But Maria, go.

Sure.

OK, so I am not a predictions market expert either, but this has come up as a corruption issue.

And so I have dug a little bit into it.

And let me just explain a little bit about what they are.

So prediction markets have been around for a while, but they weren't getting widespread attention and use until the last couple of years.

And they're basically places online where you can go and place bets on something happening or not happening.

But talk a little bit about the Congressional Courage Campaign.

But Maria, go.

Sure.

OK, so I am not a predictions market expert either, but this has come up as a corruption issue.

And so I have dug a little bit into it.

And let me just explain a little bit about what they are.

So prediction markets have been around for a while, but they weren't getting widespread attention and use until the last couple of years.

And they're basically places online where you can go and place bets on something happening or not happening.

But talk a little bit about the Congressional Courage Campaign.

How-- What is it supposed to look like at this point in terms of the framework being created, and how can we do anything?

It's not gonna happen right now, period.

We have to work our way to accountability, and that means we've got two years, assuming Congress changes hands, where you do have an opening and a, I think, a willingness in the House and maybe the Senate if it flips too, to investigate.

And that's all about getting at the facts, right? Surfacing findings, helping the public understand what's going on, and identifying where there's been misconduct or potential criminal activity that could be the basis for criminal prosecution.

The reality is this administration controls the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice is not going to hold anybody tied to the administration to account because of the same dynamic I discussed before, right? They've destroyed the mechan-me-mechanisms of accountability that they have control over.

And so especially now with Todd Blanche, President Trump's former personal lawyer, ahead of, a-as head of the Justice Department, that is not going to happen.

So how do we keep track without it being overwhelmed? And how, what kind of, you know, work should organizations like yours and others do to chart, track, and not forget the crimes that they're committing on a daily basis?

The Congressional Courage Campaign, what exactly is it? What efforts are you undertaking? And I, I know, you know, y- you were really pouring your efforts into Texas, and I think maybe they reaped some benefits.

Yeah.

I mean, just over the last few weeks with, uh, the Blanche nomination in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, we put real effort into getting people in Texas to call Senator Cornyn.

And lots and lots of people did.

We made a bunch of patch-through calls ourselves, completely energized and motivated because I think most Americans, and that includes many, many Republicans, do not like the idea of taxpayer money going to pay people who were convicted of, in many cases, violent offenses as part of the January 6th insurrection.

And they don't like the idea of the Trump family and businesses getting protection from IRS audit for past returns when that's something nobody gets.

We can't get that.

So talk a little bit about the importance of congressional investigations, not just because there's that whole check and balance thing that coequal branches of government are supposed to be governed by, but even, even more so, they can be a prelude to criminal investigations.

The Congressional Courage Campaign, what exactly is it? What efforts are you undertaking? And I, I know, you know, y- you were really pouring your efforts into Texas, and I think maybe they reaped some benefits.

Yeah.

I mean, just over the last few weeks with, uh, the Blanche nomination in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, we put real effort into getting people in Texas to call Senator Cornyn.

And lots and lots of people did.

We made a bunch of patch-through calls ourselves, um, totally energized and motivated because I think most Americans, and that includes many, many Republicans, do not like the idea of taxpayer money going to pay people who were convicted of, in many cases, violent offenses as part of the January 6th insurrection.

And they don't like the idea of the Trump family and businesses getting protection from IRS audit for past returns when that's something nobody gets.

We can't get that.

So talk a little bit about the importance of congressional investigations, not just because there's that whole check and balance thing that coequal branches of government are supposed to be governed by, but even, even more so, they can be a prelude to criminal investigations.

So let's start with kind of accountability for DHS and the, and the efforts that you all are engaged in.

Yeah.

Uh, so DHS is, uh, as you said, engaged in terrible abuses and has been for over a year.

Uh, it started with those, um, cases where they sent more than two hundred people to a Coate prison in El Salvador, where they were subsequently tortured and in some cases sexually assaulted, um, as appeared in that CBS sixty minutes, uh, piece, uh, that came out in December.

Um, that by the way, uh, Barry Weiss apparently tried to bury.

Um, but that's kind of a side note.

Um, look, they've been v-very, um, uh, bru-brutal and, uh, disturbing in their behavior, and unfortunately, Congress gave them a huge amount of money, uh, made them the biggest law enforcement agency in the country, uh, specifically last year.

So can you just talk for a few minutes about some of the work you did around the world to fight authoritarianism and governmental corruption?

Maria McFarlane Sanchez-Marino, tell us about represent.us and your affiliation with this new club.

Thanks so much.

So Represent Us has been doing work to hold the U.S. government accountable, make it more accountable to the people for over a decade.

We've been working on issues of money and politics, corruption, gerrymandering, all sorts of dysfunctions in our democratic system that have in many ways landed us where we are today.

And this year, we have been very focused on the dramatic effort coming from the top of our government to erode democratic norms.

And in particular, what we've been doing is trying to mobilize people to put pressure on Congress.

Our Congress has been operating as a rubber stamp.

Whistleblower

Okay.

...

I've worked in international human rights for a couple of decades, uh, and I've seen this happen in country after country.

And Miles is, uh, a dissident.

You know, he's a person who has been targeted by the person who is trying to concentrate all power.

Uh, and to me, when I first met him, uh, it was, uh, such a, an important thing to do everything I could to, to try to support, uh, him, but also it was very inspiring to see his courage.

And I'm so grateful that he's, uh, included RepresentUs in this initial lineup of groups for defiance.org. Um, our organization has been working for years to make the US government more accountable to the people, right? To cut through the money and politics problems, the gerrymandering, and, um, try to fix some of the dysfunction in our system.

Mm-hmm.

How does someone who feels like either being at an ICE protest or doing something to help someone in their community has them targeted or followed or they got a weird letter from the IRS, how do they receive services and how do people who want to support these people who stand up to the Trump administration plug in and help?

So I think that's more of a question for you, Miles, with Defiance.

But, um, RepresentUs, the organization that I'm leading, uh, is organizing people to focus on Congress.

So we are taking one piece of the puzzle in a highly targeted way, right? It's not like, "Go do a million things." We, we need to build power.

We need to focus people's energy on the branch of government that is actually supposed to hold the executive branch to account, that has the authority to make decisions about tariffs, about war, um, about, uh, whether what's happening at the DOJ is okay (laughs), right? They could be asking much tougher questions.

They could be doing so much more, and constituents have power over them.

Um, I know that it seems like, uh, Congress is, in many ways, hopeless right now.

Mm-hmm.