Stand Up America’s Executive Director Christina Harvey discusses her group’s national “Kick Out Corruption” Tour, being organized with End Citizens United, to expose how corruption in Washington is driving up costs for everyday Americans. Harvey offers solutions to cleaning up the waste, fraud and abuse that results from unchecked government corruption.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right now, I’m very happy to welcome to our program Christina Harvey, executive director of the group Standup America. Thanks so much for joining us on Counterpoint this evening. Christina, appreciate it.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yeah, thanks for having me back again, Scott.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yeah, thanks for having me back again, Scott.
SCOTT HARRIS: So you’re doing a lot of great work at Standup America and I wondered as we get into our topic this evening about the Kickout Corruption Tour, first of all, just tell our listeners who may not be familiar with Standup America the work you and your colleagues do there.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Absolutely. Standup America is a community of nearly 3 million people in all 50 states across the country who are fighting to end corruption, protect and expand voting rights and demand the democracy that we deserve. And the last time I came on, you might have heard me say we’re a community of nearly 2 million people. And tonight I say nearly 3 million because nearly a million additional activists have joined our community since Trump was re-elected as president as we’re really seeing a ground swell of opposition to the corruption and the attempts to stand above the rule of law of this administration.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks for that, Christina. So we’re glad you can be here this evening to talk about the Kickout Corruption Tour that will be visiting key battleground states before the critical midterm elections this November. And this is a partnership with the group End Citizens United. Tell our audience about the tour and the goals of this campaign.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: It is. So we’re teaming up with End Citizens United and national leaders to take to voters our message about the connection between the corruption in Washington and rising costs and to offer real solutions for how we can get our government back to actually working for everyday working people.
SCOTT HARRIS: And so tell us about what’s happening on the tour, who’s speaking and what’s the purpose of the rallies? There are actions that are being organized in anticipation of the turnout project for November 2026.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yeah, absolutely. So we actually had our kickoff event yesterday in Tempe, Arizona at Arizona State University and yesterday’s special guest was Sen. Mark Kelly, who’s someone who has been a true advocate for legislation to stop corruption and has really been a model himself of standing up against corruption. Yesterday we talked a bit about something that he likes to call the Kelly Standard, which is his voluntary refusal to accept corporate PAC money, placing all of his assets in a blind trust and making his schedule public so that voters actually know who he’s spending his time with. And we had a fantastic crowd that came out yesterday, a really engaged audience as we talked about really how Washington has stopped even trying to hide corruption. It’s come out of the smoke-filled backroom and it’s out in plain sight. We talked with folks about the gilded ballroom whose corporate funders have received $50 billion in new and expanded federal government contracts and voters are mad because they know that they’re paying for those contracts.
And we talked about how the cuts that Congress made last year and their billionaire budget to food assistance and school lunches and healthcare—so that they could give their ultra wealthy donors tax breaks—are impacting Arizonans and their costs and their quality of life.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah. I wondered if you could give some more examples of the corruption we’re seeing, as you said, in our faces, because they are no longer trying to hide it. They may be trying to spin it, but they’re not trying to hide it much. And that includes everything from domestic and foreign policy. You’ve got Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law doing deals with the Gulf monarchies as he’s overseas trying to thus far unsuccessfully broker a peace agreement with the war the U.S. and Israel started against Iran, but the money deals are really front and center. I mean, they are not trying to hide it. And certainly one of the biggest recent examples of corruption is the attempt by the Trump administration to negotiate with itself to give Donald Trump $1.776 billion in what’s being described as a slush fund that he can give to anybody he wants.
He’s got sole control over it and he’ll be likely to give it to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrectionists that tried to overturn Trump’s election loss that resulted in five deaths at the Capitol, including police officers, many injuries and at its heart, an attempt to overturn U.S. democracy. But talk about any of those that I mentioned and of course there are many, many more.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yes, there are so many examples and I’m so glad that you brought up Jared Kushner because one thing that people in Arizona and across the country are concerned about are rising gas prices and the prices of all the other goods that are going up because the cost of fuel is increasing. This illegal war in Iran is putting service members’ lives at risk. It’s driving up costs for Americans. It’s destabilizing the global energy market. And at the same time, it’s creating some really serious questions about whose interests are being served by this war. As you said, Jared Kushner—who, for folks who don’t know is Trump’s son-in-law—advised him to enter into this war and he has extensive business dealings in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, countries that are two of Iran’s biggest competitors on the global energy market. And unfortunately, the Trump family possibilities for corruption when it comes to Iran don’t end there.
Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, own a stake in a drone company that was just awarded a defense contract to produce weapons used to defend against Iranian attacks. So whatever your view is on the war in Iran, we shouldn’t have to wonder whether politicians’ personal financial interests are influencing decisions that are putting American lives at risk or costing taxpayers billions of dollars. We should be able to trust that if they’re taking us to war, it’s based on national security, not on whether the president’s friends and families stand to profit. And unfortunately, we have to wonder.
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re speaking with Christina Harvey, executive director of the group, Stand Up America and we’re talking about the Kickout Corruption tour that just began yesterday in Tempe, Arizona with partner organization End Citizens United. My name’s Scott Harris here on listener-supported WPKN in Bridgeport. And Christina, one of the things that I’d like to ask you about includes how to relate the corruption that we’re seeing unfolding on an almost daily basis in Washington under this second Trump administration with the hardships average Americans are encountering in their daily lives. You just mentioned the gas prices and the wheeling and dealing going on with defense contracts going to family members and the like. But maybe there’s some other examples you could identify that would really link the policies that are made to cut healthcare, food stamps and other programs that people depend on with the money flowing to Congresspeople and the Trump administration in terms of contributions that many people would identify as bribes.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yeah, absolutely. So we talked a bit about the billionaire budget that was passed last year and that was really a prime example. Congressional Republicans made massive cuts to healthcare, including to ACA subsidies, to Medicaid, to rural hospitals that are now driving up the costs for healthcare for Americans. They also made cuts to nutrition assistance, whether that was to folks who are receiving SNAP benefits, which when I was younger we called food stamps, to school lunches. And they did all of that because they were trying to find the money to give enormous tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy donors who helped put them in office. People like Elon Musk. Elon Musk does not need another yacht or another private jet, but American families need healthcare. They need free and subsidized school lunches for their students. So that is just one more example of a place where we are seeing corruption and corruption that doesn’t have to exist.
It is legal corruption because of the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court. People like Elon Musk can spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections and after they help get candidates like Donald Trump elected, they can then turn around and expect something for their investment like these massive tax cuts.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah, exactly. And it’s a good investment because I think for just pennies on the dollar, they can get huge tax rebates or contracts that really are profitable for them in terms of the initial investment in a campaign donation. Christina, I wanted to refer to something I talked about earlier this evening and that is Victor Orban, the authoritarian leader of Hungary, he just lost an election after I think it was 16 years in office. And one of the things that was very successful for the opposing candidate’s campaign was to link the corruption that was taking place in Hungary under Victor Orban with the hardship that people had in their daily lives, making it not corruption wasn’t just some abstract problem that affected somebody else, but they translated it to link it directly to people and the things they were going through at home with their kids, education, healthcare and the like.
Maybe you could talk about that example of a successful campaign that did throw out a would-be dictator after 16 years in office.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Well, and that lesson is part of the reason why we are doing this tour because there is not much that Americans can agree on these days, but being fed up with corruption and wanting to fight against corruption is one of those things. And Americans are really hungry for leaders who want to fight against corruption and who have real solutions. Not only that, they are making the connection between corruption and the rising costs in their everyday lives. For example, End Citizens United recently did some polling that demonstrated that the majority of Americans make the connection between corruption, rising healthcare costs, rising grocery costs and the prices at the pump. And that’s not just the majority of Democrats, that’s the majority of Republicans and a majority of independents.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, the charges of Donald Trump and his administration being the most corrupt in U.S. history, it’s a compelling argument. And I would say that what’s also clear is that the guardrails of our democracy are fairly well broken. Laws and regulations being bypassed on a regular basis with little or no accountability from Congress or the courts. And when the courts do weigh in on the important issues of corruption, it’s often coming months or even a year or two late. And then we’ve of course got the Supreme Court that’s in Donald Trump’s back pocket, breaking decades of precedent to normalize corrupt behavior and I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of that yet with the six-member extremist right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. I wondered if you weigh in on the importance of strength resurrecting, repairing and resurrecting the guardrails for our democracy to prevent this kind of blatant corruption from occurring in the future.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yes. I think there are so many places where we need to, as you said, resurrect those guardrails. Trump has really tested the system for us and shown us where the weaknesses are and some of the things we need to shore up in the future. And one place I’d start there is with the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the ultra- conservative right-wing faction of the Supreme Court has been rubber-stamping much of what the Trump administration is doing and I think the worst thing is that they have made it harder for Americans to actually hold the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress accountable for their corruption and their attempts to go above the rule of law. For example, the Supreme Court decision that we recently saw in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down the most recent, one of the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act now kicks off a wave of redistricting that’s happening across the South where Republican-controlled states are even further gerrymandering their districts to eliminate black congressional districts.
Now, this was a continuation of a campaign that Trump started in Texas a year ago because he saw that Americans were upset with the billionaire budget that passed last year with the corruption that they were seeing. And rather than Republicans decide to change course and pass different policies that actually benefited American families, Trump and Republicans decided that they would make it harder for voters to say, “Hey, we want different people in Congress.” So Trump successfully pushed Texas to gerrymander and add Republican seats, Missouri and other states, but he lost in a lot of states too. He lost in Kansas, he lost in Nebraska, he lost in Indiana. So when he wasn’t able to gerrymander the map to rig the midterms on his own, his Supreme Court stepped in to help him by further gutting the VRA and we’re seeing the consequences across the South as those states gerrymander and black voters face losing power to elect the representatives of their choice and representatives who look like them and the power to hold their elected officials accountable for these terrible policies.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Christina, we only have a minute or two left, but I wanted to get your brief read on ideas for reforming the U.S. Supreme Court. There’s been discussion of imposing an ethics code on the justices and of course Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas on the court have been accused of taking money for billionaires and favoring them in their rulings. There’s also ideas of expanding the number of justices on the court or imposing a retirement age on the justices. Maybe all the above, but what’s your sense of what an effective reform of the U.S. Supreme Court could look like?
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Well, I’ll say that our membership has long advocated for a number of Supreme Court reforms, including a binding code of ethics, term limits for Supreme Court justices and if necessary in order to rebalance this court so that we actually have a court that will defend our Constitution and stand up for the rule of law, adding seats to the court. Our members have logged nearly a million phone calls and emails to their members of Congress advocating for these policies and we are seeing more and more candidates and elected officials come out for structural reforms to the court, including folks who are running for Senate in some red states. For example, James Talerico in Texas; Dan Osborne, in Nebraska; (Josh)Turek in Iowa. They have all come out in support of Supreme Court term limits. And if we want to make real reforms that will stop corruption, for example, banning presidential and congressional stock trading, we need to have a Supreme Court that’s not going to strike down those policies.
So reforms to the Supreme Court really go hand in hand with any other Democratic guardrails that we want to pass and making sure that those guardrails get upheld.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Christina, thank you for spending time with us tonight talking about the Kickout Corruption Tour. And please leave with our audience … My voice is breaking up. Excuse me. Please leave our audience with the contact information for Standup America and the Kickout Corruption Tour.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yes. So the best way to get on our list and get information about both is to text Stand S-T-A-N-D to 63033. That’s Stand to 63033. You can get on our list, find out how you can help elect anti-corruption candidates this fall and then help them get those anti-corruption proposals across the finish line. And if we happen to be doing a stop near you, you can make sure that you get that invitation so that you can get on the list and come join us.
SCOTT HARRIS: All right, Christina, always great talking with you and congratulations on your important work and this Kickout Corruption Tour. Love to stay in touch with you and have you back soon, talk more about the important issues leading up to the 2026 midterm election. Thanks for being with us tonight.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yeah. Thank you again and thank you for hosting a show where you elevate such important topics. Have a good night.
SCOTT HARRIS: You too. Take care, Christina. Goodnight.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Bye-bye.
SCOTT HARRIS: That’s Christina Harvey and she’s the executive director of the group, Standup America.
