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 Steve Bennon says, billionaire CEOs or supplicants to Trump, we have such a great show for you today. Democracy Dockets. Markellized stops by to talk about the legal battles of the Trump two point zero era. Then we'll talk to the Brennan Centers Michael Waldman about what.
This whole thing is going to look like. But first the news.
Somali the big, big controversy on the internet. Of course over the weekend, there was lots of them, but one of them really was that TikTok was banned for a few whole hours. What are you seeing happening here?
You and I are on both different sides of the TikTok fiasco.
You are a TikToker, I am not.
I'm a TikToker who believes it should be sold to a US A company.
The company.
Yeah yeah, so but whatever, we can both agree that how this has been handled by Biden world is words.
I mean, who disagrees with that?
At this point? Nobody disagrees with it. I think even Biden would be like, whoops.
So what happened here was both branch is the House and the Senate said we need to ban TikTok.
It's owned by the Chinese government.
There's no aggmirate transparency, there's no transparency at all, and so we pretty much everyone was like, this has to stop. One of the very few times that our government chose to legislate, and it was enacted today, the ban, and soon after, like Lucy with.
The fucking football, Donald Trump.
Was teed up to undo the ban via executive order.
And there was enough latitude with.
The way that the law's written that it's not actually technically illegal. He's not using his executive order to break a law because it's not written quite so clearly.
But so now TikTok is is bad and Trump.
Is it looks like a hero to anyone under the age of thirty. And this is why Democrats, while having very good ideas, still continue to lose elections.
Congratulations, guys, that was that was not of it.
We should say, so TikTok is back for ninety days after he does this order. But they would still suppose they need to sell the at least fifty percent of the company to you a US company to have a holding in it.
Yes, and Donald Trump has some of the the Byteedance, which is the company that owns TikTok. People up on the dais with him during the inauguration, so you can see where Donald.
Trump comes down.
Great stuff. So in other tech, nice work if you can get Trump tech news. He launched a scam coin, a meme coin whatever we want to call it, and is now twenty five billion dollars richer.
Yes, trump coin.
And there was a great headline in the FT which proclaimed and I think this is pretty great. The president elect of the United States is promoting a shit coin. So that's from FT. That's something. Let me tell you a shit coin. Yes, And from that shitcoin he has made twenty five billion dollars and also lost the respect of a lot of crypto people for whom crypto is actually a real thing, including the guy who owns Barstool Sports, who is Dave Fortnoy yet not a feminist icon by
any stretch of the imagination. Very mad about Trump's shit Now? Is he mad because he himself can't launch a shit coin?
Who knows?
I'm going to read you what I just I have a dumb two part question This is from Dave port Noi Feminist Icon. What's the difference between the Hawk two coin, which was Tua whatever, the Hawk Tua coin and the Trump coin besides nothing? And then part two?
Can I string up my.
Own coin now and tell people it's a Ponzi scheme from the jump and I'm going to pull the rug at some point anyway, The point is welcome to the resistant feminist icon.
Dave Portnoy.
Yes, And for people who are in fluent, the Hawk to a Girl who became meme famous that pull did a meme coin has now been in hiding ever since she did it because she got such a huge backlash.
Right. She also she was a Ponzi scheme.
So congratulations Donald Trump, You and the Hawk to a Girl have have more in common than not.
I could see it. So the other big scam news though, is that Trump's inauguration has been moved in doors through rotunda, where now they will be able to keep two hundred million dollars of contributions.
My hottest take is they're going to keep a lot of the money anyway. Also, remember they wanted him to be indoors anyway, so he Trump has moved the inauguration inside. It means that a lot of his people who bought tickets now have to go go to their members of Congress to get them refunded. They're not offering refunds. Technically it will be less expensive. Also, it is very cold, so that's one of the reasons why they're moving in inside.
And also remember Trump.
Has had a lot of violence directed towards him. I think him moving in inside is largely a better idea. Now, you know what's not a good idea, all the stuff that Trump wants to do once he's in office.
I agree.
Today we had the Wall Street Journal out with that he's going to declare a national emergency at the United States Mexico border. This we'll see this tomorrow and Tuesday. Look, all weekend we had different bits of news. Remember we had Tom Holman, who's the new Border securiti Zar, who had been on television saying they were going to enact
parts of the Project twenty twenty five agenda. You'll remember the Project twenty twenty five agenda being all the stuff that was so unpopular that Donald Trump pretended he wasn't going to do it. Well, now he's going to do it. So part of it is these they're going to use these emergency these emergency declarations as a way to skirt a lot of law to give himself a legal framework.
You'll remember that last time, in twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, Trump enacted the Muslim ban, and that was not able to stay, not because it was unconstitutional, though certainly there's an argument for that, but because the Supreme the United States Supreme Court fild Trump didn't do it the right way and didn't dot the i's.
And cross the t's.
So this time Trump is vowed to use the military to assist with deportations, and to do that he has to use these emergency and wartime powers acts. There are three. The Insurrection Act and that is the one that we've talked a lot about. That's the one that would be where he would be able to go after protesters or send the army after Americans. There's the National Enemies Act, and then there's the Alien Enemies Act, to which you and you may remember on this podcast, we've done a lot.
Of talking about that act.
That's that act where you can put you can say that members of countries you're at war with, are enemy combatants and then put them in camps.
I think that is going.
To be the hardest one because it has only been used three times during three different wars. But you know, this is what we're going to get to see is a sort of Trump doing crazy stuff with the law in order to try to get to do things that are extra judicial, that are things that are not within the normal bounds of the law. And I think we're going to see more and more about that. And I want to just say right now, because we're just going into this Trump and I'm saying this for myself as much as.
For anyone else. He wants shock and awe.
He wants people to be upset, like the Tom Holman stuff in Chicago that he was planning a raid. Part of this is to get people scared, right. Part of him saying he's going to go after his enemies is to make people, you know, obey in advance. I mean, just like what's happening at Meta. He wants that to
happen with everyone. So it's worth just remembering that when you start seeing these these headlines come out, some of this is certainly real, and some of this is meant to get people upset, and you'll remember, the cruelty is the point, but it's also just the sort of the fear to make people scared. And so as much as there's a lot of scary stuff that's going to happen, there's also we all just you know, we have gotten through one Trump admin and we will get through another.
Mark Elias is the founder of Democracy Dockett.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Mark, thanks for having me.
Okay, so first we're going to talk about how you superheroed in to the Justice Riggs situation. North Carolina Democrat won re election in the Supreme Court and the Republican was like, no.
Yeah, this should be a much bigger story than it is. In twenty twenty, we all understood that what Donald Trump was trying to do after the election was still an election by trying to throw out tens of thousands of legal votes in a number of different states, and we all stood up and I was happy to represent President Biden and defeat that effort in court. But that's what's happening in North Carolina. That's what we've seen in the
last since election day. Alison Riggs, incumbent Democratic state Supreme Court justice won a narrow victory that was confirmed in
a recount. It was confirmed in a second recount, and the Republican National Committee, along with the state party and the candidate there have been trying to pitch this theory that there were sixty thousand voters who, by the way, were legal, like, there's no question these were not fraudent voters, but they're saying that those voters votes should be thrown out because essentially they think the state law was not requiring certain information on their voter registration forms, which is,
by the way, bunk in and of itself. But even if it wasn't bunk like, this is the information the state saw it from these votersister. I'm of two minds of.
This, Molly.
One is that this is about stealing a state Supreme Court seat, and I think that probably for the candidate, that's it. But I think that the other thing that's going on here is that why you see the RNC involved, Because you know it's a five to two court already, right, Republic's already controlled this court seat, So why is the
RNC involved. I think the rnc's involved because they view this as if they win this, if they're able to pull this off, then they're able to say that Donald Trump in twenty twenty was right, like in a weird way. This is them trying to vindicate a larger question of you know, throwing out sixty thousand votes after an election's taking place.
Yeah, And I think that's exactly right.
And I think that what is interesting here is that this is the kind of stuff that is really bad, and that is really the legacy of Trump's twenty twenty crusade is that if you don't like the results of an election, you can just say no. And it is the sort of ethos of Trumpism, too, right. I mean, like I was just talking with a guest about Restvott. Restvaught's whole thing was that he went into omb and was like, no, I don't want to give you money for.
That now, right, Yeah. So I would say it's not just the East ethos. I think it's the animated principle of trump Ism. People want to know, like what is mechanism, and they like contort themselves to try to find a some coherent theory of government with Donald Trump, which there isn't. I think the only consistent thing is abuse of the law. I mean think about it, like, you know, what is what was Donald Trump known for before he became a politician. Well,
you know, he wanted his roy cone. He wanted to ignore building code, you know, building codes or whatever or whatever the I mean his father did with the you know, the civil rights violation. Like he has always been about abusing the legal system.
He sues.
He you know, think about all the frivol's laws since he's brought against people. And so you know what you say about omb it's like the animating principle is we don't have to follow.
The law, right, No, No, agreed.
And I think what has been interesting is that trump Ism does not scale right. Trump is a separate brand from the Republican Party. Republicans are hoping now. I think what I think is was interesting in Trump one point zero was that in Trump one point zero, Republicans were sort of went along to get along, and they thought that he would help their brand. Now I think they've
realized that it doesn't transfer. So they're just trying to sort of get as much of his sort of magic fairy dust or whatever it is, probably fame on them in the hopes that they can take over.
Yeah.
I think that Actually, you're right that in the first term they thought he might help their brand. I think in the second term they are resigned to the fact that he has replaced their brand. You know, in many usbecs, you know, Mike Johnson is not really the leader of the House Republicans, Donald Trump is, you know. I mean, like there really aren't any Republican leaders who independent of Donald Trump exert any authority or power. And so I think what they are they're like, Okay, fine, we have
no brand. There is no Republican brand, and now they're going to see whether if they just throw in to Trump's brand, like you said, does any of it rub off, and then they be they gain power derivatively of that.
Yeah.
And we saw this with the election to a certain extent, I mean, because we saw voters who voted for Trump and left the bottom of the ticket.
Bye, that's exactly right, you know, and we've seen Look, we've seen it, not just in that we've seen it. You know, Trump had reverse coattails like kind of what you're saying, Like Democrats did better in the Senate than they did at the presidency, and they did better in the House even still, and that is because there is no, there's no there's no Republicanism. There is just Donald Trump and then sort of his his merry band of siccophants. And so I think that Trump two point zero is
about how do you fold into that? I mean, look at the business community, look at the look at look what it's doing. I mean, it's it's folding into that.
It is unbelievable.
And you and I actually talk offline about this all the time.
I wasn't going to say that, but we do.
We do. We're friends.
We're friends, and we've thought and we worry about it. Yes, we jgularly for people who don't know. Off air, we worry about this and talk about it as well.
Yes, because it's unbelievably scary. I mean, you know, since Donald Trump won the election, basically every billionaire, every single company that is going to have any kind of legislation in front of him, has been like, you know, how much can we donate to you?
Yeah, it's remarkable. You know, Normally raising money for things like the inauguration is really hard because like a lot of companies don't want to get involved in what they historically would perceive to be you know, sort of giving
money for a party for the incoming president. Now, not only are corporate CEOs and corporations eager to do so when they ran out of benefits to give, corporations are still giving them, like they're giving them money even not getting tickets that I think they're doing it just to be able to show Donald Trump that they that they are supporting. And the other thing is Molly. It's like sometimes the corporations give it and sometimes actually the billionaire just gives out of their own pocket.
It's just remarkable, Yes, And I think what's really interesting about this is that as we see these billionaires making these choices, they are not even trying to excuse themselves. And then we see today and I feel like at every point they keep getting undermined by Trump, so like they give all this money, and then we see the Jack Smith stuff come out, and it shows that Trump
has even done more right there. He's been a little bit even, you know, just putting out this sort of information of how he was involved in trying to overturn the twenty twenty election is pretty you know, if you have any moral compass, you're like, wow, this guy. And then today we saw that all of these former presidents right. I mean, I don't know if you saw this because it's breaking news, but that in fact, all of these former presidents are refusing to go and to his inauguration.
It's not just and for this one, it's Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush all will not attend Trump's traditional inauguration lunch. I guess they don't want to suck up to tech bros.
Right, and again, you know, the thing that I find most remarkable is that these tech pro billionaires, you know, they strut around as if they are the most important people on earth. They're all powerful, all knowing all everything, and they have kind of turned themselves into like the court jesters of Donald Trump. You know, he summons them when he wants to be entertained. He's going to like, you know, he's seating them, like there's going to be
some seating area for them. You know, he's doing this to humiliate them, and.
He's got them fighting against each other.
Yeah.
Right, they think they're especially he's doing good to so they'll be this visual of how he is. Essentially, he's made them all sick with one another.
Yeah.
There are a lot of theories out there about Trump and Elon and whether are this romance end? And you know, I've heard everything under the sun from like Elon loves Trump because he feels like he's a father friguer too. Trump is using Elon as a fog guy for when things go wrong. And I mean, if you were to just look historically at Trump one point oh versus Trump two point zero and Trump one point oh, there were a number of fall guys.
Oh, with Trump, the one thing there always is is a fall guy. Like the thing about authoritarians is that it can never be their full like whatever it is, whatever the thing is, large or small. You know, remember after the first inauguration, they go back to the White House briefing room, there's a press conference with Sean Spicer.
It goes horribly wrong on crowd size. It was Sean Spicer like shortly thereafter like fall guy, and Mike is out right and so like it can never like and that was a small thing, right, that was like like who cares? Like who cares what the size of the crowd was other than Donald Trump. But with Donald Trump, there always is going to be fall guys. So of course it will be at some point whoever it'll be, you know, it'll be Steven Miller. It'll be Remember one boy,
Steve Bannon got exiled from Trump World. And if Elon Musk thinks he's any different, he's kidding himself. If what's his name Zuckerberg thinks he's any different, Like Zuckerberg already was the fall guy once for Donald Trump. But yet he's groveling back his way in.
Yeah, and even like we're seeing reporting, you know that Trump is already making fun of Steve Bannon for how racist he is, right that he the guy loved you know, there's some line in there about how.
You know he loves immigration so much.
I mean, the thing that I think is so interesting about like trump World destroying the mainstream media, which is basically what's happened at this point, is that Trump loved the mainstream media. That like, without a mainstream media, there will be no Trump because these stories are all being reported because there are leakers.
Yeah, no, that's exactly right, and you're spot on. I mean, the weird thing about trump Ism and Donald Trump is that trump Ism acts like the mainstream media is irrelevant, like completely irrelevant. But Donald Trump, there is nothing more relevant to Donald Trump that his coverage in the mainstream I don't understand it, honestly, because you know, as you and I have talked, like, I'm more of a critic
of the mainstream media than probably you are. But nobody loves his mainstream media more than Donald Trump.
Yeah, we go back and forth on this conversation to the mainstream media. My whole thing is just that the reporting is so important and we're not going to get it anywhere else. That said, I feel a little bit good because and this is like a place I used to work and was not a good place for me, But I think is I'm very excited that The Atlantic is going to do more reporting.
Oh, the Atlantic is fabulous, And I do single out in individual publications, by the way, and I've singled out the Atlantic before. I think the Atlantic is fabulous. I think it does phenomenal reporting.
And they're picking up a lot of the reporters who you know, they're not saying at the Watching Post.
So like Ashley Parker, who I think is very.
Talented, is going to the Atlantic, and even like the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by pretty much one of the sort of architects of trump Ism. But at least you know, they have done some good reporting. I personally have to separate the weed from the shaft when it comes to because I just think without this reporting, we're sunk.
Yeah.
I think the place where you and I differ is whether that has to exist or whether it should exist in a consolidated, large scale newspaper format. I mean, I would say one of the strengths of the Atlantic is that it's actually not a daily.
Newspaper, right for sure, it's small, yeah, and.
So like to me, it therefore allows it to do reporting in a way that makes it less accountable to the day and day day out transactional relationships with you know, for example, a Trump Whitehouse. And so that's I think probably one of the difference between you and I is I wouldn't put the I wouldn't put The Atlantic in the bucket of traditional legacy media in the way that I would the Washington Post.
For example.
Right, but the Washington Post.
I mean again, there was this letter this week four hundred.
I mean, all of these editors like.
Leading with Bezos to just like we need to go back to the Watergate Washington Post, and I mean, I don't think that's happening.
But but that's I think my point is that I think that the big paradigm shift that we have learned after the election is we assumed for many, many years that if you had a large news institution that was very prominent, very prestigious, and well funded, it would be able to stand up to Donald Trump and people like him, It would be able to hold people in power account and that the problem with smaller independent media is that
they wouldn't have the resources to fight those fights. And what it turns out is it's actually the opposite, because it is those large institutions, because they have so many holdings that government can touch, they're actually they you know, like they are they If you're Disney, okay, you have so many pieces of gus of business for the federal government. Are you really going to be on Donald Trump's bad side?
If you are Jeff Bezos? You know, not that I'm defending Jeff Bezos or Disney, but I think you know, he would say like, I have so many you know, or he wouldn't say, but one might say about him, you know, he has rockets he wants to launch, he has aws services he wants to sell, and so like, how much are you willing to be on the bad side of a narcissist president, whereas if you are a smaller publication or an independent publication, the government has no
leverage over you. Donald Trump doesn't have any leverage over you, and so you can afford to be tougher on them.
Yeah, agreed.
And I also think you know this is why we're not supposed to have monopolies, right. This is the case against monopolies is that if you own everything, you're conflicted on everything.
Correct.
That's I think you've actually just put it probably better than I could. It is classic anti trust theory and why monopolies are bad.
Yeah. I mean, how down on democrats are you?
Because this has been a very tough three months for me, and I have cycled through self blame other blame. I think of you as very tough, and that is one of the many things I respect about you. You are very tough in a way that a lot of Democrats are not. I mean, do you think democrats come around? Are you furious with them? What is your takeaway.
From all of this?
Yeah?
So I have two takes on it. The first is I am less down on democrats than a lot of people are. I think that the internal finger pointing between whether it was the fault of this faction or that faction, or this tactic or that tactic or this campaign. I think is like just wasted time. And I think that you can find a million reasons when you lose a close election to blame everybody, and when you win a close election, you can vidamilitary reason to credit everyone, and
I don't think that gets you anywhere. So like, I have no time for that. And I think that there are you know, people who say Democrats are not tough. You know, I would point out it is hard to look at what the Democratic Party did last summer, which was you know, whether it was Nancy Pelissia, Chuck schumera King, Jeffers or whomever you know that you know went to President Biden and showed him the handwriting on the walls.
It's hard to say that's not a tough party. And I think if you look at Democrats' ability to hold their caucuses in close legislative chambers and the House, in the Senate, charges say that they're up tough. I think that where that there are places where people think I am tough. It's because I am willing to use every legal means in every legal tactic to protect democracy and
to advance my client's interests. And you know, I listened to Merrick Garland's closing remarks to the Department of Justice,
and frankly, I couldn't disagree with him more. I mean, he basically said that the strength of the Department of Justice and this is you know, his quote, it's the obligation of each of us to follow our norms, not only when it's easy, but when it's hard, especially when it's hard, And he says, it's the obligation each of us sudhere to our norms even when, especially when circumstances we face are not normal. And like you know, I wrote this piece for Democracy Doc about you know, bringing
norms to a Trump fight. Like you know, I have no patience for that. We cannot have a situation in which Democrats are held to one standard and hold themselves to one standard, and Republicans are held to no standard and hold themselves to no standard. Like we have to fight with the tools as they are, not as we wish they are. They it means following the law. You know, we don't cross the line. But the idea that somehow norms are the guideposts here, I just reject.
Yeah, correct, Mark, thank you, thank you, thank.
You, thank you.
Michael Waldman is the President and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Michael.
Thank you so much for having me in these interesting times.
Yeah, I'm so delighted to have you. And the first thing.
I want to talk to you about is you run the Brennan Center. You guys, just do God's work. We are Monday will be the first day of Trump two point zero. He is planning shock and awe. How can the courts save the American people from or mitigate some of the shock and the awe.
So it's important, I think, to remember that shock and awe didn't work out so well in Iraq for the American side when we swept in.
The wording is suspect, Yes, continues sorry.
Well, the wording is suspect. But it's a lot of the same idea. When they say they are going to issue a slew of executive orders on the first day, in the first hour of the new presidency, in part, they're trying to imprint the idea that they're all action and changing everything. In fact, a lot of the executive orders that any president's issue don't have nearly as much teeth as legislation.
That's a really important point.
I worked in the White House, as you know, for Bill Clinton on the day he took office in nineteen ninety three, and we also issued a bunch of executive orders. Some of them are really meaningful, and some of them are kind of like press releases with a.
Governmentber Well, exactly, what we do know is.
That he is going to try to use all the levers of executive power to do mass deportation, to politicize the government, to do a whole bunch of other things that he tried has talked about very openly NonStop for months and months and months. Some of these are at the very beginning of the administration. In the answer to your question, presidents have a lot of power. Unfortunately, a lot of the existing laws give them even more power
than they should have. But a lot of the things they say they want to do are illegal, and courts should step up. And it's going to be a real test for the courts and whether they.
Step up, Yeah, especially because they're the only lever left. I do think that that's a really good point, and we saw this reporting from Politico about how he's already saying, like the mass deportation, he can't do it because he doesn't have the money. Right, Congress has to give the money in order to pay. I mean, mass deportation is wildly expensive, correct.
Right, it's wildly expensive. There isn't actually a massive federal internal police force that can just instantaneously be mobilized to go seize people off the streets and things like that, as Politico and other outlets have reported, some of the steps that any president can take that's more kind of clearly within their own purview, or things like what they
do at the border. Look, there are a lot of steps that Donald Trump has said he's going to take on mass deportation that we just have every reason to expect he'll do some version of some of them. He has said that he will take away the temporary protected status, say for Venezuela and Haitian immigrants, that enables these people to work legally in the United States while their immigration claims are being assessed. Taking that away would have a
huge impact on a lot of people. He has said he will declare an emergency at the border to enable him to build his wall. And do other kinds of things. Presidents have a lot of power to declare emergencies. Now, in his first term, he tried to declare an emergency and use that fact to reallocate money from a different department to pay for building his wall, and that was actually unsuccessful. So, you know, even though there is a lot of power presidents have, there are still restricts in
some cases. And those of us who who want to stand up for the rule of law, those of us who think the courts need to do their part, have a job to do.
Yeah. One of the things I'm struck by is the Muslim ban, right.
Right, Remember that was the very beginning. Yeah, you know, this is one of the things where they probably have learned their lessons maybe on some of what they did wrong the first time. So you know, you remember in twice sixteen he said we're going to ban all Muslims from coming into the United States till we find out what's going on. Very early on, a few days into his term, he issued a travel ban from a bunch
of countries that were Muslim majority. Courts very quickly started blocking that from going into effect, if you remember, But like a lot of lawyers rushed to Kennedy Airport.
I do remember to.
Represent people who were in limbo. But what the courts then said, what John Roberts and his very conservative Supreme Court said then was well, you didn't cross the tea and dout the I right and didn't follow the procedures. You didn't follow the Administrative Act. But then they eventually let him do what he wanted to do in a case called Trump versus Hawaii. In other words, where the courts were willing to stand up to him the first
time was to make them follow the procedures. It may be that this time they're going to be more fastidious about following the procedures. One of the things that we've looked at a lot. You know, presidents have a lot of power to do immigration policy, and that includes deportations. I mean Barack Obama, you know, deported a lot of people for example. It's part of the mix of immigration policies. What Trump has said he wants to do is use laws that are incredibly abusive of power and give him
vast authority. And a lot of these laws that haven't been used very much he wants to use, He said, the Insurrection Act of eighteen oh four to enable him to use the military domestically to do some of this stuff. He wants to use the National Emergencies Act. He says he wants to use. He talked about this on the campaign trail. He wants to use the remaining part of the Alien and Sedition Act. Yes, which I know I know about you. I last thought about that in high school history.
Right.
That is something we actually had someone from the Brennan Center on Because you have someone who has just focused on that now and writing about it, and she's right.
We have a lawyer who was working away on this Alien Enemies Act who are like, really, like, isn't that rather obscure thing that'd be spent?
No, but it's not. It's in Project twenty twenty five. I mean, what's so interesting about this Trump two point zero, and I mean this in only the most pejorative sense, is that they have taken all of these like zombie laws like this and also comstock, and also that they've repurposed for modern use.
So you know, you have to be at war. Right.
The last time this happened was World War two with Japanese. Before that, World War One, Before that, the War of eighteen.
Twelve, the British supporters were being interned. Yeah.
Right, So this sort of legal framework for it seems very very shaky. I think we both think and we actually had a conversation about this, where we think he's going to try to declare war on the cartels.
I don't see how you do that.
So that's one where he's on very weak legal ground if he tries to use it. The Alien This Sedition Acts, for those who missed that day in high school history, were these laws that are considered some of the worst laws in American history. They were passed in the John Adams administration and they cracked down on free speech and dissent. Thomas Jefferson called them the result of the reign of witches,
and they really discredited it. And the only one of those laws that's still in the books is this one. And you're right, it's only been used three times, and the last time it was used was during World War two to in turn Japanese nationals who had people who had not gotten their American citizenship yet. But it's pretty clear in the language that it has to be against a government we're at declared war with or the result of an invasion so you know that was the case
when we were attacked at say, at Pearl Harbor. We had an actual declaration of war in World War Two. It was the last time we had one. But you know, we're not at war with Venezuela and the cartels are not a government. They may say, I suppose, oh, well, it's an invasion. You know, they have all these immigrants, but it's pretty illegal. The problem is this is where
we need the courts to step up. In the past, courts have often said about this particular law, oh well, you know, this doesn't seem right, but this is a political question. That's actually up to the president to decide these things. Now, a lot of those rulings were a long time ago, before courts were in the business of
enforcing civil liberties the way they do now. So you know, that one I think is really illegal, and honestly, I think that it would surprise me if they really went to that one, because because that one is on such shaky ground. A lot of these other things are things where presidents have considerable authority, and people don't realize. The National Guard is a military force controlled by states by the governor, but presidents can federalize the National Guard, and
that has happened. You know, to put in nineteen ninety two to deal with violence and life Los Angeles example, it would be quite extraordinary to do that to deal with what is a lot of immigration, but it's basically an immigration issue.
Yeah, I think this is where we're going to be for the next four years. How many nights have you lost sleep thinking about Russ Fodd?
So you know, first of all, Donald Trump said during the campaign that he'd never heard of Project twenty twenty five. He didn't know these people where you'd never heard of this heritage what do you call it? The Heritage Foundation? It was so transparently absurd. It was like that in the Marx Brothers movie. You know who you're going to
believe me or your own eyes. First of all, I happened to go to Milwaukee of the weekend of the Republican Convention for a family wedding, not because of the convention. While Trump was saying, oh what, I never heard of any of these people. I never heard of Project twenty twenty five. When you got to the airport, it was a floor to ceiling display saying the Heritage Foundation welcomes you to the Republican National Commission. The corporate sponsor was
Project twenty twenty five. Russ Vault was one of the minds behind one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five. He was a senior official in the Trump White House the first time. He is smart, he is adept at fiddling with the levers of government, and he is extraordinarily ideological and even extreme in what he wants. He wants
a religious approach to government. He said, we I believe tell me if I'm mixing him up with one of the other boys, I believe he's the one who said we live in a post constitutional era.
He is, he is, he is, that's him. Yeah.
At the Brandon Center where I work, we actually have the Constitution on the wall. So I don't think most Americans think or want to believe that we're in a post constitutional era. But he is one of the people who has a very radical legal view of what government ought to be allowed to do. That is much more assertive than traditional conservatives, even sort of federalist society conservatives have had.
Yeah, and it is interesting to me to put so. He had been in omb before Office of Management and Budget, and he did in Trump one point zero do things like hold money that was supposed to go to federal agencies, right,
and was supposed to go to Ukraine. That was the most famous of his alliances into this, but one you sort of dig into Project twenty twenty five, there's sort of a lot of like, this is how we can get people to do this, and it's by holding the money, which is really not what the president is supposed to be doing at all.
Right, it violates when you say we're in a post constitutional era. One of the ways that would be post constitutional is the Constitution, you know, articularly it's checking cons You talked about the zombie laws. I think it's a really good point when you look at the Comstock actor. Some of these things, they're really talking about the social
values of the eighteen hundreds. A lot of these other things are trying to undo the restraints on abuse of presidential power that were enacted over the last fifty sixty seventy years after Nixon. After Nixon, so one of the big issues at the time of Nixon's impeachment was what
was called impoundment. He claimed then the right to not spend money that Congress had passed the law, saying he had to spend the president, the government had to spend, and it was considered, it was found on constitutional it was the basis for some of the charges of the abuse of power, and all kinds of budget rules were put in place to make sure that this couldn't happen. A lot of people, I guess on the right think
this was all a grand mistake. You see this also with the immunity decision by the Supreme Court going back that really went back to again Nixon, when courts ruled in the cases about Nixon's tapes and other things that oh, no, there are restrictions. You know, the law does apply to presidents. Presidents are subject to criminal law. Certainly after they're in office,
they're subjects to criminal law. And again there's a strain of thought on the right that's kind of a monarchical approach that thinks that it was a big mistake to have these kinds of things that embedded the presidency in the rule of law. And you know, they call it in some instances they call it the unitary executive theory, with basically say everybody in the whole executive branch works for the present personally. So Rustvot saying in effect, It
doesn't matter what Congress does. We're just going to spend the money how we want to spend it. They're going to put this kind of like fancy legal jargon and justification for it. But it's just a power grab.
Yeah, no, exactly, it's just a power grab.
It's extra constitutional or whatever they're calling it.
It is definitely because.
There's this larger idea that what trump Ism is trying to do is sort of repeal the entire century since Nixon, not century, but the fifty sixty years since nixton. That this is and even before that, that's sort of every the social safety net, everything since sort of nineteen twenty nine on. Is really the last hundred years that Trumpism wants to repeal the last hundred years. Do you see that legally? Do you see that as something that could be possible?
You know, I figure right that that is that is something that you see across a lot of these areas. And there are ways in which this has already played out, not just with Trump's you know, personal idiosyncrasies, but a lot of the efforts by the conservative legal movement leading up to this, including at the US Supreme Court. So give you an example, for a lot of the country's history and mal you know, I wrote a book on the history of the Supreme Court that talks about this.
From a lot of the country's history, the Supreme Court saw its role as being kind of to stop progress. It was often a very conservative force, and in the early twentieth century, what the justices of that time thought their job was was to stop government from acting, from regulating worker hours or public safety, you know, a lot of the things, to protect people. And they would over and over again make these constitutional rulings to stop government
from acting. At the beginning of the twentieth century, this was the basis of a lot of fighting between Theodore Roosevelt and the Court, between the Progressives as they were known, and then and then ultimately Franklin Roosevelt. He fought when the Court was trying to strike down the New Deal, Roosevelt threatened to try to get them expanded, packing the court.
And what happened was in nineteen thirty seven, in the middle of all is the Supreme Court back down and they said, you know what, government agencies, you can do your thing. You can regulate the economy, you can protect people. We're not going to pretend it's some constitutional issue. This is how we have a modern country. There are some people who think it was a grave mistake. They call it the Constitution in exile. They think it went into
exile in nineteen thirty seven. One of the people who thinks that, there was a New York Times article about twenty years ago in a Times magazine that said, you know, here's this kind of kooky idea, and here are some of the people who believe it. Here's a young judge you've never heard of named John Roberts.
Oh no, that's not good.
Wonder well, we'll ever come of him. And so the Supreme Court, of several opinions of the last few years, has for the first time in at least half a century, made constitutional claims to basically limit the power of government agencies to do regulation on the environment and on other things like that. And that is not just Donald Trump. That's the kind of thing you see across the government.
Yeah, now, thank you, Michael, really appreciate you. And this was really so Again, We're going to be using this word a lot for the next four years.
Chilling.
It's chilling. But remember this is a scary time. But the laws of political gravity have not been repealed. You know, Donald Trump is now going to have countries, not just going to be true thing about things. He's going to have control of the government, of the executive branch. There'll be consequences. And while it's hard, there are many ways that if there are biass of power, that we all have the ability to push back.
Right, all right, true, thank you.
Thank you, No moment, Jesse Cannon.
So, Molly, you may remember the last secessionist movement, which was the Greater Idaho SECESSIONUS movement that didn't quite get off the ground because well, it was pretty stupid to bring California, Oregon, and Washington into Idaho, a state that isn't doing so hot. But now we have one that's even stupider, which is seceding from Illinois. What are you seeing here?
Yes, cis from Illinois. Again.
I just want to point this out for a second because I think this is worth mentioning for just a hot minute. As Trump tries to bully California and complains about how they want aid and that they're takers. California has pays a ton of federal taxes.
Now they need us.
If they seceed, We're all completely fucked. Okay, versus a place, versus the state of New Illinois.
They're never going to be able to get this organized.
But I just want to point out, and if anyone can handle something that's stupid, it is one of this program's favorite governors, Governor Pritzker. But I just want to point out, like no one, you know, the state of New Illinois, you know got you know, go with God team. If you want to join Indiana, they're happy to have you. Instead of succeeding, they should just join us, all right, sure, why not? Or we could just make a ton of news states. We're looking at DC and Puerto Rico as
our as our addition. So 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.