In this episode of the California Underground Podcast, the hosts Phil and Camille discuss the significant ad spending on Prop 50, the implications of SB 771 on free speech, and the shifting dynamics of voter registration in California. They analyze the strategies employed by both parties in the lead-up to the elections, emphasizing the importance of local elections and the potential for political shifts in the state. The conversation highlights the challenges and opportunities facing California politics as voter registration trends show Republicans and independents gaining ground against Democrats.
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Original air date 9.30.25
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$50 million on ads just for Prop 50, which is in less than 40
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days. There is SB-771, which is an
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attack on free speech on social media platforms.
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And in a continued trend, more Republicans are outpacing
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Democrats with voter registration here in the state
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of California is a red. Wave or a red revival happening
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here in California. All that and more on this
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episode of the California Underground Podcast happening
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right now. What's going on, everybody?
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Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the California
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Underground podcast, the most trusted podcast for all things
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California politics. I am your host.
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Phil, we got. A lot to get to tonight,
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including the spending on Prop 50 for the ads.
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Obviously it's in 40. Days, so there's.
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Going to be a lot of money spent on it, over 50 million, I
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believe at this point, SB-771, which is an attack on free
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speech here in California. And then we're going to talk
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about Republicans outpacing Democrats for voter registration
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and. Before we get started, if you
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haven't already, make sure you subscribe, like share, comment,
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review, hit the notification bell so you know when we're
00:01:19
going live or a new video pops up.
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And as always, joining me, my trusty Co host, the best, the
00:01:24
fastest researcher in the West. Camille.
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How are you doing tonight, Camille?
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I'm good, thank you. How are you?
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I am good. A couple housekeeping things.
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Next week I will be out of town. Celebrating my 40th birthday.
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So I will not be doing the podcast on Tuesday, but we will
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probably do it Wednesday or Thursday and we'll let you guys
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know. So there is going to be a
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podcast next week, it just won't be on Tuesday next week, so.
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That's the first thing. Also, we're toying with this
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idea of starting a members only Telegram.
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So a members only Telegram would take the conversation off of,
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you know, Instagram or whatever social media platform we'd be
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able to share with you. Like up-to-the-minute news
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commentary, because there's a lot of news that happens in
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California and we don't always get to it because.
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We can't do all of it in podcasts.
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It'd be two or three hours long and I'm not sure.
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I know you guys love us, but I don't know if you'd TuneIn for a
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three hour podcast. I also don't want to be up until
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11 AM doing it, but there's a lot of things that are
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happening, breaking news and stuff like that, that we want to
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comment on. It'll also be like cultural
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stuff and like our thoughts. Camille and I and you guys would
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be able to comment as well. So if you are watching, you can
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let us know in the comments later or right now if you would
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be interested in joining a telegram or anything about like
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a monthly fee like. 299 or something we're going to try and
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keep it as low as possible if you're interested let us know in
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the chat or in the comments all right should we just dive right
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into our first topic which is prop 50 or do you have something
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you want to talk about I wanted. Just add because I wanted to
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clarify that we're not going anywhere or changing anything
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with the podcast. The Telegram channel would just
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be in addition like it because you said we're taking the
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stories off. There's always going to be that
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on Instagram. It's just more like, you know,
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there's breaking news like every hour at this point and we don't
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get on here and discuss national issues and we don't necessarily
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have all kinds of time to really get deep.
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And it's not like it's like Phil and I being like, oh, we're the
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authority and you know, we are all knowing or anything like
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that. It would, it would definitely be
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a community like, you know, we would be sharing news throughout
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the day and everyone gets to chime in, who's there, give
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opinions, ask questions, all that.
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And we would just like be able to then dive into national
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issues, cultural issues, religious stuff like that.
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So it, it wouldn't change anything regarding the podcast
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or how we run Instagram. It would just be in addition.
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Exactly. Yeah, good point.
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It's it's a good way to it's it's also a good way for people
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who are kind of in this community to connect with each
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other. Like it doesn't have to just be
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me and Camille. It could be to hear what you
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guys have to say. And that way you guys can share
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your opinions throughout the week and you don't have to wait
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for a show every Tuesday or any of the videos that come out
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between them or Instagram or stuff like that.
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So that would be the point of it.
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But with that said, obviously with a short runway for Prop 50,
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there was going to be a lot of money spent on these ads.
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We knew there was going to be a lot of money.
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Charles Munger. Who I, I'm always flabbergasted
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how much money people like the mongers have because he just
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like no problem like cuts a $10 million check for Prop 50.
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Like he just drops money like it's crazy, but people are
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dropping money left and right. It's like I said, I think the
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total is over 50 million at this point.
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It's going to go like even higher by the time we get to
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November. I could at this point, I imagine
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it's probably going to be like $100 million in money spent on
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this Prop 50 campaign between the four and the against.
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There was an ad though that came out the other day and I saw it
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and I was, I, I don't want to say I'm shocked because I was
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fully expecting them to go this route, but we'll just go ahead
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and we'll just go ahead and, and watch it and then we'll, we'll
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add our commentary. If you want to want me to pause,
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let me know. We'll pause there.
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Who's behind the campaign against Prop 50 mega millionaire
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Charles Munger Junior. What's Munger's game?
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Munger gave lavishly to anti abortion and anti LGBT
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extremists. There it is.
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There it is, 11 seconds in. They couldn't help themselves.
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They just couldn't help themselves.
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What is Prop 50 about? Well.
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It's it's about abortion. They.
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Were too old it was for to save democracy.
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No, now it's about abortion. It's about abortion.
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Democrats, they they have their ace in the hole and they, they
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just can't wait. They just can't wait to play it.
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And I guess with only 40 days, less than 40 days, they had to
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play abortion right away. And I was like, OK, I mean,
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sure, you, you don't have much time.
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You might as well play that card as soon as and I imagine this is
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going to be played a lot. And yeah, so they're playing
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that right away. He's spending millions to help
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Trump rig the election. And there's the second part.
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So we got the the, the double whammy of Democratic strategy in
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basically any election anywhere. That has nothing to do with
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Trump or anything like that. Trump and abortion, that's all
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they're going to say is Trump, abortion, Trump abortion.
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They're going to be yelling from the rooftops about Trump and
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abortion from here. Until November, even though that
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has quite literally nothing to do with what this fight is
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about. But.
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They're going to scream it. They're going.
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To scream it. The Kelborn to GOP.
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I'm sorry, the Kelborn to GOP needs to quickly release a deck
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of cards just like this with all proceeds going to fight Prop 50.
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That'd be fine. Like like these cards with
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Charles Munger and Trump on you. Know at our our nine
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congressional our congressional politicians that we have in
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California, all nine of them. All nine, it wouldn't cover the
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whole deck, but you know. He.
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Puts our elections back on a level playing field, protects
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independent redistricting, and gives the power to the people of
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California stop. No, no, no, I hate that line
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because it is so. And, and I don't know if you've
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noticed, not only in this ad, but like all the ads that are
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for Prop 50, they all kind of, they, they say the squishy
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language of like it's to return power to the people and preserve
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democracy. And they kind of say like across
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the country, they kind of allude to like it's to protect
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democracy across the country. And it's like, no, no, no, no,
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this is a California specific thing.
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All they're doing is redistricting to disenfranchise
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voters here in California. And this has nothing to do with
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protecting democracy across the country.
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But they they like to say these vague things about protecting
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democracy and give power to the people.
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You're not giving power to the people because the people voted
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to have an independent Commission back in 2008, I
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believe was a 2008 with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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That's why he's so adamantly against this.
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And they, the people said we want an independent Commission.
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Polls show that people support the independent Commission.
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The people of California said they support the independent
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Commission. And now they're saying it's
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power to the people. No, no, it's it's power to
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legislative Democrats up in Sacramento and their kind of
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connected lobbyists and their. Buddies like Paul Mitchell, who
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are redrawing the maps, who's married to Jody Hicks, who is
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the head of the Planned Parent Parenthood PAC.
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So draw from that. What you will, But it has
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nothing to do with power of the people.
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It's we're giving the power that we had with the independent
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commissioning and we're giving it right back to the legislature
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and they're going to gerrymander the hell out of this state just
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for their own political gain. So it has nothing to do with
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power to the people, that's for sure.
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Trump and Monger's gain and save democracy, Yes.
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And save, save democracy. So that's one of their ads.
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I mean, it's 20 seconds. Obviously they're going to scare
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you with the abortion and Trump and how they have to give, you
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know, the power to the people. It's all about democracy.
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So they hit the whole Democratic like trifecta of like golden
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talking points, which is it's about abortion, it's about
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Trump, and it's about protecting democracy.
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First off, like I said, we're not voting on abortion.
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That's enshrined in the California Constitution, OK?
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Nothing's going to happen to your abortion rights here in
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California. It's enshrined in the California
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Constitution. When they overturned Roe V.
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Wade, it didn't ban abortions. It just said it went back to the
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states, and California voted to add it to the Constitution.
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So no abortion rights are going to be harmed here in California
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by voting yes or no on Prop 50. Trump.
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They keep trying to blame all of this redistricting in Texas on
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Trump, which we were, you know, lucky enough to have Mark, Mike
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Garcia explain this to us. I didn't even know this.
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This all came from a federal ruling in a federal case started
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by the Biden DOJ against Texas because of their maps, saying
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that their maps were not properly drawn or that they
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didn't include the right, you know?
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Communities or minorities or something like that.
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So that is not Trump didn't start the redistricting in
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Texas. And then finally, you're not
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protecting democracy because you are disenfranchising voters.
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Like you're having people who are way up in the state of
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Jefferson, and I think it's in Mocab or I'm trying to remember
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the name of the county, Moab or Mocab is being drawn into
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Mendocino County, which is heavily blue.
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So you have a heavily red district that is reaching out
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and grabbing Democratic voters from Mendocino County, obviously
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Napa Valley, all that and trying to turn it more leaning blue
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rather than strong red. So no, it's not about protecting
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democracy. You're actually disenfranchising
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voters here in California. But that's what they're going to
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play. They're going to play that on
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rerun. I bet you're going to see that
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over the next month and it's going to drive you nuts over the
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month of October. So what are?
00:12:03
What are your? Thoughts about this entire ad?
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I feel like you actually said most of the stuff that I was
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going to say. I'm going over my my notes real
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quick because like, as you mentioned, abortion is already
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codified into our state constitution.
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It's not going anywhere. We're not.
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I don't even think Republicans are trying to take that away.
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I think they gave up on that. Like maybe in a red state,
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they're fighting for a bit in California.
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I don't even think anyone's like addressing that honestly.
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And let's see, yeah, so I literally wrote exactly what you
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said because I was like this. This quickly changed from
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fighting Trump and saving democracy to all of a sudden
00:12:43
MAGA, anti abortion, anti LGBTQ. So I think, I think that's
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pretty much my notes on it. I'm just checking if I had any,
00:12:51
you know, sassy remarks. I don't think I did.
00:12:55
OK, Well then we we kind of nailed it.
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I guess that's that was it. There was a, I'm trying to think
00:13:03
I, I saw this, I want to see if I can pull it up, but I must
00:13:07
have lost the tweet. I, I see so many tweets over the
00:13:11
course of the week that, you know, I, I should have
00:13:16
bookmarked it. But this all came about because
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I saw that they had spent like 50 million on, between the two
00:13:26
of them, they've already spent like 50 million on all of this.
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And we're barely into October. And I, the big push is going to
00:13:36
be in October when we're getting close.
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It's going to be down to the wire.
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It's going to be those last two weeks.
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And we're spending millions and millions of dollars on these
00:13:47
ads. So I, I fully expect that
00:13:49
there's going to be 100 million dumped into this.
00:13:53
Special election. Now that's not counting the fact
00:13:56
that we as taxpayers are going to end up paying probably around
00:14:01
280, three, $100 million just for this special election just
00:14:05
to do this. So those are two different
00:14:08
numbers. We have the 50 million right
00:14:09
now. Which is the running total for
00:14:11
what they're spending on campaign ads.
00:14:14
Not to mention Gavin Newsom's whole pack is raising what what
00:14:18
George Soros dropped like $10 million into.
00:14:20
His pack for this like. This has become like the new
00:14:25
recall for Newsom. He figured out the recall was a
00:14:28
great way to make money. It was a great way for him to
00:14:30
raise money because he took that war chest, turned it into the
00:14:34
campaign for democracy or whatever the heck he calls his.
00:14:37
His pack that we all know is going to be funneled into his
00:14:40
presidential pack the minute he runs for president.
00:14:43
And that's what this all is. If you don't understand that,
00:14:46
politicians can kind of set up these packs and stuff and then
00:14:49
raise money. And then those packs, when they
00:14:52
get dissolved, they can shovel money to different packs or they
00:14:55
can shovel it to campaigns. So this is all just a great way
00:15:00
for him to build a war chest going into 2028, win or lose.
00:15:04
Gavin Newsom is going to make a ton of money off of this for his
00:15:07
presidential run. And we're all just going to be
00:15:10
sitting here going, why the hell are we losing our
00:15:13
representatives because you don't like Trump or something
00:15:15
like that? Oh, because we're saving
00:15:16
democracy or something like that.
00:15:18
We're saving. Abortion.
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Really. We're saving abortion, which
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again is enshrined in the California Constitution.
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There's nothing you can do not it's.
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Nothing's going to be affected here like, and I don't know how
00:15:31
to talk like I can say that until I'm blue in the face, but
00:15:35
people will really think that like that.
00:15:38
Anything that well outside of them passing a congressional
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federal law. Banning abortion, which they
00:15:44
would never do because it'd be political suicide for
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Republicans, nothing outside of that is going to change what
00:15:51
happens here in California when it comes to abortion.
00:15:54
So a state proposition about redistricting has nothing to do
00:16:00
with abortion. But they had to get that in
00:16:02
there. They had to get the Charles
00:16:03
Munger's anti abortion. OK.
00:16:06
So I don't know, should we also say, like Charles Munger is like
00:16:09
a San Francisco Giants fan and like, if you're a Dodgers fan,
00:16:12
you should vote no or yes on Prop 50 because you don't like
00:16:16
the Giants? Like.
00:16:17
Let's just bring in all. Other extraneous things that
00:16:20
have nothing to do with. It I would like to discuss his
00:16:22
race or religion because that's really what's important.
00:16:25
Sure. I mean, that's that has
00:16:27
everything to do with the redistricting right now and and
00:16:31
what the fight of Prop 50 is all about.
00:16:33
But that's basically the update. So that's what's going on in
00:16:37
Prop 50. You're going to start seeing
00:16:38
these ads. If you haven't already started
00:16:40
seeing these ads, these ads are going to start popping up even
00:16:42
on YouTube, which is the worst. Even if you're not watching
00:16:45
local TV or network TV. You know someone said I heard he
00:16:51
sweats too. Well, sweating's bad too.
00:16:53
Someone said in the comments that he sweats.
00:16:55
They can't have that. Got to vote, brushes his.
00:16:57
Teeth. You might eat Graham crackers
00:17:00
like you never know. This guy's wild and out over
00:17:03
there and we're not. Even got to, got to.
00:17:06
Vote yes on all of this so. Which, yeah, I was going to say
00:17:10
hi, Chad. I see, I see people are
00:17:12
chatting. I'm blind.
00:17:13
You guys like I have to be like this to read, to read the
00:17:16
comments. But hi, I see you guys are
00:17:18
chatting. Thanks for joining us.
00:17:20
OK, wait, hold on. I found it.
00:17:23
Let's see. I'm going to pull it up right
00:17:25
now. So this was from this is the
00:17:29
tweet. Ad spang for the California
00:17:31
redistricting referendum has topped 50 million per ad impact
00:17:35
poll since the start of September.
00:17:36
Supporters have spent about 32 booking ad time,
00:17:40
opponents about 27. So kind of right down the middle
00:17:45
as of this point. So a little close.
00:17:48
I mean, 4 is going to spend a little bit more.
00:17:50
But all right, next story, which a lot of people have been asking
00:17:55
us to cover. I just released a video a couple
00:17:58
days ago, kind of going into it, I'm not going to go as in depth.
00:18:02
If you want to go watch the video, it just got released this
00:18:05
morning. It's kind of going into my legal
00:18:07
theories as to why I think SB-771 is completely
00:18:12
unconstitutional and why it's likely never going to see the
00:18:15
light of day, but. Doesn't mean I.
00:18:17
Didn't want to talk about it on the live so I can get your guys
00:18:20
opinion and those in the chat and stuff like that and also
00:18:23
Camille's opinion as well. So somebody said hey Camille to
00:18:28
you in the chat. So hi somebody.
00:18:32
So I said, oh, I know that that I guess that you're checking the
00:18:35
comments. So yeah, Camille sees the
00:18:36
comments too. So it's not just me.
00:18:38
So if you want to give a shout out to Camille or ask her a
00:18:41
question, feel free to do so. So let's watch this clip real
00:18:45
quick about SB-771 and then we'll discuss afterwards.
00:18:52
Major heat online tonight over proposed California law It
00:18:55
attempts to hold social media companies accountable for
00:18:58
threatening content. But some conservative social
00:19:00
media accounts and personalities have been warning that it could
00:19:03
severely limit free speech and result in major penalties
00:19:07
against people. KCR Three's political director
00:19:09
Ashley Zavala is getting the facts on this proposal.
00:19:14
To. Silence us on social media.
00:19:17
A proposed California law is getting into the center of the
00:19:20
free speech debate online. Former reality TV star turned
00:19:23
political activist Spencer Pratt posting this video Thursday
00:19:28
urging people to call Governor Newsom to reject Senate Bill
00:19:31
771. The bill specifically targets
00:19:34
major social media platforms such as Facebook and X.
00:19:38
It would place up to $1 fines and civil penalties for
00:19:42
the role platforms could play in hate crimes by amplifying
00:19:45
threatening content or using algorithms that push it.
00:19:48
State law already punishes individual people who do so.
00:19:53
I would guarantee you that knew some things me calling him out
00:19:57
for letting 12 senior citizens burn alive in Pacific Palaces.
00:20:01
I would guarantee him and his social media team would consider
00:20:05
that hateful content. In no way shape or I'm.
00:20:09
Going to say something that's probably unpopular opinion and I
00:20:15
know we've we've reached out to him to be on the show, but I
00:20:17
guess he's too busy. I think Spencer Pratt thinks the
00:20:23
governor cares more about him than he really does.
00:20:26
That might be an unpopular opinion.
00:20:28
I think Spencer Pratt thinks he pushes the buttons that make
00:20:31
things happen in Sacramento with Gavin Newsom.
00:20:33
But that's just my thought. I don't know.
00:20:38
Or is that accurate? Go ahead.
00:20:41
I think Spencer misunderstands this bill.
00:20:45
I think a lot of people misunderstand this bill because
00:20:49
I feel like Spencer's comment was basically like, governor is
00:20:54
going to Newsom is going to go after me and fine me.
00:20:56
He didn't say that. But I, I think that's kind of
00:20:58
what his thought process was, is I'm personally going to get
00:21:00
fined for what I say. And that's why he's passing this
00:21:03
bill. And I know we're going to dive
00:21:05
into, it's not attacking, it's not fining individuals.
00:21:10
We'll we'll get into that. You can roll the video.
00:21:12
Ed Howard is the senior legal counsel for the Children's
00:21:15
Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School
00:21:18
of Law. He helped Democratic lawmakers
00:21:20
write the proposal. The First Amendment protects
00:21:24
offensive, salacious, you know, insensitive, horrifying,
00:21:31
terrible things that people say. Bill is, in fact, about the
00:21:36
right of Mr. Pratt, the right of me and the right of every single
00:21:40
one of your viewers to be protected from threats of
00:21:45
violence in response to his speech, if those threats of
00:21:51
violence would legitimately and reasonably place a regular old
00:21:56
person in fear for their lives or being harmed.
00:22:01
Is this an attack? I think I said this in the video
00:22:05
that came out this morning, but it's it's worth repeating with
00:22:10
Mr. Howard here. First off, there is this is just
00:22:16
proof that you can find any lawyer, law professor to spew
00:22:19
whatever crazy legal theory that fits your political narrative as
00:22:24
long as you're a authority like a law professor or something
00:22:27
like that. Is what he's describing what
00:22:31
basically got Charlie Kirk killed?
00:22:35
Like, is that like, is that what we're describing?
00:22:38
Because he's saying, well, this bill protects you from people
00:22:44
being violent against you for the speed, like for what you
00:22:48
incite. Well, First off, I'm gonna that
00:22:50
kind of like weird tangential logical chain doesn't make sense
00:22:54
to me. But is he saying that like
00:22:57
social media companies aren't doing enough to police the
00:23:00
violence that is incited by social media and people on
00:23:03
social media? Does he feel like Charlie Kirk
00:23:07
was a victim of people calling out Charlie Kirk and calling him
00:23:10
a Nazi and stuff like that and inciting people to violence and
00:23:14
to anybody else? I wonder if.
00:23:16
He feels the same way about what happened to Charlie Kirk
00:23:21
regarding this bill. Because as far as I have like
00:23:24
Charlie Kirk is the most prominent person to suffer
00:23:28
violence at the hands of probably people on social media
00:23:31
who didn't like Charlie Kirk. So I don't know, I was just my
00:23:36
thoughts on it. I wonder if you felt the same
00:23:37
way about that? That's a good question.
00:23:42
Yeah, I'd love to ask Mr. Howard.
00:23:44
So do you mean like this Bill was kind of inspired by what
00:23:48
happened to Charlie Kirk and all the people on social media who
00:23:51
were basically cheering that he was dead or like, that is it?
00:23:56
Is it this whole idea of like they're cheering that Charlie
00:23:58
Kirk's dead? So now there's.
00:24:00
More people who think it's great to go out and target
00:24:03
conservatives. Is that what this bill is
00:24:05
supposed to protect against? I mean, this bill, this whole
00:24:07
bill is very confusing. Anyway, I want to get into the
00:24:10
text in a minute, but just kind of something to ponder.
00:24:16
The government dictate what social media companies can keep.
00:24:20
Up or down? No, it's the other way around.
00:24:23
If if look, one thing that ought to unite everybody on the
00:24:27
political spectrum is nobody should be trusting the social
00:24:30
media platforms to be the guardians of our free speech.
00:24:34
But social media companies? We're trusting the government to
00:24:38
be the guardians of our free speech.
00:24:40
Who are we trusting? Right, You took the words out of
00:24:42
my mouth. That was We should be trusting
00:24:45
bureaucrats and legislators in Sacramento because who's?
00:24:47
Going to be policing this, probably some sort of
00:24:50
bureaucratic agency that they're going to set up is going to be.
00:24:53
Protecting our free speech by looking out for hateful content
00:24:56
that they don't like. Or fighting the bill and have
00:24:59
warned that it violates the First Amendment.
00:25:02
While the bill seeks to hold platforms accountable for
00:25:04
egregious behavior, it's structure risk sweeping and
00:25:07
protected speech and imposing extraordinary penalties based on
00:25:10
subjective judgments about user content, including content the
00:25:14
platform did not create. Axis Global Government Affairs
00:25:18
account posted in part It's alarming that California
00:25:21
lawmakers sworn to uphold the Constitution have so brazenly
00:25:24
ignored their oath. Governor Gavin Newsom has until
00:25:27
October 13th to decide what to do with it at the state Capitol.
00:25:31
Ashley Zavala KCRA 3 News. Well, we reached out to the
00:25:35
governor. All right, so that's a little
00:25:37
bit about SB-771. Let's pull up the exact text
00:25:42
here. A lot of people in the chat are
00:25:44
getting this right. It it doesn't fine you
00:25:47
personally, so let's just get that out of the way.
00:25:49
It's not fining individuals personally, so it's not going
00:25:54
after you. So if you say something hateful
00:25:56
that they deem well, I say hateful.
00:25:59
It's a subjective term that they may call hateful, but they may
00:26:04
say it's hateful and then they go after the social media
00:26:07
company. And then what that does is it
00:26:09
creates this fear with the social media companies that
00:26:12
anything that's borderline could be hateful, they're just going
00:26:16
to start taking down so they don't find you.
00:26:19
But think of it as the way. A good way to think about.
00:26:22
It is like, let's go back to 2020 when COVID was rampant and
00:26:27
social media companies and Google even admitted recently
00:26:30
that the Biden administration leaned on them really heavily in
00:26:32
2021 to kind of censor the speech that was against their
00:26:37
vaccine and COVID protocols. Now imagine that scenario today
00:26:43
where California bureaucrats can lean on these social media
00:26:46
companies and say. Well, if you don't stop this
00:26:50
hateful speech, we're going to start fining you 500 to
00:26:53
$1 for every single infraction.
00:26:55
And it that adds up. I mean with the amount of people
00:26:58
who are online every single day that could add.
00:27:01
Up really quickly even for these big social media giants who
00:27:04
don't want to be paying 10s of millions of dollars or hundreds
00:27:07
of millions of dollars out. So what happens is is the social
00:27:12
media companies then get trigger happy where everything they
00:27:16
don't think is. Everything that could be
00:27:19
questionable, they're going to start getting rid of you or
00:27:22
banning you or shadow banning you or something like that,
00:27:24
which is exactly what happened during COVID, which is anything
00:27:28
that the federal government didn't like or thought was
00:27:31
dangerous under COVID protocols. They're like, oh, you can't
00:27:35
question vaccines. You can't bring up this, you
00:27:37
can't bring up that. You can't ask like, you know,
00:27:39
whether immunity is fine, all that stuff, because we're
00:27:42
getting pressure from the federal government now.
00:27:45
We have to start taking all this stuff down.
00:27:47
But now that the tide has turned and there's a cultural shift, it
00:27:50
would trump in the the White House.
00:27:51
And I think also Elon taking over X has kind of changed a lot
00:27:56
of this. Things seem to be a lot.
00:27:59
More open-ended. Even Mark Zuckerberg got rid of
00:28:01
his. What was it his like?
00:28:03
Fact checking office or whatever, he is no longer as a
00:28:06
fact checking team. It's basically like the Wild
00:28:09
West out here on social media again.
00:28:11
So that's where it kind of impinges on our free speech on
00:28:17
these platforms because now all of a sudden they're going to
00:28:21
start clamping down on what people can say.
00:28:25
And I know there's the whole, well, First Amendment doesn't
00:28:28
protect whether like what, you know, private companies do and
00:28:31
that stuff. And but it tangentially the
00:28:34
government kind of threatening these private companies to shut
00:28:40
down speech. I think is a vile that's when
00:28:43
the government starts getting involved and then it becomes an
00:28:46
issue of the government stepping in and trampling on your free
00:28:49
speech. Before we get into the text, did
00:28:51
you have any thoughts? I have thoughts and questions
00:28:55
real quick. I believe Google is actually a
00:28:57
public company, Alphabet, which owns Google, YouTube, etcetera.
00:29:03
And so I know that the government can impose certain
00:29:07
regulations, but, and I know you're going to get into the
00:29:10
legal side of this, which I appreciate.
00:29:12
But something about this, like as you mentioned, they're,
00:29:16
they're going to start censoring us in the sense of we might be
00:29:20
allowed to say it. But then if they're threatened
00:29:23
with, you know, 500 to $1 per offense, of
00:29:27
course, they're going to start shadow banning us or, you know,
00:29:31
deleting our post or whatever, telling us it goes against their
00:29:34
guidelines, all that sort of stuff.
00:29:36
So I think a few interesting things about this is that, you
00:29:41
know, it was last year, I'm sorry, my text message last year
00:29:46
that Mark Zuckerberg admitted he was under pressure from the
00:29:49
Biden administration to censor what they deemed misinformation
00:29:54
for COVID. And then he went on Joe Rogan in
00:29:57
January. And then this bill was authored
00:30:00
I think in February. And interesting timing is that
00:30:04
it passed the 22nd, like September 22nd last week.
00:30:09
And then the 23rd was when that letter came out from Google
00:30:14
saying the Biden administration had pressured them into removing
00:30:19
certain comment contact, sorry, content.
00:30:23
I can say the word as well. I thought that was such an
00:30:26
interesting timing. I had a point.
00:30:30
I was good at going somewhere with this.
00:30:32
Oh, OK. So this law, if signed, doesn't
00:30:36
go into effect until January 2027.
00:30:40
And again, this is one of those things where I feel like that's
00:30:44
when we know that Newsom will be like announcing his presidency,
00:30:48
you know, hopefully announcing his his campaign.
00:30:51
And it's almost like I need to silence them when it's my time
00:30:55
to shine. And I need to make sure that
00:30:58
anything, you know, because now that they've admitted they were
00:31:01
pressured under the Biden administration, he's kind of
00:31:04
like, and I know he didn't author this, but I feel like
00:31:07
he's like maybe a little bit shaken in his boots over there
00:31:10
with like, how do get them quiet again?
00:31:13
And this only applies to large social media platforms that are
00:31:19
based in California. But that is, you know, made a
00:31:24
meta, however you say that, which is Facebook Threads,
00:31:26
Instagram, and then there's X and then Google, YouTube.
00:31:30
So I think it's linked into Pinterest.
00:31:34
I don't think anyone's being political and Pinterest, but who
00:31:36
knows? So, yeah, this is kind of kind
00:31:40
of wild. Also the timing again, because
00:31:45
it was like 10 days ago that they were all in tears and, you
00:31:48
know, clutching their pearls over Jimmy Kimmel possibly being
00:31:52
cancelled. And this is the government
00:31:54
canceling him. This is the government blocking
00:31:58
free speech, and we can't have the government interfering with
00:32:01
free speech, and yet this is the government interfering with free
00:32:04
speech. So what, dude?
00:32:07
I said to you before we hopped on.
00:32:08
California is absolutely drunk right now.
00:32:11
Like they don't even know what the heck they're doing at this
00:32:13
point. It's insanity, you guys.
00:32:17
OK. Yeah, I had a thought about it
00:32:23
legally. All right, let's take a look at
00:32:24
the language because I had a thought and then I.
00:32:25
Was going to say something but. All right, so this is the bill
00:32:29
itself. California law prohibits all
00:32:32
persons and enemies, including corporations, from engaging in,
00:32:34
aiding, abetting, or conspiring to commit acts of violence,
00:32:37
intimidation, or coercion based on race, religion, gender,
00:32:40
sexual orientation, immigration status, or other protected
00:32:42
characteristics. These are well established civil
00:32:46
rights statutes. California has a compelling
00:32:48
interest, and I'll get into that in a second.
00:32:51
Why they put compelling interest in protecting its residents from
00:32:54
targeted threats, violence and course of harassment.
00:32:57
Particularly when directed at historically marginalized
00:32:59
groups. That interest is especially
00:33:01
acute in light of rising incidents of hate.
00:33:04
Hate motivated harm is documented across the state as
00:33:07
follows. The LA County Commission on
00:33:10
Human Relations reporting 24 that hate crimes involving anti
00:33:14
immigrant slurs increased by 31%, which marks the highest
00:33:17
since 2007. Human Rights Campaign Center for
00:33:20
countering digital hate of documentary. 400% rise in anti
00:33:24
LGBTQ plus disinformation, harmful rhetoric.
00:33:28
According to the Department of Justice data, anti Jewish bias
00:33:31
events rose by 52.9% and anti Islamic bias events rose by 62%
00:33:36
in 2023. Keep going on.
00:33:39
In light of these trends, the Legislature affirms the urgent
00:33:41
need to ensure that Californian civil rights protections apply
00:33:45
with equal force in the digital sphere.
00:33:47
The purpose of this act is to not regulate speech or
00:33:50
viewpoint. Also a really important thing,
00:33:53
but to clarify that social media platforms, like all other
00:33:56
businesses, may not knowingly use their systems to promote,
00:33:58
facilitate or contribute. To conduct that.
00:34:00
Violates state civil right laws and then also it goes on to the
00:34:04
punishment all the way down here.
00:34:06
So couple things about this. First off, there are things that
00:34:13
Mister Howard put in here because I think he thought this
00:34:16
would get him past any court under First Amendment or the
00:34:19
California Constitution. And I had talked about this,
00:34:23
that the California Constitution, its liberty of
00:34:27
speech clause is actually broader than that of the 1st
00:34:32
Amendment. So it actually protects more
00:34:35
than what the 1st Amendment protects.
00:34:37
So there was a case law that I had cited.
00:34:40
It's the Pruneyard case, where basically it said that there's
00:34:44
free speech rights. You have liberty of speech even
00:34:48
at a private forum like a shopping mall, because it's a
00:34:51
place where people go and they gather and they were handing out
00:34:54
pamphlets and their speech. What that was free speech was
00:34:57
allowed to get them to hand out pamphlets.
00:34:59
Now Fast forward to today, Let's think of like the digital
00:35:02
shopping mall, the public forum where people are.
00:35:05
It's social media and people are on social media and they're
00:35:08
giving out their ideas and they're giving out information
00:35:10
and they're putting up posts and people like them or they don't
00:35:12
like them and stuff like that. And you have free speech.
00:35:15
So does the California Constitution apply in this case?
00:35:19
Absolutely. Do I think it's bigger than the
00:35:23
First Amendment and that it protects more?
00:35:25
Absolutely. The two things that are
00:35:30
important here. And I don't really want to bore
00:35:32
people, but if you have thoughts or comments in the chat, you can
00:35:35
let me know if I can clarify them for you.
00:35:38
One they say California has a compelling interest in
00:35:42
protecting its residents whenever the government comes up
00:35:46
with a law regulating speech. And it's based on content of
00:35:52
that speech. And in this case, it's the
00:35:54
content of the speech that they're regulating, which is,
00:35:57
well, we don't like what you're saying about this group or that
00:36:00
group. And we think it's hateful.
00:36:01
And that's content because you literally are saying whatever
00:36:05
you are saying, the content of your speech, we don't like.
00:36:07
So we're going to start regulating it.
00:36:09
The only way that they have found Supreme Court
00:36:13
jurisprudence or case law precedence is.
00:36:17
There has to be a compelling interest for why you're
00:36:20
regulating this speech. Anything content based has to go
00:36:24
under this thing called the strict scrutiny test.
00:36:27
And that basically means a compelling interest.
00:36:29
You need a compelling interest and a compelling interest.
00:36:32
A compelling state interest is like the highest bar to pass for
00:36:37
the person who's writing this law in.
00:36:39
Compelling state interest is usually like national security,
00:36:43
like we need to protect the country.
00:36:44
So that's why this is a compelling state interest.
00:36:47
Other than that, there's not really a lot that passes
00:36:50
compelling state interests and the strict scrutiny test.
00:36:54
So I think Mr. Howard thought he was being clever by saying, oh,
00:36:58
there's a compelling interest, but is it a compelling interest?
00:37:02
Like, is it that important to trample on people's right to
00:37:04
free speech because you want to start policing subjectively what
00:37:09
you think is hateful or harmful speech on social media?
00:37:13
And then it goes on to say there is an urgent need to ensure
00:37:17
California civil rights protections apply with equal
00:37:20
force in the digital sphere. The purpose of this act is to
00:37:23
not regulate speech or viewpoint.
00:37:26
That's actually exactly what this is doing.
00:37:29
This is exactly regulating. It's so urgent it's not going to
00:37:34
go into effect until 2027. It's very urgent that we have to
00:37:37
wait a whole year, probably because they have to set some
00:37:39
bureaucratic agency up, some bureaucratic watchdog.
00:37:44
But he says, oh, the person's act is not to regulate speech.
00:37:46
Basically he's trying to get around that whole content based
00:37:50
argument. Well, it's not content based
00:37:52
because we're not regulating your speech or your viewpoint.
00:37:54
OK, then what are you regulating?
00:37:56
Because your whole thing is we're going after every time we
00:37:59
see social media allowing or promoting hateful speech, OK,
00:38:06
that's someone's speech or their viewpoint on something and
00:38:10
that's what you're regulating. So those two things that he
00:38:14
tried to be clever and figure, well, if I just throw these
00:38:17
things in there, it's going to stand up in court.
00:38:20
And in reality, it's not going to stand up in court.
00:38:23
That's my professional opinion. It's not going to stand up in
00:38:25
court because you're regulating based on the content of the
00:38:28
speech. The 1st Amendment is very
00:38:30
against content based speech regulations.
00:38:33
The California Constitution, liberty of speech is even
00:38:36
broader. So in the end, do I think this
00:38:40
is ever going to see the light of day?
00:38:41
It may not even get signed. You know, Governor Newsom, who
00:38:44
we know is a very savvy politician, knows that if he
00:38:49
signs something like this, it will be hung over his head in
00:38:52
2028 about him trying to trample speech.
00:38:54
Oh, this was my last point that I wanted to talk about because
00:38:57
you had brought it up about Newsom running in 2028.
00:39:01
It's funny how. And this goes for both parties,
00:39:04
really. When social media was working
00:39:08
against you, that party wanted to crack down on social media.
00:39:13
So in 2020, it was Trump who was all about repeal Section 230.
00:39:18
We don't need to Section 230. It's, it's harmful because
00:39:22
they're censoring me or whatever he was saying back then.
00:39:26
So he wanted to repeal Section 2:30, which ironically would be
00:39:30
the federal law that protects the social media companies from
00:39:33
liability of what's published on their websites and on their
00:39:37
platforms. So Section 230 actually comes
00:39:39
all the way full circle and protects the social media
00:39:41
companies and strikes down something like this.
00:39:44
But now, because social media has changed completely, with
00:39:48
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg changing their tune, and it's
00:39:52
helped like the conservative movement in the whole country,
00:39:57
now all of a sudden it's not really a big issue for
00:39:58
Republicans. But because Democrats have lost
00:40:01
control of social media and it's no longer beneficial to that,
00:40:05
they don't have them in their back pocket anymore where they
00:40:07
can go tell Mark Zuckerberg, hey, go censor that person.
00:40:10
You know, go censor that person on Facebook and Instagram.
00:40:13
Hey, gosh, what's his name? The old CEO of Twitter, Jack
00:40:18
Dorsey. Hey, Jack, go censor these
00:40:20
people on Twitter, You know, ban Donald Trump off it.
00:40:22
Like get all these people off. We don't like these people on
00:40:24
Twitter spreading like what? We don't like, you know, speech
00:40:27
we hate. They call it hate speech.
00:40:29
I think it's speech they hate. Now it's flipped the other way.
00:40:33
Democrats are like, whoa, now we need to regulate social media
00:40:36
because they're saying stuff that we don't like about us and
00:40:39
they're spreading all this different information.
00:40:41
So it's interesting the power dynamic of like.
00:40:45
When the shoes on the other foot, Democrats when social
00:40:48
media companies were in their back pocket, Democrats love
00:40:51
social media companies. But now because it's flipped
00:40:54
completely and there's been this whole cultural movement and
00:40:57
cultural change, now they want to regulate the hell out of
00:41:00
social media and penalize them. So I hope that I hope that
00:41:05
helps. If anybody has any questions in
00:41:07
the comments or if you have any questions and thoughts, Camille,
00:41:10
let me know this. This is totally different, I
00:41:14
know. But this reminded me of my own
00:41:17
lawsuit, which was based off of social media content that, you
00:41:22
know, I had put up where I questioned a political candidate
00:41:27
and I was sued into silence over it or sued to be silenced.
00:41:33
I should say I don't, I don't know how much I should share
00:41:37
because I need to be careful. But you were my lawyer.
00:41:40
We won. But I, you know, I was
00:41:42
definitely sued to, to be silenced over raising questions
00:41:46
of a political candidate. And that's exactly what they're
00:41:50
trying to prevent here, I think is they don't want their party
00:41:55
to be like they don't, they don't want people putting on
00:41:58
information that is like, well, this this particular person,
00:42:02
this particular politician, this because I could easily say
00:42:06
something about my next door neighbor.
00:42:08
My next door neighbor is fantastic.
00:42:09
She's my friend, but my next door neighbor on social media.
00:42:12
And then someone could decide that I am basing it off of her
00:42:16
race or her sexual orientation or that she's running for an
00:42:21
office and she's the opposite political party of mine.
00:42:24
And now it's, you know, if YouTube allows me to say this or
00:42:29
if Instagram allows me to keep up the post or whatever, it's
00:42:32
hate speech. And now they're pushing it.
00:42:34
And now they're being fined somewhere up to a billion
00:42:37
dollars. I feel like, yes, this already
00:42:39
isn't going to stand up in court because of Section 230, because
00:42:43
of free speech, because of the 1st Amendment and everything.
00:42:46
But I can also see that if this does go through, I think the
00:42:48
state of California is just going to be sued left and right
00:42:51
immediately because as soon as they're trying to find, they're
00:42:53
going to be like, oh, we're not paying that.
00:42:55
We're just going to take our business out of California and
00:42:57
sue you. Like that's what I see happening
00:43:00
here. I don't think that these large
00:43:01
companies are going to bow to Newsome and the Democrats and be
00:43:05
like, oh, OK, we, you know, our algorithm pushed that content.
00:43:09
And so, you know, here's $1.
00:43:12
Here's $3. Well, didn't mean to do it
00:43:14
again. No, they're going to leave.
00:43:16
They're just going to be like, OK, we now operate Facebook,
00:43:20
Instagram, YouTube, out of Delaware, you know, whatever.
00:43:23
They're not going to be here. No.
00:43:26
And I don't even know how you prove that they were knowingly
00:43:28
or willingly promoting that stuff like that.
00:43:30
That's. What I was going to say.
00:43:32
Sorry, that's no idea how you promote that A.
00:43:34
Lawsuit was that there was the burden of proof of like were
00:43:38
they being malicious or were they genuinely asking questions?
00:43:43
So that's why, sorry, that's how I was going to wrap it up in
00:43:45
comparison to my lawsuit was that, you know, how do you prove
00:43:49
exactly that their their intent was bad, their algorithm, they
00:43:53
pushed it, whatever. Someone had asked why do
00:43:58
anything said isn't that forcing the platforms to go against the
00:44:01
Constitution, not that it hasn't happened before.
00:44:05
Yeah, you're. Forcing.
00:44:07
Well, you're forcing the platforms.
00:44:13
And in that video, they kind of showed some of the lawyers from
00:44:17
Meta were there at the Capitol saying like, you can't do this
00:44:20
as a fringement on free speech because it's the government
00:44:24
forcing a platform to change and regulate speech on their behalf.
00:44:30
That's I think the causal connection here.
00:44:33
Now, assuming the reason that this makes the free speech
00:44:38
argument and the you know, the the libertarian argument is.
00:44:42
Well, they're a private company that can do whatever they want.
00:44:44
However, if it was a private company that just started one
00:44:48
day and they said let's take like Rumble for example, and I'm
00:44:51
not saying this is what Rumble does.
00:44:53
Let's say Rumble started and they said, guess what?
00:44:56
We're going to be a completely conservative YouTube.
00:45:00
We're not going to let anybody who's left-leaning on Rumble,
00:45:04
OK? Doesn't matter.
00:45:06
It's our platform, we pay for it, whatever.
00:45:09
They're allowed to do that as a private company.
00:45:11
You just got to deal with it. You got to play ball.
00:45:14
The problem is when the government steps in and starts
00:45:17
forcing these private companies to do it on their behalf, that's
00:45:21
when it becomes an issue. And it also becomes an issue
00:45:25
with chilling free speech, where people now stop speaking or
00:45:29
allowing speech because of government threats and
00:45:32
government fines. So that's basically what these
00:45:35
companies are going to do or what they're being forced to do
00:45:38
is violate people's free speech via the government.
00:45:41
So it's a little bit of a tangential thing and they're
00:45:44
trying to dance around it and say, well, we're not stepping on
00:45:47
your right to free speech because we're really just going
00:45:49
after the companies. And it's like, well, the
00:45:53
companies are now changing their tune and how they do things
00:45:56
because you're forcing them to do so or threatening them with
00:45:59
with $1 fines, a lot of people.
00:46:03
Are bringing up what's going on in UK yeah, the UK is nuts
00:46:06
what's going on over there I feel bad for them it's it's very
00:46:09
sad I love the UKI love the people over there it's a great
00:46:12
country Scotland, London, love it all love it all so I I feel
00:46:18
very sad when I see what's going on so.
00:46:22
We could discuss that in Telegram if we do the Telegram
00:46:25
channel, because we could probably start to not.
00:46:28
I don't want to go totally off subject here, but you know, in
00:46:30
1997 they basically banned private gun ownership.
00:46:35
They didn't fully like. If you go and Google that,
00:46:37
you're going to be like, no, you're wrong.
00:46:39
But no, I know they have a right to own a gun under certain
00:46:42
conditions, but it's like 1997 was not quite 20 years ago, was
00:46:48
it? Am I doing mouth right?
00:46:50
And you know, it was a little over 20 years ago, so.
00:46:54
Oh my gosh, it's almost 30 years, right?
00:46:57
It's not that long. Yeah, I mean, it's an old
00:47:00
whatever, but it's in the grand scheme of life.
00:47:02
It wasn't that long for them to ban private gun ownership to.
00:47:07
No, you don't have free speech. Ha, ha, ha.
00:47:08
What are you going to do about it?
00:47:09
You can't defend yourself against the government.
00:47:11
And I'm not encouraging anyone to go violent on the government.
00:47:14
I'm not. And again, that's just, that's a
00:47:16
different subject for a different day.
00:47:19
But it it's just interesting how how you've heard not just us,
00:47:25
but you've heard it all over and probably, you know, you say it,
00:47:28
the Second Amendment protects the First Amendment.
00:47:30
You know, like it's just they don't have that there.
00:47:34
Yeah, someone else that brought up let me pull this up.
00:47:39
Oh someone said so the opposite of blue sky.
00:47:42
Yeah, basically. Well blue sky started because
00:47:44
they want to be the anti X and. Yeah, that's where all the
00:47:49
people who lean left went after. But that's I'm fine with that.
00:47:52
I'm fine with companies that want to start and be like, hey,
00:47:55
we're we're only here to do XY and Z and you know, if you're
00:48:00
not that you can't be on this platform.
00:48:02
OK, that's fine. You're a private company.
00:48:04
I'm fine with that. Free market, do whatever you
00:48:05
want. My problem is when the
00:48:07
government steps in and starts putting their thumb on the
00:48:11
scale. And this is absolutely a clear
00:48:14
cut case of where. They are putting their thumb on
00:48:16
the scale to try and scare social media companies into
00:48:20
complying and taking down whatever they think is their
00:48:25
hateful speech or speech that they hate.
00:48:30
I know we've had the screen share up for a while, but there
00:48:32
was another bill you told me about right before we hopped on
00:48:37
and I hadn't really read into it, but it's kind of.
00:48:41
Interesting is also Rick Chavez a Burr who was also a co-author
00:48:45
of 771 and look Scott Weiner is also a co-author of it
00:48:50
interesting in April 2024 Governor Gavin Newsom released
00:48:55
the Golden State plan to counter anti-Semitism.
00:48:59
They are. They want to set up a.
00:49:01
What do they call the? Counterterrorism group or
00:49:07
something? The Counterterrorism Commission
00:49:09
or counter anti-Semitism Commission or something?
00:49:13
I where is it? I have I have notes here.
00:49:19
They went to amend the education code to prevent discrimination
00:49:22
with a strong emphasis on anti-Semitism in public schools.
00:49:25
It prohibits they they wanted to nominate.
00:49:32
Oh, the anti-Semitism prevention coordinator.
00:49:34
Yes, coordinator. Develop, consult and provide
00:49:37
anti-Semitism education to school personnel to identify and
00:49:40
proactively prevent anti-Semitism and to make
00:49:43
recommendations in coordination with you on legislation
00:49:46
necessary for the prevention of anti-Semitism in educational
00:49:49
settings. I'm so confused.
00:49:52
I'm so I started laughing because I when I was reading
00:49:58
this the first time, I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm still
00:50:01
homeschooling. And I'm sorry because I am not
00:50:03
saying that like in an offensive way to anybody who doesn't or
00:50:09
can't homeschool, but just for me, I was reading this and I
00:50:11
started laughing and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to continue to
00:50:13
homeschool. It's not changing anytime soon.
00:50:17
I just think really one more ridiculous thing to add to
00:50:19
public education. I Alford is drunk.
00:50:25
Drunk with power, drunk with stupidity.
00:50:26
I don't, I don't know what's going on here, guys.
00:50:28
Go on California, you're drunk. All right, last story I want to
00:50:33
get to, which was the title of this episode.
00:50:35
I'm sorry I kept you guys waiting, but thank you everyone
00:50:38
for hanging out and chatting with us.
00:50:39
Chat is lively as always. If you joined late, we did start
00:50:44
off the show talking about a Telegram, a members only
00:50:47
Telegram where we can take conversations like this onto
00:50:50
Telegram outside of the show, not getting rid of the show, but
00:50:55
like outside the show. So if we want to talk about UK
00:50:57
and what's going on there, because I like talking about
00:50:59
what's going on in the UK, we could talk about stuff like
00:51:02
that. It doesn't always have to be
00:51:03
fully California politics, but there's a lot of news going on
00:51:05
out there. So we'd love to have you guys
00:51:08
there. So if you're interested, let us
00:51:09
know in the chat in the comment if you'd be interested in
00:51:12
joining a members only Telegram. I think I was like, we're
00:51:15
thinking about 299 a month or something and trying to make
00:51:18
his. Yeah, it would basically be like
00:51:20
on your Instagram at California Underground, you would subscribe
00:51:24
to his channel for like. Or you could be a member here on
00:51:27
YouTube. Oh, I didn't know if.
00:51:30
You have a member here on. YouTube.
00:51:32
Then you can also do the same thing.
00:51:33
You would get the link to the private group, which would be
00:51:36
all of us discussing like everyone's welcome to, you know,
00:51:40
post questions, articles, news, pop culture, other culture
00:51:44
provision. All that stuff.
00:51:45
National International, just really like dive into issues.
00:51:49
It could be very very fun, very interesting.
00:51:51
Yeah, basically anything so and not.
00:51:55
That. Not that Phil's gonna go and
00:51:56
give free legal advice, but he is a lawyer and can give a
00:51:59
lawyer perspective on a lot of issues, so that's always fun and
00:52:02
interesting. Yep.
00:52:04
All right. Last story, this is We're gonna
00:52:06
end on a high note that turns out Republicans and independents
00:52:15
and Libertarians and Green Party have all been killing it with
00:52:19
voter registration and have outpaced Democrats this year in
00:52:24
2025. So we're going to watch this
00:52:27
video. This is about Stanislaus County.
00:52:29
Which is pretty historic. And then we'll break down some
00:52:31
numbers and we'll talk about sort of the repercussion.
00:52:35
For the first time in a decade, Republicans now outnumber
00:52:39
Democrats in Stanislaw County voter registration.
00:52:41
Your reporter covering Stanislaw County, Nina Burns, is getting
00:52:44
answers on the trend. County Republicans call this
00:52:50
flip a political milestone as they take the lead in voter
00:52:53
registration. We're super excited.
00:52:56
We saw a trending in this direction.
00:52:59
New number shows Stanislaus County Republican voter
00:53:02
registration surpassed Democratic registration for the
00:53:05
first time in a decade, a jump from February when Democrats
00:53:09
were nearly 1400 ahead We're. Close.
00:53:11
We're almost there. And so we just made a a really
00:53:14
strong drive this entire year and the the data shows.
00:53:19
As of September, there are nearly 109 registered
00:53:23
Republicans and just over 108 Democrats, giving
00:53:28
Republicans A570 voter lead. It's not just, you know,
00:53:33
observations or you know, subjective.
00:53:36
It's it's real. But Democratic strategists say
00:53:40
numbers fluctuate when there are no elections.
00:53:43
Registrations coming. So particularly during the
00:53:45
offseason, we're not in the heat of a real presidential race or
00:53:49
anything where everybody's fired up.
00:53:51
We see those numbers go up and go down.
00:53:54
But when it comes to presidential election results,
00:53:57
the county has seen a shift. In 2016, Stanislaus went blue by
00:54:01
just under 2%. In 2020, the Democratic majority
00:54:05
was razor thin, winning by less than 1%.
00:54:09
Then in 2024, Stanislaus County went red, with Republicans
00:54:12
leading by nearly 11%. They're the exception to the
00:54:16
rule. Democrats are doing very well
00:54:17
across the state, particularly in the more urban counties where
00:54:20
there are a lot more voters. Democrats outnumber Republicans
00:54:24
statewide by almost a 2 to 1 margin.
00:54:26
They continue to push all through the 2026 election cycle
00:54:30
to ensure that this that our majority stays.
00:54:33
Republicans say they plan to continue community outreach to
00:54:37
keep this lead, while Democrats say the lead is narrow enough
00:54:41
for it to still swing back in their favor.
00:54:44
Nina, thank you. And the Republican Party of
00:54:45
Stanislaus County credits that flip to community engagement and
00:54:49
targeting Democratic areas. So you might be wondering
00:54:51
whether demo demographics have shifted in other counties.
00:54:54
Let's take a look. In Sacramento County, between
00:54:56
February 2023 and February 2025, Democrats saw another 5200
00:55:01
voters added to its roles, while Republicans picked up 19 new
00:55:05
voters, although Democrats still outnumber Republicans in Sac
00:55:08
County 2 to one. In San Joaquin County during
00:55:11
that same 2 year span, Republicans picked up 10
00:55:14
voters while Democrats lost 8000, though they still account
00:55:18
for 40% of voters compared to 30% for Republicans.
00:55:23
All right, so that is the news on that.
00:55:31
I see a lot of people who are kind of like Pooh poohing this
00:55:33
and being like, well, you know, Democrats still outnumber
00:55:35
Republicans 2 to one. OK, well, you know, a long
00:55:41
journey starts with one step. Like it takes a long time to
00:55:45
flip a state. And we've said this on this show
00:55:47
for a long time, ever since I've started like 8 years ago.
00:55:51
It takes a long. Time, like flipping a state
00:55:54
doesn't happen overnight. You're not going to flip the
00:55:56
state red overnight. You're not going to flip it out
00:55:58
of a Democratic super majority overnight.
00:56:00
You got to chip away at it. You got to chip away slowly but
00:56:03
surely. It's like turning around an
00:56:05
aircraft carrier, takes a long time and takes a lot of work.
00:56:09
So this is the two tweets that I saw this on California voter
00:56:12
registration since February. Independents outpacing
00:56:15
Democrats, 4th, 435 to 1, Republicans outpacing Democrats
00:56:20
253 to 1 Democrats basically flat.
00:56:24
That's not politics, that's math.
00:56:26
This is from Rob Pires if you're a political nerd like us.
00:56:30
He he posts a lot of stuff like this.
00:56:33
Here's the recap. The net change in registered
00:56:35
voters by political party in California since February.
00:56:39
Independents are killing it. No party preference are killing
00:56:43
82 more Republicans out of 48 the American Independent
00:56:48
Party. Which I'm getting I'm.
00:56:50
Wondering if people think that the American Independent Party
00:56:53
is being independent. Like there's people who want to
00:56:57
be independent, like they don't want to be any part of any
00:56:59
party. I wonder if they but that'd be a
00:57:01
huge margin of people picking that incorrectly.
00:57:04
Otherwise the American Independent Party is just also
00:57:07
killing it. Peace and freedom.
00:57:09
Sure they picked up almost 6000 and Green Party picked up almost
00:57:14
2500 and Libertarian party pulling up their writ 487.
00:57:18
Come on Libertarian party you got to got to do a little bit
00:57:20
better than that. And Democratic Party only added
00:57:23
190 in the entire state. That's over a 7 month period.
00:57:31
7th month period, Yeah, they only added 200 voter
00:57:34
registrations in the entire state.
00:57:36
Not even 200. I gotta I gotta do the bath on
00:57:39
that. Well why you doing 1?
00:57:42
190. 190. So like 27 a month?
00:57:50
That is not very good. It's.
00:57:51
Not a good one, Democrats. No.
00:57:53
Maybe your maybe your party's change a few things.
00:57:57
Yeah, you have. For as long as I've known you,
00:57:59
you've always used the phrase progress to purple.
00:58:02
You know, people have been like, it's going to be a red wave and
00:58:04
then it's not a red wave. It's going to be a red wave and
00:58:07
it's not a red wave. And.
00:58:09
But we have seen it seems like for the past few election
00:58:13
cycles, slowly but surely it's a little more red.
00:58:16
And yes, they do outnumber us. But I believe in breaking the
00:58:24
Super majority. I don't believe in having a
00:58:26
super majority of one party. That's my my personal opinion,
00:58:29
not talking for Phil or anyone else.
00:58:33
Like, you know, my big thing has just been like, we just need
00:58:36
balance. We are so unbalanced right now.
00:58:39
And I don't think that any party should have a super majority
00:58:42
because people need to learn to just work together and you know,
00:58:46
pass, pass legislation that benefits the majority.
00:58:49
You know, we're going to please everybody.
00:58:51
But right now we have, as we just talked about, two crazy
00:58:55
bills and it's like, who is this even for what?
00:58:58
It's crazy, It's crazy out there.
00:58:59
So, you know, there just needs to be things that benefit the
00:59:02
majority of us and I don't think that you're going to get that
00:59:04
with a super majority red or a super majority blue.
00:59:09
And so it is nice to see a little bit of turning a little
00:59:13
more red, turning a little more purple, like I think that that's
00:59:16
a good thing. Yeah, all these states slowly
00:59:21
change over time. I I I like to use Florida as an
00:59:26
example of like Florida was. Back in 2000 Florida was a swing
00:59:31
state and then Barack Obama won it twice and now it is solidly
00:59:39
red. Like it is beaming bright red.
00:59:42
Like it's not even like a swing state.
00:59:43
They try and pretend it's a swing state.
00:59:45
It's not really a swing state anymore.
00:59:46
Republicans have taken it off the map it but that.
00:59:50
Look at it that way. It took 1620 years for it to go
00:59:54
from a swing state to state that voted for Barack Obama twice to
00:59:59
a deep RedState that now, like, Miami flipped red, which was
01:00:04
never read for a long, long time.
01:00:06
These things do take a long time.
01:00:09
And California is going to take a long time because Democrats
01:00:11
just racked up such, like, a huge lead that it's going to
01:00:14
take a long time. And there's a lot of people I
01:00:16
saw in Reddit and, you know, yeah, Reddit's a cesspool of
01:00:19
people who are left-leaning status and stuff like that.
01:00:22
So no surprise that they're all downplaying this like it's not a
01:00:25
big deal. But it is a big deal, and I'll
01:00:27
tell you why. It's the reason why I'm wearing
01:00:29
my Local Elections Matter shirt. Because local elections do
01:00:33
matter. They absolutely matter.
01:00:35
And a lot of these local elections are decided by like
01:00:41
less. Than 1000 votes.
01:00:43
Like the one I always bring up is Greg Wallace out in Palm
01:00:46
Springs flipped his assembly seat with like less than 300
01:00:50
votes or something, or was like even less than that.
01:00:52
I think it was like 67 votes or something.
01:00:54
Like it was so marginally I feel.
01:00:56
Like it was under 100 it. Was it was like so low, so razor
01:01:00
thin that he flipped it and now he's he said he won again.
01:01:04
He wanted re election. So he's held that seat for two
01:01:06
terms now, but that's like, that's where it's going to make
01:01:11
a huge difference in California. California is an enormous state.
01:01:15
There are hundreds of city councils and mayors and city
01:01:19
governments and county governments and county
01:01:21
supervisor and stuff like that. This makes a difference on the
01:01:24
local level where these races often are decided by less than
01:01:31
1000, by less than 500. And you know, adding, you saw it
01:01:37
right there with like Stockton or San, I say Stockton, San
01:01:40
Joaquin Valley or San Joaquin County.
01:01:43
That was a huge, well it's Stanislaus, San Joaquin, all of
01:01:48
them. Like adding 10 voters is a
01:01:53
huge deal. Like that's a huge deal in a
01:01:55
county of like, OK, before we didn't have these voters.
01:01:59
Now we have 10 more voters and that changes the layout of
01:02:04
that county and how people vote in their certain city districts
01:02:08
and their different county districts.
01:02:10
Do county supervisors, boards of supervisors all of a sudden go
01:02:14
from blue to red? Does it change their policies on
01:02:18
the ground? Are these little pockets of like
01:02:22
now you're flipping things away from Democrats that those little
01:02:26
pockets of localities start to help create the groundswell that
01:02:31
changes things. And yeah, maybe they'll keep
01:02:34
saying, wow, you know, we have a 2 to one lead, who cares?
01:02:37
Like it's not a big deal. Like they're never going to win
01:02:39
governor. They're never going to win
01:02:40
Secretary of State. But you can let them keep
01:02:43
thinking that. Let those, you know, far left
01:02:46
status Democrats keep thinking that it's never, they'll never
01:02:50
catch up. We have a 2 to one lead, who
01:02:52
cares, we're fine. Let them keep thinking that and
01:02:54
rest on their laurels. And then if it's year after year
01:02:57
after year, where there's it's this continued kind of growth
01:03:01
and voter registration where they got 200 / 7 months, but
01:03:08
then like Republicans got 42, that adds up over the
01:03:14
course of year after year after year.
01:03:17
And it changes things dramatically.
01:03:21
And that's where I think people like have to be excited about
01:03:24
this is it could change your city, it could change your
01:03:29
county, it could change so many things.
01:03:31
It could change your assemblyman, your state senator,
01:03:34
all those things. And breaking the Super majority,
01:03:37
which we harp on again and again and again, is probably the
01:03:40
single most important thing when it comes to California politics
01:03:44
outside of who's governor, because governor could be
01:03:47
Republican or Democrat, but if it's a Democratic super
01:03:49
majority, they can do it over the hell they want anyway.
01:03:51
I think breaking the Super majority changes California
01:03:56
overnight. I think it changes.
01:03:58
You don't see wacko bills like this anymore that we went over.
01:04:03
They don't see the light of day. They don't get out of committee.
01:04:06
They don't even get to the governor's desk.
01:04:08
AB495, this one, SB-771, this other one that we just talked
01:04:14
about tonight, 7:15 Like all these bills that are wacko.
01:04:18
Doodle bills that people look at and go What the heck is
01:04:21
California thinking? They don't get out of.
01:04:23
Committee anymore when there's no more Democratic supermajority
01:04:26
and that's the change is like now all of a sudden we're
01:04:29
getting back to business of. Making the state better.
01:04:33
So that's my little soapbox rant.
01:04:36
So what are your thoughts? I, I think you somewhat repeated
01:04:41
what I said, but yeah, 11% difference majority, red
01:04:48
majority in Stanislaus County. That's huge. 11% is a big number
01:04:52
when it comes to voting really is it's big.
01:04:55
Like I think anything over 5%, it's like not even close
01:04:59
anymore. So, and they're up near
01:05:02
Sacramento, like Sacramento's going to have to start paying
01:05:05
attention. Yeah, because it it was red and
01:05:09
then it went blue and now it's like slowly creeping back to
01:05:12
red. So somebody had asked about
01:05:17
judges. There is a page Judge Voter
01:05:21
guide that does actually go over judges.
01:05:24
That's also a big thing too, like.
01:05:27
People need to realize you vote on so many things every
01:05:31
election, like you vote on so many officials.
01:05:35
And it it, I will admit it takes homework.
01:05:38
I do homework. I sit down and I get my sample
01:05:41
ballot and I look at everything that I'm.
01:05:43
Voting on and I sit down and go, OK, what am I doing here?
01:05:47
Like what am I voting on? Who am I voting on?
01:05:51
Sometimes is a choice between the moderate Democrat or the
01:05:55
radical leftist communist Democrat.
01:05:57
Like those are basically sometimes your choices and you
01:06:00
got to do your homework. And judges are a big one too
01:06:03
that a lot of people kind of overlook 'cause I don't know, I
01:06:05
just vote for the governor and I just kind of move on.
01:06:08
And those are tougher because there's they're non partisan
01:06:12
position. So people don't know, they don't
01:06:14
have that default of like, well, I'll just vote red down the
01:06:17
ticket. So, oh, someone said, I love
01:06:20
your map of California. Thank you.
01:06:23
Yeah, it's been a mainstay of the background for a while.
01:06:26
So. But yeah, local elections
01:06:29
matter. This is a big deal.
01:06:31
People are changing their minds. People just becoming no.
01:06:34
Party preference is a big deal as well.
01:06:37
A little disappointed the Libertarian Party that they
01:06:39
didn't do more, but I probably blame that on their egotistical
01:06:43
narcissistic chair right now. But we should get that Joe
01:06:48
Campos guy on. Is that his name?
01:06:50
Joe Campos, the head of the Stanislaus GOP.
01:06:53
We shouldn't have him on and ask how he did it and how he flipped
01:06:56
that that county. That would be fun.
01:06:58
Yeah, I have no idea what his name is, but yes.
01:07:01
Camille's going to take notes and be like, OK, I'm going to
01:07:02
reach out to this guy, Joe Campos, all right?
01:07:06
Only me. Tomorrow morning you have
01:07:08
homework, meal, you have a job. Camille's the one who likes she.
01:07:13
Reaches out to people and bugs them because she, she bugs and
01:07:18
better than I do. I, I would send an e-mail and be
01:07:20
like that. I forgot about They don't they
01:07:22
don't ever e-mail me back. All right, any other thoughts?
01:07:25
We went a little over because we started a little late today, but
01:07:29
yeah, a lot of people hanging out.
01:07:31
Thank you for everyone for tuning in.
01:07:32
Any other thoughts? Any other thoughts in the
01:07:34
comments about the Telegram idea about the local elections,
01:07:40
anything going on the chat? Let's see why don't you share
01:07:43
your thoughts and I'll see if anybody has any good comments
01:07:45
that I can share. My thoughts, I feel like I
01:07:50
shared my thoughts throughout this podcast, but OK per SE.
01:07:53
I like the idea of the Telegram channel.
01:07:56
So I'm kind of pushing for it. But you know, that's that's
01:07:58
really up to if we have the support.
01:08:02
But I like the idea that because I am a stay at home mom who has
01:08:06
extra time and I like to discuss these things.
01:08:09
And so, you know, it's it's just in addition to the podcast to be
01:08:12
able to have these conversations and get all different
01:08:14
perspectives. And so are you.
01:08:19
Are you reading? Yeah, I'm, I'm reading comments,
01:08:22
someone said. I vote in all local elections.
01:08:25
Good. More and more classic liberals.
01:08:27
Don't forget Prop 50s coming up November 4th.
01:08:32
You're probably if you haven't received your ballot yet, don't
01:08:35
be surprised if you get it in the next week.
01:08:37
Don't be scared if you haven't received it yet, but Prop 50 is
01:08:41
super important. As we discussed at the
01:08:42
beginning, you can vote yes to give it over to the Democrats
01:08:48
and their little private who drew the maps group or keep it
01:08:53
with the independent district. Voting no.
01:08:56
Yes. I know they trip up the wording
01:08:58
and they and all that, but it's definitely vote no to keep it
01:09:01
with the independent district. Vote yes if you want this, if
01:09:05
you want to side with Newsome and his fight against Trump or
01:09:07
whatever, whatever abortion, whatever they're fighting.
01:09:10
I'm not sure anymore, sorry, making jokes, but we've talked
01:09:14
about, if you missed, we talked about the beginning of this
01:09:16
episode. So that election's coming up
01:09:19
3034 days, 35 days very soon. So I want to add on and Phil's.
01:09:24
Turning 40 this week, next week, Sunday, Monday sometime in
01:09:30
October next month. Someone didn't couldn't believe
01:09:33
that. Someone couldn't believe that I
01:09:35
was turning 40. So I did share in the chat.
01:09:39
It's Judge voterguide.com. That's that's where I go it.
01:09:46
It doesn't have like everybody, but that's been like my go to.
01:09:51
If you're ever curious about judges and you just, you're
01:09:56
like, I don't know. They send out questionnaires.
01:09:59
Sometimes the judges don't answer the questionnaires.
01:10:01
That's fine, but at least it gives you an idea.
01:10:05
The cat lady next to me has the vote YES on 50 sign in her yard.
01:10:10
The Iceman. Iceman always coming.
01:10:12
In with the great comments at the end, Love it Iceman.
01:10:15
All right. Thanks everyone for tuning in.
01:10:18
Sounds like there's support for the Telegram, so we'll start
01:10:20
talking about that and how that's going to happen and go
01:10:22
down. That'd be great.
01:10:23
I think it'd be fun to have a Telegram where we can share,
01:10:26
just talk about different issues that we want, maybe talk about
01:10:30
the UK and stuff like that, everything else that's going on.
01:10:34
But with that said, thank you everyone for tuning in.
01:10:38
Make sure you like share, subscribe or view all that stuff
01:10:41
else with the algorithm. I'm still trying to figure out
01:10:43
why they can't hype our videos right now.
01:10:47
I've contacted YouTube. They're supposed to be able to
01:10:49
hype our. Videos to get it pushed up in
01:10:51
the algorithm. But with that said, the best
01:10:54
thing you can do to support the show that is 100% free is you
01:10:58
can tell someone about it. Tell them to join you, Say hey,
01:11:00
join me Tuesday night at 8:00 PM on YouTube.
01:11:03
Join the chat. It'll be fun.
01:11:06
Not next week, though. It'll be Wednesday or Thursday.
01:11:08
We'll let you know about that and we will see you on the next
01:11:12
one later, everybody.