Republicans are so worried about the political motivations of judges that they are attempting to disempower them with their bill. And so to hear the Team Republican Federalist Society lawyers say that the statute should be interpreted by politically independent judges Like, aren't these the same people right now saying loudly and often and in legislation that politically independent judges don't really exist?
Because to believe that judges are politically biased and politically independent, that's holding two conflicting theories on judges at the same time. It seems to me that they're ideologically flip-flopping whichever way is convenient for whatever goal they're trying to accomplish. Hello my friend and thank you for listening to the 315th episode of Congressional Dish. I'm your host Jennifer Briney.
And today's episode is one of those episodes that will probably get low download numbers and even lower money because this episode is going to give process wonk vibes. It's not that exciting. But it's actually one of the most important episodes that you'll listen to because last year, some Supreme Court decisions fundamentally changed the balance of power in our federal government.
And it's going to change how I analyze every bill and every law that I read for you on this podcast from here on forward. And that's due to the fact that because of the Supreme Court decisions, Congress is going to have to change the way that they write bills and laws, at least if they want those bills and laws to be effective.
And so today, via expert testimony provided to Congress, you are going to learn what the Supreme Court decisions were, the consequences of those decisions, what Congress needs to do if Congress is doing it, and if there are options for changing this new reality if we want to. But first...
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Today, I'd like to ask you for just one simple favor, which is please get one friend to listen to an episode of this show. Because we've long had a problem with Congressional Dish, which is that because of the topic, Congress, It sounds like this podcast would be boring. And it also sounds like this podcast would be about politics. Everyone assumes that congressional dish is about politics. You know, like the red team versus the blue team, and here's where they all stand in the polls.
But you listen to this show, you know better. You know that I avoid that kind of coverage like the plague. Because Congressional Dish is about government. It's about what Congress is doing. It's about what's in the new laws and how they affect your life. It's about what investigations are happening in Congress. And we have learned so much about our role in the world and about what's going on in the world and in our own country from all of this expert testimony.
We've also learned information that has saved us many thousands of dollars. From the information about how to combat surprise medical bills, to all of that money in the Inflation Reduction Act that was set aside for people like us to upgrade our homes and cars, which no one told you about. But this podcast, it's just so different from all the others. And I don't know what to do about those misconceptions.
Because I get it. Because every podcast that I check out, including even my own, my other podcast, We're Not Wrong, all of them are more about politics than government. And most of them are conversation. and almost none of them are fact-checked, and none that I know of provide every single source using the creation of the episode. This podcast is just different, and I can't explain those differences to everyone one by one.
But we can explain it to lots of people if we do it together. And so here's what I'm asking today. Please pick someone in your life who you think would be a good fit for our community. This is probably someone who is probably disgusted by both parties and someone who likes to know what is going on in our government beyond the campaign. I'm sure you have someone in your mind right now. And so get that person to press play on an episode of Congressional Dish.
And to be clear, that is a step beyond just saying like, oh, you should listen to Congressional Dish. No, this assignment is to get them to press play. And so here's some examples of ways that I've done it. You can turn on an episode when that person is trapped with you in a car. You can grab their phone when you're talking about congressional ditch.
Find Congressional Dish for them in their favorite podcast app and press follow so that it shows up in the episodes that they want to listen to. Or even better, download the episode that you think will hook them onto their phone. So the next time they get on a plane and they don't know what to do with themselves, they'll go to their downloads file and be like, oh, I remember this. And they might press play.
If you aren't with that person in person, you can also send them an email with a link to the episode you're thinking of and explain in a paragraph or so why that episode is must listen specifically for them. Or get creative. I'm sure you know this person better than I do.
But the reason to do this is because as a member of the congressional dish community, you know that Congress is a show. And that's because so few of us know what's going on in there. And that's the heart of the issue at this point. Our media does opinion and politics. We do fact checks on government. And I think more people need this information.
And this seems like a job best accomplished together because I have a very small social media following because I spend my time researching and creating congressional dish episodes. And I am 100% positive that that's how the paying part of this community wants it. They have been crystal clear about that. And so, how about you be the marketing wing of our community if you aren't ready to pay yet? Let's grow this show together, one person at a time.
And I think this episode is a good place to ask you to do that because I truly believe that hardly anyone in this country understands the fundamental shift in lawmaking that has occurred. And so to get us started, let's get some background on the main Supreme Court case that is changing how Congress writes laws and how they'll be enforced.
The main culprit is a case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. In this case, the owners of a fishing company in New Jersey sued a federal agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is a part of the Department of Commerce. the fishing company challenged the enforcement of the magnuson magnuson stevens act Whatever. But that law put in place catch limits to prevent overfishing.
But to enforce that law, the Commerce Department required that fishing boats have a government-appointed inspector on board the boat, but they required that the fishing companies pay for that inspector, which costs about $700 per day. And so the fishing company suit.
And the lower courts ruled repeatedly in favor of the government because even though that cost was not in the law itself, Since 1984, in the aftermath of another case called Chevron v. NRDC, it has been standard practice that when a law is unclear about something, the law enforcement agency gets to decide.
And using this principle established in the Chevron case, that would mean that the agency would get to decide who pays for the $700 per day inspector since the law written by Congress was unclear. But the Loper-Bright case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and in June of last year, in 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that courts must use their judgment in interpreting laws, instead of deferring to the law enforcement agency's decision.
This overturned the precedent that has been used since 1984 by Congress when writing laws, used by law enforcement when writing regulations, and used by courts when deciding cases where laws are unclear. That precedent is nicknamed Chevron Deverant. And what the end of Chevron deference means big picture was the topic of a hearing titled Congress in a Post-Chevron World, which was held in the Committee on House Administration in the month following the ruling on July 23, 2024.
And asked to testify in that hearing was Dr. Josh Chaffetz, who is a professor of law and politics at Georgetown University. And so here's Dr. Chaffetz explaining how Chevron deference used to work so that we can compare it to our new reality. Chevron was a two-step test and step one was if Congress has clearly expressed itself, that's the end of the story. If Congress has clearly expressed itself, the agency has to do what Congress says.
Only if the statute is silent or ambiguous under Chevron would there be any deference given by the court. And then beyond that, the Administrative Procedure Act creates a whole host of procedures that the agencies have to go through in order to regulate. And if the courts didn't think that the agencies went through the correct procedures, they could also
vacate regulations. So it's not that there was unconstrained regulatory authority in the agencies. They had procedural requirements. And of course, if Congress spoke to the issue, they had to do what Congress said. It's only if they went through the correct procedures Congress had been silent or ambiguous that they got any deference under Chevron. And so that's been the process for federal agency regulation writing for pretty much my entire life.
And so now let's listen to an expert explain what has changed. The next person we're going to hear from is Jonathan Gaffney, who is a high-ranking lawyer at the Congressional Research Service and part-time professor at Georgetown University Law School. This testimony was given in a more recent hearing in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs on December 18, 2024. But here he is with a bit more information about Chevron deference and the Supreme Court case that blew it up.
And in his testimony, he's going to mention the CABC. And the truth is that I can't figure out for sure what he's referring to. But my best guess is that he's referring to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. but i could be wrong about that the thing is doesn't really matter though because he's just using it as an example and so here's professor jonathan
Chevron involved a two-step test requiring courts to ask first if a statute was ambiguous, and second if the agency's rule interpreting that statute was reasonable. If the answer to both questions was yes, the court was to defer to the regulatory interpretation of the statute. In the 40 years since Chevron was decided, it became the most cited Supreme Court administrative law decision, and the CABC alone has cited Chevron in 170 of its presidential decision.
Earlier this year, on June 28th, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Loper. Reversing Chevron is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act or APA. In particular, the court held that the APA's charge that courts decide all relevant questions of law when reviewing an agency action conflicts with chaffron deference to agency interpretation.
As a result, courts will no longer defer to an agency's interpretation of an ambiguous statute, and instead must decide the single best meaning of that statute. The Supreme Court did not, however, overrule individual cases applying Chevron, and those cases continue to be binding law.
Although courts will no longer defer to agencies' regulatory interpretations of ambiguous statutes, courts may, under a separate doctrine called Skidmore, consider the agency's expertise as one of several factors when trying to decide what the best meaning of a statute is.
The Supreme Court also emphasized that sometimes the best meaning of a statute may be that Congress intended to give an agency discretion in how to carry out the statute, such as explicit authority to define terms or to fill up the details of a statutory scheme. Loper does not direct Congress or agencies to change how they legislate or regulate. It only speaks to how courts should review statutes and the regulations interpreting those laws.
But while the Loper Bright ruling doesn't order Congress to change how it legislates, or order agencies to change how they regulate, Its result is highly likely to be that Congress will change how it legislates and agencies will change how they regulate, at least if they want their actions to be held up in court.
Because this is the effect of Loper Bright. The following testimony is from the December 18th, 2024 hearing in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs by Chad Squattery, who is an assistant professor of law at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University.
More importantly, in my opinion though, he's a member of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society is a group of approximately 60,000 activist lawyers who openly want to change the United States legal system to make it more conservative. These people are not independent. They have long been influential members of the Republican Party, nor are they neutral. They have an agenda. And so knowing that, here's the Federalist Society's Chad Squattery.
As to the courts, Loper Bright frees judges to give legal effect to a statute's best reading. Prior to Loper Bright, courts were often required to adopt a less than best reading of a statute simply because that less than best reading was offered by an administrative agency. This required courts to place a thumb on the scale in favor of one class of litigants, federal agencies, and thus disfavor other types of litigants such as veterans who might argue that a federal agency acted unlawfully.
Federal judges, however, should not give undue preference to any litigant that comes before them, including federal agents And so, what we have here is a shifting of power. And everyone seemed to agree that that power shift has occurred. So here's Georgetown University Law Professor Dr. Josh Chaffetz.
First of all, Congress has created these agencies. Congress has passed their organic statutes. Congress has delegated authority to these agencies. And since 1984, Congress has done so in the shadow of Chevron deference. And this isn't just a hypothetical. We have really solid research showing that Chevron deference is the tool most understood by congressional drafters.
by staff in Ledge Council and by staff sort of elsewhere on the Hill. They understood they were drafting these statutes in light of Chevron deference. And they understood that if they didn't want the agencies to have interpretive freedom, that they should draft with more specificity. And so they did. So what that means is that by taking this away, essentially the courts are saying This thing that Congress thought it was delegating to agencies, which is this interpretive freedom,
In fact, the agencies don't get to have that. And what replaces that is not power flowing back to this institution. What replaces that is the courts giving their own sort of de novo interpretations of the statutory regime. So it's not passing from unaccountable bureaucrats to the accountable Congress. It's passing from somewhat accountable bureaucrats to even less accountable federal judges.
Eliminating a doctrine in whose shadow Congress has drafted for decades and replacing it with something significantly less certain in its operation is not congressional empowerment. It's judicial empowerment. And on the other side of the ideological spectrum, here's the Federalist Society's Chad Scuiteri.
No longer should legislators simply hope that a broadly worded statute will be routinely interpreted by a politically friendly agency. That is because, after Loper Bright, statutes should be interpreted by politically independent judges. Politically independent judges. And that just makes me curious, hearing that from a federalist society dude. Because don't Republicans constantly bitch lately about how not politically independent they think judges are?
Like, didn't we just spend four years and counting listening to constant whining about how Donald Trump, poor Donald Trump, has been treated very badly by activist judges? I mean, just this month, the House Republicans passed the No Rogue Rulings Act.
which won't pass the Senate, so don't worry too much about this, but the bill aims to prevent U.S. district court judges from having the power to be able to put a nationwide injunction, otherwise known as a stop, on a president's possibly illegal behavior while the courts do their work. Republicans are so worried about the political motivations of judges that they are attempting to disempower them with their bill.
And so to hear the team Republican Federalist Society lawyers say that the statute should be interpreted by politically independent judges Like, aren't these the same people right now saying loudly and often and in legislation that politically independent judges don't really exist? Because to believe that judges are politically biased and politically independent, that's holding two conflicting theories on judges at the same time.
It seems to me that they're ideologically flip-flopping whichever way is convenient for whatever goal they're trying to accomplish. Now personally, I think that judges are human beings. And I know that all human beings have their biases. And so I do think that they're politically motivated, some more aggressively and openly than others. But I do think it's worth accounting for political motivations in governing systems.
And so, by extension, I think that means that statues should be interpreted by politically independent judges, that idea? I think it's impossible. And therefore, it probably shouldn't be the goal. Especially when I think about the fact that, like, the Federalist Society exists. Their entire goal is to get politically motivated judges into the highest positions of power. And they're doing it.
On the Supreme Court right now, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts all have ties to the Federalist Society. and federalist society guys like Squattery, that means they know that judges aren't independent. They count on it.
and the Federalist Society-connected judges on the Supreme Court are doing what they were put there to do, in this case, to make it harder for the government to regulate, to make it easier to legally challenge regulation. And, in addition to Loper Bright, another Supreme Court decision, a Supreme Court packed with Federalist Society people,
is helping the anti-government ideologues with their mission. Here's Georgetown professor Dr. Josh Chaffetz speaking with Representative Terry Sowell of Alabama. I'll also add that there's another case that came down three days after Loper Bright, which is the corner post decision. And up until, so the federal law says that there is a six-year statute of limitations for challenging agency actions.
It had always been thought that it was six years from the time the agency action was finalized. And not when the person was injured. And in Corner Post, it says it's six years from the time that that regulation was applied to that regulated entity.
which means that every regulation can now be challenged indefinitely. There's no point at which a regulation has exhausted them. So what does that mean, coupled with the Chevron deference case? It means that that corner post means that there are going to be just a flood of cases that would not have previously been filed.
And coupled with Chevron, coupled with Loper Bright, and Loper Bright, the majority, claims that, well, you know, cases that relied on Chevron are still good law. We're not going to reopen those. those are now available to be challenged again. And if the judges think that there's some error that goes beyond mere reliance on Chevron, then even consistent with Loper Bright, those longstanding agency interpretations would be open for reevaluation.
And so not only are government agencies less empowered to make decisions when Congress makes vague laws, which by the way, this congressional dish community knows that Congress does all the time, Like, I remember when my eyes were first opened to this all the way back when the Affordable Care Act became law. Because that law left so many decisions up to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
At the time, Kathleen Sebelius had that job, and I just remember thinking that, like, this woman is now one of the most powerful people on earth. And this isn't exactly a good thing because that agency flexibility allowed the next administration, which was the Trump administration, to come in and change the rules to make them more friendly to insurance companies and other healthcare profiteer.
And then the Biden administration can change the rules again to make them less friendly. And now Trump is back and just goes back and forth and back and forth. So now big businesses are going to find that their challenges to agency decisions will be easier. And so my fear with this is that big businesses are going to be challenging regulations that prevent excessive profit at the expense of our community.
I'm afraid that they'll be able to legally successfully challenge pollution regulations and food safety regulations and drug safety regulations and workplace safety regulations and banking system safety regulations. they are now more likely to be successful if they can get their case in front of an ideologically friendly judge. And because of people like the Federalist Society, they are making sure that there are ideologically friendly judges all over this country.
And not only are government agencies less empowered to make decisions, but the decisions that are already made are now also going to be challenged in court, perhaps a lot of them, and there's really no end date to that. And so I see this as a recipe for chaos. But I don't think this particular administration is going to mind the chaos. But that said, like I said,
Chevron deference has led to some scenarios that are not great for us. Like when Congress is so vague that major rules can be and are changed drastically from administration to administration.
And so while we are in the beginning of a four-year term of an administration that we know exists to enrich corporations and the already wealthy, and which is brazenly cutting parts of our government and trying to cut government benefit, Well, here's a scenario in this new legislative world that I can easily see working to the benefit of some normies like you and me and other people that I love.
So this is John Vecchione, I think is how he pronounced his name, but he's a senior litigation counsel for the new Civil Liberties Alliance, and his job is to help people sue executive branch agency. When somebody is denied a benefit, like the prosthetic case we heard about, they have standing because they're immediately injured. It's why the benefits case get up to the Supreme Court quite often.
and the language about that I was asked by the chairman about the interpretation of a language once you're denied something those people have standing because they're immediately injured. and mr. Gaffney's written testimony explained where the veterans claims go and how they're done and it's almost always they were denied something and Chevron when there was an ambiguity The government always wants.
the part of this was and when we see and I want to address some of the questions about that what's happened what's happened is is that immigrants and veterans on the remands are more likely to win than they were before because once the an ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous statute was interpreted in a regulation by the agencies, they want And so there's our silver lining here.
Legal challenges to government regulations just got easier. And that does make it easier for us to challenge decisions that hurt us. including decisions that arise from, say, corporate capture and Trump's law enforcement agencies. or cuts made by weirdo unelected billionaires in imaginary departments who pretend to have the authority to cut things that they have no legal right to cut whatsoever.
If you can prove harm by a federal regulation or action, you can sue, and the deck is less stacked against you now in court. And so I don't really mind personally having a clear legal path challenging those cuts because I contribute a shitload of my money to this government and I want everything I'm owned in return for my investment.
but I also know that many regulations Consumer product regulations, pollution prevention regulations, banking regulations, so many regulations protect me from suffering the consequences of allowing corporations, which are bigger than many countries at this point, from using their power to pursue profit in ways that rip me off and poison me and my community.
And this new reality is going to make the job of protecting me in that way harder when we have an administration that actually wants to do it. I don't think that's our reality right now. But Trump will not be president forever. And when we have someone who wants to protect us, it's just going to be a lot harder now. And I think that's kind of the point.
Here's Georgetown University law professor Dr. Josh Chaffetz, who in the second and third clips will be responding to questions posed by Representative Joe Morrell of New York and Representative Terry Sowell of Alabama.
Agencies seeing this posture by the courts are likely to respond by preemptively trimming their sails, issuing only those regulations that they think are likely to meet with judicial approval and refraining from altering old interpretations even as new information and new technologies become available.
the flexibility that's a hallmark of the administrative state, the flexibility that Congress has designed into the administrative state, will be substantially undermined, all under the flag of supposedly empowering Congress. How might the decision affect the ability of agencies to respond quickly to advances in technology like artificial intelligence or other challenges?
I'd like to begin by noting that agencies can do almost nothing with relative ease, or I suppose you'd have to emphasize relative a great deal. Most agency rulemaking takes years. And so the idea that this is something that agencies just sort of pop off and create regulations all the time I think is somewhat misleading. There's a lot of time and effort and conversations that go into producing rulemaking in the first place.
But, you know, one of the things that Low Probrite does is says that if agencies want to get any deference at all, even the lesser so-called Skidmore deference, which is basically just sort of respect for the agency's expertise if they want to take advantage even of that their interpretation has to remain consistent over time.
And this is a problem because facts on the ground change over time. And so when I look back, for example, Representative Loudermilk was referring to Justice Scalia earlier. Justice Scalia was a huge fan of the Chevron decision. When I look back to his major essay praising the Chevron decision, one of the things he praises is its ability to be responsive to changes over time such that agencies don't get locked into their first interpretation.
The Supreme Court has now done a 180 on that and said essentially if you want even minimal respect for your interpretation, you have to be locked into the first decision you make. AI is a great example. The agencies are just coming to terms with AI now. Who knows what the state of AI will be in five or 10 years? It seems crazy to lock them into their initial interpretations at this point. How do you think this will hurt potential policy making?
Well, it'll make policymaking less robust, less responsive, less likely to address the problems that Congress and the American people want to address. and less responsive in adapting to changes in scientific knowledge or in technology in order to adjust pre-existing regulations.
And so what Congress has to do, and what I'll be looking for from here on forward, is that they have to be more specific about what they want in their bills and laws. They can't be as vague anymore. They can't leave so much up to the executive branch agencies to decide. If Congress wants the will of the people to be enforced, they need to be crystal clear about what their intentions are. And so how do they do that?
Well, here's Representative Amata Coleman-Ratawagon, and I don't know if that's how you pronounce her name, but we're going with it. But she's a delegate from American Samoa. And she is asking that question in the Veterans Affairs Committee hearing. But her question and answer can be applied broadly to basically all regulations. And so here she is asking Jonathan Gaffney of the Congressional Research Service.
Mr. Gaffney, how can Congress influence future VA regulatory policies and guidance to ensure that the laws are being carried out as Congress intended? There are a number of ways that Congress could do so. The first is through the regular legislative process by passing legislation that more specifically directs VA and what Congress wants VA to do.
Congress can use its appropriations power to shape agency action. And Congress can come back after a VA regulation or after a court decision interpreting a statute and amend the statute to make clear if the agency or the courts in Congress's mind got the interpretation right. And another witness in the other hearing earlier in the year about the end of the Chevron deference.
He also talked about how bills are crafted. And long-time Congressional Dish community members will know exactly what this guy is preaching. So here's Dr. Kevin Kosar, who used to work at the Congressional Research Service and who now works for the American Enterprise Institute. Yeah, the drafting process. Well, I think the drafting process in many instances has been bedeviled because there's not a regular order being followed.
Bills are being slapped together with a lot of other bills. You guys are being called to the floor and told it's time to vote on the rule and please line up by party and don't scuttle things.
reorienting getting back to a more regular process where committees are in the seat and when committees report out a bill those things get preference on the calendar would allow a process by which you could be more deliberative and you could draw more the expertise that's already available to you and get it in there.
And, in an idea that I hadn't ever considered, John Vecchione of the new Civil Liberties Alliance gave this suggestion for how members of Congress can make their intentions clear even after a bill becomes law. One of the things that has always struck me as odd is that Congressional agencies rarely comment on regulations when they're proposed.
or definitions when they're proposed we comment all the time and then the agency has to respond in writing about why it's doing what it's doing so you've got the power of the purse but I also think that if if you see a regulation coming along notice a comment regulation I don't know why more congressmen don't sorry and so those are good suggestions but all of them require more work to be done and so here's georgetown university law professor dr josh chafix
If the court is going to insist that Congress make policy at ever more granular levels, then Congress will need to build an institutional infrastructure mirroring that which currently exists at the agency. This means large increases in the number of staffers and diversifying the experience of staffers, including hiring many with graduate degrees in the social and physical sciences and many more with security clearances.
It means paying those staffers well enough to retain them and giving them access to resources like sophisticated information technology, databases, and perhaps even in some cases, laboratories. But staffing has been headed in the wrong direction in Congress. Here's Satya Talaman. He is the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Americans for Responsible Innovation.
In the 40 years since the decision, the total number of congressional staff has actually decreased, has actually gone down by a few percent. In the last 30 years, the number of committee staff has gone down by 40 percent. Does anyone on the committee believe Congress's work has become less complicated, confusing, and therefore easier since then? Members of Congress may be wary of the self-aggrandizing appearance of accumulating more staff.
but human capital and expertise are embodied in people. And this kind of a decrease in intellectual capacity has only one result in terms of productivity and effectiveness. And we've been documenting the tragic results on this podcast for the last 12 years. And Georgetown Law Professor Dr. Josh Chaffetz didn't sound optimistic for the future.
And even a massive increase in congressional capacity could never fully substitute for administrative expertise. There's a reason that no modern democratic system that I'm aware of has its legislature making policy at the level of granularity at which agencies regulate. Moreover, many government's decisions in the executive branch are specific to circumstances that arise after implementation has already begun. Asking Congress to resolve those issues ex ante is unlikely to succeed.
Not that there are any signs whatsoever of this Congress prioritizing a more deliberative process that draws on anyone's expertise. First of all, this Congress hasn't done much of anything. But what it has accomplished has been a procedural failure, as we just saw them fund the government for 2025 six months late and via a continuing resolution, which extends 2024 funding to cover all of 2025.
Basically they didn't just kick their deadline, they decided to just not finish their homework at all this year. And in that failure bill, I looked at the funding for the legislative branch, and while there was a small increase in the amount that they appropriated for Senate employees, they actually cut the amount available for House of Representatives employees. And so the increase in staffing recommended by these experts clearly isn't happening right now.
Despite the Supreme Court rulings that essentially require Congress to do a lot more work when writing bills and laws. Despite that, they are operating with the same dysfunction that I've been documenting for over a decade. And so if Congress isn't interested in doing more work, that leaves one more option to ensure that their will would be done by the executive branch and that judges wouldn't be able to stand in the way. Here's Georgetown Law Professor Dr. Josh Chafer.
So what can Congress do to respond to this judicial power grab? Well, first, in the realm of bill drafting, Congress can write deference into individual bills empowering agencies, or it could even draft a standalone bill reinstituting Chevron deference. Because Loper Bright claims to be an interpretation of the Administrative Procedure Act, not a constitutional holding, it can be reversed by statute.
And I think that might be the best way forward. But that too is nowhere on the horizon that I can see. And so going forward, I'm going to be paying much closer attention to the vagueness in bills that become law. And I intend to look for loopholes where legal challenges are likely to happen because Congress, as it so often does, leaves details up to the executive branch.
which might even be by design because i've also seen many bills that are crafted or seem to be crafted with the intention of them being unlikely to be enforced and so that's something to watch out for too Vagueness in bills from now on could be a deliberate strategy of Congress looking like it's doing something that it doesn't really want to do while knowing damn well that the court probably won't let their action stand.
Legislative theater is what I call that. We actually see it in messaging bills a lot, so I'll be on the lookout for that in laws as well. But this is going to be a theme on Congressional Dish from now on, and now you're going to know why. So if you are new to this program, I suggest checking out the most valuable episodes of Congressional Dish, which you can find on congressionaldish.com on our most valuable episodes tab.
And what I really love about the most valuable episodes is that those are not determined by me. Those are determined by the producers of the show, the people who pay for the show. Specifically, what you have to do to have your impact on the most valuable episodes list is you become an executive producer. Every executive producer credit costs $535.
And that allows you to put your credit on an episode, which not only lends that episode your personal vouch, but also moves it up the most valuable episodes list. And one of our executive producers who has been so generous to this show for so long is Mike Coverdale. And so he cashed in. four of his executive producer credits and so he caused a major shakeup in our most valuable episodes list and as usual I absolutely love the episodes that Mike picked.
So here are the four that he picked. One along with his messages. He has messages about all of them. So he put another executive producer credit on Democratic Deception. That's the 313th episode. It was about that government funding.
failure that just happened back in March. And that episode is far more popular than I thought it would be. And with this executive producer credit, it is now going to be the number seven most valuable episode of congressional dish so thank you for doing that and what mike said about that episode is he said first let me start by thanking you for episode 313
I have a lot of problems with Democratic leadership and have for a long time, and the Senate Democrats that crossed the line to allow the continuing resolution vote to go through really pissed me off until I listened to 313. It hadn't occurred to me at all what the current regime could do in a shutdown government. Duh. Thanks. And the thought that after 30 days down, it opens Pandora's box even wider is frightening.
I totally agree. And thank you for moving that episode up the list because I would like as many people as possible to hear that before we deal with this all over again in September. Another episode that Mike picked is episode 129, The Impeachment of John Koskinen. I shouldn't have named it that because it's a much bigger deal than that name implies. It's something that is still relevant to this day. Here is what Mike said about it. He said,
All of the issues we face have at the root money in politics. And the fact that there is a one-word change in IRS interpretation of enforcing C4s that could shut down a lot of the dark money, but no one will act on it, is maddening. I have tried to contact members who claim to hate dark money and no one will look into it. The fact that every budget has language buried in it that prohibits the IRS from investigating 501c4s is enough in my mind to blow the lid off of it.
I have attempted to get John Oliver or Jon Stewart to rise to the occasion, but so far crickets. Trump plans to cut IRS staffing in half, so fat chance getting it dealt with anytime soon.
Mike, I agree with that assessment, but I also think that you putting an executive producer credit on that episode and highlighting it again today is really, really smart. That is still a problem that we have That's an old episode and one of the reasons that we produced it at the time is that there was an effort by the Republicans to shut any investigations into 501c4 social welfare organizations down. The 501c4 social welfare organizations.
are the ones that essentially allow donors to remain secret while politically contributing a whole lot of money. And so there were people at the IRS who were looking into that at the time. They were branded as politically targeting conservatives, which was crap. They were scared enough to where those investigations are no longer happening. And so the whole story around that is in the impeachment of John Koskinen episode because as a result of that, they were trying to impeach the IRS.
director is he a commissioner i don't know but the head of the irs they tried to impeach the guy for doing his job so Good reminder that that happened and that problem still remains. And with that executive producer credit, that is going to now have two executive producers on it, which should move it up to at least the second page on the most valuable episodes list.
Mike also put the first executive producer credit on Keeping Ukraine. I'm actually surprised that this is the first, which he said too. Here's Mike's message. He said, I can't believe there isn't an executive credit on this one.
The US drove Ukraine into this war and prevented them from settling it early, and our country has spent billions, another great year for the military-industrial complex, and you laid it out so thoroughly. Most Americans still think hostility started when Russia took Crimea. Now with the unfiltered Trump flat out stating, we want your resources, he has made clear what past administrations kept in the back rooms while they talked about democracy and freedom for Ukraine. Absolutely.
I think that that is a really important episode, also incredibly relevant for what's going on today. Thank you for putting its first executive producer credit on it. Unfortunately, we have a ton of episodes that only have one executive producer credit. and so it's still going to be buried pretty far back there but by putting your credit on it right now we're talking about it right now and so hopefully more people will listen to keeping ukraine
And then in the same realm, Mike also put an executive producer credit on target Belarus. And he said about that, I personally think that the actions the U.S. took in Belarus, which you lay out so clearly, was the impetus of Russia going all in and attacking. Putin saw that the US was using the same playbook in Belarus that it used in Ukraine leading up to the coup and decided he needed to get ahead of that.
I struggle to disagree with that assessment. And so with your executive producer credit, that will now have two credits on it and that should move it up to the second, maybe third page. But yeah, great episodes to pick. I think all four of those are essential. Mike, you are a mind reader so often. And thank you so much for supporting the show at that, at the level that you have. You're amazing and we love you. Okay.
quick production note here i am going to be a little tough to reach i'm taking a little bit of time off at the end of april in the beginning of may This is because as much as I love Austin, Texas, we are moving out of our apartment in Austin, Texas.
And we are going to go home to California for the summer, but we're basically hitting the road again. We're going to be living in hotels again and being digital nomads for a while. I'm pretty excited about it, even though I absolutely love Austin and I'm really going to miss it.
I'm talking to you in April. It's already almost 100 degrees. So I think this summer is going to be a scorcher. And as someone who plays sports outdoors, who has had skin cancer four times, This is just not a good place for me to be in the summer and so I'm leaving and so I'm taking a little bit of time to move or to at least pack up our stuff and get out to California and...
Yeah, so you now have these episodes. I still think we're going to have two episodes in May because when you drive from Texas to California, you have a ton of time with nothing to do. I've already asked my very patient, lovely husband if I can listen to hearings in the car. And he said, yes, that poor man.
But we have some really interesting hearings, which you know if you've heard last week in Congress, and so that's what I'll be working on. So I'm sure that by the time I get to California, I'm going to have all kinds of stuff that I want to talk about. And the people that will help me talk about them are my production and research assistant, Claire. I'm so happy she's back from maternity leave.
We also have Mike and the gang at Pro Podcast Solutions. Pro Podcast Solutions is the best decision I have ever made if you are in need of editing. I love them so much. I also love Mark who owns podcastbranding.co. He's the one who designed our website and keeps it from getting attacked by all the people who hate me.
My sister Lauren does our bookkeeping and is our executive producer services specialist, which is a name that I have completely made up. But if you want to be an executive producer, she is the one who is going to work out the accounting for you and put your name on the list.
I also need to thank my dad and my stepmom Robin because they are the ones who have been doing my taxes or did my taxes in April. It's the one way that my parents still haven't cut the cord on me. I still don't do my own taxes. And I hope I never have to. So thank you for doing that for me. And then, of course, I would like to thank our guardian angel, Brian, who is our artist. And every time I create a really AI art, I like to think of Brian laughing at me from above.
Okay, that's it for now. I'll talk to you in May. Take care. Stay sane. Talk to you soon. We don't have a domestic spine. jobs consume the profits of the private sector These bills represent common sense, bipartisan solutions that actually solve problems.