Who Is Starting a Constitutional Crisis?

pretty much total editorial control. I kind of talk about what I want to talk about, and iHeart does not harass me about what I do or don't choose to talk about. And some of you may have noticed I really have not talked much about the whole Abrego Garcia, the story the guy who was deported, the illegal alien who was in Maryland, who got deported, who got sent to the mega prison in El Salvador, and the claim is he was sent there utilized with President Trump utilizing

the Alien Enemies Act. Apparently there had been a prior immigration ruling giving a hold that he not be sent back to El Salvador. The administration has now admitted in court that they wrongly sent him there. And the Trump administration has received orders from lower courts, now from the Supreme Court asking that he tried to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from that Salvador in prison prison, and President Trump seems to be trying to minimally complain with those court orders.

And that case and some of these other cases with the l Salvador is at the heart of the left wing critique that Trump has initiated a constitutional crisis. Basically the idea that courts have issued rulings and Trump has deliberately not followed them. And I don't think that that flatly is an accurate description of the situation. I think you have that Trump administration is not taking the posture of we are going to disobey these rulings from the courts.

They are at least giving a facial appearance of trying to comply, trying to comply in the most minimal way possible. Some courts have in fact written, I think sloppy rulings that Trump and his team complied with, complied with in ways that we're hitting the letter and not the spirit of the ruling and making these judges mad. But it's the letter of the ruling and I don't think that's a constitutional crisis at the actual level that it would

really be a constitutional crisis. This is a party engaging in one could argue bad behavior. That is different from a full blown constitutional crisis in which we have unbalanced the sort of set arrangements between the courts and the executive branch. Furthermore, there are other arguments on the other side of you know of this, about our federal judges initiating a constitutional crisis, which I actually think is more the case, and I'll talk about that in a little bit.

But here's the thing that I have noticed for basically the entire Trump era as a commentator, and I think this is something that impacts respectable figures on the right, or people who deem themselves respectable and intelligent figures on the right. Here's how it works. We have a media culture that wants to react to things instantaneously. We have

cable news, we have talk radio, and now we have Twitter. Okay, we have Twitter where people we have social media where people are reacting to stuff right away, and people are giving their takes on political issues immediately right away. And a lot of this throughout the Trump era. Many of the controversies are legal controversies. It's controversies about has President Trump violated the law in this way or that way? Has the Trump administration violated the law in this way,

that way, or this way. And people want to give knee jerk reactions to what are really actually fairly complex legal questions. That's hard to do, right. It's hard to actually analyze a complex legal question, really understand it, and then synthesize it, analyze it, and give an opinion on

it in twenty four hours, let alone two hours. I remember this, you know, during the first Trump administration, the first blush of the Ukraine phone call, the phone a perfect phone call to Zelenski that resulted in Trump getting impeached the first time. I remember the first blush basically was the media painting this atmosphere that this is really serious. And I mean I was sort of like, oh, jeez, was this really serious? And I'm trying to think through it.

I'm trying to analyze it, I'm trying to discuss it. And what I realized was it took people like a solid couple of weeks to sort of realize maybe you might think that it was sleazy for Trump to try to put pressure on Zelensky to investigate a family member of a guy who was going to be his eventual

opponent in the twenty twenty election. This was again the phone call to Zelenski in which Trump sort of intimated that he might make military aid contingent upon Zelenski investigating Barisma, the big Ukrainian energy concern that Hunter Biden was on the board of directors of which we now know today was a super sleazy arrangement. We didn't exactly know it one hundred percent at the time. Well, anyone with a

brain knew it was super sleazy. And again, after the first blush of the news story, it took us about a week and by us, I mean the media globally, the commentariat globally to sort of realize what was the actual crime that President Trump committed. What did he do that was illegal? The arguments that it was a campaign finance violation because he asked Zelensky to do something that was helpful for his No, that's not a campaign finance violation.

That's not an unreported campaign finance expense, it's not unreported appo research. No, campaign finance law is a certain thing, and that's not a campaig and finance expense that he should have reported or something some such thing. In fact, it I find it hard to think it was even much of an abuse of his office, given the fact that I think it's pretty hard to escape the conclusion that Hunter Biden was engaged in shady dealings in Ukraine, and I still to this day think it beggars belief that.

I think you have to have your ostrich head buried in the sand to think that Joe Biden wasn't benefiting from a whole bunch of shady and illegal activity that his son was doing. I think his son was acting as an agent of a foreign country and had never registered under the Farah laws, the Foreign Alien Foreign Agents Representative Act FARA. Basically, you can work as an American citizen on behalf of a foreign country he as an agent of a foreign country, but you got to register

as such. Hunter Biden never did that. I think there were money laundering things that the Bidens were doing. Why were they creating this large network of various companies. Why were millions of dollars flowing into the Biden family going to the bank accounts of family members who had nothing to do with anything going, you know, going to Halle Biden, who was a kindergarten teacher, getting payments from Romanian business

concerns or whatever. Why you know, you had several people going on the record accusing Joe Biden of being the big guy ten percent going to the big guy, all this stuff where Biden was utilizing his political influence as the vice president to get deals for his son. His son was clearly selling it anyway. But this is the problem.

The first blush of the story is Trump has done something illegal, and then it takes about a week for people to realize either and this is more of a fifty to fifty situation or even I don't know that Trump did anything wrong to this day, I really don't think, especially the grand sweep of history, the first Trump impeachment feels to me unbelievably silly, unbelievably silly threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine, which he ultimately didn't even do.

He didn't even follow through on it. The Ukrainians did not investigate hunder Biden, and Trump still gave them the military aid. So that's why I've been a little silent about all of this stuff. With the deportations to l Salvador. The factual scenarios are so complex, and the stories initially just get presented in such a one sided fashion as Trump as violent has deliberately disobeyed an order from a federal court. And I just don't know that it's quite right.

And even there's this whole attitude that's being presented about they're violating the due process rights of these immigrants, of people who are in this country, of non citizen aliens in this country, that they're violating their due process rights. Okay, let me just explain this. Due process means different things for different kinds of people in different kinds of situations.

If you're an American citizen who's being arrested on suspicion that you have committed a crime, you have a very robust degree of due process protections that are afforded to you. You get your Miranda rights read to you, you have

a right to atturn, you have this you. The kinds of due process that we have to give to an illegal alien is not the same as the kinds of due process we have to give to an American citizen an America, and especially this particular illegal alien, this Obrego Garcia guy who It's clear the government had a good bit of information that this guy was no good. He had already been determined to have been an illegal alien. They had a good bit of reason to think he

was involved with MS thirteen. They had a ton of reason to think he was a slimeball who was beating up his girlfriend wife. I'm not sure. I think it's his girlfriend it he's a bad dude, clearly. Now, there had been an immigration ruling in his case saying that he was not to be deported back to El Salvador, and the Trump administration has admitted that they wrongly released him to El Salvador. Now I think that that, you know, I've read up on that ruling. That ruling was dumb. Okay,

that was a silly ruling. Basically, he made this claim that when he was twelve, local gangsters were trying to shake down his mom's She had some sort of food restaurant, food store kind of thing. I think she was selling a rape bus or something. Local gangsters were trying to shake her down. This was like over a decade ago,

when he was twelve. So he got this immigration judge to say, well, it would be a humanitarian problem if you sent him back to El Salvador because those gangs, even though the mom's business doesn't exist anymore, it was over a decade ago. He said, well, you can't send him back to El Salvador because he'll be persecuted for that, which is a ridiculous ruling. It seems as though they accidentally released this guy to El Salvador, and the Salvadorans have said, no, we are holding this guy for our

own reasons and we don't want to release him. And that's the thing. I mean it kind of I think an analogy to think of is, you know, I think our American courts can demand that President Trump do his best to facilitate the guy's return all day, But the courts don't have the authority to dictate to the American President, who has sole exclusive responsibility of this how he conducts foreign policy and President Trump interacting with the president of

l Salvador, that's his exclusive domain. Courts can't get into the nitty gritty of how he relates to it, and I know John Roberts doesn't want to step into that territory. So you have the Supreme Court saying, okay, well do what you can to facilitate the return. If El Salvador is willing and Trump's sort of saying, well, it's not going to happen, and I don't know. At a certain point the Supreme Court even can't really do much with it. If the else, If the Salvadorans are saying, we don't

want to release this guy because he's our citizen. We think he's a bad dude, what are we supposed to do now when we return. I want to talk about this constitutional crisis language and try to assess is there what what what do people actually mean when they say that, and try try to assess is there such a crisis happening. That's next on the John Grardy Show. Are we in a constitutional crisis? Let's break down what do people mean when they are saying that President Trump has initiated a

constitutional crisis? All right, this is what they mean. We have had a fairly well settled constitutional order within American government. It's something that's not exactly written in the Constitution. This is the order of operations. Since Marbury versus Madison, the Supreme Court has held and the other branches have sort of accepted this power that courts have the power of what's called judicial review. They can review actions by the executive.

They can review laws passed by Congress for their constitutionality. They can only review laws passed by Congress in the context of an active case or controversy. It's not like Congress passes law and the Supreme Court just sort of jumps up and says, hey, that's unconstitutional. No, an actual case or controversy has to arise, an actual, real lawsuit has to make its way to the Supreme Court. They don't. The Supreme Court does not give advisory opinions about the

constitutionality of laws anyway. And we sort of accept within our political order that when the courts, and especially the Supreme Court rule on an executive action and its constitutionality or not because a lawsuit was generated out of it, or when the courts rule on the constitutionality of a law, we accept, We accept acc ept the holding of the court, and we abide by it. The executive and it's a

fit allow that to be enforced. We accept this constitutional order, even though this is a bit of a lacuna, a gap within the actual written order of our constitution. Okay, this isn't all necessarily spelled out in the Constitution itself. It is a kind of settlement that we have arrived at. This is the most majorum, and it's kind of the way in which the custom of our ancestors, if you will. That's how the Roman Constitution worked within the Roman Republic.

The Romans didn't have a written constitution with all of its various procedures and stuff written out. They had bits of legislation passed by this body or that body, and the constitution of the Roman Republic. The actual setup of it was kind of like your eccentric uncle's crazy addict where Rube Goldberg machine esque kind of craziness. But the Romans would appeal to the most majoram the custom of our ancestors. This is the way our ancestors did it. It

was always an appeal to tradition. And we kind of have a little thing like that within our American constitutional order, particularly as it involves the relationship between the courts and the other branches of government. There have been occasions in our history, though, where we sort of didn't respect that order.

Andrew Jackson once, you know, there's sort of a myth I guess that Andrew Jackson once said about the Supreme Court in an opinion that was issued in eighteen thirty two that John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, has made his decision, now let him enforce it. Now. That is kind of a myth. Jackson never uttered those words, but the story sort of makes sense. It shows you sort of the kind of ify nature of the Court's standing.

The Court can issue decisions all at once, but the Court relies on the executive branch to enforce the law and to ensure that its decisions are carried out. Because the Supreme Court doesn't have cops. The Supreme Court doesn't have guys with guns at the end of the day to enforce its decisions, even when the Supreme Court is

ruling against the executive branch. So when the Supreme Court rules against the executive branch and tells the executive branch you can't do X, Y, or Z, the Supreme Court has no way to force the executive branch to comply. They don't have off, they don't have guys with guns. With the Supreme Court has is its moral and political authority. It's auctoreitas, sort of the Roman word basically meant how

much weight you had, how much pull you had. Okay, that's all they've got, and if the Supreme Court keeps over if this is really more a problem of the lower courts, but if the lower courts keep issuing rulings that are clearly beyond their scope. I mean, yesterday we had an immigration a federal judge give a ruling that is sure to be over turned very quickly saying that border patrol can't detain an illegal alien without a warrant for their arrest, which is insane, Okay, an insane ruling,

totally lawless. But basically, the courts rely for their standing on the president, on the executive branch's goodwill, and I think they are starting, they are really approaching with the proliferation of nationwide rulings by individual district court judges, this overstepping of individual district courts authorities authority, I think that is precipitating a constitutional crisis in which this sort of settled order of things that we have that we've had

in America for hundreds of years, that settled order is going to get upset. And people on the left are all just going to blame Donald Trump for not following courts. I think these judges will have them really have themselves to blame because at a certain point, the president would have to ignore judges. If a judge tells the president, Hey, you can't move the marines from this marine battalion over here, you need to move them over there, at that point

the president is like, no, you are infringing. A district court judge is not allowed to tell me what to do about moving marines around. Sorry, that is my job and my responsibility. And I think we'd all agree the president should blow off a court who told him that. That is the problem. If the president is refusing to obey a court, whose fault is it. Is it the president's fault for disobeying or is it the court's fault for wildly overstepping it's authority. I tend to think it's

chicken and egg. But I think a lot of the problems that we've seen in the last one hundred days have been from courts overstepping their authority. When we return new data on abortion, new data on transgender interventions, could this reshape how the expert class talks about these topics. Next on The John Gerardi Show, there are two big stories, one of which I talked about a little earlier this week, and I'll talk about again on Saturday for Right to

Life Radio, and another having to do with transgenderism. Basically, there's new research coming out that is breaking the lefty social lefty consensus of about eight years ago, which centered around two propositions, one that the abortion pill is the safest thing that has ever happened, and two that transgender

surgeries are supported by science. We follow the science and I want to talk about them, and I'm hoping that the Trump administration can use new data to break the back of these two movements over the course of the next four years. Now here's a piece in National by Abigail Anthony. HHS report finds no strong evidence that supporting gender affirming care is effective so called gender affirming care.

She writes, there is not strong evidence that quote gender affirming care for miners is effective for treating gender dysphoria or improving mental health. According to a report issued on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services based on a review of existing literature, the researchers found that existing studies suffer from bias and methodological errors, while the literature also fails to appropriately consider potential harms such as

the loss of sexual function. OH that would seem to be a harm. I think I would be upset at that. Just that's just me. The gender affirming model of care includes irreversible endocrine and surgical interventions on minors with no physical pathology. Reads the reports forward, these interventions carry rips of significant harms, including infertility and sterility, infertility slash sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density, accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular

disease in metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret. Meanwhile, systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep, uncerted uncertainty

about the purported benefits of these interventions. In an executive order titled Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation issued on January twenty eighth, President Trump announced that the Secretary of Health and Human Services would publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid onset gender dysphoria, or other identity based confusion within ninety days, given the

toxicity of this issue, and in order to allow for a peer review process that focuses on the substance of this report. The names of the contributors are not being released at this time. A source familiar with the report told national review like the CAST review commissioned by the UK National Health Service on gener related medical care for minors, that concluded this is an area of remarkably weak evidence.

In twenty twenty four, the HHS report found that quote the overall quality of evidence concerning the effects of any intervention on psychological outcomes, quality of life, regret, or long term health is very low. Proponents of PMT, which I guess is I'm not sure what that acronym stands for. I guess that means child sex change interventions. Proponents of

PMT often describe it as life saving. Some physicians recommending PMT have urged anxious parents to consent to irreversible interventions for their distressed children, warning that not doing so may increase the risk of suicide. Reads the report, Such claims are not supported by the evidence and have been criticized as unethical. Additionally, the HHS report, or titled Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria Review of Evidence in Best Practices, notes

a blind spot in the existing studies. Most fail to appropriately consider any potential harms The HHS Report is an umbrella review of seventeen pre existing systematic reviews, with some reviews encompassing more than one topic. Two on the effects of social social transition so kid just wearing different clothes and using a different name, nine on puberty blocking drugs, eight on cross sex hormones, three on surgery, five on psychotherapy.

The HHS researchers measured the quality of evidence as high, moderate, low, or very low by evaluating the risk of bias, unexplained variations and results, a lack of direct evidence, wide confidence intervals, small sample sizes, and other methodological errors. Of the seventeen systematic reviews, seven were rated as having a quote high risk of bias overall, while others similarly suffered from methodological flaws. Now, this is the thing the left has totally captured the

American Academy of Pediatrics. People don't appreciate this, the way in which the left has completely captured the leadership of a number of medical professional associations, particularly ACG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others. My parents have talked about this dynamic with me for a long time given up. My mom's a dermatologist, and my dad who passed away back in March of

twenty four. My dad was an orthopedic surgeon, and different branches of medicine, there diferent sort of professional organizations for different branches of medicine. For example, my dad was an orthopedic surgeon, so he was part of the American Academy of Orthopedics, And basically there were kind of different yeah, American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, so that there were different kinds of political vibes depending on which specialty you were

talking about within medicine. The American Academy of Orthpetic Surgeons was it tended to be a bit more conservative a cog the American College of Obstetricians and kind of cologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics super liberal. And the way that the left has gotten away with its manipulation of language, its ability to sort of win the debate on transgenderism before we had even really had the debate,

like they declared victory on it. They sort of declared that this is the new orthodoxy media right about transgenderism, as if the question is already settled. Why Because they captured the medical scientific community. They cooked the books with research. They presented all these studies purporting to show that, oh,

it's actually so helpful. Now when you have a more skeptical HHS looking at this with a more skeptical eye, they say, hey, no, the methodology for a lot of these surveys is bad, high risk of bias for a ton of these surveys. They're not really demonstrating much benefit for these kids who are having these irreversible things, and

they're not really considering the potential harms. But because you have physician groups like the American Academy Pediatrics going oh this was fine, this was wonderful, it gives cover to this idea that well, the experts say blah blah blah blah blah, and the media bases its characterization of these things, it bases its reporting on these things with the quote value neutral sort of framing that's given by professional medical associations.

That's why when you read so an allegedly non biased media report, they still will talk about transgender people who identify as transgender. They'll still they insist on using female pronouns for a biological male, or they then pronouns for someone who's biologically one way or another. They insist on using things like this person was assigned male at birth,

as if your biological sex is assigned to you. I mean, that's a whole worldview contained in a little phrase, the idea that your sex is something assigned to you, I eat, a label attached to you from the outside, as opposed to something that is inherent based on what parts you got or what you know, whether you got x x or x y chromosomes, etcetera. You know what reproductive organs

you have, so what the Trump admitted. So that that is why the media is able to get away with absolutely taking one side of the issue, because we have all these professional medical associations that took one side of the issue. And I think we can't overlook money, the role of money. All right, let's think about this. Great Britain rejected transgender interventions for minors without a very strong

conservative movement, without a strong social conservative movement. Right the Prime Minister of Great Britain right now is from the Labor Party, super left wing. Prior prime ministers were from the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party was dominant in Great Britain for years and years and years prior to Cure Starmer coming in to office, and they were all socially very left wing. Why has Great Britain come to this

conclusion that they're not going to do transgender interventions on kids. Well, I think it's in part because the British, the British National Health Service is a socialist is a socialized medicine system. It's not as much driven by the profit motive, not as much as the American system. And I think these doctors doing these hormonal interventions and surgical interventions on kids

are making a crapload of money. They are turning these kids into just constant revenue generative machines for medical services that they can build for and they're making tons of money off of these kids so they can have have their sort of liberal autonomy based philosophical ideas about oh, your identity is whoever you think it is, and your body you know you're you're a girl trapped in a boy's body, and we're helping you live who you are,

and expressive individuals and blah blah blah. But you scratch the surface of this, and it's about money, filthy stinking money. You scratch that rainbow and you're gonna find green underneath. Why is it that all these local you know, uh LGBT nonprofits, the these LGBT you know support center nonprofits that we see locally that are getting all these dollars flying in from last from southern California to help establish them. There's one and vice Salia Fresno. EOC has one in Fresno.

Uh why did they? Why are they always sponsored by medical clinics? Why are they always supported by medical clinics FQHCs who just so happened to offer gender affirm care, hormones and stuff. Because it's money. It's money, it's money, it's money. They're funneling kids into it for money. That's why dirty stinkin filthy money. That's why I would curse about it more, but I can't do that on the radio.

So I think that you know, look, I'm not saying socialized medicine is great, but that is one thing that's different there. They don't have the profit motive over there as much. They were willing to follow the evidence, honestly. So I'm hopeful that HHS can break the back of this when we return, just really briefly on the revolution, the data revolution that could be taking place with the

abortion pill. That's next. On the John Gruardy Show, we talked about this revolution that might be happening with the HHS giving this new report on the total lack of data of the effectiveness or usefulness or helpfulness of transgender interventions for kids. There's a similar thing happening with the abortion pill. Remember how everyone kept insisting that the COVID vaccine. COVID vaccines are safe and effective. COVID vaccines are safe

and effective. Now, I'm not as much of a critic of COVID vaccines as some, but I got very suspicious of the constant, repeated use of that phrase safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective. The same language has been used about the abortion pill, mifipristone, which is the chief way that abortions happen in America. Over sixty percent

of abortions in America happened via the abortion pill. Because of the abortion pill and the fact that can be shipped through the mail, It's actually resulted in the states that have outlawed abortion since the overturning of rov Wade, a lot of women are still getting abortions there because the abortion pill is being sent in and the federal

government's not enforcing any kinds of restrictions on shipping abortifations. Well, new data has come out that actually eleven percent of women who have the abortion pill have serious adverse outcomes. It's not safe. This lie is repeated by the left to favor things interventions, medical interventions that they like. And I'm getting really sick and suspicious of safe and effective, Safe and effective, safe and effective. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk.