Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist and
David Harsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just as
a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We'd
love to hear from you. Molly. It's been a pretty
busy week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like we had a couple of weeks
where things were just normal crazy, and then we picked
up again into the what we saw in the early
days of the Trump administration, which is a higher level
of craziness.
Speaker 1: I saw the MSNBC host his name escapes me, but
he had to take a break because he said that
things were just too crazy for him with Trump.
Speaker 3: Was it Laurence o'donnald. I didn't see Lawrence o'donald. Okayea,
Lawrence o'donald. I have to say I kind of understood
what he was talking about. It gets a little bit much.
I'm like, I don't even know what am I writing about?
What happened yesterday? Who knows?
Speaker 2: It's you know, in general, whether you're a journalist or not.
I think taking a break from political chaos is a
healthy thing for everybody to do. For sure, they should
not wield their lives around politics.
Speaker 1: But Molly, we cannot take a break today or right
now because the purpose of this podcast is politics. So
let's talk about the I don't know what to call it.
I guess we'd call it the kerfuffle over the Trump
administration's deportation of two to three hundred I'm not exactly short.
The number is Venezuelans to uh to Venezuela who are
accused of being gang members. Do you know the name
of the gang?
Speaker 4: Okay, let's back up just a second here, so you
don't like how.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration did send plane folds of Venezuelans to
l Salvador, Salvador as part of an agreement they made
with the President of El Salvador to how some of
our worst elements who have illegally come to this country.
So this was done under multiple statutes, but one of
them is the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight,
which says that this act can come into effect at
times of war. It can also come into effect at
a time of predatory incursion and also invasion. I think, sorry,
I don't have it in front of me, and so
under the Act. Well, first off, Trump named members of
the Trendeaarragua group a terrorist group. He said they were
under they were classify as terrorists and they have some
support from their nation state, which is Venezuela. There were
also people I think involved in this which are with
MS thirteen, which is another really bad group that is
not like a typical criminal gang in that they engage
in terrorism or the attacks on people who are unrelated
to their criminal enterprise as a form of threat and intimidation. Anyway,
the Venezuelans I think were the Trende Arragua people, and
they were deported and a judge, someone representing the interests
of the people who are being deported, tried to stop it.
And this one Judge Boseburg, was like, yeah, you're going
to stop that right now. I'm putting a temporary restraining
order under on you right now. And even if the
planes are in the air, you have to turn them around. Sorry,
I just wanted to get that part of the story out.
Speaker 1: I hear you, I hear yeah. That's all. That's all right.
The uh, the Alien Enemies Act has only been enacted
three times in history, right, the War of eighteen twelve,
World War One, and World War Two. I know where
you stand on this. I think, do you think it's
unreasonable to have some concerns about enacting this, about ignoring
a judge's order even if he's wrong, because if he
is wrong, then a higher court will over you know,
will overturn his decision. And those are concerning concerning things.
To me. I'm not concerned about getting rid of these guys.
I don't think Trump is inventing a group, you know,
is trying to get rid of, you know, an immigrant
who is completely peaceful. I'm sure these people are criminals,
and I'm sure they're terrible people, and I want them
out of the country. But don't you have any concerns
about the precedence that this kind of thing sets moving forward,
especially using this law. I don't care how old it
is or not old it is, but I do care
that it's properly enacted. I don't feel like we're in
a time of war, and I don't feel like it's
especially different today than it was five years ago as
far as predatory aliens in the country. But anyway, so
it's just two things.
Speaker 2: One the actions are being undertaken under multiple authorities, and
to a time of war is just one of the things.
The triggers the Alien Enemies Act, also incursions and invasions.
And the question that is everybody roiled right now is
whether a solitary inferior Court judge can take over operations
like this. You know, he says, I don't care if
the plane is in the air, you're going to turn
it around. I just want before we talk about the
balance of powers issues in play. I think it's also
important to just think about the facts of the case.
But we talked last week about Supreme Court stuff, and
there are constitutional scholars that are totally theory based. They're
like autistic for theory.
Speaker 4: And then there are.
Speaker 2: People who do constitutional law who care a lot about
the underlying facts of a given case. And whether you're
SKILLI alike in being focusing on principle and just writing
that to the ends of the earth and whatever tests
are in play for that, or whether you think that
you should look at the actual case at hand. That's
kind of one of the debates you see on the
Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I want the autistic people because because yeah, I'll
keep going.
Speaker 4: Sorry, go ahead, go ahead, no.
Speaker 1: Because then everything becomes malleable. This is just like how
liberals treat the Constitution. Vern Obama said that we have
to inject empathy or something into the rulings. I mean,
this reminds me of you know, this reminds me of that.
I think there's a place in time for them that's
in legislation and in governing, not in thinking about the law.
But anyway, I'm sorry interrupted you. You know you were
moving from if.
Speaker 2: You forgive me another tangent really quickly. Do you know
the Bostock ruling that was causing a lot of drama
a few years ago, in which Gorsich said that sexual
orientation and transgender status were included in the Civil Rights
Act when they said no discrimination on the basis of sex,
And he took this very hyper literal, autistic approach to
reading that law to say, well, like his whole thing
when this was something Justice Kagan had introduced in oral
argument was to say that like, let's say someone has
a party and they discriminate against gay people, and one
of the people there says that their wife is coming
to the party, and if the wife, sorry, if this
is one of the people there says their spouse is
coming to the party, and if the spouse is a
wife or the spouse has a husband, if that a.
Speaker 4: No, wait, sorry, you might need to clean this up.
Speaker 2: He's like, let's say there's someone at the employees The
employee at the party says their spouse is coming, and
the employer is like, great, And it turns out that
the spouse is a man versus a woman. That's discrimination
on the basis of sex. And so therefore the Civil
Rights Act includes prohibitions on discrimination on the basis of
gender orientation or same sex attraction status. And the thing was,
Congress had thought a lot about whether to include those
provisions and had decided not to. And further, there's a
lot of evidence that at the time that the Civil
Rights Act was enacted that nobody even knew of gender ideology.
And they also allowed federal laws discriminating against gay people
in federal employment. So the argument was absurd, but it
was hyper literal. And you see then the problem with
being hyper literal and how you sometimes have to think about,
like a little bit about context.
Speaker 1: Of course, I don't mean you should never have any context.
I think that people also get the Constitution wrong, right.
I mean there are decisions I think people are being
hyper literal and maybe they're not getting the meaning. I'm
not saying that any of this is perfect. I'm saying
that we and the argument I see a lot from
now from people defending Donald Trump and this situation is
like he can ignore the court because he has decided
that what he's doing is constitutional. And that's fine. And
I actually think what he's doing is probably constitutional. But
that doesn't mean we ignore judges and don't go to
a higher court, which will either we have autional crisis
if higher courts say it's not okay, not right now.
Speaker 2: Some team has actually shown itself to be working with
this judge quite a bit, even as they say we
don't recognize your authority to question like there is there
are certain things that are considered non justiciable, which means
they're not for judicial review. And this case actually deals
with one of the areas which is under this Act
the authorities granted to the executive This has been reviewed
by the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has affirmed
that this is that the balance of powers goes to
that the executive branch gets to handle this stuff without
it being under judicial review from every podunk judge on
Earth on the plane issue, Like, I think it does
help explain why the Supreme Court views certain things as
non justiciable. So let's say that the judge says, turn
that plane around right now, and let's say that the
plane has enough fuel to land in Venezuela or in
land in El Salvador, but not enough fuel to return
to the United States. Does that mean that Donald Trump
has to follow that order?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Say there are sensitive issues that have been handled by
Marco Rubio and the leaders of foreign governments that are
clearly you know, clearly in Article two of the Constitution
and not Article three, and that the judges order contra
judges order actually makes it an intolerable incursion on Article
two authorities and responsibilities.
Speaker 5: What are you.
Speaker 1: Situation exactly exactly. I am not, I am not. I'm not.
People are going to write this show, They're going to
write us email, They're gonna yell at me about something.
The case I'm not making. I could already see it.
I understand the administration's position. I actually am sympathetic to it.
It's the argument, it's the backstopped arguments that I'm seeing
from administration officials. Actually are people connected to Trump that
they have a right to simply ignore courts and that's
just fine just because someone acts on constitutionally, well, Congress
acts on constitutionally sometimes and they're overturned by the courts.
The resident has a good case here. Do these aliens
have a right to judicial review? You're saying not. I'm
not a scholar. I don't know that much about this law.
But that is a reasonable issue, I think to adjudicate
in a court. Don't you think so?
Speaker 2: That is the that is the issue here, and I
would say no, this has already been decided by the
Supreme Court. I think the remedy if you think that
Donald Trump should not protect Americans from violent terrorist organizations
is to impeach him. If you think so, there's all
you know. That's the actual proper course is to go
to Congress and have them try to impeach Trump for
deporting trend Are Ragua and MS thirteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're flippantly like, I no, you do you loaded
that question up? What if I said I want to
impeach Donald Trump because he's ignoring the judicial branch that
would be a better I think case that he wants
venezuela and killers.
Speaker 2: You don't have a case that he's ignoring. I mean
he's responding to every single thing. You've got the top
Justice Department officials responding to every single thing, not just
on this case, but on literally a hundred cases that
they are having to fight to just to just to
retain their Article two authority.
Speaker 1: It's an airing problem besieged.
Speaker 2: By billionaire funded lawsuits every step of the way. And
the reason why this is an issue is because of
a recent problem where inferior court judges are issuing global
injunctions on the activities of the of the Article two branch.
And that's inappropriate and it actually needs to stop, and
the Supreme Court needs to stop it. And you have
had multiple justices writing that they think this is something
that could get out of control. Like for years now,
they're saying, these global injunctions are a massive problem, and
they really rose up people judges nominated by both parties
do them, but they kind of rose up during the
first Trump administration as a major major issue. And it
also is flooding the Supreme Court's emergency docket. It's making
things really untenable in terms of rule of law and
balance of powers. And so the Supreme Court should issue
some very strong guidance and like one of the things
they could do this doesn't affect this case, but to
just tell judges that if they're going to do an injunction,
they could do it just in their sphere of command,
as opposed to a global injunction, like just on the
cases that have been brought or in the area that
they oversee, not nationwide or throughout the world.
Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying. I just think it's a
dangerous precedent to set. For instance, Mahmud Khalil is being deported.
He is going to go in front of a judge, right,
there's due process for him. He's not just thrown on
a plane. Let me give you an example. If we
have a president like Joe Biden or when you don't
trust and he just says this class of alien, which
is what this is about, can be deported because we're
in war and without any kind of due process. I
think that's something we need to think about enacting so easily.
Let's remember in World War One, Wilson threw anti war
protesters as a class into prison, and we barely had
any due process.
Speaker 2: Here's a difference between anti war protesters as a class
and illegal immigrant terrorists.
Speaker 4: As a class.
Speaker 1: I know that one is one is criminal and evil
and the other is just a political speech. My point
is that no one has prosecuted any of these people
as terrorists. You know what I'm saying. It's just the
president's word on it. But we have to laws.
Speaker 2: There are laws governing the designation of classes as terrorists.
Those laws were followed, right.
Speaker 1: The Venezuelan group that he says terrace has never been
prosecuted under any terrorism law.
Speaker 4: That's it's a different. That's a different.
Speaker 1: It's a unilateral But so then it's just a unilateral
admit a presidential move, right, it's not, which is.
Speaker 4: Why if you have a problem with it.
Speaker 2: To me, the appropriate recourse is to impeach the president.
Right and Article one, which is I think are should
be our best, most superior branch should take an active
role if they have a problem, and if the people
have a problem with.
Speaker 4: This, and they might.
Speaker 2: Now, when you say, what would you do if a
president you didn't like deported a class of non citizens?
And I have to be honest, like, this is what
I learned with.
Speaker 4: The Khalil thing. What is his name? Khalil Muchmud, Mahmud, Khalil, muckmud, Khalil.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I there are people I greatly respect who are
mortified by the Rubio deportation plan. There they say this
is a horrible incursion on free speech, that just because
he supports Hamas and has been a ringleader of destabilizing
campus protests, this does not mean that we should have
the right or ability to deport him.
Speaker 4: And I.
Speaker 2: Realize, like I have extremely different ideas about the due
process protections for citizens and non citizens. I think almost
like the two shouldn't meet. We're in a contract with
fellow citizens, and it's hard enough to keep that going
when it applies to non citizens, even if they're here
legally as he is, even if they were awarded a
green card, which is like a very nice gift to
have given someone like him.
Speaker 4: I still don't think that that's the same. Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not freaking out about the due process that he's
being afforded because he's here legally, But when you're getting
to criminal violent terrors, terrorists and gangs who are here illegally,
I just just.
Speaker 1: Don't I agree, I don't think about it. Non citizens,
we should be able to deport them for almost any reason.
We feel like if they don't, we don't think they
belong to Illegals and criminals for sure, should be just
checked out of this country immediately. I'm trying to make
a theoretical point to you, and this is autistic theoretical
points that you were mentioning before the president unilaterally maintains
there's a group of people in this country who are terroristic.
I think he's right about these people from as far
as I can tell. But he can just say it,
and there's no way without due process to make sure
that that is true.
Speaker 4: Well done.
Speaker 2: He did follow the law in designating them that way,
but he can just.
Speaker 1: Do that unilaterally. And what I'm saying is, do you believe, Well.
Speaker 2: It's not it's like acting like he just came up
with it in out of nowhere. There's a law that
has a process by which a president may do this
that was passed by Congress and signed into law by
the Senate, and he followed that, sorry, sign into law
by the President, and he followed that. And so it's
not just like a unilateral thing. You have a process
here that's been followed. That's actually okay.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 1: I also concerns me that we're not actually in a
war and that we're using a law that is meant.
I know it has other facets, but it is really
an extraordinary first of all, incredibly abused law like Wilson
abused that law and a FDR abused that law. And
I'm just I just worry about that stuff, and I
think it's reasonable to worry about that stuff. I'm not
saying in the end, Trump's not right. I'm just saying
that this idea that you can well it's his name,
Holman or whatever. The immigration He's like, I don't care
what judges say. Well, you're just the bureaucrat. You don't
get to say you don't care what judges say.
Speaker 2: I did not see him say that, but I did
see him respond to a reporter saying, wasn't this law
passed in the eighteenth century? And he said, you mean,
like our constitution? And I thought that was a good response.
I also want to highlight the difference between this act,
which you say is a problem because of how it's
been used by bad presidents, but compare it to the
Logan Act, which we which was also in eighteenth century
law that has never been used effectively or successfully, and
was used to run the Russia collusion hoax against Americans.
And I don't remember the Washington Post saying that it
shouldn't be used because it was old and had never
been tested by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: You know, no, I no trust me. I agreed that
there's a hypocrisy. In fact, I think the Logan Acts
probably should unconstantitutional. Actually think the Alien ins edition actually
be unconstitutional as well. I just I think there needs
to be better protections. But I know that is what
it is. It's the law. I get it. I'm not
you know.
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Speaker 1: Now, I want to talk about John Roberts. You know
so John Roberts, he came out any you know, and
he said that you know, in two hundred years, you
know what did he say? The precedent is for more
than two centuries. It has been established that impeachment is
not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. I
agree with the latter part of that statement. But the
impeachment processes as how I understand it, again, not no
constitutional scholar. Here is a political action. So if I
decide and voters decide that they want to impeach a judge,
a justice, a politician, a president, but it really is
a political decision, do you agree with that or not?
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: I think that judges, federal judges serve lifetime.
Speaker 4: I should say sentences terms.
Speaker 2: They have lifetime appointments for good behavior, meaning not if
you disagree with their decision, but if they've done something
to violate the integrity of the institution that they serve in, that's.
Speaker 4: When you can impeach them.
Speaker 2: That's different than just saying I don't like this person
or I don't like this decision. The whole point of
the lifetime appointment is to protect judges from from people
just disagreeing with a particularly controversial decision and retaliating against them.
But that does not mean that I agree with John
Roberts here. For a few different reasons. First and foremost,
he just should.
Speaker 4: Not be weighing in on this.
Speaker 2: It's inappropriate for the reason that you said, right, it's
a legislative question. He's the chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
that's in a different branch. It's not really for him
to opine on this. It's also inappropriate because he's probably
going to oversee some cases dealing with this very dispute,
and to weigh in against one of the parties in
such a prejudicial manner like he did unnecessary today is
just wrong. But then, more than anything, I would say,
the case is not that Boseberg should be impeached because
people disagree with his decision. The case is that he's
unconstitutionally taking authority from a different article branch of God.
Speaker 1: It didn't take any authority hold on.
Speaker 2: He actually did when he's telling the President how to
run operations involving a hostile foreign government. That's not his role.
That is an article to branch authority. And that's the
entire crux of the debate. Now, you can say you
can you can disagree with what I just said there,
but the debate is not about disagreement with a decision.
It's about disagreement about whether he has any role here
at all whatsoever. That's the Is this justiciable is the issue.
And Trump's position is that the judge is unconstitutionally taking
this power.
Speaker 4: So it's not so.
Speaker 2: Roberts was wrong in how he assessed the actual nature
of the argument.
Speaker 1: I think if Roberts would probably viewed as that he
is defending his branch of the government. It was a
pretty neutral statement as far as it goes. He was
just saying that the proper appropriate is this and this,
which you actually agree with, and I disagree with because
I don't know when the last time we had an
impeachment over high crimes and misdemeanors. Most impeachments are politically motivated.
Every Trump impeachment was politically motivated, and nothing, there's nothing
to stop you from doing that. It's become a political tool.
But I'm just doing this to be yelled at by
all the listeners.
Speaker 2: I a really important thing, But I would like to
push back, if you don't mind, on this Alien Enemies Act,
which is the thing at issue.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's an old law.
Speaker 2: It can only be invoked by the president or executive
branch under certain conditions. The president must make a public
proclamation about the incursion or invasion or war. And he
did that, and then he has the authority. It's pretty
extraordinary to declare that these things are occurring and that
he can remove these people. The sorry, I'm trying to
find something here about okay. So the case that looked
into this was Ladeki versus Wadkins, in which Harry S.
Truman invoked the Act three years after World War Two,
and the Supreme Court was very clear that the Acts
removal powers extend beyond times of war or even warlike actions,
and that it was the president's power alone to invoke
the Act, and that it involves matters of political judgment.
This is a quote, matters of political judgment for which
judges have neither technical competence nor official responsibility. So these
are the separation of powers issues. Now it gets into
whether you can do a temporary restraining order like Boseburg
is trying to do. But the argument of the Trump
team is that Boseberg has no authority to even consider
a temporary restraining order, that he has no authority to
turn government aircrafts around in mid flight, that he does
not have the authority to substitute his judgment for these
incursions for the presidents, and that he has no authority
to issue a nationwide injunction.
Speaker 4: And that's the issue. It's not like a decision. It
wasn't even we didn't even reach a decision. It was
just a order.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an order to review whether these people need
do process. I don't agree. Maybe he's wrong, but it's not.
And maybe he's wrong about the plane specifically, like maybe
he has no business stopping them, But I just you're
the thing is that you just had a Schmorgsborg of
things that are a problem, right, but they're all all different.
Stopping a plane, Yes, ordering judicial review seems well within
the bounds of.
Speaker 2: Why do you okay, But that's why I said, the
Supreme Court says it's not subject too.
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court said that abortion was an issue
of privacy and they were wrong. That doesn't mean that
you can never have a case that takes it back
to the Supreme Court to either clarify what this is
about or to say that the law it self might
be unconstitutional.
Speaker 4: I think you can attempt to challenge that. I do.
Speaker 2: But for the Supreme Court's decision to have any meaning,
you have to follow until such time as it's successfully overturned.
And so what I mean by that is, if the
Supreme Court says that the president's actions are not subject
to judicial review under this Act, then that means they're not.
You know, you can try to work the case through,
but you can't enjoin the president from doing what the
Act says he can do, what the Supreme Court has
reviewed and affirmed he can do without Like, you can't
just do that willy nilly and then blame the victim
of someone not following the Court's precedent and not following
the law, Like you can't blame the victim for not
following things when he's the one actually following things and
it's the judge who's acting in a renegade fashion.
Speaker 1: And I think I'm slightly annoyed by this as well
because of the broader issue of Donald Trump declaring emergencies
about everything and just running everything through executive orders. Congress
literally doing nothing. They've handed the tower of power over
to him, They handed the emergency power over to him.
I mean, the whole government is not This is not
how government's supposed to be run. And I don't really
blame him. This is something that has been happening for
a long time, but especially since Obama and Gosh. I mean,
it's no way to run a government because tomorrow there'll
be a Democrat and he's going to overturn everything. We're
going to go back and it's going to just be anarchy.
It's instable.
Speaker 2: Even if that weren't true, that we'd go back to
something else, it's still true that our article one branch
Congress has been throwing away its authority for like one
hundred years, and it has caused a crisis in the country.
And the best thing that could happen right now would
be for Congress to debate some of these issues, including
whether this is the proper venue to get rid of
terrorists who are terrorizing Aurora, Colorado in other places. And
you know what, Congress should have a more active role,
not just because it makes it more permanent, but because
it's actually what the Constitution gave them.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is another eighty twenty issue. What you're
talking about a word debating. No one's going to think
about it like I'm thinking about it. They're going to
be like these Venezuelan killers need to be chucked out
of the country, and they are one hundred percent right
on that we should rewrite immigration law to make it
easy to depoor people, even Mahu Khalil. He has too
many protections as a non citizen to be here and
to support terrorist groups. It's insanity. It's just a suicidal
you know, these suicidal laws, and Congress should be dealing
with that AnyWho.
Speaker 2: It is madness for a single solitary inferior court judge,
one who by the way, was involved in the Russia
collusion hoax, to try to take over presidential powers. It
risks destabilizing the entire judicial branch. And so what John
Roberts should have done. And I think there's even a
way of interpreting what he was saying as like trying.
Speaker 4: To get other people to calm down by.
Speaker 2: Defending I don't know. We're at a dangerous point already.
The left does not respect the authority of the courts.
The right has been But you do things like this
that are so offensive to Americans about which branch of
government handles stuff like this, and there's going to be
broad public support for just ignoring the courts. I don't
want that to happen. I think that John Roberts's refusal
to rein in the global injunctions is a threat to
the country basically because if we lose respect for the
courts because they're acting so crazy and lower and the
lower courts, it could destroy the country. I don't mean
to be so hyperbolic, but it's a serious problem here.
Speaker 1: I agree it's a serious problem. I think you're slightly
exaggerating what a serious problem. It is not exaggerating that
these lower court judges are a problem. I agree with
that completely, but that they will likely always be overturned
by court that cares about the Constitution in the end,
and that will solidify belief in the in the courts,
not undermine it. I don't know, can you LEGI I
think there needs to be judicial reforms that are going
to happen with the way Congress is now, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know the legislature would be the right place to tamp
that down. I do think the Supreme Court could quite
easily provide some guidance on when and how to issue I.
Speaker 1: Mean that would be best junctions.
Speaker 2: So I just want to say there was a judge
who gave them a like set it up for them
on the issue of whether you can review temporary restraining orders,
because there's this like practice of not viewing those as reviewable.
But they should be in cases like we're seeing, where
it could cause wars to break out, or it could
cause billions of dollars to be spent wrongly, you know,
all this kind of stuff, And that judge teed it
right up for them, and they whiffed that was the
that was related to the case, the two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I could make a just another
theoretical A judge you know, says you can't take those bombs,
take get the missiles back, We're not bombing the huties today,
and tells the president he can do it. It's obviously
a completely unconstitututional thing to do. So I can understand
why people are concerned. I get that. My concern is
that things are falling apart that we that we're not
going to have any rule of law. There's going to
be another one day there'll be a progressive president, and
I will be very nervous for him to be or
she to be using emergency powers in this way for
bad things. Gosh, I think to think about one day,
one day.
Speaker 4: As we've already experienced it.
Speaker 1: But also like what I know.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I'm going I don't know exactly what criminal
immigrant terrorist class.
Speaker 4: You're worried about a progressive business.
Speaker 1: It's such an unfair way of framing it. I am
not worried about them. I'm worried about people in the
in the in the executive branch, ignoring the judicial branch.
I'm not worried about Venezuelan in te I love people
keep doing that to me and trying to frame me up,
you know, send me up that way. I'm not concerned
about them. If they are sent to El Salvage or
I don't even care where they're sent, as long as
they're out of here. I don't want a single illegal
immigrant to be in this country, violent or not.
Speaker 2: You said that I was being hyperbolic, which which I
want to say something.
Speaker 1: So slightly exaggerated problem.
Speaker 2: I want to say something in your defense on that there.
I do think people sometimes act like a bad thing
happening in the judicial system is intolerable for even a moment,
and they forget that sometimes we've gone through this in
the past, and I think it was Mike Fragoso over
at Ethics and Public Policy Center who raised this, but
it could have been someone else that. In nineteen seventy three,
a single Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ordered the
American bombing of Cambodia to be stopped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2: Think that's fascinating. The case, by the way, is one
that you and I would find very we would probably
agree with it. It was brought by people who said
that no declaration of war had been issued against Cambodia,
and therefore it was illegal what was happening. So the
injunction made sense in that sense.
Speaker 4: Right, But the.
Speaker 2: Bombing continues, they do the injunction, the bombing doesn't stop
for a second, and six hours later, the full Supreme
Court lifted the injunction, thereby averting a constitutional crisis. But
I'm not sure how that case was eventually resolved. I
would actually like to look into that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been tons going back to Jackson and
even Yeah and Jackson before where presidents ignore courts. I'm
not saying this is new, it is kind of new
in the new era of originalism. I think you know
what I mean. When the right took that up, and
there are people now that are considered conservatives who teach
at Harvard and other places, who I think don't really
believe in originalism and don't really believe maybe that the
judicial branch should be dictating what is constitutional all the time,
and maybe they have a point historically speaking. I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a problem that requires courage from the Supreme
Court that might not be there. Is what makes me
nervous about it.
Speaker 1: This is almost like Roberts's nightmare, really right, because he
doesn't want to undermine his branch, but he will have to.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, but what was he doing with his statement today?
He makes the weirdest statements this year. At his end
of the Court end of the year Court in Review
was like, I hear, Russian disinformation is a problem. Or
when he came out against Trump saying that there were
Republican appointed justices and Democrat appointed justices and he was like,
how dare you there are only good justices and no
bad justices or whatever. Like he just has weird statements
that he makes that don't seem to help anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's made statements I wouldn't say condemning. But
when Chuck Schumer threatened the cord in another time with
the ethics investigation. I mean, I just feel like he
feels impelled to defend his branch of government. In some sense.
It's not politically savvy. But he doesn't need to be
politically savvy, really, Okay.
Speaker 2: I do think this is the problem with Chief Justice
John Roberts. He claims to want certain things. He came
onto the court saying all he cared about was the
legitimacy of the institution and he wanted fewer five four decisions.
It was a weird goal because a lot of people think,
regardless of their constitutional interpretive philosophy, that you should judge
the law according to what's right and not according to
what's politically popular.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: He's almost always in the majority because he wants to
be in majorities to strengthen majorities rather than ruling just
how he thinks is right. Also, he says he said
when he was confirmed, and he says it again sometimes
when he's like on the losing side of tough issues,
that he thinks the job of the court is to
do as little as possible, basically, like to just try
to uphold the given law but don't go any further
than that. But then when it comes to stuff like Obamacare,
which could have clearly been disposed of as unconstitutional under
the law and just be done with. He's like, so,
it is unconstitutional, but we could rescue it by rewriting
the law and reinterpreting everything.
Speaker 4: As a tax.
Speaker 2: He doesn't even stay consistent to his own views, or
he switches votes late. You know, they'll vote right after
a case is heard. He's like switching votes all the
time later, like, oh, I ruled in favor of being
asked about citizenship on the census, but I'm going to
change my vote later because of something I read. Or
in the Obamacare case, it was because he was pressured
by the president.
Speaker 4: Himself to change his vote.
Speaker 2: And when you show yourself being willing to be politically pressured,
that's a reward you give people and an indication of
how they can affect things going forward. If you're brave
and you're courageous and you defend the court as a
non political institution one hundred percent of the time, it
makes it less effective to apply political pressure. You know,
as much as the left does.
Speaker 1: I agree with all that, I am not, as you know,
I am not a fan of democracy, you know, as
kind of just a you know, a majority tearing sort
of views, and Roberts feels like he thinks he's in
a legislature or something, or that he needs validity. I
want the most zealous textualists that you can find on
the court, Like that's what I want. The other stuff,
the empathy, the you know, thinking about what the people want,
that's for other branches to deal with.
Speaker 2: So anyway, by the way, you were right, and I
was wrong when you said when you mentioned that he
had had a good statement after Chuck Schumer threatened kavan
On gorsicch and also when he pushed back against some
of the politicized politicization of ethics reform. And so I
just wanted to acknowledge that you were right.
Speaker 1: I don't think you said I was wrong. But he
needs to. He feels the need to defend the court,
I think, and that's why sometimes he makes statements probably
that aren't great.
Speaker 7: Elon Musk and Doge need help.
Speaker 5: The watched aut On Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski
Every Day Chris helps all I packed the connection between
politics and the economy and how.
Speaker 1: It affects your wallet.
Speaker 7: Doge is only highlighting this spending problems, but Congress controls
the per strings. Congress needs to follow through and step
up to control this spending or we'll be back where
we started. Whether it's happening in DC or down on
Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 5: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about something else right now. I have to
say Donald Trump's tweets make me laugh. I mean, they
are just insane, right, or whatever you call a truth
social tweet. This tweet he had about how the pardons
of Joe Biden that we're done with an auto pen
are all invalid. Now, he assess, because how do we
even know that Joe Biden was there or knew it
was going on, etc. And I don't think he has
the right to overturn pardons. I'm sorry, but it's very interesting,
at least for the historical record, and maybe because we
need to think about the autopen a little more that
Joe Biden, even Jake Tapper has wri in a book
about this, did not know what was going on around him,
Like it is very reasonable to believe that his underlings
and others within the government decided to give I would say,
not even pardons, but immunity in the most I would
say that. I would say no president has had more
corrupt pardens than him leaving office. Maybe Clinton with Mark
Rich but and maybe there's a few others. But this
was not just his family but his political allies. It
was detrimental. I think to justice, you know, justice and
transparency in government. So anyway, I found that interesting. I
don't know what can be done about it. I don't
think you reverse a pardon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is again why Congress should have
acted and and invited a twenty fifth Amendment challenge to
Joe Biden as president. There were many people who kept
the country in a position where it was led by
someone who was unable to lead it.
Speaker 1: Is that a congressional thing or is it a cabinet.
Speaker 4: I said they should have invited, Oh.
Speaker 1: Invited, Okay, they should.
Speaker 4: Have encouraged it.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking other people who could have encouraged
it would be the media. I was reviewing. The Washington
Post has this left wing reporter named Isaac Arnsdorf, whose
wife was a clerk on the court the year of
the Dobbs decision Lake, and she's a noted pro abortion activist,
but he's also an activist. And days before the election,
he's all tweeting about or writing stories about how Donald
Trump is making no sense and he's crazy and he's senile,
and I'm thinking yes, And the Washington Post has done
next to nothing on Joe Biden's senility. And during Trump's
first term in office, Trump would like use two hands
to drink a glass of water, and the Washington Post
would quite seriously in tone about the twenty fifth Amendment.
And then when Robert Herr says he's not recommending anything
be done against Biden because no jury would find him
to have the mental acuity needed to stand trial, Everyone's like,
oh okay, and they don't do anything. They don't push
him out, they push him out as the nominee because
they know he probably can't win the election.
Speaker 1: Well, they actually speared. They did. They smeared Robert her
They didn't just say we can't do anything. They tried
to lie about what he said. The Biden lied about
what he said and the moment, and that had they
ever released the audio transfer the audio of that, I'm
not even sure anyway, started to interrupt, but yeah, it
was more well Merrick.
Speaker 2: Garland refused to do it, and yeah, they just I
guess to me a lot of people were to blame
for it. But insofar as nobody was able to successfully
challenge him as president because of these issues, I'm just
going to assume that whether he signed it personally or
had the auto pen, that it's considered like to me
that it's not specific enough in the Constitution about how
it must be done. That I think it doesn't matter
quite how it was done, but the actual question, that
the substance of the issue is just as important. And
I wish we were earnestly trying to find the answer
of whether he knew what he'd done. You remember a
representative Johnson said that he didn't know what he had
done to cut off was it fracking, I think drilling
for energy. He didn't know he had done it. He
might not know he pardoned these people. And I did
find it interesting that the pardon of his son was
done by himself, like you can see, it's like a
shaky signature, whereas the other ones were autopen. I find
that interesting, but I don't interesting what it means exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, all the stuff that's going on tells me that,
you know, it tells me this is such a cynical worldview,
right here's coming no matter how great a system you have,
and I think we have as good a system as
you can have in politics. If you don't, if you
have bad people in government, if you have corrupt people
and dishonest people. Because there's nothing we can really do
about this. The people elected Joe Biden. Let's say. You
may disagree, but he was the president and he has
the right to partner whoever he wants. I mean, there
is no limitation on that. And it is what it is.
You know, there's no way really to stop it. All right,
on that happy note, let's turn to culture. I love
asking you this, Molly every week. Do you have anything
for us?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I am struggling to finish this book, which
means I'm not doing anything else, including that I had
tickets to see craft Work on Sunday night and I
just couldn't go because I desperately. I just didn't assume.
I didn't realize that I would still be working on
this at this time.
Speaker 1: I ask you about that A Kraftworks still like, is
this the original members of kraft work.
Speaker 2: It's like two guys and one of them died. But
they are supposedly like.
Speaker 4: A good show and a good you know good.
Speaker 1: I love that krowd rock stuff, So what about you?
I have a very very strong recommend. Now, this was
a television show I watched. I would say that if
this had been a movie, it should win Best Picture.
It is a four episode show called Adolescence on Netflix.
It starts Stephen Graham. Do you know who he is?
Speaker 4: Thanks?
Speaker 1: So you're a British actor, real good actor. Here is it?
Watching it? It's about It starts with a police I'm
not going to give anything away, raiding a house to
arrest a young boy who is accused of murder. Thirteen
year old boy. I'm watching it, I'm like, this is
pretty amazing. They're in the car, they're doing this, they're
doing that. There are no cuts. Each episode is an
hour or more and they're done in one take. And
it's not like they're sitting in a room like a play.
There's a lot of movement and you realize this and
you're just impressed by it. But it's really incredibly It
builds a lot of tension because you're just following this
people from room to room. Then a person walks by,
they'll follow that person and it all it goes comes together.
The boy is a thirteen year old. This is his
first acting role and he is mind blowingly amazing at this.
And there are four episode. One is the arrest, the
next is in the school, I think, then it's just lawyers,
and then the final ones the family and how they
deal with what happened. And it is amazing adolescents. Yeah,
it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know we talked about it earlier, like years ago,
I think. But the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rope, which is
one of my very favorites. Yeah, and that is I
think an uncut movie, like it's just all the way
through there. There might be one spot where there's a cut, yeah,
and that that's all one room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's all in one room. So do you
know in Goodfellas there's a scene where they go to
the copa caban and that's done in one take. So
imagine that going on for an hour and everything's moving.
So I read later about this. There's a one of
them takes place within the school with all the kids.
There were like two hundred kids involved and they had
to move them from room to room and like choreographed
the whole thing, and it was really kind of amazing.
I don't know, I just I watched it and I
was I just I watched it like in one sitting.
It's like four hours long, and I just I was
not bored for a second of it. I just think
it was fantastic.
Speaker 2: So we had a reader email in we have, you know,
of the many reader emails we got, someone was saying
that they hadn't caught up on all of our old episodes,
like they basically just started listening to us more recently,
and they wanted to recommend three TV shows and I'm
pretty sure we've discussed all of them. Two of them
were Bosh, which I love seeing all of it, and
Slow Horses ditto, although I think the later seasons are
much weaker really, And then he also recommended The Pit
and I was like, Oh, I'm definitely going to check
out The Pit because this guy clearly has good taste.
But you said you already talked about it and had
seen it. What is it about?
Speaker 1: Well, we talked about on the episode where we had
a guest host named Mark Hemingway, which he didn't listen to.
Speaker 4: Apparently he did, but I've probably zoned out.
Speaker 1: By the end. I think you've probably listened to the beginning,
and by the end it's kind of like er. I
would say something like that in Pittsburgh, but it is more.
I can't watch it. It's too there's too much blood,
and they really like zoom in on the things going
on Broken Bones operations, you know, I just for me,
I don't need that. I just want drama. I don't
need the realism in that way. And I only watched
an episode or two and it was it was it
was fine has I'm not gonna remember a guy's name,
Noah something is. I think he was an er. Actually, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: I do kind of remember you talking about that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The other thing I wanted to mention a couple of
weeks ago, I said I'd watched like one episode of
White Lotus, Yeah, third season, and there was a clip
going around from the show this week of one of
the characters. It was an amazing actor and I'm forgetting
what his name is, describing his auto gynophilia in detail
to Walter Goggins.
Speaker 1: Okay, to Walter Goggins, that's someone I knew yeah.
Speaker 2: And it is a riveting scene. But also I find
it so I find that show so interesting because it
is the creation of what is his name, Mike White.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just thinking about him because he was
on Survivor one season. Was he Yeah? He was. I
love that. You know that.
Speaker 2: The show is far and away the most subversive show
on television to the current sexual politics that we're subjected to,
but Mike White is a member of the community, as
they say, so I just find it fascinating. And the
second season had like amazing scene that involves language barriers
and the protagonist is worried that the man she married
is secretly gay, and well, she kind of figures out
he is and has been just using her for her money,
and she's worried that he's going to have her killed.
And she goes up to the captain of the yacht
that they're on and tries to communicate this with him,
and he explains that he's gay too. She's like, the
gays are trying to kill me and he's like, I'm
gay too, And it's so interesting, like the sexual politics
of that. Like also the first season, the guy who
kind of ends up spiraling out of control is a
drug using gay hotel manager. And then this season where
apparently there's going to be a character who's got auto ginophilia,
and like because he just can explore things in a
much more interesting and honest way. Maybe because of his perspective.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what happened to me in that show. I
was watching the first episode and Steve zah is in
his name I think it is. He's an actor, and
there's just a close up of his junk like for
a long time, and I'm like, what is this show?
Why did Molly tell me to watch it? Please?
Speaker 2: Nobody watch it? Okay, including like the autoginophilia scene is
explicit about his sexual fetish. But we have been constrained
in how we can talk honestly about adult on set
sexual fetish, transgenderism, and everyone acts like you're just not
allowed to talk about it, even though it's a very
real thing. There are people with gender dysphoria from childhood,
there are people who develop it as a sexual fetish,
and polite company doesn't talk about it because it's uncomfortable,
And yet I think, you know, I just think it's important.
Speaker 1: To talk about I do like when people honestly kind
of explore things that most people don't talk about. But
so maybe I'll just skip the those parts.
Speaker 4: Dam rockwell does that sound right?
Speaker 1: Oh? Is Theannada? He's a great actor.
Speaker 4: I think that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it's just well acted too.
Speaker 1: I mean the reviews or the reviews are great, like
Rotten Tomatoes, it's like ninety nine. You know, people love it.
People tell me to watch it, and maybe I'll just
skip over some of the more pornographic scenes. I guess, Yeah,
it's not for me. I'm an old man now, I
do that.
Speaker 2: I don't even like cussing. I don't like violence, cussing,
gratuitous sex.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before. It usually like ruins the
momentum of the movie. It's just not necessary like ninety
percent of the time, unless you're watching like seven and
a half Weeks or whatever. Remember that movie.
Speaker 4: Note in the last weeks?
Speaker 1: What is it I confuse it with. That's the funniest
thing is that I was going to confuse it with
like eight and a half, which I think is a
Fellini movie. So I just got the wrong number completely.
I will get more numbers and facts wrong next week.
Until then, these be lovers of freedom and interest feel
fact