Speaker 1: It is the height of megalomania to basically have a
Speaker 1: radio show in the first place, and to think, yes,
Speaker 1: an entire city, an entire region worth of people should
Speaker 1: listen to my opinions about things. Definitely, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: There's certainly more than a little bit of ego involved
Speaker 1: in an enterprise like this. But what might be even
Speaker 1: more megalomaniacal is on your own radio show reading an
Speaker 1: op ed piece that you wrote.
Speaker 2: So that's what we're doing right now.
Speaker 1: This Saturday kind of had a resume altering kind of
Speaker 1: deal in which National Review, the big conservative national publication,
Speaker 1: one of the most important conservative publications in America, decided
Speaker 1: to run a little op ed column that I wrote
Speaker 1: about the abortion pill. And I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: it with all of you because I think it's really important,
Speaker 1: especially as it seems that RFK Junior is on track
Speaker 1: to get confirmed as HHS Secretary. And basically in the piece,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about miff of pristone, aka the abortion pill,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about why it needs to be regulated,
Speaker 1: and I want to sort of tell you guys about
Speaker 1: kind of the history of this.
Speaker 2: A little bit of it ties.
Speaker 1: Into USAID and those kinds of foreign funding type deals
Speaker 1: because of how the abortion pill got developed in the
Speaker 1: first place, how it came over from Europe. Basically, the
Speaker 1: abortion pill was invented in France. I think in the
Speaker 1: late eighties it became a more and more popular way
Speaker 1: to perform abortions in Europe, and Bill Clinton said, boy,
Speaker 1: I sure could use that. Let's bring that over from Europe.
Speaker 1: So Bill Clinton working through allies at things like the
Speaker 1: Ford Foundation, and I now wonder if USAID was paying
Speaker 1: for this, just as foreign aid, you know, for different
Speaker 1: kinds of big nonprofits. The Ford Foundation was getting a
Speaker 1: lot of money from USAID anyway, just my wild speculation.
Speaker 1: Clinton and the Ford Foundation worked for eight straight years
Speaker 1: to bring the abortion pill mif of pristone over from
Speaker 1: Europe to America and to go through all the necessary
Speaker 1: work through the FDA for the drug to get FDA approval. Now,
Speaker 1: let me explain what the abortion pill is. So first
Speaker 1: point of clarification, the abortion pill is not the morning
Speaker 1: after pill. I just want to clarify that for you.
Speaker 1: The morning after pill largely functions as a contraceptive. Its
Speaker 1: goal is the morning after a sexual encounter to prevent ovulation.
Speaker 1: A woman, a woman's ovicular follicle rupturing and releasing an egg.
Speaker 1: That is the goal of the morning after pill, also
Speaker 1: known as levonne or gestrel, So the goal is to
Speaker 1: prevent ovulation. There is some thought though that it does
Speaker 1: alter the lining, the interior lining of the uterus, to
Speaker 1: make it hostile to the implantation of a new embryo,
Speaker 1: so it could be abortifation, but its chief goal is
Speaker 1: to prevent ovulation. The abortion pill is what I'm talking about, mifipristone.
Speaker 1: And what a lot of people don't understand is that
Speaker 1: the abortion pill is the dominant method of abortion provision
Speaker 1: in America today, and that the entire face of abortion
Speaker 1: provision in America was changed just in the last five years,
Speaker 1: really starting in twenty twenty one, when President Biden's FDA.
Speaker 2: Something I called, by the way, that you know, anyone.
Speaker 1: Who was listening to this show or listening to who
Speaker 1: write to Life Radio, Jonathan Keller and I were calling
Speaker 1: this during the twenty twenty election. One of the most
Speaker 1: undertalked about things in the twenty twenty election related to abortion,
Speaker 1: and it was basically, if Trump is reelected, he will
Speaker 1: keep whatever existing restrictions there are on the abortion pill.
Speaker 1: If Biden's elected, he's going to loosen those restrictions to
Speaker 1: make the abortion pill far more widely available. And that's
Speaker 1: precisely what happened. Starting in twenty twenty one, Biden issued
Speaker 1: his FDA issued new regulations, as he had been urged
Speaker 1: to do by various pro abortion public policy medical public
Speaker 1: policy advocates who had been agitating for this throughout the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. Biden put in place new regulations allowing the
Speaker 1: abortion pill MiFi pristone to be prescribed without an in
Speaker 1: person visit to a doctor or a clinic, so via
Speaker 1: a telemedicine appointment, and for it to be shipped through
Speaker 1: the mail, so you never have to leave your house
Speaker 1: to get an abortion. Basically, this resulted in basically pill
Speaker 1: abortions went from about fifty percent of all abortions to
Speaker 1: now over sixty percent of all abortions, and the total
Speaker 1: number of abortions in America during the Biden years spiked
Speaker 1: from nine hundred thousand a year to a million per year,
Speaker 1: so it jumped like one hundred thousand per year. Now,
Speaker 1: what does the abortion pill do. The abortion pill, you
Speaker 1: take it up to ten weeks into a pregnancy. It
Speaker 1: cuts off this hormone called progesterone. Without progesterone, basically you
Speaker 1: can't maintain a pregnancy. The lining, the interior lining of
Speaker 1: the uterus is altered such that the embryo or fetus
Speaker 1: who has adhered.
Speaker 2: To the interuter and wall.
Speaker 1: The embryo or fetus detaches from the interior lining of
Speaker 1: the uterus, is cut off from food and oxygen, and
Speaker 1: dies about twenty four to forty eight hours later, the
Speaker 1: woman takes a second drug called mesa prostole, which results
Speaker 1: in the child being expelled from the woman's womb. Mesaprostol's
Speaker 1: a legitimate drug. It's used to induce labor. Now, this
Speaker 1: is the most common way abortion happens in America. I
Speaker 1: think most people when they hear the word abortion, they
Speaker 1: still think like a surgical intervention. What I'm telling you
Speaker 1: is no, that's most of the time. That's not how
Speaker 1: it's happening anymore. Most of the time it's happening as
Speaker 1: a drug intervention. I'm not going to say treatment, because
Speaker 1: what illness exactly is abortion treating? What sickness is it treating?
Speaker 1: If it's treatment, if it's healthcare, what is the illness
Speaker 1: it's correcting. Pregnancy is not an illness, guys. It's a natural, healthy,
Speaker 1: bodily process that we are artificially arresting, making abortion not
Speaker 1: really healthcare but maybe something kind of healthcare adjacent adjacent. No,
Speaker 1: Like you know, Michael Jackson getting a nose job was
Speaker 1: not a healthcare intervention. There was nothing wrong with his nose.
Speaker 1: It was something he chose for some kind of social reason.
Speaker 1: That is the case with abortion in the overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: of cases, and in cases where it is chosen for
Speaker 1: health reason, often it's not exactly abortion. I won't get
Speaker 1: into that whole discussion.
Speaker 2: Now. In my piece, I make the point.
Speaker 1: So basically, the sequence of events has been Democrat presidents
Speaker 1: work like mad to deregulate the abortion pill, take away
Speaker 1: safety respondrictions imposed on it, in order to make it
Speaker 1: more accessible and to increase the total percentage of American
Speaker 1: abortions done via the abortion pill. Why the abortion pill
Speaker 1: increases abortion quote access. And this is the buzzword that
Speaker 1: the abortion industry today likes. They don't want abortion to
Speaker 1: be safe, legal, and rare anymore. They want abortion to
Speaker 1: be legal. They're willing to sacrifice safety for the sake
Speaker 1: of legality and not rare, but accessible. They want the
Speaker 1: abortion pill to be accessible. They want you to be
Speaker 1: able to get an abortion even if you're in a
Speaker 1: state where it's illegal. They want you to be able
Speaker 1: to get an abortion even if you don't live near
Speaker 1: an abortion clinic. And yeah, the abortion pill is less
Speaker 1: safe than a surgical abortion by any standard. The abortion
Speaker 1: pill process involves usually heavy, extremely heavy bleeding, extremely heavy cramping.
Speaker 1: About five percent of the time, it involves what's called
Speaker 1: an incomplete abortion, meaning not everything is expelled from the
Speaker 1: woman's body. She has dead tissue remaining, which can lead
Speaker 1: to serious infection and requires a follow up surgery. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the abortion pill is being marketed to people as if
Speaker 1: it's a nothing burger intervention that erzos saypher's taking a
Speaker 1: tile andol, by which they mean the complication rate is
Speaker 1: about the same as overdosing on tilenol. So again, the
Speaker 1: history of this has been. Clinton worked furiously for eight
Speaker 1: straight years to get the abortion pill FDA approved, gets
Speaker 1: it approved through an expedited FDA process in September of
Speaker 1: two thousand because he realizes he's running out of time.
Speaker 2: George W. Bush could win the election.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to leave it to chance, so he
Speaker 1: does this expedited process that was probably illegal. There was
Speaker 1: this expedited FDA process to approve medications that treat quote,
Speaker 1: serious diseases or illnesses, which again does not fit the
Speaker 1: abortion pill. The abortion pill does not treat a disease
Speaker 1: or an illness. It treats pregnancy. Then it doesn't treat it.
Speaker 2: It ends it.
Speaker 1: It's not making the situation better. So for eight years
Speaker 1: Clinton worked to get the abortion pill FDA approved. He
Speaker 1: gets it FDA approved months before leaving office. George W.
Speaker 1: Bush is president for eight years and does nothing. Then
Speaker 1: Barack Obama comes into office. Barack Obama lessens a bunch
Speaker 1: of the health and safety restrictions around the abortion pill.
Speaker 1: Instead of needing three appointments, a preliminary appointment, an appointment
Speaker 1: to get the pill, and a follow up appointment, Obama
Speaker 1: reduces it to just one appointment just to get the pill.
Speaker 1: Obama increases the time frame during which it can be
Speaker 1: prescribed from the first seven weeks of pregnancy through the
Speaker 1: first ten weeks of pregnancy, and yeah, the complication rate
Speaker 1: increases the further along into pregnancy. You are, just like
Speaker 1: with miscarriages. The later into pregnancy, a miscarriage happens, the
Speaker 1: more likelihood there is for adverse outcomes, for risks to
Speaker 1: the mother's health. So Obama gets rid of all these
Speaker 1: safety precautions, including the need for follow up care. Why
Speaker 1: do you need follow up care? Well, what if you
Speaker 1: have an incomplete abortion and you need a follow up surgery.
Speaker 1: That's the really helpful thing of having follow up care. No,
Speaker 1: Instead they say, ah, well no, you don't need to
Speaker 1: have the follow up care. Now, just come in the
Speaker 1: one time and if someone's feeling bad, just go to
Speaker 1: the er. Leaves someone to the vagaries of the er,
Speaker 1: because again it's about access. Fewer needed drives to a
Speaker 1: clinic equals readier access. So Obama deregulates it. And as
Speaker 1: he's getting rid of these health and safety standards, Obama decides, basically,
Speaker 1: he decides, we're going to get rid of all adverse
Speaker 1: outcome reporting for the abortion pill other than deaths. You
Speaker 1: have to report deaths, but you don't have to report
Speaker 1: anything else. So now we're flying blind. Now we have
Speaker 1: pretty good info for the first like sixteen years of
Speaker 1: the abortion pills life cycle, the first sixteen years of
Speaker 1: its being FDA approved, in America for its health and
Speaker 1: safety risk.
Speaker 2: They're not negligible.
Speaker 1: But ever since twenty sixteen, we're flying blind because Barack
Speaker 1: Obama's like, ah, we don't need.
Speaker 2: To collect adverse health data.
Speaker 1: So Obama issues those regulations three appointments to one, seven
Speaker 1: weeks to ten, no adverse reporting data in twenty sixteen. Again,
Speaker 1: just like Clinton did. Months before the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 1: here's Obama saying, well, you know, maybe Donald Trump will win,
Speaker 1: you know, let's not leave it a chance. Trump then
Speaker 1: spends four years, maybe Trump will win, Let's not leave
Speaker 1: it a chance. Trump administration one point zero doesn't do
Speaker 1: anything about the abortion pill for four years.
Speaker 2: Then Biden comes in.
Speaker 1: Immediately after he comes in, Biden deregulates the abortion pill again,
Speaker 1: gets rid of more safety standards, gets rid of the
Speaker 1: need for any in person appointment, says you can just
Speaker 1: do it via a tele medicine appointment. Get a prescription
Speaker 1: via tele medicine appointment, which, by the way, how many
Speaker 1: weeks gestation are you?
Speaker 2: I think ten? You can't. You can't expect.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of American women to all guess that
Speaker 1: they're within ten weeks of pregnancy. You know how many
Speaker 1: of them are probably gonna get that wrong. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying they're idiots or something. Sometimes it's hard to
Speaker 1: tell exactly how far along you are. That's the point
Speaker 1: of having an appointment in person, so you can have
Speaker 1: an ultrasound to confirm gestational age. So someone's gonna get
Speaker 1: the abortion pill for a baby that might be twelve
Speaker 1: weeks along, that's gonna severely increase that. That's gonna big
Speaker 1: time increase all the risks for adverse health outcomes. Eh whatever.
Speaker 1: Or if a woman's having an ectopic pregnancy, which is
Speaker 1: where the baby's growing in the filippian tube instead of
Speaker 1: the uterus, Uh, well, I got a positive pregnancy to us,
Speaker 1: all right, let's just have the abortion pill. Well, what
Speaker 1: if she's having an ectopic pregnancy, So if the baby's
Speaker 1: growing in the Filippian tube, the abortion pill.
Speaker 2: Is not gonna work.
Speaker 1: The baby's gonna keep growing in the fillopian tube until
Speaker 1: it bursts, which is going to be serious danger for
Speaker 1: both the mom and the baby. In fact, New England
Speaker 1: Journal of Medicine covered a case like that about a
Speaker 1: year ago. Mom trying to do an abortion pill process
Speaker 1: didn't realize she was having an actopic pregnancy, was doing
Speaker 1: the abortion pill process online not in person. Fillopian tube ruptures,
Speaker 1: you know, she almost dies. So with after President Obama
Speaker 1: did his twenty sixteen regulations seven weeks to ten, three
Speaker 1: visits to one visit, it resulted in the number of
Speaker 1: pill abortions spiking from about thirty nine percent of all
Speaker 1: abortions in America to fifty three percent of all abortions
Speaker 1: in America. After President Biden deregulated the abortion pill further
Speaker 1: with no required in person visits. Have the abortion pill
Speaker 1: be shipped to your house or shipped to a major pharmacy.
Speaker 1: It's from fifty three percent of all American abortions to
Speaker 1: sixty three percent of all American abortions. So you're talking,
Speaker 1: and under the Biden regime, the total number of abortions
Speaker 1: spiked from nine hundred thousand to a million, and probably
Speaker 1: that extra hundred thousand was all the result of pill abortions.
Speaker 1: So in comes Trump two point zero incomes RFK junior.
Speaker 1: Will RFK junior want to regulate this? Why would RFK
Speaker 1: junior want to regulate this? Let's how should RFK junior
Speaker 1: regulate it? Let's talk about that. In the next segment.
Speaker 1: This is the John Gilready Show on Power Talk. So
Speaker 1: we've been talking about my piece that was published in
Speaker 1: National Review about the abortion pill if a pristone and
Speaker 1: why Trump and RFK should regulate it now one of
Speaker 1: the things that has amused my wife and me over
Speaker 1: the last So the National Review agreed to run the start.
Speaker 1: I wrote very grateful to my friend's the Spencer family
Speaker 1: who kind of helped me with getting it submitted.
Speaker 2: Thanks Susie.
Speaker 1: I got it submitted, it was edited last week. I
Speaker 1: was really excited. I mean, this is the biggest publication
Speaker 1: I've ever had anything I've written published in.
Speaker 2: So I'm super excited.
Speaker 1: And it gets posted on National Reviews website Saturday Saturday, early,
Speaker 1: early Saturday morning, and I wake up at about I
Speaker 1: woke up actually extremely early because our two year old
Speaker 1: Jimmy's been waking up crazy early.
Speaker 2: For some crazy reason.
Speaker 1: And I woke wake up at like five thirty or
Speaker 1: six or something, and I look at pull up the
Speaker 1: website on my phone and I see it and I
Speaker 1: see just a ton of comments. It's like over four
Speaker 1: hundred comments. As of today, it's over four hundred comments.
Speaker 1: But even you know, early Saturday morning. Right ever, was
Speaker 1: posed a ton of cos and the thing that astonished
Speaker 1: me was how many of the comments were really negative
Speaker 1: on it. Wow, National Reviews readership apparently far more pro
Speaker 1: choice than I expected, and it was ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the comments seemed to indicate that they hadn't really
Speaker 1: read the piece, that they thought it was just a
Speaker 1: generic anti abortion piece, or like some of them were like,
Speaker 1: why should RFK do anything that National Review wants to do?
Speaker 2: Which I'm like, well, I'm not National Review.
Speaker 1: I just got a thing published, So why is there
Speaker 1: any reason RFK would want to REGULARLYMPH for pristone. Now,
Speaker 1: RFK was specifically asked about the abortion pill, which, again
Speaker 1: for context if you've missed the first segment, MEPH for
Speaker 1: pristone's the most common method of abortion provision in America. Today,
Speaker 1: sixty three percent of all abortions are done via MIPH
Speaker 1: for pristone. Since President Biden got rid of a lot
Speaker 1: of the health and safety standards around it and allowed
Speaker 1: the abortion pill to be ship through the mail, it
Speaker 1: has spiked the total number of American abortions from about
Speaker 1: nine hundred thousand a year to a million per year,
Speaker 1: and the total the percentage of all abortions done via
Speaker 1: the abortion pill has massively increased as well. So my
Speaker 1: contention is this administration, if it's going to do anything
Speaker 1: abortion related, this is a federal problem. The FDA regulatory
Speaker 1: status of mif A pristone is a federal question.
Speaker 2: State governments can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: As much as people want to say, oh, abortions for
Speaker 1: the states, now, all right in certain respects, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: states can regulate it. But states can't do anything about
Speaker 1: the FDA approval and FDA restrictions on a drug. That's
Speaker 1: a federal question. And it was brought before RFK during
Speaker 1: his Senate confirmation hearings. Now, RFK said a couple of
Speaker 1: things about abortion that I thought were really interesting, and
Speaker 1: most of them pretty good.
Speaker 2: Honestly.
Speaker 1: Now he is pro choice, he admitted, But he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, he really sounds like. RFK sounds like
Speaker 1: a Democrat from nineteen ninety two. When you talk about
Speaker 1: abortion with RFK the way he talks about it, he
Speaker 1: sounds like a Democrat from nineteen ninety two. I think
Speaker 1: he's still stuck in that kind of Democrat party and
Speaker 1: the rest of the rest of the Democratic Party abandoned
Speaker 1: his position. They the most of the Democrats moved way
Speaker 1: to the left on abortion, and RFK is still kind
Speaker 1: of living in this nineteen ninety two Democrat attitude where
Speaker 1: he says, look, I think every abortion is a tragedy.
Speaker 1: I don't think we can be a moral nation if
Speaker 1: we have, you know, over a million abortions per year.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't support federal funding for abortion. I
Speaker 1: safe legal and rare. RFK Junior is still living in
Speaker 1: the safe legal, rare era of abortion. And while I
Speaker 1: certainly don't think that's an adequate summation of like what
Speaker 1: our country's moral and legal approach to the question of
Speaker 1: abortion should be, it's certainly preferable to the modern day
Speaker 1: Democrat approach to abortion, which is basically, abortion should be
Speaker 1: universally accessible with no restrictions on anyone being able to
Speaker 1: get abortion, meaning you, the taxpayer, should fund it. It
Speaker 1: should be shipped through the mail to people's houses directly,
Speaker 1: without even needing to see a doctor first. Like that,
Speaker 1: that's the level of insanity we're talking about with Democrats
Speaker 1: and their abortion activism. All right, So RFK said a
Speaker 1: couple of good things, and when asked about and if
Speaker 1: Pristoni said, I haven't decided how I want to regulate it.
Speaker 1: President Trump hasn't decided what how to regulate it. We're
Speaker 1: going to discuss it together. So I wrote this column saying,
Speaker 1: I think the whole pro life movement needs to orient
Speaker 1: its focus on this issue. I think everything else practically
Speaker 1: pales in comparison, because again, the deregulation of the abortion
Speaker 1: pill under Bien, under Biden has led to one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand more abortions per year. So what could be done well? First,
Speaker 1: the FDA could look back at the original approval of
Speaker 1: the abortion pill by the FDA. President Obama's loosening of
Speaker 1: safety restrictions in twenty sixteen three mandated doctor visits before
Speaker 1: to receive the drug and follow up reduced just to
Speaker 1: one visit, extending the timeframe from seven weeks into pregnancy
Speaker 1: to ten weeks in pregnancy where there are more complications,
Speaker 1: and getting rid of reporting requirements for adverse health outcomes.
Speaker 1: That was the twenty sixteen regulations and then the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one Joe Biden regulations. First, there's already been a
Speaker 1: federal court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that has
Speaker 1: held that the twenty sixteen and twenty twenty one deregulations
Speaker 1: violated federal law, violated the Administrative Procedures Act, basically that
Speaker 1: they were arbitrary and compricious regulations that had no relationship
Speaker 1: whatsoever to the actual health and safety data that was available.
Speaker 1: So the Fifth Circuit is ruled that it violated them
Speaker 1: Inministrative Procedures Act. I think that gives the FDA pretty
Speaker 1: good grounds to say we're going to roll back those regulations.
Speaker 1: Make it much more difficult to get the abortion pill.
Speaker 1: You need three in person visits, it's only within the
Speaker 1: first seven weeks. Also, they could just reassess the original
Speaker 1: approval of miphipristone in two thousand. Clinton's FDA approved MiFi
Speaker 1: pristone in the year two thousand with an expedited process
Speaker 1: that was meant for this FDA process that's meant for
Speaker 1: drugs that treat quote, serious diseases and illnesses. The abortion
Speaker 1: pill doesn't treat a serious disease. It treats pregnance. It
Speaker 1: ends pregnancy, it terminates pregnancy. Pregnancy is not a disease
Speaker 1: or an illness. There's also been huge problems with the
Speaker 1: abortion pill being shipped illegally into being shipped into states
Speaker 1: where abortion is illegal from states where it is legal.
Speaker 1: So California company or doctor shipping the abortion pill through
Speaker 1: the mail to Texas, and California set up these shield
Speaker 1: laws to prevent doctors, prevent companies from any kind of
Speaker 1: adverse legal action from Texas. Well, maybe the Trump administration
Speaker 1: could enforce this thing called the Comstock Act. Was that
Speaker 1: Ulysses says, grant law that prevents shipping abortifations through the mail.
Speaker 2: So I really encourage you guys.
Speaker 1: Go to Fresno Johnny on Twitter dot com slash Fresno
Speaker 1: Johnny read my piece.
Speaker 2: I think it's really good.
Speaker 1: When we return how Trump could restore the executive branch
Speaker 1: Next on the John Girardi Show, I think one of
Speaker 1: the most significant and potentially long lasting outcomes we could
Speaker 1: see of Trump two point zero is the way that
Speaker 1: it will possibly restore executive power to its proper constitutional constraints.
Speaker 1: And this is happening on a number of fronts that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of court challenges that seem to
Speaker 1: be getting set up on a number of different fronts
Speaker 1: for basically allowing the Trump and min Stration to do
Speaker 1: its job and chipping away at a bunch of laws
Speaker 1: that were passed at a time when the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: just really did not care very much or just sort
Speaker 1: of the political culture was just not as caring about
Speaker 1: separation of powers problems.
Speaker 2: Let me explain what I mean.
Speaker 1: We have like a federal workforce. Now, these are employees
Speaker 1: who work for the various federal executive branch agencies, and
Speaker 1: we now have this classification system between well, there's political
Speaker 1: appointees and then there's career appointees, political employees and career.
Speaker 2: Employees of the federal government.
Speaker 1: That the career employees are allegedly nonpartisan, and they stay
Speaker 1: when even though a new administration comes in, a new
Speaker 1: administration can.
Speaker 2: Easily fire this whole category of people.
Speaker 1: But this category of people, these some of these career people,
Speaker 1: you can't fire them. An incoming president can't fire them.
Speaker 1: Why well, because their career employees and basically if you
Speaker 1: fire them, their union will get involved. Why do federal
Speaker 1: government workers have a union? That seems maybe a little
Speaker 1: again that the whole point of labor unions is that
Speaker 1: they make a lot of sense in the private sector context,
Speaker 1: where you've got management who has a certain financial interest
Speaker 1: in keeping most of the profits for itself. And you
Speaker 1: have labor, which has a certain financial interest in keeping
Speaker 1: more of the profits for itself. Two sides that don't
Speaker 1: have aligning interests. Labor which an individual laborer working for
Speaker 1: a big company like four does not have the kind
Speaker 1: of bargaining power for his own individual job that all
Speaker 1: of the laborers together collectively bargaining have. So labor unions
Speaker 1: make total sense in a private sector context. They don't
Speaker 1: make sense in the context of government employees, where there's
Speaker 1: no profit motive for the federal government for demanding more
Speaker 1: for itself. Now, so the idea is the president can't
Speaker 1: fire these people and beyond just like firing career employees
Speaker 1: of the federal government, having the total attitude to do that.
Speaker 2: A lot of stuff happened after Watergate that was really weird.
Speaker 1: Nixon was so despised, so despised, and was so at
Speaker 1: war with Washington in.
Speaker 2: A lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of Nixon in Trump like And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that in a negative way. I'm saying
Speaker 1: that actually kind of as a compliment. I think Nixon
Speaker 1: is a wildly underappreciated president. I also sort of think
Speaker 1: that other presidents did a lot of crap far more
Speaker 1: wildly abusive of power than Watergate was, and never, you know,
Speaker 1: never got nailed for it.
Speaker 2: LBJ. You know, I'm LBJ was.
Speaker 1: Doing stuff with the FBI that I think was far
Speaker 1: worse than anything Nixon did with Watergate, or or at
Speaker 1: least as bad. Anyway, after Watergate, Democrats had these massive
Speaker 1: over two thirds majorities in Congress, and Ford was completely powerless.
Speaker 2: And then eventually Jimmy Carter comes.
Speaker 1: In, and what happened was Congress wound up passing a
Speaker 1: bunch of statutes that really empowered Congress and really limited
Speaker 1: the power of the executive in a certain to a
Speaker 1: certain way, I think, to a point overstepping the constitutional
Speaker 1: role of Congress and infringing on the proper constitutional role
Speaker 1: of the president. So things like the Independent Council Statute,
Speaker 1: the idea that there can be a federal prosecutor who
Speaker 1: is independent of the executive branch who can investigate and
Speaker 1: prosecute the president. This law eventually was allowed to sunset
Speaker 1: because it wound up biting both Republicans and Democrats in
Speaker 1: the rear.
Speaker 2: You know, Nixon.
Speaker 1: It was obviously an anti Nixon thing, and then it
Speaker 1: wound up biting Bill Clinton in the rear during his presidency.
Speaker 1: So I think both Republicans and.
Speaker 2: Democrats were like, all right, we'll just allow this to die.
Speaker 1: I got replaced by the Special Council, which does have
Speaker 1: some degree of political accountability to the executive. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: Congress created these things called the Inspectors General. These were
Speaker 1: entities were supposed to report to Congress basically bad stuff
Speaker 1: that was going on within various federal executive agencies. The
Speaker 1: idea being that they answer to Congress and say, well,
Speaker 1: what is this entity. It's an employee whose task with
Speaker 1: executing the law. But he's not under the executive, he's
Speaker 1: not under the president. He's reporting to Congress. Doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to make any sense. That's a constitutional you know, this
Speaker 1: is a constitutional platypus. You can't have something that sort
Speaker 1: of has features of the executive sort of as features
Speaker 1: of the legislative. So Trump made headlines by firing a
Speaker 1: bunch of these inspectors general, and a bunch of these
Speaker 1: inspectors general said well, he doesn't have the authority to
Speaker 1: fire me. He needed to give Congress written notice within
Speaker 1: thirty day. A thirty day written notice before he terminates
Speaker 1: our positions, and the Trump administration's taking the perspective of no,
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is taking the perspective, we don't think
Speaker 1: the inspectors general are constitutional, so we're not going to
Speaker 1: respect that. We're just firing them. If they're part of
Speaker 1: the executive they can get fired. And I think this
Speaker 1: makes sense. If someone's an executive official, the president needs
Speaker 1: to be able to fire them in order to do
Speaker 1: his job.
Speaker 2: The only check that we have.
Speaker 1: On the president's ability to appoint people to help him
Speaker 1: execute the law, because let's remember what Article two says,
Speaker 1: the executive power of the United States, the power to
Speaker 1: enforce law in America.
Speaker 2: Is vested in one guy uno hombra, the President. That's it.
Speaker 1: Everyone else in the executive branch who's doing legal stuff
Speaker 1: is doing so with his delegated authority. The Attorney General
Speaker 1: only authorizes things at thesis at the president's pleasure, at
Speaker 1: the president's pressure, at the president's pleasure. If the Attorney
Speaker 1: General does something Trump doesn't like, he can fire.
Speaker 2: Him like like that.
Speaker 1: Because the president controls the executive branch, the only check
Speaker 1: on it is that for officers of the United States,
Speaker 1: the Constitution does require, just as a basic test of competence,
Speaker 1: that the President run that person by the Senate for
Speaker 1: their advice and consent. But once the Senate gives their
Speaker 1: advice and consent, that's it. They do what the president
Speaker 1: wants and they don't answer to Congress other than Congress
Speaker 1: doing its sort of oversight for funding and creating these
Speaker 1: executive departments. But they ultimately do what the president tells them.
Speaker 1: The president's the one who hires and fires them. When
Speaker 1: the president is you know, if they do something stupid,
Speaker 1: it reflects poorly on the president. The president is politically
Speaker 1: accountable to the people. The president gets rid of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the political accountability that all the members of the
Speaker 1: executive branch have. They answer to this president who has
Speaker 1: to be concerned with his political standing, that is standing
Speaker 1: he has with the people. Donald Trump looks at the polls. Okay,
Speaker 1: he cares what the polls say. He wants to ensure
Speaker 1: that he's doing things that are popular with the American
Speaker 1: people with an eye towards well, I don't want my
Speaker 1: party to lose the twenty twenty six midterms, and I
Speaker 1: don't want us to lose the twenty twenty eight presidential election. Now,
Speaker 1: another aspect that were of this that Trump might challenge
Speaker 1: is with impounding money. And there's an interesting piece written
Speaker 1: by John Yu. John You sort of made himself famous,
Speaker 1: sort of notorious for writing a bunch of legal memos
Speaker 1: during the George W. Bush administration justifying enhanced interrogation methods
Speaker 1: which to put a black eye on him. But he
Speaker 1: still is very prominent and important legal scholar, and he
Speaker 1: has this piece in National Review talking about basically the
Speaker 1: ways in which Trump could really significantly shift presidential power
Speaker 1: through impoundment. Basically, Trump saying, i know Congress authorized spending
Speaker 1: on this, but I'm not going to spend this money.
Speaker 1: I'm pausing federal spending on this. Now. Can the president
Speaker 1: do that? Can the president just decide, I know Congress
Speaker 1: allocated a bunch of money for this, I don't want
Speaker 1: to spend the money on that. Is that lawless by
Speaker 1: the president? Is that the president breaking the law? Is
Speaker 1: that the president violating that? Hey, Congress passed a law
Speaker 1: saying that the money should be spent for this. Therefore
Speaker 1: you got to spend the money on this. Now you
Speaker 1: goes over. There are actually a decent number of circumstances
Speaker 1: where it's totally foreseeable at the time of the founding.
Speaker 1: An originalist vision of things would say that, no, the
Speaker 1: president doesn't have to spend all the money. If Congress
Speaker 1: allocates one hundred million dollars to build a bridge and
Speaker 1: someone figures out a way for the bridge to be
Speaker 1: built for seventy five million dollars, the president doesn't have
Speaker 1: to spend that last twenty five million. So if changing
Speaker 1: circumstances renders the expenditure moot, then the president doesn't have
Speaker 1: to spend it that way. But you is basically identifying
Speaker 1: a couple of things where he's saying, I think there
Speaker 1: are other ways that Trump could free spending that he'd
Speaker 1: be on good constitutional grounds. One of them is for
Speaker 1: anything having to do with foreign policy. So basically, if
Speaker 1: Congress said, all right, we are spending all this money
Speaker 1: to fund advancing this American foreign policy, well, the president
Speaker 1: is supposed to direct foreign policy. If this is Congress
Speaker 1: sort of impinging on the president's sole ability to direct
Speaker 1: foreign policy, a power that is only check by the
Speaker 1: need to go to Congress for declarations of war, go
Speaker 1: to the Senate for ratifying treaties. Short of that it's
Speaker 1: a presidential power, and this is why I think the
Speaker 1: president might get away with cutting all this stuff at
Speaker 1: usaid that a lot of it's this foreign policy stuff
Speaker 1: that the president doesn't support, so why should the president
Speaker 1: keep funding it? Now he also sort of wants to challenge,
Speaker 1: so he wants to challenge the constitutional constitutionality of what's
Speaker 1: called the Budget Act. Now, the Budget Act is one
Speaker 1: of these Nixonian post Nixonian congressional.
Speaker 2: Things that I think infringes on executive power.
Speaker 1: Now, when we return, we'll talk about more about how
Speaker 1: this could really reshape the whole look of the presidency
Speaker 1: and the legal impact of the Trump era. That's next
Speaker 1: on the John Girardi Show. Or I'm thinking that Trump
Speaker 1: is going to be the most legally significant president in
Speaker 1: a really long time. That first of all, he's already
Speaker 1: reshaped the Supreme Court, and he may reshape it further
Speaker 1: if he replaces Alito and Thomas with some real home.
Speaker 1: If Alito and Thomas resign sometime in the next two
Speaker 1: years here, which I think is very likely. I'm betting
Speaker 1: they'll resign in twenty twenty six, and maybe maybe both
Speaker 1: of them will resign it at around the same time,
Speaker 1: Trump will have completely reshaped the Supreme Court if he
Speaker 1: gets a leader. If Alito and Thomas resign and Trump
Speaker 1: gets to replace them, he'll have picked literally a majority.
Speaker 2: On the Court.
Speaker 1: Also, the ways in which he's challenging executive authority, the
Speaker 1: ability to not spend on things, the ability to fire
Speaker 1: larger swaths of the federal workforce. That's going to be
Speaker 1: a huge shift in executive power in a way that
Speaker 1: I think stores its proper order within the constitutional framework.
Speaker 2: I Between that and overturning.
Speaker 1: Roev Wade, the Trump era maybe perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: most significant The legal impact of Trump may be his
Speaker 1: most significant impact.
Speaker 2: That'll do it for John Geordy Show. See you next
Speaker 2: time on Power Talk.