Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm in Washington, D.C.
Chapter 2: What is the focus of the interview with Senator Ruben Gallego?
this week to interview Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego. He's a Democrat from Arizona, but he's been thinking about running for higher office, and he's been pitching himself as someone who has a new message for Latino voters that can bring them back to the Democratic Party. But Gallego's run into some hot water recently because of his connection to Congressman Eric Swalwell.
Eric Swalwell lied to all of us. My friendship with him, our family's friendship together with him, clouded my judgment. And I was wrong. I deeply, deeply regret that.
This week on America Actually, we ask Iago about predatory behavior in Washington, his plans for immigration reform, and more. Let's dig in.
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Chapter 3: How is Eric Swalwell's resignation impacting Gallego's political future?
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Senator Gallego, thank you for joining America Actually. Thanks for having me. I appreciate your time. I know that there's been some news this week. I want to get to it later, but I want to start with the premise of why we asked you to come on the show.
We've been thinking a lot about topics that you've been talking about, things like immigration, affordability, even the Democrats' outreach to Latino voters. I kind of wanted to start there. Okay. You know, out of the groups that we've seen over the last year, Latinos maybe have the biggest polling shift in terms of backlash against Donald Trump.
You represent the swing state with the highest percentage of Latino voters. I wanted to know what you think is driving this backlash to the administration, at least that we see in the numbers.
So two things. Number one, the affordability crisis. And number two, immigration, immigration enforcement. The affordability crisis, Latinos are probably just also as affected by the economy as black men. And so when things start going south, that community first feels it first. They're the ones that will get fired first. They're the ones that start losing contracts first.
And they don't have much savings to actually kind of like get through these bumps, right? Yeah. So if you see when the economy started going south, here, Latinos had already started moving against the president because they were feeling it first, right? Number two, immigration enforcement. Now, the president had a message in 2024 that if you listened, it said, I want to do mass deportations.
And of course, everyone in, you know, D.C. mind world says like, well, how do these Latinos not see that? Yeah, yeah. In their mind, like what they're talking about is those people that are coming across the border right now in these massive waves claiming asylum. They weren't thinking that, oh, you're going to go after the person in my neighborhood that's been here for 20 years.
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Chapter 4: What are the main issues affecting Latino voters according to Gallego?
where elections have consequences, real consequences, your duty is to win an election.
I wanted to ask two questions that we got from reporters we talked to in advance of this interview. We talked to Caitlin Dickerson, immigration reporter at The Atlantic, and she pointed out how some Senate Democrats, including yourself, supported the Lake and Riley Act in 2025, which gave ICE new powers to keep people in detention.
And you've seen so many prominent Democrats go back and forth between assailing even these basic aspects of immigration enforcement when they're done by Trump. And then at other times in response to what they perceive to be public opinion turning against immigrants, go and vote for very restrictive legislation that makes all these problems they've been complaining about worse.
I guess that thinking about your kind of message of reforming ICE now, did some Democrats like yourself supporting Lake and Riley help empower the same out-of-control ICE we see right now?
No, I think the $175 billion, the fact that you have Stephen Miller that's leading it versus the DHS secretaries. You have Judge Kavanaugh saying racial profiling is allowed.
And then just in a general attitude from this administration, they have zero accountability standards, whether it's investigations, holding people actually accountable, jailing some of these ICE agents, showing masks, showing IDs, things of that nature. That is the actual full scope of what they're doing right now.
We also talked to an Arizona reporter locally ahead of today. And one of the things that came up in that conversation, she was talking about community pushback against data centers, that the construction of data centers has caused some organizing efforts and caused some resentment against some more establishment politicians who've supported them.
I cover local government a lot. I think it has made people think about how they want government to talk to them and share information with them. That was a big issue here, how the data center was brought forward that people didn't know about it or didn't share about it publicly. And I didn't see another issue galvanize people at quite the same level in their relationship with local government.
You've called data centers a, quote, necessary evil. I guess my question is, why are they necessary?
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Chapter 5: What are the two main factors driving Latino backlash against Trump?
Yeah. So we need to give more control to the states and to the localities to regulate them. There are places where they should go. It does not necessarily mean it has to be in Arizona. It does not mean it has to be in the cheapest land that these data centers can find. So if I hear you correctly, it's that-
The question of AI's centrality in our work economy is, you're saying that's without question. It's important. And so it's only a choice between whether we proactively tax these data centers or give them a place in our shared economy or focus them on workers rather than what's happening now, which is kind of an untamed wild west.
I mean, I guess there just feels like such a big gap between the certainty that political groups, you know, tech groups, like I would say kind of elite society has about the centrality of AI and people, right? Like we know that that backlash is driven by a sentiment that folks don't necessarily agree that AI should kind of hold a central place in their lives going forward.
I guess. So far, they haven't seen the benefit of it. I mean, I could totally understand that. What they see is their kids being glued to their phones and then AI lying to them, companies mining their data and selling them. And so this is something that I think both policymakers, but also upon the AI industry, they need to show what the benefits are.
Because right now, there is no yet massive scale benefit to society when it comes to AI. Right.
We heard Bernie Sanders say to us a couple weeks back that that was a reason for a moratorium on data centers. Why don't you support a moratorium?
Well, number one, because I think that we'd fall severely behind. And then we start losing the future wealth, jobs, and growth that comes from AI. Number two, I think states need to lead also. When it comes to zoning, things of that nature, if we could do it at the federal level, we absolutely should. But it is incumbent upon a lot of states to actually understand what's going on.
People do have... legitimate arguments. They have legitimate rage. There's areas of Phoenix where they're, you know, it's the middle of an urban area. They're going to put a data center, all because it's cheap land. And they think because it's a black and brown area that they're going to have less pushback.
They're just going to do it. After the break, we speak to Senator Gallego about the recent allegations concerning Congressman Eric Swalwell and how to eliminate predatory behavior in Washington. And just a quick note, we spoke to Gallego prior to Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna's formal complaint against him alleging misconduct.
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Chapter 6: How does Gallego define the Democrats' stance on immigration reform?
I can certainly feel it when a politician feels like they're dipping into something as a means of outreach. Or all of a sudden, when they all become Iowa fans at March Madness, I'm like, who's buying that?
Well, nobody. That's the problem. If you look at, Donald Trump goes to UFC fights, because I think he actually does UFC fights, right? But he also used that smartly to get into the streams of a lot of men that were basically not following politics. He did it just recently. In the middle of a war, he goes to a UFC fight with Marco Rubio and sits down and does it. He does it for two reasons.
Number one, he knows his numbers are lagging with Latinos horribly, with Latino men especially. What are they watching right now? It's not CNN. It's not even CNN Español. Sorry, CNN Español. I love you guys, but this isn't happening right now. But they are watching UFC. But that's definitely the thought process.
I wanted to end kind of thinking about something that you've talked about openly, which is a decision process about thinking about running for president about 2028. I referenced it a little bit earlier. You just got to the Senate in 2024. I wanted to know, how did you go from that point of that arrival to getting to this type of open decision-making process?
What was it in those steps in the way that made you say, hey, maybe I should take a step up here?
Well, number one is I, again, had many decisions and were very far from any decisions. Yeah. Yeah. The most important thing, constitutional thing right now is that we need to win elections, right? Democrats, we need to both win in 2026 and 2028 really to – and hold to be able to change the direction of this country.
And the direction of this country is not going to be going well if we are stuck – with Republicans in power or being able to obstruct because they're still going to have control over the Supreme Court. They could still have a lot of strength within the Senate, even if we take out the House and have the White House.
I get that. But I'm saying the question of what is the unique lane and unique voice that you think you're bringing to that discussion that can't be replicated maybe by others around you. Do you think there's one?
Well, I certainly think that I have a unique lane, especially when it's coming to working class people, Latinos, veterans. Can other people replicate that? Maybe. That's why you have all these years to figure that out. That's why you have campaigns and stuff like that. I don't think, yeah, I'm certainly not naive or conceited enough to think that I am the only person that could win this, right?
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