OA24: Trump Presidency Legal Q and A, Part 2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 24. With me is Jack Bauer. How you doing? No, it's Andrew. How are you? You

0:01:27 Andrew: I'm actually materially better than I was in episode 23. I had a lot of fun recording part one.

0:01:31 Thomas: Know, I feel the same way. Yeah, it helps. It helps. I feel the same exact way. I'm doing a lot better. We're going to get right into your questions once again because there's a lot.

0:01:43 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:01:51 Thomas: Dan, I don't know how to pronounce that, Friend, that's a cool name, asks, asks, what will happen to the value of the dollar? So why don't you tackle that, Andrew?

0:02:01 Andrew: I don't know.

0:02:03 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I have somewhat of a little bit of a, you know, undergrad economics background, and I don't know. Nobody knows. Economists don't even know. They predict this crap and it doesn't work. You know, one thing, actually, this would be a good chance to point out, just to make sure liberals are holding each other to a good standard. The stock market tanked the night of the election. But by the next morning, it was actually up. It had recovered everything it lost and then had gone up a little bit, which is puzzling to me. But I think we should recognize that. I did one tweet about how my retirement was worthless. And I just want to recognize that that changed. And for now, the market recovered.

0:02:48 Thomas: So nobody knows. The economy to me is impossible, that's why Andrew's a lawyer, that's easy, oh.

0:02:53 Andrew: The only thing I was going to say is the explanation that I heard even before the election was that, you know, the market's essentially price instability, stability. And that makes a lot of sense to me. And so, you know, the reason why there was a catastrophic sell-off Tuesday night was because, you know, nobody thought that this was going to happen. And then, you Now, everything corrected. That has a lot of plausibility to me. The reason I wanted to add it is because I'm happy to say when I have no expertise to answer a question, and I have zero expertise to answer this question. But the notion of stability is something that I have talked about as being important from a legal standpoint as well, um, and so I I just wanted to to to piggyback on off of that, that sometimes it's better to know, right? Like if a law is bad, right, like it's better to affirmatively have the exact interpretation of that bad law and know that it applies and just know you have to deal with it than to say, like, hey, well, we don't really know what the law is. So,

0:03:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:58 Thomas: All right, let's move on. Stephen Rodwell, uh, that is a porn name, I'm sorry. Stephen, Stephen Rodrell took a break on set to ask, as a non-American, my one concern, concern is, what can he do to the American action on climate change, is it possible, and how easy is it for him to completely stop any government investigation into the topic and to legislate against private sector investment into renewables? Well, I don't know about that last part, but it's not like we're doing a whole hell of a lot currently. But what do you think about that? Oh.

0:04:05 Andrew: Yeah, I mean, that's I think I would sort of question the predicate of the question, which is to say it is going to require affirmative steps to sort of destroy the environment, kind of like, you know, a Monty Burns character. Like, I don't think that I don't think that Donald Trump is Montgomery Burns, you know, sort of eager to destroy the environment, but I don't think it takes that, right? Right. Like I think all it takes is benign neglect. Our biggest environmental challenges right now are global, are multinational. And, you know, you can't predict what Donald Trump is going to do. But the one thing he clearly ran on was a pro-nationalist, anti-globalist coalition.

0:05:21 Andrew: And so, you Know, I don't think we're going to see international climate change I don't think we're going to see, you know, the United States worrying about transborder pollution, both, you know, in waterways and and in and in the air and sort of the most critical, in my view, the most critical steps for for environmental action are in places that are outside the United United States, like things like rainforests are a tremendous source of, medicines and like biodiversity for habitats. And just I'm bringing us down here. I don't mean to do this in sort of question two. But the answer to the question is I so this is a shot to to some of our, of party, right?

0:06:09 Andrew: I want a globalist president. I want a president that wants the United States to be active. You know, even if you're a Republican and you want, you want to be sort of first among equals or a leader on the world stage, I would rather have a, a globalists Republican president on things like climate change on other, you Not when it comes to appointing Supreme Court justices, but I would rather have for those kinds of policies a globalist Republican president than an isolationist Democratic president.

0:06:40 Thomas: Interesting, yeah.

0:06:40 Andrew: And I think climate change is just one of those that requires global action. So hopefully we'll get some hate mail on that from the no TPP isolationist folks.

0:06:49 Thomas: You know, Just on, and it's again, it's it's been hard to have the time to sort through it all, because honestly, there's been a lot of liberal, judge both parties on this show, a lot of liberal kind of misinformation, clickbait news that has gone around. It's hard to sort out exactly what's true and what's false at this point. But I did see an article the day after the election about there's some new scientific paper on how climate change may be even worse, and even it might be even more irreversible than we thought. And it was bad, bad timing for right after President Trump, who doesn't believe in it, and Pence certainly doesn't. So yeah, not looking good. Well, our next question is from Eli Bosnick, and he's sure to cheer us up, right, Eli. We got his patron of the show, we certainly need to field his questions, he's one of our top patrons, in fact.

0:07:39 Andrew: That's true.

0:07:40 Thomas: So ready your lawyer knowledge here, Andrew, he asks. In all caps, why, God, Jesus, F word, why? Okay, there's nothing we can do. Yeah. I don't know. We don't know.

0:07:49 Andrew: I wish I knew. I Wish I Knew, Eli, brother.

0:07:55 Thomas: I laughed pretty hard when I saw him comment that. I was like, yeah, you know what, that is a good question right about now. Jacob Zeller asks, what path could a Trump administration have to facilitate the overturn of the Obergefell and Windsor decisions and what mechanisms could be brought to bear against same-sex marriages like mine? Already answered part of that a little bit, but what's this Windsor decision that I should know?

0:07:58 Andrew: No, yeah.

0:08:21 Andrew: So the Windsor decision is a 2013 case that overturned the crucial provision of the Defense of Marriage Act. And so it dovetails nicely with our previous discussion, because you may recall that in 2013, Antonin Scalia was very much alive, as I discussed when sort of breaking down the Supreme Court, the Windsor decision was actually written by Anthony Kennedy. So it's it's a good it's sort of more evidence for the position we set out in part one, you know, a 23 that that Anthony Kennedy is a reliable vote for LGBTQ rights, you know, the rest of it, I would defer back to our previous our previous answer. But but but I think it's, you know, it's worth pointing out in that the near term you're not going to be able to appoint sort of a single person who's going to all of a sudden turn the court into a five four, you know, hate monster majority that's going to go back and overturn all these decisions.

0:09:22 Thomas: All right. Thank you, Jacob. Jacob. Also added that I should do some commentary on Eli's question. So David Derman asks, what are the legal particulars surrounding the VP getting the president declared unfit by Congress with the support of the majority of the cabinet? Hmm, I saw, what is that about? I saw someone suggest this as something the GOP might try to bring the executive branch more in in line with their establishment. And it seems like something Pence would be for, since it would get him closer to enacting as much of a theocracy as he can manage. Let me take a part of that just because my expertise will be in not, and you can take it for what it's worth, because I'm not an expert, but I certainly think I'm not prone to fantastical conspiracy theory stuff about what's going to happen. I think there's zero chance of this happening. There's no reason to do it.

0:10:15 Thomas: It It wouldn't have, he's already, Pence can already control a ton from where he is and is likely going to have an enormous influence on the presidency. But that's just my view. But in terms of the legal movie Hollywood potential for this, what do you think?

0:10:31 Andrew: This is another great question because it turns out he has correctly stated the law, right? So I know this is going to, or I hope this is gonna surprise you a little bit. We talked in part one about, you know, what can you do if a Supreme Court justice is incapacitating, right, if they're in a, coma, if they have, or a coma would be a very, very interesting movie, but if they just have dementia and refuse to resign, we talked about that movie. It turns out that have actually addressed this when it comes to the president and we have addressed it via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

0:10:37 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:11:09 Andrew: And the 25th Amendment provides specifically for constitutional succession. I'm not going to read the full terms because it's long. Um, but basically what it says is, uh, the uncontroversial parts are, uh it's clear that, if, uh the uh president is removed from office, dies or resigns, then the vice president becomes president, right? And that's happened. We talked about Nixon and, you know, all of the, um, you know, permutations around that. Uh, same thing is true. Uh there's a, there's A procedure, again, came into play under Nixon when his first vice president, Spiro Agnew, who was potentially under indictment for fraud committed while governor of Maryland, resigned. That's how Gerald Ford wound up being first president and then vice president.

0:11:55 Andrew: But there's also a provision that has never been used that says if the president is incapacitated and the vice president with, and here I am going to quote from the statute, or from the 25th Amendment, with, quote, quote, the principal officers of the executive departments, right, or such other body as Congress may by law provide, and Congress has not by law so provided.

0:12:22 Thomas: Provident.

0:12:22 Andrew: Yeah, right. But that would be the cabinet, right? So the vice president and the cabinet can get together and declare the president disabled, and they submit just a piece of paper. It goes to this to the Senate and to the House. You can declare a president disabled. And that would make the vice president the acting president. There's a there's also a procedure for the president can dispute any declaration that he's disabled. Again, you know, this is this would make for a fun, a fun film.

0:12:56 Thomas: Good legal drama. Yeah.

0:12:58 Andrew: But but I mean, your political view of the situation, there's no way Pence would do this. There's no you would could get people that Donald Trump appoints who would be approved by the Senate to serve in his cabinet to then turn around and say, oh, but, you know, you're unfit and we're going to let Mike Pence stage a coup. That's not going to happen.

0:13:18 Thomas: Yeah, it's just pointless. There's no reason to do it. But yeah, interesting.

0:13:21 Andrew: But that procedure is there. It could happen.

0:13:27 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah.

0:13:27 Andrew: Again, and there is, I should add, this is another one where we don't know what incapacitated means because no one's ever used this, invoked this provision before. So this is another good example of law says that, but we don't really know entirely what it means.

0:13:35 Thomas: Hmm. Awesome. Okay, so Michael Schaefer has a question, very long question, several parts to it. And we've already answered, I think we've already answered most of the parts. So I'm going to just take that and thank Michael, but then kind of ask my own question related to it, because he touched on the lawsuits again, and the the Senate filibuster and all that. We've kind of talked about that. But he also touched on the conflict of interest between Trump and the Trump organization, the Trump, you know, his businesses. What is the legality of that? Is that something that has more been just a, like a tradition among presidents? Or is there actually laws in place about what Trump can be doing with his business while he's president?

0:14:23 Andrew: As far as I know, no, there is it is only tradition, and there is no law that prohibits the president from owning an interest in things that will be affected by how he acts on the world stage. There are duties the other way, which is to say that, have, when you are on the board of directors or, you know, an officer director of a corporation, you have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of that company. And so I, I would expect that even if Donald Trump intends only to maximize his profits, that he will do something to divest himself of those direct interests, because you could bring a shareholder's derivative suit to say I mean, it's sort of the exact opposite of the predicate of the question.

0:15:15 Andrew: But you could basically say, you know, he has a conflict where, you know, he's got to do X, right? Like he's got to, you know, mediate some conflict in China. That's going to cause, you know, the price of wages in China to go up. We know that, you know, his clothing line, you know. Uses Chinese slave labor to make these clothes. And you could bring as a shareholder of that Trump company, you can bring what they call a derivative lawsuit, right? That is a lawsuit on behalf of the company against Donald Trump to say, you're not acting in the best interests of the country. I promise you that Donald Trump knows this, okay? Because you do not get to be a billionaire and, you know, we can dispute his actual water water. You are not an international global business professional without understanding the concepts of fiduciary obligation and shareholder derivative suits. So I think he will put some sort of screen in place. He will he will undertake something, but he will do it not to preserve his integrity as president, but to insulate himself from from potential shareholder liability.

0:15:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:26 Thomas: How funny is That? Yeah, it's like, like, no, president, who cares? But for the business, that's what matters. And that's what the law protects. Wow. I didn't know that. That's so funny. I guess we can, we can. I think we've sort of answered this one, but maybe if there's something new about it. We'll give it a try. Jordan Navarro asks, um, how easy do you think it would be for the Republican controlled Congress to impeach Donald Trump? None of the establishment seems to like him. So it seems they could easily convince the legislature in a year or so when all the Trump supporter hysteria has settled down to impeatch him and then install the much more establishment friendly Mike Pence as commander in chief.

0:16:27 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:17:04 Thomas: Again, let me, let me take my stab at it. I don't think there's any reason they would do that. I have think they They have no motivation to do that whatsoever, personally. But I will add this, and you can answer both of these, Andrew. I was going to ask earlier, what do you think, what is your just kind of a more political opinion, I guess, on the threshold of what it would take for a Republican-controlled Congress to impeach a Republican president? I mean, there must be some line at which they would do that, I hope. What do you thing about that?

0:17:35 Andrew: And and so. Right. So there are a couple of answers to that. Right. The first is if you if you I like to think that if we truly had an existential danger to the republic, that you would return to sort of the Nixon standard and that, you know, even hyper partisan Republicans would would kind of get in line if, you Know, if the president, for example, were, youknow, if President Trump were colluding with the Russians and that you know, and that were proof, like, you now, I like t o think that our partisanship doesn't go that that far. With respect to when does the Republican Congress turn on Donald Donald Trump. Right. Like I think that depends on does an anti-Trump voice emerge, you know, sort of among conservatives. Right is that does does a Ted Cruz, you know, take on the mantle of this guy is a, you know, hidden Democrat and he betrayed us all.

And and I think, you know, you would sort of need that as a as a predicate for a revolt, know, that that would kind of crack through the the partisanship aspect. And And there, you know, you might have the the situation where, you know, angst would be very, very high among Republicans and Democrats might be looking at it going, yeah, you know what? Maybe we're better off with Trump than we are with Pence.

0:18:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:18:51 Andrew: So, you know, again, I I think we're in we're in for interesting times. And if you know if Ruth Bader Ginsburg were 42 years old and running marathons like, you you know, I, would be easier to console me, I guess.

0:18:51 Thomas: Yeah. Interesting.

0:19:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:05 Andrew: If we had gotten you know in August if Merrick Garland had been, had been confirmed and you know and we'd sort of taken that Supreme Court issue off, off the table you I would feel somewhat better.

0:19:17 Thomas: I don't know if we get to this later. I have a few questions for you myself. Okay, I'll just ask one then. You mentioned the colluding with Russia. Can I get your quick answer? Listener Thomas S uh asked, what if it was determined, because I just saw a headline, again might be some fake bullshit liberal news, I don't know, but if it were determined, let's just say hypothetically determined that Russia totally affected the outcome in Florida, they hacked voter machines, whatever, they got Trump to win in Florida, could anything be done about that, like Let's say it's proven. Oh.

0:19:48 Andrew: Yeah. Right. And so the answer is you would be on the Bush v. Gore timescale. And remember, we talked about I don't have the name of the case off.

0:19:56 Thomas: Wow. So what if it's after inauguration, we're just screwed. Nothing you can do. Wow.

0:19:59 Andrew: If it's after inauguration, there's nothing you can do. So what you could do is you Would bring a state lawsuit. You know, if you prove this before, you know, the the electoral vote totals are certified, right, you would go down to Florida and you would say, hey, look, you can't certify these totals. And, you know, you would litigate that in state court in Florida, it would go up to the state Supreme Court and possibly to our divided 4-4 Supreme Court. And remember that if the Supreme Court splits 4-5, then the lower court opinion stands, right?

0:20:33 Andrew: So if you prove that, but now mind you, just overturning Florida, right, like you'd have to coordinate multiple lawsuits in multiple Because you could give Hillary Clinton Florida's electoral votes. There's only 29. That's not enough to make her president.

0:20:31 Thomas: Yeah, so Florida would be able to, yeah.

0:20:48 Thomas: Oh my gosh, you're right. I think I was going off of a view, a more rosy view of the actual end results than what actually happened.

0:20:49 Andrew: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to prove. Yeah you'd Have to prove multiple states, you have to. But

0:20:56 Thomas: What did he end? Yeah, what are you, 311 or something? Is that what he got? Yeah. Geez, you're Right.

0:20:58 Andrew: Yeah, yeah, right. So you'd Need you, need Florida and Pennsylvania. That would be doubly hard because both states could plausibly say, like, well, you haven't proven it in Florida, so we're Pennsylvania, our 20 votes don't matter. And Florida could say, yeah, haven't proven it in Pennsylvania and our 29 votes don't matter.

0:21:02 Thomas: Oh man.

0:21:16 Andrew: Um, so it, yeah, it would, yeah,

0:21:17 Thomas: Gosh, that is so sad that like, even if you had some solid proof that this was a bogus election, you know, you almost couldn't do anything about it. Wow.

0:21:26 Andrew: You need to get the proof now, and you would need to bring the lawsuits, uh, such that, uh, you could get an answer, uh, prior to the certification under 3 U.S.C. 1. Good question.

0:21:26 Thomas: Wow.

0:21:36 Thomas: I'm glad I asked. That is a, that is a frightening

0:21:38 Andrew: We have, we have some smart listeners, yeah.

0:21:39 Thomas: Answer. Thank you, I appreciate that. Finally, we're getting to one that I know has been on everybody's mind, who I've seen lots of people ask it, I've seen shared everywhere. Uh, looks like Mark Demonbrun. Oh, man, I need to learn how to pronounce every name and every language and every origin. Uh, but Mark Demonbron asks, and he was, seems to be the first one to ask us this, so congratulations, Mark, Mark. If there happened to be enough faithless electors for Trump to fall short of 270, the Senate would decide president, right? And lots of people asked about the faithless electors, and you've likely seen there's a petition, probably, I don't know, change.org or whatever it was, that it got millions and millions of signatures for electors to decide just not to go for Trump, just to switch your vote to, uh, to Hillary. I think there's... there's a lot of aspects of that to talk about, and we'll kind of tackle all those questions at once. What do you think? Yeah.

0:22:38 Andrew: I have seen this, um, my answer will probably not surprise you, right? Right. Which is to say, many states have laws requiring their electors to report the winner of that state so that prohibit faithless electors. And I know people have said you know, like the punishment attached is only a thousand dollars. So the elector is going to, you Know, write in Hillary Clinton and then just, yeah, and just pay the thousand dollars, that's not what the laws say, right? Right. They provide for an additional punishment, but you could get a writ of mandamus, which is a very specific action in which you tell a government agency to do something they're required to do. Right. So if you had a faithless elector and he wrote in Hillary and you have a state with a faithlessness elector law, again, not an election law lawyer. This has never been done. But I feel really, really confident that a court would issue a writ of mandamus and tell the state, hey, you got to write in Trump on here. Your state voted for Trump. And so,

0:22:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:00 Thomas: I have seen that Oh, so

0:23:37 Andrew: You know, it's well, no, it still it's still provided.

0:23:37 Thomas: The a thousand dollar fine stuff seems like BS. No,

0:23:42 Andrew: Right. Right. Like you would.

0:23:42 Thomas: I know, but but that, that, that the reasoning that that's all they would do, oh, you can do whatever you want because I can I can pony up a thousand bucks.

0:23:45 Andrew: Yeah, it's not. It's yeah, it'S not. There's an additional penalty for failing to comply with the terms of the law. But if you pay that, that doesn't right. That doesn't mean the law is impotent to be carried out as it's written. So, number one, I don't know if you could do it. Right, number two, I feel pretty confident that you could not persuade 70 electors. Well, you would need 311.

0:23:58 Thomas: Yeah, what

0:24:11 Andrew: So you would need, yeah, you got to get him to 268. So. So you'd have to convince 43 Electors to 43 Trump electors to Write in Hillary instead. That's not going to happen.

0:24:11 Thomas: Was it 41 or so 42 yeah, let me tackle a component of it that I don't think you need a law degree to to tackle. Uh, I, wouldn't want this to happen personally, I don't think, no. I you you do not want a system in which, I mean, really, I think the only argument to consider, kind of to consider is, well, she won the popular vote, so therefore, you know, that it would more reflect the will of the people or something. But I don't think you want to live in a system where people can just decide who the president is against the rules. You know, they could just say, well, here were the rules, let's just forget all that because we want a certain outcome. I don't, I'm not comfortable with that. I think it going the other way would be, know, that would be... we would be raging. Imagine it going another way and the electors deciding to go for Trump instead of Hillary. If Hillary had won, I mean, we would not, you would lose it as liberals, as Democrats. We would absolutely lose it if that happened. So, I don't really

0:24:28 Andrew: Dear God, no. Thank you for saying that. Keep going.

0:25:18 Andrew: That's Exactly the point I was going to make, it is, uh, and rightly so, right. Like, we believe in the rule of law, uh, we believe you, you follow through with the process, uh, and even when the process seems unfair. In Bush versus Gore, I think there was value to the fact that after the Supreme Court issued its opinion, even though, you know, I said, well, how interesting that the, like, five politically active Republicans on the court voted to install the Republican. But nevertheless, right, like, that's a complaint on the order of, you know, to take a baseball analogy, like, you know, when the umpire calls a ball that is almost in the dirt strike, you know, called strike three, and the game's over, right? Right. Like, yes, you're mad at the umpire and you're sort of unhappy about it for a while.

0:25:23 Thomas: Like that. Yeah.

0:26:08 Andrew: But it's not like the opposing team stays on the field. Right. It's not the fans refuse to leave the stands and start murdering fans of the opposing team. And I mean that only slightly facetiously. Right. We have orderly, peaceful, non-murdery transfer of power in this country. And I really, really value. And we don't.

0:26:28 Thomas: Legal term non-murdery.

0:26:29 Andrew: Yeah.

0:26:30 Thomas: I like it.

0:26:30 Andrew: And and and I value maintaining that. And so the idea that you would subvert the process for something that is nakedly and transparently the process is just, you know, it's everything I oppose about how people think about the law. You know, it plays into the, you know, gold fringer sovereign citizen thing. And never minding the fact he couldn't do any of this anyway. Right. Like if you couldn't get four electors to switch their votes in 2000 for Al Gore, you're not going to Get 43 people to switch there, their votes in in in 2016. I wouldn't want you to if you could, uh, it's a terrible, terrible process. Um, yeah, I'm done.

0:26:59 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:27:08 Thomas: Yeah. No, that's, I think, yeah, I totally agree. I thought that was BS when I saw it. So I'm glad to hear that Harvard educated lawyer Andrew Torrez agrees with me. Okay. So Eric Brewer asked a question that I think relates to something that I kind of wanted to know. So, I'm going to do it even though we've covered it a little bit. Eric Brewer, are we likely to see the Republican-controlled Senate use the nuclear option in order to get SCOTUS appointments made? So, I don't totally know what that means, but I also, I'll throw in my question as well, which may be similar. I wanted to know what situation we're in with that now. As regards Merrick Garland, it seems to me, my guess he has zero chance now because they can just hold out forever.

0:27:09 Andrew: Okay.

0:27:56 Thomas: What's the status of that? What's the statusof any Trump appointees? Are we able, are Democrats able to do what Republicans have been doing this whole time?

0:28:05 Andrew: So let's take, let's tak all that together, because they're all aspects of the same question. Uh, Merrick Garland's appointment is dead. Uh, I think there is a question on the list, but I'm going to answer it now about, uh, in fact, uh, my my former debate uh student Samantha Waters would ask this question because there was an article suggesting that Obama could just appoint Merrick Garland because the Constitution says advise and consent, and the Senate has already advised and consent by, or I've seen two versions of the argument. Either number one, they've already given their advice and consent by, you know, saying we're not going to talk about this, or number two, that they've waived their right to advise and consent by refusing to hold hearings or the like. And the answer to that is no, no, they have not.

Remember that those terms are defined by precedent, and every president ever, going back to George Washington, has treated advice and consent of the Senate as the Senate. It has to have an up or down vote and has to vote up, uh, and so the idea that you would come around and persuade a court, uh, that, uh, advice and consent

0:28:08 Thomas: Sure. Oh, yes, yes. Absolutely. I saw that too. Well,

0:29:15 Andrew: Means something other than that, uh, is in my view, approaches zero, and ought to, right? Like, again, that that's judicial activism, right? Like, don't, don't fall for when, you know, your conservative uncle Frank says, you know, judicial activism is every time, you know, we recognize gay men. No, like, that that's building on a legal history of president we've talked about all that, uh, but changing a 200 year old, uh, term because you don't like Donald Trump, uh, is, uh, that is judicial activism. Now, it's it's appalling to me that the Democrats, uh, rolled over and let the Republican Congress, uh, say you don't get to appoint a Supreme Supreme Court justice in the last year of your presidency. And I hope.

0:29:57 Thomas: How did they roll over?

0:29:59 Andrew: Well, I mean, in terms of not making a public issue about this every day. Right. Like it. Now, maybe they made the judgment that we're just going to get Hillary elected. The numbers favor her. And, you so we're not going to getting in the way of that. You know, I can't speak to the political calculation there. But what I can say is that they didn't remind people about the issue. They legitimized the issue. And now, right, the consequence of that, and this is going to tie into the rest of the answer, the consequences of that is, okay, now we have a rule, right? And by God, in year four of Trump's presidency, if, you know, so Ruth Bader Ginsburg only needs to hold out for three more years, right. Like we have rule that says we're going to filibuster nominees in the fourth year, you know, in the last year of a president's.

0:30:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:47 Thomas: Why keep it to that? Why not just filibuster him forever? I mean, how's that any any different

0:30:50 Andrew: Right. Well, here's the answer to why you don't filibuster forever. And that is and that's where I think the nuclear option would come in. So what is the nuclear action? The nuclear option is changing the rules such that the advice and consent of the Senate for Supreme Court appointees or you could make it for all judicial appointees, depending on how aggressive you want to be, no longer requires a cloture vote to end debate. And so as a matter of parliamentary procedure, there are a number of ways that you can do that. I'm not going to go into the specifics because you don't care.

0:30:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:28 Andrew: And no one, it

0:31:28 Thomas: Well, that doesn't take a constitutional amendment to

0:31:31 Andrew: Does not take any, it does Not even take in and of itself, it's a motion to suspend the rules, right? So it does does not in and of itself take even a vote that itself requires cloture, right? So you can do this with 51 votes. You can do it with 50 votes and Mike Pence. And you could change the rules such that, because they're just internal Senate rules, right, so you can change the rule. You move to suspend the rules. You change the laws so that judicial appointments to the Supreme Court fill in the blank, no longer require unlimited debate, and thus are not subject to a vote for foreclosure. And then they can't be filibustered. And then everything goes to a straight up or down vote. Why would Republicans do this? They would do this if they felt like Democrats were preventing President Trump from nominating anybody to the Supreme Court. Why would they not do this, they would not do This because, right, once you exercise, it's called the nuclear option, I want you exercise it, then Republicans know that there's a Democratic president coming down down the pipe. And Republicans have

0:31:31 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, would

0:32:34 Andrew: Successfully.

0:32:34 Thomas: They be able to like patch it back up afterward? Would they'd be able to change the rules again? Or no.

0:32:37 Andrew: And you can. But at that point, you know, now you're stuck with doing something that, think really would draw the ire of of the voting public. Right. Like, remember that, You know, Mitch McConnell did not say we're not letting President Obama appoint Merrick Garland because we hate President Obama and we don't want another liberal on the Supreme Court. Right. Now, that's what he meant.

0:33:05 Andrew: Right? And that's what 30% of the country wanted. But the reason that it didn't, but if only 30% of the company wants something like, you know, you get a revolt, right? Like that's what Newt Gingrich learned when he shut down the government in 1996, right. Like you can't just go by what partisan Democrats or what partisan Republicans want. You've got to convince the middle. And to convince the middle, you have to have a rational sounding reason. And Mitch McConnell said, well, you know, we've got the Biden rule and we've which, you and I debunked in a prior way. But nevertheless, there was a justification. And if you exercise the nuclear option and then go and then try and put it back like mean, I think it's very, very difficult to come up with a justification at that point. Like once you've once the genie is out of the bottle to use like the eighth metaphor in this answer, you know, it's not going back in.

0:33:05 Thomas: I was gonna say that's what his face said, so What actually happens to Merrick Garland then? Like, what is the actual process? But did do they just finally hold the hearing and then and not approve him? Is that? Oh,

0:34:08 Andrew: No, what what will happen is when President Trump takes office, he will withdraw that nomination and put up somebody else. Yeah. So Merrick Garland will hang around in limbo.

0:34:16 Thomas: Right. Okay. Got it. God, poor Merrick Garland. I feel really bad for him.

0:34:20 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I think he knew what he was signing up for when he agreed to be be the nominee, but uh, but I, I agree, I mean, by all accounts, uh, he is uh an eminently qualified, intelligent, uh, non, non-political jurist, uh, and everything I've seen, you know, he was sort of a disappointment to liberals and was thought, like, oh, this is kind of a compromise, uh, to try and do, and and from everything that I've read, not not extensively mind you, but uh seems to indicate that, that Obama just, just as a, you know, Obama's a constitutional lawyer, uh, head of the Harvard Law Review, law professor, like somebody who like me is kind of a geek on these sorts of issues. Uh, and everything I've read suggested that, uh. That Obama just liked Garland and thought he deserved to be on the court. Um, so that's another sad, uh nope.

0:34:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:35:05 Thomas: So there's really nothing Obama can't, that those articles going around and all that, Obama can just force Merrick Garland. Yeah, yeah, sad, sad answer, but I get it, and and but I, I think Republicans may get a taste of their own medicine later, uh, when, when if there's another appointee. Okay.

0:35:22 Andrew: Yeah. And that's what I would say from a, from a political strategic standpoint. If, if Trump nominates a qualified candidate in 2017, I think as the, I think, as the Democratic Senate, you've got to allow that to go, to, you can't filibuster that you got to go that you gotta allow that you go to an up or down vote. You want everybody to vote against and have them come on. Fine. And I say him deliberately, because I think Donald Trump is not going to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. But I do think you maintain, the reason you do that is because you don't force the Republicans to go to the nuclear option and you preserve that. And I think, in, know, in year four, in late year three, right, like you get there and and and you employ the same tactics and say, oh, hey, we've got the McConnell rule. Like it's the last year. Let's wait for an election and let the new president decide.

0:35:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Let's move on. Good answer. Depressing answer. But yeah, it's good to be... There's so many stupid, inaccurate liberal memes that we're battling here. And I'm glad for that because I would rather be in reality.

0:36:29 Thomas: Janelle Blaylock asks, and I'm going to put this in a category. Again, this might be one where we We got more questions. I've certainly seen it floating around. Can the Pacific states join Canada or become their own country? I know Texas has tried. Secession So in general of any kind, my answer will be no, not likely, not going to happen. But what's the official Andrew Torrez legal expert answer?

0:36:51 Andrew: Yeah, I mean, we fought a war about that, so I don't I don'T recommend it.

0:36:54 Thomas: Yeah, it's just not goingto happen, right? And it really can't happen without a war, right. I mean, you can't legally do it, right?

0:37:04 Andrew: I don't know. Here's what I would say. You could make a philosophical argument. The problem is any philosophical argument you make would equally retroactively apply to the secession of the South during the Civil War. Right. Like, like you can certainly say, you know, this is a country that is, you know, created by voluntary agreement among sovereign states. And that's true. And that, you know, in a voluntary agreement, you can then voluntarily disagree. And that is also true. But I cannot come up with an argument that would allow, you know, California, Oregon and Washington to secede from the United States that would would not have equally applied to uh you know the South during the Civil War uh and again like

0:37:20 Thomas: Right.

0:37:51 Thomas: Well, hey, if the South wants to secede, I don't know that I care that much.

0:37:54 Andrew: Again you know that, and what follows from that is uh you secede, then the the the president will be uh in a position to use force to prevent that from happening, so that this would this would would not be a good idea yeah I

0:38:06 Thomas: Yeah. No. All right. Joel Shercliff asks, and we can just quickly tackle this one. Could you explain the purpose of the Electoral College and give your opinion on whether that purpose is still relevant or if it ever was? I would point people to Atheistically Speaking 292 and 293. We talked about it. Andrew had a good answer for it. I'm not, personally, I've wasted no time complaining about the Electoral College because it's the system we're in. It is the one we have.

I think there is pretty decent value to it, but I would point to those episodes. So do, yeah, so that's what I would say about that. That. Andrew Wood asked legal recourse for Obama to seat someone in the Supreme Court, and we've answered that. So there you go. Katie, I actually know it's pronounced Cannell. I hope I'm remembering that correctly, because I joke that her name is Katie Quiznos. Katie Cannell asks, can you please touch on what queer and trans rights are in jeopardy, such as gay marriage, things like bathroom bills? Also, when Trump talked about uh reigning in the media, well, that's another separate question, does this mean he would be able to take measure measures to prosecute journalists that say things he doesn't like? Let me add another tiny uh wrinkle to that question, which is, how do the executive orders work when it comes to the next president? Can Trump, because I, because, because Obama did have that executive order, I don't know how useful it was, about the bathroom bill related stuff, can Trump just come in and repeal every executive order? Is that how that works?

0:38:57 Andrew: Um, I think our steady march towards you getting an honorary law degree uh continues apace, Thomas, uh, because the answer to the first half of Katie's question, uh, which is to say, how how important is it to have a president with respect to LGBTQ rights? And the answer is very, very important. And the reason is because of executive orders. So let's talk about what executive orders are, right? Executive orders are in an area, when you pass a law, right, sometimes you pass law that says the national speed limit is 65 miles an hour, right. And it's it's a very clear rule, and it applies, and, you know, you just sort of go forward. Sometimes you pass a law that says, like the Clean Air Act, that says what we want to do is find steps to reduce pollutants in the air.

0:40:29 Andrew: And we recognize that this is going to change over time. So we will say, hey, let's establish a committee and it will be under the guidance of the Department of the Interior, which is in charge of environmental issues, and will allow the Department of the Interior to come up with rulemaking authority to set guidelines for pollutants, right? And the reason we do that is because, science may change, the conditions may change. You know, and so we just say, look, like, a valid law, right, because it's Congress who is making the decision, but Congress says, we're going to delegate that authority to an executive agency. And then it matters what the president does in terms of who he appoints to head that executive agency, because agencies are then appointed by the president, right?

0:41:24 Andrew: And executive orders typically are instructions that the president gives to his agency that says, you know, look, in addition to I'm putting somebody in here who presumably shares my political view, let me be really, really clear about what I want to do. So President Obama has been, my perspective, and again, I am a, you know an ally to the community, but a straight, you know, cis, heterosexual, white male. But from my perspective, President Obama has been very aggressive, particularly in his second term, with issuing executive orders, which don't require congressional approval, to try and defend rights of people in the LGBTQ community.

0:42:12 Andrew: And that not just the instructions on the bathrooms, which I think are important, but in 2014, I mean, you may remember the president issued an executive order that prohibited federal contractors from discriminating against any employee on the Basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, right? And the other provisions were race, color, religion, sex, national origin are all in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We've talked about that before. But it's the first time that the has included sexual orientation and gender identity. And now that applies as a directive to federal contractors. So it doesn't apply to private employers, that affects millions of people. Um and and so uh so that's the legal landscape, uh, and then the second half of your question is uh what can the president, you know, what does the president do, and the answer is President Trump can revoke all of them, uh, he can, he, he will appoint uh new individuals to head executive agencies, uh and you know the individuals who are being talked about for his cabinet are in in my view horrifying.

0:42:28 Thomas: Yeah,

0:43:24 Andrew: Again, I'm a liberal partisan Democrat, so you would expect that. But sort of even for Republicans are pretty horrifying. So, yeah, like, those protections are going away, it's a real shame, and I wish I had a better answer. My better answer is, start organizing at the levels in which can make a difference, and and I've already said, get you out and tell your story and and be active, uh, but um, you know, when you when you wake up and realize that that the levers of political power are are held by uh people that disagree with you, um, you know, that's that's when you have to get active, so

0:44:00 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Sad stuff. So yeah, it's not looking good is the answer, I suppose. Do you want to talk about the reigning in the media portion of it?

0:44:09 Andrew: So the reigning in the media, I'm not overly concerned about that, there's very little, uh, at this point that, you know, you, you could do from the presidential standpoint, really, we just talked about the wide ranging areas where the president has authority via executive order. Um, there's, there's not much you can do, uh, via executive order that, that I can see that would, you know, sort of, um, be pro censorship or, or pro, you know, some of the like, like, wilder, crazy things Donald Trump said on the on the stump about, like, you know, we're going to change the libel laws, like, well, you know, unless unless he appoints Eric and Melania Trump to the Supreme Court and tells them to overturn New York Times versus Sullivan, and even then, I don't know.

0:44:56 Andrew: I mean, you would have Trump, Trump, Alito and Thomas and probably everybody else on the other side. You know, he's not going going to be able to change the libel laws. Uh, so I'm not worried about that.

0:45:04 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Not As worried about that. All right, Mark Landis asks, "What is the poetical impact?" I don't know, is that a typo or okay?

0:45:14 Andrew: I think he means potential.

0:45:16 Thomas: We'll say potential, what is the potential, unless you want to talk poetry, that's, we can, poetical and potential, "impact of the Supreme Court nominees we talked about this a little bit already, but, and could you discuss your impression of each of the judges previously, previously released by the Trump campaign?" Oh yeah, that list he released.

0:45:34 Andrew: Right. Um, so now I'm not going to do that because there are like 20 names on the list. And, um, and, and quite frankly, many of them, I, I do not know. Uh, I think it is fair to characterize the list in two ways. Um. There are certainly some who fall outside of, of these two broad categories, uh, but there are two troubling categories on the list. Okay. So the The first are who I would describe as conservative and politically active, which would include, for example, Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit Bill Pryor on the Eleventh Circuit. These are folks who I think would slot immediately into a kind of Samuel Alito mold on the Supreme Court and would continue the trend of conservative judicial act, judicial activism from the bench. Then there are candidates who, in my mind, are even worse. And it's it's bizarre. And this is this is part of a promised rant that I had made on on Facebook for listener Sarah Kate.

0:45:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:33 Andrew: But there are a number of state Supreme Court justices on this list. And I mean, you know, like Arkansas and Alabama state Supreme court justices. And let me say this. I clerked for a state Supreme Courts justice and I routinely practice before the Maryland State Supreme Court. So I have nothing but respect for those people, for their intellect. But it's not remotely proper training to become a Supreme Court justice. Right. It is it is. And and state Supreme Courts in Maryland, for example, we have a hybrid system where judges are appointed but then have to stand for reelection in other states. We know this is true in Alabama, where Roy Moore, I mean, he may not even have a law degree, right?

0:47:20 Andrew: That's the grandstanding person who was just removed from the state Supreme Court, will probably be the next governor of Alabama, for failure to comply with the Obergefell decision. Prior to that, he failed to comply, lie, with the Ten Commandments ruling, right? I mean, he's just a Christian activist and gets elected to the state Supreme Court. I'm honest, I'm not making it up when I say he may not have a law degree. I haven't looked, and I'm not going to, because I just want to rant about him. Being a state Supreme Court justice is not remotely appropriate to then move up to the, the only reason you would pick state Supreme Court justices is to have people who are politically motivated activists, who can plausibly make their way through congressional approval and through a hearing, because the public is going to be like, "Oh, well, look, like, he's on the, you know, Arkansas state Supreme Court."

0:48:17 Andrew: Like, I'm sure, you know, that's only one step removed from being on the federal Supreme Court. But the but the reality is, like, when you're a state Supreme Court justice, you are an expert on your state's laws, right? Like, those are the cases you read. Those are the issues that you maintain. You have much more political awareness for some of the reasons that I've talked about, as opposed to over the past 50 years. The tradition has been that judges on the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal, right, for the D.C. Circuit, first, second, third, fourth, all the way, we've talked about that. Those judges tend to be where Supreme Court justices of either party come from, right? And the reason is because they're dealing with federal law, constitutional law, and federal question, right. Like that's the area in which they play because of that reputation as sort of a feeder for the Supreme Court, it also means that there is considerable competition.

0:49:11 Andrew: And so even where I strongly disagree with, various judges you know, on the various circuits, I have a hard time saying, I have yet, I will place this affirmatively, I have yet to encounter in my practice, other than other than Clarence Thomas, a federal court judge for, you know, the United States Court of Appeal for any particular circuit who was not impressively intelligent. The same is just, it's just not true when you're talking about state Supreme Court justices. And so most of these, I don't know, like, I have been, you know, I had a case, I've talked about this a little bit before I had a billion dollar coverage case, uh, pending in Beaumont, Texas and my local council and the trial was not, uh.

0:49:58 Andrew: Going particularly well. Uh, and my local council said, "Well, I gotta tell you, uh, you are unfortunately in a situation where, uh, the appellate judges who sit directly over this court are the dumbest appellant judges in the country, and I don't know how good our state Supreme Court is. Uh, and so they may try and help, help us out, but they may not even know how." And that, you know, I repeat that as advice that was given to me. That is not my evaluation of courts. I don't know, that's why I rely on local counsel. Couldn't imagine somebody saying that about, like, "Oh, you're going to go to the Fourth Circuit, like, you know, they're all idiots," like no one would say that, because the Fourth Circuit judges, including some I know really, really well, are impressively intelligent, even the ones with whom I passionately disagree.

0:50:44 Andrew: So all of that is a very, very long rant to say it's unprecedented to have a pool of judges, the pool of charges from which Donald Trump has said he's going to draw his candidates. And I feel like this is one of the few things about which Donald Trump was very, Very detailed. Almost nothing got specific details in this campaign. But he released, you know, two lists and then promised to nominate somebody from those two lists. And you heard is sort of a postmortem that all of the like semi never Trumpers like, you Know, not going to name them because would prefer people not pay them any attention. But conservative activists who who said, Well, I am on board. And I'm happy Trump's here because of the Supreme Court. So I think conservative activists are going to hold him to his list.

0:51:31 Andrew: I think his list contains an overwhelming majority of activist, conservative, political, ideologically motivated judges. And I really, really fear for the future of the supreme court. So yeah, he's Getting one for sure. He's getting one in which I would not, as the most, you know, under the most aggressive circumstances, I would not say Democrats should filibuster, you know, indefinitely, because the Republicans will invoke the nuclear option if that happens, and rightly so. I would say he gets his one, and let's take away, you, there's a vacancy in year four, and let's work to get Donald Trump out of office. But, but you, you, you got to, you got to play by the rules, know, when we'll look at this on a case by case basis, and I hope that Democrats don't make the mistake that they have made with some previous nominees of sort of pretending like both ideology and competence do not matter, and I feel like, you know, Clarence Thomas, that the Biden decided that the argument that they were going to the hill, that they were going to fight and die on, was his sexual harassment of Anita Hill and others.

0:51:44 Thomas: Man. And he's getting one for sure. Yeah, yeah,

0:52:41 Andrew: And that was not established with enough certainty that, you know, when that allegation went away, Thomas was approved and is on the Supreme Court. And had Joe Biden led something that said, "Clarence Thomas is not intellectually and temperamentally fit to be on the Supreme Court, and we have a right to have somebody who, who has a judicial philosophy that is consistent with the mainstream view of the law throughout American history, and also someone who has the level of accomplishments and, and, and quite frankly, the intellectual regard of his peers." I don't know if it would have come out differently, but that's the argument, that's the agreement I was making at the time. Uh, and it's the argument that I hope is raised, uh, this, if this list turns out to be the blueprint for the next Uh, Trump appointee.

0:53:28 Thomas: Yeah. Well, right, I think we've got time for one more, at least, and, uh, Angelica Lopez asks, "With so many states having legalized marijuana for recreational use, including California, the state that I live in, can casual consumers still be fired by employers?"

0:53:48 Andrew: So I love the question, I'm not going to answer it, uh, as per usual. Uh, because, uh, there are implications on the state level in terms of, "If something is still legal, can it be factored into an employer decision?" So I don't want to get into the employer aspect.

0:54:04 Thomas: Right. So, that varies by state is what you're saying? Or, right.

0:54:08 Andrew: Well, no, and remember, if you're employed at will, you can be fired for any reason so long as it's not a member of a protected class. So it's not like there's a constitutional right to smoke pot. It's just not a crime. I think the larger question there is, here's how I would reframe it and then sort of answer it. And usually I wouldn't call this out like an argument. I would just do this and answer it in front of the court this way. This is an old lawyer trick. But potential strategy for those of us who are lucky enough to live in blue states over the next four years is to lobby our elected representatives to pass the kinds of protections that we wish could get passed at the federal level. And so it's bad that it doesn't affect our brothers and sisters in Alabama, but at least we managed to get those sorts of things passed in the states in which we live.

0:54:21 Thomas: Sure. Oh,

0:55:07 Andrew: And so we've talked in previous episodes about how California, for example, has a more expansive Civil Rights Act than the Federal Civil Rights Rights Act, right? And I expect that a lot of that will take place. The legalization of marijuana is another example of where local states can pass laws that give you more rights than you get at the federal government. But there is something that potentially comes into play that I want to to talk about, and it is the federal doctrine of preemption, okay? And what preemption says is, if there is legitimate authority for the federal government to pass a law about something, right? And where does that legitimate authority come from? It's a specific grant in the Constitution.

0:55:54 Andrew: Usually, for most laws, that grant is found in Congress's power to regulate Interstate commerce. Right. And so stick with the example of legalized marijuana. A state could say we're not going to have any state penalties on legalized marijuana. But the federal government could say, well, you know what? Marijuana is interstate commerce because unless the pot is grown in California and sold in California, like you've probably gotten it from somewhere else. And once it's crossed over some other state country's borders into California, we can regulate that. And the federal government can do one of two things when they regulate interstate commerce in a way that affects the states. They can pass a law and then allow the states to sort of go beyond that.

0:56:41 Andrew: Or they can write into the bill, we talked about this in part one, they can right into the law, this law preempts all state law to the contrary. And if they write that in the law, it means exactly what it says, right? Which is to say, uh, that, uh. You can, even if a state passes a particular law, uh that the federal government can preempt that law and say, no, no no no, it's no good, uh so long as we have the authority to do so. So anything that's strictly within the state, the federal government can't turn around and preempt, uh but anything that they have a reasonable reasonable basis to pass a law about. They can actually preempt and override the state law.

0:57:22 Thomas: Wow. Interesting. So does that seem likely to happen? Do you think, what do you think about the likelihood of that in the case of all the states that are legalizing marijuana.

0:57:30 Andrew: I don't think it's likely to happen with respect to legalizing marijuana, because I feel as though from a political standpoint, we have sort of passed a, you know, a cultural turning point. And right.

And so, you know, it would be it would be very, very difficult to, you know, sort of say, well, we're going to we're gonna have a federal law that uh charges everybody you know so for example you could do this right like you could say uh we're gonna charge possession of uh one joint of marijuana and the you know whatever the the weight on that would be uh as uh but but possession with intent to distribute and traffic in a controlled, dangerous substance and and effectively, you know, preempt the state law.

So it would be you know you would you would be guilty of no state law if you smoked up in Colorado, but you could be arrested on a federal charge, tried in federal court and sentenced and convicted. There's no, in my view, there's not a political appetite for that. And in fact, you already have, you know, libertarian leaning Republicans who are sort of pro legalization or at least pro decriminalization. And you have Republicans across the spectrum.

There's not a good way to describe these Republicans who have looked at incarceration for possession of drug crimes and have sort of agreed like they might not be on board with all of the Democratic rationales for, you you know, disparity and, and the like, but, but I've kind of looked at him and like, well, the fact that our jails are overflowing with people who are in there for possession of drugs, um, is, is a real problem, right?

It's a, it's, it's a, and, and so, uh, you know it might not, it might not rise enough to the level of being able to solve that problem. Um, although, you know, I've, I have a friend who served on that, uh, Senate, uh, subcommittee.

0:57:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:59:17 Andrew: I'm trying to get him to come on the show, uh, and, and talk about the issue. Uh, but I think that it's such that nobody, I don't think there's going to be a federal congressional appetite to, uh over to, to, to preempt, uh state laws, uh legalizing marijuana. I think it's, I think that's going be live and let live. Uh but, but when you think about, and when you think about other areas, right, uh not, I'm I'm not convinced that, that you that won't be the case for other state laws that potentially conflict with federal laws. That just to, just to end this episode on another downer, like we've got a couple in a row.

0:59:35 Thomas: Okay, but it is possible, but just not likely.

0:59:46 Thomas: Hmm, yeah, well, yeah, an upper and a downer, I don't know. I guess it was, it's an upper for pot smokers everywhere, I suppose, but a downER for the potential elsewhere. Yeah well, I think that just about wraps it up. I want to thank everybody so much for all the questions. There were a lot of repeats, so we didn't get to every single person's question. But I believe that, Andrew, you did a great job answering, I think, pretty much all the unique questions that we were posed. And I also am just so happy for the response from the listeners and the give and take there. So definitely follow the social media so that in the future, you'll be able to participate in this kind of thing again.

1:00:29 Andrew: Yeah. And I would say, look, we, Thomas and I were planning on doing a Q and a episode, um. The election, I mean, it, it just, you knows, sort of turned out to be perfect. Um, we love, uh. Hearing from you and, and being able to interact. So I would say going forward, with us on our social media. We've got all the links in the show notes. That's Twitter at OpenArgs. It's Facebook, OpenArds. And send us an email. If you've got a question that you want to go into the hopper for a regular answering questions segment, the best way to make sure we see that is to send us and email at openarguments@gmail.com. We couldn't get openargs@gmail.com. I don't know if

1:00:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. What

1:01:06 Andrew: Anybody

1:01:06 Thomas: The hell? Who took that? If you know, yeah.

1:01:09 Andrew: Out there has openargs at

1:01:10 Thomas: Yeah, I would love to have it,

1:01:10 Andrew: gmail.com give us yeah we Would, but, openarguments@gmail.com, drop us a note, we will put it in the hopper, and you know we always answer at least one question every episode, that was our Patreon promise to you, and it's a lot of fun, we love doing this, so let us know what your thoughts are.

1:01:23 Thomas: Yeah, all Now is the time we've got to thank our patrons. First off, we've gotta thank our new patrons. Thank you Steve, Zach Epps, Chris Stromberg, Matt, Jason Mullock, Christopher Christofko, Renee, Niall, Michael Schaefer who edited his pledge to $5. Thank you so much. Matthew Mengel, Katie, James Anderson, Mike Hudson, Kasaba Dede, Tyler also edited his pledged to $3. Thank you very much, Tyler. Caleb Boyd and Sammie with a $20 pledge. Thank you for the generosity, Sammie. We really appreciate it. And George Newman with a new pledge. Wow, a blown away as always. Thank you guys so much.

And now we've got to thank our Hall of Fame patrons, and that's Roger Metcalf, Danny Rosari, Eli Bosnick, Dave Nichols of Positively Doubtful Podcast, Dale, Steve Sigmund, Jim Grove, Desecrator, Patrick Fussell, Amanda Lipnack, La Bibliotecatrice, Heather Loveridge, Leon Hartley, Geeker41, Sean Pitti, Ian and Ali, Matthew Vernon, Michael Schaefer, Hunter Ash, Michael, Kaylee Reiser, Jeff S, Sakashite, Fukasami, Pro Panic, Philip Stromberg, Zabby, Frederick Alstomer, and now Sammie, latest edition, thank you very much, and the Inciting Incident Podcast. Wow, absolutely blown away by your support. I hope you enjoyed the early episode. That's something we would love to do more often, and also this month there's going to be the first Law'd Awful Movies, so you can look forward to that. Thank you for all your support! Right, and with all that said, thank you for joining us, and until next time, stop breaking the law,

1:03:11 Thomas: I don't know, I'm too depressed about President Trump, I got nothing, see you guys later.

1:03:18 Andrew: See ya. All

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