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CBS’ Gutting of 60 Minutes Is an Attack on ‘the Gold Standard’ of Broadcast Journalism

This week’s firing of 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, along with the forcing out of star journalist Sharon Alfonsi — who spearheaded the bombshell investigation into El Salvador’s CECOT gulag that CBS management tried to kill — and the exit of Anderson Cooper have left the journalism world watching to see what’s next for the remaining faces of 60 Minutes. Schulze didn’t mince words about what’s being lost.

“When I was young, it was the kind of place where you were like, ‘Oh my god, if I could work there — that would be it,’” she said. “To see it go through this trauma intentionally is just remarkable to me. I’m dumbfounded by it, I really am.”

Schulze emphasized that 60 Minutes isn’t some relic of a pre-digital era. Nine million people watched every episode last season. The show has been the gold standard of American broadcast journalism for 52 years, and the journalists who work there earn that distinction every week.

“You have to be a journalist at your core,” Schulze said of 60 Minutes’ on-air talent. “The gutting of 60 Minutes is just unfathomable, really.”

CBS’ Real Strategy: Keeping Donald Trump Happy

CBS Evening News ratings under new anchor Tony Dokoupil have cratered — hovering around 3.7 million viewers while ABC’s David Muir pulls close to 9 million on a regular night. But Schulze argued that’s beside the point, because the people making these decisions aren’t actually trying to run a news organization.

“The strategy is the owners of Paramount — who own CBS and are trying to buy CNN and Warner Brothers Discovery — their strategy is keep Donald Trump happy so he will approve all of the business deals they want to make,” Schulze explained. “They have an $11 billion merger pending right now.”

That context, Schulze said, explains everything from the Taiwan embarrassment — where CBS reported on Trump’s visit to China from Taiwan, 1,000 miles from the actual story — to the destruction of 60 Minutes. The veteran journalist argued that CBS’ billionaire owners, and their hand-picked editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, care less about ratings and more about greasing the wheels that will lead to the growth of their empire.

Bari Weiss Has No Idea How to Run a Newsroom — But That’s the Entire Point

Bari Weiss came to CBS News from The Free Press, a right-wing opinion website she founded after leaving the New York Times. She has no TV news experience. By her own admission, she doesn’t own a television. Schulze, who worked her way from reporter to field producer to executive producer to running WGN Chicago’s newsroom, described Weiss’ hire as, at minimum, an insult to everyone who spent decades preparing for that kind of role.

“She was mostly an opinion editor. She wrote a few columns at the New York Times, left in a huff, and started this Substack,” Schulze said. “I do find it a little bit offensive. I mean, I know people who run these big news organizations who spent their lives preparing for this and working at it every day. And then she swoops in — she’s a political hire, and there it is.”

The practical results have been visible. Schulze documented CBS’ string of failures in a May essay for her Indistinct Chatter Substack. Tony Dokoupil’s broadcast from Taiwan happened because Weiss failed to obtain a visa for him to go to China. She wrote that reporters unable to get to where the story is suggests a newsroom in visible distress.

“Logistics are it,” Schulze said. “You can’t do the news without a solid logistics operation, and they clearly have muffed that. And nobody cares.”

All the Media Properties the Ellisons Could Control Under the Proposed $11 Billion Merger

Oracle founder Larry Ellison — one of the wealthiest people on earth — and his son David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, are racing to finalize an $11 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. If it goes through, the Ellisons will control not just CBS, but also CNN, HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, BET, TLC, the Discovery Channel, Paramount Pictures, and streaming services including Paramount Plus and HBO Max — in addition to their existing ownership stake in TikTok’s U.S. entity.

David Ellison hosted a private dinner for Donald Trump and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who would need to bless the merger, on the same week as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Schulze called the situation blatantly corrupt.

“There are some really important concerns here,” she said, noting reports that Ellison has already privately assured Trump he’d address Trump’s grievances about CNN. “He’s already shown us how powerful he is with 60 Minutes. It’s terrifying, really.”

Schulze expressed hope that California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s lawsuit and a coalition of state attorneys general could slow or stop the deal, particularly given that Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterms. Schlulze noted that Democratic lawmakers have already said they’ll be targeting the merger if they win back a majority in one or both chambers of Congress.

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Local News Vanishes Overnight in Indianapolis

In a May 4 post to her Substack, Schulze wrote about how the entire newsroom of Indianapolis, Indiana ABC affiliate WRTV was shut down without warning literally overnight. Over 50 journalists lost their jobs. By 10 PM that same night, a newscast from a competing station took the WRTV team’s place.

Schulze said what happened in Indianapolis is coming to communities across the country, especially if the Nexstar-Tegna merger — which would give one company ownership of 256 TV stations reaching roughly 80 percent of the country — goes through. She argued the stakes are much higher than most people realize.

“Local news is the lifeblood of a community in many respects,” she said. “It’s the place where your local officials are being held to account. It’s the place where reporters are digging into that sketchy contract, or that data center that got secretly approved, and they lied to you about how much energy the data center was going to suck out of your community.”

She urged people to find out who owns their local TV station, and to be vocal with advertisers if they don’t like what they see.

How Nexstar Is Laundering Right-Wing Narratives Through Local Media

Nexstar — which brands itself as a non-biased, middle-of-the-road news organization — owns NewsNation, a cable network that Schulze plainly described as “Fox Lite.” Its prime time lineup is full of former Fox News personalities, and Nexstar chairman Perry Sook has made a series of moves aimed at winning favor with the Trump administration for his pending merger. Schulze warned that NewsNation’s programming is already being fed into Nexstar’s local stations, with more to come.

“We do not need any more of that,” she said. “The right wing has done a perfectly executed capture of media, and it’s not a new project for them. They’ve been doing it for decades.”

The Solution: Public Funding and Independent Media

With legacy media increasingly captured by billionaires trying to cozy up to the powerful, Schulze sees independent media as a critical part of the answer. She also called for expanded public media funding in the vein of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in that a federally funded entity could provide grants to media outlets that don’t have corporate advertisers. She also expressed a need for a national media literacy program, along with a Democratic-led antitrust movement willing to break up media monopolies similar to how railroad and oil barons had their empires broken up by the Sherman Antitrust Act.

“We need to start thinking about media as a public good, instead of a political tool,” Schulze said.

The veteran broadcast journalist also applauded Hungary’s new government as an instructive example the U.S. could soon follow. After a decade of former Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán consolidating media control among his donors and political allies, Peter Magyar’s new government has moved to dismantle the machinery used to target journalists and opposition figures. She stressed that today’s consolidated media environment can be undone, but only if enough people stand up and fight for it.

“Get out there and support any local media and independent media you can,” she said. “They need your help. Help them in the meantime, while we sort this out.”

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Rhodes broke down why Bill Pulte’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence represents a genuine threat to national security, explained why Democrats should use intelligence funding as leverage to stop his confirmation, walked through the origins and likely resolution of the Iran conflict, assessed the fragile state of the NATO alliance, weighed in on the political cost Democrats paid for backing Israel’s war in Gaza, and explained how the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan ended up as the cult Donald Trump.

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Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence: “This Is Police State Stuff”

Gibson opened by asking Rhodes about President Trump’s nomination of Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), following Tulsi Gabbard’s departure. Gibson noted that federal law — specifically 50 U.S. Code Section 3023 — requires that any DNI nominee have “extensive national security experience,” a qualification Pulte conspicuously lacks.

Rhodes didn’t hedge. “One hundred percent,” he said when asked whether Pulte’s appointment constitutes a threat to national security. Rhodes noted that his first job in Washington was working for Lee Hamilton, who was co-chair of the 9/11 Commission and one of the architects of the DNI legislation.

“Let’s just say Bill Pulte is not who he had in mind,” Rhodes said of Hamilton.

But Rhodes argued the danger goes beyond mere lack of qualification. He pointed to Pulte’s record at the FHFA, where Pulte used access to mortgage records to build allegations (which were later dismissed) against high-profile Trump critics including Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Rhodes said that pattern should terrify Americans when applied to the intelligence community’s far broader surveillance capabilities.

“Imagine with him having access to the National Security Agency — the signals intelligence people that intercept phone calls and email communications,” Rhodes said. “I’m not suggesting he’s even going to find crimes. I’m suggesting he’s invented them before with mortgage fraud. This guy going through everybody’s emails to try to find something he can use against Trump’s enemies should be a terrifying thought for every American. It’s police state stuff.”

Rhodes also raised the prospect of Pulte continuing work Gabbard had begun — using the intelligence apparatus to advance conspiracy theories about election fraud, potentially laying groundwork to contest future Democratic electoral victories.

“If they lose the midterm elections, and let’s say Trump wants to say that this was fraud and that some foreign government must have interfered to help Democrats,” Rhodes said, “that’s your nightmare scenario right there.”

Democrats’ Leverage to Stop Pulte’s Confirmation

Gibson noted that Democrats have threatened to withhold votes to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — the provision authorizing the intelligence community to collect and analyze foreign intelligence — as leverage against Pulte’s confirmation. He asked Rhodes whether he thought the threat was credible, or whether national security hawks in the Democratic caucus would ultimately fold. Rhodes was unequivocal about what Democrats should do.

“There’s no Democrat that should vote to reauthorize Section 702, full stop,” he said. “It would demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the emergency moment that we’re in.”

Rhodes pointed out that the entire rationale for reauthorizing surveillance authorities rests on the argument that the intelligence community needs these tools to keep Americans safe. According to Rhodes, Pulte makes that case impossible to make in good faith.

“Do you really think Bill Pulte is going to effectively carry out the functions of that job?” Rhodes said. “Do you think he’s going to be making sure we’re connecting dots to foil terrorist plots? No.”

The author and former Obama administration official acknowledged the real risk: a small number of Democratic senators who have historically been sympathetic to intelligence community funding requests. He noted that while some may normally break ranks to confirm a new DNI, Pulte is so extreme that it should be possible to hold the caucus together and perhaps even peel off enough Republicans to stop Pulte from being confirmed. He also suggested Democrats should think beyond Section 702.

“I’d be looking at holding up the funding for the intelligence community,” he said. “It’s time to play some hardball.”

For Americans whose senators include traditional hawks like Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) — the current ranking Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a figure Rhodes cited as particularly susceptible to deferring to the intelligence community — Rhodes offered a specific framing constituents can use when calling their offices.

“The argument I’d make is: this person, Bill Pulte, makes the American people less safe. If you’re trying to protect the intelligence community by voting for Section 702, you’re not protecting them, because you’re not using your leverage to make sure they have appropriate leadership,” he said.

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To End the Iran War, Trump Has No Choice But to Eat Crow

Gibson turned to the ongoing U.S. military conflict with Iran, noting that Trump’s repeated promises of a swift resolution have gone unfulfilled, that negotiations have collapsed, and that Iran retains its most decisive leverage in control over the Strait of Hormuz. Gibson asked what a hypothetical new Democratic administration in 2029 should do to end the conflict if it’s still ongoing by then.

“You have to make a deal with the Iranians,” Rhodes said. “And you have to accept that that deal is not going to be everything you want.”

He drew on historical precedent, noting that both the United States and the Soviet Union made significant concessions in Cold War agreements, despite then-President Ronald Reagan maligning the Soviets as an “evil empire.” Rhodes argued the same logic applies to Iran, and that the refusal to accept anything short of complete Iranian capitulation is pure fantasy.

“Arms control agreements are by definition agreements you enter into with your adversaries in which you don’t get everything you want,” he said.

Rhodes also pushed back on the premise that sanctions represent meaningful leverage, noting that they primarily hurt ordinary residents of countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, while doing nothing to stop the regimes being sanctioned. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), he noted, has become expert at operating under sanctions and accessing illicit revenue streams, while ordinary Iranians bear the costs.

“Who’s getting hurt by these sanctions? The Iranian people,” Rhodes said. “It’s not changing their government. It’s actually entrenching the regime in power.”

Rhodes pointed out that during his time in the Obama White House, every national security war game scenario with Iran led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the strangling of the global economy.

“The IRGC is saying: if you won’t give us access to our money from sanctions relief, we’re going to start tolling this strait. We’re going to get revenue one way or another,” he said. “I would rather they get access to frozen revenue from transactions than that suddenly Iran is running 20 percent of the world’s energy as a toll road.”

Trump’s Eventual Deal with Iran May Mirror Obama’s 2015 Agreement

Gibson asked about a specific flashpoint in the Iran debate — the charge, frequently advanced on Fox News and by Trump himself, that the Obama administration “gave” Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA. Gibson noted his own understanding that the money in question already belonged to Iran.

Rhodes confirmed this and spelled out the mechanics. Iran sold oil and gas to other countries — India, China, and others — and the revenue owed to Iran in return had been frozen in international accounts by the United States. America was not party to those transactions. Releasing the funds meant giving Iran access to its own money, not writing a check from the U.S. Treasury. The actual figure Iran received access to was approximately $55 billion, not the $300 billion Trump has cited — a discrepancy Rhodes attributed to the compounding effect of years of additional frozen assets.

Rhodes further argued that the entire premise of the criticism misunderstands how sanctions are supposed to work.

“You don’t put sanctions on a country just to keep them there in perpetuity,” he said. “You put sanctions on Iran to restrict their nuclear program. So when they accept those restrictions, they get access to the revenue they’re frankly entitled to.”

Rhodes reminded viewers that Iran fully complied with the JCPOA, and that it was Trump himself who withdrew from the agreement in 2018, not Tehran. The bitter irony, Rhodes suggested, is that Trump now finds himself pursuing something that will inevitably resemble the deal he spent years denouncing.

“He just kind of can’t seem to bring himself to do it, because he knows it is going to resemble the Obama nuclear deal,” he said.

Did Biden’s Support of Netanyahu Cost Democrats the 2024 Election?

Gibson asked Rhodes to assess the political fallout of the Biden administration’s decision to continue unconditional military support for Israel despite its atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, and whether it contributed to Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024.

Rhodes argued the damage was real, but more layered than a simple question of where voters stood on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The deeper wound, he said, was the perception of Democratic inauthenticity. He observed that Democrats’ comments about being troubled by the murder of civilians Gaza were undercut by continuing to authorize billions in military aid to Israel.

“It’s kind of what people don’t like about politicians,” he said. “If you actually believe that you’re concerned about what’s happening, you do something about it.”

Rhodes recalled a maxim from Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign that has continued to stick with him over the years.

“Obama used to say ‘in order to win an election, you have to show people that there’s some things you’re willing to lose over,’” Rhodes said. “If you’re not willing every now and then to take an unpopular or controversial position, you’re the perfect foil for Trump — because what Trump says to people is all these politicians are full of it, they tell you one thing and do another.”

Rhodes was more sympathetic to Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 campaign than to the Biden administration, acknowledging the impossible position a vice president faces when she’s duty-bound to defend her president’s politically toxic foreign policy. But the author and former Obama speechwriter argued that the attempt to signal quiet disagreement with Netanyahu while publicly maintaining the status quo was the worst of both worlds.

“That stuff just doesn’t work with people,” he said. “Because it’s like: well, if you really disagree with the policy, why don’t you convince your boss not to do it?”

How Trump Is Pulling the U.S. Out of NATO Without Officially Withdrawing

Gibson raised the state of the NATO alliance, noting reports that some European members have begun developing contingency plans for a European security structure that could function without American participation. He also asking what a U.S. withdrawal would mean for European stability.

Rhodes pointed out that Trump likely lacks the legal authority to formally withdraw from NATO without congressional approval, but that a president determined to hollow out American commitments could achieve the same effect without a formal declaration. The more immediate risk, he said, would fall on the Baltic states like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which share historical and geographic vulnerability to Russian pressure.

“If you remove the United States from NATO, you just make it that much more likely that we’re back in the days of conquest, of war between great powers,” Rhodes said. “We set up NATO to prevent a world war. And I think if you remove the United States from NATO, you make it that much more likely that we get drawn into a major global conflagration with Russia and China, because we no longer have the very institutions we set up to prevent that from happening again.”

On the episode in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the withdrawal of thousands of troops from Poland only to have Trump reverse course, Rhodes speculated that the reversal likely reflected pressure from Poland’s allies in the Republican Senate caucus. He opined that some senators may have called the White House to flag that the move went too far.

“They don’t have any backbone, they don’t say anything publicly,” Rhodes said of those Republican senators, “but they might call over the White House and say, ‘Wait, you’re going too far on this one.’”

Trump Would Be Powerless to Stop China from Taking Taiwan

Gibson pressed Rhodes on the risk to Taiwan from China, given how broadly the Trump administration has extended American military commitments — simultaneously supporting Ukraine, backing Israel, pursuing regime change in Venezuela and Cuba, and now waging war in Iran.

Rhodes said he’s deeply worried about the convergence of conditions. Chinese President Xi Jinping, he argued, is almost certainly watching American overextension and diplomatic isolation and calculating whether this represents the optimal window for action on Taiwan.

“The maximum window is when the United States has no friends and allies around the world, when the American president doesn’t indicate any willingness to defend Taiwan, and when the world is already chaotic,” Rhodes said.

He pointed out that that the geographic fault lines in East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe look uncomfortably like the map of World War Two. And for Americans inclined to dismiss Taiwan as a distant concern, Rhodes offered a more concrete argument: more than 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors are manufactured there.

“If there’s a war in Taiwan, good luck having anything in this country work for a long time, like the computers in your car, like the way your refrigerator works,” Rhodes said.

How Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party Was Destined to Be Led By Donald Trump

In the interview’s final stretch, Gibson asked Rhodes about the historical argument in his new book, All We Say: The Battle for American Identity, a History in 15 Speeches — specifically in which Rhodes laid out how Donald Trump is the conclusion of events set in motion by Ronald Reagan. Gibson asked whether figures now positioned as anti-Trump conservatives — including Liz Cheney and others from the Bush era — bear some responsibility for creating the conditions that made Trump possible.

“Yes,” Rhodes said without hesitation.

He walked through how Reagan assembled a three-legged coalition of Christian evangelicals, national security hawks and small-government conservatives. The Cold War served as the glue holding those factions together. When the Soviet threat dissolved, the coalition’s internal contradictions came to the surface.

The enemy then shifted inward toward liberals and cultural change, while the economic policies those same Republicans championed hollowed out the industrial base and accelerated inequality. The hawks, meanwhile, steered the country into Iraq under George W. Bush, which Rhodes described as a direct precursor to Trump’s rise.

“With no war in Iraq, there’s no Donald Trump,” Rhodes argued.

Rhodes further observed that failed right-wing presidential candidate Pat Buchanan had already articulated the essential Trump message in 1992, which included a wall along the Southern border, punishing tariffs and an America First foreign policy. While Republicans were hesitant to embrace that platform in the early nineties, they were ripe to run on it by 2016.

“He was tapping into political forces that had been there all along,” Rhodes said of Trump, “and taking the wreckage of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and weaponizing it against the rest of us.”

What Comes After Trump: A Return to Compromise, or the Brutal Wielding of Power?

Gibson closed by asking Rhodes one of the book’s core questions: given the arc from Benjamin Franklin’s argument for compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to Trump’s open contempt for constitutional constraints in 2025, is the era of compromise over? Should Democrats, if they return to power, govern with the same force Trump has, or attempt to restore norms?

Rhodes drew a careful distinction. The problem with Trump, he argued, is not that his policies are unpopular, but that he has abandoned the legal framework within which political competition is supposed to happen. He argued that gerrymandering and the influence of dark money are more insidious in that they rig the contest itself.

“What is radical about Trump is he’s not playing within the lines of the compromise,” Rhodes said.

Democrats, he argued, have abundant tools available to them that are entirely within constitutional bounds and have simply gone unused out of excessive caution. This includes antitrust enforcement against big tech companies, rooting out entrenched corruption in government and eliminating the Senate filibuster (which Rhodes pointed out is not in the Constitution) and pass legislation on a simple majority. He added that Democrats should pushing hard for getting money out of politics and ending partisan gerrymandering.

“I’d be moving with speed and force to essentially reverse Trumpism,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes concluded with one note of historical optimism. He pointed out that the Gilded Age of the late 19th century — which was marked by extreme inequality, government corruption and a captured political system — gave way to a progressive era. He noted that this era brought about antitrust law, child labor protections, the direct election of U.S. senators and women’s suffrage.

“I think we’re in a Gilded Age,” Rhodes said. “And I think the next phase is going to be a progressive age.”

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Tucker Carlson’s Faux Populist Playbook

Gibson opened by asking Sexton about his recent essay “The Fascist Feint: Tucker Carlson and Faux Leftist Commentary.” Tucker Carlson has been discussed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate and Sexton observed that the far-right commentator is deliberately co-opting progressive language to stay relevant after Donald Trump leaves office.

“A right-wing movement doesn’t just suddenly wake up one day and they’re like, ‘Hey, we like democracy now,’” he said. “They grow worse.”

Sexton argued that MAGA figures actually view Trump as a moderate who is too soft on nationalism, and that Carlson has been positioning himself to capture that energy.

According to the author and political analyst, what Carlson is doing follows a well-worn historical pattern: make the necessary critique of capitalism and economic betrayal, but redirect the resulting anger away from the owner class and toward vulnerable working-class communities with no actual institutional power.

“The right wing does a very simple trick,” Sexton said. “They say, ‘yeah, capitalism isn’t working’ — or they don’t ever say capitalism, because they don’t want to address the actual system — they say there’s corruption, you have been betrayed, and then on behalf of the wealth class, they go ahead and say, ‘oh, we’ll tell you who did this,’ and it’s always vulnerable people.”

Can the Left Find Common Ground With Tucker’s Audience?

Gibson pressed Sexton on whether there are areas like opposing foreign wars and decriminalizing drugs where progressives and Tucker Carlson’s audience might find common cause, even if Tucker himself is a bad actor.

Sexton acknowledged the question but urged caution. While he said some Trump voters are genuinely reachable through class-based arguments, the danger is that Carlson’s critiques, even when they sound reasonable, are drawing people toward a dangerous project.

“We have to understand they’re not making this critique in good faith,” Sexton said. “They’re making it as political strategy to bring people into a project that is about capturing power.”

He also noted that many people in Carlson’s audience don’t realize how far they’ve drifted until it’s too late. He argued the key to reaching persuadable people is abandoning partisan stereotypes and having direct conversations about how the working class has been betrayed by the wealthy elite and the politicians they own.

Where the Democratic Party Falls Short

Gibson asked Sexton why Democrats — with a few notable exceptions like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar — seem unable to make the kind of trans-partisan, class-based arguments that could actually win people over.

Sexton was blunt: the Democratic Party is too beholden to the same donor class to make an honest critique of the system that’s oppressing the working class.

“It’s a captured party that is doing the bidding of billionaire benefactors who pay for all of this,” he said.

Sexton pointed to the already-emerging framework around “Project 2029” — a Democratic Party policy playbook that until recently was spearheaded by Jeffrey Epstein associate Larry Summers — as evidence that even a post-Trump Democratic majority would fail to address the underlying material conditions that gave rise to fascism in the first place.

“The cycle that we live in,” Sexton explained, “is that a Republican gets in office, they break all kinds of rules and laws, they take more and more power, and they run up the debt, they crash the economy, and then a Democrat comes in and they promise a lot of things — ‘but guess what, we just don’t have the resources right now.’”

The “Dispatches from a Collapsing State” publisher argued that manufactured culture war issues like transgender bathroom access are deliberately created by the right in order to prevent Americans from uniting around class issues.

“These issues are created in order to divert us,” Sexton said.

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The Biggest Lesson from the Minneapolis General Strike

Gibson cited Sexton’s essay from January entitled “Shut It Down,” which he wrote at the height of the Trump administration’s ICE crackdown in Minneapolis. Sexton wrote about how tens of thousands of residents responded to the crackdown by organizing with local business owners to conduct a one-day general strike that ultimately contributed to a strategic retreat by federal authorities. Gibson asked Sexton whether targeted general strikes in key sectors —like trucking, nursing and education — could be an effective tool against the current administration.

Sexton said the potential for this kind of action is greater than most people realize, and that the primary obstacle is more psychological than logistical.

“This can end tomorrow,” Sexton said. “This whole facade, this whole crisis, this erosion, the growth of fascism, it could end tomorrow. What this relies on is a fear that has been instilled in us.”

Sexton argued that capitalism has deliberately destroyed American solidarity with each another, pointing to the assault on labor unions and social structures to ensure that American workers remain too precarious and too isolated to organize. However, he also said an economic collapse may change the calculus quickly, pointing to botj Bolivia’s recent general strike and South Korea’s response to its attempted coup as models.

“None of this works without us,” Sexton said. “We’ve been convinced that politics, that our representative government, is more important than us, that corporations are more important than us. We can stop, because the participation in capitalism is the only thing that keeps this thing going.”

The Organizing Opportunity Against AI Nobody Is Talking About

Gibson observed the backlash against AI and data centers, in which AI infrastructure is being forced on communities across the country — at the expense of water access and farmland — represents a rare and powerful organizing opportunity that transcends partisan lines.

Sexton agreed, calling data centers “the most uniting thing for people to go against.” He noted that opposition to AI and data centers draws together people who are concerned about environmental issues as well as rising energy bills, declining property values and job security. He added this coalition that would be nearly impossible to assemble around any traditional political issue.

“It just so happens that the hated and universally opposed product is the only product of an oligarchical, fascist, anti-human group,” Sexton said.

Sexton also argued that the broader “enshittification” of the internet — a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow — is creating organic openings for class-based conversations. When someone complains that they can’t watch their local baseball team without paying for multiple subscriptions, or that their Google search no longer works, and they ask “why doesn’t somebody do something about that?” — Sexton proposed that could be a doorway to deeper conversations.

“It cracks the entire edifice open,” he said, “and suddenly you’re not talking about who’s going to win in the midterms. You’re talking about class politics.”

Grieving the Empire and Building What Comes Next

Gibson closed by asking Sexton about his essay “Death to Empire: Trump, China, and Moving Beyond This Wretched Order,” and what ordinary Americans who are frustrated and searching for agency can do to maintain hope for themselves and their children.

Sexton opined that Americans need to move through a period of genuine grief about the end of U.S. dominance, and then recognize that what they are losing was always built on exploitation.

“The things that made our so-called first world lives so comfortable have come on the backs of exploitation, slave labor, coups [and] wars. Just violence upon violence upon exploitation upon exploitation,” he said. “We made a deal with the devil, which was capitalism.”

He rejected the nostalgic politics of both Trumpism and mainstream Democratic Party incrementalism, suggesting that a retreat to the past is no longer an option. According to Sexton, the lure of fascism may offer the promise of recapturing a lost greatness, but that’s a dangerous illusion that only leads to self-destruction.

“We can have better lives,” he said. “We deserve better than what we’ve got right now. We have to be honest with ourselves and accept that it’s falling apart — and that you can build something better on the other side of it. That opportunity is there.”

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Parnas, who has deep personal ties to many of the key players inside Trump’s orbit, also opened up about the DOJ’s latest harassment campaign against E. Jean Carroll, the weaponization of a Fort Pierce grand jury under Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon and his decision to leave the Democratic Party and run for Congress as an independent.

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The E. Jean Carroll Investigation: “A Trophy Win for Trump”

Gibson opened by asking Parnas about his recent Substack post, in which he wrote that the Trump DOJ’s criminal investigation into writer E. Jean Carroll — who won two civil cases against Trump in 2023 and 2024 — was “only the beginning.” Parnas framed the Carroll prosecution as a political gift from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to Trump himself.

“The E. Jean Carroll investigation is very important, and it means a lot, because knowing Donald Trump, knowing the players involved, especially his puppet, now Todd Blanche in the DOJ — this was more of a trophy win for Donald Trump, you know, by Todd Blanche gifting him E. Jean Carroll,” Parnas said.

Gibson noted that Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney, had technically recused himself from the Carroll case. However, because Blanche is the de facto head of the DOJ, Parnas dismissed his recusal as “theatrics.”

“That’s what the Trump DOJ is about right now,” he said. “That’s why I always say, don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do, watch their actions.”

Trump Planning to Indict Barack Obama in Florida

The conversation shifted to what Parnas described as the centerpiece of Trump’s revenge campaign: a grand jury quietly assembled in Fort Pierce, Florida overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — the same Trump-appointed judge who threw out Trump’s classified documents case.

According to Parnas, one of Todd Blanche’s first moves upon taking over the DOJ was to reopen a long-dormant investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and the origins of the Russia investigation, then move that probe to Fort Pierce, where Cannon sits as the lone judge. Blanche also appointed former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova — who helmed the DOJ’s District of Columbia office during the Reagan administration — as special prosecutor. Parnas observed that he knows DiGenova well as his former personal lawyer.

“There is a grand jury that has been put together. There’s already, I’ve heard, hundreds of subpoenas that have gone out to ex-CIA agents and people that were part of the 2015-16 administration,” Parnas said. “And what I’m hearing is that one of the main targets that they’re going to be going after and that they’re going to indict is going to be ex-President Obama.”

Parnas said DiGenova’s appointment is significant, describing him as someone who has long been consumed by his belief that figures like Brennan, James Comey, and Obama committed treason by investigating Trump.

“Out of everybody that I know in Trump world, he’s the most passionate and the most aggressive,” Parnas said.

Could Presidential Immunity Shield Obama?

Gibson raised the question of whether the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States — which established broad criminal immunity for presidents for any and all official acts — could be used by Obama’s lawyers to get any indictment thrown out before it ever went to trial.

Parnas acknowledged the argument, but said Trump insiders are deliberately gaming it out to put Trump’s predecessor through the same gauntlet Trump himself endured during his 2024 campaign.

“They want Obama to go prove that this was an official act. Obama has to go there, go through the process,” Parnas said. they want Obama to go through what Trump did, get indicted, get that mug shot.”

He also pointed out that the Fort Pierce venue is no accident. Routing the case through Cannon’s courtroom all but guarantees a friendly judicial hand, regardless of any current legal precedent.

“That’s why the case is in Fort Pierce, because it would be Judge Cannon on that case if Obama gets indicted in Florida,” Parnas said.

Judge Cannon’s Impossible Bind

Gibson pressed Parnas on what he sees as a legal catch-22 for Cannon: the very precedent she used to dismiss Trump’s documents case (in which she cited Clarence Thomas’ opinion in the Trump v. United States decision to justify throwing out the charges) could now be weaponized by Obama’s defense team. Parnas dismissed the idea that Cannon would feel constrained by her own prior ruling.

“A lot of people that come on these shows talk about how things used to be, how things should be, how in a normal society it would be. They keep forgetting that Donald Trump, and especially loyalists like Judge Cannon, don’t follow the rules,” he said. “That is why we are here. She will just say no, find an excuse, and this is what they’re good at.”

He also flagged the role of Stephen Miller, whom he described as the most dangerous figure operating behind the scenes, as the person who excels at finding obscure legal loopholes to justify whatever outcome Trump needs.

“It’s not if they’re gonna do it, it’s when they’re gonna do it. You’re gonna see lots of these indictments. I don’t say it unless I know it — and when I come out and say it, I pretty much know it,” Parnas argued.

The DOJ’s Credibility Crisis — And Why Trump Doesn’t Care

Gibson noted a string of high-profile DOJ failures — a botched Comey prosecution led by an inexperienced attorney, the collapsed Leticia James case, and the Carroll inquiry against someone who has already prevailed before two separate juries — and asked whether Blanche and Trump were worried at all about the damage being done to the institution’s reputation.

Parnas said the answer is simply that the DOJ’s credibility is irrelevant in a system oriented entirely around pleasing one man.

“Todd Blanche doesn’t care about what anybody’s saying right now. It’s such a cult mentality. Right now it’s one leader, one man, and trying to figure out how to please him and nobody else,” Parnas said. “We’re living in an authoritarian time. We’re living in a dictatorship. A lot of people don’t realize it. The system is cracking — it’s like a dam. If you have a little crack and the water keeps pushing, eventually it’s going to break.”

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Why Parnas Left the Democratic Party

Gibson noted that Ballotpedia still listed Parnas as one of five Democrats running in Florida’s 27th congressional district, prompting Parnas to correct the record: he is now running as an independent.

Parnas described the decision as a product of both frustration with Democratic establishment politics and a practical read of the electorate. He recounted attending a MAGA event in his district, where residents responded warmly to him until they learned he was running as a Democrat.

“When I was there as an individual, they loved to hear what I had to say and wanted to know more. But once I got labeled as a Democrat, all of that went out the window,” he said.

He also pointed to a larger structural reality: nearly half the country now identifies as independent.

“They don’t want to be either Democrat or Republican, because both parties got us here,” Parnas said. “Both parties have become radicalized. Donald Trump instilled division into us — we have to stop that.”

Running as an Independent: Spoiler or Disruptor?

Gibson asked the obvious question: in a first-past-the-post system, doesn’t an independent candidacy risk splitting the anti-Republican vote and handing the seat to the GOP?

Parnas pushed back, noting that Florida’s 27th Congressional District is currently drawn to disadvantage Democrats anyway, and that he believes he can pull more from the Republican side than the Democratic side. He also said he is eyeing the 22nd district — where several Republicans are competing with no Democratic presence — as a potentially stronger opportunity.

“I’m not changing my values. I’m running as an independent to get into Congress so Congress can change the laws … so a president could be able to run without being committed to be labeled a D or an R,” he said.

After Gibson pressed Parnas on how he would caucus, Parnas emphasized he would caucus with Democrats but would not be a reliable party-line vote.

“I’m going in there more to root out both of the problems we have, because the biggest problem we have in Congress is not Democrat or Republican. It’s that we have foreign money that has infiltrated our lobbying system, our super PACs, our special interests, and these are the people that are really running our Congress,” he said.

Parnas’ Firsthand Knowledge of Funneling Foreign Money Into Elections

Gibson brought up Parnas’s 2022 sentencing announcement, in which then-U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Parnas was going to prison for 20 months for “pumping Russian money into U.S. elections and lying about the source of funds for political contributions.” Parnas acknowledged his wrongdoing, but said his firsthand experience inside the super PAC system makes him uniquely qualified to fight it from the inside.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Parnas said. “But I donated money to a Trump super PAC. The Trump super PAC did not get indicted, just so you understand. I got indicted.”

He said he watched firsthand how the campaign finance system was exploited by both parties.

“I know how the system works. It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, it works the same. They both do it,” Parnas said. “One of my main platforms is to try to destroy the super PACs and special interests and bring our country back to where each vote matters.”

Parnas Announces New Project Aimed at Digging Into Epstein Files

Gibson raised the question of how Parnas plans to hold people named in the Epstein files accountable not just for child sex trafficking but for financial crimes described in the documents.

Parnas used the question to unveil a significant new venture: a media and advocacy organization called Deep State Media, formed in partnership with Jonathan Hay (publicly identified as a plaintiff in the civil case against Sean “Diddy” Combs), activist David Sugerman, and Parnas’ son Daniel.

“Deep State Media is going to be set up to go out to fight corruption, to stand for survivors, and to stop this attack on women’s rights,” Parnas said. “The P. Diddys, the Epsteins, the Weinsteins, they not only treated women the way they did, but the business was also intertwined.”

Parnas said a signature feature of the venture will be fully livestreamed transparency for his congressional campaign.

“Every meeting will be livestreamed,” he said. “There’s no more closed-door, behind-the-scenes meetings. There are no more private conversations. My campaign is going to be run on pure, pure transparency, because that’s what we need. Enough is enough.”

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Trump’s $1.776 Billion Slush Fund Is an Endorsement of Right-Wing Violence

The Trump administration’s plan to funnel $1.776 billion to January 6 defendants — a figure whose digits are no accident — is, in Holt’s view, about as explicit an endorsement of that day’s violence as you can get. He described the original pardons as a sweeping “hall pass” issued with no moral or legal distinctions drawn between those who wandered in with the crowd and those who arrived with violent intent and proved their capacity to act on it.

“Because the pardons and commuted sentences were issued so indiscriminately ... that meant that some individuals who had gone to the Capitol — you know, in court being argued with the explicit intention of doing this, or had engaged in violent activity, had proven their capacity for crimes of that nature — also got the same pass,” Holt said. “I think it was interpreted as a thank-you card.”

Holt praised journalist Mike Wendling’s reporting, which identified dozens of pardon recipients who subsequently committed additional crimes, including violent offenses and crimes against children. When viewed collectively, Holt said, the recidivism rate is “pretty shocking.”

“If you could plausibly make an argument against these pardons being a hall pass or condoning what these folks engaged in, cutting them checks — or the prospect of cutting them checks — is about as explicit of an endorsement as you can get.”

Celebrating Vigilante Violence: Does Trump Have His Own Paramilitary?

The conversation turned to the administration’s pattern of elevating right-wing vigilante figures like Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny — men who killed people and were subsequently hosted in VIP boxes at championship games alongside Trump, JD Vance, and Mike Johnson — and what that pattern signals about the relationship between this White House and far-right street-level violence.

Holt drew a careful distinction between legal defense of an acquittal (as in the case of Rittenhouse) and the spectacle of organizations like Turning Point USA putting Rittenhouse on stage with fireworks, allowing him to build a public career on implicit threats of further violence. He connected this to a broader authoritarian playbook.

“Authoritarians throughout history around the world will gain power as a minority, and then attempt to maintain that control over society, over government, through the use of state force — which includes either the explicit or implied threat of violence against their opponents,” Holt said.

He stopped short of saying Trump has a formal militia in the mold of Mussolini’s Black Shirts or Hitler’s SA, but noted the administration has gone further than Trump’s first term in courting, cozying up to, and empowering far-right movements.

“[The administration wants] to have their cake and eat it too,” Holt said. “They want the electricity that is found in these movements, the ability to animate people in that intense way you can by fomenting hate and resentment and cynicism in society, but they also want to be treated as respectable, as real statesmen.”

Far-Right Dog Whistles Inside Federal Agencies — and the Reporters Who Could Expose Them

Holt confirmed that something significant is happening inside the social media operations of federal agencies like DHS and the Department of Labor. Executive branch agencies have repeatedly posted content containing recognizable far-right signals — including, in one notable case, a song with ties to white power movement that circulated on extremist Telegram channels around 2017 and would be virtually unknown to anyone who hadn’t been “marinating in those spaces” at the time.

“I know this song,” Holt said of the song “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” which Trump administration social media channels have invoked in the recent past.

He identified this as a significant and under-covered story, arguing there is genuine public interest in knowing who is writing and approving these posts — and that the answers would likely raise serious questions about vetting and how far up the chain awareness goes. He acknowledged the investigative path is difficult, noting that FOIA requests under this administration will almost certainly require litigation to enforce, and even then may yield heavily redacted documents. But he was unambiguous about the value of pursuing it.

“I would imagine that if we figured out who those people are, there would be a pretty concerning story there,” Holt said. “It raises a lot of questions about how they’re vetting people — or just how high up in the agency it goes. Is it just someone showing the press secretary ten tweets for the week and they say ‘yep, looks good’? Or are they fully aware?”

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The Insurrection Succeeded — Just Not on January 6th

Holt agreed with the framing that while the Capitol riot failed in its immediate tactical objective of stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, it has in a meaningful sense been vindicated. The same ideological universe that drove people to the building that day now staffs federal agencies and shapes White House policy. What changed between then and now is not the movement — it’s the Republican Party’s willingness to say so out loud.

“The government is loaded with sympathizers,” Holt said. “There are people working in the White House that are entirely sympathetic and entirely on board with the kind of thinking that motivated so many people to go to DC that day.”

He recalled the brief, anomalous moment of bipartisan condemnation in the days after January 6 — a moment that has been completely erased from the modern GOP. Those who condemned the attack, like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, have been driven out or sidelined. The machinery of retaliation now extends to state legislators who resist Trump’s midterm redistricting push, where even Republicans who privately oppose it are having primary challengers backed against them.

“Any criticism against the administration, against the tip-top brass of federal leadership, especially Trump, is extremely penalized,” Holt said. “There’s no room for dissent in the modern Republican Party. And I think that — just to boil it all down — that complete follow-the-leader mentality, and all the extreme rhetoric that comes along to justify it, is what’s dangerous.”

‘Nihilistic Violence’ Is a Law Enforcement Cop-Out for Right-Wing Terrorism

When a gunman attacked a mosque in San Diego — leaving behind documents filled with neo-Nazi references — local police attributed the attack to what they called “nihilistic violence.” Holt argued that this language is being systematically misapplied in ways that launder racially motivated terrorism into something more generic and less politically inconvenient.

He explained that “nihilistic violent extremism” originated as a useful, narrow descriptor for a particular category of online radicalization networks — like the 764 network — in which violent ideology functions more as an aesthetic costume than a sincere political belief system. In that limited context, the term had analytic value.

“My criticism, my issue with the term is that what has been included in the scope of that has broadened out and broadened out over the years, to the point where you could ask four or five organizations that track hate movements to define it and get five different answers,” he said.

His sharpest critique was reserved for how the term gets applied to attacks with unmistakable ideological fingerprints. In San Diego, he noted, the perpetrator appeared to replicate the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque attack almost exactly — and yet no one debates what motivated that attack. He placed the misapplication in broader political context: the Trump administration has simultaneously stripped resources from countering right-wing extremism while redirecting public attention toward undocumented immigrants and left-wing organizers.

“I just kind of think the way it’s being over-applied comes at a detriment to public understanding of these threats and what’s actually happening in these attacks,” Holt argued.

The Trump Administration Is Waging War on the Organizations That Expose It

The Department of Justice’s criminal prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center — which the SPLC is fighting as vindictive prosecution stemming from a 2019 exposé of Stephen Miller’s white nationalist email history — is, in Holt’s view, part of a coordinated campaign to destroy the institutional infrastructure that tracks and exposes far-right movements.

The escalation takes multiple forms: Elon Musk suing Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate with litigation expensive enough to bankrupt nonprofits operating on six-month budget cycles; congressional Republicans subpoenaing and grilling researchers on Capitol Hill; and now the federal government attempting criminal charges against the SPLC. Holt noted that many of his colleagues inside these organizations have significantly curtailed their public work and messaging as a result.

“This administration has explicitly saber-rattled against these kinds of organizations. Not just ones that track hate movements, but ones that track disinformation and misinformation,” he said. “A nonprofit gets sued for $50 million and they’re facing three or four million dollars in legal fees to defend themselves against the wealthiest man on the planet. Lights out.”

He expressed skepticism that the SPLC charges will stick, but emphasized that the point isn’t necessarily conviction, but cost. For the SPLC, which has substantial resources, the legal fight is survivable. For most organizations in the sector, it wouldn’t be. Holt and his Posting Through It co-host Mike Hayden — the SPLC reporter whose Miller story the prosecution appears to have originated from — have responded by doing their work independently, treating the podcast as a space that exists precisely because mainstream news organizations have fewer, not more, resources dedicated to this beat during the second Trump administration than they did during the first.

“At a time where this is front and center, breathing down your neck — a lot of news organizations in this country have less resources devoted to this issue than they did during the first Trump administration,” Holt said. “A fractured media is a weaker media.”

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Nick Fuentes and the Groypers Are Bluffing

When asked about figures like Nick Fuentes openly rooting for Democratic candidates in 2026 and 2028 as a form of protest against what they see as an insufficiently extreme Trump administration, Holt was blunt.

“They’re full of shit,” he said. “Nick Fuentes is not about to rally up support for Democratic candidates. He threatened to do that during the 2024 election, and he did not.”

The frustration itself, however, is real. The far-right base of the MAGA coalition feels the administration hasn’t delivered the racially focused, brutalist version of governance they believed they were voting for. They’re looking at rising prices, an Iran conflict they didn’t want, legal setbacks to the immigration agenda and ongoing entanglements with Wall Street and cryptocurrency interests they were told to overlook as the price of admission.

“What they’ve got is inflation going up, everything’s getting more expensive, a huge issue with Trump’s loyalty to Israel, a war they didn’t want — and they’re not really getting what they want exactly on immigration,” Holt said. “They’re frustrated because they don’t think he upheld his extreme far-right end of the bargain.”

Holt’s read is that figures like Fuentes, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are engaged in a pressure campaignby threatening to fracture the base in order to force the administration to appease them. He noted that the White House is aware of and responsive to that dynamic. However, he dismissed the actual threat as hollow. Going from “I might sit this one out” to “I want a Democrat to win” is, he suggested, not a line that crowd will cross.

Tucker Carlson Is Dangling Bait — Don’t Take It

Holt pushed back firmly on the notion that Tucker Carlson’s occasional use of populist economic language — his acknowledgments of healthcare dysfunction, wealth inequality, and the unattainability of the American dream — makes him any kind of ally for people on the left. He characterized it as sophisticated audience-capture.

“What people like Tucker Carlson have realized is that if they can acknowledge those sentiments, validate those sentiments, that will differentiate them from the Fox Newses of the world. Once they get that audience, particularly younger audiences who feel the effects of this stuff in a much more profound way, they can start steering them in a right-wing direction,” he said.

The trap, Holt argued, is mistaking shared diagnosis for shared vision. Carlson may agree that healthcare in America is broken. But his prescription isn’t single-payer coverage — it’s building a deportation force to remove brown people from the country. Holt said when it comes to the fundamental question of what a positive future looks like, the left’s vision is “so diametrically opposed” to Carlson’s that no tactical alliance is coherent.

“One is creative, one is destructive. I just don’t think it’s advantageous or wise to take the bait,” he said. “Because the way I see it, that’s ultimately what it is.”

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Louisiana v. Callais Didn’t Formally Kill the Voting Rights Act. Murray Says It Effectively Did.

Gibson opened by asking Murray whether she agreed with the assessment of attorney Anne P. Mitchell — interviewed previously on Raw America — that the Louisiana v. Callais ruling significantly weakened but did not gut the Voting Rights Act. Murray said she sees it differently.

“Justice Alito, who wrote for the six-to-three conservative super majority, basically said that he was not overruling Section Two. He was instead ‘realigning and updating’ the jurisprudence and the statute,” Murray explained. “And if you’re concerned that a federal court is updating legislation, which seems like a legislative and congressional function, you would be someone who has read the Constitution, because that is exactly what legislators do.”

Murray drew a pointed historical parallel to the Court’s refusal in 1992 to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision to underscore her concern about the Court’s approach. Murray noted that justices “changed the ruling enough to allow states to effectively legislate the right to abortion to the point where it was really kind of a nub of a right.”

“If they had simply overruled Roe, I think you would have seen massive public galvanization over that issue in 1992,” she said.

Murray said she believes the Court deployed the same strategy in Louisiana v. Callais in keeping Section Two nominally alive while stripping it of its practical power.

“It actually would have been not only more responsible, but also better for the public, if the court had just come out and said, ‘We are overruling Section Two of the Voting Rights Act,’” Murray said. “This sort of too-clever-by-half really protects and insulates the court from public outcry.”

Why Partisan Gerrymandering and Racial Disenfranchisement Are Inseparable in the South

Gibson noted that the ruling has already had real-world consequences, with Alabama moving forward with a 2023 congressional map that would eliminate one of its two predominantly Black districts. He asked Murray whether this is proof that the Voting Rights Act remains as necessary today as it was when it was passed in 1965. She responded that this was “100 percent” the case.”

“This court has a really weird view of racial progress. It’s almost like none of them are racial minorities — although one of them is, although I’m not sure the Black delegation is claiming Clarence Thomas these days,” Murray said, referencing the Chappelle’s Show “Racial Draft” sketch.

Murray pushed back on Justice Alito’s argument in Louisiana v. Callais that what occurred in Louisiana was partisan gerrymandering rather than racial discrimination. She argued the distinction is nearly meaningless in practice across much of the South.

“Throughout the South and in many parts of the country, partisan affiliation runs closely with race. They’re inextricably intertwined, such that many minority voters are also Democrats,” she said. “So if you are consolidating for partisan advantage in the South, you’re likely doing it in a way that disenfranchises minority voters.”

Murray also flagged the cynical corollary of this logic — that the remaining shell of Section Two could now be weaponized in reverse. “When blue states now go to redistrict to consolidate their advantages for the Democratic Party, what you will instead see are white voters challenging those redistricting efforts under Section Two, on the ground that they’re actually about consolidating advantage for racial blocs,” she said. “It’ll just be used the opposite way.”

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Murray Calls on Congress to Pass a New Voting Rights Act

Gibson asked whether, if Democrats were to retake the House and Senate in future elections, passing a new Voting Rights Act should be a top priority. Murray was unequivocal.

“It’s past time for the Democratic Party to take seriously the threats to the right to vote and to protect it in earnest,” Murray said.

The NYU law professor and author also expanded on what she sees as the broader anti-democratic threat hiding beneath the racial dimensions of redistricting battles. She cited comments made by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) following Louisiana v. Callais, in which Blackburn reportedly said the ruling would ensure Tennessee remains a red state.

“Do states have a partisan affiliation? No, they are comprised of individuals,” Murray said. “What does it mean to draw your districts to keep Tennessee red? It means you’re not only disenfranchising Black people, which may be your goal, but you’re also disenfranchising white Democrats — anyone who is a Democrat.”

Murray urged Raw America’s audience to understand the issue in its full scope. “If Black people are the canary in the coal mine here, they’re just the first. This is going to trickle down. Ultimately, this is an anti-democratic move to consolidate partisan advantage. It is profoundly, profoundly anti-democratic. It is the exact opposite of what the framers of the Constitution, and certainly the framers of the Reconstruction amendments, wanted to see.”

What Can Be Done to Rein In the Roberts Court?

Gibson asked Murray about potential structural remedies for a Supreme Court that many legal commentators have described as the most partisan in modern history — including court expansion, term limits, a binding code of ethics and requiring justices to ride circuit.

Murray said the conversation needs to start from a different premise.

“We need to stop thinking of court reform as the nuclear option,” she said. “We’ve had a Supreme Court that has been of different multiples at various points in our history — six justices, seven justices. It’s been at nine for a long time, but it doesn’t have to be.”

On term limits, Murray said the idea is reasonable but legally complicated, since Article III of the Constitution guarantees life tenure for federal judges. She noted a potential workaround — a justice could serve a defined term on the Supreme Court but remain in the federal judiciary in another capacity — though any such statute would almost certainly be challenged and could land before the very court it seeks to reform. She also argued for more aggressive congressional oversight.

“We ought to normalize the prospect of hauling the Supreme Court justices before Congress more often,” Murray said. “Congress could certainly call them in and ask them questions — at the very least, questions about the fact that some of the justices appear to have emotional-support billionaires who take them on lavish vacations, while the emotional-support billionaires also have very cozy relationships with the kinds of regulated industries and groups that regularly appear before the Supreme Court.”

She emphasized that public pressure, while imperfect, has already worked.

“We only got that non-binding ethics code because people made such a stink about Harlan Crow being so tight with Justice Thomas,” she said. “These justices — they care about what the people think. All the court has is its own legitimacy. There’s no way to enforce its judgments with the military. All it has is this idea that when they say something, we believe them, because we think they are doing law and not politics.”

The Threat of an Article V Convention Is Real — and the Right Is Already Mobilizing

Gibson raised the possibility of an Article V constitutional convention — a process by which states, bypassing Congress entirely, could force a rewriting of the Constitution itself — and asked Murray whether she thinks it’s realistic.

Murray said not only is it realistic, but that elements of the political right are actively working to make it happen.

“There are people who are very excited about the prospect of a state-led constitutional convention,” she said, noting that conservative state legislatures have been organizing in pursuit of exactly this goal. “I think it’s one of the reasons why there’s been so much pressure to gerrymander state legislatures — to consolidate partisan advantage so that there will be a super majority of state legislatures that may be amenable to amending or rewriting the Constitution to lock in certain privileges.”

“This is one of the reasons we don’t talk enough about why the Rucho v. Common Cause decision is so alarming — the decision that said federal courts have no role to play in partisan gerrymandering,” she continued. “If you have partisan-gerrymandered enough state legislatures so that a super majority of them are red, then it’s on. They will write a whole new constitution, and who knows what they’ll do.”

Why Murray Wrote a Guide to the Constitution — and What She Hopes Readers Learn

Murray got the idea to write her book thnks to a viral Twitter thread from hip-hop pioneer Luke Campbell (aka Uncle Luke) of 2 Live Crew.

“Luke had a list of all these things that he wanted Joe Biden as President of the United States to do, and I realized probably three-fourths of the list were things that Joe Biden did not have any constitutional authority to do,” Murray said. “It occurred to me that Uncle Luke probably hadn’t read the Constitution.”

Murray said the problem runs deeper than any one person — it reflects a generation-wide gap in civic education that opened up after No Child Left Behind began stripping civics from public school curricula.

“We have a whole generation of people now coming into political maturity who literally have no idea, through no fault of their own, how this government works, or what they can do to engage with it,” she said.

On what she most wants readers to understand, Murray pointed to the original intent behind the document itself.

“This is a trauma-informed document. The framers wanted a government that works, but they didn’t want it to work against us,” she explained. “It is really a document that is about restraining government power, dividing it between three branches so that no single branch, including the President, can become too powerful and despotic.”

Murray closed with an urgent message: the Constitution is not merely a weapon wielded by those in power — it belongs to everyone.

“We the people have actually played a role in making constitutional meaning,” she said. “Back in the Gilded Age, people were so upset about income inequality and the rise of oligarchs... and they got a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to levy a progressive income tax. If this sounds familiar to you, it should. We the people can actually do stuff. We just have to remember that this document is not just a tool to be wielded against us. It’s something that we can use to change our own lives, too.”

Melissa Murray is a professor of law at NYU School of Law and a contributor to MS NOW. Her new book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader, is available now from Simon & Schuster.

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• How Republicans used nonsensical technical arguments to overturn the will of the people

• The Virginia Supreme Court declining to weigh in before the election happened

• Virginia counties being out millions of dollars in election-related expenses without hope for reimbursement

• The case Virginia justices cited that revealed their true motivations

• Democrats’ next steps after the April election results were thrown out

• A redistricting arms race that could still end up in Democrats’ favor

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‘Legal Calvinball’: Republicans’ Nonsensical Argument to Throw Out an Election

Fiddler didn’t mince words when asked whether Republicans had any legitimate legal footing for their challenge. “It was legal Calvinball,” she said, citing the fictional game from the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip in which rules are made up in the middle of the game.

“The State Supreme Court, specifically four justices on the Virginia State Supreme Court, decided that they were going to invalidate the results of this election,” Fiddler said. “And they had to get really creative to do it.”

She outlined Republicans’ three-pronged legal argument. The first centered on the definition of the word “election” itself , and whether “election day” constituted the entire election or just the final day of what is actually a broader voting window that includes early voting. The second argument was a procedural one about the scope of a special legislative session. The third leaned on a century-old law requiring constitutional amendments to be posted at every courthouse in Virginia for 90 days — a requirement tied to the state’s 1920 constitution, rather than the one that has been in effect since 1971.

Ultimately, Fiddler said, the four Republican-leaning justices latched onto the first argument and bent it to their purposes. “They decided that election is not actually the election — which is that Tuesday after Monday in November,” she said. “They decided that it includes the entire period before, during which folks have the opportunity to cast their ballot early. It’s not early voting if it’s election voting.”

The Court Had a Chance to Step In Before the Vote — And Chose Not To

One of the most damning aspects of the ruling, Fiddler argued, is that the Virginia Supreme Court had every opportunity to rule on the legality of the election before it happened — but declined to do so.

“Republicans went to their pet judge out in southwest Virginia, a guy that they had appointed who’s friends with some of the lawmakers, and he ruled the way they wanted,” she said. The case was then appealed to the state Supreme Court, which Republicans asked to block the April 21 vote entirely. The court refused.

“I am positive that at least four of those justices were just praying that the measure would fail at the ballot box so they wouldn’t have to weigh in,” Fiddler continued. “The State Supreme Court is actually, historically in Virginia, not super political. But we can’t say that about them anymore. I was frankly shocked by the ruling on so many levels.”

She confirmed that a state supreme court ruling invalidating an entire statewide election is essentially unprecedented in modern Virginia history.

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Millions of Voters Were Disenfranchised and Counties Are Out Millions of Dollars

Fiddler was blunt about the human cost of the ruling. The court’s decision to retroactively invalidate the election means that approximately $5 million spent by Virginia counties to conduct the election will never be reimbursed.

“Those localities are just out of the money for no reason,” she said, noting that the financial burden falls unevenly. Wealthier regions like Northern Virginia can absorb the hit better than rural counties that depend on state revenue sharing.

More importantly, she pushed back hard on the court’s claim that early voters were somehow disenfranchised by casting ballots before the legislature completed a procedural step.

“They were saying that voters were disenfranchised because of how they decided to define ‘election,’” Fiddler said. “But also, they were totally okay with disenfranchising even more voters — 1.6 million voters — who actually voted in this election directly on these maps.”

Citing Marbury v. Madison: The Court Showing Its Hand

In her article summarizing the Virginia Supreme Court decision, Fiddler flagged a telling moment in the majority opinion — the justices’ decision to cite Marbury v. Madison, the foundational 1803 case that established the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review.

“It’s the equivalent of the justices channeling [South Park character] Eric Cartman and saying, ‘Respect my authori-tye,’” she said. “It’s basically reminding everyone that we have the power to do this. The fact that you feel the need to flex like that is just very suspect.”

She added that the Virginia justices are not operating at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court — and that even the Roberts Court knows better than to lean on Marbury v. Madison as a crutch, adding: “That’s just crap.”

What Democrats Can Do — And Why It’s Complicated

Fiddler acknowledged that a lot of people in progressive circles have been asking whether Virginia Democrats could simply ignore the ruling. She said the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.

Fiddler pointed out that because Republicans’ favored judge in Tazewell County blocked certification of the April results, the new maps were never officially implemented. Any effort to proceed as if they had would require active, affirmative steps from the Virginia Board of Elections and local registrars across the state, which Fiddler said would require “a lot of proactive ignoring.”

One option being floated is for the Democratic-controlled legislature to lower the mandatory retirement age for Virginia Supreme Court justices — currently set by statute at 73 — to something like 54, which would effectively remove the current court and allow Democrats to appoint a new one. But Fiddler said that path runs through Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger, who would have to sign the legislation.

“If she’s not on board with it, it’s not going to happen,” Fiddler said. “And the fact that it seems like lawmakers in Virginia are saying this is not happening — I think that’s coming from the top.” She also noted timing issues: the legislature still hasn’t passed a state budget, and with primaries already pushed back to August, the window to implement new maps for 2026 may have already closed.

How Democrats Can Still Win the Redistricting Arms Race

Fiddler observed that Republicans have been planning to interfere with the 2026 elections for months, and that the Virginia ruling is less a new template than a formalization of a playbook already in use.

“No tactic is off the table when it comes to Republicans looking to Donald Trump specifically, and his allies in the movement, doing everything they can think of to mess with elections and election results this fall,” Fiddler said.

But she also said Democrats are finally responding in kind. After initially trying to simply counter Republican redistricting moves state-by-state, Democrats are now behaving as though all restraints are off. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has already begun outreach to blue-state counterparts in Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and other states.

“Unilateral disarmament does not work,” Fiddler said. “Democrats did not come at it with the ‘all bets are off’ approach from the start. They were just trying to counter what Republicans are doing and keep it more or less equal, and that didn’t work out for them. So now Democrats are finally behaving as though all bets are off — even though they’ve been off.”

Reasons for Hope: Federal Worker Fury, Special Election Trends, and Anti-Trump Energy

Despite the frustrating ruling, Fiddler offered several reasons for optimism heading into November. She pointed to the rage of Virginia’s more than 300,000 federal workers — many of them laid off or displaced by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative — as a powerful undercurrent that hasn’t dissipated.

“If you weren’t a federal worker who got laid off, you absolutely knew one,” she said. “They remember this, and they’re not going to forget it, and they’re going to carry that with them through November.”

She also noted that Democrats have been dramatically overperforming in special elections throughout Trump’s second term, beating Kamala Harris’s 2024 numbers by an average of 10 to 12 points. Even on the old Virginia maps, she said, Democrats have a realistic shot at picking up two congressional seats if turnout reflects the current political environment.

“The anti-Trump juice is going to be real this year,” Fiddler said. “People in the country are going to remember why they’re mad and who they’re mad at — and they’re going to show up in November.”

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• Why the new maps may not survive a court challenge despite the latest Supreme Court ruling

• Florida Republicans endangering their own congressional representation by diluting their own districts

• Florida Democrats’ recent pattern of surprising wins in deep-red cities and districts

• How the cost of living crisis is impacting Floridians, and making it harder for Republicans to win

• The recent resignation of a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and what that means for an embattled Republican congressman

• The strength of Florida’s slate of 2026 Democratic candidates

Raw America is unbought, editorially independent and not for sale. We don’t answer to a billionaire behind the scenes telling us what we can and can’t say. We only answer to readers. But that also means that none of this is possible without the support of paying subscribers. If you haven’t yet updated your free Raw America subscription to a paying one, please consider upgrading today. None of this would be possible without you.

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DeSantis’ Gerrymander: Rushed, Indefensible, and Likely Unconstitutional

Fried opened by explaining that Florida voters passed a Fair Districts amendment in 2010 with nearly 70% support, enshrining protections in the state constitution that prohibit partisan map-drawing, mandate the protection of minority districts, and require keeping communities and counties intact. DeSantis, she argued, is trampling all of that.

The special session moved with startling speed.

“On Monday, we saw the maps that he announced on Fox News — color coded red and blue — and talked about the partisan differences between Democrats and Republicans in our state,” Fried said. “None of that should be in consideration.”

By Tuesday, the legislature had passed the new maps in under 24 hours, with the bill’s own sponsor unable to answer basic questions about how the lines were drawn.

Perhaps most telling, Fried noted, was the silence from the GOP itself: “There was not a single Republican in either chamber that defended the maps, and I think that says everything we need to know.”

Lawsuits, she said, have been in the works for months. As soon as DeSantis signs the legislation, legal challenges will be filed by a coalition of advocacy organizations. Fried said the Florida Democratic Party has been closely involved in preparing for litigation, though the party itself may not be a named plaintiff given the non-partisan framing of the Fair Districts law.

‘They Just Handed Us Seats’: Why Democrats Think the Gerrymander Backfires

After Virginia voters passed their own pro-redistricting ballot measure, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) argued that the new maps would actually create more pickup opportunities for Democrats — just as he believed Trump’s redistricting effort in Texas had done. Fried said she shares that confidence.

Florida Democrats have flipped 29 seats since early 2025, outperforming the national leftward swing by 17 points. The new lines, Fried argued, diluted once-safe Republican districts.

She also pointed out that the state’s eight Democratic members of Congress — including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Darren Soto, Kathy Castor, and Jared Moskowitz — are deeply embedded in their communities and their political influence extends beyond their district lines, making them difficult to unseat even with redrawn maps.

A Grassroots Wave: How Florida Democrats Are Winning Again

Gibson pointed to a string of striking Democratic victories: Miami’s mayoral seat flipping blue for the first time in 30 years, a Democratic mayor in Boca Raton, and a state legislative seat in Mar-a-Lago’s own backyard flipping Democratic. Fried attributed the turnaround to a combination of structural organizing and genuine voter frustration.

The party launched what it calls the “Pendulum Project” in early 2025 — a year-round organizing operation that contacted over 5 million Floridians in an off-year cycle alone. “For the first time, and probably maybe ever, can say that we are not in chaos, that everybody is rowing in the same direction,” Fried said.

She also pushed back on the perception that Florida’s voter registration numbers doom Democrats from the start. Around 1.5 million Democrats were shifted from active to inactive voter rolls under a DeSantis-backed law — a move she said inflated the GOP’s apparent advantage. Meanwhile, she said roughly 80 percent of independents have been breaking for Democrats this cycle, with 10 to 20 percent of Republicans crossing over as well.

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Cost of Living: The Issue Driving Voter Anger

Fried was emphatic that pocketbook issues are central to the Democratic message. She noted that Florida Democrats in the legislature introduced over 25 bills this session addressing affordability — covering housing, tax relief, subsidies, and healthcare — and not a single one received a hearing. Republicans, she said, spent the session renaming airports and arranging a Trump presidential library deal on prime Miami real estate.

“The reason why our insurance premiums — we’ve seen since DeSantis became governor a 400 percent increase in people’s premiums — that is not by accident,” she said, also faulting the state’s former CFO for failing to hold insurance companies accountable after major hurricanes.

On the national level, she connected soaring costs to Trump administration policies favoring wealthy corporations, pointing to recent reports showing CEO salaries rising roughly 25 percent in 2025 while worker wages declined.

“This is just corporate greed at its worst,” Fried said.

Holding Both Sides Accountable: The Corey Mills Question

Gibson noted that the Florida Democratic Party had taken an unusually firm stance when former Congressman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) resigned amid an ethics probe, publicly stating that “corruption has no place in Congress.” Fried used the same standard to call out Congressman Corey Mills (R-Fla.), who faces his own ethics investigation and has been accused of Stolen Valor and other serious misconduct.

“If the Republicans aren’t going to hold him accountable, we will,” Fried said, adding that the party has a strong candidate — Bale Dalton, a former NASA Chief of Staff under Senator Bill Nelson — running against Mills in 2026.

Looking Ahead: Candidates and Cautious Optimism

Without making primary endorsements, Fried expressed enthusiasm for the overall candidate bench Florida Democrats are fielding — veterans, first responders, Teach for America alumni, and community organizers. She named Eliot Rodriguez, a well-known former TV news anchor, as a notable candidate in Florida’s 27th congressional district, and praised Gay Valimont for her 22-point improvement in the Florida Panhandle’s 1st district in the last cycle.

“Do not give up on us,” Fried said. “Florida is worth fighting for. Our people are worth fighting for. We were the lab rats of Project 2025 — it started here in Florida, and we’re going to end it here in Florida.”

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Fried’s exclusive interview with Raw America capped off a week in which we also spoke with attorney Anne P. Mitchell about the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling that fundamentally weakened the Voting Rights Act, and with former Trump DHS chief of staff-turned-whistleblower Miles Taylor about his new anti-ICE initiative. Our Capitol reporter, Luke De Cresce, has also been bringing on-the-ground coverage of developments in Washington, directly from the halls of Congress.

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Gibson and Mitchell also discussed Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s ongoing violations of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and ways the Department of Justice can still be held accountable for not releasing more than one million pages of Jeffrey Epstein-related evidence to the public in spite of federal law. Mitchell also revealed new details about a searchable database that contains both the DOJ’s Epstein files dump and ways to help searchers connect the dots into the soft white underbelly of the Epstein class’ finances.

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• Making universal healthcare a key campaign issue

• Selling progressive policies to a swing state that voted for Trump twice

• Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, paid for with cuts to social programs

• Israel’s war in Gaza, which El-Sayed describes as a “genocide”

• El-Sayed’s campaign rally with streamer Hasan Piker

• How Democrats can connect with Trump voters without compromising on policy

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El-Sayed’s Top Issue: Universal Healthcare

El-Sayed brings impressive credentials to the healthcare debate. He rebuilt Detroit’s Health Department after it was shuttered, led Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services, and co-authored a book on Medicare for All. As mentioned in the interview, respected medical journal The Lancet found that the Medicare for All legislation sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would not only save 68,000 lives each year, but would save American taxpayers roughly $150 billion annually.

El-Sayed he argues that the biggest obstacle to universal health care isn’t logistical, but rather political cowardice enabled by corporate money.

He pointed to a familiar Washington pattern: consultants armed with polls convince candidates to chase voters where they already are rather than persuade them toward something better. El-Sayed sees that as a fatal mistake, and he invoked an unlikely role model to make the point.

“The best evidence I can point to, as much as I hate to point to him, is Donald Trump,” El-Sayed said. “When he came down that hideous golden escalator, nobody was talking about immigration, but he kept talking about it and talking about it and talking about it to the point where now he’s using immigration to destroy the Constitution itself.”

El-Sayed believes Democrats need to show the same commitment to healthcare that Trump showed to immigration — relentlessly, unapologetically, in every forum. And he says the reason most Democrats don’t is simple: they’re financially compromised.

“Too often, the people who are willing to fight for health care in the first place are taking money from the companies who benefit from the system as it is,” he said. “I don’t take corporate money. I never have, I never will. I’m the only person running for Senate in Michigan who can say that.”

Selling Universal Healthcare in a State That Voted for Trump in 2024

When asked if he could make the case for universal healthcare in a state that twice voted for Donald Trump in the last twelve years, El-Sayed said he’s already doing it. He described a health care town hall held in Houghton, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — hardly a Democratic stronghold — where 100 people showed up, many of them Trump voters.

“It’s only those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about politics who use this really outdated model of left versus right, Democrat versus Republican,” he said. “Most people don’t think about politics that way, because most people don’t think about politics.”

His pitch to those voters is direct and economically grounded: with every paycheck, before they have any say in the matter, their insurance company takes its cut through premiums — and then, when they actually get sick, they’re hit with a deductible on top of that. Medical debt in America has reached $225 billion, more than the GDP of half the states in the U.S.

He recounted a memorable encounter on the campaign trail with a man who told him bluntly: “I never met a Muslim, and I’ll be honest with you — I don’t like you.” But the man said he was going to vote for El-Sayed anyway.

“He said, ‘I thought you were either dumb or honest. I know what a doctor can make, and you’re out here trying to talk to people like me about giving me health care, and I think you really want me to have healthcare,’” El-Sayed recalled. “I said, ‘Sir, I really want you to have healthcare.’”

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Trump Wants $1.5 Trillion from Social Programs to Fund War. El-Sayed Points Out the Hypocrisy

President Trump proposed $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon, and wants to fund it by enacting even steeper budget cuts to programs that provide healthcare, housing, social services, and disaster assistance to Americans.

El-Sayed drew a sharp contrast between how government spending on domestic programs is treated versus military spending and foreign aid.

“Every single time you come up with one of these programs, some smart legislator comes up to you and says, ‘Well, Doctor, how you gonna pay for that?’” he said. “And the crazy thing is, when you’ve got a general who’s drawing up war plans, or you’ve got a treaty that says we’re just gonna write you a check for $3.5 billion — it doesn’t matter if you’re conducting an apartheid or a genocide with it — nobody actually asks, ‘Hey, General, how you gonna pay for that?’”

He said his role as a senator would be to force that question — to be the voice in the chamber demanding accountability for military expenditure with the same rigor applied to spending on schools and healthcare. He also pushed back on the notion that supporting a foreign government is somehow a senator’s job.

“My job is to advocate for Michigan,” he said. “It’s a crazy thing that somehow people think that their job in the U.S. Senate from you-name-the-state is to advocate for a foreign government.”

He added a personal note: his family immigrated from Egypt, one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid. “I love and revere the Egyptian people just like I love and revere the Jewish people, just like I love and revere people from all over the world. I just don’t pay my taxes so that those people get tanks and bombs.”

El-Sayed Calls Gaza War a Genocide. Here’s Why

El-Sayed didn’t hesitate on using the specific word “genocide” to describe what Israel is doing to Palestinians in Gaza — a major issue for Michiganders in the 2024 presidential election.

“I went to good public schools and a good public university where they taught me that words have meanings, and that usually you should use the words that describe the meanings,” he said. “When you articulate that you want to cleanse people of a certain ethnicity from a place, then proceed to bomb all their infrastructure and their homes and their schools and their hospitals in contravention to international law, and then try to ship them off to other places — having articulated a particular animus for those people as a function of their ethnicity — that meets [the definition of] genocide.”

He acknowledged the political cost of that position. The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) called him “the most dangerous candidate for the U.S.-Israel relationship” and is expected to spend $20 million in the Michigan Senate race to defeat him.

“I honestly wish they’d send me a t-shirt. I’d wear it every day,” El-Sayed remarked. “I’m not afraid of AIPAC.”

His broader argument is that foreign policy and domestic policy are inseparable — that money spent on bombs abroad is money not spent on schools and health care at home — and that voters increasingly understand that connection.

“I’m not willing to give up my dignity and my beliefs and my sense of the truth so that I can have an office where they can tell me what I can and can’t do with the office,” he added.

El-Sayed Defends Rally with Hasan Piker — and Says Politics Is About Connecting with Audiences

El-Sayed recently held a packed campaign rally at the University of Michigan with streamer Hasan Piker, who has an audience of millions, primarily among the Gen Z cohort. Piker has made controversial statements in the past — including expressing more sympathy for Hamas than Israel. El-Sayed rejected calls to disavow Piker and questioned the efficacy of political purity tests.

“If we played that game to its logical conclusion, none of us would ever talk to anybody,” he said. “I just thought that we had gotten past the cancel culture ridiculousness of the early 2020s.”

He pointed out that then-Vice President Kamala Harris invited Piker to stream from the Democratic National Convention in 2024. He also noted that on the very same day he rallied with Piker, he appeared on Fox and Friends — a fact that drew none of the same criticism.

“Fox and Friends and I disagree on a lot more than Hasan and I disagree on,” he said. “Should I not go on them?”

El-Sayed said his calculus is simple: go everywhere, talk to everyone, and trust that the message holds up.

“If Fox and Friends give me a platform, Hasan gives me a platform, or you give me a platform, or Rogan gives me a platform, or Bill Maher — who said some absurd things about people who pray like I do — gives me a platform, I’m going to go there. Because my conversation is with the broader public, and I’m going to go anywhere and talk to everyone who gives me the opportunity.”

El-Sayed’s Message to Michigan’s Trump Voters

Because El-Sayed is a Democrat running in a state that voted for a Republican in the most recent presidential election, connecting with Donald Trump voters in red counties is a must for any Democrat hoping to win a general election. El-Sayed said he approaches his conversation with Trump voters from a place of genuine respect. He argued that most people who voted for Trump did so because they felt they had no better option.

He described a telling exchange with a Trump voter over the Second Amendment. The man challenged El-Sayed, expecting standard Democratic pablum. Instead, El-Sayed engaged him directly, walking through what the Second Amendment was actually designed to protect against — government tyranny — and asking whether that logic extended to nuclear weapons.

“He was like, ‘Okay, okay, fair point,’” El-Sayed recounted. “And after the discussion, he pulled out a $100 check and said, ‘I’m going to support you.’ I was like, ‘Wait — why? We disagreed.’ He said, ‘We disagree on this point, but we agree on a lot more than we disagree on, and the fact that you were willing to debate me and share your perspective tells me that when you get to the halls of power, you’re going to say the same things.’”

For El-Sayed, that exchange captures what he thinks is fundamentally broken about how Democrats have approached these voters — and how to fix it.

“I don’t run away from my positions. I don’t trim my positions to go and earn a vote because I have some stereotype about what somebody else believes,” he said. “Take me or leave me. I want you to know what I believe.”

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El-Sayed’s interview with Raw America comes on the heels of recent interviews with newsmakers like former CNN anchor and current Substack host Jim Acosta, former Biden DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer, former NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder and others. We’re committed to bringing you perspectives and viewpoints you won’t find in billionaire-owned media outlets.

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• Trump’s promise of mass pardons to White House staff — and why it’s unlike anything in American history

• How Oyer was fired after refusing to recommend restoring Mel Gibson’s gun rights

• The $1.5 billion in financial penalties Trump has wiped out for convicted white-collar criminals

• The pay-for-play pardon system: how donations, ambassadorships, and political loyalty have replaced merit

• The national security implications of pardoning Changpeng Zhao, who processed transactions for Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas

• Whether future administrations can hold pardon recipients accountable — and what guardrails Congress could put in place

If you’re new here, Raw America is Raw Story and Really American’s people-powered response to the attempted billionaire takeover of the media. Exclusive interviews like this one — with the insiders who know where the bodies are buried — are only possible because of paying Raw America subscribers. We don’t take money from billionaires. We don’t run ads. We answer only to you. If accountability journalism matters to you, become a paid subscriber today. It’s the most direct way to make sure this work keeps going.

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Trump’s Unprecedented Promise: Pardons for Anyone Who Breaks the Law on His Behalf

A recent Wall Street Journal report quoted staffers concerned that they’re being given illegal orders. Trump’s response is: Don’t worry, you’ll get a pardon.

According to Oyer, Trump has treated the pardon power in a way that no other president has before. While Joe Biden did issue a handful of preemptive pardons, there was never a suggestion that preemptive pardons were promised to members of his staff in advance to sanction illegal conduct going forward.

Trump has said he’s going to pardon anybody who came within 200 feet of the Oval Office, which would obviously extend to business associates, political allies, and more.

How Trump Dismantled the Non-Political Pardon Process

The Pardon Attorney is a non-political job, created so the Justice Department can advise the President on how to exercise his pardon power. When Donald Trump came into office, all of that changed. People seeking pardons started going directly to the front doors of the White House rather than through the Justice Department.

Oyer’s office had a staff of about 45 people responsible for carefully reviewing and investigating applications for clemency. But now there is little if any vetting taking place. What matters under Trump is political support, donations to his campaign or his causes, or personal connections with people in his orbit.

According to the Cato Institute, Joe Biden granted 80 pardons during his four-year term. Trump has already issued 166 pardons — not including the more than 1,500 January 6 rioters — issuing pardons at eight times the rate Biden did.

Oyer emphasized that there are people who are truly deserving of a second chance — people who’ve been convicted of low-level crimes decades ago who are still enduring collateral consequences, people who can’t get professional licenses, who face housing barriers — who are being completely overlooked by Donald Trump. There is no space for recommendations based on merit under the current administration.

Current Pardon Attorney Ed Martin has a belief in “no MAGA left behind,” and that pardons should be used to reward those who are loyal to the president.

How Should the Pardon Power Be Reformed?

Former January 6 police officer Michael Fanone told Raw America he’d like to amend the Constitution to eliminate the pardon power entirely. Oyer noted that while she understands Fanone’s point of view given the mass pardons of January 6 rioters, there are many other people out there who are deserving.

According to Oyer, new guardrails are needed to rein in pardon power. She called on Congress to “step up and conduct oversight” by demanding more transparency around the decision-making process and investigating the donations and the lobbyists involved in securing pardons.

A report from the Campaign Legal Center outlined six ways Trump is rewarding his supporters. This includes ambassadorships, cabinet appointments, dropped investigations, and even pardons. Jared Kushner’s father Charles, for example, was convicted on multiple felony charges and was rewarded with an ambassadorship to France.

Oyer observed that Trump’s pardons cannot be undone, and that many have “tremendously harmed and re-victimized victims of crime.” She added that Trump has pardoned some of the biggest white-collar criminals in history, and that many of those pardoned owe their victims tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. She tracks all of this on her Substack’s “pardon tracker.”

“The total comes to around $1.5 billion — that’s billion with a B — in debts that he has forgiven through pardons,” Oyer said. “These are debts owed to people who were defrauded and victimized, in many cases to taxpayers whose money was stolen. And all of this while Donald Trump claims to be cracking down on fraud as a major priority. It’s nonsense and hypocrisy.”

The Worst Pardons: Drug Lords, Embezzlers, and a Sheriff Who Sold Badges

Some of Trump’s most egregious pardons to date include former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years for conspiring to traffic cocaine into the United States. Nevada State Legislator Michelle Fiore was also pardoned for embezzling $70,000 from a police memorial fund, using the money to pay her rent and get plastic surgery. Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins sold badges to untrained businessmen for $75,000 in bribes.

Oyer said she was “not aware of any other president who has systematically disregarded or not sought input from the pardon attorney the way Donald Trump has.” During her seven-week tenure, she was not consulted about dozens of pardons granted beyond the January 6 pardons.

Oyer was eventually fired over refusing to recommend giving actor and director Mel Gibson permission to have firearms again after being ordered to do so by then-ttorney General Pam Bondi.

“My experience pushing back within the Trump DOJ is what got me fired — and if I had to do it again, I would do exactly the same thing,” Oyer said.

“What I knew about him is that he had a conviction for a very serious domestic abuse incident involving his ex-partner, whom he hit while holding their child. She was injured. He pleaded guilty and was convicted,” she continued. “I had no information to suggest he had rehabilitated himself or was the type of person who could safely possess a firearm.”

Oyer noted that “the data is very clear that domestic violence incidents are much more likely to be fatal when the abuser has a gun.” And because she refused to make the recommendation and declined to reconsider her decision, she was escorted out of the building hours later by security officers.

The National Security Threat: Pardoning Someone Who Processed Money for Al Qaeda

In 2025, Trump’s DOJ pardoned Changpeng Zhao, who headed the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Zhao facilitated over 1.5 million illegal virtual trades and allowed prohibited transactions to members of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas. However, perhaps because he brokered a $2 billion investment in the Trump family’s crypto company, he was given a full presidential pardoned.

Oyer argued that the pardon was not only endemic of the Trump administration’s “hypocrisy” on crime, but also “very dangerous” in terms of national security. Trump’s allowed Zhao to get back into the crypto space, opening up the possibility of actions that could potentially endangers national security, and enable consumer fraud and other scams.

“This is a very clear example of Donald Trump placing his own personal and family financial interests ahead of the interests of the American people,” Oyer said.

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Trump’s DOJ’s January 2026 Epstein files dump revealed that Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein had an extensive, secret relationship spanning roughly 18 months, from early 2018 until the day Epstein was arrested. Bannon sought Epstein's help building his European populist movement, while Epstein offered use of his jet, homes, and connections. Bannon in turn offered media training to help rehabilitate the convicted pedophile's image.

Signorile's reporting for The Signorile Report on Substack dug into a particularly explosive thread: the Epstein files contain thousands of text message exchanges between the two men, including evidence that Bannon recruited Epstein into a scheme to "take down" Pope Francis. Bannon recorded 12 hours of interviews with Epstein for a documentary that was really a PR makeover for a convicted sex offender.

Meanwhile, Bannon, who’d spent years publicly demanding the release of the Epstein files and calling Epstein a "globalist child molester," has gone almost completely silent since his own name turned up in the newly released records. He hasn’t mentioned Epstein on his show even as the story dominates headlines.

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