Rick Wilson & Leah Litman

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 remisa O's turk Tough student detained by Ice has been released after judge's orders. By the way, her crime was writing an opinion. PieP We have such

Smiley as Friday sunset, we got a choice quote from one Stephen Miller, and it's pretty pretty chilling.

The privilege of the written of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of innovation.

So would say that's an option we're actively looking. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the course do the right thing or not.

At the end of the day, Congress passed the body of law.

All right, this fucker, by the way, a few thoughts no ah, ah, nope, and by the way, the times when they've suspended habeas have been like have been like Pearl Harbor. Okay, they're not suspending habeas because they've made up another crisis. Okay, so try again, baldy, that's a no go. And by the way, when they say this crazy shit, we just say no. We say no, no, no, no. Net net net is fucking bullshit. Just ignore them and keep going. The courts will smack it down. Don't let

Yeah, agreed. So on Friday, there was also a huge confrontation outside in ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey, where Mayor Rosbarroka was taken into custody and they had threats towards Representative Body Watson Coleman the.

Rest of the fucking mayor of Newark because they said whatever. It doesn't matter, they said whatever. Lie. Congress has the right to go into Ice attention centers. Trump thinks that ICE is sisca Savo. It is not. It is under all of this. By the way, I'm going to say this as many times as I humanly can, Congress has authority over all of this. Just because they are largely cowardly and don't want to assert it doesn't mean that they don't have authority over it. Right Congress is allowed

Now, well, unfortunately trumpstration to say that it is definitely on the table to arrest members of Congress, and it looks like AOC has some words about that.

Yeah, by the way, they basically the Trump administration has been working real hard to make abolish ICE a reasonable centrist position. Okay, abolish ICE is like moderate Republicans are soon going to be saying it. AOC did a really good video. You should see it. AOC is a really good communicator, communicated really well about this ICE stuff, Like, you guys have to push back. This guy's a bully, but he's also lazy and shiftless, and you just have

So, mister Trump not known for those thoughtful, carefully crafted policy decisions. He killed the Woke program the other day, which you might say, Oh, that sounds like was something he would do. But there's one problem. It is mostly benefits his voters, so it's not so woke.

Well maybe it is, man. Maybe the reality is that woke policies actually just benefit for people. So he has he got rid of everything that has the word equity in it. And it turns out that the Digital Equity Act wasn't just This is the problem with reverse racism, right, is that occasionally you stumble on reverse whatever that is hurting the poor. So here we have Trump and these worthies grants to improve internet in poor Red States, which Donald Trump, because it had equity in it, he ended

Fast is always a pleasure to be with you on this fine day.

The are giving Donald Trump a.

Jet, a fancy jet, a seven forty seven eight hundred, which is very large and was decorated by some combination of Saddam Liberachi and somebody who went buckwow with a hot glue gun and glitter.

I understand that this is a complete authoritarian creep, but it is worth for a minute just realizing that we have sort of given up. Congress has given off on the idea that presidents aren't supposed to use the presidency to make money.

They have completely given up on that. You're one hundred percent correct. They now believe that the only corrupt thing in the White House could be Hunter Biden selling some oil paintings. This is all just perfectly normal to them. And let's put this down for what it is. This is a bribe. The Qataris are paying Trump a bribe. It's about a you know, a five hundred million dollar airplane. It's a bribe.

Yeah. They're doing it because they know what Trump is like, right, I mean, this is they know that it's paid for play with Donald Trump and Donald Trump. I mean even in the lesser right, like even with the British government. They came in and were like, we'd like to bring you an invitation from the you know, from the king. Like that is in itself a bribe too. I mean, right, this is the whole way of doing business.

If we were looking at some other country and at their government doing this, we would say, wow, that country is really incorrupt. We would say that's remarkably shady. That's not first world business practices. That's the kind of thing that happens in kleptocracies and satropies and weird you know, East Asian money laundering havens and all this other stuff. But now, as you said, we've sort of given up

So Democrats don't control they don't control any branch of the federal government. But what should they be doing? I think they should be doing more on this.

I think, look, I think this is another thing where some shadow hearings would come in handy. I think this is another thing where in the course of other hearings they should be asking the White House these things. They should be papering the various agencies that are doing this with questions who they still are. You know, even though they're not going to get immediate answers or real answers, they should be doing it in a way that lets the government know that Donald Trump is in fact engaged

Sil I mean, it's bad when the moral compass is Laura Lumer. That's not good, right.

I mean, that's that's a low bar.

But it is interesting. I mean, she definitely is right. So also this week we learned that Pete Haggs Hath had plagiarized his thesis that got like two seconds of airtime right that the Princetonian had found he had plagiarized his thesis from the New York Times in the Washington Post, leading me to think he reads the New York Times in the Washington Post. I'm shocked, but I guess.

It was a while now. Look, I mean, I would say this in many other administrations, a plagiarism scandal would be disqualifying. But when you look at the biggest influencers on the right, several of them, Ben Dominic, Benny Johnson, a whole bunch of these folks are known plagiarists, and that doesn't affect their position inside the Mago universe at all.

I mean, I'm still impressed that he plagiarized from like real legit.

Outlets right right right, and not like the Golden Book of Defense Policy or something right right.

Or like you know, remember you'll remember that the other person who was famous for plagiarizing, though it turned out to be plagiarizing himself. Was everyone's face, the great economist ron Vara, ron Vara, ron Vara. By the way, we haven't seen him so much since they've I.

Was gonna say, have you noticed that he's sort of I mean maybe heara direction program or something.

I feel like they're going to put Peter Navarro in. He's going to get some other job because now this administration, Trump doesn't fire people, He just moves him around. So he's going to be like hud secretary who knows.

I mean, you could easily see that. I think of Trump, you know, not wanting to get as he as they say. He doesn't want to give the media a scout, so you can easily see him saying, hey, you're going to be the ambassador to the United Nations economic counselor. I don't know, makes some faky job, right, right, right.

But what is happening behind the scenes, and I do think this is real important and also interesting is that Trump seems to acknowledge that he fucked with the tariffs, right because trying to make a deal behind the scenes in Switzerland. I like that they're like, we solved, we

In India and Pakistan says, the.

Fuck are you talking about talking about?

But we'll see.

But the the stuff in Switzerland where they're trying to negotiate a trade deal, Trump said it went very well. You think it went very well.

Knowing what a truthful interlocker to Donald Trump tends to be, I would say that this is about as real as you know Trump University. This is bullshit. He's lying. And the Chinese, if they do what they've done lately, within a day or so, we'll say nothing was accomplished in these talks. We're back at stage zero. I think the other thing that's going on here, though, is Trump needs

So let's talk about what that looks like, really weird deep water. Because there are right now lots and lots of empty or semi empty port containerships like we see the slow row all here. Here is no world. Even if they and I don't think China is going to do this, but even if tomorrow China was like, we did it trade, we're done, we have a deal, which

We are right where we are right now. You know, as of now, shelves are starting to empty out in major retailers and there are no ships waiting to refill those shelves. And if those ships tomorrow, if you said, okay, it's all over, if Trump dropped dead tomorrow and the new president said, China back to.

Where we were, even better, if you do that, I'm sure, which it doesn't necessarily want to.

I think we've got the bit in their teeth and they're not playing around. But if they wanted to, it's going to take a month to turn all those factories back on, bring all those people back in, get new orders in the door. Then a month after that the ships will be loaded. It takes about three weeks for them to cross the Pacific. Two weeks, let's call it to cross the Pacific. It takes about a week from the minute the ship gets there to the minute stuff

People need to stop repeating what the administration says. Okay, stop it right. They did not make peace with India and Pakistan did not happen.

They did not make a deal with China this weekend. The UK trade deal was a nothing burger. And when they claim it's the biggest thing ever, you shouldn't just repeat it's not. It's the biggest thing ever.

And by the way UK is like our seventh or eighth biggest trading.

Party, not the same category.

We actually export more to them than they import.

A little bit. Yeah yeah, so.

But the other thing that I think is spectacularly stupid about this whole problem, right, is going to be hard, Right, they are hard. They're hard to deal with. They've been eating our lunch for decades and decades. It's not going to be that easy to solve.

Right.

But Mexico and Canada, he could do that tomorrow.

He could walk in the door tomorrow with Canada, flip the switch in the you know, easily. They would immediately reciprocate to go back to zero or back to whatever the effective low rip rate was, and it would be over and it would start helping. Because Canada and Mexico are our two biggest partners. Then China like, why.

Not do that? But explain to me why he's not doing that.

I don't want to it.

I think he doesn't want to be perceived as having given in first off to Shinebaum in Mexico, who is both a woman and a Mexican. These are not great things in the mind of the MAGA. They don't want to be seeing that Trump caving in to these two countries that they basically in maga culture holding contempt, and Trump knows if he does that, he will be perceived as a loser and all that of their business.

Right, he clearly is trying to do it with Canada because when Carney came, he was not his usual obstructor. He was not the same obstructor asself self.

Even would you notice his body language in that meeting? Tell me hunched over pass it? It was very different. I mean, I want to ask you this because is Zelensky all these people would have dealt with him so far? Don't you think Carney's like the most impressive.

I just think about the Zelensky meeting where JD was like, you didn't even wear a suit, right, Like that's when you know, but this was like I think Carney is very smart and knows how to deal with this. But the problem is, you know, again, this is like the thing I always talk to Gid here about he's living over a crack house. So there's only so much you can do when you're a right when the big economy is completely crazy. So the my question though, is why

No, he's gonna get He's gonna get fucked by China in a way that's gonna leave him walking funny for a month. This guy does not understand. He gave she the greatest political gift he could have ever given China. He gave me with all the China, all China's internal economic problems. Now she is like a war leader against Trump. It's so crazy to me that this White House is so unsophisticated that even the people who are allegedly sophisticated

Yeah. And it's interesting though, like he must have someone behind the scene, and this is the thing, right, I mean, I know there are no grown ups in the room, but isn't there someone behind the scenes who's like, China's not gonna make a deal with you because they are There's no incentive for them to do it.

I think that Marco will never say that to him because it will be seen as defiant. Right, even though I think Marco knows that, I think Rubio knows that at some level, he's not. Marco is not completely unsophisticated about what's going on in China. He is Marco is a big China hawk. But I don't think he wants to tell Trump the truth because Trump has invested everything in this. This is his signature issue now, even bigger

The board because like clearly he started a pass.

I think he does know that, because he's trying to do this like austerity bullshit. I love that or two dolls. Yeah, I was like, okay, comrade, do you control the means of productions?

Amazing? I mean they hate.

Capitalists, the beat arbists be bountiful.

Why do they hate capitalism?

You know, I don't know, Molly, because it seems to me, and you know, I'm a free markets guy. It seems to me that telling people what they can purchase, how many items of a given product they could purchase, strikes me as planned economy stuff. This doesn't sound like American capitalism in action.

So let's sort of do a few minutes on where we are right now. Trump is going to try to make a trade deal with Canada. I think Canada. It's going to be on and off. He has this couple of other sort of things going. I mean, what do you sort of want like as you're looking at the kind the you know, the House is still trying to pass a budget. It you know, they are nowhere.

Everything I've heard from people in DC in the legislated process, in the Senate and the House in the last week is that Mike Johnson is spinning his wheels and the MUD's flying everywhere. But this is not at this point, this is not happening, right. They're not doing a tax bill that is going to add five trillion dollars to the deficit or to the debt. Excuse me, actually, you know what and a trillion dollars to this.

I just want to add something. Donald Trump, as we were recording this just truth, and we use that in scare quotes that he has a China deal, you'll notice, and US announces China deal in Geneva. Okay, so we'll see what this looks like. But I would not breathlessly report a China deal.

I would not breathlessly report that either. I would be very extremely cautious. I would be extremely cautious if I were the markets in accepting this. But you know, if there's a if, as always, there's a bunch of mysterious buying of futures tomorrow for an uptick in the market surprise, I wouldn't be shocked to see the same game that has been played three or four times now, you know, not as big a scale as the first time. When Trump gave Wall Street a heads up privately, but I think for.

Sure was it his tweet that said is.

Time to buy? I mean, look, I don't know one reason why China would take a deal right now. Yeah, why would they take a deal today when they can drag this out and get more out of him? This is I think perhaps the concept of a deal yeah yeah, rather than a deal.

Yeah. It's always concepts of something, isn't it in two weeks yep?

But they have been backing down over all these things, right, they're backing down from two right, and even some of these like you know, we've seen some of these students who are arrested now being freed on court orders. They're obeying some of those. And I think one of the most interesting tells of the whole week was just how badly unprepared and how badly beat up Cash Betel and Christy Noman in particular were in front of the US

That was I don't really know.

I mean, I think I mean a gold star at Chris Murphy, who was like unbelievable buck it, I'll do yea. He went in there with like out for blood and he got.

I know, and a lot of facial hair too, out for blood, with lots of facial hair. Chris Murphy, he.

Is, listen. I think he's got the sort of Viking berserker gong spirit.

Leah Lippmann is the co host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny and the author of Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative grievance, stringe theories, and bad vibes. Welcome to Fast Politics.

Leiah Lipman, thank you so much for having me.

Let's talk about this court. Seems like it's gone well, No, I'm just kidding. First, let's talk about your book, because I actually think Supreme Court has weirdly as much as they can considering how conservative they are, in some way is not done as badly as I thought they would. But first, talk to me about this book and sort of where we find the Supreme Court at this moment. Yeah.

So the book is called Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes. The sub title should give you a basic gist of the argument, but mostly the idea is the Republican justices are kind of repackaging and channeling Republican talking points, their innermost feelings and the generals like geist of the Republican Party into the law. And because a big animating principle of the

How did this Supreme Court get here?

So a few different ways. One is, the conservative legal movement and Republican Party made a concerted effort to plan to take over the court. You know, they recognize that they needed the court to enable their anti majoritarian project. You know, they needed the court. Oh yeah, No, it worked in splendid ways.

You know.

It was not a straight line, to be sure, But they invested in communicating to people about why courts matter. They invested in organizations like the Federalist Society that would help them credential and select people whose views would match the parties and who would be influenced by the signals they sent to them. And they managed to develop all the legal theories that created this veneer applausibility that they could sell to the public. And you know, their base

Turns out that's what it meant.

Yeah, it's surprised.

Trump said this week that he was not sure if he needed to uphold the Constitution. You know, it's so funny because I'm so glad I get to have you on, because I'm obsessed with the Supreme Court, and I am like very nerdy about it, and so I often can't ask some of the questions I want to ask because they're too nerdy. But I can ask you them. Which members of the court are real textualists? By the way, of course, we both agree that textualism is largely bullshit

Yes, so I would say the people who perform textualism the most ostentatiously perfect would.

Be That's the question I wanted to ask.

Yeah, bil Gorsich, Amy Barrett, and then after them Brett Kavanaugh.

Right, so the new justices yep. And then Alito and Thomas performed box news.

Yes, so Alito manages to have zero principles whatsoever, and not even to pretend to have principles other than the idea that a democratic party is an existential threat to his worldview.

Yeah, okay, and then Thomas is just mad about everything.

So Thomas is more focused on a method of interpreting the constitution, originalism, than he has been focused on how to interpret statutes textualism right.

And originalism is basically.

Wo Originalism is the idea that, in order to determine what the constitution means today, we ask what it meant to the people who drafted and ratified the constitution in the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds, who, surprise, surprise, all white men. Since only men could vote at the time.

You would think that originalism would not be would he would want for any number of reasons in this country's history.

Clarence Thomas is perhaps better than anyone the embodiment of we all contain multitudes, because of course I agree, right, you would think that would be a giant red flag and siren going off. I will not outsource our rights today. What the government can do to the people who drafted and ratify the constitution and said women can vote and black people can be owned as property. And yet originalism has continued to this day.

Can we talk about Shaughnessey and then Shaughnessy Pardue, which was a sort of shadow dock at nine zero in which there were two talk to us about that.

Yeah, So Shaughnessy is this kind of older Supreme Court decision from the fifties or yes, from the nineteen fifties, and it should, I think be understood as part of this Cold War era, you know, system of immigration, and with the Court said, there is you know, when you are dealing with someone who wants to enter the United States, they have less protections, you know, than people who are citizens in the United States or permanent residents of the

So those two nine zero decisions, right, what is happening or.

One of them was nine zero but then.

The other one was seven to But talk to me about that sort of is Roberts, what is happening behind the scenes here that we are getting these numbers? And what is the Supreme Court doing taking these cases? And in the nine zero they took a case that they sort of chose to take, like sort of talk us through because it feels like Roberts is doing stuff here that is meaningful and important.

Yes, so I think we should understand, you know, what is happening at the Supreme courts to be a product of a few different things. One is how wild the asks are that the administration is making of the Supreme Court. Like, if you managed to lose both sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, I think you need to do some real soul searching. And yet that is what they have done in at least one case. So that's part of it.

And that case wasn't meant to go up right, I mean that was sort of they took it.

That was one of the shadow docket cases on the Alien Enemies Act about whether the individuals could challenge their summary expulsions via this one federal law, the administrative procedure acting, rather than something else. And then the Kilmara Brego Garcia case about whether a court could order the administration to facilitate the return of someone wrongfully deported. Even sam Alito said yes, in fact they can do so. Wow. Right, So it's partially a product of the administration is making

Right, So it's a pr stunt. That's why they're taking on the birthright citizenship case, because they could just bat it down.

Exactly, like, there's no reason to move that case from the shadow docket where it came up, you know, to the Court's regular docket, and doing so is going to generate a ton of coverage on the oral argument, more coverage on the ultimate decision, and delay the ultimate decision to coincide with some of these crazy ones.

So that is important. But I just want to do another minute on what Roberts is doing right now, because I do think the Alien enemies didn't seem like great. You know, it's this wartime act. There's no evidence to support the idea that we're at war. No one's even heard of this El Salvadorian gang. I mean, it was pretty it's pretty weak sauce. Is it now completely out of the realm? I mean, can they use it anymore? Is it gone? I mean, where are we now with them?

So, they unfortunately can still use it because what the Supreme Court did in their first intervention in the case is say a court cannot block that policy nationwide. Instead, individuals have to challenge their potential expulsion via this one procedural mechanism habeas petitions, and because of that that means you get these like one off district court rulings that block the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act, but

How much of where we are in this moment is because of this sort of bad legislature not repealing zombie laws because you thought, well, no one will ever bring them back, and also part to keeping America in a state of emergency after nine to eleven despite the fact that there was no emergency.

Look, there's no question that Congress has enabled the rise of Donald Trump and also not to take in preventative steps to make the Trump administration less bad by repealing some of the zombie laws or some of these statutes

Yeah, right now the Supreme Court has you know, they're sort of going into this oral arguments and then they'll publish, you know, and then they'll all go on vacation. As one as one does. In's sort of what way have they kind of done right by us? And what way have they done wrong by us?

So I think they were absolutely correct to in the middle of the night early morning, Holt the Trump administration's efforts to try to expel more Venezuela nationals to El Salvador by moving them, as we were saying, like out of one place where there was an order prohibiting the expulsions to another where there wasn't. So that's one thing. I expect they are going to turn away his request to strip away birthright citizenship, so that will be another.

Trump World, I mean largely because a lot of the stuff they want to do is illegal. Has been pretty sumarily losing in the court in the lower courts for sure, and I think the lower courts are more principled than the Supreme Court for a few different reasons.

I mean, one is, administrations just aren't trying to appoint right people who are as uniformly ideological to the trial courts as they do the appellate course of the Supreme Court. Another reason is there's this blue slip system where when Donald Trump went to appoint people to states with Democratic senators, those democratic senators could block his appointees, so that allowed

All of the stuff Doge did seems like it's illegal. The NIH grants. One of the more justive things that Elon Musk has done is cut cancer research and Alzheimer's research, and he's done this by capping indirect funding. He was very offended by the idea that indirect funding was more than fifteen percent. He didn't understand how it worked, because why would He's the richest guy in the world. That stuff seems like it'll get reversed in court. That said,

Yeah, so the administration has actually turned tail and reversed course after some lower courts ruled against them. So when, for example, we got the early Office of Management and Budget pause on all federal financial assistants, you know, they quickly walk that back, I think within twenty four to forty eight hours after a court said no, you can't

Back excited to see what DOGE does with all our data. It seems like a no brainer. We're almost time. But I want you to talk about Amy Coney Barrett, hero of the resistance.

Go okay, wildly overstated. She has ruled against the Trump administration or Donald Trump in three cases. One was to allow a New York State court to impose a virtual sentence of zero time, you know, on the heels of him assuming to office. Not a huge deal. Second was to not pause a lower court decision that told the administration you can't suddenly defund all of the United States

So yeah, not good, not good. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank.

You, thank you so much for having me.

No moment, Rick Wilson.

Yes, Molly, what is your moment of fuck?

Right?

So?

My moment of fuckery is an all time fan favorite. It is the general he loves I know he loves us both. It's the degenerate FOP. It's the walking STD sample case of Paul Beach County. Actually he lives in Broward now in an apartment, not even in a house.

It's Roger Stone really trying to get him, aren't listen.

Here's the thing about Roger Stone. This week he's out calling for Mark Kelly, United States Senator, and to be executed, to be tried and executed for treason because.

He complained about Trump's crypto scam. Is that why?

That is correct? He complained about Trump's crypto scam.

You're these free speech absolutists don't like free speech.

These guys, they yeah, they love free speech, they love talking a big game. And yet the slightest whisper of criticism of Donnie, you know, Donnie sticky fingers and families, obvious cryptos scam, an obvious flim flam. And they've got Rogerstone out there calling for the execution of a US senator. You know, I gotta tell you, if it comes down to the revolution, I got I'm betting Roger is up against the wall before Mark Kelly by a long damn stretch.

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,