This Is the Fight Democrats Need To Have

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Cherry? No. Pineapple? No. Passion fruit? Blackberry? No. Wait, I've got it. It's... Try Wendy's new sweet and smoky barbecue cheeseburger with super secret sauce. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we're going to talk about the Democrats fighting back against the Trump regime's illegal renditions to a foreign torture dungeon. And Dan just spoke to Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen.

who's in El Salvador trying to get answers about Kilmar Obrego Garcia, one person the government has admitted sending to the prison by mistake. We'll also get into Trump's latest targets for retribution.

colleges and universities, most notably Harvard. The president is also threatening to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. We'll talk about whether he can or will. And in case you didn't think Elon Musk was creepy enough, There's a shocking new Wall Street Journal story about the billionaire's, quote, baby-making project.

Yeah, that's right. Then later in the show, Tommy talks to Congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, about how Democrats are trying to push back on Trump's defiance of the courts. Big show. Many of us up at night, at least me,

Our government is disappearing people to a dungeon in El Salvador. They don't get a trial. They don't get any contact with a lawyer or their families. They may never leave alive. And Trump says he's looking into sending American citizens there next. He said, quote, he would love to do it. Our courts are trying to stop this.

Since our last show, D.C. Chief District Judge James Boatsburg announced that he will start looking into whether people in the administration should be held in criminal contempt. for their refusal to abide by his order to halt these renditions under the Alien Enemies Act. Meanwhile, the disappearance that's attracted the most attention is Kilmar Obrego-Garcias, primarily because the government admitted to the Supreme Court that they sent him to the torture dungeon by mistake.

But Trump is so far refusing the court's order to facilitate Garcia's release. He was asked about this again on Thursday in the Oval. Here's what he said. Will you take steps to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States and put him in front of a judge? Well, I'm not involved in it. I'm going to respond by saying you'll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ. I've heard many things about him and we'll have to find out what the truth is.

So the many things about Garcia that Trump referred to likely match up with the case that his team has been making, not in court, notably, but in the media, that Garcia is a foreign terrorist who deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. Nothing will change the fact that Obrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again. Every time I read a story about this, it's Maryland father, Maryland father. They don't mention he's a member.

of MS-13 who is a designated terrorist group. If somehow he comes back and that happens, he's gonna be detained and removed again. He's an illegal alien and I'm sick of the liberal media. saying that he's a Maryland man. He's not a Maryland man. He's a guy from El Salvador. Maybe he's not a terrorist. But he's a potential terrorist. He's a terrorist watch list person. He could be a terrorist. Any of us could be terrorists, I guess. That's why it's going to be a very long watch list.

Yeah, a long watch list. A few hours before we recorded this, we got another ruling in this case, this time from a three-judge panel at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is their second ruling, by the way, at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. This one, they ruled that the government has to comply with a lower court's order, that they show the steps they're taking to get Abrego Garcia out.

of prison. Here's the key line from the judge who wrote the opinion, a conservative Reagan appointee who was joined by the other two judges. quote, it is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.

Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. It's a real barn burner of an opinion. I would encourage everyone to read the whole thing. Dan, any sense of what happens next here?

constitutional crisis. I know we've said it before. It sure feels like one. If this isn't a constitutional crisis, I don't know what is. You're exactly right. This is the moment. We are not 100 days into the Trump presidency yet, and we are headed towards a massive collision between the judicial and executive branches of our country, the results of which will, I think, affect our democracy for generations to come. Just the idea, the judicial branch exists as a check and a balance.

to ensure that the president is not king. And if we lose that at a time in which the Congress is controlled all by the president's party, all of whom seem to have never read a constitution and don't care either way, then Trump has unlimited power. This is where we're heading. Will Trump step back from the brink? I think it's notable he said that you have to talk to his lawyers. But if he doesn't step back from the brink, will anyone speak up?

Who's not an elected Democratic member of Congress? Will any Republicans speak up? Will any Republicans not employed by the bulwark speak up? Will business leaders speak up? Will anyone in American society speak up if he... operates in pure defiance of these court orders. Because this is where it comes to. Ultimately, if Judge Bozberg decides that someone has to be put in jail because they're held in contempt, the U.S. Marshals have to put that person in jail.

Who controls the U.S. Marshals? Donald Trump. Yeah, Pam Bondi. Who seems to be a very independent voice, yes. Yeah, right. Yeah, apparently, Bozberg talked about appointing a special prosecutor, which... a judge has the power to do if DOJ is conflicted or refuses to go along with contempt proceedings. But again, once you appoint the special prosecutor, the special prosecutor does their thing. Eventually, you get back to needing to rely on the marshals if someone's going to jail.

Or if someone's not paying the fine they've been given or someone's not, you know, doing what the judge orders. And that's, you know, that's what the executive has the power there, right? So this is why it's very, very dicey. I mean... The strategy being employed by the Trump White House now and the right-wing media and all of their goons and all their friends, it's important to highlight what they're doing. To me, it's even...

their response to this is even more disturbing than what happened in the first place. Because what they're trying to do is... They never offered evidence to prove that this guy is MS-13, right? They never offered evidence. All the stuff they're saying now, like, oh, well, there was a, you know, his wife years ago.

tried to get a restraining order against him because of domestic violence, and then she dropped it, and she has since said that they have their rough patch and they're great now and everything. None of this was introduced in court. There's still no criminal charges. There's still no solid evidence that the DOJ has provided any of these courts. Right. But what they're doing is now they're trying it in the court of public opinion. And they're trying to say.

This guy that you want to make some martyr, right? Like that he's the hero for Democrats now. He's really just a bad guy. And they think that if they can get people to just believe he's a bad guy, what do you care? Why do you need him back? Then that's enough.

But the problem with this is, I mean, there's a lot of problems with this, but like... A very, you know, you heard Tom Homan, the immigration czar in that clip that we just played, saying like, if he comes back, we're just going to deport him again. You know what? A very easy way to handle this would be for the government to facilitate Garcia's release, flies back to the U.S., he's detained at customs, and if the government wants to deport him, they bring their case to a judge.

And if they win, he gets deported to, I don't know, one of the many countries that are now taking our deportees. And while I'm sure he would certainly rather be in Maryland with his family, at the very least... He wouldn't be in a fucking concentration camp. Which is where he is right now. There's not enough focus on the prison. It's all focused on like the character of the people that we're sending. We are sending people.

to a foreign prison that might as well be a concentration camp. It is that the conditions are terrible. People do not get, it's extra legal, right? How long are these people going to sit in that jail? We don't know. They've not been given any sentences. They've not been convicted of anything. They're just thrown in a hole. They don't get to contact their family, their lawyers.

They are, they don't, the lights are on 24 hours a day. There is torture. There is starvation. There is like, they're not getting the healthcare they need and they're dying. I mean, it's just, it is fucking insane that we're sending people to this place. And in particular, we're sending people accused of no crimes. Right. It'd be one thing if he was just deported to live.

Understanding that a judge said he cannot be deported to El Salvador because it's dangerous, but he could be – even if they said we don't believe – we're going to get that order removed. We're going to send El Salvador. He's going to live in society in El Salvador. What is the purpose of him being in this prison other than keeping him out of the reach of just cruelty, right? Keeping him out of the reach of the judicial system. Because they just sent him to El Salvador.

in violation of the order, they can find a way to get him back. But because he's in this prison that no one who's not a Republican member of Congress shooting vertical video can get into, then there's no way to get to him. Right. I mean, you'll hear I talk about this with Chris Van Hollen in my conversation coming up. But if you have this case, right, like present it before a judge.

Just do that. And then the president has broad power to deport people if they go through due process. But they are unwilling to do that. And the reason that they, and the fact that they have picked this case. This would be such an easy one for them to solve. They admitted they made a mistake. They bring him back, bring him before the judge. As you said, he gets deported elsewhere or gets deported to El Salvador, not in the fucking concentration.

But they will not do that because in their mind to let him back somehow unravel the whole system. Or as some people pointed out today, we're not going to let him to talk about the conditions of the prison. Because everyone else who's been sent there has not been heard from again. Reportedly, no one has left the prison in the history of the prison. Yep.

And all of the reporting about people who have died in some of these prisons in El Salvador, it's some of the other prisons there that they have been able to, you know, track some of the people there who've died in those prisons. I think they had like since. Since Bukele declared a state of emergency and became a dictator, like 350 people in the prisons have died. But you're right. They don't know. They have no idea what's happening in Seacott because no one's gotten out.

And in fact, the justice minister in El Salvador says the only way you get out of CECOD is in a coffin. That's where the United States is sending people right now. And there's been comparisons to, and I heard this today, and I think Tommy's made the comparison too, that it's like Gitmo, right? they were able to file habeas petitions, right? They were able to like...

ask why they're being detained there, right? And, you know, it's whatever. Shameful. We all disagree about what happened at Gitmo. But even they got more rights than what's happening right now. And one of the judges on the Fourth Circuit who wrote the first opinion... said even the fucking Germans who were Nazis in this country during World War II got more due process than these folks.

that we're sending to prison, who at least one of them, Garcia, we know has been sent unlawfully to prison. For what is a life sentence? Yeah. It's like, oh, it's liberals want to bring him home. But no, no, I just want to fucking shut the prison down or at least stop sending. People who are in custody of the United States, many of them asylum seekers here legally, stop sending them to a fucking torture dungeon. That we're paying for. That we're paying for. Six million dollars a year.

One piece of good news in all of this is that Democrats are really starting to fight back. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who represents Garcia, traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday. Dan, you spoke with him by Zoom today, Thursday afternoon from San Salvador. Let's listen to that interview. Before we get to the interview, one note. After we recorded the episode and this interview, Senator Van Hollen tweeted that he had actually gotten a chance to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

We don't have a lot of information yet about how that meeting came to place or what Senator Van Hollen learned in that meeting. We do know that Senator Van Hollen has called Kilmore's wife to pass along his message of love. Later on last night, President Bukele tweeted that now that Kilmar has been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody. We hope to learn more about this today.

Joining us today from El Salvador is Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen. Senator, welcome to Pod Save America. Dan, good to be with you. Senator, it's my understanding that you just tried to visit the prison in where Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held. What happened when you tried to visit? I did try to visit to check on his health, and I was stopped about three kilometers outside of the prison by soldiers. who told me I could not proceed. You could see cars continuing to go by on the road.

Now, we have seen videos, social media posts from Republican members of Congress who have been inside the prison recently. So it's pretty clear that it seems to me at least that you were being targeted because you are not a supporter of Trump's policy here. I assume that's your assumption as well. I think that's fair. My request also has been to go see Kilmar. Republicans don't seem to care about the fact that he was illegally abducted and taken. You know, Trump administration seems to be.

celebrating that fact and, of course, are ignoring the court orders to facilitate his return. Now, it's not just you. No one has spoken to Kilmar since he was taken to this prison. Is that correct? Not his wife, not his family. Has his attorneys spoken to him? No, they haven't allowed anybody to speak with him. And that, of course, is a... a violation of international.

law, but that is the current situation. And I explained to the vice president of El Salvador yesterday that they're really being complicit in these illegal actions by... the Trump administration and illegal under U.S. law for lack of due process. But by not allowing him to have any contact with anybody, that's also.

a violation of international law. As you mentioned, you met with the vice president yesterday. What did the vice president say when you requested that they return Kilmar to the United States? Well, his basic response was that they had this deal with the Trump administration. The Trump administration was paying the government of El Salvador millions of dollars.

to detain him and others. And I explained that the courts of our country, including the Supreme Court, by a nine to zero ruling, had ordered the Trump administration to help facilitate his release. You know, the president of El Salvador has said that, well, he doesn't have the power to smuggle, you know, Kilmar back into the United States. I pointed out to the vice president. We're not asking El Salvador to smuggle them in. We just want them to open the prison gate.

And Attorney General Bondi did say the other day that they'd send a plane. I don't know if that offer still stands, but I want to make that distinction clear. El Salvador is a sovereign country. We don't think that they can, quote, smuggle him back to the United States. But what they can do. is open the gates to the prison to somebody who's been illegally detained there. And it also seems clear that the Trump administration has not asked.

for him to be returned. You know, it sort of felt in the meeting with Bukele that the... Well, we can't. It's up to him. He doesn't want to do it. So that's the end of the matter. But they also haven't asked, right? There's no evidence that they have done anything to facilitate, correct? Well, that's absolutely right. I mean, the first question I asked of the American embassy team here has...

Has Washington, has the Trump administration given you any instructions to help facilitate his release? And the answer was no. Obviously, in clear violation of the Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit just weighed in on this. Have you had a chance to see that opinion?

I have a very strong opinion where they said essentially they backed up the federal district court judge and... said that this violation of due process by the Trump administration goes to the very heart and foundation of our Constitution, a total violation. the due process rights. And they said, I'm reading here that it should be shocking for all of us to also listen to the Trump administration's claim that since he's already left the country.

They have no obligation to get him back. They admitted. They admitted in federal court that they had erroneously abducted him and taken him to another prison. And instead of fixing the problem, the Trump administration fired the lawyer who told the truth in court. fired or put on administrative leave. One of the theories, other than just pure cruelty about why the Trump administration is so unwilling to address what is their own admitted error.

is that if Kilmar were to come home, he could talk about what he saw in that prison, which is notorious for torture, starvation, absolute violations of human rights. Do you assume that to be the case as well? I think the Trump administration wants to cover up all of their illegal activity and wrongdoing. That can certainly be. a part of it. But they're lying through their teeth every day about this, the case and trying to fool Americans as to what it's about, what this is about.

is stripping an individual of his rights to due process. And if you can do this for this individual. The rest of us watch out because what bullies do is they pick first on the most vulnerable. And that's essentially what the Fourth Circuit just said today. I know you're focused on getting Kilmar freed.

But over the last 36 hours here, the Trump administration has engaged in a full-throated effort to try to smear his character, putting out evidence that claims he's a domestic abuser, comparing him to Osama bin Laden in one case, and he's a proven gangster. What's your response to that effort? Well, all I know is the federal judge in the case looked at the administration's claims regarding that he was in MS.

13 and found them lacking. That's where the Trump administration should be providing any evidence they have rather than just putting this out. in the court of public opinion look i want to be clear i'm not i i don't know every single fact here What I'm vouching for is the system, due process. That's the forum in which these things are decided. And it is exactly that that the Trump administration wants to avoid entirely.

So what happens now? What realistically can be done? What are you going to do next? What leverage do Democrats or others back home have in this matter, do you think? Well, number one, I intend to keep a spotlight on this issue because I do believe that the government of El Salvador... At some point, I think the international community may also weigh in and just say what's happening here is illegal, becoming the contracting out prison in a way that violates people.

rights, but the Trump administration is going to be providing those monies to the government of El Salvador. Ultimately, Congress appropriates these funds. And so I'm certainly not going to appropriate one penny of American taxpayer dollars. the government of El Salvador to pay them for violating this individual's rights and violating the rulings of the United States courts with respect to his rights. Are you coming home? Are you staying there much longer? What is your plan?

My plan is to come home either later this evening or tomorrow. I've had lots of meetings here. I also met with some of the... human rights groups. I met with the lawyer for Kilmar's mother and his wife who's down here. In fact, he accompanied me to try to go see Kilmar in prison. He was also blocked by the soldiers when we made that effort. I also met with the U.S. Embassy team here to talk about bilateral relations between the United States.

in El Salvador. But I intend to either leave later tonight or tomorrow morning, but I can assure you and I've assured the government of El Salvador that I may be the first senator here or the first member of Congress. There will be more to come because a lot is at stake for Americans in terms of protecting the right of due process.

for this individual, but really for every American when it comes right down to it and every resident of the United States. Senator Van Hollen, thank you for joining us. Thank you for what you're doing and safe travels home. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right, so that was Chris Van Hollen. Dan, what do you make of Van Hollen's visit and your conversation?

First, good for Van Halen for going, right? We need people to draw public attention to this. Just as you heard in his interview, like what a surreal authoritarian. He can't get to the prison. He can't get information. No one in the embassy has heard anything. Just the fact that it is very clear that Trump has done, as I said to Senator Van Hollen, in the Oval Office meeting. It's like, we asked. He said no. What do you want us to do? But what's very clear from Van Helsvist is no one asked.

They've done nothing to try to bring him home and seem to be trying very hard to keep him from getting any information. I mean, just as Van Hal noted, no one has spoken to Kilmar since he went into the prison. Not his lawyer, not his family, not Senator Van Hollen, no one.

And that is, as Senator Van Haan said to me, a violation of international law. Same thing with many of the other people we've sent there who have, you know, no... sure some people might be gang members and whatever but like andre the the uh gay stylist from venezuela

who they thought were, you know, his random tattoos of his mom and for his mom and dad were Trendy Aragua, you know? No one's heard from him. No one's heard from any of these people that we've sent there. It's horrifying. It's really horrifying. Pod Save America is brought to you by Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol. I have to tell you about this game-changing product I use for a night out with drinks. It's called Pre-Alcohol.

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Honey. Nope. Peach. Lime. No. Cherry? No. Pineapple? No. Passion fruit? Blackberry? No. Wait, I've got it. It's... Try Wendy's new sweet and smoky barbecue cheeseburger with super secret sauce. A bunch of other Democrats, Cory Booker, Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost, among them, have said they're trying to go to El Salvador too. I just saw that the House Republicans turned down.

The House Democrats request to have a Codell go there or to be able to go there. They're not going to fund Democrats going there. They're just going to fund House Republicans going there so they can take selfies in front of the prison full of detainees. Do you think that's still worth doing since Van Hollen couldn't get anywhere by going? I kind of think it is just because I think it's a show of like...

we're going to fight on this, but I don't know what you think. No, I agree. I think people should keep going. The second public attention moves to the next thing, we've lost. Right. And not just for Kilmar. It's not just about Kilmar. This is for everyone who's already been sent and everyone who's going to be sent. And so people should keep going. The only weapon that we have in this environment is public attention and public. And we got to keep it focused on this for as long as we possibly can.

Not all Democrats want to fight about this. One House Democrat told Axios that this shouldn't be a, quote, big issue for the party and that they should instead focus on, quote, the basic things that affect people every day. Another House Democrat said that this is a, quote, soup du jour issue, a, quote, trap.

and that the party shouldn't, quote, take the bait for one hairdresser, referring to Andre Romero, the gay hairdresser from Venezuela with no criminal record, who has also disappeared to Seacott. Gavin Newsom called it, quote, the distraction of the day and, quote, exactly the debate they want because they don't want the debate on tariffs.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Going to try not to scream about all of this. I'm going to scream about it. I'm going to warn you right now. Good. Thank you. Because I can't anymore. My head's going to fucking pop off my body. You wrote a message box on Thursday making the case. First, I will stipulate happily that all the public opinion research says that the best way to drive down Trump's approval rating is to talk about the economy.

tariffs, inflation, economic chaos, market drops, tax cuts for billionaires, custom Medicaid, that is without a doubt the most persuasive message in all the polling, right? I'm not arguing. i do however think that democrats look Cowardly, calculating, and fucking ridiculous. If our response...

To the father and husband of a U.S. citizen being sent illegally in defiance of a Supreme Court order to a foreign gulag is to vomit up some poll-tested talking points about tariffs? To turn our back to it? Like, that is absurd. Like, who are we and what do we stand for if we... We don't always get to pick the fights.

Trump gets to pick them most of the time. The fights come to us and we have to decide how to win them. And in this moment, with so much on the line, not just for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but for democracy, for the rule of law, for due process. And the idea that Democrats lose every time we talk about immigration is such learned helplessness. It drives me bananas.

Yes, people want a stronger border. Yes, people want gang members and violent criminals out of this country. Yes, they want less chaos at the border. And they want, frankly, a lot of the migrants who came here in the last few years to go home. But the people they do not want deported, the people who have, like Kilmar Briggs, who have been here for 10 years. who are married to a US citizen, who have US citizen children in this country, people who are gainfully employed.

people who are paying taxes abiding by the law, those are the people that majorities of Americans, including large swaths of Republicans, believe should be given an opportunity for a path to citizenship, to find a way to have them stay. pay taxes, follow the law, go to the back of the line, whatever else. But that is what people believe. When they think about mass deportation, they don't think about people like Kilmar Braco.

And if we turned our blind eye here, we are ceding the ground. I think Democrats are learning the wrong lesson between. We did not lose on immigration because we talked about people like Gilmore Abrego Garcia too much. We lost because we ceded the issue to Donald Trump. We allowed him to decide that immigration was about border security and border security only. And we tried to out-tough him on who would be tougher on transnational gangs.

But when you brought in the issue to talk about who is actually going to solve the problem, the complex problem of immigration in this country, you talk about what mass deportation means for people who've been in this country for a long time, for our communities, for the workforce.

That is a fight we can win, and we just never tried to win it. So this idea that this is some sort of trap is idiocy, but it also – it's a fight we can win. We have a lot of public opinion on our side here. And so I just – It is so frustrating that our party in the face of something so serious, so dangerous, so real, would be such prisoners to polls for an election that's happening in 16 months. is exactly why people hate politics. I'm so pulsing with rage right now over this.

It's like, if we are not willing to stand up here, then I don't know what we are fighting for or what we stand for. You don't think if we just get egg prices down a bit, then that'll... I feel like some of these Democratic politicians are going to be

screaming, what about the egg prices as they are hauled off to El Salvador to rot in prison? You know where people find out what the egg prices are? It's not from a press release from a Democratic member of Congress. It's when they go to the grocery store.

That is one of my big points on this, which is the effects of Trump... fucking up the U.S. economy and maybe the global economy are going to be felt by people in their everyday lives, whether Democrats talk about it or not, particularly now this far out from an election. The politics of immigration. YouGov tested this question two weeks ago.

Do you support or oppose deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to El Salvador to be imprisoned without letting them challenge the deportation in court? This was on a list of, I don't know, about like 12 Trump policies. It was the least popular. Under tariffs. Less popular than the tariff. And it was 61-26 people opposed this. 61% to 26%.

Signal, which is a right-leaning polling organization, supported or opposed deporting people who entered the U.S. legally on humanitarian status. That's Andre, the Venezuelan hairdresser. 3656. 56% of people oppose that. Only 36% support deporting those people. Yes, the politics are on our side, first of all, but even if those numbers were flipped and the politics were on our side, you know what to that Democrat who talked to Axios?

what the basic things that affect people day to day. One of those things is whether you can walk down the street without a van pulling up with masked people throwing you in the back and shipping you to El Salvador so you're in a prison for the rest of your life. That affects your day to day life.

And if you think it's just going to happen to Kilmar Obrego Garcia because you think he might be a bad guy because he's MS-13, three U.S. citizens have now received emails in the past week from the government telling them to leave the U.S. immediately.

One was a doctor from Connecticut who has absolutely nothing to do with immigration. She was talking to the news. She's like, I have no idea why I got this email, but I had to get an attorney, an immigration attorney, because I'm like, maybe it was an error, but it was pretty serious and it told me to leave the country.

And you think the Department of Homeland Security or CPB or ICE would be like, oh, I'm so sorry. These emails were sent in error and said they were like, they may have been sent in error, but they may have been trying to get to an illegal alien and blah, blah, blah. And people should take it seriously. So those are U.S. citizens.

There was a story, another story in Boston, a man from Guatemala who's here legally. His wife has asylum protections. She's here legally as well. They were both pulled over. While they were saying that they wanted to wait for their lawyer to the ICE agent, the ICE agent smashed his window, dragged him and his wife out of the car, took them into custody. And then I said, oh, we were looking for someone named Antonio. The guy's name is Juan.

And he's still, they're still trying to get him out, right? Now, a lot of these people, maybe it's a mistake, maybe they get out, maybe it's no problem, but like... Or maybe they get sent to El Salvador by mistake, which the government has already admitted that it did with Garcia. And then what's going to happen? The government's going to, oh, well.

In El Salvador, nothing we can do. Nothing we can do. That's their argument. In the most generous terms, if they just mistakenly send some people to El Salvador, nothing we can do. Sorry. Like, should we fight on this issue? This is the issue, right? Living in a fucking free country where the government doesn't, we're not in a police state where the government scoops you up. If you don't fight this, what are you doing? You're fighting for fucking to avoid Medicaid cuts and lower egg prices?

It's like if we wanted to have a debate about what the ad traffic should be in New York 17 or wherever in October of 2026. That's a real debate. We are not there. This is happening. And if Democrats don't speak out about it, and this has been my argument that I've been making in recent weeks, is we know the media just doesn't have the reach or the power to make people know about it. And the only thing we can do, the only power we have right now is our voice.

Right. We don't have the ability to pass legislation to stop them. We don't have the ability to stop him from confirming these judges. We just don't. We have no tools other than our voice. So we should use that right now, because if we don't do it, no one else is going to do it. And then Trump is going to get away with all. And I do want to say before we move up the Democrats like. I think after the Oval Office meeting with Bukele,

I noticed because I was like, again, I was like, why aren't Democrats talking about this? And I saw more elected Democrats. Speaking out, not just posting, you know, but like talking about it. Van Hollen's going all these guys. So like, I do think that most elected Democrats are ignoring the advice of. Some of their colleagues and probably most Democratic strategists, I'm guessing, are behind this. People who are like got their head deep in the polls.

And so I'm encouraged by most of the party. Yes. Like, obviously, Chris Murphy's been talking about this stuff. Cory Booker's been talking about it. AOC and Bernie talked about it at the rallies over the weekend. Like, more and more people are talking about it, but there is still this. instinctual reticence to take Trump on on these issues that I think is going to be very damaging to the party, not to mention the country itself.

Right. And even if you don't care about the country and the party, if you care about just your own narrow political considerations, you're looking to run for president in 2028. Look at the fucking latest polls. Of, like, who's on top in the primary field? The people who are, like, Cory Booker is now, like, second in some polls. Because he went up there and gave that filibuster and showed that he's willing to fight.

Like, there is political benefit to this. I mean, there is individual political benefit for someone who wants to be president. There's also collective political benefit for the party to be seen as people who will fight for something. Yes. Yes. And that, I mean, yeah.

All right. Two other items on this that I think should serve as a preview of coming attractions. Brendan Carr, the Project 2025 co-author, turned... chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under Trump, attacked Comcast in a tweet this week because he isn't happy with how they're covering the Garcia case. He also included this threat, quote, Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn't cut it.

Did he point out any specific examples of MSNBC lying? Giving the wrong facts. No, not at all. Nothing. He's just upset with the coverage. Meanwhile, OG Trump goon Sebastian Gorka, he's back in the game as the White House counterterrorism czar. He went on Newsmax this week to say this. The other side that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists. And you have to ask yourself,

Are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute, Rob. Aiding and abetting. If you don't like Trump disappearing people to foreign prisons, you may be aiding and abetting terrorism. Seems bad. How seriously do you take these threats from these two goons? I think we should take them deadly seriously.

It was just this time last week that you and I were talking about the president of the United States sitting in the Oval Office and signing two executive orders to target two specific individuals for the crime of criticizing the regime to instruct the Department of Justice to investigate.

So like Seb Gorka and Brendan Carr, frankly, are deeply unserious people. But the Trump era is about unserious people having deadly serious power. And so we should expect them to wield that in ways that could be quite dangerous. The whole terrorist thing, they're throwing around terrorists a lot these days. You're a terrorist supporter. It's not enough for you to maybe have weak ties or unproven ties to a gang. Now it has to be a foreign terrorist organization.

And this is how it starts, right? And again, we're only 100 days in. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Therapy can feel like a big investment, but it's worth it. It's really worth it. Everybody should take the time to get... Everybody's got stuff they're working through. Everybody's got patterns. It's hard to see without the help. of a professional. Let's talk numbers. Traditional in-person therapy.

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The Trump regime has also been targeting a number of other political enemies lately. The Times reports that a housing official in the Trump administration is referring New York Attorney General Tish James for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department for allegedly falsifying real estate records. Pam Bondi is suing the state of Maine for not complying with their trans athlete ban. An interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

Former Trump personal attorney Alina Habba announced late last week that she plans to investigate New Jersey's Democratic Governor Phil Murphy and his attorney general over immigration enforcement. But the biggest news of the week is Trump going after Harvard. We talked about Harvard's decision to fight back on Tuesday's pod, but there are a couple updates here. First...

In response to Harvard, the government has moved to eliminate over $2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts from the school. Then on Tuesday morning, Trump posted to Truth Social that Harvard should, quote, perhaps lose its tax exempt status. Sure enough, CNN reported on Wednesday that the IRS is making plans to do exactly that.

Later that day, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem demanded that Harvard submit lists of international students who have engaged in, quote, illegal and violent activities before the month is out. or the school will risk losing the certification that allows it to enroll any foreign students at all. They are threatening to eliminate Harvard's ability to take any foreign students.

To take the foreign students thing first, do you want to talk about just why that's such a big deal to schools like Harvard? Yeah. Foreign students pay full freight. They are not eligible for financial aid in the way that U.S. students are. Oftentimes, they are children of wealthy people abroad or their education is being funded by nonprofits or organizations from abroad.

So the students who are paying full tuition are subsidizing the tuitions of the kids who are getting financial aid. So if you were to get rid of all the foreign students, what that would mean is that tuition for everyone else would go up.

Which would be just the pitch perfect addition to the Trump agenda to raise prices on every American in every facet of their lives. We're going to do it for smartphones. We're going to do it for car seats. We're going to do it for eggs. We're going to do it for college tuition. And how would stripping Harvard's tax status work? What would that do? Why is that a big deal? That would be a massive deal for Harvard because it would mean they would all of a sudden owe.

taxes on everything, including their $60 billion, whatever it is, endowment, property taxes, state taxes. It also would reduce their ability to raise money. Donations to a university are tax deductible. There's often part of the charitable giving plans of foundations or individuals. So for example, when Jared Kushner's dad bought that building so that Jared Kushner could go to Harvard.

He got to write that off on his taxes. And so they would owe more money and they'd be able to raise less money. And now the question is, can they actually do that? Right. The president does not have unilateral authority to do it, although the IRS are the ones who. decide whether someone has tax-exempt status. There is a pretty narrow statutory definition for what you cannot do to retain your tax-exempt status. a certain amount of political lobbying and becoming a profiteer.

And so theoretically, in a world where there were rules and norms and court decisions abided by, they would have to prove that Harvard did something to violate their tax status on those very narrow statutory grounds. And so the second it happened, which... I would find it hard to imagine that Harvard did anything like that. But it can't be we didn't like their response to the Gaza protests. It cannot be a broad, up-sustantiated...

allegation of anti-Semitism. It cannot be political speech. It cannot be bias. Yeah, which Trump has already discarded their defense there on anti-Semitism because Trump was like, also, they're just so liberal. They're just too liberal. But none of those things, you cannot do this on First Amendment grounds. That is very clear in case law that you cannot take away their tax status because you do not like what they say. In a world where there are norms and laws and people in court situations.

It doesn't seem like they're going to stop with Harvard either on this. Like, there's, you know. a lot of rumors and concerns that they're going to go after people with 501c3 status. nonprofits. Trump was asked about it today again when he was signing some EOs and he said he's mentioned CREW, Citizens for Responsibility of Ethics in Washington. He talked about them. He talked about some climate groups.

So I think there's more of this coming. And again, like good for Harvard for... standing up i saw the stanford did the same thing northwestern so i think that like Harvard standing up is hopefully inspiring. We were talking about this on last episode, hopefully inspiring other colleges to stand up as well and not be Columbia. Well, I mean, Columbia learned the lesson pretty quickly since they... caves and that Trump immediately demanded more from them. Yes.

Obviously, the administration is targeting Harvard because it's the most elite of the elite institutions. And it does seem like they are. daring Democrats to defend these institutions. We've talked a lot about putting us in a position to defend institutions here. How are you thinking about that now? I think we have to stop trying to litigate this on each individual data point and make a broader argument about abuse.

Yeah. There's a very interesting Navigator poll out today which talks about how people are feeling about Trump and one of their big concerns is abuse of power and thinking he's above the law. And I think these are... examples of that. We need to tell a story, not just respond, not play guacamole with every single thing. I think equality under the law is like a bedrock principle of America that everyone gets, that everyone supports.

That, you know, because when you frame it as institutions and due process and all that, but like when you're talking about everyone deserves to be treated equally, everyone deserves a chance to defend themselves in court. Like just the most basic. foundational principles of the country. Talk about it in those terms. I do think that it's a powerful case.

One other Trump target who's back in the president's crosshairs, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, who was the first appointed to the job in 2017 by... Donald Trump. Powell said this week that Trump's tariffs are, quote, highly likely to cause a spike in inflation. Trump responded on Truth Social, where he does all his best work, that, quote,

Powell's current term doesn't expire until May of next year. He has maintained that he cannot be fired by the president. And Politico reported Thursday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has, quote, repeatedly cautioned White House officials. that Trump trying to fire Powell would, quote, risk destabilizing financial markets.

Is Trump listening to Scott Besson's advice? Let's find out. Oh, he'll leave. If I ask him to, he'll be out of there. But I don't think he's doing the job. He's too late. Always too late a little slow and I'm not happy with him I let him know it and If I want him out he'll be out of there real fast believe me Nice work, Scott Besson. Just what the economy needs.

some uncertainty over the future of the Fed chair as we still grapple with inflation and now a global trade war that could tip us into recession. How do you think this plays out? I mean, this one is... alarming and fascinating on a whole host of levels. I mean, the market chaos of Firing Pal would be... devastating and be somewhat akin to the freak out in the bond market that caused Trump to back off the reciprocal tariffs. Because it would do two things. One...

Replacing Powell with a Trump goon like Kevin Hassett, the goober at the NEC, which is what was speculated in some of the reporting today. would raise questions about the independence of US monetary policy, obviously, which would bring into question the idea that the US is the world's reserve currency, which is the foundation of economic strength. So that would- Real fears of financial crisis, the sparking global recession there. But then also...

The reason he wants to fire him, as he said on True Social, is because he wants... Powell to cut rates. The reason Powell is not cutting rates more is because he's worried about inflation sparked in part because of Trump's policies like tariffs. And so if you bring someone in. during a time of possibly growing inflation and have them cut rates, you're going to lead to more inflation and to be deeply damaging to our economy and the world. And so that's what happens.

The interesting question here is like Trump obviously wants to bully him out. Like that's the easiest path. Just force him to resign like he did Christopher Wray and so many other people within the government. If he wants to fire him, it is believed he does not have the power to do that. Right. That the Fed has independence. But what not just Trump, but the right has wanted forever is to test the idea of the unitary executive.

The idea that Trump has control over the entire executive branch, including independent agencies, including the Fed. And so this would... If he fired them, it would probably be stopped. It would go to the Supreme Court, and then we would test this big case, which would have massive implications for the balance of power in this country.

Do you think maybe Jerome Powell just needs to read the art of the deal? That would set him straight? Like everyone else in America, but we're required to do so before too long. I know there is... I do think there's a good chance that the Supreme Court could rule on some of these cases that Trump has more power over these independent agencies than we thought. The law is pretty explicit. around the Fed that the Fed chair can only be fired for cause.

for like malicious behavior, whatever. I don't know. There's a certain standard there. I guess they could, the Supreme Court could say that law is just unconstitutional that was passed by Congress, but it does seem like they have. a little more insulation at the Fed than they do in some of these other independent agencies, which are no longer independent. They would need a majority to adopt the unitary executive, the idea of a unit.

So as we've been talking about Trump's attempts to trample on the courts and the universities and the Fed chair, some of you might be thinking... Isn't there another branch of government that's supposed to have some power here? Indeed there is. It's called Congress, Dan. What? I haven't heard about that in a while. Yeah, it's controlled by Republicans, barely, who are apparently scared shitless of pissing off Donald Trump.

Here's Alaska's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski at a nonprofit conference in Anchorage on Monday. you have to say to people who are afraid or who represent people who are afraid. We are all afraid. Okay? That's what I'm stating. But we are, we're in a time and a place.

I don't know. I certainly have not. I have not been here before. And I'll tell you, I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about... about using my voice because retaliation is real and that's not right I mean thoughts about that and some of them are you know some Part of me wanted to react to like, you know, pull my hair out and be like, hello, you're a Republican senator. Like you have some power here. But just the way that she answered that and like the pause before she said.

We're all afraid. And then she said, that's quite a statement. Like she's, you can tell she's legitimately afraid, grappling with it, trying to figure out what to do. And it was sort of chilling. Yeah, that was my reaction. That's like, you can scream about it. We are here. We can scream about it. Cause she could, you know, she could do more, although her power is certainly limited within that caucus, but.

I think it's just it's a real statement from where we are that a Republican senator, one with an independent base of political power, right? Trump really can't. Of all the Republican senators, she's the hardest one for him to do something to. She won a write-in campaign. The Republican Party tried to drive her out. She was so popular. She's a longtime senator. She's a senior Republican. And she's still scared. That should say a lot. I don't know, man. I don't know. I do think that like...

Her speaking out, people talking about being scared, and then people saying, you know what? Yeah, we're all scared, but we're going to speak out anyway. And again, there's strength in numbers. And the more people speaking out, the more places like Harvard saying like, no, we're not going to deal with this shit. chris van holland saying you know what i'm going to el salvador uh even though that's you know carries with it a lot of risk as well some of these other democrats doing that

Cory Booker going on the floor for 24 hours, right? Like we're starting to see people going to the hands-off rallies. as things get really dark and bad really fast, people feeling more courageous and showing that courage in different ways. And back to your earlier point, like that's all we have right now, right? Is we have like our strength in numbers and our voices and our ability to try to focus public attention. on what's going on. And it doesn't feel like much, but it's something.

You know, all we got. It's all we have. And you have to believe it. Maybe it's a naive hope, but that it can matter. We still have elections coming up. Right. We still have the ability to. shape what is going to happen in this country. And we have to take advantage of that. But it begins with, we're only going to do well in those elections if everyone understands the stakes. And what we can do right now is help people understand the stakes of that election.

All right. One last thing here before we get to Tommy's interview with Jamie Raskin. Our pal Elon hasn't been making as many headlines lately, which is probably good for America. But the Wall Street Journal ran a story about him this week that's too crazy not to talk about. So the headline is, quote, the tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his legion of babies and their mothers. In Musk's dark view of the world,

Civilization is under threat because of a declining population. He is driven to correct the historic moment by helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter. And separately, Musk has said he is concerned about what he called third world countries having higher birth rates than the U.S. and Europe. So we're not concerned about declining birth rates globally.

Just declining birthrights in Europe and the U.S. and perhaps other countries in the global south. overtaking us. That's what he's really worried about. Musk refers to his offspring as a quote legion. a reference to the ancient military units that could contain thousands of soldiers and were key to extending the reach of the Roman Empire, he texted one of the women he impregnated, right-wing influencer Ashley St. Clair,

And the Wall Street Journal reviewed these texts. Quote, to reach legion level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogate. Apparently, the Wall Street Journal reports and again, they looked at texts. They talked to Ashley St. Clair. You know, he like. Goes online, reaches out to some women that he follows online. I don't know, he likes some of their posts, likes some of their content. And he's like, hey, you want to have a baby with me? That's basically what's happening here.

And then some who say yes, then he pays them. But as long as they don't go public, he doesn't like them going public. He's got a fixer who tells the women like, oh, if you go the legal route, it never goes well for people. And then you don't get as much money. I mean, it is so fucking creepy. I don't even know where to start with this one. But did you manage to read the whole thing and what jumped out at you? I think I sent you this story the night it came out.

Oh, you did? Oh, wow, I missed it. I had not read the whole thing at the time because I had to stop reading it. Then this morning in our editorial meeting, you suggested we add this to. the podcast. I argued against it. I was uploaded two to one by you and Reed. And I tried to redid it all the way through again and I could not. It's so fucking weird and so gross.

And the grossness and weirdness of it is – like if he was just Elon Musk, head of Tesla and SpaceX and whatever else, it would be weird and gross and disgusting. The fact that he is now the second most powerful person in our government who is making decisions about what government programs exist and which do not, who has access to all of our... data or health data, tax data, financial data is so concerning. This person has a...

Just an insane level of apocalyptic narcissism. Just imagine this thing yourself. The world's coming to an end, and the only solution is more me. And for more me, I'm going to start DMing random women to have babies with them and then pay them. According to the Wall Street Journal, to be clear. According to the Wall Street Journal. Well, and then some of this is just all like the tech.

They've reviewed the text, right? So the Wall Street Journal is making up the text. Another great story here. Cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong was covering disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried's downfall when Musk started liking and replying to her post. So then she got a lot more followers, right? And it was a financial boon because she had all these followers because Musk is interacting with her.

And she was earning $21,000 on the platform in a two-week period in November. And that's when Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child. Is that like the opening line, do you think? That's what I want to know. I want to know how that goes. This is just like... Like, hey, I've been following you. I've been responding to some of your posts. You want to have a kid? They two had never met in person.

Fong didn't move forward with Musk because she pictured having children in a more traditional nuclear family. Great understatement in the piece. But confided to a few friends about the approach, including St. Clair. and she was worried that turning him down could hurt her earnings. And then once Musk learned that Fong disclosed the request to others, he chided her for not using discretion, and that contributed to a fall, and her engagement and her earnings declined.

That is a sad state about... Everything. Everything. Everything. It is fucking. Also, there's the text. I just I'll stop after this, but it's just it's too wild. He was texting St. Clair again. She gave these texts to the Wall Street Journal when he was in Pennsylvania at the end of the election helping Trump. He texted her, I can't be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden, and I will. And then he said, in all of history,

There has never been a competitive army composed of women. Not even once. Men are made for war. Real men anyway. I am in full war mode. Going to the front lines today. Must win Pennsylvania. Like, what a perfect combination of being a fucking misogynistic asshole and just a douche. Just a real tool. Yeah. I mean, it's... It's a lot. It's really a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. Great guy. Glad he has so much power over everything.

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When we come back, Tommy talks to Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, who stopped by the studio Thursday afternoon. Pod Save America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Do you say data or data? Well, at my house, we say data. And both are acceptable. This is telling me to riff on which is the normal way to say it, but I don't believe in that. I believe language is an evolving part of life. And as long as we can understand each other, there are no rules.

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Joining us now in studio is the Congressman from Maryland's 8th Congressional District and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin. Great to see you. I'm delighted to be with you, Tommy. Thank you for being here in person in Los Angeles. Sorry it's not warmer out. Well, it's better than D.C. where we say it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

Well said. Um, So Dan Pfeiffer just spoke with your fellow Maryland delegation member, Senator Chris Van Hollen. He is in El Salvador right now. trying to meet with Kilmar Obrego Garcia, the Maryland man who even the Trump administration has admitted was wrongly sent to El Salvador. The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to facilitate his return, but the White House so far has refused.

If that continues, what can Congress do to put pressure on the White House or the government of El Salvador to bring him back? Well, first they admitted in court that he was wrongly detained and transported to El Salvador. They confessed it was an administrative error. In public now, they are saying... that he was rightfully taken down there, and they're making up various stories about him. But he's basically...

Like a disappeared person. I mean, that's what happens in authoritarian societies where you get swept off the street and then taken to whereabouts unknown. Yeah. So. Look, you know, we have the problem that they still have a couple vote majority in the House and in the Senate. But we're going to do everything in our power to get him back, including sending other members down there to go and try to get in.

But it's a lawless situation and we have to see to it that the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision is actually enforced. There's no argument. for what the administration has done here. None whatsoever, which is why you even had Thomas and Alito in the right wing on the court agreeing there's got to be due process. Otherwise, we are living in an authoritarian police state. If anybody can be swept off the street and just transported to a torturer's prison in another country. then all is lost because

If they can do it to a non-citizen, they can do it to a citizen because the only way you can prove you're a citizen is if you have a hearing. Right. The due process. Yeah. And Trump has now repeatedly said that he is interested in sending American citizens. to this very same prison, potentially other foreign prisons. You're a former constitutional law professor. Where does that idea land on the range from unconstitutional to constitutional?

It's almost certainly unconstitutional. I mean, there was a form of punishment called banishment that existed in the colonial era where people would be banished from their community and exiled. And I suppose that's what they're talking about doing. The Supreme Court. or any rational Supreme Court, I should say, would probably find that this violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment. But in any event... It certainly violates due process.

to send anybody to a foreign prison or a domestic prison, for that matter, without due process, without a hearing. That's what due process means. And these are the two most beautiful words in the English language because that's what stands between us. an arbitrary dictatorial power. If anybody were to go down the road of trying to create foreign prisons for American citizens, it would have to be the United States Congress. Because we are the lawmaking power.

So this is another constitutional principle that gets trampled in the process. It's not up to the president to just make up. some idea of foreign prisons and start it. The Supreme Court said in the steel seizure case in 1952, the president derives his powers from only two places. One, the Constitution. There's nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the right to do that. And two, an act of Congress.

authorizing the president to do it. And that, of course, has not happened either. So it's a violation of the separation of powers, a usurpation of congressional lawmaking power, and almost certainly a brutal violation of due process. and of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Do you see these reports that Eric Prince, who folks might recall, was the head of Blackwater, which is this private mercenary group?

that was responsible for a horrific massacre in Iraq in 2007 that I think irreparably damaged the U.S. relationship with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people and was horrific in its own right. But apparently Eric Prince and some defense contractors are pitching the White House on the idea.

of building more prisons in El Salvador and maybe declaring some of the territory down there to be U.S. soil to get around some of the legal provisions you're talking about? Does any of that strike you as potentially legal? Not very, no. We're living in something like a gangster state right now where people like Eric Prince think that they've got the right to take taxpayer resources. to set up offshore prisons and justice systems.

or injustice systems that have nothing to do with the American rule of law and due process. So I imagine that they look at Guantanamo Bay as some kind of... towering example of what they'd like to reproduce all over the world. We have to stop that, obviously, to prevent a slide into complete dictatorship. Look, Donald Trump is a convicted criminal. Could he be sent off to a foreign prison? You're separating people from their families. You're separating people from their lawyers.

implicating the right to counsel. And you're engaging in a form of punishment, banishment, which hasn't been seen for centuries, really. Into a prison where it's well known that people are tortured and killed. I'm interested in ways that Democrats can push back now. I realize that we do not have majorities in either the House or the Senate. It's very challenging. But I was talking to a very smart Latin America policy expert earlier this week who suggested to me.

that Democrats should threaten to take action against any foreign government that participates in the extraordinary rendition of American citizens. The idea being We say to them, look, if you mess with American citizens, we will cut off future assistance. We will seek to prosecute foreign officials involved in these illegal actions. Basically, we publicly warn these leaders.

Trump's in power now. We're going to be back at some point, maybe in the midterms. We're keeping score. Thoughts on that idea? Well, that's right. We should be talking about cutting off aid to El Salvador right now. The whole idea that Bukele doesn't have any power to return. An American prisoner who was sent to him under an agreement where he's getting paid $6 million by America is ridiculous. He's our legal agent in this dubious arrangement they've created. Of course he's got the power.

So he and Trump are just acting like, you know, a couple of dictators having fun at the expense of. a man's life and his family and they want to be able to do that all over the place so I like that idea and it's It's a complement to something that we need to be doing right now, which is engaging in far more work. of transnational democratic solidarity with the democratic governments and the democratic movements and peoples and parties of the world. Totally agree.

try to prevent the spread of the lawlessness and the fascist chaos that's been unleashed against us. But implicit in it should be the idea that If and when we come back to power, and we will, we are not going to look kindly upon people who facilitated. to use a word of the day, who facilitated authoritarianism in our country. That's an assault on our Constitution and on our people. Yeah, we can effectuate that outcome. You talked about some nerdy jokes there. An anonymous House Democrat.

told Axios that Democrats are falling into a trap. set by Trump by talking about these deportations. This is a quote from that story, an anonymous quote, but a quote. Rather than talking about the tariff policy and the economy, we're going to take the bait for one hairdresser. That's a reference, I believe, to Andrii Hernandez-Ramiro, a gay Venezuelan makeup artist who the White House.

baselessly called a member of Trenda Aragua and sent to El Salvador. Your response to this anonymous political vice? My response is, we're going to beat them on all fronts. We're going to beat them on the tariff. which were economically catastrophic. for our country and for the world and utterly destabilizing of world trade. and also lawless and unconstitutional outside of the president's powers.

We're going to beat them on his massive assaults on the rights of federal workers and the civil service. And we're going to beat them in court. and in the court of public opinion on their assault. on the due process rights of people in america whether they're citizens or non-citizens in other words We can't ration justice here. And this is why we need all hands on deck and everybody needs to be fighting at every turn, every battle. And, you know, a victory for one is a victory for all.

and we're gonna hang together or we're gonna hang separately and we're gonna hang together. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, kind of, is busy revoking the valid green cards and visas of students who express views the administration disagrees with. People like Rumesa Ozturk, who is the Tufts University student.

who a bunch of masked ICE agents grabbed off the street, sent to a detention center in Louisiana for signing an op-ed. That was pretty banal, frankly, and critical of the university's stance on Israel or the war in Gaza. I've seen reports that as many as a thousand students have had foreign students have had their visas revoked. Obviously, we're talking about foreign nationals in that case. But what do you think the impact on free speech in this country is?

When you're seeing these kind of roundup and attacks on, you know. I mean, it's a totally scandalous situation with the assault on free speech. It is like the Alien and Sedition Act period of the late 1790s, where the attack on immigrants became an attack on... people considered political enemies of the government, dissidents.

I'm very cheered by the tremendous support that she is getting and that all of these students are getting across the board here. In fact, there are a lot of Jewish student groups who are coming out very strongly. And speaking up for her and Mahmoud Khalil and others who are the subject of outrageous.

government harassment and retaliation simply because of their speech. They wrote an op-ed, they appeared at a rally. And what's fascinating is, unlike the hundreds of violent insurrectionists, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, extremists who Donald Trump pardoned, people who violently assaulted police officers, none of these people engaged in any violence at all. All they had done was to write an op-ed or to... officially disapproved by

our new authoritarians in America. So it's very important as a matter of civil liberties for everybody to speak up for them. And especially I've been moved over the last few days to see the Jewish groups coming out and saying, don't try to deport these people and destroy their lives. uproot them in the name of fighting anti-Semitism. You're not doing anything about anti-Semitism.

and you're going to inflame things much worse in the country by what you're doing. Yeah, it feels like there's a real frightening weaponization of the charge of anti-Semitism happening. I mean, one recent example I saw was, do you know Ms. Rachel is? Anyone with a three-year-old or younger currently knows Miss Rachel because she's a former teacher. She makes educational content for kids, puts it up on YouTube. Her episodes have gotten over 10 billion views.

Half of them in my house. But so last week, this group, they call themselves Stop Anti-Semitism. They're known for doxing students, accusing them for being anti-Israel. They sent a letter to the attorney general, to Pam Bondi, asking her to investigate whether Miss Rachel was getting.

quote, paid to disseminate Hamas aligned propaganda to her millions of followers as this may violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Now, that sentence is stupid on so many levels. She's not posting pro Hamas content. You know, she's posting like. love and care for all kids, including Israeli kids, including the BBOS family that was being held hostage. Also, you can't register under Farah for Hamas.

you know like this is self-evidently ridiculous but There are these organizations that are flagging foreign students, going after people like Miss Rachel, and then asking the U.S. government to deport them, to investigate them, to use the awesome power of the state to punish them. Well, apparently some of these students who've been targeted by ICE for removal were first identified by various right-wing projects allegedly pursuing anti-Semitism.

You know, on that understanding you just identified, there are people who are being called anti-Semites simply for speaking out for a two-state solution and recognition of human rights on the Palestinian side. and the Israeli side and the necessity for mutual security. I mean, that's just scandalous. And so, you know, this is a period like Salem witchcraft trials.

where, you know, you can just fling that charge at someone and then the right wing thinks that that's the end of the discussion. But I do think that the country is waking up. I think about what Jefferson said in that beautiful letter he wrote in 1798 to his friend John Taylor, who was expressing his...

consternation about what was going on in the country during that time. And Jefferson said, a little patience in the reign of witches shall pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight restore their government to its true principle. Let's hope. Yeah. Let's hope that the reign of witches is passing over. Yeah. And no offense meant to any witches. No, I'm thinking of Stephen Miller personally. The changing gears a little bit, the Trump administration.

They've handed over these ransom lists to various universities, including to Harvard University. They want to dictate things like diversity, equity, inclusion policies. student discipline, admissions requirements a lot more. Harvard, to their great credit, refused And the administration has cut off $2.2 billion in federal funding. CNN reported that the Trump administration is planning to rescind Harvard's nonprofit statuses.

Harvard's fighting. You've seen other schools like Columbia cave even preemptively. What do you think is the best way to fight back and what's required here? Everybody's got to summon up all of their institutional resources and personal courage to fight back as much as you can. And I'm very proud of Harvard, I got to say. And I'm speaking as a graduate of the college and the law school. And I spent a lot of my years.

in school fighting against Harvard because they refused to divest their money from apartheid South Africa. And they were just totally on the wrong side there. And I called them out. And I was ashamed that Harvard did not do the right thing and follow what Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu and the people struggling for freedom there were asking for. I've got to say in this situation, I'm beaming with pride.

about Harvard standing up. Look, Donald Trump spent a lot of time in real estate in New York City, a lot of time in casinos in Atlantic City. He knows what a mob shakedown is. This is a mob shakedown against the universities. It's a mob shakedown against the law firms, against lawyers. And he's seeing how far he can push it.

And it's undoubtedly a terrifying thing for even big law firms to go through, even big universities to go through. But now is the moment when you get to prove why you're a lawyer. Now you get to prove why you're a college president. you know, a university administrator. You can stand up for academic freedom. You can stand up for the Constitution. And these judges are proving why they're judges. You know, there are 78 preliminary injunctions.

and temporary restraining orders right now against the lawlessness in the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump. And they're threatening judges. And you go online, you see all kinds of violent threats against judges. Justice Amy Coney Barrett's sister got a bomb threat. There are other people on the Supreme Court and other judges who've received death threats. that are taking place. And I've got colleagues who have wanted posters up outside of their offices.

In the Cannon House office building, these judges are wanted and they want to impeach them just for standing in Donald Trump's way. They never tell you, by the way, substantively what's wrong with a particular opinion. Right. Like what's wrong with the four opinions?

rendered against Donald Trump's attempt to nullify birthright citizenship in America. One from an Obama judge, one from a Biden judge, one from a Reagan judge, and one from a Bush judge. And the Reagan judge said, this is the easiest case. I've decided in four decades on the bench. This is blatantly unconstitutional. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.

Like, what don't you understand about that? You don't even have to be a lawyer. You just have to know how to read to get that. And these judges are just. like over the top angry about what's going on. And yet they turned around and say there's something wrong with the judges. They're saying, well, we got to impeach them. I think. I mean, everybody in the administration, J.D. Vance, all of them. Trump tweeted about impeaching them. They say this is a record number.

of court decisions against a president, a record number of injunctions against a president. Yes. And it's a record number of violations of the Constitution by a president. So if you don't like this tsunami, they call it. of opinions against the president than call off your tsunami constitutional crime wave against the American people. There's this rolling debate about whether this is a constitutional crisis. And I feel like...

Part of the reason there's a rolling debate is no one's completely defined what that means. Do you have a definition and an opinion on whether we're in one? Well, I think it's a hopelessly vague and abstract term. So when people say, are we in a constitutional crisis? I say we are experiencing an unprecedented. sweeping and comprehensive attacks.

on the Constitution by the presidential administration. And so we have to defend every element of the Constitution. Due process, equal protection, freedom of speech, the separation of powers, congressional powers, judicial independence.

And so on. So, I mean, I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder. It feels like a crisis to you. It's a crisis. But the point is, it's under attack and we've got to defend it. Yeah. One way we have been fighting back, Democrats, is holding town hall meetings in Republican districts.

You recently hosted one in Maryland calling out Andy Harris, congressman from the eastern shore of Maryland, for being MIA. My father-in-law was there, by the way. Shout out Chris Cook. He said it was a packed crowd. You gave a great speech and the people were just amped. But if we're being honest, Democrats have been trying and failing to defeat Andy Harris for what, over a decade?

Why do you think this time will be different? Can we take them out this time? Can we take out these like? Well, I believe that Heather Mazier got, I think it was a 54 to 46 in the first district of Maryland. So we're closing in on the target. There are a lot of people from my district in Montgomery County, in the D.C. area, in the Baltimore area, moving to the Eastern Shore in retirement. And there's an incredible new Eastern Shore Indivisible group that I met with.

out there. So we don't give up on any congressional district or any state legislative district. We won that great state senate. race in Pennsylvania that nobody expected us to win, the Wisconsin race. And even in Florida, we were disappointed that we didn't win those two house seats, but we went up 15 or 16 points, which then builds for the future. So no good act is wasted in this process. And there were some very...

creative political art representations at that event when I went out there. They brought up a huge milk carton. with Andy Harris's face on it. And I just said, hey, if your name is on the ballot, your face should not be on the milk carton. That's right. That's great. So last question for you. In the before times, the dividing line between Democrats was on policy, you know, moderate left.

center left now it seems to be divided on who is fighting hard who is saying kind of keep some powder dry i would put you in the fight hard on everything all the time kind of side of the ledger Why is that the right place to be? And can you help define for others listening, members of Congress, elected officials, average citizens, what it looks like in practice, how they can emulate that? Well, let's just say that...

Because we're experiencing an attempted authoritarian takeover of American society, the job has changed. Right. There were people on all sides who thought the job is you stay in touch with your constituents and you go and you push a red button or a green button and that's your job. That's not our job anymore. We are organizers. We are organizers and we've got to be leaders of a nationwide popular movement.

to arrest the dissent into fascism in America. And we haven't even gotten a chance to talk about Elon Musk and the Silicon Valley people because these people really believe that democracy is defunct. They say we live in a post-constitutional America. And, you know, if you listen to their intellectual guru, Curtis Yarvin, he did an interview with The New York Times about a month ago where he said the American people have got to get over their fear of the word dictatorship.

He said the corporations are just dictatorships of the CEO. And just like we have. CEOs, dictatorships in the private sector. We need to have a dictator for the government. And by the way, that dictator does not serve the people. That dictator serves the other dictators. They're talking about a corporate state. And they're being very unvarnished and explicit about it. So our jobs have changed. It's not enough just to go and cast our vote.

and to write a monthly newsletter. We've got to be involved seven days a week in the struggle to defend constitutional democracy in America. And when I say that... I believe constitutional democracy is not just. a structure of laws and constitutional principles and practices. It is that, but it's more than that because constitutional democracy is always an unfolding and unfinished project.

And if we're not moving forward, like Tocqueville warned in Democracy in America, we're going to be lapsing back into some other autocratic or monarchical aristocratic form of government. We've got to be moving forward. You know, you got to hand it Donald Trump. At least he's talking about Greenland and Canada and Panama. He's not talking about. Anything Democratic is talking about taking them over.

like a dictator. Well, we've got to put on the agenda the millions of disenfranchised people in America. We need statehood for Washington, D.C. We need statehood for Puerto Rico. We need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing everybody a right to vote. We need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We can't be in a constant.

quicksand struggle against voter suppression tactics and they're trying it again for 2026 and 2028 and the save act which would conceivably disenfranchised millions of American women because, you know, you've got to show when you go to the polls now your birth certificate, your driver's license or. a passport. And if they don't match your birth certificate, then you've got to show your marriage certificate. And 80% of American women change their last.

name. So they've got to bring their marriage certificate along with everything else. It's just more obstacles to voting for the people that they think are not going to vote for them. So we got to deal with that. So I just believe. you know, I'm kind of with John Dewey, who said that

you know, the only solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy. And what we're suffering from today is not democracy, but it's all of these attacks on it and all of these obstacles to it. But we do need to be not just legislative representatives, you know, which is hard enough, but we've got to be movement leaders along with everybody in the streets and everybody in the state capitals and the city halls and the church halls and the union halls across America.

Couldn't agree more. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for all you're doing to fight and push back on these monsters and for being here. We appreciate it. It's great to be with you, Tommy. Keep up the great work. Because the press is not the enemy of the people. The press is the people's best friend. Agreed. And we need you. Thank you.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Jamie Raskin for stopping by. Thanks to Chris Van Hollen for making time for us during his trip to El Salvador. I'm going to be back with a new show on Sunday, talking to our friend Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress. about what it's like being a freshman in the house right now. Levitt's going to join me. We're both going to be talking to Sarah. She's going to be here in studio on Friday.

So definitely check that out. Everyone else, have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcast, Consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more.

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