What Can We Do To Stop ICE?

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Matt: I'm going to say some things that are going to get me put in a camp here.

0:00:18 Jenessa: Actually, it's racist to have race in mind when you draw these, to try to make sure that you draw at least some Black -majority districts. If you're even thinking about race, you're racist.

0:00:41 Matt: It's Opening Arguments, Rapid Response, Friday, August 15th, 2025. I'm Matt Cameron, Real Life Immigration Attorney, and that over there is Jenessa Seymour, who's all kinds of other kinds of attorney. What's up?

0:00:52 Jenessa: Yeah, former neuroscientist, current trying -to -be -disability attorney. We'll see how Congress feels about that.

0:01:00 Matt: And voting rights, which is very relevant to today's topic, unfortunately.

0:01:05 Jenessa: Yeah, that'll come up a lot today.

0:01:07 Matt: It has become unfortunate that both of our specialties have become so relevant to the news, but here we are, both being relevant. So, let's enjoy it while we can, I guess. I guess we should have mentioned before that both of us have other jobs besides doing podcasts and that nothing we're saying here is representative of any of our other jobs or any of the people associated with them. We are speaking just for ourselves. I feel like we have to mention that at some point, don't we?

0:01:31 Jenessa: I am here in my personal private capacity

0:01:35 Matt: That's right. We do try to keep it more or less positive in this program, but we do have to actually cover what is actually going on in the world right now. And we got two big buckets of topics. We have, I'm not going to call it martial law, but there is a martial action happening in Washington, D .C. right now, We'll talk about why it might not actually be martial law. And there's also, though, kind of on the other side of the balance, a really interesting trial going on as the data we're recording. And by the time that you hear this, you may have a verdict in it. Maybe we'll do an update if we need to. But there's a bench trial happening about the Trump administration's violations of the Posse Comitatus Act in the way that the National Guard was deployed in California. So we're going to talk about both of those things and how they relate in the way that Trump is using the military and domestic situations, which is unfortunately a topic that we fully anticipated. We've recorded now a couple of different episodes touching on this, including a a complete one, on the Insurrection Act. So you can check OA 1123, where we did an overview. I was actually on vacation when I recorded that one, and I thought it was going to be fun to talk about, but I was wrong. So we'll talk about those two related topics, and we'll take a break and talk about some recent threats to the Voting Rights Act that are now in front of the Supreme Court. And Jenessa, I think you've got some stuff ready on that.

0:02:40 Matt: And then we've got a footnote, and usually we try to have some fun with the footnotes, but I want to have something serious but also very helpful, because we do have all this bad news. I want to talk about an idea that I've cooked up for how to actually defeat ICE every day in our everyday lives and something I think I've decided after 19 years of fighting ICE and thinking about ICE and being very concerned about where this all goes. This is the only way that we can actually, as regular people, there's not going to be a political response. There's not goingto be any opportunity for any other way that we're going to change this. But I thinkI do have an idea for howto stop the unchecked growth of ICE. So that's today's footnote. And we'll just wait for that at the end. We'll take a break and we'll be back in a moment to talk about what is going on in DC and California.

0:03:20 Thomas: Hey folks, patrons and non -patrons alike, I'm just jumping in here to say, there's a new Lotawful Movies hot off the presses. It is juror number two, and I'll give you a little spoiler on it. It's actually a Lot great movie. It's a really good movie because, you know, we deserve something nice. So hop onto patreon.com/seriouspod. If you're already a patron, make sure you are a patron at that $2 level and above to get Lotawful Movies. And you can listen to me, Lydia, Matt, and Casey break down juror number two. We had a great time. I think you'll really enjoy it. So check it out.

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0:03:55 Matt: So there's been a a lot of talk this week about martial law, which isn't really a thing in American law, especially at the federal level. We have talked before in OA 1123 about how confusing the Posse Comitatus Act, which is what keeps the president from using the military on American soil, is. The many, many exceptions, there's like 27 different exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act. Unfortunately, because the District of Columbia is the District of Columbia, it does have a different sort of status in American Law. And I'm going to talk about what is actually going going on in D .C. legally right now, what it means for the rest of the country. I want to try to be as straight ahead about this as possible. I think anybody who's listened to the show before knows I'm very concerned about fascism in the United States and about where all these things are going. I know we all are. So I want to try to be clear-headed about this. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. This is bad. This is very bad .This is a harbinger, I think, of something that Trump is very clear about and that Project 2025, which we talked about earlier this week, is also very clear that they want to start using the Insurrection Act and finding ways to deploy troops into American American cities, especially what they consider to be Democrat -occupied blue cities. And there's really no bluer city than Washington, D .C., which has never had a Republican mayor or Republican leadership, as far as I know, and has always been a particular bugbear for Trump. So we were talking Wednesday's show about how ICE may or may not resemble the Gestapo in some ways. And of course, the thing that made the Gestapo, the thing that made everything possible, there are two things. One of them was the federalization of German police. We talked about that a little bit, about the fact that Heinrich Himmler was appointed the chair of of all German police and essentially was able to command them to do whatever he wanted. This is Trump's dream. Obviously, we had that executive order about unleashing the police, you might remember back in February, that talked about how important it was to put more money into policing and to defending police against every possible infraction and every violation and abuse they commit and into making sure that we send military assets essentially to support the police whenever we can. You know, again, these are policy memos, these executive orders, but now we're starting to see how this kind of thing might play out. So the president, as we've discussed before, does usually have pretty limited authority to send National Guard and other troops in. We'll talk about how this has played out in California, but I want to start with DC. Because under the DC Home Rule Act, the president does have more emergency power than he would in a regular American city, which kind of makes sense. It's the seat of government, a lot for him to protect. You would think that if he was going to do this, he might've done it on, I don't know, January 6th, 2021. Might've been a good day to call out the National Guard, but we know that he didn't do that.

0:06:13 Jenessa: Did

0:06:21 Matt: Wasn't it Pelosi?

0:06:22 Jenessa: We ever get to the bottom of that somebody called in the national guard that day to end the riot I thought there was like a whole thing about like the only way anybody else could have done it was like invoking the 26th or something but nobody did do that and then like who did it and

0:06:33 Matt: This is actually really important. I'm glad you brought brought this up. On January 6th, this is very important, Donald Trump did not make the order to bring in the National Guard, but only the US President, the Defense Secretary, and the US Army Secretary, the only people authorized to activate the DC National Guard. So the House Select Committee on January 6 concluded after 18 months that there's no evidence whatsoever that Trump made any effort to make that order. What happened was that the House Sergeant at Arms asked Pelosi for permission to contact the Pentagon so that, you know, obviously the Defense secretary could could do it. And Pelosi approved that request immediately, but Pentagon delayed and National Guard didn't get to the Capitol for four hours. So not only did Trump have nothing to do with it, but it sounds like there was a lot of internal debate about whether they should do it at all.

0:07:12 Jenessa: Right because if he called them in And that would have just been the end of it.

0:07:16 Matt: Yeah. And that would be easy proof. He could prove that, but nobody was able to say that he did. So obviously it's not Pelosi's responsibility, but she signed off immediately on the request that was made by the Sergeant at Arms. She is responsible for security as House Speaker for the security of Congress. So it is relevant. So January 6th, of course, is the kind of thing that you would expect the National Guard needs to exist for in DC. That's the kind of thing, you know, when there's a riot, when it's an insurrection. We talked before about how Nixon actually federalized the post office and had the National guard running the post office briefly during the Vietnam protest, the largest still recorded protest in DC history. I'm very concerned about the possibility of the government shutting down or being shut down by protesters. That is a different situation. Of course, what Trump is doing in this case is talking as he does in the most fascist way possible about crime and crime in DC, So Trump's been talking for a while about how Washington, D .C. is going to hell and how it's, you know, highest crime of any capital in the world or whatever. And J .D. Vance was trotting around these charts that are extremely deceptive, lying with statistics as they like to do. At the end of the day, he was able to issue this special order of the D .K. Home Rule Act. And I'll just read you the relevant provision from Section 140 of the DC Home Rule act. Whenever the president of the United States determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist, which require the use of the Metropolitan Police Force for federal purposes, he may direct the mayor to provide him. And the mayor shall provide such services of the Metropolitan Police Force as the president may deem necessary and appropriate. So this is not to last more than 48 hours unless he goes through a series of steps.

0:08:41 Matt: And he has gone through those, and he's gotten the maximum 30 days that he can get to do this. Now, the attorney general of DC has strictly said that they still are under the mayor's direction. The Metropolitan Police is not directly responding to Donald Trump. He has sent to the National Guard for the purpose of defending federal buildings and personnel, which is the excuse they've used every time they've done this stuff. He issued an executive order on the 11th of August saying that there's special conditions of an emergency nature, which again, we've got D .C. crime, according to DOJ, at least as of January of this year, D.C. crime was at a 30 -year low all around. But according to the executive order, we want to maintain law and order in the nation's seat of government, protect federal buildings, national monuments, and other federal property, ensuring conditions necessary for the orderly functioning of the federal government. And again, there has been nothing in Washington, in D .C. that has interfered with the orderly functioning of the federal government. And I was thinking about this in terms of the Gestapo conversation that we had on Wednesday, because the closest thing that we've had to a Reichstag fire in this dumbass era of ours, do you know what it is?

0:09:41 Jenessa: Well, I'm going to reveal my history ignorance. I have heard the word Reichstag fire. I don't quite know what that is.

0:09:49 Matt: Yeah, the Reichstag Fire was definitely set by the Nazis. It was the burning of the parliament. And, you know, I actually just read another book about the Gestapo recently. I'm a lot of fun at parties these days. But there's extensive evidence that this was definitely planned by the Nazis, carried out, and then blamed on somebody with mental disabilities from the Netherlands who was sort of wandering around the halls.

0:10:09 Matt: But the Reichstag fire was four weeks into the Nazis' rule in the Third Reich, and it was used to pass the Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler to essentially become dictator. It was the end of democracy in Germany within four weeks. I'm not saying we're getting to the Enabling Act yet, but this is a slow march. The constitution of the Weimar Republic had a very unfortunate loophole that essentially allowed the Enabling Act to happen.

0:10:29 Matt: We don't have one quite like that. And as we'll talk about, Posse Comitatus is still the law that we can't really have military deployed as permanent law enforcement. It just can't be done that way. So there's always, when we talk about a Reichstag fire, we're talking about sort of the triggering incident, you know, the catalyst for the end of democratic freedoms. And, you know, 9 -11 certainly was its own kind of Reichstag fired.

0:10:49 Matt: It certainly put us on the path to a lot of what's going on right now, but it was not anything as dramatic. The thing that, and again, I mean, I just don't even know how to talk about this stuff, but I'm sure maybe you've heard about a 19 -year -old employee of the Department of Governmental Efficiency named Big Balls. That's his working nom de guerre.

0:11:08 Matt: Also known as Edward Korostein, but known online as Big Ball. So of course, he is forever going to be immortalized as Big balls. He was carjacked, unfortunately for him in DC by a couple of 15 -year olds. There was a picture of him that went out and sitting there bloody and carjacks. And yeah, poor

0:11:21 Jenessa: Oh, no. All right. Well, that's sad for him.

0:11:24 Matt: Big Balls.

0:11:25 Jenessa: God, pick a better name.

0:11:27 Matt: I will point out that according to the DOJ report I was just citing, carjacking was down 53% as of earlier this year in D.C. You know, still probably too much carj hacking.

0:11:37 Jenessa: Yeah, I mean, one is too many. That's annoying.

0:11:40 Matt: Yeah. The New York Times did some pretty extensive fact checks of the executive order that justified the D .K. orders. But, you know, again, I think we can assume just knowing because it's Trump that this is not really the truth, that's not really based in truth, that it's an excuse to test out what they want to do and to see how we react. That's what all of this is all about. I will just read a couple of quotes here recently. We have to explain that we're going to fight crime. That's a good thing. Trump said Wednesday afternoon, that's today we're recording. Already they're saying he's a dictator. The place is going to hell, DC. We've got to stop it. So instead of saying he is a dictator, they should say we're gonna join him and make Washington safe. That is what we should be saying. Yeah.

0:12:15 Jenessa: We like the public?

0:12:18 Matt: And kind of going back to last Friday's conversation about the homelessness executive order, that is very much his focus about removing the tents and the people living in our parks, redoing the parks. He's bragging about how it's gonna be a relatively small amount of money. That's not really the question here. More concerned about the freedom. And then he made this weird comment about how Lindsey Graham and the Republicans are going to be approving it. I'm not sure what Lindsey Graham has to do with this decision -making process, but, you know, I guess it's just his closest ally in Congress because of, you know, the dirt.

0:12:43 Matt: Yeah. So point is, D .C. is already one of the most heavily policed jurisdictions in the United States. I looked this up because I thought it was true, and it was truth. More cops per capita than any other city as of a few years ago. I couldn't find the latest numbers, but 543 police officers per 100 ,000 residents. That's extremely high. And it was spending about $750 per year per resident on cops, which is more than any other city is at the time that was published. D .C. is doing just fine for cops.

0:12:43 Jenessa: What okay that seems like a lot per person

0:13:12 Matt: It does seem like a lot. This is not a city that's hurting for law enforcement. If any city needs more law enforcement, which I'd argue is generally not necessary. So the National Guard, I think they deployed about 800 troops. And there were pictures of them just kind of wandering up and down the mall, not really doing much because, you know, what are they going to do? You know, it's not that much. Trump also bragged that the officers would be able to do whatever the hell they want. Knock the hell out of them. It's the only language they understand. And the attorney general of DC had to get up and say, no, the constitution does still apply. You can't just do whatever the hell you want. So this is all kind of TBD. This is all developing story.

0:13:41 Matt: But the thing, of course, that is most concerning about all of this is that he's talking about how we did it in LA, we're going to do it in DC, and now we're coming for Baltimore. We're going to come for Oakland, Chicago, whoever else. Good luck in Boston, by the way. Good luck doing this in Boston. See how that goes for you. Wish you the worst possible luck.

0:13:56 Jenessa: It was happening in la and it was happening with ice and it's like now you've got it in dc it's just these videos of cops like just mulling around in a field and it'S like do they think like immigrants and criminals are like pokemon we're gonna pop out of the grass like it that's not how anything works like you're not gonna just like walk around and bump into criminals the whole thing is so stupid it's obviously for the cameras it's not gonna do anything

0:14:23 Matt: Yeah. Oh, no, they're going to come up with cooked up statistics about how by the end of the year, they are going to have the lowest crime in D.C. ever, and it's because of this, right? And he'll be able to show that they've cleaned up the parks and gotten the unhoused out to dot, dot, dots, wherever. As we discussed last week, long -term institutionalization is what they've been promising under the last executive order, so we'll see. This whole thing is, there's no other way to say it, it continues to be a fascist takeover. People have pointed out that, well, he can do this in D。C., but he can't do this in other places, which is true. More in the next section about California, how that's playing out there.

0:15:02 Jenessa: Can I ask you so the first thing you were saying is um the law that relates to this is a federal law right it's nicht like dc made their own law consenting to this it's like congress passed it

0:15:07 Matt: So yes, that was passed by Congress in 1973. And it gave certain powers that were previously up to Congress back to local government and allowed some home rule. But it still reserved these powers for the president to take over. And het does make sense why the president might need to occasionally take over D .C.

0:15:21 Jenessa: Because we're calling back to the times when dc was like literally they didn't have like full -time residents it was just the place where representatives showed up for part of the year to have a congress and then go home so then we pass this law that says hey we actually have to create a city government we have full -time residents now but we're gonna reserve certain powers for the president as if it's not like really an independent city that's basically what's going

0:15:50 Matt: Something like that. It's also in recognition of the fact that it is the seat of the federal government and they do have to have special provisions. It makes sense. I don't like it, but it makes sense. None of this is necessary, obviously, and it's very bad. So we need to compare it to California, but I just want to sort of set that up and say that I generally agree with the idea that yes, legally, for what it's worth, it is nowhere near as easy to take over the... I mean, you can't. You can't just take over The Police in other cities. But I'm not sure how much that's going to matter. And I think that we're going to talk about this in the context of California too. But as you said, the visuals are going to be out there. What he wants is for people to get used to the idea of troops in the streets, and more importantly, to get use to federal federal officers in the streets, which we're already seeing, of course, with ICE, which is working now in collaboration with the FBI, DEA, ATF. Even the IRS, of coarse, has armed agents out there doing their immigration arrests now. So this is all just kind of about normalizing as much as possible federal law enforcement in the states and military in the street, which is something that has never been normalized, just in a normal, everyday, just fighting crime kind of way. The only time that this usually happens is when there's an actual rebellion.

0:15:54 Jenessa: On sure yeah sure yeah right Right.

0:16:52 Matt: We've talked about some of those instances previously, including during the Reconstruction and during civil rights protests in the South, when people were interfering with the desegregation of schools, or certainly during Reconstruction, when the KKK was a terrorist organization that was interfering with voting rights and every other kind of right. This is something we've got to watch. And I do think it's a very dangerous, a very bad precedent. It's exactly the kind of thing that Trump wanted from the beginning to see in American streets. And the fact that he's established this sort of precedent in LA, where he said, well, we have to do it because of the response to immigration enforcement. And now he's doing it in DC based on a complete pretext that it really is not anything. There's just no particular reason that D .C. needs this. And the D .K. government has been pretty clear about that, too. And the mayor of D .S. said this is unsettling and unprecedented. I have to agree with that. So let's take a break and come back and talk about what's going on in California, because this trial is pretty interesting and I think it's pretty encouraging.

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0:19:41 Matt: As we're talking about, generally speaking, the Posse Comitatus Act keeps the federal government from using military troops to enforce domestic law or to do anything to do with them. So basically, if they're going to be called in, if National Guard or other troops are going to be called in. They have to provide support services. They can't be making arrests. They, they can't do anything that looks like law enforcement. And of course, we know in early June that there was serious response from people in LA to what was going on with ICE and to their overreach. And so Trump sent in 4 ,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines. All but 250 of the National Guard are actually out as of the end of July, but a new order went in on August 5th, which is bringing in a new round of people. In June, pretty much right after this happened. Governor Newsom filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief under a few different bases. And the first of them was that essentially this is ultra -various, that what they were doing when they went in amounted to a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. And I don't want to go through everything we've already talked about the Posse Comitatus Act, but basically this whole thing is a huge mess. The Insurrection Act, the Possi Comitatum Act, and then this other statute, 10 U .S .C. 12406. There we go. The Posse Comitatus Act, again, it's a criminal statute, So you actually can be prosecuted for a crime, and it's only been prosecuted twice, actually, against two black army officers who were helping federal marshals arrest outlaws in 1879. They were acquitted in 1881. That's the only time that there's actually been a full -on criminal prosecution under it. But what Newsom is seeking here, which has never been done as far as I know, and it sounds like as far as the judge knows in this case, is he's seeking a declaration that this is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and could be prosecuted. And he wants an injunction saying they've gone too far in the way they've deployed these troops, which is all pretty fair. I'll just read to you from Attorney General Bonta's press release on this, just to kind of end from the complaint. This is all sort of what they're alleging in here, that the use of military personnel clearly ventures into the territory of civilian law enforcement by ordering federalized National Guard soldiers to to participate in law enforcement operations. National Guard members have subjected civilians to the exercise of coercive military power by preventing Californians' freedom of movement, and they're making direct active use of military personnel to execute the law in other ways. So there is three days of trial this week. As we're recording this, the trial is just wrapping here. And it's a bench trial being held in front of Charles Breyer, who's the younger brother of Stephen Breyer in the Supreme Court of Justice. And this is a really interesting trial. I listened to some of it today, open proceedings that you can just get on Zoom, and took some notes at lunch But I also went back and read about some of the rest of the testimony. So Major General Scott Sherman testified in this trial on Monday and kind of conflicting testimony about what he was told this is for and why it was happening. He actually said that his loyalty to the country was questioned by a Trump official when he objected to a request for military assistance for a park operation. You might have seen some of that footage of them just combing, I think it was MacArthur Park for no reason. I think they were doing this at other parks. And also it came out in testimony that there was a platoon that attended an FBI briefing and the soldiers were going to be helping the FBI to block roads to carry out raids to find a suspect in Carson, California, just completely unrelated to any of this. And this is the kind of thing they're talking about is ultra viris, is beyond the authority of what the military is supposed to be doing. I want to talk a little bit about the interplay between 10 U .S .C. 12406 and the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act. So the Insruction Act, as we talked about before, is just sort of a series of statutes. It's not really any one thing. It's been kind of added to over the years.

0:22:57 Matt: And 12405, this is very confusing, but it is essentially drawing from the Insurrection Act's power to allow the president to federalize the National Guard under very specific circumstances. Generally speaking, the National Guards called out at the request of the state governor. That's the scenario I usually think of. But there is this way under this statute where the president can do it. Let me just tell you, the statute is very confusing because it's been amended several times. And this is the problem with all of the Insurrection Act. This isn't exactly in their Insurrection Acts, it's just sort of adjacent to it. But it's ben amended in ways that just don't make a lot of sense. So we'll just read the relevant part. Obviously, we're not talking about actual invasion by a foreign nation. We haven't gotten there yet. Whenever there's a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States. Now, Trump was using that kind of language in his declaration, making it seem like that might might be part of what the justification was. But then also for Section 3, the president is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States. And they were saying that ICE was being interfered with to a degree that they were not going to be able to actually carry out their operations, which is pretty questionable. And the testimony is variable on that. But General Scott Sherman said that he did not get any indication there was actually a rebellion. That was not something they were talking about. And that means that if they're using Section 3 that for these purposes. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors or the states, or in the case of D .C., through the commanding general of the National Guard of D。C. So they are supposed to have Gavin Newsom give the actual order to federalize the Guard and put them under federal control. But of course, Newsom wasn't doing that. He didn't think it was necessary. And he specifically in the complaint was saying this is done without his permission or his consent.

0:24:28 Jenessa: Remember even there was a video of like the police chief of like the LAPD was like, yeah, you know, I didn't really think we needed that. I didn't call him. I wouldn't have called him. I think he kind of like hedged his bets on like, well, you know, we could reassess the situation. But like he was like yeah, no, we got it under control, man. Like this is, it's LA. There's protests all the time we got this yeah

0:24:53 Matt: And I mean, again, that's the LAPD, one of the most abusive and overreaching police forces in the country, saying that we've got this under control. Control. Yeah, they know what to do with a protest. This thing with 12406, though, it's really ambiguous. It's really ambiguos as to the president's authority to use it by itself, because he's not declaring a rebellion. He's not using the Insurrection Act, which is one of the only exceptions to Posse Camitatus. He just using this statute by itself. And the only other time that was done, unfortunately, was by Eisenhower for one of them. I think it was Little Rock, but it was one of those segregation protests. And, the governor in that case refused to federalize because he supported the protesters, obviously. So, Eisenhower went ahead and did it. So there There is precedent for this, and the only other time it's been used, it was done in a way that looks like it's against the way the law is written. But this is the first time. There's a lot of first times happening in this administration, and this isthe first time that there's been a trial like this, that it's gone to a court. And Charles Breyer basically confirmed that in today's hearing, that he was asking both sides, and they seem to agree this is a first time it has happened like this. Breyer is running a pretty tight ship here. It's an interesting trial to listen to, but a couple of things kind of came out in this trial. First of all, the federal government is arguing that California doesn't have standing to question this, which is pretty shocking when you think about that. The state that they're invading, Deputy AG Megan Strong.

0:25:00 Jenessa: They love protests who would

0:26:04 Matt: Right, exactly. That's what she was saying. And that's what Breyer was asking is like, who else is going to do it? The Deputy AG, Megan Strong argued today for the plaintiffs. I thought she did pretty well. And I wrote this down actually, what she said, it lacks basic common sense to assert that a state occupied by a standing army within its borders has no standing to challenge the deployment of troops in the borders. Right. I mean, that's just obvious. Right?

0:26:24 Jenessa: They're harmed by it that's like you know the most basic yeah okay

0:26:27 Matt: But the government kept saying, that Section 10, USC 12406 is a separate question from Posse Comitatus Act violation because it's a separate kind of statute and separate process. He kept saying the Ninth Circuit has already recognized that this was appropriate. They basically recognized enough to overturn Breyer for the purpose of this appeal, right? Breyer's injunction, his 88 -page order was stayed by the Ninth Circuit while they considered this appeal and they allowed the National Guard to remain there.

0:26:53 Jenessa: So he he originally enjoined this and then the ninth said no and now we're having the actual trial about

0:26:56 Matt: Yeah, that was pending the appeal of something else relating to this. It's a little little confusing, but this is a trial on the declaratory and injunctive relief that he was seeking. In the meantime, yes, the 9th did say that they could just go forward.

0:27:12 Jenessa: It okay that was like the emergency emergency tro a temporary restraining order kind of thing yeah okay I got you

0:27:18 Matt: Yeah, I often have trouble with the procedural stuff. It's good to make sure we lay that out. And one of the things that California was also arguing was that this was inflaming more protest to bring in, obviously, bring in federal troops, people that aren't necessary. And there's kind of a devious argument here by Eric Hamilton of the government saying that California can't argue harm if there's more protest because protest is a First Amendment protected activity. So it's not harmful. We love protest in the federal government, obviously.

0:27:44 Jenessa: Now california is not harmed by the fact that people protest they're saying they're being harmed bythe national guard coming in like what did I miss

0:27:52 Matt: Yeah, they're just saying because it's inflaming tensions, basically, that it's inflaming people. It's invoking more trouble, I guess, was all he's trying to say. I don't know.

0:27:55 Jenessa: That the californians are causing the harm

0:28:03 Matt: I did want to note Eric Hamilton. He made some interesting arguments today, but he's actually the former Solicitor General for Nebraska. And I've got some notes on him here. He successfully defended the Let Them Grow Act in Nebraska, which was a 12 -week abortion ban and a gender -affirming care for minors ban in the same act, hitting the culture wars pretty hard there.

0:28:02 Jenessa: Whatever oh I thought it was going to be weed

0:28:22 Matt: This is very funny, though. His first bar complaint dropped a couple of weeks ago. It was filed by a legal accountability organization. It turns out that he lied to a court about whether or not the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which we just talked about on Monday, was actually shut down or not. In his opposition in this CFPB litigation, the defendant's opposition brief contained what the court later characterized as a rosy depiction of events. Hamilton wrote that the defendants were not shutting down the CFPB, they had merely closed the headquarters building and tightened staff supervision, making sure they're focused only on the aspects of the mission that are in fact urgently required by law, which sounds fine if that's what he did. But there's an email from Russ Vought, of course, the head of both OMB and CFPb, as we discussed on Monday. And Russ Vught stated specifically, the Bureau's DC headquarters building is closed this week. Employees should not come into the office. Please do not perform any work tasks. So that was the actual in writing order. And Eric Hamilton did not exactly tell the truth.

0:29:12 Jenessa: They tell these lies that are just so independently verifiably false I get it when they do it to the media because they're just hoping no one will notice but what that doesn't apply to a courtroom have they not figured that

0:29:26 Matt: It could just be because they're just just not being told anything. And maybe he wasn't aware of this email. Maybe that was what he was told to say, but still worth a bar complaint because he did lie to a court. Another interesting wrinkle in this argument today from the government, I thought, was, and I shouldn't say interesting because it's awful, but they're using CASA, the birthright citizenship injunction case, to argue that equitable remedies, which is what they're seeking here, obviously, it's just injunction and declaratory judgment are classic equitable remedies. They're saying that they have to have some equivalent to common law chancery courts. And Breyer stops them immediately. I What is the likelihood in 1700s England that there'd be a remedy to restrain the king? Like, how much could you think you could actually do that? Because I'm not going to hear an argument that if you couldn't restrain the king, you shouldn't restraine the president. He said that pretty directly. He said, by the way, we've had a revolution and we've got a constitution. I just don't think 1776 is the way to go. He lost me on that one. I thought Breyer was doing great in this. It was really interesting back and forth because it's a bench trial. You know, they're mostly just arguing about the law and all of this. The facts are pretty much in evidence.

0:29:31 Jenessa: Out still yeah you sent me the link earlier today why was it being streamed I thought federal is it the federal courts they do or don't usually

0:30:29 Matt: They can. They can stream audio by, and this judge likes to do that, and they have links for for each one of the judges. And in important cases, they often will, but it's completely up to the courts. No, that's really hard to get.

0:30:41 Jenessa: I wonder if the recording is out there just live stream

0:30:42 Matt: They say it over and over again when you log into these things, you can't use any of it. So I had to take a lot of notes. But Breyer did agree with the government that the president has to be immune because this is a criminal statute. So obviously, we all know the president can't do crimes. That's just not an option anymore. But the Department of Justice and the Department Defense could still be prosecuted and people could still Be held accountable for this. So that's kind of where we're going with this. The California government did point out that obviously, this decree to a judgment would would require the government to prosecute itself. And we all understand that's not really going to happen. But, you know, again, it would be good because as a matter of precedent, if the president wants to continue to send American troops into American cities, it'd be good to start getting some court orders saying you can't do that. And if you do that, then here are the strict limits you have to be under. And that's what they're really looking for. So this is one to watch. There's a lot that happened in this. We have to move on to other topics, but this is really important.

0:30:46 Jenessa: Dang all right yeah

0:31:27 Matt: And I want to make sure we talked about it.

0:31:28 Jenessa: Well and I think that makes a lot of sense too that if we have the ultimate finding that yeah this is obviously an overreach of how that is supposed to work and you can't just do this in other places not that we like what's going on in dc but if it can stay restricted to dc that's a win for

0:31:48 Matt: Yeah. The whole point of this is obviously Trump knows there'll never be consequences for him personally. But if we can put a lot of the lower people at at risk of prosecution and make them think twice about what they might be getting themselves into. There's some hope. I hope. I have to believe that. No matter the pardon power or anything else. But I guess I'll just close this segment by saying, as of the day we're recording, Trump has just announced that he's going to be looking for a long -term extension because the Home Rule Act only lasts 30 days at a time. So he has to ask Congress for more. He's going be asking Congress. I'm sure he'll get it. One concerning comment from this, though. He said, we're going to need a crime bill that we're going to put in, and it's going to pertain initially to D .C. Don't like that language.

0:32:01 Jenessa: Absolutely yeah me too there's no way it's going to be a reconciliation thing so it's going to have to be regular bill that requires 60 votes in the senate and so this will hopefully not happen this should be fine

0:32:33 Matt: Then they're going to say Democrats are standing in the way of law and order. This is something to fight.

0:32:38 Jenessa: That's always been their campaign slogan so um

0:32:42 Matt: As we'll talk about at the end here, there are still lots of ways the federal government is already federalizing American policing. But I'm assuming this crime bill would be looking for more of that. The phrase Trump crime bill, it should inspire some real terror. That's a really bad idea, no matter what's in it. Not at all. But you know, I really did appreciate what Judge Breyer is doing.

0:33:00 Matt: I'm feeling good about, he actually said specifically that Pete Hegseth's specific comments about DC and about how we're going flood the streets and how he's rejoicing about this, that he said already, he kind of showed his hand, he said he's going to tip it to the state because he thinks they're clearly stating an intent to overreach all around the country. Keep a watch on that. But let's talk about voting rights. So this is very much your jurisdiction. I followed this a little bit, but there's a couple of big cases going up to the Supreme Court where I've been seeing headlines saying that these are going to destroy what's left of the Voting Rights Act. Is that hyperbole?

0:32:56 Jenessa: Not great yeah it could be really really bad when you asked me about this um when we were prepping it we had a little bit of confusion going back and forth and I realized the problem was when we said that case about the voting rights act that's going up the real question is which one um there's multiple going up right now one big one that's in the news is, I'm going to hope I pronounce this right, Louisiana v. Calais. This one is getting a lot of attention because it could make it damn near impossible to prevent racial gerrymandering. We've already had the Rucho case that said, you can do partisan gerryandering, go right ahead. And that has obviously like ruined our politics. Racial gerryhandering, you still can't do that. Now, the problem is because voting is so racially polarized, it's already become extremely difficult to prove. No, no, no. They didn't gerrymander on the basis of voting trends of Democrat versus Republican. They did it based on race. It was still theoretically possible. It's just very, very difficult. And the line of how to do that has been getting narrower and narrower. Yada, yada.

0:33:46 Matt: Before we go on, I just want to make sure for context, I'll do the usual Thomas role here and ask, well, what is the existing law? I mean, mean, the point of the Voting Rights Act was to prevent racial discrimination in voting, right? And this seems like racial gerrymandering is pretty much the kind of racial discrimination in voting you can do short of stopping people from voting.

0:34:59 Matt: What are the protections in place right now?

0:34:58 Jenessa: It yeah yeah you'd think it is a very broad act it provides protections to everybody for all kinds of things but obviously it came out of uh the civil rights era it is very much focused on racial discrimination and racial gerrymandering is absolutely something they had in mind when they wrote it initially the thought process was uh and and we know this from the evidence people were drawing these districts that would um people probably heard the phrase like packing and cracking like pack as many people into one district as possible so that way they only get one or crack which is like draw districts that separate little parts of a city into different districts it's just been a problem since day one because how do you define that the map was drawn in a way that had race in mind of course our court and our whole society likes to say that like racism is only explicit racism so like you basically at this point need to find somebody wearing a klan hood with like a picture of like I did this on purpose because I am racist like it's so hard to show that there's obvious implicit bias here um at one point like sociologists and and political scientists have tried to create models that can show you like what are the odds you would draw this map if you weren't

0:36:24 Jenessa: Trying to discriminate on the basis of race um and I forget which justice it was who called it sociological gobbledygook and I was like no it's math it's it's science it's god damn it it's peer -reviewed there's

0:36:38 Matt: It's not that hard to understand.

0:36:41 Jenessa: A really great 538 piece on this that just said the supreme court is allergic to math um they just don't want

0:36:47 Matt: That's the most relatable thing I know about the Supreme Court. Me too. But I just want to ask though, because I remember just, and I'm not a voting rights expert, but just I remember in 2013 in Shelby County that John John Roberts basically said that we don't need Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because racism is dead, essentially, right? He said that racial discrimination is mostly over.

0:37:07 Matt: So Section 5 is the one that there was like a monitoring provision that required, that had certain states under supervision of DOJ to keep them in line, right, right.

0:37:07 Jenessa: It yeah yeah yeah there there were all kinds of like pre -clearance requirements so especially in places and this is how he got around it like especially in cases where there was a long history of racial discrimination if you were going to modify your uh voting rights laws you had to just run it by the doj first and they were shooting down laws to be like I see what you did there um and then And eventually, when you know you're going to get stopped, you just stop trying. Roberts was just like, we're, you know, we had a Black president, post -racial America. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it.

0:37:51 Jenessa: And the absolute second they said, that's illegal. You can't make some places get preclearance and not others. Instantly, the hotbed of racial discrimination for voting started passing. A whole bunch of voting rights restrictions that targeted racial minorities like this surprising no one except roberts apparently but we don't go back and correct it once the evidence goes against what he said yeah

0:38:22 Matt: Didn't know it was that quick. But of course, that's exactly what you expect would happen. This was the dissent. I just had to look it up again because I just remembered this. This is the dissent where Ginsburg said that throwing out preclearance was like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you're not getting wet. And I thought that's a great analogy, right?

0:38:36 Jenessa: Beautiful it's exactly right and that's exactly what happened we were instantly wet they're just just rain of racial bullshit that's the backdrop drop louisiana draws up a bunch of districts that are obviously racially gerrymandered if you have eyes and a brain and somebody sues and says hey um we clearly look at the population look at this look at that there should clearly be at least this many black majority districts look what they did you get a supreme court decision that says yep you gotta redraw it and then you get this lawsuit suit that says on behalf of white voters actually it's racist to have race in mind when you draw these to try to make sure that you draw at least some black majority districts if you're even thinking about race you're racist it's like it's very much the harvard students for fair admissions case of like trying to not discriminate is discriminating like ever thinking about the fact that we were ever racist is racist so this one is a huge problem because it will mean this voting rights act protection that says it is okay to go through and purposely draw districts to avoid racial discrimination because we know implicitly implicit bias you're going to do that you're allowed to explicitly try to overcome that no you are not allowed to even think about race and so you don't have to redraw it's like it's it's going to be clarence thomas's favorite argument on planet earth

0:40:18 Jenessa: I don't know how it's gonna go but it's concerning briefly we've got two other ones that I actually think could be even worse because they could just take away your right to sue over any of this altogether.

0:40:30 Matt: Well, before we move on, though, I just want to ask, so Shelby County was Section 5. I just wanted to make sure I understand because my basic knowledge of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 is the one we're talking about with any kind of race -based restrictions on voting, right? So this is the typical kind of, you know, this is white racism or anti -white racism, right? Just saying any consideration of race is inherently racist, despite the obvious purpose of the Voting Rights Act and despite the commonly understood definition of racism as including power along with prejudice or discrimination.

0:41:01 Jenessa: Yeah, pretty much.

0:41:02 Matt: They're trying to kill section two and essentially say it's meaningless too, along with section five.

0:41:06 Jenessa: Yeah. So that decision could make Section 2 extremely difficult to enforce, even harder than it was. That's a portion of Section 2 is about racial gerrymandering. These cases would literally say there is no private right of action for Section 2. Only the DOJ can enforce it.

0:41:26 Matt: Which cases?

0:41:27 Jenessa: Arkansas United v. Thurston Houston and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe. These two cases both are making their way up. One of them, the exact facts of it aren't going to end up mattering because they're going to just say throw the whole thing out, but one of them was people with disabilities who you don't have to get assistance necessarily with voting because we do have in the Help America Vote Act a requirement that there be accessible voting machines with all kinds of accessible technology features. But if you choose to have another person assist you instead, you do have a right to that. And that can be for people with print disabilities. So if you're blind, if you cannot read, if you don't have hands to hand mark a paper ballot, that kind of thing. Those individuals felt that this law in Arkansas was getting in their way of trying to get assistance properly. And they were suing over it. The Turtle Mountain case, a Native American group was saying that it was a racial gerrymandering issue that tried to disenfranchise them as Native Americans. And in both cases, we have the circuits. It's a weird combination of like the trial courts saying this. And then I think in one, the circuit upheld it in one the circuit reversed it. So we've We've got a circuit split, so it's going to have to go up there, saying that actually, Section 2, you don't have a private right of action. Private people can't just sue to say my rights were infringed. The DOJ has to enforce this.

0:43:09 Jenessa: I don't know what they're thinking about the, like, last 60 years of private lawsuits that have happened under Section 2. Like, what is that? Did we just throw that in the garbage, I guess?

0:43:09 Matt: Well, and the entire history of civil rights and voting rights shows us that you can't rely on the DOJ to do this for for you.

0:43:28 Jenessa: Yeah. This administration?

0:43:30 Matt: It really depends on who's in power. You have to be prepared to do yourself.

0:43:33 Jenessa: Exactly. 90 % of Section 2 enforcement has come from private litigation.

0:43:38 Matt: Of course, you have to have a pretty motivated administration that really cares about voting rights. And we haven't had that many of those.

0:43:43 Jenessa: Yeah. I can tell you, as somebody who has sent stuff to the DOJ being like, hey, by the way, I feel like we got an ongoing violation, they're not the most responsive people. They're a little busy. At the best of times, they're a little busy.

0:43:56 Matt: Well, now they're busy finding anti -white racism. So that's a full -time job. Yeah. Right.

0:44:00 Jenessa: Apparently this is the focus now so keep an eye on those cases I don't know that I have much in the way of advocacy for people to think about but at some point we definitely need to talk about the redistricting stuff that's going on you know the texas thing I don'T have a ton to say about it the reporting has actually been very good on this I think and mostly what people need to know is yeah the fed cannot force them to come back but the state has tools to do so they are fining them for not being it is their job. Like they do have the Texas legislatures. They do have to come back at some point.

0:44:35 Matt: This seems to happen more than it should, that Democrats feel like they have to leave the state so they don't have to do something that is going to violate the law. And just to remind everybody, of course, this is the Texas legislature that is being called upon by Trump to create five more congressional seats, right? Isn't that the, to try to tip Congress permanently?

0:44:52 Jenessa: Yeah, what's really weird here, you redistrict every 10 years after the census. Like what are they even doing? There's a whole back and forth about like Texas is doing it. So now California, New York, you're going to do it. I'm going to tell you right now, New York is not going to it. It would require a constitutional amendment. We have had judicial decisions that have made it extremely clear what our New York state constitution says about how to do redistricting. Somebody started proposing this and a state senator said, I can't believe we're talking about redistricting because we've just had like three years of trauma litigating our districts over here. I would be shocked if it happens over here, I'm not sure. I can get into more detail on it some other time if it starts coming up. The brief version is the the fbi will not be arresting them but it's not gonna last much longer a quorum is required and people are required to do their job like they're gonna find a way around this at some point

0:45:48 Matt: It does seem like the only way to respond is the Democrats are going to have to start playing dirty too. I mean, that's, and they always are so likely to do that, but they're going to having to find other ways to redistrict. I saw a wonderful proposal that I want to talk about at some point from Harvard Law Review that I'd missed in 2020 to essentially create something like 137 new districts in DC alone, just to completely mess with everything. I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but yeah, Yeah, just at this point, because they're just making the point that the system is so messed up anyway. But anyway, so the reason we're talking about just before we move on, though, about this voting rights case, Calais, the big one, is that the Supreme Court just showed their hand because they had already argued this.

0:46:07 Jenessa: Sure why not whatever yeah

0:46:26 Matt: And this happens sometimes from time to time. This happened actually with Brown v. Board, that they heard arguments and they thought about it for a little while. And they're like, no, wait, there's more we want to know about. Because the original oral argument was in March. And then they just issued this order a couple of weeks ago, directing the party to file supplemental briefs. And the supplemental briefs have to address the question of whether the state's intentional creation of a second majority -minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th amendments to the U .S. Constitution. I think that signals that they certainly want to strike down Section 2 and they might have a quorum for it. We will see. But that's why we're talking about it and that's we

0:46:25 Jenessa: What the hell was that yeah yeah yeah you can't

0:46:58 Matt: Want to keep a watch on that one and we'll certainly watch the other arguments in the fall. But we're going to move on. I've got some good news footnote in the face of all of this, so let's come back and talk about that.

0:47:09 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:47:09 Matt: This footnote is a little more personal. As everyone I think listening knows, I'm an immigration attorney. I have been for about 19 years working to stop deportations in federal immigration courts. And I've been thinking a lot about ICE for a very long time. And when I first got a sense of who these people were in 2006, and I, of course, this was under the Bush administration when they were doing a lot of the same kind of dirty tricks they're doing now, but they didn't have anywhere near the resources or integration or public support that they have now. They also weren't getting much attention. It just wasn't that much happening in public. But now we're in this moment, a very critical moment, because the thing that I unfortunately am required by law to call the big beautiful bill, which was signed by Trump on July 4th, is about to create, yeah, no, I don't know.

0:47:50 Matt: I'm just going to call it the July 4 funding bill. The budget bill is going to give ICE just absolutely unprecedented amounts of money for immigration enforcement. Now, we already in this country are doing immigration enforcement in a way that costs more than all other federal law enforcement combined. And it's been that way for a while. We are going to be spending more on ICE than most countries spend on their military.

0:47:47 Jenessa: Make me no

0:48:12 Matt: That's where this is going. Yep, we're going to give them, I think in some estimations, more than the Marine Corps. We're going to be giving them just so much money. A new $29 .8 billion to personnel alone, $45 billion to detention. The chart on this, I can't get it off my brain. It's burned into my brain with the orange lines that quadruple from now until 2028. By the time of the next presidential election year, ICE will be four four times larger. That's the plan. And they're going to go from 6 ,000 enforcement officers to 16 ,000, which just coincidentally, just to follow up on Wednesday, 16, 000 was about the size of the Gestapo at their height. Obviously, proportionally very different in Nazi Germany, about 94 million people versus what we have. But I just wanted to notice that. Just one more weird little coincidence. But yeah, this is a crisis in the making. I'm just setting this up so everybody understands why I'm about to suggest what I'm going to suggest, because I'm I'm going to suggest something that is really pretty extreme. Now, again, this program, we do not condone violence or threats or doing anything against ICE that would be illegal. I mean that. I really mean that I've been living my life in a nonviolent way, and I'm not about to start changing that now. But what I'm gonna suggest to you is not that difficult. It's something we can all do. For most people, it won't be that difficult, there might be some exceptions. And it's something that can actually start to make a difference right now before this disaster begins. Because right now, as I'm sure you've seen, they're on a massive hiring kick. They are trying to get as many people in as they can. We talked about this before about how they're going to remove the maximum age of 40 for enforcement officers and age limits are just completely out. They're saying they're receiving 100 ,000 applications. They're talking about signing bonuses of 50 ,000, about student loan assistance, I think student loan forgiveness, tuition reimbursement. I mean, massive new financial incentives to get people in to do some of the worst jobs that you can do in law enforcement. And again, ICE is not particularly respected by actual law enforcement, regular cops make make fun of them all the time for good reason, because they're enforcing civil immigration law. They're not real criminal cops. So I'm going to say some things that are going to get me put in a camp here. You can just nod along if you want, but

0:48:11 Jenessa: Geez solid now I'll come hang out with you

0:50:10 Matt: I'm already on record as saying most of this. Yeah, that's right. Now, maybe we'll end up in the same one. We're not that far apart.

0:50:16 Jenessa: We can go to the rfk work camps where they'll take her out or all

0:50:21 Matt: Oh, that's true. Yeah, maybe I'll just end up there anyway, but even apart from all of this, but I'm gonna propose something that my good friend Megan Coleman was on the show last year. She's a state senator in Rhode Island. Megan's book, The Conceivable Future, which is a really good good book to read, especially if you're interested in family planning in a time of climate change. But she talks about a lot of different organizational and activist things that I think people should consider. And she has an entire chapter on the big yes and the big no, and talking about collective action in the face of things that we can't accept and things that we want to change and want to see do better. Talking about the idea of not just opposing this power substation in your neighborhood, but the ideaof all coal power, and just taking on the entire system in ways that I think are very effective. And I found that chapter to be be especially inspiring. Megan herself is a very inspiring person. We had Megan on last year on 081059, and a great episode, well worth a listen. I always love talking to her. But I've been thinking a lot about, because we're not going to get political change. We've just passed this massive budget bill. We are, you know, on the back foot right now politically. We're not gonna be taking over Congress. The best we can do is hold this off. We aren't going to have a violent revolution against ICE, no matter how much the online keyboard leftists want to tell us that we can rise up violently against ICE. Not going to happen, should not happen. This money is going going to guarantee they're going to be better armed than you are. And I'm going to get yelled at by online leftists for even suggesting that we should not be engaging in violent revolution. But even if I thought we should, I wouldn't be talking about it on my podcast. So the thing that we can do, that I know we can is what I'm calling the big freeze, that we can make sure that we completely lock immigration and customs enforcement and CBP officers out

0:50:23 Jenessa: Away yeah there you go jesus

0:51:51 Matt: Of public life, that we can lock them out of decent society. And we'll talk about a few ways that we can do that. This needs to be a cultural movement right now. And And I have to say, I'm not really a South Park fan, but Matt Parker and Trey Stone got started already from the clips I've seen of South Park in the last couple episodes and going after ICE and showing who they really are. And I appreciate that because that's a broad cultural reach. They have a lot of influence. And that's just the kind of thing I want to be seeing right now. But full, I am talking social, financial, political. We are talking about anybody who has ever worked for ICE should never get another job, and that should be understood. Anybody who has ever work for ICE shall not be invited to your neighborhood barbecue. You shouldn't be swiping right on them on Tinder.

0:52:28 Matt: Oh, no, absolutely. Take no hostages here. Metaphorically take no hostages and you have the absolute right to refuse service to people who work for immigration customs enforcement you don't want them in your bar you can kick them out you can say our employees don't feel comfortable having ice officers hanging out in this bar right why would they have given you know my clients certainly quite a few of them do work in these places you know bars and restaurants you don'T have to hire them I mean this is the kind of discrimination that more respectable people like sex workers or unlicensed cannabis dealers have been experiencing for many years right that they can't ever find respectable jobs again, there's no reason at all that ICE should not be treated the same way. Big freeze. Teach your kids. Tell them what ICE does and what they're doing to their friends' parents and their families. And don't give them a platform. Don't engage with them. Don'T have them on your show to debate with them, just freeze them out. No reason to retweet or quote tweet them. You can talk about what they are saying, but don't get them a plan for them. Everybody already knows that Stephen Miller and Tom Homan are terrible. At this point, I think we can just stop playing clips of them. And we have for a while. We haven't really been playing clips. We talk about them occasionally. And I really don't think that these people should be allowed back in. You might I remember Kirsten Nielsen, who was DHS secretary, who KirstEN Nielson was one of the architects of the family separation policy. And I think everybody involved in family separation should be facing criminal charges right now while we still can. Of course, that's not going to happen. But she ended up getting board seats and speaking tours and engagements and lots of other people involved in these things without any kind of redemption or repentance, right? They just got to go out in public and be regular public people with good jobs. They shouldn't get to do that. She shouldn't get to manage a Starbucks. I mean, this is not somebody who should ever have any kind of authority again. And you don't just get to leave the job behind. If you're going to get out in public, if you're gonna have any kinda public life again, if wanna go teach at a university, if you wanna have Facebook friends again, you should have to issue a complete statement of repentance. And then you should explain in detail about what you did and why you regret it. And I'm not gonna apologize for any of this. This is what I believe. And I think at this point, I'm now proposing this, by the way, for everybody who's ever worked for DHS, because people like Like TSA and the Coast Guard, like they're doing like good working class jobs, good opportunities, good benefits. You know, nobody loves the TSA, but, you know, we got to, they're a job that exists and they're not doing the same kind of

0:52:29 Jenessa: Come on I'm sure they don't this yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:37 Matt: Awful stuff that I saw in the CBP are doing, right? I'm not talking about, I'm talking about very narrowly targeted. I know there are plenty of leftists who'd like to expand this to all cops, but I'm just talking about right now in this emergency moment when we have to keep people from filling these jobs because they are trying desperately and they are having trouble doing it. They're claiming they're getting all kinds of applications. Communications. But if it becomes known that the only people who work for ICE are the worst people you know, are the most racist and bigoted and horrible prejudice people that you know are just complete assholes who are terrible in bed, if we can get these kinds of things going and make sure that everybody understands that this is who ICE is, then we have a better chance of winning.

0:55:09 Matt: And it's going to take an actual cultural movement, an actual social change. And that's the kind of thing I believe we can do. I have very little faith in institutional politics. I do still have some faith in our federal courts for reasons we've been talking about. But, you know know, I, this is my plan. I'm going to write it up and I'm going to post it. I think by the time this episode airs, it'll be available online on my sub stack, but start thinking about it this way as the big freeze and start talking to people about the fact that this might require obviously people to consider their personal relationships, consider family relationships. This isn't any kind of hardship on me, but there might be, you know, maybe there might быть people close to you that you have to think about.

0:55:45 Matt: So I was originally thinking of calling this the Isis strata after the Lysa strata, but that's a little too specific and also very sex specific. So, you Know, I think it goes without saying that don't have sex with ICE officers, but given that most of them are men, that's going to put the burden on women for the most part. So yeah, about 13 % of ICE are women. So, yeah, that is where I am coming from.

0:55:57 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't think we're feeling terribly burdened by this request. Yeah.

0:56:07 Jenessa: Oh, God. You know, yeah, I am 100 percent down for the repentance. Like, I know people who have changed their mind on a lot of issues, including Trump, and I respect the hell out of that. But if somebody's teetering the other way, like, oh, this signing bonus is tempting me, man, we better make that the least tempting offer you've ever seen in your life.

0:56:30 Jenessa: And this does not require effort on my part. I already feel this way. You're not coming in my house if you're deporting people. No, no, absolutely not.

0:56:39 Matt: Yeah. Sure. And imagine if you know that your grandkids will never talk to you again, right? If it is that kind of level of social discrimination that you will be facing. There are so many other more respectable jobs. I do understand people need to work. And I really, I understand. I am coming at this from a position of enormous privilege, village, as are you. We're doing pretty well employed. I'm not making enormous amounts of money. I am still an immigration lawyer, but this shows the only way I can have a retirement. But I really believe that there are other jobs and other ways to go and that you'll feel a lot better about yourself and that your family and community will respect much more than breaking in the windows of innocent people and dragging them out of their cars and sending them to concentration camps.

0:57:15 Jenessa: There's a line somewhere. This job is new. This is not the same as your existing job got worse and you're trying to decide what to do. Changing careers into that job? Come on. No, thank you.

0:57:28 Matt: I will also say this has to apply to Palantir and all the people that are working for DHS to expand their surveillance operations because those are massive. So I guess I'll just just want to make sure I include that too. Maybe the tech bros you know that might be tempted by that Palantir paycheck.

0:57:34 Jenessa: Oh, they're all on thin ice.

0:57:42 Matt: Palantirs, yeah, they're doing nothing good for anybody at Palantire. So give them the same treatment. But yeah, the big freeze. Let's make it happen, everybody. All right. Well, that's our show. That's what's going on in American fascism today and what you can actually do about it. We'll be back on Monday. We're going to be talking about a little known Supreme Court case that I thought was really interesting. It's, I think, one of the probably least known gay rights cases in Supreme Court history from 1958. Otherwise, we'll be be back next Friday to cover more law in the news and on Wednesday to respond to some of the worst takes that we can find out there. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you soon.

0:58:48 Matt: This is always a problem with recording in downtown Boston at this time of day. I mean, who wants to put up with Boston traffic when you can just turn on your sirens, you know? It's a pretty good deal. It's interesting to think what the Supreme Court might do with it. Well, scratch that. It is not interesting. We'll see what the Supreme Court might do with all of this.

0:59:03 Jenessa: Thought it was going to be weed.

0:59:11 Matt: Poor big balls.