Trump Keeps Racking Up Ls in the Courts

Transcript

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

0:00:02 Thomas: Not moderate, lukewarm, nothing. I'm not talking about that. That doesn't do anything. We're all agreed there. Getting a bunch of Democrats in power, that is going to do something.

0:00:17 Matt: If no lawyer within earshot of the president is willing to give him that advice, you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion. But it was never going to be me, Hagen Skaten.

0:00:35 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1214. I am Thomas Smith. That over there is real life attorney Matt Cameron. How are you doing?

0:00:42 Matt: I'm feeling pretty good, Thomas. I was just spending some time going over all the different places where we have been winning in court, which is quite a lot of places, actually.

0:00:48 Thomas: You and I?

0:00:49 Matt: I'm sure when it comes down to it, we can defend ourselves.

0:00:50 Thomas: There's only one court I've prevailed in, although, you know, settlement wise.

0:00:55 Matt: That was a big one.

0:00:56 Thomas: This isthe right thinking folks of the country versus Trump. Up.

0:00:59 Matt: Yeah, there's not a single plaintiff here that I don't like. Well, maybe one. We'll get to them. But for the most part, these are people we can agree with and they're fighting policies we don't like. Quite a few of them have been blocked. And I think it's just worth remembering that the courts really are holding for the most part. I know there's a lot to say about the Supreme Court, but the fact is the Supreme Court can't interfere with everything. They just don't have the time.

0:01:18 Thomas: But I am having a hard time not yelling about what they can interfere with because they just decided they just gave a mulligan to the Texas Republicans who effed up so badly. I loved Jenessa's coverage of that. They tried to gerrymander in the only remaining way you couldn't gerrymander, like the one way. And they messed it up. And a Trump judge told them no. Yeah.

0:01:37 Matt: After extensive proceedings, after a very long trial with lots of evidence.

0:01:42 Thomas: And then Alito's like, nah, they're kids. They're so young. Give them another chance to racially gerrymander come on you can't just count this against them for the rest of their lives that's bad news I don't want to talk about it we're talking about good news we're talking about victories today

0:01:56 Matt: You're making a good point though that we do cover obviously the shocking stuff, the stuff that's bad. There's a lotta good stuff that has been happening. We're getting closer to the end of 2025 here and January is even around the corner. We'll be able to talk talk about a full year of this. And one thing that's really stuck out to me as I'm doing this review is how many of the executive orders have not survived.

0:02:12 Matt: Several have, no doubt. We'll get to it. There's a lot to talk about here. We're not naive. I'm not insane. I do watch the news and talk about it all the time. I know what's going on.

0:02:19 Matt: We are not going to pretend that everything is fine. I just want to push back.

0:02:19 Thomas: I think everyone's on the same page now we've gone through enough of this where it's like I think we all know how bad it is well okay I don't know that we fully grasp it, but I think we all are of that opinion. And now I feel like these ones that are kind of the good news episodes are received in the spirit in which they're intended, which is like, well, everything's but here's this, you know? It's like it's nice. There are some nice things..

0:02:42 Matt: This is a drive-by. We will hit a lot of them. It's also the rule of law is holding. That's kind of the theme here is that for the most part, the lower courts are doing their jobs, in case we just talked about.

0:02:48 Thomas: Who would have thought? I know we talk about it, but like who would have thought the truth is it's just a race where everyone else fell over.

0:02:56 Matt: Yeah, it's true.

0:02:56 Thomas: You know, the starting gun went, everybody else fell over and some other people ran backwards. Harvard ran backwards, a bunch of other institutions just started running the other way. And then like the legal system was like kind of inching along. I was like, I'm in the lead right now.

0:03:10 Matt: Yeah, Yeah, it's true.

0:03:11 Thomas: Barely moved, but okay, yeah.

0:03:13 Matt: So far, the most successful branch of government, even for as much as we complain about the Supreme Court.

0:03:17 Thomas: But hey, they had the Olympics in the 1920s. You If you look at some of the times for the 100 meters, but still those folks got the gold medal or whatever for winning the race. And similarly, the courts are doing something. So can't wait to talk about it. Jenessa is still on vocal rest. Hope she gets better soon. I think with that, we can take our first break.

0:03:38 Matt: I just want to add that I think there's so much here that we're going to have to have a part two. She's got some stuff lined up for voting and disability rights. I started saving that for her.

0:03:44 Thomas: Sweet.

0:03:44 Matt: So we'll probably come back in a month or so with more of that.

0:03:46 Thomas: So much good news that there's a part two, everybody.

0:03:49 Matt: Sure. We can do this.

0:03:50 Thomas: All right. Well, we'll take our fist break. Please support the show, patreon .com slash law. Keep the good news flowing, skip the ads. And with that we'll see you after the break.

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0:04:02 Thomas: All right, Matt, load me up on good news. God.

0:04:04 Matt: Okay. Let's start with, I think, the single biggest threat in all of this, which is the Department of Justice. And as you were saying, they really did just kind of fall on their faces coming out the gate. If the DOJ was going full speed with a whole bunch of Trump people that were totally competent and total ideologues, we'd be in a different place.

0:04:20 Matt: I think they'd be winning a lot more, but they're suffering attrition. They're losing so many people. There's an entire website actually that I will link to that just collects Trump -related resignation letters from DOJ employees.

0:04:31 Thomas: I love that.

0:04:32 Matt: It's a great genre that we have created this year of people just leaving, you know, pissed off notes on the way out.

0:04:38 Thomas: Remember that one guy with the amazing name that resigned?

0:04:40 Matt: I was going to actually read that paragraph again, just for your pleasure.

0:04:43 Thomas: Oh, thank you. Thank you. That was a while ago, right? Hagan Scotton. That's it.

0:04:46 Matt: Hagen Scotton, we're all big fans here.

0:04:49 Thomas: Huge Hagan Scotton fan, especially his early albums.

0:04:51 Matt: Any assistant U .S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials in this way. This is, of course, the Eric Adams corruption.

0:05:00 Thomas: I was trying to remember which corruption it was, Matt. I was like, was this a Trump something? Nope. Nope. That is not this one. Gosh.

0:05:08 Matt: Now, we did some great episodes on this with Liz Skeen. Well worth a listen to go back to just really appreciate the way that SDNY, they pushed out so many of the best people, including Mr. Scott in here. But here's the best part. If no lawyer within earshot of the president is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion.

0:05:26 Matt: But it was never going to be me, Hagen Scotton. No.

0:05:26 Thomas: So good. It is not like that guy was a saint. I feel like he was probably a pretty conservative guy, but like, you know, I will take it. I will takethe ones with standards.

0:05:36 Matt: Yeah. I would probably have like a Coke with him. I don't know about a beer, but like, Seems like it might be a good 15 -minute hang. A couple others, though, I just wanted to read just to kind of give you the idea. Now, again, this isn't great news. I'm not saying it's wonderful all these people are resounding in protest because they're being forced to do terrible things.

0:05:49 Thomas: It kind of is though we've seen how bad the other attorneys are the like beauty pageant

0:05:51 Matt: It is. Yeah. We're going to talk about that.

0:05:55 Thomas: One you actually do need to have good attorneys look the supreme court is going to do everything they can they're going to bend over backwards but like you say they can't reach everywhere you know like in aladdin to make a literary reference when aladdin's drowned at the bottom of the water and the genie's like you got to technically rub the lamp for me to save you here like you do have to have a lawyer enough to kind of like be conscious and they are failing

0:06:18 Matt: I am just going to say it for the 400th time this year, but fascism does require competent lawyers. It really does, not just any lawyers. We've got Joseph Terrell here from the former director of the Departmental Ethics Office. That's a big one in DOJ. Literally saying they didn't want the ethics office calling them up and telling them what to do, which is the ethics officer's job.

0:06:34 Matt: Trial attorney for the the Office of Immigration Litigation, something near to my heart, I can't with a clean conscience defend actions by our clients that I cannot square with even the most tortured reading of the U .S. Code and Constitution.

0:06:32 Thomas: That next

0:06:43 Matt: That's quite a statement from the oil guys. Here's an immigration judge, Anam Raman -Petit, who was fired in September. Replacing career judges with less experienced or politically malleable ones reflects a systemic effort to reshape the bench with individuals more likely to deny cases without regard for due process. Wrong denials can carry devastating consequences, family separation, deportation to danger, and violations of core constitutional rights. And of course, an immigration judge is an employee of the Department of Justice. That's why they get the list.

0:06:43 Thomas: President can they fire every single one like just immediately that's not the norm

0:07:13 Matt: No, because there used to be a union and I assume they want to restore that unit at some point, but it might be good to

0:07:17 Thomas: There isn't the union what happened to

0:07:19 Matt: Trump dismantled the immigration judges union. And it really was a problem. They had good protections.

0:07:21 Thomas: It wow that's interesting well too bad I guess that's gonna you know it sucks and then we're gonna use the suckage to do good when we can get back in power

0:07:31 Matt: Yeah, that's how it works. Fantastic piece from Emily Bazelon in New York times on November 16th. I'm going to link to about the unraveling of the justice department includes some of these statements of people and great interviews. The civil rights division is especially featured in all of these because it has been completely retooled, probably filled with tools also, but but it has

0:07:42 Thomas: Sorry yeah that's a bummer yeah Yeah. That is a great term for it. Yeah. Can we get some tools in here? We need the white people are being persecuted. We need some total tools to keep forgetting that. I can't care. Okay. Well, it's the bleep. I'm using the bleeps, but I'm so used to the Wednesday format.

0:07:50 Matt: Been retooled or tooled. Yep.

0:08:04 Thomas: I'm out of practice. Anyway, can we get something complete tools? Cause the white people are being discriminated against.

0:08:03 Matt: Got some DEI crimes happening here that we have to prosecute. It's been totally turned on its head. And Civil Rights Division is a premier organization.

0:08:12 Thomas: Used to be. Yeah, wow.

0:08:16 Matt: Even if you don't like being a prosecutor, that's where you would go. Yeah, about 5 ,500 of the 10 ,000 DOJ employees have quit or fired. 70 % of the Civil Rights division is gone. Two thirds of the attorneys in the Federal Programs Branch. And as we've seen, and as you were were referencing, now we're getting real bottom -of -the -barrel appointments to really important U .S. attorney positions. We have talked a bit about the Lindsay Halligan situation, a U .K. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia attempting to prosecute James Comey on bad evidence. Some of it was attorney -client privilege taken from Dan Richman. But the issue came down to something that Trump has previously been very happy to argue, which was that Lindsay Halligan was, of course, unlawfully appointed. Now, she joins a long list now of U. S. attorneys who've been unlawful appointed. Of course, everybody remembers that the Jack Smith prosecution of the Mar -a -Lago case was dismissed because Eileen Cannon, the best judge in Fort Pierce, Florida, found that there was an unlawful employment there. We flagged about a year ago that the Vacancies Act was going to be a serious issue under the Trump administration. I had a great guest to talk about that. They have really done some buffoonish stuff to try to get around it, including at one point with Alina Haba in New Jersey. They actually appointed her her own first assistant and then tried to promote her from there because that was the only way that they could do it. Very long list now. I mean, relatively speaking, because this doesn't happen, right? So as these things go, it's pretty long. And again, these are even under different statutes and in different ways, but they've all been found to have been unlawfully appointed. Bill Assele in Central District, California, disqualified because he remained beyond the 120 days. Sigal Chata in Nevada, there was an attempt to appoint her. Federal judge had to rule she was not validly serving. Ed Martin, of course, favorite of the show we've talked about in DC. He had to be pushed out. He was one of the worst US attorneys ever to serve. He was replaced by Jeanine Pirro.

0:09:58 Matt: They managed to get her in front of the Senate for some kind of a very brief kind of confirmation hearing. So she's got at least enough legitimacy that I think she's going to stick. But that's embarrassing, obviously, to have Jeanine Pirro as U .S. attorney for D .C.

0:10:09 Matt: This is a TV person. These are all TV people for the most part. You have to have competent U .s. attorneys bringing these things. Comey indictment, they have passed now the statute of limitations. The reason it was rushed so much was because they were reaching a statute of limitations where they had to try to charge James Comey with something. And that expired on September 5th. And now the indictment was dismissed because of those issues. They're making noise about trying to bring another one. I haven't seen that happen yet. Letitia James of New York, of course, went a a long way toward dismantling Trump's operations in New York as a businessman, and he was going after her in a very specific kind of way. She was first charged in October with the bank fraud we talked a little bit about. They're claiming it was some kind of lie, but would have saved her about $18 ,000 or something over the life of her mortgage.

0:10:47 Thomas: Over the life of a mortgage.

0:10:49 Matt: Yeah, over the entire life of the loan.

0:10:50 Thomas: Oh my God. Quick math, 50 bucks a month or something like that. 60 bucks a year.

0:10:57 Matt: And it's the kind of thing that people do accidentally all the time, just digging through whatever they could find. So of course, Lindsay Halligan was unlawfully appointed. They tried to bring the indictment again, and a grand jury declined to indict. They actually found it wasn't enough, finally. The Comey and James thing, and we'll see, of course, he's going to be going after political enemies across the country.

0:10:59 Thomas: 60 bucks. Just imagining a meme where it's like, damn, ham sandwich got hands. You know, like they just can't. It's actually hard to indict a ham sandwich. It's like harder than you think.

0:11:22 Matt: It does have to have done something. Turns out it has to be a little bit guilty. It was probable cause. There's a lot of other good news too. A lot of the smaller things that you haven't heard about that we're going to talk about. I just want to remind everybody that the fact is that one of the main concerns we had about the Trump administration is that they would be successfully prosecuting political enemies. They are trying to prosecute political enemies, but it's not getting very far. Now, again, that'S not to discount the fact that this is stressful. It's not easy to be prosecuted for a federal crime. Part of the purpose is to put you through this, but if it's It's not sticking. And if you don't have people who are even lawfully appointed to prosecute them, and if you Don't have any kind of actual legal basis that can stick in front of a grand jury, this to me, again, this is all reminders that the rule of law in this country continues to hold. I want to make this point because I talk to people all the time who are from countries where the rule of law has not held or has fallen apart.

0:12:05 Matt: They tell me about what that's like. We have to celebrate what we have here because you can't get it back once it's gone. And as long as we have these judges that are willing to be honest, and as long As we have enough safeguards that can protect these things, I understand what the hype that people are giving right now about the idea that that there's going to be mass ignoring of court orders. That hasn't really happened to the degree that I think people have been saying. I'm not trying to downplay the things that have happened that we will talk about. There's still good news in a lot of this. And a lot of these were test cases. They were stress tests. And so far, the system has passed them for the most part.

0:12:34 Matt: I just wanted to make those points about those indictments, about DOJ, about where things are at with that. The targeting of big law across the board, universal wins. Referencing that up front.

0:12:44 Thomas: They don't even deserve those freaking wins.

0:12:47 Matt: No, I know. They didn't even fight for themselves. It was just a few of them. Perkins Coie, General Block, Wilmer Hale, Sussman Godfrey, and the American Bar Association were all the ones who actually called the bluff and stood up to the administration. Everybody else caved. And there were a lot of other people named in firms.

0:13:00 Thomas: We won? Are you sure?

0:13:01 Matt: Yeah.

0:13:01 Thomas: Because we already kind of gave up. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, sure.

0:13:05 Matt: It's great news because as we talked about with Liz, these are the institutions that should be able to best defend themselves. And at least enough of them did. The judges that these cases were in front of were not having it. This is something the judges can see right through. They knew what was going on and they don't want lawyers targeted this way. I don't actually believe this is going to happen, but I would hope it would give lawyers who've been afraid to speak out a little more room to do that. And I would encourage them to do that. Your freedom of speech remains intact for this. I don't work with major government contracts. I do not need the federal government to like me to do my job. In fact, it is kind of the other way most of the time. So I am just used to that. That is how it is. All right. So let me talk about my home turf, of course. We will talk about immigration for a bit. This is obviously the primary Trump mission, right? Immigration has permeated everything. It is what DOJ was completely revamped under Bondi to do, to just have every agency in the Department of Justice in one way or another involved in going after immigration cases. And before I go any further, I should mention, since we are getting into some of the individual granular cases here, here. Just Security has a pretty good litigation tracker. The New York Times has another one as well. AP is keeping one that hasn't been updated since November 14th. Come on, AP. Come on. You can do better than that. Just running down the most recent 575 entry tracker, just to give you an idea of the numbers here. Most of these have not gone to the merits. Almost all of them have not gotten to the merit. And not a single one of these cases has actually been formally resolved on the merits in favor of the plaintiff. But that's because we're only in December. It's going to be a little while before we get all the way to the point where we can conclusively say either the Supreme Court has taken it or declined to take it. But as it is, 93 of these cases, these policies have been temporarily blocked. When I say policies, I mean executive actions of some kind, things that the government is trying to do. 26 blocked pending appeal, 44 permanently blocked. Only 44 out of the 575 cases they're pending have not been blocked pending appeals. Some of those are big losses, but there's more than not. The visuals on this are pretty good. When you look at the chart that the AP has, it is a lot of red. Most of this is being blocked.

0:14:53 Matt: Most of THIS is working because there's so much overstep. The one that I'm particularly excited about is the issue that I've brought up now several times that matters quite a lot for mass deportation in this country and for Trump's efforts. And that is the attempt to rewrite the Immigration and Nationality Act to say that everybody in this county who came without permission is what they call an arriving alien and has to be held without bond.

0:15:12 Matt: We've already talked about your Hurtado, which is the BIA decision. We talked about it just a few days ago on Friday about the Board of Immigration Appeals and how the one place for Chevron deference has really worked out because across the board, circuit courts have not been having it. And we do have now a class action that's been declared. Immigration judges aren't implementing it yet, but it looks like we're pretty close to having it locked in. But it is a class action that definitively defines this class and says that anybody who's being treated this way as an arriving alien who's been classified under INA 235 when they should be classified under INA 236 is eligible for bond has to be given a bond hearing. And this is great news because otherwise what we've had to do in every one of these cases, and we've handled quite a few of these now, is we've Had to file habeas petitions individually for each one of These cases.

0:15:52 Matt: And I will tell you in Boston, it's getting to the point where you file one of the habeas Petitions, the judge will wait long enough to make sure the government is responding the way that they think they're going to respond. And they're not even holding a hearing. They're just immediately granting bond hearings because the judges here are so fed up with all this. It's still a huge block. It is a major problem for people who are in custody, especially if they can't begin to afford lawyers.

0:16:11 Matt: They can't seek habeas by themselves for the most part. It has been a real obstacle. That's coming, and I'm sure it's going to be reviewed. We'll see what happens as it goes up the chain. Just to see the lower courts, and that's really the theme of this episode, is that we can count on the lower court, even in some of the places you would think you might not be able to.

0:16:25 Thomas: Yeah I mean that Texas decision that I referenced like we said was a Trump judge. When things get bad enough that even pretty right -wing judges are like, I don't know about this.

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0:18:17 Matt: The Alien Enemies Act, we should talk about because because I made sure to follow that very closely at the time. I still see this as a very significant move. That was another stress test. I've seen people referencing that people are still being deported to Sikon. That's just not true. We track this stuff pretty closely. And I'm not saying this was great. There was, I think, about 219 men, I thinks, were sent total down to SIKON. None of those people are there anymore.

0:18:36 Matt: The Venezuelans were negotiated out. They're back in Venezuela, which is not necessarily ideal since some of them were asylum seekers, but it's better than being in SIKon.

0:18:43 Thomas: Wasn't aware of that.

0:18:43 Matt: The Salvadorans are still there because they're Salvadoran citizens, I think.

0:18:47 Thomas: I do remember a lot of confusion and worry that like we didn't even really know the extent of how many people got sent over there. Do we ever track that down or?

0:18:55 Matt: There's now been a kind of a conclusive reckoning because there are people, there's a Blue Sky account and many other people, I think, that are just watching deportation flights that are trying to put things together and figure out who's going where and where they're going after that. Advocates are just in touch all of the time about this stuff. The ACLU and the other advocacy groups that litigate this stuff are constantly watching it. Most of these deportations were over the course of one weekend.

0:19:14 Thomas: Oh really? Just that one?

0:19:16 Matt: Yeah, that one time. Right.

0:19:16 Thomas: Because Because I guess the courts put a pause on it pretty quickly. Is that why?

0:19:19 Matt: And there were a couple of others, slightly different legal situations within the next couple of weeks. The use of the Alien Enemies Act was shut down right away by Judge Boesberg, famously, in DC, and then onward by all the other courts to look at it, including the Fifth Circuit, had decided that we could not use the Alien Alien Enemies Act because it turns out, even as we record this today, we are not at war with Venezuela. Let's hope that remains true as you're listening to this. As long as we're not actually at war mit Venezuela, we can't just designate these people enemy combatants and deport them without a hearing. The thing I wanted to update on the JGG case, which is the main Alien Ennemies Act litigation, there's several of these cases. This is the one where Judge Boasberg, who was ultimately found, he did not have, and I don't agree with this, but he didn't have the full authority to do this because it should have been brought in Texas where they were being held and not in DC where Boasburg is. But Boasborg did still have a court order in place that they defied. And this is the one that people kept coming back to. This is the one where Emile Beauvais basically said, F the court.

0:20:10 Thomas: A lot of profanity. Yeah.

0:20:11 Matt: I'm trying to respect our beliefs on this Monday as well.

0:20:14 Thomas: Someone's being professional, at least. This is not me.

0:20:16 Matt: The administration was very annoyed because they're trying to make the point that, well, ultimately it was found that Boasberg didn't have that authority, but it doesn't matter. It was a court order that was in place. So contempt proceedings are going forward.

0:20:29 Thomas: As in like, well, we should have been able to disobey it because we were pretty sure that it wasn't good. Okay. Yeah, that's courts love that. You just disobey. And as long as you're kind of like relatively sure that the order was going to eventually be overturned, they're like, oh, yeah, you're right.

0:20:32 Matt: Right. Turns out it was bad. Right, sure.

0:20:44 Thomas: That's just advisory, really.

0:20:44 Matt: Yeah, I was just joking around. Some interesting things have happened that I wanted to mention on JGG because, again, I see this as such a good sign. And very committed advocate for justice. I mean, you can tell just the way he writes, the way that he's been so on top of this, his concern about the fact that these planes were sent out after his order. On the 26th of November, the government filed something in which they acknowledged in these contempt proceedings that Kristi Noem personally authorized these flights.

0:21:10 Matt: That really escalates things. It looks like Todd Blanch and Emil Bove also provided direct legal advice as deputy attorney general and principal associate deputy attorney in general, and then Noem signed off on it as well. So this was top of government. This wasn't just a last minute thing of an ICE agent going rogue and deciding, let's just put these people on a plane anyway. They saw a court order and they directed them to go.

0:21:29 Thomas: I feel like it would be kind of hard for like an ice agent to be like, nah, put them on a plane by the authority vested in this badge here. That takes like organization and orders.

0:21:36 Matt: People, a lot of people.

0:21:40 Thomas: And yeah, that seems like a thing that a random agent couldn't do.

0:21:43 Matt: And maybe that flight crew doesn't want to be involved in a kidnapping. Their defense really is just that somehow that

0:21:46 Thomas: Maybe it's nothing. Yeah. It's, we didn't want to

0:21:54 Matt: Boesberg order was not clear or that he has ordered that Kristi Noem and the others file affidavits specifically explaining themselves in contempt proceedings. He's going to refer it on. Now, this again, as we've talked about, the judge has independent authority apart from DOJ to do this potentially to enforce his own contempt proceedings?

0:22:05 Thomas: Just like by the power of like judgy stuff.

0:22:10 Matt: Yeah, potentially. There's a bit of a possibility here. I want to see if those affidavits have been filed. At the time that we're recording, they are due. They're about half hour overdue. They filed these late before, these kinds of things. I'm sure they're still trying to figure out what their story is going to be. But they had until the end of the day on the 5th of December to file these statements. And I've been very curious to see them. And as of now, Court Listener does not see that they have them. I am not seeing anybody's mentioning that they've come out yet. We'll continue to follow that. Maybe we'll have a breaking update. But my point is that the fact remains that we have this commitment to the rule of law that we are still capable of holding the people at the very highest parts of government accountable for violating a court order, because that was the real Rubicon moment that we all kind of were expecting, was that there'd be an immigration -related court order or certainly a military -related code order, and that the administration would just completely ignore it and get away with it. And Boasberg is holding the line and making sure that they don't to the extent that he can. I'm not downplaying the seriousness of it, because Seacott in El Salvador, the facility they were sent to, is hell. It's a terrible place, and nobody should have been there. Nobody should be there now.

0:23:07 Matt: It's a massive violation of due process rights. It's one of the worst places in in the Western Hemisphere for human rights, but it was not a continuous thing, and it was a test case. Now, what they're doing instead, as we talked about a few days ago, is they're now just deporting people to third countries, potentially Uganda and other places, and some of those people upon arrival are being detained, so that is still happening. Those are at least after some kind of due process after court hearings. You know, an Enemies Act allowed essentially nothing but possibly a very bare habeas case to be brought, and even that had to be something you had to bring yourself. That is sort of the worst possible. If we're going to anything that looks like war with Venezuela. My concern is that they will try to resurrect this. But the law still requires that there be a declared war or there be some sort of incursion or actual military action, not just the presence of Venezuelans in the country. We'll see. Keep watching this. While we're at it, I just want to mention Kilmer Obrego Garcia, of course, who became sort of the face of all of this because he was absolutely among these people, the one who was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. There was a specific order in place about that. He's being allowed to proceed with a motion for vindictive prosecution and the criminal charges that were brought against Yeah,

0:24:05 Thomas: I would hope so. Gosh.

0:24:09 Matt: They were so bad. They're so thin. That's just in the criminal case. In the immigration case, DHS is just thrashing around like they're just not getting anywhere. They are trying to send him to Uganda. Government of Costa Rica had to deny that they had said they wouldn't take him because there was an offer on the table. Obviously, Costa Rica, if you have to go somewhere, that's going to be a much better option for a Spanish speaker from Central America than Uganda.

0:24:28 Matt: Costa Rica is willing to take him and they were trying to work out some kind of thing where he would enter a plea deal and be allowed to go to Costa Rica which he didn't want to take obviously or that he would just be sent to Uganda Conda. We're waiting on an evidentiary hearing that was held

0:24:37 Thomas: Almost they're just trying to like, if they could get it off the books, then maybe they never get busted for the fact that it was a totally bogus prosecution. You think?

0:24:47 Matt: In their interest to brim it at this point. If you get extensive findings on vindictive prosecution, that's not going to be great either. But it clearly was a vindictative prosecution. We talked about this before that they essentially manufactured the evidence they needed after they'd already done this to him. And they went and got a bunch of gang members who were facing deportation to C. Conda themselves to try to put the blame on something to say that he was involved in some kind of trafficking. And nobody actually believes that. Speaking of other immigration cases that we've been tracking over the course of the year, there's the sort of package of cases involving people being deported for ideological views for their politics, essentially. Rameza Ozturk here in Boston for writing an editorial on the Tufts paper. Mahmoud Khalil for his work in Colombia as an advocate. This all comes down to Gaza.

0:25:26 Matt: This is what the administration is trying to do. Mohsen Madawi, who was arrested as a naturalization interview. These people are all at home right now. They are not in federal custody. These test cases have not worked out so far. There's a long road ahead on these because, as we've discussed, the government is trying to proceed on this obscure provision of the Immigration Nationality Act, which only has has one published case on it. So it's provision under 8 U .S .C. 1227C, in which essentially if you present, you yourself would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States just by being in the United States. That's quite a reach, but as we've discussed, that really only requires a letter from the Secretary of State. The immigration court for Khalil did find that that letter was enough, but that's going to be reviewed by an actual court pretty soon. And as we have been talking about, that doesn't have to be deferred to.

0:26:09 Matt: There have to be limits to what this provision can do. It can't just be, I hope that the Secretary of State can just say whatever he wants about a given individual, and they can just deport him for what he believes. That's something to watch. I think that they thought they were in for an easier time when they sent these people down to the Fifth Circuit.

0:26:22 Matt: But because in the habeas cases, the lawyers who acted very quickly and kept their cases for habeas purposes up here in the Northeast, they were able to get out. I am somewhat optimistic about what could happen, ultimately, with foreign policy grounds. It's going to be a lot of litigation. But the important thing is that these people are at home. They're not in federal custody. There have been a few of these. I'm naming the three big ones that people are familiar with. There've been a couple of others. But this has not been a widespread thing because it takes a lot of government resources to target somebody like that, knowing there's going to be this kind of litigation around their case and this kind OF activism. And I think the public outcry has been very helpful. And it's to the point that Rameza Osterich just the other day here in Boston was in federal court trying to get her student visa reinstated. And that'd be a big victory if she can do that.

0:27:00 Matt: And if she could get that far, you know, when she's facing this pending charge about foreign policy deportability, I think there's something here. I consider that to be a, a big win across the board. And of course, got to mention William Young's decision here in the American Association of University Professors of Rubio. The federal decision we talked about a few weeks ago in which the judge came out swinging no uncertain terms, said you cannot deport people for ideological beliefs. And it's especially significant here in Massachusetts with the number of university students we have and the amount of activism we have right now on Gaza and other things.

0:27:28 Matt: Lower courts doing what they do. Speaking of birthright citizenship, we've covered this plenty as well, but this is not an unmitigated win, but we got up to the point where the Supreme Court did not want to touch the merits of the birthright citizenship executive order on January 20th. As of the day we're recording, they have have taken up Trump v. Barber, which is a New Hampshire federal case that blocked the order, because even with all the concerns that we had about Trump v Casa, which was the case that was originally argued over the summer, where they did find that you can't have a nationwide injunction in many of these cases, judges immediately found ways around it the way that I thought they might. So the order has never gone into effect. And there has been this order from New Hampshire, I think there's another couple as well, that found ways to craft an order that could work, that could survive what the Supreme Court had said we couldn't do. They are going to be taking the merits. And I remain optimistic and have been from the beginning. And maybe we'll watch how this goes and we'll see how the justices respond. It looks like it's going to be argued in January. Certainly we'll be following that. But the merits are stupid and they've always been stupid. That one will be a real test of where the Supreme Court is at. And I understand the dumerism of people saying the Supreme court is just going to do whatever they're going to do. But I think they understand how bad it would be to uphold this one.

0:28:31 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

0:28:31 Matt: So I think that's I'm feeling good about that. A quick selection of other immigration cases we haven't necessarily talked about. Bracey v. Noem, D .C. District Court, again continuing the theme of January 20th executive orders. More of them I think at this point, especially the immigration ones, have been partially or completely struck down or stopped that have survived. And I think that's a good thing. The January 20th proclamation guaranteeing the state's protection against invasion. Some dramatic language here talking about how because we're in the middle of some kind of invasion that we can do extraordinary things.

0:28:57 Thomas: Hmm, we are.

0:28:59 Matt: Yeah, it turns out. The court found in that case that one of the things you can't do, even if you think you're being invaded, is just start deporting people. You can block people from coming under INA 212F. There's a very broad power for that. It's going to be tested again in the order trying to keep people from 19 countries, what he calls third-world countries from coming. 212F doesn't necessarily allow you to deport people en masse. It also doesn't allow youと keep people from seeking the forms of protection that are underneath asylum, which include withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, because those are guaranteed under international law. And the court had defined that maybe you can limit access to asylum for people who didn't come through ports of entry, possibly. The parts of the injunction that protected withholding removal and CAD have survived. So people can still seek those forms of relief and they're not getting deported en masse without getting to see a judge. ICE in in churches under the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting v. Noam. Kind of an interesting case we didn't talk about, but the Quakers, the Baptists, and the Sikhs teamed up. Sounds like some kind of joke, because they're all committed to common values. The Quakers and Sikhs certainly are committed to pacifism and social justice and immigrant rights. And the court found that because the ICE enforcement memo that allows them to go into places, sensitive locations is what they used to call it, like schools, churches, hospitals, the injunction was actually narrowed down to the plaintiffs only in this case. But the plaintiffs actually cover quite a lot of people, if you're talking about Quakers Baptist and Sikh, that ICE can't do enforcement on. And And the only reason they did not broaden the injunction to all churches is because they couldn't find that all faiths and all churches are committed to social justice and immigrant rights, which is pretty sad. No, no, that is correct. There are plenty of churches that seem to support this stuff. They said, basically, as long as you can show this is something that's important to you and you're going to be organizing for immigrants or in any way supporting them. Sanctuary City funding, I think we talked about as well. San Francisco v. Trump is an absolute rerun, like a complete shot -for -shot remake of a case from 2018 where they had an executive order under review, which was trying to cut off funding to sanctuary cities, cities that wouldn't cooperate with ICE. This was found to be an overreach. Same judge, same court. And he's like, what are you doing here? Same thing. What are we doing?

0:30:23 Thomas: I mean, you're not wrong. They're not wrong. It's like, gosh, we keep making sequels. Can you just somebody do something original?

0:30:57 Matt: Something original. Yeah. Well, I will say this next one is pretty original. LG ML v. Nome. DHS tried over the course of a weekend to deport several hundred kids to Guatemala. That was a new one. The Office of Refugee Resettlement. And advocates got word of this and immediately got to action. And there was an immediate injunction to stop that. So it's become a preliminary injunction that's still holding. I don't think that's going to change. Something else to mention, the Harvard case in which DHS tried to just revoke all student visas for Harvard, which was ridiculous, that was blocked pretty much immediately and remains blocked.

0:31:27 Thomas: I don't even remember that one. That's so dumb.

0:31:29 Matt: That was a big one. That was a scary one for a minute there. It was one of those like out of nowhere things where we're just being told and there was just advocates were just immediately sprung to action because Harvard is a major factor in Massachusetts, obviously, obviously. And foreign students contribute so much to our economy and our culture. And the idea that You could just say, you don't get any more student visas because we don't like the things you're doing. I mean, that was just way too much. I knew that wouldn't survive, but it's just good to know that was immediately blocked as well. Speaking of, I guess I should also talk about the challenges to Harvard.

0:31:57 Thomas: All right. Why don't we take a break and then we'll, we're going to Harvard. Finally. I've always, yeah.

0:32:02 Matt: That was easy.

0:32:03 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. It's, yeah, why are you, it's not, is this, if it's hard?

0:32:06 Matt: It's

0:32:09 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:32:09 Thomas: All right, Matt, let's go to Harvard, what's going on?

0:32:12 Matt: A 15 minute red line trip for me. Harvard, the UC system and Columbia have all earned temporary restraining orders against the administration for trying to withhold billions of dollars, mostly for DEI kind of stuff, but also for not restricting speech in the way that the administration would want about Gaza and other things. So I think that's well worth mentioning. We haven't talked about funding in a while because obviously, as you know, Roosevelt and the Office of Management and Budget were very intent on just trying to withhold as much federal money as possible from as many organizations as possible. So I want to run down some of the wins that we didn't really talk about for those. National Council of Nonprofits v. OMB, big win there, temporary restraining order. New York et al v. Trump, there was a whole bunch of different nonprofits that were able to get their funding back. TR on favor of the states. State of California versus the Department of Transportation, Summer judgment in favor of the states from DOT threatening to cut funding for states that wouldn't do immigration enforcement, very much like the San Francisco case, which is obviously something you can't do. Stuff that we would expect would happen in a functional country has happened. Federal judges have stepped up. A lot of these, I got to give credit, Rhode Island and Massachusetts and D.C., a lot of These we're talking about are all from those federal courts. And then this other sort of bucket of cases around Doge. And you did mention the other day, and I saw that article you were talking about, that Doge has just kind of been integrated into other agencies.

0:33:22 Thomas: That was a, I ended up sending you the Wired article that says Doge isn't dead. Here's what its operatives are doing now. So what did you make of that? That was kind of, we put a pin in that on Friday.

0:33:33 Matt: The sort of immediate primary mission of taking a chainsaw to places like USAID is gone, but I think that there is something more insidious here where it's harder to trace because it is still people that are on the payroll of something that seems to resemble Doge. An IRS employee told Wired that they buried into the agencies like ticks, which is a pretty good analogy, unfortunately. The most important thing, I think, immediately for Doge was that it seemed to be a way to steal our data. There have been good blocks on

0:33:59 Thomas: Hands off my data. I only let Meta and Google and every, literally every company take that.

0:34:01 Matt: That at Google. Yeah, that's right. But they were trying to make like a super meta. They were talking about ending data siloing. And when you combine that with AI and with the kind of ICE surveillance that is coming, it is scary stuff. So Center for Taxpayer Rights has kept the IRS from sharing information with ICE.

0:34:15 Thomas: Not good. Bad news. Oh, nice.

0:34:20 Matt: New York sued has stopped the Treasury Department financial information from being shared. The American Federation of Teachers sued Doge and got a lot of personal information protected. That's a good start, at least. You probably also saw, we hadn't talked about yet, the major case involving federal employees. The judge found that they were unlawfully fired, did not restore them. But I think something like 24 ,000 of them, there was a finding at least as a judgment that they weren't unlawful fired. And that's something. I was looking at some of the government agencies, some of them I hadn't even heard of, that have successfully fought these attempts. There was a White House order called Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy from March, which eliminated, unlawfulness, obviously just completely eliminated these agencies that Congress had designated funds to, including the United States Agency for Global Media, which I had not heard of before. But the person who was appointed to run the United States Agency of Global Media is Kari Lake, governor candidate who, like many Republicans, has called for journalists to be jailed. So why not put her in charge of one of our journalistic agencies?

0:35:17 Thomas: Was she the one that was the news lady?

0:35:18 Matt: Yes, she was a news lady.

0:35:19 Thomas: Okay. So, you know, she's an expert.

0:35:22 Matt: That agency includes things like Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America. This is the one where I'm not as excited. Radio Free Europe was actually pretty much run by the CIA until 1972. It's always been an American propaganda arm, But Voice of America isn't that bad. And generally speaking, these are things that should exist. There's no reason they shouldn't. They don't cost that much anyway. The Inter -American Foundation, big injunction, restored their original director. This is one of many places where Trump tried to fire somebody and was told he couldn't do it. That might have to be something I revisit because there's so many of those cases in different places where courts said you couldn't fire the person you thought you could fire. Be heard on the day that this episode airs, the slaughter case, actually, which is quite a name for it.

0:35:59 Matt: That's the one about independent agencies that we've been previewing for a while here. Whether Humphrey's executor, the 90 -year -old president, will survive that prevents the president from firing members of certain independent agencies, including potentially the Federal Reserve, which was the scariest one. I think that's really not something the president should be doing.

0:36:15 Thomas: See, my memory is that was the one where the justices were like, well, that might affect us.

0:36:20 Matt: Yeah, that could be bad. Right.

0:36:20 Thomas: So no, you can't do that for no reason, but the other ones you can for no reason. Cause we feel like it. That's my memory. Is that right? Wow.

0:36:26 Matt: That was kind of a surprise a couple weeks ago that SCOTUS found that the head of the copyright office could stay, but they basically just said, we're going to wait on this. But they had been previously saying, essentially, that Humphrey's executor was already dead, which is not a good sign for these arguments, but we'll keep a watch on those. But that is just for a certain kind of independent agency. For a lot of this stuff, when we're talking about the funding, like the Inter -American Foundation, that's something where it just was clearly illegal because only the board of directors could fire. The president didn't have that kind of direct authority. One I really liked that I hadn't heard of was the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the IMLS, permanent injunction in Rhode Island v. Trump that has just become permanent as of November 24th. And all of their grants were just restored this week. It is the only federal agency dedicated to the nation's libraries and museums.

0:37:06 Matt: So you can see why Trump would want to get rid of it. Who needs them? Arbitrary and capricious to shut this down. Obviously, they have a mandate from Congress, like all these other agencies. Just another little win for the good guys there. The Gulf of America suit I've been following.

0:37:17 Thomas: I forgot about that.

0:37:19 Matt: The way this came down was because the Associated Press refused to use Gulf of America for the entire Gulf, which is still the Gulf of Mexico. We've talked about it before. I think this stuff matters. They're trying to change reality. It's been limited somewhat, but the Associated Press has been allowed back in the building. He was trying to keep them completely out of all press briefings. And the argument now is about if the president has private space, basically if the Oval Office and Air Force One are his, or if they belong to us, I think they belong to us, I'm pretty sure, last I checked. AP is still now being allowed to participate in media events at least, right?

0:37:41 Thomas: Private space, but it's not a private space if it's some media what's the legal term there what does that even

0:37:53 Matt: So they're saying like the East Room, that the press office, you know, where they actually are supposed to do press business, they can't be kept out of. But if Trump wants to have the discretion to allow certain people into the Ovil Office or not, he can't allow all the media into the oval office all the time. If you're saying you want to give a sit down interview to Fox, but not to MSNBC, right? Then you have that right, always.

0:38:04 Thomas: Mean sure yeah yeah yeah that's fine

0:38:12 Matt: It's not great, but it's not the worst. I did want to mention out of the Jimmy Kimmel fallout after the Charlie Kirk shooting, after they tried to fire him, Disney's stock went down $5 billion. It is not great for Disney, but that was a direct consequence of people not being happy about their immediate caving to something that was not even really criticism. Also, a case that had missed my radar, and I think a lot of people's, Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence v. Bondi.

0:38:35 Matt: The Violence Against Women Act allows a lot funding for support for people who are survivors of domestic violence or abuse. They got an injunction here from the coalition against any attempt to block grant funding to anything involving gender ideology under the executive order about that or any kind of DEI. So basically, you know, if it looks like you're providing services, I guess, to non -white people or you're accounting for gender or race in the way that you provide services, the court pointed out in the injunction that something even as simple as using preferred pronouns while providing social services could kill the grant, right? I mean, that's not good. Yeah, it's terrible. So that's an easy injunction. A lot of this gender stuff, we haven't really talked about as much, but there have been some wins for trans rights in all of this. For the most part, federal prisons attempts to put trans people back into the general population or to put them into prisons of the wrong gender have been blocked.

0:39:22 Matt: So that's very good news for those prisoners. That's obviously the most extreme and potentially harmful, I think, of any of the policies that were targeting trans people. So, that's a good immediate thing. The ban on transgender military service is still blocked. Yeah, and Schilling v. Trump, the plaintiffs got a nationwide preliminary injunction that prohibits the government from enforcing the Trump administration's trans trans military band as to any trans service members.

0:39:34 Thomas: Wow wait it is Yeah you know we interviewed well now ex-trans military member logan who was a military doctor providing health care to trans youth children of military essentially so someone right there in the crosshairs and is is trans himself so uh it was a really interesting interview on uh Serious Inquiries Only if you want to check it out if you want to know more about that that's someone who was in literally like every single different axis of attack in terms of that culture war and it was interesting because I remember him I think I remember him saying like the one that was maybe the most scary was as a medical provider just because they can be really vicious in the stuff that they say toward people who are just providing basic medicine to trans kids really good interviews check that out everyone if you're interested in it.

0:40:28 Matt: Important perspective. Yeah. Wanted to mention along the same lines, the Maine lawsuit that actually has just settled. USDA restored funding to trans athletes. There was that Title IX challenge, keeping trans girls from participating in girls' sports. That was pretty much an immediate win for Maine. And I think that that state should keep standing up for trans rights. There's no reason not to. And then on our way out here, we've got the National Guard cases that I've been watching pretty closely. There's a lot of whiplash back and forth on these. The best one so far is out of Illinois with the Seventh Circuit. That is the one place where we've got a clear block on National Guard deployment. They're still allowed to federalize, but they're not allowed to deploy.

0:41:07 Thomas: What's the distinction there? What does that mean?

0:41:08 Matt: They could potentially federalize them, butthey can't deploy them for this purpose. They have been sent home for the holidays. The Illinois National Guard here were deployed, but they're still technically under the control of the federal government, potentially for other purposes. D .C. National Guard has been enjoined from being used for basic crime control. Obviously, that's a posse comitatus issue.

0:41:25 Matt: They can't bring in guardsmen from other states to do it either, So that injunction is going into effect coming up here. That's in just a couple of days. I do want to shout out, of course, once again, Charles Breyer for finding that the president was in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, first time that has ever happened at that scale from a federal judge in U.S. history. Ninth Circuit stayed that, unfortunately. We're going to keep watching that. The Attorney General of California did get a final ruling blocking the unlawful deployment of the California National Guard to Portland because both states, of coarse, objected to that. As we've discussed, the Trump administration just kind of pretended that the governors had signed off on these things and sent them in.

0:41:55 Thomas: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was the one that was like, they didn't like quite forge a signature, but they did almost that. What was that?

0:42:00 Matt: The statute requires it to go through the office of the governor and

0:42:04 Thomas: Just like put the name on it from

0:42:04 Matt: They basically just put at the top. Right. Yeah. They're like through Gavin Newsom's office or whatever. Yeah.

0:42:08 Thomas: The desk of yeah.

0:42:10 Matt: It's so weird. Like it's just so obviously illegal. Again, this is really important that we keep the rule of law there. And again, this kind of stuff with the military and the things we're talking about, the boat strikes. This is getting to the edges of where courts feel like they have power. I do understand that when it comes to military issues and deployments. But there are limits. There have to be limits and we're finding them. And that's good.

0:42:29 Matt: So I'm happy about that. That. I want to keep watching all this stuff. I understand there's a lot of reason for pessimism, but I've been feeling pretty good in the last couple of months, especially since the election and since the Epstein stuff. We've been feeling a real change in the energy. And I think people are really starting to realize that this can end, this entire thing. Even just something as simple as that, I'm not going to say victory because it was still a loss in Tennessee in that race in which they did everything they possibly could to crack those districts and split them up and keep any possibility of democratic win. And they were still very close, like ridiculously close. The numbers I've seen are that in the midterms of this continues, that we've got a very good chance of really making some difference here. So as always, the rule of law only exists as long as we believe it does.

0:43:07 Thomas: It's only going to hold on for so long. We need a change in government. We need a massive change and it's not good enough to just have a bare minimum house majority or something. It's not nothing. It'll help. But like voting is a thing we need to do. I know I always harp on it. It's not the only thing we need to it's not magically going to solve everything. We have to do it though.

0:43:28 Thomas: And it can, if we all just decided, I get it. I might feel pie in the sky, but like there are a lot of people who don't vote and there are lots of people that are fed up. And if we got the right numbers, the Texas numbers always blow me away. You know, when you look at Texas as a state, potentially in terms of non -voters, there's way more left voters than you would think. I think they're kind of convinced of their own helplessness in a way, you know, know, by the system and by whatever. And it's like, if we could get kind of a revolution going in terms of voter numbers and take control in a serious way where we could pack the court, where we can get rid of the filibuster, where we Could do actual things, not moderate, lukewarm, nothing. I'm not talking about that. That doesn't do anything.

0:44:05 Thomas: We're all, we're all agreed there getting a bunch of Kyrsten Sinema types or whatever in power. That's going to do nothing. Getting a bunch Of Democrats in power, some of whom are going to be those very moderate ones, but will still vote with us, that is going to do something.

0:44:17 Matt: You know what I want is a house full of young, energetic Democrats that just want to start bringing impeachment proceedings against everybody from Pam Bondi to Kash Patel to Pete Hegseth, obviously criminal proceedings against Hegseth too someday.

0:44:28 Thomas: Someday.

0:44:28 Matt: These people can all be impeached. And even if you don't think the impeachment is going to go anywhere, you can create committees. You can create a record. You can bring out what they're doing. You can put this in people's faces every day, the way the Democrats should be right now. Wouldn't it be great if there were two branches of government that weren't completely terrible?

0:44:43 Thomas: That would be nice.

0:44:44 Matt: I'm with you. As you said, the rule of law is holding for now. I think it's going to bridge enough that we can get to this and we can vote better people in. I know that there are people listening to this who think that all of this is naive and that this is just electoralism. But as you said voting isn't that much work. It's pretty easy to do and it turns out that a change in Congress would actually make a difference here because one of the reasons that we're suffering so badly is because we have this Congress that just refuses to do anything. Except apparently release the Epstein files. We'll be watching watching that and see what happens.

0:45:11 Matt: We'll see what we actually get. That's what I've got for today. I think there really is a whole other potential episode here with a lot of other things and subjects and cases and things that are going to be developing in the next couple of months. I should mention the tariff argument too, that looked pretty good for the good guys on that one as well, to the point that Costco and a bunch of other companies, meant to mention this before, just filed suit to try to get their money back. They're that optimistic at this point, I think, because you have to go through a special process to get your tariffs back from customs.

0:45:33 Thomas: From? Who? Because they, okay, gotcha. Wow.

0:45:38 Matt: They are feeling optimistic that that's ultimately going to work out after the arguments we discussed past November 5th. Yeah. So, you know, we shouldn't assume automatically that everything's bad all the time and that doom is upon us.

0:45:50 Thomas: It's close, but we're keeping it at bay. Keep the doom at bay, yeah.

0:45:53 Matt: It is close. That's right. I think of this as like people who are obsessed with dystopian fiction, right? Because if you read enough dystopia and fiction, if you think about that world, everything's inevitable. If you think that climate change is inevitable, it will be. It's just all along the same things. Let's keep up the fight and let's keep going.

0:46:06 Thomas: All right, well, a lot of good victories there, Matt. Thanks for taking us through this. Thanks for listening, everybody, and yeah, nice lift to our spirits it's there. Weirdly, the courts are the place now. I never thought I'd see the day. All right. Well, thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you probably on, I'm guessing, Wednesday for a rapid response, maybe. One way or the other on YouTube, you'll see our shining faces. So I'm excited for that. And, uh, we'll, we're going to see you then. Thanks for listening and

0:46:31 Matt: All right. See you soon. Let me make sure I get that.

0:47:09 Thomas: Make sure a bomb's not about to be dropped on Boston.