The Daily Beast Podcast - Where Are the White People Standing Up to Trump?

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

The New Abnormal hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie question why it appears that only people of color are leading the Democratic Party’s fight against the Trump administration. Then, actor and filmmaker Alex Winter talks about “Tesla Takedown,” a movement targeting financial support for Elon Musk and his car brand. Plus, Deirdre Schifeling and Alexa Kolbi Molinas from the American Civil Liberties Union discuss how the organization is pushing back against the administration from legal battles to grassroots organizing. 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. 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. Actor and documentary filmmaker

Alex Winter is here to tell us all the details on Tesla Takedown, a movement targeting Tesla's brand and financial support for Elon Musk and how folks like you can get involved. Double talk to the ACLU's Deidre Shefling and Alexa Colby Malinus, who will outline the organization's pushback against Trump's attacks on civil liberties from legal battles to grassroots. organizing and the urgent need for state and local resistance. But first, let's have some fun. So in a wildly unsurprising move from the feckless Democrats in the House of Representatives, 10 supposed moderates join the MAGA Republicans to censure Representative Al Green, the only member of Congress that showed full four.

how abnormal, how ridiculous, and how dangerous this new Trump regime is. You guys saw him, stand up, point his cane at Donald Trump, and call him out on the ways that he is undermining our democracy, throwing families under the bus, and he was escorted out by the sergeant of arms and should have been followed by every single Democrat in that chamber, but instead they all just sat there and looked at him while he was removed. And now 10 Democrats have joined with Maga Republicans to censure him. And I just, disgrace is not a strong enough word for the Democratic Party right now. Yeah. And I mean, how are you going to have Al Green right there and not understand that the motto should be, let's stay together? Like, I just, I don't get it. But I want to read the names of the 10 Democrats.

Who voted to censure Al Green. Ami Barra from California. Ed Case from Hawaii. Jim Costa from California. Laura Gillen from New York. Jim Himes from Connecticut. Chrissy Hulahan from Pennsylvania. Marcy Kaptur from Ohio.

Jared Moskowitz from Florida. Marie Glousencamp Perez from Washington and Tom Swazzy from New York. The only one of these people I have fairly decent knowledge of is Tom Swazzi because he's the congressman for the district that some of my family lives in. and he's a Long Island Democrat, which means he's basically a Republican. His name may be familiar to people because his is the seat that George Santos took. And then when Santos was booted out of the house, Swazi ran again and won the seat back. So I've seen people say all these 10 people should be primaried, and look, I'm all for that.

I just, I will say that I feel like, at least in Swazzi's case, he ain't going to get anything better, unfortunately. But I'm with you, Danielle. This is all, it's deplorable. And the fact that they thought it was a good, like, even if in their heart of hearts, they were turned off by what Al Green did, the fact that they sat there and thought, well, my move here is I need to vote with the Republicans on censuring him. The fact that that's where they went to is pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic.

And I don't even know what else to call it. It just to me is it's such an abdication of their responsibility. And I have no doubt that all 10 of them thought, you know, well, I need to do this to help my re-election chances. But it's like, what are you doing there if your only thought is how do I keep being here instead of what do I do while I'm here, i.e., like, you know, the right thing. Like, again, I continue to say decorum is not going to save Democrats in this moment. Like, it really isn't. And their fecklessness, their spinelessness, to even side and continue to legitimize this Maga Republican Party and this regime to undermine our democracy just does not make sense to me.

So I don't know who the people are in these districts that would say, oh, yeah, I'm really proud of my representative for censoring the one person that had enough integrity to stand up in this moment. Honestly, it is truly embarrassing. and if this is your stance, then you might as well be a Republican. Like, stop masquerading as a Democrat in this moment. And the fact is, Democrats don't know who they are. They don't know who they are. They are really, you want to talk about people suffering from an identity crisis.

It's a Democratic establishment that can't decide whether they're moderate Republicans or whether they actually stand for anything that the people who are the base of their party believe. Yeah, and I want to raise an issue that, Danielle, I'm sure you hadn't even thought of. but why is it always black people who stand up? I was like, is it going to be something I really never thought of? Yeah, no, it's odd to me that this never occurred to you. But we've seen it time and time again throughout American history, and we're seeing it again now.

We're seeing Al Green. We're seeing AOC. We're seeing Jasmine Crockett. We're seeing Maxwell Frost. And there are some exceptions to this, obviously. Well, sorry. It's not a completely black and white issue. But it's embarrassing to my, for me, for my fellow white people to be acting like this.

Take the lead for once. Like, stop putting people of color and women in these positions without backing them or without leading, without taking the lead, without standing side by side with them. It is so annoying to me and so upsetting that it just feels like every single time. And again, I know it's not every single time. But no, it's pretty much every single time. time. It is, at the very least, it's a disproportionately high percentage of the time that it is people of color leading the charge. And that shit has to stop. And obviously by that, I don't mean

people of color need to stop. I mean, white people need to stand up. White people need to stand up and start realizing that, first of all, it's the right thing to do. And second of all, it's not fair to place this burden on people of color. It just isn't. I mean, but it's particularly why you heard following, you know, Vice President Kamala Harris's loss that black women, uh, who are the base of the Democratic Party said, okay, we're taking a back seat this time. We're not, this is, this is not our fight. This is y'all's fight. And black women, you know, across social media were like, you know, y'all seem to got this now. I'm not putting my body on the line anymore. I'm not going to be the first to line up at the protest. You do it. Black people make up

13% of the population and have, you know, for the longest time. White people are the majority. And yet, black people, like you're saying, Andy, carry the unbalanced weight of always having to fight for justice. And frankly, the reason why any other group has rights in this country is because of the fight and blood and loss of life that black people endured in order to bring civil rights to this country. So at this point in time, it is not. a shock to me, it just remains disappointing. And we're here because, you know, white Americans, in large part, wanted to align themselves with whiteness and fascism rather than to elect a black woman and Asian woman to expand our democracy. That's what the choice is. And it's a

disheartening one, but that's the reality. And anybody that wants to debate on that can just look at the numbers. Yeah. We've talked about this before. It's not just a racial thing. It is also what we talked about on our post-Trump address podcast was Sarah McBride sitting there while Trump was saying all these awful and untrue and hateful things about trans people. The fact that the cis people, who obviously way outnumber the trans people in Congress, because it's just Sarah McBride, sat by and did nothing. It's the same thing. And so we really are seeing it over and over again where it's just this willingness to sort of either sell out minority groups or even if not fully sell them out to sort of let them fend for themselves and not stand up and say this isn't right because you're not a member of an affected class or so you think anyway. You will find out differently, unfortunately.

But I guess that brings me to one white guy, Danielle, who does get it. And that's Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. Right? I'm right about this. Yeah. This is, you know, I want to say that it's the most disappointing, but I'm sure it's not. Wait, so I'm not right about this. No, you're right about this, that he's disappointing. Oh, okay. I was saying he was one of the few white people who got it.

He's one of the few white people that got it up until now. Ah, okay, fair enough. Up until now. So Gavin Newsom most recently, because he thinks that, you know, I guess the podcast field is not crowded enough, decide to debut a podcast. This is Gavin Newsom. And in it, launched into the reasons why trans women athletes don't deserve to be in sports. And said this, quote, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that.

I'm thinking that he is speaking to Charlie Kirk, who he was interviewing. It's an issue of fairness. It's deeply unfair. Why do you need to capitulate to Republicans on an issue that has to do with, and when we're talking specifically about trans people in sports, you're not even at 1%. Why is it that Democrats feel like they need to carry Republican talking points and their water for them on an issue of bigotry and discrimination? I honestly really don't get it.

And it is shocking coming from Gavin News. who is the governor of California, which, you know, the whole of California, not super liberal. Once you get into the San Diego's and you get into also the northern parts of California or the middle. And what got me about this article in Politico and now it's just everywhere is that they begin the article with saying, California governor, Gavin Newsom, a pioneer for LGBTQ rights. You cannot be a pioneer for LGBT rights and throw trans people under the bus. I think that it's really frustrating because when you look at Gavin Newsom's history, he was the mayor of San Francisco at the time before large equality had become law of the land that presided over a gay wedding. One of the largest cities at that time and he was defying the discriminatory policies that LGBT plus people.

were facing. And so you think that then here we are fast forward, that you're going to regress and go to a place again where we are erasing the existence, the experiences of trans people and saying that you agree with Maga Republicans who say the most vicious and vile things about one of the most vulnerable communities in this country where the murder rates of trans people are just astronomical as well as the suicide rates, alcoholism, drug abuse, all of these things, just so that you can look like what? You're working in lockstep that you can look like a collaborator? I don't know what the win here was for him in this moment. Yeah, and look, you mentioned that he was talking to Charlie Kirk at the time.

And first of all, let's just say that inviting Charlie Kirk onto your podcast on the premiere episode or any episode, but in particular to kick off your podcast with Charlie Kirk, who is an absolutely loathsome bigot and also is, you know, not for nothing incredibly stupid. That's already, you're already in hot water. And then to sit there, I want to read, and this is from the Politico piece, Newsom compared his position on trans athletes to conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage on principle, saying he values. that Kirk and others are not abandoning their opposition now that gay marriages are both legally and socially acceptable by a majority of Americans. What? Think about this.

He is, first of all, he is saying he is like them, which, yes, I'll agree with that. It's just that ain't the winning position. Newsom seems to think it is. And secondly, saying that he values that people like Charlie Kirk are not abandoning. their opposition to gay marriage. He values that because it might even be one thing to say, hey, I value that you've kept that position if it were just a private position. But these people are working to overturn the legality of gay marriage. And so to sit there and say that he values them for not abandoning their opposition when in fact they are not doing so as private

citizens, but they are doing so as public figures in an effort to overturn it and to take it back to the days when gay people couldn't get married. It's so contemptible. You know, look, I've never been a Gavin Newsom fan. And, you know, I do respect the stuff he did for, I won't even say LGBTQ. I'll say LGBT, sort of the way the turfs do. Above all, for him not to get that two things here. One, that opposition to trans folks, anti-trans stuff, transphobia doesn't stop there. It goes from there to all LGBTQ plus people. It goes from there or works simultaneously with black people, with brown people, with Jewish people, with Muslim people, etc., etc., etc. So for him to not understand that is sad.

And lastly, for him to not understand that the whole. oh, I support trans people, but not in sports thing, is also a position that is being used by people to further marginalize trans people because they don't support trans people. And they are using trans people in sports, which could not be a smaller deal. Mm-hmm. They are using that to get jargony to further otherize trans, to further marginalize trans, to further marginalize trans people, to further set trans people apart as they seek to take more and more rights. way and as they seek to erase trans people from existence. You know, like, Democrats are just sealing their own fate right now. Yeah.

They don't, they don't even need, you know, Republicans don't even really need to, even if we, if we have midterms, they don't even really need to run against them because they're sealing their own fate because people are literally going to tap out unless there is some type of viable, viable third party option. I mean, they can't run fast enough to. to chase Maga right now in order to align themselves with them. It's so disheartening and disgusting and astonishing in this moment that this is what they took from an election loss, is how can we be more like them? And you couldn't be less like us than you tried. Yeah. I want to read something

else from the political article, and here it is. Newsom's interview with Kirk was friendly, sometimes exceedingly so. He mentioned the influence Kirk and other Maga World figures have had on his 13-year-old son, he distanced himself from the use of pronouns and the gender-neutral term Latin X called police defunding lunacy, denounced cancel culture, and agreed that there had been some internal issues in the leadership of the Black Lives Matter organization. So he's a Republican. Yes. I'm looking at this. First of all, if Charlie Kirk has influence on your 13-year-old son, you need to be a better parent. Come on. And what you don't need to do is have Charlie Kirk on your show and be friendly to him, what you need to do if you're going to have Charlie Kirk on your show

is fucking destroy him and show your son exactly what he is. He went the other way on this. Latin X, are we still talking about that? Yes. The number of times I have seen or heard people use that term, which by the way, I don't care if they want to use it, it doesn't affect me at all. But it's such a small number of people who even use that term. And I'm talking about people of Latin descent. Calling police defunding lunacy. Okay, whatever. you're going to play into that game that to fund the police meant something it didn't. Denouncing cancel culture. I mean, come on.

It's 2025. I look at this and I'm like, boy, you just, like you said, you are basically a Republican, except maybe you want a little bit of Social Security and Medicare for people. Nope. I'm sure he'll probably agree with them on that too. Alex Winter is a recognizable face from acting in beloved movies such as the Lost Boys and the Bill and Ted trilogy. And he's become at least equally well known as the director. director of documentaries including Deep Web, The Panama Papers, Showbiz Kids, Zappa, and the YouTube

effect. He's also one of the organizers of the Tesla takedown movement, and he's here to tell us about that. Alex, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. He's great to be back. Absolutely. So I think maybe first explain what the Tesla takedown movement is for our listeners who may not be aware of it. Why do you hate Nikola Tesla? But that would be a whole other conversation. Yes. Yeah. This is obviously a... about the vehicle company. I've been on the sort of Musk concern bandwagon for quite some time. I'd say back to the PayPal Mafia days and sort of watch the rise in power of these tech

oligarchs like Musk and Peter Thiel and others who are now quite powerful and very involved in our government. But this has been coming for a while. And I was very active in helping people get off Twitter when Musk bought that and immediately turned that into his own version. of truth social. I felt the place was unsafe. I'm safe for journalists, unsafe for trans people and others and helped get a lot of folks on the blue sky back at that time. What Musk is doing now with Doge, this kind of illegal, manufactured quasi-government, but not really entity that is bashing away at our

infrastructure with a hammer and getting access and control over private data, it seemed that there needed to be a swifter and louder response than what, to me, feels like a pretty tepid response from our congressional opposition folks. So that's why this started. This is a people's protest movement. It is largely a way to effectively and easily get people out onto the street who want to protest and make their voices heard. And so it was in essence a way to catalyze that effort. I wouldn't call it protesting for dummies, but it's close, right? It's just a very simple, effective way of getting out in the street. And as a result, and this is very unexpected. It's grown exponentially since what I thought would be an initial weekend event. It started my friend Joan Donovan, who's at Boston

U and is very well regarded in computer and digital rights world and came out of Harvard and Joan had posted, you know, hey, does anybody want to go to a Tesla takeover at a store? And I called John and said, do you mind if I centralized this effort a bit more and pull in an organizer and get it and get a website up and actually get more folks to come up possible? She said, go for it. And so I created the Tesla takedown hashtag and created a web. website, pulled in a couple of organizers. And we thought we'd have a handful of people that first weekend of the 15th of March. And we all got out there. Joan was in Boston. I was in L.A. and we had people in various places. Hang on. I think you mean 15th of February? Sorry. Yes. That's right. Yeah.

She posted on Blue Sky on the 11th of February. And so all of this happened in four days, which is crazy for pulling a pretty well-organized coalition together, which is what I was doing in L.A. and Joan was doing from the East Coast. So by the 15th, by that Saturday, I went to my local Tesla store expecting to see three people there, including me and a friend who said they would show up. So I didn't, I didn't feel bad. And there were 80 people like in Old Town Pasadena. And we have thousands of people across the country, thousands. And I realized by Sunday that this thing was, people were still setting up events on our site. I didn't expect that. I wasn't even built to do that. So I built a proper site very quickly with folks on my team. That's,

the Tesla takedown.com site that's up now. And we launched that. And the second weekend, we had a 10 times increase. And then we had, you know, many, many thousands of people. We had 80 individual events across the country, including the UK, Portugal, Spain. And then by the third weekend, now it was tens of thousands. And that was last weekend. And it's just growing. And there's, there's a ton coming up this coming weekend. We have like close to 100,000 unique visitors on our site, people who are sticking around, reading information. on Musk and Doge, pulling down our flyers. And now it's a proper coalition. I'm not, and Joe and I are, you know, we're happily going to protest, but we have like proper organizers involved and a much

bigger team that's doing a lot of the footwork. Yeah, that's amazing. And it seems like every day I see images from a Tesla take down protest. And as you said, you have a whole bunch coming up. You posted on Blue Sky Wednesday morning that you have over a hundred upcoming events in the U.S. and abroad. How amazed are you at how much this has grown? I'm encouraged. I'm concerned and I'm critical about the response to this coup, which was really what we're experiencing. I think the Dems, who I am one of, have been caught pretty flat-footed. And there's a few, and I would say really a few, like maybe two or three, that are providing any kind of meaningful opposition. I think most have been sitting on their hands. And so I think it's really paralyzed the constituency. I think people have been afraid to get out in the street. They're sort of way they're hedging. They're waiting to see what's going on from leadership. And what happens with the rise of authoritarianism is you don't have that kind of time.

The window to dig in and start to present a more meaningful opposition is very short and it's immediate. So I was really encouraged and surprised to see that people glommed onto this particular little baby movement that we made. And none of us are our babies, ourselves. We're all pretty well versed in community organizing. I make topical documentaries that have big social impact components. I have a whole team that builds websites around social impact components. So we're not neophytes. You know, Joan is a serious person and the organizers we brought in are serious people.

But we had very small expectations. And what it's now become is a proper protest movement. And that is on the people. That is not on us. We are just responding and moving, I would say, efficiently, thankfully, thankfully, and growing this thing quickly in response to people's interest in this movement. So I would not pat myself on the back for any of this. So the path of the citizens of the United States who are pissed off and scared and not waiting for

the leadership that is currently not showing up. And so they're taking to the streets. And that's a good thing. Yeah, I'd like to correct you on one point. You said a lot of these Democrats are sitting on their hands. Alex, they held up little paddles. That's true. You were not able to sit on your hands and hold a paddle. That is physically impossible. You could maybe keep your feet firmly planted on the ground. I mean, God bless Al Green. And A.O.C. is just, you know, I think she's a once-in-a-generation political talent. I am so, so glad we have her. And the criticism she gets, she posts, whatever she posts and says she's going to do, she's met with a torrent of just nonsensical abuse, largely from other Democratic citizens.

But she's on social media. She's speaking directly to constituents. She's engaged. He's loud. And we need more and more and more of that. And I think we will get it. Or, you know, these people are going to get primared. They're going to. have to get out of the way because we're going to need folks who fight or we're going to lose again. Yeah, absolutely. So I was just looking at Tesla stock. It looks like in the last three months, it's down like $97 a share, which is roughly 20% of what it's worth. That's kind of the idea of Tesla takedown, right? To hit Musk where it hurts, given that most of his fortune is tied up in Tesla. We have a threefold mission and not to sound like Joe Bullitt point over here, but I'm going to.

You know, really it's a threefold mission. And I have the same agenda with the documentaries. When I made the Panama Papers documentary, I did not expect to put out this documentary and have the Hague show up at the Kremlin and drag Putin out of the Kremlin and Cuff and stick them in the Hague. Right. I didn't expect that kind of result. It's in a way a more modest result and in a way not. I think that we, you know, we live in the digital age. And what we're lacking right now is information. I think that the low information voters got us to where we are with. Trump. I think most of those people don't quite realize what they were voting for, despite the fact the information was out there because this guy's such an idiot, he literally forecasts everything he's going to do in the most granular fashion to anyone who's paying attention. He doesn't know how to hold a poker pan. But people don't pay attention. So there's a very dangerous lack of knowledgeable voters. So I would say the first mission with Tesla take down is to inform the public, is to create a basically a delivery system for informing a greater swath of the public to what is going on with Musk and Doge, because it is extremely dangerous and extremely unconstitutional, and dispel this

idea that we're fighting with a lot of the way the media is covering it that has anything in the fucking world to do with cost cutting, right, which it does not. So if I see one more fucking headline that's talking about Doge and cost cutting, I'm going to lose my goddamn mind. Yeah. You know, that's like saying Hitler was trying to intelligently fix the the economic woes of his nation. Right. First and foremost, the mission is to inform. I say second, the mission is to get people out onto the street, which is very healthy.

It's healthy for people on a psychological level and is healthy because no matter what anyone wants to say about, A, the numbers, and B, Musk's response, the numbers don't really matter in the digital age. We had one person the first weekend protesting in the frigid cold in Minnesota. He was a very eloquent protester turned out. He was covered by local news, which was picked up. up by national news, we just picked up by global news. That little guy on this little roadside in freezing cold, tundra of Minnesota was seen by millions and millions of people speaking eloquently

about the problem with Doge and Musk. Now we have tens of thousands of people around the world being picked up by the news and this is spreading. So the numbers don't matter. And I can tell you that Musk knows we're out there. I can tell you that Doge knows were out there, Trump knows were out there, the GOP knows were out there. That's really the core mission. I didn't originally assume, frankly, Andy, that there was going to be any impact on Tesla whatsoever with what we were doing. That is proving not to be true. We do have numbers now that the protest is heavily impacting brand awareness and helping to toxify the brand. Even at the stores that we are at, we're at hundreds of them now, the managerial employees with whom we're very friendly and copacetic

are telling us that they are being deluge with calls from their customers saying, we're seeing these protests, our cars are being stigmatized, I don't want to drive it anymore, is there trade in value, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's no doubt in our mind that we're helping to toxify the brand. We also happen to have the greatest help to our movement on Earth, which is Elon Musk, who is doing a fantastic job of toxifying his brand. Yeah. So yes, the numbers are going to continue to go down.

I don't have a kind of fantasy idea that this drop that we've seen since we've started is particularly significant yet. I think it's significant in that we are seeing a steep, a short. sharp decline that will have a sucking sound and continue to decline greatly. But for it to matter on a stock level, we'd really need to be down below the 100s. And we have a ways to go. Yeah, for sure. You know, what you said about people feeling like owning a Tesla has been stigmatized. We've been seeing a lot of pictures of Tesla's, particularly cyber trucks, but also just the regular Tesla sedans with stickers on them. Some of those stickers have been slapped on the vehicles by their actual

owners. And they say things like, I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy. That's right. I've seen images of Teslas where the owners are trying to camouflage them by putting other manufacturers logo on them like Mercedes and Audi. That's right. Yes. And it really does feel like the Tesla logo and the Tesla brand is becoming sort of a modern day scarlet letter. It is absolutely Elon at the forefront of the Tesla take down movement taking down Tesla. So let's be clear about that. And he has been a problem for the company before, as we know. He's been dinged by the company before. He's been dinged by shareholders before for his behavior. But this, behavior is next level. It's not comparable to stupid tweets. Musk himself is coxifying his brand. But people are taking to the streets and people are being heard and the media is picking up on those people being heard. That is going to increase. How do you drive a Tesla today and not feel like, A, you're supporting someone who is aligning himself with neo-Nazi parties, which he is,

that's just a fact, in Germany and in the U.S. So how do you, in good faith, say, oh, people are overreacting to this guy? How do you drive that car? And I also, I also, you know, think that it's important for the Tesla take-down initiative specifically that we do not vandalize these cars, right? And I'm speaking about us. I'm not speaking about the greater public over whom I have no jurisdiction. But it is important that we're a peaceful protest. It's important that we're nice to the Tesla employees.

It's important that we don't block the entranceways to the store. We don't block the sidewalks. We don't deface the cars. We don't abuse or disrupt the owners of the cars. And again, that's not because we're manby-pandy. We're actually pretty tough, and a lot of us have been part of much more dangerous, intense, and physical protests. I mean, I've dealt with documentaries where I've had to have very high-level security in various parts of the world. So it's not like we're wimpy, but what we're trying to do is get more citizenry on side, right? We're trying to get more citizens to understand that this is a plutocratic takeover that is going to screw them. So I don't have a beef with someone who drives a Tesla, and I don't want to hurt them. I want them. I want them. to understand that Elon Musk is going to hurt them in many, many ways beyond just what he's done to devaluing their cars. We want to expand as much of that awareness as we can. And we don't succeed

in doing that if we're setting things on fire and spray painting people's cars. Yeah. And look, just to be clear, I've seen a ton of pictures of people putting stickers on Teslas who are not the owners of the Teslas. And they say things like, when you ride Tesla, you ride with Hitler. One of them, I know a guy named Aaron Kleinman designed that simply says, sell your car, and then there's a picture of Musk doing the Nazi salute under it. I don't have a problem with any of that, but I do want to point out that that is not part of Tesla takedown. Yeah, I just think that our mission is very specific, and it helps us to be clear in what our mission is so that we can expand and be as effective as possible. And like, for me, I'm an information guy. That's why I make

documentaries. The reason I made the YouTube effect was it was bothering me that people have total understanding of Google and other tech platforms rise in the far right, which is what got us to Trump, and it's what killed so many people during COVID. So that was about information, right? That was its aim. For me, personally, Tesla Takedown is about information. It's about disseminating information and its delivery system is this. Yeah, 100%. Look, I do think, and I'm just speaking for me personally here, the people who are putting the stickers on the car, that's another method of going after Tesla. It's separate from yours. Yes, I would say that. I don't want to condone, you know, burning stuff down because I think that's a different thing. Yeah. Or shooting out windows of stores, both of which have happened. I will say in the Tesla take down defense, the arrest that happened in New York at our event last weekend, which was massive, was not because any of those people had done anything. They had not damaged any property. The window that cracked at the Tesla store in Manhattan was cracked by the pressure from photographers who were trying to get photographs of the protesters because there were so many.

And our protesters who were arrested were let out immediately without any form of charge. But I will agree with you wholeheartedly that we, you know, we don't have any hubris. We're one little coalition. Indivisible is now picked up the ball and they're doing their own tassel takedowns that are, we're supportive of each other, but they're totally separate from ours. People are protesting SpaceX. There's a science march. There's the woman's march.

There are people whose form of protest is to create disruption like your friend on the stickers. And I agree with you to a point that it doesn't end up causing. actual physical harm to people. I'm all for as much of this as possible. We need as many people out in the street. And that was the issue that I had with the state of the union last night. I think that the order from wherever it came to be quiet is a huge mistake. I think it sends a terrible message to the constituents. I think it sends the message to the GOP that there will be no fight coming from the opposition. They are free to roam. And I think that, you know, I know what Slotkin meant by bringing up Ronald Reagan, but, you know, I was around and very active during

the Reagan era. It was fucking horrible and a lot of people died. And this idea, the strategy, at this stage of the game, right, 10 years after we've had MAGA, 10 years, the strategy by the Dems to say we're going to shame the GOP by bringing up Reagan, yeah, you really think that's going to fucking work? That is bananas. And that's the issue I have with touting Reagan in ways. As a strategy is just incompetent beyond belief. So for me, the more people that hit the streets, the more people that let their reps know, mostly Dems, because I don't see the GOP reps giving a shit about any of this right now, that they are not satisfied with this form of opposition, that they want greater, louder opposition. I think that the better. The more of that

we get, the better. Yeah, absolutely. Look, the bottom line is there are a lot of fed up angry people out there. And Tesla Takedown and these other sort of guerrilla tactics that are being used against Tesla really have become an outlet for a lot of people. And so let me end by asking you, how can people get involved in Tesla Takedown? We've made it very easy. We are street protest for dummies, proudly. All you got to do is go to our website, Tesla takedown.com. We will do the rest for you. And we make it very easy. And I want to make it clear that we're not neophytes. We understand the the dangers or the commitment to registering with your name to a protest. You do not need to do that to create an event, show up at an event, protest an event. We do not need your real name. We do not need

your real email. We are providing that as a means of creating community for those people who are fed up enough that they want to be part of our coalition. And I'll tell you, we've had thousands and thousands of those folks. We keep these names protected. But we are very, very aware of the need for safety in street protest and the need for anonymity where that is beneficial to someone. And we are wholeheartedly supportive of that. And again, to repeat, the website is Tesla takedown.com. Alex, I think all of this is just absolutely fantastic and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and help spread the word. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you having me. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Fighters for Justice at ACLU because my God,

God, do we need them? Deidre Schifling, who is the chief political and advocacy officer, as well as Alexa Colby Molinas, who is the deputy director of ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project and a fantastic lawyer in the space. Look, you all right now are seemingly doing the Lord's work. And I just want to, first off, say thank you for fighting for what is left of our civil liberties in this moment. And, Deidre, I want to start with you. We are living in a transformative moment for American civil liberties, where it seems that every single day, there is a new headline, a new executive order that is undoing

our democracy writ large at a breakneck base. pace. Give us the 50,000 foot view as to how ACLU is meeting this moment. Well, thank you so much for having us on. And I would love to do that. There's a lot going on. And the breakneck speed and pace of what the Trump administration has been doing is absolutely by design. They are trying to shock and awe us. They are trying to confuse us. And we are staying laser-focused. So we are doing four things right now to fight back and protect rights and liberties across the country. The first, of course, is our legal arm. And Alexa here is one representative of a really powerhouse team across a whole range of issues that is working every day to protect rights and liberties in the courts. We have filed 13 legal actions to date and more every day to protect immigrant.

rights, to protect LGBTQ rights, to protect freedom of speech in the attacks that have come around DEI in colleges and schools across the country. So those are just a few samples of the kinds of legal actions that we've been taking to protect rights and liberties in the courts. And I will say in general, the ACLU alongside many other legal partners has been very successful so far in the courts. So I think we are finding the courts are a good place to really push back on this breakneck speed and hold Trump accountable. You know, Trump is not above the law. And the courts have signaled that time and time again. So courts are one way that we're fighting back. The second way that we're fighting back is we're organizing in every single state in this country.

The amazing thing about the ACLU is that we have affiliates in every single state in this country. And we are working hand and glove with those affiliates to work with their local elected leaders, their governors, their attorneys general, their mayors, their city councils to pass what we are calling firewall for freedom laws, firewall for freedom, executive orders, directives from AGs that really protect people's rights and liberties at a state and local level. And you're seeing those be challenged by the federal government, right? You're seeing Trump says, that we saw this whole spectacle of bringing in the mayors. Oh, yes, yep.

Just yesterday of blue cities, Chicago, New York City, Denver, Boston to basically threaten those mayors with withholding our federal tax dollars to them if they don't tow the line on Trump's mass deportation agenda. And those mayors stood up strong. And they said, no, we are not going to use our. tax money, our resources in our city on your political obsession with mass communication. So that's a great example of the power that states and cities have to resist and to say and to say no to some of Trump's agenda. The third piece is really organizing our supporters. We have seven million supporters,

again, all across the country. We've been organizing them, training them out to town halls, turning them out to know your rights trainings. We've trained thousands and thousands of people at this point in know your rights. And that has had a big impact on the pace that the Trump administration has been able to go to do this kind of mass deportation or crackdown on protesters. People still have rights and we need to empower them to know what those rights are and exercise them. And then finally, we're very focused on key congressional districts where those Republican members, maybe they won by half a percent. Maybe they won by one percent. They have a lot of Medicaid recipients in their district. They have a lot of federal workers in their district. They are going to be held to account to their constituents for going along with Trump's political agenda, an agenda that is deeply, deeply unfavorable in their district. And so organizing to those districts, making sure that those Congress members hear from their constituents about what is happening and block much of what is moving through Congress is our fourth lever. Fantastic. And I dare I say that I had a little spring of

hopefulness. As you were laying out the four distinct pillars of work that you're engaged in, Alexa, I want to come to you as the resident attorney here, because here is one of my fears. And I know that I'm not the only one because I've seen headlines around that say that our laws and the courts are only as strong as those that are willing to follow their decisions. We have seen this administration be beat in the lower courts only to not unfreeze aid, only to blatantly ignore the instructions of the court. And what we know is that the courts don't have their own law enforcement. They don't have their own police, their own military.

So talk to us about what this winning looks like at the court. courts, but against a regime that is blatantly ignoring the decisions that are coming out. And thank you for having me as well. It is very scary. It's very scary to see what's happening. And like Deirdre said, the chaos and confusion is by design, right? Every day we are being bombarded with a new, you know, whether it's a tweet, whether it's an executive order, another attempt by Trump to really call into question the rule of law. And I just think that, look, what, it's been six weeks. And like Deirdre said, we're fighting and we are using every tool in our toolkit. And that is going to be to continue to use the courts as long as we can to do as much

as we can to protect people's rights. But like Deirdre said, that's not the only thing we're doing. And it's not the only thing we can do. We can't put everything in that basket because of exactly the reasons you identify, right? There are real fears that the courts may not be able to enforce the law. I will say we haven't seen a total loss of that institution, a total loss of that branch of our government yet. Obviously, it's a real fear. But that's why we're organizing in the streets. That's why we're organizing at the ballot box. You have to, when you're facing a threat like this, you have to give it all you can. And that means using every tool at your disposal. And so that's what we're going to continue to do. And we're not going to give up on the courts. And just like we're not going to give up on the people and we're not going to give up on the ballot box. And we're not going to give up on state legislatures. Right. We have to continue fighting to save what we know is good or what could be good about this country. So let me ask you this, Alex, I want to follow up here. Because you work on the repo justice side of things with ACLU.

And what we know is that even before Donald Trump was sworn in, MAGA Republicans have been waging a war against women in various states, whether it be with IVF treatment, the criminalization of abortion following the Dobbs decision. And, you know, there's a case right now in New York where I am, where the state of Louisiana is suing a doctor for providing abortion medication to a woman in Louisiana. Talk to us about what ACLU is doing with these state-by-state attacks, but the overarching agenda of the Trump administration, which is to control women's bodies at every single turn. Look, this didn't start, like you said, this didn't start on January 20th.

It didn't start on November 5th of last year, right? If we want to, we can go back to the first Trump administration. He promised he was going to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. That's exactly what he did. And that's exactly what they did. But overturning Roe was never going to be the end. That was just the beginning. They were not going to stop with Roe.

And anti-abortion politicians were never going to stop with just trying to ban abortion within their own state borders. We know that anti-abortion extremists are fighting to make abortion illegal and inaccessible in every state in this country. And actually what happened this week in the emergency abortion case is actually a perfect example of this, right? Because in 2022, we have Roe overturned. Just two and a half years later, we have anti-abortion politicians going all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to put doctors in jail for providing life and health-saving care that has actually been protected under federal law for the past 40 years. Right? We're talking about emergency. pregnant people are begging for scraps at this point.

Right. Like, it's important that we're fighting to protect emergency abortions, but oh my God, right? This is where we've gotten to at this point. The right to have the care you need to save your health, your future fertility, your life, the right? The right not to miscarry in a hospital parking lot. We know this is what abortion bans lead to. And I just, every time I think about, you know, the work that I am my colleagues and my partners are doing, I think of the quote about when people, people show you who you are, believe them. Anti-abortion politicians have been showing us who they are again and again and again. And of course, it didn't just start with, you know, the first Trump administration. We could, you know, I've been doing this work for almost 20 years, but certainly people were doing it before me. But, you know, it's really important to see that the stakes could not be higher when it comes to what we are facing in the fight for reproductive health

and reproductive rights and reproductive justice. And you're right that it goes beyond abortion. It's access to contraception. It's access to IVF. It's access to pregnancy care without fear of being criminalized, right? You know, one thing people don't often realize is that if abortion is illegal, then any miscarriage is potentially evidence of a crime, right? You may never have had, you may never have intended, you may never have had an abortion. But if you go to a hospital seeking care for yourself and for a pregnancy, you could be a suspect.

And that is a very real fact of life for many people in this country. And that didn't, you know, just start with when Roe was overturned. But certainly that has exacerbated it. I do want to say because I'm saying all this negative or depressing thing. Well, it's the truth. Yes, and it's, you know, much of my day to day. But I do think it's important to recognize because, again, you know, just as we need to see people for who we are, we also need to recognize the fight and resistance where

it is. States across the country have been enacting state constitutional protections for abortion that go beyond anything Roe ever gave us. And these are not like New York and California, right? We're talking about Ohio. We're talking about Missouri. We're talking about Arizona. So at the same time that my colleagues and I are fighting this criminalization and abortion bans and all the nasty stuff happening at the federal level, we're winning in states. We are dismantling and expanding abortion access in places. like Missouri, Ohio in Arizona, in ways that, you know, we haven't seen for decades. I've spoken to doctors who are just, they're like, thank you.

I've been dreaming of this day for years that we can go into court in their state and say, you know what, this abortion ban has gone now. You know what? This medically unnecessary law that burdened your patients that forced them to delay their access to care that jeopardize their health, we can get rid of that now. So we are sort of living in this dual to, you know. It's a dual existence of recognizing that while there are terrible atrocious things that are happening, we also are making change in progress at the state level, which I think is what

we need to hold on to. And to that point, Deirdre, I want to ask you this, because state's rights has always been the mantra of Republicans. And yet when it comes to blue states, that is not at all their mantra. And we're seeing, you know, to what you had mentioned earlier, with the corraling of the mayors of sanctuary cities, this weaponization of federal aid. I'm wondering here, when you talk about the organizing that is happening at the grassroots, is there also an organizing of these mayors and governors in these places to,

coordinate and and fight back so that it isn't just a state by state case by case issue, but that you really are seeing a blue wall that is being built, if you will. Yes, that's a great segue because that is a piece of the work that we and others are doing with these elected officials to present them with a theory of the case here. Our theory of the case is that states and cities have power to protect their residents. They have to protect their residents' reproductive rights, protect their residence tax dollars, protect their residence privacy. On all fronts, states and cities have the ability to act to protect their own residents,

and they should. And so we have done a lot of organizing of the attorneys general in these states. And you have seen those, and they've also self-organized. So not taking credit for all the good things that they've done together. But like, they have self-organized, and we have all. also helped organize them. In fact, we just had a town hall with thousands of our supporters, ACLU supporters, just last week that we had 14 attorneys general join, 14, to talk about the ways in which they're fighting back and how ACLU supporters can support them and

lift that up. I think we need to see more of that kind of organizing and sticking together from the governors. We need more of it from the mayors. And this is like very much a work in progress. But when you see something like sanctuary cities or sanctuary states, which is really just states and cities exercising their power to decide how their state resources are going to be spent and provide a little bit of a safety net around the immigrant community in their states, meaning you know, if somebody who is an immigrant goes to the hospital, it goes to the emergency room, they don't have to worry about being arrested by ICE, or if they report a crime, they don't have to worry about being arrested by ICE. That kind of safety net keeps our community safer.

It allows people to get the medical help they need. It allows people to report crimes when they see them. It's very important to the fabric of our society to have that kind of safety. So when you see sanctuary cities and states like that, there are over 700 across the country. It's not a small number. And that's one example of a lot of cities and states acting together to say, you know, we're going to do this together. We're going to have these standards for our community to keep our residents, rights, and liberties secure. And I think we could see that also on a range of other issues. Well, we will have to leave it there today. But I just want to thank the both of you for the incredible work that you all are doing at ACLU to try and preserve our rights and our democracies. And I do

believe that at the state level, there needs to be a continued linking of arms with the governors and with the mayors to create some type of liberty wall, freedom wall against this regime. So Alexa and Deidra, thank you so much for making time for the new abnormal. And I hope to have you guys back again. Thank you. Thank you for happiness. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. So, Danielle, why don't you close out this week?

Tell us a funny story about how fuck that guy? It is a funny story. So we all know that earlier this week, the joint session that Trump presided over was a spectacle for a number of reasons, his gaslighting, his lies, his puppetry of children, and, you know, allegiance to Russia. and some Democrats like Representative Al Green actually showing some level of conviction and outrage. But it seems as if Republicans felt like they had a lot to celebrate. One Republican in particular, which is Speaker Mike Johnson's chief of staff, Hayden Haynes, which why his parents did that, no one knows.

But Hayden Hayden Haynes was arrested on a DUI charge following Trump. address to the joint session. This is, as reported by the Independent, and this is what a U.S. Capitol Police told the Independent, quote, a driver backed into a parked vehicle last night around 1140 p.m. We responded and arrested them for a DUI. But you would think that there would be any admonishment, any very embarrassing. He's going to be put on probation. No, Mocker. Republicans don't do that anymore. And a spokesperson at a Johnson's office, and maybe this was Hayden himself from his cell, said, quote, has full faith and confidence in Hayden's ability to lead the speaker's office. Of course you do. That's exactly what you would say after your chief of staff gets a DUI on

federal grounds. Like, you know, that would be my reaction too. I think he's a great guy and can lead We always keep a bottle of aspirin, water, and gatorade, uh, right at the ready for him. Because once he gets that, you know, he keeps it going for us all day long until 5 p.m. Because it's always at the hour somewhere. Bravo. Speaker Johnson and Hey, hey, which is what his parents named him. Fuck those guys. Yeah.

Did you see who the car belonged to? No. Who did it belong to? The Capitol Police. Meaning, at least this time, he backed into them by action. accident. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Damn, Seamus. Whoa. Yeah, look, is this what they mean by back the blue? Mm-mm. Yeah, I don't. Fuck that guy. So, Andy, how are you closing out this week? I run out of euphemisms and synonyms. So how are you closing out this week with your fuck that guy? Oh, I want to highlight a young woman named Kingsley Wilson, who was just hired as a deputy press secretary at the Pentagon.

And the reason I want to highlight her is even at a time when the masks are off and there is no quiet part, she kind of stands out. And I'll quote here, Anna Merlin, the great reporter, did a piece at Mother Jones about her. And I'll quote from here because Anna really put together a lot of Wilson's previous tweets and statements, and I'll just read some of them. We can start with, she said, if you identify as transgender and or are undergoing hormone therapy, you should not be allowed to legally purchase a firearm. She said, in a healthy country, transgender people aren't visible. The Great Replacement isn't a right-wing conspiracy theory. It's reality. I suppose it's no surprise that she is a supporter of the German neo-Nazi party, AFD.

She tweeted, global elites hate AFD because they put Germans before foreign migrants and radical Islam. And then she said a German phrase, Auslender Rouse, which means foreigners out. As you might not be surprised to hear, it is a common slogan among neo-Nazi groups in Germany. On top of that, she spread, I don't know if. People are familiar with the story of Leo Frank. He is a Jewish man who back in 1915 was kidnapped from a Georgia prison and murdered. He was in a Georgia prison because he was accused of a murder that it is very well known now. He did not actually commit and he was thrown in jail and accused of it because he was Jewish.

Wilson decided to tweet that he was guilty. There is nothing in what she has tweeted that separates her from a neo-Nodont. And she is now a deputy press person at the Pentagon. These things are kind of going under the radar. And unfortunately, we're all kind of just getting used to them and being forced to shrug our shoulders in a lot of cases because it's just one thing after another. And, you know, you and I have talked about how it's important to not get used to this stuff. And it's important if we're going to fight back, which we should be doing and which people are starting to do, we need to keep tabs on these things and bring them out into the sunlight and make sure that all of these things are noted and accounted for.

And so I just, I wanted to highlight her because she is, as I said, we've gotten so used to the mask off and the No More Quiet part thing. But she is just, even for this group, she is extreme. And so fuck that guy. I just, you know, she sounds lovely. So I'm like, I'm confused with all the hullabaloo. She sounds like somebody that you'd want to have over for tea. It's amazing to me. All of the things that people have said on social media was like their resume.

And all like all the Trump team did was like, who has said the most vile things and said, let's appoint them? Like when the Heritage Foundation put together Project 2025, they had a list of, you of about 20,000, you know, plus supporters ready to move in, you know, in various positions and agencies. And it was like the hate filled LinkedIn, right? Like, and I guess it was just probably filled with their resumes, but not really resumes, just like tweets that they posted.

It's wild, but like, no, we should not get numb to these things. We should not just roll our eyes and say, oh, well, you know, what else should we expect? We should expect fucking more than what it is that we're getting. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh and our star-studded

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