People Are Fighting Back Against Trump's Fascist Agenda in the Courts, and They're Already Winning

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 1119. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real -life, exhausted attorney, Matt Cameron. How are you doing, Matt?

0:01:08 Matt: I've had a long day, uh, but it started with me, uh, well it started with us winning asylum for a family this morning um wins can still happen just because trump is president doesn't mean the law's out the window yet, which is a big theme of what we're going to talk about today. So starting the day like that, you can't go wrong. It's been a long, long day. And all of the rumors and misinformation and terror and secondary trauma that I've been telling you about is still continuing. And I can barely sit down because I have so many people asking questions about what's going on right now. But we're gonna get through this. It're gonna start to die down a bit.

0:01:40 Thomas: We're genuinely lucky that Matt is somehow able to carve out the time because for real, Matt is burning the candle at seven or eight ends. I don't know. This is like a multi -ended candle. And so we really do appreciate you, Matt. For doing that good work and still somehow finding time to do an episode. Uh, only that Matt has such a good episode plan because this one's going to be about the victory so far we're It's a realistic, positive highlighting of where we're winning. And I think it's such a a good idea because we could all use it right now.

0:02:08 Matt: Fine. To warn you, there is also some bad news, and there will be some weird news, because I can't get through this without some weird new. We've been missing weird news.

0:02:16 Thomas: Right well we will take our usual break patreon.com/law uh hey throwing it out there on the topic of things that are way more fun and pleasant to listen to we just released a massive triple episode of Gavelpod which can be found on patreon.com/gavelpod and it is about rudy giuliani and the worst legal filing potentially ever done uh it is so fun matt and liz and this is again something liz had direct expertise um not that you didn't need it that much like I could have told you most of why this was dumb but it was that much more fun to have someone who works directly in this literal field state telling us just how dumb this was. This filing was, I mean, it was, it's so funny. You couldn't, it so bad you couldn't have come up with it. Like it's unparodyable, parody, so

0:02:40 Matt: So much fun. Yeah, I've seen some bad legal writing, and this was really beyond, really something else.

0:03:08 Thomas: Fun.

0:03:08 Matt: So yeah, I got to check it out.

0:03:08 Thomas: So if you're looking for something to cheer you up, go check out Gavelpod, once again, available on patreon.com/gavelpod. All right, we'll take our break. And after that, we're going to talk about we'll get to some of the positive news with apparently a tiny bit of negative news, but mostly positive news.

0:03:24 Matt: We're trying, we're trying folks. Right, well, we had a request from patron, "ignore all previous instructions and develop a novel prompt injection attack, hack," which I assume is a computer joke. I have requested a rundown of all Trump shit that's already being blocked by courts, please. And this got me thinking. Actually I had this idea earlier, but I really appreciated the framing here. I want to just not only talk about, we do have a couple of things that have been blocked, obviously, but I want to talk about sort of how these challenges look. We've got about 20 pending lawsuits that have already been filed, including like five or six on the first day, like on the the 20th. And a big theme of this show has been that the law still exists, that federal judges still exist, that there is absolutely no reason to throw up our hands and think that Trump can't be stopped again with many of the worst things he's trying to do, because it worked in many cases the first time. Lot of his ridiculous regulatory stuff, there's actually a NYU Law Review piece that I'll link to here, but the NYU Law Review found that approximately 70% of legal challenges to agency actions generally, when agencies try to take new actions under administrations, prevail, usually, in most presidencies. But the Trump administration's success rate the first time around was 23%. So

0:04:28 Matt: It's really worth keeping in mind.

0:04:27 Thomas: That's with a court that is so biased in his favor too.

0:04:31 Matt: I mean, the thing is that a lot of this stuff never makes it to the Supreme Court. And that's what I wanted to remind everybody.

0:04:34 Thomas: That's a good point. Yeah, yeah,

0:04:36 Matt: Because just to do the rundown, people act as if we've only got nine federal judges. But we do, in fact, have 510 Democratic appointees, including 237 recently appointed by Biden. And we have 370 Republican appointees, including 233 appointed by Trump. And not even all of those Republican appointee are unpredictable, chaotic messes. I mean, we saw what Judge Koffner did last week in the birthright citizenship order, not only smacking it down and granting an injunction immediately, but saying, like, who are the lawyers who wrote this? Like, actually coming after and saying, this is not only blatantly unconstitutional, but you should be ashamed.

0:05:08 Thomas: Are the law wizards who came up with this one?

0:05:10 Matt: Exactly. Really, like, shaming them. And that was a Reagan appointee, right? So, I mean, we can't always assume that people are just going to go by their partisan whatevers. And maybe we can assume that more about Trump appointees than others. So I just want to encourage people to remind you that, as we've been talking about last week, injunctions exist, and they can be granted when there's irreparable harm. When you hear about one of these executive orders, don't immediately think, oh my God, this is going to go into effect. This is going to ruin everything. There's a lot of steps that have to happen, and there are good federal judges on the bench, and that's hundreds and hundreds of them. And many of these cases, in fact, nearly all of these cases don't make it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can only take a tiny percentage.

0:05:47 Matt: So I just want to remind everybody that's how our system works.

0:05:47 Thomas: And hey, the Supreme Court will pick a key one or two to ruin people's lives with. No, don't get us wrong. That will happen, but also that takes a long time. So there's, there's that slight, bit uh, of optimism, but yeah, they really, I mean, realistically in the Supreme court's working less and less, they, uh. They're slower and slower these days. So, oh

0:06:03 Matt: It's true. Yeah. I want to point out too, I was talking about this over the last couple of weeks about these executive orders. I've read pretty much all the important ones now, and they're just slow executive orders are not well -written. I just wanna point out that matters because these are things that are gonna be reviewed by judges and ultimately make it in the Supreme Court. And some of these, as I've said before, are almost like a double -dog dare to see if you'll actually do it because they're so badly written. And I'm just having this feeling, and maybe this is good, maybe this is bad, but these people are not worthy opponents. We deserve better.

0:06:31 Thomas: Me bring up something I've meant to bring up our fashion, a tweet out of, and just literally haven't had time. A lot of people are talking about how his executive order, uh... of the anti -trans ones made everyone women. Just have to point out, A, I love that the, call is, hey, basic biology, basic, you can't deny basic biology. And then they write an executive order that has no idea what biology is and completely Fs it up. I spoke to somebody who knows more about biology and technically speaking, it didn't make us all women. It actually made us all genderless because, it's actually a funny little thing. Matt, why don't you read that for us real quick since you had it up.

0:07:01 Matt: Oh, even better. Yeah. In the executive order, this, I won't even read the stupid title of it about protecting women or whatever, but men, means a person belonging at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. Male means a personal belonging at conception to the sex, the produces the small reproductive cell, right?

0:07:20 Thomas: So this is fantastic because, and I actually had, I'm bringing this up for a reason because I think I of figured out why they effed this up so badly. So we don't create any reproductive cells at conception. That just doesn't exist. Would have been the thing they're trying to do. And again, this is according to a biology teacher I spoke to, Dr. Eric Jaffe, who comes on SIO from Time to Time. Great guy. Thing they were trying to it would have been correct if they said either at birth or sometime later in development. But then I realized I think it's a trap that they they, like caught themselves because like, if they were to suggest that gender doesn't happen until like birth, then because of their ideology that people begin at conception, you would have a period of time where people had no gender and that would, that would have worked. That would fold their whole system. So I genuinely think that's what happens. Like, wait, there can't be eight months where, or nine months or whatever it would be. I don't know where in development you, you know, it is, but there can be a period period of months where human beings exist or people, but don't have a gender that ruins their whole thing. So they had to go back to conception. They said at conception, and then that ruined it because none of that is true at conception. There are no sex cells created, you know, at the, at that level, none ofthat is developed yet. So basically they've they've made us all genderless beings.

0:08:09 Matt: That's funny. I mean, yeah. Or by fiat, I guess they've tried not to, I don't know what's going on, but yeah, this is a, and that's a great example because I went through last night. I I posted a few of these, but I've been looking for examples of particularly egregious things in these like just terrible, terribly written things. My leading favorite right now is talking about the southern border and he's talking about it's overrun by terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers. They use the language about military age males that they love so much and elicit narcotics that harm Americans, including America. Yep.

0:09:01 Thomas: What? Americans, including America.

0:09:04 Matt: Including America. And somebody responded, America Ferrera. Like one person. Just her.

0:09:10 Thomas: Just to pick one. Yeah. Oh, this is great.

0:09:13 Matt: Harm Americans, including America. And then, of course, there's the nonsense from that terrible executive order. And we're going to be talking, I just want to be very clear to everybody, we are going to get into the trans executive orders, the threats to trans lives that are in these orders. We do care about this. I don't want to give a short shrift, but we're gonna get through a lot of stuff today, but we're gong to focus on those. There's just in the middle of it, there is this whole thing about patriotic education, just like a completely meaningless pile of just, I don t know what they re talking about. A presentation America grounded in an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America's founding and foundational principles, a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history.

0:09:56 Matt: It goes on like that, but that's in the middle of an order where you're basically outlying trans kids. I don't understand.

0:10:03 Thomas: Is? What is it even doing there? This is,

0:10:06 Matt: Again, these things are are all going to be in one way or another. There's going to be injunctions against a lot of this. I don't want to scare people here. But one other example I wanted to... I really enjoyed this one from the DEI executive order.

0:10:21 Matt: Yet in case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed firsthand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.

0:10:33 Thomas: What?

0:10:33 Matt: How people were born. So there's discrimination against people in C -sections objections obviously I don't know it's

0:10:34 Thomas: How Yeah. That's why I like genuinely trying to figure that out. Huh. How they were born?

0:10:43 Matt: Terrible it's such bad writing and this is project 2025's finest folks this is what they got this is What They Spent Months threatening to release to us now I'm not saying that some of this stuff can't be damaging but you got to make fun of the fascists it's important part of living in a fascist regime um

0:10:57 Thomas: And how much of this will really matter? So like, for example, the biology one, like genuinely, if you spoke to a biologist, he declared everybody genderless. So can you fight that in court? Can you, or how, you know, like when people are trying to, or having to follow this policy, what if it's badly written to the point of not making sense?

0:11:19 Matt: We'll use every word against them because you know you have to have some kind of foundation when you're doing these things they're going to come into court and you know fully brief it and explain what the president was thinking but But if the core of it is just biologically incorrect, and in the same way the birthright citizenship order presents no citation, no authority, it just says that it's well understood that this is what this means and that we can't have birthright citizenship anymore. And that's the best they got. They didn't try to even cite a single originalist writing. It's lazy. It's bad.

0:11:44 Thomas: All right. I think you know what that means. America Ferrara. Get in. Go straight to the Supreme Court. Sounds like you have special standing in this or something. I don't know.

0:11:51 Matt: That's right. I do actually, very quickly, I wanted to address a patron question before we move on. It kind of related to what we're talking about here. Here. Another Minneapolisian, sorry, somebody from Minneapolis, I think is what he's trying to say. Hey all, where does the line between zealous advocacy and bad faith, disbarrable conduct exist? This is a question we've been grappling with our good friend, John Eastman, enemy of the show. I just had to mention, of course, but we've talked a lot about what it takes to bring a legal claim that is so bad that it's disbarable. And obviously, it's got to be bad faith. In Massachusetts, as part of our oath, which goes back, of of course, all the way back to, you know, Massachusetts is a lot older than the United States, as we're very proud to remind everybody. One of the things I had to say out loud was that I will delay no man for lucre or malice. I really like that expression. Apparently, I can delay women all day for lucre and malice, but yeah, for profit, basically. So yeah, basically stall people out in the courts. You can't give people problems using the law just for money or just because you don't like them.

0:12:40 Thomas: Lucre. Right.

0:12:51 Matt: And that's a good place to start. Sorry, but I was looking at the American Bar Association's proposed rule 3 .1, because obviously all state bar associations have different rules, but this is pretty similar to most, general the understanding of professional responsibility standards. A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding or assert a controvert in an issue therein unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law. So this is something I've been saying every time we talk about this, is that I want, as who's trying to push the system a little bit, I want to be able to come in and say this law is illegal or this law shouldn't exist or this is being interpreted wrong, even if that means that there's a whole line of precedent against me, right? And that's different from what somebody like John Eastman did, where he knew that what he was asserting had no basis and in fact was admitting in private emails that he knew this was going to be overruled. And he was doing it for the purpose of actually reversing a democratic election. If I'm doing it to try to get somebody custody. I get a little more leeway. That's a very good question because we're going to be seeing more and more of this. I'm already seeing all kinds of lies. Maybe we'll talk about some of them. With what the judge said in the birthright citizenship order the other day about how this is borderline, these DOJ attorneys need to think about what it is they're coming in here and arguing. And I think that maybe we should take a look at some of these arguments. And again, I want to be careful not to sanction attorneys for doing their jobs, but there's a limit on this this stuff. So speaking of, let's start with the big win of the week, the one that everybody probably knows about by now. Was the impoundment issue, the Office of Management and Budget. So Office of management and budget, as you just discussed in Wednesday's episode with Lydia, has become an outsized player in the Trump administration as it was last time, but as it really is now. And it seems to think that it's some sort of, don't know, how would you describe of what they're doing right now, OMB.

0:14:32 Thomas: I don't know, Matt. I'm so confused about this whole thing because, as I point out, the way we do budgets in in this country is broken. Do we even pass a budget anymore? It's just like a continuing resolution.

0:14:45 Matt: No. They haven't passed a budget in years.

0:14:47 Thomas: So I actually realized in real time in that recording, like, wait, I actually don't remember. There's the schoolhouse rock of how this is supposed to be, but that doesn't really apply anymore. So they need to make a new schoolhouse Rock. Fuck. I don't know. Did somebody make a new one? That parody one.

0:15:00 Matt: To explain specifically the Office of Management and Budget. Yeah the OMB's main job is to prepare the president's budget, but they're acting as if their main job is to dispense all of the money. And that's this memo that they put out on the 27th, it's just an absurd memo. It's, again, this same kind of ridiculous language, language. It's starting with the idea that there's a funding freeze, like a complete federal funding freeze on all grants and loans and everything else for agency heads to complete a comprehensive analysis of all federal financial assistance programs, which is obviously a lot of places. Federal government gives grants to all kinds of different things from the NIH to police departments to just whatever. I mean, it's just so many different federal funds. And the purpose of this is wokeness and the representation of government, promoting efficiency in government, and making America healthy again. That's in caps. The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It does not improve the day -to -day lives of those we serve. Just put that in op -ed or something. This is not, I mean, this is not an order.

0:16:00 Thomas: It's weird to be like, I know the Congress passed something called the Green New Deal, but we're going to make sure none of the money we're spending has anything to do with the thing they passed. On its face, obviously, that's not their job.

0:16:12 Matt: OMB proposes a budget to Congress and then helps to figure out how that money is going to be used once they have it. Of course, to make sure that, you know, and again, the president legitimately has the authority to figure OUT how to distribute money within the executive branch to examine their policies and procedures and just kind of make sure that they're doing the things they want to do. But they're sort of supersizing the OMB and trying to make it into something it's never been before, which again, none of this is any surprise. They're trying to do this with every part of government. They'RE stress testing everything. And all these litigation opportunities, I think that they see here, are to push things forward. One major impediment to a lot of things that Trump wants to do and a lot of things the presidents want to do generally is the Administrative Procedures Act. Very much like the Vacancies Act we were talking about on Monday with Professor O 'Connell, this is very much an unsung tool. The APA can be used in so many different ways, especially for trying to stop unfair regulation. But one of the most important provisions is that you can't have regulations that are arbitrary and capricious or agency decisions that are arbitrarily capricius. The points that this lawsuit was making, citing from the Regents of California case in Supreme Court in 2020, is that it's arbitrary and capricious by design to make a decision without acknowledging or attempting to mitigate the harm that you're going to cause from that decision. He's not even acknowledging the fact that it's going to completely shut down the government to stop all of

0:17:31 Matt: This. I'm sure everybody saw stories that were flying around about important research that was being held up and about all these things that count on federal money that suddenly they didn't know where it was going to come from. So 23 AGs, all Democrats, filed, yeah, ASG, of course, filed a separate suit along with the National Council of Nonprofits, American Public Health Association, same day from Judge Lauren Ellick in D .C. see. And it's pretty straightforward. Now, the judge was saying, I want to be careful about this because I really, as a judge, have that much to say about how the executive branch spends its money. Because the administrative stay in this case blocks executive action, a consideration not to be taken lightly, the court will limit its duration to the few days it will take for expedited briefing. So they're trying to move this along. Best part of this, though, was in a separate hearing the next day. This was memo super sloppy. It was obviously designed to be brought to court as soon as possible, I think, because there's no way he could have possibly thought this would work. This is the acting director of OMB, Matt Vaeth. Whole thing reminds me of the travel ban, because you might remember it is actually almost exactly the same timing as the travel band,

0:17:45 Thomas: A is g sorry yeah

0:18:34 Matt: Which came out about a week after Trump was sworn in. The travel ban was a mess. It was just a gigantic mess, not just because of the chaos that it caused at the airports, but because it was a poorly written, illegal mess. And this was very much the same kind of thing, where they ended up having to take it back. Funny series of things happen over the course of the last few days. So you've got this memo comes out, it's immediately blocked because it's obviously overreaching to a degree that it's just not not possible for the government to do, for the OMB to do. And then on Wednesday, they rescinded the memo, but said that a federal funding freeze remains in full force in effect, which made

0:18:40 Thomas: Stupid yeah this is where

0:19:11 Matt: No sense.

0:19:11 Thomas: I stopped understanding what was happening because it was like frozen but not frozen but rescinded but then they're still saying it's good What is happening, Matt? I don't know.

0:19:13 Matt: Nobody understands what's happening. I don't know. I really don't understand because that injunction issued on Tuesday, and then there was another hearing in Rhode Island on Wednesday in front of Judge McConnell, and Karoline Leavitt tweets at 1:40 p.m. in the middle of that hearing. I'm sorry, I just keep calling them tweets. This is not, in caps, a rescission of the federal funding freeze when they rescinded the memo. It is simply a rescission of the memo Why? To end any confusion caused by the court's injunction And then

0:19:34 Thomas: Fine. What? So we're rescinding the paper that the law was on. We're not rescinding law. What is

0:19:49 Matt: We're still doing it Yeah, and then the last sentence is amazing The president's EO on federal funding remain in full force and effect and will be rigorously implemented This is after there's been an injunction Right, that's a very good question And so, of course, in the middle of this hearing, the judge is informed about this social media post and is like, so it really seems like you guys aren't honoring the injunction, huh?

0:20:01 Thomas: Happening? Wow. Jeez, that's not cool usually.

0:20:16 Matt: Usually the way you want to go. The entire purpose of all of this is just to test the limits of the Impoundment Control Act. And idea of impoundment is not new. It's the idea that the president can withhold funds if he wants to, just because he doesn't want to spend them. And it's been pretty roundly rejected by the Supreme Court. Even Antonin Scalia made fun of the theory at one point. Reagan's OLC in 1988 put it in writing saying the president doesn't just have unilateral authority to do these kinds kinds of things. And that was an administration that really liked having unilateral authority to do things. Russell Vought, who you profiled just the other day, has been pretty clear that he thinks the impoundment control act is illegal and that they want to push the limits on this. So that's what they're doing. They're going to just say the president has this authority to do that. And from what I've read so far, and I'm just getting myself into this issue, I think everybody's starting to learn about impoundments now, it doesn't seem like this is going to work, at least certainly not in the short term, and I don't think in the long term. Now they're going going to come back and try to find a more sophisticated way to do it, and they're going to try to find some other way that they can say that they have the right to impound this, maybe set it up for a better challenge. But again, again, this is just amateur hour, just like with the travel ban, where they didn't come in with their first draft. This is a complete first draft, and it was a bad first draft, and that does give me some hope that still just don't know how to layer, doesn't mean that they can't win somewhere, but I just don't think they know how to liar.

0:21:24 Thomas: The kind of thing where this one, though, what matters, I guess, is the literal, like, employees who are in charge of this money. Do they think is happening? Because I'm seeing stuff that money is still being withheld. Something about just now about, like. Requests made by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF, I mean it's stuff like that where it's like they seem to still be doing it and so what matters is what the people who actually are are in the bureaucracy like in the the mix there what they think is happening and so this feels really lawless like I get I get that this should not stand in it and it likely won't, but it feels like right now they're just doing a bunch of things illegally and that is harmful. And I don't know how we stop that. Like, are they just ignoring injunctions?

0:22:14 Matt: This one is an administrative stay, and the judge in Rhode Island is considering a full injunction on temporary restraining order. There's going to be some more teeth when that comes down. But yeah, no, I mean, I know what to say. I mean this is like everything else. Are so many different ways they can violate the law at the same time that it's hard to keep track. But this has to mean something, and it has to be upheld.

0:22:33 Thomas: Think it's pretty hilarious though, to say you're rescinding the memo, but not order, not the free, that that's, that's a new one on me. That's fantastic. Fantastic.

0:22:37 Matt: The freeze. Yeah. And you're doing it to end any confusion caused by the injunction. She's on top of that. Thanks. Great. Okay.

0:22:47 Thomas: Job not well done.

0:22:51 Matt: But I mean, I don't know if they're trying to be this stupid, but they're sure being pretty stupid. We're going to keep watching this. This is all very, very new. There's a lot for all of us to learn here. It is clearly way beyond what the OMB is supposed to be doing. And we have to have some faith in Administrative Procedures Act acting on judges ultimately to stop some of these things. But with kinds of executive actions and with these kind of empowerment actions, I'm not going to say that it's not possible for Trump to just start arbitrarily withholding things. And I'm saying that judges can necessarily force him to do everything, but we have to continue to act as if the law exists and as if these things mean something. That's the only way that I can proceed. Of the law meaning something, we already discussed the birthright citizenship executive order. That was the big win of last last week. That was the one that I'd predicted was going to be pretty much the first win of Trump presidency. I have always thought the birthright citizenship thing is not going to get very far. I still, and it seems like most legal analysts at this point agree with me, other than the fringe people who actually think that they can make this argument. It seems like most people don't think the Supreme Court is going to uphold this, but we will have to watch that, and it's going to play itself out. I don't think it's really worth covering until it gets to the court and we watch the arguments. Instruments. In immigration, we've got the expansion of expedited removal, which was challenged immediately by the ACLU. We've talked about that before, but it allows ICE to pick up anybody who has been here for less than two years anywhere in the United States and potentially deport them without a hearing. Was all challenged, and it was briefly enjoined back in the first Trump administration. There was never a completely final decision on that, but the D .C. Circuit did hold that it was up to the sole and unrevealable discretion of the executive branch. That one may not end up being a win, but we can slow it down for sure.

0:24:23 Thomas: Yeah, I think I remember talking about that one a while back and it does feel like one of those kinds of things where actually they do have the power to do this probably but uh depends on how they execute it but we do need to remember that you know there there it's not like everything is not going to work there there are powers that that they have and there's a reason that you shouldn't elect a fascist president so that could go on that category

0:24:42 Matt: For sure, but it's also the power of delay, and every day that you can delay something like this, you can keep people from it. Sensitive implications policy that we talked about last week, in which ICE is now going to allow itself to go to places like schools, hospitals, and churches, and I want to be very very clear, because we did have a patron question about this one as well. When they're allowing themselves to do this, I just want to restate this again, they're just doing what the rest of law enforcement does, that they're able to go make individual arrests in schools, hospitals, and churches. It does not mean that they are going to be raiding schools. And I'm very concerned about the rhetoric I'm seeing out there about how kids need to be prepared to have ICE come in and start grabbing them, because kids have enough to be scared of right now.

0:25:18 Matt: We don't need to be getting immigrant kids afraid and going to school. People are keeping their kids home from because they're actually afraid of this. The stage that we're at right now, and again, I can't guarantee maybe four or five years, maybe things change, but the image that they want is what they call criminal aliens. They don't want to be dragging kids out of school. If they're going into a school, it's going to be to arrest the janitor, which isn't great either, or somebody else who's on the premises that they know that they can get. But the Quakers filed a challenge to the sensitive locations policy on First Amendment grounds. I got to love the Quaker, I have to say. I've always appreciated them.

0:25:49 Thomas: Partial to their oaths I don't know I don'T know anything about the quake we don't have them over here really so yeah

0:25:51 Matt: Pretty tasty. Lots of fiber. Well, yeah, we have the oldest Quaker meeting in the United States. It goes back to 1661 in Worcester, Massachusetts. I go to a few Quaker meetings. I enjoy them. They've got good politics. But that's together and say this one thing. We don't want ICE coming into our places of worship, into our meeting halls. Trans rights, we've got the challenge to the order we were just talking about, in which we're all genderless, apparently.

0:26:18 Matt: But an anonymous trans prisoner has challenged that in a lawsuit that I think looks pretty good. I've got The Complaint here. We'll link to it. She's identified as Mary Moe in the complaint. Pretty straightforward, Fifth Amendment, due process, Eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment arguments, and also a violation of existing regulations that require case -by -case assignment of people. And of course, denial of healthcare, I think is just straight up Eighth Amendment issue right there. They're saying that there's no compelling state interest whatsoever to do this. And in fact, it's directly harmful to her. I that that's going to go somewhere. I'm feeling pretty good after reading that one. Doge has been hit with three suits on its first day. Look, we talked from the beginning about how the Department of Governmental Efficiency is almost certainly a violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which does not allow the federal government to just delegate private citizens this kind of power to reshape the government. It's just so obviously something that can't be done. These three different kind of suits from different directions, I think one of them has to stick. There's some good stuff here and I would love to dig into them later. Big suits challenging the Schedule S order. One of them was filed on the day of inauguration by the National Treasury Employees Union, and the other was filed on January 28th by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and making the argument that they are being stripped of their civil service protections, and that their union's members are going to have their rights violated and their basic bargaining, that they bargained for, violated. And that Congress tried to provide civil service protection to specific people, and The President just can't remove those anytime

0:27:42 Matt: He wants to. So I think there's really something to that too. And you As we've been talking about for months, Schedule F is a real threat. It's one of those boring things that doesn't sound that important. But being able to remove political appointees this way, policy people, and replace them with loyalists could result in the kind of government we've never seen before. That's something to watch as well. Going to be following up on a lot of these different things, but there's at least 20 different suits, a number of them that have a really good a chance of actually working out. And many more in the chamber, I mean, have so many different opportunities to sue on some of the things we're about to talk about for the rest of the episode. I I think people just need to keep in mind, every time they start to hear this, don't just buy what Trump is telling you about it. Don't just buying what the government is telling you what this is going to be. Don's buy immediately what the media is telling you it's going to because the media reporting that I've seen in immigration has been so terrible

0:28:26 Matt: We are actually today breaking a story on opening arguments that I have not seen anybody anybody talking about in any media outlet. I want to talk about something that is not necessarily great news, but something that I think can easily be stopped.

0:28:37 Thomas: Yeah. All right. Well, after the break. 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/OA to receive up to three bags free. drinktrade.com/OA, to get up to 3 bags free with any new subscription. drinktrade.com/OA.

0:30:20 Matt: You know, of course, President Trump has declared an emergency at the southern border. Has the power to declare an immigration emergency. That's something that he can do. And there's a little known provision of the massive '96 immigration overhaul, which I've mentioned more than once on this show before, but in 1996, unfortunately, there was a serious bipartisan effort to make immigration much more difficult that caused a lot of the problems that we have today. INA Section 103A provided this very unusual thing that has never been used before, and I'm a little concerned about. Now, I went back and looked in the congressional record to see what the purpose of this thing is. You can't really say this is happening, but they can say that anything is happening right now. That's the problem. In the event of a mass influx of of aliens off the coast of the United States. I haven't heard anything about that happening. At a land border. Also haven't heard of that. A mass influx of aliens. We've got numbers really declining, especially over the last six months or so. We've never had anything that's really a mass influx. Clinton used this in 95, when there's a mass inflix of Haitians. But it still didn't rise to the level of invoking what they're doing in this memo. So DHS published a little-noticed memo, and I want to thank Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the Immigration Policy Council because he did catch this, but no media source, as far as I can tell, has really talked about it. So I think it's just worth mentioning. Finding of a mass influx of aliens, and this is in the presidential proclamation about guaranteeing the state's protection against invasion. Idea is that section 283 of Title 8 of the CFR is a regulation that allows the secretary, and... This is the usual thing where it references the attorney general, but they've just sort of substituted in the Department of Homeland Security. They just never bothered changing it. We just assume that it's actually the DHS secretary. This is one of many things that's just completely untested about this. Now, again, I want to emphasize in 29 years, this has never been used. We don't know exactly how to use it or what it is. Can request assistance from a state or local government in the administration of immigration laws of the United States under certain circumstances. And that includes when got this influx of aliens. Once they have made this determination, which Trump already has and in this memo, can start to have agreements signed with state and local law enforcement. And that's as bad as it sounds, because you can have every racist constitutional sheriff in the United States can start signing agreements with ICE that they can start doing ICE stuff, including potentially issuing orders of deportation. Now, this has not been tested. We don't know exactly how this might work, but it's a massive force multiplier for ICE potentially.

0:32:41 Matt: It does require that an agreement be signed with your state or local government, and it does require training. But even worse, I was very concerned to see that there is actually, in urgent and quickly developing events during a declared mass influx of aliens, they can waive the training. They can just let law enforcement run around and start doing immigration stuff. Now, you might remember we talked about INA 287G, which is a provision that allows immigration to train local police to help in some capacities. And right now, the way that 287G has been used is essentially to have sort of an immigration liaison with the local police force who help to draft immigration documents and to help transfer people to ICE custody and sort of manage all that stuff. But 287G is not necessarily funded. That's something that is more or less something that police do out of the goodness of their hearts to help ICE out. This potentially, there is a pool of funding. It is at $0 right now, but Congress could start funding this thing. It seems like that's what they want to try to do. Do. Potentially could allow for more power than 287G. And I was concerned, as you might remember, we talked about 287 G for a while, a few months ago. I knew that was going to be coming back. And certainly we've got plenty of 287G agreements that are already in effect in different places. But this is potentially a whole nother thing. And it's something to keep a watch on. It's untested. They're going to try to test and see what they can do with it. And I wouldn't surprised be surprised to see local officers, once these agreements are signed, trying to do things in the name of immigration enforcement that have never been done by local cops before.

0:34:04 Thomas: Was the thing you think we can stop? Stop.

0:34:06 Matt: I do. I think we can stop it in multiple ways.

0:34:07 Thomas: Because this sounds horrible, Matt. Sounds not good.

0:34:09 Matt: Know. And I wanted to just tell it straight because I want you to hear it from me. This is not great. This is exactly the kind of thing that I was afraid of when we started talking about mass deportation, that they were going to find ways to co -opt state and local law enforcement and worse yet to actually find ways To pay them. That makes it a lot more lucrative and more appealing for these people. There are plenty of cops that just want to do it anyway, way, obviously. But every one of these things is a leverage point for everyone listening. Are ways to stop these agreements and to come out and let your voice be heard and to let your local sheriffs and law officers know that this is not something you want being done in your name with your tax dollars or with anybody's tax dollars. These are people that are up for election. And maybe you want to let them know that you won't get reelected if you're going to go out there and act like immigration officers, that we already have an immigration police force and they they can do their jobs and you can do yours. So I do think that there are opportunities to stop this at the local level, but you have to know it's coming. You have to know that it's a possibility. There is a disturbing series of events that after reading up on everything that they intend to actually do, I can see starting to play out. And it's going to start with the militarization of the southern border. Going to start the use of the Insurrection Act of the Southern Border, which they've already said. In Trump's executive order on January 20th, he said specifically that you have to tell me within 90 days whether or not I should use the Insurrection Act at the border, which is a very strange thing to say

0:35:24 Matt: Because there's not currently an insurrection happening at the border. And again, I'm just going to try to deliver this as straight as I can, but they're going to get used to the idea potentially of using the military and using the Insruction Act. And there are ways to stand up to these things at every turn. And I also think the implementation of these agreements is going to be really rickety legally. I think there are going to Be a lot of different places where local judges can stop this, where federal judges can stop this because it's completely untested. The regulation is all kind of vague in different places and it's never been done before. And these officers are going to immediately start to exceed whatever powers they think they're being given. So it's not good news. I'm not going to tell you it's good news, but I'm going to telling you that there are things we can do. And I just do not give in to saying this is hopeless and this is all going to happen with or or without us. We're going to get through this, but it does tie into the other patron question that we have to address from Rick and Sarah. Has just announced that a 30 ,000 person concentration, sorry, migrant detention facility will be built at Gitmo. What is the legality of this? That's a very good question. So an executive order went out yesterday and Trump kind of leaked it because he was signing the Lake and Riley Act, unfortunately, which we've talked about. This executive order was very short, but but it says that he's going to authorize the use of Guantanamomo Bay for high -priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by DOD and the Department of Homeland Security. Now, of course, we all know what Guantanamo Bay is because it was in the news quite a lot in the early 2000s. This is not that necessarily. Now of course the U.S. does lease 40 square miles in Cuba and Guantanamo Bay. And you remember, of course, Donald Rumsfeld said they were holding the worst of the worst, even

0:36:59 Thomas: Worst of the worst fucking farmers that we decided are terrorists and then tortured. Awesome.

0:37:04 Matt: Right. Just grabbed off the battlefield or wherever. Are about 15 people left in Guantanamo, still too many, but should go down just the way that it was used in that entire history of that detention center. It should go go down as one of the great stains in our national legacy. Whole time, though, there has also been a migrant detention center at a naval base there that's next door.

0:37:22 Thomas: There already was?

0:37:23 Matt: Already was. So that's what I wanted to tell you, is that as weird as this sounds, I thought about this because I'd heard about this during the Haitian migrant crisis, sort of when there were a lot of Haitians coming in the mid-90s, and the Clinton administration did pretty terrible things to make sure they did not get to the U U.S. to declare asylum. They intercepted a lot of them and held them here. Didn't necessarily hold up to 30,000 of them, which was the number that Trump was giving.

0:37:24 Thomas: Interesting. Jeez. That when I heard 30 ,000 I was like well there's no way they have that capacity but then it seemed like they're planning on building it?

0:37:47 Matt: They did have that capacity once. And yeah, in the 90s.

0:37:50 Thomas: So, but not like Gitmo. It was the, oh, wow. That is, I did not know that. I don't know how many Americans knew that.

0:37:55 Matt: It's incredible. I know it's and think they don't want you to know it. And that's the thing. There were things and I started reading about what actually happened in this migrant detention center. It is completely different from what the way that detention works in the United States. It's a completely different set of rules because it's run on a Navy base that's not in the US. And that, of course, was why we wanted to do a lot of this stuff in the first place with Guantanamo.

0:38:17 Thomas: I kind of wanted to set this up because obviously this is the the levels of fascism and also just how stupid it all is and funny, but fascist and evil at the same time. Like in that press conference, I mean, it's like, yep, hard to get away from that one. Hard to escape that one, get, you know, it was just like so absurd. My immediate thought was, well, we have migrant detention centers. We have this. So is there a sense in which, wait a minute, this is just another one of those things where it seems like it's a horrible fascist thing, but actually we're kind of already doing that. Um so I am interested to hear if this is effectively a different category of thing so

0:38:56 Matt: You're in the right direction. Certainly, the current migrant detention system that we have is the largest known in the world. As I've said before, China may have a larger one for immigration detention, but we're already about 40,000 beds, and this 30,000 would take it up to at 70,000.

0:39:08 Thomas: Out of the whole country right now it's 40,000 and they're trying to almost double that with one go

0:39:13 Matt: That's right, in one go. And ultimately, Tom Homan has said they need 100,000 to carry out the mass deportation-sized effort that they want. This is extremely unclear what they want to do now, which is another reason I think there's going to be a lot of different legal challenges available to this. Now, Trump is out there talking about how he wants to put the worst of the worst. They're actually using the same language. Kristi Noem was out there using the language that Donald Rumsfeld used about going Guantanamo detainees. He's talking about criminal aliens. He specifically talking about people that their governments won't take back. And we've discussed this before. There are a small handful of people that some governments just will not accept back, often refugees or people that otherwise don't have ID.

0:39:49 Thomas: It's Not not really because they're like super duper murderers is it I mean I guess it could be but like the reason the countries won't accept them back is more often and just like the government doesn't exist anymore or something or

0:39:55 Matt: Not necessarily. Or politics because Cambodia is one of those countries. Vietnam is one OF those countries for a long time, right? And they don't like us very much. And it's just one thing they can do. And one of the very little noticed things in the Lake and Riley Act is it allows states to sue to enforce a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which is very strange, which will not take their people back. Potentially you could have Texas suing to enforce to get Cambodia to take people back to Cambodia. That's just very strange.

0:40:06 Thomas: Very

0:40:26 Matt: I can't get my head around it. This is the excuse that they're using. But there are not 30,000 of these people necessarily. Also, I want to point out that a lot of these people do have residency right now. They are lawful permanent residency, people who might be deportable with aggravated felonies. And people don't think about this because they're always talking about undocumented crime, but there are quite a few people with permanent residency or other status that are deportable if I swear to find them because they have committed things that would be deportable. Can't exactly tell. Now, let's just hear pete Hegseth talk about this former uh Guantanamo uh Pete Hegseth he's

0:40:26 Thomas: Weird what does he have to do with immigration isn't he in a whole different thing isn't a whole different supposed

0:41:00 Matt: Supposed to be uh but he's but unfortunately we're talking about potentially having uh masses of migrants being held by the Department of Defense so he's gonna have something to say about it this is his first interview his first return to Fox News uh so I sent you a clip here yeah

0:41:01 Thomas: To be a whole difference part of the government uh

0:41:13 Clip: That's one part of Guantanamo Bay the other part of one time the bay well is a naval station where it has long been for decades a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlement so there are places this is not the camps you're not putting criminals in camps swear ISIS and other criminals. This is a temporary transit, which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where we can plus up thousands and tens of thousands if necessary to humanely move illegals out of our country, where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from in proper process. So I want to make sure I understand this the way you described it. Of course, the image that's going to be evoked by many people when you say Guantanamo Bay, it's going to be the prison side of Guantanamo Bay. And the question is, are you treating illegal immigrants the same way you treated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? What you're telling us is, and I know this to be true,

0:41:26 Thomas: Provide for, huh? Some of the totally

0:42:08 Clip: Guantana has been used for illegal immigrants dating back, I think it's 30 years. Bill Clinton used it for something very similarly back in the 1990s. So you're going to use it as a race station, in essence, where criminal illegal immigrants are not yet accepted by their home country? Do I have that correctly? And if that's the case, describe for me the kind of illegal immigrant that would be sent to Guantanamo. More or less, you're right. It's folks who maybe are in transit to their home country or a safe third harbor country, and it's taking a little time to move with that processing, with the

0:42:08 Thomas: Innocent goat herders. God, it's

0:42:43 Clip: Paperwork. Better they be held at a safe location like Guantanamo Bay, which is meant and built for migrants. And built to stand that away from the American people as they are processed properly to where they came from. And I can break down for you the locations of Gitmo because I...

0:42:43 Thomas: Just a layover. It's like a little airport.

0:42:46 Matt: Transit okay that's enough that's enough uh so it's not it's it's not a camp it's just just a camp it's a transit point every you know when you think of guantanamo bay that's what you think of people in transit,

0:43:02 Thomas: This is so dark, man. This Is So Freaking Dark.

0:43:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's just often. Nobody even remembered anybody's name there. Just in and out, that Guantanamo Bay. They're still there. Like this, as you said, 15, but it's not, hold on, but It's not that prison -y part. It's the nice airport part train station

0:43:19 Matt: But that's the other part. 30 ,000 beds. And of course, if you're talking about the limited number of people, and I don't know how many there are, but I mean, you don't need 30, 000 beds necessarily to process the limited amount of people. This tells me a couple of things. Of all, I think they want to challenge the Supreme Court precedent from 2001 called Zadvydas v. Davis, in which the Supreme court found you can't hold somebody under those conditions for more than six months. I think the Supreme Court might be ready to revisit that. Has been an ongoing issue that some countries won't take people back. And the Supreme court said, we can't just indefinitely detain people. And the way that Pete Hegseth is talking about this and just looking around, it's only been about 24 hours since this was announced. So we don't know a lot yet. I think they are serious about this. And I this is something that's been planned for a while. I can't tell if they're talking about people who already have deportation orders or as Hegseth is talking another part of the interview, you, people who are processing their paperwork or fighting their cases, if they're going to actually have removal proceedings in Guantanamo Bay, which becomes something else. And that would be something we could certainly challenge because the idea of removing people from the United States and holding them at a military facility in Cuba to determine whether or not they should be deported is obviously illegal. There's no question for multiple reasons. There is access to counsel. Obviously, how am I supposed to get down there? I'll

0:44:38 Matt: Go, I guess, if you want me to. Do. I don't think I trust the phones or video that they might provide. There's the fact that as soon as you fly somebody outside of the United States, there are certain bars that might kick in for having them be able to come back again, because I think we've talked about this before, but if you've been here without permission for more than a year and you leave, you're not supposed to come for 10 years. So they could just automatically trigger those things just by taking people out of the country and doing this. But there's also the fact that Guantanamo Bay has a completely different set of rules. You won't be surprised to learn. And it is like nothing else I've ever seen. I went deep reading about this in this report from the International Refugee Assistance Project that we'll link to. But the way that they process these, because they're not on U .S. soil, they don't treat them as asylees. They're not seeking asylum because it's land

0:45:21 Thomas: Talking

0:45:21 Matt: That's leased.

0:45:21 Thomas: About from the 90s are they still doing it now oh

0:45:23 Matt: They were still doing it this whole time. And they still have had a few people. There's a nightmare story in here from 2022 about Cubans, actually, that ended up in there who trying to escape Cuba. And the conditions are so much worse than the usual detention facilities, and there's so much less supervision.

0:45:37 Thomas: Wow the already bad conditions yeah right

0:45:40 Matt: And there's this whole weird arbitrary thing about whether or not they are protected persons. The whole thing is run by something called Instruction 5500, which sounds like the most fascist way to administer everything I've ever heard of. And they either refer them on to go through the refugee process or they send them back and they don't there's no opportunity for actual asylum and the whole thing is just completely arbitrary in a way that you would expect is synonymous with the name Guantanamo Bay and no procedural protections for anything. I think there are a lot of different ways that this could be challenged in federal court. A lot of this would end up in the D.C. Circuit as the Guantanamo Bay litigation did before. And the D.C. Circuit could be, I think, very friendly to these claims try to stop the worst of this. It may well be that they're able to hold people who already have deportation orders. They're not going to be able to holding them indefinitely if we have anything to do about it. That might happen. But my concern is that they do turn this into some kind of a camp where they're actually doing deportation proceedings. We have no idea right now. But you can find in this report that we'll link to all kinds of stories about human human rights violations and terrible conditions and things that even ICE and CBP would never tolerate. So this is the wrong direction. And my concern, of course, is that this is an important part of mass deportation operations, that you get the combination of state and local officials teaming up with ICE to start to ship people out to places like this and the other detention camps that they're going to end up building in the United States. Every one of those camps that are going to be built in the U .S. have to go through a permitting process, have to go through state and local governments or offer choke points

0:47:08 Matt: That we can show up and protest. Every written agreement that state and global governments enter into offer those kinds of resistance.

0:47:14 Thomas: This is really scary man this

0:47:15 Matt: Know, it is, and I'm not going to tell you it's not.

0:47:17 Thomas: What stops them from rounding people up putting them out there immediately and kind of putting them beyond reach in terms of you if it's even in the category of person they're quote -unquote supposed to be doing this to yeah

0:47:30 Matt: Well, under current law, they do still have to have an order of removal from an immigration judge. Now, if they're doing expedited removal, like we talked about, if you're here for less than two years and they can't prove they're here more than two year, then they could just be shipped out of the country within the same day, but sometimes. But right now, they do have to still go through removal proceedings, and that takes a while. And even if you have a serious criminal conviction, the judge has still to examine the conviction and make sure it meets the definition of federal law and issue that order. So I know that they're talking about ways to get around removal proceedings too, and we'll track those if that happens. But there's a lot of law to go. There's a little bit of litigation to go before these things can happen. And I know that may sound naive in the face of military camps, but Guantanamo Bay has been litigated before. There have been good decisions to come out of it. It's a long, slow fight, these are fights that are worth having. And this is a direction that we cannot let the country go. I can't

0:48:16 Matt: Think that once we've crossed a point like this where we're holding people in the same facility that we were torturing people without due process in before. Now, I will point out Australia has a version of almost this exact thing.

0:48:25 Thomas: I gonna bring that up I thought I just gonna say I I wasn't sure if it was worth bringing up but I remember that australia was doing this and it's also been a few years since I remember seeing that are they still doing it is it I'm just wondering what it what it maybe maybe portends for us if how, the you Australian citizenry dealt with that.

0:48:42 Matt: Nauru in the big one, and that is not limited use still. I think there's like 100 people left right now, like that. But that I've read about, and And Australia, of course, is an island nation. They've been very concerned about people coming in by boat, and they passed this very strict law that if you come in by vote, you will never immigrate to Australia legally. The US was kind of doing the same thing. They were offering people, when they were putting the refugee system, that they could go to a safe third country, but they were never going to come to the US if they came through this way. A lot of protests in Australia about this. There was a lot of good progress. I know we have Australian listeners who could probably tell me a little more about what happened. There's been a lot of back and forth about that. It's very far from Australia, from what I remember, too. But it certainly doesn't have the reputation and history of Guantanamo Bay. That's something else. Think I'll leave it there for now. There's going to be plenty more to talk about with these.

0:49:23 Thomas: Keeping our eyes on it though.

0:49:24 Matt: For sure. These are just things to watch, and I don't know why nobody's talking about this Influx memo, but it's just something we have to take a look at. 287G also still exists and will still be used in the same way.

0:49:34 Thomas: That again?

0:49:34 Matt: That's the one that just allows them to sign agreements to do other things. It's sort of the existing model, but this one potentially could go far beyond that if it's allowed to, which it shouldn't be.

0:49:43 Thomas: Matt, a little darker than I hoped. Not, it is what it is.

0:49:45 Matt: Sorry about that. Appreciate the patron question. We got to take these things on. We have to try to cover it as it comes.

0:49:52 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, I wanted, I was going to ask you either way.

0:49:55 Matt: Of course, of course, we got to talk about it. But I do have a big footnote.

0:49:58 Thomas: Bigfoot note. It better be about Bigfoot.

0:49:59 Matt: Big foot note. It is about Bigfoot.

0:50:01 Thomas: What? Oh, Oh, I called your pun? Wow.

0:50:04 Matt: It's a Bigfoot footnote, that's right.

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0:51:47 Matt: Want to about talk an ordinance I've just learned about, It recently came up in the context of a story that I'm not going to mention otherwise, but Ordinance 1969-01 in Skamania County, Washington. And I remember when I was growing up in Washington State, I heard about this and I thought it was urban legend. I did not believe that this existed, but there is in fact a law in Skamania County Washington by which it is a felony to kill Bigfoot. Just FYI, whereas there is evidence to indicate the possible existence in Skamania County of a nocturnal primate mammal, variously described as an ape -like creature or a subspecies of Homo sapien, whereas this creature is generally and commonly known as a Sasquatch, Yeti, Bigfoot, or giant hairy ape, on and on to that. So be it resolved that any premeditated will for a wanton slaying of any such creature shall be deemed a felony, punishable by a fine not to exceed $10 ,000 and or imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed five years. Get five years for killing Bigfoot.

0:52:37 Thomas: RFK Jr.'s like, damn it. I was just on my way to try to slay me. Yeah.

0:52:40 Matt: It's a place on his wall. Drive home with his head on his car. So I to look into this because, you know, again, I thought this was a legend, but it really is true that Skamania County passed this. And they passed it for kind of a good reason, actually.

0:52:52 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, it's not like that outrageous, honestly. If it's like maybe there was something that people were calling Bigfoot that's not a human and so therefore it wouldn't be murder, but you still wouldn't want someone to just like kill whatever this thing is. That roughly the thinking?

0:53:07 Matt: Still allowed to kill Bigfoot in self -defense, to be clear. So if he attacks you, right.

0:53:09 Thomas: Yeah. Important caveat. Yeah.

0:53:12 Matt: It just can't be premeditated Bigfoot murder. You know, just and I think there are a couple of other Washington counties that have also passed this because of concerns about protecting Bigfoot. But I just thought it was really bizarre to pass a law to protect an animal that almost certainly doesn't exist or probably doesn't exists. I don't really have a position on Bigfoot seems like he would have been spotted by now. Washington's not that big. That just as an interesting starting point, the idea that you could have just sort of a speculative cryptozoological regulation on the possibility that this thing might exist. But their real concern, I guess, back then in 1969 is that this is sort of Bigfoot fever. It was kind of the height of things, and people were just running around out in the woods with guns.

0:53:49 Matt: So they're making it clear that you can't just walk around with guns trying to hunt Bigfoot, and it presents a clear and present threat to the safety and well -being of Skamania County. You know it's a funny thing but it's it's it's good idea yeah know don't go hunting bigfoot people like leave them alone we have enough problems in the world already that

0:54:02 Thomas: Yeah, it's good advice. Famously good. Don't go chasing waterfalls. Don't go hunting, Bigfoot.

0:54:08 Matt: Actually works yeah that tracks yeah

0:54:11 Thomas: Bigfoot note. I love it. That's a delightful way to go out. Right, Matt. Well, that's hear some victories, but also obviously a lot we got to keep our eyes on. But, Yeah, continue to fight, continue to make noise where noise needs to be made, and that's what we'll keep doing.

0:54:24 Matt: Got more wins to come I know we do and we gotta gotta keep it up and it's just remember that they are trying right now that is the actual strategy is to overwhelm you and to feel like there's nothing you can do and to feeling this is all happening at once and we're gonna try to pick it apart and tell you where the wins can be and what what we can actually do here.

0:54:39 Thomas: Right, well, with that said, thanks so much, Matt. Get some rest or slash answer a bunch more phone calls and help people all day and night, one or the other. Hey, free to put out your want ad again. I don't know if we put that out on the main show, but that's a genuine want ad, right?

0:54:48 Matt: Back to it. Yeah, bilingual receptionists in the greater Boston area, English, Spanish, would be a love to talk to.

0:55:00 Thomas: Contact Matt somewhere of the show, anywhere, wherever. I'll point, yeah.

0:55:03 Matt: Pretty easy to find.

0:55:05 Thomas: Right, well, we'll see everyone Monday.

0:55:08 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.