4/22/26: Fed Chair Nominee Grilled, Data Center Revolt, CIA Officers Die In Mexico, VA Redistricting

20:09Per serving not a low-calorie food. Some products contain allulose. See nutrition info on Hero.co for sodium and sugar content.

20:16Emily Jashinsky:Let's talk about data centers. We've got to talk about data centers. Always should be talking about data centers, which are rocking many, many places in the country. Local politics rocking all kinds of different, I mean, let's just put this element up on the screen. And this is D1. This is a tear sheet from the Free Press, which had a wonderful piece of reporting. We got to give credit where it's due. A wonderful piece of reporting into what happens when the headline is, what happens when a data center comes to town? This is about a rural Ohio county where there's this 800-acre data center being planned that would produce, get this, Ryan, the massive total of 50 permanent jobs.

21:01Emily Jashinsky:I think it's like typical. That's all of these too, yeah. Yep, of course. Typical where they'll have about, I think it's like 2 ,000, or yeah, 1 ,200 construction jobs for the first phase and quote, at least 50 permanent jobs. Once construction is complete, it will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in greatly needed tax revenue. And one local man said he hasn't seen this. He's the county commissioner, told the Free Press, he hasn't seen this sort of local investment quote, in my lifetime. It is a very poor county, But, the piece reports, not all the neighbors feel that way. After announcing plans for the data center in January, dozens crowded into the local courthouse.

21:37Emily Jashinsky:They're wondering how much water the data center will use. Will their power bills go up? What about the noise? We played a video last week on the show about someone recording, just from their back deck, the noise from a nearby data center. Absolutely insane. According to Google's own assessments, the Free Press reports, each individual data center consumes anywhere from 10 ,000 to more than 1 billion gallons of water. But the reality is that nobody really knows what those numbers will look like for Franklin Furnace. So this is a Google data center. It would involve a 75 % tax abatement. And they're, again, looking for 800 acres of land right by the river.

22:21Emily Jashinsky:you can see how this would get on people's bad side very quickly. Just in Wisconsin recently, I think it was Whitefish Bay, there was a referendum where voters came in and rejected. It was one of the first big referendums in the country where you saw local voters rejecting future data centers in a big, big vote. Breaking points, we've been covering this for a long time. Dave Weigel has been covering this at Semaphore. But we can actually throw up on the screen here a New York Times. This is going to be D3, New York Times terror sheet. Job cuts driven by AI are rising on Wall Street. It's coming not just for rural Ohio, Ryan, but rapidly in some of the white collar sectors as well.

23:05Emily Jashinsky:Let's move to D4. These are just two headlines from yesterday. AI meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training data. So big data centers going up all over the country, job cuts even on Wall Street, mouse tracking to train AI at Meta. Everybody's happy. Everyone's loving it. And so if you're in this rural area where they want to take 800 of your acres along the river to install a whirring, like water guzzling, energy guzzling data center. With tax breaks that you don't get. Tax breaks that you don't get for a A couple bucks for a couple jobs. And tax revenue. What on earth?

23:53And maybe some tax. Okay, so I was going to say.

23:55Emily Jashinsky:Hopefully some tax revenue. What on earth would be the argument for doing that? The best argument, I guess, could be, yes, tax revenue. And you put that into schools. Okay, so if you actually believed that that was going to come forward, then okay. That's at least an argument for it. But what I would say is that this is the place where the public has their leverage to strike some sort of grand bargain with AI. Where it's like, okay, you want this and you need this from us. What do we get? Pitch us on how AI is going to bring us a better world. Right. And like Grok being able to take the clothes off of a 12-year-old isn't it.

24:49Emily Jashinsky:Or to prosecute wars in the Middle East, which is the other thing. Yeah, that's not it either. Like what is the society that you're going to create that is better than the one we have now in order for us to agree to do this with you? Because you can't do it without the land that people control. So there is this big movement that is fighting back against these data centers. And it really does seem to be the only thing that humanity has against the creep of these robots. One of the things I love about this story is that it focuses on the history of this particular place in Appalachia and Ohio and how they have had the rug pulled out from under them during the last century of industrialization where you had these plants that is a chemical plant, so sun, coke, energy at one point.

25:46Emily Jashinsky:Quote, the plant makes up material called coke, critical for steel production. But a decade ago, the plant was fined by the EPA for violating the Clear Air, Clean Air Act. And McDavid claims, one of the people in the story, residue from the plant still rains down on the houses and cars in the neighborhoods nearby. And just over and over again, how you get economic opportunity, rug pulls out, rug is pulled out from under you because the opportunity goes away. that jobs go overseas. I think there was a printing business in this area as well at one point. The story is fantastic. And then you get people who open plants like the Suncoke one, and it has just dirt raining down on you, and you're promised over and over again, this is going to be a great investment.

26:29Emily Jashinsky:This is exactly what the community needs. And now they're asking for it again with something that's not even tangible. It's one thing when you're like, okay, we are making this. We are making that. I can see it. I get it. Right now, you have, what, 35 % of the S &P 500 is these Mag 7 companies. It feels like a total bubble. And nobody even, other than people who are using - Propped up by golf money. Propped up by golf money. That's another good point. And there was a study that came out, horrifying study that came out the other day, where it showed, I'm actually just going to pull it up because it's worth mentioning.

27:03Emily Jashinsky:This is from a Google deep mind researcher. It's called the abstraction fallacy, why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness. Oh, wait, that's the wrong study. That's another good study. But there was a study that came out the other day that a huge proportion of LLM use is actually personal, something like 60%. It's not work-based. So people are using AI for conversational needs in their personal lives, AI therapy, conversation, and that sort of thing. How to fix the water heater? How to fix the water. No, I think it was actually not even just those types of questions, but actual personal questions.

27:43Emily Jashinsky:So anyway. How do I tell this person I'm not going to the happy hour? Right, yes. Questions like that. That seemed really personal, right? I don't know which happy hour you're planning on skipping. I say no to them all. But anyway. I don't need chat GPT's help with that. And yeah, the consciousness study too, important one, because the Google DeepMind researcher was arguing that LLMs can never be conscious, not in 10 years or 100 years. And it's like, this is the waters that we're swimming in right now. People are being expected to give tax break to these massive companies that want to push these technologies on you without producing juice that feels like it's worth the squeeze.

28:19Yeah. But yeah, Ossoff clearly sees a lane there. There are some efforts in the Georgia legislature to crack down on the data center build out. Those efforts have been stopped. And so Ossoff, clearly, who is running for reelection and is talked about as a presidential contender, assuming he wins. Here he says he's invested. He sent a letter to the Georgia power plant company or utility, which is now run by a Democrat right after that big win, asking them to investigate precisely how it is that AI data centers are impacting rising power bills. And the reporting out of this is that he sees a wide open lane now in Georgia, that he's going to be the guy who's going to take this mantle and say these data centers suck.

29:08And if he can drive down the Republican margins in rural Georgia by being the guy who is willing to say that. He's got a lock on Atlanta already. And he's very good at trying not to be a Democrat. Like, I don't know if you saw his speech the other day where he was going after Citizens United and corruption in politics. And he repeatedly said both sides are infected by this.

29:39Emily Jashinsky:Which is a big problem that a lot of centrist bents have. Yes. Centrist, yeah. Who are trying to be populist. They can't quite, like even in their act, they can't quite get it right. You have to be able to do that. Because their whole identity is that Democrats good, Republicans bad. Right. So any admission, both sides are bad at something. How could you possibly say that? And this is where Trump succeeded. Right. And this is where Bernie succeeded. Yeah. The other person who's trying to take this lane among Republicans is Ron DeSantis. So if Ron DeSantis runs in 2028, it actually makes me think he's more likely to run in 2028, that he's trying to own or pave actually this path of being an anti-data center Republican lawmaker and sort of pushing back on some of this stuff in Florida.

30:20Emily Jashinsky:So quietly making that his thing, possibly if you wanted to blow that up into a campaign attack against other Republicans, potentially a J.D. Vance, who's very close to some of these tech oligarchs or has been throughout his career. should this issue, I mean, the polling on this has shifted dramatically over the last year. We've reported on some of that here. So the tech companies, at the very least, need to do a better job of selling this to the public. That much is abundantly obvious. So Republicans now in the midterms have to own that Trump on what day two of his presidency did his major press conference with all of these AI oligarchs behind him promising to support their data center builds outs with the support of the federal government.

31:08Emily Jashinsky:And every Republican now has to face that part of the GOP agenda on the ballot. It's good because this is our chance. This is all we got against these guys. Now let's go ahead and turn to Mexico, Ryan. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with ai it all starts with your prompt from renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20 year over year you can literally type any prompt and put the ai to work it screens thousands of stocks builds a one-of-a-kind index and lets you back test it against the s p 500 then you can invest in a few clicks generated assets are like etfs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

32:02Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

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32:54Love bread, baked goods, and pasta, but not the way they make you feel? What if I told you there are macro-friendly options that don't taste like sawdust and sadness? Satisfying sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles that can stand up to your favorite chunky sauces. All delicious. Craveworthy and smart, each serving of Hero Bread has up to 19 grams of protein and 32 grams of fiber, and just 0-5 grams net carbs and 0 grams sugar. Hero Bread bakes with heart-healthy olive oil and delivers the soft, fluffy, flavorful experience you love. breakfast burritos, schmear-loaded bagels, real mac and cheese.

33:26Hero Bread bakes loaves, bagels, and tortillas that don't taste or feel like cardboard. Noodles that don't fall apart in hearty sauces. Plus, limited-edition small batch bakes like the 2-grams Net Carb Hero Croissant or 1-gram Net Carb Hero Cheddar Biscuit, handmade in a Sonoma-based French bakery. Shop now on hero.co. Use code IHEART for 10 % off. That's hero.co. Per serving, not a low-calorie food. Some products contain allulose. See nutrition info on hero.co over sodium and sugar content. Two CIA agents were in a car accident in Mexico, which conveniently ended with all of the evidence going up in flames.

34:04You can put up E1 here, the Washington Post and others reporting that this car accident involving two Americans was in fact connected to the CIA, that these were CIA officers dying in Mexico. The last time a high-profile American official died in Mexico would be the DEA agent in the 1980s, which sparked a massive cartel war as well as an HBO or Netflix series. Anybody who's seen Narcos knows the story of that one. So joining us to try to unpack what the heck is going on here, is Juan David Rojas. Juan David, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me back on, guys. Yeah, you got it.

34:52What happened here? Like, where did this happen, and what do we know about the circumstances? It's, I mean, yeah, we don't exactly know. This is the official story. So, in the border state of Chihuahua, in Mexico's north, the borders with Texas and New Mexico, on the way back from a counter-narcotics operation, there was a car accident. And the Chihuahua state authorities claimed that around 2 a.m., this convoy of around six vehicles, it was dark, apparently, presumably, and the vehicle carrying the two CIA agents, along with two Mexican officials, crashed and the four of them died. I mean, I will say it's possible.

35:42I mean, you know, that late at night, you're in a rural area, mountainous. I mean, it's kind of strange that there aren't really more details and kind of odd that all four of them died. I mean, hard to say. And what do we know about the operation? What kind of operation is going on here. Yeah, the official story is that these two CIA officers were training Mexican officials on how to use drones to destroy methamphetamine labs in rural areas of Chihuahua. That's the official story. And I will say that that's fairly normal in Mexico, that U.S. officials provide intelligence, support, training to their Mexican counterparts.

36:28This has been going on for decades under the current president, previous presidents. What's odd is that, you know, typically that would be, you know, the purview of like the CIA, even the FBI, although collaboration with the FBI typically isn't in person. Although, you know, we had Cash Patel with Ryan Wedding, the Snow King, and we could talk about that case as well. But what's odd here is that, hmm, CIA officers, Counter narcotics isn't actually the purview of the CIA. That's more like regime change and supporting wars abroad. But the reason for that is because last year Trump designated Mexican cartels, along with a host of all other kinds of drug trafficking organizations in the hemisphere, as foreign terrorist organizations.

37:13And that gives the CIA leeway now, you know, to treat these, you know, cartels as national security threats, terrorists and drastically expand operations in Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere, which has definitely happened.

37:30Emily Jashinsky:And Juan, you covered AMLO closely. My understanding is that AMLO had put safeguards in place essentially to shore up Mexican sovereignty when it came to potential CIA, DEA operations. And you had, what is it, AEI in Chihuahua doing this big drug bust. I'm reading from another great reporter, Yohan Grillo, right now, who says that the, let me just make sure I have the right part of this, officials initially gave mixed and confusing explanations as to what the agents were doing. U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson, himself a former CIA agent, broke the news by reporting, quote, the tragic loss of two U.S.

38:11Emily Jashinsky:embassy personnel. Others were claiming that the agents were doing training to the point that you made. AEI picked them up en route, but didn't go, they did not go on the operation, which is obviously a huge point in question right now. Claudia Scheinbaum is claiming she didn't know about the op or the role of U.S. agents, according to Yohan over at Crash Out, which everyone should subscribe to, and that it should be investigated. Chihuahua is ruled by the opposition party in this case. So how is this playing politically for Scheinbaum and with the Mexican public? It's such a sensitive question about the country, its sovereignty itself.

38:47Yeah, yeah. And it was funny, I was talking to Yohan yesterday, and what he was telling me is that, you know, we probably wouldn't have found out about this at all if just Ron Johnson, who I actually I know personally, by the way, wouldn't, you know, just blurt it out that, oh, hey, we had, you know, two over guys killed. He like tweeted this out on Sunday. You know, at the time he didn't specify that they were CIA. You know, later this this came out. But still, it's kind of curious that he felt compelled to just, you know, blurt this out. As far as how this is playing in Mexico, I mean, there's a lot of spinning going on.

39:22And again, I mean, I don't want to speculate too much. I think that would be irresponsible. But yeah, Scheinbaum, she says that they're going to get to the bottom of whether the two officers were there illegally. Any sort of foreign official, especially security official, needs to be authorized by the national government to be able to conduct any sort of assistance or support with officials inside of Mexico, including state officials. Chihuahua actually signed a security agreement with Texas in 2022. And this was authorized by the national government. But the fact that she says that, you know, she didn't know the Mexican government didn't know, a lot of people within the governing party are basically saying that the Chihuahua state government, who's run by the right wing ban party, like they invited these officials without permission.

40:23And that would be a huge scandal if these guys were there on tourist visas. I wouldn't put it past Maru Campos, the opposition governor. But, you know, it's also possible that they had permission. Hard to say. I mean, either way, I think the bottom line of this story is that, yeah, we kind of have boots on the ground now in Mexico. And whatever exactly happened here, I mean, you know, you can just connect the dots. What if, like, you know, next time it's confirmed that, you know, CIA officers were killed by one of the cartels? Like, you'll have Lindsey Graham and the other hawks advocating for us to go into Mexico, unless maybe we're still in Iran.

41:09And last question. Like, so let's it's hard to figure out whether or not, OK, the opposition governor allowed them in or Scheinbaum knew about it and doesn't want to say. how do their policies towards the cartels and towards American cooperation differ? The Scheinbaum versus her kind of right-wing opposition in that area.

41:30Emily Jashinsky:Good question. The great question and a hard question. And, you know, this is the sad thing. I'm basically convinced, unfortunately, I hate to say this, but I'm probably going to be on the show again in the future when we're discussing military operations in Mexico because that's just kind of Trumpism and Trump himself work. What's sad is that both the Trump administration and the Scheidemann administration have like objectively really good accomplishments on this front. I mean, first of all, you know, and increasingly this is Trump's most lonesome achievement, you know, border crossings through the southern border are like a 50 year low.

42:15But in addition to that, fentanyl flows have dropped like 50 percent and fentanyl seizures south of the border are at record highs. Scheinbaum is going really, really hard against the cartels, but she's doing it in a smart way. Independent analysis, like the economists have shown that under her first year, homicides have dropped at least 15 percent. And that's historic since the drug war in Mexico began in 2006. No other administration had managed to have homicides drop in its first year. She has this superstar security minister, Omar Garcia-García Griffuch, who himself was the victim of an attempted assassination by the CJNG.

43:00You know, was it two months ago? El Mencho, the head of the CJNG, was killed in this huge operation. And what's interesting about that is that, yeah, you know, we saw a lot online about subsequent violence, but that actually only lasted around like two days. They surprisingly were very capably able to contain subsequent retaliation pretty quickly. You know, it's not to say that, you know, everything's perfect all the time everywhere in Mexico. It is a complex situation, especially in different states. But there's definitely achievements that both governments can point to and can law in terms of their cooperation.

43:37Marco Rubio has done this. But unfortunately, a lot in MAGA and, you know, in Trump as well, they don't really seem to talk about this or recognize or realize it.

43:48Emily Jashinsky:So, I don't know. Well, and what Claudia Scheinbaum wants to avoid is we can put E2 up on the screen. This is a drop site headline. rare survivors of Pacific boat strikes allege U.S. forces kidnapped and tortured them. Everyone should go read this piece. And Ryan, you may have more to say about it, but it is really fascinating reporting. And for leaders in Latin America, what they don't want to look like is they're cooperating with a brutal American regime that's also encroaching on their sovereignty. So So Juan David Rojas, thank you as always for jumping on the show. We were excited to have you on to help us understand what on earth could possibly have been going on in Chihuahua over the last several days.

44:32Emily Jashinsky:Appreciate it. Anytime, guys. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20 % year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S &P 500.

45:05Then you can invest in a few clicks. generated assets are like etfs with infinite possibilities completely customizable and based on your thesis not someone else's go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped one percent bonus when you transfer your portfolio that's public.com slash podcast paid for by public investing brokerage services by open to the public investing inc member finra and sipc advisory services by public advisors llc sec registered advisor generated assets is an interactive analysis tool output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures the following ad is sponsored by Pets Best Insurance Services.

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46:19Emily Jashinsky:For terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services, LLC. $1 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age 0 to 10. Love bread, baked goods and pasta, but not the way they make you feel? What if I told you there are macro-friendly options that don't taste like sawdust and sadness? Satisfying sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles that can stand up to your favorite chunky sauces.

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47:24Shop now on Hero.co. Use code IHEART for 10 % off. That's hero.co. Per serving, not a low-calorie food. Some products contain allulose. See nutrition info on hero.co for sodium and sugar content. Voters in Virginia went to the polls to decide whether or not they were going to radically gerrymander the state. We can put up F1 here. They said, yes, let's do it by a very narrow margin. Democrats basically outvoted Republicans. What is it? What are we at? 40, 51, 49, something. It's really close. It's going to end up being very close.

47:59Emily Jashinsky:As of right now, it's 51.5 to 48.5. And it's going to take a congressional delegation that is currently six Democrats and five Republicans, which is about as fair as you can get in a state that went by like, what, six, seven points to Kamala Harris. And it's going to take it to 10, likely going to take it to 10 Democrats, one Republican. oh boy, what a wipeout. Put up F2 here. This is one of the... This is hilarious. It's a good tweet. Cameron Corduroy. I've read the name because you have a good tweet like this, a banger, you get your name read. It says, Welcome to the new rural subjects of the Arlingtonian Protectorate.

48:49All voters will be required to provide at least two sets of pronouns to vote in upcoming elections. And it's showing this wild district that's drawn where you have deep, deep blue Arlington voters who will then overwhelm this deep stretch of rural Virginia that rolls through the suburbs, out the highways there, and then deep into actual rural Virginia where there are many fewer people. Yeah, and many fewer Democrats.

49:22Emily Jashinsky:It looks like a lobster. If you're listening to this, it looks like a lobster. The tail is the Arlington area, and then the claws are like rural central and western Virginia, like Appalachia. The original term, as nerds in D.C. know, gerrymander, comes from a district that was drawn in like the 1700s to look like a salamander. Incredible. It looked like a salamander, and that's where gerrymander—I don't know where they got the jerry. You should call it jerry lobster. Yeah. But so this one looks this one actually looks almost rational compared to some. Some of the Maryland ones are wild. Yeah. And so the there was so much delightful back and forth over this, whether it was Republicans complaining about it.

50:10Yes. After having launched the war.

50:12Emily Jashinsky:So let's I think it's unclear who technically launched the war in the big picture. But this cycle, Republicans started with Texas. This is a mid cycle. Right. The gerrymandering fight goes literally back to like for 18th century. Yeah. We can't keep blaming the wigs. Right. No, wigs weren't even around yet. But the actual mid cycle, doing it mid cycle rather than every 10 years, that was Republicans doing it. um, uh, in Texas, but let's read Hakeem Jeffries, who's feeling his oats. He's never felt so good. Um, put up F F three. So this, this is from the democratic leader. It's expecting to turn this into becoming democratic speaker.

50:55He says last July, Donald Trump demanded that Texas drew five, draw five new Republican seats in the middle of a decade, igniting a chain reaction of corrupt MAGA state legislators attempting to rig the midterm elections while many expected Democrats to roll over and play dead. Guilty. I'm sure I did. We did the opposite. Democrats did not step back. We fought back. When they go low, we hit back hard. We won Prop 50 in California, which redrew California to give Democrats a bunch of new seats. Reclaimed a seat in Utah, true. They're going to get another Democratic seat there. Pushed back extremists in Ohio.

51:34They did block the Ohio stuff and halted toxic GOP efforts in Indiana, New Hampshire, Nebraska and Kansas. A lot of the credit for halting those efforts actually goes to Republican lawmakers who didn't want their own seats kind of redrawn. And some of them, just on principle, didn't want to see it happen and actually faced in Nebraska, like, significant threats of violence from Republican legislators faced threats of violence from Republicans and stood up to them to block this. He goes on, this war is not over. This one I want your take on. Next week, Ron DeSantis is hauling the Florida legislature back into a special session to redraw maps because Republicans know they're on the verge of an epic defeat in November.

52:17DeSantis is clearly more interested in illegal gerrymandering than lowering the high cost of living, blah, blah. If Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pickup opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump's dummy mander in Texas.

52:33Emily Jashinsky:That's from Hakeem Jeffries. He said dummy mander. Bro, I thought he ate. He did eat. We will aggressively target for defeat Mario Diaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Jimenez, Kat Kamnak, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, Corey Mills, and Brian Mast. No, not Corey Mills. We are prepared to take them all on and we are prepared to win. Maximum warfare everywhere all the time. So the one reason he's eating here is that it was a dummy mander in Texas in the sense that they misunderstood the depth of the support they had among Hispanic voters in Texas. They drew a bunch of districts that require them to have levels that are close to 2024.

53:15Emily Jashinsky:To keep them. To keep those seats. Yeah. So the way you do a gerrymander, you have a seat that's like 70-30, right? So you take it down to like 55-45. So you're going to win that one. And then you take the Republicans or the Democrats, whoever's doing it, and you move them into a district that previously the other party held. Move those voters over. And now you win both. That's why they call it. That's the goal. If you move these voters over here and they don't vote for you and the voters that you had over here are these, let's say they're Hispanic voters or others who voted for Trump but now hate Trump and they flip.

53:57Emily Jashinsky:Yeah. Now you lose both these seats. That that is a legit dummy bander. So now it would be illegal. The Florida Constitution is probably going to save DeSantis because it's very clear. In the Constitution, it says you can't gerrymander for political purposes. Yeah. Like straight. It's like very crystal clear. Maybe they'll do it anyway. So what they're arguing here is if you take these cats that we just listed down to 55 percent. Yeah. They're in trouble. We're going to overperform. We're going to beat them. Yeah. So go ahead. Make our day. Yeah. You feeling lucky? Which is also what Republicans are saying about like Corey Mills.

54:37Emily Jashinsky:Right, yeah. But no, they want to keep that seat. So I've seen it. There were a decent number of Republicans who were like, look, I told you that doing this Texas thing was a bad idea. It's wrong on principle, but also the politics is wrong. Trump has now once again started a needless war and he's losing it. It's one thing to start a war for no reason and win it. One little political gain. He's starting wars and losing. It became a proxy for who's willing to use their raw political power when the other side has seemingly, to voters, discarded with the principle. And that's understandable. I mean, it's completely understandable.

55:20Emily Jashinsky:Now you have Republicans waxing sanctimonious about how gerrymandering is anti-democratic and unprincipled. Barack Obama, like, congratulated Virginia Democrats on taking a step to uphold democracy, which is just hilarious. when you look at districts like the Arlingtonian, what was it, Arlingtonstan, whoever the great tweeter put up. That was a great one. But it's California, Texas. Now, Florida, Hakeem Jeffries using the, quote, illegal gerrymandering term is interesting because he's defending the gerrymandering in Virginia. Florida actually has a law in its constitution that you can't gerrymander.

56:02Emily Jashinsky:So whatever they do in Florida, they're going to have to be really careful about. for obvious reasons. Now, this could, my understanding is it's possible it could go down at the Virginia State Supreme Court shortly, but that it's unlikely it gets rejected by the Virginia State Supreme Court and that Democrats have picked up probably, what, five seats and then 10 in California. Republicans picked up somewhere around like 710 in Texas. So just absolutely duking it out for control of the House going forward. But I think that's what it's really become is just this proxy for failing the Michelle Obama test.

56:37Emily Jashinsky:When they go low, we go high. We all now, like the base, as Americans, we all want political parties, not you and I, but everyone wants the political party to fail that test, to say, when you go low, we punch back harder. Isn't that what Hakeem Jeffries said? It's funny to hear, like to read that post in Hakeem Jeffries' voice, which is just like impotent. But speaking of which, Ryan, we should get this from the president pro tempore of the Senate of Virginia. We got to put this post up on the screen. F4. She's been on fire. L. Louise Lucas. Yeah. I have the utmost respect for Senator Cain and Senator Warner, but we do not need, quote, coaching on redistricting coming from a cuck chair in the corner.

57:20Emily Jashinsky:How about you all stay focused on the fascist in the White House and let us handle redistricting in Virginia. Oh, to one. And if you look at Louise Lucas's Twitter profile picture, she is an elderly woman. So it's even funnier to hear her talking about the cock chair. It's incredible. Um, no, it was crazy. Uh, well done. She like, you should just scroll through her whole Twitter feed. Is it good? The whole thing is good. At one point I can't find it, But she said something like, hey, look, when when Republicans gerrymandered all of the black voters into one district, they said we should be grateful for gifting us this representative district.

58:01She's like, well, now we're putting all of you into one district. Right. So thank us for it. You're going to love it. See how you like it.

58:08Emily Jashinsky:The other thing is, you know, you never have a push for unilateral disarmament. So it's just an arm. We're in a gerrymandering arms race. To Louise's point, we're in a gerrymandering arms race. Maybe that wasn't her. I think it was, though. I can't find it. Either way, not just in Virginia, but across the country. And Ryan insisted that we put up F5. This is a classic post on X from 2019. Ryan, why don't you go ahead and tell us what we're seeing here? oh the old reaping and sowing that's right uh it's incredible um the quote is haha fuck yeah yes republicans in virginia oh so yeah yeah the tweet is me sowing haha fuck yeah yes me reaping well this fucking sucks what the fuck yeah no shout out to the golden sir screaming but calm reaping great sowing not so great yeah never but that's the reaping and the sewing will continue until morale improves and morale does not seem poised to improve.

59:09No, no, indeed. I have one other little nugget of news to get out for people before we move on from this one. So in, if you've been following Philadelphia's congressional race, it's an, it's an open contest. We had Chris Rabb on the program before, before he, before we had him on, And since we've had him on, he's picked up like endorsements from like everybody, from like Jamie Raskin, Justice Democrats, like real progressive kind of consolidation behind him.

59:42Emily Jashinsky:He's a he's grim momentum, breaking points momentum. Um, he's, uh, endorsed by Philly's, um, DSA chapter and he's running up against, uh, Sharif Street, um, who, uh, is more of the kind of establishment, uh, pick, um, like kind of a legacy dynasty guy, um, with a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, ethical challenges you could say. And Alice Stanford, who is one of, who was a leading candidate, who has gotten more than a million dollars in support from this super PAC called 314 Action, which I previously reported back in 2024, APAC was using it as a shell to funnel money into some congressional campaigns.

1:00:29It claims that it supports scientists and doctors. And it does often support scientists and doctors, But usually to the tune of tens of thousands or maybe low six figures, it's extremely rare that 314 action has more than a million dollars unless they're working with APAC. APAC is not publicly endorsing anyone in this race because they're so toxic. But people have suspected because of that 314 action support that Stanford is getting APAC money. And they also then were like, oh, she's totally getting APAC money. When she was asked why it is that she is unwilling to say that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, and she said that using the G word is similar to using the N word.

1:01:19And people are like, I'm sorry, what? So she was actually, what? What? So she was asked again about this last week. And she said there are a lot of Israelis who get very hurt feelings when you accuse them of having of committing genocide. So this is like her campaign line that she's not going to say that Israel is committing a genocide because it could hurt the feelings of the people carrying out the genocide. So we do have some news on that. Finally, went through her went through her FEC report and found nearly$30 ,000. I think we're going to find more if we keep looking. Nearly$30 ,000 of contributions that flowed through Democracy Engine.

1:02:05Democracy Engine is the payment processing platform that APAC uses. And so that's how you can now confirm Alistandford is getting APAC money. So what they do is they'll send out emails to their major donors and say, privately, here are the candidates that we are supporting. Please make a contribution through this Democracy Engine portal. And then sometimes on the FEC report, it shows up as having been funneled through the Democracy Engine portal. And so thankfully, in her latest report, we can see a little over$27 ,000 having run through Democracy Engine and from candidates who have in the past given huge amounts of money to AIPAC and to AIPAC SuperCup.

1:03:00So case closed. It's done. She's getting APAC money. She said in her recent town hall where she was where she made this comment about Israelis hurt feelings that she's not getting any APAC money. So that's a lie. She is getting APAC money.

1:03:17Emily Jashinsky:Good stuff for him. Yeah. Well, so we'll so this is going to be an interesting race. And we'll see if Philadelphia Inquirer actually shocked shocked the world by endorsing Chris Rapp. I saw that. Because that's like, they're not known. Interesting. That's like kind of progressive leaning. But anyway, we'll see how that race goes. Well, that does it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. Thank you so much. If you want a premium subscription, breakingpoints.com is where you can go to support our independent journalism. Help us keep going. And you get, well, actually Ryan has declared the Friday show is totally free.

1:03:51Emily Jashinsky:But you do get the show every morning in your inbox in full, which is really how it's meant to be watched. But if you pay, you also get it free. There you go. Yes. Ryan, also we wanted to mention, if you find yourself in the area or you want to travel, Michael Parenti, his memorial is coming up. You can go to eventcreate.com. That is where it's in Berkeley? Yes, it's in Berkeley. Do we have the precise details? It's April 25th. Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. Yes. so check that out 2 to 3 p.m. at the Unitarian Universal Church Saturday, April 25th if you're in the Bay Area a memorial for Michael Parenti.

1:04:36Emily Jashinsky:All right, we'll see ya.

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