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COMMENTARY HEATHER COX RICHARDSON Politics Chat, October 14, 2025 PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5052W9T0ik
Politics Chat, October 14, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson October 14th 2025 589K subscribers In which I try to answer your questions about modern politics.... Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... You can also find me: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxr... Facebook: / heathercoxrichardson Resources: https://redwine.blue/ https://www.commoncause.org/take-action/ https://www.congress.gov/members/find... 00:00 - Welcome 02:52 - Article II Section IV 05:23 - Qatari Air Force Base 11:03 - Nuclear option for ending the government shutdown 24:10 - Difference between reality and the image the administration hopes to portray 42:09 - Free speech and No Kings Day protests on October 18th Heather Cox Richardson ... 589K subscribers Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I have only recently found Heather Cox Richardson, and am not yet familiar with her mindset. I like the fact that she thinks of herself as a historian more than as a current affairs reporter. In some ways it reminds me of my father who taught history at the high school level while also training sports teams at the school. Some of this was during WWII in the UK when many of is best players went straight into the Royal Air Force (RAF) with many of them dying during the Battle of Britain. Winston Churchill referenced the Battle of Britain in a famous peach in the British Parliament saying something along the lines 'Never in all of history have so many owwed so much to the ultimate sacrifics of so few!' referring to the young men who had faught against the German Luftwaffe in the skies over Britain against the odds to win the Battle of Britain. My roots are British ... botn in Preston, Lancashire in January of 1940. I have lived a full life and been a US resident in the USA since the late 1960s. Incresingly, I find it deeply disturing that school children in the USA seem to have such a limited knowledge of histry in general and especially recent history since WWI and WWII. This year was 80 years since the end of WWII. During a Memorial Parade in London to remember VE Day, I was moved by the flags of all the Nations that fought with Great Britain taking part in the parade. Two weeks later, or so on July 4th a Memorial Concert in Washington DC seemed to have the main narrative that the USA had won the Second World War all on its own ... seriously! My first impression of Heather Cox Richardson is very ositive. I look forward to seeing more of her work! Peter Burgess Transcript Welcome 0:04 Hey folks. Oh, Frog Town. You know, that's going to be one of those things that future graduate students are going to look at and think, why is he calling it Frog Town? And they're going to have to unravel things, which is always interesting about history. Westerly, Rhode Island, Powder Springs, Georgia, Ellensburg, Washington, Mesa, Arizona, Los Angeles. Rain in Los Angeles. Let me tell you, it is so freaking dry here in Maine. Um, the froggies are here. Interesting that we have taken the frogs back from the radical right. Uh, when the frogs didn't deserve that. Kalamazoo. Uh, Los Angeles again. Arlington. Yes. Uh, that's such a great I love Arlington. You know, you got great bakeries. Ofallon, Illinois. Charlottesville, Virginia, where my aunt used to live. Richmond, Virginia. Um, uh, Lisbon, Portugal. Brownville, Texas. Brownsville, Texas. Long history about 1:02 uh Brownsville. Urbana, Illinois. Buffalo, New York. Where's my Facebook people? Are they not here yet? Um Marshall, Texas. North Branch, Minnesota. The frogs. Yeah, Fort Worth in the house. Man, did I have a good stake in Fort Worth in 1985. Um Claremore, Oklahoma. Um Lincolnshire, Illinois. Where are my Facebook people? Come on, guys. Um, Facebook is still not on. Deerfield, Massachusetts. Oh, you know what? Sometimes, uh, Facebook is really slow. Uh, let me see if I can find a story here. Oh, yeah. That, believe me, that steak was a very long time ago. That 1985. Um, De Moine, best bakery in the country, De Moines, Illinois. Uh, De Moine, Iowa. I was I was just telling somebody that today actually. Um, Saratoga, New York. That's famous. Of course, Webster, Massachusetts. Facebook is live, it somebody says, but I'm not seeing anybody here. Facebook is on. Liberal 2:04 Rock says Facebook is on, but I'm not sure seeing anybody commenting. Is Facebook up to its usual tricks? It might be. By the way, a lot of pe Hey, happy birthday, Gary. Um, uh, every once in a while, Facebook goes through and throws a whole bunch of people off the page. I have nothing to do with that. Um, and and we don't seem to have any way to fix it except then they seem to reverse themselves or something. So, if you are suddenly in Facebook jail and you have no idea why, it's probably not you. Um, all right. Well, I'm not seeing Facebook. Oh, somebody's saying they're seeing comments. I'm not seeing them yet, but let's just go ahead and jump into things here. Um, I'm going to start with the easy questions and get them out of the way simply because they're easy and we'll throw them out and um, and then there's some bigger questions behind them. A lot of people are asking about article 2, section 4 of the United States Constitution, which I'm seeing in a lot of social media suggests that if 3:01 the president is impeached and convicted, the entire apparatus of the administration is also removed from office. That is a misreading of the constitution. That is not what it actually says. Um the the const the the words are these. The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. What this means is that each one of them can be impeached individually, but when the president or some officer is impeached and convicted, it does not mean that they all go down together. And you'll notice that in the words that I spoke, the way they are being reproduced on social media, there's a change in that. So, it makes it sound like the whole um administration gets removed. 4:00 And that is incorrect. And I'm seeing it more and more now. And that's that is simply never the way it has been um uh discussed, interpreted, and certainly not the way the people who framed the constitution wrote it. So a lot of people are putting a lot of hopes on that and that's just a misreading of that um article 2 section 4. By the way, the you know, I did a short video on the constitution and the way this constitution was written, but the constitution itself is a pretty easy read. Um, it was designed for ordinary people to read it. And if you're interested, this doesn't have to be a mystery. There are transcripts of the Constitution in many places. The one that I go to is the National Archives. And the trick to understanding it is, I hate to say this, first of all, they put commas everywhere. But um, but to read it slowly, piece by piece, because it's a legal document, not literally a law, but it's the underpinning of our legal system. and they were trying to make it 5:01 intelligible. So, it's it's kind of rare that you're going to run into something that you don't that you can't figure out pretty easily. Now, that being said, um they they were really trying to cover all their bases as quickly as they could. So, there's a lot of stuff that it's kind of dense, so you might want to slow down on that a little bit. So, that was one of the questions that a lot of people asked. The other one was about Qatari Air Force Base 5:26 the Qatari, alleged Qatari Air Force base in um in Idaho that Secretary of Defense Pete Hexith appeared to announce over the weekend. Now, it it's now seems one of the caveats I'm going to put here is that this administration has been extraordinarily um opaque about what it's doing. So, in the Biden administration, if somebody had said something like that, I could have gone right to the Department of Defense, right to to interviews, right to the papers, and been able to say to you, 'Oh, that was a paper signup, blah, 6:01 blah, blah, and it's going to do blah blah blah. It's going to do that.' This administration doesn't post stuff. It doesn't say what's going on. Stuff shows up days late, if there even is anything to show. And in this particular case, we don't really have the documents that would make it easier for me to be absolutely definitive about this. Now, that being said, it appears that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexith, misspoke and and yet he was reading from a paper. Um, so it may be that the paper was badly written or whatever, but it certainly sounded as if he was saying that uh Cutter would have an Air Force base in Idaho. That's what I heard as well as a lot of other people. But it does not appear that that was what he was trying to say. It appears that what he was trying to say was that there will be structures built on a US Air Force base to house pilots fromQatar who will be training with the US Air Force. That 7:05 kind of an arrangement is not unusual. Germany has trained with um with the US Air Force. Uh Singapore uh Singaporean pilots have trained with US pilots. The Netherlands and NATO allies have all trained in similar situations in the United States. What's different about this is this is the first time we have had a country um we've had cutter do it and have had a country in from that part of the world training in the US. And I think you have to look at in conjunction with the September 29th statement from the White House that the United States was going to give security guarantees to Qatar that look very much like our guarantees to our NATO allies. And by that I mean what the White House said um in it was an executive order that the White House released on September 29th in which the 8:02 president said that uh the United State quote the United States um shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty or critical infrastructure of the state of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States. Got that? If they are attacked and and this was probably a reflection of the Israeli attack on Qatar in what they said was an attempt to take out some of the leaders of Hamas. Um but the US said ifQatar is attacked, the United States will consider it an attack on the peace and security of the United States. And section 2B says, by the way, this is on the White House website. If you want to read this, you can go to it. It's called um assuring the security of the state ofQatar. It's from September 29th. It's only like two clicks. Um it says um 9:00 in the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures including diplomatic, economic and if necessary military to defend the interests of the United States and the state of Qatar and to restore peace and stability. Okay, so a couple of things about that. That was an extraordinary document giving to the state of Qatar the same as assurances that we give to our NATO allies because they are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and that treaty says that we will all consider any attack on one of us an attack on all of us and will respond in kind. It's only that uh that clause of the treaty has only been invoked once and that was after 911 when other ally NATO allies came to the aid of the United States. But do remember that this is an executive order of the uh president of the United States. It is not a law and it is not an official treaty which must be approved by the US Senate. So um so you know it's in that 10:06 sort of murky thing where Trump is offering um what seems to be you know a a guarantee to another country through an executive order. It's it legally doesn't have that much standing uh compared to uh an actual Senate treaty, but it does appear that the United States is firming a relationship up with Qatar. There's a long history of that that reaches back many years. It is also tied up with the recent events in the Middle East, which I'm not going to talk about today, but I will talk about in the future if you are so inclined. It's a real mess, and I tend to avoid it. I follow it very closely, but I tend to avoid it because it just gets people screaming at me um because I they want me to take a side rather than to explain stuff and and I'm just trying to explain stuff here. All right, so those were two easy ones. Here's another one um that um 11:02 that I think we should get into. People asked about the so-called nuclear option for ending the government shutdown. Uh Nuclear option for ending the government shutdown but they're a little confused about what that looks like. So, let me explain to you all. I mean, you don't have to listen to this, by the way. You could go make dinner, but um let me explain to you what is going on with the government shutdown because it's it's a little complicated, but it's uh a a a political it's a political flash point that is really important to the United States right now. Every shutdown is important to the United States right now, but this the United States, but this one is especially important right now. Oh, somebody asked what the Hatch Act is. I'll get to that in a second. I'm going to write it down, though. Um um so it's es especially important right now because the Republicans under President Donald Trump are trying to force the Democrats to do what they want 12:03 without regard for the norms of um the way that the government has always worked and that matters. So, one of the things that I get a little frustrated by is I'm not interested in in horse race stuff. I'm really not. Not not just because, you know, I just find it mind-numbing. And and so many of you might feel the same way about the shutdown. It's like they're holding a vote, they're not holding a vote, they're holding a second vote, they're holding, you know, and you're just like, I don't care. Tell me how it comes out. The reason that all of this matters is because it is an attempt on the part of the Republicans to force the Democrats to knuckle under and to do what Trump and the mega Republicans say. And that's why this has become such a big deal. Usually, it's the other the other way around. The Republicans are trying to shut down the government because they're trying to slash the government. In this 13:00 case, the Republicans are in control of the government. they have been unable to produce the appropriations bills that they were supposed to forever ago or by the way next year's budget and um and as a result they're trying to use the power of a shutdown to force the Democrats to knuckle under. What does this look like? What this means is that on September 30th the funding for the government um for the fiscal year ended. That's when the fiscal year ended. Did I say October? It's September 30th. I'm sorry if I said October. September 30th. So the government had to shut down beginning on October 1st. And when a what a government shutdown means is that the government does continue to pay the things that the um executive branch deems imperative, but a lot of other stuff doesn't get paid. Um and and theoretically that will be made up later. And I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, but someday I mean I write about that. There is more to that, but I'm going to leave that where it is for now. So, what happened is this. In the 14:04 House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson, who's a Republican from Louisiana, is really caught between a rock and a hard place in that he has a majority, but it's a very slim majority of the House and he's got the Republicans have uh a number of Republicans who are not willing to that they're factional. They're fighting amongst themselves. He only they only the Democrats only have to peel off um I think it's four people to stop things from going through the house. I could be wrong about that number. People come and they go. It's not very many is the point. Now, one of the things that's a real problem for House Speaker Mike Johnson is that not only do the Democrats want the release of the Epstein files, so do a lot of Republicans. And Johnson is determined that he's going to make sure that that those Epstein files do not see the light of day despite the fact a number of Republicans as well as Democrats want 15:04 them. And I believe it's 78% of the American people want to see them because he knows as Pam Bondi has made clear as well as the Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump is named in those and we've already seen some material that was pretty bad. Um, and we don't, you know, obviously there's other stuff that the administration thinks will be very damaging or they wouldn't be trying to hide it. Um, you can speculate about what that would be. Um, there's money issues, there's, um, uh, crime issues, there's all sorts of things. We do not know what's in those files. We have a lot of material from the files, but not everything that's in the files. So, he has um has twice now sent the the House home rather than facing a revolt from his Republicans over the Epstein files. But now he's got another real problem in that on September 23rd in Arizona, a 16:03 woman named Adalita Graalva was elected as a Democrat. And Republicans, I think it's four Republicans as I say, don't quote me on that. And the Democrats have all gotten behind what's called a discharge petition. And that discharge petition, by the way, is being run by Thomas Massie, who's a Republican of Kentucky, as well as some other Republicans. And what that will do is it will force the h the speaker of the house to hold a vote. It doesn't say it's necessarily going to going to the votes necessarily going to be positive, but force him to hold a vote on whether to release the Epstein files. And he does not want to do this because a lot of Republicans want that out as well. And above all, they don't want to go home to their constituents and say they voted against it. So he's trying really hard to make sure that doesn't go forward. But Ghalva will be the 218th signature on that discharge petition if she is sworn in. So at this point, he has managed to keep her from being sworn 17:00 in for uh what is it 3 weeks, which you know, often a a new representative is sworn in within a day or two. And at this point, the attorney general of Arizona is talking about suing to have her sworn in. So, he's got those problems on top of everything else. Now, the other problem he's got with this government shutdown is that um the a lot of the Republicans actually want to do what the Democrats are demanding that they do, which is to extend the premium tax credits that support purchasing of health insurance on the Affordable Care Act markets. for people who make between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. That's a lot of people. But even more than that, the because the premiums are going to go up on average more than 18:05 100%. That is more than double. That means a lot of the healthier people on those health exchanges will simply decide that they can't afford insurance and they will drop off them. when they do that, the the pool covered by those um those markets will get sicker and premiums go up for everybody. And this is such bad news that you have seen uh the Republican representative from Georgia, Marjgerie Taylor Green, come out and say this killing people. We got to go ahead and extend the tax credits that the Republicans decided not to extend when they wrote and then passed the what they call the one big beautiful bill act. If you ever go to Congress, don't pull that crap. I hate saying all those words. Just name it something simple. Anyway, the one big beautiful bill act 19:02 in July. They extended the tax cuts for the wealthy corporations, but they did not extend those um premium tax credits. And that's going to create this this um uh real healthcare crisis and a price crisis. And a lot of Republicans don't like that and they think that it looks really bad now for the Republicans to have said, 'Yeah, we don't care.' Because those tax uh bills, I'm sorry, those, forget that word, those um those health care premium bills are going out. Uh I believe it's November 1st. I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think it's November 1st. All right. So, what has happened here? What happened was that Johnson pushed through the House of Representatives a continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels until November 21st, 3 weeks after those health care bills are going to appear in people's mailboxes or they'll appear a few days after they're sent out. They're 20:06 supposed to go, as I say, about the beginning of November. So what he did is he pushed it through those things through on I have the numbers here. Um September 19th and then if you remember um let me make sure I've got that right. Yes. On September 19th that was a Friday. The House and the Senate were on break the next week and that meant that they would only be back for two days before the shutdown. And that would be Monday and Tuesday, the 29th and the 30th of September. They were supposed to be back. Johnson kept the House out of session so that the Senate would either have to swallow what the House had passed or the government would shut down. And he made a calculation that the Democratic senators would back down because they did in March, if you remember, and things were very different in March. But they didn't. They said in 21:04 the Senate, you must get 60 votes to pass this continuing resolution. Um because we will filibuster it otherwise. Now, back to that, and this has been going on. I'll finish with with that, and then I'll go back to to the the problem with Johnson. Um the the Republicans in the Senate could use and this is what you asked about the um the what is the so-called nuclear option to pass the shutdown I mean sorry to pass a continuing resolution um by it's a simple procedural thing but it's it's a you know it basically says you can't filibuster this particular law or or it could be this category of laws measures going forward. But if they do that, then the Republicans will be solely on the hook for passing a 22:03 continuing resolution that permits the end of those um those premium tax credits that affect the health care markets. So they're trying desperately to get the Democrats to sign on to it and to say, 'Yeah, we're we think it's important enough to keep the government open that we're going to look the other way while people's health insurance is so dramatically impacted.' So in order to keep the pressure on the Democrats, Donald Trump has told the the Republican senators, 'Do not negotiate with the Democrats,' which is what one normally would do. You'd negotiate. He's refusing to meet with um with the Democrats. He says to the senators, 'Do not negotiate. Do not meet with them.' And they're not doing it. At the same time, Johnson has said he will not call the House back into session until the Senate passes that continuing resolution and they're at an impass now. So, um, so how that's going to play out, I I who knows, but that's what's going 23:05 on. That's what the nuclear option was. And that's um you know it's a it's a a question really here of whether the Democrats will say and people are badly hurt by the shutdown mind you whether the the Democrats will finally say we just can't see this happen. We just can't watch people hurt this badly. We'll go ahead and knuckle under or whether whether they will continue to say as they are now there's a Republican problem. You didn't pass the bills. You didn't you control both the House and the Senate. You're refusing to go negotiate with us. you're screwing people over on health care. Good luck to you, which is the position they're taking now. But we'll see. I think it's um I think it's um I think there's I think they need to get eight Democratic senators and one um senator who usually votes with the Democrats but has not on this is Angus King of Maine who's an independent. So I think they only need seven senators but but in fairness I have not looked at those numbers. So um so that's what's happening in that. Now, 24:06 um the um the other good thing that I think is Difference between reality and the image the administration hopes to portray really important this week is the difference between the image that the administration is trying to project and the fact that it is now coming up against significant push back. And I want to clarify something here. One of the questions that I thought was great when I first um put out a call for questions today, there was a question that popped right up and I can't find it for the life of me now and I'm sorry if you're listening, whoever you are, because I thought it was a great question and and I'm not going to quote it accurately because I figured I would start with it today and so I would look at it again and now, like I say, it's buried. I can't find it. But the questioner basically said, you know, you keep saying people don't like Trump, and I think you're giving people false hope because, you know, he's still in power. He's he's garnering all this power. He's he's creating all this havoc. And you're giving people false hope. And it's not 25:04 fair. And and I want to be really clear about what I do and what I am trained to do. I'm not a journalist. I'm a historian. And that really matters because as I say, I don't care about the latest horse race which a journalist is not only trained but charged to do to say these are the things that are happening in your world. I'm going to put them in front of you and you should make sense of them. I am that's not what I do. I am somebody who studies how societies change. That's what historians do. What makes them change where the pressure points and how they change. And my I am trained to study ideology, the ideas that people have and politics primarily. Now, because of my degree, I mean there's a lot of different facets to that. My degree is actually in the history of American civilization, not in American history, which is if anybody's listening who knows this stuff, you'll know that's a difference. It may not matter to most people, but what that means is that I am constantly looking at 26:06 the relationship between ideas and practical politics. And one of the things that I have spent my entire career doing is saying that the ideas that the first faction and now the entire body of the Republican party have put forward since the 1980s are not popular. And this is how those people are staying in power. And this is how um and how and and why peop why these ideas are not popular. And why I know those ideas are not popular. What I am never saying is reclaiming American democracy is going to be easy. All you have to do is vote and it's done. Um and and there is my bias. I am I really don't care a lot about political parties. um or rather I care deeply about them but more about their long trajectory. And I believe that we need both at least 27:05 two political parties in the United States to be healthy and to believe in democracy because both the ideology of the Democratic Party and the ideology of the Republican party as they were first conceived are central to American DNA. But I also believe that the faction that has taken over the Republican party is a an existential threat to American democracy in this moment. Very different than the traditional Republican party that I have studied. Now one of the things when some this person said you know you talk talk about polls polls are useless. Actually polls aren't useless. Polls that measure um ideas about issues are very good. Polls that measure how somebody's going to vote and what they think about a certain politician. Not so good. But there's something important about polls that you always have to pay attention to. As I always talk about, you have to look who is being pled so 28:01 that polls that deal with the American people, usually American adults, turn out very different numbers than polls that turn out American voters. So, if you look at the last election, the things that the um Trump administration or the Trump campaign was talking about doing were extremely unpopular or to the degree that they were popular, people misunderstood what they were going to do. So, as I've said before, and there's a a great poll on this, the people who knew about Project 2025, only about 4% of them wanted to see it enacted. But, as you know, Trump went on to win the election. Now, he didn't win 50% of the vote, by the way. He won slightly over 49% of the vote. Uh there was a there were other votes that went to third party candidates, but it was enough to win the election. What people need to factor in with that though is voters versus American adults. 29:01 So in that election, the number of eligible, not necessarily registered, but eligible American voters who voted was about 64.1% according to Elliot Morris, who writes um Strength and Numbers, the the paper devoted to statistics. He points out that that translates to about 32% of people voting for Donald Trump for president. You look at that and you say 32%? That's nothing. Why why are we having a real problem in with this administration? And that's where I come in that um the since 1986 those people who were pushing the destruction of the United States government recognized that what they were doing was not popular. So beginning in 1986 they did two things. They started first of all to pack the courts with justices and judges who would as Edwin me who was Ronald Reagan's attorney general said um 30:02 u make make the Reagan revolution um such that it didn't so permanent that it would not matter what the voters said. So they packed the courts and they also began the process of what they called ballot I'm sorry um yeah ballot integrity uh the idea that there were somehow voters that were cheating and in our memos that we have from our their memos that we have from a court case. They recognized that what they were really trying to do was cut away from the vote black voters. So where where I come in is explaining that the mechanics of the system that we currently have in the United States do not reflect the will of the majority of the American people because through voter suppression and through gerrymandering and through our u electoral college system which has been skewed since 1929 31:02 and through our um media ecosystem. We have created a world in which a minority of the American people have been able to have a lock on the US government. Now, how do I know that's the case? Um, I mean, aside from the historical documents we have, look at states like North Carolina where the the both senators are Democratic in a statewide race and the governor is Democratic, but the House uh the the House delegation is gerrymandered to reflect um much stronger Republican bias than what is essentially a 50-50 state. And you can see this around the country. these uh Republican dominated states that have gerrymandered to the point that they can control the congressional delegation are um the reason that we have a Republican House of Representatives right now and one of the reasons we're in the the mess that we're in. So you can see it from that. You can also see it and watch this very closely. You don't have to look at 32:05 the statistics. You don't have to look at anything. You don't have to look at polls. All you have to look at is what states are trying to get rid of ballot boxes and to take away the the right to vote and who is pushing those things. So you look at gerrymandering for example, the Democrats around the country have worked very hard to stand against partisan gerrymandering. They would love to get rid of partisan gerrymandering. Why? Because they know they're going to win those elections. Republicans are the ones who stop that. Similarly, if you look at the party that is pushing voter um voter voting restrictions, as in the state of Maine right now, there is a proposition to get rid of absentee voting. 40% of the people in Maine vote absentee. That doesn't mean they're necessarily out of state. It means that it's easier for them. It's a this is I believe demographically the oldest state in the union. It's easier for people get to to to mail in a ballot. The people who are doing that are those who are trying to make sure largely that Democrats can't get out to vote. So just 33:02 look and see who's trying to suppress the vote. And one of the things that makes me angry always when you look at the outcome of an election and ever since the gutting of the voting rights act um with Shelby the Shelby versus Holder decision of 2013 in 2014 one of the things that in those midterm elections one of the headlines was where are all the black voters like suddenly black voters decided not to show up. The difference there was Shelby versus Holder and the voter ID legislation and the voter suppression measures that went in across the country. So when people say, 'Oh, that voters are apathetic. They won't show up.' Let's take a look at voter suppression first of all. So what I'm trying to point out here in what I do is the disconnect between our current system of democracy and the will of the American people. And I am fervently in favor of fixing our system 34:03 so that it actually does result in what the majority of Americans want. And for the record, I believe that some of those decisions will be ones that I really don't like. But that's the point of democracy is that you trust crowdsourcing is how I always think of it. Because especially for younger people, their reality is not mine and I don't know how to fix their world. I know how to help them maybe, but I shouldn't be telling them how to fix their world is my philosophy of it. Anyway, so all that being said, um what you're seeing right now, I think, is the recognition on the part of the administration that its power is slipping. And I am in in real time here. So I don't know what the tipping point was compared to what historians will 35:01 say. I think Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air and getting put back on looks to me like a moment in which the administration really took a hit in terms of what it's trying to do. its attempt to show to show a world in which Donald Trump is an authoritarian dictator. The videos that Christine Gnome puts out and the Department of Homeland Security puts out and the the videos that the administration shows when it keeps um striking those small boats in the Caribbean. They struck another one today. That brings the total of uh alleged dead up to 27 people um that were uh killed without any information or any sign that this was anything other than an extrajudicial killing. And that's going to matter going forward a lot. But, you know, there's this constant attempt like the attack on the apartment building in Chicago to make it look as if the administration is 36:02 exercising extreme control against what they call the worst of the worst. That is the allegations that the undocumented immigrants they are rounding up are rapists and murderers, the two categories that Trump always goes back to. And yet uh what you are seeing increasingly is push back against that. You're certainly seeing a number of independent journalists releasing information that says hey wait a minute in fact um you know fewer than 10% of the people that you have rounded up have a criminal record. um you know this idea that in Chicago the administration was going after gang members in that apartment building and it turns out one person of the 37 that they took might have been affiliated at least that's what reports are today. What you're seeing I think is really interesting because the administration has tried to portray a reality that isn't true. And you see this most dramatically in their insistence that Portland, Oregon, and 37:08 Chicago, Illinois, as well as Los Angeles, but especially Chicago right now and Portland are at under are at war. There there's there's this war going on. And it certainly appears as if Trump believes that in part because of things that he is seeing on videos that are from 2020, which was a very different moment. But in the last week, people in Portland and now in other cities around the country are showing up to stand against ICE in frog costumes, chicken costumes, um things that make it very clear that there is not not only not as there is not a war zone in those areas, but also that the administration seems anyway, and there are journalists who have have said this to be trying to create the kind of provocation that will result in uh clashes that they can then 38:06 use to justify invoking the insurrection act, for example. And one of the things I've said here for months is that old white women like me need to be out in the front lines because it's very hard to see that on your TV or in a video and say that person is somebody that I associate with being dangerous. Um you know what do they call them? Auntie Fos or whatever. Um and the the visuals of this administration are incredibly important. putting a frog suit on or a chipmunk suit or Mr. Potato Head or the things that I have seen defangs that idea that the administration is protecting Americans against a war zone and that's incredibly important. So, you've seen the Jimmy Kimmel thing. You're starting to see the the frogs in Portland, but 39:01 also some of the other things, you know, the other costumes in Portland, the naked bike ride. Um, and all of those things, by the way, are not necessarily accessible to those of us who don't live in Portland in the sense that there's a lot of layered meanings to all of what's happening in these cities and in these communities that outsiders like me don't understand. But the larger picture says, I mean, apparently there's a history behind the naked bike ride is where that came from. Believe me, I don't know what the history of the naked bike ride is. Um but but there is this sense that the administration is losing control over the narrative and that is playing out in a number of ways. Um, it's playing out by the fact that the the Pentagon under Pete Hegath, Defense Secretary Pete Hgsith said that all journalists would lose access unless they signed a document agreeing not to report anything that had not officially been handed out by the Pentagon, including stuff that was not classified. And except for one right-wing outlet, every single news 40:06 outlet has declined to sign that, including the Fox News Channel. That's a big crack. They also um uh what's the other one that I had? They also um a number of airports are refusing to show the video that Christy Gnome and the Department of Homeland Security put out. Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Gnome and the the Department put out blaming the Democrats for the shutdown. It is a blatant violation of the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act is a law that says you cannot use public resources for partisan ends. Um with a little bit of an exception, the president is able to uh to to do um uses security, for example, and the vice president also is not covered by the Hatch Act in the same way. Possibly not at all. Although the Republicans jumped all over Al Gore in the Clinton administration when he actually made a 41:04 fundraising phone call from his office. Um but generally the Hatchack covers everybody else and you certainly shouldn't be using it the way they're using it. People are refusing to put up that that video in airports um at the by the TSA um TSA lines. Similarly, the administration sent out last week a requirement or a an invitation for I believe it was seven universities to get preferential treatment if they agreed to um to agree to sign a statement saying that they would um do a bunch of things that the administration wanted. All of them said no. Now the administration is offering it to every university and some will cave. But the point is there is increasing um push back against the administration's attempt to uh to prove that it is a fact in fact in control. So where does that leave us? Um um 42:06 tonight that leaves us with something I want to call your attention to and that is people asked about free speech for Free speech and No Kings Day protests on October 18th example and I thought the most profound thing I'd read about pre free speech lately is that if you are worried about exercising your free speech and not using it, you've already lost it. And I I think that's really important. And I'll be honest, sometimes when I think about the stuff I'm going to write, I worry. But then I just make sure that I have footnotes for everything and make it very clear where I'm getting my information and um and I say it I I do not self censor except to the degree I try never to be out on a limb. Um so use your free speech and one of the places to use that of course is at the no kings rally on October 18th this Saturday. And one of the things that you see reflecting the administration's extraordinary concern about its loss of 43:05 um of domination is their attempt to paint those people who are turning up legally to protest which is pro which is uh protected by the first amendment of the constitution and to exercise their free speech also protected by the first amendment of the constitution. to say they do not want to be governed by a king, to stand in favor of American democracy, to call them terrorists, and to say that they are anti-American, that they are what was the latest one? Marxists. I think there is nothing more American than standing against kings. There just isn't. That is that's actually where we started. There is nothing more American than standing up for democracy. Um, there is nothing more American than taking part in public conversations about what your country should be doing. It is crucially important that those be nonviolent 44:02 always in the United States. But exercising your right to demand that your government respond to your interests is the most American thing you can possibly do. So, I urge everybody to stand up for their rights and stand up for your neighbors rights and to continue everything you're doing to try to protect American democracy. And that, I got to tell you, is not partisan. It is not about just being a Democrat or being an independent or being a Republican because you will have all of those groups and others turning out to say, 'We do not want to be governed by a dictator.' And again, one of the crucial things to remember in this moment is the same thing Americans remembered in the 1850s and the 1890s and the 1930s. That while somebody who is trying to garner power will always try to divide a society into us and them friends and enemies, you know, us and and those people in these moments. What will make the 45:07 difference for surviving um as a country that supports democracy is remembering that we are we the people. We are not a a partisan group. We are we the people standing against somebody who wants to be a king. And when I talk about that and say that it's nonpartisan, I really want you to understand that on the other side of this, all of our coalitions will change. And some of the people that you cannot stand right now are going to be your allies on the other side. Maybe not your best friends, but they're going to be your allies. And some of the people that you are think you're going to be with forever are going to split away. That's part of reinventing American democracy. And it's really cool. I talk a lot about here about um the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, under Lincoln, 46:06 who joined Lincoln's cabinet as a Democrat, uh not keen at all on the Republican party, did it because he cared about the country. And four years later, when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Stanton wandered um the the streets of Washington sobbing so profoundly that his friends were worried about his safety. you will see those sorts of changes and and that's good because we will reinvent a country that can adjust to the 21st century in a way that a country that is led by people trying to go back to the 1920s cannot do. So, this is our moment. Let's get out there and do it. All right, I'm going to um let you go and turn back to writing. Thank you for being here. And I'm doing an an uh I'm doing an an interview tomorrow. There there's there's must be 47:01 a list of this somewhere. Um I'm trying to do a few interviews, but mostly I'm trying to to write a book. So um thank you for being here and I will see you again on Thursday.

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