This Is the Fight Democrats Need To Have

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 4 On today's show, we're going to talk about the Democrats fighting back against the Trump regime's illegal renditions to a foreign torture dungeon.

Speaker 4 And Dan just spoke to Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who's in El Salvador trying to get answers about Kilmar Obrego Garcia, one person the government has admitted sending to the prison by mistake.

Speaker 4 We'll also get into Trump's latest targets for retribution, colleges and universities, most notably Harvard. The president is also threatening to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Speaker 4 We'll talk about whether he can or will. And in case you didn't think Elon Musk was creepy enough, there's a shocking new Wall Street Journal story about the billionaire's, quote, baby-making project.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4 Then later in the show, Tommy talks to Congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, about how Democrats are trying to push back on Trump's defiance of the courts.

Speaker 4 Big show. But let's start with what's keeping many of us up at night, at least me.
Our government is disappearing people to a dungeon in El Salvador. They don't get a trial.

Speaker 4 They don't get any contact with a lawyer or their families. They may never leave alive.
And Trump says he's looking into sending American citizens there next. He said, quote, he would love to do it.

Speaker 4 Our courts are trying to stop this. Since our last show, D.C.

Speaker 4 Chief District Judge James Bosberg announced that he will start looking into whether people in the administration should be held in criminal contempt for their refusal to abide by his order to halt these renditions under the Alien Enemies Act.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, the disappearance that's attracted the most attention is Kilmar Obrego-Garcias, primarily because the government admitted to the Supreme Court that they sent him to the torture dungeon by mistake.

Speaker 4 But Trump is so far refusing the court's order to facilitate Garcia's release. He was asked about this again on Thursday in the Oval.
Here's what he said.

Speaker 5 Will you take steps to return Kilmar Obrego-Garcia to the United States and put him in front of a judge?

Speaker 6 Well, I'm not involved in it. I'm going to respond by saying you'll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ.

Speaker 6 I've heard many things about him,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 we'll have to find out what the truth is.

Speaker 4 So the many things about Garcia that Trump referred to likely match up with the case that his team has been making, not in court, notably, but in the media, that Garcia is a foreign terrorist who deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Speaker 4 Here's some of what they're saying.

Speaker 7 Nothing will change the fact that Obrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again.

Speaker 8 Every time I read a story about this, it's Maryland father, Maryland father. They don't mention he's a member of MS-13 who is not a designated terrorist group.

Speaker 8 If somehow he comes back and that happens, he's going to be detained and removed again.

Speaker 7 He is an illegal alien, and I'm sick of the liberal media saying that he's a Maryland man. He's not a Maryland man.
He's a guy from El Salvador.

Speaker 9 Maybe he's not a terrorist, but he's a potential terrorist. He's a terrorist watch list person.

Speaker 4 He could be a terrorist.

Speaker 4 Any of us could be terrorists, I guess. That's why it's going to be a very long watch list.
Yeah, a long watch list.

Speaker 4 A few hours before we recorded this, we got another ruling in this case, this time from a three-judge panel at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Speaker 4 This is their second ruling, by the way, at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Speaker 4 This one, they ruled that the government has to comply with a lower court's order, that they show the steps they're taking to get Abrego Garcia out of prison.

Speaker 4 Here's the key line from the judge who wrote the opinion, a conservative Reagan appointee who was joined by the other two judges.

Speaker 4 Quote, it is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter, but in this case, it is not hard at all.

Speaker 4 The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.

Speaker 4 Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, that there is nothing that can be done.

Speaker 4 This should be shocking, not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. It's a real barn burner of an opinion.

Speaker 4 I would encourage everyone to read the whole thing. Dan, any sense of what happens next here? Now that we are in this constitutional crisis? I know we've said it before.
It sure feels like one.

Speaker 4 If this isn't a constitutional crisis, I don't know what is. You're exactly right.
This is the moment.

Speaker 4 We are not 100 days into the Trump presidency yet, yet, and we are headed towards a massive collision between the judicial and executive branches of our country, the results of which will, I think, affect our democracy for generations to come.

Speaker 4 Just the idea, the judicial branch exists as a check and a balance on executive to ensure that the president is not king.

Speaker 4 And if we lose that.

Speaker 4 at a time in which the Congress is controlled all by the president's party, all of whom seem to have never read a constitution and don't care either way, then Trump has unlimited power.

Speaker 4 This is where we're heading. And there is a, you know, will Trump step back from the brink? I think it's notable he said that he would, you have to talk to his lawyers.

Speaker 4 But if he doesn't step back from the brink, will anyone speak up who's not an elected Democratic member of Congress? Will

Speaker 4 any Republicans speak up? Will any Republicans not employed by the Bulwarks speak up? Will business leaders speak up?

Speaker 4 Will anyone in American society speak up if he operates in pure defiance of these court orders.

Speaker 4 Because this is where it comes to, right? Ultimately, if Judge Bozberg decides that someone has to be put in jail because they're held in contempt, the U.S. Marshals have to put that person in jail.

Speaker 4 Who controls the U.S. Marshals?

Speaker 4 Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Pam Bondi.

Speaker 4 Who seems to be a very independent voice. Yes.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 4 Yeah, apparently Boseberg talked about appointing a special prosecutor, which a judge has the power to do if if DOJ is conflicted or refuses to go along with contempt proceedings.

Speaker 4 But again, once you appoint the special prosecutor, the special prosecutor does their thing.

Speaker 4 Eventually you get back to needing to rely on the marshals if someone's going to jail or if someone's not paying the fine they've been given or if someone's not

Speaker 4 doing what the judge orders. And that's, you know, that's what

Speaker 4 the executive has the power there, right?

Speaker 4 So this is why it's very, very dicey. I mean,

Speaker 4 I just want to, the strategy being employed by the Trump White House now and the right-wing media and all of their goons and all their friends, it's important to highlight what they're doing.

Speaker 4 And to me, it's even, their response to this is even more disturbing than what happened in the first place because what they're trying to do is when they were in court, They never offered evidence to prove that this guy is MS-13, right?

Speaker 4 They never offered evidence. All the stuff they're saying now, like, oh, well, there was a, you know,

Speaker 4 his wife years ago tried to get a restraining order against him because of domestic violence, and then she dropped it, and she has since said that they had their rough patch and they're great now and everything.

Speaker 4 None of this was introduced in court. There's still no criminal charges.
There's still no solid evidence that the DOJ has provided any of these courts, right?

Speaker 4 But what they're doing is now they're trying it in the court of public opinion and they're trying to say,

Speaker 4 this guy that you want to make some as a some martyr, right? Like that he's the, he's the, he's the hero for Democrats now. He's really just a bad guy.

Speaker 4 And they think that if they can get people to just believe he's a bad guy, what do you care? Why do you need him back? Then that's enough. But

Speaker 4 the problem with this is, I mean, there's a lot of problems with this, but like

Speaker 4 a very, you know, you heard Tom Homan, the

Speaker 4 the immigration czar in that clip that we just played saying like, if he comes back, we're just going to to deport him again. You know what?

Speaker 4 A very easy way to handle this would be for the government to facilitate Garcia's release. He flies back to the U.S.

Speaker 4 He's detained at customs. And if the government wants to deport him, they bring their case to a judge.

Speaker 4 And if they win, he gets deported to, I don't know, one of the many countries that are now taking our deportees.

Speaker 4 And while I'm sure he would certainly rather be in Maryland with his family, at the very least, he wouldn't be in a fucking concentration camp, which is where he is right now.

Speaker 4 There's not enough focus on the prison. It's all focused on like the character of the people that we're sending.
We are sending people to a foreign prison that might as well be a concentration camp.

Speaker 4 It is that the conditions are terrible. People do not get, it's extra legal, right?

Speaker 4 How long do these people, are these people going to sit in that jail? We don't know. They've not been given any sentences.
They've not been convicted of anything. They're just thrown in a hole.

Speaker 4 They don't get to contact their family, their lawyers. They are, they don't, the lights are on 24 hours a day.
There is torture. There is starvation.

Speaker 4 There is like, they're not getting the health care they need and they're dying. I mean, it's just, it is fucking insane this place that we're sending people to this place.

Speaker 4 And in particular, we're sending people accused of no crimes. Right.
It'd be one thing if he was just deported to live.

Speaker 4 Understanding that a judge said he cannot be deported to El Salvador because it's dangerous, but he could be, even if they said, we don't believe, you know, we're going to get that order removed, we're going to send him to El Salvador.

Speaker 4 He's going to live in society in El Salvador. What is the purpose of him being in this prison other than keeping him out of the reach of his, just cruelty, right?

Speaker 4 Keeping him out of the reach of the judicial system. And because if they just send him to El Salvador in violation of the order, they can find a way to get him back.

Speaker 4 But because he's in this prison that no one who's not a Republican member of Congress shooting vertical video can get into, then

Speaker 4 there's no way to get to him, Right. I mean, you'll hear, I talk about this with Chris Van Holland in my conversation coming up.
But if you have this case, right, like present it before a judge.

Speaker 4 Just do that. And then the president has broad power to deport people if they go through due process.
But they are unwilling to do that.

Speaker 4 And the reason that they, and the fact that they have picked this case to, this would be such an easy one. for them to solve.
They admitted they made a mistake. They bring him back.

Speaker 4 They bring him before the judge. As you said, he gets deported elsewhere or gets deported to El Salvador, not in the fucking concentration camp.
But they will not do that because in their mind, to

Speaker 4 let him back somehow unravels the whole system, or as some people pointed out today, we're going to allow him to talk about the conditions of the prison.

Speaker 4 Because everyone else who's been sent there has not been heard from again. Reportedly, no one has left the prison in the history of the prison.
Yep.

Speaker 4 Yep. And that's, and, and all of the reporting about people who have died in some of these prisons in El Salvador, it's some of the other prisons there that they have been able to

Speaker 4 track some of the people there who've died in those prisons. I think they had like since since Bukele declared a state of emergency and became a dictator, like 350 people in those prisons have died.

Speaker 4 But you're right, they don't know, they have no idea what's happening in Seacot because no one's gotten out. And in fact,

Speaker 4 the justice minister in El Salvador says the only way you get out of Seacot is in a coffin.

Speaker 4 That's where the United States is sending people right now.

Speaker 4 And, you know, there's been comparisons to, and I heard, you know, I heard this today, that, and I think Tommy's made the comparison too, that it's like, you know, we did the, it's like Gitmo, right?

Speaker 4 Yep. But even Gitmo,

Speaker 4 they were able to file habeas petitions, right? They were able to like ask why they're being detained there, right? And, you know, and it's whatever, shameful.

Speaker 4 We can all disagree about what happened at Gitmo. But even they got more rights than what's happening right now.

Speaker 4 And one of the judges on the Fourth Circuit who wrote the first first opinion said even the fucking Germans who were Nazis in this country during World War II got more due process than these folks that we're sending to prison, who at least one of them, Garcia, we know has been sent unlawfully to prison.

Speaker 4 For a, what is this, what is a life sentence? Yes. It's something like, oh, it's the liberals want to bring him home.
But no, no.

Speaker 4 I just want to sh fucking shut the prison down or at least stop sending people who are in custody of the United States, who are many of them asylum seekers here legally.

Speaker 4 Stop sending them to a fucking torture dungeon.

Speaker 4 That we're paying for. We are paying for torturers.
We're paying for it for $6 million a year.

Speaker 4 One piece of good news in all this is that Democrats are really starting to fight back. Maryland Senator Chris Van Holland, who represents Garcia, traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday.

Speaker 4 Dan, you spoke with him by Zoom today, Thursday afternoon, from San Salvador. Let's listen to that interview.
Before we get to the interview, one note.

Speaker 4 After we recorded the episode and this interview, Senator Van Holland tweeted that he had actually gotten a chance to meet with Kilmar, Brego Garcia.

Speaker 4 We don't have a lot of information yet about how that meeting came to place or what Senator Van Hollen learned in that meeting.

Speaker 4 We do know that Senator Van Hollen has called Kilmar's wife to pass along his message of love.

Speaker 4 Later on, last night, President Bukeley tweeted that now that Kilmar has been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody. We hope to learn more about this today.

Speaker 4 Joining us today from El Salvador is Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen. Senator, welcome to Pod Save America.

Speaker 10 Dan, good to be with you.

Speaker 4 Senator, it's my understanding that you just tried to visit the prison in where Kilmar Abrego-Garcia is being held. What happened when you tried to visit?

Speaker 10 I did try to visit to check on his health, and I was stopped about three kilometers outside of the prison by soldiers

Speaker 10 who told me I could not proceed. You could see cars continuing to go by on the road, but they were ordered to stop me from going.

Speaker 4 Now, we have seen videos, social media posts from Republican members of Congress who have been inside the prison recently.

Speaker 4 So it's pretty clear that it seems to me at least that you were being targeted because you are not a supporter of Trump's policy here. Is that, I assume that's your assumption as well?

Speaker 10 I think that's fair. My request also has been to go see Kilmar.
Republicans don't seem to care about the fact that he was illegally abducted and taken to Seacott.

Speaker 10 You know, the Trump administration seems to be celebrating that fact. And, of course, they're ignoring the court orders to facilitate his return.

Speaker 4 Now, it's not just you. No one has spoken to Kilmar since he

Speaker 4 was taken to this prison. Is that correct? Not his wife, not his family.
Has his attorney spoken to him?

Speaker 10 No, they haven't allowed anybody to speak with him. And that, of course, is a a violation of international law.

Speaker 10 But that is the current situation.

Speaker 10 And I explained to the vice president of El Salvador yesterday that they're really being complicit in these illegal actions by the Trump administration and illegal under U.S.

Speaker 10 law for lack of due process. But by not allowing him to have any contact with anybody, that's also a violation of international law.

Speaker 4 As you mentioned, you met with the vice president yesterday. What did the vice president say when you requested that they return Kilmar to the United States?

Speaker 10 Well, his basic response was that they had this deal with the Trump administration. The Trump administration was paying the government of El Salvador millions of dollars to detain

Speaker 10 him and others.

Speaker 10 And I explained that the courts of our country, including the Supreme Court, by a nine to zero ruling, had ordered the Trump administration to help facilitate his release. You know,

Speaker 10 the president of El Salvador has said that, well, he doesn't have the power to smuggle, you know, Kilmar back into the United States.

Speaker 10 And I pointed out to the vice president, we're not asking El Salvador to smuggle him in. We just want them to open the prison gate.

Speaker 10 And Attorney General Bondi did say the other day that they'd send a plane. I don't know if that offer still stands, but I want to make that distinction clear.
El Salvador is a sovereign country.

Speaker 10 We don't think that they can, quote, smuggle him back to the United States, but what they can do is open the gates to the prison to somebody who's been illegally detained there.

Speaker 4 And it also seems clear that the Trump administration has not asked for him to be returned. You know, they've sort of felt in the meeting with Buckeye that, well, we can't.
It's up to him.

Speaker 4 He doesn't want to do it. So, you know, that's the end of the matter.
But they also haven't asked, right? There's no evidence that they have done anything to facilitate, correct?

Speaker 10 Well, that's absolutely right.

Speaker 10 I mean, the first question I asked of the American embassy team here has, has Washington, has the Trump administration given you any instructions to help facilitate his release? And the answer was no.

Speaker 4 Obviously, in clear violation of the Supreme Court, the

Speaker 4 Fourth Circuit just weighed in on this. Have you had a chance to see that opinion?

Speaker 10 I have a very strong opinion where they said essentially they backed up the federal district court judge and said that this violation of due process by the Trump administration goes to the very heart and foundation of our Constitution, a total violation of the due process rights.

Speaker 10 And they said,

Speaker 10 I'm reading here that it should be shocking for all of us to also listen to the Trump administration's claim that since he's already left the country, they have no obligation to get him back.

Speaker 10 I mean, they admitted, they admitted in federal court that they had erroneously abducted him and taken him to another prison.

Speaker 10 And instead of fixing the problem, the Trump administration fired the lawyer who told the truth in court, fired her or put on administrative leave.

Speaker 4 One of the theories, other than just pure cruelty, about why the Trump administration is so unwilling to address what is their own admitted error, is that if Kilmar were to come home, he could talk about what he saw in that prison, which is notorious for torture, starvation, absolute violations of human rights.

Speaker 4 Do you assume that to be the case as well?

Speaker 10 I think the Trump administration wants to cover up all of their illegal activity and wrongdoing. That can certainly be a part of it.

Speaker 10 But they are lying through their teeth every day

Speaker 10 about this

Speaker 10 case and trying to fool Americans as to what it's about. What this is about is stripping an individual of his rights to due process.
And if you can do this for this individual,

Speaker 10 The rest of us watch out because what bullies do is they pick first on the the most vulnerable. And that's essentially what the Fourth Circuit just said today.

Speaker 4 I know you're focused on getting Kilmar freed, but over the last 36 hours here, the Trump administration has engaged in a full-throated effort to try to smear his character, putting out evidence that claims he's a domestic abuser, comparing him to Osama bin Laden in one case, saying he's a proven gangmer.

Speaker 4 What's your response to that effort?

Speaker 10 Well, all I know is the federal judge in the case looked at the administration's claims regarding that he was in MS-13 and found them lacking.

Speaker 10 That's where the Trump administration should be providing any evidence they have rather than just putting this out in the court of public opinion. Look, I want to be clear.

Speaker 10 I'm not, I don't know every single fact here.

Speaker 10 What I'm vouching for is the system, due process. That's the forum in which these things are decided.

Speaker 10 And it is exactly that that the Trump administration wants to avoid entirely.

Speaker 4 So what happens now? What realistically can be done? What are you going to do next?

Speaker 4 What leverage do Democrats or others back home have in this matter, do you think?

Speaker 10 Well, number one, I intend to keep a spotlight on this issue because I do believe that

Speaker 10 the government of El Salvador

Speaker 10 At some point, I think the international community may also weigh in and just say what's happening here is illegal, becoming you know, the contracting out prison in a way that violates people's rights.

Speaker 10 But the Trump administration is going to be providing those monies to the government of El Salvador. And ultimately, Congress appropriates these funds.

Speaker 10 And so I'm certainly not going to appropriate one penny of American taxpayer dollars to the government of El Salvador to pay them for violating this individual's individual's rights and violating the rulings of the United States courts with respect to his rights.

Speaker 4 Are you coming home? Are you staying there much longer? What is your plan?

Speaker 10 My plan is to come home either later this evening or tomorrow. I've had lots of meetings here.
I also met with some of the human rights groups.

Speaker 10 I met with the lawyer for Kilmar's mother and his wife, who's down here. In fact, he accompanied me to try to go see Kilmar in prison.
He was also blocked by the soldiers when we made that effort.

Speaker 10 I also met with the U.S. Embassy team here to talk about bilateral relations between the United States and El Salvador.
But

Speaker 10 I intend to either leave later tonight or tomorrow morning. But I can assure you, and I've assured the government of El Salvador that I may be the first senator here or the first member of Congress.

Speaker 10 There will be more to come because a lot is at stake for Americans in terms of protecting the right of due process for this individual, but really for every American when it comes right down to it and every resident of the United States.

Speaker 4 Senator Van Hollen, thank you for joining us. Thank you for what you're doing and safe travels home.

Speaker 10 Thanks so much. Thank you.

Speaker 4 All right. So that was Chris Van Hollen.
Dan, what do you make of Van Hollen's visit and your conversation with him? First, good for Van Hollen for going, right?

Speaker 4 We need people to draw public attention to this. And just as you heard in his interview, like, what a surreal authoritarian experience.
He can't get to the prison. He can't get information.

Speaker 4 No one in the embassy has heard anything.

Speaker 4 Just the fact that it is very clear that Trump has done, you know, in the, as I said to Senator Van Hollen, like in the Oval Office meeting, it's like, we asked.

Speaker 4 He said, no, what do you want us to do? But what's very clear from Van Holland is this no one asked. Right.

Speaker 4 They've done nothing to try to bring him home and seem to be trying very hard to keep him from getting any information.

Speaker 4 I mean, just as Vinhal noted, no one has spoken to Kilmar since he went into the prison. Not his lawyer, not his family, not no one, not Senator Van Holland, no one.

Speaker 4 And that is, as Senator Van Holland said to me, a violation of international law. Same thing with many of the other people we've sent there

Speaker 4 who have, you know, no,

Speaker 4 sure, some people might be gang members and whatever, but like Andre, the

Speaker 4 gay stylist from Venezuela, who they thought with, you know, his random tattoos of his mom and from his mom and dad were trende or agua, you know, no one's heard from him.

Speaker 4 No one's heard from any of these people that we've sent there. It's horrifying.
It's really horrifying.

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Speaker 4 A bunch of other Democrats, Corey Booker, Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost, among them, have said they're trying to go to El Salvador too.

Speaker 4 I just saw that the House Republicans turned down the House Democrats' request to have a Codell go there or to be able to go there. They're not going to fund Democrats going there.

Speaker 4 They're just going to fund House Republicans going there so they can take selfies in front of the prison

Speaker 4 full of detainees. Do you think that's still worth doing since Van Holland

Speaker 4 couldn't get anywhere by going? I kind of think it is just because I think it's a show of like, we're going to fight on this, but I don't know what you think. No, I agree.

Speaker 4 I think people should keep going. The second public attention moves to the next thing,

Speaker 4 we've lost this, right? And not just for Kilmar. This is not just about Kilmar.
This is for everyone who's already been sent and everyone who's going to be sent. And so people should keep going.

Speaker 4 The only weapon that we have in this environment is public attention and public scrutiny. And we got to keep it focused on this for as long as we possibly can.

Speaker 4 Not all Democrats want to fight about this.

Speaker 4 One House Democrat told Axios that this shouldn't be a quote big issue for the party and that they should instead focus on quote the basic things that affect people every day.

Speaker 4 Another House Democrat said that this is a, quote, soup du jour issue, a quote trap, and that the party shouldn't quote take the bait for one hairdresser, referring to Andre Romero, the gay hairdresser from Venezuela with no criminal record, who has also disappeared to Seacot.

Speaker 4 Gavin Newsom called it, quote, the distraction of the day, and quote, exactly the debate they want because they don't want the debate on tariffs.

Speaker 4 Deep breath, deep breath. Gonna try not to scream about all of this.
I'm gonna scream about it.

Speaker 4 Good. Thank you.
Because

Speaker 4 I can't anymore. My head's gonna fucking pop off my body.
You were to message Bucks on Thursday making the case that they are wrong. What is your argument?

Speaker 4 First, I will stipulate happily that all the public opinion research says that the best way to drive down Trump's approval rating is to talk about the economy.

Speaker 4 Tariffs, inflation, economic chaos, market drops, tax cuts for billionaires, custom Medicaid. That is without a doubt the most persuasive message in all the polling, right? I'm not arguing that.

Speaker 4 I do, however, think that Democrats look cowardly, calculating, and fucking ridiculous if our response to the father and husband of a U.S.

Speaker 4 citizen being sent illegally in defiance of a Supreme Court order to a foreign gulag is to vomit up some poll-tested talking points about tariffs, to turn our back to it. Like, that is absurd.

Speaker 4 Like, who are we and what do we stand for if we do that?

Speaker 4 We don't always get to pick the fights. Trump gets to pick them most of the time.
The fights come to us and we have to decide how to win them.

Speaker 4 And at this moment, with so much on the line, not just for Kilmar Obreco-Garcia, but for democracy, for the rule of law, for due process, this is an important fight.

Speaker 4 And the idea that Democrats lose every time we talk about immigration is such learned helplessness. It drives me bananas.
Yes, it is a strong issue for Trump. Yes, people want a stronger border.

Speaker 4 Yes, people want gang members and violent criminals out of this country. Yes, they want less chaos at the border.

Speaker 4 And they want, frankly, a lot of the migrants who came here in the last few years to go home.

Speaker 4 But,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 what the people they do not want deported, the people who have, like Hill Margaret or say, who have been here for 10 years, who are married to a U.S. citizen, who have U.S.

Speaker 4 citizen children in this country, people who are gainfully employed, people who are paying taxes, abiding by the law.

Speaker 4 Those are the people that majorities of Americans, including large swaths of Republicans, believe should be given an opportunity for a path to citizenship to find a way to have them stay here, pay taxes, follow the law, go to the back of the line, whatever else.

Speaker 4 But that, that is what people believe. When they think about mass deportation, they don't think about people like Kilmar Brego-Garcia.
And if we turn to a blind eye here, we are seeding the ground.

Speaker 4 I think Democrats are learning the wrong lesson from 2024. We did not lose on immigration because we talked about people like Kilmar Brego-Garcia too much.

Speaker 4 We lost because we ceded the issue to Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 We allowed him to decide that immigration was about border security and border security only. And we tried to out-tough him on who would be tougher on transnational gangs.

Speaker 4 Of course, he's going to win that fight.

Speaker 4 But when you brought in the issue to talk about who is actually going to solve the problem, the complex problem of immigration in this country, if you talk about what mass deportation means for people who've been in this country for a long time, for our communities, for the workforce, that is a fight we can win.

Speaker 4 And we just never tried to win it. So this idea that this is some sort of trap is idiocy, but it also, it's a fight we can win.
We have a lot of public opinion on our side here. And so I just,

Speaker 4 it is so frustrating that our party in the face of something so serious, so dangerous, so real, would be such prisoners to polls for an election that's happening in 16 months is exactly why people hate politics.

Speaker 4 And so just

Speaker 4 we just had we

Speaker 4 I'm like, I'm so pulsing with rage right now over this.

Speaker 4 It's like, if we are not willing to stand up here, if we are, then I don't know what we are fighting for or what we stand for or who we are.

Speaker 4 You don't think if we just get egg prices down a bit, then that'll,

Speaker 4 I feel like some of these, I feel like some of these Democratic politicians are going to be screaming, what about the egg prices? as they are hauled off to El Salvador

Speaker 4 in prison. You know where people find out what the egg prices are? It's not from a press release from a Democratic member of Congress.
It's when they go to the grocery store.

Speaker 4 Okay, that's that is one of the my big points on this, right? Which is like the the effects of Trump fucking up the U.S.

Speaker 4 economy and maybe the global economy are going to be felt by people in their everyday lives, whether Democrats talk about it or not, particularly now this far out from an election.

Speaker 4 The politics of immigration. YouGov tested this question two weeks ago.

Speaker 4 Do you support or oppose deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to El Salvador to be imprisoned without letting them challenge the deportation in court?

Speaker 4 There was a, this was on a list of, I don't know, about like 12 Trump policies. It was the least popular

Speaker 4 under tariffs. under less popular than the tariffs.
And it was 6126 people opposed this. 61% to 26%.

Speaker 4 Signal, which is a right-leaning polling organization, tested support or opposed deporting people who entered the U.S. legally on humanitarian status.
That's Andri, the Venezuelan hairdresser. 3656.

Speaker 4 56% of people oppose that. Only 36%

Speaker 4 support deporting those people. So.
Yes, the politics are on our side, first of all.

Speaker 4 But even if those numbers were flipped and the politics weren't on our side, you know what, to that Democrat who talked to Axios, what the basic things that affect people day to day?

Speaker 4 One of those things is whether you can walk down the street without a van pulling up with masked people throwing you in the back and shipping you to El Salvador so you're in a prison for the rest of your life.

Speaker 4 That affects your day-to-day life. And if you think it's just going to happen to Kilmar Obrego Garcia because you think he might be a bad guy because he's MS-13, three U.S.

Speaker 4 citizens have now received emails in the past week from the government telling them to leave the U.S. immediately.
Two of them were immigration attorneys.

Speaker 4 One was a doctor from Connecticut who has absolutely nothing to do with immigration. She was talking to the news.

Speaker 4 She's like, I have no idea why I got this email, but I had to get an attorney, an immigration attorney, because I'm like, maybe it was an error, but it was pretty serious and it told me to leave the country.

Speaker 4 And you think the Department of Homeland Security or CPB or ICE would be like, oh, I'm so sorry. These emails were sent in error.

Speaker 4 And said they were like, they may have been sent in error, but they may have been trying to get to an illegal alien and blah, blah, blah. And people should take it seriously.
So those are U.S.

Speaker 4 citizens. There was

Speaker 4 another story in Boston. A man from Guatemala who's here legally.
His wife has asylum protections. She's here legally as well.
They were both pulled over. They wanted to wait for their lawyer.

Speaker 4 While they were saying that they wanted to wait for their lawyer to the ICE agent, the ICE agent smashed his window, dragged him and his wife out of the car, took them into custody.

Speaker 4 And then I said, oh, we were looking for someone named Antonio. The guy's name is Juan.

Speaker 4 And he's still,

Speaker 4 they're still trying to get him out, right? Now, a lot of these people, maybe it's a mistake. Maybe they get out.
Maybe it's no problem.

Speaker 4 But like, or maybe they get sent to El Salvador by mistake, which the government has already admitted that it did with Garcia. And then what's going to happen?

Speaker 4 The government's going to, oh, well, we, in El Salvador with nothing we can do. Nothing we can do.
That's their argument.

Speaker 4 If they, in, in the most generous terms, if they just mistakenly send some people to El Salvador, nothing we can do. Sorry.

Speaker 4 This is not like, like, should we fight on this issue? This is the issue, right?

Speaker 4 Living in a fucking free country where the government doesn't, we're not in a police state where the government scoops you up. If you don't fight this, what are you doing?

Speaker 4 You're fighting for fucking, to avoid Medicaid cuts and lower egg prices?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's like if we wanted to have a debate about what the ad traffic should be in New York 17 or wherever in October of 2026,

Speaker 4 that's a real debate. We are not there.
This is happening. And if Democrats don't speak out about it, and this has been my argument that I've been making in recent weeks, is we know

Speaker 4 the media just doesn't have the reach or the power to make people know about these things right now.

Speaker 4 And we, the only thing we can do, the only thing, the only power we have right now is our voice, right? We don't have the ability to pass legislation to stop him.

Speaker 4 We don't have the ability to stop him confirming these judges. We just, we have no tools other than our voice.
So we should use that right now. Cause if we don't do it, no one else is going to do it.

Speaker 4 And then Trump is going to get away with all of this.

Speaker 4 And I do want to say before we move off the Democrats, like, I think after the Oval Office meeting with Bukele, I noticed, because I was like, again, I was like, why aren't Democrats talking about this?

Speaker 4 And I saw more elected Democrats speaking out, not just posting, you know, but like talking about it. Van Holland's going, all these guys.

Speaker 4 So like, I do think that most elected Democrats are ignoring the advice of some of their colleagues and probably most Democratic strategists, I'm guessing, are behind this, people who are like got their head deep in the polls.

Speaker 4 And so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm encouraged by most of the parties.

Speaker 4 Like, obviously, Chris Murphy's been talking about this stuff. Corey Booker's been talking about it.
AOC and Bernie talked about it at their rallies over the weekend.

Speaker 4 Like more and more people are talking about it, but there is still this instinctual reticence to take Trump on on these issues that I think is going to be very damaging to the party in the long run, not to mention the country itself.

Speaker 4 Right. And even if you don't care about the country and the party, if you care about your just your own narrow political considerations, you're looking to run for president in 2028.

Speaker 4 Look at the fucking latest polls of like, like, who's on top

Speaker 4 in the primary field? The people who are, like, Corey Booker is now, like, second in some polls because he went up there and gave that filibuster and showed that he's willing to fight. Like,

Speaker 4 there is political benefit to this.

Speaker 4 I mean, there's individual political benefit for someone who wants to be president. There's also collective political benefit for the party to be seen as people who will fight for something.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 4 And that, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 4 All right. Two other items on this that I think should serve as a preview of coming attractions.

Speaker 4 Brendan Carr, the Project 2025 co-author, turned chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under Trump, attacked Comcast in a tweet this week because he isn't happy with how they're covering the Garcia case.

Speaker 4 He also included this threat: quote, Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn't cut it.

Speaker 4 Did he point out any specific examples of MSNBC lying, giving the wrong facts?

Speaker 4 No, not at all. Nothing.
He's just upset with the coverage.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, OG Trump goon Sebastian Gorka, he's back in the game as the White House counterterrorisms are, he went on Newsmax this week's to say this.

Speaker 9 The other side that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists, and you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?

Speaker 9 Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute, Rob.

Speaker 4 Aiding and abetting.

Speaker 4 If you don't like Trump disappearing people to foreign prisons, you may be aiding and abetting terrorism.

Speaker 4 Seems bad. How seriously do you take these threats from these two goons? I think we should take them deadly seriously.

Speaker 4 It was just this time last week that you and I were talking about the President of the United States sitting in the Oval Office and signing two executive orders to target two specific individuals for the crime of criticizing the regime to instruct the Department of Justice to investigate them.

Speaker 4 So, like Seb Gorko and Brendan Carr, frankly, are deeply unserious people, but the Trump era is about unserious people having deadly serious power.

Speaker 4 And so we should expect them to wield that in ways that could be quite dangerous. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And this is why, like, the whole, the whole terrorist thing we're throwing around, they're throwing around terrorist a lot. these days.
You're a terrorist supporter.

Speaker 4 It's not enough for you to maybe

Speaker 4 have weak ties or unproven ties to a gang. Now it has to be a foreign terrorist organization.
And

Speaker 4 this is how it starts, right? And again, we're only 100 days in.

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Speaker 13 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 7 Oh, you're just gonna go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 13 I'm Dan Pashman from the Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 13 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 4 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 13 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're gonna learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkvo, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 The Trump regime has also been targeting a number of other political enemies lately.

Speaker 4 The Times reports that a housing official in the Trump administration is referring New York Attorney General Tish James for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department for allegedly falsifying real estate records, which is what she went after Trump for.

Speaker 4 Pam Bondi is suing the state of Maine for not complying with their trans athlete ban. An interim U.S.

Speaker 4 attorney for New Jersey, former Trump personal attorney Alina Haba, announced late last week that she plans to investigate New Jersey's Democratic governor Phil Murphy and his attorney general over immigration enforcement.

Speaker 4 But the biggest news of the week is Trump going after Harvard.

Speaker 4 We talked about Harvard's decision to fight back on Tuesday's pod, but there are a couple updates here.

Speaker 4 First, in response to Harvard, the government has moved to eliminate over $2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts from the school.

Speaker 4 Then on Tuesday morning, Trump posted to Truth Social that Harvard should, quote, perhaps lose its tax-exempt status.

Speaker 4 Sure enough, CNN reported on Wednesday that the IRS is making plans to do exactly that.

Speaker 4 Later that day, Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Noam demanded that Harvard submit lists of international students who have engaged in, quote, illegal and violent activities before the month is out, or the school will risk losing the certification that allows it to enroll any foreign students at all.

Speaker 4 They are threatening to eliminate Harvard's ability to take any foreign students because they're mad at Harvard.

Speaker 4 To take the foreign students things first, do you want to talk about just why that's such a big deal to schools like Harvard? Yeah, the foreign students pay full freight.

Speaker 4 They are not eligible for financial aid in the way that U.S. students are.

Speaker 4 Oftentimes they are children of wealthy people abroad or their education is being funded by nonprofits or organizations from abroad.

Speaker 4 So the students who are paying full tuition are subsidizing the tuitions of the kids who are getting financial aid.

Speaker 4 So if you were to get rid of all the foreign students, what that would mean is that tuition for everyone else would go up, which would be just the pitch-perfect addition to the Trump agenda to raise prices on every American in every facet of their lives.

Speaker 4 We're going to do it for smartphones. We're going to do it for car seats.
We're going to do it for eggs. We're going to do it for college tuition, too.

Speaker 4 And how would stripping Harvard's tax status

Speaker 4 And what would that do? Why is that a big deal?

Speaker 4 That would be a massive deal for Harvard because it would mean they would all of a sudden owe taxes on everything, including their $60 billion, whatever it is, endowment, property taxes, state taxes.

Speaker 4 It would also reduce their ability to raise money because

Speaker 4 donations to a university. are tax deductible.
There's often part of the charitable giving plans of foundations or individuals.

Speaker 4 So for example, when Jared Kushner's dad bought that building so that Jared Kushner could go to Harvard, he got to write that off on his taxes.

Speaker 4 And so it would, it would affect, they would owe more money and they'd be able to raise less money. And now the question is: can they actually

Speaker 4 do that?

Speaker 4 Right? The president does not have unilateral authority to do it, although the IRS are the ones who decide whether someone has tax exempt status.

Speaker 4 There is a pretty narrow statutory definition for what you cannot do to retain your tax exempt status, and it's a certain amount of political lobbying and becoming a private, you know, profiteering.

Speaker 4 And so they did it theoretically in a world where there were rules and norms and courts and court decisions abided by, they would have to prove that

Speaker 4 Harvard did something to violate their tax status on that very, those very narrow statutory grounds. And so the second it happened, which

Speaker 4 I would find it hard to imagine. that Harvard did anything like that.

Speaker 4 It can't be, we didn't like their response to the Gaza protests it cannot be a broad unsubstantiated uh allegation of anti-semitism it cannot be political speech it cannot be bias which yeah which which trump has already uh discarded yeah their defense there on anti-semitism because trump was like also they're just so liberal they're just too liberal but none of those things you cannot do this on first amendment grounds that is a that is very clear in case law that it can't you cannot take away their text status because you do not like what they say in a world where there are norms and laws and people abide in court stitches, people abide by them.

Speaker 4 It doesn't seem like they're going to stop with Harvard either on this. Like,

Speaker 4 there's, you know, a lot of rumors and concerns that they're going to go after people with 501

Speaker 4 status,

Speaker 4 nonprofits. Trump was asked about it today, again, when he was signing some EOs.
And he said he's mentioned crew, citizens for responsibility of ethics in Washington. He talked about them.

Speaker 4 He talked about some climate groups. So I think there's more of this coming.
And

Speaker 4 again, like good for Harvard for standing up. I saw that Stanford did the same thing, Northwestern.
So I think that like Harvard standing up is hopefully inspiring.

Speaker 4 We were talking about this on last episode, hopefully inspiring other colleges to stand up as well and not be Columbia.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, Columbia had learned the lesson pretty quickly since they caved and then Trump immediately demanded more from them. Yes.

Speaker 4 Obviously, the administration is targeting Harvard because it's the most elite of the elite institutions, and it does seem like they are daring Democrats to defend these institutions.

Speaker 4 We've talked a lot about putting us in a position to defend institutions here. How are you thinking about that now?

Speaker 4 I think we have to stop trying to litigate this on each individual data point and make a broader argument about abuse of power. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And there's a very interesting Navigator poll out today, which talks about how people are feeling about Trump and one of their big concerns is abuse of power and thinking he's above the law.

Speaker 4 And I think that these are

Speaker 4 examples of that. Like we need to tell a story, not just respond, not play whack-a-mole with every single thing Trump does.

Speaker 4 I think equality under the law is like a bedrock principle of America that everyone gets, that everyone supports, that, you know, because when you frame it as institutions and due process and all that, but like when you're talking about everyone deserves to be treated equally, everyone deserves a chance to defend themselves in court, Like just the most basic foundational principles of the country.

Speaker 4 Talk about it in those terms.

Speaker 4 I do think that it's a powerful case.

Speaker 4 One other Trump target who's back in the president's crosshairs, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, who was the first appointed to the job in 2017 by Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Powell said this week that Trump's tariffs are, quote, highly likely to cause a spike in inflation.

Speaker 4 Trump responded on Truth Social, where he does all his best work, that, quote, Powell's termination cannot come fast enough. Powell's current term doesn't expire until May of next year.

Speaker 4 He has maintained that he cannot be fired by the president.

Speaker 4 And Politico reported Thursday that Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has, quote, repeatedly cautioned White House officials that Trump trying to fire Powell would, quote, risk destabilizing financial markets.

Speaker 4 Is Trump listening to Scott Besson's advice? Let's find out.

Speaker 14 Oh, he'll leave. If I ask him to, he'll be out of there.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 14 I don't think he's doing the job. He's too late, always too late, a little slow, and I'm not happy with him.

Speaker 15 I let him know it, and

Speaker 15 if I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 4 Nice work, Scott Besson.

Speaker 4 Just what the economy needs.

Speaker 4 You know, some uncertainty over the future of the Fed chair as we still grapple with inflation and now a global trade war that could tip us into into recession. How do you think this plays out?

Speaker 4 I mean, this one is

Speaker 4 alarming and fascinating on a whole host of levels.

Speaker 4 I mean, the market chaos of firing Powell would be devastating. It would be

Speaker 4 somewhat akin to the freak out in the bond market that caused Trump to back off the reciprocal tariffs because it would do two things.

Speaker 4 One, replacing Powell with a Trump goon like Kevin Hassett, the goober at the NEC, which is what was speculated in some of the reporting today, would raise questions about the independence of

Speaker 4 U.S. monetary policy, obviously, which would bring into question the idea that the U.S.
is the world's reserve currency, which is the foundation of economic strength. So that would

Speaker 4 real fear of the financial crisis and sparking global recession there. But then also,

Speaker 4 the reason he wants to fire him, as he said on True Social, is because he wants Powell to cut rates.

Speaker 4 The reason Powell is not cutting rates more is because he's worried about inflation, sparked in part because of Trump's policies like tariffs. And so if you bring someone in

Speaker 4 during a time of possibly growing inflation and have them cut rates, you're going to lead to more inflation and to be deeply damaging to our economy and the world.

Speaker 4 And so that's what happens to puts there. The interesting question here is,

Speaker 4 Trump obviously wants to bully him out. Like that's the easiest path, just force him to resign like he did Christopher Wray and so many other people within the government.

Speaker 4 If he wants to fire him, it is believed he does not have the power power to do that, right? That the Fed has independence.

Speaker 4 But what not just Trump, but the right has wanted forever is to test the idea of the unitary executive theory, right?

Speaker 4 The idea that Trump has control over the entire executive branch, including independent agencies, including the Fed. And so this would be, if he fired them, probably be stopped.

Speaker 4 It would go to the Supreme Court. And then we would test this big case, which would have massive implications for the balance of power in this country.

Speaker 4 Do you think maybe Jerome Paul just needs to read the art of the deal?

Speaker 4 That would set him straight.

Speaker 4 Like everyone else, America, we're required to do so before too long.

Speaker 4 I know there is, you know, and

Speaker 4 I do think there's a good chance that the Supreme Court could rule on

Speaker 4 some of these cases that Trump has more power over these independent agencies than we thought.

Speaker 4 The law is pretty explicit around the Fed that the Fed chair can only be fired for cause, for like malicious behavior or whatever. I don't know, there's a certain standard there.

Speaker 4 I guess they could, the Supreme Court could say that law is just unconstitutional that was passed by Congress, but it does seem like they have a little more insulation at the Fed than they do in some of these other independent agencies, which are no longer independent.

Speaker 4 They would need a majority to adopt the unitary executive, the idea of a unitary executive. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So as we've been talking about Trump's attempts to trample on the courts and the universities and the Fed chair, some of you might be thinking, isn't there there another branch of government that's supposed to have some power here?

Speaker 4 Indeed, there is. It's called Congress, Dan.
What? I haven't heard about that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's controlled by Republicans, barely, who are apparently scared shitless of pissing off Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Here's Alaska's Republican senator Lisa Murkowski at a non-profit conference in Anchorage on Monday.

Speaker 16 What are you going to have to say to people who are afraid

Speaker 16 or who represents people who are afraid?

Speaker 16 We are all afraid.

Speaker 16 That's what I've stated.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 16 we are

Speaker 16 in it. We're in a time, in a place, where I don't know, I certainly have not.
I have not been here before.

Speaker 16 And I'll tell you,

Speaker 16 I'm

Speaker 16 oftentimes very anxious myself about

Speaker 16 using my voice

Speaker 16 because retaliation is real.

Speaker 16 And that's not right.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 look, I have a lot of thoughts about that.

Speaker 4 And some of them are, you know, some part of me wanted to react to like, you know, pull my hair out and be like, well, hello you're a Republican senator like you have some power here but just the way that she answered that and like the pause before she said we're all afraid and then she said that's quite a statement like she's you can tell she's legitimately afraid grappling with it trying to figure out what to do and it was sort of chilling yeah that was my reaction That's like if you guys scream about it, we are here.

Speaker 4 We could scream about it because she could, you know, she could do more, although her power is certainly limited within that caucus.

Speaker 4 But I think it's just, it's a real statement from where we are that a Republican senator, one with an independent base of political power, right? Trump really can't,

Speaker 4 of all the Republican senators, she's the hardest one for him to do something.

Speaker 4 She won a write-in campaign. Yeah.

Speaker 4 He tried to go. The Republican Party tried to drive her out.
She was so popular. She's like a, she's a longtime senator.
She's senior Republican. And she's still scared.
Yeah. That should say a lot.

Speaker 4 I don't know, man. I don't know.
I do think that like

Speaker 4 her speaking out, people talking about being scared, and then people saying, you know what? Yeah, we're all scared, but we're going to speak out anyway. And again, there's strength in numbers.

Speaker 4 And the more people speaking out, the more places like Harvard saying like, no, we're not going to deal with this shit. Chris Van Holland saying, you know what? I'm going to El Salvador.

Speaker 4 Even though that's, you know, carries with it a lot of risk as well. Some of these other Democrats doing that.
Corey Booker Booker going on the floor for 24 hours, right?

Speaker 4 Like we're starting to see people going to the hands-off rallies.

Speaker 4 You know, we're starting to see as things get really dark and bad really fast, people feeling more courageous and showing that courage in different ways.

Speaker 4 And back to your earlier point, like that's all we have right now, right? Is we have like our strength and numbers and our voices and our ability to try to focus public attention on what's going on.

Speaker 4 And it doesn't feel like much, but it's something. You know, it's all we got.

Speaker 4 It's all we have. And you have to believe it.
Maybe it's a naive hope, but that it can matter. We still have elections coming up, right?

Speaker 4 We still have the ability to shape what is going to happen in this country. And we have to take advantage of that.

Speaker 4 But it begins with, we're only going to do well in those elections if we, if everyone understands the stakes. And what we can do right now.
is help people understand the stakes of that election. Yes.

Speaker 4 Yes. All right.
One last thing here before we get to Tommy's interview with Jamie Raskin.

Speaker 4 Our pal Elon hasn't been making as many headlines lately, which is probably good for America. But the Wall Street Journal ran a story about him this week that's too crazy not to talk about.

Speaker 4 So the headline is, quote, the tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his legion of babies and their mothers. I'll read you some highlights.

Speaker 4 Quote, in Musk's dark view of the world, civilization is under threat because of a declining population.

Speaker 4 He is driven to correct the historic moment by helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter.

Speaker 4 And separately, Musk has said he is concerned about what he called third world countries having higher birth rates than the US and Europe.

Speaker 4 So we're not just we're not concerned about declining birth rates globally, just declining birthrights in Europe and the U.S., and perhaps other countries in the global south overtaking us.

Speaker 4 That's what he's really worried about. Musk refers to his offspring as a quote legion,

Speaker 4 a reference to the ancient military units that could contain thousands of soldiers and were key to extending the reach of the Roman Empire.

Speaker 4 He texted one of the women he impregnated, right-wing influencer Ashley St.

Speaker 4 Clair, and the Wall Street Journal reviewed these texts, quote, to reach Legion level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates.

Speaker 4 Apparently, the Wall Street Journal reports, and again, they looked at texts, they talked to Ashley St. Clair.

Speaker 4 You know, he like goes online, reaches out to some women that he follows online, that he, I don't know, he likes some of their posts, likes some of their content, and he's like, hey, you want to have a baby with me?

Speaker 4 That's basically what's happening here.

Speaker 4 And then some who say yes, then

Speaker 4 he pays them.

Speaker 4 And, but as long as they don't go public, he doesn't like them going public. He's got a fixer who tells the women, like, oh, if you go the legal route, it never goes well for people.

Speaker 4 And then you don't get as much money. I mean, it is so fucking creepy.
I don't even know where to start with this one, but did you manage to read the whole thing and what jumped out at you?

Speaker 4 Here's how I'm going to have to admit something to you. I think I sent you this story the night it came out.
I had not read it. Oh, wow, I missed it.

Speaker 4 I had not read the whole thing at the time because I had to stop reading it. Then this morning in our editorial meeting, you suggested we add this to the podcast.
Sure, I did.

Speaker 4 I argued against it. I was outvoted two to one by you and

Speaker 4 Reid.

Speaker 4 And I tried to read it all the way through again and I could not.

Speaker 4 It's so fucking weird and so gross. And the grossness and weirdness of it is magic.

Speaker 4 Like if he was just Elon Musk, head of Tesla and SpaceX and whatever else, it would be weird and gross and disgusting.

Speaker 4 The fact that he is now the second most powerful person in our government who is making decisions about what government programs exist and which do not, who has access to all of our data, our health data, tax data, financial data, is so concerning.

Speaker 4 This person has a

Speaker 4 just an insane level of apocalyptic narcissism. You're just imagine this in yourself.
The world's coming to an end, and the only solution is more me.

Speaker 4 And for more me, I'm going to start DMing random women to have babies with them and then pay them.

Speaker 4 According to the Wall Street Journal, to be clear. According to the Wall Street Journal.
According to the Wall Street Journal. Well, and then some of this, some of this is just all like the texts.

Speaker 4 They've reviewed the texts, right? So the Wall Street Journal is making up the texts. Another great story here.

Speaker 4 Cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong was covering disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman Fried's downfall when Musk started liking and replying to her posts.

Speaker 4 So then she got a lot more followers, right?

Speaker 4 And she got a fight. It was a financial boon because she had all these followers because Musk is interacting with her.
And she was earning $21,000 on the platform in a two-week period in November.

Speaker 4 And that's when Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child. Is that like the opening line, do you think?

Speaker 4 That's what I want to know. I want to know how that goes.
This is just like, like, hey, I've been following you. I've been responding to some of your posts.
You want to have a kid?

Speaker 4 The two had never met in person. Fong didn't move forward with Musk because she pictured having children in a more traditional nuclear family.

Speaker 4 Great understatement in the piece, but confided to a few friends about the approach, including St. Clair, and she was worried that turning him down could hurt her earnings.

Speaker 4 And then, once Musk learned that Fong disclosed the request to others, he chided her for not using discretion, and that contributed to a fall, and her engagement and her earnings declined.

Speaker 4 That is a sad state about this. Everything.
Sadly,

Speaker 4 everything.

Speaker 4 Everything.

Speaker 4 It is fucking... Also, there's the text, I just, I'll stop after this, but it's just, it's too wild.
He was texting St. Clair.
Again, she gave these texts to the Wall Street Journals.

Speaker 4 When he was in Pennsylvania at the end of the election, helping Trump. He texted her, I can't be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden, and I will.

Speaker 4 And then he said, in all of history, there has never been a competitive army composed of women, not even once. Men are made for war, real men anyway.

Speaker 4 I am in full war mode, going to the the front lines today. Must win Pennsylvania.

Speaker 4 Like, first of all, like, what a perfect combination of being a fucking misogynistic asshole and just a douche.

Speaker 4 Just a real tool. Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, it's a lot. It's really.
It's a lot. Yeah.
It's a lot. Great guy.

Speaker 4 Glad he has so much power over everything.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Cool.
Anyway. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do that, obviously the news environment is overwhelming and grim, as you may have

Speaker 4 may have caught that from listening to this episode. Our daily newsletter can help.
What a day comes out every afternoon.

Speaker 4 It's a quick, accessible roundup of the day's top stories, plus sharp analysis and original reporting from Matt Berg and our news team.

Speaker 4 Matt's been breaking some incredible stories about Doge, about other things the Trump administration is doing in Washington. He's great.

Speaker 4 Last week, he dug into Doge lobbying and how AI is being used to spy on federal workers in collaboration with The Guardian.

Speaker 4 This week, he wrote about how internal emails from the National Security Council show what the administration is really trying to achieve with its tariffs.

Speaker 4 So, if you want more stories that actually matter, sign up for What A Day newsletter at crooked.com/slash daily.

Speaker 4 When we come back, Tommy talks to Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, who stopped by the studio Thursday afternoon.

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Speaker 13 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 7 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 13 I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 13 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 4 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 13 Every episode of the Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh.

Speaker 4 The Sporkvo.

Speaker 13 Get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 Joining us now in studio is the congressman from Maryland's 8th congressional district and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin. Great to see you.

Speaker 11 I'm delighted to be with you, Tommy.

Speaker 12 Thank you for being here in person in Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 Sorry, it's not warmer out.

Speaker 11 Well, it's better than D.C., where we say it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

Speaker 4 Well said.

Speaker 12 So Dan Pfeiffer just spoke with your fellow Maryland delegation member, Senator Christian Allen.

Speaker 12 He is in El Salvador right now, trying to meet with Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, the Maryland man who even the Trump administration has admitted was wrongly sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 12 The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to facilitate his return, but the White House so far has refused.

Speaker 12 If that continues, what can Congress do to put pressure on the White House or the government of El Salvador to bring him back?

Speaker 11 Well, Well, first they admitted in court that he was wrongly detained and transported to El Salvador. They confessed it was an administrative error.
In public now, they are saying

Speaker 11 that he was rightfully taken down there, and they're making up various stories about him.

Speaker 11 But he's basically

Speaker 11 like a disappeared person. I mean, that's what happens in authoritarian societies, where you'd get swept off the street and then taken to whereabouts unknown.

Speaker 11 So,

Speaker 11 look,

Speaker 11 we have the problem that they still have a couple vote majority in the House and in the Senate.

Speaker 11 But we're going to do everything in our power to get him back, including sending other members down there to go and try to get in.

Speaker 11 But it's a lawless situation, and we have to see to it that the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision is actually enforced.

Speaker 11 There's no argument for what the administration has done here. None whatsoever, which is why you even had Thomas and Alito in the right-wing on the court agreeing there's got to be due process.

Speaker 11 Otherwise, we are living in an authoritarian police state.

Speaker 11 If anybody can be swept off the street and just transported to a torturer's prison in another country, then all is lost because if they can do it to a non-citizen, they can do it to a citizen.

Speaker 11 Because the only way you can prove you're a citizen is if you have a hearing. Right.

Speaker 12 Due process. Yeah, and Trump has now repeatedly said that he is interested in sending American citizens to this very same prison, potentially other foreign prisons.

Speaker 12 You're a former constitutional law professor. Where does that idea land on the range from unconstitutional to constitutional?

Speaker 11 It's almost certainly unconstitutional. I mean, there was a form of punishment called banishment that existed in the colonial era where people would be banished from their community and exiled.

Speaker 11 And I suppose that's what they're talking about doing.

Speaker 11 The Supreme Court, or any rational Supreme Court, I should say,

Speaker 11 would probably find that this violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment. But in any event,

Speaker 11 it certainly violates due process to send anybody to a foreign prison or a domestic prison, for that matter, without due process, without a hearing. That's what due process means.

Speaker 11 And these are the two most beautiful words in the English language because that's what stands between us and arbitrary dictatorial power.

Speaker 11 If anybody

Speaker 11 were to go down the road of trying to create foreign prisons for American citizens, it would have to be the United States Congress because we are the lawmaking power.

Speaker 11 So this is another constitutional principle that gets trampled in the process. It's not up to the president to just make up some idea of foreign prisons and and start it.

Speaker 11 The Supreme Court said in the steel seizure case in 1952, the president derives his powers from only two places. One, the Constitution.

Speaker 11 There's nothing in the Constitution that gives the President the right to do that. And two, an act of Congress authorizing the President to do it.
And that, of course, has not happened either.

Speaker 11 So it's a violation of the separation of powers, a usurpation of congressional lawmaking power, and almost certainly a brutal violation of due process and of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Speaker 12 Aaron Ross Powell, did you see these reports that Eric Prince, who folks might recall, was the head of Blackwater, which is this private mercenary group that was responsible for a horrific massacre in Iraq in 2007 that I think irreparably damaged the U.S.

Speaker 12 relationship with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people and was horrific in its own right.

Speaker 12 But apparently Eric Prince and some defense contractors are pitching the White House on the idea of building more prisons in El Salvador and maybe declaring some of the territory down there to be U.S.

Speaker 12 soil to get around some of the legal provisions you're talking about? Does any of that strike you as potentially legal?

Speaker 11 Not very, no.

Speaker 11 You know, we're living in something like a gangster state right now, where people like Eric Prince think that they've got the right to take taxpayer resources to set up offshore prisons and justice systems

Speaker 11 or injustice systems that have nothing to do with the American rule of law and due process. So

Speaker 11 I imagine that they look at Guantanamo Bay as some kind of

Speaker 11 towering example of what they'd like to reproduce all over the world. We have to stop that, obviously, to prevent a slide into complete dictatorship.
Look, Donald Trump is a convicted criminal.

Speaker 11 Could he be sent off? to a foreign prison.

Speaker 11 You know, you're separating people from their families. You're separating people from their lawyers, implicating the right to counsel.

Speaker 11 And you're engaging in a form of punishment, banishment, which hasn't been seen for centuries, really.

Speaker 12 Aaron Powell, into a prison where it's well known that people are tortured and killed.

Speaker 12 I'm interested in ways that Democrats can push back now. I realize that we do not have majorities in either the House or the Senate.
It's very challenging.

Speaker 12 But I was talking to a very smart Latin America policy expert earlier this week who suggested to me that Democrats should threaten to take action against any foreign government that participates in the extraordinary rendition of American citizens.

Speaker 12 The idea being we say to them, look, if you mess with American citizens, we will cut off future assistance. We will seek to prosecute foreign officials involved in these illegal actions.

Speaker 12 Basically, we publicly warn these leaders: Trump's in power now. We're going to be back at some point, maybe in the midterms.
We're keeping score.

Speaker 11 Thoughts on that idea? Well, that's right.

Speaker 11 You know, we should be talking about cutting off aid to El Salvador right now. The whole idea that Bukele doesn't have any power

Speaker 11 to return

Speaker 11 an American prisoner who was sent to him under an agreement where he's getting paid $6 million by America is ridiculous. He's our legal agent in this dubious arrangement they've created.

Speaker 11 Of course, he's got the power to return them. So he and Trump are just acting like a couple of dictators having fun at the expense of a man's life and his family.

Speaker 11 And they want to be able to do that all over the place. So I like that idea.
And it's a complement to something that we need to be doing right now, which is engaging in

Speaker 11 far more work. of transnational democratic solidarity with the democratic governments and the democratic movements and peoples and parties of the world

Speaker 11 to

Speaker 11 try to prevent the spread of the lawlessness and the fascist chaos that's been unleashed against us.

Speaker 11 But implicit in it should be the idea that if and when we come back to power, and we will, we are not going to look kindly upon people

Speaker 11 who facilitated, to use a word of the day, who facilitated authoritarianism in our country. That's an assault on our Constitution and on our people.

Speaker 12 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, I hope we can effectuate that outcome. You talked about this some some nerdy jokes there.

Speaker 12 An anonymous House Democrat told Axios that Democrats are falling into a trap set by Trump by talking about these deportations.

Speaker 12 This is a quote from that story, an anonymous quote, but a quote: Rather than talking about the tariff policy and the economy, we're going to take the bait for one hairdresser.

Speaker 12 That's a reference, I believe, to Andri Hernandez-Ramiro, a gay Venezuelan makeup artist who the White House baselessly called a member of Trende Aragua and sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 12 Your response to this anonymous political political advice.

Speaker 11 My response is: we're going to beat them on all fronts.

Speaker 11 We're going to beat them on the tariffs, which were economically catastrophic for our country and for the world, and utterly destabilizing of world trade

Speaker 11 and also lawless and unconstitutional outside of the president's powers. We're going to beat them on his massive assaults on the

Speaker 11 rights of federal workers in the civil service, and we're going to beat them in court and in the court of public opinion on their assaults on the due process rights of people in America, whether they're citizens or non-citizens.

Speaker 11 In other words,

Speaker 11 we can't ration justice here. And this is why we need all hands on deck, and everybody needs to be fighting at every turn, every battle.
And,

Speaker 11 you know, a victory for one is a victory for all. And,

Speaker 11 you know, we're going to hang together or we're going to hang separately and we're going to hang together. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, kind of, is busy revoking the valid green cards and visas of students who express views the administration disagrees with.

Speaker 12 People like Rumesa Oz Turk, who's the Tufts University student who a bunch of masked ICE agents grabbed off the street, sent to a detention center in Louisiana for signing an op-ed that was pretty banal, frankly, and critical of the university's stance on in Israel or the war in Gaza.

Speaker 12 I've seen reports that as many as a thousand students have had foreign students have had their visas revoked.

Speaker 12 Obviously, we're talking about foreign nationals in that case, but what do you think the impact on free speech in this country is when you're seeing these kind of roundup and attacks on, you know, opinion?

Speaker 11 I mean, it's a totally scandalous situation with the assault on free speech.

Speaker 11 It is like the Alien and Sedition Act period of the late 1790s, where the attack on immigrants became an attack on people considered political enemies of the government, dissidents.

Speaker 11 I'm very cheered by the tremendous support that she is getting and that all of these students are getting across the board here.

Speaker 11 In fact, there are a lot of Jewish student groups who are coming out very strongly and speaking up for her and Mahmoud Khalil and others who

Speaker 11 are the subject of outrageous government harassment and retaliation simply because of their speech. They wrote an op-ed.
They appeared at a rally.

Speaker 11 And what's fascinating is unlike the hundreds of violent insurrectionists, proud boys, oath keepers, extremists who Donald Trump pardoned, people who violently assaulted police officers, none of these people engaged in any violence at all.

Speaker 11 All they had done was to write an op-ed or to speak in a way that is officially disapproved by our new authoritarians in America.

Speaker 11 So it's very important as a matter of civil liberties for everybody to speak up for them.

Speaker 11 And I'm especially, I've been moved over the last few days to see the Jewish groups coming out and saying, don't try to deport these people and destroy their lives and uproot them in the name of fighting anti-Semitism.

Speaker 11 You're not doing anything about anti-Semitism, and you're going to inflame things much worse in the country by what you're doing.

Speaker 12 Yeah, you know, I just wonder what it feels like there's a real frightening weaponization of the charge of anti-Semitism happening.

Speaker 12 I mean, one recent example I saw was, do you know who Miss Rachel is?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 12 Anyone with a three-year-old or younger currently knows Miss Rachel because she's a former teacher. She makes educational content for kids, puts it up on YouTube.

Speaker 12 Her episodes have gotten over 10 billion views. Half of them on my house.

Speaker 12 But so last week, this group, they call themselves Stop Anti-Semitism. They're known for doxing students, accusing them for being anti-Israel.

Speaker 12 They sent a letter to the Attorney General, to Pam Bondi, asking her to investigate whether Miss Rachel was getting, quote, paid to disseminate hamas aligned propaganda to her millions of followers as this may violate the foreign agents registration act now that sentence is stupid on so many levels um she's not posting pro-Hamas content you know she's posting like love and care for all kids including Israeli kids including the Bbas family that was being held hostage also you can't register under Farah for Hamas you know like this is self-evidently ridiculous but there are these organizations that are flagging foreign students going after people like Miss Rachel, and then asking the U.S.

Speaker 11 government to deport them, to investigate them, to use the awesome power of the state to punish them.

Speaker 11 Well, apparently some of these students who've been targeted by ICE for removal were first identified by various right-wing projects allegedly pursuing anti-Semitism.

Speaker 11 But, you know, on that understanding you just identified, there are people who are being called anti-Semites simply for speaking out for a two-state solution and recognition of human rights on the Palestinian side and the Israeli side and the necessity for mutual security.

Speaker 11 I mean, that's just scandalous.

Speaker 11 And so, you know, this is a period like Salem witchcraft trials, where, you know, you can just fling that charge at someone and then the right wing thinks that that's the end of the discussion.

Speaker 11 But I do think that the country is waking up.

Speaker 11 I think about what Jefferson said in that beautiful letter he wrote in 1798 to his friend John Taylor, who was expressing his consternation about what was going on in the country during that time.

Speaker 11 And Jefferson said, a little patience in the reign of witches shall pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight restore their government to its true principles.

Speaker 4 Let's hope. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Let's hope that the reign of witches is passing over. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And no offense meant to any witches.

Speaker 12 No, I'm thinking of Stephen Miller personally.

Speaker 12 Changing gears a little bit. The Trump administration, they've handed over these ransom lists to various universities, including to Harvard University.

Speaker 12 They want to dictate things like diversity, equity, inclusion policies, student discipline, admissions requirements, a lot more.

Speaker 12 Harvard, to their great credit, refused, and the administration has cut off $2.2 billion in federal funding.

Speaker 12 CNN reported that the Trump administration is planning to rescind Harvard's nonprofit statuses. So Harvard's fighting.
You've seen other schools like Columbia cave even preemptively.

Speaker 12 What do you think is the best way to fight back? And what's required here?

Speaker 11 Aaron Powell, everybody's got to summon up all of their institutional resources and personal courage to fight back as much as you can.

Speaker 11 And I'm very proud of Harvard, I got to say. And I'm speaking as a graduate of the college and the law school.

Speaker 11 I spent a lot of my

Speaker 11 years

Speaker 11 in school fighting against Harvard because they refused to divest their money from apartheid South Africa. And they were just totally on the wrong side there.

Speaker 11 And I called them out and I was ashamed that Harvard did not do the right thing and follow what Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu and

Speaker 11 the people struggling for freedom there were asking for. But I've got to say in this situation, I'm beaming with pride about Harvard standing up.

Speaker 4 Look,

Speaker 11 Donald Trump spent a lot of time in real estate in New York City, a lot of time in casinos in Atlantic City.

Speaker 11 He knows what a mob shakedown is.

Speaker 11 This is a mob shakedown against the universities. It's a mob shakedown against the law firms, against the lawyers, and he's seeing how far he can push it.
And

Speaker 11 it's undoubtedly a terrifying thing for

Speaker 11 even big law firms to go through, even big universities to go through. But now is the moment when you get to prove why you're a lawyer.
Now you get to prove why you're a college president

Speaker 4 or

Speaker 11 a university administrator. You can stand up for academic freedom.
You can stand up for the Constitution. And these judges are proving why they're judges.

Speaker 11 You know, there are 78 preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders right now against the lawlessness and the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump. And they're threatening judges.

Speaker 11 And you go online, you see all kinds of violent threats against judges. Justice Amy Coney Barrett's sister got a bomb threat.

Speaker 11 There are other people on the Supreme Court and other judges who've received death threats that are taking place.

Speaker 11 And I've got colleagues who have wanted posters up outside of their offices in the Cannon House office building.

Speaker 11 These judges are wanted, and they want to impeach them just for standing in Donald Trump's way. They never tell you, by the way, substantively what's wrong with a particular opinion.

Speaker 11 Like what's wrong with the four opinions rendered against Donald Trump's attempt to nullify birthright citizenship in America?

Speaker 11 One from an Obama judge, one from a Biden judge, one from a Reagan judge, and one from a Bush judge. And the Reagan judge said, this is the easiest case I've decided in four decades on the bench.

Speaker 11 This is blatantly unconstitutional.

Speaker 11 The first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.

Speaker 11 Like, what don't you understand about that? You don't even have to be a lawyer. You just have to know how to read to get that.
And these judges are just...

Speaker 11 like over the top angry about what's going on. And yet they turned around and say there's something wrong with the judges.
They're saying, well, we we got to impeach them. I think,

Speaker 11 I mean, everybody in the administration, J.D. Vance, all of them,

Speaker 11 Trump, Trump tweeted about impeaching them. They say this is a record number of court decisions against a president, a record number of injunctions against a president.

Speaker 11 Yes, and it's a record number of violations of the Constitution by a president.

Speaker 11 So if you don't like this tsunami, they call it, of opinions against the president, then call off your tsunami constitutional crime wave against the American people. Aaron Ross Powell,

Speaker 12 there's this rolling debate about whether this is a constitutional crisis. And I feel like part of the reason there's a rolling debate is no one's completely defined what that means.

Speaker 12 Do you have a definition and an opinion on whether we're in one?

Speaker 11 Well, I think it's a hopelessly vague and abstract term. So when people say, are we in a constitutional crisis, I say we are experiencing an unprecedented,

Speaker 11 sweeping, and comprehensive attack on the Constitution by the presidential administration.

Speaker 11 And so we have to defend every element of the Constitution: due process, equal protection, freedom of speech, the separation of powers, congressional powers, judicial independence, and so on.

Speaker 11 So, I mean, I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder. If it feels like a crisis to you, it's a crisis.
But the point is, it's under attack, and we've got to defend it.

Speaker 12 Yeah. One way we have been fighting back, Democrats, is holding town hall meetings in Republican districts.

Speaker 12 You recently hosted one in Maryland calling out Andy Harris, congressman from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, for being MIA. My father-in-law was there, by the way.
Shout out Chris Cook.

Speaker 12 He said it was a packed crowd. You gave a great speech, and the people were just amped.

Speaker 12 But if we're being honest, Democrats have been trying and failing to defeat Andy Harris for, what, over a decade? Why do you think this time will be different? Can we take him out this time?

Speaker 12 Can we take out these like.

Speaker 11 Well, I believe that

Speaker 11 Heather Mazier got, I think it was a 54 to 46 in the first district of Maryland.

Speaker 11 So we're closing in on the target. There are a lot of people from my district in Montgomery County, in the D.C.
area, in the Baltimore area, moving to the Eastern Shore in retirement.

Speaker 11 And there's an incredible new Eastern Shore indivisible group that I met with out there. So we don't give up on any congressional district or any state legislative district.

Speaker 11 We won that great state Senate race in Pennsylvania that nobody expected us to win.

Speaker 11 The Wisconsin race, and even in Florida, we were disappointed that we didn't win those two House seats, but we went up 15 or 16 points, which then builds for the future.

Speaker 11 So no good act is wasted in this process. And there were some very creative political art representations at that event when I went out there.

Speaker 11 They brought up a huge milk carton with Andy Harris's face on it. And I just said, hey, if your name is on the ballot, your face should not be on the milk carton.
That's right.

Speaker 4 That's right. That's great.
So last last question for you.

Speaker 12 So in the before times, the dividing line between Democrats was on policy, you know, moderate, left, center left.

Speaker 12 Now it seems to be divided on who is fighting hard, who is saying kind of keep some powder dry. I would put you in the fight hard on everything all the time kind of side of the ledger.

Speaker 12 Why is that the right place to be?

Speaker 12 And can you help like define for others listening, members of Congress, elected officials, average citizens, what it looks like in practice, how they can emulate that.

Speaker 11 Well, let's just say that because we're experiencing an authoritarian, an attempted authoritarian takeover of American society, the job has changed, right?

Speaker 11 There were people on all sides who thought the job is you stay in touch with your constituents and you go and you push a red button or a green button, and that's your job. That's not our job anymore.

Speaker 11 We are organizers. We are organizers and we've got to be leaders of a nationwide popular movement to arrest the descent into fascism in America.

Speaker 11 And we haven't even gotten a chance to talk about Elon Musk and the Silicon Valley people because these people really believe that democracy is defunct.

Speaker 11 They say we live in a post-constitutional America. And

Speaker 11 if you listen to their intellectual guru, Curtis Yarvin, he did an interview with the New York Times about a month ago where he said the American people have got to get over their fear of the word dictatorship.

Speaker 11 He said the corporations are just dictatorships of the CEO. And just like we have CEOs, dictatorships in the private sector, we need to have a dictator for the government.

Speaker 11 And by the way, that dictator does not serve the people. That dictator serves the other dictators.
They're talking about a corporate state, and they're being very unvarnished and explicit about it.

Speaker 11 So our jobs have changed. It's not enough just to go and cast our votes and to write a monthly newsletter.

Speaker 11 We've got to be involved seven days a week in the struggle to defend constitutional democracy in America.

Speaker 11 And when I say that, I believe constitutional democracy is not just a structure of laws and constitutional principles and practices. It is that.

Speaker 11 But it's more than that, because constitutional democracy is always an unfolding and unfinished project.

Speaker 11 And if we're not moving forward, like Tocqueville warned in Democracy in America, we're going to be lapsing back into some other autocratic or monarchical aristocratic form of government.

Speaker 11 We've got to be moving forward. So,

Speaker 11 you know, you got to hand it Donald Trump. At least he's talking about Greenland and Canada and Panama.
He's not talking about anything democratic. He's talking about taking them over like a dictator.

Speaker 11 Well, we've got to put on the agenda the millions of disenfranchised people in America. We need statehood for Washington, D.C.
We need statehood for Puerto Rico.

Speaker 11 We need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing everybody a right to vote. We need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Speaker 11 We can't be in a constant quicksand struggle against voter suppression tactics.

Speaker 11 And they're trying it again for 2026 and 2028 and the SAVE Act, which would conceivably disenfranchise millions of American women because, you know, you've got to show, when you go to the polls now, your birth certificate, your driver's license, or a passport.

Speaker 11 And if they don't match your birth certificate, then you've got to show your marriage certificate. And 80% of American women change their last name.

Speaker 11 So they've got to bring their marriage certificate along with everything else. It's just more obstacles to voting for the people that they think are not going to vote for them.

Speaker 11 So we've got to deal with that. So I just believe.
You know, I'm kind of with John Dewey, who said that,

Speaker 11 you know, the only solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy. And what we're suffering from today is not democracy, but it's all of these attacks on it and all of these obstacles to it.

Speaker 11 But we do need to be not just legislative representatives, you know, which is hard enough, but we've got to be movement leaders along with everybody in the streets and everybody in the state capitals and the city halls and the church halls and the union halls across America.

Speaker 12 Couldn't agree more. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for all you're doing to fight and push back on these monsters and for being here.
We appreciate it.

Speaker 11 It's great to be with you. Tommy, keep up the great work because the press is not the enemy of the people.
The press is the people's best friend. Agreed.
And we need you.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 4 That's our show for today. Thanks to Jamie Raskin for stopping by.
Thanks to Chris Van Hollen for making time for us during his trip to El Salvador.

Speaker 4 I'm going to be back with a new show on Sunday, talking to our friend Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress, about what it's like being a freshman in the house right now.

Speaker 4 Love it's going to join me. We're both going to be talking to Sarah.
She's going to be here in the studio on Friday. So definitely check that out.
Everyone else, have a good weekend. Bye, everyone.

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Speaker 4 Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Reed Sherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

Speaker 4 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglu and Charlotte Landis.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 4 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 4 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Heathcote, Mia Killman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavieve, and David Toles.

Speaker 4 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Speaker 7 Hey, weirdos! I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast. Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 7 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 7 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird. Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.
Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 Yay! Woo! Aye!