Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and House Democrats will force a Flora
Speaker 1: vote this week on the Matt Gates Ethics Report. We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today Bloomberg Opinions.
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien talks about what we can expect from Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero. Then we'll talk to pro public as
Speaker 1: Molly Redden about how Trump plans to take powers from
Speaker 1: Congress to change the federal government.
Speaker 2: But first the news, So.
Speaker 3: Molly, our mayor, our mayor. He has got a lot
Speaker 3: of charges against him, which a lot of people don't realize.
Speaker 3: And I'll be shocked to tell you he's sucking up
Speaker 3: to the guy who gives lots of pardons out, mister
Speaker 3: Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: None of this should come as a surprise.
Speaker 1: Mayor Adams indicted, has more federal investigations swirling around him.
Speaker 1: Many people from his administration have resigned or married each
Speaker 1: other or both. He is really in political danger. And
Speaker 1: when someone is in political danger for influenced trading with
Speaker 1: Turkey or doing crimes, they tend to find a way
Speaker 1: to mister Trump. Because for mister Trump, and he's said this,
Speaker 1: ethical problems are not necessarily disqualifying, or in fact, they
Speaker 1: may in some cases be qualifying. So here we have
Speaker 1: my man Eric Adams saying that he will basically deport
Speaker 1: migrants and this is the way he's trying to curry
Speaker 1: favor with Trump. Mayor Adams incorrectly asserted, by the way,
Speaker 1: this is the guy who said that cheese is like Heroin.
Speaker 1: He's not factually always completely accurate. May Or Adams on
Speaker 1: Tuesday incorrectly asserted that undocumented immigrants are not entitled to
Speaker 1: the right of due process under the US Constitution. He said,
Speaker 1: the Constitution is for Americans.
Speaker 2: That is not true.
Speaker 1: By the way, the Constitution is for America, but it
Speaker 1: does not limit itself to just citizens. And this phrasing
Speaker 1: the Constitution is for Americans reminds me a whole lot
Speaker 1: of Stephen Miller, who said America is for Americans, and
Speaker 1: America is for Americans is a line that was used
Speaker 1: during really darkest times in anti civil rights movement, the
Speaker 1: anti civil rights, the white supremacist movement in this country.
Speaker 1: So it is a really dark that he said this.
Speaker 1: He continued at a press conferencing I'm not a person
Speaker 1: that's snuck into this country. My ancestors have been here
Speaker 1: a long time. Again, not how any of this works
Speaker 1: a country built on immigrants. Legal experts disputed Adam's claims.
Speaker 1: They claims have no basis in law. I would add
Speaker 1: the Mayor's claims have no basis in anything, and never have.
Speaker 1: We're going to have a legal fight that is going
Speaker 1: to be mind bending here in New York City when
Speaker 1: Donald tries to start deporting people from a city that
Speaker 1: has been long a sanctuary city. This is going to
Speaker 1: get really ugly. And again, I hate this so much,
Speaker 1: and no one wanted this, and it's going to get
Speaker 1: really ugly, and maybe voters won't care, but I hope
Speaker 1: that they can see how this serves no one at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I can't wait for Mayor Adams to roll out
Speaker 3: the red carpeting of the key to the city. These guys. So,
Speaker 3: in speaking of other people who continually disappoint us, we
Speaker 3: have more fun at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Supreme Court today is Wednesday. They're listening to a
Speaker 1: very big oral argument. Again. They won't come out with
Speaker 1: an answer until they go on vacation in June because
Speaker 1: you know never it's important to not have to have
Speaker 1: accountability for your legal decisions. And this is not should
Speaker 1: not be surprising. Is a state lawn Tennessee is blocking
Speaker 1: minors from accessing gender affirming care in the state.
Speaker 2: This is just like spaight right in Texas.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that state level law tries to
Speaker 1: enact a ban, then you know it'll either get it'll
Speaker 1: either go through or it won't. And then if it
Speaker 1: goes through, you can see this enacted.
Speaker 2: On a national level.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to remember, like Republicans are
Speaker 1: about to control the Senate, the House, and the presidency.
Speaker 1: So even though they would need sixty votes to enact
Speaker 1: a federal law, they are working on all sorts of
Speaker 1: complicated legal maneuvering, using laws that are out of date
Speaker 1: or rarely used, doing different kinds of things like that
Speaker 1: to enact different laws to hit different legal loopholes. So
Speaker 1: I would be shocked if there was not if there
Speaker 1: was not some kind of you know, this is part
Speaker 1: of a larger plan to make things inaccessible. And whether
Speaker 1: or not you believe in trans healthcare for children, I
Speaker 1: think it's worth thinking about whether or not you want
Speaker 1: the federal government to make choices like this for your children,
Speaker 1: and I think larger than that. This is not necessarily
Speaker 1: about that. It's about what is the federal government's place
Speaker 1: in your life and in my life.
Speaker 2: This is very scary.
Speaker 3: I agree, this is not looking good.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has been
Speaker 1: tasked with an ethics code, right, because I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know this, but last year there was quite
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting, and I think it's worth remembering.
Speaker 1: This is why the right hates reporters so much. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of reporting about Justice Alito and Justice
Speaker 1: Thomas getting pressed, taking trips, drinking fine wines and champagnes.
Speaker 1: It was really blockbuster reporting. So the court's three last liberals,
Speaker 1: Kegan Sodamayar and Katanji Brown Jackson, want some kind of
Speaker 1: enforcement of an ethics code, but the Trump judges are
Speaker 1: not fans.
Speaker 2: Justice Gorsich objects.
Speaker 1: To the idea of a code that's anything more than voluntary.
Speaker 1: You'll be shocked to hear that Thomas and Alito benefit
Speaker 1: fisuaries of numerous private jet trips also back him up.
Speaker 1: So the conservative majority, Gorsa, Chamath Alito do not want
Speaker 1: enforcement mechanisms.
Speaker 2: We're sort of seeing.
Speaker 1: This play out, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: Scotis placed no restrictions on taking gifts, accepting travel, or
Speaker 1: real estate deals.
Speaker 2: All of which Justice Thomas.
Speaker 1: Has come under fire for doing, which is incredible, right,
Speaker 1: like just one circuit down, you know this stuff would
Speaker 1: be career ending, but at the highest court in the land,
Speaker 1: you good. So they placed no restrictions on taking gifts,
Speaker 1: and the Justice gave themselves a broad carve out for
Speaker 1: book deals, just as so to my Air received three
Speaker 1: point seven million for her memoir and her children's books
Speaker 1: came under fire for using court staff for book events.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys could really use an ethics code.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously so to my Year. It's not anything
Speaker 1: like what the situation was with Thomas. But I think
Speaker 1: it's a really important point that there should be an
Speaker 1: ethics code for the Supreme Court and it should be enforceable,
Speaker 1: and instead the code just states that justices should not
Speaker 1: be swayed bipartisan interests. And Michael Wallman, the president of
Speaker 1: the Brenett Center for Justice, who has been on this
Speaker 1: podcast and will again be on this podcast, said these
Speaker 1: rules are more loophole than law, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a really important point. These guys really need to have
Speaker 1: ethical guardrails. And it's just as we say a Shonda.
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien is an editor at Bloomberg Opinion. Welcome Back,
Speaker 1: Too Fast Politics, Tim O'Brien.
Speaker 4: I'm Molly, how are you? Oh, I'm Marvi. Everything's normal
Speaker 4: in America right now.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this because you're so smart. It's true,
Speaker 1: and we're so fucked as a country. But it's like
Speaker 1: one of these moments where it feels like it's sort
Speaker 1: of a little bit beyond reality. I always feel like
Speaker 1: before a new administration comes in, there's always a sense
Speaker 1: that perhaps everything we thought about them was wrong, and
Speaker 1: maybe they will be this, you know. I feel like
Speaker 1: this happened before the first Trump admin too, that perhaps
Speaker 1: all of us are overreacting. Discuss so one.
Speaker 4: You sort of want to, like Q Rod Serling right
Speaker 4: to say, like, right, imagine the country, you know, governed
Speaker 4: by an unhinged individual with no object expertise or Pollo's interest.
Speaker 1: Elected because he was afraid of going to jail.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's why he was passionate about running.
Speaker 4: For sure, you wanted to get out of jail free card.
Speaker 4: I think Trump one point zero had real consequences. There
Speaker 4: wasn't the kind of institutional wrecking ball impact that people
Speaker 4: were concerned about them that I think could very well
Speaker 4: happen in Trump two point zero. But the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: had a generational change that is affecting people's lives. You
Speaker 4: just need to look at reproductive rights as one example
Speaker 4: of that. I think the US is standing in the
Speaker 4: world as a kind of enforcer of democratic norms when
Speaker 4: it's behaving well has been diminished and people took advantage
Speaker 4: of that. And then I think domestically, just the what
Speaker 4: is now considered acceptable kind of public dialogue about really
Speaker 4: important issues has gotten degrade it and we're in the
Speaker 4: midst of kind of a frat party populated and hosted
Speaker 4: mainly by white guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one cold comfort is that he has this
Speaker 1: insane coalition that I think will be very hard to please.
Speaker 4: Well, because you know, the coalition both parties have spent
Speaker 4: I think since really since the late nineteen seventies and
Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties. They're working. Americans in fairly broad numbers
Speaker 4: have bounced between the parties because their standing in the
Speaker 4: world has been diminished living wages for average Americans has
Speaker 4: declined significantly since the nineteen eighties, and you have a
Speaker 4: big portion of Americans who feel adrip and I don't
Speaker 4: think either party has come to their aid with constructive
Speaker 4: long term solutions. And I say that as well with
Speaker 4: the idea that they're it will be hard for anyone
Speaker 4: to provide constructive long term solutions to some of this
Speaker 4: because we've been in the midst of this epic technological
Speaker 4: change and the old economy got undermined by it. And
Speaker 4: it's not the first time it's happened in US history.
Speaker 4: It'll happen again. But our fellow Americans get buffeted and
Speaker 4: really ruthless and undignified ways on the waves of those things.
Speaker 4: I also think alongside that has been a growing desire
Speaker 4: for disenfranchised Americans to become more franchise, and that expresses
Speaker 4: itself in a lot of unmanageable ways, whether they're voters
Speaker 4: of color, or women or new immigrants. You can just
Speaker 4: pick off all the boxes. And historically people will look
Speaker 4: back at this as not twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four,
Speaker 4: but we'll look at it as you know, nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: to twenty twenty four and beyond, and we're just in
Speaker 4: the midst of it, and some of the bigger patterns
Speaker 4: are hard to see, but it's a really we are
Speaker 4: living in a really intense epoch.
Speaker 1: You've opened the door to me doing something really annoying,
Speaker 1: which is I have been you never do that, and never.
Speaker 1: I've been rereading the paranoid style in American Offseutter. He
Speaker 1: talks about these status elections, elections that are based on
Speaker 1: status anxiety and not necessarily on material more nuanced.
Speaker 4: That it's more about anxiety than financial well being.
Speaker 1: And in some ways twenty sixteen, you had voters voting
Speaker 1: in a much more clear way. Right, you had Hispanic
Speaker 1: and black voters voting for the Democrat. You had white,
Speaker 1: non college educated, white college educated, more of a coalition
Speaker 1: going for Trump. Now that has sort of flipped on
Speaker 1: its head in twenty twenty four. So you had Hispanic voters,
Speaker 1: you had some black voters voting for Trump. Was not
Speaker 1: on race and class was a subtext that we have
Speaker 1: not talked about very much or written about for any
Speaker 1: number of reasons.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if you could just talk about that.
Speaker 4: Well, the other thing I would say, is the other
Speaker 4: kind of great companion book to the paranoid style is
Speaker 4: intellectualism in American life, which, you know, he identified the
Speaker 4: kind of resentment of elite that has always run through
Speaker 4: American history. You know, it used to be getting a
Speaker 4: college degree was a badge of honor that you were
Speaker 4: trying to better yourself on the world, and in recent
Speaker 4: years it's become this sort of symbol that you live
Speaker 4: in a bubble and you're not solving real world problems
Speaker 4: and you only care about yourself. I never think there
Speaker 4: is one explanation of big voting changes. I think a
Speaker 4: lot of things went into this election, but I think
Speaker 4: you can't ignore basic pocketbook issues and that are so intense.
Speaker 4: And when I say, I think, I would, you know,
Speaker 4: inflation became this barometer for like the bogeyman that was
Speaker 4: haunting consumers because they were seeing higher gas prices and
Speaker 4: higher growthcery prices. I just think it's actually the straw
Speaker 4: that broke the camel's back. I think the larger issue
Speaker 4: has been affordability. Average Americans feel like they can't afford houses,
Speaker 4: and they can't afford college for their kids, and they
Speaker 4: can't stay for the retirements in total, they actually can't
Speaker 4: get a piece of the American dream, and that ties
Speaker 4: into people's dignity and their sense of themselves in the world,
Speaker 4: and I think that does play out as anxiety, and
Speaker 4: I would dive from that off fetterish analysis in that regard,
Speaker 4: and that I think that the reason Latino voters and
Speaker 4: black voters moved in meaningful ways along with white women
Speaker 4: towards Trump, which I think that's a different cohort why
Speaker 4: white women landed where they did, But for black and
Speaker 4: Latino voters, to me, I read that as yes, they
Speaker 4: care about race, and yes they care about their own
Speaker 4: cultural identities, but first and foremost, they want to put
Speaker 4: bread on the tables for their families, and they will
Speaker 4: ally themselves with whoever presents a path through prosperity to them.
Speaker 4: And the thing about Trump that is damning in that
Speaker 4: mix is he has no real interest in doing that.
Speaker 4: He just rides on this historic brand of the Republicans
Speaker 4: is being better for business than Democrats, when if you
Speaker 4: look at the data, democratic presidents that presided over bigger
Speaker 4: GDP growth far more often than Republicans. And then Trump
Speaker 4: has this like the host of The Apprentice Mojo and
Speaker 4: I think the anxiety that comes out of economic uncertainty
Speaker 4: of cruised to Trump in this moment because he's seen
Speaker 4: as a better economic steward. But I think that's how
Speaker 4: I'm built on stand says, I ask your question and
Speaker 4: I go in a completely different direction.
Speaker 1: Well, it just got me thinking about something else, which
Speaker 1: is Trump. He ran for election on this idea that
Speaker 1: he would make things cheaper, right, which was people were
Speaker 1: upset about inflation. Some of that inflation it was transitory,
Speaker 1: but longer than we thought. Some of that inflation was because,
Speaker 1: like the inflation when it comes to mortgages, was because
Speaker 1: the Fed raised interest rates, so everything was more expensive
Speaker 1: when it came to money, monetary stuff. You know, to
Speaker 1: be able to borrow money. There is no way to
Speaker 1: make things less expensive except to regulate prices, which no
Speaker 1: one wants to do in a capitalist country.
Speaker 4: But you know what, you can make them more affordable
Speaker 4: by paying people a better way.
Speaker 1: Which is what Democrats were trying to do. But Trump,
Speaker 1: I just want you to address this fundamental problem that
Speaker 1: Trump has, which is he has promised to do something.
Speaker 2: It's undoable.
Speaker 4: It's not only undoable, it is he's actually in pursuit
Speaker 4: policies that maya words right. He wants to impose tariffs
Speaker 4: on Mexico and China that would cause import prices despite
Speaker 4: and the cost of those would all get passed along
Speaker 4: to consumers. He also wants to deport a mass deportation
Speaker 4: of eleven million immigrants who are central. A large portion
Speaker 4: of them are central through the construction business and to
Speaker 4: hotels and farming and restaurants and home services, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And if they disappear, the labor prices are
Speaker 4: going to go up. And if labor prices go up,
Speaker 4: the cost of living's going to go as wealth for Americans.
Speaker 4: Trump is a profoundly ignorant man. He latches onto ideas
Speaker 4: that he will, as he said his first term, only
Speaker 4: I can fix it, and he presents absurd fixes to
Speaker 4: complicated But the real thing he benefits from is that
Speaker 4: his cult believes him.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm wondering if you can talk about sort of
Speaker 1: like the tension here. For example, Trump has nominated Basant,
Speaker 1: who is a pretty sort of I would say, largely.
Speaker 4: Normal mainstream Wall Street god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, made money managing for George Soros discussed.
Speaker 4: Gave money get a Democrat back in the day. I've
Speaker 4: sort of wondered, like when the Trumpies are going to
Speaker 4: discover this Soros thing and really decide that George Soros
Speaker 4: is taking over the world now that he's put an
Speaker 4: acolyte inside the Treasury Department. You know, that's like Taylor
Speaker 4: made for a Trump World conspiracy, but it hasn't really
Speaker 4: surfaced yet. I have to wonder what Scott Besson said
Speaker 4: to Donald Trump to get nominated for this job, because,
Speaker 4: you know, the Treasury secretary, unlike the iffse secretary, Secretary
Speaker 4: of State, some of the other cabinet roles, it's not
Speaker 4: that powerful a position in the White House, and Fed
Speaker 4: Chairman economically is much more powers than treasury secretaries. The
Speaker 4: Preasury secretaries often become a spokes person for the economic
Speaker 4: goals of an administration, and when they're really good, they're
Speaker 4: super effective, like Bob Rubin was, you know, or Jim
Speaker 4: Baker with different administrations. And so Besson's going to have
Speaker 4: this tension which between what he knows actually works around
Speaker 4: economic fixes and economic growths and the malarkey that flows
Speaker 4: out of Donald Trump's mouth like a fire hydrant. And
Speaker 4: he cannot have gotten this job without I think saying
Speaker 4: to Trump, I will be pro pare, and I will
Speaker 4: be pro deportation, and I will be pro strong dollar,
Speaker 4: all these things that have economic impact that Trump backs
Speaker 4: and which bessn't if he's still thinking the fact pattern
Speaker 4: can't really believe. So will he continue to sort of
Speaker 4: say these things Trump wants him to say, is the
Speaker 4: economic megaphones for the administration or will he actually start
Speaker 4: talking about what he really believes and then you know,
Speaker 4: his life span within the Trump administration shortens dramatically.
Speaker 1: It does seem like there's a lot of behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stuff happening with Republican senators and these cabinet appointments.
Speaker 1: It seems like they're sort of articulating their views to
Speaker 1: Trump and his people, and then there's kind of back
Speaker 1: and forth playing out in front of us. We see
Speaker 1: this right now with the DoD hegsats. It seems like
Speaker 1: they're sort of hit a moment with reporting where people
Speaker 1: have decided.
Speaker 4: Too many Trump parties, right, too many strip clubs. One
Speaker 4: strip club was okay, but by the time it got
Speaker 4: to like the tenth strip club or.
Speaker 5: Whatever, it's the fourth adulterous affair, And you know, the
Speaker 5: mother's email was problematic, but I guess he was on
Speaker 5: as we record, he had, I think, done a fots
Speaker 5: interviewed this morning with them to try to rehabilitate him.
Speaker 4: I think the interesting thing to me about the Senate
Speaker 4: is you have Republicans there trying to stand up for
Speaker 4: their institutional prerogatives that are historic and well beloved by
Speaker 4: senators themselves at both parties, and I think there's a
Speaker 4: meaningful number of Republican centators who don't want to get
Speaker 4: steamrolled by Trump. And that obviously first surfaced with Gates,
Speaker 4: but actually it surfaced before Gates. It surfaced with the
Speaker 4: tussle over the Senate Majority leader, right where there was
Speaker 4: obviously pressure by the MAGA Lonis to have Rick Scott
Speaker 4: the in the Senate Majority leader.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the richest man in the world, Leon Musk.
Speaker 4: Yes, And there was a social media pressure for that,
Speaker 4: and within Marlo Lago there was pressure for it, and
Speaker 4: the Senate said no, John Thup, And I think that
Speaker 4: was an important moment. Whether or not that means they
Speaker 4: have the kind of backbone you would want for them
Speaker 4: to stand up for core American values for the next
Speaker 4: four years, we'll have to see, but they certainly felt like, no,
Speaker 4: we will run our house the way we want, not
Speaker 4: the way Donald Trump wants to. And then Gates got punted.
Speaker 4: And you know you saw Stusan Collins and some others
Speaker 4: early on say yeah, I don't know, this one makes
Speaker 4: me nervous. That started to happen around Haig step. But
Speaker 4: when you look at the list, we still have Tulcy
Speaker 4: Gabbert in there, and on and on, and you know,
Speaker 4: Robert Kennedy Jr. You know, these aren't confident people with
Speaker 4: long track records. And Trump is flooding the zones. So
Speaker 4: the Stenate really to play a meaningful role here is
Speaker 4: going to have to stand up repeatedly. And I don't
Speaker 4: know if they've got the appetite or interest in doing that.
Speaker 4: Will have to see.
Speaker 1: I wrote this piece this week where I said, you know,
Speaker 1: the Senate must be forced to stand up because Article two,
Speaker 1: Section two, this is our job, Timothy Snyder, protect institutions.
Speaker 1: This is an institution in the Senate protecting a really
Speaker 1: important institution, the President's cabinet.
Speaker 2: I wrote this, and then I thought, you're such an idiot.
Speaker 2: They're not going to protect the institutions.
Speaker 1: Like and a lot of pundits were saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they only can take one scalp, so this means everyone
Speaker 1: else is going to get through.
Speaker 4: That is the test of the Trump era is whether
Speaker 4: or not people will transcend their narrow electoral interests or
Speaker 4: of being sliined by Donald Trump. To simply say, I
Speaker 4: believe in that. You know, everyone remarks on Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 4: for good reason as a sort of standard bearer for
Speaker 4: doing the right thing. But he had a moral code
Speaker 4: that he lived by and it governed his decisions his
Speaker 4: entire left, and he was fallible, but he died for
Speaker 4: those values, and he oversaw a war for those values.
Speaker 4: And we've done that throughout our history. Whether or not
Speaker 4: you know this Republican Party right now is willing to
Speaker 4: stand up for stuff that is baked into the Constitution
Speaker 4: is going to be tested with Trump in a way.
Speaker 4: It wasn't an administration because this first administration, he was
Speaker 4: in preschool. And I'm not prepared to say he's in
Speaker 4: college now because he needed help to get into college,
Speaker 4: as you recall. But he's in high school and he
Speaker 4: knows enough like to get the car keys and take
Speaker 4: the car somewhere from We'll have to see.
Speaker 1: But the central tension is still the same, right Trump
Speaker 1: with the aid of this Heritage Foundation, anti government wing
Speaker 1: of the repub Party. So it'll be there's going to
Speaker 1: be real tension between what Trump wants, which is to
Speaker 1: be popular and to spend money, and what this Heritage
Speaker 1: world wants.
Speaker 4: Right totally, and what they actually are prepared to absorb
Speaker 4: in the service of that vision. You know, the lion's
Speaker 4: share of government spending is entitlement programs, you know, Medicare, Medicaid,
Speaker 4: social Security plus defense. That's basically the whole mcgillo. They're
Speaker 4: not going to take anything out of defense spending. And
Speaker 4: by the way, Elon Musk benefits from big contracts as
Speaker 4: companies get through the Defense Department. So are they going
Speaker 4: to take out Social Security and alienate seniors while they're
Speaker 4: cutting taxes that make it harder to fund Social Security.
Speaker 4: The mathematics here are daunting, and the impact of what
Speaker 4: they're going to do, if they really intend to carry
Speaker 4: it out, is daunting. And that comes back to how
Speaker 4: much of a bomb thrower is Donald Trump? Is he
Speaker 4: willing to sort of detonate his parties alone actual prospects
Speaker 4: because he's only going to stay for one term. In theory,
Speaker 4: or are they going to start to look at what
Speaker 4: blowback they get when they try to implement some of
Speaker 4: these things and they'll back down again. I feel like
Speaker 4: it's hard to predict which way that's going to go.
Speaker 1: No, no, exactly, and I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: It's also a lot is at stake here. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you, Tim.
Speaker 4: O'Brien, Thank you, Molly. It's always a treat talking rule.
Speaker 1: Molly Redden is a reporter of Pro Publica. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6: Molly, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to be here. I'm really excited to have you.
Speaker 1: Before we start this interview, I just want to be
Speaker 1: very annoying here to.
Speaker 2: Our listeners for a second. You right, for Pro Publica.
Speaker 1: There's like a new, very scary phenomenon where the left
Speaker 1: is also mad at.
Speaker 2: The mainstream media.
Speaker 1: And I know that a lot of listeners' podcast are
Speaker 1: slightly on the left, varying degrees, some center left, some
Speaker 1: center center. But without reporting like what you do, all
Speaker 1: of Trump's nominees would have sailed through all of the
Speaker 1: things that Trump is doing behind the scenes to undermine
Speaker 1: the federal government. Would work, and so it's just so
Speaker 1: important that we support organizations like Pro Publica.
Speaker 2: Okay, anyway, it's done.
Speaker 1: Sorry, that's very annoying, but you wrote this great piece,
Speaker 1: really important about how Trump plans to seize the power
Speaker 1: of the person from Congress. This is like not getting
Speaker 1: nearly as much attention as the sexy nominees who are
Speaker 1: you know, alcoholic lunatics. But this is the sort of
Speaker 1: russ Vat kind of stuff that's happening behind the scenes
Speaker 1: and so important.
Speaker 2: So can you talk to us about this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Thanks, So okay. At its very most basic impoundment is
Speaker 6: this theory that the president does not have to actually
Speaker 6: spend the money that Congress appropriates, so spending bills, the
Speaker 6: federal budget, it starts in Congress, it gets negotiated in Congress,
Speaker 6: and then they pass a budget or they pass budget bills,
Speaker 6: bills funding programs and services that we're all familiar with,
Speaker 6: and then the president signs them and you know, executive brand,
Speaker 6: the president has a lot of power to decide how
Speaker 6: the money gets spent in order to accomplish the goals
Speaker 6: that Congress spelled out. But under our constitution, the president
Speaker 6: doesn't get a line item veto. The president doesn't get
Speaker 6: to say, no, I don't like that program, so I'm
Speaker 6: not spending the money. And what Trump and some of
Speaker 6: his very close budget advisors the theory that they're pushing
Speaker 6: is actually, yes, he does. He does get to say
Speaker 6: that if he simply doesn't like a program, if he
Speaker 6: thinks it's wasteful, he can impound the funds or simply
Speaker 6: refuse to spend them.
Speaker 1: That seems like a very big shift in the way
Speaker 1: Congress operates. How would mag a world be able to
Speaker 1: do this.
Speaker 6: It would be a huge shift, you know. Right now,
Speaker 6: the executive branch, as I said, they do have some
Speaker 6: control over how money gets spent. They get to decide
Speaker 6: what are the parameters for a program getting this grant
Speaker 6: for example, again a very basic example, but yeah, it
Speaker 6: would be an enormous shift. It would essentially say Congress
Speaker 6: doesn't have the power of the person anymore. Congress can
Speaker 6: never tell a president to spend money. It can only
Speaker 6: give him the option. It would take an Act of
Speaker 6: Congress to one overturn a law that they passed in
Speaker 6: the seventies after Richard Nixon tried to pull this off
Speaker 6: and Ah clarified, no, we think the Constitution says that, like,
Speaker 6: you absolutely cannot do that, and then it would probably
Speaker 6: also take a Supreme Court challenge because not only is
Speaker 6: there this law, and the law at its most basic
Speaker 6: says it's called the Impolment Control active nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 6: and it clarifies that the president can't just kill programs
Speaker 6: he opposes or are exceptions, but it clarifies that we beleep.
Speaker 6: The Constitution says you can't do that. But also this
Speaker 6: is a really radical reading of the Constitution, and so
Speaker 6: there would probably be a court challenge. There would probably
Speaker 6: be multiple federal court challenges if they tried to defund
Speaker 6: certain programs using impoundment, and you know, it would probably
Speaker 6: ultimately wind up at the Supreme Court. And just a
Speaker 6: note too on overturning this Impoundment Control Act, they're essentially
Speaker 6: asking Congress to give up one of their very core duties.
Speaker 6: And I think that's really important to emphasize. I mean,
Speaker 6: you talked about some of Trump's planned nominations for his
Speaker 6: cabinet that are now facing trouble, and I think it's
Speaker 6: really important to understand that doing this this would really
Speaker 6: take Congress just sort of rolling over and giving Trump
Speaker 6: exactly what he wants, and that that is a real
Speaker 6: step here and a real open question. Trump has said
Speaker 6: he wants to see the Senate go into recess so
Speaker 6: he can make recess appointments and his various nominations don't
Speaker 6: have to face public scrutiny. And so far senators have said,
Speaker 6: we're not really interested in giving up one of our
Speaker 6: horror jobs here. And so I think it's really important
Speaker 6: to think about, you know, there are actors here who
Speaker 6: are going to face choices if he tries to pick
Speaker 6: this fite over impoundments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump again and again comes back to the Nixon playbook. Right,
Speaker 1: he did this in his first administration. He's trying to
Speaker 1: undermine some of the legal anti corruption stuff put in
Speaker 1: after Nixon. Like, we really do see how democracy could
Speaker 1: have gone off the rails after Nixon. But there were
Speaker 1: Republicans who weren't complete partisans.
Speaker 2: Now that is not the case.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I struck by is that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of use of these unusual or just
Speaker 1: sort of not typical, you know, things that are not
Speaker 1: you know, haven't been used in a long time, like
Speaker 1: the Comstock Act or the Alien Enemies Act, things that
Speaker 1: were not repealed but really are not in practice, and
Speaker 1: then also sort of taking away acts like this act.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about this sort of weird way
Speaker 1: they're going through legislation and picking and choosing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so, okay, some of the history here, there are
Speaker 6: some historical examples of presidents saying I'm not going to
Speaker 6: spend the money that Congress appropriated for this program.
Speaker 2: Ooh, excellent, tell me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I had to learn about gunboats on
Speaker 6: the Mississippi for this story. And this is sort of
Speaker 6: like the original or example for constitutional scholars who are
Speaker 6: into this debate. Thomas Jefferson eighteen oh three said he
Speaker 6: was not going to spend some money that Congress appropriated
Speaker 6: to place gunboats on the Mississippi River. And the debate
Speaker 6: over this is the law in the text of the
Speaker 6: law itself said we're giving you money for no more
Speaker 6: than fifteen gun boats and no more than fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: And what that meant was Jefferson essentially had discretion to
Speaker 6: decide whether or not this money was necessary to spend,
Speaker 6: and that was written down in the text of the law,
Speaker 6: and he said, I don't think this is necessary, and
Speaker 6: those are the kinds of examples you see throughout history
Speaker 6: is presidents taking these like really narrow exceptions that Congress
Speaker 6: actually allowed them to make. You know, Congress said like, hey,
Speaker 6: they're almost all in the military context. So Congress is
Speaker 6: essentially saying like, hey, we understand this is a military situation.
Speaker 6: Things shift rapidly on the ground, more rapidly than we
Speaker 6: Congress can respond to, and so we're giving you, like
Speaker 6: we're actually writing down that you do have the option.
Speaker 6: And so throughout history, when you see presidents exercising their
Speaker 6: impoundment ability or claiming they have that ability, it's usually
Speaker 6: in that context, and sometimes they get challenged and sometimes
Speaker 6: they back down. What Nixon did was take this theory
Speaker 6: to a new extreme and tried to use the concept
Speaker 6: of that he had this impoundment power to gut billions
Speaker 6: of dollars from programs he simply didn't like water treatment,
Speaker 6: drug rehabilitation programs, and local communities disaster relief for farmers.
Speaker 6: He thought this was wasteful spending. But in these budget bills,
Speaker 6: Congress never said, hey, up to you. These standard appropriations
Speaker 6: that Congress was making for programs that they had a
Speaker 6: baited felt represented their constituents and Nixon just didn't like them.
Speaker 6: Organizations and programs took Nixon took court about a half
Speaker 6: dozen federal judges rules that just on the text of
Speaker 6: the law, you can't do this. The Supreme Court ultimately waited,
Speaker 6: and not on the constitutional issue of when he could
Speaker 6: do this, but again reading the text of the law
Speaker 6: and saying, no, these laws don't give you the flexibility
Speaker 6: to cut these programs. So he lost almost across the
Speaker 6: board in federal court when these were decided on the merits.
Speaker 6: And then also Congress stepped in to pass a law
Speaker 6: after Watergate saying just to clarify, you cannot do that.
Speaker 6: That's sort of where we are. And since then generally
Speaker 6: presidents have understood, like, I don't get a line item
Speaker 6: veido when they've sort of tried again and they've gotten
Speaker 6: shot down in various contexts. And that's the fight that
Speaker 6: Trump wants to pick. One way he wants to do
Speaker 6: that is through Listeners are probably familiar with the Vidic
Speaker 6: Gramaswami and Elon Musk committee that's going to propose about
Speaker 6: two trillion in cuts, they say, doze or the Department
Speaker 6: of Government Efficiency. There are lots of tools that they
Speaker 6: could use to try to those cuts. But this is
Speaker 6: one of the ones that they have talked about. They've
Speaker 6: talked about sort of being the Supreme Court last case.
Speaker 6: In a recent Wall Street Journal op ed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it strikes me that it seems like the crew
Speaker 1: addoge wants to work with the sort of heritage crew,
Speaker 1: the Russ spot at omb that these are two separate
Speaker 1: groups that have interest that collide. Is there more connection
Speaker 1: here than we're seeing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this idea, this impoundment idea, comes from a man
Speaker 6: who you and I have talked about poor named Russ Vote.
Speaker 6: He was the Office of Management and Budget director in
Speaker 6: Trump's first term, and that is the office that that
Speaker 6: has that power I was talking about earlier to sort
Speaker 6: of decide, Okay, Congress wrote us the check, how do
Speaker 6: we get the money out the door in a way
Speaker 6: that aligns with our politics, our ideology. That's essentially what
Speaker 6: the Office of Management and Budget does under any president.
Speaker 6: They're the gatekeeper for the flow of money, and it's
Speaker 6: a political appointment, so you can make political decisions about
Speaker 6: it to some extent. So after the first Trump administration,
Speaker 6: he found a think tank that really tried to spread
Speaker 6: this idea, but Vote, who Trump has now said he
Speaker 6: wants in this role again in his second administration. He
Speaker 6: is really skilled at finding other ways that don't pick
Speaker 6: this high level impoundment fight to control the flow of
Speaker 6: money in a way that achieves the MAGA goals. And
Speaker 6: you know, that's something that Muska and Ramaswami have also
Speaker 6: talked about, that they don't want to just use this
Speaker 6: impoundment power. They want to change the classification for lots
Speaker 6: of civil servants. This is another idea that Vote and
Speaker 6: his think tank, which is called the Center for Anew
Speaker 6: in America, that they've popularized that Trump can reclassify tens
Speaker 6: of thousands of civil servants so that they can be
Speaker 6: fired more easily to schedule effs, and Vote was instrumental
Speaker 6: and putting that partially in place at the very very
Speaker 6: tail end of the Trump administration for his department. The
Speaker 6: Biden administration rolled that back, but there are all signals
Speaker 6: that when the Trump administration gets into office again that
Speaker 6: they are going to reinstate that they're going to reinstate
Speaker 6: that for a really broad class of civil servants. Fifty
Speaker 6: thousand is a number that gets thrown around a lot,
Speaker 6: and so that's another way that they can cut the budget,
Speaker 6: not only through you know, those civil servants salaries, but
Speaker 6: the programs they oversee, the things that they execute exactly.
Speaker 1: This is like one of these things where it seems
Speaker 1: like it's going to be very hard for them to
Speaker 1: do this, But it also seems like these are the
Speaker 1: smartest people in Trump world. Not Elon or Leon as
Speaker 1: Trump calls him in vague but vaugh seems very very smart.
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering, you just talked to me through
Speaker 1: the legal challenges that this would would hit, but like, politically,
Speaker 1: don't you think this is going to be hard for them?
Speaker 6: I think it will be very difficult for them. Part
Speaker 6: of the way that I predict, based on the first
Speaker 6: Trump administration, they will try to get around that difficulty
Speaker 6: is that even impoundment, if they choose not to pick
Speaker 6: the fight very publicly, can be done subtly or secretly,
Speaker 6: or moves that achieve the same thing as impoundment without
Speaker 6: being technically impoundment, that achieve the goal of we just
Speaker 6: don't want to spend this federal money for you know,
Speaker 6: whatever reason. That can be done very quietly and subtly.
Speaker 6: The federal government is big, dense. The number of people
Speaker 6: who like understand what technical impoundment looks like, what a
Speaker 6: change and a grant rule looks like. That is achieving
Speaker 6: a political goal. It's small, it's technical. It's annoying to
Speaker 6: figure out. I mean, the best example we have of
Speaker 6: Trump using his impoundment powers or trying to is at
Speaker 6: the end of his first term when he held up
Speaker 6: about four hundred million dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as a way to try to pressure President Zelenski
Speaker 6: and opening your corruption Investigationiden, right, Yeah, part of that money,
Speaker 6: not all four hundred million. But a US Government Accountability
Speaker 6: office later ruled that that violated the Impoundment Control Act,
Speaker 6: the seventy four Nixon Law, and that only came to
Speaker 6: light because of whistleblowers. Some of it was reported at
Speaker 6: the time, but sort of the extent and the ask,
Speaker 6: the corrupt ask involved the fact that it was for
Speaker 6: ideological reasons, not for you know, oh, technically we feel
Speaker 6: we don't need to spend this money reasons. Part of
Speaker 6: that came to light through a whistleblower, and so you know,
Speaker 6: even that it took time, it took investigation to establish
Speaker 6: that that's what was going on here. And in the meantime,
Speaker 6: Trump has lots of other lovers that he legally can
Speaker 6: pull to just not spend money or maybe arguably legally.
Speaker 6: One example somebody pointed out to me is after some
Speaker 6: really devastating wildfires in California and Washington during his term,
Speaker 6: Trump just refused to sign Master deck Work.
Speaker 2: Right I remember this, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Like in one case, indefinitely. In one case he eventually
Speaker 6: did do it, but that's because he didn't want to
Speaker 6: unlock federal relief aid for states that hadn't voted for him.
Speaker 6: And that is a power that the president has whether
Speaker 6: or not to sign a federal disaster declaration, and it
Speaker 6: unlocks about of money if he does, so, you know,
Speaker 6: those are there's a huge range of things he can
Speaker 6: do to simply stop money going out the door. And
Speaker 6: it's going to you know, it's complicated, it's subtle. It's
Speaker 6: going to take investigation to find out.
Speaker 2: That is wild. I mean, I shouldn't say wild.
Speaker 1: It's really really insane and scary and also just something
Speaker 1: that we need to be doggedly following.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate you, Molly, thanks so much.
Speaker 6: For having me.
Speaker 2: No moment full Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: Oh Molly, there's going to be so much more. This
Speaker 3: isn't there So a court and Idaho has ruled that
Speaker 3: they can ban interstate abortion travel for minors. What are
Speaker 3: you seeing here?
Speaker 2: We know this was coming right.
Speaker 1: This is the thing where Trump said he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to ban abortion on a federal level, and then here
Speaker 1: we are with these little kind of chip away on abortion.
Speaker 1: So here is another idea here that Idaho wants to
Speaker 1: keep minors from being able to travel for an abortion.
Speaker 2: This is not okay.
Speaker 1: It supposedly states rights that now you can't travel to
Speaker 1: a different state. I mean, it's just this is where
Speaker 1: this is all going. This is all going to a
Speaker 1: federal band. This is all going to you know, women
Speaker 1: having less and less rights. The Idaho Attorney General, a
Speaker 1: vocal opponent of abortion, called the ruling a tremendous victory.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more dystopia. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening,