The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 2.14 Trump Red Scare 2.0 Fears Are Getting Worse & These Greedy Billionaires Are About to Kill Medicare

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Subscribe for New shows every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday @ 6pm ET/3pm PST & watch more here: https://youtu.be/7727A-qs3H4?si=Kl9x570McxKS6zxj&list=PLHcsGizlfLMWpSg7i0b9wnUyEZWI-25N3&index=1&t Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/phil to get 50% off your first order of Sundays for Dogs!  Use code “PHIL” for $20 OFF your first SeatGeek order & returning buyers use code “PDS” for $10 off AND your chance at weekly $500 prizes! https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/PHIL https://BeautifulBastard.com Get yourself some of our new shirts, crews, and hoodies! copy pasting old ones will lead to an increase of sales and codes being pushed that are no longer active  – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - A Look at the Last Time a President Purged the Bureaucracy 08:07 - Sponsored by Sundays for Dogs 09:07 - Billionaires’ Successes in Avoiding Medicare Taxes Could Kill the Program 15:44 - The Last Election Cycle Cost $20 Billion, Hitting Records Dark money deep dive: https://youtu.be/d4unF_Tqz4Y?si=83vpYmslos143a6E&t=922  ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Chris Tolve, Star Pralle, Jared Paolino  Associate Producer on Red Scare: Lili Stenn Associate Producer on Medicare: Chris Tolve Associate Producer on Election Spending: Lili Stenn ———————————— For more Philip DeFranco: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-philip-defranco-show/id1278424954 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ESemquRbz6f8XLVywdZ2V Twitter:   https://x.com/PhillyD Instagram:   https://instagram.com/PhillyDeFranco Newsletter: https://www.dailydip.co TikTok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@philipdefranco?lang=en ———————————— #DeFranco #DonaldTrump #ElonMusk ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Is Trump's federal purge the beginning of a Red Scare 2.0? And if so, what are the long-term risks? Wealthy investors and billionaires are exploiting loopholes that are screwing over Medicare to the point that it could die. We need to talk about the over $20 billion new state of play when it comes to money, politics, and elections in the U.S. We're talking about all that today on your brand new Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news starting with this. Today is the first President's Day since Donald Trump took office for the second time. And at around just a month in, he has already implemented countless policies

that will define his legacy and change the landscape of the American political system forever. Especially when it comes to the administrative state and Trump's ongoing efforts alongside Elon Musk to dismantle American bureaucracy as we know it. But a big thing with looking at news now and looking forward is also taking a look back. Because notably, this is not the first time a president has conducted a mass purge of the bureaucracy. It actually happened during the Red Scare as well, which is also why we've seen countless comparisons between the McCarthy era and what we're seeing now. And so with it being President's Day, I wanted to take a closer look at the past and what it might be able to tell us about the future.

Because in the 1946 midterm elections, Republicans captured both the House and Senate after running campaigns centered on anti-communist attacks. With one of the most notable among their ranks being Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who would of course go on to be the main perpetrator of the Red Scare. And under pressure to act, the following year,

President Harry Truman signed what became known as the Loyalty Order, which directed the Civil Service Commission to screen the background of every federal employee for evidence of disloyalty. And those screenings, I mean, they covered everything, including records across the government, police departments, past employers,

and even college transcripts. With Truman also instructing his attorney general to come up with a list of what he said were subversive organizations, that would be a huge red flag for anyone found to have been a current or former member. And if anything came up in those screenings, the FBI would then lead a full-fledged investigation

into the person's life with any possible damaging information going into a file that would be given to the department to have been a current or former member. And if anything came up in those screenings, the FBI would then lead a full fledged investigation into the person's life with any possible damaging information going into a file that would be given to the department that they worked for. And while hypothetically, the department was given the ability to decide what to do with the employees, including discipline or reassignment, most people who reached that point in those probes,

they lost their jobs. With seeing examples like a vet who lost both his legs in World War II being fired from the Veterans Administration because he had been a member of the Socialist Workers Party, an anti-Stalinist organization that had been put on the subversives list. Also other employees who had been involved in pro-labor activities faced invasive probes,

as did dozens of black workers who were involved in civil rights organizations. Gay and lesbian employees were also probed and purged as part of a parallel campaign that became known as the Lavender Scare, which targeted homosexuals because they were believed to be weak security threats and communist sympathizers. And beyond that, these inquiries targeted top experts

on US foreign policy with China, but a group of academics and foreign service officers known as the China hands. And in the late 40s, those experts cautioned the US from getting too deeply involved in the Chinese civil war. With the morning that Mao's victory was inevitable and the US should instead exploit fissures between him and Russia to counter communist forces

in the region. And in hindsight, that was probably good advice, but at the time it was taken as evidence that they were soft on communism and part of a pro communist conspiracy in the region. And in hindsight, that was probably good advice, but at the time it was taken as evidence that they were soft on communism and part of a pro-communist conspiracy within the State Department, so members of the group were purged. But it didn't stop there, right?

When Dwight Eisenhower took office in January of 1953, it marked the first Republican elected president in two decades, and his administration continued these efforts in full force. With the saying, Eisenhower signing an executive order mere months after taking office, that launched an even more extensive campaign to investigate thousands of potential threats in the government. And again,

we saw many gay employees being targeted as part of the order, which defined threats to national security as constituting, quote, any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, sexual perversion. And so all in all, historians have estimated that between 1947 and 1956, over 5 million federal workers were screened with a total of 2,700 getting fired and 12,000 resigning. But, and this is a huge key takeaway, not a single spy was ever discovered as a result of either Truman or Eisenhower's efforts.

Now with all that, defenders of the effort argued that it was successful in deterring potential subversives from joining the government. But there, you have many historians saying that it also likely discouraged many talented people from joining. And that while also forcing out experts in fields who were crucial to shaping foreign policy as it related to communist countries and forces at the time. In fact,

according to Clay Rison, a journalist who has expertise in the time period, these purges did nothing to actually improve America's security. If anything, they actually had the opposite effect. With him writing that the US effectively kneecapped itself by removing thousands of valuable employees and forcing those who remained into unhappy conformity at a time of deep geopolitical turmoil. As well as noting that while it's impossible to know exactly how big of an impact these purges had, the cost, quote, was clearly enormous and played out not just over the subsequent years,

but over decades and going on to explain. For instance, had expertise not been purged and dissent not been punished so severely across the government during the early 1950s, wiser heads might well have raised the right objections to America's short-sighted anti-communism in East Asia, above all, its rush to intervene in Vietnam. With Risen then asking the key question at hand here,

which is, does the Trump administration run the same risk of short-sightedness today? That becomes especially concerning given the many parallels between the Red Scare and what we're seeing now. But as many experts and historians have argued, DEI has effectively become a stand-in for communism as a scapegoat used to purge government workers

and shutter entire offices, in many cases with questionable legality. This is there also even more explicit one-to-one comparisons between then and now. Right, while the Red Scare largely petered out eventually, there has always been a significant faction of the American right that continues to weaponize allegations of communism and socialism as scare tactics

or to rile up their bases. You know, this is something that we've seen increasingly more and more with the rise of Trumpism and the growing polarization between left and right over the last decade or so. I mean, you can hardly go on X without seeing certain Republicans and Elon Musk decrying some policy as socialist or DEI.

And that's something that's even been emulated in official government directives. In the memo that attempted to freeze federal spending, the Trump administration explicitly said that it was trying to stop, quote, the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, among other things. But beyond the obvious parallels, there are also some very notable differences between now and then that make the stakes that it was trying to stop, quote, "'the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity,' among other things."

But beyond the obvious parallels, there are also some very notable differences between now and then that make the stakes arguably even higher. And as Rison points out, one important difference is that loyalty then meant loyalty to the United States. Today, Trump demands loyalty to himself and his agenda. And in addition to getting rid of anyone

who threatens his agenda, Trump is also installing his own loyalists to run government agencies. But they're seeing other experts here saying that this is an explicit attempt to expand the powers of the presidency by disrupting nonpartisan civil servants who provide essential checks on those powers

and replacing them with yes-men who will follow any orders. We're seeing people like Donald Kettle, for example, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service, arguing that Trump's purges are, quote, focus much more on shifting the balance of power than they are on improving the results of government. And saying there that taken together,

Trump is demonstrating a blunt assertion of presidential authority, which the administration believes sits above everything else. And so as a result, experts say that the impacts of these efforts, they're gonna go far beyond national security concerns and geopolitical threats.

In addition to potentially undermining democracy by centralizing power in the presidency, these efforts will also hamper our ability to respond to any future crisis, be it a pandemic, a natural disaster, a terror attack, anything, period. As Roger Karma, a staff writer at The Atlantic, explained in a recent article, Trump is committed to dismantling the federal bureaucracy as we know it, and with it, the government's capacity to handle the next crisis. Like an individual who chooses to forego health or fire insurance, most Americans won't feel the negative

impact of this effort as long as everything in the world runs smoothly. But with that saying, what happens when the next crisis strikes is another story altogether. With Karma then specifically using COVID as an example, arguing that the few successes that the U.S. had in addressing the pandemic was all thanks to bureaucrats with area-specific expertise who, quote, helps limit the damage often despite Trump's own negligence and attempts to interfere, and going on to say, these are exactly the sorts of experienced public servants whom Trump is trying to push out of government. With him then arguing that if Trump succeeds and pushes out career experts

while installing his loyalists, we could be in a world of trouble when he actually has to face a crisis, right? Imagine if Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, had been in charge of the nation's public health apparatus and surrounded not by scientific experts, but by hardcore Trumpists.

But I'm asking, how many more Americans would have died? And all of this is karma and other experts say that the steps that Trump is taking now to gut the American bureaucracy, it's gonna have a long lasting impact that's gonna go far beyond just the next four years. And with that, you know, looking at history, the impacts of the red scare purges,

they lasted for decades. With what Trump is doing now, you have many saying, that's going to surpass the red scare purges in scale. With Karma here essentially arguing that we won't notice until it's too late. Writing at first, most people won't notice an agency gutted here or a program slashed there, but saying those cuts will make disaster more likely. And when that disaster strikes, whether during Trump's presidency or his successors, the government will be far less

capable of handling it. And adding here, what we don't know is how bad that crisis will be and whether Trump will still be in office to face the consequences. But on that uplifting note, that is where I'm going to end this one. Though, of course, with that, I do want to pass the question off to you of, you know, what are your thoughts here? You see what's going on now versus a lot of what we just talked about as being a one-to-one comparison, being parallel or a more extreme version, or no, the reaction to what we're seeing now, it's overblown. Any and all thoughts, takes, reactions, I'd love to hear from you in those comments down below. And then, you know, it's more news in just a moment, but you know, as our dogs age, what a transition. As our dogs age,

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let me first start by grossly oversimplifying the American economy for a second. With that being that most income earners can roughly be split into two classes. Those who earn a living by working for a wage or a salary, and those who primarily live off of interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, royalties, and other forms of passive income from investments. And generally speaking, that first group tends to be

much less wealthy than the second. Yet for a very long time, Medicare Part A was funded almost entirely by taxing the first group, but not the second. Or because Medicare Part A, which mainly covers inpatient hospital care for tens of millions of Americans, it nearly gets all of its funding from the payroll tax. With that shaving off 2.9% of a worker's paycheck

or 3.8% above a certain income level, say $250,000 for a married couple. But if you were an investor in the company employing that worker, the income that you raked in from your investments It wouldn't fall under that tax And so in 2010 the Democrats in Congress They finally decided to even the playing field a little bit between the rich and the poor with then President Obama signing an amendment

To the Affordable Care Act that created a brand new tax meant to catch those passive income earners It's called the net investment income tax and just like the payroll tax It's objected married couples earning more than two hundred fifty thousand000 a year in investment income to a 3.8% tax. With both then contributing to the Medicare Part A trust fund that keeps tens of millions of people on health insurance. At least, that is how it's supposed to work in theory. But in practice, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that things are a little bit different. Because while they were negotiating the bill, Democrats inserted a loophole for so-called active business owners. Basically, people who are not only invested in a business, but actively involved in the day-to-day operations.

With that meant to exempt small business owners, you know, mom and pop shops, main street grocers, self-employed professionals and the like. Then that also meant that if the owners of enormous corporations could make an argument, however flimsy that they were also active, then they may not have to pay the tax. And that's even if the corporation they're invested in

is a financial institution whose job is to invest in other entities. So to put it simply, they are actively involved in a business making passive income. And in fact here, when ProPublica combed through reams of IRS data, they found numerous examples of wealthy people doing this. With this including people like

the former professional poker player, current billionaire, TikTok investor, GOP mega donor, and 23rd richest man on earth, Jeff Yes. Right, because you see, he's also the co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a giant investment firm that uses computers to get an edge of mere microseconds over other securities traders. Or, to put it in other words, he is exactly the kind of person that Congress had in mind

when they designed the net investment income tax in 2010. Yet, from 2013, when the tax went into effect, through 2018, Yass reportedly excluded $8.5 of the $9 billion he made in capital gains from the tax. Was that reportedly saving him more than $300 million that would have otherwise gone towards people's health insurance? And notably, right, that's just him. ProPublica also noted two of his firm's partners who reportedly saved a combined $120 million the same way. Also, here I will say that is just his capital gains, right? He reportedly excluded hundreds of millions of dollars in dividends and interest from the tax as well.

What we saw is that when ProPublica put these numbers in front of actual tax experts, the outlets said that they struggled to explain how Yass and his partners could justify not paying the tax. In fact, these experts reportedly told them that they couldn't think of a legitimate reason why any financiers making huge profits would be exempt from the tax. But the active business owner thing isn't the only loophole written into the law. There's also an exemption for capital gains made from the sale of pass-through businesses, which again, primarily means smaller firms, but there are some huge ones

that take advantage of the law. And so here, for example, Donald Sterling, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $12.5 million in 1981, and then sold the NBA team for $2 billion in 2014, meaning that nearly all of that money was taxable capital gain. While he paid income taxes on it,

reportedly he did not pay the net investment income tax, saving him around $70 million that of course, once again, would have gone into the healthcare system. With ProPublica then also finding other similar cases where four fossil fuel billionaires each saved between 45 and $87 million in taxes after they sold off portions of their empires. And all in all, the outlet here identified 17 billionaires

who collectively saved about $1.3 billion in taxes using these loopholes over six years. But then you also have to consider that as just the top sliver of investors, right? The numbers get way bigger when you include non-billionaires as well, right? And there, according to ProPublica, closing the loopholes would increase tax revenue by an estimated $250 billion

over a decade. Now with that, you know, some people are gonna go, well, if the legal arguments that these rich folks are using to justify their exemption from the law are absurd, why is nothing happening? Right, why aren't we seeing the legality here tested out in court? Well, in there, you have reports saying,

well, the IRS is just simply too underfunded and understaffed to pursue audits of all these investors and go to war with their teams of lawyers. Now with that, Biden's Inflation Reduction Act sought to restore some of the agency's teeth by giving it more money to hire thousands of new agents. But with now Donald Trump in the White House and Republican Congress backing him,

you have people saying it is gonna go the complete other way, which some say could then ultimately put the financial solvency of Medicare in jeopardy. Because the trust fund that Medicare Part A draws from only contains so much money. And when expenses start to outstrip revenues, which is projected to happen by 2030,

the program has to dip into those reserves. And then if that keeps up year after year and the reserves run dry, which is projected to happen in 2036, Medicare won't be able to pay out people's full benefits. And so by not paying the net investment income tax, these wealthy investors aren't just straining the government's budget, but they are actively speeding up Medicare's decline. And the thing is, it appears it wouldn't even take all that much to bring the Part A trust fund back into balance over the long term. In fact, according to Medicare trustees who make these projections, simply raising the payroll tax from 2.9% to 3.25%, or cutting expenses by 8% would do the trick.

And that's without even touching the net investment income tax or a host of other economic factors that influence the program's revenues and expenses. But what I will say here is that instead of doing that, what we're seeing is that Trump has proposed policies that critics say would dramatically tighten the financial squeeze on Medicare

and other entitlement programs. Most notably here, we're talking about eliminating the tax on social security benefits that all but the poorest recipients pay, which according to the nonpartisan committee for a responsible federal budget would cut $1.6 trillion from social security and Medicare over nearly a decade.

If that estimate is correct, Medicare would run out of money in 2030, six years ahead of current projections. And that's also without considering the potential impact of any of Donald Trump's other proposals, things like ending taxes on tips and overtime, yanking up those tariffs, and deporting undocumented immigrants

who pay into the system but don't receive benefits back. All of which, according to Forbes, would add approximately $2.3 trillion to Social Security's deficit and deplete its fund by 2031. But even assuming Medicare or Social Security become insolvent, that wouldn't make them unsalvageable. Right, Congress could still restore their balance sheets or just take preventative action

before they ever get to that point. And this is both programs are extremely popular among the general public, even with Republicans. So it's possible that if people losing their benefits becomes a real near-term prospect, the political pressure might become too great for politicians to let it happen, which is partly why,

even though Medicare has come within a decade of insolvency many times since the 1990s, the government's consistently kept it afloat. But that doesn't mean that they can't chip away at its foundation as they already have been for just as long. And so amidst all the other headline grabbing chaos and political drama we may or may not see

over the next several years, you may wanna keep your eyes peeled for this issue. And then, you know, since it's President's Day, I wanted to also share with y'all a piece that I recorded during our holiday break that I never actually got around to putting out. But because it's about just how much money was dropped on last year's election,

I think it's very important to talk about on a day like today. Especially as we think about future elections, future Congress people, and future presidents. We all know that elections in America are very expensive, but the details are insane. Starting with the top surface level fact that the 2023-2024 election cycle

costs more than $20 billion. Right, that is the combined total that was spent on both federal and state elections, according to a new analysis by the campaign finance tracking nonprofit, Open Secrets. And regardless of how you feel about the outcome of the presidential election or really any of the races,

this is an astronomical number, and one that shattered many records. But also with everything now said and done, I think it's important to take a deeper look at those numbers and who the money came from, where it was spent, how it influenced various contests, and the numerous records that were broken. So let's break it down.

Starting with first, the nonprofit finding of the vast majority of money that was poured into the election was spent on federal races, which raked in around $16 billion. Then the other $4 billion being raised by state candidates, party committees, and ballot measure committees in all 50 states. But this also, as big money does not always mean big wins.

I mean, just look at the presidential race. Kamala Harris's campaign and outside groups outraised Donald Trump by hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, according to the most recent Federal Elections Commission filings, Harris's campaign raised over a billion dollars through mid-October, and that's almost three times the nearly 382 million that Trump's campaign raised in the same period. Then also, very notably, that was just the money being brought in by the campaigns. The dollar amounts raised by groups outside the campaigns, like Super PACs, were actually much closer. With outside groups supporting Trump

or attacking his opponents, reporting about a billion dollars in spending, while groups that were backing Harris or opposing Trump reported spending 1.05 billion. Then also beyond that, there was a significant discrepancy between Trump and Harris when it came to donations from the ultra rich mega donors

that have an oversized influence on our elections. Right there, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump got way more of those donations. In fact, around 44% of all the money raised to support Trump came from just 10 individual donors. Whereas comparatively, the top 10 donors to elect Harris only made up around 8% of total contributions, both to her campaign and outside groups.

With Harris pulling in around $126 million from her top 10 donors, which is actually less than Donald Trump got from his biggest donor alone. But what's also wild is that the total donations million from her top 10 donors, which is actually less than Donald Trump got from his biggest donor alone. But what's also wild is that the total donations that Trump got from mega donors, it could actually be even bigger as the final disclosures are filed with the FEC.

And that's already something we're seeing with recent filings from December showing that Elon Musk actually contributed way more money to elect Donald Trump than previously known. With it being revealed that Elon Musk spent $260 million on outside groups for Trump, which would mean that Elon Musk single-handedly accounted for more than a quarter of all the money outside groups spent

getting Trump elected, which is just objectively a fucking wild figure. It's also notably more than double the 118 million open secrets had recorded before this most recent disclosure. With that new data officially making Musk the single biggest individual donor in the 2024 election cycle by a long shot.

But again, it wasn't just the presidential election that saw enormous amounts of money in circulation. Spending on federal elections as a whole also broke several already ridiculous records as billions of dollars were poured into the hotly contested House and Senate races that helped give Republicans narrow majorities in both chambers. I mean, one of the records that was broken was the totally unprecedented $4.5 billion spent by PACs and other independent groups outside individual candidate campaigns. And when I say totally unprecedented, I mean, that is over $1 billion more than the previous record of 3.3 billion in 2020.

And again, these are numbers that could also grow as the final filings roll in. Now with that, as far as how that insane amount of money was spent, the analysis found that the bulk of it went to independent expenditures, right, which are the funds that outside groups spend advocating for candidates with things like constant ads that you'd see on TV or the bajillion mailers

that you'd get in your mailbox. And the reason why so much was spent on independent expenditures is because there is no cap on the amount of money that individual donors, organizations, unions, and other groups can give to those efforts. Now with that, as far as the breakdown here along party lines, conservative PACs outspent liberal ones

by 2.2 billion to 1.7 billion, though the single biggest spender among outside groups was actually the Democratic hybrid PAC, Future Forward USA, which spent $517 million. Though most of that was channeled to the presidential race, not congressional contests. And this, while on the conservative side, their biggest outside spender

was the Make America Great Again Inc. PAC, which spent over $364 million on Trump. And kind of an interesting aside here, the majority of MAGA PAC money, over $251 million, that was spent on attack ads opposing Harris and Biden, with just a quarter of that amount, around $58 million, actually going to support Trump. But on the note of outside spending at large,

it wasn't just the presidential candidates that sucked up a disproportionate amount of those funds. Right, of the $2 billion these groups put towards congressional races, more than a quarter of that went to just three Senate elections. With over $714 million going to the seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Montana, all of which were flipped by Republicans.

But then also, unprecedented outside spending, it's not the only wild record that was broken in this cycle. We also saw a historic amount of dark money contributions, which is when money is spent to influence elections, but the source of that funding is kept secret. Because while super PACs are required to disclose their donors,

certain kinds of nonprofits and shell companies, they don't have to. So this essentially creates a loophole where donors will give funds to dark money groups, which then turn around and give those dollars to PACs, allowing the original donors to remain anonymous. And if that sounds familiar, it's because we actually did a whole separate deep dive

on that a little while back. I'll link to it down below. But as we talked about in that story, there has been a massive increase in this kind of spending year after year since the 2010 Citizens United rule, because that reversed centuries of campaign finance rules and paved the way for corporate interests to have an outsized role in our elections.

And according to Open Secrets, the 2024 election cycle followed the same trend with dark money contributions topping over a billion dollars for the first time ever, crushing the previous record of $734 million in 2020. And with that, we also saw the continuation of another trend that we talked about in that dark money deep dive, and that is that a large chunk

of these shady contributions actually went to Democrats. Right, and this, despite the fact that people often associate the support for Citizens United and dark money with conservatives in opposition with liberals. In fact, I mean, Harris herself also railed against these groups in the past. And while Open Secrets didn't say

if dark money contributions to Democrats outpaced those of Republicans as they have in the last three election cycles, it did provide some insight. For example, filing showing that super PACs for Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress received more than $250 million from the four main dark money groups

that they're allied with, and saying of that, the majority, 62%, went to Democrats. But also with this, we need to touch on spending in state elections also hitting historic highs. For example, Open Secrets projecting that dollars put into state contest will hit a record of $4.6 billion. And specifically, they predicted that once all is said

and done, state level candidates will have raised $2.6 billion for the 2024 cycle, which is a notable 22% increase from 2020. Though unlike some of the federal trends, Republican candidates are expected to out-raise Democrats by 1.3 billion to 1.1 billion. Which is also interesting because it marks a reversal from 2020 when Democrats raised more than GOP candidates.

So that said, it's also not uncommon for the parties to take turns topping each other in overall funds. But what is really stand out and unique about these state numbers is the amount spent on ballot measures. With the seeing that Open Secrets is estimating that the total dollar figure across all 50 states, that that'll reach $1.4 billion.

And unsurprisingly here, a big chunk of that was spent on abortion and reproductive rights measures, which were actually on the ballot in 10 states. And according to the nonprofit, as of November 1st, abortion measures made up almost a third of all money raised by ballot measure committees this cycle. The committee is supporting abortion access, massively outraising those opposed to it by $305 million to $96 million. But then also beyond abortion, contributions both for and against various initiatives broke several spending records in different states. With actually the most expensive ballot initiative

of the entire election cycle being the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida. With that racking up over $179 million, which is literally more than every other marijuana-related measure combined. And while $153 million of that money was spent by the committee supporting legalization, the measure failed to pass.

So that also because it needed more than a majority vote. If Florida requires their ballot initiatives to get 60% of the vote to pass, which is also why we saw the state's abortion protection measure failing as well. And so with all that, as we're in the aftermath, very interesting information about the state of our kind of political economy

and the enormous role that money plays in it. But also I think it's important to look at these things because it helps us kind of look towards the trends of what we may see in the upcoming midterms and the elections after. With that, my friends, is the end of your Monday dive into the news. And remember, while today's show is pre-shot

because it's President's Day, I got three more shows for you this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific. Thank you for watching. I love your faces, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.