Straight White American Jesus - Weekly Roundup: The Grownups in Charge? SCOTUS, Gerrymandering & White Christian Power Aired: 2026-05-08 Duration: 01:03:17 === Welcome to Our Seven Neighbors (02:35) === [00:00:07] Axis Mundi. [00:00:14] What's up, everyone? [00:00:15] Brad Onishi here with the one and only Reza Aslan, and we've got something you do not want to miss. [00:00:21] That's right, Brad. [00:00:22] The brand new season of Our Seven Neighbors from the Interreligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary is live right now. [00:00:30] And this year, the United States marks its 250th anniversary. [00:00:34] We're stepping back to ask a big question What is the real story of religion in America? [00:00:41] This season, we're lifting up the deep history of spiritual diversity in the United States and revisiting the founders' very different visions. [00:00:48] For the role of religion in public life. [00:00:50] The truth is, there's never been just one religious story in this country. [00:00:53] There have always been many. [00:00:54] Exactly. [00:00:55] From the earliest days of the Republic, debates about faith, freedom, pluralism, and power shaped the nation. [00:01:01] Some founders imagined a country with strong protections for religious liberty, others had narrower visions. [00:01:08] And alongside them were native traditions, enslaved African spiritual practices, immigrant faith communities, all shaping America in ways that often go untold. [00:01:18] Instead of repeating a tidy myth. [00:01:20] Narrative, this season tells a braver, more accurate story, one that honors the breathtaking diversity that's always been here. [00:01:26] If you care about how religion has shaped American democracy, if you want to understand how spiritual communities have fueled movements for justice, if you're ready for a fuller account of our shared history, this season is for you from the Axis Munby Podcast Network and Chicago Theological Seminary. [00:01:44] The new season of Our Seven Neighbors is streaming now wherever you get your podcasts. [00:01:50] Welcome to Straight White American Jesus this week. [00:01:52] We're going to jump into all of the redistricting mania that is going on around the country as a result of the recent Supreme Court decision. [00:02:01] We'll talk about the Christian nationalist dimensions of this and how this is a long backlash march to take the country to the 1950s or the 1850s. [00:02:11] We'll also get into the ways that the court set the table for this and how, despite John Roberts' best efforts to defend SCOTUS as a neutral body, the logic at play here tells us a different story. [00:02:25] Lots to cover. [00:02:26] Let's go. === Redistricting and Racial Gerrymandering (15:18) === [00:02:42] Welcome to the show. [00:02:43] My name is Brad Onishi, author of American Caesar, founder of Access Moody Media. [00:02:47] Was off last week. [00:02:48] Glad to be back this week with my co host. [00:02:51] I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College. [00:02:55] Always glad to be with you, Brad, even if we always get together to talk about the worst possible things. [00:03:01] So, you know. [00:03:03] Yes. [00:03:04] And I don't associate those things with you, just so you know, Dan. [00:03:07] When we're together, I don't want you to think that it's just. [00:03:11] I know. [00:03:11] We'll suck it in the trauma responses. [00:03:13] We won't be able to hang out without, like, Breaking into a cold sweat or like feeling a sense of existential dread. [00:03:19] It's like every time I see Brad, I'll just like want to curl up in a corner and cry. [00:03:24] Can men actually have a conversation if they're not on a podcast? [00:03:27] I don't know. [00:03:28] This is the only way men can communicate, I think. [00:03:31] All right, y'all. [00:03:32] So last week I was off, but Dan talked all about the decision of the Supreme Court that basically rolled back the Voting Rights Act and brought us to a place that feels as if the Jim Crow South has been reinstated where racism and gerrymandering. [00:03:49] Gerrymandering along racial lines is possible. [00:03:52] And so, Dan, by way of a summary, let me read a bit from Wajahat Ali at the left hook. [00:03:58] Apparently, in 2026, racism no longer exists, and southern states and their Republican leaders can be trusted to oversee free and fair elections. [00:04:06] Right on cue, Louisiana suspended its congressional primaries ahead of early voting to redraw its map and lock out black Democratic voters. [00:04:14] Florida followed suit with a new map to give Republicans four more seats. [00:04:18] Five of the seven Indiana Republicans who resisted Trump's pressure to gerrymander their state. were just booted out after Trump backed their opponents. [00:04:26] On Wednesday, the FBI, which now serves as a weapon to attack Trump's enemies and protect MAGA allies, raided the office of Louise Lucas, a Virginia Democratic state lawmaker who championed the state's successful redistricting push. [00:04:39] A few hours later, a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department does not have to return the 2020 election ballots that were taken in the FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia. [00:04:51] I should add that before we started recording, The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the redistricting initiative was unconstitutional. [00:04:59] And so that is now on hold. [00:05:01] We just want to remind everybody, I'm just going to back up a minute. [00:05:05] This all started when Trump asked Texas to redistrict mid decade. [00:05:09] And they said, sure, President, whatever you want. [00:05:15] And then, of course, California and New York and other states responded. [00:05:19] And now what we're seeing is simply a deeper polarization and entrenchment along party lines in our country. [00:05:28] Florida, Louisiana, Indiana, other places, we're seeing this kind of activity. [00:05:33] The most notable to me this week, in addition to Virginia and the FBI raid on Louise Lucas's house, a chilling raid. [00:05:42] A lawmaker who, a black woman who leads a redistricting effort, has her home raided by the FBI. [00:05:48] That's a scare tactic. [00:05:50] That's telling lawmakers not to pass a legislative reform here. [00:05:55] That's a lot of things. [00:05:56] But in addition, Memphis, Tennessee, a place I used to live, has one of the only black districts. [00:06:03] Majority voters are black. [00:06:05] They are represented by a black representative. [00:06:08] Memphis is a predominantly black city, and that district is now being carved up into three so that those black voters' votes will, in essence, be nullified. [00:06:18] The scenes out of the Tennessee courthouse this week were harrowing. [00:06:21] By way of an appetizer, Dan, let me just play you a clip of a Texan, a man who comes from Texas, and that's Kevin Roberts talking about how he feels about. [00:06:30] The efforts in Virginia to do, to make a redistricting push to benefit Democrats. [00:06:35] Whatever you think about redistricting and gerrymandering and who's behind it, what happened in Virginia, what passed in Virginia on Tuesday night, is simply unconstitutional. [00:06:44] It's that simple. [00:06:45] And so I do think ultimately by mid May, common sense will reign and we will be back to the heart of your question, to the old maps, which would be, by the way, the fairest maps of any state in the country. [00:06:57] If that was not bad enough, here's a clip from Brian Beckwith, the lieutenant governor of Indiana, talking about. [00:07:04] This as well. [00:07:05] Well, I just think that, you know, if that vote holds and we see that Virginia does amend their constitution to go down the redistricting path, I would just say, wake up, Christians. [00:07:14] They are coming for you. [00:07:15] And you can't pet a demon. [00:07:17] I mean, I know people like to say, just, you know, hey, demons, stay over there, but, you know, we just don't hurt us and we won't hurt you. [00:07:24] It doesn't work that way. [00:07:25] Evil will find you. [00:07:26] And until strong men stand up and do something and fight fire with fire, then we will continue to lose ground. [00:07:32] Our children will be warped. [00:07:33] The curse will be over the land, as Pastor Kuhneman was saying. [00:07:36] And so I think it's time. [00:07:37] Like, I hope it fails, but at the same time, I don't think it will. [00:07:40] I think it will pass. [00:07:41] I've kind of been saying that all along because the Democrats and the side of darkness, which again, Democrats aren't necessarily all dark, but they are being led by the minions and the voices of darkness. [00:07:55] They're going to win. [00:07:56] They're playing to win. [00:07:57] And so we have to wake up and guys, step up. [00:08:00] And if we go on the battlefield, we will win. [00:08:02] The question is, will we enter the battlefield? [00:08:04] That's just what I don't know. [00:08:06] It's really hard for me to listen to these men talk about this, Dan, for a lot of reasons, but one of them is just. [00:08:10] We have reached this place, and I'm very curious what you think of this in this country where politics has simply been reduced to if it's my side, it's good. [00:08:21] And if it's not, then it's not good. [00:08:23] Brian Suave, who's a racist Christian nationalist pastor, said this on Twitter on May 7 I oppose bad people gerrymandering so that more bad people can hold political power. [00:08:35] I support good people gerrymandering so that more good people can hold political power. [00:08:39] Do you notice, Dan, how there's nothing about democracy there? [00:08:42] Voting, majorities, representatives. [00:08:44] Negotiation, dialogue. [00:08:46] It's just will to power. [00:08:49] Or just even a pretense that there's a rationale or a deep principle behind this. [00:08:55] So it's the absurdity. [00:08:58] I'm aware, everybody's aware that there have been, prior to this kind of escalation, Democrats, Democratic states that gerrymander. [00:09:05] But in general, overwhelmingly, it has been a right wing strategy. [00:09:09] It's been a GOP strategy. [00:09:11] As you said, Trump sort of started this round in this gerrymandering war by. [00:09:16] Very publicly and explicitly, because Trump communicates on social media, he doesn't communicate to anybody any other way. [00:09:22] He didn't like to call the governor of Texas and say, Hey, have you guys considered doing this? [00:09:26] He called for it publicly. [00:09:28] They responded. [00:09:28] And so you get this escalation. [00:09:30] But there's not even a pretense when they turn around and talk about how bad the Democrats are for doing this and how it's a power grab and it's anti-democratic and whatever that they're doing the same thing or that it's a response to what they're doing. [00:09:42] So any pretense that it's about anything more than, as you say, power or just the, well, when my side does it, it's fine. [00:09:49] It's just, Just all out in the open, very, very clearly and very plainly, as is, and we'll circle back around to this. [00:09:55] I think the rank racism behind a lot of these redistricting pushes now, which, you know, John Roberts in the Supreme Court did us the great favor of just basically saying, go ahead, just go ahead and do that. [00:10:08] And so it's just all out in the open and pretty brutal to watch and experience. [00:10:13] Yeah. [00:10:14] And I think what happened in Tennessee is the clearest example of that. [00:10:17] I mean, there's one district, there's one Democratic district in Tennessee. [00:10:22] And that will now be gone. [00:10:24] And, you know, somebody put on social media the other day as I was scrolling and reading and, you know, digesting the Republicans in that state are burning through so much political capital. [00:10:37] They are making such an effort for this one district. [00:10:40] And in some ways, you know, you can hear them saying, well, we need every district we can get so we can have a Republican majority in Congress in 2026 and 27 and 28. [00:10:50] But it also just doesn't feel like there's a bloodlust here to say, yes, we. [00:10:54] Finally, Tennessee will be a place where there is no more Democratic representation, no more representation of a majority black city that votes in a certain way, because finally we will have our state back. [00:11:11] Here's Andy Ogles. [00:11:12] Two weeks ago, we played a clip from Andy Ogles where he not only talked about how he likes fondue, I've emailed the representative's office several times asking about his fondue fondness, his fondness oo. [00:11:25] Fondueness, but no response yet. [00:11:28] I have also asked about his vile racism. [00:11:32] But here's what he said For too long, Tennessee politics has been dominated by cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers imposing their corrupt will on a deeply rural and conservative state. [00:11:42] The General Assembly's constitutional redrawing of federal districts affirms a foundational truth. [00:11:47] And he goes on to say, you know, talk about how Tennessee is this place that should be a red state and a red state only. [00:11:54] There's a lot of code words in here, Dan. [00:11:56] Cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers. [00:11:58] That sounds to me like a code word for Black people and anyone who supports them. [00:12:04] So I think the racism you're talking about is evident in Tennessee most clearly. [00:12:10] I want to play a clip here from Mike Johnson. [00:12:17] And then I want to get into the kind of theological and spiritual dimensions of this a little bit. [00:12:21] So here's Mike Johnson talking in 2026. [00:12:25] You ready? [00:12:25] Here's him explaining what we need in 2026 in terms of midterms in Congress. [00:12:29] They have full on Trump derangement syndrome, okay? [00:12:32] And it informs how they see the world and how they react and how irresponsible they are now is on full display for the whole country. [00:12:40] I hope voters remember this in the fall. [00:12:42] You've got to keep the grownups in charge, and that's the Republicans. [00:12:46] Mike Johnson uses the phrase, the adults in the room. [00:12:50] And I just want to break this down. [00:12:53] I want to break this down for several reasons. [00:12:58] I just think that these four words characterize so much about. [00:13:04] American history, American religion, and the push to make sure that non white, non Christian, non men don't have equal representation and power in this country. [00:13:17] The adults in the room. [00:13:21] Okay. [00:13:22] One of the things that strikes me, and I'm happy to just throw it to you, is going back to the Civil War, going back to the antebellum South, going back to the justifications on theological grounds of enslavement. [00:13:33] The idea was this men are the adults in the room. [00:13:37] White Christian men are the only adults in the room who can have responsibility. [00:13:42] If you're a woman, you should not be able to vote. [00:13:44] If you are an enslaved black person, you're part of the family. [00:13:48] You're just part of daddy's flock of children. [00:13:52] You'll never be a full grown adult. [00:13:54] You'll always live in submission to the patriarch. [00:13:57] And there will only ever be one adult in the room. [00:14:01] When Mike Johnson says the adults in the room, I want to remind everybody that's in the context of a couple of things. [00:14:07] They just tried to pass the Save America Act. [00:14:10] Which would force women to do so many things if they have changed their name because of marriage, because of anything else, to be able to vote. [00:14:18] It would require millions of people would essentially not be able to vote in the next election. [00:14:23] So the Save America Act is one. [00:14:24] Number two, on theological grounds, there are people in Mike Johnson's universe, Pete Hegses' denomination, that are openly calling for the repealment of the 19th Amendment so that women cannot vote formally. [00:14:39] That is in addition to everything that happened last week with the Supreme Court decision and the redistricting fights we're seeing today. [00:14:45] When he says the adults in the room, I know what he means. [00:14:49] Dan, he means white Christian men. [00:14:52] We have Andy Ogles calling people race hustlers and cosmopolitan communists. [00:14:57] We have Brian Beckwith, lieutenant governor of Indiana, who you just heard, saying that the left is led by the minions of darkness and demons. [00:15:07] Like these are folks who think that you should not have rights and representation if you're not a white Christian man. [00:15:14] Am I overplaying that, Dan? [00:15:16] Is my brain fried from just digesting this stuff for 10 hours a day? [00:15:20] What do you think? [00:15:21] No, I think I don't think you're overdoing it. [00:15:23] I think it's just highlighting that, you know, we could look at the adults of the room comment on a number of levels. [00:15:28] The most basic is great. [00:15:30] How has the GOP Congress done lately in acting like the adults in the room? [00:15:34] They can't agree with themselves and do anything when they have a majority in both houses. [00:15:39] So there's that. [00:15:39] But I think that's like the surface level. [00:15:41] That's like the surface level analysis. [00:15:43] And what you're doing, as you do really effectively, is say, well, let's look at how this dog whistle language has been used in the past. [00:15:52] And let's listen to that comment in the context of what's he talking about immediately redistricting, defending that, and the court decision and so forth. [00:16:01] Let's circle back around to like the context of when he chooses to say this in case somebody's saying, Well, you're making it about race. [00:16:07] It's not about race. [00:16:07] You guys make everything about race. [00:16:10] I know you've never heard anybody say that, Brad, but I might have gotten that comment from a critic or two. [00:16:15] So, in the context of the redistricting, like you mentioned this a minute ago, when you know, the racism is how it's almost as if. [00:16:23] Wait for it. [00:16:24] Almost as if the Voting Rights Act has basically been rolled back, and all those southern states are like, oh, hey, we're free to create all white districts now. [00:16:35] And so I think it's in that context like, where is Mike Johnson from? [00:16:39] Who does he represent in Congress? [00:16:41] What state is he representing and speaking for when he says this and he celebrates the decision? [00:16:47] And he's like, you know, going all the way back a number of times he said it that redistricting is about making sure that the grownups stay in power. [00:16:56] Well, what have we seen? [00:16:57] We've seen this explicit re racializing, I guess, of these states through the redistricting. [00:17:06] And I want to circle back around for a minute and sort of tie this in because I think it's important to think about what John Roberts said. [00:17:14] But then you mentioned Pete Hegseth and Pete Hegseth's pastor because it's the same logic that runs through everything in the Trump administration and the contemporary right and MAGA that I think circles back around. [00:17:26] And that's why we hear Mike Johnson's comment the way that we do. [00:17:30] So Here's the logic, the really, really perverse logic that we have seen play out in the last week. [00:17:36] Okay. [00:17:37] So the Roberts Court declares that creating congressional districts on the basis of race is unconstitutional. [00:17:43] I talked about it last time. [00:17:44] There was a statement in there that race should not be a part of political decision making, period. [00:17:51] Which then unleashes a slew of mostly Southern states rushing to do what? [00:17:55] To dismantle congressional districts on the basis of race. [00:17:59] They're targeting the districts. === Unconstitutional Race-Based Districts (05:08) === [00:18:01] That are predominantly black. [00:18:02] These are not states that have been sued. [00:18:04] These are not states who, you know, they've taken their existing maps and taken it to court and challenged it. [00:18:09] These are states that have just been waiting for the Supreme Court to lift the requirements that the Voting Rights Act put on Southern states in representation for voting. [00:18:18] And as soon as that came out, they're like, Yep, we're all redistricted. [00:18:22] We're going to erase all of those black majority districts. [00:18:25] I say all of those. [00:18:25] There aren't that many of them, but they matter for representation. [00:18:28] They do that on the basis of race, which explicitly enables political decisions to be made on the basis of race by claiming that the political decisions you didn't like, John Roberts, were made on the basis of race. [00:18:41] You are able to weaponize anti discrimination to license explicit and open discrimination. [00:18:48] But here's where I think it plays out the same way that the Pete Hegseth logic has and the other things in MAGA. [00:18:53] And you can tell me if I'm crazy here. [00:18:55] What have we seen if we talk about, say, Pete Hegseth in the Pentagon? [00:18:59] We have seen women and we've seen people of color who are lined up for promotion have that knocked down. [00:19:04] Why? [00:19:05] Well, if we were only going to promote on the basis of merit, not on the basis of gender, not on the basis of racial equity. [00:19:12] So if they're black or they're women, That it must have been a DEI initiative. [00:19:16] We're going to roll that back. [00:19:18] But what it does, of course, is make it so that you can now refuse to promote anybody who's a woman, who's a person of color. [00:19:26] Why? [00:19:26] Because they're a woman or a person of color. [00:19:28] We have just licensed discrimination by appealing to anti discrimination. [00:19:33] And that's what John Roberts has done. [00:19:35] And that's what we've seen the Southern states do. [00:19:37] And you can just feel him last week trying to say, oh, this is not, we're just calling balls and strikes. [00:19:41] We're just doing our thing. [00:19:42] It's not, you know, we're not targeting anybody. [00:19:45] And like literally as soon as they did it, Other states jump on board to squeeze in these gerrymandered maps ahead of the election. [00:19:53] And we'll see on some of these, if they get held up in court, if they're not following correct processes and procedures and things like that. [00:20:00] But we've seen it play out, and that is the playbook. [00:20:02] Because what you do is basically you make it so that any time there's a black majority district, oh, that must have been on the basis of race. [00:20:11] Got to get rid of it. [00:20:13] Anytime there are women or people of color who are advanced in the military, same logic. [00:20:17] It had to be because of their identity. [00:20:19] We can roll it back. [00:20:20] All it does is allow discrimination on the basis, supposedly, of non discrimination. [00:20:27] That's the perverse logic of somebody like John Roberts, but that's the logic that's accelerated by somebody like Mike Johnson saying, hey, this is a good thing. [00:20:34] It helps keep the grownups in the room, helps keep the grownups in charge in the military. [00:20:40] It helps do that. [00:20:41] So that language of being the grownups in the room is not just a folksy or fun or cool way of saying, we're the party of, they would have said once upon a time, we're the party of ideas. [00:20:51] I think it's coded language that communicates everything that you are. [00:20:53] By grownups, they mean the right kind of Americans. [00:20:56] And by that, they mean white Christian men and those who support white Christian men. [00:21:00] And anything other than that, that must be discriminatory. [00:21:05] Anytime it's not white Christian men, it must have been decided on the basis of something discriminatory that allows us to discriminate against everybody who's not a white Christian man. [00:21:14] And that's the logic we see. [00:21:16] But what did Brian Beckwith say, Lieutenant Governor of Indiana? [00:21:18] He said, Oh, they're coming for you, Christian. [00:21:20] They're trying to. [00:21:21] And so he's talking about Virginia redistricting as Texas is doing the same, as there was a push to do this in his own state that failed, but Trump primarily the people that got in his way. [00:21:34] There's this persecution complex, this victimhood complex that says, well, if we don't have total power, then we're being run out of our country. [00:21:44] And what SCOTUS did is say, yeah, you're right. [00:21:47] Yeah, you're right. [00:21:47] And then what I take you to be saying then is that there's a license to say to anyone else, Predominantly black population in Memphis, people in the military trying to get promotions. [00:21:59] Oh, yeah, sorry. [00:22:01] You're not going to get that. [00:22:02] You're not going to have your representation. [00:22:04] You're not going to get your recognition, your promotion. [00:22:07] And when you claim that you're being victimized, when you claim you're being marginalized, when you claim that you are not being afforded the rights that you were promised, we're going to call you race hustlers, cosmopolitan communists, woke, anti American, God hating domestic terrorists. [00:22:23] That's what we're going to do. [00:22:25] That's the tactic we're going to take. [00:22:26] And you see that we've talked about this for eight years, but there's weeks you just see it so clearly. [00:22:33] All right, let's take a break and we'll get to the long history of this, but also how. [00:22:38] If we zoom out a little bit, there's a very clear picture here of how this whole redistricting court decision phenomenon is one more wrinkle in the tear down of American democracy. [00:22:52] Be right back. [00:22:54] All right, Dan. [00:22:55] So, given what you just said, this rolling back of rights, I want to go into the history of this a little bit. [00:23:01] And then I want to arrive at a place where we can talk about how everything that's happening with redistricting and gerrymandering. === Christian Nationalism Tactics (15:09) === [00:23:09] Is an assault on American institutions in terms of voting, in terms of congressional district, that is one more notch in the belt of making sure this is not a democracy. [00:23:19] So that's where we're trying to head. [00:23:22] In my forthcoming book, American Caesar, I chronicle the progression, the political progression of Paul Weyrick. [00:23:30] And Paul Weyrick, many of you know who that is. [00:23:32] He's the architect of the religious right. [00:23:34] He founded the Free Congress Foundation, the Council for National Policy. [00:23:39] He Is somebody that in the 1970s and 80s was kind of the central node in the nervous system of the conservative takeover of the GOP, the Christian nationalist movement to join Catholics and evangelicals against anyone else who stood opposed to their understanding of family and sexuality and gender and American history. [00:24:02] And you might remember some of you this very famous clip of Paul Weirich talking about voting. [00:24:08] Let me play that for you now. [00:24:11] Now, many of our Christians have what I call the Goo Goo syndrome. [00:24:16] Good government. [00:24:18] They want everybody to vote. [00:24:21] I don't want everybody to vote. [00:24:23] Elections are not won by a majority of people. [00:24:26] They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. [00:24:30] As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down. [00:24:36] Goo Goo syndrome. [00:24:39] It's a technical political term, Brad. [00:24:42] Just gonna leave it alone. [00:24:43] It's a technical political term. [00:24:44] Yep. [00:24:46] I don't want everyone to vote. [00:24:48] The more people who vote, the less chance we have of winning. [00:24:52] He said it out loud. [00:24:53] This is the man who basically masterminded the moral majority with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye. [00:25:01] This is the guy that spearheaded the movement to get rid of Jimmy Carter, the Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, and put in the Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan. [00:25:09] This is the guy that sees Christian American orthodoxy as the nuclear family, heterosexuality, child bearing women. [00:25:20] Women in the home. [00:25:21] The person who, when Martin Luther King Jr. died, a Catholic priest joined an ecumenical service and he tried to get that priest defrocked because of his participation in an ecumenical ceremony in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death. [00:25:42] Okay? [00:25:42] So that's who we're talking about here. [00:25:45] But the thing I want to point out for everybody is this the man who said out loud, I don't want everyone to vote. [00:25:52] Was a man who believed there was a moral majority in the country. [00:25:54] In the 70s and 80s, he was like, All we got to do is wake up all those voters. [00:25:58] We got to wake up that moral majority so that if they all vote, if they all mobilize, we'll win. [00:26:04] And you know, Dan, by 1999, he no longer believed that. [00:26:09] Let me quote you a letter from 1999. [00:26:11] I no longer believe that there is a moral majority. [00:26:13] I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually share our values. [00:26:18] I believe we've probably lost the culture war. [00:26:21] This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important. [00:26:29] The guy that said, just wake up the moral majority and we'll win because most of America is a white Christian landowning gentry that wants these retrograde values surrounding sex, gender, family, race, white supremacy. [00:26:42] By the turn of the millennium, he was like, nah, we're not the majority and it's never going to happen. [00:26:46] So, you know what we need to do? [00:26:47] We need to create separate institutions that will basically allow for us to attack from a different angle. [00:26:56] Here's a direct quote The Constitution has not only failed, it was bound to fail. [00:27:00] The architects of our constitutional order built a house in which secular liberalism could live, and given the dominant urges of the age, would live. [00:27:11] The time has come to leave that house and head for home. [00:27:15] He's not calling here, Dan, for like, let's get out the vote. [00:27:19] Let's make sure our voice is heard. [00:27:21] You know what he's calling for? [00:27:21] He's like, you know what's really bad is the Constitution just allowed for things like secular liberalism, which is based on the free choice of individuals. [00:27:30] And it turns out most individuals don't agree with us. [00:27:34] So instead of getting different ideas, we need to not allow individuals to have choice or representation when it comes to our government. [00:27:41] We need to get rid of all that. [00:27:43] That needs to go away. [00:27:46] He helped with a manifesto two years later that was written by Timothy Hubeck at the Free Congress Foundation, which Weirich founded. [00:27:55] And the plan in this manifesto is to quote, attack the very legitimacy of the left, to be intimidating, and to impose a cost on those who impose them publicly. [00:28:05] I don't know, Dan, does that sound like maybe a rating? [00:28:08] The home of a Virginia lawmaker who's a black woman with the FBI. [00:28:14] That might be it. [00:28:15] The methods would be, quote, guerrilla tactics used to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime. [00:28:22] It's an us versus them, insider versus outsider mentality. [00:28:27] If you polarize people, and this is actually his colleague, Connie Marshall, saying this if you polarize, people either agree with you or they don't. [00:28:35] Polarization is an essential political tool. [00:28:41] This is what Ann Nelson calls a virtual war on American culture and governance, shocking in its ruthlessness and anti democratic spirit. [00:28:50] And you're like, Brad, thanks for writing a book. [00:28:52] Who the hell cares, man? [00:28:53] What are you doing here? [00:28:54] And my response is most Christian nationalists, when they're polled over the last couple of years, have said they want to go back to the 1950s. [00:29:04] And that is before the end of Jim Crow, it's before women's liberation movements, queer liberation movements, it's before the loving case. [00:29:11] Before what else? [00:29:13] And I always say this whenever I give talks or lectures or seminars it's before the Voting Rights Act. [00:29:19] It's before what happened in the mid 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement and Lyndon Johnson and the Voting Rights Act and all kinds of other reforms surrounding voting, immigration, and so on that made this country more like a democracy than it had ever been. [00:29:35] My point is this Christian nationalists like Beckwith from Indiana, Christian nationalists like Kevin Roberts, when they talk this way, they're talking in the heart of a tradition that has been trying to roll back voting rights since voting rights were expanded in the mid 1960s. [00:29:53] They have been on a march to overturn Roe v. Wade, but they've been on the same parallel track to repeal voting rights because they don't think anyone else but them are the adults. [00:30:06] In the room, I want to come back to the adults' comment, but any other thoughts? [00:30:11] I just want to pick up the continuity element of this because somebody could look at this, be like, okay, Paul Weyrick, we know who that is. [00:30:16] He's this kind of old school figure, important. [00:30:18] Yeah, we get it. [00:30:19] You know, but like it's 2026, it's not 1999, it's not 2000. [00:30:25] But we've talked about this like recently the number of people on the right with the sort of common good model of government that the role of government is not to represent the will of the people, the role of government is not to be, you know, of the people, by the people, for the people. [00:30:38] The role of government is to have essentially. [00:30:41] Elites in charge who can dictate to everybody else what is right and wrong and what the common good is. [00:30:46] And it comes primarily through a kind of radical Catholic strand, a kind of a certain kind of Augustinian strand in contemporary Christian nationalism. [00:30:54] People like JD Vance is probably the biggest name political figure attached to it. [00:30:58] You could rattle off 57 other names of people who are sort of like feeding that. [00:31:04] You're never going to guess what religion Paul Lyric was. [00:31:07] You're never going to guess. [00:31:10] I get it. [00:31:10] Catholic. [00:31:11] He was Catholic. [00:31:12] He was Catholic. [00:31:12] He was Buddhist. [00:31:13] Yeah, I was going to guess Buddhist, but you know. [00:31:14] He hated. [00:31:15] And look, this is not, I am not indicting the Catholic Church. [00:31:18] What I'm saying is, Paul Weyrich was a Catholic who hated Vatican II with every fiber in his being. [00:31:24] I'm sorry to interrupt. [00:31:25] Yeah, yeah. [00:31:25] So the point is that if people are like, well, that's Paul Weyrich, that's like way back when. [00:31:30] It's like, no, we've heard the same thing. [00:31:33] And so another theme that we've been saying for eight years, I remember saying this in one of like our very, very first episodes, like, I don't know, maybe one or two episodes in, when I said that what is emerging is. [00:31:44] Contemporary Christian nationalism, as we refer to it now, the language was still sort of evolving then. [00:31:49] It's nothing new. [00:31:51] It's sort of more open, it's less hidden, but it's still there. [00:31:54] And that common good model, who are the elites? [00:31:58] Brad, they're the grownups in the room. [00:32:01] That's what it's talking about. [00:32:02] The grownups in the room put the right people in charge, not chosen by a majority, not representative of a majority. [00:32:11] Just put the right people in charge who believe the right things and know how to run the country the way that an authoritarian parent would just, you know, an authoritarian. [00:32:19] Father would run the family and just make sure that everybody's doing what they're supposed to do and everybody would defer to him. [00:32:24] That's the model of governance. [00:32:26] And it's explicit in people from Wayrick all the way up. [00:32:31] And it has been at least since you get the demographic shifts in the US where conservative Christians are not a majority and where they did lose the culture where a majority of Americans support things that they didn't used to. [00:32:41] And then they realized that, well, we're never going to win people over with ideas. [00:32:46] So you have a GOP now that doesn't even pretend to be the party of ideas anymore. [00:32:50] They're just the party of we're going to be a ruling minority. [00:32:53] Explicitly, that's our aim. [00:32:56] Okay, I want to throw two analytical things out of you. [00:33:00] I want to throw two analytical things out of you, Dan. [00:33:03] You're just going to beat the analysis out of me. [00:33:07] Go to it. [00:33:10] Oh, my. [00:33:11] All right. [00:33:12] Different kind of show. [00:33:12] We're now available on OnlyFans. [00:33:14] Please check us out. [00:33:15] Straight White American Jesus. [00:33:16] That's a new channel. [00:33:18] We're not doing great. [00:33:19] Very few people have signed up, but if you'd like to support us there, please go ahead and check it out. [00:33:25] One is this. [00:33:26] You just talked about a ruling minority. [00:33:30] So let's just talk about redistricting and everything that's happened. [00:33:32] Let's bring it all into the present. [00:33:34] Weirich wanted, if you read my book, if you read Chelsea Eben's amazing book, The Radical Mind, you will see that that is what Paul Weirich wanted in essence. [00:33:43] And there is just, it's clear from the historical record. [00:33:47] They want a hierarchy based on race and gender and religion. [00:33:52] And they want a minority to have the power. [00:33:55] They do not want a democracy. [00:33:57] And you're like, no. [00:33:58] And I'm like, yes, you just heard the man say, I don't want everyone to vote. [00:34:03] From the historical record, you're going to have to buy my book when it's out. [00:34:05] You should go read Chelsea Eben's book, The Radical Mind. [00:34:07] All right. [00:34:09] When you see the redistricting thing happening here, Dan, across the country from Texas to Louisiana to Virginia to California to New York, here's the basic outcome of that it's the destruction of American democracy. [00:34:23] Because we said it way back when, when it happened, when Trump asked Texas to do this a year ago or eight months ago. [00:34:30] This is not good. [00:34:31] You cannot have people who think their vote matters. [00:34:34] To think they are franchised, to think they are citizens with a voice, if the chessboard is completely redrawn such that there's very little power in mobilizing people to vote, to organize, to make their voices heard. [00:34:52] And the ripple effect is now that what happened with Texas and Trump's blatant power grab is a response, and I think the right response by Democrats to say, well, we can't just let you take Congress. [00:35:04] We can't just let you, you know, Cheat us out of any say. [00:35:08] So, we're going to redraw maps in these states and those states where we have the power. [00:35:12] Do I think they should have made that move? [00:35:14] I do. [00:35:15] What's the end result, however? [00:35:17] It's this is not democracy. [00:35:19] This is not representation. [00:35:21] This is not any kind of way to have a situation where you are going to live in a place where people believe they actually have some kind of voice. [00:35:28] And secondly, it entrenches polarization. [00:35:33] I think it's 56 or 58% of black Americans live in the American South. [00:35:38] And there is now no district. [00:35:41] That represents majority black voters in the ways that that Memphis district did. [00:35:45] They were all wiped out. [00:35:48] How do you tell people that they are empowered citizens living in a democracy when the maps can be redrawn such that they can negate your voice? [00:36:00] This is not how you have any kind of situation where we the people exist in a real way. [00:36:07] So that's the ripple effect. [00:36:08] Now, I would remind people, and I'm sure everyone listening knows this already, but Democrats tried to put forth Legislation so that an independent commission would prevent gerrymandering from happening. [00:36:17] Democrats were all in favor and zero Republicans would vote for it. [00:36:23] So, the end result here needs to be to get to a place where gerrymandering is not possible. [00:36:28] In the meantime, we're just watching an institution of American democracy crumble before our eyes. [00:36:34] Do you see it that way? [00:36:36] Yeah, I do. [00:36:38] Because we would keep saying the same thing it's not intended to be democratic in the sense of sort of majoritarian. [00:36:45] And I want to circle back around. [00:36:47] I'm going to be a nerd for a minute because, you know, it's what I do and talk about an idea. [00:36:50] I'm going to bring in Uncle Ron. [00:36:52] We haven't talked about Uncle Ron in a while. [00:36:54] I feel like Uncle Ron is probably feeling left out. [00:36:56] And so, if somebody's sitting around talking to Uncle Ron and says, Well, you hate democracy. [00:37:00] You think a minority should rule the country, he's going to say, No, I don't. [00:37:03] What are you talking about? [00:37:04] I'm defending democracy. [00:37:06] And people ask me, How can it possibly be that the people who are doing what we say that they're doing are eroding the foundations of democracy? [00:37:13] And there are people like the Paul Warwicks of the world and And the Johnsons of the world, and people like that, who I think know full well that that is what they are doing, that that is what they want, that that's what they're aiming for. [00:37:23] But there are a lot of Uncle Rons in the world who listen to the rhetoric, who say, hey, we're defending the Constitution. [00:37:28] We're defending democracy. [00:37:30] I don't know what you're talking about. [00:37:31] Those cosmopolitan Marxists, they're the ones who don't believe in democracy. [00:37:35] And the reason I think that they can do that is what I call minority majoritarianism. [00:37:40] And what does that mean? [00:37:41] It means that when you have a mindset that says everybody who lives in the US, they're not all real Americans. [00:37:48] Being a citizen doesn't make you a real American. [00:37:50] That real felt sense yes, yes, yes, all those black people in those cities, yes, they're technically Americans, they have citizenship, but they're not real Americans. [00:38:01] They're not really Americans. [00:38:03] All those people living in the cities, those urban elites, they're not really Americans. [00:38:09] That's what we heard that valorization of Tennessee as a rural state. [00:38:13] People who live in the country, they're the real Americans. [00:38:15] The red Americans are the real Americans. [00:38:17] Everybody else isn't. === Who Are Real Americans (09:00) === [00:38:18] So, yes, it's a numerical minority of the people in this country, but they view themselves as a majority because they're the voice of real America. [00:38:27] They'll be like, well, yeah, I mean, you put all those people in a room and they vote, they'll do that. [00:38:30] But I mean, you count the votes of the real Americans in that room. [00:38:35] A majority will go for this. [00:38:37] So that's where you get the logic. [00:38:39] Again, it's perverse and it's not cogent, but that's where you get the logic, the felt sense for millions of Americans who act this way that they are somehow defending democracy when any analysis would say you're not. [00:38:53] You're undermining it, you're eroding it, you're actively trying to do away with it. [00:38:57] But I think that's the logic is that not everybody who gets to vote is a real American. [00:39:02] And that's precisely why they shouldn't be allowed to vote. [00:39:05] Let's only let the real Americans vote. [00:39:07] And then, because all the real Americans are MAGA red Americans, then a majority of them will go for something and see that's what we mean. [00:39:15] It's democracy. [00:39:15] The majority voted for it. [00:39:17] I think that's the really, really perverse, twisted logic that generates this sort of double discourse where the elites will say the quiet part out loud and say, we don't want everybody to vote. [00:39:28] But the Uncle Rons in the world will believe that they're defending democracy even as they disenfranchise and work to disenfranchise millions of Americans. [00:39:37] This is. [00:39:38] This goes hand in hand with the creedal nation idea that so many Christian nationalists, Christian supremacists, JD Vance himself say should not be. [00:39:49] And what I mean by that is, you know, what they're going to say, JD Vance, C.J. Engel, Christian Reconstructionists, radical Catholics, they're going to say, look, you're not a real American if you just attest to some propositions or ideas. [00:40:03] A real American is, well, my fifth generation granddaddy's over there buried in this cemetery in Kentucky. [00:40:10] Legacy Americans, a heritage American. [00:40:13] Okay. [00:40:14] You just got here. [00:40:14] You don't have any skin in the game. [00:40:16] My people came on the Mayflower. [00:40:18] That's what they're doing. [00:40:20] They're saying, they're doing exactly what you're saying, Dan. [00:40:22] And the way they justify it is, well, yeah, you might have been a naturalized citizen. [00:40:26] Yeah, you can vote. [00:40:28] What? [00:40:28] You just held up your hand and put your hand over your heart and swore an allegiance when you crossed your fingers behind your back? [00:40:35] No, I don't think so, pal. [00:40:36] You're not a real American. [00:40:37] I don't, you know, and that's what that's the way they'll do it. [00:40:39] And I completely agree. [00:40:42] Let's play one more clip before we move on and go to. [00:40:45] A specific exchange between two of the Supreme Court justices on the redistricting and the gerrymandering issue. [00:40:54] Let's just listen to Mike Johnson talk about something a year ago, Dan. [00:40:58] This is a year ago, May 2025. [00:41:03] What did he say then? [00:41:05] Let's check it out. [00:41:06] Now we have President Trump back. [00:41:07] He has a great team in place, he has willing partners in the House and Senate, unified government. [00:41:14] The adults are back in the room, okay? [00:41:16] And we are going to turn this economy around. [00:41:18] We need a little runway to do it. [00:41:19] I keep using this metaphor of an aircraft carrier. [00:41:23] It took decades to get into the mess that we're in. [00:41:26] You don't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime, but you need miles of open ocean to do it. [00:41:30] But we have begun that turn. [00:41:33] Ah, yes. [00:41:33] The adults in the room. [00:41:35] We have the adults back in the room who are going to re rescue the American economy. [00:41:42] I mean, we've got the best guys in charge now. [00:41:44] Trump's back in office. [00:41:46] He's put Kash Patel in the head of FBI, he put Sean Road Rules Duffy in charge of transportation. [00:41:52] We've got a world wrestling icon in the McMahon family ahead of. [00:41:57] We're doing great. [00:41:59] So, a year later, Mike, how are we doing with the adults in the room? [00:42:03] Let's check it out. [00:42:04] Hmm. [00:42:05] Kash Patel is making FBI agents take polygraph tests, which, not sure polygraph tests are better than Ouija boards, but whatever. [00:42:14] But he is handing out bourbon. [00:42:16] So, I mean, there's that going on with it. [00:42:20] And the FBI is training with MMA fighters, and Cash has limited edition Kash Patel MMA FBI sneakers he wears. [00:42:27] So, that sounds like adult decisions to me. [00:42:29] Okay. [00:42:30] You know, we put the equivalent of a Tesla cybertruck in the charge of the FBI, and that's what you get. [00:42:35] When you put a cybertruck in charge of the FBI, this is what you get. [00:42:39] I don't know. [00:42:39] What are gas prices like, Mike? [00:42:41] How's that doing? [00:42:42] Economy? [00:42:42] Hmm. [00:42:44] Our borrowing, our debt is 100% of the budget. [00:42:50] How's that going? [00:42:50] Is that going great? [00:42:52] We spent $25 billion and counting on a war for no reason. [00:42:55] And why are we fighting that war? [00:42:58] What do we want to get out of it? [00:42:59] I don't know. [00:42:59] Let's ask one of these adults you just talked about. [00:43:02] Marco Rubio, who Dan, I'm not going to play the clips. [00:43:05] I'm tempted to. [00:43:07] But when he was at the podium the other day, he said the Iranians should check themselves before they wreck themselves. [00:43:13] He also said that their leadership is insane in the brain. [00:43:17] Dan, I'm an older millennial. [00:43:19] I don't know how you classify Gen X millennial, but he is trolling people. [00:43:24] Those are 1990s rap lyrics. [00:43:26] Check yourself before you wreck yourself. [00:43:28] That's Ice Cube. [00:43:29] Insane in the membrane. [00:43:31] Cypress Hill. [00:43:31] Is anyone with me? [00:43:32] Am I the only one? [00:43:34] The Secretary of State is. [00:43:36] Is quoting 30 year old rap lyrics to talk about American foreign policy, but at least he can explain our goals in Iran clearly. [00:43:45] Here they are. [00:43:45] Here they are. [00:43:46] Marco, take it away. [00:43:47] Take it away. [00:43:47] As President Trump has said, and the facts clearly bear out, the United States of America holds all the cards. [00:43:53] There is no scenario here in which, if they decide to join a ladder of escalation, they wind up getting the last say. [00:44:00] But our preference is for these straits to be opened to the way they're supposed to be opened, back to the way it was. [00:44:06] Anyone can use it. [00:44:07] No mines in the water, nobody paying tolls. [00:44:10] That's what we have to get back to, and that's the goal here. [00:44:12] Dan, we have lost dozens of American lives, bombed girls' schools, and put the global economy in a chokehold. [00:44:21] Why? [00:44:21] So we could get things back to where they were with the Strait of Hormuz open. [00:44:27] That's a victory, Dan. [00:44:29] That was worth it. [00:44:30] It was worth death, destruction, burning through money, burning through goodwill with all of our allies, just so we could get back to where this was before Trump started this. [00:44:42] It's really great to have these adults in the room. [00:44:44] It just feels good to have men who know what they're doing in charge of the rest of us and telling us how we should live our lives. [00:44:50] They really do seem like they're up for the challenge. [00:44:52] Do you agree? [00:44:54] Yeah, I just want to, like, broadly speaking, you look at the top of the party, any party that's led, like, is there any place in the world, any context, at any point in his life, when Donald Trump walked into a room, everybody's like, oh, good. [00:45:10] The grownups are here now. [00:45:12] Everything's okay. [00:45:15] Never happened. [00:45:15] I don't know if it's a whole side thing. [00:45:18] The other day, when Melania Trump referred to Donald Trump's empathy, she was at this thing speaking and talked about how empathetic he is. [00:45:24] Like, everybody starts laughing. [00:45:25] Like, nobody, like, I don't think that they were sure whether or not it was a joke or they just thought it was ridiculous or like they didn't know how to react. [00:45:33] That's the guy we're talking about. [00:45:35] And that's like the top of the stack. [00:45:37] And then it just goes all the way down. [00:45:39] You've got, yeah, quoting 90s rap lyrics from one administration official. [00:45:43] We already had another one who's, you know, repeating Pulp Fiction prayers. [00:45:47] So, yeah, that's, you're right. [00:45:49] It's what we do. [00:45:50] So, as a Gen Xer, I guess I feel right at home. [00:45:53] I guess maybe, maybe there's a place in MAGA for me after all, if we're going to like quote everything from the 90s. [00:45:58] But, It's absurd. [00:46:00] Just look at how dysfunctional the government is. [00:46:02] They haven't legislated really kind of anything since Trump came into office. [00:46:07] They had the one big beautiful bill, and that's it. [00:46:09] They've just abdicated to Trump. [00:46:11] They can't, just the narrative from the winter. [00:46:14] Remember the whole like, we're going to have the government shut down because of ICE and Department of Homeland Security and all of that. [00:46:20] And Democrats are like, you know what? [00:46:22] Let's separate the two. [00:46:23] We'll fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security and make ICE separate. [00:46:27] And what did the Republicans say? [00:46:28] Nope, can't do it. [00:46:29] Won't do it. [00:46:31] Until eventually the Senate Republicans are like, okay, I guess we'll do it. [00:46:35] Send it over to the House. [00:46:36] What is the House? [00:46:37] We're not going to do it. [00:46:38] This is terrible. [00:46:38] This is awful. [00:46:39] We're not going to do it. [00:46:40] They're fighting each other. [00:46:41] They're all in the same party. [00:46:42] They're all the grownups in the room. [00:46:44] They're busy throwing cake at each other, but like, you know, they're the grownups in the room. [00:46:46] They're like, what did the House end up doing? [00:46:48] They eventually wound up in the same spot that I guess the kids in the room, the unreasonable Democrats, offered them back in like, what was it, February or whenever that was? [00:46:58] Yeah, it's a whether we're talking about race or gerrymandering or just Day to day governance, that's their best pitch is that they are the people who know what's going on. [00:47:10] Yeah. [00:47:10] I mean, I won't play the clip, but Mike Johnson announces the deal that you just talked about. [00:47:15] He's like, he's like, never forget, House Republicans deliver for the American people. === Pushing the Country Forward (05:55) === [00:47:19] And then he turns and he runs faster than Josh Hawley on January 6th. [00:47:23] Like he almost pulls a muscle. [00:47:25] He's like, oh, yeah, we deliver. [00:47:27] And people are like screaming questions and he like tears it, like he almost tears his Achilles, like hightailing it out of there. [00:47:33] So he doesn't actually have to answer anything about that. [00:47:35] All right. [00:47:36] Let me give you one more analytical point before we go to Alito. [00:47:40] And that's this. [00:47:42] Something hit me this morning, and it's so simple, but I think it actually is clarifying. [00:47:48] Tomas Zimmer, writing this week at his Substack, had a really good sort of overview of like the history of voting rights, going back to Reconstruction, and asking basically, you know, can we have a country that was once built on racial and gender hierarchies turn into a multiracial, pluralistic democracy? [00:48:07] Can you do that? [00:48:08] And, you know, what Zimmer argues is that. [00:48:11] During Reconstruction after the Civil War, and he's not alone in this. [00:48:15] Eric Foner and many other Reconstruction historians have made the same point: is that there was a revolutionary turn in the country that really did restructure American society. [00:48:28] You could make the same argument for the 1960s, okay? [00:48:32] And what Zimmer talks about, and many other people have before talked about, is anytime you get that kind of restructuring, you're going to get a backlash that is of. [00:48:44] The same magnitude. [00:48:47] And what hit me this morning was that whether it's white rage, whether it's backlash, whether it's white lash, however you want to talk about it, the more power you have in the restructuring of society, the farther they want to push the society backward. [00:49:06] Let me try to explain that. [00:49:08] If you pass reforms that radically change who is represented, Who has a voice in the country? [00:49:19] You are pushing the country forward. [00:49:21] You're springing it forward. [00:49:22] So I want you to imagine, like, a spring, just like pushing into the future. [00:49:28] Whether that was the 1860s after the war or the 1960s, civil rights movement, Lyndon Johnson, immigration reform, the loving case, and so on. [00:49:39] The 1960s sprung the United States into the future that we have now. [00:49:42] We have a situation now where white Christians are no longer a majority of the country, where some states are pushing minority majority now, where we have more mixed race people than we ever have. [00:49:53] Where we have more non religious people than we ever have, so on and so forth. [00:49:58] The farther that reforms like that spring you into the future, the farther they want to go back. [00:50:04] And the argument that I've been making recently is in the first Trump term, they wanted to go back to the 1950s. [00:50:10] As soon as Trump got reelected, if you go back to those episodes, I was saying they want to repeal the 20th century. [00:50:14] They want to go back to the 1850s before the Civil War. [00:50:18] And people like Pete Hegsath and some of the radical Catholics, they want to go back to the 1150s. [00:50:24] They're just like, no, no, no, give us medieval Christendom. [00:50:28] What do you think of that thesis? [00:50:29] And then we'll take a break. [00:50:31] The further you spring the country forward, the farther in time they want to go backward. [00:50:36] And that is what we're seeing now. [00:50:37] Don't let women vote. [00:50:40] Let's go back to Jim Crow. [00:50:41] Let's go back to the antebellum South. [00:50:43] Blah, Yeah, I think it's just a further and further move to the right, which if your vision of the American golden age is always the past, right? [00:50:57] And that's how conservatism works, right? [00:50:59] The future, such as it is that we want to move to, is always a repetition of the past. [00:51:03] So, some point. [00:51:06] So, you get this sense where at this point, it's like a lot of radical movements that sort of eat themselves or they like metastasize. [00:51:15] You have to become more and more extreme, I think, in your sense of, well, how far back do we have to go? [00:51:21] It's not enough to go to the 50s. [00:51:23] It's we've got to go further and further and further back. [00:51:26] The idea of your commitment is how radical are you? [00:51:31] In your vision of when the American sort of golden age was, even to the point of somebody like Hegseth or the radical Catholics, like, well, it wasn't really an American golden age. [00:51:40] It was a Western golden age, which was like medieval, medieval Christendom. [00:51:44] And what we need is an American Christendom, you know, a new medievalism in the 21st century. [00:51:50] And so I think that that's the logic of sort of an accelerated notion of becoming more and more extreme as a sign of virtue. [00:51:57] It's like a form of virtue signaling. [00:51:59] And the way that you do that on the right now is by hearkening further and further and further back. [00:52:04] In time, pushing that, that, and the reason you can push it back is because it's imaginary and never existed. [00:52:10] There never was an imaginary golden age. [00:52:13] But because of that, you just keep pushing it further and further back. [00:52:16] And that becomes the sign of your commitment of how serious you are about, you know, a real America and so forth, the farther back you can push that. [00:52:24] So I think, I think, I don't know if that's exactly the same thing as the way you're putting it, but I think you bring those two things together and you'd really have something about the dynamics and the rhetoric and the discourse of the contemporary MAGA movement, especially among its leadership. [00:52:38] But what did Paul Weirich say in the quote? [00:52:39] I said, he's like, the Constitution failed and it was bound to. [00:52:42] He's like, the Constitution? [00:52:44] Got to go back before that if we want the real good shit. [00:52:48] Constitution, too liberal. [00:52:49] Too liberal. [00:52:50] We were never going to have the Christian nation we needed. [00:52:52] Constitution. [00:52:54] And let's go back a little before that. [00:52:56] Maybe Massachusetts Bay Colony. [00:52:58] That's exactly what I was about to say. [00:52:59] Theocratic totalitarianism. [00:53:01] That sounds good. [00:53:02] Let's burn some Quakers and witches. [00:53:04] That's probably when we were doing well. [00:53:06] Let's take a break. [00:53:07] Be right back. [00:53:08] All right, Dan, tell us what happened in a specific exchange between some SCOTUS colleagues. === Partisan Supreme Court Logic (07:15) === [00:53:14] Yeah. [00:53:14] So unsurprisingly, everybody can see these decisions in the Supreme Court and recognize that they're highly partisan. [00:53:23] The conservative courts, one analysis says that, you know, they sort of go along with the GOP about 75% of the time and so forth. [00:53:31] And so the decision, the Voting Rights Act decision was disappointing, but for many, not surprising. [00:53:37] But the conservatives on the court weren't finished there. [00:53:40] There has been a pretty longstanding principle in American jurisprudence, often coming down sort of at the hands of the Supreme Court, sort of. [00:53:47] Trickling down to lower courts, that if you're going to make these big, momentous decisions, you do so or you implement them in a way that doesn't directly influence elections and electoral politics and so forth. [00:53:59] Why? [00:53:59] So that we don't look like we're being partisan and so forth. [00:54:03] In this case, there's lots of technicalities to this, but the long and short of it is the Supreme Court, which means the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, allowed the Louisiana Fed to go into effect immediately, meaning we're going to allow you to redo the maps and all that before. [00:54:18] The 2026 election. [00:54:21] This is why, as you're highlighting, you've got people sort of hitting pause on elections that have already sort of started. [00:54:27] You've got all the other states kicking in, whatever, this immediacy. [00:54:29] So there was a fiery exchange in dissenting and concurring opinions between Katanji Brown Jackson and the conservatives on the court, especially Alito. [00:54:40] Samuel Alito was the one who really was sort of voicing this. [00:54:44] Definitely one of the grown ups. [00:54:45] Yeah, definitely a grown up in the room. [00:54:48] Like, I would just, as an aside, I would love to like, I don't know, hang out with Samuel Lito, watching a baseball game or something, and just say something he disagrees with, just to watch how incensed he gets that you would pretend to disagree with him about something. [00:55:02] He is such a self-important asshole all the time. [00:55:07] He's just like, How dare you question me? [00:55:09] You'd be like, Yeah, I don't know, man. [00:55:10] I think this could be a year. [00:55:11] This could be the Broncos might go all the way. [00:55:13] You'd be like, How dare you question me? [00:55:15] I just want to know. [00:55:16] I'm going to be like, No, I think Pepsi is better than Coke. [00:55:19] Actually, I prefer Pepsi. [00:55:21] You know what I miss? [00:55:22] I think new Coke was the way to go. [00:55:24] I think the big mistake in America was getting rid of that. [00:55:26] And he would just, yeah. [00:55:27] Anyway, I could really go for a Zima. [00:55:29] You want one, Sam? [00:55:34] S Man. [00:55:34] S Man. [00:55:35] I'm going to get the Zimas. [00:55:37] Elderberry flavor. [00:55:38] You want an elderberry Zima? [00:55:39] Okay. [00:55:40] No, no. [00:55:40] You know, no. [00:55:41] Okay. [00:55:41] All right. [00:55:42] Next. [00:55:43] I think you could be wrong. [00:55:44] You might be looking at this wrong, Sam, and just watch how he implodes. [00:55:47] So, anyway, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson basically accused the conservative court of abandoning its principles with the aim of influencing the November election. [00:55:56] And this. [00:55:57] In the world of very kind of polite disagreement and discourse on the Supreme Court, this was pretty fiery stuff. [00:56:05] And she stated that the development since the decision, quote, have a strong political undercurrent. [00:56:10] She basically said to the conservatives, you are trying to influence the November election, and we all see you doing it. [00:56:18] Alito responded, calling the point she raised baseless and insulting. [00:56:23] Brad, you're insulting and baseless views about Zima. [00:56:25] Same kind of thing. [00:56:26] Baseless and insulting. [00:56:29] In a concurring opinion that was joined by who else but Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, he called the charge that, quote, our decision represents an unprincipled use of power. [00:56:39] He said it was groundless and utterly irresponsible. [00:56:42] And then he poses this question, and I think this is really significant the way that he poses this as a rhetorical question, but you're kind of like, you're actually hitting on the real thing here, Sam. [00:56:53] He said, What principle has the court violated? [00:56:56] The principle that we should never take any action that might unjustifiably be criticized as partisan? [00:57:02] End quote. [00:57:04] The point is, he recognizes and is very sensitive, hypersensitive to these charges of partisanship, primarily because the objective evidence shows that Samuel Alito is a tremendous political partisan. [00:57:16] Everybody sees it. [00:57:17] He got called out for it. [00:57:19] And I think the defensiveness and the way that he reacted doesn't mask anything the way that he might think it does. [00:57:26] It just makes it clear that Samuel Alito and the conservatives know that they are partisan actors, they resent the fact that people identify this. [00:57:33] And it was just very much out in full force and full display in the exchange about the Supreme Court decision and its implementation. [00:57:41] Well, I, you know, I, as you said, his pal, Clarence Thomas, agreed with him on this. [00:57:47] And let me just, I'm just looking some things up here, Dan, that I remembered from the past. [00:57:53] Oh, yes. [00:57:54] For over two decades, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted undisclosed luxury trips, including private jet travel, yacht cruises, and resort stays from billionaire, let's see what it says here. [00:58:03] What party are they from? [00:58:04] Republican donor Harlan Crowe. [00:58:07] There's also an instance where allegedly his kids' private school was paid for by Republican mega donors and so on. [00:58:14] So I'll just throw that out there. [00:58:16] I'm not sure if it seems relevant to you, but this charge of partisanship. [00:58:20] I also remember Sam Alito and Mrs. Alito, who he blamed for the whole incident, flying the appeal to heaven flag and other flags that are associated with the American right, the Republican Party, Christian nationalism, and so on. [00:58:34] So I don't think that he's really the best guy. [00:58:38] To try to wiggle out of the partisanship charge. [00:58:40] And, you know, all joking aside, Neil Gorsuch recently gave an interview and he, you know, I'm no fan of Neil Gorsuch. [00:58:50] Don't email me. [00:58:52] But he's much better at sort of trying to kind of articulate how he and the court can be nonpartisan. [00:58:59] Do I buy it? [00:59:00] No. [00:59:00] But Alito and Thomas have no leg to stand on whatsoever. [00:59:04] I mean, there's just no way for them to get out of this. [00:59:07] So, anyway. [00:59:08] I think this says a lot when Gorsuch is like their best spokesperson for this. [00:59:12] Because John Roberts just keeps coming out and being like, we're not partisan. [00:59:15] I don't know why people think we're partisan. [00:59:17] It's like he's talking in the mirror, trying to convince himself that the court isn't partisan. [00:59:21] He wants it to not be or something. [00:59:23] As he, who has aimed to undermine the Voting Rights Act since he was in the Reagan White House, is now the one saying, it's not partisan. [00:59:31] I don't know what you're talking about. [00:59:33] He just asserts it as fact. [00:59:35] Alito just gets offended anytime anybody tells him the truth. [00:59:39] Gorsuch at least can try to put some. [00:59:43] Some numbers to it. [00:59:43] You know, he's like, we agree 40% of the time, which also means they disagree 60% of the time, but you know, whatever. [00:59:49] But I think it says something when he's the most like convincing spokesperson they have for trying to make the argument that the conservative wing of the court is not just openly partisan at this point. [01:00:03] I agree. [01:00:04] The court has to be expanded. [01:00:06] Just in close for today, the reforms when it comes to gerrymandering, when it comes to voting, when it comes to the Supreme Court. [01:00:14] They have to be as decisive as the blows to democracy have been. [01:00:21] And that was incomplete and it ultimately was defeated by reactionary redemptionist forces. === Hope for Mark Kelly (02:46) === [01:00:30] We can't let that happen again. [01:00:32] And we have to dream of a different country if we're going to get anywhere. [01:00:36] What's your reason for hope? [01:00:37] Yeah. [01:00:38] Just to add to that real quickly, I think even more than expanding the court would be turn limiting judges, I think would be a huge thing. [01:00:44] I'm not going to lie, it's a hard week to find hope. [01:00:48] But a story that I did find it, the ongoing story of Mark Kelly, Senator Mark Kelly, former astronaut, former Navy naval officer, the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth, through the Pentagon, coming after him to try to punish him for that video that he and others made, just stating the fact that military officers, excuse me, not military officers, military personnel don't have to follow illegal orders. [01:01:11] This has made it to an appeals court, which seemed highly skeptical of the Pentagon claims. [01:01:16] And I took hope that. [01:01:18] Mark Kelly is sort of coming out on the winning side of this, and it's exposing Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon for kind of what they are. [01:01:24] But it's also bringing, I think, creating a figure in the Democratic Party that is perhaps somebody that the party can begin to rally and build around. [01:01:33] And I think we need that. [01:01:34] A couple of reasons for hope on my end come from our Discord. [01:01:39] One is that there's a billionaire tax that is making its way in California, which would be, I think, a really good thing. [01:01:49] Trump's tariffs were world illegal again, which is a good thing. [01:01:54] And Media Matters, which was under investigation by the FTC for calling out anti Semitism and hate speech, has secured complete and total victory in their lawsuit. [01:02:07] And finally, InfoWars was officially taken over by The Onion this week, which is pretty cool. [01:02:14] And I got to applaud The Onion for that move. [01:02:17] All right, y'all, sign up for our newsletter. [01:02:19] It comes out every Sunday. [01:02:22] And look for a new chapter in the kind of life of our show. [01:02:26] We're working on some big changes and renovations. [01:02:29] Hopefully, we're going to put those in place over the next couple of months. [01:02:33] More live streams, more live shows, doing the weekly roundup live, some voices to the mix in our other kind of days of the week that we publish. [01:02:44] And anyway, we'll have more soon. [01:02:46] This Sunday, I have an interview with Robert Downen, who broke the story about the SBC abuse crisis. [01:02:53] He has a brand new piece about Paul Pressler, the architect of the SBC conservative takeover, and his decades of abuse of young men and how he was a protected part of the religious right, good friend of Paul Weirich, and so on. [01:03:06] We'll be back next week with It's in the Code, the weekly roundup, and much more. [01:03:11] Stay tuned. [01:03:12] Otherwise, thanks for being here. [01:03:14] Have a great weekend. [01:03:15] We'll catch you next time. [01:03:16] Thanks, Brad.