6/25/26 Panel

Good morning. Welcome to the roundtable and to our panel discussion this morning. Very nice to have you with us. It's a Thursday. It's the 25th, and it's 12, 13 minutes, rather, past the hour of 9 o'clock. We are very grateful you are with us and hopefully enjoying the day. We remind you that you can be a part of our program by simply writing to us panel at wamc.org. Panel at wamc.org. We've got quite a list of stories to talk about today. And once again, we're going to be waiting for a possibility of a decision on birthright citizenship from the Supreme Court. They basically have two more days to come down with a decision. I think it's this Thursday, today or next Tuesday. And... We are going to take coverage of that if the decision does indeed come down shortly after 10 o'clock this morning, so we will be watching out for that. The last couple days, we that they have said it's a possibility it does not happen, but today it may. So we'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, we have a rich docket of stories, and we will get to that in just a moment. Let me introduce the group. to you and we'll get started. Public Policy and Communications expert, Teresa Borgiawa is here. Good morning. Teresa, how are you? Good morning, good morning. I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Excellent. And yeah, everybody always says, what can we do? What can we do after I listen to the Postmaster's testimony yesterday on Capitol Hill talking about yet another approach to try to restrict voting? Most important thing that people need to do is... Make sure you have your birth certificate. Make sure your friends have their birth certificate. Make sure you have ID because they're going to go at this issue from every different direction. So anyway, I know it's not on the docket today, but that's all I keep thinking about. We got to. They have to fight it in the court, but people have to be prepared so they're not blocked from voting because they don't have the proper ID. Yeah, don't worry about. Other than that, I'm not thinking about much. Yeah, don't worry about the do. This is your time. You get to, you know, tell us what's on your mind. Well, people always say, well, what can we do? What can we do? That's right. Here's something you can do. It is the question we get the most. Absolutely. What can we do? This is one thing you can start thinking about how you and your friend groups and everybody make sure that they're prepared so that they don't get blocked from voting. We welcome the Reverend Peter Cook principle, faith in the public square, and co-principal of faith beyond religion, nationalism. Did I get that right? Religious nationalism. Religious nationalism. Oh, maybe that was an ass. Okay. I jotted it down quickly. How are you, sir?

I'm well, thank you. Very nice to have you here as always. It's a pleasure. Welcome the former mayor of the city of Albany, Kathy Sheehan, to the program. Good morning. Mayor, how are you? Good morning. I am thinking about Venezuela and the... tragedy that is unfolding there and the fact that it puts in perspective some of the things that we talk about and I'm hopeful that you know generous Americans across the country will find ways of reaching out and helping in what is a dire situation there it certainly is without a doubt we also will talk about that in a second we also welcome author lawyer consultant public speaker and entrepreneur Fatima Gilliam, most recent book Race Rules, What Your Black Friend Won't Tell You. Fatima, thank you very much for being with us. Very nice to have you on the program again. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. And, you know, I echo the concerns about Venezuela. When I heard about it, my heart went out when I saw that it was a 7.2 earthquake followed by 7.5. I grew up in California. I've been in a 7.1, and it's not fun. So I think it's scary that they are estimating maybe as many of the 100,000 people could possibly be dead. Right. That's right. And at least, right now, at least 164 killed, according to officials. Rescuers are mounting frantic search for survivors. The disaster is the latest major challenge for the president, Delci Rodriguez. Earthquakes also once again put into a spotlight the fragile infrastructure of Venezuela. And as Fatima mentioned, a 7.5 magnitude quake, the biggest in Venezuela and more than a century. So that is happening. The other natural disaster, if you will, is that the extreme heat in Europe. As Europe bakes, Spain is warning of a possible high death toll, a Spanish agency linked the heat to an estimated rise in deaths. Scorching temperatures are testing Europe's ability to adapt to... extreme weather and they are working very hard on this and with varied success of trying to address the immediate problem of

cooling people down and keeping them safe. Right. And, you know, we talked about last week, for those who might have been listening, about the El Nino, which is going to be at historic rates, and they expect globally very, very high temperatures and storms that are much more magnitude, maybe not as many hurricanes, but high winds. And we even saw that in this area in the last week. But what's going on in Europe now is a real tragedy. A high percentage of homes and businesses do not have air conditioning. And so it really heat really puts people at tremendous health risk. And it's, you know, they... It's a warning for everyone to be aware of how we can in our own country be more prepared for these high heats because it's just going to keep getting worse and worse. And the other thing about Venezuela, I heard the U.S. Geological Survey said that they can expect a whole series of aftershocks over the next week as well. And I thought it was interesting to hear that China has already on their way, helping India is on their way to help. Some European countries are on their way to help. It'll be interesting to see what role the U.S. plays or not in helping. But it's a very, in both places, tough situation. Can I add one thing about Europe? Of course. Yeah, because I've lived in France several times. have a lot of friends there and chat with them all the time. And I mean, there's chat groups with my friends in France who are talking about all the different things they're trying to do to stay cool and to echo the point that they don't have air conditioning over there. So it's very different. And if you look at the temperatures, I mean, some places are experiencing like 109 degree, kind of these Arizona-level heat wave. where they don't have air conditioning. You know, like one of my friends, when they had the previous massive heat wave where a lot of old people passed away, and she was elderly. I mean, one of the things that she had to do at the time is she had all of her shutters closed. Luckily, they have, you know, shutters on lots of homes. in France that can make your apartment or home be really dark. But she would just sit in her apartment naked, you know, and then would run her bath to have cold water and then would just repeatedly just lay in the cold water to lower her temperature. I mean, it's really crazy over there with the heat that they're experiencing. So I'll be quiet, but I just wanted to add that to give some human context of what people are going through with a massive heat and not having... air conditioning, which I guess also is a problem because it creates, you know, greenhouse gases and things like that to have air conditioning, but they're not equipped. They're not equipped to deal with it.

Well, and I think that, you know, building on that, this is a real opportunity. These are the things that everyday people, whether in this country or in Europe, are thinking about with respect to the impacts of global climate change. And we've demonstrated right here in Albany that there are ways of addressing it that don't impact greenhouse gases. When we rehabilitated Steamboat Square, which is an Albany Housing Authority complex down near the river, we used geophobic. And we now have, I think at the end of this project, there'll be close to 400 units of affordable housing that is heated and cooled using geothermal technology that drives down prices and costs, energy costs for those residents and provides essential cooling. Cooling is going to become every bit as important as heat here in the Northeast. And so we, you know, this is to me the energy that we want to see broad. to these problems. And we have solutions. We have technology. It creates jobs. It helps save people's lives. And yet we are, I think, in the grips of this leadership right now. paradigm or paradox where everything is terrible, everything is horrible, and these types of solutions are things that are not even being given any oxygen. And so, I don't know, maybe we can use this as an opportunity to talk about the future in a way that brings hope and really solve some of these everyday ordinary problems that people are facing. I just want to start clapping and cheering for what you just said. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. No, it's okay. I just want to say that I think that under the Trump administration, we've just seen a massive retrenchment in investment in these kind of clean energy technologies, trying to pass regulations that don't even allow us as a federal government. to examine the effects of climate change. I mean, it's really outrageous and where the United States should be leading in terms of this technology and countering climate change. We're being pulled along by the rest of the world kicking and screaming. You know, I would say that I listened to a story the other day. about how the Red Cross in Arizona is checking in on mobile home residents because they're very concerned that these people are going to die. A lot of mobile homes are not equipped to be retrofitted for air conditioning. There's just a disproportionate number of people who die in mobile homes.

So where do we put this investment at this time? And I think the Biden administration was very, very effective in laying a broad scope effort, building a broad scope effort to promote clean energy. And by that I mean... make sure that there's a workforce, look at the manufacturing base, so we resure the construction of solar panels and things like that. My brother is a geothermal person doing research and implementation, helping gotten grants, helping communities implement geothermal technologies around the Northeast. And so it's an untapped enormous... resource that pays off both in the short run and the long run but you have to have the technical expertise you have to do the research so there was funding for research there was funding for implementation there was funding for workforce it was funding for manufacturing and the Trump administration has eliminated all of that. Stop these projects in their tracks. And, you know, stop solar projects, stop wind projects. And at the same time, they are increasing the subsidies for the oil and gas industry. I just looked at a quick check if this is true. $40 billion in new subsidies over the next decade for oil and gas. At the same time, oil companies are making enormous excess profits over the tragedies of the last year. this oil, the choke on oil, these are companies who've made an enormous profits. And the our tax dollars are subsidizing them at the same time, and all of these incentives to electrify everything are... And I saw... In our own community, one of the things my colleagues and I worked on was a floating solar project, and that's floating solar on our water reservoir, which is a... It's not a... natural ecosystem, so you're not disrupting a natural ecosystem, and it would generate enough power to heat our public buildings. There was a study that if you use the available these reservoirs around the country, there are 24,000 of them, you could generate 10% of the country's electric needs. You know, the incentives for doing that now are gone. Ours will happen, but the others are gone. And we need more of that. And we need to have an infrastructure that make sure that there are cooling centers and warming centers and such.

And these are things that people say, well, what would the Democrats do? What's their agenda? That's, you know, one of their agendas, and it's critical. Two things I want to mention about both of the stories that we were talking about. One, in regard to the heat. The heat is also testing infrastructure in Europe. At one point on Tuesday, nearly 120,000 homes lost electricity in France as the nation's power grid struggled to meet demand. In southwest France, the authority shut down a nuclear plant because the water temperature in the river used to cool its reactor was dangerously. We also should mention that there is not there is not air conditioning so much in in these places. And not only is there not air conditioning, but they're also built, these buildings are built to keep in the heat. Retaining here. And to retain the heat. So that is also an issue. And the other problem kind of? And they're just not accustomed to this kind of heat, yes. And real quickly, the trains, the train tracks were heating up so much, and they really. rely on train transportation and that was the other thing I read about the even the transportation systems were being affected by the heat because the tracks are so hot it's affecting their switching and such and as far as what is happening in Venezuela with the earthquakes a 7.2 followed by a 7.5 and that's huge the strongest to hit Venezuela in the past century The extent of the destruction remains unclear. The agency said, I mean, we have a number now of 164 people, but that's going to climb. And the extent of the destruction was unclear, but the agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, said that high casualties and damage are probable, estimating a significant chance of fatalities rising into the thousands. We'll hold there for the moment. We'll take a break. When we come back, we'll continue. We'll move on to other news. We welcome you and your letters, as always, panel at wamc.org, panel at wamc.org. And we'll continue our conversation. Talk a little bit about... A testy lunch that took place in Washington yesterday. That or more after this. Good morning. Just a reminder, we just heard the promo for the WAMC on the road event that's going to be taking place with Detroit.

Waterfront Farmers Market this Saturday, June 27th. And a lot going on on that. People working very hard. And I just want to make mention of... We'd love to have you there. Just add to what you just heard in that promo. You can find all the information about it by going to wamc.org. There's a pop-up for a prize giveaway, and there's going to be a lot of cool stuff there. We welcome you. We hope you'll be there, and hope you'll listen to us as well. And again, it's the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market this Saturday. June 27th. I had a fun day yesterday. I went to, I was when I was driving, I had an appointment and it got delayed and I had time to kill for like half hour. So I went through Troy and I just watched them film. Gilded Age. It's very cool. I know you were part of that last year. Oh, my goodness. Two years ago, it was fantastic. It was, it was, they were great to work with. It was so much fun. They, in our music hall, they filmed scenes in our music hall. There's a historic mills, and they filmed a scene outside the mills, and then in one of our neighborhoods. And it was a lot of work. It took a year for us to. convince us me i was hounding them for a year to come to goes but okay i kind of was hounding but um it was it was just a fantastic time i've never had you hound me can you imagine that it's me hounding Dr. Jackson used to say, relentless, she's just relentless. And on HBO, I was absolutely relentless. But it was really fun. I had done it before, but to see the city come out, to see people just fascinated. But it's not so much like star gawking as much as it is, just the fascinating to see a city. not really all that transformed. Showcased. And showcased. And just what goes into a production like that. It's really fascinating. And, I mean, scenes for the people of Coho's to see the music hall, just showcased like that, just gorgeous in the mills. And Albany, breathtaking scenes of Albany. When they were in Washington Park, when they were in Center Square, and they filmed the scene for the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. And then we hosted. the cast in our house. We were the green room for a scene that was shot on First Street in the yard that we, the lawn that we use is a dog park that's next to St. Joseph's Church. They transformed that into a cemetery. And so outside of my house, there were horse-drawn carriages and people in costumes. And it was incredible. And to see, you know, Audra McDonald's snuggling with our then pooch who has since passed away.

It was great. But they're so fast. I mean, they came at like 7 o'clock in the morning, and they were gone by noon. And they come in and they transform everything, and then they leave the pretty stuff behind. Absolutely. But I know one of the beauty shops at the Mills, they took that over for the stars as they're a green room, and those people just, you know, it was just, it was fun, and it uplifts the community. It showcases a community, and I don't know about your experience, but ours, they were delightful people to work with. And a couple bucks there, too, right? Well, I mean, we didn't take any money. We were offered money, but I did not accept a check. No, no, I don't mean that, but as far as the people coming to your restaurants and the caterers, they hire tons of local people, not just. the extras, but a lot of the production people are local folks. And it really is an opportunity to showcase the talent that we have in this area as well. I agree with you, Teresa. Very uplifting and just so great. I mean, they literally walked their advanced people. We gave them a list of businesses in the community that they could purchase from, and they could have done it. you know, somewhere else in a big box store or whatever, but they actively chose to purchase and use our local caters. In fact, two of our local caters are used in Coz and then in Albany, they liked them so much, they used them in Albany. It was, it was really, they work hard to uplift. the communities in which they come from. I think they have a couple filming days left. If you just Google Gilded Age filming locations, they put out a daily list because traffic is often diverted, and they have those up. So you can, if you want to go see it, it's your last chance. And it is really fun to see. So I am. Can that, oh, can I add something? Of course. I love. A period piece. I love Gilded Age, and I can't wait for the next season to drop. But I'll say a couple of things that it's really nice when people can be extras in films and things like that. I mean, I said several times on the show that I grew up in California. That means I have a lot of relatives in Los Angeles that have been in films, work in films, and my... Great-grandfather was an extra in many films, including like Errol... Flynn movies and my great aunt, who is the first black judge in the state of female judge in the state of California, was like an extra in a Laurel and Hardy movie. And it's nice to be able to go back and see these films and then see blimpses of my relatives. But I'm happy to see that New York is getting an infusion of capital from the film industry. I know later in the show we're going to be talking about...

aid and comfort to the enemy. He questioned why any Republican would vote for such a resolution during a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, which led to a shouting match with Bill Cassidy. Senator John Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of Louisiana described Trump as mad as a murder hornet about the vote during lunch. Put yourself in his shoes, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters he's right in the middle of delicate negotiations and the Senate votes to get out of Iran. Democrats have forced repeated votes since the start of the war in February to block Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran. The war powers resolution of 1973 states that the president must remove U.S. forces engaged in hostilities. abroad without congressional authorization if Congress passes such a resolution, though the White House and some Republicans have argued that that is unconstitutional. This was also tied into the Safe Act, and I'm interested. I'm not quite, Teresa, I'm going to yield to you on this, but how did that end up of where that is right now? The Safe Act? Yeah. So the House and Senate, almost with a strong bipartisan support, passed a housing bill. And the housing bill was supposed, I'll get to the Safe Act, it says it occurred to his weird route. So the housing bill was supposed to be signed yesterday. President Trump was coming to the hill to go to the Republican luncheon, Senate Republicans luncheon, and he was supposed to go to Statuary Hall first and sign this strong bipartisan supported housing bill, which was, in theory, going to help the Republicans cope with the midterm elections. Just before, as they gathered for that signing, just before he was supposed to arrive, he posted a... social media post tweet, whatever it is, social post, saying he wasn't coming. He wasn't going to sign the bill, and he refused to sign the bill until the House and Senate passed, and he signed the Safe Act. And this is the act that's going to make it more difficult for people to vote. And the House and Senate Republicans have already signaled that that bill doesn't have the votes to pass in the House and Senate. John Thune has... told them that but he yesterday insisted and so he he didn't call give a courtesy call he just posted on social that he wasn't coming as they literally the stage was set people were there just a no show and then arrived went into the lunch and by all accounts it was uh

a rough and tumble conversation both about the situation and around because not only the the war powers act you have to understand they've also remember the the Trump JD Vance administration had asked for $1.5 trillion in defense spending for the coming year but they've also yesterday sent up a package requesting $87 billion more in appropriations for defense on top of the 1.5 trillion. And so those are huge numbers. But the Senate is just not having that. I mean, and the whole thing about the SAVE Act is that is that they Republicans just keep telling the president we don't have the votes. We don't have the votes. Because it creates all sorts of barriers to voting. This is why when I began talking, so they did the Trump administration. Obviously, they realized they don't have the public on their side. They don't have voters on their side. And so what they're going to do, their approach is just to make it harder to vote. And so there was a two-pronged attack yesterday on voting. One is the Postal Service proposal that... unless the state provides data that they want on voting records, that they are not going to process the vote-by-mail records in the same way, which I just can't imagine that's constitutional, but it's going to have to go through the courts. And then separately, this yet another push to enact the SAVE Act. I think they're going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, which includes these complex voter ID. requirements and such. And it basically, he's trying to eliminate vote by mail, and the Republicans don't want to eliminate vote by mail, because many of their voters vote by mail. I mean, Mayor Sheen, you sure know this better in more detail than I do about the importance of voting by mail. So if I may, I'd like to put on my religious nationalism's hat here to say that, you know, religious nationalism. And it's fetching. What's that? Your hat. Yes. It's quite nice. And really the principle behind religious nationalism is that governments have a propensity to take a religion. primary that religion, twist it, and then weaponize it against religious minorities and to deny human rights. And we see this play out, particularly in what we call replacement theory, which is really a Christian nationalist agenda that really sees diversity in the United States as a threat. that needs to get eliminated. And so this gets reflected in policies that are highly misogynistic, which go after immigrants, which basically...

punish anybody who might challenge a white patriarchal religious power structure. And so we don't talk about these underlying reasons, but even, you know, it's interesting on the SAVE Act that he wanted to roll in attacks on transgendered people. which people say, well, what does that have to do with it? Well, part of this religious nationalist agenda is to go after gay people and transgendered people as sort of a wedge issue. So if we use that as a sort of a basic philosophical framework, when we look at what happened in Washington yesterday, You know, the housing bill that was put together was a pretty good bill. And it doesn't do everything. Dealing with housing is a, by definition, of very strange bedfellows kind of exercise that brings a lot of different individuals together from industry to advocates to whatever. And that there's a... you know, a shared agreement that we really need to increase housing supply. And so this bipartisan act was put together to...

really begin to address how we increase production of affordable housing, particularly for homeowners. But apparently the president didn't think much of that, and he instead is fixated on the SAVE Act and trying to secure his place. in the midterm elections to make sure that the Republicans in the Senate, the Republicans in the House retain their majorities. And it's all in service again of trying to suppress the vote to replace people who might in some way undermine that white power structure. Kathy? Well, you know, I think. When we look at what the president is doing is, you know, he's really doubling down on his lack of concern about issues that impact everyday Americans. This fixation that he has on the SAVE Act, the personal grievances that come ahead of a bipartisan bill that... has provisions that he even championed. But to say that it doesn't really matter is an echo of what he said with respect to the rise in gas prices and their impacts on everyday Americans after he attacked Iran. And so that is a message and the messaging that I think the Democrats are not doing a good job of really. focusing and zeroing in on. Again, you know, this is a president who said he was going to not get involved in foreign wars. He said he was going to end the war in Ukraine. All of these things that he's promised. And we're now almost two years in. And he has. inflation is up. People are paying more at the gas pumps. People can't afford houses. None of these issues have been addressed. And we just have controversy after controversy and outrageous statement after outrageous statement. How is this impacting everyday Americans' lives? And we've got to get back to those basics. I mean, the conversation that we had and the energy in this room when we were talking about the possibilities around. you know, renewable energy and creating jobs and doing things again, that's what I think Democrats really need to be talking about, doing things that help average Americans. But again, we just heard this president double down on being dismissive of working families on people who are just trying to get through their day, trying to figure out how to pay their bills. And to him, this. I think racist, white supremacist legislation that he's trying to push through is more important than them and their families. And people need to wake up to that. And they need to go to the polls and they need to understand that their vote will make a difference and has to make a difference if we want to stop this. Fatima. Well, you know, the core thing with what they're doing, you know, combining the Voting Rights Act being blown up and then wanting, excuse me,

to get this terrible Save Act is, you know, coming for voting, right? That is the linchpin of democracy and power. And at the end of the day, if your ideas don't resonate with people, right, if your platform is terrible and sucks, which is effectively my view of what the Republican platform is, instead of trying to come up with... policies and positions that better connect with everyday people, with voters. Instead, they want to change the rules. They want to change the rules so that they can maintain power, right? And so... Coming up with things like the Save Act with requiring people to have IDs and all of that, it is a solution in search of a problem because voter fraud is not a real thing. You've got a greater chance of being struck by lightning. And when you look even further at this voting ID concern, right, something like 12% of voting-aged Americans that are citizens don't have IDs. That's a lot of people, right? So then if you say you have to require an ID to go vote and you don't have one, it's a de facto poll tax because it's costly. It's not like you just get them for free. And even still, it's like the process of getting it. And then if you have to prove your citizenship on top of it, I mean, like half of Americans don't even have passports. So it's a documentation hurdle, right? And then you could also think of it sort of like, well, if you have to get all this documentation and you have to understand all the documentation, it also reminds me of like the literacy test that they used to have back in the day to try to keep black and brown people from voting in this country. So I think people really need to take a good look at what is the underlying goal. What are they trying to achieve? And I'll just say, you know, In my book, Racial, I do talk about some of these rules. I have a whole chapter dedicated to voting rights. And I think it's important for people to understand what are they trying to do here. And I would say the broader question then for the people who are listening is, you know, if you have people on this show that are talking about that they're coming for democracy, they're coming for your rights, then you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do about it? Right. When we're returning to a Jim Crow system. Right? And we only have had a real democracy where everybody could vote for 60 years, not 250 years. What are people going to do? And I think a lot of people sit back and see these things, whether it's like the Save Act that's coming for women, that has gotten married and changed their name, or people of color, all of these types of things. They sit back and say, well, maybe this doesn't affect me. But it does affect you, right? It's not just about race, because voting is about democracy. And also, when they're coming for people's rights, specifically black and brown people's rights, then what's right behind that is everybody else is right. It is the gateway to take away your freedom. And so I, again, say, what are people on this call going to, and listening going to do to protect their rights in their own communities?

Fatima, one of the things I wondered if you might be able to speak to, one of the provisions that I think is a sleeper and very concerning provision, as the states actively check voter rolls for non-citizens using Department of Homeland Security data and then remove them for the roles, that they are really pressing that states must provide voting roles to the Department of Homeland Security. And the voting had always been a state's issue. The states did not. provide that data. And I think this is this is one provision in there that it's deeply concerning, I think. And the states, even Republican states, have been resisting turning over that data. Well, they want to come for lots of different data, right? Homeland Security, they want to get, like, Social Security information, voting information, right? There's a lot of blurring of trying to get data from different federal agencies to share with Homeland Security and ICE and also voting. And when we really don't have voter fraud, it's all a ruse. It's a ruse to not just pierce the veil of privacy. Clearly it shows that they, you know, for the years and decades and centuries that they would complain about states' rights, states' rights, but it's only states' rights when it's something that they want to advance. These are all nefarious plans to not just come for our rights, but then I question, what are they doing with all this data that they're going to compile as they create profiles on people? And the data that Doge. Sorry. Yeah, and when Doge went in, and took a whole bunch of stuff that we really don't know and understand, and they also lowered our security protocols that immediately we're starting to get hacked from overseas sources when they were doing that. And then you also have some of these tech companies that are in bed with the government that already have massive profiles on us about how we shop, what we buy, you know, tracking our phones. I'm very worried. about what profiles they're compiling on people, not just in terms of your citizenship, not in touch with your voting patterns, in touch with how you shop, where you are. We need to have some serious controls over this data sharing issue, and then they want to use as a farce that they're trying to stop. illegal, I won't say, you know, people who are undocumented in this country when it's really about so many other nefarious plans at hand. I think, Fatima, you know, when you talked about... What does this mean to the average person out there who might have a passport or who has a driver's license? And it's exactly that. I mean, you know, I saw people come into City Hall in tears on a regular basis because they had moved. They couldn't find their birth certificate. And getting these documents costs money. And you have to go to the right place and you have to have the right documentation. This is really disenfranchising the most vulnerable.

in our communities and to sit back and think, well, it wasn't hard for me to get a driver's license or it wasn't hard for me to fill in the blank. That can be a huge insurmountable hurdle for people. Think about people who have had a house fire. I mean, pulling your life back together and getting all of this documentation, it is a huge hurdle. And if you pile on top of that, you know, the challenges of a work schedule and caring for your children and all of the things that happen in people's lives, this is disenfranchising and it is intended to disenfranchise those who, you know, really the original founding fathers had carved out of this democracy. And so we are going back. in time and it's a travesty. We have to take a break. If I could add, I'm going to hold you there because we have to take a break. We're late and we'll be back, I promise, unless the Supreme Court issues a decision and then we'll be back a little bit later. We'll take a break, return right after this.

Good morning. Welcome to the roundtable and to our panel discussion for this Thursday. It's Thursday. Oh, my goodness. It's Thursday. It's the 25th of June. It's eight minutes past the hour of 10 o'clock. We are waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to come down on a couple of decisions, perhaps birthright citizenship. deciding this case, which has been something that the president has been, he showed up in the court to watch the arguments for this particular case and has been attacking the court over the last several. several days and weeks over this as the decision is to be released. We believe any moment. If and when that happens, we'll be going over to NPR coverage, and we'll take that for a little bit as they cover this in their broadcast, and they'll be having a special on this. So we'll go to that when it comes. In the meantime, I'm interested in just what you all make of these cases that we're still watching and tracking these major court decisions, which are... It has been... We've seen the court in action, obviously, but we also... At this time, as they get ready to end their session, to look at what has happened so far and what ultimately we get to see over the next few days. Kathy? Well, you know, I think, you know, in law school, when you take constitutional law, the professor that I had anyway talked about, you know, folks who think that the Supreme Court gets a decision wrong or got a decision wrong and calling into question, you know, sort of the justices themselves. And he was a real believer that, you know, You didn't do that, you know, that this is, you look at the case, you look at the reasoning, you look at the precedents, and they come to decisions. But I think, you know, we're at this moment in history where when we look back and study the decisions of the Supreme Court, I'd be very interested in what my constitutional law professor would say about that premise, because I think we've seen with the gutting of voting rights and some of the other decisions that... This is a highly, highly partisan Supreme Court who has used tactics and ways of issuing decisions that are truly unprecedented. I'm not hyperbole. They have issued more of the pocket decisions than any previous Supreme Court. And I think that this Supreme Court is going to be.

I don't think viewed well by history. One who, first of all, it's... Sonia Sotomayor's birthday today. So that's one thing to look at that. And as I mentioned, some of the biggest cases yet to be decided will test the president's efforts to expand presidential authority. The cases involve his efforts to limit birthright citizenship, fire federal reserve governor Lisa Cook, oust Democratic members of independent agencies and terminate a humanitarian... legal status protecting hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Haitian immigrants from deportation with court experts saying it's totally normal for the most important cases of the term to come out in the last few days. What is unusual is that there are so many blockbuster cases, according to Sam Erman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan. Also a pending case on mail-in ballots. Yes. About whether or not it's Mississippi, based on a Mississippi case during COVID, they allowed mail-in ballots. You could mail them in as long as they had to be mailed by Election Day. They could be received up to five days later, and that's a contention of whether or not that's legal, and that will really fundamentally change the landscape. That's yet another way that they're attacking access to voting. There are 12 more decisions expected over before the 1st of July. And we also, so we'll see how many we get today. The gun decision is the one that takes. Yeah. So it looks as though they just handed down a decision.

that would strike the Hawaii's default ban on guns on private property that's open to the public. And this, you know, were centered in Hawaii where you had private landowners who would allow their space to be. used for public purposes and Hawaii tried to restrict the use of guns on that property that even while it was private it was used for public purposes. But these three gun owners sued. sued for the right to be able to possess those guns on their private property, and it looks as though the Supreme Court cited with the plaintiff. Fatima? Supreme Court. You know, because I truly believe that they are compromised. And you talked about people looking back over time and looking at this court and not going to think favorably towards them. As a lawyer, I'm just appalled and disgusted by this court and the decisions that they make. But I think it's important to think about the fact. that it is just routinely six three, six three, six three decisions, right? Six conservative judges, three less conservative judges. And the decisions keep coming down that way. So I encourage people to look up several years back when Amy Coney Barrett was being confirmed for the Supreme Court, Senator White House, I think he's from Rhode Island. Instead of spending his time, wasting his time, asking her questions that she would not really answer. Instead, he spent his time giving like maybe a 30-minute presentation on the influence of dark money on shaping the Supreme Court and why we keep having... these decisions at the time it was, you know, five, four decisions. And he was just breaking it down. And I really encourage people to look at that, to really understand the power shift that's taken place with the court, why we keep having these kinds of decisions, and then the influence that is taking place externally. And then it really makes you want to think about strategies to reshape the court, to change the court, to possibly have term limits for the court. a whole bunch of other reforms, whether or not it should go to having not just nine justices or another number like 13, 15, whatever the number may be. But we have a serious problem with money and corruption and influence on this court. We already know about the corruption influence with justices like Clarence Thomas, who, you know, goes on these expensive trips.

And the Supreme Court doesn't have the same ethics guidelines as other courts in our system. So we can sit here and talk about the decisions that we're waiting to drop any minute. But to me, the bigger problem for this country is the underlying rot that we have taking place influencing our court. And so, again, check out the, I think, you know, the video that you can find online where Senator White House gives this. breakdown of the dark money influence on our court. The Supreme Court also has ruled for bearer. the company, B-A-Y-E-R of aspirin frame, in its fight against claims that it failed to warn consumers that Roundup causes cancer, boosting the company's efforts to resolve costly litigation over its popular weed killer. In a 7-2 decision, the court said the pharmaceutical and agricultural company couldn't be held liable under state law for failing to warn about the alleged risk with a federal regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency. didn't require the product to carry a warning label. Why is Roundup still in the market? Were you going to? I was, yeah, Roundup. When I was working in the Congress in the 80s, we were talking about the issues around Roundup. I'm not sure why it's still on the market. But the broader issue that Fatima was talking about, I just keep thinking. Hillary Clinton was right. I mean, she kept talking about how important it was, the election was, to the Supreme Court. And there was a lot of eye-rolling going on, you know, but what about her voice? What about this? What about that? But you realize that the Trump-JD Vance administration has the potential of adding two additional Supreme Court. members, that if in the next few months, it's possible that Samuel Alito, you know, he's older, Clarence Thomas older, could resign and they could fill those seats with much, much, much younger judges, right? And so... Voting matters, folks. Voting matters. And, you know, there's this purity test. I just think about Bernie Sanders and constant criticism of people like Hillary Clinton because they're not perfect. But, you know, this is what happens if you don't vote. But I think that it's more than just voting. I think we are seeing a Supreme Court act in a way that... Again, we're seeing a president act in a way that our founding fathers, and it doesn't even have to be our founding fathers. I think 10 years ago, we never expected to happen. We have a Supreme Court that is doing the same thing. And so I do think it's looking at some of the structural underpinnings that...

We really need to take a hard look at how do we prevent this from happening? We don't want a Supreme Court that is run by dark money. We don't want a Supreme Court that is making political decisions. And look, we can go back in time. And, you know, if we had a conservative on this panel, they would be talking about liberal courts and, you know, those who think that Roe v. Wade was, you know, an overreach by the courts. We've had those debates. But this is just. It's so blatant and it is so political and not allowing Obama to appoint a Supreme Court judge. All of these things have compromised this court and I think laid bare. some weaknesses in the system that created it. I absolutely agree with you. And I appreciate calling out, Fatima calling out Senator White House because I think he's been relentlessly on this issue. He's done amazing work and people need to pay more attention. I think Fatima is right, much more attention to what he's doing on this issue. I 100% agree that there need to be the same rules for Supreme Court justices as there are. for members of Congress and such around taking gifts and those kinds of things. But in addition to all of that, I mean, I don't think you expand the court. There's always going to be cycles, right, depending on who gets selected president. And in addition to those kinds of restrictions in terms of taking money and those kinds of things, I do think we have to remember that it all comes down to voting. and that it has to be factored in. People don't think about the Supreme Court, but you should do in your selection when you vote or choose not to vote, which is a way to has an impact. Yeah, I mean, I think that the... You know, all the efforts to try to structurally reform the Supreme Court will require an enormous amount of political heavy lifting.

I'm just going to interrupt. Okay. I'm going to interrupt just for a second. The Supreme Court has ruled that asylum seekers may be turned around, citing with Trump. The Supreme Court ruled the government can legally turn back asylum seekers before they reach U.S. soil. This update coming from the Hill. And it enables border officials to turn back migrants before they could physically cross the border from Mexico into the U.S., preventing them from making an asylum claim. The court's three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sotomayor read her dissent allowed from the bench, which the justices reserve for when they want to express their strong disagreements in a case. Okay, that's... That's a terrible decision. You know, one of the only paths that we have right now in the United States for people to come here legally is through the asylum process. And... And you really need to be able to make that claim while standing on U.S. ground and not behind the border, which is apparently what the Supreme Court has now said is permissible. I mean, this underscores just... how profoundly broken the asylum system already is and the reforms that are required, but this is just another step backwards in making a bad system even worse. Yeah, I think we have some bigger issues, too. I mean, this decision doesn't shock me. Like, it just tracks, like, this is their vibe, right? Their vibe is everything terrible. And they're just going to continue, and it's predictable, they're going to make these really bad decisions. But I think we have a couple of different crises taking place at the same time. We've got this broader crisis with this attack on democracy and authoritarianism and fascism taking root. only amplified by the decisions of the Supreme Court. But then at the same time, we also have a crisis taking place within the Democratic Party in terms of how are we going to counter these things. And I believe that the party leadership that we have in place right now are just not the people for this moment in time to deal with this particular battle. They like to come to these bazooka fights with feather dusters and cotton balls, and that's really not going to get us anywhere. And until this party really starts making some hard choices, which means some folks just need to step aside and create space.

for people who are willing to do what is necessary to protect our democracy, to protect our civil rights, to protect our freedoms, then we're going to get more and more in the same. Because we've got these terrible Supreme Court decisions, these, you know, the government, the federal government, you know, eliminating departments, gutting the civil service. doing all kinds of self-dealing, grifting, corruption, all of this stuff taking place in front of our... They're not even hiding it. They're just playing in our faces every single day. And then what's the response? The response are like some strongly worded letters or when you see more progressive people trying to rise up and spending all of their time trying to cling to power and to knock those people out instead of... saying, well, maybe some other people have some better ideas, and they're just not the ones that should be in power right now. But no, they want to hold on to it. So we've got multiple crises, and these multiple crises coming from the left and the right at the same time are not serving the American people. And then we're left with this dumpster fire, you know, barely a democracy. We're going to celebrate our 250th, but like, what is it really? It's just kind of hollow. And so I really wish that when we see these elections taking place, That the leadership would recognize that they need to pivot. They need to change strategies. They need to focus on communication plans. And they need to get the hell out of the way. Well, and I think, you know, to your point, it's not the same thing everywhere. Right. You know, there there is room for moderate Democrats and there are room. There's room for Democratic socialists. And, you know, we're wringing our hands over these election results with three Democratic socialists that won their primaries when the, you know, the party leadership. didn't want them. And now we're polling on it, right? It's a national story where we're wringing our hand saying, oh, my God, now the Republicans are going to label us all as a bunch of socialists. And so they're polling, you know, Democrats don't have as negative a response to that as Republicans do. Well, where is the freaking polling on the Republicans who are Christian nationalist white supremacists? You know, Pete Hegseth has a pastor who believes in repealing the 19th Amendment. Where's the polling on that? Why isn't the Republican Party ringing their hands over the fact that these folks who are truly on the fringes, if you talk to average Americans, are winning their primaries? And so I agree. This is a party that has not figured out how to create openings for new voices at the table. new leadership at the table. And we do have to get out of our own way. I don't know what the answer is. That's, you know, that's kind of where I hesitate. I don't know what that looks like. But I agree that we've got to stop wringing our hands over these.

these primaries and trying to have a single answer when what we are and what we need in this country are elected people who understand and listen to the people in their community, who bring their fire and their fight to the issues that matter in their community, to people in their community. And I believe that Democrats are far better poised to do that than what we're seeing right now in the Republican Party. But they're taking a whole bunch of unforced errors. They engage in endless unforced errors, which is part of the problem, too, that they flub opportunities, which then means that people are not going to register to vote, they're not going to register to be Democrats, they're not going to show up, because the party that should be out there currently fighting for democracy in a very significant way isn't presenting things that are encouraging people to become engaged. Instead, I think more people are becoming. hopeless by the day, and that's a problem in and of itself. But I think that, you know, what we saw in the election in New York City really was a theme song that we're seen across the country where people... and voters are not taking the lead from the democratic establishment. But they're, and they're not particularly ideologically driven by this. You know, oh, is this a person a socialist or, you know, as Trump would say, they're all communists, right? But it's more pocketbook kinds of issues. Can. Can I afford to feed my family? Can we push for Medicare for all that really helps people, no matter what your political party or age, you know, access health care? You know, and I think people are just sick of us plowing money into foreign wars. and disinvesting in people in the United States. And, you know, I think you could find Republicans, moderates, and liberals, progressive, socialists who all share similar concerns. But, yeah. We're going to take a break. We... The Supreme Court is not issuing the birthright citizenship decision today, so we won't be taking NPR coverage. We will, however, take a break, and when we come back, we will hear, I know Teresa wants to weigh in on this and some of the things that have been said, and we'll continue the conversation. We have a lot of letters as well. I want to get to those, and we'll talk about what's on your mind, and we'll do all of that coming up. We welcome your letters. panel at wamc.org, excuse me, panel at wamc.org. And we will continue our conversation with our wonderful group after this short break of news from the BBC.

Good morning. Welcome back to the roundtable and two-hour panel discussion this morning, Theresa Borgeois, Reverend Peter Cook, Fatima Gilliam, and Kathy Sheehan with us this morning. We have a busy show, a lot of decisions coming out from the Supreme Court. We've been going over those over the last several minutes. I know everyone has waited, I think, except for Teresa. I want her to weigh in, and then we'll go to some of your letters. So at a time like this, I guess my tendency is to not, I understand their messaging issues with Democrats, but my tendency is to not use the moment to denigrate Democrats, but it is to double down on this is why we need to elect more Democrats. I mean, this gun issue in Hawaii... We have a national health crisis around guns. And the Democrats are not trying to take people's guns away from them, right? But we need some basic gun safety regulations. And the Republicans say, turn everything back to the states. Let the states decide. Let's the states decide. In this case, Hawaii decided. They decided against this concealed carry aspect, this one aspect of concealed carry in public places, right? But that wasn't good enough. How many kids have to be slaughtered in their classrooms? How many neighbors, I mean, I spent three years in Boston working on urban crime issues, and I can't get out of my head some of the things that I saw. I will never get it out of my head, and I shouldn't. Because, you know, people going into churches and shooting up churches, a grandmother sitting in her house at her window, probably doing her knitting. I don't know what exactly she was doing, but she ended up being shot in the head through the window through random gunfire and killed. How much of this are we going to tolerate? How much of this death are we going to tolerate before we put basic, basic, restrictions on the use of guns. It's a public health crisis. How many kids in this country? How many young people? It's, I think, one of the leading cause of death of kids. What is it between 18 and 24 is guns? All right? So this isn't a small thing. And if they're first states, and this is not because the Democrats aren't acting. This is because the Republicans are acting. And are we a nation of immigrants or aren't we? Are we going to have basic fairness or not? This issue about entering the country. So they're going to choke off every point where people can try to come into this country. How are we going to replenish ourselves as a country? And when are we going to get immigration policy? This is the Republicans. This isn't the Democrats not doing this. This is the Republicans. I know I'm ranting. But I just think. Issue after issue after issue, we've got to do something about these things. This is why we have to elect James Talarico in Texas, why we have to elect Sherrod Brown in Ohio. We have to elect governors like Deb Hallin in New Mexico. And in any case, I'll stop. But I just think now is the time to say, what are these House and Senate Republicans?

thinking in allowing this to continue and not putting some basic constraints around this administration. They're the ones that need to be held accountable for this. Anybody want to respond to that? It is the leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 19. Firearm related injuries. I'll just think, oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead. I'll just quickly add that I do agree that the Republicans are the worst actors in this scenario, but I also think that it is also fair to criticize the Democrats because they're not stepping up in a way that is necessary. And it's not happening in a little bubble. So what results from that is when people don't see the fight happening, they become discouraged, they become disengaged, they check out, they don't vote. And so that's the risk that's playing out in real time and yielding results because not all the Democrats. not just needing to be on the same page, but they're just not up to the challenge. But I think they are speaking up to not breaking through. But what you did a little while ago is exactly what we all need to do. You shone a light on Senator White House, right? He doesn't get the kind of press that he should for the work that he's doing to protect people and affordability issues and justice issues. But you've shown a light on his work so now more people know about it. And we all have a responsibility. to do that, what Jamie Raskin is doing, what, you know, the whole host of people, Congressman Tonko in our own area, right, on environmental issues and on these climate issues. He's a warrior on these climate issues and in all the best possible ways. But people need to elevate his voice because he's not breaking through and it's going to happen less and less because of the Ellisons and others taking control of the media. Right? And we're going to have fewer and fewer platforms. The Dems have a weak communications plan. That's also part of the reason why they fail. is because they don't invest adequately in things like ideological infrastructure, connecting information, news, think tanks, the type of information that explain things to people in ways that connects with them. The left doesn't invest in that type of communications platform. The right has spent billions and decades over time doing it to invest in it, and then you couple that with media consolidation. then it results in being able to gerrymander outcomes when you can influence how people think, what they think, what they consume, and they're not realizing how much conservative content they're consuming on a regular basis. I'll be quiet there because I know we may eventually talk about this ABC issue. And so if I could just say that, I mean, I think one of the big problems that...

both Democrats and Republicans are dealing with is the influence of religious nationalist-based money, whether that comes from APAC or also Like one of the largest contributors of money in these elections comes from Christian Zionists who have far more members than even APAC does. And so they... The Hindu nationalists, for instance, they put down a lot of money. And it doesn't really respect party in this case. It really has to do with furthering a religious or strategic agenda. And so it gets confusing why. You might be speaking against a Democrat who might be progressive on a number of other issues, but is bought and sold by, you know, this big money. I also think, though, the challenge for Democrats is that, you know, I can't think of a monolithic message that would resonate, right? And I think that is where we really struggle and why I think it's so important to not. jump on each other. You know, I mean, a Democrat who is elected from Peoria, Illinois is going to be different than a Democrat that gets elected in, you know, certain areas of New York City. And we have to realize and recognize that they're representing the people in those congressional districts. And they're listening to the voices and the challenges of the people in those congressional districts. So figuring out, you know, how do we not... you know, try to create this one vision of what a Democrat is. I agree with Fatima, the Republicans have done a phenomenal job. But I think that there are so many Republicans that don't see themselves anymore in that monolithic far-right Christian nationalist message. And as they see that evolving, we do see those who are either more moderate Republicans or independents who are not going to register as Democrats or even see themselves as Democrats saying, wait a minute, this maybe isn't what I want to be a part of.

the answer but I think that that messaging piece of it what does that look like and and who are the standard bearers of it is going to be really important as we look not just at the midterms but you know at 2028 and can I And if I could also say, I mean, I think I mentioned this earlier in a previous program about James Talarico. But, you know, what he does when he goes into like a deep red district, he doesn't start by trotting out a bunch of labels. He goes and he says, how many of you are struggling to get health care? How many of you are struggling to get child care? How much, how many of you are seeing your... you know, fuel budgets go out of sight, your utility budgets going out of sight. You know, so let's talk about those things. And then we can talk about how we address that and not whether you're a Republican or... Democrat or a socialist or a communist or an apologist for transgender or, you know, whatever labels that we, you know, throw on to these conversations. And I think politicians who get under the ideological labels and really center listening carefully to the needs of their constituents, you know, that's a winning formula. James Talarico is brilliant in the way he communicates. And the other thing that he is incredibly effective at is as his opponents insult him, he immediately turns those insults back and makes them look small and petty. He deflects, he uses those insults as fuel to make them look. But I... I mean, I do think that it is easy to foment hate. It is easy to tear things down. One of the reasons why the Democratic message is more complicated is because the Democrats are trying to build systems up. The Republicans focuses on tearing it down, and it is much easier. What Trump does, he picks three issues, and he pits people against each other. And we have a problem, a growing problem in this country with... the economic divide. And he pits the have little against the have less and creates attention between those. And he attacks things like clean energy so he can help his oil and gas folks. Tearing things down, it's not that hard to communicate about tearing things down. It is more difficult to communicate about tearing things down.

about how to build things up, how to fix the health care program, you know, how to fix the climate issue, how to address these health issues. And, you know, they don't talk a lot about all the stuff that they're actually doing. They attack immigrants, they lie about, you know, they have these lies that they tell over and over about immigrants. and they attack the LGBT community and a couple of other things. And all the while they're distracting with those attacks and they hate that it's fomenting. under what they're doing behind the scenes is shutting down the department of education they are deregulating through the EPA and they are trying to you know they have a housing bill but they want to cut section 8 funding and half and so on and so forth but we're not paying attention to that substance because what they focus on in their messaging is pitting people against each other that's easy to do it's harder to convey a message about health care and economic security. We'll pause there. We'll take a break. We'll finish up our program with one more topic on the other side. We'll be right back. Good morning. Welcome back to the Roundtable. Final topic up for bids this morning is ABC taking on the FCC. ABC viewers across the country are getting a message from the network. If you like your local stations or The View, you know The View. Help us get the government off of our back. Essentially what they're saying. ABC this week launched an on-air campaign asking viewers to send comments to the Federal Communications Commission website pushing back on the agency and its chairman, Brendan Carr. Since February, the FCC has been investigating whether ABC's The View violated the commission's equal time rule, which guarantees equal airtime to all candidates running... for the same public office. ABC has maintained that the view qualifies as what the commission calls a bona fide news program and it is exempt from the rule accusing the FCC of violating the First Amendment in a legal filing. In April, the FCC also ordered an early review of ABC's eight local stations over its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. The review was announced just days after President Trump. And First Lady Melania Trump intensely criticized ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel through the... Excuse me. After they criticized ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, though the FCC maintained that the timing was purely coincidental. Intensifying its response, ABCBN airing two television spots directing viewers to submit public comments on the FCC's website.

The view has hosted your favorite guest and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years when commercial reads. Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Viewers, use your voice, scan this QR code you have until July 6. Fatima. Well, you know, I'm glad that ABC is taking action and being proactive. I mean, they're a little late to the party, but we'll take it. And by late to the party, I mean that to remind people that they entered in 2024 in that $16 million settlement for that sham bogus defamation case filed by Trump. against ABC and they thought they were going to be buying them some safety. And as we can see, that you don't really get safety or a path with this administration. You're only as good as that instant second that you bend the knee and then they come for you. So I'm glad that they're doing this and they're encouraging people to take action because we have this broader problem of censorship taking place and political coercion that's taking place. with the government weaponizing its agencies like the Federal Communication Commission, the FCC, against news outlets and free speech and people wanting to speak their minds on various networks. And so I'm happy that this is taking place, and I encourage more of this action. I hope that ABC will keep it up. I mean, this is a self-serving move, not going to knock them for engaging in a self-serving move. But, you know, I don't see them necessarily wanting to be broader free speech champions, but I'll take it in this moment in time. And to connect to some of the stuff that we're talking about before, the need for communication strategies, to sort of counter what this government is doing, I would love it if the Democratic Party spent more time and invested in strategies to protect free speech, to make sure that there's freedom of the press. And that's what they need to be doing in this moment in time so that ABC can say what it wants. CBS isn't the dumpster fire that it is, that Bari Weiss is destroying it. And now with the media consolidation of Paramount about to buy Warner Brothers Discovery and have control over HBO and CNN, we're going to get more and more singular messaging, which is going to be censorship and coercion. Anybody else on this? No, I think that that's exactly right. And what we see in the media more and more are, you know, every media outlet buying into the Republican talking points. Again, you know, to be watching CNN ringing their hands over Democratic socialists and how people respond to socialism, I didn't see that coverage, as I said, when white supremacist Christian nationalists won their primaries. Why are we buying into the Republican talking points on?

Democrats. It makes it even worse. To Fotomous point, not only do the Democrats not have their act together on what their communication strategy is going to be, but the Republicans are so unified in it that those are the talking points that even what we think of as more moderate or liberal media, that's what they're reporting. And it all has an impact on how people think about Democrats and what people are going to do with respect to voting. I mean, I thought it was... Oh, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Fatima. And then we'll go to... Yeah, just quickly, I mean, to the point of the need for these strategies, I'll just share this point. I've spent time analyzing a lot of data points around what I think will be beneficial in this moment in time, which is why I keep talking about media consolidation and the need for ideological infrastructure. And what is the connective tissue across all of these different efforts? that whether or not someone is litigating to protect our rights, whether or not there's an advocacy organization doing something, whether or not somebody is running for office to try to implement policy change, and the key connective tissue across all of this is not having an adequate communication strategy that's strategically targeted at moving policy and political change. And when I have spoken to people, because I've developed a strategy that I think could be beneficial in this moment in time, when I speak to people on the Democratic Party side or that are in positions of power, you know, trying to get support for these kinds of strategies, it's like talking to a brick wall. And it's like we can all see that this is a problem, but action is not taking place. And when strategies are presented, they're not jumping at it. And that is why we are where we are. I'll be quiet because I know Pito wants to talk. You know, I, you know, routinely listen to ABC News, you know, at 630. And I don't watch it. But do you watch the view? I've tapped into it. Okay. All right. Yeah. You know, I've tapped into it. I ask him like as a good run against the show. Well, yeah, but. You know, I don't watch ABC News thinking that I'm going to get some, you know, deep, thoughtful analysis of the news, but I kind of want to see just kind of what they think is important, that they want to stick up there. But, you know, I think we just put too much load on these corporate media to get our information. And we really need to be doing everything we can to encourage people to be reading alternative news sources as much as possible. And so I'm glad that... ABC is standing up for the right to have a diversity of viewpoints. But, you know, it's okay if a show tilts a little bit in one direction or another, and people shouldn't get too crazy about that.

I think that I applaud ABC for doing this. I think we have to be deeply concerned about a Federal Communications Commission leadership that is so politicized. It's in a democracy. They should not be dictating who is on the view and who's not on the view. I think we have to be deeply concerned about the consolidation of media as been discussed. But I also want to say that if the Republicans' message was so powerful and so well received, then why are they so frightened of the voters that they feel that they have to do everything possible to disenfranchise them? They are not trying to disenfranchise people because they think they have the majority of the people on their side. They know they don't have the majority of the people on their side. That's why they are from every angle possible they are trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters. They are trying to keep people out of this country who might not be them. They are trying to bring white South Africans into this country who they think are on their side. They are doing everything that they're accusing the Democrats of doing that they're not. Their messaging is not being positively received because it's not in the best interest of most average Americans. And so, I mean, I... I just think, yes, great that ABC, we have a bigger problem, folks. We have to be concerned about the consolidation of media, how we're going to get our information. And we have to realize that the Republican message is not breaking through in a way that people support it. We are out of time. I hope you all got everything off of your collective chests, and we will end there for this morning. Thanks to Kathy, Fatima, Peter, and Teresa. Wonderful to have you here, as always. We will continue our program. We still have an hour left. We've got all kinds of things to talk about. We'll do that right after this.