Spectacular Night for Democrats

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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. November 6th, 2025, a spectacular night for Democrats' edition. I'm David Plotz of Citicast here in Washington, D.C. We've overcome technical difficulties. We are moving forward like America itself or something. That was that cackle. That wasn't a cackle. Cackle's a pejorative word. That giggle, that laugh, that intake of breath was Emily Bazelon, of course, of the New York Times Magazine in Yale University of law school. Hello, Emily. Hello, David. And co-anchor of CBS Evening News in New York City, John Dickerson. Hello, John. Hello. I was the one causing the technical difficulties, by the way. Let's just get that straight. This week on the Gab Fest, Democrats had a clean sweep in Tuesday's off-off year election, winning everything they could possibly win. Why did it happen? Does it matter? Will it change politics? Will it change the Trump administration's behavior? Then the Supreme Court weighs whether Trump's reciprocal tariffs are legal or whether he overstepped his power and triggered the dreaded major questions doctrine and must be slapped down for that. Thank you for laughing at that, Emily. That was a really hardy laugh. Really approved of that. Then why on earth is the Trump administration playing chicken with snap benefits as the government shut down drags on? Can it possibly be good politics or good for people? Then we will have cocktail chatter. And super exciting announcement. Thank you to everyone who came to our Chicago show last week. It was so fun. That was great. And we are... incredibly excited to tell you about our New York show, our New York Conundrum Show, which will be on Friday, December 12th. and it will feature Stephen Colbert. Stephen was a guest on a conundrum show some years ago. He was amazing. He's, of course, there's nobody you want to talk about conundrums more with than Stephen Colbert. Can you imagine his answer to would he rather be a fish or tree or dirty clothes on clean body or clean clothes on dirty body or any of the other amazing conundrums that you will give to us? But he's going to join us on stage. The tickets are going to be on sale next week at slate.com slash gabfest. Live. Slate.com slash GabFest Live. The tickets will be on sale next week. They're not quite on sale at this minute. If you want the ticket link sent directly to your inbox as soon as they're available, go to that page slate.com slash GabFest Live right now to sign up and we will notify you. Again, Friday, December 12th with Stephen Colbert in New York City. Save the date. And if you're really planning ahead, our Washington, D.C. show is going to be on Wednesday, February 11th. And also, send us your conundrums. Every year, you all are agonized. You have moral agony. You have agony about really difficult questions, like where you would hide an elephant or what time you should brush your teeth. And...

Abigail Spanberger won by. And what happened in 2010, the Republicans ran the table with 63, picking up 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. So if you're a Democrat who's looking for a good sign, that's one of them. And we'll talk about the overlapping. But I should say one other thing that's just really jumped out at me is if you look at in Virginia and in New Jersey, the voters who voted for the Democrat, the number of people who said they cast their vote as an act of defiance or opposition to the president was 40%. That is higher than those in the exit polls who cast their vote in opposition to the president for Biden, Trump, or Obama. And so. One of the questions is, you know, was this a referendum on Trump? If you pay attention to the exit polls, it certainly was. Emily, going back to the Democratic Civil War that John doesn't want to talk about, which? side has a stronger case to make about the results on Tuesday. The moderates in New Jersey and Virginia in so many other places or the progressives in New York, which is a pretty liberal city to begin with. Well, I mean, I guess I would say maybe the moderates, but also sort of neither. I mean, the moderates won in a whole state, but those were blue states, right? I mean, we're still talking about New Jersey and Virginia. And Zohran Mamdani obviously won in a very liberal big city, which doesn't reflect the electorate in the hinterlands and the parts of the country that the Democrats would need to win if they had any hope of retaking the Senate in 2026. So, I mean, neither side can show real proof that they could do that. Like, that still seems, I think. um like a reach and if you do the kind of back of the napkin or is it the back of the napkin no back of the envelope you can use on the napkin back of the envelope Back with the envelope. Yes, exactly. But the napkin usually has like spaghetti sauce on it. Yeah, and don't go mailing any letters in a napkin. Oh, that's a good point. Okay. If you do the back of the envelope calculation about how far ahead Abigail Spanberger and Cheryl ran of Kamala Harris and then how far ahead they would need to run to win, you know, Iowa, for example, that Senate City is up for grabs in 26, right, John? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. then you're not quite there. The math doesn't quite get you there. So, you know, we'll see. I think that.

Zohran Mamdani's victory is really exciting and energizing. Young people voted for him in just hordes. They are really ready to go. And it'll be interesting to watch him actually govern in New York. He seems like he's making gestures toward like real management. You know, he's talked about keeping on Jessica Tisch, who's the police commissioner, who's more conservative. His record on crime, I think, is going to be something that is going to be a real yardstick for him. So. To me, it was just like there was lots of interesting people to watch and future, but I didn't see some definitive path forward for the Democratic Party. John, this is an off, off cycle election. So the turnout was relatively high because I think there's so much political angst and anger about Trump. But that is very much. from motivated high propensity voters? What larger significance might this have for either a midterm or for a presidential election? And this is this is the and also most of the election was in bluish states. Yeah. There weren't a lot of votes in reddish states. That was my point. Yes. And as, as Emily mentioned, yes. I mean, so for example, if you look at the, if you look at the 09, 10, and 12 example, 09 presages. 10 cent word what happens in 2010 so um but then it doesn't predict what happens in 2012. So Republicans win in 09. They really win in 10, but they don't defeat Obama in 12. So you can overread these figures. Now, the caveat to that is there won't be an incumbent president in 12, third term nonsense notwithstanding. So I guess the important thing to do is to not lean too heavy on. these results as being predictive. But that doesn't mean that they're not a huge shot in the arm for a dispirited party, that both wings of the party are, have legitimate and strong reasons to be excited. That the important thing to note about the Donald Trump figure is that Democrats who ran against Trump, and this is where I think you mentioned that the Virginia lieutenant governor candidate was MAGA, yes, but. But Trump never endorsed her. Winsome Earle-Sears, he kind of stayed away from Virginia. He did not stay away from New Jersey. And that's what makes those two states different. But the Democrats ran against Trump, not just as the way they have in the past, they did what seems to me to have been, and we've talked about this before, a pretty obvious thing to do. As I have said a lot, he's deeply unpopular in the country, and he's deeply unpopular on the things that people care about, which is to say prices in the economy and health care.

And so it looks like in both New York City, where Zohran Mamdani talked about affordability and child care, in New York City, the affordability of child care figure, according to HHS, is you should have 7% of your income go towards child care. In order to, therefore, afford child care in New York City, which is an average of about $28,000, you would need to make. 330 some odd thousand dollars, right? And the average income in New York is $85,000. So he focused on those affordability issues, which are directly related to what people think Donald Trump has been terrible at, not just that he's been asleep at the switch, but 61% in the CNN polls say he has contributed to the economic woes of the moment. And that's not hard to see because you know that tariffs are attacks on people and the tariffs. have been felt by people. So they connected current economic woes with the president, not just that he was a bad person. And I think that offers opportunities for both wings of the party. Lingering on Zohran Mamdani for a second, Emily, do you think he's going to be a boon or a curse for Democrats? It's clear that he's going to be a bogeyman for the right, that he's going to be the socialist Muslim who's bankrupting the city by... giving free kale to toddlers all day. I mean, that's the role he's going to occupy. But he's also, like, animated the heck out of young people in New York and also around the country, I suspect. Where do you think it nets out? I'm going with Boone because I just refuse to start on a sour note with this new, exciting, charismatic, handsome figure. I mean, Trump is going to go after him, right? He's like a perfect foil for Trump. Trump is going to threaten New York City, shake his fist at Zohran Mamdani, turn him into a foil. But Zohran Mamdani looks like he might really have the kind of social media skills to deal with this well. He's very on message. He's disciplined. Also, New York is a vibrant, exciting place in which, as you said, he is really galvanizing people. And so, you know, there's sort of two tracks, right? There's like the theater track of Trump threatening New York. And then there's, can Zohran Mamdani really manage a city and make the city more affordable, address the child care problem that John was talking about? And then also housing, you know, build some housing. We'll see what happens. But... I just refuse to start out by predicting doom for Zohran Mamdani. What do you guys think? One of the things he was successful at doing is taking whatever dumb question he was posed with that tried to bait him on whatever thing and going, blot, child care, you know, transportation, affordability of housing. And he did that endlessly and successfully in the same way Bill Clinton used to talk about in the 1992 presidential race. He used it to say to voters, don't let them steal this election from you, which is to say, don't let the press and our opponents make this election about something other than about you and what your life is like. And to the extent that he was successful doing that, presumably he should be able to translate that to success into responding to the president. I should note just...

It's a final point is that in New Jersey, the key winning issue for the Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, in that race was... utility bill costs, another affordability issue, which has some similar numbers in terms of household share of spending on energy is higher for low-income people and middle-class people than it should be and getting higher. And so that's a way in which Democrats of both kinds are overlapping and, again, offer an easy talking point on something that President Trump has very low polling numbers on. One name that has not... come up yet in this conversation because you guys are clearly asleep is Gavin Newsom like arguably the biggest winner on tuesday night is Gavin Newsom who pushed through this redistricting initiative about which i have extremely mixed feelings but whatever uh i didn't i don't get to vote um and you know one triumphantly and has been pretty successfully baiting trump and he is lining himself up for a run for the presidency Do you think, John, like he is now pole position? Or it's not as simple as that. There's still, it's still too many more shoes to drop. Not as simple as that. Plus, like, you know, if Josh Shapiro runs in Pennsylvania, if you're a governor of a swing state, you. Like, that puts you in massively poll position. Gavin Newsom's got some charisma, but he's also got a lot of people in the Democratic Party who are so sure about him. California does have some baggage nationally that a state like Pennsylvania doesn't. So he's got some obstacles. It was a big win for him, but also gerrymandering is a little bit far from... my kitchen table. So if it's true that one of the things that was possibly successful in this election was the success of affordability, then a big, stunning success on gerrymandering is a little further away from that. By the way, the affordability question is really interesting and clearly had played a role in New York. I think that's hard to gainsay. But in New Jersey and Virginia, if in fact, the exit polls are right and 40% of the voters were voting against Donald Trump, then you could imagine that being the energy for this particular race. Affordability was a nice thing that candidates might have been talking about. But if the Trump energy was really what turned people out, that may or may not work going forward. Although, again, Donald Trump seems to be doing everything he can on the economy and immigration to lean into his most unpopular. positions. But we've also seen in the past we're running just against Donald Trump, even if it's in this new way where you tie his deficiencies on the things people care about, has not always been successful for Democrats in tougher terrain like those battleground states. Last question on this, Emily, is this likely, is this election likely to reshape any of the immediate political questions we're facing or to affect?

the behavior of Trump or affect the behavior of Republicans who have to run in 2026. And if so, where, where will it affect them? I mean, I think privately the Republicans probably saw the wide margins that Abigail Spanberger and Cheryl racked up and trembled a bit inside about, you know, this huge bet they've made in throwing themselves in with Trump and MAGA. They're still going to fear primary challenges and the wrath of Trump more than they're going to fear, you know, losing some votes because they're seen as too extreme. So. I bet it doesn't really change their behavior. I mean, one warning sign for them, though, is that they were very excited about winning over a bunch of Latino voters in 2024. And it did not seem like everyone stuck with them by any means in parts of New Jersey and Virginia. And so that's a sign that there's a part of the electorate that's kind of up for grabs. And if you don't bring down prices when that was like the main thing people wanted, then you're going to be in trouble. So. You know, if they were being the most savvy about 2026, that's what they would press toward. But it's just really hard to imagine that, you know, Trump is so puffed up. He's like blown up right now into this giant balloon. It's really hard to see how the Republicans are going to be the ones who pop it. Well, they can't. No, Republican can move a micrometer from Donald Trump without his wrath or without the wrath of his voters. And to the extent that this is a boon for Democrats, you know, there are lots of things you can talk about. Did they do? You know, they're still overperforming with college-educated white voters. They can't build a national coalition for a presidency on that. And there are their challenges still ahead for Democrats. But. having excitement in your party and being able to kind of pick and choose, you know, I'm a Mikey Sheryl Democrat. I'm a Abigail Spanberger Democrat. I'm a Zohran Mamdani Democrat. Like that, as we've talked before, was it Buchanan or Nixon who said the party that's having fun is the party that's winning? The Democrats were having what. David Plotz said that. As David Plotz has always said, the party that's having fun. And the Democrats were having whatever is the existential opposite of fun. And so finally now. They get a minute to actually have fun. And if they, you know, if the Republican Party now, you know, faces this complicated thing, which is how to manage Trump's unpopularity, if now they believe, as Democrats do, that there is a successful way to get voters to focus on Trump's unpopularity on the things they care about. This episode is sponsored by Lisa. Life is chaotic. My life is chaotic, like travel, family, work, trying to enjoy the long days of summer. It can feel like there's no time to truly unwind. But better sleep on a quality mattress like Lisa can be your sanctuary at the end of a very long, busy day.

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delegate all this power to the president. And the reason Gorsuch was talking about that is that the most essential power that Congress has is the power of the purse, the power to tax and spend. And so Gorsuch was saying, wait a second, John Sauer, Solicitor General. Your theory of the case here is basically that Congress can give all its power to the president for taxing and spending. because tariffs really are taxes. And the president can use it however he wants. He can declare an emergency based on whatever his determination is and courts have to defer to that. And then Gorsuch pointed out that it's going to be really hard for Congress to get this power back because they would have to have veto-proof majorities to get over the president's signature to change the law. And there was a realism in that analysis that seemed so trenchant. And at least for me, was really different from the way the court has been dealing with the Trump administration's encroachment on congressional power in all these emergency docket cases that we've been seeing come down all summer. So it was just like. kind of surprising how much Gorsuch and I also thought Amy Coney Barrett seemed skeptical of the administration somewhat John Roberts as well, although that was for me harder to tell. And then I couldn't decide at the end whether I was just excited that people seemed to be asking clear-eyed questions and I was like reading too much into that because we don't know how the argument translates into the final result. Isn't there also fundamental contradiction what the administration was claiming? The national security grounds and foreign policy grounds. So they're saying this is about protecting national security. It's about guarding against fentanyl. It's not about taxation power. But then simultaneously, they're also saying, oh, it would be devastating. We would lose all this tax revenue if you unrolled this. And so they want it both ways. They want to be not, oh, they're like when it comes to the law, it's not about taxation. But then it's when it comes to the effects of disrupting it, it's all about taxation. And it seems like you've got to pick a lane. Totally. I mean, the Solicitor General kept saying like, oh, these tariffs are not about raising revenue. Meanwhile, every time Trump talks about this, he goes on and on about all the money coming in. So I found myself sort of snorting when I was listening to those parts of the argument.

definition of emergency power the loophole he's trying to build as you articulated emily basically what creates us a an excuse for anything so john i mean like i this is one thing that's super interesting it's like one thing the supreme court seems to be desperate to avoid is the question of whether this is an emergency they are likely to to settle this case without ever dismissing, whether grappling with the idea that Trump can simply declare an emergency wherever he wants. And. And they're going to allow him to do that. And that is effectively going to be unreviewable, which is, to me, in a way, the most alarming precedent of this will not be whether or not they let this go forward, but whether or not Trump can sort of have this power to declare an emergency, which in this case may not be enough to get him the tariffs he wants. But they're not going to say the reason he can't have the tariffs is that this emergency is bogus, which it clearly is. The emergency is bogus. And yet they're going to let that piece of it go forward. Right. Well. If they take away the power, then it's not that they'll let go forward. They just won't rule on it. They won't render an opinion on it. It depends how their ruling comes down. Because I guess they'll have to decide how to read the statute and his emergency authority. But I guess the other thing that to me is, I think, quite important that shouldn't be lost is that. It should be sort of unavailable to you. One of the things that Trump has been super successful at is he's just been, he's asked for forgiveness more than permission and not really even forgiveness. But I mean, he's just said, we're, we're going to do something ever ask for forgiveness. He's definitely not asking for permission and basically saying, you know, let the court stop me. And there's some, there's some genius in that and maybe some even. something that people might applaud in that. But even if you are a Trump supporter at this point, the economic chaos that he will have created by going forward with an emergency use of tariffs that is clearly risky, if not. you know, based at least on the way the justices were responding, not even that plausible, causes economic pain and has economic consequences. And there's like, you know, you should have thought this through before you balanced your entire world reshaping economic policies on a pretty thin read. I just want to go back to actually laying out what Trump's claims of emergencies have been, right? So one is the trade deficit, longstanding, all of a sudden an emergency. And the second is the idea that fentanyl is coming into the country. Also, not something that, like, suddenly rose. But also, does Spain importing fentanyl to the U.S.? I think the fentanyl part was about mostly like Mexico and China. But there are also countries that neither have a trade deficit nor.

are importing fentanyl, like Australia, I think. Yes. Right. So the point is, you're right, these justifications were thin. You're also right that the justices didn't spend time on this. It seemed like they were going to defer to the president's determination of what an emergency is, or at least that probably wouldn't be the basis of blocking the tariffs. You know, to the point about like the thin read, the other. Part of this story is that there were other statutes that actually use the word tariff that Trump could use and he used them in his first term. They're just more limited and they require more process. You have to go have a review. It takes some time. You have to make findings. And you can't do them in this totally broad latitude, whatever I feel like it kind of way. And so in one sense, the availability of these other tools means that the court, it. could reassure itself, well, if Trump really wants to go ahead, he has these other vehicles. On the other hand, Trump has been so insistent that it's going to be this devastating blow to him if the court stops this particular route to tariffs. He's kind of upped the ante on himself. And I think he did that basically to like intimidate the justices or at least try. And if it backfires, it's going to be, as you were saying, John, kind of like egg on his face. So I'm. That's a fascinating dynamic. As I've said before, the justices have to embrace the idea that your poor planning is not my emergency. I mean, this was foreseeable that this would be an issue for review. And so, you know, rolling the whole dice of the economy on it maybe isn't such a wise thing to do. And then trying to bully the courts the way you've successfully bullied CEOs. Again, Trump has had amazing success with law firms, universities, CEOs. You can't, you. can't begrudge him uh listening to the biofeedback he has gotten from the system republicans in his own party um so you know Probably by his thinking, absolutely a risk worth taking, but we should really focus on the amount of chips that he put on this big risk. And just to go back, this is a pretty damn central question about who gets to tax the American people, whether it's the president or the representatives who are most close to them. I mean, this is not an abstract question. And the Constitution gave that power to Congress. But I do think, to your point, Emily, yes, the other mechanism. So section. 232, which allows a national security finding that would allow him to tariff certain industries or section 301, which sort of relates to trade practices and finding that there are reasons that you might be able to tariff industries or countries based on particular trade practices. They do require findings. From what I understand, like that can be pretty cursory. That can be done. They're supposed to be, those reports are supposed to be made public. I believe they're not being made public. So they don't even have to do a lot of work to show the evidence behind it. One of the most interesting points that I read actually had to do with.

with the ability of Trump to impose tariffs that aren't taxes because they're part of a bilateral trade negotiation. So one of the ways that Trump has been most effective is by just using the power of rhetoric and coercion, as he's done with the law firms and universities and so forth, but with other countries. And so with the threat of actual imposed tariffs coming from either from a section 232 or 301 or from these reciprocal tariff, that imposition is a threat. for a country like Vietnam or Korea or anywhere. And so Trump doesn't need to get Congress to authorize a tariff on Korean products. If Korea feels like we better just deal with this guy, they can negotiate a bilateral trade deal, which is more or less what people are doing, in which tariffs are built in, in which there is a tariff rate as part of that bilateral trade deal. And that is not Congress imposing something. That is the, that is presidential diplomacy extracting a tariff. And so that. I feel like the end result is going to be Trump is going to get most of the tariffs that he wants. But hopefully Congress's power to tax will be at least somewhat protected by the Supreme Court. This episode is sponsored by HomeServe. I just bought a house, and I've owned a house before, and owning a house is amazing until it is not amazing. One minute, you are sipping coffee on your patio, your patio, and the next minute you are ankle deep in water from a burst pipe, or your ice maker has broken, as mine just did. Repairs don't care about timing, and they definitely don't care about your budget. And regular homeowners insurance usually doesn't cover a lot of the day-to-day wear and tear on your house, plumbing failures, HVAC breakdowns, electrical issues. You're often on your own for those. And that's where home serve comes in. It's like a subscription for your home. For as little as $4.99 a month, they've got your back. It's super simple. Choose a plan for your needs and budget. And when something on your plan goes wrong, just call their 24-7 hotline and start the repair process. I've had... In the last month, so many surprise expenses with my new home. Every time I have it, I wish I had peace of mind knowing that someone like HomeServe had my back. Because emergency home repairs can get really expensive. So join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe for 50% less. Your first year, go to homeserve.com slash GabFest. That's homeserv.com slash GabFest for 50% less. Savings compared to renewal price, void, and Florida. Be adventurous in the sun. Be protected in the sun. Be confident in the sun. Be fearless in the sun with Blue Lizard Australian sunscreen. As experts in mineral sunscreens for nearly 30 years, we've earned awards for our high quality products and the trust of healthcare professionals. Embrace every moment in the sun with your family and Blue Lizard by your side. Be fearless in the sun. Shop Blue Lizard Australian sunscreen now on Amazon.com.

The Trump administration is playing a repulsive game over snap benefits, over what people call food stamps. As with so many issues, this is a moving target. It's being litigated in multiple ways in different places and different parts of the administration are saying different things at different times. But the long story short is that the USDA, which administers SNAP, has announced that because of the shutdown, it would not pay SNAP benefits to the 42 million Americans who depend on them in November. Or is that immediate outcry over that pointing out that USDA. A, had the funds available to pay for SNAP mostly, and B, that SNAP is an essential service that should not and has historically has not and is legally not supposed to be disrupted by a government shutdown. And where we stand now is that the administration seems to be willing to partially fund SNAP in November, but in a way that is going to impose huge burdens, administrative burdens on states and also would slash some of the SNAP payments to zero for millions of people. compounding this is that the president has said one of the reasons he would target snap is because it would hurt Democrats, which is both. abhorrent and it's also untrue. So, John, this to me appears to be really, really, really, really, really bad politics by the Trump administration. They said the quiet part out loud, like they want to hurt Democrats. They're actually hurting all kinds of Americans and they're playing politics with a part of government that it just performs an absolutely necessary critical service for 12% of the American population. Am I missing something or is this just as... vicious and stupid as it seems to be. I can't see the political genius lurking behind this. As you intimated, SNAP benefits go across the country. There are a great number of people in rural areas which tend to vote for President Trump who benefit from supplemental nutrition assistance. So it has that problem. It also has the problem that this keeps the affordability, who cares about you, question front and center. And that's an area where Trump is doing very poorly in the polling. His overall approval rating, we should note in the CNN polls at 37. That's almost its lowest point. The other lowest point was 36, and that was on January, right after January 6th. So that was after a riot on the Capitol by his supporters. It was a one-time event. You could imagine a one-time shock driving numbers down. What makes this number significant now, as I started to look back at it, is it's essentially a referendum on his governing as a second-term president. And what is the referendum based on? It's based on these issues of affordability. This keeps that in the center of the conversation. It's also tied to the question.

that the shutdown is about overall, which is the Democrats making a choice to have a fight over subsidies for health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act. So I don't, you know, the politics don't seem to be on the president's side here. Also, as you mentioned, there was emergency funds. And when the Agriculture Department was asked by Republicans and Democrats to use those emergency funds before the courts got involved, they said, oh, we can't. They're just for emergencies. President Trump has used emergency justification, as we talked about before, formally in, I think, nine instances, and then informally, according to the Associated Press, in another 30, and then rhetorically, you know, a whole bunch more. So he's willing, you know, sort of to find emergencies wherever they may lurk when it's in his interest. In this case, where the emergency was that 42 million people who depend on this to eat wouldn't get their food assistance. He was like, nah, that's not really an emergency. So it's also inconsistent with him. So I don't see this as being a, having a real benefit for him. It's also the kind of thing that people aren't going to forget, you know, in November, which is the month where we have the most notable food-based holiday. This seems to be to be rather sticky in the memory. Emily. What is the law on this? Does the law require full SNAP payments? Medicare and Social Security continue pretty much unabated now. Is SNAP in that same category or is it sort of arguably a separate category? It's a continuous program. It also has an annual budget, but it has the kind of emergency reserves attached to it the job was just talking about. And two judges have ruled in challenges to withholding the benefits, and one of them ordered payments. So. This idea that like, oh, we can dribble out partial payments when we get around to it, which is what the administration said in court just seems wrong. I mean, it's the kind of foot dragging and gamesmanship that the Trump administration has basically pulled off in other cases. For me, it's very reminiscent of withholding foreign aid. You know, back in the beginning of the administration, there was this just huge... taking away of money to all kinds of groups and companies that feed people and provide medical services, et cetera, et cetera, abroad. And the judge in that case, Amir Ali, said, you have to pay some of this money right now. And some of it got paid over the following months, but not all of it. And then in the end, the Supreme Court, at least in this emergency docket posture, basically took the Trump administration off the hook. I just didn't expect they would try to pull the same kind of gamesmanship when you're talking about low-income Americans and feeding them and they're your voters and they're 42 million of them. And we're talking about taking food out of people's mouths. That just seems like...

really bad way to treat a judicial order. I mean, I'm just that is a problem in itself. And then as you were both outlining, the politics of it just seemed crazy to me. I mean, Trump seems to have this idea that because Snap is a program, the Democrats support, they're going to somehow take the blame for the withholding of this money. But like, why? When obviously for. It's not hard. All the things you already said about how well he paid out funds when he wanted to pay for other people despite the shutdown. I just don't get it. And adding this is a different topic, I realize, but. Now the news today on Thursday is, oh, we're going to cancel tons of flights across the country because the air traffic control system is overloaded because of the shutdown. Like, they really think that's going to redound onto Democrats. And when Sean Duffy, Trump's Transportation Secretary is the one standing up there announcing this, like, I don't know it. That seems like that that one seems, I mean, I think it will annoy a lot of people. Yeah. But it's also, it feels like it feels like a genuine public safety issue to do this, whereas cutting food away does not feel like. anything it doesn't feel like you're doing anything good by doing that whereas it whereas protecting the safety of of air travel seems like a valuable thing to do i don't know but whose fault is it that all these flights are getting canceled like that's a different question sure yes like it's not a good idea to have flights taking off if the air traffic controllers can't keep track of them 100 but why is this necessary and you know are democrats really going to take the blame for it no democrats won't take the blame for it i don't know I feel like it's, having just argued for the political curiosity of the snap piece of it, I mean, at the moment the polls show that people are apt to blame Trump rather than Democrats, which is a reversal, by the way, of the past shutdowns where the initiating party tends to be the one that gets the blame. But I, for some reason, flights feels. different because it affects it will affect so many people um and so you're essentially saying it's like a lot fewer people than snap like way fewer people than snap how many people travel in the united states every day I mean, the number of people, it's not 42 million. I can tell you that much. Sure. I hope not. It's not 42 million a month. Well, I guess we'll see what the politics of this is. My point is that Trump is no front and center that it is much more plausible, obvious to blame him and his people for what's happening. Maybe I'm wrong about that. And for some reason, the fights will be different. But I feel like this all signals that we're in the end game.

I think there is the ending in the shutdown. I think the shutdown is close to being resolved. What do you hear about this, John? Or what's the signals? I mean, it sounds like there are actual negotiations going on. Yeah, three million Americans. Three million travel by day. So that's 90 million people a month. Obviously, some people travel twice. That's not 90 million people a month. That's why I said, obviously, some people travel twice per month. But not, not, you know. A lot of people. And it doesn't affect every one of them. It affects a small percentage of the flights. No, it doesn't. It's the top 40 cities, which is like a lot of people. And whether you're actually on a plane or not, you have experience with a plane. Not everybody has experience with SNAP. It's like 15% in cities and like 16 in rural areas. So you can empathize with people who are on SNAP, but the vast majority of Americans are not on SNAP. Whereas the vast majority of Americans have been in a plane in their lives. And there was just a plane crash of UPS plane in Louisville. It is in the public imagination in a way that's different than either the Affordable Care Act or SNAP. And we've seen a particular power of airline travel related stuff with respect to. to shutdowns sometimes it's been that members of congress are bummed because they can't travel the way they want to but other times it's because it's where shutdowns have ended because it's where the rubber meets the road so the fact that airlines might be a little bit different than those other two benefits i think is certainly a real possibility which is why my guess is that this gets figured out in some way in the Senate where there is some kind of promise that there will be a vote on Affordable Care Act subsidies that is sort of sufficiently ironclad that Democrats can say we got what we we wanted or you know they tailor something that everybody can vote the question is whether such whether they be able to get 60 votes for the Affordable Care Act vote on the subsidies. I mean, it has to be a sufficient prize that Democrats can say, see, this was worth it. And I don't, that's where the sticking point would be. Can we end? I just want to note this topic gave me the opportunity to read a bit about SNAP. And Matt Iglesias had a super interesting column about this. And he cited a study, which was so interesting to me, which was looking at the performance on the SAT and the ACT, the standardized tests of kids whose family receives SNAP. benefits. And so when you receive SNAP benefits, you receive it monthly. And people have more money for food at the beginning of the month than they do at the end of the month. And so if you look at the performance of kids whose families receive SNAP, if they take the SAT in the first two weeks of the month, they do significantly better than they do in the last two weeks of the month. Because in the last two weeks of the month, presumably there's less food, more stress, more insecurity. And It just is a very small but clear indicator of here is something that when people have these benefits, it allows them to perform and to do the work and to achieve and to live the kind of life that we want them to live, live much more easily than it does when they are in a state of insecurity. Let's go to Cocktail Chatter. When you are Emily Bazelon sitting in a...

cocktail party at Yale University Law School, perhaps, or maybe it's just a New Haven neighbor's house. New Haven neighbor's house. New Haven neighbor's house. There you are. At a New Haven neighbor's house. Having a very civilized cocktail this weekend, what are you going to chat about? I was struck by a contrast. I noticed between House of Dynamite, the new Catherine Bigelow movie and The Diplomat, the latest season of that television show. So House of Dynamite has lots of, like, foreboding, sobering features. One of them, which seemed so real, was that communication is constantly getting scrambled. People are like... fumbling around, dropping phone calls, trying to make super decision, super important decisions when they can't quite hear what someone else is saying because like they're in the car and the phone call isn't quite clear and there's like a video call and this deputy national security guys like late and so he's on video like running to his office. That just felt like reflecting at least of my reality in which every call starts with some dropped fumbling around. In the diplomat, by contrast, everyone strides purposefully from one room to the next, especially Carrie Russell, the main character. She just, like, walks with this kind of swift determination. And I just kind of love those two portrayals of government. One of them has its pants down. And one of them, people are, you know, moving through these beautiful settings in England in the ambassador's house. And it was really the first one that felt real, as I was saying. And it also struck me that one of the things the movie makers that Bigelow wants to portray is that... Because no one will have done this before if there really is this like pressing nuclear threat, no one who's alive. They're all going to be kind of going by this playbook. They're going to be making it up as they go along. And we have this idea that there are all these people like all ready to figure these decisions out who've rehearsed this 8,000 times. But that just seemed to really unlikely after I watched this movie. Yeah, that was a really good point. There was all the human messiness, which really was well portrayed in that. I do feel like there's basically all forms of government TV shows fall in movies fall into either their West Wing or their JD Vance. Either everything is, everyone is competent, everything is competent, or everyone, no one knows anything and everyone is incompetent. And it's no surprise that a bunch of the West Wing characters appear on The Diplomat. Like it's very much a kind of inheritance show in some sense. Yes. Although in House of Dynamite, it's not really played for laughs. No. Nor is the diplomat. No, diplomat. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yes. John, what is your chatter? Wednesday was the 90th anniversary of Monopoly, which the Parker Brothers game. And I did not realize. So I guess I had been fed the Parker Brothers approved story, which is basically the game was created by this.

guy who during the um during the depression uh it was about you know life um in america and then the um parker brothers bought it from him um and then they they announced it the guy's name was darrow in 1935 was the official release of the game monopoly but what i did not realize is that darrow cribbed it, basically, from a woman named Lizzie Maggie, who came up with a game in 1903 as a teaching tool to teach people, kids, about the dangers of monopoly and the rapacious behavior of gilded age landlords. And so instead of a game in which the objective is to smash everyone else, the objective was to teach people about the ills. and a bad thing that happens when you smash everyone else so this history was hidden by parker brothers of course they basically they subtly paid off maggie with very little money um and darrow didn't get i can't remember whether darrell got a lot of money but maggie definitely didn't get very much money and this all came out though when um in 1979 or the late 70s um A guy tried to make a game called Anti-Monopoly, and Parker Brothers sued him, and he said, well, you know, if you want to talk about theft of intellectual property, let me tell you the story about Lizzie Maggie, and that's how this came out. So essentially, Parker Brothers sued a guy for making a game about monopolies, and in the legal discovery, proved that they'd built their empire by monopolizing somebody else's anti-monopoly game. So I thought that was an interesting little bit of history about a common board game. All right. I want to, A, remind listeners in Seattle and Twin Cities, we've launched CityCast Seattle now and CityCast Twin Cities. They're both amazing podcast, newsletters, social media channels. If you live in those cities, please check them out. If you want to really connect with your city day to day, what we're doing in both Seattle and the Twin Cities is awesome. My chatter is about a discussion that I moderated yesterday at the Petrie Flom Center at Harvard on... law, bioethics, medicine, and it was about psychedelics and the law. And it was so interesting and a number of things that was really interesting. One, that FDA approval for psychedelics is likely going to come, for psilocybin, in particular, magic mushrooms is likely to come pretty soon as a treatment for depression. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the folks at the MAHA folks who are going to make the decisions that the FDA are very pro-psychedelic, and it seems extremely likely that this will be approved. Second thing that was super interesting is like, difficulty of conducting a randomized control trial if you are doing experiments on psilocybin because if you are being given a magic mushroom or you're being given a placebo it's kind of obvious if you're given the psilocybin that you've been given something that is causing your brain to do some really interesting weird stuff you're aware you're getting treatment and so the idea of doing a blind trial becomes very difficult and it was very fascinating hearing some of the scientists working on this talk about the difficulty of constructing randomized trials. But the main thing I want to talk about is a guy who was on this panel with me, Wiz Buckley, who's a F-18 fighter pilot, served a bunch of tours in Iraq and went through a lot of trauma and comes out of a lot of family trauma.

And he had an experience where he used, he went to Mexico with some other vets and used Ibogain, which is a psychedelic. And it really was transformative for him. And he felt like it absolutely was his, it put him in touch with God. It made him connect with his faith in a new way. And so he has started a church called the Sacred Warrior Fellowship, where he is delivering psilocybin as. a therapy it's not therapy it's a sacrament he calls it a sacrament as part of this church um now you could say this is therapy and they're giving an illegal you know schedule one substance to people he says it's a church and it is for to help people connect with something sacred in them and he's mostly serving veterans and people are associated with veterans and people have been through a lot of trauma because of it and he is all but daring DEA or DOJ to go after him for this and try to say that this is a crime because he is pretty sure and i think from all that i learned yesterday it is pretty clear that under the religious freedom restoration act and both the state and federal level that this would this supreme court would probably uphold this kind of church practice this kind of freedom to practice your religion to exercise your religion this way um so i've used psilocybin therapeutically i think And I thought it was amazing. I think this is all fascinating and pretty wonderful. And it was totally interesting to learn all about it. Listeners, you have chatters. Please keep your great listener chatters coming to us by emailing us at gabfest at slate.com. And our listener chatter this week comes from Elliott Burger in Indianapolis. Hello, GabFest. I'm Elliot Berger from Indianapolis, Indiana. My chatter is mind-blowing in the most literal sense. It's about Dan Brown's new novel, The Secret of Secrets. What grabbed me even more than the plot, you can find that elsewhere, was the theme, consciousness. Brown explores the idea of non-local consciousness, that awareness doesn't just arise from our gray matter, but may exist throughout the universe with our brains tuned to receive it. The story is peppered with references to real studies and mysteries, precognition, remote viewing, out-of-body experiences, quantum entanglement, behavioral synchrony, sudden savant syndrome, free will, lucid dreaming, psychedelics, and death. Many of these I was familiar with, others I investigated and found to be real events or experiments. Brown even begins by saying that all experiments, technologies, and results in the book are true to life. Give yourself a treat. It's not just a fast-paced thriller, but a fascinating, well-researched alternative viewpoint on consciousness itself.

This isn't the only Slate podcast worth listening to this week. I would urge you to listen to Hang Up and Listen, which is about... the World Series, partly. It's obviously a slight sports podcast, but also has Josh Levine on. Josh returns to talk about his new sports history podcast, replay booth. He dropped the first episode. In fact, our producer, today's producer, Kevin produced that episode. It's a great episode about a really funny incident in baseball and political history during the Goldwater campaign. If you're interested in politics, you're interested in baseball. You will love this episode of Replay Booth, and you can hear about it on Hang Up and Listen, too. That's all for our episode this week. We also have a bonus episode in your feed on Darth Vader. I mean, on Dick Cheney, I literally, that was literal, just my brain froze there for a second on Dick Cheney, not Darth Vader, on his death. That is just for Slate Plus members who get lots of other great stuff for their subscription, discounts to live shows like our show coming up with Stephen Colbert in New York. You get to hang out with us at the cocktail party. You get bonus episodes on other Slate podcasts. You don't hit the paywall on the Slate site. So if you are a member, thank you. If you're not, you can subscribe to Slate Plus directly from the political GabFest show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or visit slate.com slash GabFest Plus to get access wherever you listen.

That's our show for today. The Political Gab Fest was produced today by Kevin Bendis. Our researcher is Emily Ditto. Our theme music is by They Might Be Giants, Ben Richmond, a senior director for podcast, Milo Bell is the EP of Slate podcast, and Hillary Frye is EIC of Slate. For Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson, I'm David Plaus. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week. When it comes to managing money, forget the hype and look at results. Bill has a trillion dollars of secure payments powering our bill pay tools. Instead of just moving money, Bill is powering the financial operations of nearly half a million customers. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Ready to talk with an expert, visit bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a $150 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See Offer Page for details. The promise of freedom has shaped our country. Freedom can feel secure until someone decides your rights don't apply to you. Democracy can feel secure until the people enforcing the law decide to ignore it. That's why the National Police Accountability Project is training hundreds of lawyers to hold police and federal law enforcement accountable for abuses of power because democracy is protected by people willing to defend it. people like you. Support the fight. Donate at national police accountability.org.