CA Vows to Fight TX "Power Grab"

0:00Ever notice how life's best stories don't happen in your living room? They happen on the open road, out on the water, or parked under the stars. At Progressive, they get that you want to focus on the experience, not worry about the what-ifs. That's why they offer quality insurance designed for your ride, whether that's a boat, RV, or motorcycle. Adventure with confidence. Visit Progressive.com and see how easy it is to protect your favorite way to get away. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Not available in D.C. Prices vary based on how you buy Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing You're managing all the things So why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way?

0:39Mail and ship when you want, how you want with Stamps.com Print postage on demand 24-7 And schedule pickups from your office or home Save up to 90 % with automated rate shopping That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com Go to Stamps.com and use code podcast to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. And as we come on the air, we have an eye on what's happening in Texas and a bit of a fact check for all the people who said concerns about democracy or authoritarianism in last year's campaign against Donald Trump were overblown. Quite the opposite.

1:15Indeed, you don't have to take anybody's word for it. You can see it happening out of Trump's own mouth and in the action on the ground in Texas. You can also look to the vocal backlash to what many people view as an effort out in the open, starting far earlier than some of Trump's last efforts when he was in the first term, which were closer to the election. Now, we are a long ways away from the midterms, let alone another presidential. And yet it's happening and earlier. And people are against it because democracy remains pretty popular. From town hall protests to Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth, now getting an earful today in Washington.

2:10There are a range of concerns and we can't always interpret boos exactly by their intent. But democracy is one of the big issues. Texas Democrats are also trying to stand up against something that most modern Republicans would have criticized any time before the MAGA era and that they certainly still are suing to stop when it happens to them in California. But this is what Republicans are doing. A blatant power grab in an off year, unusual time to carry out what Trump demanded to change the rules in the middle of the game to try to get more seats because they are worried about losing a free and fair election in these upcoming midterms.

2:47So California Democrats are saying it's time or past time to fight fire with fire. If Republicans are able to strong arm these tactics in Texas, California Dems led by Governor Newsom say they will cancel it right out using their powers in real time. No more long-winded speeches about precedent and declining republic. They are going to do what they say they need to do to blunt what looks like a very abusive, precedent-breaking effort to redraw and kind of basically steal some of these districts in Texas. So that's one way to go at this. Trump, meanwhile, has been very blunt. He thinks that what he's doing is working.

3:26He's been censoring and attacking free speech. He's been threatening. We know all that. He's got a Justice Department that's going after some of his political opponents. And he's made false claims that are blatant. He's going after mail-in voting. And then he's been doing an old Trump style of laundering and raising things and saying, oh, he's only joking. Russia, if you're listening. And then his aides say it was a joke. That was the very first campaign. We're way past all of that. And so joking or maybe not about canceling elections in wartime as he meets with a wartime leader or toying with the idea of an illegal unconstitutional third term, something that the Supreme Court and courts have never allowed, so he wouldn't even usually be able to get on the ballot.

4:05And yet, amidst these other campaigns I'm telling you about, he continues to muse about doing something that is flatly banned under our Constitution. You know, Vladimir Putin said something, one of the most interesting things. He said your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. So you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, I wonder what the figure is. You like this idea. No, no, no. Speaking of, we've got a long time to go. We have a long time. You know, we have almost four years to go. And that's a long time. But despite that, so many people are saying, you've got to run again.

4:50Who's saying that? Why is he doing that? Is it to move the goalposts and then act like it's a compromise if he doesn't run for a third term and make other ongoing efforts to kneecap democracy look somehow smaller, kind of an expanding of the authoritarian Overton window, as some of the political scientists say? Or is he just getting ready to try to see if he can break the whole thing and run for a third term, turn this country into a dictatorship? And you say, oh, wait a minute, that sounds extreme. It is extreme, but don't let them trick you into word games and rhetoric or trying to shoot the messenger or go after the media, which we've seen in many countries and we see right now in this one.

5:30Because what we're talking about is what Donald Trump says and does. We're not talking about it doesn't even always matter how I describe it to you, as long as you can get the facts and evidence and make sure you're getting reliable information, which is what we do around here, what we practice. So forget the word dictator or the word authoritarian for a moment if you want to. And remember that Donald Trump did not leave office peacefully last time. That is a great stain on him, regardless of anything else you like or dislike about him. And we've reported before, there are things that he says and does that many people in the country like.

6:03That's fine. He won more votes in the last election. That's fine. But he also trafficked in, supported, and then pardoned people convicted of the crimes against the United States, attacking police, sedition, pardoning every last Jan 6 attacker. The plan was simply this. We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep. Do you realize you are describing a coup? No. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned. J.D. Vance, welcome to Your New Life. Yesterday, Donald Trump commuted the sentences of and pardoned everyone, from the most violent criminals who participated in the insurrection to those convicted of lesser offenses.

6:54There has been no greater embrace in the modern era of people who attacked police and tried to overthrow democracy than those pardons. pardons so extreme that now they've happened and people got used to it. That's part of being alive. People can get used to a lot of things, but so extreme that J.D. Vance, then vice president-elect, was saying in public, well, obviously not all of the people who attacked. Yes, all of them. And that is the context for other things Donald Trump is doing that are not technically currently illegal. For example, the show of force in Washington is still within the legal limit of basically a month limit on that.

7:33I'm not going to get into all the details. So I'm not telling you it's technically illegal right now, although he's been testing it in California and there, and he may try to blow past that deadline. But the wider impact is a federal government using a show of force, pushing others to the side, using ICE raids not only to do immigration enforcement, which, again, is part of their work, but showing up at opposition party members' press conferences, sometimes getting involved in arresting them. Some of those cases dropped. Others continue. The show of force is linked to the attacks on democracy.

8:05And now Republican governors say they want in. Remember, there's not a bunch of riots right now in the country. This is not historically a time where you'd have National Guard troops. And while the numbers you see are relatively small, we're showing you Republicans doing this again as kind of a little step, because who really wants to debate 135 personnel? The point is to get it started, Just as Trump started in California and D.C., and now we're seeing Republican governors test this. If you don't think that this is a risk for being abused around election time, you haven't been paying attention.

8:37Meanwhile, the people being patrolled are concerned.

8:59From the nation's capital to California to Texas, this is what it looks like when the attacks on democracy get more physical into the streets, encroaching while legislatures try to redraw the maps to prevent what? A free and fair midterm election that might dislodge one aspect of a Republican agenda right now that from Trump to the anti-healthcare bill that came out of Washington to the ongoing secrecy over Epstein, an agenda that remains very unpopular around the nation. I want to bring in Molly Jong-Fast from Vanity Fair and our friend Jason Johnson, Morgan State professor and MSNBC analyst.

9:36Jason, our reporting is careful to distinguish what is technically legal or legal for a few weeks versus other things that are flatly criminal, like attacking the Capitol. But do you see an interconnected effort here? And does that concern you with so much time left before the midterms?

9:58Jason Johnson:Absolutely, Ari, because it's all just stress testing. Right. And it it leaks out not just from this White House, but at the state level. So from the White House, you have sending in military troops into Los Angeles, waiting to see what courts say, because if the courts say that's allowed, they will continue to do that in other cities. You see them stripping funding from Washington, D.C., and then federalizing the police and seeing how long they can do it and running the possibility of extending the 30 day deadline. And then what do you see happening in Texas? Locking members of the legislature in a building or forcing them to sign permission slips.

10:34Jason Johnson:All of the authoritarian urges of this administration are leaking out. So whether it's legal or illegal, it is definitely against the spirit of democracy that everyone, except people in this life in this White House, have lived with for our entire lives. i think also it's important to remember that intimidation plays a big part here this is the district of columbia they can they feel they can do it because it's not a state technically so it is legal but i also think there really is you know this is a city that is majority minority 90 voted for democrats filled with media and a lot of democratic politicians and a lot of judiciary So these are groups that they really want to keep in line and intimidate.

11:20So I think that's a real thing, too. Also, I want to add these checkpoints that they have, you know, where they used, you know, it's technically legal to do checkpoints for sobriety and for car accidents. But checkpoints just because somebody is annoying you or someone doesn't look the way you want them to, that is not, that is very much out of the mainstream. Right. Right. And it's testing it and encroaching on it, as we've seen. Jason, the absence of bad news is not good news. But I have something that is less bad news, low bar. But we had the Democratic leader, Jeffries, on this program and we asked him exactly about these issues and he's doing what he can within the minority powers that he has.

12:09But he also made a point that's just a sad autocratic math. It's not good news. But here's what he said about what is in danger and what might still be protected in the coming midterms.

12:23Jason Johnson:The good news is, to the extent that there's a silver lining in our electoral system, is that we don't have a national election system. It's state by state by state. And in many of the states where there will be competitive gubernatorial elections, and certainly in the overwhelming majority of the states where the House will be decided, there are Democratic governors, Democratic attorney generals, and Democratic secretaries of state. fact check true so jason that actually is something that the parties spend a lot more time on than everyday people which is where the really competitive districts and why it would be functionally harder to pressure or steal and then on top of that it seems that he has a messaging goal here to tell people don't just give up and and see the troops and think nothing can work um he's very concerned about the general election uh in in 28 but he's saying in 26 what you heard there, that voting will, he believes, matter.

13:25Jason Johnson:I believe it will, too, Ari. I just don't know how reliable it'll be. I think sometimes we have to step back from the sort of red state, blue state thing and recognize that there are large numbers of Republicans in blue states and large numbers of Democrats in red states. And so the issue is, will a fair election be allowed at the local level? Right. Most of these states have a reasonably good idea as to how to run an election that allows everybody to vote and participate. But what happens when they need federal funding for additional machines? What happens when they need federal funding to open up voting places if there's been some sort of natural disaster after hurricane season?

14:02Jason Johnson:That's where we're concerned. Most cities, most governors, most mayors, they know what they need to do. They don't need don't tap the class. They don't need the federal government getting involved, telling them how to do things. And that's what I worry about heading into the midterms. You don't need Trump getting involved. We can work democracy at a state level well. Now, Jason, you've done two things there. One, like the professor analyst you are, you've really broken down what the other issues are, that Jeffreys could be right, but there could be other malfeasance. Or National Guard troops concentrated only in areas where certain people are and certain people vote.

14:33Second, you've made a subtle reference to Tyler, the creator's new album. And Molly, I'm sure you were as tickled by that as I was. Oh, I was. Don't tap the glass. Further thoughts, Molly? Yes. No, I think that's a really good point. And look, this is the Voting Rights Act, right? These are the problems that have always been structural and what have stopped us from being the multiracial democracy that we can be. But I think the scariest part for me is Abbott just taking these five seats, that he's going to try and take five seats from Democrats. I mean, there's just no historical precedent for that.

15:16And again, I don't want to say a bright spot because we really are in an uncharted moment in our democracy. But the one possibility is if this is as unpopular as I think Trump is worried it is, there is a possibility for a dummy mander, right, where they have less good numbers, they have less good margins. and so many of the voters that Trump might have gotten because of his sort of singular ability to message may actually be lost to Republicans without Trump. And I think that is a real question. But but the anti-democratic urge of the governor just taking five seats away is there is it's it is mind blowing.

16:01Yeah. No, and you both hit the import of that. Jason, as Tyler would say, I got to peel off like an orange because we got a lot of other stories. My thanks to both of you, Jason and Molly, a little light amidst the darkness. I'll tell folks what's coming up. Fox News hosts secretly texting when they thought no one would ever find out. And tonight we have those texts. I'm going to read them to you. Also,$100 million conflict of interest coming out of the Trump White House and this federal judge rebuking the Trump DOJ for what has already been reported. They're hoarding in secrecy around the Epstein files while pretending to ask a judge to get involved has just blown up in their face.

16:38They're losing the bid and being hit for diversion tactics. We're back with Melissa Murray in 90 seconds. Stop and look at your walls. Does anything there actually inspire you? Original art has the power to transform not only how a space looks, but how it feels. And that's why Saatchi Art is on a mission to make living with original art accessible to everyone. Join buyers from around the world who have experienced the joy of living with art. Visit SaatchiArt.com today and get 10 % off original art with code PODCAST10. That's 10 % off at SaatchiArt.com. That's S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. Ever notice how life's best stories don't happen in your living room?

17:19They happen on the open road, out on the water, or parked under the stars. At Progressive, they get that you want to focus on the experience, not worry about the what-ifs. That's why they offer quality insurance designed for your ride, whether that's a boat, RV, or motorcycle. Adventure with confidence. Visit Progressive.com and see how easy it is to protect your favorite way to get away. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Not available in D.C. Prices vary based on how you buy

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18:20Donald Trump and his DOJ have played many different games with this Epstein case. And we've been reporting on several aspects. Today, they got a setback in court for a very basic ploy that, frankly, hasn't been working on the MAGA crowds or others concerned about getting the Epstein docs because they went to a judge and said, hey, we want you to help us release some of the transcripts. This is not even the key part of the Epstein docs that matter. And now it's blown up in their face. The judge denying the request to release a small part of Epstein docs, those grand jury transcripts. The judge noting that there are 100 ,000 plus pages of Epstein files and other materials that dwarf what is basically less than a slice of 1 % of all of that, these 70 pages of grand jury transcripts and materials.

19:05And then a little truth. The judge reminding the Trump administration that because they have all those documents and most of them are not grand jury privileged, the DOJ, the Trump administration, are the logical party to simply disclose it. And the grand jury motion itself, the judge notes, is effectively a diversion. I'm joined by Professor Melissa Murray from NYU. Welcome. Your thoughts on what kind of judicial reaction we got here? Because while there was a bit of business to deal with, whether you release those materials, the judge made a point to kind of call out what was a pretty obvious diversion.

19:44You're exactly right, Ari. Judge Berman, who is the Southern District judge who heard this motion, really could have answered all of this by using that hot dog suit meme where we're all looking for the guy who did this. Judge Berman appeared to say, yes, people want to know about the Epstein files. There's considerable public interest here, but we have a bedrock principle of not releasing grand jury materials to the public for a lot of different reasons, including maintaining the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, which is a bedrock principle of our legal system. And yes, there are certain circumstances where we might depart from that, but they are extraordinary circumstances, and those circumstances haven't been met here.

20:25You are asking government for 70 pages of information that was supplied by a single FBI agent. There's no witness testimony here from any of the victims. And in fact, the things that the public really want to know are contained in that trove of information that the Department of Justice compiled in its investigation of LaFerre Epstein that it says it can release at any time, but still refuses to do. And so I think Judge Berman got it right here and, you know, gave this government more airtime than it really warranted in saying that I've taken all of these requests seriously. But in fact, you are the ones to actually satisfy the public interest here by releasing the files that you already have.

21:11Yeah. And one reason that these type of tricks work is that people aren't always totally paying attention. so to pick a basic example everyone knows sometimes somebody is pushed out of a job and they put out a statement saying they want to spend more time with their family and you think who's that even going to work on but it keeps it moving and a week later people don't really remember because they're not fixated on that unless you're really it's your thing here you have this active MAGA aligned group of people that are following every detail of this and And so unlike cover stories that are weak but kind of might help, it seems like this is only further aggravating the very people, some of whom have spent literally years clamoring for answers for these documents.

21:56They're seeing through the smokescreen. They're upset. Joe Rogan is very influential. Here's what he's saying. This is new.

22:04Jason Johnson:But the problem is this is a bipartisan issue. It's bipartisan. It's I don't know. I heard is it is a Democratic hoax. Yeah, I don't think that's true. Well, it's certainly not a hoax if you go to jail. It's certainly not a hoax if Glenn Maxwell's in jail too. So she's in jail for sex trafficking. She's in jail for sex trafficking. But the question is to who? You have to be sex trafficking to someone in order to go to jail, right? So how does that work? So that's some of the wider environment. What happens in a case like this, Melissa, where the judges called them out, the DOJ caught between claiming they want to release stuff and now being put on notice in a very public forum?

22:50Go ahead. Most of it you could release if you actually cared about the transparency you promised. Well, I just want to sort of put this in the context of the broader attack on the lower federal courts here. I think one of the plays here was to put this in the hands of a district court judge like Judge Berman. It's been in other hands of other district court judges, the same issue. and they've all said, no, we're not going to depart from the bedrock principle that we don't release grand jury proceedings to the public. And I think that was intended to gin up more ire, more rage against these judges.

23:23We've already seen the attacks on the judges from this administration. I think this was intended to do that. I'm not sure that it works here. I think most people will recognize that what Judge Berman is saying is that, yes, you're right, there is public appetite for this, but it is the Department of Justice that could sate that appetite by releasing these files. And as we know, there has already been a request from Congress to release these files. And apparently we are supposed to get over the course of the next few days, I believe beginning on Friday, Congress is going to be able to release those files or at least some portion of them.

23:56So if there isn't public responsiveness here to the, like if they don't release those files to the public, I think there will be more questions, but it won't be because of these charges. Yeah, all fair points. Professor Murray, thank you so much. I want to tell folks before we get out of here, by the end of the hour, the Emmy-winning star of so many great shows, including Parks and Rec, Nick Offerman, is back. Also, the grift from crypto to these bond trading, Donald Trump insisting on doing more business out of the White House than any president ever. We're going to get into that. And you're going to hear the texts, some of them never released before that show exactly how Fox hosts viewed their role as Trump tried to steal the election.

24:40The story we sort of began the night with, these attacks on democracy. Now there's accountability. Fox on defense. Remember, this is a new case in addition to what they already settled over those election lies. That's next.