Climate Change, SCOTUS Term Limits, and How To Protect Democracy
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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm Bea Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience.

Today we are joined by Congressman Dan Goldman. Congressman Goldman is an attorney who, before running for office, served as lead counsel in the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump. I remember that very well. He also oversaw the drafting of the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report, which exhaustively detailed Trump's efforts to extort Ukraine for his personal benefit. And he's got five kids, so J.D. Vance is probably pleased with you, and you are a busy guy, so thanks for taking the time to...

My pleasure. And yes, I have a special credibility to tell J.D. Vance that his great replacement theory sentiments about children would have a lot more currency, I think, and a lot more credibility if Republicans would support any programs that help families. But it is so hard to raise a child, to keep a career, to have the necessary resources

health care and rent and food and so many other costs that it's a decision that is not just simply whether or not you want to have a child.

For sure. Five kids, though. Congressman Goldman, over-exceller, maximizer on the show today. You know, trying to do my part. I appreciate that. Bringing good people into the world is a really important thing. Four daughters, by the way. Girl dad. We love a girl dad. True girl dad. So you have a real stake in this future. I do. I do. It ranges from 19 to 6. So I got...

I got everything covered. You're also a Yale and Stanford educated lawyer, which is something I'm really excited to talk to you about because it's not often that we get to talk to somebody so super smart on the law. And as the Republicans continue to try to bastardize the law, it's nice to have somebody who could maybe tell us how much of that is legal and what we could maybe push back on.

This week, Biden put forth a plan to reform the Supreme Court, and I want to take it in three parts, and maybe you could just give us your breakdown on how each would be accomplished. The first, he's proposing term limits, which I know is very popular, saying that no one should serve a lifetime appointment now, but maybe just 18 years. What is it going to take to get that passed, and is it legal for him to suggest such a thing? So I actually do think it's legal. The requirement is that a judge has lifetime tenure.

But I think the way to properly look at that is that the judge has a job for life. It does not necessarily mean that that judge must be a sitting judge on the Supreme Court. The judge could sit elsewhere. The judge could be senior and still get the full pay benefits. So I think from a constitutional perspective, it is fine.

The reality, of course, is that the Supreme Court will decide that. So what I think matters a lot less than what the folks who may feel like their terms are being targeted think about it. But the rationale is really a nonpartisan one, which is, in fact, largely to take out some of the partisanship that exists in the Supreme Court right now.

Because you would not have the Merrick Garland non-hearing for nine months and then Amy Coney Barrett jammed through three weeks before an election or judges talking about when they're going to retire so that they can be replaced by a judge of their same party.

This would really regiment and routinize the process where a new justice would be appointed every two years. So you would know exactly when you would be getting a new justice. Obviously, the president would still be able to appoint that justice, but it would take out a lot of the sort of partisan shenanigans that often go on with Supreme Court appointments. But you don't think that we should add more judges because I'm of the party of like,

There's been 11 or 13 before. Why not have 13 now? We only have nine right now. We have the largest population we've had in American history. Why shouldn't we add more? Yeah, that's the part that, you know, that I'm a little wary of. I think if there were a way and I've been trying to brainstorm about this, but if there were a way to.

to increase the number of justices from nine to 13, say, because there are 13 federal circuits, but to do it in a forward-looking prospective way where it would not be so clear that one party or the other would get to appoint those justices or that they would even probably be appointed all at once, right?

I would get behind that. My concern about the Judiciary Act, which just simply calls to increase the Supreme Court by four justices, presumably appointed right away, is that we have such a crisis of credibility and legitimacy at the Supreme Court. And I think doing something like that would just exacerbate it. It would appear as if, even if I know this was not the original intent, but it would appear as if

The Democrats, for example, are trying to add four more justices after Roe versus Wade was overturned so that they could reimplement Roe versus Wade. And that would lead to a really dangerous, slippery slope. So I am in favor of expanding it as long as we can do it in a prospective and nonpartisan way.

Right. It definitely sort of has a bit of an I am rubber, you are glue effect, which doesn't seem to solve the ultimate problem, which is the legitimacy. A legitimate court that is sort of truly bipartisanly appointed and fair will ultimately have cases that are decided that make people on both sides of the aisle happy and not. And

And that's sort of the way the system is supposed to work. But if not packing the court or if they were to add justices in a way that seemed fair, or maybe it's combined with a term limit where it's not like, oh, we just have to keep ratcheting up the number of justices or, you know, you run into this problem again with the majority. Are there other reforms or...

I guess, approaches you would have taken to the justice makeup on the court. Yeah, well, I mean, part of the problem that we are experiencing is that the court is much more

political and partisan than it was historically. Justice Souter, as an example, was a Republican appointed justice who turned out to be quite a liberal justice. And the point is not that they might switch gears. The point is that when you become a Supreme Court justice, you are supposed to be apolitical.

And you are supposed to be interpreting the Constitution without a political lens. And unfortunately, what has happened is that the court has become extremely political and politicized.

And so we are in a little bit of a different world now where the party that nominates you is very determined to make sure that they select someone who is ideological consistent with them or their their beliefs.

and that they will execute that. And we've seen that in the Supreme Court, which has, you know, after the Republicans have complained for decades about, quote, judicial activism from the Warren court and the civil rights movement. Now they are just making up law out of whole cloth. They're making up tests. They're just create their overturning precedent. They are more activist than any court has been in history.

And so for that reason, we do need to figure out a way to try to take some of the partisanship out of it. Term limits is a good way where people are just cycling through every every two years. But I also think that we need to make sure that we implement.

a binding code of ethics and that there are independent enforcement mechanisms to prevent ethics violations. Because what is going on right now is that the court, the Supreme Court, is the only court, the only nine justices, judges in the land that do not have a binding code of ethics.

They have a voluntary code of ethics, but if they decide not to follow it, there is nothing that anyone can do other than Congress potentially using the power of the purse or in the worst case scenario, impeachment, which requires a high crime and misdemeanor. So it's a very high bar.

President Biden this week proposed that the Supreme Court must have a binding code of ethics, and I fully agree with that. I have also introduced a law called the Supreme Court Office of Ethics and Investigations Act, which would create separate offices of ethics counsel and investigative counsel so that the ethics counsel would be required to give training and to go through disclosures and to ensure that the justices are aware of their obligations and

And then there would be a separate independent investigative arm that would investigate any

credible complaints about either ethics, ethical violations, or conflicts of interest, as we saw in this recent term in the most egregious way that I certainly can remember by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. So there are lots of different ways to address some of these issues with the courts. And I'm very happy that President Biden has

and Vice President Harris have now doubled down on making sure that we do everything we can to take the politics out of the judiciary. You know, I used to be a caterer on the Hill, and I know the congressional ethics rules inside and out because we can't feed you guys a sandwich. It's got to be something that could fit on a toothpick. And you can't have a toothpick either because that's a projectile. And you can't give you a gift over $50 because that's a bribe, right? So it can't even be like nice food that could be considered somehow like

persuading you and just the rules to feeding a congressperson during a cocktail party are so incredibly strict. Do you think that the Supreme Court would have... That's so stupid. That's such a waste of... It's not though, because otherwise, if you've been to these parties... I get it. If one has caviar and the other has french fries... Yeah, then they're going to have a problem. Right. But the justices are getting vacations. Well, that's what I want to ask. That's what I'm trying to get to. Exactly.

Do you think that the Supreme Court ethics rules would be something that mirrors that of Congress, which I think are actually pretty good for as hard as they make it on the caterer? They do make it very clear that you can't bribe them in party, in product.

or in trip to Tahiti. Yeah, I think whatever the nitty gritty details are, I think can be worked out because there are different rules for different parts of government, et cetera. But absolutely, we need to be banning the opportunity to get trips by people who have interests before the court. I mean, the fact, just as an example,

You may have heard about this Loper Bright case, which overturned the Chevron Doctrine. So the Chevron Doctrine was a 40-year-old case that gave deference to the expertise of the administrator, the executive branch, who would implement rules and regulations. Now, the court just recently got rid of it altogether.

And there's no question there were some parts of Chevron that created problems. Most noticeably is that no rule of regulation was ever settled because the next administration could come in and change it altogether. And that is a problem.

But the notion that this was a Koch brothers mission for 30 years and that Clarence Thomas, who has been feted by the Koch brothers and provided gifts and gifts and taken on trips and fundraised for them, would have completely changed his vote.

And he's somebody who, as you know, takes somewhat extreme positions and does not move from them. But on this one, he completely changed his vote. It just goes to show you that maybe it has had an impact. Maybe it hasn't had an impact, but there's an appearance of a problem here. And that's what we have to address. Mm hmm.

Is there a reason that they have not had a code of ethics up until now? Is it a fantasy to say that it wasn't a problem for the Supreme Court and that they genuinely were self-regulating or not?

Is this sort of like a really new problem? Well, look, I think that as we have now learned more and more over really the last 20, 25 years, a lot of this has come to light recently, but it dates back to the late 90s and early 2000s. This has been a much bigger problem than we've all realized.

But even if you go back to Abe Fortas, who was a justice in the 60s, who was caught accepting money that was, you know, effectively a gift, he just resigned. You know, he respected the appearance of a conflict of interest or the appearance of impropriety, and he resigned from the Supreme Court.

Now, today, you have Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who are both involved. Their families are involved in the underlying events surrounding January 6th. Their wives, at a minimum, them, you know, in Alito's case, he exhibited a political bias there.

And they did not recuse. That is not just a recusal, a discretionary recusal because there's an appearance of a conflict of interest. That is by law a conflict of interest. Yet there's no enforcement mechanism. There's no way for anybody to do anything about the fact that they just said, nah, we're going to hear the case.

And part of the problem is that I think Chief Justice Roberts has wanted to have unanimity among the court in implementing whatever ethics rules they implement and has not taken the responsibility as the chief justice just to simply put in a binding code of ethics because of all of these questions of legitimacy. And if they're not going to police themselves, then it's on Congress to do it.

I do want to talk about Project 2025. From a lawyer's perspective, how inactable is it? Because my dad's friends will say, oh, that's not even Trump's plan. And it's so crazy. It's not even legal. They'd never be able to get that all done. Is Project 2025 a fever dream for the far right? Or is it something that gives you great concern? Well, it gives me tremendous concern. First of all, just the objectives of Project 2025 are so extreme.

They're so backwards. It would literally try to take us back to the 1950s in every way. It would eliminate all medication abortion. It would limit contraception. It would deport immigrants of all kinds, even those who have papers to be here and are married or have family members who are citizens.

It would gut the entire executive branch from and remove any expertise there, which is how our government functions. And it would basically enable Donald Trump or whomever would implement it to become a king and be able to put in political loyalists. You could weaponize the Department of Justice to go after your enemies. And now with the Supreme Court's case about immunity, there's very little that anybody could do to stop that. And

And it goes on. I mean, we would be so regressive on climate change. It would take climate change out of all regulations. It's just literally every single possible policy to just take us back to the 1950s, which is not a place that I think any of us want to be, especially as science and technology and culture and ethics and civil rights and equal rights have developed so much over the last 75 years.

From a legal perspective, there are lots of different things that they are proposing, each one of which would be sort of a different legal question. One example that is talked about a lot is this so-called Schedule F.

which would allow for the traditional career officials in the executive branch agencies, in the State Department, in our Defense Department, in our intelligence community, in the Veterans Administration, in every single agency, there are people who are career appointees. They are apolitical, nonpolitical.

And they execute their job without any consideration of politics. And they are subject matter experts. And our government functions solely because of them. But what Donald Trump wants to do with this Project 2025 is something that he did at the tail end of his last administration, which

which is to turn these sort of for-cause career appointees into at-will political appointees, meaning that they could just eliminate thousands of people who have had careers and built expertise in the executive branch, and then they could install their own political loyalists, those people who only gave money to Donald Trump and not to any Democrats, for example.

And that would then allow for, first of all, remove a lot of expertise and it would be devastating to the administration of our government. But it would essentially allow Donald Trump to just put political lackeys who will do whatever he wants in these offices. Now,

When you get then to the point of what they do, yeah, they're probably going to be – first of all, there is some question as to whether they can do that, and that will be challenged in court. And it's an open question. A lot of this stuff has never been done before.

And certainly if these political lackeys did something that pushed up against the law, for example, another reenactment of the Muslim immigration ban that Trump implemented or the child separation policy, there will be lawsuits that flow from that.

And there will certainly be lawsuits if they just direct the FDA to say that medication abortion is no longer safe and effective. And that will be something that is something that is in Project 2025. They want to get rid of access to medication abortion altogether, which, as you know, it makes up more than 50 percent of abortions and is safer than Tylenol.

So each one is individually its own legal issue. There will definitely be challenges, but it's not as if, I would say this, it's not as if it is obvious on its face that these things are illegal. And when you have this Supreme Court, which just made several crazy and egregious rulings,

that one would never have thought a Supreme Court would do, then it's very scary because your dad and his friends and I can get together and say, "Oh, well, this can't possibly be legal or that's not legal."

But what we think is irrelevant, it's what those nine justices think. And that's what's really scary. There's a question as to if Vice Presidential Hopeful J.D. Vance's wife would qualify for American citizenship under this plan, given that her parents are Indian immigrants and she is American by having been born here in their standard of things. How do you think this is going to affect folks like Usha Vance if they were to get their way? Well, the one thing that I do think is just

flat out unconstitutional is this notion of getting rid of birthright citizenship. I mean, that is in the Constitution and that is a right. I mean, you can bash, you know, the fact that there may be immigrants who are eight months pregnant and they come in here and without documentation and have a baby who becomes an American citizen. But it happens remarkably infrequently relative to the number of births.

And I think that is one objective they have that would not is just flat out illegal. And there's no real way of measuring what some if you have literally every single person born in this country had to fill out some form and make a case for why you should be a citizen.

I mean, our whole system.

and nationalistic the Republican Party and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party has become. And that's what this is about. This is not that they don't want immigrants to come to this country when, you know, they're more than 50 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are either immigrants or children of immigrants. It's that they just don't want certain immigrants to come to this country.

That's just simply because of xenophobia and racism. And we ought to call it what it is. Absolutely. Speaking of being born, we hear a lot about restoring Roe, and that's something that we definitely want to achieve. You and our friend of the pod, Representative Jasmine Crockett, just sponsored a bill called the Abortion Care Awareness Act. Can you tell us a little bit about this? And why aren't we not just signing the Equal Rights Amendment? Well,

The Equal Rights Amendment is incredibly important, but it would not necessarily restore the protections of Roe. I'm a sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment, and it's something that I hope we will be able to implement. We also, though, need to codify Roe. We need to put into law the protections that Roe had established and that we had enjoyed, women had enjoyed for 50 years.

Do you mean like the privacy protections generally or the specific abortion protections? Because I think it's a little bit of both, right? It was like strengthening the 14th Amendment so that the government isn't in your doctor's office for all kinds of things, even beyond abortion. Yeah. And that's clearly where this Supreme Court wants to go. So I do think that Vice President Harris is correct when she is talking. She talks about this as reproductive freedom.

which is not just abortion, but is IVF, is contraception. And it is clear that the Supreme Court and this extreme Republicans are going after those two things as well. And so it is not just simply abortion. And so I think that you're right and that we have to look at this holistically on the issue of of choice and abortion.

We are all in support in the Democratic Party, almost all of us, of codifying, of passing the Women's Health Protection Act, which would make federal law the exact same protections that Roe established.

But that is going to require a lot more Democrats to win. And it's going to require a lot more Americans to vote for Democrats, recognizing that we are simply the only party that is that advocates for women to have control over their own bodies and make these decisions without the government in the medical medical room.

In the meantime, though, one of the things I am doing is I'm thinking a lot about how we can expand abortion access under the current regime until we're able to pass that law.

And so this Abortion Care Awareness Act that Representative Crockett and I introduced is one way to help people get better access to medical care, to abortion care. And it is both designed to provide accurate information about each state's laws and

and where sort of a one stop shop for where you could go if you wanted to get an abortion and what the various different laws are now that it is up to the to the states to to determine. But it also is designed to tackle misinformation and disinformation, especially as it relates to these so-called crisis pregnancy centers.

which are really deceptive and manipulative and are presented as if they're some sort of Planned Parenthood. But in reality, they are designed to discourage, dissuade, influence, convince women not to have abortions. In New York, where I am, there are 13 crisis pregnancy centers and there are five Planned Parenthoods.

And so this bill would really restrict the kind of information that is disseminated by these crisis pregnancy centers, which are really just anti-abortion clinics. And also run by people who are not medical professionals a lot of the time. We had Dr. Jennifer Lincoln on the show, and she was talking about how you don't have to be like a medical professional to do some of the ultrasounds and things they're doing on people. So it's just like super gross and terrible. Absolutely awful.

Congressman, something we don't often get to talk about is how inaction on climate is causing some very serious security issues for us here in the United States. Now, you wrote a bill that draws a line that connects the climate crisis to issues that we might see with homeland security. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Uh,

Absolutely. I'm on the Homeland Security Committee. And one of the things that has become very clear as we've had the FEMA administrator in, as we've had the secretary in, is the impact of climate change on.

is having dramatic effects on many more issues than just, you know, what we might see in terms of flooding or weather events. Those weather events are becoming much, much more severe. And FEMA has stated that basically in the last year,

10 or 20 years, I'm not sure exactly the number, but there are three times as many severe weather events that FEMA has to respond to as there were before. And you can try to deny climate change as some of my Republican colleagues did on the committee. But when you are looking at those facts, they speak for themselves. And regardless of what the cause is, FEMA now has three times as many weather events to deal with.

But it's not just the weather events, because first of all, climate change is having a tremendous effect on immigration. And it's having an effect on many countries around the world, which are already often struggling. And then when you have a massive weather event,

they can't recover like we may be able to recover in the United States. And that displaces people, it dislocates people, and it forces them to look to go to different countries. And that's what's happening a lot in Central America. And that's part of the reason why there's been such an influx of migrants coming to this country is because of climate change. And then when you look one step further, which is that so much of our population in this country

is inhabits coastal areas, which are becoming more and more vulnerable to extreme events.

You are now putting a lot of pressure on where everybody lives and whether they will be displaced. And then we just have severe heat, which affects people who are working, which affects crops, which affects water availability. The impacts of climate change are so widespread and broad that ultimately it becomes a national security issue. We have to make sure that people who are coming into this country are

are doing so in an orderly and regimented fashion. We have to make sure that there are enough services and water and food and protection for Americans who live here. And all of that is under attack, really, by climate change. And so this bill would basically put into law

a climate coordinating council that would be through the Department of Homeland Security and would require coordination among all of the different agencies, especially within the Department of Homeland Security, to mitigate the impacts of climate change as it relates. The Department of Homeland Security has many, many, many different departments. And so, you know, both it has the immigration side, but it also has FEMA, as I mentioned, there are lots of different aspects of it.

The security of our homeland is dramatically impacted by climate change. Is there anything in particular you're concerned about in New York as it relates to climate change? Because we think about climate change like, oh, the lakes and the seas and the oceans and the forests. But up there in New York City, are you worried about the islands sinking into the harbor? Are you worried?

I mean, were you not here for Hurricane Sandy? I was. Yeah. Yeah. Hurricane Sandy is still having massive ripple effects. And there are billions and billions of dollars that are now being spent on making the sort of lower Manhattan, the outskirts.

the coastal areas around lower Manhattan, which is my district, as well as the coastal areas in Brooklyn, which much of which is also my district, resilient to higher water levels. And it's incredibly expensive, but it is a necessary action in order to protect against a future Hurricane Sandy. We've also even had...

But last summer, for example, for the first time that I can remember, there was tremendous smoke from wildfires in Canada that came streaming through New York City and made the air quality below acceptable. And so we're seeing it in so many different ways in New York City, in addition to everywhere else.

And it's part of the reason why I am hoping and pushing for my district, the 10th District of New York, to become a real hub for renewable energy. We just broke ground on a $3.5 billion offshore wind project in my district. And we're excited about that and hoping that more will come. And there have been some bumps in the road with offshore wind technology, and we need to dramatically improve our grid to

and our transmission in order to be able to receive all types of renewable energy. And we need to streamline a permitting process to make it a little bit more feasible to do it. But in addition, we simply have to start this transition to renewable energy to reduce climate change. And the benefits of it are significant. We become energy independent as a country.

And we create millions of jobs. So there's a lot to be said for making that transition beyond just the impacts on climate. But the impacts on climate are a real driving force for it. You hear that, Midwest? We need to care about the climate and New York City so that the hipsters don't make their way into Omaha, Nebraska, the way they did Boise, Idaho. Nobody can afford it.

Ford Boise anymore because we all moved out during the pandemic. We are one weather event away from your lovely city being taken over by the hipsters. So care about climate change.

There is really no good reason not to actively, aggressively switch to renewable energy except for the benefits of moneyed interests and the propaganda that they espouse. I make the case all the time. This company that's doing this offshore wind project in my district, and they're very open about the fact that they never would have been able to do this project without the subsidies provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

And I think that's important because it's the Inflation Reduction Act. Some of the other legislation that the Biden-Harris administration passed in the last Congress, including the Chips and Science Act, the infrastructure bill. We're moving. We're bringing manufacturing back to this country, which is creating jobs, which is really important. But this company is an oil and gas company.

And they are seeing the future of renewable energy. So they're continuing their oil and gas business, but they're also looking into renewable energy. Now, right now, because it's not...

a well-oiled machine, pun intended, there are obstacles, there are hiccups, and it's not a streamlined process. But if we put in the resources and the investment in building out these technologies, it will very likely become as cheap as oil and it will make a transition much more seamless. Makes perfect sense to me.

Before we let you go, tell us, how are you feeling about the new developments in the presidential race? And how are you feeling about the veep stakes? Any favorites? Well, first of all, it's been, you know, it's been a trying few weeks, I think, for for many of us in the party, including me. It was such an admirer of President Biden and has truly believes that he has done an absolutely phenomenal job.

And it was unquestionably difficult for him to do, but to be able to sacrifice his own interests for the good of the country and recognizing that far more is at stake November 15th than tax policy, which is at stake on November 5th as well. But there's a lot more that we have to worry about that is much more fundamental to our country. And he stepped aside.

I'm very excited about Vice President Harris. She has been at the side of President Biden for four years, as most vice presidents are, has been somewhat under the radar, but has taken on a lot of, I think, important roles in this administration and is ready to step up and ready to take on one of the most dangerous people ever to run for president. And I distinguish 2024 Trump from 2016 Trump.

Trump, because 2024 Trump is on a personal revenge and retribution tour. You listen to him talk and he's not talking about anything positive, anything about the future. He's talking about his own grievances and getting back people who are against him. It's all about himself. And we cannot allow that to become the person who occupies the Oval Office.

As for the Veep stakes, there's some fantastic candidates and you see the depth in the Democratic Party. I think all the folks who are being talked about are just are very impressive, have had success, have had success in a bipartisan way, have reached across the aisle. And I think what you see is.

from even just the category of people is that there is a real desire in the democratic party to

not only lower the temperature, but to reduce the extremism and to try to think about how we can solve the problems of the American people, what the future is going to look like and how we can make it better for the average American, for working Americans. And that's a very different vision than what the MAGA Republicans and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have. They are trying to take us backwards.

And I think Vice President Harris and all of the candidates for vice president are really looking toward bringing us forward, making life better for all Americans and lifting those up who have not yet had access to the American dream.

And when you see people, you know, like Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who has a 61 percent approval rating in the state of Pennsylvania, which is about 50 50 Democrat Republican, or you see someone like Senator Mark Kelly, an astronaut, a Navy pilot who is very thoughtful and very good on immigration and the border, which is a big issue.

You see Governor Tim Walz in Minnesota. There are some really, really, really good candidates who I think will present such a contrast to J.D. Vance, who is basically the creation of a MAGA campaign.

combining with a QAnon guy. And you have J.D. Vance. He's further extreme than Donald Trump is. And just so...

creepy. He has done the weirdest things. Said the weirdest thing. Said the weirdest thing. Many times. He's got, yeah, none of our, none of our VP picks, right, are rumored to have been intimate with a couch or a dolphin. So I think we're far ahead in those two categories alone. Weird is the right word. That is, that is the word of the day. And there's not a lot of other ways of explaining that.

some of his crazy characteristics. And by the way, it's not just him. I mean, if you listen to a Donald Trump rally, it's just weird. What I'm glad for is we're not dignifying deeply unserious people with very serious analysis anymore. We're just like, they're weird. We're doing our own thing and we got to move on. It's also a response to the developments in what they have begun proposing. Like,

Project 2025, it's creepy. There are creepy propositions in there that involve the government being in your home, and it actually is not very Republican at all. I think that's really what it comes down to and why it really works, because it is just beyond the pale in some cases. It ranges from...

from weird to all out, full out perverted in many cases. Like they want to track your menstrual cycle. That's disgusting. So like we got to call that what it is. And there's no strategy behind it, except I think people are really, I almost feel like when Biden stepped aside, it opened this bottleneck to,

to what really is the big tent of Democrats because he did pass the torch. He passed the torch to the future, and now it's really been very exhilarating to see we have such a strong bench and just great options to choose from for vice president and more than that. We do, and you hit the nail on the head in terms of Project 2025. Project 2025 is Donald Trump and the Republicans' campaign

plan to take control of all of us.

And that's really the most simple way of putting it, is that they want to be able to control what every American does with their own body, where they live, what their environment is like, just completely whether they're safe from guns or not. They just want to control us. And I think what you look at when you combine that with this crazy isolationist pro-Putin

anti-democratic strain. Can you imagine? I mean, Ronald Reagan would be rolling around in his grave right now. The party that was all about individual freedom and all about global democracy was the Republican Party of the 1980s. And you look at this, these two candidates right now, and they're the exact opposite. And what it's it is really, really going backwards. Right on.

Well, Congressman, thank you for being here with us. Is there anything that we didn't get to chat about that you wanted to bring up for the folks listening at home? Other than I have a strong belief as someone who went to Washington to work in Congress as a staff member because I wanted to help provide checks and balances on what I thought was a rogue presidency at the time and that I ran for Congress because I want to make sure that we keep

our incredible democracy, and that has given so many people, including me, so much to work with. The way to preserve and protect our democracy at the bottom is for everybody to become a little bit more involved and engaged. And I think it's terrific that you have this podcast and that you're connecting with so many people who may not otherwise be

have thought of becoming engaged in our democracy. But I always say, you know, you don't have to run for office to help protect our democracy. You just have to do one more thing than you ever did before.

And if everybody does one more thing, either votes for the first time or help someone get to the poll or volunteers to help register people to vote or is a lawyer, as we were talking about, who helps ensure that our laws are our election laws are followed, then we will maintain our democracy. And so I strongly urge all of your listeners to become more engaged, even though sometimes

I feel it too. You just want to put your head under the pillow and hope it goes away. But that's not going to make it go away. And so we all need to lean in a little bit more. And that's how we're going to win this battle. Well, good luck on your reelection. We'll be rooting for you. And good luck with your four daughters and son. That's quite a lot of kids. We appreciate you so much for being with us today. Until next time, I'm Vita Spear. And this is American Fever Dream.

American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.