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 Trump nominated in an oil industry
Speaker 1: executive as his pick for Energy secretary.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss
Speaker 1: Trump's absolutely insane cabinet.
Speaker 2: Then we will talk.
Speaker 1: To the Brennan Centers Catherine Ebright about Trump's plans to
Speaker 1: invoke the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 3: But first the news Somali, you want to talk the resistance.
Speaker 3: I think I am resistant to ever wanting to talk about.
Speaker 3: Tell me make your case for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So before we started recording, I was giving you
Speaker 1: a hard time because I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: resistance and you said resistance is cringe.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 3: I said, it's a bad brand that we shouldn't continue using,
Speaker 3: is what I said.
Speaker 1: And I want to make the case for earnestness right now. Look,
Speaker 1: there is a thing that you and I both sometimes
Speaker 1: do of wanting to be the cool kids. But we
Speaker 1: are in a moment here and we're not there yet,
Speaker 1: and we all have to sort of state ourselves. But
Speaker 1: we're going to be in a moment where there's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of stuff that the government is.
Speaker 2: Going to do, or Donald Trump is going to do
Speaker 2: to our government.
Speaker 1: That we are going to have to be a bull
Speaker 1: war against and resist. And I think that one of
Speaker 1: the least helpful things we can do is to dismiss things,
Speaker 1: even like the idea of resistance. So there were a
Speaker 1: lot of pieces this week written by some very smart
Speaker 1: people about sort of what does it mean to be
Speaker 1: resistant and should we even use that word? And I
Speaker 1: just want to make a case here for earnestness. Part
Speaker 1: of the ethos of trump Ism is this idea that
Speaker 1: nothing matters, this kind of nihilistic we were talking about
Speaker 1: it earlier, this black pilling, the idea that these things
Speaker 1: are ironic, that nothing matters, that we shouldn't care what
Speaker 1: happens to other people.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't characterize that as black pilled, because that's not
Speaker 3: what black pilots is.
Speaker 2: Okay, explain to us what black pilled is.
Speaker 3: That's when your ideology is so poisoned by so many
Speaker 3: things on the Internet that no one could ever make
Speaker 3: a clear distinction between whether you're left right, libertarian or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's just so all over the place that it cannot
Speaker 3: be mapped.
Speaker 1: So great, but the idea is that I think it's
Speaker 1: important for Democrats to be the opposite of black pilt,
Speaker 1: to be four things. It's easy to reject everything. It's
Speaker 1: hard to believe in things, especially right now. And I
Speaker 1: believe in democracy.
Speaker 2: I believe. I know you're rolling your eyes, but I'm not.
Speaker 4: I believe in all this. I'm with you right now.
Speaker 1: I think we're in a moment right now where a
Speaker 1: lot of us are really in despair. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this article because in it is a
Speaker 1: bunch of really good news. And for those of you
Speaker 1: who didn't read this Rebecca Tracter article in your magazine.
Speaker 1: She talks about how on Thursday, after Trump was re elected, Indivisible,
Speaker 1: which is a really good organization, and the Working Families Party,
Speaker 1: did a call and they drew more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty seven thousand people. That call went on for hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: a woman who was part of it said she didn't
Speaker 1: get to speak until ten PM, and people stayed on
Speaker 1: and the attendance grew. People are not only seeking community,
Speaker 1: but ways to engage okay, And then I want to
Speaker 1: talk about Amanda Littman, a frequent guest on this podcast.
Speaker 1: She runs an organization called Run for Something, which is
Speaker 1: an organization that supports young, progressive first time candidates running
Speaker 1: for state and local office. As you know, as we
Speaker 1: talk about on this podcast all the time, stay and
Speaker 1: local office are really the keys to enacting policy, to
Speaker 1: protecting people.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So she says that in the first Trump inauguration day,
Speaker 1: she said she hoped that our organization would carry on
Speaker 1: doing consequential work even without resistance two point zero, which
Speaker 1: I did not expect to see. Seven days later, seven
Speaker 1: thousand people had signed up with Run for Something, seven
Speaker 1: times the number it had drawn the week it launched
Speaker 1: on Trump's first inauguration day. Seven times okay, and that
Speaker 1: was just after Trump was re elected. So I just
Speaker 1: want to point out, like, this is a very dark
Speaker 1: moment for a lot of us, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of green shoots right. People understand what another Trump
Speaker 1: administration means, and we see women at the grassroots and
Speaker 1: men trying to push back, and so I just want
Speaker 1: to make the case for earnestness. I'm not even a
Speaker 1: fan of earnestness. But I think at this moment we
Speaker 1: have to care.
Speaker 2: Okay, did you die? Are you there?
Speaker 4: I'm fined. I just don't.
Speaker 3: I just don't want to call it the resistance, That's
Speaker 3: all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: We could call it the case for caring. Okay.
Speaker 3: I think this is just the same way that the
Speaker 3: word liberal became a bit of poisoning and we used
Speaker 3: progressive instead of other things. I just think it's not
Speaker 3: the best brand anyway.
Speaker 2: Speaking of brands.
Speaker 3: Yes, So with Trump's lead into the manisphere, he went
Speaker 3: to the manliest of sports UFC. You know, where men
Speaker 3: hug each other for a long periods of time. Is
Speaker 3: what I noticed whenever I see it on the TV.
Speaker 3: What'd you see here, Molly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Trump went to the UFC fight. UFC has
Speaker 1: been part of trump Ism. And I want to talk
Speaker 1: about this idea that politics is downstream of culture. This
Speaker 1: is an idea that we kind of got from Andrew Breitbart,
Speaker 1: and it comes from sort of Obama era, where you
Speaker 1: had a politician who was a meshed with the culture.
Speaker 2: You had that to some degree with Harris, but you had.
Speaker 1: This also with Trump, and I think because it didn't
Speaker 1: happen in traditional media venues. A lot of us missed
Speaker 1: it because it happened on podcasts and streaming and YouTube
Speaker 1: and Twitch. But Trump has this relationship with these sports
Speaker 1: and also with the kind of health and Wellness space
Speaker 1: influencers which really did help him get elected.
Speaker 2: And helped him win some women.
Speaker 1: One of the ways in which Trump had this relationship
Speaker 1: with health and Wellness space people is that he got
Speaker 1: endorsed by RFK Junior. RFK Junior delivered him some voters,
Speaker 1: many of whom want to be able to drink raw
Speaker 1: milk and not get vaccinated anyway.
Speaker 2: Sort Of following up on this in.
Speaker 1: The Everything Trump Touches Dies genre, so photo of Trump
Speaker 1: and his people on his plane eating McDonald's RFK Junior
Speaker 1: drinking a coke, eating a quarter pounder on Trump Force
Speaker 1: one discuss.
Speaker 3: A lot of people are saying saying that this is
Speaker 3: Trump testing if OURK will bed the dee. I personally
Speaker 3: just think this is just stupidity as usual.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is interesting though that this is something
Speaker 1: where we know, like Ourk's brand is based on like
Speaker 1: not doing things like this, so you know, eating organic
Speaker 1: food and eat and raw milk and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And this is a pretty star contrast.
Speaker 3: Doesn't get more organic than when you pick up roadkill
Speaker 3: on the side of the road.
Speaker 2: That's all that's right, and numerous roadkill stories.
Speaker 1: So I am without words though it does seem it
Speaker 1: does seem kind of hypocritical.
Speaker 3: So mommie, this Mannion Musk, that's the first buddy who's
Speaker 3: coming around with Trump everywhere he goes his Tesla cars.
Speaker 3: Interesting story here where you see.
Speaker 1: It's sort of interesting, right, Tesla vehicles. This is according
Speaker 1: to a recent icy cars study that analyzed data from
Speaker 1: the US Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which is called FARS
Speaker 1: in case you were wondering, study conducted aunt Tesla's from
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two vehicles focused on
Speaker 1: crashes between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty two that resulted
Speaker 1: in occupant fatalities. Tesla vehicles have a fatal crash rating
Speaker 1: of five point six billion miles driven. According to study,
Speaker 1: they are the most fatal car. It is Tesla's then,
Speaker 1: kias than buicks.
Speaker 2: And I'm not very surprised.
Speaker 3: It's almost like this guy who rails against regulation isn't
Speaker 3: very careful moves fast and breaks things as cars that break.
Speaker 2: I mean, it does not seem so surprising to me.
Speaker 3: But no, you know, as somebody whose wife every time
Speaker 3: she sees me get near a tesla or we get ed,
Speaker 3: what she says, Oh, great, we're driving.
Speaker 4: It a bomb?
Speaker 3: Why did she say that? Because the batteries explode. You've
Speaker 3: experienced this yourself with an electric car battery.
Speaker 1: Yes, it did, but you didn't. We didn't die. We
Speaker 1: were okay, yes, but it did explode.
Speaker 4: But they they do explode. It is bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, the good news is you don't die, but
Speaker 1: the bad news is it is a little scary. And
Speaker 1: also then you're stuck on the stuff by the side
Speaker 1: of the road.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Not so.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Elon, he's trying to save what Nick's treasury. Bit,
Speaker 3: what do you think about this?
Speaker 1: So right now in Marlago, there's a lot of jockeying
Speaker 1: between the first body that's Elon Musk or as Trump
Speaker 1: calls him, Leon and the quote unquote more normal appointment.
Speaker 1: So Trump had to give RFK Health and Human Services
Speaker 1: because the Kennedys are actually trying to assassinate us. I
Speaker 1: stall that from the internet. Somebody made that joke, a
Speaker 1: brilliant joke. But so the question is will it be
Speaker 1: this Scott Asson, who is sort of a more normal pick,
Speaker 1: or will it be Howard Nick, who recently went on
Speaker 1: television and said that Trump would not pick RFK Junior,
Speaker 1: and then maybe vaccines weren't so great again. You know,
Speaker 1: we are so down the rabbit hole here, it's hard to.
Speaker 2: Imagine that any of this ends. Wow.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, doctor joh former Biden administrator in the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen and the dean of Brown University School of
Speaker 1: Public Health. He talked about the RFK appointment and he
Speaker 1: said RFK Junior has signaled that he doesn't intend to
Speaker 1: follow the approach. Instead of relying on rigorous analysis and evidence,
Speaker 1: he seems poised to prioritize his own views in decision making.
Speaker 1: Now all of us know that MAGA is all about
Speaker 1: doing your own research on Facebook. Nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 1: except if you cause another pandemic. Rick Wilson is the
Speaker 1: founder of the Lincoln Product and the host of the
Speaker 1: Enemy Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Rick Wilson, Hey, Mollie John Fast how are you on
Speaker 4: this fine day?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, it's a great day, you know, I'm enjoying
Speaker 1: the last gasps of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 4: How about you, Well, I mean it was the Roman Republic,
Speaker 4: but yeah, close enough. Yes, I mean you're you really
Speaker 4: are looking at the dying civilization right now.
Speaker 2: But we don't want people to be depressed here, because
Speaker 2: that is what because we want I know, I get.
Speaker 1: We don't want people to despair because I think that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is about to have a tent so big
Speaker 1: that includes both anti Semites and Zionists, both anti vaxxers
Speaker 1: and people who believe in modern medicine, Russian trolls and
Speaker 1: America firsters every which way discuss h.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's largely where we're about to go.
Speaker 4: We are going to have a very very very fed
Speaker 4: up period of time in this country where the promises
Speaker 4: Trump is made to his base to be awful to
Speaker 4: the world will be fulfilled. But it will also be
Speaker 4: so chaotic and so fucked up, and they will have
Speaker 4: such There are already internal maga civil wars breaking out,
Speaker 4: which I love, and boy Elon seems to be at
Speaker 4: the center of most of them.
Speaker 2: Which civil wars are you talking about?
Speaker 4: The civil war in this case is the moment that
Speaker 4: they're having with Treasury Secretary, where Howard Lutnik was supposed
Speaker 4: to be the guy, and then Elon wade in and
Speaker 4: wanted somebody else to be the guy. The thing about
Speaker 4: this moment we're in to remember is while they are
Speaker 4: evil and while they are powerful, they are also fucking stupid.
Speaker 4: They really are. These are not smart guys. These are
Speaker 4: not a class thinkers. And that's one of our only
Speaker 4: big advantages in this fight right now is that they
Speaker 4: really are a bunch of fucking morons.
Speaker 1: Well, what I would say is that it seems like
Speaker 1: there is a feeling in which Trump and his people
Speaker 1: are not like they have made promises. I just don't
Speaker 1: know how you keep promises to people who want to
Speaker 1: end government programs but still want to have So.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about government efficiency for a minute.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Elon and Vivic and
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, one of the reasons that Silicon Valley joined MAGA,
Speaker 1: besides tax cuts, is that they're very excited to cut
Speaker 1: the federal government. But I think that one of the
Speaker 1: places that Vivik wants to start is not a place
Speaker 1: that Republicans love to cut discuss.
Speaker 4: He wants to cut the DoD and he wants to
Speaker 4: also cut the VA. Let me tell you something, Republican
Speaker 4: congressmen are a spineless, gutless, nutless, ballless set of human beings.
Speaker 4: But the minute you ask them to cut VA benefits
Speaker 4: for people in their districts, I assure you that's one
Speaker 4: of the red lines that they will actually say, vivek Donald, elon,
Speaker 4: go fuck yourself, because it is political poison. Same thing
Speaker 4: with cutting social security political poison. One of the realities
Speaker 4: of government contract is that when you decide you're going
Speaker 4: to build a new fighter plane, Okay, let's take the
Speaker 4: F thirty five for existance, the current hot fighter number.
Speaker 4: That plane may be assembled at a factory in Dallas
Speaker 4: Fort Worth, but every part of it is built somewhere
Speaker 4: in this country and in all fifty states and all
Speaker 4: the territories. Everybody gets a bite, everybody gets a piece
Speaker 4: of the pie, everybody gets a cut. So let's say
Speaker 4: they go, okay, we're going to cut this program. Well,
Speaker 4: that program is being built in some senator's home state
Speaker 4: and some congressman's home district. And the idea that that's
Speaker 4: just going to go that these guys are going to go,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, well, of course, in obedience to Trump, we're
Speaker 4: going to fuck ourselves politically for all time. That's not
Speaker 4: going to work out for you, goodloe boys.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what we're sort of looking down the
Speaker 2: barrel of very much so.
Speaker 4: And the idea that you're going to end up with
Speaker 4: less government spending is always commendable. Everybody wants to do that. Okay,
Speaker 4: everybody wants less government spending. Blah blah blah. Reality is,
Speaker 4: though these tax dollars are allocated to the various states,
Speaker 4: the spending in those states benefits, benefits individual people, and
Speaker 4: it also benefits the members of Congress and the senators
Speaker 4: who pass that legislation and get those things spent in
Speaker 4: their states. And not all of it is you know, fraud,
Speaker 4: waste and abuse. An awful lot of it is providing
Speaker 4: services that Americans have paid taxes for, e g. Just
Speaker 4: just just a little as a little for instance, veterans benefits.
Speaker 4: Wh's another place at Vivek Ramaswami has already promised he's
Speaker 4: going to cut Oh okay, you know that is about
Speaker 4: like saying I want to pass the National Herpes Distribution Plan.
Speaker 4: It is not a popular idea. It will never be
Speaker 4: a popular idea. No one's ever going to say that
Speaker 4: is the greatest idea since prepared, mustered Vivek, you should
Speaker 4: go ahead and do that. Let's get let's get on
Speaker 4: with cutting VA benefits madness.
Speaker 1: One of the things that it feels like Vivak and
Speaker 1: Musk don't totally understand is that a lot of our
Speaker 1: national debt is actually interest payments.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yes, and here's a dirty little secret. Republicans are
Speaker 4: really fucking good at spending money. Okay, let's not pretend
Speaker 4: that all this money was just spent by Democrats doing
Speaker 4: national mime and puppetry programs. These things were spent on
Speaker 4: a lot of programs that went to Republican districts, and
Speaker 4: a lot of these guys have made their political careers
Speaker 4: off of having a very lavish federal spending program in
Speaker 4: their states or their districts. This is not going to stop.
Speaker 4: Nobody's going to stop doing.
Speaker 2: This, including in red states.
Speaker 4: Right, even more so in red states. Red states have
Speaker 4: a net and you know benefit they pay less in
Speaker 4: taxes than the blue states do. This is not rocket science,
Speaker 4: it's just a fact.
Speaker 1: So explain to us what's gonna sort of what's going
Speaker 1: to happen.
Speaker 4: Now, they're going to say. Elon's going to say, we
Speaker 4: have to cut the XYZ program in the Department of Energy, Okay,
Speaker 4: whatever it is, but he's going to find out that
Speaker 4: that program is in statute, it is in federal law
Speaker 4: where Congress has said this program is established under House
Speaker 4: resolution or House Bill blah blah blah, signed by the Senate,
Speaker 4: signed by the President. And you don't just get to
Speaker 4: randomly cut those things. That's not how any of this works.
Speaker 2: Right, So how does it work?
Speaker 4: Explain they're going to have If you want to get
Speaker 4: rid of some of these programs, you have to have
Speaker 4: votes on the floor of the House to get rid
Speaker 4: of them. You have to have votes in the Senate
Speaker 4: to get rid of them.
Speaker 2: And the House has right now, I think it's like
Speaker 2: a three seat majority, right, correct, Republicans.
Speaker 1: It's not all the California votes are encountered yet, but
Speaker 1: it looks like it's going to be a very small majority.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this will not be a sweeping Republican hoarde. The
Speaker 4: Senate and the House both are going to end up
Speaker 4: feeling very tight, very constrained.
Speaker 1: The Senate is a little better for Republicans, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: But again, it's not the It will not be easy going. Now.
Speaker 4: This is going to be like a walkover where they
Speaker 4: have just so much ladder to play fuck around that
Speaker 4: they're going to be able to come out and pass
Speaker 4: anything they want or cut anything they want. I've been
Speaker 4: around the block on these things. I was around when
Speaker 4: we did something back in the nineties called the Base
Speaker 4: Closure and Realignment Commission, which was what and whether they
Speaker 4: were at the time the most liberal anti war, anti
Speaker 4: military blah blah cliche whatever, or the hardest core Republican,
Speaker 4: they all wanted us to do base closures after the
Speaker 4: end of the Cold War. And guess what, none of
Speaker 4: them wanted the base closures to be in their districts Ah, weird,
Speaker 4: weird how that works.
Speaker 1: But also Vivig and Elon don't it's not part of
Speaker 1: the government. They're not being appointed to the cabinet, right.
Speaker 4: No, this thing is a quasi governmental office. It has
Speaker 4: no statutory authority whatsoever. You know. I know it has
Speaker 4: no statutory authority because it never existed until today, right,
Speaker 4: That's how I know.
Speaker 1: So they're going to make recommendations and then the government
Speaker 1: is going to just not be able to implement them.
Speaker 4: They're gonna make recommendations and it doesn't matter what they
Speaker 4: say because it's not in the budget. We don't pass
Speaker 4: budgets anymore in this country. We stopped doing budgets years
Speaker 4: ago for a lot of bad reasons. We should do budgets, Honestly,
Speaker 4: we should pass budgets. That'd be a good, responsible, grown
Speaker 4: up American thing to do, but we don't. And because
Speaker 4: of that, we're going to end up with these people thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 4: we can do whatever we choose, we can cut these
Speaker 4: things and they'll just go away because Trump doesn't want
Speaker 4: them there and Elon doesn't like them. Nope, not how
Speaker 4: it works. And again you're going to find out some
Speaker 4: maga member of Congress is going to say he's going
Speaker 4: to get on the phone to Elon. I go, well, listen, buddy,
Speaker 4: I'll tell you one thing. I'm on the NASA Procurement Committee,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to tell you some your fucking rockets
Speaker 4: aren't going anywhere unless you stop this bullshit.
Speaker 1: Right. That is the sort of interesting thing about the
Speaker 1: situation is like Elon has more money than anyone else
Speaker 1: in the entire world, so he can fund primary challenges.
Speaker 1: But these people have control over the space stuff he
Speaker 1: wants to do.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these people have also been around the entire history
Speaker 4: of Washington. They know what they're doing. This is not
Speaker 4: an easy skate for Elon. This is not some magical
Speaker 4: wave of magic wand and the world does what Elon wants.
Speaker 4: It just doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: So what do you think happens now? I mean, like,
Speaker 1: just sort of talk us through what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: In a few days. They're going to start more in
Speaker 4: earnest saying, oh, how do we do this? What do
Speaker 4: we do? They won't get a good answer. They'll get
Speaker 4: lawyers who tell them, oh, well the president will pass
Speaker 4: this because or the president will push people and they'll
Speaker 4: do it because the president, when you are taking money
Speaker 4: from people in their districts, you are going to get fucked.
Speaker 4: This is just I mean, this is one oh one Washington,
Speaker 4: d C. And people who don't understand this, they don't
Speaker 4: understand it for a reason because they're they're magas. They
Speaker 4: come from a world where they've never had a dear
Speaker 4: with an actual issue with government. They've just ignored it
Speaker 4: or pretend that it didn't exist, and they're going to.
Speaker 2: Get fucked I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1: This is meant to be the Trump term where he
Speaker 1: gets serious and finally dismantles the physit over men.
Speaker 4: Is it though?
Speaker 1: But a lot of these appointments don't seem like Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio is pretty is it sort of normal?
Speaker 2: Appointment? RFK Junior is not enormous?
Speaker 4: Not so much. Yeah, Look, all these guys other than
Speaker 4: Marco and maybe a least stophonic okay, are not serious people.
Speaker 4: And even at Lease isn't a terribly serious person. But
Speaker 4: these are not serious people. These are not people who
Speaker 4: could get a job at a waffle house, as I
Speaker 4: like to say. They're not smart, they don't have their
Speaker 4: shit together. They are not normal people. They're going to
Speaker 4: end up, you know, fucking this up. They can't help it.
Speaker 4: These are broken people. They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: A lot of these candidates don't seem like they'll be
Speaker 1: able to get through a Senate comproment.
Speaker 4: I suspect what we're going to end up with, as
Speaker 4: everybody else is sort of, you know, clearly predicting, is
Speaker 4: we're going to end up with a bunch of recess appointments.
Speaker 1: Now, can you just talk us through recess appointments, because
Speaker 1: isn't that sort of up to the Senate majority leader.
Speaker 4: No, it's also up to the president. He can recess Congress.
Speaker 2: But doesn't he sort of need the leader to be
Speaker 2: bought in.
Speaker 4: Do you think that John Thune won't say yes or
Speaker 4: three bags full when he says we're going to do this.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't see any world in which Thune
Speaker 4: becomes sort of a superhero and says, this is the line, sir,
Speaker 4: and you will not cross it.
Speaker 1: So what happens? In said, So he recesses the Senate.
Speaker 1: He appoints all these people without hearings, yep.
Speaker 4: And they are in office for two hundred and eighteen
Speaker 4: days I think it is, or fifteen whatever. It's some
Speaker 4: non trivial but long enough to fuck things up. Not
Speaker 4: long enough to get too comfortable, but long enough to
Speaker 4: fuck things up.
Speaker 1: We explain this to me. A recess appointment can only
Speaker 1: last for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 4: Only last for two hundred and eighteen or two hundred
Speaker 4: and nineteen days, it's some weird number.
Speaker 2: And then they have to go into hearings or now.
Speaker 4: No, then they're done. You cannot be recess appointed twice.
Speaker 4: Doesn't work. That way.
Speaker 3: Wasn't this Matthew hot Tub crime machine?
Speaker 4: And this is what he had to do with him? Yeah,
Speaker 4: exactly what happened with hot Tub.
Speaker 2: He was acting.
Speaker 4: He was acting. A recess appointment is an acting appointment.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so they'll put them in for acting. But
Speaker 1: then do you think anyone will have regular appointments or now?
Speaker 4: Oh, there'll be some regular appointments that get passed. I
Speaker 4: mean a few here and there, not as many as
Speaker 4: they would like.
Speaker 1: So they'll be confirmation hearings. But just for the people
Speaker 1: who could pass.
Speaker 4: Like dog Killer, Christie right, the Senate will confirm dog Killer.
Speaker 4: They'll just do that pro forma. But if you're Christy Nome,
Speaker 4: you get a regular appointment. But you really don't matter
Speaker 4: Matt Gates. Look, I'm a skeptic about the strength and
Speaker 4: moral character of Republican elected officials, as you might well know.
Speaker 4: Even with these guys, it's a real tough to sell
Speaker 4: giving Matt Gates an appointment putting a secondator, a sexual
Speaker 4: predator inside the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1: So do you think Matt Gates gets appointed as a
Speaker 1: recess or No?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the only way they're going to get him.
Speaker 2: In right, And you think that's going to happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, look, Matt is loyal to Trump.
Speaker 4: None of these senators want to None of these senators
Speaker 4: want to take this vote. Okay, they're petrified to this vote.
Speaker 4: And so I think you end up in a world
Speaker 4: where a lot of them are like, just say, mister President,
Speaker 4: we can't pull this off. You got you got to
Speaker 4: give us a break on this one. You got to
Speaker 4: let this one go. Let us do this in a recess.
Speaker 1: So they want him to do Resa's appointment so they
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely for the tough votes, one hundred percent. Look, none
Speaker 4: of these guys want to cast a vote for RFK
Speaker 4: when they know that that means in the year or
Speaker 4: two that kids are going to start dying of fucking mumps.
Speaker 4: I mean, none of them want to make that choice.
Speaker 4: None of them want to make that call.
Speaker 1: And you think RFK ends up as a recess appointment too, Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And then what happens destroy the agencies they're tasked to lead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's their actual job is to destroy the agencies
Speaker 4: they've been they've been hired to run.
Speaker 1: Well, that's pretty chilling. Any good news here. Give us
Speaker 1: a little bit of good news.
Speaker 4: They're all stupid. I mean that actually is a piece
Speaker 4: of good news. I really want you to internalize that
Speaker 4: these people are stupid, and stupid people make easy mistakes
Speaker 4: all the time. Stupid people make a lot of mistakes,
Speaker 4: and I think we can be hopeful that as we
Speaker 4: go forward the kind of mistakes that they will make
Speaker 4: which are predictable, both in terms of corruption, in terms
Speaker 4: of not understanding the law, in terms of exposing the
Speaker 4: White House to political and logistical and criminal problems. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of good news here.
Speaker 2: Frankly interesting. Rick Wilson, thank.
Speaker 4: You a pleasure. As always, Mollie, talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Katherine you Bright is a counsel at the Brennan Centers
Speaker 1: Liberty and National Security Program. Welcome to Fast Politics, Catherine.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me explain to us what you do.
Speaker 5: I'm a counsel on the Brandon Center's Liberty and National
Speaker 5: Security team, and I've been doing a concerted, focused research
Speaker 5: project into the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Great did you see this coming? And when did you
Speaker 1: get interested in this act?
Speaker 5: So? Donald Trump, on the campaign trail had been promising
Speaker 5: to use the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight
Speaker 5: for over a year, and then we saw this law
Speaker 5: also pop up in the GOP twenty twenty four presidential platform,
Speaker 5: And so this is not something new by way of
Speaker 5: a promise for what the incoming president would like to do.
Speaker 5: The mass deportation promise has been a focal point of
Speaker 5: the campaign for again over a year. I really got
Speaker 5: interested in this particular authority because of the way that
Speaker 5: I felt it had been covered when Trump first started
Speaker 5: promising to use it, and there was I think a
Speaker 5: lot of reflective skepticism about whether it would be possible
Speaker 5: for him to invoke this law and whether it would
Speaker 5: be a slam dunk in the courts to strike down
Speaker 5: that kind of use. And this is a wartime authority.
Speaker 5: I work on constitutional war powers, and I thought that
Speaker 5: the argument was not as clear cut and that the
Speaker 5: situation could be a little bit hairrier than some of
Speaker 5: the reporting reflected.
Speaker 1: So the Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight was
Speaker 1: enacted during wartime, right, and the last time it was
Speaker 1: actually enacted was during World War Two.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the law was enacted as the name suggests
Speaker 5: in seventeen ninety eight during something called the quasi War
Speaker 5: with France, which was an entirely naval conflict. It never
Speaker 5: escalated into a ground war, it never became a declared war,
Speaker 5: and the Alien Enemies Act was passed alongside three other laws,
Speaker 5: quite notorious. You probably learned about them in grade school,
Speaker 5: be Alien and Sedition X, and they're very controversial, sort
Speaker 5: of negative precedent in American history. This swaw was not
Speaker 5: actually used in the quasi war because it never escalated
Speaker 5: into a more intense ground invasion or declared war. It
Speaker 5: has only been used three times, the first time in
Speaker 5: the War of eighteen twelve, then in World War One,
Speaker 5: and then in World War Two. And it is in
Speaker 5: authority for summary detentions and deportations in wartime and its history.
Speaker 5: I think most notably and notoriously in World War Two
Speaker 5: was the internment of thirty one thousand immigrants non citizens
Speaker 5: of Japanese, German, and Italian descent.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I actually have known people whose mothers and
Speaker 1: grandmothers were swept up in this.
Speaker 2: Tell us how it ended.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So this is one of the things that gave
Speaker 5: me pause about the assumption that the courts would definitely
Speaker 5: strike down a peacetime use of this wartime authority. How
Speaker 5: did the use of the Alien Enemies Act end in
Speaker 5: World War Two? Well, it actually ended in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 5: even though World War Two, as we would all assume
Speaker 5: and we were all taught, ended in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 5: But the courts for years and years allowed Harry S.
Speaker 5: Truman to continue relying on this authority to detain people
Speaker 5: and to deport people, because the court said, while the
Speaker 5: Congress and the President say that the war is ongoing,
Speaker 5: and so even if there's no hostilities, even if we've
Speaker 5: actually already finished demobilizing US forces after the war, we
Speaker 5: can't second guess the president on that.
Speaker 2: How was it stopped in the end?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Eventually, in nineteen fifty one, Congress passes a resolution
Speaker 5: that says the war is over. The President signs it,
Speaker 5: and at that point the courts acknowledged, Okay, the power
Speaker 5: of the Alien Enemies Act has terminated because the political branches,
Speaker 5: the Congress and the President have now acknowledged that we're
Speaker 5: not at war.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the courts exercised really no independent judgment to determine
Speaker 5: whether we were or were not at war. And so
Speaker 5: one of my concerns is that this law in our
Speaker 5: history has been used outside of what we would generally
Speaker 5: understand it be wartime where there were no ongoing hostilities.
Speaker 5: And so can we be certain that the courts will
Speaker 5: serve as a check on a peacetime use or abuse
Speaker 5: of this law.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't understand if it's a wartime act,
Speaker 1: if you're not at war, how would that work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the law can be invoked in times of
Speaker 5: declared war. We know what that means, Congress gets to
Speaker 5: declare war, but also in times of quote invasion or
Speaker 5: predatory incursion, and those aren't defined terms in the law.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: What we've seen in the past several years is some
Speaker 5: anti immigrant groups and politicians claiming that migration constitutes a
Speaker 5: quot unquote invasion, or that cartel activity narcotics trafficking constitutes
Speaker 5: the quote unquote invasion. And so even if you look
Speaker 5: at the history, and it's very clear that an invasion
Speaker 5: was understood by the Fifth Congress back in seventeen ninety eight,
Speaker 5: as well as by presidents and congresses since then, to
Speaker 5: refer to acts of war and invasion is an act
Speaker 5: of war there's this sort of obfuscation or gainsmanship where
Speaker 5: these anti immigrant politicians and groups are trying to replace
Speaker 5: that legal meaning of the word invasion with their rhetorical meaning.
Speaker 2: Right, talk me through what would happen.
Speaker 1: Right. We know Donald Trump is planning this, we know
Speaker 1: he's planning deportation. We know he wants to use this act.
Speaker 1: Explain to me why.
Speaker 2: He needs to use this act.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen a lot of deportation of people
Speaker 1: who are not in this country illegal for years and
Speaker 1: years and years. If you could explain to us why
Speaker 1: this is necessary to begin with.
Speaker 5: So, one of the things that I think Trump's team
Speaker 5: finds so attractive about the Alien Enemies Act is it's
Speaker 5: summary deportation process. And what that means is there's no hearing.
Speaker 5: In fact, not only is there no hearing, this law
Speaker 5: can be used against anyone who is not a US
Speaker 5: citizen who is from a proclaimed enemy nation. And so
Speaker 5: that could mean an asylum seeker, it could mean a
Speaker 5: VIASL holder, It could even mean a permanent resident. And
Speaker 5: so this not only has none of those procedural protections
Speaker 5: that you have in conventional immigration law, it also if
Speaker 5: you accidentally scoop up someone who has legal status like
Speaker 5: it's not going to matter. You can still hold that
Speaker 5: person in immigration or not immigration processing rather under this
Speaker 5: wartime authority, and then you can still summarily deport them
Speaker 5: under this authority. The other thing that this law does
Speaker 5: is it provides detention authority, as we saw in internment
Speaker 5: in World War Two and internment in World War One.
Speaker 5: And so it's unclear what kind of authority Stephen Miller
Speaker 5: and Tom Holman would be relying on for the immigration
Speaker 5: processing camps that they're talking about holding migrants as they're
Speaker 5: trying to figure out repatriation. Right, if these aren't people
Speaker 5: who are subject to an immigration removal order from an
Speaker 5: immigration judge, how are we holding them? And they're not
Speaker 5: people who are criminally convicted or even criminally charged. Necessarily,
Speaker 5: if the courts refuse to strike down an abuse of
Speaker 5: invocation of this law, this law then could become the
Speaker 5: legal basis for detaining people at those immigration processing camps.
Speaker 1: Wow explained to us how it would be different than
Speaker 1: what we have right now.
Speaker 5: I think the rapidity with which the detentions and deportations
Speaker 5: could be affected would be the substantially different would be
Speaker 5: much faster, and the scale on which the detentions and
Speaker 5: deportations could happen would also be conceivably much larger.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: One thing that in the deportation context is a persistent
Speaker 5: challenge across administrations is the under resourcing of the immigration system.
Speaker 5: And so there's a tremendous backlog. We don't have enough
Speaker 5: immigration judges. The immigration judges are overburdened. There are many
Speaker 5: hearings that need to take place, particularly when people make
Speaker 5: asylum claims. One of the things again with the extreme
Speaker 5: summary processes of the Alien Enemies Act, but the Trump
Speaker 5: administration is hoping this law will allow them to do
Speaker 5: is bypass asylum hearings altogether. What we saw in World
Speaker 5: War Two was that this law was used even against
Speaker 5: German Jews simply because they were of German ancestry.
Speaker 1: Wow, as a GEO, that's pretty rough, especially considering what
Speaker 1: was happening during World War Two to German Jews. So
Speaker 1: why was that? Is the law just open to that
Speaker 1: or was that a conscious choice.
Speaker 5: The law applies to anyone once there's a presidential proclamation
Speaker 5: that there's an enemy nation with which we're at war.
Speaker 5: Applies to anyone who is a native, a citizen, denizen,
Speaker 5: or subject of that foreign enemy. If you happened to
Speaker 5: be Jewish and born in Germany, the fact that maybe
Speaker 5: you had been denationalized or stripped of your citizenship by
Speaker 5: Germany and that you had then fled to the United
Speaker 5: States as a refugee didn't change the fact that you
Speaker 5: were born in Germany. You were still a native, right
Speaker 5: and so you still fell under this law, and you
Speaker 5: still fell under the proclamation and the potential to be
Speaker 5: interned that this law gave to the Roosevelt administration and
Speaker 5: later to the Truman administration. And it was actually a
Speaker 5: conscious choice as well by the Department of Justice, at
Speaker 5: least for part of the war, not to exclude Jewish
Speaker 5: refugees out of fear for the potential that German Jews
Speaker 5: would use their refugee status as a quote protective cloak
Speaker 5: for Malian activities, as if someone who had just suffered
Speaker 5: that kind of persecution in the third right would go
Speaker 5: around and turn around and conduct espionage or sabotage to
Speaker 5: undermine the US war effort. It's a draconian, unforgiving law
Speaker 5: that contains no exceptions for someone who's completely loyal to
Speaker 5: the United States to someone who in no way, shape
Speaker 5: or form could constitute a threat to the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there any way to push back against this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So, as I've said, it would be an abuse of
Speaker 5: the law to invoke it in peace time. And the
Speaker 5: que unquote migrant invasion that Trump and Miller are hoping
Speaker 5: to proclaim is in fact not anywhere close to the
Speaker 5: kind of invasion or act of war that the Alien
Speaker 5: Enemy Is Act is concerned with. And so one of
Speaker 5: the things one of the arguments that we would be making,
Speaker 5: and you know, helping detainees immigrants detained under this law
Speaker 5: to do, is bring havieous petitions to the courts saying
Speaker 5: this law was inappropriately invoked. There actually is no legal
Speaker 5: authority to hold me in detention and queue me up
Speaker 5: for deportation. That's one of the arguments, and I think
Speaker 5: it's a pretty strong argument that this is a pretextual
Speaker 5: and abusive invocation of the law. We also would argue
Speaker 5: that the Alien Enemies Act violates contemporary understandings of equal
Speaker 5: protection or anti discrimination under the Constitution and the due
Speaker 5: process rates that immigrants have under the Constitution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but where would this go?
Speaker 1: So you would argue that it would get kicked up
Speaker 1: to what circuit it would eventually go to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: Right, that's right unless the circuit courts, district courts, and
Speaker 5: circuit courts soundingly strike down the abuse. I think if
Speaker 5: we have a case where the circuit courts are unanimous
Speaker 5: that this is a violation, this cannot be happening. Maybe
Speaker 5: the Trump administration doesn't appeal it up to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 5: but I think if this law is invoked, the chances
Speaker 5: are that this does end up with the justices.
Speaker 2: Do you have any reason to be hopeful here?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean whenever you're litigating up to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: But the question is can you count to five?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: And we have the three liberals who I'm sure would
Speaker 5: be aghast at an abusive invocation of this law. I
Speaker 5: think Frankly Neil Gorsich would also be really upset by
Speaker 5: this kind of pretextual, ahistorical use of an overbroad national
Speaker 5: security authority. And there are some cases where Gorsich has
Speaker 5: shown himself to be a little heterodox on the issue
Speaker 5: of national security pretexts advanced by the President. And I
Speaker 5: should hope that either Kavanaugh or Roberts would also strike
Speaker 5: down this kind of abuse because of the tremendous damage
Speaker 5: that using this wartime authority for peacetime massed attention and
Speaker 5: deportation would due to the American ethos and also of
Speaker 5: course to the courts themselves.
Speaker 1: Right, you don't have any hope for justice, Barrett.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure about justice, Barrett. There is a case
Speaker 5: that she wrote the majority opinion for in the past term.
Speaker 5: It's called Munez, and it is an immigration case, and
Speaker 5: she actually, in that opinion favorably cited as immigration precedent
Speaker 5: the Alien Friends Act, which was a counterpart authority of
Speaker 5: the Alien and Sedition Acts. So the peacetime authority was
Speaker 5: Alien Friends, the wartime authority was Alien Enemies. She cites
Speaker 5: that favorably as an immigration precedent, and then she also
Speaker 5: cites Chinese exclusion favorably as an immigration precedent, And those
Speaker 5: are both counter precedents in my view, and those are
Speaker 5: both arguments in my view, for why the Alien Enemies
Speaker 5: Act should be viewed and understood as unconstitutional and incompatible
Speaker 5: with our present day values, because it's just so rare
Speaker 5: for these kinds of really overbroad immigration statutes that discriminate
Speaker 5: against a person based on their identity, not based on
Speaker 5: their conduct, to be enacted by the Congress. And also,
Speaker 5: when we have as a nation enacted those laws, we
Speaker 5: have apologized for it and we've understood that that was
Speaker 5: a mistake. And so to see that in Barrett's opinion
Speaker 5: in that case left me a little bit concerned.
Speaker 2: Makes you think, yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I'm used to bear it being one
Speaker 1: of the less insane conservatives on the Court. Though she
Speaker 1: tends to vote with them, she tends to not be
Speaker 1: happy about it. Though, for whatever that's worth, that's super
Speaker 1: interesting and relevant. The money to finance these camps, do those?
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't that come from Congress?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So whenever you're talking about government action, you need
Speaker 5: to be thinking about the authorizations but also the appropriations, right,
Speaker 5: and so the Alien Enemy Us Act is an authorization, right, Like,
Speaker 5: what can we do assuming that Congress is giving us
Speaker 5: money to do it? The appropriations have to come from
Speaker 5: somewhere else. And one thing, and I'll admit I'm not
Speaker 5: an expert on this, that people have talked about is
Speaker 5: the potential of reprogramming funds that have been allocated to
Speaker 5: other projects, and so can the Trump administration take those
Speaker 5: funds that are allocated to other projects and move them
Speaker 5: into mass deportation as an endeavor.
Speaker 1: Right, that's good. I'm very depressed now. Thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you again for having me.
Speaker 1: No moment, fuck Rick Wilson, what is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 4: My moment of fuckery is the promise by the Trump
Speaker 4: administration's louder mouths to prosecute the American generals who were
Speaker 4: executing a lawful presidential orders in the withdrawal from Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: that they are going to hold them in a court
Speaker 4: martial and try to prosecute them. I get that they
Speaker 4: have a lurid fantasy life and they believe that they
Speaker 4: want to punish their enemies. Trump is doing this not
Speaker 4: because of Afghanistan or anything else. He's doing it for
Speaker 4: the very very simple and ugly reason that they believe
Speaker 4: that they need to scare the shit out of as
Speaker 4: many members of the military as they can in advance.
Speaker 4: They want to scare the shit out of those people
Speaker 4: so that they will obey Trump, so that they will
Speaker 4: not fight back against Trump, so that they will not
Speaker 4: in any way stand up and uphold their oath of
Speaker 4: office when the time comes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really scary.
Speaker 1: My moment of fuckery is that all of this feels
Speaker 1: very familiar and that we're back here again, and that
Speaker 1: people are more exhausted and the Supreme Court has his
Speaker 1: back and it's just a very dark moment in American life.
Speaker 1: But I also want to add that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of hope here.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This is he won by a very small margin. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who don't agree with his cheos, right,
Speaker 1: and that in fact there are Democrats won a bunch
Speaker 1: of Senate seats, kept a bunch of Senate seats, and
Speaker 1: the down ballot, they worked on state legislatures and did
Speaker 1: the unglamorous hard work that they had been needing to
Speaker 1: do in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: And in some ways that will provide a bullwork.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of good Democratic governors and
Speaker 1: they understand that they have to fight trump Ism tooth
Speaker 1: and nail. And that is not either fuckory, but in fact,
Speaker 1: like it's a moment of hope.
Speaker 4: Who are you and what have you done with Fast?
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of.
Speaker 2: All this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
Speaker 1: friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.