Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Donald Trump is mad at the reports that he did not win in a landslide after winning less than fifty percent of the popular vote. We have a show of shows for you today. To the contrary, author Charlie Sikes talks to us about staying sane in in Saturday. Then we'll talk to Democracy Forward Sky Perriman about fighting back against Trump's agenda using the courts.
But first the news.
So, Molly, one of the things we've been talking about that I think is most important about Trump's incoming regime is this mass deportation plan.
What are you seeing here?
I've been saying that we all need to keep our powder dry for when Donald Trump starts rounding people up. But our powder, I mean our outrage, you know, we have to save it for things that are really outrageous,
like mass deportation. But before even Donald Trump has taken office, it has become clear that this mass deportation plan is going to be very expensive, not just the price of separating people from their families and flying them to countries that won't necessarily take them, but it will have enormous effects on agriculture. So there's reporting that agricultural output will fall between thirty and sixty billion dollars if Trump's flagshift policy is carried out.
That's quite a lot.
And remember, farmers are already suffering because climate change has made it harder to predict what crops are going to look like, what this sort of farming landscape, if you'll excuse the use of the word landscape, will look like. And so now deportation of all of the farm we'll add another wrinkle to an already very unpredictable business. And you'll remember Donald Trump ran on making things more affordable. Getting rid of the people who farm the farms will
mean that everything will be more expensive. Farmers will have to pay more for labor, wildly inflationary, and restaurant owners are already and agricultural leaders are already calling foul on Donald Trump's plans, and he isn't even in office yet.
Even Walmart is I mean, it's ridiculous.
No, this is the whole thing is completely insane.
It's okay, we'll all be eating the dogs and the cats soon.
That's right, they're eating them.
So speaking of other things, that seems like mister Trump wasn't telling the whole truth about on the campaign trail. So begetting to look a lot like something you and I said as coming true, which is that this whole thing is gonna be staffed by Project twenty twenty five.
Yeah, you'll be shocked to know that everything Donald Trump said, maybe not everything, but certainly this when he said he knew nothing about Project twenty twenty five and that Project twenty twenty five is not him. Well it turns out, you guys, I know you're gonna be shocked, but Donald Trump was saying a lie. In fact, Project twenty twenty five is basically Trump's transition And in fact, now we
see what the campaign over. Trump's transition team is turning to Project twenty twenty five, even though they said they.
Weren't going to.
They're taking suggestions from for potential hires from their website, which was called Project twenty twenty five, a website.
To staff the next Trump administration.
How ironic that they actually are using the thing they said they would. It's a database, you know, it's been set up for a couple of years, so it has people have applied through it. Project's twenty twenty five massive book of conservative I was going to say conspiratorial, but it's sort of the same policy recommendations. It received the most attention from Democrats. It was a wishless and by the way, when people started googling it, they realized that
all of the things were pretty dystopian. Now we get to see Trump try to enact them, we'll see what happens. But again, it's really important to realize that in fact, this is all Donald Trump's plan. And Russ Vatt is likely going to return to the OMB director and he was acting director, and he was deputy director before. He comes directly from Heritage Action, which is a branch of the Heritage Foundation. He wrote a chapter of Project twenty
twenty five. His chapter covers the Executive Office of the Presidency.
And you'll remember that the whole idea with.
Project twenty twenty five is to expand the powers of the presidency to ncap the federal government and to make almost all aspects of the federal government arms of Trump's campaign. So you know, the DOJ will be his personal criminal prosecution arm. Every part of the federal government will be in the service of Donald Trump, and you'll be shocked to know that Russ Vott is in fact one of those parts.
So this is interesting. Oftentimes I think people would get really excited around election, sees that we can get rid of the Marjorie Taylor Greens, of the Matt Gates is at the ballot box, and that didn't happen. But it turns out we are actually getting rid of Matt Gates and Congress. What are you seeing here?
You'll remember that Matt Gates.
I can't stop laughing.
So last week Matt Gates resigned because the Congressional Ethics Committee.
Known to be highly toothless.
Okay, like the Congressional Ethics Committee has many times investigated people and found no need for anything here, they were about to release this report.
Clearly there was some stuff in there that really worried Matt Gates.
So he was designed and Trump made him his pick for Attorney general. Only in Trump world does such a series of events happen. But Mark Gates spent the week trying to avoid sort of the alleged story of him having sex with an underage girl. He resigned right before CNN ran another story about him allegedly having sex with another girl who was underage. So again their witnesses, there's just a ton you know, there's all of these VENMO payments.
I mean, where there's Venmo payments, there's usually fire.
Really twenty four thousand dollars to one girl, right.
I mean, so now there was a question because Gates resigned before the next Congress, which he'd already won a seat, and if he would stay in Congress in Florida's first district or not. But yesterday, which was Thursday, because today is Friday and tomorrow you will be listening to this podcast on Saturday.
Thank you.
I know how the days of the week work at. Gates told some news outlet, I'm going to be fighting for President Trump. I'm going to be doing whatever he asks of me as I always have. Oh, not even a news outlet. He told that to Charlie Kirk. But I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress. I think the rest of Congress agrees.
Hours after Gates ended his big Trump announced longtime loyalist and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondy as his new pick to head the Justice Department.
God help us all, Samali.
We have to discuss one last Trump phenomenee, wrestling magnate Linda McMahon. Turns out she's had some pretty bad things when it comes to being around children. What are you seeing here?
So Linda McMahon helped co run Trump's transition team with Howard Lutnik. Linda McMahon really wanted to be Commerce Secretary. She's a big dop donor. She lost out on Commerce Secretary to Howard Lutnan, who really wanted to be Treasury Secretary, but lost to add to someone that Wall Street thinks is sane. We still don't know who that is because
there's a lot of inviting about that one job. You can tell what jobs they think are important from how long it takes them to put together a nominee anyway. So McMahon now has been given the door prize in the Trump cabinet. She is the Secretary of Education if she gets through congressional approval. The hilarious part of this is that Donald Trump is planning, or at least thinks he can shutter the Department of Education. So here's the job that Trump is hoping won't exist. She has not
without her scandals. She's the former CEO of the WWE, which is a wrestling federation. She found herself in a lawsuit against her, her husband, the WWE, and TKO Group Holding, it's the league's parent company, knowingly allowed employee Marvin Phillips Junior to use his position as ringside announcer and essentially exploit children again, you mean like QAnon. Charlie Sykes is the author of the newsletter to the Contrary and the book How the Right Lost Its Mind Welcome Back Too Fast Politics.
My friend, Charlie Sikes, I.
Actually wanted to talk to you, even what's your podcast. I want to talk to you about your about your strategy to remain sane, because I do think that this needs everybody has to have this on their agenda. How are you going to get through the next four years? What's your plan right now? Other than not doing the same thing we've done over the last eight years, we got got to mix it up, right, Bunnie.
You should ask this because I actually wrote about this this week, and I think it's a pretty smart plan, if I do say so myself. My theory of the case is this, there is no knock novelty here, right. We know where this is going, and there are very few guardrails. Right, we have Democrats control no levers of the federal government, though the House is very very tight, and the Supreme Court has gone it is no longer the Roberts courts. It's the you know, it's basically it's
like the Alito Court. It's not quite the allital Court, but it's the Kavanaugh Court for sure. So my theory of the case is that this needs to be a kind of triage. The focus needs to be norms and institutions, things that really will be undoable, like things where Trump really just structurally damaged the United States in ways that cannot be undone, and that those norms and institutions have to be job one, and that everything cannot be outrageous, because then nothing is well.
I think this is the hard part is you know that we're about to go into this fire hose of outrage that you know, starting on January twenty I actually already started. Now it's going to be like twenty seventeen every single day, and it is gonna be hard not to set yourself on fire, particularly for the folks who
have to have opinions every single day. This is one of the things I was thinking about earlier this year when I said I was stepping off the daily hamster wheel of crazy, which is not to you turn your back on it, but if you basically keep your face right up against that fire hose, it's going to make you insane because every single day you will try to,
you know, fill space. You'll have the hot takes, and you have to react to whatever outrage, and some of those outre I mean, look, they're all outrages, but some of those outrages will matter, and some of them are ephemeral. So I think it's kind of separating out the big stuff from the little stuff and not being obsessed by it.
I don't want to digress too much, but I don't want to be chasing every single moment when Nancy Mace is demagoguing something or the latest stupid thing that Marjorie Taylor Green is, because at the end of every week, we'll think, how did I get so stupid? And it's because I spent all my time I'm talking about Nancy
Mace or Marjorie Taylor Green. Well, meanwhile, they're carting out all the furniture from the Department of Justice and they're dismantling the EPA I'd say, Okay, maybe we ought to focus on the big stuff.
And I think that's exactly right. And look, Nancy Mace wants you to be outraged, right. I mean this is like democracy dies in darkness.
Right, democracy dies in bullshit right.
And Nancy Mays only exists if she can dictate the news cycle. Right, like she has learned at the knee of Marjorie Taylor.
Green, do not take the bait. Just don't take the bait. That's at least one thing.
Now.
How long we're going to be able to stick with that, I just don't know. So I was I was on a Canadian show this morning and the host says, so, Charlie, are people afraid? Are you afraid? And I had a very inadequate answer. I said, well, you know, the day after the election, someone suggested that I write a you know, on my substack newsletter to the contrary that I write the headline be not afraid. And I said, hell with that, because people should be afraid. People should be afraid, but
they should not be frightened. And I think this is the key thing. People ought to be very aware of the danger, but not be so frightened that they cave in or obey in advance. If you act out of fear, I think it's one thing to be again on alert, to be aware, but to act out of fear is the dark place. That's what authoritarians want. They want us to cower. They want us to think, how can I not be noticed? How can I not make them mad? And of course there's a lot of that going on.
And again that's not for me to say there's nothing to worry about. There's a lot to worry about them.
There is really a lot.
You worry about it, but you stand and you face it intelligently and effectively not run away. That's the key thing.
Yeah, And I think that's really really so important. And that's what I think about a lot is like this is the break glass in case of emergency, right, Like, this is it. This is as dark as it's going to get. And so we need to be very thoughtful about how we proceed, right.
And you can't break the glass every single day. The other thing that I'm I'm really trying to commit myself to is try to not chase every squirrel of outrage, you know, not every every single shiny object. But also, and this is really hard, and I think I'm going to be misunderstood here. I think we do have to keep a sense of humor.
Yeah, no, no, agreed, A grade agrade, because I.
Listened to some of just the grim people, you know, repeating the same talking points that they've been repeating and using the same jargon and everything, and they're depressed and they're all ere and everything, and as a fuck that. I mean, honestly, these people are They're absurd and they're dangerous, and I think that there's a balance there to say, you people are absolutely ridiculous. I mean people like Peter hegxitt yes, and An RFK and Matt Gaates. I mean
they're risibly absurd human beings. Now that's not to say they're not also dangerous human beings.
Yes, many things can be true, which I think is part of what we're experiencing here. These people can be dangerous, and they can also be ridiculous and look, and they can also more importantly be stopped. And that's what we saw with Matt Gates this week, right, because Matt Gates really did in the end, there were enough brave Republicans and we had questions and worries and dowds about this but there were enough brave Republicans, so Matt Gates will not be Attorney General.
I would say there were enough nauseator Republicans.
Right, we'll take it.
No, okay, I want to take this in a positive point of view. I did write this morning that, you know, the fall of Matt Gates, which was is a splendid thing to watch, maybe more of a speed bump than
a guardrail. We don't know how many brave Republicans there will be, but it is worth pointing out that Donald Trump went all out to get Matt Gates, including this report that they were going around telling senators, you know, if you don't bow the knee to Donald Trump and Matt Gates, we're going to primary you, and this guy Elon Musk is going to bankroll it. So you had basically this thuggish out in the open threat, and the Republicans didn't caved. And it also didn't work because there
was a retreat they could have taken. They could have you done that craven recess appointment, They could have surrendered their power.
Mitch McConnell, hero of the resistance, told them they couldn't.
No fucking way. Mitch McConnell said not this time. Maybe, unlike Susan Collins, he has learned his lesson. I don't know. I don't want to be the lucy in the football again with these guys. But you do get the sense that maybe Donald Trump has seriously overplayed his hand by going to war with the Republican Senate as right out of the box. He insulted them, he threatened them, he tried to humiliate them, and he's still trying to humiliate
them by shoving these nominees down their throat. And at least as you and I are speaking, they said, no, we're not going to do it, which again ought to be you know, let plant let's plant this, you know, rare flag of success.
Enjoy it.
I mean, I also do think like remember as soon as Trump won, Trump and Elon were like, we are going to install Rick Scott, the president for Mars Attacks as the majority leader.
And that did not work either.
No, Actually that that was really interesting. That was his first big failure, right that he was He clearly didn't want John Thune, you had, the Maga verse was all on fire about that, and they lost badly. In fact, that was the day you might remember, that was the day that he began, you know, rolling out some of the absurd original appointments. And it felt to me, having watched Trump this long, that that was a way of distracting attention from what otherwise would have been something that
Trump hates more than anything else. People pointing out that you just lost, you just lost big on something that that is going to have long term ramifications. But I know that some people are really really surprised. I'm only mildly surprised that the you know, rape mcfoorhead was a bridge too far, or for this that it was such a ridiculous I stole that from somebody. No, I think I stole it from the guy who drops all the F bombs even more than me. We'll see what they do with Peter Hegsith.
Yeah, now that Matt Gates is out of the lineup and Pam BONDI we actually know, is a lawyer, Matt Gates is also a lawyer, though that seemed more a little more circuitous.
Who is the cabinet appointment who keeps you up at night?
Now you know.
That that's a hard one to choose. And this, this, I think is the and I'm doing air quotes here. The flood the zone with shit. Genius of all of this, because you know, the notion of putting Peter Hegsyth in charge of the Department of Defense keeps me up at night. The idea that we would put a Russian asset like Tlsea Gabbard in charge of the US intelligence community keeps
me up at night. The fact that you have a complete, demented, deranged conspiracy theory nut job like Roberda F. Kennedy Junior dismantling the Department of Health and Human Services. I mean that one is not just absurd and dangerous, it's potentially deadly. If we go back to pre vaccination days. We have opened We've opened a Pandora's Box of medieval horrors here,
so you pick your horrors. And also, as people have noticed, things are becoming more and more dangerous in the world, and I think they will become even more dangerous between
now and January. And so that delta between what we would hope the kinds of people we would hope would be in charge of our intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense of the United States of America and the people that Donald Trump has put there is becoming wider and wider so great that you know, down goes Matt Gates. But we have this parade of grotesqueries and horribles in waiting.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think the one who really keeps me up at night. I mean, I guess you're right, RFK Junior has to be the one because we did just live through a pandemic. By the way, we just lived through a pandemic that Donald Trump, you know, clearly again it's not fair to say that he killed people, but he certainly was not good for public health. Right.
I think we can all agree on that A.
Million people died and it has been completely memory hold, just completely memory hold.
Yeah, a million people died.
So let's let's put RFK, who does not believe in vaccines in charge of public health.
Let's put a guy with literal brainworms in charge of deciding how to keep Americans safe from the next pandemic. And there will be a next pandemic. I mean, this is going to happen.
Oh, no question, because of the climate stuff.
Right. And that's not Donald Trump's fault, That's not RFK, that's just the nature of things. The question.
It's Ronald Reagan's fault.
Yes, go on is how we handle it, how we respond to it, whether or not we will we will actually be intelligent and serious and sober, or whether or not we have put one of the most dement I mean, where do you even start with him? The fact that he actually is out there saying that the first one was a pandemic obviously planned by the Trump administration. Who the freak knows what he's talking about.
By the way, though I shouldn't laugh, but I'm laughing to keep keep from crying.
Yeah, I mean, I love these quotes that are now surfacing about how you're saying, you know that the Trump is hitler and you know.
Terrible, and that's good.
This is this is I think the pre brainworm RFK, which is like, okay, you got it at one time before your brain turned to tapioca pudding whatever it was, before.
The worm the brainworm had died. I think that was part of it right there. I think the brainworm is no longer a line.
I think the brain worman was killed by what it was eating. I mean, I all know.
Yeah, I'm going to go out on Pete Hexth because if this happens, he will direct the United States military and he will be sending the message that it's okay to have numor allegations at the very least of sexual assaulted misconduct.
Yeah, the details of that police reporter are interesting to dad. Yeah, did you see my newsletter today? I did the WWD question mark not this FS Yeah, what would Jesus do?
Not this?
For fuck's sake? Okay, So here's an interesting dynamic though in the whatever mar A Lago Oval office. The one argument you cannot make to the president elect is, hey, we can't put this man in charge of the Defense Department because he's been credibly accused of rape.
That does not hold a lot of water to Trump.
Right, because basically you will elect a rapist who grabs women by the pussy, and you know what, you are not going to be able to convince him that it's disqualifying to rape someone or grab somebody. So the only thing you can say is, yo, the votes aren't there, or this is a distraction.
I think the votes aren't there is probably all you can say.
That's the only thing you can say. I think that hag sith there's got to be a big question mark. Again, ironically, not because he may have raped someone. And by again, the details of these you know, clean yourself up and all.
Of that stuff.
Oh my god, not because of that, but you know, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the Trump transition team was amazingly blindsided by this. Who knew that these things like that would happen? When you basically say, we don't need FBI background, Yeah, we don't need to vet these people.
Yeah, those cocks in the FBI.
Yeah, we don't mind that you rape that girl, but you should have told us about it on your form.
Right, right, right, there's social justice warriors in the FBI known for their liberalism. Yeah, I mean, we'll see, but it continues. The House has this very slim majority. You've got Mike Johnson in there. I'm wondering, the last time Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, we were all eight years better looking.
Now we are.
And I'm speaking about myself obviously, because I remember those salad days. Is it being in my thirties? Now we are all very old and exhausted. I'm curious, like Paul Ryan had to lead the House and then he and then he left the business altogether. Now we have Mike Johnson. Talk to me about the difference between Paul Ryan and Mike Johnson.
I was just thinking about the salad days in my early sixties back then. So well, Paul Ryanland was of course much smarter than Mike Johnson, but he had a much bigger majority, right, right, they had quite an edge there, and so when you're talking about a two three four vote margin, particularly when you've seen that clown show that they've had, and then of course now they have vacancies, so Matt Gates is actually a vacancy. So for a few months it's going to be below two hundred and twenty.
So I mean, we you know, what could go wrong? Well, you know they've been giving us the off Broadway version of what could go wrong for the last two years.
So I do think that's worth watching a good line today on television.
I'm going to steal your line and no, no, I'll let you use a birth.
The other thing is that that right now everybody is you know, they're all in you know, swinging around, you know, VVAK and elon are swinging around their big dicks about how much they're going to cut government spending. You're going to need congressional approval, and so it's one thing to put out, well, Assie, I don't think they quite understand that all the things they're cutting, all of those spending programs, and I'm certainly not going to say there's not wasteful spending.
There's a lot of wasteful spending. But every program exists for a reason, and there is a constituency for every single program. And once you step on some of those minefields, you're going to find out that even some MAGA adjacent congressmen are going to be very, very unlikely to vote to cut I don't know, veterans' healthcare, for example, That is just not going to happen. So it is going
to be extremely messy. They're going to have to have real discipline and the kind of discipline that we have come to know they rarely are able to exercise.
Charlie Sikes, will you please come back?
I will come back anytime. I mean, I am a man without a podcast. I'm just sitting here in my robe in front of this it's rather pathetically unused microphone.
So yeah, yes, please come back. You are just the best, and so.
You're the only one who invites me, So I asked, Michael, you are the best anytime.
Scott Perryman is the president of Democracy Forward. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Sky.
Thanks for having me. Always get to chat with you.
We're delighted to have you. So now we are in the dystopia. Donald Trump is about to become president for the second time, thus creating a tension where the courts are really the only thing that are going to protect the American people. So can you talk us through what that look like?
Absolutely, you know, And part of it is we have a little bit of knowledge here because of his first administration. He engaged and his administration engaged in such lawless activity that was designed to create chaos. It was harmful, but
fundamentally it was also against the law. And while the Supreme Court, of course has a majority of justices come from the conservative legal movement, and we have the far right legal movement that has obviously been responsible for cases like Dobbs and other things that have really shaped the court. The types of activities that this administration is expected to engage in are ones that I think even that court
will stop in some instances. And the more important thing is that there are hundreds of federal courts across the country with judges that will fairly interpret the law and litigation is just going to be a huge piece of providing that check for the American people. So we can talk specifically about kind of what the cases would look like. But what we know in the last administration, the Trump administration lost nearly eighty percent of the time in court
because of their you know, lawless activities. We intend, along with a lot of other organizations, to be really making sure that people and communities are represented in court moving forward.
Yes, so that is a really good point. Say that again, what percentage of court cases did Donald Trump lose?
You know, there's different estimates, but it was approaching eighty percent, and in the first year of his administration, I think it was around you know, seventy nine eighty percent.
So, like the Muslim ban, it's like big pieces of quote unquote legislation, right.
The Muslim ban, of course, was able to be successfully challenged in the lower courts once it finally got up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did issue an upolled part of that at you know, part of that. But the important thing is, like, let's just look at what he did across the board. So they appointed and this will sound familiar to you if you're watching and
following the news right. They would corrupt commissions. They would appoint people from outside of government that were deeply tied to industries or to special interests that they curried favor with to commissions to try to shape the way the federal government operates. And they would do that and did that without complying with all of the transparency laws and other laws that we have in this country about how you do this. So they got sued on that a lot,
and we've shut down a range of corrupt commissions. They sought to abruptly discontinue important federal funding funded bipartisan programs in cities like Baltimore and in counties like King County, Seattle, and we were able to sue and successfully restore those funding and stop their conduct there. They sought to reverse a lot of policies that were really important for working Americans and working families, and we were able to stop those. So I want to say, it's going to be a
tough fight, and I don't have rose colored glasses. This is really such a critical moment for the country and it's going to take all of us doing our part. But we do know if the past is prologue, that the courts are going to be such a frontline in this battle, and we are ready to go. The lawyers at Democracy for the lawyers at so many other organizations, we are geared up and ready to go to ensure that if they break the law, that there is legal action to challenge it.
Yes, what are we going to see as people that is really easily addressed in the courts? For example, give me the kind of things because Trump's going to do it a.
Lot of stuff.
He's got like numerous executive orders all lined up to start on day one. So explain to us what sort of the stuff that's going to be easier to challenge, and then this stuff is going to be harder to challenge.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's a lot of we don't know entirely how they're going to do things right, but we know, for instance, when they say they're going to engage in mass deportations, You've seen the ACLU out there talking about what those challenges will look like swiftly and on day one. I'm not saying those are easy, but I'm saying that there will be swift legal challenges.
We've seen, you know, Elon Musk and others say that they're going to remake the way the American government works, and Trump has said that he's going to create some type of commission or department to do that. The things that I've seen suggest that they're not going to be following the law when they create these commissions. And there's
a lot of legal remedies that will be utilized. If they want to come after the civil service and engage in arbitrary mass firings of the civil service, which is what they've said that they want to do, there are legal remedies there reversing the last administration. They sought to just reverse a range of policies without going through the
process that they had to go through. And so I just, you know, I think that this is not going to be an easy path because there's so much but you know, we're made to do hard things the courts right now
because of the balance in Congress. The courts really are the tool at the federal level as well as I think being clear and you and I talked a lot about Project twenty twenty five before the election, and we're now seeing him accelerate try to accelerate Project twenty twenty five now that the election has been called for him.
You know, this is a president elect that ran by telling the American people that he didn't know anything about Project twenty twenty five and sought to distance himself from all of these unpopular, you know, these unpopular policies. And so I do think that there's going to also be a role for the American people to really hold him
to account. But also they're members of Congress to accounts when these Project twenty twenty five policies start rolling through, to say, wait a second, you know, this is not actually what the American people voted for. In fact, you know, he sought to this is himself he.
Said, I have nothing to do for Ragic twenty twenty five. And then, by the way, let's talk about Russ's voice.
Well, I mean, look, either they're not slowing down at all to seek to really accelerate Project twenty twenty five. Russ was one of the architects of this entire extreme agenda, which again, in poll after poll, there was a lot of disputes over polls. Guess where there wasn't disputes over polls. In poll after poll, conservatives, liberals, and independents all broadly
rejected Project twenty twenty five on the issues. But now they're going to seek to install Russ Voyd into the administration and he will have to be confirmed by the Senate, and I think that's going to be really important for Americans to make their voices heard in those confirmation battles, especially given them mis leading nature of the campaign where they really disavowed Project twenty twenty five. But the bottom line is, we also have that blueprint for over a
year because they published it. We know what their plan is, and we know how to argue and we know how to bring cases against it because a number of the things that they are proposing are just flatly unlawful, and we're going to have to rely on our courts to
do the right thing too. And that's really important that people are making sure that we're clear that we expect our courts to protect the rights of the American people, to protect our democratic institutions, and that is what they are here to do, and they're going to have to stand up to you know, stand up and do that, which we saw in many instances last time that happened.
So I'm wondering if you Ross Vointe is being put in charge of budget. Yeah, will you explain why that is and what he has the opportunity to do there?
Well, the Office of Management and Budget is really just like such a core office that really seeks and is able to help define the way the federal government operates across agencies, because it's really an agency that is cross cutting. This is, unfortunately for the American people, the type of position that will have a lot of influence over multiple policies.
By controlling budget, he will have a certain sort of ability to cut off the finances.
Right well, and what they've suggested is that this position would be the one that would seek to impose what is known as Schedule F to seek to reclassify our federal workers to make them more political, to make you know, reclassify civil servants as political appointees, to then enable the president to engage in mass firings. And then also this office potentially could seek, through much of that work, to undermine some of the more autonomous organizations like the consumer
financial Protection Bureaus. So now that's what they say they're going to do again, I will just say like there is a broad and diverse effort, and I would encourage our listeners to go to democracy twenty twenty five dot org, where you can see so many of the organizations and groups that are lined up to really help represent the
American people. When these agencies engage in that, these offices engage in unlawful activity to that is what they you know, attacking our civil service and our ability of government to deliver for people has been a censure piece of Project twenty twenty five. And so you know, if the Senate were to confirm us, you would really see an opportunity that he would have to accelerate or seek to accelerate, many of the harmful things in that policy.
Yeah, it is really scary.
It is.
It's scary, but it should also be motivating. Trump and the GOP have been saying they have this mandate. I
don't see that. What I saw in the election was deep red Missouri vote for abortion access and people in Florida, more people in Florida voting for the ballot initiative than if I have my figures right, then they voted for Donald Trump or Rond de Santis the last time, and people voting for a candidate in President elect Trump that blatantly throughout the campaign trail thought to deceive people about his connections to these very people and to these very policies,
And so I think there's just a real moment for both those of us that work in the courts, but also for the American people and for those that are going to be going into Congress to check this extremism by staying vigilant and pushing forward. And so it is very scary, but there's not a mandate for this extremism.
Yeah, I'm hoping you could talk about how pushing back in the court it's sort of the only way to stop a lot of this stuff, right because Democrats don't control any of the federal branches.
Yes, and I think this is important to understand that the administration is poised to engage in a range of harmful activities, many of which are of those activities will have legal problems we can sue with the ultimate goal of stopping that harm for people in communities, and that is always the ultimate goal. And President Biden has appointed
more than two hundred and twenty pro democracy judges. I believe at the end of this administration, if you look across the federal judiciary that you will see that the majority of those lower court judges have been appointed by pro democracy presidents. And I will also tell you that our team, as well as other teams, win in front of judges, including judges that were appointed by former President
Trump and more conservative presidents. So I will say the courts remain a hugely important tool to stop some of
this behavior. But more than that, litigation has a way of helping change behavior, even if you disregard how a court rules right, forcing people to every time they seek to harm the American people and seek to do so outside the bounds of the law, to have to show up in court and defend that, and to defend that publicly, for the public to be aware of those challenges, that is a critical, critical tool to really forcing the sort of extreme administration to account. And so there's really important
impact beyond just how a judge rules. In the last administration, last Trump administration, let me give you one example, Trump created the Pence Cobalt Voter Commission, which was seeking to undermine votes, are seeking votes right exactly because he didn't like the popular vote count. Notice that no one's dispute, Notice that no one's disputing anything now, but he didn't like the popular vote count. Them and a range of
organizations including ours. I was one of the lawyers who did this, but a range of organizations representing people in communities suit and in the face of that avalanche of litigation, the administration actually just abandoned their plans of the Commission. Now I'm not again, I don't have rose colored glasses, and I think that they're going to seek to do a range of very harmful things and are determined to
do that. But we have seen time and again that even apart from how courts are rolling, litigation is important to force that there be some costs when extreme lawmakers are seeking to undermine the rights and privileges and well being the American people. And that's what we're committed to doing, and that's what hundreds of organizations are committed to doing.
Yeah, you are faced with this because you're in the court and your lawyer and your organization is faced with this.
It is very stressful.
Give us a two second tip because a lot of people who listen to those feel things the way that I feel things and the way that you feel things, like, we really take this personally, we really care, which is I always say, like the worst thing about.
Me is I believe everything I see on television.
So like, I actually I actually like think this is a real crisis.
I don't think this is a game.
I think we're a huge crisis.
Yeah, we're going to see if our institutions hold or not. And I think it's a real fifty to fifty question. And the best thing going for us is that Trump is erratic, and you know, he's nominating people who are completely unreasonable. Why do you worry about Pam Bondi because she is not as problematic as Matt Gates, but she's still very problematic.
Well, I worry about so many of the people, and Bondi is one. These are people that have made their careers not engaging in the you know, just amazing opportunity that we all have as people to help protect people's rights, to ensure that our government is actually working for people
and delivering the things that we need. But this is someone that's long been associated with a you know, a quite extreme age, Inda, And so I think that you know, we're the Department of Justice holds and just an incredibly important role in American society and then protecting our rights. And when you look at Project twenty twenty five, you see that there are a range of plans that this incoming administration has for perverting that institution and seeking to
weaponize it against the American people. I haven't seen evidence that, and I'm an open minded person, so I'm going to be listening and watching in the days ahead. But I hadn't seen evidence that she is the type of person that would buck that political and ideological pressure that we
see and know that the incoming administration would provide. And so the question is will she be an accomplice and seeking to accelerate some of the most harmful policies in Project T only twenty five, or would she be a good steward of the Department of Justice. I don't have evidence to show me it to suggests that she would be a good steward of that, but we will wait at watch. But I think it's concerting when you look at what they want to do to that institution, and
I think it's high concerning that. Like they've also sought to prevent the release of information about Matt Gates, which is important for American people to know and understand.
And I think that's a really good point.
And I think that the one bright spot here is that you can absolutely bully.
These people into doing the right.
Thing if you're able to get their attention, and it's going to be four fucking years of.
That, and we saw in the campaign. I don't think that it was a great day for Trump and his associates when they had to come out and disavow and distance themselves from Project twenty twenty five. I think it's deceptive and it's consistent with this pattern of conduct we see from him. But really it became such a problem because the vast majority of American people in this country reject that extremism and it is going to be incumbent
up on all of us. Yes, there's a Republican majority in the Senate that there are senators that will be held to account in two years.
Tom Tillis in North Carolina.
Wow, here's an old war story. You remember in the first early days of the Trump administration the last time that Trumps was hell bent on repealing the Affordable Care Act and thought they had the majority in Congress to
do that. And I will tell yeah, you know, many of us there would have been legal problems with some of the implications of that, and so there, you know, there was a court strategy there, but we never had to go to court because Congress ultimately did not deliver on what President Trump wanted them to do, because the
American people pushed back. And that is the kind of retail level advocacy It is going to be required to save some of the institutions in our country in order to ensure that at some point we can be back on the track of moving forward as opposed to just preventing a backslide.
Yep, yes, yes, yes, But.
For your listeners, I think, like I know, we're all scared, and everybody is. You know, it's just a highly emotional situation, and we're moving into the holidays, but there is a lot we can do, and we just have to remember that we cannot give up our own power. And so lawyers are going to be doing that every single day on behalf of people in communities that people can do that too. And these extremists do not get to write the last chapter or the next chapter of what happens
in this country. The American people do. And it is up to all of us to help galvanize people. And there's a lot of disaffected people who our institutions haven't delivered for, and our government hasn't delivered for and I think you see set in the voting patterns, and it's time to show up and do real things and to motivate people to engage in that work, to show up and do the real things. And that's what we're going to really be focused on.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Please come back.
Thanks Molly a moment, Jesse Cannon, my Jen Fast.
One of the things that is just so sad that we kind of knew would happen if mister Trump got re elected is well, the racists, the Nazis, the clan type people they will be, and we're seeing it play out.
What are you see in here?
I did not see it coming. Oh boy, oh a group of neil. But if you can't laugh about Nazis, who can you laugh about? Neo Nazi groups?
Scattered flyers across lawns and doorsteps in three Waterloo, Iowa neighborhoods just before veterans state, the Handouds offered a chilling assessment of the group's proximity in capital letters, we are your neighbors. We are the random strangers holding the door open for you. We are everywhere. I'm not sure they are. A week later, a dozen people march through with parts of Columbus, Ohio that are known for arts and culture, or carrying Nazi flags, using it bullhorn to shout racist
slurs against Jews and people of color. You'll notice they also wore masks.
You know why they.
Wore masks, Please tell me?
Because they were scared of being identified.
And that, my friends, is why if you're scared of being identified, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it.
It's a good rule for life. I think that's it.
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