Key Figure Behind Project 2025 Lies His Way Through Confirmation

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.

0:00:57 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1118. I'm Thomas, and that over there is real-life Lydia. How's it going real

0:01:06 Lydia: Don't know. Real-life Lydia. That's probably the best way to describe me. Pretty interesting.

0:01:11 Thomas: Life doozy watcher too light a word for what's going on but but take

0:01:17 Lydia: It's really concerning. Learning. And honestly, I had started prepping this episode before the news broke last night that there was going to be a federal funding freeze across, you anyone who received federal dollars for anything. I want to to talk today about someone who is behind a lot of these actions, Russell Vogt. So we'll be digging into this guy.

0:01:42 Lydia: Name might be familiar. Oh, no. Name may be familiar for some people.

0:01:41 Thomas: Never heard of him. I think it's one of those things where you keep telling me and I keep thinking her, like, I don't know who that is, but apparently it's very important for all the evil purposes happening.

0:01:50 Lydia: That's fair. Yes.

0:01:54 Thomas: Yeah, and it really is truly, there's too much, too much to cover. Is normally T3BE, and it will still be T3BE because we're to get Heather Heather Veronini, and we're going to answer the question from two weeks ago, and we're gonna get a new question. We're gonna shout out the winners, and we're gotta shout out to the patrons, all the normal stuff. But also, we're trying to squeeze in a little bit of doozy watch of what's going on. There have been so many confirmation hearings that I wish we had time to cover. It's impossible to keep up. That's the flood the zone. That's what they do.

0:02:22 Lydia: I gave in for Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary. Her confirmation hearing, I just posted on the Facebook group, the OA Facebook group if you're not in it it already um in you can all be there for each other and I just posted some quick thoughts on her because we're just we can't get to it in a show so yeah

0:02:38 Thomas: Other favorite thing is how everyone looked at Marco Rubio and was like, Like, okay, fine. I, whatever. It's just, okay. Fine.

0:02:43 Lydia: They're they're tired too yeah

0:02:45 Thomas: It's like a hundred and nothing, pretty much, you know, 99 to nothing. Yeah. It's, like, all right. This is the closest thing to a person that you found. Whatever. I get it. Like, you can't, it's just for news purposes. How could you possibly keep up? But we're going to do our best and we are going to talk about a very important figure whose name Lydia just made up, but now controls the world. That's how it works. I've never heard of this person, but we will definitely have heard of what the things they're doing to us right now. First we'RE going to take our break, uh, and you can avoid that at patreon .com slash law. Hey, and YOU can get in on the hangout we just had. That was a lot of fun.

0:02:47 Lydia: 99 to nothing yeah mm -hmm okay so fun so fun

0:03:19 Thomas: Uh, we got questions from patrons and, uh we'll, we'll see if we can get that audio out to patrons uh that was a ton of fun lots of good reasons to be on patreon .com slash law yeah plus

0:03:29 Lydia: A really nice to have community at this time. So I was really thankful for the time to spend, know, you together in that space and really enjoyed it. It's nice.

0:03:38 Thomas: I found out we uh we both found out about matt cameron's uh career we didn't know about uh this is uh a real thing did not know so uh yeah you'll have to find out at the uh the hangout audio for patrons only patreon .ca uh okay we'll pause and then we will We'll talk about this person you made up.

0:03:45 Lydia: Actor Matt Cameron, everybody. Buddy.

0:04:02 Thomas: Right. So Russell, it's not Vought. I keep wanting to say Vought because then it fits in with The Boys and that, but it's nicht Vought, it is just Vought.

0:04:10 Lydia: It's Vote. Yes.

0:04:12 Thomas: It's like how you say, oh, I ought to do that today. You know, ah, it's spelled V plus ought, but it's Vote. All right, sure.

0:04:19 Lydia: We're going to respect how he says his name is pronounced.

0:04:21 Thomas: Fine. Yeah.

0:04:23 Lydia: He is someone that some people might be familiar with. He previously served in Trump's 45 administration. He was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from served first, and then Russell Vogt came in July 2020 to January 2021. Officially, he was also acting director from 2019 to 2020. now And he is being nominated to serve in that role again, but just now from day one. Guy has been very deep in conservative tank land. He worked for Heritage Action years ago, which is the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation. He was named the policy director of the RNC Platform Committee in May 2024. He's a self -described Christian Christian nationalist, self -described.

0:04:32 Thomas: Wasn't that Mick Mulvaney? Cool.

0:05:07 Lydia: Trump's presidency, so kind of like in that, you know, during the Biden years, what was he up to? He founded the Center for Renewing America. And on their homepage, it says, for God, for country, for community, for good, at the top. Highlights of folks that work at Center for Renewing America, Jeff Clark, as you might might remember from the previous Trump administration and also starring in Eastman Dilemma, Jeff Clark. He is the the senior fellows there and he is the director of litigation.

0:05:35 Thomas: He the guy with the weird crap on his face? Okay.

0:05:37 Lydia: Yes, he is. And was the only one who was willing to move forward with Trump's insurrection plans at the DOJ. Favorite, actually, the cooch, Ken Cuccinelli, who has been very with Homeland Security over the years and immigration. He's the senior fellow at Center for Renewing America for Immigration and Homeland Security. And Mark Paoletta, specifically and with Paoleta's bio on this website, it says that he previously served in the Bush 41 White House Counsel Office, where he played a key role in the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas. Mark has written extensively on Justice Thomas's confirmation and jurisprudence, and he created two websites to honor and defend our nation's greatest jurist.

0:06:18 Thomas: Oh, wait. There another Clarence Thomas -like scholar? Oh, that's who I'm thinking of.

0:06:20 Lydia: Scott Gerber, where there's woke callback.

0:06:23 Thomas: Oh, okay. There's more than one person who cares enough about...

0:06:25 Lydia: Good thinking. Yeah, we should make them fight. We should say, like, you guys have to battle.

0:06:30 Thomas: Try to start a rivalry? Like, I saw his weird sycophantic website was getting more traffic than yours.

0:06:37 Lydia: Know, I know. What the heck did this organization do over the last four years? Well, they did a lot of blog entries and proposed budgets for certain agencies, specifically things like education, health and human services. And so you can actually look and see what they are proposing to for these various agencies. And this is important because Russell Vogt, who started this organization, is on track to be confirmed as the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the White House, setting budget direction and a of policy, too, actually. He has a very strong opinion about the OMB under him should look like air traffic control for an executive branch to help them with oversight to, quote, ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and at times ground planes that are flying off course. So that is how he views this role.

0:07:36 Thomas: Don't necessarily necessarily remember exactly what this is supposed to do.

0:07:40 Lydia: Of Management and Budget.

0:07:40 Thomas: Yeah, like now that I think about it, I'm like, how does, what is the real job? What last person who was a real person and did it, what did they do?

0:07:47 Lydia: The most prominent function is to produce the president's budget, which is then produced to Congress and then Congress evaluates that. Right. Right. So talked we about this a little bit.

0:07:56 Thomas: So it's a useless job.

0:07:58 Lydia: Well, we talked About this a Little bit where when we were talking about health and human services and how each of the entities within health and Human services, they talk with their scientists and their experts and they talk about what funding they want to do. And then that goes up the chain to health andhuman services and all of the different departments across the federal government then submit their plans to OMB. O .M .B. evaluates that in conjunction with the president and then they compile it together, collate it and submit it to Congress for review and consideration as the president's budget.

0:08:27 Thomas: That's what made me ask the question is like, wait a minute. Doesn't Congress do the budget? Aren't they in charge of the budget, but I guess this makes sense. It's like, they need to figure out how much these agencies like in a, in a typical circumstance, It's like, hey, we need to know, does a certain federal agency need, you know, a refresh of funding or more funding, less funding and being able to propose that and then pass it. But I feel like in recent times, since we do all our budget in the stupidest way possible where we're not even like passing a budget, I wasn't sure if the job was real anymore. But I guess, who knows?

0:08:56 Lydia: That's fair. And see, the person person who survived under the Biden administration was Shalanda Young. And she previously worked as the staff director for the United States House Committee on Appropriations. So talk a little bit about how Russell Votes organization during the Biden years imagined that the budget should work for some of these agencies. So for education, they proposed to cut twenty five point one billion dollars, about a third of the budget for education because they say it's a key funder of critical race theory and radical gender theory. Quote, the worldview is ideologically infused throughout the department's bureaucracy.

0:09:37 Lydia: And then they say that, you try to hide it because they name grants things like culturally responsive learning and social emotional learning. And those are all woke ideology, things that we shouldn't be funding. Have documentations of examples of how things in the Department of Education are against parents. All the footnotes that you see in these documents are things like Fox News, Washington Free Beacon. These are the sources that they are using to produce this documentation to justify cutting $25 billion from the Department of Education. The FBI, they are also very, very concerned about the FBI and how the FBI has been handling its money. They want to cut about 24 percent of the FBI's budget, and they're going to do it by eliminating the entire intelligence branch, which was established in 2014 by James Comey. And from what I can tell, they're on about this because there a whistleblower report issued from branch of the F .B .I. that was titled Radical Traditional Catholics. And I think they're pretty mad about that. And so now they just want to get rid of it and say the FBI.

0:10:40 Thomas: Is this that famous thing where they're like hey we can't do extremism because then it's it's just republicans we've realized so the

0:10:47 Lydia: They say that we used to be worried about, you extremists and now we're too focused on like domestic violent extremists.

0:10:54 Thomas: Ones that actually stormed the cast capital yeah

0:10:57 Lydia: Yeah yeah. It used to to be like homegrown violent extremists. Now it's domestic violent extremist. They go on and on and on about that in various documents on this website. Also are in favor of eliminating funding for Ukraine. They say that our should bear the cost of their own defense. 43 percent cut to housing and urban development, 43 percent, a phase out of Section 8 grants because, quote, they are a magnet for crime and decreased property values. Want to cut nearly 30 percent of health and human services budget. That's huge. And they say it's because they're a key supporter of the abortion industry and the transgender medical industry. Also say that the CDC.

0:11:37 Thomas: You know that industry that has like one person per state per year that gets any treatment boy

0:11:42 Lydia: I know. Also want to cut the CDC's budget by two thirds because they are too involved in trying to prevent STDs and chronic disease.

0:11:52 Thomas: What a nice cush job it is to be a republican be a mega oh I think we're just this this cut by two thirds, this cup, I'm not gonna, you the details, but just cut, you know, this massive organization that's really complex and probably does a lot of good things. Probably does some cuttable things, but rather than actually do any meaningful analysis, ah, two thirds gone. Cool, man.

0:12:17 Lydia: He was behind not carrying out the funding appropriated by Congress for Ukraine, you that led to Trump's first impeachment. So he's behind that. And that comes to is the Impoundment Control Act and what a lot of folks are talking about now. And what has been brought up specifically related to the federal funding freeze that happened last night that has since been enjoin just a a little bit before we started recording. The Impoundment Control Act was a result of Nixon just kind of not spending what Congress was telling him to spend. Congress would say, you know, this needs to go for, you Know, these various programs to serve these various purposes, and then Nixon just wouldn't. Would say like, Nah, I'm

0:12:27 Thomas: This guy. Wow. Right. Yeah. Yeah

0:13:01 Lydia: Not gonna do that.

0:13:01 Thomas: You would think wouldn't be how good it should work if you're a co -equal branch and you congress decides to pass a law that funds something the president should have to do it what

0:13:11 Lydia: And Vogt is like very much of the opinion that it's unconstitutional. I bring bring this up because he his committee hearing just last week. He had two. And so we're going to talk specifically about the Senate Budget Committee. And we had previously talked about like Tim Kaine really stepping up when we did the Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing, but we didn't get to really like give him his due during that. He did a great job in this hearing as well. Why don't you pull up that first clip I sent you and we'll hear Tim Kain kind of go, remember, self -described Christian nationalist, Russell Vogt. And Tim Kine, I think, frames his line of questioning very well.

0:13:49 Clip: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Congratulations on the nomination, Mr., but I want go back to the comment that Senator Warner read to you. There's 140,000 federal employees in Virginia, and you gave a speech that got a lot of attention when you said, we want bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they wake up in the morning we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains now I pay attention to the way people say things because there's a million ways you can make a point and the way you choose to make a point tells you something about the person there's a wonderful since I had an old testament reference over I'll go to a new testament or in Luke 645, from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks. We want people to be traumatized. We want to reduce federal spending, we want to deal with the deficit, but I haven't heard anybody give a gleeful speech about traumatizing the federal workforce. You don't want federal air traffic controllers going to the airport traumatized, do you, Mr. Vogt? No, Senator. You don't want the people inspecting our food, our medicine, our infant formula as federal. You don't want them to go to work traumatized, do you? No, Senator. You don' t want the PEOPLE interdicting drugs at the border. You don't want them going to work traumatized, do you? No, Sen. And you DON´T want people who are working for you at the OMB, who many people would think, well, they're in the White House, they must be... You don't want them traumatized, do you? No, sir. Thank you for expanding on that. Yeah, I mean, so, well I felt like I had to. Too, because I got 140 ,000 people, and most of them have families, and they're trying to do a good job. Was your comment about people being traumatized just focused on the federal workforce, or was it more broadly about state employees and local government employees, too? Senator, it was about the weaponized bureaucracy that unfortunately — I'm going to get to weaponizing in a minute, but you were talking about the federal workforce. I was talking about the bureaucracy that I experienced at the federal level. At the federal level. You were not talking about state employees? I can't speak. I have no experience with the state. You were talking about local employees? Was not. Your mother was a public school teacher, correct? Yes, Senator. So you were talking that you want the federal workforce to be traumatized. You're right. I

0:16:09 Lydia: He goes on and you know, I just like I was snapping like I've just so beyond other thing that that think is was really important here was know they know, the folks on the left on this committee are concerned about the way that he has treated the Impoundment Control Act in the past and the way that he is talking about it now and may use it and may not adhere to it in the future. So I have another little clip here that I'd like to hear from Senator Murray, where she really kind of drills into this point.

0:16:12 Thomas: This guy has these dead eyes god this guy he's

0:16:38 Clip: Mr. Vought, I appreciated the opportunity to meet with you last week, but I do contend to have very serious concerns regarding your nomination, starting with your position and record on impoundments. I do not believe what happened in the case of withholding security assistance to Ukraine in 2019 while you were acting OMB director was an accident or a misunderstanding, and I fear it is actually a harbinger of what is to come these next four years. In fact, on his first day in office, we saw the President order, among other things, what appears to be an illegal deferral of the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and Foreign Assistance Funds, as Senator Merkley referred to. And Mr. Vogt, your written response when pressed on this, that you will follow the advice of the incoming OMB General Counsel, Mark Paoletta, someone who has called the Impoundment Control Act a stupid law, and recently tweeted at you to impound baby impound is a bit rich. Look, as I said to you at our meeting, members of Congress on both sides must know a deal is a deal. A deal is a when we reach a bipartisan agreement on major legislation. Agreements cannot happen and Congress cannot function without that level of trust. And impound baby impound is not the answer I am looking for. So when I ask you today, will you, if confirmed, ask Director, faithfully follow the law, the Impoundment Control Act, yes or no? Senator, we will faithfully uphold the law. The President ran on the notion that the Impounding Control Act is unconstitutional. I agree with that. I would, in response to both questions, say that what the President has unveiled already are not impoundments. They are programmatic delays. Has the impoundment law ever been said to be unconstitutional by a court of law? Not to my knowledge. No, it has not. So it is the law of the land. I don't care what the president said when it was running. It is the Law of the Land. So will you follow that law if you are confirmed in this office? Senator, the president and his team is going to go through a review with our lawyers, if confirmed, including the Department of Justice to explore the parameters of the law with regard to the Impoundment Control Act. He hasn't developed a strategy that he's announced as it pertains to how we would approach it. There are pieces of legislation that have been proposed by members of this committee. We propose legislation all the time. If the rule

0:17:37 Lydia: Who works for him at the Center for American. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

0:17:42 Thomas: Impound baby impound

0:19:21 Clip: Of the law in a state is that it's a 15 mile an hour speed limit. You can't just say, well, I think that's irresponsible and I'm going to challenge it, so therefore I don't have to follow it. The impoundment law is the law. Will you follow it or not? You can say that we're going to look at it and you might challenge it in court, but it is the Law today. Will you Follow that Law? Ask Director. Senator, the reason why the President ran on this is that 200 years of Presidents had this authority to manage taxpayer resources. But the law is the law. We follow the law And what he found in the first term was that we had agencies that would push out spending at the end of the fiscal year Mr. Chairman, let me take my time back for a minute and just tell all of us we work all the time on appropriations where I am ranking number to come to an agreement. Senator Graham, you and I work on agreements and we decide yeah, okay, we'll both vote for this we have an agreement How can we ever have an agree in the future if a president, whoever he or her may be in the feature teacher has say over that, saying, yep, never mind, I'm not going to pay for this part of it. We have to have agreements. It is the law of the land. And I have to say that your answering this should be disconcerting to every single member on this committee.

0:20:35 Thomas: Ought to do it no I don't know yeah it's like it's it's so interesting to see the last serious people try to like ask serious questions and

0:20:36 Lydia: I know I wish I know wish I know I mean Senator Padilla actually calls out Lindsey Graham who's the chair of this committee he calls him out by like name during his questioning about this issue too that you know why why are you okay with you things that that have worked on so hard to then not be be used as expected.

0:21:01 Thomas: It's really hard to know what to do because I get it. I mean, it's sort of mean it's asking questions we know the answer to and we know they're not going to answer. The hope is that while we're illustrating that so that it makes some difference. And I can't blame any of the Senate. Again, we don't have the power to do anything. We do not have the Power to do Anything when it comes to this. If they want to pass this person through, they will. Have the votes. But not sure what we need. I wish we had something better. I wish I here's what I will say for Democrats. They at least need to all accept that this is the reality. The answer to why Lindsey Graham doesn't give a shit is because he knows that all that matters is what Trump says. It's all that matters. I don't, again, I don't know the perfect way to formally a question in the the Senate hearings that does... I don't know. Maybe there isn't a way to formulate a question in the Senate hearings that will actually accomplish anything along those lines. But I do hope that at least the Democrats are operating under the reality, which is that it doesn't matter. They don't care. All they care about is Trump.

0:21:59 Lydia: In the hearing, we hear from Senator Whitehouse, Sheldon Whitehouse. And great line of questioning here as well. And it actually gets it's kind of, kind of testy. So I'd love for you to play that so we can hear what he has to say.

0:22:02 Thomas: Love White House. Can

0:22:13 Clip: I would like to ask you some questions about these executive orders. President Trump fired off 26 executive orders, I believe, his first day. Are you familiar with them? I'm getting familiar with him, Senator. I've been trying to stay abreast to them and read them. I haven't read through all of them. But I'm aware that he has been very active, and I've been reading a number of them." Did you have any role in preparing any of them? Senator, that's part of the deliberative process that a transition goes through. And I'm not going to invade that deliberative process.

0:22:48 Clip: Wait, wait, wait. Hold. Can we have a point of order here and stop the clock? Um I was the chairman of a congress in which we had, I think, over 40 hearings and in those hearings uh never once did I tell a republican colleague what questions they could or could not ask those are kind of not my business and we had somebody out there questions I will tell you. And we certainly never had a witness tell senators what questions they could and could not ask. So I guess I'm like, why can I not get an answer? Is there some new rule in this committee as to where these executive orders came from? That's perfectly, to me, legitimate congressional oversight. Oversight and over and over this witness has told us what he what questions he will answer but the oath he took was to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth in response to our questions so if there's some new limitation about what question I can answer I would like to understand that if not I'd like to have the chair tell the witness to answer my questions well as I understand it um there's no attorney client privilege here right You're not claiming an attorney claim? I'm not claiming a privilege, Senator. Okay, yeah, well, you're not part

0:22:49 Thomas: Are you talking about no of that is real oh

0:24:23 Clip: Of the administration. Generally speaking, I guess the question is, did you advise on executive orders and which ones? Is that the question? Yeah. Can you kind of tell us that, please, if you could? Senator, I was not a member of the transition.

0:24:23 Thomas: Yeah he did he said dealer of privilege uh

0:24:24 Lydia: Deliberative prophecies. Mm

0:24:39 Clip: I was nicht ein Mitglied in der Präsidentskampagne. Do you have knowledge of where the executive orders were drafted? I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of whether the executive order was drafted.

0:24:39 Thomas: God what a joke

0:24:43 Lydia: Hum.

0:24:54 Clip: Do you know, for instance, if some of them came out of language from the Center for a Newing America, or some of the came out Project 2025, or some came out Heritage Institute, or the American Petroleum Institute? Do you an answer to those questions? I can't imagine they came from Project 2025. The president disassociated himself repeatedly from that. But no, I can give you a comprehensive answer with regard to where the executive orders were compiled. My assumption is that they were compiled within the transition. Well, we will see, because I think there's every reason to believe that they came from special interests and lobbyists, and we'll pursue that.

0:25:36 Lydia: All All what's important here is folks might remember that Russell Vogt is thought to as the key architect of Project 2025. He's the person who wrote the chapter on the executive office, laying out the role of the OMB, laying Out the role of the chief of staff, all the deputy chiefs and their policy. In addition, I mean, we're not idiots. We know Project 2025 is setting this stuff. If you covered this on the show before as well, but the Center for Climate Reporting went undercover and was able to not only sit down and speak with Russell Vogt himself, and we'll play that clip as well. But specifically with someone who worked for the Center für Renewing America, Russell Vogt's organization, talking about the second phase of Project 2025 and how they were planning to go about doing that.

0:26:25 Thomas: We've seen this video, I don't know if we played this part.

0:26:28 Clip: First phase of Project 2025 is a 922 -page policy book published openly. The second phase is a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency. These much more detailed plans are confidential. The Freedom of Information Act allows the public to request government communications, but Metacroft reveals they plan to avoid these rules. Yeah, the goal is to familiarize all the transition team people with these plans, but you don't actually, like, send them to their working place. You know, you could just give the handbooks to everyone, going, this is the game plan for the admin here. If the press knows that that's what you're doing, that they're going to immediately just say, I request all of your emails from the airwaves. You know. You are a real person.

0:27:27 Lydia: So explicitly saying in this clip that, you know, the playbook was, he says executive orders, policy plans, you know, all of those things like the the things that allowed Trump to from day one issue 26 executive orders and a number of other administrative actions he was not able to accomplish the first time. Those were all prepped ahead of time. And here Here, one of the employees for the Center for Renewing America specifically says that Russ oversaw all of that. This, to me, is telling me that, like, he is he's absolutely lying during his confirmation hearing to Sheldon Whitehouse's face.

0:28:00 Thomas: This is crazy. Yeah. Oh, man. And what sucks is we don't control the House, so we can't do anything. I don' t... I mean, Whitehouse said he would look into it. I don't know if there's, like, an extent to which, you know, Democrats, kind of, on their own can, like look into something and, I mean... I guess White House produces reports all the time, you know? Like, maybe we, his office can just kind of put together, you something, but like, yeah, we don't have oversight right now because we don't have control of anything. And, uh, just so frustrating because we need to just vote for the right people, not the fascists. We just needed to do that. And so it's infuriating how much our country did not understand that.

0:28:10 Lydia: So there's nothing we can do about it. Mm hmm.

0:28:32 Lydia: Just and to close this out, Well, I thought we should hear from Russ himself during this undercover reporting and they were able to sit down with him explicitly and talk about Project 2025 and Trump.

0:28:52 Clip: Believes that in his first term, Trump's agenda was frustrated by what he calls the deep state. So Vote is planning a radical centralization of government power under the president, Firing civil servants and ending the independence of agencies like the FBI and DOJ. 80 % of my time is working on the plans of what's necessary to take control of these bureaucracies. And we are working diligently on that, whether it's destroying the agency's notion of independence or independent from the president. Vote has also been preparing documents based on fringe legal theories, arguing the president has the power to use the military against protesters.

0:29:34 Clip: George Floyd obviously was not about race, it was about destabilizing the Trump administration.

0:29:34 Lydia: Insurrection Act. Unbelievable.

0:29:42 Clip: We put out, for instance, a 50 -page paper designed

0:29:44 Thomas: It couldn't possibly be about the black man that was killed couldn't be that you

0:29:47 Clip: For liars to know that the president has, you know, been buried both around the border and elsewhere to maintain raw water with the military. And that's something that, you guys, it's going to be important for him to remember and his lawyers to affirm. But we've given him the case for that.

0:30:07 Thomas: Know it's funny is when James O'Keefe from Project Veritas, the, you know, right-wing version of this, they do an undercover at an abortion clinic and you can tell the editing is like yes we like that baby yum yum we should eat that baby and And you're like, yeah, definitely. That's totally what they did. This one, they're just like, hey, tell us, you know, the evil plan. Oh, evil plans? Yeah, sure. Okay. So evil plan, where do I start? So evil Plan 1, and they just like tell the evil Plan, and it's like the difference in that, like Project Veritas thinks they're doing this, but with these, you who are not in on the Illuminati Democrat, you or whatever. It's just like abortion clinic workers who will say stuff that their confusing questions that don't make any sense this is crazy yeah

0:30:52 Lydia: I know it's absolutely insane. And this is the person who is going be behind all the decisions for money for all the agencies. And it's it's very concerning. I think the way that Lindsey Graham kind of set up the confirmation hearing, it's pretty certain votes going to get confirmed. He was like, I'm pretty sure you're going to gets yeses from all of us and nos from all them, like explicitly said that in the in the hearing. So it's just a joke.

0:31:20 Thomas: That that little bit with

0:31:21 Lydia: A joke, I

0:31:21 Thomas: Lindsey graham was so funny because he approached that was so funny from in the darkest way like well I the way it works is like you I guess you know he's kind of got you like can you is it okay and will will he get mad if you answer this no do you will he should I text him will he get mad? No. Okay.

0:31:31 Lydia: You just answer. Yeah yeah. And

0:31:38 Thomas: Why don't you go ahead and just say something. Okay, go ahead. All right. Yeah. We're not that far away from that. Yeah.

0:31:40 Lydia: Lie. Just lie. I know.

0:31:47 Thomas: Could you just lie for the Senator, please? No, one's going to call you on it. We'RE close to that. Oh boy.

0:31:49 Lydia: Yeah, it's so crazy. It's so crazy. But again, to end on on a happy note, at least the nonsense that they were up to last night to freeze federal funds has been enjoined. So we have a pause there. We have a cause there. And hopefully Hopefully there's enough outrage and concern that they'll dial that back or know that they will change course.

0:32:05 Thomas: Mean, sure. Yeah, see about the, I mean that, that's just so, that'S just so crazy. I think that's going going to be a case of the absolute fundamentalists um trump maybe being at odds like if he gets bad enough press trump will be like I don't want to get this bad press because he just doesn't like that but this is crazy I mean I in terms of the pause on funding I mean we're going to we're gonna be trying to like with that one stupid thing they did we're gonna be to figure out what that means and what you the stakes of that are forever ever you know it's it's that's wow yeah

0:32:42 Lydia: Going to be more on that there's gonna be more than that so vote

0:32:42 Thomas: Well yeah it seems like he's going to be just be confirmed then probably yeah and

0:32:47 Lydia: So yeah yeah they haven't voted him out of committee yet um the democrats on that committee are asking for a delay because of the federal funding freeze that happened last night they said like we need to talk about this um I'm you know I'm urging specifically senator murray out of Washington. I'm urging Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, a fellow appropriator, to hold Russ Vogt's nomination that was supposed to occur this Thursday.

0:33:11 Thomas: It would be inappropriate not to they're

0:33:14 Lydia: That, yeah, yeah. Republicans should not advance that nomination out of committee until the Trump administration follows the law. So we'll see what the Republicans want to do about that and if they're serious about being fiscally responsible.

0:33:25 Thomas: Is that fiscal responsibility if you're just like I'm not gonna pay my mortgage anymore more like, and no, that's not in one sense that, Hey, it's I'm, I'm being a but the other sense is like, yeah, no.

0:33:34 Lydia: Yeah you've improved your cash flow but it's certainly not responsible

0:33:39 Thomas: Right. Well, thanks so much for that. And, uh, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, I will be on with Heather Varanini for the answer to two weeks ago, bar question and a new brand new one. So thanks Lydia. And then we'll see you for the the shout outs. This show is brought to you by Quince. It's a new year and not the greatest start, not the best year so far. Out of 10, I'll say, terms in of the year. I think we should treat ourselves wherever we can because a great way to do so. Refresh your look with great clothing and stay on budget at Quince Because and chilly out there. I think everyone needs Quince's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60. Resolution is about working out, there's no Better Workout Motivation Than Some New Activewear. Performance tees and tech shorts are perfect for any movement, and you might be wondering, Thomas, Thomas, how are they making amazing clothing and within your budget? Well, How I'm so glad you asked. Way they do that is by partnering directly with the top factories, cutting out the cost of the middleman and passing the savings onto us. They only work with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices. They use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. My Quince towels, that was the most recent Quince purchase. I still have the shorts I've bought, the joggers I bought, and Still great, still looks good as new. I also have the towels, and I'm telling you, these towels. I feel like I was using a tissue paper for my towel before, because towels have been a revelation, especially in the winter when you just you want that nice, warm, thick towel to greet you after shower. Fantastic. So upgrade your closet this year without the upgraded price tag. To quince.com slash OA for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash OA to get free shipping and 365-day returns. One more time, quince.com slash OA.

0:33:51 Lydia: You will I

0:35:32 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:35:38 Thomas: Heather Varanini, how are you doing today?

0:35:40 Heather: Doing pretty well. I'm really curious to see how this grading app business turns out. What about you? How are you?

0:35:46 Thomas: Can make you a grading app for a $100 ,000 if you need one. I'll figure it out. I'm a disruptor in the area of grading apps. Yeah, this this this shy guy, this Silicon Valley, David, developer David, totally ripping off poor Professor Paula.

0:36:04 Heather: Know. What has the world come to? Well,

0:36:06 Thomas: But more importantly, what in the world is this question? Why don't you remind us what happened here?

0:36:12 Heather: Professor Paula was suing developer David in federal court under diversity to void a contract due to mistake. So they originally got into an agreement where David would create an app that would help Professor Paula with her grading and make it easier for her. And he agreed to make this grading app in one year for $100 ,000. But a couple of months into the project, David realized it would take double the amount of time And that he would need to charge her double. Unfortunately, Paula couldn't do that. That was too much. So she decided to turn around and sue him. She sued him in federal court for a mistake. We're trying to figure out once that complaint was filed, David moved, filed a motion for a more definite statement. And we're trying to figure out whether the court would grant David's motion. We had our answer choice, A, yes, because the circumstances constituting mistake must be pled with particularity. B, yes because a complaint must show that there's a possibility that the plaintiff is entitled to relief. C, no because the complaint provides the defendant with notice of the claim or D, no, because the complaint contains a short and plain statement of the Claim. We're tying to figure which is our best answer. You did a great job nailing this right away to say that this was a civil procedure question.

0:37:24 Heather: We're in federal court trying to figure out how the court should rule on a motion. And we know from the call of the question because it's asking if the court should grant David's motion for a more definite statement. And this is classic civil procedure.

0:37:35 Thomas: Classic.

0:37:35 Heather: Like you said, sometimes it was trying to get us to think about contracts, but you did not fall for that trap. We have our subtopic. And you are right here to think about going to the answer choices because the answer choice is where the tip off to help us determine where in the universal civil procedure that we land. Here it's really talking about pleadings or what's required for a complaint to get into court. And we know this because three of our answer choices are telling us that. First, we have answer choice A, which uses the language with particularity. About possibility of entitlement to relief. Leave. Then D talks about short and plain statement of the claim. So we're right in this pleadings area. So that's how we know that we're going straight into pleadings. I can talk a little bit about what that means. So for a complaint to get into federal court, we use the federal rules of civil procedure, which tells us under rule 8a, that there's three things that are required. We have to have a statement of court's subject matter jurisdiction. You have to talk the plaintiff has to say court's jurisdiction over the subject of the case. Also have to have a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the plaintif is entitled to relief.

0:38:42 Heather: And then lastly, we also have the demand for the relief sought. Essentially, the plaintiffs must say what it is that they want. You mentioned a little bit too about mistake. What is it? And I will just touch on that very briefly. Mistake in contracts is a defense to contract formation. What it does is if you want to get out of a contract, you can say, whoops, there was a mistake. A lot of times it's just a mistake that's not in accord with a present fact. And there's two flavors. It's unilateral, bilateral. We don't have to worry about that too much. But usually when there's something that's central to the agreement that maybe you didn't know at the time of contract formation, you can say, listen, I didn't know that. And that would have affected whether or not I got into the agreement. That's the case, the person who got intothe agreement and did not assume the risk of the, let's say, of the agreement, they can work to void the contract. And that is exactly what our friend Paul is trying to do here. So as we're looking at the answer choices, we're trying to figure out what's happening. So we see answer choice C, which says that the complaint provides a defendant with notice. True. But we get this noticing that comes up in civil procedure. And it definitely happens in a couple of different ways, right? By itself isn't enough, right. We get notice when there's a summons that also with these requirements for the complaint under 8A, that the goal of that, assuming that it's met, is to provide the defendant notice. So notice alone, that's not enough, right? We

0:40:03 Heather: Need more than that.

0:40:03 Thomas: It didn't really answer this question. I didn't think.

0:40:06 Heather: Yeah, that's exactly it. So it's part of how we get C out. So you were right to eliminate answer choice C. then we'll go to answer choice B because you also eliminated that one, right? Is because the complaint must show there's a possibility that the plaintiff is entitled to relief. And you were talking about, isn't the relief canceling the contract? The answer to that question is yes. So yeah, saying, listen, I want to get out of this thing. Yeah. That's the relief. I'll also hit on this other portion here. The second part of the requirement here, the short and plain statement of the claim showing the plaintiff is entitled to relief, required. There's a lot of meat in this, and I'm not going to go too in -depth about it, but there's a lot there. Have some case law that tells us that the standard is not possible. Possibility isn't the standard. We have plausibility. The plaintiff must plead facts supporting a plausible claim. The language here that says possibility isn't

0:40:59 Thomas: Just a misstatement of the rule. Okay, okay,

0:41:01 Heather: And that's part of how we can kick B out. So B is also wrong for that reason. Then we're left with the answer choices that you narrowed it down to as well. The complaint contains a short and plain statement with the claim, or because the circumstances constituting the mistake must be met with particularity. It's true that all complaints must contain a short and plain statement of the claim. That's true. And as part of that, the facts have to support a plausible claim. That's truth. The courts told us that, quote, a claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for misconduct alleged. And to your point, we have this sentence from Paula that's saying that, the defendant induced plaintiff to mistakenly enter into the contract with defendant for him to build a grading app. That's really all we have, right? That's not a lot. Is that, if you're looking at it, is that enough to lead the court to plausibly believe that there was a mistake when it came to the contract? That's kind of the first question. To make it a little bit more complicated, because that's what we do here, is also there's this other rule here that tells us that when we have a complaint that alleges mistake, it has to be pled with particularity. Referred to as a heightened pleading standard. There are certain types of complaints or certain types of allegations, like fraud, like mistake, in which the pleader, the plaintiff here, has to give more. They have to do more,

0:42:30 Heather: Right? And you kind of had mentioned that. You said it's particular unless they need more, right? In the instance of mistake, then the pleaser has to explain and give more detail about the circumstances constituting the mistake, right, how, what, where, why, where. In. And usually this will likely include the precise nature. What made the mistake? What was it about? When did it happen? And that kind of thing.

0:42:52 Thomas: I'm still not understanding what mistake is to be honest with you. I think it's one where like it's unfortunate that that's a plain language word that we all use every day but I think It's a very specific legal legal thing happening. Cause I don't know why, Paula would even be the one suing. It seems like she signed for 150 to make an app and David's like, ah, it's going to cost too much. Wouldn't it just be like, sucks to be you. Okay. Give me my app. Then it's like, she would sue for him failing to perform. I don't know why she would have to take the initiative to be like, well, guess I shouldn't assign this because you were wrong about something. I don't really even understand how this is working. So does why I'm asking, like, does mistake mean something like than the plain word would be?

0:43:41 Heather: In to mistake, certain things have to happen. It's one of those instances in which there's a specific definition in it allows somebody to do something specific. And I think that's kind of where a little bit of the crossover is happening. So she didn't listen, she didn't have to sue. What that kind of gets her out of is that that gets her Out of having to wait another extra year, and it gets her out of having to pay double the amount rather than what they originally agreed on. She certainly doesn't have to file the lawsuit but she does hear because um what's happening is he kind of comes back to her and says well I can only do this if I have another year and you pay me double the amount of money

0:44:18 Thomas: I guess. Oh, you could read it that way. He says a few months into project, David realized it would take two years and $300,000, but that's like, that's your cost, man. I don't care. I agreed to pay you 150. I I don't it doesn't say that he demanded that, but are we just supposed to assume that unless

0:44:28 Heather: I think that's a reasonable inference here is that that's the next step is that david was like I'm not doing this until it

0:44:40 Thomas: We change the terms of the contract?

0:44:43 Heather: Yeah so mistake. Mistake allows her to get out of the contract completely because mistake here also indicates that had she known this information at the Times of Contract Formation, she would not have entered in, like she wouldn't have gotten into it with him, right? A lot of times mistake here is looking like, usually it's the mistake of fact exists at the time of the agreement, um, it relates to like a basic understanding of

0:45:08 Thomas: Can you give me like a real example of this happening? What would be a good case of this person does sue for mistake and it's a good case and it is right.

0:45:17 Heather: There's a there's a mistake mutual one that's like about it's called the barren cow case. This is not this is not that it's literally called that because like basically two people agreed to sell a cow because they thought the cow was so dumb. I'm sorry. Ranchers basically get into agreement. Argument. Agrees to sell the cow, one agrees to buy the cow because that the cow was barren, essentially. And because the price of a barren cow and the price of a fertile cow is different, right? So the barren cow is less money. So they get into it. The guy buys the cow at the less price because they think she can't basically produce cow babies or whatever. Then once they find out that she can, all of a sudden they sue each other because one guy sues because, oh, whoops, like she can have cow babies I'm sorry calves um sorry this is where my brain is at today

0:46:01 Thomas: I've now I have custody of a cat one of them's suing because they're

0:46:04 Heather: Yeah

0:46:04 Thomas: Mad about having a baby of calf and the other is like oh you should have paid me more huh I

0:46:11 Heather: From what I remember yeah sorry

0:46:12 Thomas: It seems like mistake does not fit the fact pattern here is that the point yeah

0:46:16 Heather: Because it does in the sense of that, like in the sense of both she didn't know that it was going to cost double the amount of time and effort at the time that the contract existed. So like, neither, like, also, frankly, neither of them knew at the time that the contract started. So there's like also good argument that it could be mutual mistake, in the sense that neither of the new when it existed at the time. That's a good argument for even mutual mistake here.

0:46:39 Thomas: What particularity would we need here? Because I think another problem is the question tells us stuff that seems like particularity to me. And then it's the questions kind of, it doesn't really make clear what's in the complaint or not, because it does say she alleged that David's promise induced her. So it seems like that's some particularity, but is that not enough here?

0:47:00 Heather: That's a great question. And it's not because when we're looking at something like this, and the question asks like this what we are really looking at is what's in the quotation marks, essentially. And for mistake, we need to hear more. We need to hear everybody who was involved with the mistake, when it happened, what it was over, how the mistake happened. And so we need to hear a lot more information in order for it to meet this pleading standard here. And so when David asked for a more definite statement, the court's going to say, yes, of course.

0:47:32 Thomas: Okay. So I would say, okay, this makes sense to me now that I think about it, because if this weren't true, then it would be a way for anyone to try to get out of a contract. Oh, I made a mistake. I didn't know. Then the court's like, well, what, what didn't you know? Oh, just, I didn't think it would be this or something. You know, whereas like, it makes sense that the law would be like, all right, so that this isn't some way that everyone can try to get out an unfavorable contract or something, you have to really say, hey, I thought this this word meant this, or I thought like, you know, whatever the mistake is, it seems like it can be all kinds of different things, but I thought that this meant this and I was wrong for this specific reason, et cetera, etetera. So is that the kind of thing? Are there like, is is there like a list of things you have to say, or is it just, you know, vaguely more specific?

0:48:16 Heather: I mean, the comments section of the rule, because oftentimes when we're looking at a rule book or statutory book like the Federal Civil Procedure, it'll have a comment section that helps to kind of explain. And it kind of does talk a little bit about the who, what, when, where, why, and how. And so that's usually what we get in terms of what they're looking for. So that will help to kind of meet that requirement. So it's not hard and fast, but the more information to try to explain and try to raise also to heightened pleading standard to explain the circumstances constituting the mistake. Again, we're trying to put the defendant there on notice about what exactly that he did wrong and how exactly that they can respond.

0:48:57 Thomas: Well, Is it something he did wrong or it doesn't have to be? It seems like It can be a mistake. That's just a a mistake or it can be a mistake that you're alleging. Maybe the person did something wrong. It could kind of be either, but she is.

0:49:06 Heather: And specifically in this instance, it's that she's alleging a myth.

0:49:08 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Right. Right, okay. So, all right. Well, one. So it's I got it wrong. The answer is A instead of D, but proud that I at least got there, but it, this is a weird one because it just feels like what more specificity would you need than, well, he told me it was 150,000 and it was actually $300,000. Like

0:49:16 Heather: It's your second chance answer. It has to say that in the quotes in the complaint.

0:49:30 Thomas: So it says, but no, it's in the complain. Paula alleged that David's promise to finish the app for a specified dollar amount induced plaintiff to mistakenly enter into to the contract with defendant for him to build a grading app.

0:49:43 Heather: Yeah, usually anything that says after the plaintiff alleged, and then in addition to what's in the quotes, that's usually the extent of what you can know that's in the complaint. So you're kind of narrowing in on that, and it's limited to whatever is in that. And that's part of why some of these questions are so tricky, is because you're reading more based on what's in the entire fact pattern. But

0:50:03 Thomas: In the complaint, Paula alleged that David's promise to finish the app for a specific amount induced plaintiff to mistakenly enter into the contract. So what more would she need for this to be?

0:50:11 Heather: So time period. So for example, she would have to say, our original agreement was for a year and $150,000. But after a few months into the project, then it moved to $300,000 over the course of two years. It would need to be more specific in that way.

0:50:27 Thomas: Well I hate this question because I feel like a lot of it is just because it the conventions of question asking like don't normally have the entire complaint in a question it sort of summarizes stuff and says this is what's in the complaint and we assume that there's other stuff beyond the one sentence that's quoted but then in this question it's like ah gotcha that was all that was in there or something I don't this seems weird to me but I I think that if I I were a law student I would probably just have to remember wait mistake means additional heightened pleading standards right and I would just be like that would clue me in that like ah okay there's probably needs to be more here because I guess like you say a short and plain statement of the claim which was my answer d doesn't really answer the question now that let you say all that because that just one the requirements of like even being here it wasn't necessarily an answer to it more particularity right is that true okay so yeah the key was that heightened pleading standard sounds like and I got it wrong so the answer was a darn it my streak ends at four but hey you know four questions straight. Pretty happy about that. I'm still just a hair above 60%. So you got me. This one, this was a tricky one, but have to find out if anyone on the internet saw through Heather's dastardly tricks. I'm going to sue you for mistake. I was mistakenly led to believe this question told me what was in the complaint, but I guess it didn't. See you in court.

0:51:22 Heather: That's exactly it. Yeah?

0:51:57 Thomas: Right heather let's take a look at the winners uh blue sky and of course that's open args dot b sky dot social I don't know just search open arg so you'll find it had three answers and uh they were all all correct. So but I wanted to read from some other knowledgeable answers and my winners are going to be the commenters who made me feel better because as a couple commenters that I appreciated. For one we had Elizabeth who commented as someone. Someone who litigates in federal court every day? I have no clue. Too much time is spent in law school on these kinds of weird problems that most lawyers rarely encounter. You should do a version of this with real life lawyer scenarios. And Katie also said, sometimes I bite my tongue with these to avoid giving away the game. But man, I frequently litigate in federal Court and anyone's guess on this one. So me and these two lawyers didn't really know. But other people got me and the lawyers, you know, me and though the litigators, frequently spent time in federal court. All right. I should award a real winner.

0:52:53 Heather: But I also want to do a quick shout out to say this is not uncommon for my students who do externships or have experience working um they say the same thing as they're working through some of these multiple choice questions when they're they're like, listen, this does not feel at all like some of the work I'm doing outside of school. And I'm just saying, listen. I hope you feel validated in hearing that from lawyers who do the work in federal courts and are saying, this is a little bit weird. And that's part of why I think the bar exam and the multiple choice questions can be so hard. So I'm like, I feel your pain. It's OK. You're doing good. This pain is temporary. It's going to be all right.

0:53:25 Thomas: Think I'll have to award the real Blue Sky Prize to TraxAttack, T-R-A-X-X dash attack on Blue Sky, who says, if developer David were defendant Donald, and by the way, you could have said also David Dennison. If developer David were developer David Dennisson, Cannon would step in and say he has unqualified immunity. Here, though, my guess is A. These particulars need more particularity. Well, you nailed it. Good job, TraxAttack. You want to give us our Reddit winner?

0:53:54 Heather: Absolutely. The Bisque said, my first inclination was D, but if I remember correctly from CivPro, claims alleging fraud or mistake are subject to the heightened pleading standard. And since plausibility rather than possibility is the typical Iqbal standard anyway, I don't think it could be B. I'm going with A. You were right on the money and did a great job explaining why some of those other wrong answers were wrong and

0:54:15 Thomas: Iqbal and Twombly. Did why I remember those names and don't remember what they mean.

0:54:19 Heather: Yeah, Iqbal and Twombly, also Twikbal, those are those two cases that help to explain part of the pleading standard that we use as we're talking about are needed for our pleading to get into court. That's exactly it. I was like, dang, that's good. Memory's good

0:54:33 Thomas: I don't know. They're very funny I think all the precedent should have, like the case law you need to know, should really memorable names. Iqbal and Twombly. I mean, come on. Fantastic. Yeah, that's that classic cop duo. Iqbal and Twombly. Iqbal plays it by the books, but not Twombly. No, not Twombly. Twombly is a loose cannon.

0:54:43 Heather: Yeah, sticks better it's a great civ pro slash buddy cop show.

0:54:59 Thomas: Dammit, Iqbal! I can't always play it by the book all our biggest winner is, of course, on patreon.com/law. That's always going to be where the biggest winner is the biggest. Congratulations, Heather. I hope you saved at least 1.3 times the excitement as you did for the other winners, because this is a patron. Patron, the great state of denial says, I'm curious why this is federal jurisdiction, but I guess that's not the question. Claims of fraud or mistake require specific pleading. It looks like Paula's claim did not have much detail. So I say the answer is A. I'll admit I looked up the pleading rules because this seems like one of those things you'd learn in law school and you just need to know the rule. Well, you looked it up. I don't know if you're confessing to cheating or saying you looked at it after, but either way, the Great State of Denial is the winner. Thank you so much. To everyone who plays. I love it so much. Read every answer, even if we only pick a few and we enjoy them so much, so keep it coming.

0:55:51 Heather: And I'm always as a teacher I'm always excited to hear people say they're doing a little bit of extra research that actually warms my heart I'm like yay well

0:55:58 Thomas: Didn't know I was allowed to do that, Heather. Can I, am I allowed to doing that? No way. I would have been doing that this whole time. No, I have to, I have do it without any help. Without any help or knowledge. That's the arbitrary rules I've set up for myself.

0:56:11 Thomas: All right. Well, after After this break, we'll get question 56 and I'll see if I can get it right without any or knowledge.

0:56:19 Thomas: Arguments is brought to you by Trade Coffee. Okay, so I have to ask this. Do you makes your coffee a home? Because if you don't, I am very much wondering what your excuse is, and I hope it's good, and maybe you have one. If you do not have an excuse, should be making your coffee home. For one, obviously, better economically. For two, it is going to be better coffee, like Especially if you use Trade Coffee, because no matter how you brew or what coffee maker you use, getting coffee from Trade Coffee is the easiest way to instantly upgrade your coffee experience. You know for sure that you're drinking the best coffee that you could be? I'll tell you, coffee for me, one of the main benefits of life. Want to make sure I get it right. I Trade Coffee has this quiz that you can do. And in a minute or less, they'll match you with your perfect coffee. If that first bag isn't quite right, Trade will replace it for free until they get it. Right. Right. With So something like coffee very individual I happen to like dark roast stuff know people who are like oh dark roast can't stand it love light roast people coffee is a great way to find you like what's take their quiz it's fantastic I did it. Match you up, with a perfect cup of coffe. This stuff is customizable exactly how you need it. You nightmare that is waking up, going to make the coffee, and you're out of beans. Because how are you supposed to go get more beans when you need the beans to do anything to It's awful. Trade coffee, I've got my amount calibrated so that I always have enough and never too much. And I'm going on vacation or something can delay next order you can schedule to ship sooner if you need don't settle for okay coffee. Head to drinktrade .com slash OA to receive up to three bags free. Drinktrades .com slash OA, to get up to 3 bags free with any new subscription. Drinktrde .com slash OA.

0:57:58 Thomas: Right, Heather, let's have question 56.

0:58:00 Heather: Private plane crashed near the Washington Monument, and Congress enacted a law

0:58:04 Thomas: Where do you bury the survivors? Know there's survivors. You don't bury them. Done. Got it. Thank you so much. Finally, a freebie. You

0:58:12 Heather: Prohibiting private planes from flying over Washington, D.C. An organization representing private plane pilots, the Private Plane Pilots Association of America, sued in federal court seeking to invalidate the law. Of the following is the strongest constitutional argument in favor of enacting such a law? A, the General Welfare Clause. B, Congress's police power over the District of Columbia. C, the Supremacy Clause, or D, the Free Exercise Clause?

0:58:42 Thomas: Know, this it often feels like I'm just constantly setting myself up for failure, I will say that right on reading a question like this, I do realize that if I were to go back to 2017 me, it's funny how many more things I know. No. And I do. I hope if there's anyone who's been listening a long time, like I hope we all at least recognize a lot more interesting things, which is important because if we're doing any sort of analysis or anything, you know, forget taking the bar. Just it helps in knowing enough to where it's like, oh, I need to look this up because I know there's something about that that's different. You know what I mean? Like, it's really cool because right away I'm like, all right, a plane crash. We got Washington, D.C. And I wouldn't have known this prior to doing opening arguments, but like Washington, D.C. has got those weird rules. I can't remember exactly what they are, but I would look them up if I could. But yeah, Washington, DC, it's the reason that we had DC v. Heller and least the reasonthat that like, balloon of a case was brought there because DC has weird rules, it is not really a state, it that police power answer, I think, is something. So I'll have to think about that. But it's interesting because there's there's just so much to this stuff that I think I would have known before listening to this show. So let's see if any of it helps me or if it just keeps me more confused. So the plane crashes near the Washington Monument. Is enacting a law prohibiting private planes from flying over Washington, D.C. and now if this were a state if were a State maybe that's a problem although I don't know if that's true because I feel like the airspace is like the FAA or whatever like the I feel like airspace has one of those things that like it's not really States rights usually like it there's there's some amount like you need to coordinate it there's FAA I feel like everything involving airports and all that like its pretty it's pretty federal rather than state level so I don't know if that matters, but if it's D .C., I already feel like that's not even going to be an issue necessarily because D .K. isn't a state. It's got the weird rules. So, off the bat, do I feel like Congress can enact a law prohibiting private planes from flying over Washington, D.C.? it feels like yes. I mean, I guess the question is, which of the following is the strongest constitutional argument in favor? So maybe a yes doesn't get me much. But I got to see why. Okay. So if an organization representing private plane folks sue to invalidate the law. So they're like, hey, how dare you prohibit us from flying private planes over Washington, DC. Okay, so which is the strongest constitutional argument in favor of enacting such a law? A is the general welfare clause. I feel like it's never going to to be that. I don't know if I'm making this up, but if this is right, Heather can tell me next week. I feel like it's never the general welfare clause. Just like it was the house thing. I hate that show, but it's not ever Lyme disease or something. I think it's like that. I don' t feel like. It's never general welfare. So few things seem to be that. Is Congress's police power over the District of Columbia. Now, I'm pretty sure that's real. I I think that's real. Police power sounds like something that wouldn't involve flying. If you think of just police power you might think like, you know, police officers or whatever and I don't think that's what it means. I think it's one of those old timey phrases that means something different. And police power over the District of Columbia, it strongly feels like that could be it. Because I do think that exists. I do you think it is that special carve out for D .C. And I do feel like this would sense as something you could enact if you have police power over something because the supremacy clause or d the free exercise clause well I cannot imagine how this would be the free exercise clause like I can't even think of a way that would help enacting a law banning private planes unless there's I mean that would be super tricky so I think I think here's the issue. I think we're meant to be thinking about B, the Congress's police power of the District of Columbia, or C, the supremacy clause. Because the supremacy cause, I think, is just about federal supremacy over the states in some way. I don't remember all the details, but I feel like that's what it wants us to think about. And could it be that the difference is if this were Washington in the state instead of Washington in D .C., obviously B wouldn't be the right answer. Maybe it's more about the supremacy clause. And then do you, like, don't even know if you could enact that law because while it makes sense that you can have federal regulation of airspace, it does seem a little extreme to ban all private planes in a state. But once again, since we're not talking about a state, I I'm going to go with a plain answer, but I worry because it all seems too easy. It all seems Too Convenient, am skeptical that this question will be that easy because I feel like one problem with this question and how easy it is, is that if you knew nothing and you just read the words, you'd be like, well, that answer has power. Over the District of Columbia, and that's what we're talking about. So that's the right answer. So that worries me a little because I just feel like the test takers wouldn't want to make it so easy for people who you have never read a law book. And you'd be like, yeah, that seems right. The same time, I can't really think of how it would be any of the other ones. I'm strongly strongly between B and C. It's either Congress's police. But I don't think it's the general welfare. I don'T think think that could be it. It's the free exercise clause, I'm just going to have to tip my hat to the test and be like, well done. You tricked me. I don't know what that could possibly be relating to this. So I'm between B and C. the trick be that somehow the supremacy clause is still what does it or something? Like if this isn't about police power and it's about just laws, like in general, like if there's no police power, I think that's the most plausible way I get this wrong, I would say. And between B and C, I would say the most plausible way that I get this wrong is it, I that I can think of. Another plausible way is it's just, I'm totally wrong about everything. There's something I'm not thinking of. But maybe this isn't about police power. Maybe it is just about supremacy over, I don't know, everything everything else, or the federal supremacy over the states and and DC or something prohibiting I got to just go go with B. I don't have a strong enough. can'T think of a clear enough articulation of why it would be a trap. So I think the safe thing to do is pick the plane answer. Cause sometimes it is just the plane. Answer. So I'm between B and C and I'm going with B. All I keep forgetting to say the category, I will go ahead and say, this is constitutional law. Seems pretty clear since we're talking about the constitution and the law about it. So that's also that just to throw that in there. Final answer B, if you'd like to play along, go to blue sky, follow open args, find the skeet that this is and quote skeet it and also go to reddit .com slash r slash open args but most of all if you want the biggest if you went nearly 1 .2 to 1 .3 times the excitement our praise of you then go to patreon .com law and play along there just find the post for this episode I'll label it it'll have t3b somewhere in there all right heather well I'm on pins and needles waiting to see where we bury the survivors here uh so we'll have to bring you back next week we can find out.

1:05:42 Heather: Guess we will.

1:05:46 Clip: Thank you for being, say we started from the bottom, now we're here, girl.

1:05:56 Thomas: Is now time to thank our new patrons at patreon .com slash law like I said we'll start with those new patrons thank you so much to james morgan kelly alissa tessa cole bill ellis Chris M-Dash. Oh, I love that. It's like a name, but not. Kristine Amdor, Farrah Lehman, Lance Leishman. Neil Savalia, Cynthia Baker, and James Ito. Wait, you so much and now uh for the hall of famers and uh why you what I'll go have these on the hall famers I can I can spare I can spear half these let me California law that if you're married you have to split yeah if it 56% of your Hall of Fame patron shoutouts don't you start us off with our Hall of Famers, our all time greats at patreon .com slash law

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1:08:42 Thomas: Malaika Chandler, Xakir The Dragon, the precious variant, Big Easy Blasphemy, RhondaTheDork.com, FRED R GROOTHUIS, Chris Waltrip, Classic libtard, and our top patron of all time currently, Mitchell. Thank you so much, top patrons. You are the absolute best. Pledge at that $5 level and above for at least a month, and you get a Hall of Fame shout out with eternal internal thank yous and fame and fortune as well.

1:08:56 Lydia: Mitchell and

1:09:07 Thomas: For listening, everyone. We'll see you for what I can only imagine is an impossibly full Rapid Response Friday. We will see everyone then.

1:09:06 Lydia: Our love oh god good luck bye

1:09:15 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.