Welcome to episode one of The Oath in the Office, a brand new podcast about the Constitution, what it was, what it might still be, what it could still become. I am John Fugelsang, and I am so pleased to welcome the star of our show, the man who wrote the book The Oath in the Office, Professor Corey Bretschneider.
Hello, Corey, Hi, John, Thanks so much for doing this. I'm so excited to be talking to you about this topic and such an important moment. And maybe I should just say that, in the first few seconds in office, the president takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. But what we're facing at this moment, and the reason why we're talking, is that we are facing a president who's doing anything but that, who's really threatening
to collapse the system. So that's the urgency that's really led us together to start this podcast.
And that's why I was so intrigued to do this with you, Professor, because you've done my show on SiriusXM for years, and I've learned so much about the Constitution. I've actually been able to talk my way into a couple of law schools fraudulently based on how much I've learned from you, and I have to say, there's a lot of podcasts out there about the very, very curious
predicament we're in. This is not a podcast where we're necessarily going to be talking about all the Trump supporters losing two billion dollars because they invested in his mean coin, although it's kind of hilarious. This is not a show about Secretary Jaegermeister telling Russia go ahead and keep Ukraine. And we're not really doing a show about apartheid nefo Baby's abusing ketamine, although they might come up. This is a show about the Constitution. This is a show about
the oath a president takes. This is a show about the very real jeopardy we all find ourselves in. I'm guessing that's why you wanted to do this, Professor.
Absolutely, this is a show prompted by how dire the moment is. And part of what I want us to do and what we plan to do, is to talk about the fact that it's not just some particular law or some misbehavior that's going on, but that there is a threat to the system as a whole, and that comes not just from some of the malicious intent of Trump, although I think that's part of it, or his crony Elon Mosk, who seems to know nothing about American democracy.
We'll talk about that too. It comes from how powerful this office is. The commander in chief of the military control over an executive branch, and he wants total control over it. We'll talk about that. Of more than two million people, this is a powerful office, and at this moment, I don't think it's ever risk that this office is so dangerous that it could destroy the entire American system. And yet, at the same time, to go to the point of the podcast, I don't want people to lose hope.
I don't think that we should lose hope. I think that we've seen these crises before, and as dire as this one is, we're going to get through it.
I completely agree. Every night on Serious XM, my callers who weigh in, and a lot of the journalists I talk to, we read all of these op eds every day, people discussing are are we headed for a constitutional crisis? At what point does this Michigas officially become a constitutional crisis? Based on what I know, it seems like the constitutional crisis is already in progress. We are in it right now, whether people know about it, acknowledge it, or care.
Do you agree? Definitely. I don't think that this is a question of whether we're going to enter one or it's going to get worse before we're there. We are here right now. And again that's the reason I think why we're talking to each other, that's the reason for a new podcast, because when you have a president who is not just creating executive orders that violate the Constitution.
We'll talk about some of those, birthright citizenship for instance, the firing of the NLRB board member, but really doing it with an aim of consolidating total power within the executive branch. That's what's going on, and trying to use his appointments on the Supreme Court, three of them, to ratify that consolidation of total power, and to make use of what might have been more benign ideas like the unitary executive, to really move us towards a dictatorship, an
elected dictatorship. That's what's happening right now. That's why it's not just a constitutional crisis. But I've been using the
word coup. I think it's that serious. Coups sometimes happen through violent activity, through takeover, but they also can happen and have happened often in Latin America, through the president consolidating legal powers, usurping the courts, usurping the Congress into his own in this case, Trump's own power, and the threats to violate court orders just get to that as well.
Is that a tough sell for you, Professor r I've talked about it with people who say, well, how can it be a coup? They've already got the power, They've got the White House, House and Senate. The power is already there. And you know, I'm not smart enough to explain it doesn't matter that they've already got the power. This is a coup not of the office, but of the entire structure of our government. This is South Africa and apartheid, Nepo baby taking over what the founding fathers want.
And as you've pointed out many times, Cory, the founders left very specific instructions. They wrote it all down more than once.
That's right. I mean, I think we have to look. America has been a model for democracies around the world, and where we've seen them fail, oftentimes in Latin American countries. What's happened is that from within the executive branch, the presidency, the other branches are essentially destroyed. And political scientists called these self coups or autocups. And that's I think what's
happening right now, that he is consolidating power. The power of the purse, the power to make laws lies with Congress, and yet he is stealing that purse, stealing that power to make laws. With the help of Elon Musk, the power of the purse turns out to be located in an office in the Treasury department. Elon Musk figured out where that was and has gone in there and stolen it,
even though the constitution doesn't give them that power. And the courts, the fundamental idea of American democracy is nobody's above the law, no person, not even a president, and the courts are supposed to be the ones to uphold it. So when you have this president and his cronies JD. Vance in particular, are threatening to disobey court orders, they're essentially announcing the coup. They're telling us in real time. American democracy isn't that we elect a president and then
that person can do whatever he or she wants. We have laws on the books, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the president is not above the law, supposed to follow them, and we've really abandoned that.
I mean, you'd think Trump would know. He already got impeached once for trying to tamper with funding Congress had already approved.
That's what his.
Impeachment for the Ukrainian phone call was all about. Congress had approved the funding. He tried to hold it back. I'd like to think he'd learn his lesson, but again, you know, if he believed in learning lessons, wouldn't paid all those kids to take his test for him at Wharton's School of Business. Now I'm looking at the headlines, and there's reason to feel optimistic. We see, as was so often the case in the first term, the judicial
branch is there. It's protecting the guardrails. In the past couple of weeks, we've seen he can't freeze federal grants. He can't slash money for health research. They made him put back up the public health information. They took off the government websites. They can't just wipe out the US Agency for International Development. But it seems like the real test is not how well these judges are fighting back.
The real test is if they decide to just not even listen to these courts and to move ahead with policies that have already been deemed illegal because who's going to stop them? And that seems to be the curious area we're occupying.
Now, that's the frightening moment. And it's right to say that lower courts are doing their job. Many of these decisions are going to wind up in the hands of the Supreme Court, and we're going to talk about that. But what happens when the lower courts do their job or the Supreme Court does their job and the executive just doesn't listen. That really is unprecedented. Andrew Jackson supposedly said Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him
enforce it. He never said Thats versus Georgia isn't even a case about Andrew Jackson. So we're in unprecedented territory. The time that supposedly happened did not happen. And when you start to think through it, certainly the federal courts have the ability to finding criminal contempt federal officials who
don't listen to them. But here's the problem. The president has the pardon power, and many of these federal officials who are going to be encouraged to disobey, or are being encouraged to disobey or might be might count on
such a pardon. And of course Trump himself, although these cases are not about the question of criminal immunity, he has the incentive to bad behavior, to defy the courts because he knows he himself will never be found guilty, never even be indicted under the immunity case for any criminal action, even if it comes to that.
Yeah, so this is the crazy thing you mentioned Andrew Jackson. I was going to ask you about that because I was raised believing the legend that Andrew Jackson brazenly defied the Supreme Court, and I've been walking around thinking, well, Andrew Jackson did it. We managed to survive. No one cares, but it doesn't make me feel any easier. And when I look at what's happening here, it's kind of everything
you've said, Professor. I mean, he began his administration telling them not to enforce the TikTok ban that he fought for a year ago, that's been passed by Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court. So right away day one, he's disobeying a ban because I hope he's gotten a better
bribe from China. The executive order to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship ignores Supreme Court precedents, And just this week the judge in the federal grants case has said that the administration still has not abided by the court order to restart the federal grants. So I mean, if he's fine court orders now and White House counsel is sitting around letting him do it, do we still have checks and balances anymore?
I think that's why I've been using the language of coup, because all of this isn't that he's ignorant. When you and I first met, I had written a piece called Trump versus the Constitution, and it was about how he really didn't understand even the most basic thing of the system. And my hope then and prediction was that the courts were going to stop them, they were going to teach him a constitutional lesson. But he really is hell band
on absolute power. And part of the point of these massive turn of executive orders is to overwhelm the system, flood the zone, as they've been saying, and what that really means is to show his defiance of the Constitution. Part of that might mean defiance of courts, but he also is hoping and he might succeed in using the courts to remake his own power, to get rid of those checks and balances that we read about in seventh grade.
So he really is It's not that he doesn't know, oh, that the birthright Citizenship Order is unconstitutional, it's that he wants to challenge the courts to stop them, and he is defying intentionally these basic textual guarantees protections of the Constitution. And I think that's true too, of firing the head
of the NLRB. In all these cases, he's trying to remake the Constitution, and he's hoping that the people that he regards as his justices, these three members of the court that he's nominated and that we're confirmed, are going to back him up in his quest for consolidated power.
My god, it's just like you know, you're raised in Civics class to understand that Congress controls the purse rings.
And now Trump with Elon Musk and Elon's little in cell clown posse of hackers have now decided no, they're going to try to pull the money out of the Treasury and apparently dump it into a Donald Trump sovereign slush fund where he can essentially be a king sitting on a pile of gold and give it out as he sees fifth and Congress just, I guess, shows up to work and no longer controls the purse strings and the Constitution, like the New Testament has been thrown out
by these people. I mean, it seems insane, Corey, But you know al Gore tried to have a sovereign wealth fund. He called it a lock box because they had taxed their rich a little tiny bit and they had a budget surplus with a balanced budget, and they wanted to use that money to protect poor people and strengthen social security. This is something very different. They are trying to take the money away from Congress and let King man Baby hand it out to whoever kisses his butt the most publicly.
That's right. I mean, what we learned in Civics class is the right understanding of the Constitution that Congress makes the law and Congress allocates funds, and this freeze is really an attempt to reverse that, to put in the hands of the executive branch, the ability to impound funds. There's a statute, by the way, after Nixon, the Impoundment Act, that stops the president from trying to simply unilaterally decide what to spend or not. And let's think about how
important this is to the system. If it's not Congress, but it's the president that can decide what to spend or not, in Congress's power is essentially eliminated. And I think that's the goal here. And that's true too of the other cases that we're going to talk about.
Okay, do go anywhere. We got to take a quick break to make some money to pay for our own defense lawyers. We'll be right back. This is the Oath in the Office. Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. I'm John fugel Sang Professor Corey. Let me ask you about the birthright citizenship case. It was one of the first things he did coming through. And you know, Professor, we've talked about this. I don't believe Donald Trump or the Republican Party care about undocuted mented immigration at all.
I don't believe they care about it anywhere. They care about abortion. It's an issue to get votes. If they wanted to stop border crossings, I've always said they would incarcerate the employers who put up a giant help want that sign at our border. The only reason they cross our border is for all those jobs white employers dangle fro undocumented people, and when the Republican Party refuses to go after those employers, it seems like it's, say, just
a racket to get votes. So when I first heard that he was doing this birthright citizenship thing, I thought, well, that's wacky and racist and probably won't go anywhere. But as the weeks have gone by, Toy, I've begun to worry, Well, what if they just did it as a trial balloon. What if that was just a focus group to see right off the bat, how much can we get away with and let's start weakening the guardrails.
That's exactly what I think is going on here. And let's just lay out for listeners exactly why I don't think this is a two sides issue. There's not a real debate about him. The Constitution says very clearly that if you're born in the United States, you are a citizen, and it doesn't have anything about undocumented people. And we have a case Wan Kim Mark in the nineteenth century
that really settled this question, made it settle law. This was a a Chinese national who in the United States had a child, and the question was, is this person the parent was not a citizen. Is this child a citizen of the United States? And the court said, just extremely clearly, Look, the fourteenth Amendment says what it says. And this wasn't a progressive court, by the way, and yet they were too embarrassed to say otherwise. They said, if you're born in the United States, you are a citizen.
Now it does say that those subject to the jurisdiction, if the parents are subject to the jurisdiction, that's the requirement. But that was really about trying to make sure that if you were an ambassador, for instance, that your child wouldn't automatically be a citizen, or if there was in some case you could imagine an invading army that wouldn't
the children of that invading army wouldn't be citizens. But absent that, it's a pretty absolute It is an absolute protection, and it only is the most I should say here too, the most fringe figures in all this. John Eastman who is under indictment, and Arizona, who designed the insurrection. Really with Donald Trump, those are the kind of people trying to defend this idea. And I think here are conservatives and liberals, anyone who understands what the text says is
lining up against Trump. Yet, why would he do this? To go to your question, given how clear it is, and it's to try to really send a shot at the Constitution. It is a cannon shot at the Constitution, an attempt to make it clear that he seeks absolute power and wants to destroy this document. If it was just one case, maybe that wouldn't be what's happening. But it's happening across the domain that he's challenging any limit on his own power.
So can I ask you one more goofy question about the birthright citizenship because as you know, our indigenous brothers and sisters have had American American citizenship since nineteen twenty four, Happy centennial, y'all. What's crazy to me? If you follow Donald Trump's career, you know he despises American Indians going back to his days in the casinos and you know,
making Pocahontas into a slur. But the Justice Department is defending this birthright citizenship order by arguing that immigrant kids who are covered by birthright citizenship can't be citizens because the children of Native Americans aren't really US citizens. This is so daffy and stupid. It almost seems like they're looking to be looked out of court. But they really submitted this from the Pambandi Justice Department that Indians aren't
really citizens. Why would they do something so blatantly unconstitutional and historically inaccurate. Are they just trying to see what shit will stick to the wall.
No, they're trying to pay fast and loose with history and confuse people. And I think they're succeeding in that, unfortunately, because what the court did say in the Wankim Mark case, and this was before Native Americans were citizens at least many, and they were saying, look, if you're a member of a Native American tribe at the time that is not doesn't have American citizenship, well then you're not covered by
this birthright citizenship. But of course, as you said, in the nineteen twenties, things change, Native Americans are given citizenships. So they're trying to really use this historical analogy and say that there's somehow an analogy between undocumented people now coming from other countries and the unique situation that Native Americans were in before the nineteen twenties. It is, I would just say, very clearly a confusion of the issue.
The other argument that I've heard floated, and I mean, I can't imagine they're going to say this before the Supreme Court when it gets there, but they're certainly thinking about it, is that the analogy is between undocumented people and an invading army, and that rhetoric is just beyond
racist comprehensible. But that's what we're dealing with, that they think that somehow that families coming here to seek a better life or analogous to some occupying army, that should be called out for the racist and horrible insult that
it is. And that's what this whole case is. It really is an attempt to undo and let's go back to the principle, the idea of the fourteenth Amendment, including the birthright citizenship clause, including the idea of equal protection, is an attempt to get rid of the horrific dread Scott case that said that black Americans are not people under the Constitution and to replace that evil idea with a notion that we are all equal, regardless of who
our parents are. Frederick Douglass talked about the idea of the corruption of blood, the practice of essentially allowing the next generation to inherit the punishments and crimes of a previous generation, and how antithetical that was to the notion of we the people, and this clause by saying that we are all Americans if we're born here full stop, is a way of guaranteeing that idea of equality, getting rid of this notion that our status is dependent on
our parents' status. And the attack on it really is not just an attack on the children of undocumented people. Well, it's an attack on the idea of American democracy and the notion of equal protection.
Amen. You know, I was thinking, and Culter tweeted a while ago, because so much of this is about the fact that Caucasians are going to be a minority in this country in the year twenty forty five. We're not going away, folks, but we're going to be under fifty percent. We're still going to control everything. Don't worry. Once we're a minority, will still control the systems of government itself. But white people. Some white people are freaking out about this.
They don't like the way they've treated minorities and they don't want to be treated the same way themselves. And Culter had to tweet a while back saying that she thought that we should have a law that all four of your grandparents should have been born in America in order to have the right to vote. And I thought, my god, with that policy, all of Trump's children wouldn't be allowed to vote, and Trump wouldn't either. Maybe I like that, But do you think you're going to see
any conservatives rising up to say this is wrong? Will any conservatives decide that the Constitution that they studied in law school means more to them than keeping their job and avoiding mean tweets?
I think it depends on the case. So I've been hardened, actually to see that this birthright citizenship nonsense is so extreme that conservatives are saying, we can read, we have a written constitution, you can't do this. Even John Yu, who is not exactly a defender of civil liberties, the person during the Bush administration, of course, extended the torture program of the Bush administration, says, no, I can read and you can't do this. Now. There are going to
be other cases, ones that will get to that. I think conservatives will go along. But here it is not that this is a two sides and we disagree. It is a blatant attempt to try to destroy the Constitution. I do want to say there was, there are There's an important written descent in the Wan kim Ark case, the case about the Chinese national that has a child and and the court defends the birthright citizenship of.
Eighteen ninety eight right eighteen ninety eight.
And in this case there's a descent that really speaks to the moment. And what the descent is really about is the idea that really Chinese people are not like Americans, they are separate race. It is the most racist creed that you could imagine. Somebody said to me, well, why kim Mark had a descent? So I went and read it really closely, and I don't think I've ever seen such a vile insult, such a pile of racism that even at the time was regarded by the majority as
too much to stand by. So that's really what we're dealing with here, and we've got to call that out. This isn't a two sides reasonable disagreement. It is an attack on not just any part of the Constitution. The thing we fought a war about the idea of equal protection.
I mean we also thought a war against having a king. But with this immunity ruling, which I know you never get tired of talking about, man, I mean King George Muster, I hope he realized he was working way too hard because now with this immunity, we have a king. We have a king who's talking about not leaving office. Cory. And again we've discussed this on Sirius XM. He could strangle AOC with his bare hands and say it was part of the job, and there would be people in Congress who would defend him.
Second Circuit Judge Judge Chen asked his lawyer, basically, are you saying in defending presidential immunity this was a case about when he was a former president that he could essentially shoot someone on the street and get away with it. And the lawyer basically had to admit, Yeah, that is
what I'm saying. And that's the worry here that you know, especially, I don't think there's any disagreement that Trump has immunity as president, and the disincentive that that creates to follow the law, the incentive it creates to law break, to go along with his what his corruption, his desire for
absolute power is frightening. I have to bring up Patrick Henry, you know, I bring him up all the time, but we haven't brought him up for this audience because it speaks to the moment and how the immunity decision fits into all of this. He says that the founding, this is the person who's famous for saying, give me liberty, give me death. But he also less famously made a really dire warning at the founding. He said, do not
ratify this constitution. That what we've got here is a presidency that is so powerful it assumes George Washington a person of virtue in office. And then he asked, what if you get a bad person? What if you get a criminal president, what's going to stop him? Impeachment's not
going to work. He predicted essentially that there wasn't going to be the mechanism of prosecution, that there would be immunity, and he said such a person would be above the loss so much so, and now this is the frightening part that they wouldn't hesitate to make one bold push for the American throne. And that's what I worry that we're facing right now. That's why we're doing this podcast.
And when you combine it with there are more than forty cases going on now in the federal courts that are being challenged of obviously unconstitutional executive orders, and some of them, when you combine them with this immunity decision and the birthright citizenship, are all about consolidating power in a way that really would make Patrick Henry's warning come true. That's why it's such a dangerous moment.
You're listening to the Oath in the Office with Professor Corey Breschneider and John feel saying we'll be right back after this. We are back. This is the Oath in the Office. From everything you've said, Nixon, if he'd known, didn't have to resign, and Ford never had to parton Nixon because Nixon's crimes weren't crimes. It's amazing, Corey, in fifty years we've gone from I am not a crook to a crook is not a crook?
That's America. I should say. I'm going to say why in many ways. What we're facing now is Nixon's revenge. But at the time he was ordered to US versus Nixon eight to zero. He was ordered to hand over the tapes that had been subpoenaed, and he did it. Ford's pardon of Nixon essentially admits that, yes, former presidents can be prosecuted. Nixon's Department of Justice did, really, I think, in many ways make prominent the idea of immunity for a sitting president, but they didn't have the gall to
argue that a former president couldn't be prosecuted. But then again, Nixon did say in the interview with Frost, and this is where I think it all comes from, that when a president does it, it's not illegal. That was a thought out idea. He thought that America was in a civil war and that the president has emergency powers, and that meant the ability to commit crimes. And the crimes of Nixon were so hidden by the pardon. They're so vast.
They include, for instance, his ordering on a thievery basis. He's told by he believes that there are tapes in the Brookings Institution documents. I should say that reveal that he had a secret dealing with the Vietcong in which he encouraged them to postpone the war until they could get a better deal from him. Essentially treason, and he knew he thought these documents were hidden in the Brookings Institution.
And when Henry Kissinger says, well, if they have those, we should get them through court, he says, no, Henry, and everyone can listen to this on the tape. I want that done on a thievery basis. So he was a criminal president, but not even he went as far as Trump. And what we're facing now is somebody who believes that Nixon didn't go far enough that if you would have just pushed back, if you would have stuck to that idea that when the president does it, it's
not illegal, he could have gone even further. And that's why we are in the well, let's call it what it is, the self coup auto coup.
That woom, You've got us feeling nostalgic for Nixon.
Cory.
That's what we've come to. Donald Trump is like a less honest, less legal, less healthy, less attractive, less moral Nixon. Let me ask you about the National Labor Relations Board case, because this one is not getting as much hype because they flooded the zone. This is the gish gallop. This is what the gas lighting is. There's you know, I call it what the fuck fatigue, professor. It's this non stop fire hose of what the fuck's designed to burn
out our outrage systems and just be overwhelmed. So the National Labor Relations Board, I thought their board members had legal protection against being randomly fired. Is this another example of them saying, screw the law, let them sue us, and let's see how my ringers on the court find.
I'm so glad we're talking about this because this is one of those wonky cases that if you don't understand it, you're going to miss what's happening, and so it's worth going deep on it. This is a case in which member of the NLRB was fired, even though there's a requirement that that can't be done unless you could show that there was malfeasans or that there was good cause for the firing. It's a protection, in other words, against solely political firing. And yet Trump did it anyway, Now,
why would he do that in this case. It's certainly that he's challenging the law, but it's that he thinks that he might have the votes on the Supreme Court to really bring back political firing, not just in this case, but the real question is whether or not the move towards Schedule F, the reclassification of federal employees to get rid of the civil service protection they have against political firing, a protection that goes back to the Pendleton Act of
the nineteenth century, the success and getting rid of the spoils system. What he wants is complete control. He wants loyalty these civil servants, the head of the NLRB. They're independent and protected from political firing because in our system there are laws and they are charged with carrying those laws out. And Trump is trying to undermine that by gaining total control, demanding total loyalty, and that means the ability to hire and fire at will. Now here's the kicker.
It's not just here that he wants to do it. It's that he might succeed because there's a long standing theory known as the unitary executive and extended in full, it would mean complete control of the executive branch over hiring and firing. I don't know if Elon musk knew he was talking about it today From the Oval office. But when he said, look, you win an election, democracy means you can do whatever he wants. That is an idea that the Supreme Court might affirm. And just to
be clear, that isn't American democracy. American democracy involves laws that no one is above and that civil servants are obligated to carry out. And Trump wants to reverse that with a very undemocratic idea, one of dictatorship in which he can decide what everyone should do, and that includes choosing loyalty over the law.
We just heard the federal judge over the last weekend who temporarily restricted Elon Musk's in cells from the Treasury Department's payment and data systems, saying there's a risk of irreparable harm. We don't know if they're complying with that, but this was Judge Paul Englemeyer. He put out this emergency order and saying that Trump's whole new policy of letting political appointees or special government employees have access to these systems heightens the risk of leaks and the systems
are more vulnerable to hacking. So the outcry against this judge has been astonishing. Congressman Eli Crane has now said, I'm drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Englemeyer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy. The left has done a reparable harm to this country. Trump at the team at Doze, you're trying to fix it.
This is obviously judicial overreach. Judge Englmeyer is attempting to stop White House employees from accessing the very systems they oversee. I don't know if these nineteen year olds named big Balls are official White House employees Corey, but the judge, I think most conservatives would agree that it's a time for some caution. It's not just we have to point out the entire Republican Party is lawless now, anti constitution,
anti guardrails, anti rule of law. I guess when we've seen these guys celebrate cops being beaten on the Capitol steps for a lie, and then releasing the men who attacked the cops, and then hunting the FBI agents who prosecuted these terrorists who attacked the cops, we really shouldn't be surprised that they're trying to get judges fired for protecting Americans paychecks and Social Security payments.
Yeah, this is such an important issue that there is a process of impeachment and removal of federal judges. You have to show a high crime and misdemeanor and requires a majority of the House and two thirds to remove in the Senate. And that's supposed to be for serious malfeasans for undermining the core tenants of democracy, for instance,
or for crime crimes. But what's going on here, and it ties into the last point, is that any judge who doesn't go along with the agenda of stealing the power of the purse of extending the unitary executive, I should say too, in the unitary executive case, there are precedents that prohibit that, that protect the Pendulton Act, a case called Humphrey's Executor. And what they want these judges to do is to overturn those cases. Now, what if
they don't do it. They're aware certainly that in the birthright citizenship case, in these cases that we're talking about about spending, that the judges might try to stop them. While they need this threat, we'll just get rid of them. We'll use what looks like legal process to really upend the entire judiciary. And the message is being sent, Yeah, we're asking you to upend the law, to re do the checks and balances that we learned about in the form of a dictatorship. And if you don't go along
with it, we've got a mechanism to stop you. We're going to fire you. And that's what Musk and company are pushing. None of this is virtue in the sense of following the law or the text. It's all about power and they might win.
Yeah, okay, so this is our first episode, and it's okay if what you've heard so far makes you want to draw a warm bath, open up your veins, hop on a Leonard Cohen song and jump in the tub. But there is so much cause for hope. Corey. I'm going to point now where I've had it with people who are despairing this early in the game. I've said almost every night on Sirius XM. This is a fifteen round fight of Rocky versus Apollo Creed and we're still only in the first minute of round one. I think
despare is privileged. But going forward, let me ask you, I mean, what can people do? We're facing these threats to democracy from this reality show racist clown, and you know, we only have so much power. People are calling Congress and being very mad morning Democrats to do more. They're praying the judicial branch saves us all. But I appreciate
anybody who feels helpless right now. You talk about this, professor in your most recent book, The Presidents of the People, But what can ordinary citizens do about this?
Wow? John, what a great place to end, because this is I think the main reason to do the podcast, to not give into despair and to see the hope. And I think the fundamental lesson that we've seen again and again of American history is that there is a danger of the presidency and that Patrick Henry was right. It is powerful, and we have seen presidents who have threatened democracy. This isn't the first time we had John Adams use the Sedition Act to prosecute over one hundred
and twenty of his opponents. And the Sedition Act, just to be clear of how bad it was, was written in a way that made it a crime to criticize the president of the United States, but it didn't make it a crime to criticize the vice president, a member of the opposition party, Thomas Jefferson. And this law was used to prosecute again and again, those who criticize the president. He had an idea of the constitution that was not democratic.
John Adams out of the president as a kind of monarch, and their right to free speech, even though it had been enacted in the First Amendment, didn't mean the right to criticize him. And what about the courts, And just to see the parallel, why did the Supreme Court not come and say, hey, we have a First Amendment, you can't do that John Adams. It's because the courts were
in bed with John Adams. In fact, Samuel Chase, one of the most prominent Supreme Court justices of the time, lobbied for this Sedition Act and the shutdown of the opposition party, went and sat on the trial of each of these sorry let me say that again, went and sat on the trial of Thomas Cooper, one of the editors who criticized Adams. So the courts weren't going to save us. There wasn't going to be impeachment because the president's party was in Congress as well. So what happened?
How did we survive that moment and actually get the American democracy that we have where we're able to do what you and I are doing criticize the president, at least for now without going to prison. These editors heroically fought back. They used their own trials to put John Adams on trial to say that there is a rule of law that stands above everyone, even this president. And then they use politics. They used the election of eighteen
hundred to make it a referendum on democracy. And when Adams was tossed out and Jefferson came in and he uttered the words, we are all federalists, we are all Republicans, he was saying, I'm not going to have a sedition Act. It was a recovery of the idea not just a
free speech, but of the right to dissent. So these stories, and we'll talk about more of them, the really heroic activity and speeches of Frederick Douglas who pushed back against the dred Scock case and Buchanan, people like William Monroe Trotter, and others like Sadie Alexander who pushed back in the twentieth century against the segregation initiated by Woodrow Wilson. These people didn't just fight back, They figured out a way to win by turning their descent into a political movement
that recaptured American democracy. And really, that's my hope of what we're doing at this moment, not only to not give into despair, not only to call out what's happening, not only to fight back, but to use these moments to try to galvanize the American people into recovering our democracy. I love it.
This is why you are the anti Alina Habba, and I thank you very much for that, professor. I'm thrilled to do this show with you. I'm excited to learn, and you know, I think information and knowledge is one of the antidotes for despair at a time like this. I am a firm believer that the only thing that's going to beat these fascists is nonviolence, humor and ridicule, and a very informed populace of informed voters and consumers. And so I'm really really happy to take this journey
with you. I want to tell everybody this would be a really good time for y'all to subscribe and rate us and review us on Apple podcasts. If you want to give Corey five stars but give me none, you can split it and give it four. Maybe you know do that, But let's let's get some reviews and Coreo as we go by in the weeks to come, I'm really looking forward to taking the most outrageously confusing acts of malfeasance and legal fuckery these guys try, and breaking
down the history, breaking down the Constitution. I find it really really comforting to know definitively how wrong they are. I mean, do you have hope that historians of the future are not going to be swayed by Donald Trump's nonsense? And you know, I think dumb people of the future aren't going to remember Donald Trump. They're not going to know and the historians will know everything and won't be swayed by ads and won't be swayed by racism for migrants.
In the long run, I think America will survive this. A lot of people will be hurt in the meantime, but these guys aren't going to win long term.
The history books.
I don't see any way they come off as the good guys. One hundred years from now.
Absolutely, I think that, you know, the judgment of history is going to show that Donald Trump was seriously on the wrong side, opposing basic ideas of democracy and freedom. And that's why I'm so honored to be in this series. Of conversations with you, John, to bring it as wide an audience as we can, to really make us aware of what this threat to democracy is, to not get fooled by the different techniques and arguments that they're going to use to try to pretend that they're defending freedom
or defending democracy. We're going to call it out, we're going to explain it, and we're going to have fun along the way, because I think the joy and the humor and all of that is part of what it means to oppose. I want to be tyranny and we'll do that together. And so thanks for doing this. It's such a pleasure to be in conversation. And as John says, please subscribe to the Oath in the Office and post some reviews.
Yes, and I want to thank you. I want to thank everybody who put this together, and most of all, I want to thank my parole officer for telling me this would be a very good idea for my eventual clearance. Guys, it's a real joy. The show is once again the Oath in the Office. Thank you guys for listening to us. We'll be back next time. Be sure to subscribe for Professor Kurey Bret Schneider. I'm John Thiegele Sang Sang Peace. We'll see you next week.
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