ABC endures massive boycott amid Kimmel cancellation

25:21Brian Tyler Cohen:Uplift Desk helps you move more and sit less, which does wonders for your posture, circulation and overall mood. I'm way more productive when I can easily switch between sitting and standing. That keeps me alert and energized and creative. And what I love most is how customizable it is. There's over 200 ,000 desk combinations to match your space, style and workflow. What I find most helpful about my Uplift Desk is actually their wire and cable management solutions. There are so many cables around my desk and I'm kind of a lunatic about making sure that everything is neat. Uplift Desk makes that so much easier than any other desk I've ever had.

25:54Brian Tyler Cohen:Your workday does not have to leave you feeling worn out. Go to upliftdesk.com slash btc and use our code btc to get four free accessories, free same-day shipping, free returns, and an industry leading 15-year warranty that covers your entire desk plus an extra discount off your entire order. That's U-P-L-I-F-T-D-E-S-K dot com slash BTC for this exclusive offer. It's only available through our link. I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Raskin. Congressman, thanks for joining me. Delighted to be with you. So you had the opportunity to question Kash Patel, the FBI director, during a hearing today in Congress.

26:29Brian Tyler Cohen:there was a lot of focus on the fact that he had staked so much of his reputation, so much of his credibility on this idea that he was going to be the guy to come in and expose all of this, all of this wrongdoing as it relates to Epstein that had been covered up by these deep state operatives, only to then basically become the very problem that he criticized for so long. Did anything in his testimony give the impression that he is, that he's going to be true to his word that he gave when he was a podcaster, as opposed to what it seems like he's doing right now, which is just perpetuating a cover-up.

27:04No, he's in full-blown cover-up mode. And it is really mind-blowing because I confronted him with just video snippets of him saying, this is totally within the control of the FBI director. He's got the black bag. He can release it. Put on your big boy pants and show us who the pederasts are. And I just turned around and I said, so what do you say? Are you going to put on your big boy pants and show us who the pederasts are? And then there was a lot of hemming and hawing and kind of pointing fingers at the federal courts. And their whole deflection ploy has been to say, well, we asked the courts to release the grand jury material, which is a totally irrelevant distraction.

27:50The government has just mountains of evidentiary data, investigative data, data that they've gotten. And then they're going and saying, we want the grand jury data from the old Maxwell and Epstein files, which were about Maxwell and Epstein, not about everybody else. So those judges, not only did they say, no, we're not going to release this under 6E, you've not shown reason why, they also kind of called them out saying this is a deflection because you have a much greater mass of material that you could just release on your own and you don't need this stuff. And it's pretty extraneous to what the public wants to see.

28:36Brian Tyler Cohen:Back a few months ago or years ago, whenever he said it, when Kash Patel came out and said that really this this the buck stops with the FBI director, who, of course, was not him at the time. But was he telling the truth that the buck does stop with the FBI director, which would in turn suggest that he right now, as the FBI director, has the power to release exactly the files that he's claiming that that he has no power to release? Yes, overwhelmingly, the buck stops with the FBI director. In other words, the greater mass of material out there is within the control of the FBI director. Everything they found when they went to Epstein's house and they were in his safe, all of the computers and the memos and the telephones and the photographs and the videos and so on.

29:20And they're focused on a very tiny percentage of the overall materials, which was grand jury material leading up to the indictment of Epstein or the indictment of Maxwell. Again, a small fraction of everything the government has and everything that the people want to see. So there were a number of false distractions like that that he engaged in, which says to me he's really just flipped over. He was demanding it. They thought it was to their political advantage to say, we want to come clean on everything. We're going to do it on day one and so on. And then when they get in and he's deployed a thousand FBI agents to pour over the material to look for Trump's name and to make a mark there and to redact it, then that's when they come back and completely flip over to 180 degree U-turn and say, nothing to see here.

30:13We're not interested in this anymore.

30:14Brian Tyler Cohen:Is there anything to suggest that the FBI under Kash Patel's leadership is working toward transparency or accountability? Or does the sole project, the sole goal, the sole focus of this whole thing, is this just a protection racket for Trump? I think it is. I mean, a great example is he repeatedly testified to the Senate during his confirmation hearing that there would be no political retaliation or retribution against people in the FBI. And yet there's all kinds of statements now by people with FBI that that's precisely what he's doing. And he's forcing huge numbers of FBI agents out. Experienced, talented, awarded FBI agents are being pushed out of the department, fired, sacked, demoted, told they've got to leave.

31:05Why? Simply because they worked on the January 6th investigation and Trump wants them out or they worked on the Russia investigation, the investigation of Russian infiltration and attacks on the 2016 election, the 2020 election, the 2024 election. And so when all these people have been targeted for removal, so he's doing precisely what he said he wouldn't do, which is turning the FBI into an instrument of political revenge and retaliation against people.

31:36Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, almost worse than that is even in the event of the Charlie Kirk shooting. I mean, he was live. He was basically live tweeting it and putting on his podcaster hat and live tweeting the thing, offering up fake information, information that was ultimately proven completely false because he can't get out of this frame of just being this political commentator. So to what extent is this harming the credibility of the agency that he's supposed to be leading right now? Well, yeah, and that might just be general incompetence and inexperience on his part. I mean, he's, you know, one of the only people who ever became FBI director with no experience ever at the FBI.

32:20I mean, he was writing children's books about Donald Trump, about King Donald and about the, you know, the wacky wizard Cash who protects King Donald. I mean, this is the level of comic book fantasy world he lived in. And so suddenly he's head of the nation's premier law enforcement organization. And as you say, he thinks he's still some kind of, you know, just online troll or blogger or something and starts, you know, live tweeting things he's hearing from afar about the investigation. And he had to retract a number of his statements.

33:00Brian Tyler Cohen:Can you talk about his his unwillingness to respond in any of the correspondence that you had sent to him over the last eight months? Well, we've been trying to raise all kinds of things, especially about the personnel matters and the ongoing Stalinist style purge of FBI agents. You know, they're using polygraphs basically to cross examine FBI agents as to their political loyalty to Donald Trump. And so we've been trying to raise these things and get an answer from him. And we've simply not gotten an answer. He doesn't even send me form letters saying it's been received. It just goes out into the ether.

33:37So I said, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. Of course, we were all limited to our five minute question spot and they didn't want to do another round or a third round. I mean, we could have gone for a long time on this. So we're going to have to get some answers from Attorney General Bondi when she comes in that we never got from Kash Patel. Of course, I think we did have more substantive exchanges than took place over in the Senate when he just started screaming and yelling over the senators. He did some of that today, but I think that his team must have told him that that's not a very effective communications tactic for the director of FBI.

34:13Brian Tyler Cohen:I know this is a little bit of an unfair question to ask you to get into Kash Patel's head. But what do you presume Kash Patel, the podcaster, would say if he saw an FBI director being asked these questions point blank, very simple questions about about the Epstein scandal, about, you know, this this effort to basically bury any any accountability or transparency? What do you think that he would say if he was still in his capacity as a political commentator? He'd say that's an FBI director in full-blown cover-up mode who's covering up for the deep state. He would definitely say that. We just learned from the four CEOs of major banks like J.P.

34:59Morgan that there were$1.5 billion worth of financial transactions that they identified as suspicious activity going through Epstein's various accounts. That doesn't sound like, you know, just sort of a prostitution ring on the corner. One and a half billion dollars. I mean, my colleagues across the aisle went crazy for the SARS reports about Hunter Biden, which were around 20 or 25 million dollars. And here we've got a billion and a half dollars going through this international child sex ring. And we tried to get a subpoena of these bank CEOs and every Republican, except to his great credit, Representative Massey from Kentucky, voted against it.

35:48But Massey voted with all the Democrats to subpoena these documents. Jamie Dimon released a statement right after I first raised it saying, you know, essentially he'd be happy to comply. And they're sorry they ever had anything to do with Epstein. So, you know, I think the banks would welcome an opportunity to come clean with all the information they've got.

36:09Brian Tyler Cohen:On the Massey front, to your point, he is the only Republican who seems to be engaged in any effort toward transparency. What is the sense among your Republican colleagues who are actively voting to suppress transparency as it relates to a notorious pedophile and the people that he surrounded himself with? I mean, these these were people who during the campaign were perfectly content to exploit this issue if it meant they can derive some political benefit. But now that they actually have the power to substantiate their own promises from September and October and every month before that, now they're the ones actually perpetuating the cover up themselves.

36:48Well, in fairness, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace still have their names on the discharge petition. And we added one more vote on the Democratic side when Jerry Connolly's seat was filled by Congressman Wackenshaw. So now we just need one more Republican, if my math is correct, but one or two more Republicans to add their name to the discharge petition. And we will be able to put a bill on the floor, which will have to pass overwhelmingly saying release all the files, because even the people who aren't signing the discharge petition say that they would vote for that. But you're right.

37:26I mean, the truth of the matter is that there's a lot of fear operating on the Republican side, and some of it is fear of political retaliation. Some of it is fear of all of the death threats and violent threats that are out there today. And then some of it is, frankly, just tribalistic thinking. We live in very tribalistic times. And so you saw the center of gravity on the GOP side, just switch on a dime from release the file. We want to know what's in there. This is sick. This is a deep state conspiracy to know we're not interested anymore. We're willing to go with the president. Yeah. Simply because Trump changed his mind.

38:07That is tribalistic and I think humiliating, obsequious and sycophantic psychology, but it has really saturated our politics now.

38:19Brian Tyler Cohen:What about the prospect of the Epstein files being released to the House Oversight Committee? Is that any different than the effort that would be put forward if the discharge petition passes? Are you trying to do them in tandem for some reason? Is there some greater degree of transparency that we would get if the discharge petition passes? Well, right. The whole point is we're passing legislation with the discharge petition that would command the surrender of the entire file. In other words, it would no longer be dribs and drabs. Right. Parceled out in little political micro doses. Right. I think I think the last the first batch had 97 percent already public files included in They were releasing old press releases and old newspaper articles.

39:07I mean, it was ludicrous just so they could say it was a big batch. It's not the stuff that they want us to see that we want. It's the stuff they don't want us to see that we want. And we're afraid, of course, that it could be destroyed. It could be redacted in the meantime. And so we don't want any more dilly-dallying around this. We want to just get the file exactly what Kash Patel, exactly what Donald Trump was talking about before they came into office and they were able to review the file themselves.

39:38Brian Tyler Cohen:And finally, let's finish off with this. I know that the Republican effort right now is to try and basically convince. Actually, I don't really know what the convincing is, but to try and persuade the base that for some reason, the same Epstein files that they staked all of their credibility on releasing now have to be suppressed. And again, I don't know if it's because they're trying to claim that it was some deep state plot that's been concocted by by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and James Comey and Clapper or whatever, whatever it may be. I don't I don't I don't know what conspiracy theory we're up to right now.

40:15Brian Tyler Cohen:But what would you say to the folks who, you know, in part stake their votes on this Republican Party based on the idea that they would seek some accountability for for this heinous pedophile? and only to watch these people now, again, engage in the same cover up that that just a few months back they were decrying. And what we're getting is deep state double talk. I mean, what Kash Patel was saying was, oh, we brought these motions to the Epstein and Maxwell judges to release the grand jury material. And they said, no, here's what Judge Berman had to say about this, because these judges, not only did they reject the request and explain precisely why, but they also called the bluff of the Trump administration.

41:00So here's Judge Berman. This is on page seven of his ruling in the United States of America versus Epstein, which came out in August. And he goes, the government's 100 ,000 pages of Epstein files and materials dwarf the 70 odd pages of Epstein grand jury materials. The government's Epstein files are sui generis. That is, they're one of a kind. They are investigatory and not subject to federal rule of criminal procedure 6E. In other words, Cash Patel comes to us and says, well, the court says that we can't release all of these materials because of rule 6E about grand jury materials. Those aren't grand jury materials.

41:45Those are independent materials that have been collected by the government. And then Berman goes on to say the government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files. By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a diversion from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the government's possession. So you even have a federal judge saying, you know, basically, don't make us a party to this fraud on the public. Right.

42:19Brian Tyler Cohen:And I think, you know, Kash Patel himself said it best that the buck stops with the FBI director. So if we're looking for the person responsible for secreting all of this information, Kash Patel just has to consult Amir. Congressman, as always, thank you for the time. Thanks for continuing to fight on this front. I appreciate it. Thank you, Brian, so much.

42:40Brian Tyler Cohen:I'm joined now by the founder of All Rise News, Adam Klassfeld. Adam, we have been watching as the Trump administration continues to bear down heavily on media outlets, and that includes his existing lawsuit against The New York Times. We now have a major update as far as that case is concerned. Can you explain what just happened in court? Well, it took less than a week, Brian, for a judge to just brutally smack down the Trump lawsuit against the New York Times. He called it and here's the operative. Here's the key sentence from the ruling. A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or a functional equivalent of a Hyde Park speaker's corner.

43:22And he spent all of four pages just witheringly dressing down. The fact that this complaint was full of praise for his business acumen, talking about his historic victory. As a matter of fact, one of the parts of this ruling just summarizes, simply summarizes a lawsuit. And there are lines that begin, the reader of the complaint must labor through the allegations. A reader must endure an allegation of him talking about winning the election in historic fashion, for example, trouncing his opponent, quote unquote. He talks about the enervating prose. It's just it's filled with mockery. And here's the thing, Brian.

44:08This judge, Stephen Merida, is a George H.W. Bush appointee, a very conservative judge, by the way, in the Middle District of Florida. And this is it's basically him calling out the buffoonery, frankly, of the lawsuit, simply just filled with, you know, attacks on the newspaper that aren't even related to the complaint. He complains about, for example, the endorsement of Kamala Harris early on in the complaint and pleads a ridiculous definition of actual malice that doesn't actually have to do with actual malice, claiming that essentially the New York Times is out to get him, which has nothing to do with the legal definition of actual malice.

45:02And what happened today was the judge said, try again.

45:08Brian Tyler Cohen:Now, in terms of Trump's willingness to actually continue to push this thing forward, is there anything preventing him from doing that? Can he appeal? Was it dismissed with prejudice? Like, where do we stand right now in terms of the continued existence of this lawsuit? So the technical nature of this is the original complaint is stricken. And so this is actually a highly technical ruling that it didn't meet the Rule 8 procedures just to get out throughout the gate. And so the Trump legal team said that they will be refiling the complaint without all of this self-aggrandizement, without the attack.

45:48Brian Tyler Cohen:Is that even possible to file a lawsuit that comes from Donald Trump without the self-aggrandizement? Well, we'll see what they submit soon. They have 25 days to do it. And, you know, they had the here's the thing, Brian, they have the first complaint out there. It's been through the news cycle. They have the press release out there. We'll see if they can cut it down to about half the length, as the judge is demanding here. Team Trump now has to cut it down to 40 pages or less, and we'll see the case go forward. But the kind of question remains, when you cut the fat from it, is there any meat left?

46:29Brian Tyler Cohen:Now, in the event that this lawsuit doesn't go forward, what kind of precedent does that set for his other existing attacks on media companies? I understand that this would happen at the trial court, so there's no binding legal precedent. In fact, there's no legal precedent because it's not at the appeals court level. But what kind of atmospheric precedent does this have? Well, this is one of a series of lawsuits that Trump is filing in and before his second term to try to chill the press. And sometimes he's had success with it. It happened with ABC, CBS, where he gets settlements for over cases that most legal experts didn't really find a lot of merit in.

47:11He wields these lawsuits as a cudgel. As a matter of fact, the lawyer, the lead attorney behind this lawsuit is Alejandro Brito, who's the same lawyer whose lawsuit we've spoken about, Brian, against the Wall Street Journal's parent company and their reporters over the letter that we now know is 100 percent legitimate. The one that he sent to Jeffrey Epstein that was authenticated by nothing less than Epstein's estate given to Congress and publicly released. They're still pursuing that lawsuit. It's the same legal team that just got this judicial smackdown today.

47:51Brian Tyler Cohen:And, you know, can the Wall Street Journal, for example, look at some of the arguments that the New York Times would be able to make against would be able to make against Trump? and use some of those arguments in their own existing case? Well, the interesting thing about this ruling is it happened before there were any arguments. This was a judge simply looked at the complaint and said, this is not an acceptable complaint. So I don't think it's going to do so much with precedent, but it does hopefully put some wind in the sails of other media organizations facing ridiculous lawsuits. from the Trump administration, while they use litigation to try to intimidate the press, when they use the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, to try to threaten media organizations to suspend Jimmy Kimmel.

48:47I think that we need to view all of this through that same prism. This is more than a legal case and more than the defamation law and precedent. This is an act of intimidation. So in that sense, Brian, the victory here, even if there isn't a real precedent to hearken to, we'll see. It should be wind in the sails because it's a judge saying right out the gate, This is ridiculous.

49:21Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, you know, the irony of that is that when Trump doesn't have a leverage over certain institutions or certain outlets and they go to court and they win, none of that is surprising. Right. And there's no reason for them to capitulate. But it's only in the instances where these these major media outlets are so over leveraged like CBS, like ABC, and they know that even though they have a winning lawsuit on their hands because the Trump administration has has, you know, taken on some action that is so blatantly nakedly unconstitutional. Still, they need something from this administration. In the case of ABC News, you've got Nexstar that needs approval of a merger with Tegna so that their affiliate channels can be in something like 80 % of American homes.

50:08Brian Tyler Cohen:They can't do that without FCC approval. And so they kind of put themselves in a position where they opt to capitulate to Trump, knowing full well that his arguments against them are baseless, but they still recognize the extent to which they're over leveraged and he can exploit that weakness for for an otherwise home run win. Absolutely. I think that's exactly right. And, you know, you mentioned Nexstar's merger with Tegna there with the Paramount settlement. You know, there was all the talk about the Skydance merger, which was mysteriously approved by Brendan Carr as soon as the settlement happened.

50:52So, you know, it is an awful thing to face a federal lawsuit by one of the most powerful individuals in the world. And a lot of people just want to make it go away. But I think today's ruling from this judge kind of shows the kind of lawsuits that we're dealing with here. One that was just witheringly dressed down by a very, very conservative judge who found that just on its face, before anyone has made an argument, before the New York Times said a word in defense of this lawsuit, he just smacked it down in the most mocking language and said that it was tedious. He said that it was unacceptable and he ordered them to write what is essentially a sober and serious complaint.

51:50Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, that's not an embarrassment just to the Trump administration, and it's clearly an embarrassment to the Trump administration. It's also an embarrassment to all of the media organizations and outlets that do opt to entertain or capitulate to this Trump team that's engaged in such farcical prosecutions. I mean, when you look at the extent to which the people who actually fight back, whether it's the law firms or the universities or the New York Times or any outlet that does opt to take these joke lawsuits to court and when they inevitably either win or don't even get far enough to win before the judge just throws the whole thing out, that shines a spotlight.

52:28Brian Tyler Cohen:that underscores just how much the ABCs of the world and CBSs of the world chose to neuter themselves in deference to this guy when very clearly they could have just fought any of this and won because what Trump is doing is so blatantly unconstitutional, such an egregious overreach, such a stunning breach of free speech rights and the First Amendment. And yet and yet you have these people, you know, at ABC, at CBS who are just so focused on consolidating more wealth for themselves and their shareholders because they want to just continue to engage in these mergers and acquisitions and try to get themselves in front of more people and deliver more shareholder value.

53:16Brian Tyler Cohen:It is so money focused that they allow themselves to be completely humiliated by this administration that anytime they go into court, they get laughed out of the courtroom. And yet that's almost a bigger, makes a bigger mockery of the people who do choose to engage in this stuff and allow themselves to be rolled by Trump. Absolutely. And of course, this week, with everything going on with Jimmy Kimmel, we're very focused on media and media companies, news organizations. But if we pull out the picture a little bit, and every sector of civil society has followed the same pattern you're talking about, Brian.

53:57There's the major law firms, all the major law firms that fought back against unconstitutional executive orders to have the Trump administration bully them about who they can and cannot hire and associate with and yanking certain privileges that whether that they cannot enter a federal building if they work for such a law firm. One federal judge after another keeps smacking down these unconstitutional executive orders. The ones that fight back win. Same thing with Harvard University so far. They have fought back and they won while other universities are capitulating. And it shows that, as you're saying, some of the ones that folded in big law, like the major media companies, were the major, some of the most wealthy and powerful law firms in the world.

54:59They knew they could have defended this. They chose not to. And and they were run circles around by smaller law firms that stood up for the rule of law. And the and it's a real message for media companies. Are they going to take this? Are they going to take this naked attempt at journalist intimidation dressed up as a lawsuit? And if they do, independent media needs to pick up where institutional media is failing.

55:33Brian Tyler Cohen:And I'm glad you said that because, you know, we are seeing these failings happen left and right. And it's creating a major sense of disillusionment in terms of what legacy media actually stands for. And I think most of us are recognizing the extent to which while they hid behind their flashy slogans of democracy dies in darkness and the esteemed fourth estate, that in reality, these people are looking out for themselves and their shareholders. And it's all about just their bottom line. It's about finances for them. And so in light of this massive failure at the hands of legacy media, I think it's incumbent upon all of us to support independent media outlets.

56:13Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, Adam, you do it. You do it better than anybody else. So I would highly recommend for everybody who's watching right now, if you'd like to support fearless independent journalism, please sign up for All Rise News. I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Adam does an amazing job. I think you can see that by the conversation that we just had. And so if you've not yet signed up for his sub stack, highly recommend you sign up. It is a great read and a great way to support independent media more broadly, especially in light of these failings by Legacy Media.

56:41Brian Tyler Cohen:So, Adam, as always, thank you for your time. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. Always a pleasure.

56:49Brian Tyler Cohen:I'm joined now by Elliot Morris, author of the Strength in Numbers newsletter. Elliot, I was reading your newsletter and something really caught my eye as we head toward 2026 as it relates to the House, which has been a major focus of politics over these last couple of weeks and months. Can you explain what the analysis that you just went over just showed? Yeah, that's right, Brian. And thanks for having me back to give you some of these numbers. Look, I saw an article from NPR yesterday. It said that there are 27 total retirements for the House of Representatives at this point. And in this case, retirement means a member says they either don't want to continue in elections, they're quitting overall, or they're running for a different office, say governor or senate in their state.

57:33At this point, 27, that's a lot. And it's a number to focus on because it signals that there's some dissatisfaction among representatives. And it can also signal that some members of one party feel like they might lose their seats or that this might be a bad midterm for them. Historically, when there There are more retirements from one party than another, say the Republican Party this year, since they're the ones in power, than the Democrats. That tends to forecast that that party does poorly in the next midterm election. So that's why these numbers are worth tracking over time.

58:09Brian Tyler Cohen:And right now we're seeing 17 Republicans compared to 10 Democrats. And so kind of using this analysis, that would suggest that Republicans, almost to a two to one ratio, are looking to head to the exits as opposed to their Democratic counterparts. Yeah, so there are six or seven, it kind of depends on how you count it, more Republicans retiring than Democrats. So for some historical comparison, I time traveled. I looked at the previous retirements or at this point in the 2018 election cycle. That's the cycle. You'll remember Democrats' big wave. They won by eight in the popular vote in November.

58:42At this point in 2018 cycle, so 2017, September, there were 18 Republican retirements and nine Democratic retirements. So a difference of nine there. This time, there's that difference of six or seven. So it looks like there's some slight lagging in this indicator. If you're going to use this indicator to forecast what's going to happen in the next election, there's a bit of a lag. Democrats are a little bit behind where they were at this point in 2018 by this metric, but it's still directionally similar. This is still a large advantage historically for the Democrats going into the midterm. Speaks to probably some dissatisfaction with Republicans and some poor projections on how they're going to do next year.

59:24Brian Tyler Cohen:So staying with this comparison to 2018, I know that we've spoken in the past about the similarities that we're seeing in the special election overperformances at the hands of Democrats and how similar they are to the special elections that we saw in 2017 ahead of the 2018 midterm cycle, for example. So can you give us a little bit of an overview of what we're looking at in terms of the overperformance by the percentage in these special elections? Yeah, great question. So at this point in 2018, again, time traveling, Democrats were doing 11 percentage points better in special elections to state legislative chambers and to the U.S.

1:00:02House of Representatives. 11 points better than than Hillary Clinton had done while time traveling in 2016. Seems like forever ago. So 11 percentage points better. They ended up doing, again, you know, an eight point margin in the in the House. And that was a shift of of double digits as well. So again, these numbers are pretty close. At this point in the 2026 election cycle, Democrats are doing 16 percentage points better than they did than Kamala Harris did in 2024. So an even larger shift in the special election index. Now, I wouldn't say this is particularly bullish for them, at least in comparison to 2018.

1:00:46I wouldn't say they're going to swing the House by 15 or 16 points just based on this number. That might be possible. But actually, I think what's going on here is that the types of people that vote in special elections who are really intensely interested in politics, they're very high income and very high educated relative to the rest of the population. Those people just tend to be much more democratic now than they used to be. So when the midterm rolls around and you have more less engaged voters voting, those tend to be a little bit more Republican. So you probably shouldn't expect a 16 point swing next year, but it could be double digits.

1:01:19I would not necessarily bet against that.

1:01:21Brian Tyler Cohen:In terms of the going back to the retirements that we're seeing thus far, can you give a little oversight into who the Democrats who are opting to retire might be and whether there is, you know, actually some some good like if the thesis that we're going off of here is that is that retirements are generally a net negative because they show that those people don't like they're seeing that their prospects at winning their elections might not be that good or that or they're they're figuring, OK, we might be in the minority anyway. and so I don't want to sign up for that. And so I'd rather just head for the exits.

1:01:54Brian Tyler Cohen:Is there anything positive to look at in terms of the Democrats who have opted to step aside? Well, two prominent examples come to mind. First is Mickey Sherrill in New Jersey. She might think, putting myself in her shoes, that she's well-suited to run in a year that will be favorable to Democrats in a state that was not so favorable to Democrats in 2022 or 2024. So she might just seem like, you know, she wants to get out of the House. It's very hard to be a minority in the House of Representatives. You really can't do much. You can do a lot more as governor of New Jersey. So that's one example.

1:02:28Another pattern here is a lot of the people that are leaving are older. So Jerry Nadler, who's, of course, very progressive, very important on the left. He's on MSNBC all the time. He's 78 and he's retiring this year. And he just said point blank when he was announcing his retirement, it's time for more for a new generation of leadership in the Democratic caucus, more young people getting into these seats. So he might feel like this is a good opportunity for him to hand that seat. It's a safe Democratic seat over to someone younger who can continue to serve. He also said in his announcement, he saw how people reacted to Joe Biden as he aged in that seat.

1:03:07And he just sort of felt that it was his time to move on.

1:03:10Brian Tyler Cohen:So I believe another lawmaker, Jan Schakowsky in the Chicago area, is in the same boat where I believe she's either a septuagenarian or octogenarian. So it looks like, you know, I guess going back to what I was saying earlier, it looks like whereas normally we would say, OK, these people just running for the exits because because things don't seem like they're going in the right direction for one party or another. It seems like a lot of these older folks are leaving, but that doesn't necessarily that doesn't necessarily suggest that they that they're doing it because they think that election prospects are dim.

1:03:46Brian Tyler Cohen:In large part, it seems like some Democrats are answering the call for generational change that a lot in the party have been demanding. Yeah, I'll say there are a lot of idiosyncratic reasons someone might leave. And sometimes they are given the opportunity to run for an office. They're sort of told, hey, you're going to be a shoo-in for this seat. Byron Donald, a Republican from Florida, thinks he's a shoo-in for the governor's race, for example. He said as much, so that's why he's leaving the House on the Republican side. But on balance, when we tend to have more retirements from one side or the other, that tends to foretell, forecast a poor showing for that party in the next midterm.

1:04:24But yes, there's a good amount of idiosyncrasy. And yeah, I mean, you cannot be an older Democrat living in the 2022, 2024, and 2026 elections and not feel the pressure from the base to give that seat to someone younger.

1:04:38Brian Tyler Cohen:Is there anything else that you're tracking as we head toward 2026 that might suggest overperformance by Democrats? One other thing, we've already talked about the generic ballot on the polls. That's the popular vote margin Democrats might get in the House. Another polling indicator is enthusiasm. And this gets a little bit back to that special elections point. But Democrats are much more enthusiastic about voting. If you ask them to rate themselves on a scale from one to 10 and how interested they are in elections right now, they're much more interested in elections than Republicans are. So So that number also tends to be correlated with electoral performance in midterms, especially because you really have to be interested in that midterm to go seek out that participation.

1:05:16So that's another thing to keep your eye on that we'll keep tracking.

1:05:19Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, isn't that kind of a regular recurring theme that we've seen where so long as Trump isn't on the ballot, Republicans do seem to underperform? And we've seen that in 2018, for example. We saw it in 2022. And now we're seeing it, you know, possibly as we head toward 2026, the polling suggests the same thing. And so isn't this kind of becoming a recurring theme here? Yeah, there's a long term trend at this point in American politics where Democrats do better with educated, higher income voters. In 2012, 2008, there were a lot more working class or non-college educated white voters in the Democratic Party and they've left.

1:05:58And that sort of sorting on education has started to affect Democratic margins for other racial groups as well, especially Hispanics. That has been characterized as bad for the party in general elections for president when you have a really high turnout. But this has been actually worse for Republicans in those lower turnout elections like a midterm, like a special election or an off-year election like Virginia or New Jersey governor this year or the California recall or New York mayor, etc. If your base is concentrated among people who are lower education, lower income, they might have to work more on election day, have a harder time getting off.

1:06:35Are they just less interested in politics? That's actually harder for your coalition. So, you know, Republicans have mobilized a lot of voters in presidential elections using arguments that I would characterize as sort of social or more culture worry. And that helps them in presidential elections when those people turn out. But when it's an off year, where do those people go? Well, they stay home. So that's been bad for the party.

1:06:58Brian Tyler Cohen:And to what extent, and I know this is kind of veering into a non-numbers focused question here, but to what extent do you think that the Republicans' efforts to redraw these maps in Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Florida, and even try to benefit from the dismantling of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, where the Constitution mandates the presence of these opportunity districts, these black majority or Hispanic majority districts, To what extent do you think that that might undermine a lot of what the Democrats have going for them as we head toward 2026, whether it's the enthusiasm gap advantage or the overperformance in special elections?

1:07:38Yeah, I so I'll take off my like data hat and put on my speculation hat, I guess. Yeah. Look like the Republicans that are drawing these maps are very smart. The national directors of the redistricting commissions for for all of these states are talking. and it would be silly for me to think that they expect themselves to do well in the next midterm election. So if they are operating in the headspace that they're going to do poorly, and they're also operating in this headspace where the Republican president has told them find more seats, to quote from Trump, then they have both the pressures they need.

1:08:15They have the electoral pressure and they also have support from their party leader to be as aggressive as they want in those map redraws. So I do expect that it reflects a little bit of their internal discourse about the party's position heading into the next midterm. But the biggest thing that's going on is that the party leader has said, you know, single member districting in the US is not a matter of who voters want for their politicians, but a matter for who politicians want as their voters, and they have permission to do that.

1:08:46Brian Tyler Cohen:Last question here, and this stays with the speculation hat on, but do you think that what the Republicans are looking to do right now with regard to these mid-cycle redraws and, again, the possible dismantling of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, will that be enough to overcome all of what the Democrats have going for them? Enthusiasm gap, the number of retirements for Republicans versus Democrats, and also the overperformance we've seen thus far. Yeah. So here's the number that people want to look out for. It's D plus two. Okay. We've done the math here at Strength in Numbers. It looks like Republicans might get nine seats, maybe optimistically, they might get closer to like 11 or 12 out of redistricting.

1:09:30And if things don't go their way, if some of these maps get struck down, then it could be closer to like six. Okay. So between, let's just say between six and 12. If you take six, between six and 12 seats out of the Democratic column, they need to win by two points to win the House majority back. So that's accounting for those seats that they're going to lose along the way while you shift all these seats to the left. So right now, as mentioned, they're at D plus four. So they would be on track, I would say, to overcoming the bias in the national map from all this redistricting. But four is close, so you don't want to say for sure they're going to win.

1:10:05If they stay on this path and the maps go how we think they're going to go. Yeah, four is going to be enough. Three is probably enough as well. Elliot, for folks who want to follow your work, where can they find you? Yeah, thanks, Brian.

1:10:16Brian Tyler Cohen:They can go to gelliotmorris.com or just Google Strength in Numbers. I could not recommend Strength in Numbers enough. I follow it on a daily basis. Every time there is a new article that comes out, I immediately consume it. So highly recommend for everybody who's watching right now. If you are not yet subscribed, please go ahead and subscribe. I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. So Elliot, as always, I appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks, Brian. Thanks again to Daniel Goldman, Jamie Raskin, Adam Klassfeld, and Elliot Morris. That's it for this episode.

1:10:45Brian Tyler Cohen:Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you You can go to BrianTylerCohen.com to learn more.