00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;07 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I need Chicago to step it up here like I need. I need them to stop cowering before the New Yorkers and going, oh no, actually, we eat tavern style up here. No deep dish pizza is the correct pizza. Stop being a bunch of assholes and defend your proper pizza. Stop. Pizza should not be cut into squares. That's bullshit. 00;00;23;13 - 00;00;38;03 George Also tavern style. It's communion wafer pizza, right? It's cracker with sauce on top. I'm sorry. I have to say it. It's not good. Chicago. Deep dish is superior to tavern style. And whatever of you freaks in Chicago want to come for me? You can. The deep dish is better. 00;00;38;05 - 00;00;49;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer The only way they can get away with it not being communion wafer pizza is because those clowns in Saint Louis make something that's even more ludicrous than Chicago Tavern. 00;00;49;23 - 00;01;08;29 Propter Malone See, now we have we have a little bit of a division on the pot here because I, I enjoy Chicago Tavern pizza. It's it's it's not my favorite Midwest pizza. That would be that would be Detroit. But, but I think it's a it's a legitimate expression of the pizza maker's art, and, I prefer it to the deep dish casserole. 00;01;08;29 - 00;01;14;18 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That is the most political pizza answer I've ever heard in my entire life. 00;01;14;20 - 00;01;15;03 Propter Malone We need a. 00;01;15;03 - 00;01;17;23 George Subjected to a round of booing for how careful that was. 00;01;17;23 - 00;01;21;19 Propter Malone Yeah. I'm moving. I'm moving to Detroit. I'm going to take on the judge, in a couple of years. 00;01;21;26 - 00;01;29;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer No, no, you're gonna have to go up against that. That redhead, woman. The hot redhead girl that everybody, everyone, 00;01;29;11 - 00;01;42;06 Propter Malone Is in for, McMorrow. Yeah. You know, one thing that the Pope being from Chicago opens up for us is that we might actually get an infallible ruling on the superior Chicago pizza. It's not likely, but it's in play. 00;01;42;12 - 00;01;59;23 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE All the different Chicago things that the Pope has done are very funny to think about. I spent a whole weekend thinking about this last weekend. Like it is not entirely impossible that the Pope has heard the banned, the smoking Popes great indie band from late 80s early 90s Chicago. 00;01;59;25 - 00;02;11;07 George Also not totally impossible that he's, managed to make his way through life without a martini, which is something I wouldn't recommend anyone drinks. But is is does exist. 00;02;11;10 - 00;02;15;05 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Where in God's name did you have a mobile martini? 00;02;15;08 - 00;02;20;03 George I don't want to talk about it. And I'm not legally allowed to. 00;02;20;05 - 00;02;53;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Since we're since we're talking about, the Pope and and bands, I would like to see, Billy Corgan, go to the Vatican and try to introduce himself to the Pope, since they're both Chicago guys, and I want to see it play out, just like the Rod Dreher thing, where he, he put out that terrible book, The Benedict Option, and went to the Vatican and met, Pope Francis and said, you know, Mr. Pope, I wrote the Benedict Option. 00;02;53;26 - 00;03;04;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Francis looked at his name badge and looked up at him and just sort of stared blankly like, I have no earthly idea what you are talking about. I want to see that for Billy Corgan. 00;03;05;00 - 00;03;10;03 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I don't want to see that for Billy Corgan, because we're going to get a triple album out of it. 00;03;12;02 - 00;03;34;19 George Welcome back to Normal Men podcast about being normal in a very abnormal time. Each week we'll talk about the news, make some jokes, and just be normal about all of it. Thanks for listening and enjoy some good news for once out of the Tar Heel State, which is something I don't get to say very often. So Jefferson Griffin had lost the Supreme Court election last fall. 00;03;35;13 - 00;03;58;05 George Part of pretty, pretty great statewide performance from Democrats, across a bunch of different elected offices. We elect our Supreme Court here. We had talk previously about them, about, Griffin going to the mat, in the courts after the fact to try and throw out large numbers of votes, from people that followed all the rules that they were obliged to follow at the time. 00;03;58;05 - 00;04;23;24 George And, you know, still, we're trying to have they're the Republicans. We're still trying to throw out those votes. That process is now over. Griffin has resigned. He had gotten a ruling from the North Carolina Supreme Court, which effectively threw out some votes cast in a specific manner in five counties, but not did not apply those rules to other counties. 00;04;24;01 - 00;04;59;09 George These are primarily overseas voters, and and military voters, not exclusively. But basically, it wasn't clear that that was going to be enough for him to win. Anyways. There were some good analyzes suggesting that he wasn't that wasn't going to be enough in terms of the margins in those counties that to tilt the overall statewide vote. But, the good news is both from a North Carolina perspective and from a national perspective, I think because there's a read through here, he withdrew after this, decision got a, pretty good ruling in, in federal court. 00;04;59;11 - 00;05;21;00 George And the read through to National is that the Supreme Court sent a back channel to him saying, but he is a no fly. On a constitutional basis, it obviously wouldn't fly because it's a clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause, but that, wouldn't have stopped our Supreme Court from just making up laws that go along, if they had really wanted to. 00;05;21;00 - 00;05;22;29 George And it looks like they didn't want to. 00;05;23;01 - 00;05;45;07 Propter Malone Yeah, I think there's I think there's a more optimistic way to read this and a less optimistic way to read this. The optimist, the more optimistic way to read this is that, there are limits in what the Republican courts are willing to do, to push Republican elections, even in even in lower courts. I think that's I think that's plausible. 00;05;45;07 - 00;06;09;21 Propter Malone This would have been pretty egregious. The somewhat less optimistic reading is that this is this is too small ball for Scotus to want to expend capital on that, that this seat matters for sure. But it's not make or break even for an even in the context of North Carolina. That's going to be decided in, in 2028, it soonest is when Dems can flip that court. 00;06;10;10 - 00;06;16;16 Propter Malone And they can still flip it. They could have they would have still been able to flip it even if the seat had gone the other way. 00;06;16;18 - 00;06;34;27 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I don't know if this is upside or downside or neither of those things. Wasn't he also running out of money, though? Wasn't his fundraising really running dry? And appeals are very expensive to continue pursuing? Thought I remembered that like his last fundraising haul was like a total of like $1,600 or something. 00;06;34;29 - 00;06;57;04 Propter Malone Yeah, I mean, it was bad. He was running out of money, but that kind of goes to the same likelihood of success. Question. Because if, if, if the money people associated with the Republican Party had thought that there was sufficient chance that this was going to net them up, a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, you know, there there would have been some money there to continue the appeal. 00;06;57;06 - 00;07;02;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah, they would have they would have found the money if if he had a reasonable chance of success. 00;07;02;18 - 00;07;24;18 Propter Malone Yeah. I think, I think that the, you know, a lot of ways he was drawing dead as soon as we had the more limited North Carolina Supreme Court ruling and it became clear that that the number of votes, it was a fairly narrow path to begin with and also was correctable, by, by damns by these overseas voters carrying their vote. 00;07;24;21 - 00;07;43;19 Propter Malone So I think that even if he had won on the legal merits, on the legal quote unquote merits, he probably still would have lost the election. So there may be a little of that, too, that this wasn't a this wasn't a sure thing. Even if the courts had gone and blown a lot of credibility fixing this one. 00;07;43;19 - 00;07;51;02 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So what are kind of the what are the the ramifications or the consequences, of this, of him losing, and of her going forward. 00;07;51;04 - 00;08;42;01 George Makes it easier for Democrats to control the state Supreme Court, which would potentially break the Republican gerrymander of not just the North Carolina General Assembly and Senate, but also the congressional districts in North Carolina. So, in North Carolina, Democrats run very well statewide, especially for governor. But there is a frankly obscene gerrymander, both in the state House and in the congressional districts, that if you get a Democrat majority on the state Supreme Court, you start to look, even even just a fair map means for House seats for Dems, probably in the, in the, House of Congress and House of Representatives and something like a 5050 legislature, which is just 00;08;42;01 - 00;08;49;19 George a complete game changer from now, which is a supermajority for Republicans in both the congressional delegation and the state House. 00;08;49;22 - 00;08;56;02 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Is it is it more egregious than, what we had in Wisconsin? Similar, similar. Okay. 00;08;56;02 - 00;09;10;02 Propter Malone The Wisconsin was really the model, for for North Carolina in terms of, in terms of something where you had a temporary advantage in the state that they were trying to cement as as a permanent, unassailable advantage. 00;09;10;04 - 00;09;12;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer They were trying to turn it into Hungary. 00;09;12;07 - 00;09;46;28 Propter Malone Yeah, basically. I mean, I mean, the mechanics were a little bit different because in Wisconsin they had the governor's mansion for a while. Whereas in, whereas in North Carolina, this is just, this is just legislature. It's, this is this is legislative force majeure. Basically what this does do is this does avoid a potential whammy scenario, where if in addition to losing this race, Dems had also lost, the 2026 seat on the North Carolina court, there was a scenario where even with three seats up in 2028, we still wouldn't have been able to flip it. 00;09;47;00 - 00;09;54;26 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That is not to be confused with a Wham scenario, which is when you wake me up before you go. 00;09;54;28 - 00;10;05;14 Propter Malone So it's still way too early for us to be making any kind of confident predictions about what's going to happen in 2026, but we're starting to see some tea leaves about what politicians are doing to prepare. 00;10;05;16 - 00;10;16;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm so upset with how machine right now for that joke. 00;10;16;22 - 00;10;41;16 Propter Malone We're starting to see some Republican candidates who might, under different circumstances, have stood for election in 2026, start to withdraw. And the big the big names there, there are three state level Republicans who would have had a pretty decent shot at one thing or another, who have in recent weeks decided not to stand for election in 2026. 00;10;41;26 - 00;10;54;08 Propter Malone We've got Kim Reynolds, who's the sitting Republican governor in Iowa who is not running for reelection. She might have been in trouble anyway. She was the least popular governor in America, as of as of late April. 00;10;54;10 - 00;11;16;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And I think Iowa is one that I'm, I'm sort of keeping an eye on as as we head into 26, just because I want to see what does this look like when when Dorito Mussolini is not on the ballot, you know, could they could they knock out Ernst? Could they take back the governor's mansion? Could we sort of pull Iowa back to. 00;11;16;08 - 00;11;27;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer It's it's maybe not. We're probably never going to get the Obama era back in Iowa. But but maybe somewhere a little more in the realm of sanity. 00;11;27;10 - 00;12;08;04 George We actually got a bit of a read through on that in the Nebraska. Sorry, the Omaha, Nebraska mayor's election this week. The Democrat John Ewing, Jr knocked off the incumbent Republican. What was her name? Jean Stoker. Stewart was her name. And it wasn't a complete blowout, but it was pretty decisive. And that part of the country, I mean, there is there is a read through from Omaha, Nebraska to, to what's going to happen in Iowa, especially without Don juicing the rural red turnout that was so strong in 2024 as it was in 2020. 00;12;08;06 - 00;12;31;17 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That one in particular was kind of heartening, because I was reading that, the that the, the incumbent, kind of went all in on anti-trans messaging and advertising and promotion, particularly late in the race. And she still got, you know, just essentially defeated on it. And I that's, that's going in the direction we want things to go in. 00;12;31;19 - 00;12;39;23 George And Ewing also leaned into that and did his own messaging that was explicitly like, like, this lady is a freak. What why are we doing this? 00;12;39;23 - 00;12;44;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And she's, you know, he's she's worried about potties. He's worried about potholes. 00;12;44;16 - 00;12;45;08 George Ding ding ding. It's a. 00;12;45;08 - 00;13;07;27 Propter Malone Good one. It's a good one. We're going to be seeing that one again. She was I think a three term incumbent at this point running for her fourth term. That's correct. So I mean, turfing her out is is significant that this was one of, this is that this was a relatively rare Republican bright spot at the Blue City mayor level, because Omaha as, as a city is blue. 00;13;08;14 - 00;13;18;11 Propter Malone But, you know, they managed to hold on, but with a Republican in office, for I think these were four year terms. So for 12 years now. 00;13;18;18 - 00;13;55;11 George Speaking of incumbents, there are a couple different, ones talk about elsewhere in the country. Brian Kemp in, Georgia, technically not an incumbent because he's the governor, but, he is not going to run for Senate, in Georgia, which is a big deal, because he would have probably walked through the Republican primary there. And is quite popular as a governor is what I think 2 or 3 term governor, in Georgia, a two term governor in Georgia, and him pulling out is is a pretty big signal that he and and again, this is somebody who is very, very good at Georgia politics is not liking his chances. 00;13;55;11 - 00;13;58;17 George Chances against is it Warnock or Ossoff the type. 00;13;58;23 - 00;14;20;24 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE It's also and he was he was the only one giving Ossoff a lot of kind of heartache. When it came to kind of potential lineups and hypothetical hypothetical matchups, he was the one who looked like he actually maybe could knock yourself out. Once you get rid of Jack Kent or, 00;14;20;26 - 00;14;21;28 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Brian Kemp. 00;14;22;00 - 00;14;28;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Then you get rid of Brian Kemp. Then you move on to the lesser tier candidates from Georgia. 00;14;28;24 - 00;14;51;04 Propter Malone Yeah. It actually sounds like Marjorie Taylor Greene has decided to give it a miss, too. Which is unfortunate, because I would have really enjoyed watching her get her one handed to her, statewide. But Kemp was far and away the best possible Republican recruit for that Georgia seat, which is which is our most vulnerable Democratic Senate seat up in 2026. 00;14;51;11 - 00;15;23;02 Propter Malone So if he's shying away, that's a good sign that Ossoff is very likely to hold the seat. Kemp is kind of an interesting guy politically because he's he's very publicly, crossed Donald Trump in the past, back in back in 2020, he and the, and the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, were both rock ribbed Republicans who were nonetheless not willing to buy into the whole, you know, find me 13,000 votes. 00;15;23;15 - 00;16;01;15 Propter Malone So I win the state, thing from Trump. And it's pretty clear that there's no love lost between Kemp and Trump. There's a lot of speculation that campus is he has his eye, on 20, 28 and on a presidential run, as somebody who has created some separation between himself and Donald Trump, if things continue to go poorly in terms of the Trump legacy, that might be attractive to Republican primary voters and might represent, you know, whether it's an actual pivot back to sanity or, kind of a fig leaf that, would still be a move. 00;16;01;17 - 00;16;02;20 Propter Malone Good luck. 00;16;02;23 - 00;16;30;01 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. But I mean. But. Right. If he runs for Senate, there's, like, Trump hates him and and Trump very well could sandbag him. So I would imagine that Brian Kemp is just going to kind of keep his head down until, until 2028 rolls around. And then he can just pretend that Trump didn't happen. Because he's betting that Trump is going to be comically unpopular by that point. 00;16;30;01 - 00;16;31;19 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Probably. Right. Rightly. 00;16;31;21 - 00;16;47;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I'm a little sad, though, that green is not going to run just because in every single polling matchup, green gets absolutely nuked from orbit by Ossoff. And and Ossoff actually has to compete against anybody else. 00;16;47;24 - 00;17;15;13 Propter Malone Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, this is this is the the primary electorate that brought us Herschel Walker. So, you know, I'm confident that Georgia is going to be able to find somebody crazy, to run in 2026, even if MTG wants to sit it out. 00;17;15;16 - 00;17;40;29 George Also notable up in New Hampshire, Sununu, the governor who has served four terms up there, just absolute institution. New Hampshire politics is is not going for the Senate seat. So again, this is a high quality candidate that has a lot going for him saying, I don't want that smoke, which is not a good sign if you're trying to, hold or expand your margins in the Senate. 00;17;41;13 - 00;17;43;19 George From the Republican side of the aisle. 00;17;43;22 - 00;18;15;05 Propter Malone Yeah. These are these are seats that you would expect in a Republican environment. Would be competitive. Plus, for Republicans, so it would probably be a slight favorite, in an open seat race against, Chris Pappas is the guy who's likely to be the nominee on the Democratic side. But in a Democratic environment, which I think everybody's kind of pricing in at this point, you're just going to get beat up ad. 00;18;15;08 - 00;18;16;20 Propter Malone Yeah. And, you know, go home. 00;18;16;20 - 00;18;44;02 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. If we were, if we were looking at if, if Kamala had won in November, I think there's a very high likelihood that we're losing both Ossoff and that New Hampshire seat and with no real shot whatsoever in, you know, an Iowa or a Texas maybe in North Carolina with Cooper running or Cooper. Sorry. Like like spell your name right. 00;18;44;02 - 00;18;46;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Man. What are we doing here? 00;18;46;17 - 00;19;03;02 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE As it stands, one of the only kind of rumored candidates so far on the Republican side is human barn jacket Scott Brown. But I don't think that, Chris Pappas will make the same mistakes that Martha Coakley made, because, yes, it's the same dude. 00;19;03;05 - 00;19;05;03 Propter Malone How is she? He's just hopping that border. 00;19;05;10 - 00;19;07;03 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer How? Yeah. 00;19;07;05 - 00;19;09;06 Propter Malone Well, he's got it. He's got a truck. That's that's a thing. 00;19;09;06 - 00;19;11;27 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yes. He's the only guy in Boston with a truck. 00;19;12;02 - 00;19;21;21 George As a guy who his personality is centered on having a truck. I, reject all of this commentary from my fellow podcasters and, in fact, presented a little bit. 00;19;21;23 - 00;19;23;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Wait, but do you have a barn jacket? 00;19;23;27 - 00;19;25;29 George I don't know what a barn jacket is. 00;19;26;02 - 00;19;27;25 Propter Malone It's a versatile piece of outerwear, George. 00;19;27;25 - 00;19;48;03 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a jacket. It's like the equivalent of, the sweater vest in Virginia. You throw, you throw a sweater vest on any politician who's a Republican in Virginia and the whole DC press. Once you throw a barn jacket on any Republican in New England and and the DC press will also swoon. 00;19;48;05 - 00;19;52;12 George Having googled this is probably something I will never own. So we're safe. 00;19;52;15 - 00;19;53;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Does it guy with the short shorts. 00;19;53;21 - 00;20;02;27 George Hey, listen, these thighs need to breathe. I don't need all of this color different from the jacket color thing. That's that. No. 00;20;02;29 - 00;20;24;14 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So anyway, so. So the important thing about New Hampshire is we don't really know exactly what that race is going to look like yet. And we kind of have to wait on the Bears of New Hampshire to weigh in. And this is, a and a politics joke. If you have never read about the bears that invaded, a town, a libertarian town in New Hampshire. 00;20;24;20 - 00;20;32;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Oh, it's a delightful and absolutely insane story. And we'll link it in the show notes. Just. 00;20;32;28 - 00;20;56;16 Propter Malone To go down, to go down a different rabbit hole, where there are fewer bears. We've got some, some, some good polling out of Texas, even though it's still way, way, way, way, way premature. And every time I bring up Texas Senate, everybody yells at me, because we've been burned so many times on Texas in the past, we have calluses and scars from hoping that good things are going to happen in the Texas election. 00;20;56;18 - 00;21;06;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And, prompter is not lying about that. I have been among the people yelling at him about Texas for the last couple years. 00;21;06;10 - 00;21;32;07 George And I will actually say, I think you can make a qualitative argument grounded in numbers that this time will be different. In Texas, not just because of the thermostatic swing against the sitting president, which will obviously be a factor. I think the polling had Texas a lot closer than it actually turned out to be in this last election, and Latinos were a huge part of that. 00;21;32;09 - 00;21;55;15 George If we continue to see a maximal or near maximal enforcement, of the darkest impulses of Stephen Miller, I do not think you will see anything like those margins for Republicans in Texas. And when you combine that with thermostatic public opinion, it is a winnable seat for Democrats. Now, both of those are contingent. You know, I'm not saying, oh, you know, whatever. 00;21;55;15 - 00;22;02;09 George I just think you can make a steel Man case in favor of of a Democrat winning a Texas Senate seat. The cycle. 00;22;02;12 - 00;22;25;14 Propter Malone So this is this is a long time hobby horse for me. But I think that Ice enforcement, particularly border enforcement down in Texas, kind of cuts both ways with the you population because those border counties are having a federal money hose blasted at them. As long as they're trying to do border enforcement, there are literally billions with a B, a federal money that are going into what are poor communities. 00;22;25;17 - 00;22;49;25 Propter Malone And, you know, it's it's the whole economic game down there. And those are very heavily Latino communities. And it's it's enough to move the needle a little bit the other direction. But there's, there's a reason, I think that that those, that those counties swung so much farther than other heavily Latino, districts, back under the first Trump administration. 00;22;49;28 - 00;23;04;14 Propter Malone And it's because of the money that said, I, I agree that for the rest of Texas, that plays a little bit better because, Texas is a big state, big economy, and even those billions aren't enough to buy off Houston and Dallas. 00;23;04;17 - 00;23;24;03 George Yeah, yeah, the RGV dynamic, the Rio Grande Valley dynamic is, is very real. And that's a really good point. I do think that that is somewhat contingent on, the Latino population continuing to operate under the assumption that, oh, they're not coming for me. They're not coming for people who are law abiding, they're coming for the bad people. 00;23;24;09 - 00;23;51;06 George And it's going to be harder and harder to cling to that myth as we progress here. Again, this is contingent. I don't know, I you know, I think we we all need to be very careful about making predictions about what will or won't happen over the next two years. But, I think if you just sort of extrapolate the trend line forward, stuff like that came out of Baker Garcia case that we've talked about, that is moving the needle and it's it's really impacting perceptions. 00;23;51;06 - 00;23;58;20 George And if that continues long term, I think I think it's going to create a different, different outcome than what we saw in 2024. 00;23;58;22 - 00;24;22;28 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So here's a quick question. And I genuinely don't know the answer to this. So it's not like something where I'm trying to get one of you to give me the answer that I want. So let's say that, let's say that Ken Paxton, who's currently the AG of Texas and for my money, one of the top five most corrupt politicians in the entire country. 00;24;23;17 - 00;24;37;06 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Let's say that he does knock Cornyn out, in a primary. Does Collin already have a better chance at, against Paxton than he does Cornyn? 00;24;37;14 - 00;24;39;06 Propter Malone Yes. Unambiguously he does. 00;24;39;08 - 00;24;39;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Okay. Why is. 00;24;39;25 - 00;25;08;13 Propter Malone That? Well, I mean, Paxton is Paxton is unpopular with a lot of Republicans in Texas because, as you say, he's cartoonishly corrupt. And also, he's picked a lot of fights, with, establishment Republicans are aren't really the breakdown. But like you see, in a lot of states that have been red for a long time, you have kind of a civil war within the state Republican Party, where you have relatively moderate Republicans. 00;25;08;13 - 00;25;35;21 Propter Malone And to be clear, these are not these are not people that I personally would vote for. These are still Republicans, but they're the kind of Republicans that in a blue state, they might be Democrats, if that makes sense. These are these are politicians who are in it because they like politics. They're not as ideological as the when a tech fringe, which is definitely the part of the party that Paxton is more associated with, they're Mitt Romney basically. 00;25;35;23 - 00;26;07;06 Propter Malone Yeah. I mean, most of them are to their are are are to Romney's right, particularly in the Texas. But, you know, these are guys who who are maybe more interested in, in, in actually doing the blocking and tackling of politics than they are in, you know, passing in another bathroom bill, or prosecuting down to the individual level, on, doctors who are, you know, giving advice that could lead to abortions, both of which are things that Paxton's my very involved in. 00;26;07;11 - 00;26;40;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer The other thing I would say is we I think we tend to forget the 2018 midterms, where that seat was decided this would this would have been, Ted Cruz's seat. That seat was decided by it. What was it, like, two points? You know, he nearly got knocked off by Beto O'Rourke and much as everyone rightly despises Ted Cruz, I kind of think Ken Paxton is going to be a bit less popular than even Ted Cruz. 00;26;40;21 - 00;27;13;29 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah, like Paxton's history of just really genuinely unpleasant behavior. You know, affairs, with affairs paid for or paid to cover up. I can't remember the exact story. With his own office's money, he's been under indictment or under investigation for approximately 7000 years. He's just unbelievably unpleasant as a politician. Even as compared to Ted Cruz. 00;27;14;02 - 00;27;19;29 Propter Malone Yes, he would be. He would be the most likable senator from Texas if it was a Paxton Cruz lineup. 00;27;20;14 - 00;27;36;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And I imagine being less likable than the guy who, you know, he looks like the penguin and, you know, abandons your state to go to Cancun every time. The state's ridiculous electrical grid melts down. 00;27;36;16 - 00;27;40;00 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE This is like choosing the colon cancer and testicular cancer. 00;27;40;08 - 00;27;42;16 Propter Malone Wait, which horse do you have in that race? 00;27;42;19 - 00;27;44;28 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Depends on how early it gets cut. 00;27;45;00 - 00;27;46;08 Propter Malone Yeah. 00;27;46;10 - 00;27;59;21 George I do think the 2018 Senate race is also interesting because if you look at the map of of Texas, like the county level map of of where the 2.6 percentage margin of victory for Cruz came from. 00;28;01;00 - 00;28;25;21 George The very, very large concentrations of Democratic votes. We now see in North Texas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, much less visible. Right. Like like this looks like the, the, the dem firewall is in the Rio Grande Valley, which as we've talked about, has started to swing away from Democrats. So the political geography of this is going to look really different. 00;28;25;21 - 00;28;47;22 George And the coalesce that is going that that Democrats could win with in Texas. Not well, I want to I want to keep stressing that I'm not predicting what's going to happen. I'm just sort of laying out an argument here. The, the potential political coalition there looks really different and is much, much more reliable as, midterm election turnout. 00;28;47;24 - 00;29;00;21 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I am going to throw it down here. I have been yelling at you all about Texas, for a couple of years now. I'm going to call it. The Democrats are going to win that Senate seat. Wow. 00;29;00;24 - 00;29;46;11 Propter Malone I will say that back back before this last election, about which I got a lot of things wrong. Well, one piece of digging I did into the Texas Senate race was looking into, who contributions were coming from, for various notable Texas institutions. And one of the things that really jumped out to me is that a lot of the classic Texas Republican businesses like the Baker Botts of the world, which that's Secretary of State James Baker, served under, you know, H.W. Bush, the the fixer for the Bush dynasty, the halliburton's of the world, which is a primarily an oil services, contracting firm, that is associated with the Cheneys. 00;29;46;13 - 00;30;07;26 Propter Malone These companies were giving money, not not to Cruz, but to. All right. And that surprised me a lot that you had, this real divergence between who the institutional players used to give money to in Texas and who they were giving money to now. And, you know, like, I've got I've got friends who've worked for Baker Botts. It's still a conservative firm. 00;30;07;29 - 00;30;29;02 Propter Malone But if we're at the point where it's okay to have your name on, you know, a max contribution going to the Democratic challenger instead of instead of going to Ted Cruz as, as a, as an attorney at that firm, then that's that's a that's a signal of a culture shift. Anyway, it's still too it's still too early to have any confidence in these polls. 00;30;29;02 - 00;30;52;07 Propter Malone But we do have some early numbers out of Texas. And, we now have, three different private polls. So take them with a grain of salt. You always take a private poll with that. You know, these wouldn't be released if somebody wasn't trying to push some kind of an agenda. But we have two Republican private polls and one Democratic private poll, that have Paxton up over, John Cornyn, who's the incumbent? 00;30;53;00 - 00;31;08;17 Propter Malone Senator from Texas, by between 16. And I think it's 21 points in the primary. So we've been talking about Paxton like he's probably going to be the nominee. It's still early, but that's what the numbers say right now that Paxton is probably going to be the nominee. 00;31;08;17 - 00;31;28;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yes. And just to be clear, my bet on the Democrats winning that Texas Senate seat is premised on me betting on the sheer stupidity of the Republican Party, in that primary, like I, I'm betting that all Ken is going to take, Cornyn out. 00;31;28;12 - 00;31;50;08 Propter Malone If we want to win that Senate seat as opposed to do harm reduction with that Senate seat. Paxton is the guy we want to run against. He's going to be a less formidable general election opponent, than Cornyn or than any of the also rans who are kind of poking around the edges of the race. Now, the polling that we've seen for the general election that is polling various Republican candidates against. 00;31;50;08 - 00;32;14;14 Propter Malone All right, let me just take a quick digression here. I don't think that all red is magical there. I think that all red has name recognition, and therefore he's a better proxy for some of the other potential Democratic hopefuls than they themselves would be, because they don't have name recognition yet. But no matter what the matchup is here, Texas is one of the very, very few routes for us to take the Senate in 2026. 00;32;14;16 - 00;32;30;06 Propter Malone So Dems are going to spend a lot of money there. We're probably going to hit, triple digit millions and in single party spending, for that race. Especially if it's Paxton, because people are going to get their wallets out because screw that guy. 00;32;30;08 - 00;32;37;04 George Make sure your phone's charged because you're about to get a lot of actblue tax. 00;32;38;08 - 00;33;03;17 Propter Malone So in the general election polling right now, it's it it's interestingly, it's only the Republican pollsters who have released general election heats for all red versus Paxton. But, Brad Parscale, who is Trump's pollsters, outfit, has, all red up 15 points over Paxton in the general 15 points is good Lord. Insane. Yeah. 00;33;03;23 - 00;33;37;03 Propter Malone I mean, like like again, we've all been burned by Texas before, but we've never had a result like that in Texas before, even this early, where you can look at that and say, wow, this isn't just a the shape of a win. This, this is this is maybe a blowout. Anyway, I laugh, which is, which is kind of the centrist, Senate, pack, for the Republicans also pulled the race, and they have, they have already beaten Paxton by one. 00;33;37;05 - 00;34;00;11 Propter Malone Well, all red loses to Cornyn by six. So everybody's showing a significant differential between how Paxton would perform energy and how Cornyn would perform energy. You we're probably not up by 15 against Paxton. That's that's a little too much to hope for. But I think there's a very real chance that if it is Paxton, we come in as favorites. 00;34;00;13 - 00;34;12;01 George How much of that how much of this you know, you commented that we only have polls from two Republican pollsters. How much of this is, either Parscale or. 00;34;13;28 - 00;34;14;03 Propter Malone What. 00;34;14;03 - 00;34;17;00 George Was it? So, so self. 00;34;17;03 - 00;34;18;29 Propter Malone As I laugh. Yeah, yeah. Push him, you. 00;34;18;29 - 00;34;31;23 George Know, trying to push Cornyn into the lead as a, you know, trying to convince Texas primary voters to stay away from Paxton as opposed to the other way around. Like, like is there a gamesmanship going on there or do we think this is a clean, clean hit? 00;34;31;25 - 00;34;47;06 Propter Malone Oh, I mean, I think I think the polls are legit, but I don't think we would have seen him if they didn't show this. That's that's where the the dirty pool usually comes in on private polling is that you do the poll and you do it as accurately as you can. But if it's not pushing a message you care about, you bury it. 00;34;47;06 - 00;35;05;18 Propter Malone You don't release it. So I absolutely think that, Soph, and maybe, it's a little bit harder for me to understand what Parscale is trying to do. But I think that there is there is some amount of pushing this to try to sell Cornyn as the electability candidate. Yeah. I mean. 00;35;05;18 - 00;35;18;01 George Also a 15 point lead versus a one point lead. Those are that's a lot of variance. I mean, we are so early that this is all sort of hypothetical still, but that's still a pretty big variance. So I don't know I just. 00;35;18;04 - 00;35;43;01 Propter Malone Yeah, I mean I you know, Parscale didn't release the Cornyn versus all red heat, which means that Cornyn was probably wasn't all red too. So it may have been that they just pulled a super blue sample, for, for the G and wanted to play it up because of the reasons you said that they wanted to drive home how unelectable Paxton might be. 00;35;43;03 - 00;36;08;01 Propter Malone So, you know, we can't take too much help from that. The one thing the one of the thing I will say is that we did have a Democratic we did have Democratic private polling. The corroborated that Paxton is currently rinsing, Cornyn in the primary. So I think we're on fairly solid ground there. Then we've had three different polling outfits that are all reasonable, good polling outfits who've taken a look at it, and they all think it's it's, you know, plus or minus, 20 points. 00;36;08;01 - 00;36;25;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Wade could also be a function of how much you're pushing leaners to, you know, if you've got the poll with Paxton was, what, 5237 I would guess that. So that leaves what, another 11 points of people. I would guess nearly all of those people would wind up with Paxton. 00;36;25;16 - 00;36;36;02 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So is what you guys are saying that the tie may now be right for the Dems to win the night deep in the heart of Texas. 00;36;36;05 - 00;36;40;26 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Jail jell o trial. 00;36;40;28 - 00;36;42;05 Propter Malone That's. 00;36;42;08 - 00;36;47;25 George Get me out of here. 00;36;47;28 - 00;36;54;18 George That's. 00;36;54;21 - 00;37;17;24 Propter Malone So back here in DC, the news is really what's not happening on Capitol Hill right now, which is that Republicans are not successfully moving this reconciliation bill as yet. We're kind of in a holding pattern to see what happens, because the the claims that they've made of what they're going to do with this bill are very bold. 00;37;19;02 - 00;37;29;06 Propter Malone And they require a lot of people in very thin majorities in both houses, to, to swallow it, if it's going to get through. 00;37;29;12 - 00;37;54;17 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So, so one of the easiest ways to describe this right now, particularly on the House Republican side, is everybody is pissed at everyone else. You got, on the Freedom Caucus side, they want significantly more cuts than Johnson will ever be able to deliver. He will never be able to deliver everything that they're asking for. And clear a majority in the House. 00;37;55;00 - 00;38;15;26 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE You've got on the moderate side, folks who are starting to get kind of shaky about, the Medicaid cuts. Not as shaky as I would like them to be. And, a handful of Republicans who can actually tank it, who are just volcanically pissed off about salt and salt. 00;38;15;29 - 00;38;36;16 Propter Malone To be clear, is the, state and local tax deduction, which already took a big hit with the standard deduction going way up, under the first Trump administration's tax plan. Fewer people itemize taxes when the standard deduction is higher. So it matters less if you have these other deductions going on. 00;38;36;18 - 00;39;04;18 George That Salt deduction geographically works out to basically New York, new Jersey Republicans saying we absolutely have to deliver on this like this is our reason to exist is to to get these this thing through for our constituents, because those states have much more capacity and therefore much higher taxes. Yeah. So, so that's, that's that crew. And then the Freedom Caucus crew are scattered out of Chip Roy is sort of the, standard bearer. 00;39;04;18 - 00;39;47;16 George He is bearer. He's, Texas, if I remember correctly. And then, you know, South and Midwest, I think is probably the best way to think of that. And then there is a third faction to which is Republicans that, are interested in not completely gutting the IRA, for instance. A fourth faction would be Republicans who want to do a bunch of cuts but don't want a $600 billion cut to Medicaid, a $290 billion cut to Snap, which is like a 30% cut, to, food assistance, as well as just, ton of different, programs that are going to really drive up the cost of everything from electricity to 00;39;47;16 - 00;40;06;04 George natural gas, while providing tax cuts to rich people. I mean, there is a real Republican caucus who is looking at that and going like, that's not going to work for me. So, yeah. Good. Good luck, I guess. Mike Johnson there's they seem to be holding things together for now, but the rubber isn't really hitting the road yet. 00;40;06;07 - 00;40;35;16 Propter Malone Yeah, and snap is particularly difficult. Because for a long time, food assistance has been this sort of. It's not exactly a corrupt bargain, but it definitely is. One hand washing the other where Democrats get food assistance for poor people in urban areas and Republicans get subsidies for farmers because that's how the food assistance works, is we push a whole bunch of money towards farmers. 00;40;35;28 - 00;40;36;25 Propter Malone To buy the food. 00;40;36;27 - 00;40;56;27 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I just want to say, anything that gets Tri-State Republicans washed on having to pay more taxes, I'm in favor of, like, the these greasy Staten Island ass pricks in in Jersey and elsewhere. All of them. Take them down. Filibuster that. Yeah. 00;40;56;27 - 00;41;24;21 Propter Malone I'll be honest, I kind of thought that we should a nuke salt back when we had the trifecta. Just just from a political standpoint, not from an economic standpoint. It's it's it's good that we're capping it at some point, but we could have taken it up to, you know, a 30 K exemption to a 50 K exemption and still rinsed the billionaires while providing enough of a political sop to those districts that maybe were still looking at a Democratic House right now. 00;41;24;21 - 00;41;30;12 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Anything that makes a Chris Christie voter cry, I am in favor of. 00;41;30;14 - 00;41;56;09 Propter Malone I mean, I mean, I mean, the thing about the salt caps is these are Trump salt caps. These are these were passed during reconciliation during the first Trump administration that was his big, big middle finger to the blue states, that, you know, you guys can no longer get the subsidy. You're going to have to actually squeeze your rich people, instead of allowing them to deduct their taxes against against federal taxes. 00;41;57;11 - 00;42;09;21 Propter Malone So I thought I thought we should have, as a matter of politics, not as a matter of economics, not as a matter of fairness, just as a matter of politics. I, I thought we should have torn that down. Salt of the earth, if you will. Curious. 00;42;09;26 - 00;42;13;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I shales? Yeah. Shale. Yeah. 00;42;13;08 - 00;42;40;24 George No trial prompter and go like hell machine. You guys, you're at your quota for dad. Jokes were done with those from U2. I mean, except one from low tax. I might drop something in myself, but we can't each do multiple jokes that bad on on one podcast. On the salt thing, I will say there is a compelling case to be made both ways on the economics of, state and local tax deduction caps. 00;42;41;15 - 00;43;15;20 George Basically giving blue states the ability to do actual fiscal transfers to their, lower income residents and build state capacity, is a genuinely useful thing, both from a politics perspective and from an economics perspective. On the flip side, the ultimate redistribution of income in this country is the federal government and trying to do fiscal policy from the state level as opposed to the federal level, is a recipe for disaster. 00;43;15;20 - 00;43;20;08 George At some point, as we found out in the eurozone, I did just get back from Greece after all. 00;43;20;11 - 00;43;26;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Are you are you so, Georgia, are you salty about the, salt joke? Is that what I'm getting from us? 00;43;26;19 - 00;43;28;07 George Okay, that's your one capital. 00;43;28;07 - 00;43;47;14 Propter Malone Capital punishment. All right, so to speak. Anyway, I, I think we can, I think we can kind of leave salt where it is. There. It looks to me like it looks to me like the blue state Republicans have the votes, to make something happen there. So they're going to get at least some movement their direction. 00;43;48;19 - 00;43;54;28 Propter Malone And they're just going to have to figure out how to sell whatever budget busting that does, to the rest of the caucus. 00;43;55;00 - 00;44;26;02 George The other thing to remember about this reconciliation process is that the real tricky stuff on in a reconciliation bill is going to happen in the Senate. The Senate is where all of the bird rule tests and parliamentary procedure and, just goofy stuff about, this reconciliation process really binds. So it's important to remember anything you see out of the house is bargaining or negotiation, as opposed. 00;44;26;02 - 00;44;27;11 Propter Malone To. 00;44;27;13 - 00;44;48;03 George Some sort of final thing that has to be in the bill. Anything that goes through the House is then going to get redone in the Senate and then go back to the House for one more vote. And how the House sets up what they send to the Senate is ultimately not very important. The dynamics in the House and how they approach whatever the Senate does, do matter. 00;44;48;03 - 00;45;09;19 George But the Senate can basically dictate to the House on this stuff, and it's not clear they will. I don't have a good bead on how the two caucuses relate to each other in that sense, but I just, you know, when you're when you're seeing all this stuff come out of the House committees that we saw this week, I was talking about almost $700 billion worth of Medicaid cuts, for instance. 00;45;09;22 - 00;45;15;05 George Just just keep that in mind that that's a negotiating position, not what will be in the final bill. 00;45;15;11 - 00;45;38;12 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. And I think that for for people who are kind of out there and, and listening to us, I think you're probably similarly politically aligned. And, and want to see Dems try to put up a fight. Dems in the House had way, or House Ways and Means Committee just last night went for 25 hours, on offering amendments. 00;45;39;15 - 00;46;00;03 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And got every single one rejected. They, they can't control that. But they fought every single line of the bill, and every single line, of the markup, from their, their, their counterparts in ways and means. So there's, there's not a lot they can do to stop all of this, but they are trying to do what they can. 00;46;00;03 - 00;46;12;12 Propter Malone Yeah. I honestly don't think that there's a whole lot of cause for complaint about how the House Democrats in particular, have conducted themselves, at least at least after week right away. This this term. Oh. 00;46;12;15 - 00;46;35;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I think I had said this like a few episodes back, that I thought we were going to be in a place where the Dems were sort of going to be fumbling around in the, in the post election hashtag analysis era, that you always get when you lose an election and you have to, you know, you have to look inward. 00;46;35;20 - 00;46;55;00 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And what lessons should we learn and all of this nonsense? But I, I get the feeling that the Dems are, in fact, starting to find their footing. And I think that was that was perfectly foreseeable. 00;46;55;02 - 00;47;00;26 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That's. 00;47;00;29 - 00;47;23;26 Propter Malone So one other interesting, interesting thing that happened this last week, was that, Ras Baraka, who is the mayor of Newark, went and got himself arrested, at an ice facility. And my initial thought when I saw this was that this was something where Ross Brock is running for governor of new Jersey. It's a kind of a tight race on the Democratic side in the primary. 00;47;24;11 - 00;47;53;28 Propter Malone I thought this was something where he went out there with the intention of getting himself arrested. And after looking at the video, it was not that, this was this was something where he was out there with with three, Democratic, House members, doing oversight on this Ice facility, which apparently the congressman at least have the, the legal right to do, because we snuck that one in, back when we had the trifecta, and they got they got bum rush by, like 20 Ice agents. 00;47;54;13 - 00;47;57;09 Propter Malone It was kind of a ridiculous video. 00;47;57;12 - 00;48;28;26 George Yeah. I just wanted to give a shout out to Aaron Raichlen Melnyk on Blue Sky, who surfaced this, back in 2020 that they put this, writer in that mandated ice and also any facility operated for Ice. This includes private prisons. Be willing to submit to inspection by congressional oversight on 24 hours notice. So a congressperson or a senator can show up at any Ice facility in the country or any facility operated, on contract for Ice and walk through. 00;48;28;28 - 00;48;49;17 George You need 24 hours notice for your staff. That's it. There's they cannot deny them access. So when you see a member of Congress doing this, I mean this this is something that, was was snuck in inside a spending bill back in 2020 during Trump's first term. And, and this was, you know, we don't want to give Democrats too much credit, but this was really smart. 00;48;49;17 - 00;49;06;04 George Whoever whoever came up with this idea to sneak this in, really did good work, because it's just such a free hit on, and, and also a genuinely valuable way to keep track of what's going on inside, the Castle state that does so much damage to people. 00;49;06;11 - 00;49;32;05 Propter Malone Yeah. And I think, you know, we all kind of have these terror scenarios running through our mind about what's happening inside of these ice facilities at this point. And it's been very nice to have Congress people going there and giving us some on the ground, reporting from places where it's clear the agency would prefer that nobody be, you know, the conditions in these, in these holding facilities are, are bad. 00;49;32;07 - 00;49;58;28 Propter Malone They're not equally bad everywhere. Some some of these, some of these facilities are much worse than others. But we've had a number of deaths already this year, you know, in ice holding facilities, including of relatively, relatively young and previously relatively healthy people. These are bad news. And I think that we are going to hear much more over the months and years to come coming out of these facilities. 00;49;59;11 - 00;50;00;23 Propter Malone That is going to be pretty dire. 00;50;01;08 - 00;50;02;18 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Who is with us for? Okay. 00;50;02;20 - 00;50;22;23 Propter Malone Well, so, I, I took a lot of poetry classes in college. And, I had not realized that Ras Baraka was. Amiri Baraka is kid, Amiri Baraka, born Leroy Jones, was a, I think it's fair to call him a black nationalist poet who was sort of tangentially associated with the later beat movement. 00;50;22;26 - 00;50;47;10 Propter Malone So he wasn't really part of the the initial Kerouac and Ginsberg wave. But kind of with kind of with the second set of beats. I wouldn't say that Amiri Baraka is, is, he was he was a very good poet. But, he's got Wikipedia sections entitled, anti-white racism, misogyny, rape advocacy, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the nine over 11 attacks. 00;50;47;13 - 00;50;56;14 Propter Malone So he's kind of, he was kind of a loon. I don't think Ras Baraka is is a loon. He seems like a he seems like a pretty good guy. 00;50;56;16 - 00;51;00;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer So what you're saying is he'll be the Republican nominee for governor. 00;51;01;16 - 00;51;22;15 Propter Malone Next year. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where Barack is. Politics. We're late in life, to be honest. He probably he's he's probably written some things about Donald Trump at some point. But anyway, Ras Baraka, I think, is probably now the outright favorite, for new Jersey governor on the Democratic side. You know, it's a tight race. 00;51;23;18 - 00;51;56;04 Propter Malone Baraka and, Thorpe were the two kind of more anti-establishment candidates. Mikie Sherrill, who is the the establishment wing candidate, has not really caught fire. It's new Jersey politics. You know, if you stare too long into that particular void, you go and say, but this is a big name recognition bump, doing something that a lot of Democrats in new Jersey agree with, in what was already going to be a tight race. 00;51;56;07 - 00;52;15;14 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I'm always amazed that the, the national Republicans and, and and I'm going to include Ice in national Republicans because they are very clearly Partizan aligned. I have never heard of Barbra Streisand ever. And they have never heard of the Streisand effect, ever. 00;52;15;18 - 00;52;26;11 Propter Malone Yep. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think one of the, one of the dynamics at work here is that, Lena Harbor, who you may remember as Trump's personal attorney. 00;52;26;24 - 00;52;29;14 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Who? She's the gamer laptop lady, right? 00;52;29;17 - 00;52;34;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Oh, yeah. Didn't she, didn't she have a, like, a razor laptop or something? Yeah. 00;52;34;06 - 00;52;34;27 Propter Malone She had the. 00;52;34;29 - 00;52;39;01 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Razor laptop in court. 00;52;39;03 - 00;52;55;02 Propter Malone Yeah. So before she started working for Trump, she was a she was a, parking garage attorney. That that that that's a term of art in this case that that essentially her entire career to date had been doing litigation surrounding parking lots and parking garages. 00;52;55;04 - 00;53;07;06 George I was I was going to say like like literally, she worked as the like. How many accidents and scrapes can you have in a parking garage where you need a attorney on staff? Like, what are we doing? 00;53;07;09 - 00;53;11;18 Propter Malone I mean, you know, plenty, I guess, you know, you got to have somebody show up anyway. She's she's the. 00;53;11;18 - 00;53;16;17 George Was this the parking garage from Ferris Bueller's Day Off? 00;53;16;19 - 00;53;40;07 Propter Malone She's she's the attorney who lost Trump a whole lot of money. On the, on the rape civil litigation, in New York, where she did not perform particularly well. But anyway, she is she is now the acting, us attorney in new Jersey. And it's pretty clear that she was directing, some of the skull cracking. 00;53;40;09 - 00;53;42;24 Propter Malone And this might be kind of an audition tape for her. 00;53;42;27 - 00;53;50;26 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer They're calling her the most qualified new Jersey attorney in history. Folks, I can tell you. 00;53;50;29 - 00;54;14;01 Propter Malone So in new Jersey, you've got a wino harbor who may be auditioning, for some kind of subsequent appointment. By doing things that'll get her on TV and get her back in, you know, Trump's cone of vision? We just kind of went through the same thing down in DC, with Ed Martin, who we're going to list as another victory. 00;54;14;03 - 00;54;17;06 Propter Malone At least provisionally for the good guys. And. 00;54;17;06 - 00;54;19;21 George Another North Carolina connection. We'll get to that. 00;54;19;23 - 00;54;34;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And by the way, Elena Haba leaving Trump's got a vision for Ed Martin entering Trump's kind of vision. Shows you just how much President Papa, is is falling apart here, I think. 00;54;34;28 - 00;54;42;07 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE All right. And then now we'll go to the next section. 00;54;42;09 - 00;55;08;24 Propter Malone Yeah. So let's get back over to the executive branch writ large. One of the good things that happened, recently, since we last taped, was that Ed Martin is out as the nominee for the D.C., US attorney, Ed Martin, who I think we talked about a little bit on the show before, has been sending nasty grams to anybody he can think of, particularly educational institutions, hospitals, entertainers. 00;55;10;20 - 00;55;23;28 Propter Malone You know, he's he's been using one of the lesser known powers of the DC acting U.S. Attorney's office, which is just to send nasty letters with no legal force behind them and get them written up in the paper. 00;55;24;01 - 00;55;32;07 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I want to make sure that we give him his due because he was the, the Saint Louis Riverfront Times, 2010 ass clown of the week winner. 00;55;32;28 - 00;55;34;10 Propter Malone But, 00;55;34;13 - 00;56;08;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE What he got was a consolation prize. So essentially, Tom, Tom Tillis, who who has been an oath breaker in the past when it does come to Senate confirmations, even Thom Tillis couldn't actually vote for him. And that more or less sank him. The nomination. So now he has been placed at the head of a committee that is basically the the name and shame committee, which is one of the more ridiculously shameless things that this administration has done thus far. 00;56;08;24 - 00;56;31;09 George The Thom Tillis intervention here is interesting for two reasons, in my opinion. First thing is, I think it loops back to what we were talking about with incumbents and Senate races. In 2026, Thom Tillis is going to get, very, very strong challenge from, Roy Cooper, who was a two term governor, very popular. Every indication I've seen is that he's running for that Senate seat. 00;56;31;11 - 00;57;06;10 George I very heavily expect him to win that seat. And Tillis actually saying no to Trump on something is, I think, decent evidence of that, reality sinking in for him. If you go back to the Haeg Seth nomination that the, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, nomination, Pete Hegseth, whatever this yak, gin enthusiast name is, Tillis was one of the senators who could have sunk the nomination and chose not to. 00;57;06;15 - 00;57;37;21 George And there was reporting we had talked about this on a previous episode. There was reporting that he was actually afraid physically. For himself if he had voted no. I think there was a very clear fog of war in DC right after the, Trump administration kicked off that took Trump to be totally invulnerable and able to do whatever he wanted. 00;57;37;24 - 00;57;42;14 George And resisting him was either political suicide. 00;57;42;16 - 00;57;44;04 Propter Malone Or. 00;57;44;06 - 00;58;04;16 George Put you at real, real physical risk. And I think that has worn off at this point. I think when you look at the tariff conversation, what financial markets, and we haven't really talked about this yet, but, Trump walked back the China tariffs essentially, he did this because the financial markets forced him to. I mean, it's really that simple. 00;58;05;11 - 00;58;33;13 George And I think that combined with other evidence that we're getting feedbacks from the public against the Trump administration has taken that sort of shine of invulnerability off of these guys. And it's going to be interesting to see how long it takes them to figure that out. But I think Tillis is one piece of evidence. Tillis basically putting the kibosh on Ed Martin is one piece of evidence, but the shine is off and the end, and they can't just dictate anymore. 00;58;33;16 - 00;58;56;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I just love that we have, a Department of Justice that is naming and shaming. Now, they're not actually doing anything, but they're but they're gonna let you know about it because you're you you said something that hurt their feelings on the internet. I think the Brits, the Brits actually tried to legislate that to save JK Rowling from pile ons a couple years back on. 00;58;56;16 - 00;59;17;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Well, the funny thing is, is that so we're going to we're not going to have Ed Martin, which is great. Who we might have instead is, Jeanine Pirro, which, if you have never watched Fox News, we're we're adding another Fox News barely functional alcoholic to Trump's cabinet. 00;59;17;10 - 00;59;38;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I just want to say on on just to circle back one last time on Ed Martin. The Democrats need to a point. They need to keep that name and shame commission, but they need to appoint Will Stancil, to head it when they take back the white House in 2029, because I want to see that. 00;59;38;19 - 00;59;58;21 Propter Malone Anyway, the good news on Jeanine Pirro is that she's, she's 70 something and she falls asleep a lot. So I'm optimistic that, you know, that that the work rate coming out of the US Attorney's office is going to go down a little bit during her tenure as, interim US attorney here. 00;59;58;21 - 01;00;01;24 George Presumably brought to you by breakfast, Jen. 01;00;02;20 - 01;00;07;07 Propter Malone I think she's a franzia girl. And no, getting a breakfast. 01;00;07;07 - 01;00;21;11 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Wine, which is not nearly as offensive as breakfast gin. But, you know, it's still deadly if you do it all. All breakfast long. So. So wait until the last time that she is actually really worked as, like, a practicing attorney. Does anybody know? 01;00;21;13 - 01;00;24;10 Propter Malone Man? 90s, I think, 01;00;24;12 - 01;00;26;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Oh good ministration. 01;00;26;23 - 01;00;36;20 Propter Malone Yeah. No, she had she had a brief stint, she had a brief stint on the bench and she had a brief stint as an elected prosecutor. But those were both well into the 90s. 01;00;36;23 - 01;00;43;01 George So a recurring theme on this podcast is they're running out of lawyers. And boy, are they ever running out of lawyers. 01;00;43;03 - 01;00;53;21 Propter Malone Yeah, I don't think she counts as a lawyer anymore. I'm not even sure she really plays one on TV, I think. I think caustic is mostly being angry, condescending and drunk, which I sympathize with. 01;00;53;21 - 01;01;02;11 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer But she was on she was on television in the 90s. So that's all. That's all Trump needs, right? Because his brain stopped working in 1994. 01;01;02;11 - 01;01;25;07 Propter Malone So speaking of Trump's age, we've got here in DC, we have a we have a birthday parade coming up for Trump. But I'm not super excited about, on, on June 14th. It is technically the, I believe, the 250th birthday of the US Army. Correct. As they count it. But it also happens to be Trump's birthday. 01;01;25;07 - 01;01;34;27 Propter Malone And that's why we're having a parade. And everyone knows that, details TBD. They've released the parade route. It goes over a bridge, which I'm a little concerned about. 01;01;35;09 - 01;01;39;27 George So no M1 Abrams. And I'm assuming for the sake of both the tank drivers and the bridge. 01;01;40;01 - 01;01;47;15 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer He's going to do what that plane, that skidded on the ice into the bridge couldn't do, like, 30 years ago. 01;01;47;15 - 01;01;55;10 Propter Malone I'm assuming that they have civil engineers on staff somewhere who are looking at this. And saying, it's okay to put whatever you're planning on putting over the Potomac. 01;01;55;10 - 01;01;58;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Why would you assume that from the Trump administration. 01;01;58;27 - 01;01;59;10 Propter Malone You're getting. 01;01;59;10 - 01;02;00;17 George That from. 01;02;00;20 - 01;02;03;04 Propter Malone I'm assuming I'm assuming that the Army has civil engineers. 01;02;03;04 - 01;02;07;03 George I actually have an entire corps of them, believe it or not. 01;02;07;06 - 01;02;22;09 Propter Malone Yeah. But, you know, like, I mean, we just fixed up that bridge, right? Like, it would really suck if they took out the bridge. Also, you know, people would probably die, and that would be bad, too. But we've got a parade route they're going to repel out of the roads around here. It's going to be awful. 01;02;22;21 - 01;02;59;24 Propter Malone But that's coming up. And that does definitely factoring in to the ongoing negotiations about DC's budget, where it's clear that certain Republicans that that certain that certain House Republicans are kind of relishing having the whip hand over, over DC right now. We're still looking at I think it's, I think it's a $400 million budget shortfall, because they're telling us we can't spend our own money as a result of the continuing resolution, which is going to necessitate furloughing a whole bunch of DC employees, teachers, cops, firefighters, you know, people that it's it's fine if they just take a couple weeks off. 01;02;59;24 - 01;03;00;23 Propter Malone It's not going to be a big deal. 01;03;00;29 - 01;03;04;21 George But, hey, at least you'll find some jobs for them with that new bridge you're going to need. 01;03;04;23 - 01;03;30;15 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So the wild thing about this is that they're trying to do it in such a short period of time. So. So we are recording this on, May 14th. They were talking about hosting this on June 14th. We are one month out. So a couple of things to think about here. It usually takes about four months to build the inauguration platform for for the presidential inauguration. 01;03;30;24 - 01;04;00;24 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And they keep talking like they have a bigger game this time. The National Park Service has said that the permit is considered approved. This is not the same thing as a permit. Actually, having been approved by the city. And it's apparently going to cost more than $45 million. And I have to assume some seven digit portion of that is going to go straight into Kid Rock's pocket and gets spent on Busch Light. 01;04;00;26 - 01;04;01;29 Propter Malone I mean. 01;04;02;02 - 01;04;11;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I mean, who's going to who's going to approve it? There's, what, like one of the three people left at the National Park Service that Elon hasn't fired? 01;04;11;11 - 01;04;17;00 Propter Malone Yeah, we got we got Ranger Rick out here doing approvals. Smokey the Bear doing approvals. 01;04;17;02 - 01;04;49;27 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE One thing I do think, that you can tell that the administration has not considered at all. So, so like the entire the entire sort of entirety of, of people who would be in the parade from a military standpoint is going to be far less than, like 10,000 people. Right? Marches in January in DC, brought out more than 100,000 people, in January in Washington, DC, this will be June in Washington, DC. 01;04;49;27 - 01;05;17;15 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And Trump is far less popular now. And the potential optics of like, I don't know, a tank falling through the street and then being surrounded by 200,000 DC residents, is something that, you know, we would see every single day for the entire rest of this administration. You do have to wonder if anybody is telling them the to watch out for some comedic pitfalls. 01;05;17;17 - 01;05;22;17 Propter Malone Yeah, well, we'll know more about the parade as we get a little bit closer to it. And as they make it up. 01;05;22;19 - 01;05;40;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer These are like, Trump's fans are all car dealers in Ohio. They're not ready for this. It's June in DC, right? Like prompter. Prompter is from DC. George's in Charlotte and I'm in Florida. These boys aren't built for this. 01;05;40;13 - 01;05;43;22 George I've actually lived in DC in June and I don't recommend it. 01;05;43;24 - 01;05;47;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer As have I. It is. It is awful. 01;05;47;12 - 01;06;21;27 Propter Malone It beats August, I'll say that. Meanwhile, over on the Hill we've had we've had RFK giving testimony today about HHS cat, and he's been in the news recently for, going swimming in Rock Creek so long as we're talking about workable DC institutions on Mother's Day. I'm going to quote a friend of mine about Rock Creek, which is under an advisory from that National Park Service and its three remaining employees, not to swim in it because it's full of fecal bacteria that my friend commented that he thinks it's gross when people let their dogs swim in Rock Creek. 01;06;21;29 - 01;06;25;11 Propter Malone So that's that's the level of contamination we're talking about. 01;06;25;11 - 01;06;36;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer There is no reason to be in Rock Creek, in or around Rock Creek, unless you are a spy or a congressman trying to dispose of his mistress. 01;06;36;05 - 01;07;08;06 George RFK also moved today to introduce new restrictions on method Stone, which is, a, key medication key step in medication abortion. To two step process. And mifepristone is is one of the steps. And yeah, I mean, most predictable thing imaginable that, Trump flunky at DHS would, move to significantly restrict, access to abortion for the entire country, exactly what everyone was voting for last fall. 01;07;08;08 - 01;07;53;06 George And looks like we're going to get that. So, it's also worth noting that, pill based abortions are still accessible via, packages delivered from overseas. Their aid access is the big group that does this. There are a number of others. Just because the FDA moves to, change the access to abortion pills in the U.S doesn't mean that they won't be available at all to anybody, but it will raise the bar and, for, abortion clinics, it'll it'll it'll change things because, providing an abortion to repeal versus providing it through a procedure is are two very different things, both in terms of cost, and in terms of 01;07;53;06 - 01;08;11;06 George the volume of procedures you're able to do and so on, so forth. So, that's a huge deal. I haven't seen a lot of news about that. But if if a person, is is pulled by the FDA, there would be court challenges. It would be it's gonna be a contingent process. So let's not get a worst case here, but that would be a big deal. 01;08;11;20 - 01;08;15;27 George And again, is an entirely predictable result of of what happened last fall. 01;08;16;00 - 01;08;32;10 Propter Malone The one add on comment on have on that is that my understanding is that is that myth keeps pretty well on the shelf. So if you're in a red state and you're worried about it, you might want to do a little of your own research and see whether or not getting a little stocked up is a thing you could do right now. 01;08;32;13 - 01;08;54;05 George I mean, not just red state, I will say. Like it. Although a number of blue states have done stockpiles and, you know, if you're in California, you will probably be able to get access to an abortion pill. But, if you are in a state which is most of them that haven't developed stockpiles or that, are rationing, then yeah. 01;08;54;05 - 01;09;26;05 George And also who, I mean, who knows how long, those supplies will hold out for. So I, you know, I, I this is a nationwide thing. This is going to mean people in blue states who thought this was not a problem they had to worry about, really do have something to worry about. And, yeah, it's, you know, it remains to be seen how this whole process plays out, but, banning Medford pistol nationally or removing approval for it nationally would be a huge hit to abortion access in a country that is already having a lot of trouble. 01;09;26;19 - 01;09;29;09 George Getting access to the abortion care needs. 01;09;29;12 - 01;09;51;23 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I will say also, this is this is less serious than that. But our worm brain shit swimming roadkill enthusiast, Health and Human Services secretary could not. When asked by Senator also Brooks today name a department within the now National Institutes of Health that was named after his own aunt's. 01;09;51;25 - 01;10;11;22 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I do think that him swimming in Rock Creek, may explain RFK as we understand him like that. Maybe where the worm came from. And, that may be what's what's completely destroyed his brain. Like, he's probably been doing it since he was a kid, and his dad was ag and stuff. 01;10;11;29 - 01;10;14;12 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Not destroyed enough, in my opinion. 01;10;14;15 - 01;10;26;08 George All right, on that note, a boiled tomato, swimming in a, flowing creek full of sewage. We are going to leave you for the week. 01;10;26;10 - 01;10;31;22 Propter Malone For normal men. I'm George on prompter. 01;10;31;24 - 01;10;33;04 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm low tax. 01;10;33;07 - 01;10;35;06 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And I'm go like hell machine. 01;10;35;09 - 01;10;48;22 George And thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. If you could please rate and review us in your podcast app of choice. We sure would appreciate it. Stay normal y'all.