Republicans Are Messing with Texas

Transcript

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

0:00:01 Matt: Vladimir Putin told him that he had won the 2020 election and there would have been no way that he could have possibly lost if it weren't rigged because you have mail-in voting.

0:00:18 Jenessa: There is always the risk that you redraw this hoping for the optimal result, and it is not the optimal result.

0:00:32 Matt: All right, August 22nd, Rapid Response Friday. Jenessa Seymour, what's up?

0:00:35 Jenessa: I'm doing good. It is a cold rainy day and I have some hot tea, so I am pretending things are great and enjoying the inside of my apartment.

0:00:46 Matt: No, we're having one of those too. I was wearing an overcoat. I just keep forgetting that we're in the same time zone. I'm used to recording to somebody who lives in the past, but here we are together in the present. Just hanging out and talking about incipient fascism once again, but I have to say we're going to start off with some good news on the DC front. You know, they were actually able to scale them back a bit. It's small good news, but we'll take what we can get.

0:01:07 Matt: But then we got to talk about this thing in Texas I've been trying to follow it, but it's more your lane here with the voting stuff. So we'll talk about the redistricting and what's going on with this nutty quorum thing and why a state representative is locked inside the statehouse and filing a habeas petition from inside the building. That's a new one for me. Then I want to talk a couple of USCIS policy changes that I don't think are going to make a lot of news, that are potentially really important and very scary. And again, just the duration of this presidency, no matter how long it may last, we have some pretty scary new policies that are going to give USCIS a lot more discretion over who can become a resident and a citizen. It's the kind of thing that would really slip through, I think, and that probably will slip through for the most part. But it's a massive shift in policy, and I want to be sure we talk about it so people can understand all the different ways that the executive branch can mess with the immigration system that just have nothing to do with Congress. So we'll talk about that. And then we'll get on to a fun footnote, a classic footnote here about Columbia v. Columbia.

0:02:03 Jenessa: Mom and dad are fighting ah

0:02:06 Matt: Really weird dispute that's happening between two entities that happen to share the name Columbia. One of them is the one you think it is. So we will talk about it. But I got to say, I don't understand this lawsuit. Not a civil lawyer. I mean, I understand the suit, but I don' t understand why it's being brought.

0:02:21 Matt: I'm capable of reading a complaint, folks. Folks. But yeah, so we will get through all that and see what we can see about what's going on this week in the news, explaining what we canned out of this crazy time that is a little hard to explain sometimes, but we're doing our best here. So let's get on with it. We'll take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about what is going on in Texas

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0:04:24 Matt: All right, Jenessa, what's coming on in Texas?

0:04:26 Jenessa: Boy people have probably seen in the news little bits and pieces of this so I'm hoping what I can mainly do today is put it all together in like one storyline you've probably seen that texas legislators um state level not the federal level many of the democrats have fled the state to try to prevent a redistricting effort so what is that and why just as a brief reminder because I will um never let it go I'm salty forever about rucho v common cause is uh the lawsuit that made this all possible when the supreme court said yeah partisan gerrymandering they didn't say it's constitutional they said it's non -justiciable like we're just oh this is a political question we can't say.

0:05:11 Matt: Not going to touch it. Sure. If you just want to illegally redraw your maps anytime you you want to?

0:05:18 Jenessa: Go ahead, do it, whatever. So you can't, as of right now, you cannot racially gerrymander, but you can politically gerrymandering, which of course means you can racially gerrymanter because the political situation is like people vote along racial and political lines. So how do we know people are gerrymandering? The math that they attempted to use to prove that this is a real thing. The standard you cannot use is proportionality. Everybody seems to be in agreement. Whatever rule we ever manage to come up with, it's not going to be, well, the state is 70 -30 Republicans and Democrats, so 30 % of the representatives in the House for that state have to be Democrats.

0:06:07 Jenessa: That's not gonna be the rule. Why? Your state state of Massachusetts is actually the perfect example of this. So Massachusetts breaks out about 70 -30 Democrats and Republicans.

0:06:19 Matt: Hell yeah.

0:06:19 Jenessa: They have not elected a Republican to the House of Representatives in like, I think it's like a hundred years or something.

0:06:27 Matt: Go Massachusetts.

0:06:29 Jenessa: Not because of gerrymandering.

0:06:31 Matt: Right. Just because we don't like them.

0:06:32 Jenessa: Yeah, pretty much. You can't draw a map with a single Republican district anywhere in Massachusetts Massachusetts that follows the rules. You have to have the right number of people. It has to be proportional, you know, the same number of People in each district, you have to like follow the basics of geography. So for example, you can't have a district where it's not contiguous, like the like two pieces that don't even touch each other, the leaps and bounds you would have to go through, you would essentially end up having to break a rule. Eventually, the Republicans in Massachusetts are just too evenly distributed throughout the state. There's no district you could draw where they would cross 50%. They're just 30 % of the state everywhere in the state well

0:07:22 Matt: I will say, fortunately, for Republicans in Massachusetts, we've got a whole bunch of Democrats who should just be Republicans. So I think you have the same problem in New York. Sure?

0:07:29 Jenessa: And if you think about it that way like yeah there's more conservative areas and there's more conservative Democrats but there's no area that's like Texas right so it is entirely possible to look at a state that is like 70 30 the other way and has not a single blue district and be like yeah that's not because of gerrymandering it's because the democrats are not clustered properly but that tends not to happen because democrats do cluster in cities so we could have done this we had an opportunity we had people there and john roberts called it sociological gobbledygook and gorsuch said it was like making a recipe and somehow he like literally said it it was like, oh, it's all these like putting spices in a recipe. And I was like this is the whitest thing on earth. You don't want spices in your meal. I don't know what's happening. It's chaos. So now we're allowed to do this. So what happened is totally predictable. What's really strange here though, normally every 10 years we do a census and then we redistrict everybody because we go, oh my god, there's more people in this state. There's less people in this state we're gonna figure out how many districts there are what's super weird here the formula is not just like well this state has this many people so they get this many representatives like northern states get less because this was biased in favor of the south when we were making all of this up

0:08:54 Jenessa: Southern states have to have fewer people to get the same number of reps the formula's not the same for every state so it's like extra already biased in the the house it's not just the senate that has this same bias built into it's really annoying everything is trying to preserve slavery whatever okay you do every 10 years you do your census you get a new assigned number of districts and then your state draws up your district map well texas just decided in the middle of the decade ah screw it we're just gonna do it again it turns out that's not technically illegal like federally?

0:09:07 Matt: Hmm? Just a tradition? Prohibition 10 years? Custom?

0:09:33 Jenessa: Pretty much. I think I'm pretty sure in New York it's the law that we don't do that. Like it's not that it says you can't it's that it says you do it every 10 years which would imply that you don't do it ever five years. Apparently in Texas this is technically allowed. I was hearing all this this is Trump's redistricting and I thought that was just like political branding of like tie everything shitty to Trump which is probably not the worst campaign campaign strategy it turns out it really does seem like they were not going to do this abbott and the texas republican legislature were like I don't know and then trump put a lot of pressure on and abbott called a special session and they are trying to get this done god

0:10:17 Matt: I saw the reason why was actually because DOJ sent Texas a letter warning them about the thing we were talking about with the Voting Rights Act, that there are four majority -minority congressional districts that are unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. So they're getting ahead of that Supreme Court case that we were just talking about. It was last week, we were juste talking about the VRA.

0:10:33 Matt: So DOJ, this is a great example of how you can use the executive branch to do fascism in the states, right? They send this letter out, giving Texas the perfect excuse based on a theory of something that's about to change in a Supreme Court case that hasn't really changed yet about this majority -minority districts thing. That's when he called for the special session. But then I saw that one of the leading state Republicans was very clear that they didn't care about racial gerrymandering. It said, these districts were drawn primarily using political performance, citing Republican gains made across the state since the legislature last redistricted in 2021, especially among Latino voters. That's from the Texas Tribune a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, they're just openly saying this is political and we're going to make it political. And of course, with those five extra extra house seats, they guaranteed, you know, red place. Area, that is.

0:11:11 Jenessa: It's interesting with that commentary too because I saw some people saying like hey uh you want to know why I think we shouldn't do it because we already drew this this already is politically cherrymandered and seeing the way you know part of why everybody wants to redraw these maps is they see where this midterms is looking and it's not looking good but on the other hand yeah it's Not Looking Good and you already drew yourself a pretty damn good map and like there is always the risk that you redraw this hoping for the optimal result and it is not not the optimal result. Like you could accidentally put a Democrat legislator who has won an election before who's popular into your district and get yourself voted out. Like nothing is a foregone conclusion.

0:12:02 Matt: Interesting. Sure.

0:12:07 Jenessa: Get out there and vote, people. This is all going down. They're calling a special session. They are going to try to redistrict. It is blatantly obvious. They aren't hiding it. It's partisan gerrymandering, but it's not illegal, so they don't have to hide it, right? Right? There's a rule, pretty much every legislative body has a quorum rule that you can't vote on something if not enough people are there. This usually doesn't come up. It's usually not a problem because it'll be like, you know, you only need like two thirds of the people there. You know, our House of Representatives has, what is it, 435 people. What are the odds that like a hundred of them are going to be absent on a given day.

0:12:43 Matt: I mean, they don't love coming to work, but yeah, most of them do when they have to.

0:12:50 Jenessa: Yeah, not that badly, right?

0:12:52 Matt: Yeah, sure.

0:12:52 Jenessa: So it's just, it doesn't normally come up, but it can if everybody's doing it on purpose. So this has happened before in Texas where something bad is coming up and you don't know what to do and they don't, I don't. They have a talking filibuster, but they do not have a like voting type filibuster the way our federal senate does where it's just absolute done they have

0:13:31 Matt: I remember when they did this in 2021,

0:13:33 Jenessa: The like oh you can stand there and talk until you're gonna pee yourself and then what so you know it can only go on so long so they've done this before just leave if enough of you leave then you don't have a quorum and you can't vote on anything yeah

0:13:33 Matt: And it was a very similar situation. They escaped to D .C. somewhere. And I went back and checked on this myself. I was just curious a while back when it started. And it's happened quite a few times in Texas It's called a quorum break, and it's always democrats when republicans are pushing it trying to do something like this the problem is that they get fined five hundred dollars a day nobody else is paying that and they're away from their families and they usually have to hole up in you know not great hotel rooms because there's so many of them and it'S not the best way to live and they would have to stretch it out until the next session basically which I think would be the fall and I read that

0:13:51 Jenessa: So that's new yeah mm -hmm yeah yeah and then you just raise it again you know it's this isn't a sustainable strategy so I hope um the way to think about this imagine um a world where life is going good and democrats have won the majority of the seats and we're not talking about some bill that is like pushing forward horrifying fascism and oh my god the end of the world you wouldn't want this to work you would not want in the long run like Like, go ahead and do your, make your point, but you would not want it to be that a very good bill that the majority of voters want and the majority of legally elected representatives want can't pass because some people just won't come home.

0:14:47 Matt: No also not to put too fine a point on it but we do live in a representative democracy and this is no way to run a railroad as they say we do actually want people to show up and be able to vote but at At the same time, you know, I do, again, I understand morally why they don't want to show up, but it's really a terrible thing for democracy that this is a regular event in Texas because they keep pushing it like this.

0:15:01 Jenessa: I support this. Do what you gotta do.

0:15:08 Jenessa: Yeah, and so sure enough, for exactly the reason that you would want, not want this to be the normal practice if you were in power, there are rules that stop this. So they have in their constitution, yeah, go ahead, do a quorum. You need a quorum. You can do a Quorum Break. You can leave. And we have rules for how to unbreak the quorum, and they are wild. So you mentioned $500 a day fine. They can get a civil arrest warrant, which is somebody's going to show up at your house and drag you back to that Capitol, and now there's a quorem.

0:15:42 Jenessa: And you can choose to vote or not vote, but you're in the building, and it counts.

0:15:45 Matt: Or does it? Maybe. We'll find out. Stay tuned.

0:15:48 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah. It's not a criminal arrest. It is civil. And there's no penalty associated with the civil arrest whatsoever. So like, that's really why they can get away with it. Because you're not committing a crime, right? If you didn't show up to your regular job, like, what are they going to at worst, you broke a contract, maybe they could like sue you for a penalty that that's not going to happen. This is not legal advice, figure your own stuff out with your job. So yeah, I

0:16:16 Matt: Well, yeah, I saw that there was talk that they're going to ask the FBI to chase these people down, but they don'T, there's no jurisdiction for that. Right.

0:16:23 Jenessa: Mean, no right they're not breaking any federal law I just can't even begin to imagine a federal jurisdiction here and the critical part is that civil arrest warrant the jurisdiction is restricted to texas because that's how u .s jurisdiction rules work nobody's gonna like extradite on this it's not how it works so that's why they're fleeing outside of the state as opposed to just not coming to work today

0:16:44 Matt: Why can't we just have like a super cool billionaire? I don't know.

0:16:54 Jenessa: Take them to an island

0:16:54 Matt: I'm not saying Ted Turner's super cool, but a lefty kind of billionaire, yeah, just to put them up and pay the fines.

0:16:57 Jenessa: Because that's not a thing yeah

0:17:00 Matt: Those fines are a lot. Ted Turner owns more land in America than any other person. Surely he's got places they could stay, even if they want to camp, which they probably don't. I can totally understand if nobody else is going to pay for your life and you're not getting paid to go to work. I mean, this is also a part -time job, I believe. I don't think these are full -time.

0:17:15 Jenessa: State legislatures are often part -time jobs it's not like you're going to become filthy rich by being the state assembly district number 78 like it's Not a big thing right so they usually have their like real job on the side. So these people are away from their actual job that would be paying them so that they could pay the $500 a day fine they're accruing.

0:17:41 Jenessa: It's just not sustainable. Beto O 'Rourke, Texas perennial Senate candidate, I don't know what he's actually up to right now, tried to pay these fines out of his campaign finance fund because he also doesn't have that kind of money just in his back pocket, I think. I don' t know. He might be a millionaire for all all I know.

0:17:57 Matt: That doesn't sound like campaign spending, though.

0:18:04 Jenessa: Yeah, so a judge said you cannot do this because this is not campaign, like campaign finance rules. This is not going to fly.

0:18:12 Matt: I mean, you didn't show up for your job and you got a fine.

0:18:15 Jenessa: Yeah. It's not, it's not campaigning.

0:18:15 Matt: That's not really part of your campaign. I understand it was campaign related in the sense that it looks good for his political stuff. But yeah, sure.

0:18:21 Jenessa: It does look good for him, right? But it's really, it does not look good for him. It doesn't look good. It not really lining up with the usual campaign spending. So every attempt to support them is ultimately going to end with, they got bills to pay. They got families at home. They get jobs they're skipping out on. And the second they come back into Texas, there is a civil arrest warrant that's going to drag them back into that Capitol building. You can only drag this out so long. So if you drag it out for the whole special session or the whole regular session, hooray, they're just going to raise this bill in the next session. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just explaining why, of course, it doesn't work in the long term, right? We would not want that to work in the long term. And so we have created laws to make sure it does not work in the longterm. And there've been state Supreme court cases that backed up the right for these civil warrants and all of that. That's pretty much where that hit. Um, they came back and then, uh, my understanding is you looked into, uh, hope I'm going to pronounce this right. Nicole Collier? Is it French? Yeah.

0:19:30 Matt: Yes. New national hero has arisen, Nicola Collier. Yeah, she seems awesome. So yeah, we should talk a little bit about that. Before we move on to that, though, I did want to say it's possible that this time, because it's been a couple of weeks now that they were on the run, right?

0:19:42 Jenessa: Yeah, it was a while.

0:19:44 Matt: It could have possibly given California time to come up with its plans to do its own redistricting, which Gavin Newsom announced recently. And I did want to note before we move on that that was, to me, one of the most shocking things that I've seen in the Trump administration last Thursday. I just want to mention it. When Gavin Newsome announced his press conference that he was going to be holding to counter what Texas is doing to possibly redistrict California and create more blue seats, and CBP showed up to the the press conference.

0:20:12 Jenessa: I saw that.

0:20:12 Matt: They just showed up to stand around. And this is just the kind of thing I've been warning about for decades now. I mean, almost going on decades. As soon as I started to realize what ICE is, that this would become a political force accountable only to the president doing the regime's bidding, doing the ruling party's bidding. It's the kind thing you hear about on the BBC growing up, right? This is not really what you expect in this country. But I just take just a little check in there on how much it smells like boiling frogs right now, because because that's scary. I just wanted to note that.

0:20:38 Jenessa: Yeah, there was precisely zero customs nor border nor immigration enforcement going on in that function. That was to scare people.

0:20:51 Matt: And it was at a private museum, not only a museum, but the Japanese American Museum, which is the place where the location of it is where they used to take, it was a marshalling station basically to take people to camps. So it just, you know, the internment camps. And so quite a site for CBP to be prowling. But again, yeah, it wasn't even a federal building, I checked just to be sure. Let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about Nicole Collier.

0:21:04 Jenessa: Oh great, cool, yeah nice.

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0:22:49 Matt: All right. So Nicole Collyer seems pretty great, honestly. This is her seventh term, and she's been keeping her head down and working. She does not seem like the kind of person who has been looking for fame or publicity doing her job. She's actually the first woman to represent her district. She was elected in 2012, re -elected six times, and She won the Roy Wilkins Civil Rights Award from the NAACP and a State Legislator of the Year Award from National Black Caucus of State Legislators. Single mother of two, graduate of Texas A &M Law, now the University of Houston. She is a trial attorney at a small business center, so kind of a typical state representative story, but, you know, very Very impressive.

0:23:19 Jenessa: Exactly who who you want in this role.

0:23:22 Matt: Exactly. Representing the community and, you know, like made her way, did the things that we expect our leaders to do. Before we go on to talk about Nicole Collier, we should mention they did come back and hold a special session on Monday the 18th. They didn't get to the map. But at the conclusion of the session, the Democrats who had all left, 50 of them, were required to sign a form to acknowledge their release into the custody of a public safety officer. Basically, they were going to have like a permission slip to leave the Capitol. Like they're on probation, right? They get to go pee in a cup somewhere.

0:23:49 Jenessa: They make it sound like they're going to have a cop following them.

0:23:52 Matt: It does sound a lot like that. But Nicole Collier decided that she was not going to sign a permission slip. She said, the moment the directive was issued, I felt like it was wrong. It's just wrong to require grown people to get a permission to slip to roam about freely, so I resisted. I objected the only way I knew how. She also said, they take that high road. Well, you know, the high road is crumbled. We're on a dirt road.

0:24:10 Matt: We are going to meet them on that dirt road and get down and dirty just like they are. So I appreciate that. That's kind of where we are at. Nicole Collyer stayed in the statehouse. She decided she was nicht going to sing this bogus order that she's going to be releasing the custody of a public safety officer, and she just remained at her desk. And she slept there last night, and he's still there as of the time we're recording. Maybe by the time that you hear this, she'll be in a different position. I don't know. But in the course of this, he filed the most interesting petition for habeas corpus I've ever seen. And I've read a lot of habeas petitions in my legal career. This one's only five pages. It's pretty straightforward. It is an application for writ of habea corpus filed in the district court of Travis County, Texas. Application for writ habeas Corpus, colon. I've never seen this this before, like it's a movie title.

0:24:47 Jenessa: Does

0:24:48 Matt: Representative Collier is not absent, underlined, so the restraint on her liberty is illegal. As always on this program, I have to congratulate the Fonts. This is a nice Palatino. I can't go wrong with a Palatino. It's very clean, nice serif font.

0:25:01 Jenessa: Look nice.

0:25:01 Matt: It goes a long way on my eyes. So she is actually filing from inside the Capitol building, and she's filing a writ of habeas corpus from insidethe Capitol. This can't have ever happened in American history. I've never heard of anything like this before. You're trapped in your legislature and you can't leave. And of course, habeas is when you're in the custody of the state and you're asking for them to review your custody.

0:25:20 Jenessa: Does this mean she wrote it herself? Could she get a lawyer in the building?

0:25:29 Matt: Oh yeah, no, she has attorneys on call.

0:25:32 Jenessa: Oh, there's internet. I forgot about the internet. Right. Okay. Yeah.

0:25:35 Matt: Presumably this is the kind of thing that maybe some attorneys might've considered it might've happened at some point. I don't know. I couldn't have this kind of imagination to think this would end up in this scenario, but they've had enough quorum breaks at this point. Who knows?

0:25:45 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah.

0:25:45 Matt: Representative Collier is under restraint by virtue of the Speaker of the House's order, placing her into the custody of law enforcement. So essentially, even though she's refused to sign it, she has been told, if you leave the Capitol without signing this, you're subject to arrest. So she's saying essentially that she is unable to leave. And here's where it gets really interesting. The question before this court is not whether the House's Sergeant -at -Arms can arrest an absent quorum -breaking member. That's already pretty well established. They concede that. Rather, the question is whether detention, arrest, and compulsion is permitted for previously absent but now present members. So I'm here, you just won't let me leave the Capitol. And she's saying, obviously, there's no precedent for this. It's ridiculous.

0:26:26 Jenessa: It's like kind of presuming that they're gonna do it again and therefore I'm gonna put a leash on you so you can't run away a second time. And it's like, no, you guys have already established that this is part of how it works. You're allowed to run away and then you get to come, like they just have a built -in game of manhunt. Like I'm going to run, you're going to come catch me.

0:26:48 Matt: She says an opinion from Ken Paxton, of course, the Attorney General of Texas, saying that attendance means physical presence in the chamber. So she's like, I'm hier, I am present. What are you going to do? And she is making the point, I can't really argue with this, the legislature is not even in session. There's no calendar, there is no calendar for tomorrow, any upcoming date, no pending vote, a quorum is even needed. So she's not even required to be there because there's no vote. They're only supposed to be able to vote. So yeah, this is, again, it's all kind of funny, but this is Republicans, as they're in a lot of state houses right now, and certainly as they are at the federal level, pushing democracy to its limits and pushing these procedures and processes to their limits. So I really hope that we can get through this redistricting thing. I mean, I do understand the argument of, you know, if we start adding more seats to California, then it just becomes an endless arms race, but we're already in one, right?

0:27:27 Jenessa: Like, the way I'm looking at it at this point is If you can get into that arms race to the point that it finally hits, I really think that Democrats want a bipartisan redistricting and to stop all of this. So if you can Get It to where Republicans are like, oh, this is finally not working in my favor, maybe we'll finally get a federal law on it. It's extremely popular among just American voters to not have political gerrymandering. We hate it. So if that law passes, I don't see that law getting repealed ever. Like the idea that as soon as you can re -gerrymander, you're gonna undo that law. Like that would be political suicide because people love not having political gerrymandering, So my hope is that's how that will go. I do want to throw some cold water on the idea that New York is joining the party. New York has it in our constitution that we must have a bipartisan redistricting committee. We had a whole litigation about this where our supposedly bipartisan redistricting committee drew obviously partisan gerrymandered maps. They weren't even that bad, but they were definitely gerrymandered. And then what happened is uh somebody sued and a judge said yeah this is pretty obvious do it again and they did it again and it was still partisan and then a judge got a special master to like emergency draws maps because hey there's gonna be an election and you kind of like need a map guys we lost a district so it was like you can't just use the old map you have to do something quick I met the guy who they made the special master. And he was like, I just got a phone call from like the New York Times being like, do you have a comment on the fact that you're now the special master? And he Was like, what? Like, they just assigned him because he was an expert at this kind of map drawing. And then there was another court case that said, hey, you can't just rely on his map for 10 years. It says in the Constitution, the bipartisan committee has to to draw the dang map and you can't just let them get away with not doing it because they can't do it right so then we got new districts again and it's just like

0:28:00 Matt: I mean, right. Sure. Sure. Yeah.

0:29:58 Jenessa: Absolute trauma over here the fact that districts are even coming back up again so there has been a proposal that we would amend our constitution to say if other people redistrict not on the 10 -year mark we would do it too and I think obviously they're gonna say and not bipartisan. To get a constitutional amendment in New York it has to pass our state legislature twice like two years in a row and then it has go on the ballot and New Yorkers have to vote like at least 50 % plus one vote yes. It's not happening people I'm sorry there ain't no way so um don't get too excited about New York joining the club. California is is probably your best hope for a battle between the two it's chaos over here I

0:30:47 Matt: And apparently Democrats in New York aren't willing to trap a woman in the Capitol indefinitely either. So, you know, I've heard some pretty terrible things about New York Democrats, but you know we would say that down here.

0:30:53 Jenessa: Doubt it you know never never say never over here no

0:31:01 Matt: It is kind of brilliant though because what she's doing here is, you know, in the rule, in The Constitution of Texas, it says that the legislature may compel the attendance of absent members, but she's not absent. She is present.

0:31:10 Jenessa: It seems extremely straightforward and I think she's also right that like so you're gonna try to force me to sign something that says I'm gonna have like a anti -bodyguard and if I won't sign it you're going to arrest me on the premise that you think I'm gonna break a not law later like come on I mean this is ridiculous on five levels yeah

0:31:32 Matt: That's another habeas claim. So yeah, now we'll see how this one goes. It's the most interesting habe I've ever seen, though, I will say. A new national hero, Nicole Collier.

0:31:39 Jenessa: She's a real champ yeah for

0:31:41 Matt: So before we move on, I just wanted to, since we're on the subject, ask about some things that I heard Donald Trump saying this week about mail-in ballots. I assume that he's talking about mail and ballots as much as he was, both when he was meeting with Zelensky in the White House and also in a post on Truth Social. Can't be good, right?

0:31:56 Matt: Nothing good can come of this. What do you think they got planned?

0:31:50 Jenessa: Sure now it doesn't sound good now granted Trump is like we got the best lawyers they're gonna write the best thing and I'm like who and what and why like it's really hard to interpret whether that means anybody's doing anything you know but presuming someone's doing anything remotely like what he's trying to say, it's probably not gonna work. He's claiming that they're gonna try to stop mail -in voting and they're going to try to get rid of voting machines. He tried to say that I think the U .S. is the only country in the world with mail -In voting and you will probably be shocked to learn that is false.

0:32:33 Matt: Really? We're not the only country.

0:32:35 Jenessa: I was surprised that it's only 34 countries and territories do it. I would have thought it would be more. It's mostly in Europe. So like he's talking to Zelensky, a leader of a European country, and be like, I don't think anybody else does this. Like, all right, dude, whatever. Other countries do do it now. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing, but I'm here to tell you it's a good thing. First of all, we have UOCAVA, Uniformed and Overseas. I never remember the rest of this acronym but it's in an election law that says basically the bare minimum for overseas and uniform voters they have a right to vote and they're overseas so they have to be able to somehow get you their ballot without coming home

0:33:17 Matt: I've done it. It's great. Strong recommend.

0:33:25 Jenessa: Seems obvious especially like yeah military voters you have told them they have to be overseas what are they supposed to do they have have to vote. When you look at absentee ballot laws, every state has some version of, you know, some of them have no excuse, just go ahead and vote by mail. Some of them require an excuse for why you can't get to the polls. There's no state that's like, no, if you can'T make it to the polls that day, then you just can'T vote. And I can'T, like, you KNOW, in a quick search, I can't find anything in federal law that guaranteed it, because I was just like, I mean, the states all all guarantee it because of course they do because you have a right to vote and what are you gonna do if you can't get to the freaking polls I don't know it's probably buried in there somewhere and also just like because it's a fundamental right and oh

0:34:15 Matt: So this is all like the 2 ,000 mules Dinesh D'Souza bullshit about how they're all stuffing the boxes and you can't trust mail -in ballots. This is where this is that kind of thing, the conspiracy theories.

0:34:26 Jenessa: Yes this is all based in conspiracy theories mail -in ballots are secure we many states have tracking systems and in the states where there's a tracking system people track their ballots and find they were correctly delivered and counted. Like, you're good. It's working. It'S fine. It''s all based in conspiracy nonsense. He's also mad about the voting machines because everybody saw all his conspiracy theories about the machines. They're fine. Those are also heavily protected for disability rights reasons because there's accessible technologies built into the voting machine. There has to be at least one in every polling place. You might think there isn't one if you're in a state that uses paper And that's because they often put it in the corner and don't advertise it, which is a real shame, but it's there. There's always an accessible voting machine in every polling place by law, the Help America Vote Act. So basically, UOCAVA and the Help America Vote Act both are requiring absentee and adaptive technology voting machines. You'd have to get past those federal laws. And then how you would stop excuse absentees, like I cannot get to the polls in all 50 states. Like, I just can't even imagine. You're going to hit legal obstacles. There's no way.

0:35:46 Jenessa: I don't doubt he will try. And I don'T doubt the lawsuit will be filed the absolute second that hits the desk.

0:35:54 Matt: Well, the federal government can't just tell the states not to do mail -In ballots.

0:35:57 Jenessa: Yeah, it's up to the states.

0:35:59 Matt: I know we try to use can't carefully around here, but but that is really supposed to be how it works.

0:36:05 Jenessa: Go ahead and try.

0:36:08 Matt: There's no mechanism, there's no legal mechanism, there's not a route for that to happen. That's what I'm saying when I say can't, can't

0:36:12 Jenessa: I struggle to imagine how they're goingto say, New York, no more mail -in ballots.

0:36:19 Jenessa: Even if somebody tells you they're homesick, they can't mail you a ballot. And we're gonna be like okay god wasn't he like talking to zielinski about

0:36:26 Matt: Have it. Just before we move on, did you see how this all started? Oh, it's worse. It's so much worse. It was Putin. Vladimir Putin told him that he had won the 2020 election and there would have been no way that he could have possibly lost if it weren't rigged because you have mail -in voting. Vladimir Putin called him this and he kept repeating it. Fair elections expert, Vladimir Putin.

0:36:50 Jenessa: My god the man who just always wins with 86 percent of the vote

0:36:54 Matt: They've engineered so many different ways to just make elections a joke in Russia. But it's impossible to have mail -in votings and have honest elections, Trump told Sean Hannity. That's what he said that Putin told him, because he knows honest elections. So yeah, another attack on our basic freedoms, courtesy of Vladimir Putin, let's move on.

0:37:10 Jenessa: Oh god I'm so over it our elections are secure good lord

0:37:18 Matt: And I love the idea that it's that effective. All Putin has to do is just tell him something and start another news cycle. Yeah, because something he wants to believe, right?

0:37:22 Jenessa: Just whisper a little thing in his ear and now it's just bugging him for a week mm

0:37:29 Matt: Anyway, So let's talk about a quick update on DC before I talk about the thing I've got here today. We talked last week about, obviously, the Attorney General Pam Bondi trying to take over the DC police, along with sending the National Guard. We were mostly talking about that. At the time of recording, she had not attempted to replace the head of the DC Police with DEA Administrator Terry Cole, which is something she tried to pull late Thursday, I believe early Friday. Friday. And I just want to note that that's a very Nazi thing, just as long as we're going with the Nazi comparisons. The thing where you give your top loyalists a bunch of different jobs, heads of different agencies, like too many jobs that they can have.

0:38:05 Matt: This has happened a lot so far, making Russ Vought both OMB and CFPB, making Marco Rubio USAID and Department of State and something else. It effectively renders these useless, which they want to do.

0:38:04 Jenessa: Huh interesting oh yeah they can't even do the one job they are assigned

0:38:17 Matt: No, exactly. They don't have time for that. And they're bad at it. So they made him emergency police police commissioner. And there is absolutely no way under the Home Rule Act of D .C. that you can do this. And this is just a quick one to push back against the Demers who are like, well, they're just going to do whatever they want to do. The fact is they go in before a federal judge, Ana Reyes, and she literally tells them, you're making the argument the president can run the entire police department based on language that doesn't even allow the president to talk to the police department, she told DOJ.

0:38:43 Matt: She said the statute would have no meaning at all if the president could just say we're taking over your police department. So Ana Reys, awesome judge in D .C. told them, you have until 6 .30 tonight on Friday to back off and not do this, or I'm going to be putting an injunction in. So Pam Bondi backed down, and they made Terry Cole some sort of designee. Just to make things a little worse, though, they did also enlist D .K. police in helping to enforce immigration law, which until very recently they weren't doing. That was not at all one of the justifications of this, but now she's making it clear it's kind of just like a, almost like retaliation from what happened, right? She's now going on about how they're no longer a sanctuary sanctuary city, and we're going to take care of that. So, but again, just good news, at least to the A check here. Checks are possible. And again, remember, we are careful about the way we use the word can't, but it is a big difference between taking over the DC police department, which is authorized by law, and trying to take over the other states. Now, we do have a clear path to how he does want to takeover state police and local police, and

0:39:37 Matt: That is through the sanctuary city nonsense. Pam Bondi is coming back on that again, and they're making it clear they're going to start prosecuting people. They're going start doing whatever they can to cow them. And effectively, this is going to be a huge stick they can wield, but they don't have an actual jurisdictional legal authority to do it. Not that that matters at this point, but just an interesting piece of trivia.

0:39:53 Jenessa: The friday deadline was that the 15th or the 22nd like the last friday oh okay so this already happened it's not okay yeah yeah

0:39:58 Matt: Oh no, that was last Friday. It was that day. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this already happened. Yeah. Just to be very clear about it, the Home Rule Act allows the president to direct the police department, but there is nothing in it that allows him to take it over and put his people in charge of it. That's absurd.

0:40:12 Matt: Let's move on to a couple of USIS updates. This is US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Normally not an agency that makes the news very much because they usually just process immigration benefits. I have to deal with them every day. Generally, for the most part, the people, at least in the Boston and Lawrence field offices that I work with, very professional, very well -trained, very much about getting it done efficiently and making sure that they do the best job for the people who are spending a lot of money. Frankly, these filing fees are very expensive to get these cases in. There are two memos. They're both pretty equally concerning, to be honest. I'm not sure which one I'm concerned about more, but I'm going to tell you very quickly. First one is clarifying discretionary factors in certain immigration immigration benefits requests. It came out of the 19th. And that sounds all right. Clarifying discretionary factors. That's nice to know

0:40:11 Jenessa: Yeah gotcha yeah Yeah, mm

0:40:51 Matt: How you're going to interpret your discretionary factors. Discretion, of course, for non -lawyers is just any time that an adjudicator or judge of any kind gets to use kind of their own personal judgment in something rather than, you know, along with the factors, right? So you can have a bunch of factors you have to meet, but at the end of the day, to become a resident, it is still discretionary in most cases, not all cases. So most employment visas are not when you're getting residency through employment. All family visas are, family residency applications are rather.

0:41:18 Jenessa: So you can meet all the qualifications and a judge can still be like, mm, I don't know about you.

0:41:23 Matt: Don't like your face. They can't actually say don't like her face. That would be a little thing we call abusive discretion. But that's a classic abuse of discretion. Generally speaking, though, this discretion really just comes down to your record. If you had a long history of being charged with domestic violence in every relationship you've been in, but there were never any convictions because it's very hard to secure convictions in domestic violence cases for obvious reasons, they could certainly use that against you. And they can say, look, you've got. But 15 years, you've got six arrests for domestic violence in six different relationships, right? There's something going on here. Even though we have the presumption of innocence, they can still say as a matter of discretion, you know, and also they can go and interview your exes. They can go in and talk to people if they want to, and they can get testimony and find out what kind of partner you are,

0:42:03 Jenessa: I can kind of see where this comes in now because we'd be like okay, maybe you didn't meet the beyond a reasonable doubt guilty of a crime standard but it's also still super obvious you've been beating your spouse. Like yeah okay maybe maybe it makes sense okay yeah

0:42:18 Matt: Kind of a gut check, right, that something's off. We want to be very careful how we give officers discretion. We don't want them because then, of course, you just get straight up racism, misogyny, homophobia, right.? It's just inevitable that you're going to have all kinds of room for human error and human foible. So here's the deal. This clarifying discretionary factors thing, they tried something like this in 2020 in a couple of different places. It was pretty much along the lines of the law. It was a lot, but it wasn't anything that's jumped out the way this one does. This one has a special section. Just take this in for a moment. USCIS considers factors involving circumstances where an alien has endorsed, promoted, supported, or otherwise espoused the views of an anti -American, an

0:42:25 Jenessa: Yes of course yeah oh no yeah

0:43:01 Matt: Anti American or terrorist organization or group. That kind of goes by quickly, an Anti -American or terrorist organization or group,

0:43:08 Jenessa: I feel like those are a little different kind of my whole life they've been saying

0:43:10 Matt: I've heard a lot of people say the Democratic Party is anti American, for example. It's not right.

0:43:18 Matt: So this is incredibly broad. And then it goes on, of course, we know where this is going, including those who support or promote anti Semitic terrorism, anti Semetic terrorist organizations, and anti Semantic ideologies, right? So not just giving money to Moss, but, But maybe just saying out loud that Israel's doing genocide might be an anti -Semitic ideology by these people's estimation, judging on the way they've treated Mahmoud Khalil and Ramesa Osterich, among other people.

0:43:41 Matt: But they say that this is going to be considered an overwhelmingly negative factor in discretionary analyses. So you could have your residency denied. I'm very sorry to say this, because I don't want to make people any more paranoid than they already are about this process. But I do have to warn people, immediately put your socials on private. And whatever activism you're doing right now, unfortunately, this is not the time. I'm very sorry. If you're looking for residency through a family member, you know, even through marriage, it's possible that anything could be used against you at this point with this language. And this is residency. The next one I'm going to talk about actually goes to citizenship. This anti -American thing, the footnote they drop is to a section of the INA that was passed in 1952. And they are trying to say that INA 313A, and they're trying to saying that this somehow defines anti -american ideology. But this was a McCarthy era thing where you can be denied residency if you're a communist or you support totalitarian forms of government, which I think we are getting toward one, so kind of coming around.

0:43:40 Jenessa: That yeah wow yeah hmm are they citing a mccarthy era statue like something's still on the books from that what and

0:44:40 Matt: It's still the law. Yeah. No, the Immigration Act of 52 was a straight up Cold War McCarthy product.

0:44:47 Jenessa: They're just still like yeah McCarthyism that's what we're doing oh my god

0:44:51 Matt: Yeah, I mean, these questions are still on the application, but there's also no language in this section about anti -Americanism. What it is is about supporting communism, totalitarianism, or the overthrow of the United States government government by force. I wouldn't call that anti-Americanism.

0:45:05 Jenessa: Okay that last one might make more

0:45:09 Matt: You're a radical, but you're not just anti -american. Like that's, I don't know. It's another category. So this is bad and something to watch that they're really making a big deal about how independent they can be with discretionary requests. But the second one I want to talk a little bit more. This is restoring a rigorous, holistic, and comprehensive good moral character evaluation standard for aliens applying for naturalization. So that's nice. Rigorous, holistic, comprehensive. Who doesn't want that? This is about good moral character. So good moral character is a pretty well understood concept in immigration law. It's pretty much what it sounds like. They have to find that they think you're a decent person. But that's not supposed to be an affirmative finding of you have to prove that you're a decentperson. It's a negative finding that you don't have any of the factors that we're looking for. Mostly an arrest and conviction record. So historically, we've had good moral characters been in immigration laws since 1790, since the original Naturalization Act. And it was not defined until that that 52 bill I was telling you about. It's one of the many things that was in there. And they also, they created a five -year window. And now we're talking about naturalization. We're not just talking about residency, which is the first step. You can't naturalize until you're a resident. And then for most people, it's either going to be five years, or if you're going through marriage, it'S three years later, you can become a citizen. And citizenship, as Hannah Arendt said, is the right to have rights. It'S a very important step. And if you want to stay here and be guaranteed not to be deported, it' s the way to go. But it' S also how you control who votes, to what we were just talking about. So this, to me, seems to be the first shot on a war on citizenship that, I mean, Trump has certainly been having

0:46:39 Matt: For a while, but this is a pretty clear shot here. So good moral character typically is limited to a five -year window, the five years before you apply. And as long as you're basically, you have no arrest record and don't have anything else that would be used against you, and we'll talk about some of those other things for good moral characters, generally speaking, it's presumed that you are a person of good moral character. Now, they can look back beyond the five years if you have serious offenses, and they can potentially hold those against you as a matter of discretion. But again, that's talking about criminal charges and arrests and convictions, right? So these are things that they can look at from your record, going all the way back, and there's a wide range of discretion, but there's never been any talk about, as far as I'm aware, and I went back and looked a bit today, there's never been a talk about making somebody prove themselves in the absence of any of these factors well

0:46:33 Jenessa: Sense yeah how would I

0:47:29 Matt: I mean you can I'd write you a letter I'm willing to attest to your character you can certainly you know prove your charitable works and you know involvement in community service or whatever you shouldn't have to you should be able to sit on your couch and smoke weed and become a citizen if you want to although you technically can't do that either uh you can't be smoking weed but that's that's another thing I actually should mention jeff sessions put out a memo uh during the first Trump term, where he declared that if you admit to smoking marijuana within the five-year period before your naturalization, we will automatically find that you are not a person of good moral character.

0:47:32 Jenessa: Oh I yeah all right right wow

0:48:03 Matt: Jeff Sessions famously said that the only problem he had with the KKK is they smoked weed. So just, yeah. That actually cost him a federal bench at some point in the 80s. That was what he said, because he was so racist.

0:48:07 Jenessa: What oh that's I I knew that that he couldn't even get on the federal bench because people were like he's too racist but I didn't know why they said he was too racist until now oh

0:48:22 Matt: So yeah, there's been just a very quickly to review good moral character. The idea that it's going to have to basically be the average person, and they actually write it as the average citizen of your community, which is kind of an interesting standard because, you know, in Somerville, Massachusetts, we recognize polyamorous unions, right?

0:48:38 Jenessa: So you could still be of good moral character in massachusetts but not

0:48:44 Matt: Right. That would be the argument I would make, right. There's a whole other issue in immigration law with polygamy, which we haven't got to yet, which isn't necessarily the same with polyamory, but that's a, that's whole other conversation. We don't have that kind of time. But I'm just saying, there's an interesting argument to be had there. And it's kind of a funny case I found from 1878, where they said that obviously the standard for good moral character for the average good moral character is going to vary, but probably the average man of the country is as high as it can be set. That's the best we're going to do, folks. We'll just look at the average man and use his good moral characteristic.

0:49:10 Jenessa: Boy oh so the women are gonna be fine

0:49:16 Matt: I would actually suggest, my proposal for this is that we set the good moral characteristics of the average person standard at where the president is at at any given time. Time. Exactly. But nobody would ever fail under the test they're going to put out here, if that were the measuring stick, whether the president, somebody who's falsified business records and been convicted of multiple felonies

0:49:22 Jenessa: Oh god no then they will not be sending us their best yeah

0:49:39 Matt: For it, and everything else. I don't have to rattle off everything else Trump has done, we all know. But I just mentioned that because falsification of testimony is actually a major issue for good moral character, even if you weren't charged with perjury.

0:49:49 Jenessa: I mean that makes sense

0:49:51 Matt: It does. Adultery used to be an issue, but of course it was much much more of an issue for women. At one point, I found a case where Learned Hand wrote that it's basically not reasonable to expect that an unmarried man must live completely celibate or forfeit his claim to good moral character.

0:50:06 Matt: Homosexuality was previously an issue if you're moral character, but it's just amazing language you can see from that. Anyway, I should get onto the real point here, which is that 8 CFR 316 .10 defines that it is case by case. You've got this this five -year window, but you're not limited to the five - year window if there's other stuff outside that's, you know, particularly egregious. And you have to be able to show some kind of reform or rehabilitation if you do have a serious record. And we're usually able to do that with our clients. It's not usually too much of an issue. But here's the new memo as of the 15th of August. Going forward, USCIS officers must account for an alien's positive attributes and not simply the absence of misconduct. In evaluating whether or not an alien has met the requirement of establishing GMC, the officer must take a holistic approach in evaluating whether whether or not an alien seeking naturalization is affirmatively established that he or she has met their burden of establishing they are worthy of assuming the rights and responsibilities.

0:50:01 Jenessa: Of course wow wow wow

0:50:56 Matt: This is not the way we've talked about it before. And I'm not saying that citizenship isn't a serious right and responsibility. But again, the point of the way it's written is that we're supposed to show that there's nothing negative on your character, not that you have to produce positive statements about it. There's really no precedent for that.

0:51:11 Jenessa: That's a lot to expect especially in this climate when everybody not everybody but so many people are so negative about immigrants and like yeah how are you gonna go out there and get somebody to testify what a great person you are you know but people will that's the thing is people are like I hate immigrants but not tom so like that's different

0:51:36 Matt: That's not even the worst part, unfortunately. I have to tell you about the worst part. Yeah, the worst parts kind kind of similar to this last deal, something that I think could be abused pretty badly. So, you know, a lot of these things, when they publish these memos, they're just restating the existing law. Sometimes media picks up on it when they don't know what the existing law is and they think there's something new going on. And some of that was happening with this cycle, but I'd say about 75 % of this is pretty much restating The Way the Law Already Works. And 10 % of it's new, and 10 % is just, I don't what I'm looking at. And here's this part. So again, looking at good moral character, we're not talking about any kind of crimes or infractions. And I will point out out that very famously in Washington state, there was a man who got an infraction. It was written up by the Washington State Wildlife Service for collecting a few too many oysters in Puget Sound. And that was used as the basis of denial of naturalization. And the person who wrote in the ticket was contacted and said, I never would have wanted him to be denied citizenship over this.

0:52:27 Matt: Please don't do that. That actually became a class action, part of a class section, because those field offices were denying so many naturalization cases. They actually had to reopen open hundreds, including that one. But I'm getting off topic. So, because I don't want to tell you about this. I don'T like it. It really bothers me. And I've been thinking about it all day. I know. So along with the other stuff that's already a bar to good moral character, and I should mention, there are some things that are a permanent bar to Good Moral Character. So if you've committed an aggravated felony, something that we see that way, you can never gain citizenship.

0:52:54 Matt: You're considered to be permanently, and that includes minor drug sales, along with a lot of their much more serious offenses. But we used to have a little bit more opportunity for rehabilitation for that kind of thing. We don't anymore. But here's the part I don't like. Any other acts that are contrary to the average behavior of citizens in the jurisdiction where aliens reside. These could be actions that while technically lawful, may be inconsistent with civic responsibility within the community, such as reckless or habitual traffic infractions or harassment or aggressive solicitation.

0:53:26 Matt: Somebody could just put in a report that like, you know, Fred's going around knocking on doors and it's annoying, like trying to sell products, right? Right? The aggressive solicitation. Or much worse, you could be a known organizer in a red district.

0:53:25 Jenessa: What I was about to say like knocking on doors can be political activism Yeah.

0:53:42 Matt: Absolutely. And it's perfectly legal. But if they say, and especially if you tie it in with that last thing about anti -Americanism, you're talking about, and the standards of the community, right? So again, in Massachusetts, it's typically normal to organize against genocide in Gaza, but maybe in a different part of the country, that would not be considered to to be by community standards. This is so broad that I think it's very dangerous. I think this idea of, you know, inconsistent with civic responsibility, this is all the kind of stuff that fascists love, this kind of vague language, very political language that can be used by anybody. And I wanted to close here by just making the point that USCIS should not be a political agency ever, because who gets to join the country and then get onto the path of citizenship should not Be a political question. That should be something where we have a bipartisan set of standards, generally, I mean, more or less how it's worked. But up to very recently, immigration policy was actually one of the few things that the parties could mostly agree on. It's hard to think about now, but that actually was true for most of American history. The idea, though, of weaponizing and politicizing your immigration agencies so that you can start to do political enforcement. You might remember Menon Madawi was arrested in Vermont at his naturalization interview just for things he said. And this is a real harbinger of what we're looking at here, the idea that we can just decide that you're doing things that are anti -American.

0:54:57 Matt: If you want to join what we call the only country in the world with a constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, you better shut your mouth. That's what I'm getting out of all this. And also, there's a lot here about how they're going to be scouring social media even more than they already do.

0:55:07 Jenessa: They're explicitly saying that?

0:55:12 Matt: Yeah.

0:55:12 Jenessa: That they're going to go into your social media? Wow.

0:55:14 Matt: Oh, they already have. Yeah, no, that's already been part of it. And there's AI. They've developed a really powerful AI that can scour social media and look for keywords and patterns of posting. It is. It's really gross, and it's really dangerous. So I hate to have to do this, but this is not legal advice, but it's just general advice to everybody that USCIS and and ICE have the right to watch your social media if it's public. So, you know, just bear that in mind. So these two things together, I think this is just something to watch. This is not something probably you're going to hear about in a lot of outlets, but it's important to me, as everybody knows, and I think it's importante to all of us because this is how we create new citizens. These are the standards we're using, and potentially also how you put people on the path to deportation when you deny these things.

0:55:21 Jenessa: Gross. Ooh. Yeah, that's what they'll do to us next.

0:55:53 Matt: Yeah, we are certainly involved in anti-American activities, and let's get on to our next anti-American activity, the footnote. So I'll come back and talk about Columbia v. Columbia.

0:55:57 Jenessa: Apparently.

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0:57:30 Matt: Just got a fun, frivolous classic footnote this time. I'm going to send you this complaint so you can see that it's got pictures. I always appreciate it when complaints have pictures.

0:57:36 Jenessa: Very nice.

0:57:37 Matt: Breaks up the reading. So this is Columbia Sportswear of Oregon, founded in 1938 versus the Columbia University, might've heard of it, founded in 1754. One of these two institutions is saying that it has a right to the trademark to Columbia. You'll never believe which one. This is kind of funny though. I mean, I guess Columbia University was so old that they just didn't think about registering the name for their own merchandise until 2023.

0:58:02 Matt: And Columbia is like a pretty generic word, like there's a lot of things called Columbia in America. It's actually used to be kind of the name für die Kontinent. So it's not a particularly original name, but the fact is that Columbia Sports were a registered Columbia in 1997. Columbia University didn't get around till 2023. Now, this doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing where you're going to have brand confusion.

0:57:59 Jenessa: Amazing. Amazing yeah

0:58:23 Matt: I mean, I know that Columbia has sports, obviously, but I think people understand this difference between a university and a sportswear company. I hope.

0:58:23 Jenessa: Probably I don't trust anybody to know anything at this point but sure

0:58:34 Matt: Yeah, that's true. That's usually the issue with these kinds of things, these kinds of infringement things, right? That you're confusing my brand, you're messing up my ability to sell my product and causing some kind of harm by using my registered mark. They're claiming trademark infringement, false designation, unfair competition, breach of contract, breach of duty of good faith and fair dealing, because they did actually make an agreement. They sat down and made an agreement with Columbia, the two Columbias, that they were going to kind of keep off each other's turf. And so Columbia University was allowed to produce stuff that said Columbia on it, as long as it had certain things like the university logo or other things

0:58:39 Jenessa: Yeah yeah okay uh oh

0:59:10 Matt: That indicated that it was for Columbia University, even if it didn't say Columbia University. This actually reminds me, I don't know if you've heard about this, but the Beatles had their Apple Records music company. That's how they released their records. They made a deal early on with Apple computers that they wouldn't get involved in music. And then they got sued by Apple Core when they started iTunes, because they're using the Apple. They actually had a similar kind of overlap there. It's kind of funny, but regardless. So what we're talking about here is, take a look at some of these pictures. I think we're all generally familiar with Columbia Sportswear. It's got the, I think that's some sort of a Gilead Roman font, probably, pretty standard serif. It'S a pretty font. That's nice.

0:59:51 Matt: But it's a distinctive. I mean, if I say Columbia Sportsware, you can probably picture it. Columbia University, I don't think, from what I could tell, has an official font necessarily. And the examples that they give of the infringement,

1:00:00 Jenessa: It is as I scroll through I definitely don't notice when it switches which is from one brand to the next, which is maybe telling.

1:00:06 Matt: Yeah, made a good sign. I also, has anybody ever maybe tried telling Columbia Sportswear that their logo looks like a swastika?

1:00:14 Jenessa: It is, it is funny little, funny little shapes. I, I, yeah, I might want to get rid of that.

1:00:14 Matt: Just a little kind of swastikalink? Seems like that might be worse for the brand, guys. But confusing yourselves with one of the worst brands in history. So they give lots of examples of Columbia products, including a bucket hat. Maybe people still wear those. Good luck to you. And then they give examples of Columbia University stuff. And they show the different logos that they're supposed to be using so they can distinguish themselves because it's so important that they distinguish themselves. So like page 17, it's a Columbia t -shirt in like the classic college font, right? But they're mad because on the website, it says men's champion in caps, Columbia University. The champion isn't even the same brand. They're just saying, look, you're appropriating somebody else's brand. And then they have other examples of fonts that to me look like standard college fonts, and they don't like them. They just don't Like that they are presenting them without the logo. They've got another one that's in the Trajan font that's on page 19. Clearly, looks like the same Columbia University logo.

1:01:07 Jenessa: The kerning on it is terrible.

1:01:09 Matt: Oh, it's awful. No, terrible design. Somebody just send that back. But then they get really weirdly irritated on Nike's behalf because this is stupid on whoever did this. I assume they got permission, but there's Columbia gear that has the Nike swoosh on it. So here they're saying, well, people are going to think that Columbia and Nike are doing some kind of collaboration. I guess that's bad for us.

1:01:26 Jenessa: Wait, so is it a knockoff Nike Columbia University? Come on, they can't be doing that. It has to be endorsed. Yeah, oh

1:01:32 Matt: I mean, you can't just use the Nike logo. Yeah. And I would think that the Nike lawyers would think of the same thing, that people might think this is a Columbia sportswear crossover, but I don't care. I can't bring myself to care that much. Honestly, this is just one of those things. They give an example of good apparel that complies with everything on page 22, and that's what you expect, a pretty boring college sweatshirts. Right, right, right. And then page 24, infringing merchandise. They've got Columbia, again, in the standard college font. You see that font and you think, oh, that's a college. They think that's infringing.

1:01:49 Jenessa: These are obvious. I see the crest, I see university, then I know, yeah.

1:02:02 Jenessa: That might be just you, man. I don't know. I'm not 100% sure.

1:02:05 Matt: It looks like a letterman's jacket. You know the thing. The compliant merchandise just says Columbia University, and they're just, again... And I don't, yeah, I've said this before. Obviously, I don'T do civil law. I don' t understand what motivates people to sue for a lot of things. I certainly appreciate the kind of stuff we' ve been talking about, you know, for civil rights and voting rights. But when it's just over stuff like this, just the team that put this together and thinking it through about how important this must be, let me find the part that just made me almost laugh. The likelihood of deception, confusion, and mistake engendered by the university's misappropriation and misuse of the Columbia name is causing irreparable harm to the brand and goodwill symbolized by Columbia Sportswear. Do you not want to be associated with an Ivy League? I mean, I understand they've been doing some weird stuff with their students recently. They're not the model of how to deal with students.

1:02:08 Jenessa: I guess, yeah, it's almost identical to be fair, yeah?

1:02:50 Jenessa: No, they don't want to be associated with their crappy t -shirts.

1:02:53 Jenessa: You're going to put it on and be like, this is a Columbia shirt? Gross.

1:02:57 Matt: It's true. It is true. Yeah.

1:02:57 Jenessa: This thing feels like crap.

1:03:00 Matt: It was just funny that they're talking about the brand and good will that Columbia Sportsware has, and I'm sure they're perfectly fine. I don't know. I do not buy sportswear, but

1:03:03 Jenessa: I know. I'm sure they're fine. I just want Columbia University to have to change their name because I don't know if you've noticed in the news, they're the worst right now. They're also union busting right now, so like extra screw them. Oh my god.

1:03:13 Matt: Yes, for sure. Yes. No, honestly, I would have had full respect for this lawsuit if it was like, we do not want to be associated with Columbia University. We just do not want to be associated with what you're doing to your students, calling in the NYPD and the way that you're basically letting your students get deported. Everything, everything you were just saying. This is really something that's just a little peek into the world of bullshit trademark infringement.

1:03:38 Jenessa: I love it.

1:03:39 Matt: And again, if a lawyer from the plaintiff, the other Columbia, would actually like to let me know why this is so important and how much money you're going to lose over this, then I guess we're not going to be on the show or anything, but maybe send me an email. I don't know. But I don'T understand. I'll never understand. But it's a lot more fun than most of what's going on in the law right now. So there we go. Fun little Columbia v. Columbia footnote. Well, I think we're about at time here.

1:04:01 Matt: Not too bad. We got through here. We learned a little about some redistricting, what's going on Texas, and we talked about good moral character, of course, brought to you by some of the best people that we could possibly produce that are writing and executing these policies. And then our fun footnote, so yeah, not too bad, not to bad. We'll be back on Monday with a really interesting rundown on the science behind Brown v. Board. Not just the case, we'll talk about the case. But your contributions on the science were just super interesting. I'm still thinking about them.

1:04:11 Jenessa: God. Awesome. I'm excited too.

1:04:27 Matt: All right. Well, we'll see you next week.

1:04:29 Jenessa: Bye.

1:05:08 Matt: When they go low, we punch them. I don't know.

1:05:12 Jenessa: Roll around in the dirt.

1:05:14 Matt: Roll around in the dirt. Don't like your face. They can't actually say don't like your face. That would be a little thing we call abusive discretion.