 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueroaido. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash Humanist Report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueroaido and this is episode 250 of the program. Today is Friday, July 17th. And before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members, all of which either sign up for the very first time to support us this week or increase the monthly pledge that they were already giving us. And that includes Eileen Fox, Elias Otelstead, Hanna S. Illy, James D. Ray III, Joshua Bessam, Lukas Trusaski, Matthew Arnold, Steve Allen, and Vilan Wajasekara. So thank you so much for all of these kind individuals. I'm so sorry if I butchered your name. If you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanistreport.org by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So we've got another jam-packed episode for you. This week, we'll talk about Donald Trump's new COVID conspiracy theory and how his campaign is currently in complete shambles. We'll take a look at the grim situation with regard to COVID-19 and examine more anti-mask hysteria taking place in Florida as cases surge. Additionally, we learn more about Joe Biden's stance on net neutrality and it's surprisingly good. Elliott Engel is proving to be a sore loser. Oregon might be the first state to decriminalize all drugs this November and while we're on the topic of Oregon, Donald Trump deployed federal agents to Portland to protect statues. And finally, we close the week by talking to 2020 congressional candidate Jen Proman running in Florida's 23rd congressional district against the infamous Debbie Wasserman Schultz. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Let's waste no time and get right to it. I hope you guys enjoy what we've got for you. So towards the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests, I'm sure that you all remember when Donald Trump invoked the insurrection act when he threatened to use the military to violently crush Black Lives Matter protests. Now that's something that is deeply unconstitutional and it's unprecedented because to subvert what the governors want to say, regardless if you like it or not, I'm gonna send in the military. That is not something that we want to become a normal thing in the United States. It's not a precedent that you want to set. But nobody necessarily knew whether or not he was serious, whether or not he was just bluffing either way. It's still an escalation. It's the president of the United States threatening violence against his own people. Now, regardless if you think that he was explicitly threatening violence or not, it was an implicit threat of violence. You don't bring in the military unless you are actually going to resort to violence. So it was disturbing and it's something that really shows how fascistic and authoritarian he is. But a month or so past and it seemed as if that threat was just, it was hollow. Except he wasn't bluffing. In a way, he followed through on that very threat. He may not have used the military, but Donald Trump has in fact deployed federal agents now to at least two states and the District of Columbia. One of those states happens to be my own state, Portland, Oregon. So as Tess Risky of Willamette Week reports, for days reporters and protesters have observed federal agents at Portland's nightly protests, but it remained unclear who had ordered them to Portland. A July 9th report by the Associated Press asserts that one of the federal agencies, the Department of Homeland Security was deployed to Portland following President Donald Trump's June 26th executive order to protect monuments. Once we surged federal law enforcement officers to Portland, the agitators quickly got the message a DHS senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the AP. The report says Homeland Security officers were deployed to Seattle, Portland and Washington DC following Trump's executive order. Since at least July 2nd, federal agents have been present at Portland protests. Those agencies include DHS, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Protective Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Federal agents have made at least 10 arrests at Portland protests many over the July 4th weekend. During a press conference Wednesday, Portland Police Bureau Deputy Chief Chris Davis said the city has little control over federal agencies' tactics when covering protests and that PPB does not coordinate with federal agents. The Department of Homeland Security typically focuses on foreign terrorist threats and securing the nation's borders, but it has identified property damage in Portland as a national security threat for at least three years. In 2017, Willamette Week obtained a memo DHS sent to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, which confirmed the feds were classifying property damage by left-wing protesters as domestic terrorism. So there's a lot to take in there. Donald Trump is deploying federal agents, one, without the consent of the governor and two, the reason why he's deploying these federal agents is because these protesters are being treated as domestic terrorists, quite literally. Because if you are vandalizing statues, well, that is in some way a threat to U.S. national security. So we're gonna send in federal agents. And can you guess what's been happening? They're doing violence against peaceful protesters. In fact, one federal agent, just the other day, shot a protester in the head with a tear gas canister and he was obviously severely wounded. And it's so bad that I can't even play the video because there's so much blood, but if you wanna see the video, it's on YouTube, it may be removed. You could probably find it elsewhere on Twitter or whatnot, but it's violent, right? So now they are there and they are acting as an occupying force in Portland. Now once the cat was out of the bag, he had some really disgusting comments in response. His justification, I don't know how else to put it, it was deeply fascistic. Test risky continues. During a Monday morning press conference, Trump justified the deployment of federal agents in Portland who have patrolled protests since at least July 2nd and claimed they had successfully tamped down chaos in the city. Quote, we've done a great job in Portland, Trump said. Portland was totally out of control and they went in and I guess we have many people right now in jail. We very much quelled it and if it starts again, we'll quell it again very easily. It's not hard to do if you know what you're doing. Trump's claim that federal officers have mitigated violence at Portland protests falls in the wake of a federal agent for the U.S. Marshal Service shooting a protester at close range in the face with a projectile. The protester suffered serious injuries and underwent facial reconstructive surgery. During his speech, Trump condemned rising gun violence in liberal cities, which he said was a result of defunding police departments. He vowed to quote, take over if such violence continues to rise. So that last sentence there should send chills on the back of your neck. He's gonna take over if violence continues. He's talking about how, oh, we quelled the protests and just flippantly talking about how easy it was to quell these protests using federal agents. This is basically the federal government using an occupying force treating United States citizens as if they're domestic terrorists. Nevermind the fact that Donald Trump doesn't treat gun violence in terms of these types of mass shooting events, he doesn't treat them as domestic terrorists. He doesn't treat right-wing groups like sovereign citizens as domestic terrorists. But if you vandalize the statue, then Donald Trump thinks that you're a domestic terrorist. Now once word got out that Trump had federal goons occupying Portland, while officials spoke out, including Governor Kate Brown, who denounced the presence of federal officers in Portland, calling them an occupying force. Senator Ron Wyden condemned it via Twitter, saying the consequences of Donald Trump unilaterally dispatching federal law enforcement into U.S. cities played out in Portland with a peaceful protester shot in the head. Trump and Homeland Security must now answer why federal officers are acting like an occupying army. Now on top of that, in an interview with CNN, Senator Jeff Merkley also spoke out and denounced this and he referred to them correctly so as an occupying army as well. Senator, something tragic happened over the weekend in Portland. Many people have seen the video on social media of a protester outside of the federal courthouse, their 26-year-old man being shot with something. It's been reported as impact munition, shot in the head, his mother saying that he had a skull fracture and facial fractures as well. You tweeted about this. I know you have a number of questions about what happened. Do you know who fired the round? And what led to this? Well, the video shows a peaceful protester holding up a sign, a tear gas canister, some kind of canister landed his feet, he kicked it or moved it back away from him several feet and then seconds later, he's shot in the head. And it's just a horrific example of what should not happen. We do not know the rules of engagement for these federal forces. We do not know how many there are or what groups they've come from. We don't know if they're properly identified. We don't know if they're coordinating closely with the mayor. It is just a real concern that this feels like an occupying force with no transparency. And this type of assault, shooting a protester in the head who's holding up a sign, absolutely makes the situation so much more tense and worse. So rather than helping, it's inflaming the situation. So we do not trust that these federal forces are trained, have protocols, are working in cooperation, are helping in any way. We don't have answers. Senator, I know that the U.S. Martial Service put out a statement that they are investigating it, so I hope there are some answers for everyone and for his family and him soon. When I found out that it was confirmed that Trump did in fact deploy federal agents to my city, it was honestly, it was shocking, right? It's like we're living in the twilight zone because Donald Trump, as much as he wants to be a fascistic dictator, we do have institutions in this country that have been around forever that do protect us from this. But if our government didn't have these types of long-lasting, strong institutions, these types of checks and balances, what little remain, I mean, I can't imagine what this country would look like. Trump would literally just be a dictator. So the fact that he's doing this and there's not that much outrage, it's honestly shocking. So I mean, he's not unilaterally deploying the military, but whatever federal agencies he can, he is directing them into certain states. Now, how he's choosing these states, I don't necessarily know. You can kind of rationalize Seattle because conservatives were making a really big deal out of Chaz slash chop, that semi-autonomous region or whatever. But I mean, Portland, like many other cities, they've had protests here go on for six weeks. So I don't know how he's selecting which cities he's choosing here, but the fact that he is suggesting that if you vandalize a statue, you're basically a domestic terrorist and you pose a threat to national security, it is insane. And where are all the conservatives, the libertarians who cry about state's rights? I mean, he is literally violating state's rights. Shouldn't Kate Brown, the governor of Oregon, be the one to decide whether or not to call the federal government in because she's had these protests under control. They've largely been peaceful until police officers are the ones that escalate, right? But now we have federal authorities in our own states and cities at the behest of Donald Trump, brutalizing peaceful protesters, shooting a protester, holding up a sign at point blank, unacceptable. So this is an escalation. Donald Trump has declared war on his own people, on the United States citizens. That's what he's doing, right? He cares more about statues than he cares about the safety of these peaceful protesters. He cares more about vandalism than about the 135,000 Americans dead because of COVID-19. It's just, this is a nightmare situation. And I don't know what to say about this. I mean, seeing this, it's just the United States has become unrecognizable and it's not like we haven't always had problems, but we're basically allowing fascism out in the open by accepting this, by not sounding the alarm about what he's doing. And it's really unacceptable. And if we allow this to happen, can you imagine what he's going to do if he gets another four years, if he realizes that he can deploy federal agents to states and nobody really makes a people about it? Like, can you imagine what he's going to do? It's troubling. So he's got to go. And this should scare everyone. I mean, I don't know what else to say about that. This is absolutely disturbing. As many of you know, Donald Trump has been desperately trying to explain away his own incompetence with regard to COVID-19 and he keeps saying the same thing over and over again. You know, it's not necessarily that we're seeing an extension of the first wave that we're seeing, you know, a record amount of new cases every single day. The reason why this is all happening isn't necessarily because we're not getting the virus under control, but because we're doing more testing. So more testing equals more cases. Like he keeps saying this and it's not persuading anyone. Nonetheless, he keeps using this as an excuse, but he is adding one more excuse to his bevy of excuses. For some reason, in some way, he's tying this to Obama and he's blaming Obama for cutting off COVID-19 testing seemingly. I can't really make heads or tails out of this. Nonetheless, we'll listen to what he has to say. President Trump, you've said many times that the number of coronavirus cases is going up because testing is increasing. That's right. Do you acknowledge that it's going up for other reasons too? For example, that it's actually spreading and what are you going to do to stop the spread? Well, you know that we have one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere. If you know Biden and Obama stopped their testing, they just stopped it. You probably know that. I'm sure you don't want to report it, but they stopped testing. Right in the middle, they just won. No more testing. And on a much lesser problem than the problem that we have, obviously, with respect to this is the worst thing that's happened since probably 1917. This is very bad. All over the world, it's 188 countries right now. But no, we test more than anybody by far. And when you test, you create cases. So we've created cases. I don't know what he's talking about. Like usually when Donald Trump says something, you know, he'll base it off of something that happened or a tweet that he's made or something that Fox News said. But I mean, I don't even know what to tie that to. Like you can't connect the dots. You can't make any logical leaps for him. He just isn't making sense. I mean, is he talking about Ebola? Is he talking about literally Obama's handling of COVID-19, which didn't exist when Obama was president? Obama hasn't been president for three years. So why are you invoking Obama? And regardless, I mean, even if you found a way to tie this to Obama, you are the president of the United States. Take responsibility, stop making excuses. But I mean, he can't. He is incapable of acting like a grownup. So he says, you know, we're seeing more cases because we're doing more testing, also Obama. And he has a new excuse. Now he is using a conspiracy theory to justify his own incompetence because as Jamie Ross of the Daily Beast reports, President Trump is pushing a ludicrous theory that doctors are purposefully lying about the novel coronavirus pandemic because they want to harm his chances of reelection later this year. Early Monday, Trump retweeted the conservative conspiracy theorist and former game show host Chuck Woolery as he dismissed medical experts as politically motivated liars. The incendiary tweet read that most outrageous lies are the ones about COVID-19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, media, Democrats, our doctors, not all, but most that we are told to trust. I think it's all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I'm sick of it. Neither Woolery nor Trump explained exactly what aspect of the ranging pandemic doctors are supposedly lying about, nor did they provide any evidence to back up the vague, unproven claim. Last week, the US repeatedly broke its own daily record for new COVID-19 cases and the nation's death toll now totals more than 135,000. On top of that, Trump also retweeted this from the same individual. There is so much evidence, yes, scientific evidence that schools should open this fall. It's worldwide and it's overwhelming, but no. I mean, imagine how narcissistic you have to be to think that a global pandemic is literally just about you. That all everyone, the CDC, doctors, the media, they're all in this conspiracy against you all to make you look bad by tanking the economy, by urging people to shut down the economy. I mean, how narcissistic do you have to be? You are the president. If you don't want to look bad, there are things you can do to try to mitigate COVID-19 spread. But instead, what we're doing is essentially using the strategy that you floated a couple of months ago where we just let it wash over Americans. And now look what's happening. We are seeing 55 to 60,000 new cases every single day. We have a positivity rate that's higher than 5% and in states like Florida, they're hitting record highs with 15,000 new cases in a single day, which is more than most countries. So the reason why some of these other countries are reopening schools is because they got the pandemic under control. But what are you doing? Nothing. First and foremost, let's just pretend like, we have the pandemic portion under control. We're in lockdown once again, and now it's just a matter of waiting this out. What have you done for people, Donald Trump? You signed the CARES Act. That's just one piece of legislation that gave people a one-time payment of $1,200. 32% of Americans missed their July house payment. So what are you going to do for people? Because even if we get this under control, the economic devastation that this caused is not something that you're dealing with at all. You're focusing on statues. You're focusing on flag desecration. You're not focusing on the pandemic or the economic consequences. So even if, let's say, hypothetically, there were some type of big conspiracy to make you look bad with this pandemic. Well, why aren't you trying to actually do a better job at getting it under control or stopping us from going into complete economic ruin? I mean, you chose to not do anything about COVID-19. You're just going forward, pretending as if it's not a thing, pressuring governors to reopen schools as if it's no longer with us. And on top of that, you're making matters worse by withdrawing from the World Health Organization, which isn't perfect. But I mean, at a time where we're suffering through a pandemic and we have the most cases, you know, compared to anyone else in the world, this is what you're doing. I mean, no amount of conspiracy theories that you fabricate or retweet are going to help you here. You are looking terrible right now because of you. You're not trying to stop people from suffering economically and in terms of suffering from the virus. You just don't care. You're completely ambivalent and there's even reports that some of his staffers are just hoping that Americans grow numb to the deaths. So I mean, you can have it one of two ways. You can actually try to make an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 and try to stop the economy from tanking. Or you can continue to do nothing, but you don't get to complain when people rightfully call you out for your incompetence and lack of empathy for people suffering. I mean, it's just, it's honestly, it's insane that he just is throwing his hands up in the air and saying, I'm done with the pandemic. I don't care that it's still here. We're just going to pretend like it's not a thing. And if you don't also buy into my delusion and reopen schools and pretend as if, you know, everything is normal and under control, then I'm going to punish you. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is threatening to withhold funding from schools who don't reopen and obey their commands. I mean, this is absolutely insane what we are dealing with. Everyone else in the world, other countries, they're looking at us in shock. And I don't think we're truly going to be able to grasp how ridiculous this moment is until we're like, decades past this where we look back and think, what the hell was going on in America during this time? What was happening? I mean, the fact that there isn't universal outrage, the fact that there aren't widespread calls for Donald Trump to resign because over a hundred thousand Americans are dead on his watch. It's honestly baffling. What we put up with as Americans is shocking to me. The fact that we allow this to continue, I mean, it really speaks not just to who we elect, but us individually as well or collectively as a society. I mean, to allow this, if we allow it to get this bad and not do anything about it, then it's going to continue to get worse. So I don't know what else to say about this. It's honestly shocking that the president is not only refusing to act to save American lives, but that he is making excuses for himself with conspiracy theories and by blaming his predecessor who hasn't had power for three years. It's shocking, but I mean, I shouldn't be shocked because what is absurd is the new normal in America. It's no secret that Donald Trump is not doing too hot right now when it comes to polling, but I will say that there is still a chance that he could win in November because a lot can change between now and then. And I kind of learned my lesson when in 2016, I thought that there was no way this clown would win. I thought Hillary Clinton's victory was a foregone conclusion. But I was humbled by the result of that election. I didn't think that he'd be able to win, so I'm not going to underestimate my opponent. I'm not going to say that he's definitely going to lose, but when I say he's doing bad, he's really doing bad according to polls. When it comes to real-clear politics polling averages, Joe Biden is up nine points on average. And at the same time in 2016, Hillary Clinton just wasn't up that high. I mean, she was also up. She had a lead, but it wasn't by nine points. And there's even discussion around this idea that Texas might actually be a swing state in 2020 if nothing changes. Now, again, back in 2016, we were having the same conversation. What if Hillary Clinton is able to win in a landslide? What if Utah is even in play? What if Hillary Clinton can win in Arizona? She's up in the polls and that changed. Now, one of the key things that I'm looking at is how Biden will perform in the debates. There's gonna be three debates and if Joe Biden can perform as well as he did in that one-on-one debate against Bernie Sanders, I don't think it's going to be enough that will change in Trump's direction. Although I will say that Donald Trump knows that currently as things stand, if nothing changes, he will lose and he's going to lose handily. So as a result of this news, he's kind of grappling with it and he's clearly flailing. He doesn't necessarily know what to do. He's hyper-focused on statues and vandalism and it's just not something that a lot of people care about. I mean, when 32% of households in July couldn't make their payment for their housing, I mean, you have to focus on something that will impact Americans. If you're not actually handling this pandemic when most Americans want you to do a better job at that, then it's gonna hurt you. And as a result, he really is panicking. He's flustered and his campaign is in complete disarray and people in Trump's administration, they're kind of starting to throw his campaign manager Brad Parscale under a bus and they're placing a blame on him rather than Donald Trump himself. And as CNN reports, with just four months until election day, the Trump campaign is struggling to deploy what was supposed to be a chief feature of the president's reelection effort, the signature Trump rally. Three weeks after the poorly attended Tulsa event, the hangover is still being felt inside the campaign, and it's been a long time since that happened. The president's campaign has been under investigation by eights and advisors tell CNN and safety concerns over bad weather caused the campaign to postpone a rally scheduled for Saturday in New Hampshire, even as skies were expected to be clear by the time Trump took the stage. The president's difficulty turning on his rally machine is indicative of the broader problems the coronavirus poses to him. Not only has the pandemic kept him off the campaign drill, it's ruined much of his case and robbing him of any argument that Americans are better off than they were four years ago. I think there was a growing sense of concern that the campaign isn't functioning as we wanted to, one donor close to the campaign told CNN in the immediate aftermath of Tulsa. Internally, several officials have blamed campaign manager Brad Parscale for the Tulsa debacle, faulting him for not only touting the number of signups, but also for badly overestimating how many people would show up. Officials say Trump's relationship with Parscale hasn't been the same since. He does not like Brad, one advisor said, noting that Trump has taken to frequently cutting Parscale off during meetings and disagreeing with nearly every position he takes at times, ultimately agreeing with the same position when it's later reiterated by another aide in the room. Wow, it's very clear that when Brad offers a position, Trump decides to be against it, the advisor said. Now, this really is telling because it speaks to the panic that Donald Trump is currently experiencing, right? Because he's kind of backed into a corner at this late in the game. If you shake up your campaign that much, if you replace your campaign manager, that's gonna look bad. You're gonna get dogged on in the media and he doesn't want to sound the alarms. So instead, he's kind of just trying to live with Brad Parscale, but at the same time, he hates him and he's very petty in the way that he interacts with him. And you know, his campaign, according to this article, which I believe is in complete disarray, it's in shambles, but in spite of that, Donald Trump is trying to play it cool, but I'm not buying it. So for example, he tweeted this out on June 29th. Sorry to inform the do nothing Democrats, but I'm getting very good internal polling numbers. Just like 2016, the New York Times polls are fake. The Fox News polls are a joke. Do you think they will apologize to me and their subscribers again when I win? Yeah, I'm just not buying that. It's very clearly a head fake. He doesn't want his supporters to feel discouraged. So he's trying to keep up this facade that he's definitely going to win and the polling is fake. And look, he may still very well pull out a victory. That's not inconceivable to me, but currently he's not doing a good job. And the campaign that he's running is honestly embarrassing. And the fact that he's going with Keep America great as his slogan, I mean, you have a pandemic, a great recession happening, possibly great depression going on. And you're saying Keep America great, reelect me. I mean, it's honestly baffling because I thought that even as stupid as he is, his political instincts were better than this, but it's just he's making a fool of himself. Now, part of the thing with these rallies, it's not just political, it's not just a means to him signing up new voters, getting voter data and generating, you know, the sense of excitement. It also was psychologically beneficial to Donald Trump because if he can't do what he loves doing, the only thing he loves about being president, arguably these rallies, then he kind of gets pissy. He gets moody and he starts being petty towards his own campaign manager. And his mood has been down not just since Tulsa, but even way back dating to April, which is when his own advisors, Hope Hicks and Dan Scavino, they literally brought in big trucks to cheer him up. I repeat, they brought in 18 wheelers to put Donald Trump in a good mood and they're having to do things like this as if he's a child because what kept him satisfied before was the rallies. That was the one thing he liked. And it's weird to me like his rallies are strange because he's not really talking about policies. He's just kind of like freestyling it for an hour, two hours, but he loved it. He loved doing it. Nobody can deny that you can see that he clearly enjoys doing that. But without that, if you take that away from him, especially considering the fact that it was a really useful tool for his campaign, I mean, you see how it affects him. He doesn't know how to respond. He has one setting and one setting only. And if you take away his greatest strength, then he can't go to plan B or plan C. He just kind of fumbles, right? He starts talking about statues. Nobody cares about statues. This is not a big issue. Nobody cares about this. People are worried about how they're going to put food on the table. And they're worried about whether or not them and their loved ones will be protected during a very contagious, deadly pandemic. And he's not delivering on these fronts. So look, the one thing that I'm gonna look out for are the debates. Joe Biden, whatever his staffers gave him during that Bernie Sanders debate, if they give that to him again and he at least does a half adequate job, if his performance is mediocre, he'll be fine. Nothing will change, I'm guessing. But at this time, I mean, to see Donald Trump crash and burn already, flame out this soon and not really know how to recover and just kind of be petty towards his own campaign manager. I mean, it speaks to, I think a sign of what's to come. Now, again, I want to add that we should never underestimate our opponents as I alluded to at the beginning of this clip, never underestimate someone who you think is going to lose, don't take a particular moment in time for granted because we saw how fast things changed during the primaries with Bernie Sanders when he was riding high and all of a sudden, it was over. So that's something that could happen plausibly in this election, Trump could still feasibly win. It's gonna be difficult and a lot has to change for that to happen, but it could happen. So what I wanna say is don't get too cocky. It's not a foregone conclusion that he will be defeated, but at this point in time, this snapshot that we're given, it does look likely that he is going to lose because he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. But again, we'll have to wait and see. But the fact that his campaign is in disarray, that is certainly a really bad sign for him. We are continuing to learn more about COVID-19 and as we learn more, we get a better sense of how long this is going to last. And maybe it's a really vague timeline, but we kind of learn how long approximately we'll be dealing with this. And given how Americans just aren't taking this seriously, it seemed previously as if this isn't going to go away just naturally, we're going to need a vaccine to accelerate the end of this pandemic. Although we're learning that a vaccine might not actually be our saving grace after all, unfortunately, because infectious disease experts are suggesting that a vaccine, even if it becomes widely available and is affordable, might not actually offer full immunity. Now, of course, it's too early to know that for sure, but this is a possibility that I think a lot of us hadn't entertained even though we knew that this could very well be the case. A vaccine might not be our saving grace. However, another thing that we were kind of banking on was if a vaccine alone wouldn't stop the spread of the pandemic, then maybe some type of herd immunity, if we see a combination of a vaccine and herd immunity, if enough people get it and become immune, then that would essentially halt the spread of COVID-19. Although that's something that also doesn't seem likely as well, because the immunity enjoyed by recovered patients may not actually last forever. In fact, COVID-19 reinfections are now popping up, which basically diminishes any hope that we had of herd immunity. And as Vox's Declay Ackerly explains, wait, I can catch COVID twice, my 50-year-old patient asked in disbelief. It was the beginning of July and he had just tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 for a second time, three months after a previous infection. While there's still much we don't understand about immunity to this new illness, a small but growing number of cases like his that suggest the answer is yes. COVID-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced the mild cough and sore throat. His second infection in contrast was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital. Recent reports and conversations with physician colleagues suggest my patient is not alone. Two patients in New Jersey, for instance, appear to have contracted COVID-19 a second time, almost two months after fully recovering from their first infection. Daniel Griffin, a physician and researcher at Columbia University in New York, recently described a case of presumed reinfection on the This Week in Virology podcast. It is possible but unlikely that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months. Some COVID-19 patients now dubbed long haulers do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms. My patient, however, cleared his infection. He had two negative PCR tests after his first infection and felt healthy for nearly six weeks. Also troubling is that my patient's case and others like his, made him the hope for natural herd immunity. Herd immunity depends on the theory that our immune systems once exposed to a pathogen will collectively protect us as a community from reinfection and further spread. There are several pathways out of this pandemic, including safe, effective and available therapeutics and vaccines, as well as herd immunity or some combination thereof. Experts generally consider natural herd immunity a worst case scenario backup plan. It requires mass infection, and in the case of COVID-19, massive loss of life because of the disease's fatality rate before protection takes hold. Herd immunity was promoted by experts in Sweden and early on in the pandemic in the UK with devastating results. Now there is a caveat to this story with this particular patient that this doctor writes about. They did not receive an antibody test. So maybe it's the case that this person just didn't create a strong enough antibody response, thus allowing for the relapse or the reinfection, I should say. But this is really, really just, it's like a gut punch to hear this, right? Because everything that we looked at to be, you know, our hope, it seems like it's falling apart, right? If a vaccine wasn't gonna do it, then I guess maybe herd immunity, but that's not gonna do it. So the implication is that we have to be really realistic about what we're dealing with and how long it's going to last, especially considering that Americans aren't gonna take this seriously. And if Americans don't take it seriously, then the rest of the world will also suffer because of our irresponsibleness. But we're gonna deal with this for quite some time. And the World Health Organization just issued a really stark warning about just that. As Andrea Germanos of Common Dreams reports, the head of the World Health Organization warned Monday that a return to the old normal was not in the foreseeable future and urged global leaders to act cooperatively to control the coronavirus pandemic. Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction. Who director general, Dr. Tadros Adhanom Gebresias, I probably butcher that name, said in a media briefing, Tadros remarks came as the total number of total coronavirus cases continued taking upward, nearing 13 million globally. More than 570,000 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded worldwide, over 134,000 of which were in the United States. The United States, which has the highest number of cases in the world, recorded over 3.2 million cases as of Monday, an increase of over 60,000 Sunday. Infections continue to rise in dozens of US states, including Florida, which on Sunday, broke the national record for the largest single day increase in coronavirus cases with over 15,000. The WHO chief didn't single out the US in his comments, but noted the epicenter of the virus remains in the Americas, where more than 50% of the world's cases have been recorded. The trajectory of the pandemic, if governments fail to roll out a comprehensive strategy focused on suppressing transmission and saving lives, and individuals don't take public health measures like wearing masks is clear, said Tadros. If the basics aren't followed, there is only one way this pandemic is going to go, Tadros said. It's going to get worse and worse and worse. I wanna be straight with you, he continued. There will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future, but he stressed, it is never too late to take decisive action. And in response to his warning there, we're not going to take decisive action. Donald Trump's administration has washed their hands of this issue. In fact, Trump is formally withdrawing us from the World Health Organization on top of that. He's tweeting conspiracy theories about how the media, the CDC experts are lying about COVID-19 all to hurt him and the economy. Because if you hurt the economy by advocating for prolonged shutdowns, then you then hurt Donald Trump in turn. Except this isn't about Donald Trump, this is happening in the world. And we've just decided we're not gonna take it serious. So it's going to be here for a really long time and it's not just gonna be here for a long time, it's gonna get worse and worse and worse. This is catastrophic. I don't know what else to say. I mean, right when we flatten the curve and it kind of looks like we're taking this seriously, we see cases skyrocket and as they're skyrocketing, we're taking it less seriously now than we were back in March. I mean, this is just, it's tiring. It's really tiring. And about a month or so ago, I did a segment where I talked about how, you know, experts are saying social distancing may be necessary all the way until 2022, except that was kind of like a worst case scenario. Now it's not looking like that's gonna be a worst case scenario. It seems like it's gonna be the likely case scenario or that the worst case scenario will be what actually comes to fruition because we're just not taking it seriously. And look, it's not just the United States who's handling it like absolute idiots. It's other countries as well, but nobody is doing as poorly as the United States where the government has just completely ignored it and is not even trying to help save, you know, the economy, not even providing any relief to Americans with the exception of a one-time $1,200 payment. I just, I don't know what to say. This is going to destabilize the world. It's going to hurt the economy long-term and cause a great depression. And people are going to die because of this. And it's just, it's deeply depressing. By the time we hit November, we're gonna be at around 200,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States alone, according to some experts based on projections. And that is so heartbreaking to consider. 200,000 people in America alone died, but not to mention all the people around the world, hundreds of thousands of people who are dying because humanity just can't get its act together. It can't get its act together to stop a pandemic. It doesn't seem to want to get its act together to stop climate catastrophe. I mean, it just seems like our species hasn't advanced enough to stop these types of wicked problems. We're just pretending like they're not a thing and whatever consequences come to fruition as a result of these catastrophes, we're just letting it happen. So it's sad, but this is the harsh reality. We can't promise ourselves that it's gonna get better once a vaccine becomes available because that's wishful thinking. Maybe it will happen. But I mean, the doctor and that physician from the Vox article said that it's really not actually a good thing to promote this idea that herd immunity or a vaccine is going to stop this pandemic because then that will encourage people to engage in risky activity. They may think, well, if they're immune from COVID-19 after they get it, maybe they should just go contract it and get it over with and then they could resume life as normal or just not worry about it because the vaccine is coming out. No, that's wishful thinking. We have to be proactive. And the fact that we're not actually aggressively taking on this pandemic, it shows that this is going to be the new normal for quite some time for the world. And that's really deeply depressing. But that's the fact of reality. I can't sugarcoat it. So lately on this channel, unfortunately we have been covering the anti-mask hysteria which is a little soul-crushing, to be honest, because it seems like this is a phenomenon that is unique to the United States. I mean, I'm sure that there are other instances in other countries where every once in a while they'll occasionally be someone who throws a fit about wearing a mask. But I mean, we're not seeing many viral videos come out of France or the UK of people refusing to wear masks. It's something that is happening almost exclusively in the United States, right? But this mask story, it really is just the tip of the iceberg because collectively as a society, we've just chosen to not take this seriously. And that includes elected officials like Ted Cruz, who was spotted in an airport and subsequently on an airplane, not wearing a mask, which is horrible, not just because he's endangering everyone who's around him. But I mean, think of the message that this sends to his supporters. They are mostly evangelical, likely conspiracy theorist people who support him and they take what he says seriously. So if they see him not wearing a mask, they're gonna do the same exact thing. But I mean, on top of that, there's a story in Florida of an immuno-compromised 17-year-old teenager who died from COVID-19 because her mother was irresponsible enough and knee-deep in QAnon conspiracy theories to take her to a COVID party at their church where there were more than 100 people not wearing masks and then surprise, surprise, she ended up contracting COVID-19 and she died. The mother tried to treat her with hydroxychloroquine, which is the drug that Donald Trump was promoting and that just made matters worse. And the story is tragic. Like, I don't blame the 17-year-old, you blame the mom for doing this. Now, this young lady was a survivor of cancer. So she was vulnerable, she was immuno-compromised and this is what happens. This is what the mother did. I mean, this is what's happening in the United States. People aren't taking it seriously and they're celebrating the fact that they're not taking it seriously by going to COVID parties and whatnot. And on top of that, while we're on the subject of Florida, on Sunday, they passed 15,000 new cases in one day with a positivity rate almost 20%. And rather than actually taking precautions and trying to get this under control, Devan and Ron DeSantis is taking cues from Donald Trump and he is pressuring schools to open. As they surpass 15,000 cases in a single day, that's more than countries, right? Most countries don't have cases this high. This is a record for any state in the country. And he's saying, I'm not gonna worry about that, but we're gonna open them schools though in fall. I mean, it's shocking, but it's not just elected leaders and individuals who aren't taking this serious. It's the business world because when there's money to be made, they don't care about human lives, profit over people because Disney World is also reopening. Now, obviously this is a bad idea because this will lead to people dying, but hey, at least they're outside and at least they're gonna be requiring people to wear masks but in places like Windermere, Florida, it gets even dumber, believe it or not. Windermere, Florida is a current COVID-19 hotspot and there's a restaurant, a grilled cheese bar, who is not just choosing to remain open. I get that because you need money, you need economic relief when she should be shutting down but nonetheless, she's choosing to remain open but not just that. She's not mandating any customers wear masks. This is an indoor restaurant and she's saying, hey, you can come into my business and not wear a mask. Expose me, expose all the customers, that's perfectly fine but the story, believe it or not, gets even dumber because anti-mask activists in Windermere, Florida heard about this restaurant owner choosing to disobey CDC guidelines and they chose to encourage people to go there and not wear masks. They literally said for the first 100 patrons that walk in the door, not wearing a mask of this particular restaurant, they're gonna buy their meal. They are literally encouraging people to not wear masks. This is unbelievable and the video from this protest or event, whatever you wanna call it, really shows how insane these people are. What we wanna see right now are these police officers just stand down. We want them to stand down right now. Stand down, stand down, stand down, stand down, stand down. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong. Don't shut her down. Three lately. Are you taking this woman's alcohol license from her today? It's wrong, it's wrong, what you're doing? It's wrong. This is America. This is America. This is America. This is the United States. We are not communists. This is not communist China. You do not believe it. Wow, and you know what I wanna second that? Up here, this crappy neighbor and what about my right, if somebody's there. Stay in your house. You have a right to stay in your house. Don't shut it off me. Shut it off me. You have anger up against me. We're up against. This is a person in her... Single woman, yes. This is a single woman who is running this grilled cheese business. This is her dream and all she is doing is standing up for the rights of people to make their own medical decisions. Okay, and you know what? You wanna call me selfish for not wearing a mask? I wanna say to you, all the people calling me selfish, you're the one who's trying to force me a medical procedure so you can feel more safe. The risks are very, very low. This is a virus that has a 99.6% recovery rate. This is a virus that is very well contained. This is a virus that the CDC is removing epidemic status from. How I view it is everyone's healthcare decisions are their own and everyone is responsible for their own healthcare decisions. As Chris said, if you are afraid, if you are at higher risk, feel free to stay home, feel free to wear a mask, feel free to social distance. That is your choice and we respect it. We want our choices respected as well. I have no problem. If anybody wants to wear a mask, feels comfortable wearing a mask, we fully support that. Do it. If it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel safe and healthy, then you do it. But for the rest of us, we shouldn't be required to. We do enough for our health to support our immune system. There are studies that show, oh, thank you, sweetie. There are studies that show the detriment on the other side of things to wearing the mask as well. So I think the bottom line is that the government is there to protect their rights. They're not there to tell us how to live our life and how to be healthy, basically. Let's say a prayer for Kerry right now. Father God, I pray for Kerry right now. Yeah, I mean, the video speaks for itself. These people are absolutely shameless and they are proud to be stupid. I mean, that's what it is. I mean, T.J. Kirk, the amazing atheist, made a phenomenal point in a video where he says that basically if Americans today existed during the Black Plague, they would be licking rats all under the guise of like disobeying government and standing up to tyranny, something like that. Because this is what we're seeing. Like this is literally what they're basing their whole argument on. This is about freedom. This is about liberty. And they said to a lady who is yelling at them from her window, you have a right to stay in your house. How merciful. So stay in your house while we go spread COVID-19 to everyone. And what they say here is honestly, it speaks to how stupid they are. They say that the restaurant owner, according to the two ringleaders, this individual and this lady, that the restaurant owner was standing up for the rights of people to make their own medical decisions, except that's not the way that this works during a contagious pandemic. You're not standing up for the rights of people to make their own medical decisions. You are unilaterally choosing to make medical decisions for everyone else by not wearing a mask because you're endangering them. If a patient was terminally ill and shows to stop treatment of something, that would be an individual making their own medical decisions. If somebody wanted to have an abortion, I know they probably wouldn't wanna hear that, that would be an individual making their own medical decision. But choosing to not wear a mask, that's not something that just affects one person. You affect everyone around you. If you choose to go in public because by not wearing a mask, you're spreading your germs to everyone else. This isn't about liberty. This is a pandemic and you're stupid. And when I call these people stupid, I'm not just being an asshole. It's science, literally, because as raw story reports, lower cognitive ability linked to non-compliance with social distancing guidelines. And as Psypost reports, new research provides evidence that working memory and fluid intelligence are associated with engaging in social distancing in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The new study has been published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to be a global pandemic. Governments around the world urged people to follow preventative health measures such as frequent hand washing and physical distancing, but not everyone abided by the safety guidelines. In two studies, the researchers surveyed 850 US residents between March 13th and March 25th, 2020, the first two weeks following the US presidential declaration of a national emergency about the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to collecting demographic information and assessing social distancing compliance, the surveys included assessments of working memory, personality, mood and fluid intelligence. Zhang, the author of the study and his colleagues found that those with better working memory capacity were more likely to indicate that they had followed social distancing guidelines such as not shaking hands and avoiding social gatherings. Our findings reveal a novel cognitive route of social distancing compliance during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhang said. The researchers also found that higher levels of fluid intelligence and agreeableness were associated with greater social distancing compliance, but the link between working memory and social distancing held even after controlling for these factors and others. So again, when I tell you that these people are stupid, I'm not just being an asshole. It's science, they're literally stupid. They're stupid because I mean, it doesn't take science, it doesn't take a study, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if during a global pandemic, you are running around, not just not wearing a vest, but encouraging people to not wear masks, you are fucking stupid. There's no other way to put it. You're a dipshit. If you choose to do this, you are fucking stupid. I don't know what else to say about that. And I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I try to take into account factors that might make them think this way, but I'm sorry, there's no time, there's no room for that during a pandemic. Cases in Florida are at a record high and you're doing this, you're encouraging people to not wear masks and you're gonna buy them their meals if they don't wear masks. I mean, I don't know what to say about this. Things that happen in America as of late are so shocking that I think that like a hundred years from now, if we're able to survive, humanity will look back at this moment and think this had to be like a joke. It had to be satire and what is happening now is indistinguishable from what we saw in the movie Idiocracy, right? That wasn't supposed to be nonfiction. It was supposed to be satirical, but I mean, we've reached that level of stupidity in the United States where it's not just that we're choosing to not wear masks, but we're encouraging other people to not wear masks. And in some instances, we're shaming people who choose to wear masks. So it's deeply, deeply depressing to see this, but this is done in Kruger, right? They are super confident and proud of the fact that they are prolonging this virus and they're not gonna take it seriously until they get it themselves or know someone who's affected by it. But I mean, at the same time, we can't wait for you all to personally experience COVID-19. We need you to realize that this is a pandemic that has very specific measures that mitigate its spread. And if you don't do that, then we're gonna be dealing with this. We're gonna be dealing with the mask mandate, which you all hate and prolonged closures. So I mean, it is what it is. This isn't surprising, but I mean, what people are choosing to make a political issue, what people are choosing this hill to die on about masks and basing it off of some vague notion of liberty and freedom. It's so embarrassing. Everyone in the world is laughing at us and they should be. Look, I understand this instinct of people to gravitate towards Joe Biden because Donald Trump is so terrible. And it seems like lately Donald Trump has been more horrible than usual. So I mean, orange man bad, I get it. I get it, right? Having said that, we can't lie to ourselves. I think we have to be realistic and temper our expectations. This man is not going to be the next FDR. Joe Biden is not going to govern as a progressive because we have an extensive history to look at to see how he's governed. And I'd be surprised if he was even as progressive as Obama and Obama was no progressive. So, you know, the positive aspects of a Joe Biden administration are limited to, one, he's not Donald Trump. Two, he will replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg most likely. And three, he'll handle COVID-19 like an adult. And that's fine, but don't expect, you know, more than we should. I think we have to be realistic. Now, part of being realistic about Joe Biden goes both ways. I also want to give him credit words to do because he recently commented on net neutrality. And his plan for net neutrality is surprisingly good. And whenever I hear about a policy position from Joe Biden that is, you know, outside the realm of what I stated as his positives, I'm always skeptical because this individual isn't necessarily known for being truthful, right? But in this area, he can't actually really make a difference by just doing one simple thing, appointing an FCC chair that is not a G-PI. Now, in the realm of net neutrality, what Joe Biden is promising is to actually go further than Barack Obama. And even if he personally chooses to abandon this issue, who he chooses as FCC chair can make all the difference. And what he's saying is that he doesn't just want to restore net neutrality, but he actually actively wants to encourage public municipal broadband, which would solve this issue permanently. And this would be a game changer. This would be a game changer. So I would add this to the positives of Joe Biden and I'll explain a little bit more. But as John Egerton of multi-channel news reports, Joe Biden has signaled that if he becomes president, his FCC will restore the net neutrality rules and FCC oversight authority, the Republican FCC jettisoned in the restoring internet freedom order, as well as working to undo state laws, blocking municipal broadband and invest even more in those projects. The FCC is an independent agency, but Biden would get to choose the chairman and have the majority. So it is likely the pendulum would indeed swing back toward the net neutrality rules pushed by President Barack Obama, Biden's former boss. Biden also signaled he would not only fight state efforts that block municipalities and rule co-ops from building publicly owned broadband networks, but invested federal funds in muni broadband and for the Lifeline Universal Service Fund subsidy that goes to low income residents so children and families can fully participate in school, work and life from their homes. As millions of Americans have stayed at home to prevent the spread of the pandemic, it is plain to see that in the 21st century, the internet is not optional. It is a vital tool for participating in the economy and all Americans need access to high-speed affordable broadband service, the campaign said. Now let's hold for a second because the signal that we're getting about the way that his administration would go comes from a recommendation by the unity task force. Now you all know I was shitting on the unity task force because this is just a recommendation that is printed off and handed to Joe Biden. So he can unilaterally choose to shoot it down. And considering the fact that he literally kicked off his campaign at the home of a Comcast executive, I'm not gonna blame people for being skeptical of Joe Biden here and his intentions with regard to net neutrality. But yet in spite of that, I'm still optimistic because I followed this issue for a very long time. And what the president does with regard to net neutrality, it doesn't necessarily matter as much as a lot of people would think. So Donald Trump, he does not know what net neutrality is. Going into the presidency, he made one comment about net neutrality on Twitter and he said something about, oh, this is just the fairness doctrine. So he said he's against it, but that clearly shows that he doesn't know what net neutrality is. So I mean, the FCC chair has a relatively large degree of autonomy. And Trump, his administration dismantled net neutrality without him actually knowing what net neutrality is. So let's assume that Joe Biden doesn't actually accept this recommendation. And even in saying this, he's lying. Well, that doesn't necessarily matter so long as he appoints an FCC chair who is pro net neutrality. Now there is an incentive for Joe Biden to want to appoint someone who is pro net neutrality to the chair of the FCC to replace Ajit Pai because his entire legacy was undone by Ajit Pai. So he has an interest in securing his legacy. And on top of that, look at Jessica Rosenwurzel as one of the options here. So she's currently an FCC commissioner and all Joe Biden has to do is name her as Ajit Pai's replacement, which is something that isn't out of the realm of possibility. Certainly someone who he'd consider. And she would actually do wonders. Now I will say this, that Jessica Rosenwurzel who's a current FCC commissioner, she wasn't always the biggest ally to net neutrality because let me remind you back in the Obama years, he appointed a Comcast lobbyist to be the FCC chair, Tom Wheeler. And he appointed Tom Wheeler after Tom Wheeler donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to him or fund raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Barack Obama. So that appointment was the result of corruption. And one of the first things that Tom Wheeler tried to do was dismantle net neutrality by introducing fast lanes, which was a way of allowing internet service providers to carve out these types of packages, not necessarily explicitly in the way that, you know, Ajit Pai's rules would have allowed, but just by saying, hey, if you pay us more, we'll give you faster internet for this website when that's not okay, that undermines net neutrality. But what happened was Tom Wheeler ended up becoming one of the biggest allies to the net neutrality movement ever. And he gave activists everything that they wanted because he succumbed to public pressure. They were protesting in front of his house. And the campaign that net neutrality activists mounted against him was highly successful so much so that not only did he declare the internet a public utility, but he went even further than that and started to regulate zero rating, which basically allow cell phone carriers like Verizon to undermine net neutrality in a roundabout way using zero rating because they can say, hey, us at Verizon here, we have this brand new streaming service, and if you use our streaming service, this isn't going to count towards your data, but if you use Netflix, that will count towards your data. So I mean, this is anti-consumer, it's anti-competitive. It allows these types of, you know, cell phone providers and internet service providers to basically rig the rules in their favor and give themselves the advantage that other competitors don't have. So Tom Wheeler started to, you know, hone his craft a little bit, really zero in on these types of practices. And Jessica Rosenwurzel was a part of the Obama administration. She was part of that Tom Wheeler era where they were aggressively trying to make the internet more free and open. So even if back in 2015, she kind of downplayed the importance of municipal broadband saying, oh, well, you know, this is something that I don't want to, you know, get people's hopes of about, but it seems kind of unlikely because it's difficult to do the infrastructure and whatnot and building it would be a hassle. Now things have changed. She wasn't an ally, but now she is. And if Joe Biden only did one thing with regard to net neutrality and made Jessica Rosenwurzel the FCC chair and replaced Ajit Pai, he could fulfill all of the promises that he's saying now and then some because he's not actually the one that's doing it. It's Jessica Rosenwurzel who we do actually trust to do what he's saying he wants to do. And it would be great if Biden secured funds to encourage municipal broadband, but I'm not necessarily optimistic about that. I think that he has a lot of lobbyists in his ear that will kill that initiative. But even if Biden doesn't follow through with that promise, Jessica Rosenwurzel can choose to unilaterally promote municipal broadband. She doesn't need Joe Biden's permission. She can act autonomously independent of what Joe Biden wants. She can unilaterally take the FCC in any direction she wants. Now, if Trump has reelected, Ajit Pai will remain the FCC chair most likely unless he chooses to resign. And whoever is elevated, it's gonna be who Trump chooses. It may be, you know, Michael Riley who's another anti-net neutrality goon. And maybe Brendan Carr was also another shill for the industry. Jessica Rosenwurzel, assuming Biden is actually elected, she would likely be the next FCC chair and it would be a game changer. Even if Biden doesn't choose to do anything about net neutrality, if he says nothing else about net neutrality for the rest of his administration, if he's elected, Jessica Rosenwurzel can act independently. I mean, Tom Wheeler, he, even though Obama's stance, their administration's official stance was pro-net neutrality, he was trying to tear down net neutrality. And he was doing this without Obama's explicit consent. And it wasn't until, you know, activists started putting pressure on him and Obama kind of signaled support for net neutrality, tepidly that Tom Wheeler switched gears. So it doesn't really matter what Joe Biden wants to do. Jessica Rosenwurzel would be steering the ship here. So in conclusion, like all of this considered, Joe Biden would be, I think, a really positive force for net neutrality, even if he chooses to abandon his promise. Now, you know, with that being said, there is the possibility that Joe Biden, you know, once he's in, let's say he elevates Jessica Rosenwurzel and makes her FCC chairwoman. And then, you know, a bunch of Comcast lobbyists who are already in his ear, get in his head and say, hey, you don't want to undo these net neutrality repeals. I mean, come on. You know, that's a possibility. And he could try to, like, control what Jessica Rosenwurzel does or whoever else he appoints. But at the same time, is that something that I think he would focus a lot of effort on? Not necessarily, because as we've seen from Obama and Trump, they don't really focus on this issue a lot. I mean, the FCC chairperson has been the driver of net neutrality regulatory standards. This is true for Tom Wheeler, and it was true for Ajit Pai. He chose to single-handedly repeal net neutrality. So I just don't think that the president is going to be really focused on this. So I mean, I give credit where it's due. At least he's saying the right thing now. And even if he doesn't do the right thing and follow through on this promise, it's still a good sign for net neutrality. It's still really important to have him in power if we want to secure net neutrality. So, hey, I'll hand it to him here. This is the exact right thing. And for him to suggest that he would promote local co-ops, I mean, I'll believe that when I see it, but just the fact that he appoints someone who would be more open-minded to it than Ajit Pai, that's a good thing. That's a step in the right direction. So, hey, I've been critical of Joe Biden. I think he's a disgusting human being for not supporting Medicare for all. But you get credit for this at least. This is a very positive thing. So a couple of weeks ago, you all know that the Democratic Party establishment was embarrassed when their favorite candidate, Elliot Engle, lost in a landslide to Jamal Bowman in New York's 16 congressional district. I mean, he was endorsed by Andrew Cuomo, the congressional black caucus, I believe Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton. They even brought out her destiny ass to endorse him. And he's still lost. And we haven't got the official results yet. Like we don't know for sure that he won, but he won. They're still counting absentee ballots. However, Elliot Engle is clinging to whatever hope he can find. And he is hoping that if he sues New York to invalidate some of these absentee ballots, maybe he could clench victory, maybe just maybe. So this is pathetic. He should just concede and congratulate Jamal Bowman, but he's not stopping. And as Akilah Lacy of the Intercept reports, more than two weeks since New York's Democratic primaries, Jamal Bowman maintains a double-digit lead over Democratic representative Elliot Engle, who has filed a presumptive lawsuit preserving his campaign's right to challenge the validity of absentee ballots. With all 50,575 in-person ballots counted, Bowman, a former middle school principal backed by Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America, leads Engle by more than 12,600 votes. Absentee ballots, meanwhile, are still being counted with delays caused by the historic number of absentee ballots cast because of the coronavirus pandemic, around 765,000 distributed in New York City alone. The Board of Elections has said it is not sure how long it will take to finish counting absentee ballots, though the Bowman and Engle campaign say they've been told that it will take until early August. In New York's 16th Congressional District, there are more than 12,000 outstanding ballots in the Bronx and 27,382 in Westchester, according to election officials. Among in-person voters, Bowman got around 15,000 votes in each county, while Engle received 9,607 votes in Westchester and 8,405 in the Bronx. Westchester County officials expect they will begin counting absentee ballots for the Congressional race by Monday. The Bronx County Board of Elections did not respond to a request for comment, but Bowman is leading absentee ballots there according to his campaign. Jerry Goldfeder, a longtime election law expert in New York City, is representing Engle's campaign in the lawsuit, which was filed on July 1st. Engle's campaign is seeking the ability to oversee the absentee ballot counting process and the right to contest those ballots. Bowman's campaign has said the lawsuit would unnecessarily prolong the campaign and could disenfranchise voters. Given Bowman's 25-point lead, a substantial portion of the 40,000 absentee ballots would have to be invalidated for the race to tip in Engle's favor, a highly unlikely scenario. It is not unusual for campaigns to file such lawsuits in close races, but it's less common when the gap is so large. We recognize that Mr. Bowman's lead is substantial, but when the outstanding ballots are well more than three times that margin, it is also clear that primary voters deserve a clear and accurate count, with ballots in question examined fairly by each campaign. However long that requires, Engle spokesperson Tom Watson said in a statement, fun fact, Tom Watson actually has me blocked on Twitter, but moving on, look, this isn't going to change the result. What we're seeing here is desperation in the same way that Joe Crowley made a desperate attempt to still win after he lost the primary in 2018, this is what we're seeing from Elliot Engle. If you'll recall, Joe Crowley was also on the Working Families Party ballot line, so he'd still be on the ballot after he lost the Democratic primary, but just running as a third party candidate, and AOC called this out, right? He's basically trying to take votes away from her and pave the way for the Republican to win. This is the same argument that, you know, or that Democrats use against progressives when it comes to the need to defeat Republicans, but yet an establishment Democrat was doing it to a lefty. So that was desperation. What we're seeing now is just more desperation. He's not gonna win, but, you know, if he were able to disenfranchise voters and invalidate a sizable portion of absentee ballots that maybe, maybe took the skills in his favor, it's a possibility, which is exactly why he's doing it. This isn't something that is necessarily unusual, but it's something that you would only expect if the gap was closer, as the article points out, but Jamal Bowman beat him in a landslide. So the fact that he thinks that even if he's lucky enough to invalidate every single absentee ballot that he would still win is kind of delusional, but I mean, he's desperate. Now, if the shoe were on the other foot and Jamal Bowman was the one who lost and was trying to invalidate absentee ballots, the response would be predictable from the Democratic Party establishment. They would be saying, why aren't you rallying behind Elliot Angle? Why aren't you endorsing and supporting Elliot Angle and telling all of your supporters to support Elliot Angle? I mean, do you want the Republican to win? Why aren't you supporting the Democrat? Why aren't you voting blue, no matter who? But you see how they operate when the shoe was on the other foot. They refuse to concede. They try to, you know, find some type of sneaky way to stay on the ballot in hopes of maybe still winning possibly, even though that's unlikely, whatever they can do to cling to that little strand of hope that they can find, that's what they're going to do. And it's pathetic, but nonetheless, this is what we've come to expect from the Democratic Party establishment. So each time we oust one of their leaders like this, it really is huge. And even after we oust a member of the Democratic Party establishment, I mean, the tricks don't stop, right? They still try to find some sneaky way to undermine the will of voters. I mean, we see this in elections where, you know, they will purge voters from the registration list. This happened in New York, I believe, Brooklyn in 2016. They'll have closed primaries. They'll try to find ways to strip away access to NGP van of their primary opponents. Or in the case of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in Florida's 23rd Congressional District, she literally bought the web domains of her primary opponent, Jen Perlman. So she can't have her own like website with her name. It's, they do all of these dirty tricks and the tricks don't end. The dirty tactics don't end once they lose. They fight to the very end until there's no fight left. And it's not gonna pan out in favor of Elliott Engel. I'd be surprised if it did, but I still wanna highlight it because damn, this is really pathetic and embarrassing and he should be ashamed of himself. Why aren't you supporting the Democratic nominee, Elliott Engel? Why aren't you endorsing and telling your supporters to rally behind him, Elliott Engel? It's funny how unity only goes one way for the Democratic Party establishment. So obviously the war on drugs in the United States has been a colossal failure. It's led to mass incarceration. And I mean, this is something that is functionally the new Jim Crow in America. Communities of color, black Americans have been disproportionately targeted in the war on drugs and it hasn't actually stopped drug use. It hasn't led to a reduction in drug related crimes. So what we need to do is decriminalize all drugs and rather than treating drug use as a criminal issue, we treat it as a health issue. And instead of locking people up, we offer them treatment. And guess what? Oregon is going to vote on just that issue. So we're making some progress at the state level. At the federal level, we're not making much progress when it comes to ending the war on drugs, but states have made a lot of progress. I mean, back in 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to legalize cannabis. And then two years later, Oregon was one of the states to follow suit. And now in 2020, in November, Oregonians are going to be voting to decriminalize all drugs. And this could be a game changer. So as Leafley's Max Savage Levinson explains, in the upcoming November election, Oregonians will vote on a measure that would decriminalize all drugs. On July 1st, Oregon's Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, IP44, officially qualified for the November ballot. The Oregon Secretary of State's office verified 116,000 signatures in favor of the initiative, just over the minimum of 112,020. The initiative would decriminalize the use of all drugs and provide holistic, wide-reaching services to drug users. IP44 is the first measure of its kind to reach a statewide ballot in the United States. The proposed program would be funded almost exclusively through the 100 million in annual cannabis tax revenue. Nothing like this has ever been done before, said Matt Sutton, Media Relations Director at Drug Policy Action, which helped write and advocate for the initiative. Drug Policy Action is the advocacy and political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance. There's been a lot of movement in terms of criminal justice reform, and people are starting to realize that criminalizing drugs isn't doing anything. It's just harming them more. So this is a game changer. If this passes, I mean, I can't explain how big this could be. Like the implications aren't limited to Oregon, because we oftentimes see this domino effect. This is why so many states have voted to legalize cannabis. If one state does it and it's successful, odds are other states are going to want to emulate that state's success. So what they're going to do in a nutshell is rather than treating drug users like criminals, they're going to treat it as a health issue, and they're going to focus on funding treatment. And also there's going to be an emphasis on housing. So now if you're caught with heroin, for example, you're not gonna go to jail. Maximum you'll face is a $100 fine. That's it, no jail time, $100 max. Because this is no longer a criminal issue if this passes, it's a health issue. This could be huge. Now, if this passes in the United States, I give it a couple of years. I think we would see just how effective it will be. I don't think you'll see the results of it automatically. But if you look to a country like Portugal, in 2001 they actually did decriminalize drugs and the results, I mean, they've just been stunning. And we've had almost two decades to see how effective this policy has been. I mean, they've substantially decreased overdoses, they've decreased HIV infection rates, and even crime related to drugs has substantially dropped. So we want this to pass in Oregon. Even if you don't live in Oregon, you should be rooting for this to pass. Because if it passes here, it may pass in your state in a couple of years. Unless you live in like Mississippi, then I'm sorry, there's no hope for you. I'm so sorry. So I'm gonna link you to the IP44 website. If you want this to pass, you've got to fight for it, you've got to advocate for it, and you have to educate people. Using the success of Portugal to explain to people that this really is the correct approach. Criminalizing drugs hasn't done what they said it would do. It hasn't led to a reduction in crime. It hasn't made the streets any safer. The opposite has happened, right? Refueling private prisons and mass incarceration and it's got to stop. So this is something to fight for. Even if you've kind of checked out of this election because Bernie Sanders lost, this is definitely something to fight for even if you don't live in Oregon. And I say that selfishly as someone who does live in Oregon who wants this to go through. But I don't want to just stop there when it comes to drug reform. Oregon, aside from this, is also on the cusp of legalizing psychedelic mushrooms. Now, we're not talking about legalizing it in the way that they legalized weed here in 2014. We're talking about them basically making it legal for medical professionals to prescribe to patients with depression and whatnot. So as Lizzie Acre of Oregon Live reports, IP34 would legalize the use of psychedelic mushrooms in controlled doses and administered by professionals in the state. Oregon would be the first state to legalize the substance which is currently a schedule one drug. Cities like Oakland and Denver have already decriminalized psilocybin. If the measure passes, it won't mean psilocybin will be widely available in the same way cannabis is. Instead, it will empower the Oregon Health Authority to set up all licensing training, certification, and ongoing education requirements for psilocybin service centers and facilitators during a mandated two-year development process according to the release. Only license holders will be able to provide psilocybin therapy, cultivate psilocybin, or own a psilocybin service center under the measure. And the measure would not allow people to take or roast psychedelic mushrooms in their homes or leave a treatment facility while still under the influence of psilocybin. The use of the substance will be highly structured with therapy recipients going through a pre-screening, a supervised therapy session, and a post-use evaluation. So they're approaching the legalization of psychedelics in a really cautious way. It reminds me of the way that they approached medical cannabis, but I mean, this is still good. It's a step in the right direction. If they open the door to it in this way, get their feet a little bit wet, maybe in a couple of years, we vote to legalize it in the same way that we legalized cannabis. This is a really, really good sign. And we don't necessarily know if these are going to pass. I haven't seen polls yet. They probably won't do much polling until closer towards the time the election takes place because we don't even necessarily know at the time I record this that the legalization of psychedelics will make it on the ballot. I think that they met their required signature threshold, but now it's in the validation process. They have to make sure that all of the signatures are valid. So that's gonna take some time. We'll probably find out relatively soon, but I mean, in the event both of these measures passes, Oregon's drug policy will be substantially different. They will be a leader in the United States and possibly around the world. Like we are emulating Portugal who has been wildly successful when it comes to their drug policy. So I mean, if you wanna end the drug war since the federal government isn't taking it seriously, state governments are the way to go. And for Oregon to vote on this, just the fact that they're voting on this alone is a success in a way, right? I mean, we want the policy and executed, but just the fact that we're to this point where we're voting to decriminalize all drugs in a state, that is a victory. But if we pass it, that's a game changer. Like that's a different story. So I will be voting for this and supporting these measures enthusiastically. But if we want these to pass, we've got our work cut out for us because people are, they're gonna be afraid of this. There's going to be fear mongering. I'm sure that, you know, there's going to be talk of the world collapsing. You know, back in 2014, when we legalized cannabis, I had a lot of conversations with people in Oregon who were afraid that, you know, this is going to lead to driving while high being legal and people freaking out. And, you know, there's no way to test if somebody is high and they're driving. But I mean, you have to educate people. We didn't have a way to determine whether or not someone was driving while drunk while under the influence when we legalized alcohol. But I mean, that's still not a reason to not legalize it. Like there are a lot of precautions that we're taking. We're doing this responsibly. We're not just really nearly selling drugs to kids, which was one of the main fear mongering tactics. They basically said, oh, well you're going to market marijuana to kids. It's going to be so terrible. They're going to start smoking pot. No, that never happened. They said the sky was going to fall. It never fell. So we're going to see that same thing. So we're going to have to fight to combat propaganda. I mean, the fact that it's on the ballot, it's such a great thing to see. So I hope it passes. I'll be fighting for it, but just getting there is a victory in and of itself. And I hope that we can actually lead the way in the country and around the world and show that decriminalizing drugs is the way to go because the war on drugs has been a colossal failure. Folks, once again, I bring you absolutely shockingly good breaking news with regard to elections that took place in the state of Texas. Now I'm kind of spoiling it with our thumbnail here being displayed on the TV behind me. Nonetheless, we're going to pause and get to the really big news in a moment. But first, I do want to start off with the bad news so we can end on a more positive note. So Maine also voted today and there was a competitive Democratic Party primary taking place. And in that race, you had two people who were attempting to be the one to take on Susan Collins in November, who needs to go. So you had Sarah Gideon. She's a more centrist, pro-corporate Democrat who endorsed Joe Biden over all the other candidates. And you also have Betsy Sweet. This is the justice Democrat. This is the individual who's been endorsed by brand new Congress. She was the more Bernie Sanders-like candidate. And unfortunately, she was defeated, but not all hope is lost in Maine because Maine, as many of you know by now, has ranked choice voting. And in November, there will still be a progressive option on the ballot. Lisa Savage, she is a Green Party candidate. She's extremely progressive, just as progressive as Betsy Sweet. She supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal. She's pro-labor. And what you can do is you can rank your choices. You can have Lisa Savage be your first choice and make Sarah Gideon your second choice. So you're voting your conscience, but you're not inadvertently spoiling the election at the behest of Susan Collins. This is really an option that I hope a lot of people look into in Maine. And I hope that Betsy Sweet will use, you know, the campaign that she built to mobilize for Lisa Savage so we can still get a progressive option in there. So there's that. When it comes to local races in Texas, there was a competitive race in Travis County for district attorney and the incumbent, Margaret Moore, was ousted by a candidate who was endorsed by DSA, Jose Garza, and this is truly a huge win. Now, when it comes to house races, we had some really important races taking place. Two races that I was watching really closely were the races with Mike Siegel and Donna Imam. I've had Donna on the show multiple times. I had Mike Siegel on. These are candidates that are absolutely excellence. They're pro-labor. They are pro-medicare for all, pro-union. They basically check all of the boxes if you are a democratic socialist or, you know, even a social democrat. These are phenomenal candidates. So when it comes to Mike Siegel, he defeated the establishment-backed democrat, Pratesh Gandhi, in a landslide with 54.5% of the vote to Gandhi's 45.5 with 77% reporting at the time that I record this video. This is almost a 10-point difference and this is absolutely huge. If you don't know about Mike Siegel, this is someone who truly knows what he's talking about. Like he has a solid campaign and running in Texas, the way that he appealed to people there using policies like Medicare for All, like he wasn't hiding from Medicare for All. He was using that as a selling point and having conversations with people and convincing them, like actually changing hearts and minds. So the campaign that he ran was phenomenal. I'd encourage you to watch the interview that I did with him. He was endorsed by Bernie Sanders. I mean, this is someone who truly, you know, he had his work cut out for him. He was the underdog and he won. Now, when it comes to Texas's 31st Congressional District, Donna Imam was an even bigger underdog because not only did she lack support from the Democratic Party establishment, really the only public figure who gave her any time was Andrew Yang. So this is someone though who is a phenomenal candidate. She supports Medicare for All. This is an engineer who is sharp. She knows exactly, you know, what she's doing. The conversations that she's having with people are changing hearts and minds. Her district is winnable. So the fact that she didn't get more attention, it's criminal to me. So I had her on the show three times. I love Donna Imam. And she absolutely obliterated her opponent. She beat Christine Mann in a landslide with 56.6% of the vote to Mann's 43.4% with 62% reporting. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a landslide. That is a landslide victory. And if you weren't paying attention to Donna Imam's race, now you're gonna wanna pay attention. Now she's got your attention because this is an individual who is absolutely what the left needs. Like if we had her in Congress, the difference that she'd be able to make is remarkable. And the fact that she pulled this off in Texas with no institutional support, no media coverage. I mean, when I saw the results, I was honestly emotional because you know, this is exactly what we need. We need to show people and show the establishment and America that progressives and left-wing politicians, they can win anywhere, including in Texas. Now there's another semi-victory. I'm gonna count this as a victory. So in the 24th Congressional District of Texas, Candice Valenzuela defeated Kim Olson in another landslide, winning by almost 20 points with 60% of precincts reporting. Now in this race, the better candidate won. Kim Olson was a horrible candidate. We're talking scandals to the extent that she's culpable for Iraq war profiteering allegedly. I mean, it's not something that you want if you're trying to win in Texas, right? Like you want a Democrat who is strong. So Candice is the better candidate on top of that. She has a really good story. She was previously homeless. So I think that what she was saying speaks to people. Although I will say she doesn't support Medicare for All. If you go to her website, it says she wants to expand access to healthcare and she supports the Affordable Care Act. She was endorsed by people like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, not great. I mean, the fact that she doesn't support Medicare for All honestly is kind of a non-starter, but I am still happy that she beat Kim Olson because Kim Olson was an awful candidate. But I mean, overall, the real victories here for me, Mike Siegel, Donna Imum. These are victories that weren't necessarily expected. These were the underdogs and they didn't just win. They won in landslides, both of them. This is huge, not to mention, you know, the district attorney race with Jose Garza. I mean, this is a good night for progressives. And you know, maybe I'm just a little bit too cynical because I wasn't necessarily expecting to be making this video right now. I wasn't expecting to be talking about progressive victories in Texas, but here we are and I couldn't be happier. Hello everyone, I am here with Jen Perlman running against Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in Florida's 23rd congressional district. She is back on the podcast for a third time to talk about a lot of really interesting developments that's happening in her race. Jen, welcome back to the program. Hi, Mike, thank you so much for having me back on. It's always a pleasure. Before we get to your campaign, you're currently in the state of Florida and on Sunday we saw a record number of COVID-19 cases with more than 15,000. So what do you think is going wrong? Leadership or lack thereof. I mean, we have a governor, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with Ron DeSantis, but essentially he's a mini-Trump. And in fact, I think a large part of why he was put in as the governor of Florida was to deliver Florida to Trump in the election. And so that's what he's working to do. So whether it's forcing people to go back to work, which remember, Florida is a right to work state. So there's very little regard for labor in our state and that is one of the biggest pushes, I think, in terms of getting people to go back is they just don't care one way or the other. And to say that we're having some thriving open economy and in fact, that's delusional. So we never properly shut down in the first place. So let me be clear about that. Even when we shut down, it wasn't a real shutdown. It was never really enforced here. It was never really taken seriously here. And so to say that we've opened up is somewhat misleading because we never properly shut down. So this has been mismanaged from beginning to end. They certainly were not working on building up our resources and infrastructure in terms of hospital beds and ventilators during the shutdown, which was the point to flatten the curve, to make us be able to handle the incoming cases. So this has been mismanaged from start to finish. And we see a push from the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos, education secretary, basically threatening to withhold funding from schools if they don't reopen. And at a time where Florida is surpassing other countries in terms of new cases daily, Ron DeSantis is also echoing the same sentiment from Trump's administration. He's pushing people to reopen. So I mean, as a Floridian, someone with children, what's the sentiment that we get from people? Is there's gotta be mass terror about sending children to school in this? It's a combination of the health fear factor of sending our kids to school. And then the fact that people are still coping with that they're not getting their unemployment benefits. Their kids, whether they're going back to a physical school or going back to online school, these people cannot be home and taking care of their kids. And they're not getting any sort of help or social safety, we have no social safety net. So all these working parents, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. So on the one hand, there's people that are essentially gonna be forced to send their kids back to school because they have nothing else that they can do with their kids. So it hurts the parents in so many different ways. It's not just a matter of that it's unhealthy for the kids, which it is, it's not safe, but it just is putting parents in this horrible position of having to decide between their job and their kid's health and all these, it's a disaster. Yeah, the way that we responded to this collectively as a country, I mean, I can't even describe it. It's honestly shocking. Like the response is comparable to what we'd expect from a failed state. And you have some governors doing an adequate job. But I mean, overall, we're only as strong as our weakest links. So if we have one single governor that's not doing a great job that endangers everyone else in the country. So really it's frustrating. So I wanna kind of move into this discussion about your opponent, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz because in a position of power, you'd be able to really make a difference. What do you think she's done right or wrong with regard to COVID-19? Like how would you grade her? I'm not gonna give her like an official rating but I can tell you what she's been doing. So all I've heard or seen from her is essentially just talking that it's Trump and DeSantis. Trump and DeSantis, they're doing everything wrong. It's Trump and DeSantis. I haven't seen her proposing anything. I haven't seen her speaking out on behalf of our small businesses that are suffering. I haven't seen her speaking out on behalf of the millions of unemployed people and the amount of them in our state that are just so inadequately being able to, they can't even get the resources that they are entitled to because our system is so woefully insufficient. And while I recognize those are functions of our state government, I haven't heard her saying anything about it. Now what she has done is she has had several forums during the COVID. One was on childhood drowning, one was on childhood internet predators and one was on scam artists. So she's essentially been holding forums for people whose basic needs are already met because if you're in a position where you're worried about your child on the internet, that assumes you have a computer for your child to use. If you're worried about your kid having drowning, it's you're stuck at home with your pool. So she's speaking to a very small group of people as they go through this pandemic but as to the bulk amount of working people, I haven't heard her say anything. And that's really disappointing. I mean, this isn't necessarily surprising like anyone, especially people on my podcast who knows about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, like we've followed her on the show for years and there's so many things that are wrong with Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I think she's probably one of the worst Democrats, the most, you know, special interests backed, most conservative. But for all of her flaws, for all of the criticisms that the left rightfully has of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, you know, she is taking her hubris to the next level. She's running for a leadership position. Talk through this because when I saw this, I was absolutely just like shocked like I laughed. It's like, how, how do you have the gall to do this? Like, what is she running for? She is running to be chair of Appropriations Committee, which, you know, and even forget the, forget the appearances of impropriety and all of that stuff. If you just even put that aside and you just look at how she managed the DNC from a perspective of their finances and the amount of seats they lost in the country. So I'm talking just management, not even the other stuff. She was, it was a total failure, you know? I mean, they lost more than 1,000 seats when she was head of the DNC. They ran themselves into the ground financially. So why would we want that person in charge of the money? Yeah. And I mean, that's, that's the thing. It's like, if you've already proven to be a failure in a position of leadership that actually has influence over democracy, you shouldn't ever run for leadership again. I mean, she should be lucky that she's still in Congress. So it's shocking to me that she chose to run. I mean, I'm sure that the predatory payday lender industry is just ecstatic about the fact that she's running for leadership, but it's just, it's honestly shocking. Now another aspect about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is basically what I see, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that she's kind of pretending like you don't exist. You're not really there. Although she did purchase some web domains with your name. Talk through this. You're the one who actually broke this story. This is insane to me. Okay, so I wish you could almost demonstrate it as I'm telling you, but so we only inadvertently found out about this, but if you go to genperlman.com or genperlmanforcongress.com, they link directly to her congressional webpage. Not a campaign page. She didn't just squat on the domains because to be honest with you, you know, we're rookies so we didn't buy up all the names. And so this is the kind of thing that happens. I get it. But it's the fact that they go to her congressional webpage, like her official page as my congressperson and I am still a constituent. I am sure it's just this side of legal. I'm sure it is. And if it isn't, I'm sure her hands are clean because the company is in Panama that bought the domain. I'm sure you're surprised to hear it's Panamanian. And so I'm sure she's clean, but it is so unethical to me. It's just so incredibly unethical. So yeah, it's funny, she has ghosted me, but yet she relishes my name apparently. Yeah, I mean, hey, if you're gonna buy the domains, then that's at least a tacit admission that she knows that you exist as a human being. Why not actually be brave and debate you? I think that the people in Florida's 23rd Congressional District, they deserve to see their options. But I mean, of course, this is what we see. I mean, it's not necessarily shocking incumbent Democrats. They like to pretend as if their opponents don't exist, even if they're facing pretty serious primary challenges. And this isn't the only race. So I mean, it's kind of just par for the course, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should accept it. It's just, it's frustrating to see the things that are being done. You know firsthand, so I don't have to explain it to you. Talk through a little bit about what's been going on with regard to the campaign and COVID-19, because I don't think we talked since the pandemic really got as serious as it has been. And in a state like Florida, which is really dealing with this more so than other states, how has that affected campaigning? Because you're a grassroots candidate and knocking on doors, this is kind of like the lifeblood of what you do and what activists like you do. How have you been able to adapt? I mean, I'm sure that there's been some growing pains, but I mean, what's it been like to campaign in the COVID era? Yeah, so there's no campaigning during a pandemic 101 type of book that has been able to sort of help a lot of these grassroots campaigns. And yeah, you're right. I mean, grassroots campaigns, we are based on canvassing and door to door. And that's what we're about. And we were shut down for about a month and a half where we really didn't do any canvassing at all. We have an incredibly great social media presence. We have been doing our emails, phone banking, text banking. We're working on getting a mailer out this week. So, we're doing as best we can, but a lot of those things, especially mailers, are really expensive. And that's something, of course, Debbie's gonna be able to be blanketing the district. She's sitting on over a million dollars just from this cycle. All corporate. And so, we're hand to mouth. And so it's not as easy for us, but I think, and we have re-initiated socially distant canvassing. So we do have canvassers. A lot of places that have vulnerable communities are just getting door hangers or just doing lit drops. And then we are having canvassers that are out there with masks and gloves. We do give out sanitizers. They knock on doors, they step back six feet. And generally just do the best they can. And we're at least being able to put up yard signs. We're putting up signs. I mean, we're making the best of it, but it's not ideal. Yeah, and I will say that I'm really impressed with the way that campaigns, grassroots campaigns have adapted because the disadvantage that you have is that you don't take corporate money, but the advantage that you have is that you have this grassroots enthusiasm. So for that to kind of be taken away from you in a way, it's really, it's devastating, but I think that a lot of campaigns have been able to adapt and we're still seeing progressive success in spite of that. So I really am encouraged to see that. What I wanna ask you about is COVID-19 relief. I'm assuming that this is going to be a thing until 2021. So let's say you're able to beat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and you make it into Congress. What would you be pushing for in terms of relief? Economically speaking, and what would you think would be the solutions that we implement to actually stop the spread of the virus itself? This has been, like I said, mishandled from start to finish, but I mean, I was obviously much more in the thinking of payroll guarantees than unemployment. I obviously would have liked to see this, even if it was something like you guarantee 80% or whatever it was that they were able to do, was that Canada or the UK? I mean, I know that other countries are handling this infinitely better than we are, but yeah, I mean, we're doing it purposefully to squash labor. I have no doubt about that. And the money is then being further funneled to the top 1%. We have seen the top corporate people earning billions and billions during this pandemic as almost like, they're price gouging almost. They're really benefiting the spoils of something horrible and it's really grotesque and we're seeing it in live time, but this needed to be everything shut down, hard shut down and dealt with and we needed to compensate people, whether it was through paycheck guarantees or universal basic income, that needed to happen immediately. A $1,200 one-time payment is a joke. We gave what a $3 trillion slush fund to Steve Mnuchin is like, I don't even understand how people can sit in a meeting where that's brought up and not start laughing. Like I don't understand how that ever made it to a table. Like this is outrageous. So I would have taken that 3 trillion and stuck it at the bottom and let it funnel its way to the top. People need that money. People need that money. People need a UBI right now more than ever. Rich people are making off like bandits, whereas the poor, they don't know what to do. I mean, it was just the other day where CNBC released a headline that says 32% of households overall missed their July housing payment. The way that we've responded to this as a country, like you said, it's been laughable in comparison with other countries. We've done the least for citizens. I didn't get my $1,200 payment until mid-May. A lot of people I know still haven't received it in Oregon. I'm sure it's the same where you are. And a lot of people who they own these small businesses, they don't necessarily know how to access the funds, the small loans that were given to them. And now we see that Nancy Pelosi's husband, Kanye West's business, they're getting these loans that are supposed to be guaranteed for small businesses. So I mean, the response from our government has been laughable. So to have someone like you in there to at least be one more voice would have made a tremendous difference because I mean, it really isn't that difficult. I think that there wouldn't have been as much of a pushback to the shutdown if we responded adequately to people's economic suffering because I don't necessarily like, I know that it was easy to kind of like poke fun at the people who were doing these protests of, hey, I need a haircut and that's foolish. But like people who were against the shutdown, I think there was a huge economic component to this and they were really suffering and they didn't know how they were gonna put food on the table. And it's just, it's tragic to see, and this isn't going to get better anytime soon and the virus is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. So it's really grim. And the one thing that I see as the silver lining is that this is kind of radicalizing people and it is leading to more progressive victories like Cara Eastman in Nebraska, Jamal Bowman in Mondair Jones in New York and maybe Jen Perlman in Florida's 23rd Congressional District against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I wanna ask you another question about what's been happening and we're seeing the Black Lives Matter protests take place across the country. We're seeing calls to defund the police. If you were elected to Congress, what do you think would be the solution that you'd push for? The first thing that is the most underlying problem with criminal justice reform and I'm talking from policing all the way to post-probation is that we have a profit motive in our corrections institutions. So when you have a profit motive in something that ought not be for profit, it's going to affect it from start to finish and we see that we have for-profit policing and we have for-profit corrections. So first and foremost, we need to abolish any sort of profit motive from being in the criminal justice arena that shouldn't even be there. This is like, we're the only country that has this. So that is the first step. I personally support the campaign zero policing reforms, which to me break it down in the most easy, you know, prettiest little diagram ever, but we are dealing with a system that is essentially rotten. It is a white supremacist system. So even though there are decent officers and there are decent officers, I know some, they are still working within a system where their hands to be decent or tied behind their backs because the system doesn't allow for there to really be decent officers. Those officers end up getting fired if you're going to blow the whistle on somebody. So we need to eradicate the power of the unions in this capacity. And the way to do that is to elect people that aren't on their payrolls. So coincidentally, my opponent is the second highest democratic recipient of police PAC money in the house next to Steny Hoyer. And yet she will stand up at a Black Lives Matter event and talk about, you know, police reform. I don't understand how anybody can take that seriously. So I mean, this to me is really the same concept of cronyism that infects every aspect of our whole civilization at this point, but we need to completely revamp how we police. I don't need police patrolling our citizens. I need them solving actual existent crimes that have occurred. We have open cases, backlog cases, untested rape kits. There is no shortage of the need for actual law enforcement. What we don't need are patrols in our streets, patrolling our every move and our behavior and especially in vulnerable communities. That's not what we need. We need people that do mental health counseling, social services, addiction counselors, crisis counselors. Those are the people that need to be addressing most of these issues. And then there are issues where we do need law enforcement. I mean, if there's somebody that's killing people, yeah, I want that person to be taken into custody and kept incarcerated. So there is a place for law enforcement. We just don't need them to be patrolling us. And I think that, so when I, my problem with when they say defund the police is, I support it. I support everything that that mission stands for. But I knew as soon as they said that, that you are going to scare off so many people that would otherwise be supportive of this mission just by the terminology you're using. So I think when you say defund the police, it scares people. I think we have to demilitarize the police. I think we need to reallocate funding. So what I tell people, it's kind of funny is, we're not talking about making them go away. We're just talking about treating them like public education has been treated, defunding them. So they're still there. We're just not necessarily putting them at the top of the money food chain. But no, and I do think there's a myriad of unsolved cases. I mean, some crimes are less than a 20% close rate. So I have no problem with allocating resources to those types of law enforcement activities. But them dressed up in riot gear, these guys, if all you have is a hammer, all you see are nails. These guys are going into this armed for combat and so that's what they're gonna do. That needs to all go away. I wanted to ask you because Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she does not support Medicare for All. She's been very vocally against Medicare for All. However, we are seeing a lot of people lose their jobs and thus lose their employer-based health insurance. We're living through a pandemic. Florida is one of the worst states. Has Debbie Wasserman Schultz at all changed her position on Medicare for All even a little bit? No, not at all. In fact, she refused twice to even meet with the members of our Progressive Caucus that we're trying to talk to her about Medicare for All. She had her totie, of course, meet with them at one point but really didn't give them the time of day. She has zero, zero intention or interest in single-payer healthcare, zero. She takes money from Big Pharma and she takes money from the private health industry. This isn't rocket science. What's infuriating about it really is that she never misses an opportunity to drop her breast cancer survivor card on the table and really play this sort of like how hard it was for her and she survived breast cancer and I'm not negating that. It's just infuriating to me that she doesn't think we're all deserving of that same healthcare that she got. And so if you're gonna really be out there as a breast cancer survivor and expecting any amount of real comradery or support in that arena, you need to maybe think about people that have breast cancer and have no healthcare. And before this pandemic hit, back in 2019 when everyone was making this argument, I shouldn't say everyone, but you know, the corporate Democrats running in the presidential primary were saying that people loved their employer-based health insurance. They never responded to the fact that 68,000 Americans per year were dying according to a Princeton study because they didn't have healthcare and that was a relatively conservative estimate. But now it's gotta be worse. We don't know what the numbers are but we can only anticipate that the number of people dying because they don't have health insurance is going to increase. The number of people who are uninsured is going to increase. So I think that Medicare for all to not support it was indefensible in 2019, but in 2020 I've been arguing that if you don't support it now, you're just insane. Even like putting corruption aside because we do know that there's conflicts of interest. There's donors, interest who are influencing Debbie Wasserman Schultz. But even in spite of that corruption, if you don't support it then that's just inhumane at this point. You lack human empathy and to talk about being a breast cancer survivor, that's great. We're all glad that she survived breast cancer but why wouldn't you afford that same possibility to other people? Because maybe they can't even get checked to see if they have a cancer of some sort. There's no type of preventative healthcare for people who don't have healthcare. So it's deeply frustrating and if you were elected you would be another co-sponsor to the Medicare for All Act. What are people saying in your district as you've been campaigning? I know you haven't probably been able to have much, a person-to-person conversations maybe over the phone but what's the response to people when they hear that you support Medicare for All? It's like everywhere else in the country. What, 72%? I'd say that our area pretty much mirrors, I would say it's pretty close to mirroring whatever the national that percentage. So most people when they are presented with it in a normal manner and not in a way where do you wanna lose your insurance? You're gonna lose your insurance. When you presented to people as a fact-based scenario, you've got like I would say close to three quarters. I would say close to three quarters of people support Medicare for All. And yet our employee does not see fit to give us what we want even though she gets that healthcare. So we pay for it, for her to have it but she doesn't think we can have it. How people do not feel inspired to pick up pitchforks at this point, I don't understand. I won't even debate Medicare for All anymore with anybody. I just won't. That is now in the ways with flat earthers or creationists or it's with the people that don't even warrant a response anymore. I am so done with it. It's just, it's ridiculous at this point. I'm really glad you said that because I totally agree. Like we're beyond the point of selling and debating Medicare for All. We know it's the best option. Medical experts have endorsed Medicare for All. I just shared an article to Joe Biden on Twitter from Physicians for National Health Program. Now it's just a matter of give it to us. We want it and especially now during a pandemic I think that our arguments make sense to where it's not even an argument it's just common sense. Now it's just a matter of one will Congress and government in the United States actually give the people what we need and want. So yeah, I'm glad that you said that because it really is, it takes a level of delusion that is comparable to that of flat earthers and other conspiracy theorists to think that Medicare for All isn't the option. I mean, you're either lying to yourself or lying to everyone else. It's a distinction without a difference at this point but either way it's not acceptable and anyone who doesn't support Medicare for All they've got to go. They're just okay with people dying. Like that's basically what it comes down to. You're okay with people dying if they don't have healthcare and that's completely unacceptable especially if you are from the Democratic Party and you claim to have the moral high ground as Debbie Wasserman Schultz does, which is a joke but I mean, nonetheless she still claims it. So I mean, anyone who's watching this, they are convinced like we're all rooting for you on this program. So what can we do especially now to make sure that your election is a success and when does that primary take place? So our primary is August 18th but the most important factor is that because we live in closed primaries everybody has to be registered as a Democrat by July 20th which is obviously coming up. You can do that through our website. We have the link. You can also request a vote by mail. That's at gen2020.com. So we are encouraging people to request their mail and ballot just I have every reason to believe that they are going to play games and there's gonna be nonsense and they're gonna close polling locations and they're gonna disenfranchise voters and even if it weren't intentional and even if it's just based on COVID even if it's just, it's not always nefarious sometimes it's incompetent. It could be both, I don't know but I know that we need to be prepared for it and the way to do that is to request a mail-in. So I want everybody to request your mail-in ballot. Make sure you're registered as a Democrat. Follow us on social media. I'm at genFL23 on Twitter and Instagram. We're at gen2020 on Facebook. And if anybody wants to, we still need money. We are fighting a corporate monolith. We need volunteers for phone banking which can all be done in our website. And anybody who lives in our district if you will host a yard sign send me an email gen at gen2020.com. If you live in our district please go on to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's congressional page and leave a comment as to that you don't like my name being appropriated and directed to her congressional page. Only constituents can even leave a comment for her. So you can't even email her if you want to, just can't. You have to live in our district. So yeah, these are the kinds of things that we need. We need people to sort of recognize that this is the nonsense and the shenanigans. As if she wasn't already advantaged being the incumbent, she had to steal my name. Yeah, it's comical. And I'm glad that you brought up the point about voter suppression because it's real. And I want people to really arm themselves with information and take precautions because voter suppression is a thing everywhere. It's not just something that happens in red states. It happens in blue districts because incumbents will do everything. They'll fight dirty to make sure that they cling to power. So you have to make sure that you protect yourself. So Jen, we're rooting for you. Hopefully the next time that I talk to you, you will be a member of Congress. Wouldn't that be weird? It would be so weird. We went into this knowing where the look, we know where the long shot, we know that it's an uphill battle. Like we're not delusional people. But I do feel like if we had a really fair system and you and I both know that that's just not the way that this really works, whether it's being ghosted by the media or the polling places in my most popular communities. Oh, well, those will be the ones that are closed. I mean, we know how this goes. And I do really feel that if this were a fair fight, that it would be a no-brainer. I do. I feel that if she and I stood on a debate stage and actually people had to watch it and everybody saw it, I think it would be a done deal. So we know that it's not a fair fight. So we need all the help we can get. So thank you so much for having us on. Yeah, absolutely anytime. I think you're running a fantastic campaign and I love that you're actually challenging and incumbent. And you're not backing down. You acknowledge that they're gonna play dirty and you try to operate with that in mind and prepare yourself and kind of overcorrect what's going to be done. Because I mean, I agree with you, if this were a fair fight, I don't even think it'd be a con, like you would win by a landslide, but it's not. So you have to like all the votes that you'd lose because of voter suppression. You have to like find more votes to make up for that. And it's frustrating, but it's the reality. We just have to keep chipping away at it and make sure that people like you get elected so we can actually change the system and just make it more democratic. Aside from the policy elements, I mean just emboldening or enhancing, I should say democracy in and of itself would make a huge difference. So Jen, thank you for fighting, thank you for running. We're all rooting for you. Thank you, thank you so much. Well, that's it, I'm out of news. I've got nothing left to talk about. Hopefully you all enjoyed what we discussed even though some of the topics weren't necessarily pleasant before we go. I wanna thank my guest, Jen Proman. And also I wanna thank all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members for helping us not just to thrive but really survive. Thank you all so much. You are crucial, you're the lifeblood of the show. We can't do this without you, thank you. Yeah, so I'm done. I'll see you all next week, take care, everybody.