What Happens When Politics Replaces Science And Faith

Measles was once a solved problem in the United States. Now it’s spreading nonstop, children are dying again, and the people charged with protecting public health are helping to blur the truth. We walk through the 2025 measles surge, the mechanics of vaccine misinformation, and why “just do your own research” collapses when the CDC’s voice is muted, funding gets cut, and disinformation is treated like a valid alternative to immunology.

Then we zoom out to the deeper cultural engine behind it all: loyalty. I talk about political idolatry in the American church, how a party can become a counterfeit religion, and why moral consistency matters most when it costs you something. If your ethics switch on and off based on which side is winning, we name what that does to your soul and to your witness.

We also dig into raw power in politics: Virginia’s redistricting fight and the national gerrymandering arms race, the argument for an FDR and LBJ-style middle-class agenda, and a sharp debunking of oversimplified talking points about Israel’s wars using historical record. Finally, we follow a campaign finance thread in a Philadelphia race, including the claim that AIPAC-linked money can be traced via Democracy Engine, and what that means for transparency.

If this helped you see the connections between public health, faith, maps, media, and money, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_10 0:46

Welcome to the Darome McClain Show. I'm your host, Darrell McClain, independent media. It will not lead you to tribalism. We have one planet. Nobody is leaving. So let us reason together big news coming out of the st commonwealth of Virginia. There was a referendum to change the way the Virginians have been voting. It was a redistricting campaign. And by the slimmest of margins, the Democratic Party won. And at least on paper, now it looks like they will get to redistrict the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was a panel of delegates that was six Democrats and five Republicans. If this map stands, it will now be ten Democrats and one Republican officially turning Virginia into a solidly blue state versus the purple state that it has been for years. Now, let me get into the analysis of why I actually think this is unfair. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, we have a part of Virginia we call Nova. Now that is Northern Virginia. That's where all the money is concentrated. Your Alexandria, your McLean, Virginia, your Norfolk, Chesapeake, uh Newport News, and what's the other one? Portsmith, Williamsburg, and a lot of money there. Then you have the other part of Virginia, which we would call Southwest Virginia, which would be your Bristol's, your Christianburg's, your Blacksburg, your Pulaskies, your Dublins, etc. And then there are other parts of Virginia that are rural counties as well, where you have your Bonavista, your Lexington, your Harrisonburg's, uh, your Farmville's, and the list goes on and on. Why I object to this sort of measure is because of this. It looks as if the poverty in Virginia is already heavily concentrated in the southwest portion of the states, the rural areas, and the money interests in Virginia because of the shipbuilding, etc., and the military industrial complex, and therefore the FBI industrial complex, the deep state, the CIA, the Federal Protective Services, the ATF, the NCI, blah, blah, blah, the NIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Air Force, the Department of Marine Corps, the Department of the Coast Guard, the Langley Air Force Base, the Langley FBI Center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is heavily focused in Northern Virginia. I feel that it is inappropriate for the richest people in the state to be taking away the voices of the poorest people in the state because the president of the United States is doing something stupid. Now I do understand how the laws of science work. The laws of science state this. For every action is an equal and opposite reaction. And because that's what the universe, the very laws of nature demand, you cannot have a Donald Trump without having a democratic version of him swing heavily in the other direction. Because Donald Trump was the hammer for right wing politics, you are now going to have to, by the very nature of the laws of nature, get a hammer in the other direction. But my problem is this. And that's just the way DeBrell sees it. Let's get into the episode.

Political Idolatry In The Church

SPEAKER_00 4:57

One might reasonably have assumed that in the 21st century, the United States would not require a tutorial on the catastrophic consequences of vaccine refusal. The 20th century, after all, provided ample instruction: the iron lungs, the quarantine wards, the tiny coffins. Yet here we are in the closing days of 2025, watching a nation that declared measles eliminated a quarter century ago slouch toward the humiliating loss of that distinction, with the blessing, indeed, the active encouragement, of the very man appointed to safeguard the public health. As of December 23rd, more than 2,000 confirmed measles cases have been reported across 44 states, with 50 outbreaks recorded, compared to 16 outbreaks in all of 2024. Three people are dead, including two children in Texas, a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, marking the first measles fatalities in the country since 2015. January 20th, now just weeks away, will mark 12 straight months of uninterrupted measles transmission, and health experts regard the loss of America's elimination status as virtually certain. The last time the nation saw numbers this grim was 1992, before most of today's parents were old enough to remember what measles could do. The proximate cause of this disaster is no mystery. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who has devoted decades to the promulgation of medical falsehoods, now occupies the office of Health and Human Services Secretary. He was confirmed 52 to 48 with only one Republican dissenting. The Senate knew precisely what it was getting. Kennedy had spent years as chair of Children's Health Defense, an organization that engaged in relentless anti-vaccine propaganda and helped flood social media with disinformation linking vaccines to autism, a claim refuted by more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people across seven countries. Kennedy's curriculum vitae includes a particularly damning episode that his Senate interlocutors largely chose to ignore. In June of 2019, he traveled to Samoa, where vaccination rates had already plummeted following a tragic incident in which two infants died after nurses mistakenly prepared vaccine doses with an expired muscle relaxant. Into this crisis of public confidence stepped Kennedy, seeking to exploit a deadly vaccine accident and meeting with local anti-vaccine activists. Vaccination rates for eligible one-year-olds fell to 31 to 34%. Five months later, Samoa endured a measles outbreak that infected more than 5,700 people and killed 83, most of them children under 4. Kennedy has consistently denied responsibility. He is questioned whether measles actually cause the deaths, calling it a very controversial supposition. This is akin to questioning whether drowning causes death in people found at the bottom of swimming pools. Dr. Paul Offitt, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has been unequivocal. Kennedy had everything to do with that, and disinformation can kill. Now installed in Washington, Kennedy has performed precisely as his record promised. At Donald Trump's first cabinet meeting following the inauguration, Kennedy described the Texas outbreak as not unusual. A claim that infectious disease experts immediately rebutted. He incorrectly stated the number of deaths and mischaracterized the reasons for hospitalization. In a Fox News interview, he made numerous false claims, including that it is almost impossible for healthy individuals to die from infectious disease, and that the child who died may have been malnourished, despite health officials' statements that she had no underlying conditions. The contrast with the previous measles crisis could not be starker. In 2019, when outbreaks cropped up across the country, Trump himself told parents, they have to get the shots. The vaccinations are so important. CDC Director Robert Redfield stated then that the way to end this outbreak is to ensure that all children and adults who can get vaccinated do get vaccinated. No one died in those outbreaks. Today, with children in the ground, the government's messaging has become a study in equivocation and misdirection. A study published in the journal Vaccine found that the CDC posted just 10 times about measles on social media during the first seven months of 2025, compared to an average of nearly 46 posts during the same period in each of the previous four years. The agency's voice has been silenced precisely when it was most needed. CDC experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials. A public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in an email: CDC hasn't reached out to us locally. My staff feels like we are out here all alone. A child would die before CDC scientists contacted her. The administration's capacity for self-sabotage appears boundless. In late March, the CDC abruptly cancelled$11.4 billion in funding for state and local health departments. In Dallas County alone, this forced the cancellation of more than 50 vaccination clinics. Many planned for schools in areas with low vaccination rates, where shops would have been offered free to families. 21 workers were laid off, including epidemiologists and lab staff involved with measles surveillance. HHS justified the cuts by declaring that the COVID-19 pandemic is over and that the department would no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic. That those funds were also being used to combat measles apparently escaped their notice or their concern. On April 6th, Kennedy attended the funeral of an eight-year-old girl who died of measles in Lubbock. Hours later, he praised two controversial doctors, one of whom had released a podcast describing mass infection as God's version of measles immunization, and the other of whom had been disciplined by Texas medical regulators. Meanwhile, Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock reported patients with signs of vitamin A toxicity after their parents followed Kennedy's promotion of the nutrient as treatment. Kennedy had claimed that the toxicity issue is no longer an issue. The children's blood work suggested otherwise. The culmination of this campaign arrived in November when Kennedy ordered the CDC to alter its website on vaccines and autism. A page that once stated unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism was rewritten to declare that this claim is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. This is, as Dr. Offitt noted, an exploitation of a technicality in the scientific method, the same logic by which one could claim that chicken nuggets might cause autism, since no study has specifically disproven it. Senator Bill Cassidy, who had voted for Kennedy's confirmation after receiving assurances that such language would not be removed, issued a statement condemning the change as wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker. Dr. Deborah Hummery, the CDC's former chief medical officer, said the agency's scientists had nothing to do with the website change. Scientists were not involved in any of these decisions, and when you remove science from scientific information, you get ideology. Dr. Offitt offered the epitaph. The CDC is being weaponized to promote RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine point of view, so why should you trust it? There is a particular obscenity in watching Kennedy invoke parental choice. While children die from a disease that vanished from American life within living memory, you research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they're getting, and you need to research the medicines that they're taking as well, he told an audience, as if the accumulated knowledge of immunology were equivalent to consumer reports ratings for infant car seats. This is the language of abdication dressed in the vocabulary of empowerment. It is not a coincidence, observed Fiona Havers, adjunct associate professor at Emory's School of Medicine, that the first year where we've had 12 months of continuously circulating measles is the first 12 months of this administration. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, offered a grimmer assessment. This administration is only pouring more gas on the fire with the kind of comments that are coming out of HHS. The mathematics of measles are unforgiving. One infected person can transmit the virus to 12 to 18 others in an unvaccinated population. One to three children per thousand who contract measles will die. One in 20 will develop pneumonia. Only 4% of this year's more than 1800 cases occurred in people who had received two doses of the vaccine. The MMR vaccine is safe, effective, and has been protecting children since 1963. These are facts impervious to the ministrations of conspiracy theorists, even those with cabinet portfolios. It's horrifying and it's embarrassing that our country, the technological leader of the world, will lose our designation of measles being eliminated when this is completely preventable, said Admiral Brett Girois, who served as HHS Assistant Secretary under Trump's first administration. It's actually shameful. Shame, however, requires the capacity for self-reflection. Kennedy has demonstrated none. The graves of children in Texas testify to the cost of his convictions. By the time the bureaucratic machinery confirms what epidemiologists already know, that America has lost its measles elimination status, the accounting of preventable deaths will have grown longer still. The virus does not negotiate. It does not respect ideological commitment or political alignment. It simply spreads, feeding on the gaps in immunity that ignorance and policy have jointly created. 25 years of public health achievement erased in 12 months. The arc of the moral universe, it turns out, does not always bend toward justice. Sometimes it bends toward measles.

Music Break And Disclaimers

Democrats And A Middle-Class Blueprint

SPEAKER_10 16:29

Welcome back to the Darrell McClain Show. Let me say something today that a whole lot of people, especially church people, know is true, even if they don't want to admit it out loud. One of the most dangerous things that is actually happening in the American church right now is not atheism. And it is not secularism, and it is not Hollywood, it is not college professors, and it is not even the culture war by itself. It is a political thing that I would like to call political idolatry. And that is the disease. It is what happens when people who say they follow Jesus begin to act like their deepest loyalty is not to Jesus Christ, not to the kingdom of God, not to the truth, not to righteousness, but to a specific political tribe. Pick your toilet. Everybody has a golden calf now, and most folks have taught it to wave a flag and quote a Bible verse. And once politics becomes your idol, you stop thinking clearly, you stop listening honestly, you stop repenting sincerely, you stop loving your neighbor consistently. Because idols always make you smaller than you were before. Now hear me clearly, I'm not saying Christians should not care about politics. That may be ridiculous. Laws matter, justice matters, war matters, poverty matters, crime matters, education matters, immigration matters, life matters, public morality matters. Any Christian who has faith has nothing to do with public life, has not read the prophets, and has not listened to Jesus carefully, and has definitely not paid attention to church history. The people of God have always had something to say to kings, to rulers, to empires, to nations, and to each other. So this is not a call to apathy, this is a call to uh reorder. Politics must stay in its proper place because once politics leaves its proper place and climbs up into the throne of the heart, it begins to function like a counterfeit religion. It tells you who the good people are and who the bad people are, it tells you which sins matter and which sins to be ignored, it gives you saints and demons, it gives you rituals, slogans, sacred symbols, heretics and blasphemers. It gives you a ready-made worldview with villains already pre-assigned in perpetuity. And if you are not careful, you will begin to treat your political party uh like it's your church, your favorite politician like it's your favorite pastor, and your news uh feed like it's uh your Bible. That is not political engagement, that is spiritual captivity. So let me put this very plain enough for the folks in the cheap seats and the expensive ones as well. If your walk with God rises and falls with an election cycle, something is wrong with your walk with God. If you can excuse cruelty because the cruel person helps your political party win, something is wrong. If you can overlook lies because the liar fits your party and fights your enemy, something is wrong. If you can s if you can spot hypocrisy in every other party, but never in your own camp, something is wrong. If your political opinions are stronger than your Christian ethics, something is wrong. And if the church in America has a whole lot of wrong, we have to address it right now. Because too many believers have stopped asking what is righteous. Now they ask, what helps my political party? What helps the Republicans? What helps the Democrats? What helps the Libertarians, etc., etc. They have stopped asking what brings honor and glory to God. Now they ask what humiliates the people I cannot stand. They have stopped asking how do I love my neighbor? Now they ask, how do I defeat that bastard over there, my enemy? And that shift right there is where the soul starts to rot. And let me say something else that may sting just a bit. Some Christians do not really want Jesus to be Lord over their politics, they want Jesus to bless their politics, and that is a different thing. They want him to be a mascot, but not the master. They want him to have an endorsement, but not to be the judge. They want him to ride in the pastor's seat and not while they drive straight into bitterness, straight into rage, straight into lies and dishonesty, straight into pride and arrogance, and straight into tribal hatred. But I'm here to tell you today, Jesus does not uh play a mascot. He is Lord, and if he is Lord, then he gets to confront the left, he gets to confront the right, he gets to confront the middle, he gets to confront the church, he gets to confront me, and he gets to confront you. He gets to tell us all when we are wrong. And this is what the Lordship gospel is about. This is what lordship truly means. A lot of people say Jesus is king, but what they really mean is Jesus agrees with me. No, sir, no ma'am, that is not the gospel, that is not Christianity, that is pride and ego wearing church clothes. The real test of whether Christ is above politics is whether you can tell the truth about your own camp. Can you rebuke people who you vote for? Can you condemn sin when it helps your tribe? Can you admit corruption when the corrupt person has the right enemies? Can you call the wicked wicked even when the wickedness is politically useful to you? That is the test. Because if you only have moral outrage when the other side is sinning, but endless grace when your side is sinning, that is not conviction, that is a partisanship of pretending to be faith. And this is why so many people outside the church do not trust the people inside the church. Let us tell the truth today. And a lot of unbelievers do not reject Christianity because they have carefully studied the Sermon on the Mount and found it wanting. A lot of them reject the public face of Christianity because what they have seen is a church that preaches humility and then practices our arrogance, practices uh everything, it preaches truth and then excuses every dang lie. It practices holiness, it preaches holiness, and then it sells it witness for power and political access. And this is why some churches feel spiritually thin even when they are numerically large. Talking to you, megachurches. This is why some pulpits sound powerful but feel hollow. This is why some believers can quote scripture all day long, but cannot produce the fruit of the spirit when politics enters the room, because they have been discipled more by outrage than by the love of Christ. And outrage is a bad God. It always demands sacrifice. Use the enter peace. In your compassion. In your honesty. And in your soul. So what is the answer? No retreat. No silence. The answer is to politics on a beauty of peace. I mean it's Christianship. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Which means there is something we must never sacrifice even for a political victory. What are those things? Decency. Integrity. Mercy. Justice. Love of neighborhood. Care for the weak. Moral consistency. And the courage to repent when our own people are wrong. Especially when we are wrong. If gaining power requires me to lie, I have already lost the moral hydro. If winning requires me to become cruel, I have already lost the moral hydro. If defeating my enemy requires me to dishonor my God, I have already lost. This is the part that we get twisted over. That is the part that this culture cannot understand. Because American politics teaches people that the only sin is actually losing. That the the the they they follow the eleventh commandment, thou shalt not get caught. As Dr. Cornell says. But the gospel teaches something very different. The gospel says, What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? And I'm telling you right now, part of the church are in danger of gaining influence while losing their soul. This is why this conversation matters. Because one day, one day, my friend, believers are going to look back at this era and ask how so many Christians got emotionally attached to politicians so morally compromised by party loyalty and so spiritually confused that they could not tell the difference between defending the faith and defending a tribe. And the answer will be very simple we loved power too much, we feared cultural defeat too much. We trusted we trusted princes too much. We trusted kings too much. We trusted committees too much. We trusted the parliamentarian too much. We trusted Congress too much. We trusted Senate too much. We trusted the President of the United States too much, the governors of the mayors, the aldermen too much, the state delegates, and we put almost no trust. We did not trust Jesus enough. So let me close with this. The church does not need less courage. It needs clear courage. The church does not need less conviction. It needs conviction and is not chained to a party. The church does not need less involvement in public life. It needs involvement without idolatry. Because donkeys do not save, and elephants do not save, and presidents do not save, and pundits like me do not save, and political parties do not save. Jesus saves. And if the church forgets that, it does not matter how many legends it influences, it doesn't matter how many judges it celebrates. It doesn't matter how many slogans it cares, or how many enemies it defeats. A church that places politics above Christ still have crowds. And it may still get money. You can find that song by pushing in your YouTube uh Viani Hampton. It is on YouTube Music. And so the way you're gonna spell that name, if you enjoy that type of music, is going to be V-I-A, N N I I, space, H A M P T O N. So that is V-I-A, N I I, Space, H-A-M-P-T-O-N, and the song that you just listened to was called Don't Let Go.

SPEAKER_12 33:04

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Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_11 33:09

The strategy that built America's middle class still works. So why won't Democrats deploy it? The liberal commentators are shocked. It was reported yesterday that Graham Plattner, the Democrat who will most likely win the primary to run for the U.S. Senate from Maine, has staked out some truly radical positions. The former Marine Combat veteran and oyster farmer has called for impeaching Supreme Court Justice Clarice Thomas for the bribes he took from billionaires, replacing Chuck Schumer as leader of Senate Democrats with a fighter, investigating and prosecuting Trump regime officials and underlings who've been involved in illegal actions like bombing unarmed boats in the boats in the Caribbean, prosecuting ICE thugs who assaulted, terrorized, or killed people and smashed into cars and homes without warrants, going after corruption in the Trump White House, including among the Trump family, the cabinet, and Trump himself, promoting aggressive new social safety nets, the programs to restore America's middle class and take on the Epstein class, including a wealth tax on those with more than a billion dollars, and a national health care system modeled on Medicare for all. One cable host mused out loud yesterday that these positions may help the 41-year-old progressive win the primary against septigenary and moderate Governor Janet Mills, quote, but can that really win a general election? This don't be burnier like AOC is the great fear and marching anthem of the mainstream media and the Democratic consultant class. When Trump both broke both U.S. and international law in joining Israel in bombing Iran without any provocation, and while they were making very real concessions during their negotiations, and in violation of the War Powers Act of 1973, Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn't call for the president to be prosecuted, turned over to the Hague, or even impeached. Instead, he said, Congress must be fully and immediately briefed. Yeah, that'll teach them. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump a liar and the bombing a major failure at Operation Epic Blunder, but beyond strongly worded press releases, also hasn't called for actual consequences for Trump, Hegeseth, or anybody else in the chain of command committing these war crimes. The conventional wisdom across the chattering classes and within the leadership of the institutional Democratic Party seems to be don't make big promises or real threats. Don't be Bernie or AOC. The problem with this strategy is that most Americans now want a modern-day Bernie or AOC. In multiple elections and planners, polling, prove it. It wasn't always this way. There was a time when Democrats boldly promoted programs that literally built the world's first 50% of the population middle class and weren't afraid to take names and kick ass. Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed America with his New Deal programs, including legalizing unions, Social Security, the minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, ending child labor, federal emergency relief, the FDIC, SEC, FCC, TVA, NLRB, FHA, and Fannie Mae, and the National Archives, among others. He also took on the Epstein class of his day, the morbidly rich had seized control of the GOP after the end of the Taft presidency in 1913, established a top 90% income tax rate, and proclaimed that they and their captive Republicans had declared class war against average working class Americans. For out of this modern civilization, Roosevelt told America, economic royalists carved new dynasties, new kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. He used the language of class warfare. As with all wars, the first step is to identify the enemy. For FDR was the fat cats of his era who weren't content to just run their businesses and make money, but also lusted for the political power they'd been given during the 1920s by Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America, Roosevelt proclaimed. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. He paused for a moment, then thundered, our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. The crowd of Madison Square Garden roared when he said that. They knew that Republican politicians had worked hand in glove with wealthy industrialists to suppress unions of aid taxes and accumulate fortunes beyond anything ever seen in America, that the GOP had been running an often violent class war against them for years. And they were over it. Over the greed, over the theft, and over the self-righteous proclamations that the Constitution protected their avarice. Average working people knew these economic royalists weren't patriots. They were looters, vandals, and political arcists. FDR gave voice to their anger, disillusionment, and disgust. In vain, Roosevelt said, they seek to hide behind the flag in the Constitution. In their blindness, they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny, for freedom, not subjection, and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike.

FDR And LBJ Lessons Revisited

SPEAKER_12 38:27

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Build It Again Interlude

SPEAKER_11 40:27

Republicans had declared class warfare. FDR, like he would later do with the Japanese and Germans, led the charge to fight back and defeat them. President Lyndon Johnson similarly added to the middle class while keeping the top income tax rate at a fierce 74% on individuals and 50% on corporations. His great society programs included Medicare, Medicaid, Meals on Wheels, Title III, the low-income school districts, Pell Grants, Head Start, Job Corps, Community Action Agencies, Community Service Block Grants, VISTA, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, anti-racial quotas on immigration, food stamps, HUD, NEA, NEH, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR and PBS. And he and President Kennedy weren't afraid to go after malefactors in the government itself. As Lamar Waldron and I document in our book, The Legacy of Secrecy that long shadowed the JFK assassination, Kennedy was the first president in a half century to take on the mafia, including its control over FBI Director Hoover. It ultimately cost him his life. LBJ similarly frequently went after big business and corrupt deals between what he called corporate or wealthy special interests and Republican politicians. Had LBJ not blundered and lied on the Vietnam War, he may well be remembered as one of our greatest presidents. When it comes to the middle class, he and FDR were singular in their advocacy of programs that lifted working class people from poverty into relative comfort. And Americans love those programs, both FDRs and LBJs. To this day, they're among the most popular in the country's history. Progressive politics and policies are once again popular in America as the foggy bubble of Reagan's trickle-down economics has burst, leaving us with a$38 trillion hangover in a middle class that's been wiped out, shrinking from 65% of us when Reagan was elected to 43% of us today, and now requiring two incomes instead of just one. Polling of Democratic voters who simply failed to show up for Kamala Harris in 2024, handing the election to Trump, found that they failed to vote because they believed Democrats were ignoring, quote, poverty and inequality, and they wanted an explicit, quote, economic message of taxing the wealthy to invest in infrastructure and jobs, end quote, that the Harris campaign failed to deliver. These no-show voters, the pollsters heard, wanted to, quote, hear a story about systemic change. Instead, they heard a series of misaligned policy points that failed to connect. Put bluntly, voters felt that Democrats weren't fighting for people like them or taking on big corporations who profit from price scourging and reach people who don't pay what they owe in taxes, end of quote. End of quote. Graham Planner's shocking call to actually investigate and prosecute the many corrupt people and open criminals in the Trump administration, including Trump himself and his rapacious kids, is widely popular across a purple state. Combine it with bold progressive policies, and it's a winning nationwide formula for 2026 and 2028. Democrats need to fire their neoliberal advisors left over from the Clinton and Obama years, take a law and order posture against the corruption of Trump and his GOP lick spills, and put forward FDR and LBJ-like transformational programs to restore America's middle class and our status as an example for the world. Anything less merely guarantees, like the lukewarm messages of 2024 did. More Republican victories, more tax breaks for billionaires, and more people living in tents, while what's left of our liberties vanish behind the barbed wire of Trump's and Miller's so-called detention facilities.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

That built this town, don't name the hay. That took too much, don't turn the heat, don't strike the match. But we've seen hunger dressed as long. We watched them smile while they withdraw. And every way just buys them tight, more working hands fall out a light. We remember stealing sweat and fight. When hope wasn't soft, it was loud, it was bright.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

Build it again, break, break, not with fear, not peace by piece.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

Rise it high wear walk instead and take it back. Build it again. To say enough to wealth and crime, but history bends when people not when they stole, not when they shoot.

Debunking Israel War Narratives

SPEAKER_03 45:54

We had a fire that lit the sky makes that down made a wages. It wasn't it wasn't fade. It was colours that we wrote the stage. No shadows no more disguise. You don't win bicycles in your eyes. Build it again strong and why with every voice.

SPEAKER_14 46:22

The wheel the craft stains off ground. Build it again. Say their name, say their power. For silence, this is the hour.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

No more begging after We don't ask, we legislate and together line by law. This is of course. This is not very crafting laugh me.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Stop the time. You don't worry well by standing still. You don't win by fearing well. You don't stop trying to stop.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Oh very clear. Not someday the moment's here. We've got the numbers. We've got the steps.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Build it again. They have a tap, they showed down. This time.

SPEAKER_09 47:56

Bill Maher is a lot of things. Annoying, unfunny, misogynistic, Islamophobic, and of course, pro-Israel. The noted atheist is very, very pro-the Jewish state. So much so that he can't stop lying in order to defend it. Here he is on Friday's episode of Real Time on HBO.

SPEAKER_07 48:13

To me, what the Democrats are not doing with this is leading. The energy in their party is with the young people who learn everything about Israel on TikTok. They don't know shit. And their leaders are not standing up and saying, kids, you don't know what's going on here. Every war Israel has fought is a war of defense. Right. Every war they were attacked first. The kids don't know shit, Bill?

Gerrymandering Arms Race Expands

SPEAKER_09 48:37

Or is that you? Time for a debunking. Let's look at Israel's wars, because Israel's fought a lot of wars. But let's just take a look at three of the major ones. Who started them? First off, 1956, the Suez Crisis, also known as the Second Arab-Israeli War. Israel, Britain, and France colluded together to invade Egypt and to try and topple President Nasser. Israel attacked on October the 29th, and Britain and France joined two days later. Now, the Israelis always say that any war they start is a defensive war, a preemptive war. But we actually know that Israel, France, and Britain got together to plan this war of aggression a week earlier in Sèvre, France. Even super partisan Israeli politician and historian Michael Oren admits that then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's plan in 1956 at Sevre was for dividing Jordan between Israel and Iraq and Lebanon between Israel and Syria. It was a war of conquest, not defense. Israeli Colonel Mordecai Baron, who took note at the Sevre meeting, was embarrassed by what he heard. He later said the Israeli-British-French plan was, quote, more fitted to the kind of imperial discussions which took place at the end of the Great War and was totally out of place, he said, for the post-World War II era. Hey Bill, it was an imperial war that Israel started in 1956. Number two, let's go to 1967, the Six-Day War, the conflict that opened the door to Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, the longest ongoing military occupation in the world. Israel attacked Egypt in June 1967 before expanding their attacks to Syria and Jordan. Now, the standard Israeli narrative is that this was a preemptive war, that President Nasser of Egypt had mobilized his forces in the Sinai, kicked out UN peacekeepers, and was about to attack Israel. And that the Jewish state's very existence, as its then Prime Minister Levieshkol claimed, hung on a thread. But that was all bullshit. Egypt wasn't about to attack Israel. Don't take my word for it. In 1982, the Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin admitted, and I quote, in June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that NASA was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him. Did you hear that, Bill? In 1968, a year after the Six-Day War, Israel's own military chief, General Yitzhak Rabin, who went on to serve as a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister of Israel, he told a French journalist, and I quote, I do not believe that NASA wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14th would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it, and we knew it. But Bill Maher doesn't seem to know it. Multiple other Israeli officials have said the same, by the way. In the year since, one of the top Israeli generals who pushed for war in June 1967, Matit Young Pelled, later said that all the talk of a threat to Israel from Egypt was nothing but a bluff. Israeli wartime cabinet minister Mordechai Bentov later confessed that this whole story about the threat of extermination was totally contrived to justify the annexation of new Arab territories. So, no, the Six-Day War in 1967 wasn't a preemptive war. It wasn't a war of self-defense. It was a war of aggression and occupation by Israel against its Arab neighbors. Again. And finally, number three. Let's go to Lebanon. 1982, Israel launched an illegal invasion of southern Lebanon, killing thousands of civilians and kickstarting its 18-year brutal occupation of that country. Now you might say, well, they were fighting Hezbollah. But Hezbollah didn't exist until Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Oh wait, but there was the PLO before that. There were Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. In fact, the Israeli military says on its own website that what they called Operation Peace for the Galilee was launched on June the 6th, 1982, following a terrorist cell's failed attempt to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the UK. Well, here's the slight problem. That terrorist cell wasn't from the PLO. It wasn't an assassination attempt ordered by Yasser Arafat or anyone in Lebanon. It was from the Abu Nidal organization based in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Abu Nidal organization that was a sworn foe of the PLO, and whose leader had even been sentenced to death in absentia by the PLO. But as Israel's top general in 1982 sneered at a cabinet meeting on the eve of invading Lebanon, Abu Nidal Abu Shhmidal, we have to strike at the PLO. To be clear then, Israel used that assassination attempt on their ambassador in London to illegally invade and occupy Lebanon, which had nothing to do with it, and they did so not for self-defense or security reasons, but because they wanted to take out the PLO, and because, as historian Zachary Foster pointed out in a recent piece Visiteo, the Zionist movement has wanted to expand Israel's borders into Lebanon for over a hundred years. So that is what Israel does. That is what the historical record shows. Israel attacking its neighbors, attacking Arab countries without justification and in violation of international law. And they're doing it again, right now, to Iran. When Bill Ma says the kids don't know shit about the history of Israel's wars, it's pure projection on his part. Every war they were attacked first? Shut up, Bill. Did you like this video? Don't forget to subscribe to this YouTube channel and turn on notifications. For exclusive content and to support our independent, unfiltered journalism, head over to zateo.com. Your support matters.

SPEAKER_13 53:59

Voters in Virginia went to the polls to just to decide whether or not they were going to radically gerrymander the state. They said yes, uh, let's do it by a very narrow margin. Uh Democrats basically um outvoted Republicans. What is it? What are we at? 40, 51, 49, something. Really close. It's gonna end up being very close.

SPEAKER_06 54:21

Right, as of right now, it's 51.5 to 48.5.

SPEAKER_13 54:24

It's and it's gonna take a congressional delegation that is currently six Democrats and five Republicans, which is about as fair as you can get in a state that went by like what, six, seven points to uh Kamala Harris, and it's gonna take it to ten, likely gonna take it to ten Democrats, uh, one Republican. Oh boy, what a wipe out. Uh put up F2 here. Um this is one of the This is hilarious. It's a good tweet. Um this person, this uh Cameron Corduroy. Uh I resonated because it's a you have a good tweet like this, a banger, uh you get your name read. It says, Welcome to the new rural subjects of the Arlingtonian Protectorate. All voters will be required to provide at least two sets of pronouns pronouns to vote in upcoming elections. And it's showing um this wild district that's drawn where you have uh deep, deep blue Arlington voters who will then overwhelm this like deep stretch of rural Virginia that rolls through the suburbs, out uh out the out the highways there, and then deep into actual rural Virginia, where there's many fewer people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 55:43

And many fewer Democrats. It looks like a lobster. If you're listening to this, it looks like a lobster. The tail is the Arlington area, and then the claws are like rural central and western Virginia, like Appalachia.

SPEAKER_13 55:54

The original term, as as nerds in DC know, um gerrymander comes from a district that was as nerds in DC know, um, gerrymander comes from a district that was drawn in like the 1700s to to look like a salamander. Incredible. It looked like a salamander, and that's where gerrymander, I know where I don't know where they got the gerry.

SPEAKER_06 56:13

Should call it gerrymobster.

SPEAKER_13 56:14

Yeah. But so this one looks, this one actually looks almost rational compared to some.

SPEAKER_05 56:21

Some of the Maryland ones are wild.

SPEAKER_13 56:23

Yeah. Uh and some Republicans, yeah. But so this one looks, this one actually looks almost rational compared to some.

SPEAKER_05 56:31

Yes, yeah, that are some of the Maryland ones are wild.

SPEAKER_13 56:35

Yeah. Uh and so the the the there was so much um delightful back and forth um over this, whether whether it was um Republicans complaining about it after having launched the war.

SPEAKER_06 56:50

So let's I think it's unclear who t technically launched the war in the big picture, but this cycle, Republicans launched the war. Started with Texas, went to Galilee.

SPEAKER_13 56:59

Right. The the gerrymandering fight goes literally back to like 18th century. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 57:05

Um we can't keep blaming the Whigs.

SPEAKER_13 57:07

Right. No, the Whigs weren't even around yet. Um but the actual um mid-cycle, doing it mid-cycle rather than every 10 years, that was Republicans doing it um uh in Texas. But let's read Hakeem Jeffries, who's feeling his oaths. He's never felt so good, um, put up F F3. So this is from the Democratic leader expecting to turn this into becoming Democratic speaker. He says, last July, Donald Trump demanded that Texas drew five, draw five new Republican seats in the middle of a decade, igniting a chain reaction of corrupt MAGA state legislators attempting to rig the midterm elections. While many expected Democrats to roll over and play dead, guilty, I'm sure I did. We did the opposite. Democrats did not step back. We fought back. When they go low, we hit back hard. Uh we won Prop 50 in California, reclaimed, which which redrew California to give it give Democrats a bunch of new seats. Reclaimed a seat in Utah, true, they're gonna get another Democratic seat there. Pushed back extremists in Ohio, they did block the Ohio stuff, and halted toxic GOP efforts in Indiana, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Kansas. You know, a lot of the credit for halting those efforts actually goes to Republican lawmakers who didn't didn't want those their own seats kind of redrawn. And some of them, just on principle, um, didn't want to see it happen. And actually faced in Nebraska like significant threats of violence from like Republican legislators face threats of violence from Republicans and stood up to them and to block this. And he goes on, this war is not over. This is what I want your take on. Next week, Ron DeSantis is hauling the Florida legislature back into a special session to redraw maps because Republicans know they're on the verge of an epic defeat in November. DeSantis is clearly more interested in illegal gerrymandering than lowering the high cost of living, blah, blah. Uh, if Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, uh, they will only create more prime pickup opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump's dummymander in Texas.

SPEAKER_06 59:11

That's from Hakeem Jeffries. He's a dummy mander. Bro, I thought he ate.

SPEAKER_13 59:15

He did eat. We will aggressively target for defeat Mario Diaz Ballart, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Jimenez, Kat Camnak, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, Corey Mills, and Brian Mast. No, not Corey Mills. We are prepared to take them all on, and we are prepared to win maximum warfare everywhere all the time. So the one reason he's eating here is um is it it was a dummy mander in Texas in the sense that they misunderstood the depth of the support they had among Hispanic voters in Texas. They drew a bunch of districts that require them to have levels that are close to 2024 to keep them. To keep those seats. Yeah. So what you the way you do a gerrymander, you have a seat that's like 70-30, right? So you take it down to like 55-45. So you're gonna win that one, and then you take the Republicans or the Democrats, whoever's doing it, and you move them into a district that previously the other party held, yeah, move those voters over, and now you win both. Yeah. That's why they call it that's that's the that's the goal. If you move these voters over here, and they don't vote for you, and the voters that you had over here, or these, let's say they're Hispanic voters, or others who voted for Trump and now hate Trump, and they flip, now you lose both these seats. That that is a legit dummy mander. So uh what now it is it would be illegal the Florida Constitution is probably gonna save DeSantis because it's very clear. You in the Constitution it says you can't gerrymander for political purposes. Yeah. Like straight, it's like very crystal clear. Maybe they'll do it anyway. So what they're arguing here is if you take these cats that we just listed down to 55%, yeah, they're in trouble. We're gonna overperform and we're gonna beat them. Yeah. So go ahead, make our day.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 1:01:10

You feel lucky.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:12

So um Which is also what Republicans are saying about like Corey Mills. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_13 1:01:17

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:17

Uh but no, they want to keep that seat.

SPEAKER_13 1:01:19

So I I've seen it. There were a decent number of Republicans who were like, look, I told you that doing this Texas thing was a bad idea. Um, it's wrong on principle, but also the politics is wrong. Trump has now once again started a needless war and he's losing it. Yeah. Like it's one thing to start a war for no reason and win it. Yeah. In one little political gain, and he's starting wars and losing.

Philly Primary And AIPAC Money Trail

SPEAKER_06 1:01:44

It became a proxy for who's willing to use their raw political power when the other side has seemingly, to voters, discarded with the principle. And that's understandable. I mean, it's completely understandable. Now you have Republicans waxing sanctimonious about how gerrymandering is anti-democratic and unprincipled. Barack Obama like congratulated Virginia Democrats on taking a step to uphold democracy, which is just hilarious. Um, when you look at districts like the Arlingtonian, what was it, Arlington Stan, whoever the great tweeter put up, um, that was a great one. But it's in California, Texas, now Florida, Hakeem Jeffries using the quote, illegal gerrymandering term is interesting because he's defending the gerrymandering in Virginia. Florida actually has a law in its constitution that you can't gerrymander. So whatever they do in Florida, they're gonna have to be really careful about um for obvious reasons. Now, this could, my understanding is it's possible it could go down at the Virginia State Supreme Court shortly, but that it's unlikely. It gets rejected by the Virginia State Supreme Court, and that Democrats have picked up probably what, five seats and then 10 in California, Republicans picked up somewhere around like seven, ten in Texas. So just absolutely duking it out for control of the House going forward. Um, but I think that's what it's really become, is just this proxy for failing the Michelle Obama test. When they go low, we go high. We all now, like the base as Americans, we all want political parties, not you and I, but everyone wants the political party to fail that test. To say when you go low, we punch back harder. Isn't that what Hakeem Jeffrey said? Um it's funny to hear Hakeem, like to read that post in Hakeem Jeffrey's voice, which is just like impotent. But uh speaking of which, Ryan, we should get this from the president pro tempore of the Senate of Virginia. We gotta put this post up on the screen, F4. She's been on fire. L. Louise Lucas. Yeah. I have the utmost respect for Senator Kane and Senator Warner, but we do not need, quote, coaching on redistricting coming from a cock chair in the corner. You all stay focused on the fascists in the White House and let us handle redistricting in Virginia 0 to 1. And if you look at Louise Lucas's Twitter profile picture, she is an elderly woman. So it's even funnier to hear her talking about the cock chair.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:15

It's incredible. Um, it's crazy. Uh well done. She like you should just scroll through her whole Twitter feed. Is it good? The whole thing is good. At one point I can't find it, but she said something like, um, hey, look, when uh when Republicans gerrymandered all of the black voters into one district, they said we should be grateful for gifting us, you know, this representative district. She's like, we're all now we're putting all of you into one district. Right. So thank us for it. You're gonna love it. See how you like it.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:47

Uh the other thing is, you know, you never have a push for unilateral disarmament. So it's just an arm, it's a j we're in a gerrymandering arms race, to Louise's point. Uh, we're in a gerrymandering arms race. Not just in the I think it was, though. I can't find it. Either way, not just in Virginia, but across the country. And Ryan insisted uh that we put up F5. This is a classic post on X from 2019. Ryan, why don't you go ahead and tell us what we're seeing here?

SPEAKER_13 1:05:16

Oh, the old reaping and sowing. That's right. Uh it's incredible. Um the quote is ha ha, fuck yeah, yes. Republicans in Virginia, oh so yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:25

Yeah, the the tweet is me sowing. Ha ha, fuck yeah, yes, me reaping. Well, this fucking sucks. What the fuck? Yeah. No. Shout out to the Golden Surf. Reaping great screaming but calm for that one. Yeah, never. But yeah, that's the reaping and the sewing will continue until morale improves. And morale does not seem poised to improve.

Closing Notes And How To Support

SPEAKER_13 1:05:47

No, no, indeed. Um, I have one other little uh nugget of news to get out uh for people uh before we move on from this one. Uh so in if you've been following Philadelphia's congressional uh race, it's an op it's an open contest. We had Chris Rabb um on the program. He before before he before we had him on, um since we had him on, he's picked up like endorsements from like everybody. Um, from like Jamie Raskin, Justice Democrats, like the like real progressive kind of consolidation behind him. He's a he's grim mentum. Breaking points mentum. Um he's uh endorsed by Philly's um DSA chapter, and he's running up against um Sharif Street, um, who uh is more of the kind of establishment uh pick, um uh leg kind of a leg legacy dynasty guy, um with a lot of uh a lot of uh ethical challenges, you could say. Um and Alice Stanford, who is one of the who is a leading candidate, who is has gotten more than a million dollars in support from this super PAC called 314 Action, uh, which I previously reported back in 2024. APAC was using it as a as a shell to funnel money into some uh congressional campaigns. It claims that it supports scientists and and doctors. I mean, it does often support scientists and doctors, but usually to the tune of tens of thousands or maybe low six figures. It's extremely rare that 314 action has more than a million dollars, unless they're working with APAC. AIPAC is not publicly endorsing anyone in this race because they're so uh toxic. But people have suspected because of that 314 action support that Stanford is getting APAC money. And they also then were like, oh, she's totally getting APAC money. When she was asked um why it is that she is unwilling to say um that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, uh, and she said that using the G word is similar for to using the N word. And people are like, uh-uh, I'm sorry, what? So she was actually what so she was asked again about this last week, and she said there are a lot of Israelis um who get very hurt feelings when you accuse them of having of committing genocide. So that's this is like her campaign line that she's not going to say that Israel's committing a genocide because it could hurt the feelings of the people carrying out the genocide. Uh so we do have some news on that finally. Um went through her um went through her FEC report and found nearly$30,000, or I think we're gonna find more if we keep looking. Nearly$30,000 have come. Contributions that flowed through Democracy Engine. Democracy Engine is the payment processing platform that APAC uses. And so that's how you can now confirm Alice Stanford is getting AIPAC money. So what they do is they'll send out emails to their major donors and say, privately, here are the candidates that we are supporting. Please make a contribution through this democracy engine portal. And then sometimes on the FEC report, it shows up as having been funneled through the Democracy Engine Portal. And so thankfully, in her latest report, we can see something a little over$27,000 having run through uh Democracy Engine and from candidates who are um who have in the past given huge amounts of money to APAC and to APAC super. So case closed, it's done, she's getting APAC money. Um she said in in her recent town hall, um, where she was where she made this comment about uh Israelis hurt feelings that she's not getting any APAC money. So that's a lie. She is getting APAC money.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:55

Good stuff for him.

SPEAKER_13 1:09:57

Yeah. Well, so we'll we'll so this is it's gonna be an interesting race, and we'll see if like Philadelphia Inquir actually shocked shocked the world by endorsing Chris Raff. I saw that. Because that's like that's they're not known. But anyway, well, we'll see how that race goes.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:13

Well, that does it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. Thank you so much. If you want a premium subscription, breakingpoints.com is where you can go to support our independent journalism. Help us keep going. Uh and you get, well, actually, Ryan has declared the Friday show is totally free. So, but you do get the show every morning in your inbox uh in full, which is really how it's meant to be.

SPEAKER_13 1:10:33

But if you pay, you also get it free.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:35

There you go. Uh yes. Ryan, also, we wanted to mention um if you find yourself in the area or you want to travel, Michael Parenti, his memorial is coming up. You can go to eventcreate.com. That is where it's in Berkeley.

SPEAKER_13 1:10:52

Yes, it's in Berkeley. Uh, do we have the precise details? It's uh April 25th.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:58

Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley.

SPEAKER_13 1:11:00

Yes. Um, so uh check that out. Um 2 to 3 p.m. at the Unitarian Universal Church, Saturday, April 25th, if you're in the Bay Area, uh a memorial for uh Michael Parenti.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:14

All right, we'll see ya.

SPEAKER_12 1:11:16

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SPEAKER_05 1:11:21

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