November 19th. It's for most people just another
Tuesday, right? But if you go back a hundred
and sixty some years November 19th 1863 that
was the day of the Gettysburg Address a moment
defined by this huge fundamental Conflict over
what America even was and that's such a good
frame for the sources You've sent over because
you can see these echoes of that same structural
battle today. It's just it's masked by all this
high stakes political drama. So I think for this
deep dive, our mission is to sort of untangle
three big areas. We've got this political surrender
on the Epstein files. Then there's this really
transactional deal making with the US and Saudi
Arabia. And the big one. And the big one, yeah.
The foundational fight over gerrymandering, sort
of an arms race. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's
start with what was probably the biggest domestic
headline. the House vote on the Epstein materials.
The whole story just shifted so fast from if
the administration would block it to why they
suddenly just folded. The initial vote was, I
mean, it was almost unprecedented. You had 534
members of Congress, a near unanimous vote to
demand the release of these files. That kind
of unity, you know, against a sitting administration,
it's a huge signal of institutional pressure.
And yet there was one single No vote. Representative
Clay Higgins from Louisiana. Why? Why him? Why
stand -alone? Well Higgins gave a really detailed
reason. He argued the bill, and this is a quote,
abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure
in America. How so? His point was that you're
forcing the release of files from an ongoing
investigation. And he claimed that doing that
risks injuring thousands of innocent people,
witnesses, family members, people who just provided
alibis by making all their confidential info
public. So his argument is all about process,
about protecting innocent bystanders. Exactly.
But of course, A source has immediately jumped
to the political angle. Sure. They're suggesting
he's either, you know, positioning himself as
a loyalist to the former president or he's basically
laying the groundwork, the legal argument for
them to hide the files later. And what's so fascinating
is how the Senate handled it. It gets over there
and the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, pushes
it through with unanimous consent. Yeah. Can
you just break that down for a second? Why is
that move so important here? It's a procedural
shortcut, really. It lets a bill pass without
a formal roll call vote as long as no single
senator objects. So it's fast. It's fast. And
it lets every single senator avoid having to
go on the record. Taking a politically risky
vote on something this explosive, it's the clean
way to apply maximum pressure with minimum personal
risk. And the pressure clearly worked. Because
then we see this complete reversal from the former
president. One minute, he's fighting the release.
The next, he's publicly supporting the bill.
Right. And this pivot, this sudden surrender
kicked off a bunch of theories and the source
material trying to explain what happened. Yeah.
And the theories are really telling. One is purely
strategic. They call it the Ukraine playbook.
OK. The idea is, if bad stuff is coming out anyway,
you release it yourself. You control the narrative.
And then you tell your base it was a perfect
move all along. Exactly. You gaslight them. But
does the administration really have the discipline
for that? I mean, their crisis management hasn't
always been sharp. It hasn't. Which is why the
other theory, the one based on psychology, feels
a little stronger. The idea that he just can't
stand to look like a loser. Right. Psychologically,
he's just incapable of admitting he lost a fight.
So if he can't stop it, he has to pretend it
was his idea the whole time. So those theories
explain the public pivot, but the consensus and
the sources seems to be that this is all just
a setup for a concealment strategy. That's it.
They're just buying time and changing the battlefield.
And there are two main ways they could try to
hide the information. OK, what's the first? The
attorney general could just claim the files are
part of an ongoing investigation that legally
shields them. It's basically the new, my taxes
are under audit excuse. And the second way involves
Congress itself, using that same argument from
the one dissenting vote. That's the more subtle
play. Once Congress has the files, members aligned
with the administration can just start quoting
Clay Higgins. We have to protect the innocent
witnesses, the families. So they can justify
redacting huge chunks of it. Huge chunks. And
the big win for transparency becomes... You know,
an empty gesture. They give you a stack of blacked
out pages. OK, so let's shift from domestic pressure
to these high stakes foreign deals. The recent
White House meeting with Prince Mohammed bin
Salman. Yeah, MBS. They pulled out all the stops
for him. I mean, Marine Corps band and F -35
fly over the whole nine yards. The ceremony really
matched the prize thereafter. The whole visit
was about a massive transactional arms deal selling
300 American tanks and crucially F -35s. to Saudi
Arabia. And this is where the sources get really
critical. The deal was made with, and I'm quoting
here, no strings attached. Which is just malpractice.
Diplomatically, you would think a skilled negotiator
would use those F -35s as leverage. Right. To
push Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with
Israel, that's a huge U .S. priority in the region.
But that condition was just gone. Not even on
the table. And on top of that, the former president
gave MBS these huge political gifts. You're talking
about Jamal Khashoggi. He publicly defended MBS
over the murder of Khashoggi, which remember
the CIA says MBS ordered and he's out there saying
MBS knew nothing about it. He even called Khashoggi
extremely controversial. And he didn't stop there.
He also suggested the Saudi government had nothing
to do with 9 -11. A claim that just flies in
the face of, you know. Two decades of evidence.
So after giving away all that leverage, all that
political cover, what did the US actually get
in return? A massive, almost laughably huge,
financial promise. Yeah. MBS said he would up
his investment in the US from $600 billion to
$1 trillion. A trillion. Just pause on that number.
Saudi Arabia's entire annual GDP is only about
$1 .2 trillion. The idea that they're investing
nearly their entire country's output, it's a
rhetorical tool, not a real. So even if we take
a more realistic number, say 300 billion over
a decade, the term investment itself can be tricky,
right? It's not necessarily building factories
here. Oh, it could be the exact opposite. The
sources warn that MBS could use that money to
buy controlling shares in strategic American
companies. Think chip manufacturers or even an
iconic brand like Ford. And once they have a
controlling interest, their people are on the
board. They can change priorities. They can push
to move R &D offshore, force the company to share
trade secrets. It's basically a legal way to
gut American industries from the inside. It is
transaction foreign policy at its most raw. But
the sources all point to one truly concrete,
undeniable win. And it was for the family. Absolutely.
The focus snaps right to the $2 billion investment
fund that the Saudis gave to the former son -in
-law Jared Kushner. Right. And from MBS's perspective,
this is a brilliant low cost investment. He pays
what is, to him, a pittance, these exorbitant
management fees, and in return, he gets influence
and access. That $2 billion fund, that's framed
as a real win for the family. Let's pivot now
to the structural foundation of our democracy,
gerrymandering. And we can start with a really
surprising lesson out of California, Proposition
50. Yeah, that 64 % to 36 % vote is so telling.
It really suggests that for Democratic voters,
playing fair is not the top priority anymore.
They just want to win. They want to win any way
that is legal. And that feeling, that shift...
is putting enormous pressure on Democratic leaders
to just abandon unilateral disarmament in these
mapmaking wars. And this puts a huge target on
states where Democrats have total control. All
eyes are on Governor J .B. Pritzker in Illinois.
Right, because Illinois is a Democratic trifecta.
They have the governor's office and supermajorities
in the legislature. Yeah. And this is key, they
do not have an independent commission. So Pritzker
literally has the power to draw whatever map
he wants. And he's positioned to set this new
hyper aggressive standard. The threat is that
he could draw a map. that eliminates all three
Republican districts in the state. Imagine him
bragging that he created a zero Republican delegation.
But ironically, as Democrats are gearing up to
go on offense, the Republican side of this arms
race has been hitting some major roadblocks.
That's right. In Kansas and Indiana, for example,
their efforts to draw these super GOP friendly
maps just stalled. Not because of a court challenge?
No, because of fear of the voters. Legislators
were afraid that if they drew maps that were
too obviously partisan, their own voters would
punish them at the polls. They got scared of
their own shadows. And the news was even worse
for the GOP in Utah. Much worse. A judge just
flat out threw out their map. And the new court
ordered map creates a heavily Democratic district,
D plus 24. Former Congressman Ben McAdams is
running there. That looks like a guaranteed GOP
seat loss. But the biggest blow... the real bombshell
came out of Texas. That was supposed to be the
crown jewel of their redistricting effort. Absolutely.
A three -judge panel blocked their new map. the
one that was designed to create five new Republican
seats. The court said it was racially discriminatory.
And they forced Texas to use the old 2021 map
for the next election. So the GOP gets zero new
seats for all that effort. But the wildest detail
is about the Department of Justice. The court's
opinion actually cited a letter from the current
administration's DOJ. But then in the same opinion,
they ripped that letter to shreds, calling it
legally unsound and a mess. So you have this
bizarre situation of a court ruling against a
Republican map while also kneecapping the Democratic
administration's legal argument. It's just a
massive setback for the GOP. And this whole debate
always comes back to the solution that, you know,
77 percent of voters say they want. independent
commissions. But as you said, the devil is always
in the details of how you structure that commission.
Right. If you look at California, their model
is really hard to game because it focuses on
getting partisans out of the selection process
itself. They use a panel of state auditors and
have strict rules like no partisan activity for
10 years. And Colorado has a different kind of
safeguard, right, to force consensus. Exactly.
Their commission has 12 members and you need
eight votes to approve any map. But here's the
key. Two of those eight votes must come from
the independent members. It forces the two parties
to actually negotiate and find a middle ground.
So let's talk scale for a second. Based on the
sources, what would actually happen if blue states
just go all in on this arms race? Follow the
Pritzker model. The potential gains are just
enormous. If you look at the states where Democrats
already have a trifecta, they could potentially
pick up 25 seats total. California alone is a
nine seat prize. And the real prizes are the
swing states where Democrats might win a trifecta
soon. Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.
Those three states alone could be another 29
seats. And the level of detail they're going
into is, it's surgical. We saw data for one hypothetical
district in North Carolina where the difference
came down to a single registered Democrat versus
a single registered Republican. Just incredible.
That's the level of this fight now. Which brings
us back one last time to November 19th, 1863.
to Gettysburg. Right. The ceremony itself was
delayed until that date so the main speaker,
Edward Everett, could finish his research for
what turned out to be a two -hour speech. And
Lincoln was, you know, almost an afterthought.
He was just invited to give a few appropriate
remarks. But in two minutes, he completely redefined
the entire American project. Starting with that
first line, four score and seven years ago. by
dating the country to the Declaration of Independence,
not the Constitution. He completely shifts the
focus, because the Constitution at that point
protected slavery. It counted enslaved people
as three -fifths of a person. But the Declaration...
The Declaration defined the nation on the proposition
that all men are created equal. So Lincoln reframes
the war. It's not just about saving the Union
anymore. It's a battle to redefine the nation
around that idea of equality. And he calls that
idea a proposition, something we're testing,
testing whether a nation so conceived and so
dedicated can long endure. He asks the living
to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work.
And he ends with that vow, that the dead shall
not have died in vain, that the nation will have
a new birth of freedom, and that government of
the people by the people for the people shall
not perish from the earth. That ideal feels So
far away from the transactional deals and the
cynical political games. We've just been talking
about it does and yet There's this one core finding
from your source material that is so counterintuitive
It just sort of stops you in your tracks. And
what's that? It's the idea that this current
ugly hyper aggressive gerrymandering arms race
that this might be the only thing that could
actually force Congress to ban the practice for
good. So it has to get worse before it gets better.
Exactly. The theory is that the spectacle of
both sides engaging in this mutually destructive
map drawing Pritzker eliminating every Republican
in Illinois Republicans doing the same elsewhere
it will create so much public disgust that even
the partisans will be forced to support reform
just to save the institution's credibility. It's
like political mutually assured. Which leaves
a really provocative question for you, the listener,
to think about. We've seen how partisan self
-interest is just dominating everything, but
if the only path to protecting government of
the people, by the people, for the people, runs
through an escalating retaliatory arms race,
does that make this anti -democratic fight a
necessary evil to achieve that new birth of freedom?