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 the White House has paused all
Speaker 1: federal grants.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Talking points memos, Josh Marshall looks into how Trump's spending
Speaker 1: freeze impacts everyday American life, and we'll talk to California
Speaker 1: Attorney General Rob Bonta about how Democratic augees are writing
Speaker 1: back against Trump.
Speaker 3: And first the news Somalie saying I told you so
Speaker 3: in this era is a not very helpful thing to do. It's,
Speaker 3: if anything, I think, depressing. But all we have seen
Speaker 3: for days on days is just Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: coming true exactly how we said it would, and it
Speaker 3: makes me want to slam my head into a table
Speaker 3: more than anything else.
Speaker 2: What I would say is this, It's not surprising.
Speaker 1: It's week two of Trump and Trump is now implementing
Speaker 1: some of the nuts and bolts of Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: You and I know all about this because we did
Speaker 1: a whole YouTube series on this in July about Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. So none of us are particularly surprised
Speaker 1: by this. But it is chaotic and upsetting and pretty
Speaker 1: much exactly what we thought it would be. So I
Speaker 1: just want to talk for a minit about the ethos
Speaker 1: of Project twenty twenty five. So Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: it was called the Mandate for Leadership. It was a
Speaker 1: large book of ideas, a sort of wish list of
Speaker 1: the things that Republicans desperately wanted, and on that wish
Speaker 1: list the idea. And Thomas Zimmer, who was a Georgetown professor,
Speaker 1: talked to me about this this summer and he pointed
Speaker 1: out that the whole idea here is that the first
Speaker 1: Trump administration was of policy failure, that they weren't able
Speaker 1: to implement the really radical stuff that they wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and that was Project twenty twenty five. As people started
Speaker 1: to google it, it got very unpopular because they started
Speaker 1: to learn about it, and what they learned was that
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five is largely.
Speaker 2: About removing a lot of.
Speaker 1: The social safety net that was put in to practice
Speaker 1: by FDR Right, A lot of the stuff that is
Speaker 1: either set up to protect people to give them a
Speaker 1: possibility where there's something between, like you know, to get
Speaker 1: them back on their feed. That that needed to go,
Speaker 1: and I want to add that that needed to go
Speaker 1: to make way for tax cuts for very rich people. Remember,
Speaker 1: Trump is pruning the federal government, not because the federal
Speaker 1: government doesn't work, but because really, really, really rich people
Speaker 1: do not want to have to pay taxes at thirty
Speaker 1: eight to forty forty five percent. They want to pay
Speaker 1: taxes at twenty percent ten percent. And for them to
Speaker 1: do that, that would mean that the federal government has
Speaker 1: to do less stuff for people. And so part of
Speaker 1: this is enacting the product the Project twenty twenty five agenda. Now,
Speaker 1: in the first Trump administration, there was a guy who
Speaker 1: was the head of the Office of Management of Budget
Speaker 1: and the OMB. The Office of Management and Budget is
Speaker 1: set up to duel out the money that Congress puts
Speaker 1: towards different things. The idea is that Congress is supposed
Speaker 1: to decide what money goes to what. But what happened
Speaker 1: when Russ Faugh was the head of OMB the last
Speaker 1: time was that he decided he didn't think money should
Speaker 1: go to Ukraine. Money that Congress had allocated to Ukraine,
Speaker 1: he decided that it shouldn't and so he held that
Speaker 1: money and ultimately that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment,
Speaker 1: right the quid pro quote no aid for Ukraine if
Speaker 1: you can't get me dirt on Joe Biden. Oh how
Speaker 1: I long for those halcyon days of the first Trump impeachment. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: we still had a mainstream media and a few Republicans
Speaker 1: in Congress who were not total shills for Donald Trump. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the point of this story is that now we have
Speaker 1: Russ Vought. He's waiting for Senate confirmation that is supposed
Speaker 1: to happen on Thursday. This timing is not so good
Speaker 1: for him because if there are any Republicans who have
Speaker 1: a spine, and maybe there are two, and perhaps there
Speaker 1: are more, if you call them every day, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, if you jam their phone lines and
Speaker 1: you call your senator right now, or call your congressman
Speaker 1: right now, and you just keep calling, even if they're
Speaker 1: a Republican, they get hundreds of thousands of Jesse.
Speaker 2: You know this, Jesse.
Speaker 1: What happens when members of Congress get hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of phone calls.
Speaker 3: They get very very shock. And we've seen proof of
Speaker 3: this before that a lot of the time when you're
Speaker 3: getting these calls, it is not going to pause your
Speaker 3: deepest conviction. Like the thing people get wrong about this
Speaker 3: is that when you are as Zella, Mike Pence has
Speaker 3: not changed his mind on abortion, but something he's squishy
Speaker 3: on and doesn't really care that much about, like whether
Speaker 3: Cash Bettel gets through or not, Well that might change
Speaker 3: a mark Wayne Mullen if they fear the wrath. I
Speaker 3: think there's gonna be a lot of wrath felt this
Speaker 3: week about Medicaid, which we're going to be talking about soon.
Speaker 3: That with the congressional phone lines getting flooded right now.
Speaker 3: And I know this because I'm married to somebody who
Speaker 3: takes these calls, it's very very very very easy to
Speaker 3: sway them on the things they are persuadable on.
Speaker 2: So anyway, the point of this is that if you.
Speaker 1: Call your senator, if you call your congressman, and you
Speaker 1: say to them, do not approve Russ Bobb, do not
Speaker 1: go along with letting Donald Trump have the power of
Speaker 1: the purse, because Congress is really giving.
Speaker 2: Away its power here and that is what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: Anyway. So this omb memo came out yesterday. It says
Speaker 1: that five o'clock on Tuesday, which is when we are
Speaker 1: taping this, but you will be listening to this on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: It says at five o'clock on Tuesday, all federal.
Speaker 2: Grants and loans will paused.
Speaker 1: So all White House federal grants loans will be paused
Speaker 1: by five o'clock unless there is a court injunction. I believe,
Speaker 1: and again I could be wrong. You guys know, if
Speaker 1: you listen this podcast, you know I'm never wrong. But
Speaker 1: except when I am, I believe that what's happening here
Speaker 1: is that there's going to be an injunction and that
Speaker 1: this is going to have a code to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court is going to look at it
Speaker 1: on the shadow docket because what Donald Trump I actually
Speaker 1: think wants to do here is a repeal of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four Impoundment Act, which made it so that
Speaker 1: the president could not stop congressionally allocated money from being distributed.
Speaker 2: I actually think this is a legal play.
Speaker 1: As much as it's trying to freak everyone out, I
Speaker 1: also think it is a legal play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think that's wrong. Somali, I am a Doo,
Speaker 3: follows the AI thing very very closely. Starting around Friday night,
Speaker 3: everybody started talking about this deep seek thing that happened
Speaker 3: from China, where China basically made an AI model for
Speaker 3: one one hundredths two one one thousandth of what many
Speaker 3: of these AI people were talking about building something like
Speaker 3: this for that is much more efficient. Now while some
Speaker 3: people have said it has some holes in it, that
Speaker 3: is kind of a team of AI in that it
Speaker 3: looks really nice but has some very big falls when
Speaker 3: you look under the hood. But Trump was about to
Speaker 3: give five hundred billion dollars in AI initiative, and uh oh,
Speaker 3: that's not looking so on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so again, this is another Chinese app that's causing
Speaker 1: problems in America.
Speaker 2: Not to be confused with TikTok. We don't know what
Speaker 2: the play is.
Speaker 1: We don't really know how good this AI is and
Speaker 1: whether it's better than the homegrown American AI, but we
Speaker 1: do know that China is yet again perhaps eating our lunch.
Speaker 2: Maybe not, we'll see.
Speaker 3: I think the most interesting thing though, is Nvidia's stock
Speaker 3: falling by over six hundred billion dollars in a day,
Speaker 3: being one of the largest losses, and really a lot
Speaker 3: of people feel like this is now Trump putting a
Speaker 3: very bad investment from our text dollars into something and
Speaker 3: yet to get a funnel towards rich people.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only thing I would say is we
Speaker 1: don't know if it's real or not. Because you'll remember
Speaker 1: that Trump trotted out that Sawbank CEO in twenty seventeen too,
Speaker 1: So who knows, I mean, I.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't you know.
Speaker 1: Maybe he made the investment, maybe he just had pretended
Speaker 1: to make the investment.
Speaker 2: No one knows, No one knows, solid point.
Speaker 1: Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the podcast, Josh Marshall.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I had always thought that Project twenty twenty five was
Speaker 1: the plan because they kept saying project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: is the plan, except when Trump was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: never heard of it, never heard of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was run out of his campaign basically,
Speaker 4: so that was always a good indication.
Speaker 2: By his people.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I mean almost literally out of his campaign.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, is this the day that the American
Speaker 1: people like sort of thread the needle and are like,
Speaker 1: oh wow.
Speaker 4: Well, I think last night is when we saw, you know,
Speaker 4: the collision come into view. I'm not sure that a
Speaker 4: lot of people are going to realize it today because
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that the headlines that people are seeing
Speaker 4: are quite making it clear in that case. I'm not
Speaker 4: even sure in every case that that is a failure
Speaker 4: of the media. Although there's plenty of that to go around.
Speaker 4: It's difficult to capture quite what's happening. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think the you know, substantively what the president is doing
Speaker 4: is he's doing kind of a unilateral government shutdown on steroids.
Speaker 4: It is both less than a government shut down in
Speaker 4: some ways and very much more in other ways, and
Speaker 4: that obviously has all sorts of implications. Again, it takes
Speaker 4: a lot for things to break through to people, but
Speaker 4: I think we're I think we're pretty much there, because
Speaker 4: this is going to show up pretty quickly in a
Speaker 4: lot of areas. There are the hot button things, and
Speaker 4: then there are the more in some ways more mundane
Speaker 4: things but that people will see in their own neighborhoods,
Speaker 4: in their own lives.
Speaker 1: I just want to pause for a minute and talk
Speaker 1: about how this is actually kind of legal, right. It's strange,
Speaker 1: it's unusual, but it's also technically like, I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't really care. There is a thing the
Speaker 1: Impoundment Control Act of nineteen seventy four, a post Nixon
Speaker 1: anti corruption statute, which created a world where the president
Speaker 1: cannot withhold funds because he wants to.
Speaker 2: Now, Russ vought in Trump one point zero.
Speaker 1: You'll remember he withheld the money for Ukraine and that
Speaker 1: led to Trump's first impeachment.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, there's two levels of this. First of all,
Speaker 4: what he's doing here is on its face, I think
Speaker 4: on constitutional this isn't just a matter of statute law,
Speaker 4: and it's not just a technicality. Basically, I think most
Speaker 4: people would agree that a president has some discretion at
Speaker 4: the margins of how to what pace to spend moneys
Speaker 4: that are appropriated and ordered to be spent by Congress.
Speaker 4: At the margins is the key thing. After President Nixon
Speaker 4: tried to do very small and focused versions of what
Speaker 4: President Trump appears to be doing now, and that led
Speaker 4: to creating this Impoundment Act that you just referred to.
Speaker 4: And what that act does is it basically says that
Speaker 4: if the president wants to say, okay, this, I'm going
Speaker 4: to slow down or stop this one area of funding,
Speaker 4: he has to go to Congress and get approval for that.
Speaker 4: So that's what that is. No one at the time
Speaker 4: envision this, which is basically I'm going to stop all
Speaker 4: spending everywhere for everything, which is basically what he's doing.
Speaker 4: But I think the key thing to understand here is
Speaker 4: that this isn't just a matter of violating the Impoundment Act,
Speaker 4: which the administration will certainly say is unconstitutional. It's also
Speaker 4: what he's doing here is unconstitutional and in the most
Speaker 4: basic level that the Congress is in charge of spending,
Speaker 4: that's where spending is decided, and what he's doing here.
Speaker 4: If the president can do this, the Congress's control over
Speaker 4: spending becomes basically meaningless.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So it's taking away power from a co executive branch,
Speaker 1: which was again part of Project twenty twenty five. Right,
Speaker 1: the idea was give as much power as possible to
Speaker 1: the presidency, stripped the executive branches from their power, make
Speaker 1: him the boss, the big boss. I'm curious now here
Speaker 1: we are. We've sort of gone down this rabbit hole
Speaker 1: the reading reporting. You know, the Republicans in the House
Speaker 1: are having a meeting in durral in the Trump deraw
Speaker 1: right under the floodpath to talk about their legislative agenda,
Speaker 1: which is largely a tax cut for very rich people
Speaker 1: and trying to take stuff away from the federal government,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to cut Medicare and trying to do
Speaker 1: anything they can to save money so they can give
Speaker 1: these billionaires a tax cut. The reporting I've read so
Speaker 1: far shows that the Republicans are pretty reticent to challenge Trump,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that there is no world in which
Speaker 1: any of this is okay. Are you surprised at all?
Speaker 4: I'm not surprised. There's clearly no appetite to challenge him
Speaker 4: at all. I think that I'm only surprised at what
Speaker 4: he's doing in the sense that he is doing it
Speaker 4: on a blanket level, which will not only hit the
Speaker 4: things that he wants to hit, but will hit the
Speaker 4: things that I think he's much more indifferent hitting, but
Speaker 4: will show up pretty dramatically for people everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's the chaos of Trumpism.
Speaker 4: Right, It's the chaos of it. And I think that
Speaker 4: at the scale in which you know, as of eleven
Speaker 4: forty three on Tuesday morning, he seems to be doing it,
Speaker 4: it will have pretty dramatic and immediate not only showing
Speaker 4: up when, like you know, the local daycare center has
Speaker 4: to shut down like next week, but also will be
Speaker 4: a big jolt to the economy. This is going to
Speaker 4: have effects that people are going to see, and at
Speaker 4: that point, we're going to have to see what everybody
Speaker 4: wants to do about it, because I think we have
Speaker 4: seen very clearly, if it comes to a norm or
Speaker 4: what you know, I guess we now call technical illegalities,
Speaker 4: Republicans don't care. You know, they don't care when it
Speaker 4: comes to things you're relative in long term care. If
Speaker 4: the long term care facility shuts down again next week,
Speaker 4: people are going to see that, right, and then you're
Speaker 4: going to have to That's a different kind of conversation.
Speaker 4: And I don't have any certain expectations what that conversation
Speaker 4: is going to produce. It's but it's a different conversation,
Speaker 4: and I think that's that's why this is a This
Speaker 4: is a big deal. This isn't like, oh, we're gonna
Speaker 4: you know, we're not going to send you know, some
Speaker 4: anti tank missiles to some country you've never heard about.
Speaker 1: You It's actually like aid to your grandma, which she's
Speaker 1: been getting this whole time, and now she's not going
Speaker 1: to get it because Donald Trump says.
Speaker 4: Now, well, Molly, let me say one additional thing that
Speaker 4: I think is important for people to think about most
Speaker 4: cancer research in this country. Trials that cancer research, basic research,
Speaker 4: all of it. Most of it's funded by the federal government.
Speaker 4: What this does it immediately stops all of it. And
Speaker 4: that just doesn't mean things in the distant future. That
Speaker 4: means things will stop because the people doing the research
Speaker 4: don't know when the next check is going to come.
Speaker 4: So these things are again things that most people who
Speaker 4: are casual observers of politics think that these are things
Speaker 4: that are just kind of on autopilot that are never affected,
Speaker 4: but they will be effected if what he is now
Speaker 4: saying he will do he actually does.
Speaker 1: This is the accelerationist case for trump Ism. If Donald
Speaker 1: Trump were John Roberts and he were very cunning and
Speaker 1: wanted to slowly dismantle the administrative state so that no
Speaker 1: one would notice, we would be looking at a very
Speaker 1: different week two, right, we'd be looking at a week
Speaker 1: two that was don't worry, those Democrats are such liars.
Speaker 1: We just want to trim the fat of the federal government.
Speaker 1: But that's not what Donald Trump is, right. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has moved fast and break things. So what we're looking
Speaker 1: at is a real sea change. Right, we're looking at
Speaker 1: a real American government that will be much smaller if
Speaker 1: they're able to pause almost all of it.
Speaker 4: Smaller is an understatement less functional, right, Well, think of
Speaker 4: it this way in terms of what is not affected,
Speaker 4: what does not appear to be affected is a the military,
Speaker 4: and b salaries or government employees, which obviously is the
Speaker 4: big deal to government employees. And then direct payments from
Speaker 4: Social Security and medicare okay, those things right there are
Speaker 4: most of the federal budget. But that leaves kind of
Speaker 4: everything else the government. The federal government does, and a
Speaker 4: huge part of what the federal government does is contract
Speaker 4: for lots of things to happen. It gives money to
Speaker 4: state and local governments to do various things, run schools,
Speaker 4: run hospitals, blah blah, blah, blah blah. A lot of
Speaker 4: medicaid is in the form of grants. It's not to
Speaker 4: individual people. So it's not just that it'll be smaller
Speaker 4: and less functional. In a basic way, it'll stop doing
Speaker 4: almost everything it does because everything that it does outside
Speaker 4: of again the military and checks to those two programs,
Speaker 4: and that's only direct checks. The check that actually goes
Speaker 4: to you personally, there's a lot of stuff that is
Speaker 4: grants to hospitals and blah blah blah blah blah. So
Speaker 4: it is honestly a little hard to understand exactly what
Speaker 4: their plan is is. I think basically what they're really
Speaker 4: trying to do here is two things. One is force
Speaker 4: the principle that the president is in charge of all spending.
Speaker 4: So take that power back. And once you take the
Speaker 4: power back, you know, you probably decide, Okay, I want
Speaker 4: to do this, that and the other, but first you
Speaker 4: want to kind of set the principle. The other thing
Speaker 4: is I think that they want to take all of
Speaker 4: these different kinds of spending and have the stakeholders, you know,
Speaker 4: hospitals when it comes to Medicaid and medicare, schools around
Speaker 4: the country when it comes to all that funding, blah
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. Wants to get all these stakeholders to
Speaker 4: kind of come hat in hand to the president, well,
Speaker 4: you know, what can you do to make it worth
Speaker 4: his while? Those, I think are the two things that
Speaker 4: are going on here. Because this doesn't just go to
Speaker 4: fund the woke mind virus right or whatever they call it.
Speaker 4: It funds a lot of things that they want too.
Speaker 4: Yeah too, and again I think, look, people don't like answer, right,
Speaker 4: It's very unpopular. And I think that when you hear
Speaker 4: something like that, because look, I mean in a more
Speaker 4: serious vein. Obviously, cancer has impacted all of our lives,
Speaker 4: some more directly than others. But when you hear something
Speaker 4: like that, that's shocking. But that's what this does, and
Speaker 4: it's not an exaggeration. It shuts all of that off.
Speaker 4: So it's going to get everybody's attention.
Speaker 2: And I think.
Speaker 1: It's worth just pausing for a moment and talking about
Speaker 1: how the things that the federal government does besides cancer
Speaker 1: research FEMA, right, I'm thinking about the stuff that in
Speaker 1: the Health Department, a lot of that stuff. Trump said
Speaker 1: he had a mandate, and the mandate was He's going
Speaker 1: to make things cheaper, right, like that we were going
Speaker 1: to if there was anything that was all a little
Speaker 1: bit of a mandate, it was this idea that was
Speaker 1: going to make things cheaper.
Speaker 2: So here we are.
Speaker 1: Now we have this bird flu, right, which is all
Speaker 1: these chickens have to die because they are spreading this
Speaker 1: bird flu.
Speaker 2: So that is a thing that.
Speaker 1: Will actually make eggs even more expensive. So that is
Speaker 1: a thing that the federal government has been monitoring, and
Speaker 1: if it's on pause, that is going to increase the
Speaker 1: likelihood that there will be more unmonitored cases of bird flu.
Speaker 4: Am I right, yeah, I mean the bird flu situation
Speaker 4: is very ominous. Even if you figure none of this
Speaker 4: was happening. You know, the big thing happened almost a
Speaker 4: year ago now where it moved into the cattle. That
Speaker 4: seems to be ongoing, So that is a big, big
Speaker 4: deal even if none of this was happening. I don't
Speaker 4: know offhand the precise mix of surveillance and monitoring on
Speaker 4: that front that is from you know, government employees versus
Speaker 4: grants and loans and blah blah blah blah blah. But
Speaker 4: putting a huge jolt into the federal bureaucracy short circuiting
Speaker 4: a lot of the funding will unquestionably hobble that effort.
Speaker 4: There's no way it can't. It's difficult to describe how
Speaker 4: widespread this is, and again, as with so many things
Speaker 4: with Trump, it's a little hard to say is this
Speaker 4: going to still be the policy tonight? How carefully was
Speaker 4: this thing written? If you look at it, it doesn't
Speaker 4: seem terribly carefully written. And by that I'm not trying
Speaker 4: to kind of give people, you know, solace. Like the
Speaker 4: point is is that this is really coming into the
Speaker 4: classroom with the battle axe and you're swinging it around
Speaker 4: and like, are you going to kill all the kids? Well,
Speaker 4: you know it's not great, but it's so jagged. Who
Speaker 4: knows exactly who's going to get hit?
Speaker 2: Right? And this is the move fast and break things right.
Speaker 1: This is like by design set up to be non
Speaker 1: specific and to be you know, quite problematic. I want
Speaker 1: to talk through something with you that happened this weekend,
Speaker 1: which was the appointment of Pete Heagseth to the DoD.
Speaker 1: He is unqualified, he is likely has some issues with
Speaker 1: the drink. He has certainly some many allegations of sexual misconduct,
Speaker 1: and perhaps.
Speaker 4: More are violence misconduct.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there's just many reasons to be skeptical of
Speaker 1: disappointment for any number of reasons. I want to talk
Speaker 1: for a minute about Mitch McConnell voting against him, because
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Tillis was expected to vote against him,
Speaker 1: and then somehow, after meeting with him for two hours,
Speaker 1: he decided it wasn't Who knows what the calculus there was,
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious what you think about the idea
Speaker 1: that Mitch mcconnald voted against him and what you think
Speaker 1: that could portend.
Speaker 4: It may pretend that we are entering the dark Mitch
Speaker 4: era for Trump, Right, that's possible. We know who Mitch
Speaker 4: McConnell is. We've lived with Mitch McConnell back deep into
Speaker 4: the Obama era. Having said that, it is also true
Speaker 4: that many of the things that are happening right now
Speaker 4: are going so far rogue that it shouldn't surprise us
Speaker 4: if extremely conservative, extremely cynical people say is a bit
Speaker 4: much for me, I can't go with you on Matt thing.
Speaker 4: Having said that, Having said that, plus, I think it's
Speaker 4: clear that you know Mitch McConnell has a bit of
Speaker 4: a polio. Is a bit of a sore point for
Speaker 4: Mitch mcconnal's.
Speaker 2: Many people are saying, yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, So that is an issue. Having said that,
Speaker 4: there's also another possibility, and I think this is actually
Speaker 4: something coming up with RFK Junior specifically, there's one scenario
Speaker 4: where someone like Mitch McConnell says, hey, I can't support
Speaker 4: this guy. I'm going to vote no, or in the
Speaker 4: background says I'm not going to like try to actually
Speaker 4: sink it for you. There's another scenario, and I'm against
Speaker 4: talking specifically about the Kennedy confirmation process, where what I
Speaker 4: hear from people who are kind of working that confirmation
Speaker 4: on the anti side is that they think there are
Speaker 4: potentially as many as six or seven Republicans who will
Speaker 4: vote against him. So what they are working on now
Speaker 4: is they are trying to do everything they possibly can
Speaker 4: to make sure there are no democratic defections, because if
Speaker 4: there are democratic defections, it's much easier for Publicans just
Speaker 4: to say, hey, if you guys, aren't you know, just
Speaker 4: to go ahead with all of that. There is also
Speaker 4: they're looking very closely at McConnell because again, he probably
Speaker 4: votes against But there's a scenario where again McConnell says,
Speaker 4: indirectly to the White House, I'm going to vote against,
Speaker 4: but I'm not really going to try to, you know,
Speaker 4: screw you guys here and make it fail, or he
Speaker 4: can say I'm actually going to use my remaining influence
Speaker 4: and try to get those six or seven to vote no.
Speaker 4: So I don't know quite where. I don't think we
Speaker 4: know yet where McConnell's is on that spectrum of doing
Speaker 4: just his votes, kind of sending a you know, kind
Speaker 4: of a vote for posterity and legacy or is it
Speaker 4: something a little more And I don't think we I
Speaker 4: don't think we know yet.
Speaker 1: I agree. I also American Democracy the final season. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned everyone. Yeah, Oh, thank you, Josh Marshall.
Speaker 4: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Rob Banta is the Attorney General of California. Welcome too
Speaker 1: fast politics. You're actually general, right General Banta?
Speaker 4: Attorney General Banta A G. Banta?
Speaker 2: In general you are general though, right general?
Speaker 1: So you are the general of the great State of California,
Speaker 1: fifth largest economy in the world. So this summer we
Speaker 1: interviewed a bunch of attorneys generals and we talked to
Speaker 1: them about the plans that you guys have put together
Speaker 1: for what would happen if Donald Trump was elected.
Speaker 2: And are of doing these.
Speaker 1: Post constitutional to quote Russ Vought, sort of jiu jitsu
Speaker 1: on the federal government. So talk us through is this
Speaker 1: what you thought it would be? Is it worse than
Speaker 1: you thought it would be? And explain to us what
Speaker 1: is exactly happening here.
Speaker 4: It's what I expected.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And when I say that, I mean unfortunately day
Speaker 5: one and the immediate days that followed actions that violated
Speaker 5: the law, violate the constitution. That's his brand, that's what
Speaker 5: he does. It's what he did in Trump one point zero.
Speaker 2: It's what he said he would do.
Speaker 4: It's what he said he would do.
Speaker 5: He channeled it, he indicated it the whole time and
Speaker 5: telegraphed it. Now he's doing it, so not a surprise.
Speaker 5: And the Attorney generals, the Democratic attorney's general in the
Speaker 5: United States, have been working together for months preparing for
Speaker 5: the possibility of this moment and now the reality of
Speaker 5: this moment. We've been meeting, we've been thinking, we've been
Speaker 5: looking at what he says he's going to do, what
Speaker 5: is inner Circle says he is going to do, what
Speaker 5: Project twenty twenty five indicates he might do, and preparing
Speaker 5: for every scenario so that we're ready. And we believe
Speaker 5: that preparedness and readiness is the best antidote to the
Speaker 5: threats that are coming, and we should be ready as
Speaker 5: soon as an action is taken that we believe was
Speaker 5: unlawful to go to court to stop him, and we
Speaker 5: did that with the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order on day
Speaker 5: one he issued it.
Speaker 4: The end of the.
Speaker 5: Day on day one of his inauguration. The next morning,
Speaker 5: we were in court with the filing. We had the
Speaker 5: briefing and the filing ready. We just had the dot,
Speaker 5: the i's, cross the t's press print and file it.
Speaker 5: Because he said he would do it. We prepared for
Speaker 5: that scenario and we are ready to file now. We
Speaker 5: have a restraining order of stopping him from the unconstitutional
Speaker 5: executive order attacking birthright citizenship, and that's.
Speaker 4: Our plan for all the things he might do. Now.
Speaker 5: Will he surprise us with something up a sleeve that
Speaker 5: he hasn't talked about that he decides during the course
Speaker 5: of his administration to do. For sure, we'll be ready
Speaker 5: for that too. We're watching every action that he takes,
Speaker 5: including the Office of Management and Budgets memo last night,
Speaker 5: and we'll be ready to act as appropriate on any
Speaker 5: action he takes that's unlawful.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if you could explain to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about since you're in California, I wonder how
Speaker 1: surprised you were when he started going after FEMA.
Speaker 5: Not surprised, certainly disappoint it. I think very unfortunate to
Speaker 5: even go down that route and consider conditioning funding for
Speaker 5: disaster relief when people have lost everything and are in pain,
Speaker 5: and when there's a tradition in the United States of
Speaker 5: America for the federal government for presidents too immediately and
Speaker 5: decisively and quickly deploy massive resources to states hurt by disaster.
Speaker 5: President Biden did that for Florida and for Texas when
Speaker 5: they were hit with devastating hurricanes. That was the right
Speaker 5: thing to do. He didn't ask if they were Red
Speaker 5: states or blue states. He said they were with Americans
Speaker 5: who need help, and they deserve it, and they're going
Speaker 5: to get it. That's exactly what mister Trump should be
Speaker 5: doing here. He ran for and is the president of
Speaker 5: the United States of America, not the president of the
Speaker 5: Red States of America and the Blue states. If they
Speaker 5: do the things he wants and follows the right conditions,
Speaker 5: that's not how it works. So he's trying to condition
Speaker 5: FEMA funding on a potential voter id law when there's
Speaker 5: absolutely no evidence of any widespread voter fraud, or on
Speaker 5: a new water policy when there is nothing about California's
Speaker 5: water policy that helped they contributed to the fires in
Speaker 5: La So entirely different policies unrelated to the fire at hand,
Speaker 5: and a potential distancing and different approach than what every
Speaker 5: president of the United States of America has done before.
Speaker 4: So it's a dangerous game.
Speaker 5: It's inappropriate, and I think and expect that he will
Speaker 5: provide the funding because of the disaster, and he came
Speaker 5: to La. Our governor met him on the tarmac, met
Speaker 5: with leaders in La. He was able to survey the damage,
Speaker 5: and I hope and believe that after seeing that damaged, destruction, devastation,
Speaker 5: the pain that Americans are in, he will do what
Speaker 5: every president has done before and provide the fighting without conditions.
Speaker 1: California pays more into the federal tax system than it
Speaker 1: gets out now. Right now, it needs a gazillion dollars
Speaker 1: because the fires. But historically, you guys are a like
Speaker 1: New York where I live a net. You guys take
Speaker 1: care of the red states that don't pay as much
Speaker 1: into federal taxes.
Speaker 2: So I'm wondering if you can.
Speaker 1: I mean, there must be like a palpable anger even
Speaker 1: from Republicans in California about how unfair it is to
Speaker 1: pay so much into the federal government and then in
Speaker 1: your hour of need be you know, nickeled and.
Speaker 4: Dimed hundred percent.
Speaker 5: We are a massive donor state, the fifth largest economy
Speaker 5: in the world, the tenth pole of the American economy.
Speaker 5: We give more, far more billions and billions of dollars
Speaker 5: more to the federal fisk and purse than we receive
Speaker 5: back in federal funding. We subsidize other states, many of
Speaker 5: them happen to be red states, including the great State
Speaker 5: of Louisiana, where Speaker Johnson is from. And he's talking
Speaker 5: about conditioning the FEMA funding. Very ironic that he might
Speaker 5: be doing that given the state that he's from, in
Speaker 5: the state that he's talking about, California and Louisiana, it's
Speaker 5: well known in California that we are a donor state
Speaker 5: and that we put money into the federal government's fisk,
Speaker 5: and that in a time of need, like a national disaster,
Speaker 5: we should be receiving the funding, no questions asked. So
Speaker 5: of course it's disappointing, it's frustrating. Unfortunately, it's not surprising.
Speaker 5: We think we're going to work through this. Mister Trump
Speaker 5: is talking about certain conditions, but I think when it
Speaker 5: comes down to it, the funding will be provided without conditions.
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of issues here. One is
Speaker 1: this sort of extra legality of it. One is this
Speaker 1: certain kind of political calculus of it. Do you talk
Speaker 1: to Republicans and do they see how this could hurt
Speaker 1: them in the state.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Republicans in the state are asking for funding
Speaker 5: from FEMA without conditions, rightfully so, and I'm grateful that
Speaker 5: they are. They're fighting for their state. They don't want
Speaker 5: their state to be treated differently than every other state
Speaker 5: that's ever received disaster relief in America.
Speaker 4: They want us to get the funding.
Speaker 5: There are people hurt by these wildfires from both parties.
Speaker 5: Wildfires don't see party. They just ripped through communities and
Speaker 5: destroyed everything and took everything from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Speaker 5: And it doesn't matter what your party is, Your people,
Speaker 5: your Americans, and you should receive the funding and that
Speaker 5: should be the end of it.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could sort of talk us through
Speaker 1: some of the other things at the federal level that
Speaker 1: we're seeing Trump World, you know, trying to pull back. So,
Speaker 1: for example, tonight at five o'clock, there has been an
Speaker 1: omb memo which will pause almost all discretionary spending in
Speaker 1: the federal government period paragraph, what can you do as
Speaker 1: a state attorney's general for your state?
Speaker 2: And what does this look like? And how destabilizing is this?
Speaker 5: It's very destabilizing. It's a shocking act of unlawfulness. It
Speaker 5: threatens students in college who are only in school because
Speaker 5: they have federal student loans.
Speaker 2: Those are pelgrams, right, that's right.
Speaker 5: And also children who receive subsidized food programs like Snap.
Speaker 5: And these are programs that need to flow consistently with certainty,
Speaker 5: not be paused or stopped without any notice without there
Speaker 5: being great harm being done. And the President, unfortunately has
Speaker 5: shown and continues to show, both in the Trump administration
Speaker 5: at one point zero and the current Trump administration, that
Speaker 5: he likes to do what he wants, when he wants,
Speaker 5: how he wants. And that doesn't fit well with our
Speaker 5: democratic structure. It doesn't fit well with separation of powers,
Speaker 5: with checks and balances, with the rule of law, with
Speaker 5: the Administrative Procedures Act, with budget being allocated and restricted
Speaker 5: for certain purposes and not for others, and so he
Speaker 5: ends up violating the law consistently. Unfortunately, it's not a
Speaker 5: lot to ask and shouldn't be a lot to ask.
Speaker 5: To ask for a president who complies with the law,
Speaker 5: who follows our constitution. We my office, the California Department
Speaker 5: of Justice, sued him over one hundred and twenty times
Speaker 5: in the Trump one point zero administration, and we won
Speaker 5: over two thirds of the time, meaning a federal judge,
Speaker 5: a neutral decided that mister Trump was breaking the law
Speaker 5: two thirds of those times, and a judge found that
Speaker 5: already with his day one action attacking birthright citizenship. So
Speaker 5: his action, which he seeks to be effective at five
Speaker 5: o'clock today.
Speaker 4: Is very damaging.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of real lives that would be adversely impacted,
Speaker 5: severely harmed, and we are looking at all of our options. We'
Speaker 5: working through the night to be honest with other states
Speaker 5: preparing potential actions based on the illegality of his action.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us sort of what a Californian's
Speaker 1: life will look like if Trump's federal government free is like,
Speaker 1: it won't just be college, It'll be like, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about, like if you're in a clinical trial,
Speaker 1: if you rely on any kind of research, if you write,
Speaker 1: I mean, what other aspects of everyday life do the
Speaker 1: federal government control for people in California?
Speaker 5: I mean the same that they impact every American in
Speaker 5: every state. As you mentioned, there's massive grants and federal
Speaker 5: outlays for health and human services, for research, for the
Speaker 5: safety net, healthcare programs, for Medicare and Medicaid, and you know,
Speaker 5: there's Social Security. But I think he's specified in the
Speaker 5: memo that some of those things will be exempted. But
Speaker 5: I'm painting the picture of the mass of social service,
Speaker 5: safety net and set of services and programs that affect
Speaker 5: everyone's life in some way. You know, students in higher education,
Speaker 5: those seeking federal anti poverty support, or food programs or
Speaker 5: federally subsidized housing, you know, whether it's housing, food, healthcare,
Speaker 5: the basics that the things that everyone needs to survive.
Speaker 5: They're potentially at risk based on one seemingly arbitrary and
Speaker 5: capricious decision made by the President when he doesn't even
Speaker 5: have the authority to make that decision. So it's a
Speaker 5: dangerous game he's playing, and he's violating the law in
Speaker 5: the process.
Speaker 1: We knew it because we knew about Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: But it's still completely crazy, right, I mean, to see
Speaker 1: it happen, to see that they're actually doing it is
Speaker 1: kind of nuts. What other things are you looking at
Speaker 1: besides this dismantling of the federal government.
Speaker 5: Well, looking at all the things, certainly immigration a big
Speaker 5: area that the Corump administration has flagged for action, and.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get to have people sort of see
Speaker 1: as much immigration as possible, right, Like they want the
Speaker 1: raids on television. They had doctor Phil in bed, famous
Speaker 1: immigration reporter, Doctor Phil. They are hoping to get more
Speaker 1: attention than they're necessarily deporting, right because for example, those
Speaker 1: deportation flights to Columbia have been going on forever. The
Speaker 1: fact that they were turned around. Now this one flight
Speaker 1: was turned around was largely because it was a military plane.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're trying to you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: performative politics here, a lot of showmanship as opposed to
Speaker 5: real substantive progress over years past. This president is a showman,
Speaker 5: he's a salesman. He's trying to sell his agenda and
Speaker 5: show that he's doing something by putting it on TV,
Speaker 5: by bringing military to the border. And I will point
Speaker 5: out the massive hypocrisy in his rhetoric versus his action.
Speaker 5: Talked about going after undocumented criminals and that would be
Speaker 5: his focus that would be his priority. But on day one,
Speaker 5: he went after American citizens and children with the executive
Speaker 5: order attacking birthright citizenship. He went after children learning and
Speaker 5: the faithful praying and patients healing in hospitals and schools
Speaker 5: and churches. With his revocation of the memo preventing immigration
Speaker 5: enforcement at sensitive sites. He went after those folks who
Speaker 5: were participating and fully vetted and approved in legal immigration
Speaker 5: programs where they were seeking refuge in asylum after facing
Speaker 5: persecution and violence in their home country. So what he
Speaker 5: is doing is not consistent with what he has said
Speaker 5: he will do, and he's creating a lot of damage
Speaker 5: in the process. We're looking at the use of the
Speaker 5: military when it comes to immigration and whether it's being
Speaker 5: used lawfully. We're certainly looking at reproductive freedom. His Safe
Speaker 5: Mens and Project twenty twenty five talk about the weaponization
Speaker 5: of the Comstock Act, the revocation of approval of FDA
Speaker 5: for abortion medication, a potential national abortion ban. So we're
Speaker 5: looking at all those spaces. We're looking at see what
Speaker 5: he does on firearms, particularly ghost guns. He could take
Speaker 5: a different position than the ATF under Biden did when
Speaker 5: it comes to treating ghost guns.
Speaker 4: Like what they are guns.
Speaker 5: We're looking at what he does on the Department for
Speaker 5: the Department of Education and his statement that he wants
Speaker 5: to defund them DEI, the LGBTQ plus community. So there's
Speaker 5: many areas where he has started to act with some
Speaker 5: of his executive orders or acted already or said he
Speaker 5: will act, and we're monitoring all of them.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk us through, like, for example, let's
Speaker 1: talk through birthrights citizenship.
Speaker 2: Talk us through what you're doing now on that.
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: Yeah, our north star is what mister Trump doing unlawful.
Speaker 4: If it's not, there's nothing for us to do.
Speaker 5: If it is, we'll take him the court to make
Speaker 5: sure he complies with the law birthrights citizenship. That executive
Speaker 5: order on day one is a example of him taking
Speaker 5: a clearly and blatantly unconstitutional, unlawful action, and we took
Speaker 5: him to court immediately, as he should have been, and
Speaker 5: we have restrained that unconstitutional action immediately.
Speaker 4: So he issued an.
Speaker 5: Executive order he attacked a fundamental constitutional right, the right
Speaker 5: that says that all persons born in the United States
Speaker 5: of America are American citizens, and he threatened in a
Speaker 5: prospective way, thousands of children to be born in the
Speaker 5: United States, including about twenty five thousand per year in California,
Speaker 5: who otherwise would be American citizens, but because of his order,
Speaker 5: they will not be, and that means they won't have
Speaker 5: access to things like the Children's Health Insurance program CHIP
Speaker 5: or Medicaid, or subsidized housing, or the student loan programs
Speaker 5: or subsidized food programs. They will be deportable immediately. They
Speaker 5: can't work legally, can't vote, can't serve un injury, can't
Speaker 5: run for office, can't have a Social Security number, we
Speaker 5: can't have a passport, and we sued. Over twenty states
Speaker 5: sued in two different courts, and one of those courts
Speaker 5: two days later issued a temporary restraining order preventing the
Speaker 5: implementation of Trump's executive order, and in the process saying
Speaker 5: that in the last four decades on the bench, and
Speaker 5: this is a President Reagan Republican appointee, said he'd never
Speaker 5: seen a clearer case that it was so clear that
Speaker 5: the federal government was violating the law. He said his
Speaker 5: mind was boggled that the US Department of Justice attorneys
Speaker 5: could even come to court and make these arguments, and
Speaker 5: said it was a blatant violation in the Constitution and
Speaker 5: stopped it from being implemented.
Speaker 4: You know, that's what Trump is doing.
Speaker 5: That's what Republican appointees on the bench are saying he's doing.
Speaker 5: And that's what attorneys general will do. We'll take him
Speaker 5: to court when he breaks the law and stop him
Speaker 5: immediately to make sure he's lawfully compliant.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Attorney General Fonta, Thank.
Speaker 4: You now momently.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon Molly.
Speaker 3: I never like when we have to long for the
Speaker 3: days of donass don't tell being a policy that's that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: So Trump has declared transgender soldiers unfit for the US military.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I saw this coming. It's not a
Speaker 1: huge shock. Trump has been at war with people who
Speaker 1: are transgender. This is a very stupid, shitty thing. He
Speaker 1: wants to punish people who are trans because of course
Speaker 1: he does, because the cruelty is the point, and none
Speaker 1: of us should be surprised. It appears to prohibit thousands
Speaker 1: of transgender members from serving in the military, citing issues
Speaker 1: of physical and mental readiness.
Speaker 2: I mean, they'll just say whatever.
Speaker 1: It's just so incredibly shitty and unsurprising and welcome to
Speaker 1: Trump two point zero, where all of his worst ideas flourish.
Speaker 3: Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode to see if those sirens
Speaker 3: that and going off the entire segment. If it was
Speaker 3: just Molly getting taken.
Speaker 2: Away, that was good.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.