we see to this day, right? We do. And we're seeing, secondly, the second iteration of that, right? Because the way I see the continuum is states like Wisconsin pass these laws initially after the 2010 election in response to the first black president. Then in 2013, the Supreme Court gets the Voting Rights Act. So that makes it easier for southern states with the history of discrimination to put these kind of measures in. Then they accelerate with Trump. especially after 2020 when Trump tries to overturn the election fails, but then all these Republican-controlled states like Georgia, for example, turn around and change their election laws to make it harder to vote again. So there's different movements in time, but basically the trend in the Republican Party

is the Republican Party becoming more and more undemocratic. And going from tried to suppress votes on the front end to just try to throw out votes all together on the back end. And now you don't just have people who are trying to make it harder to vote, but they're denying the outcome of elections altogether. So I think that's what's frightening is that the anti-democratic forces within the Republican Party have become so much more radical and so much stronger in terms of their orientation. What they're doing now far eclipses what they tried to do after 2010. But what I'm trying to do is also contextualize and say,

listen, the Republican Party radicalized against democracy before Donald Trump. And that's one of the major reasons we ended up with Donald Trump. Because if the Republican Party hadn't already become an authoritarian party or an authoritarian friendly party, they never would have nominated someone like Trump in the first place, not once but twice. Yeah, I mean, look, as Hillary Clinton is quoted by you in the book, you know, after she lost Wisconsin in 2016, she says Republicans learn that if you suppress votes, you win. And they definitely seem to have taken that lesson and applied it as far across the board as they possibly could. And one thing I gleaned from the book that I don't know that I was fully cognizant of this is the importance of Chris Kobach to all these mod.

day efforts. Like, I knew he was a vile human being, but he really did have his hand in a lot of pies. Yeah, and Kobach has a blueprint for mixing, basically, suppressing voting rights with targeting immigration. So it's sort of the next chapter of Buchananism, because Buchanan is saying is, we need to control non-white immigration, we need to curb political participation. But he doesn't really have much of a plan for doing that. He's a commentator. So he has ideas that he throws out there. Of course, he throws out the idea of a Buchanan fence and other things that then becomes Trump's wall. But Kolbach has these really targeted policies. He has these policies, for example, to go after undocumented immigration in all these ways. So the papers please law

in Arizona where essentially cops can stop you on any kind of suspicion of being undocumented, which is this incredibly broad law leading to widespread racial profiling. That's something that Kobach comes up with. And then Kobach comes up with all of these specific policies on voting. And he does things like he says, you need proof of citizenship to register to vote. So you essentially have to have your passport with you to be able to register to vote, which of course many people don't carry with them. And when they enact it in Kansas, it blocks one in seven people who try to register from registering to vote. And half of them end up being under 30.

So he's basically stopping the demographics from changing in terms of voter registration. And he starts talking about things like non-citizens voting in large numbers. So when Trump says, I think three million people voted illegally, And people are like, what are you talking about? Where did you get that information? He says, oh, Chris Kobach. And then again, Trump is saying this in 2024. The non-citizens are voting illegally.

And of course, it's completely insane that migrants crossing the southern border would be concerned with voting at this point in time. But again, this is stuff that dates back to Kobach. And what I'm really interested is the ideas behind a lot of these radical policies. Who came up with them? Who promoted them? How did they become in favor within the Republican Party?

And Kobach is one of those largely behind the scenes figure. that it's kind of easy to dismiss. In the same way that Buchanan is kind of easy to dismiss, saying he never won anything. He never amounted to anything. But look, actually, you know, his policies have become pretty damn influential in terms of in Republican circles. Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about what you call the superminoritarian exception. And I also want to talk about how the notion of so-called constitutional originalism plays into all of this that we've been talking about. Well, we're in a situation with the courts where not just the Supreme Court, but the appellate courts for the first time are dominated by members of the

judiciary who were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote and then confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans. So that's what's called the superminoritarian exception. Basically, judges appointed by candidates who represent the minority of the population. And then of course, those courts are ruling in ways on abortion rights, on voting rights, on gun control, and other issues in ways in which they're going against public opinion and also set up precedent to do these really radical things. And the Federalist Society in the 1980s starts using originalism to reorient the courts because they don't like the fact that the courts are

protecting vulnerable minority groups. They want the courts to protect powerful minority groups like wealthy GOP political donors. So they say, let's reorient the courts to interpret the Constitution as it existed at the time. Well, when the Constitution was drafted, a majority of Americans were excluded from political participation. So it's really easy to look at the Constitution and say, oh, they, hey, the Constitution allows these very undemocratic things, because of course the Constitution allows these very undemocratic things, because the Constitution itself was not very democratic. And then, of course, they're also cherry-picking history in such a way that when originalism doesn't suit their point of view, they just say, okay, well, we're just going to cherry-pick the history so that we can justify

taking away abortion rights or taking away voting rights. So I think the courts have really become the epicenter of the GOP's drive for minority rule, because they're doing all these unpopular things through the courts that they couldn't do through the normal legislative process because things like gutting the V. Rights Act or repealing Roe v. Wade would be too unpopular if they just tried to do it through the normal political channels. Yeah, you have an unbelievable stat in the book, which is where in addition to appointing a third of the Supreme Court, 60% of Trump's appellate picks were confirmed by senators receiving fewer votes or representing fewer people than the senators opposing them. That's absolutely unreal. Really remarkable. Well, that's because the Senate,

under Mitch McConnell and under Republican leadership was a product of minority rule. So the senators themselves represented a minority of Americans. Of course, the judges were appointed by President, Donald Trump, a representative minority of Americans. And then, of course, they picked very radical nominees that Democrats wouldn't support. If they had picked more moderate nominees, that wouldn't be the case. But they basically stacked the courts with all of these radical judges. And I wanted to write about the appellate courts because the Supreme Court only hears about 80 cases a year. So the majority of major decisions are decided at the appellate level, which are basically the regional Supreme Court. So Donald Trump's impact on the judiciary is going to last a long time.

And that's why if Joe Biden accomplishes nothing else, no matter how long he's in office, but if he accomplishes nothing else, I would like to think Democrats would make the courts and confirming judges while they still control the Senate, their number one priority. The book is Minority Rule, the right-wing attack on the will of the people and the fight to resist it. Ari Berman, thank you so much for joining me. I love the book. I'd recommend it to everyone listening to this. Thanks so much, Andy. I really appreciate it. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you kicking off this good, good week with your fuck that guy? We were talking

before we started recording. It was really, it was a tough one today. There are so many of them, and I guess we should maybe give just a quick honorable mention to Greg Abbott because we're not going to get to him for trying to pass some law down in Texas that transgender teachers cannot use their correct pronouns. But anyway, I went with instead something that's going on up in New Hampshire, and that is where the New Hampshire House and a bill passed solely by Republican votes would end the requirement for parents enrolling kids in child care to provide documentation of polio and measles vaccination. And this is just unbelievable, as Mother Jones points out,

the publication, not a person. If this bill gets through the, I guess the Senate there, And if Governor Sununu signs it, it would make New Hampshire the first in the nation state to have this kind of law. And the idea that we eradicated, for the most part, things like polio and measles. And now we're seeing measles making a comeback. If the Republicans keep passing laws like this, we're going to see polio making a comeback. And all of us involved in this podcast were lucky enough to be born after we got the polio vaccine. And we didn't grow up knowing people who had a, spend their entire lives inside an iron lung. But I think we've all seen pictures and what a

horrible way to have to go through life. And the idea that this was eradicated, thanks to Jonas Salk and others, and that suddenly we have Republicans out there deciding that they're going to pass laws saying these vaccines are no longer mandated. I guess this is in the name of freedom, you know, so you can have the freedom to have your child live their life in an iron lung. It's so gross and it's so heinous. And of course, you know damn well, all these people call themselves pro-life. And obviously, that is just, you know, that really rankles. And it just shows how much of the abortion debate is not about human life, but about subjugating women. And the polio vaccine has been around since 1955. And the measles vaccine, it has been, according to Mother Jones,

it's estimated to have saved over 55 million lives around the world. That's the MMR vaccine, the measles, mom said, Rubella. And the idea that Republicans want to do away with these things and completely throw out the notion of public health and make all of this some kind of personal freedom thing that parents can choose to, you know, they can make it optional for their children. Again, it's absolutely heinous and these people are gross and they are as anti-life as it gets. So, you know, fuck those guys. You know, what the plan here, I think, for Republicans is to keep people extraordinarily sick,

undereducated, ignorant, and desperate. Why? Because you're easier to control that way. And it has absolutely nothing to do with freedom. It has everything to do with subjugation. And so if there are now tons of people that are unwell, that bodes good for them. And so you have to ask yourself, if you're a parent, right? now like who are you listening to your doctor or the party that celebrated their president telling you

to inject bleach right you get to be the final say and what happens with your children so if you choose to listen to a man that has no fucking medical degree and now you think that the politicians who all take fucking money from pharmaceutical companies and you know have their own agendas and take really no oath to do no harm, no better than the doctors and scientists that have come up with vaccines that, frankly, underdeveloped countries would die for and have, then by all means, put your fucking child at risk. But don't come crying to the fucking ER after they are now sick because you're stupid, because you decided to follow the cult instead of following science. So, go with God. All right, Danielle, I'm sure you have a much cheerier.

fuck that guy for us. Well, yes and no. So I want to say, if I remember correctly, that I ended the week with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders as my fuck that guy. I'm pretty certain. And so she is now, once again, starting the week off with Sarah Huckabee Sanders because, I mean, she's just the fucking gift that keeps on giving. She is currently being sued by students in Arkansas for her bullshit backing of this controversial legislation called the Learns Act, so catchy, a new law that is championed by her to promote school privatization and ban what she refers to as, quote, left-wing indoctrination. You know the truth. And so what is ironic about this, but I guess not, is that the students that are suing her are from the same high school that was integrated back in

1957 by the Little Rock Nine, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas are suing her for the fact that I guess under this Learns Act, they can't even learn about the Little Rock fucking nine or anything else. And so now they are taking her to court backed by the NAACP to revoke the Learns Act and essentially get their right to an education. But Lord Jesus, what is old, you know, is new again, which is a white right-wing governor trying to deny black and brown kids access to education about this country, about themselves, about their ancestors. It is just, it's like white supremacy will never die because of the fact that we never want to tell the truth.

Like the truth is the, as people have said, is the best disinfected. The light of day. Tell the truth about America so that we don't continue to repeat this type of bullshit every fucking generation. But the reason why we repeat it is because we don't tell the truth about it. And these people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and the rest of them, all they do is recycle white supremac ideals and brush them up to fit with the the current sentiments of today. It's just, it's so aggravating, but I applaud the NDACP and I applaud

these students for taking the governor to task. So we will have to, you know, continue to watch as this case evolves because hopefully it could be a turning point, as was the Little Rock Nine in United States history and desegregation of schools. So for that reason, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you stay on my fuck that guy list because you can't seem to do anything right. She stays losing. Mm-hmm. And the way they try, the way they do this is they bring up, you know, critical race theory, which is not something that is taught at anywhere below the college level if it's taught at all.

And then what they do also is they make the laws purposefully vague. And that's what's going on here with this learns act. And as truth out reports, it doesn't even have an accurate or clear. definition of critical race theory. And because it's vague, what it does is it promotes fear. It promotes the fear that you will run afoul of this law. So what do teachers do? The only, you know, the natural response to that is if you're not sure about whether or not you should teach something, you don't teach it. And that's exactly what they want. And in the lawsuit, it talks about this one student, Sadie Bell, who goes to Central High, she is set to do a

presentation on whether the legacy of slave codes still has an impact today. And then as the lawsuit says, it is unclear if by doing so that Sadie Bell is, quote, and this is from the Lerns Act, purposely or otherwise teaching that would indoctrinate students with prohibited ideologies. Prohibitive ideology that, oh, I'm sorry, slavery was wrong. And that slavery was wrong, and that even after the Civil War and slaves were freed, that there was. still systemic injustice against black people in this country, which is as close to an, I don't even want to say as close to an obvious truth as possible. It's just an obvious truth. So you're talking about she could get in trouble for giving this presentation. The teachers could

get in trouble for allowing her to give this presentation. And they could lose their education license. And Republicans could say, well, but no, that wouldn't run afoul of this. But there's no way to know that from the language of the act itself. This is done on purpose. And It's another way of keeping people down by using fear, which is exactly the intent of all of this. So yeah, fuck those guys. 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.

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