Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-25-25_TUESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

I go over some of the news both national and local. Prov contract approved...what about the crazies in the ER...will the state get serious? Mike Oneil from Landmark Legal Foundation - which Trump orders will likely survive legal challenges?

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. As always, great to have you here 10 minutes after six on Pebble In Your Shoe Tuesday. Join the conversation at 770-5633-770-KMED. Email bill at billmyershow.com. Had quite a few interesting emails last night. I ended up getting some from some people who had some relatives within the federal government and how upset they were at the emails coming in from Elon Musk. And yet they, well, one of the people was actually also happy with what I was talking about yesterday, in that these shouldn't have come from Elon Musk, rather.

They should have come from the department heads, the Kash Patels of the world. But we can continue that conversation if you wish. Let's see. Some of the top stories. President Trump meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron to talk about the peace plan in Ukraine. Federal judge blocks order to transfer trans inmates to jail of biological sex because, yeah, we don't want reality dealt with in the prison system. Much better to have bio dudes raping the women in women's prisons.

Apparently how they're working that, that seems to be what they're looking at trump holds 52 approval rating this according to the hill meanwhile the latest poll revealed doge's massive popularity 83 of voters expressed preference for cutting government spending to raising taxes while 77 supporting a broad review of government spending what they don't do when they come out with those kind of stories though is that they really don't dig into hey do you want the snap benefits cut a do you want this cut do you want that cut when you just kind of use that generic question hey would you rather they cut spending than raise taxes everyone will say yes until their district's spending plan ends up being hit.

That's just kind of the reality. Do you remember a few weeks ago when I was talking about when RFK Jr. was going to be confirmed and was up with the confirmation battle? And I would say you have to watch out for all of the stories that will be coming out of the, especially the television, the video media, about vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. And I was talking about this, I don't want to call it a propaganda group, but I guess I do have to call it the propaganda group, the science line. The science line.

I like to keep you up on what science line is targeting every week or two as they send out information because I made it to the journalist's email list. And they send me emails because they think I'm a video journalist of some sort. Maybe I'm on Facebook Live and I'm a video journalist, you know, this kind of thing. Well, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences puts out ScienceLine. And, of course, the thing is that they feed our local television stations, the state television stations, the national television networks, talking points and expert interviews for doing television news articles, and they're trying to put their thumb on the scale now the advancement the american for the american association for the advancement of science is really about advancing the politicized science these days and so i just wanted to let you know what the next round of of television news articles we're probably going to be watching and hearing about and this has to do with the

department of education science line offering an interview with an expert special education with dr kimber wilkerson now this was actually last week that they that they offered it so it was last friday that they had the interview but i saved the note because I just want to let you know what a full court press there is on making sure that any kind of department cutting gets headed off because, well, there's science involved here. And this is from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the science line. As the Trump administration prepares to disband the Department of Education, which plays a critical role in the provision of special education for students with disabilities, 17 students are also suing to overturn Section 504, a federal law protecting people, including students with disabilities, from discrimination. To learn more about the science behind this issue, book a 15-minute

one-on-one Zoom interview with Dr. Kimber Wilkerson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. University of Wisconsin-Madison, as we know, is a bastion of conservative politics and conservative fiscal policy. But anyway, she could talk about what types of disabilities make students eligible for these services and how many students get special education and in other words the implication being that special education services cannot be delivered without a big bloated federal department of education which is nonsense really and it comes right down to it even if they disbanded the department of education today you would probably just revert to what used to happen prior to this which block grants were given to states to provide perhaps a perceived

social need not that i'm saying'm saying that special education is only bashed into the federal government, but it's something that is not, nobody's stopping a state government from providing a special education. And no doubt special education would continue. But just be aware that the propaganda mills are working really hard. We wouldn't want to cut absolutely anything, anything at all. All right. 16 minutes after 6, good news, Providence Hospital, all eight of them ended up signing off on a deal to end the strike. So that's pretty good news.

I was talking about this last night on social media, and my comment was kind of, yeah, I was being rather snarky. Because I said, congratulations on the Providence nurses coming to an agreement with the hospital system. I said, I hope the new contract makes up for the raving lunatics you have to put up with in the emergency room. At least the last time I took mom there. Actually, I think it was the last two times I took my mother to the emergency room over the last couple of years or so when she needed some emergency treatment. And it's serious. I just tossed this off.

And instantly I have someone, I think it was Randy Adams out of Cape Falls, and he was saying that people with issues and mental problems are everywhere. It's an unfair call-out. I said, no. No, Randy, it is not an unfair call-out. It is not an unfair call-out. This was not a call-out about Providence. It's about the system that we have in Oregon for taking care of mental health problems

because we don't have one. That's it we've decided that uh you know raving drug addicted lunatics walk the street in zombie land their entire life and then uh and then whether they're not whether they're on fentanyl or on methamphetamine or they're doing heroin or whatever the case might be and they were told all we have to do is get them housing and then they're going to behave perfectly normally which is not true i wasn't calling out providence i just know that what happens is that if you go into practically any any emergency room there's a certain percentage of the people who would arguably uh in earlier times in earlier times that were more sensible that had adults in charge they would have been locked up now not locked up but you know confined to a mental institution because that's how bad it's been

i remember you know the last time i was at the providence and now like i said the providence emergency room is the one i've gone to the most it's the closest to my home so i just had more experience with this and i have to tell you the nurses were being much more calmer and and nice than i probably would have been in something like that i probably would have been more along the lines of pulling out my my Klingon sword like, ooh, you crazy person, get out of this emergency room because you are not making sense and you are wasting everybody's time here. But I remember one night there was one person that was just screaming about,

give me my drugs, give me my drugs, give me my drugs. And then another time that I was in there was another kind of thing like, I'm here, give me my drugs or else I'm and then and medford police end up showing up to it so it's not exactly like it's something that just happens a little bit it happens a lot and we've deinstitutionalized the mental health systems and we've decided that all we have to do is give them some zoloft and then of course you can't force them to take their Zoloft, but then they still end up just kind of roaming the streets zombie-like, and then many of these people are also then addicted to illicit drugs, too, on top of that. So that's what I meant when I was saying, hey, you know,

I hope that the contract is able to compensate them for having to deal with just, you know, bat guano crazy out there, and that is the reality of what Oregon is doing. But remember, all we have to do is provide homes. All we have to do is provide homes and everything's going to be okay. Speaking of providing homes, because that's what Governor Kotick thinks will end up solving all these problems, Governor Kotick showed up Monday, this in Oregon Live. She showed up yesterday at the first hearing on a bill that she put forward that would create statewide homeless shelter systems

at the cost of $218 million over the next two years. According to the Governor's Housing and Homelessness Director, Matthew Schabold, that represents the ongoing cost of supporting 4,800 shelter beds that the state already pays for. And if lawmakers agree, the state's housing agency would develop a system of regional coordinators to oversee local shelter fundings and report back to the legislature on how many people were served, how much money was spent, what types of services were provided, and other metrics to measure shelter successes. But once again, much like the mental illness problem in the Providence, and I would imagine, I would suppose probably the Asante emergency room,

we're not talking about reinstitutionalizing people who desperately need reinstitutionalized, so they're going to be hanging out in the shelters and or going to the emergency room when they're not getting their meds and screaming at the people that are there to get me my meds. Now, I wouldn't be talking about that if I hadn't witnessed it a couple of times. All right?

So when someone tells me this is an unfair call-out, no, I'm just seeing it, Randy. God love you. I guess I should believe the kind-hearted people from Oregon Health Authority. Believe them when they say, yes, we're taking care of these people, but the need is always increasing. I don't know. In other Tina Kotek news, this is actually some good news someone's pushing back against her bs contractors are suing her over the december executive order the oregon columbia

by the way this in the willamette week the oregon columbia chapter of the associated general contractors of america more than a dozen of its members, more than two other business groups, have filed a lawsuit over Governor Kotick over her executive order. And this was the one that requires that all large state infrastructure projects include project labor agreements. In other words, hiring only union people. And I got to tell you, here in Southern Oregon, that means that almost nobody will ever work on any kind of state large infrastructure project. Because you look at, well, Randall from Advanced Air was on talking about it with me the other day.

He's like, you know, this is, in these smaller markets like this, you know, we're not big union towns for a lot of these sort of things. And so that means that, what, Portland construction companies are the only ones working on state projects that would be about the story so they're going to be suing i'll let you know and see how that ends up working okay but keep an eye on that story i hope that they win i hope they clean her clock uh big time all right 770-5633 on pebbling your shoe tuesday what's on your mind we can talk anything there this is the bill my Show. Should you trust your drinking water on a do-it-yourself water test? I don't think so. At the Grants Pass Water Lab, we get a lot of calls about this. The kits are cheap and, yeah, they look easy, but the results can be confusing and still require a lab follow-up.

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24 After 6 on Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. Mike, how are you doing this morning? With a name like Mike, my brother's name is Mike, you've got to be a good guy. What are you thinking today, huh? Well, I'm thinking about the 300 million i believe that was the figure irs possible cut uh forgiveness debt if you owe uh money to the irs sort of trump's tax plan right i only read a part of it um i drive truck i had my bad times in the world went upside down owed a bunch of people and so on, went around and paid all the debt back, even if it wasn't on my credit report. Got up near an 800 credit score here and looking at buying a house. Then you got the I-10 program. You don't even have to have a Social Security card.

I drive truck. I don't get paid by the hour. I don't even have to have a social security card i drive truck i don't get paid by the hour i don't get tips what do truck drivers in their tax plan who does that help i paid thirty four thousand dollars in taxes last year single you know and i'm like oh yeah and if you're single you're screwed really big time right there, at the single rate, right? 33,000, 33,000-something. You know, I'm like, wow. You know, like I said, I went down. Well, yeah, just to be. People live on the street.

Yeah, well, just to be fair. You can't fix those either. Yeah, well, just to be fair, Mike, if I understand now, the reenacting of the tax cut bill from a number of years ago from the last Trump administration, I don't believe that there's anything in there about the taxes on tips and all those other things that he had talked about on the campaign trail. I don't think they've done that. I've not seen any reporting that said that they did. Have you? Quick Google, and I see it, but I don't know if that's, like I said,

I don't really know in the bill. I don't know. Yeah, I have not seen any reporting about that. They're just trying to get what was there before passed. You know, not taxing Social Security, not taxing tips, I mean, all those kind of things, that is a big lift. They're going to be lucky just to keep the tax bill that is currently in place that we're even using this year in place. So I doubt you're going to see any of those kind of campaign promises. But now you're a truck driver.

Are you an independent or are you an employee driver? I'm an employee. i get paid by the mile and by the hour i click my little handheld when i go to fuel now i'm getting paid by the hour when i drop and hook i drive out of central point or medford to portland every night and back uh run triples up and down yeah it's a good living on my way home now live out of grants pass uh drive drive drive yeah and do you have a huge uh tax deductions i'll bet you don't no yeah well okay so you probably found yourself in the same situation my tax bill under the uh under the trump tax bill actually went up when they uh when they passed that a few years ago now it wasn't much

it went up about 500 bucks a year if i recall correctly is what i ended up paying 500 bucks more a year because uh all the deductions that i had before mortgage charitable all the rest of it doesn't matter diddly squat for most people unless it's huge amounts and i think that's what's probably screwing you, too. Yeah, yeah. A tax lady, I said, well, can I write off my boots and gloves? Nope, nope. Nope, nope.

And this is for people who are wage people, you know, like me, like me and you. There really wasn't that much. You know what the Trump tax bill was really great for? Was if you had a bunch of kids. If you had a big family, man, you were in clover with that. Because there were many, many exemptions for that and a lot of credits for it. And I'm not bad-mouthing it, but people like you and me were supporting the others. Okay? Right.

Right. And back to the emergency room deal. Like I said, I went through my downturn in life. I've been with those people and you can't fix those people unless they want to be fixed. Um, and my new saying is, uh, homeless people or addiction people are like stray cat.'s that you give them a little bit of food they bring their friends yeah there you go all right appreciate the call there mike good hearing from you call again all right 29 after six let me go to chris chris you've been holding on to and uh guys you wanted to talk about everything from the pla uh deal the the

labor agreement with uh governor kote other stuff, too. Go ahead. Take it away. Well, you know, I've worked union, and all those guys up there, they're a bunch of sissies. All they want to do is work at Intel and go home cleaner than they showed up, because they're the foreman's buddy. They don't have to do any work. They get to watch you work. I've lived through it. Really?

I've never had a union job so i don't know what that's like chris so i it's not like me people the people are uh they're like the ones in congress they get treated too well you know and they're they they go to work to backstab and cause drama there are good there are good mechanics people are worth their wage but for the most part if you work in non-union, you're begging for a wage. If you work under collective bargaining, you're going in for the whole group. Well, in other words, the worst mechanic gets paid as much as the best one, right? Yeah.

And there's a lot of bad ones in the union, too. But everyone's suffering at a higher level. I guess that's the way it is, right? Yeah. But, you know, you're right. And yet I do think that we're in this – I think we're in a transition period right now because I think with demographics and everything else, I think that the balance of power is shifting to labor after having gone to capital for a number of years. Now, I may be off base on this, but it's just kind of an observation of mine that we're probably going to see with demographic realities

higher wages for a lot of different industries here, and it's just going to be a matter of trying to get someone to show up. What do you think? Well, the market only bears so much. You know, it tops out. But, you know, the only way, that's the minimum. Under a collective bargaining agreement, that's the minimum wage, say, is $55 an hour plus benefits. That's the minimum the contractor has to pay their employee.

Now, they'll get employees to think they're worth better, and they go and try to negotiate their own state. Oh, I'm younger and more handsome, so you should pay me foreman's wages. I've seen a lot of that, too, where they think they're special. All right. Hey, appreciate your story there. Thank you, Chris. Let me go to Vicki's, who's out in the Applegate, too. Vicki, what did you want to talk about again this morning for news? Go ahead. Actually, I have two things real quick. Sure.

Transgender-owned bathrooms, owned sports, and owned prisons. How about that? Yeah. The thing is, though, the transgender agenda wishes to be respected as their trans identity. And so that doesn't work politically for them. They've not been real happy about that, as you can imagine. Well, no, but they want to be their own group, so let them have their own bathrooms. Oh, I don't think they want to be their own group.

I think what they want you is to be forced to recognize, well, you know, like the dude in a dress as a woman. Okay, well, no. Okay. Sorry. I'm just saying that's where we are. The second thing is you were talking about the homeless people, the Medford zombies. I took my mother-in-law from a doctor's appointment to the Wendy's over by the mall. And we were sitting there eating our hamburgers and our Biggie Bird, and this guy was in the corner of the restaurant,

and he was, I don't even know what he was, but he was not in reality at all. And I don't know if he had a really bad itch on his forehead or if he was trying to scrape his face off, but pretty soon he was dripping blood. He literally scraped his skin off on his forehead. Oh, my gosh. He was dripping blood. And there's other people in there trying to eat their boogie bags.

And he walked up to the counter and asked for some napkins. And they just handed him napkins. And then he proceeded to drip all the way back to his table, and he was standing in the window, facing the window, wiping his, like I think he was rubbing more of his face off with the napkin. But my point is, that's unacceptable. I'm sorry. I mean, who knows?

Well, and I agree with you, and that was the type of individual that I was witnessing in the emergency room that night. And I'm not making a value judgment on them as a person. I'm not saying this. But what I was trying to get at is that we used to institutionalize people who were really far gone and having difficulty functioning. Now, I must say, that gentleman who you said was picking his face off, I'm not experienced with this, but I'm told by people who are that that's a sign of methamphetamine addiction, that you'll start picking at everything like one of the side effects of it, you start picking at your face because of the itch.

You know, that's what I was told. And maybe that was it. Or else you just have someone who is just really, really just having mental health crisis. But, you know, 2 North is only a transition kind of center. And I just don't know, we just don't do much of that anymore. You know know you close down state mental health hospitals and i know it's really expensive care and i and i understand that i i i appreciate why they probably did that but you know what we're just supposed to let the

the zombification of society continue it's it's a real issue here it's an establishment where people are patrons are going there. He never ordered anything. He just was sitting in the booth arguing with his, I don't even know what, cup. Yeah. And I feel, my mother-in-law felt so horrible because that's somebody's son. That's somebody's brother. Maybe somebody's dad. And it just... And then we also don't even know

if some of these people, like Chris had been talking about, or was it maybe it was Mike, are fixable. And, you know... That's ironic, because this lady who obviously worked with the mental ill,

she walked up to us and said, I was going to try and offer him help, services. She said, but he's too far gone. I can't help him. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing your story there, Vicki. But, boy, that's a rough one.

Didn't want fries for that experience, did you? Oh, hell no. All right, yeah. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hey, Bill. Michael Shaw. How you doing?

I'm fine, Michael. What's on your mind? Well, you were talking about those individuals normally in past history being institutionalized, and I'm trying to remember my history. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who shut down a lot of those institutions years ago? Well, I think that it's true he did preside over the shutdown of a lot of that in california this was in response to the california state legislature having said so to do this but it was i thought there was something on the national level yeah there was something there was a whole national i you know i'd have to look this up here, but I once talked about this.

There was a push back in the 1960s especially to deinstitutionalize, and Ronald Reagan did preside in California over a lot of those shutdowns, but it wasn't like his order. He was just doing what federal and state law had more or less commanded be done, that kind of thing. Yeah. So it was just something that was tickling at the back of my brain cells listening to your conversation with the young lady.

Yeah. And I'm sure that part of this was that, well, mental health treatment was cruel, one flew over the cuckoo's nest, you know, all that kind of thing. And the other part about is that let's face it it's some of the most expensive uh treatment that we have out there for people some of the most at the same time it's a tool in the bag that has to be used when it's really needed yeah agreed appreciate the call michael as always 770 actually hold the calls we'll get some more open calls here on pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday in a little bit, okay?

We're going to talk a bit about Trump's executive orders from the legal legal side of things and which ones are going to stick, which ones may have a little more trouble in the courts. I'll have more on that coming up after news. The Outdoor Report is every Friday morning just past 7 a.m. on The Bill Myers Show. The Outdoor Report on KMED and the Jukebox 99.3 covers recreational opportunities and is powered by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority, your department of adventure, off Vilas Road on Airway Drive. Latest news brought to you by locally owned and operated Artisan Bakery Cafe in South Medford. It's a full-service cafe offering breakfast, lunch, and specialty coffees.

You'll be wowed one bite at a time. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. Oregon's Department of Forestry continues to accept appeals from property owners concerned about their designation of the new wildfire hazard map. Governor Tina Kotak announced last week the appeals will be put on hold while state lawmakers discuss potential changes, but still your appeals must be filed by March 10th to reserve a place in line for future hearings. A recent study found that the top three smokiest cities in the country from 2019 to 2023 were in Oregon, including Bend, Grants Pass, and the smokiest being Medford. The study

used an algorithm that measures the impact of wildfires and smoke in a faster way. It collected two sets of data through satellite images of smoke and particulate matter. Nearly 5,000 Providence nurses voted to ratify a new contract, ending a 46-day-long strike at eight Oregon hospitals. Union-represented workers will see pay raises ranging from 20 to 42 percent. I'm Bill London, KMED. 106.3 KMED is the home for Kim Commando's Digital Minute, just after 8 a.m. weekdays on The Bill Myers Show and The Kim Commando Show Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.,

sponsored locally by TechNomad. Kim Commando is your trusted source for the latest news on everything digital, including technology, security threats, scams, the latest tech gadgets, and more. And your trusted local source for home computer repair and IT service is TechNomad at MyTechNomad.com. Kim Commando, she's right here on 106.3 KMED. The Bill Myers Show on 106.3 KMED. Michael O'Neill joins me from the Landmark Legal Foundation, and it's the Ronald Reagan Legal Center, too,

oddly enough. And, you know, I forgot to mention that part last time we had you on here. Michael, it's great to have you back on. Good morning, sir. Oh, good morning, Bill. It's always a pleasure to be on with you. Hey, there was something I want to, I don't know if you know the answer to this. I'm kind of, I didn't mean to just kind of come out of the blue about a Ronald Reagan question, but at least I thought I would toss it to you. We were talking about kind of the walking zombies of Southern Oregon, people that in earlier times would have been institutionalized. And it's a real issue between addiction and mental illness. And a listener calls up and says, hey, now didn't Ronald Reagan deinstitutionalize?

John F. Kennedy. Was that now? It was Kennedy. John F. Kennedy. Was that now? It was Kennedy. John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy was the one who, again, they were called asylum. And there was a reason, you know, we have this point, there's been a pejorative with asylum, you know, insane asylum. And they were called asylum. But actually there was a rationale for it.

It was asylum. It was seeking peace. You were seeking a refuge from the day-to-day existence. You were trying to get out there. Some mentally ill individuals, unfortunately, what happened was they were run by the state, and they descended into just terrible conditions. And it was widely publicized in all of these asylum state-run facilities that were necessary to house the mental health, you know, people with severe mental health issues just descended into these houses of horror.

Well, unfortunately, I don't mean to get going off this, but just unfortunately what's happened now in our time is that who is the backstop for these individuals with mental health disorders that are out wandering amongst the populace? That's the jail system and the prison system. So oftentimes the people, the only mental health care that these individuals receive that they need it is from the jails or from prisons is when they're picked up by police and are put into the prison system or the jail system. First time some of these individuals get some actual access to mental health. And sometimes it actually works. I mean, I do think that there is a renewed call for it. And I think there's a necessity now that we know so much more about mental health and what it entails. And I think there's a necessity now that we know so much more about mental health and what, what, what it entails.

And I would also dare say that, you know, the pendulum has swung wildly away from, you know, in which the insane asylums were, you know, cruel and unusual. And,

but I wanted to be clear here that Ronald Reagan's involvement, I had told the listener, I want to make sure I was right about this because what I had read was that, okay, so that makes sense. John F. Kennedy, president in the early 60s, says, OK, this is a problem. Laws were passed and then Ronald Reagan presided as governor during the time when they were reducing or closing a lot of these institutions. Is that a fair? I mean, most likely. Again, this was the outcry at the time.

It made a lot of sense. You know, I mean, you had these we all think of the movie, you know, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Mask, for example. You know, these movies, these films in the public's perception of how these state run institutions had just again, as I said, descended into these houses. My wife is very active in mental health practice. That's why I happen to kind of know a little bit about this. But I am I think, again, as you said, that the public the public the pendulum has swung. And I think we know a lot more about mental health practices. We have a lot more robust sense of the kind of help that individuals need and how to counsel and how to help extend useful help to these individuals. And it's it's really a tragedy that it's oftentimes the backstop for this is our is our criminal justice system. And I think, you know, there should be a renewed effort to look into that from a public perspective. Okay, I appreciate it.

Boy, you know, just out of luck, I just asked you that question. Well, we'll find out. He's at the Ronald Reagan Legal Center. Maybe he knows, you know, that kind of thing. All right. Hey, let's take it back to current President Trump and some of the challenges that he's at. There have been many, many executive orders that are issued. And I'm kind of wondering, and also many, many lawsuits have been filed and pushing back against a lot of this.

I wanted to get your take over at Landmark Legal from the legal eagle's mind. What of or which of these executive orders that have been challenged are more likely to prevail? Which ones may find themselves more in trouble, in your legal opinion, over... Right, that's a fantastic question. I mean, I think if you... The most likely, you could say most likely to succeed in court, or most likely to succeed and get judicial approval, I want to say, a rubber stamp, versus most likely to be maybe struck down by court. I think, first of all, let's put the provisor and it depends a lot of times on the judge. We know that there are a lot of judges at the district court level and there's hundreds of

them that are appointed by Clinton, Obama and Biden that might be predisposed to rule against Donald Trump and bring in some prejudice. Yes, let's put that aside. But I think, legally speaking, looking at it strictly legally, the ones that are most likely to be struck down, the challenges that are most likely to be struck down where Trump succeeds, are cases where he's exercising his strict Article II executive authority in his managerial capacity. This means if he's going to remove the DEI website, or if he's going to say that we're no longer going to say we're going to push DEI from a departmental standpoint, HHS or the Department of Defense or Department of Education, however you want to have it, those are strictly managerial executive decisions. If he wants to remove a website from an HHS website, the DEI section of it, then he's strictly within his managerial powers to do that. Then going down the spectrum a little bit, we could talk about appropriation. If he has, if Congress, we all know Congress appropriates money for spending to the executive branch.

If he has discretionary authority on that, in that particular appropriation, in other words, the language of the law is such that the president in his authority can spend up to $50 billion on such and such. And, of course, Congress has conveyed discretionary spending authority to the president. Therefore, those institutions, if he wants to not spend that money, if he wants to cut that money, he probably has a little stronger executive authority, legislative, statutory authority to do just that. But it had to be in the spending appropriation that they were talking about. There was executive authority, right? Exactly. You're going to want to look to the language of the text of the statute. And again, these are laws passed by Congress, appropriation bills that are passed by Congress. We talk about there's one up in front of Congress right now as we speak,

these omnibus bills. And unfortunately, that's the format they take. I'm not a big proponent of the omnibus spending bills, but you actually have to look at the language of the specific appropriation and do a legal analysis based on that. We did the textual analysis that we're all familiar with and say, what is the what is the actual appropriation say? And then, you know, again, these cases are you have to take them one at a time. I think you're going to have a little bit of the rubber beef is going to meet the road a little bit for the president when you have these specific appropriations specific specific directives in other words you have to spend you know we allocate five billion dollars for the construction of five new virginia class submarines right you know that that's just a dod that's a dod example of a department and so the president really can't mess with that when they well or can they where it comes it's going to come there's this thing

called the impoundment Control Act, whether the president has the power to impound those funds. And it's been litigated a little bit in the lower courts. President Nixon tried to do this, tried to actually withhold these spending. And the courts, not the Supreme Court, let me be very clear, the Supreme Court hasn't spoken on the president's power to impound funds, or the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act. But lower courts have basically said, and I think Chief Justice Roberts, when he was a lawyer at the Department of Justice, and Justice Kavanaugh, when he was an appellate judge at the D.C. Circuit, both spoke on, they expressed severe reservations on the presidential power to impound funds.

In other words, to not to specifically withhold spending funds specifically directed via Congress. So we're going to get into a little rubber meets the road, I think, on those cases. When we're talking about personnel matters, again, I think that the president has a lot of authority in those. Yeah. In fact, I wanted to ask you about that. Michael O'Neill with me once again, landmark legal, one my uh favorite legal guests i enjoy kind of kicking these uh you know i'm not an attorney but i like to talk to them okay and what about doge in general because i know that we have new mexico v musk looking for permanent

injunctions to talk that stop a doge and elon musk from wielding what they call significant authority within the government without being elected or lawfully appointed. What do you think about that particular challenge? Just curious. Well, I think Doge is an advisory capacity, exercises an office within the White House or the executive office in the White House where we're talking about how this all works. And it only functions in an advisory capacity. It doesn't have any kind of power to cut spending. Now, what it does is it simply says it identifies, it's been tasked with the

president with identifying waste, fraud, and abuse, which is a necessary goal. I think the American people, if you look at, there was a recent poll that just came out, overwhelmingly support this identification and cutting of waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government. It's necessary and incredibly imperative that we do this. But DOGE itself doesn't actually have the authority to do the cuts. Of course, it will provide an advice. It will say, hey, look, we've identified $5 billion on this environmental justice grant, for example. That's going nowhere.

It's up to you to cut that spending. Okay, what about as Elon Musk sends out the, hey, give me five reasons why we shouldn't fire you today kind of email. Yeah, that was an email circulated by the Office of Professional Management, which OPM has supervisory authority over the executive branch employees. And OPM is certainly well within its, again, managerial decision. And that's managerial authority simply saying, hey, tell me what you did. If it's done, again, at the suggestion, at the behest of, I mean, at the suggestion of Musk, Musk doesn't have, isn't doing it. It's OPM that sent the office out. So again, we get into these legal technicalities here, but they're

important to understand how this works. And, you know, you kind of got to separate the wheat from the chaff and burn through some of the noise and look at exactly who's doing what and why they're, and how they're doing it to get into the legal. into the legal now so it may be perfectly legal as um as a point of politics though i think it would have been better to have come from the actual agency heads rather than uh having been connected because uh you know doge being a little bit um bit of a hot button but we'll set that aside here at the moment now something that i am really focused on because uh i think that what court decisions have been made about the 14th amendment have not been particularly correct you know in my view i don't think that the 14th amendment was designed that just anybody comes and has a child

and then all of a sudden instant citizens no matter what you know uh what do you believe might be happening with the challenges to President Trump's birthright citizenship ban? I know it's on hold, but, you know, where do you think that goes legally? Yeah, this is probably going to migrate up to the United States Supreme Court. And again, the operative term here is subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And then we're going to have arguments proffered on both sides, and it's going to be incumbent upon the Supreme Court to decide what is the meaning of subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And we know that the court, this iteration of the Supreme Court, looks at an originalist perspective, and we'll look at

what did the writers, what did the drafters of the 14th Amendment, again, this is post-Civil War, this is post-Civil War, so we're not going back into the original drafting of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, we're going into the 1860s here. What did those individuals intend when they drafted it? Did they ever, can you, you know, the proponents of the immigration interpretation, that suddenly the birthright citizenship interpretation, can they proffer an argument that this was somehow, that this was original, part of the original intent of the 14th Amendment? And of course, I think, you know, the individuals who are opposing the birthright citizenship, saying that this doesn't support the birthright citizenship as it's been currently interpreted, will proffer arguments saying that

this is never how it was intended to be applied, and that simply crossing over the border for 30 seconds having a baby is enough to convey automatic U.S. citizenship. So this is a case that's going to be litigated. It's going to probably migrate up for the United States Supreme Court to decide the meaning of that term subject to the jurisdiction thereof. So you're thinking, though, more of an originalist court would be hearing this. So that means that John Roberts is the deciding vote, most likely, right? Yeah, probably most likely. We have Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice Roberts probably being the integral votes on deciding where this comes down. AP suing the White House because they were kicked out over the Gulf of America kerfuffle.

Do they have a case? What do you think? No. Well, I don't think so. It's funny. It's amazing. Every single thing they do that the Trump administration does is is is watched in federal court. It's incredible how we talked about lawfare with President Trump, you know, with candidate Trump, then candidate Trump, then citizen Trump. Now, President Trump, a lawfare thing to just be, you know, just exploding even more. I don't think so. I think, again, that this is they don't they don't. I think they're trying to argue a First Amendment right now. What I understand is they were simply prohibited from traveling on Air Force One and not permitted to be in the Oval Office. I think

they still have their press credentials in the White House. Now, I think that just shows the level of entitlement that some of these media outlets might feel that they're entitled to. I don't necessarily think that that case is going to go anywhere. Okay. There are some other ones that really just stir the mind here. And the one in which he got rid of – well, he canceled the agreement with New York City on congestion pricing. And the reason this is a big deal to me is that the state of oregon wishes to start tolling up on interstate 5 and i would imagine we also have the capability of

having congestion-based pricing with origo that they've been test marketing for a number of years you know chipping the cars you're probably already dealing with that in the uh you know in the belt way but right do uh if if the federal government can agree for an exception doesn't it mean they can then unagree at some point or how do you see this legally yeah again it's funny that if you get if this is kind of falls into the if president revocations of an executive order if president biden has an executive order saying we want to do this and then there's a revocation of that order, how do you jive that as an improper exercise of presidential authority? If it was okay two years ago for someone to do it, and now is it not okay

for the president to simply revoke doing that? I think that's the argument you could be made there. And if there is a federal issue, if it's a federal Department of Transportation, generally speaking, I'm leery of interfering on these local affairs. I don't believe that. But you also know that these local affairs are taking big grant stream funding amounts of money from the federal government. And so you have to dance. Everybody knows you have to dance to the tune of who's bringing the big money. Exactly.

And so, of course, that's your hook. That's what it comes into power. If the federal government is playing a role in the funding of this and this is where they get they manage to get their hooks into everything. It's incidentally, Bill, not to just get too far afield here, but I think it's I think it's really right that the left is somehow arguing that President Trump is acting in a tyrannical manner when he's what is he doing? Fundamentally, he's trying to shrink the power base, right? He's trying to reduce the size of the executive branch, which is incredibly important and necessary right now. I mean, we're facing how many? Forty trillion dollars of debt, insurmountable debt, unfathomable levels of debt this country is facing. And the president is actually trying to reduce

the power of the executive branch. And then you have the left is arguing, of course, that this is somehow tyrannical. Well, I don't know. I've never every time anybody's wanted more power, they've tried to grow the size of government. They actually haven't tried to shrink the size of government. So I think that that argument really doesn't jive when you're trying to say that the president is acting in a tyrannical manner. Which of the challenges do you think are likely to succeed or do any jump out at you to say, hey, this one, most likely Trump will be on the losing end of? Yeah, I think, again, those ones where you're when there's a specific I think the Impoundment Control Act cases, the impoundment when there's a specific

allegation, there's a specific appropriation for that the president that the executive branch is to spend X number of dollars on Y project. I think that that's tough. This is why it's imperative that those are going to be tough, as I said. Justice Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts have expressed sincere reservations and significant reservations about the president's power to impound funds. This is why it's imperative, Bill, that Congress take some action here. Again, right now, there's a big appropriations bill that's in front of Congress. Well, couldn't they even revisit the impoundment bill? Oh, yeah, absolutely. They can revoke the Impoundment Control Act. I also think that they can provide legislative cover, and it's necessary. And it's imperative, again,

Congress has a specific role in this. They have an Article I power to appropriate funds. They have the power of the purse. So it's important that Congress... This is what's amazing, is I read a poll, and we have the overwhelming majority of the American populace, overwhelming, we're talking like 80%, believe that the government needs to get its financial house in order. Congress needs to understand where the political winds are blowing and take heed and actually do something and provide this legislative cover so that the president's more likely to succeed in any of these challenges.

So if they were to repeal the impoundment act, let's say, then president Trump makes the cuts. He's the bad guy. He takes the heat, right? They can do that. And they can also specifically, they can actually cut the budget. They can actually say, okay, we're not going to spend, we're going to say, okay, Hey, instead of allocating, you know, $10 billion to the EPA for environmental justice grants,

we're not going to do that. We're going to, you know, We're going to allocate $3 billion for A, B, C, and D. Simply don't appropriate the fund. And I think that's a fundamental role that Congress needs to play. They need to understand where the political winds are blowing, that the American people are on board with this, that for the president's actions, despite the protestations, the mainstream media and the people within the Beltway, are overwhelmingly popular. And President Trump ran on this. Every single opportunity he had, he pulled Elon Musk onto the stage with him. He is utterly transparent in what he's doing.

He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do when he was running for president. And the American people, I believe, right now are supporting it. So Congress needs to take heed of that. Mike O'Neill, Landmark Legal Foundation, landmarklegal.org. Thank you so much for your analysis, and you're doing great work over there. And thanks for even being a good sport about delving into the Ronald Reagan and the deinstitutionalizing claims back in the day. My pleasure, Bill. You have a great day. All right. Take care. Landmarklegal.org. Great group.

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