Will Trump Defy the Courts?

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I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
On today's show, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance hinted over the weekend that they may defy the courts after a few federal judges have started to put the brakes on Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the federal government.
We'll talk about the brewing constitutional crisis in a bit, and I'll dig in on the legal issues later in the show with strict scrutiny's Leah Littman, who joins us. We'll also talk about how Elon's wrecking ball is putting everything from cancer research to consumer protection at risk.
So much so that even some Republicans are starting to speak up just a little bit. Just a peep.
And in case you were wondering whether Trump and his family are still shameless grifters, it now looks like they've made $100 million in trading fees on the Trump meme coin while a lot of investors got screwed. But are they happy? It seems like it, honestly.
Yeah, they do seem pretty happy. Pretty psyched.
We are recording this the Monday after what used to be known as Super Bowl Sunday, but will henceforth be known as something else entirely, thanks to our new king and savior. Here's what was heard aboard Air Force One en route to the big game in New Orleans.
Air Force One is currently in international waters. The first time in history flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America.
This is a population declaring today, February 9th, 2014. That is the first ever Gulf of America day.
And we're flying right over it right now. So we thought this would be appropriate.
Even bigger than the Super Bowl. This is a big thing.
Now, I love the people of Canada. We have a great relationship.
But if they became our 51st state, it would be the greatest thing they could ever do. It would be unbelievable.
It would be a cherished state. Because without the U.S., Canada really doesn't have a country.
And if we say we want our cars to be made in Detroit, with a stroke of a pen, I can do that. Other things in addition to that would not allow Canada to be a viable country.
There's a light over the United States. People are happy, they're more confident.
The approval ratings for this country have gone through the sky. Is that what it is? It's a light, a light over the United States? American people are taking solid shits.
They're sleeping through the night. Where to begin? Where to begin, guys? I did find it notable that Trump was somehow able to insert himself at the center of one of America's last and certainly biggest monocultural moments.
He sat down for an interview with Fox News' Brett Baer, part of which aired before the game. He also became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl, where he was cheered on his way in and left before the second half.
What did you guys make of him going and basically just being on our screens and in our faces even more than he was

during the first term. God, so annoying.
It's just so annoying. Just give me my Super Bowl.
By the way, was that the Air Force One pilot doing that announcement? So we're getting a uniform member of the US military in on your political announcement about the Gulf of America. Check out this Norm's fag.

I mean,

I mean,

Apple, Google are changing the name. It's all over the place.
It's an even, as he said, it's an even bigger deal than the Super Bowl. And guess what? No one, everyone thinks this is stupid.
This is, of all the shit that, like the polls. It's not popular.
Which surprised me. I thought people would be like, Gulf of America, cool.
But it turns out even American voters, smarter than that. I will say, though, if I were to think of the places that would like it the most, it would be that ring of kind of red America that runs from like Clearwater, Florida, through the panhandle, down on the Texas.
Greater Tampa. Yeah, greater Tampa for sure.
I'd love to know whoever thought of that before this became a thing with Trump. You know, like I'd love to know someone should do the history, an oral history of how Gulf of Mexico became Gulf of America and a Trump proposal.
Yeah, we got to get that person and the guy who told Seal to become an anthropomorphic singing seal singing about Mountain Dew and we send them both the gimmo that was maybe it was definitely number one for a while that song in 1994 93 94 i can't remember exactly i was i was in eighth grade so i think it was associated with batman forever yes yes that's right and then so i know it then all these years later years later, 30 years later, he's a seal that made me a communist on the spot. I haven't consumed the ads.
That was it for capitalism. I was making a delicious orange cake based on a recipe by Nigella Lawson.
And then I got a text from my father saying, what is this? Which led me to believe that the halftime show would be gone. So I did turn that on.
And then I went back once the oranges were done steeping to making my cake. That's what I did.
Dad's a Drake guy. Yeah.
There were a few questions from parents in our home. Is there going to be another act too? Is this just, is it just this, this guy? Anyway, I really, my thought about, first of all, you know, Trump likes to flood the zone and he's out there all the time and that's helpful and everyone's made that point.
And I do think it's a lesson for Democrats going forward who are running for president. But he really does seem this time around like he is more of a king in like the ceremonial sense.
And like Elon now is the prime minister just doing all the work. And Trump is just, he's just posting, talking.
He's like a little more relaxed, you know? He's holding court. He's hosting.
You always say he's hosting. He's having a good time.
And then like meanwhile, Elon's just running around breaking the entire federal government, eliminating services for people. Yeah, he's free.
I'm not saying it's the worst model, by the way. Seems like a good time.
Like I would like to have a democratic president maybe next time who is out there all the time and just talking to the country the whole time. And then there's a whole bunch of people doing the work.
So we are still very much in the honeymoon phase. And I think this is really effective for a couple of reasons.
One point that Dan and Ben made when they were talking, or I think it was a point that Dan made in that conversation was that Trump paid for being compared with Ben Smith, which is a great episode people should check out, but Trump paid for being compared to Obama. He's now benefiting from being compared to Joe Biden being out there more and active.
And we'll get into the politics of all these different moves and what people know is happening, what people don't know is happening. But fundamentally, he looks extremely active.
He's everywhere. He's doing things.
He seems dynamic. He seems like he's having fun because I think actually for the first time as president, he is genuinely having fun because he doesn't feel bound by any of the advisors who are telling him the rules that he didn't care about in the first place.
But let's see what happens when there's two ways in which this eventually has to, I think, give. One, at a certain point, they won't be able to keep up with their own pace.
I'm sure they're thrilled with themselves that the press can't keep up and the Democrats can't keep up. They can't keep up with this.
That's the first. And the second is, you know, he called off that first round of tariffs.
We are still, he is still able to deny that he is responsible for a plane crashing, right? Even as he's getting rid of air traffic controller boards, whatever. So let's see what happens when there start to be consequences for governing or consequences of just reality and the crises that happen to any president, right? So like- Let's talk about a comparison with Obama for a second though.
I watched this and I thought, why couldn't we have gone to stuff? Every time Obama wanted to do something cool, we were told it was a security risk or it was gonna be inconvenience people? And I would just ask everyone to Google Obama and date night.

Remember that?

2009, Obama and Michelle, they get on the plane, they fly to New York, they go to dinner and they go to a show. Fox News and all the conservative media outlets went insane for weeks about what they did, whether it was out of touch, the cost to taxpayers.
I would love to know how much it costs to pack up Air Force One, fly to New Orleans,

rename a gulf, a body of water, and then leave at halftime. But that's not part of the conversation because of this massive conservative bias that Fox put on the game and they interviewed Trump before.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know.
I just think he's, forget about comparing him to either Biden or Obama, like just aside from that, which are all good comparisons, just compared to himself in the first term, right? Which is, I am wrestling with the fact that we, he seems to be having more fun and is in more places and is more culturally accepted and is part of, you know, right, Fox News is always going to attack everything that a Democratic president does for sure. But just people who don't turn into Fox or the more liberal parts of the media but are just normies in the country.
You know, you see the Super Bowl and there's Brad Pitt and there's Taylor Swift and there's, you know, New Orleans. And there's Donald Trump and he's just there and he's part of it with everyone else.
And it's also yet, compared to the much more dangerous and everything he's doing is much more lawless and there are much more consequences and it just seems there is this sort of disconnect between how he is in the second term and how he appears and how he's being received and what is actually happening though I will say that I think he always would have been welcomed in New Orleans at a Super Bowl to be honest in the first term just in terms of culturally and people liking him him and stuff like yeah of course but i'm just saying like it was i don't know if he was there the first term there would have been some i mean there were companies boycotting stuff there was it was a whole different scene there was just it was very very different but um yeah no i just think it's there's a way there's look i think it's just there's a way in which he is right now like ascendant and feeling strong and that like that crowd feels happy to happy to cheer him and then boo taylor swift and that like everybody knows that that's what's going to happen yeah and that's what we're going to do together and that's part of the fun but they booed her because she's dating travis kelsey and it's half eagles fan you know what i mean everyone making the comparison it's like come on guys yeah it's just bitter bitter eagles fans they're everywhere they've done way worse to like santa claus they throw batteries yeah i mean he used to get booed more yeah he was he used to get one of the most unpopular presidents in american history i mean he was booed everywhere he went he was booed at tons of games yeah um but i do i think like look at this time in joe biden's first year it was like 60 approval and his staff was like pushing around that he was the second coming of FDR. And it was like that was taken, you know, somewhat seriously by various outlets.
Right. So that's just I mean, it's true.
You know, and when we were sitting there like Joe Biden's doing great. Look at that.
So I guess we'll see. And he was and Joe Biden was in the CA box, I think.
He was in the CA box. Yeah.
So we heard Trump once again talking about making Canada our 51st state, though every time he brings this up, it sounds like it started from like joke to maybe he's serious to that one that we just heard. That sounds like a threat.
I mean, that was they it's good for them to do this. But also they wouldn't have a country without America.
And with one stroke of the pen, I can make sure the cars are made in Detroit, which I didn't. What is he in Mexico inv it Mexico invading them? What is he talking about? Tommy, how are our poor Canadian friends taking all of this? They don't like it.
There was a YouGov poll. 77% of Canadians oppose Canada becoming a part of the United States.
Trump also keeps claiming that the U.S. is subsidizing Canada, which he just doesn't understand what a trade imbalance is.
We buy a lot of oil from Canada. Thus, we buy more of their stuff than they buy of our stuff.
But it's, it is really pissing people off up there. I mean, there was a sketch on a sketch comedy show in Canada where you had two guys at a grocery store and they were talking about what products to buy.
And one guy keeps scolding the other for buying American things and replacing it with, uh, the joke is that they're shittier, inferior Canadian versions of whatever it is, even maple syrup. And it's pretty funny, but it went super viral.
And then I was talking to a Canadian friend today. Sketch comedy in Canada.
What's that like? Sharp comedy? Do we like sketch comedy? Oh, they're famously good. Yeah.
A lot of our Canada, we stole it from them. That's one of our biggest imports.
What was the famous one? This is killing me. Kids in the Hall came from Canada.
But a ton of like Jim Carrey, a ton of SNL people. Everybody's from Canada.
Yeah, but on top of that, there was that one clip of Canadians booing the national anthem at like a hockey game that went viral. Apparently that's happening over and over and over again at NBA games, NHL games, et cetera.
So I don't know. I do also think you have to view this in the context of like last week he announced that we're going to annex ethnically clans and then occupy Gaza.
We're picking fights with Denmark over Greenland. There's the Panama thing.
So like whether or not he's serious, he's pissing everybody off.

And we didn't play it because there was just too much sound to play.

But Gaza is another example where he has the press conference, says that they want to own Gaza, doesn't rule out sending troops.

The next day, he walks back the troops.

The White House tries to walk the thing back. He has the press conference, says that they want to own Gaza, doesn't rule out sending troops.

The next day, he walks back the troops. The White House tries to walk the thing back.
Then he gets asked about it on the plane on the way to the Super Bowl. And he's like, own it, like owning a resort, like we're going to own it and develop it.
Like he just he doubled down. It is ethnic cleansing.
Two million people live there. He wants to push them out and steal their land.
That is illegal. Also on the Canada thing, I heard, I saw a piece that last week Trudeau was caught on a hut mic telling people that like, telling people that like Trump is serious about Canada.
And then he thinks that Trump wants their minerals. Their minerals.
Yeah. What are we doing? Are we like a feudal lord now? What are we doing? It's really hard to, it's like hard to think about how to talk about this.
I saw Tim Miller make this point over the weekend. I thought it was a good one because he pointed out that Trump talking about Gaza in this way, I assume Trump talking about Canada in this way, it's breaking through.
It's the kind of thing that gets beyond where conversations around USAID and NIH grants and- I mean, I would hope so. The President of the United States talks about annexing the country to the north, yeah.
But then you'll sometimes see from Democrats, like, this is a distraction, right? And I agree, right, ultimately, like, if this is just part of Trump's kind of malign trade war to kind of bully Canada into accepting certain terms, like it is in some sense a distraction. But I do think it's worth just like taking a beat and saying, well, so everyone gets to find out about it.
We don't address it because it's a distraction. And so then all the culturally relevant conversations happen without Democrats offering a serious response beyond like distraction.
distraction that's what we're saying when everyone's like what is this gulf of america canada it's a distraction won't help egg prices come down and and like it's hard it's hard to talk it's hard to deal with because it's and it's meant to be but uh the answers that we seem to offer most often are like distraction boy this is crazy is crazy, and constitutional crisis. As if like if you add the word constitutional, it like unlocks a new set of like controls.
I don't know. But I do think it's worth just being like, hey, we really benefit from the fact that the world's largest border is safe and that there aren't skirmishes between us the way there are in the Himalayas between China and India.
Or Europe. Or Europe.
Russia and Ukraine. We benefit a lot, right, that France and Germany aren't building trenches as often as they used to.
Or even more basic than that, Canada doesn't want to be the 51st state. It's not popular.
No one there wants to join the United States. I thought that as the United States, we believed that people get to determine how they are governed.
That seems to be a fundamental value in the United States. So what are we talking about anymore? What are we even talking about? And it is true that there's nothing in the constitution that requires people want to become a state before we make them one, but it's just sort of the way it's often, at least at its best, been done.
Core values as a nation. Core values.
But the other piece of this too is it's like that I feel like what's under assault is this idea of like, there's a stability premium we pay and it's expensive in a lot of different ways, but we get a lot for it, right? It's like we have a America premium and for America premium, you don't have to worry about a war with Canada and you can kind of trust that there aren't going to be a 19-year-old political apparatchik in the payment system. And you know that there's some kind of divide between the military and law enforcement and the political appointees of the government, even if we've not always honored that.
And we can have an extremely trusting relationship, which creates a lot of economic benefits for everybody. And now we have these doofuses running around the government being like, what are we paying for? Why are we doing this? What is the value of all this? And our two options right now are to convince people that the benefits of kind of common sense and stability are worth it, even though you don't feel the pain, or allowing these guys to rip things to pieces so terribly that we start to experience what America, how bad America could get to prove everybody, I guess that we were were right the whole time as we slowly claw our way back.
Believe me, I've been thinking about a third option and I don't know if we have it. Important correction, Big Balls, Mr.
Balls, got a job at the State Department, so he's no longer at Treasury. This is the Doge 19-year-old.
I think they threw him like a goodbye party at the Treasury at the systems office. Yeah, hey, take a couple of these social security checks with you, which I imagine being like the severance office.
The other thing, like to Tommy's point, like it's like severance, like just, just turn your, just four people there. And then suddenly, well, I know, I know big balls is different than the other one.
Everyone know that, right? The big balls was the one who was fired for leaking information. All, all those bros look the same to you, but the to you.
But I was also just sort of taking a moment to think about it. It's like, okay, what is he complaining about exactly? To Tommy's point, we actually, if you take out oil, we don't have a trade deficit with Canada.
They buy a ton of stuff from us. We get more out of it than they do.
They are our biggest export partner, which means that they are our biggest customer. 17%, 70% of everything the U.S.
sells around the world, we sell to Canada. They are.
And like, no, I'm glad we've moved beyond a society that believes the customer is always right. But as a rule, like you don't like fucking try it out.
You don't like poke your biggest customer in the eye over and over again. It's just fucking stupid.
Well, now we'll see what happens because some real news from Trump was the announcement that he's putting 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports,

including from Canada and Mexico.

So he did this in his first term.

Trump announced similar steel

and aluminum tariffs

that were meant to target China,

but ended up impacting US businesses

that rely on those materials,

whether they get them

from other countries or not.

Trump later carved out exemptions

to the tariffs for the rest of his term.

And Biden rolled them back even more

when he got into office. The tariffs reportedly just went into effect right before we started recording it's monday afternoon and apparently there are no exemptions this time so it i don't know it seems like these are not just in a negotiating tactic and it's real since they are they have now been levied just like the china one hard for the world to call a meeting you know okay let's all get together let's get on a zoom um yeah it's a negotiating position but it is real you know i think it's just both like trump has just shown us that he wants to tariff first ask questions later i mean interestingly that's good tommy the u.s stock the u.s stock market was up on monday so wall street is kind of brushing off.
They were like European steel producers that took a hit. But like, I don't know.
It's just weird how the economic system is just kind of like taking this in. I have the same reaction to it.
Because the economic, it's like, if you're, probably it's going to be felt by like people who are in these industries. And then consumers will pay higher prices for things that we buy that are made from steel and aluminum that are not made in the united states but even domestic steel producers they didn't really increase their output that much the first time around in the first administration after the tariffs were put in place on imports so it's not benefiting anybody right and there was it was some of them were interviewed and they were like i like i liked his protectionist instincts but uh first time around, it just ended up making everything more expensive.
Yeah. Yeah.
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It turns out people's views on Trump's tariffs are mixed at best. A new poll from CBS over the weekend about Trump's first few weeks in office show a slight majority favors tariffs on goods from China, but even bigger majorities oppose tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and Europe.
Maybe because most Americans see those countries as our allies. The poll also shows that 66% of voters think that Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices, though his approval rating is at 53%, with around two-thirds of voters describing the president as tough, energetic, focused, and effective.
What do you guys make of the poll? And especially the discrepancy between how people feel about Trump's economic agenda and his focus on lowering prices and how they feel about Trump's presidency overall. I mean, I think it reflects a lot of what Lovost was getting at earlier, which is, first of all, presidents tend to have a honeymoon period.
And that's just kind of a tough political reality for all of us Democrats as we're trying to figure out how to fight this. And also, as much as I want to throw all of Trump's campaign promises in his face, like the price of eggs is not down, you have not ended the war in Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera.
You said he'd do it in 24 hours. I think most voters get that it was a shtick and they're going to give him some time to actually get things done.
But moreover, like they just see him doing stuff. He's active.
They might not like all of it, but he's doing things. He's taking action.
He looks decisive. He's on the TV.
He's signing shit and holding it up. No one can read what it says, but you know, they, I guess seem to like that so far.
And you know, to feel the pain on this stuff, it's going to take some time. Like the, the, the response on should the U S annex and occupy Gaza was like 13% in favor, like 47, something opposed 41% were like, huh? You know, like most people were like, what? You know, and I think over time, if he slaps terrorists on Europe and Canada, if we really do have a military occupation in the Middle East again, people will not like that.
Like the Elon stuff also, I think will not wear that well over time, but it will take time. It doesn't wear that well in this poll.
In this poll, there's a lot of people who are looking at this and saying, I would like less or none of him. Thank you very much.

A billionaire interceding and having so much sway over the government, which I also took as a good sign. Yeah, I like I think like we have a lot of ideological criticisms, obviously, with what Trump is doing.
We don't like the way that he's doing it. But if you're not like kind of thinking about like the value of forbearance and the ways in which it has been done in the past and why a government that moved more slowly and deliberately is ultimately more valuable because over time we all benefit from that, the safety and security of that kind of a system.
Trump is like, he is moving so fast. They are doing a lot.
It's not just the perception of it. They hit the ground running in a serious way.
It's like genuinely impressive, impressive in a dark and sinister way, but it's nonetheless impressive. And if you're turning on the news every day and hearing about all these different things Trump is doing and all the different criticisms coming out of it, you may not like all of it, but like in comparison to how people felt about Joe Biden being basically absent, I imagine for a lot of people, it's a welcome change, even though you're like, I didn't want, like I was, I wanted the border under control.
I wasn't in this for some kind of, for cuts that I don't totally understand. I was in this to get the economy in better shape and prices under control and to feel like I understood what my president was doing.
So that I think it kind of reflects what we've been talking about. I think the normies just aren't paying attention.
And the normies are most of the country. And we just had an election where we learned this, where despite billions of dollars being spent to get people to pay attention to the 2024 presidential race, there was still a good chunk of Americans that barely paid attention.

They tended to vote for Donald Trump.

The Americans who did pay close attention to the news tended to vote for Kamala Harris.

In these polls even,

his approval rating among Democrats

isn't especially high.

Democrats are still outraged by Donald Trump.

And I think, to your point,

the energy and he's assigning things

and he's affecting all that,

I think that is playing extraordinarily well with the people who voted for him, right? With most people who voted for him. I think they're excited.
I think most people in the country still aren't paying attention. And I do think I buy the approval rating at 53% for sure, or at least in that neighborhood, right? Like I think these polls are all legitimate.
I wish pollsters would start asking more questions about like people's views on actions that he's taking or proposals that he's making on some of the cuts that are going to happen under the Doge, you know, regime, all this shit. Like, I just feel like asking about presidential approval and what do you think he's like and is he energetic at this point?

I just think it's of limited value right now in the first hundred days. And that we actually need to, you know, like those descriptors of Trump, tough, energetic, focused, effective.
Like, yeah, they make sense. I get why people would say that about him.
Like, I get why, you know, he's in a honeymoon period. It's the beginning of his term.
Again, Joe Biden had higher approval ratings at this time, too. So it's not super surprising, but you kind of got to dig in because most people aren't paying attention.
Well, here's the problem though. Most people are never going to like, right, they're never going to pay attention.
Until they feel effects. This is what you were saying.
Well, this is, I think we have to, this is why I think it's about what happens when people start feeling effects. But like, I do think we should assume that the way people are consuming Donald Trump right now is not going to change that much until a few months before the midterms, right? Or, I mean, think back to the first term.
His lowest approval is January 6th. Everyone's like, obviously, of course.
And tied, maybe even lower in one of them, is ACA and tax cuts. Because in ACA, the country was like, oh, we don't like paying attention to the news, but you know what? We might lose our healthcare.
And all the other shit that we obsessed about and we talked about on this podcast and everyone else in the media talked about didn't really make that much of a difference in his approval rating. But those things that were going to affect people actually did.
So we're waiting for acute moments of focus around big signal political events, either crises or legislative moments, fine. But my point is only that day to day in between those, this is the kind of Trump we're going to get.

A Trump that's kind of everywhere,

swamping the news.

And we need to be able to figure out

how to make an argument during those times.

Because if we're just waiting for things

to either get bad

or for them to actually try to pass something terrible,

we're kind of just yoked to his news cycle.

And even the people not paying attention,

I agree, that's the majority.

What they're seeing is Trump at the Super Bowl.

Trump doing stuff.

And they're like, oh, that's cool.

That looks fun. Or, I mean, this is, again, the Gulf america thing just keeps popping up in my head that would be stupid right like that's something that breaks through because it's so weird and different and what and like a cultural thing and people are like i don't know that's stupid yeah it's like is it salient like that's always the question oh i'm sure it's not stupid obviously but like do they care are they like that's fine i'm sure they don't i'm sure they don't care but they don't like it yeah i i look i think i think about that like that group of people, obviously.
But like, do they care? Are they like, I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they don't care, but they don't like it.

Yeah, I look, I think I think about that, like that group of people.

Right.

Because like, yes, I think there's Democrats that are inoculated against Trump forever.

The Republicans that will love him forever.

There's this group of people, independent people, like when they see Trump saying Gulf of America, when they see him talking about making Canada a state, maybe they don't like

it in the moment.

But it's also like it's hard not to imagine the idea of Trump just like out there every

day being like a pro-America guy is not like there. One last thing that we should, I just, I don't know.
Before we leave this, like the 66% who think that Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices, that is a big deal. And I want to note this as well because there was a long-running debate just on our side of the spectrum about is it the economy? Is it vibes with voters being concerned about inflation and high prices during Biden? And there's a lot of people who said, oh, no, actually the economy is wonderful.
And the only reason that people think that are complaining about prices is because they're either partisan Republicans or the media is fucking up. And as soon as Trump wins, oh, it's going to be different.
Everyone's going to be wonderful. Well, actually, no, Trump has won.
And 66% of voters think he's not focusing enough on lower prices. And consumer confidence came in last week and it was down.
So here's what's interesting. I think I agree with you.
I think that that will largely be proven correct, that it was like not some media-fueled or Republican-fueled notion. I think that's probably true.
It wasn't headlines. But there's two steps.
It was not the phrasing of AP headlines. But I do think that there is a two-step process to this, which is Trump is, people are correct.
It's forget having an impact on Trump. Trump is not focused on it.
He's not talking about it all the time. He's not thinking about it all the time.
He's not addressing it all the time. He's actually not doing it the way.
He's trying to use tariffs as a substitution which is a real fucking energy energy right but like when trump wants to hammer something he wants to hammer something i think the bigger test is actually when trump doesn't magically have the ability to lower prices but starts figuring out a way either to blame people or to declare victory then what happens and like i i think largely like this will be proven to be a serious political problem for him,

but he has,

he has another turn of it.

Yeah.

I just,

I think,

I think that material people's material conditions are still,

they still drive a lot of public opinion.

Hunter Biden gave all those birds the flu.

So Hunter Biden did it.

Hunter Biden did it.

Really?

You didn't read that?

Is that a thing?

Is that a part?

No.

I'm starting. You can't surprise us at this point.
There's nothing that would surprise me. No joke.
Was that people saying that? That he did that? All right. Let's talk about our brewing constitutional crisis that Elon Musk and his dogebags have started.
By the way, I said dogebags on Thursday. Yeah.
I'm with dogebags too. And a source very high up at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert alerted me today that actually they did something on Thursday.
They did something before we set it on Pod Save America. They claimed dogebags? So I just want to say, it's all yours.
We walk in your footsteps and I'm glad we're on the same page. Yeah, I think we just wanted to get away from calling everyone bros.
Yes, that's right. Because our culture is not your costume.
No one's ever called us pod bros in a complimentary way. It's always condescending.
How many skirts I have to wear, how many lockers I have to get shoved into to stop being called a fucking bro. Not enough.
So keep wearing them and keep getting in those lockers. Unbelievable.
Anyway, on Monday afternoon, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration hasn't fully complied with multiple orders to unfreeze federal spending. That followed a ruling on Saturday that Doge can't access Treasury's payment systems.
Only trained civil servants are allowed. Elon and MAGA World are furious over this ruling.
Elon called for the judge to be impeached. Also proposed annual elections to eliminate the worst judges.
I don't know if you know. That's his new thing.
But the most alarming reaction, I think, came from Vice President J.D. Vance, who tweeted, quote, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.
When Trump was asked about this by Brett Baier during his Fox News interview and then again on Air Force One, here's what he said. 19 states attorneys general filed a lawsuit and early Saturday, a judge agreed with them to restrict Elon Musk and his government efficiency team, Doge, from accessing Treasury Department payment and data systems.
They said there was a risk of irreparable harm. What do you make of that, and does that slow you down on what you want to do? No, I disagree with it 100%.
I think it's crazy. You say you trust him.
Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything.

In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it.

He's so into it.

J.D. Vance said judges aren't allowed to control the executive power.

What's your take on that?

Well, we're going to see what happens.

We have a long way to go.

And we're talking about fraud, waste, abuse.

And when a president can't look for fraud and waste and abuse, we don't have a a country anymore so we're very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling small thing there but when trump was talking about elon and he was like i don't know where he finds the time for this i know it just betrayed just a hint of he trump always is very good about like i know where the american people are i know what you're thinking you're like what with this guy? I gotcha. You know where he finds the time? Not parenting.
You gotta have a lot of kids and you see them as little as possible. That's how you free up all your time for doging.
Not the first dad to stay late at work because he doesn't like his family and won't be the last. Trump's also like, I mean, there's no bigger poster than Donald Trump.
And he's probably like, this guy is posting even more than I am. He's just in awe.
He's like, this is magnificent. So I talked to Leah about all the legal implications of this, which you'll all hear in a little bit, but just a little spoiler for you guys.
Even though judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, guess who decides what constitutes the executive's legitimate power?

Well, sure.

I had this moment over the weekend.

South Africans?

I had this moment over the weekend.

Yeah.

I had this moment over the weekend

where I was just sort of like,

I can't believe I have to go back

and try to remember

what the fuck Marbury vs. Madison was about.

I did too.

And I was like,

what did Andrew Jackson do?

I went into chat GPT and I was like- Oh, great. great fucking great go to a different oligarch to get your answers to how to fight let's this oligarch's fucking stolen ip machine is going to help me figure out the answer how to fight this other oligarch i said this on offline but part of it is google sucks these days and so i actually asked gp i'm like can you give me a copy of the constitution i thought that was going to be faster than Googling.
And it was. Oh, wow.
I actually read because I'm like, all right, what is Article 3 actually say? And that I read. Yeah, the whole thing.
It's believe me. Robert Byrd over here.
Yeah, exactly. But so I guess like I like I am curious what Leah has to think about this.
And I do think some of this is posturing and some of this is what presidents of all stripes and all administrations have said, some version of these courts. I am a constitutional officer.
I have the right to say what I believe the constitution is to be. And they are not the sole arbiters of what's in the constitution.
But to me, some of this is negotiating, right? They are sending a message to courts to trim their sales and to be mindful

that they're not afraid to push it to the limit. The point that Liz Cheney made this point, several other people made this point, which is you don't just get to ignore court rulings you dislike.
You have to appeal them. Now, on a lot of issues, that's what they're doing, right? They are appealing them.
Including this one. Including this one.
And so they are appealing them. They are seeming to have some respect for the process.
So there are some signs that that is, if not fragile, temporary, like different memos from legal officials inside the DOJ and other parts administration explaining why this court ruling doesn't need to be followed in certain ways. To me, I have two broad categories that I'm concerned about.
One is they take a signal case, they take it all the way to the Supreme Court, Supreme Court rules against them, and they violate it. Either they violate it explicitly or they violate it implicitly by putting some kind of a legal, just some kind of way of making, of claiming to abide by, about actually ignoring it.
Very worried about that. That is terrifying.
Day to day, what I've been thinking about is, you know, Trump is trying to do all this activist shit inside of these agencies. That's his prerogative as president, right? To put people in place, they're going to execute what he wants them to do.
And inside these agencies, they're putting in place Trump loyal lawyers. Some of them are going to be better than others.
Some of them are going to be more conservative than others. Conservative, small c.
And the question is, how much are those lawyers, the outside of the spotlight, in the day-to-day work, grinding work of these agencies, How much are they going to worry about legal challenges from states, attorneys general, from outside advocates and groups, from individuals, from employees? How much are they going to make decisions the way previous administrations would have, in one way or another, being guided by the fear of lawsuits because they know practically they just can't fight everything all the time, all at once. They have to make decisions about where they're going to push harder and where they're going to be willing to not take legal risk.
And what I don't know in watching this right now is over time, will they become less concerned about those kinds of risks because of rhetoric from J.D. Vance and because of the actions of the higher level people inside the administration? I think right now we don't know.
And that's really nerve wracking because that daily check on the power of the administration, that kind of risk aversion of lawyers is really, really, really important. The slightly optimistic version of this, and I don't share this view really, is that there was sort of a willful or maybe accidental misreading of what the judge said, because it was a little bit sloppily worded or confusingly worded.
And some people were interpreting his ruling as saying, even the secretary of the treasury did not have access to the treasury payment system, which is like kind of self-evidently ridiculous. I think what he actually meant was the treasury secretary could not give unauthorized people access to this payment system within treasury.
And you're right, like fight it out in court but i i think my takeaway from this which drove me nuts is that trump jd vance elon musk even like the far right fringe like alex jones it doesn't matter how much power they have they can have the white house the congress the courts the media social media they are always the victims and they're always whining about how they're being attacked and it's unfair and like going after these judges. And it just, it drives me crazy.
And I'm just hoping, hoping that they will rub voters the wrong way just to hear them bitching and moaning all the time. I mean, they have vanquished Congress, right? Congress has given up any kind of resistance to the president.
It's just abdicated power because it's controlled by Republicans. And so they've got Congress and, you know, they're feeling pretty good about the country and where public opinion is.
And I think they have decided that the judiciary is the last obstacle, the last villain left. You missed one, which is the media, which they now view as an unnecessary, sort of like a kind of ignorable component.
Just adding that just for sadness's sake. Right.
And some of that is, look, the, you know, the attacks on the media, but some of it is just the balkanization of the media, which we've talked about a million times. So, yeah, definitely.
And so. Offensive word.
Balkanization. Shame on you.
It's Trump's president. It's fine.
And so they are going to. It's interesting.
There there's two tracks here right there's the the legal track where they you know right now they are um trying to come up with an agreement the the the defendants and the plaintiffs here and trying to work out who gets access who how you know all this and the judge is like i'll give you till monday night you can do that so that it's proceeding along normally right but the public component of this, the messaging component is everyone in MAGA world and Doge world and everything just attacking the shit out of these judges and saying that they're corrupt and they're awful. And Elon Musk being like, we should vote judges out.
I mean, it's so the danger to me is maybe not necessarily in what happens in this individual case.

Right. Although maybe it is.

But the now we are turning, turning the guns toward the judiciary system and turning everyone's fire towards the judiciary system on the right. And that's where...
I think it's dangerous. I think it's...
Look, I think there's... I mean, judges have been murdered.
Yeah, I would add you're less physically scared. Romney talked about it.
They are physically scared. I think that's real.
I think that they are being cowed into making more, um, less far reaching rulings. Yep.
But then you look at Elon, it's just also some of this is just like, God, the combination of just like the malevolence, but the idiocy, it's like, they should be impeached. And it's like, do you know, do you know that that word is just to launch a trial? You understand that, that the Senate won't convict.
Have you thought about that? You do not care. You just, just, uh, just firing off pique.
Because these judges will not be removed. There's no two-thirds vote to remove these senators.
Willful ignorance. He doesn't care.
He's like, I'm smart about rockets and cars, and so I must be smart about everything else. And if I don't know about it, who the fuck cares? If I don't know, it doesn't matter.
It's not important. And actually, it shouldn't be important.
Right. It's embarrassing that you care about that.
The other, like, there's this back and forth between Elon and Lawrence Summers, who was a treasury secretary among the several treasury secretaries that wrote in the New York Times declaring that democracy is under siege because of what they're doing. And like.
Institutional move of the week. And then.
Yeah, sure. And then, like, institutions defending institutions inside of creaking institutions but the yeah institutions in institutions getting institutions uh but uh the atlantic was like damn we should have got that yeah god damn it it's just the new york times that's it why not that way we eat uh but uh like watching them go back and forth it's like elon it's just like kind of falsehood that he probably believes you know like if we don't get this out of control spending under control America will be forth, it's like, Elon, it's just like kind of falsehood that he probably believes, you know, like if we don't get this out of control spending under control, America will be bankrupt.
And it's like, well, first of all, no, actually, if we don't get USAID under control, we'll be fucking fine because that's not where spending is. And also, okay, let's say there is fraud.
You know, there's this little bit of like, Summers has to do this, Larry Summers has to do this, where he goes like some version of like, I love your passion hate fraud myself. And it's like, if you, like, if you show up at a police station and say, I was really worried about crime in my neighborhood, so I arrested some people, they're all in my trunk, the cops aren't like, love your passion.
They're like, you're arrested, because that's not how we do it. The cops are like, I also think crime is important.
Just letting you know. Thank you so much.
Like, I don't want you to think that we don't respect how much you take crime seriously, because we do too. You'd be like, are you insane? That's not how we do this.
And like this idea that like because there might be fraud somewhere in the government, you can send a group of fucking neophytes deep within the bowels of government to cut off into a payment is absurd on its face. Anyway, we have to like indulge this idea that like now we all take stopping waste, fraud and abuse very seriously.
Well, no, I saw, you know, I don't think he's saying the wrong thing. I i think it's the right messaging like i know me too i'm not it's my own this is my rocanna was doing this earlier it's like you don't want to seem like you're opposed to government efficiency but obviously now they're just rampaging through like the government venmo and and shutting shit off left and right i'm not saying they're wrong i'm just lamenting our situation me too no i love it i felt the same way because i've seen the messaging memos and it's like you know the young young people gen z they like doge and what elon's doing because you know they don't see they see government as sclerotic and inefficient and they like the move fast and break things ethos and they want to get stuff done and they like the results it's like yeah we yes of course we all want that we all know the government is slow we all know the government can be We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated.
We all worked in the fucking White House. We tried to reorganize the government.
We tried to find efficiency. It's hard to do.
And honestly, some of this is pretty annoying because it's some of the stuff we should have done. Right, yeah, yeah.
You could do some of this. You just got to talk Gen Z to them.
You're like, I can dig these Doja cats. Oh my God.
That was horrible. Oh no.
That was fucking horrible. They got good vibes.
Jesus Christ. They're just not going about it the right way yeah i'm gonna throw it throw a no cap on the end of that no cap anyway fuck this is why we're losing the uh yeah the yeah the technology in the federal government at least when we were there sucked yeah there's gateway computers gateway computers healthcare.gov gateway computers and you had no there was no service in the in the the basement of the West Wing.
You couldn't use your phone because there was no service. The gateway computers.
So you just had to sit there. Five bars of the OEOB though.
But anyway, the fact that, you're right, that the fact that you have to do that now, all of that throat clearing before you're like, but you know what? It is bad that when everyone has signed off on on a payment congress has mandated it by law and everyone's fine with it then some random 19 year old racist maybe it was not 26 year old balls is not racist 26 year old thank you 25 year old racist whatever it was the guy who thinks that all the all the indians should either uh go back to india or be automated out of a job sorry that that guy, they're in charge of just cutting off payments now. That's how we fix waste and fraud? Well, the reason I bring it up is only because I do think as we talk about how to talk about this, part of it is that there's a lot of ways in which we're kind of doomed to speak this way right now because we all kind of understand that there's a lot of people that just don't trust Democrats at all.
And so we have this extra step we to take to kind of like, I don't know, figure out over time to claw back some credibility. But like Trump doesn't have to do that when he talks about a Democratic prerogative, right? He's like, no, they're making some good points.
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Well, the Washington Post had a pretty eye-opening piece about Elon's big picture plans. They quote an anonymous U.S.
official as saying, quote, the end goal is replacing the human workforce with machines. Everything that can be machine automated will be.
Yeah, it seems like that. Doge is also trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.
Newly confirmed OMB director Russ Vogt installed himself as head of the agency and immediately shut down the building, told staff to stop pretty much all of their work and suspended its funding.

Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, announced on Friday that it would be making huge cuts to the grants they provide scientists, researchers, and universities to come up with all kinds of scientific and medical breakthroughs. The spokesperson for Doge called this, quote, doing away with liberal DEI Dean's slush fund.
The former dean of Harvard Medical School, who was not a squishy liberal, said the move would cause harm and chaos and that a sane government would never do this. That's correct.
That is very true. Even Senator Katie Britt, a Republican who flew with Trump on Air Force One on Sunday and whose state hosts major research institutions, told a local reporter the next day that, quote, this is a great quote, a smart targeted approach is needed in order not to hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.
That's a great, she really stepped out of line there. That's pretty courageous.
That's bold. It made me think of her State of the Union response.
Simpler times. Just screaming.
She's in that kitchen. She simpler times screaming in that kitchen now she's like oh you're you're losing your state's largest institution they're getting got budget cuts and she's like oh we might need a smart targeted approach not even like the one that we haven't she didn't even say this approach is wrong and we need a better one we just just we need a smart targeted approach everyone thanks just want everyone want to flag that.
And right before we started recording, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the NIH cuts.

So we will now see if the Trump folks appeal that ruling.

So we know that most voters generally support cutting government waste, trimming federal budget.

It does seem to me like gutting cancer research and a consumer watchdog that takes on big banks and credit card companies. It's potentially the first like really unpopular fight that Doge has picked.
What do you guys think? Pick this fight. I am shocked by how stupid this is.
I mean, what NIH is saying is that grant recipients can spend only 15% of their grant money on so-called indirect costs. But indirect costs are the building where you work, maintenance for your lab, the microscope support staff that apply with safety regulations and like the big, you know, like evil DEI institutions like Harvard.
They could probably eat that 15 percent. They can deal with this.
But the smaller research institutions at smaller schools, they're just going to get forced to shut down. And that's why you're hearing Katie Britt weigh in on this.
Although that fucking moron, Tommy Tuberville, is like, I support the doge cuts and everything they're doing. But he doesn't know where he is.
It's not just the long term. He also hated the halftime show.
It's not just also from that same interview, I believe. It's not just the long term impact on medical research and finding cures and all the things we want medical research to do.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham is the largest employer in the state. So this is going to ripple out into their economy in a big way.
And also, it's not like the NIH budget is some runaway fiscal disaster. The Bulwark reported that the NIH budget adjusted for inflation is about what it was at the beginning of the Obama administration.
We spend, look, this is part part of the problem too of the like this is obviously not considered a distraction according to the experts so we're allowed to talk about it but this is the problem where like you only supposed you're only supposed to talk about things in the prescribed correct ways because you never get into like the deep substance of the argument like this i imagine like you're not like for example like hey bunsen burner overhead cost not a overhead costs, not a problem. This was not a problem we had.
Overhead costs for scientific research, scientific research that can be described as being silly. This is just not a problem America has.
Some money that goes towards scientific research is going to come to nothing. That's the point of it.
That's why you do experiments. Some of it doesn't work.
Some of it sounds silly and then leads to amazing and magical things. Like if you were starting a rocket company and some of the rockets exploded in the air and didn't reach the moon if you're not listen if you're if you're making every flight at the airport you're going to the airport too early and if all your scientific research is producing positive results you're not taking enough risk on scientific research isn't that from larry summers isn't that that is a larry summer's thing yes that's and i've heard that from him in person which is i was thinking over the weekend that i would love someone to describe to the doge bags in Elon that they have found this loan guarantee for this Green New Deal DEI car company that we need to cut immediately.
And it's basically just the Tesla loan. What we did.
Let's see what happened. They would have killed it.
Sam Stein at the Bulwark, we're really Bulwark freaks today. But he had a story that basically a lot of these Republican

Congress people who are not saying anything publicly, their constituents, many of some of whom

are federal employees, others just have concerns about what's happening in their districts,

are getting letters from Republicans saying, I too am concerned

about the way in which this is being implemented. I too am concerned about the freeze.
I too am

worried about your privacy. And there was a Republican member of the House today that I think for the first time making the point that Congress's approval on certain decisions isn't just a good thing to have or a nice thing to have.
It is a legally necessary thing to have, whether it's cutting budgets or eliminating the Department of Education, that the president simply does not have the right to do anything. So I do think that like the first step is not like I agree with you that Republicans in Congress have largely just sort of given up.
But I think we have to just continue like that. There are going to be some places where normal politics is still working.
And those letters to me are a sign that like there are Republicans in closely divided districts that are worried about this shit, that are worried about losing their jobs.

And that's important. That's good.
That's a good thing. Like, you know, is Katie Britton any danger in Alabama? Maybe not.
But there's this woman who is a research professor at University of North Carolina, and she was posting over the weekend that this could like decimate their children's hospital, their outpatient care. She said the first canceled grant hitting our department that I've heard of was for new interventions supporting NICU patients and parents.
These are like newborn babies in the ICU. Like just the idea that this, like the damage that this is going to cause.
And I do think, you know, Tom Tillis, he's up in 2026. He should fucking care about that.
He's in North Carolina. Represents the research triangle.
Yeah. I mean.
But I do think that everyone's like, what do we do? What do we do? I think elevating more of these stories as we find them. And I would suggest like everyone out there who has these stories, whether it's about medical research, whether it's about any of the other, the funding freeze that has been unfrozen, but is not really unfrozen and headstart programs people are still having problems with.
Like, just, you know, you got to tell your stories and pass on the stories, send your stories in. Because I do think the more we make this about, like, the people who are feeling these effects or who are worried or who are experts in these fields, scientists, teachers, all these other, you know, instead of just like federal bureaucrats, which, of course, you know, don't have the best approval rating, then the more it's going to hurt.
Yeah. The other part of it too is like- Politically.
Yes. Well, both.
But the, like the Inflation Reduction Act freeze is starting to hit farmers who decided to take a chance on one of these programs, right? There's all kinds of conservation programs that involve required investment. They made the investments and now all of a sudden they're not getting the payments they expected.
It's risking their farms. It's risking their families' livelihoods.
And like, that's, that's a real consequence. And there are plenty of partisan people who are pretending it's actually not Trump's fault or trying to elide the fact that it's a political decision made by trump and that it's the government that's failing them there are a lot of i think people

that want that to be the case even though everything on some level one understands what's going on here and like you can't deny like there's only so much trump can do to deny that reality and so making sure people understand that reality uh is really important there's another one more point i wanted to make about this which i like is like how do we talk about the fact that they're doing this, you know, CFPB, one of the most effective government agencies, has done an incredible

amount. how do we talk about the fact that they're doing this? You know, CFPB, one of the most effective government agencies,

has done an incredible amount of good.

$800 million budget, by the way.

$20 billion returned in the consumers.

Exactly what you would want.

Not perfect.

Makes mistakes, I'm sure.

But like exactly what you would want to govern.

Just a tribune for working people

against the rapacious giant financial corporations. trump has sent all those people home they're still getting paid so donald trump's cost efficiency is he's basically given a snow day to federal officials because he because they don't like certain parts of what the government is doing because because they attended a diversity training in uh in.
And so right now, the American people are paying government workers to sit at home instead of go after big banks, try to cure diseases, try to prevent diseases in foreign countries, whatever it may be. Those people are still getting paid in their houses.
Like, I do not understand. That to me is worth mentioning.
At least they're not tainting our federal government with their wokeness. Yeah.
Doing all this under the guise of that DEI attack is so pathetic. This also, it is entirely out of the Project 2025 playbook.
And I do think it helps to remind people of this. I saw people referring to the halftime show as a DEI halftime show, which is, I think, calling, which is sort of drawing a little too much attention to what the word DEI is really standing in for.
Yeah. Now, yeah, no, now it's just any person of color or woman who has any kind of position of authority or influence is DEI.
That's the new thing now. Yeah.
Benny Johnson, the TPUSA plagiarist tweeted, uh, Hey NFL, it's Trump was elected. Uh, we're not going to pretend we like bad halftime shows anymore.

And I was like,

yes, people famously never complain

about the halftime show.

So Twitter was invented for you.

I really-

It is, it goes back to your point though.

They're the victims all the time.

They have to play.

If they have nothing to complain about,

they have nothing.

You know, if they can't be,

if they can't complain

about how they've been put upon.

You're in charge, guys.

How much power they have.

You're in charge of all the money,

all the power.

Two last things here,

both related to worthless coins.

Trump announced that he was ordering

the mint to stop producing

and I'll see dealing with them. Our future 51st state, Canada, banned the penny in 2014.
Everything seems to be fine there, except for the fact that America is going to take it over. Separately, the New York Times did an investigation into the Trump meme coin and how early investors and the Trump family made millions from the meme coin while everyone else lost tons.
Let's start with the penny. Love it.
Thoughts on the demise of the penny. Shocker.
I have previously held deep thoughts about this, which is not only so obviously people are pointing out that the penny costs four cents to make. That's obviously stupid.
Nickels cost 14 cents to make. Now, yes, probably percentage of the penny is more expensive per penny, but in just for each nickel, it's a nine cent loser.
Here's what we should do. Get rid of the nickels too.
What we should do is we should go what we have now. I have to go a little bit further.
Just stick with me. Don't take my quarter.
We should go from penny, nickel,

dime, quarter, and we should be moving to a 10 cent piece, a 20 cent piece, and a 50 cent piece.

That is the correct denominations. And then all prices should no longer be to the 100th place.

They should be to the 10th place. That is the answer.
Trump is doing a kind of compromise,

but leaving the dumb nickel in place, which has the most overrated founder on it, who is Thomas Jefferson. Now, here's what's interesting.
Until 1857, there was a half penny. That was when we had the half penny.
Then the half penny was gotten rid of. So the penny's been our smallest denomination for a very, very long time.
From 1913 to 2024, inflation has increased the value of the dollar by 30 times, right? Which means if the penny was the lowest denomination in 1913, we could get by with a 30 cent coin today, right? I don't think that's necessary, but we should go to a nickel, a 20 cent piece and a 50 cent piece. That's the answer.
And that's how Democrats can have their own positive agenda. You know, if you pass that idea along to Elon and the doge bags, you might end up being in charge of the US mint.
You might be able to mint all the money yourself. I'll get in there and I'll put an op-ed in about it.
Did you say Norman Mineta? Yeah, he was a token lib and a conservative. I thought he was the transportation.
He was a token Republican in a Democratic administration. Who would I be? Ray LaHood, sorry.
Tulsi Gabbard. You're our at tulsi gabbard who's the rfk jr i have a lot listen i got a lot of good ideas and i and i and i can and i can show myself able to work with some pretty bro guys the whole thing would save you like 80 million dollars the penny thing this is very it's like fucking it's no no the penny's billions the pennies bill i was i thought that i read that the savings was 80 million i don't know i don was 80 million.
I don't know how they're netting that out. 85 million each year.
Huh. It is funny, Elon's just raging about these small sums of money and little changes and he gets 15 billion in contracts from the US government.
I'll tell you something. Here's the mistake I made.
We meant 3 billion pennies. That was my mistake.
Obama wanted to do this. Obama expressed his support for this in a 2013 interview.
He got cowed by the fucking deep state. And he said, this is not going to be a huge savings for government.
He was right. But anytime we're spending more money on something that people don't actually use, that's an example of something we should probably change.
He should be in Doge, huh? Look at that guy wanting to cut costs. Leave a hero, live long enough to become a villain.
I don't know how that whole thing went down. I remember, I think Cody Keenan, who's the speechwriter after we left, was like on this very podcast once telling us about how there was a request to get it into the State of the Union, the penny thing.
Yeah. It was like a whole thing.
I'm sure some, the deep state probably killed it. Well, there's a, there's a, I think there's like a, there's a, there's a few, there was a couple hiccups.
There's an Illinois problem. I think the nickel thing comes up.
The nickel thing comes up. There's a, there's lobbyists involved you know government doesn't work tommy tell us about you know well you know who it works for works for donald billion tell us about the shit coin the trump shit coin yeah i mean there was a report over the weekend in the new york times well let me back up you guys might remember uh just before the inauguration when donald trump announced the sale of a meme coin Trump coin.
I think it was the next day. Melania announced the sale of her Melania coin.
So the price skyrocketed. Then it fell.
People accused him of a rug pull. It was this whole kind of weird grifting thing that was happening on the sidelines.
A rug pull is basically you launch the thing. The price skyrockets.
You get out when it's high, and then the whole thing falls apart. Yeah, you own most of it, you market it heavily, and then you sell a bunch of your shares of whatever the thing is, and the people who bought in late get screwed, and the people who own them early make a lot of money.
Kind of like the Hawk Tua coin for those who are big fans of the Hawk Tua podcast. The New York Times over the weekend reported that as of last week, at least 810,000 people have lost money on the Trump coin.

But the Trump family and its partners have made nearly $109 million in fees because they

get paid every time you buy and sell it.

Also, a Trump-owned business owns 80% of the supply.

So if they wanted to sell a bunch of their coins, they could make a lot of money. Also, there's all this shady shit that was happening.
There was some mystery account that bought millions of Trump coins just minutes after they were offered for like, you know, 19 cents or whatever, and then flip them for a profit of what they think is about $109 million. So it was just this massive grift happening in plain sight.
And it kind of ties into our CFPB conversation earlier because getting rid of the CFPB means you're going to have small community banks regulated by a different set of regulators. Big banks no longer have a regulator because they're all regulated by the CFPB.
And then you have these, this proliferation of, uh, bank-like companies that provide bank-like services, but are not backed by the FDIC. There's no deposit insurance and aren't regulated well.
So it's just like the wild, wild west of like blockchain, you know, mumbo jumbo bullshit. Um, to the big, but the, to the big banks still, they're still regulated by Dodd-Frank stuff, right? They are, but Dodd-Frank pushed all the regulatory authority to the CPD.

So it's like this zombie set of laws without an agency to enforce it.

Yeah, there's a lot of the consumer protections run out of CFPB.

And if the CFPB is no longer enforcing those laws, the other agencies that have purview over the banks don't suddenly pick up the slack.

They are not in charge with those.

They do a lot of the other systemic regulations, but they're not going to be in charge of that.

Don't worry, they also want to get rid of the FDIC.

So that's on their agenda as well.

But even in just sort of a normal year, the CFPB would modify

rules to account for inflation, or when the pandemic hit, they made a bunch of changes

just to account for the economic shock that was happening, and now there isn't an agency

to exist to do that. Well, the other thing too is these financial

institutions are raptors testing the fences, and they see this happening

I'm not sure see this happening. And no, I think a lot of the more serious and big financial institutions are not, some of them do just explicitly break the law as they see fit.
But in most cases, what they'll do is be like, huh, that thing we were going to maybe try, but we're afraid the CFPB might stop. Let's just fucking go for it.
Let's offer offer a new product that has lower interest but not tell our customers about it so they don't accidentally have more interest uh like there's a bunch of shit that these banks can pull yes well it's like little stuff just like one example is like overdraft protection like i remember i remember standing outside the iowa obama for america office and screaming at bank of america because they had let me buy uh like seven coffees and overdraw my account every single time and then charge me a courtesy fee of like 25 then escalated to $35 each time rather than just being like bro you have no money and cutting off the transaction not letting it through and apparently the CFPB when it was created there was someone who worked at a bank talking about how their institution kind of reformed their ways of charging those fees because they were worried the CFPB was going to come after them.

So the mere existence of this agency was protecting consumers, and now it will just be gone. I got hit with so many overdraft fees when I was a Senate staffer.
It's the worst.

Not making a lot of money.

It happened all the time.

I am just thinking about Donald Trump and Melania launching a shit coin.

They made them a hundred million dollars.

Well,

a bunch of people got screwed.

And then there's that,

that,

that professor at UNC who's like,

Oh,

you know,

we're just,

we're,

we're,

we're trying to do research to make sure we can keep babies alive in the NICU,

but no more can't do that anymore.

And then the,

the fucking like $2 malaria nets that we're not sending

to protect kids in Africa anymore

because we've destroyed USAID

and the $400 million

in food assistance

that is now,

that people are just going to starve

and they're like,

oh, I'm making hard,

what the fuck?

Well, also it's like,

even just do the,

do you like the apples to apples?

Right now they're figuring out

how to extend the Trump cap.

Like what is the cause

of America's budget deficit?

The cause of the American

budget deficit are the Bush tax cuts, the Trump tax the military social security medicare medicaid that's it wokeism and wokeism but like fucking you know dei expensive chemical showers at the fucking scientific institute is not our problem yeah it's all the it's all the money we're spending to turn turn animal train animals trans too many too many yes that's what that's what that's what senator too many non-binary frogs in india that's the problem all right before we wrap we do have a couple of news stories that broke while we were recording uh trump has signed an executive order to bring back plastic straws gotta love it though honestly uh why did you give him that liberals you know fucking paper straws You know what? Unpopular opinion. Fuck you plastic straws.
Gotta love it, though, honestly. Why did you give him that, liberals? You know what? Fucking paper straws.
You know what? Unpopular opinion. Fuck plastic straws.
It's stuck in turtles' noses. Come on.
Just suck it up. Use the paper.
We've beaten the... They're cellulose straws.
Paper straws are terrible. That's good.
I'm going to do the centrist position here. Oh, my God.
You don't need a straw? I know. I'm fine.
I like the paper straws. The no straws.
And no straws at all. You like the paper straws? I don't want no straws.
I want straws. We have more news.
The Justice Department reportedly is going to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Fuck off.
Can't say I'm surprised on that one. No, that one was coming.
If you're a criminal, but you say nice things to Donald Trump, you're not a criminal anymore. I want to go find my prediction that he's going to end up as Homeland Security Secretary.
I just want you to go. I predicted that last year.
I see you, Kristi Noem. And Trump has pardoned Rob Blagojevich.
Oh, okay. Wow.
Hot run. That was a blast from the past.
Didn't he commute him last time? I haven't thought about him in a while. He did.
He has commuted him in the past. So this is just kind of wiping the record clean.
Good point. He's on the apprentice.
Because he let him out. He let him out.
What is this? At least one dead after two jets collide on a runway at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona? What? The air travel, guys. I don't want to think about it.
I don't want to think about it. Well, they'll be driving around the country on a bus, guys.
Adrian, what else you got? You got news? I mean, we've got a lot if you check it out. There's a lot of what Trump said.
I'm not going to slack now. Yes, if you had the PSA news monitoring.
Oh, I see. Yeah, he's looking at us.
We can't do the press conference. No, that's too much.
It's a lot.

You know what?

Tune in.

Dana and I will cover some of this on Friday.

Everyone else?

More as the story develops.

Everyone else?

Enjoy your Tuesday.

Okay, when we come back from the break,

you're going to hear my conversation

with strict scrutiny's Leah Lippman

about how the courts might or might not be able

to stop Trump and Musk.

Two quick things before we do that.

Crooked Media Reads is proud to be publishing

Woodworking, the fantastic debut novel

from Yellow Jackets writer and culture critic

Emily St. James.

is quick things before we do that. Crooked Media Reads is proud to be publishing Woodworking, the fantastic debut novel from Yellow Jackets writer and culture critic Emily St.
James. It is out March 4th.
The story follows a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows, one of her students. Woodworking is your much-needed breather from everything else.
Yeah, that's good. That's a lot of sad, actually.
actually i remember when our ceo lucinda first read woodworking as we were thinking about like do we want this to be part of crooked media reads and she was like read it in a day and was like this is one of the best literally she like wouldn't stop talking about it yeah i also do think too like i seem like what how much trans attention you see on like fox news versus how many trans people you see on Fox news. And the answer is none ever.
And like, this is just like the term woodworking is like the description of this character's experience of being trans. And I think it is worth spending time thinking about the perspective of trans people because so often they are objects of our debate.
And look at this. If you're in LA,

Lovett and Emily are going to have a conversation about woodworking and a book signing at Skylight Books

on Friday, March 7th.

Hell yeah. Love Skylight Books.

Where is Skylight Books?

It's in Los Feliz.

Oh, okay, cool.

You can learn more at crooked.com slash books.

And speaking of LA events,

Love or Leave It records live every week right here in LA.

12 new show dates from now through May at crooked.com slash events we are having such a good time with these live shows come say hi we have some really big guests lined up and uh you'll you just the stuff we cut it's unbelievable it's unbelievable where do people get tickets oh crooked.com slash events there you go When we come back, Leah Littman.

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Joining us today, our friend Leah Lippman from the best legal podcast on the planet, Strict Scrutiny. Welcome back.
Thanks for having me on this joyous occasion. with your look at your book behind you, for those of you just listening.
Leah has a new book coming out. It's called Lawless.
You want to give us a little quick plug? Yeah. So subtitle will kind of give you a sense how the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories and bad vibes.
Basically how the court is just implementing the worst parts of the Republican Party's platform, targeting different groups that aren't part of the modern Republican coalition and doing so by just declaring their feelings, their hurt feelings, quote, the law. And when is it out? It is out May, but you can preorder it now.
Go preorder it, everyone. Do it now.
Speaking of bad vibes, I want to start by teeing you up to respond to something that I just know you have strong feelings about. Here's the headline.
Trump is testing our constitutional system. It's doing fine.
Oh, my God. I knew.
I know. The piece is by Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman.
And here's the part I'd love to hear your thoughts on. Quote, Trump, who did not ignore court orders in in his first term is unlikely to defy a judicial decision.
No matter how conservative the justices in the Supreme Court majority might be, their primary identity comes from their role as interpreters of the Constitution and laws. They might tolerate a lot from Trump, but they won't tolerate defiance of the authority of the judiciary.
What do you think? How's your blood pressure? So for those of you not watching the video, my eyes are literally bugging out of my face at this point. This is why you should go to Michigan for law school rather than Harvard.
Side note. One, the idea that everything is working, the system is working, is just so divorced from reality, it is difficult to relay that.
Even if courts are striking down some of what Trump is doing, the damage he is wreaking on the infrastructure of the federal government is profound, right? Like scaring away all of these civil servants, letting these doge whatevers like infiltrate the Treasury Department. These are things that have already happened and that courts are not going to be able to claw back.
And so that's just like a first step.

Now, the idea that Donald Trump is just going to respect all of these court orders aged really well over like seven days, let's say, as his vice president took to the media, floating the idea that he had floated four years earlier. Right.
If you had bothered to be remotely online when he was suggesting that Donald Trump fire every member of the civil servant and basically tell the Supreme Court, you know, you made your decision, try and enforce it. And they're already floating, right, as he did previously, the suggestion that they weren't going to obey various court orders that told them, no, you can't do wildly illegal things.
So I can't say the system is working super well right now is kind of the TLDR. J.D.
Vance's tweet, and we'll get into the case in a second, but his tweet, the money line was, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Now, I didn't go to law school, nor did I even take the LSATs and get a good score like John Lovett.
But I guess that is maybe technically true in that if the power is legitimate, they can't control it. But like, who decides if the power is legitimate? Well, so this isn't even a question about courts being in a position to decide all of the questions in our legal system.
It is about the fact that the executive branch is subject to the law. And in these cases, that law is really fucking clear.
It is directly compelled by the lawmaker in our constitutional system, Congress, who told the executive branch, like, no, you don't just get to not spend whatever money you don't like that we appropriate. Or, right, the Constitution is unusually clear, like in the case of birthright citizenship.
So this is an instance where it's not about courts being good or awesome or constitutional caretakers. It's just about whether the executive branch is subject to the law.
And there are so many foundational court cases that obviously tell presidents to not do things or to do things, right? Like one of the biggest presidential power cases is a case called Youngstown, where the Supreme Court told President Truman, no, you can't just seize the steel mills. And J.D.
Vance, of course, has been praising Supreme Court decisions that told Democratic presidents they can't do things, like, for example, the immunity ruling that let Donald Trump get off scot-free for attempting a coup first time around. He was describing that as a massive win, right, for the rule of law, even though that decision told the executive branch you cannot prosecute a former president for official acts.
So he knows, right, this is horseshit. And yes, right, it is wildly inconsistent with basic premises of our constitutional system.

I'm not going to ask you to like predict what the Supreme Court might do but like how do you think J.D. Vance's tweet or his view of the power that the executive holds will land with even this Supreme Court and I'm thinking particularly of like Roberts, Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, like who knows what Alito and Alito and Thomas are probably like, yeah, you're right.
You got it. We'll just we'll go on vacation on our private jets.
Yeah. So a few things.
I don't think it is going to hit well with those guys. And it's not going to hit well for any number of reasons.
One is that J.D. Vance is essentially claiming the power, not just of Congress, right, to make laws defies laws, but here the power of the courts, right, to, again, enforce laws that Congress has made.
And these guys on the Supreme Court, they are judicial supremacists, right? Like they think they have the power to decide all things. And so having some weird dweeb like J.D.
Vance tell them, right, like, no, you don't actually get to have your fingers in all the cookie jars is not going to go over well with them. And so I don't think, right, they are going to be cool with this.
And there are going to be certain cases where, again, the law is just sufficiently clear, whether we're talking about federal statutes or the Constitution. And what the Trump administration is trying to do is just wildly destabilizing in other ways, like where you had the executive branch saying, we're not actually going to spend federal money that Congress has appropriated.
Like, that's horrible for the rule of law, like even for finance bros. Like, it's bad when the federal government doesn't pay out money that Congress said it would.
So it's not even like this is a big conflict of interest for them when they're thinking about rule of law and like my rich friends. So the ruling that seems to have really set them all off in MAGA world over the weekend came from U.S.
District Judge Paul Engelmayer in response to a lawsuit brought by state attorneys general over access to the Treasury payment system. The judge issued an order that said only career officials who've had the proper training can access the system, not Elon and the dogebags.
And some Trump folks interpreted the ruling to mean that even Treasury Secretary Scott Besant wasn't allowed to access the system, though it seems like at least as of this recording, then another federal judge has given the Department of Justice and the state AG some time to work out an agreement over who gets access to the payment system. And the DOJ says that so far, they are despite J.D.
Vance's tweets, they are abiding by the order. Is this a case where the actual legal process looks different, or at least I wouldn't say it's proceeding normally, but is at least proceeding on a different track than the political conversation? Yeah.
So the legal process is proceeding differently, I think, in at least two ways. One is the legal system is attempting to deal with something that is in many ways unprecedented, like the systematic, unconstitutional, and illegal acts that this administration is doing.
And so they are trying to craft these orders quickly because what they are doing, if allowed to go into effect, is just going to have these immediate profound consequences that would be difficult to reverse. And so they are being forced to proceed on a pace that is a little bit different than the average legal process.
And, you know, at a volume that again, is a little bit different. And yes, right, they are figuring out exactly the scope of their orders that they are having to do right on a pretty tight timeline that isn't usual for courts.
And that's because the administration put them in this position. And so I do not take what the administration is telling courts or doing in courts to evince a position that they think they can deny court orders,

right?

They are not telling courts that, right?

They are saying they are in compliance.

And all of the litigation and disagreement is about what exactly these orders require

right now and how courts should modify them.

The other conversation is happening more in the public sphere and political sphere.

And of course, that's a huge warning sign because who knows whether it will sift into

the former.

But it does seem like at least for now, right, they are not adopting the express position

that like, fuck it, let's just do it and be legends.

And that's something.

Yet.

Right.

Exactly.

Yet.

Well, on that note, like there are some actions the Trump folks have taken, like birthright

citizenship, right?

We're going to go. thing.
Yet. Right.
Exactly. Yet.
Well, on that note, like there are some actions the Trump folks have taken, like birthright citizenship, right, which seems obviously illegal or unconstitutional enough that it feels like they are just throwing them out there on the chance that maybe they get five justices to agree with them at some point or they just want to throw it out there, right, just flood the zone. Then there are examples like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, right? Which is they know it is against the law to just eliminate an independent agency that was created by Congress.
So instead, they just put Russ Vogt, the new OMB director, in charge and told everyone to stop working. How much functional dismantling of the federal government do you think they can do within the bounds of the law? They can do an immense amount.
And that's part of why I just went ballistic when you read the title of the op-ed that talked about the system working. Because even if, again, courts are striking down everything that is illegal, even if the executive branch adheres to all of those decisions, there are still many, many things they can do to hollow out the federal bureaucracy, right? Like if they put all of these administrators on leave, if they say we're just not going to bring any new cases under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, right, they are just going to allow consumer fraud to run rampant.
They're going to cause people to leave the administration and administrative state. And it is impossible to quickly build back up that infrastructure in the next competent, sane administration.
And so that's part of why we are in a constitutional crisis, whether or not the executive branch refuses to comply with court orders, because they are using their power to basically undermine our system of government, our system of laws, trying to do it in any number of ways, some of which might be legal, some of which might be not, some of which courts are going to be able to stop, and some of which courts aren't. And inevitably, when courts strike some of the more outlandish, obviously illegal policies down, I worry that that is going to give the administration cover and the court's cover to let other things through because it is going to present a facade of the system working.
And the court will look like an independent check on an executive branch that, again, even if it respects court orders, is acting in ways that are absolutely antithetical to a functioning constitutional democracy and the rule of law. Right.
And as you point out, at some point, the fact that government services that people depend on and benefits will be so disrupted, whether or not a court decides that the administration took an action that was illegal or not, like the results seem like they could be similar. Right, exactly.
So if, for example, right, there's some uncertainty about whether the federal government is actually going to give out these payments, you know, there are some organizations that run on a paycheck to paycheck, disbursement to disbursement basis. People's health care will be interrupted.
Child care is going to be disrupted. And even if a court stops that later, that is not going to undo the immense harm that people will already have experienced and that the administration is already going to be unleashing on all of us.
Obviously, the Supreme Court has an expansive view on executive power, at least when it comes to Republican presidents named Donald Trump. Ding, ding, ding.
What do we know so far about their views on how much power the president can wield over the federal government, particularly civil servants and spending that's been appropriated by Congress? Yeah. So I think those might be two areas where the court's views could diverge, because I think the Republican justices have evinced the view that presidents, in their view, should have the power to fire most people kind of within the executive branch or at least a lot of people.
And so even though the law is right now that Congress can protect civil servants, right, the civil service, they can say the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and whatnot can't be fired, you know, without good cause. There is a decent chance that the Supreme Court will overrule those cases and change the law to allow Donald Trump to exert more control over the federal bureaucracy.
Now, on the issue of spending, I think that that is an instance where the court or at least a majority of the justices are probably going to say, no, presidents don't have the unilateral power, right, just to decline to spend money that Congress has appropriated. The constitutional text is clear, right? Congress has the power of the purse, right? This is not ambiguous.
This is also clear from federal law,

you know, after Richard Nixon attempted to impound federal funds that Congress had appropriated, Congress wrote a law being like, no, knock it off, you can't do that. So these things are all pretty clear.
And so I think those might be two spaces where the court diverges. And again, that gets back to your point where that still gives the executive branch an awful lot of power to unleash a lot of havoc because if they replace, right, the civil service, right, civil servants with a bunch of like 19-year-old douchebags and like whatever else they're planning, right, like the operation of the federal government is going to be vastly undermined.
All right, let's go to the dark place for a second. You may be like, we haven't been in the dark place yet.
Yeah, no, curious where this is going.

Well, I've heard some people say, okay, in the minds of the Supreme Court, they must be thinking, okay, if Trump just refuses to comply with a ruling or defies a court order, like what recourse does the Supreme Court have? And if they think that the answer is not much at all, will they in advance be wary of delivering a ruling that they think Trump will defy, in which case it's functionally the same thing? Yes. So a few things.
There are some things that they can do. Right.
They can try to hold officials in contempt that involves basically sending out the US marshals, right, to haul these people, you know, before the court and potentially in jail. Slight problem with that is who controls the US marshals, the executive branch.
Second is, I think they can hope and I think that they should hope that there are enough people in Congress and elsewhere who would be so horrified by the idea that the executive branch would not comply with an order telling the executive branch, right, just to comply with the law, that this could actually lead to a fissure, you know, within the Republican coalition and lead to some internal checks within the Republican Party, which seem to be, you know, the only or a particularly important mechanism of pushing back on Donald Trump. And so those are some possibilities.
But I think it is a very real risk that the court is going to look at all these cases and wonder which ones is he not going to listen to us on. And in fact, like if you go back to one of the very earliest, most foundational constitutional cases, Marbury versus Madison, right, that is the case where the Supreme Court said we can declare an act of Congress unconstitutional and decline to enforce a federal law.
The federal government, they didn't even like show up at the Supreme Court to defend their position. And Chief Justice Marshall and the other justices were rightfully wary about whether the executive branch would comply with the decision.
And so, you know, he kind of wrote it such that he didn't actually require the executive branch to do much at all, even in the course of reaffirming the court's power. And so I think what you are positing is a very real concern that the Supreme Court is going to be worried about whether this executive branch is going to comply with all of their court orders.
And so maybe they would budget their capital or at least ask, you know, on what issues would a decision, you know, striking down what the administration has done, allow us to kind of be aligned with, let's say, Republican senators or super majority of the American people. And maybe, you know, that is an issue or a lens that they are approaching these cases with.
I mean, there's a recent potential example of this, even though it may seem smaller scale, which is like it seems like the Trump and the DOJ are just ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling on the TikTok ban, which is like they've given themselves an extension to get some kind of a deal done. The law says an extension is only allowed if there are already, quote,

binding legal agreements in place for TikTok to divest of Chinese ownership, which there are not.

There is not a deal in the offing.

They're not just figuring out, crossing the T's, dotting the I's, negotiating and need an extension for that.

So is that right, first of all?

And like, why does no one seem to care about this?

Yeah.

So it's so weird there isn't a deal because we were told Donald Trump is the consummate dealmaker. Best dealmaker.
Work this shit out immediately. So I actually think that example is a little bit different than the worst case scenario we were talking about, because the Supreme Court in that decision, what they said is this law is constitutional.
Right. They did not purport to require the president to do something or prohibit the president from doing something.
And so the president is not technically in violation of the court order. Now, what he is in violation of is the federal law itself, right? What Congress has said.
And that's, you know, going back to what I was suggesting earlier, like that too is a constitutional crisis. Like presidents do not have the power just to say that federal law is optional, right? Like no one has to listen to that one, right? That's a problem too.
But it's a little bit different than the situation we're imagining, which is whether he would actually defy a court order. And no one has brought suit saying, hey, this is a law.
The president is not in compliance with this law. What are you going to do about it? Like that just hasn't happened yet.
Okay. Exactly.
Obviously, a lot of Americans aren't paying much attention to what Trump's doing to the federal government. And I'm sure one response from people to Trump trying to fire government prosecutors, lawyers, FBI agents who aren't loyal is, well, maybe that's bad, but like, you know, he's the president, maybe he should get to hire the people he wants.
Can you talk about why what's happening specifically at DOJ and FBI should alarm someone who doesn't happen to be on Trump's enemies list? So the Department of Justice is reportedly instituting, right, these loyalty tests, right, asking people, you know, do you believe the 2020 election is stolen and whatnot, and using that as kind of litmus tests. And I think it is extremely dangerous, right, to have a federal law enforcement apparatus that is all loyalists, right? No people who are going to provide any measure of dissent or counter views or any sort of independent views.
And again, I think you just have to look at how the federal government has been operating until now and what they are doing with the Doge Bros, right? Like, do you want them to be able to replace the people who have insured your Medicare payments, right, are issued, the people who are insuring, right, that the Medicaid system is functioning, the people who are insuring, right, that child care centers get the support that they need, the people who are insuring that student loan payments, right, actually are forgiven, like we're allowed, the people who are ensuring, right, you can actually pay your taxes online, right? Those are things that federal bureaucrats do. And if you replace all of those people with a bunch of hacks, right, who don't believe in government, right, and are like freshmen at Northeastern who go by big

balls, like those things are not going to get done. Like when people who are 18, like they can't even get up at 8 a.m.
in the morning, right? Like these are not the people, right, that you want running the basic services that allow all of us to function and live our lives. Yeah.
Or, you know, when they say things like,

oh, don't worry, we're going to replace all of the Indian Americans with AI and send them back and normalize Indian hate. You know, it might cause you to wonder, are they going to prioritize government services for certain people and not others? Yes, indeed.
You might wonder that. and you know

that's part of what we are

seeing right

and worried about

when you look at what

does Yes, indeed. You might wonder that.
And, you know, that's part of what we are seeing, right, and worried about when you look at what DOGE and they are doing as far as, you know, whittling down parts of the federal government. They have disbanded, you know, portions of the Department of Justice that were designed to go after Russian oligarchs, right? They have disbanded, right, parts of the Department of Justice that were designed to go after major corruption.
And, you know, they are suspending investigations into, for example, like what Elon Musk is up to at like SpaceX and his other companies. So yes, right, again, if you put in a bunch of hack loyalists into the federal government, they are not going to be applying the laws equally, They are not going to be providing benefits equally.
And that too is, again, just antithetical to how our system is supposed to work. Last question.
Maybe the worst thing Trump did over the weekend doesn't even have to do with the law. I know what you're going to say.
He said he was rooting for the Chiefs, praised Brittany Mahomes, only to then attack Taylor Swift for getting booed by Philly fans. I mean, I just feel like it was a real bummer of a postscript on the Errors tour, just the whole way everything ended.
It was. And yet I am choosing to take a longer view of this because one of the last people Taylor Swift got into a major feud with was Kanye West.
How's he doing now? Right? I'm just waiting. He had a tough weekend.
Yeah. Exactly.
I'm just waiting for her to like pull a Kendrick Lamar on him as her Drake. Yeah, maybe reputation Taylor's version when it comes out will have some of the, you some of the original was a sort of a Kanye Kim thing.
Maybe this will be Trump. Or this is the secret hidden album Karma, right? Oh, yeah.
Where she just unleashes karma on him. All right, see, we needed to end this with some hope and optimism.
Leah, thank you so much for joining us, as always. And everyone, go pre-order Lawless.
It's out in May. And then, of course, if you're not already, listen to Strict Scrutiny every Monday.
Thanks. That's our show for today.
Thanks so much to Leah for joining us. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.
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