Behold My Articles of Impeachment, Three

Transcript

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

0:00:02 Thomas: Getting up there and calling the victim of the shooting a domestic terrorist completely without basis and just lying, that's impeachable. That's absolutely impeachable. Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 1226. I'm your host Thomas Smith. With me as always is immigration attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:17 Matt: Defendants' actions force such an impermissible choice. Use state or local law enforcement resources to carry out the federal government's civil immigration priorities or accept occupation by federal troops. I'm feeling real impeachy about it too, but it is. Yeah, a lot of different ways. And Minnesota, of course, fighting back against what ICE is doing to it right now.

0:00:42 Thomas: I just impeach you. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm so glad. We don't get that much to cling on to, but these impeachments are a big deal. You'll tell me exactly where they all stand. I've just seen a bunch of headlines about impeachment, and that's good. That's a good thing. And I think we can have a bit of a positive episode today because, you know, lots of different fighting back. Yeah, lots to talk about there. Excited, as always. I'm just feeling positive. We had a cool interview. It's not going to be out for a minute, but we interviewed some journalist who's covered Antifa on Where There's Woke.

0:01:11 Matt: Sending good thoughts to everybody in Minneapolis and St. Paul right now is a pretty strong suit. I think we can go through it a little bit. Cool. Wow. Yeah. We didn't even talk about this, but that is exactly what today's footnote is about.

0:01:26 Thomas: And I'm just, you know, I'm reminded of like how many amazing people have come before us, whether it's the punk rockers fighting skinheads and punk concerts and all that. And I don't know, there's just there is a lot there's there's not a ton to be positive about. But when you see, you Know, I just had a conversation where it's like, oh, man, there is such a history of people fighting fascism, you know, and it's it's so unknown to the mainstream America, you know, it's It's so unknown, the amount of like fighting Nazis and fascism that's gone on in this country. And I don't know, I'm just feeling a little positive from that. So I'm excited to record today. Oh, we didn't even plan this.

0:02:03 Matt: Out is about someone who might risk getting forgotten by history, who stood up to something that, a story that you think you know that actually has a lot more to it. Yeah, got a nice tribute today for someone. Are you sure? It's a good one. It's A Tough Case. Illinois has filed

0:02:05 Thomas: That's so funny. Oh, I love this. I can't wait. Footnotes are already my favorite part anyway, and now it's going to be extra my favorite. Can't wait, all right. Well, we'll take our first break. And of course, you can avoid all the ads and get the goodies, a lot of the movies and all that, patreon.com/seriouspod. Thanks so much to our supporters and we'll Take a Break and get to it. All right, Matt.

0:02:34 Thomas: So, yeah, Minnesota is suing. Give us the kind of the wrinkles of that, the details. I would hope they would. Think they would have a case. You know, they're being invaded by an occupying force, it seems to me. Yeah, yeah.

0:02:46 Matt: A similar case. Chicago is having the same issues, obviously, not to the scale that I think Minneapolis is, but it's certainly been bad. It is very hard to stop immigration enforcement because it is obviously federal law. They're there to enforce it. But I think Minnesota makes some really good points and very much kind of like the impeachment articles we're going to to discuss after this, I do think it's worth putting this on paper and bringing it to a judge, bringing it somebody who can review it and to think about what this actually means. And I think it's also important to step back because we've been really immersed in this story for the last week for obvious reasons. And to remember the context of how we got to the point that the largest immigration enforcement operation in US history kicked off in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, a place which, as the lawsuit points out, has disproportionately many fewer undocumented undocumented immigrants. I mean, as you might imagine. Yeah, that's right. Refugees. Yeah.

0:02:58 Thomas: Well, yeah because the Somali population is all, you know, that's all pretty much going to be documented people, right?

0:03:35 Thomas: Yeah, or citizens or refugees. Yeah, it's like, so what are you doing there?

0:03:38 Matt: Yeah. Right. That's what we're supposed to. I don't think that any refugees except that South

0:03:40 Thomas: What the hell? They did it the right way, didn't they? Isn't that the rightway? Oh, those white farmers.

0:03:48 Matt: African Afrikaners who suffer discrimination. Right? Those are the only people that are refugees anymore. Got to talk about that another time. But yeah, Minneapolis estimates that maybe about one and a half percent of their entire population is undocumented. Now, of course, ICE doesn't just enforce against undocumented people. They do come after people who are here legally that have deportable records. Sure, everybody now. Yeah? But that is kind of a a common misconception that they only enforce against the undocumented. They do enforce against people that have records, and a lot of the stories that you're hearing are about people that have minor records, or major ones, depending, but usually the minor. They're deportable, yeah. So

0:03:51 Thomas: Yeah, geez. Jeez. Yeah. And citizens and yeah, kids and everybody. Yeah, you're right. Good point.

0:04:10 Thomas: So what does that mean? They're grabbing them because they're documented, but they can get kicked out because they committed a crime? Yeah. Well, but at least it's a bastion of

0:04:26 Matt: They can put them in front of an immigration judge and see what they say. This lawsuit, though, really effectively details so many things that are happening. You know, that's part of the whole purpose of these things, right, is to document, and even, it's January 10th, right? This operation kicked off just the week before, really. I mean, and ICE has been very active in Minneapolis, list, but they specifically stated, Noam said on Twitter, that they were going in there because of the fraud, because of all the stuff they'd seen on X, basically. And that's a real concern that I have here, is that a lot of our government, state, local, and federal, is being run by social media, being run by things that people see on social media. Right. X, especially. Yeah. Nowhere better than that. Yeah, yeah. Noam reposted information about this operation, just in case there was any doubt about why they were there. The largest DHS operation is happening right now in Minnesota. Trump and Secretary Noem have rallied DHS law enforcement personnel to keep Americans safe, and in caps, eradicate fraud. Yeah, that's what they're doing on the streets when they're just smashing windows and grabbing fraud. That's what we're seeing. Right. Well,

0:05:00 Thomas: Credibility and good journalism that is X. Yeah? It's just horrible. Yeah eradicate fraud. Is that in their job description? Is that in their mission? Yeah, I know. I know I'm asking naive question, but that isn't something they do, is it? I guess I'm saying does that complicate anything anything in terms of their legal defense, if then I would think you could be like, well, what are you talking about? That's not even what you do here. Oh, okay. Okay. So they could say

0:05:41 Matt: Technically speaking, if people were convicted of fraud, they go and get those people and deport them potentially, right? Yeah. Presumably everybody associated with this has already been caught who's not a citizen that they could deport. This is just an excuse. And this is an excuse to make Somalis a scapegoat, obviously, which is a very fascist thing to do. And as we discussed last episode, this is collective punishment. This is going in and punishing an entire city for a video that somebody made on social media because it got their attention. The claims here are interesting because I'm not aware of anything like this really having been brought before, where a municipality is just saying, you're doing too much here. You're way overtaxing us. Because you think about the Newsom v. California suit, that was Gavin Newsom saying, you're disrupting our operations with National Guard. We can't have the National Guard, there's no reason to have the national guard, right? That wasn't really specifically about immigration officers. That was when we got the famous Kavanaugh stop that we haven't really talked about yet, yet, but the idea that Brett Kavanaugh wrote specifically that you could stop people based on race and other factors. Right. Of course. Yeah. These guys are professionals. Right?

0:05:46 Thomas: That, that they're just, okay, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, because it's such a small thing. It barely inconveniences the person. This is the Kavanaugh stop thing. It's ridiculous. He literally said like, oh yeah, it's just a quick, it can be based on race because it is so easy. It's so simple. Yeah. Are you a citizen? Yes. Oh okay. Sorry for the misunderstanding. That's in his stupid stupid privileged mind, that's what he thinks it is. That's how you think it works. Oh yeah, sorry. Okay. Go about your business. Meanwhile, we see the actual videos of what it is and it's people being like, I'm a citizen. Don't care. I'm abducting you. Yeah. It's really bad. I've

0:06:53 Matt: Yeah. And beating you. They're getting serious injuries out of this. I mean, this is really bad.

0:07:11 Matt: And there are affidavits filed in support of this, dozens of them. There's one just grabbing at random from the Department of Public Works. We've got the head of the Department of Public Work confirming under oath that he knows that ICE stopped one of his work crews and only asked for ID from the non-white workers, right? Something that simple. Just harassing city workers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not how ICE usually does things. And I'm not defending

0:07:27 Thomas: Seen a lot of videos that are just explicit, just out and out racism because they'll literally say you don't sound like you're from around here because of the accent. Yeah, Matt, famous fan fan of ice. Yeah. As the number one fan, they're really letting you down lately, you know?

0:07:38 Matt: ICE. I'm just telling you that this is not their tactic. That's right, right. Got to really set the record straight, guys. That is right. Their usual high standards. But I mean, I know I've discussed this before, but I think that a lot of Americans maybe before this year might have assumed that ICE just does this, that they just go out in the street and randomly grab people, but they haven't had the resources to do that. And we've talked about this on the show before, but they go through lists. Almost all of what they're doing if they're out in the community is they're searching for people that have known convictions that make them deportable and or have prior removal orders that make the deportable. They're just going and trying to find specific people. And when you hear about raids, that's often almost always what it is, is they are going to get one person in the house. But of course, under Trump standards, they're now also grabbing everybody else they can in the House and causing chaos generally. And there's been a lot of talk in Minneapolis about door-to-door raids. But from what I can tell, and I've really been trying to investigate this as far as I can from Boston, I might just have to go to Minneapolis and find out for myself. But I don't think they're doing completely random house-to-house searches, but they're certainly doing random street stops in this Kavanaugh stop kind of way. He did say that, but it's not his call. I think he just wanted to sound as much like a Nazi as possible because that's a super Nazi thing to do. And again, it's indefensible to be stopping people in the street just because they don't sound American or whatever you think. But it's so much even worse to be knocking down doors or even knocking on doors in people's homes. No.

0:07:48 Thomas: Didn't somebody say they were going to, didn't Vance say they're going to go door to door or something? But it's not clear if they're actually doing it. Yeah, yeah. That does seem to be what they want to do. It's just not anywhere that we want to live in. We tried to get them to wear a mask to not kill other people and they did an insurrection over it, but they're gonna go door to door. Like, come on, give me a break. Yeah yeah yeah. That's interesting. So trying to make the

0:09:03 Matt: No. Right. Exactly. To be fair, they're happy to wear a mask to kill people. The assistant city attorney in Minneapolis said there's been over 80 911 calls just in the last month just about federal agents. There's somebody busting my door down or just kidnapped my son or whatever, right? I mean, I don't know who it was. And the Department of Planning and Economic Development had an affidavit saying they're estimating that their business and immigrant communities are suffering 50% to 80% drops in consumer traffic. Huge hit to the city economically. Yeah. Yes. And the city is saying we're losing taxes out of this, all the sales tax. And it's totally legit. It. You know, cities depend on a robust economy, and immigrant economies really support cities like this. There's just a wide range of harm that they're trying to show here. And they're also making the point, and again, I'm not as sympathetic to this as I am to the businesses, but they're saying that the police are basically stretched to the limit now because they have to cover all of this extra bullshit. Even just giving the example of what happened the day that they killed Renee Goode, it basically took up the police department's day, you know, that they had to get involved in something they didn't want anything to do with. But I phrased it that way,

0:09:38 Thomas: The case for like, I don't know, standing or for at least a cause of action kind of thing. Yeah, okay. I hope they phrased it a little bit better than that, but yeah, yeah. I know, I'm just joking. It

0:10:15 Matt: But yeah. They had to cancel 983 days off going through mid-January. It's a lot. The people have

0:10:18 Thomas: Ruined our whole — we had plans. Oh wow. I mean, this, you know, it's not nothing. Yeah. Sure. Add it to the list of bullshit that they're causing. Sure. Yeah, yeah. For protesters. Yeah, yeah. They're like, well,

0:10:30 Matt: To work overtime, sure, and you're going to get stressed out Minneapolis cops. Just making the point here that there's just a lot of different kinds of harm. And I really like the way a lot of this is written. This is filed by Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota. Very cool guy. Defendants' aggressive and militarized surge interferes with the ability of state and local law enforcement to address crime and protect residents' health, welfare, and safety. Defendants' unlawful tactics also undermine public trust in state and local law enforcement because individuals cannot distinguish between ICE activities and local police actions. That's a little too on the nose sometimes, depending on where you're living. Also, a very interesting point about, we were actually talking about this on Wednesday's show, about the legality of going out in public with your face covered. Yes, for protesters, right, generally speaking. We were talking about the legality, and I said, you've got to check your jurisdiction. It turns out there is a Minnesota statute on this. It's section 609.735, and they're making the point that ICE agents are every day in violation of this, and there's nothing they feel like they can do about it because it doesn't allow people to just go out and wear... It's kind of funny, actually, the way it's put. A person's identity is concealed by the person in a public place by means of a robe, mask, or other disguise, unless based on religious beliefs or incidental to amusement, entertainment, protection from weather, or medical treatment is guilty of a misdemeanor. So you can't just go in public with mask on. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah this hood is very important to me. Yeah yes. So we've

0:11:43 Thomas: Well, white nationalism is kind of my religious view. So Christian white nationalism. So Supreme Court will sign off on that. Yeah. That's really interesting. Now, like you led off with, and I have to imagine this is a hugely uphill battle, like you say. I mean, I don't know what. So you talk about all these harms and I get that. But what like what exactly is the like cause of action?

0:12:06 Matt: Got a few counts here. The first is under the 10th Amendment, which of course reserves all rights not in the Bill of Rights to the states. It's a pretty powerful amendment and they're saying that ICE is at this point interfering with Minnesota's abilities to do its own policing and public education because they had to shut down schools and people are terrified to go to school now. One argument I've found very compelling in these cases in any of these is that the idea of unlawful coercion or commandeering, The idea that the federal government is trying to force the states and local governments into complying and removing their sanctuary city jurisdiction policies. And we've talked a little bit before about Printz v. U.S., which had to do with gun policy, and the idea that you can't have the federal government tell state and local officials what to do if you're not funding it, and if you're not giving them more guidance than just telling them to do something on their own time. And so they're saying essentially that the Trump administration is trying to force them through these heavy-handed tactics to repeal their sanctuary city policies. The second count has to do with state equal sovereignty, which is an interesting argument. They're citing Shelby County, the 2013 voting rights case for the idea that the federal government has to treat the states equally. It's basically equal protection between states. You can't single them out for disparate treatment. I think that's compelling. That's what

0:13:09 Thomas: Yeah, that's it. That makes sense. Yeah. No kidding.

0:13:13 Matt: They're doing. Yeah. Right. And that's one of their questions. And they're also making the

0:13:13 Thomas: Especially because California can be like, hey, we got loads of more illegals over here. Like, why are you focused on Minnesota? Yeah.

0:13:24 Matt: Point, of course, that these actions have only really been happening in a big way in cities that are opposed to Trump, that are blue cities, right? And there's obviously a political aspect to this. And that this enforcement action only began when the Supreme Court told Trump that they could not send National Guard troops to Chicago, Portland, or LA. So this was the next best thing, right? Just send out massive militarized federal force like we've never seen before. They write, as set forth above, defendants have targeted Minnesota for disparate treatment relative to other states based on not in any real or legitimate concern for public safety or fraud. Defendants have repeatedly made statements that reflect their true intent to punish Minnesota's elected officials and residents for their perceived political leanings. Yeah, and that's basically

0:14:02 Thomas: Yes. Put in here how they won't let him cooperate with the investigation because they didn't vote for Trump, essentially. Got to be in there.

0:14:10 Matt: What they're saying. And there's some great language here too about police officers who have other things to do are instead being called upon to respond to incidents where tensions have been escalated by defendants' agents roaming the streets, wearing masks, raiding schools, harassing lawful protesters, and shooting unarmed citizens. Our constitutional structure does not contemplate or allow the executive branch of the federal government to punish Minnesota for political differences. That's all true. I don't have any problem with that. I think that's going to be a tough argument. The third count, I think, is a little more powerful, probably, under the Administrative Procedure Act, because under the APA, you can come after both rules that the government makes, but also just the basic way that they carry out their enforcement and how they decide to handle law enforcement generally. So they're saying that clearly, you know, the same kind of thing. They're being singled out that this is wildly disproportionate. And they use the example, too, of the masking thing about how they're just like wildly in violation of state law and they don't even care. Defendants' actions force such an impermissible choice. Use state or local law enforcement resources to carry out the federal government's civil immigration priorities or accept occupation by federal troops. It's quite a statement. This is particularly true in light of threats by President Trump that he has the absolute right to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military, even though there has been no legal basis to do so. These threats suggest that the federal government is attempting to create a pretext for military deployment by provoking civil unrest, which has been our concern since we started talking about the Insurrection Act back in January, maybe this time last year when we did an episode on it. That's been my concern, is that they would use this kind of immigration unrest and provoke things to the point that Trump would have an excuse to call in the Insurrection Act. No, he still hasn't

0:14:31 Thomas: So he still hasn't done that? Okay.

0:15:42 Matt: Fully. The provision of the Insurrection Act that they were using was kind of the hybridized one. It had never been used exactly the way that they were trying to use it in the jurisdictions we were talking about. And so far, that hasn't worked for federalizing state troops. You know, the California thing, when the protests over the CBP actions there, they found it didn't quite rise to that level, right? It wasn't quite close enough. If he had something that looked more extreme, and so far they have been peaceful. They're just people getting out in the streets, making noise and expressing themselves. I was halfway expecting there'd be some kind of preliminary injunction maybe, but this was in front of Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee in Minnesota on Thursday, the day before you're hearing this. She held a preliminary hearing and said she couldn't give an ex parte injunction without giving the federal government time to respond to the complaint. So briefing has to be done by the 22nd of April. We'll see where it goes. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kindof limiting order the way that the California court did in the National Guard case, where they said, you know, here's how you can enforce the law. I want to see these kinds of limits. There is a companion case to this right now that's going up that was filed last month in Tinker v. Noem, and that was filed with the ACLU to protect observers and protesters specifically for their First Amendment rights. And that's becoming more important than ever with everything that's coming out. So they're trying to get class

0:16:48 Matt: Certification on that. That might be hard to do. The way that we're getting all of these videos of the way that ICE is treating just people who are there, who are just not even doing anything, being pulled out of their cars. The best thing that we can hope for right now is if we get a strong court order strictly telling them that they can't do these kinds of abuses. And then we have all of these people, all of these people in Minneapolis out in the streets with their cameras ready to document violations and send them to the court because, you know, federal contempt is real and it is powerful. Yeah. The Minnesota district court. Yeah,

0:16:55 Thomas: Wait. So what court does this go to? Do they just like the district court? So they went there right away and she was not going to issue anything without briefing from the federal government. She's giving them another week for them to kill people and then probably sometime after that. But we're just hoping for some sort of court order that at least can limit stuff. Is that really as much as we can hope for?

0:17:19 Matt: That did work to some degree in California. It helped certainly to get those kinds of limits.

0:17:38 Thomas: I mean, you mentioned a lot of possible damages and causes of action, but it's really all they can hope for is just like a court to say, stop, stop. Knock it off. Sure. Yeah.

0:17:50 Matt: But just to give you an idea what they're asking for at the end here, they want an injunction that they Can't arrest or threaten to arrest anybody who's not subject to lawful immigration arrest without probable cause, threatening or using physical force, including brandishing weapons against people who are not being subject to arrest or where it's not reasonably necessary. Literally, they're just stating the law. They're just saying, we want you to do the things that you're supposed to do legally, but we want a court order behind it. Dispersing individuals engaged in First Amendment protected activity with physical force. They can ask them to move, but they can't actually just start shooting tear gas at them. Pointing firearms at people, using hands-on physical force using chokeholds, seizing or arresting people who were trying to comply with dispersal orders, you know, just like all of this stuff that you should not have to tell a federal law enforcement agent to do. What are we doing now? They're also looking for an injunction requiring them to wear a visible ID, even just an alphanumeric identifier and to wear body cameras.

0:18:12 Thomas: See law. Follow that. It's like, but that's our favorite stuff. Oh, God. Can't do anything. Hmm. That would be nice.

0:18:46 Matt: That's not going to be popular. Yeah. But these are very reasonable asks. They can't tell us to

0:18:47 Thomas: Fascist number one. Fascist. Number two. Yeah. So something. All right.

0:18:55 Matt: Get out of Minnesota as much as everybody would like that at this point. They do have the legal federal right to be there, but they don't have the right to just run wild as a militarized street right now. You got it? Yeah, I'm all about it. There have been, for what it's worth, and we're

0:19:04 Thomas: Well, we'll keep an eye on that. Good effort. And I think we're going to take a break and then talk impeachment. Right. Let's get peachy. All right, well, we will take that break. So all kinds of impeachments. Now, it's funny. I had mainly seen the Kristi Noem one, but you were coming in here with a couple others as well. So we got all kinds of impeachment to talk about. Sure. What do you mean? If they've been filed, then why do you say Democrats? We don't control that, right? Oh, like they don't have

0:19:28 Matt: Not going to talk about this, but there have been three different sets of articles of impeachment filed against Trump. Democrats, for whatever reason, don't feel like they have enough to try to go forward yet. I think they've got more than enough. They're not going anywhere. Right, but they still need to have some kind of quorum amongst them. Yeah, there's not enough motion to even have the Democrats put anything behind it. Obviously, it's not goingto get out of the House, and the purpose of these, all the ones we're going to talk about here, I think the most important thing is to bring public attention to the fact that these people are doing things that are impeachable. And it's good to just remind everybody of that just to get it on paper, because I'm going to say the RFK one we're going to talk about, I wasn't even aware of a lot of the stuff he was doing because I don't follow HHS policy that closely. Let's start with Pete Hegseth because that's an easy one. Yeah. I got to say, the other ones, maybe there's a little

0:19:44 Thomas: Enough sponsorship of Democrats. Okay. Gotcha. Okay, yep, yep. Wow. Yeah, doing some murders, doing some bombings. That one should be pretty straightforward. Hmm. Yeah. I don't know, man. I

0:20:17 Matt: Bit of an argument about high crimes and misdemeanors, but murder is a pretty classic high crime. That's one of the big ones. Hakeem Jeffries just preemptively stood up and rolled over on the 1st of December when this boat strike stuff was coming out and announced that House Democrats would not be trying to impeach Hegseth. Why would you do that? Why even say that? Yeah,

0:20:35 Thomas: I don't get that guy. I don' t know what he' s doing there.

0:20:36 Matt: I think he needs to get out of the way. Assuring Pete Hegseth that we're not going to impeach

0:20:37 Thomas: He hasn' t done a whole lot that I' ve thought was any good. So what are we doing? Yeah, bizarre.

0:20:44 Matt: Him, just come on. Don't say anything. It's easier to just not say anything." I just wanted to compliment Sri Thanedar from Michigan. Actually, two of these are from Michigan, who filed articles on the 3rd of December. And these are very straightforward, short articles. Article 1, Murder and Conspiracy to Murder. And it explains about how you can't kill people. Right, right. He's watched the video. Yeah. Yeah, let's jazz it up. We all have seen,

0:21:03 Thomas: I feel like that' s never been an impeachment thing before. Like, is that the first time they' ve been like, I don´t know, man, murder? Usually it' s like corruption. You know, I remember there' s, like, the judge that was always drunk on the job. You know what I mean? That kind of stuff. It' s got to be rare that it' S like, well, we got Benoit Blanc here to deliver the impeachment articles and give a big speech. Who's the murderer? Yeah. Actually, that'd be kind of, I like that idea. Let's do that. Have him preside over it. Yeah. Oh, I saw that. Yeah, it's one of the bad war crimes, huh?

0:21:37 Matt: Obviously, and we've been talking about the boat strikes for months. This is an easy one. He has killed over 100 people in completely unauthorized boat strikes that violate the laws of war multiple ways. He doesn't even mention this because it only came out recently, but I'm sure you saw that one thing that did come out within the last few days is that a couple of these boat strikes were carried out by planes that were disguised as civilian planes, which is a war crime. It's a bad war crime." Yeah. Yeah. This one is perfidy, which

0:22:01 Thomas: It's one OF the more frowned upon war crimes. That was interesting, because I just am not, I'm not a war guy. I don't really give a shit about, you know, it seems like a lot of men, I'm accusing you of this, like to know all this kind of crap for some reason, just in case. Like, Like, if you told me, is that a war crime? I'd be like, I don't know. I thought it was just a style choice, but I don' t know. Explain to me who's now don't follow war. I take your word for it, but why is that a big war crime, just because it's like a surprise attack type thing that, like, because you can, I mean, I guess I just mean, like war, you're allowed to kill people, so like already war's pretty bad. So why is this in particular a bad war crime. Yeah.

0:22:40 Matt: Is a great word. So basically just lying in war. Right. Exactly. You have the nerve to actually be

0:22:45 Thomas: You could kill all of us, but be honest about it. Tell the truth. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Kill me to my face. Yeah. I would imagine the idea probably would be to try to discourage

0:22:51 Matt: Flying a military plane. But the classic thing is you throw up a white flag, but then toss a a grenade when somebody comes to help you surrender. That's part of it, but also just

0:23:03 Thomas: Killing of civilians. If you're allowed to disguise yourself as a civilian, then it's going to the other side or whoever's going to be like, ah, we thought they were disguised. And so we massacred this town, you know, kind of thing. You think that kind of thing maybe? Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah interesting. Oh, yeah, that should be one that Republicans

0:23:16 Matt: Like as bizarre as this all is, there are these ideas that go back for thousands of years about how you're supposed to do war and not supposed to do in war. And it's just considered bad form to pretend to be not military. Tack that onto the bill, I guess, but it's not certainly the same as murder, but perfidy, it's in there. So that's article one. I think that's pretty straightforward. I don't really need to explain why murder is a crime. Article two is, we may have almost forgotten about this one, but there was that whole signal chat debacle, article. Hegseth clearly authorized? I would think. From what I remember, the title of this article is Reckless and Unlawful Mishandling of Classified Information. I feel like I heard a lot about that at some point in the last few years. Yeah, right. So, you know, this is very straightforward. I

0:23:45 Thomas: Republicans theoretically should also care about. Yeah, that's weird. That's yeah. Yeah. It seems like that should be a thing. First I've ever heard of that concept. Yeah well aren't we? Yeah. Yeah

0:24:03 Matt: Think they should just pursue it because why not? I mean, these are easy articles. You know, it's in committee right now, obviously, but like it does still require, again, if every single Democrat got behind this and said, this is something that we have to look into and we have to push and try to get a few honest Republicans to sign on and really made a thing about it every day. Again, I'm not saying it would happen, but they should do it. Getting the impeachment process moving forward means you get to conduct essentially the equivalent of discovery and that you get to develop a record and that we could have for history before they start really rewriting or covering things up. We could have a pretty comprehensive record of what happened with everything they were doing in the Caribbean, let alone whatever else. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, the Smith Report. Smith Report 2. Sure. Yeah it is because they are

0:24:21 Thomas: Right. Yeah there's been a lot of weird discourse around impeachment and I don't I don't follow that much of the like I don't know super horse race whatever I don'T know if that's the right word for the day-to-day like political politicking of the you know I don't follow a lot of that but I just feel like there's a lot of discussion around like oh well, the impeachment. Impeachment didn't work of Trump. So therefore you can't, you know, we shouldn't even bother. We shouldn't do it. I don't I don't really understand that. Should there be law? Yes. OK, let's do it like just impeach him when it's worth it. And the other thing is, I might have like maybe underestimated this at a different time, like 10 years ago. But now that, you know, we do this show and I do all my shows, putting that shit on the record is really helpful. Like that's actually really, really helpful in a way that I underestimated maybe before. For a lot of complaints about Mueller. Don't get me wrong, but we do have at least the Mueller report documented. It is not the best, but like it is there and there's, there's bad shit in there. They just tricked everyone to thinking there wasn't. Yeah. Yeah, oh, Smith report. Yeah the one that we got. Wish we could get the other one. There's some bad shit there, but getting that authoritative view from the side of the aisle and, and sometimes it'll be like, yeah, one or two Republicans in there too, like January 6th stuff. That is really, really helpful. Not just, not just to history but like to us now yeah and a lot of that has gotten lost in all the other news cycle

0:25:59 Matt: Trying to rewrite history so hard. And I got to tell you, this actually leads up perfectly to the the next one because Haley Stevens in Michigan, a week after Senator filed his against Hegseth, filed articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. I got to say, this is incredibly helpful because, you know, again, we all have reasons we don't like RFK Jr. You don't have to look that hard for them. But it's great to have them all in one place and to just kind of state what his record has been to date and everything that he's done. And it's especially important because he is in a job where his decisions can get people killed. And she's making that point. Yeah, right. Let's

0:26:32 Thomas: Because I I know he's done some harmful shit but I couldn't really rattle it off because it's just not been front of mind so yeah what what's going what is that one for oh yeah yeah wow huh he's a

0:26:41 Matt: Rattle them off. This is getting into more difficult territory because, of course, you remember we talked about it years ago at this point. We talked about the Mayorkas impeachment when Republicans are trying to impeach head of DHS. And I can understand the argument from the other side that this looks like that, that you're just saying that you don't like the job he's doing. But the Mayokas thing was, they're trying to say he was lying to Congress because he said that as far as he was concerned, the border was operationally closed. That's an opinion, right? That's just, and it can't be closed. You're not lying. You just can't. And they just didn't like like the way he was doing the job, but he was doing his job within regular parameters. But Secretary of Health and Human Services has a very specific set of things he needs to do. And he's not only not doing them, but as this impeachment points out, he's working actively against American public health. We'll talk about it after this part. There is actually some reason to believe straight from the Federalist Society. I went to the people that I trust the most on originalism. That's right.

0:27:32 Thomas: Big fan of ice and he's big fan the federalist society everybody we're unveiling a new map we're

0:27:35 Matt: That's why we're making some changes around here.

0:27:37 Thomas: We're just trying to, you know, trying to get more views, listens, views.

0:27:39 Matt: But, you know, I figured why not let some of my least favorite lawyers tell me what what impeachment should be, because I think they might've written what I'm going to tell you about it for a different reason, but it works pretty well for this. Let's just run these down very quickly. She kind of divides them up into three big categories. And the first one is disregarding duties of office and threatening public safety. So she talks about the reduction in force efforts that, you know, working with Doge to try to fire a bunch of people. Apparently they ended all public comment on new regulations from HHS, which I did not know that it can't be illegal. They fired, according to this, and I haven't had time to look at this one, but I think this has to be true, who fired basically everybody responsible for FOIA compliance, so you can't get records from HHS. Yeah, that's clearly illegal. She talks about the Maha report, which they make America healthy

0:27:40 Thomas: Matt 2.0. Yeah. What? Like, you can't just do that. Come on. Oh.

0:28:22 Matt: Again, which kind of laid out the plan for what they're going to be doing to vaccines. And she claims it was imperiling the health and well-being of children across the U.S. His baseless attacks on the FDA, which is supposed to be part of his own agency, one I never heard about, forcing through something called Luvuravin. Luvuravin, it's a cancer drug that these people say can can treat autism? It's absurd. They're saying it's a cure for autism, which is offensive in itself.

0:28:43 Thomas: Jesus.

0:28:45 Matt: Refusing to act on bird flu and suggesting that bird flu run its course, quote unquote. That's not what you want to hear from the HHS. Section B, undermined innovation and threatened public health. Canceling $9 billion in grants, ending research and grant programs that were set up by Congress for children's health specifically. Shuttering the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which Jenessa actually just sent us a note about $9 million more in grants or something. It was a tremendous number, a whole lot of other grants, like frontline grants for people that have issues of addiction and mental health that some of these services can't come back, like if they're canceled. Something I didn't know about, withheld Title X funding, which is the only funding designated by Congress specifically for reproductive health care, 850,000 patients. And he just arbitrarily withheld. Serious effects, apparently, for a lot of these programs. I had actually almost forgotten that he would pretend to do that. Yeah,

0:29:30 Thomas: Remember when this guy was in a Democratic primary? What a lying sack of shit. He's a narcissist. He's been in it for him.

0:29:41 Matt: He's got what he wants right now. Eliminated research into STIs, including HIV, eliminating the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, which, as the name would suggest, was something we really need. Emerging infectious diseases? Like, why not wait till they're infectious? Come on. That's just wasting money. Canceling research for all mRNA vaccines, which is actively working against public health, obviously. Like, they're a miracle. mRNA vaccines are something we should all be celebrating, and I cannot believe. Yeah. Yeah,

0:29:42 Thomas: Transparent. Yeah. Oh, we wouldn't need that, you know.

0:29:53 Thomas: Oh, lately. When are we ever going to use that? Come on, man.

0:30:08 Thomas: And it's recent. Isn't this whole thing? Oh, they haven't done the right studies. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay, let's shut down the research then. That makes sense.

0:30:14 Matt: Stop looking at them. He abolished, of all the things to abolish, the Foodborne Diseases Active Active Surveillance Network. This is like the Onion version. I know. It's incredible. It's incredible. CDC will now only be monitoring two foodborne illnesses. Yeah. Yeah, I guess

0:30:14 Thomas: Come on, dude. What is even the theory that you're using?

0:30:31 Thomas: Okay, I know they're idiots and I know their quacks, but like you've gotten food poisoning, right? They can't believe that, doesn't it? Do they think that's from not enough meat or something, not enough steak? Do they have some stupid theory about it?

0:30:47 Matt: Big listeria got to him. I don't know. I was wondering how much of this is just going along

0:30:51 Thomas: Mass listeria, yeah. But seriously, is there any theory there or do you think it's just like, Like, they're just, was this a part of just trying to cut the shit out of the budget as much as possible? Yeah.

0:31:03 Matt: With Doge stuff, with Musk stuff. I really don't know. One of many Trump appointees who just hates his own department. Yeah, but just those people, if possible. It makes you wonder what he has been

0:31:04 Thomas: If I could have my wish, if I could add my wish. A bunch of people would get massive, horrible diarrhea as a result of whatever this is. And then they'd be like, hey, maybe, maybe we bring that back. Maybe bring that, hold on. I got to, I need a break. Be right back. That'd be my wish? Yep.

0:31:29 Matt: Supporting because there's so much elimination of all this stuff. Yeah. The next part is just

0:31:32 Thomas: Yeah. What, what would you say you do here? Stuff that allegedly cures autism and all that crap.

0:31:39 Matt: About undermining trust in vaccines. I have to say, to be fair, just to be a little fair here, she says that he lied to Congress. He said that he would not make it difficult or discourage people from taking two vaccines, two of the vaccines that he now says he supports. He has He's previously been against the measles vaccine, but is now for it, I guess, and polio, which nobody really seems to argue with the polio vaccine. And he has not, to be fair, actually stopped those. But she kind of writes it as if he said that he wouldn't make it more difficult for people to take vaccines generally, which he certainly has. He also did promise Congress he wouldn'T undermine the advisory committee on immunization practices. And as I talked to with Jess about a couple of months ago, he fired the whole thing and replaced all 17 people with hacks, just absolute hacks.

0:32:13 Thomas: Wow. Oh, come on. Oh God. We covered this. We cut. When did I cover that? Oh man. When

0:32:16 Matt: He also illegally fired the CDC director, Susan Monares, that is not supposed to be something that Trump can do. And he just decided to do it himself. Herself, and I guess she didn't want the job enough to sue. He lied to Congress about the basis for ending the COVID vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and children. He appointed a known vaccine conspiracy theorist, someone who used his father's medical license to administer risky, scientifically unsound treatments. David Geyer. Yeah, this is vaccines and autism. This is one of those things. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. No, it's disgusting. The next part is about how he's

0:32:43 Thomas: Did I come? When did we cover that was Jenessa on one of the shows, Lydia or Jenessa covered this. This is it's sickening. Just straight up fraudsters, like actual criminal fraudsters. And they're going to put them in charge of a study. Yeah. I think it was Jenessa where it's like, they're actually like guilty of having falsified data before. Like there there's There's no way. And that's the person that for some reason RFK thinks is the only truth teller on this thing. It's just truly upside down world. It doesn't make any sense getting people killed.

0:33:20 Matt: Publicly voicing support for unproven theories regarding immunization safety and COVID vaccines vaccines during an active measles outbreak. He's not doing anything to actually help people with that. And then finally, we've got policies relying on unsubstantiated evidence promoting false, misleading, and dangerous rhetoric. So obviously the false claim about Tylenol and autism. The false claims about autism as a preventable disease, quote unquote. Trying to end fluoridation programs like your Dr. Strangelove. This one I'd missed out. False claiming that poppers, the gay recreational drug, cause AIDS. False claiming that vitamin supplements can prevent measles. And just by saying that, she's saying in this impeachment that there's been a documented 39% increase in pediatric vitamin A poisoning cases because people believe they can give their babies vitamins instead of vaccines. No. Yeah. Too

0:33:47 Thomas: Oh, right. Yeah. A lot of those vitamins are not harmless, like a lot of them, actually.

0:34:05 Thomas: If you take take a little too much, it's like some of some of the effects are like horrifying to take too much.

0:34:07 Matt: Much of a good thing for kids. Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah, yeah, don't do anything the Secretary of

0:34:10 Thomas: I forget. It's like vitamin B or something. No, for anybody. Those vitamins we think of them as like, oh, those are the Flintstones vitamins. You know, it's like, no, if you get too there is very much such a thing as too much of certain of those. And for some of them, it's not even all that much that it takes. So be careful around that. It'S not just this infinite like, oh, this any amount of this I take will be good because it's a quote unquote vitamin. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that'S going to be a good rule of thumb. Yeah. Yeah question, though. And I know you kind of went through this, but we'VE covered this for so long with Trump. Like what'S impeachable is what Congress decides is impeachable. I get it.

0:34:33 Matt: Health and Human Services tells you to do. I guess that's her advice. Yeah great stuff in here. I think that, you know, good on her for putting the case out there, Haley Stevens, and just putting putting it on paper for history. I think that this is well worth it. Yeah. So it's very important to

0:34:54 Thomas: But there is some amount of trying to talk about precedent, though. You know, it's not like it's you know, there's some amount we can talk about that. I'm glad you brought up the Mayorkas thing because I kind of forgot about that and there is a certain amount of, hey, people elected this guy. If Trump's people that he put places are just doing his agenda, then it's not like, it'S not really a thing you would impeach them for. Like I do, I do get that. It makes sense. You know it's, it's more like we need to impeach Trump for it. Like we just shouldn't have elected him and we need to impeach him. So how much of that is operative here? And do you think do you think there is stuff that's over that line? And again, acknowledging it is kind of just an arbitrary line somewhat. But yeah, what do you think about that case? Of course. Right. But I guess the wrinkle

0:35:38 Matt: Ask these questions. Like I said, I took a look at the Federalist Society standard because I thought that'd be the way to go. They have some interesting stuff here about the parliamentary understanding of impeachment that the founders would have been coming in with and about high crimes and misdemeanors and how that was not explicitly criminal conduct. And there was an understanding that you could have non-criminal fiduciary breaches if you're just doing things that are completely in violation of the trust of your office. And they give examples such as an ambassador failing to inform other ambassadors of major decisions or breaches of your duty of care, like delaying court proceedings for no reason or giving false information to the king or just refusing to carry out one's duties. That's actually an example that's given in this digest of the laws of England. And that's exactly what they're saying about RFK here is that he's just not doing the job he's supposed to do. He's actively working against the goals of the agency. There's carrying out Trump's policies and then there's just completely ignoring things like

0:36:23 Thomas: There is if Trump wants him to not be doing that, like what's what's the line there? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, but we're the effort. Yeah, who among us?

0:36:31 Matt: Congressional funding, like withholding funds. You don't actually have to do that to accomplish, you can follow the law and still say the things that Trump wants you to say. So yeah, this is the weakest of the three that we're going to talk about because there's no clear crimes here. There are some things that sound like lying to Congress potentially, but you could say that's opinion or that there's some protection there. But worth the effort, absolutely. And I think that also expanding, especially for non-presidential impeachments, expanding the understanding to just basically complete neglect and not just doing your job badly. Because the founders were pretty clear. They didn't want people just getting impeached because they were bad at their jobs, because then you just have constant impeachments. Yeah, exactly. It's when you get to the point where you're actually violating the trust that you've been given, right? But I think the Noem one we should go on to briefly here, because this is just filed. This one's a little simpler. Yeah. Sure. And she is directly responsible for what

0:37:09 Thomas: Yeah. Dereliction of duty level stuff. Yeah Yeah, absolutely. Now, can I say I feel like this one has the biggest chance of success and in no small part because it's a woman. I just feel like the Republicans are going to be a little bit more apt to be like, oh, let's, yeah, let'S scapegoat this woman for all the stuff people are really mad about right now. Who knows? And maybe that's, even that might be wishful thinking. I don't know. Maybe they won't do that. Oh, fair. Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. Scapegoat was the wrong term. You're totally right about that. She is absolutely responsible. Yeah.

0:37:47 Matt: It's worth for an operation that just got somebody killed. Now is the time when people are on all eyes are on this appropriately. Now's the time to say, what are we doing right now? And why is is Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem. Did you know her full name was Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem? One of her middle names is Arnold?

0:37:56 Thomas: Yeah. You know, I had misremembered. I thought I thought Massey had maybe joined on to one of those.

0:38:10 Thomas: But I think I think there's also the Epstein files. And, you know,I think Ro Khanna and Massey are kind of together on that.

0:38:18 Matt: Not yet. Not yet yeah Massey did put out a poll on X

0:38:18 Thomas: And I guess that would be impeaching Bondi potentially or doing something about a Bondi. So so I guess so far, no, no Republicans then sounds like.

0:38:29 Matt: And two-thirds of the people who responded on X said that she should be impeached over the Epstein file so that's on X just saying

0:38:33 Thomas: Can we not? Can we can we just not? I know. I hear you, but I don't want anyone at all validating the idea that X is any voice of anything other than Nazis and Russian bots. I don'T care about their opinion. Remind me, what was that? What did she do?

0:38:46 Matt: That's true so we got the Noem articles here and I gotta tell you they're keeping it high and tight here these are pretty solid article one side one track one here obstruction of Congress that's pretty good that's a a good place to start because there have been six documented denials of members of Congress trying to inspect DHS facilities. They have the legal right to go in anytime. And she recently, very recently imposed just through a letter, a seven-day notice requirement. So basically, you're going to have to give us a week if you want to come look at any given ICE facility, including just our offices. And that's ridiculous. You can't do that. That's impeachable, I think.

0:39:02 Thomas: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What? But you can't. You can't just decide I'm writing a letter that goes against what the law is, right? Trump sure likes to do that, though. Trump and Trump-related people.

0:39:26 Matt: Yeah. Basically, she just said, we've got too much to do. And also, we think these are too too political. Yeah, we've got too many people to shoot. I know, I know. It's bad. But I mean, she literally said in the letter that we think that most of these are just political stunts, and we don't think it's... But it's the law, and this is what Congress is for, is to just see what the executive's getting up to. If you give them a week, they can clean up quite a lot. So that's just pointless. So I like that, because that's just so up and down, straightforward. You can easily prove it happened, and it is no debate that you're supposed to let them in. So, that's it's easy. Violation of public trust. We got that up and down, of course, but just basically the way that she's using ICE, the way that ICE is behaving right now, all kinds of unconstitutional and warrantless activity going on. Give the example of ICE agents using tear gas on a Halloween parade on kids in Chicago. I mean, just like some of the most extreme examples, but they're not that hard to find. Yeah, yeah. And obviously, the killing of Renee Goode on top of everything else is in

0:39:30 Thomas: Oh boy that's silly okay solid yeah oh my god come on the stuff they've been doing yeah the Minnesota like schools is just uh just atrocious for sure yeah yeah in another world it's worth

0:40:32 Matt: There. And just the fact that she stood up and said that the officer was in danger and this was is a domestic terrorist or whatever, right? There's all that stuff, the way she's doing her job. And of course I agree with all of this. Yeah. And then there's one that I hadn't really

0:40:42 Thomas: Saying that getting up there and calling the victim of the shooting a domestic terrorist completely without basis and just lying that's impeachable that's absolutely impeachable in my book that's the book of like rational normalcy. You know, like that is impeachable. Ridiculous. Oh, right.

0:40:59 Matt: Been tracking because it's just, it's so hard to keep track of all this stuff. Article three, self-dealing. This is pretty good. $200 million ad campaign. And this is actually the stuff we're talking about on Wednesday, this ridiculous wartime recruitment ad campaign where they're, I mean, they're reaching out to people in the manosphere. They're doing gun shows and all this other right-wing stuff to try to get the worst people they can to work for ICE. And she used a national emergency decree to bypass the competitive bidding process and give this contract to the husband of Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS press secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, one of her closest people. This just happened. And again, it's just so hard to keep track. Let's see about the date here. Obviously a scandal, right? Right. This is exactly the kind of self-dealing that we expect

0:41:34 Thomas: Yeah, I didn't hear about this at all. When did this happen? That is a scandal. Like that's, man, there's so much. God, the zone is flooded with shit. What are we supposed to do? That's ridiculous.

0:41:52 Matt: In an autocratic regime and that we've seen Trump do all the time. But it's an easy one to get her on and looks like she did it. And that's the kind of thing that in the nineties would have been a scandal. It would have been a headline thing, but you know, we all remember what a scandal used to be and this is that kind of thing. Push forward, keep it going. Yeah. That's all. That is the last

0:41:59 Thomas: Oh God, it would have been months of news, months. God, I can't believe I didn't even know about that.

0:42:12 Thomas: Was that all the self-dealing? It's just that one allegation? Okay. Okay. Wow. Okay. So what, I mean, yeah, I would hope again, who knows if Republicans are going to have any spine, but that, that seems like a very solid case. That seems like the best of all of them easily. Not that some of the others aren't really good. What is the process exactly on that? And where are we in any of this process? Well, but can we get it to an investigation? They have

0:42:16 Matt: One. An investigation through the judiciary committee and the investigation is what can reveal a lot of the best stuff. Assuming as we are that this isn't going any further than an investigation, at least we can get some kind of record. This actually goes back to the first Trump

0:42:47 Thomas: Such a slim majority now. I don't know how that's working committee-wise, how that shakes out committee- wise. I know sometimes there's some interesting stuff there, but do they have to get get it out of that committee you know and so they need like republican help with that or oh okay I didn't know that well the speaker though we don't have the speaker hmm yeah for sure all

0:43:02 Matt: Impeachment over the Zelensky call where Kevin McCarthy tried to stop Nancy Pelosi from from effectively starting an impeachment inquiry. And she responded in writing that she didn't think a vote was necessary, that the Democrats could start doing their own investigation if they wanted to do it. My understanding, and I've seen legal scholarship on this, I remember reading about this at the time, was that the House Speaker could initiate an impeachment basically just by saying that Democrats want to look into it. This is obviously going to require Republicans because it requires a majority to get it out of the House to the Senate for a trial. And I think we all know that's not going to happen. It also would require for an investigation that we have a House committee led by somebody who wants to do it, by a majority that wants it to happen, to start an investigation that has traditionally been the Judiciary Committee. The Constitution doesn't have a lot to say about a lot of this. Obviously, you have to set up the case. It's like an indictment. You have to do the full investigation. You have to have something behind it. This is political pressure. And I hear people complaining, well, impeachment is just a political process. Well, yeah, it is. That's the point. It was always supposed to have been a political process. It is not an actual trial. It never was. This this is a very powerful political tool to put this stuff in writing and give it kind of the ring of an indictment and continue to wave in their faces and say, this is what the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security is doing. And why aren't we investigating this? I think that's worth something. Well, I wanted to celebrate a civil rights hero who risks being forgotten.

0:44:19 Thomas: Right well uh we'll keep an eye on those well we'll take our last break here and then we'll get to my favorite segment it's the footnote can't wait I'm out what do you got for us oh oh wow

0:44:35 Matt: And this is so incredibly relevant to our times and everything that's going on right now, just about the way that a regular person can step up and be a hero in these situations. We all know who Rosa Parks is, and we should know who Rosa Parks is obviously, one of the faces of the civil rights movement. Nothing I'm going to say here is going to undercut Rosa Parks' importance in history. But before Rosa Parks, there was Claudette Colvin, and she just passed this week. We just lost her. And she had a long and very good life. She was arrested at the age of 15 in March of 1955, nine months before Rosa parks was. And her case is actually the one that made the difference for the Montgomery boycott, not Rosa Parks'. I learned a lot this week, I'd heard her name. I knew a little bit about this, but I did not realize that she was actually the lead plaintiff in Browder v. Gale, which we'll talk about, but the case that actually ended the boycott and the Supreme Court affirmed and essentially ended Plessy v. Ferguson, this one 15-year-old. This is obviously, I think people know or should know the story of Montgomery and the busing there. 75% of the people riding the bus in Montgomery, Alabama are black, but there's a city ordinance that requires that the first 10 seats be given only to white passengers and the 16 middle seats

0:45:37 Thomas: Jesus hmm wow yeah I didn't know that imagine how just shitty racism is that it makes you think I

0:45:37 Matt: Go to whoever. And then the 10 middle back seats are always for black passengers. And there was sort of an unwritten rule that you had to give up your seat even if you're in one of the middle seats that's not designated by race. And that's actually where Rosa Parks was sitting, was in one of the middle seats, not one of the white seats. I thought that was kind of interesting. Colvin, you know, she was nobody. She was a pregnant teen mother. She was 15 years old and she just did not want to get up when she was told that she had to let a white person have her seat, rightfully. Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:07 Thomas: I need this pregnant woman to get up for my whiteness. Get the F out of here.

0:46:10 Matt: It's just, I don't know if she was visible pregnant at the time, but I mean, even if, whether, either way. And the driver too, then part of the ordinance is you couldn't have black bus drivers. So the drivers are super abusive throughout the system to their majority black passengers. The NAACP briefly considered her as the lead plaintiff to do with her what they were going to do with Rosa Parks, but they decided they weren't going to put a 15-year-old through this, which is, I think, the right call. Because Rosa Parks herself, she ended up in poverty. She had to move to Detroit. She was chased out, lost her job. She'd had a very tough life. Colvin, they were concerned that she would get extra heat because she was young and pregnant. But she still took her case up to federal court. She just didn't become the face of the movement the way that Parks did. It's interesting because Rosa Parks appealed her conviction through the state system and tried to say that the segregation and the fine that she received was inherently inherently unconstitutional. But Colvin went this way with these attorneys that took it to federal court, and they won in federal court. And that was taken up to Supreme Court. And in Browder v. Gayle in 1956, it ended the Montgomery bus boycott that day when the Supreme Court

0:47:11 Matt: Affirmed this, because this was the last nail in Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy v. Ferguson was the case that said that inherently the segregation on transportation isn't unconstitutional because we can have separate but equal accommodations. And obviously, Brown v. Board in 1954 overruled the idea that you could have that in education. It didn't explicitly overrule. In fact, Plessy has never been explicitly over ruled, but this basically put the nail in it, this case, because it's about transportation. I just thought this was really interesting for a lot of reasons. We've been talking about civil rights claims under 42 USC 1983 a lot. And this is a really good example of how you can actually successfully, because we associate 1983 claims with extreme violations where people are harmed or killed, but they are supposed to be for all civil rights violations. And that's what she brought this suit under. And this was ultimately the one and was affirmed by the Supreme Court was just a basic civil rights violation of being told you have to sit in the back of the bus. This one 15-year-old who just didn't want to move, and the four plaintiffs that brought this with her, were way ahead of this. Rosa Parks was arrested later in December, and she became, as I said, sort of the face of the Montgomery bus boycott. They were able to organize around that. And Rosa Parks was the right person. She was already a trained organizer. Kind of contrary to the myth, she wasn't actually prepared to do it that day. She just literally did not want to get up that day, she was tired. She was already involved, she was a secretary of her local NAACP, she certainly knew her way around the issue, but she just decided that was the day that was going to be. I obviously feel credit to both of them, but I just want to make sure to honor the memory of somebody who, you know, again, we just lost her, and it should be a very important name in civil rights, Claudette Colvin. Just a really amazing example of what one person who just understands injustice can

0:48:46 Matt: Do. And we're looking at a lot of those people right now in Minneapolis, and I'm just really happy to see it. That's right.

0:48:52 Thomas: Good stuff. Great note to go out on. Thanks so much, Matt, for all the breakdowns. Lots of positive stuff to keep an eye on. You know, the impeachments, the lawsuits. Keep up the fight, everybody.

0:49:01 Matt: It's absolutely worth it.

0:49:02 Thomas: Hopefully we have a safe weekend in places where federal jackbooted thugs still are, for the citizens at least. We'll see everybody on Monday. It's one of the more frowned upon war crimes.

0:49:12 Matt: Stay safe. I think that's pretty straightforward. I don't really need to explain why murder is a crime.