Apocalyptic Present

end of last week. So, in a stunning move, in the midst of a global health pandemic that we are reeling in the United States with having the most COVID positive cases of anywhere in the world, even though we have the most vaccines, the Supreme Court has decided to strike down Biden's e fiction moratorium extension. So let me read this to you from USA today. The Supreme Court rule that Joe Biden's extension of a coronavirus pandemic eviction

moratorium was unconstitutional last Thursday. The Court had already ruled the moratorium, issued via the CDC in July twenty twenty, was unconstitutional without an Act of Congress that would pass it into law. Biden's administration issued the extension while acknowledging that its legal standing to do so was questionable at best. The High Court's three liberal justice assented the conservative majority

opinion read this. It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC had taken, but that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decade old statute that authorizes its implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credutility to believe that the statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts. Folks.

There is sometimes when we have to recognize that laws that are on the books are meant to be broken, that sometimes they are just cruel and unusual. When I see things like this Supreme Court decision that is going to affect tens of thousands of American families that they will be out on the street. That we are already at a place where we have crippled our hospital system. We are overwrought with people who have lost their jobs because of COVID nineteen. We are now seeing hospitalizations uptick

for children again. So think about what is going to happen when tens of thousands of people now lose their homes. Right, So, when I think about this Supreme Court decision, in them saying that the CDC does not have legal standing, they could have just extended the moratorium. Given the severe situation that America and American families are in right now. Right, And when we think about what is legal versus what is right, I remind you slavery was legal, the Holocaust

was legal, Apartheid was legal, colonization legal. All of these things that have destroyed communities, our humanity, our morals, countries all were legal. Right. And so when you talk to me right now about whether or not the CDC actually has the standing to issue right a moratorium on evictions, well, they're not doing it from a place of legality. They're doing it from a place of morals. Right. Who the fuck would think that it is a great idea to

throw people out of their homes. There's a reason why we had a moratorium on evictions, on mortgages, on remp on all of these things, right, because people need help. And what I recognize about Republicans is that they don't give a fuck about who needs help. They don't want to help the American people. They are the cruelest group of people that I have seen. And you know what, speaking of cruel I have to tell you this story, which I find so reprehensible. It's you know, where we are.

It is we're in like our apocalyptic present, right, We're in our Orwellian present, right, We're in this space where cruelty has just become the norm. What I believe is that we are having, as Congresswoman Ayana Presley had said, when we were talking about whether or not people should, you know, leave Congress on vacation and leave their constituents out in the cold. As they continue to do so,

we have a crisis of empathy in this country. Think about that for a minute, that if people had even a drop of empathy, wearing a mask wouldn't be such a big fucking deal, right, putting a piece of cloth over your face, over your nose and your mouth, because I don't understand why people still don't get that, that would just be an act of solidarity. It would be seen as your most patriotic duty. Right now, we are at a place where this whole live free or die,

this whole pull yourself up from your bootstraps. I am an island onto my self. Mentality is destroying us. And so here's this story, folks that if this doesn't make your stomach turn. I don't know what will which is this. A Wisconsin school district has decided that they are going to eliminate their free meal program, which is federally funded. Right, and this is what these people in Wakeisha School District

board have said. Karen Rajanik found herself saying that she was aminating the free lunch program because families would become too spoiled. I don't know about you, but I don't think that poor people who cannot afford to feed their children that without these programs, their children would go fucking hungry. I don't think that giving them federally funded free lunch

is going to make them spoiled. I think it's going to keep our children from being sick and hungry and the ability for them to actually learn, because you see, kids can't learn on a fucking empty stomach. They can't learn right in this type of intoxic environment where we are making poor people the problem as opposed to the systems that they fucking live in. And so now in this Wisconsin school district, nine hundred parents and teachers have banded together to oppose the move, calling it in sense

and out of touch. Well, it's not just insensitive and out of touch. It is downright fucking cruel to be able to look at children that cannot afford school lunch right and tell them, well, fuck it, fuck you, and fuck your family. That's essentially what this school board has just said. You know, there's another report that came out, and this is again going back to the cruelty that

the Republican Party is just all about these days. They don't even have any qualms about stating it because of death scantists de Satan's decision to not have mandatory masks in schools. There is another report that has come out that is beyond heartbreaking, folks, And what is it? A fifth grade teacher right who our friend Glenn Kirshner will

tell us about in a little bit. A fifth grade teacher in Florida school district who was already immuno a compromise because of her battle with leukemia, decided to go back into the classroom, even though her doctor had told her she was going to be unable to get the vaccine because of how immuno a compromise. She was double masked and doing all of the right things, but without

her students being masked, she was still putting herself at risk. Well, guess what, that well meaning teacher who wanted to show up for her students a job that she loved has now caught COVID and has died. That is yet another one of De Satan's constituents that he has killed. This man, this party has blood on their hands, and instead of us being honest about who the fuck they are and what it is that they're doing, we continue to treat them as if they are a normal political party instead

of a death cult. Because I don't know what else you would haul them. Right, You have this Wisconsin school board saying fuck you kids, right, you don't need free lunch. You have governors across this country saying fuck you kids, you don't need mass right. So where is the family values again? Coming up next, friends, is my conversation with our good, good friend Glenn Kershner to walk us through the latest legal nonsense and criminal web that Donald Trump

and his sycophants are continuing to weave without accountability and responsibility. Folks, I'm always so excited when we have our friend MSNBC legal analysts and the host of Justice Matters Glenn Kirshner join us unwoke have to run through all of the legal leads that is happening across this country, particularly around our wayward twice impeached ex president who continues on his spree of the Big Lie and continues to attend hate

rallies where he undermines our democracy. And eight months in Glenn, still nothing, no indictments, no nothing. So I want to start off on justice matters. You had Representative Eric Swalwell on your show to discuss the idea of a Presidential Crimes Commission, which would essentially allow for there to be independent investigations into the criminal acts of presidents. Can you give us like a big picture view as to what

this would entail and why it's needed. So, Danielle, I have been calling for a very long time for a Trump Primes Commission the TCC. I am a little bit less politic than Congressman Swalwell, who I admire. He's a former prosecutor. He calls it the Presidential Crimes Commission, but

I think we know which president he's talking about. And Elizabeth Warren was somebody who very early on called for a kind of presidential crimes commission to to investigate not only Donald Trump but his cabinet members who may have been involved in criminal activity, any of his criminal associates in and out of government, including members of Congress. And so you know, Eric Swalwell has gone on record as saying,

we need a presidential crimes commission. What would that look like. Well, just as at the Department of Justice, we have a Civil Rights Division, we could stand up the Department of Justice could stand up a presidential crimes commission. They could draw from the most experienced prosecutors not only at Main Justice in DC proper, but the ninety four United States

Attorneys offices around the nation. There are some remarkably experienced, dedicated, career process secutors among the hundred and ten thousand Department of Justice employees. The Attorney General could pull together a group of investigators from the FBI and other federal agencies and then assign a series of the most senior, most highly regarded, most experienced prosecutors, and the mandate, the jurisdictional mandate of that task force would be investigate all potential

crimes by Trump and company. And I think, you know, there are so many crimes that we've seen committed in the harsh light of day by Trump, his family, members his associates, and people will say, yeah, it just seems like too much to get our arms around. And I've always argued, you know, it's too much not to get

our arms around. And that's why I think if we have some sort of a dedicated, targeted unit, like a Presidential Crimes Commission, not run out of Congress like the Select Committee, run out of the Department of Justice, so they had full subpoena power, full indictment power, and full prosecutorial power. I think that is what's called for in the aftermath of the unique atrocities that we just experienced

for four years at the hands of Donald Trump. How would this be different then, let's say the application of a independent like an inspector's general. How would that? How would how would this Presidential Crimes Commission look different than let's say the fact finding and gathering that happened in the Muller report that was with a you know, an inspector's general. What would be the difference here? Great question.

So the inspector General for the Department of Justice one doesn't have subpoena power and two doesn't have prosecutorial authority. All they can do is investigate and issue reports with findings and recommendations about how to fix any problems that

are found. The Mueller investigation had a very narrow investigative mandate all the all the letter of May seventeenth, I think it was granted to Bob Muller and his team was to investigate any contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign and prosecute any cases that are necessary to develop that investigative mandate. The Mueller team did not have a broad and sweeping mandate prosecute all crimes you find, and

I think we lose sight of that. And what Bob Muller did was he followed the rules that he had to abide by, and that left us all frustrated because it's like, wait, WHOA, there's a whole lot more crime out there that seems to have unprosecuted, unaddressed, uninvestigated. And if Bob Muller could respond, he would say, please look at the May seventeen letter giving me my jurisdictional marching orders.

And he followed them to a t, though it ended up ultimately doing a disservice to the American people in my opinion, not that he followed it, but the narrow mandate he was given in the first place. So this would be a wide open, no holds barred task force. Maybe we shouldn't call it a commission because that conjures

up notions of congressional commissions. This would be a prosecutorial task force and their mandate would be investigate all potential presidential crimes and any Trump associates, enablers, co conspirators who

may have been involved in Trump's criminal shenanigans. So well, because this would be outside of congressional purview, right, so, how would this be formed and who would be the person or people that are able to appoint the members of this commission so that it wouldn't turn into what we have seen right now with the Congressional one six Commission,

which is just a partisan nightmare. So I think this would be entirely within the purview of the leadership of the Department of Justice to put this task force together, to draw from the many federal law enforcement agencies that would be available to contribute investigators, agents, resources to this task.

But here's the thing right now, there is you know, there's a Civil Rights Division, there's a National Security Division, there's a frauden public corruption that depend the public Integrity Section. There are all of these different units at the Department of Justice, and they have different jurisdictional mandates broken down by crime by person. Donald Trump has committed crimes across the spectrum of all of those different divisions, civil rights crimes,

white collar crimes, national security crimes. And so if we put a task force together that is not bound by its own sort of little jurisdictional slice of the prosecutorial pie because it's either civil rights, or its white collar, or its national security or it's something else, that's what we need, a holistic approach to investigating Donald Trump's crimes, you know, and I see when I hear this, I think,

oh my god, this is absolutely what we need. But then in my other side, in my heart, I'm thinking, well, what happens when there is another Bill Barr or Jeff Sessions that is the head of the Department of Justice and we're looking at a President Obama situation where we're going after you just simply because we are looking. We are nail. Uh, We're a hammer looking for a nail. So how does that how do you how would you

possibly stop something like that? I think we've just learned that you can't stop something like Bill Barr and Donald Trump, which was our nation's most dangerous tandem combination of president and corrupt attorney general. You can't stop it if coequal branches of government are willing to endure or endorse it the way the Republicans did in Congress. The Republicans basically

neutered themselves. They made themselves a second class branch of government by allowing the executive branch to, you know, be a runaway, lawless executive branch. Congress is like, okay, that's okay for us, because if we if we serve as a check against that, then we Republicans might lose Donald Trump's base in the next election, and then we will lose power, we will lose money, we will lose prestige. And that's what's more important to so many members of

the Republican Party than actually governing. Honestly, we see it with Dasantis right now. I don't want to go off on the Dasantis rant, but he is willing to kill Florida citizens by prohibiting school masked mandates. We just had a horrific report of a fifth grade school teacher who had a compromised immune system. She was battling leukemia, could not, on doctor's orders, received the vaccine, but went back to her classroom because she loved and was dedicated to her

fifth grade students. She was double masked. She was sanitizing every day, but Dasantis had prohibited masked mandates so the students didn't have to be masked. She contracted of it and die. This was reported out in recent days. That's Ron the Santis sacrificing the men, women and children of Florida so as not to alienate Donald Trump's base. I don't know when we reached the conclusion, Danielle, that it's okay for politicians to kill the citizenry and have that

go unaddressed. I don't know why we have settled on this point, rather than holding criminal politicians accountable when they commit what I suggest is a negligent homicide or an involuntary manslaughter of the citizens they were elected to govern. That is it for me today. Folks on the Woke a f daily podcast. To hear more conversations like the one I have with our friend Glenn Kirshner, check me

out on patreon dot com. Slash Woke a f power to the people and to all the people power, get woke, and stay woke as fuck.