American Civil Liberties Union

And then the

ACLU of Maine came out and did a bunch of videos about voter intimidation, too.

And then you had the Press Herald article running with the voter intimidation.

And then just a little afterthought at the bottom says, oh, and there's accusations of electioneering, too.

It's not like the electioneering made like the New York Post and the Gateway Pundit and all of these national news outlets and had millions of views on social media and rightly sparked national and international outrage over the situation.

But no, if you're the ACLU of Maine, or you're the League of Women Voters, or you're the Press Herald, you're these supposed nonpartisan institutions.

You run with the one completely out of context video, and you side with the community that is clearly engaging in the electioneering efforts.

Yes, I'm reading a recruitment effort for poll chaplains by the Maine People's Alliance.

And they use the legal system that has been completely corrupted since the 70s with critical legal theory and social justice and DEI went on steroids under Eric Holder and Obama, firing everyone that wasn't ideologically aligned with them.

meaning everyone that was conservative or independent, and replacing the DOJ, Civil Rights Division, and National Security Division with Southern Poverty Law Center, ADL, NAACP, ACLU lawyers, and law students that came out of these law schools that now don't teach constitutional law.

Actually, they teach how to get around constitutional law.

They teach critical legal theory.

OK, and this guy right now, Eric Holder, his wingman who destroyed our education system with disparate impact, who did everything he could to weed out the entire Washington, D.C. of anyone that wasn't progressive left globalist Marxists.

He gutted the DOJ.

put in people from the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, ACLU, foreign-born lawyers, all ideologically aligned to destroy the Constitution and constitutional republic.

And right now he's working with Chuck Schumer and all of them and Eisen and Elias and McCord and Gupta.

dc to fight for you Now on the House side, you almost can't believe this stuff.

We have an ACLU lobbyist from Portland by the name of Sam Forstag.

Now this is a guy who tells Montanans that this great state needs a sales tax.

He's a guy who tells Montana that it needs sanctuary cities.

So it means that these people like to eat every day.

and also it means that people the thing that i get it used to be when i was on cnn people would say they would see me go hey it's the kkk guy which wasn't awesome in airports uh but now the thing i hear is like thank you for your work there's just a general like thank you for what you're doing out in the world because people know me from the aclu commercials shout out to the aclu right here people know me from see on on instagram and substack writing haha on the faces of my enemies so people know me as somebody who's out there who's going to try to stand up for whoever needs to be stood up whenever they need to be and who's not afraid of the consequences so like i think that like luckily i live in oakland so i feel pretty pretty at home and safe here so yeah but i think that's you know it's just it's a it's there's a vacuum of A lot of comedians, especially right now, have chosen a side, and it's not the side that I'm on.

So I think it's also about the fact that I'm with the people.

You are with the people.

We are joined by a fantastic, wonderful, nation-lifting guest, Deirdre Schifeling.

She is the Chief Political and Advocacy Officer at the ACLU.

Hello, hello.

Thank you for taking Democracy.

We are excited to be here.

I'm really excited that you're here.

The ACLU has made sure that our civil liberties are protected for so long.

And right now, early voting is underway in many states.

It is 10 years old.

It is not the ACLU's and the California law that everybody is quoting never said the word ICE.

But this is a very interesting story.

The version that reached us was that the ACLU of California had just rolled out videos and a hotline for reporting ICE agents intimidating voters at the polls.

This is eight days out from an election.

So I went and I opened the pages.

So you can start with the hotline itself.

The number in that story is 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

So today, we're glad that you're here to be part of examining with us this escalating war on dissent, how to turn attacks into occasions for broader, more organized resistance, what meaningful defense requires of all of us, and what we, the people, must understand and prepare to do together.

I'm so glad to be having this conversation with Robert Held, President of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, investigative journalist Will Potter, Sergio Alcubilla, Director of Community Engagement for ACLU Hawaii with Drew Harmon, an organizer with Minnesota 5051, joining

us later.

And let's get started.

But they were definitely interested in your organization.

I think it's extremely chilling.

I think that what you're getting at in terms of the real life ramifications of what they're trying to bring into being, and we could talk about why separately, but I'd like to bring Sergio into this conversation because, well, A, you can obviously respond to anything that anyone else said, but I did want to get, as somebody who's doing a lot of community, you know, leading community engagement efforts for ACLU Hawaii.

What does NSPM 7 do? What is it directing federal agencies to do? And how can its framework turn the political beliefs and organizing and association into grounds for suspicion? How is this working?

She's the executive director, which is a training program for progressive organizers and activists.

She's worked with the ACLU and Maryland working families.

And she knows exactly what breaks down inside a party.

When they lose races, they had no business of losing.

Some states, you still have the ability to register and vote on the same day.

You can go to your state website, or I believe you can go to vote.org and find out if you're still on the voter rolls and show up.

And hey, if you go and they tell you, well, we don't have you on the voter rolls, Ask for a provisional ballot and a receipt and refuse to leave until they give you a provisional ballot because it's better to have recorded your vote and let ACLU or somebody else go to court and sue to get your vote counted rather than you just walk away and give up.

So fight for your right.