Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and Donald Trump's Middle East Envoy Steve Woodcoff can't name a single concession that Russia will make in the quote unquote peace deal house shotging, we have such a great show for you today the Lincoln Projects. Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Elon's profoundly dumb email
to federal workers. Then we will talk to the Brennan Centers Michael Waldman about how they have been countering Trump's war on the judges.
But first the news Smiley, I have to say I knew who main governor Jenet Mills was. I didn't know much about her game, but I liked her game this week.
Yeah, you know, Maine has some really interesting politicians. I'm thinking about Angus King, who was a Republican became an independent. There's just a lot of super stuff here. Here's Janet Mills. She's at a meal with Trump with the governors, and Trump asks if she's at the event, and she says yes, and he says, in the typical trumpy fashion, you better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't. Now, FYI, this is
really now how it's not supposed to work. Right, There's federalism exists for a reason, right, Trump says to Mills, who replied that she would follow state and federal laws.
By the way, we want our.
Lawmakers to follow the law, okay, Like that is the correct answer, right, Like we should want all of our politicians to follow the law. If you are a politician, you are doing something that is not following the law, you should not be holding office. She also told the President see you in court, which I think is really like.
It was a pretty ball or move.
Especially you're surrounded by other governors, you are in the White House, or you're in you know, he is intimidating guy, and she's you know, just this sort of older woman. And by the way, I would like to point out it does seem to me that older women are doing a lot more standing up to Trump than people like say, oh, I don't know, Jeff Bezos or you know they're right, I mean, or Zuckerberg. These are people who are not you know, who have billions of dollars and refuse to
stand up to Trump. Miles also released a statement vowing if the President attempts to unilaterally deprive main school children of the benefit of federal funding, my administration in the Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal option
to restore that funding. And by the way, I just want to point out, like anyone who listens to this podcast knows that we've had a lot of Democratic attorneys generals and that they have been working their asses off to prepare the battle in court that will protect federalism hopefully, And so I just want to say, like, all of this is happening because these Democratic attorneys general did what they were supposed to be doing, prepare for Trump is
I'm really just super impressed that they had the war withal to get on this immediately, and also good for her for standing up.
Hell yeah, ma, let's break a little news here. You and I are going to be putting up three YouTube videos every week that are different programming than what you hear on Fast Politics, because we're putting our foot into the world of YouTube and it's very good. We've done some tests so far they are amazing. You're killing it. But while I was studying for what we're going to do over the weekend. I have a tool called video iq. It tells me how many views a channel gets in
a month. And something I noticed is Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy each have singular videos that are more popular than the entire month of videos from the rest of the Democrats entire channels in the Senate.
I just want to say two things here about us going to YouTube. One is that Jesse is actually a big YouTube celebrity already for music, so I will be cloud chasing him and two, I know and also embarrassing him on this podcast.
That's what I do.
But the other thing is that I think it's really important to realize that there are some really effective messengers. And it was a really good piece in The Times today about Murphy. Bernie too has been doing these huge town halls, and I think what's important about these two men is that they prove my theory that this is not actually an ideological issue, it's a messaging issue. So
Bernie is very lefty, Murphy is very centrist. They are not the same, they do not represent the same wing of the party, but they are both breaking through and that's because they are very good communicators and they are flooding the zone with information, and so I think that would spend a lot of time, especially on cable news, arguing about whether or not Medicare should cover you know, or that we should do free glasses, or we should do rebreakfast.
Or we should you know what I mean.
And the truth is, this is not about policy, This is about persuasion. This is about connecting with voters. And so I am particularly thrilled by this combination of these two men because it really does show that, in fact, this is not an ideological issue. It is a communication issue. I think that's actually quite good. And thank you for letting me.
Vent on that well.
Speaking of venting, protesters at Republican events were told that your voice is meaningless.
Yeah, shockingly.
Look, these Republicans are so scared, right because as much as they think trumpsm is great, or maybe they don't. Basically, they're supporting Trump because they're scared of what Trump will do to them. They're supporting Musk because they're scared about what Musk will do to them.
Do they believe this stuff?
Certainly they believe in cutting the federal government, but I'm sure they don't believe in an unelected billionaire being the one who's deciding it via email. And so they are scared, and they are in a terrible situation, and they're going to have to defend the indefensible, as they have done before.
Saturday's protests come as Trump made several policy decisions, including the creation of the Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency as unofficial agencies established to executive orders operating the White House Task Force. The President has signed several executive orders enacting this conservative agenda. But you know, also the other thing, and I think this is worth remembering when it comes to executive orders, is that.
They are very easy to undo.
So many of these will not hold up in court, and many will be undone quickly. Now that said, there's going to be a real problem in the Office of Management and Budget whether or not Russ Vought will continue to impound the funds because Jesse and I know from our YouTube series that we did during the summer about Project twenty twenty five that Russ Vought is working real hard to make sure that the agencies that Congress allocated
the funds for do not cut the money. And so I think that is what was will ultimately kick us into a slow rolling constitutional crisis.
Speaking of constitutional crisises, one of the concerns was that the Supreme Court was going to uber stamp every one of Trump's aggressions on the federal government. And so far that's looking to actually not be the case, which is a pleasant surprise.
Yeah, so Supreme Court looked at Trump's ability to fire the head of the federal agency that protects government whistleblowers.
By the way, if you want transparency and government protecting whistleblowers who come out and say when people are doing corrupt things in the government, that's kind of how this goes. And remember Elon Musk, the real president keeps saying that he wants transparency.
This is about transparency. He's protecting transparency. It is not about transparency. And you know it's not about transparency because they are not being transparent and also because they refuse to provide any transparentancy. That makes me think it's not about transparency.
Yeah, okay, Now on to the bad news. Hawaii, who had probably the best response to the pandemic of all fifty states. Their governor, Josh Green, he said some pretty dark stuff on Friday.
Let's just remember Elon Musk is cutting NIH funding. He's cutting funding that is working on cheers for cancer and also infectious diseases. And basically, Josh Green is saying states must prepare now for another pandemic, and man, he is totally right. Also important to remember that Elon Musk made all his money on scientific.
Discoveries green energy.
Here he is now making sure he's sort of closing the door to others. Josh Green is worried that there's going to be measles or bird flu or something like that. And I think he's right to be, and we all should be worried about this.
But this is how the things start.
Rick wills And is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome Back, two Best Politics.
Rick Wilson, Molly.
John Fast, Happy day to you, my friend, and.
I am happy to be here with you. And you know why we're happy. Why are we happy?
Because bad people are getting smitten from time to time now and smited, smited insmite rated.
Yes, let's start with the beginning. Let's start with assessing the president. Elon Musk.
He is our greatest president.
Right.
He wrote a BCC email to the entire federal.
Government impressive, I have to say, honestly impressive. And it's it's it's sheer dumbfuckery level. Levels of dumbfuckery previously unknown to science were achieved.
It's one of these things where it's like I get being high on your own supply because everyone has had a moment like that, including myself.
I know you're shocked to hear this.
But I still think, like there was no one who said, before you send this one email to everyone in the federal government, let's game out what happens.
Yeah, what are the consequences of this email?
Boss?
Like all megalomaniacs, he has reached the point where he believes that nothing that he wants is wrong and that no impulse could have other consequences. And the fact of the matter is he's actually proving to a lot of people that while Elon has a certain cunning, much like Trump, it's narrow and awfully dumb in some ways.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point, that he has a very narrow field of vision. And I do think what you're saying is right. And I do think also, like as someone who has sort of been a fame hobbyist, a person who has often thought a lot about how fame affects people and wealth and power. One of the things that I think is so interesting about him is that he had quite a lot of goodwill, and maybe
that was what created this sort of invincibility. But there really is a feeling when you watch his behavior that he thinks that the tides will never turn for him when it comes to popularity. And there were a lot of polls this week that showed otherwise.
There were a lot of surveys And by the way, my favorite thing of the week is Donald Trump declaring he's at seventy one percent approval, and I'm like, motherfucker, you're not even at seventy one percent approval in your own family.
Well, not to hand it to Donald Trump, but seventy one percent approval, we do not live in a country where that is going.
To be Our country doesn't work that way anymore. It did back in the day. But he could cure cancer tomorrow and people would be like, no, right, And the same thing could have applied if George Bush had cured cancer or whatever. Well, you just wear a divided country in that respect. I think I don't see that changing in the near term.
So let's just talk through a little bit. So we got MOSK sending this mass email. We have FRINT divisions including cash Battel, Welcome to the Resistance, cash Battel. Just kidding, oh, saying ignore the Elon email, right, because the thing is, here's a guy who's saying he's going to fire whoever doesn't write back something that makes him happy. You know, I want to like pause or a second and just talk about this. Nobody wants waste. No one is served
by wasting your tax dollars. That said, just writing an email to the entire federal government and then reading I don't know who's going to read all of these emails, but the idea is that someone will, and that that person, oh.
Oh, AI is going to read all these emails. That's the thing here. They're going to have AI reading them and say, oh, this person must go. They have not displayed sufficient fealty to Lord Alon.
I was actually just reading an article in the New Yorker which made me think about this, Which is part of what Elon is banking on, is that we all think AI is further along than it is.
Well.
AI can certainly do a lot of things like edit little changes in voice or whatever. It can't necessarily actually figure out who's doing what in the federal government, or it can't do the sort of nuances that would be needed in this moment.
It is not yet the magical box.
It will be soon, unfortunately.
Yeah, I mean we're racing toward that. My favorite story of last week was there's a new AI that's purpose is to hack other AIS.
Great, it's probably fun.
Fine, No, but you're right. I mean he is doing this as part of his broader campaign to terrify the federal workforce and to dishearten the federal workforce. And look, it has been somewhat effective to date.
Right, they are terrified.
I think it's worked.
You know, you made smart people have a terrible time and feel like shit.
Congratulations Yet.
In suject yeah, I mean, like these are people who could have made more money in investment banking.
Yeah.
I look at it as what I call the high skill skill cuts.
Okay.
I talked to somebody today who got fired from an agency because she had gotten her scholarship and internship through a women in science program.
Right, which is Dhi DEI.
They didn't care that she's a talented and very highly educated person. In her field doesn't matter. You're out. You're a dei hier if you're a woman, right well obviously or black, I mean then, or if you're a forty year combat veteran in the Joi Cheesus staff, or the chief of Naval operations. Right that was a woman who spent twenty years of her forty year career at sea
commanding destroyers. But now they're being replaced by a guy whose main criteria not that he's a successful combatant commander or ran a major staff organization that he was the was a fighter pilot. Is who got Donald Trump's attention for making his guys wear red hats?
Yeah wow cool? You know fieldy to the king in the court.
Very unsurprisingly, Trump continues to lose.
Donald Trump is having a terrible run in the courts. I think it's getting a little hard for them now because I am seeing the rhetoric coming from Elon, because you can always watch Elon. He sort of like preps the battlefield, like he prepped the battlefield on Ukraine. Now he's prepping the battlefield on the judges. Satis that judge
must be impeached. And I promise you that the House of Representatives is gonna gonna rev up the the old impeachment wagon any minute now, Yeah, because Elon wants it.
Who's he going to impeach?
The House? Is going to try to impeach judges in the Senate, it's going to say hamanahamanahamana.
No.
So here's a bit of weirdness.
I don't know if it's weirdness, but I think it's like, actually, good is the Supreme Court on Friday prevented Trump from firing the head of the watchdog agency.
That is not nothing.
You know, we love to pooh pooh how incredibly demented this court is, but it's nice to see that there are still a fee.
Once in a while you get a moment out of this court where they say, no, thank you, we don't choose today to be the day that we burned the Constitution to the ground. Yes, it could happen anytime, mind you.
Yeah, exactly.
It's funny because as I watched this continual shit show going on, and I think this is worth talking about for a minute. You have all these federal employees who have been fired for no reason. Some are there back to try to rehire them. I'm thinking nukes, FDA FAA. It's been clear that a lot of the wrong people. It turns out that just firing people, you fire a lot of the wrong people, people.
You really need. But you did.
Really what Elon did, which I think is is pretty spectacular, is he has radicalized the federal workforce.
Oh yeah, look, I mean the bad news I probably should even say this, but the bad news is the ones that stay. If you think you've seen malicious compliance before, get ready for something entirely new. I said that there are the high skill low skill cuts, and they both hurt. These people that are quote probationary offense because they changed
a job, not because they're new. And there was a belief initially on Elon's part in the in his team's part, that anyone who was probationary must have been put in there as a sleeper agent by Joe Biden.
Well, I don't think they understand what probationary means. There have been a number of points where it.
Becomes clear that Elon doesn't actually know how any of those works, Like when he learned about judges.
You mean any day that ends in a why, right, But.
When he learned about judges, that was amazing. He was like, well, that means that we couldn't do everything we want, And I was.
Like, may I introduce you to Chief Justice John Marshall.
Yeah, no, Roberts.
I think the other part of this starting to Marshall, I'm talking about Barbari versus Madison.
And oh that's what I thought you were to.
Actual division of the.
Yeah, ware to go, Rick Wilson owning Jesse Cannon with his continue Yes, sir.
The other cuts that I think are actually starting to penetrate in the minds of a lot of voters are things like park rangers, firefighters, USDA inspectors.
Wait, you want food that doesn't make you sick?
You call me crazy, but I picked that one up this weekend that the new problem that's happening is they're laying off all these food inspectors and so now the farmers who are trying to sell their product can't get it to market. And aside from you raw milk goons, most of us don't want to have listeria or salmonella or rotavirus or any the other assorted parade of things that at least a cursory inspection by a trained human being might help prevent.
Yeah, well, Ai can probably do that. No, agree, Well, I don't even think that.
They're not thinking that exactly.
No, I know they are thinking that.
I just feel like we can't say this enough. This is all to pay for tax cuts.
Yeah, and they say, oh, it's four point seven billion dollars in the tax cut. The actual debt that will be accumulated from it in the first five years of the tax cut is ten point nine trillion dollars. Now, Elon Musk is out there and so far they've managed to find about eighty billion dollars in cuts. Most of those cuts are bullshit. Most of it's made up in their heads.
Some of it is just the zero in the wrong place.
Right, some of it is they missed a comma. But the crisis ahead for them, and I think this is a meaningful and real thing they need to sort of
grapple with. Is this tax cut for Elon and Bezos and Zuckerberg and a handful of other people, Because remember, folks, if you don't make over about five hundred thousand dollars a year, the tax cut is actually a tax increase for you, and not to mention, you're going to be hit with another tax increase, not counted in the score so far, which is the tariffs, which will cause another tax increase.
For you make for yourself.
Yeah, but all of this comes down Molly, I think too.
Now I'm kidding, of course, No.
I think all this.
Stuff comes down to they don't understand what they're doing, but they're not really trying to do anything consistently or ethically or meaningfully. They're trying to cause as much chaos own the Libs as hard as they can on the front end of this deal, because I think there's a small slow recognition beginning to creep in that this may be the happy sixty days of the administration and the rest of it goes show south.
Last week we saw that the market had a really bad week. If you don't think Donald Trump has his eye on the.
Market, oh think again again.
Yeah, there were a lot of New York people who wanted him in that job because they thought there'd be a big market rally. And the fact that he can't even get a big market rally. He is trying to juice the economy right now. He wants an interest rate cut that you know, he has sort of plans to juice the economy. So I think a lot of us thought it would crash in a year or two years. But you know, there's a real chance that he doesn't even get at the rally that he wants.
I think he's doing things that are going to make the rally much harder to achieve. I don't think there's any person on Wall Street, any any serious person on Wall Street in the equity space at all, who wakes up in the marning and says, you know what would be great, massive tariffs on trade. That would be fantastic. That's the solution to our national problem. None of that's real.
We saw this.
Week a lot of big fund managers, including Steve Cohen, came out and said that they were adjusting, that they didn't think their outlook was good. Like Donald Trump may not care about American democracy, but he cares when rich people think he's.
He cares about what the market does.
And he cares about very rich people.
Yeah, he cares about very rich people. And he cares about the international market climate because it affects his friends in Saudi Arabia and thus Jarret and thus the family business. I think he cares a lot more about markets than anybody. Let's on inside of his world.
There's also this other thing which I feel like we have not focused on because because the blood letting at the federal government is so humongous, but we are hurtling towards a government shutdown because there is no budget.
So let's talk.
I think the Democrats need to play the hardest game of hardball in the history of hardball. There is no reason for a single Democratic elected official to go out there and save Mike Johnson's ass, not a single one.
Do not.
And I will tell my Democratic friends what they're going to try to do. They're going to say, well, you need to make sure your programs for your district are in place. Man, we're gonna you know it might you might lose snap, or you might lose this, this or that. These people are going to lose these things anyway. These things are. These things are going away no matter what
they do. And if they play or played for suckers by Mike Johnson and they save him when you should be looking for every day, if you're a Democratic elected official, to show the chaos, to show the confusion, to show the bullshit, to show the nightmare of all of the madness that's happening. This is a golden opportunity for Democrats to say we told you so. And that is satisfying, not to a lot of people who really like think
about like, I'm going to do good. I'm going to make sure that my people are taking care of everybody's going to have to suffer a little short term pain.
Well, there are no choices.
The matter is whether you suffer short term pain in a way that destroys and breaks the Republican majority for twenty twenty six, or if you suffer long term pain by not having to bother with future elections.
Right, that's not perhaps not that that's a.
Sub optible outcome in my view.
I want to do two more seconds now.
I actually think that there's a school of thought that is a little bit worrying, which is that these guys are such nihilists that they would actually relish a government shutdown because they want to break the federal government and they think a shutdown might help them do it.
Again, I'm not sure. I'm just like, that's a devil's addicate question.
No government shutdown has ever helped the party in.
Power, right, No, for sure.
Today The Times had a big piece about Chris Murphy and how effective he has been at producing a lot of content which people have seen. I sent this to a friend of mine who's the comms Democratic Comms, and the Democratic Comms person wrote back and said, I'm not one hundred percent with the message, and I was like, you fucking moron.
Yes, the technical phrase you should be using is you fucking morons?
Right? I was really impressed with what Chris did.
And Jesse is now texting saying what Bernie has been saying for years. I know, yes, correct, And Bernie has been doing a really good job traveling around the country talking to people.
Stand by for news. Yes, I agree with Jesse. Holy shit, no, I do.
I think that there is a moment we're in right now, and people haven't utterly thought it all through yet, but there's a moment we're in it on this day in the Year of our Lord, that really has a chance to break loose some of the very deeply solidified bullshit on the right because the consequences are actually real for people now and that oh my god, my cousin, my friend, my neighbor is losing their job or I'm losing my job over this. I thought they were going to get
the DEI people out not me. I thought it was the black people going to be fired, not me. And the size of the federal government actually matters in this case. There's a lot of federal government. There's a whole lot of it, and these people that thought this was going to be painless and consequence free are in the throes of the finding out. Rick Wilson as always a pleasure. My friend.
Michael Waldman is the President and CEO of the Brennan Center for NYU School of Law.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Michael.
It's great to be here in this interesting time in which we live.
It's funny because it's like here we are in this moment where Republicans in Congress have really just beclowned themselves even more than usual. But it does feel like there have been some incredible moments in the courts.
And I would love you to first talk.
Us through this most recent decision with the mayor and Trump and what is going on.
Just talk us through this.
Well, the big picture is you're right that the trial courts, a lot of these judges are really stepping up, which is very encouraging. The New York City situation is an example. It's kind of an unusual one. As you know, Eric Adams was indicted for corruption. And the question is not whether it actually thought the case was on the week, to be perfectly honest, but he was indicted for corruption. He spent a lot of energy going to Mura Lago,
sucking up to Trump trying to finagle a pardon. Instead Trump's Justice department, his defense lawyer who's acting in charge of the Justice Department for a lot of this.
Oh wait, wait, wait, is a mule Bove actually the defense lawyer of Mayor Adams?
Two?
No, he's the defense lawyer of Trump. Right, No, No, adams defense lawyer is Elin Musk's lawyer.
Oh excellent. It's important for everyone to have the same lawyers.
Yeah, yeah, you know, you got to keep up with this season of suits or whatever. But they said, we're not wrapping the charges. In fact, we don't care whether the troupe, We don't know if the charges were valid, and we don't care. We're going to hang them over your head so that you'll cooperate with us on immigration and other things like that. And they made Adams Trump's poodle.
And there was this deeply embarrassing thing where home and the border securities or trotted Adams around on Fox and Friends.
Yes, we saw it. Talk about it though.
Was so condescending to him. Can you imagine Julianius mayor Michael Bloomberg or coch or any of these mayors putting up with this. This is New York. And Adams giggled along. And anyway, as you know, the prosecutors, including acting head of the Southern District of New York Federal Prosecutors, which is a very legendarily independent body, she resigned, and the Thelliant prosecutors resigned and they are all died in the Wold Federalist Society. Conservatives. These are not squishes, these are.
Not we're talking about to soon here, right right.
And she was a you know, I think she was an Alito clerk or Scalia clerk. She was on the fast track. It was a gutsy thing she did, because she didn't just resign. She said, I was in a meeting where basically the Quippro quote was arranged and you confiscated all our notes, and it was quite an accusation. Anyway, it all went before the judge in the case, who's a judge named Dale Hoe. Judge Hoe may have been on your show. For all I know, he was the head of the voting team at the ACLU until he
was on the federal bench. He's arguing a number of important cases and successfully in front of the Supreme Court. He heard the Justice Department and Adams's lawyers the other day both said, oh, this was fine, there was no corrupt deal here. So what he did on Friday was he said, that's not good enough. I'm appointing a lawyer to argue for why the case shouldn't be dropped, in other words, to argue why this is a real problem.
And the lawyer he chose was a guy named Paul Clement. Now, in the legal world, I mean I was kind of looking at the news cover shouldn't It was like, you know, judge orders lawyer. In the legal world, this is big news. He is the leading conservative Republican litigator in front of the Supreme Court. He is somebody who people he was the Solicitor General. He is somebody who people assumed might be on the Supreme Court someday. Maybe Trump isn't going
to be so interested in that anymore. And he's taken on this job of arguing, no, you shouldn't drop the case and so in the legal world, the fact that it's Paul Clement, it suggests that at least some you know, I think we're seeing this phenomenon where all the law breaking, all the antics, all the constitutional violations, so many of the people in and around government know it's bad, so
many of them are afraid to speak up. This prosecutor was not afraid, and that Clement took this on, you know, is another sign that it's only one month in, but political reality has not been repealed.
Yeah, the courts continue to be really the only check. We saw a sort of situation where the courts were providing a check on a lot of the real corrupt stuff that this admin wants to do. What we're edging towards, which I want you to talk us through, is a constitutional crisis where they ignore the court or we're already seeing shades of that.
How do we get here on? How do we get out of it?
So the courts, many courts have stepped up. It's important that we remember these are the trial judges and that the higher up these cases go to the US Supreme Court. We need to remember that as a very ideological, often very partisan court, this is the same Supreme court that gave Trump to all presents vast immunity from prosecution for lawbreaking. So I think the courts are doing an important thing here.
We want them to do the important thing. I don't think they are the only check, but I think we need them to do their job, and many of them have done that. The response to the rulings, and you know, they've ruled that birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. They've ruled that in a bunch of different cases that the Elon Musk crew and you know, the in cels who are going in and rummaging through all these federal agencies, that they can't do that, that they have to follow rules.
They've ruled that a number of the firings of independent agency heads or of the Inspectors General and other people are illegally. These are basic constitutional checks and balances or laws that are being upheld. Elon Musk and JD. Vance responded by saying, well, why should we have to follow court orders? And that's actually something Vance has said over the years.
The irony here is said JD.
Vans went to Yale Law school, so if he knows anything, it's.
That, well, maybe they teach that there. I don't know. Yeah, But what's interesting is Trump felt compelled to say, oh, no, of course, we're going to follow court orders. That's because it really would be quite extraordinary and a constitutional crisis of sorts for a president to just say, oh, I don't like the court order, I'm not going to follow it. Following court orders is something presidents have done for one hundred and fifty years, basically since the Civil War. There's
a little bit of complexity here. For example, a number of the courts or ordered them to not freeze all the funding for this program or that program, or all the federal grants or all the federal loans, and they said, oh, yeah, we're following that. We're going to heel, which is what you're supposed to do if you have a court ruling you don't like a lot of times, the money doesn't get turned back on. This bigot is non Now is
that a quiet contempt of the court rulings? Is it that it's actually hard to turn the federal government on and off like a toggle switch? We don't know. This is also something that other presidents have done, sort of edged around complying with these individual judges. The bigger crisis would come if the Supreme Court made a ruling and Trump said, the hell with you.
It's vance has been musing. I just want to drill down on this for one second. Does this mean that JD. Vans is actually kind of more anti democratic than Donald Trump?
At the very least plays around with authoritarian, highly right wing language and ideas more than Trump has. In other words, very much embracing the idea of basically, things are so messed up in society, we need to be willing to have dictators court. You know, we don't have to listen to the corts. This is sort of an alt right idea of what edgy ideas are. He's sort of dabbled in that stuff even when he was just a kind
of punt it before he was the Cenator. Remember, he's only been in office for two years, and you know, who knows what he really believed. This carily wasn't what he was saying eight years ago when he was an anti Trump writer.
Right when he was writing for The Atlantic and anti Trump.
Yeah, but there's a kind of a school of thought that thinks that even originalism and a lot of these other things the Federalist Society have been working on for years and years that that's not right wing enough, that you really need a kind of Christian nationalist jurisprudence and legal system that is trying to impose morality, impose a certain kind of vision of morality on the whole country. So we care a lot. I care a lot run the Brendan Center. We care a lot about making sure
that the federal courts are followed. And that has been really important throughout the country's history. It's how the civil rights laws were enforced over very rare, calcil trend racist state governments, you know, in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties. Presidents don't really like following these court rulings very often. I mean, I work for a president in some White House seats always like following those rulings by any means. But they do it because they know how
important it is. There's a little bit of complexity.
Remember Judge Kasmeric, Yeah, Matthew Kizmerck from Texas's Amarillo.
It's the one judge in that district.
Right And there's a lot of problems in the federal courts right now where basically you can find a judge to agree with you. It's called, not surprisingly judge shopping and if you want to bring a right wing case, go to Amillo, Texas. And Judge Kasmerick, for example, was the one who ruled that methapristoe, the medical abortion drug that has been approved by the FDA a quarter century ago, and it's been very successfully that they had done it
all wrong and that it was now illegal. And a lot of us at the time said, there's a problem with, as I put it at the time, a judge with a gamble and a grudge, you know, making a ruling like that for the whole country. And we knew then that liberals do bring these cases and conservatives do too, and so it's probably not a good system that one judge maybe can make this kind of ruling for the whole country. At least there's an argument around that. But what you have to do is you appeal the ruling.
You don't just say, oh, we're not going to do it. But what I want to remind my fellow liberals about, we have a very big set of fights in front of the Supreme Court coming up. Some of these cases that are going to get there. For example, Trump on the first day tried to by executive order and birthright citizenship.
The fourteenth Amendment.
Yeah, yeah, And that's the idea that if you're born in the United States physically your citizen. That's literally in the Constitution. It's why they wrote the fourteenth was that. And I think even the Supreme Court will rule Trump can't do that. There are other cases coming up where I think the very right wing supermajority in the Supreme
Court can't wait to rule with Trump. Thinking about what the ability, for example, to fire independent agency commissioners, which Trump is doing with a bunch of different things that involves a case called Humphrey's Executor from the nineteen thirties. They can't wait to overturn that. They were trying to overtrain that when Trump was still a liberal Democrat. I'm going to the Playboy managers. They were trying to overturn that.
Where I think it's really important that they step up and where I have a lot of nervousness about it, or on some of these very basic cases having to do with what the power of Congress and what Elon Musk is doing. The idea that if you're going to have a system of checks and balances, the idea that even puts out that he's the wealthiest person in the world, that one presidential aid can go in with no authorization from Congress and just stop the spending, shut down programs,
with no laws being passed. That upends the constitution that makes the president of king or dictator. And that's what a lot of these cases are about. And that's where a lot of cases in front of the Supreme Court will be. And so I think we all need to be shouting from the rooftops that they need to do the right thing and do their job. I would say, given the configuration of this court, it's going to be case by case.
Yeah.
I think Komi and Roberts are not rubber stamps for the real badg hit staff, but everything else I think there's a real chance they're.
Able to do.
Yeah. And you know, she's interesting. She didn't know that much about her Let they put her in the court.
No they didn't, Thank god.
She's the one with the greatest potential for cutting her own intellectual path.
Yeah, she's very smart.
Kavanaugh tends to follow the political needs of the party that put him in power, and he's a very strong supporter of a strong presidency. Roberts, you know, a lot of people said about Roberts, Oh, he's an institutionalist. He's above all trying to preserve the credibility of the Supreme Court. Occasionally he would make rulings where he didn't even agree with really the outcome, but he knew it would be really bad for the Supreme Court injecting it into politics
to make the rulings. But then again, he did this ruling on presidential immunity that was so much worse than people expected, so much worse than it could have been. And according to coverage by Jodi Kant and Adam Liptak in the New York Times, the liberals in the court said, let's work together. We can make this the unanimous ruling to limit presidential prosecutions. And he said, no, I want to work just for the conservatives. He can go jump
in a lake. And so I wouldn't assume John Roberts is the John Roberts of liberals dreams.
No, No, I don't think so either. But I do think all is not lost, Like there's a lot of room between. All is not lost, and this is going to be okay, right.
I think the laws of political gravity have not been repealed. The laws of reality have not been repealed. The impact of all the craziness on the stock market, on tariffs, on the economy, inflation, all of those things are real. And I think that these court rulings, first of all, they're very important. In twenty seventeen, it's pretty interesting. In twenty seventeen, I really thought that it was the Women's March that set the tone, that encouraged and empowered the
judges back then to stand up this time. You know, you've heard so much doom and gloom and oh, there's nothing anybody can do. There's nothing anybody can do. This time, it's a lot of the judges who were the first ones to stand up. And three days into the term, a Reagan judge judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, said about the birthright citizenship thing, so this is flavorly and constitutional and question basically the law license of the lawyer who
was arguing the case in front of them. You know, I think that should give the rest of us, and some of the people in Congress, some of the Republicans in Congress, some courage. Here. If people believe something for their whole lives, they don't have to chuck those views aside just because Donald Trump is present.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Michael.
Thank you. Interesting times, no momentle fuck.
Rick Wilson, Molly jong Fast.
If you have a child with Elon Musk, do you know how you can communicate with him?
There's a large audience for this. I mean, we know of thirteen. It could be a much larger pool of people. I don't know how many it could be. But every time you go out on a date with Elon ladies and he says, let's do kennymine that make a baby in a laboratory, you should try to get something up upfront on paper.
Again, Rick is kidding because he doesn't know what Elon does.
That said.
I would think you could do a DM and not an actual tweet. But it turns out that if you have had a child with Elon Musk and you need to get his attention, the way to do it is to tweet to him, Dear Elon, our child is dot d dert or I'm suing you for debt because that is really the only way to get his attention.
Yeah, this week, both Grimes a baby mama of two of his babies, three three of his babies. Excuse me, Jesse and Ashley something or another.
Some conservative influencer. She rolled off the MAGA also a writer quote unquote, is.
She now.
Rolled off the MAGA influencer production line somewhere? I mean the other part of this, This is the party of Christian Values. This is the part of the pro life party. And you know, I'm sorry. At some point, guys, just put his statue icons in your Twitter avatar of Roman generals does not make you a man.
Speak for yourself.
Just being a rich dipshit elon does not make you a man. Taking care of your family that would be the definition of making you man.
Oh Man Mars, I can't get.
That first rocket to Mars. He is welcome to go. I encourage it. Rick Wilson, my Jung Fast the pleasure as always, my friend.
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