What Are the ACTUAL Policy Differences Between Trump and Harris?

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Clip: So, just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan? I have concepts of a plan. That is a damning non-answer. I'm not trying to make it about myself, Your Honor. I'm just trying to show his bias toward the defendant. Just don't make it yourself.

0:00:33 Clip: Something simple as a crack pipe, a used crack pipe. The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check.

0:00:45 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1083. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. That over there is real life attorney, Matt Cameron. How are you doing, Matt?

0:00:55 Matt: Thomas, I'm great. I've had a good day. How about you?

0:00:59 Thomas: I don't know how to take that. This is mere moments away from fascism or not fascism. America's favorite favorite game show, or not fascism, in which we flip a coin and decide whether or not we're going to descend into absolute chaos or just kind of have a normal one. That's what we do. And this is our, I think our last regular episode before election night. So that's how I'm doing, Matt. You want to amend your answer?

0:01:25 Matt: No, I honestly, I, you know, I usually answer something a little more, but I'm feeling good. And there is nothing I can do but talk about these policies today and just get the word out the best we can. And that is the thing I can can do. And I feel good about that. So that's what we're going to do.

0:01:40 Matt: I'm feeling positive. I'm feelin' optimistic. Let's do it.

0:01:42 Thomas: Yeah, well, there was was some good polling news which is which was much needed uh going to claim an assist because I put out a very, you know, episode of Where There's Woke about how bad the polls were and then I think that told the universe well we got to make Thomas wrong, which I'm fine with, believe you I tricked the universe so I'd be like oh no don't make me wrong universe I'll be so upset psych would love to be super wrong and uh the Iowa poll uh Ann Seltzer was incredibly good news and gives um gives me almost hope which is too scary to do I don't really want to fully do that but it's but it is close

0:01:46 Matt: I'll take it. Right. Yeah. You're just doing the secret on polling. That worked out. Good job.

0:02:21 Thomas: I'm trying whatever I can you know they always say leave leave it all in the field.

0:02:24 Matt: Hey, we'll take good.

0:02:26 Thomas: You don't want to regret. I'm trying the secret. I might sacrifice a goat later. I don't know. I am just doing whatever I can over here, Matt.

0:02:27 Matt: That's right. We'll everything. All right. Yeah I'm with you. I am manifesting positivity right now. I m feeling good. And uh I m sure that everybody listening to this already has a voting plan. But make sure sure you have a voting plan.

0:02:41 Thomas: And an evacuation plan.

0:02:42 Matt: That's right. Maybe both at the same time. Vote on your way out. Thomas, I wanted to come in today with, guess, I kind of a closing argument on the elections, but just I want to make sure that listeners have a pretty straightforward, objective, up and down look at both administrations, what these two administrations would look like, because they're pretty starkly different. And I think it's worth just getting all these policies in one place. Yeah, who knew? Who knew? Different people, different administrations.

0:03:04 Thomas: All Wow. Okay. Well, we're going to find out folks after this break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/law. And you can also find very soon the election through a wrench in it, but we've already recorded a wonderful lot awful movies. And I promise as soon as we decide fascism or no fascism, or possibly before that, I will get it out to you, but it was really good. AndI can't wait. I will plug it more later.

0:03:23 Matt: That's be a fun break.

0:03:24 Thomas: So after this break, we'll find out if these candidates are different all right let's talk about one of the candidates or the other and we'll you know we'll just see we'll guess like which one you're talking about

0:03:40 Matt: Yeah, that won't last long. Know, obviously, to be clear, it is this podcast's official position that Donald Trump, under no circumstances, should ever be president or anything else ever. Know, so we're not unbiased. We're not pretending to be unbiassed. We're on the New York Times. I think it is worth just presenting these policy platforms and letting people have some idea. And obviously, I have strong opinions about these. I'm going to throw in a few. I think some of these really speak for themselves, if you actually say them out loud. And I should say that to go from these platforms, to try to figure out each of these candidates' platforms, it's not always easy because Trump is all over the place. He's constantly saying things that contradict. He's got a Republican Party platform that looks like it was written by a cabal of 10-year-olds. I mean, it really just, we'll link to it, but it's really written like it was written for children.

0:04:22 Matt: It's 28 pages. Yeah, no, it is. It is. There's no way around it. Also, it does that thing that so many conservatives do right now that annoys me so much, where they capitalize every other noun. I hate it so much. It makes it so hard to read.

0:04:22 Thomas: Well it is yeah oh come on really wow they're really doing that huh

0:04:38 Matt: Yeah, it's like a real boomer thing. Yeah. I don't know. Really don't like it.

0:04:38 Thomas: I get yeah back in my day boomers knew knew how to type properly and everyone else didn't. Now we're, now we're here.

0:04:47 Matt: Don't The know if they're just copying Trump because he does it all the time Or if it's just like a secret language with Republicans So

0:04:51 Thomas: Probably if you take all the letters and unscramble and just says like like, people you are superior or something, you know? I'm sure if you, there's some puzzle or something.

0:04:57 Matt: Of course I mean really The Republican platform is just In like 28 bullet points or something And then they decided they might as well just Add some text to all of that, but it's meaningless as we'll see Democratic platform is about 98 pages. It's much more detailed. It actually offers things that lawyers and policy people can grab onto. Of course, we're in a kind of strange position here because we have a new nominee for the last three months who is somewhat different from the previous nominee. We can assume that she's going to continue on to Biden policies, but there's some places that she seems to be a little different. So I'm just trying to ascertain best I can. And there are things like climate policy, for example, she hasn't had the chance to really say anything specifically. So we're assuming for the most part, she's gonna stick with the Democratic platform. Form. I'm just kind of working from all available materials here to try to give you the best overview we can. That includes, by the way, Project 2025. I'm going to throw in, and I'll mention a few of those as we go. But I think it's safe to assume the Heritage Foundation is going to have a lot to do with

0:05:44 Matt: Republican policy.

0:05:45 Thomas: Matt, Matt didn't, sorry everybody, Matt didn't get the news. Trump said he didn't do that. He's not. Scratch, I all, I don't know know if you prepped that but scratch it, he no yeah he says he doesn't know anything about it so not worried about it

0:05:51 Matt: He had nothing to do with it. That's right. That is right. Okay. Well, I can't possibly, just because there's 140 previous Trump staffers involved in writing it, there's no way it could possibly affect this administration.

0:06:00 Thomas: Misunderstanding I wish you would get better at research man

0:06:03 Matt: Demonstration.

0:06:03 Thomas: He said it's, it's fine, it's all fine, he didn't know he hasn't seen anything in it he likes some of it and he doesn't like other things but he hasn't seen it okay glad I could clear that up

0:06:12 Matt: Okay, great. Well, then nothing to worry about. What also thought it was worth mentioning, since we also have the full record of somebody who served an entire term in the White House, we can draw from that as well. On Politifact, they do a pretty good job of keeping track of campaign promises, and I thought it Was worth just breaking down how he did on his 2016 campaign promises.

0:06:30 Matt: 100% were fully broken, and that includes things like placing a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for foreign governments. That was revoked pretty quickly. The parts of the internet where ISIS is. That's on the list. I thought that was funny. Just why didn't anybody else think of that? And why

0:06:45 Thomas: Man yeah just close the parts where isis is that's really funny

0:06:51 Matt: Are we giving out those .ISIS domains? I mean, that really was pretty stupid. So he made all kinds of wild promises.

0:06:59 Thomas: There because for one I would want I'm more scared if he does keep his promises obviously but for two it's hard to even count his because I was going going to say this earlier, it's hard to like divine what the policy agenda is when we know he is not trustworthy and he was willing to just promise whatever pie in the sky, anything in the moment, if it suits him. So like, I guess I wouldn't mind if they threw together every one of those promises, you know, cause that'd be really funny. But if they kept it, if thing the New York times would probably do, which is like, well, we'll do some editorializing. We'll fact check it it's like well that's worthless I don't care about that but close the parts where isis is I think maybe they did a better job because a great one yeah

0:07:32 Matt: But it's by terms of PolitiFact here, he kept about 23% of his campaign promises. I just think that's relevant when you're looking to pick somebody to be the president again. Right now, by the way, Biden has kept about 28% of his campaign promises and 24% are considered to be in progress. And so far, according to PolitiFact, only three were completely broken. So for whatever that's worth,

0:07:55 Thomas: One, I've said it before, but all campaign promises should be, if we control the House and the Senate, if we could control the House and the Senate, that that should just go automatically before every single promise and then I would like to see it adjusted for that you

0:08:06 Matt: Yeah. No, very amorphous. It's kind of like a lot of this kind of fact -checking that you can define the parameters and set the goals however you want, but I thought it was an interesting way to look at it. So I want to run down some policy areas and just talk about each of these administrations and what what we can actually expect from them. And I hope this is helpful to people because there've been so many headlines or so many things that have kind of popped up and down. 30% of voters right now polled say that they'd be more interested in voting for Harris if they knew more about her policies. That's something I keep hearing over and over again. And I understand what you're saying, but I don't. I mean, what do you know about Trump's policies, right? When you say that, right?

0:08:37 Thomas: Know it's it that's such a funny oh ostensibly the like sensible answer well I need to know more about their but also it's incredibly silly because it's just saying like like well I'd vote for you Sauron, but I want to know more about the policies of Frodo and the Shire. Like, no, just, yeah, yeah.

0:08:56 Matt: Right? Just don't vote for saran vote against saran maybe yeah yeah it's so true and that's and honestly I have to chalk that up to just basic misogyny and racism frankly because the higher standard

0:09:07 Thomas: A lot of people aren't, there aren't people aren'T good at saying what they actually believe on these things, or sometimes they lie or they come up with an explanation for why they think what they think. But I just, I mean, it's, it'S very silly to live live in a world where you're just a couple policy proposals away from deciding between Hitler and Harris. It's like, that's okay.

0:09:28 Matt: Uh think democrats do a really bad job of promoting when they're doing a good job so I'm gonna try to highlight some of those places because we can pretty much assume that a lot of the biden policies will continue under harris maybe not all of them but I think that we give a pretty good idea um you know it's interesting that harris's published platform so the democratic credit platform is telling you about 98 pages, but the platform that's on her website, the Harris-Walz actual official platform is all about the economy. The word immigration doesn't appear in it anywhere. Any number of other things officially don't appear on it. She understands that this is the issue people want to hear about. And we will talk about economic policy. It's not my favorite thing, but we'll get to it. Let's start with just sort of general governance, how we know that these two people would run a government. You really need to know about how Donald Trump would run his second term is that he's floated putting Elon Musk in charge of a government efficiency commission.

0:09:33 Thomas: That's fair. Yeah.

0:10:10 Matt: I think that's the who spends his entire day on Twitter. He wants to call it, of course, the Department of Governmental Efficiency. Musk does, you know, Doge.

0:10:17 Thomas: So it's so clever and cool and

0:10:19 Matt: Typical. Yeah?

0:10:20 Thomas: Really cool.

0:10:21 Matt: Important that our federal agencies have silly names. Also I was wondering if Elon Musk and Donald Trump are aware there's already something called the Government Accountability Office, which is already looking for waste and abuse in the government.

0:10:30 Thomas: But is that a meme coin or what?

0:10:32 Matt: That's right. Yeah, no, you got to change the name at least. But I do appreciate the irony OF adding a Second Agency for Government Efficiency. I think that's the way to go. Let's do that.

0:10:40 Thomas: That's great. Yeah. I didn't think about that.

0:10:42 Matt: But did suggest at this rally when he was talking about this great new job he's going to have that he could slash the federal budget by $2 trillion, which is pretty impressive. That is a third of the total budget. Now that's absolutely insane that's a that's a crazy person talking sure

0:10:55 Thomas: Goes fast and he breaks everything and he's such an innovator, he'll be like, oh, why are we having Congress approve this? Let's just not have them approve anything and be like wow, that's brilliant. We didn't think of that. A disruptor.

0:11:05 Matt: Disrupting Congress absolutely yeah there's that that's the way but yeah just to make the point obviously I'm sure people aware but like 3.8 trillion dollars of our budget is mandatory spending like it has to be spent by law and that includes all of your Medicare Medicaid Social Security other stuff that just you know we want to make sure is in place and only 1.7 trillion dollars the entire budget last year was discretionary which is the stuff that's actually authorized by appropriations and half of that was the military. So he's talking about cutting the budget by more than the discretionary amount already. Obviously, there's no reason to take Elon Musk seriously. We've spent the last three weeks not taking him seriously, specifically on

0:11:39 Thomas: I spent a lot lot longer than that yeah but

0:11:41 Matt: This show. But yeah, on this show, we've gone out of our way to make sure we don't.

0:11:44 Thomas: I do have a question about that because I presumably you could pass laws and change spending right I mean is that like just want to make sure we're evaluating things um fairly we're evaluating harris I mean are we looking at like here's what she would do if she could pass a law and change how we're spending or is it that there's some reason that that spending you're talking about is like even more ironclad than that that

0:12:04 Matt: The estimates I've seen, I think they're just based on the overall policy proposals. If you care about the national deficit in terms

0:12:08 Thomas: I mean in terms of the budget in terms of the split between stuff you're like oh this stuff you can't possibly change and this other stuff you could seems like could you change anything with the law right or is there some reason that

0:12:11 Matt: Of budget. The discretionary stuff obviously is done completely through appropriations, but things like entitlements, they can't be changed because those are set. Medicare and Medicaid cost what they cost. Social security is going to be what it is.

0:12:28 Thomas: You couldn't even pass a law to change that so

0:12:31 Matt: You could certainly, I mean, there's been, I think Trump wants to quietly, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump's plan, as stated, would most likely make Social Security insolvent by 2031. So that's not the right direction.

0:12:42 Thomas: That's a way to save some money yeah

0:12:43 Matt: Would save some money. None of us get Social Security, all the stuff we've paid into our entire lives.

0:12:47 Thomas: I guess the only reason I ask that is I would I want massive health care reform in my world that would greatly change that and like the idea that there's just some inefficiencies that he's going to iron out that will take care of two trillion dollars obviously insane and a tale as old as time with the Republicans it never works they always think they're just going to get in there and like cut all there's so much waste and then oh wouldn't you know it every single time they either things just way harder and ruin things while barely saving any money or they don't even try to do that

0:13:15 Matt: It's a delusional fantasy. It always has been this waste, fraud, and abuse thing, and you're going to get somebody like Elon Musk to come in with the scissors and just magically remove... And certainly there is waste, and fraud, abuse in the federal government, but it's not $2 trillion worth, I'm pretty sure. We know a lot more about how Trump would govern. I just wanted to point out how stupid and fantastic this stuff really is. But let's talk about federal hiring, because that's something we've been very concerned about in the past. To remind everybody that Trump signed the Schedule F order, that was Executive Order 13957 in October of 2020. So it never actually went into effect, but that was the order that would have reclassified about 50,000 federal employees who were basically protected and in policy and administrative positions that are very important for what Trump would call the deep state, but I would just call running a government. The Office of Management and Budget determined about 68% of its employees would be reclassified under this. No one actually got reclassified because Biden canceled this order within days of coming into office. Shortly after that, actually about a month after our episode on Project 2025, so I assume they were listening, Office of of of Management Management and Budget actually passed rules that would make it much harder for Schedule F to go into effect in the future. Now, this could just be a speed bump for a future administration because you can undo these rules. But they did try to freeze these people in place and make it so they can't be switched over. At least something. There's at least something in place that might slow this down a little bit so that Trump can't just come in and start firing everybody right

0:14:32 Matt: Away.

0:14:32 Thomas: Well that's good news but

0:14:34 Matt: I think that's something. It's certainly helpful that they did this back in April. It's a final now. It's a final executive role.

0:14:38 Thomas: When you look at the line items that like if he gets elected we're gonna be like well he came in here said he was gonna cut a whole bunch of money look at this line I have nazis that's up so much that's like a lot I wouldn't say zero

0:14:49 Matt: From zero. Well, yeah, that's true. We do have ICE, but several thousand percent increase in Nazis. I just want to mention that again because it's such an important piece of the whole picture that he's got the Heritage Foundation. The Project 2025 has this database of people ready to go. They've been collecting resumes. They have been getting people in one place because that was the major hurdle for the the Trump administration in 2016 is that they were the dog that caught the car and they didn't have an administration to put into place. He had nobody. And he hadn't even let Chris Christie do his job with the transition team. So they really were not prepared for anything. But if they come in ready to fire a bunch of people who have not previously been political and replace them with loyal political appointees, we've got much bigger problems in every one of these policy areas because they can be a lot more effective with all this stuff. We're still, at the end of the day, going to be subject to the courts, which we'll talk about in a moment. Am I very concerned about federal hiring as a policy in a way that I never thought I would have been. Will mention that Harris obviously opposes Schedule F, and she has said that she would eliminate degree requirements for 500,000 federal jobs to make it easier to get

0:15:45 Matt: These jobs. So I like that.

0:15:45 Thomas: That's a good idea yeah

0:15:46 Matt: That is actually consistent with the law, 5 U.S.C. 3308, I just looked up, only allows to set minimum education requirements for federal jobs when it's a scientific, technical, or professional position that requires basically that you would have had to have that kind of education. Did attempt something like this through executive order. I don't know how far that went, but it's a good thing to make sure that we can have more people have access to federal jobs and benefits. Certainly And not every job like that requires a degree. So no problem with that. Law enforcement. This is one, of course, we're all particularly concerned about because Trump's platform for federal law reinforcement is essentially revenge. It comes down to just seeking vengeance on the the people that wronged him. NPR has recently reported that he identified over 100 people that he would prosecute. That includes journalists. He's committed to ending his own prosecutions, obviously. And he's recently talked about deporting Jack Smith. I don't even know how that would work. You can't actually take Jack Smith's citizenship away. I'm sorry. It just can't be done. But I guess that's the state of mind he is in, that he just wants him exiled from the United States. Maybe they'll bring back exile just

0:16:45 Matt: For Jack Smith,

0:16:45 Thomas: Australia or something like what is yeah

0:16:48 Matt: Jack Smith deserves a vacation, so maybe we can just let him leave the country for a while, but he should be able to come back. I'm concerned about what Trump would do to the Department of Justice, because we have potentially, as Attorney General, as we were discussing, anybody from Aileen Cannon to Jeff Clark, either of which would be terrible choices, obviously. Jeff Clark obviously is an actual insurrectionist. He was recently disbarred by the DC Circuit. I'm not sure if he holds a bar license anywhere else, but not a great look for an attorney general.

0:17:12 Thomas: Would be pretty amazing my attorney general someone who has been disbarred you know how hard it is to get disbared we do because we've tracked this forever and like five people got disbarbed after a coup and took 10 years what feels like a decade is what it took

0:17:22 Matt: Pretty hard. Yeah. It's true. There are worse people than Jeff Clark on the list, worse people even than Aileen Cannon, because the worst thing about Jeff Clark and Aileen cannon is they're just loyalists who have no experience. But if you get a loyalist who does have some experience, like somebody like Mike Davis, who is an extreme Maga Troll. He's a Gorsuch clerk. He is the one who's going around out there talking about how it's time to put critics of the administration in gulags and make sure we put every migrant kid in cages.

0:17:50 Matt: And of course, he says he's trolling, good fun jokes that we all like to have about these things. He told a political reporter recently that my goal is for the Supreme Court to dismantle most of the federal government. Somebody who's on the list. And John Ratcliffe also. I don't know if you remember John Ratcliffe, but he was Director Director of National Intelligence, the least qualified DNI director in history per Politico. Was actually the one who was following a number of QAnon accounts on Twitter. So we're getting to that level now that somebody seriously on the list for AG is a QAnons follower. His only previous experience was as the interim US attorney in Northern Texas. He really did that for about a year. About his experience during that time, lied about quite a few things in his resume, but Trump loves him because he's been extremely loyal all of this time. And that's what he's looking for in his attorney general. So we can assume, and J .D. Vance said pretty clearly, they think that the AG is the most important position that they're going to be appointing. It's always one of the most important positions, but

0:17:49 Thomas: Jesus christ yeah great oh boy yeah yeah

0:18:40 Matt: It's concerning that he particularly thinks that. Of course, he's also talked pretty seriously about putting journalists in jail, about revoking media licenses, about doing all kinds of other enforcement things that previously I think would have been pretty much unthinkable just a few years ago. One my top concerns, obviously, is how we can expect the Department of Justice to be used and who's going to be in charge of it. The Civil Rights Division under Donald Trump obviously was slashed. It was cut back quite a lot. And he's now talking about abusing the Civil Rights Division and turning it around to a completely different purpose, to going after anti -white policies, which is clearly what we should be doing with the Civil Rights Division. Decision. Even know what that means exactly, but that's a new obsession of his, of the idea that there's these anti -white policies that we have to prosecute. Looking out for voter fraud, kind of basically retooling the whole DOJ to just go after people who aren't supposed to be voting, allegedly. Again, you just have a lot of power in these places with this kind of authority, and you can use it in lots of different ways. With Kamala Harris, we don't know exactly. Obviously, she has a long record as a prosecutor.

0:19:36 Thomas: I bet she's gonna appoint someone who like bailed her out out of jail once right and like because you know yeah

0:19:41 Matt: She's her out of prosecution as times. Looking at the shortlist potentially for her attorney general, and and she's got Cory Booker who's in the running. I think that's just fine. He's a safe Democratic replacement if we need to have him taken out of the Senate.

0:19:53 Thomas: It's interesting he seems too jolly to be you know like

0:19:57 Matt: Honestly, I do like him. I used to live in New Jersey. It's where I went to law school. Amazing things for Newark when he turned things around. But he has no experience as a lawyer. He worked for a lawyer, it was about a year before he went into city council.

0:20:06 Thomas: Now where are you getting that name because is that something they've actually put out or is this just speculation I think it's important to yeah

0:20:14 Matt: Speculation. These are just sort of the names that are floating out there. Yeah. And I don't know that she's officially said anything. Previously was considering Jones, you might remember from Alabama. He was a US attorney. Not a senator anymore, so you wouldn't be taking him out of a seat. But He's been good on civil rights and generally seems seems like the kind of a good compromise pick. And of course, she could just leave Merrick Garland in place. I think Garland, we've had things to complain about, but he's been fine.

0:20:35 Matt: But I can't think that, from what I can tell, that there's anything special that we can expect from the Department of Justice that would be unusual under Kamala Harris, which is fine with me. Mean, I think that we could certainly expect that she'll beef up the Civil Rights Division based on her record. She's talked a lot recently about prosecuting drug cartels and how important that was to her when she was California AG, but I thinkthat's just kind of trying to push back on the border reputation thing. Again, if she wants to go hard on border prosecutions, sure.

0:20:57 Thomas: She wants to go after drug cartels in an actual serious way and yeah Yeah,

0:21:01 Matt: No reason to stop her, sure. Translate to some other problems I don't like on the border, but no reason to talk about that now. Looking at cannabis and drug policy, something that matters a lot to me and a lot of people. This is another one where Trump's been kind of dodgy, but he has landed apparently on the idea that cannabis should be a state issue. His administration obviously didn't even try to deschedule or decriminalize. And his 2021 budget proposal would have actually specifically ended the DOJ policy, which has been in place for a long time, of not funding enforcement against medical dispensaries. So that's a little concerning, if that's the direction you want to go, of starting to round up people that are running legal medical dispENSaries in the majority of states at this point. It. He did say also that he's going to be voting for Florida's question three to legalize in Florida. And that's one that DeSantis opposes. So, you again, he's all over the place. Who knows? Harris has had a change of heart on this one. She was opposed to legalization in 2010 when she was attorney general, but she said by the time she was running for Senate in 2015, that she had no moral objection,

0:21:54 Matt: Which isn't, I'd like to make sure she doesn't have any other legal objections or other objections too, but I'll take a moral objection. It's a good start. In 2019, she sponsored the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment Expungement Act, which was a full decriminalization with some really good stuff in it for people previously convicted of marijuana offenses and for immigration. And I can assume, I think, that she probably supports Biden's plan to reschedule. I don't think she said anything specifically about this, but she has come out in favor of decriminalisation more or less. That is obviously still going to take an act of Congress to fully decriminalize, but they could deschedule it as we've talked about on this show before, and

0:21:54 Thomas: Which

0:22:26 Matt: I'm still concerned. I do, right? Well, the rescheduling, I have mixed feelings about. Deschedulng is fine.

0:22:26 Thomas: You had mixed feelings on, right? Or. Oh,

0:22:31 Matt: It's just taking it off the schedule entire, yeah. But I don't like the resceduling from one to three. Get I off the scheduling on this one. And DEA have cleared the way for, finally, because this was frozen for many years under the DEA as a bipartisan thing. They were freezing increasing research into psychedelics and MDMA specifically, and that's been opened up and has been doing really well in the last couple of years. So I want to see that kind of progress continue. Know exactly what Trump's position is on psychedelics. It's one of those things he probably hasn't even mentioned. But on the ballot in Massachusetts actually this year. I'm very excited about that, about legalizing psychedelics." So the judiciary, let's talk about the judiciary very quickly. We already know, of course, that Trump has appointed one -third of the current Supreme Court and he's appointed about that much of the federal appeals courts and the district court judges right now. 27 % of

0:22:32 Thomas: Gotcha. Yeah. He probably doesn't care so it'll be whatever someone around him wants

0:23:15 Matt: The district court judge is about 30 % of appeals court judges.

0:23:17 Thomas: Now so like of all active, those things, wow yeah

0:23:20 Matt: All sitting judges. 234 federal judges appointed under his term. Yeah, that's a lot.

0:23:25 Thomas: Well boy I knew it was bad but that's geez

0:23:27 Matt: Yeah, it was

0:23:27 Thomas: That seems nearly impossible I guess that's mitch mcconnell for you all

0:23:31 Matt: A record. Obama for appellate courts alone, Obama had appointed 55 in eight years, and he appointed 54 in four years. So that is really putting on the gas there. Obviously, another four years of that, and we're going to have a pretty bad federal judiciary. It's easy to say. I think that we've already seen some of these Trump judges, the way they've played out. There was kind of a a funny thing happening. It's darkly funny. There's a Wall Street Journal piece which I'll link to just a couple of days ago about how the Trump people have completely turned on the Federalist Society. It had to happen. It was inevitable. As we talked about with fascism, traditional conservatives always try to support them right up until they can't. And Trump has decided at this point that he just wants to fill the federal judiciary with nothing but people who would be eligible to sit on the Fifth Circuit, in his view, the nuttiest kinds kinds of judges, the people that really don't care about the law at all and are just loyal to whatever he wants to do. And the Federalist Society actually doesn't want a whole Fifth Circuit worth of, maybe, I don't know at this point, but officially on paper, they don't at least. There have been some real splits on that and some divergence of opinion at this point between him and the Federalists Society, but they'll continue to try to find picks for him. And I'm sure there's going to be plenty of hardcore right -wing people that will come through that pipeline as always. This is the place where we really need to hold on to of the Senate. And if we had a Senate that actually reflected the popular vote and times more power than you do in California as a voter in the Senate,

0:24:43 Thomas: Be a paradise yeah yeah

0:24:49 Matt: Wouldn't have had the Senate for like 30 or 40 years if we'd been actually doing this properly. But our constitutional system didn't quite think this one out, I got to to say. Obviously, if we do lose the Senate, which is looking unfortunately more likely than not, I think at this point, we're going to be severely restricted in how we can see judges and who we're gonna get through. And we could actually be talking about what Josh Blackman, he's one of these extreme MAGA people, scholars, which I can almost say without laughing. Josh Blackman is a big contributor to Project 2025. And he said that he expects that we'll just give you the Merrick Garland treatment. And that's what he said. We'll have these seats open for three or four years. That's just going to become the new normal that we just hold judges up forever, and especially Supreme Court judges. I was double -checking about ages of current Supreme Court justices. And right now, Sotomayor is 70, Alito is 73, and Thomas is 76.

0:25:36 Thomas: I think the plan is Thomas would likely retire if Trump wins. If Trump doesn't win, there's no noway those ghouls will voluntarily leave under anyone but Trump, I think.

0:25:42 Matt: So I think he'll get at least one pick. At all. No way. Those two. Sotomayor, really, honestly, as much as we love her, she should do the right thing if Harris wins and step down during that time to be guaranteed to replace by a younger judge, I think. We don't want another RBG situation.

0:25:59 Thomas: For sure. I mean, she still has another 20 years to go until that, but yeah.

0:26:03 Matt: Yeah. It's hard because I love her. I really do. But she's 70 and she deserves to retire. Really I was looking just to see what Thomas Alito might have been saying about this. Someone who would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity told NPR, what would Alito do? Go home and fly flags with his wife at the beach?

0:26:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:20 Matt: That was somebody who was...

0:26:21 Thomas: I don't, yeah that's interesting. I don' t know if he would retire. Fire because I think thomas would for sure he would just go in his rv and yeah

0:26:26 Matt: Think he would. No, this person said that Thomas wouldn't want to be caving. They were driven off the court, but he would retire. But this ally, this alleged ally who was making the joke about flying flags with his wife at the beach, said that this is Alito's life, which is pretty obvious. This is totally who he is.

0:26:40 Thomas: He's a miserable garbage creature what else is he gonna do

0:26:43 Matt: All he's got. That's right. We wish the justices we like the best of health and the best futures. But if Sotomayor and Kagan decided they wanted to step down at some point, think there's only one obvious pick for me, and that's going to be our Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar. She's lined up. That's how Kagan got there, was through the Solicitor General's office. Yeah, she was the first female Soliciter General, just only 2009, the first one.

0:26:58 Thomas: She's great oh really oh okay yeah Prelogar is great, I actually don't know I I love her in arguments I think she's really smart I guess I don't Know much about like how progressive she is per se because she's always She always has to take the government's, like, position, right? Like,

0:27:18 Matt: But she quirked for RBG and for Kagan. I feel like she's got to be in the right headspace.

0:27:23 Thomas: Two people who are a little more moderate on certain issues than I would like, but who knows?

0:27:27 Matt: But picking as Supreme Court justices, you're not going to get a lot of choices here. So take I'll what we got. I mean, Elizabeth Prelogar is my age. She's 44 years old. And that's a great age for a Supreme Court justice.

0:27:36 Thomas: Little on the old side, but okay.

0:27:38 Matt: Thanks.

0:27:39 Thomas: No, this is what it is now. Until we reform this stupid system, I want a 23 -year -old who's, uh, like burning flags. That's what I want, personally. Personally, no, that's

0:27:42 Matt: It's true. Yeah. The Doogie Howser of judges. Yeah, just an 18 -year -old who just graduated Harvard Law. Yeah he's out there somewhere. That's how you get Ben Shapiro. We don't want Ben Shapiro. He went to Harvard Law like at 18 or something and yeah, just ruined him. I mean, we may not have any vacancies at all, but I thought it was worth taking a look to see. They're not going to reform the court anytime soon. We're going to have to have a full trifecta of government to actually pass anything resembling real reform in nice thought anyway.

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0:29:39 Matt: Talk about few other policies that have to do with the judiciary. Got LGBTQ policy. We know already without saying that Trump is already willing to appoint terrible people that will do terrible things to our rights. There was that very concerning concurrence from Thomas where he said that it's time to revisit Obergefell, Lawrence, and Griswold, which are all fundamental basic rights. Obviously Griswold being for contraception, Lawrence being for the underpinnings of making sure you can't criminalize homosexuality, and Obergefell being for the federal recognition of all marriages. Thinking about, just for some reassurance, how likely it would be that Obergefell can actually be overturned. It's not that easy, first of all, just to start with, because Roe was based on liberty and privacy interests, but Obergefell was actually mostly based on equal protection, so that's going to be a little harder to dig into. But if they want to, I'm sure they'll find

0:30:21 Thomas: Man, I am sorry, are you, you are telling me that there there, is some, like, reasoning behind what they can and can't reverse like they just find a way doesn't yeah

0:30:28 Matt: A way. That's what I'm saying. There's no deeply rooted tradition of recognizing non -heterosexual marriages. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they're going to have to work a little little harder for it. The real thing, the real protection that we have in place is the Respect for Marriage Act, which was passed in 2022. I think it was passed, in part, because of that Thomas concurrence. It was passed after Dobbs. And it killed the remaining of pieces the Defense of Marriage Act which was still technically law but had been struck down as unconstitutional. Codified Obergefell in a way that I think is going to be hard to overcome that states can't discriminate for marriage licenses. And Codified Windsor, which is obviously, in 2013, the federal government recognizing all marriages from the states. And also, I thought this was interesting and kind of telling, that when it went back in, actually added loving for interracial marriage. They guaranteed that loving v. Virginia is codified. And that's something I never would have thought we'd have to do.

0:31:13 Thomas: On one hand I always think it's a joke when you know the conservatives want to pass First Amendment act or whatever and you're like we already have that but I guess it's little different and it's something like maybe we need to start again nailing down every piece of furniture that's not directly just the floor.

0:31:23 Matt: These are, yeah. That's exactly right. That That's what it is. We really can't count on any of our court -given rights. We need to make sure they're codified as quickly as we can. As it is, 35 states still have anti-marriage laws on the books. And so we could have a Dobbs situation if Obergefell were reversed, where it reverts back to the states and we've got a bunch of states ready to queue it up. Again, that would at have the same time, they'd have to change or overrule the Respect for Marriage Act. So that is a powerful protection that Biden never saw. And I think just another thing that he should get get credit for. The real issue, though, for LGBTQ issues is the disgusting transphobia that has completely taken over the Republican Party. Trump's promises regarding the things he's going to do to trans people, I don't want to bum anybody out. I'm sure everybody's aware. Everything from going after doctors to going after educators, legislators, just people for these things, to making compete in sports, all the things that you'd expect, bathroom bills, all the stuff they're obsessed with, using the federal government tothe to extent they possiblycan to make people's lives harder, there's no surprise there. I don't want to dwell on it. I think we're aware.

0:32:27 Thomas: If we're keeping score, this is like negative $11 billion in the Trump column. So without going through it, disqualifying as any number of already disqualify things are.

0:32:37 Matt: So much a part of their platform this year especially, and there's actual transphobic ads running right now everywhere.

0:32:43 Thomas: Yeah, disgusting. Mean, Republican ads have have always been bad, but these are like, it's a gasp if you see them on just regular TV. You're like, oh, this is just like a speech that I'm seeing on TV.

0:32:48 Matt: Straight as we've discussed before, the Weimar Republic was very good on trans rights, and the Nazis really hinged a lot of their campaign on that, on the moral failings of the Weimar Republic. So no comment there. Don't think that needs to be said. Abortion rights. This is something, obviously, that we know that Kamala Harris is very good at, and going to do to protect those rights. Of course, has been much more evasive. He's been bragging a lot about how he appointed the judges that have returned Roe because he knows a lot lot of people like that. Obviously, he doesn't care either way. I think he's probably paid for more than one abortion. I Think we know that. He's been extremely vague about a national abortion ban, which is, of course, the real concern here is that when we lose Congress at some point that we're going to end up with a federal ban. J .D. Vance said in an interview that Trump would probably veto it if it were in front of him. But that's not really comforting. It's not helpful because Trump has refused to really answer that question directly. Exactly. And I was looking at the Republican platform, and it's not great. Says that we believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life, liberty without due process, and the states are therefore free to pass laws, et cetera, et cetera. But invoking the 14th Amendment like that suggests that they are going in for fetal personhood, which is not a surprise. That is something that we've already certainly seen. Like Alabama and Florida that are trying to institute full fetal personhood rights. They claim that they're going to support access to birth control and IVF, but if you're going go in for fetal -personhood, that's going to get complicated. We'll see.

0:34:12 Thomas: Lot of habeas petitions filed on behalf of fetuses, if that happens, I think, right?

0:34:16 Matt: And that means, I guess, they have the right not to be deported with their mothers, so I can represent them separately.

0:34:21 Thomas: No, if they're, well, they haven't yet been born here, so I'm sure will find a way, you

0:34:24 Matt: Citizens. I don't know. Mean, we might actually have to decide if a fetal person had citizenship. Birthright citizenship applies to pre -birth. That could be a thing I hadn't even considered before. I know.

0:34:34 Thomas: Almost like fetal fetal personhood is a really stupid concept that makes no sense and shouldn't exist.

0:34:38 Matt: It would be a legal disaster. Yeah. Doubt. Out. Talked about the Attorney General, but I wanted to mention Secretary of State potentially, because I'm said is the top contender for this, Richard Grenell. Was Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence, and he was actually the person John Ratcliffe replaced. Before John Ratliffe, he was the least qualified DNI director in history. And then Radcliffe was the absolutely least qualified.

0:34:39 Thomas: Setting

0:35:02 Matt: Yeah. Just all over the place. To Trump's very minor credit, Richard Grenell was actually the first openly gay person to serve in a cabinet position. So I never would have thought Trump would have gotten that distinguishing factor of appointing that. But wasn't very good at it, unfortunately. But previous to that, he was appointed as the ambassador to Germany. And this is why I'm particularly concerned about him being our Secretary of State, because he pissed off the Germans pretty much before his jet lag had worn off when he got to Germany. He started tweeting things that really upset them and made them demand a meeting with him almost immediately. And more concerning though, in the last three years, he's been acting as what the Washington Post has called a shadow secretary of state. He's just been going

0:35:01 Thomas: Records huh hold jesus

0:35:38 Matt: Around meeting with foreign leaders and conservatives in different countries on behalf of Trump, just getting ready for the next administration. Very concerning. And again, if the Logan Act existed and was a thing, maybe it would be kind of a problem. One example that I found was he went to Guatemala recently. Now the Biden, Again, this is something I don't think the Biden administration has gotten any credit for, but they did actually intervene in Guatemala because there was going to be a right -wing coup to steal a lawful vote that was going to go to the center-left candidate, Bernardo Arévalo. Know, it was a lot of familiar stuff, seizing ballot boxes, challenging election results all over the place, trying to charge the incoming president so they could keep him from taking power. The Biden ministration imposed pretty extreme sanctions, threatened to cancel the visas of pretty much the entire Guatemalan government that had a lot lot of people that have assets here, and force them to recognize their own election results. And during that time, Richard Grenell was going down there and supporting the right -wingers who were trying to overturn the election. And yep, met with about 45 people in his little two-week trip down there. So that's the kind of stuff he's been getting up to. I don't understand how that's legal. Guess

0:36:35 Matt: It's legal because you're doing it. That's pretty much the situation with these Trump things. Just give you the idea of the kind OF person, and that again, that's That's the person that Don Jr. said specifically is the top contender for secretary of state right now and that Trump called his own envoy and clearly been acting with the authority of the Trump campaign or the Trump people going around and doing these things. He's not just doing this out of nowhere. So that's concerning. Don't really have a on who Harris would put into state, but I was thinking, I saw this analysis that maybe this is a place where she'd reward one of the many moderate Republicans who have endorsed her. That is a very Democrat thing to do. To decide we have to give a Republican a job. You got your Liz Cheney's, Adam Kinzinger's, Jeff Flake, reasonably decent people, but I think we could also maybe just get Democrats in those jobs. So we'll see how that goes for those big jobs. Again, on the appointments that Biden has made for the most part, I trust where Harris would go with these things. Let's talk about unions for a minute, because they have not gotten nearly enough airtime during this election cycle, and they hardly ever do. But Biden has been calling himself the most pro -union president in US history. And I think that he has some right to do that. Start with, he appointed our boy, Marty Walsh, the former mayor of Boston, who is known very well for his union connections as Secretary of Labor, and did everything from averting that train strike a couple of years ago, to expanding bargaining rights for federal unions, to making sure even just setting aside in the American Rescue Plan a few years ago that $36 billion went out to bailing out union pensions, which were in bad shape at the time. Had basically let the National Labor Relations Board rot, and Biden revitalized it with real people in charge and real funding and restructuring it. Little stuff that matters a lot to a lot of people, things like overtime rules to extend overtime protections to lower -income salaried workers. That was effective as of July 1st. I didn't hear anything about it. I don't even know that it it happen.

0:38:13 Matt: Yeah, that's great for people making, I believe, under 58,000 something. A whole category of lower income people that were not protected for getting overtime.

0:38:12 Thomas: Wait what right

0:38:21 Matt: I just will point out, of course, that Trump wants to end federal unions, has been union busting everywhere he can. The Republican platform is 28 pages, and the word union does not appear once in that that platform. It appears 21 times in the Democratic platform for what it's worth. And it's unfortunate that Sean O 'Brien, the Teamsters president, spoke at the RNC this year because the DNC basically just never got back to him. And because in their polling, about 60% of their members supported Trump, even though I would argue that is very much against their interests from everything we know about Trump and Harris union plans. So I just thought that was worth pointing out. Also was the first president to walk a picket line for what that's worth, You

0:38:19 Thomas: Oh yeah Yeah, yeah,

0:38:57 Matt: Would think somebody would have done that by now, but I won't spend too much time on this because I could do the whole episode on it. But just as a reminder, obviously, Donald Trump has promised to initiate the largest mass deportation campaign in United States history. And I cannot emphasize enough, if he was actually given the funding to do this, and he might be, that this would would look like something we've never seen. It would be the largest police action in US history, and it would be something that would start to get into your life. You, just a regular US citizen going about your day, you would startto notice if there's a mass deportation campaign going on, because we're talking about about maybe 3 % of the US population, a little more if we're going after people that used to have TPS and DACA, which is committed to ending, of course. That's about 4.4% of the entire US workforce. So you're talking about 21% of the construction industry right now, for example, which we really need as housing continues to get more expensive. But also things like meatpacking and hotel services and all kinds of other jobs that are not going to be immediately replaced if you just deport this workforce. It's also about 4.4 million US citizen kids born to mixed status families. So you're causing a whole other round of anguish and problems if you're deporting those parents. Talked about this before, but he was raising the idea of using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to try to just get around the immigration court system so he can just round people up and send them out as quickly as possible as alien invaders or whatever. And that's the kind of thing he might get the Fifth Circuit to agree with, and maybe if they frame it correctly, the Supreme Court could sign off on it too. Even if he doesn't, I will point out that Jeff Sessions oversaw the single largest hiring of immigration judges in US history. Huge, massive push to hire new IJs. Biden's been doing doing pretty well on that, I have to say, too. Those immigration judges will be with us for a while. While president in the immigration court system, he imposed case completion quotas. He ended asylum for survivors of domestic violence.

0:38:58 Thomas: That's crazy. Remember that. God, what a horrible thing.

0:40:43 Matt: No, just all kinds of just when you say it out loud stuff that is just almost unimaginable. And even just something like ending the enforcement priorities, because right now, the Biden enforcement priorities make a lot of sense. They're not keeping people in deportation proceedings because they have such a massive backlog. They're trying to focus on the people that might present any kind of actual threat to public safety. And even that, it's just very hard to do. When you have no enforcement priorities, you're just putting everybody into the pipeline and that gets a lot worse. So overall though, we know that Stephen Miller had a drawer full of stuff ready to go for Trump's second term. He'll be very involved in immigration policy once again. But kind of nutty stuff like deporting people for being poor, for being deportable under INA 237A5, which is the public charge ground of deportability. We talk a lot about the public -charge ground of inadmissibility, which keeps you from getting residency. But that ground of reportability hasn't been used for like 100 years, but it's there, it's on the books, and Stephen Miller wants to use it. And that would essentially immediately, as soon as anybody takes any kind of benefits or loses their job or has any kind situation like that where they can't fully support themselves, they could be deported for that. Already talked about expedited removal and what we can expect there with potentially maybe in combination with the Alien Enemies Act thing, another way to circumvent immigration court and get more people out more quickly. So again, for immigration, this is really absolute worst case scenario. And I do completely understand people right now who are just absolutely disgusted by what's happening in Gaza and where they don't agree with our policies. I'm not talking about foreign policy in this episode. We don't have time for it. I try to keep it domestic because that's what we do here. At the same time, These this immigration policies raise more of a direct threat than anything else I think we're going to talk about because the president has so much authority over immigration and has the power to do the things he's actually talking about doing, unlike a lot of these other things. So this is something to really look out for. And this is the reason, if you are even thinking about not voting, this is why I'd urge you, please, if can, to vote, because this is so bad for all of us, not just people who weren't born here. By contrast, of course, Kamala Harris would basically continue the Biden policies. We know more or less. I have to say things have been a little easier in my job for the last four years, with enforcement priorities being what they are. And we're not seeing the worst outcomes. I'm very happy with the immigration judges for the most part that Biden has appointed because most of them come from our side of things, have of have actually had experience working with immigrants and working on things that are not government enforcement, which makes for a much better judge, I think. And also the border bill that Trump refused to have them pass, that's a whole other episode. I'm not going to get into it right now. But one of the things that is good about it that it would do is hire 4,300 more asylum officers, because right now we have about 800 asylum officers. And I think the official number is something like four to seven years to finish an asylum claim with the asylum office. But I've been hearing and I've seen more like nine or 10. That's really about how long it takes to get an asylum claims through the system. And that's inexcusable, obviously. We should not be making people wait around the limbo for that long.

0:43:30 Thomas: The ones where they get to stay here, though, while they're doing that?

0:43:33 Matt: But they don't know what their future is. And if you've got

0:43:35 Thomas: I mean, I guess it's a mixed bag there, right?

0:43:37 Matt: Family who's counting on you to win your case and bring them, that's going to take a long time, and they're in danger that time.

0:43:42 Thomas: There's no reason in the world that this should take that long. Like, just figure it out. Talk about inefficiency.

0:43:47 Matt: Hire more people. Yeah.

0:43:48 Thomas: You you want know, to fix this all up like a business or whatever. Like you also need to do the job that you're supposed to do. Though Like government is not a business and it shouldn't be, but like, they don't talk about that very much. They always talk about, oh, waste and, you Know, whatever, which just means they want to cut any sort of benefits that might go to poor people. But like, also how about someone, make you the government better at doing the job it's supposed to Do. That would be great.

0:44:10 Matt: I'm going to tell you, the only way to do it with asylum officers is to hire more of them, because the average asylum interview takes about two hours, and it should take about two horas.

0:44:13 Thomas: All right. Sounds like we got to do that.

0:44:16 Matt: So yeah, that's the way to go. Now, the pipeline is just much smaller than the cases coming into it. Right now I saw the estimate is that there's nine new cases being filed for everyone that's being closed out. So it's got to do something about that. Would also potentially clear up a lot of the other issues that people are having with the asylum system, with the waiting, with what has been called the border crisis of helping to sort of move things along and figure out these asylum claims a lot faster. Will say this is through the asylum office. So when you're put it goes, I'm going to say faster, more like three to four years sometimes, but right now it's about two to four.

0:44:47 Thomas: The express lane there it's up in the fast track you know wow only three to four years

0:44:49 Matt: Yeah, pretty much. They trying to commit to somehow getting them done in six months and it's just never going to happen. It's just not possible. But as we're hiring more judges and more people are coming on board and the system's getting bigger, it is getting more possible to actually finish things out in an efficient amount of time. But I've seen what happens when people are in deportation proceedings for 10 or 15 years. It's not great for your mental health. I've And had people die during that time, just never knowing what was going to happen to them. That is one place where I wish the difference were a little stronger, but it is also pretty stark when you think about what Trump is actually going to do.

0:45:20 Thomas: I think the difference is very strong I

0:45:22 Matt: It's stark, it's stark.

0:45:22 Thomas: Might wish that the yeah the democrats could do more but like gotta keep in mind what could happen if they're not elected yeah

0:45:26 Matt: Even as I said that, I started picturing the camps again and that mass deportation that people have always been afraid of. Right now, just to be clear, ICE does not go door to door and round people up. That's just not a thing that happens. But he wants the resources to have the National Guard do it and have National Guardsmen come in from other cities and states, from red places to blue places, and come enforce the law.

0:45:48 Thomas: Me if I'm wrong I mean obviously this is that's a nightmare for so many reasons but I I even think that white America might be underestimating. Like, about what like, oh, a suspicion that you are harboring someone in your house, you you know, like that of ugly that gets so quickly.

0:46:02 Matt: No. Like an actual police state. And this is what I've been saying for a while, because another one of the Trump goals is to continue to integrate state, local, and federal law enforcement. I think that's something we have got to look out for just as a basic privacy thing. It's so bad. And it's the kind of thing where if you have that kind enforcement, you're going to start to notice it in your neighborhood, in your community, and you won't like it. Even if you think you like it, you will not like it it's not pleasant. Very quickly on environmental policy, I think it's another very stark obvious difference. We all know that Trump gutted environmental agencies, that he got us out of the Paris Agreement, Biden has rejoined the Paris agreement, has tried to rebuild these things. Just one example that I've come up with a while back with this, the USDA, this is such a small, simple thing that Trump did to really make things a lot harder. Research agencies of the USDA, they claim they're trying to save money and relocated them during the Trump administration from DC to Kansas City, Missouri. And in the process, 75% of those offices quit. They didn't want to move, understandably, if you weren't expecting to work in Kansas City.

0:46:59 Matt: And the The Government Accountability Office, the other one that's not the one that Elon Musk is going to run, a headline here that said, USDA's decision to relocate research agencies to Kansas City was not fully consistent with an evidence -based approach. I really like that. Not fully consistent.

0:47:14 Thomas: Way to understate it.

0:47:16 Matt: With an evidence based approach. The former director of one of these agencies put it a little more clearly and said these agencies have been decimated, that the functions they're created to perform just don't exist anymore. More. And Biden had a really hard time trying to get people back into these jobs because so much of running a federal government, running these kinds of agencies, again, should not be partisan and should just be giving us the science the best they can. You're going to discourage people and drive out career bureaucrats, the people who have been there a long time, it's very hard to replace them, all that institutional knowledge.

0:47:42 Thomas: Matt, I'm sick of this line item gas in my monthly budget. So I I actually threw away my car and I can't drive to work anymore, but I'm not spending anything on gas. It's awesome. I don't spend anything on it.

0:47:53 Matt: Makes sense.

0:47:54 Thomas: I've reduced it so much.

0:47:54 Matt: And if you stop paying your accountant, you won't hear about how you don't have any money for gas. So that's basically what what they're doing here. Of course, we've talked at length about Chevron and about deregulation generally and about how that fits into the picture. And the whole point of so much of this is to make the federal government irrelevant, to make enforcement irrelevant, to make sure that environmental standards can't be maintained so that we can just drill in national parks and do whatever else he wants to do. Kamala Harris hasn't really had the chance to have a climate policy. Is plenty of good stuff in the Democratic platform about it. Did cast a deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which she was going to do anyways, way as vice president, but she's always said the right things about climate. I have no doubt that she's committed to it. Certainly, again, this is another one where it's like you've got one side that refuses to acknowledge that climate has anything to do with what people are doing, and you've the other side that does understand that. So vote I of the things before we go on the economy, which is, of course, the one issue that every voter seems to care the most about out right now. Yeah, the economy, of course, is doing better than advertised, but that's another thing. Tax cuts from the only piece of legislation that Trump was able to pass, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, will expire next year. So there's going to be a big fight about what to do with those. And he wants to make them permanent, of force, and he wants to reduce the corporate tax rate, which he already slashed. He wants to reduce it down to 15%, which is a joke for a corporate tax rate. Kamala Harris is committed to not having people who make less than $400,000 pay significant taxes, and raising some corporate tax rates. So I think that's a pretty obvious difference there. And for what it's worth, the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, I think I mentioned this before, but it found that Trump's plans would add about $7 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, and Harris is about $4 trillion because she's not slashing as much. Trump has suggested, by the way, paying off the $35 trillion national deficit with crypto. So, why

0:49:33 Thomas: Mean, that I support if they'll take it. Yeah. Okay. I mean worth a try.

0:49:37 Matt: It's all made up anyway. I mean, if we're going to mint a platinum coin, we might as well mint a Platinum Dogecoin.

0:49:43 Thomas: I mean. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. If you can get whoever our debtors are, which is like mainly China or something. I don't know. Whoever it is. If they'll take it, do it.

0:49:50 Matt: This is some tasty unregulated currency that we just made up.

0:49:57 Thomas: Why didn't I think of totally defrauding our debtors before?

0:50:03 Matt: Work. Musk, of course, when he was talking about the same stuff, I'm sure you saw this, but he promised basically that he was going to crash the American economy if he's put in charge, which if you're going to slash $2 trillion, you're actually guaranteed to do that.

0:50:15 Thomas: Consistent with what I've seen from his business practices.

0:50:19 Matt: He's pretty good at that, running things into the ground.

0:50:21 Thomas: Him and Trump combined. Geez. Government will be bankrupt by January 10th. Yeah. Yeah.

0:50:23 Matt: That's a dream Yeah. No, he basically said, we're going go through some pretty extreme hardship and austerity, but it's going to be worth it on the other side of it, which is typically not a a message that Americans want to hear six days before the election, but I thought I'd amplify that message.

0:50:32 Thomas: What are you talking about? Yeah. And we're in the middle of like the highest economic performance like ever. That's not a time where you're like, well, gonna need to tighten our belts.

0:50:47 Matt: So I think that's a pretty solid roundup of some of the most important policies. I There's quite a lot more. I want to talk about space but I think I need to have a little episode about space another time. There's a lot of good space a lot going on.

0:50:50 Thomas: Some of the roundups. Of the things I'm concerned about space I mean I'd love to get to it on the list but yeah I got a long list well shoot I don't know how to make a decision between these two THINGS

0:51:07 Matt: I have to think it out a little more.

0:51:08 Thomas: Laying everything out I don't know I think I need to hear some more policy stuff out of Kamala before

0:51:12 Matt: Is still saying that. Somebody has listened to this and still said I need need to hear more about her policies. That's what it is. I can't think of a more stark choice in any American election between these two candidates and these two visions and these two administrations.

0:51:24 Thomas: One side, there's zero roundups. On the other side, several roundups promised.

0:51:30 Matt: Yeah, yeah. Vote accordingly.

0:51:32 Thomas: Right. Well, sarcasm aside, I do really hope people have voted and are voting and make absolutely sure you and everyone who's not a Trumper in your life votes. Have a little bit of hope right now, but I'm not going to put much stock in anything as much as Ann Seltzer is a great pollster. I am still very, very worried. And see. Oh, I think it's likely that I'm going to not do T3B this week because I just feel like it's highly... Unless we have an election Tuesday where everyone's like, oh, yeah, okay, that's fine. Like unless it's so run -of -the -mill they're like I guess we'll hear the answer to our question like fine I feel like you know at the very least I'm gonna want to say something so we'll we'll probably likely be doing that

0:52:08 Matt: Unlikely. Yeah? Well, we've closed the office Office for the day, so maybe I'll join you. Going to to bed tonight, actually, assuming that all the stuff we just talked about of a second Trump term is just going to be an interesting historical oddity. Just a fun thing, a little thought experiment that we've all talked about. And we'll never have to think about it again. That's what I'm choosing to believe.

0:52:29 Thomas: Give me some of whatever you're on matt all right well thanks so much for listening everyone and uh you know see you just keep in touch

0:52:40 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.

0:52:57 Matt: Position. So he'd be, oh, it's the haunted heater again.

0:52:57 Thomas: On all those hearing noises oh god all

0:53:01 Matt: Yeah, it doesn't last very long at least.

0:53:03 Thomas: Well do a quick exorcism a

0:53:06 Matt: Okay. That was a quick one. All right. Just making sure.

0:53:07 Thomas: Little disappointed in the ghosts today I

0:53:13 Matt: Yeah really Letting us down. I guess we're past the season.

0:53:17 Thomas: Can't find uh I can't find good employees anymore anywhere no one wants to work wow