Living In The USA

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13. All right. Well, thank you for your service, Russell, and your family. I want to thank you. I want to thank Keith Shipman. I want to thank Speedy Gonzales Sports Report. I want to thank Meredith Brown. I want to thank Patricio Guadalupe. I want to thank you, Jeff Keller.
14. I want to thank you, Lalo.
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24. and Bobby Brown, 35th anniversary, Don't Be Cruel, on the 10th of July.
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26. And the group Ambrosia will be at the Canyon and Gore Hills on the 10th of July.
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37. Hello, this is Ben Taylor and you're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
38. from KPFK in Los Angeles this is Living in the USA I'm John Wiener talking about politics
39. thinking about the left later in the hour David Cole former legal director of the ACLU
40. has our analysis of this week's Supreme Court rulings. And Alan Minsky has some common sense
41. for American politics on this July 4th weekend. But first, politics this week. For that, we turn
42. to Harold Meyerson. Of course, he's editor-at-large of the American Prospect. Harold, welcome back.
43. Always good to be here, John. Of course, the biggest news in the past week was the Supreme
44. court's historic rulings. I wonder what your thoughts are about the court's actions that
45. made the president so much more, this president in particular, so much more powerful,
46. especially eliminating independent agencies with the exception of the Fed. On the other hand,
47. the court also took steps blocking Trump, rejecting his most unconstitutional executive orders.
48. They defended birthright citizenship. They blocked his effort to enlist the post office in a vote suppression scheme.
49. And, of course, they had earlier declared his tariffs unconstitutional.
50. What for you are the most significant of the court's actions this last week?
51. Well, some of them constitute sort of a two-step, one step forward, one step back.
52. in terms of America policy towards what really is American exceptionalism which is to say immigration and its consequences On the one hand the birthright citizenship decision
53. simply restated what the Constitution, what the 14th Amendment of the Constitution says,
54. which is basically that if you're born here, you're a citizen. And this has been pretty much
55. the norm in the United States before it was the United States, actually. If you were born in one
56. of the 13 colonies, if you weren't a slave, and even if you were a slave, sort of, you were a
57. citizen of the United States. And that has been uncontested except for the Dred Scott ruling,
58. which was negated in effect by the Civil War and the consequences thereof. So that's on the one
59. And I'm pretty sure David Cole will address actually that that particular ruling only got five of the nine justices saying this is what the 14th Amendment says.
60. In contrast to that, the court permitted Donald Trump to expel refugees from Haiti and Syria, but also, by extension, any refugees he really wants to expel, not to mention keeping asylum seekers out of the United States.
61. So really, by the welcome and nativist go home duality, you know, we went one way on one decision and one way on another decision.
62. The particular opinions that were written on the case of the Haitian and Syrian refugees who had received temporary protective status were, you know, fascinating in and of themselves.
63. with Justice Alito writing that Trump can do whatever he wants with them,
64. basically working to refute the notion that any degree of racism infected the decisions that
65. Trump is making here, while not quoting any of his racist statements, while Justice Elena Kagan
66. said, well, here, look at this, and then provided a whole list of racist slander, libel, you name it,
67. big lies that Trump, you know, and, you know, she didn't bring it up, but also Vice President Vance
68. had been saying about Haitian refugees and others. She also didn't reference the fact
69. That the only group of immigrants that Trump is genuinely seeking to welcome to the United States are white South Africans, which might also lead one to conclude that there is a slight tinge of racism in these Trump decisions, which, of course, Justice Alito denied.
70. So that was the one big back and forth. And the other back and forth was on the president's power to totally reconstruct the independent agencies and regulatory bodies that Congress set up and set up in a way to give fixed terms to its members.
71. and this was basically recodified, if that's the word, given constitutional sanction back in 1935
72. by a nine to nothing decision at that point of the Supreme Court in a case called Humphrey's
73. Executor The apostles of the unitary executive which is the doctrine that says the president should essentially rule over and swan over everything that he can glomp his hands onto have said that all of those agencies the National Labor Relations Board the Federal Trade Commission you name it are unconstitutional because the president really should have the right to just hire
74. and fire the commissioners or governors or what have you on those at will without needing to
75. specify misconduct or anything. So we have existed with these independent agencies with
76. constitutional sanctions for 90 years since Humphrey's executor came down in 1935. And the
77. conservative justices on the court said, no, we're with the unitary executive, except, except,
78. except, and here's the contradiction here, except for the Federal Reserve, which they said is
79. somehow different, though they didn't really specify how. And in fact, it was Chief Justice
80. Roberts who wrote both the decision striking down Humphrey's executor on the one hand,
81. and the decision saying, but this doesn't apply, by striking it down, doesn't apply to the Federal
82. Reserve, on the other hand, which you can come up with all kinds of interpretations
83. for this contradiction. Mine is that historically, the conservative court, and this basically has
84. been its rule almost since, you know, John Jay became the first Chief Justice in 1789.
85. The conservative court has always favored business and what we now would call capital over even their, you know, obeisance in this case to the unitary executive.
86. To put it in brief, that what's good for the banks is good for the USA and therefore has to be legal.
87. So that seems to have been the unstated reasoning behind the court saying that Trump could not fire, however, a governor of the Federal Reserve, which he's been trying to do.
88. So we have a week of do this, but don't do this here decisions from the Supreme Court.
89. And it's quite clear there's a six to three majority of what I hesitate to call them conservatives because they have been ripping apart tradition so drastically.
90. Right wing Republican rule, pro-business rule, six to three.
91. some of our friends are suggesting the only the only way to deal with this is for the democrats
92. to expand the court uh once they are back in the white house and in control of both houses of
93. congress we hope that will be in 2028 where do you stand on expanding the court and is that a
94. real possibility even if the democrats have a trifecta uh it's a real possibility if the
95. Democrats get rid of the filibuster, the 60-vote hurdle for that vote, and I'm in favor of it.
96. You know, I mean, I think the example here, which is, I think, generally somewhat misinterpreted,
97. is Roosevelt's threat to the court right after his re-election by a massive majority in 1936
98. to expand the court. Because the existing court rejected all of the New Deal.
99. Yes yes It was composed of the Republican appointees since there had been Republicans running the government from 1920 to 1932 and had basically appointed you know sort of aging conservatives
100. who were aging even more by 1937 to the bench,
101. who, you know, had already struck down the national reconstruction,
102. the programs of the first New Deal.
103. Len Roosevelt knew that the crucially important acts that he had signed into law in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act and Social Security, were coming up before the court and might not survive.
104. So he said he was going to pack the court.
105. This sort of horrified, you know, polite, conventional sensibilities.
106. Let me just add a footnote here. The Constitution says nothing about the number of Supreme Court justices. They leave it up to Congress to decide. And therefore, it's an open political question, how many should there be? Nine happens to be the number we have now.
107. Yes, but nine is not the number we have always had because the court has been subject to congressional expansions over the course of years. We certainly didn't have nine justices when the court first convened in 1789.
108. So on the one hand, this kind of shocked the centrist sensibilities and the establishment sensibilities of 1937.
109. On the other hand, it had a real effect, that and the fact that Roosevelt had just won the most sweeping re-election victory that any president has ever had before or since.
110. And so, you know, some of those justices switched. I think there was a little saying at the time, a switch in time saves nine. And they upheld Social Security and they upheld the National Labor Relations Act. And some of these desiccated conservatives began to retire.
111. And so as early as 1937, Roosevelt got one appointment on the court, which went to Senator Hugo Black, who was a champion of the New Deal.
112. And then by 1939, there were a number of retirements, and he was able to begin to get a New Deal majority on the bench.
113. So this was a case where Roosevelt's initial attempt to increase the size of the court
114. failed, but nevertheless, he achieved his goals.
115. You say that's not a good example for what the Democrats could do after the 2028 election.
116. Well, I really don't think that the six Republicans on the court are going to change their stripes.
117. I mean, two of them are kind of a little bit softer than the other four, those being Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
118. But, you know, this ain't going to change, certainly not Alito and Thomas.
119. And by the way, I'm going to digress here for a second.
120. The two most doctrinaire, far-right whack jobs on the court are justices who were not appointed by Donald Trump.
121. They were appointed by the Bush family.
122. And Clarence Thomas was appointed by Papa Bush and Sam Alito was appointed by Bush,
123. the son, which kind of suggests that there has been festering in Republican ranks way
124. before Trump.
125. You know, a streak of rancid neo-authoritarian reactionary doctrine festering in the Republican
126. Republican Party long before Trump came along, although Trump has provided the opportunity
127. for Alito and Thomas to show their true colors. Rancid Republican doctrine long before Trump.
128. Excellent point. I want to talk about the politics of the Senate elections right now. It seems pretty
129. clear that Democrats will be able to win back control of the House. The Senate is still very
130. much up in the air. Democrats need to hold two seats, Michigan and Georgia, and then flip
131. four more. Five would be a lot better than four. Seems pretty clear they're going to hold Georgia,
132. probably Michigan, and flip North Carolina. So what about the rest? Where are we going to find
133. three or four more? We have some polls this week, polls which are from the very authoritative New
134. York Times in the very pretty good poll from Fox News on the other side of the political spectrum,
135. and they polled a lot of the Senate races. This is a very complicated and confusing picture.
136. It is indeed. I think what may be the decisive factor in all of these races
137. is Republican turnout. How much the bizarre conduct of Donald Trump combined with a fairly
138. rotten economy. It is now the beginning of July. The great majority of voters are not paying any
139. attention to this. It's just maniacs and obsessives like you and me and the professionals.
140. The campaigns don't begin really until after Labor Day, which is beginning of September,
141. September 4th or 7th this year. So the question really isn't what do the voters who have been
142. following this think now. The question is, what's it going to be like in America in September and
143. October in terms of it's the economy, stupid? So that's what we're talking about. And we're
144. just guessing here. Will Trump be able to bring down prices? Will housing prices and food prices
145. and medical care cost less in September and October than it does now? Seems pretty unlikely.
146. Well, it seems to me also that the one thing Americans are paying attention to,
147. because they have to, is the state of the economy and its impact on their lives right now. And,
148. you know, they know that housing is prohibitively expensive, and this certainly affects,
149. you know, young families in particular. They know that food and electric power
150. costs more than they ever have. And so this is, you know, whether they're paying attention to
151. the races or not, this is something that they have to pay attention to. And it does not help
152. the Republicans. As you say, it's turnout is really what's going to matter. And that's a very
153. hard thing for the polls to decide about. But we know from all the other opinion polls, that support
154. for Trump is disastrously collapsed in the last year and a half. And we also know that in the
155. primaries and special elections that have been held in the past year, Democratic turnout has
156. certainly exceeded Republican turnout, even when there's a competitive Republican primary on the
157. ballot So that argues in favor of the Democrats on the turnout question plus which in midterm elections it the party out of power which usually turns out to register its discontent more than the adherents of the party in power
158. turning out to register their content, which is questionable at the moment.
159. I want to close here with some thoughts about July 4th, this weekend. You've been arguing for
160. months that the left should take this opportunity to celebrate democracy and claim the mandate of
161. the American Revolution, no kings. That hasn't really happened. Instead, Trump has kind of seized
162. the opportunity to once again advance his own personality, let us say, and interests.
163. What do you make of the current state of celebrations of America's revolution, which is certainly more endangered now than ever before since the Civil War, at least?
164. Well, you know, Trump has had this America 250 celebration on the mall, which is basically lacked celebrants, lacked attendees here in Washington.
165. The fact that the heat index in Washington over the next couple of days is set to be 111 degrees, I should add, is a deterrent to all political factions, not to mention that a thunderstorm is predicted for July 4th.
166. So those are caveats to begin with. Yes, Trump has claimed it, but I think I really don't see lasting significance from this except for rising disgust among those Americans who dislike the idea of Trump's face appearing on every piece of government property, you know, and then some non-governmental properties and God knows cryptocurrency.
167. We now know that he can get his face stamped on.
168. Harold Meyerson on the rancid Republican doctrines which burden us this July 4th.
169. Harold, thanks for talking with us today.
170. And a glorious 4th to you, John.
171. It's the same old story. This is Living in the USA, and I'm John Wiener,
172. talking about politics, thinking about the left.
173. For our analysis of this week's Supreme Court rulings, we turn to David Cole. He's the former
174. National Legal Director of the ACLU, now teaches law at Georgetown. He also writes for the New York
175. Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Review, and he's the nation's legal affairs
176. correspondent. David, welcome back. Thanks for having me, John. Well, the biggest one for the
177. Supreme Court this term was birthright citizenship. Trump wanted to end the Constitution's guarantee
178. of citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented mothers. He issued an
179. executive order to that effect. You and almost everybody else said he can't do that. The 14th
180. Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship for everyone born in the USA, period. You
181. were right, the Supreme Court majority agreed with you. That's what the 14th Amendment says.
182. Were there any surprises here?
183. Well I guess not huge surprises The court decided this case after all in 1890 in a case called Wong Kim Ark
184. And essentially what Chief Justice Roberts did was reaffirm that decision, which held that the 14th Amendment was designed to make everyone a citizen who is born here with four narrow exceptions.
185. people who are born in embassies or of ambassadors because there's a foreign sovereign there,
186. people who are born in a territory that's controlled by an invading army because the
187. United States is not in control there, people born on foreign ships because the United States
188. isn't in control there. And people born on, Native Americans born on tribal
189. lands because they allegedly have their own sovereignty, although we don't generally
190. really honor that sovereignty. And that's a closed set. And that's what Chief Justice Roberts held.
191. And the court, you know, strongly rejected President Trump's signature effort to try to remake who is an American.
192. There were three dissenting votes, Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch.
193. How could you dissent on this?
194. Well, I think what they said was essentially the issues presented today, namely whether people who are illegally here have a right to birthright citizenship and people and transient visitors, people who come here very briefly and then leave, have a right to citizenship.
195. were really not presented at the time that the 14th Amendment was adopted. We didn't have
196. restrictions on immigration, so there was no such thing as illegal immigration. And because travel
197. was much more onerous then, you couldn't fly in, have a baby, and fly out. And so these are new
198. questions. And they concluded that on these new questions, the 14th Amendment does not
199. preclude the president's view. So, you know, it's disturbing that three justices went that way and
200. would rewrite what it means to be an American. But at the end of the day, the majority prevailed.
201. And we had another big victory for liberals for the Constitution on voting by mail. Trump wanted
202. to block the counting of mail ballots that arrived after election day. The court said no to him and
203. approved a law that said ballots postmarked on election day could be counted even though they
204. arrived later than that. And Trump was more outraged, more crazed about this decision than
205. any of the other decisions that went against him. He said on Truth Social that this shows there is,
206. quote, a powerful communist movement taking place in our country, close quote, apparently led by
207. John Roberts.
208. Please explain why this was such a
209. big deal for Trump and
210. why his defeat is
211. a big deal for liberals.
212. Well, Trump has an obsession
213. with mail in ballots for some
214. reason.
215. You know, even though mail in
216. ballots don't necessarily
217. cut in favor of Democrats or Republicans and some elections they gone one way other elections they gone the other way But he been long and even though he in the past voted by mail
218. he's been obsessed with mail-in ballots.
219. It's one of the many irrational obsessions that he has.
220. And this was a real shot at basically stopping many mail-in ballots
221. from even being counted.
222. And thankfully, the Supreme Court in a decision written by Justice Barrett, appointed by Trump, rejected Trump's position and said, no, as long as the votes are cast by Election Day, the fact that they are received and counted thereafter does not violate the federal law that mandates a particular Election Day.
223. And that's very important because many states do have rules that permit that. In many places, a lot of people vote by mail. Alaska, almost everybody votes by mail. And the, you know, the exigencies of the mail being what they are, if you want to wait to make your decision until Election Day, you know, you wouldn't have that option if your ballot had not only to be postmarked, but also actually received by Election Day.
224. And there was another big defeat that came when the court said Trump could not fire a governor of the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook, without cause.
225. But that came with a related decision that was much bigger.
226. There is a generation-long precedent that says that when Congress creates an independent agency, it's able to make decisions without regard for what the president wants.
227. And the president can't fire the members of the commission if they do what he doesn't want them to do.
228. Trump himself made them all subject to his will, fired the heads of independent agencies who didn't follow his wishes.
229. And on Monday, the justices appointed by Trump said he could fire independent regulators for any reason or for no reason, with that one exception, the Federal Reserve Board, where they said its leaders could not be fired at will.
230. Please explain what this is, how this works.
231. Basic idea is that the president exercises executive power under the Constitution, and the conservatives have argued for some time now that means that he has to be able to remove any principal officer, any head of an agency that is not acting as he wants them to act.
232. And that's required by the Constitution. That view, which has been sort of building in the court for, I would say, two decades now, basically won the day in the case called Slaughter, in which the court overturned a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court from 1935 that said some agencies where there's a reason to have independence,
233. and where they engage in quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative activities,
234. can be protected by for-cause protection,
235. meaning the president can remove their leaders only for malfeasance or neglect of duty
236. and not simply because he disagrees with something that they do.
237. And so now the president has unfettered power to remove
238. at will, any officer of any executive branch agency, even where it would really undermine
239. the effectiveness of that agency, the independence of that agency, the integrity of that agency,
240. with this one exception, the Federal Reserve. And, you know, the reality is that everybody
241. on all sides from the most conservative to the most liberal, well, maybe not the most conservative,
242. maybe not Thomas, but almost everybody agrees that it is absolutely critical that the Fed
243. make decisions about our national economy and our currency based on economic matters and not
244. on the partisan political desires of the president. And so they carved out the Fed.
245. And then in order to make that carve out effective, they rejected, at least at this point, President Trump's effort to dismiss, fire Lisa Cook, one of the governors of the Fed.
246. he said it was for cause. So he said he was acting within the for-cause limitation there.
247. He pointed to her an application for a mortgage that she had submitted years before she was on
248. the board. And what the court said was, you know, you have to at least give her an opportunity to
249. respond, a fair opportunity to defend herself. Let me just ask, on this mortgage application,
250. Had she been found guilty of lying on this application by any legal proceedings?
251. No, absolutely not.
252. And it was a matter of whether a particular residence was a primary residence or a secondary
253. residence.
254. It's, you know, it's not a, you know, it's not a major issue.
255. It was obviously a pretext.
256. He just wanted to get rid of her.
257. He searched for a reason to get rid of her.
258. And what the court said was, look, the Fed goes back to the first national bank of the United States, the second national bank of the United States. Those were independent entities. And that history of independence allows Congress to give them a certain amount of protection that the Constitution forbids for anyone else.
259. And is that a principled distinction? No. Is it an important distinction given what they held in slaughter? Yes. A better ruling would have been to say the Constitution doesn't say anything about removal.
260. It is silent on the question of presidential removal, the president's power to remove officers, and therefore it left it up to the president and Congress to work out in a nuanced fashion, as has been the case for the last 200 years.
261. But no, this Supreme Court said, no, there's no nuance. There's no working it out. One rule prevails, and it's the rule we're going to impose, even though the Constitution is silent on the matter.
262. And what Congress and all previous presidents had concluded was that there are some areas in which it is best to have professionals, experts making the decisions rather than political leaders.
263. That the Consumer Product Safety Commission the National Labor Relations Board the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the Postal Service All of those places we have thought for 90 years some of them haven existed for 90 years but the principle has been for 90 years some things should be ruled by
264. expertise, not by politics. You think of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it's more urgent
265. now than ever that we have this kind of independent expertise making crucial what in some cases are
266. life and death decisions, and the Supreme Court doesn't seem to think so. Well, and one of the
267. things that I think is most problematic about it is that, as I said, the Constitution is silent
268. on this matter. The Constitution specifies how principal officers of the federal government are
269. to be appointed. The president nominates them, then they get confirmed by the Senate, but it
270. says nothing about how they are to be removed. And, you know, elsewhere, the Supreme Court has
271. said when the Constitution is silent, for example, on the subject of abortion, that means there is
272. no constitutional constraint on the ability to regulate abortion. Well, the Constitution is
273. silent on removal. That, you would think, should mean that there's not a constitutional constraint
274. on the way removal is regulated. Under these four-cause restrictions that Congress imposed,
275. the president was still making the decision. He just had to make the decision within a framework
276. of law, not for any reason whatsoever. And now he's allowed to make those decisions for any reason
277. whatsoever. One more big issue. The Supreme Court ruled on trans athletes, permitting states to ban
278. them in public school sports. This decision does not create an automatic nationwide ban. It's up
279. the states, 29 states now have a ban in effect. And of course, it's been a big talking point
280. by Republican candidates. Democrats talk about affordability, Republicans reply by attacking them
281. for favoring men competing in women's sports, as they say. This case was about whether a state's
282. ban on trans athletes violated Title IX and therefore constituted discrimination based on
283. sexual orientation. Tell us about that one. I think one way to think about this is by focusing
284. on the facts. The case, the case, the court, the main case the court decided is called BPJ
285. versus West Virginia. That's because it involved a minor. And so the name, the full name is not
286. there. But BPJ, when this case began, BPJ was an 11-year-old transgender girl, identified as male
287. at birth, but very early on determined that she was a girl, wanted to, you know, run on the
288. cross-country team. And the cross-country team in her middle school said, sure, you can run on the
289. cross-country team. There's no limit on who makes the team, so allowing you to run doesn't hurt
290. anybody else. She did run. She was not particularly fast. She ended up finishing sort of last or close
291. to last in most of her races. No one objected to her being on the team who was on the team or who
292. competed against her. And then the West Virginia legislature decided this was a good wedge issue
293. And so enacted a law that categorically bans trans girls from participating on girls teams And the claim in the case was no this is somebody who has gone through hormone treatment for gender dysphoria so that she has never actually gone through puberty
294. She has reduced her testosterone levels so that they are at the same level as an ordinary cisgender girl.
295. She has no sex-based advantage over a cisgender girl.
296. She doesn't put anybody out. And to apply a categorical ban to someone like that who does not have any sex-based advantage is sex discrimination. That was the claim. The court rejected that claim. The claim was pounded both on Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause.
297. And the court basically said, it's good enough for us that as a general matter, persons identified as male at birth have advantages over persons identified as female at birth.
298. Sex segregated teams are therefore generally permissible based on what the court called biological sex or sex identified at birth.
299. And therefore, there's no constitutional right or statutory right for someone like BPJ to participate.
300. And what does that mean? It means she can't play sports.
301. when nobody at her school objected, nobody who she was competing against objected.
302. She is precluded from playing sports.
303. She can't make the boys team.
304. She'd have to reject her identity as a girl in order to even participate on the boys team.
305. And now the West Virginia legislature, for political reasons, not for any legitimate
306. reasons, has excluded her from participation in any sports in school.
307. I want to just take a step back and look at the big pattern here. Most of these votes were six to three, the Republican appointees in the majority. And the pattern here is the Republican appointees give President Trump and all his successors much more power than they had before.
308. I'm reluctant to call these people conservatives because that's not really a conservative idea.
309. To what extent is this simply Trump's appointees being, what shall we say, reciprocating the favor of their appointments?
310. To what extent is there something else going on here?
311. So I would say a couple of things.
312. One is I do not think this is a Trump court.
313. This is not, much to his dismay, as evidenced by his comments after the tariffs case and after the mail-in ballots case and probably after the birthright citizenship case, we'll see, much to his dismay, this is not Donald Trump's court.
314. The court rejected his signature economic and international foreign policy tool, tariffs.
315. It rejected his effort to rewrite who is an American.
316. It rejected his effort to put National Guard troops on city streets against the people's wishes.
317. and it rejected his effort to politicize the Fed by firing a Democratic governor.
318. And in those cases, Trump appointees voted with Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal Democratic appointees to rule against Donald Trump.
319. So this is not a Trump court.
320. On the other hand it is a very conservative court extremely conservative court radically conservative court that doesn really care all that much about precedents that it disagrees with And so it overturned an almost 100 precedent in the case about
321. the removal of officers. In a campaign finance case that came out on the last day of the term,
322. It overruled a 25-year-old precedent allowing parties to basically give unlimited amounts of money in coordination with candidates for elective office, further weakening any realistic limitation on campaign finance.
323. And in probably the worst decision of the term, Calais versus Louisiana, it radically rewrote the Voting Rights Act to basically make it impossible for minority voters to succeed on a claim that they have been iced out of the representational process.
324. So, no, it's not a Trump court, and Trump can't rely on it to simply give him a blank check. But yes, it's a very, very conservative court, one that ignores precedent that it doesn't like, and I think is far to the right of the people of this country.
325. A radically conservative court. David Cole, former National Legal Director of the ACLU. David, thanks for talking with us today.
326. Thanks for having me, John.
327. It's the same old story.
328. This is Living in the USA, and I'm John Wiener, talking about politics, thinking about the left.
329. Now it's time to talk about America this July 4th and the historic question, what is to be done?
330. For that, we turn to Alan Minsky.
331. Of course, he's executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, the grassroots group that works with the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
332. He's also former program director here at KPFK and a longtime producer for this show and many others.
333. Alan, welcome back.
334. Great to be here, John.
335. Well, this July 4th, of course, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is an anxious and unhappy holiday for Americans this year.
336. It seems to a lot of us that the threats to democracy have not been as dangerous since the Civil War.
337. I wonder if that's the way you see it.
338. Yes. I mean, this is a major, major crisis for the American Constitutional Democratic Republic.
339. And I also think people who, no doubt many KPFK listeners and people who would be reading my work consider themselves progressive and on the left, and they're very taken by the idea that the United States has been a failing democracy for a while, that the democratic process, look, the democratic process, I certainly agree, has not been producing people who've adequately represented the citizenry and their best interests.
340. But at the same time, we have to look out across the world and ask the question,
341. where are there emerging democracies right now and where are there actually consolidation?
342. More the trend is towards consolidation away from democracy.
343. And if the United States, really the country that brought the idea of constitutional democratic republics
344. republic with representative government elected by the people onto the modern map of history,
345. as it were, is in crisis. This is a very, very serious crisis. I would say that goes to the
346. very heart of how people conceive of themselves as individual subjects with a sense of control,
347. let alone sovereignty, over their lives. Well, you've responded to this moment in a very
348. old-fashioned form, a pamphlet, not a TikTok video, not an Instagram post, and your pamphlet
349. titled Common Sense 2026 was inspired by one published in 1776. Of course, that's the one
350. titled Common Sense written by Thomas Paine. Remind us about Tom Paine and his pamphlet.
351. Well, let me just say first, this is very true. It's an old school form, but we very much hope
352. by tomorrow, July 4th. It is being released today. It'll appear on Common Dreams. It's also posted
353. on the PDA website. But we very much hope that it will go viral on all of those social media sites.
354. Look for it on the Reddit politics subreddit, very important forum there to boost it up.
355. And if you do, just go to Common Dreams and look at it. Please feel free to share it on your
356. Instagram, your TikTok, your X account, whichever one you choose to use. But alas, back in the day,
357. this was produced around January 10th, 1776. And it didn't originally have Tom Paine's name on it.
358. It was the really sort of second pamphlet that he had released. Paine was a recent immigrant to the
359. United States from England, where none other than Benjamin Franklin had facilitated his arrival to
360. the United States. And he set up shop in Philadelphia to try to start a journal. Now,
361. most journals at the time started up and failed pretty quickly. And his did okay. But actually,
362. it was convincing a publisher to produce a pamphlet, a special pamphlet, independent of
363. the magazine project called Common Sense, that instantly caught fire. And it was so popular that,
364. First of all, historians acknowledge that the revolution transpiring the way that it did so that only about six months later on July 4th, they met in Philadelphia and had the Declaration of Independence, that it's almost inconceivable without the publication of Common Sense.
365. Common Sense spread the idea of breaking from the British Empire, no longer be a part of the British Empire, the colonies, beyond to the general public, and not only in population centers like Philadelphia, but across all of the colonies.
366. and it's estimated that you know within weeks there were over a hundred thousand copies that
367. had been printed of common sense it by the end of the revolutionary war I think half a million is
368. sort of the estimate it became the most popular book or pamphlet original document published in
369. the United States ever and the only book that I had outsold it to that point would have been the
370. Bible. And 250 years later, you have published a pamphlet, and your argument here is that really
371. the rise of authoritarianism is not hard to explain, as a different writer put it. It's the
372. economy, stupid. The pamphlet has three sections. The chapter one, as it were, part one, is
373. common sense revisited, laying out the crisis as it exists now. Then common sense solutions is
374. Chapter 2 and that looks at the root of the problems with the economy and how they can be solved such that we can go back and fulfill all of America promise And then Chapter 3 is Common Sense Strategies in which I address the unique structure of the American two political system and the role that
375. the Democratic Party can and must play in achieving these ends. And then there's a coda.
376. I'll leave that to you. You can pick it up and read it and find out what the coda is. Very
377. exciting coda at the end, John. So today, then, where is the struggle for this left kind of
378. economics, where should it be focused in your argument and the argument of the group you
379. lead progressive Democrats of America, argue that it should be inside the Democratic Party.
380. Now this is a controversial view among many of our friends who say the Democrats are not
381. part of the solution.
382. The Democrats are part of the problem.
383. We need they say a different party, a better party, one that's not tied to the corporate
384. elites. And I think you know better than most people about the problems with the Democratic
385. Party. So let's talk about that for a minute. We shall. And I'll go back to the economy in a
386. moment, too. But yes, look, the United States election system is very different than most
387. other countries. And there's actually a guy who writes often for Jack event called Paul
388. Heidemann. He has a book out about the Republicans. That's a H-E-I-D-E-M-A-N. And he does a good
389. analysis of the American electoral system and how it is that it came to have these two parties
390. dominated, the Republican and Democratic Party, and then the ways in which they really aren't
391. political parties at all, like political parties in almost any other country in the world.
392. They are these two amorphous, large national coalitions that are ill-defined and malleable,
393. and they aren't top-down from inside the party that determines what they stand for.
394. They large that's largely determined by their leading elected officials, though it has come that there's very little variation across the country as to what those politicians stand for.
395. And so they've changed considerably over the course of time.
396. And because of the unique primary election system, you really have a situation in which in other countries where you have parliaments that have multiple parties, they get elected and then they form they try to form a government once they're elected with the blocks from the various parties that are operating under strict party discipline.
397. In America, we don't have that much strict party discipline, but basically the coalitions are forming through who gets elected because there's variations of people who get elected per the primaries.
398. And even before the rise of the progressive and democratic socialist left of the moment, you clearly see a pretty broad differentiation.
399. It's been as narrow as it's been, but my work is in recent history.
400. We had huge variations between what a Democrat was in the Southeast versus the Northeast.
401. That sort of came together. But, you know, we certainly have a legacy of Democrats right now who would be in the FDR tradition.
402. They always were there. They weren't ever entirely wiped out of the Democratic Party.
403. I think of congressmen like Jim McGovern in New York and Massachusetts.
404. And and then you have people who are just incredibly pro-business, really like Reagan Democrats, but they happen to be more socially liberal inside the Democratic Party.
405. And so the coalition forms inside these two massive parties.
406. There are no rules written that they couldn't be a very, very far left party.
407. The Democratic Party could morph.
408. There's nothing blocking it in its structure from it becoming an incredibly what we would
409. conceive of as a truly Democratic Socialist Party or anything else that you want to believe it could be on the left If those ideas became so popular candidates started winning primaries And also people did it is important to enter into the party structure at least have some portion of a political movement do that because you can
410. as we saw in 2016 and 2020 with the Sanders campaign, the rules can be used to sort of
411. suffocate new political tendencies within the party. So going inside the party and also running
412. in the primaries. And I talk about in it the ways that those you have to strategize to achieve
413. success in both ways already in terms of the progressive movement in America. People who
414. identify as Democratic voters or Democratic leaning voters overwhelmingly support the
415. progressive agenda, not the centrist sort of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris type policies,
416. but something, you know, much stronger in terms of pushing for the redistribution of wealth and
417. power back to the people that the Democratic base supports.
418. And there are a number of other measures like addressing the climate and so on, where progressive
419. positions are very much clearly held by the progressive base.
420. It's only really the entrenched position within the party, plus the money power of the centrists
421. in the Democratic Party that allow them to have still a dominant position, even after
422. this past week inside the Democratic Party.
423. One other feature distinguishes the American political system, and that is the huge number of people who don't participate in it.
424. In the recent presidential elections, we have about, what is it, 70 million people vote for one party, 70 million people or 75 million people vote for the other party.
425. 90 million people do not vote.
426. How can we, and that's one thing that explains Trump.
427. People don't see they have a stake in the future that can be affected through politics.
428. How can we strengthen American democracy and increase participation?
429. Well, of course, look, the numbers of people who don't vote, it's pretty much a straight line.
430. The wealthier you are, the more likely you vote.
431. The poorer you are, the less likely you vote.
432. And then I think it's also pretty clear that for poor and working class Americans, both parties have really offered very little to help them with the struggles of their lives in recent times, as both parties have become very much beholden to big money interests.
433. and there's a divide between the big money in society as to whether it's Republican money or
434. Democratic money. And one of the coups of, of course, Trumpism is that they stole one of the
435. largest blocks of money, the Silicon Valley oligarchs, and shifted it from the Democratic
436. Party over to the Republican Party. And that was to be the most ascendant group of rich people in
437. the country in terms of their wealth. Going back to economics, I do want to say that one of the
438. central points of the piece, and it's organized into three sections. The first one is just called
439. Common Sense Revisited that lays out the current crisis around the crisis of democracy and the
440. rise of authoritarianism. The second, it makes the argument that this has its roots in the economic
441. social contract no longer working for most Americans. And I provide some information about
442. why I believe that's the case or why that is the case. And then I explain what people want from
443. the economy and how the two parties have not been delivering it, which has really exacerbated the
444. the crisis of democracy in America. And so I do, what do I mean by that? And if you look at
445. the American economy from 1945 to 2026, you have a period after World War II in which the
446. quote unquote American dream is accessible to the majority of the population, meaning the white
447. population at a degree that was never true before And never really true if you understand with the American dream is to live at the level of in a modern society a technological society at the level of a prosperous middle class
448. Richard Nixon said in the key to Khrushchev, and this isn't in the document, I think in 1958 or
449. 59 when Khrushchev visited, look, it is our system that has produced the most prosperous
450. middle class in history. So what can we say about that? We know that the American dream
451. is very deeply inscribed in the minds of Americans as what is their birthright,
452. that they get to live this prosperous middle-class life.
453. They know it is not attainable to them now.
454. The prospect of buying a new house when you're a young adult is almost gone.
455. Of course, that's the great signifier of the American dream.
456. But other than that, you have to work multiple jobs.
457. You have to work over 40 hours a week.
458. There's no longer vacations.
459. Pensions are going out the door.
460. Life is just becoming more and more difficult to maintain a prosperous middle-class life.
461. Well, the economic model from 1980 to the present has failed the middle class, the broad majority of the population.
462. It was the previous model and only the previous model that has a proven track record of producing middle class prosperity in modern industrial societies.
463. So I think what's clear is we have to look at those kind of economic structures from 45 to 80 and apply them to the present.
464. And that's really what standards started doing in 2016 and what the contemporary democratic socialists are proposing.
465. In other words, they're not going to have a command economy and a set of bureaucrats in Moscow are going to decide all of the economy runs.
466. That's not really their model of democratic socialism. Their model of democratic socialism is pretty much let's let's reset back to the economic programs of 45 to 1980.
467. and that's what I argue needs to happen and until that is offered by one of the two major parties
468. we're going to have a massive political crisis because people are going to be alienated from
469. the system and those poor and working class people who vote very rarely they're going to
470. continue not to vote they will get engaged when they see something that lifts their lives up
471. and it's available to us given the amount of material abundance we have we just need to
472. reorder the society back to those kind of structures and approaches and policies if we do
473. that. And that's what the Democratic Socialists and Progressive Democrats of America, Bernie
474. Sanders, Zohra Mamdani are calling for. And not just in New York City, by the way. These guys are
475. winning elections all across the country, as we know from the last week. So I think we're on the
476. right path on the progressive left. And I think it's given the nature of the crisis, because
477. there's such alienation from the political system that we've arrived at the population twice
478. electing a racist authoritarian blowhard like Donald Trump. I mean, you know, people need to
479. sort of recognize this as a crisis. You know, forget about what the Democratic Party was under
480. the Clintons. This is a new day, and I encourage everybody to engage with it, to support it as best
481. they can. Tom Paine would recognize the logic. Alan Minsky, Executive Director of Progressive
482. Democrats of America. His new pamphlet is Common Sense 2026. Alan, thanks for all your work. And
483. thanks for talking with us today. Oh, thank you, John. It's great to be with you. And happy birthday.
484. 250 years of this stuff. Let's keep it going.
485. that's it for living in the usa for today our producer and social media maven is renee reynolds
486. our audio editor is alan minsky thanks as always to rye cooter for our theme music mambo sinuendo
487. If you missed part of this show or any of our recent shows, you can listen online anytime you want at Apple Podcasts.
488. Living in the USA.
489. I'm John Wiener.