Rick Wilson & Norm Eisen

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 the latest Gallup poll shows Americans leaning 49% Democrat, 39% Republican, marking a sharp reversal from 2024

We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson joins us to talk about Emperor Trump's new hair color and the many other things he's doing to distract from his terrible economy. Then we'll talk to States United Democracy Center's Norm Eisen about the battle over mail-in voting. But first, the news.

SPEAKER_2 (0:41)

Molly, you don't have the right to safe drinking water. How do you feel about that?

Molly Jong-Fast (0:46)

So basically, this is the Fifth Circuit of Appeals in Mississippi.

In the city of Jackson, the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water. There's a lawsuit not from 1976, but from 2022 And the lawsuit says that it violated Jacksonians' constitutional right to bodily integrity. But here's the deal about this country. You only get bodily integrity when it comes to not being allowed to have abortions. Otherwise, they don't give a fuck. And again, this will probably, oh, I would say definitely keep going up the chain.

But the Constitution, according to the Fifth Circuit, the Constitution is too narrow for such a claim. And these Jackson plaintiffs do not have the right to save drinking water. I will remind you that Jackson is a city that is 80 percent black and has a poverty rate of more than double the national average. And that is why people are taking advantage of them. And also the EPA, the Trump EPA, which is one of the very few times the EPA has been pro-pollution. They did not give a. And they, I'm sure, are not going to be involved in this. And a really some Jim Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation said, the administration is clearly struggling to craft a rule that will hold up in court, while satisfying their donor's desire to effectively scrap those protections wherever possible. And I think it's a great example. One thing is clear, if we don't protect our streams or wetlands, the cost of dirty or drinking water and increased flooding will flow downstream to households.

And especially at a time when Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Look, polluted groundwater is one of the things that we are seeing in this election cycle. And I think it's quite interesting. I've been spending a lifetime in Long Island where we have very polluted groundwater because of all the farming. What we're seeing more and more is an agricultural places, the groundwater has been polluted because of all of the chemicals that people use in chemical farming. So when you look at the map and you look at places like Iowa that have been reliably read for a long time. Iowa is different, but it's a swing district, but ultimately more agricultural spaces are largely reliably read, not Iowa, but there are different spaces that are. And when you look at them and you look at how they are having the effects of the groundwater first, right? Because they are agricultural centers and we're seeing, Iowa is a really good example where cancer is one of the biggest things they're voting on now because they have this crazy high cancer rate and that's because of the polluted groundwater. And that's what we're going to see more and more. And the agricultural areas are going to get hit first because they're surrounded by farms. And so this is, it's really scary.

SPEAKER_2 (4:05)

Yeah. So one of the great features of Trump 2 that goes along with 1 is the absolute incompetence when they try to do really defiant things to the Constitution. And Trump's mail-in ballot order seems that it's a little too little too late and that mail-in ballots are going out on Friday.

Molly Jong-Fast (4:23)

Yeah. So this is a really interesting problem the Trump administration has. They really want to make it harder to vote. A third of all Americans vote by mail. Trump administration actually just went back to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, you'll remember, had said that it was too early to weigh in on the mail-in ballots. Of course, it's not. It's too late. This is going to go back to them. We'll see what they do. We know there are at least two people on the court who will do whatever Trump wants. So we'll see about the rest. But this is a very sort of interesting moment for the ballots. North Carolina has already started sending out ballots. We did see earlier this summer that Republicans redistricted even after people were voting or at least tried to. So that won't necessarily stop Republicans, but I think the Supreme Court will look at it for sure.