Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And according to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the Desanta's campaign has burned through nearly forty percent of
Speaker 1: every dollar he's raised in his first six weeks without
Speaker 1: ever airing a single television ad.
Speaker 2: What a show we have for you today.
Speaker 1: White House Senior advisor Mitch Landrew explains why Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has been able to build the strongest economy and generations.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to NYU laws Noah Rosenblum about why
Speaker 1: Trump and the Heritage Foundation's plans to expand executive power
Speaker 1: are so scary and dangerous. But first we have former
Speaker 1: Vermont governor and close personal friend of mine presidential candidate
Speaker 1: Howard Dean. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Howard Dean.
Speaker 3: Bank nice for having me on as always.
Speaker 1: You're a fan favorite and also one of my favorites.
Speaker 3: That's the more important.
Speaker 1: It's true, I want to talk to you about this.
Speaker 1: I feel like this Republican primary world, we're just watching it.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting to me. We keep seeing the whole week.
Speaker 1: I feel like was a lot of reporting about the
Speaker 1: DeSantis campaign having a reset again and again and again.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what you're seeing with this crazy
Speaker 1: Republican primary.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's the most fascinating thing is that
Speaker 3: all the Republican money is going into Body Cannedy's campaign
Speaker 3: and no labels. Basically, this is John Roberts legacy. Democracy
Speaker 3: is for sale, and it is. If you put tons
Speaker 3: and tons of money into doing all kinds of weird
Speaker 3: things to undermine the Democratic Party, your opposition, you have
Speaker 3: a better shot. And these guys, the oligarchs, the right
Speaker 3: wing oligarchs, are spending money so as a disrupt democracy
Speaker 3: because they know, in a straight up vote that's fair,
Speaker 3: the Democrats are going to win. Knock of the Democrats
Speaker 3: are so wonderful, But because I think people really do
Speaker 3: want to live in a democratic country, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, it definitely seems like this is the move. It's
Speaker 1: this Harlan Crow kind of prop up. I mean, I
Speaker 1: also think it's like they know Trump can't grow the
Speaker 1: elector ad so and they know they can't take down
Speaker 1: Trump because they're too cowardly, and so they've decided that
Speaker 1: this third party option is the only way they can win.
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, that's true. I don't think they're too cowardly
Speaker 3: to trade takedown Trump. I think they can't take down Trump.
Speaker 3: They want their money. You know, Republican conferences are great
Speaker 3: because they run up huge deficits by giving tax cuts,
Speaker 3: which is George W did it, George HW did it,
Speaker 3: Reagan did it. Trump certainly did it. They give huge
Speaker 3: tax cuts for rich people and then they blame and
Speaker 3: the enormous deficits on the Democrats are too much spending.
Speaker 3: At this point, they're talking about cutting Social Security and
Speaker 3: most people don't want to do that, no matter what
Speaker 3: political part they're in. So is what the Roberts Court
Speaker 3: did is make democracies for sale, and now many years
Speaker 3: after Citizens United, these decisions are coming home to roost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's certainly true.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see with this Republican primary group, every
Speaker 1: strong candidate has their own superpack, right.
Speaker 3: I mean the billions and billions of dollars going into this,
Speaker 3: many of them are un reported. I mean, they literally
Speaker 3: bought the Supreme Court. They're flying around justices on their
Speaker 3: planes and then they put billions of dollars into the
Speaker 3: process by which Supreme Court justices i mean are are selected.
Speaker 3: They have destroyed the Supreme Court. Well, the Supreme Court's
Speaker 3: destroyed itself, but the billions and billions of dollars that
Speaker 3: are behind this are extraordinary. Look, these oligarchs do not
Speaker 3: give a damn about democracy. They do not care. And
Speaker 3: that's true in all societies, not just in the United States.
Speaker 3: We for a long time had a bulwork against that,
Speaker 3: although we almost lost it in the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 3: fortunately Roosevelt came out long and check some of their power.
Speaker 3: But they've worked very hard in the last century to
Speaker 3: get it back, and now they have it back and
Speaker 3: we are on the precipice.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, I just want to get to
Speaker 1: Roosevelt for a minute. I'm sure you saw this MTG
Speaker 1: speech where she compared Biden to Roosevelt and what Biden
Speaker 1: is doing to the New Deal, and I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you had thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably true. I'd like to see Biden
Speaker 3: expand the New Deal, and I think most people would
Speaker 3: like to see Biden. I mean, the right wingers think
Speaker 3: that Roosevelt is a bad word. Well, Roosevelt doesn't mean
Speaker 3: much to many of the people that are still alive,
Speaker 3: but he did save the country, and ironically, Franklin Roosevelt
Speaker 3: saved capitalism from itself. And we're going to have to
Speaker 3: try that again, and it's not so easy.
Speaker 2: Will you say more about saving capitalism from itself?
Speaker 3: I think capitalism works, but nothing works without some regulation,
Speaker 3: some checks and balances. And what the right winger Republican
Speaker 3: Party has done by the same technique as Hitler, they
Speaker 3: through hay in Anger, they have put the oligarchs in control,
Speaker 3: and the oligarchs that are in control because they have
Speaker 3: lots and lots of money. And the problem is there's
Speaker 3: no reasonable solution. You can't fight somebody who owns their
Speaker 3: own television network with the small amounts of small donations.
Speaker 3: I mean, it helps, but it's small donations. So Roosevelt
Speaker 3: came along when this happened in the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 3: finally the economy collapse, which is eventually what will happen
Speaker 3: here if this keeps up. Is he put in place
Speaker 3: guard for the ordinary people, for farmers who are starving,
Speaker 3: for old people who had no medical insurance and were
Speaker 3: dying in their apartment. And he put in play some
Speaker 3: guard so that capitalism worked for everybody and any system.
Speaker 3: I don't care what system it is, is not going
Speaker 3: to work unless it works for everybody. This system that
Speaker 3: we now have does not work for everybody. And the
Speaker 3: Democrats know it. Sometimes they're courageous enough to say it,
Speaker 3: and sometimes they aren't. And the Republicans hope the system
Speaker 3: keeps working for them because all they care about is power.
Speaker 3: They really don't care about the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's funny because I think about right now,
Speaker 1: these Republicans, a lot of Republican governors are certainly Sarah
Speaker 1: Sanders and her ilk are loosening child labor laws in
Speaker 1: the hope of right. I mean, so insane. And now
Speaker 1: you're starting to see stories about children getting hurt on
Speaker 1: the line. I mean that seems like a really good example.
Speaker 4: And why are they doing it?
Speaker 3: Because child children are cheaper and you don't have to
Speaker 3: give them a lot of benefits because they can get
Speaker 3: some state benefits. So it makes your business run easily,
Speaker 3: so you give more money than you're the Republican representative
Speaker 3: who keeps undermining safety standards for children. And here they
Speaker 3: are talking about the terrible threat that the point one
Speaker 3: percent of the American is who a transgender post and Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the business community is putting our kids to work when
Speaker 3: they're fifteen years old in dangerous jobs, and the Republicans
Speaker 3: are saying that's just great. This is insane. It's going
Speaker 3: to end badly, and these guys will not have any
Speaker 3: control over the ending. But the couples that will tell
Speaker 3: you to be the end of the country if it happens.
Speaker 3: So we just need some sanity. Unfortunately, forty eight percent
Speaker 3: of the people in Washington, DC have none, or maybe
Speaker 3: it's a smaller percentage than that, but the other ones
Speaker 3: are too afraid to confront the people in their own party.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at like last week and this week's
Speaker 1: House schedule and an included platforming. RFK Junior included yet
Speaker 1: another weaponization committee. Hearing a Republican from Wyoming, Harriet whatever
Speaker 1: her name is, talking about how Christopher Ray was trying
Speaker 1: to frame conservatives. I mean, there were just so many
Speaker 1: yikes moments in this GOP Congress. I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think that it's smart for Democrats? Should Democrats be running
Speaker 1: on the fact that Republicans in Congress have lost their minds?
Speaker 2: Harriet Hagerman, that's who I mean.
Speaker 3: I think yes, But that's peripheral. I mean, Democrats have
Speaker 3: to run on decency and including everybody, and most Americans,
Speaker 3: believe it or not, across the spectrum, think that everybody
Speaker 3: ought to be treated fairly. Most people that do not
Speaker 3: agree with the Supreme Court, and I mean that's why
Speaker 3: the numbers are so awful. And people think that the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court is just a political body, which it is,
Speaker 3: but they think so because the Court doesn't understand fairness,
Speaker 3: because they don't care about fairness. So most Americans who
Speaker 3: do care about fairness, and this is people in both parties,
Speaker 3: although it's obviously skewed towards center left, do think that
Speaker 3: the decision about saying that the women in Colorado didn't
Speaker 3: have to help a gay couple if they wanted to her,
Speaker 3: you know, buy her product. They think that's wrong. Most
Speaker 3: people do not think that women ought to be told
Speaker 3: what to do by correct governors like Greg Abbott. They
Speaker 3: think that's wrong. And politicians should stay out of the bedroom.
Speaker 3: Most Americans think that by wide margins. So that's what
Speaker 3: we should run on. And I think we can have
Speaker 3: a lot of fun with the antics of some of
Speaker 3: the Republicans. I mean, I thought that Biden put out
Speaker 3: an ad about Marjorie Taylor Green saying some ridiculous thing. Sure,
Speaker 3: that's their games because she's got so much publicity now
Speaker 3: that he represents the Republican Party just as herschel Walker did,
Speaker 3: and the elections in Georgia for the Senate, So there
Speaker 3: are individual congress people we can go after if we
Speaker 3: want to. But the truth is this is much broader
Speaker 3: than that, and most people in America have no idea
Speaker 3: who Jim door Jordan is and they wouldn't care. I
Speaker 3: do think that the broad themes are really important and
Speaker 3: people know we're right, So we have to articulate that.
Speaker 1: Like I think about this Supreme Court and how when
Speaker 1: that three ZHO three creative decision, that's the Colorado website
Speaker 1: designer who hasn't designed any websites but might want to
Speaker 1: discriminate against gay people. They made a whole showing in
Speaker 1: that decision of expressive speech, that there's expressive speech and
Speaker 1: then there's speech speech. And this isn't discrimination because it's
Speaker 1: expressive speech. It's not true. And in fact we're seeing
Speaker 1: now as a result of this, already this summer, we're
Speaker 1: seeing discrimination based on this decision and different we're seeing
Speaker 1: reporting of people who don't want to marry gay people
Speaker 1: who are already saying, well three h three creative says
Speaker 1: I don't have to. It seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: this very maga Supreme Court opening the door to discrimination.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's what they're doing? And if it is,
Speaker 1: are they doing it on purpose or do you think
Speaker 1: they just don't understand anything.
Speaker 3: No, they're doing it on purpose. The Republican Party, and
Speaker 3: this of course includes the court justices who were put
Speaker 3: there by the Republican Party, and they are very wealthy
Speaker 3: benefactors the Republican Party believes, and they pull for this.
Speaker 3: The Republican governor in Virginia is a classic case. Reasonably
Speaker 3: modern Republican got a lot of money.
Speaker 4: But right poem kidded that people.
Speaker 3: Would really be upset if they're on racial stuff going
Speaker 3: on in the school. So what did they do. They
Speaker 3: invented this critical race theory thing which doesn't exist in
Speaker 3: any public school in America, and then went at that saying, oh,
Speaker 3: they're teaching you to hate your kid. The stances is
Speaker 3: on this too, but the guy in Virginia did it first.
Speaker 3: Then they gin up that all your kids are going
Speaker 3: to suddenly who were born as girls are going to
Speaker 3: suddenly decide that they want to be men, and that's
Speaker 3: pretty unsettling the people. You know, if one of your
Speaker 3: kids decides that they might be transgender, that's a big
Speaker 3: deal in the family, and most people don't want to
Speaker 3: have to deal with that. And if you ask the
Speaker 3: transgender person, they will tell you how hard it was
Speaker 3: for the most part to get through all that. So
Speaker 3: the Republicans know that, and in the abstract they can
Speaker 3: use that to scare the hell out of people, and
Speaker 3: that is what they are doing. And the Court is
Speaker 3: absolutely compliant with that. Don't forget literally, you know, and
Speaker 3: the Federal Society screened these people to make sure that
Speaker 3: they're ideologically pure before they run them up to the
Speaker 3: White House, and in the case of a Republican president,
Speaker 3: simply rubbers Dampson, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't even know how much Trump even
Speaker 1: knew about these people he put on the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: which is probably for the best, because otherwise he put
Speaker 1: a bonk on there. I just I want to get
Speaker 1: back to this. Congress has an opportunity here. They can
Speaker 1: do more to hold this Supreme Court accountable.
Speaker 2: I mean, and if it were reversed.
Speaker 1: If it were a bunch of liberal judges, don't you
Speaker 1: think Jim Jordan would be ben ghaziing this Supreme Court
Speaker 1: to the hilt.
Speaker 3: The Republican Party has no principles left. That's not to
Speaker 3: say there are not some principal people in the Republican Party,
Speaker 3: but they lack backbone. So they need a combination of
Speaker 3: a principal transplant and a backbone transplant at the same time.
Speaker 3: It's a very difficult procedure. I'm told yes, So that's
Speaker 3: exactly what's going on. Exactly what's going on is you
Speaker 3: just saw the vote yesterday in the Judicial Committee. Every
Speaker 3: single Republican senator voted against any kind of accountability to
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court. They wouldn't even allow them to have
Speaker 3: an ethics program. That's insane. Now that we can run
Speaker 3: on because most people don't like the Supreme Court and
Speaker 3: they know they're politically oriented and they don't like that,
Speaker 3: so that we can run on.
Speaker 2: This is not a great map for Democrats.
Speaker 1: You have been confronted before, was not a great map
Speaker 1: for Democrats.
Speaker 2: How do Democrats sort of survive this?
Speaker 3: Actually think we can win this map? It's going to
Speaker 3: be very hard and that set it's going to be
Speaker 3: harder than in the House. And one of the most
Speaker 3: interesting things is what's going on in Alabama over there.
Speaker 3: It's just's right back to the nineteenth fifties where the
Speaker 3: Alabama Legislature won't tobay the Supreme Court, even their own
Speaker 3: Supreme Court which they own in that party, but they
Speaker 3: will not do what the Supreme Court said, which is
Speaker 3: to create a second Black district. And they're about to
Speaker 3: submit a map. Is today the deadline that doesn't conform
Speaker 3: with the Supreme Court ordering on the subject. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Here we are, We've wound the clock back eighty years.
Speaker 2: I mean, what happens now with that?
Speaker 3: Damn if I know. That's a compregational moment, and it's
Speaker 3: going to happen again and again. It's going to happen
Speaker 3: on the other side. So one of the things that
Speaker 3: that's going to happen is somebody in Texas is going
Speaker 3: to get in the fifth mythit that the fists drone
Speaker 3: and to have an abortion, and they're going to get
Speaker 3: it from Vermont or New York in the mail. And
Speaker 3: you know, the fools have run Texas are going to
Speaker 3: send out an extra will it even the Republicans did
Speaker 3: have the nerve, I must state a sideline, Ken.
Speaker 2: Paxton, Amazing, Yeah, right, amazing.
Speaker 3: There is a small That's why I say, there is
Speaker 3: some small amount of backbone and a few people, and
Speaker 3: sometimes they all get together to add up to one backbone.
Speaker 3: So there's going to be a confrontation. Somebody's going to
Speaker 3: put out an extradition wark for a doctor who sent
Speaker 3: the pills into Texas, and the governor of state is
Speaker 3: going to obey the state law and not extradite. Then
Speaker 3: what happens? And then the Supreme Court might order their
Speaker 3: extradition and there will be no extradition forthcoming. Then what happens?
Speaker 3: You know, we are rapidly approaching the place where the
Speaker 3: conspetition is going to fall apart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean what do you do when that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess none of us now right, there's no precedent.
Speaker 1: I mean we're seeing this already. If Red States refuse
Speaker 1: to follow the law, then that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: When Red States refused to follow the law, it's not
Speaker 3: a problem because they own the Supreme Court, and the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court just rubber stamps what they do. This Alabama
Speaker 3: situation is going to be fascinating though, because the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court spoke first and stead, you have to fix this,
Speaker 3: and they're not doing it. So we're back sort of
Speaker 3: where Eisenhower was Neural Warren's chief justice. Whether the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court is going to do.
Speaker 2: About this huh so insane.
Speaker 3: So we're there and interesting, interestingly, it's not the Blue
Speaker 3: states to provoke the potential crisis. It's a red state
Speaker 3: by pushing the envelope. Because if you let people get
Speaker 3: away with this kind of stuff, they'll go further and
Speaker 3: further and further. And that's what the right winning the
Speaker 3: publican party is done.
Speaker 1: So incredible, you are optimistic. I have one last question
Speaker 1: for you. You're a little bit optimistic about the Senate map.
Speaker 2: Tell me why.
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't say I was optimistic. What I said was,
Speaker 3: I don't think we should give up on it. I
Speaker 3: think Tester is likely going to likely going to win,
Speaker 3: but I think Cruz could lose. That would give us
Speaker 3: a seat. Managine, I'm not sure what he's going to do.
Speaker 3: Say we lose that seat, But if Cruz loses and
Speaker 3: Tester wins, and I think the others supposed up in
Speaker 3: the air seats, they're not up in the air. I
Speaker 3: think we're going to be fine in Nevada. I think
Speaker 3: we find in some of the other states that the
Speaker 3: inside of the Alway folks are talking about. So this
Speaker 3: isn't going to happen without effort. There's a ton of
Speaker 3: Democrats who are working very, very hard to make sure
Speaker 3: that the Senate doesn't flip on the House side. I
Speaker 3: think we have a shot taking back the House because
Speaker 3: I think we'll fix the problem in New York if
Speaker 3: the Assembly caused by not doing what the just to
Speaker 3: what they should have, and I think that's probably going
Speaker 3: to get fixed. I think we'll fix the problem in California.
Speaker 3: And if Louisiana and Alabama actually do obey the court
Speaker 3: that they hire to to do all these things, then
Speaker 3: we'll pick up a couple of seats there, which, of
Speaker 3: course is exactly why McCarthy and people like that are
Speaker 3: telling the legislatures, calling into the Alabama legislature telling him
Speaker 3: not to obey the Supreme Court. That ought to tell
Speaker 3: you something about the decadence of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the decadence of the Republican Party. Howard Dean, please
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Mitch Landrew is a senior White House advisor and former
Speaker 1: mayor of New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Mitch Landre.
Speaker 4: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 1: I was so thrilled that you were appointed to this
Speaker 1: senior advisor and infrastructure coordinator, and I was thrilled when
Speaker 1: by and appointed you. And you know for me, your
Speaker 1: Confederate Monument speech will always make you an incredible, I mean,
Speaker 1: a hero. I'm sorry to bring this up. I not
Speaker 1: was a while ago. It was several seasons ago in
Speaker 1: the reality television news industrial complex that we live in.
Speaker 1: But you made a choice that almost no other elected
Speaker 1: officials make.
Speaker 4: Well. Thank you, first of all, thank you for that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: the need to do that and the reason why we
Speaker 4: had to do it continues to be with us today.
Speaker 4: Raises this nation's Achilles heal. It always has been, and
Speaker 4: we have not yet figured out how to adequately confront
Speaker 4: it or deal with it. You have people today that
Speaker 4: are trying to ignore the past. They think that ignorance
Speaker 4: is bliss, and that's the best pathway to a more
Speaker 4: perfect union, which is completely wrong at this particular point,
Speaker 4: unlike you know, some other points where we thought that
Speaker 4: we had that all this issue, it's clearly not. And
Speaker 4: those monuments are just a symbol of people hanging on
Speaker 4: to a false past and a false narrative of America
Speaker 4: that's going to take us in the wrong direction. And
Speaker 4: so there are many, many, many people who went before me,
Speaker 4: and there are some really very courageous people out there
Speaker 4: are still fighting the fight that's based on a really
Speaker 4: pretty simple principle that we all come to the table
Speaker 4: of democracy as equals, and that the reason why we
Speaker 4: said a more perfect Union is to denote that you
Speaker 4: can't have a reach perfection and you have to keep
Speaker 4: But we have a long way to go. So I'm
Speaker 4: hoping that and I'm sure that it's going to happen
Speaker 4: by the way, that the next generation of leaders at
Speaker 4: a stepping up, we're going to pick up that mantle
Speaker 4: that has been laid down by so many people, not
Speaker 4: the least of which was John Lewis, who unfortunately was
Speaker 4: taken from us too soon, who reminds us that although
Speaker 4: we've made great progress, we have a long way to go.
Speaker 1: The speech you gave was about how these Confederate monuments,
Speaker 1: which are not of the time at the Confederacy. They're
Speaker 1: actually later as a I mean, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of them are not actually civil war monuments. They're set
Speaker 1: up as a way to keep people down after reconstruction.
Speaker 1: So I just am wondering, like, are you disappointed that
Speaker 1: so many years later it has still been so difficult
Speaker 1: to get rid of them and to move away from.
Speaker 4: This Well, James Baldwin said once that it is because
Speaker 4: I love the country so much that I reserve the
Speaker 4: right and assume the responsibility of criticizing her in that vein.
Speaker 4: You know what that speech was, if people have a
Speaker 4: minute to read, it was an invitation to people that
Speaker 4: haven't thought about it very much to open themselves up
Speaker 4: to understanding our history and our fullness, and to really
Speaker 4: understand how wonderful the country really could be if we
Speaker 4: ever could go through and I say, go through the
Speaker 4: issue of race, because you can't go around it, you
Speaker 4: can't go over, you can't go under it. It is
Speaker 4: a wound that has not healed in this nation. And
Speaker 4: you know that was brought back to us as it
Speaker 4: is way too frequently. The murder of George Floyd and
Speaker 4: those that were murdered before him, all the way back
Speaker 4: to Emmettil and before that, and then all the way
Speaker 4: through our Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, and so many
Speaker 4: examples that that would spend all day talking about them
Speaker 4: to indicate that we have a long way to go
Speaker 4: on lots of different issues. You see now in the
Speaker 4: political sphere, you know there'd be actually being a retrenchment,
Speaker 4: much like had occurred during the area of reconstruction when
Speaker 4: the black codes came in, and then we made some
Speaker 4: progress and there was a clap that there was a
Speaker 4: civil rights and then there was a clap back. Then
Speaker 4: there was President Obama's election, and now we're at a
Speaker 4: clap back again. But the issue has been with us
Speaker 4: since the beginning of time, and it is a constant struggle.
Speaker 4: And I think that the forces of light have to
Speaker 4: kind of stay at and keep the shoulder to the
Speaker 4: wheel because, as I said, freedom's not free. You have
Speaker 4: to earn it every day, and this is the rent
Speaker 4: we pay for living in the greatest country in the world.
Speaker 4: So there is always a level of disappointment that we
Speaker 4: don't do better. There's also a sense of gratitude for
Speaker 4: those people that have sacrificed so much to get us
Speaker 4: this far. But we ought not be clear about what
Speaker 4: direction we want to go into the country, which is forward,
Speaker 4: not backward. And I think that if this is not
Speaker 4: clear to people in America, it should be the diversity
Speaker 4: as our greatest strength. It's not out weakness. It is
Speaker 4: the one thing that separates us from every other country.
Speaker 4: And the idea that we all come to the table
Speaker 4: of democracy is equals understanding that we've been unperfect and
Speaker 4: we haven't reached that, But that's what we ought to
Speaker 4: be reaching for. We ought to be reaching for separation
Speaker 4: and disunity and oppression and making sure people don't get
Speaker 4: a right to vote, are making sure that people can't
Speaker 4: live where they want to live or love who they
Speaker 4: want to love. We ought to be heading in the
Speaker 4: other direction. And I think that's what this president has
Speaker 4: been talking a lot about when he says we want
Speaker 4: to revive the soul of the nation, we want to
Speaker 4: unite the country, we want to rebuild the backbone of
Speaker 4: the country. I think in many ways, you know, President
Speaker 4: Biden is actually walking the walk on all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk about your job in the administration
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration, every week was infrastructure a week,
Speaker 1: but he never built any infrastructure. And now Biden is
Speaker 1: actually building a lot of infrastructure.
Speaker 2: So talk to me about what that looks like.
Speaker 4: Well, as a general rule, the former president really did
Speaker 4: everything anything he said he was going to do, but
Speaker 4: she should have tried. So I'll leave that there. Because
Speaker 4: I'm not involved in the politics and stuff, but I
Speaker 4: am an American citizen, then I could make observations. I
Speaker 4: will say this that as a general rule, you know,
Speaker 4: the federal government over time says we're going to do something,
Speaker 4: and they pass a bill or they don't pass a bill,
Speaker 4: and then at some point in time they leave it
Speaker 4: up to the states and the cities, and you know,
Speaker 4: to see what might happen. And sometimes passing a bill,
Speaker 4: as hard as it is, is the end of the route. Well,
Speaker 4: in this instance of infrastructure, of rebuilding our country, which
Speaker 4: has a lot to do with whether or not people
Speaker 4: who have been left out actually have something physically to
Speaker 4: stand on, can build generation and wealth out of it,
Speaker 4: actually can get a good job that can bring neighborhoods together.
Speaker 4: It's critically important and for the last fifty years in
Speaker 4: this country, all the presidents talked about infrastructure week and
Speaker 4: then they would have able to deliver. They won't able
Speaker 4: to pass a bill this president when he ran for office.
Speaker 4: Remember now, I mean this is a proven fact that
Speaker 4: now when Joe Biden took off, there was an active
Speaker 4: insurrection under away, and then there was the worst public
Speaker 4: health crisis that was seen in our lifetimes plus some.
Speaker 4: And yet he put a stellar cabinet together, which is right,
Speaker 4: by the way, a majority female first time in the
Speaker 4: history of the country, all of whom are better than
Speaker 4: the next. They're all competent people that are working really,
Speaker 4: really hard. And he then passed for the most significant
Speaker 4: pieces of legislation that was seen in the land fifty years,
Speaker 4: one of which it is the Infrastructure Bill, which is
Speaker 4: one point two trillion dollars to rebuild the roads, the bridges,
Speaker 4: the airports, up ports, waterways, to make sure we have
Speaker 4: high speed internet. Amazingly, not everybody in the nation has it.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine going through COVID again and having access
Speaker 4: to high speed internet, how alienated and left out you are,
Speaker 4: how far behind you would be, Whether you're a kid
Speaker 4: who's trying to learn or a small business owner. You're
Speaker 4: a farmer who's trying to do precision agriculture, or a
Speaker 4: fireman trying to get someplace where you don't know where
Speaker 4: they are. I mean, that's really kind of crazy that
Speaker 4: most people in America don't have it. And then making
Speaker 4: sure that everybody's got clean air and safe water. Now
Speaker 4: many of us take this for granted, but if you
Speaker 4: live in the Black Belt, are you living the delta?
Speaker 4: Are you live in some parts of this country. They're
Speaker 4: folks that don't have indoor plumbing in this country. And
Speaker 4: then many of our kids that are sucking dirty water
Speaker 4: out of lead pipes that are given a brain damage,
Speaker 4: so we're changing that too. And then finally, as you know,
Speaker 4: because of the existential crisis of climate we have to
Speaker 4: move into a clean energy economy. And they're substantial outs
Speaker 4: of money that are being spent in partnership with the
Speaker 4: private sector to basically rebuild the entire country. Now, the
Speaker 4: President not only passed these bills and found the political
Speaker 4: muscle to make that happen, but then he said this
Speaker 4: smart thing, and this is what really separates him from
Speaker 4: past presidents. He said, well that's not enough. Now we've
Speaker 4: got to get it done. Now we've got to implement it,
Speaker 4: and usually that's where the federal government stopped. And so
Speaker 4: he asked me to come up with kind of a
Speaker 4: lens of being a mayor and said, how'd you rebuild
Speaker 4: the city of New Orleans? What did that look like?
Speaker 4: How did it really work? Because he's got it right already,
Speaker 4: he's a local government guy. It works when the federal government,
Speaker 4: the state government, and the local governments all know each other,
Speaker 4: are communicating with each other, are coordinating with each other,
Speaker 4: and are working across and all the way up and down,
Speaker 4: so that, for example, all the cabinet secretaries are coordinating
Speaker 4: their efforts so that when a mayor or a congressman
Speaker 4: or a community leader comes up here, they don't have
Speaker 4: to talk to twenty two cabinet metters. They can just
Speaker 4: talk to one group of people. And then I've talked
Speaker 4: to all the governmors on behalf of the president and
Speaker 4: asked them to appoint an infrastructure coordinator. The job it
Speaker 4: is to coordinate the state. And then I've talked to
Speaker 4: sixteen hundred mayors and then we put them all in
Speaker 4: a room together and say, okay, look, you're the team
Speaker 4: that's got to get this stuff to the ground. So
Speaker 4: my team is kind of doing the three things. We're
Speaker 4: building the team, and that's what I just talked to
Speaker 4: you about today. Now that was the government side, but
Speaker 4: you got to get the faith based community, the not
Speaker 4: for profits. Everybody's got to be in the same room.
Speaker 4: Communities have to set priorities, and so that's the first thing,
Speaker 4: build the team. The second thing that we're doing is
Speaker 4: we got to get the money out the door, because
Speaker 4: if you have a team and you got no money
Speaker 4: or you got no equipment, you can't get anything done.
Speaker 4: We've pushed two hundred and twenty billion dollars out of
Speaker 4: the door in eighteen months. We have thirty five thousand
Speaker 4: projects that are in some level of formation in forty
Speaker 4: five hundred communities in all fifty states, in the territories,
Speaker 4: and in the communities. And then finally, we have to
Speaker 4: tell the story, which we do because we want to
Speaker 4: tell them from the perspective of the people who are
Speaker 4: being impacted, because that's who the president'cyes.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So you sort of taking your mayoral wisdom well, and
Speaker 1: there as a reason for this because oftentimes, and I
Speaker 1: mean this just observationally, if you're a legislator.
Speaker 4: You're a congressman, you're a senator, you're a state legislator.
Speaker 4: You generally are advocating for something to happen. You're not
Speaker 4: responsible for actually getting it done. That's what happened on
Speaker 4: the executive branch side. But there has been a disconnect
Speaker 4: on how you execute big, big, big things in this
Speaker 4: country over the last fifty years. So you actually have
Speaker 4: to go build and completely rebuild what I call the mousetrap,
Speaker 4: the execution side of what we're doing, which requires an
Speaker 4: intense amount of planning, vision, setting priorities, and then actually
Speaker 4: getting it done. And when I mean getting it done,
Speaker 4: I mean actually digging dirt and building the bridge, where
Speaker 4: you're going to do it, who's going to dig the dirt,
Speaker 4: where you're going to get the materials from, where the
Speaker 4: employee is going to come from, Which one of the
Speaker 4: projects are going to get funded. All of those things
Speaker 4: require an intense amount of communication and collaboration, and of
Speaker 4: course we haven't done something this big in the last
Speaker 4: fifty sixty years and arguably since the New Deal. So
Speaker 4: we're in the process again of doing three things at
Speaker 4: once that ing up the team. We're getting the money
Speaker 4: out the door, and then we're telling the story about
Speaker 4: how it's impacting real people in real time. And I
Speaker 4: can give you bucketloads of examples of the people that
Speaker 4: we're touching, because that's what really matters. So like if
Speaker 4: I'm traveling around the country and I'm in meta Georgia
Speaker 4: and we're talking about house speed Internet, I'm talking to
Speaker 4: the men and women that live in that quasi rural
Speaker 4: community about how it's going to help the principal in
Speaker 4: that school get those kids of better education. I'm talking
Speaker 4: to the emergency medical providers about how quickly it's going
Speaker 4: to help help them get to folks that they really
Speaker 4: need to do, telling medicine for a grandma or grandpa
Speaker 4: that might be living out in the rural community that
Speaker 4: doesn't have access to a community hospital because it closed,
Speaker 4: maybe because of a state didn't accept medicating. We're talking about,
Speaker 4: you know, the guy that's working the lock and damn,
Speaker 4: the Montgomery lock and dam in Pennsylvania because we're trying
Speaker 4: to make sure that barges can move much more quickly
Speaker 4: and get more goods from ships to shells more quickly.
Speaker 4: Who is that guy? Well, how long is he been
Speaker 4: working there. How much generation of wealth is he able
Speaker 4: to build up? Is he the third generation? You know,
Speaker 4: folks are if I'm in the Imperial Valley in California
Speaker 4: and we're talking about the water crisis out there, meeting
Speaker 4: a young girl named lose Is with a mom and
Speaker 4: daddy living in a mobile park, who is working the
Speaker 4: fields but is not making enough money, and by the way,
Speaker 4: is drinking water that has arsenic in it. That's to
Speaker 4: the president. See. So, yeah, it's an infrastructure project, but
Speaker 4: the whole point is to lift up individuals and to
Speaker 4: give them opportunities they never had. And so you have
Speaker 4: if you want to do it fast, but you want
Speaker 4: to do it right. You don't want to miss anybody,
Speaker 4: and you want to make sure that you make it
Speaker 4: part of the pro growth economy, because, as you may recall,
Speaker 4: not too long ago, people said, oh, this is not
Speaker 4: going to work. Y'all can't make it happen'll y'all are
Speaker 4: trying to do too much with this stuff, and so
Speaker 4: you can't do it fast, you know, And that hasn't
Speaker 4: turned out to be true. So I just like to
Speaker 4: tell people that Joe Biden is bringing the receipt right
Speaker 4: now and I know that have it. When he ran
Speaker 4: for office, they said he never could get elected. When
Speaker 4: he got elected, they said it never get anything done.
Speaker 4: When he started to get everything done, he said that
Speaker 4: he was too old. And now that the numbers are
Speaker 4: coming up, roses, we're not in a recession. We don't
Speaker 4: think the economy looks like it's going into recession, although
Speaker 4: people have been, you know, saying the sky was falling
Speaker 4: for the last year and a half. The most noted
Speaker 4: economists in the country, All of a sudden, thirteen point
Speaker 4: two million jobs. Hello, how many?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 4: More than in two years that any president has done
Speaker 4: in four years, the lowest unemployment rate. Oh wait, you
Speaker 4: can't fix the economy if you don't lay people off
Speaker 4: and reduce wages. A president said, not only no, but
Speaker 4: hell no. And now what's happening economy strong, wages are
Speaker 4: going up, they're gone up. The number of jobs available
Speaker 4: has gone up, not down. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, there's this popular wisdom that was
Speaker 4: supposed to apply just doesn't apply. It turns out that
Speaker 4: you got the right man for the right job at
Speaker 4: the right time in history doing the things that the
Speaker 4: country has needed for the last fifty years. Everything's coming
Speaker 4: up roses in many, many ways, although we still have
Speaker 4: some tremendous challenges that we're not finished. But it looks
Speaker 4: like we're doing pretty well on every objective metric that
Speaker 4: you would that you would judge presidents on over time
Speaker 4: you would like to is a stock market going up
Speaker 4: or it's going down. It's going up, okay. So so
Speaker 4: I kind of, you know, I'm a kind of political
Speaker 4: you know, had you know, kind of chuckles a little bit,
Speaker 4: and I really kind of start to chuckle the most.
Speaker 4: And the President's got a good sense of humor and
Speaker 4: big show, so they'll appreciate this that. And he's told
Speaker 4: me and everybody else in this administration, don't listen to
Speaker 4: all the noise. Go everywhere in the country, Red states,
Speaker 4: Blue states. People voted for it, they didn't vote for it.
Speaker 4: I represent everybody in the country. Make sure everybody gets it.
Speaker 4: But he does chuckle a little bit at at us
Speaker 4: doing groundbreakings in states and congressional districts where congressman has
Speaker 4: said it has voted against this bill. They said it
Speaker 4: was socialists, they said it was communists, They said it
Speaker 4: was going to destroy the country, and they show up
Speaker 4: for the groundbreakings and the ribbon cuttings. Then they come
Speaker 4: back to Washington and try and try, and then they vote.
Speaker 4: They voted against the bill. Then they come back and
Speaker 4: try to cut the budget. Then they try to claim
Speaker 4: credit for it. And I think the American people are
Speaker 4: going to see through that because at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, the president is like, look, I'm here just
Speaker 4: to make the country aboutter place, and I'm delivering. I
Speaker 4: have the receipts and uh, and we're going to keep
Speaker 4: working at it because you have a long way to
Speaker 4: go and we have a lot more to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. I want to ask you tell
Speaker 1: me about the trains. I feel like I can't get
Speaker 1: a straight answer on the trains. What's the question, Like,
Speaker 1: what's happening with the trains. I'm very interested in the trains.
Speaker 1: I love the trains.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you and my boss. If you know, the leader
Speaker 4: of the free world has a lot on his mind,
Speaker 4: and he's got a lot going on every day all day.
Speaker 4: But if you say the word trains in front of him,
Speaker 4: he's likely to stop and have a very long conversation
Speaker 4: with you. Okay too, he will remind you of a
Speaker 4: couple of things. The first thing he will tell you
Speaker 4: is that he's written on Amtrak more than anybody in
Speaker 4: the history of the world since the beginning of time.
Speaker 4: You should It seems a little bit of exaggeration, but
Speaker 4: not so much because the people of America may not
Speaker 4: know this. But he he was a local government elected official,
Speaker 4: and when he ran for office when he was twenty nine,
Speaker 4: having been on the Delaware on the Council and before
Speaker 4: when he became a senator because of his tragic family story,
Speaker 4: as a good dead would he commuted every day back
Speaker 4: and forth to Washington on Amtrak, and so he has
Speaker 4: clocked a lot of miles. And he actually, because of
Speaker 4: that physical experience that he had every day, actually pretty
Speaker 4: much knows every inch of what they call the Northeast Corridor.
Speaker 4: So if you live in the South like me, you
Speaker 4: might not know what that is, or you live in
Speaker 4: the West you know, you might not know, but the
Speaker 4: entire corridor from Boston all the way down to Washington,
Speaker 4: d C. And he wants to make sure that we
Speaker 4: get fixed at Amtrak's very important. Also, he wants to
Speaker 4: make sure that we're able to lay down high speed
Speaker 4: rail somewhere in this country in a reasonably short period
Speaker 4: of time, and then see if we can connect people
Speaker 4: in other areas in the country to the extent that
Speaker 4: it works. So there's sixty six billion dollars in this
Speaker 4: bill that is designed to improve rail serve was across America,
Speaker 4: and we're working on that right now. Amtrak, of course,
Speaker 4: is the big player in that there's a substantial amount
Speaker 4: of money to actually help fix the tracks, to actually
Speaker 4: help fix the spaces and the places where the trains
Speaker 4: stop along not only the Northeast Corridor but across the country.
Speaker 4: There is substantial amount of money to make sure that
Speaker 4: folks with disabilities have access. There's a substantial amount of
Speaker 4: money to actually rebuild the cars for the new clean
Speaker 4: energy future, so that to make sure that those cars
Speaker 4: are manufactured with parts that are made in America. We
Speaker 4: have a number of different companies that have planted new
Speaker 4: plants in states that are producing thousands of jobs, that
Speaker 4: are actually doing this very thing, and we're well in
Speaker 4: the process and well along the way on that. You
Speaker 4: may have noticed that last week Satadashumer was able to
Speaker 4: highlight a fairly significant announcement in what they call the
Speaker 4: Hudson Tunnel are the gateway projects. These are the rail
Speaker 4: lines in and out of New York and New Jersey,
Speaker 4: starting on the Northeast Corridor, which of course is one
Speaker 4: of the most heavily traveled harriets. And so those investments,
Speaker 4: in partnership with the States, are going to improve rail
Speaker 4: service in America faily significantly. But that's a big That
Speaker 4: is a big, big, big project. It's going to cost
Speaker 4: a lot of money, it's going to take a lot
Speaker 4: of time, but eventually, you know, we want to make
Speaker 4: sure we go faster, go safer, get as many people
Speaker 4: off out of their cars as we can. And if
Speaker 4: the President says, if you can, you know, get them
Speaker 4: there faster and cheap. But that's what they're going to do,
Speaker 4: and that's what that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely come back.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hi.
Speaker 1: It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for the
Speaker 1: first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for your support.
Speaker 5: Noah Rosenblum is an assistant professor at NYUBAW.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Noah Rosenbom.
Speaker 4: Hi, so glad to be here.
Speaker 2: We're delighted to have you.
Speaker 1: So just tell us a little bit about what your
Speaker 1: field of study is.
Speaker 4: I'm a legal historian of constitutional administrative law. I mostly
Speaker 4: focus on the history of the administrative state. The administrative state,
Speaker 4: I tell my students it's basically what people think government is.
Speaker 4: So if you think about every interaction you have ever
Speaker 4: had with someone you think of as the government, whether
Speaker 4: it's a tax collector or a mortician or the person
Speaker 4: who validates your marriage license, they're all different parts of
Speaker 4: the administrative state. So I work on the legal history
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting, So let's talk about I think the
Speaker 1: first thing we need to talk about is this bonkers
Speaker 1: bombshell piece that was in the New York Times a
Speaker 1: few days ago, which had the title, which I think
Speaker 1: is like a little bit misleading considering how bonkers.
Speaker 2: The stuff in the article was.
Speaker 1: But it was Trump and allies forged plans to increase
Speaker 1: presidential power in twenty twenty five. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: what you're thinking there was and what you saw.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad to hear you call it bonkers and
Speaker 4: understated for how extreme the proposals are. That was my
Speaker 4: reaction too. I think the first thing that can be
Speaker 4: surprising if you're not a historian is that even though
Speaker 4: Trump is the one who seems to be pushing this,
Speaker 4: and the version that Trump is pushing is the most
Speaker 4: extreme version of it I've come across. Actually, people have
Speaker 4: been making arguments like this already for nearly fifty years,
Speaker 4: and during the George W. Bush administration, arguments kind of
Speaker 4: like this, and when Nybele were made at that time,
Speaker 4: they really freaked a lot of people out too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that there are a couple of scary
Speaker 1: things in this article. But the thing we were talking
Speaker 1: about last night, which I think is perhaps the scariest,
Speaker 1: is that clearly this push to widen presidential powers is
Speaker 1: not coming from Don Junior or her Jared Kushner or
Speaker 1: Donald Trump himself, or even Trump's favorite three piece suited lawyer,
Speaker 1: Borisch Epstein. This is really coming from a third party heritage.
Speaker 4: Like Tank, right, I would think about this as a
Speaker 4: deep historical story. So there's a book love by a
Speaker 4: historian at Columbia named Kimberly Phillips Fine called Invisible Hands,
Speaker 4: The Businessman's Crusade against the New Deal. And part of
Speaker 4: what Kim shows in this book is that even all
Speaker 4: the way back to the nineteen thirties and the first
Speaker 4: significant institutionalized effort to make the United States more socioeconomically democratic,
Speaker 4: you've got resistance coming from rich business interests. The villain
Speaker 4: is the dupap family, and for what it's worth, there's
Speaker 4: still the villain now. And these rich families who had
Speaker 4: a lot to lose from the creation of a more
Speaker 4: economically egalitarian society. Initially they tried to fight the New
Speaker 4: Deal kind of on its own terms, but that was
Speaker 4: just incredibly unpopular their position to try to fight the
Speaker 4: New Deal on its own terms, because after all, the
Speaker 4: New Deal was about empowering the vast majority of Americans,
Speaker 4: a special working Americans, and if you're a super rich
Speaker 4: polutic prat and your whole political position is that you
Speaker 4: don't want to do policies that benefit the vast majority
Speaker 4: of the Americans. You're just going to be on the
Speaker 4: losing side of those fights. So over the course of
Speaker 4: the next years, they started to change the way they
Speaker 4: made their arguments and to come up with new ways
Speaker 4: of trying to attack what were basically social programs that
Speaker 4: they didn't like. And one version of that attack is
Speaker 4: this attack on the administrative state. And so you'll remember,
Speaker 4: back when Trump was president, Steve Bannon famously gave some
Speaker 4: interview in which he talked about how his goal was
Speaker 4: to deconstruct the administrative state. And for somebody like me,
Speaker 4: that's set off alarm bells, because a lot of what
Speaker 4: the administrative state does is implement those New Deal era programs.
Speaker 4: Also Lyndon Johnson Eric great society programs, And in saying
Speaker 4: you want to deconstruct them, what you're really saying is
Speaker 4: that you want to eliminate those programs. So the question
Speaker 4: becomes away, So how are you going to go about
Speaker 4: deconstructing them? And I'm sorry for being such an academic,
Speaker 4: but I just have to name check two of my
Speaker 4: incredible co authors Levman and and Ashamed, who both teach
Speaker 4: at Columbia Law School, and with the two of them,
Speaker 4: I've been doing some work, and part of what we
Speaker 4: have been trying to expose is the way in which
Speaker 4: arguments for presidential control of the administrative state have been
Speaker 4: a powerful tool for doing what Steve Bannon wanted to do,
Speaker 4: for trying to undercut the administrative state or deconstruct the
Speaker 4: administrative state. So I don't think it's an accident at all.
Speaker 4: You know you were saying a second ago, Molly, these
Speaker 4: kinds of arguments, they're not coming from Trump or even
Speaker 4: from World. They're coming from the institutionalized conservative legal movement,
Speaker 4: and Trump is their useful mouthpiece. And that's exactly right. Right,
Speaker 4: arguments for strong presidential power, particularly coming from the right,
Speaker 4: have been used to try to attack the administrative state,
Speaker 4: which delivers a lot of things that the vast majority
Speaker 4: of the Americans want and like, and the theory to
Speaker 4: use it to cut through the administrative state that is
Speaker 4: a tool of the anti New Deal reactionary right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I would also add that there are like a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the administrative state who think of themselves
Speaker 1: as completely nonpartisan, whether or not they are, but they
Speaker 1: consider themselves to be above politics. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: think at least this kind of person existed before Trump
Speaker 1: ran for office. And so I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things the government does that have no you know,
Speaker 1: driver's license from driver's licenses right to fixing roads that
Speaker 1: have no partisan BND whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Oh no, absolutely, it's not just consider there's even academic evidents.
Speaker 4: There's empirical evidence that government bureaucrats are actually way less
Speaker 4: partisan than people think they are, and they tend to
Speaker 4: have a moderating effect and be more centrist. So even
Speaker 4: the most extremely liberal government bureaucrat really primarily devoted to
Speaker 4: public service.
Speaker 2: Right, So let's talk about Article two.
Speaker 1: First of all, when Isaac Chattner from The New Yorker
Speaker 1: wanted to interview you, did you get scared?
Speaker 4: You know, the scariest moment of my life is opening
Speaker 4: my seeing an email from Isaac Choetner saying I'd like
Speaker 4: to talk to you.
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, he.
Speaker 1: Had a good point, which is he wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about this larger administrative state. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that you guys talked about was Article two. First
Speaker 1: of all, explain to us what Article two means. Second
Speaker 1: of all, explain to us what Trump thinks Article two means.
Speaker 1: And third of all, put this all into context for us.
Speaker 4: Please, I'll do my best. What is Article two mean?
Speaker 4: And that comes back to the point that you made
Speaker 4: a minute ago about that Bonker's New York Times article.
Speaker 4: So the New York Times article talked about how Donald
Speaker 4: Trump wants to consolidate power over the government in his
Speaker 4: own hands. And as the New York Times article explained,
Speaker 4: the legal theory for doing that drew from Article two.
Speaker 4: So what is Article two are? Article two is the
Speaker 4: second article of the Constitution. It's the article in which
Speaker 4: most of what the president is able to do legally
Speaker 4: under the Constitution is elaborated. So what is Article two do?
Speaker 4: It gives us the basic constitutional framework for understanding presidential power.
Speaker 4: What does Trump think Article two does? Yes, he told us, right,
Speaker 4: he says, I have an Article two and it lets
Speaker 4: me do whatever I want. And Isaac, I'll say it again, right.
Speaker 4: I think Trump genuinely believes that the Constitution makes the
Speaker 4: president into something kind of like a king. And in
Speaker 4: Trump's defense, there are a lot of people who've made
Speaker 4: arguments that are kind of like that. I don't know
Speaker 4: anyone who's ever made the argument that Article two creates
Speaker 4: a kingship. And indeed, even some of the most royalist
Speaker 4: readings of presidentialism highlight that, in the words of Michael McConnell,
Speaker 4: a conservative law professor at Stanford, right, the president who
Speaker 4: would not be king, It's not a kingship. Even the
Speaker 4: strongest versions of presidentialism would say no, no, Article two
Speaker 4: did not create a kingship. However, people have elaborated all
Speaker 4: kinds of arguments that under Article to the president should
Speaker 4: be able to exercise a tremendous amount of power over
Speaker 4: the federal government. You have to make those arguments in
Speaker 4: a constitutional frame, because otherwise, if we were looking for
Speaker 4: where the president's powers come from, we'd say, while, they
Speaker 4: come from statutes. But statutes, of course, are drafted by Congress.
Speaker 4: And shockingly, even though Congress is in the habit of
Speaker 4: delegating lots of power to the president, Congress isn't in
Speaker 4: the habit of giving the president so much power that
Speaker 4: the president can do whatever they want, to run the
Speaker 4: country any way they want. So if you're going to
Speaker 4: make arguments that the president has got this kind of
Speaker 4: expansive article to power the Donald Trump. Right, I have
Speaker 4: an article too, and it lets me do whatever I want.
Speaker 4: What you're saying is that the president has the power
Speaker 4: to cut through a whole bunch of other alleged restrictions
Speaker 4: on his power, which means you've got to come up
Speaker 4: with a constitutional theory that would let you cut through
Speaker 4: those statutes.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's what this.
Speaker 4: Is exactly right. So when I read that New York
Speaker 4: Times article, like I said, it reminded me of this
Speaker 4: much longer crusade against aspects of the social democratic state.
Speaker 4: It echoed a strong version of what sometimes called the
Speaker 4: unitary executive theory. That was the way that it was
Speaker 4: described a lot during the George W. Bush years. And
Speaker 4: it's this idea that because Article two says the executive
Speaker 4: power shall vest in it's either a president of the
Speaker 4: United States or the president of the United States, I
Speaker 4: should really look that one up. But the key client
Speaker 4: the executive power is vesting in a singular person. That
Speaker 4: means that the singular person of the president should be
Speaker 4: able to exercise all executive power. And what is executive power,
Speaker 4: while it's not legislative power and it's not judicial power,
Speaker 4: is the way the argument goes. Or in other words,
Speaker 4: it's not what Congress does and it's not what judges do.
Speaker 4: But if you stop and think about that for a second,
Speaker 4: most of what the government does is not what Congress
Speaker 4: does or what judges do. In fact, for most of us,
Speaker 4: most of the interactions we've ever had with the federal
Speaker 4: government are with parts of it that are not what
Speaker 4: Congress does or what judges do. So what the theory
Speaker 4: really seems to be saying is that everything that the
Speaker 4: government does that's not Congress or judges needs to be
Speaker 4: under the control, maybe even the direction, of the President
Speaker 4: of the United States. And that might not be a kingship,
Speaker 4: but it starts to be pretty close to one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's completely crazy. Why do you think that conservative
Speaker 1: think tanks like Heritage want that?
Speaker 4: That's actually a really deep question. The reason it's such
Speaker 4: a deep question is because it's not obvious that if
Speaker 4: you're interested in let's just say market ordering, and in
Speaker 4: particular low government regulation market ordering, that the way to
Speaker 4: do it would be to create a super strong president.
Speaker 4: You might be happy with basis, I'm not one hundred
Speaker 4: percent positive. That's part of why in this piece that
Speaker 4: I mentioned with Ashahmed and livmannd we tried to look
Speaker 4: into the history a little bit. What I can say
Speaker 4: is that in the nineteen eighties conservatives were really interested
Speaker 4: in strong presidential power as a reaction to one the
Speaker 4: already existing social democratic state and to a liberal Congress.
Speaker 4: So if you think about it, right, by the time
Speaker 4: we get to the Ronald Reagan presidency, the Democrats have
Speaker 4: had control of Congress for almost fifty years. Couple, there's
Speaker 4: you know, Republicans are in charge of Congress for a
Speaker 4: little bit.
Speaker 1: But this was all because of Nixon. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: Nixon gave it to liberals. I mean, you know, if
Speaker 1: Democrats had had a guy who did lots of crimes,
Speaker 1: well it was an all as they would have.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Democrats were in charge of Congress even before Nixon, Right,
Speaker 4: So it's more like Nixon reads an additional life into
Speaker 4: the Democratic Congress, and the Democratic Congress isn't always super
Speaker 4: pro regulatory. That's a much longer story. But if you've
Speaker 4: got a Democratic Congress and you're a Republican president, then
Speaker 4: it certainly helps to have a theory of presidential power
Speaker 4: that will let you ignore what Congress is doing or
Speaker 4: at the very least cut through some of what Congress
Speaker 4: is doing. And the fact that the Republicans were perceived
Speaker 4: to be the party of big business meant that if
Speaker 4: you were a big business you might want to be
Speaker 4: behind a strong president who could cut through what the
Speaker 4: Democratic Congress would do. So that's one bucket of arguments.
Speaker 4: The other bucket of arguments might just be that by
Speaker 4: the time we get to the end of the twentieth century,
Speaker 4: we've already built up a regulatory apparatus, and obviously it's
Speaker 4: a super imperfect one, right, I don't have to tell
Speaker 4: the listeners of your show how obviously inadequate the regulatory
Speaker 4: state has been. Nevertheless, there was a lot of it
Speaker 4: in place, and so if you were the kind of
Speaker 4: interest that wanted to cut through those regulatory activities, you
Speaker 4: had a better chance doing it through the president who
Speaker 4: could have reached through them, especially if you had a
Speaker 4: Republican president in office, then you might through Congress. So
Speaker 4: what Ahmed and minand what ashen Lev and I argue
Speaker 4: is that actually the reason why folks like Heritage are
Speaker 4: interested in a strong president is in order to advance
Speaker 4: deregulatory priorities. Because the president a strong president can be
Speaker 4: the deregulator in chief. And for what it's worth, that
Speaker 4: totally explains what it looks like Donald Trump wants to
Speaker 4: do with the office.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: On the one hand, it does seemed like he wants
Speaker 4: to use presidential power to advance what are frankly just
Speaker 4: you know, nativist, xenophobic goals. But when it comes to
Speaker 4: the actual management of the American markets, you know, if
Speaker 4: you think about the way that his Environmental Protection Agency acted,
Speaker 4: the way that he thinks about safety standards right this,
Speaker 4: it seems likely that were he empowered the way he
Speaker 4: would like to be, he would be using that power
Speaker 4: to make it easier for large agglomerations of capital to operate,
Speaker 4: not harder.
Speaker 1: But these are the same people who were furious with
Speaker 1: Obama for executive orders.
Speaker 4: Are you suggesting that how people think about executive power
Speaker 4: based on who gets to wield it. I'm scandalized that
Speaker 4: political actors are politically are politically active.
Speaker 2: And partisan.
Speaker 4: Part of my journey one of the reasons I'm a
Speaker 4: law professor is because I was really taken aback by
Speaker 4: the flip flopping around questions of executive power as we
Speaker 4: went from the George W. Bush administration to the Obama administration,
Speaker 4: to the Trump administration now to the Biden administration. And
Speaker 4: call me old fashioned, but I would like to see
Speaker 4: some integrity at least in our thinking about what makes
Speaker 4: for good democratic government.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think that's happening anytime soon, though.
Speaker 4: You're undoubtedly right. That's why, that's why I became a
Speaker 4: law professor, and that's why or on the waves trying
Speaker 4: to help save our country.
Speaker 1: I want to like step back from minute because I'm
Speaker 1: hoping we can talk about amendments the Constitution. I'm going
Speaker 1: here like on purpose because one of the you know,
Speaker 1: we have this very very conservative Supreme Court. Trump managed,
Speaker 1: with the help of Mitch McConnell, to install three justices
Speaker 1: really when he should have really only installed one, right
Speaker 1: because of the timetable, and or maybe two, but it
Speaker 1: seemed like, you know, they were very smart about the
Speaker 1: way they did it.
Speaker 2: So now it's a six ' three court. They are
Speaker 2: in bolden.
Speaker 1: They are remaking our country in weird and wild conservative ways,
Speaker 1: everything from water to abortion. Congress does have some power
Speaker 1: here to keep them in check.
Speaker 4: I'd even say Congress has a ton of latent power
Speaker 4: if only it can get its act together to exercise it.
Speaker 2: So talk to me a little bit about what that
Speaker 2: would look like.
Speaker 4: So the Constitution says very little about the federal courts.
Speaker 4: It says that there shall be a Supreme Court, but
Speaker 4: it doesn't tell us very much about what that Supreme
Speaker 4: Court has to do. It defines its original jurisdiction, the
Speaker 4: cases it has to hear as a court of first instance,
Speaker 4: learn very many of those, and then the Constitution doesn't
Speaker 4: require the creation of any lower courts at all. It
Speaker 4: leaves that to Congress to create whatever courts. So, in
Speaker 4: other words, the Constitution leaves Congress a tremendous amount of
Speaker 4: space to define the number of justices on the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: the kinds of matters that the Supreme Court gets to
Speaker 4: hear on appeal, the number of other intermediate federal courts
Speaker 4: that exist, their jurisdiction, and how they go about hearing things. So,
Speaker 4: if you were a Congress interested in curbing the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: you could do it by adding new judges to the court.
Speaker 4: You could do it by creating lots of other courts
Speaker 4: and having different kinds of cases in different ways before
Speaker 4: they get to the Supreme Court. You could also do
Speaker 4: it by transforming how the Supreme Court itself operates. So
Speaker 4: let me just say more about this idea because it's
Speaker 4: one of my favorites. Imagine if instead of having nine
Speaker 4: justices on the Supreme Court, or twelve justices on the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, or whatever, the Supreme Court had one chief
Speaker 4: judge and every other judge in the federal system were
Speaker 4: Supreme Court justice, and the Supreme Court heard cases in
Speaker 4: randomly chosen panels. Most of the federal appeals courts operate
Speaker 4: this way. There are twenty judges on a federal appeals court,
Speaker 4: but a case is heard by a randomly chosen panel
Speaker 4: of three. And there are some good things and bad
Speaker 4: things about that system. But I'll tell you one thing.
Speaker 4: It means that instead of having a durable super majority
Speaker 4: or you can just count the people in advance and
Speaker 4: know whose personalities you need to appeal to, the composition
Speaker 4: of the court is the product of a random process,
Speaker 4: and it will roughly correspond on average to the balance
Speaker 4: of the other judges where part of the pant or
Speaker 4: part of the court system as a whole right, So
Speaker 4: that would be sort of a way of immediately transforming
Speaker 4: out the court operates and completely constitutional, by the way,
Speaker 4: truly no problems with it at all. And then a
Speaker 4: plan that a lot of people have been pushing that
Speaker 4: is another totally constitutional way of doing things would be
Speaker 4: to just limit the court's jurisdiction. So very famously, during
Speaker 4: Reconstruction after the Civil War, the radical Republicans in Congress,
Speaker 4: the ones who had fought the war to save the
Speaker 4: Union and were trying to make sure that the treasonous
Speaker 4: white supremacists in the South who had lost the war
Speaker 4: and betrayed the Constitution, weren't able to take advantage of
Speaker 4: the large ESTs of the victorious Union by allowing them
Speaker 4: back into the Union to undo the victory. Those radical
Speaker 4: Republicans were worried that the Supreme Court was going to
Speaker 4: strike down parts of Reconstruction, and so what did they do.
Speaker 4: They just stripped the court's jurisdiction, and the Court absolutely
Speaker 4: went along with it, because it's so clear that Congress
Speaker 4: has that power. I actually think another kind of fascinating
Speaker 4: moment to think about is after the election of eighteen hundred.
Speaker 4: So this is back to all of our high schoolistory classes,
Speaker 4: but up until eighteen hundred, the federal government had been
Speaker 4: controlled by the Federalist Party, that's George Washington Adams, and
Speaker 4: the election of eighteen hundred is super vituperative right way
Speaker 4: high on the partisan opposition scale between Jefferson and Adams,
Speaker 4: between the Federalist Party and the Democratic Republican Party, Jefferson
Speaker 4: wins first time. The new government is transferring power between parties,
Speaker 4: and just to really underscore how much the two parties
Speaker 4: hate each other, right, each party is convinced that the
Speaker 4: other one is trying to destroy the public. So, like
Speaker 4: you know, should remind us of a situation we're currently in. Anyway,
Speaker 4: when the Democratic Republicans come into power, the Federalists, their enemies,
Speaker 4: have stocked the federal courts with Federalist judges to try
Speaker 4: to hold onto power. So it's a lot like the
Speaker 4: current situation. And in fact the Supreme Court, in particular,
Speaker 4: John Adams jams through John Marshall to be the Chief
Speaker 4: Justice of the Supreme Court. He puts a major Federalist
Speaker 4: and a big enemy of the Democratic Republicans at the
Speaker 4: head of the Supreme Court. What do the Republicans do
Speaker 4: when they come into power. The first thing they do,
Speaker 4: of course, is they refuse to serve a bunch of commissions,
Speaker 4: and we can talk more about that. That's where Marbreaving
Speaker 4: Madison comes from. They repeal the Midnight Judges Act, but
Speaker 4: they also just cancel the Supreme Court's trump. They just say,
Speaker 4: you know what, the Supreme Court isn't going to hear
Speaker 4: any cases next year. And the next time the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court comes around to hear cases, you bet that John
Speaker 4: Marshall is thinking to himself, wait a minute, if I
Speaker 4: issue rulings that are so repugnant to the people of
Speaker 4: this country, it's possible that my court will lose all
Speaker 4: its legitimacy, and the Congress and the Democratic Republicans in
Speaker 4: the Congress will go further to further trim my sales
Speaker 4: answerp me of power. And so the Court changes course.
Speaker 4: The Court reacts to the fact that it was out
Speaker 4: of step with the will of the people. So, you
Speaker 4: know what is this tell us about the current moment.
Speaker 4: I think it's a reminder that at other moments in
Speaker 4: American history, the executive and Congress have been very aggressive
Speaker 4: in trying to rein in robue Supreme courts. The Supreme
Speaker 4: Court has gone rogue before, and it has been brought
Speaker 4: to heal before through the ordinary political process and the
Speaker 4: powers that Congress and the President already have.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Noah, We're going to have to have.
Speaker 4: You back anytime. Molly, it's really been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: No moment exectly Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast.
Speaker 5: So I feel like it's a little rough waters when
Speaker 5: Ron DeSantis has to defend this terrible policy he has
Speaker 5: teaching this curriculum and he's not navigating it. Well, tell
Speaker 5: me what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis today had to defend his curriculum, his new
Speaker 1: Florida curriculum, which argues that slaves may have learned some
Speaker 1: useful skills. Ron DeSantis' communication director for Education Florida is
Speaker 1: a guy called alex Land Franco T. Konini, who was
Speaker 1: a frequent Mom's for Liberty retweeter. He said that this
Speaker 1: in his African American history standards, his statements had any
Speaker 1: attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails
Speaker 1: to recognize their strength and courage and resilience during a
Speaker 1: difficult time in American history. What so, let's just talk
Speaker 1: for a minute about some of these slaves they used
Speaker 1: to talk about as people who were able to get
Speaker 1: jobs from being slaves. Okay, So one of the people
Speaker 1: is called Ned Cobb. He was listed as a blacksmith,
Speaker 1: but he actually was a tenant farmer and not a slave.
Speaker 1: And another person is called Henry Blair, and he was
Speaker 1: listed as a blacksmith, but he actually.
Speaker 2: Was never enslaved.
Speaker 1: And as you look through a lot of this history,
Speaker 1: you see that a lot of these people and one
Speaker 1: of the people they list is Betty Washington Lewis, who
Speaker 1: is the white sister of George Washington. So I think
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that what is happening here in
Speaker 1: Florida with their education standards is not making anyone smarter,
Speaker 1: and for that they.
Speaker 2: Are our moment of fuck ray.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics.
Speaker 2: Makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
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Speaker 1: for listening.