Speaker 1: We like to do kind of big picture thoughts here
Speaker 1: on John Girardi Show. I like using the radio as
Speaker 1: my sort of sounding board for my larger sort of
Speaker 1: thought pieces. And maybe I'll do a Maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: a written essay on this. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: illegal immigration, and I want to talk about it from
Speaker 1: the problem of macro harms versus micro harms, and the
Speaker 1: inclination to want to address micro issues not understanding how
Speaker 1: they impact macro issues, and sort of the macro bad
Speaker 1: outcomes that result from intentionally I think in many cases
Speaker 1: result from our status quo that we have that we
Speaker 1: have had in America of allowing as much illegal immigration
Speaker 1: as we do one political party just being kind of
Speaker 1: dedicated as a party to a policy of just not
Speaker 1: really enforcing American immigration law. So I maybe one way
Speaker 1: of thinking about this. I've seen this tension myself in
Speaker 1: my own work. Okay, So I helped start a nonprofit
Speaker 1: opgyn clinic. From the perspective of that work, I have
Speaker 1: had frustration in the past because so I started the
Speaker 1: clinic in January of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: The clinic's been in three twenty four to twenty five.
Speaker 1: So the clinic's been open for three years, okay, between
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two and twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: I think it was in twenty.
Speaker 1: Three Gavin Newsom and the California legislature changed California law
Speaker 1: opening medical eligibility to everyone under the required income threshold,
Speaker 1: regardless of your immigration status. So medical health insurance became
Speaker 1: open to illegal aliens. Before that, I had had instances
Speaker 1: where it was frustrating.
Speaker 2: You know, we're trying.
Speaker 1: You know, we have all of our pro life work
Speaker 1: that we're doing through Right to Life and through our
Speaker 1: Overria Clinic. We're trying to help women in difficult situations.
Speaker 1: People are pregnant, they might be considering abortion. We want
Speaker 1: to provide them with care. They're pregnant, but they're not
Speaker 1: in the country legally and they're nervous about you know
Speaker 1: that they can't sign up for medical so how do
Speaker 1: they get health insurance? That's a big push to drive
Speaker 1: them towards abortion. So there's a part of me that's like, well, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that Gavin Newsom provided medical eligibility to people
Speaker 1: who are in the country unlawfully, because then it means
Speaker 1: I can take care of this person.
Speaker 2: That's the micro benefit.
Speaker 1: On a macro level, though, oh, I could very easily
Speaker 1: understand how giving health insurance government funded health insurance to
Speaker 1: illegal aliens is a terrible idea. Maybe not it by itself,
Speaker 1: but it along with a suite of other social welfare programs.
Speaker 1: Why are we expending state resources to make it easier
Speaker 1: to come to the country illegally. You're making California almost
Speaker 1: like a magnet for illegal immigration. If word gets out,
Speaker 1: Hey you can go to California. You can get health insurance,
Speaker 1: you can do this, you could do get this program,
Speaker 1: that program by bah blah blah, bah bah blah, blah
Speaker 1: bah bah. At a certain point, you're on a macro level,
Speaker 1: you're encouraging this behavior that's not good. So I see,
Speaker 1: and I have seen, and I have felt this tension
Speaker 1: between my as a nonprofit. What is my concerned Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not as concerned about in my day to day work.
Speaker 1: I'm not as concerned with the problems, the macro level
Speaker 1: problems of immigration, illegal immigration and the vast social and
Speaker 1: economic pluses and minuses that it brings, economic, social, national security,
Speaker 1: whatever pluses and minuses it brings. All I'm seeing is
Speaker 1: this pregnant woman who overstated or visa who's scared to
Speaker 1: sign up for medical.
Speaker 2: And I want to help her out.
Speaker 1: I think, for example, a lot of the criticisms of
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church a lot of and its service to immigrants,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of the ways in which
Speaker 1: the bishops in America advocate around the immigration issue is
Speaker 1: infected by this micro level concern. They have people in
Speaker 1: their parishes who are in the country, either they over
Speaker 1: state of visa or maybe they came into the country
Speaker 1: illegally at some point years ago who are now scared,
Speaker 1: and they see their fear and concern. And these are Catholics.
Speaker 1: These are people in their parishes whom they love and
Speaker 1: care for and want to help, and that is what
Speaker 1: motivates this sort of almost knee jerk reaction resistance to
Speaker 1: immigration enforcement efforts. They see the micro harms, but there
Speaker 1: sort of there's this unwillingness to sort of step back
Speaker 1: and look at the macro picture. All right, So I
Speaker 1: want to look step back and look at this macro picture.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that sort of alerted me
Speaker 1: to this was the episcopal female bishop in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Who at the National Cathedral started wagging or started lecturing
Speaker 1: President Trump and Vice President Vance, and she's sort of
Speaker 1: lecturing that they need to be merciful towards Is this
Speaker 1: one part of her sermon in fairness, I don't think
Speaker 1: it was the whole thing, But in this one part
Speaker 1: of her sermon, she says she's urging them to be merciful,
Speaker 1: to be kind to transgender kids and to the immigrants
Speaker 1: who are picking vegetables in our fields. Now, first, the
Speaker 1: transgender kids thing is revealing that mercy and kindness is
Speaker 1: not what this person's about. This person has a warped,
Speaker 1: perverted sense of human nature that thinks that biology is meaningless,
Speaker 1: that the body is meaningless, that the body can be
Speaker 1: reshaped into whatever we want, and that therefore, giving a
Speaker 1: child a label like transgender is even something that is sane,
Speaker 1: which it is not. Again, it's a denial of this
Speaker 1: child's biology. To assign that kind of a static identity
Speaker 1: to a child, I think is practically child abuse. So
Speaker 1: I know she's already not coming from a head screwed
Speaker 1: on right Christian starting point, but she mentions to be
Speaker 1: merciful to the people who are.
Speaker 2: Picking the vegetables in our field and.
Speaker 1: A lot of pro immigrant people, especially white pro immigrant people,
Speaker 1: especially white pro immigrant people from the Northeast, who've never
Speaker 1: actually seen.
Speaker 2: A Mexican before.
Speaker 1: And by that that is one dynamic in all this
Speaker 1: is that Northeast liberals who claim to care about the
Speaker 1: plight of Latino farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley
Speaker 1: or of Latino immigrants whatever, don't actually interact with that
Speaker 1: many Latinos at all.
Speaker 2: You go to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: You go to one of these big Northeastern cities, it's
Speaker 1: often it's you know, yes, some parts of New York City, Yes,
Speaker 1: have large usually Dominican populations. It's different kinds of Latin
Speaker 1: American immigrants. It's not you know, the Northeast is pretty
Speaker 1: far away from Mexico. It's not as many actual Mexican
Speaker 1: or Central American you know, immigrants who are coming up
Speaker 1: through our southern border. There just aren't that many of them.
Speaker 1: They're not as understanding, they don't understand as well the
Speaker 1: day to day realities of illegal immigration and its consequences
Speaker 1: as we see it here in the San Joaquin Valley,
Speaker 1: or people see it in Texas or Arizona or New Mexico.
Speaker 2: But their bleeding hearts still go out.
Speaker 1: To all those people picking the vegetables in our fields.
Speaker 2: But why do we accept that.
Speaker 1: Step back for a second, here's the Democratic Party, the
Speaker 1: party allegedly of labor, of the working man. You know
Speaker 1: that there's this repeated line that farm workers, you know,
Speaker 1: they're doing the jobs Americans won't do. Why won't they
Speaker 1: do it? It's not that we haven't had other kinds
Speaker 1: of heavy industry in this country.
Speaker 2: We did. We had heavy industry in this country of
Speaker 2: various kinds, various kinds of construction work that Americans.
Speaker 1: Did basically, I mean, I mean, look at Detroit, look
Speaker 1: at the entire auto industry was built on men from
Speaker 1: America working really hard making cars. Why did farm labor
Speaker 1: wind up being the way it is that it's dominated
Speaker 1: by people either or on worker visas from Mexico or
Speaker 1: people who are here on questionably legal status. Why is
Speaker 1: it dominated by that? Well, in many ways, it's financially
Speaker 1: advantageous to have workers not from America rather than from America.
Speaker 1: And it's not because workers from Latin America work harder.
Speaker 1: The advantages come from their tenuous legal status on a
Speaker 1: visa and or the fact that they are illegal all right.
Speaker 1: If you're a factory, if you're working the line at
Speaker 1: Ford or GM in Detroit, and your boss treats you
Speaker 1: like crap ely and eventually this did happen, you unionize, okay,
Speaker 1: you unionize. A whole political party organizes itself around your right.
Speaker 1: Because you're a citizen, and because you're a voter, a
Speaker 1: whole political party organizes around your right to unionize.
Speaker 2: You're a citizen, you're a voter.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you want to quit your
Speaker 1: job at Ford and go work for GM, you're totally
Speaker 1: free to do that. If you want to quit your
Speaker 1: job at Ford and go work for anyone else, you're
Speaker 1: free to do that. When you're in America just on
Speaker 1: a visa of some sort, some kind of work visa,
Speaker 1: you have to still be working to keep that visa going,
Speaker 1: all right. The H one B visa debate, what was
Speaker 1: a classic example of this. The H one B visa
Speaker 1: is a visa that's basically given to people for certain
Speaker 1: kinds of like technical work. It seems that a lot
Speaker 1: of this is happening, bringing engineers over from India on
Speaker 1: H one visas. Guess what company like doing that because
Speaker 1: they can get away with paying them less and they
Speaker 1: don't complain. What Well, if you're an H one B
Speaker 1: visa holder and you complain and you get fired, your
Speaker 1: rear end is going right back to India because the
Speaker 1: whole point of your visa you maintain your visa as
Speaker 1: long as you maintain your work. So employers are able
Speaker 1: to treat you worse, pay you less, give you worse
Speaker 1: working conditions, treat you like crap. Generally, if they do
Speaker 1: that to an American citizen, what can happen? Well, One,
Speaker 1: the American citizen can just quit and go find another job.
Speaker 1: That they always have that option. You know nothing, you
Speaker 1: know other than you know they need income. But they
Speaker 1: can just quit. They can just go get another job. Two,
Speaker 1: the American citizen can say, hey, uh, if you're violating
Speaker 1: labor law, I'm gonna sue you. American citizen can say that.
Speaker 1: American citizen can say, Hey, all of us here working
Speaker 1: for this company, none of us are being treated very fairly.
Speaker 1: We don't have great bargaining power. Why don't we unionize?
Speaker 1: American citizen workers can do that. American citizen workers can
Speaker 1: alert their congressmen. American citizen workers can alert their state
Speaker 1: assembly member their state Senator, American citizen workers have actual
Speaker 1: rights and employers have to treat them well. You know,
Speaker 1: liberals always complain about farm laborers, how they're poorly treated,
Speaker 1: and you know what, if I'm being honest, I think
Speaker 1: there have been, at various times, various places, various ways,
Speaker 1: total legit concerns. Farm labors work, in many cases bone
Speaker 1: breaking hours, under very difficult conditions, under you know, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes they're mistreated. There's plenty of
Speaker 1: historical examples of that. Why did the farm labor industry
Speaker 1: get so dominated that way? Well, if you're in the country,
Speaker 1: has a farm labor on some kind of work visa,
Speaker 1: and you're working some job at some farm where there's
Speaker 1: bad conditions, they're not giving you off water breaks, they're
Speaker 1: not doing blah blah blah blah blah, are you gonna complain?
Speaker 1: You're only there with that work visa. Your only reason
Speaker 1: for being in America is to work. Are you gonna
Speaker 1: complain and risk losing this job? You might you're in
Speaker 1: the country not legally, either you came across illegally or
Speaker 1: you overstayed your visa.
Speaker 2: Are you going to.
Speaker 1: Bring attention to yourself. Are you gonna get all the
Speaker 1: other workers at the farm together to unionize and join
Speaker 1: UfW when half of you, or whatever significant percentage of
Speaker 1: you maybe don't want to rock the boat given your
Speaker 1: tenuous legal status.
Speaker 2: So, on a.
Speaker 1: Micro level, I think a liberal like that liberal episcopal
Speaker 1: bishop in Washington wagging her finger at Donald Trump, be
Speaker 1: merciful to the people picking our vegetables. Why are you
Speaker 1: okay with a permanent subclass, permanent legal subclass, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking both both in certain cases, legal immigrants here on
Speaker 1: work visas and illegal immigrants. Why are you okay with
Speaker 1: a permanent racial nationality subclass of people with fewer working
Speaker 1: rights than actual American citizens being the ones who pick
Speaker 1: your vegetables, make the beds in your hotels, do your
Speaker 1: janitorial work, clean your toilets, et cetera, et cetera. When
Speaker 1: the only people you're benefiting are big corporations, big corporate
Speaker 1: entities who want to make a lot of money and
Speaker 1: would like to pay their workers less, pay their workers less,
Speaker 1: have them work under worse conditions, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. There's no real reason why the farm labor
Speaker 1: industry in America couldn't have developed in the way that
Speaker 1: the autoworker industry developed, with American citizens unionized, working under
Speaker 1: good conditions, getting good pay, making careers out of it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Yet there are probably certain conditions that are different that that,
Speaker 1: you know, the seasonal nature of the work, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I understand that the seasonal nature of the work,
Speaker 1: the fact that crews of workers tend to go from
Speaker 1: different places from one part of CALEI need to the
Speaker 1: next part of California.
Speaker 2: But I still would contend there are certain kinds of
Speaker 2: historical accidents that allow the farm labor industry to develop
Speaker 2: in a way that was very different from the say,
Speaker 2: the auto industry. Clearly, immigrant labor.
Speaker 1: Benefits big time corporations because they can get away with
Speaker 1: paying them less. And this is the bizarre sort of
Speaker 1: horseshoe that on the one hand you have these liberal,
Speaker 1: pro unrestricted labor folks who don't believe in borders and
Speaker 1: have these insane sort of ethno nationality ideas about, you know,
Speaker 1: wanting America to have lescent national sovereignty. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: these ultra lefty people on the other hand, in this
Speaker 1: sort of horseshoe politics. You have a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who support unchecked immigration are people on the libertarian
Speaker 1: extreme right, who, you know what they want.
Speaker 2: They want cheap labor. They want cheap labor, cheap ununionized labor.
Speaker 1: That's not going to complain, that's not going to demand
Speaker 1: better wages, it's not going to demand better conditions. Are
Speaker 1: you really doing something great for the world? You know,
Speaker 1: I understand your micro concern for the suffering of this
Speaker 1: individual group here, but why are we just okay with
Speaker 1: this whole setup of a permanent subclass working for us
Speaker 1: when we return I want to talk about.
Speaker 2: Some historical examples of this.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John d'ardy show, a historical example
Speaker 1: of all this with regards to illegal immigration and the
Speaker 1: compassion we should be feeling for the illegal immigration situation.
Speaker 2: Basically, what I'm saying is the.
Speaker 1: Status quo of having a permanent underclass of immigrant workers
Speaker 1: who necessarily have fewer rights than Americans would. It's inherently
Speaker 1: just helpful to corporations to allow them to pay them worse,
Speaker 1: give them worse working conditions, and it's a huge disincentive
Speaker 1: to them unionizing. There's no, I mean, I don't see
Speaker 1: any super clear reason why farm labor, for example, or
Speaker 1: hotel workers or this or that, why so many of
Speaker 1: these industries that are currently dominated by illegal labor, why
Speaker 1: so many of these industries couldn't be done by American citizens,
Speaker 1: other than it's advantageous to employers to have a bunch
Speaker 1: of workers who are here either as immigrants not with
Speaker 1: full citizenship status, or here illegally. If you're you know,
Speaker 1: if you're here on work visa, you got to work.
Speaker 1: You got to keep a job. So if you cause,
Speaker 1: if you you know, act up at work and your
Speaker 1: employer fires you, your reason for being in the country
Speaker 1: ceases to be and you lose your visa and you
Speaker 1: get your rear end shipps home.
Speaker 2: So you shut up.
Speaker 1: You shut up in a way that American citizens wouldn't
Speaker 1: the American citizens wouldn't tolerate. If you're paid poorly, you
Speaker 1: don't have the flexibility just as well, I'll just leave
Speaker 1: and go to a job that pays me better. And
Speaker 1: the whole thing, honestly kind of reminds me of the
Speaker 1: Helots and the Spartans, So Sparta in kind of like
Speaker 1: sixth fifth century b see ancient Sparta is kind of
Speaker 1: heralded in older you know, history and classics textbooks as
Speaker 1: like these great heroic warrior culture. And then they were
Speaker 1: in the movie three hundred. It's the movie three hundred,
Speaker 1: which is sort of a dramatization of Herodotus's account of
Speaker 1: the Spartans and their defeat of the Persians, well sort
Speaker 1: of their peric the persians peric victory against the Spartans
Speaker 1: at the Battle of Thermopyli. The Battle of Thermopyla was
Speaker 1: this sort of amazing moment where just a group of
Speaker 1: three hundred Spartans held off for an enormous length of
Speaker 1: time at this point called Thermopyli, which means the hotgates,
Speaker 1: an enormous army of Persians who were coming to basically
Speaker 1: take over all of Greece, and this group of three
Speaker 1: hundred Spartans just killed tons and tons and tons of Persians.
Speaker 1: And so the sort of manly virtues of the Spartans
Speaker 1: have been sort of talked about and written about and
Speaker 1: heralded by you know, Herodotus, certainly in other Greek historians
Speaker 1: for you know, over to millennia and what a you know,
Speaker 1: they're sort of militaristic culture that Sparta had, where every
Speaker 1: male citizen was basically a soldier and from a young
Speaker 1: age was raised in a sort of military setting.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Spartan society was also, in various ways, as were many
Speaker 1: many societies in the ancient world, fundamentally unjust in various ways.
Speaker 1: Their slavery was very common practice in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: but the particular kind of slavery that was practiced in
Speaker 1: Sparta was particularly bizarre and kind of gross kind.
Speaker 2: There was a nearby town to Sparta called Messenia that
Speaker 2: the Spartans had conquered and it was part of their
Speaker 2: sort of regional territory, and the people of Messenia were
Speaker 2: made into this permanent slave subclass called helots, and the
Speaker 2: Spartans treated them horrifically. In some cases they're writing about,
Speaker 2: part of a young Spartan male's training involved, you know,
Speaker 2: going out and killing helots, just sort of almost indiscriminately.
Speaker 2: Helots were subjugated by the Spartans for forever.
Speaker 1: And this idea of having this permanent underclass whose job
Speaker 1: is to do the jobs that Spartans won't, to do
Speaker 1: the jobs that Americans won't do.
Speaker 2: It's fundamentally unjust.
Speaker 1: And I can understand the small picture concern of I
Speaker 1: want to help this immigrant right here, right now, but
Speaker 1: I think to restore a more broadly just system is
Speaker 1: going to require cutting off the border now and maybe
Speaker 1: deporting lots of people who shouldn't be here in the
Speaker 1: first place. When we return government by executive order. That's
Speaker 1: next on the John Girardi Show. The first week, I
Speaker 1: guess what are we at? Nine days now, Day ten
Speaker 1: of Trump administration has been dominated by executive orders.
Speaker 2: Executive orders seems to be the.
Speaker 1: Preferred main method of governance that we have in this country,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about it.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about it as a phenomenon.
Speaker 1: We're seeing this massive uptick in executive actions and greater
Speaker 1: creativity on the part of executives of the executive branch
Speaker 1: to get stuff done, greater pushing of the envelope for
Speaker 1: what is within the competency of the executive branch, to
Speaker 1: the point of within twenty four hours, both Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden tried to make significant changes to constitutional
Speaker 1: law itself via executive action via tweet in Joe Biden's case,
Speaker 1: with Joe Biden declaring that the Equal Rights Amendment had
Speaker 1: been In his opinion, I think it's part of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: I think it should be recognized as the twenty eighth
Speaker 1: Amendment of the United States. A preposterous legal or a
Speaker 1: preposterous thing for him to say, like, you know, a
Speaker 1: day before he's leaving office, and not like ordering that
Speaker 1: it be so recognized, not ordering the Justice Department that
Speaker 1: we are going to treat the ERA as the twenty
Speaker 1: eighth Amendment in the context of all litigation efforts, and
Speaker 1: I'm ordering the National Archives to publish it, and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: No, he didn't do any of that. He just sort of.
Speaker 1: Said, it's my opinion that the ERA is part of
Speaker 1: the twenty eighth Amendment, basically meaningless. Subsequently, though I believe
Speaker 1: that this was a Day one executive order, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: said that the fourteenth Amendment does not guarantee birthright citizenship,
Speaker 1: that just because you happen to be born on American
Speaker 1: soil does not automatically make you an American citizen, particularly
Speaker 1: if you were born here the parent to illegal migrant parents,
Speaker 1: unlawful migrant parents, so illegal immigrant parents, whatever terminology you
Speaker 1: want to use, and that's a pretty ambitious thing for
Speaker 1: Trump to do. I mean, in the best case scenario
Speaker 1: that executive action by Trump. Say what you will about
Speaker 1: whether it is wise or not wise as a policy. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I think as a policy matter, I think it's ridiculous
Speaker 1: that we just that we would say that someone breaks
Speaker 1: our laws coming to be in the country and just
Speaker 1: has a baby here, and that that baby is therefore
Speaker 1: automatically an American citizen.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I think that's a terrible policy idea. It's a perverse
Speaker 1: incentive to and frankly, could be a dangerous incentive to
Speaker 1: get extremely pregnant women to do extremely dangerous things to
Speaker 1: cross into the country to have a baby for the
Speaker 1: obvious immigration benefits that would accrue from having a son
Speaker 1: or a daughter who's an American citizen. I think it's
Speaker 1: a wildly terrible from a policy perspective. Now, it's a
Speaker 1: separate question of is that actually what the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees?
Speaker 1: The Fourteenth Amendment says, all persons born or naturalized in
Speaker 1: the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
Speaker 1: American citizens. What does that subject to the jurisdiction thereof mean? Okay,
Speaker 1: We've always interpreted that to mean that, well, the children
Speaker 1: of diplomats living in America. So if you're the French
Speaker 1: ambassador and.
Speaker 3: You you're if you're a woman or your wife a woman,
Speaker 3: if you have a baby in America and you're the
Speaker 3: French diplomat, you you're the French ambassador, and you're living
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And you and your wife have a baby in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Well, that baby's not an American citizen. That
Speaker 1: baby's a French subject. And the rationale being well, ambassadors
Speaker 1: are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The French embassy is a little island of France in
Speaker 1: the midst of Washington, d C. Subject not to American
Speaker 1: law but to French law. The French ambassadors have immunity.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The best that the United States can do is demand
Speaker 1: if an ambassador or someone in the diplomatic staff, if
Speaker 1: they violate American laws, the best we can do is
Speaker 1: demand that France take them back, get them out of
Speaker 1: the French embassy, and take them back to France and
Speaker 1: have them be punished there. But we can't prosecute they're
Speaker 1: not subject to American law.
Speaker 2: So what about an.
Speaker 1: Illegal alien coming into the United States. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: very complicated and difficult question. What is subject to the
Speaker 1: jurisdiction thereof If you're an illegal alien who's in the
Speaker 1: United States, I mean, you're subject to our criminal law jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: but you're not really supposed to be there in the
Speaker 1: first place. You're supposed to just be a Mexican citizen
Speaker 1: who is not subject to our laws, and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be in Mexico or Nicaragua or El Salvador, wherever
Speaker 1: you came in illegally. We didn't accept having jurisdiction over you,
Speaker 1: but we do have some jurisdiction, criminal law jurisdiction, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So President Trump is now President Trump's interpretation of the
Speaker 1: Fourteenth Amendment, though we're talking about executive action here, President
Speaker 1: Trump's interpretation of the fourteenth Amendment. There, while I think
Speaker 1: it's a viable one, certainly in a very difficult, complicated
Speaker 1: legal question, his executive order is challenging directly a couple
Speaker 1: of Supreme Court precedents that don't agree with him. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're Supreme Court presidents on the books, that is what
Speaker 1: we have relied on to say that, yeah, an illegal
Speaker 1: alien who has a baby in the United States is
Speaker 1: an American citizen. So Trump, via his executive orders is
Speaker 1: doing something pretty darn ambitious. He's challenging an existing Supreme
Speaker 1: Court president. There might also be normal statutes on the
Speaker 1: books that Trump's executive order could be violating. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is an ambitious move by Trump. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to be more, you know, more flame throwery about it,
Speaker 1: you could say it's lawless that he's ignoring statutes on
Speaker 1: the books that regardless of what the Constitution should be
Speaker 1: interpreted as, meaning, we have statutes on the books that say,
Speaker 1: you know, people born even of legal alien parents, are
Speaker 1: citizens of the United States. A president via executive action
Speaker 1: cannot contradict a law passed by Congress. Sign passed by Congress.
Speaker 1: A president can't do that via executive order. The whole
Speaker 1: idea of an executive order is that within the framework
Speaker 1: of a law passed by Congress, a president has a
Speaker 1: certain field of action or inaction that he can pursue
Speaker 1: in enforcing that law. But he can't contradict laws via
Speaker 1: an executive order. If you want to contradict a law
Speaker 1: that's on the books, you need to get another law passed, Okay,
Speaker 1: you need Congress to change.
Speaker 2: Its mind on something.
Speaker 1: And so much of the Trump agenda so far that's
Speaker 1: been implemented has all been implemented through executive orders, far reaching, sweeping,
Speaker 1: big executive orders to affect big time change.
Speaker 2: Now, why is this? Two things. One is that the
Speaker 2: executive branch has grown tremendously.
Speaker 1: Over the last The size, the power, the scope of
Speaker 1: government in general, and therefore of the executive branch has
Speaker 1: grown tremendously. Since nineteen thirty seven, the notion of what
Speaker 1: kinds of things Congress could regulate as being interstate commerce
Speaker 1: expanded enormously. And so Congress has set up all these
Speaker 1: Congress passes, all these laws. We're going to regulate this,
Speaker 1: and we're going to regulate that. We're going to regulate this,
Speaker 1: and we're going to regulate that. And who is supposed
Speaker 1: to enforce laws that Congress writes, well, the President does.
Speaker 1: The President is the executive, that's his role. Congress rights
Speaker 1: all these laws. Congress has had this vast field since
Speaker 1: the New Deal, this vastly larger field of activity that
Speaker 1: it can write laws for and regulate, and therefore has
Speaker 1: given far more ground for the executive to cover as
Speaker 1: far as enforcing LAWND To allow the executive to enforce
Speaker 1: all these laws, Congress created this vast alphabet soup of
Speaker 1: executive branch agencies, the FDA, the EPA, the this that
Speaker 1: all of those executive branch agencies have the President at
Speaker 1: the tippy top of their org chart. He is in
Speaker 1: charge of every single federal executive branch. They are all
Speaker 1: exercising his executive branch authority. So, for one, you've got
Speaker 1: just over the course of the last hundred years, this
Speaker 1: enormous expanse of public life and law ohaw, that the
Speaker 1: executive branch is supposed to enforce and therefore so much
Speaker 1: room for activity on the part of the president. The
Speaker 1: other big reason I think this is the legacy of
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. You don't like expansive executive power being wielded
Speaker 1: in questionable ways. You don't like governance by executive order.
Speaker 1: I'd blame Obama. Barack Obama in after twenty fourteen, his
Speaker 1: party lost the House, his party lost the Senate, and
Speaker 1: Barack Obama had been trying to get immigration reform of
Speaker 1: various kinds of pass for years. Republicans wouldn't play ball.
Speaker 1: He wanted to get the dreamers legalized. He should have
Speaker 1: done this in his first two years in office.
Speaker 2: He didn't.
Speaker 1: When he had massive Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress,
Speaker 1: he didn't get it done. And so famously, after the
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen elections, Obama said, well, I've got a pen
Speaker 1: and I've got a phone, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: do by executive orders. And the most significant thing he
Speaker 1: did was DACA DACA, which was basically trying to do
Speaker 1: through an executive action what he couldn't do in passing
Speaker 1: the Dream Act. So the Dream Act was basically, someone
Speaker 1: comes into the country unlawfully, but they're brought there as
Speaker 1: a child, and they've been living in the country since
Speaker 1: they came into the country illegally as a kid. You know,
Speaker 1: if they came in as a kid, we can sort
Speaker 1: of consider it. Well, they they weren't the ones who
Speaker 1: came in. It's not their fault. They came into the
Speaker 1: country unlawfully. Their parents brought them here, so maybe we
Speaker 1: give them some path to legal residency. Barack Obama just
Speaker 1: did it via executive order Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals DACA,
Speaker 1: and basically tried to argue, well, you know, I have
Speaker 1: I have executive discretion, I have prosecutorial discretion. I don't
Speaker 1: have to enforce all the laws all the time. I'm
Speaker 1: just choosing not to enforce any I'm just choosing not
Speaker 1: to enforce American immigration law as it relates to this
Speaker 1: group of people. But he also set up like basically
Speaker 1: a whole program for it. It wasn't just him not
Speaker 1: enforcing certain provisions of the law. There are very good
Speaker 1: arguments that he positively did things. So here's this incredibly
Speaker 1: ambitious executive action by Barack Obama, and it held up
Speaker 1: in the courts. The courts didn't demand that it he
Speaker 1: got rid of even the Supreme Court under President Trump.
Speaker 1: When Trump tried to get rid of it, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said, well, yeah, you legally could, but you didn't
Speaker 1: follow the administer the Administrative Procedures Act in doing it,
Speaker 1: so you got to start over again.
Speaker 2: DACA is still on the books.
Speaker 1: You know, about a decade later, when it was highly
Speaker 1: questionable whether Obama legally had the authority to do it,
Speaker 1: and by I can certainly learned that Lesson Biden tried
Speaker 1: to keep forgiving student loan debt via executive order when
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear he didn't have the authority to
Speaker 1: do it. And President Trump's basically saying, well, what's good
Speaker 1: for the goose is good for the gander. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do stuff via executive order if that's the game we're
Speaker 1: gonna play when we return. My global thought on RFK
Speaker 1: next on the John Girardi Show RFK Juniors having his
Speaker 1: congressional hearings today. Here's just my general thought. There are
Speaker 1: all these trumpy people say, if you don't support OURFK,
Speaker 1: you're a monster. I'm just a radio host, so I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lose my job. I can agree with you
Speaker 1: all you want that we've had bad food additives.
Speaker 2: Over the last you know, fifty years in America. Whatever,
Speaker 2: I will agree with you all you want.
Speaker 1: That pharmaceutical companies are bad in various ways. I can
Speaker 1: agree with you all you if you want to get
Speaker 1: rid of pharmaceutical companies advertising, you want to, you know,
Speaker 1: a greater scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry, the ways in
Speaker 1: which regulatory captures happen, where pharmaceutical companies have captured government regulators.
Speaker 1: All right, fine, I just don't want someone extremely pro
Speaker 1: abortion in charge of HHS.
Speaker 2: And that's it. That's my whole thought on RFK, See
Speaker 2: you next time on Power Talk