Kafka, Esq.

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: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1146. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real -life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:01:05 Matt: Thomas. You know, I've said this from time to time, but I am actually angry, like actually living sort of with rage.

0:01:09 Thomas: I can hear it. I

0:01:10 Matt: Yeah, it's coming right through.

0:01:10 Thomas: Can here it. Boy, I've had to do a lot of work on the audio to get it quiet enough to not wreck people's stereo systems.

0:01:14 Matt: I'm spiking. Yeah. We're going to talk about a story today that has made me angry. I think we have to go behind the headlines and explain just how bad this is. But of course, to balance that out, I'm going to make sure we get some good news and some weird news because that's opening arguments. We've got to do a little of everything.

0:01:33 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I mean, the Switch 2 games, but being priced at $80 to $90 isn't as extreme as you think it is, but you know, Matt's Matt, everybody. Yeah. It's THE main story. With inflation, that's kind of what the Switch 1 games were. Really.

0:01:43 Matt: Didn't I'm a PC guy myself. I had no idea. Missing you know, just illegally deporting people to hell and not bringing them back.

0:01:50 Thomas: There's something else going on? Oh, okay, that stuff. Okay, yeah, no, for sure. We got to get to it. A A lot of questions to answer today. Don't know why I'm wasting any more time on the intro. We got to do it. So, um, take our usual break and, please support the show. Patreon .com slash law. Really important to keep the show going, especially in this day and age when, um. A whole lot of people are not accurately covering things. So thanks so much to our patrons and show is brought to you by Notion. Here's the thing. I know it's incredibly powerful. It has the power of AI built right inside it and works across your entire workspace. Is amazing for Productivity. Notion combines your notes, your documents, and your projects into one space that's simple and beautifully designed. Can use the power of AI right inside Notion in to connect all that stuff so that you can work across your notes and across your documents without jumping between all those things separately. Fully Fully integrated Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger, doing tasks that normally take you hours and just seconds. You have a hard time starting a project, which thing you can do is just have AI, .ai write a quick first draft for you. You just need that help to to get a jump start there and AI unlike me doesn't suffer from executive dysfunction

0:03:05 Thomas: Try Notion for free when you go to notion.com slash opening—all lowercase letters—notion.com slash opening to try the powerful, easy -to -use Notion AI today. And when você usa o nosso link, você também está apoiando o show. Dê uma olhada no notion .co .br slash opening.

0:03:24 Matt: Let's start with something easy. Eric Adams case, which we've been following pretty closely here on Opening Arguments. And we do finally have a decision from Judge Dale Ho. And I'm going to say straight up, 78 pages. That is a long order for a motion to dismiss. A long

0:03:36 Thomas: Yeah, that is. I just say I feel so informed about this because of Liz and I'm glad we did the episodes we did on it because feel if you're an opening arguments listener, it's This was predicted by the time it was all said and done. Like, guys' coverage was excellent. And hats off to both you and Liz for the excellent coverage. I sure I would have been more outraged had I not known. Not that I shouldn't be. But, like, it really kind of was sort of the only thing that could be done, don't you think? Is that where you landed or was that just me and Liz eventually?

0:04:03 Matt: Yeah, I think we all pretty much got there. And just to catch everybody up. And of course, I absolutely credit Liz, as always, our New York City insider, bringing knowledge and skill that we don't have to talk about New York city criminal cases. But this is just to give the very quick short recap. Of course, this is Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York, who's actually running again for some reason, who is facing major federal charges for things he did. Department is trying to dismiss it for corrupt reasons. We and there's multiple episodes of OA about this already, going through the indictment, talking to Liz about the charges. And most recently, we were talking about the brief filed by Paul Clement, a conservative attorney who was appointed to... interests of the government since the government was operating in what was pretty clearly bad faith in trying to dismiss this case so that it could keep Eric Adams on a leash. There's a lot going on here, obviously. I would also note that Paul Clement actually recently stepped up to defend some of the law firms that have been under attack by Trump. So he's on the right side of that one that we were talking about last week.

0:04:53 Thomas: Defend in which direction? Was he defending them like, hey, it's fine that they caved? Or

0:04:57 Matt: No, the side of justice, actually. And it's especially impressive because he was on the shortlist for the Supreme Court. I doubt he will be anymore. After that. So order from Judge Ho pretty much follows what we were expecting because Paul Clement recommended directly that these charges be dismissed with prejudice rather than without prejudice so the government wouldn't have the chance to bring them again. And as Judge Ho said, adopting basically Clement's position, dismissing without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the mayor's freedom depends on his ability to carry out immigration enforcement priorities and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government. We know that because basically Danielle Sassoon, the former U .S. attorney, said that in her resignation letter, that that's what was going to happen.

0:05:33 Thomas: So all that was left for this update, Matt, is I want to know, did we finally get a good bit of writing? Did we finally, you know, like a good chastisement? Something. Give me, give me something, Judge Ho. What

0:05:45 Matt: As much as he calls Emile Bove a liar, I mean, there's like page after page of facts. There are a lot of facts, you don't see this many facts in a motion to dismiss order usually. Usually it's just the party wants to dismiss it and that's what we're going to do. He says a for example, about the immigration enforcement rationale, when they're saying that we need to leave Eric Adams free to be able to enforce immigration law, he notes that he's got no examples. They can't find any anywhere of the government trying to dismiss charges against an elected official to enable the official to facilitate federal policy goals. DOJ's assertion that it has virtually unreviewable license to dismiss challenges is disturbing in its breadth, implying that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant. The suggestion is fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law. There's a lot of different parts like this I could read into the record here.

0:06:26 Matt: He's got several different places where he's just saying this is bad, this is very wrong. Makes the point that Eric Adams himself did something that appears to be contrary to New York law, pretty much.

0:06:34 Thomas: Extremely guilty. I guess I can't say that, but, oh, that, yeah

0:06:36 Matt: Yeah, that too. But in terms of ICE enforcement, around the time that DOJ was trying to get the dismissal, he was playing his part in allowing ICE into Rikers Island, which he wasn't supposed to do. And so he's just making the point without saying it too much. He's noting that there's definitely quid pro quo on the record. He is exploring whether or not he can even look at bad faith. He notes that Eric Adams is saying essentially that he's not even allowed to look at the public interest. Were talking about debating the case law, how far it allows them to go in a motion to dismiss.

0:07:02 Thomas: Wait, wait, wait. What's up, noises?

0:07:04 Matt: Gang.

0:07:05 Thomas: Oh. You're part of the biker gang now. Cool. You do it on your off time or do you have to do it now?

0:07:07 Matt: Getting there. I'm just jumping on my hog. You know how it is.

0:07:15 Thomas: I know it's a fool's errand to separate Matt from his hog, but we're good. If you don't mind.

0:07:22 Matt: Yeah. Just for an hour, I could do it. His part, argues that courts are not authorized to consider the public interest in adjudicating a motion to dismiss, which is quite an argument to be making. And he says that goes too far. He doesn't have to go that far, but he's like, this is seriously, don't say that. Of course, we can look at the public interests.

0:07:38 Thomas: By the way, like, I I know we always do the arguing the alternative, but doesn't that kind of concede the point? Like, well, hey, you're not even allowed to look at does this really suck?

0:07:46 Matt: Yeah.

0:07:46 Thomas: Like this is awful for every reason. You can't look at that. You're not allowed. Because if anything, like mean your other argument as well. It's It's needed so that I can focus on my job, be mayor for New York. You know, so like if anything. You could argue that like, yeah, that's for the public good or whatever. So it's funny that like rather than trying to do that, it's like, no, you can't even. Please, please don't. Please don't look at how bad this is.

0:08:05 Matt: Yeah just keep that curtain drawn. That's important. Yeah, no, there's some... a long section where Ho is basically suggesting that this motion is deficient and that he should not grant it. Yeah, he says, in theory, a court could deny Rule 48a even when made at the direction of DOJ leadership, which is, again, noting that it's the top, as we've been discussing, not just the SDNY. A denial would almost certainly be an exercise in futility. The court cannot appoint its own prosecutor, he by an inevitable dismissal on speedy trial grounds. A point that we made several times when we were discussing it, but you just can't force them to do it. Then he gets into the idea of, because the government is asking for this to be dismissed without prejudice, obviously, so it can carry out this corrupt deal that he made so that they can keep him on a leash. He makes the very good point that if, as DOJ asserts, this prosecution has been tainted with appearances of impropriety, it is unclear why the government should be permitted to reinitiate the case in the future. Told the court that it was improperly brought, and now they're saying, well, we want to...

0:09:04 Thomas: Well, it's just because you, well there's a cool down period where you'd be like, okay, doing it just like normal now. Like just doing a good job. We reset. Okay. Put I that, I jammed the paper clip on the reset button and now it's a good prosecution. Yeah, no, that's completely ridiculous.

0:09:08 Matt: That's right. Yeah, we got more impropriety. That's fine. Yeah. And he says to the extent that DOJ might argue that any whiff of impropriety could fade over time. Just what you're saying. The cooldown period. It's like the stench of mendacity or whatever, right? It's just always there.

0:09:26 Thomas: Impropriety is like cat piss. It's not going anywhere. You can leave it for a hundred years. It'll still smell just as bad.

0:09:33 Matt: They're hard to get out. Yeah so even addresses at the very end, getting into page 77 of 78, he acknowledges those of us who will find this unsatisfying as a decision and wondering if, because the reasons are so troubling that the court does not simply deny the motion. As he explained, just because he can't order them to continue, he's got no authority to do that, can't appoint an independent prosecutor. That is all we can do. And that all we'd be doing is bumping this up against the mayoral primary. And, you So, you know, he's saying, I don't express any opinion about the merits of the case or whether the prosecution should, quote unquote, move forward. You

0:09:34 Thomas: You should know. My house is riddled with it. After

0:10:10 Matt: Know, it's just, yeah, it should. Yeah. At the end of the day, as a defense minded person and as somebody who read the climate brief, you know, and I think Liz is more or less on board with all this, too. This is where we're at. I mean, this is terrible. Be how it is. But if the government wants to drop a case, court really just can't step in and make them not do it. So that is what happened. And as expected. So this is it. This is the end of the road.

0:10:10 Thomas: Which he typed, cough, he's guilty. Yep.

0:10:31 Matt: And this case is dead.

0:10:32 Thomas: The only option New Yorkers have is to elect a pillar of integrity in Governor Cuomo. Fantastic. Well done, New York. He's going to run away with it, it seems like. Hopefully that's somehow not right, but it seems to be what the numbers are saying. Great job, New Yorkers.

0:10:46 Matt: Please don't do that. Yeah, yeah.

0:10:50 Thomas: Matt, next topic here. People are wondering about the tariffs. Go on a rant for hours about how dumb it is, but I don't think that's what the show is for. But people do have we've got a patron question and a Facebook group question kind of about the ins and outs. And how Congress is like maybe blocking some of Trump's tariffs and how does this even work? Because remember in the first term there being much talk about. Anyone other than Trump just being the final say on tariffs, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. How's this work?

0:11:14 Matt: It is strange when you think about it, because Article 1 of the Constitution makes it pretty clear that it is Congress that has the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, which would include these tariffs. So we've just kind of arrogated some power over to the president to do some of this. And I got interested in this myself. There are a couple of patron questions along this line. I'm going to look at David Oster here. Thank him for this question. It's a very good detailed question about the national emergency powers and how this plays in. He's essentially declared a national emergency on both borders. That was the famous one on the southern border on the 20th of January, and then on the 1st of February, he declared a National Emergency involving Canada. This was an order imposing duties to address the flow of illicit drugs Across Our Northern Border. Essentially, he's just saying that there's a public health crisis with fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and Canada has failed to do more to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept. Failure to act on the part of Canada constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States to the national security and foreign policy, etc., etc. The president has the authority under the National Emergency Act of 1976 to unilaterally declare emergencies. And worse yet, for our purposes, he has the power under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare national economic emergencies.

0:12:25 Thomas: We're in one right now. He made one.

0:12:27 Matt: He's creating fun. I know, who gets to declare that? I know.

0:12:30 Thomas: I the entire thing, I'm The entire thing is literally just because he doesn't understand the meaning of a word. That's the entire think. The whole thing is that he thinks trade deficit equals bad. I know we've already been here. We all know this, but like. The media doesn't do a good job of this because I heard the other day on one of the shows. Well, Trump has, you know, he has a different view of how tariffs work than most economists. Shut up, man. Just say he's an idiot. He's wrong about how this works. God. OK, I'll stop.

0:12:58 Matt: It's It's Peter Navarro, right? It was the only guy who was telling him that tariffs are a good idea, and he just clung to it. McKinley, he loves President McKinlay because he also did tariffs in like 1898.

0:13:08 Thomas: And there's a weird like leftist I know Zephyr Teachout, I think, is like in favor of terrorists, but I imagine it's like a more targeted different use of them. So there are are some so people who there's no good use of maybe that power, but it's sure as hell is nothing like this.

0:13:28 Matt: I think this kind of messing with foreign trade really should be done very carefully and deliberately by Congress, as the Constitution perhaps intended, instead of doing these janky emergency orders. The problem with the National Emergency Act of 1976, and I'm certainly not the only person to point this out, is that the only way to overrule a national emergency is for a joint resolution from the House and the Senate, and then that goes to the president for his signature. So I guess he's supposed to... Yeah, great thinking. The president's just supposed to be like, oh, Congress doesn't like it. Okay, sure. Just not do this. And then after he refuses, obviously, to sign off on that, then they can pass something by two -thirds and finally overrule the national emergency.

0:13:54 Thomas: Smart. Yeah, it's like a veto, essentially, at that, a veto. Sort of. It's like similar. Yeah.

0:14:12 Matt: That Except you're talking about something that's initiated by the executive that overrules the laws. The emergency powers are pretty bad when you've got somebody like Trump wielding them. So this is getting to the point that there are actually some concerned Republicans. Almost saying something. They're very close to saying something, they're right on the edge of saying something out loud.

0:14:31 Matt: Klobuchar in a press conference earlier this week said, our Republican colleagues behind closed doors are telling us, keep going, keep work, everybody. Yeah, yeah. So Kaine introduced a resolution to terminate the Canadian tariffs. Very simple, straightforward. Joint Resolution 37. It just declares the national emergency to be over. Paul was the only Republican co -sponsor.

0:14:39 Thomas: Okay. Whatever. Yeah! Hmm.

0:14:53 Matt: That did pass. Yeah. Doing his own thing as always.

0:14:54 Thomas: That's interesting because yeah.

0:14:56 Matt: So isn't going anywhere because obviously the House would still have to also pass it and then the president would have to sign it. And then we'd have to be talking about two thirds of both houses passing. So it's just not going to happen. But again, this did pass, I think, 51-48. So we got that done at least. Here's the other problem is even if Republicans found some kind of resolve to do something about this in the House, they've already passed this thing. Okay. This is so stupid. This legislative nonsense. Is one of those procedural algebraic things.

0:15:10 Thomas: Interesting. Algebra. Wow. OK I'm excited. I'm Matt's just dreaming of getting back on his hog and out of here. But I am so excited.

0:15:35 Matt: Let's leave my hog out of this.

0:15:38 Thomas: That's what you use to escape the math. Like wind blowing in your hair. Math. Nothing but math behind you. You know, you're just like, don't never have to see that math again. Was going to put that bit in the credits, but now I might have to put it in the main show. Dang it.

0:15:43 Matt: That's right. Is canon, folks. This was a joint resolution passed in the Senate, and now it's supposed to go into the House, and it's required under the National Emergencies Act within 15 calendar days after its introduction to be voted on in the House. Of course, Republicans do not want to vote on this. So they already, ahead of time, March earlier, 11th, they passed a rule which says that

0:16:10 Thomas: Yeah. That X equal. I'm just waiting for the algebra. It's got to be in here somewhere. Okay.

0:16:14 Matt: I mean, everything's fancy math to me. I can

0:16:16 Thomas: Bracing for this just to be merely addition and subtraction, but I'm, but you never know. Maybe there, maybe there's some algebra for

0:16:22 Matt: Day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day. Yeah, let's hold on to that. We're just stopping time, ladies and gentlemen. This is something they can do.

0:16:31 Thomas: What? Okay.

0:16:34 Matt: Purposes of Section 202 of the National Emergencies Act, which is the part that requires the vote in 15 days, with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the president on February 1st, 2025. That is the Canadian one specifically. This is to protect the Canadian tariffs, which are such a bad idea and which Canada is rightfully very upset with us over. Are just declaring that the rest of Congress's session shall not constitute a calendar day for the purpose of the national emergency act.

0:16:58 Thomas: Me make sure I have all this algebra right. You're saying because there's some requirement that they vote, like it makes them vote, there's a rule here where they have to do a vote and they don't want to. So they're like, we've stopped time.

0:17:10 Matt: Yep. No more days.

0:17:11 Thomas: Wow, that's a new one. Did not know that was a thing they could do.

0:17:16 Matt: Know that it is, but who's going to stop them as always?

0:17:19 Thomas: Parliamentarian.

0:17:20 Matt: They just decided, you know, I don't know how that gets ever rolled or where it goes from there. But obviously, Mike Johnson isn't going to allow this to go to a vote if he possibly can. They're just going to do whatever Trump wants. And what Trump wants is to go to war with Canada, trade or otherwise, apparently at this point.

0:17:32 Thomas: But that's a sign. I mean, if the numbers were good, they'd just be like, sure, we'll vote. Great. Right. This

0:17:37 Matt: Sure. Right. I keep thinking about what Justin Trudeau said last month when he publicly, it's just one of those statements that just kind of came and went that I feel like people should have been talking about at the time. But, you know, it came out and basically said that he's concerned at this point that Donald Trump is trying to destroy Canada, that he is like actively trying to strike Canada. And that hurts my heart.

0:17:53 Thomas: Well, he's too busy destroying America, right? Well, I could do he could multitask we could multitasking.

0:17:56 Matt: That's true. Collateral. Yeah. But I mean, it does really seem like he's trying to weaken Canada in a very specific kind of way. And I love Canadians. I love Canada. And it's just a really sad thing to see. We don't want to do that to anybody, but truly.

0:18:07 Thomas: We're really sorry. It's it F's with the NHL Look, I'm already upset. I'm an already very engaged, progressive -minded person. But if it Fs with the NHL, then fighting words. Again, more fighting words I'm going to get a 5 for fighting and then another I'm a game misconduct. Game mis conduct, Matt.

0:18:27 Matt: I know is if it messes with the NHL, that I'll actually be able to drive around Boston certain nights when I can't otherwise.

0:18:31 Thomas: Oh, good news. Bruins The suck now. So, is very good news because

0:18:33 Matt: Good to know. Usual, I have to have my friend three time zones away. Tell me what's happening. Half mile from me at the garden. Okay.

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0:19:53 Matt: We've got to talk about the big story today, the bad news, because this is so consequential, so monumental as a moment right now. And I know I've said this probably every week for months now, that there's something else that is consequential and monumental that we have to note. I cannot let this moment pass, and we have Ábrego García. Is the story that I'm sure that people have seen at least the headlines about, about a man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador among those flights on March 15th that Judge James Boasberg had ordered be stopped. 15th, there were three planes that took off and went to El Salvador. One that we're talking about here took off several hours after. James Boasberg's order to turn all planes around and to keep any new planes from leaving if they were going to be deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act. And just to remind everybody, the usual deportation process is in front of an immigration judge. You have a full hearing, you get deported. Trump is trying to say is that Venezuela, or at least some portion of Venezuela, is now being run by Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang, and is therefore subject to the Alien

0:20:50 Matt: And that is just now going to the Supreme Court. They have just turned in some horrific briefing. It's so bad. Want to, at some point, perhaps on Gavelpod, get into the hearing in which they explained about why they were not violating the judge's order, because it is so important, I think, that we focus on some of this. Some very dramatic stuff has been happening around all of this, but this case of Mr. Obrego -Garcia is kind of a side thing, but it is related and it has a lot to do with what they actually want to be doing right now. Remember that these deportations were especially stunning because these deportations were landing in El Salvador, and they were taking these men directly to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, the CICAT.

0:21:26 Thomas: We got some geometry there. Trigonometry. Sorry. That's an inappropriate place to make a joke. But secant is it is a trigonometry. We did bring it around. Thank you for giving me that math. I was, I was waiting for the math and never got it, but thank you.

0:21:40 Matt: So much ptsd right now of that she can't I so the Seacott is, We can get into another time, but it is an absolute hell. I mean I don't believe in hell, but hell exists on Earth. There are places that are, and it is supposed to be. Now at this point, El Salvador is per capita the world's most incarcerated place. It has 2% of its population in custody because President Ney Bekele campaigned on ending criminal gangs in El Salvador, and I have to say that he did do that. I have been working with Salvadorans for going on 20 years. It's a big part of my client base and a large part of our immigrant community here in Boston. Awesome people. If you've never met a Salvadoran, make sure you do at some point and enjoy some pupusas—some of the best people I've ever met. I've been to El Salvador. I was there when the gang problem was much worse. And it is unimaginable. I just want to say this because I think that we have so much privilege in this country and many of the countries that our listeners live in not to think about. A life in which everything is being run by criminal gangs all around you, in which you can't trust that your sons can go to school without being recruited, that your daughters can leave the house without being assaulted, that your business can't be successful without being extorted. This is a horrible way to live, and my clients across the board are very happy to see these changes. He understands that there are problems. I'm not in any way admiring what he did. I'm not saying this is the right solution, but I'm just saying that it did objectively work, unfortunately, that it actually did end criminal gangs, because what he does is he just took young men off the streets with tattoos and locked them up indefinitely. The warden of Secott has said nobody is ever going to leave. The people who have actually been tried, and not everybody in there has actually been subject to any kind of criminal process, yeah, the ones who haven't tried have received sentences of several centuries. It's just Guantanamo Bay, but worse. It's bad. It's a really bad solution. And if you ever do let these people out, then you're going to have another gang problem, much worse, because you're creating a gigantic super gang.

0:21:42 Thomas: Just think about that I mean, I would look at this like you say, some of a nuanced situation. I mean it does strike me that like what cost is this freedom and safety coming? I mean but but I you know, like you said, I think we don't have so much privilege in not living in this kind of thing. So I at least understand needing to take desperate action, but I would have at least thought you things are settled down and like the problems a little more at hand you could begin the process of trying to give some due process, couldn't you? Couldn't you be like, all right, let's let's do our best to make sure nobody's in here that shouldn't be in here. What's the cost to that? Because if you it feels like you could put some manpower behind, you determination. And then if you're letting people go who weren't gang members, why would that be bad? That'd be good.

0:23:57 Matt: The problem is that Nayib Bekele is a fascist. He's a looking young fascist who loves crypto, but he is a facist at the end of the day.

0:24:00 Thomas: There's that. Yeah.

0:24:04 Matt: And he's not great. Of course, that's why Trump loves him and Marco Rubio loves him. And we made a deal with Nayibbekele to use, well, we still don't know the terms of this deal. It doesn't seem to be public, but some kind of deal, something like $6 million for them to hold some of our people. And that has been announced to potentially include US citizens, like potentially very, very bad US citizens allegedly could be. Deported to this place, totally unprecedented, obviously, to use not just something like Guantanamo Bay that is U .S. territory, but to send people to a foreign prison. And that's what the legal situation has become here with Kilmar Obrega -Garcia. There were planes, two of them were full of people. There's about 238 people total, I believe, who were deported under the Alien Enemies Act. And there's a third plane that DHS was insisting was full of Removal orders, like actual removal orders issued by a judge. So they were saying that that one wasn't actually subject to the court order. But at the same time, we now know from the lawsuit that has been filed by Abrego Garcia that he was mistakenly put on one of these planes. When I say mistakenly, I mean, I'm looking directly at the declaration of Robert Cerna, who is the field office director for the Harlingen Field Office in Texas. And just so people understand, I will just read the part where he says it was a mistake. I'm going to explain why this is so bad in a minute, because it's much worse than it sounds even.

0:25:17 Thomas: Sounds pretty bad, Matt.

0:25:19 Matt: It's bad. I'm ready to start. You're talking about mistakenly deporting somebody to hell. Ábrego García was not on the initial manifest of the Title VIII flight to be removed to El Salvador. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. This is all very passive, right? Was assigned. Yeah, just kind of slipped in there. The It's a very strange way of saying that.

0:25:34 Thomas: It What? Is that what manifests do normally?

0:25:43 Matt: Yeah, he's on the list,

0:25:44 Thomas: So we caught him, guys. We caught him. It was the manifest. Arrest that manifest.

0:25:45 Matt: Manifest is manifest. Right. So here's the real Kafkaesque. I mean, people throw Kafkaesque around a lot, but this is going to get more Kafkaesque than anything I've ever heard of in American law. Through administrative error, Ábrego García was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried on in good faith. Thanks. Good to know.

0:26:08 Thomas: It was a good faith oversight.

0:26:10 Matt: Sure was. So

0:26:11 Thomas: Mean, I guess legally that probably is a distinction rather than like we weren't trying to do it.

0:26:17 Matt: And in its briefing, the government actually made a big thing about it. I want to read the government's summary of the problem here. And again, there's a little more complication and nuance going on here, but it doesn't really matter. And I'm going to get into that complication nuance because I think the media is not doing a very good job of And it. This is kind of my thing, and I want Based on that statement I just read you. To the extent that the plaintiffs assert a general public interest in not perpetuating unlawful agency action. Let's just stop there for a minute. So they're saying, you know, well, the plaintiffs say that we shouldn't do things that are illegal. But have you considered?

0:26:50 Thomas: Okay, I'm listening.

0:26:51 Matt: They have made no showing that the removal of Ábrego García to El Salvador was something other than an administrative error. So have you considered that it was just a mistake? Like, no harm, no foul. We just made a mistake.

0:27:03 Thomas: Look, I'm willing to believe it's a mistake, but does that make it better? I don't get it.

0:27:08 Matt: It's a horrific mistake. And I have to say, if I'm Kristi Noem or if I were Robert Cerna or anybody else responsible for actually making these decisions, I would not be sleeping or eating until I had gotten this man back. I mean, right,

0:27:20 Thomas: They don't have souls. Don't worry. They They don't.

0:27:22 Matt: I'm just saying, if you can imagine, really, honestly, it does put this in perspective about how just completely devoid of conscience you have to be to do these jobs. I wouldn't be the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security if you put a loaded shotgun to my head, honestly.

0:27:34 Thomas: But couldn't you F it up? Couldn't you just like, I'd want you in there as a Manchurian candidate.

0:27:37 Matt: That's true. Could try. I guess that is better than getting shot in the head, probably. Explain a little bit about just how much worse this is than it sounds up front. Because remember, the government is now saying they can't bring him back.

0:27:49 Thomas: You didn't say that. That seems important. So why? I just want first question. Whoops, mix up, get him back on the plane the other way.

0:27:57 Matt: What they're saying in response to the plaintiff's very reasonable request to bring him is that habeas corpus jurisdiction doesn't extend to El Salvador. Corpus, of course, the ancient writ is about the person who has you in custody, you're appealing to that person, you haven't you're telling a judge, you have to release that person. And I made the argument a couple weeks ago, when we talked about the Alien Enemies Act removals, I made a point that if we have some kind of agreement where we're essentially leasing space in a foreign prison, then we are still the jailers, right?

0:28:22 Matt: It's still our contract. And they are completely denying that that is the case.

0:28:22 Thomas: Yeah, well, that can't be the rule, Matt, because then it's a if you've successfully disappear a citizen or whatever, you know, right? Like, isn't that be it?

0:28:32 Matt: No, there has to be a way to undo an actual mistake. And they're just blatantly saying, just totally blasé about this. Like, yeah, no, well, our bad, whatever. To the next one. And what they're saying is that because a habeas order only extends to the jailer, and the jailer in this case is not within their control, that the court has no power to order El Salvador to return him. It's also complicated because unlike the others, because remember, this was mostly Venezuelans who were sent down there. I think there were a couple of Hondurans as well, but this man was Salvadoran. So he is now in his own country, in a prison in his Now, Bacalli's government could just bring the regular charges they bring against everybody else and just say, well, he's a gang member because here's this evidence that we have in the United States that we think he's a gang member or he's got tattoos or whatever. So at the point at which the Salvadoran government makes a criminal determination as to him, and we all know at this point that that doesn't take much in El Salvador, then he would be out of our control. It's not like he was extradited to El Salvador to face charges. This is incredibly unusual. Nothing like this has ever happened on our orders. But then we're just not responsible for him. But let me just pull back another level because the part that the media I don't think has been covering very well is why it is such a crime to deport this person in particular. We know a lot of this, which we'll link to from the docket. And I'd recommend that everybody take a look. His actual asylum decision is in the docket. You don't get to read asylum decisions very often. They're usually pretty private. But this is an exhibit now in this case. And the sequence of events here was that this man grew up in El Salvador. And this is a very familiar story. I've heard so many times from people who grew up He was trying to defend his mother's business, which was being extorted. They were pretty well known in the area for making pupusas, which again, everybody should give a pupusa a try if you haven't. A pretty special dish. Gang members were extorting, as they do when they see a successful business, they're extorting her. Then once he got in the way, they started to threaten him and they were trying to get him to join. And this happens all the time where they threaten men of gang -eligible age and they basically just do everything they can to come after their families. They were threatening his sisters with rape and death. The family tried to move, I think, at least twice. They still found them. I mean, this is very serious. This is a man who is escaping gangs. There's no question about this.

0:30:36 Matt: He was found in a Home Depot parking lot in Maryland in 2019, and it appears he was looking for work. He was doing the thing that many day laborers do where they're waiting in a certain place for construction work. The police came over and harassed him. The things I subject myself to, I was listening to Liz Wheeler, if you know who she is at OANN. One thing I want to do in some of this is respond to Liz Wheler and Will Chamberlain, Chamberlain with the Article 3 Project, a hardcore conservative lawyer. And he's got this whole X thread that I would love to spend the next three hours just knocking apart because this man knows nothing about immigration law. But they are trying so hard to make the case that this was fine. And that even if we don't know, he admits this, even if don't if he's a gang member or not, it's fine because it was a lawful order. And some people are actually willing to go this far, apparently.

0:31:25 Matt: Let me explain this a little better. He was not eligible for asylum because he had been here for more than a year at the time that he was applying. You have to apply for asylum within one year. He received something that's called withholding of removal. I call it to my clients, I say it's asylum light. It's the least we can do for you, which

0:31:40 Thomas: It's like a judge saw like, okay, you did, you kind of F this up a little bit in terms of the procedure, but we don't, we're not going to like have have you killed by, yeah, exactly.

0:31:45 Matt: We have to protect you. This is required by

0:31:48 Thomas: Least there's that. Yeah.

0:31:49 Matt: International law. For what it's worth. Withholding removal is required in all cases, and you can even receive it if you have a serious criminal record because we recognize that... And he doesn't, by the way. This man has no criminal record. It's the kind of thing that even if you don't qualify for asylum for other reasons, you can still get it because we have to protect you. What it does is it guarantees that we will not deport you to your country, but it does enter an order of removal against you that is withheld. So that's what it comes from, is withholding of that order. If ICE really doesn't like you, if you have a pretty serious record, I've seen this happen before, they will try to set up a third country. They'll pressure some other place to take you. So if Cambodia would take you or whatever, then they can deport you there. But the promise that we're making under international law is that we will not deport you to that country, the one you came from, the country where you had serious problems with gang members and they know who undo the withholding of removal order, the government would have to bring it back in front of an immigration judge with new evidence and say things have changed. Now, to be fair, if they'd wanted to do that, they could have tried to do it in this case because El Salvador is materially safer than

0:32:44 Matt: It was when he received this order.

0:32:44 Thomas: I was just thinking that.

0:32:46 Matt: So the gangs have been dealt with. They're not completely gone, but my clients tell me they go back all the time now when they're able to, and things are different, and the economy's doing better, and people are much happier. They didn't even do that because they were just so desperate to try to sweep people up. Just stopped him. They stopped him at a traffic stop, and they told him that his immigration status had, quote unquote, changed. This man has a young autistic son. He's a provider. He works hard. No criminal record. There was an allegation that day when he was arrested in 2019 that somebody said that he might have something to do with gangs, and that has never been substantiated. The government made an argument in its Bond case, and he was denied Bond for a few months while his case was being decided. And again, this happens all the time. I might have talked about this a bit, and I'd love to talk more about how the government makes allegations about gang membership, but we've already talked about tattoos, streetwear, making

0:33:32 Thomas: From what you've said so far, it seems like, uh, And then they're like, oh, okay that's a powerful argument. Much that. Oh

0:33:40 Matt: The judge, you know, as a matter of caution, is often just going to deny Bond while they try to figure this out. But by the time that he was able to have a full hearing, the judge heard him out, heard his life story, realized that he did not make any findings whatsoever in this order that he was a gang member. That's something else that Will Chamberlain was saying, well, there's already been a finding that he's a gang number. No, there was a finding in a bond order that there might be some evidence that he might have had something to do with gangs, but that was never, that's just for a bond that was for custody. The ultimate determination in this case is that he a victim of gangs. And there is nowhere worse on earth, literally anywhere worse on Earth that you could send someone who was a victim in Salvadoran gangs than the SICON in El Salvador, full of gang members.

0:34:20 Matt: I could not have constructed a worse immigration nightmare than what this man is living through. And every time I go back to read this docket, I've been trying to write about it, I'm trying to think about it. I get angry again every time. I mean, I started crying just reading the facts of this thing and thinking about the reality of it. If you read the story that the AP photographer wrote about when he was there, when these men were brought to the tarmac, I mean the Salvadoran minister of defense went up and just punched one of them just for fun as they were coming off the plane. Yeah, just to do it. This is what you're deporting people to. And they were taken there, immediately dehumanized, had their heads shaved, chained together in humiliating ways. And he said he saw people who showed up with designer jeans and nice haircuts reduced to nothing, basically completely dehumanised within hours and thrown into a gigantic, hot, sweaty warehouse full of gang members with no blankets or pillows on metal bunks. And it's just, you know, I can't emphasize enough.

0:35:09 Thomas: That's horrible.

0:35:10 Matt: Is torture. It is actual torture, and it's completely illegal under international law, for whatever that's worth. It's completely legal under our law. And to have the government stand up and tell a judge that, you know, well, nothing we can do. What are you going to do? You know, you got to break some eggs, right?

0:35:24 Thomas: Plus J .D. Vance said he might have had a couple traffic tickets. So there you go.

0:35:28 Matt: That was, yeah, they literally did. They invoked the traffic tickets. Incredible. I mean, I hope nobody finds out about my record.

0:35:32 Thomas: Unbelievable. People are fucking evil. It's so horrible.

0:35:37 Matt: I want to share, I don't know if you see, have you seen the video of Kristi Noem standing in front of these men talking? We We have to play a little bit of it.

0:35:43 Clip: Of all, do not have their country. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our trade that we will use if we commit a crime.

0:35:56 Matt: Of the tools in our toolkit, she's standing in front of a bunch of men with shaved heads and in this horrible place, packed into the cell, and she's talking to everybody. She's not talking to gang members. She is talking to everyone about how this is one of the things that we're going to use if you come to this country. This is all for PR. They're doing these horrible, torturous things to people for public relations. It's so disgusting.

0:36:17 Thomas: This is horrifying. Matt, what what can happen here? I mean, I in it is true that this man is not really in our control anymore. So it's kind of, you to the kind hearted fascists to see if they want to. Let them out or something, but like, what, is there anything else that can happen? What's the, what's, what are we looking for on this?

0:36:33 Matt: Think there is after reading through the briefing. Far as I know, the contract that we made, whatever agreement that we have with El Salvador is not public, but we need to see that contract because there should be an argument under habeas that we still have enough of a connection to these people that essentially, you know, if I was renting your apartment. And I stored a bunch of stuff in your apartment that's still under my control, right? I mean, that's like if I'm renting a room, that is essentially what they're doing here. So this is a very unusual use of habeas. And I have to stress too, the habeas they're looking for wasn't even for release. The habeas that they were looking for in this case was to remain detained in the United States. That's all they were asking for. This AA suit. That's pretty minimal. But this is completely unprecedented. There's just nothing like this has ever happened before. I hope it never happens again. I do hope that the judge here is going to find that there's enough nexus, there's

0:37:05 Thomas: Why, why would it hurt? It a try, you know?

0:37:21 Matt: And order officials the that are responsible for this deal to call in the deal and say, well, you know, turns out we accidentally stored a person there that we didn't mean to store there. Go ahead and send it back.

0:37:31 Thomas: If that's some sort of like business relationship, you

0:37:35 Matt: Right. It's a lease, right? I mean, you have the right to undo, to cancel a lease. So I do think there's some hope there in contract law, but I am concerned just because I would be less concerned if he were a Venezuelan or Honduran, but because he is Salvadoran, I'm concerned that his government might try to hold onto him. I don't know. But it's astonishing to me that the government is not only just admitting a mistake in this way, pretty openly, but then just saying there's nothing they can do to fix one of the worst mistakes that I've heard of the immigration system. I maybe the worst one ever

0:38:02 Thomas: Nothing they can do and he had traffic violations anyway so it's fine that he's going he's in hell like we put him in the worst place in the world

0:38:08 Matt: Are you going to do? He were a gang member, by the way, even if you had a history of being a gang which I don't believe he does after reading through this record, absolutely not. And the fact is that even if, let's just say, if he was a gang at some point in his life, he still came here afraid of gang members. He still came and established a life for himself and has a wife, child, and people who need him and deserves due process. And certainly if the government wants to reverse the judge's decision to protect him, they should go through the due process that's due here and put it back in front of a court. Already talked about this, but there were eight women on these flights, and there weren't supposed to be women involved at all.

0:38:13 Thomas: I wouldn't want him to be in there yeah right

0:38:43 Matt: They got the...

0:38:41 Thomas: Oh yeah and they were just like well no can do we just

0:38:45 Matt: They sent them back. Yeah, we didn't agree to women. There's no place to hold them in this place. It is very famously a men's prison, right? So if they couldn't get the gender right, if they wouldn't get any faith whatsoever, and we already know from the stories that are coming out that many of these people have absolutely nothing to do with gangs. And it's just, you know, I have to keep beating the drum on this. I know there are a lot of other stories to talk about, but this is so important and we cannot abide this as Americans. This is something we have to draw the line at.

0:39:11 Thomas: I OK, there's a mistake. But there's also if you're so careless. A mistake was inevitable then all of a sudden we're not talking mistake we're talking liability I don't know if that applies here but like just legally speaking isn't that usually a principle where it's like okay mistakes could happen but if you're just acting completely recklessly then you don't get to just be like oh whoopsie daisy now

0:39:30 Matt: The recklessness, though, not even knowing or caring what someone's actual immigration status is, and then coming up with this bizarre declaration to try to explain about how he was just sort of on the manifest somehow, and we forgot to mention what his immigration status actually was.

0:39:43 Thomas: Blaming them. Yeah the manifest didn't tell us!

0:39:45 Matt: Yeah, I mean, and we've been told that every one of these people was carefully vetted. They knew exactly who they were and that they'd gone through, you know, you cannot believe any of this. This is why we need to process this entire thing with the Alien Enemies Act and everything around these importations, the way they're treating Venezuelans in particular, underscores why we can't allow the government to do this, why we just allow the game to tell us that people are gang members or terrorists or whatever else, because it's unraveling pretty quickly here. You want to transition to some good news? I want to tell you about is actually directly coming out of what we just talked about with Kristi Noem standing there in front of those men talking about this is what happens because you're all criminals. For the second time, this is pretty late breaking, but a federal court has just found that Donald Trump did something in such a racist way to end temporary protected status that it didn't count. I want just celebrate the court decision here and how good it is and how thoroughly done this was. Just to give you some background very quickly, temporary protected

0:40:38 Matt: U .S .C. 1254A. It allows the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security to designate a country for temporary protected status, basically, that everybody in this country right now, as of the time of the designation, can be protected.

0:40:48 Thomas: I was like Haiti and stuff after the, all that.

0:40:51 Matt: Right. Syria, Ukraine, Nepal after the earthquake, places that are clearly just suffering. And think the one for Ukraine, everybody can immediately understand when you say there's Syria. When breaks out, that's the most common one. But we've had TPS orders for all kinds of other countries for other reasons. They're usually for a few years, and then they terminate when they determine it's safe. Trump is determined to end every one of the TPS programs, which is kind of inconvenient for him because he doesn't just get to do that. Decision as a reminder that he doesn't just get to do that. I really appreciate the thorough effort that the court took in page after page, dozens of pages, in explaining about why he doesn'T get to this. Venezuela was designated for temporary protected status in 2021 by the Biden administration. And at the time, they had made findings as they're required to. They talked about the humanitarian emergency in Venezuela. I'm sure you know, but there's a complete political and economic crisis. Inflation's been out of control. Talking about a very authoritarian government. Shortages, access to medicine, COVID -19 inflamed everything, obviously. That was extended and then redesignated in 2023. And when they redesignate TPS, it actually opens up the pool even more. So all Venezuelans there at the time. The, at the

0:41:59 Matt: Kristi Noem comes in on January 25th, and she vacates the extension of TPS. It's a little confusing. I'm not going to get too detailed on it, but there was both an extension and redesignation that sort of combined. It ended up so TPS is supposed to be carrying on through next October. And she came in and vacated it and said that the way that they had done this was novel and that in consultation with the Department of State, they'd reviewed everything. Now, again, to terminate TPS, to say that a country is no longer designated for temporary protected status, the Department for Homeland Security has to come up with findings in consultation of the Department State. There's a long, complicated process, which the judge does lay out here in the decision, multiple people providing multiple reports. They have to be able to find that. Country conditions have changed material in a way that they are better or that it's safe now to go back. And you can't do that with Venezuela. You certainly can't with Haiti. Haiti's worse off than it was in the last time that TPS was designated. Not supposed to be easy. And this is a really good test. And the reason I wanted to feature this as good news is because this is really good of the executive powers that Trump keeps trying to claim, which he's saying right now, of course, are completely unlimited. By statute, they certainly are not. He still is governed by the Administrative Procedures Act and by the law that actually governs TPS. Just we get to the fun part, judge is talking about how the government failed to provide any evidence in conjunction with this motion to support claims. They're saying that they consulted with other agencies, there's and supposed to be a contrary conditions report. And they're like, oh, yeah, there was totally a report, but you don't get to see it, I

0:43:18 Matt: Guess.

0:43:18 Thomas: Cool. Oh, I did my homework. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not turning it in. It's done though. Just give me an A. Yeah, it's so good though. If you got to see it, but you can't.

0:43:21 Matt: It's at home, right? Yeah, exactly. Think they could just cobble something together, but I can't imagine what that report would say. I mean,

0:43:30 Thomas: Are really seeing recently the that I wish were but just the amount of incompetence in these people, the fascism, it attract the best and brightest. Fortunately, fortunately.

0:43:41 Matt: That's why this is good news.

0:43:43 Thomas: And it's students. A few of them that that were evil and good students, and that sucks. But for the most part... They're lazy, they're not good students, and they think they should just be able to say and do whatever they want. And so when they get called out, it's pretty cool to be like, no, you have to actually do this right. What?

0:43:57 Matt: Do your homework.

0:43:57 Thomas: I'm sorry, the rules apply to me? No.

0:44:00 Matt: Because Exactly. What they tried to do, instead of providing the report they're supposed to provide, is they just said, well, it's contrary to the national interest to have Venezuelans in the United States. That's literally what they said. Having known quite a lot of Venezuelians in my life, that is not true. It's certainly not true of any nationality, but that is extra not true at Venezuelan. The court makes some interesting findings about negative stereotypes, class -wide aspersions on the character of Venezuelans, but talks about how they have higher education than most US citizens. They have higher labor participation rates. Earn nearly all, 96 % of the personal income reported as earned through their own work and annually contribute billions of dollars to the economy and pay hundreds of millions, if not billions in social security taxes. They also have lower rates of criminality than the general US population.

0:44:38 Matt: He's just talking about Venezuelan, but you could say this about all my clients, frankly. That all matters because, again, you've got Kristi Noem saying explicitly that it's against the national interest to permit Venezuelans to be here. But of course, being Donald Trump and being Kristi noem, they can't just say that. They have to go on on the day that she signed the order vacating TPS to call Venezuelan's dirtbags. That's a word that she actually used to describe Venezuelians. And if you're looking for, you know, this is obviously the suit is brought under the Administrative Procedures Act to say that this was arbitrary and capricious, because it was, but it's also being brought on equal protection grounds to say it was clearly brought for racial reasons and for ethnic reasons, right?

0:45:11 Thomas: Really reminds me of the first failed attempt at the Muslim ban.

0:45:14 Matt: Yes, because they're so bad at it that they're just openly racist.

0:45:16 Thomas: And just racist, yeah!

0:45:17 Matt: Right. And it's very gratifying.

0:45:19 Thomas: Good at racism, Matt. I don't want to take your credit away. Like they're good what they're. Good at. And it's racism.

0:45:24 Matt: I said, this isn't even the first time that exactly this question has been raised about TPS. In the first Trump administration, the Haitian TPS program was continued, as was the Salvadoran one, because of so many racist statements that Trump had made. When he was talking about shithole countries, he was about Haiti. And that a very good reason to say this is a discriminatory order. Is incredibly gratifying in this decision. I just want to be sure to end this with very good news that for four pages, the court goes on. There's two different headings. One is discriminatory statements made by Noam, and one is discriminator statements made Trump.

0:45:53 Matt: Just page after paragraph after paragraph of openly racist things and talking about how they're animals and about how their taking all the criminals and the mental patients and releasing them and putting a bus under a bus, you know.

0:46:03 Thomas: Weird that they end up doing so well here. Maybe, maybe we're good. I've never would have said it. Maybe America is good at mental health. You know, if you're taking your, your crazy people and you're sending them to us and then they're model citizens. Wow, nice.

0:46:10 Matt: That's It's a good point. It Yeah, all worked out well. So the court essentially finds the whole thing is racist and that this just never should have happened. And so a bunch of people who are going to have their status expire this week now have it extended through next year. Going to see there's some more. This is 350 ,000 of the TPS holders. There's several hundred thousand more we still have to decide on, but I think the same thing's going to happen.

0:46:35 Thomas: That's final, final. It sounds like, Trump you gets to pull some shenanigans or appeal and get somebody else to. Yeah.

0:46:39 Matt: They could appeal. It's an injunction. They can certainly try, but I don't think it's going anywhere. I think that this is a very, very good decision. It is a similar suit pending for the Haitian TPS. And as we all remember, Trump on a national stage said that Haitians eat cats and dogs in Springfield, right, in Springfeld, Ohio. Said all kinds of horrible things about how he was going to come for Springfield first because he just didn't like those people. And so this is all going to And a federal court is going to find that this was just as racist as anything else. And we're to get to keep TPS, I'm sure of it. And so this is unequivocally good news. And this isn't something as black and white as the government ignoring in to turn a plane around. This is an entire government program. You have a lot of different civil servants that are going to have to follow this order. Optimistic that this is actually going to work. I know it sounds naive when I say things like this, but it's great.

0:47:26 Thomas: Yeah, you've been right about this stuff before, and that's why I love listening to the show. Are some wins, and it's good to celebrate them.

0:47:32 Matt: I realized, you know, kind of as we were about to record that I had a perfect thing with this terrible story about Venezuelan deportations and being racist against the Venezuelans and then the outcome of this kind of racism actually having consequences, real consequences and good ones for good people.

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0:49:03 Matt: I thought I should just talk about one completely non-Trump thing for the day. Kind of supposed to be the purpose of the footnotes. I today's footnote is about an album I was just checking out on Spotify, and would be terrible hog listening, I have to say.

0:49:12 Thomas: It your road mix for while you're on your hog? The British

0:49:19 Matt: You know, it's a thousand British artists, and they just couldn't manage to produce anything.

0:49:23 Thomas: Are not big on hogs.

0:49:26 Matt: This album is called Is This What We Want? And it was done by 1 ,000 UK artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Alberg, Annie Lennox, and a whole lot of other people. Pretty much every British artist you've ever heard of has signed on to this album.

0:49:34 Thomas: That's all of them. Yeah, a thousand?

0:49:39 Matt: On the track spell out, the British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies. What this is about is a charity album, and it is to protect artists because the British government is considering copyright changes that would allow AI to essentially incorporate anything as the artist didn't specifically opt out to incorporate anything into its models. So just scouring through the best music and art and text in the world and allowing it to create slop, just absolute garbage. And this is something that we should fight at every opportunity. Obviously, putting the burden on the artist to inform AI companies that they don't want their stuff used is insane. That's just wrong. Not how it should be.

0:50:17 Thomas: Be honest, I actually think they're getting to the point where they can make good music, but even so, I don't want it. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, it's stolen. It's also the art part. It blowing my mind that the things that we would have hoped, that AI takes over the hard stuff so we can do the art and the writing and the whatever, is like, no, we're still going to do all the crap. Let's just have the computers do all

0:50:39 Matt: Right. Yeah. Put artists out of business, some of the most talented people in the world. I mean, it's not worth it to get another Beatles album. The Beatles don't exist anymore. It's okay. We can enjoy what they had, right? We don't need to have AI create this stuff for us. I think it's disgusting. And I'm sure you've seen a lot of the discourse around the Studio Ghibli AI stuff recently.

0:50:58 Thomas: Yeah. And there was some fake news out of that, too. There's like a fake cease and desist letter that wasn't actually real. Yeah.

0:51:04 Matt: Yeah, yeah. And it's exactly the the kind kind of thing that Miyazaki obviously would never want to do. This is completely wrong. Stuff that is made with love by humans and have it be just blindly replicated with no sense of... Remember, did you see those... There's a thing where people were doing completing paintings, like having AI complete paintings. So you have Nighthawks, the guy sitting there at the diner. It's like, right. No! That's the whole point. That's what the artist gave us.

0:51:31 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I don't mind. I'm maybe not as hardcore in that. I wouldn't mind this kind of stuff as like a novelty, as interesting. Like if AI wants to pump out, hey, we're just going to like tell you here's what we're so good with this AI. We're going to tell you, here's AI thinks the next Beatles album would be. Just for like, it's interesting, but like not as like, this is music now and it should be. Yeah, it's like, I dunno. It's a fine line. I think it's an interesting technology and I am interested in. Its use in some ways, but I also really, really, don't think, especially with how much we've seen these companies just stole data. They just decided like steal first and, you later. And it's, it's

0:52:06 Matt: There's also the idea of the photocopying, the slop, right? If you just have more AI -generated stuff, and then it reads the AI - generated stuff and creates more, and we lose people. We have to try to keep people in this equation somewhere. And of course, I'm saying this as somebody whose job could eventually be in jeopardy, the legal tools that are coming out now myself.

0:52:20 Thomas: Don't worry, Matt, nobody, but a white man can podcast. It's fine. That's there's never, they're never taking our job. Oh, your lawyer thing.

0:52:27 Matt: I wasn't even thinking of that job. Oh no, now you got me scared too. Who could possibly capture my voice? It's just too weird. Yeah, that's today's footnote on the 1 ,000 you care or something.

0:52:40 Thomas: Did this album do exactly? Like, said is it's spelling something? Is it that they did they contribute actual songs or do they do some gimmick where it's like, what did they do? What is the actual album?

0:52:48 Matt: Complete silence.

0:52:49 Thomas: It's silence.

0:52:49 Matt: That's the protest.

0:52:50 Thomas: Oh, that's the part maybe should have said.

0:52:53 Matt: Oh, yeah, I was actually meant to do a performance from it, which I could just briefly do now. That part. So it is just silence because obviously AI can't steal from silence.

0:53:01 Thomas: They're all stealing from what is it? John Cage.

0:53:04 Matt: That's right. That's been done.

0:53:07 Thomas: Yeah. All that's the show. Thanks Matt for doing your best to put a bright spin on stuff at the end there, but yeah, no, we take positives where we can and we'll keep an eye on that story. Certainly. Thanks for the breakdown. Thanks Everyone for listening this week and we will see you on Monday.

0:53:21 Matt: Things are still happening and love still exists. We'll see you later.

0:53:23 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.

0:53:41 Matt: Just jumping on my hog. You know how it is.

0:53:43 Thomas: Fool's errand to separate Matt from his hog, but classic classic

0:53:47 Matt: Is canon, folks. Looks pretty contained. I should never say things like that. I shouldn't have by now. It looked like just one track. I mean how long can one track take? He asks. Yeah, but this all completely underscores why the Alien Enemies Act in itself, and again, this is something else, right? But, oh, no. Okay.

0:54:12 Thomas: What the fuck is that? That your motorcycle gang leaving? You gotta go, wait! Just taking turns.

0:54:30 Matt: But we your hauling gravel into the Boston Globe? I don't know what is happening here. That's some sort of dumpster -type thing. Would be terrible hog listening, I