Jon Wiener: From The Nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense. I’m Jon Wiener. Later in the show: This week’s polls and this week’s primaries have nothing but bad news for Trump and his followers; John Nichols has our analysis. But first: state legislatures have a lot of power in America; Daniel Squadron will explain – in a minute.
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What is to be done now — to counter Donald Trump? Even though the Supreme Court has pretty much done away with the Voting Rights Act, Democrats still seem like we’re going to win control of the House, and maybe the Senate, this November. But Trump will still be president until January 20th, 2029, and will be able to veto any law a Democratic Congress passes. So, what is to be done?
Daniel Squadron has a strategy. It’s a really good one: Focus on winning legislatures in the states, because state legislatures have a lot of power in America. He’s the co-founder and co-executive director of the States Project, and a former state senator in New York. Now he’s got a new book out: it’s called The Fourth Branch: How State Government Can Save Our Union. Daniel Squadron, welcome back.
Daniel Squadron: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.
JW: You say state legislatures have a lot of power. How much power do they have?
DS: More than just about any of your listeners could possibly imagine. In fact, if you think of whatever domestic policy issue you most care about, odds are a lot of folks thought about civil rights or the existence of our democracy, energy costs or climate change, minimum wages or clean air and water gun safety.
JW: How about health care?
DS: Or health care. I would say that, in the last 15 years, states have done more harm or good on those issues than Congress has. So, of course, to take health care, we know that Obamacare was a seminal achievement. But you know that a large part of it, maybe the largest part, which was the expansion of Medicaid to many more people, required states to act. Today, sitting here 17 years after it passed, there are still nearly 100 million Americans who are not benefiting from Obamacare, from that expansion of Medicaid, because their states have failed to act.
JW: Now it’s time for your Minnesota moment–news from my hometown of Saint Paul that you won’t get from Sean Hannity: Minnesota shows what you can do with a trifecta. In the midterms of 2022, the DFL, which is what we call the Democratic Party in Minnesota, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, the DFL flipped the state Senate and maintained their majority in the state House. Before this, the legislature had been under what they call split control for a decade. Minnesota had already elected Tim Walz governor. So, in 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed, and Governor Walz signed, new laws guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave and medical leave; free public college tuition for lower income Minnesotans; a new child tax credit; free lunch for all public school students; driver’s licenses for all residents, regardless of immigration status; stronger protections for unions, for unionizing campaigns; the restoration of voting rights for convicted felons; new protections for abortion rights; and a trans refugee law that protects trans children traveling to Minnesota to receive gender affirming care when they’re coming from states that would punish them. That’s what you can do with a trifecta.
DS: And this is a story that actually is mostly untold and overlooked. There’s all of this stuff happening, stuff that will give you hope, stuff that will make you concerned, stuff that makes you think. And it’s happening in the states and no one’s talking about it. And the book is really about that. The power of states to do these kinds of things, but also something else that I learned in my decade as a state lawmaker, which is the decisions for whether these things are happening or not, are largely made by the narrowest special interests that are in the capital every day, and sort of the chance of people’s individual personalities, which are much less muted in the state legislative context than the national context, lack of focus. And then, more than anything, that tiny numbers of people getting involved change the outcome.
That Minnesota majority was both won and lost in both cases — because it was won in 2022, and then unfortunately, we lost the House majority in 2024 by just a few hundred votes, a few hundred people.
The campaigns for the entire effort, for a whole legislative chamber, cost less than a single congressional district. If people focus on this and do something about it, the opportunity to have an impact is right there for them.
JW: But what about what about Virginia? In Virginia. we won a trifecta a few months ago. Abigail Spanberger became governor. Democrats won control of both houses in the state legislature. They followed the plan: They passed a redistricting initiative to bring to the voters that would change the state constitution, to empower the voters to create four new Democratic districts for the House of Representatives. The referendum passed. But then — I think you remember this — the state Supreme Court of Virginia overturned that referendum on an obscure technicality. So Virginia will not have four new Democratic representatives in Washington next year. Maybe they’ll have two. So, what about Virginia? We got a trifecta. But it did not succeed in redistricting because of the state Supreme Court. And then we learned that in Virginia, the state Supreme Court is selected by the state legislature. So how did we get here?
DS: That’s a story that started when Donald Trump, President Trump personally called Texas state lawmakers right around the horrible tragedy at Camp Mystic on the Guadalupe River and used that as an excuse with Greg Abbott to come in and change the maps in Texas, to increase the number of Republicans that would go to Congress, in the middle of a decade.
That was the starting point, and it became an arms race. As you point out, the Virginia state lawmakers, including the House, just a few days before every member was on the ballot and before that decision was decided, wrongly, they decided to do something about this and give Virginia voters the chance to restore fairness to the congressional map. As you point out, a wildly politicized Virginia court did something that is basically unprecedented, which is it nullified the votes of three million Virginians, after they had voted.
Here’s what’s wild about that, if you think of the power of states: The reason that court had a four-three highly politicized majority is that, in the 2021 Virginia legislative elections, there was a one seat majority for Republicans that confirmed the justice that cast the deciding vote. If that one seat in the Virginia legislature in 2021 had gone differently, then there would have been a different outcome, and the legislature would have succeeded in offsetting the power of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump wants to centralize power. Donald Trump, unlike Ronald Reagan, wants to take power from states if it can undermine our democracy; he wants to give power back to states that undermine our democracy. That’s his goal. But, you know, the only folks effectively pushing back against this are state lawmakers. And it’s not always going to succeed, but it is where things are happening, and failing, in this country.
JW: Okay, I have another ‘what about?”: What about the states where Republicans have a trifecta? Republicans have been much better at this over the last couple of decades — I think you know about this, too — at winning Trifectas. Right now, there are about 23 states with Republican Trifectas. What does the States Project have to say about them?
DS: The reason Republicans and conservatives have overperformed in states for the last 50 years is they made the choice to overperform in states. The same guy, and I talked about this in the book, the same guy who founded the Heritage Foundation, founded ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Paul Weyrich. And, you know, he wasn’t even trying to just get Republican power. He was an ideologue who was upset about Barry Goldwater losing the presidency. He was upset about the Voting Rights Act and the Great Society, and he was upset about Vatican II, the modernization of the Catholic Church. And he wanted to bring back a conservatism and traditionalism through American government and built institutions that are creating outsized power in states for that movement, because he and his membership and allies focused on it. We have to do the same if we’re going to get back to reflecting the people’s will in the country.
JW: And one of the things the States Project can do is run candidates to break up the trifectas in those Republican states. We we’re not going to get a Democratic trifecta in some of those, but we can prevent Republicans from getting a trifecta.
DS: Absolutely. And in fact, in places like Arizona and Michigan, also gubernatorial elections, and I hope those go well from my point of view. But it could be the only thing that prevents those states from becoming trifectas that I really fear in 2028 could undermine a free and fair presidential election. I think that if you take Donald Trump and JD Vance at their word, they would prefer that these elections get decided before anyone votes. I think the Virginia court just gave us even further evidence of that. And so you need to be fighting.
And there are, you know, people talk about who wins the presidency. What about whether we have a well-administered election with fair election laws? That’s going to be decided by who’s in power in Arizona. Let’s talk about swing states, Arizona and Michigan and North Carolina, with the supermajority in the legislature and Wisconsin and Minnesota and Georgia, though that’s a tough one, but worth fighting for. This is where the country’s future gets dropped.
JW: Let’s talk about priorities for right now. My priority is my home state of Minnesota: in the state Senate, the DFL, the Democrats, right now have a one seat majority, 34 to 33. They have to defend every seat and maybe win another couple. In the state House, there’s a tie. And under the Minnesota State Constitution, the lieutenant governor does not have the power to break a tie. So Republicans in Minnesota, in the state House, can block everything. For example, they’ve blocked the state legislature from investigating ICE for killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Republicans in the Minnesota legislature have blocked that. That’s my top priority for the states: winning back the Minnesota trifecta. Remind us again what yours are.
DS: Well, Minnesota is certainly on that list. Wisconsin has had Republican control now for years and is more competitive than it’s ever been in the state Senate and the state House. You could have a trifecta in Wisconsin that would fix all sorts of laws that you may remember when Governor Scott Walker came in and changed it.
Arizona has is a legislature that has been Republican for many of your listeners whole lifetimes. And the Republican Party in Arizona has become ever more extreme. And that is a place where you have incredible legislative leadership on the Democratic side that has been knocking at the door, has been within a couple of seats and I think can get over the top.
You know, we talked about Minnesota and how they lost their trifecta. The other state that lost its trifecta in 2024 is Michigan. And in Michigan, you have a bare majority, 19 to 18 for Democrats in the state Senate, in the House, Republicans flipped it and have a cushion. But it is possible to win back the House there. And there you have a messy three-way governor’s race where it’s sort of unclear what will happen. And so the legislature there is both a sword and a shield. Remember, Michigan is the state where Donald Trump invited the, at the time, Republican leaders of both chambers of the legislature to the Oval Office after the 2020 election, and said, “block certification of your state’s votes. If you do that, we will be able to undo the results of this election.” January 6th, and everything that happened after, was only because one of them refused. Michigan is where the future of the country goes through.
North Carolina: Josh Stein has been a great governor. He’s been facing sort of, depending on the vote, a supermajority that has overridden a number of vetoes on some terrible stuff. We’ve got to get rid of those supermajorities so that the great Democratic leadership in the legislature can partner with Governor Stein to stop bad things and actually start forcing negotiations for some good ones. I’m a little bit with states, as I am with my children: among those, which is my favorite, Jon? Yes.
JW: Okay. There’s one other reason to focus on elections to state legislatures; Obama. Didn’t Obama start in the state legislature of Illinois?
DS: State Senator Barack Obama, state Assembly member Hakeem Jeffries, state Assembly member Chuck Schumer, state Senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, state Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt. I’m focusing on New Yorkers here, but it’s not just them.
JW: Okay.
DS: The bench for the country and the future of the country starts in state legislatures. I can’t leave out House Representative Abraham Lincoln, of course.
JW: Thank you for that. Yes. I also want to ask about the money. The States Project raises money to fund these candidates. But in my understanding, most candidates, when you give them money, they hire consultants. The consultants say “spend money on TV ads, digital ads.” But there’s no really good evidence that that this kind of advertising wins undecided voters. What about wasting that money? What about spending that money wisely? I think this is something you’ve thought about, too.
DS: A whole lot. I mean, I have spent my career in politics and government, and as a result, I’ve gained a healthy skepticism that campaigns do much of anything. They do, but skepticism is healthy and appropriate. I know because I got into office originally in my late 20s, running against a 30-year incumbent into the state Senate race. I had no business winning — by knocking on nearly 10,000 doors personally. And that is a wildly potent way to do things in state legislatures, because the districts are smaller. But it’s not what consultants tell you to do, because there’s no fee for them in that. And so, they tell you to sit in your dark room and just make phone calls — to donors out of state, especially.
The States Project tries to make it easy for candidates to go out and focus on the folks who they should be thinking about, the ones who are going to hire them or fire them: their voters. Candidate door-knocking is hugely important.
But it is also true, and we have to say this, that because of how parties work and are focused in Washington, D.C., the campaign infrastructure and the campaign spending on things like TV ads and other paid communication, and earned communication, talking to the media, is vastly underdeveloped at the state level.
And so, at the States Project, we’ve just tried to create enough of a set of best practices so that folks know that the money they contribute to the States Project, the States Project contributes to state legislative campaigns will be spent well. There’s no reason these campaigns should be run less professionally than competitive congressional races, they’re every bit as important.
And so we’ve done enormous research to get away from the assumptions. And it really does hearten you. When you get past the myths in politics, and I try to do this in the last section of the book, and you start to see what really matters, you actually see what matters is good politics. Like, the best kind of volunteer is someone who actually has credibility in the district. If you don’t, you should probably be out raising money outside of the district to help people in the district do well. I like that idea. Or knocking on doors, going to the voters. Or the idea that we’re not looking for a single savior here. We’re looking to build coalitions across folks to have governing power to do something. I find all of those ideas inspiring and empowering.
JW: One last thing about your new book, The Fourth Branch: the foreword to this book is written by Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City. Now, I know she’s a Democrat. I remember she endorsed Kamala Harris. You don’t hear a lot from her about politics. How did you get her to write the foreword to this book?
DS: Well, first of all, I’m really so grateful, and she did a great, a great job with it. You know, she is so focused on trying to figure out how people can have an impact. She talked about this in the foreword: she grew up in Ohio and really grew up in a house where it was about having an impact. And the hardest thing about getting to write the foreword is she says, you know, “people shouldn’t listen to me in politics. People should do the thing that will have the biggest impact for them.” And I’m just really grateful that she’s determined that focusing on states with whatever your value system is, is the place to have the biggest impact. And I certainly can’t speak for her, but that’s what she talks about in the foreword, and I’m so grateful that she did.
JW: Daniel Squadron, co-founder of the States Project, [email protected]. That’s ‘Statesproject,’ one word. He’s also author of the new book, The Fourth Branch: How State Government Can Save Our Union. Daniel, thanks for all your work, and thanks for talking with us today.
DS: Thanks for having me.
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JW: For today’s political update, we turn to John Nichols. Of course, he’s Executive Editor of The Nation. We reached him today somewhere on the road between Detroit and Toledo. John welcome back.
John Nichols: It’s great to be with you, Jon.
JW: The latest New York Times Siena poll found that Trump’s approval rating has hit an all time low. Their headline was a crack in the polling floor puts Trump in new territory. And the times poll is, of course the most authoritative, the most respected poll we have. They found Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of every issue. Worst of all was his handling of the cost of living. Just 28% of the public approve of Trump’s efforts. 69% disapprove. Of course, this is a time when gas prices have reached historic highs because of Trump’s war with Iran. And during a Q&A with reporters last week. I’m sure you noticed this. Trump was asked, when you’re negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are Americans financial situations motivating you to make a deal? And without hesitating, he answered, quote, not even a little bit. I don’t think about Americans financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. Close quote. The president of the United States. Now, that’s certainly a no no for any politician. Was it just was it just a slip up?
JN: That was a pretty honest expression of where Donald Trump’s head is at, I think, at this point. It’s working. Not at all for him. When you’re down at a 28% approval rating the issue that people vote on and remember, Carville was right. It’s the economy, stupid. And when you’re, when you’re barely got a quarter of the people on your side. You ought to be spending all of your time trying to reconnect, right? Trying to let them know that you feel their pain at the very least that you you care about them to say something like that at this point in a midterm election year, I think is something that is jaw dropping, and also that it really does have the potential to show up in ads and and in speeches and in debates going forward. I think it’s something that a lot of Democrats will seek to attach to their Republican opponents.
JW: The New York Times poll also asked about the generic congressional ballot. That’s the question. If the election were held now, would you vote for the Democrat or the Republican? At this point, the Democratic lead has expanded to 11 points in the New York Times poll among independents. Democrats lead the generic ballot by 18 points. Is that big?
JN: That’s real big. I’ve been watching these you know, the generic polls for a very, very long time. And look, I think you have to be careful with the generic poll because it doesn’t take in local factors and the quality of candidates and things like that. But when you get to these kinds of numbers, when you enter into the double digits, that is the the underpinning. It always has been the underpinning for a wave election.
JW: There was a Senate Republican primary in Louisiana this weekend where the incumbent Republican Senator, Bill Cassidy, was defeated because Trump came out against him. Now, a lot of our friends think the defeat of Bill Cassidy in the Louisiana Senate Republican primary is unfortunate since it will make Republican politicians even less likely to cross Trump than before. Cassidy got only 25% of the Republican vote. Pretty incredible for an incumbent. He had voted to impeach Trump and opposed him on some key personnel nominations. But, you know, I’m not sure I agree. It’s unfortunate if more Republicans tie themselves tightly to the most unpopular president in American history, because that gives the Democrats a better chance of winning. What do you think?
JN: I think you’re right, Jon. Look Bill Cassidy was not just defeated. He was wiped out. 75% of primary voters voted against him. He didn’t come in second. He came in third. And for an incumbent senator, that’s a pretty hard thing to accomplish. And, you know, I think part of the challenge here is that Cassidy tried to kind of walk that thin line between opposing Trump on on some very big things like impeachment, but also voting with Trump on some very big things, like Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination to head Health and Human Services. So at the end of the day, Cassidy he gave nobody anything, right? He didn’t give the Trump people what they wanted. He didn’t give, you know, people who were opposed to Trump what they wanted. And so he’s running basically on his personality, which I don’t think he got him very far in Louisiana. Now, that doesn’t necessarily translate every place. But when you combine it with the message from Indiana about a week or so ago where they had primaries there, and you had a group of Republican senators who had state senators who had opposed Trump. And Trump came in in a very big way against them, and most of them lost. In fact, most of them lost pretty badly. What you get is this signal that the Republican Party is coalescing around Trump. You may see surprises. There may be an individual who, you know, beats the curve or whatever. But by and large, the message is very, very powerful.
JN: Now, what that means is that to get through their primaries and even to get the level of support they’re going to want from Trump and from the party going into the fall elections, these Republicans are not going to break from them. It’s very unlikely that they’re going to put distance between themselves and Trump. That’s devastating, because at this point, when you’ve got that generic ballot we just talked about, they need to be doing a lot of work to kind of build their their appeal outward. Instead, they’re being drawn inward. So I do think it is very beneficial for the Democrats that Republicans are being given no space in which to moderate their positions. And in fact, one of the subtleties of this is that Trump is so punishing as a as a political player that I would suggest to you that there are Republicans, even in safe districts, who have won their primaries, right. And don’t face a challenge from Trump this year who might still be thinking, well, you know, in 2028, he might go against me in a primary then. And for those who want to hang on to their their seats, right. You know, in the primary at least, I think the breaks from Trump will be very rare. What that spells out to is a message from the Republican Party that just is very much base oriented at a time when their base is much smaller than it was.
JW: And there’s one more incumbent Republican senator who Trump isn’t supporting, John Cornyn of Texas. This is the big news of the weekend. This is in there’s in Texas. There’s a Republican primary coming up. This week, Trump finally made his pick, and he endorsed not the incumbent, John Cornyn. He endorsed the challenger, the state attorney general, Ken Paxton. What did John Cornyn do to lose Trump’s support? Did he vote for to impeach the president?
JN: No. John Cornyn did very, very, very, very little to offend the president. But John Cornyn is a very traditional career politician, a very traditional senior Republican senator. He’s part of a leadership there. And frankly, Trump doesn’t like the Republican leadership in the Senate. They, they give him almost everything he wants his his nominees and all sorts of other things. But they’ve resisted things like getting rid of the filibuster at least in some circumstances. They have shown a little bit of caution on even a couple of judicial nominees and things like that. And so the end result is that Trump just doesn’t like him. Now, this is one of those places, though, where the the analysis of how Trump does politics becomes fascinating because he in this case isn’t merely opposing Cornyn because Cornyn has crossed him. He is opposing Cornyn because there’s quite a bit of evidence that Paxton, who is a just a wild eyed populist, you know, right wing, extreme populist, but also an incredibly scandal plagued, incredibly controversial figure that Paxton is doing well in that Republican primary. And so there is a decent amount of evidence that Trump got in not to shift the result of the primary, but to get ahead of the curve, right? To be there with the guy who might well upend a Republican incumbent.
JN: That’s a lot of kind of complex internal thinking, you know, really spending almost all of your life thinking about what’s going on within the Republican Party of Texas at a time when a lot of people would suggest Trump should be thinking outward, right about, you know, how do you how do you get beyond the the base to appeal to more people. And there’s one final thing why this becomes a big deal. Cornyn has had some ability to attract at least a small portion of suburban, kind of what might somehow be called moderate, although they’re really very conservative Republicans. There is a analysis in Texas, and I think a reasonable one, that suggests that there are just enough of those kind of suburban Republicans who will either stay home or might even cross over to vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. That backing Paxton has the potential to make the Texas seat more winnable for the Democrats, which is really an incredible thing. You know.
JW: I wanted to ask: since Talarico has actually been a little bit ahead in the polls for the last couple of weeks, it’s pretty clear he’s going to be running against Paxton, the most extreme and kind of crazy Republican. Dare we hope that the Democrats could elect a senator in Texas — for the first time in, what, 40 years?
JN: Oh, it’s a very, very long time, in fact. You got to go back to the 90s to when the Democrats won any statewide races and Senate, even a more complex and more challenging circumstance. Look, I think yes, you dare. And and I’ll say, why you dare. Please. We remember that in a, the equivalent election of Trump’s first term, which was 2018 the midterm that year, Beto O’Rourke went out with a, a very determined message and a very determined campaign. He didn’t cut corners. He actually, you know, ran as a relatively progressive challenger to Ted Cruz. O’rourke got, you know, in the 48% range. He, he actually did very, very well. And he clearly cut into that you know, swing vote a little bit more effectively than, than any of his predecessors had. Texas has changed some over the years. The population keeps shifting. There’s all sorts of dynamics. There’s a lot of evidence that the Latinx vote is actually more enthusiastic now toward the Democrats than they were a few years ago. I mean, that has shifted back and forth, but there seems to be some real shifting toward the Democrats this year. So Talarico, who is a unique candidate with a unique message, but one that is sort of tailored to Texas has the potential. Yeah. I mean, and boy, when you put Texas on the list, what this means is that both parties are going to have to pour immense energy into Texas, a state with dozens of media markets. I mean, it is a very expensive place to run. That’s kind of the last thing the Republicans needed at this point. So it’s hard for the Democrats to but for the Republicans to have to be battling to keep Texas at a point when you’ve got all these other problems. Wow. That’s that’s a mess.
JW: I also want to ask you about this so-called settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. Trump announced he was dropping his lawsuit against the IRS, suing the IRS. In exchange for that, the attorney general of the United States agreed to create a fund to pay $1.8 billion. He’s calling it the “anti’Weaponization Fund.” And it’s going to be paid, not to Trump, but — to who exactly? and how is this going to work?
JN: No. The Trump and his allies and friends and and political anybody who might have faced a legal investigation legal challenge along the way. Now where this becomes problematic is first and foremost, don’t assume that Trump doesn’t get a piece of this action at some point down the line or his family, you know, or, or people associated with him. But what this does is it, it circumvents the courts. It creates a what, what I think can fairly be referred to as a slush fund in the, in the Department of Justice, which by the way, is, is in a pretty chaotic position anyway, because we had the resignation of an attorney general. We’ve got, you know, we still have a process by which you gotta sort of shape things up there as regards leadership. But here’s the interesting element of it. I think voters will understand that as just taking money and putting it into a slush fund. And for the base of the Republican Party, for the Trump folks who do think that that the Department of Justice and other agencies were weaponized against them, they’ll like that. But that’s not a broadly held universal view.
JN: And so I do think that in this midterm election year, you end up in a situation where I could see a Democrat running against the Republican incumbent saying, you know, give me this seat. I’ll vote to defund the slush fund. Right? Or I, I will we will do oversight on the Department of Justice and make sure that’s not abused. And it feeds into a much broader narrative. The fact of the matter is, this particular fund isn’t going to be central to the debate, but the notion that there is a great deal of corruption, the notion that the federal government has become a vehicle by which not just Donald Trump and his family, but but their associates and by where a military industrial complex and so many other corporate entities seem to be massively enriching themselves because of policies and because of, you know, a lack of oversight. This is something that I think has potential to be a very resonant issue in 2026. And boy, when you add that to all the other factors yeah, this is a, this is a part of that.
JW: One last thing: There’s still almost six months to go before the midterms, and lots of things can happen in six months in American politics. Trump could bring peace to the Middle East. The. We could have lower gas prices at the pump. We could have an end to the inflation of food costs. And then people might change their minds and decide, hey, he hasn’t been so bad. Do you think Trump will change between now and the midterms?
JN: You know, it is always within the realm of possibility. But you know, I’ve heard talk that there are some cases where when you get to be around 80, you don’t change as much as, as maybe when you’re 20.
2026 is shaping up as a strikingly good year for the Democrats. However I’ve covered the Democrats for long enough to say, let’s wait till November before we make any final judgments.
JW: John Nichols — read [email protected]. John, thanks for talking with us today.
JN: Thank you so much. It’s always good to be with you, Jon.