Fighting DOGE!

Ralph welcomes Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, whose group has filed eight lawsuits that have significantly slowed the Trump/Musk cabal’s attempt to dismantle the government. Then, our resident Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein reports on Public Interest Law Day at Harvard Law School and how important it is for law schools in general to step up to meet this constitutional crisis. Plus, Ralph answers listener questions!

Robert Weissman is a staunch public interest advocate and activist, as well as an expert on a wide variety of issues ranging from corporate accountability and government transparency, to trade and globalization, to economic and regulatory policy. As the President of Public Citizen, he has spearheaded the effort to loosen the chokehold corporations and the wealthy have over our democracy.

The efforts in the courts are really vital to stem the illegal, unconstitutional actions of the administration, but also to show that there's a way to fight back. In these early days and months of the administration, there's been a sense that Trump is inevitable and unstoppable. And the actions in the courts, I think, have been really critical to illustrating that that's not true.

Robert Weissman

It's open season for the polluters. And of course, they're also promoting in a variety of ways a rush towards climate catastrophe by undoing the positive measures that have come recently from the Biden administration to deal with the climate crisis.

Robert Weissman

If you pull back all the enforcement rules, and you say we're not going to enforce the rules that are left over, corporations get the message. And they're going to be

more reckless, and it's a near certainty that we're going to have many more serious industrial disasters as a direct result of what they're doing at EPA and other agencies.

Robert Weissman

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

If we don't inform the public (with the law students as well as others in the lead), we're not going to have rule of law and Harvard Law School will become an irrelevancy. It will be a museum piece.

Bruce Fein

I think the country and the law students are going to pay a price. They're being very narrow and myopic with regard to their immediate preoccupation with their trade school, where they're going to work the next day, and very little given to the fact that if we don't have a country anymore, they aren’t going to have a legal career.

Bruce Fein

It's a more cowardly, timid type of law school whose explanations are still ready to be discovered. It's a real puzzle…because they have tenure, they have status, they have wealth, and they have the ability to defend themselves because they're skilled lawyers.

Ralph Nader

News 4/2/25

1. Our top stories this week are on the topic of corporate crime. First, the American Prospect reports that the Trump administration is seeking to reverse a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau case against Townstone, a mortgage brokerage firm that blatantly discouraged p