Jason Selvig & Alex Seitz-Wald

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Donald Trump promised to cut electricity rates in half, they're up 18%.
We have such a great show for you today, The Good Liars. Jason Selvig talks to us about all the lies the GOP is telling about the Iran War and Mitch McConnell. Then we'll talk to The Midcoast Villager's Alex Seitz-Wald about the very interesting turns in the Senate race in Maine. But first the news.

**Jesse Cannon** (0:38)
So, Molly, Trump got out with the tariffs when the Supreme Court said that they were not legal. And yet he has decided, no, I'm going to find a way around this to tariff Canada for pollution.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:51)
So here's what's happening. Remember, the Supreme Court said, you can't do the tariffs. That's emergency powers. That's not emergency. Actually, this unusual new law is from Smoot Holly. It is a law from the 1930s. It was passed during the Great Depression, which I think is amazing. He's using it to punish Canada for forest fires. Okay? He's using it to punish Canada for forest fires. Why are forest fires happening with more frequency? Because of climate change. What is Donald Trump very uninterested in addressing climate change? What is Donald Trump very focused on? Fighting with Canada.
And that is why we have him putting in these Smoot Holly tariffs on Canada. Again, my guess is that Donald Trump will forget about this, but this is a never before used section 338 of the 1930 Smoot Holly Tariff Act. So this is the maximum penalty allowed by law at 50% duties. I just want to point out, it's bad for Canada, it's bad for us, it's bad for everyone. And like the other thing is that there's no way the courts are going to go along with this, OK? And again, the really important part of this story is this is a zombie law, like the Comstock Act, that people thought the Democrats and other politicians thought they wouldn't have to repeal because no one would be stupid enough to go back to 1930s laws and put them back on the books. But here we go. And so this is a really, I think it's important that when Democrats get back into power, they make sure to put in place the kind of anti-corruption measures that we saw after Nixon and Watergate. They need to regulate. They're going to need to get, you know, laws like this off the books for once and for all, you know, section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley-Terra fact. That should not be being used in the year 2026
It should not be available to a demented Republican president.

**Jesse Cannon** (3:03)
Yeah, but here we are. Okay, so Governor Mikey Sherrill had an announcement today that they found that there was an error in the automatic registration that happens at the DMV for people who don't know. I used this to register to vote for the first time, that when you get your license at the DMV, they automatically register you to vote as long as you're a citizen. It registered roughly 6,000 non-citizens, 400 which have voted. So now what we're going to hear for the rest of our lives is illegal voting in New Jersey.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:32)
Was one of them a Trump voter? There was a person who was not a citizen who got deported, but before they got deported, they voted for Trump. Yeah. This is the bad place.

**Jesse Cannon** (3:43)
Yeah. This is not good.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:45)
My analysis is this is really, really bad. All 6,600 people will be removed from the voter roll. They all answered no when asked on a keypad whether they were United States citizens, but a mistake was made and 400 of those people voted. If you think about how many people are in New Jersey, how many people are in New Jersey as a New Jersey resident?

**Jesse Cannon** (4:07)
I am not New Jersey resident.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:10)
Someone who grew up in New Jersey.

**Jesse Cannon** (4:12)
It's almost 10 million.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:13)
Almost 10 million people live in New Jersey, 400 illegal votes, probably not going to do much, but we're going to hear a lot about this from Trump World because this is exactly what they are hoping for.

**Jesse Cannon** (4:31)
Yeah. So RFK Jr. is playing politics when he's not out playing with owls or chopping off dead animals, raccoon penises, and he's halting Medicare funds for blue states.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:43)
Yeah. So there's no proof of fraud. But again, this is like Trump is really just president for the red states. The Trump administration announces pausing a billion dollars in Medicaid, right? That's for people who can't afford it. And Medicare, which is for older people, payments to California and Minnesota accusing each state of widespread fraud. This is from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and celebrity doctor, Dr. Mehmet Oz. They made an announcement at a press conference on Tuesday, accusing recipients of the program of suspected fraud and non-compliance. Now, you'll remember Trump World obsessed with Minnesota because of a dumb-dumb called Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley, Mr. Medicare fraud, doesn't know how to reach, gets very confused, and makes some mistakes. Vice President Vance is running, this is one of his midterm issues, is fraud, is widespread fraud when it comes to public services. The reason they're doing this is, this is like, this should remind you a lot of what happened with Doge, right? The idea is that, remember Doge was coming to get find to waste, fraud, and abuse. But what did they really find? Well, they created a lot of waste. They canceled a lot of contracts that they had to re-op. Remember they stopped monitoring the screw worm, which then populated the beef supply.