The Young Turks - Feinstein Passes Away

Episode Date: September 30, 2023

Senator Dianne Feinstein dies at 90. Democratic lawmaker blasts Republicans at impeachment inquiry for ignoring that Trump hid classified documents "in the sh*tter." 1.4 million wealthy Americans are evading nearly $66 billion in federal taxes. Florida school district orders removal of all books with gay characters before slightly backing off. HOSTS: Maz Jobrani (@MazJobrani), Rayyvana (@RayyvanaTTV) and Jackson White SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Drop my team! Bexie! Bexie! Drop it! Power panel on the Young Turks, Rayvana, Maz Jobrani and Jackson White.

Guys, thank you so much for joining me on this beautiful Friday. How are you doing? Pretty good, pretty fantastic. He's one thumbs up. I'm two and a half thumbs up. All right, three thumbs up. He won this time. I'll add a couple too, so we can be six thumbs up. And with that, let's jump right into into this first story and the big news that came out this morning is the death of Senator Diane Feinstein. Let's take a look at this video. We lost a giant in the Senate. Senator Diane Feinstein was one of the most amazing people who ever graced the Senate, whoever graced the country. That was Senator Chuck Schumer paying tribute to Diane Feinstein, who passed away

last night at the age of 90 years old. Now, Senator Feinstein had served in the Senate for over 30 years, the longest serving female senator in American history. Her death also leaves an important power vacuum. Her tie-breaking Senate Judiciary Committee seat. Now let's get into some reporting from Slate about what that means for the Democrats. A number of prominent Democrats, including those on the judiciary committee had argued this year against Feinstein resigning on the grounds that Republicans would filibuster her replacement on the committee, deadlocking its membership and limiting Democrats' efforts to process, excuse me, judicial nominations. Continues on, Republicans had already blocked a Democratic request earlier in the year while Feinstein was on a lengthy hiatus

from the Senate to temporarily swap in another Democratic senator to her judiciary seat. So Feinstein returned to Washington from her bout with shingles sooner than may have been medically advisable to serve as that tie-breaking vote in committee on Biden's more partisan nominations. Now, the photographs of Feinstein's early return quickly became infamous, as you all know, and we've shown them many times on the show before there is one of them. But the images were not only an indication of Feinstein's physical and mental decline during her last several years in office, but they were also symbolic of the current state of American politics thanks to the many octogenarians in our government. All of you will remember, Senator Mitch McConnell, locking eyes with the Grim Reaper across the room several times this year so far. Now, multiple reports from inside Feinstein's office state that she was often

confused and unwell towards the end of her term getting where she was or what she was supposed to be doing. But of course, I mean, the woman was 90 years old. Now, we could only speculate whether her refusal to step down was her own decision or pushed on her by others, the party family, people who donate to her campaigns. But either way, it does appear that she was taken advantage of near the end of her life. And it is unfortunate that she did not live out the end of her day's peacefully retired, as you would hope someone at that age is able to do, regardless of their record and who they are. I do want to talk to you guys for a minute about the importance of this judiciary seat that is now going to be left open. Now there won't be, they won't,

Democrats won't have this tie-breaking vote on the committee, which is going to severely hinder the ability of Joe Biden to do what I think is one of the most important jobs of the president appointing judges to the federal bench, something Trump was wildly successful for, something that his success will continue to curve our judicial system for years and years onwards, because these are lifetime appointments. So I think, of course, it's too little too late, but I mean, at age 85, Senator Feinstein probably should not have run for reelection, knowing that obviously she was going to be facing health problems, and just aging in general, when she did hold this very key position in the Senate, but I'll just open up to you guys.

Thoughts on that or anything we mentioned already? Well, this is another argument for term limits. I mean, you take it out of their hands. If she doesn't have to decide or someone doesn't have to push it on her, then we don't end up in this situation. I mean, I felt bad for her because again, I don't know if she wanted to do it, but even if she did want to do it, she wasn't in the right frame of mind to be making that decision. And my grandfather lived to be about 100 years old. We lost count because he came from Iran and we didn't know how old he was. But he was very active right up until the end, but I wouldn't want him to be running the government because no matter how you look at, he was actually a very progressive person as

well, but no matter how you look at it, there's going to be a big difference between the world of today and the world of the past and also as we see, you know, in their mental decline. So it's just another argument for term limits. We have, you know, your Chuck Grassley's, your Mitch McConnell's, even the, you know, Biden and Trump. I mean, it's all not to be ageist, but, you know, everyone's been saying it. It's right there in front of our face. And then the other thing that this brings up as well is this crazy thing of how we keep seeing how, you know, the way the electoral college is set up and the way that every state gets two senators, you end up in this slim. margin where, you know, by the popular vote, there's more Democrats than there are Republicans. So

it's just crazy that by losing one person, all of a sudden we can't have our judges going in. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that you pointed out is, you know, my grandfather lived to be about 96, so almost as old as your father. But as I'm sure you saw, like, you could be as healthy and sturdy. But those last couple of years, you know, When you're up in mid-80s, a couple of years can make a huge difference. You could fall something, you could have a stroke, something very small that otherwise wouldn't be that big of a deal could really tear you down. But I think for me, one of the silver linings, because you always got to find one, especially,

you know, living in today's times. But millennials and Gen Z inevitably, now it's our time to be in managerial positions because a lot of these people, and Gen X, not just the younger ones, but a lot of these people, their time is up, whether they're literally dying or they're like, eh, I'm 80, I'm 75, I don't think I should really run again. So ultimately, whether it be the federal level or local levels of government, it's really, really our time to shine. Simply, if nothing else, because people are dropping dead. You know what I'm saying? So is the cycle of life. And I think that it's important that we take advantage of what we have in front of us. Yeah, especially with

someone like Diane Feinstein, who let's be honest, the writing was on the wall for quite some time that her health was in decline. And you know, senators serve out six year terms. So when you're 85 years old, you know, you would want that not to be, you would like for them not to be considering running for reelection, let alone actually running for reelection. But then of course, you have to face the fact that the voters voted for her at age 85 to remain in that seat. But speaking of that seat, let's turn to what happens next. next, because her passing leaves behind this open Senate seat, which is going to be filled by California Governor Gavin Newsom's appointment. Now, Newsom has previously pledged to fill

Feinstein's seat with a black woman should Feinstein retire early. Obviously, that is not the situation at hand, but the circumstances around it are still the same. He still has to appoint someone. So it is expected that he's going to appoint a black woman. Now, the obvious choice should be Representative Barbara Lee, who is a progressive black woman and has been everyone's sort of assumption of who is going to be appointed. But there is an issue here because Gavin Newsom recently said that he would not appoint anyone currently running for that Senate seat in order to not give them an unfair advantage. And Barbara Lee is running for Diane Feinstein Senate seat. it was announced earlier this year that she would not be running for re-election. Several people have already announced their candidacy for her seat, including, as I mentioned, Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff,

as well as Katie Porter. So, I mean, my opinion on this is I think it should be Barbara Lee. I don't really, I understand the position that you don't want to, you know, influence the results of a Democratic primary. I get that, but I think that especially at times like these, someone who is, competent, someone who has a long history of the most senior individual in from California in Congress. She's the right choice. She is the person who should be put in that seat. What are your guys' thoughts on what Gavin Newsom should do, who should fill the seat, how it should be filled? Well, the way I understand it, once that seat is filled, they're still going to be an election in November. So depending on when that person comes in, they may just have a few months.

But I guess it gives them an advantage in the election. So I kind of see his point. point, but at the same time, you're right. She's highly qualified. I don't know, he could go outside the box. He could be like, how about Wanda Sykes? You know, it's in LA. I don't know. But the good news is that, I mean, I'm hoping that he's able to put someone who's progressive and is someone who can get things done. And it obviously is going to be a vibrant position. You know, again, given how sickly Diane Feinstein was at the end there, hopefully we get someone who is going to push certain progressive agendas. And, and, you know, Barbara Lee, you're right, is probably the right choice. Absolutely. I, you know, I think Barbara Lee would be great. And I'd love to see Katie Porter

run for Senate at some point, you know what I'm saying? I think that there's definitely a good likelihood that that'll happen. But I think what's interesting about this is, well, we all know, Gavin Newsom is a rising star in the Democratic Party. He's almost certainly going to run in 2028. He has a good chance of winning, too, for a variety of reasons. But since, that's the case, he really needs to make some good decisions. He really needs to pay attention to who he's making happy and who he's choosing to make an enemy. So when he said that he's going to put a black woman in that seat, if he doesn't do it, that's going to end up hurting him when he goes and ultimately runs for president, because he's definitely going to do it. I mean, as far as I

can see right now, I don't really see that many other people, not that I don't see anybody else who could run, but who are like kind of primed and ready as he is, especially within the DNC. So I think that he has some tough decisions to make, especially considering, again, he's going to run for president soon. So we'll just have to see. Yeah, he's definitely an ambitious man. I don't think anyone thinks that his political career aspirations are going to end with being the governor of California. But I think you make a really good point about who he's trying to appeal to because several pieces of progressive legislation have been passed to the California Assembly and reached his desk in the past few weeks. And he has vetoed them against what everyone expected of him to do, against what the assembly,

the party expected him to do. He vetoed them. And he's been doing a little bit of a run on right wing media. I don't think that by any stretch of the imagination, Gavin Newsom is a Republican. But he's definitely been appealing to the moderate, to the more conservative elements of his own party. So that does lead me to wonder what he's going to do here with this seat. And I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens and we'll keep you all updated on that front. But with that, let's move into one of the other most pressing stories of today.

Pressing in the fact that it has been an absolute clown show and it's a waste of our taxpayer dollars. But let's talk about the impeachment. As I prepared, I said, what is the crime? Because when you're talking about impeachment, you're talking about high crimes or misdemeanors. And I can't seem to find the crime. And honestly, no one has testified of what crime they believe the president of the United States has committed. But when we start talking about things that look like evidence, they want to act like they blind. They don't know what this is.

These are our national secrets looks like in the to me. One of the more memorable moments to come out of the Republican-led impeachment hearing yesterday was Representative Jasmine Crockett, who's Democrat. If you hadn't guessed by what she was saying from Texas and her awesome take down of Republicans who should obviously be focusing on Trump's crimes instead of trying to fabricate crimes to pin on Joe Biden, or maybe potentially they should be focusing on our impending government shutdown. But no, instead, they're using their resources to do whatever that nonsense was. And she read them perfectly, so I'll let her continue to speak. When we're talking about somebody that's committed high crimes, it's at least indictments.

Let's say 32 counts related to unauthorized retention of national security secrets. Seven counts related to obstructing the investigation. Three false statements. One count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Falsifying business records conspiracy to defraud the United States. Two counts related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings. One count of conspiracy to violate civil rights. 23 counts related to forgery or false document statements,

eight counts related to soliciting, and I could go on because he's got 91 counts pending right now, but I will tell you what the president has been guilty of. He has unfortunately been guilty of loving his child unconditionally, and that is the only evidence that they have brought forward. And honestly, I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as he loves his child. Until they find some evidence, we need to get back to the people's work, which means keeping this government open so that people,

Don't go hungry in the streets of the United States, and I will yield. So that was, you put it really well for your boss, absolutely. It's just a fantastic moment from what was a six hour long initial hearing into the Biden impeachment inquiry. So if you didn't watch it, I respect that, honestly. I watched a good chunk of it and it ruined my day. So, but that was a shining moment from it. And also the fact that it was kind of a disaster for the Republicans.

So let's get into some of this from NPR. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said the panel had uncovered a mountain of evidence. I'm sorry, reading that earlier and just now have made me laugh every single time because just knowing what I know about how little evidence they have. Must be the world's smallest mountain. and claim Biden used his official government role for his family's gain. But Comer and his Republican colleagues didn't provide clear evidence backing up this massive allegation of wrongdoing. And it continues. Among that evidence is thousands of pages of financial records and other information. But little has been publicly presented in the way of

concrete evidence for an impeachable offense by Biden. Now, another, we're going to get a second, Another fantastic moment during this impeachment hearing. The three witnesses for Republicans didn't offer any direct knowledge of wrongdoing either. These are not fact witnesses. They have no firsthand or second hand or any knowledge whatsoever for that matter of any wrongdoings on Biden's part. Now these witnesses were subject to criticism by Democratic panel members. The witnesses themselves said it's not clear, impeachable evidence against Biden. Take a look.

Mr. Turley, I have a simple question for you. In your testimony today, are you presenting any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the President of the United States? No, I'm not. No, you are not. Ms. O'Connor, you are the second Republican witness here today. Have you, in your testimony, presented any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by by the President of the United States. I have not.

Thank you. Now, Mr. Dubinsky, as the third and final Republican witness in this hearing, have you in your testimony presented any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the President of the United States? I have not. And Professor Gerhardt, given that you are the minority witness, I assume the same, correct? I am not a fact witness, correct. Just taking them down one by one, making them acknowledge the fact that, that although they are, the first three were the witnesses for the Republicans, they don't know. They have no clue. They have seen no evidence. They are there to present no evidence that Joe Biden is guilty of any wrong.

Doing again, great use of our taxpayer dollars and a great use of time when we are staring down the barrel of a government shutdown. So let's talk a little bit about who those people were. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley and forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky said the panel had enough evidence to open an impeachment inquiry, but did not have enough evidence to justify impeachment charges. Another law professor Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina said he had not heard credible evidence to justify the probe and warn the panel that it was being driven by partisan concerns. Yeah, no duh. I mean, right, I guess this is obviously not just a partisan effort, but this is Trump being petty. This was Trump.

Trump's directive for Congress because he feels scorned that he is twice indicted and he wants to force Joe Biden to feel that pressure. Forcing these Republicans to make this their priority. And it's their own fault because they allowed Trump to have that much power within their party. And now they're forced to do all these types of charades and shenanigans. Yeah, they don't have evidence. They've got a hunch. You know, it's like I got a hunch that Something fishy happened. Let's open an inquiry. Let's go to the impeachment inquiry. It's so ridiculous. The Republican Party has become the head in the sand party because they will not admit that their leader is a criminal. Anytime anyone in the Republican Party has

something happened to him, all of them go running. Nobody stands up to anything. We just had Bob Menendez come out with all these accusations, which are very clearly, you know, he seems very guilty, you know, he's innocent to proven guilty, but it looks very guilty. We got gold bars showing up, you know, you're guilty. And sure, some of the leadership have not come out and said that he should resign, but a lot of Democrats did. Fetterman was making fun of him on Twitter saying, you know, you should resign. So you see that a lot of times that the Democrats are actually stepping up and admitting when there's a there there. And the Republicans don't. You know, George Santos. Whatever happened, George Santos? He's just floating around. Nobody's doing anything about him.

So here we are, you know, doing this inquiry into Joe Biden without any evidence, wasting people's time. And that those takedowns were so great. And it's, and it's just crazy to watch people go to these Trump rallies or any Republican rally. And they ask them, they go, did Trump commit a crime? Well, you know, Joe Biden and Mike Pence had classified documents as well. Well, what about the fact that, as she said, Trump's documents were in the poo-poo house, you know, or the fact that Trump obstructed justice and wouldn't return. That's the crime. Or the fact that they tried to overthrow democracy on January 6th.

They just keep putting their head in the sand and keep trying to deflect, deflect, deflect. I think it was what Jared Maskowitz, I think that's his name from Florida. He also put on an unbelievably beautiful show in his fabulous blue suit that he had on. I thought that was pretty flat. But no, I mean, but this is really a good way to handle the Republican Party, especially in through here, whether it be the inquiry, the shutdown, their determination to pass these six-week abortion bills, which, mind you, was going to very, very badly hurt Republicans in these House races. I think that's one thing that we overlook, because, you know, Donald Trump and Joe Biden take,

suck all the oxygen out of the room. But we saw what happened in Kansas and Ohio. Overwhelmingly voters or even Republican voters are like, I don't know about this six-week stuff, but the lawmakers are like, no, we must do this. That's going to continue to hurt them along with voter suppression and just general, you know, like no, you know, F yo kids, they don't need to eat school lunches. That's going to come back to bite them. But let's talk about how she beautifully laid in to all those charges. Listen, the federal government has like a 98, 99% conviction rating.

Now, I don't think, I can't sit here and say Trump's going to go to prison. I think that's a stretch. But 91 charges, I can't see this dude walking away from 91 federal charges, given the same. fact that every day this man wakes up and puts a middle finger to the judge and the prosecutor and everybody who's in a position to throw him in prison. And we still have over a year left of this. So it's just an unbelievable dumpster fire to watch. But let's keep our eyes on these house races and these local races especially. Yeah, that's an excellent point because so much of what we've seen this rift between Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gates. And Kevin McCarthy has time and time

again shown that he is a spineless creature, willing to capitulate to the Matt Gates elements of the party at the massive disadvantage of these more moderate Republicans, if that's the thing that exists anymore. But these Republicans who are running in purple districts who have competitive re-elections coming up. These are people who are not safely in their seats. And if these states are passing, like you mentioned, these six week abortion bans, if these Congress people have to spend all their time talking about this impeachment inquiry and trying to justify why the government is shutting down because the leader of the party just has no backbone, right? That's definitely going to hurt them. And that's going to advantage the Democrats in 2024. But one last element of the story, I feel like I can't finish out this story without mentioning it is what Marjorie Taylor Green did. And the warning she got from Representative Jamie Raskin, who didn't want a repeat of, her displaying Hunter Biden nude photos. Let's take a look at this. He used his father. Hunter Biden used his father, the vice president of the United States,

to threaten his victim who he had just trafficked for sex. And the Department of Justice refuses to speak to me. Hunter Biden needs to be held accountable for his sexual exploitation of women. And we've shown more evidence. colleague from Georgia has introduced before pornographic exhibits and displayed things that are really not suitable for children who might be watching. A bathing suit's not suitable, Mr. Raskin? I'm saying I would like the witness to, I would like the member to be instructed to not introduce any pornography today, at least without running.

A bathing suit is not pornography. Well, we can't see it from down there. So you didn't make it available to the minority before you started? it before. It's on the internet. It's everywhere. You and you are submitting a naked woman's body. This is a bathing suit. This is a bathing suit. And it has not been clear before this committee. Glass is on. Do you wear them or not? I have contacts in. Thank you. Oh, congratulations. I wish I wasn't wearing my glasses right now because I don't want to see this stuff. I really, it's absurd to me, first of all, that she can sit there and with no evidence claim that Hunter Biden is a second.

trafficker. In a sane world, he would be able to sue the pants off of her for defamation. But then to show a picture of a woman, a naked woman's body, she says she's wearing a swimsuit, but she has previously tried to show on the floor of Congress nude, fully nude photos. Oh, she didn't try. She did. She did. She didn't try. Successfully, unfortunately. But, you know, this whole thing has just been such a circus. But I mean, that is what I guess Republican control of the House looks like. You have any final thoughts on this? I don't recall if there was ever a time where there were so many bozos in Congress.

I mean, there's always been bozos, but it feels like there's a lot of bozos, you know, between her and Lauren Bobert and Jim Jordan and Gosar, it's just bozo central. And it's, I mean, I'm a loss for words because you used to think, oh, member of Congress is someone who's, you know, educated or knows something, has a little bit of class. And it's just, it really is the worst of the worst. I mean, this lady, I don't know how she got elected. I know it's a conservative district. I get it. But even if I'm a highly conservative person, I'm going to scratch my head and go, I don't know if she knows what she's doing. And she just keeps bringing out nudes. So, you know, she's a loudly and proud of porn.

Right. And then she was like arguing like, no, I'm a show this if I want to. Actually, she has on a bathing suit. So that makes this appropriate. But look, man, reality television and American football destroyed this country, man. Because look, and the metric system. We don't, you know, we're the only ones on that. But just in general, like it's like, you know, entertainment is so ingrained into American culture that Donald Trump became president and millions of people want him to be back in there again. Literal game show host. I mean, we know his record, but really seriously, this is largely a result of American culture. Everything's a reality show. And so, I mean, look what we got. If you got enough clout, you can be a member of Congress. You're right. If substance meant something, Ralph Nader would have been president.

Right, exactly. They're like boring. Right. You're trying to help people. No, we don't need None of that. No, we need the cross, more crossfit crazies in Congress, apparently. Okay, with that, we absolutely have to go to a break, but we'll be back talking about how rich people, surprise, surprise, are stealing your buddy. All right, back on the power panel, Rayvonne, Maz, and Jackson, and let's talk about how rich people are cheating on their taxes. Let's take a look at this. Working Americans, mostly low and middle income, overwhelmingly comply with the law because their information is automatically passed on to the agency through pay.

On the other side of the coin are the complicated pass-throughs and other structures, often designed by the wealthy, especially for tax avoidance. As you heard, IRS data reveals that the wealthiest Americans have evaded taxes to the tune of nearly a billion dollars, just between 2017 and 2020. And now Senator Ron Wyden, as you just saw, is calling on the IRS to crack down in a letter to the IRS commissioner. Danny Werfel. So let's get into some reporting from Common Dreams. More than 1.4 million wealthy Americans have still not filed their taxes for those years. Wyden said, with the total amount owed to the federal government reaching a whopping $65.7 billion, almost enough to fund a universal child care program for one year or a universal school lunch program for more than two years. I just want to pause and say, I love the common dreams includes that kind of information in the reporting,

because most large mainstream media outlets wouldn't point out what can be used with that money so that we can see in terms of what that means for the American people when these rich people cheat on their taxes. Just wanted to give some flowers to common dreams. And let's get into some more of their reporting. Nearly 1,000 people who earn $1 million per year or more have yet to file their tax returns, but Wyden wrote that the most alarming revelation is the data provided to his committee by the IRS was the extraordinary amount of unpaid taxes owed by a small subset of ultra wealthy non-fileers, with the 2,000 highest earning tax dodgers currently owning $923 million. These high earners, said Wyden, have access to professional advisors and are well aware of their

filing obligations with the IRS, but continue to withhold hundreds of the millions of dollars that could support food aid, housing assistance, public health efforts, and other federal programs. Now, he said this when speaking to the Washington Post, these are people who essentially blow raspberries at the IRS. They're sophisticated people. They know this is wrong, wrong, wrong, and they do it anyway. The data underscores that when the IRS is underfunded, as Republicans advocate for, wealthy tax cheats benefit in a massive way because smaller audits for lower income people are significantly easier and less resource intensive. So they're more likely to conduct those smaller scale audits on average everyday

people as opposed to going after these people who owe, as we just pointed out, almost a billion dollars in unpaid taxes. Now to Biden's credit, the Inflation Reduction Act included increases in funding for the IRS, which House Republicans, as you would expect, voted to rescind from WAPO. Unfortunately for Republicans, enforcement funded by that law has paid off, bringing in more than 38 million from 175 tax-rich delinquents. The IRS announced in July, and this month the agency announced plans to use the funding for still more efforts targeting wealthy tax avoiders. With tax evasion from previous years still affecting federal coffers, Wyden told Worfell in his letter that the IRS should initiate enforcement actions against every single millionaire non-filer as part of its ongoing effort to use inflation reduction act funding to restore fairness and tax compliance.

But of course, tax evasion is just one small part of this massive problem because thanks to the tax code that favors income from wealth over income from work, the richest Americans often end up paying a smaller percentage of their income. to the federal government than most working families. And a little bit more on that from Oxfam America. Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two thirds of all new wealth. According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2%. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13%. According to leaked tax returns highlighted in a pro-publica investigation, the 25 richest Americans paid 13.6 billion in taxes from 2014 to 2018, a true tax rate of just 3.4% on 401 billion dollars of income. And guys, this type of story is the type of story that really infuriates me, especially when we're talking about Republicans who have been pushing this.

continuing resolution or this budget resolution, which they're naming the Stop Government Spending Act. They're always talking about how we need to be, you know, we need to be financially stable. We need to be fiscally conservative so that we're not overspending from the government. We have this money that the government should have that the Republicans are intentionally protecting from the government getting. They're trying to pass legislation, trying to prevent reauthorization of legislation so that these rich people don't have to pay their taxes. But do poor Americans get those same sort of protections? Absolutely not. They get the book thrown at them because they can't hire these wealthy consultants, these tax experts to help

them avoid their taxes. And I don't think that they should. I just think that the rich people should pay their fair share of taxes, what they're supposed to be paying. Wait a minute, Rayvana. Are you saying trickle-lidon economics doesn't work? How dare you say that? It's amazing how when you tell people, go ahead, make the money in the share with everybody else, they go off and buy yachts. There was a great daily, the daily podcast, there was a great one where they were talking about how Jeff Bezos and these, you know, ultra rich people, they don't pay any, like Jeff Bezos supposedly, and people can research this. I think he was giving himself like an $80,000 salary. And then the way these guys work is they don't even sell stocks to pay what you were talking about, which is where the rich pay a lesser tax and income tax, they pay the profit tax. So, you know, so. He, these ultra rich don't even do that. What they do is they go out and get a loan when they're going to go buy something. And then they get another loan, they use their assets to get another loan to pay off the loan.

So they're just borrowing, they go, look, I'm worth $300 billion. Just keep loaning me money. And they end up avoiding having to pay any taxes. And, you know, there's been some great ideas. Elizabeth Warren had a great idea. She said, why don't we tax you on the profit you made that year? if you didn't sell the stock, let's tax you once you hit a certain amount of, you know, wealth. Let's tax you on, you know, you went from 50 million to 52 million. So let's get some taxes,

3% tax on the 2 million. But as you said in your own breakdown, the obviously they have a lot more clout in Congress and they keep getting away with it. Yeah. And in regards to that, it's when you hear these numbers, because you know, the human brain doesn't really do well counting big numbers, even past like a hundred or less than that, but the $65 billion in skip taxes, almost a billion dollars, $940 million, the Pentagon, oh, we accidentally forgot where we put a trillion dollars. The military always getting more money than they ask, no matter who's in office that goes up every year. The United States is the wealthiest country, nation, and the history of organized human civilization. There has never been a country

with a more organized military that's more deadly than ours. So the idea that we can't afford to do things like fix our health care system, fix our education system is absolutely ridiculous, especially as you pointed out from Commonwealth, how this is like, oh, well, the amount of taxes that the wealthy have dodged in this one year alone could have paid for free college or free school meals or free daycare, whatever it may be. That really just reflects that the people in power don't care about these things. They have malice and they have disdain for the working class.

I mean, look at what's being said about all of these, the union strikes. You know, what's the attitude towards that? Oh, these people don't want to work five days a week. They want a four day week. That's not what America is about. You know what I'm saying? So at the end of the day, if anything destroys this country, it's just going to be the corruption.

America controls a lot of land. And if too many people become broken, dissatisfied with the government, it's going to get rough. You know what I'm saying? It ain't going to be over Donald Trump, that's for sure. It ain't going to be over Donald Trump. But it's going to be over, hey, there's a lot of people who can't make they, can't pay their deals, can't make ends meet, and the rich get richer. Yeah. There's something really insidious about the ability of these Republicans to present these, you know, something like what Maas was talking about, the 3% tax on gains, profit made over a certain amount of million of dollars. The way that they're able to pitch that as though they're coming for you working class Americans who will never reasonably will never be making that insane amount of wealth in your lives because the American dream, I won't even say it's dead. It never existed to begin with. But they always have to turn it and make it some sort of personal affront to the working class and pitching tax cuts as somehow beneficial. Because that's something that people can feel, right, when you pay taxes. You see that amount coming out of your people. paycheck, it doesn't feel great, you know, I'm a private contractor, I have to pay my taxes a lump sum, it sucks, doesn't feel good. So I understand the emotions that they're appealing to in these voters, but it's insidious because it's only to the benefit of the Uber wealthy.

It's only to the benefit of, you know, the top 1%. And, you know, we pay less into these taxes than we get out in programs generally as a person who's not wealthy. This person who's not a millionaire, a person who's not billionaire. And the framing around the issues is so harmful to the working class, it just makes me sick. But what's perplexing is that the working class then supports these people and just buys it, hook, line, and sinker. That's why you have somebody like Donald Trump is able to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, because they just listen. And like I was saying earlier, they're head in the sand party. They don't want to hear anything, they just go, oh, I was

I was told that Obama care is bad for me, so I'm just going to go ahead and protest it. And then a couple of years later, they're like, oh, I actually got health insurance from that. Oh, yeah, that was actually a good thing. So similarly, I'm told that this infrastructure bill is somehow not good for me. And then all of a sudden they're going, oh, there's Wi-Fi in my, on my farm somewhere. I actually can get Wi-Fi. So it's unfortunate that there are a lot of people who, the constituents who get taken advantage of, and they believe it, and then they buy into the culture wars, and that leads them to just say, whatever, whatever this, you know, Republican is telling me, I'm just going to go ahead and believe

him that, oh, yeah, the IRS, more IRS agents means they're coming after me and my $50,000 year salary versus, you know, these billionaires. And that reminded me of something that Donald Trump said. He said, we did very well with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated. I mean, there you guys. You know what I'm saying? There you go. There you have it. But exactly, it's the culture wars that keep people blinded from policy. But they, I mean, they say the quiet part out loud all the time. They don't hide it. They say they don't want brown people in the country. They say there's too many. It's not even that. Well, yeah, of course, there's too many gay people. But it's deeper than that. It's that they have the nerve to be gay out loud. You know what I'm saying? Like all of these things. And they have never been quiet about it. Ever since I was old enough to even realize, oh, that's New Gingrich. That's Bill Clinton on TV. They was talking about the same stuff. So this isn't new, but unfortunately, the Republican Party is absolutely going to become more authoritarian, 100%. They're not backing down, so. Absolutely. Okay. Well, my dog agrees.

The pooch, yes, the pooch agrees. I'll just end on saying to the people out there, you are not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. You're not a temporarily embarrassed billionaire, all right? You're middle class, your working class, and that's fine. But don't let these. people sell this ridiculous notion on you that if we raise taxes on the rich, it's going to come back to bite you. It's only going to come back to help you. Okay, with that said, let's go to our next break and we'll be back talking about Florida's book banning, taking an extreme turn when we come back. This was my ass.

Back on the Young Turks, and let's go right into this next story, because we've been covering for a while now the prevalence of book bans being pushed by what we now know is apparently 11 parents who are traveling the country to push these book bans, but also by state legislators across the country. So let's turn our attention to Florida, although I know a lot of us prefer we don't have to do that. But let's suck it up and let's talk about Florida because a Florida school district ordered the removal of all books featuring LGBTQ characters and themes. Characters, you heard that right. Just if there is a gay character in a book, a trans character in a book, they have to be removed in order to conform with the requirements of Rhonda Santis's don't say gay law. This policy coming out of the Charlotte County School District is one of the most strict. policies made in response to that law. Now, librarians in the school district wanted clarity on how they were to comply with this don't say gay law.

And they received this shocking guidance from the district. So we'll pull this up. Now this is from the superintendent of the district, Mark Vianello. Now the first part is in what the teachers are asking, what their assumptions are about it. And then in blue is the response. So the first statement is novels to be used in courses or in the media centers with LGBTQ plus characters are acceptable as long as they do not have explicit sex scenes or sexual descriptions and are not approaching how to manuals for how to be an LGBTQ plus person, which is an absurd notion as though that exists. But then the school, the school district replied, no, books with LGBTQ plus characters are not to be included in classroom libraries or school library.

media centers. The next statement or the next question asked by the teachers and the librarians was, are we removing books from any school or media center pre-K through 12 if a character has, for example, two mothers or because there is a gay best friend or a main character is gay, to which the school district replied, yes, if a character in a book has two moms or two dads. That book is apparently not suitable for children, but they can show books to kids that have a mom and a dad, that's fine, that's appropriate because the only time they see a couple and immediately think about them having sex apparently is when that couple is gay. It's absurd,

but they took it even a step further because teachers wanted to know if the students could bring in their own books that feature these characters. And it won't surprise you what the district said. Here's the next one, the next guidance. The teachers asked, teachers need to be aware of what their students are reading for silent, sustained reading in class or book reports or anything involving instruction, even if it is a student selected to ensure they are not violating this rule. In other words, to ensure LGBTQ characters or themes do not exist, or can they exist, but not cross into pornographic territory. To which the district replied, these characters and themes cannot exist. A student can't even bring in a book that they got

from the public library, another school library, the public library, or a book that they got in a bookstore if it has a gay character in it, the teacher will not allow them to use that book in school. That is how far these conservatives are going. That's how far this don't say gay law is going and how it is harming the education of students in Florida. Now once this guidance was made public by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which is a nonprofit organization that is fighting to ensure that these book bans don't get enacted and to provide transparency in what's going on. The school district was obviously on the receiving end of massive pushback, and they gave the smallest concession they possibly could. From AP News, the district later backed

off a bit, allowing some exceptions for high school libraries. But Charlotte's policy remains one of the more stringent policies adopted by the state's 67 countywide school districts to enforce the bill. Now the school district issued a statement to popular information who was the initial reporters of this information that says in part books featuring LGBTQ characters are accessible in the media center for grades 9 through 12. While they may not be utilized for classroom instruction, these books are available for individual study and can be borrowed by students. Now as a member of the LGBTQ community, I had no idea that we were so powerful that just knowing that we exist can apparently infect the minds of your children and persuade them to take up

our cause, to join our side, and to become gay. I mean, they, Ron DeSantis scoffed at the idea that this was going to result in book bans. He, like, argued specifically that this was only going to take out pornographic material from libraries. But here we have it, you can't know that gay people exist in the school district, in the state of Florida. You're not allowed to see gay representation in media and books, it's not allowed to be part of an educational plan. This is an attack so broadly on the LGBTQ community. And it's frightening, especially when these schools, I don't know the intent of the school districts themselves, but they have to implement this. The teachers have to implement this or risk losing their jobs. And on top of that,

individually being sued, this is so frightening. I hate to break it to these parents who are banning books, but kids don't read anymore. They need to be banning social media. And I mean, it's so ridiculous. I mean, first of all, I've been to South Beach, and there's a lot of gay people in South Beach, so I don't know how these people in Florida are dealing with South. Pretty soon they can't be like, you can't say South Beach. You know, they're very much, these people are like the, they're like the Wizard of Oz.

You know, there's no place like home. There's like, there's no word like gay. There's no, but these people are out of there. But this is what you get when you mix religion with politics. I was born in Iran and when the Islamic Republic took over in Iran, the first thing they did, they went after women, then they went after the LGBTQ community, then they went after to religious minorities. We're seeing it play out right here.

They took away a woman's right to choose last year. Now they're going after the LGBTQ community and probably religious minorities, immigrants. This is how it plays out because in their minds, God has said that you shouldn't think about being, you can't, you, God has told them that you gotta be straight. And it gets crazier and crazy when you talk logic to any of them because obviously there's a lot of them that are probably gay and they wanna come out, but they can't because God has said don't come out. It's just, it's such a crazy, crazy situation we're in and DeSantis is a stupid idiot by the the way, who went through these great schools, if I, if I'm part of those schools, at this point,

I'm holding my my head and just going, he's ruining our name. And clearly he's ruining his own chances of winning anything. So it's clearly just insane. And, you know, I think we really need to push back on this religious agenda that's coming after everybody. Yeah. And like you said, I mean, they're banning these books, but we live in a time where you can just up your phone, Google stuff, look at stuff on YouTube, be on social media, and just exist in the world and realize that gay people are a thing. We have Pride Month. You know, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

There's too much of it out. The cat's out of the bag. However you want to say it, there's really no going back and there's nothing they can do about it. And secondly, you know, it's always interesting how, you know, the personal responsibility don't want to raise their kids. You know what I'm saying? Like you don't, you don't want to steer your children into whatever right direction you think

it is and you believe that homosexuality is so powerful that the mere thought of it is going is going transition you down that path. I mean, I guess that's how they see it. But as a heterosexual man, I can tell you, I've never been tempted to sleep with a dude because I'm not attracted to men. It's not more complicated than that. I'm not sexually attracted to men. The end. I have gay friends. My girlfriend's gay. It's not that big of a deal. I don't struggle with these things. But as you pointed out, a lot of people do. But this isn't going to stop and we got to fight back. Right. Also, there's just a level also of, you know, hypocrisy, of course, coming from the people advocating for these book bans. Because first of all, they're fighting as though they are

champions of free speech. These are the same people who, whenever, you know, someone's like, oh, actually the vaccine didn't kill me. They're like, oh, this is literally George Orwell in 1984. These are the people who are literally trying to ban books, but there was one woman who's been a really prominent activist, as it were, and she refers to herself as an investigative journalist. I guess you can give that title to anybody with a camera on their phone nowadays. But she has been trying to show pornography in books that are in school. She's been championing book bans. And it was just revealed that this woman has a felony charge of child abuse. A child abuse. who is claiming that a child just knowing that a gay couple exists or seeing a drag queen is that that child is being abused. But this person is a literal convicted child abuser and it does come from such a place if these people think that they own their children, that their children are their property, they're not independent people, they're not allowed to have their own personalities, they're not allowed to live their own lifestyles, that they are to be the, you know, whatever the parents project on to them, that is who's who, the child must be so they project their homophobia onto their children. And it just breaks my heart the idea that a young gay child or a young, you know, broadly more queer child might be reading a book and having it literally snatched out of their hands because there is a gay character

in the book or whatever broad gay themes, whatever on God's Green Earth that means. Like how do you determine if a book has gay themes? Does Lord of the Rings have gay themes? I would argue that it does. So the relationships between so many of the characters in that book could absolutely and have been interpreted as having underlying gay themes. So as a child not allowed to read Lord of the Rings anymore in a Florida school district, probably not because no characters are explicitly not gay. But I mean, you could interpret it as such. A teacher could make that distinction. A librarian could feel like they need to make that distinction. And it sucks that they have to do it in order to protect themselves because these librarians did not what

to enforce these rules, right? They leaked this information to the reporters. Well, a lot of it came from a Freedom of Information Act request. I want to be clear on that. But the librarians were speaking out against this really stringent enforcement because of course these are librarians. And as you point out, Maas, kids don't want to read anymore who are having to fight tooth and nail to get these kids to read in the first place. So when you see these pictures of these Florida schools that are cleared out, their libraries have no books in them because of these challenges to books, these book bans, it just makes me feel very happy that I live in Illinois, where we passed a law to prevent book banning in our schools, libraries, but it still breaks my heart for these kids

in these states who don't have a legislator that's looking out for them, who don't have a governor who's looking out for them. And this is against the tide of public opinion. They're making, they're passing these book bans against what the people actually want, against what their constituents actually want. Most people in Florida are not heinously homophobic, Like you guys both mentioned, there's lots of gay people who live in Florida. Not everyone in Florida is heinously homophobic. Most of them don't support this type of legislation. So all of it is just, every aspect of this story is upsetting. Yeah. Yeah. Vote people vote. Yes, but just to close off what you said, it's not even that people like people aren't even thinking about this.

People are thinking about I can't pay my rent. I can't pay my mortgage. That's what people are thinking about. So they're going out of their way, but like you pointed out, to potentially someday somebody will get hired or appointed, we'll be like, no, we can't, this Harry Potter, this too magic, this black witchcraft. You know what I'm saying? So, as you pointed that out about with the women, the LGBTQ community, and then the minority religious group. So we're absolutely seeing this girl in our country. Absolutely. And we'll keep you all updated as these book bands progress. But that's all the time we have for the first hour. Don't forget to check out Jackson and I on Rubledge Q. You can see all our videos there. And Maas has something to promote as well. Yeah, I'm on tour. So you guys come check me out. I'm doing stand-up comedy all over the country. I'll be in Philadelphia. I'll be in Miami and I'm going to say gay as soon as I land there. I'll be in Connecticut, DC, LA, many, many other places. You can go to mazjobrani.com to find out when I'm coming to your city and hope to see you out there. Come by. A lot of people

come by and they say they're TYT fans. So come on. up afterwards, shake a hand and let me know or message me on socials. That's awesome. Yeah, everybody check that out. Try to go if you can. But like I said, that's all the time we have for the first hour. Stick around because we've got more great stories and a great second hour power panel coming up right after this break. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad free. Access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcast. podcast at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.