Despite Disastrously Stupid SCOTUS Decision, Jack Smith Fights On

Transcript

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

0:00:44 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1064. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing?

0:00:53 Matt: Thomas, as I'm sure you can tell from my voice, I am shaking with rage. I have had an angry week. Just furious.

0:00:58 Thomas: Yeah, not to mention the Gorsuch bonus, the Law'd Awful books we did that people can find.

0:01:02 Matt: Still coming off of that.

0:01:03 Thomas: Yeah, you were mad then too. I am worried about your blood pressure, why it might be a 70 over 15.

0:01:04 Matt: Yeah. Well, it is historically dangerously low, so this is probably good for me.

0:01:16 Thomas: Like that movie where the guy had to have all the adrenaline all the time that I didn't watch and I'm just remembering from the preview, it's like, Matt, we need to keep him just so hyped up from all this anger so that he reaches about 80% of the, like, you blood pressure of a normal person. I think that's what's going on here.

0:01:31 Matt: And I still don't sound angry somehow, so here we are.

0:01:32 Thomas: No, well, glad we can be your life Support, though. Oh, Much to talk about, but first, really quickly, for wanted to say hi to, uh, social media person Olivia, to maybe plug the new OA social media that's happening. Olivia, are you there? I

0:01:34 Matt: Yeah, thanks

0:01:47 Olivia: I am here. I just wanted to tell everyone about at OpenArgsPod on Instagram, um, putting together some cool episode preview art and news updates, uh, just all things OA on there. It's super fun account, worth a follow, I promise.

0:02:02 Thomas: Love it, it's so good. And that one, that the the young people are using, or no? Is

0:02:06 Olivia: Kind of, more or less. It's, is fun. It's worth it. A That's good scroll.

0:02:10 Matt: And maybe even TikTok to really get to the the Youngs.

0:02:12 Thomas: Yeah, we got to get on that and and to get to the Chinese government. I really want them to consume our content, you No, Olivia is doing an amazing job and very worth a follow. And we're hoping to expand out to more various social media things. Thanks so much, Olivia for helping with that and doing a great job.

0:02:18 Matt: Could learn a lot. Sure.

0:02:30 Matt: Yeah. Great work.

0:02:30 Olivia: Course, yeah. Watch that space. Lots of exciting stuff coming.

0:02:34 Thomas: Of exciting stuff. Okay. This is long overdue, Matt. I don't even know that I'm just realizing that I don't even know if I've talked about where there's woke on this show. I, I maybe I've mentioned it, but I don't even know if I have, well, here's the thing. I started the other show where there's woke while I was on a sabbatical, yeah, An involuntary sabbaticle.

Where There's Woke, I... I have not really plugged it on the show much, but it is, I guarantee you so many of these listeners would be into it because it is debunking the anti-woke myths, the stuff that the right makes up, about like, "Hey, did you hear where a teacher said, oh, I think maybe, um, there are differences between races and then they were killed, they were publicly executed by the students?" Then you notice those wild stories that Bill Maher will say on every show, and we just started like actually looking into them, and they're just, wouldn't you know, what, they're all incorrect every single time, in every single way. Like, it's not, it's not like they're like, oh, it's 50 -50. It's like 0% accuracy. It's amazing.

0:02:43 Matt: Not hardly at all. Yeah? Fourth sabbatical. Yeah?

0:03:35 Matt: You've been at it for a year. You must be done by now. You must have gotten through all of them.

0:03:38 Thomas: Oh man. Well, that's both an indictment of how many lies there are, Matt, and how hard it is to do all these shows at once because we have, but we had slowed down. We hadn't put anything out. The reason I'm talking about it is we were working on a really, really big series and it's been dead for like two months since we we have put anything out, I think. And it's finally out. And this is about John Ronson's podcast, Things Fell Apart, because it was something I'm a fan of John Ronsin. He's an author. He wrote Psychopath.

0:04:07 Matt: Sure, he's great.

0:04:09 Thomas: Well, yeah, I was a big fan. And Things Fell Part, second the season came out this year and it was just a disaster. I couldn't believe it. Like I listened and it's great storytelling. It's still the John Ronsense storytelling. That's great. But the only problem is he decided to just listen to a bunch of anti-woke people and kind of take their word for stuff. And he got so much stuff wrong, like really badly wrong. And nobody's talking about it at all. And so that's one of the reasons we're working so hard on it. But it's one one of those things where it's felt really, I don't know. It's felt a little scary to be like out on that limb. I don'T see anyone else talking about it, but like, it's, it'S how much the anti-woke bullshit can just pervade. Like if you can't trust them in any way, because they're always lying for an agenda.

And I, unfortunately, as much as I love John Ronson, he really let a lot of bad facts through in that podcast. And I the it's first part is going to be out as you're hearing this. So if check you go, out where there's woke and, that that's not under a paywall or anything that'll be out for everybody search where there is woke on your podcast player.

And then one more thing I did want to say, Matt, is we have not one, but two series is, is on where there was woke about law professors being pieces of shit. And it's so good because there's these anti-woke, there's two of them. One is like absolutely batshit insane. The other one is just like, was kind of normal, but then it's, it's always narcissists, you know, like when narcissists

0:04:11 Matt: Yeah I haven't listened.

0:04:24 Matt: Sure? John.

0:05:34 Matt: Sure.

0:05:34 Thomas: Get called out on stuff, they tend to just go insanely anti-woke because they can't handle having been wrong, you know, or like having been corrected about something. And there's one law professor who claimed that because he put like racial slur, but censored it out on his exam. Bill Maher claimed that he was fired for that and all this stuff. And it's like completely wrong. And we did this whole series on it. And so specifically for the legal audience listening, So, it uh for the long plug, but I just, we've been working so hard on it and it's finally, uh starting to come out. This is going to be a lot of parts, but the first several chunks are going to be out as you're hearing this. So thanks for sitting there while I do this, man. I appreciate that. Thanks for not quitting the show while I promote my other show.

0:06:10 Matt: Anytime. Big of Thomas Smith's protections.

0:06:15 Thomas: So much. All right. Well, we have a lot to talk about. So after this quick break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/law. going to get to it because, hoo boy, lots of news.

0:06:28 Thomas: Matt, Jack Smith is up to stuff, right? Can you tell us?

0:06:31 Matt: What I'm seeing, the case should be thrown out and dismissed on presidential immunity grounds, as already ruled unequivocally by the U.S. Supreme Court. Smith rewrote the exact same case in an effort to circumvent the Supreme Court decision. That is the official opinion of the defendant, Donald J. Trump. So I just thought I should share that up front, because we want to know what he thinks. Out he doesn't like it. So let's see what's in this thing.

Talked about this before, when when the immunity case came down, about how it was hard to say where this was going to go, and that Smith was going to have to retool this, because obviously a lot of this indictment was based on official communications. It was based upon official acts, presidential stuff. So Jack Smith took the scissors to this and went through and did some control effing, as we all do sometimes when we have to change course. Thing went down from 45 pages to 36 pages.

And the fat that he trimmed is almost all conversations with federal employees, with other people in the government, and anything else that just might seem like it even borders on a presidential act. Unfortunately, that is some of the best evidence against Donald Trump, because he was told multiple times, including by his own attorney general, that there was no voter fraud and that he should stop doing this. And those are all things that were in the indictment that have been removed.

But I do think, based on what I'm seeing here, that there's still plenty to work with. And let's just talk a little bit about some of the differences here.

0:07:41 Thomas: But first, just to remind, the absolute most shamelessly stupid part of the Supreme Court decision was not just the immunity, but but also, like, you can't even remind me, you can even use things that might be presidential communications for evidence in cases about stuff? What

0:07:57 Matt: Yeah. If anything that touches on an official act whatsoever can't be used as evidence of a crime.

0:08:01 Thomas: Even if the crime is a different thing, it's absolutely insane. So

0:08:03 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So, if you're having drinks with somebody, if you just having drinks, hanging out with another official who works for you in the White House, right?

0:08:10 Thomas: You discuss, you know, where you buried a body, it doesn't matter. Apparently, we can't use that as evidence in your murder case for burying a body. Even if the murder was not an official act. Right.

0:08:13 Matt: Yes. That's my understanding. And I think That's more or less Jack Smith's understanding because he's being very cautious with this. I think he really is trying to bulletproof this as much as he possibly can. It's not easy to do. We'll sort of go through this a little bit.

0:08:29 Thomas: Yeah. But the point is, this is him having to badly hamstring his own really and investigation and stuff because of this nonsense. But he's still like, hey, well, Trump, you're so treasonous. I could maybe convict you with five tied behind my back. Like it's still I'm curious if you think it's strong enough to work. That

0:08:46 Matt: Yeah, plenty of stuff. Oh, absolutely. So let me, I'm going to start with how we got here though, though, how this works, because the mechanism is kind of interesting. I don't understand the administrative differences between a superseding indictment and a fresh new indictment. How can it be under the same court thingy if it had a totally new grand jury? Why isn't it a brand new court thing with a new judge and everything? So that is a very good question. We want to make sure that we understand how he got here.

Can't just amend the indictment, that would be a violation of Donald Trump's constitutional rights to just go ahead and change what the grand jury had already signed off on. So even for these kinds of tweaks that he's making, he has to go back to a grand jury. And just kind of to show off, or maybe because the original one wasn't available, he went to a different grand jury, this is actually one that's been sitting since 2023. Politico, this grand number 23-8, and has been sitting since last year. He presented the case as written in this new indictment to them, and they signed off on this. So the superseding indictment under Department of Justice rules, I've got 9-55 here about superseding indictments. It can be brought to narrow charges, but it can't broaden them.

So obviously you can't come back and add more charges, but if you need to slim it down, if there's some reason, maybe that some of your evidence has gone bad, or there's something that you realize is a mistake, or something that's just not going to survive, you can come back undue that anytime you want to, if you can get a new grand jury to sign off on it.

0:09:59 Matt: So that's what he did.

0:09:59 Thomas: Makes sense Yeah, okay. I never thought about that. Yeah, if you're gonna take stuff away, I suppose, makes a violation of your constitutional rights. Yeah.

0:10:01 Matt: Yeah. So, you Trump, saying it's exactly the same case, but it isn't. It's actually a slightly weaker case. What he's done here, in words, I thought the way he phrased this is actually quite good. He filed a little statement along with the new indictment. And he said this was an effort to respect and implement the immunity decision. I like how there's an effort for him to say, you're not to respect the decision. We're all trying. We're all trying to respect affect the decision, Jack. It's fine.

0:10:24 Thomas: Yeah. I like, well, I made the effort, still don't respect it, but you know, I tried.

0:10:28 Matt: Yep. Close enough.

0:10:31 Thomas: Which

0:10:31 Matt: He's got to work with what he's going to work and we want to make sure that this thing is not tied up with another few years of stuff, assuming that we're able to prosecute it at all, which we're all hoping that we have an administration that's going to be doing that. He's obviously operating in that because there's no way at this point, obviously, that we can get to trial before November. That's just not going to happen. As it is, he just narrowly got inside the 60-day rule that the Department of Justice has for political activity, making sure that they're not doing any kind of charging somebody somebody within 60 days.

0:10:57 Thomas: I think is insane, but whatever. Yeah.

0:10:58 Matt: Counts. I know. But that's the rule. It's not like a hard constitutional rule. It's just a rule they have that could waive. Different charges. He's not changed the charges, notably. He's just changed the allegations behind them to make sure that they can stand up. Also has to contend on top of the immunity decision, he has to contend with the Fisher decision, which we discussed, which is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act case, in And remember, the January 6th defendants were charged with this. Of course, in the Fisher case, the defendants were charged under 18 U.S.C. 1512 C .1, which has to do with obstructing, influencing, or impeding any official proceeding or attempts to do so. And it seems like the way that he's responded to the Fisher Case is not very much, honestly. He hasn't tweaked too much. But from what I can see, there's more talk about the documentation, because Supreme Court was suggesting that anything where you're trying to mess with the actual certification documents, where there's papers involved, would still survive.

But sort of the general sort of invading the Capitol might not under Sarbanes-Oxley. So that is a factor in here too, that he's got to look out for Fischer on top of everything else. A quick kind of run through some of the changes I was kind of going through and trying to get a sense. One thing, the word private appears in here all over the place.

He stuck in the word private as much as he possibly could to emphasize that Trump was talking to private attorneys, not government attorneys that Trump was working in a private capacity, that Trump was a private candidate.

0:11:03 Thomas: So It's our version of how now in that impeachment crap they're trying to say the Biden-Harris administration. You know, it's like, well, he's very privately, Trump, privately, non -officially spoke to this person.

0:12:15 Matt: Right, exactly. Yep. Right. In no official capacity whatsoever. And he refers to him all the way through as candidate Trump, even in the first line, had referred to him as a president, and here I just referred to him as candidate for the United States presidency. You would never even know that Mike Pence was the vice president, barely, from this, because he's referred to all the way through his running mate, which is very smart. So, you know, he's so, any public aspect of those conversations is gone. And he's talking about influencing his running mate. Now, they're able to keep in a lot of the stuff about Mike Pence and the way he talked to him and was trying to force him to do these things on January 6th, obviously, clearly, there's no official act involved whatsoever in him being involved with January 6.

0:12:32 Thomas: Right. Right.

0:12:58 Thomas: Coup. Yeah.

0:12:59 Matt: Yes, that too.

0:13:00 Thomas: You would hope.

0:13:01 Matt: Mike Pence's ceremonial job is to sit there and count the votes and nothing else. And Donald Trump has nothing to do with that constitutionally. So there's pretty good standing there, I think, to change that and to have it be all about these private conversations, the private people, private attorneys. We've removed all references to Jeff Clark, the DOJ attorney. We've removed pages and pages of references to ways that he tried to influence DOJ, that he trying to get DOJ to do his bidding.

The stuff with state officials is still in there because it's clearly not his job as president to call up state election officials and tell them to find votes. Hope. Pretty much what you're looking at here is a targeted indictment that is trying its best, as he says, making an effort to comply with the Supreme Court. And I really like this approach because, you know, Jack Smith had come back a couple of weeks ago to Judge Chetkinen and said, give me some time.

We have to figure out what to do with this case in light of the immunity decision. And one thing that was speculated that we had talked about even as a possibility, and I think I mentioned both possibilities when we were talking about the immunity decisions, he could either try to push forward with the indictment that he had and have a hearing in which Chetkin was going to have to take the scissors to it herself, or he could just voluntarily come back with a new indictment and try to winnow it down to what would work. And that's what he's done here. And I think that's the smart move.

0:14:10 Thomas: That makes sense.

0:14:11 Matt: And people were disappointed because there was this thought that we were going to get to have what they were calling a mini trial, where you'd be able to present the evidence and really make the public aware of exactly what Trump did. Because a lot of people still don't really seem to know or haven't been paying attention. And that would have all happened within a month or two of the election, which would have been great.

But also set things up for appeal even worse than they already were. It would have just created a whole other record weird. And as it is, I don't know exactly what's going to happen. There's going to be a hearing on the 5th in which Chuck is going to check in on the status of all this to see what needs to be done.

Obviously, I'm sure the Trump team is going to bring a motion to dismiss, and they're going to try to say that somehow there's still official acts in here, even though I didn't really see anything. But again, I'm not a Trump lawyer. I'm certain they'll find something to argue about with official acts and try to see that

0:14:55 Matt: There's something in here.

0:14:54 Thomas: Well, when the president does it, it is official is what they'll say.

0:14:57 Matt: That's right. No, no, matter what. That's right. You know, it's kind of a 50-50 because he's of the evidence that would have helped him the most to prove that Donald Trump knew that what he was doing is wrong, because the people who were telling him to stop doing this and there was no election fraud are the people in the government whose conversations are now missing from this indictment and will not be brought in at trial. At the same time, there's still plenty of evidence and plenty of other conversations. Think that there's more than enough to work with here to prove the conspiracy and to prove this attempt to interfere with the certification every time.

0:15:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:29 Thomas: Was a perfect phone call, Matt. I feel like it's pretty ironclad. You're talking to a state official that, I mean, there's so much evidence, but like, yeah, it's not in the president's job to go beg state officials to find him votes that don't exist. I feel like that's not an official act. And if somehow that doesn't hold up, I'm, I'd be amazed.

0:15:50 Matt: Let's hope. I think he's doing the best he can with what he's got here and with the limitations the court put on the evidence that he can use and with limitations that they put on how close we can get to anything that looks like a presidential act. But I really do appreciate this judicious editing. It really reminds me of, I mean, obviously, Smith and the team he's got are outstanding lawyers.

And one thing I think that lawyers understand that people don't just is the way to tell the truth in the way that you want to tell it. That's very much the way, that's how lawyers operate. And that's what he's doing here is focusing on the parts of the truth. Everything in the indictment before was true, but now this indictment is also true. He's just focusing on parts that meet the law better as it stands as as of today.

So we'll keep watching this, I think it looks good, but there's going to be a long road ahead. I think it's going be a shorter road than it would have been if we had tried to slog through having the judge go through this piece by piece, though. And I understand people's desire to get this evidence out on the record and to have a public viewing and to, you know, maybe the only chance potentially if Trump is reelected to actually get this stuff out.

But at the same time, I don't think it'd be great for his case to his hand that much and to do it halfway, which is what he would have to do with this sort of mini trial, and also to create a record that can be appealed and go up and down once

0:16:58 Matt: Again. So

0:16:58 Thomas: People just really wanted that gavel gavel content though. They're like, we need another courtroom thing for gavel gabble. I agree.

0:16:59 Matt: Yes, it's true. Well, there will be plenty of other Trump trials to get through, and maybe we'll actually have real audios for as much as I've been enjoying the reenactments.

0:17:05 Thomas: Yeah! Oh, that would be so nice. It

0:17:10 Matt: Yeah, that's

0:17:11 Thomas: Would be a lot less work. It would make things come out faster, Matt. So what's, remind me, what's the next step here that we would want to look out for? Just, all

0:17:13 Matt: True! September 5th, There's going to be a status hearing, so we'll get a sense of where they're going from there. I have no doubt the Trump team is going to try to file a motion to dismiss and that there will be a hearing on that. But I think it's going to be a much weaker motion than it would have been if he had stuck with the indictment and tried to sort it all out in court.

0:17:31 Thomas: Right. Well, I will confess that I thought this was going to be the entirety of the episode. And I thought there was going to be so much news with this, but Matt, there is something that you have been, the thing you're actually mad about is not even this. And so why don't we take a break and then we'll talk about the thing that Matt really wants to talk about? Oh, for Rocket Money, because I can honestly say I was a customer before they were a sponsor because they are absolutely perfect for me. Actually think someone invented Rocket Money specifically for me, Thomas Smith, Money user, because Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, descriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

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0:17:46 Matt: No, no, not at all. I'm My boundless rage.

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0:21:26 Thomas: Right, Matt, this is something that you want to cover because correct me if I'm wrong, it's kind of going a little bit under the radar. Unreal.

0:21:32 Matt: Think it's going far too under the radar. And it's a follow-up actually on OA 1043, we talked to Emily, who's a US citizen who's going through the process we're going to talk about. This is about the Biden administration's parole in place program, which since the time that we talked about it a couple of months ago, they have brilliantly branded as Keeping Families Together, which I think is a really good name for it, because that is exactly what this program does.

And just to reiterate very quickly, I don't want to go into the full legal explanation, which you can find again in OA 1043, but this opens up a pathway essentially to people who are married to U.S. citizens and have been here for more than 10 years. And it is very important that they have this pathway, because otherwise right now, the very difficult waiver process that they might be eligible for is taking about four to five years and is not guaranteed.

Otherwise, their only other choice is to wait outside the country with their families or to be separated from their families for 10 years. So those are terrible choices. And The Biden administration did something that immigration attorneys have been asking for for a very long time, which is to open up a parole process. And parole is just permission, essentially. It gives somebody a status as if they came legally. And it's something that has been in place for 72 years in one form or another that Congress gave the executive the authority to do.

And we talked about parole in the last episode, last time we talked about this, this program has already been in place for military families. I want to emphasize that because that's one thing that DHS is drawing from when they're, when they publish this very long 91 page Federal Register entry explaining what they're doing here. And the parole in place from military families program was instituted in 2007 by George W. Bush under DHS Secretary Chertoff. And that was not controversial for reasons you can imagine, right? This is

0:22:22 Thomas: Absolutely. Unreal, yeah.

0:23:08 Thomas: Jesus.

0:23:09 Matt: To protect the family members of people who were serving at the time in Afghanistan and Iraq, be to sure that you don't have to worry about your mom getting deported while you're out in the front lines. And yeah. Thing I don't know that the Republicans have considered when they're challenging this is that this would undo that program too.

0:23:24 Matt: And I, yeah, this was the exact same logic.

0:23:18 Thomas: Wow. Party of family values I I'm I'm done doing this ironically, I'm going to start doing it like positively. Hey, Hey, Democrats are now the party, as they always were. We are the party of families, everybody. Want your family to be together and not deported and maybe also have health care and a lot of other things that are really important to families.

0:23:30 Matt: Yeah. Yes.

0:23:45 Matt: Know what we're not doing is going to federal court and saying that your presence, you, you know, United States citizen who's married to an immigrant, that your presence is causing irreparable harm to my state. That's not something the Democrats are doing. And that's something Republicans have just done.

0:23:57 Thomas: Well, Matt, that can't be something anyone is doing. I don't know why you're even making this insane joke.

0:23:59 Matt: Hey, uh, you know, I, the attorney general, the attorneys general who have done this will are already denying it to the faces of their constituents. But I have the proof, and I will link to it, and I'm going to read to you from it, about just how awful and disingenuous this lawsuit to try to stop this program is.

And you're hearing now, I think, some of the anger creeping into my voice, because I have been waiting for 18 years for this program to come into effect, and I have clients who have been awaiting for many, many years with me. We have people who've had pending waiver cases, who have living in uncertainty, who've not been able to get a work permit, people married to U.S. citizens, people who have small businesses, people people who are contributing to their communities.

I have, this morning, just talked to two pastors, people who were completely entrenched in their communities, doing wonderful work, who are both wondering what they're going to do now if this program doesn't go through. These are people that, if you went out on the street and you told the average citizen, including, I absolutely believe, including the average MAGA person, if he told them about these people, they'd say, well, why don't they already have a green card?

0:24:54 Matt: How do they not have citizenship.

0:24:54 Thomas: One million percent. Yeah, 100%.

0:24:56 Matt: Absolutely. I'm sure of it. And the reason I really want to talk about this today is because I want everyone listening to this to promise, if they can right now, just back to me that you're going to have a conversation with somebody else about this, about what you've learned today. Because I think this is actually something we can move the needle on. I really believe it is. I think that most immigration policy is entrenched. It's intractable. I don't think that Most people respond very well when they believe what they believe about immigration. They They can't be persuaded that the system is anything other than what they think it is. But I found in these conversations, and I've been talking to some of the activists that are working on this issue, and they're telling me the same thing, that if you talk to people, if you tell them what they're going through, if you tells them what this program actually is, because right-wing media isn't doing that, because the attorneys general aren't doing that, none of the Republican leaders are doing that. They're pretending it's something else entirely.

0:25:43 Thomas: It count if I just tell you what you just told me after this? Does that count as my conversation? With someone else.

0:25:49 Matt: I'm sorry, it doesn't.

0:25:50 Thomas: I'm just trying to get out of my homework.

0:25:50 Matt: You have to teach somebody about it. Yeah. Sorry.

0:25:53 Thomas: I have a long practiced history of trying to do technically homework as quickly as possible, but it sounds like I can't get out of this one. Okay.

0:26:02 Matt: I might make an exemption for you because, you know, we're making this program. Yeah, I think we're okay.

0:26:03 Thomas: Oh, thank God. Okay, I don't need more homework.

0:26:07 Matt: Sure. Let me tell you why I'm so angry. Again, it isn't just the fact that people are speaking out against this and lying about it, it's that they're going to a federal court and they filed the weakest ass immigration challenge I've ever seen. And I've read a lot of complaints challenging immigration programs, but this is such horseshit. This is just absolutely, they know it. I know they know it. I'm sure they know I'm till

0:26:22 Thomas: I bet. Wow. Never heard Matt quite like that. That's for real, though. Like, man.

0:26:34 Matt: I start talking about these people. I have some things to say to them, but let's talk about the complaint very quickly. And then we'll talk about who brought it. This was brought in the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler, Texas, and it was put in front of Judge J. Campbell Barker, who is a very reliable Trump appointee. They know what they're doing.

They brought this where they brought it, as they always do, for good reason, because any reasonable judge looking at this complaint, I think, would dismiss it on the papers. I don't think he would be taking it as seriously as this judge has. And isn't too far off from the challenge that the states brought a couple of years ago to the parole program that was for people from Cuba and Haiti and Venezuela and Nicaragua.

That went up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme court found the states had no standing in that case. And in fact, Neil Gorsuch wrote a concurrence in which v. Biden in 2022, the same standing argument that these people are using, special solicitude, which is something from Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007, which is sort of a way to relax standing rules. Because it's hard for states to have standing when they're trying to challenge federal policy about immigration, because immigration is exclusively a federal thing. It's

0:27:34 Matt: Very hard for States to say, right, that we want to interfere with your immigration policy? Talk about standing. That's the most important thing as we get into something like this is, can they even bring this suit? I'm going to tell you there's no way they can. And they seem to know that because they don't spend too much time talking about the harm, because they have to be able to show that there is harm to the states by having people who have been here for 10 years who are married to U.S. citizens in their states existing with them.

0:27:34 Thomas: You would think existing Yeah, do they try saying, like, well, we might one day design a website about it, so because that's worked in the past, Matt. It's worked in the past.

0:28:05 Matt: Yeah, right. No, yeah. Sure, yeah, that's what they should have done. Should have website guy, because this is nonsense. I mean, they have to cite a Scalia concurrence dissent, which suggests that the states wouldn't have ratified the constitution if they thought the president could do this, right? Okay.

0:28:12 Thomas: Wow.

0:28:25 Thomas: They're going they're taking it way back, huh?

0:28:26 Matt: Yeah. If somebody had called up Madison and told him that Joe Biden someday is going to authorize a parole program for people to marry to US citizens, okay, they're trying to say is that every one of these states goes through and they list how many people they think are going to be affected. Now, off the bat, the Biden administration estimates that there are 500,000 US citizens.

And let's just center them for a minute, because usually when I'm talking about immigration policy, I'm not talking about people who are citizens. But I think the best way to talk about this program, as much as I love the immigrants involved, is to talk about the citizens who are affected, because that is is what it is for. It is to protect them, it is to protect their kids, it's to protect their communities and their jobs and their schools.

It's to make sure that they can stay there and they don't have to make the most difficult decisions that I've seen people ever have to make. What we have here are a whole lot of cowards coming in, attorneys general from 16 different red states, and reporting into the court about how many people they think live in their states who would cause

0:29:22 Matt: Them this irreparable harm. And yeah, the way they have to write it is they actually have to say, and they each have a little section here where they talk about their whatevers. Start with Texas, because that has the most. Texas estimates they have about 200,000 people who are married to U.S. citizens and would therefore be eligible for the program. And of course, they're glossing over the married to US citizens part and they're just focusing on the undocumented people. You cannot talk about this without talking about the other half of the couple. And they're really trying not to do that because they know that's not good PR. And all of the attorneys general, when they're going back and talking about this in their statements, when they're posting about this on social media, they're posting long, long things and not mentioning what the program actually is, which is the thing that has made me the angriest, because you just can't go into a Texas federal court and make these claims and then pretend you didn't. And I'm not going to let you do that. Is very concerned about this program. And North Dakota

0:29:21 Thomas: What I not

0:30:15 Matt: Says, that's

0:30:15 Thomas: Enough room in North Dakota, yeah. We're - oh, I can barely breathe as I'm writing this because we're just packed to the gills here. We're just full on. And there's some people who are here that need to not be here.

0:30:17 Matt: Right. Right. Dakota's running out of people, from what I heard. They're trying to get people to move there, the last I heard they were thinking about abandoning it and just calling it Dakota, like just trying to combine the state a few years ago.

0:30:35 Thomas: Oh, please God do that.

0:30:38 Matt: On this too, by the way. They both have their concerns. But North Dakota is so lazy, or there are so few people involved, that every one of the other states says how many people they think are affected. North Dakota just says, there are unlawfully present aliens in the state of North Dakota who are married to US citizens. So what, like two, one, five?

0:30:55 Thomas: I was going to say, I think that means two. I think That's well, we can't just say a couple. Yeah. There's more than one. So how about we say there are citizens, people.

0:30:58 Matt: Yeah, probably. And we want them out of here. Yeah. Yeah, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming all went this route. They all said, "There are some, we don't know how many, basically." So that's, you know, say, what are you even worried about? And they're trying to say that there's some kind of economic harm because they're taking benefits and going to schools and doing whatever else and all the other stuff that regular people do. And this is the thing that I always say when people ask me, "How are we going to afford all these new immigrants?" I'm like, well, how do they afford you? Because my clients are working and paying taxes, aren't you? Right? I mean, and you still cost us money. Like, your existence, when you use our roads and go to healthcare and do all the things that humans do, costs us money. That's just how it is.

0:31:25 Thomas: Yeah, I Think on average, if you take a more of it, I think can only be true that on average each person adds. Otherwise, we'd be in a lot just in a Lot of Debt. The country would be negative value. Like if some... We'd be like, guys, some of you need to kill yourselves because we're like negative trillions of dollars. Every time someone's born, it costs us more money. No, on average, more people equal resources.

0:31:44 Matt: Yes. Well, we earn a lot of debt. But every when anti-immigrant opponents talk about this stuff, they talk about the costs without talking about the taxes contributing, without talking about the payroll, without talking about the small businesses and the jobs that are being created and sort of the way that we're growing the pie by having more people, let alone the industries that desperately need people right now. And the harm that it would cause to have all these people who, and again, these are people, sorry, I'm just going to, I've never getting off my soapbox for this episode.

0:32:11 Thomas: Yeah. Sure.

0:32:30 Matt: I'm just stuck there. Let's just keep going. On. Ever want to hear again about how none of these people did it the right way, because you got here, you stayed here for 10 years, and you put down enough roots to marry somebody in another country and live with them and integrate into their lives, right? To me, that's about as much as you can integrate into another country. And I don't care how you got here at this point. It doesn't matter how you got here. At this point, you are a part of an American family. And it is sadistic to suggest that we should separate you or that you should have to be exiled for 10 years with your family. And that's what they're doing in this lawsuit, is they're openly saying that. So let me get back to the law.

0:32:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:03 Thomas: That's interesting. I didn't think of it that way. Because I, I is already so wrong. I don't even bother. It's just like evil. But yeah, like the ultimate sign that you should be here is a person who is a citizen was like, yeah, I want to be with this person forever. Ever. I feel like that's like an easy endorsement, you know, on behalf of the country. Like, yeah, okay. If one person wants you to be not just here, but like with them intimately. So yeah, you win. Okay.

0:33:18 Matt: Forever. Yes. Not just one person, but the two people you created together also would like to have you around.

0:33:34 Thomas: Possibly. Yeah. Yeah, if they have kids,

0:33:35 Matt: Yeah, very likely. And most of these people do. So when you're talking about any of these numbers, you still have to tack on the kids that are involved in all of this, because if you've been here for 10 years and you've been with somebody for that long, there's a good chance you have a young child. So this is the non -starter on the standing on the harm, right? It's very hard for them to show that.

0:33:35 Thomas: Yeah. Jeez.

0:33:53 Thomas: Sorry. If Pretend this is me coming into your law office and being like, Hey, I want to sue my neighbor. Then we go over it and you're like, well, don't have standing and there's no harm, but like, what's the, but after that, there's the I don't even understand. Isn't that like pretty much 99% of what you would have to have? Like, Like, I don't understand.

0:34:16 Matt: Thinking about your neighbor upset you? Does it cost you money? I mean, that's, right, I don't know.

0:34:19 Thomas: But if I don't have standing or harm,

0:34:22 Matt: You don't, right.

0:34:24 Thomas: Am I even doing in your law office, Matt, is what I want to know.

0:34:27 Matt: They're trying to say that they just have to share that they're they're taking $1 from the state that they shouldn't or whatever. It's stupid. So a couple of just delusional things I wanted to read very quickly before we move on to the standing thing, from the fan standing thing. Say They that vacature, the PIP program would cause some recipients to leave, thereby reducing the financial burdens on the state.

People who have been in your state for 10 years and are married are going to leave because this program didn't work out. Is that really what you're saying? You're going to go with that? Say, get out of here and we'll save some money by getting you out of our state.

They actually, and then they make it very clear a little further on when they talk about the fact that these people would be removable if they didn't get this, you know, deportable, if they did not get this benefit. They are already deportable. They are already right now deportable because they are here without permission. Me read this part.

They're saying right now that the PIP program itself, which just came out last Monday, it not even two weeks old, that it's providing incentives for some, if not many, to leave the United States, including Texas, if it were vacated. Their departure would reduce the state's Medicaid, social services, and education costs, now catch this, for those individuals and their families who depart with them. So again,

0:35:26 Matt: The U .S. citizens. So get out of here. Like, you're not welcome in this state. Go stay outside the country for 10 years. That's what these attorneys general are telling U.S. citizens and their kids. Really the only reference in here to the other people are actually going to be harmed.

0:35:26 Thomas: Okay, so the harm is that they're, oh my God, I think I'm having, struggling with this, because for one, obviously, it's just absolutely insane. Saying. So they're saying, Hey, here's the harm. This didn't happen, then people could leave and would leave. And that's good. So the harm is the absence of a good. Is that what they're for them?

0:35:45 Matt: Yeah. It's offensive.

0:35:58 Matt: Yeah.

0:35:58 Thomas: I'm just even trying to understand their terms. The harm is that a good thing in their minds would happen if you didn't have this program would

0:36:00 Matt: Yeah, no. And that good thing would be people would give up and leave the country. Yeah.

0:36:08 Thomas: Be people leaving. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird to be like, Hey, the harm is people aren't leaving our state. That's, that's what it is, right? I'm like, genuinely, I just am trying to understand their logic, man. That's it.

0:36:13 Matt: Yes. No, it's so bad. Right. No. Sure. Sure, yeah, no, this is not a law that is targeted at pedophiles or drug dealers or people that you could point to and say, maybe that's a problem to have all these people in our state. Are people that are as sympathetic as anyone you could possibly put in front of the public. And two months before an election, the Republican attorneys general have decided this is the fight they want to pick with citizens in their own state, their own voters.

And that's what I really want people to know. Let's just very quickly though, I want to make sure I get the legal stuff out of the way. The other standing argument they're making because they know that that one's not going to fly too far. And because they already know that in Texas v. Biden, the They're going with what's called special solicitude, which is, uh, from Massachusetts VAPA, which I'd mentioned before, 2007. And it's sort of a way of relaxing the standing rules to say that there's some sort of general reason that states should be able to show that they can have standing. It's really kind of amorphous and ambiguous. Um, Neil Gorsuch, of all people, I completely agree with on this one. I got to say, um,

0:37:14 Thomas: You stop agreeing with Neil Gorsuch? New

0:37:16 Matt: Can't help it. But well, he really doesn't like special solicitude. And he says, nor has special solicitude played a meaningful role. This is from 2022, two years ago, in this court's decisions in the years since Massachusetts BPA. Even so, it's not hard to wonder why the court says nothing about special solicitute in this case. And it's hard not to think too, that lower courts should just leave that idea on the shelf in future ones. So they've spent pages with something that their their boy thinks they should have left on the shelf. So yeah, this will be in front of the Supreme Court, I'm sure, at some point, and we'll see what Gorsuch thinks about it then.

0:37:17 Thomas: Company policy, man, I'm sick of this. Get this off of my show.

0:37:50 Thomas: Still can't get over this idea that like, Hey, we need people to leave our state as fast as possible. Ideally, the ideal state, no people. It's just like a square on a map with nobody. Then, hey, we won't be paying anything for health care if there's no people. We don't have to pay any. This is great. That's a benefit to the state.

0:37:59 Matt: Yeah.

0:38:10 Matt: Not just people, it's married people. They're coming after marriage, the institution of marriage, the thing that we have heard Republican attorneys general speaking out against, right? They're very concerned about protecting traditional marriage. And well, we'll get to that in a minute. But let's look at the claims briefly here, because I just want people to understand as quickly as we can how dumb these claims are and how much of a non -starter this is, just skipping over the other two very stupid standing arguments.

Parole, again, remember, very well established. Congress, in fact, in 2020 reaffirmed – because again, this is an executive program with the military parole and police program I was telling you about, which is essentially identical to this, except we're expanding it now to all married couples that can qualify. Congress affirmed, specifically affirmed the idea of parole in place, which is something the judge has a question about already, I'll talk about.

But Defense Authorization Act in 2020, first of all, they just acknowledge just directly, Section 1099, that there is a thing called parole in place, that it exists under INA 212-D5, which is the basis for this. They say, Congress reaffirms parole in place authority for the Secretary of Homeland Security. So there's no question that Congress, because people are saying, well, Congress doesn't want to do this. They should be legislating. This is executive legislation.

Congress has said to the executive branch, you can do this, this is a thing that is available to you, that a parole in places a tool that you can use, because there has been some question about whether parole can be done inside the country or whether it can can only be done to let people in at the borders. So there's not much of a question there. This is a program that is legal, that exists.

0:39:39 Thomas: Closed.

0:39:40 Matt: So. I really do. Here's the other super offensive thing, the thing that I really want people to know. Parole can be granted for two reasons, the kind of parole we're talking about. It can be grant for urgent humanitarian reasons. So if your loved one is suffering from cancer or something, you need to come in. We can get a special parole permission for you to come, especially if there's a life -threatening illness. But the one that matters here is significant public benefit. Now, do you think it is a significant public benefic to keep people with their families? Is it a significant public benefit for you to be with your family?

0:40:10 Thomas: Yeah, to not like separate people from their families. Yeah, I think that's a beneficiary. I'd say.

0:40:14 Matt: And maybe not stress them out because I've seen the mental health consequences of waiting and waiting and not knowing what's going to happen and not being able to work, the effect on kids of not knowing if their parents are going going to be living here or in Honduras next year.

0:40:23 Thomas: Yeah. Do you think it's a public good to not just take away the parents from their children? Children That not controversial, Matt. Yeah.

0:40:30 Matt: Yeah. Wouldn't have thought. And this is, I want to emphasize, this is family separation. What these people are doing is a slow motion version of what Trump was doing at the border. And I think everyone needs to know it. They need to understand what they are standing in the way of and the way that they are doing it. Because, yeah.

0:40:50 Matt: They come out and say pretty much that they don't think that there's a significant public benefit to granting parole under these circumstances and making it easier for people to get residency through their spouses. They're pretty explicit about that. And they're doing this under the cover of saying, well, you're creating a class of people. You're creating sort of like an en masse option for people, to get parole instead of having it be case by case. But this is case by case. There's no question, because I've already done a bunch of them now. I've gone through this application, and I've had to write up exactly why my client should qualify. They're looking at each person individually, case bycase, as you do with parole. They've not just granting them

0:41:20 Thomas: It's just about where you have, where you're waiting while they do it, right? Well

0:41:27 Matt: Right, and how long you're going to wait. And also, really emphasize this, if we don't have this program, people who are here undocumented who came across the border and are married to U.S. citizens, citizens, they have to prove extreme hardship to a spouse. That's not always possible. If you're young and healthy and you're just sort of living a regular life, it is hard to prove extreme hardship. And that means if you can't prove that, you're going back for 10 years.

0:41:45 Thomas: And didn't you say something crazy, that like, you can't use the family separation as the hardship part? You

0:41:51 Matt: You can't use your kids. You can only use your spouse.

0:41:52 Thomas: Can't you can use your kids. Yeah. Okay.

0:41:53 Matt: Yep. Nope.

0:41:54 Thomas: Hey, people with kids, tell me why it would be hard if I just separated you from your kids right now. Tell me why that's a hardship. But you can't at all use the part where you're separated from your kids. You have to use other stuff.

0:42:06 Matt: Hardship to you. That used to be the standard. We used to talk about hardship to the alien, but no, they don't count at all. They're not even people. Are the kids because we don't want people having kids and being able to claim hardship from them. So you can only claim hardship to a spouse or a parent for this waiver. They don't think that any of this relates to a significant public benefit, including promoting family unity. They don't think that that is a significant public benefit. Who these people are.

I just think everybody should understand that. As they scream about traditional marriage and family values and make you crazy about trans people, this is what they are. They're very upset because they actually do the percentage on this. Federal Register notice that put out this program is 91 pages long, 5,283 words. And in all of these words, there's only a 63-word statement that tells them about case -by -case requirements.

So they're saying it's just like a tiny little percentage of the entire document explains about case by case. But I think that we all understand when you make an application that you were being reviewed case bycase, that's

0:42:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:43:02 Matt: How it works.

0:43:03 Thomas: I don't. Why are they hung up on this? Because there's just nothing else to do.

0:43:04 Matt: Yeah. That's so stupid. Because, Because, yeah, they have to be able to say that somehow this is a violation of what parole was supposed to be, because Congress was pretty clear when they changed the rules on parole in '96 that they didn't want this to be something that would be substituted for a new immigrant program. They don't want the president to create a new way for people to immigrate through parole, but that's not exactly what he's doing.

What the president is doing here is creating a way for people who already have access to immigrant visas to use those visas. He's not giving them any option to get different kinds of visas or to create any new path to citizenship. I want to be very clear about that.

This is a shortcut, essentially, and not a shortcut in the sense that you're jumping ahead in line or that you are doing anything at all that affects the rest of the people who are waiting in other kinds of statuses. People who are married to US citizens are immediately eligible for visas. The question is if you're actually able to use that or if you have to wait 10 years. That's what it comes down to. To.

So they're trying to say this isn't what parole is for at all. They're wrong. That's just not true, because the purpose of parole is to give a significant public benefit to the United States, which is what this is. They cite some explanation that Congress had in the '96 bill, sort of some of this ephemera that went along with it.

And I found further down in the same document the actual truth about what Congress was trying to saying, that Congress wasn't concerned about letting a bunch of people in with parole. They were concerned with letting a bunch of in who would not otherwise be eligible for immigrant visas, which is exactly what these people are. They're all eligible for immigrant visas because they're married to US citizens. So that's not even a factor, but they really go on about that, about how that's not good enough.

Identify a few other problems. One of them is they think that the 550,000 people that Joe Biden has identified, identified, is likely a significant underestimate, because generally speaking, they think that there are 1.3 million undocumented people married to U.S. citizens, which might be true, but they don't mention in this complaint that this requires you have to have been here for

0:44:49 Matt: 10 years. So that narrows it down quite a lot, right? So that's not everybody. It really does, because unfortunately, I've met quite a few people now who do not qualify because they're pretty close, but they're not there for the 10 years, so then to get a stay on this, which is what they really want to do, they want to stop the program, they wanna keep it from going forward, which is always what they will try to do with these immigration things. Have to be able to show actual irreparable harm. And is so weak. It is just even weaker than what we were talking about before.

0:44:49 Thomas: Yeah, I would think.

0:45:12 Thomas: They can't even show regular arm, Matt. I'm not sure how they're going to show irreparable arm.

0:45:14 Matt: Exactly. Exactly. Irreparable harm to people who are already part of your communities. And trying to pretend that somehow creating this program is going to be a magnet for people to come to Kansas. I'm sorry. It's just not. That's not going to happen.

0:45:25 Thomas: Well, and hold on. And just to make sure we're clear, the irreparable harm part you're talking about, that's so that that you can get the emergency stay. So it's like, right. So it's the, it's not even like, oh, this thing's going to harm. It's like oh no, if you don't stop this thing immediately, it's going cause the irreparable harm. That's the standard we're looking at. Not just like, Oh, is this maybe like a bad thing, which it already isn't, of course.

0:45:32 Matt: Right.

0:45:48 Matt: Right. Right. And again, I don't think a serious judge would agree with them at all.

0:45:53 Thomas: Do they even try, Matt? How do they even try to justify this irreperable harm thing?

0:45:55 Matt: Just Again, by saying that somehow this is a magnet, they try to tie it to the border crisis, of course, because this is what Joe Biden's actually, his big master plan is to bring a bunch of people in and then make them wait 10 years and marry US citizens 10 years in the future, I guess, to do this again. That's the, yeah, it's definitely, yeah.

0:46:10 Thomas: It's a long -term plan. You know, Biden, one thing Biden has his time. You know, he's got nothing but time. The man is in his early 20s.

0:46:16 Matt: In his fifth term, sure. Yeah, that's

0:46:20 Thomas: He's like, I could form a plan that'll come to fruition about, I don't know, 20 years.

0:46:20 Matt: Right. They also, opponents make a big deal about how many people are affected and they're saying, well, parole is not supposed to be. But the thing is that there's no scope. There's no requirement in the law that it only affect a certain number of people. If you have a program that happens to have a bunch of people that are eligible for it, that's legal. It's fine. And again, to be clear, parole is not residency. It is not citizenship. It is just making it a little easier to apply for residency and eventually for citizenship. And that's another thing I keep seeing is that they're somehow giving them citizenship before November so they can vote. That's something that people are just repeating.

0:46:54 Thomas: Okay.

0:46:54 Matt: They're just saying that's true. Yeah, it's absurd. So, okay, a couple other things. When you're talking about the actual attempts at legal claims, they're trying to claim that parole is a temporary thing, that it's only for temporary admissions. And that is true. It is a contemporary status. The whole point of this is we're going to give you a temporary status that will bridge this and allow you to apply for residency. So I don't really see the problem there. They're going to be fully inspected when they apply for presidency. They are going to have to meet all of the requirements of residency, which means you can't have a serious criminal record. You can't any of the other things that might disqualify you from residency. We're just fixing this one issue about how you got here. That's the only thing that we're talking about here. They're trying to say that they're circumventing Congress by doing all of this. And of course, we all know that at this point, Congress really can't do anything, thing, especially with immigration. It's never going to happen.

0:47:36 Thomas: Thought you told me a moment ago that Congress was super cool with the parole thing and didn't care.

0:47:41 Matt: Exactly right. Exactly right that They they, have this problem that exists that they'd handed over the executive and said, you know, have fun, do what you will with it. We have affirmed. This is a thing. They're saying here though, is that it's, it's getting around the waiver process by doing this, that people would otherwise have to apply for a waiver. And, uh, I don't care. I just don't cares. You're not going to get me to care about that because I've seen how painful this waiver process is. I don't think it should exist as it is. If we want to give people this and

0:48:02 Thomas: What is even the argument there? That there's some inherent value in making people fill out paperwork or

0:48:08 Matt: Run the gauntlet, Yeah, and have 30% of them denied, by the way. So you're going to have like 30% people that are just going to stay here without permission because they don't have any other option. They're not going to leave. And of course, lots of references to the Biden -Harris administration, as you'd expect. Know, they're saying it's arbitrary and capricious because they didn't consider an account for their legally recognized reliance interests and how, you know, they enforce their federal immigration law and that it's going to create this perception that, you know, there's amnesty in the United States and people are going to come here and wait it out and, you know, get ready for this thing to happen again.

0:48:08 Thomas: Sure.

0:48:35 Matt: Know, and they just don't think that there's any reasoned explanation for this things and it just shouldn't exist. One that really killed me. The pro -employment program makes it significantly easier for unlawfully present aliens is to get work authorization. Oh no, I can't. That's the idea of giving people who are married to US citizens, who have US citizen kids, the ability to work legally.

0:48:52 Thomas: To Pay taxes. Yeah, yeah.

0:48:53 Matt: Astonishing. And they actually argue, Texas argues this is going to drive wages down and it's going to make life harder and US citizens will be out of jobs. These people are already working. If anything, it's gonna bring wages up because you're gonna bring people out of the shadows. You're gonna get people who Are right now being exploited and being paid less to be paid fairly and subject to labor law. So I don't want to keep going. There's just a lot of other stupid stuff, but Very quickly, I just want to talk about the people who are responsible for this, because every one of them should be driven out of public life and never return. None of these people should ever hold elected office again.

0:49:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yes.

0:49:24 Matt: One of them is up for election. I want to talking about him for just a second, Andrew Bailey. Hello.

0:49:22 Thomas: I love this, like

0:49:30 Matt: I've been harassing you because you shouldn't have a job because you're an absolute coward. I hope that you have a mild incurable case of tinnitus for the rest of your life. I help that nothing ever works out for you again. Are an absolute freak. You do not belong in office. You don't belong in public life. I think I just said that. Man loves to talk about families and about how he's deeply invested in protecting children. He is, of course, incredibly pro -life. He's obsessed with trans people, all the stuff you'd expect. And he had the temerity to go to Texas and tell the Texas federal court that there are 9,000 people in his state that don't belong there, and then come back to those people and say, look at me, I'm stopping a Biden amnesty program. He wrote a very, very long post on X in which he explained why he was opposing this, which did not mention that this involves spouses of U.S. citizens. It just called it an amnestry program.

0:50:15 Thomas: Biden just did an amnesty, like, "Hey, I declare amnestry like the bankruptcy. Yeah.

0:50:20 Matt: Because they love using that word, right? That's one of their scariest words. But it is by definition not an ammnesty because you're not creating a new path. You're just making an existing path a little bit easier easier for people who really, really need it. I've already given 50 bucks to Democrat Elad Gross, who's running against existing the Attorney General Andrew Bailey. I would encourage everybody else to support Elad Gross in Missouri. I have never met or talked to or even read a single thing about Elad Gross, but you know what he's not going to do?

Go to Texas and say that there are a bunch of people living in a state who don't belong there. I'm sure he won't do that. I haven't even asked him, but I'm confident. So that the one person out of these 16 attorneys general who is actually up for consequences this year, and he should have some. He is pro -family separation. He's anti -family. There's no other way to say it. Have any number of other attorneys general, including some real all -stars from some of the worst Republican stuff you've heard of. Chris Kobach. Are you familiar with Chris Kobich?

0:50:22 Thomas: Nope. Where Where is this Missouri. Oh.

0:51:11 Thomas: Yeah, is

0:51:12 Matt: I should do an episode on Chris Kobuch.

0:51:13 Thomas: That Arizona.

0:51:13 Matt: Kentucky. Kansas.

0:51:14 Thomas: Why do I know, I'm Kansas.

0:51:16 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's one of the greatest losers in immigration policy. Just loves to lose. Just can't stop losing. Big L on his forehead. Just constantly losing. I can't believe this man still holds office. He won his last election by like 200 votes statewide. Is disgusting. He has a despicable person. He does not belong in office. I think I've said that now a few times. His entire deal is just hardcore anti -immigrant policies that are designed to make people feel uncomfortable and leave their own communities. And that's what he's doing here. Very consistent. Pro -family, pro life, great Christian man. Yost of Ohio. Don't need to keep going, but Brenna Bird of Iowa, Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Ashley Moody of Florida, Elizabeth Murrell of Louisiana, Marty Jackley of South Dakota, Drew Wrigley of North Dakota, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Jonathan Scrimetti of Tennessee. You all suck. Get out of office. Get Out of this lawsuit. Withdraw it. This is disgusting. And people are going to find out what you're doing.

0:51:16 Thomas: Okay. I think what you're saying that is it's very, very important to try to not let Republicans into office at every single level and every way. It's just, as is a starter, as a general rule, because yeah, these are elections I don'T typically think a lot about personally. We should, we If you don't time have to go through all the research, you can just vote blue. And that's a pretty reliable, not a hundred percent, but it's like a high nineties percentage going to tell you who the better candidate is. No, it'S probably a a hundred percent.

0:52:13 Matt: Yeah, sure, Generally speaking, not in favor of separating families in any way if they can help it. That's pretty consistent Democrat policy. Now, of course, they still support deportations to some degree. That's a whole other thing. But this in particular, when you have a chance to use the law to make people's lives better in a legal way, in a way that's already been being done for other classes of people, and you want to stand in the way of that, that is not what people should ever be elected for. That is not something that we should ever be sending you to any elected office to do to make people's lives harder, and certainly not to trash the people who are voting for you and say they don't belong in your communities. To take Andrew Bailey, his whole deal, he said when he was elected, I'm just going to spend my entire time suing Joe Biden. That's just goingto be my job now.

0:53:07 Thomas: Oh yeah. Cause what's his name? Paxton did that with Obama and look, and look where he is actually.

0:53:12 Matt: Yeah, well, right. And he's part of this too. I didn't even mention Ken Paxton, of course. I mean, he's one of the...

0:53:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Is he still, he's battling so many indictments and crap. I didn't know he was still in office.

0:53:17 Matt: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, and impeachment after he cheated on his wife and almost got thrown out of office and just family man. Yeah, no, Paxton's in here, too. I figure people already know Paxton sucks. But the idea that your entire job is suing Joe Biden, and he's doing this mindlessly, I'm sure. Maybe he really does hate the families in Missouri that much. But he'sdoing it because he wants to be able to come back and say, look, I'suing Joe Biden. I'm stopping him, right? He's gonna run for governor on this at some point, probably. Me, I did my part to try to stop an illegal Joe Biden amnesty program. And I want every one of those 9,000 people, U.S. citizens, and of course their spouses and kids to know this, that what he's doing to them and personally, what he's trying to do to their lives. This is exactly the opposite of what you should be going to public service for. I really can't seem to get off of this volume right now. This ist weird, Thomas. I'm having some feelings now, is this anger? This

0:53:26 Thomas: Family Family values.

0:53:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:54:08 Matt: Feels like anger.

0:54:09 Thomas: I maybe, I mean, I'm looking at the audio readings and it seems pretty identical, but yeah, I'll trust that in in your mind. No, I just want to say like, I know it's not a popular thing to say, but voting actually works. You said one of these people won by 600 votes in their state.

0:54:21 Matt: Yes. Yeah, Chris, go back. Oh, yeah. Hardly anything. It was like 50.5%.

0:54:27 Thomas: Yeah. You can't tell me that voting doesn't work when 601 votes would have been the difference between this person and whoever the other person was. And that happens a lot. And it happens in places that you might not not think. Like, you know, Kansas. Voting does matter. It does. It doesn't everything in the world, but it very much does matter."

0:54:27 Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:41 Matt: It also is pretty easy relative to other things you could be doing.

0:54:51 Thomas: Is extremely easy. Now that you say that, Matt, the amount of time we argue about it versus the amount time it actually takes to just go fill out a piece of paper once a year, you want to keep up with voting and everything, it's not much.

0:55:04 Matt: Get to walk down the street to Sam Adams Elementary School and see people I know and have a nice time. And maybe it's not so easy for you, but it's not that hard. And I tired of hearing people on the left say they're going to sit this out or that we need to protest the Party right now. It's just, oh, it's not that hard. On. I'm sorry. I get it. I understand what you're saying.

There's a lot to complain about Democrats right now, I really do understand it. But this is the kind of stuff we're up against, people who are actively anti-family because they think that US citizens in their state married the wrong kinds of people. That's what they're saying to your family. And the reason, by the way, that I'm extra fired up about this is because I have been talking to to those people who are some of my favorite clients in the world.

Some of the people that I've enjoyed working with the most are the people who qualify for this program. With deep roots who really want to be here and want to contribute and are doing wonderful things for their families. And I have to tell them now that I don't know what's going to happen with this program because I guess I should get to the end here.

0:55:58 Matt: Judge Barker put in a stay and a temporary stay. It's 14 days, but I'm concerned about where this is going. The Biden administration has requested time to brief it. They're going to be arguing about the stay in October and we'll be following it, I'm sure.

But he said that he thought there was enough of a question that he basically said in the stay, I don't have time to sit down and take a look at all this, so I'm just going to, you know, we'll just give it a stay for now. And what he says, the claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date. That conclusion is particularly based on the need to analyze, etc., etc. He says he thinks that he needs to analyze. This isn't even a question I don'T think the party's really raised. He wants to analyze as whether parole, quote-unquote, into the United States includes entry by aliens who are already in this country as opposed to at or beyond the border. Again, Congress told them four years ago this is fine to parole people while they're in the country. He also thinks that the federal government has possibly misapprehended the legal standard, which he understands much better.

He thinks that focusing on significant public benefit is a mistake, that we shouldn't be doing that, because he thinks what they're actually doing is judging Congress's policies by doing this, by creating this thing. He's saying they're telling Congress that they were wrong to have it the way they were. And you know what? Congress was wrong. You know who helped pass this? Joe Biden. He's got a lot to pay for, and he's doing it. This is a redemption for him, because he created this 10 -year rule.

In the Senate, he was instrumental in passing this rule, this law. And I respect that, that he's coming back and trying to do something to fix it. And it needs to be changed in Congress, but this is what we can do for now. And so this is not worth a stay, but that's what it's getting. Way that this has come out is that they are stopping approvals of the program. And there actually were a couple of approvals very quickly last week.

You're still allowed to file the applications to pay $580 to go online and file one of these. But it will not be approved until the judge decides what to do with the stay. I will say USCIS has given me some hope by going forward with scheduling biometrics appointments, which is a lot of resources for them, for people to come in and get background checks. So they think something, I think, might still be going on.

From what I'm hearing, I think it's very possible they might still be organizing these things and trying to triage them and getting them ready for approval because, you know, who knows what's going to happen after January. And let's try to get as many of these approved as possible. That is what I have to say for now. I've got four more hours of material if we want to keep going, but I think we should probably call it here.

0:55:58 Thomas: Yeah Uh, I mean, are evil people doing evil things and not enough people are talking about I haven't heard anything about this except for from this fine show so thank you matt and uh yeah spread the word as you said the homework that matt is giving everyone except me and I have that on record I'm already I checked uh I don't have to do it because I don't have time to have a conversation with a single other human, uh, what you all have to do. I'm like the teacher's aide that gets to like, all right, class, you heard him. He said, if you want your credit, talk to another person about this in the place where people talk. I don't know. I'm not much help. I have a bad TA.

0:58:16 Matt: Yeah. You're out. Exempt.

0:58:46 Matt: Yeah, please spread the word because I do think this is something we can move the needle on. I don't say that about a lot of immigration issues, but I think that people understand what this means to U.S. citizens and how this is interfering with their basic right to be with their families. I think it might actually make a difference for people who think they understand what the system is.

0:59:02 Thomas: Right. Well, thanks so much, Matt. And thanks so much for listening. Reminder, check out that OA Instagram, args pod on Instagram, and go check out where there's woke. I think you're gonna like it. I think especially go through the back catalog. I want to get mad, I want maybe do get an update, we can do some crossover because there are developments in uh one of the asshole law professors uh cases that we could cover that back.

0:59:25 Matt: Always.

0:59:26 Thomas: At the time, I didn't have access to uh, to uh as much on the pod, so it'll be fun to revisit. But anyway, thanks. By the way, check out the Law'd Awful books on patreon.com/law if you haven't already. Um, well, I'm worried about you, actually, now I think about it. You're so mad today, we made you read Gorsuch's whole book. Is there something nice we can do for Matt? Everyone, what can we do? What can we have? You do what's

0:59:47 Matt: Oh, know what I'm going to do? I'm going to read Ketanji Brown -Jackson's new book, because it looks awesome. Maybe we'll talk about that. It just came out.

0:59:49 Thomas: That oh maybe we could do a Law'd Awful book. Yeah, well, actually and and we've talked about maybe. Maybe discussing her version of originalism, which could be, I

0:59:55 Matt: Yeah, there we go. That's true. We could get all that. Do Do a episode. KPJ

1:00:02 Thomas: I would appreciate that. And I think the listeners would as well. So maybe Matt can have a nice thing. Right. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you Monday.

1:00:03 Matt: Yeah, I'm interested to learn. Sure. I'm ready. All right.

1:00:10 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

1:00:27 Matt: Really was as fired up as I've been about anything in a while. I knew that was all coming, because I've done so mad. And like last night, I just went on a tweet store about this.