7/22/26: Trump Imposes New Canada Tariffs, Jon Stewart Defends DSA, Whitmer Hot Mic

27:53You think it's dumb, but you're allowed to say it. And by the way, again, what's frustrating about this is the Arctic Frost split screen, which found recently, I mean, Chuck Grassley is releasing these documents that show So Jack Smith totally abusing his power, knowingly abusing his power, likely perjuring himself about how he abused his power to spy on Republican members of Congress. What's even worse than that, and it's gotten zero coverage in the corporate press, is that they were spying on the conservative movement apparatus. So things like Turning Point USA, love it or hate it, they were being surveilled by Jack Smith and the FBI at that point in time, the DOJ in that point of time.

28:30We're talking about dozens of conservative groups. So we're talking about Republicans' conversations with the press, CBS News, part of the Smith dragnet. And there's no outrage about that. There is outrage about it on the right. But then you see similar abuses of civil liberties starting to creep into the conversation or potential for similar abuses of civil liberties creep into the conversation. And there's a really easy first principle to just apply across the board to stop treating your domestic enemies who are actually just domestic ideological opponents as enemies. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's wrong to do in principle.

29:08And then also in practice, the other thing that this McCarthyism did is it destroyed militant democratic organized labor, like actual democratic unions that represented the workers and replaced them with either boss run or mob-run corrupt unions, which then were very quick kind of to sell out their workers, which fueled the de-industrialization of the United States. So again, if you like what happened to the United States in the second half of the 20th century and the destruction of our middle class, then you should cheer McCarthyism and you should want it to come back. If you think that maybe you liked having a middle class, then you should be aghast that they're looking back at this and celebrating.

29:55But you shouldn't be surprised because these are the people that profited off of the smashing of the middle class. So of course they want to keep the boot on the neck of working people. It's also just going to backfire as it's done in the past. I mean, maybe you have short-term gains, but in the long term you end up with growing populism like you see exactly right now. And you have the CEO or the owner of Flock out there saying deflock activists are comparable to Antifa. Why is he doing that? Why is he making a distinction between the ACLU and the EFF? He's doing it because he's trying to send a signal to the Trump administration, which is putting things out like NSPM 7, to say people who are taking on Flock cameras, even if they're just making maps of where the Flock cameras are, are comparable to Antifa.

30:47Take it seriously. This is abolish the police. This is Antifa. And so it becomes a really powerful sort of like incantation. That's not it's not going to end well for anyone. You know, a lot of that rage is bubbling up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to transition to our guest, Kyle Blomquist, who's going to talk about the Haley Stevens, Abdul El-Sayed race and also his own race against Republican Jack Bergman, who apparently might even live in Louisiana. We got to dig into that one. That's the rumor we're going to dig into that one. Yet he represents the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. All right, let's move over to Kyle.

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32:43They recommended Electrolux, and we love it. Advanced cleaning features with a massive dryer that gets everything dried the first time? Yes, please! Sounds like another perfect match from the Grand team. Shop GrandAppliance.com So the politics of Michigan in a curious turn of events seem to revolve now primarily around how supportive you are of the state of Israel and of the state of the data center build out. Michigan Governor Meg Whitmer here, in a clip that has circulated pretty widely, is seen getting kind of to the heart of this question when it comes to data centers. We're used to people saying, oh no, I'm doing it anyway.

33:29We're used to people saying F no and then doing it anyway is what is what she was caught on that hot mic saying. And F no is what what people are saying around the state to the build out of data centers. And and here is why we can we can let's put up F2 just so you get a sense of what it what it sounds like to live near one of these things.

34:03So joining us now to discuss is Kyle Blomquist, who's a Democratic candidate for Congress in Michigan's first district, which is that Upper Peninsula part that for some reason stretches into another state. Part of it looks like it. If you look at the map, it really should be Wisconsin. But it's not. And apparently it makes up almost 50 percent of the entire state, this district. Kyle, thanks so much for being here to walk us through some of this. Thank you so much for having me. By the way, do you have any idea why that is part of Michigan and not Wisconsin? Like if you look at them, do you know the history?

34:37Yeah, it was actually a war with, it was called the Toledo War. It was between Michigan and Ohio. And the consolation prize was the entirety of the Upper Peninsula. That's amazing. We made out pretty good. That's a great, yeah, it's a great prize. I have to go read up on the Toledo War after this. I was telling Ryan before the segment he would absolutely love the UP. So maybe he'll get up there sometime. Yeah, I've never been. We'd love to have this. Yeah, just describe it a little bit for us. Like, what is this area of the country like a little bit? You know, I think that it's deeply rural. It's gorgeous.

35:09You know, we're the only congressional district that touches more than one Great Lake, and we touch three of them. It's 44 % of Michigan for a reason. It's deeply rural. It's got a lot of its untapped potential in terms of its beauty, its natural beauty. It's the reason why most U-Pers and Northern Michiganders live where they live. And I think that, unfortunately, it also opens us up to a lot of exploitation. And I think that's what we're seeing with the data center issue, is we have an abundance of land and water. and a lot of these AI data center companies want to come here and exploit that.

35:52And unfortunately, the state of Michigan has kind of opened up the floodgates to that by providing tax breaks to these companies. Yeah, and you saw the comment from Whitmer there, clearly kind of basically supportive of this, no matter what local people are saying. What has been, how many data center fights are there in your district? And where are your other Democratic opponents? Where's your Republican, the incumbent opponent on it? And how have you seen it affect your race? You know, one thing about data centers is it's a unifying issue. When you see what happened in Saline Township, where Governor Whitmer was saying, you know, where it used to be people saying F no and doing it anyways, that's exactly what they did in Saline Township.

36:36Saline Township was faced with the rezoning of around 600 acres of farmland to industrial use just so that they could put up one of these hyperscale data centers. And all of the people of Saline Township, whether they voted Democrat, Republican, Independent, or otherwise, they came out and they said F no, quite literally. And the township board said no, and that should have been the end of it. But instead, these data center companies used their considerable means to threaten an exclusionary zoning lawsuit onto this small township, a township with an operating budget, I believe around$1 million.

37:13And so they were faced with the option of either having all that money sitting on their chest and suffocating their community, or they were going to be given a gift, which was, I believe it was$10 million or so for a community center. And what everybody saw as part of that was how rapacious those data centers were being in terms of entering communities, overriding the combined will of the population to do whatever the hell they wanted with our communities and our environment. And then when you see Governor Whitmer there digging a hole alongside Sam Altman, you know, effectively digging the grave of local control, I think that that's becoming a unifying issue.

37:53And unfortunately, it's a unifying issue that neither of the other candidates on the Democratic Party side or the Republican incumbent or his competition wants to take on as forcefully as we need to. Right now in America, we have something like 12 times the number of data centers that China has, and we're supposed to believe that we're in some kind of AI race with China. And if that's somehow physically contained by its infrastructure, I have to imagine we're doing pretty good and that we don't need to be invading communities against their will. Yeah, I wanted to ask how this is affecting the politics, because obviously Gretchen Whitmer is a Democrat, and you were just laying out some of these dynamics that both major parties seem unresponsive to the concerns of people on the ground.

38:36So as you are talking to people on the ground, rank and file voters, normal people. How are they seeing this through a political lens or not through a political lens? And how is it affecting some of these elections, like the one that you're running in for Democrats? And just again, like for voters who are trying to decide who they want to cast a ballot for in November? Well, tell you what, when you're running as a Democrat, you know, when you're running as a Democrat in Northern Michigan, you're always going to be at somewhat of a disadvantage because of the partisan identity. You know, we don't speak through party.

39:10In our race, our campaign speaks through class. And it is the working class that's unified against these data centers. And I have absolutely no hesitation to calling out BS on either side and calling out Gretchen Whitmer and the way that she's operating against our best interest. She does the same thing when her administration has now issued permits for the Line 5 pipeline tunnel going through the Straits of Mackinac. That is an infringement on a lot of people's wishes here in northern Michigan, but also our treaty obligations to our native brothers and sisters. So it's interesting because the dynamic as I see it is this, is it's tough to be a Democrat while one of the most prominent Democrats in the state is doing what she's doing on behalf of big tech.

40:01But at the same time, it gives me an opening to people who vote differently than me or are independent or looking for something different because they see that I'm absolutely willing to call that BS out on both sides. It's a bridge issue in that way because I think really what people are tired of is party loyalty at a time when both parties seem to be primarily loyal to their donors. There's a bit of a catch-22 when it comes to running as an independent in this country. Like if you run as an independent, but there's also a somewhat credible Democrat on the ballot, and they cleave off like, you know, 15, 20 percent of the vote, then it's going to be enough for the other major party candidate to move first past the post.

40:47The way that Bernie Sanders handled that in Vermont, so what he does is he runs in the Democratic primary, he wins it, and then he rejects the nomination. and so then the Democrats can't put somebody on the ballot. I wonder what, have you looked into what Michigan's law is around this question? Like, would you be able to win the nomination and then reject it and say, you know what, I'm actually going to run as an independent? Because I imagine in the Upper Peninsula there, there are a lot of people who would agree with your politics, but the brand of the Democratic Party is just so toxic that it's going to be hard for them to overcome it.

41:21So really, the election law here in Michigan is such that you have to have more petition signatures if you're running on an independent line compared to one of the two major parties. You have to go through that process. I believe that that deadline, I believe it was July 14th. So I don't believe it's possible to go the route that Bernie Sanders has gone. But, you know, as as the DSA candidate, I'm running through the Democratic Party like most candidates do. And it's funny because most of the things I get when people are saying, well, aren't you afraid that people are going to call you a socialist?

41:59One, I have no I have no problem with that label. But two, there's something far worse that you just tapped into than being called a socialist here in northern Michigan. That's becoming being called a Democrat. is because we've seen so many places in this country where the Democratic Party has basically thrown up their hands and they said, we're not going to participate in those districts. And we feel absolutely forgotten. It's the reason why our material conditions continue to deteriorate because they have just decided that these districts are not worth running in. But I can tell you what, it's a lot cheaper to run and win a race in a weakened Democratic Party in a place like northern Michigan than it is to try to compete in a deep blue district like down in Illinois or out in California where you have$30 million flying around.

42:46Yeah. And so do you anticipate, I mean, you're talking to people. So what's your, do you anticipate serious challenges with a DSA affiliation? I mean, AOC said something interesting over the last couple of days that she wasn't like raised in a family that was steeped in leftist politics, something like that. basically a nudge to talk more like regular people and perhaps less like some of the old tweets that get thrown front and center that some of the candidates have had to bat away in their successful races like Dario-Liza Chevalier in cases like those. So is that sticking? I mean, your point is really important about how it's worse to be called like a Democrat than it is to be called a socialist, but in a place that you just mentioned is pretty independent-minded.

43:31What's your, you know, you said you don't mind the label. What's your experience with people maybe asking you about the label, if they do at all, and then, you know, kind of talking through it? Well, you know, the label is something that's there. You know, what I explain to people is there's nothing dogmatic behind it. You know, when I was a kid, I was baptized Catholic. And they told me, all right, you're Catholic. You're going to go to catechism every Wednesday, and you're going to learn what that means. And you're going to be kind of, you're going to backfill that label with the belief. same thing when I left high school.

44:02I left high school in 2004 in a rural, you know, conventionally red district. Most of my friends and family were Republicans. So what was I? I was a Republican, right? When you gain distance and you start to divorce your political, your personal ideology from whatever political label you have, it's very quickly that you become rightfully distrustful of this two-party system and the way that we label people, the way that we take three-dimensional individuals and we place them first on one dimension, which is, or supposedly is a left-right spectrum. And then worse yet, we put them into a binary between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

44:39And the Republican Party seems to be moving consistently further to the right, where the Democratic Party is consistently inconsistent, that it has an incoherent platform for the most part. What I'm finding is I don't walk into rooms and just pound my chest and wave around a read book or nothing like that. What I'm doing is I'm walking into those rooms and I'm using class language to talk about all the things that we have in common, to talk about all the ways that our system is abusing all of us, regardless of how we vote. That once the dust settles on our elections, we're all on the menu and we need to start working together.

45:15That if you sell some of your finite time on this earth for a dollar, at any point you stop the system, abuses you, jails you, and forgets you, then congratulations, you're in the American working class. And by that definition it's 90 of us and we have a tremendous amount of agency and power so long as we start looking at our neighbors like allies rather than adversaries and i'll tell you what this partisan shit like this this stuff is is fake this stuff is is there's nothing real behind it what's real is when there's an ice storm or there's a uh an erosion event here which are happening more and more because of our you know man-made climate change or death in the family like that's what's real.

45:53When somebody comes out and they already have their chainsaw clearing your road before you get out there, even though you vote differently, it's when there's a meal train for the death of the family and doing those sorts of things. That's how we are as human beings naturally. And all this other stuff is pumped into us to keep us divided and keep us from pulling the cart in the same direction. And speaking of ignoring different parts of the state, Haley Stevens, a Senate candidate, has gotten a lot of criticism up in the UP and elsewhere for focusing her campaign almost exclusively on the Detroit kind of metro area and not leaving that part of Detroit.

46:27I wanted to play a little clip of her talking about, well, just roll this and ask you about it. Let's play F3. Of course, we do have this rally tomorrow with Sanders and AOC for your opponent. There are a lot of people in the Democratic Party that are looking for that progressive kind of movement. Yeah. How would you try to bring those people in? I'm just curious if, you know, Mr. Sanders is willing to acknowledge the great work that I did alongside President Obama on the auto rescue. You know, he had just himself gotten into the United States Senate. And I don't remember him being around for the auto rescue.

47:03But I certainly remember our sleeves being rolled up to save the 200 ,000 Michigan jobs, to stand up for working people and to do the right thing. And I'm also really proud of the record that I have. Interestingly, I think it's kind of a low bar being set for that. That clip has gotten a lot of praise as it's been circulated. But if you listen to his clothes, it's kind of a swipe at Bernie Sanders for not being in the room on the auto rescue in 2008, 2009. But I'm curious how Haley, how you think Haley Stevens is is playing up in the Upper Peninsula versus her opponent, Abdul El-Sayed. Well, I can tell you this much, and this might be the worst kept secret in the world, but before I was ever a candidate in this race, I was a believer in Abdul El-Sayed.

47:53And I met Abdul in, I think it was May or June of 2025. He had come up to the Upper Peninsula. He had come up to Escanaba. He was making the rounds even then to the deeper, darker places of our state, the places that are often forgotten. And he was having these conversations, same conversations that I'm having, telling people that they deserve more from their government. And he's willing to go to those contended places and have those difficult conversations, even in rooms that might not be predisposed to agreeing with him. That's what the work is. And Abdul seems to understand that that's what the work is.

48:29And I can tell you this much is I have never seen a Haley Stephen yard sign in all my travels here in northern Michigan. I painted this district with three coats by now. I see a lot of Abdul signs. I talk to a lot of people and whether there are volunteers or people that are coming to our events, it's Abdul Buttons all the way. I can tell you that every single time I see a pole and they have the splits out and they're looking at various different regions, the north seems like it's solidly for Abdul. I think that the way that Abdul has been running his race is honest. It's authentic. I think everybody can see that.

49:08And I think it's playing well. And then the question, the outlying question is only whether or not the amount of money that is being pumped into this race from outside sources is going to have the desired impact to mislead people into believing that Ms. Stevens is the better candidate. Finally, as we talked about at the very top here, Israel is playing a huge role in the Stevens-Abdul al-Sayed race. rule f4 is like this is a little bit of an interview between abdul al-sayed um and alex wagner so no funding to ensure the survival or future of the jewish state well i turn that back around on you alex and say why is it our responsibility to ensure that i i'm just asking because i think no i mean but like but why is it why is it understanding i think but hear me out hear me out why is that the essential frame from which we work like why is it assumed that the united states ought to be in the business of backstopping a foreign government like i'm just saying, like, I don't want ill will for Jewish Israeli people at all.

50:06I really don't. I just want equal rights to peace, dignity, self-determination for all people. But the notion that somehow our tax dollars ought to secure the interests of a foreign government, like this is the United States and our own kids don't have good schools. And you're telling me that that should be a primary concern over there? How is this argument kind of playing out in the Upper Peninsula? Well, I can tell you this much. I think that what we've seen is the entanglement between the United States government and the government of Israel, not only at a time where they're committing a genocide in Gaza, when they have illegal annexation of pogroms in the West Bank, when we have incursions into Lebanon, when we're getting ourselves entangled into a broader regional conflict now in Iran that's starting to hit our pocketbooks, there's not a single person that I've talked to, Democrat, Republican, Independent, or otherwise, who believes that we should be sending our tax dollars to a foreign government, like Abdul said, to be able to backstop their ability to perpetrate violence against their neighbors, to be able to starve, brutalize a community that is mostly children.

51:11And I can tell you this much is personally, I want my community's needs met. I believe in Medicare for all. I believe in the guaranteeing healthcare. And as an architect, I believe in guaranteeing housing. I believe that we should have housing first policy in this country. But if there's one thing that physically compelled me to run in this race is I was sitting up in the upper peninsula halfway between some of it and the rest of it. And I was watching on my phone as my tax dollars, murdered children that looked like my children. And that's not, that's, that's not a, it's not a something I say lightly.

51:43I quite literally with a tired mind one night looked at my phone in an instant that'll last the rest of my life. I saw my own son's face on a child in Gaza. And by an accident of their birth, that child was dead and my child was sleeping soundly in the next room. And I found it impossible to believe that on either side of the aisle, that there was a consensus that we should continue to fund that right-wing Israeli government during a time when they're committing those sorts of atrocities in the name of the beautiful Jewish people. And this idea that we can't separate, that we can't detach the Israeli the government from the Jewish people writ large is bizarre, and I reject it wholeheartedly.

52:25Well, Kyle Blomquist, candidate for Michigan's 1st Congressional District. The primary is on August 4th. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks a lot. Take care. Talk to you later. All right, that was Kyle Blomquist. That's our show. But of course, we can't leave without getting Emily's review of Sunday Night Fish Concert at Meriwether Post Pavilion. We throw this up. This is us at the show. That's actually my Uncle Archie in the background. He was awesome. But he's great. Oh, my gosh. He was telling me the best stories. I bet. He's from outside Allentown. Yeah, Kutztown, Pennsylvania. Good stuff.

53:01He ran for state rep in 2006 in a heavily Republican area. It lost by like 110 votes or something like that. You think we didn't talk about this at length? Amazing. Of course we did. Hopefully not while the music was playing. They call that chomping. We were chomping. Uh-oh. Anyway, so what did you think of the show? Smells were bad. Vibes were good. That's my basic recap. You know, I'm not a jam band person, but I can concede that jam bands are usually great musicians, and it's just genuinely good music, like objectively fun music to listen to. It was a beautiful night. So an awesome guy came up to us, said he loved the show.

53:43There you go. That was fun. And definitely a lot of Breaking Points viewers. I think so. Open-minded people there. Yeah, it was chill. It was a beautiful night. We had the sun setting to the side of the stage. So it was lots of nice people. Emily and Phil stayed for the first set. And then you left a set break. But did you catch any of the second set with the light show or anything? No, we didn't. There was a light show. I didn't even realize there was going to be a light show. Nobody told me there was a light show. I'm just hearing of this. I told Phil. Yeah, I was like, you've got to catch the light show.

54:12You probably wanted to get out of it. You missed a, the second set started with a 40-minute Karini. Okay, we probably made the right decision. You don't want to miss the 40-minute Karini. We went and got McFlurries, to be honest. All right, well, so next time, maybe they'll be in Hampton Fall Tour. I mean, again, if the weather's nice, it's like just a great time. You can't have a bad time. No, you actually couldn't have a bad time, especially if you're not like in the middle of the throngs, although we kind of were in the middle of the throwing. So, you know, people are getting up to different stuff at the pitch concert.

54:48People certainly are. Beach balls bopping around. Lots of kids. We pointed that out. Lots of families. Lots of kids. Yeah, there were. It was a fun time. I get it. I get it. I'll say that. Thanks for the invite. It was tons of fun. It really was fun. Thanks for coming. And your family's fun, so it's always cool to be with the Grims. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. All right, until next time, we'll see you guys soon.

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