Analysis of U.S. negotiating with Ukraine & Russia

The November midterm election is just a little more than two months away. Can you believe it? While Democrats and Republicans battling for control of Congress here in California, probably the two biggest races are for governor between Javier Becerra and Steve Hilton. And the other big race is Prop 40, the billionaire's tax. Joining us to review the week in politics and chat it up is a professor of media education, political history at the University of Santa Cruz, Nolan Higdon. Higdon, Nolan, great to have you with us as always. Good morning. Glad to be here. Good morning. So I've noticed TV and radio ads are bombarding the airwaves about California's billionaire tax. It has failed in some other countries. And I heard one telling quote from a journalist, a tax intended to capture wealth instead taught the wealthy how to make it disappear. What do you make of this tax? You know, this piece of legislation really seems like a political winner in this year. I mean, this is a year when Democrats are talking about affordability. California is a deep blue state. There's a lot of frustration about the economy, a lot of blame on very wealthy billionaires and their influence in Washington. However, as you point out, there's a big pushback. There's a big campaign to convince voters this is not in the best interest of the state. And also California is kind of unique around the country right now, we're seeing a lot of like DSA aligned candidates really act as insurgents in the party and topple over incumbents. That hasn't really happened in California. California is, you know, a lot of these races like Karen Bass down in Los Angeles or even Javier Becerra for governor, they've been able to kind of be able to stave off any of those threats. So it seems like the right legislation in a blue state, but I think it's going to be an uphill lift. Well, I know Governor Newsom is against it, and he's been a very busy man in South Carolina and the Deep South this week, and it's not his first time there midterms in November. What do you think the governor's finally going to turn over his cards and say, I'm running for president? Yeah, I think Governor Newsom running for president is probably the most open secret at this point. I think it's been years. He's seemingly been running while not running. You know, I think after the midterm, I think you're going to see after the midterm election, I should say, you're going to start seeing more candidates announced. I think Newsom will be one of the early candidates to announce the past handful of years. He's done a lot to make Fox News appearances. He's gone to some of these Republican leaning states like Florida, now South Carolina. So I think it's very clear he's positioning himself for 2028, where he hopes to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency. U.S. and Steve Whitkoff, Jared Kushner to Moscow in an attempt to broker peace in Ukraine. They are now in Kiev trying to do the same thing. Ukraine has been kind of forgotten because of the Iran war. Putin was in Iran a week back supporting their cause. So what, if anything, can the U.S. envoy get done with these two meetings? Thank you so much. Well, I think, you know, the United States has a lot of leverage here and has for for quite some time. But one of the real unique things about what's going on in Ukraine is the United States, especially since World War Two, has really seen themselves as a superpower that's going to go around the world and protect democracy. During Trump's second term, we've seen a lot of that rhetoric kind of drop off and America's vision for what it wants to be in terms of foreign policy is unclear. But I think it is clear that Trump would like to see this war come to an end. I think he would like to get credit for doing so. So we're just going to see how these kind of negotiations play out. But we've been here before. We've seen the United States try and intervene in negotiations for years at this point. Speaking of the president, he's pushing new restrictions on the mail-in voting. California relies very heavy on that. Is this really about election integrity in your mind, or is this about gaining a political advantage before the elections in November? You know, I don't think this is about election integrity at all. If anything in this country, we don't really have a problem with people voting fraudulently. We have a problem with not enough people voting, and this certainly wouldn't solve that. You know, President Trump is someone who doesn't like to admit an electoral loss. He still has not conceded the 2020 election. And one of the ways he justifies, you know, saying he won when he lost is by claiming that the other side quote unquote cheated. And this legislation or this executive order that he tried to push to get the U.S. Postal Service to basically supersede states in terms of determining who can vote through mail-in ballot, this has been shot down by the courts. But I think it's something that he's going to want to point to when and if Republicans lose in the midterm elections to say like, look, the courts, the Democrats, they were against me. They cheated. So I think he's laying the groundwork to already tell the public that he won this election or his party did when they didn't. Well, it's going to be a good theater the next couple of months, that's for sure. I don't know how you teach your students. It changes daily. But Nolan Higdon, always a pleasure, my friend. And we'll see you again next week. Thanks a lot. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much. All right, Nolan. Take care as we leave you with a live shot of the White House. Got more news coming up. We're going to talk a little Niner football to stay right there.