Tuesday, March 24rd, 2026 Today, a Republican sheriff who is running for governor of California recently seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in a 2025 statewide election; Steve Bannon recommended Trump send ICE to airports as a test run for sending them to polling places during the midterms; the Supreme Court heard arguments today about whether we should count mail-in ballots received after election day but postmarked in time; Donald Trump TACOs on his Strait of Hormuz ultimatum as Iran denies they talked about it; prosecutors seek to dismiss the charges against the police who falsified a warrant to enter the house where they murdered Breonna Taylor; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
Tuesday, March 24rd, 2026
Today, a Republican sheriff who is running for governor of California recently seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in a 2025 statewide election; Steve Bannon recommended Trump send ICE to airports as a test run for sending them to polling places during the midterms; the Supreme Court heard arguments today about whether we should count mail-in ballots received after election day but postmarked in time; Donald Trump TACOs on his Strait of Hormuz ultimatum as Iran denies they talked about it; prosecutors seek to dismiss the charges against the police who falsified a warrant to enter the house where they murdered Breonna Taylor; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
Thank You, DeleteMe
Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/DAILYBEANS and use promo code DAILYBEANS at checkout.
Thank You, Babbel
Get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription – at Babbel.com/DAILYBEANS.
→We are ending the $3 Daily Beans only subscription effective March 30th. If you are subscribed at $3 before March 30th, you can keep your $3 subscription for as long as you like without any changes.
Guest: Ezra Levin
Indivisible
Ezra Levin | Indivisible
@ezralevin - Bluesky
The Latest:
Mountains of Documents Shredded at the Prison Where Epstein Died?
Stories
In California, a Republican Sheriff Seizes Ballots, Prompting Concerns | The New York Times
Supreme Court worries Trump’s attack on late ballots could also threaten early voting | POLITICO
Bannon: Trump’s ICE airport deployment is ‘test run’ for ICE at polls | Democracy Docket
Feds move to dismiss charges against officers accused of falsifying warrant in Breonna Taylor raid | AP News
Good Trouble
ICE Invades Airports Across the US | WIRED
“In a post on Truth Social, Trump asked ICE agents to not wear masks at airports. As part of the administration’s immigration crackdown, ICE officers conducting raids have worn masks and used unmarked vehicles to hide their identities.”
There is a database for that at ICEList.is (ICE List Wiki)
The ICE List Wiki is a public, verifiable record of immigration enforcement activity in the United States.
icelist.is/names-and-faces
icelist.is
ICE List Wiki
→2026 Primary Election Calendar: All the Dates Ahead of Midterms
→Public Comment Period Open: White House Ballroom Proposal
→Standwithminnesota.com
→Tell Congress Ice out Now | Indivisible
→Defund ICE | 5Calls
→Congress: Divest From ICE and CBP | ACLU
→ICE List →iceout.org
→2026 Trans Girl Scouts To Order Cookies From! | Erin in the Morning
→Share your Good News & Good Trouble - The Daily Beans
→Beans Talk audio -beans-talk.simplecast.com
Subscribe to the MSW YouTube Channel - MSW Media - YouTube
Our Donation Links
Pathways to Citizenship link to MATCH Allison’s Donation
https://crm.bloomerang.co/HostedDonation?ApiKey=pub_86ff5236-dd26-11ec-b5ee-066e3d38bc77&WidgetId=6388736
Allison is donating $20K to It Gets Better and inviting you to help match her donations. Your support makes this work possible, Daily Beans fam. Donate to It Gets Better / The Daily Beans Fundraiser
Join Dana and The Daily Beans with a MATCHED Donation http://onecau.se/_ekes71
More Donation Links
National Security Counselors - Donate 💰, secure.actblue.com/donate/msw-bwc, WhistleblowerAid.org/beans
Dr. Allison Gill - The Breakdown | Allison Gill, Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com - Bluesky, MSW & The Daily Beans Podcast @muellershewrote - Instagram, MSW Media - YouTube
→Federal workers - email AG at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you’re going to do, or just vent. I’m always here to listen.
Dana Goldberg - Dana is on Patreon! At Dana’s Dugout, @dgcomedy - Bluesky, @dgcomedy - IG,
Dana Goldberg - Facebook, DanaGoldberg.com
More from MSW Media - Shows - MSW Media, Cleanup On Aisle 45 pod, The Breakdown | Allison Gill
msw media. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Tuesday, March 24, 2026. Today, a Republican sheriff who's running for governor of California recently se more than 650,000 ballots cast in a 2025 statewide election. That was the Prop 50 election. Steve Bannon recommended Trump send ICE to airports as a test for sending them to polling places during the midterms. The Supreme Court heard arguments today about whether we should count mail in ballots received after election day, but postmarked in time, Donald Trump tacos on his street of Hormuz. Ultimatum as Iran denies they even talked about it. And prosecutors seek to dismiss the charges against the police who falsified a warrant to enter the home where they murdered Breonna Taylor. I'm Alison Gill.
And I'm Dana Goldberg.
Hello, my friend. I am back after the squirrels killed my Internet yesterday.
Literally, the squirrels ate through a wire in the middle of our recording, everybody. And Allison was like, can you finish the episode? And I was like, you betcha.
yep. And the same for Beans Talk. And today we just hit record. And in the middle, apparently the guy came to replace the squirrel chewed wire. And we got kicked off again. So we're starting again. Hello. We're starting fresh. Apparently some engineer at AT&T decided that their fiber Internet cables should be coated in a soy based product that squirrels find delicious.
Yeah, I don't think that was a good idea. No.
So they're replacing it and I'm like, is it still the same delicious squirrel food that you're putting up there? Or are you gonna maybe wrap some electrical tape around it or something? I don't know. We'll see what ends up happening. But fingers crossed, later in the show, we're gonna be talking to the co executive director and co founder of Indivisible, Ezra Levin. We're gonna talk about the upcoming no Kings 3 rally.
Yep.
And of course, Trump always chickens out. Dana.
Taco Tuesday. It's Taco Tuesday.
It's Taco Tuesday. This weekend he said, if you don't open the Strait of Hormuz, I'm going to blow up your electrical grid in Iran, which is a war crime, by the way. And so then that was supposed to be yesterday. Monday, right. Which is today as we're recording this. But then today's like, wait, I'm going to postpone it till Friday because we've had really great and productive talks. It's been really amazing. And then Iran was like, we haven't been talking to you at all, bro. And, don't blow us up or we'll blow your stuff up, too. And that's like, kind of where they left it off. So that's happening. there's just so much. Couple of breaking stories we're going to cover in more detail tomorrow. Did you hear this, Dana? Bill Cosby has to pay $19 million to Donna Motzinger, a former waitress that he raped in 1972 after a civil jury found him liable.
I did not. That is fantastic.
It's extremely fantastic. $19 million. Probably a drop in the well to him, but. Damn.
And doesn't take away the pain and the trauma, but, man, maybe, you know, a little bit of a better life. However you want to. Whatever they want to do with that money, I mean. Good. I just. It also is guilt. It's accountability. It's on the record that matters.
It's justice. Like e. Jean Carroll got right, which, ah, we couldn't get criminally, but we got civilly. So this makes me very happy. And it's a win for all assault survivors, you know?
Yeah.
Also get this. The Trump administration's going to pay a French energy giant about a billion dollars to abandon its plan to build wind farms. We're going to talk about that tomorrow, too.
What? Okay.
Billion dollars. Probably money he got from the oil barons when he was running for office.
Yeah.
And, he's really mad about this whole Strait of Hormuz thing. He's just desperate trying to find a way to get energy prices down. And I'm telling you, building a wind farm would help. If we didn't depend on fossil fuels so much, we wouldn't be in this fucking situation.
Yeah, you are.
If Al Gore had won in 2000, well, had they counted his votes and he was sworn in like he should have been in 2000, we might be in a different world.
Could you imagine how different things would be?
I would love to see a show. You know, like, I watch the show for all mankind, and it's kind of a historic fiction about what would have happened if Russia made it to the moon first. I would love to see a show about what would have happened if Al Gore won the election in 2000 instead.
Well, I don't know if we'd be sitting here, that's for sure. I don't know. We still might be here. You know, Donald, Trump, Russia, all that stuff. Who knows? Who knows? But here we are, Everybody. Here we are.
We're in this timeline, which I think is due to an accident from a weasel getting stuck in the Large hadron collider. In CERN back in 2016. That's just my.
That sounds right. Yeah.
Just my.
That sounds right.
My two cents. All right, we got a lot of news to get to today. Let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right, first up from the Times, a Republican sheriff who's running for governor of California seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in a 2025 statewide election, prompting criticism from the state's top election official, who said the sheriff's concerns about fraud lack credible evidence. The sheriff, Chad Bianco, on Friday said he was investigating allegations by an election activist group that vote tallies did not match the number of ballots received. The investigation is simple, he said in a news conference. Physically count the ballots and compare the result with the total votes reported. His office confirmed the ballot seizure and investigation on Sunday. 650,000 is fewer than the amount of people who voted. So I don't know what he's going to count and compare. Yeah, whatever. Mr. Bianco's investigation involves ballots cast in the 2025 special election over Prop 50, which asked voters whether they wanted to allow Democrats to redraw the state's congressional maps in response to the nationwide redistricting war that Republicans started in Texas last year. The outcome was not close. Voters overwhelmingly supported redistricting, with about 7.4 million people voting in favor and about 4.1 million voting against. State and local election officials have described the investigation and Mr. M. Bianco's justification for seizing the ballots as baseless. Democrats and Republicans in the state have also said they believe that politics was a motivating factor in the probe. When Asked for comment, Mr. M. Bianco, the Riverside county sheriff, criticized the state's Democratic attorney general. The moves by Mr. Bianco, a supporter of Trump, are similar to efforts by the Trump administration and its allies to discredit previous elections, namely 2020. You can be a little more specific. New York Times. Yeah. Such efforts could be used as a justification for attempts to change the way future elections are conducted, or, as I've said, a, justification to come in and take our voting machines if he doesn't like the way things go. Yeah. And the outcome of the probe is unlikely to have any impact on the result of the Prop 50 vote, given the margin. But it's raised alarm among election officials about future election interference and accusations in both parties that Mr. Bianco is trying to enhance his standing with the party base and Trump by raising an issue that animates the president and many of his backers. Now Rob Bonta, who's our Attorney General here in California, issued a rebuke of Mr. Bianco's investigation in a letter earlier this month, saying the office had serious concerns about the underlying evidence and that Mr. Bianco was flagrantly violating my directives. That's a quote. Mr. Banta took particular issue with Bianco's plan to use his own staff to count the ballots. H m. The investigation stems from allegations from a group called the River Bottom Nightmare Band. No, I'm just kidding. It's called the Riverside Election Integrity Team.
Sorry.
When I first read the Riverside Election Integrity Team, I thought of that River Bottom Nightmare Band from. Remember Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas? Anyway, the group said, no, I don't remember.
I love you so much. I am. I don't know if one of the squirrels that lives in your head jumped out and ate through the wire, but I feel like it's just incredible how much information is up there.
It's the Muppets. It's Kermit, and there's Muppet. It's Otters. It's about otters. You would love it.
I was like, okay, then you're in. I'm in. I'm in. You should have stopped bearing the lead. Let's get back to the story.
Yeah, sorry about that. The River Bottom Nightmare Band said its examination of records found about 45,000 more ballots had been counted than were documented as having been received, according to Bianco. But local election officials dispelled the allegations, noting they were rooted in a misunderstanding of how ballots are counted, according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun. So we'll keep an eye on this. They just keep doing it everywhere they can. And it's. It's so frustrating. Like the. Just, yeah, why don't we do this? We should do this. We should seize ballots in some counties and recount them.
I think we should, too. I want to fight fire with fire this election. All right. And a related story, by the way, this one's from Politico. The Trump administration kept running into the same problem Monday as it urged the Supreme Court to stop letting states count mail in ballots after Election Day, fears that such a move could also imperil early voting. The Justice Department and Republican National Committee both urged the justices to strike down a Mississippi law that allows officials to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day, but that arrive up to five days later. A ruling against Mississippi could invalidate similar laws in about 30 states. Not all justices made clear where they stood on this issue. During oral arguments Monday. But several questioned whether the RNC's position that votes can't be counted after Election Day would also mean votes can't be counted before Election Day. Millions of Americans rely on earlier absentee voting. Lawyers for both the federal government and the RNC insisted that they are not trying to end those practices.
Yeah, but you can't have it both ways, my friends.
I know. They said, we agree with both sides that early voting is still acceptable. This is Solicitor General John Sauer, and that's what he told the court, citing civil war practices. I'm sorry, we're citing civil war practices, but apparently laws that have been. I, can't. He said there could be a process where ballots are being received earlier, but that ballot box has to close on Election Day. That answer didn't seem to satisfy Justice Roberts, which is interesting, who suggested Sauer was making an arbitrary decision to treat early voting and late receipt of ballots differently. He said, I'm not sure I understand how that point is responsive to the point that if Election Day is the voting and taking that, it has to be that day. Robert said, maybe you're not saying anything other than, well, that's different. What? Yeah, okay, you heard the quote. Apparently it made sense in the court. He said, it's a challenging question. Is what sour said, Yes, a challenging question. Now, justice, Barrett, Amy Coney Barrett, jumped in with a similar question after the RNC's lawyer, Paul Clement, said federal lawmakers involved in passing a uniform Elections day law in 1845 would have found it unthinkable to count ballots after Election Day. How could we ever. And I quote, isn't that true of early voting, too? Barrett said, why is that permissible if we're just going to say historically, it just needs to look like it always looked? How come those features fall out? Justice Alito gave the most voice to concerns President Trump has repeatedly aired, and of course he did. And amplified about public suspicion driven by vote tallies, potentially being swayed by late arriving ballots. He said, we are moving in this direction. We don't have Election Day anymore. That's what Alito said. There's no Election Day. We have Election Month or we have election months. Early voting can start a month before the election. The ballot can be received a month after the election.
No, it can't. Received a month after the election, you dumbass.
I know, I know. He goes on to say, some of the briefs have argued that confidence in election outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close, is radically flipped by the acceptance later of big stash of ballots that flip the election. Oh, my God. I know. The liberal justices repeatedly noted that the Constitution. I'm sorry, the Constitution gives states the default power to oversee elections except where Congress has stepped in. And some warm. That the court could regret. Concluding that a couple of phrases in the election day statute were intended to dictate what election practices are and are not allowed. Now, Kagan said, once we go down this road, once we say that these statutes, which don't say anything, actually have some significant preemptive effect, where are we going to end up? the case is likely to be decided in late June, which raises the question of whether a decision invalidating. That's plenty of time for the conservative justices to be bribed. And the case is likely to be cited by late June, which raises the question of whether decision invalidating late arriving ballots or perhaps even early voting could disrupt this year's elections. It's absolutely absurd if you are not making election Day a federal fucking holiday to just stop early voting and not accept late ballots. It's. It's insane.
Yeah.
And unconstitutional.
It's also insane that every state doesn't just have mail in voting. Yeah. I mean, God, we just. We just kicked it off.
Remember how Trump voted last year? I believe it was by a mail in ballot.
It was by mail. How does our military vote? Early by mail. But, yeah, I think. I think Justice Roberts made a good point, as did Amy Coney Barrett, believe it or not. Like, how can you say receiving postmarked ballots a day after don't count, but that early voting is okay? And Johnson, that's a difficult question to answer. Yeah, because you can't. Because it doesn't fucking make any sense. Because you're an asshole. Yeah.
Speaking of assholes, take the next story.
Steve Bannon. This is from Democracy Docket. Steve Bannon suggested that Trump deploy ICE to major US Airports as part of a test run for using them to meddle in upcoming elections. Quote, we can use this as a test run, a test case to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 M midterms. That's what Bannon said on his War Room podcast Monday. Last month, Bannon, who served as White House chief of Staff strategist during the opening months of Trump's first term and who remains an influential figure in the administration, currently urged Trump to send ICE to voting sites during this year's midterms. He baselessly claimed that the tactic would prevent Democrats from Stealing the elections. In reality, the move is clearly meant to intimidate voters and poll workers and artificially influence election outcomes. The White House and leaders of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ice, have never definitively ruled out sending ICE to the polls, even though a federal law expressly bars the stationing of law enforcement officers or members of the military at polling places. Over the weekend, Trump abruptly announced that he ordered ICE agents to major US Airports to assist TSA amid a funding lapse that he caused for most of dhs. The snap decision not only demonstrated Trump's urge to command ICE as his personal law enforcement agency, but also his willingness to deploy its officers into abnormal situations for which they have not received training.
Yep.
Senior Trump officials say ICE agents would not be directly assisting TSA agents with screening passengers, but would instead be guarding exit lanes and checking passenger IDs. Okay. Bannon's new suggestion, which he said he was making to blow up mainstream media's head today, came as he was interviewing Mike Davis, a far right lawyer assisting Trump's effort to fill the judiciary with unquestioning loyalists. Davis has said he agreed with Bannon's proposal, saying, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling place because if you're an illegal alien, you can't vote. It's against the law. It's a federal crime for you to vote in federal elections. And if so, if you're an American citizen, you should be happy that ICE is there because you're not going to have illegal aliens canceling out your vote. Yeah, I'm super happy to see a roided out freak with camo, tactical vest and an AK supposed to be trigger happy. I know, seems like a good idea to me. I love it. Sarcasm. Neither Bannon nor Davis noted that noncitizens fraudulently voting is virtually non existent. Numerous studies and voter roll audits have shown that vanishingly few non citizens attempt to register and fewer still try to vote. The Heritage foundation said there's been 99 cases of non citizens voting since 1982.
Wow.
Later in the episode, Bannon moved beyond suggesting and definitely stated that ICE would be at the polls come November, quote, to train for it, wait for it, check IDs. That's why it's perfect training for the fall of 2026. That's why it's such a brilliant. This is another 5D chess move from President Trump. Five dimensional chess. Now we're playing, quote, that's what's going to happen in the fall of 2026. Because folks, we're tired of having elections stolen. ICE is going to be there in the fall of 26, just like they're in the airports today. So from the war room. Suck on that. That's what he said.
I really despise Trump.
Not making that up.
Disgusting.
That wasn't a. Yeah, that wasn't a impersonation. That's what he said. Trump Monday said that if ICE agents were not enough to bring down security wait times in airports, he would bring in the National Guard. It's of note, by the way, Democrats and Republicans reached a deal on Sunday to fund the tsa and Donald Trump killed it. John Thune brought it to Trump and Trump killed it, saying he's not gonna pass and sign anything unless the SAVE act passes, which is his disenfranchising millions of voters by having to prove citizenship and adding on some very anti trans amendments to it as well. It's a terrible bill and it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell to pass unless they kill the filibuster.
What a piece of garbage. All right. This is from the Associated Press. Federal prosecutors asked a judge Friday to dismiss the charges against two Louisville officers accused of falsifying the warrant that led police to raid Breonna Taylor's apartment the night she was killed six years ago. Prosecutors said in court filing that their review of the case showed the charges against former detective Joshua janes and former Sgt. Kyle Meaney should be dismissed in the interest of justice. It's unclear when the judge might rule on the request. A hearing is scheduled for April 3. Justices have twice reduced a felony charge against each officer to a misdemeanor, saying there wasn't a direct link between the false information in the warrant and Taylor's death. How? prosecutors said after the second ruling that they had decided to drop the cases. Taylor, who was 26, as we know, was shot to death by police when they broke down the door of her apartment while serving no knock drug warrant looking for a former boyfriend who was no longer there. Taylor's boyfriend at the time fired at the officers and Taylor was killed as police fired back. March 13th of 2020, the death of Taylor, who was black, as we know. And local anger over Louisville's handling of the case gained widespread attention during the wave of racial justice protests sparked by the police and their murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis that same May six years ago. Activists continued to point to Taylor's killing as an example of the systemic injustice black women face. Federal prosecutors under former President Joe Biden pressed charges against the officers now under Donald Trump, though the Department of Justice asked that Brett Hankison, the only officer serving prison time related to Taylor's killing, be let out of prison while he appeals his conviction. Are you kidding me? Friday's decision was an insult to everyone who fought for Taylor. Shows her life is not valued by the current administration. This is from Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey represents much of Louisville, said my heart is heavy for Brianna's loved ones. This is not justice. A federal judge sentenced Hankinson to two years and nine months and just two years and nine months in prison and three years of supervised release for blindly firing 10 shots into Taylor's windows on the night she was killed. None of the shots hit anyone. Interesting. Neither of the two officers who did shoot Taylor were even charged. And prosecutors deemed that they were justified in returning fire into the apartment even though the warrant was not valid.
It's a falsified warrant. They lied on the warrant to go in with a no knock. And of course, you know, as we know, Donald Trump has, well, Pam Bondi has rescinded the no knock warrant restrictions that Merrick Garland put in place as well. So not only are we letting every all these folks off the hook, but we're allowing no knock warrants to continue unabated. All right, everybody, we've got some good news to get to, but first, I have a great interview with co founder and co executive director of Indivisible, Ezra Levin. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages.
We'll be right back.
Hey, we want to thank our sponsor for today's episode, Deleteme. Deleteme makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. As someone with an active online presence, privacy is so important to me. And with Deleteme, I'm helping protect my personal privacy and the privacy of my business. Because once your information starts spreading online, it can be really hard to pull it back. Data brokers profit off that problem. And your data is a commodity to them. You're the product. And that means strangers on the Internet can buy your private details more easily than most people realize. That kind of access creates real risks, including phishing scams, harassment, doxing, identity theft. And data brokers are not just collecting one or two pieces of information. They can compile your name, contact info, home address, Social Security information, details about your family members, and then they can sell it all online. And it gets even worse when you factor in all the data breaches. We keep hearing about Hackers have exposed names, addresses, phone numbers, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, masked bank account numbers, and data brokers can scoop all of that information up and keep reselling it online. But Delete Me Help helps you remove your information from those sites, which is a practical way to take more control over your privacy and keep your information from ending up in the wrong hands. It's also been named New York Times Wirecutter top pick for data removal services. You're going to love it. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com DailyBeans and use promo code DailyBeans at checkout. Again, the only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.comDailyBeans and enter code DailyBeans at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com DailyBeANS code DailyBeans hey everybody, it's AG. A lot of people have learning a new language on their bucket list, but the truth is most of us are not looking for another app that just turns everything into a game. We want something that's actually worth our time, something that sticks. And that's why Babbel stands out to me. I appreciate how focused it is, on effectiveness over gamification. It makes grammar feel less intimidating, but it doesn't lose sight of the real goal, which is to help you communicate and be conversational with actual people in the real world. Babel is built around progress. You can feel their lessons are short enough to fit into a busy day easily, and just 10 minutes can help you keep moving forward. I also like that their courses are created by more than 200 language experts so the material feels thoughtful and grounded in real use. You are learning words and phrases you might actually need and that makes the work feel more rewarding. Personally, I like the idea of using Babbel for both self improvement and travel. If I'm putting time into learning a language I want to know, it'll help me in practical moments. Whether it's ordering coffee, navigating a new place, or having a simple conversation with confidence, Babel helps you practice those real life situations step by step, which makes the learning feel much more relevant. Another thing I appreciate is that Babbel is more than lessons. They also offer podcasts, which is a great option when you want to keep learning in a different format. And with 14 languages, progress tracking, personalized feedback and over 25 million subscriptions sold, plus a 14 day money back guarantee. Babel feels like a smart way to finally follow through on that goal. So here's a special limited time deal for listeners right now. You get up to 60% off your Babel subscription at Babbel.com DailyBeans. Get 60% off at Babbel.comDailyBeans spelled B A B B E L.com DailyBeans rules and restrictions may apply. Hey everybody. Welcome back. So I have some news. I've been selected again to speak at no Kings waterfront in San Diego. This will be the third time I spoke at no Kings 1 and 2. And they want me back to speak at no Kings 3. And joining me today to discuss the upcoming no Kings rally on March 28th and maybe what's going on in the future is the co founder and co executive director of Indivisible, Ezra Levin. Hey, Ezra, how are you today?
Hey, great to see you. Great to be talking.
Always, always a pleasure, my friend. I am so excited about March 28th. Talk a little bit about how it's going, how the organizing is going.
Look, it's incredible. We're calling it no Kings 3000 at this point because as of right now, we have more than 3,000 events on map. And I mean that. It is wild. It is wild. I mean, put that in comparison. The first major protest of the second Trump term was Hands Off. This incredible, inspiring demonstration against the richest man in the world going after the entire federal government and the poorest people in the world, and his unholy alliance with Donald Trump. That was in April of last year called Hands off. And it had 1300 events nationwide, 3 million people, about double the size of the largest protest of the first Trump term. And so even that was historic. And then as you said, you've spoken at the last couple events, we had 5 million people at 2100 events for no Kings 1 in June of last year. We had 2700 events and 7 million people in October of last year for no Kings 2. We are now on track to have more events than ever before. We'll see who shows up. I can guarantee you is going to be a lot.
Yeah. And I have to say I was very impressed because as these events keep happening, we talk about Hands off no Kings 1, no Kings 2. The media coverage has started to get better. We were very sort of, disappointed. We want the world to know that we're showing up and showing out. Talk about how you've seen the media coverage of this, evolve over the
last year and a half, it's been really interesting. Alison. I will say it has been very interesting because hands off, it was was struggling to get anybody in mainstream media to actually cover it. Even no Kings won, which I think took a lot of people by surprise. It was difficult to get a lot of coverage. By the time of no Kings 2, the Republicans were spending all of their time attacking us in the lead up, and they were drawing so much attention to it that traditional media couldn't really ignore it. And the scale of it was difficult to ignore. The other thing I think they started seeing was if you talk to creators who are actually covering it, they were seeing people were hungry for this information. People wanted the actual coverage of what was actually happening in their communities. And a lot of the mainstream press wasn't covering. There are some exceptions out there. You know, Rachel Maddow did a great job covering everything that was going, the twists and turns of it, but she was more of the exception rather than the rule. And I think the success and the growth of these over time has itself become a story. No Kings has entered the American lexicon where everybody knows what that means. And it's not just some random protest of some random undetermined number of disgruntled people out there is literally historic. Three of the five largest protests in American history have been done in the last 15 months. We're about to add again the largest protest in American history in just about a week. It's difficult for them to ignore now, and I think that is healthy. To your point, I don't want this to be an exclusive event. My dream is that everybody watching this finds three people who never attended a hands off or a no Kings rally before and convinces them m to come on Saturday. Because that that's how you build an effective pro democracy movement. You don't go around pointing fingers at people who show up and say, why weren't you here before you roll out the red carpet and welcome them in. That's what we want to do.
Yeah, I concur, 100% on that. And every single time we go to a new no Kings or hands off, I find somebody else. More people to bring into the fold and sign. Creating parties and all these other great things now indivisible sets up other things, including very important training on knowing your rights and then how to marshal some of these events. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Oh, gosh. Training is so important for this work, especially if you're hosting an event. Look, you can just show up at a Rally, that's okay. If you're like comfortable with it, go forth, make your cool sign, have some fun, bring your speakers, get ready to dance, bring your dogs, bring your kids, bring your grandparents. That, that works. You can do that. If you are uncomfortable, you've not done it before, you're like, ah, I don't know, I'm not a protest person. We've got you. We've got you. You can sign up for trainings either@indivisible.org or, or nokings.org and find out how to engage in safety and de escalation. You can find out how to recruit more folks for your event. If you're hosting an event, you can find out, with toolkits on. How do I do best outreach? How do I schedule people to actually speak? What types of folks are good at speaking? How do I structure this event overall? This is a day of protest that isn't being led, despite what the right wing whack jobs might say. It's not being led by people getting big checks from anybody from national. It's being led by volunteers, normal everyday people who are their teachers and their IT workers and their office workers. And they're they're in their community doing this because they care about it, not because they've got some deep expertise in quote unquote, political organizing. So this is made for everybody to be part of and everybody to lead. So I hope the message people are taking is this is an accessible, powerful and joyful representation of what the American people actually want in this moment. And that means you should be part of it and we're there to help you.
Yeah. And that training is vital given what we just saw in Texas and Prairiel, people being convicted of being a part of antifa or whatever. And so I think it's vital. So Definitely go to invisible.org to see if you can find some of those trainings and seminars on how to know your rights and how to marshal one of these events. It's extremely important. Can you talk a little bit, Ezra, about the strategic timing of these? I see time and again people are like, well, we need to be out in the streets every day, all day, forever. And I don't know that that's necessarily a tenable. A tenable goal considering the size of our country and the amount of events that we have going on. Can you talk a little bit about the timing of these events?
Yeah, I think that people both play up, the importance of one day protests and underplay the importance of one Day protest. And it kind of depends on who you're talking to. For the folks who played up too much, what I would say is they, they, they look at research from somebody like Erica Chenoweth or Maria Steffen, these leaders of the movement of, anti authoritarianism research, who I love and I respect and I learn from, who point to three and a half percent figure the three and a half percent of the population that you need involved in anti authoritarian work to prevent a fascist from consolidating power. In the US context, that's 11 or 12 million people. And so one way of viewing that research is to think, wow, if we get 11 to 12 million people out in the streets on one day, we win, Fascism loses, we can all go home. And that's not true. I mean, anybody who thinks about it for a second understands that there's not some referee in the sky who says, you hit your mark and now democracy wins. that's not how it works. And also I think some people say, what's the point? A, one day protest. People come out and say, who cares? He's still going to be a fascist, he's still going to be a White House. Why come out? And I think that puts too much weight on this tactic. And I use the word tactic precisely because we view this as a broad campaign with a central goal. Prevent a fascist from consolidating power. We start with a goal. From that goal, then you develop a strategy. How do we achieve that goal? How do we safeguard democracy? Prevent a fascist takeover? We have one tool, one strategy is organized, nonviolent, people, power. Everything we do feeds up to some part of that strategy. How do you feed up to that strategy? With a, a plethora, of tactics. One of those very flashy tactics is the largest protest in American history, which we call no Kings. That is an important tactic for inviting new people in, people who have never been part of this before, for sending a very clear message that this guy who's threatening peaceful protesters does not have all the power in this country, is indeed vulnerable to public pressure and will indeed be deposed by the public. Organizing. That message is important and it's not enough. Real success for no Kings is both going to be historic numbers of people in an unexpected number of places. And also it's going to be those people who have never participated before getting plugged into their local organizing hubs, whether that's 5051 or Working Families Party or indivisible, which I'm biased towards, but I frankly don't care. Allison, I want them plugged in somewhere that is real and local and organizing on the ground. And whether it's a home with indivisible or one of these others, the important thing is that it's with your neighbors, it's with your, with folks who are actually living with you in community. Because ultimately what we're going to have to do is repel an attempt by this regime to subvert or sabotage the midterm elections. That is what they are planning to do. And we're not going to fix that just with a one day protest. But these no Kings protests pull new people in so that we can then train them up. Up for the real fight that's in our future.
Yeah, and you know, you mentioned community, the importance of community. Talk a little bit about the importance of community in combating authoritarianism.
Look, you ask any authoritarian expert on this and they will tell you. I remember a quote from Tim Snyder, who wrote one of the authors of How Democracies Die. And one of the key lessons that come out of the anti authoritarian work is that these fascists, they want you to feel alone. That's what they want.
Isolated.
They want you to feel isolated because if you are alone, if you are disconnected from your community, you are that much easier to steamroll. That is what they depend on. They project strength, they project invincibility so that they can divide and conquer. You look, and so part of being together, it'll make you feel better, but it's not just about it. Touchy feely stuff here. You look at the Twin Cities, Allison, you look at what they accomplish. That was not just community building. To sing Kubaya and feel good about each other. That was hard nosed organizing. That was week in, week out. Neighbors getting all together on a WhatsApp chain identifying where the secret police force was swarming and coming in defense of their neighbors. one of the most inspiring things that I've seen since Trump got reelected was a few weeks after Renee Goode's murder. 48 hours after, we saw the murder of Alex Preddy by the secret police force, we held a no Kings training on eyes on eyes. How to do exactly what Renee Good and Alex Pretty were doing. Exercise their First Amendment rights in defense of their neighbors. More than 200,000 people joined up to be trained on the nuts and bolts of how to protect your first Amendment rights when a mass federal agent tells you to stop doing it. People want to be part of something real. They want to be part of this fight. They don't want to Just donate to some campaign. They don't want to just sign some petition. They don't want to just like something on social media. They want to do something real. The real thing to do in this moment is to start organizing locally.
Yeah. And that's how we get together, is through events like, no kings in numbers that we've never seen before. And before I let you go, I want to ask you about the numbers. I feel like 7 million is a low estimate of how many people came out in no Kings 3. How do you guys count? Because I feel like some of the numbers might be coming from places that might not be, I don't know, fully trustworthy on the numbers. How do you know how many people are showing up?
It is very hard to get a precise estimate. We have a whole internal process where we ask events hosts to not just give us file numbers, but give us early numbers as they're coming in and estimates so that we can get these numbers as quickly as possible. What we do not want is for some right wing or nefarious actors to try to pitch that this is something that it isn't actually. And so we take the crowd counting as seriously as we can because we don't want to be drinking our own Kool Aid and believe something that's not real. And also we don't want bad actors to be able to muddy the message. I, I think we've done a decently good job getting, good estimates and that's been backed by third parties, people like G. Elliot Morris and Erica Chenoweth, who's done work looking at what's actually out there. Ultimately, the numbers are one thing, and the numbers are about messaging. I care as much as I care about being able to tell you right now there are going to be 3,000 events, which has never happened in American history any day before on a single day of protest. That's important to me. I like that. But look, the real work is going to be happy on the ground, away from TV cameras, away from social media. It's going to be in libraries and community centers and people's living rooms. And so yeah, we should care about the crowd county. But you know what? I care a lot more about Alison. I want 50, 51 group members and move on. Members and indivisible members who are organizing the events. I want them out at these events with a clipboard and collecting names and cell phone numbers and emails and telling everybody, great that you're here. We've got this what's next meeting coming up next Saturday. You should come and check it out because we would love to keep organizing with you. That's real success. We got to play the media game. We want the messaging to be right. But this is about organizing neighborhood by neighborhood. And, this is a huge recruitment opportunity for everybody to engage in that work right now.
Yeah, yeah. I always say, politics work best when it like the way the economy works best. Bottom up, middle out, not trickle down from the top.
Thousand percent.
Yeah. All right. Well, hey, I appreciate you coming on. Tell everybody where they can get more info about March 28th and, and, you know, sign up maybe to lead an event or go to an event, rsvp. Give everybody the information, please.
If you go to no kings.org and you look at that map and you say, ah, shucks. The closest no Kings protest is an hour away from mail. Here's what I would say. You have until Thursday, March 26, to pull a few friends together and get your own local no Kings protest on the map. My rule of thumb is if it's more than roughly 30 minutes to an hour away, start your own. That's. That's important because we want people in every community doing this. But it's also important because you're going to recruit new people in your community. If it's in your community, it's going to be harder. If you go to the big city and you're all there with a million other people. That's not to say that you shouldn't go to your big city. No Kings protest. That's where you live. That's where you live. That's your community. That's great. But you have an opportunity right now if you are, from a small town like I am in Texas, to start up your own no Kings protest and plant that seed. And from that, a lot of good stuff is going to grow. Now, if you've already got your no Kings protest, that's cool. That's great. My challenge to you is identify two or three people who have never been there before. I said this earlier. We built. There's not some big multimillion dollar ad campaign. There's nobody pulling the strings from the top. This grows because us individually make it a priority and pull people in so that. That's on all of us. That's on all of us to make no Kings the biggest protest in American history. If you were nervous about doing this whole protest thing, that's totally cool. People who do things for the first time are often nervous. You can find trainings, as we mentioned, at nokings.org or indivisible.org the number one thing I hope people do is make this a priority over the next few, pull people in and then celebrate. You become part of history in this 250th anniversary of the founding of the country. A country founded on rejecting an authoritarian who's trying to squash our rights. We get to stand up for them now and we get to tell our kids and grandkids what we did in this year.
I just, I just wrote down and years from now, when someone asks you what you did, yeah, you can proudly tell them. All right, my friend, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Everybody. Check out Indivisible.org there's tons of things for you to learn and know and to figure out how to, to get in community with the people around you and bring some friends out. It's going to be an amazing day. March 28th no Kings 3 Ezra Levin, co founder Co Executive Director of Indivisible thanks for joining me today.
Great talking.
All right everybody, stick around. We'll be right back with the good news. Everybody, welcome back. It's time for the good news everyone.
Then good news everyone.
And if you have any good news, good trouble suggestions, any small thing that's happened to you, that's great, whether it was yesterday or 20 years ago, we want to microdose in your hopes. So send it in to us. Tell us your story. Tell us your favorite story that you like to tell when you're sitting around telling stories with friends. Tell us your favorite joke, maybe your favorite Monty Python movie. Quote what you think the most quotable movie is. Misheard song lyrics. A shout out to a a loved one or yourself or a small business or a non profit, a government program that's helped you or a loved one. It can be anything at all that'll bring a smile to our faces. Send it into us dailybeanspod.com and click on contact. And all you got to do to get it read on the air is pay your pod pet tariff, which means attach a photo of literally anything. Anything will work. It can be your pet, an adoptable pet in your area. Random animal on the Internet. Send in some otters, goats, we love those chickens. Do you have, do you have laying hens? We would love to see that. Maybe something you're making or creating. Are you knitting, quilting, painting, writing? Send it to us. We would love to hear about it. One guy sent in this role playing game, tabletop role playing game that he created. It was very cool. It can be anything at all. Send it to us dailybeanspot.com click on Contact. First up is your good trouble. All right, good trouble. Today, ICE invades airports across the US From Wired magazine. In a post on Truth Social, Trump asked ICE agents to not wear masks at airports as part of the administration's immigration crackdown. ICE officers conducting raids have worn masks and used unmarked vehicles to hide their identities. Marcy Wheeler, our friend, posted on Bluesky today, why don't people just take pics of these unmasked ICE faces with badge numbers and upload them to a database? There is a database for that. It's called Isilist is the Islist wiki. It's a public, verifiable record of immigration enforcement activity in the United States. So everybody, when you're at the airport, if you're traveling and you see an ICE agent without a mask and his badge number visible, snap a photo. We'll upload it.
All right? Next is from Grandma. No pronouns given. For the first time, I made a Protest sign. I'm 70 years old, and I'm excited for the no Kings protest in Madison, Wisconsin. Attached is a photo of my sign. I play wordle every day, Grandma. I also play wordle every day with my mother to make sure that she woke up and I woke up. This, is so good. Clown. Idiot. Dummy. The u's in there, but not in the right place. Brute. Now the U and the R in the right place. Prick. And we know the p's in the right, the in there somewhere. And R's in the right place. And the word is trump. This is really fantastic.
And then it says at the bottom, smart people don't like me. Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. All right, next up for Melanie Pronoun. She and her hi beans queens. I've been a daily beans listener now for a little over a year, and I wanted to share a story that I hope will make you smile. Sl Laugh. Last week, for a couple days in a row, I noticed Allison sounded different, and I became concerned. It was as if she had had a few glasses of wine before recording. Oh, I know what happened. She was listening at half speed, right? Or possibly had suffered a mild stroke. Her speech was slurred and slower. I was genuinely alarmed. The second day, I was looking for a way to contact you directly to see if you were all right when I noticed I had somehow probably with my butt. Change the playback speed to 0.5x. You're not back to normal speed. And at least that, small part of my world is all Right. I laughed at my mistake and then shed some happy tears that you were okay. Thanks for all you do. My pod pet tariff. I'm sending a picture of my daughter's cat, Charcoal. She's a rescue from a litter of four that were dumped in an abandoned property a few miles from our town. She and one other kitten survived, and we adopted Charcoal and our friends adopted her sister. Here's Charcoal birdwatching on our sun porch. Oh, my goodness.
She's cute. Beautiful cat. Yep.
That's so funny. We've had this happen before. Somebody will accidentally butt dial half speed and we sound like drunk idiots at a bar. It's pretty great.
Yeah. M. All right. This is from Katie. Pronouns. She and her. Hi, ladies. I'm finally submitting for the good news. I listen every day on my way to work and then watch Beans talk during my lunch. Love unjustified, too. You guys are so important to me for keeping informed with that hyperbolic bullshit. And the humor is welcome to rel. Okay, I'm trying to be brief, but it's hard. I have a pronunciation for Dana. we. West Laco. I had this the other day. I didn't know how it was pronounced. Is a small city in the lower Rio Grande Valley. It's pronounced with the accent on the first part, like the name Wesley, Wes, then Laco. Okay, good part is kind of like the French.
La.
La. West Laco. Wow. I wasn't even.
Westlaco.
Oh, there you go. Weslaco.
There we are.
See? I'm glad you're here. This would have been a mess if I had to record this alone. This would have gone on for a while. West Laco. Weslaco with a long O. I hope that makes sense. It does. After Allison helped me. I'm really glad the story is being covered. I've lived here in deep South Texas for over 30 years and I work at a school on the border. It's crazy how many people in this largely Hispanic area support the asshat out of ignorance and others for racist reasons. I'm sure what I hear is they'll only get bad people. good news, good news. A friend and I are starting a drinking liberally group in Harling a hair. Oh, boy. Harlingen, Texas, maybe. Harlingen, Texas. I'm hoping to meet more like minded people there and enjoy some camaraderie. Maybe I'll meet some fellow Beans people during the informational zoom. The woman who started it was happy to hear that I found out about it from you guys. Guys, so thank you and keep up the good work. You save people so much time by presenting what we all need to know. And I'm sure you're important to many people's mental health. Pod Pet tax is Ginger. Very pretty, sweet and fun, but not the smartest. I hope people don't say that about me. Named after the one at, on Gilligan's Island. Ginger, Right. It's right. I think the movie star. Right. The second picture is Porsche. She came as a neighborhood stray and we called her Patio Kitty for a while before committing and naming her her. Portia was derived from the porch because we didn't think Patio was a nice name for her. That's fantastic. She's beautiful. Oh, they both are. Yeah.
Yeah. The orange babies aren't the brightest, but they are sweet, sweet clowns. Thank you so much for that. Next up, anonymous pronouns. Hand him. My wonderful wife Teriann took this picture of protesters at the no Kings march last summer. For context, Trump held a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota. And this might surprise you. Did not pay the city for the agreed upon overtime for police, fire and IT services, nor expenses for charges made to road construction projects for yes. And so the sign says, dear Donald, you still owe $209,000. City of Cloud. I love that. And then next up from Susie Pronoun. She and her I'm an avid listener and new subscriber. Welcome, Susie. I want to share some great news. After a bitter 12 day, not including weekends strike, my teachers union has reached a tentative agreement with the district and the terms are very much in our fav. My emotions over the strike began with excitement and then despair and depression after the first week and finally anger over the lies and pettiness of the other side. Now I'm back to excitement. I can't wait to see my kiddos again. This strike has empowered me to donate and participate in this Saturday's no Kings protest in my city. And I cannot wait. Attach is my pod pet tariff of my three babies. Katniss. Yes. After the Hunger Games hero Nemo. Yes. Afford the Disney fish. And Sadie, my old guest cow. They all have blank in them. Katniss is a purebred, while Nemo is half blank. And Sadie has blank in her. They're all rescues. All right. Chihuahua, dachshund. terrier. What do you think?
Yeah, I think that sounds great.
Chihuahua dachshund. Shelty. Oh, look at Miko.
What? What?
Nice.
I got three out of three. We did it, Dana. we got 100 so far for dachshund.
All right, Amanda pronounced she and her greetings queens. The beans and crew as Ohio is trying out is trying to out Florida the news. We had Bigfoot sightings, Afroman being amazing on the stand, and a meteorite explosion. My husband and I needed a break. We went meteor hunting and ended up meeting goats in capybara's majestic meadows in Medina. They are adorable and they love scratches and foot rubs. Me too. Reminder to all Ohio listeners to check voter registration by April 5th as our, D. Swine. I love that d swine. Governor released 8 million voters registration information to the feds. Keep fighting the good fight and enjoy random adventures in this hellscape. Look at that Capoberra. And the goats. Goats.
And I think to avoid emails, I believe the town in Ohio is pronounced Medina.
Oh, thank you.
But I. I could also be wrong. Let us know. Look at the sweet baby capybara. And a goat.
That.
That's a. The colors on this goat's like a calico. Oh, seriously, Very lovely. Thank you for the goats and capybaras and kitties. And we guessed the dogs right, so we're 100% on what the mutt today.
They're nice. Well done, my friend.
Thank you all so much. I'm glad to be back and we'll see you over on the beans talk and we'll be back on your ears tomorrow. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, and take care of your family. I've been ag.
I've been dg.
And them's the beans. The Daily Beans is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg. Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarlane with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios. Music for the Daily Beans is written and performed by they Might Be Giants, and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Media Network, a collection of creator owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit mswmedia.com msw media.