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Mr. Chief of Justice, may it please report. It's an old joke. When a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I asked... no favor for my sex all i ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it.
Because the Trump administration 2.0 is in full can't stop, won't stop mode with an onslaught of executive orders and other actions that seem designed to break the constitutional order and maybe even the world order. We are not going to be actually talking about the court today. The court's also been on vacation, like, where are those guys? Like, Mustique, where are they? Who knows? The court's not in session, but...
the federal government is. So we're going to be covering much of what the Trump administration has been doing over the last week. So this is all to say that we are staying on the chaos beat. And we should note that we are recording live at Fordham Law School on-
Big crowd here at Fordham Law School, and they're excited. And we're recording on a Thursday evening. And the way this usually plays out is that we record on Thursday, and then there's all kinds of stuff that happen on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. on this episode gets released on Monday. So we don't even know.
what's going to happen. So a lot of this may be preempted by other things, but take it as a time capsule of a moment that we were in on a Thursday night and that there's more to come. And we're just going to soldier on and do the best that we can. So we are going to start with a rundown of the most outrageous recent developments. It would take us days to get through all of them. So we're just going to cover some highlights, really lowlights and not JVN approved lowlights.
to include some new moves made inside the administration by Musk, Trump, and some perhaps less familiar figures, such as the acting deputy attorney general, who we'll call Dagbag, Emile Beauvais. an interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a.k.a. USA Dick. Yes! Good, good. Yeah. So we're also going to cover some... developments in courts involving some of the administration's actions. So it's going to be a lot of stuff on DEI for men with bad personalities.
And if there's time, we will take a step back and focus on what these early moves tell us about the substantive vision of women and their place in society that seems to drive... Trump, Musk, Vance, the doj bags, maybe we should call them doggy bags, doji bags, they are full of shit. The muskrats, evil musketeers, and whoever else is calling the shots over there in the mojo dojo casa.
White House. I hope the dean was prepared for us to get a little spicy tonight. I feel like Charlie XCX at the Grammys, right? Like, performing guests. There's no delay, though, so they can't bleep anything out. Okay, and I actually want before we dive in to make one threshold observation, which is that Leah has been saying for years that the meanest thing you can do to the conservative justices on the Supreme Court is to accurately describe.
their rulings. It is outrageous. Not a joke, just a fact. That is a deep cut RuPaul Drag Race reference, just to be clear. And I feel like there is something similar afoot right now, which is that... The best way to sound kind of like a raving lunatic right now is to accurately describe the ransacking of the federal government that is occurring in front of our faces. It is crazy.
Reciting it without embellishment truly makes you sound unhinged. And I think if you landed here from Mars and just tuned into what we were saying, that would be your conclusion. Like, there's something wrong. These people are not right in the head. No. This is all just what is happening. We are trying to dispassionately just describe it for you. So on that note, let's start breaking it down.
So we spent a lot of time in our last episode talking about doge, and we'll do a bit more of that today. But we're going to start with the Department of Justice, which is actually becoming pretty doge. Like, get it? Like, D-O-J, Doge. D-O-G-E, Doge. Okay, anyways, we are recording this live show in the city of New York, a great city, with... A not so great mayor. He's pretty mid. He's pretty mid. Eric Adams. So, right. Where do things stand with Mr. Adams, Melissa? So...
He seems very committed to the rat situation, which I appreciate. Very committed to threading his eyebrows, which I'm always here for some strong manscaping. So good for him. But until last Monday, Mayor Adams was actually under federal indictment, which make America great again, make America Tammany Hall again, whichever you choose.
Not great for the city of New York. He had been charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York with corruption charges, specifically bribery and the solicitation of foreign campaign contributions. When this was first announced, we were a little dubious about how those charges would ultimately fare before our very corruption-forward Supreme Court, which in recent years has taken a hatchet to various federal anti-corruption laws.
But it appears that we will never actually have the experience of reciting faithfully the conservative justices anti-corruption slash corruption forward decisions because This particular case is never going to get to the United States Supreme Court because Acting Deputy Attorney General Dagbag, Emile Bove, who was also one of Donald Trump's lawyers in the New York hush money trial, and who is now emerging as a top lieutenant in the Trump DOJ, has decided to put the kibosh on this prosecution.
Or at least he has tried to do that. So this is a developing story. But here is where we are as of Thursday night. Thursday 6 p.m., we should say. It's going to be a long night. It's going to be a very long night. So let's just bring you up to speed on where things stand as of, what is it? 6.15 Eastern Time. On Monday, as Melissa mentioned, in a letter... that I personally hope will be widely taught in both legal ethics and government lawyering classes for years to come.
In that letter, Beauvais directed Danielle Sassoon, then the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to dismiss the case against Adams. Dismissed without prejudice, so the charges would remain... dangling out there seemed like that was part of the point and so soon we learned just before the recording started resigned rather than agree to dismiss the charges
Remember, she was the acting U.S. attorney designated by the Trump administration. She was picked for, elevated for, this role by Trump. And that's part of why this resignation is such a big deal. So she wrote a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, saying she could not. Pamela Jo Bondi. Say her name. Say her full name. I told Melissa I would, and I already failed. It's a very Florida name. Like, I grew up in Florida.
In the fifth grade, there were five girls who all had Joe as their middle name. So this is very specific, very of the moment. I will not omit that again. Pamela Jobandi. In the letter... Sassoon explained that she could not in good faith request that these charges be dismissed. And Bove responded,
with an eight-page screed of his own, saying that Sassoon's resignation was accepted in light of her refusal to comply with his directive, and also saying many, many other things. So we are mostly going to focus on the initial letter, and there is a lot in it. That's the initial letter directing Sassoon to dismiss the charges. First, there is the fact that Beauvais decided to put in writing this letter.
at all. It is in some tension with Stringer Bell's sage advice not to take notes on a criminal conspiracy. So, I mean, to be clear, the main Justice Department could have leaned on the Southern District of New York. quietly, could have tried. Putting this letter into the public domain reflects a choice, and I think a choice to signal and to broadcast real antipathy for these kinds of anti-corruption prosecutions.
And more than that, so it does seem in DOJ's defense that they do sometimes understand Stringer Bell's advice because Sassoon's later letter to... Pamela Jo Bondi, notes, quote, Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion. Like, I know I'm engaged in a little conspiracy here. Light conspiracy. Light conspiracy. Don't take notes. All right, so...
What did the DOJ letter directing the dismissal of the Adams prosecution actually say? Well, first, it makes clear that Maine Justice did not decide to dismiss these charges against Adams because
it had determined that there was a problem with the case or with the underlying evidence that had been gathered in support of the prosecution. So that was not the issue. Rather, the decision to let this light corruption slide, as it were, is because Mayor Adams, in the administration's own judgment, apparently needs to be free and on the streets to help the federal government enforce the immigration laws.
Let's put this differently. This is a non-prosecution that apparently is in exchange for Mayor Adams's cooperation with the... Justice Department, the Immigration Department's decision to enforce the immigration laws and do this mass deportation screen. Literally. And Sesun's letter also says as much. It says, quote, Adams as attorney repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with immigration enforcement. So.
Apparently, that was what was on offer, and the DOJ said, yes. Sold! Exactly. Yes, please. Look, to be fair, the initial DOJ letter did contain some suggestion that the case should be dismissed for other reasons, not because of the weakness of the evidence or the legal theory.
but because the charges were at least being pursued too close to the mayoral election, right, they were impeding Mayor Adams' reelection bid. And also there was a suggestion that the previous presidential administration was essentially punishing Adams.
for his criticism of their immigration policy. And that at least was the ostensible reason provided in part of the letter. But all of that, even inside the four corners of the letter, seems pretty pretextual because the letter then goes on to say, quote,
We are particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams' ability to support critical ongoing federal efforts to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement. So it really does seem to be a thank you for your cooperation kind of situation.
And as we all know, tips and gratuities to officials are perfectly legal, right, per the U.S. Supreme Court. Non-prosecution, the best tip. Exactly, exactly. Now, there is a footnote in that letter that tries to walk it back a little bit. it reads, quote, your office correctly noted in a memorandum, as Mr. Bove clearly stated to defense counsel, the government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adam's assistance on immigration enforcement and, quote, insert...
on winking face here that's not actually in the letter but the footnote doesn't really blunt the impact of the text that's right there above the line you know like we said stringer belt would never but these guys seem to want to convey to people scratch our back we'll scratch yours they want to make clear the implied slash not so implied quid pro quo do our bidding and we'll put you above the law too
Can I ask a question, though, just as a con law matter? Do you remember that whole Prince thing about how the federal government cannot commandeer state officials into the service of a federal program? It's true, but what if the federal government instead implies that a state officer is free? depends on whether they are keeping daddy happy by enforcing federal immigration law.
Not conscription. Exactly. Then it's totally fine. So after the Department of Justice's public integrity section was informed they would be taking over Mayor Adams' case, the acting head of the unit and his... boss, the senior most career official in DOJ's criminal division, both resigned.
Like this is Trump's Saturday night massacre when Nixon was firing officials who wouldn't do his bidding to keep him above the law. And this is just another Thursday afternoon, less than a month into the Trump administration.
This is an order so foul, so transparently corrupt, Trump's selected officials are resigning rather than touch it. So the New York Times also reported that Mr. Bouvet in accepting Sassoon's informed her that the prosecutors who worked on the case, Adams case, were being placed on administrative leave and would be investigated by the Attorney General and the Justice Department's internal investigative.
He also named those line prosecutors by name in the letters. So, I mean, like, not full doxing because their addresses aren't there, but, I mean, this does open them up to all kinds of stuff. Yep. Yeah. So... The district judge who was presiding over the case, Judge Dale Ho, whose nickname we have regrettably had to retire since he took the bench, but you can listen to the back catalog. If you're a true fan, you know.
You know, I don't think it is clear who is going to actually, like, stand up in front of Judge Ho and ask that these charges be dismissed. You know, maybe it will be Beauvais personally, who's in main justice, but it'll be big balls. That's a joke. Yeah, so we don't know, but I am quite sure that is going to be quite a hearing if and when somebody puts their name to this ask and has to answer questions about why. Maybe it'll be Elon Musk. Anyway, guess what?
We're not even done covering the DOJ. That was just one episode in this week at your Department of Justice. There are more DOJ slash New York City hijinks that we can talk about. Last night, newly confirmed Attorney General. Pamela Jo Bondi announced that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York. At her press conference, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that DOJ has, quote, filed charges against Kathy Hochul, Tish James, and others," end quote.
That is not actually true because Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi was talking about a civil suit that does not involve charges at all. It is a challenge to the city's immigration policy. So it's not a criminal prosecution. and therefore the term charges is really not apt. But why would the nation's top law enforcement official pay attention to these minor, minor distinctions between a criminal prosecution and a civil suit?
The best people, the meritocracy in action. I think so. All right, so staying on the topic of New York, because there is, yes, more. The great controller of our city, Brad Lander, who is also running for mayor without federal charges dangling over him, announced yesterday some not so great news, which is that the federal government has apparently clawed back.
$80 million in funds that were not only approved, but evidently also dispersed to New York. The funds were appropriated by Congress to help New York cover the costs of housing and providing other services to migrants in the city. I do not know the mechanism by which this clawback was achieved, but I do know that it seems outrageous.
The administration is, to be clear, absolutely entitled to change its immigration enforcement policy. Like no one disputes that, but it cannot do it in this way. I mean, that I think observation could hold true for much of what we have seen in recent weeks and what we're going to talk.
about but we should say that Lander has pledged to challenge the federal government's actions in court and so that's something that we're gonna keep an eye on and what this amounts to they literally took 80 million dollars out of New York's bank account like that is looting the American people and we should link this back to corruption. You would think New York City's mayor would be making a stink about this.
Alas, he has been bought off with a non-prosecution decision by the Trump administration. Like, it is the corruption all the way down. All right, there's more. We're not done. Literally, covering DOJ in this environment is like drinking from a fire hydrant. So we recently learned that the Trump DOJ is planning to take a pass on enforcing. anti-corruption laws. So, kel surprise, right? This is no surprise. Not only is corruption going to be encouraged, anti-corruption laws will not be enforced.
As with many of the administration's moves, reading about this felt a little bit like reading an Onion headline, but it's not. So... Pursuant to a new executive order that was issued, the administration has plans to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The FCPA is a 1977 federal law that prohibits US citizens and entities from bribing foreign governments. officials in order to benefit their business interests seems like a good idea but
I guess the administration decided that it was going to take too long to wait for a case to get up to the United States Supreme Court so they could strike down the FCPA. So the Trump administration decided just to do this with a stroke of the pen instead. to wonder what big law is going to do. Because like a lot of big law firms have huge FCPA practices. So I mean, if there is a burgeoning coalition to fight back here, I think it's white shoe law firms. From your lips.
Complementing this executive order, ordering literally non-enforcement of this Corrupt Practices Act, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondy has also announced that the administration will disband the National Security Division's Corporate Enforcement Unit and drastically limit prosecution. under the Foreign Agent Registration Act or FARA, you know, does seem to reduce to make corruption great again. Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Naked Wines.
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So let's move from the acting deputy AG Dagbag and the newly confirmed AG to the interim U.S. attorney for D.C., as we said, USA Dick, a guy by the name of Ed Martin.
few days before Bove's absurd Adams letter, Martin sent a fawning letter to Elon Musk and Doge compatriot Steve Davis that was evidently sent via ex- only um as one does you know when your postal service is just x right that's what we're gonna have to all communicate using communicating with private citizens sliding into your dms as it were yeah yes um so the topic of this letter appears to be
reporting on the names of individuals in Doge wreaking havoc on the federal government. And Martin pledged in the letter that, quote, if people are found to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically. we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the earth to hold them accountable, end quote. That last part is bolded in the letter. So too is... A sentence in the next paragraph, which reads, quote, noon is above the law. Yes, that's spelled N-O-O-N-E. Who is noon?
You ask? Only the best person, I think. Definitely. Someone who's part of the meritocracy. 100%. So... Martin is really distinguishing himself, even among this administration of absolute winners. So after being installed as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, he fired dozens of prosecutors who were... involved in the prosecution of the January 6th protesters. So again, very, very normal.
And I want to step back to note that what they are doing seems to be in tension with Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi's, PJB's, new Department of Justice policy of requiring all DOJ lawyers to sign all briefs. Previously, the department had allowed attorneys to opt out of participating in certain cases or signing their names onto briefs. A move Bondi said, quote, politicized the department. So now people seem to be in a double bind. You have to sign your name to all briefs.
will fire you if they don't like some of those briefs, because in addition to firing people involved in January 6th prosecution, the department is reportedly investigating the prosecutors on the Adams case as well. All right, back to... Ed Martin. So Martin... also withdrew all of the still pending charges against those January 6th defendants. So folks who had not yet been convicted but still had charges pending against them, all of those charges were withdrawn. But guess what, listeners?
One of the January 6th defendants. Wait, wait, wait, question. Did those January 6th defendants, were they needed to help enforce federal immigration law? Probably, yes, probably, probably. Or the Voting Rights Act. Yes. It's hard to say. Deep cut. Very deep cut. All right. Well, it turns out that one of the January 6th defendants who got one of these get literally get out of jail free cards. was Martin's own client. So Ed Martin...
was still representing this guy. He hadn't actually withdrawn from the representation of this defendant. And when that was brought to Martin's attention, like, hey, there's a little conflict here. He said that he believed that he had withdrawn from the case, but it turned out that he hadn't, and when he went to actually get dismissed from the case, having already directed the dismissals of those charges, the district judge who he went before basically told him that he would not.
be granting leave for Martin to withdraw because Martin was no longer a member in good standing of the federal court there. That is how you do it. Legend. Absolutely iconic. The district court was like, yeah, your card's no good here. Thank you.
And, you know, correctly, there's at least one ethics complaint growing out of all of this that has been filed against him by the 65 project. So we will see where that goes. I mean, I truly cannot imagine what the, I think, hardworking, decent people in the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. must be. making of all of this, their nominal head who can't even withdraw from his unethical representation because he has let his bar membership lapse.
Only the best people. One more piece of DOJ kind of adjacent news involves Rod Blagojevich. I never, I really was not expecting to hear. No, me either. You sort of forgot that that whole thing happened. It's almost like he's been under a bridge somewhere. Right. He had just kind of become irrelevant.
Well, I don't know. I don't know what the next season is going to hold, but I think he could be a central figure. It's entirely possible. In any event, he is, as a reminder, the former governor of my home state of Illinois. Blagojevich did not have the good sense to try to sell a Senate seat while Donald Trump was the president. That was poor timing on his part. So he was prosecuted because that's what we did then. And he was convicted. He served eight years in federal prison.
of his 14-year sentence commuted by Donald Trump the first time Donald Trump was the president. Well, Trump has now made that commutation into a full pardon. Blagojevich feels quite vindicated, and I just feel like maybe this is his moment. I don't know. Maybe he'll run for mayor, too. Well, no, he too is needed to help enforce federal immigration law and the Voting Rights Act. And the Voting Rights Act, yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, okay.
We need a palate cleanser from all of this DOJ nonsense. Let's do some updates on some other... agencies outside of DOJ, and then we can turn to all of the lawsuits, which we've gotten a lot of questions about, so lots to say about that. First up, I think we should remind everyone that Russell Vaught was... confirmed to OMB. And who is Russell Vaught? Well,
He is, if you listen to our summer episodes, the architect of much of Project 2025. And Project 2025 was the conservative blueprint for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which Donald Trump said he had absolutely no knowledge. of. Interestingly the first
30-odd days of the Trump administration seems to be following Project 2025 pretty much down to the letter. So maybe there was some overlap. It hasn't even been 30 yet, Melissa. Can you believe it? Who knows? When we hit the 30-day mark, I don't know where we're going to be. How many days has it been? 25 when we're recording. We are 25 days into a four-year sentence. Oh, my God. Okay. All right. And four years is optimistic. Oh, God. Well.
There is that third term. Exactly. Anyway, we know that Russell Vaught is part of the unilateral funding freeze. He hadn't even been confirmed to OMB when he got that going. Despite that, you would think that the fact that he paused all of this federal funding would have been... a moment for the senators on both sides of the aisle to be like, hey, is this the guy we want running OMB? But apparently not.
Well, it sailed through the Senate, was confirmed, and for good measure, he was then subsequently made the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB, whose real director, Donald Trump, fired last week. Friday, two Fridays ago. So for folks who might not be familiar with it, the CFPB does super important work. It supervises banks and other financial institutions. It protects consumers by doing consumer education, investigating complaints filed by
consumers, finding companies that engage in fraudulent and abusive practices. And so, of course, these guys were like, that one's got to go. Very, very populist. Yes. Definitely good for the price of eggs. Yeah. And, you know, I think this too is part of the corruption forward ethos of the administration because guess who was and is trying to do something that the CFPB might... have regulated.
Our secret president, Elon Musk, who wants to create some sort of Musk buck and use X as a digital payment system. And federal regulators had, to no surprise, been carefully... reviewing and scrutinizing digital payment systems because of security risks, fraud risks and more. And that's no longer a problem. Coincidence.
I'm sure it's a pure coincidence, but Vogt's first act as the acting CFPB director was, in fact, to tell the entire agency we're no longer enforcing any of the consumer protection laws. Literally, that's essentially what his agency-wide message said. The offices are closed. No one is to perform any work tasks. If there's an urgent matter, you should email Mark Paoletta, who's the chief legal officer.
an email in that an email address for pauletta that i'm pretty sure had a typo in it because cfpb's letters were transposed so i don't know where that email went but it turns out if you want to work at the cfpb and you have a job at the cfpb there is literally no way for you to do that you are barred from doing any work at the CFPB. And Mark Paoletta, is he a friend of
our favorite justice. I mean, all roads lead back to Clarence Thomas somehow. So yes, all roads do lead back. Speaking of roads and meritocracy, do you remember road rules slash real world contestants slash lumberjack slash new secretary? of Transportation, Sean Duffy.
Oh, I do, because I took a flight today and was literally panicked the entire time thinking about it. Well, you have good reason to be panicked, because there was yet another airline collision, this time in Arizona, on Duffy's watch. want to point out meritocracy yes meritocracy all right This airline collision, there was a fatality involved. This is really a catastrophe, deeply concerning if you ever do air travel, which a lot of us do. But interestingly...
Guess where you're not going to hear about this sort of thing? Typically, it's been the case that when there is an incident like this, there would be an ordinary press release because the National Transportation Safety Board would release one.
most disturbing instances of the unholy entanglement between the United States government and Elon Musk's ex, it was announced that Going forward, the only way that investigative information and information about agency news conferences will be released is through X itself. So X is not only going to be your mail service and your digital payment system, it is also going to be the way in which the United States government communicates with all of us about airline safety and maybe other things.
So this seems great for free markets and competition and data privacy. Yeah. So I also want to be clear. what I think is kind of happening here, why they're doing this. So I think it's related to the fact that some federal departments are reportedly considering telling reputable news agencies to clear out and make room for wing nuts. So CNN reported that the Pentagon shared a plan that would replace NBC News as well as bright.
Bart, apparently not right-wing enough, with One America News Network in the Pentagon Press Corps workplace. And the New York Post was going to be invited to the New York Times workplace. They're just rotating, Leah. They're giving everybody a turn. That's what's happening here. happens that OANN's turn is forever. Right. But don't you love the idea of page six in the Pentagon? I don't think they're on the list. Pete Hegseth having lunch with, like, so good.
So I think this harkens back to something we covered a while ago, which is a project that was called Teneo. This was Leonard Leo's Federalist Society for Everything. That was a plan that was described as a way to crush liberal dominance in the media. in education and elsewhere. And here I think they are
propping up these far-right news networks to give them access and to give them stories that other outlets are not going to have. I also think this same impetus is partially what explains the administration going after higher education institutions by, you know, withdrawing or attempting to withdraw National Institute of Health research funds and other, you know, again, penalties that they just seek to be imposing on these places.
All right, so we have a lot of other moves in other agencies we want to cover. We talked last week in our last episode about the abrupt termination. or pause, but potentially longer term pause of many of the programs run by USAID. There was a lot of additional reporting just in the last week about USAID workers literally stranded when the agency abruptly placed employees.
on administrative leave, stopped their programs, ordered many people back to the United States. I mean, and to be clear, these are individuals, many of them, who are essentially US diplomats. They hold diplomatic passports. They represent the United States and carry out U.S. aid policy in programs all over the world. And last Friday, many of them were told they would have to immediately leave their post, meaning pack up their lives, pull their kids out of schools.
You know, one family reported having to leave a post and not bring their dog with them, which like for us, all of us as dog owners is just like an unthinkable thing for the government to have done of all the horrible things the government has done in recent weeks. It also kind of appears since we last recorded that.
The Doge Cabal has now set its sights on the Department of Education in a way it hadn't even a week ago. And can I just like pause to say how truly like a military takeover it feels to be saying things like, or reading things like, okay, the Department of Education has fallen. right and it's like no no wait it might be holding on it might not have fully fallen yet this is the tenor i think of our conversations and much of the coverage this week and it's chilling
Yeah, so a few hours before we were recording, Senator Ron Wyden posted this on Blue Sky. Quote, my office is hearing that Doge is now at the IRS. That means Musk's henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America. So it seems to me that we are like a few news cycles out from a story along the lines of...
Some doge bro on a ketamine bender leaves at least, you know, at some weird strip club like a USB drive with millions of Americans' bank accounts and social security numbers. I'm not trying to manifest that. Sorry.
All right, so it seems that the Musgrats have stormed the Department of Education and have announced that they are unilaterally terminating nearly $1 billion in U.S. GOE contracts, including essentially eliminating... research office that was intended to track student progress and there's already a lawsuit challenging that and we're going to turn to it in a minute but that's sort of where things are they are they are definitely in the building
Yeah, so this was a short list of lowlights out of DOJ, OMB, USAID, education, and more. Axios described this as masculine maximalism. They're trying to get a desk at the Pentagon. I just could not with that. But much of what is happening is in clear violation of laws passed by Congress. leading me to say, like, babe, wake up, new unitary executive theory just dropped. Not only is all of the executive power vested in presidents,
Republican presidents. All legislative power is also vested in presidents. You would think Congress would mind. You would be wrong. Right. You would be wrong because when Senator Tom Tillis was asked about Elon Musk. exercising Congress's power of the purse, Tillis answered, quote, that runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.
But it's not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending. I don't even understand that statement. Like, how can a little flex be unconstitutional? in the strictest sense, but still be okay. We knew stare decisis was for suckers. Now it turns out constitutions are for cucks.
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So it seems like Congress is not just asleep at the wheel, it also seems to be co-piloting the plane right into the storm. You can pick whatever metaphor you want. But the good news is the lawsuits are flying fast and furious. So that's good. And so we're going to turn to that topic now. We cannot...
provide a full roundup of all of the lawsuits pending right now. There are too many, over three dozen, and probably significantly over. But we do want to quickly shout out the organizations that are doing some of this work. state democracy defenders public citizen protect democracy democracy forward the aclu the institute for constitutional advocacy and protection and i'm sure there are more um but these are all scrappy little organizations doing incredible work pulling together plaintiffs
filing complaints, really laboring to make sure and to show all of us that something of the rule of law remains. There are also some law firms that are stepping up to support this work, but more need to be doing that. And I also want to note that state attorneys general offices have also been on the front lines doing a lot of work. Over 40 lawsuits in total have already been filed. Melissa's colleague at NYU, Ryan Goodman, and the Just Security website have been doing fantastic work cataloging.
all of these cases. The suits are challenging, among other things, the removal of officials who cannot lawfully be fired without satisfying certain conditions, granting DOGE access to sensitive payment systems, unilaterally canceling programs, activities, expenditures, entire offices, and even agents. as well as substantive challenges to things like the birthright citizenship executive order and many of these cases have resulted in preliminary relief.
So let's start by mentioning one that was just filed that I think makes a really important argument that's distinct from those that have been filed already. And it's a suit filed against both Elon Musk and Doge. And it is challenging the extraordinary power that Musk and Doge are exercising.
as inconsistent with the Constitution and specifically with the appointments clause. So the claim is that this kind of power can only be exercised by officers of the United States, individuals appointed as the Constitution requires for those who exercise.
a significant authority on behalf of the United States. So if it's a principal officer, the president has to nominate and the Senate has to confirm, and even inferior officers can only be appointed through the mechanisms that the Constitution allows if Congress acts to confer the appointment authority.
somewhere other than the president with Senate confirmation. None of that happened here. And so the focus of the suit is just that, you know, this extraordinary power that they are wielding. As to the education department, that's the focus of this lawsuit. But the arguments absolutely apply much more broadly.
All right. We also want to talk about some of the personnel related actions and the litigation that those actions have prompted. So just to give you like a snapshot over the last three weeks. the first three weeks of his administration, Donald Trump has fired the following people.
career officials at the DOJ and the FBI for no other reason than the fact that they worked on the January 6th prosecutions. He has fired a number of inspectors general, the internal watchdogs of the federal government. They have fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel.
which is an entity that enforces the civil service laws and protects whistleblowers. It's fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, because that person is in charge of ethics. He's fired a board member of the NLRB, preventing the board from having having a quorum and not being able to do its work enforcing labor laws. It's fired the head of the CFPB.
It's fired the FEC commissioner. It's fired the EEOC commissioner. And it's fired much of the Kennedy Center's board and replaced them with new board members, including one Usha Vance. So each of these offices... slightly different, and the legal arguments against the permissibility of the firing look somewhat different from one to the next, but the cumulative meaning and effect of these firings is clear. It is to eradicate from the federal government any individual.
It sounds like something I read in Project 2025. What's that? Don't know her. To be clear, some of these officials are not going quietly. So there have been lawsuits filed. Actually, just last night, a district court issued an order to allow the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, who is represented by friend of the show, Joshua Matz, to remain in his position in advance of a hearing that was scheduled for next week. So for now, Dellinger stays put.
So we've already mentioned others are also planning to sue. That list includes NLRB board member Wilcox and a friend of the show and previous guest, Ellen Weintraub, who was... attempted to be fired as an FEC commissioner last week. So the administration is going to have a number of these suits on their hands. And lo and behold, Wednesday night, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris made an announcement that we knew was coming.
is nevertheless significant. So they are going to argue before the Supreme Court that the case of Humphrey's executor should be overruled. As our constitutional law students know well, Humphrey's executor is a 1935 opinion that allowed Congress to create agencies with heads that are somewhat shielded from the president's ability to remove them and thus are able to be somewhat independent from politics and the president.
This has been building for a while, but it's still a very big deal. The announcement came in the form of what's known as a 530-D letter the Department of Justice actually sent to the Senate. And that happens sometimes. The executive branch decides not to defend a statute or a precedent.
A recent example was when the Obama administration decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. It announced that it had concluded that DOMA was unconstitutional, and it announced that in a letter, a 530D letter sent to the Senate. But here, obviously the upshot of this argument. accepted by courts is that many
maybe not all, but many of the restrictions that exist in statutes that constrain the ability of the president to just summarily remove anyone he chooses will be unconstitutional. And thus, one of the last remaining checks on the president inside the executive branch will be gone. And as we've said previously on the show, it couldn't come at a better time. So we should say these arguments are not identical to the arguments.
against the job protections that members of the civil service enjoy because on the list of individuals that we've mentioned are a number of civil servants who don't have the exact same protections that the members of boards like the NLRB have. they may be gearing up to make that argument too, that all of the protections that career civil servants enjoy are...
similarly impermissible in that they encroach on the president's power which again apparently includes not just all of the executive power but all the legislative power and maybe all the judicial power too. All to say that the lawsuits are flying and Some of those lawsuits are resulting in rulings against the administration. And the men's at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School, well...
Those men have some thoughts about this. And we promised you in last week's episode that Leah had some thoughts about Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman's intervention on this question. So Leah, I'm just going to let you cook. Go. I just want to say I got on a plane even though I was scared I was going to die in a fiery crash specifically so I could get to this part of the show. We are all so grateful, Leah.
The column by Noah was, don't worry, the system is working great because courts are invalidating some of these Trump orders. I don't even know where to begin with how absurd and wrongheaded this is. Like the fact that these cases are even getting to court. itself I think like a mark that something has gone horribly wrong like an indication of a real crisis like the president is engaged in systemic and systematic legal violations seems to view the law as like a decorative wall
plant and courts are not going to be able to stop everything because some of what the administration is doing is legal but wildly destructive and the damage is going to be long term and hard to reverse and also courts are likely to do their jobs and enforce the law ruling against the administration.
if people are agitated and if there is public outcry. And using your platform to give the public false assurances, right, to tell them basically to calm down and to take away some of the public outcry is... choice and this guy's Metier is bad, lawyer-brained, nay, Harvard law professor-brained. He is just vamping and primping in Bloomberg, and I have no patience for it. not getting invited to do a live show at Harvard and I am okay with that.
And he does this because, this is another callback just like Metier was, because people say things like, quote, neither of us can remember what Noah said, but I know. It was so profound. That appeared in the New York Times, just to be clear. And again, like the chasm between how our constitutional system is working. Okay, he's dead. He's dead. No, I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm Elena Kagan with some douchebag at the lectern in front of me.
I am not done. Go off, go off. Okay, so the gap between how our constitutional system is functioning, like, and how it should be functioning is so, like... Huge, right? The idea that you would write a column that says everything is hunky-dory. Did you look around? It is just so delusional. It is beyond delusional. I'm going to stop you because we are an equal opportunity destroyer podcast and it's time for Yale Law School to enter the chat. That's right. Okay. Yeah. So let us.
set up the Jed Rubinfeld intervention. What triggered this intervention was one of the district court losses that we have mentioned, which was a ruling by District Judge Paul Engelmeyer in the Southern District of New York, which was really just a very preliminary ruling pausing Elon Musk's underlings from accessing the Treasury payments. system until a couple of days later when an actual hearing could occur. It was a very modest light touch order.
But JD Vance took it personally. And he took to X, which is apparently how we all communicate and exclusively must communicate, to inch awfully close. to encouraging defiance of court orders. Awfully close. I am in a strike. So Steve Loddick had a good column about this, reading in the most charitable, conceivable way what J.D. Vance was saying. It's not how J.D. Vance intended it. But let me read the couple of seconds.
sentences, and then we can decide sort of how close he came, and maybe he's all the way there to encouraging outright defiance. So Vance said, quote, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. So I think there is a kernel of truth there.
Directing a military operation, telling a general where to send troops, everyone agrees courts can't do that. It would clearly constitute a political question not suitable for judicial resolution. The point, though, is irrelevant because no judge is trying to do anything close to those examples, and thus the claim is deliberately misleading and seems designed to stoke opposition to courts in ways that
could be quite dangerous if the administration decides it needs to actually amass public support for outright defiance. Okay, that's the context. Now enter Yale Law School's Jed Rubenfeld. You want to do the honors, Melissa? I'll read it. I'll read it. So weird. Okay, I'm the voice of Jed Rubinfeld. GD is correct about this, and his examples are exactly right.
Where the executive has sole and plenary power under the Constitution, as in commanding military operations or exercising prosecutorial discretion, judges cannot constitutionally interfere. there was more to it. Like I think contextually.
This wasn't about military operations, and both of them knew that. So this is just a very Yale Law School kind of thing to do. Yeah, no, I was not trying to co-sign the kind of embrace or endorsement that Rubenfeld seems to be offering here. I actually think that it is incredible.
dangerous too so the very narrow I think point made by Vance in a law school classroom like has a kernel of truth to it the point he's making on the public stage is that we should think very seriously about not abiding by court orders and I think Rubenfeld had to understand what he appeared to be endorsing in that tweet in a way that is wildly dangerous. You can't divorce this statement.
by J.D. Vance from an earlier statement he made when he was running for senator from Ohio, where he said that he would advise President Trump that if the courts did not rule in his favor, he could simply do what Andrew Jackson did and say, you know, let him enforce his decision. I mean, that is sort of the broader context in which this entire exchange is occurring.
irks me is like they are equating to very different things um and suggesting like a false equivalency right and conflating easy cases in both directions right and suggesting there's some gray area here um also the marshall thing that just annoys me because it's like, did you not read the rest of the story?
about how Andrew Jackson eventually came to the court and the federal government's defense when South Carolina attempted to nullify federal law and basically said, as president, I have a duty to enforce federal law and it would destroy the union, right, if officials could just be. like I'm gonna veto nullify that federal law like again read a book okay so to make things better White House press secretary Caroline Levitt entered the chat
Now, before I take questions, I would like to address an extremely dishonest narrative that we've seen emerging over the past few days. Many outlets in this room have been fearmongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place.
place here at the White House. I've been hearing those words a lot lately. But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority.
We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law. And they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits this is part of a larger concerted effort by democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against president trump bless her heart
First of all, Caroline, we weren't even in the room. Like, we're the ones constantly saying we are in the throes of a constitutional crisis. And we are. And we weren't even there. But she's listening. She's listening, obviously. Friend of the pod, Caroline. But yeah, this is what that is. This is a genuine constitutional crisis. I'm glad she recognizes, I'm glad someone recognizes it.
Now you have a problem with forum shopping after Judge Matthew Kaczmarek? Like, girl, come on. We've got the receipts. Okay. Also, the idea that judges have cited no evidence or grounds, like, again, Do you read? Did you read the words? Like the answer is clearly no. All right. Okay. So that's all I'm going to say about that. Yeah. Also 12, like that's it. Consider the denominator. True. Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Skims. I have to wear real professional clothes, but...
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So we have maybe 10 or so minutes remaining. So in the last part of the show, we wanted to take a few minutes to talk about an important through line in some of the administration's orders and actions, which we have talked about kind of individually, but haven't.
pulled together, which is sort of the view of sex and gender that emerges from some of these moves. And in some ways, like the question almost answers itself, which is like, what do the doge bros think about women having power and autonomy? But let's unpack. Spoiler alert, it's not good for you ladies.
So there was an insane story that didn't get enough attention about the commandant of the Coast Guard. Commandant. Commandant of the Coast Guard. The first woman to serve in that role and the first woman to lead any branch of the Army. forces. So of course, within 24 hours of inauguration, the administration was determined to remove her in the most sadistic fashion. Citing DEI. Right. The then acting DHS secretary issued a statement disparaging her leadership and excessive...
focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. And then it got worse. So she was summarily fired. She was given a 60-day period to find new housing because she was living in Coast Guard quarters. And then about two weeks later, according to NBC, she was thrown out of her living quarters with just three hours to pack up her life because, again, the president wants her out of quarters, according to the NBC report.
This is the contempt that the administration seems to have for women in military leadership positions. And I'm not even getting into the fact that they nominated Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense. Yeah, or consider how they have justified some of their announced policies. So when HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced they were halting some enforcement actions,
those protecting trans people, he said, quote, we at this agency are carrying out the mission laid out by President Trump when he signed an executive order to restore biological truth to the federal government. This means recognizing there are only two sexes, male and female. It means getting the government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in his own image, end quote. I'm going to...
say something will probably get cut from the episode. I don't even think Sam Alito needs to read the articles on Pornhub anymore. He can just read the news. That's staying in. Leave it in. That's staying in. So, you know, and just the fact that there are so many utterances and writings along those lines that the kind of firehose of news has sort of so overtaken us we haven't stopped to appreciate is just really stunning. So we just, you know, kind of want to...
point out a few other things so you know one that there's a claim that these efforts that the administration has taken to eliminate literally all legal protections for transgender individuals and it seems essentially try to erase their very existence.
They claim all of this is necessary to protect and defend women. So literally, the first part of the title of one of these anti-trans executive orders was, quote, defending women from gender ideology extremism. So let's actually ask how committed the administration.
administration appears to be to defending women? Not so much, I think. So there are two things to mention here. One, I don't think they're necessarily interested in defending women. But more importantly, The constitutional scheme that we have been living under since 1996 with the United States versus Virginia, and maybe even earlier with Craig versus Boren, the 1970s sex equality case.
basically says that the government cannot make policies in order to protect women, that that is a species of paternalism rooted in sex-based stereotypes about gender roles. The fact that we're even talking about protecting women, that like the federal government is issuing executive order after executive order in defense of women and this kind of paternalism gives us the very distinct feeling that the very...
bedrock principles of constitutional sex equality are under threat. And if you were confused about that, just consider some of the language and the Dobbs opinion that didn't get. a lot of attention because they were too busy rolling back the right to an abortion. In Dobbs, Justice Alito says that there is no root for the abortion right in equal protection. And he goes all the way back to gedulding, a case where the courts.
said pregnancy discrimination is not sex-based discrimination because not all women get pregnant. It was the 70s. There were no women on the court. There were other cases since then. 1996, United States versus Virginia, 2003, Hibs. And they ignore all of this. And then, of course, Justice Alito says that women are not without electoral and political power.
Apparently we aren't because we need defunding. So there's a real inconsistency here and everything's up for drafts. And to be clear, right, like these anti-trans moves are obviously... horrific for transgender women like that is really clear and needs to be underscored but it's also the point that Melissa's making is that cis women all women like this a lot of this policy making is very very bad for women writ large and the view that women need protecting from government policy
is one that, if taken seriously, would roll back over half a century of constitutional equality jurisprudence in ways that, again, I think have been a little lost in the shuffle given the fire hose. So, you know, in turning now from kind of this... high-level observation to some substantive initiatives, we wanted to just tick through a few that we haven't had a chance to mention but that are quite important.
So the Department of Education rescinded Title IX guidance that stated NIL, that is name, image, and likeness payments must be proportionate between male and female athletes so women can be paid less.
And the administration has been disrupting federal funding for rape crisis centers. So state-level organizations reported they weren't getting CDC funding. The Federal Office on Violence Against Women removed funding opportunities, ways to apply for grants from its website. They've been blaming deadly airplane crashes.
on the presence of women in the workforce. A memo from NSA leadership listed some banned words, words not to be used on websites and internal network pages. One of those words, feminism. This is a government. The real F word. Exactly. A government of broligarchs and patriarchs. So that was a lot. There is some cause for celebration. So we don't want to leave you with the idea that we're just a bunch of Debbie Downers, gloom and doom. We want to celebrate some things.
Today, Thursday, the time we're recording, we got word from Washington about a new confirmation, and we wanted to mark this new addition to the administration with a toast. You already are groaning, so it seems like you know what I'm going to say. Yes, Robert F. Kennedy was confirmed today as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. DEI for brain worms. And we are going to mark this occasion, not with champagne toasting, the end of the administrative state.
people. Raw milk. That's right. We're going to do it by chugging some milk. Raw milk. This milk is pasteurized. It's very, very pasteurized. To that gentleman. Cheers. Cheers. Are you really going to drink this? I'm an oat milk girly myself. I'm going to leave this here. Same. Right. So I also brought a bear carcass that because I rushed here from the airport, I wasn't able to dispose of.
So after the show, we're going to drop this bad boy off at Central Park. Luckily, it's very close by. Very close by. Okay, so all of this is a lot. Again, we want to be a little more upbeat, so I'm going to ask my co-host, how are you finding hope amidst all of this? I mean, I think it's hard but important. I think that honestly the resignations today at DOJ were really an important moment I think. I think that seeing people stand up even at personal cost to what they think is
outrageous, unethical conduct that can't be squared with the rule of law. I think that, you know, like courage is contagious. I think actually that that really was important and I'm glad that it happened today so we could kind of try to process it a little bit in real time. with all of you. So that's one thing. Ooh, this is a hard one. Dig deep. So I appreciated a post by friend of the pod, guest of the pod, Sherilyn Eiffel, on her substack in which she said like,
I see a lot of statements along the lines of no one is doing anything, but that's not true. There are people doing things. And if you are doing things, you see them too. And that has partially been my experience, and I appreciated that. So I am taking solace in the fact that I believe the children are future. And it's not just a song. Middle school students at a U.S. base in Germany walked out of school in protest when Secretary Pete... Seth came to visit. Right on kids.
I'm also cheered that there are high school students around the country, including here in this room tonight. We'd love to say hello to Dr. Rachel Halper's Supreme Court class and the feminists of Trinity who are back there too. They are doing the work. learning about the Constitution, learning about Supreme Court cases, and the fact that they are pitching in and doing this work right now is huge. So that's giving me hope.
And the fact that Leah's going to dispose of this bear carcass. Moments of levity like that. That and Noah's body. That's not going in. Okay. All right. This is all to say that... We are in the midst of a genuine constitutional crisis. Do not lose sight of that. Do not let them gaslight you into believing that it's not true. This is the moment, and one day we'll ask ourselves, what do we do in this moment?
That's serious. These are tough times. Hang in there. If you're even a fraction of as incensed as we are about all of this. please make a phone call, donate some money to organizations doing this litigation, support journalism by subscribing to the places who are doing great investigative work like ProPublica and Wired.
And keep listening to Strict Scrutiny because we'll keep pushing this stuff out. We will be back next week, and hopefully we will continue to keep lighting a fire under ourselves. And all of you. So before we are back next week, a few notes from this week. Elon Musk's Doge gang just got slapped down by a federal judge, but not before infiltrating the Treasury first. If you're wondering how we let billionaires hijack the government, tune in to the newest.
episode of Assembly Required. This week, Stacey Abrams unpacks how Musk and his cronies carved out unchecked power and what we can do about it. With Wired editor Leah Figer, they unpack Doge's grip on the Treasury. And then I joined Stacey to answer big questions like, is this even legal? And got to actually get some tips from Stacey's experience.
heading up the minority in the Georgia legislature and what a party that isn't in control of a chamber but still can flex some muscles can do. So I thought that was a great conversation. Listen now to stay informed and get practical steps on ways you can fight back. You can search for assembly required.
you get your podcasts or on YouTube. And if you're looking for more essential conversations, tune in to Pod Save the People, where organizer and activist DeRay McKesson, along with Kaya Henderson and Miles Johnson, bring a sharp take on news culture and social justice.
on the stories that too often go overlooked. This week they dive into how an AI program wrongfully jailed an innocent man for 17 months and what that means for the future of justice. Listen to Pod Save the People every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. So someone on Goodreads wrote in a review.
that they were reading this book Lawless and didn't realize that it was Leah Littman from Strict Scrutiny or that she had a book. And I feel like this is a failure on my part. I do have a book coming out, Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs Unconstitutional.
conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes. And also it relates back to Mojo Dojo Casa House. There is a Mojo Dojo Casa House reference in the very first chapter to it. So if you would like to hear the equivalent of my pimply virgin...
edgelord, friendless libertarian dogebro reads, but for Supreme Court justices, you should pre-order it now. And again, it is called Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. As RuPaul said, never be afraid of a shameless plug.
Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by Leah Lippman, me, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw. We are produced and edited by Melody Rowell. Michael Goldsmith is our associate producer. We get audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Our music is by Eddie Cooper and production support.
board comes from Madeline Herringer and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroat is our head of production and we are very grateful for our digital team, including Joe Matoski. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. You can subscribe to Strict Scrutiny on YouTube to catch full
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