It's Only Been 18 Days, But That's An Eternity in DOGE Years

Transcript

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

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

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

0:00:58 Thomas: And welcome to opening arguments this is episode 1122, yeah cool I'm thomas that over there is real life attorney somehow trying to keep up with all this matt cameron how you doing

0:01:08 Matt: To you live from a hurricane of news. Doing it. Making it happen. Feeling great because this is actually my one year anniversary on Opening Arguments, which means it's the one year anniversary of you taking back the show. I'm pretty sure. Don't know how that happened.

0:01:20 Thomas: Not shit yeah the wake of the news, I've completely forgotten. But no, that's awesome. That's amazing. I can't believe how time has flown. Thanks here this last year, Matt. Really appreciate it.

0:01:30 Matt: I've had a great time and I really appreciate everybody listening. Think we'd be diving into the coup that we're talking about here when I started last year, but you know, no, no.

0:01:38 Thomas: Wasn't what we envisioned, I'll say. Wasn'T what we drew up.

0:01:43 Matt: But I'm Let's talk about it. We got a lot to get through. You know, on Fridays, I think I'm just going to start giving you a new sandwich. I think that's the way to do this. We've got some good news. We're got some bad news. So

0:01:55 Thomas: Got got so many legal questions uh I just don't understand how someone can just take over again just run rid of this raccoon just running loose in the government dismantling it hiring racists and then firing them once they're outed to be racist if you haven't seen that oh my god I saw a funny skeet on that so one of his little you know 20 year old whatever employees that's going and stealing stuff was outed as a real racist. Just a, just plausible deniability on it. It was just like, hi, yes, I am proudly racist. I think they had a post that was like, I was racist before it was cool or something, which is like, Jesus Christ. Wow. But anyway, I saw a great skeet on that was just, like, it must be weird to be hired and fired for the same thing.

0:02:26 Matt: We've got a Yes, literally. Totally.

0:02:40 Thomas: Which, yeah, I honestly, I think that could be it. But yeah, I've had a lot of questions and so glad to have you here for, year two with some to how in the world this is happening. What the word is this? What in world we could do about it? Many laws is this potentially breaking? I just, all hope so.

0:02:55 Matt: I could save us about 50 minutes. I mean, this is all illegal. So how about that? Yeah, yeah. But let's talk about why. Why not?

0:03:02 Thomas: All right. Well we'll take our break please um support the show patreon.com/law thanks so much to those who do uh you make the show happen and uh wow going on a year start year two with a vengeance here um so we'll taker break and get to it so just want to know what how many years of prison would a normal person be facing I just I just wanna know that hmm

0:03:23 Matt: We'll get there, but let's start with some good news first, very quickly. Was an injunction, a of injunctions, excuse me, have issued. There've been a lot of lawsuits to catch up on. I'm not going to get to all of them now, but the trans rights issues around trans lives in prisons, in federal prisons, is a really pressing one. As we've talked about before, that order was essentially ordering transgender women into men's facilities, an obvious threat to their safety. So there was a complaint filed immediately by anonymous prisoners, both in Massachusetts and a general one. The Massachusetts one was already granted, but that was only for that one prisoner. Listener. So Royce Lambert, this is actually the second Reagan appointee to stand up for the Constitution. There are still 11 Reagan appointees in the federal court system, I had to check, wrote a very good decision, granted solely on Eighth Amendment grounds. He said he didn't have to get any further, that this is cruel and unusual punishment to put someone into men's confinement under those circumstances. And And of course, I agree. Denial of health care, of course. Because people are in the middle of treatment. That's an easy win. That's And the way that the Trump people are playing this one, I mean, they're really not even bothering, as he pointed out in his decision, to contest the idea that this is cruel and then this is a bad thing to do to people. So I

0:04:12 Thomas: Sounds right they're like hey the cruelty is the point well

0:04:30 Matt: Yeah, what we're doing here. Has also been an injunction against Doge. We'll be talking about Doge plenty, but I just want to mention that this injunction limits Doge access to the Treasury to two people, one of whom, as you mentioned a few minutes ago, has just resigned as a racist. Now there's just one guy left, Tim Krause.

0:04:47 Thomas: That's something I'm actually not nothing could have envisioned a world in which they just didn't even resign so something still applies some amount of shame

0:04:56 Matt: I thought that too. Right? It is possible to shame someone for being a racist in 2025. a good metric. It's good to know.

0:05:02 Thomas: Not openly doing a Nazi salute in front of everybody at the inauguration but you know other racist stuff

0:05:07 Matt: Things. And then there's the fork in the road email you might might have heard about. That's the buyout program, which we're not going to talk about too much today. But there's just an injunction against that as well to Monday. We're recording this on Thursday was supposed to be the last day that federal employees had to choose. About 60 ,000 employees have already taken the buyouts, and that comes out to about 3 % of the entire workforce. That'S a lot.

0:05:24 Thomas: That's crazy I didn't think it would be that many

0:05:27 Matt: Lot of people, yeah. The judge is finding that this is possibly illegal. And of course, there's no guarantee these people are going to end up getting the money that had been promised, but that's something else. So we will see how that plays out. But piece by piece, these lawsuits are working in different places. And there's been yet another order against the birthright citizenship executive order. I don't think that was ever really going to go anywhere. But Judge Kovner formerly in Seattle found that this was an absolute constitutional violation and they shouldn't have brought it. So, we got some some ongoing litigation that is to going bring fruit. I'm positive you about some of those directions.

0:05:59 Thomas: Is good because we're not going to be able to afford fruit now that all the tariffs are going to effect so we need these lawsuits for that

0:06:04 Matt: Take the fruit where you can get it. That's right. Want to talk very quickly about some firings before we get into the Doge coup. Wanted to cover a broad range of some of the people who've been fired and just how abnormal this all is. Was thinking longingly the other day about the George W. Bush U.S. attorney scandal. Have we talked about this recently? Did this come up recently?

0:06:23 Matt: I don't think it has. This was just in 2008, which isn't that long ago. Idea that George W. Bush might have maybe fired seven U.S. attorneys for political reasons so they couldn't prosecute Republicans in their districts was a scandal. It was a two -year investigation, investigation the possibility that that might have been political firings, something that the president is allowed to do. He's allowed to hire and fire his own U.S. attorneys. Here in the last couple of weeks, we've had about 40 U.S. attorneys fired, 12 directly associated with the Jack Smith investigations, and another 30 who worked on January 6th cases. And I just want to point out, just kind of in the same way that last week we were talking about the idea of sending people to Guantanamo Bay, which is already starting. We've already got

0:06:22 Thomas: Can't remember. Those were the days. Yeah.

0:07:01 Matt: Some migrants. I don't have full details yet, but it is starting. We'll talk about it.

0:07:03 Thomas: Was it 11 people or something like that?

0:07:06 Matt: I just saw another plane load have gone down, too. We don't know much yet, but we'll find out. But sure we can take them at their word, yeah. Just in the same sense that it's worth stopping and marking something like that, that we're sending people to a facility previously known as a black hole of due process outside the United States. It's, we are talking about the U.S. Attorney's Office intentionally purging people who worked on the prosecution of the person who is now the president for trying to overthrow a lawful election. The acting attorney general wrote in his message to the first 12 that were fired from the Smith investigation, he said, given your significant role in prosecuting the president, I do not believe the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president's agenda faithfully. So this is straight up. I mean, if this kind of thing happened in another country, this is the kind of thing that President Trump would generally call a banana republic, right? This is the idea that you purge everybody who helped to investigate, and in this case, a righteous prosecution, as we know. Emile Bove fired this other 30, and we're going to have to keep reminding everybody that Emile is now the Assistant Deputy Attorney General. Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi are still awaiting confirmation.

0:07:10 Thomas: It's okay. They're the worst of the worst, so we can all feel justified. Yeah. Bondi's confirmed.

0:08:14 Matt: She's confirmed now. Yeah, see, I can't keep up, But he sent the most recent memo on that. I just wanted to read – there have been some really interesting phrasings in the New York Times around some of this stuff. But I wanted to write a sentence because a couple of these that you just read them and then you read it again and you're like, wow, I really just read that in the newspaper. This is really where we're at. That. Made it all the more jarring, current and former officials said, was that such a momentous and aggressive step had been initiated by an acting attorney general operating on behalf of a president with a stated desire for vengeance and few advisors with the stature or inclination to restrain him. Where we're at. That sounds like something that doesn't happen in the United States, but that's where We're at other things that don't happen United States including firing 17 inspectors general which we haven't really talked about yet. But really vital important role in the government to keep us on track to keep things as ethical to investigate to get whistleblower complaints. Then we also have the first instance ever of a president firing a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Never happened before. That is a big one. Believe the only Democrat. Are supposed to be a purge. And course, he's going to war with unions, as we can tell already. We didn't need to be told that. Certainly, these orders bringing everybody back to work and violating all kinds of collective bargaining agreements going forward. Going to see how it all plays out with these lawsuits. Federal employees have a lot of reasons to be upset right now. I just wanted to mark that because the NLRB thing, I think, as you said, is getting overshadowed by so many other things. Then we've got whatever's going on at the FBI. There does seem to be kind of a war happening at point between DOJ and FBI. Do you know what happened with the acting director of the FBI? Do you knows who it is? It's an amazing story. Sorry.

0:09:38 Thomas: Yeah, go ahead.

0:09:39 Matt: Brian Driscoll, kind of a cool background in hostage negotiations, which is pretty much what he has to do right now on behalf of the FBI. Was appointed accidentally, complete fluke, because he was supposed to be the deputy. But on the website, when they posted all of this, they made him the principal and they made the other guy the deputy, the White House actually acknowledged that was a mistake, but they decided not to correct it.

0:09:59 Thomas: Oh my God.

0:10:00 Matt: He's just acting as And it sounds like it's a good thing he is, because he's doing pretty well in trying to protect his agents. And I'm not usually that excited about protecting the FBI, but we're talking about potentially 6 ,000 FBI agents who worked in one way or another on the investigations of Trump, and they are trying to purge them in the same way they were the U .S. attorneys. Journeys. And they made them all fill out kind of extensive survey about their role in all of this. And two different lawsuits were filed pretty quickly because the has demanded a complete list of essentially doxing all of these people that something would be public. Two different law suits have been filed, one of them involving the union, the other one involving nine anonymous FBI agents. Think they have a pretty good chance. They're alleging Privacy Act violations because obviously this is a lot of private stuff that would come out. Would subject them to threats. Administrative Procedure Act claims, which we're going to be seeing again and again in every one of these lawsuits because they're not doing anything the way they're supposed to be doing anything. One is actually seeking mandamus, which which does not seem as like in this situation, but we'll just watch as this develops. Just want to sort of make sure we step back and see the picture. I know that we're hearing all of this news, it's just kind of all rushing at us at once. But the picture that is created here when you have all the prosecutors who worked on January 6th prosecutions, who prosecuted the president, all of the FBI agents now under investigation, although Emil Bove did did say in a memo this week that they're only looking for the ones who acted in a partisan or inappropriate way, but I think they're going to find that anybody participating in this probably was.

0:11:17 Matt: You've got, of course, the pardons, which are still, I think, one of the most shocking things that Trump has done in all of this time, all of the January 6th pardoms. And the fact that the U .S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, is an extreme, hard -right MAGA partisan who was actually at the Capitol on January 6th, who actually represented as a defense attorney, some of the same people who have now been pardoned. In fact, one of the cases that he helped to drop this week was somebody he represented, which is a massive ethical violation.

0:11:42 Thomas: What? How is that possible?

0:11:44 Matt: I think it's not. It's not something that should be done. He should be reported to the bar for having his name on that, for having anything to do with it. This is the state that we're in here. This has been one of my main concerns in all of this is that we are going to forget what ethics are by the time we're done with this. Ed Martin is somebody that I think I was suggesting to Lydia you guys should investigate for a Wednesday because he is really something. That is going to be one of the most important US attorney positions now for DC because they're going to do what they can to go after their perceived enemies. And he's a scary guy. He's literally just a talk show host, very much like Pete Hegseth. The kind of stuff we're doing now for the US Attorney for DC. Just wanted to point out sort of the purge aspects of this, which is also what's going on with Doge, of course, which we're about to get to. That's really what this amounts to, is an effort like none other. This has never happened before. I mean, obviously, the president has the right to change the administration, to hire and fire people following the law, but these people that have been fired for the most part are not people who are supposed to be just fired at random. They're supposed to actually have some some kind of good cause. And

0:12:42 Thomas: To say nothing about the fact that, yeah, okay, technically legal, but used to be impeachable to do stuff like this. It used to beyond the pale.

0:12:49 Matt: Yeah. That was one thing I kept thinking is there's so many different grounds for impeachment that have already been established in the last 17 days or so.

0:12:54 Thomas: I think there's been articles filed, and I don't know what it'll do, but at least they're doing it. Somebody's trying.

0:12:59 Matt: I think they should just be a standing Democratic Minority Impeachment Committee, basically, just keep up.

0:13:03 Thomas: Keep doing them and make them them different. It, So keep it fresh, you know, spice it up, vary them. Don't just submit the same one.

0:13:08 Matt: And just continue to notice the way that we are, the best we can, like these things as they happen because they are trying to overwhelm us. That is the stated goal. Stephen Miller and others have said that that's what they wanted to do in the first month or so is to give us the feeling that this is all happening at once. There's nothing we can do. As we've been talking about all the way through, this is a bunch of amateurs and they are making mistakes left and right. And this though, what we're going to be talking about today, the main story in about Doge, this exactly an example of what I've been talking about for many months about how Now, fascism and authoritarianism and autocracy can't happen without lawyers, can't happen without the patina, basically sort of the sheen of law. You just slap a coat of law on this nonsense. And that's what's happened here. And I wanted to sort of explain, because I haven't seen a lot of people sort of pull back and talk about what has actually happened with Doge and what this deal is. So the Department of Government Efficiency has been many things over the last few months, and the point that when they filed suit against it, about there four suits right now, I believe, pending against it. Of the suits, they actually had to cite Trump's truth statements about what

0:14:07 Matt: It was going to be because they had no other information about it, it was one of the ones that failed on Inauguration Day. I want to point out what is actually in in the executive order, because I haven't really seen anybody talking about the executive order to create it, and legally, what they're standing on here, it's nothing, I want to point out, it is nothing at all. But this is the kind of thing where I think they think, and I think this works for a lot of people, they can just point to it and say, well, here's this order, here're the series of events, here' the statute that authorizes us to do this, and all you have to do is scratch the surface and it's gone, there's nothing here. So, executive order on January 20th that created the Department of Government efficiency. It did essentially is just say that the United States Digital Service, which we'll talk about in a second, is now just going to be Doge. That's what it did. It just repurposed a part of government. Now, the US Digital Service was something created by Barack Obama. It didn't even require an executive order because it was essentially just putting a bunch of the government's tech guys.

0:14:55 Thomas: Matt that was something where you, they just went in and ripped out every part of the government. Was that what that ad agency used to do and now they're just renaming it to doge because yeah

0:15:04 Matt: Never existed like that, actually, it turns out. Yeah, not a thing. Digital Service actually was doing a lot of good work to to modernize websites, to modernized systems. Think it's how we ended up with the pretty good systems that we have for the immigration courts and for USCIS now that are all online. The federal government was way overdue. I can tell you that even the National Visa Center, if somebody could get on that, please. The National Visa Center website looks like it's from 1998 and works about as well. The purpose of the USDA, so it was set up in 2014 by Barack Obama, it was to modernise and to sort of integrate IT. And And so it's just a bunch of IT IT guys, I think about 250 people at its height. And it was created after that disaster on healthcare .gov when that website crashed and just was unusable. And we realized that maybe the best coders weren't coming to work in DC. So maybe we start to get these people together and see what we can do in one place. And again, this is just sort of reorganizing existing IT resources into one thing. It didn't require much. Might remember, of course, Vivek Ramaswamy several years ago was assigned to this as well.

0:15:58 Matt: And he was the first victim of the cost -cutting measures and he was eliminated.

0:16:03 Thomas: Have dog years but now it's doge years Yeah. It was only a few days ago in human days, but in Doge days, it's eternity.

0:16:05 Matt: That's exactly it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, this whole thing has been been going on for about a week, and it seems endless. But Ramaswamy's thing was very much along the lines of what's in the executive order. And if they'd actually followed what he said, it would be pretty normal. It's essentially the same thing as USDS, just kind of beefed up. In the Executive Order, it talks about a software modernization initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government -wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology systems. Nothing in here about cost -cutting or about efficiency of that kind. Doge teams are supposed to include one Doge team lead, one giant engineer, one human resources specialist, and they can all be the same person.

0:16:40 Thomas: Racist that we, one 4chan racist. Yeah.

0:16:46 Matt: One attorney, which I thought was interesting because I haven't heard anything about attorneys being involved in any of this. I've just heard about, you know, 19 to 25 year old kids running

0:16:52 Thomas: What use would Elon Musk have for an attorney, Matt? What use what do you have?

0:16:55 Matt: Well, that's true. Just tell him he's breaking the law. Yeah.

0:16:58 Thomas: He them, doesn't care about the law. It is a person telling him there is limits to anything that he wants, which is is not how would he ever listen to that that's not he's not capable of that yeah

0:17:07 Matt: That's not the Elon Musk way. It's not the Silicon Valley way. Move fast and break stuff, even if that's the social security system. Yeah, I mean, it's an executive order, and obviously they're completely not in the spirit of the executive order with what they're doing. But it is very much in the Spirit of what Trump promised in his truths. So I guess if you see his truths as an executive Order, he said in his various statements in the last few months that they're going to dismantle, slash and restructure the agency's programs and pave the way for making drastic cuts to federal programs. This is all from the complaint in one of the cases. So that's what he was promising was going to happen. And then the executive order he signed really had nothing to do with that. But I don't think they care. I don'T think they CARE at all what they're actually saying any of this actually is, because they're just going in, this is a coup. This is just a

0:17:11 Thomas: The government that's mm -hmm

0:17:46 Matt: Straight -up unconstitutional seizure of power. And I want to be very clear about that before we're talking about anything else. It's very hard for me going into this as in a law podcast to take this seriously and to come in here and tell you all the different ways this is illegal. It's just so obviously illegal. You shouldn't have to be a lawyer to know that. And I want to be very clear that I'm not giving this any credence or even considering the possibility this might be illegal just by talking about it. What I want to try to convey here is how they got there or what they're saying they're doing, because it's so flimsy on itself that I have to think this is going to be stopped by a court. And then what happens? We'll talk about that. But the can't just swap out a temporary agency, which is what they did. They basically created this sort of temporary thing. They appointed Musk a special government employee in SGE.

0:18:27 Thomas: Well that was interesting because it felt like there were laws at least against private citizens just running amok in the government. So they at least seem to respond to that.

0:18:36 Matt: At least pretend that he was going to fit under this category, under 18 U.S.C. 202.

0:18:41 Thomas: That work retroactively?

0:18:42 Matt: For what he's doing. There are a lot of requirements for special government employees. Now, one of the reasons they did this is because the requirements are far less than they would be, and you don't have to file anything within 130 days. They're limited to basically 130 days of running amok. Now, are expected to report conflicts of interest, but they don't have to file financial disclosure forms within 130 days of appointment. The conflict of interest rules absolutely still apply. There's no question. Now, the whole point of this is supposed to be to bring in private experts, to appoint them as special government employees, kind of like special counsel almost, to come in and do this kind of thing, like advice and consultation for the government. This is so far beyond any kind of ambit that he's been given. It's so far behind any kind of legal definition of what an SG should be doing. Now, Elon Musk himself has a security clearance, but we haven't been told about these kids. I doubt they've just been given security clearances overnight. Maybe they have. Will become relevant, as you'll see. But is a crime in and of itself, though, I want to point out, someone who has a conflict of interest, a known conflict of interests, to willfully be working as a special government employee while that conflict of interest exists. As a starting point, if you're asking about crimes, that's 18 U.S.C. 208, and that's punishable for up to five years for what it's worth. So I would say that this man, the world's richest man who has billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, acting in direct conflict of interests. Obviously, he's going to be reviewing things that are payouts to him and his companies and his friends. There is no reason at all that somebody like this ever should have been appointed to do anything resembling this. I don't know why I even have to say this out loud, but I just feel

0:20:08 Matt: Like I should.

0:20:08 Thomas: It's insane. I said it in SIO that really banking on the fact that there's never going to be consequences, you know, and I know they are. I know Trump does. I know they always act invincible, but like this feels like a new level. I mean are you are you that certain there's never going to be consequences to anything? Would you, would you take that risk? Like if we, if, if this gets outrageous enough that the American people decide to do what is required to which have consequences, is not impossible, like could just go to prison forever. Like this is crazy.

0:20:36 Matt: Counting on a pardon. He is counting on everything he does being pardoned or having the way cleared. And I don t think it's unreasonable for him to count on that.

0:20:37 Thomas: I think, I don'T either, but it's like a lot to bet. I'm just saying like, it's a lot Tibet. Like not going to Be a state crime. They'll get you for, there's not going like, you're just betting. And it's, I think it's sign of where we are that he's that that confident. And he's insane, but in a narcissist, but he's that confident, you know, it's, it's insulting to the American people should feel insulted that this guy is that confident that there's no consequences for him, that there's nothing we can do. It's impunity. He could shoot a man on fifth Avenue.

0:21:08 Matt: Quote Chuck Grassley from 2013, this is worrisome because if the government isn't properly tracking who has special government employee designation, it may not be looking at whether anyone has a conflict interest with government service and a private sector job. Chuck Grassley was very concerned about SGEs when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and appointing people who may or may not have been her wealthy friends to do this.

0:21:26 Thomas: But to do what she didn't appoint people to to do this, Matt, like she appointing people to doing?

0:21:29 Matt: No, not she was appointing People like Huma Abedin, her top aide, to do some work for the the State Department. And were concerned because she was also employed by the private sector at the same time. And there's an issue. Sure. Nothing like this. This is consultation type stuff.

0:21:41 Thomas: A little bit of grift, a little bit But yeah, not good.

0:21:45 Matt: Regular Clinton stuff.

0:21:45 Thomas: But what's importantly to be able to not just crumble into this fascism, there has to be an accurate perspective and scale of how bad something is. Like, that's where we got. That's how we got here. Oh, well, Trump is bad, but Hillary once maybe had a private email server. It's like, we need to beable to say, okay, one thing, not great. The other thing, off the charts, like not even just completely unacceptable, words

0:22:05 Matt: It a constitutional crisis. It's just the kind that has lawyers and people showing up in suits and doing things in government offices. It doesn't have the visuals that we need. Now, we might have a crunch point pretty soon here. We might have it reach a point where it's visible, because I think what's going to happen within the next few weeks is that this is going to keep going, and they're going to have multiple court orders saying they can't do this anymore. We've just had the very first injunction saying that their they access has to be read -only. That they can only access the information. It can only be these two people, and now it's just this one person, Tim Krause. And that's the first, I think, is going going to be of many orders because judges are not going to like this any more than we do. And what is going to happen when Musk and his team continue, continue, continue to keep doing this?

0:22:48 Thomas: Yeah. That's what I want to know. Oh

0:22:50 Matt: And at that point, they can be held in contempt. It can start with civil contempt and it can go down to criminal contempt. And this is exactly what happened with Joe Arpaio in Arizona. You might remember that he was just flagrantly violating a court order that ordered him to stop doing all those racist arrests. And he's just kept doing racist arrests to the point that U .S. Marshals came out and arrested arrested him because he was in contempt of court. And that could happen here. Now, that doesn't require the U .S.

0:23:12 Thomas: That'd be so nice.

0:23:12 Matt: Attorney's Office, doesn't acquire DOJ. Question does become, now, I trust U. S. Marshals to do their job in carrying out the federal court orders. That's what they do. They are technically part of DOJ, so there is that possibility that you could reach the constitutional crisis where a federal judge says, go out and arrest Elon Musk or one of these other kids that are going out there and acting in violation of court orders, because I have no doubt, as you said, that Musk is just going to keep going. And then what happens when When U .S. Marshals get there or they're on their way and they get a call from Pam Bondi saying, nope, not on my watch. You're not going to go arrest that guy. Don't know what happens.

0:23:26 Thomas: That's dark. I speculated that same thing actually on SIO. I was like, I even said like, I need to hear Matt's take on this, but like, he listen to people who say no, he just doesn't. So what happens? You Are know, like are the judges going to come out and slap the cuffs on him?

0:23:56 Matt: It's such new territory that I couldn't possibly say.

0:23:58 Thomas: That would break things so fundamentally. I mean, things are broken, but like that would be a new, like a judge, a federal judge ordering something and not being able to carry it out. Like that so dangerous. That is just so dangerous."

0:24:11 Matt: It's and I think that they're going to start doing that. They're goingto start flagrantly violating court orders pretty soon, probably sooner than later. To the point that three days into the Trump administration, General Counsel Bill McGinley, who's just a pretty regular kind of Republican lawyer who's been working with Trump for a little while, think we talked about him before, but he left the Doge team. He was supposed to be general counsel for Doge, and he just quit. I think he saw where this was all going.

0:24:32 Thomas: He's like, well, this is a do nothing job. Like, what is the point? Why am I here?

0:24:36 Matt: Yeah, right. Just, yeah. He said he wanted to explore opportunities in the private sector. That's not usually what you do three days and do a new job. So I think that has a lot to do with what's going on here. Act, and because there's a whole sequence of things that have to happen to set up this kind of a task force, this kind of advisory committee. And this is an advisory committee, it's supposed to be just advisory, but now they're saying saying that they have the ability to act. Have absolutely no ability and no authority and no ambit whatsoever to do any of this, but they're supposed to file a charter. They're supposed to prove to the administrative GSA that it's in the public interest to do the things that they're going to do. And the government has to determine whether the functions of this new agency could be performed by something that's already in existence, like the digital service. If you're saying this is already just the digital surface, why can't it just do that? Just another way that it's violating the law. Not a criminal law necessarily, but yeah, it's a big one. There's so many different directions here, but we'll talk about the two major ones that we know about so far with Treasury and with USCID. Treasury obviously was very concerning as soon as we found out that they had gotten into Treasury systems, into the fiscal service, which handles 90 % of the payouts and also the receipts for the federal government. To the point that CNN just reported very recently that Doge staff emailed the Treasury and told them to stop payments made to the U .S. Agency for International Development, USAID, which we'll talk about in a moment. That's stunning. That is a very surprising thing to learn, even now, that one of the first things that they're doing is emailing the Treasury, and just telling them to stop certain kinds of payments. The fiscal service has no authority whatsoever. They have no discretion. They are just the checkbook. They're told to write checks. They'RE told to distribute money. That's what they do. They are not a point where you deliberate any of this. And the fiscal assistant secretary of the treasury, David Lebrecht, wrote back and said it might be more legal or closer to legal if the Department of State made that request, which has some oversight over USAID, because that would be more in line with Trump's executive order about how we're going to be handling payments. And that's what pushed him out. He had to quit. He's on an admin leave now too.

0:26:38 Thomas: In the end, I thought they did kind of do that, didn't they? Then they have Rubio after the fact, kind to justify it.

0:26:44 Matt: Again, as we'll talk about, have some oversight of USAID. But

0:26:46 Thomas: About this because, uh, I see people, conservatives trying to justify this, their whole thing was, well, USAID was an executive order to begin with. So you can just do whatever you want.

0:26:57 Matt: Is not true. It's literally true that JFK did establish this agency by executive order, but then it was quickly confirmed by Congress as an actual agency. It's also not really a part of the Department of State. And there's a letter right now from Democratic senators to Marco Rubio reminding him that they can't just fold it into Department of state. It is actually somewhat independent. That they're coming for USAID first, a couple of good reasons. There is the appearance of giving lots of money to foreign governments and foreign causes. Foreign aid is one of the things that Trump was trying to crack down on. The fact that USAID has historically been, in some cases, a cutout for the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence operations. Corporations. The fact that Vladimir Putin and other dictators and authoritarians really, really don't like it because it has sponsored democracy initiatives in 120 countries, including Russia, where it was kicked out of in 2012, and Hungary, which is kind of the direction that we're on right now. I'm sure we're going to talk about this another time, but a lot of this, as people are pointing out, resembles what happened in Viktor Orban's Hungary when he took over and started gutting these all public agencies. And there was actually a very wealthy man involved in helping them to do that in exactly the same way.

0:28:01 Matt: USAID, just to talk about what it actually is, established with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. And it was a Cold War effort to show the best of America and put out our humanitarian presence. And It was confirmed as recently as last year that this agency exists, that it actually very strictly says there is within the executive branch of government, the U .S. Agency for International Development, which means that as long as it's stated that clearly by Congress that it can't not exist just because the president doesn't want it to, just to make that very clear. It was even recodified last year to say that it can't be abolished, that it cannot be reduced without consultation, and that there's a long process it would have to go through and Congress would have be involved, obviously, because it's appropriating $40 billion to USAID. It wants that money to go there. One of the many, many any illegal things that's happening here is essentially impoundment, as we've discussed before, the idea that the president can just hold onto money instead of spending it where Congress told him to put it. USAID is a very unusual sort of independent organization. It was initially part of the State Department, but essentially the Clinton administration was given an opportunity to review it and decide what it should do. It allowed it to stay as an independent agency, but it's also by statute under the direct authority and policy guidance of the the Secretary of State. It's not the same as

0:29:13 Matt: Being under the authority of Secretary of State. Essentially, the Secretary just sort of directs what its policy should be and where it should be doing things. But it's a little confusing, but it has essentially been recognized as an independent agency. And let's hear Marco Rubio talk about it. He's going to blame the victim here for why USAID needs to die.

0:29:14 Thomas: Wait,

0:29:30 Clip: Global entity and that the master is the globe and not the United States. And that's not what the statute says, and that's non -sustainable. Can it be reformed, or does it need to die? Well, that was always the goal, was to reform it. But now we have rank insubordination. Now we have basically an active effort. Their basic attitude is, we don't work for anyone. We work for ourselves. No agency or government can tell us what to do.

0:29:51 Matt: There you go. A willful misstatement of how this works, as the Democratic senators point out in their letter. But Marco Rubo has now been appointed the head of USAID, our new Secretary of State, is also directly running this agency, which has never happened before. Previously, for a few days, had somebody in there as the head of it who didn't believe in it, as Trump likes to do with these agencies. There's that. Marco Rubio has had lots of nice things to say about USAID in the past, but of course, now he's doing the Trump line. I just want to remind everybody, because this news kind of came and went just before the election, but in the last week of October, the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk had had regular conversations with Vladimir Putin about all kinds of geopolitical things, allegedly, and maybe some personal and business stuff. And this agency in particular, and I'm not saying that Putin is behind all this stuff, I'm just saying it's one that Putin and his ilk do not like.

0:30:37 Thomas: Is freaking weird, though. I don't, but

0:30:38 Matt: Weird to go picking on it right away.

0:30:42 Thomas: Show is brought to you by HelloFresh. Lydia and I are always podcasting, always researching, always editing all the time, we're always looking to save time anywhere, and HelloFresh meal kits are a great way to do that, because with HelloFresh, you get farm fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Trips to the grocery store, and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. You think about how much time savings that is, planning of the what to cook. Then you have to go to the grocery store and get all that stuff and get the right amounts and not forget anything. Oh, whoops. You got too much. Didn't use all of it. And the rest of it just goes to waste. Well, forget that, HelloFresh has you. They've got so much too. There's so many choices. They've got new ready -made meals that go from your fridge to your fork in three minutes. Talk talk about time savings. They also have a lineup of prep and baked meals. This is great. This is a newer thing. Very short prep, around five minutes, and then you pop it in the oven the oven does most of the work but it's still so good and it's still a home cooked meal and I'm telling you, if you are someone who is as busy as we are, or even like half as busy, as we have been HelloFresh is such a good way to save you time and money. Take advantage of this. Get up to 10 free meals and a free high-protein item for life. Go to hellofresh.com/opening10fm. item per box with meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com/opening10fm. HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit.

0:32:14 Matt: USAID has or had 10,000 employees, all of whom I believe are now on leave. 10,000 employees and $40 billion. You cannot just have the world's richest man come in and tell it to shut down. I don't know how many different ways I can say this, how many different times I can tell you this is illegal, but this is shocking. I mean, it really is truly shocking. And I think it's hard to get people to see it because it sounds like such a reorganizational reform administrative kind of thing. You who knows anything about how these things are supposed to work thinks this is OK. And I think that's very important to stress. And of course, the same with Musk messing with the Treasury, because there were early reports from Wired that his coders, including a man known professionally as Big Balls, were in there just rewriting code, ancient code. Might remember how fun it was to use Twitter after Elon Musk took over that month or two. And he's been reported to be doing the same thing, the same kinds of things with the federal government that he was doing with Twitter when he took over, just kind of moving very quickly, firing a lot of people and breaking things. And when you're talking about the treasury payment system, the very heart

0:33:17 Matt: Of the way that we distribute and receive money, that's not something you want to break. And I think there are a lot the federal coders are very worried about this for good reason, that we've got a bunch of kids who don't know anything about these systems, some of which I understand are written with ancient programming languages, trying to integrate and redo all of this. And the idea that Elon Musk has come out now several times and talked about parts of the government that need to die or need to go, again, not anything that's supposed to be his job. USAID, he said that he spent the whole weekend feeding it into the wood chipper, which he said he could have been going to parties, but he was feeding into the wood chipper instead. But I did want to mention one thing that I found particularly concerning, where he allegedly did stop payments. And I think, I assume this is back on, I don't really know what's happening, but Mike Flynn, the Mike Flynn tweeted that Lutheran family services was a money laundering operation. This is a Lutheran humanitarian group. This is essentially the humanitarian wing of the Lutheran Church, which

0:34:10 Thomas: What?

0:34:10 Matt: Includes Lutheran immigration and refugee services, social services, and refugee resettlement. This is what they call a voluntary agency, a VOLAG in our terms. I just want to say that I think the voluntary agency system is one of the coolest things that the federal government does. I want to tell you a little about it because it's just like primates that are messing with this stuff, these absolute monkeys that have no idea about anything they're looking at. Mike Flynn just looks at this and is like, well, this is a money laundering operation because it's helping refugees. So these voluntary agencies are exactly what conservatives say they want. It's public-private partnerships with faith-based organizations doing a lot of the work that the federal government would be doing otherwise, but doing it within the ambit of the things that these faith groups are supposed to believe in. HIAS, which is the Jewish group. Most of the rest of them are Christian. Obviously, that the Catholics are in on this. I think there's eight or nine major volags, and they work in partnership with the federal government to resettle refugees. It's one of their major functions. And by doing that, they save the federal government an enormous amount of money, and they allow the members of these churches to feel like they're doing the things they're supposed to be doing for their faith, for those Christian faiths who still believe in helping refugees at least.

0:35:14 Matt: And the Lutherans are still among them.

0:35:14 Thomas: Was gonna say, I can't even believe they found a handful of churches that actually try to practice what they preach, or even preach that still.

0:35:21 Matt: That Lutherans are still doing pretty well, Lutherans. But this is just disgusting. The idea that Mike Flynn would say this is somehow a money laundering operation, and then Elon Musk jumps on the bandwagon and talks about how he's going to make sure that he shuts this thing down. February 2nd, the Doge team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments. Again, these are authorized payments to a voluntary agency that has been working for decades and decades to resettle refugees and, again, to save taxpayers a lot of money, to help people get on their feet, to do things like literally teach them how to wear winter clothes if you're showing up as an African refugee, to help them get jobs, to help them find housing, and even the cost of your plane ticket, you have to reimburse eventually as a refugee when you come here. It's a very efficient system, and it ultimately helps people integrate much better. And eventually, the research shows overall that refugees contribute more to the economy than anyone else once they get going. The idea that Elon Musk has no idea about any of this. I doubt Mike Flynn really understands any of these. And he's just going to go ahead and say it's illegal. And he apparently turned off the tap for a little while somehow to the Lutherans. And now there's just massive confusion what's going on here and where the money is going and what's gonna happen. I mean, this is a really unhealthy way for the government to operate all around. I just want to highlight that one example because here's something that's been operating just fine for many years and actually saving the government money, and they've just decided that it's some kind of globalist project. This injunction, which was just issued, at least we have some security for now that they're not supposed to be doing the worst things that we thought they might be doing, which is actually stopping payments or getting in and changing the code. They may still continue to do those things, but there's at least going to be some teeth behind it if they start to do that.

0:36:53 Thomas: You know, I had missed... I originally, it told me this Doge, they were just kind of sticking it in this place where this digital services thing was. I thought that was just a matter of convenience and just finding a place. I just absolutely missed the fact that it was very intentionally so that they could go in to these systems and do this. I really, I've missed that personally.

0:37:12 Thomas: Personally, I thought it was just like, oh, he's just finding a place to like put it so that it's like a legitimate government federal agency.

0:37:18 Matt: It's very intentional. And this agency has never had anything resembling the kind of authority or advisory or consultation powers that they're taking on now, but

0:37:27 Thomas: Because Congress is supposed to do that.

0:37:28 Matt: Right. You can't just start not spending this money or shutting down these agencies. I mean, USAID, as I understand it right now, is effectively closed. And there are projects all around the world, including people who are in the middle of medical treatments and things where I'm just reading that the doctors are very concerned they don't know what to do because there's this stop work order and they might be in violation of it if they go ahead and help. But I mean, there are people with devices in them that need medical treatment. There are people who who are in the middle of courses of drug treatments, HIV treatments. Are good things that we are doing around the world, and it doesn't cost that much.

0:37:59 Matt: People routinely overestimate, yeah, relatively. I mean, $40 billion in the scheme of this for the kind of work we're able to do.

0:37:59 Thomas: It's nothing. What's so frustrating about it. I mean, it's just absolutely nothing. It's peanuts. We don't we don't do enough of this. And it's just symbolic for them and ruins people's lives and doesn't even... Here's the other thing, the way government works, what happens to like leftover money for this kind of thing? I mean, usually government accounting is weird. Like not usually just like, Hey, we saved a buck. Let's put that wherever we want, or let's refund it to the taxpayers. That usually just means, Oh, okay, well we'll put it somewhere else in the same, you agency or same fund. Cause that's what that fund is for. And that's the amount of money they have.

0:38:37 Matt: That's the appropriation.

0:38:38 Thomas: Yeah. So what even happens to this money? What is the purpose of this?

0:38:41 Matt: I don't think that the purpose is actually saving money. I think that we're about to get some big tax breaks for very wealthy people, and they want to show that they've cut a certain amount of money to make up for it or whatever. I don't know. Or also just because... symbolically.

0:38:52 Thomas: Like symbolically. Yeah.

0:38:54 Matt: And a lot of this, too, they want to be able to give over to the private sector the way that fascist governments have always done.

0:38:58 Thomas: Yeah. I've loved that line lately. I don't know if you've seen that one, Matt. Whoa. Elon's the first fascist that's ever wanted to make government smaller. It's like, that's not, it's hollowing that that's exactly in line with what fascism would want, it's hollowing out anything good government does and just keeping the parts that might control people and you know or the military part, like as though I, I don't know, Hitler had like a really strong bureaucracy that funded that, people around the world for stuff and helped, it's, it's such an obviously bad faith argument, oh

0:39:28 Matt: That was Elon, who's never been a real fan of democracy as it is. I remember him tweeting a while back that democracy isn't the objective of anything that Trump is doing, that ranked democracy can thwart the human condition. He said something like that. But yeah, my

0:39:36 Thomas: That yeah yeah what a stupid sequence of words.

0:39:43 Matt: Yeah, no, he's an idiot. But fact is that there's not a single Republican who seems to have any kind of public issue with any of this. And I wanted to play a quick clip of what happened recently when the Oversight Committee was talking about issuing a subpoena to Elon Musk so he could come in and explain what what the hell he's been doing, which seems like something that Congress should have the right to do at this stage, since it appears the world's richest man is running amok.

0:40:03 Clip: Importance. I move that the committee subpoena that Elon Musk to come before it as a witness at the earliest possible moment. And I so move.

0:40:17 Clip: There's been a motion in second. The motion is not debatable.

0:40:23 Clip: Mr. Chairman, why is it not debatable? Point of order. It is debatable, Mr.

0:40:30 Clip: Chair. Mr. chair, I strike the last word. Hold on.

0:40:34 Clip: Mr. chairman. I'm going to table the motion. Mr.

0:40:43 Clip: Chairman, why don't we want to debate Elon Musk coming in and talking to us about his work and how he's enriched himself with $164 billion. Dollars mr. chairman I move to table the motion the motion is not debatable as many are in favor of tabling point of order state your point mr. chairman I think it's outrageous that this committee will not even entertain You know, you're out of order. You know the rules of this committee. There's been a motion.

0:41:42 Matt: Let's have order in this

0:41:43 Clip: Mr.

0:41:43 Matt: Country.

0:41:43 Clip: Elon Musk is out of the order in this meeting. I call the question. There's going to be a motion and second. Motion by Dr. Fox, second by Mr.

0:41:48 Thomas: You're out of order.

0:41:54 Clip: Higgins.

0:41:53 Matt: So you get the idea.

0:41:56 Thomas: Mean, he's not wrong. That's it's not a point of order. You can't say point of order speech, political speech, but yeah, whatever for

0:42:00 Matt: But she's not wrong either. Yeah, right. That was Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico doing what all Democrats should be doing right now, just getting in the way as much as possible and putting her objections out there. This is literally the oversight committee. This is what they're for, and they are refusing to do this. And no, no surprise.

0:42:15 Thomas: I don't know why it's not debatable that, that I don't understand. I don't know all those little rules, Robert's rules of order or whatever bullshit. I don't know, but that, that seemed weird. I thought I was, I'm disappointed because I thought they were going to say point-of-order. Why the hell isn't this debatable? I don't understand that, but

0:42:30 Matt: I extremely debatable, as we've been discussing. Again, not from Republicans, and we continue not to. This is their fault, as you've been pointing out. This I think people should hear what they're doing and how they're going out of their way to make sure that none of this is subjected to any kind of oversight, that it's just going to continue on the way it is. And courts are really the only way that this is going to stop, and we're going to have to see where it goes.

0:42:53 Thomas: Yeah, we need to universally demand. I'm, I'm so sick of the spotlight always being on Democrats. It's always on Democrats, it's either we're not, we didn't stop it, now we're not fighting, right, now or not, it's like, somebody just, what happened was, the Republicans stopped feeling shame, and so everyone gave up, we're like, wait, oh, well, that was the only thing we had, was the ability to make them feel shame, and they're all shameless, so, I guess we'll just point at each other now, but it's like, I don't, there's got to be a better way, don't, there, I, has to be better way. If something truly this unacceptable is happening, every media outlet, every person should just not give them any respite on this. It should just be, why are you not stopping this? It their cowardice. You'd only need a couple Republicans in the House. We wouldn't even need that many.

0:43:39 Matt: Just look beyond beyond what you're being told and stop repeating these things and call it a coup. Call it completely out of order. Tell it what it is, if we accept this, if we continue to accept this. And by we, I don't mean necessarily you and I, We're going to keep talking about it, but I just mean as a government, if this becomes acceptable, then we're done. The constitution is essentially meaningless because this is so completely illegal. So obviously illegal. This is so beyond what the president is supposed to be able to do or anybody working with the president. And it's not even clear, by the way, there's another sort of scary sentence in the New York Times. I been thinking about a lot.

0:44:11 Thomas: Matt, was it, my favorite, which is Trump's attacks on DEI, get approval from some in the left wing. Unbelievable. It's so stupid.

0:44:19 Matt: I saw that, yeah, this is one of the times a few days ago, and it just, again, this is the kind of sentence where you just read it. And I read it again and again. I thought about it for about 30 minutes after I read it. Trump official who was not authorized to speak publicly said, Mr. Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control. Almost no one.

0:44:37 Matt: Like, did they lose the guy's number that can control him?

0:44:40 Thomas: Almost no one. Yeah.

0:44:41 Matt: Of course is pretending like this is all stuff that he's authorized and everything he's doing is okay. But I think we're beyond that. That almost no one can control. It's incredible that we're all just acknowledging that there's a guy running amok in the government that no one could control who's, with guns, actually.

0:44:51 Thomas: There are people that could if they wanted to. Of people. Yeah

0:44:56 Matt: Yeah.

0:44:57 Thomas: Incredible.

0:44:57 Matt: They're just apparently just all walking by security. USAID thing was especially concerning because they were immediately demanding access to classified documents, which USAID does have plenty of, and not showing any kind of security clearance that allow that, and certainly no authorization whatsoever to get these documents. And the two people that tried to stand up to them were eventually put on leave as well. And they do, as of Saturday, I believe, have those documents. Know what else to do but to report on it. I'm not even sure how to tell people, obviously, other than let your representatives know as much as you possibly can that you understand that this is a coup in progress. Is just something that we have to talk about. And right now, I'm Not sure what else we can do.

0:45:29 Thomas: Imagine if George Soros was just in the government doing whatever. It is just unbelievable.

0:45:36 Matt: It would be a lot lot better than this if they were doing that. But yeah, I mean, still it'd be illegal, but just saying.

0:45:41 Thomas: It would be illegal. Illegal. Illegal, yeah.

0:45:45 Matt: It'd be our kind of illegal. I don't know what else to say, but I've been thinking all week about how to talk about this on today's show, because I don't think it does a lot of good to take it through every one of the statutes that he's violating, and then we've mentioned a few of them at least, to talk about all the different criminal penalties that could apply. I think that everybody understands instinctively that this is illegal and it can't happen and that this is essentially a stress test. We've had many, but this is an early stress test to our democracy and to our ability to run a country in any kind of constitutional manner. Just don't know what else to say.

0:46:15 Thomas: Right, Matt, well, leave it there, because I agree, I don't know how to talk about this. It's really challenging, and the risk of, sorry, just repeating things I said on my other show, one thing I have to ask is, for these Republican House members, what are they doing this for? Like, they're all so terrified that, well, if we go against Trump, we'll lose our election. We'll lose, we will be primary. Okay.

0:46:34 Thomas: What are you doing now? What is valuable about what you're doing? All you do is sit there and take orders from the big guy and just do what he said. Like what? That's not a job. That's nothing like it. Are they all that? Like I get that many of them now at this point are MAGA sycophants. I get that. They're, they are true believers. Many of them, not all of them like they're in and all through Trump times, there's has been this pattern of Republicans being like, well, you know, off the record, we wish we could, sure wish we could do something. But, you know, it was just, he's so powerful that we'll be instantly, we'll lose our seats. You're not doing anything with your seats. They're useless.

0:46:39 Matt: Are you for? Yeah. Yeah?

0:47:08 Thomas: What are they hanging on to?

0:47:10 Matt: That they're going to make a bunch of money or be favored in this new government?

0:47:13 Thomas: Like they'll be the next candidate for something? Yeah.

0:47:15 Matt: Yeah, but I mean, we have to step back and remember that the entire purpose of this project, everything we're talking about, Schedule F, all these these firings, all of these mass layoffs and buyoffs, all this administrative leave, everything we're talking about with Doge, the entire project is to completely reform the federal government as quickly as possible in Trump's image. That's what they want to do, and that's what they're trying to do. And I don't think Republicans have any problem with that. I think they think it's going to come out just fine for them.

0:47:40 Thomas: Yeah. No, I just, we already touched on that. I was just making the point that like what person, like what even anyone, look, if you want to say that all 200, I forget how many house members are Republicans, but if you wanna say all of them are true believers, okay. I don't believe you, but maybe they are the ones who aren't. I just don't get what the point of this is. Like, is they so short sighted that they're just, they're just hanging on to this job that they they must have and then it'll be rendered useless by trump's gutting of our democracy like I just don't understand it but uh why don't we uh we can't go out on that note Matt so why don't we take a quick break and then uh maybe there's a footnote we can go out instead of going out on a bad note, go out a footnote, yeah, that's our new motto all Episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Ever sign up for something because it's, it's a free trial and then you forget that, they're like, hey, it expired. We signed you up for the first time. For a decade of, you're like, that can't be right. That's, yeah, an exaggeration, but I've been signed up for a year of a thing because I forgot a trial before, that's a painful mistake You don't want to make and everything is a subscription now. Everything. Things that you didn't think could be are now subscriptions. And some of that's good. Others, I'll say, not so great. Others you forget about. Others are trials that you never meant to sign up for, but how do you separate the ones you want from the ones you don't want? Well, Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Something, something we all need right now with, you know, various and sundry trade wars that might be going on. Rocket Money, all of your subscriptions are in one place and you know exactly where your money is going. For those ones that you perhaps forgot about, Rocket Money can even help you cancel them. Rocket Money can even negotiate bills for you. It automatically scans your bills to find opportunities to save, and then you can ask them to negotiate. They'll deal with the customer service. Crazy. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. And with that savings, you can afford to buy a few more subscriptions. No, no. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/opening today. rocketmoney.com/opening. One more time, rocketmoney.com/opening.

0:48:17 Matt: A heartwarming footnote, for sure. That's right.

0:50:04 Thomas: Alright Matt, what do you have for us today and

0:50:06 Matt: All right. Well, you might have seen something about this, but I really think it's worth highlighting. I just love to talk about good outcomes and things, especially for people that are doing the right thing. We have a story out of D.C. There is a D.C. Superior Court judge, Tanya Jones-Bossier. And this is a long -running civil case that's been going between the Proud Boys and the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AMA. And you might remember that in 2020, there was a Trump rally in which Proud Boys went down the street and vandalized this church. They pulled They burned some things. They were just generally causing a lot of trouble in this church. And in this civil suit, because this is essentially a hate crime, it came out to 2.8 million in damages, which is huge, just massive damages.

0:50:45 Thomas: You're saying they won or wow

0:50:47 Matt: Metropolitan AMA won. They won against the Proud Boys. And this is a Giuliani kind of situation where they just didn't show up or respond to anything. So there's default judgment.

0:50:49 Thomas: They're They're like, we actually live in Florida, we promise.

0:50:57 Matt: Then the fight began for the organization's trademark. And this is where things get fun. AME, because at this point, they're not getting any money out of the Proud Boys, so, how about you just give us the name, we'll take the Proud Boys name, which is actually a really powerful form of opposition because this brand, this Proud Boys thing, they sell hats and shirts and they have their stupid little logo and their Fred Perry gear. They're very much about branding because they are essentially the brown shirts of the Trump movement, SA equivalent. We've talked about this before, about how fascism can't take root without some kind of organized paramilitary or partisan forces that are in the streets. So anything that we can do to stop these kinds of movements. So Judge Jones-Bossier imposed this lien now against the organization, permanently barring it from selling, transferring, disposing of, or licensing the trademark Proud Boys without the consent of AME Episcopal Church.

0:51:13 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah.

0:51:50 Matt: A black church with the Black Lives Matter sign out, a continuation of political violence against black churches, which has been at the heart of creating democracy." This is from the pastor of the church. Think that this is a really powerful thing. They just own this trademark. And the funniest thing they could do with it is form a Nation of Islam militant black movement, but I don't think that's going to happen. But just really appreciate that this is just one small way that the bad guys are losing and that this whole concept of the Proud Boys, which has always been very stupid, is going be slowed down. And I'd have to point out Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, recently pardoned Enrique Tarrio I should say, try to make sense out of this one. I'm still puzzling this tweet. A follower of Jesus Christ, I see disturbing parallels between this church's actions toward the individuals and families involved and the Pharaoh's oppression of the Israelites in the story of Moses.

0:52:15 Thomas: It's very silly.

0:52:36 Matt: I can't even imagine what this has to do with the oppression of Hebrews, but his official position is that he is being oppressed by the Pharaoh because they don't get to use their stupid name anymore.

0:52:35 Thomas: No, no, don't see it. Sure, man.

0:52:48 Matt: Good on Methodist AME. Yeah, too bad they can't get any more of the money, but this is at least a win.

0:52:53 Thomas: That's awesome. To follow what they do with that.

0:52:56 Matt: Holding onto it as a victory, there was a lot of merch going out. But yeah, that's what I got for a footnote. And I just wanted to add a personal footnote of thanks to you and to Lydia for being such a pleasure to work with over the past year and to all of our listeners for giving me a chance because I've been learning on the job and having a great time doing it. And I'm really looking forward to more of all of this, doing our best to explain what's going on in the news and just coming back at you.

0:53:17 Thomas: Absolutely, yeah. Thanks so much. I mean, it can't be said enough. Couldn't have done this without Matt. Matt, I don't know that I would have the show. I don't know that I would have. It was a very difficult position I was in.

0:53:28 Matt: I should say a special thanks to you because I'm not sure, we might have a lot more listeners, listeners who don't even know what you went through to get this show back and the enormous personal cost, financial and personal, to you and Lydia and your family on what you were put through for a year to get your own property back. I really appreciate that you believe in this show and this format that you created seven or eight years ago. I'm proud to be part of it. It's my dream second job. I still can't believe I get to do any of this. So I really appreciate everybody who's listened and thank, welcome feedback from listeners, if there's anything you think I could be doing better or that you'd like to hear more of, and uh let's keep going, see you soon yeah

0:53:57 Thomas: Right. Good note to go out on. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Thanks, Mat. And yeah, we'll see you on Monday.

0:54:03 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:54:21 Matt: Union one of seeking mandamus, which does not seem, like, in this situation, but we'll just watch as this develops.

0:54:25 Thomas: Mandamus, isn't it? How do you say that? I've never heard it the other way, but you are the lawyer, so. Yeah.

0:54:28 Matt: Know, I've heard It's one of those words that just I hear both I don't know what to say.