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 the irs predicts Doge will actually lose quite a lot of money for the United States.
We have such a great show for you today.
Charlie Sykes stops by to talk about Pete hegsa's little group chat problem. Then we'll talk to academic and author of the Shadow Docket Stevid Fladdock about what is happening with this Supreme Court.
But first the news.
So Wali Postmaster Joy, a person that everyone has been looking to get rid of for a long time on the left, is no longer going to be leading the post office.
Yeah, it's hard to know, right, because Postmaster de Joy has been unpopular, But there are things worse than Postmaster Joy, right. For example, he has continued to keep the post office running in a certain way. So, I mean, look, the Joy is a great example of one of the failures of the Biden administration. And again I've talked about some of the really good policy stuff that the Biden administration passed,
like the Chips and Sciences Act. They did a lot of good stuff, but one of the things they didn't do, which was.
Really disappointing to a lot of us.
They were so by the letter of the law and careful about things like the ups board of Directors that they felt they could not fire the Joy because they didn't have the votes on the board of directors.
Now, FYI, Donald Trump would.
Not have given a fuck about this, right, he would have just gone in there like a bull in a china shop. And again this gets the question of what is the right amount when you're faced with a lawless with the Republican Party that has foregone norms and institutions, is the question to be so profoundly careful like Merrick Garland? Or is the play to shore up norms and institutions? And sometimes that means taking risks and doing things that might not be exactly the way another place would do it.
So the answer is I don't know. Right, thank god, that's way above my big grade. But to Joy has now resigned, this can mean any number of things, right, This could mean he's a GOP donor so he has you know, been very trumpy, but he did keep the post office running. Look, this administration has put worse people in this right, I mean the true The one truism is that Trump one point zero looks like Lincoln compared to Trump two point zero. So it's possible they put
in someone who wants to privatize the mail. It's possible they put in someone who wants to make the mail ten times worse because they think it'll help Trump. There are any number of terrible permutations that could come downstream of this. I think what's important when you think about trump Ism is think about the intended consequences, but also
think about the unintended consequences. So this will have intended consequences, but like with so many things in Trump world, when there's so much incompetence, there will also be unintended consequences.
Yeah, and then there's also sometimes surprising, surprising rulings, like the Supreme Court shockingly standing up to Trump on press freedom.
Right, Well, this is technically not exactly that.
So the Supreme Court we saw yesterday they're not going to take a case called New York Times v.
Sullivan.
It was in nineteen sixty four, landmark defamation case. We actually had on this podcast a really smart journals from the New York Times who talk to us about it. This is a case from So this case got all the way up to the Supreme.
Court with Steve win.
You'll remember Steve Winn as a casino magnet and also a big trumper, right, big donor to Donald Trump. He was pushing a story against the AP in the hopes of getting this case looked at by the Supreme Court.
And by the way, the goal of this was, you know, just like the Gawker case, to open the door so that everyday people could sue media organizations for you know, quote unquote actual malice instead of the way it works with the New York Times versus Sullivan is there's a sort of little bit of a cutout for mistakes if you make a mistake. This could have opened up to any number of lawsuits, less and less press freedom. So
the fact that they didn't take this is good. I mean, I don't know, you know, they have.
Four years of being completely crazy.
Just because Barrett and Justice Roberts aren't complete partisan hacks does not mean they get a parade for me. So this is going to be a yet another season of them remaking the country in completely insane wise.
YEP, agreed, So we should do the full disclosure. Former guests of this podcast.
And she's coming back.
Love to hear it. Use Look she is running against a longtime Democratic incumbinant, Jan Schakowski in Illinois ninth district, and I thought her opening message was really really good and what we need right now.
Yeah, I mean, look, this is the Democratic tea Party and it's coming.
And you know, we've we've talked about this a lot.
Republicans were able to temper sort of the Democratic urges were able to push a more corporatey Democratic party. That corporatey Democratic Party lost, right, they lost. It turned out zero Liz Cheney Democratic voters. Well, that's bad news for the sort of more conservative Democrats. That's probably good news for the party. Right, there's a message that resonates, and it's not a kind of never Trump Republicanism. It's real democratic values. And by the way, Democrats want to give
people stuff, Republicans want to take it away. I don't know why this is so hard. But the other thing is that Democrats are way too polite. They're super ossified. They have all of these people who have been in office forever, who are you know, who can't get better jobs so want to stay and it's time for them to go. I mean, this is a democratic tea party. The truth is you do not especially and look, I mean democrats said that this was an emergency right that democracy was on the ballot.
I don't disagree.
But if that's true, that means you don't get to just help your friends, you have to actually govern. And that's going to mean that some of these people have had these jobs forever are going to lose them. And I think that's correct. So we'll see more of this. I hope she wins. None of these seats should be safe, right, They're not safe. This is crazy, and I think we'll see more of this.
I think more than crazy, it's just accountability of that. You know, it's time to start getting a referendum on so or of the people who sat in these seats and it kind of just kept them warm with very milk toast votes.
Yeah, and done nothing.
So Molly, you wanted to talk about the protests. I personally get invited to oats of them enough to say, you know, I have a podcast to tape today. I can't quite make the protest, but boy, they seem abundant these days. I literally the other day was like, Wow, that's a lot of noise. This old man is hearing and I'm like, oh, that's the type of noise I like a protest.
Look, this is the other part of the Democratic Tea Party, and a lot of people maybe don't like this, but this is where it's going, is that American people are fucking mad. I actually wrote about this today in my Vanity Fair piece. Bernie and AOC had a rally in Colorado where they were expecting, you know, a couple thousand people, and they got thirty thousand people. And I mean, that's what's happening everywhere, right, is that voters are worried.
They are not happy.
They see this right, Like us in the bubble, you know, we only sort of see what we see, But here we're seeing the rest of the country is mad, and they are protests, and there are a number of other things that only happen when people are mad. Right, People are going to their congress people, they're going to these open houses, these town halls, and even like they had a town hall where the guy didn't show up and they just screamed at the chair, Like this kind of
stuff is real. And the good news is the Democrats. JP Pritzker's chief of staff, I talked about this before, but I'm going to say it again because I think this is the real question. The fight going on in the Democratic Party right now is not between hard life left and moderate. It's between those who want to fight and those who want a cave. And team fight stretches across all ideological aspects of the party. Misread this at
your own apparel. So my question to you, Representative Jeffries, my question to you, Chuck Schumer, is our you team fight or our you team cave. Charlie Sykes is the author of the newsletter to the Contrary and the book How the Right Loss Its Mind Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, Charlie.
Sykes, Jesus, which something was happening in the world that we could talk about.
You came for group chat, but you stayed for what the fuck is happening in Wisconsin?
You know it is amazing. This is not New York, this is not California, This is not Texas or Florida. It's Wisconsin. And it looks like spending on the state Supreme Court race is going to edit one hundred million dollars. I mean, Elon Musk could parachute in here and you on handout big checks to every voter in the state, which basically is what he's doing. I mean, you know, Elon Musk is all in on this state Supreme Court race, which could in theory, flip the State Supreme Court from
a liberal majority to a conservative majority. But it is crazy. We've had intense races before, but nothing of this scope or the stakes.
Let's talk about what that looks like.
That's a lot of money for the Wisconsin media market.
No offense, no, no, that is my point. I mean, we only have one big media market unless you're going up into Minneapolis, so it's completely flooded the zone. So you get mail all the time. There's radio ads, there's television ads, and also this weird thing that these Musk backed groups are doing. They're putting out.
Man.
Maybe it's more than just text messages, but I get the text messages saying, you know, Susan Crawford, who is the liberal candidate, Susan Cross for Progressive Champion, who favors the opposite of incarcerating criminals, and it looks like it's supporting her, but what it is is a must campaign to portray her as this really out of touch defund the police touchy feely progressive. You know, on one level
it's kind of sophisticated. On another level, it's just the rank dishonesty of it that they're doing a false flag campaign here. And frankly, you have to look really closely to determine. I mean, I actually when I first got the first text, I'm thinking, Wow, this is interesting. This Susan Crawford is running this far to the left. I mean, I'm really not sure that's the sweet spot in Wisconsin politics. And then I clicked on the link and it's like, no, there's just no way that this is for real.
That is wild.
So it's like they're advertising on the sphere. I mean, there's no Wisconsin sphere. It's meant to be a joke. But where else can you spend that much money?
I really don't know. I mean, that's really an interesting question where where all the money is going. But you're talking about, you know, massive contributes, and by the way, there's also contributions you know, from the Democratic Party and from liberal billionaires as well. But Musk's involvement and Trump's involvement is extraordinary. Like, I don't honestly know the answer
to your question of how you'd spend that money. I've been in this media market for my entire career and unless you buy every single spot on every single television station, and I'm not even sure that's the most effective way.
But every day I get mail for the conservative candidate, the right wing candidate for State Supreme Court, Brad Shimmel, and every single piece of literature, and I kid you, not shows Shimmel with Donald Trump, and it makes the appeal that you have to vote for Shimmel because he will protect Donald Trump, he will advance Donald Trump. These radical liberals will block Donald Trump. So Donald Trump and
Elon Musk have made this a referendum on them. But the amount of money just creates this big question mark. Does it backfire or does it allow them to shape the entire narrative? And you know, we're going to find out very short the elections April first.
Yes, And that's so interesting to me, is that, like Trump, what you really see here And I've said this a lot, and I feel like it is something we just don't talk about enough, which is Trump's brand is very good and Democratic brand is not so good.
But you know it's really not good. Is the Republican brand?
I mean that said Democrats right now, it's not a good moment, and that people are very mad at the party, including the base is mad at the party, which is an interesting phenomenon which we can talk about in a minute. But what is so interesting when you talk about those Bradshamel advertisements.
Is that they know that the really the only.
Way to get a Republican to win in this atmosphere is to just say Trump likes them, and that doesn't always work, as we've seen, you know, we saw, I mean, Carrie Lake is a great example of how trump Ism doesn't necessarily scale well.
And again, this is not a red state, this is a very even the balance state. And so yes, Trump's brand is strong among the Republican base. And I think that the theory of the case is that you will turn out those low propensity voters that turned out in November. They're not aiming across the aisle here. This is if we get a really huge Republican turnout, we can swamp
the Democrats. So the Democratic challenge in Wisconsin and especially these lower turnout elections is always maximizing the turnout from Dane County in Milwaukee County eroding Republican leads in the suburbs. But it is an interesting, you know, moment, because we will find out whether or not Donald Trump's brand is is that strong here, and we will find out whether Elon Musk's brand is strong enough if he wins here.
I mean, I think, look, I mean, the stakes for Wisconsin are huge on abortion, on redistricting, on public employee unions. I mean, you know, the actual substance of the court. But I also think the imagery of Elon Musk coming into I won't say a random state, but you know, spreading across the country with massive contributions is really going to be a test of his role as a powerbroker and how much juice he has. And if he wins, it will certainly reinforce his power within the Republican Party.
On the other hand, if he stumbles here in Wisconsin, it's going to be a warning sign. So, I mean, the stakes for Elon Musk's clout, which right now I don't think can be overstated. Republicans are just terrified of him because they know that he will drop more money than God on a primary challenge, and in Wisconsin, he's really flexing his muscles here, So we're going to see very very soon. So this is a local election that will have real national consequences.
Okay, so we got to talk about the group chat?
Oh please please?
Yes?
Jeffrey Goldberg added to a group chat which includes the Secretary of Defense, includes Mike Walt's National Security, includes S and M, which could not be more approposed, Stephen Miller.
And of course the Vice president JD Vance's.
Right, the Vice President, Like, is that the greatest thing to ever happen to anyone?
It is so extraordinary, And the more you read about, the more you think about it, the more what the fuck just happened? Is it? I mean, it is just amazing, the recklessness, the carelessness, the arrogance of this. And somebody wrote this morning, I saw we do need to remember that in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump rode to the White House, you know, largely on the basis of concerns about national security and Hillary Clinton and her servers. I mean, what the hell?
I mean?
There are just so many aspects to this, including the incredible incompetence of allowing someone to be on this call, the arrogance of using a signal for these communications, because I think at some point you need to recognize, Hey, if they did this this badly, they've probably done it before, you know, in other cases, And you'd have to be very naive not to think that the Russians, the Chinese, the Arabians, and the North Koreans are not listening in to these these idiots.
On everything, right.
I mean, it's not just the Atlantic that's getting added to the group chat. I think that's a top one. I actually want you to talk about what is not in this article, because Goldberg has done a bunch of interviews and has said that there's actually stuff he didn't put in this for national security reasons.
No, he was very very careful about it, and that he needed to be careful about it. I mean, my initial concern was that they would come after him for violating something, but I don't see any.
Indication of that.
But again, wait five five minutes. No, he was obviously very very careful not to reveal secrets, not to reveal identities of people in sensitive positions, or the names of certain targets, anything that would have endangered our men and women in arms. But if somebody else was listening in to this clearly unsecured communication, they would have all of that,
and I think that that's important. And I also think, look, I mean, you know, there's a bigger pick sure here that this administration has been moving with shock and awe, and everybody's terrified of standing up against them, and the Democrats are in disarray. It is worth reminding ourselves that these people are dangerous, there's no question about it. But
they're also idiots and they're deeply incompetent. Now that's not completely reassuring, because it's the same sort of incompetence that you will see with the handling of secure data from say the Social Security or the IRS, as Elon Musk moves through that. With the we're experiencing right now what could be the largest data breach in human history in the hands of people named big Balls.
Big Balls, yes, with the broccoli haircut.
And how confident can we be that they're going to take better care of that information?
So not confident at all.
We have all of the stars kind of aligning here just to remind us who these people are, and it's fascinating to watch them try to spin their way out of this without much success so far except to your maga Fox News base.
Yeah, I mean so let's just do two more minutes on this, because one of the things that I saw today was Trump's press secretary. What happens when something really big like this sprigs is that they can't figure out how to message it, right, Like, there's so much of what we see out of Trump World has to be workshopped so much because a lot of these people are not that smart, so they don't know how to message this,
so they're all over the place. You had Hegseth getting off the plane and saying it's not real and everyone knows that the Atlantic is trash. Then you got Carolyn Levitt I want to talk about this Carolyn Levitt tweet because she says Jeffrey Goldberg is well known for his sensational ast spin. Okay that nobody would say that, I mean really right, I mean in.
True or false.
Look, he has the receipts here. We know that they hate him, and I guess that's also what makes this story so extraordinaries of all of the journals, was in the world right, great Goldberg and the Atlantic. I mean, this would be as if as if Joe Biden was having a national security call and Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon were on the line. I don't even mean to
compare them. But the whole thing about it's sensational. He has the receipts, you see the actual text messages, and frankly, given what actually happened, there's no way to sensationalize it because it is.
It's sensational, sational, I'm sorry.
But also, just to get back to this tweet, One, no war plans were discussed, so clearly she's daring him to release the war plans. Two, she says no classified material were sent on the thread. Right, clearly that's fucking bullshit. But also three, the White House Counsel's Office has performed guidance on a number of different platforms. Anyway, the point is what Jake Sherman from punch Bowl also not some crazy leb says, right, I mean, like, by the way,
no one is a liberal in any of this. I mean, and even though jeff has published a lot of things that the Trump administration doesn't like, he is very much ideologically about national security. Sherman says, the risk here for the White House is they are prodding.
Jeffrey Goldberg into releasing the entire thread.
Well, I don't think that he will because he's a patriot and he's not going to do that. And if he did do that, they're legal jeopardy. So I don't think he's going to do that. But I think right now the question is who will they escape?
Goat?
Who's Donald Trump going to blame? You know, he's too invested in Pete Hegsith, who, by the way, is disgracing himself. Are they going to throw Mike Walls under the bus? I still think that they're going to circle the wagons because as we know, Trump has limited loyalty, but he will never acknowledge that he made a mistake. He will never concede that he's screwed up here. So they're in a trick box at the moment.
Yeah, we are living in a perfect storm here right Like you have a bunch of federal workers who are demoralized and defenestrated, right They've been fired, been rehired, They're furious, they are terrified. You have an administration that is super incompetent and needs them, needs federal workers to protect them. It is only a matter of time before this whole thing implodes spectacularly.
You would hope. So I feel we've had this conversation. Over the last ten years, they tend to escape.
But even Trump one point zero, there were so many scandals like this.
Well, and also you had a million people who ended up dying of COVID. You know, there is that. I think that the thing to watch is that once that sense of vulnerability begins to grow, maybe people will stop bending the knees so quickly. Because right now there's the sort of the sense not sort of the sense I mean among law firms and universities and politicians that resistance is futile, that you cannot stand up against the borg. Therefore you need to cut the best deal that you can.
But but what happens if you begin to see that you know, they're weak, they are vulnerable. You know, if we actually do push back against them, they might back off. The vulnerability is the key thing here, and also the recognition that these people are idiots, these people are not competent. I think there was a sense growing in people's heads like, man, they have a plan, they have this blueprint, you know, and they're moving so much quicker, and they have a
strategy and we are in disarray. Well, they may have a strategy, but that doesn't mean, they're not idiots, and this is really important to cling to.
No, I agree, and I think it's really worth just like talking about this for another minute, which is these people, they are idiots.
They have no plan.
And what we saw in trom one point zero is that resistance works. And what doesn't work is what's happening right now, not resisting giving up saying like ooh, it might be scary for me. The reality is if you push back, they stop. Like That's what we've seen again and again. The reason RFK Junior is the Director of Health and Human Services is in the cabinet is because no one fucking pushed back. Could have Collins, Murkowski and one other any other senator could have pushed back, and that guy.
Would not be right.
Cassidy is a doctor, could have pushed back and none of this would have happened.
So the reality is pushback works.
You have to push back in order to protect our norms and institutions. And by the way, voters want it. Like what we're seeing around the country is democratic.
Voters are furious.
Oh absolutely, there's no question about it. Look, I mean I think the most the most depressing active appeasement was that the big law firm, Paul Weiss. This is a law firm that rakes in two point six billion dollars, but which felt the need to kiss Donald Trump's toes. The assumption, of course, is that somehow this makes them safe, that they won't face the retribution of the federal government.
But the reality is that every time somebody caves in, it emboldens them, It emboldens the jackals, it depresses and demoralizes the other targets. And as soon as Paul Weiss cut that deal, you notice they they issued in order that targets every single law firm in America. I mean they you know, we say they don't have a plan, but they in some ways they do have a plan.
And the plan is to intimidate the federal judiciary, to discredit the justice system, and to intimidate lawyers to think twice that if somebody goes after Molly Jong Faster Charlie Sykes, we better not represent them, because you know that would be an existential threat. So you would hope that the legal profession would understand the stakes and would stand up, because if they did stand up, shoulder to shoulder collective action. I think that I think these guys would back off.
But what they're realizing is they're so timid. They're so timorous that you can split them up and pick them off one at a time. You know that they won't hang together, We'll hang them all separately, and and and that, and that plan is working at least for the moment.
I mean, what's good is that a bunch of other law firms were like fuckio, and we're like, we're not going to do that. And we just have to see more of that, right, Like the President Princeton talked about how he wasn't going to bend the KNAE. We just need to see more of that exactly because the reality with Trump world is if you give in to them, you cannot win.
You will not win. Appeasement does not work exactly.
This is a lesson that should be very very clear. And I guess part of the concern is that there are no limits on what Trump is prepared to do, and he's using the cudgel of the federal government, using government power to coerce private settlements. The corruption is so breathtaking, and I think that there's a loss of faith that it will be held accountable for that. But the reality is that a lot of the things people are caving in to, like when ABC settled the libel suit, CBS
may as well the attacks on the law firms. These are all lawless, they are all unconstitutional. If they actually fought back, I think they would win a lot of what the administration is doing is completely into in a court of law. If people just took a deep breath and said, you know what, you know, we may not want to fight, but we need to have this fight. And if we have this fight, we will win. It's the surrender when you hold the high ground. That's I
think the most disconcerting to me right now. It's like, seriously, guys, you will win these lawsuits. You will win these cases.
Of course, why would you cave.
In unless you're the cowardice and the fear is just you know, penetrated into your bones too deeply.
Yes, exactly, so incredibly true. And I think that's a good point. And remember, you know, Rick Wilson, everything Trump touches sooner or later. You know so many people from Trump one point zero. I mean, think about Rudy Giuliani, like it never ends well for anyone.
Well, I keep waiting for all that. Yes, absolutely and yet people continue to flock to the banner. People keep thinking it's going to be different with me, and right now, let's face it, they feel that the winds that they're back, at least before this incredible fuck with the phone call. I get. My one piece of advice, though, is I do think that it's very important to pick the targets, pick the issues that you want to do it. This issue, I think is extraordinary. This should be a major scandal.
It really undermines everything Trumps said about keeping America safe and keeping America strong. I think what's happening with Social Security is just an extraordinary story. I was on television late last night with somebody I don't remember his name. I don't want to pick on him, but he was saying, you know, they have this concerted plan to undermine social Security. This is what they're doing, and this is why they're
doing it. I completely disagreed. I don't think they had the slightest fucking idea what they're doing with Social Security. I think if you listen to the rhetoric about Social Security, you realize the downside of stalking your administration with completely out of touch, tone deaf billionaires who have no idea what they are messing with. And the headline in the Washington Post about how the cuts are really you know,
bringing the Social Security Administration to the brink of collapse. No, there's a reason why we've always talked about this as America's political third rail. So I think that at some point choose the issues Donald Trump wants to talk about the eighty twenty issues, the issues were eighty percent of the public is behind him, whether it's you know, gang members or whatever. There are eighty twenty issues that he and Elon Musk are on the wrong side of, and Democrats need to really focus on those.
Charlie Sikes, thank you.
It is always a pleasure Molly.
Stephen Vladdock is a CNN contributor, author of The Shadow Docket, and professor at Georgetown University. Welcome to Fast Politics. Welcome back, Steven Dan Molly.
I mean, it's great to be with you. Although I wish we could find like a happier story Sunday, like you know, rainbows and unicorns and Steve Wade's here to tell you all about them.
You had a peace last Sunday in the Times Opinion and I was reading it and I was like, Oh, this guy is so smart and I can just text.
Him and talk to him.
Like, you know, as much as everything sucks, there is something so fucking cool about reading something smart and then knowing that I can actually talk to that smart person about said smart thing.
Isn't that like much of what you write, Molly?
Oh, thank you.
But it is a horrible, horrible time to be a person who believes in the rule of law and American norms and institutions. But and maybe this is me as a cock eyed optimist, but it does feel like we are seeing firsthand why the law matters.
I totally agree with that. I actually think that, you know, if we get through this somehow, there's been a remarkable public exhibit. I mean everywhere you look of why the law matters, of why do process matters, of why institutions matter, of why you know, nerdy things that law professors like
me holler about from the rooftops matter. And you know, maybe it's going to take a lot of time and effort to build back those institutions and those ideals, but at least the costs and the sticks of not having them are now visible for all to see.
I want you to talk about this piece that you wrote last week, which has a completely new title that it did five hundred and forty one comments ago, and you write about all the stuff we need to be worrying about right now. My hottest take is that as much as I love to criticize the Supreme Court, I.
Don't know, do you ever listen to this podcast five to four?
Yep?
Right?
So they hate like they are so.
I mean, I was texting with actually Kate Shaw, who's such a smart writer and lawyer and thinker, and I was saying, like, I feel shitty, but I can only imagine how shitty I would feel if I understood exactly why all of this was illegal. Yeah, that tracks I actually don't think the Supreme Court is. I actually have a little nuggetive faith in them.
I agree with that, Molly, and I say this as someone who has is very closely associated with very strong criticisms of this Supreme Court. I don't have a lot of faith in the Supreme Court, but I have sub faith in the Supreme Court. And I think it's really striking that, you know, Chief Justice Roberts was impelled to actually make this remarkably rare public statement on Tuesday you know,
basically saying, hey, like Trump, knock it off. We don't impeach judges, and we don't talk about impeaching judges just because you don't like their ruins. That's what appeals are for. That may have struck a lot of folks as a remarkably milk toast comment from the Chief Justice. I actually think it was a striking comment, and the fact that he made it at all.
Yeah, I think so too. And actually, I can't believe that was only Tuesday. I thought that was three weeks ago. Like when you said tuesday, I was like, and actually I just looked up your piece and it was from Wednesday.
But yeah, I thought that was a big deal.
And the reason I thought it was a big deal was this Supreme Court has really tried not to ject I think, I mean, except for the insane immunity decision. And in fact, you wrote an entire book about the shadow docket, which you were very critical about. Will you explain to us about the shadow docket and and why this Court sort of tries in a way not to sort of get involved in things that are not exactly on the schedule.
Sure, I mean, so that the shadow docket is just this evocative shorthand that it wasn't even mine. I stole it from Will Bode, who's a conservative calm law professor at Chicago. But the basic point of the book was to help folks to understand all the ways in which the Supreme Court exercises power and how it gained all that power, besides the big fancy, you know, fifty to sixty seventy page decisions that they hand out at the
end of each term. And you know, we've seen Molly a lot of those in the last couple of years that have had massive effects, whether it's you know, the Alabama redistricting cases or the Texas abortion case, or you know,
the first round of the Trump Community case. And I guess you know, one of my real goals is to try to help everybody, you know, whatever your politics and whatever your background, have a better sense for how the Supreme Court operates, and for how much control it has over everything it does, and how that auto shape our perspective and our and our perception of the justices, Which gets back to why you know, someone like me reacts to the Roberts quote perhaps differently from someone who doesn't
watch the Court is closely because it is so clearly out of the norm, and it's so clearly a break from both the Court's protocols and his own normal behavior that it's, you know, it's it really is to some degree the you know, the canary and the coal mine stopping the same. And that's that should in some respects molly alarm us, but also I think in bold in us because it suggests that even John Roberts is calling enough of this.
Yeah, that's right, and he did, he made this statement and then we saw him and bear It rule against some of the more craven of Trump world's plays. So there's really a sense in which the Supreme Court is probably not going to rubber stamp some of the really crazy shit, which again this is still, you know, a sad statement.
But also an important one.
It feels like we're hurtling towards, I mean, with the deportation staff, some kind of slow rolling constitutional crisis maybe.
I mean, I think there's a real question here about just how far the administration really wants to go and pushing this. So the Venezuelan flights to El Salvador. Part of why this has become such a flashpoint is because the administration, for whatever reason, has decided that this is the hill it wants to die on, removing people it
claims to be dangerous Venezuelan gang members. When it turns out, by the way that some of them got picked because they have like real Madrid tattoos, is apparently something that they think they can win on in the court of public opinion. And this is why I think it's so important for folks to understand that, like what really is implicated by those cases is due process. You know, is there a right on the part of someone the government just points at and says you are a Venezuelan gang member.
Does anyone have a right to say, actually, I'm not before they get sent into a Salvadorian prison, Because if the answer is no, then what's to stop the government from pointing at any of us and saying that. But this is why I also think it's like really revealing that this is the case that provoked the Chief Justice. I mean, it was, you know, the judge who's presiding over this litigation in the DC Federal District Court, a
guy named Jeb Bosberg. Is no ideologue, he's no radical, And it was when Trump called for his impeachment that we finally saw the Chief Justice issue of public statement. I don't think that's a coincidence, Molly. I mean, I think you know, the Chief Justice understands that this case too is special among all of the ones that are out there.
Let's talk about that, because so this is a judge. Judge Bosburg was put on the First Court by George w in the second Court by Obama.
So yeah, on the DC's report yet.
Right, so there's something to dislike for everyone.
Or maybe he's just not ideological, right.
So the Press secretary of Trump said he's an Obama judge. Garrett Haig said, actually, he's a deba be a judge. He is actually both, right.
It's both. But also, I mean, we're talking about someone who was a federal prosecutor for a long time. You know, a group of people who are notoriously softies on gang members and territories something.
Yeah.
Right, But also, Mollie, we're talking about someone who was hand picked by Chief Justice Roberts to sit on a couple of very very sensitive courts. The Foreign Intelligent Surveillance Court which does all of like the super classified national security surveillance cases, and a court that's never met, but that exists for cases where the government has to remove a non citizen based on class of information, a court called the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. I mean, John Roberts
picked him. So you know, here's a judge who has just about as good a reputation and about as good a pedigree as you could have for someone who's like buy the book, you know, neutral, well respected, and they're going after him too, and I think there's there's an element of, you know, if they're going to go after him,
they'll go after anybody. And I think that's you know, that gets us back to why I think it was so important, not just what I mean, not even what John Roberts said, but just when he said it.
Yeah, no, it's true. So attacking the judges. We're seeing Elon do this a lot. We're seeing jd. Vance had floated this idea a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was a day ago, or maybe it was yesterday, but about you know that we should just these judges. If the president doesn't have unilateral power over everything, maybe he doesn't have any power and we should just impeach him. But there are some grown ups in the room still despite where we are.
I think that's right. I mean, I'm not sure that grown ups are in the room in the White House, but you know, and I think that's the biggest difference between this administration and the first Trump administration. But there are certainly some outlier federal judges out there, Molly, but there are also a whole bunch of grownups. You mentioned
my piece in the Times. You know, the original headline, which was so much better, was the first time they ever used my headline was the Tom and Daisy Presidency. So it's about Yeah, I like Trump breaking everything. They changed it to make it about the courts. So now it's the courts alone won't save us, which I don't disagree with the kind of changes the point of the piece. But the broader point, though, is that it's not that the courts won't save us, it's that they won't save
us alone. You know. I think it's remarkable as we sit here just over two months into the presidency, and you know, Trump has been subject to just an unprecedented number of temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, and his supporters cry foul and say, well, you know, the courts are out to get us. But my response is no, the courts are responding to an unprecedented amount of lawlessness. That's impressive, but it's also, I think, a temporary condition.
And the question is, you know, how can we get the courts back? How can we help them? And you know, the analogy I keep using is it's like the Trump adminstrations, like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. They're testing defenses went with regard to how much they can get away with and pushing on the courts around. Of course, the mistake that they made in Jurassic Park because they didn't reinforce defences. The question for us is how can we do that?
Right?
It feels like the real issue is how can we protect the courts?
Yeah, so, I think part of how we protect the courts is we have conversations like the one you and I are. We talk about why it's important to have courts. We talk about why do process really is about judicial process? We talk about how and why. You know, just because we might not like the judges doesn't mean that we don't have appreciation for the role that the courts are
supposed to play in our system. You know, two things can be true at once you can be very, very very opposed to our current Supreme Court and believe at the same time that the Supreme Court as an institution plays a critical role in preserved on the rule of law in this country. And I think, you know, making sure everyone understands and leans into that nuance is part of how we backstop them.
Yeah, exactly.
So one of the things that you talk about in this piece is something that I'm a little bit obsessed with, and by a little bit obsessed with, I mean a hate that I'm obsessed with us is this Alien Enemies Act. And the reason why it's one of the many, many, many zombie laws that Trump World when they were working on Project twenty twenty five found and got excited about it.
Seems like very I see legal framework to everyone. But they're still going to try so talk about it and then also talk about the sort of other zombie laws that this crew has teed up.
Sure, I mean, so the Alien Enemy Act, you know, it's a statute, Molly that actually makes a fair amount of sense in the abstract. The idea is that if we're in a war with another country, you don't have to find some special reason to pick up people who are nationals of that country. So during World War Two, we didn't need a special reason to arrest German nationals living in the United States, because we just inherently suspected them.
Right. Unfortunately, Well, let's go.
On, no, I mean, so the problem is that, right, The question is how can you be sure that these
folks are who you say they are? Right? And this is where I think the Trump administration just either was lazy or was totally malicious, because even a cursory perusal of the history of the statute would show anybody that there was a ton of judicial review that during the war eighteen twelve, during World War One, during World War two, literally molly hundreds of cases where people we were holding under this statute walked in the court and said, hey,
I'm not a German, you know, I'm Swiss or I'm American, and courts reviewed that. And I think someone in the administration got the idea that this statute would allow for mass summary removals without hearings, and that's just nonsense based on the text and the history of the statute. So there's like the meta question, which is are we even at war with Trende.
Araba, which we are not, which what I.
Find sort of so remarkably self defeating about the administration's approaches. Even if they somehow convince the courts that the government's entitled to a little bit of difference on that hold your nose squint a little bit, maybe this is enough
of an invasion to get us there. Even if they went on that, you still are required to give judicial review on an individualized basis to everyone who you're seeking to remove, which means they got to go to a judge and show that each of these people are in fact members of Trendi iradwa.
Right.
You know, it's been in bout three times, right, War of eighteen twelve, World War one, World War two, So you would have to have a war.
Yeah, At the risk of just being slightly fair to the Trump administration, you know, the statute does say declared war or invasion or predatory incursion by a sovereign nation or government. And so you know, obviously we're not at war with Venezuela. Obviously we're not being invaded by Venezuela. But if you accepted the premise, and I'm not saying we should, that trend de ar Agua is like effectively
exercising governmental powers. You know, Mollie, it's there are crazier arguments out there than that trenda a Agua is involved in some kind of predatory incursion in the United States.
We're going to agree to disagree. But the one good thing about this is and you are the legal scholar.
I am not, but you.
Do have if you do that they're working on a deal to put non citizens or a handful of you know, I don't think they really care who ends up in there in these Venezuela in prison. And so if they start going to war with Venezuela and they're Venezuela is going to stop lending them put people in their prisons.
Right, And I mean, I don't buy this argument. I'm just saying that it's it's slightly more plausible than some of the other.
Nonsense out there, right, no question.
But the other problem though, is like, so, what made all of those prior invocations different is that you had some affirmative declaration by Congress, Right, so you know war be eighteen twelve, Congress declared war on Great Britain, World War one, Congress declared war on Germany World War two, and so you know, part of the problem that Trump administration has is like, it's one thing when Congress says, yes we're at war or yes we're being invaded, is
something else entirely for the president to say we're being invaded? Trust me. That's why I think this case is so sort of important because to win, the Trump administration has to win on that issue, and then it has to persuade the federal courts that they have no role to play in individualized determinations about whether individual folks are actually members of turned the Aragua in a context in which it is entire obvious what it would mean if that
weren't subject to judicial review. So I just, you know, I think there's a reason why folks like me have sort of singled this case out from all of them as perhaps as big a test of the rule of law as any of the cases we've seen from the Trump adminstration so far, even bigger, I would say, right than Mahmud Khalil, the green card holder from Columbia who was arrested, you know, a week and a half ago.
He's still in a detention facility. Is there any sort of update on that?
Yes, So, Khalil's still in immigration detention in Louisiana. His immigration proceeding is supposed to start this week. The lawsuit that was filed on his behalf in New York was transferred last week from New York to New Jersey because by all accounts, Khalil was in New Jersey at the time that his lawyers filed a habeas petition on his behalf, and you know, law beying this macabre opera. That's the court that has jurisdiction. So we have sort of two
tracks in his case. We have the litigation in New Jersey, which is continuing to proceed on whether the federal courts can sort of preempt the immigration proceedings, and then we have the immigration proceedings, which are scheduled I think to continue, you know, later this week.
Right, this is important case because well, I.
Mean, Khalil's an important case because the government's resting on this crazy authority that it has used so far as we can tell, maybe one or two times before, that would basically allow the Secretary of State to point at any non citizen, no matter their immigration status, and say, I think you should be removed from the country because I've determined that your continuing presence poses a risk to
our foreign policy interests. You know, that would basically give the Secretary of State the unilateral power to remove anybody for any reason, at any time, and so that has problems all its own. What is I think molly different about the Khalil case is that even in that case, the government is not contesting that he's entitled to some
process and a hearing before he's removed. That's why I think the Venezuela cases are such a bigger deal, because, you know, whatever the answers are to these substantive legal questions, if we don't have due process, if we don't have judicial process, then those answers are going to be provided by the president and not by the courts. And that's not how our system was designed, and especially today, I think it's not something any of us should abide.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Really appreciate you, thank you.
That's molly always great to be with you, No.
Mo Jesse canon Smite.
There is this odd thing with RFK that everybody kind of was like, what a freak of nature. You know, this guy's off the deep edd And now there's a lot of people who seem to be like well, what if seed oils are not the greatest thing, and maybe we should just let them do some things. And then there's some of us who studied him closely or are like, this is not a guy you let play around in the lab because the lab could blow up in your face.
Yeah, you know, it's pretty interesting. There's actually a big fight going on right now with MAGA influencers about the idea of banning soda from snap.
I seem to recall that a New York Mayer wanted to just limit the sizes of sodas and these people were pretty mad.
Here's the thing that's fascinating about Kennedy's MAHA stuff, right, is that what he wants to do is I mean, yes, maybe I don't know.
A lot of this stuff is whoey.
You got measles in Texas, it's in New Mexico, it's in like a bunch of different states. You know, we've had some children die of it. We have Robert F. Kennedy Junior musing about how cod liver oil might be a good fixed for this this This guy is wrong about most things, but and I would like to point this out, I do think the one thing about him is that he has eaten a lot of roadkill. So you know, maybe he's right about ceed oil, But honestly,
I think this guy is a pretty big grifter. What I'm struck by when we talk about all of this kind of stuff is, in my mind, what is the most interesting here is that we're seeing lobbyists. What happens is like, for example, with the soda stuff, it turns out that a lot of soda is bought on snap. I know you'll be shocked to hear this, but food stamspy a lot of soda. So if they ban food samspying soda, it's going to be a real kick to like the soda companies.
This is happening with a lot of.
Different stuff right, Like for example, they wanted to ban TikTok. TikTok got a ton of lobbyists. Now they're not going to ban TikTok. And that's happening with everything. For example, universities, right a lot of these universities are worried that Trump World is going to change the irs structure because right now they don't have to pay taxes on their endowments, or they don't have to pay a sort of market level tax on their endowments. Here's the question, right, So
now you're seeing more and more university hiring lobbyists. It's not that MAGA is getting money out of politics. It's that MAGA is getting more money into politics. Look, just the anti vax stuff is a real sign that Washington
will just do whatever they think is popular. What we're going to see and what we're seeing and what you know between the NIH cuts, I mean, look, these NIH cuts are going to mean that we're missing years and years of study for Alzheimer's and cancer and the cancer you get now there could be a cure that is not happening because fucking Elon Musk said that they should limit the grants, the indirect funding for these grants. I mean, that is what we're living with right now. So the
anti vax stuff is bad. The NIH stuff is bad. You know, almost everything Kennedy is doing is bad. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.