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 White House has paused all federal grants.
We have such a great show for you today.
Talking points memos, Josh Marshall looks into how Trump's spending freeze impacts everyday American life, and we'll talk to California Attorney General Rob Bonta about how Democratic augees are writing back against Trump.
And first the news Somalie saying I told you so in this era is a not very helpful thing to do. It's, if anything, I think, depressing. But all we have seen for days on days is just Project twenty twenty five coming true exactly how we said it would, and it makes me want to slam my head into a table more than anything else.
What I would say is this, It's not surprising.
It's week two of Trump and Trump is now implementing some of the nuts and bolts of Project twenty twenty five. You and I know all about this because we did a whole YouTube series on this in July about Project twenty twenty five. So none of us are particularly surprised by this. But it is chaotic and upsetting and pretty much exactly what we thought it would be. So I just want to talk for a minit about the ethos of Project twenty twenty five. So Project twenty twenty five,
it was called the Mandate for Leadership. It was a large book of ideas, a sort of wish list of the things that Republicans desperately wanted, and on that wish list the idea. And Thomas Zimmer, who was a Georgetown professor, talked to me about this this summer and he pointed out that the whole idea here is that the first Trump administration was of policy failure, that they weren't able to implement the really radical stuff that they wanted to do,
and that was Project twenty twenty five. As people started to google it, it got very unpopular because they started to learn about it, and what they learned was that Project twenty twenty five is largely.
About removing a lot of.
The social safety net that was put in to practice by FDR Right, A lot of the stuff that is either set up to protect people to give them a possibility where there's something between, like you know, to get them back on their feed. That that needed to go, and I want to add that that needed to go
to make way for tax cuts for very rich people. Remember, Trump is pruning the federal government, not because the federal government doesn't work, but because really, really, really rich people do not want to have to pay taxes at thirty eight to forty forty five percent. They want to pay taxes at twenty percent ten percent. And for them to do that, that would mean that the federal government has to do less stuff for people. And so part of
this is enacting the product the Project twenty twenty five agenda. Now, in the first Trump administration, there was a guy who was the head of the Office of Management of Budget and the OMB. The Office of Management and Budget is set up to duel out the money that Congress puts towards different things. The idea is that Congress is supposed to decide what money goes to what. But what happened when Russ Faugh was the head of OMB the last time was that he decided he didn't think money should
go to Ukraine. Money that Congress had allocated to Ukraine, he decided that it shouldn't and so he held that money and ultimately that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment, right the quid pro quote no aid for Ukraine if you can't get me dirt on Joe Biden. Oh how I long for those halcyon days of the first Trump impeachment. Anyway, Well, we still had a mainstream media and a few Republicans
in Congress who were not total shills for Donald Trump. Anyway, the point of this story is that now we have Russ Vought. He's waiting for Senate confirmation that is supposed
to happen on Thursday. This timing is not so good for him because if there are any Republicans who have a spine, and maybe there are two, and perhaps there are more, if you call them every day, I mean I'm saying, like, if you jam their phone lines and you call your senator right now, or call your congressman right now, and you just keep calling, even if they're a Republican, they get hundreds of thousands of Jesse.
You know this, Jesse.
What happens when members of Congress get hundreds of thousands of phone calls.
They get very very shock. And we've seen proof of this before that a lot of the time when you're getting these calls, it is not going to pause your deepest conviction. Like the thing people get wrong about this is that when you are as Zella, Mike Pence has not changed his mind on abortion, but something he's squishy on and doesn't really care that much about, like whether Cash Bettel gets through or not, Well that might change
a mark Wayne Mullen if they fear the wrath. I think there's gonna be a lot of wrath felt this week about Medicaid, which we're going to be talking about soon. That with the congressional phone lines getting flooded right now. And I know this because I'm married to somebody who takes these calls, it's very very very very easy to sway them on the things they are persuadable on.
So anyway, the point of this is that if you.
Call your senator, if you call your congressman, and you say to them, do not approve Russ Bobb, do not go along with letting Donald Trump have the power of the purse, because Congress is really giving.
Away its power here and that is what we're seeing.
Anyway. So this omb memo came out yesterday. It says that five o'clock on Tuesday, which is when we are taping this, but you will be listening to this on Wednesday. It says at five o'clock on Tuesday, all federal.
Grants and loans will paused.
So all White House federal grants loans will be paused by five o'clock unless there is a court injunction. I believe, and again I could be wrong. You guys know, if
you listen this podcast, you know I'm never wrong. But except when I am, I believe that what's happening here is that there's going to be an injunction and that this is going to have a code to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court is going to look at it on the shadow docket because what Donald Trump I actually think wants to do here is a repeal of the nineteen seventy four Impoundment Act, which made it so that
the president could not stop congressionally allocated money from being distributed.
I actually think this is a legal play.
As much as it's trying to freak everyone out, I also think it is a legal play.
Yeah, I don't think that's wrong. Somali, I am a Doo, follows the AI thing very very closely. Starting around Friday night, everybody started talking about this deep seek thing that happened from China, where China basically made an AI model for one one hundredths two one one thousandth of what many of these AI people were talking about building something like
this for that is much more efficient. Now while some people have said it has some holes in it, that is kind of a team of AI in that it looks really nice but has some very big falls when you look under the hood. But Trump was about to give five hundred billion dollars in AI initiative, and uh oh, that's not looking so on.
Yeah, so again, this is another Chinese app that's causing problems in America.
Not to be confused with TikTok. We don't know what the play is.
We don't really know how good this AI is and whether it's better than the homegrown American AI, but we do know that China is yet again perhaps eating our lunch.
Maybe not, we'll see.
I think the most interesting thing though, is Nvidia's stock falling by over six hundred billion dollars in a day, being one of the largest losses, and really a lot of people feel like this is now Trump putting a very bad investment from our text dollars into something and yet to get a funnel towards rich people.
I mean, the only thing I would say is we don't know if it's real or not. Because you'll remember that Trump trotted out that Sawbank CEO in twenty seventeen too, So who knows, I mean, I.
Wouldn't you know.
Maybe he made the investment, maybe he just had pretended to make the investment.
No one knows, No one knows, solid point.
Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome back to the podcast, Josh Marshall.
Thanks for having me.
I had always thought that Project twenty twenty five was the plan because they kept saying project twenty twenty five is the plan, except when Trump was like, no, no, never heard of it, never heard of it.
Yeah, I mean it was run out of his campaign basically, so that was always a good indication.
By his people.
Yeah. Well, I mean almost literally out of his campaign.
But yeah, yeah, is this the day that the American people like sort of thread the needle and are like, oh wow.
Well, I think last night is when we saw, you know, the collision come into view. I'm not sure that a lot of people are going to realize it today because I'm not sure that the headlines that people are seeing are quite making it clear in that case. I'm not even sure in every case that that is a failure of the media. Although there's plenty of that to go around.
It's difficult to capture quite what's happening. I mean, I think the you know, substantively what the president is doing is he's doing kind of a unilateral government shutdown on steroids. It is both less than a government shut down in some ways and very much more in other ways, and that obviously has all sorts of implications. Again, it takes a lot for things to break through to people, but I think we're I think we're pretty much there, because this is going to show up pretty quickly in a
lot of areas. There are the hot button things, and then there are the more in some ways more mundane things but that people will see in their own neighborhoods, in their own lives.
I just want to pause for a minute and talk about how this is actually kind of legal, right. It's strange, it's unusual, but it's also technically like, I mean, I know, Donald Trump doesn't really care. There is a thing the Impoundment Control Act of nineteen seventy four, a post Nixon anti corruption statute, which created a world where the president cannot withhold funds because he wants to.
Now, Russ vought in Trump one point zero.
You'll remember he withheld the money for Ukraine and that led to Trump's first impeachment.
Right, Well, there's two levels of this. First of all, what he's doing here is on its face, I think on constitutional this isn't just a matter of statute law, and it's not just a technicality. Basically, I think most people would agree that a president has some discretion at the margins of how to what pace to spend moneys that are appropriated and ordered to be spent by Congress.
At the margins is the key thing. After President Nixon tried to do very small and focused versions of what President Trump appears to be doing now, and that led to creating this Impoundment Act that you just referred to. And what that act does is it basically says that if the president wants to say, okay, this, I'm going to slow down or stop this one area of funding, he has to go to Congress and get approval for that.
So that's what that is. No one at the time envision this, which is basically I'm going to stop all spending everywhere for everything, which is basically what he's doing. But I think the key thing to understand here is that this isn't just a matter of violating the Impoundment Act,
which the administration will certainly say is unconstitutional. It's also what he's doing here is unconstitutional and in the most basic level that the Congress is in charge of spending, that's where spending is decided, and what he's doing here. If the president can do this, the Congress's control over spending becomes basically meaningless.
Right.
So it's taking away power from a co executive branch, which was again part of Project twenty twenty five. Right, the idea was give as much power as possible to the presidency, stripped the executive branches from their power, make him the boss, the big boss. I'm curious now here we are. We've sort of gone down this rabbit hole
the reading reporting. You know, the Republicans in the House are having a meeting in durral in the Trump deraw right under the floodpath to talk about their legislative agenda, which is largely a tax cut for very rich people and trying to take stuff away from the federal government, you know, trying to cut Medicare and trying to do anything they can to save money so they can give
these billionaires a tax cut. The reporting I've read so far shows that the Republicans are pretty reticent to challenge Trump, despite the fact that there is no world in which any of this is okay. Are you surprised at all?
I'm not surprised. There's clearly no appetite to challenge him at all. I think that I'm only surprised at what he's doing in the sense that he is doing it on a blanket level, which will not only hit the things that he wants to hit, but will hit the things that I think he's much more indifferent hitting, but will show up pretty dramatically for people everywhere.
It's the chaos of Trumpism.
Right, It's the chaos of it. And I think that at the scale in which you know, as of eleven forty three on Tuesday morning, he seems to be doing it, it will have pretty dramatic and immediate not only showing up when, like you know, the local daycare center has to shut down like next week, but also will be
a big jolt to the economy. This is going to have effects that people are going to see, and at that point, we're going to have to see what everybody wants to do about it, because I think we have seen very clearly, if it comes to a norm or what you know, I guess we now call technical illegalities, Republicans don't care. You know, they don't care when it
comes to things you're relative in long term care. If the long term care facility shuts down again next week, people are going to see that, right, and then you're going to have to That's a different kind of conversation. And I don't have any certain expectations what that conversation is going to produce. It's but it's a different conversation, and I think that's that's why this is a This
is a big deal. This isn't like, oh, we're gonna you know, we're not going to send you know, some anti tank missiles to some country you've never heard about.
You It's actually like aid to your grandma, which she's been getting this whole time, and now she's not going to get it because Donald Trump says.
Now, well, Molly, let me say one additional thing that I think is important for people to think about most cancer research in this country. Trials that cancer research, basic research, all of it. Most of it's funded by the federal government. What this does it immediately stops all of it. And that just doesn't mean things in the distant future. That means things will stop because the people doing the research don't know when the next check is going to come.
So these things are again things that most people who are casual observers of politics think that these are things that are just kind of on autopilot that are never affected, but they will be effected if what he is now saying he will do he actually does.
This is the accelerationist case for trump Ism. If Donald Trump were John Roberts and he were very cunning and wanted to slowly dismantle the administrative state so that no one would notice, we would be looking at a very different week two, right, we'd be looking at a week two that was don't worry, those Democrats are such liars. We just want to trim the fat of the federal government. But that's not what Donald Trump is, right. Donald Trump has moved fast and break things. So what we're looking
at is a real sea change. Right, we're looking at a real American government that will be much smaller if they're able to pause almost all of it.
Smaller is an understatement less functional, right, Well, think of it this way in terms of what is not affected, what does not appear to be affected is a the military, and b salaries or government employees, which obviously is the big deal to government employees. And then direct payments from Social Security and medicare okay, those things right there are most of the federal budget. But that leaves kind of
everything else the government. The federal government does, and a huge part of what the federal government does is contract for lots of things to happen. It gives money to state and local governments to do various things, run schools, run hospitals, blah blah, blah, blah blah. A lot of medicaid is in the form of grants. It's not to individual people. So it's not just that it'll be smaller
and less functional. In a basic way, it'll stop doing almost everything it does because everything that it does outside of again the military and checks to those two programs, and that's only direct checks. The check that actually goes to you personally, there's a lot of stuff that is grants to hospitals and blah blah blah blah blah. So it is honestly a little hard to understand exactly what their plan is is. I think basically what they're really
trying to do here is two things. One is force the principle that the president is in charge of all spending. So take that power back. And once you take the power back, you know, you probably decide, Okay, I want to do this, that and the other, but first you
want to kind of set the principle. The other thing is I think that they want to take all of these different kinds of spending and have the stakeholders, you know, hospitals when it comes to Medicaid and medicare, schools around the country when it comes to all that funding, blah blah blah blah. Wants to get all these stakeholders to kind of come hat in hand to the president, well, you know, what can you do to make it worth his while? Those, I think are the two things that
are going on here. Because this doesn't just go to fund the woke mind virus right or whatever they call it. It funds a lot of things that they want too. Yeah too, and again I think, look, people don't like answer, right, It's very unpopular. And I think that when you hear something like that, because look, I mean in a more serious vein. Obviously, cancer has impacted all of our lives, some more directly than others. But when you hear something
like that, that's shocking. But that's what this does, and it's not an exaggeration. It shuts all of that off. So it's going to get everybody's attention.
And I think.
It's worth just pausing for a moment and talking about how the things that the federal government does besides cancer research FEMA, right, I'm thinking about the stuff that in the Health Department, a lot of that stuff. Trump said he had a mandate, and the mandate was He's going to make things cheaper, right, like that we were going to if there was anything that was all a little bit of a mandate, it was this idea that was going to make things cheaper.
So here we are.
Now we have this bird flu, right, which is all these chickens have to die because they are spreading this bird flu.
So that is a thing that.
Will actually make eggs even more expensive. So that is a thing that the federal government has been monitoring, and if it's on pause, that is going to increase the likelihood that there will be more unmonitored cases of bird flu.
Am I right, yeah, I mean the bird flu situation is very ominous. Even if you figure none of this was happening. You know, the big thing happened almost a year ago now where it moved into the cattle. That seems to be ongoing, So that is a big, big deal even if none of this was happening. I don't know offhand the precise mix of surveillance and monitoring on that front that is from you know, government employees versus
grants and loans and blah blah blah blah blah. But putting a huge jolt into the federal bureaucracy short circuiting a lot of the funding will unquestionably hobble that effort. There's no way it can't. It's difficult to describe how widespread this is, and again, as with so many things with Trump, it's a little hard to say is this going to still be the policy tonight? How carefully was this thing written? If you look at it, it doesn't seem terribly carefully written. And by that I'm not trying
to kind of give people, you know, solace. Like the point is is that this is really coming into the classroom with the battle axe and you're swinging it around and like, are you going to kill all the kids? Well, you know it's not great, but it's so jagged. Who knows exactly who's going to get hit?
Right? And this is the move fast and break things right.
This is like by design set up to be non specific and to be you know, quite problematic. I want to talk through something with you that happened this weekend, which was the appointment of Pete Heagseth to the DoD. He is unqualified, he is likely has some issues with the drink. He has certainly some many allegations of sexual misconduct, and perhaps.
More are violence misconduct.
Right, Yeah, there's just many reasons to be skeptical of disappointment for any number of reasons. I want to talk for a minute about Mitch McConnell voting against him, because despite the fact that Tillis was expected to vote against him, and then somehow, after meeting with him for two hours, he decided it wasn't Who knows what the calculus there was, But I'm just curious what you think about the idea that Mitch mcconnald voted against him and what you think that could portend.
It may pretend that we are entering the dark Mitch era for Trump, Right, that's possible. We know who Mitch McConnell is. We've lived with Mitch McConnell back deep into the Obama era. Having said that, it is also true that many of the things that are happening right now are going so far rogue that it shouldn't surprise us if extremely conservative, extremely cynical people say is a bit much for me, I can't go with you on Matt thing.
Having said that, Having said that, plus, I think it's clear that you know Mitch McConnell has a bit of a polio. Is a bit of a sore point for Mitch mcconnal's.
Many people are saying, yes.
Yeah, exactly, So that is an issue. Having said that, there's also another possibility, and I think this is actually something coming up with RFK Junior specifically, there's one scenario where someone like Mitch McConnell says, hey, I can't support this guy. I'm going to vote no, or in the background says I'm not going to like try to actually
sink it for you. There's another scenario, and I'm against talking specifically about the Kennedy confirmation process, where what I hear from people who are kind of working that confirmation on the anti side is that they think there are potentially as many as six or seven Republicans who will
vote against him. So what they are working on now is they are trying to do everything they possibly can to make sure there are no democratic defections, because if there are democratic defections, it's much easier for Publicans just to say, hey, if you guys, aren't you know, just
to go ahead with all of that. There is also they're looking very closely at McConnell because again, he probably votes against But there's a scenario where again McConnell says, indirectly to the White House, I'm going to vote against, but I'm not really going to try to, you know, screw you guys here and make it fail, or he can say I'm actually going to use my remaining influence and try to get those six or seven to vote no.
So I don't know quite where. I don't think we know yet where McConnell's is on that spectrum of doing just his votes, kind of sending a you know, kind of a vote for posterity and legacy or is it something a little more And I don't think we I don't think we know yet.
I agree. I also American Democracy the final season. Stay tuned everyone. Yeah, Oh, thank you, Josh Marshall.
Thanks a lot.
Rob Banta is the Attorney General of California. Welcome too fast politics. You're actually general, right General Banta?
Attorney General Banta A G. Banta?
In general you are general though, right general?
So you are the general of the great State of California, fifth largest economy in the world. So this summer we interviewed a bunch of attorneys generals and we talked to them about the plans that you guys have put together for what would happen if Donald Trump was elected.
And are of doing these.
Post constitutional to quote Russ Vought, sort of jiu jitsu on the federal government. So talk us through is this what you thought it would be? Is it worse than you thought it would be? And explain to us what is exactly happening here.
It's what I expected.
Yeah, And when I say that, I mean unfortunately day one and the immediate days that followed actions that violated the law, violate the constitution. That's his brand, that's what he does. It's what he did in Trump one point zero.
It's what he said he would do.
It's what he said he would do.
He channeled it, he indicated it the whole time and telegraphed it. Now he's doing it, so not a surprise. And the Attorney generals, the Democratic attorney's general in the United States, have been working together for months preparing for the possibility of this moment and now the reality of
this moment. We've been meeting, we've been thinking, we've been looking at what he says he's going to do, what is inner Circle says he is going to do, what Project twenty twenty five indicates he might do, and preparing
for every scenario so that we're ready. And we believe that preparedness and readiness is the best antidote to the threats that are coming, and we should be ready as soon as an action is taken that we believe was unlawful to go to court to stop him, and we did that with the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order on day one he issued it.
The end of the.
Day on day one of his inauguration. The next morning, we were in court with the filing. We had the briefing and the filing ready. We just had the dot, the i's, cross the t's press print and file it. Because he said he would do it. We prepared for that scenario and we are ready to file now. We have a restraining order of stopping him from the unconstitutional executive order attacking birthright citizenship, and that's.
Our plan for all the things he might do. Now.
Will he surprise us with something up a sleeve that he hasn't talked about that he decides during the course of his administration to do. For sure, we'll be ready for that too. We're watching every action that he takes, including the Office of Management and Budgets memo last night, and we'll be ready to act as appropriate on any action he takes that's unlawful.
So I'm wondering if you could explain to us a little bit about since you're in California, I wonder how surprised you were when he started going after FEMA.
Not surprised, certainly disappoint it. I think very unfortunate to even go down that route and consider conditioning funding for disaster relief when people have lost everything and are in pain, and when there's a tradition in the United States of America for the federal government for presidents too immediately and decisively and quickly deploy massive resources to states hurt by disaster. President Biden did that for Florida and for Texas when
they were hit with devastating hurricanes. That was the right thing to do. He didn't ask if they were Red states or blue states. He said they were with Americans who need help, and they deserve it, and they're going to get it. That's exactly what mister Trump should be doing here. He ran for and is the president of the United States of America, not the president of the Red States of America and the Blue states. If they do the things he wants and follows the right conditions,
that's not how it works. So he's trying to condition FEMA funding on a potential voter id law when there's absolutely no evidence of any widespread voter fraud, or on a new water policy when there is nothing about California's water policy that helped they contributed to the fires in La So entirely different policies unrelated to the fire at hand, and a potential distancing and different approach than what every president of the United States of America has done before.
So it's a dangerous game.
It's inappropriate, and I think and expect that he will provide the funding because of the disaster, and he came to La. Our governor met him on the tarmac, met with leaders in La. He was able to survey the damage, and I hope and believe that after seeing that damaged, destruction, devastation, the pain that Americans are in, he will do what every president has done before and provide the fighting without conditions.
California pays more into the federal tax system than it gets out now. Right now, it needs a gazillion dollars because the fires. But historically, you guys are a like New York where I live a net. You guys take care of the red states that don't pay as much into federal taxes.
So I'm wondering if you can.
I mean, there must be like a palpable anger even from Republicans in California about how unfair it is to pay so much into the federal government and then in your hour of need be you know, nickeled and.
Dimed hundred percent.
We are a massive donor state, the fifth largest economy in the world, the tenth pole of the American economy. We give more, far more billions and billions of dollars more to the federal fisk and purse than we receive back in federal funding. We subsidize other states, many of them happen to be red states, including the great State of Louisiana, where Speaker Johnson is from. And he's talking
about conditioning the FEMA funding. Very ironic that he might be doing that given the state that he's from, in the state that he's talking about, California and Louisiana, it's well known in California that we are a donor state and that we put money into the federal government's fisk, and that in a time of need, like a national disaster, we should be receiving the funding, no questions asked. So of course it's disappointing, it's frustrating. Unfortunately, it's not surprising.
We think we're going to work through this. Mister Trump is talking about certain conditions, but I think when it comes down to it, the funding will be provided without conditions.
So there are a couple of issues here. One is this sort of extra legality of it. One is this certain kind of political calculus of it. Do you talk to Republicans and do they see how this could hurt them in the state.
Yeah, and Republicans in the state are asking for funding from FEMA without conditions, rightfully so, and I'm grateful that they are. They're fighting for their state. They don't want their state to be treated differently than every other state that's ever received disaster relief in America.
They want us to get the funding.
There are people hurt by these wildfires from both parties. Wildfires don't see party. They just ripped through communities and destroyed everything and took everything from Republicans and Democrats alike. And it doesn't matter what your party is, Your people, your Americans, and you should receive the funding and that should be the end of it.
I wonder if you could sort of talk us through some of the other things at the federal level that we're seeing Trump World, you know, trying to pull back. So, for example, tonight at five o'clock, there has been an omb memo which will pause almost all discretionary spending in the federal government period paragraph, what can you do as a state attorney's general for your state?
And what does this look like? And how destabilizing is this?
It's very destabilizing. It's a shocking act of unlawfulness. It threatens students in college who are only in school because they have federal student loans.
Those are pelgrams, right, that's right.
And also children who receive subsidized food programs like Snap. And these are programs that need to flow consistently with certainty, not be paused or stopped without any notice without there being great harm being done. And the President, unfortunately has shown and continues to show, both in the Trump administration at one point zero and the current Trump administration, that he likes to do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. And that doesn't fit well with our
democratic structure. It doesn't fit well with separation of powers, with checks and balances, with the rule of law, with the Administrative Procedures Act, with budget being allocated and restricted for certain purposes and not for others, and so he ends up violating the law consistently. Unfortunately, it's not a lot to ask and shouldn't be a lot to ask. To ask for a president who complies with the law,
who follows our constitution. We my office, the California Department of Justice, sued him over one hundred and twenty times in the Trump one point zero administration, and we won over two thirds of the time, meaning a federal judge, a neutral decided that mister Trump was breaking the law two thirds of those times, and a judge found that already with his day one action attacking birthright citizenship. So his action, which he seeks to be effective at five o'clock today.
Is very damaging.
There's a lot of real lives that would be adversely impacted, severely harmed, and we are looking at all of our options. We' working through the night to be honest with other states preparing potential actions based on the illegality of his action.
Can you explain to us sort of what a Californian's life will look like if Trump's federal government free is like, it won't just be college, It'll be like, for example, I'm thinking about, like if you're in a clinical trial, if you rely on any kind of research, if you write, I mean, what other aspects of everyday life do the federal government control for people in California?
I mean the same that they impact every American in every state. As you mentioned, there's massive grants and federal outlays for health and human services, for research, for the safety net, healthcare programs, for Medicare and Medicaid, and you know, there's Social Security. But I think he's specified in the memo that some of those things will be exempted. But I'm painting the picture of the mass of social service, safety net and set of services and programs that affect
everyone's life in some way. You know, students in higher education, those seeking federal anti poverty support, or food programs or federally subsidized housing, you know, whether it's housing, food, healthcare, the basics that the things that everyone needs to survive. They're potentially at risk based on one seemingly arbitrary and capricious decision made by the President when he doesn't even
have the authority to make that decision. So it's a dangerous game he's playing, and he's violating the law in the process.
We knew it because we knew about Project twenty twenty five. But it's still completely crazy, right, I mean, to see it happen, to see that they're actually doing it is kind of nuts. What other things are you looking at besides this dismantling of the federal government.
Well, looking at all the things, certainly immigration a big area that the Corump administration has flagged for action, and.
They're trying to get to have people sort of see as much immigration as possible, right, Like they want the raids on television. They had doctor Phil in bed, famous immigration reporter, Doctor Phil. They are hoping to get more attention than they're necessarily deporting, right because for example, those deportation flights to Columbia have been going on forever. The fact that they were turned around. Now this one flight was turned around was largely because it was a military plane.
Right.
Yeah, they're trying to you know, there's a lot of performative politics here, a lot of showmanship as opposed to real substantive progress over years past. This president is a showman, he's a salesman. He's trying to sell his agenda and show that he's doing something by putting it on TV, by bringing military to the border. And I will point out the massive hypocrisy in his rhetoric versus his action. Talked about going after undocumented criminals and that would be
his focus that would be his priority. But on day one, he went after American citizens and children with the executive order attacking birthright citizenship. He went after children learning and the faithful praying and patients healing in hospitals and schools and churches. With his revocation of the memo preventing immigration
enforcement at sensitive sites. He went after those folks who were participating and fully vetted and approved in legal immigration programs where they were seeking refuge in asylum after facing persecution and violence in their home country. So what he is doing is not consistent with what he has said he will do, and he's creating a lot of damage in the process. We're looking at the use of the military when it comes to immigration and whether it's being
used lawfully. We're certainly looking at reproductive freedom. His Safe Mens and Project twenty twenty five talk about the weaponization of the Comstock Act, the revocation of approval of FDA for abortion medication, a potential national abortion ban. So we're looking at all those spaces. We're looking at see what he does on firearms, particularly ghost guns. He could take a different position than the ATF under Biden did when it comes to treating ghost guns.
Like what they are guns.
We're looking at what he does on the Department for the Department of Education and his statement that he wants to defund them DEI, the LGBTQ plus community. So there's many areas where he has started to act with some of his executive orders or acted already or said he will act, and we're monitoring all of them.
Can you just talk us through, like, for example, let's talk through birthrights citizenship.
Talk us through what you're doing now on that.
Sure?
Yeah, our north star is what mister Trump doing unlawful.
If it's not, there's nothing for us to do.
If it is, we'll take him the court to make sure he complies with the law birthrights citizenship. That executive order on day one is a example of him taking a clearly and blatantly unconstitutional, unlawful action, and we took him to court immediately, as he should have been, and we have restrained that unconstitutional action immediately.
So he issued an.
Executive order he attacked a fundamental constitutional right, the right that says that all persons born in the United States of America are American citizens, and he threatened in a prospective way, thousands of children to be born in the United States, including about twenty five thousand per year in California, who otherwise would be American citizens, but because of his order, they will not be, and that means they won't have access to things like the Children's Health Insurance program CHIP
or Medicaid, or subsidized housing, or the student loan programs or subsidized food programs. They will be deportable immediately. They can't work legally, can't vote, can't serve un injury, can't run for office, can't have a Social Security number, we
can't have a passport, and we sued. Over twenty states sued in two different courts, and one of those courts two days later issued a temporary restraining order preventing the implementation of Trump's executive order, and in the process saying that in the last four decades on the bench, and this is a President Reagan Republican appointee, said he'd never seen a clearer case that it was so clear that
the federal government was violating the law. He said his mind was boggled that the US Department of Justice attorneys could even come to court and make these arguments, and said it was a blatant violation in the Constitution and stopped it from being implemented.
You know, that's what Trump is doing.
That's what Republican appointees on the bench are saying he's doing. And that's what attorneys general will do. We'll take him to court when he breaks the law and stop him immediately to make sure he's lawfully compliant.
Thank you, Attorney General Fonta, Thank.
You now momently.
Jesse Cannon Molly.
I never like when we have to long for the days of donass don't tell being a policy that's that's ridiculous. So Trump has declared transgender soldiers unfit for the US military.
Yeah, I mean I saw this coming. It's not a huge shock. Trump has been at war with people who are transgender. This is a very stupid, shitty thing. He wants to punish people who are trans because of course he does, because the cruelty is the point, and none of us should be surprised. It appears to prohibit thousands of transgender members from serving in the military, citing issues of physical and mental readiness.
I mean, they'll just say whatever.
It's just so incredibly shitty and unsurprising and welcome to Trump two point zero, where all of his worst ideas flourish.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode to see if those sirens that and going off the entire segment. If it was just Molly getting taken.
Away, that was good.
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