What A Day - Senator Raphael Warnock On Where Morality Meets Politics

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

We don’t often talk about what the most moral path forward for the Senate, or Congress, or hell, politics in general might be — but it would probably look more like doing something about ensuring everyday Americans can afford groceries and less like going to war with Iran. Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock gives this a lot of thought in his new book, “The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America,” where he lays out some of the biggest problems facing our country. We speak with Senator Warnock about his book and how we might move forward together.And in headlines, the U.S. and Iran trade strikes after days of calm; the Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady despite persistently high inflation and a spike in energy prices caused by the Iran war; and Dr. Anthony Fauci pleads the fifth to more than 100 questions posed by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members.Show Notes: Check out Sen. Warnock's book – tinyurl.com/583vnpz4 Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children. And certainly for African-American people, the ballot is a bloodstained ballot. It's a sacred event. And so when you see this all out of salt on voting rights and the Calais decisions and in the decision prior to that, they're literally playing with our dead. I'm Jane Koston, and this is Wadaday, the show saluting Devin Dalton. Now, you might not know her. her name. But if you saw The Odyssey or have seen the posters for the movie, you know her work.

Or more specifically, you know her arms. Here's actor Matt Damon talking to interviewer, Josh Horowitz, explaining how the film made it look like he was fighting giants. There were these kind of stuntmen who were all seven feet, right? And then they got stuntmen who were under five feet. And so my double was a woman, a female stunt performer, who had the greatest arms I've ever seen. Dalton has been doing stunts for nearly two decades, but the Odyssey was the first time she got to be a body devil for a male star of Damon's caliber. And yes, her arms are spectacular. On today's show, we talked to Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock about what our moral responsibility is to one another and how to build a better politics.

Before we get into American politicians' lack of moral compass, here's what we're following today. Wednesday, July 29th. President Trump tells Fox News about Iran. we are going to beat the effing S out of them. He went on to say, we'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating. President Donald Trump continued to talk like a football coach who was about to lose 14 to 3 in response to Iran's quote, surprise attack on a U.S. base in Jordan.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it fired ballistic missiles at a key U.S. military hub for the region overnight. Jordan's military said five Iranian missiles had been intercepted and destroyed. There were no immediate reports of capital. casualties or damage. The U.S. in Saudi Arabia also attacked Tehran-backed militias in Iraq early Wednesday. Two Iraqi militia officials told the Associated Press six Iranian advisors were killed in the U.S. Saudi strike. The resurgence in fighting came after days of calm, in which neither the U.S. nor Iran announced any strikes. A original official told the AP

that mediators are, quote, still trying with both sides to get the ceasefire back on track. It gave no details on whether progress was being made. Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, did not meet the President's wishes on Wednesday. The Fed held interest rate steady in a 9-to-3 vote despite persistently high inflation and a spike in energy prices caused by the Iran War. President Trump has long wandered the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in hopes of boosting the economy, a choice that could also increase inflation, which has been high for years. This is the second month in a row that Warsh's Federal Reserve has maintained interest rates, but it's likely he won't be able to get away with it much longer.

to the CME Fed Watch tool, traders on Wall Street widely expect the Fed to raise rates at its next meeting in September. Given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at

embarrassing and intimidating me the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote. Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases and current mortal enemy of Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul asked his nemesis, why are you so obsessed with me in a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday? Fouchi repeatedly pleaded the fifth to more than 100 questions posed by Paul and his fellow Senate Homeland Security

and Governmental Affairs Committee members. Paul has been saying Dr. Fauci should be in jail for years, accusing him of lying about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. And over the weekend, the beef got deeper when Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci's journal entries from his time leading the U.S. pandemic response. Paul titled the report, Tony's diary in pink cursive font, throwing a little lock icon with the words do not open at the top, because political infighting is, at its core, petty-ass shit. FIFA, the hilariously corrupt governing body of world soccer, has decided to do something even more corrupt. And when you're doing something potentially more corrupt, you absolutely have to get a member of the Kushner family involved. On Tuesday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino

announced a plan to create a $20 billion company to run competitions like the World Cup. 20% of that company would be supported by investors led by Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm led by Joshua Kushner, yes, Joshua Kushner, Jared Kushner's brother, and Ivanka Trump's brother-in-law. The international soccer world does not like this idea. The governing body of European soccer, UEFA, responded with a statement saying, quote, the sole and governance of football are not assets to trade, especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. And here at home, Maryland Democratic representative Jamie Raskin told Politico FIFA is, quote, Donald Trump's favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in

world sports. He also said that FIFA's ties to the Trump family are worthy of further investigation if Democrats gain control of the House. Great. Finally, what soccer really needs to to break through in the United States. Congressional hearings. And that's the news. Let's talk about the Senate. We've been talking a lot lately about what the Senate is doing, or more accurately, about what the Senate is trying to do.

Trump wants the Senate to focus exclusively on passing the Save America Act to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote. And Senate Republicans want to pass a farm bill and send the military more money for Trump's war on Iran. That's not what Americans want the Senate to be focused on. According to polling from CNN, Americans are most worried about the high cost of living, and they don't think that Trump administration cares enough about that. Also, the Iran war is making it worse.

We don't often talk about what the most moral path forward for the Senate or Congress or politics in general might be. That would probably look more like doing something about ensuring everyday Americans can afford groceries and less like going to war in Iran. Senator Raphael Warnock gives us a lot of thought in his new book, The Crooked Places Made Straight, Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, where he lays out some of the biggest problems facing our country and how we might move forward together. Senator Warnock, welcome to Waddey.

Great to be here. Thank you. Your book, The Crooked Places Made Straight, Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, came out last month, and you used the biblical prophet Isaiah to frame six of the biggest moral crises you argue are facing the country today. From voting rights and gun violence to mass incarceration. and climate change. What do you hope someone who doesn't share your faith or your politics takes away after reading it? Well, on the 250th anniversary of our country, this grand experiment

in human history, the idea that you could build a country based on an idea that all are created equal, and we all know the complexity around that story. But I thought it was important for me serving as a pastor in the Senate to offer a love letter, if you will, to my country or sermon in the public square based on that wonderful phrase in the book of Isaiah. It is a moral call for us to stand up and be mindful of the covenant we have with one another as an American people to build what Dr. King called the Beloved Community and to recognize that even across our differences. And I chose six big issues that are fraught

that we fight about in the public square. But what I offer is a values proposition with the idea that whether you're on the left or the right, a lot of these issues aren't the difference between right and left. There's a difference between right and wrong and trying to call us to be better. I want to talk about voting rights because you talk about how democracy depends on voting rights.

And meanwhile, President Trump is active. trying to change the way Americans vote, especially as he pushes for Republicans in Congress to pass the Save America Act. Senator, why is this administration so focused on passing a bill that would curtail millions of Americans from being able to vote? Two words. He's scared. Donald Trump knows that come November he's going to lose.

You talk about promises made, promises broken. This man rode in the office telling the public. that he would lower their costs from day one, and he would keep us out of wars. Instead, he's raised the price on practically everything through these tariffs, which are attacks on everyday goods that are needed by everybody. And he's taken us into an unnecessary war, which is also raising gasoline prices. And so since he knows that Americans are not buying what he's, he's selling and that we are going to put guardrails on him come November.

He's trying to turn the democracy on his head. That's what gerrymandering does, so that rather than the voters picking their representatives, the people who are in power are busy trying to pick their voters. You also talk in the book about how black and Latino voters have often a fundamentally different voting experience than white voters. Earlier this year, we saw the Supreme Court weaken the Voting Rights Act in the case of Louisiana v. Calais. You make the point in your book that supporting the Voting Rights Act and supporting voting rights used to be just kind of a bog standard bipartisan effort. Why has that changed?

Yeah, the Voting Rights Law of 1965 is the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. You know, I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves. and for our children. And certainly for African-American people, the ballot is a bloodstained ballot. It's a sacred event. And so when you see this all out of salt on voting rights and the Calais decisions

and in the decision prior to that, they're literally playing with our dead. This is an insult to the martyrs who died in order to give us our voice in our democracy. I am a product. of that work is the first black senator from Georgia, largest CBC in the history of our country. A lot of those seats are imperiled. They're coming for black voting power and they're doing it with a vengeance. In the Calais decision where you have the Supreme Court basically saying you can

gerrymand to black people as much as you want, crooked politicians can draw crooked lines so that they're, even when they show up, it's not as powerful because either we've done something called cracking where you separate the strength of black voters so that they don't have the collective power being able to deliver or you pack them all into one district that could be two districts so they have less representation. That's what the Calais decision did. You know, the onus is on those who are bringing the case to prove that this is that this is racially motivated.

Well, often it's not racially motivated. In a real sense, it's not about race. It's about power. But people who want to stay in power will weaponize race or whatever they can weaponize in order to stay in power. And so we're seeing this with a Calais decision. We're seeing it with the effort to pass the so-called Save Act. The Save Act will disproportionately hurt women whose name on their marriage certificate, for example, it will be different from the name on their birth certificate.

And you've got to cross all of these barriers in order to register to vote. They're coming after our coalition, our broad, multiracial coalition. We've seen bigots before, and the way we're going to save our democracy is through democratic means, showing up to vote, mobilizing people. And then once we win, hopefully both of these houses in Congress come November, part of what I'm I'm focused on doing is dragging these southern politicians who've been gerrymandering our states before Congress because racial gerrymandering still is illegal and I intend to hold them accountable. If you love the idea of holding people accountable for racial gerrymandering or, you know,

anything, stay tuned. We'll get back to my conversation with Senator Raphael Warnock in a moment. In the meantime, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a Day is brought to you by Casper. There are a few things in life you should never cheap out on, and the thing you spend eight hours a night on is definitely one of them. This podcast is sponsored by Casper.

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If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry, you can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Hey, did you hear? Watermelon is back at booster juice all summer long. Nice. I love the watermelon explosion.

And the watermelon wend! Yep. They even got a new watermelon assaye pool this year. The one in a melon bowl. And what does that sound like? Mmm. Like that. Booster juice. Canadian born. Blending since 1999. Let's get back to my conversation with Senator Raphael Warnock. One of the most personal sections in your book was a story about your brother, who served more than two decades for a nonviolent drug-related offense. His sentence was commuted in 2024 after you petitioned President Biden. to commute the sentences of those released to home confinement under the CARES Act.

First, how is your brother doing today? Well, thank you for asking. I'm from a very large family. You know, I'm number 11 out of 12. My folks read the scriptures, be fruitful and multiplied. This brother is a few years older to me. And the answer to your question is he's doing well. And I'm grateful his crimes were serious and they're not to be excused.

But no one died, no one was physically hurt. As far as I can tell, because the feds controlled the whole thing, as far as I can tell, no one even got high. No actual drugs ever hit the street. And for this crime, my brother, who was a first time offender, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And so in the wake of that kind of extreme sentencing, I got busy as a young seminary student fighting on his behalf.

But this is just a window into an issue that I tackle in the book. I call it a scar on the soul of America. The United States of America, the land of the free, is the mass incarceration capital of the world. And that large and burgeoning carceral state continued to grow in the decades since Dr. King's death. And let's be honest, it has grown. over Republican and Democratic administrations.

Many a politician has gotten elected saying they're going to be tough on crime. And as a result of that, we have a carcoral state that's second to none in the world. We got more people and a greater percentage of American people in prison than any nation on the planet. That is a set of public policy decisions that has not made us any safer. And what I offer in my book is a new way. Rather than investing in prisons, how about we invest in child care? How about we invest in pre-K? The science shows us what happened when we invest early in little children and in their development.

How about we invest in health care making sure and making sure that every child has a chance? You obviously talk a lot about your faith in your book and in our conversation. It's a through line throughout your life. Is your face something that connects you to politicians across the aisle in your work? Well, you know, as a pastor, people get to pick their own church. I don't get to pick who joins my church. So I'm used to working with people who have a whole range of attitudes and beliefs and thoughts. So yeah, I do think the pastor is good training for somebody who wants to serve in this way.

And every now and then, yeah, I find myself praying with some of my colleagues whose politics I actually deplore. But there is the humanity. And I think there's something to be said about that. And I can tell you that as a Christian, as a Christian pastor, I am deeply offended by the ways in which there are those who are trying to weaponize my faith again, as has been done in the past. for cruelty, for oppression, and I'm going to hold them accountable. I think that actually gets to my last question. In your book, you wrote about making the decision to run for office and telling your congregation about it and how there are some people who said you shouldn't do this, but you know,

you spoke to others who said that this was the right thing. Throughout your career as a reverend and as a politician, you've had to deal with two roles that don't move at the same pace. How do you mesh a faith that is tying? with the immediacy of politics? Well, my faith is timeless, but it is very much, according to scripture, in my view, engaged in what's happening right now. Dr. King used to say that any religion that says is concerned about the souls of men, but it's not concerned about the slums that damn them, the social conditions that strangle them,

the economic conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust-religious. in need of new blood. So that is my view. My faith is what drives me into public service. And I laid that out before my congregation. I've been a church that has a long history of pastors who understand that the gospel ethic cannot be confined to what happens inside a stained glass windows, that our service doesn't end at the church door.

That's where it starts. That's what Dr. King did. ministry to the streets. And I'm just doing it in a different way as a pastor serving in the United States Senate. And I think we need to hear from people of faith who center justice, who are mad not at poor people, but who are mad about poverty. I think Jesus, quite frankly, is the biggest victim. of identity theft in American culture right now. I don't know who this mean-spirited, racist, homophobic, sexes,

Jesus is who hates the poor. He is certainly not the poor preacher from Nazareth, the barefoot prophet, who came preaching good news to the poor. That's who I read in the Gospels. And that's what informs my work to fight for the expanded child tax credit, to fight for housing, to fight for a world in which every child has a chance so that her outcome is not determined on the basis of her parents' income. In other words,

for me, creating the conditions for human thriving, fighting for the poor, fighting for the weak, fighting for the marginalized, is itself spiritual work. And I do it not in, spite of my faith, but because of my faith. Senator Warnock, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. Great to be with you. That was my conversation with Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Before we go, if you haven't gotten tickets for CrookedCon yet, here's another reason why you should. At Crooked, we believe the answer to right-wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming, fun, pro-democracy

movement. So we've invited some of the biggest, funniest voices online to all-day CricketCon. at cricket con you'll have the chance to meet creators and new media personalities who make sense of the news with humor and hot takes they'll be bopping around the washington convention center hosting happy hours q&As and workshops for attendees they'll also be making content because what happens at crooked con ends up online for every political nerd to see check out which creators are joining us so far at crookedcon.com and grab your tickets today see you in dccc That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review.

Enjoy another day of a musical artist telling Trump to stop using their songs and tell your friends to listen. And if you're in reading, and not just about Noah Khan, whose song American Cars was used by the White House on Instagram and TikTok, and who responded, quote, would never approve of my music being used in support of you or this administration, while his co-writer wrote something way meaner, I won't say here, like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston. And Khan now joins a lengthy list of artists who have told Trump to stop using their music, including Katie Perry, Abba, Beyonce, Celine Dion, Elton John, the family of Frank Sinatra, Kesha, MGMT, and honestly, I could keep going.

What Today is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. In moments like these, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and even easier to feel powerless. But we are neither.

I'm Stacey Abrams, and on my podcast, Assembly Required, I take on each executive action, legislative battle, and breaking news moment by asking three questions. What's really happening? What can we do about it? And how do we keep going together? This is a space for clarity, strategy, and hope rooted in action, not denial. New episodes of assembly required drop Tuesdays. Tune in wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.