Speaker 1: What's interesting is that the witness for the majority against
Speaker 1: the Biden administration in this opinion turned out to be
Speaker 1: Speaker Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They quote her at length
Speaker 1: in saying, of course, the president can't just grant a
Speaker 1: loan forgiveness, and so she's really in the argument of
Speaker 1: the majority for saying, this is not a close call.
Speaker 1: You really overstepped and overreached as a president, and this
Speaker 1: is now unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: Supreme Court says, hey, Joe Biden, you can't just wipe
Speaker 2: out kids loans or tens of thousands of dollars with
Speaker 2: their loans. The fact that they were quoting Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 2: because she accurately said, trying to speak truth to her
Speaker 2: own troops, it's illegal.
Speaker 3: May I quote Supreme Court Justice Nelson Months.
Speaker 2: Chris Hayes of MSNBC with this tweet right after the
Speaker 2: decision came down. Lots of very bad things, This six
Speaker 2: to three majority is done, Dobbs being the worst, but
Speaker 2: them deciding you are now ten thousand dollars poorer than
Speaker 2: you were yesterday is really a hell of a thing.
Speaker 3: Everything's performative all the time, and it's tiring me out.
Speaker 3: Here's a man who quests for the truth. Can you
Speaker 3: use quest as a verb? M oh? Tim Sander for
Speaker 3: Vice president for litigation with the Goldwater Institute. Tim the lawyer,
Speaker 3: longtime good friend of the Armstrong and Getty show. Tim.
Speaker 3: How are you, sir?
Speaker 4: I'm great, Thanks for having me back. I think quest
Speaker 4: as a verb is okay, only in the context of
Speaker 4: dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 2: There you go, mild dad, No, you were you a
Speaker 2: D and D person when you were younger.
Speaker 4: I have always hated dungeons and dragon Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to figure why the dungeons because it smacks
Speaker 3: in the cruel and unusual pole.
Speaker 4: Always. It just feels so dumb to sit there and
Speaker 4: have somebody tell you you're going down a dark hallway or
Speaker 4: something like that. It's almost it's almost as it's like
Speaker 4: it's as bad as sports, but without the sweating.
Speaker 3: Yeah there's a quote.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, so what do you talk about? You talk
Speaker 4: about MCing a football game. Here's a trivia question for you.
Speaker 4: I actually want mced a basketball game. If you can
Speaker 4: believe it.
Speaker 2: How did that happen? Was there literally no one else
Speaker 2: to ask?
Speaker 4: So totally the worst. Possibly some idiot got the idea
Speaker 4: that it would be really funny, since I don't know
Speaker 4: anything about basketball, to have the MC the local game
Speaker 4: between the teachers versus the police department.
Speaker 2: They were right about that, that would be funny.
Speaker 4: I was smart enough to realize what a bad idea.
Speaker 4: This was a brought along a friend to do a
Speaker 4: lot about basketball. So it worked out okay, But that
Speaker 4: was Yeah, it was one of the weirder moments of
Speaker 4: my life.
Speaker 3: Wow, how odd. I almost hate to get back to
Speaker 3: the recent Supreme Court decisions. I feel like we should.
Speaker 3: So where would you like to start?
Speaker 2: What's got your hack?
Speaker 4: Let me let's say this about yesterday's affirmative action ruling.
Speaker 4: Yesterday's decision was Brown versus Board of Education for Asians.
Speaker 4: Yesterday's decision was saying, we can't keep ignoring the fact
Speaker 4: that these race preference schemes that the colleges insist on
Speaker 4: keeping in place are a form of discrimination that is
Speaker 4: purposely keeping Asian Americans out of our colleges, aimed at
Speaker 4: keeping out hard working kids who don't deserve to be
Speaker 4: treated in that way. And yesterday was a great vindication
Speaker 4: of the principle that all men are created equal and
Speaker 4: it's really a shame that the liberal side of this
Speaker 4: that keeps denouncing this opinion is, in the midst of
Speaker 4: their denunciations, are proving why it was necessary by totally
Speaker 4: ignoring the fact that Asian Americans are an important ethnic
Speaker 4: group in this country that deserve to have their equal rights.
Speaker 4: It's always being treated as black versus white, and they're Asians.
Speaker 4: As Justice Thomas points out, Asians are totally being omitted
Speaker 4: from the equation in all these discussions. So yesterday's decision
Speaker 4: was brown versus Board of Education for Asians.
Speaker 2: So, since you're a student of this sort of thing,
Speaker 2: are some of the opinions more pointed at fellow justices
Speaker 2: than normal? They seem like they are.
Speaker 4: To me, Yeah, it certainly seems that way, Justice Thomas.
Speaker 4: Justice Thomas's concurring opinion, which is almost sixty pages long.
Speaker 4: He's been waiting basically his whole career to write this opinion,
Speaker 4: is aimed at the dissent, particularly Justice Jackson, with a
Speaker 4: it's ferocious. Now I agree with it, and so I
Speaker 4: love the fact that it's ferocious, but it is quite
Speaker 4: quite direct, and justics Jackson kind of steps back in
Speaker 4: her response. She responds in only one footnote, where she says,
Speaker 4: I don't know what he's talking about. I didn't say
Speaker 4: the things he's accusing me of saying. But if you
Speaker 4: read her opinion, she actually is.
Speaker 2: Well and today Gorsa saying in the student loan thing too,
Speaker 2: I think it was so my r. I can't believe
Speaker 2: we're looking at the same case. I mean, that just
Speaker 2: seems snarkier than usual.
Speaker 4: It does now. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 4: I think the American people deserve to have the severe
Speaker 4: legal and constitutional differences between the justices aired in public.
Speaker 4: That these people work for us, and we have a
Speaker 4: right to see what they think, both about the law
Speaker 4: and about each other. But it must mean that the
Speaker 4: office Chris, this party is a little tense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would think so for those who are not
Speaker 3: super hip to what was in the decision and the
Speaker 3: concurrences and that sort of thing. What was Clarence's Thomas,
Speaker 3: what was Thomas's main point?
Speaker 4: Well, here's my favorite point in the opinion that I
Speaker 4: think really boils it all down. He says, quote, today's
Speaker 4: seventeen year olds did not live through the Jim Crow
Speaker 4: era in act or enforced segregation laws or take any
Speaker 4: action to oppress or enslave the victims of the past.
Speaker 4: Whatever their skin color, Today's youth simply are not responsible
Speaker 4: for instituting the segregation of the twentieth century, and they
Speaker 4: do not shoulder the moral debts of their ancestors. Our
Speaker 4: nations should not punish today's youth for the sins of
Speaker 4: the past. End quote. I think that is the perfect
Speaker 4: summation of the argument against these race counting admission schemes
Speaker 4: that punish innocent people, particularly Asians, for crimes that even
Speaker 4: their ancestors didn't commit a lot of these people came
Speaker 4: to the country after Jim Crow, after slavery, and yet
Speaker 4: here we have these affirmative our action programs that count
Speaker 4: people's skin color in order to give preferences supposedly to
Speaker 4: remedy the crimes of centuries that before the victims even around.
Speaker 2: So is this going to have tentacles reaching out into
Speaker 2: other parts of American life, like hiring or anything else.
Speaker 4: Well, it's There is a notable footnote in the main
Speaker 4: opinion that says we're not talking about military and it
Speaker 4: basically invites the next lawsuit to be about how military
Speaker 4: academies and military recruitment, military, how all of that stuff.
Speaker 4: They also have their own affirmative action programs, and I
Speaker 4: think that's the next big front that we're going to
Speaker 4: see coming. And the Court in this opinion explicitly says
Speaker 4: we're not going to talk about that now, We'll talk
Speaker 4: about that in a future.
Speaker 2: Well, I wish I had Katanji Brown's actual quote in
Speaker 2: front of me, because she said something along the lines of,
Speaker 2: so it's okay to have black people in our bunkers
Speaker 2: fighting our wars, but not in our college classrooms.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I don't know the ideological blinders of people
Speaker 4: who are so wedded to affirmative action. And as you
Speaker 4: mentioned earlier, you know, seventy percent of the American people
Speaker 4: think that these programs are wrong. And the people who
Speaker 4: treat yesterday's opinion as being some sort of, you know,
Speaker 4: terrible setback for the civil rights movement are very much
Speaker 4: out of step not only with reality but with the
Speaker 4: way the American people see reality. And yet they act
Speaker 4: as if they are obviously right. And it's really a
Speaker 4: way of insulating themselves in a way that I think
Speaker 4: really shows up in the opinion.
Speaker 3: So, and we can jump back and forth as we like,
Speaker 3: but I want to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 3: this student loan forgiveness decision. And I'm well aware of
Speaker 3: my own ideology, but I'm also enough of a neutral
Speaker 3: observer in these things to feel like I have reasonably
Speaker 3: well based opinions. And I told my three adult kids,
Speaker 3: do not make any financial plans based on your student
Speaker 3: loans being forgiven to the tune to ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: or whatever. It's not going to happen. It can't happen.
Speaker 3: It's so clearly executive overreach. There's no way the courts
Speaker 3: let it through. And that wasn't just based on the
Speaker 3: composition of the court. What in the world were the
Speaker 3: arguments of the dissenters saying it's fine for the executive
Speaker 3: branch to do this.
Speaker 4: Well, Joe, you have more confidence in the courts than well,
Speaker 4: frankly I do, because you were right about the law.
Speaker 4: But the law is one thing, and what the courts
Speaker 4: are actually going to do is a totally different thing.
Speaker 4: Sometimes this time you were right. The court did what
Speaker 4: the law required, but that doesn't always happen. Now, the
Speaker 4: case is about this a statute that says that the
Speaker 4: secretary that is the President can modify the obligations of
Speaker 4: these student loans. And that's the word modify. And the
Speaker 4: question is, does modify mean that the secretary can wipe
Speaker 4: out really an enormous amount of money. Here, here's what
Speaker 4: the opinion says. The economic and political significance of the
Speaker 4: Terry's action is staggering. Practically every student bar where will benefit.
Speaker 4: He says, this is a third, it amounts to nearly
Speaker 4: one third of the government. It's one point seven trillion
Speaker 4: dollars in annual discretionary spending. So what this is saying
Speaker 4: that the Secretary of Education does unilaterally wipe out an
Speaker 4: enormous amount of student debt. That and with the stroke
Speaker 4: of a pen. Now, Congress is supposed to be making
Speaker 4: the laws. They're not supposed to be handing this authority
Speaker 4: off to the president. And yet the President is claiming, oh, well,
Speaker 4: you know, we have I have the authority to basically
Speaker 4: make the law because Congress has given me this power.
Speaker 4: That really is staggerant. And it's a good example of
Speaker 4: why you and I are always talking about the dangers
Speaker 4: of the administrative state, the dangers of regulatory bureaucracies, where
Speaker 4: the courts just stand back and let them just make
Speaker 4: the law however they want to. This is a perfect
Speaker 4: example of that. Incidentally, it also overlaps with the affirmative
Speaker 4: action case because the descent Justice Jackson and her descent.
Speaker 4: She says, well, what we ought to do is trust
Speaker 4: the experts. The experts say that affirmative action programs, in
Speaker 4: race counting and all this is necessary to equalize society.
Speaker 4: So we ought to trust the experts. Well, if this
Speaker 4: whole attitude of well we should have this elite group
Speaker 4: of bureaucrats who decide how we live our lives in
Speaker 4: order to accomplish justice has that notion is really stuck
Speaker 4: in the minds of the leftists on the court.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been flogging your book Freedom's Furies lately repeatedly,
Speaker 3: partly because I found the parts of the book that
Speaker 3: deal with the flirtation's the wrong word. It's just. A
Speaker 3: preference for totalitarianism among the left in the early mid
Speaker 3: twentieth century was shocking to me. It was part of
Speaker 3: history that I wasn't really familiar with. The idea that, look,
Speaker 3: we'll get experts together, they'll plan everything and will bring
Speaker 3: you a utopia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that went along with the Supreme Court creating
Speaker 4: these doctrines about deference and not protecting property rights and
Speaker 4: not protecting economic liberty. All those things are going on
Speaker 4: at the same time, and we are stuck with the
Speaker 4: legacy of that. In many ways to this day. The
Speaker 4: Supreme Court refuses to enforce property rights, refuses to enforce
Speaker 4: economic freedom in wide areas of life, and the reason
Speaker 4: is because of the legal precedents that date back to
Speaker 4: the nineteen thirties, when this country and in fact all
Speaker 4: of all of the world civilizations really kind of bought
Speaker 4: the idea that the dictatorship was a good thing. The
Speaker 4: person who is really responsible for this largely is Benito Mussolini.
Speaker 4: We often forget about Mussolini because we always think about
Speaker 4: that era. We think about people like Hitler. But Mussolini
Speaker 4: invented the idea of this of fascist dictatorship in the
Speaker 4: nineteen twenties, and for almost an entire decade, everybody's like, wow,
Speaker 4: he makes the trains run on time. He's really getting
Speaker 4: things done over there. Sure, maybe he murders his political opponents,
Speaker 4: but he's really getting the trains to run on time.
Speaker 4: And that attitude still exists today in the minds of
Speaker 4: a lot of people who think that democracy and persuasion
Speaker 4: and argument are just time wasting, and what we ought
Speaker 4: to do is just force people to do what we
Speaker 4: think is right.
Speaker 2: Here, I think is an important question that I've asked before.
Speaker 2: Because we're going to hear the President called this a
Speaker 2: rogue court yesterday. You're going to hear a lot about
Speaker 2: that over the weekend and probably on the Sunday talk
Speaker 2: shows and that sort of stuff about this is a
Speaker 2: right wing outlier court, you know, unbalanced or whatever they
Speaker 2: call it. Where does this court fit in if you
Speaker 2: had a one to five scale, one being the most liberal,
Speaker 2: five being the most conservative, Like where was the Warren
Speaker 2: Court or where were in most of the courts in
Speaker 2: modern history, and where's this one?
Speaker 4: Well, when you're so far to the left, any movement
Speaker 4: to the right is going to look extreme. So that's
Speaker 4: why you get reactions from people like that. The reality
Speaker 4: is that this is a moderately conservative court that in
Speaker 4: some ways they're doing what they think is correcting the
Speaker 4: errors of the past, and so that keyn and seem extreme,
Speaker 4: for example in the Dobbs case and so forth. But
Speaker 4: for the most part, the court is is not picking fights.
Speaker 4: For the most part, its decisions are not particularly radical. However,
Speaker 4: my initial reaction when I hear the President of the
Speaker 4: United States say that the Supreme Court is a rogue court,
Speaker 4: My question is, what would you prefer an obedient court?
Speaker 4: A court that takes off its hat and bows. He
Speaker 4: would say, yes, sir, whatever you liked, sir. Well do
Speaker 4: whatever you like, sir. We have a separation of powers
Speaker 4: in this country in order to balance these three branches legislative, judicial,
Speaker 4: and executive against each other to protect individual freedom. It's
Speaker 4: not supposed to the courts are not supposed to just say, oh, well,
Speaker 4: the President says that it must be okay, Oh will
Speaker 4: of Congress does it? It must be okay. The role
Speaker 4: of the court is to enforce the Constitution, and that
Speaker 4: means striking things down that violate this nation's fundamental law.
Speaker 4: And that's what they've been doing. So I don't understand
Speaker 4: why we call, oh, it's a rogue court. The court
Speaker 4: is not supposed to be obedient.
Speaker 3: Well, it's going to be painful and expensive, but I'm
Speaker 3: going to get that screened tattooed on my chest during
Speaker 3: the fourth of July vacation.
Speaker 2: I love the idea that the Supreme Court has one
Speaker 2: collective hat.
Speaker 4: Add the cost of that tattoo joe to the student
Speaker 4: loans are going to have to help you pay.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Tim Sander for vice president for
Speaker 3: the litigation that the Goldwater Institute. Tim, you brought it
Speaker 3: solid gold. Thanks a million.
Speaker 2: That was awesome.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys,