Trump's Executive Orders Are All Absurd and Horrible. But Which of them Actually Matter?

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is you mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:58 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments, this is episode 1115. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney Matt Cameron here on Wednesday. How you doing?

0:01:08 Matt: I'm fired up, Thomas. I'm having a great week. How about you?

0:01:10 Thomas: What, something did you hit your head? Having a great week this is how I thrive

0:01:13 Matt: Yeah, this is how I thrive. This is where I thrive, this isn't. I honestly, like I was having a good time during the Biden administration, but this is what I need. I'm tired up, yeah,. Also, coincidentally, just got glasses for the first time in my life, so I can see things. It's very inspiring, but

0:01:29 Thomas: Lydia got glasses. Um, we think maybe pregnancy affected her eyesight, although it doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but, or she maybe, she could never see, I don't know, but uh, it's pretty amazing the difference between being able to see and not, and yet also she never wears them so it's like, wow, yeah.

0:01:47 Matt: She could.

0:01:48 Thomas: It's like, you know, now what you're missing, and yet you still always forget them, but no, I'm just teasing, she's, yeah.

0:01:53 Matt: It's just a very slight correction for me, but it is nice. The eye strain was getting to be a lot on the reading, and I do a lot of reading. So here

0:01:54 Thomas: Well I always like to reference the Wayne's World, you'd be watching Plant World, normally you'd be watching T3BE world, of course. But I got to say, it's not that I don't want to do Thomas takes the bar exam. I know that we have a lot of people are like, ah, burnt out on Trump and don't I get it. And it's Not like I'm getting rid of T3B or anything. I just it's workload based. Like I can't we need to we need To talk about stuff. And I don't have the time to both edit like B and that. And so I'm just going to pause that where where it was for a week and so sorry we're get back to plant world next week and you'll get the answer to t3b and and all that good stuff sorry about that yeah

0:02:36 Matt: Too, but this is really the week because there's a lot to talk about. And honestly, for those people who are burned out or feeling down, I think we got some good news for you, honestly. I think that it's maybe time to think about how we're going to get through the next four years together and what we need to know and what we need to actually worry about. That's what I've been thinking about.

0:02:51 Thomas: Well Yeah, and I've got more good news, that Matt has a Substack now, apparently I found out along with all of you

0:02:54 Matt: Do. Do so had it for years and I have 300 subscribers and I've never once posted so I thought maybe I should yeah just uh gravitated but uh Yeah, no, I'm posting, I'm at Deport Nation, it should be up at deportnation.com pretty soon, but you can find it at Deport Nation on Substack, and I kicked it off yesterday on

0:03:00 Thomas: 300 oh that's kind of crazy yeah it's entirety John Eastman content, everybody, we know why you called it Deport Nation, maybe that was an old name left over because it's all Eastman, if you want to go for Matt's Eastman obsession, no, I'm just kidding, but it is true that there's so much more, uh, immigration related stuff especially, and among other things, that like there's no way you could talk about even half as much as you'd like to on this show, as much as, uh, you know, you could be my guest, but there's too much to cover, so it's nice that you have this overflow, I'm really looking forward to it where

0:03:41 Matt: We are a general interest podcast. And I really, it's an opportunity for me because I already keep a journal every day. So I'm just going to give you the less spicy parts of my journal.

0:03:51 Thomas: Can we go for the more spicy I see.

0:03:54 Matt: I was going to say, this is going to be free forever, but maybe we can talk subscribers. I don't know.

0:03:56 Thomas: OnlyFans .com slash DeportNation for all of your... I already forgot his name again. I'm too hungry, I didn't eat anything.

0:04:00 Matt: There you go. Eastman.

0:04:03 Thomas: For all your John Eastman thoughts.

0:04:04 Matt: Eastman thirst traps. Yeah, no, it's going to make an experiment. I'm really proud of it already. And I've got a manifesto up for the haters and the nihilists and the doomers. I no use for you. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit in this episode, too.

0:04:17 Thomas: Wow. Well, okay. We, I didn't even get to introduce, called Matt on his... Oh, Matt phone. Not the Bat phone, but the Matt phone. And I was like, dude, as though Trump signed 4 million trillion executive orders. I'm seeing headlines about a hundred. And this is really key opening argument stuff is, please, for the love of God, Matt, tell me what percentage or number of those is anything. Because I know Trump, and not just Trump, like a lot of executive orders from all presidents are kind of nothing. Like they're just, they're messaging or whatever. They don't really matter because the way the law works is different, but I'd love to know. And fortunately, Matt was kind enough to jump on on a Wednesday to tell me which of these is anything, which of these do I need to worry about and what's going on. So that's what I really am hoping Matt can answer for us. And I'm sure even a few more things beyond that on the main show. So shall we get to it? Shall we take our break?

0:05:08 Matt: You got it. Let's do it.

0:05:09 Thomas: All right. Well, please support the show, patreon.com/law. Ooh, in addition to that Lawtawful Movies that was super fun that we've already done for January, we're, a lot of people have requested Juror No. 2 for Lawtawful Movies, and I will say that Lydia and I watched it just to see, because I'm excited to announce that I really want to do this one for Lawtawful Movies, and it's actually a good movie. So that's the thing.

0:05:31 Matt: Great. You know what? Deserve a good movie. It's time.

0:05:34 Thomas: Deserve a good movie, but So that'll be next month. You know, maybe we'll do it early again. So anyway, the point is lots of reasons to go on patreon.com/law and pledge and support. Uh, not the least of which is we need to, um, the mainstream corporate shit media that I can't believe has acquiesced to Trump already in the amount that it has.

0:05:54 Matt: Great. Not great.

0:05:55 Thomas: So thank you so much to our supporters and let's take our break and and get to it.

0:06:03 Thomas: All right, Matt, which of these freaking things? First off, how many executive orders are there?

0:06:07 Matt: There are only 26 actual executive orders. Yes. Things that actually do anything. He was promising 100.

0:06:09 Thomas: What? I saw 100, 200.

0:06:13 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. In actual things that you can call executive orders versus like appointments or memos or things that are, you know, like executive orders don't really have a definition, by the way. I think it's important to say that they're just kind of like policy statements to governments. They're how I'm intending to use the government. And it's interesting, I went back and checked, Trump only signed one on his previous first day in 2017. I know.

0:06:14 Thomas: I saw, okay. How are there only 26? Really? What?"

0:06:38 Matt: I know.

0:06:39 Thomas: He rescinded a bunch, right?

0:06:40 Matt: Oh, yeah, he certainly did.

0:06:41 Thomas: Because that's also important though, I guess. It's like we should talk about which ones he rescindet that matter today.

0:06:47 Matt: Yes, that's going to come up for sure, because that was all done in one sweep. He signed up quite a few executive orders in the first couple of weeks, but they were not prepared. They did not come in ready. And you might remember something like the travel ban, they took the third time because they were such such amateurs putting that together. Stephen Miller and some congressional moonlighters just trying to figure it out without government lawyers involved, just trying to hide it from everybody. So we were expecting, I will say, part of the reason I'm in such a good mood is because these things suck. They're just not well-written. Some of them seem like they were written by ChatGPT, perhaps. We were being promised super evil, bulletproof executive orders that would stand up in federal court. And these things are a joke, a lot of them. Literally made me laugh, some of them.

0:06:59 Thomas: I do remember that. I just have to ask one more time. Is it that we've only officially heard about 26 and there's more that they're up to? Like, are you getting this from the website, from the White House website that's kind of chaos right now? Or literally, he's only signed 26 executive orders so far.

0:07:40 Matt: 26 things that you could call executive orders that actually set policy for the government. Yeah, I know.

0:07:45 Thomas: That That is weird.

0:07:46 Matt: And of course, you saw he made a big thing out of having this desk out in that arena that he was doing the after party. Yeah.

0:07:50 Thomas: Ist, okay, that's crazy.

0:07:52 Matt: That was so fascist.

0:07:52 Thomas: He signed them at an arena.

0:07:55 Matt: Yeah. One of the most dystopian, fascist things I've actually ever seen, just tuning into that. And I've seen some dystopia and fascist stuff. We're going to see plenty more pretty soon. But about how you're going to do mass deportations and then signing executive orders in front of people so they can cheer you on as you do it, it's really something just

0:08:09 Thomas: And then he had a public execution after that I'm sure it's

0:08:12 Matt: About, where, I mean, it feels, well, death penalty plays into this too, we'll get there, but uh, I was expecting more from Project 2025. I just want to say, they made it just seem like they were going to be coming in hot, they were talking about their like secret menu of options that they were gonna be offering. And an undercover journalism team got some great clips of Russell Vought, used to be the Office of Management and Budget director and was instrumental in Project 2025. He's honestly one of the most freakish right-wing MAGA ghouls out there, and he gets to slide under everything because nobody cares about the OMB. He actually just had his hearings last week for his own confirmation to be back in OMB, it's been advanced, he's not officially confirmed yet, but it's looking good for him. And this guy is the classic kind of behind-the-scenes supervillain-you've-never-heard-of kind of guy. And he told this team happily all about how they were working very closely with the transition team, but they wanted to keep everything off. They wanted their fingerprints off of the transition team. They wanted to be sure that you couldn't FOIA anything, that none of the emails would be going to official government emails or transition team emails that anybody could get if the journalists wanted to look at it. It's exactly what we were talking about a couple of months ago. The transition team was trying to operate in secrecy as much as possible, and they got away with it for the most part. But they were teasing the whole time they were doing this, and Vought's about to in this clip tease the idea they have this super secret playbook that they're going to be handing off that they didn't want in the public record at all. So let's hear him talk about that, clip I sent you.

0:09:32 Clip: Votes for his two battle plans, top secret and handed directly to the transition team, remain unburdened by the brand. Thank you. The man's not going to do another post.

0:10:05 Matt: Whole video is nine minutes. We'll link to it. But he's just openly admitting that they want to keep their hands off of this, that they don't want the public to know. They tried to pretend this was not a big revelation when they get caught on this, but it was because it was exactly what everybody thought, that Project 2025 was in fact actually a very important part of the transition and was providing them with direct policy documents, not just ideas, not just helping them staff up, but providing them với executive orders and with a playbook. And no actual surprise, but it's just good to have these things confirmed. So hearing all of that a few months ago, I'm expecting that there's going to be something that looks a lot better than the last set of executive orders. And sure, I am going to say some of these are pretty bad, no question, no doubt at all. And I'm going to sort of take you through them, in the, not all of them, but as many as I can, in the order that I think is more or less from the least harmful to most harmful. But quite a few of these are not going to hold up very well. And when I say that, I want to be very clear about what I mean. I just written this manifesto, which you can go and read in my sub stack. But when I say that something's illegal, I would just want to be clear what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's against the law. I'm just saying that the thing that is issued is not with consistent existing law and that a reasonable federal judge could find that. Now, you might be thinking, well, there aren't a lot of reasonable federal judges in the Supreme Court. That's true. There are five of them, at least, that we know are willing to be pretty unreasonable. But there are hundreds of very reasonable federal charges. Judges.

0:11:22 Matt: 90% of Trump's efforts to repeal regulations, for example, were rebuffed by federal courts. And not every case makes it to the Supreme Court by far. We have to remember, just to keep some perspective, and I'll get into a little more granular detail on some of these, we'll go deeper in some of these in the future. Miller made it very clear in everything he was talking about leading up to this, that this is a shock and awe campaign. They want to overwhelm us with a sense of inevitability. They sense there's nothing we can do, that they're just going to do all of this stuff at the same time. And we're going to be flooded with more legislation from Congress. That's going to be the next wave of it. There are going to be more executive orders. There'll be more things that feel like they're very difficult. But remember, these executive orders are just op-eds from the president, basically, on what he thinks the government should do. They're not the law. They're a reasonable way to use the government.

0:12:09 Thomas: I have to quibble a little, I mean, if they are a thing that a federal agency can operationalize right away, then they're not nothing, right?

0:12:16 Matt: No, but they're not new law. So they're basically, yeah, they're twisting, or in some cases are sort of trying to make up new law, but every executive order has to have some kind of root in an actual law. And some of these just don't, which is a problem, obviously. And I'm not saying, when I say this, I'm not naive. Again, I understand that it is possible that Trump could sign something and it could just happen. But there are a lot more people involved than Donald Trump in all of these things. And there are massive federal agencies that actually have to carry these things out. There are people at every level of government that he has to count on to actually do these jobs. There are people that might not want to do some of these things. And there are judges that are going to be asked by different groups. Already, we already have suits that have already been filed within the last 24 hours. And we're just getting through our first full day as we record this in the Trump administration. There's a lot working against them. So I just want people to have some hope here as we're talking about these things, and I'll try to identify the hope as I find it, as always. But this is not inevitable. So please don't

0:12:18 Thomas: Not new law yeah of course yeah

0:13:11 Matt: Tell me it's inevitable. And don't tell everybody else that all this is going to happen and that Trump is a dictator on day one. And in fact, if this is Trump's attempt to be a dictator on day one, honestly, this is like a D- in dictatorship. Not great. Honestly, I was expecting a lot more out of you. I'm not going to say that this country deserves a better class of villain, but I don't know, man.

0:13:30 Thomas: Let's There's been a lot of discourse about this on, well, Blue Sky, because that's the one I'm on now, and I like Jamelle, I don't know if you follow him. He's a favorite of mine for a long time. And he's very much in your corner on this. Like it's like stop talking about Trump as though he's already a dictator who can do whatever he wants.

0:13:40 Matt: He's great. Oh, yeah. Exactly.

0:13:49 Thomas: It's very easy, I've said before, I won't dwell too much, but it's incredibly easy to say always the worst thing is going to happen. And that's not information. That's not useful. It's something anyone could do. It's more meaningful to look at what's actually likely and, not be naive about it. To your point, if a federal injunction right away on one of these things, order will not be happening for a meaningful amount of time, quite a bit, maybe forever, depending on how it goes. And that's very to act as though these are just the new law of the land.

0:14:06 Matt: That's right. Maybe forever. That's fine. That's fair. And the law is a story that we tell together. It is a collective effort at telling a story. And if the story that we're telling is that Trump can do it every time, guess what, that's what we'll do. That's how it works, if nobody stands up and says he can't do it. And we're here to tell you the things that he can and can't do the way that we see them. Some of these things, there might be some room for disagreement, but some of these things are flatly, clearly illegal. And I think that's exactly the right way to approach it, is to not give in and to not concede. And I think also, for our own collective mental health, to not treat every one of these things as if they're the same, because some of them are very bad. And honestly, I think the ones that are the very worst are not even getting any coverage, because people are freaking out about the things That are not as bad. So I want to try to take you through what I, just, again, this is one guy's opinion, but I don't think I'm too far off here. I'm obviously going to focus a little more on the immigration stuff, but a lot of what he signed was immigration related. The majority of it really, when it comes down to it, that consequential

0:15:09 Matt: Stuff was immigration, about 10 of them, I think.

0:15:10 Thomas: Well Thank God we have an immigration lawyer here on Opening Arguments.

0:15:13 Matt: We are. A lot of these were not consequential. Let's start with the very first thing he signed. You know what it was? It's pretty funny.

0:15:18 Thomas: The I Won 2020 executive order I genuinely

0:15:20 Matt: Yeah. That's right. Yeah, that would be concerning. You might remember there was one thing that he was very mad about that was going to be happening on Inauguration Day that he could not stand the idea of, because it was going to overshadow his big day. The fact that Jimmy Carter died, he really wasn't a fan of, so he wasn't happy about the fact the flags were going to be at half-staff at his inauguration, which is perfect, honestly.

0:15:33 Thomas: Forgot oh yeah okay oh yeah yeah okay I forgot yeah yeah

0:15:41 Matt: It's really the perfect visual for the entire thing. We should be mourning the fact that this man is taking a second term.

0:15:44 Thomas: It's the last service that an amazing man and president did for us, Jimmy Carter he timed it, I think he did intentionally yeah

0:15:49 Matt: That's right. That's great. Thank you, Jimmy Carter. Thankyou for your service. That's right. So Trump had to sign an order saying that the flag at, basically at 1201, he signed this saying the flag was going back up.

0:16:00 Thomas: Okay, I thought it'd be so funny if he's like, three-quarter staff, oh

0:16:03 Matt: Yeah, that's right, we'll compromise, meet you halfway. He does acknowledge at the end that Jimmy Carter was the president, and that's why the flags are lowered. He doesn't say that till the end. He does say that for today and all future inauguration days, that he wants to be sure the flag is always at full staff. So, yeah, yeah.

0:16:17 Thomas: Yeah, it's for everybody, it's not just for him you can't

0:16:20 Matt: Of course. Right. Right. So not too concerned about that one. That's just silly Trump stuff. And honestly, the president has the right to have the flag up on the day, whatever. I don't care.

0:16:20 Thomas: Call him selfish, who

0:16:30 Matt: Carter's more important, but okay. Two, in terms of this one, again, it's just fun to have some laughs before we get into the hard stuff. Might've heard about this one. Restoring names that honor American greatness.

0:16:29 Thomas: But fine, oh My god, yeah, yeah.

0:16:40 Matt: Yeah. Now, I will say this sucks for Alaska because the people of Alaska worked very hard for many years to get the name of Denali, which has been called Denali, the highest peak in Alaska, for thousands of years by the Koyukon Athabascans, just thousands of years. In 2015, the Obama administration did recognize it, and it was changed to Denali from Mount McKinley. William McKinley never went to Alaska, actually, so it doesn't really have anything to do with Mount McKinley. But William McKinley was a huge champion of tariffs, so a kindred spirit for Donald Trump. So he wants to honor William McKinley and what a great president he was by making sure that a white guy's name is on the tallest peak in Alaska, white guy who never saw it. Then, of course, there's the one that got Hillary Clinton laughing during the inauguration. Got me laughing too, but I wasn't sitting behind the guy being sworn in. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. And this one is really funny. I mean, it's like a sixth grade report about the Gulf of Mexico. It's like they copied and pasted in some Wikipedia thing about how great

0:17:38 Matt: The Gulf of Mexico is, about its abundance of natural resources and providing roughly 14% of our nation's crude oil production, talking about the size of it.

0:17:38 Thomas: What does that have to do with it being named america versus whatever

0:17:49 Matt: It's exactly what you would have written if you were in grade school and had to write a report on the Gulf of Mexico, just

0:17:49 Thomas: But In seriousness, does that actually change anything, who's in charge of what these things are named, I've never even thought about it before, yeah.

0:18:00 Matt: There's a lot of coastline, according to this, about 1,700 miles of coastline, and a lot going into national waters. I don't know, I mean, we can call it whatever we want, and there, it turns out, I don't even know this, but there is actually a board of geographical names, uh, that was established a long time ago, yeah, established by 43 USC 364a, I looked it up, it was established a very long time ago, generally not very political, but of course now everything is political, so yeah

0:18:12 Thomas: You would think so Oh, but does that mean it's a federal agency type thing that he can actually control with this for us? So do we have to change textbooks for this?

0:18:25 Matt: So that's right uh Maps, official federal maps, yeah it's a big waste yeah yeah yeah, he's directing them to review it and to, uh, rename it but so stupid, yeah, totally.

0:18:36 Thomas: The Gulf of America. Else did President Camacho say? This is, wow, we're really fully there.

0:18:46 Matt: Oh yeah. Moving down the list, we've got securing our borders, which is a pretty standard Trump status quo kind of thing. Just kind of a return to Trump status quo on the border. It's not even really worth talking about. Not a big thing. I mean, it's not great, but it is exactly what you'd expect. Nothing he didn't do the first time. I will note, of course, that there's some new data from Cato that I can link to that shows that Biden really did not release that many border crossers relative to Trump, and that at this point, border crossings are lower than they've been in more than four years.

0:19:12 Matt: But they're talking about it still like it's a national emergency, as we'll get to.

0:19:12 Thomas: Of course. Just for the record, overall question for this episode is, which of these things actually matter and are real are you saying this doesn't matter are you saying it's the same as what you did last time so we're not going to talk about it right now

0:19:29 Matt: No, I'm saying in terms of the seriousness of these, I think it's just kind of restoring the kinds of stuff he was trying to do with the wall before. There are some very serious things going on at the border.

0:19:38 Thomas: It is real, though, right, and it will do stuff

0:19:39 Matt: It's real. Yeah. But the other border orders are much, much worse. So I want to talk about this.

0:19:44 Thomas: So is this one this one's more of like a signaling type thing

0:19:47 Matt: It's just kind of status quo signaling that he's really serious about the border. But we already knew that. That's nothing new. That was literally what he got elected on the first time. Here's the one that people might be surprised that I'm putting so far down the list. One I am not concerned about at this point.

0:19:59 Thomas: Let me guess. Yes, Matt. Birthright citizenship. Yeah.

0:20:01 Matt: Birthright, citizenship.

0:20:02 Thomas: I follow you on social media, so just

0:20:03 Matt: I've been talking about this. I have some things to say about it, Cameron on Blue Sky. But, protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship. Now this order, I had to read it, even though I said I wasn't going to, it's very stupid. It's even stupider than I expected. It cites no law, zero law, does not explain itself at all. It just says flat out that people are basically, just provides the language of the 14th Amendment, which, just to remind everybody, is a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof is a national and citizen. Then it just says that it does not automatically extend to persons when the person's mother was unlawfully present and the father wasn't a U.S. citizen or resident, which, by the way, could include people here on a student visa, or people here on a business visa, or people here with DACA or TPS. So potentially not just undocumented people giving birth, potentially anybody here with lawful status that's not a citizen or a resident, that's a lot of people. A similar, our kind of non-citizen or resident status. So what they're just trying to say is, this is what we think now, this is what we think the 14th Amendment is. Lots of people have opinions about the 14th Amendment. And all it does is just instruct that the Department of State and Social Security and everybody else, that no agencies produce any documents that would show that anybody's a citizen. That's what it's doing. So it's not actually overruling birthright citizenship the way that a lot of people have said. It's just saying the government can't recognize it. I know that's a stupid lawyerly difference, but let me tell you why I'm not worried about this at all. You can call me as naive as you want. Please go read my manifesto first. But I predicted this in OA1094 back at the beginning of last month, that what would happen is as soon as this came down, that ACLU would have a friendly jurisdiction, that they would have something outlined and ready to go, and that they would take it there and get an injunction to stop the whole thing, that it would be enjoined until it got to the Supreme Court. And of course, that's exactly what happened. Yesterday, a lot of lawyers I actually know went to New Hampshire District Court first to kind of get it started. And now today, a gigantic suit was filed in Massachusetts District Court, all right, in my backyard here, I can almost see the court from here. It has put out there that this is going to hurt their residents, and it's going to cause irreparable harm. And I want to be clear to everybody.

0:20:21 Thomas: Says racism noises. Okay.

0:22:01 Matt: Everybody. Yes. Oh, I hate it so much. I want to make clear to everybody how federal injunctions work, because I think that's a thing that people are really missing in this conversation. I'm sure that a lot of our listeners know what injunctions are, but to go to federal court and get an injunction, you have to be able to show that, first of all, that the merits are more or less on your side, that you have a pretty good chance of winning. And what the government is using here is not even a legal theory. It's not even the fringe theory we thought it would be, right, which says exactly the opposite of the thing that they're trying to say. Uh, we all know what's subject to the jurisdiction thereof means, uh, we've already been through this in OA1094, and I don't want to dignify this with any more argument or explanation. I'm just going to tell you the 14th Amendment means what it says, and I think John Roberts is going to agree with me, I'll get there. But for the injunction, you have to be able to show that you have a good chance of winning and that there will be irreparable harm if

0:22:02 Thomas: It's AGs, but yeah, it's the 14th amendment. That seems pretty solid. Yeah,

0:22:52 Matt: Is, you've got babies that are going to be born without Social Security numbers. You've got babies that won't be able to get passports, won't be able to get health care. I mean, this is really serious. So obviously, there is no way in any universe that a Massachusetts district court federal judge is not going to immediately grant an injunction for this. And there's no way in any universe that the First Circuit Court of Appeals is not going to uphold that injunction. This is not gonna be a Fifth Circuit situation where they're flip-flopping back and forth and there's all kinds of drama about the holds. This is just gonna happen. I'm as certain about that as I have ever been certain of any legal prediction in my life. And so when it gets to Supreme Court, everybody's been saying, well, Supreme Court just does whatever Trump wants. And sometimes that's true. But think about what an easy layup this is for John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett to be able to come out and say, look, we're not owned by Trump. There's no reason for us to do this. The 14th Amendment means what it says. And then they're going to want a lot of credit for it, which they don't deserve. But I mean, they know how mad we are about the immunity decision. They know how angry people are about Dobbs, which, and again, the right in Dobbs—the abortion right that was enshrined—was enshrined in case law. It was pretty vague, it, under the right of privacy, it was under the general sort of penumbra of rights, was not anywhere near as rock solid as the 14th Amendment. And people have raised Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado ballot case, which we talked about at length. And I know that you and I had some disagreements about this, but actually, I think it's a pretty good one, because relatively speaking, remember Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado ballot case, keeping Donald Trump on the ballot, even though there's a provision in the 14th Amendment, the Section 3, that says that insurrectionists can't be on the ballot, that was a unanimous decision. The entire court agreed that Donald Trump could go on the ballot because there's no legal way to know that he's actually an insurrectionist. And remember, we talked about last week, Jack Smith declined to prosecute him as an insurrectionist. It's, you know, this is not an open and shut thing that he was an insurrectionist, right?

0:23:22 Thomas: And an unprecedented thing. Well, not, sorry, entirely, but like virtually unprecedented thing, uh, at least in that context, birthright citizenship happens every day, like it's it's a hundred plus year history of happening every single day, yeah.

0:24:45 Matt: That's fine. That's right. And it's been Supreme Court absolute rock solid unquestioned law since 1898. Uh, they're going to have to overcome quite a lot here. It's almost a double dog dare to John Roberts. Really, that's how I'm seeing it. You know, it's a loyalty test. It's saying, you know, if you really want to show that you mean this, that you're with me, go ahead and tell me that the 14th Amendment has no clothes. That's the no-clothes situation. And I know there are a lot of cynical people listening who are going to say, well, the court will just do whatever. But what is their motivation? Why would they do that? This is not something like Roe, where there's this multi-generational project. It's not something like any of the gun cases, where there's a lot of people that own guns, a gigantic gun lobby that's pushing for this.

0:25:34 Matt: I know there are a lot of racists, a lot of xenophobes, a lot of people that want to see this changed. But that's not enough. And the Second Amendment, compared to the 14th Amendment here, the Second Amendment is pretty vague. And I still think the Second Amendment was very clear that it was for militias, but it's still not anywhere near as clear as the 14th. So I know I'm just being naive, lower-brained, but I'm trying to tell you, this is not institutionalism, this is realism. This has just legal realism. The court has to choose, pick where it's going to give Trump a win. And, and I don't see where it could possibly benefit by making people this angry, because I'll tell you, I'm willing, after oral arguments, if it looks like things are going another way, if it looks like maybe it's not going so well for our side on this one, we're going to start talking about direct action. We're going to start talking about what you can do to actually do something about this and show that you're angry about it, because that's a test too. If it really looks like the Supreme Court might be actually about to overrule birthright citizenship, I'll take it all back. But for now, right now, as of January 21, 2025, not going to say exactly what the court's going to do, but I think it's going to lean against this massive change to the status quo.

0:26:33 Matt: That's my monologue about that. But again, I'm not going to debate the merits, I'm not going to say there are any. I just want to say, too, do not engage in debate about this, because the New York Times made the mistake of putting out a poll, and part of that poll was asking, basically, do you think that people born in this country should be citizens automatically? And I just don't think that's a poll question any more than other civil rights or constitutional rights should be. That's exactly what they want by putting this out there, is they want to create a debate that doesn't exist. And I'm resisting that, and I think you should too. Okay, I've said my piece.

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0:29:02 Matt: We've got Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship, whatever. I mean, this is one of two orders that gives the AG and other agencies the right to go back and look at what the Biden administration have been doing, and trampling on free speech rights by censoring American speech on platforms, under the guise of combating misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, you know, basically just saying we can't ever do anything like that.

0:29:20 Thomas: They already have all of the tech billionaires at the inauguration, what are they even talking about, nobody's doing this anymore, if you can even call it having done something under COVID, and, yeah, well

0:29:38 Matt: A little more concerned about this one, just because it does have this language about how the AG shall investigate the activities of the federal government over the last four years. There's another one that we'll talk about that's much worse than this, that's doing the same thing. And there's a lot of room here for them to, frankly, to weaponize the government in a real way, not the way that they talk about.

0:29:54 Thomas: We should know we didn't even say it, um, case you haven't heard, Biden did a last-minute pardon of a bunch of people. That was — we had debated that. Now, I didn't think he should do it, but if he were going to do it I think he did it the right way. Do it the last minute when nobody even notices. Because we didn't even really get much time for the news cycle to say well, it must mean they did something wrong. Like, we're just already on to the, you know, other stuff.

0:30:17 Matt: I'd like to talk about the pardon section at the end because I think it's just to touch on them at least. I think the most serious thing actually in all of this immediately serious. I'll move on to the big mega order, the initial recisions of harmful executive orders and actions, which, I mean, this language is just so stupid. It's over the top, but they're not harmful. They're just different from what you want to do. No other president has done things quite like this with this kind of language, but it revokes 78 prior Biden orders. At least one of these things I have a real problem with. I think they're all bad. I mean, obviously the whole purpose of this is what they're saying to eliminate DEI from the government. All anti -woke stuff. Anything that has anything to do with equity or helping people out, the things the government should be doing, just canceling that. There's also some stuff about electric cars that... revoking the order regarding strengthening American leadership in clean cars and trucks. That's probably something Elon Musk didn't like. That would have made his life harder, I'm guessing. Some of these can be directly tied to that, as we'll talk about. But the one that really concerns me is revoking the sanctions for Israeli settlers on the West Bank.

0:31:21 Matt: Yep. January 1st, 2024, Biden signed an order imposing those sanctions. Now, it was never enforced. Obviously, it's never going to do anything about it. Netanyahu ignored it, but it was still a statement. It was still saying that these at the order here, it says the violence had reached intolerable levels and that it was a serious threat to the entire Middle East, which is true. These settlers have been causing, yeah, right, right. But I mean, this is something that the US can do to lead on this and to stop Israel from continuing to poke this issue and to go into Palestinian territory. And this is kind of a piece with the pardoning of the January 6th people. I'm just saying, the settlers have been doing violent things. They're terroristic things.

0:31:40 Thomas: Which was true in 1980. or whatever the hell it should have actually been but yeah yeah yeah it is they are awful that is that is terrible I mean it's just imagine if it was like matt and I were like you know let's go down into mexico and just kick some families out of their homes and we live there now that's bad like and they kill people they use violence it's like there's no excuse for this yeah

0:32:15 Matt: Terrorism. Yeah. Yeah right. And this toothless anyway. So you're just doing it symbolically. There's just no reason to repeal it. Then we've got clarifying the military's role in protecting the territorial integrity of the United States. So this one is concerning, and it's not higher up on my list because there's a much more serious one coming up. It's concerning only because of the combination with the other ones, but it basically requires NORTHCOM, the North American command, to provide security, which means regular border security. Now, previously, Trump deployed the National Guard, you might remember the Southwest border. And then I'm looking at Stars and Stripes here. I was just checking to see what they had to say about it. He supplemented them with active duty troops about seven months later. And at the time, those active duty groups, the use of them was criticized by the National Guard because he said they had no military training value, that there's really nothing that they were doing or that it was doing anything to help these people. He wants to create a permanent sort of presence is what I'm reading this to be. And that is very concerning to

0:33:13 Matt: Actually literally militarize the Southern border. We've got already the largest border force in the world. They can basically hold hands all across the border. We've got plenty of people at CBP who are very well armed. This is, in combination with the other stuff we're going to talk about, very concerning, but not as concerning as what they're actually going to be doing with the military. Next I have restoring accountability to policy influencing positions within the federal workforce. This is Schedule F. Of course, we're back. For whatever reason, Senate's going to remove the letter F. actually don't want to call it Schedule F. I guess they feel like it's worn out. It's welcome. They're policy slash career, because that's what these employees are. We've talked about this before, but category of typically insulated employee that were not political, it allows them to be political and allows hiring and firing to a degree that they were not allowed to before. And these are very important employees. These are people that help with policy and that keep the government running smoothly between administrations, aka the deep state. So real problem here. Though, not just Schedule F, but a hiring freeze on the federal government and all kinds of things that are designed to make existing federal employees' lives harder, which is something that Elon Musk has already been saying he wants to do as part of the Doge initiative. It's going to force them all to come back into the office, even the people

0:34:24 Matt: Who have been doing remote work, which I can tell you, somebody who lives with somebody who gets to do half and half, that's a pretty big incentive to quit if you're forced back in, if you are doing pretty well working at home.

0:34:34 Thomas: Also wants that like real man of the people making everyone go back into work yeah

0:34:39 Matt: Not even a study to see if it's a good idea, just straight up forcing them back in. Because I could see it if you were saying, let's see if it's more efficient or not. There might be some open questions about that. I don't think there are. I think people will do very well when you let them work from home. But this is just a harassment effort. About saving money, because there's even a thing in here about encouraging these agencies to put people on administrative leave just indefinitely if they don't want them to work there anymore so they can force them out with Schedule F. So it's kind of a turnover. So you're going to have these things starting to get hollowed out and replaced by civil servants who are political in a way they haven't been before. This is very concerning. And this maybe should be higher up the list. I don't know. But it always has been concerning because we don't want these jobs to be as political as he wants to make them and to be as easy to switch out as he wants to make them. But he's giving agency heads 210 days to submit a full report of their positions that qualify for real classifications so they can start doing what they can to switch out the people they want to. Then, of course, we have establishing and implementing the President's Department of Government Efficiency. And we all know about the Doge. It's a website. Did you see the website? I just went up.

0:35:41 Matt: It looks like it was made by a third grader. It is very silly.

0:35:40 Thomas: I didn't see it you would

0:35:44 Matt: Actually,

0:35:44 Thomas: Think that would be the one thing these assholes could do we

0:35:47 Matt: I think they're really just trolling us, So I don't want to take it too seriously, but I right. It's mean, got a very silly logo. They actually made it even sillier since the last time I looked at it. But we already know about Doge. It was designed to destroy the federal government. That's what they want to try to do. The legality of all of this is already in question. It's already been hit by lawsuits. We're going to talk about those lawsuits. We don't have time for that now. Multiple and multiple lawsuits already just

0:36:08 Thomas: Does this actually do anything, because you can't just create a new department, right? So how temporary organization

0:36:13 Matt: Well, it's a temporary organization. So it's, and it's. We talked about this a little bit before, but it's going to be within the United States Digital Service, which I'd never heard of before. And I think we're going to have to talk about this later, but it is definitely a violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act because it's designed to not be transparent. It's designed to make sure that you can have all these people you're talking about, all the tech people and anybody else who wants to help restructure the government without any kind of accountability. And he's going to be using an illegal process called sequestration, which we'll talk about another time to try to hold the funds. But again, this is a little too much for today. Then we've got the terrible anti -trans defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government. That's super fashy. That is a very fascist name for an executive order.

0:36:45 Thomas: Logical

0:36:59 Matt: You know, Trump went on about this in his inaugural about how there are only two genders and they're going to make sure the government only recognizes two genders. Is directly in violation of federal law, serious immediate violation of 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, which requires trans people to be allowed to have a say in their own housing. Is definitely issues with passports, with IDs. It's going to cause chaos for different things like that. Again, I assume that there will be lawsuits under this. I don't know exactly how it's all going to play out, but this is very harmful and it is designed to be harmful and it's designed to make trans people feel unwelcome and unsafe and uh so we have to do everything we can to to stop that um again it doesn't in effect it really just establishes that uh federal government is only going to recognize two distinct genders or whatever and protect women from radical gender ideology the typical thing of protecting women from trans people typical language which it's

0:36:58 Thomas: Truth weird that men don't need any protection, I don't know

0:37:50 Matt: Yeah, we're doing fine apparently, you know, from trans men who are not threatening us.

0:37:51 Thomas: That's kind of kind of bizarre um yeah or just from the the concept of different genders um have time to go into all these things each of these could be a show but I on the scale of does this actually do anything to not do anything it sounds like it does do some stuff that's concerning I wasn't sure necessarily does this make meaningful impact right away? Oh,

0:38:11 Matt: Eliminating any of trans people or different gender identifications or identities, certainly this keeps trans people out of the military, for example, among other things, as I understand it. Trying to overrule Bostock about sex -based distinctions in Title VII for employment purposes. So obviously, that is pretty bad. And see. We'll see about that. Here's one that I haven't heard hardly anything about that obviously is very concerning to me, but I think should be concerning to all of us. Realigning the United States Refugee admissions program. This effectively ends refugee admissions to the United States, which is flatly illegal. We have treaty obligations as members of the United Nations to accept refugees. There's no real reason given that we're doing this. He's just sort of saying it's in the public interest in INA 212F, which we'll talk about. But again, there's no actual thing. This has to be stopped. I think it will be. But it requires DHS to check in every 90 days to see if resumption would be in the interest of the united states in light of the policies outlined in this section.

0:38:25 Thomas: What what policies though I

0:39:07 Matt: Essentially, it's just claiming that refugees are a drain on our economy, which is absolutely the opposite of the truth when you look at the way that they contribute. Refugees contribute more in the end than other immigrants, which makes sense.

0:39:07 Thomas: Thought not a policy I'm just highlighting is this a badly written thing where it's like we're gonna check if we want to let refugees back in in light of our policy of not letting refugees in like what

0:39:28 Matt: Yeah, In light of our policy of saying that they're bad for the economy. And it's also the policy that state and local jurisdictions be granted a role and how they determine, and they already are. But anyway, it doesn't matter. But the DHS obviously is never going to come back and say, oh, yeah, okay, time to admit refugees again, not Trump's DHS.

0:39:31 Thomas: That's not a policy okay yeah is that a way to attempt to make it more palatable or something or more yeah

0:39:47 Matt: Yeah. To make it seem like it's not a flat forever ban. Might remember that, well, actually a lot of people may not remember that along with the travel ban on the same day, there was a sort of an emergency suspension of refugee admissions. I believe it was for 180 days that time, but that was just a one -time thing just to kind of see how it went. And nobody really cared that much. There was, I mean, obviously refugee groups and those of us who know about these things were very concerned, but there wasn't a huge uprising because the travel ban kind of overshadowed it. And that's my concern, honestly, about these birthright citizenship thing. That I think that it's something that is frankly pretty frivolous and is going to be enjoined, is getting a lot more attention right now than something that might be harder to stop and is actually going to immediately affect people. I mean, there are people right now that are not able to get on a plane and come to this country who have been in the refugee process for potentially years. Very long, arduous process. It takes a long time to screen you. This happened the last time too, where quite a few people were just not able to come in and who had pretty much gotten their lives ready to come over. Yeah. Not great. Not not great.

0:40:43 Matt: Yeah.

0:40:42 Thomas: Entire lives just ruined okay

0:40:44 Matt: I did want to mention, actually, this is a little out of order, but there is an order designating cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. This

0:40:50 Thomas: That concerned me a lot matt because does isn't that a step on the way to being able to like say they're an invading army and doing all that like that that really worried me yeah

0:40:59 Matt: Could. It also has a weird backfire effect, though, because it makes asylum claims a lot easier if you're being persecuted by a terrorist organization. We intend to use that as much as we can. I don't know. And I think some immigration judges might go for it. Because now, cartels are just considered to be criminals. So if your whole family has been wiped out by a cartel, that's just a crime. But if they've been wipedout by a terrorist organization, then we might be talking. It goes a little further, at least. But yes, no, this is absolutely part of the... And also the Tren de Aragua stuff you might have been hearing about from Venezuela. And they are a dangerous group, but they're very small, especially in this country. They're really trying to amp up this kind of rhetoric. This is not by far the most concerning of this direction. This is just sort an ancillary one. One more before I get to the other immigration ones. Restoring the death penalty and protecting public safety. So this is a just absolutely triple down order, making it very clear that Donald Trump wants to kill as many people as possible using the powers of the federal government. Is a full-throated defense of the death penalty. It actually specifically instructs the attorney general to try to overrule, excuse Court cases that he thinks limit the death penalty too much, which there aren't that many of those at this point. The Attorney General take all necessary and lawful action to ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection. Yep, as we've talked about before, turns out these European companies don't want to sell the state's drugs that kill people,

0:42:13 Matt: And for good reason.

0:42:15 Thomas: As a direct result of our video, this doesn't change the fact that, like, Biden pardoned or commuted a bunch of the federal ones, right? So there's not — okay.

0:42:23 Matt: That's right. Yeah. 37 out of 40 are still not going to be executed, but this is for all future. And he's trying to create a lot more death row inmates through this. There's also something here that I consider to be illegal, in which undocumented people who kill law enforcement, which rarely happens by the way, but were it to happen, they would be eligible for the death penalty. And I've never heard of death penalty eligibility based on legal status. That's a new one.

0:42:44 Matt: I'm not sure how that can be legal. But that's good chance we might not even see that one play out in Donald Trump's term because undocumented people so rarely kill law enforcement officers.

0:42:43 Thomas: Wow that can't be right yeah

0:42:56 Matt: Get to the ones I'm actually very concerned about. Ending the weaponization of the federal government. One, of course, goes on about Trump's favorite topics about how we're using third world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend democratic process. They claim that the Department of Justice jailed somebody for posting a political meme, which I don't know if you remember this, but Douglas Mackey posted not a political meme. It was, in fact, an instruction to democratic voters that they could vote by text on election day, which is very stupid, but it worked. Thousands of people texted

0:42:51 Thomas: Yeah sure oh right

0:43:23 Matt: It on election day. That was not a meme.

0:43:24 Thomas: Because it was a clear violation of

0:43:26 Matt: Yeah. That was just fraud. That was just, yeah, right.

0:43:26 Thomas: Law right to misinform people about how voting works yeah

0:43:30 Matt: This is a very serious voter protection kind of thing that we can't let people go around. It's the same thing as if you said, do you go around, as has happened before, if you go into black neighborhoods and put out flyers saying that election day is November 10th or whatever, right? I mean, it's just, you can't do it. It is an open fraud. It was designed to interfere with people's civil rights. The thing that really concerns me about this is that he's instructing the attorney general, and we expected this, but he's instructed the attorney General to take appropriate action to review the actions of all the departments. Because of course, now everything that Joe Biden's DOJ is going to be laid bare to them. They'll be able to see everything, all the investigations, everything that's going on. And to identify over the last four years, any instances where department or agency's conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order. So this how they would have ended up prosecuting the kinds of people that Joe Bidens just pardoned. And I have to say, at the end of the day, I thought this was a good idea to pardon these these people. And now looking at this, I really think it is because he potentially could have harassed these people for quite a while and made them spend a lot of money and potentially threaten their freedom over doing their jobs. People on the January 6th Committee, people like Anthony Fauci, Jack Smith, believe I they're all protected now with these. Point there, though, is that the SEC and FTC are included, not just DOJ. And I wonder about that, because you know that Elon Musk was just being prosecuted by the SEC on the way out there. Have to wonder if he stuck that in for him, because SEC and FCC are prosecuting corporations and corporate interests, right?

0:44:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:47 Matt: So it makes you wonder who he's doing favors for on that one. One that I think is going to need a whole episode at some point, sometime in the future that I just want to mention that I think is actually overall the worst is guaranteeing the state's protection against invasion. This is very, very bad. I don't think the extent of how bad this is has been covered. Has been lawless. It is appalling. Frankly one of the most fascist things I've ever seen the federal government do. Trying to invoke INA 212F, which the Supreme Court has already said in Trump v. Hawaii. Can't just be used to overrule any provision you don't like. He's using it as kind of a blunderbuss, like shotgun approach to try to cover all this stuff that he doesn't like, there was a lot of talk just before Trump came in that Stephen Miller had been spending a while trying to figure out a way to reinstate Title 42, which is a public health measure during COVID that kept people from seeking asylum or crossing the border. But He couldn't find a disease that would work. He just couldn't, even though he just wants to say generally, that immigrants are full of disease. So what they just said here is basically that immigrants are

0:45:43 Matt: Full of disease. Yep, that public health requires this, that that's just one reason. Also talking, of course, about the transnational criminal organizations, and you're not wrong about that being used as an excuse. The purpose of this, I mean, potentially what he's saying is that they can overrule INA 208, which controls asylum. They can potentially overrule deportation procedures, and they can declare that the states are being invaded. And he's invoking his power under Article 4 of the Constitution, which requires the federal government to protect the states from invasion. And as we talked about, and as he mentioned in his inaugural address, that also invokes perhaps the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows him to say that we're being invaded. And that is absolutely, flatly, absurdly ridiculous. We are not being invaded. There's no state behind any of this. There is no government. Nobody's directing people to come here. These are people who are, for the most part, fleeing or looking for better lives. But he's just going to call it an invasion just by fiat. And he's going to hope that gives him a lot of power. Now, again, this is something that can be stopped. I'm not saying this is inevitable. I am not saying it can't be stopped, I'm just saying this is a little concerning because they're not really trying. I thought they'd try a little bit more, I don't know why, but I really thought maybe they would try to make it look a little more like the law, and they're just not doing that. This is lazy. But just because it's lazy and just because it's bad doesn't mean it can work.

0:47:00 Thomas: I feel like that conflicts with the first part of our episode a little bit. What's the distinction?

0:47:05 Matt: Think that every part of this can be be stopped because federal courts still exist. As long as we still have decent federal judges on the bench. And I still think that a lot of this, because there's a lot different parts in this, and there's all different things you're trying to try to use to justify these policies. And if they start doing things that are super extreme under this, federal judges will stop them. That will happen. I mean, I don't want to say anything too definitive, but

0:47:26 Thomas: So this just sets like the blueprint. It doesn't really directly do anything yet or am I OK?

0:47:33 Matt: It's setting the tone for how they intend to do it. And we're going to see a lot more about how they operationalize all of this. But it is a big swing. It's a big statement. And, you know, calling it an invasion is, they're setting the tone for how they want to do their immigration enforcement, and of course, the problem with all of this is it will be reviewed by federal judges on the border and that goes to the Fifth Circuit and anything goes. It's not like the First Circuit reviewing the citizenship thing. Can't expect they're going to do the right thing.

0:47:55 Thomas: More of the — the Fifth Circuit has a border, right?

0:47:58 Matt: That's right. But But a lot of the borders in the Fifth Circuit and a lot the borders in the Ninth Circuit, but where people come across the most is generally in the Fifth. So it's still going to be a lot of this reviewed by the Fifth Circuit. And obviously advocates are going to try to keep it in the ninth and the ninth has done pretty well in a lot of this stuff. You to me is just about setting the tone and there's going to Be a lot of things that come from this. And I will tell everybody that there are going to be specific opportunities for direct action in every community, the United States, every city and every state, there are gonna be places that you can stop this ice and CBP do not have the capacity to do anything like what you're hearing described right now. And we'll talk about this more, but they and will not have that capacity. They don't want you to know that. They want you to think that they can do everything that they're telling us they can Do right now, they do Not want you To know that, but we can stop it, we still can, because it requires so much investment, so much infrastructure, and so many things that will have to happen at the local level to make these things happen that you can stop in your community. So I don't Want to be coming in here and telling you that this is done. I'm just telling you that this is a big swing and it's a it's hard it's a heavy start but we'll see where it goes that's then there's the pardons but we really don't have time to talk about the pardon so I think I'll have to come back to that on friday it

0:49:02 Thomas: Unbelievable. I think everyone needs to hit this hard. I hope piece of shit media is somewhat doing their job this is the kind of thing that I would kind of think the mainstream media would do a good job of of taking those really uh evil heartbreaking stories of like the you know the officers that were beaten and now have to with live the fact that the people person who did that did that violence to police officers is now free I would hope those are good like interviews that the media will will get I'm hoping they hit hit trump pretty hard on this but we'll see yeah

0:49:38 Matt: A lot to hit them on with these pardens but I won't talk a little bit more about that next time I think all know we ended on some heavy ones there, but these are, again, these are just the opening salvo. This is just the opening shot. And I just really want to encourage people, I know this is a hard time, but we're all we've got. Know, if you're of a certain age and of a certain level of privilege, there's no one else coming. We're here to do this. So let's do it together. I know, we can.

0:49:59 Matt: I am honestly very optimistic about the coming years. I know that might sound insane to you right now, but I just know that we can, and I know that that we can show people a better way and that we can do things better, and

0:50:08 Thomas: Matt, you're right that that does sound insane to me, but hopefully you are right. I really appreciate this. So it sounds like we've got the ones we need to worry about, and we've got a whole lot that we don't necessarily need to worry, but as always, we'll it. This week really did, this hit hard. It's this this whole week, Matt, and for us, it's Tuesday. And I just said this week, and I'm realizing we've not even started it.

0:50:33 Matt: It's been a week.

0:50:34 Thomas: Monday was a holiday. So yeah, this, it really reminded me a lot though, of that first, that first week of Trump 1 .0, man, little bit of flashbacks here. And it's, it's every bit as bad as we predicted it would be. And so, in terms of what — what they're wanting to do and trying to do, it's up to us to do everything we can to stop it.

0:50:54 Matt: It is, but it's also incompetent and inept, and I just want to say that I know people are asking, why bother even talking about this if we can't do anything? First of all, there are things we can do. I know they are, and we're going to be talking about them, but also are actively trying to drive us toward autocracy. They're trying to take take us down a one -way road that is very hard to come back from peacefully. And we have every opportunity right now to stop it. And I just don't see why not. Have We every reason in the world together to do this. And not just to resist Trump, but to resist the entire restructuring the government and a of new view of society that these people are bringing in. It is not inevitable, they are not the majority, and they don't have a mandate.

0:51:31 Thomas: All right. Well, thanks for that breakdown, Matt, especially on an off scheduled day. So was a lot to pack into a Wednesday episode on short notice, but I really appreciate it. It and some triaging to these executive orders. So we'll

0:51:44 Matt: That's how we got to do it.

0:51:45 Thomas: See you very soon. There's going to be so much more to talk about on Friday. And patrons look out for that rapid response thread you know I'm sure we'll want to know what questions are top of your mind uh we go into that one so thanks for listening thank you matt and we'll see you very soon

0:51:58 Matt: Got it? Yep.

0:51:58 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.

0:52:15 Thomas: Oh damn it, what's his name, ah, I ruined the joke, it's entirely — uh, you know, um — that the lawyer, that Trump lawyer, yeah, it's entirely — entirely John Eastman content, everybody, we