The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3661 - ICE's NYC Deportation Blitz; Trump Killing Cancer Cures w/ Whitney Wimbish, Jonathan Cohn
Episode Date: June 8, 2026Welcome back to The Majority Report On today's program: Donald Trump storms out of an interview with Kristin Welker on Meet the Press after Welker challenged the president on his claims of rigged elec...tions. Whitney Wimbish, staff writer at The American Prospect joins to discuss her piece: "NYC Immigration Courts Speed Deportations as Striking Detainees in Newark Suffer" Jonathan Cohn, writer of The Breakdown newsletter and author of The Ten-Year War, joins to discuss his piece: "The Cancer Research Machine Trump Is Gutting Just Delivered a Big Breakthrough" In the Fun Half: Rep. Jim McGovern on the NBA's relationship with the UAE results in supporting war crimes in Sudan. Donald Trump responds to a question about the sky-high prices for the Knicks home games in the finals by saying you can watch from home. "That's the way life is". Mehdi Hasan dispels Trump's claims that he won 2024 by a landslide in a debate with Patrick Bet-David. Ken Paxton's former criminal defense attorney endorses James Talarico for Senate. Van Latham believes that Graham Platner's campaign is a "moment of Truth" for the Democratic party. He believes that a vote for Platner is co-signing the same behavior as Donald Trump. A voter in Portland, Maine says that the media is trolling for dirt on Platner and it has no impact on her support for his Senate run. Pete Hegseth delivers a speech at the 82nd anniversary of D-Day that sounds like it could've been given in Germany in 1929. All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: FACTOR: Go to FactorMeals.com/majority50off and use code majority50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box TRUST AND WILL: Get 20% off trustandwill.com/MAJORITY SMALLS: Try Smalls and get 60% off your cat's first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life at Smalls.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.
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And now time for the show.
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
It is Monday, June 8, 2006.
name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live
steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.
On the program today, Whitney Wimbish, writer of the aim, Quicky, more importantly, staff writer at the
American prospect on her piece, New York City immigration courts speed deportations at
striking detainees in Newark suffer.
Then Jonathan Cohn, author of the 10-year war, writer of The Breakdown, a bulwark newsletter.
On his piece, The Cancer Research Machine, Trump is gutting, just delivered a big breakthrough.
Also on today's program, Israel, Iran trade missile attacks as Israel's assault on Lebanon continues.
Meanwhile, Trump naps.
Then Trump claims Netanyahu has no choice but to accept a peace deal.
Section 702 of FISA seems destined to expire as Republican House and disarray.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
Probably a good thing.
Meanwhile, out in California, Nitha Rahman pulls ahead of Spencer Pratt in the L.A. mayor race counting.
That continues on.
Remember, it's a so-called jungle primary, which means the top two vote getters will go into the general election, and Bass is definitely going to be one of them.
Pentagon raises counterintelligence threat level from Israel, our ally.
Huh.
Republican House bill would roll back food aid for children and pregnant women, because why not?
SpaceX blocked from early entry into the S&P 500, they were going to be allowed to join without making a single dollar, which has potentially saved millions of pensions.
Texas continues to sound the alarms on the screw worm, but a decapitated USDA, or I should say a gutted USDA may have already screwing.
worm the pooch on that. Oh, brother. That smile after tape worms. Ah, now it's
free-worn. Yep. Yeah. And Knicks, meanwhile, show their true colors by choosing Trump over fans.
Oh, that's what you were giggling about to yourself. All this and more on today's.
Say it again. Read it again. The Knicks, New York Knicks, show their true colors.
by choosing Donald Trump over their fans.
Welcome, everybody.
I'll have more to say about that later in the show.
Okay.
To hop on that Sam Harris meditation app.
Calm down.
This is no reflection on the team itself.
I mean, they're not in charge of, uh, you know, we have to, we have to just wonder if this is some sort of like counter-revolutionary action by you, because you know what a Nick's,
success in this postseason would mean to the Mamdani administration and AOC's agenda in the city,
for example.
Not necessarily.
We understand.
I mean, I know that you don't care about your fellow neighbors, but I guess I wouldn't
reveal that on air so frequently.
Well, I mean, most of my neighbors I have selected are Celts fans.
Oh, where do you live?
I don't know.
Little Boston.
Little Boston's just Staten Island.
Exactly.
Exactly.
A lot to get to today, folks.
Many different stories.
Of course, the war or not war on Iran continues.
Israel is apparently not listening to Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump is responding by just sort of focusing.
more on the reflecting pool.
And so I'm sure everything will work out fine.
Meanwhile, one of the things the Trump administration has been gearing up to do,
bit by bit, whether it's on the pushing for the demise of the Voting Rights Act and redistricting
across the country, which has changed the dynamic in what Democrats,
how much they have to overperform to win a majority of seats in the House come the fall.
We've also seen various instances around the country of ICE agents going and just deciding to stop by polling places and a whole raft of different mechanisms in which to influence the vote in the fall that are.
extra campaign-y, if you will, in some fashion.
And one of the things that is important for Trump is to maintain this myth.
And we're seeing it in California.
It's all over the place where for every year that I've been alive, or at least the sentient, you know, and conscious of vote counting, California comes in late.
comes in days, sometimes weeks later.
In the presidential campaign, we don't know what the numbers out of California were.
Usually for like four or five weeks, we don't even know what the final numbers are.
This has been ongoing, but every time it goes against the Republicans,
they start screaming bloody murder and fraud.
And part of that whole project is still to continue to claim
I mean, you hear it all the time that 2020 was, there was a fix in in 2020 when Donald Trump was president and running for reelection.
But somehow that fix got reversed when Joe Biden was president.
When he was in power.
Yes.
It's like it's almost as if like the people who, like you've got to apply.
to the aliens who control the lasers that affect the voting things.
And you got to apply each time for special help.
But here's Donald Trump going on, I guess, placing himself in a, on the set of he-ha.
I don't know what's going on there.
Like he's in some factory where, you know, supposedly, I guess there's three bales of hay
and then a little bit of hay by his feet.
I don't understand what's going on.
in the foreground.
I guess this is to promote the fact that they cut all of the monitoring systems for screw worm
and have pursued trade policies that have devastated American farmers.
And the number of bankruptcies is through the roof for farmers.
I guess this is some type of homage.
But here he is getting upset on Meet the Press.
The election was rigged.
Oh, pause it.
I'm sorry.
They're discussing.
We should go back just a little bit, can we?
No.
This is a clip where they're getting into the 2020 election.
Surprise.
It's really shocking to see Donald Trump still talking about this, isn't it?
And you'll hear the audio.
They're in a barn and it's raining on the rooftop.
So that's what you hear in the background.
A little bit of a strange choice.
The election was rigged.
It was a dirty election.
And it's happening again right now in California.
It's happening right now in California.
Right now it's looking, look at what's happening.
Where's the evidence to that?
It's four days.
In California, it's, no, they're not there.
They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election.
Let me tell you, it's four days and they aren't even close to coming up with it.
You know why they're doing that?
Because they're cheating on the election.
Do you have evidence to support that?
All I have to do is look.
All I have to do is look.
But that's not evidence.
And I listen.
And I listen to people.
And let's see what happens.
But, sir, that's not evidence.
You think it's appropriate?
That's how they count the votes in California.
You think it's appropriate that they have an election.
And five days later, they're nowhere close to picking the one.
State and local officials acknowledge they are slow.
They're urging.
No, they're crooked.
They're urging the votes to be counted quickly.
That's how they vote in California.
They're crooked.
Just like you're crooked.
Your press is crooked.
And meet the press is crooked.
To be fair, I'm not crooked.
But let's, let's continue.
Well, you play right into their hands in.
Let's continue.
You're either.
or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with this rap. You know that these elections are
rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. You know that I won an election in a landslide
and I got 94% bad press. But Mr. President, you know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.
But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about, I want to talk about
Todd Lynch. You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented.
Let's talk about your elections in this country.
You were like a third world country.
Your elections are crooked.
Your elections.
And Mr. President.
And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.
But, Mr. President, you're one-
He's on.
Crooked Network.
So, let's call it quits because I've had enough.
Thank you, darling.
Have a good time.
Mr. President, let's please.
I travel all the way to Wisconsin.
I've traveled all the way to Wisconsin.
I know.
I travel all the way to Wisconsin.
On and off in the rain.
And I've given you enough time.
You ought to straighten out your press
because you know what?
A country can never be great with a dishonest.
Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for the interview.
I spoke with President Trump on Saturday,
and we both acknowledged the complications during the interview posed by the rain.
He agreed to sit down with me for another Meet the Press interview.
Oh, my gosh.
I have seasonal effective decision.
The problem is it sounds like my white noise app that I fall asleep.
I know.
I have to get angry in order to stay awake.
Can you imagine if, I don't know, say Kamala Harris was president and walked out of an interview because the weather was bothering her?
Thanks, Chief.
I mean, just the double standards applied to this absolute moron that if it were anyone else, let alone a woman, obviously, let alone a woman of color, they would not apply.
he's like looking for Barry Weiss to be able to fire Welker wrong one.
Although he listed somewhere that has to be.
He said CBS in his little rant about how everything is fake news, right?
Also, I mean, she was right that Republicans are doing better in California
comparatively the other parts of the country.
This is a bit of an aside.
But like, California's got to get its crap together.
And they have this jungle primary system.
It really benefits the right or the center more when they don't have ranked
choice voting associated with it because of how it can split the field amongst Democrats.
So just throwing that out there.
It should be made a priority.
And to the extent that the Democrat establishment in California does, and it seems like IDC-style
corruption that you want to insulate yourself from democracy.
And also just one more note on Trump's claim.
Nobody ever refutes anymore his notion of a landslide.
and he did have in 2024.
He did have a big win on the electoral college side.
But as that translates into votes,
Medi Hassan made the point on with PBD the other day.
You're talking maybe 150,000 votes over the course of any three swing states
that turn the tide of the election.
So, you know, it's a landslide in the sense that,
electoral college, and that's, to be fair, that's also the system that we have.
But in terms of it, like suggesting some type of mandate, not the case.
And I let's also remember that Trump didn't even get the majority of the vote.
He got a plurality of the vote, under 50% of the vote.
to win so the idea of a mandate but he's still it makes him feel good and nobody cares anymore
really because he's at 30 percent uh approval rating or something like that so uh but the 2020
stuff really is important to him and so he's got to intimidate the hell out of uh people he's
being interviewed by and tell them like i'm going to walk out i mean understand that's the message
right it's like you you covet an interview with me and you're not
going to get it if you don't if you actually push back on my claims that the 2020 election
was stolen. That's the message. And the media, particularly like at that level, are very,
very attuned to that type of threat because their whole value proposition is that they can sit
down with the president and they don't want to ruin that. Right. And just one note on Spencer Pratt,
because he's central to all of this.
God, like, he really is a creature of reality TV
in the same way that Trump is,
although on the hills he was always presented as a villain.
But this is going to be more of, like,
what Republicans are going to try,
this whole kind of circus and reality TV
and media-focused campaigning,
where they can just be clowns and loud mouths.
And since they have nothing to provide for people,
it's just going to be kind of de-less celebrities
that try this more and more.
Worked for Ronald Reagan.
Right.
But they overplayed their hand here with the Spencer Pratt thing
because it was just a very weird,
I think, Republican-aligned media-focused orientation,
which didn't match what actually Los Angeles wants.
All right. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Wimbish
from the A.M. Quicky and staff writer,
the American prospect on her piece.
on what's happening with New York City immigration courts.
There's sort of a test case or a pilot program almost for the rest of the country in terms of mass deportations.
We'll be talking to her in a moment, and then Jonathan Cohn authored the 10-year war about what's happening with the Trump administration's gutting of medical research.
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Quick break and Whitney Wimish will be joining us.
We are back.
Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report.
It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program.
Whitney Wimbish, she writes for the A.M. Quicky, we are very, very lucky about that.
Also, a staff writer at the American Prospect.
and Whitney, you've been on multiple beats over at the prospect.
I can't encourage people to go over there and check out what you've been writing really now for months and months,
but it's been fantastic.
And you've been doing some work on what's happening in terms of immigration, particularly in New York.
And there's really two major stories.
One is happening down at the courthouses.
And this is following after New York State basically said you can no longer arrest people when they're coming.
immigrants when they come to immigration court, but there's a new innovation in our sort of
fascist assault on immigrants.
Tell us about it.
That is one way to put it.
Thank you so much for having me on the show, Sam, and thank you for the kind words as well.
What the Trump administration is doing is speed running people through the immigration court
process.
They are making it as fast as they can possibly do it because other things, like you mentioned,
that they've tried aren't allowed anymore.
Federal judges have said you can't just dismiss cases before people show up, and you can't
kidnap people out of the halls as they're coming and going from their scheduled immigration
court hearings.
So now they're trying this thing where they are stuffing the docket of certain immigration
judges so full that we're looking at anywhere from 75 to more than 120, 20.
cases in a single day for a single judge. They started this a few weeks ago in, I took some notes,
I think Boston and Chicago NPR reported, and then I reported that it was starting in New York City
at 290 Broadway. And then over the weekend, the New York Times said it had also started in
Louisiana and I think Virginia. So they are forcing these immigration judges.
to hear cases in a matter of minutes.
I started timing the cases in one courtroom because I was just like,
geez, these are really fast.
And this one judge who had 88 cases was taking no more than three minutes per person.
And these were unaccompanied children who had attorneys.
And, you know, some of the lawyers were saying, you know, this is great.
This is just actually moving these kids to an individual here,
so that the merits of their specific case can finally be heard.
But they were saying, for us, this is one thing,
because we are attorneys, we're with these kids, we can advocate for them.
A lot of people show up to immigration court without any legal counsel, no support.
I showed one man who spoke no English where he was supposed to go and he was by himself.
It's awful.
You show up to immigration court.
You stand in line for a really long time.
The line was around the block last Monday.
And then you get into these packed waiting rooms to go see a judge for two to three minutes.
And it is dead silent inside.
People are afraid.
And they're noticing that, you know, it's this industrial bureaucracy that's just been kicked up to as fast as it can go.
So, okay.
And a couple of things.
I have a couple questions on this.
Now, first off, people should know.
that unlike in a criminal court, there's no responsibility for the court to provide counsel.
So what would you say is the percentage of, and it's really just basically NGOs for the most part,
that are providing counsel for particularly unaccompanied minors and whatnot?
I mean, some people have immigration attorneys.
What would you say the percentage of people who show up with attorneys are?
Do you have a sense?
I can tell you, because I wrote.
that down. For Thursday, they kicked up in 290 the number of judges who were hearing these
mass dockets to five judges. And, you know, we're talking about an instance where, you know, of
70 cases, only 15 people have legal representatives. You can see on the dockets in this one particular
federal building, 290 Broadway, sorry.
On the 15th floor, all of the judges have their names along the top of a wall,
and their dockets are printed out on paper.
And these days, the dockets can run all the way to the floor.
They're so long.
And you can see on there who has representation and who doesn't.
Attorneys are referring to these as mega master hearings,
and they just started today in a second location in New York, 26 federal plaza,
where immigration judges have not listed their dockets.
They haven't put their dockets outside their court rooms for more than a year.
So the only way that you can know that this is happening is because there's a massive line
and people are just stuffed into waiting rooms.
So what happens to those people who don't have attorneys?
They just like, they're like immediately.
deported? Do they, or they, because they don't, I mean, presumably they don't know that like,
oh, okay, I can have a specific hearing on this. What happens to those people?
Any number of things can happen to these folks. There are ice agents still roaming around in
the halls of both of these federal buildings. The one bright spot is that there are
court watchers who approach people as they're standing in line outside.
and they ask, do you have an attorney?
Are you aware of what's happening in terms of like next steps?
You know, what's your situation?
And these folks are taking down people's information.
They're A numbers, which is the number that people have that you can use to look them up in the immigration system online.
And so they might get a continuance from a judge who says,
okay, well, we're going to set your court date to another time.
you know, in 2027.
You might get a judge that says, you know, you don't, you know, someone who says, yeah,
you're subject to removal right away.
And then that person can be taken by ICE, moved to any number of locations, and potentially
end up in someplace like Delaney Hall, where folks are on a hunger and labor strike, because
geo-group, the company that runs that place, um, is,
is keeping them in inhumane conditions and forcing them to work for a dollar a day.
I want to get to that in a moment.
We spoke to a reporter the other day who was out there recording and videotaping some of that stuff.
Waller-Connor.
Yeah.
But what ability do the immigration judges or inclination to say like, you know what, this is too fast?
This is too much.
I'm splitting my docket in four, and I'm going to take four days to do this.
I mean, or do they not have the ability to do that?
Because this is just a way for like the administration at this point to sort of up their numbers
because presumably they want to be able to go into the midterms.
I mean, part of it is political.
I think part of it is just sort of psychotic.
I mean, like this is what their agenda is.
they want to be able to go into the midterms and say like we're deporting you know a thousand people a day
five thousand people a day three thousand people a day whatever their you know sort of quota is
what what ability do the judges have to slow their role what desire did the judges have to do that
sam that's not a question i have a ton of insight into in a technical way
But I will say that in one of the judge's rooms that I sat in, I noticed that she was taking a normal amount of time and she was not going at the breakneck speed of the other judge whose room I sat in.
I don't know what power these guys have. I do know, though, that there is a consequence to not falling in line for these judges.
You know, the Trump administration has fired more than 100 immigration judges since January 2025,
and he is replacing them with military lawyers and other people who aren't really, they don't have the same background.
And some of the judges who have been dismissed have been dismissed for being too pro-immigrant.
So, you know, a comment that Brad Lander, who gave a press conference last Monday,
outside the 29-290 Broadway said that, you know, judges will lose their jobs if they don't kind
of tow the line and process these cases at the speed that the Trump administration wants
them to process.
Lastly, before we go across the river and talk about what's going on at Delaney,
New York State is, or there is a push for the state.
legislature to pass, you write, the Access to Representation Act. Tell us about A, what that would do,
and B, you know, what the status of it is. That is pretty simple. It's a proposed law that would
provide funding to folks who can't afford their own attorney. Like you said, there is a right to have
an attorney in immigration court, but the U.S. government doesn't provide that person.
And a lot of people can't afford one.
So the pro bono services in New York, at least, and I'm sure this is true everywhere, are extremely overtaxed.
There's just not enough people to go around.
This law would provide some funding to help fix that.
The status is that it's just hanging out in committee right now.
How much is the deals that the Trump administration made with some of the bigger law firms in the city at the beginning of the
administration. How much that coming into play? Oh, cranky. I don't know. Okay. I mean, no, I mean,
it's, yeah, I mean, it's hard to get an assessment because I don't know how much those firms would be
involved at this level. But I imagine when they are not doing pro bono work in that space,
somebody's doing the pro bono work that they would be doing. And then there's nobody to fill their space.
That sounds like a great story. So I am going to write that down.
I'm glad. Let's just briefly, what's the latest in terms of Delaney Hall?
Prisoners inside Delaney Hall are entering their third week of hunger and labor strike.
They report to family members and the lawmakers who have been able to talk to them that guards are retaliating against them for this collective action.
They're denying the medical.
attention. They are, you know, cutting their time with family members. They are threatening
to move people from this location in Newark, New Jersey to other places across the country.
And in some cases, are moving prisoners. And they're denying them medical care, which I'm sure
you saw the AP story that kind of showed how endemic the denial of medical care across immigration,
the immigration gulag archipelago is people are really suffering inside.
In a story I wrote today, the company that runs Delaney Hall is Geo Group,
as you've spoken about a lot on the show, along with its competitor, Core Civic.
They are trying a new legal kind of tactic to get out of responsibility for any of these,
what I would say are crimes against humanity by saying that they have qualified immunity,
which means that you're not allowed to sue them.
Are private entities, is there any precedent that you're aware of of a private entity
just because they're working for the federal government gets qualified immunity?
Like it's not, it's like a game of electricity or something.
That's right.
It's, you know, the attorneys who I talked to about it said
that it would be precedent-setting if this legal theory was successful because it would mean that,
you know, if you work for the government, you can't get in trouble.
That would apply to all contractors.
I mean, it seems like it.
In theory.
So defense contractors, yeah, private prisons, people that work at private prisons.
Amazon.
I mean.
Yeah, that's right.
Whitney Wimbish, we will link to your pieces in the American prospect.
And of course, folks can catch you every other couple of days on the A.M. Quicky.
And we get so many compliments. Whitney, if you're writing, really appreciate your time today.
Thank you both so much for having me.
And thank you also to all A.M. Quiki subscribers who played along with my postcard giveaway
distraction. I'll do it again later this summer.
There you go. All right, Whitney, thanks so much your time.
All right, we're going to take quick break when we come back.
Jonathan Cohn, author of the 10-year War, writer of the breakdown, which is a bulwark newsletter,
is going to come and tell us about some real advances in cancer research and treatment
and why we may not see a whole lot of that going forward.
We'll be right back.
We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the majority report.
It's a real pleasure to welcome back to the program, Jonathan Cohn, author of the 10-year-war, writer of The Breakdown,
which is a bulwark newsletter on his most recent piece, The Cancer Research Machine, Trump is gutting,
just delivered a big breakthrough.
we were just before we got on jonathan and welcome uh we were talking about it's been a bunch of like
sort of medical breakthroughs uh over the past several weeks like big ones in terms of we're going to
talk about cancer but in terms of like um uh g lp ones and a new triple threat and then uh some
uh breakthroughs on new drugs in terms of uh uh arterial disease um and uh and yeah
we may not be able to expect this type of stuff, at least not in this country, going forward
because of what the Trump administration is doing to medical research.
Let's just start with how you talk about this cancer conference and the reaction that a lot of like
these scientists and doctors gave when they saw this presentation about pancreatic cancer.
Yeah, it was in Chicago.
I guess it was a weekend.
So not this last weekend, but the previous weekend, the big international conference
of cancer researchers and clinicians.
And there was this presentation about this, which I'll talk about in a second,
this new drug for pancreatic cancer.
And the researcher who presented it is one of several who worked on it.
He's from Dana Farber.
People may know it if you know Boston is part of the sort of Harvard-affiliated hospitals
and research centers.
he is presenting this paper with these results and sort of spontaneously as he's giving the results,
you see people start to clap and then more of them are clapping than they give him like a standing ovation.
Of course, not for him, but, you know, for the results.
And that is just not something that happens in these sort of settings.
And it speaks, I think, to what a remarkable breakthrough this could be.
And it is.
If you know anything about pancreatic cancer, I mean, it's the third deadliest cancer in the United States,
kills last year more than, we think, 50,000 people.
And it's been just an incredible, I mean, again, if you know anything about cancer,
if I'm fortunate enough to experience this through a loved one or a friend, I mean,
it's the diagnosis for the longest time when a doctor had to give a diagnosis of pancreatic
cancer, it was this sort of resignation, just, it was a tough one, you know, and clinicians
will tell you, you know, it was hard.
And I think that's part of what you saw in that reaction was,
these are people who had to be in the room, tell families, tell people, you know, that you have this
cancer, chances are we're not going to be able to do anything about it. We maybe can give you a little,
you know, extend your life a little bit. And that's just, you know, the idea that maybe they can
make some progress, that we're making progress, we can extend life longer and, and maybe see
down the road to something that really contains it, you know, or even cures it maybe. It's just,
it's it's huge and so where did this drug uh come from i mean what like what is the process of
developing uh this kind of treatment yeah so the the challenge is interesting because um it's been a
tough one to you know there's sort of two reasons it's been tough one is that the pancreas is
sort of deep in your abdomen and so you tend not to for that and some other reasons it tends not
to get discovered until it's pretty far advanced um but they have
known for a long time, you know, cancer is usually, you know, there's some kind of mutation that causes
your cells to divide uncontrollably and it grows and that's what cancer is. We have known for a long
time what the mutation was that was causing pancreatic cancer, something called a K-R-A-S.
And the problem was, if you talk to scientists, I'm not a scientist, I always put that in there
when I'm having these discussions, but if you talk to the scientists like I did, what they will tell
you is that this gene had a kind of slippery, smooth surface on it, basically, is the way they
would describe it. The thing is, nowadays, you know, we've always had chemotherapy, but the more advanced
therapies that we're really making progress with are these targeted therapies. And the way they typically
work is you send in, you know, you have to send in some kind of drug that can really address
the mutation. But you have to attach to it somehow. So you need like a hook or an indentation.
And this gene did not have one. But about 15 so years ago, some researchers, including one at UCSF,
found a really small pocket where you could kind of jam something in there. The National Cancer
Institute said, okay, let's really investigate this because it's actually found in some other cancers as
well. There was this flurry of activity, and that eventually led to this discovery, which was
involved researchers at Dana Farber, at Sloan Kettering in New York, UCLA, some of the other
big leading research institutions in America. Now, if you wind that all back, you listen to the names of the
institutions that just gave you, you know, Dana Farber, which is part of Harvard and Sloan Kettering
in UCLA and the Houston hospitals and the National Cancer Institute.
And you go back further to the basic understandings of how cancer works, the biology,
the genes, which involves things like the human genome project.
And what is the common element there?
Federal research funding.
Federal research funding undergirds all of that.
It is decades of work.
It's this foundation of scientific knowledge we have built.
We have in the United States have long had.
We are distinguished for having the biggest public.
investment in medical research is why we are a world leader in this kind of innovation.
And that's how we got here. And that is, you know, unfortunately, what's now at risk.
I mean, like, how at risk? How much has been cut from these, from these sort of like,
grant tributaries, I guess you would call them. And, and in what's happening in terms of like
the recipients because I've heard
I've heard just
anecdotally of stories of
researchers
I mean I
know one who was working on like an
MRI cancer
work and
he was at a New York
based hospital they got cuts
they were looking like
maybe Europe
maybe somewhere else in the country
and
ultimately somebody else stepped
in and they were able to get some,
um,
uh,
sort of like NGO money,
I guess you'd call it,
or foundation money,
but I imagine there's other people who,
who can't and particularly like,
further upstream from,
uh,
you know,
finding solutions.
Yeah.
So,
I mean,
I think it's useful to think of,
of sort of a sort of three pronged attack,
um,
that has taken place.
And it's,
you know,
the idea that we're attacking medical.
research is itself kind of like I was holding off on asking why in a bit because it is sort of a
fascinating question it is a fascinating and and you know and and there's that's an interesting story about
and that speaks to the times we're in but in terms of how it's happening I mean you see three
different things going on so first of all there is this general bureaucratic interference going on
it started day one they just sort of started freezing different grants putting you know saying
we're not going to put these out until we get a chance to
review them. We're going to complicate the method, the sort of process of applying for these grants.
We are going to lay off tons of people who are responsible to administering them, like just the
bodies who have to process these. It's going to slow everything out. We're going to fire the advisory
boards that sort of weigh in on this. So all of this has made it more difficult. You know,
just the grant money that's out there is just not getting out the door.
And this has starb.
In some cases, it's just held back for a while.
Some cases it's canceled altogether.
But these labs, they need the money, right?
This is how you pay for your researchers, how you pay for your supplies,
you pay the overhead.
So there's that going on.
There is, in addition to that, a sort of more systematic effort
to just change the way grants are given out and to try to put in a new mentality
where any money going at the door for medical research,
has to be approved, and this is actually a proposal, that's now out there. It's like now has been
proposed. It's a rule for consideration formally that any grant money going on has to be, you know,
aligned with the priorities of the administration, which means everything from, you know,
what the administration takes about gender and sexual orientation. And it means thing, you know,
but it could also mean, I don't know, you know, are you a pro, you know, American or anti-American
in there of you. I mean, you have this whole list of things. So you're sort of suggest.
subjecting science to a political test. It's never been subjected to before. And then simultaneous
to that, you have this attack on universities, which we've all seen and read about individual institutions
that they don't like. And you go down the list of universities that have gotten stiffed. And right
top is Harvard, which is affiliated with Dana Farber. And these are the engines of medical innovation
in this country. And it's just mind-boggling the extent to which these places are taking it on the
chin and some are fighting back, some are making deals. And, you know, quietly behind the scene,
there's a lot of work to get some of this money going, say, hey, you don't really want to, like,
starve cancer research and you get someone in Congress who cares about this, maybe a Republican,
bend the air of the White House or OMB, and then they loosen up the spigots a little and the money
gets to a place. You know, the cancer research, like Dana Farber has gotten, you know,
hasn't been as affected as other parts of Harvard, for example. But overall, it's just this assault.
And again, if you wind back that story of that pancreatic cancer drug, it's not just that what
happened at Dana Farber. That made it happen. It's what happened 30 years ago at a university like
UCLA or Harvard or Northwestern or University of Michigan or University of Florida, wherever.
That is the basic scientific research that makes all of this possible. And that is really what's
getting pummeled. I mean, I know, I mean, that last point I think is the one that really
honestly keeps me up at night, not just in the context of this, but so much of what is being done
to the processes of our government, whether it's agencies across the administrative state or
investments in research and whatnot, is stuff that we're not going to feel the implications of
for five or 10 or 15 years. And at that point, like, there's this huge disconnect where the
American public is not going to sort of be able to say, oh, this is because of what the Trump
administration did in their first year when they only wanted to fund non-D-EI cancer research or
whatever that means. Like, uh, or could just mean like, you know, cancers only impact white people,
uh, you know, we're, we're only going to do malanomas, uh, you know, or something. Um, uh, so,
but what is the why? Like, what is the why here? I, you know, I have my theories. I think
they're a little bit eugenicists in the administration, right? I mean, yeah, what, what is, is
that your sense?
I certainly wouldn't preclude that as one of the factors.
You know, I do think there, you know, I, I mean, as always, I'm sure there's a bunch of
things going on here, right, in different parts.
I think this is a called a perfect storm, or if you want to think of it as a Venn diagram
with different things going on and what's in the center, but you have a couple different
strands here, right?
So you have the first you have these sort of classic libertarian, anti-government, government,
government can't do anything right.
We need to sort of, you know, look more to the private sector.
let's just pull back. So you have that as kind of the layer back there, right? Then you have the
anti-woke input, the anti-woke crusade. And, you know, especially with the universities, but even, you know,
inside places like NIH National Institutes of Health where they're funding research, there is a
sense from a lot of people in this administration that these are a bunch of, you know, these are a bunch
of left-wing academics, even in the sciences, they're left-wing academics. And we need,
to sort of burn this whole thing down because this is, you know, this is pushing an agenda,
you know, this is pushing us in a way that we don't know, creating not the kind of society we want.
We have to lose a little medical research on innovation on the short term, medium term,
well, the payoff is worth it because in the end, you know, in their theory, I'm sure they would
say that, you know, all this woke stuff is bad science too. So, you know, there's that element of it.
And then, you know, you have this nexus, which is one part Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one part Trump,
which is, you know, very hostile to the scientific establishment.
And in Trump's case, of course, it's a personal grievance, a lot of it that goes back to, you know, COVID.
And, you know, he blames, you know, the CDC and NIH, you know, in his, in his worldview, you know, they caused the pandemic.
They funded this, you know, they have all these theories, right.
And then, you know, during the pandemic, during his first term, they made him, they made it into a bigger deal than it was.
And they wouldn't, they would undermine him when he was out there talking about hydrochloroquine or Ivermectum or whatever it was he was called, you know, you know,
ultraviolet light, and he's furious. So you have, you know, the grievance part of it. And those come
together. And then you layer on top of that, I think, you know, you would think in a normally well-functioning
administration, you'd have enough of a break on that between the smart career people who then have,
you know, relationships, members of Congress, who would just, you know, tap the brakes on some of this.
So I would say, hey, you know, cancer research historically is very bipartisan, you know, Republicans get
cancer too. I mean, that's not been something that's been a food fight in Congress.
as, you know, maybe argue about the levels here and there, whatever. And I just think there's a level
of incompetence here, you know, epitomized by the sort of DEI purged at the beginning of the
administration where they were, you know, mixing or holding onto or suspending grants, have had the
word diversity in it. Now, I personally think there's really good grounds, all kinds of reasons
to, you know, pay attention to diversity, you know, on the merits. You know, you want to look at
disparate impact, different groups of people for different kinds of drugs. And, you know, if a group is
being impacted disproportionately. I care about that. I want to take care of that group. But even putting
all that aside, I mean, they were knocking out, you know, research. I was talking to Zeke Emanuel.
You may know, he's a former Obama administration, NIH guy, you know, oncologists. And he was telling me,
like, you know, he got a study that was suspended, rejected because it had the word diversity in the
title. What was like age diversity? It was like, you know, looking at the different, you know,
impact. And it was like, as he put, he was like moronic. But that's like the level of sophistication we're
dealing with you. Yeah, they did control.
F on a lot of these things, just looking at a random words.
All of that came out in a lot of the doge stuff.
All right.
Well, I mean, so that's where we're at.
I mean, what is your sense of, like, how many people are leaving?
When you talk to, because I mean, this is the world in which you work, are you hearing
stories of like a significant brain drain?
Are people concerned about it?
Are they hanging out, hanging in with the hopes that, like, maybe something will change in a couple of years?
So I think anecdotal, you know, it's all anecdotal right now.
It's hard to know.
There's definitely some of it.
I mean, you hear stories, people going to Canada, right?
China, this is less NIH world.
This is more the math and science, more the sort of math world.
China has pulled in a couple of really prominent mathematicians, computer scientists, by one of the ironies here, right?
Maga.
I mean, this is one of things I just cannot get over these the extent to which all of this is just handing innovation over to China, which is theoretically the country that MAG is, you know, one of the countries MAG is all about trying to, you know, get ahead up, but whatever.
So there's some of that.
I think, you know, at the end of the day, we'll see the reality is, you know, researchers are human beings, they have homes, whatever, it's hard to move to another country.
Where I really think you're going to see the impact is in the next.
We were just talking about the future.
This is going to be the impact of the young scientists who are not going to be coming in.
They're not hiring.
You know, there were a lot of cuts to something called the Early Career Awards from the National Science Foundation.
And honestly, I don't know.
There was a lot of pushback.
So maybe they'd restored some of them now.
But these are very famous set of grants that are given to PhD students right at the very beginning.
They're like, look, you seem like a really promising talent scholar.
We want to give you money.
This pays for your grad.
school so that basically it reduces the other, you know, the extent to which you have to find other
grants or whatever. It's kind of, it's like, you seem really promising. We're investing in you
as the National Science Foundation as the American people because we think you have a really
good shot at doing something important that will help society someday. And the thing is,
it's been a great bet. I mean, there's an absurdly disproportional number of like Nobel Prize
winners, founders of industry, you know, groundbreaking scientists through that grant program.
And it's been cut. And I mean, it's, it's pennies.
on the dollar in the federal budget.
Not even pennies.
It's pennies on the dollar on the on the rounding error or whatever.
It's a tiny, tiny, you know, pot of money.
And such a payoff.
But, you know, these are grad.
And today these are grad students.
Well, you know, these are the people in 10, 15, 20 years who are going to be the guy
at that conference, at that conference, cancer conference, making that presentation.
And that's the way I think about it is like we're going to lose the next generation of researchers.
And I would imagine, too,
foreign students coming into this country, we've lost a dramatic number of those who wanted to start
their education career and invariably end up staying here and pursuing their research career.
And, you know, this is like one of those things where it's like one out of a hundred people,
maybe it's one out of a thousand, end up finding something that makes the investment in all those
thousand people worth it times a hundred or you know whatever the whatever the algorithm is um yeah that's
i find that terrifying let's move to just one other thing that i know is also um you wrote the book on
uh the uh obamacare fight uh back i guess it was now 15 16 years ago was the fight or maybe more 18
years ago. 16.
16. Well, the fight with you start 18. 18. Yeah. Yeah. You got it. And one of the things it did was
expand Medicaid with a little brief stop at the Supreme Court and subject to Republican
state houses, essentially. The Trump bill, the big, beautiful bill, cut Medicaid,
essentially and did so via the imposition of work requirements, which we know from, I think it's Georgia,
ran an experiment on this, end up costing more to the state and kicking people off who are
actually eligible. It really is just a way of calling the, not even calling, like shrinking the ranks
of Medicaid recipients, and then some type of hope in the future that it's going to save money,
even though it's unclear that those savings will ever come. It really just seems like we don't
want people on Medicaid, and if it costs us more to keep them off, that's what we'll do.
They're shrinking it even more. Tell us by what mechanism.
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, look, the work requirements, we can have this to be, you know,
obviously there's a debate to be had whether we should or should not have a work requirement.
requirement and what it means to have universal coverage. But let's put all that aside.
You know, what they, you know, they did impose this work requirement. As you say, it's been
tried in Georgia, also really tried in Arkansas. The Arkansas version was even closer to what they're
trying to do now. And the finding was that lots of people lost their insurance, even though
they were satisfying the work requirements. They had hit the conditions. And the reason is that
you make the paperwork and the bureaucracy so complex that people can't get through it. And
Of course, if you know anything about Medicaid and I think about healthcare, you know,
these are people who are a lot of them are really struggling with chronic health conditions.
They may be struggling with mental health, mental illness.
So, and they may not have good access to technology.
They may not have a home.
It's just all the, everything, every factor that could make it hard to sort of just comply and meet the requirements.
You have to get the paperwork from you're juggling 10 different jobs.
You got to get the paperwork.
It is, it is designed.
And I do think this is true.
I mean, is in many cases designed to make it difficult to stay on the program.
Now, Georgia did actually spend it.
It was so complicated in Georgia they didn't get anyone to sign up, and that's why it's costing so much.
I think in Arkansas, they probably did save money.
You do save money because at the end of the day, you're keeping people out of health care.
Now what the Trump administration has done, they said they've written the rules.
Because, you know, you pass a law, say, it's got to look like this,
so then whoever's in power has to write the rules for how this gets implemented.
And they have really kind of pushed hard on the lever to make it much,
harder to satisfy the work requirement.
There's been particular, just as an example, the law says if you are medically frail,
then this should not apply to you.
And that's supposed to, you know, when this was being debated, you know, there was an
argument about exactly what do you mean by medically frail.
So obviously, if you're medically frail and you can't work, that's part of the equation
here because you're not, you were supposed to, in theory at least, if you talk to the defenders
of this, they all said, look, if you can't work, obviously we don't think you should have to
if you truly cannot have a disability or something like that.
But then in addition, there was some concern that, like, look, you know, people, because
recognizing it is so hard to stay on this program with all this extra paperwork, we want to be
really careful.
You know, there are certain people who they have conditions.
They really need that medication constantly.
They fall out of insurance once, you know, they lose their ability to pay for their drugs
for like a month or two.
They're going to be set back.
And then they're going to be in real trouble.
So you think of, like, someone taking HIV drugs, right?
Or someone, you know, who has diabetes or a cancer.
or drug. And the administration has made it very clear that, you know, the assumption, there was a lot of
thinking that those conditions would just trigger the medical frailty. Now you have to show, not only do you
have those conditions, but they are keeping you from working. And there's all kinds of confusion
over how this is going to get done. It sounds like, you know, basically we're going to have a system
of doctor notes, you know, get your doctors. And doctors aren't, you know, no one has sat aside and
train the medical profession of how to write a kind of who's able to work and who isn't able to work.
And they're going to be worried about, like, wait, if I say, you know, it's all under penalty of perjury.
So if I write a note for someone and I, whatever, am I going to get in trouble?
And it's just, it's a mess.
And you can see the system just being rigged in every possible way to keep people off this program.
And that's the way they look at it.
I mean, that is the mentality of the bill, the mentality of the Trump administration, is that too many people on Medicaid, it should be a last resort.
And frankly, I think that they feel like if we're going to have to err on one side or the other, we'd rather too few people.
have this than too many, which is the opposite as what we've had in the past, you know,
which was, look, people need health care. If you're, if you're poor, you need health care.
You know, we don't need to get into the details of why you need it or why you don't.
We want to have a universal health care program. Medicaid's there. Let's get it to you.
And, you know, we'll worry, you know, we'll worry on the back end if some people, you know,
fall through the cracks and aren't eligible or something. And that's just, we've gone 180 to the mentality.
And this is not the point. But with the Arkansas,
saw experiment.
There's direct savings in the context of Medicaid, but then you have a bunch of people who have
no health insurance, and a certain percentage of those are going to get sick, and they're
going to show up at the hospital, and somebody's going to pay for it.
So this is really just about sort of like, again, a hidden, it's externalizing the cost,
I guess, from Medicaid.
It's really just a hidden cost that is just sort of.
sort of buried and maybe delivered through private health insurance or medical provider fees,
right? I mean, somewhere, somebody's eating the cost of this.
Yes, yes. And absolutely. And before I was talking about the accounting, we were, you know,
that's what I was thinking of the actual budget line CBO costs on Medicaid. There is a broader cost
to society. And it's, you know, we can count it up as, you know, you don't get taken care of.
Now you have something worse. You show up at the emergency room where it's expensive.
of now you have more likely to have a chronic disease.
And of course, there's a productivity element to this, too, right?
I mean, people who get unhealthy are going to be even less likely to work.
Now, they're, you know, not only they're going to more likely to get sicker, they're probably
more likely to depend on, you know, you're going to need, you know, other forms of assistance.
And meanwhile, they're not working.
They're not generating income.
They're probably, you know, if they have families, they don't have stable homes, that's going to affect their kids.
It's going to work generationally.
I mean, we know this as, you know, if I could change.
change one thing about this debate. Well, I change a lot of things about this debate. But I think one
important thing to change is it would be nice to see programs like Medicaid or health insurance
in general as an investment, you know, as an investment in people, as an investment in enabling
them to compete. I mean, and that's what's so ironic because this is supposed to be about work.
But, you know, keeping people healthy means they are more likely to work. It means they are more likely
to be productive. And, you know, that's got economic value. It's got, you know, it's got, you know,
People want to be productive.
Yes, I just don't know if that's sincerely what it's about when it comes to like work.
You know what I mean?
I just think that it's a let me ask you this.
Just because you have worked so long in this space, have you seen a change amongst the sort of like advocacy class, the policy class, when they see something like this, right?
Because the whole thing about Obamacare was once everybody's in the bucket, as it were,
I think I heard someone describe it.
Everybody's going to get in the barrel and then we'll all go off the cliff at the same time.
Like we've established the Obamacare supposedly like establishing more or less the right to health care.
And it's going to be untouchable.
And then, you know, they tried to reverse it, whatever, 60 votes in the Republican-dominated house in the teens to reverse.
it. Trump famously couldn't reverse it because of McCain. And now they're, they're, they are
reversing it, uh, through legislation in part and through, uh, rulemaking process, kicking, you know,
this is going to be the first year that we have like a reduction in the number of people insured.
Is there a sense in that world, the, where you do a lot of your reporting,
that having a single payer system, which would necessarily be universal, without means testing,
without any of these mechanisms that can be played with and, you know, to kick four million people
off here, or kick five million people off there, or a price out, you know, another five million people
there, is that gaining any sort of like momentum in these space?
as a way of, because this has been that sort of like the pilot, right?
Obamacare was the pilot and it looks like it's not as durable, maybe politically more durable
in some ways, but there's not like this, not watching people go into the streets for 10 million
people lose their health insurance in the course of a year, essentially.
Is there been any change?
That is a really interesting question.
You know, I don't know to what extent the people who work on health care are, I think right now,
kind of for understandable reasons, the short-term focus is on these midterms coming up.
I think there's a sense that politically this is an albatross for the Republicans, right?
And I think that is.
I do think.
And it's interesting in a weird way, I think people, even though a lot of people aren't necessarily affected by these Medicaid cuts, at least directly,
I think they hear Medicaid cuts.
they see it as indicative of the Republican Party.
They see their own health insurance getting more expensive.
They have ACA coverage, obviously.
That's a whole other thing.
They lost some money there also.
So I think politically, this is something that Democrats are going to hit.
Already, I'm seeing it all over in all the campaigns.
I mean, this is big front of their campaigns.
And I think it's effective, too.
In fact, I think it actually, they're integrating all of that with the message on many.
It integrates nicely with the cutting, you know, medical research.
It's all part of one same message.
These people don't care about your health.
They don't care about you getting health care.
So I think that is where the preoccupation is right now.
I do think there is a bigger conversation to be had.
I'm hesitating because I don't know how much is happening yet.
I do think it will happen soon, which is to what extent do you say, okay, look, we undo these cuts,
which I sure would be day one thing for the Democrats when they got in, most of them at least.
And to what extent do we need to go back to the drawing board?
To what extent do we say this is the path?
We just get back on this path, keep going, push ahead.
maybe create some kind of government plan that anyone can enroll.
And we know this famous public option idea.
Right.
And that's the way to get there because we were so close and we just need to get back on track
and we keep going.
We make the coverage more generous, which is what the Biden administration did.
Or do we need to kind of try to blow the system up?
And that's, look, someone who's been in this for 25 years, I had this debate with myself
all the time because the hard part is tempting to say, let's blow it up.
I mean, on paper, sure.
Hard part is like, you know, how do you get there?
How do you do it?
How do you get the vote?
As a political, as a political question.
Yeah, right, right.
I mean, it seems to me, it's a complex thing.
Before we get there, there has to be an awareness, I think,
or a real genuine understanding that, like,
the Biden administration did expand it.
They made the subsidies more generous.
I mean, regardless of whether you were in favor of that mechanism of delivery,
they did expand it.
But it also was exactly at the, like, it was a switch.
They flicked.
And then the next person comes in.
and flips the switch the other direction. And so there is no long-term solution there. And I guess it's
just a question of like how much of an awareness is there that this is what it is is by having
any type of means testing in some fashion or another, you always have the mechanism to expand
that means test or contract it. And you're just going back and forth like a hamster on a
wheel.
I would also add, I think, the reason why the Medicaid stuff is salient is because a lot of
people confuse it with Medicare.
And I think, like, you're, you know, there's a lot of Americans out there just, they hear
meta.
And to the extent that they're aware that the government is even involved in it, there's a lot
of people who conflate Medicare and Medicaid.
Or the idea that if they're cut in Medicare, Medicaid, why can't they?
Cup Medicare?
I mean, it's not a bad question, right?
I mean, it's a fair question to ask.
You know, look, I mean, on the patch, you know, on the means testing, but I don't know
anyone who follows health care or studies it or cares about it who doesn't, you know,
who would say that what we've got, you know, where we had with, you know, the Affordable
Correct was any better than the third or fourth best solution to the problem, right?
I mean, everyone knew that.
You know, the question is, can you get to the number two or number one?
That's a hard, you know, that's a tough question.
you know, what does it take to get to the number one or number two?
And how do you argue for that?
And, you know, it's funny, I'm here in Michigan, as you may know,
and this is very much part of the issue playing out right now
in our Senate Democratic Senate primary campaign,
which I just actually interviewed all three candidates
and talked to them about this very question.
You get a very different view from the different three.
On that very question of like, you know,
how do we get there in these three different views?
And I think it's a complicated debate.
And it's, you know, I hope Democrats will have that.
debate i think they should and um you know hopefully it's a healthy debate and they get
someplace where they can get something done when you ask mcmorrow about it did she say we can't
have a single-payer system because uh bobby kennedy would be in charge of it
no that was not what she said to me uh we we have tape of her saying that at one point
uh that's what she said that's what she said she was joking people she i heard people say that
She walked it back a little bit by saying that she was joking, but it was sort of a weird answer for that, I thought.
I mean, we're never going to like the people always who are running these things, but making it universal makes it much harder for them to do anything about it.
As we can see now, they're doing it with the ACA and Medicaid.
Jonathan Cohn, always a pleasure.
Thanks, man.
we'll put a link to your piece.
The cancer research machine,
Trump is gutting,
just delivered a big breakthrough.
Thanks so much.
I really appreciate it.
Hey, thanks for having me on.
All right, folks.
We're going to take quick break.
Head into the fun half,
talk about how the Knicks are really just crapping
all over their fans,
but letting Donald Trump come in.
Yeah, really.
We could talk about that.
We could talk about James Dolan.
I would love nothing more.
than to talk about James Dolan.
Convenient scapegoat.
Anyways.
Tell that to Zoran.
Tell that to Zoran.
You know, there's going to be a viewing party in Brian Park.
Where is Matt?
Is he in the bathroom?
I need some backup here.
I don't want to be with these two Boston idiots talking about the Knicks tonight.
I got news for you.
I know who Matt's rooting for.
No, I know who Matt's rooting for.
He's coming back now.
I need you, Matt, as backup in this.
You're rooting for.
the Knicks, right?
100%.
Thank God!
Change that left reckoning logo.
Yeah.
No, Carl Anthony Town's supremacy.
I mean, David's from Texas, so I'm sure he's going for San Antonio, but yeah,
I know I'm definitely going for the Knicks.
Somebody's just being diplomatic.
Folks, it's your support.
No.
Not really my thing.
Folks, it's your support that makes.
the show possible. You can become a member at join the majority report.com when you do,
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We definitely break a thousand on a regular basis.
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So join the Majority Report.com.
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Majority, get 10% off. Matt,
what's happening in the Matt Leckian?
Media universe that is
supportive of San Antonio.
No, it's
more than the next.
Tomorrow
on left reckoning, if you are
a Harlem resident, particularly
in District 70, it is time to
lock in for Conrad Blackburn, who's
for state assembly.
We're having him on left reckoning
talk about co-op housing,
talking about if he's a Pambondi plant.
Like a right-wing smear
his event because he had an internship
in Florida AG's office like years ago.
So that means he's like working for Bobby.
Conrad Blackburn,
who is a Kaffirwe-aware and socialist
in Harlem.
So it's funny when like the center
starts to attack people from the left
like that.
But yeah, he's a great candidate
and people in Holland need to vote for him.
district 70. So we have them on left reckoning tomorrow.
Quick break. Fun half.
You are in for it.
All right, folks. 646-257.
39-20. See you in the fun.
Oh, no.
Who sent us this?
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Just want to degrade the white man.
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Snowflakes has what?
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Yeah, or a couple of them.
Just put them in rotation.
DJ Denner.
Well, the problem with those is they're like 45 seconds long,
so I don't know if they're enough for the brakes.
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You see white people doing drugs that look worse than normal white people,
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Snowflakes says what.
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What?
What?
What?
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A hell of a lot of bank.
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Okay.
I'm making stupid money.
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All lives matter.
Have you tried doing an impression on a college campus?
I think that there's no reason why reasonable people across the divide can't all agree with this.
Psych?
And the alpha males are back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back.
And the Africans are black, black, black, black, African.
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When you see Donald Trump out there, doesn't a little party you think that America deserves to be taken over by Jeh
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Can't knock the hustle.
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Things I do for the bigger game plan.
By the way, it's my birthday.
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I have a thought experiment for you.
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Africa's are black, black.
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Black. Africa's.
The price of plastic.
Pass you.
Pass you, pass, pass you, pass.
