Summary
The DOJ sent out a raft of new subpoenas this week of former Trump White House and campaign officials, reportedly in relation to Trump`s Save America PAC as well as the so-called fake electoral scheme. Steve Bannon is currently awaiting trial for his alleged role in another scheme to defraud Trump supporters, probably the very same donors giving money to the super PAC that Trump was raiding before. The Department of Justice asked Judge Aileen Cannon for a partial stay of that order and warns "if the court does not grant a stay by Thursday, September 15, the government intends to seek relief from the 11th circuit." Michigan abortion ballot measure will be put to voters in November.
Transcript
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: Walls of the most famous address in the world. Then again it is so important for every young kid who is doubting themselves to believe that they can too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Braids, dress, a compliment from your man, portraits. Michelle Obama, boom. She won the week. Maria Teresa Kumar, and former congressman Carlos Curbelo, thank you both my friends. That is tonight`s "REIDOUT." She won the week you all, big time. ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on "ALL IN."
REP. ZOE LOFGREN, (D-CA): So not only was there the big lie, there was the big rip-off.
HAYES: DOJ picks up where the January 6 committee left off.
LOFGREN: We found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for.
HAYES: Tonight, Congressman Jamie Raskin on the criminal grand jury investigating fundraising fraud, and late-breaking reports that Stephen Miller has been subpoenaed, then new signals that Donald Trump`s favorite judge may be backing down to the Justice Department. Plus a victory for democracy and reproductive rights as the state Supreme Court smacks down Michigan Republicans, and as King Charles greets his subjects for the first time, Melissa Murray, on coming to terms with the Imperial past of the British Empire, when "ALL IN" starts right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. The Department of Justice`s investigation into January 6, the attempted coup, is once again expanding its scope quite a bit, in fact. The DOJ sent out a raft of new subpoenas this week, we`re just learning about, subpoenas of former Trump White House and campaign officials, reportedly in relation to Trump`s Save America PAC as well as the so-called fake electoral scheme. Top Trump policy adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller, and Trump`s White House political director Brian Jack were among those subpoenaed. That`s according to a brand new report that broke just about an hour ago from New York Times.
Trump`s PAC is an issue that the January 6 committee has been focused on for months. In fact, they`ve argued that Trump solicited hundreds of millions of dollars in donations for what he claimed was a legal defense fund to help pay the legal expenses of his efforts to overturn the election when in reality, such a fund simply never existed. Instead, Trump allegedly just directed the money to his PAC where it was then funneled to a number of pro-Trump groups run by his allies. Listen to how the January 6 committee described it this spring.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANDA WICK, SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL, JANUARY 6 COMMITTEE: Between Election Day and January 6, a Trump campaign sent millions of fundraising e-mails to Trump supporters sometimes as many as 25 of the day. The e-mails claimed the "left-wing mob" was undermining the election and implored supporters to "step up to protect" the integrity of the election and encourage them to "fight back." But as the select committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continue to barrage small-dollar donors with e-mails encouraging them to donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund. The Select Committee discovered no such fund existed.
HANNA ALLRED, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN STAFFER: I don`t believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it fair to say that the election Defense Fund was another, I think we`ve called it a marketing tactic.
GARY COBY, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN DIGITAL DIRECTOR: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And tell us about these funds as marketing tactics.
COBY: Just topic matter. Where money could potentially go to be -- how money can potentially be used.
WICK: The claims that the election was stolen were so successful. President Trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly $100 million in the first week after the election. On November 9, 2020, President Trump created a separate entity called the Save America PAC. Most of the money raised went to this newly created PAC, not to election-related litigation. The Select Committee discovered that the Save America PAC made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: OK, so you`re tracking that right? They raise all this money saying the election was stolen, donate to Legal Defense Fund, they get $250 million, a quarter of a billion dollars from these small donor donors. Then they create this new save America super PAC. The money goes there and then goes to all other kinds of stuff.
Now, the fact that the Department of Justice has subpoenaed people associated with this is really, really interesting for a number of reasons. First, because fundraising has basically been the only thing Donald Trump has ever in his life been really truly remarkably good at. Almost all of his other life`s enterprises save for playing a business mogul in a reality show have been middling to failures. But Trump has been wildly successful at hoovering up donations from the MAGA faithful. It`s what he does best, so much so that his fundraising enterprise is one of the largest in the country. In fact, so large it`s actually gotten him into hot water with his fellow Republicans.
[20:05:00]
Because he has such a hold on the party`s base, these donors are sending him everything all the time instead to other Republicans. In typical Trump fashion, he has been reluctant to share any of his money, even as the NRSC, the entity in charge of getting Republican candidates elected to the Senate is basically broke. Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah even called Trump out publicly for this, telling the Washington Post. "I would sure hope President Trump would use some of that money he`s got to get Republicans elected to the Senate. It`ll be good for the country and good for the people he`s endorsed."
Of course, there is absolutely no reason to believe Trump is actually going to do that. Why would he? He doesn`t even really know where the money raises goes or at least we don`t. You might remember there was even a whole other investigation at Trump`s inaugural committee, which also raise huge amounts of money over the alleged misuse of funds. Now, misusing funds or raising money under false pretenses can be something that government takes very seriously. Because while our modern campaign finance laws allow for lots of shady behavior, and I mean, lots, there are still some clear lines. Explicitly lying to people about where the money they`re donating to you will go for instance, to an entity that does not exist, may cross one of them. Not clear if it does, but it may. And that is, of course, what the January 6 committee alleges Trump did with truly enormous amounts of money.
Now, take a step back for a second because there are so many concurrent investigations into Donald Trump, it can be difficult to keep them straight, so just to reset the table, right? There`s also the grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, investigating potentially criminal election interference by Trump and his allies. We know his close associate and lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who is integral in plotting Trump`s coup attempt has been formally notified by the DHS office there that he is a target of that criminal inquiry. So that`s one.
Two, there`s the federal inquiry into roughly 100 stolen classified documents which received from Mar-a-Lago after the FBI executed a search warrant. Apparently, in response to Trump`s own lawyers, lying about what he still had in his possession, including it appears, according to one report, documents related to a foreign country`s nuclear weapons, so sensitive only cabinet-level officials could OK being read into it.
There`s also, of course, the House Select Committee investigation in the January 6 insurrection, which should pick up steam this fall. But the third criminal inquiry, right, there`s Georgia, there`s the documents, the third one, this investigation partly into Trump`s super PAC that we`re learning more about today is part of the Department of Justice`s overarching investigation into January sixth and the attempted coup and now potentially fraud as well. That`s being run out of DC where there`s a grand jury taking a lot of testimony.
Now, here to me is the other really striking thing about this development, right? Trump`s crime in a colloquial layman`s sense is obvious. I don`t mean crime, like the technical sense. I mean, Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time arguably in modern American history at least since the Civil War by inciting a violent armed mob distorting the Capitol`s behalf. He wanted to join the mob and be at the front of them while they storming the Capitol to overturn American democracy. That`s obviously wrong, bad, and criminal even to the average person.
From the legal perspective, prosecuting someone like that is not as cut and dried as maybe it feels like it should be. There`s the question of what laws he broke what he can be charged for criminally, and what kind of case you could make against him and the people around him personally, for those actions, which are obviously offensive to the very core of our democratic being. That question, what can you technically prosecute is kind of adjacent to the raw facts of the situation. But fraud, one of those areas of law seems much more cut and dried. There are paper trails, documents, and wire transfers, which can lay out a criminal case much more clearly.
And this new line of inquiry should inspire some worry in Trump`s already overstretched legal team. Because look no further than Steve Bannon in New York yesterday in handcuffs. Steve Bannon is currently awaiting trial for his alleged role in another scheme to defraud Trump supporters, probably the very same donors giving money to the super PAC that Trump was raiding before. In Bannon`s case, it was a bogus campaign to crowdfund Trump`s border wall, which despite his promises to the contrary, Trump was unable to get Mexico to pay for.
The organizer of that campaign called, We Build The Wall, promise not to take a cut of the money raised, but he was secretly skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars off the top, which Bannon allegedly helped him launder. So that organizer again raised money from the MAGA fell faithful skimming money off the top. That organizer and another associate have already pleaded guilty to federal charges and potentially face years in prison when they are sentenced later this year.
[20:10:00]
And things aren`t looking great for Bannon, seen here, in handcuffs in the New York courthouse. It`s early. Of course, he`s innocent until proven guilty under the U.S. Constitution. The case against him seems pretty strong. And the broad strokes of what he`s accused of doing, taking money from Trump supporters under misleading pretenses. Looks awfully similar to what the DOJ now appears to be investigating Trump`s Pac for. Based on what we`ve seen so far, I think Trump should be worried.
Congressman Jamie Raskin is a Democrat from Maryland. He sits on the bipartisan January 6 committee, and he joins me now. First, I guess, Congressman, just your reaction to these developments which I imagine you`re learning from the news, as we all are. The subpoenas that have gone out to some of these individuals, including Stephen Miller, the focus of these grand jury subpoenas on the super PAC created in the wake of the election. What do you make of it?
REP. JAMIE RASKIN, (D-MD): Well, nobody should be surprised by it because financial crime follows in Donald Trump`s wake. And as you know, I`ve argued for a long time that Trump really should have been impeached the first time for his rampant violations of both the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses as he was raking in millions of dollars from foreign governments and also taking money from domestic federal departments and agencies at the hotels and the golf courses and so on.
It`s always been a scheme for self-enrichment for him and he converted the government into an instrument of capital gain for him and his family and his friends. And that is really what explains the motive behind his determination to stay in offense, a determination that was so ferocious that he was willing to try to overturn a presidential election for the first time in American history and to unleash a violent insurrection against his own vice president and against the Congress.
But -- so I`m not surprised by all of it. And I`m glad that people are finally starting to bear down on the financial details because they decided to make money off of the election. And remember, Trump was telling people as several witnesses have told us that he was planning to announce that he won the election, whether or not he won it. And they were very clear that he was going to be even more forceful about having won it if he had lost it. Well, why is that? They then proceeded to unleash this huge fundraising campaign which netted them a quarter-billion dollars by telling people that they had to go and fight in order to you know vindicate their stolen victory.
HAYES: Yes. I just want to play this clip again, from your committee`s inquiry here about once you get that money in the super PAC -- and again, federal regulation of this is incredibly loose, thanks to the conservatives on the Supreme Court. But once you get the money to the super PAC, then it can go in all kinds of places. Here`s just a little rundown of some of the places that money again raised from donors saying donate legal funds so we can fight because Donald Trump won. Here`s just a little rundown from your committee about where that went. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WICK: $1 million to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows`s charitable foundation, $1 million to the America first Policy Institute, a conservative organization, which employs several former Trump administration officials, $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection, and over $5 million to event strategies Inc., the company that ran President Trump`s January 6 rally on the Ellipse.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I mean, a million dollars to Mark Meadows foundation is -- that`s a big donation. I mean the kind of thing that might even plausibly change an individual`s mind about whether they want to cooperate with congressional subpoenas.
RASKIN: He was definitely purchasing a lot of goodwill from people who were prospective witnesses against him in subsequent criminal or civilian -- or civil prosecutions or a congressional investigation. And so -- you know that does demonstrate the slipperiness of our campaign finance laws. But, of course, Donald Trump is somebody who pushes everything to the max. And they turn this into a money-making enterprise and he, of course, is now the king of the Hill in the Republican Party as he`s got all the money and all of the members of Congress are terrified of him that he would, you know, endorse somebody against them or spend their -- spend money against them. They`re completely beholden to the guy. And you know, the -- Abraham Lincoln`s party has become the authoritarian cult of Donald Trump.
[20:15:00]
HAYES: Final question for you. You were a constitutional law professor before you were a United States Congressman. I would like to hear you talk about these different aspects of an inquiry or making the case here. I mean, your committee is not -- doesn`t have criminal prosecutorial power, nor should it. It`s a-- it`s a -- it`s a congressional committee. There`s a difference between what I would call the great crime of Donald Trump, which was a frontal assault on the core of American democracy, and whatever statutory violation of the U.S. Code he may have committed. And sometimes it can feel like a little bit of a mismatch there. And I wonder how you think about those sort of two lanes?
RASKIN: Well, obviously, we`re going to need some legislative changes to the Criminal Code to account for, now the possibility of presidents just taking a headlong rush at seizing the presidency. But there are federal statutes out there that will do the job. We, of course, have a seditious conspiracy, and we have the conspiracy to interfere with a Federal proceeding, which I think everybody can agree --
HAYES: Yes.
RASKIN: -- Took place here. After all, the whole chant was Stop the Steal and they bum-rushed the Capitol, they assaulted Federal officers all in order to interfere with the Federal proceeding, everybody agrees that`s exactly what took place. And it didn`t happen by accident. And it wasn`t spontaneous. Even if it were spontaneous, of course, there were people who agreed to go in together and do it, but this thing was planned.
HAYES: Yes.
RASKIN: So, yes, I think that we`re going to have to look at some new federal statutory changes. And we have to look at the way that the electoral system itself is vulnerable to strategic bad faith actors like Donald Trump.
HAYES: Yes.
RASKIN: The Electoral College is an accident waiting to happen, and we have to deal with that at some point in American history, and why not now?
HAYES: All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so much for your time.
RASKIN: Thank you so much, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, could Donald Trump`s handpicked judge be backing away from her protection of the corrupt ex-president? We`ll break down her latest order next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
HAYES: Last night, the Department of Justice filed a response to Donald Trump`s handpicked Mar-a-Lago judge, Aileen Cannon. A 38-year-old judge has been getting a lot of justified public scrutiny this week after issuing that questionable special master order and holding the DoD`s ability to use these documents for further investigation, a move that most legal experts said had no actual precedent. In its filing, the DOJ asked the judge for a partial stay of that order and warn "if the court does not grant a stay by Thursday, September 15, the government intends to seek relief from the 11th circuit." That threat of appeals, the 11th circuit appears to have gotten the judge`s attention. Now maybe she`s looking for Trump and the government to work this out. Cannon issued a paperless order saying "the parties are instructed to consider the DO`sJ request to continue investigating the classified documents.
Renato Mariotti is a former federal prosecutor, and legal affairs columnist for Politico where his latest piece is titled Trump`s Lawyers Might Think They Just Won. They still botched the case. And he joins me now. So walk me through where we are procedurally here. The order was issued, and DOJ responded to the order and said this is crazy, we`re begging you to only stop this one portion where you said we can`t use the 100 classified documents we have which we`ve already segregated for our investigative purposes, please reconsider that. So she can now reconsider right before it gets appealed above her.
RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes, that`s right. They basically gave her an out, Chris. They said look, we`re going to -- putting all the rest of this aside. We`re going to try to resolve the issues regarding attorney-client privilege. We`ll allow a special master for that. We`re going to return a lot of his personal property.
But as the classified documents, obviously, the government owns those, obviously, they`re not an attorney-client privilege. There is a very serious potential harm here to the public. And so if you don`t give us an accommodation here to let us continue to investigate, to continue to determine whether or not those documents, for example, you know, are a potential threat to national security, we`re going to have to appeal. And you know, essentially, what I think that order that you just mentioned, is her sending an overcharge to Trump`s team, you know, please give me a way out of this by backing off of the classified documents.
HAYES: We should know that the DOJ made this argument in its filing, which to me, again, is the whole case. And again, I always say on the show, I`m not a lawyer, I`m married to an extremely good lawyer. But Nixon V. Administrator of General Services, which is the -- you know, the kind of mean precedent for a lot of this stuff indicates a former president may not successfully assert executive privilege against review by the very executive branch in whose name the privilege is invoked, meaning the current Executive Branch who`s on the other side from Donald Trump and asserting executive privilege that does seem to be continued, particularly when we`re talking about the classified documents. The nub of the issue and one would think should prevail on appeal, although the 11th circuit is stacked with Trump judges, so who knows?
MARIOTTI: Yes. I have to say, Chris. That was the most bizarre portion of the opinion, the most bizarre -- you know, frankly, argument that was being made by Trump`s team.
[20:25:00]
It`s really as if one of my clients wanted their documents back and I asserted attorney-client privilege against my own client. I mean, it makes no sense. So the point of attorney-client privilege is to protect the client, and it`s their documents. So very bizarre, I really have trouble seeing that hold-up on appeal.
HAYES: There`s a -- there`s a deadline now. I mean, can you imagine -- I guess he -- the judge now has it in her ability to issue some order, right, where she amends what she had said before, right. And that`s going to happen either between now and Thursday, or they`re going to appeal. Is that where we are right now?
MARIOTTI: That`s right. She could say, look, I`m going to -- I`m going -- I`m going to walk this back as the declassified documents, or perhaps Trump`s team could give it to her. Trump`s team could say, you know, we`re changing our position. We`re going to back off as to declassify documents, thereby mooting this issue and essentially making it so the state is not necessary, because we`re going to back off. One of those two things could happen and if not, there`s going to be an appeal.
HAYES: And we`ll see how long the appeal takes. All the delay, delay, delay has always been the name of the game for the Trump legal team. So the speed of all this will be something to keep our eyes on. Renato Mariotti, thank you.
MARIOTTI: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, the Michigan State Supreme Court smacks down a Republican attempt to keep abortion off the ballot. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joins me on the persistent threat from state-level Republicans. Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:30:00]
HAYES: One thing we`ve learned in the past few months is that overturning Roe v. Wade has been a huge energizer for the voting public. We`ve seen clear evidence of that in state after state. And the latest is in Michigan where more than 750,000 people signed a petition to get a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion rights into that state`s constitution.
When that petition went to the Michigan elections board to be certified and placed on the ballot in November, Republican members managed to block it on a technicality, a typo involving spaces between words. Well, yesterday, the Michigan Supreme Court destroyed that ploy, ordering the proposal to appear on the ballot with a scathing rebuke to the elections board of Republicans from the chief justice of that court.
And I quote, "753,759 Michiganders signed this proposal, more than have ever signed any proposal in Michigan`s history. The challengers have not produced a single-signer who claims to have been confused by the limited spacing sections in the full-text proportion portion of the proposal. Yet two members of the Board of State canvassers would but prevent the people of Michigan from voting on the proposal because they believe the decreased spacing makes the text no longer the full text, even though there is no dispute that every word appears and appears legibly and in the correct order.
And there is no evidence that anyone was confused about the text. Two members of the Board of State Canvassers with the power to do so would keep the petition from the voters for what they purport to be a technical violation of the statute. They would disenfranchise millions of Michiganders not because they believe the many thousands of Michiganders who signed the proposal were confused by it, but because they think they have identified a technicality that allows them to do so. A game of gotcha gone very bad. What a sad marker of the times."
Now, that crucial measure will appear on the November ballot, and one of the people who helped in the legal effort was Michigan`s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. And she joins me now. Secretary Benson, first just your reaction to the decision by the Michigan Supreme Court to override those dissenting voices on the board of canvassers and put this on the ballot for Michiganders.
JOCELYN BENSON, SECRETARY OF STATE, MICHIGAN: Oh it`s a vindication for the law and for the people of Michigan and the hundreds of thousands of people who signed this petition wanting it to go on to the ballot. And it really also showed and sent a strong message to the Republican members of the Board of State canvassers stay in your lane. You know, you have a responsibility under the law to certify elections and petitions based on the will of the people not your own opinions.
And my hope is that this will send a strong message and ensure that the Board of State canvassers resumes their role, their long-standing practice of supporting the will of the voters in a nonpartisan manner. But we have to remember, they will certify the elections this fall. And this could be a sign as to perhaps additional partisan shenanigans we may expect to see in the future.
HAYES: OK, you have moved on to my next question. So, this state board of canvassers is a little bit of a strange institution for us outside of Michigan, although there are similar sorts of such institutions in other places. In your state, this is a state board and these -- and it has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Is that right?
BENSON: Exactly. Now, the part -- each party appoints to members of the board and essentially gives the governor a selection of three people that she can then choose from to appoint individuals to the board. So, these are party-appointed people. And it`s notable that those who were on the board in 2020, Republican appointees who did not follow the mandate of their party but instead follow the law have since been replaced by individuals who, in this case, voted not to follow the will of the people and allow these petitions on the ballot originally.
[20:35:17]
HAYES: Yes, I just want to trace this for people because you might remember back, there was some controversy. It was a Wayne County canvassing board in which Republican members at first said they would not certify that county and then change their mind, but they were lobbied directly by Donald Trump at that time, the present United States. Then the state canvassing board had to certify it. And one of the Republicans on that board-certified it as he should have, because there was no problem. That individual has been replaced, right?
BENSON: Exactly. Correct.
HAYES: So, I guess the obvious thing is it just seems like this attempting this gotcha game, as the Supreme Court Justice said it, indicates a level of bad faith that`s profoundly disquieting for the administration of elections in your state if there is an election result that these two canvassers, members the board don`t like this fall. Can they just say, we`re not certifying that election?
BENSON: Well, what played out this week shows you exactly what could happen if and when they were to do something like that, which is they won`t succeed. The law is clear. What was created this week was not a blocking of the will of the people. The court stepped in and did the right thing and upheld the law. That will happen again if there`s a failure to certify.
But what also happened is several days of confusion. Will this be on the ballot? What does this mean? Why didn`t they vote to put it on the ballot? And that state of confusion is really harmful to democracy. It`s harmful to our work to ensure voters are informed and have confidence in our democracy. So, harming the confidence people have in our democracy is the real detrimental effect of these shenanigans.
But you know, that said, we will stand -- the Attorney General and I will stand to make sure if the Board of State canvassers or any county canvassers failed to do their legal duty in certifying election results, we will go to court and ensure the law is upheld and the will of the people rules the day.
HAYES: Michigan has a 1931 law that was going to go into effect with the overruling of Roe v. Wade. That has been enjoined by a judge pursuant to a lawsuit by the governor Gretchen Whitmer. This is the polling in your state right now. What issue would most motivate you to vote this fall? Abortion rights 34 percent, inflation 26 percent, Education 10 percent, economy eight percent. Just a matter -- a matter of Democratic accountability. How important is it to have this before the voters this fall?
BENSON: It`s critical because not just because hundreds of thousands of voters have signed a petition asking it and putting it on the ballot, which is their duty to do under the law and responsibility and ability to do, but also really underscores that the fundamental rights and freedoms, indeed democracy itself in our state are literally on the ballot this fall.
And it gives voters, Democrats, Republicans, and independents an opportunity to weigh in substantively on the issue of reproductive freedom as well as voting rights, which is the second petition that is now on the ballot. So, it ensures that people can act on these issues that are it`s so poignant right now for so many citizens on both sides of the aisle. And I think we`ll see a high level of participation and engagement on both sides as a result.
HAYES: It`s really a remarkable position for people to say we want the cryogenically frozen 1931 abortion law to control women`s bodies in the state of Michigan rather than the elected public of 2022 to make that decision. Jocelyn Benson, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
BENSON: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: Still to come, a certain Texas senator slash podcaster attempts to troll another state during a climate crisis and it doesn`t go well, next.
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[20:40:00]
HAYES: Republicans and Fox News hosts have a weird obsession with the great state of California. They`d love to rag on it. They claim it as an example of liberal governance gone wrong the disaster of a blue state.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST, FOX NEWS: California in decline.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, FOX NEWS: The State of California is collapsing and many Californians are fleeing.
INGRAHAM: It`s not affordable, it`s not livable, and it`s locked down for most of the time.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS: Totally unlivable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take a look at the dumpster fire that is California.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The failed state of California.
INGRAHAM: California is dying a slow and painful death.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: California has gone off the cliff.
ANDY KESSLER, COLUMNIST, WALL STREET JOURNAL: We have the highest taxes, the highest energy cost, they take it away our toilets that actually flush.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, California is a state that`s got problems like all of them, but it`s really weird and super insecure to see this on Fox News over and over. But politicians, especially those from the second most populous state of the union, Texas, love to compare themselves with California as a kind of competing model of governance.
Just look at this tweet from the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, "Remember those high taxes, burdensome regulations, and socialistic agenda advanced in California, we don`t believe in that. We believe in less government more individual freedom. If you agree with that, you`ll fit right in." They try to lure Californians away especially businesses inviting them to leave, the supposed tyranny of California for the land of the free in Texas. It`s actually worked with Tesla, luring them from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, much to the delight of podcaster and Senator Ted Cruz.
Now, it is true that California right now in this moment currently is in crisis. They are in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave, the most severe ever in the month of September. Sacramento hit a 116 degrees on Tuesday, an all-time high. A friend of mine driving his car there had just had it stopped, just overheated. Of course climate change is making heat waves like this more intense, more common, longer lasting, more frequent, but California also has some of the most forward-leaning decarbonisation efforts in the entire country.
[20:45:19]
Just a couple of weeks ago, they announced a ban on the sale of new gasoline cars taking effect in 2035. Earlier this year, renewables power just under 100 percent of California`s daily energy needs for the first time. So, as California meets this latest energy crisis, we`re seeing the results of their model, the alternative to the Texas plan, which is much more focused on fossil fuels.
Check this out. This graph, a little hard to read, but check it out. It shows different sources of energy California uses to power its grid and how the supplies fluctuate over the course of the day on Wednesday in the thick of the heat wave. Each colored line here represents a different types of energy. Bright green is renewables, mostly solar power. As you can see, during the hottest daylight hours, renewables picked way up.
At noon right in the center of this graph, renewable sources were providing half of the energy California needed. Another interesting thing you can see in this graph is how batteries are helping power California`s grid. Take a look at the light orange line in the lower right section. You can see the battery power kicking in there in the evening when the sun starts to go down when solar panels start making less energy. This all works so well this week during this intense heat that California was actually able to avoid widespread blackouts are rolling brownouts, something that honestly used to be just a fact of life in the state.
The government has also been asking residents to reduce demand on the grid during the early evening hours when it`s most stressed. Requesting people keep their air conditioning at 78 degrees and not run major appliances before four and 10:00 p.m. But that did not sit well with the fossil fuel loving podcaster from Texas who took the opportunity to deliver some almost inspiringly audacious dunking.
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SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Today`s Democrat Party is all about California environmentalist billionaires. I love that Gavin Newsom was wearing his fleece, obviously in cool air conditioning saying let them eat cake, let them sweat, you don`t get air conditioning.
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HAYES: OK, I don`t know about the air conditioning. I don`t know what the fleece. All I know is that when Texas faced an extremely rare and devastating weather event last winter, their grid heavily dependent on natural gas, didn`t hold up. No, the infrastructure basically froze, and millions of people lost power some for days on end.
While California Governor Gavin Newsom may or may not be spending time in air conditioning, at least his state has electricity. And we all remember that when Texas is grid failed, Ted Cruz tried to quietly skip off to the Ritz Carlton in Cancun to soak up the sun with his family while people in his state that he represents literally froze to death. And he only came back after people found out and took pictures and he was shamed into returning to the crisis. So in that respect, score one for the California model.
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[20:50:00]
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CHARLES III, KING, UNITED KINGDOM: With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will I know continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the center ground where vital help can be given. I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.
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HAYES: The new King Charles III announcing the new org structure where his first son William with a nod to young Harry and Megan. Family drama is just one of the dynamics that has millions of people in the U.K. and, of course, around the world glued to the story as Britain enters a period of mourning for its late monarch. But of course, the Queen, particularly the Queen of the British Empire, which was, was not a universally beloved figure. She represented an empire that at one point controlled roughly a quarter of the world`s population and landmass.
Many of the people whose countries were colonized by that British Empire left with righteous anger at that Imperial Project. And we`ve seen in the wake of the Queen`s death all of these different views mixing together. I was struck by this detail in the Washington Post reporting that when he first traveled as a senator to meet the monarch, now-President Joe Biden`s proud Irish mother told him "Don`t you bow down to her." And he didn`t, because it is of course a point of natural pride for the Irish who had to win their independence from the British Crown at the cost of much bloodshed. That feeling not to bow down share by much of the global south that the British colonized.
Melissa Murray is a frequent guest on this program is a professor at New York University School of Law and also an obsessive Royals watcher. And she wrote this thread that I thought was fascinating on her conflicted feelings and the crown as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. "There will be an outpouring of respect, maybe even love and admiration for life devoted to duty, but also desire to move beyond an imperial past to a more independent future. Maybe that is inevitable, the legacy of Britain`s first post-modern monarch."
And Melissa Murray, who also co-hosts podcast Strict Scrutiny with Leah Litman and my wife, Kate Shaw, joins me now. It`s good to have you here.
MELISSA MURRAY, PROFESSOR, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: I love the thread. And I already knew because we are friends. I should say, full disclosure, that you are a real, real Royals obsessive. Tell me a little bit about your perspective on it as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, obviously also colonized by the British, your relationship with the crown and how you`ve been feeling and thinking through these kinds of contradictions.
MURRAY: So, I think it`s really complicated. So, as I said in the tweet, my entire childhood is sort of bound up and visits back to my relatives in Jamaica. And there you know, 20 years since Jamaican independence. The Commonwealth and the monarchy were very much visible parts of life. If you went to a government building, you would not only see photographs of the Prime Minister, you might also see a photograph or a painting of the Queen. If you walked down a road, it might be named for a British aristocrat. So, the residue of colonialism was everywhere. It was sort of the backdrop against which we lived our lives.
And you know, I think many people very much admired indeed, even loved the Queen, because of her steadfastness, her attention to duty, and the fact that she was an accidental monarch in a lot of ways, assume this role in the wake of the abdication of her uncle Edward VIII. And she`s just in the background the whole time. She`s the only monarch many people have ever known.
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But even as you love and revere her, you can also be clear-eyed about the institution that she represents and how it is inextricably intertwined with the history of colonialism, oppression, and even violence against the indigenous people of those particular colonized lands. And I think that`s part of the complication for me. I can be mournful for someone who`s always been in the backdrop of my life to some degree, but also recognizing the way in which the institution that she headed has really shaped the lives of a land that I love where people I love live in very material ways.
HAYES: What is the -- why do you think you like to follow the Royals? What is it?
MURRAY: Well, I`m an only child. This is a sprawling family. I think only children are always sort of idealistic about families are like.
HAYES: That`s fascinating, yes, yes.
MURRAY: And you know, I remember being interested -- and my -- one of my earliest memories is watching the wedding of Charles and Diana and just sort of, you know, for an American kid raised on Disney, like watching someone transform into a princess before your eyes is actually, you know, heady stuff. But thinking about the legacy and the way in which this family sort of infiltrated all of these other families and like sort of penetrated every aspect of the geopolitical landscape in Europe is actually quite fascinating.
I mean, I`m a family law professor, as well as a constitutional law professor, and the idea of marriage as political alliance is completely intertwined with the Royal Family.
HAYES: I want to talk a little bit about it. Let me just say this. I mean, this is -- this I think the first reaction -- of course, morning and people really grief-stricken which I understand and -- but then there`s been sort of a second round. And the piece just being like, look, there is a reason that there are some people in the world we`re not exactly weeping at this. This The New York Times piece today about Africa, right, where the Queen`s death renews a debate about the legacy of the British Empire. It was while a young Elizabeth was on official tour of Kenya in 1952. That`s when she finds word of -- she is found and given word of her father`s death.
She learned to her father`s death. She would become queen. The clampdown on Kenyans was began just months after the Queen ascended the throne and led to the establishment of vast system of detention camps that torture, rape, castration, and killing of tens of thousands of people. Of course, similar kinds of things happened in other -- in other countries.
Race also feels like a huge part of this and particularly race with respect to the global south, to Africa, which is colonized to India, of course, and other places and the Rudyard Kipling White Man`s Burden. That seems to suffuse a lot of the understandable resentment people have towards the crown that we`ve seen kind of bubbled up in the wake of this.
MURRAY: Well, I think we`ve seen over the course of the last three years not just in formerly British colonies, but around the world a reckoning, a desire perhaps to reckon with the past and the racial animus that has sometimes punctuated our past whether it`s in the United States or elsewhere throughout the world. And I think this is part of that. I mean, it is indelibly about race and racism and I think you can`t avoid that.
And even in the U.K., in modern times, there`s some real stuff there that needs to be unpacked. Like, you know, I remember the Windrush generation. These are guest workers who were brought to the U.K. in the wake of a post war labor shortage, and were unceremoniously deported back to their countries because they didn`t have the necessary paperwork in the 1970 to be allowed to stay in the U.K.
And people in the Caribbean really felt the sting of that to go over, to help, to feel like you are part of this family of nations that the Commonwealth purported to be, and then to find out you weren`t really a British citizen and you had to leave.
HAYES: There`s also, of course, the fact that the Royal Family is now a multiracial family. And that itself is remarkably fraught because of the status of Harry and Meghan who the new king, of course, shout it out there. But my lord, I mean, I feel like that`s a lot of the subtext as well, of course, obviously.
MURRAY: Well, again, I don`t think all of it is about Harry and Meghan, but the fact that you have Windrush, you have this history of colonialism, and then you have this failure to really embrace the biracial member of your family and their multiracial children and to the extent that they actually exiled themselves to the United States, I mean, that`s really significant.
And I thought it was interesting that the new King Charles III -- that`s going to take some getting used to -- he mentioned them but also noted that they don`t seem to be coming back anytime soon.
HAYES: I thought that was a real -- there was a lot going on in that one sentence, but the "My love for Harry and Meghan" seem very intentional. And I was glad he said it actually.
Melissa Murray, you can come -- we can talk Royals anytime -- anything you want to talk about. Come on. It`s always great to have you.
MURRAY: Thank you.
HAYES: That is ALL IN for this week. "ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT" starts right now. Good evening, Alex.