Join us as we speak with Assemblyman David Tangipa about the ongoing legal battles over Prop 50, California's gerrymandering issues, and the pervasive fraud, waste, and abuse in Sacramento. Discover the stakes, key legal arguments, and what citizens can do to get involved in reform efforts to restore integrity and representation in California.
Original air date 1.28.26
- The details of the Prop 50 lawsuit and its implications for racial gerrymandering
- How California's redistricting laws have been misused and challenged
- The legal arguments around voter intent versus racial and political considerations
- The status of legal challenges against Prop 50, including SCOTUS considerations
- The impact of mismanagement, fraud, and waste on California's budget and infrastructure
- How California's supermajority affects legislation and what needs to change
- Practical steps for citizens to get involved and support conservative reforms in the state
Chapters
- 00:00 - Introduction to California's Prop 50 lawsuit and Gerrymandering
- 01:10 - Assemblyman David Tangipa's background and why he fights for California
- 04:30 - Explanation of Prop 50 and the issues with racial gerrymandering in California
- 07:34 - The significance of Paul Mitchell's statements and the legal case against racial map drawing
- 10:29 - Overview of previous lawsuits and their outcomes, and where Prop 50 stands now
- 12:25 - Court rulings, voter intent, and legal arguments challenging Prop 50
- 15:09 - The danger of deception and marketing in voter decisions, with references to abortion laws
- 16:07 - How California's voting laws could be manipulated and the implications for democracy
- 20:51 - Assemblyman Tangipa on the broader implications of Prop 50 on California's representation
- 23:33 - Addressing fraud, waste, and abuse in California's budget and infrastructure projects
- 27:01 - The staggering costs and mismanagement of the California High-Speed Rail project
- 30:29 - The importance of grassroots involvement, breaking supermajorities, and fighting for a better California
- 32:21 - The ongoing legal battles, including the Louisiana lawsuit challenging Section 2 of the Voter Rights Act
- 35:15 - The potential future outcomes of Prop 50 legal challenges and how citizens can support reforms
- 39:11 - How to follow Assemblyman Tangipa on social media and support his work
Links
- Assemblyman David Tangipa's Legislative Page
- Prop 50 Legal Challenge SCOTUS Support Document
- California High-Speed Rail Project
- Voter Rights Act Section 2 - Legal Overview
00:00:01
The fight to overturn Prop 50 continues in court and will it
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go to the Supreme Court. We have a special guest tonight,
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Assemblyman David Tangipa, who will be going through that as
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well as discussions about fraud, waste and abuse going on in
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Sacramento. We know all about fraud, waste,
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and abuse here on this program on tonight's episode of
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California Underground, starting right now.
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What's going on, everybody? Thanks for tuning into another
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episode of the California Underground.
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I am your host, Phil. We have a great show and a great
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guest tonight, so I'm not going to delay anymore.
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I'm going to bring in my trusty Co host, the best, the fastest
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researcher in the West, as well as our special guest,
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Assemblyman David Tangipat, who has been on the forefront of the
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fight for Prop 50. But first, David, welcome to the
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program. How are you?
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I'm doing well and I give you an A on how to say my last name, so
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it's something that quite a few others have difficulty with,
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even though I don't think. It's that fair, right before we
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hop on. Yeah, yeah.
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So. It's better than how I thought
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it was pronounced. I, I mean, I'm not even going to
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say how I thought it was pronounced.
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So I'm glad I asked you before our listeners, why don't you
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take a minute, introduce yourself, who you are, we know
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you're an assemblyman, how you got there, stuff like that.
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And then we'll jump into some conversation.
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Yeah, well, thank you for having me again.
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As you had stated, I am the assemblyman for the 8th
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District, which is Northeast Fresno County, Eastern Madera
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County, Mariposa, Tuolami, Calaveras, Mono and Inyo, and I
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recently got elected. I'm in my freshman year.
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But I was born and raised in Sacramento.
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My mother immigrated here from the island of Tonga.
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My father was an Old Navy guy. We've all heard those stories
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about the Navy guy finds an island girl has a secret family.
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Punchline to that joke is David Tongipah.
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I am the product of a secret family.
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I grew up in North Highlands and for me, a lot of people know
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about Polynesian people is that they're fairly large.
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And the only way to get out of North Highlands really is you're
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either wrapping, you're selling drugs, or you're playing sports.
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And by the time I got into the 6th grade, I was already 6 foot
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tall. So sports was a little bit of my
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default and I had the chance to go play football at Fresno
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State. While I was there, I studied
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political science and criminology.
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I graduated early. I got my master's in business.
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I started working in real estate and real estate developing, and
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then I also started working for the Fresno County Board of
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Supervisors. Politics is something that I've
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always been passionate about because I've always believed
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that policy is the best way you could change people's lives.
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Whether it's for the better or the worse just depends on who's
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making it. And I see the state of affairs
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that California has been in. We see who has been in charge of
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this state for a long time. And I wanted to get involved.
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So I started working on campaigns, elections, data
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analytics for the Central Valley.
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Then there was an opportunity to run for the state Assembly and
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throw my hat into the ring, get a little bit dirty and dusty and
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play in the arena because I think California is worth
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fighting for. This place has changed my life
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where I believe I've lived the American Dream and we're going
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through the California nightmare, and the only way to
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change it is by being in Sacramento.
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Well. I applaud you because I think
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the way you fix things in California is you actually have
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to go to the Assembly and the Legislature here and fix things.
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No, no offense meant, meant to those who go off to Congress and
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stuff like that. But I think you have to fight
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here in California. And I think it's great to see a
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a good group of younger conservatives in Sacramento who
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are pushing back and making your voices heard.
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But the reason we have you on tonight is because you've been
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on the forefront of what's happening in this this lawsuit,
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this litigation. You and I have talked about it,
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this recent order, a ruling that came down about Prop 50.
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So why don't you tell the viewers a little bit about what
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this Prop 50 lawsuit's about, like what's the argument?
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You can explain that, we'll talk about it.
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Well, we know that top 50 is the gerrymandering.
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The state of California has claimed that it is to combat the
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gerrymandering that happened in Texas.
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And I get this question often on what's the general difference
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between the two. Well, California has a racially
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gerrymandered map where the map maker used race to justify how
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he decided to draw the lines in an effort to placate 2 Latinos
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in the state of California. That is different than the map
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makers in Texas because Texas, the legislative body is the map
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makers. And so they, for just political
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reasons, were able to change their maps.
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They had some challenges there, but they those challenges lost
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actually in the Supreme Court because of their political
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nature. What we're seeing in California
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is we're using the words that the map maker actually used
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himself when he can go on podcast and tell people that I
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created a Latino majority district as the first thing that
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I did when creating these maps. Well, he is telling us right
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there that he used race to justify these lines.
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When he is going on the news to say that he expects the Latinos
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to see a general benefit in the Central Valley, It makes sense
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to me that it was his intention to use race for a minority group
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to benefit from. And So what we've challenged
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them on is his racially gerrymandered maps, his language
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that he has actually talked about when it comes to the
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creation of these maps and how in the state of California, the
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VRA really wasn't supposed to be used this way.
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The Voter Rights Act was supposed to remedy racist and
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systemic racism of the past. Well, if you think about the
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state of California, if you're making a district for Latinos,
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you're actually making a district for the largest ethnic
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group in the state of California.
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They make up a very large demographic in the legislative
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body. And the way that Paul Mitchell
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drew the maps benefits a group that doesn't have any systemic
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barriers against them, that doesn't have any issues of
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getting into elected office. I'm a Maine plaintiff on this
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case because I'm Polynesian. I'm actually the first
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Polynesian ever elected to the state legislature here in
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California. And by the way, he drew these
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maps is actually detrimental to other minority groups.
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So we've challenged them on a lot of those grounds, actually
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utilizing their tools against them.
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And my hope is in the future that race doesn't play a factor
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in how we draw maps. But with the language that the
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map maker has deciding to use, we're we're very excited for
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where the Supreme Court is taking this.
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The state has barely 24 hours left to respond to our emergency
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injunction. Yeah, as I understood it, and I
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did a video looking at the ruling, racially drawn
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gerrymandered maps are facially unconstitutional, full stop.
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That's the end of the story. Like that's that was your guys's
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argument. And I saw I was like, OK, yeah.
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And I mean, you have Paul Mitchell, who is the individual
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in question. He's the guy who was running
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around running his mouth about, oh, we drew these Latino maps
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and we increased representation and, you know, not being very
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secretive about his intent. And then it was also crazy that
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right before you guys had this little trial, Paul just didn't
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show up. And they prevented you guys from
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even deposing Paul Mitchell. And he's like the star witness
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of the whole case. So it's crazy that they went
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ahead without even hearing from Paul Mitchell.
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You're exactly right. Paul Mitchell claimed
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legislative intent and he's not a legislator.
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They actually even submitted documents to show that Paul
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Mitchell was just a private contractor.
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So and he invoked this privilege, which really doesn't
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exist, over 100 times. It's one of the things that we
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wanted to ask him if he would have just went on, if you would
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have just participated with the trial.
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Is Paul, when you say that the first thing you did was draw a
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Latino majority district, did you consider race as a
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predominant factor in that sentence?
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I mean, his clear answer would have to be yes since he's
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talking about the racial demographic and it was the first
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thing he did. The next question would have
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been also to Paul Mitchell was when you expect Latinos and
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Asian groups to see a general benefit in these new maps that
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you created, were you talking about race?
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He would again have to say yes. And if he would have said yes to
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both of those, it would have been very clear to the judges
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that racial intent for Dom was the predominant factor for how
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he drew the lines in California. And this is actually what gave
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us a case, is that Paul Mitchell ran around bragging how he was
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the map maker because he wanted everybody to know that he was
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part of this fight. This really is an issue because
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he couldn't keep his mouth shut. You kind of segwayed into what
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my next question is. You're, you're obviously
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extremely brilliant. I don't think that you're a
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lawyer, but you seem to have a lot of legal knowledge.
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And then Phil here is a lawyer. I'm not and I don't think that
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most of our audience is. So there have been a few
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lawsuits regarding this issue regarding Prop 50.
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Some were immediately just shut down or thrown out, if I'm not
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mistaken. So this question is kind of for
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both of you. Do you mind not getting too into
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the weeds, but breaking down a couple of the lawsuits that
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California has already had because like I said, I know some
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have been thrown out. And so just kind of to clear up
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because we hear, we hear things, you know, like someone will see
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a tweet, oh, Prop 50, no, Prop 50 shut down.
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Gavin Newsom will brag about we blocked it again, we blocked
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Trump, MAGA, whatever. So if you guys don't mind taking
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just a couple minutes to kind of like talk about the, the
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different lawsuits where and that we're thrown out and why
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this one's different, where we're at with it to just to
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clarify, like what's currently happening.
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If I I hope I'm making sense with my question.
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Yes, some of the I mean. The the only one that I know
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that, yeah, go ahead David. I just wanted to touch on it.
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Than I do so I. Only, well, no, I just want to
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it's, it's actually a very simple answer is a lot of the
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lawsuits were technically what the courts are saying, filed too
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early. That injury has to occur 1st and
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then you can sue. So that's pretty much what a lot
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of them were thrown out for was that it's you're you're just too
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early on the lawsuit side. Some of those were also just
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filed in the courthouse. And so when it went all the way
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to the Supreme Court, pretty much the state Supreme Court
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threw it out because of their general interpretation.
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But remember, three of those were appointed by Governor
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Newsome anyways. So yeah.
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Yeah, these are, this is the only one I know about.
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Well, this is the one that I've been keeping an eye on because I
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think it has the strongest argument to it.
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And I when I read like everyone getting involved and I read
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their complaint, I said this one has legs like this one has a
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good argument. Sometimes people file, you can
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file a lawsuit for anything. Doesn't mean you're going to
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win. It just means you can file a
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lawsuit for it. But so we, we, you guys went
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through the process at the entry of the trial level.
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The court said, we're not giving you a preliminary injunction.
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You and I have talked about what a crazy ruling that was that
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they just basically said, well, the voters, it's the voters
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intent. If the voters voted for this,
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then that's all that matters. Doesn't matter if it's racially
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motivated. Who cares if it's a violation of
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the 14th Amendment? Who cares if Paul Mitchell
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didn't testify and we have all this evidence.
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It's the voter intent. So that was a 2 to 1 ruling and
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you and I were talking about it and I want to hear your thoughts
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about that ruling. To me, I was shaking my head and
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going I can't believe this is what they came up with.
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But when I looked at their backgrounds, I was like, OK, I
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can believe this is who why they came up with this ruling.
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Yeah, actually it was crazy to kind of hear their argument that
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racial intentions could be washed away if the voters didn't
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think racially, but we could pass something as long as it was
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marketed to the voters that wasn't racist, then it washes
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the racial sins of the people who created it.
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And that's kind of what they argued essentially, that the
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intent of the voters really usurps the map maker, really
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usurps the legislative body that had talked about a lot of the
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racial intent. I mean, one of my colleagues
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specifically said that this is about Latino families, this is
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about black families, this is about the LGBTQ communities,
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this is about immigrant communities.
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And this is our way to fight back.
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That is pretty close to a direct statement from one of my
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colleagues. But because that was just a bill
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form of the the Prop 50 map and the general voters knew that
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they were voting against Donald Trump, that that actually washes
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the sins of all other racial implications, which I mean,
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essentially creates a crazy argument of, well, if I wanted
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to discriminate against somebody, as long as I marketed
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it as something else, I could get away with that.
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If I put it to the voters, that's what they're saying is as
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long as I market it as something that wasn't part of the original
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intent, then the voters knew what my actual goal was.
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I mean, that's kind of how I feel like most of it runs.
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Not to, not to get too controversial here, but even
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abortion, it's like, well, we'll market it as it's not a baby,
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it's just a clump of cells. So getting rid of it, no big
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deal. Sorry, total side subject there,
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but. Well, we were talking about how
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it's, yeah, if you follow that logic of the court where it says
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as long as the voters voted for it and as long as that's their
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intent, like, what else can you get away with?
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And then I believe the ruling also said something to the
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effect of like, well, who cares if the legislature or the people
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who push Prop 50 duped the voters into voting for it?
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It's still the voters intent. Like that's what they voted for,
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which it was even more baffling to be like, well, even if the
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legislature or people who push it, even if you say it's because
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we're fighting Donald Trump and it's not what it's going to end
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up being, it doesn't matter. That's the voters intent.
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So you can, they've given carte blanche that as long as you
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deceive enough voters, you can basically get anything passed,
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whether it's constitutional or not.
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Here in California. I, I thought that was insane
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that they went there right. I thought it was extremely
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insane. And not only that, you look at
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what happened with Prop 8 back in 2008, the voters intended for
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to constitutionalized traditional marriage into the
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California Constitution and it passed.
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But that was actually challenged all the way up to the Supreme
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Court and was actually deemed unconstitutional.
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So we have seen ballot initiatives before actually be
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deemed unconstitutional regardless of the voters intent.
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Californians at that time intended to just
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constitutionalized traditional marriage, but they saw that it
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performed, it provided discrimination.
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So the only way that I see that this really happened was a very
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far reaching and I agree with the dissent that in the dissent
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really just put it out there saying that how can you
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determine the intent of 1111 million people who voted in this
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last election and for us to have just a general sweeping ideology
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that they all participated whether it was political or not
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political, that doesn't make any sense.
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And there's no way to somehow determine what 11 million people
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are thinking. The other one that was
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interesting on the majority side of the argument was they kept
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talking about what I was saying or what somebody else was saying
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when the original and the key point of the argument, he is the
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map maker. The map maker in a lot of case
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law in cases that have been determined for racial
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gerrymandering and gerrymandering of states has
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always been the intent of the map maker.
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And when you hear arguments like Paul Mitchell and the ones that
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he made, it is very clear that race played a factor because you
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just need to listen to when he opens up his mouth.
00:18:00
Somebody asked in the chat, as they said, I question.
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I thought this was done, which is a perfect segue to you giving
00:18:07
us an update of like where is this lawsuit right now, now that
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there was this ruling denying the preliminary injunction?
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Yes. So we have appealed all the way
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to the Supreme Court and actually by the end of day
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tomorrow, Governor Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have
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to respond to our emergency, excuse me, our emergency
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injunction. So they have less than 24 hours
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to make sure that they get the response.
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So no, this is not done just yet.
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We are fighting all the way to the Supreme Court.
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We believe that we have really good arguments.
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The Department of Justice is also signed on or has also
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signed on to our lawsuit. So they have filed their support
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arguments for why we are challenging the racially
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gerrymandered maps. And it is not over yet.
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It's not over yet until we hear back from the Supreme Court.
00:19:01
So there is still a chance that we actually stop the
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implementation of the Prop 50 maps.
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There's a chance that they revert back to the 2021
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redistrict maps. And we've actually made that
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commitment to everybody that we will fight this all the way till
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the end. I have been through the map
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making process. I went through the elections
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Committee, the Appropriations Committee, and even on the
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floor, and I talked about how a lot of these people were lying
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to us and lying and putting this out to lie to the voters.
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And you know, that is despicable to me.
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So I wanted to make sure that I fought this every single what
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step of the way. We need to make sure that we're
00:19:42
fighting. There are no easy wins when it
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comes to us getting into office and we're going to hold
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everybody accountable. One thing that I have an issue
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with, and we've talked about this a lot.
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We had a whole show about bunch of people came on.
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We were talking about why we all said no on Prop 50 is I'm just
00:20:01
not comfortable with the idea of every time a party doesn't like
00:20:07
the results of elections. And in 2024 we saw California go
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more red that you can just change your mind and go, but
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we're going to redistrict. That's it.
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We're just going to change and change the playing field.
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And to me, that just feels like you're, you're taking the whole.
00:20:23
Representation, democratic element and you're taking the
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voice of the people away because what does it matter if if my
00:20:30
representative could be changed out every couple of years
00:20:32
because you're not happy with Texas or you're not happy with
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Trump? Like that's not how it was set
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up. It wasn't set up so that every
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two years we can just change who what the districts are.
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What are your thoughts on like the the bigger overall
00:20:47
implication of something like Prop 50?
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Well, what I really thought of was California had the gold
00:20:54
standard when it comes to the Independent redistricting
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committee and the Commission which created the maps here and
00:21:00
actually prevented us from making sure that politics and
00:21:04
partisanship on the political side was the was the main
00:21:09
factor. We were we were supposed to make
00:21:12
sure that we were prioritizing the people, not the politicians.
00:21:16
And what Prop 50 has done is really just strip people away
00:21:18
from proper representation. It really diminishes the rule
00:21:22
voices. And I represent a very rural
00:21:24
district. And so I believe that if you're
00:21:28
in Shasta County, you are just as Californian as LA County.
00:21:33
If you're in Mono County, you are just as Californian as San
00:21:37
Francisco. If you're in Redding, you're
00:21:39
just as Californian as San Diego.
00:21:41
And our goal, and what my main goal is, I wish we would have
00:21:46
more competitive districts. I wish we could actually make
00:21:49
politicians work for us. Because when I was not in
00:21:53
political office and just working, I just wanted to know
00:21:55
the person that was elected to, to represent me was fighting for
00:22:00
me. And I think that there's this
00:22:02
level of complacency both on Republicans and Democrats side
00:22:06
that aren't, that isn't beneficial to the general
00:22:10
people. Like I said, I grew up in very
00:22:12
low income Section 8 housing in Sacramento.
00:22:16
I used to be one of those weird kids who used to love reading
00:22:20
about the president and go down and my mom would just walk us
00:22:24
around the capital and we would ride public transportation down
00:22:27
there. And I used to glorify the
00:22:28
building. Now that I've been in the
00:22:30
building, there are two things that I have learned.
00:22:32
One, math is subjective. And two, doing the right thing
00:22:36
isn't good enough to get things done.
00:22:38
And I would prefer to change that because the people of
00:22:41
California deserve better. If we're the richest state in
00:22:45
the richest country in the history of the world, and we're
00:22:48
suffering as bad as we are suffering today, when are we
00:22:52
going to finally look at our state leadership and those who
00:22:55
are elected to represent us and say it's their fault and we
00:22:58
demand better? And that's what I want to do.
00:23:01
Perfect segue. We got a couple minutes left
00:23:05
with you before you have to read probably about 3000 bills
00:23:08
because that's California. They love to jam as many bills
00:23:10
down your throat as possible. You were recently talking to
00:23:14
Ashley Zavala about like fraud, waste and abuse.
00:23:17
And here in California we're seeing like horrible fraud,
00:23:20
waste and abuse. We just saw the arrest of the
00:23:23
CEO of a non profit down in LA for $23 million.
00:23:27
There's been a ton of fraud in LA going on, but it's it's just
00:23:30
overall the almost spending, high speed rail, all of that
00:23:34
stuff. Tell us your thoughts about it
00:23:38
and what you want to do to try and combat what's going on And
00:23:43
Sacramento wasting our tax dollars.
00:23:46
I believe we need a California Tea Party.
00:23:48
I really do, because the amount of money that we have in
00:23:53
California, the amount of tax revenue that we've collected is
00:23:58
insane. It's just the easiest way to
00:24:01
describe it. It is absolutely insane.
00:24:05
Our budget is right around $350 billion.
00:24:09
That is more than most countries.
00:24:12
And since 2018 to where we're at today, our budget has almost
00:24:18
increased in spending by 100%. But what, I'd ask anybody, where
00:24:26
did all of that money go? Nobody feels like their quality
00:24:29
of life has increased 100%. Actually, things have gotten
00:24:33
worse. The conditions of our roads, our
00:24:35
infrastructure, our ability to get through permitting, planning
00:24:39
services from our government, all of it has gotten worse.
00:24:42
And yet our budget grows and so does our tax bill, our utility
00:24:46
bills, our grocery bills. That doesn't make sense unless
00:24:52
there is fraud, waste and abuse abusing us, the taxpayers using
00:24:57
us as piggy banks to fund all of these projects that don't make
00:25:00
any sense. I worked very hard on the high
00:25:02
speed rail project. They actually did part of the
00:25:06
audit with Secretary Duffy's office that worked in
00:25:10
coordination to retroactively stop the $4 billion that the
00:25:15
federal administration was sending because we were able to
00:25:18
find out that almost a billion dollars was paid out in a change
00:25:23
order clause. I like to call it non execution
00:25:26
of contract. That means that we paid
00:25:30
contractors almost a billion dollars to do no work because
00:25:36
California High Speed Rail did not know where the easements and
00:25:41
where the utility lines, owls, roads or even have the right
00:25:45
people on site with permitting and planning.
00:25:48
And because they didn't have any of that prepared, they had to
00:25:52
pay out the contractor $170 a day or $5 a month.
00:25:59
So we have essentially paid out about a billion dollars with 0
00:26:04
work to be done in essentially parking fees.
00:26:07
I had started going through some of that I'd feel I sent you the
00:26:10
information. I got overwhelmed, but I was
00:26:12
going through a lot of like, where is this money going with
00:26:15
the high speed rail? And I was seeing that that there
00:26:18
was these change orders that were costing millions of dollars
00:26:21
per like simple little change orders.
00:26:24
But they, you know, they add up 3 here and 5 million
00:26:27
here and a few 100 there. And and I never got to anywhere
00:26:31
close to even like half of a billion because I just got so
00:26:34
overwhelmed with it And I was like, this is disgusting.
00:26:36
This is disturbing. All the while I'm looking at the
00:26:39
salary of who's on the high speed rail, like board or
00:26:43
whatever. And they're, they have these
00:26:46
majorly inflated salaries for what I don't know.
00:26:49
And I, I sent Phil a bunch of that information, but then I was
00:26:52
like, I'm, I'm checked out. This is too much, this is too
00:26:54
big. And I just stopped looking.
00:26:56
I was like, I just, this is a mess.
00:26:58
It's a nightmare. It's California in a nutshell.
00:27:02
Here's HP. Chat.
00:27:04
Yeah, go ahead, David. Sorry, there's a little bit of a
00:27:08
delay so, but here's a very shocking piece about high speed
00:27:12
rail that I've been able to share.
00:27:13
High speed rail right now is on track to be the third most
00:27:16
expensive infrastructure project in the history of the world,
00:27:19
adjusted for inflation #1 is the Interstate project of the 1950s.
00:27:25
Number 2 is the International Space Station #3 is California
00:27:30
high speed rail. And the main difference is I can
00:27:32
drive on the I-5, the 99 and the I-80 and #2 is you can go to
00:27:39
outer space and there is a space station.
00:27:41
We will never have a California high speed rail with the current
00:27:44
authority that's on charge of it today.
00:27:46
That's on. Yeah, that's a great point.
00:27:48
I'm going to remember that. That's a good point I'm going to
00:27:50
keep making, somebody said in the chat with no California
00:27:53
Republicans in office. Well, there are California
00:27:55
Republicans in office, so not know where there's one of them
00:28:00
talking to us right now and there's more of them.
00:28:02
Then how will the voice of California Republicans be heard?
00:28:05
That's what somebody asked in the chat.
00:28:08
So I would just ask anybody to get involved.
00:28:10
I mean, we just got elected this past year.
00:28:13
There's a new group as what I've heard from others that they see
00:28:16
some of the energy of we're trying to fight back, but we
00:28:18
can't do that by ourselves. The largest Republican Party in
00:28:22
the United States is here in California.
00:28:25
But a lot of Republicans also feel defeated.
00:28:27
And I understand that. And it's why I wanted to make
00:28:30
sure that if we were one of the people saying where are our
00:28:35
elected officials and what are they doing to fight for us, I
00:28:39
want to tell everybody, I am in front of you right now asking
00:28:42
for help because I cannot do this unless the almost 6
00:28:45
Republicans also help us out. There are about 6
00:28:49
independents out there as well, fed up with the people who are
00:28:53
in charge of this state. And if you want to change this
00:28:55
state, you can get involved with campaigns.
00:28:58
We do not need any more keyboard warriors.
00:29:00
I don't need any more California refugees.
00:29:02
I need California Rebels people to run for office.
00:29:06
There's about 40 offices right now in the state Assembly that
00:29:10
actually has no Republican running against the current
00:29:13
member. We need people to file that.
00:29:15
Carl Demaio is a great vessel that has been helping us out.
00:29:19
And a colleague of mine, I have my work as well.
00:29:22
We have work from the assemblywoman out of the Tulare
00:29:25
area and we need as many as we can to sign up and be involved.
00:29:31
And so we're trying to give people some hope again that
00:29:35
we're fighting. There's nothing else that I want
00:29:37
then to fight for a better California and.
00:29:41
This is the point we constantly ad nauseam make here on the
00:29:45
podcast is I think people they, they always gravitate towards,
00:29:50
yes, there's a big gubernatorial election coming up.
00:29:52
That's a big deal. But so many of these Assembly
00:29:56
races and like legislative races in Sacramento are won by like
00:30:01
razor thin margins. They're, they're a lot of them
00:30:03
are very close. So pay attention to these
00:30:07
because state Assembly, senators, City Council, stuff
00:30:11
like that, that all makes a big difference.
00:30:14
So pay attention to that. You know, it, it's not, it's not
00:30:18
just, oh, let's get a governor in there.
00:30:19
Let's just get a Republican governor in there and, and
00:30:21
everything will be fixed. It's like, no, no, you got to
00:30:24
focus on the legislature. We need to break that super
00:30:27
majority right? That is the number one goal,
00:30:30
breaking the Super majority. And if we do that, that will
00:30:33
automatically moderate the entire state of California.
00:30:37
It actually doesn't matter if you have a Republican or
00:30:40
Democrat governor when you have a super majority because they
00:30:43
can roll or they're a veto proof majority will just usurp
00:30:48
everything a governor would want to do.
00:30:50
And if we're able to get just seven more seats in the
00:30:56
Assembly, we will change that. If we're able to get four more
00:30:59
seats in the in the Senate, we can change that.
00:31:02
And there are enough competitive seats out there that we can
00:31:06
actually break that. And I think the momentum is on
00:31:10
our side with people seeing how bad California is with the cost
00:31:15
of living, the corruption issues, the unaffordability.
00:31:21
So if we can now challenge that anger, sorry, excuse me, If we
00:31:25
can challenge that anger and then pointed at whose fault it
00:31:29
is, and then motivate people to vote for their own policies and
00:31:34
pocketbooks, we can change California.
00:31:36
Yeah, well, we're believers here of changing California.
00:31:41
So somebody I know, we got you for like a couple more minutes.
00:31:47
Camille, I don't know if you had any more questions for the
00:31:49
Assemblyman before we let them go.
00:31:51
You know, what I wanted to real quickly touch on is because this
00:31:57
current Prop 50 lawsuit with SCOTUS right now, but there's
00:32:00
also the Louisiana, is that the, the lawsuit like it's so if this
00:32:07
one, which hopefully this one does pass in our favor is ruled
00:32:11
in our favor, there's the other one that could still strike it
00:32:14
down coming up. And I, I know we've talked about
00:32:16
it before, so I didn't want to go into depth into that, but I
00:32:19
just thought maybe briefly mention that just because I feel
00:32:23
like we come on here and we talk about like, what was California?
00:32:27
And I just want to there's, there still could be good news
00:32:30
and there's, you know, there is good news.
00:32:32
California, like, like David said, it's worth fighting for.
00:32:35
California's such a wonderful state.
00:32:36
And I don't want people to come on our show, like watch our show
00:32:40
and be just frustrated and feel like, oh, there's just, there's
00:32:43
something we can do. So there's still a second
00:32:48
lawsuit with the Supreme Court that could rule in our favor for
00:32:54
Prop 50, correct? So first I'll say California is
00:32:59
the greatest asset on the history of Earth and we just
00:33:04
have some of the worst asset managers.
00:33:06
So the best way to have an amazing asset do really well is
00:33:11
to just change the asset managers.
00:33:13
So it'd be very easy to get California back on track and not
00:33:17
only that, create abundance again, we just got to get away
00:33:20
from the legislative scarcity when it comes to that lawsuit
00:33:23
that's actually in Louisiana. That's a challenge under the
00:33:25
current structure of the Voter Rights Act and Section 2 of the
00:33:29
Voter Rights Act, which allows racial gerrymandering.
00:33:32
That is challenging that basis because when the Voter Rights
00:33:37
Act of 1965 was really put in place, it was to again, right
00:33:42
the wrongs of systemic racism and barriers that were created
00:33:46
to actually hurt minority groups from being represented in
00:33:50
political office. So there have been court cases
00:33:54
that have challenged that time and time again, but have
00:33:58
basically been stopped because they've shown that there were
00:34:02
still ethnic barriers to getting proper representation.
00:34:06
Now in 2025, what we believe is that there are no racial
00:34:11
barriers when you have President Barack Obama make it to the
00:34:15
president of the United States and win at such a large margin.
00:34:18
There is no need to allow racial gerrymandering in VRA.
00:34:23
They're called VRA districts anymore.
00:34:26
When you have a state like California that's its largest
00:34:29
ethnic group, is a Latino group and it's not a white group, then
00:34:36
it is currently no longer necessary to allow Section 2 of
00:34:40
the Voter Rights Act to grant these states the ability to
00:34:45
racially gerrymander. Right now we've got to get to a
00:34:47
race neutral position and start making sure that we prioritize
00:34:51
people for who they are, where they live, and why they should
00:34:55
be put blocked together, not through a racial lens.
00:34:58
And if that lawsuit in Louisiana wins, I guess then Section 2 of
00:35:04
the Voter Rights Act will be thrown out and essentially
00:35:07
almost all maps in the entire state, in the entire United
00:35:10
States will actually be deemed unconstitutional.
00:35:13
If they have AVRA element, that's pretty big, which which
00:35:19
is a good, which is a good thing because then we won't use race
00:35:23
anymore to justify blinds. Two things before we let you go.
00:35:28
First off, the chat is very excited about this idea of a
00:35:31
California Tea Party. A lot of people say they're in,
00:35:34
What can we do to help? And 2nd, I know I joked about
00:35:38
it's like 3000 bills that you guys have to read, but what do
00:35:42
you have an estimate of how many bills?
00:35:43
Because we do a show on like looking at the new bills that
00:35:47
are introduced around this time. So what?
00:35:49
What are Camille and I in for in terms of reading bills to tell
00:35:53
our audience? I well, I think there's 2600 is
00:36:01
what we have, but tomorrow we're actually still voting on the
00:36:05
carryover from the first year. So it's still carrying a couple
00:36:09
bills over they Yeah, it tomorrow's the last day actually
00:36:13
to, to for those last carryover bills.
00:36:16
That's why it's so much. And and, you know, I wish I
00:36:18
actually had a bit more time to kind of describe that, but what
00:36:22
I will tell everybody is to be prepared for a lot of what I
00:36:25
refer to as anti law enforcement.
00:36:28
It's unfortunate that most of my colleagues prefer to fight
00:36:32
against the federal administration instead of doing
00:36:35
our job as state representatives.
00:36:38
One of the big things we also have to watch out for is the
00:36:41
massive loss of federal funds that are being pulled away from
00:36:46
the state of California because we will not come into compliance
00:36:49
with the law. We have lost, we're about to
00:36:52
lose out on $12 billion when it comes to SNAP because California
00:36:57
can't get its fraud and error rate below 10% all the way down
00:37:01
to 6%. We have to be under that number
00:37:03
or else we're going to lose our federal funds there.
00:37:06
We have to remove all illegal immigrants from the medical
00:37:10
portion and make sure that no federal funds are being used for
00:37:15
illegal immigrants. California is doing that, even
00:37:18
though they tried to lie and gaslight people and tell them
00:37:21
that it wasn't happening. I know it's happening because
00:37:24
the Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst Office
00:37:27
both told me that it was happening.
00:37:30
We spend about $12 billion a year on that program.
00:37:36
And what others that have to really watch out for is the
00:37:41
governor's budget itself. The next three years we have
00:37:45
predicted out show a deficit of in excess of $20 billion.
00:37:51
So the Legislative Analyst Office shows that our deficits
00:37:55
going to be around $35 billion year over year for the next
00:37:59
three years. This is a massive issue.
00:38:01
There has never been a time in California's history where we
00:38:04
have 4 consecutive deficits in a row.
00:38:07
Even in the Great Recession we didn't have this many deficits.
00:38:12
So if it's looking this bad in good years, we are not prepared
00:38:16
for the bad years. And that is the extremely
00:38:19
irresponsible from their government and is where we
00:38:22
really need to prioritize our goals.
00:38:25
If we have a contraction in the market, because about 42% of the
00:38:29
state's revenue comes from capital gains, that is like
00:38:33
gambling with a hand grenade. And if we have a just a small
00:38:37
depreciation in the in the general stock market, we will go
00:38:41
from a $30 billion around that deficit to over $100 billion
00:38:46
deficit. It is that detrimental the state
00:38:48
of affairs in California that we need everybody to paying to be
00:38:52
paying attention to that. There's a lot, well, we're we're
00:38:57
happy you're up there in Sacramento fighting for these
00:39:00
principles and trying to cut down on all of that.
00:39:03
I mean, that's a lot of irons in the fire between Prop 50 fraud,
00:39:06
waste and abuse. Where can people go and follow
00:39:08
you and keep up with you and all the stuff that you're doing?
00:39:11
Well, there are, there are a lot of irons, but California is
00:39:13
worth fighting for. And like I said, I'm not going
00:39:17
anywhere. I love this state.
00:39:19
I love the people here, but they can always find me.
00:39:22
It's it may be very hard to say my last name, but the easiest
00:39:28
way I'd like to spell it is Tang IPAI do have a campaign beer.
00:39:33
You might not be able to say it, but you can at least drink it.
00:39:37
But if you just look up that last name, Tang IPA, Tangipa
00:39:40
TANGIPA, you'll find me. It's only me and my family in
00:39:46
California that have that last name.
00:39:48
They can also make sure that they go to my legislative pages
00:39:51
as well. So if they want to know what
00:39:53
we're doing legislatively, what we're working on to take on
00:39:56
insurance, utility costs, student loan debt.
00:40:00
I had a big student loan debt bill trying to make it to where
00:40:05
if you actually invest in yourself with higher education,
00:40:08
including blue collar education trades, you can actually have
00:40:13
that as a full write off. So it incentivizes people to
00:40:17
invest in themselves. You know, if businesses get
00:40:20
write offs for their investments, I believe the
00:40:22
people should get a write off for theirs as well.
00:40:25
That would really help the student loan debt crisis that is
00:40:28
happening right now amongst younger people.
00:40:31
So we want to incentivize people to better themselves.
00:40:33
The best way we could do it is through creating conservative
00:40:37
solutions for some liberal problems.
00:40:39
Like it, I like it. We need to have you back on to
00:40:42
talk more about this. There's so much to talk about.
00:40:44
So, David, thank you for coming on as always the as we end every
00:40:49
show, the best thing you can do that is you can support the show
00:40:52
that is 100% free to share this with somebody else who is
00:40:55
interested in California politics.
00:40:57
Make sure you like share, subscribe, review all that
00:40:59
stuff. And we'll see you on the next
00:41:01
one later. Thank you.