[00:00:00] Welcome to Discourse where we cut through the noise and make sense of the chaos. I'm your host, Wayne Unger. I'm a law professor and former Silicon Valley nerd, and I've spent years breaking down complex topics into digestible takeaways. And on this podcast, we'll take a deep dive into the pressing issues shaping our world in law.

Politics, technology, business and more. No echo chambers, no corporate influence. Just thoughtful analysis and respectful civic dialogue because understanding different perspectives isn't just important. It's necessary. Let's get started.

Alright, welcome back to Discourse. I'm your host, Dwayne Unger, and we are recording today's episode on Tuesday, August 19th at 9:00 AM. And on today's episode, well we have two main topics today. The first one is this redistricting fight, and specifically we're gonna take a look at what California is doing or plans to do.

And we are going to talk, of course about [00:01:00] Putin Zelinsky, the European leaders, and how Donald Trump has put himself in the center as the negotiator for a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Now, before we do though, let's discuss very quickly some headlines

up first for our portion where we discuss the headlines of today. Let's begin by looking at Trump's latest push, Rumor has it encouraged by Russia President Vladimir Putin, to end mailin voting or absentee voting, depending on which jurisdiction. Sometimes those names are interchangeable. So Donald Trump has called for.

Complete end to mail-In voting, he wants to stop states from voting by mail and using voting machines. Now, he claims on his social media website Truth Social, that he plans to [00:02:00] quote, lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines in the country in next year's midterm elections. And this is according to NPR.

Part of his plan includes signing an executive order that bars states from using mail ballots and potentially some voting machines. He said, without evidence as NPR notes, that these voting machines are highly inaccurate, as well as more expensive and less reliable than counting paper ballots.

In a statement, he said, quote. We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they are corrupt. Now, Trump said this during a meeting with Ukrainian President Zelinsky at the White House yesterday on August 18th, he continued and he said, and it's time that the Republicans get tough and [00:03:00] stop it because the Democrats want it.

It's the only way they can get elected. Now, I think he means by that last sentence that mail-in ballots are the only way that Democrats can get elected, but the facts don't necessarily support that kind of carte blanche statement that he has put out there. In fact, mail-in ballots have benefited the Republicans, including Donald Trump in the last presidential election.

According to Politico, the Republican party poured tens of millions of dollars last year in the 2024 presidential election into convincing their voter that casting ballots by mail was safe . After Trump spent years bashing the practice and baselessly insisting that it was rife with fraud, you might recall that he did this during the 2020 election.

Trump attacked mail-in ballot during the 2020 [00:04:00] presidential election, and we know how that election turned out. It turned out with a Biden win. And in the 2024 election, the Republican campaign to support voting by mail worked. The GOP voters closed in or even reversed the mail-in voting gap with the Democrats in several states, according to Politico.

So in this way, mail-in ballots were successful for the Republicans in the 2024 election. As I was, as we know, Donald Trump had a successful campaign, and he is now the current president of the United States. But when he attacked mail-in ballots and told everybody to ignore mail-in ballots or not to vote by mail, told his supporters not to vote by mail.

It did not turn out very well for him in the 2020 election. Now, this is not a single cause of his [00:05:00] loss. Of course, in 2020 there were, uh, a thousand different things, or probably more than a thousand different things on voters' minds in the 2020 election. Of course, case in point, the pandemic and the poor response from the Trump administration and possibly the desire of many American voters to have steady proven leadership in office to navigate us through the global pandemic for COVID to 19.

Here's a concrete example of how Republicans have benefited from mail-in ballots. Arizona has had. Absentee or mail-in ballot since, well, as long as I can remember, and I think it dates back to the early 1990s long before I could even vote, and Republicans returned to their advantage amongst mail-in votes in Arizona during the 2024 election.

So in that way, it actually helped Donald Trump win [00:06:00] that battleground state in 2024. And according to Politico, in Pennsylvania, state data shows that GOP voters accounted for 32% of mail in ballots in 2024, where Trump, of course, won that state. Another battleground state up from 25% in 2020 when he narrowly lost it to then candidate Joe Biden.

So here we actually see some success. In an increase in the number of mail-in ballots that Republicans cast in 2024 compared to the election in 2020. This idea that mail-in ballots only benefit Democrats is just not supported by the data. It supports Republicans and Democrats depending on which state of course you're talking about and whether it's a swing state or not.

That said, why does Trump [00:07:00] continue to push this narrative? Well, possibly as they ramp up the midterm election season ahead of November of 2026. So as we approach the midterms, perhaps it's another play out of Trump's standard playbook to cast doubt into the election. And so if we begin the narrative right now, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, then he could continue that narrative as we head into the 2026 midterm elections. As I've previously mentioned, the party that holds the White House typically loses in the midterm elections. We have seen this for several administrations and many midterms in the last 25 years where you have the party in the White House lose their house [00:08:00]majority in the midterm elections.

Barack Obama saw this. Donald Trump in his first term saw this and Joe Biden. Well, that was a little bit of anomaly. Ahead of the 2022 midterm election, it was predicted that there was going to be this massive red wave.

You might recall that this massive red wave, and it turns out that there wasn't. Now of course. Republicans did gain control of the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm election, but it wasn't the substantial majority that many predicted. So in that way, it kind of was an anomaly insofar as it wasn't a landslide for the Republicans in 2022.

So there certainly is something to say here regarding a potential campaign strategy ahead of the 2026 midterm election where Donald Trump, as is his [00:09:00] mo. Wants to cast down into the next election to suggest perhaps that if the Republicans lose their majority, which is very thin currently in the House of Representatives, that it is not because the Democrats won the majority of number of seats, of course, assuming that they win in 2026, but rather it's because the Democrats cheated.

But that's not quite what is happening here. As we've mentioned, which I'll discuss further in the second half of this episode, there is this mid decade redistricting campaign that Trump has also called for, and specifically he has called on Texas to redraw the district maps with the hope that the Republicans can pick up five additional seats under a redraw on Texas map.

For redrawn congressional districts and California as well [00:10:00] as other blue states. But California is really leading the charge has responded and said, okay, Texas, if you redraw your maps, then we'll redraw our maps. And again, I'll talk about that during the second half of this episode. My point here is this could be a standard play that Trump has played over and over again for the last 10 years to cast doubt in an election in which the Republicans are poised or at least predicted to lose.

But the other aspect to what is happening here is, as I've mentioned, Donald Trump wants to begin with an executive order to prohibit mail-in ballots, but the president of the United States has no role the administration of elections. Elections in this country are a decentralized process, and what I mean by that is the [00:11:00] elections are run by the individual states, not by the federal government. The federal government does not run or minister any election in this country. Rather, as we know, individual states, typically the Secretary of State and kind of an elections department, will they operate, they administer, they run the election, including down to how is the ballot laid out.

Now, Congress has a role in elections according to the Constitution, but not the president. So even if the president does sign an executive order, I cannot see any court sustaining or upholding that executive order. Because it is clear in the Constitution that the President doesn't have any authority with respect to the administration of an election.

Now, the Trump administration may try to cast it under a different authority in which the President of the United States does have under the Constitution, such as [00:12:00] potentially a law enforcement strategy,

so for example, the President of the United States may claim that he's acting under his general law enforcement strategy, that he has a duty to ensure that the elections are run lawfully. Okay? I think that's a little bit of a stretch, but I think that this super majority conservative Supreme Court could buy into that argument, even though from an originalist perspective, the president doesn't have a role in elections.

And that's potentially the partisan aspect of this Supreme Court showing, once again, if, if the Supreme Court sustains an executive order from the President of the United States related to elections that ban mail-in ballots, well that would be hyper-partisan, in my opinion. What is clear is that election law [00:13:00] experts, so law professors around the country who specialize and focus on election law have clearly stated that any changes to the president's lawful authority or legal authority, excuse me, would require an action from Congress.

So Congress can empower the President of the United States through some sort of legislation so the Congress could pass something that would allow the President some ability to regulate or oversee elections around this country.

Now, there are some benefits to having a decentralized election process here in the United States, such as election security. I think from a cybersecurity perspective, and I'm gonna pull from my Silicon Valley experience here, from a cybersecurity perspective, a decentralized system or a segmented system is, or can be more secure than a centralized system.

If you think about, well, if you keep all of the money [00:14:00] that a bank holds in one vault, that is inherently more risky than if you separate the money into different vaults. Think about this from a consumer perspective or from a user perspective. And what I mean by that is if you have one safe in your home that has, say, $10,000 of cash that you like to keep, you like to keep $10,000 worth of cash.

If you keep it in one safe in your home, somebody breaks in and steals that safe, well, all of your money is gone, right? All $10,000 gone stolen. But if you keep several safes, perhaps you have five different safes in your home, and you split that $10,000 amongst the five different safes, so you have 2000 in each safe.

Well, it is less likely that a burglar or a robber is going to take all five safes with them. Even if they see or know of all five safes, chances are they're gonna see [00:15:00] one safe and they're just gonna take that one safe. But, so in this case, the burglar, robber gets away with. Only $2,000 instead of $10,000, you, you mitigate the risk by spreading things out.

You mitigate the risk by having multiple safes. So relating this to election, we mitigate the risk of a security or a fraud incident related to our elections by having different jurisdictions run their elections.

This way, our elections are actually quite secure because no say foreign state actor could hack into one system and kind of change the outcome of election. Instead, they would have to hack into multiple systems to have any substantial effect on the outcome of an election.

My point here is that decentralized elections actually provide a level of security that we [00:16:00]would have, that we do have over say, a federally administered election across all jurisdictions. But perhaps most telling is we can look at what our founders or our framers, the constitution's framers actually thought.

Because in this regard, Alexander Hamilton actually wrote this down, and again, it's a pet peeve of mine. When someone says, oh, our framers would be so disappointed, or Our framers thought this, or our framers thought that. Unless they wrote it down, how do you know? That's always my response. Unless they wrote it down.

How do you know what the framers actually would think? But in this case, with respect to the administration of elections, the framers actually wrote something down. Hamilton foresaw, he. He documented this in Federalist Paper number 59, that a democracy must diversify power of elections in order to protect itself from an [00:17:00] overzealous executive.

And therefore, power over elections would reside with the several states, with the individual states. So it was not only a mitigation strategy with respect to the security of elections, but also a mitigation strategy to prevent overzealous executives from taking control and manipulating elections in their favor.

 In this regard, if Donald Trump actually signs an executive order, it would have to rely on some novel legal theory, which would of course be tested in the courts. And we would expect to see that work its way up to the United States Supreme Court. But what I think is really going on here is just another play from Trump's standard playbook that we have seen over and over again over the last 10 years to call into question the integrity of an election [00:18:00] because he thinks his party is going to lose.

 Switching gears, the second headline that I wanna discuss today is sort of breaking news. So the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, who has led some pretty controversial things since he began his term. Well, he says that teachers from New York and California who apply to teach in Oklahoma will now have to answer questions meant to screen out woke indoctrinated with left wing views, and it's the latest attempt by Oklahoma officials to push the state's education system towards the right.

The Washington Post says that the test planned by Oklahoma will provide 50 questions and it will cover topics about US government, religion, and gender, according to examples shared by Ryan Walter's office. Again, the superintendent of [00:19:00] public instruction in the state of Oklahoma.

Now, he of course, is a Republican, but teachers unions have criticized the move as a political stunt that would actually discourage applicants as Oklahoma, and well many states around the country face a teacher shortage.

But perhaps most notably, Walters says that the exam will be developed or has been developed by Prager University and Prager University, if you haven't heard of it, or Prager U is a nonprofit that actually produces educational materials emphasizing patriotic and conservative views. It is known to be in a hyper conservative organization.

But the term university in its name, Prager University, is slightly misleading. Even though Prager University, to be fair, has been clear and disclaims this. So Prager University is not an accredited [00:20:00] University and it does not claim to be. It's very clear on that. So they're not trying to hide the ball or fool anyone necessarily.

And Prager University does not offer any degrees, but they do provide educational content. 

So this is a little rich coming from Oklahoma because while Oklahoma, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, claims that he does not want teachers who may be left leaning, who may carry in his terms, woke ideologies to come into the state of Oklahoma and indoctrinate Oklahoma students.

At the same time, he wants to adopt materials used and produced by Preger University.

Now that said, Prager U was started by Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host, and it is intriguing for me to hear that Oklahoma doesn't want [00:21:00] New York and California teachers relocating to the state of Oklahoma to teach because they could indoctrinate students. However, Oklahoma is willing to adopt materials put out by Prager University, which is quite clearly in the business of perpetuating partisan.

Information and conservative viewpoints. Now, I mentioned this not only for that reason, but also for the constitutional aspect Here. I argue that what Walters is attempting to do in Oklahoma through this litmus test is actually unconstitutional. Because if you hire somebody who has a conservative viewpoint on the world to be a teacher, and you don't hire somebody to be a teacher who has a Democratic viewpoint, that is discrimination and that is actually [00:22:00] impermissible under the First Amendment.

Now, the first amendment we don't typically see as the, the amendment to the United States Constitution that is about anti-discrimination. But what the First Amendment does protect in this case is viewpoint discrimination. So the First Amendment says. According to the United States Supreme Court for decades, that the government cannot favor one viewpoint over another.

That would be a violation of the First Amendment. And if public schools in the state of Oklahoma are favoring conservative viewpoints and acting by giving them an employment offer and yet not acting, or by refusing to give unemployment offer to somebody of a different viewpoint, that is viewpoint discrimination that is inherently unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

what Walters is trying to do here, I believe, is kind of a textbook case of a First Amendment [00:23:00]infringement.

Now, this isn't the first thing that Walters has tried to do, that is kind of blatantly unconstitutional. Also, according to the Washington Post, Walters recently had another controversy because he has sought to distribute Bibles in public school classrooms. And here that would be unconstitutional under the establishment clause because you cannot distribute one religious text and not other religious texts.

Now, Walters claims that the reason for including the Bible and public school classrooms is because it has a historic value, not for its religious value. But the thing here is if you favor one religious text over another by saying that the Bible has enough historic value such that it should be distributed in a public school classroom, but not other religious texts like the Book of Mormon or the Koran, well, [00:24:00]then you run into the establishment clause issue because then it shows that you are favoring one religion over another.

All of this is to say, Ryan Walters may be favored in the state of Oklahoma, but if you are a true constitutionalist. A true constitutionalist should denounce what Ryan Walters is trying to do as the state superintendent of public instruction. To me, it certainly appears that Ryan Walters is trying to indoctrinate and it's very rich that he wants to call out any left leaning folks.

They could be teachers from New York and California who in his eyes are trying to indoctrinate, but I say, look at the mirror. Look at yourself in the mirror, Ryan Walters. And what you're trying to do here, it is hypocritical. You're trying to adopt Prager University, which is clearly conservative viewpoint.

You're trying to incorporate the Bible into public instruction, which is favoring [00:25:00] one religion over another. So you may not like it. You may want public school classrooms to have religious instruction, but the fact is the Constitution does not permit it. And there are reasons for that. There are reasons for why the framers built some of these protections into the constitution.

I shouldn't say framers, actually. It was the first Congress that passed the Bill of Rights,

all of that is to say if you actually read what the framers of the Constitution believed and what the first Congress discussed, you will actually see quite clearly that there was a strong belief in the separation of church and state. Yes, the framers had their religious beliefs, but the reasons for why that separation is necessary did vary from framer to framer. So for example, some believed that we need to separate the church and the [00:26:00] state in the best interest of the state, and others believed that that separation is necessary because it was in the best interest of the church.

Regardless of why we need the separation of church and state, according to the framers, we pretty much agreed that separation is necessary. So what Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is trying to do here is unconstitutional for one, but also anti what the framers wanted and sought back in the 17 hundreds.

And again, we don't have to look very far here because the framers actually wrote this down. So if Ryan Walters as the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction,

 If he actually read up on his history, he would see that the framers had certain viewpoints that are actually contrary [00:27:00] to what he's trying to do.

Now, Ryan Walters, I am not trying to attack your education, but it appears that Ryan Walters has a bachelor's from Harding University according to his Wikipedia page.

Now Harding University is a private Christian university with its main campus in Arkansas. It was established in 1924, and the institution offers undergraduate, graduate, and pre-professional programs. Here, He went to a private university that is affiliated with Christianity. So one can assume that he learned in an environment that promoted Christianity.

And the thing we have to separate is Ryan Walters, you had an educational experience that may have incorporated religion. Because it could, because it was a private university, a private [00:28:00]religiously affiliated university. But as the superintendent of public instruction in the state of Oklahoma, you are now bound by the Constitution.

You control public instruction and that public instruction must comply with the Constitution. So whatever experience you had in higher education at Hardy University cannot necessarily be replicated amongst the K through 12 public instruction that happens in the Oklahoma Public School system.

Now, in case you were wondering what some of those questions are, it's a 50 question test developed by Prager University and the Washington Post actually published some of these questions. First, what are the first three words of the constitution? Second, why is the freedom of religion important to America's identity?

Third, what are the two parts of the US Congress? Fourth , How [00:29:00] many US senators are there? Fifth . Why do some states have more representatives than others? Those are just some of the questions, and really, if you've had kind of a basic civic education in the United States, you should know these answers, or you might know these answers, but to subject only teachers from California and New York to this test, well, that's where the discrimination comes from.

If you said any outer stater who carries a teaching credential, who comes to the state of Oklahoma and desires to teach in the Oklahoma public system. You must take this litmus test to understand the basics of American civics. Well, you might not have a constitutional issue there, given Ryan Walter's public comments, he has put himself into a situation in which the constitutionality of what he's trying to do here will be called into [00:30:00] question.

so I posed those questions. Let me answer those questions. What are the first three words of the Constitution? They are we the people? Number two, why is the freedom of religion important to America's identity? Here are the answer choices. By the way, it's a multiple choice test. A, it makes Christianity, the national religion.

Nope, that's incorrect. B, it bans all public forms of worship. Nope, that's incorrect. You can pray in public C. It limits religious teaching and public life. Well, yes. Sort of not the best answer. And D, it protects religious choice from government. Control D is the best answer here. That is what the freedom of religion is about.

Free exercise of religion means that government cannot control the exercise of one's religion. Three. What are the two parts of the United States Congress? Well, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Four. [00:31:00] How many US senators are there? There are 100. There are two from each state. And five. Why do some states have more representatives in the United States House of Representatives than others?

A. They cover a larger geographic area. No. B, they have held statehood for a longer period. No, that is incorrect as well. C, the numbers determined by military presence, no, absolutely not. Or D. Representation is determined by population size. D is the correct answer here. Case you were wondering what the answers were to those five sample questions.

With those headlines outta the way, let's turn to our two main stories for today the first one is the redistricting fight that we're seeing play out across the country, mainly in Texas and California. And then the [00:32:00] second is the meeting between. Russia President Vladimir Putin, and United States President Donald Trump that occurred on Friday in Alaska, and then the subsequent meeting on Monday, August 18th between Trump Zelensky and other European leaders. Let's begin with the redistricting conversation first. So just to catch us all up, Texas is pushing to draw new congressional maps in the state of Texas. That would net or in theory would net the Republicans five more seats.

Meaning that the Democrats would lose five seats as a result. And this push has come from Donald Trump himself. He has encouraged the state of Texas to redraw its congressional maps in order to cause this effect ahead of the 2026 midterm election. And the goal here doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Donald Trump is trying to do and [00:33:00] what the state of Texas is trying to do, which is they're trying to hold on to the majority in the United States House of Representatives.

And in order to do that, they are trying to change the rules to their favor, right? They're trying to redistrict, draw new maps halfway through the decade. Now, normally we redistrict every 10 years a census is mandated by the Constitution, and that census must count the whole number of persons in the United States.

That census drives the redistricting that occurs every 10 years. So we expect states to redistrict every 10 years, and that typically happens after a census. And the census is always held at the beginning of a decade, right? So the last one was in 2020, and the next one should be in 2030. So it is slightly abnormal for a state to seek [00:34:00] to redistrict itself halfway through the decade.

It is not abnormal for a state to draw new maps. If previously drawn maps have been challenged in court and have been ruled unconstitutional in some shape or form. We see this commonly with racial redistricting, where you racially discriminate against a population in order to. Drive down their representation in Congress. That is prohibited by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and the courts have been clear on that.

So a court may order a redrawing of congressional maps, but that is not what we have here. Texas has done this kind of willingly and voluntarily at the request or direction of Donald Trump as the President of the United States, with the goal of holding onto the Republican majority in the house during the midterm elections.

Now, California [00:35:00] has responded, governor Gavin Newsom, and said, okay, Texas, we see you and we raise you. If you redraw your maps, we will seek to redraw our maps as well. The issue that California though runs into is California has. A constitutionally required independent redistricting commission. What I mean by that is there is a provision in the California constitution that requires an independent redistricting commission to redraw the maps in the state of California.

Now, governor Gavin Newsom has said to Texas that if you continue with this, then we'll continue with ours. But if you drop your effort to redistrict state of Texas, governor Abbott and your state legislature, then California will drop it as well. So California is truly doing this in response to Texas, and it is intriguing to watch the responses and the [00:36:00] pundits argue over how Texas is doing something lawful and permissible and right.

But California is doing something that's wrong, unlawful, and how California should not be able to do this. And that calls out the hypocrisy in this. Now, republicans are trying to position this as what California is doing is wrong because it's enshrined in their constitution that there must be an independent redistricting commission.

But in Texas there's no such equivalent, and that is true. That is a true statement. To the best of my knowledge, and I haven't read both state constitutions from top to bottom, but to the best of my knowledge, California has that provision, but Texas does not have that provision. What we have seen over the last several decades is a push often led by the Democrats to install what are called independent redistricting commissions, which the Supreme Court of the United States has held to be [00:37:00] constitutional.

Arizona has one. California is another, and many other states do. And this was in response to partisan gerrymandering where you would have states led by partisan commissions or redistricting committees or state legislatures, redraw the maps in such a way that would favor one political party over the other by drawing the maps in a way to where that political party would have control over that district as to outvote the minority in that district.

And by minority, I mean minority political party and not necessarily racial minority, because that would be unconstitutional. Cool.

Okay. Getting back to California and Texas specifically, California. Has a constitutional amendment process. And according to the California Department of General Services, a constitutional amendment for state [00:38:00] Constitution can be initiated by the state legislature if it passes both houses of the California state legislature by a two-thirds vote.

And a constitutional amendment does not need the governor's signature, but of course, in this case, we would expect Governor Newsom to actually sign it. So we're not worried about that, and it becomes part of the Constitution only if the people of California approve it at the next election. A special election can be called by the governor to consider a proposed constitutional amendment if he or she deems fit.

When a legislature adopts a proposed constitutional amendment, it often also adopts a companion bill, according to the state of California, and a companion bill is a bill, which takes effect only if the constitutional amendment is passed by the people. in general, democratic voters have favored these independent [00:39:00] redistricting commissions because in their eyes, that eliminates or at least mitigates the partisanship that often occurs in redrawing congressional districts.

And that partisanship in redrawing those congressional districts is often referred to as gerrymandering. So you would gerrymandering a congressional map. In order to favor one political party over another,

now California and its constitution can also be amended through this process. So we can add provisions to the state of California through this initiative process, or we can amend existing provisions in the state constitution through this initiative process. So republicans who are trying to tarnish or taint the process in the state of California, they're arguing, well, the will of the people already spoke, and we have these independent redistricting commission in the state of California.[00:40:00]

And what Gavin Newsom is trying to do here is anti what the people of California want. The thing here is, well, that's just not true. That's just fundamentally misleading and the Republicans know it. Because Gavin Newsom isn't trying to do this unilaterally 'cause he can't, Gavin Newsom wants to start or commence this constitutional amendment process.

So if the state legislature, and we can expect the state legislature to do so, if the state legislature passes an initiative by two thirds vote in both chambers and it goes to a general election ballot, well that independent election commission does not go away unless the voters approve it. So in this regard, Gavin Newsom cannot act unilaterally and if California redistricts ahead of the 2026 midterm election, it [00:41:00] will be because the voters have expressed the desire to do this in response to Texas.

So if Texas and Republicans across the country do not want California to do this, then it's quite simple. According to Gavin Newsom, Texas needs to back off. But even if Texas does not back off and it continues to redistrict to favor Republicans by a net five and disfavor Democrats by a negative five, well, California will respond, but California will only respond at the will of its California voters.

California voters will have a say on whether they want to respect the previous installment of a independent commission or whether they want to go a different route. That is, by very definition, a true democratic decision [00:42:00] when you put a decision up for popular vote. There is no more clear form of democracy, and it's intriguing because you have conservative voices such as, well, the infamous Charlie Kirk, who is the turning point USA founder.

So if you are not familiar with who Charlie Kirk is. Charlie Kirk is an American right wing political activist, author, and media personality. According to his Wikimedia page, Kirk was raised in Illinois and he attended Harper College, but he did not graduate from Harper College. He has been a frequent commentator in Republican circles, often a commentator on Fox News. Charlie Kirk was on Fox News the other day and he said that in his characterization, Gavin Newsom, as the governor of California is going to try to call a special session to overturn the will of the voters. But that is just fundamentally misleading because as I've mentioned, California has [00:43:00] a constitutional amendment process in which any constitutional amendment will go to the voters for a vote.

And so if the voters overturn past voters, that's completely acceptable. That is true democracy in its works. So Charlie Kirk seems to have forgotten that democracy is when the people vote. And so if Gavin Newsom wants to pose a question, well, he can't do so unilaterally. It would be the California state legislature.

If the California state legislature wants to pose a question on the next ballot and see what the California voters, the will of the voters actually reflects, if the will of the voters is to allow the state of California to redistrict. To disfavor Republicans and favor Democrats. Well, that is the will of the voters.

So the will of the voters can always overturn the will of the voters.

This is, this is a 2028 strategy. And [00:44:00] so Gavin Newsom is gonna try to call a special session to overturn the will of the voters. I thought it was all about democracy, right? Will, can, what can it's not, it's not democracy. It's about oligarchy. And the, the baseline component of all of this is that the people of California, Republican and Democrat, socialist and libertarian, they don't want politicians involved in the drawing of the maps.

Gavin Newsom does not care because he wants to be president more than listen to the voters of California.

What, that's my response. What from Charlie Kirk? Because again, what Gavin Newsom wants to do here is ask the state legislature to pass an initiative to put it on the ballot, to put it to a vote in the state of California. So this, this, this MAGA speaking point. Of how somehow this is overturning the will of the voters.

It's just fundamentally not true because it will be put to a vote and the people will get [00:45:00] to decide. That is the literal mechanism for giving a voice to the voters, for allowing the voters to say what they wanna say for allowing the voters, the people of California to govern themselves to decide who their representatives are.

Charlie, Kirk, sometimes I wonder, do you, do you listen to yourself? Because if you just took a step back, listen to yourself, perhaps you would realize the how idiotic that statement is.

All right, so our last topic of the day is talking about international relations, and specifically the hostilities or the conflict or the war between Russia and Ukraine. Just to jog our memories, Donald Trump invited President Poin to a summit in Alaska, and that summit occurred on Friday and on Monday, the following Monday.

Donald Trump. [00:46:00] Invited Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, as well as other European leaders, including the head of NATO and the head of the European Union Commission to the White House to further the conversations. So it certainly appears that Donald Trump has placed himself in the center of negotiating a ceasefire or a peace deal.

Donald Trump has since walked back his explicit. Desire for a ceasefire, but he does not oppose one to be clear, and instead he has moved a step further and has called for a. Concrete peace agreement between the two countries. Now, of course, we don't know the terms of whatever the peace deal would be. The one thing we do know, because it was clear on Monday's meeting on August 18th that whatever deal would be on the table, the US will now commit to security provisions or [00:47:00]security agreements to Ukraine, meaning that.

Of course, if Ukraine's security was compromised in the future, that Europe and the United States would have a hand in responding to that security risk.

Now, that said, the other terms of the deal are yet to be determined. We know that Russia President Vladimir Putin has desired to annex another portion of Ukrainian land, but we also know that Zelinsky has. Pretty clearly said, absolutely not that that will not be a term of the agreement.

But of course, things are on the negotiation table and we'll see what actually comes of this peace deal. Now, I'll have to give credit where credit is due. Oftentimes, I slam the Trump administration, but we must recognize and we must give credit to the Trump administration for organizing these meetings so quickly.

So it was very quick [00:48:00] to get a meeting on the calendar, a meeting in Alaska with President Putin, and it was always, it was also extremely quick to get that subsequent meeting with Zelensky and the European leaders scheduled for the following Monday. So the Trump administration worked apparently diligently over the course of the weekend to organize.

A summit with Ukrainian President, Zelensky and the European leaders. Now that is telling, because you had the heads of Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany and Ukraine. I'm probably forgetting somebody all sitting at the table, France. That's what I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting The, uh, French president, um, Macron as well.

All of them gathered at the table for an in-person meeting in Washington, DC at the White House. You organized. The Trump administration organized this meeting very [00:49:00] quickly and it seems to have been productive. So I know in my own experience organizing a meeting with. So many senior officials is incredibly difficult from a scheduling perspective, but let alone getting them all to the same location, organizing the support around that meeting, including translators, the staff, the the media, the look in the field, printing out name badges.

I mean, there is a lot of logistics that go into this. That is an incredible feat. So I must give credit where credit is due there now. The one portion of the meeting that was broadcast live, which I watched, was a round table where you had all of the heads of state and the leaders sitting around a table in the east room, and Donald Trump gave his remarks and then he proceeded to call on everyone around the table for short remarks as well.

[00:50:00] Every single leader sitting around the table. Praised Trump. That's not surprising because by now Trump has been in office for four years, plus eight months or so in his second term. So world leaders know Donald Trump, and if they don't, then it's foolish. Then they're foolish and negligent. I would argue.

And we know that Donald Trump responds well to flattery. And so whether this was sincere, whether the the world leaders sitting around the table in the East room on Monday, whether they were sincere yet to be determined, I say they probably were sincere to a certain extent, and perhaps they exaggerated a little bit, but I think they were sincere because actions speak louder than words.

And what I mean by that, in this case. Is the Trump administration has acted, it has gotten the people to the table. It has arranged a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Trump, [00:51:00] and then very quickly arranged another face-to-face meeting with the European leaders and President Zelinsky. So that in itself shows action that the ball is moving forward, and hopefully we can reach a deal.

Now I will say that all of this could be a ploy. It could be a ploy by the Russian president Vladimir Putin, to get Trump to position himself in the middle of this all. Donald Trump and the Trump administration has put itself at the center of the negotiation. It is now the central coordinator. Donald Trump has now claimed he's the peace president and that he has settled every major conflict or major conflicts around the world. In fact, and I digress just a little bit, I, in listening to Donald Trump's remarks in the East Room on Monday, he said that he has solved every war and that the only war that is still going on right now is the Ukrainian and [00:52:00] Russia war.

That's just. Inaccurate. I think he just misspoke. I don't think he did this intentionally. It's inaccurate because there's still very much hostilities happening between Israel and Palestine. But putting that aside for a second, if Donald Trump and his administration can negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, we ought to all, all of us as Americans, ought to praise Donald Trump and his administration.

Because obviously the Biden administration was not able to prevent the war. Putin invaded Ukraine and he was not able to stop the hostility in Ukraine from Russia. So if Donald Trump is able to do it, we should commend Donald Trump for doing that. Regardless of whether you like or dislike Donald Trump, because an end to a war is a good thing.

Okay. Now, of course, if Donald Trump does it in such a way as to force [00:53:00] Ukraine into a deal that it does not agree with, well then we have a potential issue because if anything, the president of the United States should respect the desire and the wishes of Ukraine as a country and President. Zelinsky, as the representative of said country, it is their country.

Their country was invaded. It is their land. Their land was invaded, unprovoked. And so it certainly follows, in my opinion, that out of respect for Ukraine, Ukraine, we, we should respect what Ukraine wants in the deal because Ukraine has lost thousands and thousands of lives fighting this war that was unprovoked.

And if we allow President Putin to get what he wants. Then that just encourages dictators like Putin to invade other countries to continue to get what they want, whether it's resources or [00:54:00] land or people or all of the above. Going back to what I was previously saying, that this could all be a ploy. It could be a ploy that Poon has placed Donald Trump at the center of the negotiation, and as a result.

If Donald Trump is not successful at negotiating a peace deal, then all of the blame and the embarrassment falls Trump. That could be the ploy here. Now, if I think back to Friday's meeting with Trump and Putin, there were some criticism. The lock, actually, I should say, a lot of criticism, some of the criticism involved.

Well, Donald Trump asked President Putin into. To, to join him in, in the beast, in the presidential limo. Now here are the facts. Putin is a former KGB agent. You have now invited an adversary and a former spy into a highly [00:55:00] classified vehicle of the United States government. Of course, the schematics of the beast.

Are highly classified as they should be. 'cause it's about protecting the security, the safety of the president of the United States, its primary occupant. And you invited an adversary, the head of an adversarial country, into that limo. And perhaps that President, president Putin was able to gain some intelligence regarding that limousine, that the, the beast that he would not have had and likely would not have gathered absence, I don't know, a cybersecurity breach or something like that.

So in my eyes, that was a fundamental mistake of the Trump administration.

We also had a tremendous negative response, a pretty wide, broad, negative response related to the outcome of the, of the summit, which was basically there was no outcome, right? There was no agreement. Uh, the, the leaders canceled [00:56:00] lunch. They did not have the planned lunch that they were going to have on Friday, and you had commentators and pundits and reporters who were physically there in Alaska all report very similar things, including conservative media outlets.

By the way, you had conservative media outlets like Fox News reports that Donald Trump looked tired after that meeting. Now. That could mean two things. Either he got steamrolled, which was the narrative after Friday's meeting, or he spent so much energy in negotiating whatever he was negotiating in the room with President Putin, that he became tired.

 And the other narrative was that Donald Trump lost that he really got nothing out of the deal that that Putin steamrolled him.

And Trump's previous or prior national Security advisor in his first term, John Bolton, said that Putin really got the upper hand out of the meeting. Putin got what he [00:57:00] wanted. One thing I have recognized is that Donald Trump is willing to kind of break from the status quo in how the United States manages international relations, especially with dictators where, if you can think back to Donald Trump's first term, he also met with the North Korean leader in Vietnam.

They had the first face-to-face meeting between the, the sitting United States president and the North Korean leader. And that was considered a major taboo, that you don't want to elevate the North Korean leader to stand side by side in a picture, to shake hands with a sitting United States president.

And similarly, that was kind of the approach to Friday's meeting with Putin, where the United States shouldn't elevate Putin. After he commenced this conflict and to put him back on the world stage, but nonetheless, the Trump administration did. So we can give [00:58:00] a little praise there that the Trump administration is kind of willing to buck those traditional or conventional taboos in order to move things forward.

And I think in the North Korean example, from his first term, we didn't really get much out of it. So in that way, North Korea gained. Or benefited from that meeting and not the United States, but here, what if Donald Trump does reach a peace agreement? Well then that would say that risk of putting Putin back on the world stage by shaking hands and having side by side pitchers, well, that would've paid off.

Then. Every president takes a major risk at some point during their presidency. Case in point, I'm reminded of the Obama administration during his first term, Barack Obama approved the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. Now we know how that resulted. It turned out successful. They successfully [00:59:00] raided the compound, killed Osama bin Laden and captured his body and an incredible amount of intelligence.

Was gathered at that compound. Donald Trump, I think, has taken a risk like Obama. I don't mean to put that at the same level because I would say Obama took a major risk, perhaps the, the, the biggest risk of his entire presidency, both the first and second terms combined, because if that raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan did not go well, if it was a failure, I think we can all reasonably say that Barack Obama would not have won reelection in 2012.

We would've had a President Mitt Romney in 2012 because of how embarrassing and how detrimental that that failure of a raid would have been. Again, if it failed, but we know it didn't. I think here. [01:00:00] Donald Trump has taken a risk. He has staked the second term of his presidency potentially on this, and has accepted that he will be the center of the negotiation, the mediator between these two countries that are hostile towards one another.

So we'll see what comes of it. It seems that there is positive momentum and a settlement or an agreement may be reached, but it all could be a ploy. By Russia to embarrass the American president. Those are my thoughts as of today. We'll see how this unfolds. I'll continue to add my thoughts in future episodes, and I'll let you know how things are unfolding.

But until next time, that is it for today's episode of Discourse. I'd like to remind you before we close, that discourse is now on TikTok and Instagram reels. Check out either social media accounts for. Video shorts that I post throughout [01:01:00] the week, commenting short little videos, commenting on what is happening in the world and the headlines as they unfold today.

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