DHS Tries to Get Citizen To Self-Deport. The Story Went Viral. Turns Out SHE'S MATT'S LAW PARTNER!

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 life 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 1150. I'm Thomas Smith, and got a great episode for you today. Is going to be on, and he's got a really cool story. One of his law partners got an email from the government saying she needed to just get the heck out. It was like trying to make her self-deport. Only one to 17 problems with that. A citizen, she's and an immigration attorney. So there's been some mix up there. Going to tell us a little bit about that. But also, you've probably seen headlines about it because this story went mega viral. Seen headlines. I'm seeing news articles. It first went viral on her Blue Sky account, which you might have seen that even too. So it's so cool that Matt seems to be on ground zero, just like right around all this stuff happening with his client and now with his law partner. Maybe it's him, actually. Maybe Matt's the problem. We'll get to the bottom of it. But not even the main story. Our main story today is how the Farm Bill accidentally legalized weed. Well, legalized a marijuana product that Matt's going to tell us about because he's a big old pothead, big stoner guy who knows about that stuff. And I'm a square who doesn't know. That's our episode. It's going be great. I know I said I was switching to two episodes a week last week, if you heard that announcement, and I'm going to talk just a moment about that change. Slightly, you personal as well. So you can skip a few minutes if you'd like. But here's what's going on with that. So, The problem was there was a lot of problems. For one, it's workload for me and Lydia. Like we're just we're dying. Um so much that we haven't gotten to do because of this even like not only work stuff but also these days uh kids are really need extra attention in ways that are really difficult right now um they each kind of have their struggles and we're feeling like three episodes a week is just a bit too much um matt's practice is also going crazy obviously he's got so much going on it's making it harder and harder to schedule enough enough stuff. The other thing was I was excited to change the episode from Sunday night to Monday night because having to work like Sunday for one, when our kids are here, it's really hard. And two, it is just such a bummer to like be working all Sunday night when, you know, that might usually be like a time when you can sit and watch a show with the wife or something, you know? Like that kind of time and it has just been really adding up. So what I need to drop in order for us to be able to make with do the workload is we and the shout outs will go back to being that standalone. It was that way for a little while. Won't be adding anything to that because that really was just adding to that workload so much, was trying up with that extra segment. For a while, we wanted to because there was so much to cover. There's still so much for us to do. So much to do, but what with the gavel and all the other stuff we're doing, is how it's going to work. I'm hanging on to the fact that I really want to move the episode from Sunday night to Monday night because that work is really getting to me and to us, you know, the family. It's just, it's too much right now. So I'm going to switch to Monday Night and then T3BE on Wednesday night. Then the, don't worry, the Rapid Response Friday is not changing at all. That will still be that Thursday night. I mean, it's Friday a .m. mostly it's so late and people are on the East Coast. But for me, it is like that Thursday night. So, one more time, instead of Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it will now be Tuesday, Friday essentially. Make sure you are subscribed to the show and downloading every episode and then you are fine. You don't even have to worry about it. That midweek episode is going to be standalone T3BE. There is not going to be anything else with that. Just T3B in the shout outs. That's how we'll make it all work. So with that said, at long last, Let's let's get over to a really fun Monday Deep Dive with Matt, classic OA Monday Deep dive stuff, not Trump related at all. It's so nice. After the break we'll be on with Matt if like to avoid the ads and the ad had breaks, please pledge at patreon.com/law. Thanks so much to our patrons. All right. After this break, we'll get to it.

0:04:29 Thomas: This is so interesting. You have a friend who is now, and I know you've gotten internet famous a few times, but your friend seems to be going pretty internet famous right now for super cool and chill reasons.

0:04:41 Matt: And not just my friend, but my law partner, Nicole Mischeroni. And the closest thing I have to a sister. Love her very much. And she, yeah, it's funny. She showed us this email on Friday morning and we went out for drinks on Friday night. And I was like, you know, you might want to use that Blue Sky account. This might be the time to put this story out.

0:04:56 Thomas: A savant over here with the blue sky, Matt. You are.

0:04:59 Matt: No, I've been doing Twitter for a long time now. The reason I thought this would easily go viral, and in fact it did, is because Nicole was receiving an email telling her to leave the United States within seven days with some very scary language from the Department of Homeland Security.

0:05:11 Thomas: And this is real, right? This isn't like a scam or any, attempt.

0:05:13 Matt: Is absolutely real. It's been confirmed by Wired and several other outlets that this is real. Well, it's kind of how the government talks now, but it reads like Disney villain language.

0:05:23 Thomas: That's a good point. How do you differentiate between our current government and, you

0:05:30 Matt: Pretty much. I got to read you a few lines here because it is really something. Now, again, this was sent directly to Nicole's email address in our office, and it doesn't have a client's name or a file number on it. It's directed to her, Nicole Mascheroni. Was born in Newton, Massachusetts, which does, in fact, make her a U .S. citizen. We'll talk to her sometime. She's delightful, of course. But let me just read you couple lines.

0:05:50 Thomas: Please read the whole damn thing.

0:05:53 Matt: You to leave the United States, period. Yeah. That's how it starts.

0:05:54 Thomas: Wow. That's Okay.

0:05:57 Matt: Notice of termination. Yeah, that's just the first line. That you're here because you were paroled into the United States. We'll talk about what that means in a minute. Then it's going to expire in seven days. If you do not depart the United states immediately in italics, you'll be subject to potential law enforcement actions. Skip down to my favorite part here. DHS encourages you to leave it immediately on your own. You can use the CBP Home mobile app on your phone to make arrangements for your departure. And it goes on to explain more about how you can leave. Again, DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States. The federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.

0:06:31 Matt: It's quite an email to receive. Not even a letter anymore. We just do these things by email, apparently. So obviously, I mean, we thought this was funny. When Nicole retweeted it, I guess a lot of people actually thought that she was taking it seriously. But, yeah.

0:06:41 Thomas: You blue skied it. Yeah. Here's the, I'm sorry. I'm going to call you out on this one. You guys post that you and you shared it and me and everyone else is like, well, shit, what the hell are you in trouble? You know? And then you're like, oh no, I thought that was just a funny goof and a spoof. I was really confused because maybe it's A, I think Matt doesn't realize how little everyone knows slash remembers about immigration law. And also how scared we are about what the hell is going on right now. Like, I don't know. Maybe this is a real threat to her safety. I have no freaking idea, Matt.

0:07:08 Matt: Sorry. Sorry, everybody. And it's also in the post, she asked, does anybody know if you can get Italian citizenship through your great grandparents, which is her heritage, of course. And that was, I thought that was obviously a joke, but we got so many people letting her know that she no longer can do that.

0:07:21 Thomas: Again, Matt, we don't.

0:07:23 Matt: I guess anymore. It's April, 2025. Anything can be possible. Yeah. But we had like Italian newspapers reaching out and asking an Italian TV station. It was like, you want to talk about how you're going to have to be deported to Italy?

0:07:25 Thomas: Pretend you don't Really went viral.

0:07:38 Matt: Yeah, it really did. Really lucky first post there for Nicole. Very proud of her.

0:07:41 Thomas: That was her first post.

0:07:43 Matt: Yeah, first post ever, which was a lot of people thought was very suspicious. We got multiple emails to the firm.

0:07:45 Thomas: She owes you some royalties or whatever.

0:07:49 Matt: All these messages and emails asking, if she's really associated with me, even though I had promoted the post. So, no, very proud to be associated with Nicole, and this really is something that happened. But I should tell you real quick what it actually means for the people who got it, because it is a real message that did go out to close to a million people, and just now... Things have come out a little bit more. It looks like quite a few US citizens, including citizens who petitioned for their spouses, have also received these. Parole in the immigration context is kind of like parole in a criminal context where you're being released and you're processed back out into society, but it's released into the United States. So you're, you're getting paroled or allowed to come into the States. It's a form of legal immigration and it was being handled by the CBP one app, which you might remember Republicans complaining about. And that was recently in a very dystopian kind of way, converted to the CB home app, Which no longer admits you to the United states, but helps you leave to your home.

0:08:38 Matt: That's not terrible. It is true. Yeah, you have to laugh.

0:08:41 Thomas: I thought they just got rid of it. I guess I didn't catch that they redid it. Wow So

0:08:44 Matt: Makeover time. Yep. So yeah, now they made it into a fascist tool instead of a humanitarian one. That's what they're inviting Nicole to do is to jump on and self -deport basically. So the people who are getting these are the people were paroled through the CBP One app, and that's about a million people. And remember, Biden did that to more orderly manage the border because it was actually a way to keep people from crossing illegally. Ended a lot for asylum. It was very unpopular with Republicans. If he hadn't done that, there would have actually been much more of a mess at the border during those years when was after the Trump years when when Title 42 and other restrictions like remain in Mexico had gone away. Anyway, this something that is very serious for quite a few people. It's not serious for Nicole. This was funny for us, but I mean, it felt weird at first.

0:09:22 Thomas: You say. I was worried. It's so funny. I sent a panic message like, Matt, what in the world is happening with your friend? Oh, my God. It's like, what? What are you so nonchalant? I can't. I guess it's the confidence of dealing with this subject for so long. But the rest of us are quite scared, Matt. We don't get it. We're confused and scared.

0:09:40 Matt: I guess. Yeah. It was very interesting to see the response just because, you know, I know that she didn't come in an order of parole. Mean, I was making a joke that maybe we can find her a green card marriage because she is the most criminally single woman in Boston, but keep helping her out that way. However I can.

0:09:52 Thomas: Was worried that she said that, too. I said, great evidence against her. She's gone. She is out of here.

0:09:57 Matt: Yeah, it is a way to tell somebody to leave the United States. It's very offensive. And of course, it's only in English. So a whole lot of people that came in this way are not going to understand it anyway. They really should have sent it in Spanish since most people who have paroled in did speak Spanish. But yeah, anybody who received one of these, I should know. It is just letting you know that you need to leave because you don't have parole anymore. But you should seek out a lawyer because you may still have options because people who entered on parole did come lawfully, which means that they may have other options for immigration.

0:10:22 Thomas: Wow. So wait, they came in. I guess I was confused by come in on parole. I

0:10:26 Matt: You use CBP1 outside the United States instead of crossing the border. So they were given essentially permission.

0:10:30 Thomas: But But that just, oh, okay. I thought that meant you were still outside of the United States. I don't know why.

0:10:35 Matt: No, it's permission to enter.

0:10:36 Thomas: So long story short, it's people who got permission kind of through the app under Biden to come in. And they're just Trump is just trying to find a way to get rid of everybody. And what does this really do? Like, does this notice, I guess, does it do anything more than he was already doing?

0:10:51 Matt: It's continuing the pattern of creating undocumented people. It is one of Trump's favorite things to do. It actually is the thing he's probably been the most successful at so far in the last three months has been creating millions of undocumented people by canceling temporary protected status, by cancel all these parole programs. By reinitiating deportation proceedings where there weren't any before.

0:11:08 Thomas: Guess I question is, does the email itself do anything or did he already like stroke of a pen do all this and the email is just like courtesy letting you know or something?

0:11:17 Matt: Parole is case by case. So these emails are individualized, or they're supposed to be. Obviously, they're not to Nicole and the other citizens who receive them. The real mystery, of course, is that the CBP1 system, I should have added this, doesn't allow you to add an attorney to your application. So her email would have never been in there. We have plenty of clients who paroled that we work with.

0:11:34 Matt: And our emails are registered on their behalf in lots of other places in the immigration system, which is I'm sure how this happened. It's probably some Doge idiocy or something, right? It's just some database. There are a lot of US citizens, like attorneys and petitioners for visa holders who would be in the system and have their emails there. And we've seen a lot of stories of a lot of different kinds of people getting them. But again, it's It's a stupid mistake. But for the people who received it, who it was actually aimed at, it is a very serious thing, and they need to get legal help.

0:11:59 Thomas: Your friend didn't even know who to tell, who to give this to, like who the intended person was or did she?

0:12:04 Matt: It was for her. There's no other name on it.

0:12:05 Thomas: It was for. Oh. Okay. I thought you were saying it went to her because some client listed her email. Oh what?

0:12:12 Matt: No, I think they were just scouring emails that were in USCIS. Databases. I think they just got the wrong data set.

0:12:17 Thomas: It's a bad sign that we just have no idea, you know, like who knows? Cause that, I mean, you better, but that doesn't really make sense to me. Cause why would they specifically know it's parole? One of the parole people rather than some other.

0:12:28 Matt: Think they were just grabbing emails from USCIS and they just the wrong dataset. That's my theory. And they just shot them all out. Lot of these emails went out, probably over a million. So you can imagine potentials for mistake.

0:12:39 Thomas: That's crazy. It's also it's just so interesting. I keep I like I keep seeing news articles like just just out in the wild and read it on whatever. Gets an email saying, you know, it's like, wow, that really did go viral. So that's super cool. Also scary to us who aren't as confident as you that the rules still apply at all. So hopefully, hopefully you're right.

0:12:59 Matt: As we've discussed before, the actual procedure for denaturalizing someone, which there is no such procedure for someone born here, but the actual is extremely complicated for now and Congress would have to change that for now. Certainly, we've been talking about our concerns in the last few weeks about what Trump might want to do to citizens, but it's still not there yet. And, uh, remain optimistic that we can still fight all this. We're not, I keep seeing people saying that, you know, we are there and we've fully arrived at the place where we can't come back. And that is just not true as always.

0:13:23 Thomas: Right. Well, I guess good news for now, but let's get on to our main story, which I think might also be a bit of fun. Farm bill. You're promising this is more exciting than it sounds.

0:13:35 Matt: This is the most exciting story that you can possibly imagine coming out of a farm bill. This is actually from the Farm Bill of 2018. This is the story of how Congress accidentally legalized weed and how they may or may not want to stop it. A fascinating story. I haven't seen this get much attention outside of the industry, which I do follow a bit, so I'm looking forward to talking about it.

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0:15:22 Thomas: Right. Well, yeah, let's get into it. How did this happen? And is it still true or was it quick?

0:15:27 Matt: No, this is still an open loophole. And now again, okay, I have to call it a loophole, I hate using the word loophole because law is a law, but this is definitely a loophole. I do not think that Congress intended to legalize THC products when they did this. Let me just explain some history. So I'm sure that if you've ever met like an actual high school stoner at some point in your life, you've gotten the speech about how George Washington grew it, man, right?

0:15:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:49 Matt: You get that one? Yeah, sure. And he did, he grew.

0:15:50 Thomas: We've we have all it's almost impossible to not have met that person. Like maybe you're homeschooled all the way through.

0:15:54 Matt: Yeah. I've managed not to be that person. Yes, totally. And George Washington did, in fact, grow hemp, not marijuana. There is some interesting sort of ambiguous stuff in some letters about how he'd been unsuccessful, or excuse me, about how He'd ruined one of the crops in a way that sterilized it, that wouldn't have allowed him to get high. I'm just, I'm reading through the lines here, but yeah, but

0:16:13 Thomas: Also major debate among the nerds as to everyone thinks that Gandalf smokes weed, but then there's another corner of squares. They're like, no, it's clearly tobacco. It just is. I think they might be right based on what Tolkien intended, but that's my more relatable version of that.

0:16:24 Matt: It's pipeweed, right?

0:16:31 Thomas: That's what they say, but I guess Tolkien would have used that as tobacco is apparently the argument, so I don't know.

0:16:31 Matt: That is pretty ambiguous. Probably he was a square and

0:16:39 Thomas: But in the movie, they're clearly high as F.

0:16:39 Matt: It's hard to get around. Oh

0:16:41 Thomas: Like it's not even, and I like it. It's a good addition.

0:16:42 Matt: Having a great time. Sure, sure,

0:16:45 Thomas: Look, it's a tough, tough world out there in middle earth.

0:16:49 Thomas: Sometimes you gotta, sometimes you gotta ball rock after you gotta blow off some steam. You gotta, you know, de -stress.

0:16:54 Matt: I'm a cannabis I think it's done a lot of good for my life. I generally good if you use it in moderation like any other substance. I'm happy that it's getting to the full legalization. We're almost there. But I got interested in this particular question when I was retained back in 2018, which is kind of a favor I was doing for somebody I know who owns an herbal supplements store. He needed a letter justifying his ability to sell CBD products by mail. And CBD is everywhere now.

0:17:19 Matt: We don't really think about it, but CBD was not legal until the 2018. Yeah. And it's great. CBD has lots of benefits. And of course, CBD, just to be clear, is a non -psychoactive derivative of hemp. Be confused with THC, which is the actual psychoactive ingredient of cannabis. We'll talk about the differences in a second. But I just got into this when I wrote this letter and I realized that the farm bill had actually opened up a lot more than CBD for...

0:17:19 Thomas: It is. Sponsor of the show. Wow.

0:17:44 Matt: Distribution and sale. And there's this whole gray area in the law. And I'm going to tell you right now that I think the only solution to this is just to fully legalize and de -schedule marijuana. I know that I would say that. But as you'll see, I need one fewer job at this point.

0:17:53 Thomas: You would say that, you pothead stoner. Get a job, Matt. Living in your parents' basement. Yeah, that's true.

0:18:05 Matt: Everything we're talking about here, I have some opinions, but I'm kind of going back and forth. You might have different opinions. A really fascinating look, though, at what can happen unintentionally when Congress does a really good thing, because what they were doing was finally, after many, many, decades, legalizing hemp. This is the thing you've heard your high school stoner friend talk about, was how George Washington grew hemp, and hemp is a great American tradition. And it's true. Hemp was actually required to be grown in the colonies because the British needed it so much for their navy. It has all kinds of uses for ropes and clothes also, and a lot of other naval type products. And it was actually the Queen Elizabeth I ordered British farmers to grow it. There's actually a fine if you didn't grow hemp because it was so in demand.

0:18:33 Thomas: Isn't it ropes and stuff? That's all I thought it was. Wow.

0:18:45 Thomas: It used to be illegal not to sell weed, everybody.

0:18:46 Matt: And That's right. Yep, yep. Hemp is not exactly a different planet. It's the same genetic stuff, but it's just the difference in THC content. And now I'm going to say some things, I'm gonna try to be as careful as I can that are going to sound kind of sciencey. Everything that I'm saying that sounds kind of sciency is taken directly from sciencey type things I've read. I want to be careful not to be doing science on my law podcast, but trying my best here. If I get anything wrong, I'll hear about it.

0:19:07 Thomas: A lot of scientists listen to the show.

0:19:09 Matt: Doubt, no we love them. And I appreciate any clarity that we can get.

0:19:12 Thomas: Do your worst. Tell me how wrong Matt is.

0:19:15 Matt: That's right. Yeah. What's really interesting to me is the distinction between hemp and cannabis is completely arbitrary. It was actually created by a scientist named Ernest Small, a Canadian guy who came up with this distinction. 0 .3 % THC by dry weight, which is just the percentage of THC present when it's calculated in relation to the total cannabis plant weight when harvested and dried. That's from his writings. And 0 .03 % THCs, as you might imagine, is not very much. It takes about 1 % THCS to feel it at all. And so this is pretty far below what you want for psychoactive THC. Distinction I was telling you about, the 0 .3 % is sort of how it's used today, but hemp and cannabis have always understood to be different plants or different things. Is generally taller and skinnier, and the cannabis sativa that you think of as marijuana is shorter and of stouter, and During the reefer madness era, the 20s and 30s, when you had Harry Anzalger as the head of the Bureau of Narcotics, he was obsessed with the idea that hemp farmers were going to be able to grow marijuana. And so they lumped these things together and they did everything they could to criminalize hemp along with marijuana because was it was going to be too hard to tell them apart, even though you can visually tell them and they grow differently.

0:20:29 Matt: By the way, hemp is very easy to grow. Actually to the point that it's growing wild all over the United States because I'll tell you why actually a little later. That's going to become about why there's so much of it. Anslinger was obsessed with the idea of making sure that we criminalized marijuana as much as we possibly could. And that included wiping out the hemp industry, which was a real problem because hemp has always been kind a miracle product. You can do a lot with it. You actually make food out of it. And you can make plastics. You make a lot more paper than you can from trees.

0:20:55 Thomas: Can make a whole lot of things that smell bad with it. Like it's all different things that smells bad. Clothes, rope that smells, bad, everything that smells.

0:20:58 Matt: That's also true. Right, right, right. And yet it doesn't smell like marijuana because it's not THC.

0:21:04 Thomas: You're not really, it's like different bad.

0:21:06 Matt: Right. Exactly. There's an interesting thing that happened, though, with the regulation of machine guns with saw the model of the National Firearms Act, I believe it was at 32, that banned machine guns. That was how they were trying to rein in mob crime because there were so many mobsters running around with actual machine guns, to the point that the National Rifle Association at the time supported it, very different times. They did to ban machine guns was just... tax the hell out of them, just huge excise taxes on them. Essentially, by today's dollars, it'd be something like $3 ,500 tax on your machine gun. You had to register all users, and it was like a very strict registry. And essentially, nobody would want to... supply dried up. There's no reason to make one. It just became So Ensign Clark had this idea that why don't we price out hemp and marijuana and just make it too expensive to grow and sell? Then also just criminalize it to the point that we're going to burn down farms and arrest anybody who's involved in it.

0:21:53 Thomas: I feel the second thing kind covers it but all right.

0:21:55 Matt: The Tax Act of 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act, was the big turning point in cannabis criminalization in the United States. And it didn't distinguish between hemp and marijuana. I didn't really realize this until I started looking deeper into this whole thing. But hemp was actually a Schedule I substance along with marijuana, which makes no sense when you can barely get high from it at all. It's very hard to extract, as we're going to talk about.

0:22:15 Thomas: Half a rope and didn't feel anything.

0:22:19 Matt: A little conspiracy -ish, but William Randolph Hearst owned his own paper supply and wanted to protect the paper industry.

0:22:22 Thomas: Here we go, Joe Rogan. All right.

0:22:26 Matt: Harry Anslinger's uncle, Andrew Mellon, who was the Treasury Secretary, had investments in paper and also was all about this anti agenda.

0:22:32 Thomas: And there's that pyramid with the eye on top of it on the money, too.

0:22:36 Matt: It's actually funny I mentioned the money because at one point there was actually hemp on the money. That sounds like something else that your stoner friend in high school would have said. But there's actually a $10 bill that was made from hemp that has a plant that is definitely hemp being harvested on it. So it's very American. American's a $100 bill. This worked because the excise taxes that they put in were so expensive. It was like at every stage of the transfer process, you'd have to pay these exorbitant taxes. The hemp industry basically shut down until the 40s, when suddenly the military realized that it needed hemp for the same reason the British did. It needed to make uniforms and ropes and everything else. And so they lifted the regulations and set up this entire hemp industry for like five years. It employed thousands of people, made a lot of money, and they ran it all through this kind of shell company and essentially allowed hemp to be produced in 71 factories across the country. And then took every step they could to shut it down immediately after that. Not a very good decision considering there's all the different things you can do with hemp and it has great for the market. But again, just the same prohibitionist mindset that it was too difficult to distinguish it from marijuana. They didn't want to encourage people to be growing it. But that hemp hemp that that was authorized under the Hemp for Victory campaign in the 40s ended up becoming ditchweed all over the United States. It became like a feral kind of hemp or marijuana plant. Just a fun fact when you see it out in the wild, a lot of it is from that. The seeds can lie dormant for seven to 10 years, so it's pretty hardy stuff. Anyway, so there's a whole tortured history in the cycle of HAVP where we're just discovering it, rediscovering it, criminalizing it again. Obviously very stupid. One of the stupidest things to have it included in the Schedule 1 just because it happens to be the same genetic material as cannabis sativa.

0:24:07 Matt: Then we get to Mitch McConnell, of course, who solves the whole problem in 2018. So the Farm Bill in 2014 had already kind of opened the way for... hemp industry, because there's potentially just hundreds of millions of dollars on the table here. And Mitch McConnell was concerned about Kentucky, which was losing a lot of money from tobacco because people are smoking a lot less, fortunately. They needed a new crop, and Mitch McConnell knows where the money is. And so he helped get through the Farm Bill of 2018. And what the Farm It redefined hemp in Section 297A as cannabis sativa L, a plant with no more than, and it explains exactly about the 0 .3%. It removes tetrahydrocannabinols in hemp from the federal CSA definition of THC. It makes this magic definition about any part of such plant, whether growing or not, with a delta -9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0 .3 % on a dry weight basis. And that's the thing I was telling you about, this distinction that they came up with with Ernest Small. Dry weight -basis thing would become a gigantic loophole because delta - 9 tetra -hydrocannabanol is not the only way that you can get high from a cannabis plant. Remember, of course, that both hemp and marijuana are cannabis plants. It's just the percentage of the psychoactive substance. The thing that this really opened the door for was CBD. Because before, could not get CBD because you couldít get hemp. But once hemp was legal, you Could extract CBD. This opened up, as we all know, a major market, and you can buy it online, you can

0:25:31 Thomas: That's why it's everywhere now. I thought it was something else. So it's like an indirect thing. Oh, I had no idea.

0:25:38 Matt: Part, I think the CBD part was somewhat intentional, but the rest was not, the gray market that had opened up.

0:25:42 Thomas: Then what's sorry. What's the rest part that I thought that was the.

0:25:45 Matt: We're getting there. We're getting that. Yeah. Of course, CBD is not psychoactive. But the way that this defined it, if you're looking at a strict textual basis, as you must as a court, delta -9 tetrahydroquinone concentration of not more than 0 .3%. So that means that you derive other kinds of cannabinoids, and now cannabenoids, again, not to sound like your high school starter friend, we have cannabanoid receptors in our brains. Nobody really knows why, but we have the ability to receive the cannabis plant. Know how I else to say that. That's just how it works. And so there are other ways to get to cannabиноids. Obviously, the easiest and simplest and most straightforward way is going to be by actually growing a marijuana plant and smoking it. Or otherwise distilling it. And when you have THC -A, that's like the precursor compound, and we'll talk about that, about how that works out. But once you burn it, that becomes THC and actually becomes psychoactive in your body, or otherwise decarboxylated.

0:26:37 Thomas: Just making up words now.

0:26:38 Matt: Know, I'm pretending I'm science -y. What people figured out pretty quickly is that you could synthesize other kinds of THC from CBD. You could do some fancy science and you could extract Delta 8 or Delta 10. I don't know if you, have you heard about Delta 8? Do you know about this?

0:26:54 Thomas: This is not me at all. I couldn't be less this.

0:26:55 Matt: Not your world. Okay. Okay, this is something I'm actually pretty interested in. So it's an easy one to come back to. So last night I found some Delta 8 in an old backpack.

0:27:02 Thomas: Shame. What?

0:27:05 Matt: I had ordered some online. I was curious about Delta 8 just as a person a while back because...

0:27:10 Thomas: It sounded really like chemistry -esque. And then you're like, yeah, I found an old backpack. It's like, oh, that had to be in a beaker or something.

0:27:14 Matt: Well, here's the thing. You can buy Delta 8 online because of this loophole. You just have it sent to your house. So now Delta 8 has been marketed as diet weed or like weed light. And that's not exactly accurate in my experience. And there's also a safety issue, because you can imagine if you could just buy vodka from some guy online and have vodka sent to your house, there'd be some problems there, right? In the same way there was during Prohibition, where people were putting formaldehyde and rat poison.

0:27:40 Thomas: Bathtub gin. Yeah.

0:27:40 Matt: Right. Who knows what? There are real concerns, even among the industry, obviously, about the fact that you're talking about extracting a synthetic from CBD. Now, there's a legal definition about whether or not this is synthetic that we're going to get to at the end. Is not getting it from the plant in the same way. You're taking CBD and turning it into a lighter form of THC or a different form of is all just a backdoor way to be able to sell THC products online or in gas stations or other seedy places. Know if you've seen these ads or if people have seen this, but this is pretty common. And maybe it's just me because the internet knows that I enjoy cannabis, but I have received plenty of these ads and I've taken them up on a couple of them just to see what the products are. Now, of course, I can walk down the street in Boston and go to the marijuana store like a respectable person. And go to this nice boutique institution and purchase marijuana if I want to. But I was curious just for research to see what these things are like. So I ordered a couple. And I got to tell you, again, I was a little concerned because it's extracted in this kind of weird way. You don't know exactly what you're getting. You can actually get a certificate of analysis on their more reputable sites. You can make sure it doesn't have salmonella or arsenic. It's always good to know when you're taking a gummy. There's this kind of conventional wisdom that Delta -8 is about half the potency of Brigo THC products. And I don't think that's true. I guess maybe I'm still kind of a lightweight. I took about 10 milligrams of Delta - 8 last night, and it didn't feel like 5 milligrams. It felt different.

0:29:02 Thomas: I have no frame of reference for that, Matt, if you want to try to... No, I have idea. What is that? Feel free for... I'll represent the other squares. I don't know what that is, how much or how little that is.

0:29:13 Matt: The five milligram edible would be like a standard dose. It's like a couple of glasses of wine maybe. And it's just like, if you're a regular cannabis user, it's not that much. You're like cannabis user it would be a pretty, pretty good evening for you. That's the standard sort of default one -time dose for pretty much all edibles is five milligrams of THC. So I was noticing that in the Delta eight marketing they're talking about 10 milligrams, 25 milligrams. Now I accidentally once took a 50 milligram THC gummy that was supposed to help me put, help me go to sleep. Yeah.

0:29:38 Thomas: 50? Wow.

0:29:40 Matt: We might have talked about this before, but the packaging, even in the stores, is not great. Yeah, it was a rough night. I was somewhere else for a little while. Just not that much of a hardened user. Use it occasionally for sleeping and for thinking. So thought I'd do a little research for the show by taking this gummy last night.

0:29:41 Thomas: Sounds rough. Oh, cool. Wow.

0:29:56 Matt: And yeah, this is some of the more fun research that I've done. And I will say that once in a while, I will microdose to do research for this show because it helps me to think about things in different ways. Don't I actually do my job high, but sometimes, you know, when you're at night, I to play some video games and think about the law. It's a good way to go. So I wrote us a quick note here just to report back from last night.

0:30:13 Thomas: I have this here. It says squirrel internet. No,

0:30:17 Matt: There might be something going on. Let's read this real quick here.

0:30:22 Thomas: Is that from? That's from something. I didn't think of that.

0:30:24 Matt: That's pretty good. Hi, Thomas and Matt. Matt from last night here. Online hemp -derived Delta -8 gummy from the internet that I found in my backpack has finally kicked in, and I don't think I like it very much. Unpleasantly High is probably just about the right vibe for prepping a law podcast in 2025, so I'll take a minute to narrate how I'm feeling and how this compares to what I would usually purchase at the marijuana store like a regular person. A little THC often helps me to consider other ways of thinking about things and generally to find funnier ways to say them. Microdoses of cannabis are pretty much responsible for my Twitter and Blue Sky career. There's an admission. This is feeling like much more than five milligrams and a bit fuzzier. There's more static, I think. I'm loose on five milligrams, but not out of pocket. This is somewhere between those things, I Think. Anyway, as you might expect under the circumstances, I just started listening to farming podcasts.

0:31:10 Matt: I was trying to research marijuana farming. Somehow it just evolved into Farming Podcast while playing the new Assassin's Creed. Actually, it's a grazing, I put that in caps, a grazing podcast. The show description calls it a grazing regenerative agriculture holistic management podcast. I don't remember this, but okay. I was supposed to do a grazing sidebar, and this is a high idea, but these are still ideas. Patreon feature, High Court, in which I just get conversationally high. And you're welcome to join me and talk about funny court stuff. A lot of fun when I'm conversationally hi, and sometimes I speak with just enough energy and intonation to elevate my vocal tone somewhere above, quote, raised in a suburban library, end quote.

0:31:49 Matt: That is actually a pretty good idea. Yeah, well, that's where I spent most of my childhood.

0:31:50 Thomas: Suburban library. Okay. I like the differentiation there. The country libraries really boisterous or something?

0:31:58 Matt: Don't know. Just doing what I know. But actually high court isn't a terrible patron idea. I'm going to put a pin in that.

0:32:03 Thomas: It would be like a good Judge Judy type show, except it'd be you and Snoop Dogg. And then, yeah,

0:32:09 Matt: I was just thinking I could get high and talk about court. I

0:32:10 Thomas: I I'm giving you a better idea, Matt.

0:32:13 Matt: Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I could adjudicate something. I mean, that certainly would be fun too.

0:32:17 Thomas: Get Snoop on the phone. Yeah,

0:32:18 Matt: I have this whole thing about this rabbit hole I went down about how the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported on how the media was swindled into reporting that there was a company that used Jurassic Park technology to resurrect an animal that I only knew existed from Game of Thrones. We can skip all that. The dire wolf.

0:32:31 Thomas: Well, we're probably going to talk about that on Serious Inquiries only.

0:32:34 Matt: It's pretty interesting, actually. Yeah, it was a great piece. Back to... Let's skip ahead to the relevant part.

0:32:36 Thomas: What does that have to do with farms? Come on. Hi, Matt. Focus.

0:32:39 Matt: Here we go. Let's finish up. Don't think I like this stuff. Would you consider incorporating cannabis into other Thomas Smith productions? Hi, old dads. Where there's smoke, is that anything?

0:32:53 Matt: I hadn't come back and read this yet.

0:32:54 Thomas: Folks, not even once. This is why. Say no to drugs. Nice.

0:33:00 Matt: This is feeling like it is going to be a fun one. I just messaged you on Slack. I hope it is. All right, there we go. That's my update. So that's what it's like when I'm a little high on writing, apparently, and listening to grazing podcasts. Wow. All know, I'm a full experience kind of guy. I'm method journalist.

0:33:12 Thomas: Love. What good research. I love it. Yeah.

0:33:17 Matt: You just got to put yourself into it. So my takeaway, I don't think Delta 8 is great. I think that you should stick with regular products. And I think it's kind of an unfortunate thing of prohibition, right, where you have the gray market starts to fill in products that, you know, there is very real concern. Now, BigWeed isn't necessarily the most trustworthy source of this, but BigWead did do a study on this, the U .S. Cannabis Council, Commission, rather. Found some pretty concerning stuff in some of these things you can buy online. Of all, all of them were way over the amount of THC they were supposed to have. So they're supposed to be taking advantage of the loophole, and they're still just really taking advantage you know, some pretty fancy chemical stuff. And if it's not done right, you can end up bonding solvents like heptane, hexane, toluene, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid along with copper, chromium, and nickel. At levels found unsafe for inhalation. That's the real thing with the vapes. Like do not buy a vape from online. That is just a really bad idea.

0:34:02 Thomas: Good tip.

0:34:03 Matt: Like THC, CBD vapes, like... And this comes down to, though, is that Delta-8 THC is not a federally controlled substance if you extract it from hemp directly. So this has become what's known as the source rule among cannabis lawyers. The Ninth Circuit actually confirmed this loophole in a 2022 case. It's called AK Futures v. Boyd Street Distro, and we'll link to it. It was actually a trademarks case where somebody was saying they were copying their product. But in the course of this, they're making an argument about the farm bill. And pure text of the Farm Bill that is not illegal THC. This is essentially because it's hemp -derived and because the very strict text of Farm Bill allows hemp - derived products. It's only Delta 9, so Delta 8 and other Delta variants of all this THC, you know, then the cannabis plant is incredibly complicated, the things that sort of come together to make what we call marijuana. Really hard to copy. I think maybe you know but there's like there's a synthetic a synthetic actual prescription marijuana that was before any of this was legalized. It's called Marinol. It fits a prescription THC. I've heard it's extremely unpleasant to take because it's basically just distilled THC and doesn't have kind of the magic blend of things that the actual organic plant does. Might have heard of Spice or K2. It was something else you could buy at gas stations for a long time. Most states have cracked down on it now. That stuff was causing all kinds of problems.

0:35:18 Thomas: Sandworms. God, there's just all kinds of stuff.

0:35:21 Matt: Right. I've been kind of struggling with here is how much of this is a loophole that should be closed. And there's a doctor named Ryan Marino on Blue Sky that I found. He was saying that one of the most dramatic shifts in 11 years in all of his practice in treating overdoses, poisoning, and substance use was after the Farm Bill because people could start to buy at least something that was closer to actual THC products instead of buying spice and synthetic cannabinoids like that because that stuff can be really dangerous and very bad. This point, 17 states have banned Delta -8, 7 have severely restricted it. In Massachusetts, where we've had legal marijuana for a long time and we follow the federal definition of hemp, we're still allowed to have our agricultural department regulated. So the agricultural department outlawed Delta -8 along with everything else. Gray area still exists though. The Ninth Circuit has been upheld now. There's several other circuits have cited it, including the Fourth most recently in 2024. I thought it was particularly interesting how the Fourth did it because... the Fourth Circuit, in a case called Anderson v. Diamondback Investment Group, considered

0:36:20 Matt: Letter after that Ninth -9 and Delta -THCO, which is what they're extracting from CBD, do not occur naturally in the cannabis plant and can only be obtained synthetically and therefore do not fall under the definition of hemp. And now we have a whole interesting conversation, done by lawyers, of course, about what synthetic... THC is. And again, they're looking just strictly at the text of the bill and the arguments that have been made by the parties. And they determined that between the DEA's February 2023 letter and AK Futures, which is the Ninth Circuit case, think the NinTh Circuit's interpretation of the Farm Act is the better of the two. We're free to make that determination ourselves, despite a contrary interpretation of Section 1639, which is the new definition of hemp, is unambiguous. And because even if it were ambiguous, we don't need to defer to the agency's interpretation. So we're getting the Loper Bright, the overrule of Chevron, getting applied for good reasons, allowing them to find that this synthetic is not actually synthetic, even though the DEA, in the past, they might have had to actually defer to DEA and find some way to, you know. But in this case, they're able to find they could agree. I don't know. Again, as I said, I've been trying to read around and get a sense of how the industry feels about this, about how advocates feel about this. And of course, the general agreement is that we should be moving toward full legalization and regulation. And in the meantime, we are opening up these gray markets. But at the same time, Republican attempt to fix this, you may not be surprised to learn, was almost a disaster last year.

0:37:42 Thomas: They deported everyone who was growing. Now, I don't know. Was

0:37:45 Matt: The Farm Bill has to be reauthorized every five years. As I was saying, 2018 was the last big one. And they kept kicking it down. So in 2023, they passed an extension. And then in 2024, they finally passed another extension. It's up again, I think, this year. And this issue is going to come up for sure. This is something that both parties are expecting. Congressman Miller of Illinois proposed an amendment. And what's called THCA, which is the precursor to THC. And that is pretty much in everything. THCA is not psychoactive, but it's the reason why if you just eat marijuana or if you ingest it some way other than smoking it, even if you're making brownies, you have to actually go through a process to carboxylate it to get the THC actually activated. THCA was a big concern from the industry here. Hemp Roundtable put out a statement at that point saying that this doesn't close the loophole. This kills the hemp industry, that it would ban 90 to 95 percent of all ingestible hemp products, including the CBD. So just all the non -intoxicating, wellness -improving CBD, as they describe it, while wreaking havoc for U. S. hemp farmers, including fiber and grain, by redefining hemp in a manner that would make most crops non -compliant with a new THC standard. So either didn't know what she was doing or she was trying to double down on making

0:38:58 Matt: Sure that THC was the person who sponsored this amendment, Miller of Illinois.

0:38:59 Thomas: She? Who? Oh. Oh, gotcha. Yeah,

0:39:03 Matt: Including THC, it just went way too far because it's just that's going to kill not only CBD, but potentially the possibility for federal legalization as long as it's still in the books. The Democrats had a simpler solution in their amendment, which is probably what they're going to bring up again if they can, although they no longer, of course, control the Senate. They essentially just said that industrial hemp will not be used in the manufacturing or synthesis of natural or synthetic cannabinoid products. Pretty simple. Just keeping industrial hemp separate from any kind of psychoactive, what they call intoxicating, hemp -derived products. That is probably the best solution, is just to carefully delineate the hemp industry from the recreational THC marijuana industry.

0:39:38 Thomas: Now would that close the loophole or does that allow that loophole to still exist?

0:39:44 Matt: I understand it, it would still allow CBD to be made, but not these other gray market products. That's the idea.

0:39:46 Thomas: Not the THC stuff. Okay. Okay.

0:39:50 Matt: Think overall, I'm not sure that the loophole necessarily needs to be closed. I think there might be more harm done than good by doing it. It might make it a lot harder for the hemp industry, which again, the hemp energy industry has amazing potential. There's a lot of different places this can go if we make this a bigger crop. Mitch McConnell was on the right path here to bringing that into Kentucky. Got just incredible industrial possibility in a lot different ways, including food products. And so I think we should do everything we can not to. Stifle it. An interesting analog actually to prohibition when wine grape growers realized that the Volstead Act, Act, which made prohibition happen after the 19th Amendment, realized that it didn't ban the production sale of grape concentrate, which was a sugary pulp that you could referment basically to make wine. So they were able to, there's a very similar sort of thing, that the grape industry was able to benefit by this weird gray market of sugary pulp that was probably not very good wine, but it was something. People were desperate to drink anything then, and a lot healthier than drinking formaldehyde.

0:40:39 Thomas: Is going to sound so crazy, but I had no idea that Prohibition also banned wine. I was like, well, surely. I mean, come on. Cultured. We can still have a glass of wine. What are you talking about?

0:40:50 Matt: There wasn't the same kind of wine industry that we have right now. There was still religious wine you could still have if you needed it for... for clergy purposes. There was some kind of medicinal alcohols and things. But yeah, no, prohibition, I'd love to do an episode on.

0:41:02 Thomas: Wasn't a good idea, I don't think. Not

0:41:03 Matt: Not great, not great. And this prohibition isn't either, like I'm saying. I mean, if you're creating a situation where you're allowing for a gray market that allows this synthesized stuff, which as I said, it's just not a good experience, I don't think, and it's extremely unregulated.

0:41:04 Thomas: A great... Yeah.

0:41:16 Matt: And the packaging alone, there's just no way to know when you're taking 25 milligrams of Delta -8, what is that? You know, how many should you take? What is it? And a lot of it is made to look like candy and crackers and chips and things that kids want to eat. So you could have a bunch of this sent to your house and it could get easily eaten. I'm never knowing what it is. Whereas with the packaging that has to go through. State legalization programs. It's very clearly marked. If it does look kind of fun and colorful, it's marked as THC products. There's a lot of reasons to regulate, and I support regulating cannabis just as much as I do alcohol. There's no reason not to.

0:41:14 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, Wow. Sure.

0:41:47 Matt: This is what happens when you don't. And this is marijuana option, and the federal government continuing to have it as a Schedule 1 high potential for abuse and addiction with no medical value, which is absurd. And as we've talked about before, the Biden administration's solution was to reschedule to Schedule 3. I'm generally opposed to that. I think it should be deregulated, but it is going in that direction, at least for now. It looks like the Trump administration is keeping that going. But that would be the easiest way to close the loophole, would be just to deregulate. Because as long as there are loopholes to be had, there's an industry out there that's going to try to have know, I thought this was an interesting sort of look at what can happen unintentionally when Congress is trying to do a good thing.

0:42:27 Thomas: Were trying to do a good thing?

0:42:28 Matt: Yeah, they're trying to legalize hemp and CBD. I mean, that's, yeah, right.

0:42:29 Thomas: Just the CBD part. Okay, so the loophole, just to make sure I understand, there's a lot of weed words that I don' t remember. The problem was not the CBD, which might have been intentional. It's more the fact that you could derive these stronger things and still technically call it a hemp kind of derivative. Was that? It was?

0:42:46 Matt: And to be clear, you're not deriving it from the plant because you can barely get it out of the plant. You're actually deriving from CBD itself. So it allowed anything that was derived from CBD, which is a self -derived from hemp, to be sold on the market as long as it's not straight Delta 9 THC. And that's a huge loophole considering the other psychoactive things you can get out of it. But

0:43:01 Thomas: So So it seems like there's a couple issues, which is one is like the legalization of being able to do that at all. And another is like, and maybe I'm wrong if there's two separate things, but another would be just we have now that they're deleting the whole government too, which regulation, FDA kind of thing, making sure stuff is tested and consistent. Cause I know we have like no budget for that. That's a huge problem just with food safety and stuff. Other stuff that has nothing to do with illegal drugs. But so is that two different things going on there? And do you think? Do you need to solve them both? Or if you solved one, you don't have to worry about the other one because you're getting rid of that loophole or what?

0:43:20 Matt: I think we can pursue both. There's absolutely room to build up more of a regulatory regime.

0:43:35 Thomas: Well, sure, we could, but Republicans, they aren't.

0:43:37 Matt: I mean, there's a lot of money for Republicans on the line, and that's what motivates them. And you've got people like John Boehner who got involved with the wheat industry because he saw where the wind was going. And a lot very wealthy white men have made a lot more money. That's another piece of the farm bill that was really unfortunate, is it actually maintained a 10-year ban for anyone convicted of a felony relating to controlled substances to get involved in these industries. Really weird because It wasn't just any felon. It was somebody with a drug felony. So you could have killed or raped somebody and go into business, but because you were involved in drug sales. And it should work the other way, obviously. We should have equity for people who were persecuted by the system for doing the things now that white wealthy men are benefiting from.

0:43:59 Thomas: Pointless. Yeah. Yeah, if if you decide something wasn't wrong all along and shouldn't have been wrong, yeah, it's the opposite. But instead it's this really punitive, you know, well, you broke the rules, so we can't let you benefit from us changing the rules that were stupid.

0:44:27 Matt: And that was actually, that's another change the Democrats wanted to make last year that I hope can go through. But, you whole history, I just had no idea that hemp itself was a schedule one all this time. And that obviously was just a stupid thing to do. And one of the major things the Farm Bill did is remove it from the jurisdiction of the DEA, remove it for a definition of narcotic, and put everything under the jurisdiction at the USDA. So the Department of Agriculture now actually tests hemp farms. They can go out and make sure that they don't have the 0 .3 % THC by weight. Out that if your crop, and there's all kinds of reasons as you're carefully growing hemp that it might go a little above that. And remember, again, 0 .3 % is nowhere near what is actually psychoactive, but that's the law.

0:45:00 Matt: And so if they find that it goes above that threshold, they can deem it a hot crop and they can just burn the whole thing. That's what it's called. Yeah. That's best way to deal with marijuana and under any circumstances, obviously.

0:45:07 Thomas: Burn it. Wow. Old fashioned. It's like that stuff in the upside down world and stranger things. They just like get the people to just come torch it.

0:45:17 Matt: Just, that's where we're at now, though, at least that the USDA is regulating hemp like an actual commodity, as it should be. Originally under the 2014 bill, they were going to put out a pilot program to allow it to be done for research and some limited commercial purposes. And then they saw that was going well. And now that it's a commodity and no longer Schedule 1, you can do things like deduct your expenses and pay taxes like a regular person. So there's a huge potential in the hemp market, and I think that we should keep that as open as possible. We need all the new industries that we can get in this country right now. So I want to be careful not to restrict that or to do anything else that might step on their toes. But I think there's somewhere in between, to answer your question on the regulation here, where we can make sure that we're not... sending things that are just absolutely loaded with THC, where you don't even know how much it's in every individual unit of whatever you're buying. Again, when I go down to the marijuana store and I know that I'm going to get something where it's five milligrams per edible, and when I get something out of a bag at a gas station, I know that. There's no way to

0:46:09 Matt: Know that it's carefully measured. I mean, this is like when you make brownies at home, you can end up with a brownie that's got like 50 milligrams in one and five in the other. It all just kind of gets swirled around. So it's good to have actual regulation where you know these things, just as it is with alcohol. You want to know exactly the proof of whatever you're putting in your body and where it came from and where its been. No problem with any of that. I have problem with responsibly closing this loophole. This is the state of the world here. Hadn't really even seen any coverage about this thing.

0:46:32 Matt: And the more I started looking into it, just thought it was kind of interesting that Congress accidentally legalized marijuana, kind of.

0:46:33 Thomas: I didn't know about this at all. Yeah for sure. It dive away. I'm glad we could do something not really Trump related for that.

0:46:42 Matt: Me too.

0:46:43 Thomas: More related to what you need to do in order to get through the Trump related day.

0:46:47 Matt: That's right. No, I actually, you're joking, but I really do believe that marijuana legalization has come at the right time for us to joyfully participate in resistance. I really I know that sounds like a super high thing to say, but right, careful what you wish for. The people are going to want it, Thomas. High court is going to be a thing.

0:46:59 Thomas: Of these observations on High Court coming to TBS. Yeah. I'm on too many brain-related drugs to do any of that. So I'll just be here. You be high. I'll be your designated podcaster.

0:47:14 Matt: I'll take Adderall too. Look out. Something's really dangerous.

0:47:16 Thomas: I mean, I'm just, no, none for me. I am the designated podcaster here at this bar.

0:47:22 Matt: It's probably a good idea. Somebody has to be the bailiff in the high court. Make jokes all the time, of course, about how the Trump administration is driving me to drink or whatever. But, you I don't think drinking is particularly healthy. It's not my favorite activity, never has been. But there's real potential for joy and organization and, like, actually taking a minute on a Friday night to forget about all of this. And I do encourage people to do it responsibly.

0:47:33 Thomas: It's definitely not, yeah? All right. Well, thanks so much. And thanks to the idiots in Congress who made that happen for you.

0:47:47 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.

0:48:04 Matt: A grazing

0:48:06 Thomas: Matt's so high off his ass, he just wrecked his whole recording. Knocked something over. Fantastic. Be right back. Technical difficulties.

0:48:14 Matt: Go to the marijuana store like a respectable person.