The Dispatch Podcast - Migrant Surge at the Border

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

In a St. Patrick’s Day edition of The Dispatch Podcast, Sarah, Steve, Scott, and Declan start off today’s discussion with the ongoing migrant crisis at the border. Plus, the gang explains how while most of the conservative world was talking about Dr. Seuss and Pepe le Pew, Democrats jammed through the biggest advancement of the welfare state since LBJ’s administration. Scott points out, “When you really dig into the details you see Democrats laying the groundwork for a very substantial increase in the welfare state, and in ways that Democrats have long wanted.” And, what’s the fallout after a Biden administration official actually spoke strongly against the North Korean regime? Show Notes: -The latest GOP attack on Biden has a huge hole in it - Greg Sargent/Washington Post -Four people matching terror watchlist arrested at border - Axios -'Migrant president' Biden stirs Mexican angst over boom time for gangs - Reuters -Leaked NRSC polling data on immigration -Scott’s latest Capitolism newsletter -Conservatives Drift Leftward in the Plan to Rescue America - Ryan Streeter -Biden officials comments on North Korea -Biden Risks Repeating Mistakes of the Past if He Ignores the Evidence on Iran - The Dispatch -Declan’s TMD item on filibuster reform -Scott’s “Gridlock is good!” newsletter -The Dispatch March Madness Tournament Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined this week by Steve Hayes as always, but Scott Linsacombe, our dispatch newsletter writer for capitalism, which you've got to subscribe to, is joining us, as well as Declan Garvey, our editor for the morning dispatch. And we've got a great lineup of topics today. We're going to talk about the border crisis. We're going to talk about the American rescue package and why Republicans have been relatively silent on this popular bill. We will also talk about the Biden foreign policy. Is it just a retrenchment to the Obama years? And lastly, is the filibuster on life support or is it doing push-ups? Let's dive in. First, we have not talked about what is happening at the border on this podcast. And the conversation happening in Washington and at the White House press

podium these days is a little baffling because mostly it's about whether to call it a crisis or not, but far less about the facts of what's actually going on. So I want to put aside the word crisis because I'm not sure that that's the most relevant conversation we can have today. And instead, talk about what we're hearing from the right, what we're hearing from the White House, and what we're hearing from the Mexican president as well. So let's start with the Mexican president. This is from Reuters last week. Mexico's government is worried the new U.S. administration's asylum policies

are stoking illegal immigration and creating business for organized crime, according to officials and internal assessments seen by Reuters. This is Mexican president, Abador. They see him, Biden. as the migrant president. And so many feel they're going to reach the United States. We need to work together to regulate the flow because this business can't be tackled from one day to the next.

And indeed, some officials are saying that the gangs and human smugglers are showing, quote, an unprecedented level of sophistication since Biden took office and that their business is taking off as well. As one official said, migrants have become a commodity. But if a packet of drugs is lost in the sea, it's gone. If migrants are lost, it's human beings we're talking about. On the other hand, from the White House and the White House Chief of Staff retweeted an op-ed by Greg Sargent in the Washington Post that I'll put in the show notes. Their argument is Trump's remain in Mexico policy was far worse in humanitarian and rule of law.

terms. And so Trump wasn't trying to solve the problem. Biden's the one who's actually trying to solve the problem. And that, you know, if you dig into these numbers, the same number was seen in 2019. That wasn't that long ago. And so this isn't unprecedented. It's just higher than it was for the last two years. And that what Biden is doing long term will help. And, And short term, it is simply the more humanitarian thing to do. Of course, the weighted Mexico policy said that someone who wanted to apply for asylum needed to apply in Mexico and wait in Mexico before their asylum claim was adjudicated. And then, if they were found to have a credible fear, then they could come into the United States.

Now, just some quick stats about asylum claims. In 2009, DHS conducted 5,000 credible fear reviews. By 2016, that number had increased to 94,000. The number of aliens placed in removal proceedings went from 4,000 in 2009 to 73,000 by 2019, a 19-fold increase. So, certainly I think the White House has a point. This isn't unprecedented so much as it's been a really steady, sharp rise for more than a decade. At the same time, whether the Biden administration intended it or not,

one wonders whether the true beneficiaries here are really migrants who need asylum as they want to claim, or smugglers and human traffickers who are making lots of money out of this. so Steve I'm going to start with you how do you weigh a situation that is this nuanced in a political culture that is not nuanced what you don't think we have a nuanced political culture geez um look I think the answer the direct answer to your to the question you just posed is that both right it it benefits both the migrants potentially and the and the smugglers um it gives them business I think the critiques on both sides from the left and from the right of the Biden administration are largely on point. The bigger question is what's the long-term solution here? I mean, there's two questions. What's the long-term solution here and what's the bridge to get to the long-term solution here?

And what is pretty striking in reading, you know, surveying the coverage of this over the past couple of weeks is that the Biden administration didn't seem to have much of a plan here. they talked about it, they campaigned about it, they identified this as a problem, they knew that they were going to reverse many of Donald Trump's policies, but when you look at what they're saying, it's not, they can't really say we're moving from A to B and this is how we designed the move. This is what we came up with to facilitate this. And that is a little surprising for somebody who ran as the competence candidate, the guy who said, you know, we're going to return professionalism to Washington, it's not there. And as a consequence, I think you're seeing administration spokespeople, whether it's Jen Saki at the White House podium, whether it's

the spokespersons for the Department of Homeland Security and others, jumble a message. They can't answer even the most basic questions. And they're often talking sort of at their talking points are at odds with one another. That, I think, is a, you know, a big challenge for the administration on messaging, but more importantly reflects a lack of coherent policy underneath it. Declan, the conversation just in the last 24 hours has shifted somewhat as well because we now have reporting that four people on the terrorist watch list, three from Yemen and one from Serbia, were found at the border.

Now, on the one hand, everyone agrees this actually is relatively unusual. On the other hand, it's just another huge problem for the Biden administration when they're dealing with, as Steve said, really a fumbled response on unaccompanied minors that have soared at the border that they are letting in and putting in these facilities that are then getting overwhelmed because of COVID restrictions, the human smuggling and human trafficking aspects of what's happening in Mexico now, and now there's terrorists trying to enter through the border. which one is the Biden administration most capable of tackling first

and will they try to shift the conversation to that one? Yeah, definitely. You know, I would say you're not going to be able to tackle really that latter one on the terrorism front while the numbers are as high as they are right now. It's just so, I mean,

These agencies are so clearly overwhelmed at this point and are struggling to deal with the more immediate child or unaccompanied child crisis that we have. And I don't mean to set off a firestorm by using the word crisis there. But, you know, it really is going to be the Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is testifying before the Senate. today. Biden is going to increasingly be asked about this as the weeks go on here. And they've said something along the lines of wanting to beef up their capacity to process these people rather than necessarily changing the policies to reduce the number of people, although Biden did say in an interview with ABC News this week that in a message to would-be migrants that they should not come here right now, that they should stay in their towns and communities. Now is not the time

for them to come, et cetera. But I mean, that's not going to, that in and of itself is not going to lower the, that's not a policy change. Yeah. Correct. And so, you know, it will be made to, and we can, we can talk a little bit more about this when we get to my topic later in the podcast, but it seems to me that the real longer-term solution to this would have to come through comprehensive immigration reform, which is incredibly unlikely while the filibuster remains in place in the Senate. And so that could be another one of these issues that ends up triggering more debates around that.

I will say I just saw the NRC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, just leaked internal polling to the Hill this morning showing that 62% of Americans oppose Biden's immigration policies right now compared to 32% who support them. They obviously see this as an opportunity to capitalize ahead of the 2022 midterms if this continues to be a problem you saw. You know, dozens of House Republicans head down to the border itself earlier this week to draw attention to what's happening down there just as you saw Democrats do the same in the Trump administration. You know, it will be interesting to see if this is kind of a steady drumbeat that continues over the next two years leading into into the November elections. And if this is

something that Republicans can really drive home. That being said, you don't, you know, these are children, these are people's lives. You don't want to turn them into a political football, you know, that ends up being what happens, kind of no matter which party is in power, it's unfortunate. But, you know, it's important to remember that there are thousands of kids right now sleeping in, on maths and unsure of where they're going to be in the next two days and whatnot. And so this is, it really is a sad situation and one that are very harsh current political reality is not, is not well equipped to deal with right now. Scott, I want to talk to you about some nerd topics here.

I want to do, like, I want to do some real econ on this. Too often immigration becomes this emotional debate. What do we actually know about the effect on the labor force and on wages of having a huge influx of new migrant labor that does not have work authorization? and what do we know about the effects on the economy about a declining birth rate and what migrant children who are unaccompanied have to offer in that sense? Like what are the economics of the immigration debate? Sure.

Well, and I think it's actually first to note that the U.S. economy being on the upswing and about to get some rocket fuel from the American Rescue Plan is also going to act as a magnet of sorts because in terms of regional economic performance, especially compared to Mexico and then, of course, Central America and South America, we're just going to, we're in relative terms dominating. And so that is going to, I think, also act as a bit of a magnet as it has in the past. Regardless of Biden's immigration policy, right. Right. I mean, and that gets to the bigger point. I mean, a lot of this is being driven by things that, you know, we Americans, we love to say, this is all under our control, we can, you know, and I mean, yeah, a lot of this are bigger things

than can simply be flipped by a switch or renaming, going from remain in Mexico to wait in Mexico or that kind of stuff. And I think that that's, it seems like it's going to continue in terms of, again, the higher flows of immigrants than we've seen recently, given, again, the U.S. economic performance. But in general, the economics literature on, on, you know, migrants, whether it be documented or undocumented, is pretty clear cut. And that is that my immigrants tend to, particularly low-skill immigrants, which is presumably what we're dealing with here, tend to have a modest impact on certain U.S. workers. So what I mean by modest impact is they can negatively affect certain U.S. workers.

Those are going to typically be the least skilled workers, so people without a high school degree primarily, while having very little and perhaps even a beneficial effect for all other groups of U.S. workers. But the other side is the demand side, and that's where things get more complicated, because migrants also tend to consume stuff, and that economic activity can, again, be good for the economy. And so overall, the literature shows that still a net benefit for the economy from increased inflows of immigrants, even low-skilled immigrants. But, you know, look, as a political issue, there are concerns when you're dealing kind of at the bottom end of the wage scale,

Although we've seen over the last year, a lot of these jobs that are usually filled by migrant laborers, just going unfilled. You hear farmers, people in the tourism industry, although that's still kind of shut down, basically saying they can't find workers. So this is kind of the old cliche of doing jobs that Americans won't do. We have seen some evidence of that because, of course, the COVID restrictions really dramatically curtailed. immigration over the last year, and there's been some evidence that that has just left to unfilled jobs, not any real major boost for low-wage labor in the United States. But you mentioned, yeah, immigrants also like to have babies, and the United States has a pretty significant issue in terms of long-term demographic as we're getting older and

we're not having kids. That was, again, exacerbated during the COVID crisis. people stopped having babies. Surprisingly, when you're trapped at home with your significant other, you actually don't want to have more kids. I can say as a married man who was trapped in the house with his family for a little bit, I can maybe see how that works. I don't think it's so much trapped in your house with your significant other as it is trapped in your house with the kids that you already have.

They're like, I don't think we need to interrupt this. And I'm significant others in the broader sense. Yeah, I mean, it can get a little tight. The use of the word, the use of the word trapped is the giveaway there, Scott. Well, I should, I could say imprisoned. I mean, it was the state doing that. But, but yeah, so look, back to the, back to the point. Now I'm in deep, deep water.

Nobody send this podcast to my wife. Thank you. It's good to drop these in. We all do this. We test to see whether significant others and spouses listen. and if you don't get any grief, you know. By the way, I got busted the other day because we had Zoom drinks with a couple

who listened and they let Scott in on something I said. And I just denied. I just said it never happened. And you know what? He still hasn't gone back to listen. That's not the right. No, that's, I mean, Sarah, I don't want to get involved in your marriage.

The other possible response would be indignant that he didn't listen. I can't believe you don't support me in my career, You're right. You're right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Scott, who's soon to be maybe not married. Well, no. So, so look, to the extent that we think that fertility rates in the United States are a problem, I think that most people tend to say they are. Babies are good for all sorts of reasons. We talked about that on the last podcast. Yeah, to the, you know, you do see higher birth rates among immigrants. And so that can also be a benefit that is not seen. Now, it is, I think, difficult or impossible really to separate all these cold, hard, economic facts from the realities that are going on at the border, which is just a giant mess.

Now, my question, though, I had a question for Declan, when you said about, you know, look, we need to have a comprehensive immigration reform package here. I mean, is that really true for even things like just providing additional resources to process claims? Because it's my rudimentary understanding that one of the real big problems we have is that we simply can't process the claims. We don't have enough judges and other folks that are available to do that. I mean, is that really something that we just can't, that can't be a standalone package, or is it always going to get bogged down in the politics and the rest? Oh, Declan. I have thoughts on the judge's issue. Why don't you share those first? So here's part of the issue.

I don't know if I've used this metaphor on this show, but the asylum policy is like cranberries in the ocean spray thing. You get lots of opportunities to bounce out of the bucket. And I highly recommend a tour of the ocean spray facility. It's fascinating. and cranberry juice is delicious. So what you have are a huge number of applications at the front end of just people saying at the border, literally the magic words. I have a credible fear of returning home. 88% of those are passed right on through the system by whichever DHS official they say that to.

And so, yes, if you want to get to the final stage, having more judges would help. But there's all sorts of stages before you ever get to the judge like giving DHS officials a far more robust way to determine, you know, ask a follow-up question. Does your credible fear fall into one of the legal categories, race, religion, political affiliation?

Most of them, many of them, let me say, don't meet that at the next stage. Well, we could sort that out at the first stage. And then at the second stage, so basically, my point is, of the four or so stages, we could do a lot more and not need more judges. But if we're going to sort of pass everyone through who comes to the border directly to an immigration judge, then yeah, I guess we do.

And that, I think, is the reason that you're not seeing an easy solution and compromise to that in Congress is because the Republicans are saying, yeah, but we only need more judges because we're just letting every single 88% of people who come to the border eventually just get straight to an immigration judge. And so they're unwilling to add more judges unless any administration adds more robustness to those first few planks. I would say there's, I would add to that there's another reason that we have seen such little progress overall on immigration reform. And it's a progress that, I mean, it's a problem that's familiar to us in our discussions of so many other issues. the fight benefits the two political parties.

You know, if you look at what motivates sort of the conservative base, Donald Trump's, we're going to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it, was a pretty money line for him when he ran in 2016. The similar dynamic on the left. In 2012 for Obama, 2008, he had a unified government. and he didn't do anything on immigration. So the loudest voices in each of the parties likes the political issue.

And when the political issue is deemed more valuable than the actual solutions to the problems, the solutions to the problems are going to remain elusive. And I think that's at least part of the dynamic here. And that's why I'm pretty skeptical for real, long-term immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform. Steve, I have one follow-up for you on that, which is I have another reason that it's going to get harder politically along exactly what you just said, that it benefits the two parties.

But one of the things that's always been odd about how it benefits the two parties is political parties have to encompass all these contradictions because there's only two of them. So there's all sorts of things that were, you know, two things that Republicans believe that actually are in tension with each other. One of those things used to be immigration and shutting down the borders and not letting anyone in because actually a lot of their biggest donors and supporters and sort of the traditional Republican benefited, as Scott said, economically from having low-skilled cheaper labor. But as the Republican Party shifts, you know, in the Marco Rubio, they want to be more for unions,

They want to be more for low-skilled American labor, lower-skilled, I should say. And they are picking up support among non-white communities. That actually fits with what Scott has said in terms of the economic impact of low-skilled entrance into the labor force, which I find really interesting and is going to make it actually even harder because there won't be the pressure on the Republican Party from the sort of, you know, visa crowd that wants to increase visas, et cetera. I was wondering how you saw that argument playing out.

Yeah, it's a really good question. Senator Tom Cotton has been kind of on the leading edge of this. He's been making those arguments. I mean, he's framed the immigration debate now for years, really, as long as he's been in the Senate, as one that's primarily about American workers and the effect on American workers. And as Scott says, you know, Scott says it has a model,

effect on American workers and usually at the lower end of the wage scale. I think Cotton's response, I was thinking of him, as you said that, Scott, would be, yeah, modest to you. If you're losing your job, it's not modest at all, right? Yeah, but I mean, I can, I can, not to, sorry, but I mean, the economics that are pretty robust in that when I mean modest, I'm talking actually a little bit of wage pressures, not actually like massive disemployment or even decent disemployment. So people losing jobs. It's really more about wage, do they have a depressing effect on wages at the bottom end of the scale? I mean, it really is pretty modest. And then again, when you add in the demand side issues, it's very difficult to tease out a significant

economic effect, negative economic effect from even, you know, influx of low-skilled immigrants. So something tells me that the people who are making that argument might not pay as careful attention to those studies as you do, Scott, and might just set them aside because it's a good argument. I know, I totally agree. I mean, in fact, I think it's one of the frustrating things about the immigration debate is that those types, that nuance is totally lost, right? I mean, it's, it, and instead it inflames such passions that it's ripe for demagoguery or just

simple, ignoring the nuance, right? And when you're talking about a Republican party that wants, that needs, must make inroads in that lower quintile of workers and that that quintile is going to be disproportionately non-white as well, it's a huge opportunity for Republicans to quadruple lipple, flip down on the immigration argument and not for a second give an inch or compromise if they want to sort of complete that transition for 2022 or 2024 and make that case much more strongly to these new voters that they want to keep post-Trump. Last word to Declan. I think you saw a good example of where the GOP is on this last month or earlier this month when

Tom Cotton, who you just mentioned, and Mitt Romney came out with a proposal on, or a counter proposal on the minimum wage as Democrats were pushing to a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour, which ended up not making it into the American Rescue Plan. But the Romney and Cotton's proposal kind of touched on a lot of these issues where, as Sarah was mentioning the more libertarian big donor base of the Republican Party of old would not have favored this at all, but a boost to the federal minimum wage to $11 an hour of the next couple of years coupled with a federal mandatory e-verify system that harshly punished employers that do not rely on labor that is here legally and legally allowed to work. And so, you know, that's something

that I think in a in a Republican Party that was actually as dominated by the Koch brothers as Democrats say that it is. You know, that's not that that would be a non-starter. But it actually had had a decent amount of at least vocal approval or support when when those two senators rolled that out earlier this month. All right. Scott, let's move on to your newsletter this week and the American Rescue package. You really dove into the details. And this is a progressive law. Oh, yeah. So exactly. When you turn on the TV or hear about it described, it is, I think it's a rescue plan, right? We're talking about, of course, individual payments, those

$1,400 checks, and of course, public health measures, vaccine development, the rest. What is lesser mentioned is all of the stuff in there that is only at best tangentially related to COVID. The one think tank put it out, I think it was about, you know, only at best 30% of the bill is really COVID-related, and that even including these direct payments. And instead, when you really dig into the details, you see a Democrats laying the groundwork for a very substantial increase in the welfare state and in ways that Democrats have long wanted. And so my newsletter this week is not really, I mean, it is on some of those details, but it is also on the question of where is the conservative

movement and Republican Party in noting how the Democrats just pushed through one of, and this is not my words, this is Politico and the Washington Post, the largest and most radical or dramatic expansion of the welfare state since LBJ. And why aren't they? trying to either affect this policy, or at the very least, make their voters, their constituents aware of these changes. Because a lot of these changes are temporary, but Democrats have been quite clear that these are not, they're only temporary for now, that they are intending to expand these programs going forward. And so in the newsletter, I look at a, couple areas, family policy and healthcare. We see in family policy a dramatic expansion of the

child tax credit in a bunch of ways. I'm not only expanding the size of the credit, but also making it fully refundable, which basically means that anybody can get the full amount, regardless of how much you work or your tax liability. That's a change. And moving from an annual lump sum payment to a monthly payment. So really kind of setting the groundwork for a kind of a universal basic income for for kids. And second, there's substantial new subsidies not related to COVID for the daycare industry. And both of these combined are really putting forth kind of the left progressive view of welfare, untethered from work, and for daycare, and subsidizing kind of, you know, getting to

kind of a more universal daycare. approach. These are things that in the past, the conservative movement has generally opposed. There's certainly debates going on in the Wonka sphere about a lot of this. But in general, conservatives have been concerned about these types of moves that, for example, discourage, potentially discourage work or incentivize this double-earner framework for the family. and instead of, you know, a traditional breadwinner approach. These are things that, you know, regardless of you like what the conservative opposition is or you don't, typically conservatives have opposed these things.

And here it's pretty much crickets. And then on health care, well, look, according to the New York Times, this is Obamacare 2.0. That's their words, again, not mine. Dramatically expanding Affordable Care Act subsidies to new income groups, creating new levels of free insurance for those folks, and then dramatically are potentially expanding Medicaid, essentially offering massive subsidies. I think that was in the words of the Center for American Progress, to states that have not expanded Medicaid to do so now, really giving them more money to expand Medicaid than it would cost them to do it.

And again, these are typically in the past been pretty much opposed by conservative wanks at the Heritage Foundation or AEI or the rest. And so my question is, well, while all this was going on, what were Republican politicians and conservative media and the punditocracy on the new right doing? Well, it turns out they were focused on Dr. Seuss and the cancel culture. And there are, you know, I go through and kind of cite a lot of the commentary from both those individuals, whether it's Ted Cruz or Fox News or whatever, or from kind of politico watching this all happened, and just simply saying, you know, where is the opposition to any of this? And now we see Republicans are scrambling. After a month of complaining

about Dr. Seuss and cancel culture, they seem to have woken up to, wow, the American Rescue Plan is really, really popular, even among Republicans. which is pretty hilarious. And again, even though it contains all of these provisions that in the past, you go back to President Obama stimulus, you know, Republicans mounted this really strong effort to define that the Obama stimulus as a giveaway to various groups, as economically painful as, you know, all of these types of things. Here, you would think with the ARP, they have the same opportunity and they really don't seem to be taken advantage. And now they're really behind the eight ball because Democrats

are pushing on to new programs, whether it's an infrastructure bill that's chock full of all sorts of progressive dream policies, substantial tax increases, corporate taxes, and the rest. And again, looking to extend a lot of the social policy that's already in the rescue plan. And, you know, you were left to wonder, does the current crop of like new right conservative culture warriors who say we need more focus on family policy, nor more focus on culture policy, do they really mean that? Or is it just about getting ratings? Is it just about getting on TV and screaming about stuff, or do they really want to do the hard work of getting into the weeds on these policies? And as I note, the real irony is that there's even a great policy angle on Dr. Seuss because it really relates to copyright law and how copyright law for these works that might be problematic today but weren't 50 years ago are still protected. And so the Dr. Seuss Foundation and others can simply remove them from the market, whereas

shortening copyright terms or allowing for a more permissive standard for public use would actually allow these works to be preserved without the companies profiting from them or controlling their dissemination and use. And of course, again, nobody talks about any of that. It's just screaming on Fox News. And it's a bit, you know, it's depressing, right, for us Wong's. But I think it's also, I'm hoping, and, you know, an, oh, hey moment of realizing that Democrats are advancing their, they're winning the culture war where it really matters while they might be losing it on conservative TV. So, okay, I want to push back a little.

Okay. I think that it is fair to say that the Republicans have lacked message discipline. because you have folks like Kevin McCarthy reading Green Eggs and Ham, inexplicably, since that wasn't one of the books at issue, Ted Cruz talking about Dr. Seuss. But on the other hand, I googled my little heart out. I couldn't find Mitch McConnell talking about it at all.

I couldn't find John Cornyn talking about it at all. I actually could only find Donald Trump Jr. talking about it. Donald Trump, who has put out, you know, a handful of statements this month, and done interviews. No, couldn't find him talking about it. So really, you know, Mitch McConnell has said plenty about ARP. These other Republicans have all put out press releases about ARP. It's that conservative media isn't covering it.

And when conservative media then chooses to cover Dr. Seuss, mainstream media covers conservative media covering Dr. Seuss. And so again, I think you can accuse them of lack of message discipline, although good luck to Mitch McConnell trying to control Ted Cruz. He's been trying for nine years now and no luck there. So is it really that Republicans have been elected Republicans in the Senate have been asleep at the wheel on this? Or have they been hoisted by their own Fox News petard? No, I think that's a perfectly valid insight. And certainly, I'm not only targeting Republicans in Congress, I think it's the kind of media grassroots Republican echo chamber that a decade ago

did actually focus on policy and did actually create, and this is again in Politico's own terms in very partisan fashion, an intense opposition to Obama's stimulus that led to the Tea Party, and that essentially led to massive Republican victories in the House in 2010. Although look at the Obamacare opposition. They drive down polling on Obamacare to like the lowest you can get polling among Republicans for Obamacare. And then Republicans have 41 votes, I believe, to repeal Obamacare, even when they're in unified control and don't do it. So I wonder whether the media industrial complex on the right simply sees what happened last time that they were. worked on a policy issue and didn't get anything for it.

Well, I mean, I don't disagree that Republicans have been pretty feckless on health care. And I certainly don't disagree with that even today. I think the question, though, is that as these policies move forward and as the folks on, like, you know, Tucker Carlson, for example, who really claim that this is a, culture war, and are they even, do they care that they're actually losing the culture war where it matters? And I think that certainly Mitch McConnell is not in that group, but no offense to Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell is not really getting a lot of TV. He's not getting a lot of the social media dunks and Fox News hits. How dare you insult cocaine?

Mitch? No offense to Mitch. But, and so, you know, as someone who spends far too much time on social media and still in the kind of right of center sphere, I can tell you for a fact that there was not a lot of discussion in February and March about a lot of these, I would call them progressive Easter eggs in the ARP and, of course, the clear intention to make these permanent going forward, whereas the vast majority of the volume was on, and not just Seuss. Seuss is, I think, a metaphor, but cancel culture in general. This kind of, we're fighting the culture war against big tech and the rest, whereas, again, Democrats are just simply legislating. their culture war and win it.

All right, Declan, let's get you in here. I was going to say you're focusing too much on Dr. Seuss and not enough on Pepe Lepeu. His cancellation earlier this month was really what hit home for me. But I think your broader point on why Republicans are not voicing or not being as vocal in opposition to the ARP you touched on it is. is pretty simple, that it's a really popular policy right now. We're in a very populist moment, and Republicans have shown over the past four years, over the past 20 years, that they're not the fiscal hawks that they campaign on,

generally speaking. Republican voters don't expect them to be fiscal hawks. And there are all these kind of progressive wishless items in this bill. You're absolutely right. but the most tangible impact, the way that most Americans will experience this bill is getting a check in the mail from the government. You know, I woke up this morning and had a nice little $1,400 direct deposit, which I'm going to spend really stupidly.

I don't know how yet, but, but, you know, that's tickets. I, no, I am not supporting that team today. I'm not, don't say that today. Although I could probably, at this point, I could probably buy like an entire section worth of Bears tickets for $1,400. Maybe I can do that and have a socially distanced birthday party. But no, I mean, like, the opposition isn't there because I think Republican voters aren't opposed to this bill.

I mean, you saw even some Republicans who voted against the legislation praising it, or at least certain parts of it last week after it passed, touting, you know, I think it was Senator Roger Wicker, who was touting a certain provision of the bill helping the restaurant industry and how he was glad that it made it in there, even though he didn't vote for the overall package. And so, you know, it's, I think Republicans, it makes sense for them not to go too hard against it right now because they don't want to be seen as the people that are trying to stop you from getting stimulus checks and getting checks from the government. In fact, some of some Republicans have even come out saying that the $1,400 stimulus checks weren't enough that they

wanted 2000. And that's what Donald Trump promised when he was still president back in, back in December. And so I think, you know, there will be time for Republicans down the road. I think they're playing a wait and see approach. If this does lead to hyperinflation, if this does cause broader problems down the line, they'll bring it up. But for now, when these checks are hitting people's bank accounts right now, they don't necessarily want to be seen as the people that are trying to oppose this because it is broadly popular. And I think they're kind of playing to their populist base with that right now.

But part of the reason it's broadly popular is because Republicans didn't make these arguments to point out the things that are flaws in the bill. I would say. I mean, it's a chicken and egg question. It definitely goes both ways. I think your broader point is exactly right. I mean, these are, if you think about what Republicans have been doing for the past five years, these are muscles they have not been exercising, the limited government muscles.

It just hasn't, they didn't make those arguments. For five years, they didn't make those arguments. And I think that's a huge problem as you look at where sort of the Republican Party is today. And I'd go further too. I mean, I think if you think about, you know, Republicans having the moral authority to make the kind of arguments they're making, I mean, this is nearly three times the size of Barack Obama's stimulus. And it comes on the heels, as Scott points out in the newsletter, of previous relief, of previous stimulus that is five times the size of what Barack Obama did with his stimulus. I mean, we are talking on a scale, massive, massive. infusion of cash. And as Scott said, this includes so many sort of progressive wish list items

that they hadn't been able to get support for, popular support for forever, which is why they attach them to something like a COVID relief bill, which they thought Republicans would view as as must pass in this context. But Republicans really don't have much moral authority to talk about spending. So I'd say that's, that's one of the problem. I do think it's also the case, and this actually sort of bolsters the point you're making, Declan, Declan, that Republicans don't, Republican voters, rank in five voters, they don't care as much about limited government as Scott does and as I do. That, that I think, is one thing that's become clear. And on top of that, neither do an increasing number of Republican elected officials and the people who are on this so-called

new right. If you look at what policies are coming out of the center right, we have a terrific piece on our website today by Ryan Streeter of the American Enterprise Institute who makes this argument. Basically, conservatives are increasingly making progressive arguments, arguing things that conservatives themselves have fought for decades in some cases. There's sort of a party on expanding government. And a lot of the people on the new rights, of the intellectual side of the Trumpist, right, they're not shy about making this argument. I mean, they're not hiding that that's what they're doing. In fact, they say that the problems in Washington is that the libertarians have been in charge for so long. And, you know,

the limited government types are the ones who really have been ruling the roost in Washington. I would say that their chief problem in making that argument convincingly is reality, because look at Washington. But they're making that argument and they're openly saying, we've got to run away on the right, on the policy side of the right, it's important to run away from these doctrinaire limited government types and instead embrace the power of government to advance conservative arguments, their kind of conservative arguments, their view of the common good, because that's what liberals do anyway. All right. Very quick wrap up, Scott, and then we got to move topics. So I think Steve hits on two things there that are real important.

And first is that clearly the subtext of my piece today is that this is, you know, this is what Trump hath wrought in the sense of kind of a substanceless Republican party that can't talk about fiscal policy or really even detailed policy doesn't have much to stand on. And, of course, with a voting base that tends to agree with kind of Trump's views. The second is that the problem with that, I think, is that even the new right folks are seeing an expansion of the government in ways they don't want. And this goes back to, again, you know, family policy. You know, you're seeing progressive views on traditional breadwinner approach to families and to other. issues, you know, work and dignity of work and all that kind of stuff, again, they're losing.

So if they can't win the actual battles in the legislative space, then again, it's just a bunch of people yelling about libertarians on TV. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's

100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes same-day coverage and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch.

Application times may vary, rates may vary. All right, Steve. I was very excited about your topic because earlier this week, the Department of Justice indicted three North Koreans on cyber theft charges. And the guy who spoke at the press conference was the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, John Demers, who is actually a Trump appointee who has been kept on in the Justice Department. And during that press conference, he called North Korea, quote, a criminal syndicate with a flag. This, pretty like strong beefy rhetoric. And I was like, ooh, nice job, John Demers. And the first thing that I saw out of it was an NBC headline, Biden-AIDS bristle, when justice official called North Korea a criminal syndicate. And the quote is that they were not pleased with the choice of language because they thought the Department of Justice was going to provoke North Korea. Wait, since when, Steve, are we worried about provoking North Korea? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it was one of several things that, that I've seen over the past

couple of weeks that has led me to ask this question of you three, are we back in Barack Obama's foreign policy? And for some context, the, the North Korea question, there, there have been multiple reports that the Biden administration has repeatedly tried to get North Korea to engage in diplomacy, but that the North Koreans haven't responded. They are not interested in talking. Biden administration is apparently very interested in talking. And one imagines that the objections from the Biden National Security Council to this language from the Justice Department come in part because they're doing everything they can to get North Korea to engage.

So that's item number one. Item number two, the Iran deal. deal. We are seeing the Biden administration to one day after another, there's a headline basically declaring how eager, maybe desperate the Biden administration is to get back into the Iran deal. And setting aside the question of whether it's wise to get back into the Iran deal, I don't, I certainly don't think it is. But even if you want to get back into the Iran deal, one imagines that smarter diplomatic path might be to leverage the position that the United States is now in and the difficult position that the Iranians are in. But by declaring in public how desperate you are to get back the negotiating table, it cuts your

leverage pretty significantly. And then the third are these news reports over the past couple of weeks on the Biden administration's approach to Afghanistan, which to call it servile diplomacy is probably too gentle, probably too generous. You've had Anthony Blinken write a letter to the Afghan government, the current Afghan government, basically laying out a list of conditions for the Afghan government to meet if they want to get back to the negotiating table. This, after the Trump administration, in a bit of servile diplomacy itself, excluded. the Afghan government from peace talks and held peace talks only with the Taliban. The Taliban haven't changed their behavior. They're still working closely with al-Qaeda. All of these

things that we understood would happen when the Trump administration announced its phony peace plan. But the Biden administration seems determined to do the Trump administration one worse and actually make this worse. And the question is, is it just in service of getting out? Again, you can be for getting out and think that this is the wrong way to do it. So I'll go back to you with my question, Sarah. Is this just Obama diplomacy redux?

Perhaps, but the world has changed since then. And I don't know whether it makes that type of diplomacy better or worse. I think the answer is probably a little bit of both, depending on the country and the topic. I think that China certainly has changed in terms of how our relationship with China, both what we think our relationship is, but also just what our relationship is from an outside perspective. And I think that affects all these other diplomatic choices, whether it's the Iran deal or North Korea or anything else. I find it, though, odd, even if that's what they want to do. to sort of chastise the Department of Justice so publicly

for indicting criminals, state-sponsored criminals, that to me is something the Obama administration did not do. So this, to me, goes far beyond that because I think that's a very touchy decision. Now, of course, I think it is within the White House control to tell the Department of Justice anything it wants to tell them. frankly. And certainly when you're indicting state-sponsored criminals, that touches on national security and foreign policy and all sorts of other stuff, which needs to be coordinated

through the government. But this idea that we need to go soft on the state-sponsored criminals and not call them what they are for fear that their state sponsor will be upset that we called them out for it or indicted their state-sponsored criminals? Does this mean that the Department of Justice isn't going to indict folks from Iran for IP theft, something that Iran has been hot to trot on recently? Does this mean they will stop indicting North Korea state-sponsored actors? I think that's a far more dangerous outcome. And mind you, we don't end up with these people in our jails, very, very rarely. But it's very important internationally for them to see us indicting them, it does curtail their travel. It makes some people less interested in being

part of a state-sponsored criminal syndicate. But wow, if we start seeing those indictments drop out of the Department of Justice, that will have far-reaching consequences and tell us a lot about what's happening internally. Yeah, I mean, I don't have any reporting on this, but it seems to me likely that the Biden administration admonished this DOJ official in part so they can go to North Korea and say, look, this person was way too aggressive in his language, and we don't approve of that because we'd like to sit down across the table from you. Won't you join us for T? Declan, is this, or should we be surprised that Joe Biden is returning to an Obama-like foreign policy? I mean, is that

is that what he ran on? I mean, I don't think we should be surprised. I think you know, his entire foreign policy slogan through the campaign and and now is basically

America is back. And, you know, he and Blinken and others have been tweeting that out almost verbatim the past couple of weeks as they're going on these diplomatic missions, and I think Sullivan and Blinken are meeting with Chinese officials in Alaska today. And so, I mean, that raises the question back to what. And I think the answer that we're seeing

is some semblance of the Obama administration's foreign policy. They obviously have a lot of the same officials in the administration now. I think it's a little oversimplified to say it's a complete redux. I think it was interesting yesterday that we got this declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who assessed that China, quote, did not view either Trump or Biden as being advantageous enough to China to risk getting caught meddling in the 2020 election. I think that was an interesting perspective there that despite Republican rhetoric on Beijing Biden and his best relationship with Chairman G and these other things, that China itself does not see a massive difference between the two parties

in terms of how harsh and strict whichever administration was going to be on their country. I think that's a break from the Obama administration in many ways and a break from Biden's past himself in many ways. But as Sarah said, I think the world has changed on that front. And then I think with respect to Iran, that there's no doubt that there's a real eagerness and urgency to get back to some form of the JCPOA. But I do think that we saw a little bit of a different approach with when Biden ordered airstrikes on proxies in Syria a couple weeks ago, that that is something that, President Obama very likely would not have done. That was a little bit of a break. Now, granted, I was talking to a foreign policy analyst around that time, and he compared that to Biden doing

the equivalent of facing down a schoolyard bully by driving to the elementary school in the next town over and punching a random kid. And so I thought that that was a particularly good quote. but um wait did that did that ever appear in in the morning disband i mean that's just so good i know i was i was saving it for this podcast i knew there would come in handy one day but um but yeah so i mean it's there there are these kind of uh rhetorical uh kind of flourishes of biden himself when when he was asked why he ordered those strikes um the of the iranian proxies he he said you can't act with impunity and Iran should quote be careful. So I mean, there's at least rhetorical flourishes towards something of a slightly stricter posture. But obviously that won't matter

all that much if behind the scenes they're still doing everything they can to get back into the deal. Scott, you know, your colleagues at the Cato Institute would undoubtedly probably be horrified by my approach to this and would favor something that they would probably describe as a more realist, realistic foreign policy approach. But I look at what Biden is doing in Afghanistan in particular and inviting to participate in these negotiations, the Chinese, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, the Russians. And I wonder whether this is less realistic in the old school understanding of realist foreign policy and more wishful. I mean, there are reports that the Biden administration may sanction some Russians

who listeners may remember from our discussions during the Trump administration were thought to have offered bounties to Taliban officials to attack Americans. And now we're inviting the Russians to sit down and, and negotiate peace with us and with the Afghan government? Is that realistic? Yeah, I think, and I can't really speak for my Cato colleagues too much. And I tend to actually be a bit more hawkish at times. But I think that the kind of what I would call the kind of libertarian view of a lot of this is understanding the extent to which the United States, states really alone can affect these very complex foreign policy situations. And that extends to

North Korea, to Iran, and to a lot of other places. And, you know, not to fall back on trade as an example, but the fact is that there's a long history of U.S. unilateralism in the sanction space, just not working very well in terms of changing government behavior. And And to the extent that the realist view is simply reflecting the fact that the United States really can't make any sort of major shifts alone, then I think that's where it makes some sense. But I think there also is the understanding that, you know, to the extent that the folks that you're talking to across the table are also untrustworthy, that it's not, there shouldn't be a lot of hope for a great outcome. But, you know, look, to say that, you know, I wouldn't really say that

the Trump administration's unilateralism paid great dividends across the world, too. And that's the problem. And, you know, I think the really great example of this is China. And obviously, I'm shifting a bit out of Iran and North Korea. But the fact is that sometimes there's just no great solution. And it's important for policymakers to understand that. And this again gets back to one of the things that's so frustrating at times is that, you know, the politicians can never really say, hey, we can't fix it, right? And I wish they had a little more of that humility. Because, you know, sometimes these things are unfixable. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think that's actually a really important point as it relates to diplomacy. I guess my concern, my growing concern, as I look across Biden's approach to the world, is that he's falling into the trap that Barack Obama did, which is seeing the world not as it is, but seeing the world as they wanted to be. So Iran, I mean, you look at the entire premise of the Iran deal was that Iran was a potential partner for peace. Nothing the Iranian regime was doing told us that Iran was a potential partner for peace. They just, the Obama administration just insisted repeatedly that it was. And then finally, announced publicly that they were decoupling nuclear negotiations from the regime's overall

hostile behavior. You can't do that. You're never going to have solid diplomatic outcomes. And by solid diplomatic outcomes, I mean substance, not the process of negotiating itself. that is not an outcome, in my view, you're never going to have solid diplomatic outcomes unless you treat these problems as problems. Now, it may be the case that you have to say at a certain point, look, we're not going to make any progress on this. It's not worth our time. This is unsolvable or it's not the problem people think it is. But if you're going to engage, you sure as heck, better engage based on facts and reality rather than what you hope bad guys are going to be. All right, Declan, last up, tell us about the filibuster.

Yes. So ever since the Democrats squeaked out the narrowest possible Senate majority in Georgia back in January, I think political prognosticators on both the left and the right have understood that there's going to be a pretty significant showdown over the Senate's legislative filibuster, the procedural rule that allows a minority of senators to block or delay legislation, even if it has more than 50 votes for approval. And, you know, that's starting to come to a head now that Democrats have passed their American Rescue Plan, which they were able to do through a process called budget reconciliation,

meaning they only needed 50 votes to get it through and get it to President Biden's desk. But now they're moving on to broader policy proposals and parts of Biden's agenda that they cannot use that process for it. Legislation that goes through budget reconciliation can only have or be related to spending and revenue. And so as they're moving towards democratic reforms with HR1 and immigration reform, as we tell, on earlier and gun control legislation, environmental stuff, they're not going to, Democrats are not going to be able to enact much of this, if any, with the legislative filibuster intact. And so there is kind of a growing momentum within the party, particularly among progressives, to do away with this, what they call an arcane Senate rule, and deliver on the issues

that they campaigned on and that they promised their voters that they would fight for. And thus far, the White House has been reluctant to go that direction. Biden himself was a former senator who used the filibuster plenty in his time in the Senate and has said that he believes it should remain in place. That changed this week in an interview with ABC News. he said that he's now in favor of some sort of reform to the filibuster, going back to what's called as a talking filibuster, meaning that the senators, rather than just threatened to filibuster piece of legislation, would actually have to stand on the floor and talk for hours.

It's the kind of thing that you might be familiar with from movies and TV shows on this period. And so that would possibly be somewhat of a shift, although even, And then Biden has not said anything about adjusting the 60 vote threshold, even if you return to a Senate bill or a talking filibusters. So that wouldn't necessarily change anything on the outcome. So there's going to be hypocrisy on both sides of this argument. Republicans did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 in order to get Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

Democrats did away with the filibuster on all non-Supreme Court presidential nominees back in 2013. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said in 2018 that abolishing the filibuster would destroy the Senate as we know it, something along those lines. And now this week he came out in favor of doing exactly that. So setting hypocrisy aside, do we think that Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema are going to cave. They're the two moderate Democrats who have said thus far that they're not going to and that they will never, ever, ever, ever, ever vote for reducing that 60 vote for reducing that 60 vote threshold in the Senate. One, do we think that they mean it when they say never,

ever, ever, ever, ever, ever? And two, is it the filibuster good? Is it, should we be passing more legislation and letting voters weigh in on what they like and what they don't, or is gridlock the better option here. Scott? Gridlock is good. I cannot say it loudly enough. I mean, I already wrote a newsletter on this for those listening. You can go back and find it.

That was back when I foolishly assumed Republicans would not give away the state of Georgia entirely. I actually thought we would have some good old-fashioned gridlock. But no, I mean, I think the benefit of the filibuster end of gridlock. block beyond simply the kind of economics that I brought up in my piece, is that I don't actually want policy to change based on the whims of the voters at the moment. I mean, if you look at the insane swings we've had in the makeup of Congress and the executive over the last, say, what, since 2004 maybe? Do we really want a ping pong match of conservative and liberal policy

every time there is a quote unquote regime change? And will that have an effect, for example, on investment? Again, not to get on nerdy, but the fact is that people in terms of investing in factories and home building and whatever else, invest on 10, 20-year horizons, do they want, would a legislative environment that could change policy with, you know, every two, four, six years, would that have a dampening effect on risk taking in investment in other areas? And I don't really know, but I do suspect it would have some effect. I mean, you know, putting on my old hat as a lawyer and advising big multinational companies during the Trump years, I can tell you for a fact that the uncertainty in the trade and investment environment that Trump's tweets inflicted upon us all. And my poor sleepless nights as a big law attorney does, did I saw it firsthand, have an effect on people's willing.

this to invest and engage in various business transactions. And so would applying a slightly longer, but still very short time frame to the legislative process by removing this last check on legislative populism of sorts, would that have an effect? I would suspect it would. And while there are certainly a million policies that I could pinpoint that, you know, if I were grand supreme ruler of the universe, I would change. And I certainly would love if I had unified government to do. I also understand quite plainly that I am not grand supreme ruler of the universe and the other team gets to bat too. And that's the thing I don't even understand about this whole debate, is do these folks not see that they will not be in control forever and

forever actually might be just two years away? I want to, I'll play devil's advocate on that point a little bit. And this is the argument that I think you will hear from some progressives. And it's similar to the one that we hear a little bit on some of the voting rights versus voting suppression debate. And so we've had that on this podcast in the past. But their belief is that Democratic proposals are inherently more popular. And so if Democrats were able to pass their proposals and and the American people would see that they benefit their lives, et cetera, et cetera, then they would vote to continue more of that, rather, and if Republicans voted to do their things,

that their priorities that are less popular with the American public, that voters would punish them accordingly. I want to read something quickly that McConnell said on the Senate floor, he gave a big speech about this yesterday. He said, as soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn't just erase every liberal change that hurt the country. We'd strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side. Nation ride right to work for working Americans, defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one.

A whole new era of domestic energy production, sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn. So Republicans have shown over the past four years kind of in the Trump era that they're much more interested in results per se than process. I think there's plenty of norms that Trump abandoned and voters were perfectly fine with it because they got the outcome that they wanted tax cuts, the Supreme Court justices, et cetera. Do voter, is that actually a threat from McConnell? Do they hear that and say, yeah, let's get rid of the filibuster. Let's do that. Let's defund Planned Parenthood.

And then, you know, we'll fight to win another day down the line. Do they see that and be like, okay, don't, let's go ahead and do it. Steve? Maybe. You know, it's a good question. McConnell got some grief for making the case that he did, you know, framing this sort of as a threat. Like, we're going to do this if, this is what we will do if, if you break this norm. I don't know how much appeal it will have to rank and file voters.

I don't, I don't expect that filibuster would be the kind of thing that gets people to turn out or really juices the electorate on one side or the other. I do think Democrats are making a gamble that if they were to do this, the Democrats who favored doing this, if they were to do this, they would be able to pass all of these programs that they imagine are so popular and then would swing into a near permanent majority because they're on the side of the angel. I would suggest that polling is a little bit more complicated than we were hearing from some of these Democrats and that maybe some of the policies they're proposing aren't universally popular,

or we probably already would have seen, you know, the book, The Emerging Democratic Majority was published, what, 20 years ago? We're not there yet, and I think there are reasons that we're not there yet. This is, to me, the debate, I think, first of all, Scott is exactly right on the substance of it. I think if you favor limited government,

if you're one of the people who still, favor limited government, you should be for the filibuster. It is a tool for limiting government and for avoiding the kind of whipsaw back and forth that Scott describes. But it is, you know, in some ways it's the perfect Washington moment. You know, we've gone from having an actual filibuster that worked that, you know, maybe at its most idealistic was meant to both grind the process down, but also provide at least an opening for persuasion. We don't really do much persuading in the Senate anymore. People make speeches and they try to power things through. So it's not surprising that the parties have been as hypocritical as they've been on this, and it's not

surprising that this is the outcome. Last point on just the politics of this on the Democratic side, it is very interesting that Joe Manchin has been as adamant as he's been, that he absolutely under no circumstances will ever abandon the filibuster, and it's really important for the minority party to continue to have a voice. You know, he gave an interview to Fox News Sunday last week where he seemed to be edging off of this, the talking filibuster that you mentioned. And Democrats in particular took this as a sign of eroding support that either Mansion was willing to look for some kind of a compromise and they celebrated this. They were very excited about this. My instinct initially was that they were over-reading the moment. But then when Mitch McConnell decided to give a long speech

about this, I thought I was not getting the moment right. And Democrats might know something. Because I don't think Mitch McConnell gives that speech unless he's really worried that this is going to happen. Now, he's extracted these promises from Joe Manchin and Christian Cinema that they will not support ending the filibuster. Again, do you give the speech he gave if you're confident that those promises are still strong? All right. We are massively over time, but I do have one last question for each of you, which is the morning dispatch and morning dispatchers are doing brackets. And if you are a morning dispatcher, a member of the dispatch, I highly encourage you to go fill out your bracket before it is too late. So each of you, who do you have winning it all?

Steve? Oh, I mean, you know, my heart is with the Wisconsin Badgers. I have to say they've underperformed this year. I will go, I'm a Big Ten partisan. I engaged in these email battles for more than a decade in the, basically the 90s and the early aughts with a bunch of ACC partisans because they always are argued that their conference was the better athletic conference overall, but the better basketball conference.

It was a hard argument for me to make on basketball, a much easier argument for me to make on football. But where's the ACC this year, Scott? I mean, where's dude? In the toilet. You've got this Duke affiliation. I will go with Michigan because I know Declan's going to pick Illinois and there's not much good that comes out of Illinois.

So I will go Michigan, but my heart is with Wisconsin. All right, Scott, is Duke taking it all? First of all, I need to correct the record. I may teach at Duke, but I am a University of Virginia double alumnus reigning national champs for the last two years, mind you. With the coach they stole from Wisconsin. Coach they stole from Wisconsin. I mean, that's pretty fine. So obviously, I'm taking the calves to make a Cinderella run because they are.

are actually fighting COVID right now, which is horrible and forced him to bail out of the ACC tournament. On Steve's broader point, the ACC is very, very down, but come on, over the last 20 plus years, the ACC's dominance in college basketball is really undeniable. And that includes my Virginia Cavaliers. So, you know, enjoy this one year, Steve. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a nice one, it's like a solar eclipse. It comes around every once in a while, don't stare directly at it, but you can certainly enjoy it with kids. And yeah, I don't think Virginia actually is going to win, but of course, I'm going to pick them. All right. Declan, are you going with the Eli and I? Yeah, Steve took the thunder out of my pick here a little bit. I don't feel good about it,

in part because I'm a Chicago sports fan. Why would I ever feel good about anything? But You know, this is by far the best team Illinois has had since the 0506 run with D. Brown and Luther Head and all those guys. I'm excited. They got a really rough draw in the bracket. They're going to have to play another Chicago staple Loyola of Chicago with Sister Gene, the nun from a few years back that came to fame. and that they're going to be a tough out, and then if they win that, they'll probably have to play Oklahoma State with the consensus, one of the top three players in the country, Cade Cunningham. And so it'll be a tough road, but this is a really exciting team. It's a really fun team to watch. My dad's a University of Illinois alum, and so I've been enjoying following along with I.O. and Kofi and Andre Kerbello, and it's a really fun team, and I'm excited to hopefully see them make some millions.

here. All right, well, I am picking the true Cinderella of the tournament, and that would be the Baylor Bears, who last time they were in the final four was 1950. So one seeds are typically Cinderella's, yes. This is a Cinderella one seed. This is for sure. All right. Thank you, listeners. Go fill out your March Madness brackets. The link is at the top of today, Wednesday's morning dispatch. But I think we've had it in the dispatch, Declan in the morning dispatch each day this week. Monday and Wednesday. And we'll probably keep including it in the next two days. You just got to fill it out by the time the game starts Friday morning. And we'll stick it in the show notes as well. And there is, it's possible, we're checking with the lawyers. It's possible that we

might be able to offer some dispatch merch to those who do well. Interesting. All right, we will see you again next week. Thank you all. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.

slash yanex.