Alligator Alcatraz, Bolton Raid, Ballot Box Battles

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

News, Politics

4.4 • 783 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Justin and Sam open with a discussion of the legal challenges surrounding the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility, where Sam highlights how environmental law is being leveraged in unexpected ways and Justin emphasizes the partisan optics behind the controversy. Next, they turn to the FBI raid on John Bolton’s home. Sam underscores the legal backdrop of Bolton’s book dispute and stresses that a liberal bench approving the warrant suggests strong probable cause, while Justin raises concerns about the timing and political optics. After that, the guys analyze recent shifts in voter registration showing Democratic losses and Republican gains. Sam argues Republicans are improving ground game strategy and capitalizing on Democratic missteps, while Justin points to Democratic disorganization, difficulties with key constituencies, and the complexities of interpreting such data. The guys close with Trump’s floated executive order to eliminate mail-in voting. Sam strongly supports tighter restrictions on ballot security, citing foreign models and the Carter Commission, while Justin defends mail-in voting as a necessary tool for accessibility and notes the lack of evidence of widespread fraud. The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Check out the excellent Sustainable Planet podcast. Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Atheists, agnostics, long-haired widows, short-haired widows, vandal,
0:04.9	gulagos.
0:05.4	I love the government, hug the government, hug the government, hug the government, love, the government,
0:11.1	hug the government.
0:12.0	Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on
0:16.6	American politics and policy.
0:18.8	I'm Justin Holmes, a professor of political science at the
0:21.1	University of Northern Iowa, and I'm joined today by Sam Dewey, who's a D.C. attorney. How are you doing, Sam? I'm good. How are you? Hey, I'm doing good. It's nice talking to you. So we've got a couple of things to cover this week, and I thought you could go ahead and kick us off. So, yeah, I just wanted the, there have been some rulings on the so-called
0:38.3	Alcatraz Island Detention Center. And I think those are interesting because they're predicated
0:44.8	under a environmental statute called NEPA in the main. And NEPA deals with the requirement
0:51.4	to do analysis, environmental impact on various things. And it's come up in
0:57.2	the immigration context before. It came up with the building of the wall. And there was a statute
1:02.3	that effectively waived NEPA. And there were other statutes that let the president waived NEPA.
1:07.7	And I think the reason it's interesting is you have this injunction that's not
1:11.5	really about the merits per se. It's predicated on, okay, there's going to be a problem with how
1:17.3	alligator alcatraz effects wetlands, flows of water, et cetera. But I think the interesting part that a lot
1:23.5	of people miss is this flows both ways. The Biden open border policies, there was a case that
1:28.5	was being litigated and were the groups, the groups opposing the open border policies, one,
1:34.7	saying, well, wait a second, if you open the border, you're certainly affecting water flow,
1:39.5	repairing rights in Texas because the way that those are affected by illegal immigration,
1:43.7	well documented. A lot of the witnesses in that those are affected by illegal immigration, well documented.
1:45.1	A lot of the witnesses in that case are now Trump administration officials. So the question
	...

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