August 21, 2025 • 49 mins
NOTUS’ Evan McMorris-Santoro examines why Republicans are acting so irrationally. The Shadow Docket author Stephen Vladeck details the legality of Trump’s D.C. takeover.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and CNN data guru Harry Enton says,
the Big Beautiful Bill is the most unpopular piece of
legislation in decades. We have such a great show for
(00:21):
you today. Notice his own Evan McMorris. Santoro stops by
to talk to us about why Republicans are acting so irrationally.
Then we will talk to the Shadow Dockets author Steve
Vladdock just about how many laws the Trump administration is
breaking in DC and elsewhere. But first we have the
(00:45):
very important stories the media is missing.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
All right, Molly, there's an interesting thing we've learned the border.
Everybody's always when will maga start to break? Even just
a few of them with mister Trump. And the next
two stories going to go over seemed to be it,
which is they're very mad that the Epstein grand jury
transcripts won't be unsealed because a federal court has ruled
that way.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
By the way, anyone who knows about federal grand juries
knows that the chances of having a grand jury testimony,
it's a much higher bar to releasing it than other stuff.
The other thing that's so stupid about this is like
the Trump administration has tens of thousands of pages of documents.
(01:30):
Release the fucking documents. You don't need the grand jury.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
It took a thousand employees to read those, right.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
This is like the fakest of the fake, fakey fakeisms.
Like none of this is real. I mean, it's just
crazy crazy, It truly is. I mean I have nothing
to say here, you know, I mean I have stuff
to say, which is this is so fucking stupid.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, I mean, you know, hashtag released the files. I
really liked the thing. Evan refers to later that Al Jones,
we've all finally reached a thing that we agree with him,
like release the Epstein files. Everybody's in unison, from Alex
Jones onto lefty freaks like us.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yes, lefty freaks. That's right, baby, No release Epstein files.
Like the grand jury thing is bullshit. We know it's bullshit.
It's not about a grand jury. Just release all of
the tens of thousands of pages of files you have.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So the other thing MAGA is very mad at, along
with seemingly everybody, is that in Las Vegas there were
a handful of quote unquote child sex predators, and one
was released because they work in Israeli intelligence and they
were released by the age who has ties to the
Israeli government, and the State Department is doing everything and
(02:48):
ken to hush up. And shockingly, mega influencers are quite
quite mad about this because their brand is to protect
the children.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, so in Israeli official charge to child sex trafficking,
Ram flees the US. He gets let out. He's a
senior Israeli cybersecurity official. He was arrested during an undercover
operation in Nevada targeting child sex predators. He posted a
ten thousand dollars bail and then he just fled Israel.
(03:15):
Why was his past sport not confiscated? Why was he released?
Why is any of this going on? Attorney General Pambondy,
you may know her from her complete inability to do
any of the stuff that she said she was going
to do. She is outraged, quote unquote, But you know
(03:36):
who's even more outraged. Marjorie Taylergreen and Thomas Massey, two
Republicans who have criticized Israel, perhaps because they don't get
any money from APEC. Doj should file federal charges and
demand immediate extradition, said Jack Pisobic. I don't think Jack
understands the close relationship between net Yahoo and Donald Trump.
(03:59):
You know who is happy to criticize Jews.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Candice Ollen really hurt really wait wait wait, by you're
telling me she's taking time from transvestigating.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, you'd be shocked because Candace Owens is known to
be such a good faith actor. But Candice owns, yes,
criticizing not very shocking.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But on a more serious note, I do think it's
a very interesting intersection of that. Trump's kind of like
modus operande in this administration has been that if you're
on my side, you get away with whatever.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
And turns out, yeah, it turns out.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Mega has drawn a strong border of saying like, we
really don't like this part of it. You know, we
our whole thing is we're protecting these children. It's the
only thing that makes us feel like we're decent people
when we do bad things and hate everyone.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The whole thing is like,
there are words, but the words are hypocrites moron's you know,
there are a lot of words here.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, let's move on to the other wig of this thing.
A thing that I my neuroses keep accelerating on is
how much Trump and Magas seem to be enriching themselves.
Trump bought more than one hundred million bonds since January,
filing showing.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I'm shocked, shocked. I tell you to hear this gambling
going on in this casino. Donald Trump purchased at least
one hundred and three million dollars worth of corporate and
muniees since taking office in January. So the documents released
Tuesday night show that Trump began the bond buying spree
one day, okay, one day after being sworn in January
twenty first, he purchased a bond belonging to the Triborough
(05:35):
Bridge and Tunnel Association. He's just buying bonds. Now, Why
is he buying bonds? I don't know. I do know
that there's a lot of stuff going on in the
markets right now, including there's some anxiety in the bond
markets because of that, all of the sort of stagflationary
things that Trump is doing. So I don't know. The
(05:58):
point is eighty percent of Americans want their electeds not
to make money off of them like they don't want
elected's trading stocks. So my sense is that perhaps this
is yet another unpopular thing Donald Trump is doing.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Sounds about right, speaking of very unpopular things, pro Publica
has a new astounding report that RFK Junior vowed to
find the environmental causes of autism and then he shut
down the research trying to do just that, probably because
the research was probably not going to end up doing
that because he just can't read research properly.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
No, I think he did this because the research is
going to show that pollution has effects on people, right,
I mean, I don't know that it causes autism.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I was more even going to say the other thing,
which is just that the whole origin story of RFK
is that he read studies wrong, and so like, why
have science when you can't read.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, but he also was once an environmentalist and now
does not give a fuck about that because he's a Republican.
I think it's really important to remember that. Like I
remember so many people being like, well, it'll be good
if he gets sort of pesticides, it'll be good if
he does this. He does that, He's never going to
do that stuff, right. The only thing he's going to
do is the stuff that he has a financial incentive,
(07:10):
and like, you know, he's going to do things like
hurt scientific research, prevent vaccines.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
This is like being like, oh, I'm going to go
to an amusement park filled with razor blades on every ride,
but maybe one of them will be fun.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right, It's like, you know, medical research, encouraging snake oily
things like doing the stuff that is just what we
expect from him. But it is incredibly annoying and also
just incredibly soul crushing to watch this guy do this.
(07:44):
Evan McMorris Santro is a reporter at Notice. Evan, Welcome
to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Texas House Republicans, the House of the State House of
Texas has come back. They have a plan to steal
five seats and Representative Callier, there's one representative who is
not not having it.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
This is such an interesting moment that has happened with
this Texas redinteresting thing because you do have you've had
this kind of broad based fight that has started in Texas,
and we've learned a lot about how Texas legislature works, right,
Like you can't leave the state or they can't have
the you know, the legislature. They want to do this
thing where they want to now because they're freak out
(08:30):
about these Democrats leaving them again. They want to give
them like this twenty four to seven police, for instance's
mind around them. Yeah, and one of the members is
you know, says no, I don't want to do that
and held out and is trying to block that from happening.
But the upshot to this is that this Texas thing
is going to happen, right, They're going to get these seats,
It's going to get redrawn, and that is really kicked off.
(08:53):
The most unexpected part of this twenty twenty six cycle.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Is that it is can we just I'm going to
interrupt you because we're and also we can say it's
going to get redrawn. But you know, from what I
understand from the people I've talked to, if they were
to stay out of the state until November, they could
prevent it from being redrawn.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Well that's right. Well, this is what I just kind
of get into the I can think. Right, this is
the most fascinating thing about this is that these Democrats
and I don't know really exactly what has happened with this.
I mean, in my experience when you have sixty seventy
people in one place, they don't always agree on everything.
So they kind of had to come back because enough
(09:35):
of either enough of them wanted to come back that
they had to come back. But their their line on
this is that they came back because they have activated
this national political push now to redistricting other places and
try to push back on this. But yes, the truth
is this has now become basically a rhetorical argument in Texas.
It's not only this morning I got a press release
(09:56):
from Texas Democrats telling me, you know, we're doing this thing.
We're bad, So they can have their vote, but we're
going to put an amendment on the bill from the
Texas lawmakers that forces them to vote that they would
say that they don't want to release the Epstein files,
effectively trying to do this Epstein files tie in that,
like we would only redistrict if the Epstein files were
(10:19):
released first. Whatever. It's just kind of a whole rhetorical
argument when obviously they had all the power and they
were gone, and when they come back, the power Texas
Democrats becomes, which is very very little power. They don't
have much, so now they're asking for every other Democrat
in blue states to sort of step up and help
them out. And it's a very complicated process. I mean,
(10:41):
we don't really know how this is going to shake out.
We do know Texas is going to get these five
seats unless the Democrats find some way to leave again
and stay out, Texas is going to get.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Them, which stuff should and could. And I don't understand
like this is partisan redistricting because Donald Trump is wor
about losing the House because he sees the polling and
he sees the people screaming at the town halls, and
he knows that taking stuff away from people to give
a tax cut to very rich people is not the
(11:13):
winning is not the winning move that you think it is,
you know is. And there is a guy who ran
on bacon, right, he was going to make things cheaper,
and now we have these tariffs which are wildly inflationary
and expensive, and he somehow thinks that bullying the chair
of the Fed or causing the FED to no longer
(11:34):
be independent is the way to get inflation to go down.
But you know, we know if you cut rates when
inflation is still a problem, then what is going to
happen more inflation, and it's like where we are right now,
there is no way this is not stagflation. Right there
is no way. The last quarter was negative growth. This quarter,
maybe it's not negative growth, but it sure feels like
(11:57):
negative growth unless the AI numbers pump it out up
to the point where it's not. I mean, we won't
know until the quarter's over. But and Trump is just like,
I can bully my way out of this, but everything
he wants to do is going to hurt the economy more.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's a very cynical type of politics going on right now,
because it's not even just the idea that you're going
to sort of bully your way out, but you know,
maybe you just change the numbers and change the way
things work. I'll tell you this. I talked to somebody
who worked in the Biden administration on economic policy just
the other day, when like the jobs, when the when
the the inflation numbers have come out, the CPI number,
(12:31):
seventy summers have come.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Out before the rummit, before Trump decided that he needed
a summit, Yes.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Before the summit, but well summit, And I was talking
about this idea of looking how they look at these
numbers and how they're at this moment and they're saying, like, look,
trumppanomics is here, like Trump's argument, and We've talked I've
talked to White House about this a bunch of times,
and they will tell you every single time prices are
just not going to go up, that that's the answer.
I'm like, what are you going to do when process
go up? What's your messaging for when prices go up?
(12:58):
What are you going to say about our prices go up?
There is a message that they could use, which is,
you know, they have this sort of general vision that
there's a short term pain but long term gain, et cetera.
They don't even sat.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Dolls instead of twenty dollars, that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Their thing is they say, now, they're just not going
to go up right now. By you people who spend
a lot of time during that inflationary period saying hey,
but look at this number, Hey but look at this number.
But look at this thing we did. They recall that
not working out very well for them. And they're watching
the Trump administration now and they're sort of seeing what
(13:33):
they see as a sort of willful a willful disregard
for what these numbers actually show and The reality is,
eventually this all comes out in the wash. Someone has
to be right here, right. The Trump administration says these
prices are not going to go up. Every economist says
they are going to go up. Yeah, when the prices
go up.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
There has to be somebody there. You know, there're going
be a political conversation to have about that. And there
just really has been no teeing up a bit or setting.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Up for it. There has only been this idea that
the numbers I don't like, those numbers are wrong, will
fire those people. Will just change the way the numbers work.
We'll just change the numbers all around. You talk about
this thing with the Texas redistrict thing, it is all
part and partial of that. Like this is a mid
term that's going to be a challenge for the Republican Party.
Then the idea is what if we just change the electorate,
(14:20):
And that is this is not an administration that has
been actively focused on defending the things that they're doing
their ideas. We can just change the sort of facts
around those things, and then what we're doing is great.
It's a very different way of doing politics than I've
ever seen before.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
And when it comes to things and it can work
in a place like Texas where you can redraw those lines,
you can get those five seats. But when it comes
to the prices consumers pay for things going up, you know,
the Bide administration did a lot for consumers, pushed a
lot about it. They the actual higher prices. I think
Trump's gonna have the same problem. The prices go up.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You have to you can't pretend like they're meal vegetables.
And we talked about this actually on the podcast yesterday.
There is nearly forty percent spike in the price of
wholesale vegetables. I mean, seems like a lot. I know
that Americans don't like vegetables, but they still you know,
(15:22):
like that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about this headline I
read today that McDonald's is forcing its franchisees to lower
the price of a value meals. And I'm wondering, like,
which is more important, value meals going down the vegetables
going up. But yeah, no, it mean, it's true. It's
it's true. It's it's not just that it's energy, it's
alters of other things. It's it's these consumer goods. I mean, look,
as you mentioned earlier they try the message with this
(15:46):
when Trump was out there with this whole live simply thing,
you don't need to buy as much stuff as you
used to buy.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You don't need buy with the golden toilet, the guy
with the golden toilet is telling you that it's time
to stop spending money.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It was one of those few moments, and there's been
a couple in this administration, but one in the few
moments when his own team, his own base was like,
what are you saying? What are you talking about? I
mean I talked to a guy in New Hampshire, like
economist up there, who like used to work in politics,
and he was like, this is the kind of stuff
that like Soviet Russia would say. Like that was one
(16:21):
of those things that it's not a message. You didn't
see Trump rollout to have a have less Christmas. That
was like an actual long term policy plan. They have
shifted away to this precus You're just not going to
go up. It's just not true. It's just not happening.
It's just not going to happen because like that didn't
really work. So the fact is this exact problem that
is this really important problem in American politics. So is
(16:42):
on one hand, some of these things do take a
long time to change. It does take a long time
to make big progress. That is the whole Biden argument, right, like,
we've seeded the ground for all of this, you know,
manufacturing construction and returning on shoring all this stuff and
rebuilding America's power in this stuff and building energy projects.
But they're gonna take a long time. And people said,
(17:03):
I don't care it costs me more money to buy
stuff right now, and we just said, really, have not
seen This administration just has not embraced even the possibility
of that happening, and they are trying basically anything they
can to change it. We're gonna fire the FED. We'll
just change the way that works. We'll change the way
the FED works, which you know they can't really do,
(17:23):
but we're gonna try to do that, right, and we're
gonna like them. We're just gonna fire the head of
the BLS.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
We don't like the numbers.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Maybe we won't just we just won't release numbers. Maybe
maybe it's Katie numbers again. The idea here, and this
comes out of Trump's mouth himself, and the last time
he ran for president was that, like Mom, and pop,
you know, Joe and chain consumer they know the prices
go up and they don't like it. So it all
(17:50):
manners thinks can be set up here. All man are
are sort of you know, mumba jumbo can be done.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
But when people go to the.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Grocery store, they remember and the problem is, what are
you going to do this? The Masri says, the based
down whether I do it when that happens, which every
economist says is going to happen very soon if it
isn't already happening now.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So that is the question, and it's sort of this
interesting philosophical question. And you know, I love stuff like
that because I am very in my own way nihilistic.
So I love this philosophical question of like you have
Donald Trump, who occupies Earth two right, he believed, you know,
(18:31):
his people believe things like QAnon. They believe what he
tells it with them. He has a sort of religious
hold on his people, and they suspend their disbelief to
trust him the way they trust megachurch pastors, you know
that kind of thing. So here's a question. And they
really even with COVID right like they said things like
(18:55):
I mean, a great example is the ivermactin it didn't mark,
but people were able to, for whatever reason, still not
believe that it didn't work. Even though it didn't work.
They would say, you know, maybe you were better or
even I mean, there was this great reporting about this
child who died of measles in Texas. I mean great reporting,
(19:16):
like very accurate reporting, not great because obviously horrible, but
very sad in it. The parents would not say that
not being vaccinated was why the kid died of measles.
They believe that the kid was not treated correctly when
they got measles and that that So it's like this
kind of bug in the machine, right, like you almost
(19:39):
get it, but you don't totally get it. And here
we have something like you elected Donald Trump because he
said he was going to make things cheaper. Things are
now more expensive. It's like COVID, right, Donald Trump said
COVID's going to go away. He killed a million people.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
This is the difference that Trump has. Trump does not
have a lot lot of base problems, right. Democrats have
a lot of base problems. They have them all the time,
they're having them now, they're going to have them in
a month. It's like this is their main problem is
that like what are Democrats, what are they like?
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Who are they?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
What are they about? Republicans like Trump, They're for Trump.
Trump's the guy. They're into Trump. He doesn't have that problem, right,
But he does have the problem that other politicians have,
which is the one of like he brought new people
into the fold who maybe weren't like hardcore Trumpers, but
they're like, all right, well, this guy's gonna do this
about price, He's going to take care of this stuff.
He's gonna end these wars. You're gonna do this stuff.
(20:35):
You know, this this working class electorate that like they
they touted and how excited they were to win those
people over they brought them in. You know, his independent
numbers are not good at all, Like they've gone down
a great deal. They're not good. So even though he
he has something that I think Democrats are often very
envious of for good reason, which is that like the
(20:56):
base is going to go along when he goes to
Congress and says I want something, Congress says okay, right,
despite the fact they're maybe ever kind of Republicans inside
that Congress. Right, that's the truth. But when it comes
to the election, that has to happen. The general conversation
has to happen. This is going to be one as
these things often are on these people who switch around
and who look around, and who expect a lot of
(21:19):
things from their politicians that politicians will often say, well,
those tras.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Are a little bit unrealistic. I can't really do all
of that, but voters want them to, and Trump if
he can't. If Republican Party is walking into a situation
where they have raised prices on people, They have made
it more difficult than into access healthcare because of the
stuff that they have cut in their reconciliation bill. They
have raised prices on a lot of things. And maybe
(21:46):
there's more involvement in you know, in wars, maybe there's
you know, maybe American forces are now helping to protect Ukraine.
Other things that were really motivating in that conversation. Then
politics just become real again. Like when you get like
the Trump administration and Trump, I think really likes to
talk about this, say about his base. He gets really
nervous on the base as mad We saw how much
(22:07):
effort they put into trying to shut up people about
this Epstein issue, never from his own base, but the
Chanlelners that he has is that there are people who are.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Not hardcore Trumpers who voted for Trump, and will they
vote for Republicans again after they have seen stuff that
they don't like from Trump And we don't we don't know,
but we also have not seen extremely three D chess
brilliant messaging from this White House that would suggest that
(22:35):
they care a lot about it either. And that's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Well, no, that is, I mean that's the that's always
the Trump thing, right, he doesn't care about other Republicans.
He doesn't want to lose the House because he doesn't
want to get impeached again. Does he want Jade Vance
to be his air apparent? No? Did he care? You
know what I mean? Like he wants himself to be
his air apparent?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, I mean he'd raised it. He's reached a ton
of money for twenty twenty six, like more than anybody
had as I had talked to several Democrats who are like,
this is a pretty serious number. This could be really
real for us. There are definitely factors here, But in
terms of the sort of cover he is giving his people,
you know, he didn't even do like a national tour
after his Bill passed. You know, he just kind of
brings it up when he's at the Kennedy Center talking
(23:17):
about something completely different. You know, now they're back to
talking about crime. That's you know, that's the DC thing.
I just think that when you're talking about this and
this is all sort of part and partial to one thing,
is that like there is this cynical play, which is
that like, if we can just change the playing field enough,
then these laws of gravity may not apply. And that's
(23:37):
not entirely impossible, right, I mean, like if California can't
get this registricted gun, which is a complicated process, you know,
all of a sudden, people who are looking at history
and excited about stuff, like they're looking at a whole
different map than they expected. A founder station jump on
the bandwagon. That changes these things.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
But it you know, it doesn't really change the sort
of actuality of like whether or not he's building some right,
Like he's building something that that is lasting, and it
doesn't seem to me.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Like that's such a huge focus. So like there's true
things happening at once. It's a cynical play that could
backfire because people might just be so annoyed by the
fact that they're that, you know, the rules are being
changed around them. But there's also the effort of like,
these people have questions about what about things that are
being done right now. They have questions about things that
are happening. They have questions about these immigration procedures that
(24:25):
they've seen, They have questions about these tariffs, they have
questions about this reconciliation bill. And we are not hearing
a great deal of answers from the White House to
those questions.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I don't think that the images of the seven plane closed,
guys with the face masks beating up the Uber driver,
the Uber eatst driver, the food delivery guy are going
to help this man win elections. Now he is going
(24:55):
to have unlimited money because the rich people really are
happy with the tax cut. And Elon mush is already
meeting with JD.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Van.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So like, clearly this crew, the third.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Party thing really lasted a long time, didn't it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
They're almost like, my man is just a liar, but
you know, like he's constantly you know, so we met
with Jadvan, So like, these guys are gonna have unlimited money.
But the question is, and I think like there's always
want to be cynical when you're covering this political climate
because everything is so stupid and craven. But I saw
(25:32):
an ice guy running down the street carrying a four
eleven foot girl. I mean, I just don't see how
this ends up being okay, you know what I mean
that people, the voters don't aren't.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Like what well, you know, I'll tell you this is
one of those things. I earlier today I saw a
clip from the podcaster Tim Dillon, the comedian Tin Dylan, right,
he was heat on these guys who was made a
sphere type guy when Trump jd Vance appeared in his show,
like he became one of these Trumper guys. But he
(26:09):
was saying this ice stuff, this DC occupation, this federal
forces down there checking everybody, what they're doing all the time,
taking over This is the comes so that Alex Jones
warned us about, you know, you know, he was definitely
not excited about this, and this is this is one
(26:29):
of those things where you know, in my experience have
been covering this stuff. You know for a while now,
incumbents are always shocked by the thing that catches them.
They're always sort of in their world, doing their thing,
running around, having the time of their lives. And you know,
these guys, these sort of libertarian leaning guys who were
(26:50):
really excited by Trump saying, hey, comedy's gonna be legal again.
You can say the R one. It's about freedom. Man.
They're not the types to say like, oh good, but
I wanted wanted a police state to happen, Like that's
you know, this is sort of like, this is the
kind of thing where it's like, but if you're a
Trump person and the Trump White House peop wills say
this to you repeatedly. When you ask them about this,
(27:11):
they will say, you know, this is exactly what Trump
promised and what he ran on, and of course this
is all true. All these things that are happening. We're
kind of you know, we're previewed in Protect twenty twenty five.
Pre you been on a campaign trail. But that is
not actually why people gravitate towards a person, right, And
so when you have someone like Tim Dillon starting to
say this like this is a police state, I don't
like this. This is the same guy who was like,
(27:32):
I don't know about those Epstein stuff that's happening. I
don't know that Tim Dillon speaks for a massive electorate
or something like that. But it does speak to the
fact that, like this is not a thing that the
white has to just rely on these people to love
everything that they're doing, and if they start to question them,
they start to turn on them. They find themselves in
the position of everybody else that gets turned on. And
I don't know, like I said, you know, it's such
(27:54):
a long time before twenty twenty six, We don't know
what will happen. But I just keep looking at these experiences,
and you know that economic reporting I did last week
where they were just you know, these Biden people were
sure scratching their heads kind of saying, I can't We've
seen this movie.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
They're doing the same. They're trying to do what we did.
They're trying to buy those it didn't work for us.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Looking at this stuff that's going on with the immigration,
uh you know the immigration stuff where you know, you
saw the President himself even say, all right, I hear you.
Farmers don't like this. This is not where they we
you know, the hospitality industry, We're going to do something
immediately pushing back on that. That doesn't alleviate the concerns
that farmers had about this that doesn't change what they said.
(28:36):
It's just the White House saying, Oh, don't worry about it,
they'll come around. Don't worry about it. They're not important.
And at some point these people start to become important
and it starts to become a damage a damaging thing.
And I think that, like, this is sort of a
white House that right now is and you know, it
was built around the idea of a sort of siege mentality.
(28:57):
Everyone's against us all the time, everyone's lying about us,
everything that is not true. Only the most pure heart,
only the most pure of spirit that love us, that
have loved Trump forever, are allowed to cross its threshold.
That is a recipe for, like I said, a very
envious situation for Democrats to watch when they think about
their own administrations that they have. But it's also a
(29:18):
recipe for myopia and a recipe for making mistakes when
it comes to swing voters. This happens all the time,
and so I do think that we're at the end
of a little period of time now where this is
starting to stack up in ways that are going to
be really tough questions for them to actually have to
(29:39):
deal with if they find voters really want to know
more about it. You know what I mean. That's that's
how I think about it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Evan, thank you. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I mean tell them, of course I love doing this show.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
I love you. Mauley.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Oh, I know.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I don't care what your audience says. We are friends.
I like that people know that we're friends. They can
be bored as they want.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Stephen Vladdock is a CNN contributor, a professor at Georgetown
Law School, and the author of The Shadow Docket. Welcome
to Fast Politics, Stephen Vladock.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Thanks really great to be back with you.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
The thing that I wanted to talk to you about
because you're a lawyer, but you're really a scholar, and
you really focus on the constitutionality of things I think
that's fair right, and how the Supreme Court does and
doesn't weigh in on things like The Shadow Docket, which
is your most recent book. I wonder if you could
explain to us what the federal takeover of the District
(30:36):
of Columbia, where this sort of legality ends and where
it begins.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
So I think it might be helpful to actually break
out four different things that the federal government is.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Doing at once.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
The first and probably at least on its face, the
least controversial is Surgeon federal law enforcement presence in DC.
You know, we'll talk about about the checkpoints, but at
least in the abstract, there's lots of authority and lots
of history and lots of precedent for the federal government
to use various of its own law enforcement agencies in DC.
(31:10):
The second piece of it is Trump's attempt to take
over the DC Metropolitan Police Department, which started with the
invocation for the very first time of a statute Congress
passed in nineteen seventy three is part of the Home
Rule Act that let the president use the MPD during
emergencies for up to thirty days, but you know, doesn't
(31:30):
allow him to take it over. And so we you know,
Attorney General Bondi tried to take it over, a judge
pushed back. She then sort of changed her mind. So
there's some federal oversight slash involvement with the MPD, but
there's there has not been a full takeover mally. The
other two things are the military. So the DC National
Guard is unique among the fifty four National Guard units
(31:53):
that exist in that it is always subject to the
command and control of the president as opposed to a
governor even in the other federal territories. President Trump called
out the tiny DC National Guard, although it's not clear
that they're doing much of anything besides standing around on
the mall. And then the fourth piece of it is
President Trump has solicited a bunch of red state governors
to send their own national guards without being federalized at
(32:16):
the governor's request, basically into DC. And so what is
effectively happening is this bizarre confluence of Trump trying to
look like he is federalizing DC by relying on four
different sets of authorities, none of which actually let him
do it, but all of which are at least being
invoked somewhat plausibly, if not ultimately persuasively. So that's the
(32:41):
weird place we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
So much of this seems not legal today, things like checkpoints.
Could you talk us through checkpoints?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (32:49):
So what is hard in talking about this is that
there's no one bright line.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Is this or is this legal? Ors this not legal?
Speaker 6 (32:56):
Answer again, because Trump is really doing four very different things.
I think the first time I should be said before
we get to checkpoints, is it is all like bullshit
in the sense that it is all based on a
completely nonsense pretext, which is that there has been some
surge of violent crime in the disch of Columbia. That's
just not true based on the government's own data, which
(33:19):
Trump is now suggesting as somehow flawed. Molly, it's not
what you know most of the Washingtonian and certainly I know,
are experiencing. So problem number one is that it feels illegal,
at least in part because no one buys the narrative,
no one buys the pretext. But for better or for worse,
the Supreme Court has let the President get away with
(33:39):
pretextual things like the travel ban. And so you know,
the fact that he's invoking an authority, for example, with
regard to the Met Pelton Police Department that it is
only supposed to be available during an emergency doesn't change
the fact that, like the statute doesn't say, what doesn't
doesn't constitute an emergency. And so I think at least
three of these moves that the National Guard moves I
(34:00):
think are challengeable on their face. I think what he's
doing to the MPD is challengeable on its face, But
the real illegality to me, Molly, as you suggest is
coming in what they're actually doing on the ground. There
hasn't been a ton of media coverage of just how
many checkpoints have been set up in DC.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
You know, there were videos.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
About the one on Fourteenth Street last week, but you
know there are now a couple of different checkpoints every
day in various parts of DC. And that's where I
start getting nervous, because the Supreme Court, for better or
for worse, has been pretty clear that, you know, there's
no power on the government's part to just do checkpoints
for fundsies. When the Supreme Court has upheld checkpoints, it
(34:41):
has always been because the checkpoint was in furtherance of
some special need. So you know, a sobriety checkpoint on
New Year's Eve, or a checkpoint near the scene of
an accident where the government's looking for witnesses, or you know,
close to the border, an immigration checkpoint, right like, those
have been upheld. But the notion that like, because the
(35:03):
President claims without any factual basis that there's more violent
crime in the city at large, you know, the sixty
plus square mile city, we can put checkpoints in neighborhoods
where there's no evidence of increased crime, Molly, at least
based on the presidents we have, that should be unconstitutional.
The challenges may yet to be coming. But that's where
(35:24):
I get nervous, is sort of legally what's happening on
the ground, and then politically, the sort of the desensitization
to just how extraordinary the president's invocation of all these
authorities has been.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
So I want you to make me feel better about
the Supreme Court. I'm sorry to tell you, but this
is all just about my therapy. It strikes me that
this Supreme Court is loath to run any kind of
just like this Congress loaths to run any kind of
checks on Donald Trump.
Speaker 6 (35:57):
I think that's not necessarily wrong, Molly, but if I
can try to make it feel a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I want to be wrong. I'm telling you.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
The problem is, Molly. I think two things are true.
Speaker 6 (36:06):
I think that this Supreme Court, and especially the three
justices who really matter, the three justices whose votes are
going to drive the results in Trump related cases, by
whom I mean, you know, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Breckavanaugh,
is Amy Cony Barrett. I don't think they want confrontations
with President Trump. And I think that a lot of
(36:27):
their behavior to this point over the last seven months,
in granting so many of these so called emergency applications,
reflects that. But I also think that the Court is,
you know, zealous of nothing more molly than guarding its
own power. And the one time in all of these
cases so far where it looked like Trump was actually
(36:49):
about to defy not a lower federal court but the
Supreme Court itself, the Justices stepped in it like one
in the morning on a Saturday. And so I wish
they had stepped in a little more. I think some
of their rulings in the Trump cases are really problematic,
as I've as you know, as I've written about it,
perhaps nauseating length in my newsletter.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (37:08):
I still have a little bit of faith, not that
the justices are altruists, but that their interest in preserving
the court's own authority and you know, the separation of
powers more generally, is going to mean that if we
really get to that, you know, break the glass type
of moment, they're going to be inclined to try to,
you know, rain the president in. I think the trickier part,
(37:30):
MOLLI is trying to sort of help folks see that
we haven't gotten there yet, right. I think there are
so many folks who when I post on social media, oh,
you know this is illegal. The contention doesn't let Trump
do this? People are like, well, how's that work so far?
And actually it's worked more than I think a lot
of people will concede. I mean, the Supreme Court has
(37:51):
right ruled for Trump. I think it's now sixteen times,
and that's a lot, but Trump has actually lost. By
my count mally, we're now north of one hundred and
twenty district court rulings that have blocked something President Trump
wanted to do, and sixteen it sounds like a lot
in the abstract, it's a lot for the Supreme Court.
It's actually a pretty small percentage of one hundred and twenty.
It's just my way of saying, I think that the
(38:13):
law is constraining Trump. I think that the law will
continue to constrain Trump. The tricky part is not being
dumers about the politics, because I think part of what's
happening in d C is an effort by this administration
to make it seem like normal that you know, surgeon
federal law enforcement and deploying troops all over the streets
(38:36):
of American cities is something we do in this country
and it's not. And I think that's you know, that's
what scares me about DC. I'm not scared there's going
to be some like armed confrontation in DC. I'm scared that, like,
you know, if he tries to pull this nonsense with
some other city where there won't be nearly the same
kind of legal authorities, people will be like, well, he
(38:56):
did it in d C. And throw their hands.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Up, right right, right, No, No, I agree. I'm glad
to hear you say that, by the way, about the law,
because it feels like there's so much stuff that the
Trump administration's doing that seems pretty dicey at best. I mean,
the motivation of protecting their own power. It's not exactly altruism,
(39:18):
but at least it's some kind of check.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Well, let's go back to DC for a second.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
If Trump really were unbound by the law, if law
were irrelevant, if the law had nothing to do with
what he was doing, then that doesn't explain what's happened
in DC. Right then he wouldn't have started with DC.
He would have started with Chicago, right or New York.
He wouldn't have started with, like the place over which
the federal government has more of a claim to power
than anywhere else in the country under both the Constitution
(39:46):
and a series of statutes. He wouldn't have started with the
one place where he has direct control over the National Guard,
and he would be using all of these authorities to
do more than he's doing. Like, I think the checkpoints
are unconstitutional, but I think that's a close question under
the precedents. What we don't see we don't see. You know,
troops just randomly arresting people on the street, we don't see.
(40:08):
You know, troops bargin in the people's houses. We don't
see Trump, for example, you know, having the military doing
traffic stops. Right, And so I just you know, I
know that the law is not drawing the lines people
want it to draw, and I'm with everyone on that.
But I think it's worth appreciating how much of what
he's doing in DC is actually hyper legalized, because he's
(40:30):
trying to rely on the DC specific authorities to create
this momentum for authorities he won't have in other cities.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Right, But he's also trying to intimidate, right, I mean,
he's been trying to intimidate journalist, democratic elected people, and judiciary,
perhaps the Supreme Court. So I am glad to have
you here. This has now become you talking of the ledge.
Clearly this guy is authoritarian curious probably oritarian, very curious.
(41:02):
Like when you look at the things like the redistricting,
the five seat redistricting, which means that Texas will actually
manage to steal five House seats. I mean, don't you
feel like the sort of the rules, the law, all
of our sort of norms are just being put into
a blender make me feel better?
Speaker 6 (41:21):
So I think the norms are being put into a blender.
I don't think the laws are right. I mean, partisan
jerry mandarin is a scurge, but it is a scurge
that has been with us for a long time.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
And I wish.
Speaker 6 (41:32):
That the Supreme Court in twenty nineteen had not basically,
you know, washed its hands of any responsibility for supervising
partisan jerry mandering. But it did molly, which means democratic
states can do it too, and so we'd all be
better off in the world without it. But I also
think that at least for now, that by itself is
not the end of democracy.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Right.
Speaker 6 (41:53):
What I worry about more is, you know, when Trump
comes out like on Monday, and you know, talks about
how he's going to go after mail and voting, he's
going to you know, try to do other things, right like, So,
you know that's just totally bananas legally, because the president
doesn't control elections.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Right, right, there's on the state level, one hundred.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
Percent, right, the Constitution leaves the regulation of even federal
elections to the states. Now, Congress has the power to
set uniform national rules, but you know that requires malli
new legislation which would have to be filibuster proof in
the Senate, and nothing like that would be I guess
part of the problem is that I think Trump governs
(42:35):
by a combination of bullying and intimidation and a combination
of sort of grandiose claims of authority he doesn't have.
And the bullying and intimidation often succeed in getting people
to do the things voluntarily that he could not compel
them to do. And so, you know, my concern about
the Texas president is less that Texas is creating five
(42:57):
more seats for Republicans and more that Texas jumped when
Trump told it to right that like, you know, states
are like oh yeah, yeah, that states are basically at
least red states are basically acting the way Trump says,
which is that they're just agents of the federal government.
The Founders would roll over in their graves at the
suggestion that states are agents of the federal government. That's
(43:18):
the bigger concern for me is not what he can
do directly, but how much power he's able to amass
just by you know, bullying, intimidating, you know, scaring his
base whatever. And that's why I think it's so important
for folks to be really well educated about what he
can and can't actually do.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, it feels like we're kareeming towards some kind of showdown,
right or numerous ones.
Speaker 6 (43:44):
Yeah, I mean the problems I don't know what the
flashpoint is going to be. I mean, part of what's
really really troubling about DC is I think Trump would
love nothing more than to provoke in, you know, an
incident you know, everyone keeps waiting for, for the Reichstag fire.
I don't know if we're kareeming toward so much as
we are sliding down in icy slope and trying to
figure out if we can stop ourselves.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
I will say this.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
I think the courts are continuing, I think to do
a pretty good job of you know, holding the feet
to the firelacet I mean, Molly, DC is a good
example of this. There were two steps to the attempt
to take over of the MPD. When DC sued, after
you know, turning General, Bondi tried to claim that she
was now in charge of the MPD, the judge who
(44:27):
was assigning here the case, Judge Rey Is, convened to
hearing within like four hours, and by that night Bondi
had rescinded her order and had you know, sort of
conformed her conduct to what the statute actually authorizes. So
I think we are heading for some kind of you
know moment, Molly, but I don't know what it is,
and I haven't given up yet on the idea that,
(44:47):
you know, until that moment, maybe even in that moment,
the courts are actually going to be, you know, a
realistic bulwark against Trump's authoritarian, curious impulses and his just
indifference to you know, to accountability.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
We never had to get here, and it just makes
me so it's so bad. The other thing that I
want you to talk about is what's happening sort of
on the Supreme Court docket right now, like they are
on vacation for the summer, but they're putting stuff on
the docket still like Oberfeld.
Speaker 6 (45:24):
Yeah, so I think again, what's going on with Obergefel.
The same sex marriage ruling is another really good example
of I guess me howlan at the moon about people
being nuanced. So the Obergafell media cycle started because the
crazy Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who's.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Been married four times, is.
Speaker 6 (45:45):
Back at the Supreme Court trying to get out of
a damage's judgment that was entered against her for refusing
to marry people after Obergafel, and the media cycle started. Molly,
I think like last week or two weeks ago, because
the Supreme Court ordered the respondents, the plaintiffs who sued
Kim Davis to file a response to her certin petition.
(46:07):
That is a nothing burger, that is not news. And
someone who doesn't know what they're doing thought that signal
that the court was interested in over rulin O Berga fell,
you know, and the promise is that even if the
court is and oh, by the way.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
I actually don't think it is.
Speaker 6 (46:23):
The Davis case is the worst possible vehicle because she
didn't even raise that question in the trial court. She
forfeited it, which is what the federal appeals Court found. So,
you know, everyone gets sort of stirred up to you know,
a five alarm fire because one reporter doesn't understand how
the Supreme Court works.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
This is not to say that all is well at
the Supreme Court.
Speaker 6 (46:44):
I mean, I think the justices are up to plenty
of other things I'm not too excited about. You know,
the cases about Louisiana's congressional redistricting, for example, have now
turned into a bit of a referendum on whether states
are ever allowed to draw you know, majority minority districts
without violating the Constitution. That would be a remarkable step
(47:06):
backwards in my view for you know, civil rights in
this country. Do you know the Court just last week
in an emergency application, the Court left in place, to
me a really problematic Mississippi law that requires age verification
before folks can use social media. And you know that
means that you have to turn over a whole bunch
of personally identifying information in order to actually access a
(47:29):
whole bunch of constitutionally protected speech. Justice Kavanaugh wrote this
concurrence where he said, I think this law is unconstitutional,
but I'm going to leave it in place anyway. You know,
the court is up to a lot of to me, mischief,
but I think it's not quite at the level of
Oberga fell as vulnerable as soon as next term.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Thank you, Thank you, Steven.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
Thanks that's always way to be with IMALI. And you know,
I can't tell you how much I appreciate your pensiant
for trying to bring a little bit of sanity to
all of the drama.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
No moment cool, Jesse Cannon Molli.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
One of the things we've been discussing a lot here
is the total lack of concern ICE seems to have
about well, whether they're getting the right people, the way
they treat them, anything at all, pretty much because they've
basically been instructed that they will have impunity or that
they could act with on impunity. And the Senate probe
has uncovered exactly that.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
So John ass Off leading this investigation hundreds of reports
since January, including accounts of miscarriages, child neglect, sexual abuse
at ICE detention centers in dozens of states. Does this
surprise anyone. It's like again, shocking but not surprising. Forty
one cases of physical and sexual assault, fourteen involving pregnant detainees,
(48:46):
eighteen involving children. I thought they wanted to protect children.
I always told that this crew wanted to protect children.
But this does not seem like a lot of child
protection because they don't really care about any of this.
And by the way, a lot of these people not
criminals okay either are just people who are here illegally,
(49:06):
which technically is a civil violation and not a criminal violation.
By the way, contracts flowing to private prisons, So you're
going to see a lot more of this stuff because
this is what they do. It is our moment of frockery.
It should be our moment of rockery every day. That's
it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
(49:31):
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and CNN data guru Harry Enton says,
the Big Beautiful Bill is the most unpopular piece of
legislation in decades. We have such a great show for
(00:21):
you today. Notice his own Evan McMorris. Santoro stops by
to talk to us about why Republicans are acting so irrationally.
Then we will talk to the Shadow Dockets author Steve
Vladdock just about how many laws the Trump administration is
breaking in DC and elsewhere. But first we have the
(00:45):
very important stories the media is missing.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
All right, Molly, there's an interesting thing we've learned the border.
Everybody's always when will maga start to break? Even just
a few of them with mister Trump. And the next
two stories going to go over seemed to be it,
which is they're very mad that the Epstein grand jury
transcripts won't be unsealed because a federal court has ruled
that way.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
By the way, anyone who knows about federal grand juries
knows that the chances of having a grand jury testimony,
it's a much higher bar to releasing it than other stuff.
The other thing that's so stupid about this is like
the Trump administration has tens of thousands of pages of documents.
(01:30):
Release the fucking documents. You don't need the grand jury.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
It took a thousand employees to read those, right.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
This is like the fakest of the fake, fakey fakeisms.
Like none of this is real. I mean, it's just
crazy crazy, It truly is. I mean I have nothing
to say here, you know, I mean I have stuff
to say, which is this is so fucking stupid.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, I mean, you know, hashtag released the files. I
really liked the thing. Evan refers to later that Al Jones,
we've all finally reached a thing that we agree with him,
like release the Epstein files. Everybody's in unison, from Alex
Jones onto lefty freaks like us.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yes, lefty freaks. That's right, baby, No release Epstein files.
Like the grand jury thing is bullshit. We know it's bullshit.
It's not about a grand jury. Just release all of
the tens of thousands of pages of files you have.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So the other thing MAGA is very mad at, along
with seemingly everybody, is that in Las Vegas there were
a handful of quote unquote child sex predators, and one
was released because they work in Israeli intelligence and they
were released by the age who has ties to the
Israeli government, and the State Department is doing everything and
(02:48):
ken to hush up. And shockingly, mega influencers are quite
quite mad about this because their brand is to protect
the children.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, so in Israeli official charge to child sex trafficking,
Ram flees the US. He gets let out. He's a
senior Israeli cybersecurity official. He was arrested during an undercover
operation in Nevada targeting child sex predators. He posted a
ten thousand dollars bail and then he just fled Israel.
(03:15):
Why was his past sport not confiscated? Why was he released?
Why is any of this going on? Attorney General Pambondy,
you may know her from her complete inability to do
any of the stuff that she said she was going
to do. She is outraged, quote unquote, But you know
(03:36):
who's even more outraged. Marjorie Taylergreen and Thomas Massey, two
Republicans who have criticized Israel, perhaps because they don't get
any money from APEC. Doj should file federal charges and
demand immediate extradition, said Jack Pisobic. I don't think Jack
understands the close relationship between net Yahoo and Donald Trump.
(03:59):
You know who is happy to criticize Jews.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Candice Ollen really hurt really wait wait wait, by you're
telling me she's taking time from transvestigating.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, you'd be shocked because Candace Owens is known to
be such a good faith actor. But Candice owns, yes,
criticizing not very shocking.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But on a more serious note, I do think it's
a very interesting intersection of that. Trump's kind of like
modus operande in this administration has been that if you're
on my side, you get away with whatever.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
And turns out, yeah, it turns out.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Mega has drawn a strong border of saying like, we
really don't like this part of it. You know, we
our whole thing is we're protecting these children. It's the
only thing that makes us feel like we're decent people
when we do bad things and hate everyone.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The whole thing is like,
there are words, but the words are hypocrites moron's you know,
there are a lot of words here.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, let's move on to the other wig of this thing.
A thing that I my neuroses keep accelerating on is
how much Trump and Magas seem to be enriching themselves.
Trump bought more than one hundred million bonds since January,
filing showing.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I'm shocked, shocked. I tell you to hear this gambling
going on in this casino. Donald Trump purchased at least
one hundred and three million dollars worth of corporate and
muniees since taking office in January. So the documents released
Tuesday night show that Trump began the bond buying spree
one day, okay, one day after being sworn in January
twenty first, he purchased a bond belonging to the Triborough
(05:35):
Bridge and Tunnel Association. He's just buying bonds. Now, Why
is he buying bonds? I don't know. I do know
that there's a lot of stuff going on in the
markets right now, including there's some anxiety in the bond
markets because of that, all of the sort of stagflationary
things that Trump is doing. So I don't know. The
(05:58):
point is eighty percent of Americans want their electeds not
to make money off of them like they don't want
elected's trading stocks. So my sense is that perhaps this
is yet another unpopular thing Donald Trump is doing.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Sounds about right, speaking of very unpopular things, pro Publica
has a new astounding report that RFK Junior vowed to
find the environmental causes of autism and then he shut
down the research trying to do just that, probably because
the research was probably not going to end up doing
that because he just can't read research properly.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
No, I think he did this because the research is
going to show that pollution has effects on people, right,
I mean, I don't know that it causes autism.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I was more even going to say the other thing,
which is just that the whole origin story of RFK
is that he read studies wrong, and so like, why
have science when you can't read.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, but he also was once an environmentalist and now
does not give a fuck about that because he's a Republican.
I think it's really important to remember that. Like I
remember so many people being like, well, it'll be good
if he gets sort of pesticides, it'll be good if
he does this. He does that, He's never going to
do that stuff, right. The only thing he's going to
do is the stuff that he has a financial incentive,
(07:10):
and like, you know, he's going to do things like
hurt scientific research, prevent vaccines.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
This is like being like, oh, I'm going to go
to an amusement park filled with razor blades on every ride,
but maybe one of them will be fun.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right, It's like, you know, medical research, encouraging snake oily
things like doing the stuff that is just what we
expect from him. But it is incredibly annoying and also
just incredibly soul crushing to watch this guy do this.
(07:44):
Evan McMorris Santro is a reporter at Notice. Evan, Welcome
to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Texas House Republicans, the House of the State House of
Texas has come back. They have a plan to steal
five seats and Representative Callier, there's one representative who is
not not having it.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
This is such an interesting moment that has happened with
this Texas redinteresting thing because you do have you've had
this kind of broad based fight that has started in Texas,
and we've learned a lot about how Texas legislature works, right,
Like you can't leave the state or they can't have
the you know, the legislature. They want to do this
thing where they want to now because they're freak out
(08:30):
about these Democrats leaving them again. They want to give
them like this twenty four to seven police, for instance's
mind around them. Yeah, and one of the members is
you know, says no, I don't want to do that
and held out and is trying to block that from happening.
But the upshot to this is that this Texas thing
is going to happen, right, They're going to get these seats,
It's going to get redrawn, and that is really kicked off.
(08:53):
The most unexpected part of this twenty twenty six cycle.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Is that it is can we just I'm going to
interrupt you because we're and also we can say it's
going to get redrawn. But you know, from what I
understand from the people I've talked to, if they were
to stay out of the state until November, they could
prevent it from being redrawn.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Well that's right. Well, this is what I just kind
of get into the I can think. Right, this is
the most fascinating thing about this is that these Democrats
and I don't know really exactly what has happened with this.
I mean, in my experience when you have sixty seventy
people in one place, they don't always agree on everything.
So they kind of had to come back because enough
(09:35):
of either enough of them wanted to come back that
they had to come back. But their their line on
this is that they came back because they have activated
this national political push now to redistricting other places and
try to push back on this. But yes, the truth
is this has now become basically a rhetorical argument in Texas.
It's not only this morning I got a press release
(09:56):
from Texas Democrats telling me, you know, we're doing this thing.
We're bad, So they can have their vote, but we're
going to put an amendment on the bill from the
Texas lawmakers that forces them to vote that they would
say that they don't want to release the Epstein files,
effectively trying to do this Epstein files tie in that,
like we would only redistrict if the Epstein files were
(10:19):
released first. Whatever. It's just kind of a whole rhetorical
argument when obviously they had all the power and they
were gone, and when they come back, the power Texas
Democrats becomes, which is very very little power. They don't
have much, so now they're asking for every other Democrat
in blue states to sort of step up and help
them out. And it's a very complicated process. I mean,
(10:41):
we don't really know how this is going to shake out.
We do know Texas is going to get these five
seats unless the Democrats find some way to leave again
and stay out, Texas is going to get.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Them, which stuff should and could. And I don't understand
like this is partisan redistricting because Donald Trump is wor
about losing the House because he sees the polling and
he sees the people screaming at the town halls, and
he knows that taking stuff away from people to give
a tax cut to very rich people is not the
(11:13):
winning is not the winning move that you think it is,
you know is. And there is a guy who ran
on bacon, right, he was going to make things cheaper,
and now we have these tariffs which are wildly inflationary
and expensive, and he somehow thinks that bullying the chair
of the Fed or causing the FED to no longer
(11:34):
be independent is the way to get inflation to go down.
But you know, we know if you cut rates when
inflation is still a problem, then what is going to
happen more inflation, and it's like where we are right now,
there is no way this is not stagflation. Right there
is no way. The last quarter was negative growth. This quarter,
maybe it's not negative growth, but it sure feels like
(11:57):
negative growth unless the AI numbers pump it out up
to the point where it's not. I mean, we won't
know until the quarter's over. But and Trump is just like,
I can bully my way out of this, but everything
he wants to do is going to hurt the economy more.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's a very cynical type of politics going on right now,
because it's not even just the idea that you're going
to sort of bully your way out, but you know,
maybe you just change the numbers and change the way
things work. I'll tell you this. I talked to somebody
who worked in the Biden administration on economic policy just
the other day, when like the jobs, when the when
the the inflation numbers have come out, the CPI number,
(12:31):
seventy summers have come.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Out before the rummit, before Trump decided that he needed
a summit, Yes.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Before the summit, but well summit, And I was talking
about this idea of looking how they look at these
numbers and how they're at this moment and they're saying, like, look,
trumppanomics is here, like Trump's argument, and We've talked I've
talked to White House about this a bunch of times,
and they will tell you every single time prices are
just not going to go up, that that's the answer.
I'm like, what are you going to do when process
go up? What's your messaging for when prices go up?
(12:58):
What are you going to say about our prices go up?
There is a message that they could use, which is,
you know, they have this sort of general vision that
there's a short term pain but long term gain, et cetera.
They don't even sat.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Dolls instead of twenty dollars, that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Their thing is they say, now, they're just not going
to go up right now. By you people who spend
a lot of time during that inflationary period saying hey,
but look at this number, Hey but look at this number.
But look at this thing we did. They recall that
not working out very well for them. And they're watching
the Trump administration now and they're sort of seeing what
(13:33):
they see as a sort of willful a willful disregard
for what these numbers actually show and The reality is,
eventually this all comes out in the wash. Someone has
to be right here, right. The Trump administration says these
prices are not going to go up. Every economist says
they are going to go up. Yeah, when the prices
go up.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
There has to be somebody there. You know, there're going
be a political conversation to have about that. And there
just really has been no teeing up a bit or setting.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Up for it. There has only been this idea that
the numbers I don't like, those numbers are wrong, will
fire those people. Will just change the way the numbers work.
We'll just change the numbers all around. You talk about
this thing with the Texas redistrict thing, it is all
part and partial of that. Like this is a mid
term that's going to be a challenge for the Republican Party.
Then the idea is what if we just change the electorate,
(14:20):
And that is this is not an administration that has
been actively focused on defending the things that they're doing
their ideas. We can just change the sort of facts
around those things, and then what we're doing is great.
It's a very different way of doing politics than I've
ever seen before.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
And when it comes to things and it can work
in a place like Texas where you can redraw those lines,
you can get those five seats. But when it comes
to the prices consumers pay for things going up, you know,
the Bide administration did a lot for consumers, pushed a
lot about it. They the actual higher prices. I think
Trump's gonna have the same problem. The prices go up.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You have to you can't pretend like they're meal vegetables.
And we talked about this actually on the podcast yesterday.
There is nearly forty percent spike in the price of
wholesale vegetables. I mean, seems like a lot. I know
that Americans don't like vegetables, but they still you know,
(15:22):
like that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about this headline I
read today that McDonald's is forcing its franchisees to lower
the price of a value meals. And I'm wondering, like,
which is more important, value meals going down the vegetables
going up. But yeah, no, it mean, it's true. It's
it's true. It's it's not just that it's energy, it's
alters of other things. It's it's these consumer goods. I mean, look,
as you mentioned earlier they try the message with this
(15:46):
when Trump was out there with this whole live simply thing,
you don't need to buy as much stuff as you
used to buy.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You don't need buy with the golden toilet, the guy
with the golden toilet is telling you that it's time
to stop spending money.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It was one of those few moments, and there's been
a couple in this administration, but one in the few
moments when his own team, his own base was like,
what are you saying? What are you talking about? I
mean I talked to a guy in New Hampshire, like
economist up there, who like used to work in politics,
and he was like, this is the kind of stuff
that like Soviet Russia would say. Like that was one
(16:21):
of those things that it's not a message. You didn't
see Trump rollout to have a have less Christmas. That
was like an actual long term policy plan. They have
shifted away to this precus You're just not going to
go up. It's just not true. It's just not happening.
It's just not going to happen because like that didn't
really work. So the fact is this exact problem that
is this really important problem in American politics. So is
(16:42):
on one hand, some of these things do take a
long time to change. It does take a long time
to make big progress. That is the whole Biden argument, right, like,
we've seeded the ground for all of this, you know,
manufacturing construction and returning on shoring all this stuff and
rebuilding America's power in this stuff and building energy projects.
But they're gonna take a long time. And people said,
(17:03):
I don't care it costs me more money to buy
stuff right now, and we just said, really, have not
seen This administration just has not embraced even the possibility
of that happening, and they are trying basically anything they
can to change it. We're gonna fire the FED. We'll
just change the way that works. We'll change the way
the FED works, which you know they can't really do,
(17:23):
but we're gonna try to do that, right, and we're
gonna like them. We're just gonna fire the head of
the BLS.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
We don't like the numbers.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Maybe we won't just we just won't release numbers. Maybe
maybe it's Katie numbers again. The idea here, and this
comes out of Trump's mouth himself, and the last time
he ran for president was that, like Mom, and pop,
you know, Joe and chain consumer they know the prices
go up and they don't like it. So it all
(17:50):
manners thinks can be set up here. All man are
are sort of you know, mumba jumbo can be done.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
But when people go to the.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Grocery store, they remember and the problem is, what are
you going to do this? The Masri says, the based
down whether I do it when that happens, which every
economist says is going to happen very soon if it
isn't already happening now.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So that is the question, and it's sort of this
interesting philosophical question. And you know, I love stuff like
that because I am very in my own way nihilistic.
So I love this philosophical question of like you have
Donald Trump, who occupies Earth two right, he believed, you know,
(18:31):
his people believe things like QAnon. They believe what he
tells it with them. He has a sort of religious
hold on his people, and they suspend their disbelief to
trust him the way they trust megachurch pastors, you know
that kind of thing. So here's a question. And they
really even with COVID right like they said things like
(18:55):
I mean, a great example is the ivermactin it didn't mark,
but people were able to, for whatever reason, still not
believe that it didn't work. Even though it didn't work.
They would say, you know, maybe you were better or
even I mean, there was this great reporting about this
child who died of measles in Texas. I mean great reporting,
(19:16):
like very accurate reporting, not great because obviously horrible, but
very sad in it. The parents would not say that
not being vaccinated was why the kid died of measles.
They believe that the kid was not treated correctly when
they got measles and that that So it's like this
kind of bug in the machine, right, like you almost
(19:39):
get it, but you don't totally get it. And here
we have something like you elected Donald Trump because he
said he was going to make things cheaper. Things are
now more expensive. It's like COVID, right, Donald Trump said
COVID's going to go away. He killed a million people.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
This is the difference that Trump has. Trump does not
have a lot lot of base problems, right. Democrats have
a lot of base problems. They have them all the time,
they're having them now, they're going to have them in
a month. It's like this is their main problem is
that like what are Democrats, what are they like?
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Who are they?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
What are they about? Republicans like Trump, They're for Trump.
Trump's the guy. They're into Trump. He doesn't have that problem, right,
But he does have the problem that other politicians have,
which is the one of like he brought new people
into the fold who maybe weren't like hardcore Trumpers, but
they're like, all right, well, this guy's gonna do this
about price, He's going to take care of this stuff.
He's gonna end these wars. You're gonna do this stuff.
(20:35):
You know, this this working class electorate that like they
they touted and how excited they were to win those
people over they brought them in. You know, his independent
numbers are not good at all, Like they've gone down
a great deal. They're not good. So even though he
he has something that I think Democrats are often very
envious of for good reason, which is that like the
(20:56):
base is going to go along when he goes to
Congress and says I want something, Congress says okay, right,
despite the fact they're maybe ever kind of Republicans inside
that Congress. Right, that's the truth. But when it comes
to the election, that has to happen. The general conversation
has to happen. This is going to be one as
these things often are on these people who switch around
and who look around, and who expect a lot of
(21:19):
things from their politicians that politicians will often say, well,
those tras.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Are a little bit unrealistic. I can't really do all
of that, but voters want them to, and Trump if
he can't. If Republican Party is walking into a situation
where they have raised prices on people, They have made
it more difficult than into access healthcare because of the
stuff that they have cut in their reconciliation bill. They
have raised prices on a lot of things. And maybe
(21:46):
there's more involvement in you know, in wars, maybe there's
you know, maybe American forces are now helping to protect Ukraine.
Other things that were really motivating in that conversation. Then
politics just become real again. Like when you get like
the Trump administration and Trump, I think really likes to
talk about this, say about his base. He gets really
nervous on the base as mad We saw how much
(22:07):
effort they put into trying to shut up people about
this Epstein issue, never from his own base, but the
Chanlelners that he has is that there are people who are.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Not hardcore Trumpers who voted for Trump, and will they
vote for Republicans again after they have seen stuff that
they don't like from Trump And we don't we don't know,
but we also have not seen extremely three D chess
brilliant messaging from this White House that would suggest that
(22:35):
they care a lot about it either. And that's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Well, no, that is, I mean that's the that's always
the Trump thing, right, he doesn't care about other Republicans.
He doesn't want to lose the House because he doesn't
want to get impeached again. Does he want Jade Vance
to be his air apparent? No? Did he care? You
know what I mean? Like he wants himself to be
his air apparent?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, I mean he'd raised it. He's reached a ton
of money for twenty twenty six, like more than anybody
had as I had talked to several Democrats who are like,
this is a pretty serious number. This could be really
real for us. There are definitely factors here, But in
terms of the sort of cover he is giving his people,
you know, he didn't even do like a national tour
after his Bill passed. You know, he just kind of
brings it up when he's at the Kennedy Center talking
(23:17):
about something completely different. You know, now they're back to
talking about crime. That's you know, that's the DC thing.
I just think that when you're talking about this and
this is all sort of part and partial to one thing,
is that like there is this cynical play, which is
that like, if we can just change the playing field enough,
then these laws of gravity may not apply. And that's
(23:37):
not entirely impossible, right, I mean, like if California can't
get this registricted gun, which is a complicated process, you know,
all of a sudden, people who are looking at history
and excited about stuff, like they're looking at a whole
different map than they expected. A founder station jump on
the bandwagon. That changes these things.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
But it you know, it doesn't really change the sort
of actuality of like whether or not he's building some right,
Like he's building something that that is lasting, and it
doesn't seem to me.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Like that's such a huge focus. So like there's true
things happening at once. It's a cynical play that could
backfire because people might just be so annoyed by the
fact that they're that, you know, the rules are being
changed around them. But there's also the effort of like,
these people have questions about what about things that are
being done right now. They have questions about things that
are happening. They have questions about these immigration procedures that
(24:25):
they've seen, They have questions about these tariffs, they have
questions about this reconciliation bill. And we are not hearing
a great deal of answers from the White House to
those questions.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I don't think that the images of the seven plane closed,
guys with the face masks beating up the Uber driver,
the Uber eatst driver, the food delivery guy are going
to help this man win elections. Now he is going
(24:55):
to have unlimited money because the rich people really are
happy with the tax cut. And Elon mush is already
meeting with JD.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Van.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So like, clearly this crew, the third.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Party thing really lasted a long time, didn't it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
They're almost like, my man is just a liar, but
you know, like he's constantly you know, so we met
with Jadvan, So like, these guys are gonna have unlimited money.
But the question is, and I think like there's always
want to be cynical when you're covering this political climate
because everything is so stupid and craven. But I saw
(25:32):
an ice guy running down the street carrying a four
eleven foot girl. I mean, I just don't see how
this ends up being okay, you know what I mean
that people, the voters don't aren't.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Like what well, you know, I'll tell you this is
one of those things. I earlier today I saw a
clip from the podcaster Tim Dillon, the comedian Tin Dylan, right,
he was heat on these guys who was made a
sphere type guy when Trump jd Vance appeared in his show,
like he became one of these Trumper guys. But he
(26:09):
was saying this ice stuff, this DC occupation, this federal
forces down there checking everybody, what they're doing all the time,
taking over This is the comes so that Alex Jones
warned us about, you know, you know, he was definitely
not excited about this, and this is this is one
(26:29):
of those things where you know, in my experience have
been covering this stuff. You know for a while now,
incumbents are always shocked by the thing that catches them.
They're always sort of in their world, doing their thing,
running around, having the time of their lives. And you know,
these guys, these sort of libertarian leaning guys who were
(26:50):
really excited by Trump saying, hey, comedy's gonna be legal again.
You can say the R one. It's about freedom. Man.
They're not the types to say like, oh good, but
I wanted wanted a police state to happen, Like that's
you know, this is sort of like, this is the
kind of thing where it's like, but if you're a
Trump person and the Trump White House peop wills say
this to you repeatedly. When you ask them about this,
(27:11):
they will say, you know, this is exactly what Trump
promised and what he ran on, and of course this
is all true. All these things that are happening. We're
kind of you know, we're previewed in Protect twenty twenty five.
Pre you been on a campaign trail. But that is
not actually why people gravitate towards a person, right, And
so when you have someone like Tim Dillon starting to
say this like this is a police state, I don't
like this. This is the same guy who was like,
(27:32):
I don't know about those Epstein stuff that's happening. I
don't know that Tim Dillon speaks for a massive electorate
or something like that. But it does speak to the
fact that, like this is not a thing that the
white has to just rely on these people to love
everything that they're doing, and if they start to question them,
they start to turn on them. They find themselves in
the position of everybody else that gets turned on. And
I don't know, like I said, you know, it's such
(27:54):
a long time before twenty twenty six, We don't know
what will happen. But I just keep looking at these experiences,
and you know that economic reporting I did last week
where they were just you know, these Biden people were
sure scratching their heads kind of saying, I can't We've
seen this movie.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
They're doing the same. They're trying to do what we did.
They're trying to buy those it didn't work for us.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Looking at this stuff that's going on with the immigration,
uh you know the immigration stuff where you know, you
saw the President himself even say, all right, I hear you.
Farmers don't like this. This is not where they we
you know, the hospitality industry, We're going to do something
immediately pushing back on that. That doesn't alleviate the concerns
that farmers had about this that doesn't change what they said.
(28:36):
It's just the White House saying, Oh, don't worry about it,
they'll come around. Don't worry about it. They're not important.
And at some point these people start to become important
and it starts to become a damage a damaging thing.
And I think that, like, this is sort of a
white House that right now is and you know, it
was built around the idea of a sort of siege mentality.
(28:57):
Everyone's against us all the time, everyone's lying about us,
everything that is not true. Only the most pure heart,
only the most pure of spirit that love us, that
have loved Trump forever, are allowed to cross its threshold.
That is a recipe for, like I said, a very
envious situation for Democrats to watch when they think about
their own administrations that they have. But it's also a
(29:18):
recipe for myopia and a recipe for making mistakes when
it comes to swing voters. This happens all the time,
and so I do think that we're at the end
of a little period of time now where this is
starting to stack up in ways that are going to
be really tough questions for them to actually have to
(29:39):
deal with if they find voters really want to know
more about it. You know what I mean. That's that's
how I think about it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Evan, thank you. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I mean tell them, of course I love doing this show.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
I love you. Mauley.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Oh, I know.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I don't care what your audience says. We are friends.
I like that people know that we're friends. They can
be bored as they want.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Stephen Vladdock is a CNN contributor, a professor at Georgetown
Law School, and the author of The Shadow Docket. Welcome
to Fast Politics, Stephen Vladock.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Thanks really great to be back with you.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
The thing that I wanted to talk to you about
because you're a lawyer, but you're really a scholar, and
you really focus on the constitutionality of things I think
that's fair right, and how the Supreme Court does and
doesn't weigh in on things like The Shadow Docket, which
is your most recent book. I wonder if you could
explain to us what the federal takeover of the District
(30:36):
of Columbia, where this sort of legality ends and where
it begins.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
So I think it might be helpful to actually break
out four different things that the federal government is.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Doing at once.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
The first and probably at least on its face, the
least controversial is Surgeon federal law enforcement presence in DC.
You know, we'll talk about about the checkpoints, but at
least in the abstract, there's lots of authority and lots
of history and lots of precedent for the federal government
to use various of its own law enforcement agencies in DC.
(31:10):
The second piece of it is Trump's attempt to take
over the DC Metropolitan Police Department, which started with the
invocation for the very first time of a statute Congress
passed in nineteen seventy three is part of the Home
Rule Act that let the president use the MPD during
emergencies for up to thirty days, but you know, doesn't
(31:30):
allow him to take it over. And so we you know,
Attorney General Bondi tried to take it over, a judge
pushed back. She then sort of changed her mind. So
there's some federal oversight slash involvement with the MPD, but
there's there has not been a full takeover mally. The
other two things are the military. So the DC National
Guard is unique among the fifty four National Guard units
(31:53):
that exist in that it is always subject to the
command and control of the president as opposed to a
governor even in the other federal territories. President Trump called
out the tiny DC National Guard, although it's not clear
that they're doing much of anything besides standing around on
the mall. And then the fourth piece of it is
President Trump has solicited a bunch of red state governors
to send their own national guards without being federalized at
(32:16):
the governor's request, basically into DC. And so what is
effectively happening is this bizarre confluence of Trump trying to
look like he is federalizing DC by relying on four
different sets of authorities, none of which actually let him
do it, but all of which are at least being
invoked somewhat plausibly, if not ultimately persuasively. So that's the
(32:41):
weird place we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
So much of this seems not legal today, things like checkpoints.
Could you talk us through checkpoints?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (32:49):
So what is hard in talking about this is that
there's no one bright line.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Is this or is this legal? Ors this not legal?
Speaker 6 (32:56):
Answer again, because Trump is really doing four very different things.
I think the first time I should be said before
we get to checkpoints, is it is all like bullshit
in the sense that it is all based on a
completely nonsense pretext, which is that there has been some
surge of violent crime in the disch of Columbia. That's
just not true based on the government's own data, which
(33:19):
Trump is now suggesting as somehow flawed. Molly, it's not
what you know most of the Washingtonian and certainly I know,
are experiencing. So problem number one is that it feels illegal,
at least in part because no one buys the narrative,
no one buys the pretext. But for better or for worse,
the Supreme Court has let the President get away with
(33:39):
pretextual things like the travel ban. And so you know,
the fact that he's invoking an authority, for example, with
regard to the Met Pelton Police Department that it is
only supposed to be available during an emergency doesn't change
the fact that, like the statute doesn't say, what doesn't
doesn't constitute an emergency. And so I think at least
three of these moves that the National Guard moves I
(34:00):
think are challengeable on their face. I think what he's
doing to the MPD is challengeable on its face, But
the real illegality to me, Molly, as you suggest is
coming in what they're actually doing on the ground. There
hasn't been a ton of media coverage of just how
many checkpoints have been set up in DC.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
You know, there were videos.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
About the one on Fourteenth Street last week, but you
know there are now a couple of different checkpoints every
day in various parts of DC. And that's where I
start getting nervous, because the Supreme Court, for better or
for worse, has been pretty clear that, you know, there's
no power on the government's part to just do checkpoints
for fundsies. When the Supreme Court has upheld checkpoints, it
(34:41):
has always been because the checkpoint was in furtherance of
some special need. So you know, a sobriety checkpoint on
New Year's Eve, or a checkpoint near the scene of
an accident where the government's looking for witnesses, or you know,
close to the border, an immigration checkpoint, right like, those
have been upheld. But the notion that like, because the
(35:03):
President claims without any factual basis that there's more violent
crime in the city at large, you know, the sixty
plus square mile city, we can put checkpoints in neighborhoods
where there's no evidence of increased crime, Molly, at least
based on the presidents we have, that should be unconstitutional.
The challenges may yet to be coming. But that's where
(35:24):
I get nervous, is sort of legally what's happening on
the ground, and then politically, the sort of the desensitization
to just how extraordinary the president's invocation of all these
authorities has been.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
So I want you to make me feel better about
the Supreme Court. I'm sorry to tell you, but this
is all just about my therapy. It strikes me that
this Supreme Court is loath to run any kind of
just like this Congress loaths to run any kind of
checks on Donald Trump.
Speaker 6 (35:57):
I think that's not necessarily wrong, Molly, but if I
can try to make it feel a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I want to be wrong. I'm telling you.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
The problem is, Molly. I think two things are true.
Speaker 6 (36:06):
I think that this Supreme Court, and especially the three
justices who really matter, the three justices whose votes are
going to drive the results in Trump related cases, by
whom I mean, you know, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Breckavanaugh,
is Amy Cony Barrett. I don't think they want confrontations
with President Trump. And I think that a lot of
(36:27):
their behavior to this point over the last seven months,
in granting so many of these so called emergency applications,
reflects that. But I also think that the Court is,
you know, zealous of nothing more molly than guarding its
own power. And the one time in all of these
cases so far where it looked like Trump was actually
(36:49):
about to defy not a lower federal court but the
Supreme Court itself, the Justices stepped in it like one
in the morning on a Saturday. And so I wish
they had stepped in a little more. I think some
of their rulings in the Trump cases are really problematic,
as I've as you know, as I've written about it,
perhaps nauseating length in my newsletter.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (37:08):
I still have a little bit of faith, not that
the justices are altruists, but that their interest in preserving
the court's own authority and you know, the separation of
powers more generally, is going to mean that if we
really get to that, you know, break the glass type
of moment, they're going to be inclined to try to,
you know, rain the president in. I think the trickier part,
(37:30):
MOLLI is trying to sort of help folks see that
we haven't gotten there yet, right. I think there are
so many folks who when I post on social media, oh,
you know this is illegal. The contention doesn't let Trump
do this? People are like, well, how's that work so far?
And actually it's worked more than I think a lot
of people will concede. I mean, the Supreme Court has
(37:51):
right ruled for Trump. I think it's now sixteen times,
and that's a lot, but Trump has actually lost. By
my count mally, we're now north of one hundred and
twenty district court rulings that have blocked something President Trump
wanted to do, and sixteen it sounds like a lot
in the abstract, it's a lot for the Supreme Court.
It's actually a pretty small percentage of one hundred and twenty.
It's just my way of saying, I think that the
(38:13):
law is constraining Trump. I think that the law will
continue to constrain Trump. The tricky part is not being
dumers about the politics, because I think part of what's
happening in d C is an effort by this administration
to make it seem like normal that you know, surgeon
federal law enforcement and deploying troops all over the streets
(38:36):
of American cities is something we do in this country
and it's not. And I think that's you know, that's
what scares me about DC. I'm not scared there's going
to be some like armed confrontation in DC. I'm scared that, like,
you know, if he tries to pull this nonsense with
some other city where there won't be nearly the same
kind of legal authorities, people will be like, well, he
(38:56):
did it in d C. And throw their hands.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Up, right right, right, No, No, I agree. I'm glad
to hear you say that, by the way, about the law,
because it feels like there's so much stuff that the
Trump administration's doing that seems pretty dicey at best. I mean,
the motivation of protecting their own power. It's not exactly altruism,
(39:18):
but at least it's some kind of check.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Well, let's go back to DC for a second.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
If Trump really were unbound by the law, if law
were irrelevant, if the law had nothing to do with
what he was doing, then that doesn't explain what's happened
in DC. Right then he wouldn't have started with DC.
He would have started with Chicago, right or New York.
He wouldn't have started with, like the place over which
the federal government has more of a claim to power
than anywhere else in the country under both the Constitution
(39:46):
and a series of statutes. He wouldn't have started with the
one place where he has direct control over the National Guard,
and he would be using all of these authorities to
do more than he's doing. Like, I think the checkpoints
are unconstitutional, but I think that's a close question under
the precedents. What we don't see we don't see. You know,
troops just randomly arresting people on the street, we don't see.
(40:08):
You know, troops bargin in the people's houses. We don't
see Trump, for example, you know, having the military doing
traffic stops. Right, And so I just you know, I
know that the law is not drawing the lines people
want it to draw, and I'm with everyone on that.
But I think it's worth appreciating how much of what
he's doing in DC is actually hyper legalized, because he's
(40:30):
trying to rely on the DC specific authorities to create
this momentum for authorities he won't have in other cities.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Right, But he's also trying to intimidate, right, I mean,
he's been trying to intimidate journalist, democratic elected people, and judiciary,
perhaps the Supreme Court. So I am glad to have
you here. This has now become you talking of the ledge.
Clearly this guy is authoritarian curious probably oritarian, very curious.
(41:02):
Like when you look at the things like the redistricting,
the five seat redistricting, which means that Texas will actually
manage to steal five House seats. I mean, don't you
feel like the sort of the rules, the law, all
of our sort of norms are just being put into
a blender make me feel better?
Speaker 6 (41:21):
So I think the norms are being put into a blender.
I don't think the laws are right. I mean, partisan
jerry mandarin is a scurge, but it is a scurge
that has been with us for a long time.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
And I wish.
Speaker 6 (41:32):
That the Supreme Court in twenty nineteen had not basically,
you know, washed its hands of any responsibility for supervising
partisan jerry mandering. But it did molly, which means democratic
states can do it too, and so we'd all be
better off in the world without it. But I also
think that at least for now, that by itself is
not the end of democracy.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Right.
Speaker 6 (41:53):
What I worry about more is, you know, when Trump
comes out like on Monday, and you know, talks about
how he's going to go after mail and voting, he's
going to you know, try to do other things, right like, So,
you know that's just totally bananas legally, because the president
doesn't control elections.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Right, right, there's on the state level, one hundred.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
Percent, right, the Constitution leaves the regulation of even federal
elections to the states. Now, Congress has the power to
set uniform national rules, but you know that requires malli
new legislation which would have to be filibuster proof in
the Senate, and nothing like that would be I guess
part of the problem is that I think Trump governs
(42:35):
by a combination of bullying and intimidation and a combination
of sort of grandiose claims of authority he doesn't have.
And the bullying and intimidation often succeed in getting people
to do the things voluntarily that he could not compel
them to do. And so, you know, my concern about
the Texas president is less that Texas is creating five
(42:57):
more seats for Republicans and more that Texas jumped when
Trump told it to right that like, you know, states
are like oh yeah, yeah, that states are basically at
least red states are basically acting the way Trump says,
which is that they're just agents of the federal government.
The Founders would roll over in their graves at the
suggestion that states are agents of the federal government. That's
(43:18):
the bigger concern for me is not what he can
do directly, but how much power he's able to amass
just by you know, bullying, intimidating, you know, scaring his
base whatever. And that's why I think it's so important
for folks to be really well educated about what he
can and can't actually do.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, it feels like we're kareeming towards some kind of showdown,
right or numerous ones.
Speaker 6 (43:44):
Yeah, I mean the problems I don't know what the
flashpoint is going to be. I mean, part of what's
really really troubling about DC is I think Trump would
love nothing more than to provoke in, you know, an
incident you know, everyone keeps waiting for, for the Reichstag fire.
I don't know if we're kareeming toward so much as
we are sliding down in icy slope and trying to
figure out if we can stop ourselves.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
I will say this.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
I think the courts are continuing, I think to do
a pretty good job of you know, holding the feet
to the firelacet I mean, Molly, DC is a good
example of this. There were two steps to the attempt
to take over of the MPD. When DC sued, after
you know, turning General, Bondi tried to claim that she
was now in charge of the MPD, the judge who
(44:27):
was assigning here the case, Judge Rey Is, convened to
hearing within like four hours, and by that night Bondi
had rescinded her order and had you know, sort of
conformed her conduct to what the statute actually authorizes. So
I think we are heading for some kind of you
know moment, Molly, but I don't know what it is,
and I haven't given up yet on the idea that,
(44:47):
you know, until that moment, maybe even in that moment,
the courts are actually going to be, you know, a
realistic bulwark against Trump's authoritarian, curious impulses and his just
indifference to you know, to accountability.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
We never had to get here, and it just makes
me so it's so bad. The other thing that I
want you to talk about is what's happening sort of
on the Supreme Court docket right now, like they are
on vacation for the summer, but they're putting stuff on
the docket still like Oberfeld.
Speaker 6 (45:24):
Yeah, so I think again, what's going on with Obergefel.
The same sex marriage ruling is another really good example
of I guess me howlan at the moon about people
being nuanced. So the Obergafell media cycle started because the
crazy Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who's.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Been married four times, is.
Speaker 6 (45:45):
Back at the Supreme Court trying to get out of
a damage's judgment that was entered against her for refusing
to marry people after Obergafel, and the media cycle started. Molly,
I think like last week or two weeks ago, because
the Supreme Court ordered the respondents, the plaintiffs who sued
Kim Davis to file a response to her certin petition.
(46:07):
That is a nothing burger, that is not news. And
someone who doesn't know what they're doing thought that signal
that the court was interested in over rulin O Berga fell,
you know, and the promise is that even if the
court is and oh, by the way.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
I actually don't think it is.
Speaker 6 (46:23):
The Davis case is the worst possible vehicle because she
didn't even raise that question in the trial court. She
forfeited it, which is what the federal appeals Court found. So,
you know, everyone gets sort of stirred up to you know,
a five alarm fire because one reporter doesn't understand how
the Supreme Court works.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
This is not to say that all is well at
the Supreme Court.
Speaker 6 (46:44):
I mean, I think the justices are up to plenty
of other things I'm not too excited about. You know,
the cases about Louisiana's congressional redistricting, for example, have now
turned into a bit of a referendum on whether states
are ever allowed to draw you know, majority minority districts
without violating the Constitution. That would be a remarkable step
(47:06):
backwards in my view for you know, civil rights in
this country. Do you know the Court just last week
in an emergency application, the Court left in place, to
me a really problematic Mississippi law that requires age verification
before folks can use social media. And you know that
means that you have to turn over a whole bunch
of personally identifying information in order to actually access a
(47:29):
whole bunch of constitutionally protected speech. Justice Kavanaugh wrote this
concurrence where he said, I think this law is unconstitutional,
but I'm going to leave it in place anyway. You know,
the court is up to a lot of to me, mischief,
but I think it's not quite at the level of
Oberga fell as vulnerable as soon as next term.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Thank you, Thank you, Steven.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
Thanks that's always way to be with IMALI. And you know,
I can't tell you how much I appreciate your pensiant
for trying to bring a little bit of sanity to
all of the drama.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
No moment cool, Jesse Cannon Molli.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
One of the things we've been discussing a lot here
is the total lack of concern ICE seems to have
about well, whether they're getting the right people, the way
they treat them, anything at all, pretty much because they've
basically been instructed that they will have impunity or that
they could act with on impunity. And the Senate probe
has uncovered exactly that.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
So John ass Off leading this investigation hundreds of reports
since January, including accounts of miscarriages, child neglect, sexual abuse
at ICE detention centers in dozens of states. Does this
surprise anyone. It's like again, shocking but not surprising. Forty
one cases of physical and sexual assault, fourteen involving pregnant detainees,
(48:46):
eighteen involving children. I thought they wanted to protect children.
I always told that this crew wanted to protect children.
But this does not seem like a lot of child
protection because they don't really care about any of this.
And by the way, a lot of these people not
criminals okay either are just people who are here illegally,
(49:06):
which technically is a civil violation and not a criminal violation.
By the way, contracts flowing to private prisons, So you're
going to see a lot more of this stuff because
this is what they do. It is our moment of frockery.
It should be our moment of rockery every day. That's
it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
(49:31):
Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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