00:10:00.000I think there are about four there now.
00:10:01.860They don't care about official corruption.
00:10:04.040And we used to say, when I was a line lawyer for 12 years, we used to call the political appointees tourists
00:10:09.100and say, you know, they come and go, but we're the people who stay.
00:10:13.380And so when I came back to the Justice Department as attorney general, I always wanted to interact with the career folks,
00:10:20.960but everybody understood that if there was a disagreement, I, as the attorney general, had the final say.
00:10:27.240And within the Justice Department, you know, that's fine.
00:10:30.700None of the career people ever thought that the president had the final say on what the Justice Department was going to do.
00:10:37.260Post-Watergate, the independence of the Justice Department is something that every administration, I think, valued.
00:10:43.360And that, you know, to the consternation sometimes of the people in the White House.
00:10:47.680When I decided that we were going to look back at how the Bush administration had conducted itself with regard to these enhanced interrogation techniques,
00:10:55.980a lot of people I knew in the White House didn't want me to do that.
00:10:58.380And yet I had the independence, the ability to do it.
00:11:02.000When you reflect on what happened to Comey, reflect perhaps under different circumstances what happened to Bolton in relationship to the quote-unquote raid on his home.
00:11:18.420I mean, what's most alarming about those instances?
00:11:22.480I mean, what was your sort of internal conversation, not only with yourself, but with others around you as it relates to those actions by this administration?
00:11:31.200Well, I mean, the Comey case is one that we can pretty much understand based on the reporting that the media has done.
00:12:00.260And then you have the president in that truth social post where he says kind of, dear Pam, and basically is telling her to go after, you know, Jim Comey, Adam Schiff, Letitia James.
00:12:33.700This is inconsistent with the way in which DOJ's Justice Departments and attorneys general have, you know, conducted themselves.
00:12:40.440With regard to line employees, I mean, there's two trains of thought.
00:12:45.020People saying people should stand up on principle, resign.
00:12:49.040People should sort of stick it out because if their voice and their eyes are not there, my gosh, the folks that come behind them could really lock in and institutionalize this aberrant behavior, this normalization of deviancy.
00:13:02.000Where are you on that in terms of the conversations I'm sure you've had with some of those career staff, people that you've developed relationships with over time?
00:13:13.280And one of the things, my position, you know, everybody's got to make their own determination.
00:13:17.660When I've been asked that by people, I say stay around, stick around, because the reality is the people who they'll pick to succeed you will not be nearly as idealistic, will not adhere to the traditions of the Justice Department.
00:13:29.160And so I'd say, look, you stick around, and if they fire you, you know, there's not much, I suppose, that you can do.
00:13:35.660You'll have, you know, employment appellate rights, and you can go to court to try to get your job back.
00:13:40.640And that effort is even enhanced by having them fire you as opposed to resigning.
00:13:46.040And so I think, you know, make them push you out as opposed to you deciding that you want to resign.
00:13:56.400I mean, I appreciate the principal's stand of saying I can't be part of an administration that's party to this kind of injustice, but at the same time, the consequences of walking away.
00:14:07.160Let me ask you, as it relates to walking away, it seems that we have a completely supine Congress, that there's no system of checks and balances, that the majority, Speaker Johnson, has completely abdicated any oversight.
00:14:20.840As it relates to that, and it relates to this moment as we're talking, we're just quite literally hours away from a midnight deadline on that government shutdown.
00:14:30.540I mean, vis-a-vis that, having experienced a little of that, understanding what it means, what it doesn't mean, a government shutdown.
00:14:37.460Where are you in terms of where the Democratic Party should be, where the leadership of the Democratic Party should position themselves at this moment?
00:14:44.980Is Jeffries and Schumer right to now sort of stand firm on protecting Obamacare and its subsidies or else?
00:14:53.540Or should we right now be outside knocking on the Oval Office saying, Mr. President, we still want to negotiate?
00:15:01.440I mean, I think, yeah, we still want to negotiate, but these are – this is a principal stand that we're taking.
00:15:07.160We want to make sure that Medicaid cuts that were in that big, stupid bill are not put into effect, that the Obamacare subsidies will continue, and so health care premiums will not rise.
00:15:19.300No, we've got to stand firm and say, this is who we are.
00:15:25.180We stand with the people, with the interests of the people, not with the special interests, and we're not going to allow you to ram through things that are going to harm the American people.
00:15:36.860You know, make health care – put health care out of reach of substantial numbers of people to folks who qualify for Medicaid to make it more difficult for them to get health care.
00:15:47.400I mean, this is a basic kind of governmental thing, and I think the position that they have taken is both principled, it's consistent, again, with who we say we are as Democrats, and they've got a whole firm.
00:16:02.580Where do you – I mean, you know, this thing, the last government shutdown under Trump was among the longest that we've experienced.
00:16:09.300The consequences, they felt more intense, we colored them in in the short run, then they sort of unpacked from GDP perspective and getting people back their paychecks, et cetera.
00:16:20.700Where do you – what's your gut in terms of how this plays out?
00:16:24.880I think my gut is that if this goes longer than a week, it's going to be long.
00:16:30.100I get the feeling that, you know, this could end up being, you know, a really substantial shutdown.
00:16:39.020And my hope is that, you know, Russ Vogt and, you know, his people don't use this as an excuse to fire even more federal employees.
00:16:48.740That adds another dimension to this, you know, to use what is a policy difference to deny people their right to work.
00:16:59.060And further harm – further harm the government.
00:17:01.860But my sense is that, you know, in Trump too, where he's kind of, you know, Donald Trump unbound and surrounded by the zealots who make up certainly the White House staff and people in the cabinet,
00:17:15.480that this is something that could go, I think, for, you know, an extended period of time.
00:17:46.540And for those that are not familiar, that's the Architects of Project 2025.
00:17:50.520He was the OMB director, people forget, in the first Trump administration.
00:17:54.680But he learned his lessons and now is more unbound and obviously more surgical in terms of what he's trying to achieve.
00:18:01.620And there's a lot of speculation about serious and significant cuts that he's prepared to make in pretty short order, particularly to the workforce.
00:18:09.840But also in that respect is a tendency now, it seems to me, in the Senate, particularly with Leader Thune, we talk about nuclear options.
00:19:07.840But, again, based on the way in which this Congress has done everything – and I mean everything – that, you know, the president wants them to do, it wouldn't surprise me.
00:19:18.820Yeah, and I'd submit – I mean, I asked the question – I'm curious your opinion, of course,
00:19:23.360but also it's a question I think we need to ask ourselves because I think that outcome, I would argue, is more likely than unlikely considering.
00:19:31.920I mean, those two words you just said, shocking but not surprising, is – I mean, if there's no phrase,
00:19:38.140probably been more uttered in the last eight months than that phrase.
00:19:41.280Look, one of the things that was uttered was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, and I'm grateful for this opportunity.
00:19:46.520And that was the words that came out of Donald Trump's mouth when he reached out to Governor Abbott in Texas, and he asked for five seats.
00:19:55.660It's important for folks listening as it relates to midterm redistricting and moving forward that Greg Abbott initially was reticent.
00:20:04.080Greg Abbott expressed not just privately but publicly that he wasn't necessarily convinced it was, quote-unquote, the right thing to do or the timely thing to do.
00:20:12.980He was quickly disabused of that when Trump circled back, saying he's, quote-unquote, entitled to those five votes.
00:21:01.520Yeah, I mean, as I was leaving office, he and I sat down and talked about, all right, let's kind of look back and see what is it that we didn't accomplish
00:21:12.420and what were the reasons why we were not as successful as we might have been.
00:21:18.200And, you know, we kind of talked about, well, why, why, why?
00:21:20.580And we really came to the conclusion that gerrymandering was a problem that prevented him from getting in full his agenda, though he had significant accomplishments.
00:21:31.600And now as we looked more, we said, you know, and a lot of the stuff that's coming out of the states is unpopular and nevertheless gets passed.
00:21:39.280And that was also as a result of gerrymandering in state legislatures.
00:21:43.440And so we said, all right, let's go after that problem.
00:21:45.940And so we formed up the National Democratic Redistricting Committee in January of 2017 to really promote fairness in the redistricting process.
00:21:55.020Republicans had put together through a thing called Project Red Map in 2011 gerrymanders in a whole variety of states that have endured,
00:22:04.920endured through the course of that whole decade and put in place measures at the state level that, you know, people didn't like.
00:22:12.320But nevertheless, Republicans did it and didn't suffer any political consequence because of the gerrymanders.
00:22:18.660And then we had a gerrymandered House of Representatives.
00:22:21.640And if you look, when we started out, Democrats had to overperform by about 22 percent in order to get to 50-50 in the House of Representatives as a result of what we've done.
00:22:31.560That number is now just about one and a half percent, something like that.
00:22:35.480We can actually, you know, actually handle that.
00:22:37.080And so we've promoted fairness and that is fairness has almost been like a weapon for us.
00:22:44.080People like the idea that citizens ought to choose who their representatives are as opposed to politicians picking their voters.
00:22:51.900And so that's why we have been engaged in this in this fight.
00:22:55.280Mr. Attorney General, so much of what you tried to achieve and pursue in 2017 had a little bit of its origin story and what happened with the Shelby County decision in the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision in 2013.
00:23:11.460Remind everybody what happened at the Supreme Court in 2013.
00:23:14.4202013, the Supreme Court, as you said, in a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority.
00:23:22.900And he stated very famously in his majority opinion that America has changed.
00:23:28.260And as a result, they used that as the basis to take from the Justice Department the ability that it had to pre-clear changes that states wanted to make when it came to all kinds of electoral things, whether it was how lines were drawn with regard to certain districts, where polling places should be open or closed, where voter purges should be allowed.
00:23:53.900It took away from the Justice Department the ability to challenge states when they tried to do these things, and that has had a really negative impact.
00:24:02.400We have seen poll closures all around the country.
00:24:05.840It's one of the reasons why you see long lines in certain states.
00:24:09.280We've seen voter purges that disproportionately occur in communities of color, in places where Democrats are perceived to live.
00:24:17.260A whole range of things has happened since the Shelby County case.
00:24:21.860It's taken the Justice Department, not off the field, but certainly taken away from the Justice Department a lot of the tools that it once had.
00:24:29.180And so in, you know, in an effort to sort of push back, you've been, you know, a big part of your organization is also highlighting some of those purges as it relates to the voting rolls, highlighting some of what is just overt voter suppression activities as it relates to reducing the number of polling options in places.
00:24:47.580What, you know, what, you know, and it led to a lot of victories, and I think what I'd love to highlight is not just the problem, but some of your success in terms of what your organization has been able to achieve, and I want to get back to Prop 50.
00:25:00.820I want to get back to what's happening, not just in Texas, but across this country at this moment, but talk to me a little bit about what you were able to achieve with the organization in 2018, 19, 20, over the course of the last decade or so.
00:25:13.180Yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at the work that we have done since 2017 by, you know, focusing, using a state-based strategy, different strategy, you know, depending on the state, by supporting candidates who would stand for fairness, by challenging laws that were put in place or procedures that were being used in a variety of states, by raising the consciousness of people about the importance of fair redistricting,
00:25:38.560by standing for independent commissions and trying to get those in states wherever we could.
00:25:43.820And it's interesting, wherever we tried to get an independent commission, whether it was a red state or a blue state, people overwhelmingly supported them.
00:25:51.460We got them in Missouri, we got them in Utah, and then Republican legislatures, you know, did things to the efforts that we had, but the people always supported them.
00:26:00.560And so that's what we have done, used those different tools.
00:26:04.620And as a result, we ended up with maps in 2024 that a lot of analysts, as well as the New York Times, said, produced the fairest maps, you know, in generations.
00:26:17.840There are still states that are still gerrymandered.
00:26:20.520If you look at Texas, if you look at Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, there are still places that are still gerrymandered and are still a focus of our work.
00:26:32.220And a big part of just the gerrymandering, and just to sort of unpack this a little bit more, the racial dimensions cannot be understated, or at least even overstated.
00:26:41.820I mean, so the impacts, the Black community, Hispanic community, talk a little bit more about how that manifests in many of these different states.
00:31:01.900It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the internet for both good and bad.
00:31:06.520They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away.
00:31:11.200They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not trading rice this season.
00:31:16.000It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the internet.
00:31:21.060Platforms exist because of the regular people on them, and I think that's a real important story to keep repeating.
00:31:26.500I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us.
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00:31:31.900Listen to There Are No Girls on the internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:31:36.520This gerrymandering is done on the backs of people of color, and one only has to look at what's going on in Texas now.
00:31:45.980They get their, they think, five seats.
00:31:49.460I think they're being a little optimistic.
00:31:51.680But they get whatever it is they get out of this gerrymandering that they're doing at the expense of people of color in largely urban areas, largely Hispanic, but African Americans as well.
00:32:05.180We see them breaking up districts in Austin, Texas, and San Antonio, and drawing these really weird lines so that you really decrease, dilute the power, the electoral power that communities of color have in Texas.
00:32:21.320Now, they'll try to say, this is only partisan, these are only partisan things that we have done, as if that somehow makes it better, you know.
00:32:30.400We're just doing things, you know, that are inconsistent with our sense of who we are, inconsistent with our Constitution, but it's only on a partisan basis.
00:32:38.260But if you look, it almost always comes down to making it more difficult for people of color to vote and then taking away from people of color, communities of color, the political power that they've long sought and tried to hold on to.
00:32:57.180So California is one of those states with an independent redistricting commission.
00:33:00.540It was a commission that, when I was mayor, there was an effort to repeal it that I publicly opposed because it long supported the idea of independent redistricting, and it's a point of pride that this state has been one of the leaders.
00:33:14.860What happened, however, in Texas changed the equation, and I'm curious, just from your prism and your perspective as a champion of independent redistricting as well, what does Texas represent to you?
00:33:27.440And first, if I could just unpack a deeper question, why do you think President Trump made the phone call to Greg Abbott?
00:33:36.420Why do you think he even pursued this mid-decade redistricting strategy in the first place?
00:33:44.120Well, before he picked up the phone, he looked at his desk, picked up some papers that said, these are your polling numbers, Mr. President.
00:33:49.780And he made the determination that unless we cheat, unless we come up with more safe Republican seats, we're in real danger of losing our majority in the House of Representatives.
00:34:02.300And that would really establish a really huge obstacle to doing the kinds of radical things that they have done in the first eight months and want to continue to do over the course of the next three years or so.
00:34:15.720And I think that's the thing that generated the call from the president to the governor in Texas.
00:34:24.200You know, when he called, when the president called those folks in Georgia and said, I need 11,780 votes when it came to the 2020 election, Republicans in Georgia, you know, Secretary of State Raffensperger, a person who I don't agree with on a whole bunch of stuff, you know, they at least had the guts to say, no, we're not going to do that.
00:34:41.480He called Greg Abbott and he expressed some, you know, a little concern about it at the beginning, but at the end of the day, did exactly what it is that, you know, the president asked him to do.
00:34:52.080You know, we've always thought of the California Independent Commission as the gold standard.
00:34:56.460It's something that as I've campaigned around the country for fairness, I've always pointed to California.
00:35:01.820And I think the system in California is a great one.
00:35:04.720But I think the determination that you made and other Democrats in California was exactly the right one, given what they did in Texas and what they're doing in other states as well.
00:35:19.340And what I've said, you know, I thought about this long and hard before I said, you know, this is something I think we ought to do because I've been fighting.
00:35:25.880I've been fighting against gerrymandering, either by Democrats or Republicans.
00:35:30.840But I think that what's happening in California makes a great deal of sense.
00:35:37.380It is something that kind of meets this three-part test of mine.
00:35:52.020You know, I want to get back to this whole fight for fairness and the way in which it's crafted in California, in addition to having the people ultimately vote on it, which is not what happened in Texas.
00:36:02.940It only will exist until after the next census.
00:36:08.400And, you know, so your evolution was mine as well as someone that believes in the principle of independent redistricting as well.
00:36:14.340So it was an immediate response, frankly, was in response to outreach by legislative leaders in Texas that said, well, hey, California, you know, have our back.
00:36:26.140And we thought it may be a rhetorical play just to support them and say we're watching, we're paying attention.
00:36:31.680But realizing the consequences of these five seats and how that can tip the balance and rig the next election in the 2026, we were able to fashion a process that, as you say, is temporary, transparent and democratic.
00:36:46.620It's the only maps that are now being presented to the voters themselves.
00:36:50.380They will decide for themselves in the most transparent way and in a temporary way that ends, as you suggest, after the 28 and 30 and into the 32 census will revert back to its original form, again, only in response to Texas.
00:38:03.860They're going to cheat to try to hold on to the majority that they have in the House of Representatives.
00:38:09.620And it really comes on the basis of fear.
00:38:12.520They're afraid of the people who they say they want to represent.
00:38:15.860They're afraid of the legislative agenda that they have tried to put in place.
00:38:20.640They're afraid of the administrative things that they have done.
00:38:23.340They're afraid to be held accountable for, you know, taking a whole bunch of good people and a whole variety of government agencies around the country and simply told them, you know, get out of here.
00:38:34.860They're afraid of trying to defend that which Elon Musk and his doge bros did.
00:38:41.320It's all a political fear that is driving what it is that they are doing.
00:38:47.360And it's fundamentally un-American and it's unpatriotic.
00:38:50.300You know, it's cheating, but it also goes against that which we do and which makes, I think, this nation exceptional.
00:38:58.540We trust the people to make determinations about policy and the direction of the nation.
00:39:03.440And they want to cut the people out of the process.
00:39:07.020Yeah, I mean, they've de facto eliminated oversight with Congress, a co-equal branch of government, increasingly, particularly with this utilization of the shadow docket at the Supreme Court.
00:39:17.000That's another podcast, just the shadow docket and the abuse and use of the shadow docket by the Supreme Court itself.
00:39:23.740By the way, for those that are wondering what I'm talking about, that shadow docket is allowed for racial profiling, not just in relationship to the conversation we're having around voting,
00:39:34.240but racial profiling of people on the basis of their skin color, on the basis of where they congregate, on the basis of their language that has given ICE free reign to terrorize our diverse communities under no other pretext than is the basis of those simple profiles.
00:39:52.000And I just never thought I'd hear that in my life, and that was afforded under the shadow docket by the United States Supreme Court.
00:40:00.680I'm curious, Eric, just the broader issues around voting.
00:40:04.900I mean, how concerned are you not just around the issues of fairness with this redistricting fight, issues of vandalization of fair and free elections as it relates to what happened with Shelby,
00:40:16.560but what's happening as well with the National Guard being deployed in American cities?
00:40:22.920Are you concerned that's also part of a larger agenda that may actually impact potentially or create a chill around Election Day as well?
00:40:31.940Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast.
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00:41:21.500And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke.
00:41:26.980And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
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00:41:40.820Being more able to look people in the eye.
00:46:10.980I mean, there's an authoritarian component to this that I think is who Donald, that's who Donald Trump is.
00:46:16.580But I think it's also, as I think you're correctly pointing out, a long-term play to help them get, again, another way in which they can cheat when it comes to the 26th election.
00:46:29.440Yeah, I thought it was interesting, and people may not be familiar with this.
00:46:32.500We still have federalized National Guard in the state of California.
00:46:36.480It's not just a conversation that's being held in Portland or places like Chicago or Memphis, for that matter, Washington, D.C.
00:46:44.360It's still the case that we have federalized troops.
00:46:48.840And they were intentionally, from my perspective, not, well, could have been coincidental, but they were announced as extended through Election Day.
00:46:56.800And to reinforce that, Eric, this is important as well for folks, when we announced our efforts on this redistricting, Proposition 50, this special election, to push back and fight back against Trump's efforts, when we announced it, it was in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles at the Democracy Center.
00:47:18.680And at the same time we announced it, the Trump administration sent out masked men that surrounded us, surrounded and created that chill, literally intimidating people that were walking into the rally, walking event.
00:47:34.340By the way, that included a dozen representatives from Congress, two U.S. senators, hundreds and hundreds of community leaders.
00:47:42.740And also, for me, was a preview of things to come.
00:47:46.760You have now the largest domestic police force in the world, arguably, particularly with a big, beautiful bill, as they describe it, an additional 10,000 potential staff that increasingly appear.
00:47:58.600And this may not be fair, but I don't think it's deeply unfair or hyperbolic, that increasingly appear to have taken an oath of office to Donald Trump and not the Constitution in terms of how they are conducting many of their activities.
00:48:12.280And that, to me, would be exhibit A and the conduct that was deeply unbecoming of the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol at that Democracy Center rally.
00:48:23.060Yeah, and I think this is the kind of thing that you'd expect to see in a third world country, you'd expect to see in Russia, you know, so-called banana republics.
00:48:31.560I mean, the opposition is holding a meeting to announce a position that it's taking, inconsistent with what the power, those who are in power and government are taking.
00:48:47.660And then you end up with an interior police department that is, you know, greatly expanded.
00:48:53.280Again, that's another authoritarian move.
00:48:55.120I mean, people need to understand, ICE is going to be substantially larger than the FBI.
00:48:59.960I mean, substantially larger than the FBI, than the DEA.
00:49:02.720I mean, this is, and this is unheard of.
00:49:05.120ICE, you know, has an important job, but they have never been the size that they're going to be at the conclusion of all the hiring that Trump and Tom Holman want to do.
00:49:14.680Eric, I'm just curious, and, you know, I'm sensitive, again, to your relationship to confidentiality and just the dignity of your prior roles and the dignity of the office of citizen that you hold today.
00:49:30.900But you must have had some pretty chilling conversations with some of your colleagues, maybe former attorney generals, leaders in these, quote unquote, power ministries of the FBI and DOJ and other, even the IRS.
00:49:48.620I mean, can you sort of, is there a composite picture you can paint in bipartisan terms, in sort of universal terms, in American terms, of those kind of conversations that you uniquely are positioned to have had conducted?
00:50:04.900Yeah, and I think they operate on a couple of levels.
00:50:07.060One, I talk to a lot of folks who've been in the Justice Department for, or law enforcement, federal law enforcement, for FBI, for, you know, extended periods of time, and they talk about the shock that they have felt as a result of, you know, the things that have been done.
00:50:24.760Morale is just really, you know, it's in the toilet when it comes to, you know, federal law enforcement.
00:50:32.900I mean, these are people, you know, thinking that they want to spend their careers, you know, working to support the mission of the Justice Department, the mission of the FBI, regardless of who was the president, who was the attorney general.
00:50:58.500And I'm not going to say this is a huge number of people, but they understand that what's going on is wrong.
00:51:04.700But they are politically afraid to come out and say something against that which this administration wants to do.
00:51:11.580I thought it was really interesting that Mitt Romney, in his book, when he was talking about, you know, people making up their minds, how they're going to vote when it came to both impeachment and whether or not President Trump would be convicted after January the 6th.
00:51:25.500And he talked about people being politically afraid on the Republican side, but also being physically afraid for themselves and for their their families.
00:51:39.140And so, you know, both in terms of the political class, as well as, you know, the career folks at the Justice Department, you know, they're they're dealing with things they didn't have to they didn't expect to.
00:51:49.940And the folks on the legislative side have not necessarily shown the degree of courage and independence that that you would hope.
00:51:57.440So just on that, as we close, Eric, what you know, in terms of the frame around courage, the frame around conviction, standing in into the void in the absence of of leadership and oversight and the kind of accountability to expect with people in positions of power and influence and in in the House or Senate and elsewhere.
00:52:17.340I mean, what what what what what what what can shape some optimism as we close in terms of what we can do, what we can achieve?
00:52:24.940Obviously, Prop 50, I believe, is foundational on that.
00:52:28.540And we'll sort of jumpstart the 2026 election and taking back the House of Representatives.
00:52:34.920But in that spirit, in that space, what what what what what can we be doing more of and what gives you some confidence and hope about the future and how we can shapeshift things?
00:52:44.240Well, first, I'd say that Prop 50 has got to pass.
00:52:47.880I mean, that is kind of a foundation upon which I think this country will regain its sense of its of itself.
00:52:56.560It's crafted in a way that I think is is absolutely responsible.
00:53:00.900And again, it's temporary. So I think that has to pass.
00:53:03.380What gives me optimism, though, is also a knowledge of our history.
00:53:07.460You know, if you look at the great social movements in this country, they were launched against overwhelming odds.
00:53:13.240I mean, you just go to the civil rights struggle.
00:53:15.280I mean, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Diane Nash, they had to think, can we rip down young people, young black people and young white people?
00:53:24.080Could we rip down a system of American apartheid?
00:53:26.920I'm sure they must have had doubts at times, but they fought through those doubts.
00:53:30.720They showed an unbelievable amount of courage and ultimately were successful.
00:53:35.520Same thing with women trying to get the right to vote.
00:53:38.000You know, suffragettes at the beginning of the 20th century, they showed remarkable courage, pushed through those doubts.
00:53:47.520And that knowledge of history makes me think that in this awful moment that we will demonstrate that same courage.
00:53:55.160Every generation of Americans is ultimately called upon to defend democracy, whether it's on the beaches at Normandy, the fields of Gettysburg.
00:54:12.240You know, Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
00:54:16.920But the deal is it doesn't bend on its own.
00:54:19.260It only bends when people like us, like you, Governor, like me, like regular American citizens, put their hands on it and pull it towards justice.
00:54:27.780And I think that's what each of us has to ask, you know, what is it that I can do?
00:54:31.600What is it that I can do to pull that arc towards justice, to save our democracy and to keep this nation, you know, keep this nation exceptional?
00:54:41.240I'm optimistic because of that history that I shared.
00:54:46.640And I think that, you know, optimism breeds engagement.
00:56:20.840Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:56:27.180I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight.
00:56:31.300And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke.
00:56:35.920A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old.
00:56:39.300And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.
00:56:43.820How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?
00:56:50.940Listen to Heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:56:57.200The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years.
00:57:07.580Until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
00:57:14.640America, y'all better work the hell up.
00:57:16.700Bad things happen to good people in small towns.
00:57:21.960Listen to Graves County on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:57:32.700And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
00:57:39.880I love that you created this system that revolves around you creating pockets of peace.
00:57:46.860World Mental Health Day is around the corner.
00:57:48.640And on my podcast, Just Heal with Dr. J, I dive into what it really means to care for your mind, body, and spirit.
00:57:56.020From breaking generational patterns to building emotional capacity.
00:57:59.960I'm going to walk away feeling like, yes, I'm going to continue my healing journey.
00:58:04.120Listen to Just Heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.