Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Jetty and he Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 2: Speaking of the Pope, the trading card company Tops said
Speaker 2: that Pope Leo's new card just became their best selling.
Speaker 1: Nonsports trading card of all time.
Speaker 2: My guess is, if you collect pope trading cards, you're
Speaker 2: probably more celibate than the Pope.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, boy ouch, I see his point. I'm kidding.
Speaker 3: Talking to Tim Sander for this hour of the Goldwater
Speaker 3: Institute about the recent Supreme Court oral arguments about ostensibly
Speaker 3: the birthright citizenship question the Fourteenth Amendment, But what most
Speaker 3: of the hearing was about was can a single federal
Speaker 3: judge issue anation wide injunction and stop an administration from
Speaker 3: executing its policy for a significant amount of time? What
Speaker 3: are the reasons why that's a good idea and what
Speaker 3: are the reasons why it's a bad idea?
Speaker 1: And we'll discuss that. Yeah, looking forward to it.
Speaker 3: Will be a little cerebral, so you know, get yourself
Speaker 3: in the right.
Speaker 1: Mood, bring your brain well.
Speaker 4: It sure is tiring to every time the a president
Speaker 4: does something, then you get alerts on your phone. A
Speaker 4: judge in Minneapolis has said no, Joe Biden can't do that,
Speaker 4: and then another judge.
Speaker 1: Somewhere else says, yes he can.
Speaker 3: It's back on, and you know the back and forth, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting challenge because that sort of thing has
Speaker 3: been skyrocketing in recent years. They it was practically unknown
Speaker 3: for the first one hundred and fifty years of our country,
Speaker 3: and then there it happened once or twice here and
Speaker 3: there every decade and a half. And now it's like
Speaker 3: every three weeks. So anyway, more on that to come.
Speaker 3: Headline today. Of more immediate concern, I think to most
Speaker 3: folks is from the Wall Street Journal tech department. Meta
Speaker 3: battles an epidemic of scams as criminals flood Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 3: And this is by the standards of like six months ago.
Speaker 3: It's a flood. Compared to that, fake puppies and phony
Speaker 3: offers of mouthwatering bargains are often seated by overseas crime networks.
Speaker 3: Employees see say the company is reluctant to impede its
Speaker 3: advertising juggernauts.
Speaker 4: So I did start to get into Facebook Marketplace because
Speaker 4: somebody told me I mentioned I was using Craigslist for something.
Speaker 4: They said, Craigslist. Nobody uses Craigslist anymore. Everything's on Facebook Marketplace.
Speaker 4: I thought, okay, I'm probably behind the times. But particularly
Speaker 4: I was looking for coincidentally, an Apple Vision pro headset,
Speaker 4: and there were so many, so cheap, and it was like,
Speaker 4: you know, deal's too good to be true. And then
Speaker 4: I started doing a little researching and there's lots of
Speaker 4: fake Apple products out there.
Speaker 1: And then so.
Speaker 4: Then I just don't know how much of the marketplace
Speaker 4: thing is phony, and I just kind of bailed on
Speaker 4: the whole deal.
Speaker 1: But wow, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: They open with a guy who runs a like a
Speaker 3: wholesale home improvement supplies garden equipment in bulk out of
Speaker 3: a suburban Atlanta warehouse, and bunches of people have been
Speaker 3: ripped off thinking they're buying from him, and when the
Speaker 3: products never arrived, they all call him to complain.
Speaker 1: He has to tell them the bad news they've been swindled.
Speaker 1: Oh that sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what sucks, he says, is we have to break
Speaker 3: it to be layd been scammed.
Speaker 1: We don't even do online sales.
Speaker 3: We keep reporting these pages to Meta, but nothing ever
Speaker 3: happens meta platforms.
Speaker 1: The or companies, yes.
Speaker 4: Or metas trying and they can't go as fast as
Speaker 4: the people keep putting them back up.
Speaker 1: He can probably have.
Speaker 4: An AI bot that puts them up faster than they
Speaker 4: could be taken down.
Speaker 3: That's possible, although that's not what the article suggests.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Meta platforms is increasingly a cornerstone of the Internet fraud economy.
Speaker 3: According to regulators, banks, and internal documents reviewed by the journal,
Speaker 3: The company accounted for nearly half of all reported scams
Speaker 3: on Zel. It's a payment service you might use. The
Speaker 3: peer to peer payment platform is owned by several banking giants,
Speaker 3: including JP Morgan and Wells Fargo. Other banks that offer
Speaker 3: Zel have experienced similarly high fraud claims originating on Meta.
Speaker 3: British and Australian regulators have found similar levels of fraud
Speaker 3: originating on metas platforms. Internal analysis from twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: described in company documents Likewise, found that seventy percent of
Speaker 3: newly active advertisers on the platform are promoting scams, illicit goods,
Speaker 3: or low quality products.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because Craigslist was huge for a long time,
Speaker 4: destroyed newspapers across the country. We all went to Craigslist,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure there were plenty of scams on Craigslist,
Speaker 4: but I didn't. I wasn't never I used Crazelist a lot,
Speaker 4: never came up against a scam. But on the Facebook
Speaker 4: marketplace it seems to be all over the place. I
Speaker 4: wonder what the difference is. Just the Internet era that
Speaker 4: we're in now.
Speaker 3: Is different, yes, and I think the criminal enterprises have
Speaker 3: caught up to the opportunities. But again, going back two
Speaker 3: and a half years, seven out of ten of newly
Speaker 3: active advertisers or scammers of some sort or another account
Speaker 3: information for the scam pages from the guy in Atlanta
Speaker 3: we talked about show they are run out of China,
Speaker 3: Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and the Philippines. But they use stolen
Speaker 3: pictures of the warehouse and list its address with more
Speaker 3: than three billion daily users on Meta's platforms.
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
Speaker 4: So those are advertisers, which is different than like, I
Speaker 4: just keep focusing on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Marketplace, right advertisers?
Speaker 4: Well, like, go on your Facebook marketplace, tap in Apple
Speaker 4: Watch near you and try to figure out which of
Speaker 4: those ads are real and which are a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of them have to be fake.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of them.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, seventy percent perhaps, But anyway, with more than
Speaker 3: three billion daily users on Metas platforms, fraud is hardly
Speaker 3: a new phenomenon for the company. But fed by the
Speaker 3: rise of cryptocurrencies, generative AI, and vast overseas crime networks
Speaker 3: based out of Southeast Asia, the immensity of metas scam
Speaker 3: problem is growing and has been regularly flagged by employees
Speaker 3: over the last several years. But here's where you get
Speaker 3: into the are they really trying hard? As Jack, who's
Speaker 3: plainly under the pay of Mark Zuckerberg, tried to claim.
Speaker 4: I wish I could current, Ay, Mark, I could be yeah, Mark,
Speaker 4: reach out to I'm.
Speaker 3: Sign to our DMS or whatever you do on Facebook,
Speaker 3: I'm not on it. But anyway, current and former employees
Speaker 3: say Meta is reluctant to add impediments for ad buying clients,
Speaker 3: who drove a twenty two percent increase in advertising last
Speaker 3: year to over one hundred and sixty billion dollars, even
Speaker 3: after users demonstrate a history of scamming. If the checks
Speaker 3: keep coming Meta Box and removing.
Speaker 4: Them, that's unbelievable. Well, our whole lives of You know,
Speaker 4: if you're anywhere near our age, you grew up with.
Speaker 1: Radio and TV.
Speaker 4: Every single ad you heard, minus like three were legit
Speaker 4: and your whole life.
Speaker 1: I mean, just you didn't have endless scam advertisers.
Speaker 3: On radio and TV all day long, right, right, there
Speaker 3: was some sort of gatekeeper involved. There's the occasional buyer
Speaker 3: be where a question of quality or value or whatever,
Speaker 3: but not just a right you give them your money
Speaker 3: and never get anything back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. So here's here's the really damning part of this.
Speaker 3: Current and former employees say Meta is reluctant to add impediments,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. Uh one late last year document
Speaker 3: reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows that the company
Speaker 3: will allow advertisers to accrue between eight and thirty two
Speaker 3: automated strikes for financial fraud before it bans their accounts.
Speaker 3: I mean eight and thirty two.
Speaker 4: In instances where a Meta employee personally escalates the problem,
Speaker 4: the limit can drop to between four and sixteen. The
Speaker 4: correct number is one, yeah, or zero, depending on how
Speaker 4: you look at it.
Speaker 1: You know, one striking, you're out. That's crazy.
Speaker 3: And marketplace is a big part of the problem because
Speaker 3: that is advertising, but a meta spokesmans is the company's
Speaker 3: working to address the epidemic of scams that has grown
Speaker 3: in scale and complexity in recent years, driven by cross
Speaker 3: border criminal networks.
Speaker 1: And I hate to come off as a racist or
Speaker 1: something here, but.
Speaker 4: I would look at again, looking at applevision pro headsets.
Speaker 4: They cost like three thousand dollars new, and I was
Speaker 4: seeing them on there sometimes as low as like eight
Speaker 4: hundred dollars, nine hundred dollars, and it.
Speaker 1: Would be attached to some Middle Eastern name.
Speaker 4: Now that doesn't automatically make it a scam, I know that,
Speaker 4: but it seemed like all the really low priced ones
Speaker 4: without a box where some foreign name yeah, and so
Speaker 4: I don't know, and then the other end of this
Speaker 4: and then we can move on.
Speaker 3: And we talked about this, I think a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks ago. The report estimated organized scamming operations, often called
Speaker 3: pig butchering groups, comprised hundreds of thousands of people. Many
Speaker 3: of the scammers trafficked after falling for fraudulent social media
Speaker 3: employment adds themselves kept in prison like compounds. The workers
Speaker 3: are forced to work under threat of extreme forms of
Speaker 3: torture and abuse.
Speaker 1: In the United States. No, in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 4: In Southeast Asia, yeah, I couldn't tell that are just
Speaker 4: originated there and they're getting to people there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so getting Yeah.
Speaker 3: They have warehouses full of people who will be whipped, beaten,
Speaker 3: and tortured if they don't try to scam you, you know,
Speaker 3: eighteen hours a day.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then this law enforcement gal who's looking into this
Speaker 3: says the growth of this nightmarish industry stems directly from
Speaker 3: the inaction of Meta, and to lesser extent, it's social
Speaker 3: media peers.
Speaker 4: Well, all I need to hear is you have an
Speaker 4: eighteen strikes in your out policy.
Speaker 1: I mean, what the hell is that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, beyond buyer beware, I'm not sure I'd even
Speaker 3: want to wade into that.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I bailed.
Speaker 4: I was really interested in buying an Apple product and
Speaker 4: finally just decided it's too big a mess for me
Speaker 4: to deal with.
Speaker 1: I'd forget. Hey, here's one more example.
Speaker 3: I can't resist because peer to peer sales are trade
Speaker 3: of live animals are banned on Meta outside of narrow contexts.
Speaker 4: Peer to peer, So if another talk show host wanted
Speaker 4: to buy a goat.
Speaker 3: From me, no, just like another user, okay, another facebooker.
Speaker 3: But a recent search for puppies yielded thousands of ads,
Speaker 3: most stating no affiliation with a known dog reader or
Speaker 3: rescue organization. As Meta's rules require, other red flags abounded.
Speaker 3: Many of the results displayed common hallmarks of scams, including
Speaker 3: stolen photos of specific pets and ads from sellers supposedly
Speaker 3: near me who are actually operating out of Cameroon checking locations.
Speaker 1: I am not in Cameroon. I'm going to see I'm
Speaker 1: going to see the Cameroon puppies tonight.
Speaker 3: They're good, but so loud. Bring earplugs. So you know
Speaker 3: Facebook has these, and Instagram the Meta. You know outlets
Speaker 3: have these alleged rules, but they have zero interest or
Speaker 3: practically no interest in enforcing them.
Speaker 4: Zuckerberg, come on, you're smart, dude. That's some short term thinking.
Speaker 4: If enough people like me bail from the marketplace because
Speaker 4: they think there's too many fraudsters, then you get nothing.
Speaker 1: It's like the Laffer tax curve. I mean, if everybody.
Speaker 4: Decides it's full of frauds, you're you're not gonna make
Speaker 4: more money, You're gonna make zero money.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm chump. I'm channeling Mark Zuckerberg. I am gifted
Speaker 1: in the psychic arts. He's speaking to me, speaking through me, Jack,
Speaker 1: I'm all already a billionaire.
Speaker 3: Shut up, Mark Zuckerberg waiting in there.
Speaker 4: Or more likely he's just trying to keep these quarterly
Speaker 4: numbers up. I'll worry about the next quarter.
Speaker 1: Next quarter.
Speaker 3: Scammers checks, they cash baby, that's what he's thinking.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: I wonder what we'll go to if Mark if back
Speaker 4: to Criggs list, you're back to classified in your local newspaper.
Speaker 3: Radio Saturday mornings, I got a sat of snow tires.
Speaker 3: I'm willing to trade for a life boat or something similar.
Speaker 3: On numbers five, five, twelve.
Speaker 4: Twelve, Tim sander for this hour to talk about the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court arguments from yesterday, among other things.
Speaker 5: Passenger recently shared a video of roaches in the cabin
Speaker 5: of a Spirit Airlines flight.
Speaker 1: Wow, they really can survive anything. That's a twist. That's
Speaker 1: a good punchline.
Speaker 4: I like that Supreme Court arguments yesterday about whether or
Speaker 4: not all these federal judge across the country can say
Speaker 4: no to presidents and their executive orders. And we'll discuss
Speaker 4: that with Tim Sanderford coming up. It's pretty interesting topic.
Speaker 4: This is also an interesting topic, trying to find unbiased
Speaker 4: or the least biased news out there. This was sent
Speaker 4: to me from Ping Pong Olympics broadcaster Jim Kozmoor of
Speaker 4: among other things that he's done in his life, he's
Speaker 4: a big fan of News Nation and he's been trying
Speaker 4: to get me to watch News Nation for he was
Speaker 4: the first person ever turned me on to Fox News,
Speaker 4: like twenty five years ago. He said, fair and balanced,
Speaker 4: you gotta watch it. So I started watching Fox after
Speaker 4: years of CNN and whatever. And then he's been hammering
Speaker 4: News Nation for a while and he sent me this.
Speaker 4: This is this media bias chart from a company that
Speaker 4: does this for a living. And as I've been saying,
Speaker 4: I started watching NewsNation a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 4: it's it's so it's so weirdly non confrontational.
Speaker 1: It almost feels drop.
Speaker 4: I am like boring, and I have to keep reminding
Speaker 4: myself that confrontation isn't what you're looking for out of
Speaker 4: every news story.
Speaker 1: You're just trying to get the facts.
Speaker 4: And it's just it's we're all so used to everything
Speaker 4: being presented in a shouty way from one side anyway,
Speaker 4: this company that looks at media bias.
Speaker 1: They're top four slots were all News Nation programs throughout
Speaker 1: the day that had the least.
Speaker 4: Media bias, with number five being Brettbear Special Report on Fox,
Speaker 4: which is another news show we all like around here.
Speaker 4: So I just say, give it a look. It is
Speaker 4: it is. It is weird if you're used to like
Speaker 4: a strong point of view and anger. We've all gotten
Speaker 4: so accustomed to it. It just I don't know. I
Speaker 4: guess it's like people who are addicted to drama. If you
Speaker 4: grew up in a family that had lots of drama
Speaker 4: and then you go and hang out with some family
Speaker 4: that has zero drama, maybe it seems like uncomfortably boring
Speaker 4: to you to where the family if no drama likes
Speaker 4: it that way.
Speaker 1: Right, Sure, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I once heard a couple of describing the fact that
Speaker 3: he came from a family that was very I can't
Speaker 3: remember which was switching, that doesn't matter. That was very
Speaker 3: English and hers was very Italian, and if you know
Speaker 3: anything about those cultures, that would be a tough thing
Speaker 3: to get used to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eat a direction.
Speaker 4: I'm going to both the DMV and The Doctor today
Speaker 4: back to back, quick doctor's appointment and then to the DMV,
Speaker 4: which will be more bureaucratic, unfulfilling. I'm sorry, you don't
Speaker 4: have the right form. It's going to be quite the contest, well,
Speaker 4: and which will just be generally be more preferable being
Speaker 4: probed and jabbed with short sharp objects or being subjected
Speaker 4: to the special mental.
Speaker 1: Torture of the DMV.
Speaker 4: Right, this isn't the right form. I don't even know
Speaker 4: what to do at this point. And that could happen with.
Speaker 1: The insurance all right, or at the DMV either one. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true.
Speaker 3: Doctor's offices have really up their game, mostly unintentionally because
Speaker 3: now they have such compliance hurdles from the many thousands
Speaker 3: of laws and regulations. They're becoming more and more DMV
Speaker 3: like in some ways.
Speaker 4: I've been a couple of times in the last few years, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: where it's like emergency situation and man, they get that
Speaker 4: paperwork in front of you.
Speaker 1: Who's paying for this?
Speaker 4: Again? Sorry trying to talk over your screams, but who's
Speaker 4: paying for this?
Speaker 1: We need to make sure we know who's paying for
Speaker 1: this before we start in on any of these.
Speaker 3: The DMV has got to come up with an excuse
Speaker 3: or two to penetrate your body in one way or another.
Speaker 1: If they're going to keep up with doctors.
Speaker 4: Offices always have to throw in the caveat if you're
Speaker 4: like a working, honest person who's going to follow the law. Now,
Speaker 4: if I just said no, I'm here illegally from l. Salvador,
Speaker 4: they just go ahead and treat me and write it
Speaker 4: off somehow, and tax pers would pick up the bill.
Speaker 3: It's a good point. Yeah, yeah, we are paying for everyone. Congratulations,
Speaker 3: We thank you, Tim Sanders joining us. Yeah, the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 3: birthright citizenship nationwide injunctions by a single federal judge.
Speaker 1: What to make of all this? Coming up next? Stay
Speaker 1: with us, Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4: So I've been living this reality for a while now,
Speaker 4: and it's growing as a problem. A president decides to
Speaker 4: do something with an executive order or whatever, often that
Speaker 4: they promised on the campaign trail, their voters get all excited.
Speaker 1: Yay, they did it day one like they.
Speaker 4: Promised, And then then I get an alert on my phone.
Speaker 4: Some judge somewhere I've never heard of it said no,
Speaker 4: you can't do that, and then it stops, and everybody's
Speaker 4: like Groan's like, oh, they can do that, and it
Speaker 4: keeps happening over and over again, and uh, do we
Speaker 4: want that system to continue that way or not? As
Speaker 4: part of what the Supreme Court was arguing about yesterday,
Speaker 4: and as one of the justices said, there are six
Speaker 4: hundred some federal judges and while I do not question
Speaker 4: their motives, sometimes there are they are are wrong.
Speaker 1: So do we want them to be able to hold
Speaker 1: up the whole country?
Speaker 3: Let us discuss the very interesting and multifaceted oral arguments
Speaker 3: yesterday before the Supreme Court with Tim Sandefer, vice president
Speaker 3: for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute, among other auspicious titles,
Speaker 3: author of eight books, including most recently Freedom's Theories, How
Speaker 3: Isabel Patterson, Rosewilder and ein Rand Found Liberty and Age
Speaker 3: of Darkness.
Speaker 1: I've recommended it many times. It's terrific. Tim. How are you, sir?
Speaker 1: Just great?
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: Guys published poet. Gotta throw that in there. True, Yes,
Speaker 1: a polymath as they say.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Tim, so ostensibly everyone's talking about that we are
Speaker 3: going to discuss birthright citizenship in front of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: and that did come up. But would you agree that
Speaker 3: the more significant discussion was about nationwide injunctions by individual
Speaker 3: federal judges.
Speaker 5: Oh, yes, absolutely, that was the focus of the argument,
Speaker 5: and it was a very interesting argument. But I don't
Speaker 5: think that it's a hard question. I think the answer
Speaker 5: is obviously nationwide. The injunctions are perfectly fine. They're the
Speaker 5: ordinary way of doing business in the courts, and people
Speaker 5: who complain about them either don't understand the system or
Speaker 5: are trying to get away with something illegal.
Speaker 1: Yeah I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't always like that it happened, but I can't
Speaker 4: see what the alternative would be. As somebody pointed out,
Speaker 4: so you're gonna let me. I guess it was you
Speaker 4: that pointed it out yesterday in Twitter. The idea that
Speaker 4: so every time a president does something, it's got to
Speaker 4: work its way all the way through the courts up
Speaker 4: to the Supreme Court, and then a decision by the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court. Before the Supreme Court might say sometimes nine nothing,
Speaker 4: you can't do that.
Speaker 5: Oh wait, and during that whole period of time, the
Speaker 5: government is still doing the illegal thing.
Speaker 3: Right right, Wow, So clearly it's two to one for
Speaker 3: a judicial takeover of the government.
Speaker 1: But I will stand up for liberty.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Is there no middle ground.
Speaker 3: It's got to be three judge panel and not a
Speaker 3: single ya who in a rural Tennessee.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think. I think having a single unit ya
Speaker 5: who in rural Tennessee is perckly fine, because that's what
Speaker 5: the appellate process is sort of, that's why you appeal cases.
Speaker 5: And by the way, that's why you should avoid appointing
Speaker 5: yahoos to the federal bench. Might mention that too. The argument,
Speaker 5: the argument against nation right injunctions always seems to boil
Speaker 5: down to, well, this is a democracy and the majority
Speaker 5: should always get what it wants. And the answer to
Speaker 5: that is no where what happened to all of my
Speaker 5: friends who used to say, this is a republic, not
Speaker 5: a democracy. The whole point of our system is that
Speaker 5: the majority has to act lawfully, and if it acts unlawfully,
Speaker 5: I can go in front of a judge and get
Speaker 5: that given order from that judge prohibiting the government from
Speaker 5: violating my rights. And the idea that this that we
Speaker 5: should do this piece meal, that only a judge down here,
Speaker 5: that his order only applies there. Meanwhile, the government can
Speaker 5: do illegal things to everybody else in the country until
Speaker 5: the case reaches the US Supreme court makes no sense
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 3: The underlying theme here being, folks that what we really
Speaker 3: need to fear is the power of the government in
Speaker 3: this country is kind of the idea of forming it.
Speaker 3: So there's no question that these nationwide injunctions were relatively
Speaker 3: or practically completely unknown for one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 3: Then there were a handful of them, and the number
Speaker 3: of them is now skyrocks every day.
Speaker 1: It seems like on my phone, I see a judge
Speaker 1: jumped in.
Speaker 5: Someone Actually right, I actually don't think that that's true.
Speaker 5: I think that what happened was we just started calling
Speaker 5: them by a different name. You know, there were been
Speaker 5: injunction injunctions against unconstitutional government actions since before there was
Speaker 5: a constitution. One of the points that was brought up
Speaker 5: during the arguments was that British judges used to do
Speaker 5: this before the American Revolution, and that was considered perfectly legitimate.
Speaker 5: It's just that nowadays we call them nation right injunctions,
Speaker 5: or we have some judges who write sloppily and don't
Speaker 5: explain what they're actually saying or something, And okay, that's
Speaker 5: a problem, I suppose. But the idea that you should
Speaker 5: limit the injunction power of federal courts. Is what that
Speaker 5: is is that's open door to the majority violating individual
Speaker 5: rights on a scale that I mean, they already do it,
Speaker 5: but you can imagine what it would be if we
Speaker 5: took away one of the most important protections for individual
Speaker 5: rights in this country, which is getting an injunction from
Speaker 5: our federal court to protect their freedom. And that's insane.
Speaker 4: So I didn't want to get to this part too
Speaker 4: fast because you're a lawyer, and this part can't be
Speaker 4: fixed with the law.
Speaker 1: It seems to me.
Speaker 4: That we've got a cultural problem in that presidents are
Speaker 4: way more likely than they used to be to want
Speaker 4: to challenge the Supreme Court, either to like legitimately they
Speaker 4: don't think the law is correct, or they don't care
Speaker 4: if they're wrong.
Speaker 1: They just want to get the political credit for trying.
Speaker 4: And perhaps I don't know this, but it seems like
Speaker 4: a likely response. The six hundred some federal judges out there,
Speaker 4: there's a lot more of them who are willing to
Speaker 4: let their politics get ahead of their judge reasoning and
Speaker 4: jump in and stop somebody they hate.
Speaker 5: Yes, you're absolutely right about that, and especially the thing
Speaker 5: about the President and Congress being willing to do things
Speaker 5: that they know are unconstitutional because they know that the
Speaker 5: judges are going to strike it down, and they can
Speaker 5: blame the judges and say all those evil activist judges,
Speaker 5: or they can get away with their unconstitutional things. So
Speaker 5: it's win when if you want to do something unconstitutional.
Speaker 5: And honestly, every president's done this to some degree. Obviously
Speaker 5: Franklin Roosevelt did this a lot. But the one that
Speaker 5: I always six in my memory is George W. Bush
Speaker 5: when he signed the McCain fine Gold campaign finance law
Speaker 5: and said when he signed it that he thought it
Speaker 5: was unconstitutional, but that he would leave it to the
Speaker 5: courts to deal with. Well, I'm sorry, but if you're
Speaker 5: the president, you take an oath to support and defend
Speaker 5: the constitution of the United States. And if you ignore
Speaker 5: that oath and sign something that you know is unconstitutional
Speaker 5: just because you think the courts will clean up your
Speaker 5: mess for you, I think that's disgraceful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of the pieces I've read that have
Speaker 4: been following the growth of this use that as kind
Speaker 4: of like the patient zero because he said it out loud,
Speaker 4: and then other presidents thought.
Speaker 1: Hey, I can do that.
Speaker 4: I just won't say it out loud, and Obama did it,
Speaker 4: and Biden did it, and Trump did it in whichever order,
Speaker 4: and then Trump again, and and and it's how do
Speaker 4: we fix this?
Speaker 5: Well, there's a long answer and the short answer. The
Speaker 5: short answer is elect good presidents. The long answer is
Speaker 5: that we have to restore respect for the Constitution in
Speaker 5: this country. I think it's the long term damage that's
Speaker 5: been done to Americans understanding and appreciation of the Constitution
Speaker 5: is horrifying. We have prominent law professors. There was a
Speaker 5: law professor at at Georgetown Law School a few years
Speaker 5: ago published an article in The Washington Post saying, the
Speaker 5: Constitution is obsolete. I don't respect it at all. Well,
Speaker 5: you're a teacher of constitutional law for crying out loud.
Speaker 5: And if we don't respect the Constitution, we don't love it.
Speaker 5: It cannot protect us. The Constitution is just a promise,
Speaker 5: and if we don't honor that promise, then it's not
Speaker 5: worth the paper it's written on.
Speaker 3: We should have written a law specifically putting him in jail.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, Tim Sandefer is online from the Goldwater
Speaker 3: Institute Little Constitutional Humor for.
Speaker 1: Exactly punish one man.
Speaker 3: That's a good idea now so you know, blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: disclaimer about it's difficult to read the tea leaves of
Speaker 3: the oral arguments, blah blah blah. Did it strike you
Speaker 3: that the justices, the sane ones that we like, were
Speaker 3: leaning in any particular direction as to the nationwide injunctions judges,
Speaker 3: et cetera that we've been discussing.
Speaker 5: Some of the judges have made clear for a long
Speaker 5: time that they're against these what they call nationwide injunctions.
Speaker 5: Justice Thomas in particular. Some of the others are a
Speaker 5: little harder to read. Justice Barrett, for example, and Justice Roberts,
Speaker 5: who have become really the swing judges on this issue.
Speaker 5: I thought the most interesting judge if you want to
Speaker 5: if anybody wants to go and listen to the argument online,
Speaker 5: I thought Justice Jackson was the one who is the
Speaker 5: most interesting. She clearly understands how this area of the
Speaker 5: law works, and she rightly says there's no there there
Speaker 5: that nationwide injunctions are perfectly legitimate. They always have been
Speaker 5: and there's no problem. So she'd be the one that
Speaker 5: I find most interesting. But how to predict I think
Speaker 5: you're going to get. I think Justice Roberts and Justice
Speaker 5: Barrett are going to a side with the liberals and
Speaker 5: say we don't have a problem per se with nationwide injunction.
Speaker 5: But maybe some of them aren't very good, but as
Speaker 5: a blanket matter, they're okay. And then they're going to
Speaker 5: want to hear the underlying case about birthright citizenship, which
Speaker 5: obviously is a huge deal.
Speaker 1: That sound about right to me.
Speaker 3: Is it even worth getting into what happened on that
Speaker 3: topic yesterday or do you think it's.
Speaker 5: Well, they really just talked about whether or not they
Speaker 5: have a legitimate case in the first place, and they
Speaker 5: haven't really briefed it or argued it yet. But that's
Speaker 5: important because in order to get an injunction, you kind
Speaker 5: of have to first show that you have even an
Speaker 5: arguable point to make, and that was what they were
Speaker 5: arguing about. And I will say, I know this is
Speaker 5: talk radio, and we're all supposed to think that we
Speaker 5: clearly have the right answer and everything. I think the
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship question is a very hard question. I don't
Speaker 5: think it's an easy question on either side.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about that when we come back from the break.
Speaker 4: I want to hear the arguments on both sides.
Speaker 1: Of that.
Speaker 4: That's interesting And clearly you've probably seen the breakdown who
Speaker 4: speaks the most.
Speaker 1: The chicks talk too much? Is that given?
Speaker 5: Well, Jessic so to my r does love cutting off
Speaker 5: lawyers and not letting them answer her questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the chicks talk too so much.
Speaker 3: I think that's been in the new Gal talks more
Speaker 3: than anybody. That shouldn't happen in any organization. All right,
Speaker 3: more with Tim Sandefert in just a moment or two.
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Speaker 4: Tim's gonna stick around, and I got this question for
Speaker 4: him when we come back. He can think on should
Speaker 4: the media attached to every judge what president appointed him?
Speaker 1: Does that help us or hurt us? I love that one.
Speaker 1: On the way stay here.
Speaker 5: Strong.
Speaker 1: On the actual case itself, I've always thought.
Speaker 4: It's obvious that now is designed for slaves, and you
Speaker 4: shouldn't be able to be like a Chinese. A rich
Speaker 4: Chinese family that comes the United States, has your baby
Speaker 4: in San Francisco and then gets all the benefits of
Speaker 4: being a US citizen forever. But a lot of really
Speaker 4: smart people I like think there's a good reason for that.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to hearing that.
Speaker 3: Discussing the oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday with
Speaker 3: Tim Sanderfervice, President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.
Speaker 3: It was advertised as a birthright citizenship hearing it or discussion.
Speaker 3: It really was much more a discussion of individual federal
Speaker 3: judges and nationwide in junctions and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But to the question of the Fourteenth Amendment, Tim, you
Speaker 3: said before the break that it's not an easy call.
Speaker 3: I'm glad to hear you agree. I've thought the same thing.
Speaker 3: What should we know about the fourteenth Amendment even come
Speaker 3: to a semi intelligent opinion on this?
Speaker 5: Well, the first sentence of the fourteenth Amendment says, all
Speaker 5: persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
Speaker 5: to the jurisdiction thereof, are US citizens.
Speaker 1: And all of this.
Speaker 5: Case, all of these arguments turn on that phrase subject
Speaker 5: to the jurisdiction thereof. What does that phrase mean? It's
Speaker 5: really tough because the word jurisdiction is one of those
Speaker 5: words that can mean all sorts of different things. It
Speaker 5: basically means power, but there's all sorts of different kinds
Speaker 5: of power, and so that's what the argument turns on.
Speaker 5: Some people think that it means you have to follow
Speaker 5: the law born here, and you have to follow the law,
Speaker 5: then you're subject of the jurisdiction thereof, and then that
Speaker 5: means you're a citizen. But that doesn't really make a
Speaker 5: lot of sense because even foreign tourists who come here
Speaker 5: for a vacation have to follow the law. I mean,
Speaker 5: they have to stop at red lights and they can't
Speaker 5: steal things, So that can't be what that means, right. Instead,
Speaker 5: the other side argues jurisdiction thereof means some kind of
Speaker 5: loyalty or allegiance, that there's citizenship jurisdiction, as opposed to
Speaker 5: follow the law jurisdiction, and that difference. You can see
Speaker 5: that difference for example, in this if you're a foreign spy.
Speaker 5: Now you sneak into the country and you spy for
Speaker 5: some foreign country and you get it arrested, you can
Speaker 5: be prosecuted for espionage, but you cannot be prosecuted for treason.
Speaker 5: Why because you're not a US citizen and you don't
Speaker 5: owe loyalty to the US, so you cannot commit treason
Speaker 5: against the US. And so there's two different kinds of jurisdiction,
Speaker 5: is the argument. And so those who are against birthright
Speaker 5: citizenships say, subject of the jurisdiction means that your parents
Speaker 5: owed loyalty to the United States as opposed to some
Speaker 5: foreign country, and that would mean that illegal aliens if
Speaker 5: they have a child here, that child is not a
Speaker 5: sistant in the United States. Now, that's also there's a
Speaker 5: problem with that. There's a couple problems that. One of
Speaker 5: the problems of that argument is that nobody has ever
Speaker 5: said that that's what it means. In the one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty years since this has been in the Constitution,
Speaker 5: everybody has active like if you're born here, you're a
Speaker 5: citizen all of that time. And so suddenly discovering that
Speaker 5: we're at it turns out that we've been misreading the
Speaker 5: Constitution for one hundred and fifty years would be a huge,
Speaker 5: enormously radical transformation and how our system works. That would
Speaker 5: cause tremendous disruption nationwide, and that would be a real problem.
Speaker 5: But all of this, the real problem here in answering
Speaker 5: this question is that when the amendment was adopted, there
Speaker 5: were no such things as illegal aliens, because there were
Speaker 5: no laws against immigration, and that means if you're an
Speaker 5: originalist and you think the competition should be understood the
Speaker 5: way it was originally intended, the Framers didn't ever think
Speaker 5: about this because it wasn't against the law back then,
Speaker 5: So we don't know.
Speaker 4: What they would have thought about this question right right well,
Speaker 4: at the point that this enormously radical, disruptive president has overturned,
Speaker 4: that's when you tag me and Tim and I come
Speaker 4: in and explain to the good folks that look, the
Speaker 4: nature of global transportation, the movement of people or peoples
Speaker 4: from one place to another has changed so vastly.
Speaker 1: Joe's a living constitution guy. You can hear it coming.
Speaker 4: Out of what No, don't you dare know that the
Speaker 4: very nature of comings and goings from countries has been
Speaker 4: so radically transformed.
Speaker 1: A Chinese national with not the slightest.
Speaker 4: Notion of making life in the United States can can
Speaker 4: depart China, arrive here, give birth, go back to China,
Speaker 4: all in the span of.
Speaker 1: Seventy two hours.
Speaker 3: I'm inducing labor in this case, probably getting very lucky,
Speaker 3: and that.
Speaker 1: Child had citizenship.
Speaker 4: That's the eventuality unimaginable back in the day.
Speaker 5: Is the kids I think that that's sort of true.
Speaker 5: But on the other hand, the Chinese question came up
Speaker 5: back then because there were so many Chinese in California
Speaker 5: in the eighteen sixties, and senators rasked, well, isn't this
Speaker 5: going to make the children of the Chinese immigrants who
Speaker 5: back then did not intend to sty in the United States.
Speaker 5: They intended to go back to China. The senator's rast,
Speaker 5: does this make their kids us? Senator US citizens? And
Speaker 5: the senator from California said yes, and then he was
Speaker 5: immediately thrown out of office. So what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Nobody knows what that.
Speaker 3: Means a single case from eighteen ninety eight, or is
Speaker 3: there more precedent?
Speaker 5: Really, there really isn't. There's really just a handful of
Speaker 5: presidents and no Supreme Court case has ever said that
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship is the is in the Constitution. There have
Speaker 5: been some that have kind of mentioned it or kind
Speaker 5: of assumed it, but none has said so outright.
Speaker 4: I am surprised the polling shows that only about a
Speaker 4: third of Americans want to do away with the way
Speaker 4: we do it now. I'm surprised by that. I do
Speaker 4: want to get this. This is a journalistic question. But
Speaker 4: I think it has an effect on people's respect for
Speaker 4: the law. It has come up recently. It has become
Speaker 4: a pattern that anytime the media mentions a judge, they
Speaker 4: mentioned what president appointed them. Do you think that's a
Speaker 4: good idea or not? They didn't just barely got a minute.
Speaker 5: I think I think it's fine. I think people should
Speaker 5: know where these For instance, I think it would help
Speaker 5: a lot of judges. You know, a lot of Republican
Speaker 5: appointed judges have been ruling against the Trump administration, and
Speaker 5: I think it would be helpful for people to know
Speaker 5: that these questions are not things where it's all partisan.
Speaker 5: The law is not just partisan politics. It's something much
Speaker 5: more profound and much more important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 1: Agree, But it implies that judges I don't know.
Speaker 4: True.
Speaker 5: I didn't used to think.
Speaker 1: I didn't used to think about it. Ever.
Speaker 4: If a judge ruled, I just thought, all, that's interesting,
Speaker 4: Now it's all who appointed him?
Speaker 1: Oh of course he said that. That is true.
Speaker 5: That is a risk, But I think we should err
Speaker 5: on the side of informing people as opposed to keeping
Speaker 5: people in the dark.
Speaker 1: So that's always Trump.
Speaker 3: Tim Sander for the Goldwater Institute On the Line, Tim
Speaker 3: final question, I've called for a monarchy.
Speaker 1: You in favor of it? Yes or no?
Speaker 5: No, I'm against him monarchy. I'm for the constitution, Joe.
Speaker 4: One more question. As a published poet, I was thinking
Speaker 4: about this. Yesterday he won the Nobel Prize. Bob Dylan
Speaker 4: good poet or not lousy poet?
Speaker 5: Now read Robert Hayden or Richard Wilbur instead.
Speaker 3: Hmm, how about Ringo Star Octopus's Garden was creative?
Speaker 1: Tim, It's always great and enlightening. Thanks Millian for the time.
Speaker 1: Let's talk again soon. Thanks guys.
Speaker 4: All right, I was actually thinking about this listening to
Speaker 4: Dylan lyrics. Why do they stick in everybody's head so much?
Speaker 4: Why do people keep going back to them?
Speaker 1: If it's just.
Speaker 4: Gobbledegook, like a lot of real poets claim, it can't be.
Speaker 4: It wouldn't lodge, It wouldn't it wouldn't make the market made,
Speaker 4: would it?
Speaker 5: All?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: He was famously moody about his career and his music
Speaker 3: in his Life's Philosophy. I think some of his stuff
Speaker 3: is absolutely brilliant, and I think some of it's gobbledegook.
Speaker 1: Hum.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe more on that another day, or maybe not.
Speaker 4: We got plenty of stuff to tell you. I hope
Speaker 4: you can stick around if you missus, Sigmann, I thought
Speaker 4: that Tim thing was really, really good, and you want
Speaker 4: to listen to it again. Get the podcast Armstrong You
Speaker 4: Getty on demand
Speaker 5: Armstrong and Getty