Pod Save America

I'm sort of haunted by a book you and I know well, a book called The Way to Win that came out in 2006, about the 2008 presidential election and told everyone about what would matter and who could possibly win.

And if you read that book, you will find an area mention of Barack Obama who does not appear once in that book as an example of just how quickly things change.

I have referred to in my, on this podcast before this book that was written in 2006 called The Way to Win, which in most cases is a pile of hot steaming establishment garbage that should not be read in part because it was a treaties on the 2008 election that didn't include the words Barack or Obama.

In 2006, John Harris and Mark Halperin published the book, The Way to Win, on who had the best chance to win the 2008 election and why.

Ari, thanks for joining us.

Your book is Give Us the Ballot, The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.

Go check it out.

Ari Berman, welcome back to Pod Save America. Hey, John. Thank you very much for having me back.

The Trump administration added this question in March of 2018. And the problem is that the census is supposed to count everyone in America, not just every citizen, not just everyone who's here legally, everyone who is here, whether they are legal or not.

The census is really the basis for American political power. It is the survey that then determines how political power is allocated.

So if we have a census that doesn't count immigrants in large numbers, then states with a lot of immigrants, places like New York and California and some Republican states like Texas that are fast growing, that have a lot of immigrants, they are going to have less political power than places that are wider, more rural, and have fewer immigrants.

And basically what the federal court said was that this was pretextual, that Ross added this question for other reasons. And the other reasons included trying to diminish political power for areas with lots of immigrants, possibly trying to draw districts to exclude immigrants from counting altogether, that Ross, when he made this decision, consulted with people like Steve Bannon, people like Chris Kobach, the former secretary of state of Kansas, who are among the most anti-immigrant people in the country, the architect of the Trump administration's white nativist strategy.

I was in the Central Valley of California, Dan, where there are a lot of Latino immigrants, a lot of undocumented immigrants reporting on a story about the census in the spring of 2018. And I met a lot of undocumented immigrants. And I asked them, would you respond to the census if it had a question about U.S. citizenship? And they all told me no.

His book Healing Politics is out now.

Go pick up Abdul's book Healing Politics. It's a fantastic read.

His book Healing Politics is out now.

And go pick up Abdul's book Healing Politics. It's a fantastic read.

And in this book, I tell the story of my science and my own upbringing to set up an understanding of how epidemiology works and how we understand the moments that we live in, and then make this diagnosis of an epidemic of insecurity, working outward from the individual to look at all these systems, and then talk a little bit about what I think we need to be thinking about politically if we wanna solve it.

And the crazy thing is, as an epidemiologist who's publishing a book about an epidemic in the context of a pandemic, it's hard to appreciate sort of what you're predicting in the moment when you're writing. I mean, I wrote this thing a year ago. And then now a lot of it makes a lot more sense, but it's painful.

And unless we are willing to fix the undergirding of society and rebuild a lot of these systems robustly, I worry that we won't have learned the big lesson of this pandemic, that it's not just about a virus. It's also about how we as a society and we as individuals are so much more vulnerable to it because of the context in which we live.

Well, everyone should absolutely go buy Healing Politics. It's an outstanding book.

In fact, a Breitbart editor wrote a book called Clinton Cash that had a story in it about Uranium One. Donald Trump demanded that the FBI start an investigation on Hillary Clinton because of what was written by a Breitbart editor.

He is out of the hospital. He is recovering. So that is good news when he's fully recovered and goes online again. It would be great if his book was just selling like crazy. So please go pick up a copy of Adi's book. It is fantastic. I promise you, you will not be disappointed.

You can check that out on our website at crooked.com/beahero and he's gonna talk to us about his new book Eyes to the Wind which you should absolutely order.

Like I expected a book about political activism because that's always what we talk to Adi about and it is about political activism and it's very inspiring in that way but it's also a book about you know what it means to really live in the face of death and it is you know I cried through the book I also laughed it's beautifully written it's poignant it's just it's an incredible incredible book.

Speaking of new books, our friend Adi Barkan, one of the most inspiring humans on the planet, has written one called Eyes to the Wind, a memoir of love and death, hope and resistance. It'll be out this September, but you can preorder it now, so please do so.

I can't wait to read that book. I preordered my copy last night. Me too. Me too. I'm prematurely crying over it, because I already know the impact it's going to have on me. Yeah, no, I feel the same way.

It's like he hasn't seen Clear and Present Danger They tried it in that film and both Harrison Ford and Latin Harrison Ford figured out one through computers and the other through books that it was a cellulose encased laser guided bomb and that only the Americans had them

Do you think they have read the book or seen the movie Clearing Present Danger?

Special Ops Lioness 2. It is also the plot of Clear and Present Danger. That's a great movie.

We'll talk about that and all the latest legal news.

We'll talk about that and all the latest legal news. But let's start with the big news of the day. We got a woke Pope from the south side of Chicago.

And then, Jon talks to Leah Litman, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, about the Trump administration's attacks on the judicial system and her new book Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.

I actually want to talk to people about just how bad things have gotten because there will inevitably be a moment when people come to believe maybe the supreme court isn't actually so bad um and i want them to understand like how the court got us to this moment we are in

The book is Lawless how the supreme court runs on conservative grievance fringe theories and bad vibes it's out may 13th but you can pre-order right now wherever books are sold go get this book

Leah has a new book coming out. It's called Lawless. ... It is out May, but you can preorder it now.

Go preorder it, everyone. Do it now.

A law professor, co-host of Crooked Media's Strict Scrutiny and author of Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievances, Fringe Theories and Bad Vibes.

One of my favorite passages is the one in which Jesus is quoting Isaiah or reading from The Book of Isaiah when he says that the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to open the eyes of the blind, to set the captives free, to preach the year of the Lord's favor or the year of the Lord's freedom.

they're sitting by a fire sipping hot cocoa celebrating reading The Feminine Mystique

I think it was a very simple question. The confrontation with the Nazis is having been the military confrontation when we were good guys and they were bad guys and we went over there and beat them. But here in the United States, it wasn't just that people didn't want to go fight World War II by very large numbers.

It's always been seen as a kind of obscure chapter in American history, I think, for obvious reasons, because we had World War II and we won. That's a very comfortable tale to tell. It's more uncomfortable to think about us Americans having been on that side.

Only Nazis are Nazis. Only Hitler is Hitler. But there is an analogy, I think, that we can learn from in terms of Americans who fought that surprisingly effective, surprisingly well-connected movement and beat them and shut it down.

I mean, to the extent that you've got people who are part of an anti-democratic project who are telling you don't believe election results, don't think that the vote is the way we're going to fix these problems, don't think that democracy is the way our country should run. That's bad.

It's really bad if your vote doesn't actually count because either the elections are being stolen somewhere or because you're gerrymandered out of essentially ever being able to have a legitimate say in what governance is that applies to you.

It's more uncomfortable to think about us Americans having been on that side.

Only Nazis are Nazis. Only Hitler is Hitler.

I think that there's basically like four things that you look for for a democracy that's at risk of becoming an authoritarian state...

And so people need to believe that the democratic process writ large is what we use to solve our problems.

When you think about that scenario and how it played out in the past and you think about today with, you know, Elon Musk saying don't listen to these lying journalists, listen to these blue checks and when you think about the withering of local news, gerrymandering of districts that would make it incredibly hard to vote out some of the individuals you're talking about.

I went on a John Lewis related book buying spree starting with these great ones, these March animated books.

I just got those too.

I went on a John Lewis related book buying spree starting with these great ones, these March animated books. I just got those too.

I just read devil in the white city too, which I also recommend.

I read Devil in the White City recently. I'm on Eric Larson kick, which is about the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, I believe. And that was when the first Ferris wheel was built.

I'm very lucky that I'm reading a book right now that's kind of helping me, you know, prioritize and be centered around what's important.

And right now what's important is that my district feels like they have a voice here in Congress. But yeah, I'm reading Mark Mason's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

I'm very lucky that I'm reading a book right now that's kind of helping me, you know, prioritize and be centered around what's important.

And right now what's important is that my district feels like they have a voice here in Congress. But yeah, I'm reading Mark Mason's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

And then I'm reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I love Kim Stanley Robinson. I just read a book by him. I think it's called Aurora. And I read Project Hail Mary a while ago and it got me on a science fiction kick. So I'm reading this. It's about climate change.

And then I'm reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. I love Kim Stanley Robinson. I just read a book by him. I think it's called Aurora. And I read Project Hail Mary a while ago and it got me on a science fiction kick. So I'm reading this. It's about climate change. And it's been really interesting so far.

In fiction, I just finished Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

In fiction, I just finished Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

It's a bunch of weird billionaires you've never heard of. The Lyndon Harry Bradley Foundation, these like reactionists, you know, weird racist old white people that funded Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curves scholarship.

It's a bunch of weird billionaires you've never heard of. The Lyndon Harry Bradley Foundation, these like reactionists, you know, weird racist old white people that funded Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curves scholarship.

Remember when Wall Street broke the economy back in 2008? A few unlikely geniuses saw it coming and bet against the system. Bestselling author Michael Lewis, who's joined us on the show before, turned their story into The Big Short, the blockbuster book that became an Oscar awardwinning movie. And now, in an era of meme stocks, crypto chaos, and housing prices that make you want to scream, it's the perfect time to revisit The Big Short. It's the ultimate playbook for understanding how markets really work... And for the first time ever, The Big Short is available as an audiobook narrated by Michael Lewis himself.

Michael Lewis, the culture changing author of Moneyball, The Big Short and countless other great books about his new book on the people that make the government work

Read How to Be an Antiracist.