Hi everyone, I'm Lucretia, the International Woman of Mystery and co host of The Three Whisky Happy Hour. We've got a great show for you tonight. We're going to be discussing tariffs and the Supreme Court's opinion on tariffs today, telling Trump he can't use the IEEPA as justification for his universal tariffs. It came down that Democrats were celebrating, some conservatives were celebrating. Other conservatives are looking at it.
Maybe it's not such a bad thing. We're going to discuss all of that and the Three Whisky Happy Hour. But if you enjoy those kinds of discussions, if you enjoy hearing conservatives with different points of view, different perspectives coming together and having friendly disagreements about important matters within the conservative movement, then I have a suggestion for you. You should watch or listen to Conservative Crossroads, which is Henry Olson's whose senior fellow at the Ethics and Public
Policy Center. He's one of the smartest guys you've ever want to talk to, and just the really nice guy. But he's able to disagree.
He likes to disagree.
They hash things out on Conservative Crossroads. If you've been hoping for a series like this, I encourage you to join Henry Olsen and his guests at Conservative Crossroads every other Monday as they hash out the ideas and principles that will decide the future of the right. So download Conservative Crossroads from our partner Ricochet or any platform where you get your podcasts. Conservatism is that a crossroads, which is why all conservatives need Conservative Crossroads.
Listen today, Why think alone when you can drink it all in with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour.
Join your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You, and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
Where they slapped it up and David h leave me on the shoulder tops got to give me.
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. It's been a big day for all of us, especially for our media gad fly and very famous personality, my co host John Yu who has been uh lately the the person go to choice for Fox News, especially for the women on Outnumbered.
They love him. Uh.
He was on today with with what's the what's the beauty Queen's name?
Why do you need to be which one? The blonde? The lawyer, the lawyer which long lawyer.
Oh that you were on TV with several today.
So John, did you have to cancel your afternoon squash game because of all this? Today?
I think I know this all this The Supreme Court interfered with my leisure activities today. Yeah, but I was on basically from when the opinion issued, which was seven am my time, until about lunchtime. Yeah.
And so you missed the this is a bad joke, but somebody sent it to me. You missed the news that McDonald's is coming out with a new sandwich. It's going to be it's going to be a sandwich with rabbit meat called the mcribbitt.
Oh, now you got me excited. Actually, can I say substant I actually had a new fast food thing. I was at a club in San Francisco for lunch visiting one of my professors from law school is eighty five years old, and they had something new called a burger dog. Have you ever had one of these?
No, I want one hamburger amy.
It was hamburger in the shape of a hot dog. It was amazing. I'm already plotting how to get back there for more. It was I'm surprised McDonald's doesn't make these. Yeah, I've actually seeing good. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not sure what a difference it makes. But okay, Well, because.
You got the hamburger meat, but it's in the shape of a tube, so you can broad a bun, the hot dog bun, put all the hot dog toppings and you can eat like a hot dog and it will be grilled and it's much flatter, so you get more burnt surface cerea on it than a hamburger. I thought about it. I analyzed why was this so good?
John? That's I can't believe you haven't figured out that's just a halfway house to a Philly cheestick.
Well, there you go exactly.
I do have to say that one of I'm not a hot dog fan, but the Alice Cooper's restaurant Cooper's Town that was used to be right outside the baseball stadium in Phoenix.
It's gone.
It left during COVID unfortun But we used to love when we were Phoenix going there. And I have a picture of a good friend of mine, it's actually his avatar on the phone and they would they had a foot long hot dog and it was genuine.
It was on a oh rinch like a sour billy, Well, what do you call it? Yeah, but yeah, that's the word I'm going people.
But it was like across the hot dog it was like six different kinds of hot dogs. Like this one was a part was a chili dog, and then this one was sour kard and it was this huge, long hot dog that had just mustard on part of it and onions, you know that sort of thing. And I would get that every once in a while, even though I'd never probably order a hot dog from anywhere but Dodger Stadium.
I have to say, the best hot dog. I'm curious what you all think and crysl Lakrischi question where you really are a woman of the people if you don't like hot dogs. But the best hot dog I ever had, I think is New York City Papaya King. How many fans of Papaya King Wow, had these? And you have a little sign out front, Oh there's Papaya King and then there's Grace Pia. But there's so made me laugh
so much. The sign on the front of Papaya King would say the filet mignon of hot dogs, maybe immediately suspicious.
I thought Sabrats was the best, best thing you could get in New York, right.
Oh no, no, they.
Put papaya on their hot dogs, have.
Some strange juice. People from New York City grew up in New York would notice too. They have the strange papya drinck. I'm not sure there was any papaya, and it was some kind of hoop juice. But the hot dogs really long and skinny to maximize the chart grilling of the hot dogs. Skin Oh okay.
So the Democrats are partying across the country and we're talking about hot dogs. The Democrats are holding celebrations with I don't know what do you celebrate? What do you celebrate with if you're a Democrat?
I don't know.
But anyway, because.
Marijuana, no, no, not anymore.
No, I really don't know.
I'm doubling up on Lafoyd Lefroy all the way down to because I am so happy about this decision, believe or not.
But I don't know that's a decision to be happy about. It's just probably no one to be broken hearted. But let's have John at least explain the basics to us.
What is rare?
A breed that's.
Weirdy okay, Yeah, that's that's for sure.
Yeah, you're labeling them celebrating liquors because now we're going to be able to export bourbon to Canada again.
So getting angry.
While you're while you're getting ready to talk to now, I don't care.
First of all, congratulations to the women's team, the American women's hockey team.
I don't really know.
I haven't watched one moment of the the Olympics except the you know, highlights reels. But uh, I'm I'm very excited about the women's team. About that woman, Alisa Lu, the half Chinese woman, that was so awesome, especially in comparison to the similar story where she decided to become a Chinese spy plant and so that was wonderful. You
couldn't have written a better story. But now I'm to understand that the American men's hockey team will be going up against the Canadian men's hockey team and I might actually have to watch that, so I don't think I have the ability to. So anyway, we'll be cheering for the men's American hockey team, and I'm hoping that it's going to.
Be a route of Canada across the course.
Of course, it's see I'm better than being the Soviet Union forty six years ago.
These days, I think so I would have kind of looked with Helena Gou, You guys would be buying my idea of birthright citizenship now, because right, Lucretia's referring to.
The freestyle speyer who's he's born in America. But now she's playing for the Chinese Olympic team and allegedly must have given up her citizenship in some way or is it only a Chinese citizen? So I would have thought, you guys, I'd like birthright citizenship because she'd have to be an American citizen and then we could try her for treason.
But wait a minute. But by the way, John, did you say Helena Goo? Is that her name? I thought Helena Goho was one of our stings.
Oh my god, I'm so sorry Helena. Oh my god. We can only hope she's not student in our natural law class.
That's right, Eileen, I believe is her first name.
That's it. There you go, right.
I caught John in a rare blunder of memory because he's usually got to steal from you say something interesting. Democrats are celebrating it. I don't think they should be so.
But yeah, go ahead, let's have John John j just give us the basics.
AH of the case today, learning resources versus Trump. So it's interesting when I was on Fox this morning and people were looking at it, they're saying fractured core, fractured court. But it's not. Actually when you read the opinion, there's six clear votes for I think actually a fairly modest opinion. The opinion doesn't say Trump can't declare national emergency. The opinion doesn't say the president doesn't run national security of
foreign affairs. The opinion actually has several things I think everyone agree with. You know, One, Congress has the power over tariffs under the Constitution. Two, Congress can delegate the power over tariffs to the president. So this case is only about did Congress intend in this emergency statue called AIPA to delegate the power of tariffs to the president.
The statute gives the president the power to regulate all exports and imports with foreign countries, all transactions and transmissions with other countries, but it didn't say the word tariff. So six justices six three conservatives, Roberts who wrote the opinion, and then Gorsich and Barrett, and then the three liberals Soda, Mayor, Kagan, and Jackson agreed that cause this statute didn't specifically use the word tariff in this case, Congress didn't give the
president that power. Now, I think this is a fairly limited significance practically, because, as President Trump announced in his press conference today, there are other statutes which give the president the power to tariff. So it just requires you
to take about a year to do it. And these laws require you to pick country by country and explain why you're targeting that country, whether it's because they're national security risk, or they're engaged in unfair trade practices, or there's some kind of surge of imports from that country in a certain product category. But Trump is eventually going to get a large majorities of these tariffs through the countries that he may not be able perhaps to impose
tariffs on like he did before. Would be, say, countries that are allies that are not national security threats. I don't know, like what would well, Canada, I don't know, because.
You know I'm serious.
Actually, yeah, no, this is this is This gets to something the court did not address, in which the lower courts have generally until Trump been favorable to presidents, which is usually when presidents make these decisions that depend on the facts of the world, the courts usually say, we can't tell what the facts of the world are. We're going to defer to the president, and if the president
and if people disagree, then Congress can stop him. But right it's up to the president usually to decide whether another country is a threat and what measures to take in response. The court didn't get into any of that. All they said today was this statute. This AEPA statute, which is a very broad emergency statute, just doesn't give
the president the power paraphy now. Personally, I think this is an unduly now reading of the statute because under the statute for its entire history, and under the statute before it that it replaced, presidents Congresses have authorized president to impose complete embargoes on countries. So under this law right now, we don't allow any trade, zero trade with Cuba,
North Korea, Iran. So it's weird. The court is essentially saying, well, you could impose in a complete blockade and embargo on a country, but you can't tax their exports to US by ten percent or twenty percent so I don't think that's a very plausible reading of the statue, but that's what the majority wanted to do. But in the end, that's why I say, legally, Trump's going to be able to do this in about a year if he just takes his time and uses these other statutes.
So Steve, I know, is going to roundabout way praise Roberts a little bit here. So before he does that, I'll do my usual thing with the dread pirate Roberts.
I'll say he had dread powered Roberts. Sorry that two things.
One, John, I've already brought this up to you once and you denied it, but I'm going to bring it up again. You and I had a lovely conversation walking through that part of Berkeley where it's completely run down and all the windows are boarded up on the west end, and we were walking to a restaurant, and we had a conversation.
I deny neither confirm nor deny that the right now.
This is probably two or three years ago, and and we were we were talking about the probability that that Roberts would in these big cases coming before it. And this was before Dobbs and and and before the Harvard case and so on, that he would do this balancing thing, that he would, you know, give this side some and give this side some to try to maintain what his in his skewed inappropriate view as the independence of the court and the integrity of the court. Okay, I don't
know if maybe that's part of it. You were the one who said in your Fox article that this at the very least take some of the wind out of the sales of leftists who keep claiming that somehow this court is very pro trumped.
So I think there's something to that.
Whether that was Robert's particular motivation behind it, I couldn't. None of us can say, really, But I wanted to bring up this one point to follow on what you said, and that is that the court looked for every possible way, the majority opinion Roberts looked for every possible way to find that there was a problem with Trump's tariffs by calling it attacks, so that he could in fact overturn it. Let me recall your attention to a case some years ago, Sibelius, where.
And let me get one more thing about that.
Before during the oral arguments, one of the justices I don't remember whom asked the Solicitor General, Well, how can this not be a revenue mechanism? Because all Trump is doing out there is bragging about how much revenue that's bringing in, and that by definition makes it a tax, and that is something that Congress has the power to and the president does it.
That's that. So they brought up the pre.
The political side of it, I guess the best way to put it. So remember in Sibilius, in the Affordable Care Act case, the Obama administration, Obama himself score over and over and over again that the individual mandate was not a tax.
It was not a tax, it was not a tax.
And I believe probably maybe wouldn't have been able to get it past if he had admitted it was a tax. And then Roberts went out of his way to do the opposite and call it attacked so he could come up with a way to uphold the law he desperately wanted to uphold. Do you think that's unfair?
No? No, no, So look, I you know when I first saw the headlines, that started looking through it and seeing what a lot of our friends were saying and anticipating what you would say. It's like, well, Roberts has done it again. He's you know, done fancy footwork to read a certain way. And I'll add one more detail about the Sabelias case affordable care at case John.
Type of a quieter by the way, I'm typing, can you believe what Lucretia just said?
Oh?
Yeah, but look, I mean, I remember the day that decision came down. I remember hearing the agregious Jeff Rosen on NPR saying, gosh, I love Roberts. He reminds me of John Marshall and the way he twistified things in Marbury versus Madison, and so, by the way, in an
odd way. The more I thought about it, the more I think, Oh, and I think I said to you in a text chain, Lucretia, that or both of you, it would have been better if Roberts had had gorseus right to the majority opinion and not him doing it, because it's just the lightning run now for the whether he bends to political pressure. Except then I started noticing that maybe Roberts decided to write the opinion himself because he wanted to rest it partially on the major Questions doctrine.
And what that did was flesh out the three women who said, oh, we agree with the holding, but no, we don't want to know. We don't need the Major Questions Doctrine. Why would they say that, because the Major Questions Doctrine, which emerged two years ago now in that statute I'm now calling the Bear Fair Act whatever.
To confused, John, you knew you were going to work it in some Yeah, of course I was right.
The Bear Keen Act. That's it, Keen Bear Act, whatever it is. The point is is that the Major Questions Doctrine is an ongoing dagger at the heart of the administrative state, and the left really wants to resist that because that is the thing that is going to unravel. And by the way, it gets back to the whole climate thing from last week. John, you know, I think Trump's move may hold up, but there's been talked previously
under Biden. It will come back. If we get President Newsom, there's gonna be pressure to declare a climate emergency, and one of the remedies would be a border adjustment tax, a tariff on China and India and other countries that aren't going along with carbon suppression. This decision today both on AIPA but also the larger doctrine of the Major Questions Act just laid a roadblock in the way of that happening three four years ago or ten years from now,
whatever it is. So maybe Roberts has been clever after all, and you know, all right, we're gonna throw shade at him and beat him up for it. On the other hand, that's something that after a couple of hours, I thought, oh, wait a minute, this is why I concluded this was a no lose case in a lot of ways. But I'll just stop right there.
And I think you Roberts screwed up again. Well really one on the logic that he if you remember Sabelius, which Lucretia brought up, his main point was the tax. There was a tax, and the taxing power is essentially not limited by subject matter and not a regulation. Ah okay. And he said the reason why was because taxes are just there to raise money. They're not there to regulate policy purposes. Everyone knows taxes can do that. For example, if you break a regulation, you have to pay a
financial penalty. You could think of that as a tax if you wanted to. But Roberts says those aren't taxes. Those are not there to raise revenue. That's what he's trying to do here. But I think he's wrong because his argument essentially is this just like Sabellius, because these tariffs are like taxes, they're not really regulations. But the whole point of these tariffs is to manage our foreign policies to achieve certain kinds of goals and national security.
They're not just to raise money. I think Roberts is quite wrong about that. I don't think I don't think Roberts was I think Roberts just like actually is arguing the opposite of what he did in Sabellius. Strangely, but the second point in large paint I think Roberts really screwed up here is if you're like Steve and you care about the Major Questions doctrine because you think somehow it has to do with particles in the air, I don't know. He produces more or less particles. That's what
he's obsessed with. So Roberts actually divided the coalition on the Major Questions doctrine here that part of the opinion only gets three votes. Right, So Roberts said in the opinion the Major Questions Doctrine which is as Steve described, it means that we won't allow cop we won't infer in a vague statue that Congress meant to transfer this fast power. So if they wanted to give Tariff's power, they should have said tariff. Notice that the three Liberals,
of course, were never going to agree to that. But he also lost Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito on that too. They also believe the Major Questions doctrine doesn't apply. So Roberts actually succeeded in narrowing the scope of a Major Questions doctrine and breaking up this coalition, which I agree Steve. If they could stick together, they could really roll up some of the administrative state by sticking to this Major
Question doctrine. And maybe, you know, maybe Lucretia thinks, well, Roberts was so out to, you know, slap Trump in the head or give Trump a loss that he or give.
I don't interrupt you, but all I want to say is it's actually a little bit more subtle than that. It's look as if he's giving Trump a loss that seems to be very.
Important to him.
And you know what, I will for just for once, I'm not necessarily taking the dread coward Roberts side on this, but there has been so many very partisan and almost dangerous attacks on the court that I'm not sure that it isn't a bit justified.
Does that make sense?
And if the Democrats are stupid enough to believe that maybe this is, you know, the end of Trump, then maybe Roberts has the freedom on some more important things.
I mean, the only thing I would say about the opinion along those lines is it doesn't do a very good job of it. It's actually very spartan and doesn't have all these like Roberts one liners, and then doesn't accuse the president of you know, argrogating or arrogating too much executive power. You know. It's actually very minimal and really portrays itself as a very narrow decision. It doesn't have all the usual language you see in these Roberts opinions.
This are grandiose opinions trying really hard to be like Chief Justice Marshall, but always failing.
John, Are you playing with a fidget spinner or something? Thank you for hearing his crunching noises without the thing you're playing with in your hand.
This is this is what I do when you start talking about the environment and all there keep the particle levels of certain pollutants down.
One last technical question for you, John, because I think people will be interested and tell me if my understanding of this is wrong, which it probably is, and that is that because of those other statutes which Trump could use to, I guess, reimpose tariff's under different under different justifications, what happens with the paying back the money that he has raised with TERA so far? So what I understand is they would say they didn't speak to it. Cavanaugh
did in his but they didn't speak to it. So that goes back to lower courts to decide people have to sue to get their money.
It could take years. I don't know the exact way it would work. That's why it's you know on.
This is never This has never really happened before, so there's no pre existing refund system usually these cases. By the way, I do teach trade law because I don't know from my sins at Berkeley, they don't let me teach constitutional all the time, so I have had to teach this and so usually when this happens, it's like an individual product and an individual importer, and it's easy to figure out how to refund to that person, that importer.
But we've never had a case where, you know, this level of tariffs economy wide have been struck down, so this is not unusual. Though the Supreme Court just said the Trump adminstration is wrong, and then it's going to be up to the lower courts to figure out how to construct what we think of what we call remedy the reef, which could be a refund process. It may be that a lot of people who paid more for the goods than they normally would have because the tariffs
aren't going to get any relief at all. It's very hard to see how consumers would get any kind of refund. Maybe import companies, you know, maybe companies that paid more for raw materials they use in their products, if they kept track, they might you could, I don't know. You could also see a lower court saying it's too hard
to figure out. We're just going to create what we call forward looking prospective relief well, which is that we won't allow the tarffs to continue, but we can't figure out how to do a refund, so we're just not going to have what we call retrospective backward looking relief. We could run a lot of people the wrong way. But it might just be too hard for the lower courts to figure out.
I keep channeling the great Paul Dooley and breaking away that almost fifty year old movie Refund Refund. You don't know that movie, John, It's it's about the bicycle racer in Bloomington, Indiana.
Anyway, everything he just said is a reason not to watch the movie. Oh no, it's a classic movie, Bicycle Riders in Bloomington, Indiana.
Well, you know that was a hard Actually the rider of that movie is long passed away. But he was an American spectator guy when a spectator was based in Bloomington. So really, wow, see things you don't know because you're too young and call well. But I did enjoy Elizabeth Warren Day saying, you know, there should be a refund. It should go for the people who are you know, the middle class people who are hurt by the tariffs.
And I'm like, oh, you'd be kind of like Trump's proposed two thousand dollars rebate to Americans for the revenue race. But okay, let's just go do that. The whole thing is hilarious to watch.
I have to say, yeah, I agree, but you know what, the one thing here's so Trump gets around this, and I want to compare that for a moment, because one of the supposedly compelling moments was when one of the justices asked the Solicitor General would this if we were to ruin Trump's favor on the tariffs, would this mean that a future president could create a climate emergency? And supposedly the Solicitor General had to say yes. The point
of the matter is they would do it anyway. And my best example for that is what happened when Biden was told he couldn't do student loan refunds.
So, so that being said, I'm going to change the subject. Unless you guys have more to say.
On your point in cretia, the court does not reach that question. There's a lot of conservative commentators out there saying, oh, this was very important so that the left couldn't declare a climate change emergency. The decision does not address this question about what's an emergency or whether Trump was an error for declaring an emergency. Now, it basically says, assuming there's an emergency, you still can't do this. So this idea that has any influence on future presidents declaring it
preventing them from declaring climate change emergency. It's just not born out by you just have to read the opinion. It doesn't say that.
Well, can I just one more observation on the politics of it, how it fell out today, So you know, Trump didn't do a rage tweet on true social It took three hours and it came out in his press conference. Obviously, he huddled with advisors and lawyers who said, look, you have always fallback provisions that can be used, and and of course the media and there was oh it isn't Trump terrible? He saying mean things.
About patiotics, Supreme Court.
All the rest of that.
Well, know, you guys think that was over the top.
And I'll be honest and I don't think.
It's a that's true. Okay, yes, stipulate that. However, again the media asymmetries.
Right.
I ran back, as I always do to Franklin Roosevelt a cress conference in nineteen thirty five after the Scheckter case. Now quickly for listeners, the Scheckter case was the nine zero decision nine zero, meaning the liberal justices ruled against Roosevelt for his signature New Deal initiative. The National Recovery Act, which essentially was a government takeover of the whole economy. And it was that completely idiotic idea, and in fact,
there's no official transcript, but it was recorded. There was laughter in the courtroom, and how preposterous the government's defense of this was so nine zero. What did Roosevelt do? He raised against the courts at much longer length than Trump did today, taking us back to the horse and buggy era. He made arguments that paralleled Trump's in some ways in different circumstances. That was about near state commerce and the fifty state, the forty eight states that.
Would run wild and so work.
Of course, was there any press criticism of FDR attack, Of course there was not. Right now, the most judicious historians like James McGregor Burns said, the court did Roosevelt a huge favor by striking down that idiotic piece of New Deal policy, because he would never been able to get his way out of it for a whole bunch of reasons. And I won't say it's quite the same here, but the fact that now we're going to go back to applying well established trade powers much more clearly specified.
You know, John, you mentioned Section two one three, one, two, three two, all the others. Trump can do almost everything he wanted to do, with some limitations that I think he can deal with for all the things he wants to do, is my guess. For example, my first thought was, well, there goes threats of tariffs against India for buying Russian oil.
But maybe not. And by the way, all the people say Trump is too soft on Russia, there was a very effective and powerful thing against Russia which the court theoretically was taking away today. So it's anyway, I'll just stop there. It's a sorry.
Let me just ask do those agreements go by the wayside? Do they have to go on the wayside an agreement? Yeah, that would seem to me to take it completely if there's an agreement on some so he imposes these tariffs and then walks them back when he gets an agreement, do those agreements have to go by the wayside?
Well, I don't know. I mean it could be in a case of India saying yeah, okay, we won't buy Russians day right, well, a few days ago, but who knows what you know? Trump days are in dog hears right. The only question now is if India says well, gosh, maybe we go back to buying Russia. Well, because you can't slap us with a thread of a tariff. I don't know, but those the agreement of India is probably a fay of complete so I think it's probably fine.
But still it's interesting to ponder again the confusion and the hypocrisy of the left on this.
So that's all seems like the right seems pretty confused these days too, except John.
Of course.
I just think it's a mistake to attack the corn the way he did because the court has been so far very favorable to Trump white issues. And you know this, He's got a lot of important pending cases like the ability to fire the heads of commissions, ability to fire maybe the members of the Federal Reserve Board, the ability to end the use of racing districting, and so on. There's a lot of really important business he has for court. So I wouldn't say things like I think the three
courts being influenced by foreign nefarious interests and things like this. Well, John, here isn't there You're cringing because you still got a lot of things you want to win on at the court.
Well, well, you made a very good point today John, I don't think you've made here, which is this blows up the talking point that the Court is in the bag Ford fromp on everything right.
Or we're living under or we're living under this authoritarian government and the end of constitution on all this, you know, sir, well exaggeration.
Well, one last one, last little comment. So earlier in the week, I think I sent the link to you guys, there was Jeffrey Tubin, he of the famous Tuban missile crisis, as I call it.
I never heard that before.
He doesn't listen to you.
He had this article in the New York Times that was, you know, a liberal alternative to originalism. And I read the article and there was no theory, just said we should just oppost Trump and we want justices who oppost Trump. Well, after the day, that lame talking points kind of blown up.
But that that kind of brings us to an interesting point, and that is that it's I hate to say it like this, but if the left didn't have standards, so they're all in favor of the Supreme Court when it's
against Trump and they're celebrating out there. But one of the things that Steve and I said we were going to discuss was a recent commentary by the egregiously awful Susan Rice, She of the lying, uh dissembling fame, who said, by the way, guess what, when we get back in power, and we will meeting Democrats and when we take over this country again, we're going to undo everything, not only undo everything that Trump did in terms of DEI et cetera,
but we are going to make people pay. We are going to uh what did she What were the actual words that she used, Steve John?
Do you read something about, you know, accountability for corporate America?
Right?
And I think and ooka. I think she's responding to two specific things. So there's two headlines from the Wall Street Journal this week. One is Goldman Sachs plans to scrap DEI criteria for its board. You may know that California passed the law, and I don't remember. I know it was challenging and that maybe it was stuck down. I don't remember where it stands John, but they were going to mandate it's still the lower courts. Okay, Well, well, the law they passed was you have to diversity on
your corporate boards in California corporations. So and then the other hand line a couple of days later, also the Wall Street Journal DEI rules that change corporate boards are vanishing. I think when Goldman Sacks says we're not doing this anymore, and other corporations are following suit, and so Susan Rice comes along and she's essentially sending a missile at all these companies saying, don't you dare, because we're going to come after you in three years if we're back in power.
And this is a part of a larger story, which is they're digging in for the long haul.
They're going to ground.
They're not going away. The people I mean, I celebrate vibe shifts and point to things like these headlines, but the left is not gonna go quietly here. We have not won anything. The people who think just because Trump won in twenty twenty four and he's going hard after these things that we've won are making the same mistake that we made in nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety ninety one and thinking the defeat of the Soviet Union meant that we had defeated leftism, and they went to ground
then the nineties and now it's worse than ever. Same thing is going to happen now if we don't double down on going after the heart.
So I guess the point really quickly, John. The point I would was trying to. The additional point I was trying to make, is we actually have a final say from the Supreme Court on this issue of dei and uh, you know, preferences on the basis of race and so on. I guess it, maybe when it comes to corporation is not completely final. But the official position of the United States Supreme Court now and the official reading of civil rights law, the fourteenth Amendment, is that you do not
discriminate on the basis of race at all. And in other words, you know, color blind approach to the question of racial discrimination.
Why is it that? Go ahead? Yeah, go ahead, John Well.
I wish I could be as optimistic, I guess is how i'd say it, because I think you're right. Of course, the Supreme Court has said that the government cannot use race now in any circumstance.
Right.
The Harvard case was important because strangely, the court which had struck down these race in all these areas had left. Strangely, emissions and hiring and higher education is the last major area except for voting rights, which I think we're going to see struck down this year too, But it left that is really the only area where the government could
explicitly use race to make decisions. So I agree with you that at the top the message has gone out, But I think DEI is so deeply ingrained in all these institutions, is going to be trench warfare for ten years. I wish there were a vibe shift, and I wish that right companies and universities are going to voluntarily uproot these DEI programs before people have to sue them one by one. But I hate to say, it reminds me of the effort to stop brown versus border with education
in the South. You know, the Southern has called it massive resistance. Gosh, that seems to me still to be what going on in universities today. I mean, yeah, we see some reports here and there of schools like the University of Texas, I think, aggressively trying to get rid, But most universities haven't changed a thing.
They just called it something else.
Yeah, they's called something or I don't think at Berkeley they've changed anything. We still have diversity offices and diversity programs and diversity still statements and consideration and hiring and promotions. I'm sure the emissions proportions by race are going to be look roughly the same as they always have. I just think it's going to take years of trench warfare to get to uproot it. I wish it could be done by a vibe shift.
Can it be done by that that civil suit that our friend encouraged us to be thinking about? Could I could I bring a civil suit against my university for all the areas I know?
Well, I assume that's I assume that's why they're trying to get rid of you before.
You They don't have to.
I quit, John, I put in my respirement paperwork.
I'm done soon anyway.
No, but I get that. But the bigger question is I agree with everything you said. Has there been a
vibe shift amongst the American people? And if if it's a fight once the Democrats sneak their way back into office because Mitch McConnell is so brain dead, his stupid ass staff is running things and the same act won't go to a filibuster on the floor and it doesn't get passed in the Democrats cheek from now until doomsday and pretend that, as a result of their electoral victory, the American people really want DEI back.
Detective Vibe successful. Why do you detective vibe ship? I mean, did you see the halftime super Bowl show? You know? I mean, I don't know, or these the what the Grammy Award? You know, the sort of culture watch telling me, you know is upstream of politics. I don't know if there's a vibe shift happening there yet.
I don't know either that.
Let's confine us just slightly. The super Bowl halftime show had the largest fall off in the people viewing of any halftime show in super Bowl history. So I don't know if that was turning point having a thing or people saying, you know, I'm just gonna do something else because I don't want to see this in Spanish? And how did I end up on Univision instead of NBC. Okay, but let's look at one particular subset of this. So we're talking about DEI on campuses. There is the whole
gen transgenderism business. And so I think we already mentioned you've had the first significant malpractice case settled, and I've been saying for five years it's a trial lawyers who might end this, although there is a problem there of statutes of limitations might bar some suits and we'll just have to see how that plays out. And a lot of more medical groups here and abroad saying we're not doing this anymore. And then, but here's the important thing I am. I try to keep up with some of
the smarter progressives like Josh Barrow. Megan mccardial wouldn't say she's aggressive, but Ben Ben Dreyfus is Richard Dreyfus's son, has a pretty interesting substack and commentary, and he's a liberal. But the point is they're all saying this is crazy, it went too far. Why can't Democrats say we screwed up and we're not going to insist on women boys and women's sports. There's huge resistance to that, but the
smarter ones are saying, let's not do that again. So the big question to me is, if they do win the election twenty twenty eight, are they gonna go full speed ahead of what they were doing under Biden? And I think that's an open question. It's gonna be. Is it gonna be like Clinton in ninety two? Remember Clinton saying we don't need a distance this ourselves from Jesse Jackson. We need to disagree with Jesse Jackson, who just died
a few days ago, right, which Clinton did spectacularly. Is there gonna be a Democrat who was a sister Soldier moment with all the identitarians and the Democratic Party. I think that's what they need to do to win and govern successfully. And so.
When the primary, well, I don't know that's right.
It could be yeah, well, I I won't truss that, but that's the question.
I think.
Yeah, I don't know the answer to it. You know, where Michael Lee and I going back and forth about Virginia. But Virginia really was an odd sort of situation, and I wonder what will happen as things go to Arizonas are pushing back against their ridiculously stupid valley girl governor woke for aggressive governor, yep, you know. And and I think we'll see something happening there Virginia.
You know, too many people were I'll just leave it alone.
But but how about this one gender affirming care for minors. I can't even believe I used that term that in the just in the last few weeks, you are seeing hospitals stop the practice. Uh, and so and and people less and less on the left, not the far left, but less and less left to me being willing to
defend it, at least for children. I saw a state legislator somewhere today said that she had introduced a bill that would make the a parent who does some kind of gender affirming care to a minor in a custody battle, that would be determined as child abuse. And so it would be the case that the other parent would get custody because the parent affirming the gender affirming care would be accused of child abuse. So there is a change. People are no longer afraid to come out and say.
And you know, by the way, when some trans nazi.
Who's married his cousin decides to go crazy on it, people are looking at that everybody but the mainstream media and saying, this is we got to do something here, folks, We got to do something about this. There's got to be some that We had to talk John really quickly. We had to talk a few some episodes ago. And you said, why doesn't somebody do a study about the ratio of transgender mass murderers to the to data and and I said, the end is too small, But the
end keeps getting bigger. There's been three of them since you and I had that conversation. And I don't know what the actual percentage of transgender persons in the population is, but it's infinitesimally small, whereas the number of mass murders is not much larger.
I'll just leave it at that.
What do you guys think, Well, I've seen some of those numbers too, and I'm trying to master them. And well, there's three or four levels of this, and you know, I don't want to run ahead of the data, right because I'm not much of a social scientist. One is you have to break down people who are a caught up by a contagion, right, you know, the it's like said this a couple episodes ago. This is like anorexia thirty years ago, where suddenly you're this epidemic of anorexia
among young women that wasn't really a medical condition. It was spread by the precursion of social media. Right, So while that's going on. Second, people who really do have serious psychological problems, I think this is going to fix it. And then third, I think the really open question is are some of these aggressive hormone treatments actually making people like steroids do. We've known for a long time that steroids, steroids, especially for young bodybuilders, turns a certain number of them
to be very aggressive and violent. And I don't know that that's been studied. That's the kind of thing that I.
Said, no, no, no, no, no no, although that's figured right, you get the point, right, as you know, I bet that issue has been deliberately avoided.
By the medical community because of what they might find that would be disturbing.
Okay, you guys can't say this, but I can. I of course refuse.
To acknowledge that that female male hormones have anything to do. You know, you need to be studying no matter what the circumstances are. But we do know that the whole idea of female hormones is very much related to women being bitchy.
How to believe it that?
Right?
At certain times?
I know, I've.
Is normal.
Natural hormonal changes cause behavioral changes. Imagine what you're doing to someone if you're pumping them full of artificial hormones.
I mean, it's just you know, you don't even have to have the scientific background to think that one through.
I guess I feel somewhat like I did on the question of DEI sometimes I worry that you know, we're getting that there's too much triumphalism. I'm not so sure that this is over. Basically, what the Supreme Court has done, as it did with abortions, returned this question to the states. And there are states that govern a large number of people in this country which still have very extreme policies, like California and New York, right, two of the four
largest states, and probably I don't know Illinois. I bet Illinois with them too. So three of the five largest states in the country probably have not changed and have not had a vibe shift. So I wonder whether you know there have been signs of a turnaround. But it's not I unfortunately think that it's not that the country has fully come to its census yet.
No, but there is a possibility that it strips moving in that direction.
That's what I'm hoping for.
I agree with you, John, I I just choose to be optimistic on something that important.
Now the food pyramid that they turned out to be so wrong.
The whole point of all of this is you add the food pyramid, you had a gender firming care you ad what happened with COVID. You add the climate change vibe shift that one. You have to at the very least say that from a completely publicity point of view. Everybody's pretending like they never actually believed that the Earth was gonna end in ten years if we didn't ban all fossil fuels. They're all, oh, well, you know, they're
equivocating and so on. My point to all of this is, I'm never gonna believe a damn scientist ever again, as long as I live.
That's all there is too.
I'm just gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna throw a dart at the wall and say that it makes as much sense to me as anything. I'm not gonna believe a doctor. I'm not gonna believe a scientist. I'm just gonna do what makes sense. Because they all lie, they all dissemble, and they all do it for political reasons. There's my sermon for the night, and look there's speechless, guys, there's speechless.
Well, there's parts of that we can't touch for reasons John already articulated or reticulator or something I don't know.
And for financial Oh yeah, I saw a thing that there's a doctor. I think it's in Washington State. Who is doing I can't even say this word out loud. Five vagino plasties. Sorry, this is a family show, I know, but I don't know what else to call it. A week on on state prisoners in the state prison system being paid to do you know, one hundreds of thousands of dollars per surgery to do those gender transition surgeries on prisoners.
Yeah, and and in ten years from now they'll be suing for an Eighth Amendment violation, right.
And I'll laugh about it.
All right, we're getting close to the end. Guys, what's your last word on the subject today.
I've said all my last words.
I'm happy, you're happy you managed on a historical analogy.
I did, and uh and you didn't. And you know, you didn't chastise me too much, so.
I felt bad about forgetting to remind you to say it, so I didn't chestize. Okay, John, what do you think is going to happen with tariffs?
Is the economy going to crash?
I actually thought this might be a blessing in disguise for Trump because we saw today I think the Trump I'm sorry, the Tart decision wiped off the front page that economic growth was really weak last year. Yeah, you know, shockingly weak, and it says, well, it's like what like, wow, well it well, now this would take a while.
It was the New York fad, I think, and I'm just I'm not going to go through the arguments. I'm surprised no one has ever done a study on the different fads. So you know, there was the Dallas FED in the nineties under Richard Fitcher, Richard Fisher, who did these killer studies that had to drive the Twin administration out of their mind. The Saint Louis FED today does these great analysis and data analysis. The Atlanta fad has
been very bullish. They were predicting like four percent growth for last year and that looks like it is now wrong. And then the New York Fed, well, look that's where it's ron pal came from. The New York Fed. Okay, there's some politics there, and nobody wants to study this and say why this is happening. I in general, I think, in general, I think tariffs are a bad idea.
Yeah, okay, I looked it up. The growth last year last quarter was one point four percent. It's not what we want.
That's right. And you know the Atlanta Fed was saying, oh, it's going to come in at four or something because the previous quarter had been previous quarters.
Are around four percent. Yeah. Right, Well, look, if you if you favor Trump, you want the Republicans to do better in the midterms. You don't want there to be terriffs, right, yeah, you think about the tar ending the tariffs is like a huge fiscal stimulus because you're taking away attacks. It might be right, people, So I think it's like a from the economic perspective, not politics, not legal, but it's
a blessing in disguise for Trump. The similar thing for him to do would be not to replace the tariffs or take his time doing it and let the economy economy really grow as a result.
That's a longer subject for some other day. That Lucretian will not way too late for tonight.
Yeah.
Sorry, And when it comes to you guys in your supposed how much growth we had those immediate kind of things, back to my darts on the wall.
No, look, the American people, I do think that the left has put their finger on something, this affordability idea, which is just a different way saying inflation is still not low enough. If you take away Terraf's help lower the cost of things, that will is by definition, will reduce the inflation rate. That's good for Trump.
The affordability thing is more a matter of young people not being able to buy.
And that's not the problem of tariffs. That's a multifaceted problem.
That's mostly uh, you know, a local state issue, regulation issue, and so on.
But anyway, you're right, too late, too late, Steve has an ai for us.
I could do it now.
No, No, so I wanted to get sorry because we're getting close.
To Yeah, you're not gonna do the Babylon Bees.
I'm gonna do the babbon be because there are so many good ones. No, absolutely not. I stopped with enough time. California truck driver cited for being legal US resident.
It took you a second.
Yeah, yeah, Gavin, I'll make it click. Gavin Newsom's presidential ambition sunk after nation discover he's the one running California.
Yeah that's true.
Okay, this is very near.
John furious Trump imposes one one thousand percent terriff on Supreme Court.
He would if he could, if he could, this.
One you won't get because you didn't know what it meant last time when they made fun of him.
But I'll say it anyway.
Canadian you guys heard about you know, the Canadians have gone crazy with this whole euthanasia thing. Right, Canadian government praised for euthanizing Nickelback. Yes, right, And another one for you, John, I know you wouldn't. You had to be explained that Nickelback anyway. Desperate John Bolton throws stink bomb into Trump's Board of Peace meeting.
Yeah, I know.
Okay, all right, I should have.
I'm almost embarrassed to make this one because it's such a serious thing. But leave it to the b Prince Andrew joins UK Muslim rate gang so you can keep abusing young girl.
Yeah, all that is, I mean, yeah, a double scandal there, that's right.
Yeah, yes, And you know we didn't we didn't talk about the whole Culbert thing and not not inviting on old Jasmine Croft. So if he could answer questions, I'm not that interested in it, except that all I want to point out is that imagine if Greg Guttfield had had refused to bring on somebody because he didn't want to bring on Jasmine Crocket. That's all I'll say. But actually Greg could get away with it because he's just so great. New Yorkers with a picture of Mindami Mendomiami Swami.
New Yorker's report Warmth of Collectivism feels strangely like a crushing tech tax hike.
Yeah, well that's served some right. They voted for him.
It's amazing how fast that's happened.
Yeah, oh my gosh, it does. It does.
But AOC, this is my last one. AOC condemned Spain for stealing Mexico's language.
That's good. I like that one. That's a goodness. John, Okay, always drink your whiskey, meat, buy more books, and Steve, what is the latest message from your AI overlords?
Okay, so this is interesting. I asked chat GPT to produce a parody of Alexandria Acasio Cortez as a starfleet officer, and then Froze I said it said there's a problem, and it couldn't do it. I thought that's interesting, so I asked Gora, Gora, no groch, Grock. Sorry, Gora's a listener. Sorry, Cora, I'm gonna blame the whiskey. I asked Groc and Groc came through. It was a long thing. I'll just give
you one paragraph. It's got a Vulcan and Captain Jean Luke Icard by hologram, and then I'll just give you one part of it. AOC bursting in without knocking gold uniform slightly askew, holding a pad like it's a protest sign. Captain, with all due respect to the Vulcan lady who's been measuring carbon parts per million since the twenty third century.
We cannot just observe another planet cook itself. Well, the Federation keeps subsidizing di lithium refineries that are literally owned by the same three Orion crime families who bankrolled the last Romulin Senate election. I think that's actually too intelligent. Good, well it is, except it's too intelligent for her right has to be stupider than that. But okay, that's okay.
So we did this. This came out after we after Valentine's Day last year. We recorded on Valentine's Day and we had to end early because Steve had a hot date. He actually takes his wife out on Valentine's Day.
Imagine that.
But von b provided I know exactly eh, a few Valentine's Day cards that you could print out and send to people, full by famous people, and I just a couple of them to end this this love fest that we had here today.
Uh.
It's a picture of Kamala Harris saying Valentine's Day is a big day. It is bigger than smaller days. Valentine starts with the V.
And then we have.
Tom Honan and this is for you, Gora, you have crossed the border of my heart. Wait, wait, two more. It's a picture of Elon Muss, Hey, girl, want to help me reverse the Earth's imminent population collapse?
And then finally this is for you too. Uh.
It's a picture of Mitch mcconnall going and this says nothing.
Yeah, I've seen that one right. This is why we're gonna win, by the way, because we're funnier than they are.
And we are definitely funnier.
But I do have to make fun of the disinterreed Mitch McConnell to prove that.
I am not like a democrat.
I have standards and I stick to them, and I'm gonna make fun of Mitch McConnell for being brain dead the same way I did Joe Biden, and it's egregious and problematic in both cases. And on that happy note, have a wonderful week everyone.
You know we're still in shutdown. You don't have to go to the airport.
Well, okay, right bye everybody.
Actually, Sean Monaghan Millennial misused the five shift.
Neologismology to refer to general trend shop when it describes a much more contemporary phenomenon of radical pivots and culture are self organized.
Almost instantly and with a single without a single specific catalyst, by small groups of intimately engaged posters, a phenomena only possible in the at work era. I'm sorry, I ride a branch like.
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