Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-28-25_FRIDAY_7AM

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Some open talk, then Dr. Carole Lieberman MD, LA fire recovery, Epstein, hospital shooting. Ilya Shapiro, constitutional scholar at Manhattan institute talks the truth of DOGE and the attacks on same.

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. Don't have a lot of time here. I ran along with Rick here, but Steve, I'll give you a quick bite there. What are you thinking? Go ahead. Hello, Steve. Good morning. Doge people get to the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service and BLM, start looking at the money they're wasting.

You think that's going to be the real motherlode in the state of Oregon especially, I would imagine, huh? Well, absolutely. I mean, you know, it turned from a revenue-producing entity into a drag on the economy back when they quit logging. And, you know, in terms of a resource, we're going to go get stuff from the Ukraine because we don't have resources. Other resources that we do have, we're not using. Because we decide we don't want to mine here, right? Well, yeah, and the lawyers just rule. Yeah. Well, that'll be interesting if Doge gets a hold of that, and it needs to.

Thanks for the quick take on that. We'll have a little more time for open phones a bit later, okay? Let me go to Tom. Tom's here, too. Tom, you're concerned about something, and I read to Pastor Chuck Baldwin's article. I'm on his email list, and he sent me something yesterday. And this is another side of what we're seeing, concerns about maybe the Trump administration ushering in the technocratic state. Is that right?

That's correct. And on Chuck Baldwin's article today at LewRockwell.com, there's a link with Whitney Webb and a very long article on the replacement of democracy or republic government with the technocratic. And she goes into the long list of the billionaires. I mean, Trump supposedly is a billionaire, and he's surrounded himself with billionaires. And I don't have any particular problem with this, but, like, I even mentioned this a couple weeks ago. Remember when you had, was it Larry Ellison and these other guys that are up there, you know, the same sort of people that are talking about wanting to, well, even Elon and others, that, you know, AI replacing you, implanting your brain, this and that and the other. And we're going to put, what, a half billion dollars or a half trillion dollars, you know, towards this kind of stuff? Yeah. trillion dollars you know towards this kind of stuff right yeah and so so i i just wanted to

talk with rick about uh how much is he thinking about that or is it a concern for him replacing the administrative state with the technocratic state basically it's another form of uh i'd call it scientific tyranny yeah well technocracy is essentially the scientific dictatorship in which you have the tech bros and the scientists determining public policy and also the worth of humanity, I guess. And that's a concern. That is a concern that I've had when I see some of the people that are involved in this. And I said, everyone in this situation, yes, even Elon Musk, has an agenda, and we must be aware of this. Okay? Yes. Yes, even Elon Musk has an agenda, and we must be aware of this, okay? Yes, yes, exactly.

And they're talking about how, you know, Vance was, you know, gendered out of Peter Thiel, Israeli billionaire and so forth, and how they're actually really planning on having him really guide us into the technocratic tyranny. And I don't want the Trump administration to be the great reset. And the great reset, in my opinion, the way it's been pushed out there, there's almost like two flavors of it. There's the eat-the-bug style of Klaus Schwab, and then there's the put the neural link in your head and join the matrix side on the tech bro deal you know yes you're doing it quite well yeah and it's kind of what i'm getting to all right uh louis here hello brother louis good to hear you gave you a quick one before news go ahead hey hey boy you got some great guests and and comments already i can't believe it but i just wanted to say that pam bond thing was, it should have been no surprise to you because you already questioned that yesterday.

You don't really think that Epstein files are going to be actually released unredacted. Yeah. And you were absolutely right about that. And she, I think, was baited into announcing that there was going to be big revelations. And then when she got to see what was really revealed it's um absolutely nothing yeah a little thin gruel i'm going to talk with dr lieberman about that here in just a few all right brother louis looking forward to that and uh i just wanted to add that and rick manning also added to that and yeah i suppose you're

going to am i still on uh yeah yeah i just wanted to say that. The deep state thing, I mentioned it in the email, but the deep state is really still deep. It's not gone. And that's why Pam Bondi was not able to do what she said she was going to do. Yeah, yeah, it's not gone. It's merely resting. It's merely resting. But it's not the dead parrot yet like the old Monty Python deal.

I would like it to be a dead parrot. Okay. It's only resting. It's still the dead parrot yet like the old monty python deal i would like it to be a dead parrot okay it's only resting work i think thanks for the call brother it's 11 after seven two dogs fabricating carries north here's bill meyer it's uh 16 minutes after seven my favorite mental health professional is here she hasn't put me on the couch yet, but boy, I guess she'd have a lot to say, you know, about me if she did. But she is Dr. Carol Lieberman, MD, MPH. She's known worldwide around the entire country in the world as America's psychiatrist, host of Dr. Carol's Couch on voiceamerica.com and the Terrorist Therapist Podcast. Forensic psychiatrist, expert witness. I mean, in other words, as somebody goes a little off bubble off plum, doctor, and you end up being called in to explain the case or defend the case, right?

One way or the other. That's how you work it, right? Yes, sure. Okay. By the way, before we get into some of our topics, though, and how have things been going with your recovery on the L.A. wildfires? I could talk with you about that every few weeks and seeing if anything is moving in your neighborhood. Any talk on that?

Well, no, nothing much is moving. You know, people are having a lot of trouble getting permits. And I mean, it's just like what happened in 2018 with the Woolsey fire, which is the fire that damaged my house with smoke and ash. Fortunately, I survived this one intact. But it's really very sad. A lot of people lost their homes, both in Malibu and in Pacific Palisades, and then also the Eaton fire. And it's just, it's everybody's arguing with everybody. I mean, the leaders are not really doing their job, and it's bad. Have they kind of backed away from that push? I remember that Newsom was talking about that we're going to rebuild Los Angeles,

kind of like Los Angeles 2.0, which, of course, struck me as it're going to rebuild los angeles kind of like los angeles 2.0 which of course struck me as it's going to be the gangrene uh you know technical technocracy utopia are they kind of backing away from that and they're going to let people rebuild los angeles the way it was i don't know if you know or not i i know what you're talking about but i it really isn't clear but it is very frightening because that's like what happened in Maui. Right. That this was on purpose. I mean, I think this fire was a combination of it being the World Economic Forum on purpose.

Also, people, well, people committing arson, which, of course, you know, inspired by, directed by, paid by the World Economic Forum. Also regular terrorists. Also just people who, homeless people who are just angry that people in Malibu and Pacific Valisades live in nice homes. So it was a combination of things. I, you know, I doubt we're going to ever, perhaps, if somebody is motivated enough to really dig deep into what was going on. But one thing that, you know, it was obvious that the governor, Newsom, who is so horrible, he has destroyed California. And the longer he's going to be in know, as far as building more reservoirs. And Newsom didn't do that.

And so that was a big problem, that there was no water for the firefighters to use. And Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, she is worse or just as bad. I don't know who's worse, Newsom or Karen Bass. But she was in Ghana attending some kind of a state event, and she knew that these winds were coming. Everybody knew days in advance, and yet she still went to Africa. Well, at least she fired the fire chief, though. Fire chief got fired, right?

Yeah, I guess a small favor is coming from that. So anyways, status quo, I guess, is what we're hearing from last time. Hey, did you get a chance to look much at the Epstein files? A lot of people write me in how, boy, everyone seems to be really angry at Pam Bondi this morning because everything's redacted. It doesn't seem to be all that much stuff that was released. And it was kind of, there was a bit of a buildup yesterday. Yes, it was a big letdown.

It was very anticlimactic. We were all expecting, you know, to see who the bad guys were. Yeah, who's the parade of perverts, right? You know, who are we going to find out, right? Who's on it? So it was very disappointing. There really wasn't, you know, any big news. And, of course, part of it, I don't know that it's her fault so much,

because part of it has to do with the fact that the FBI didn't hand over everything to her. Yeah, and so this is going to be Cash Patel's job then to crack heads and get the stuff, I guess. Yes. So apparently there is a lot of good stuff to get. Well, the other thing is that she's heard word that perhaps they are trying to destroy some of the evidence. Boy, I hope not.

The FBI is. I hope there are backup copies, just saying. We'll just leave it there, all right? Hey, Dr. Carroll, so we don't have a lot of news then on the Epstein thing. Of course, we know that that's about as sick as it gets, but there is something I did want to touch in with you about, and I had a caller yesterday who just got out of the hospital, and he was talking about just the incredible challenges of being in the hospital right now and he was more or less uh and yeah he's sharing his experience and that it was just that it's chaos now i know we had a nurse's strike here about 40 45 days here that just wrapped

up in the providence health center here in southern oregon now on the west coast you know a series of eight hospitals. And so they're going back to work and getting back normal. But he's still saying that quality of care is rough. And this is what he said. And, of course, we're not giving him medical advice. He says, don't go to the hospital. If you can possibly avoid the hospital, don't go there. And he really

meant it it was it was a very very rough story you know to listen from him and i'm wondering if you know you were talking to me about that story in york pennsylvania in which a guy came in there and that story kind of disappeared we haven't heard much about it for a little while yeah but he went up and and shot up the place there over health care. What happened? Could you share a bit of that? And today is the funeral of the one person who was killed. Well, also the shooter was killed, but one of the policemen was killed.

And that was very tragic. But a man named Biogenes Archangel Ortiz, of course Archangel is rather ironic. Yeah, I do. I'm not about that. 49 years old. His wife, who had a history of some mental illness, especially depression,

and a history of some criminal arrests and so on for domestic violence. Basically, a lonely man, you know, kind of an itinerant man who really didn't have a lot of friends and so on, but he apparently had a wife now. And she was in the hospital, she in ICU and she was dying I don't know it has not I have not I've done a lot of research into this and I have not been able to find where what she was dying of but in any case he was there and he the physician's assistant told him that his wife was dying and that there was nothing more nothing left to do to that his wife was dying and that there was nothing more, nothing left to do to save his wife, nothing more that the hospital could do.

And so he became irate and the security had to take him out of the hospital. But then the next day he came back with a gun and and he, you know, he took some medical staff hostage, and he was shooting. Nobody else got killed other than the shooter and this policeman. But, of course, a lot of the staff were frightened, and they were tied up, and they were being held hostage, and it was horrible. But what's really – now this physician's assistant has been speaking out. You know, he's really courageous. He's probably going to be fired by the hospital, but it's very good what he's doing.

He's talking about how the conditions in the hospital have really crumbled. He used the word crumbled. And, for example, because they're so short staffed, people are having to work, you know, the medical staff are having to work double shifts and many more hours than they should, you know, than they're able to. You know, that's really interesting because those are similar complaints that the Oregon Nurses Association had with the staffing in Providence, at Providence. And I don't imagine it's all that different from any other hospitals here, too. And kind of a growing trend, huh? A trend to be keeping an eye on here with staffing problems. Is there any evidence that staffing problems may have led to the death of Ortiz's wife?

Is there any evidence for that? Well, it hasn't come out directly, specifically yet. But that is the implication of this physician's assistant. And also, you know, just in general, like when this man, the shooter, was told that there was nothing more that the hospital could do for his wife, that kind of begs the question, would there have been something more that could be done? But this hospital just didn't have the, she didn't have the insurance, and the hospital didn't have the equipment, or, you know, that there were these financial reasons that she didn't get potential help that could have saved her life. I mean, I think he thought, the shooter thought,

that it was the hospital that was withholding treatment. Now, I don't know yet whether that, I mean, I hope they really do a deep dive and report what the details were about it. Do you think there could be some fallout that this could almost be a bit of a fallout from the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting? Even that – I forget that guy mangione right mangione luigi mangione luigi mangione that's exactly what i thought of when i read about this um you know that and it's not just that i mean it's insurance of course yes but it's also all the border crossers all the people who the the illegal illegal migrants who have come into this country and who are just coming to the United States, yes, it is very dangerous to go into the hospital. I mean, I've been telling people that you do not want to go to the hospital.

I mean, that is a very scary thing. It's something that should motivate people to, you know, to do the proper things to take care of yourself. Yeah, stay healthy. Yeah, stay healthy, my friend and family, right? That kind of thing. But really, and this is, I see both sides of this. I almost look at the health care system right now, Dr. Carol Lieberman, as, you know, irresistible force meets immovable objects, right?

Because I was talking about the strike with you just a moment ago with Providence Nurses, Oregon Nurses Association. And they have that solved. But something tells me we're still looking at systemic issues because Providence is naturally digging in its heels because the reimbursement rates from the state with Medicaid, which is Oregon Health Plan, and also Medicare, is very low. And Providence lost money in providing health care services in like 10 out of the 12 last quarters. Now it's been getting a little bit better for them. And then people would say, well, it's got billions of dollars in this investment fund. Yeah, it was the investment fund income that made up the difference you know that was paying some of the bills to you know here and so you know you just can't keep hoping that you're going to spend out

of your big investment fund you know and in other words it's got to get paid for and yet the government reimbursements are not paying the cost i guess and and i you're probably familiar with that i guess yes yes i mean you know that's happening in california also that's happening paying the cost, I guess. And you're probably familiar with that, I guess. Yes, yes. I mean, you know, that's happening in California also. That's happening all over. And also, so, you know, some people don't want to work. I mean, there's also a shortage of, in general, of people wanting to work, which is like so unbelievable. you know, this attitude now that people want to, you know, don't think that they should have to work. They want to spend their time walking on the beach or something. Hey, wouldn't we all? Guess what?

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Sure, it's great to walk on the beach or to do other, you know, pleasant things. But this whole work ethic seems to have died with this later, more recent generation. It's like there's no pride anymore for a lot of people as far as, you know, what, you know, part of it also had to do with COVID when kids were out of school and so on. And it's just, there's a lack of pride in, and it's not just the younger ages. In general, people are feeling, well, it's a number of different reasons. Some people have lost the ambition. You know, why go through school for all these years? You know, we're going to die anyway. Like, there's this sense because of PTSD that your death is imminent.

Kind of like fatalism. It's a fatalism then. It's infecting the culture. So, like, if I'm only going to live, you know, X amount of years, I should have fun. I should have fun and I'll be a TikTok influencer and make millions. Okay. Yes, exactly. Or, yes.

Well, in fact, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to quit my radio career and become a TikTok influencer. I'm sure it'll work out just fine, Doctor. It'll be good. Yeah, but you know, that's almost showing a... I can't help but think that this is the downside of social media, really, also. I think that so many other people get convinced that everybody else's lives are so much better than their own miserable life right yes that's part of it too that um that you know

why should i work so hard when uh these people seem to be having all the fun or they're you know yes i mean not that everybody's going to go on uh only fans for example or even even tiktok not everybody is making all the money that it comes. There are articles and so on, news about different so-called influencers who are making tons of money. But not all the people on TikTok are making tons of money or YouTube or any of the social media. They're not necessarily all making that kind of money. And besides, I don't know, there used to be a sense that you should be doing something that takes more, that you can be more proud of than that. So, so I think we need to get back. So, you know, so a lot of industries are hurting as far as not

having enough staff. But of course, hospitals would be the worst. You know, that's the most important. Yeah. When they don't have staff, people die. That's the, you know, the downside of it. You know what? I can't help but think, you know, the the cultural aversion or you're wanting to convince people not to work. There's a part of me that wonders, and this is kind of a conspiratorial thought process, but not like you and i have ever had any conspiratorial thoughts you know ever in our life i wonder if this is kind of where the tech bros wish to take us to the uh universal basic income will all be replaced with a i and we more or less plug into the matrix that sort of thing i wonder if this is about pushing a little bit of that that's not right do i sound crazy is that do i sound crazy oh okay well i mean i wish you did but um this is all just see there are all these little parts to this puzzle yeah

of you know what's happening with trying to make us um you know depend upon the government for money which is like what happened during covid which was sort of a a way to get us used to the idea of just not working and getting our money from the government. So yes, all these little pieces are coming together. And so it's hard for some people to see the whole picture. Oh, they wouldn't be doing that. You know, no, no, that's just, I mean, like last night, I was at a meeting and I was telling people, people were talking about how they have brain fog. And I said, well, you know, there is some report that it could have to do with the discharges of smoke or things in the air. They all wanted to just poo-poo it.

Oh, that's just a conspiracy theory. I said, well, you know, there is thought that whatever it is that they're putting in the sky could well contribute to brain fog and other kinds of problems. Okay. See, there you go. And so the difference between a conspiracy and the news story is just a few cycles, right? Right. All right. Doctor, I always appreciate it.

I know we kind of punched into a lot of things other than the Epstein thing, but I always appreciate you and what you're doing. And you can also find out more on expertwitnessforensicspsychiatrist.com. There's also terroristtherapist.com. And I think terrorist therapist is probably your main website to find out everything about you. Is that probably the best clearinghouse overall? Well, I mean, it kind of depends what people are interested in. ExpertWitnessForensicPsychiatrist.com is good if you're contemplating or involved in a criminal or civil lawsuit. But, you know, of course, my heart is having, is trying to protect people from terrorism. So, yes. Well, in that case, terroristtherapist.com is a good one for that, too. Right. And all your books are listed there, and people can find out more.

And I thank you so much for having joined us for a few today, okay? You're very welcome. All right. Stay healthy and get that house rebuilt, too, for sure. 735-KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. This is Jeff at Quality Tree Service. We've seen the letters being sent by the state of Oregon regarding properties in the wildfire hazard zone.

And, well, we can't change your classification, but we can help create that defensible space. Oh, we've got your truck, your SUV, your certified pre-owned, and all invoices posted on our new cars. Hi, I'm Stephen with Stephen Westwell Rippening, and I'm on KMED. 20 before 8, joining me is Ilya Shapiro. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, director of constitutional studies. You mean the Constitution still matters, eh, Ilya? Welcome back. Great to have you on the show. Good to be with you. Okay. Now, I just wanted to dig in a little bit.

First off, before we dig into the topic of Doge today, you about a couple of times, three years ago now, when I was investigated for a politically incorrect tweet. And this tells all the dirty details of that investigation inquisition process, but uses it as a jumping off point for discussing failures in higher education more broadly, and specifically legal education, because as bad as it is when an English or sociology department goes off the rails, law schools have much more direct practical impact graduating people who are the gatekeepers of our legal and political institutions. So when there are failures of leadership, bureaucracy, ideology. These things have significant ramifications for the pillars that undergird American prosperity and liberty. When you have the students who are supposedly going to be the future attorneys and judges and lawmakers in many cases

smashing the windows and restricting free speech, there's a bit of a problem there, right? A bit of a disconnect going on? Absolutely. You know, you'd think that law students especially would have a greater appreciation for engaging with controversial issues. After all, they're going to face some tough situations in their legal careers, and yet too many law schools don't even bother to teach them different perspectives. In fact, some of those perspectives are outside the Overton window, the permissible range of express views,

and it's just a failure of education all around. And you know what? When we see educational leaders, too few and far between, actually enforcing their own rules, the mob disperses. But there's just, you know, most of these deans and presidents and so forth, they're not woke radicals themselves. They're spineless cowards. Now, where did the woke, you know, the woke mind virus in your view, especially having, you know, taught within the system,

is that just an evolving of the 1960s liberal radicalism kind of gone amok over, or run amok over time? Or was there something else that started, you know, really infecting higher ed? Because it's everywhere. And I know people are saying, hey, well, Trump's going to get rid of woke. There's a lot of woke to get rid of. Everywhere you look, it is just, it's the state religion, in essence. Yeah, and you can't just do it with executive orders. Everywhere you look, it is just, it's the state religion, in essence. Yeah, and you can't just do it with executive orders. This is not, I'm glad you asked that question, because this is not, my book is not just the latest iteration of a decades-long conservative complaint about liberal bias in the academy. In fact, those original hippies who took

over the faculty lounge, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 60s In fact, those original hippies who took over the faculty lounge, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 60s, would now be considered by these social justice warriors to be retrograde white supremacists. What do you mean you're for free speech? That's a tool of the patriarchy, etc. So I don't think it's just evolving from the left-right battles going back a century or what have you. Instead, it's this critical theory. It's postmodern ideology that came from philosophy departments and what have you, and it became critical legal studies and law schools, critical race theory, queer theory, all of these different things that say that truth is subjective and all issues need to be viewed through lenses of race and gender

and other identity categories. All structures are illegitimate, need to be torn down and rebuilt according to a new privileged hierarchy or intersectional matrix or what have you. And, you know, when I was in law school 20 years ago, we had heard about these theories, but that was something from the 80s and early 90s that had been relegated back to like niche corners of the sociology department. But now the crits are back. And younger professors, the millennials, even though they're identified as Democrats in surveys, just like the baby boomer liberals, there's a different mindset. It's much more activist rather than education oriented. And when you add that to developments in society in terms of kinds of helicopter parenting, social media, smartphones, all of the way that young people have been raised in the last 10, 15 years, it's become a perfect storm. You add the COVID addling people's minds, the so-called racial reckoning after George Floyd, you know, the last five years have done a lot of damage. Yeah. And boy, how do you think the

culture pulls back from something like that, Ilya? By the way, I'm speaking with Ilya Shapiro. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, director of constitutional studies there. Because you're right, though, that this is beyond just the standard left versus right kind of kind of complaints. This is certainly it's almost like it would be fair to say a nihilistic philosophy which has infected the academy. Yes. Yes. that all of our institutions are illegitimate, that the rule of law itself, American democracy, the Constitution, not just the Constitution, but securities regulations, water law, I mean, all of the rules of the game are, you know, we need to start over, a year zero to use a term from the French Revolution, or getting rid of the old, to use a term from the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

It's very much, you know, it's dangerous. And the thing is, in society writ large, I think we are pulling back. I think the pendulum has begun to swung back. There's pushback of all sorts, a vibe shift, as people talk about. The election is just one part of that. Politics is just one part of it. It's a change in the culture. And we see that in big business.

We see that in different places. But in academia, in higher ed, even though these institutions continue losing public confidence, there's just not the same market responses. There's not the same critical mass of people who would push back on it. And so it's much more difficult to reform. And some of the institutions are simply going to be unreformable. Although, you know, if you're Harvard and you have $60 billion in your endowment, that buys you a lot of wiggle room. Yeah, and that buys you time to continue to do stupid stuff. There was a part of me that wondered if the academy as it's currently structured in the United States can really survive. Can it be reformed from within the system?

Because it seems like it is so deeply corrupted by this philosophy, if you want to term it that, that the only way is to defund it and crush it and start again. And I know that sounds pretty radical in and of itself, but I don't know. I look at public education much in that way right now. There is so much inertia, so much rot and corruption to the core of it that I don't know if executive orders, even congressional intervention could cure this. How do you see this philosophically? Well, it's not going to reform itself. So to the extent reform is possible,

we need to adopt an all of the-the-above strategy with external pressures of various kinds. Part of that is for public schools to have state legislatures and state attorneys general cutting out DEI offices, saying we don't need a feminist studies department in every single community policy. Hey, I'm with you, but here in the state of Oregon, the AG is suing to keep the gender surgery money flowing. That's the kind of Oregon, the AG is suing to keep the gender surgery money flowing. That's the kind of stuff our AG does.

There are going to be different policies tried in different states, and that's the beauty of the laboratories of democracy. And given that dynamic, I'm not too optimistic for Oregon, sorry to say. But, you know, there's there's there's there's there's a role to be played for private employers who don't want to hire people who support Hamas or who yell at federal judges. We hope your daughters are raped. There's a role to be played by federal officials to investigate, to withhold that money. There's a role for legal reform to change the way student loans are done, for example, to make sure the educational institutions have skin in the game. So if they're graduating people with all sorts of useless degrees that are unemployable, well, the university should take the hit on that, not just this person with $100,000 in debt. So, you know, some institutions are going to fail, no doubt, and some states will be weaker than others. But that's, you know, some institutions are going to fail, no doubt, and some states will be weaker than others.

But that's, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom, to quote another mantra from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Yeah, I'm certainly hoping that we have the time to let those flowers bloom, okay? By the way, Ilya Shapiro is author of Lawless, the Misdirection of America's Elites. And I'll put all this information up. I wanted to shift from the book here for a few minutes and break down a bit about the Department of Governmental Efficiency. And there has been so much incoming. And, of course, on my side of the aisle, I'm kind of looking at what they're bringing up and exposing the waste, the graft, the grift, and everything else. I'm going like, yay, yay, yay. And in Oregon and elsewhere, the pressure coming the opposite direction is, this is the attack on our democracy.

What do we need to understand about what is really going on here, Ilya? First of all, the democracy bit is strange because Trump was elected to do all of this sorts of stuff, to look into our institutions and find their weaknesses, waste, fraud, and abuse and things like that. This is not as sometimes get caricatured. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world who gave a bunch of money to the Trump campaign and now gets to be kind of the shadow president or the king or something like that. No, he is a special government employee. He and his team, the Musketeers as they're sometimes called.

And so they're designated by statute to do certain kind of work from within the executive office of the president. So just like the White House Counsel's Office, just like the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council of Economic Advisors, there are something like 400 or more staffers in what's broadly called the White House. It's the executive office of the president. And so they are part of that, and they are figuring out how to restructure the executive branch,

which is the president is ahead of that, obviously, and he gets to organize. The president cannot, through executive action, Elon Musk through Doge, cannot, say, close the Department of Education. Or, you know, there are certain things that you need legislation. But he can certainly look at contracts and say Congress awarded, you know, X amount of money to be used on development aid at USAID. Well, Congress is not micromanaging that and saying, yeah, you have to spend that $20,000 on a transgender opera in Peru. Yeah, it's actually a very broad grant, though. It's a very broad grant of money there, right?

So Doge is going through agency by agency, canceling contracts that don't make sense. And looking at on the personnel side, it's a little harder because there are civil service protections for high level people. There are removal protections, which is probably going to get to the Supreme Court. And this court has been little by little giving the president more power to hold members of independent so-called independent agencies accountable to the democratic process. So this is actually enforcing democracy. But that's, you know, that's all this is. Oh, and by the way, I haven't mentioned this, but Doge itself, the structure, is an office within the White House.

It was created under the Obama administration as the U.S. Digital Service, U.S. D.S., and Trump renamed the D into Doge, which is now the U.S. Digital Service, USDS, and Trump renamed the D into DOGE, which is now the U.S. Department of Governmental Efficiency Service. And it goes around to agencies within the executive branch and looks to find various kinds of efficiencies. And, you know, it's not a brand new thing. Under Bill Clinton, for example, this is dating myself, but I remember Al Gore being in charge of reinventing government. And they had a lot of buyouts, for example, for federal workers. So a lot of the stuff that you hear, it's not even that it's, well, it's fully legally justified, but it's not

even unprecedented. Is one of the challenges that President Trump is facing, I was speaking with Rick Manning, another guest of mine about an hour ago. And one of the challenges Trump faces is a law that was passed. What was it, the Impoundment Act back in the day? I forget what, the 1960s, early 1970s? One of the post-Watergate reforms, yes. Yeah. And is this something that, in your opinion, finally needs challenged and taken up? Because I don't think it's ever been challenged in the Supreme Court.

Courts have never weighed in on this one. And it seems like a like an unconstitutional interference with what should be the executive's power. It's like who runs the executive branch, Ilya, is which I guess I'm wondering, is it is it district court judges at the federal courts or is it the actual executive, the president? Well, the Enowment Act is, it's interesting. It says that the president has to spend money that Congress has appropriated. The constitutional issue is that what if, you know, the president is charged with taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. That's part of Article 2. So what if he can execute Congress's laws without spending all of the money? Let's say he fully accomplishes, you know, Congress creates federal program X and, you know, throws $100 million at it,

and the executive branch fully executes X for $50 million? Does the president have to just burn the rest of that money or raise salaries? Or what can he do? It's unclear. It's unclear. And that, I'm sure, is going to get litigated. But even before we get to challenging the Impoundment Act itself, the Impoundment Act does not provide that federal judges can just order spending of money on particular contracts. And the president has until the end of the fiscal year to spend the appropriated funds, which is September. So the pause that we've had, which most of the litigation overdosed has been over the spending pause, really shouldn't be challengeable in the first place. Pauses don't give people standing to sue, and the money

the president has until the end of the fiscal year, even if the Impoundment Act is fully constitutional. Even if it is. And do you see you know, whittle down and everyone, the dust settles about what is being cut, what contracts are being phased out, if there are still challenges ongoing under the Impoundment Act, then certainly something like that would reach the Supreme Court. Elia, I'm going to shift gears here briefly just before we take off. I appreciate your time this morning, as always. What about Pam Bondi? If you could give her shift gears here briefly, just before we take off, I appreciate your time this morning as always. What about Pam Bondi? If you could give her any advice right now, having taken over the snake pit of DOJ, what are your impressions here so far?

I guess people are angry about what appears to be not thin gruel coming out of the Epstein files, but I have a feeling there's a lot bigger fish to fry here. What do you think? Well, the lawyers at the Justice Department have been busy. You know, there's all of these district judges, as we just discussed, issuing temporary restraining orders, which aren't appealable. You know, they only last for 10 or 14 days, and you can't appeal them, except there was one order that just went too far last week, ordering the administration by like midnight of that day to spend, I forget what it was, some enormous sum of money on USAID programs. And the Justice Department lawyers, who were much better prepared than they were eight years ago during Trump's first term, immediately went to the, when the district circuit, when the

D.C. circuit, the federal appellate court didn't block that restriction, they went straight to the Supreme Court and John Roberts blocked it himself without referring it to the whole court, which tells you how extreme that original ruling was. So this is already getting the attention of the Supreme Court. And if John Roberts, who's kind of an institutionalist and a moderate, is taking that kind of unusual position, then we know where a lot of these excesses from the district courts are ultimately headed. It'll just take a while, and some of this doge work is definitely slowed down. But I don't think it'll be stopped, again, because the Justice Department lawyers are on the ball. How many generations do you think it'll take to wash out the mind viruses that we were

talking about earlier here in the judicial world? It's something you've been looking at. It depends in what sectors. I think academia is a different sort of animal, But in society writ large, I think there just came a point where average people, normies as they're called online, people that don't live on Twitter all day long, who aren't following politics all day long because they have real lives and jobs and families and whatever. They just said enough. What is this? This speech policing, this political incorrectness on steroids. Yeah. You know, I'm tired of dudes in my daughter's locker room, you know, that kind of thing.

Exactly. Exactly. We saw that with school board meetings during the pandemic when parents were looking at Zoom school and finally becoming aware of what their kids were being exposed to. So I think there is a gradual pushback, like I said, in society writ large. Some corners of it may be beyond saving. Okay, we'll take that at face value. Ilya Shapiro, once again, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. I'm a big fan of that institute and also director of constitutional studies, and his book is Lawless, the Miseducation of America's Elites. And I'll put all that information up there, too, available at the usual suspects. Thank you, Ilya. A pleasure. My pleasure as well. And I have a substack called Shapiro's gavel.

All right. I'm going to sign up for that today. 759 at KMED 99.3 KBXG. This is KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.