Supreme Court Checks Trump — 2025 Year in Review

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to the final episode of The Oath in the
<v Speaker 1>Office for twenty Did I say final, I mean welcome
<v Speaker 1>to the first episode of The Oath in the Office
<v Speaker 1>for twenty twenty six. I'm John Fugel Sang along with
<v Speaker 1>Professor Corey Bretschneider. We have a lot of ground to
<v Speaker 1>cover for a year that doesn't want to stay buried. Today,
<v Speaker 1>we'll talk about some of the good news at the
<v Speaker 1>end of the year, as well as the most egregious
<v Speaker 1>violations of law and constitutional norms and basic human decency
<v Speaker 1>by this administration. We're going to cover due process abuses,
<v Speaker 1>illegal military deployments. We're going to talk about questionable executive
<v Speaker 1>actions and unqualified, corrupt crony cabinet members and endless dreary
<v Speaker 1>lies and racism, public corruption, bribery in the open, and
<v Speaker 1>serious humanitarian and legal red flags. And there's no one
<v Speaker 1>better for that than the star of this humble podcast, us,
<v Speaker 1>the man who built this thing from nothing into one
<v Speaker 1>of the top government podcasts recognized in the nation in
<v Speaker 1>less than a year, Professor and author Corey Bretschneider. It's
<v Speaker 1>good to see you, Sarah.
<v Speaker 2>Happy New Year, Happy New Year, John. What a pleasure
<v Speaker 2>to do this podcast. The beginning of the year is
<v Speaker 2>a great symbol of what we're trying to do on
<v Speaker 2>this podcast. It's both a moment of optimism to talk
<v Speaker 2>about the future and hopes new Year's resolutions, but also
<v Speaker 2>to be honest about what we just faced in Project
<v Speaker 2>twenty twenty Five's a year at twenty twenty five the
<v Speaker 2>attempt to destroy democracy, and so I'm looking forward to
<v Speaker 2>looking back and looking forward to Well, we have a.
<v Speaker 1>Lot to look back on, and I'm really glad you're here.
<v Speaker 1>But I want to begin the show by ending twenty
<v Speaker 1>twenty five on some good news, and that is President
<v Speaker 1>comover Caligula's ability to use the National Guard as playthings
<v Speaker 1>has been put in check. I know this could push
<v Speaker 1>him later to use the Insurrection Act, but for now,
<v Speaker 1>this is good news, right, Professor. Can you can you
<v Speaker 1>walk us through what has happened in blocking or at
<v Speaker 1>least limiting Trump's ability to unilaterally deploy the National Guard
<v Speaker 1>to majority black cities when he feels like it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I should say too.
<v Speaker 2>In terms of the stories of twenty twenty five that
<v Speaker 2>we've been covering, we talked a lot about the idea
<v Speaker 2>of a soft coup, that the president's usurpation of the
<v Speaker 2>other branches in various things like using DOGE. But then
<v Speaker 2>we also talked about this moment where he started to
<v Speaker 2>use the military as the transition to a hard coup,
<v Speaker 2>because when you use the military to usurp the power
<v Speaker 2>of the states, that's nothing less than what's associated with
<v Speaker 2>the destruction of democracy through the use of force, a
<v Speaker 2>hard coup. And so finally we have the Supreme Court
<v Speaker 2>standing up to him and saying, no, you can't do
<v Speaker 2>this now. They're not cutting off any possibility, as you
<v Speaker 2>just said that it might be the Insurrection Act in
<v Speaker 2>the future that's invoked, which he hasn't yet, but the
<v Speaker 2>statute that he's tried to use to say that there
<v Speaker 2>is a federal ability to use the military even against
<v Speaker 2>the wishes of governors like the governor of Illinois, the
<v Speaker 2>Supreme Court said no, not permanently, but they have put
<v Speaker 2>a stop to it for now. That might change, and
<v Speaker 2>the reasoning is really interesting for the purposes of this podcast.
<v Speaker 2>They went and they looked at this statute that President
<v Speaker 2>Trump is using to justify the use of the military,
<v Speaker 2>and they said, no, it doesn't say one two four
<v Speaker 2>o six. It's interesting, like, usually they give the name.
<v Speaker 2>This thing isn't being given name. It's usually just being
<v Speaker 2>called the statute and then by number. But it's a
<v Speaker 2>source of authority that the president's relying on, and they're saying, no,
<v Speaker 2>it's not there that And let.
<v Speaker 3>Me just give a slight setup.
<v Speaker 2>The usual default is you cannot use the military domestically.
<v Speaker 3>As we've talked about on the.
<v Speaker 2>Podcast, that the Possi Coomittatis Act from the nineteenth century
<v Speaker 2>was passed with the idea of limiting the use of
<v Speaker 2>the military for police purposes domestically. So you need an exception,
<v Speaker 2>and the government and this statute is claiming they had
<v Speaker 2>an exception. In this Supreme Court of the United States
<v Speaker 2>is saying no, that it doesn't actually work. And it's
<v Speaker 2>an interesting sort of argument that we'll get into of
<v Speaker 2>what specifically the words say that the court interpreted not
<v Speaker 2>to give him this authority.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what the words say was my favorite part of
<v Speaker 1>this ruling, because Trump argued that he had inherent authority
<v Speaker 1>to federalize and deploy the Guard in Illinois because he
<v Speaker 1>hosted celebrity Apprentice. I don't even know that, but he
<v Speaker 1>was the Star of Celebrity Apprentice and the Emmys were
<v Speaker 1>rigged year after year. So the court said that his
<v Speaker 1>claims were essentially, and I'm going to quote them directly here,
<v Speaker 1>untethered to facts. Now, I know that we don't really
<v Speaker 1>know what John Roberts means from hour to hour, and
<v Speaker 1>things that seem like a narrow procedural win could be
<v Speaker 1>better than it appears. But I mean, what does that
<v Speaker 1>phrase mean to you in constitutional terms? They essentially said
<v Speaker 1>that his claims were untethered to fat They called him
<v Speaker 1>a liar.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean they also, I mean, there's an interesting
<v Speaker 2>two things that are going on. They're claiming that if
<v Speaker 2>you look in this statute, there are these two words
<v Speaker 2>that are used regular forces, that don't mean what the
<v Speaker 2>president said that they mean.
<v Speaker 3>So what is regular forces? There's a law.
<v Speaker 2>This is kind of one of these wonky instances where
<v Speaker 2>law professor amicus briefs, and you and I have talked
<v Speaker 2>about amicus briefs that I've done in the past, and
<v Speaker 2>sometimes they matter, sometimes they don't. Here are a law professor,
<v Speaker 2>Marty Lederman from Georgetown Law School entered one of these
<v Speaker 2>they called amicus or friend of the court. Briefs, and
<v Speaker 2>the court really said no. This guy actually figured something
<v Speaker 2>out that nobody else had seen, which is that the
<v Speaker 2>term regular forces which allows the president to use this
<v Speaker 2>specific statute as an exception to posse commatatis when regular
<v Speaker 2>forces are ineffective. So what is regular forces? That's what
<v Speaker 2>the court said. The administration was saying, well, it means
<v Speaker 2>that we're unable to use the FBI or police forces
<v Speaker 2>or the immigration services. And of course what they're claiming
<v Speaker 2>is that I is under attack in places like Illinois
<v Speaker 2>and the federal government can't do its job and that's
<v Speaker 2>why they have to deploy the National Guard. But the
<v Speaker 2>court said, no, that's not what it means. Regular forces
<v Speaker 2>doesn't mean a force. Is regular force is the military.
<v Speaker 2>So what it means essentially is before you invoke the
<v Speaker 2>national Guard and you take the governor's power to control
<v Speaker 2>of the National Guard and assign it to the president,
<v Speaker 2>you've got to show that actually the military is unable
<v Speaker 2>to take it job. So this is a kind of wonky,
<v Speaker 2>but thing that mattered from a Georgetown law professor.
<v Speaker 3>So a shout out to Marty Liederman for doing this.
<v Speaker 1>Another word, they called him out for lying. I mean
<v Speaker 1>because yeah, regular forces means the standing military. Now, this
<v Speaker 1>ruling block Chicago, but it also of course cast out
<v Speaker 1>on the similar creepy BS deployments in la and Portland.
<v Speaker 1>Is this particular court at least, you know, three of
<v Speaker 1>the Dirty Six quietly warning Trump that the military is
<v Speaker 1>not his personal police force. Is that what we're seeing?
<v Speaker 3>I'm not sure.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you know, you always want to temper the
<v Speaker 2>good news with the bad news. So on the one hand, yes,
<v Speaker 2>it was six justices that said that the president was
<v Speaker 2>beyond his authority, can't use the military in that way.
<v Speaker 2>And as you said, and I want to emphasize this point,
<v Speaker 2>we're not just talking about Illinois, because this is the
<v Speaker 2>kind of argument that they're using in all these other places.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, I should say two, like, I'm.
<v Speaker 2>Not giving the administration too much credit, but this argument
<v Speaker 2>that Leaderman came up with, I don't know that a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people had even thought about whether or not
<v Speaker 2>this was this regular forces idea was a reference to
<v Speaker 2>the normal federal government or to the military. So I
<v Speaker 2>think it is an instance where like this law professor's
<v Speaker 2>research and history gave us an insight into this legal controversy.
<v Speaker 3>That we might not have known about.
<v Speaker 2>And the impact is so big because it's not just
<v Speaker 2>in Illinois, it's in these other places too. When it
<v Speaker 2>comes to the justices themselves, yes, there's good news. There's
<v Speaker 2>six people, six justices, who stood up for the right thing.
<v Speaker 2>And I should say, you know, the whole structure of
<v Speaker 2>the federal government, the Posse Comitatus Act is all about
<v Speaker 2>not allowing the military to be used as a police force.
<v Speaker 2>Our whole system of government is designed on that idea.
<v Speaker 2>So we've got six decent justices in this moment. Kavanaugh
<v Speaker 2>writes a concurrence just on this, this.
<v Speaker 1>Fast, decent, generous professor. I hate to push back on you,
<v Speaker 1>but maybe three of them back, three of them, backed
<v Speaker 1>by circumstance and history into a rare moral corner. I'll
<v Speaker 1>go with that, but continue.
<v Speaker 3>I like that. I like that way of putting it.
<v Speaker 2>But it might for Kavanaugh, who I'm always the most
<v Speaker 2>skeptical of because he's in this group of six, Like,
<v Speaker 2>what is he doing there?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>And my thought when I read his concurrence was he's
<v Speaker 2>kind of sending a message to the President to just
<v Speaker 2>use the Insurrection Act and that that will be a
<v Speaker 2>cleaner way of doing it, so that, of course we
<v Speaker 2>could wind up so much.
<v Speaker 3>Worse than we started off with.
<v Speaker 2>And yeah, us, let's not be too optimistic about this moment.
<v Speaker 1>Well, so let's let's end a dreary year with this
<v Speaker 1>theory aspect of it, because I mean, essentially, what we're
<v Speaker 1>looking at here is man baby saying if I say
<v Speaker 1>there's chaos, I get total control. That seems to be
<v Speaker 1>the presidential argument here. If I say there's chaos, I
<v Speaker 1>get complete control. The elephant in the room is the
<v Speaker 1>Insurrection Act, and you just mentioned it. This might be
<v Speaker 1>what they do now because this was too illegal before.
<v Speaker 1>So maybe this ruling could push him towards invoking the
<v Speaker 1>Insurrection Act instead. Let's refresh people's memories on what is
<v Speaker 1>the Insurrection Act and why does it scare the complete
<v Speaker 1>living hell out of constitutional scholars so deeply?
<v Speaker 2>Well, it's an enormously powerful statute, and exactly the fact
<v Speaker 2>that the president hasn't used it yet doesn't mean that
<v Speaker 2>he won't, And it sounds like he has some moral
<v Speaker 2>quandary about using Yeah, I don't think he could care
<v Speaker 2>less about what the statute is, so probably the lawyers
<v Speaker 2>have convinced him not to do it. This is supposed
<v Speaker 2>to be an extraordinary statute that allows the president to
<v Speaker 2>take control of the National Guard over the objection of
<v Speaker 2>governors in instances in which there really is fundamental instability
<v Speaker 2>in the society and you know, a danger to public
<v Speaker 2>safety more generally, and so that the examples in which
<v Speaker 2>it's been used successfully are primarily the Little Rock, the
<v Speaker 2>Eisenhower example of using it over the objection to ensure
<v Speaker 2>the compliance with the court mandated integration. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>that's sort of the ultimate instance of heroic instance in
<v Speaker 2>which people think of it nationalizing the Guard to protect
<v Speaker 2>civil rights. It was also used during Bush and the
<v Speaker 2>Rodney King example. But to come back to your phrase
<v Speaker 2>on tethered to reality, I mean, the idea that in
<v Speaker 2>any of these instances there is some instability in the
<v Speaker 2>society that requires this is just wrong. And yet Kavanaugh
<v Speaker 2>seems to be hinting that that might work, that the
<v Speaker 2>Court would just defer to the president. The facts don't
<v Speaker 2>support it. But my hope is that the Court would
<v Speaker 2>say that that even though it looks like in some
<v Speaker 2>instances there is this legal authority, we're not at that moment.
<v Speaker 3>We don't have.
<v Speaker 2>That instability and you know, there's some hope that we've
<v Speaker 2>got the six of these justices doing the right thing
<v Speaker 2>in this case.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>See, I view Roberts, and I view Cony, Barrett and Gorsich,
<v Speaker 1>and I view Kavanaugh as aristocrats story aristocrats who protect
<v Speaker 1>their own class first, and I only do that based
<v Speaker 1>on everything they've ever done in their legal careers. So
<v Speaker 1>I just see this as much more of a broad
<v Speaker 1>authoritarian pattern that they're going to test one lever of power,
<v Speaker 1>and if they lose on that, then they're going to
<v Speaker 1>reach for a more extreme one. I mean, is this
<v Speaker 1>going to bring us closer to the same kind of
<v Speaker 1>emergency hitlerific powers we associate with illiberal democracies or outright
<v Speaker 1>authoritarian states. I mean, I was so happy about this
<v Speaker 1>for a couple of days until I was reading up
<v Speaker 1>on what the whole scheme could be of using and
<v Speaker 1>abusing the Insurrection Act. And obviously, irony is the one
<v Speaker 1>religion that I'll never let you down, this clown using
<v Speaker 1>the Insurrection Act against law abiding Americans, I mean, the
<v Speaker 1>comedy rights itself.
<v Speaker 2>I think you know, that's the million dollar question that
<v Speaker 2>we've been struggling with all years since we began the
<v Speaker 2>podcast since Trump took office, which is that we have
<v Speaker 2>these moments where the district courts are willing to track
<v Speaker 2>the administration, where the Supreme Court in this example at
<v Speaker 2>least has checked the administration.
<v Speaker 3>But that's not the end of the story.
<v Speaker 2>You get this back and forth and when you have
<v Speaker 2>a want to be authoritarian in power, he's going to
<v Speaker 2>demand among his loyalists. I think in the past there
<v Speaker 2>would have been people there who said, no, you can't
<v Speaker 2>do that. The insurrection acts totally inappropriate. The Court has
<v Speaker 2>spoken that's the end of it. But those people are gone.
<v Speaker 2>The adults in the room aren't there, and the Stephen
<v Speaker 2>Millers aren't going to be urging restraint. They're going to
<v Speaker 2>be urging more and more action. And what's the Court
<v Speaker 2>going to do. I'm not sure you know, we're reading
<v Speaker 2>Tea leaves. They did stop him here, they didn't go
<v Speaker 2>along with it, they didn't defer.
<v Speaker 3>They found a way, you know, to focus on.
<v Speaker 2>I should say too, a lot of members of this court,
<v Speaker 2>including Kavanaugh, love to focus on the text of legislation,
<v Speaker 2>and part of what they're always trying to do is
<v Speaker 2>justify their own actions, their own power, and their own
<v Speaker 2>methodology for interpreting the Constitution a very narrow one by saying, look,
<v Speaker 2>we care about the words and the law, and so
<v Speaker 2>this definition of forces is you know, we're being honest.
<v Speaker 2>Now are they going to do that when it comes
<v Speaker 2>to the Insurrection Act? It might be go the other way.
<v Speaker 2>They're going to say, look, you know Eisenhower could do it,
<v Speaker 2>Bush could do it, We're going to allow it. That's
<v Speaker 2>my worry that they're not thinking about the principles of
<v Speaker 2>liberal democracy, the principles of the Constitution.
<v Speaker 1>So this brings us to the year we just survived, Professor.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I want to thank you for this podcast
<v Speaker 1>for helping me get through the year. It's been a
<v Speaker 1>pleasure to cheat off your paper, as it were. But
<v Speaker 1>I mean, in thinking back on twenty twenty five, you know,
<v Speaker 1>what do you consider to be the most egregious violations
<v Speaker 1>of the Constitution by this White House? I know that
<v Speaker 1>this could add another hour onto our episode. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>on the top of my head, between the extra judicial
<v Speaker 1>deportations to Well Salvador torture prisons and these due process
<v Speaker 1>obligations that have been just ignored all the way to
<v Speaker 1>these escalating military strikes without any clear legal basis, first
<v Speaker 1>on these poor bastards in the water with no evidence
<v Speaker 1>at all that their boats were carrying drugs. And now
<v Speaker 1>we just bombed Nigeria on Christmas Day because Trump cares
<v Speaker 1>about the Christians. Never mind the fact that he bombed
<v Speaker 1>the village that had nothing to do with any of
<v Speaker 1>these killings, and never mind the fact that Donald Trump
<v Speaker 1>has killed more Nigerians than anybody else this year with
<v Speaker 1>the cuts to USAID. I mean, professor, where do we
<v Speaker 1>begin in cataloging the maufeasances of just the last eleven months.
<v Speaker 2>You know, this podcast would go on for hours today
<v Speaker 2>if we were to really go through it all, I
<v Speaker 2>will say one of the real Yeah, I guess I
<v Speaker 2>would call it a pleasure. It has been a pleasure
<v Speaker 2>doing this with you. Because we're surviving this assault on
<v Speaker 2>democracy together. There's solidarity in it and the fact that
<v Speaker 2>we have so many listeners increasingly coming and listening with
<v Speaker 2>us every week, you know, and I had a friend
<v Speaker 2>who a longtime listener and friend from the beginning of
<v Speaker 2>the podcast. You know, that is part of what this
<v Speaker 2>is about. That it's a kind of solidarity and the
<v Speaker 2>humor makes it bearable. But what we're doing is documenting
<v Speaker 2>history that we are living through. This has been a
<v Speaker 2>year of not a normal presidency, but one that really
<v Speaker 2>is devoted to the destruction of constitutional democracy and even
<v Speaker 2>the rule of law.
<v Speaker 3>And what we.
<v Speaker 2>Have I think in our archive is documentation of the
<v Speaker 2>attempt to have and I'll use this phrase again as
<v Speaker 2>self coup to destroy from the inside, the use of
<v Speaker 2>the executive branch, the other branches. So as we go
<v Speaker 2>through them, it's too many cases to mention, but as
<v Speaker 2>you started to do, I'll catalog the general assaults.
<v Speaker 3>This is what I've come up with.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you've had my home. I have a long
<v Speaker 1>list I want to tell you.
<v Speaker 3>I mean the use.
<v Speaker 2>The first thing to say is this story that we
<v Speaker 2>just started with, which has been an ongoing part of
<v Speaker 2>what we're talking about, the deployment of the military to
<v Speaker 2>America's cities in contradiction to laws limiting that, and finding
<v Speaker 2>these loopholes and ways around it, and various legislation to
<v Speaker 2>ignore the posse commatatis law. That's the stuff of the
<v Speaker 2>hard use of the military to destroy democracy. So I
<v Speaker 2>put that near the top.
<v Speaker 1>It was in Los Angeles when he what are thousands
<v Speaker 1>of marines and National Guard troops into these civic protests.
<v Speaker 1>A federal judge explicitly found that that violated the Passi Coommatatus.
<v Speaker 2>Act, and that, you know, this has been going on
<v Speaker 2>since the first administration, where he was threatening even then
<v Speaker 2>to use the Insurrection Act to shut down protests.
<v Speaker 3>And let's not lose sight of that.
<v Speaker 2>This really is about not just control, but the attempted
<v Speaker 2>destruction of free speech. And so that's one of the
<v Speaker 2>themes that we've been covering. And I'd add to that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the destruction of free speech on campus. So
<v Speaker 2>when it came to the case of a graduate student
<v Speaker 2>organizer in the protests at Columbia Khalil, they claim he
<v Speaker 2>didn't even have the right to free speech because he
<v Speaker 2>was a non citizen.
<v Speaker 3>And so just in the same way, so.
<v Speaker 1>We've also got a hate intral We've also got to
<v Speaker 1>point out the Secretary of State lied about this young
<v Speaker 1>man and said that he was anti Semitic, and it
<v Speaker 1>said anti Semitic statements, which was no evidence, and there
<v Speaker 1>was never any evidence he had broken a single law.
<v Speaker 1>And yet because he was Muslim, they had complete confidence
<v Speaker 1>that they could rendition this man and take him away
<v Speaker 1>with no due process, and they got away with it
<v Speaker 1>for a long time.
<v Speaker 2>It is very hard to rank these stories, I was saying,
<v Speaker 2>because they're also egregious, you know, in the same way
<v Speaker 2>that the military is such a threat to democracy. Obviously,
<v Speaker 2>free speech is the lynchpin of democracy. If you can't
<v Speaker 2>speak out against your government, in what way are you
<v Speaker 2>living in a democracy? It's almost as the Brown professor
<v Speaker 2>Alexander Micklejohn, my favorite free speech scholar, says. You know,
<v Speaker 2>his book is called Free Speech and its Relation to
<v Speaker 2>Self Government. It's as important as voting, and so when
<v Speaker 2>you restrict people's ability it also, by the way, mickel
<v Speaker 2>John's famous for saying, it's about the rights not just
<v Speaker 2>of the speaker, but the listener. For us to be
<v Speaker 2>able to hear Khalil's critique of Columbia, of whatever he's
<v Speaker 2>saying about American foreign policy, whether you agree with it
<v Speaker 2>or not, the right to hear it, that's part of
<v Speaker 2>the right of American citizens here.
<v Speaker 3>So I could keep going.
<v Speaker 2>And there's the Gulag case, as we keep calling it,
<v Speaker 2>the deportation. This one is like, you know, you could
<v Speaker 2>trump one point. Oh, I think people said, well, at
<v Speaker 2>least we don't have, you know, rounding up and putting
<v Speaker 2>people in torture camps. Well, that's no longer true. They
<v Speaker 2>are doing that in the case of Venezuelan nationals who
<v Speaker 2>have been rounded up and sent to a third country,
<v Speaker 2>El Salvador, where the president's ally has put him and
<v Speaker 2>other Venezuelans.
<v Speaker 3>This is Abrego Garcia.
<v Speaker 2>Of course was the first case that we covered in
<v Speaker 2>this torture prison and of course we had Mike Zaymore
<v Speaker 2>giving us the details as it was happening, as they
<v Speaker 2>were arguing this, and the ACLU has a new case
<v Speaker 2>now too that the same judge, Judge Boseburg, is it's
<v Speaker 2>not over. You know, we're still pushing back the boat strikes.
<v Speaker 2>You mentioned the the use of the war power without
<v Speaker 2>consent of Congress, the deprivation of due process, and that's
<v Speaker 2>true in the should say two in the Gulag cases
<v Speaker 2>as we've been calling them, the administration is using a
<v Speaker 2>seventeen to ninety eight law, the Enemy Aliens Act, to
<v Speaker 2>say there is no due process, no rid of habeas corpus,
<v Speaker 2>no requirement the government even tell us why they're holding people.
<v Speaker 2>And one of the things that Boseburg said in this
<v Speaker 2>new case, thankfully, and this guy really deserves you know,
<v Speaker 2>when it comes to the heroes of the year.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, we're gonna we're gonna praise Bosburg in the second second.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yes, I know we're coming up. So anyway, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know, I could keep going out.
<v Speaker 3>What else abody missing? John?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Well let me talk about you know again, we've
<v Speaker 1>we've murdered over one hundred and seven people in these
<v Speaker 1>extra judicial drone strikes on boats and foreign waters. I mean, we,
<v Speaker 1>the taxpayer's cory, are going to be shelling out billions
<v Speaker 1>in class action lawsuits to the victims of these crimes
<v Speaker 1>long after Donald Trump's arteries have done what the Lord
<v Speaker 1>wants his arteries to do. I mean, We're going to
<v Speaker 1>be paying for all this for a very long time.
<v Speaker 1>But I'm thinking about the executive overreach starting with this,
<v Speaker 1>the Protecting the American People against Invasion Executive Order fourteen
<v Speaker 1>one point fifty nine, if one of his first actually
<v Speaker 1>did that, pretty much, he built this entire house of
<v Speaker 1>crap on significantly expanding his immigration enforcement powers and torturing
<v Speaker 1>people and just not having to follow the law. That
<v Speaker 1>order was enjoined because parts of it were violating federal law.
<v Speaker 1>But it's this this whole pattern that you've discussed so
<v Speaker 1>ably about, this broader pattern of presidential overreach, from the
<v Speaker 1>birthright citizenship controversy to these judicial lawsuits against judges, like
<v Speaker 1>the White House filed a lawsuit against fifteen federal judges
<v Speaker 1>in Maryland because they called the White House out for
<v Speaker 1>breaking the law. I mean, that lawsuit was dismissed, but
<v Speaker 1>this is the amount of contempt they have for the
<v Speaker 1>judicial branch.
<v Speaker 3>It is just dizzying.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, I'm trying to, of course, you know,
<v Speaker 2>order all of this and to see how it all connects,
<v Speaker 2>because I do think that just providing the list feels
<v Speaker 2>exhausting and how we're going to fight back. But when
<v Speaker 2>we start to see it for what it is, it
<v Speaker 2>is that these are all organized assaults on democracy, we
<v Speaker 2>can start thinking about both the danger that we're in
<v Speaker 2>but also the way to resist. So on that theme
<v Speaker 2>of immigration, which has been so much of the usurpation
<v Speaker 2>of democracy, one of the things that I'll just note
<v Speaker 2>from the beginning in a common theme is that we
<v Speaker 2>had all these dangers sitting there waiting in ice.
<v Speaker 3>If I were to pick one example.
<v Speaker 2>Of it is is it is that danger, and he's
<v Speaker 2>activated in this just frightening way and built it up,
<v Speaker 2>and so he's created this deportation for us, this federal
<v Speaker 2>rights violating, frightening agency that seems to have no constraints
<v Speaker 2>on it. And this is one of the areas where
<v Speaker 2>I would have thought that, as ICE is kidnapping people
<v Speaker 2>and really violating civil liberties committing crimes, that we would
<v Speaker 2>have seen arrests of some ICE officers. But it's been
<v Speaker 2>one of those areas where we just have not seen
<v Speaker 2>a lot of pushback. And then I don't want to
<v Speaker 2>miss birthright, citizenship, man, I just find it impossible to
<v Speaker 2>rank these things because this is a place where the
<v Speaker 2>Constitution says so clearly in the fourteenth Amendment, and this
<v Speaker 2>was part of the after the Civil War, to remind listeners,
<v Speaker 2>we've done whole shows on this, but after the Civil
<v Speaker 2>War an attempt to demand equal protection and the Thirteenth
<v Speaker 2>Amendment ending slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection, the
<v Speaker 2>Fifteenth Amendment a right to vote regardless of race, at
<v Speaker 2>least for men. Not fully there yet when it comes
<v Speaker 2>to democracy. Part of that whole post bellum amendments system
<v Speaker 2>included a just clear rule to make it symbolize all
<v Speaker 2>of this, which is, if you are born in the
<v Speaker 2>United States, you are a citizen. That we're not going
<v Speaker 2>to rank people based on who their parents were, and
<v Speaker 2>parentage isn't going to be the basis of how we
<v Speaker 2>think about democracy. And here the court, you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>faced with this question of whether or not the administration
<v Speaker 2>can revoke it. They haven't answered that. You know, we'll
<v Speaker 2>hear that answers at some point. But what they did
<v Speaker 2>in the meantime, just to remind listeners, is they got
<v Speaker 2>rid of the ability of the district court judge this
<v Speaker 2>is obviously unconstitutional, imposed a national injunction. And what did
<v Speaker 2>the court said. They got rid of national injunctions. They
<v Speaker 2>got rid of the ability of judges to enforce the law.
<v Speaker 1>It's white supremacy, professor, it's white supremacy. I'm sorry, but
<v Speaker 1>these chalky race people look like me are going to
<v Speaker 1>become a minority in this country in twenty forty five,
<v Speaker 1>and it's getting harder for me to deny that. That's
<v Speaker 1>driving a lot of policy choices. They're trying to just
<v Speaker 1>push the date off till twenty fifty twenty fifty five.
<v Speaker 1>But the reality is forty years of trickle down has
<v Speaker 1>made it a lot harder for white people to keep
<v Speaker 1>pumping out those babies. And they don't want to get
<v Speaker 1>rid of their trickle down. They don't want to stop
<v Speaker 1>squeezing and destroying the middle class. But now they're panicking
<v Speaker 1>because the birth rates have changed, and they know what
<v Speaker 1>the numbers are, and they know that Caucasians will dip
<v Speaker 1>below fifty percent in twenty years. And I think we
<v Speaker 1>should be very ready to see that drive a lot
<v Speaker 1>of policy. It'll never be admitted. But one last thing
<v Speaker 1>I want to throw in your face before we get
<v Speaker 1>to a much needed break. What a year for bribery
<v Speaker 1>in the open? What a year for just beating the crab.
<v Speaker 1>It's like he got away with everything with the Emolument's clause.
<v Speaker 1>I said this many times to you. They could have
<v Speaker 1>impeached Donald Trump in the first minute of his inaugural
<v Speaker 1>address for violating the Constitution's emoluments clause, for not just
<v Speaker 1>making money off the office, but now in this term,
<v Speaker 1>the bribes, the bribes from his crypto hole, and how
<v Speaker 1>he's made literally billions with a be This president has
<v Speaker 1>personally enriched himself by billions of dollars off the office
<v Speaker 1>in eleven months to this four hundred million dollars Boeing
<v Speaker 1>seven forty seven from those champions of democracy, the Katari
<v Speaker 1>royal family for his personal use. Corey, I know there's
<v Speaker 1>so much malfeasans out there, but I've given up hope
<v Speaker 1>on the Democratic Party ever doing a thing about the bribery.
<v Speaker 1>It's just normal now.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, when we began this podcast, I did
<v Speaker 2>a series of kind of on location videos to try
<v Speaker 2>to promote and just to let people know that we
<v Speaker 2>were doing this, and one was it Fact Hall, and
<v Speaker 2>I went down there because Washington and his first inaugural
<v Speaker 2>adjust what does he talk about. He talks about this
<v Speaker 2>issue that you're raising emoluments. What is an emolument? It
<v Speaker 2>means basically the Washington pledges that he'll take no emolument.
<v Speaker 2>The Constitution has two clauses about this topic of emoluments,
<v Speaker 2>one banning domestic emoluments and the other banning international And
<v Speaker 2>what it means essentially in a molument is using the
<v Speaker 2>Office for profit, and the Emolument's clauses that you can't
<v Speaker 2>do that. And what has Trump done. Washington thought this
<v Speaker 2>was so important because kings and queens and monarchs that
<v Speaker 2>had always, you know, as a matter of course, done this.
<v Speaker 2>They settled foreign wars to profit. They used the country
<v Speaker 2>in order to benefit themselves with the history of colonialism
<v Speaker 2>is largely about the profit of monarchs. And this country
<v Speaker 2>said so clearly, you know, putting it in twice, No,
<v Speaker 2>you can't do it. In case you were confused that
<v Speaker 2>you can't do it by profiting from foreign relations, you
<v Speaker 2>also can't do it domestically. They had to say it
<v Speaker 2>two times. There's a great quote of my one of
<v Speaker 2>my favorite flowserhers Isaiah Berlin, who was asked to speak
<v Speaker 2>more slowly once in a seminar, spoke very rapidly, and
<v Speaker 2>he said, well, I won't speak more slowly, but I'll
<v Speaker 2>say it twice. Well, that's what the founders did.
<v Speaker 3>They didn't have a way of.
<v Speaker 2>Speaking more slowly or putting it in print, but they
<v Speaker 2>had to say it twice to get the idea out.
<v Speaker 2>And here Trump is in all those examples that you
<v Speaker 2>just listed thing after thing, and yet you know, as
<v Speaker 2>bad as it is, I don't know where it is
<v Speaker 2>on our list, but we are getting to it.
<v Speaker 3>Towards We've gone through a lot already.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean again, George Washington defined the office by
<v Speaker 2>not doing this thing, and Trump again and again from
<v Speaker 2>the Trump Hotel in the first term where he was
<v Speaker 2>having dignitaries staying there to you know, charging the Secret
<v Speaker 2>Service all sorts of money for still doing that. Now
<v Speaker 2>he's at a next level of doing it.
<v Speaker 1>The rickety guardrails that are remaining in place, I'll be
<v Speaker 1>forever grateful for. And I think it's just another reminder
<v Speaker 1>set up before, but there are no adults in the room,
<v Speaker 1>although there may be a few adult film stars in
<v Speaker 1>the room. We'll find out when Michael Wolfe publishes several
<v Speaker 1>dozen books about this year. Okay, we got to take
<v Speaker 1>a break where Wendy's going to collapse back in just
<v Speaker 1>a moment. With the oath in the Office.
<v Speaker 4>Hey all, clean Kershner here, friends, I hope you'll join
<v Speaker 4>me on my audio podcast, Justice Matters. We talk about
<v Speaker 4>not only the legal issues of the day, but we
<v Speaker 4>also talk about the need to reform ethics in our government.
<v Speaker 3>Here's one example.
<v Speaker 4>The oath of office, you know, the one I do
<v Speaker 4>solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies,
<v Speaker 4>foreign and domestic. Let's add twenty two words to that
<v Speaker 4>oath quote, and I will promptly report any instances of
<v Speaker 4>crime and or corruption by government officials and employees of
<v Speaker 4>which I've become aware. Friends, our democracy is worth fighting for.
<v Speaker 4>Join us in this fight, because justice matters. Look for
<v Speaker 4>justice matters wherever you ordinarily find your podcasts.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the Oath in the Office, January first,
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty sixth edition. I'm John Fugel, saying alone with
<v Speaker 1>Professor Corey Bretschneider. Corey, I gotta say, Judge Bosberg has
<v Speaker 1>become a real, unlikely resistance hero. I know he was
<v Speaker 1>a Republican nominee, but he's sort of becoming a folk
<v Speaker 1>icon for people who are worried about democracy. He's refused
<v Speaker 1>the arguments that would say those deported to Venezuela have
<v Speaker 1>no due process because of the Enemy Aliens Act, and
<v Speaker 1>he's not gonna say it's too late because they've left
<v Speaker 1>the country. I mean, he's not just standing up for
<v Speaker 1>the rule of law. He's actually standing up for basic
<v Speaker 1>humanitarian ideals, which I'm old enough to remember Republicans not
<v Speaker 1>considering woke what's most striking to you about Judge Boseberg's approach.
<v Speaker 3>Well, a shout out to Judge Boseburg. I love this.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's like a one if I had the
<v Speaker 2>big one Judge who was just again and again refusing
<v Speaker 2>to give up, even though in many instances he could
<v Speaker 2>have just let this go from the contempt investigation that
<v Speaker 2>he's continuing against those just to remind people from an
<v Speaker 2>earlier broadcast, and we first reported on this and talked
<v Speaker 2>about this with Mike Zaymour of the ACLU.
<v Speaker 3>If you remember months ago when.
<v Speaker 2>Bosburgh got this case, the deportation of Abrego Garcia to
<v Speaker 2>the gulag in El Salvador, claiming that he was a
<v Speaker 2>member of this gang without any evidence, and they still
<v Speaker 2>haven't proven it. And you know, they tried all sorts
<v Speaker 2>of things to get away with it, and the main
<v Speaker 2>one was just refusing the order and sending people abroad.
<v Speaker 2>And now there's a new case that the ACLU has
<v Speaker 2>brought different group of people, a group of Venezuelans who
<v Speaker 2>were deported to this gulag in El Salvador, and the
<v Speaker 2>administration is saying, well, they're already there, so it's too late.
<v Speaker 3>It's moot.
<v Speaker 2>And by the way, they don't have due prime anyway
<v Speaker 2>under the seventeen ninety eight Alien Enemies Act. And to
<v Speaker 2>remind people about this law kind of you know, always
<v Speaker 2>mixing history and what's happening. But in seventeen ninety eight,
<v Speaker 2>it was an awful year for American democracy. It was
<v Speaker 2>the year John Adams and his party passed the Sedition Act,
<v Speaker 2>making it a crime to criticize the president of the
<v Speaker 2>United States, but not the vice president was.
<v Speaker 3>Thomas Jefferson, his opponent.
<v Speaker 2>One of my favorite details of American history and past,
<v Speaker 2>this crazy statute, the seventeen ninety eight Alien Enemies Act,
<v Speaker 2>that essentially said if you are and this is how
<v Speaker 2>the administration is claiming to read it, that if you
<v Speaker 2>are a member of an enemy nation and they're claiming
<v Speaker 2>Venezuela is you have no right.
<v Speaker 3>To do process.
<v Speaker 2>What does that mean that we don't have to say
<v Speaker 2>what the charges are against you, We don't have to
<v Speaker 2>prove that any of the things we're saying about you
<v Speaker 2>are true in court. That's their argument that it really
<v Speaker 2>is a revocation entirely of the rule of law and
<v Speaker 2>a kind of monarchical power over those of supposed enemy nations.
<v Speaker 2>And this judge is saying, first of all, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I'll put it clearly, he's saying, in a way, I
<v Speaker 2>don't care what this law from seventeen ninety eight says.
<v Speaker 2>I'll tell you what the Constitution says. You have a
<v Speaker 2>right to habeas corbus, to know what the charges are
<v Speaker 2>against you, a right to do process, and the Constitution
<v Speaker 2>is above this law. And no, I'm not going to
<v Speaker 2>accept it as a fact that because you've already sent
<v Speaker 2>these people to the Gulag, that you know they have
<v Speaker 2>no right are You're not going to get away with that.
<v Speaker 2>That's why he's been, you know, in a horrible year
<v Speaker 2>of twenty twenty five, a real hero throughout.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I want I want to ask about the Alien
<v Speaker 1>Enemy Zact, but first I just want to talk about
<v Speaker 1>this this other point that we just touched on briefly
<v Speaker 1>because I don't think it's been mentioned really enough. But
<v Speaker 1>this whole too late argument, right that Donald Trump's lawyers argued,
<v Speaker 1>after these people were illegally kidnapped and renditioned to way
<v Speaker 1>to torture prisons, oh it's too late. They're already gone.
<v Speaker 1>So the court can't help Listen, I'm just a mukoway
<v Speaker 1>at the public school, but even I know that that's
<v Speaker 1>corrosive to the rule of law. Corey, if our courts
<v Speaker 1>accepted the idea that government can evade any kind of
<v Speaker 1>review just by acting fast enough. If you're fast enough government,
<v Speaker 1>you can get around the law. What would that do
<v Speaker 1>to the constitutional protections across the board? If this Supreme
<v Speaker 1>Court were that insanely corrupt?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think that what Bozburg sees, and he's saying
<v Speaker 2>so clearly, is that I'm not going to create a
<v Speaker 2>situation that incentivizes government to disobey me fast. Because if
<v Speaker 2>you know what he's you know what he was righteously
<v Speaker 2>up in arms about was the fact that he said,
<v Speaker 2>do not send these planes to this Gulag prison in
<v Speaker 2>El Salvador. He gave a very clear order in court,
<v Speaker 2>and using these like ridiculous arguments that the order was
<v Speaker 2>spoken rather than written, the administration defied him and sent
<v Speaker 2>people there anyway. So the idea, you know, you could
<v Speaker 2>see him just steaming thinking about it. It's it's on
<v Speaker 2>the page that he's going to reward this by saying, well,
<v Speaker 2>it's too late, because you disobeyed my order. I don't
<v Speaker 2>think so that's his messages. You know, you're not going
<v Speaker 2>to get away with disobeying the law by saying it's
<v Speaker 2>too late, no way.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And as far as the Alien Enemies Act, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>this is another example of what you've warned us about before, Corey,
<v Speaker 1>using old laws ripped away from their historical context just
<v Speaker 1>to justify modern authoritarian power grabs. I mean, at the
<v Speaker 1>end of the day, this whole fight, to me as
<v Speaker 1>a layperson, just seems like whether due process applies to
<v Speaker 1>people powerful white folks don't like.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I will say, you know, as much as that's
<v Speaker 2>often true, that they're taking laws out of context and
<v Speaker 2>abusing them when it comes to this specific law, the
<v Speaker 2>seventeen ninety eight Enemy Aliens Act, I think in some
<v Speaker 2>ways the historical context is as frightening as what we're
<v Speaker 2>facing now, as you know, John. But I'll remind some
<v Speaker 2>of our new listeners that in my book The Presidents
<v Speaker 2>and the Peace People a Five Leaders who Threatened Democracy
<v Speaker 2>and the Citizens who fought to defend it, which was
<v Speaker 2>written before this second Trump term but is unfortunately extremely relevant,
<v Speaker 2>I talk about what happened in seventeen ninety eight, and
<v Speaker 2>it is a tragic year, a lot like twenty twenty five.
<v Speaker 2>Fact that if I had to pick one year that
<v Speaker 2>had a parallel, I would say that's it. And that
<v Speaker 2>was a year that John Adams definitely want to be
<v Speaker 2>authoritarian president, who saw the president as a kind of monarch.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, he thought the British king was too weak
<v Speaker 2>and needed to be stronger, and the US president had
<v Speaker 2>to be stronger than the British king if you could
<v Speaker 2>believe that. Saw to it that a series of laws
<v Speaker 2>that shut down democracy were passed, and they succeeded. They
<v Speaker 2>prosecuted one hundred and twenty five or so political opponents,
<v Speaker 2>and then they also revoke the rights of due process
<v Speaker 2>for non citizens. So what Bozburg's got to struggle with
<v Speaker 2>here is it's not as easy as saying, well, seventeen
<v Speaker 2>ninety eight, you know, it was a different circumstance.
<v Speaker 3>No, it was in some ways the same circumstance.
<v Speaker 2>So his argument is, well, it doesn't matter what John
<v Speaker 2>Adams thought. The Constitution stands above any law, and the
<v Speaker 2>Constitution and its right to do process is what's in
<v Speaker 2>play here. And that's why what he's doing is so important,
<v Speaker 2>because he's really acknowledging. I think that you know, maybe
<v Speaker 2>this law would allow it, but that the law isn't
<v Speaker 2>the final say.
<v Speaker 3>The final say is the Constitution.
<v Speaker 1>Well, then let me zoom out a little bit to
<v Speaker 1>the great State of Florida featuring the world's worst Donald
<v Speaker 1>Trump impersonator, and that would be Governor Ron DeSantis. I've
<v Speaker 1>seen some bad Trump impressions and comedy clubs in my life, Cory.
<v Speaker 1>No one does a worse Trump impression than DeSantis, except
<v Speaker 1>maybe next year when we start watching JD. Vans doing
<v Speaker 1>his impression of DeSantis doing his impression of Trump. But
<v Speaker 1>this attack on New College by DeSantis in Florida, it
<v Speaker 1>seems to be a blueprint for this entire right wing
<v Speaker 1>movements war on education. Anything that they don't like that
<v Speaker 1>is not geared towards Caucasians and power, they call it
<v Speaker 1>woke and they replace it with some kind of crypto
<v Speaker 1>fascist nonsense, or they'll pretend that Charlie Kirk was not
<v Speaker 1>a lying, racist bamboozler. May he rest in peace and
<v Speaker 1>trying to shoehorn worship of a podcaster, Worship of a
<v Speaker 1>racist podcaster who lied about the Bible into our public schools.
<v Speaker 1>Corey I mean, is this just a one off culture
<v Speaker 1>war fight? Where do you see this as the blueprint?
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, the New College situation was, by all accounts,
<v Speaker 2>this very serious academic institution with serious scholars, and it
<v Speaker 2>became under attack because in the words of the new
<v Speaker 2>president and the view of the administration, including the World
<v Speaker 2>Wrestling WWE is it or it used to be WWF
<v Speaker 2>when I followed it, World Wrestling Federation Department of Education
<v Speaker 2>person Linda McMahon.
<v Speaker 1>This was also who also helped cover up sex abuse.
<v Speaker 1>So she is qualified to be in the cabinet. I
<v Speaker 1>want to point that out. She has qualified. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>grew up thinking that pro wrestling was going to destroy
<v Speaker 1>American education. I didn't know it was going to be
<v Speaker 1>this literal, but yeah, go on, please.
<v Speaker 2>I was just going to say that the story of
<v Speaker 2>New College, you know, is you see what they're trying
<v Speaker 2>to achieve. And you're referring, of course, to their decision
<v Speaker 2>to put a statue of Charlie Kirk there as some
<v Speaker 2>sort of champion of free speech despite his many odious views,
<v Speaker 2>and again, may he rest in peace, we can be
<v Speaker 2>respectful and still acknowledge that this was not a hero
<v Speaker 2>of free.
<v Speaker 3>Speech in any way.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, I think that what we've got to
<v Speaker 2>see too, is that the administration, it's not just about
<v Speaker 2>New College, has this idea of the compact that they've
<v Speaker 2>offered to several universities. Originally it was just a few,
<v Speaker 2>and then they've expanded it. And I just want to say,
<v Speaker 2>what's in there. It says that, you know, you'll get
<v Speaker 2>a priority for grants from the federal government if you
<v Speaker 2>prohibit the disparagement of conservative ideas on campus. Now, that
<v Speaker 2>word disparagement, you know, what does that really mean?
<v Speaker 1>What does that mean?
<v Speaker 2>Mocking and criticizing and doing the stuff critical critical thought.
<v Speaker 2>And so if you want to claim to be a
<v Speaker 2>champion of free speech, you can't create a compact that
<v Speaker 2>essentially gets rid of it. And you know New College
<v Speaker 2>has embraced that, and you're seeing that in real time.
<v Speaker 3>What that really means.
<v Speaker 2>It means an ideological task of whether or not you'll
<v Speaker 2>show loyalty to this administration. The theme throughout that that
<v Speaker 2>has nothing to do with free speech or academia or
<v Speaker 2>free inquiry or critical thinking.
<v Speaker 1>You know, whenever I do any of these shows or
<v Speaker 1>on TV, and any one of these folks leaves the
<v Speaker 1>right wing bubble and uses the word woke or wokeness.
<v Speaker 1>Outside of the bubble, I always drop what I'm doing,
<v Speaker 1>and I asked that person, will you tell me what
<v Speaker 1>that word means, because woke used to mean a word
<v Speaker 1>that anti racist used as referring to awareness of institutionalized racism,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like just you're aware, and now it's a
<v Speaker 1>word that racists use to slur and mock anyone who
<v Speaker 1>is anti discrimination, any anti discrimination policies. Again, this is
<v Speaker 1>what you have to notice with the right. They never
<v Speaker 1>get angry at racism or police brutality. They get furious
<v Speaker 1>at protests against racism and against police brutality. They don't
<v Speaker 1>get menet discrimination. They get furious at anti discrimination laws
<v Speaker 1>or policies in a workplace. They say that they're eliminating wokeness,
<v Speaker 1>which again means empathy, an awareness of injustice and wanting
<v Speaker 1>to correct it. What they're really doing, it seems, is
<v Speaker 1>replacing basic academic freedom and critical thinking with blind ideological loyalty.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, is that a fair description there? They're they're
<v Speaker 1>honoring Charlie Kirk, a partisan, dishonest activist who was not
<v Speaker 1>a christ follower. If you want to get really technical
<v Speaker 1>about it. In Fife for anythings Jesus talked about, but
<v Speaker 1>use Jesus's name to grift for power an extensive history
<v Speaker 1>of nakedly racist, bigoted statements. While they're purging faculty, well
<v Speaker 1>they're purging programs. I mean, I don't know where to
<v Speaker 1>begin with this great What role does the control of
<v Speaker 1>education play in authoritarian movement throughout history?
<v Speaker 2>Well, I'm thinking the first thing is if you believe
<v Speaker 2>in free inquiry, you believe in critical thinking and serious thinking,
<v Speaker 2>don't use a word like woke to cover some general
<v Speaker 2>ay thing.
<v Speaker 3>That you're against.
<v Speaker 2>You have to define your terms, talk in specifics, be honest,
<v Speaker 2>and engage in real intellectual back and forth. So, you know,
<v Speaker 2>what does that mean that they're against what? It's just
<v Speaker 2>unclear that they don't like certain beliefs, I think is what.
<v Speaker 3>It comes to. Its code word.
<v Speaker 2>We're saying, you know, we don't want people around who
<v Speaker 2>are too much in favor of anti discrimination whistle. And
<v Speaker 2>so it's really a defense of ideology. And what's so
<v Speaker 2>upsetting to me, as somebody who studies as part of
<v Speaker 2>my you know, academic work free speech is to claim
<v Speaker 2>that somehow in opposing woke, quote unquote that you are
<v Speaker 2>defending free speech and at the same time having this
<v Speaker 2>compact which is incentivizing the shutdown of free speech, getting
<v Speaker 2>rid of professors essentially who are critical of this administration.
<v Speaker 2>I should say, let's just start with the basics when
<v Speaker 2>it comes to free speech. Congress shall make no law
<v Speaker 2>abridging a freedom of speech. In Congress, there is a
<v Speaker 2>stand in for the government and including the federal government,
<v Speaker 2>including the president. And part of the framing of the
<v Speaker 2>First Amendment was worrying about the presidency and the monarch
<v Speaker 2>having what a shutdown of free speech and monarchs, of course,
<v Speaker 2>if you criticize them, you could be murdered, a tried
<v Speaker 2>for sedition and exec So what are they doing here.
<v Speaker 2>They're trying to set up a system where again you
<v Speaker 2>cannot criticize the monarch. They can't do it. They're not
<v Speaker 2>doing it through the criminal law. They're using incentives. And
<v Speaker 2>at the same time they're pretending to be free speech defenders,
<v Speaker 2>and that there are evidently people who have some academic
<v Speaker 2>credentials or at least working in academia, that are enabling
<v Speaker 2>them and doing that.
<v Speaker 3>I'm so proud of Brown.
<v Speaker 2>I have to say, and we've been through so much
<v Speaker 2>this year, with this horrible attack on the university, the shooting,
<v Speaker 2>the murder of two of our students, who beloved by
<v Speaker 2>all accounts, And yet there was a moment too that
<v Speaker 2>we can look to for pride despite this awful, tragic event.
<v Speaker 2>We can look to pride certainly in the way that
<v Speaker 2>we have recovered, that we fought back, that we've come together,
<v Speaker 2>that we've honored what's happened. But there also was a
<v Speaker 2>moment where the administration was phased. We were one of
<v Speaker 2>the original schools that was offered this compact. And one
<v Speaker 2>thing that I'm proud of this was before the tragedy
<v Speaker 2>of the shooting, was that the administration said so clearly
<v Speaker 2>in a letter to the federal government.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely not.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, we had agreed in a previous settlement that
<v Speaker 2>the administration would respect the academic freedom and independence of
<v Speaker 2>the university as part of the fundamental idea, and in
<v Speaker 2>offering this compact, they were essentially saying that they don't
<v Speaker 2>believe in academic freedom at all, and in free inquiry
<v Speaker 2>and the idea it's all couched in terms of free speech.
<v Speaker 2>Is part of what's so absurd about this year part
<v Speaker 2>of an authoritarian shutdown. That's the same way that in
<v Speaker 2>the other cases that we talked about of free speech.
<v Speaker 1>But again it's no different than their claims of Christianity.
<v Speaker 1>They don't follow any of the teachings Christ fought for it,
<v Speaker 1>and they don't follow the Constitution. These are words they
<v Speaker 1>use to cloak their selfish dealings in some sort of
<v Speaker 1>respectability or institutionalized integrity, when in reality, I mean, if
<v Speaker 1>this model that the Santus is trying in Florida, because again,
<v Speaker 1>this guy's always running for president, right, if this model
<v Speaker 1>spreads nationally, Professor, what happens to higher education and civic
<v Speaker 1>literacy and just democracy in general. Because you know, they're
<v Speaker 1>not going to stop in Florida. They're going to try
<v Speaker 1>and have statues of Charlie Kirk and teach people that
<v Speaker 1>wokeness blows your legs off in all fifty states.
<v Speaker 2>I love that way of putting it. It really gets
<v Speaker 2>the heart of the matter. They are trying it, they
<v Speaker 2>are doing it, and they have this method, which is
<v Speaker 2>the compact. The federal government has an enormous amount of money. Universities,
<v Speaker 2>some are cash dropped. Even those that are not want
<v Speaker 2>this money, and so using this incentive to agree to
<v Speaker 2>not disparage conservative ideas core part of the compact in
<v Speaker 2>exchange for preference and grants. That's how they're going to
<v Speaker 2>do it. And New College has done it. New College
<v Speaker 2>is exhibiting it.
<v Speaker 3>What does it mean.
<v Speaker 2>It means that your faculty become subjects, not citizens, that
<v Speaker 2>they're not capable of independent thought because they're worried about
<v Speaker 2>their jobs. And by all accounts, the curriculum, the critical
<v Speaker 2>inquiry that might have characterized New College in the past
<v Speaker 2>is being destroyed. And you have a president and his
<v Speaker 2>quotes were outrageous, the opposite of what a president with
<v Speaker 2>integrity would do. Who's cheering this all on? And so No,
<v Speaker 2>the New College is just the first example of what
<v Speaker 2>they're trying to do nationally.
<v Speaker 3>And you know it's important too.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they're very aware of what happened with Victor
<v Speaker 2>Orbon for instance in Hungary, that university professors are one
<v Speaker 2>of the places, not the only, but one of the
<v Speaker 2>places where you get a lot of pushback against authoritarian power.
<v Speaker 2>You have people in those universesities who have studied the
<v Speaker 2>nineteen thirties, the fascist takeover of so much of Europe,
<v Speaker 2>the attempt of it to take over the world, and
<v Speaker 2>see the comparison in modern authoritarians.
<v Speaker 3>They've got rid of Hannah Rent, whose book.
<v Speaker 2>Onto Threat define the threat to democracy of much of
<v Speaker 2>the twentieth century, because you know, they think it's safer
<v Speaker 2>to read Homer.
<v Speaker 3>That's what this article talks about.
<v Speaker 2>And you just don't want the administration, the Trump McMahon
<v Speaker 2>Department of Education to be dictating what's taught to students,
<v Speaker 2>to be doing free inquiry because they don't care about that.
<v Speaker 2>They want and to go back to the theme of monarchy.
<v Speaker 2>They want subjects, not citizens.
<v Speaker 1>I do want to point out, though, in fairness, that
<v Speaker 1>every time jd. Vance speaks in public, the estate of
<v Speaker 1>Hannah Arent gets a royalty check for the expression the
<v Speaker 1>banality of evil. So at least there's that. We got
<v Speaker 1>to hit another break. But let's come back and talk
<v Speaker 1>about the year to come. Corey, what that was a.
<v Speaker 3>Great political theory joke? Really?
<v Speaker 1>Oh thank you. Let me tell you. Normally I open
<v Speaker 1>with my hat material at the college shows, but for you, well,
<v Speaker 1>I'll say that here. Thank you.
<v Speaker 2>Among my college Oh.
<v Speaker 1>You should hear my jokes about Larry Summers. My god,
<v Speaker 1>they're a little derivative. All right, So whien we come back.
<v Speaker 1>Let's talk about this power without accountability healthscape we're facing
<v Speaker 1>for the next year, and what to watch for. Next
<v Speaker 1>to this is The Oath in the Office.
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<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the first twenty twenty six episode of
<v Speaker 1>The Oath in the Office. I am John Fegel, saying
<v Speaker 1>so grateful as always to be here with Professor Corey
<v Speaker 1>Bretschneiter and Corey. I just want to thank you for
<v Speaker 1>a great year. I'm going to ask you what your
<v Speaker 1>favorite albums or films of the year were. But I
<v Speaker 1>want to just begin the end here by talking about
<v Speaker 1>the common threat that we witnessed in the year that
<v Speaker 1>just wrapped. And it seems to me, if you can
<v Speaker 1>reduce it to anything, it's evil power without accountability, you know,
<v Speaker 1>whether it's the National Guard, the deportations, universities. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>what do you see as the common constitutional threat that's
<v Speaker 1>tying all of this Michigas together.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, I think in Trump one point zero,
<v Speaker 2>there was a big debate among not you and I
<v Speaker 2>we were agreeing about this, but among pundets, among academics
<v Speaker 2>who studied fascism. Is Trump really an authoritarian or is
<v Speaker 2>he just a normal Republican with conservative ideals? And part
<v Speaker 2>of why that debate was allowed to happen, I think
<v Speaker 2>is because so many things were being stopped. You had
<v Speaker 2>the lower courts and even the Supreme Court at least
<v Speaker 2>temporarily stopping things, you know, forcing Trump to change his mind.
<v Speaker 3>You had civil servants.
<v Speaker 2>That were in place that were limiting even people we
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't have expected within the Department of Justice. And no,
<v Speaker 2>nowhere was that more apparent than the refusal of the
<v Speaker 2>Department of Justice as a whole to go along with
<v Speaker 2>the attempt to take over the government in January sixth.
<v Speaker 2>So it's not that that was smooth sailing, but you know,
<v Speaker 2>things were. I think it's fair to say less dangerous
<v Speaker 2>than right now. But what's happening now is a simultaneous
<v Speaker 2>attempt to destroy democracy and to declare a kind of
<v Speaker 2>dictatorship with the weakening of the Czechs by the Supreme
<v Speaker 2>Court of the United States and the birthright citizenship case
<v Speaker 2>despite what happened now, and allowing the military deployments up
<v Speaker 2>till now, in the eviseration of universal injunctions, the power
<v Speaker 2>of courts to stop the federal government, the use of
<v Speaker 2>the shadow docket or emergency orders.
<v Speaker 3>Without reason to allow all of this.
<v Speaker 2>So you have, you know, those two branches working together,
<v Speaker 2>the Court enabling the president, and then you have Congress
<v Speaker 2>really just giving up its own power, of course, controlled
<v Speaker 2>by the Republican Party. So things are much more frightening now.
<v Speaker 2>It is an attempted self coup. I'll stand by that
<v Speaker 2>idea still and you know, although we have moments of
<v Speaker 2>hope and pushback, it's it's working in a much stronger
<v Speaker 2>way than it did in Trump one point zero.
<v Speaker 1>Is this I worked on this question. Are we witnessing
<v Speaker 1>a shift from the rule of law to rule by loyalty?
<v Speaker 3>I think?
<v Speaker 2>So. You know, I've been watching asking about what what
<v Speaker 2>television I'm watching. I watch too much television, as people
<v Speaker 2>who know me would tell you, but I'm also learning
<v Speaker 2>from it.
<v Speaker 1>And one of the getting fun anything fun, I think.
<v Speaker 2>So I'll tell you The Victoria, which is about Queen
<v Speaker 2>Victoria on Netflix, is so good. I mean, I don't
<v Speaker 2>know if you have seen it, Yeah, yeah, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>And part of what I'm amazed by is the constraint
<v Speaker 2>on her power. Like even in the nineteenth century. You know,
<v Speaker 2>this kind of story of the eighteen hundreds in England
<v Speaker 2>is of a pretty weak monarch who you know, defers
<v Speaker 2>to Parliament largely, who has moments of intervention. But compared
<v Speaker 2>to what Trump is trying to do here is again
<v Speaker 2>to make himself stronger than a monarch. That's what John
<v Speaker 2>Adams thought of the presidency, although he still had you know,
<v Speaker 2>he was.
<v Speaker 3>A serious scholar.
<v Speaker 2>This is just somebody who combines narcissism with his desire
<v Speaker 2>to destroy democracy, and he's succeeding in large part. That's
<v Speaker 2>what's so frightening about this moment. So I don't know
<v Speaker 2>if that answers the question fully, but I guess what
<v Speaker 2>I was going to say about Victoria. Sorry, I did
<v Speaker 2>have a bigger point, which is, you know, the British
<v Speaker 2>really have this idea even within monarchy, even without a
<v Speaker 2>full democracy, and early nineteenth century England, there isn't universal
<v Speaker 2>voting by any measure.
<v Speaker 3>There's limits and you know.
<v Speaker 2>Property owners and although Parliament is pa but they have
<v Speaker 2>a rule of law. And one of the scenes that's
<v Speaker 2>most powerful in Victoria is that there's an assassination or
<v Speaker 2>multiple assassination attempts on her, but the first one. And
<v Speaker 2>I went and fact checked all this, so it isn't
<v Speaker 2>just in the show that the assassin who tries to
<v Speaker 2>attack her, tries to murder her, is tried in court,
<v Speaker 2>and of course she wants to see or her life
<v Speaker 2>was threatened. She wants to see this person convicted. But
<v Speaker 2>they find him to be not guilty by reason of
<v Speaker 2>insanity and he's not given the punishment of death, which
<v Speaker 2>you would get for an attempt to kill a monarch,
<v Speaker 2>and you know she honors it. She says, the courts
<v Speaker 2>have spoken. That's how it works. I'm not getting to
<v Speaker 2>decide the fate of people, even the people who attack me.
<v Speaker 2>The law does that, the rule of law. So even
<v Speaker 2>in monarchy, you have this idea of the rule of law,
<v Speaker 2>and what do we have here? We have really an
<v Speaker 2>attempt to destroy it. What is that whole story that
<v Speaker 2>we just talked about in depth about the Gulagan al
<v Speaker 2>Salvad or the Enemy Aliens Act, but an attempt to
<v Speaker 2>destroy even the constraints on the monarch. And that is
<v Speaker 2>what John Adams was trying to do.
<v Speaker 1>Did you make it through and Door season two? Corey?
<v Speaker 1>Did you get through and or season two?
<v Speaker 3>We did? Yeah? Okay, oh yeah, which the whole thing awesome.
<v Speaker 1>At some point.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, any any films professor that that caught your right
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have to be constitutional. Although I've said on the
<v Speaker 1>show before, to me, one of the greatest lines of
<v Speaker 1>dialogue of the year is in James Gunn Superman, where
<v Speaker 1>Superman is told the Constitution doesn't apply to you because
<v Speaker 1>you're an alien, and I'm like, how did this guy
<v Speaker 1>know writing this script in two thousand and two, how
<v Speaker 1>prescient that line would be. Were there any films that
<v Speaker 1>really turned you on this year?
<v Speaker 3>There were a lot.
<v Speaker 2>I mean I have to single out one battle after another.
<v Speaker 2>Leonardo DiCaprio's amazing film. I mean, just the way that
<v Speaker 2>so much of it, you know, with this is the
<v Speaker 2>DiCaprio film that was directed by all the time, and
<v Speaker 2>the way it depicts this frightening world that is in
<v Speaker 2>some ways, you know, I think before this Tooy twenty five,
<v Speaker 2>we would have said that this is a dystopian world
<v Speaker 2>in which there don't seem to be many rights, and
<v Speaker 2>where you have this, you know, kind of authoritarian power.
<v Speaker 2>Sean Penn in it as a frightening sort of ice
<v Speaker 2>leader the equivalent device. And yet when you watch it
<v Speaker 2>it's dystopian. It is dystopian, there's no question about it.
<v Speaker 2>And you have heroes pushing back.
<v Speaker 3>Along the way.
<v Speaker 2>It resembles our own society in such a frightening way.
<v Speaker 2>So is it a pleasure to watch? I mean, it's
<v Speaker 2>a great film, great acting, but it's eerie in the way.
<v Speaker 2>While in the way you were suggesting with Superman, the
<v Speaker 2>parallels with the current moment. I mean, I just have
<v Speaker 2>to believe. I know that was in production long before
<v Speaker 2>Trump took power, but there was a sense that this
<v Speaker 2>could happen, and it is happening. And you know, this film,
<v Speaker 2>I highly recommend it. How about you, John, I.
<v Speaker 1>Mean, you know, I loved many films this year, but
<v Speaker 1>I loved Superman, I loved Sinners. One battle after another
<v Speaker 1>has a lot of lovely moments. I mean, I think
<v Speaker 1>Del Torros, Frankenstein is great, and I love Trained Dreams.
<v Speaker 1>If you want to sob for hours, I mean, it's
<v Speaker 1>actually in the last year we've had, I would argue
<v Speaker 1>the best Superman movie ever, the best Frankenstein movie ever,
<v Speaker 1>and last December with nos Vatu, the best Dracula movie ever.
<v Speaker 1>And I've never needed non political entertainment more than I
<v Speaker 1>needed it this year, Corey. But I want to thank
<v Speaker 1>you as well, because my book and this podcast were
<v Speaker 1>my project twenty twenty five, and it's been such a
<v Speaker 1>pleasure to build this thing up and watch the audience
<v Speaker 1>find it and watch it take off. And so I
<v Speaker 1>have to ask you about the year to come now.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, what should we be watching for next? Legally politically,
<v Speaker 1>what do you think we should keep our eyes open.
<v Speaker 1>That would signal a real escalation.
<v Speaker 2>I do want to say a shout out to your book,
<v Speaker 2>John and all the success of Separation of Church and Hate.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, one of the pleasures of doing this
<v Speaker 2>podcast was talking to you about that as it was
<v Speaker 2>being written, and then seeing it come out, and then
<v Speaker 2>seeing the way it took off. And I you know,
<v Speaker 2>it is one of the things about twenty twenty five
<v Speaker 2>that gives me hope because I know from our own
<v Speaker 2>listeners and hearing from many of them, that so much
<v Speaker 2>of your audience, you know, is curious about how to
<v Speaker 2>fight back against hate being co opted by the theocrats,
<v Speaker 2>and to show that even within the tradition of Christianity,
<v Speaker 2>that there's so many resources we're pushing back. So that
<v Speaker 2>really did give me so much hope, not just that
<v Speaker 2>I liked the book and that I loved our interview
<v Speaker 2>right around the time that it came out, but that
<v Speaker 2>people are responding to it in the way that they are.
<v Speaker 2>I think that just shows you that the culture, as
<v Speaker 2>much as we're facing this authoritarian crackdown, that there is
<v Speaker 2>this deep culture of democracy and culture of pluralism that
<v Speaker 2>doesn't want to see religion co opted and used as
<v Speaker 2>a vehicle of hate, and that's what your book does
<v Speaker 2>so well, and that's why you're getting this wide response.
<v Speaker 2>So that really just was such a pleasure to be
<v Speaker 2>you know, a part of it, to hear from listeners
<v Speaker 2>in terms of hope. You know, I think that that
<v Speaker 2>leads us to the deeper idea, which is that the
<v Speaker 2>culture has so many resources in it.
<v Speaker 3>It has history in it, it has the law.
<v Speaker 2>Let's not forget that it's still there even if it's
<v Speaker 2>being usurped. And yes it is under attack, but it's
<v Speaker 2>also there, as Judge Boseberg shows us, and you have decency.
<v Speaker 2>I think that in this society we have people who
<v Speaker 2>you know, throughout American history have fought back in these
<v Speaker 2>authoritarian moments. And that's what this has been about for me,
<v Speaker 2>this podcast, it's been a pleasure. It has this element
<v Speaker 2>of solidarity, hearing from listeners, watching it grow from you know,
<v Speaker 2>a modest beginning to one of the top podcasts, as
<v Speaker 2>you said, in the government category, usually top three when
<v Speaker 2>the episodes come out. You know that there's lots of
<v Speaker 2>hope in that. For me, in our small corner, any
<v Speaker 2>way of resisting this authoritarian shutdown of democracy.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of that is because I threatened to sue
<v Speaker 1>the Apple Charts and they back down and gave us
<v Speaker 1>a better replace trick I learned this year threatening people
<v Speaker 1>with lawsuits to make them bend the law and obey
<v Speaker 1>with you, obey you. It's a whole thing. But I mean, like,
<v Speaker 1>let me let me ask, like, what would to you
<v Speaker 1>signal a real escalation that we should be worried? What
<v Speaker 1>should we have our eyes open for that legally or
<v Speaker 1>politically that this guy is going beyond what he tried
<v Speaker 1>this year as the decades of untreated syphilis nestle in
<v Speaker 1>his brain even more. I mean, what are you the
<v Speaker 1>most scared of opening up the paper and seeing Corey Well?
<v Speaker 2>Really, you know, every week we get an example of it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, the idea that we would begin this podcast
<v Speaker 2>and then it would turn out that Trump was just
<v Speaker 2>another president and there wasn't an authoritarian shutdown of democracy.
<v Speaker 2>You know, if you want to see proved that that
<v Speaker 2>didn't happen, look every week that these stories are ongoing,
<v Speaker 2>and I think all the dangers that we outlined when
<v Speaker 2>we were going back over the past year are going
<v Speaker 2>to continue.
<v Speaker 3>None of them are over, So.
<v Speaker 2>That Gulagh deportation, use of the Enemy Aliens Act. You
<v Speaker 2>have one judge fighting back, but the Supreme Court of
<v Speaker 2>the United States hasn't opined on it, and certainly hasn't
<v Speaker 2>given that judge's view Boseburg's view victory. So that continues
<v Speaker 2>the deprivation of all rights to this gulag in Al Salvador.
<v Speaker 2>And we could keep going with all the other examples.
<v Speaker 2>The use of the military domestically. Yes, the Court's pushed back,
<v Speaker 2>but that possibility of the Insurrection Act being used is
<v Speaker 2>extremely dangerous, and the emoluments violations the grift is going
<v Speaker 2>to continue.
<v Speaker 3>He's not satisfied with any amount of money.
<v Speaker 2>He wants to be, I think, the wealthiest person in
<v Speaker 2>the world, and he has the entire United States government
<v Speaker 2>that he can deploy. So any of these stories that
<v Speaker 2>we've talked about, the shutdown of free speech and universities,
<v Speaker 2>all of those are ongoing threats, and you know, one
<v Speaker 2>of them I'm getting a first hand view at because
<v Speaker 2>I'm teaching in one of the places that he's targeting.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, eighteen hundred souls are missing from this
<v Speaker 1>Alligator Alcatraz prison, right and ice and vcp of I mean,
<v Speaker 1>like Ice may have lost three thousand immigrant arrestees in Chicago,
<v Speaker 1>was reported by NBC. I mean, thousands of people kidnapped
<v Speaker 1>by our government. I mean, and there miss nineteen hundred
<v Speaker 1>people have not just been disappeared to a prison, they've
<v Speaker 1>disappeared from the prison. Like I fear that we're going
<v Speaker 1>to spend the rest of our lives watching all this
<v Speaker 1>investigated for human trafficking and god knows what else. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>do you have any confidence still that the judiciary as
<v Speaker 1>an institution can hold the line for one more year?
<v Speaker 1>Or is this just a race against time, a race
<v Speaker 1>against Donald Trump's arteries.
<v Speaker 2>Well, we're seeing you know, you asked the question about
<v Speaker 2>do we still have a rule of law, and there
<v Speaker 2>are semblances of it. You have these lower court judges,
<v Speaker 2>and let's remember it's not just the non justices of
<v Speaker 2>the Supreme Court, but the large number of judges on
<v Speaker 2>the district courts, the first level in the federal system,
<v Speaker 2>and the appellate court's courts of appeals.
<v Speaker 3>We also have the role of the states and fighting back.
<v Speaker 2>So there are a lot of resources to try to
<v Speaker 2>check this power. It isn't a completed coup. It's an
<v Speaker 2>attempted one, and you know, the story of next year
<v Speaker 2>is going to be whether we can push back a
<v Speaker 2>reference to you know, one of the things that I'm
<v Speaker 2>very hopeful about is that at the end of this year,
<v Speaker 2>in November, I'm hoping that we're going to see a
<v Speaker 2>Democratic Congress elected and people like Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator white House,
<v Speaker 2>who we had on the show recently, will become the
<v Speaker 2>Judiciary Committee chair, and or Ted lu on the House side.
<v Speaker 3>Who we had.
<v Speaker 2>These are people deeply concerned as we are, and that's
<v Speaker 2>why we've had them on the show, and we'll have
<v Speaker 2>them again about the authoritarian attempted take over by Donald Trump,
<v Speaker 2>and they'll have the tools of Congress to push back.
<v Speaker 2>So it won't just be these district court and Court
<v Speaker 2>of Appeals judges on the federal system. You'll have Congress
<v Speaker 2>as well. And that's why I'm hopeful that no far
<v Speaker 2>from being over. This is a fight that we're in
<v Speaker 2>the midst of, one battle after another.
<v Speaker 1>To quote, yeah, I'm with you on that. I mean, like,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not an optimist, I'm a recovering cynic, but I
<v Speaker 1>just there's so much to be proud of and I
<v Speaker 1>think as more and more people wake up, Look, Donald
<v Speaker 1>Trump is not going to become more popular. He's not
<v Speaker 1>going to have more people who are on the fence
<v Speaker 1>before suddenly start liking this agenda. So I keep telling
<v Speaker 1>everyone it's going to be hard, a lot of folks
<v Speaker 1>are going to be hurt, But don't forget to stop
<v Speaker 1>and smell the train wreck, Corey. Looking back over all
<v Speaker 1>of this, I mean, it's easy to see why some
<v Speaker 1>of our listeners would feel overwhelmed and powerless. From the
<v Speaker 1>deployment of the military forces without any legal grounding, to
<v Speaker 1>the murdering people overseas and bombing people without any legal grounding,
<v Speaker 1>the deportations without due process, these executive orders that just
<v Speaker 1>nuke the idea of restraints on presidential power, the judicial
<v Speaker 1>clashes over separation of powers and civil liberties. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's overwhelming to me. And I know a constitutional law
<v Speaker 1>professor who talks me off the ledge. For your thinking, professor,
<v Speaker 1>let me end it with this, what does constitutional resistance
<v Speaker 1>actually look like right now? For people outside the courts,
<v Speaker 1>for those listening who don't have law degrees, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>what does constitutional resistance look like? And how should the
<v Speaker 1>rest of us approach the coming year.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I love that phrase constitutional resistance. It's one that
<v Speaker 2>we've used before, but we have to keep using them.
<v Speaker 2>It's what this discussion this podcast is all about, is
<v Speaker 2>inspiring people to see that, and this is true throughout
<v Speaker 2>American history, that you can't rely on the President, certainly
<v Speaker 2>in this current moment, to defend the Constitution, even though
<v Speaker 2>the oath of office requires him to say that that
<v Speaker 2>he's going to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. This
<v Speaker 2>is doing the extreme opposite of that. The Supreme Court,
<v Speaker 2>despite its good moments, is going to have a lot
<v Speaker 2>of bad moments, and certainly this year is full with them.
<v Speaker 2>Probably chief among them, which I don't even think we
<v Speaker 2>mentioned in our rundown it's so ingrained in US, is
<v Speaker 2>the Immunity case that just essentially declared the President and
<v Speaker 2>king when it came to the ability to him to
<v Speaker 2>get away.
<v Speaker 3>With crime literally.
<v Speaker 2>And so the idea that I'm trying to get at
<v Speaker 2>is we never have been able to just simply trust
<v Speaker 2>our public officials. They're going to fail us at different moments.
<v Speaker 2>But what we can trust in is that in a democracy,
<v Speaker 2>citizens can claim the Constitution and can claim the law
<v Speaker 2>for themselves. And when the government is being used to
<v Speaker 2>shut down the constitution, we can resist in the name
<v Speaker 2>of the constitution. So that's what I mean by this
<v Speaker 2>phrase of constitutional resistance, and that's what this whole podcast
<v Speaker 2>is about, using the Constitution to resist authoritarian attempts to
<v Speaker 2>take over. And you know, if you need inspiration, as
<v Speaker 2>I say, in the presidents and the people, that's so
<v Speaker 2>often what happened when John Adams was challenged not by
<v Speaker 2>the courts which enabled him, but by the newspaper editors
<v Speaker 2>he tried to prosecute. They used their own editorials to
<v Speaker 2>put the president on trial, their own trials, they advertised
<v Speaker 2>them to show the authoritarian takeover, the Frederick Douglas wing
<v Speaker 2>of abolition that used the Constitution against the denial.
<v Speaker 3>Of all rights to all black people.
<v Speaker 2>During that period, in the dread Scott case, and so
<v Speaker 2>again and again, we have these moments of inspiration throughout history,
<v Speaker 2>and we're living through it now. And that's what I'm
<v Speaker 2>I wanted to start the podcast to do, and I
<v Speaker 2>think we're succeeding in that into showing people into inspiring
<v Speaker 2>them that just because the Constitution is being shut down
<v Speaker 2>by the people in power doesn't mean that we have
<v Speaker 2>to let them, we have to resist.
<v Speaker 3>What a great phrase, John, Thank you for raising them.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm here to help out, professor. What is the
<v Speaker 1>best way for our listeners to follow you and to
<v Speaker 1>keep up with your brilliance the other six days of
<v Speaker 1>the week as we might need it this year?
<v Speaker 2>There now is the oath in the office substack. I
<v Speaker 2>urge you to subscribe to that and to find it
<v Speaker 2>on substack. We also have a YouTube channel if you
<v Speaker 2>want to watch this show, not just listen to it,
<v Speaker 2>and of course continue to review us on Apple Podcasts
<v Speaker 2>or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you'll find
<v Speaker 2>us and be sure in your favorite app that you're
<v Speaker 2>using to listen to it or watch it to give
<v Speaker 2>us a review. We're at four hundred and seventy five reviews.
<v Speaker 2>It keeps growing, and they're all five stars somehow. So
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, John, if all of them are you know,
<v Speaker 2>friends of ours or my mom, but we've got really
<v Speaker 2>great listeners out there that seem enthusiastic. They're writing great things,
<v Speaker 2>they love this dynamic, and you know, I'm so grateful
<v Speaker 2>to hear from so many of you. I'm continuing to
<v Speaker 2>collect comments and questions. But this idea of constitutional resistance,
<v Speaker 2>this isn't just a podcast. It's meant to create a
<v Speaker 2>kind of community in this moment and a record of
<v Speaker 2>what's happening. And I think in the long run, you know,
<v Speaker 2>despite the honesty that we're bringing to what we're facing,
<v Speaker 2>that in the long run we're going to recover and
<v Speaker 2>we'll have this these shows as a record of our
<v Speaker 2>fighting back.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I just want to thank you again. I want
<v Speaker 1>to thank Wendy and Beowulf and everyone who puts this
<v Speaker 1>thing together, and most of all, I want to thank
<v Speaker 1>our deeply attractive listeners. And you can hear me every
<v Speaker 1>night on Sirius XM Progress or the John Feugel Sanging Podcast.
<v Speaker 1>If you don't have Serious XM, I have a substack.
<v Speaker 1>My book is called Separation of Church Ed Hate, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm on all the socials at John Fugel Saying, And
<v Speaker 1>I just want to thank you again, Professor. It's going
<v Speaker 1>to be quite a year. I hope everyone got some
<v Speaker 1>rest over the holidays. It's going to be a lot
<v Speaker 1>of resisting, a lot of mouth seasons, and a lot
<v Speaker 1>of devil talking. Joe, we have to deconstruct, and I
<v Speaker 1>just want to thank you again for helping us make
<v Speaker 1>sense of a moment where our constitution is very much
<v Speaker 1>on trial. I'm John Fugel Sang. We look forward to
<v Speaker 1>having you join us for the rest of the year.
<v Speaker 1>Let's talk each other off some ledges and keep each
<v Speaker 1>other sane, and keep fighting for the oath and the Office.
<v Speaker 3>Peace,