Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-05-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

Morning news headlines, hey, Medford to have a new LGBTQ+ bar, other news. Some morning calls then Mike ONeill from Landmark Legal - all about big Supreme Court case next week...administrative state to be reined in by President Trump?

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Great to have you here on Friday, December 5th, 47 degrees, a little bit of light shower activity, kind of a misting coming down already. I guess a better chance of rain later. We'll talk with Mr. Outdoors about that a little bit later,

along with the outdoor report, the hunting. And I want to talk a little bit about that. the alleged wolf attack that Vicki was calling in from the Applegate in the Bunkum area, you know, against the goat, and the authorities are not wanting to think about it as goats. And, well, it's obviously coyotes, right? And I can help but wonder if it's one of these sort of things. I'm going to talk to Greg about this. If it's one of those things where they never want to talk about it being wolves,

because, you know, wolves, of course, maybe there's more payout than coming from the wolf funds and various other things. and so you want to make it look like less of a problem. I don't know if that's how things work or not. But, you know, just kind of like when someone has a reaction to the COVID vaccine back during the COVID time. And, hey, listen, my kid got really sick after the COVID vaccine. Oh, no, it's all sorts of other things. It's never the vaccine.

You know, that's what you would always hear from the CDC lab code types, you know. But, yeah, we'll have that coming up. Also have Mike O'Neill from Landmark Legal coming up here in the next few minutes because a big story, I shouldn't say, well, he is a big story, but it's really going to be a big Supreme Court case coming up next week. And what this is all about, it's a case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Ramando. And that's the one that overturned what they call the Chevron Doctrine. And this is about taking power away from the unelected fifth or sixth branch of government. How to have many branches we have these days, it seems that we're unelected.

but the bureaucracy would more or less treat we the people kind of like, yeah, yeah, we don't care. You know, we're going to be here long after the elected clowns get turned out of office. We're here forever, and we don't have to care about you because we're the unelected bureaucracy. Well, this lawsuit, which is going up for the Supreme Court for oral arguments next week, is about taking power away from these bureaucrats, returning it to Congress and legislative bodies. and this also would have a lot to do with whether President Trump

has the legal authority to fire people within the administrative state. Now, you would think that he would just automatically have that because he's the top executive, but no, there are reasons, the administrative act, there's the administrative act that has all sorts of procedures with it, et cetera, et cetera, to make sure that, well, the deep state stays the deep state, maybe. If you wanted to be a little sarcastic, like, I would about it, but I'm going to talk with him about it and see where it goes on that.

I also am talking to a gentleman from a firm that is about protecting inventions. And he says there's a reason why so many sort of the stuff that we buy this day is kind of, well, crap, not made particularly well. He says we don't protect inventors in the United States very well any longer. And just something a little bit off the beaten path. I'll talk with him about an hour and a half from now. That should be, like I said, interesting stuff, interesting stuff going on here, too. Some of the top national stories, Senate holds hearing on the drug boat shootings, and

let's see, Republicans see nothing, and Democrats see everything. I think that is the basic way to describe that. Nothing to see here. Meanwhile, another drug boat sinking December 4th, direction of Secretary of War, Pete Higsef, another kinetic strike on a vessel. So there was another one that taken down just a day. before. Yet another strike on that. They arrested the January 6th

pipe bombing plot. Rumor has it. Maybe some Antifa connections. We'll see where this goes. I'm really going to look forward to finding out how it was that this guy, if he is if he is the pipe bomber,

if he gets convicted, how it managed to get ignored all this time. I think that would be the really interesting story. Because remember it was just a few weeks ago and we had all the right wing alternative news sites were talking about a capital police department female who was actually that was the one that they were talking about being the pipe bomb person and this female who worked for the for the capital police department for D.C.'s police department

and then going to work for security for the CIA. Gosh, there's always a CIA connection. It's always just a connection with weird things. going on. All right. And another Supreme Court case is allowing the Texas redistricting plan to stay. Now, what is going to, what I'm going to wonder is what's going to happen with the Trump lawsuit against California's redistricting plan, because here we have dueling redistricting plans. Texas, of course, favoring Republicans and California's redistricting plan voted on by the voters, which would be for making the Democrats even more Democratic. Not really.

Yeah. Doug Lamalfa, even though Doug Lamalfa may be a thin gruel over in northern California in the district in Siscue County, yeah, he would be pretty much redistricted out and replaced by some clown probably from the San Francisco Bay Area. And now that's the case or not, but that's the way that is going on. Let's see. Rogue Valley Times reporting Southern Oregon Child Exploitation Team ended up serving a warrant on West Gregory Road in rural Central Point the other day. and they picked up a bunch of dirty pictures, child exploitation kind of stuff.

Nobody arrested at this point, but kind of keep an eye on that particular story. OPB reporting, Oregon seeks companies to build out electric vehicle, fast charging stations. Yay, we're going to get more fast charging stations. You only have about 1,200 of them right now. We've got a concentrated on I-5, some more I-84, Highway 20, Highway 26, Highway 101 and 97, so they have about $52 million over the next five years. What was it if the Biden administration only built just a handful of them? I guess they're going to finally start continuing to build them out.

Well, what are we going to find out about City of Medford? Are we going to get Main Street back to the way it was? Because that's what the survey did. Remember I was telling everybody to go online and do that survey that the city of Medford had, what to do with that Main Street abomination. Shall we crush the bollard plan, you know, crush a bollard for East Maine or West Maine? I think it's still East Maine, right, where they put the bollards and that weird layout. Almost nobody except maybe the city planners in downtown Medford.

There's like a couple of the Spandex Mafia that I'm sure absolutely love. Love that part, you know, because there's nothing like having one-fourth of the road. that gets used about one eighth of the year. And even then, maybe 1% of the time. There's nothing like having your own private little roadways when you're part of the Spandex Mafia. But what's going to happen? There were four plans, four proposals,

and the winning one was putting it back to the way it was. City Council is going to have the opportunity to vote on that. I think it's, what is it, January 21st. So we'll find out. you think they'll actually pay attention to the people that did the survey when the city people like the survey they go oh yeah this is what our survey says if they don't like the survey they know said well we're not sure if that uh if the if the survey has uh actual residents or if it was just uh you know bill mire telling to go people

uh tell going to tell telling people to go sign on on stuff you know do something a certain way yeah there was kind of words did that effect in some of the conversation uh going on about that. Yeah, so I guess if you're a talk radio listener, your opinion doesn't count about going into downtown Medford. We only need the Spandex Mafia and the inclusivity club

or, you know, whatever it is and sustainable tourism. Speaking of the inclusivity club, this is an interesting one. I thought this was interesting on K-O-B-I-5 reporting yesterday. PRISM queer bar

prepares to bring new LGBT ptq plus space to medford in early 2026 hey that's great take a look at this uh interesting story yeah the new lg btqq plus bar and nightclub preparing to open in metford early next year the first queer focused nightlife venue the prism queer venue uh venue uh the prism queer bar is currently renovating its uh lease space and let's see about 20 people involved in the investment group and Daniel Tharp was the co-owner and managing member about this. And he says the mission of the PRISM Queer Bar has always been clear. He said, we needed somewhere where people didn't just feel welcomed,

but truly felt like it was their space, a safe, joyful place for the LGBTQ community right here in Medford. I find that interesting. I find that interesting that the LGBTQ Plus community wants a space, for their community but at the same time they fight biological women real women because they insist on this nonsense that trans women are real women and they want dudes and dresses in biological women's locker rooms and sports but they want their own space when it comes time to party down yes we want to a safe joyful place

but if you're a girl in high school sports, the dude in the dress needs to be able to, you know, come into your locker room and also compete against you and take your scholarships. Huh. See where that goes, huh? 22 after 6. This is the Bill Meyers show, and you're on KMED and KBXG.

Service is the difference with sweetwater sanitation. You're experts for Sanitary on KMED. 24. Pardon me, 24. You know, it's really something that I'm not, I don't even have any coffee or, what do you call it, cream in my coffee? I don't even have that, so it just happened like, you know, sorry about that. Occasionally, I get bitten by that. Speaking of the coffee and everything else, I went and saw my imaginary friend yesterday over at Providence, and it was my cardiologist.

She said, you know, I haven't seen you for a couple of years. I said, yeah, no, I've been worried more about taking care of my mom than getting that. done and so it's a good visit and yeah they're going over the lab work and yeah the cholesterol is a little high okay we're going to we're going to try to see if we can do that little cat scan thing make sure there's no calcium going into your heart or soft black and i said okay all right we'll see and uh you know and you might have to go on a statin i said you you might have to go on a statin i said no i'm not a real big fan of that because uh First off, statins are not real good for keeping your brain together well because, of course, cholesterol is brain fuel.

And, well, there are some statins that don't cross the blood-brain barrier. But we'll see. But we'll see. But other than that, you know, she said that, you know, things are looking good. You don't know, no big problems. So we're going to do a little scanning just as preventative kind of thing. So that was fine. What was interesting, though, is that before I ended up getting the appointment for my imaginary friend,

I always joke about that, you know, primary care people or specialists, you get to see them, you know, rarely most of the time, it's a physician's assistant, you know how that goes, the imaginary friend these days. In the Obamacare world, corporate medicine, so before, several days before the appointment, I ended up getting a bill from Providence, and it was the opportunity to, to pay for the visit, just pay for it in advance, and they would give me a significant discount. I think it was like a 20% discount if you paid for it in advance. And so I'm looking at this, and the cash price to see my cardiologist, and by the way, I love my cardiologists, great, great cardiologists, real happy with it, but it was like $450 for, what,

a 20 to 30-minute deal, and that's not counting the labs before that. The cash price for the labs would have been that, but I do have employer-provided insurance. And, of course, I pay a good portion of that, but still ended up not being that and just had my $60 copay. That's all fine and good. But I was thinking about that, you know, $450 cash price for a, you know, at maximum 30-minute get-together with the very people. And then probably what? The labs were probably $250, you know, $7,800 pretty quickly there. And I was thinking about this controversy that we're dealing with here in southern Oregon with the Asante Hospital in Ashland is going to be closed or just becoming kind of a satellite

clinic of Rogue Valley Medical Center or RRMC, Rogue Regional Medical Center, whatever it is. I still call it RVMC. And I had mentioned this briefly yesterday with one of the listeners. I think it was with Brad, but we're really getting down to this point. I'm wondering if we're only going to have one hospital system at some point. I really do. And I don't know. It would probably be Asante over Prov or would Prov maybe merge with Asante at some point.

Are there going to be two competing systems for a much longer? I don't know. But when I looked at that, you know, hey, pay $450 for a 20-minute sit down, you know, with a cardiologist, et cetera, et cetera, and all this, and $250 for the labs and everything else, and you're starting to see the financial challenges within the way that Obamacare has us all set up right now. Because right now in Southern Oregon, and I mentioned those stats, I was doing some research on just how many people are on government health care. care here in southern Oregon. Two out of three in Jackson County, three out of four people in Josephine County are either on Oregon Health Plan or Medicare. And the reason why I'm, it mattered to me being on private health insurance for right now is that people who are on private health care, the one third of residents in Jackson County who may be either buying it on their own

or getting it through their employer. The one-fourth, only one out of four people in Josephine County or buying their own health insurance and paying the freight or getting it through an employer. The private insurance market and the private people who are paying are getting hosed. We get overcharged. We're all getting overcharged.

I'm looking at that. I'm wondering what, gee, what the insurance company would be paying because $450 is what the cash price was going to be. for my visit. But Medicare pays barely break-even, usually. If you're a small community hospital, maybe like the Ashland Community Hospital, you'll only get maybe 60 to 70%

of what it really costs to provide the service. Oregon Health Plan only pays about 60% at best for everything that's done. So for a taxpayer-funded patient, to come in to the Providence Clinic where I was yesterday or to Asante or to any of the other, you know, networks that we have here in Southern Oregon. For every one of those people, they then have to charge people like me and people who have, you know, conventional insurance even more. So our costs have soared. And the people who are working and buying their own insurance are running out of room to be able to subsidize.

Every person who is on the government health care gravy train, whether it is Oregon. Now, Oregon Health Plan is the worst, the worst offender of all this. It's the worst offender of all. But Medicare not that far behind. Medicare doesn't pay all that well. That's why doctors, many doctors say I'm not taking any more Medicare patients because they can't afford to. You barely make enough to be able to take them in. And that's the reality of where we find ourselves right now.

especially when you only have 130 people here in southern Oregon that are actually paying for their coverage one fourth in Josephine County and everybody else is on a taxpayer-funded plan yikes that doesn't pencil does it how sustainable is that

and to think that Oregon is supposedly because of the voters voting on that ballot measure a few years ago are going to be in charge of providing health care for all. And boy, they do such a good job on OHP, huh? Yeah, maybe 60% of what it actually costs to provide the service. My goodness. Anyway, I'll take a quick phone call before news, but that was my experience with my imaginary friend. He's a good cardiologist, though. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hey, Bill, it's David. David. What's going on with you, buddy?

Hey, happy Friday. Thank you. Going to the doctor is a lot like going to the tire shop and ask them to look at your tires and generally what happened is you find out well guess what you need tires yeah i get that well it wasn't too bad you know i knew that when i saw the labs and i saw that uh you know oh the bad cholesterol went up a little bit dun dun dun dun and so you know the push is out to get you out of statin that's the way it is because uh yeah everyone operates from the somewhat sketchy theory that statins are health. The only reason that people have heart attacks is because they have a shortage of statins coursing their bloodstream.

I'm not quite a believer in that faith, but that's what you're dealing with these days. Well, you know, Bill, I'd just say creators in charge everything and your body's always going to last as long as it needs to do the job that you are given. Okay. Well, hopefully my body will last, you know, as long as it needs, okay? I hope so, too, Bill. All right. Thank you, my friend. 770K.M.D. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? This is Minor Dave.

Hey, Dave. What's up? Medical treatment. Yeah. I go to the Krip Tribal Clinic, which is a federal facility. And so, you know, they, they, they. The tribe gets for taking non-tribal members like $10 million a year to supplement what our insurance doesn't pay. So they're in the black. But once again, they're in the black only from subsidies, not from the actual organic funding that courses through the system.

And that's what I was getting at here. It's like, you know, Providence Asante, 60 cents on the dollar? Who can make it on that kind of a business model? Well, and it's probably worse with Medicare. Well, Medicare pays a little better than Oregon Health Plan. Oregon Health Plan is the worst, really. Well, the state here has a cell. Lost your cell, Dave.

Sorry, I think I got the basics of the call, though. Appreciate that. Good morning. Hi, who's this? This is Bill. KM.E.D. Good morning, Bill. This is Dave, and we're in Grants Pass.

Hey, Dave. You were talking about the doctor, and, you know, I've found that, so ironically, I'm part of that one-quarter of people who are paying for their own plan and stuff like that over here. But with that being said, like, I try and be as transparent, and with not only my doctor, but also, like, what I specifically, what I feel like we should go with, to not only fit kind of like that, you know, going to the tire shop, what he was talking about earlier, you know, like, no, man, I'm all. only here to get this taking care of. I don't need to do the statins. I don't need to do this. Like, you know, I'm not trying to go against their advice, but I'm like, no, I have a say in this as well. Oh, and I do. And my cardiologist understands that. You know, we weren't arguing about that. It said, I don't know if I'm necessarily going. But, you know, I would, you know, if she wants to, I don't mind doing a screening, though, you know, to see what does the ticker really look

like. It's like, I use practically no medical services, hard to do anything. And so it's like, okay, it's been a couple of years, all right, I'll do a little, I'll check under the hood, but we'll see where it goes. When I'm overly transparent with the insurance provider about it, like I all arranged to, hey, I'm going to go see my specialist for this or whatever, I've found that even being overly transparent, the part that gets me being a person who pays for my own coverage, you know, it's not cheap in and of itself, but I say, hey, insurance, are you guys going to cover this? you know, up to what percent, you know, they'd let me know when I go to them with an itemized

list. Even when I listen, I found that even when I listen to the specialist, because a lot of these procedures now are one day in and out, even if it's for like a minor surgery, I had a specialist telling me, yes, so we found that we get a better result going under anesthesia. And I'm like, okay, and I asked insurance, and they said, yep, absolutely anything in this category is 100% covered. I got a quote of them saying, this is 100% covered. Is it okay? What happened in the end for real, though? Uh-huh. So this is where I found that even with the doctor recommending that going under anesthesia for the procedure, and it's only like 20 minutes,

I found that insurance said, nope, that was an optional thing. Now I'm putting the bill for that. And that's the annoying part is, you know, I have to ask myself, okay, what would have happened if I was on OHP? Yeah, and the things change and the billing changes depending on what happens. Now, I remember they told me a few years ago that, Bill, your colonoscopy is covered. You know, this is covered as a diet as just a screening sort of thing. It's like, okay, hey, that's great. And then, oh, but we found a little something to snip it wasn't cancer, but because of that, then it became diagnostic, and now you owe a lot of money. and I had to pay like $2,500.

It was really weird how that worked, you know? I feel like there's no way to accurately navigate this, even when you're doing your due diligence and trying to prevent and, you know what I mean, like they're still going to find something to get you on the bill for. Yeah, I agree. And that is something. And one of the biggest reforms that has to happen is that now there were federal laws passed that says there's supposed to be transparency in all this pricing,

but there have been so many carveouts and the state of Oregon. kind of looks the other way, too, that... But I can't blame someone for being, you know, well, why would I pay for my own plan when I can jump on O.HP? And all of this is covered. Yeah, well, and you could get... And you could at least get, you know, three-fourths of a loaf, you know? Yeah, maybe you're right about that.

Hey, just a collapse there. Unfortunately, though, we're running out of people to tow the health care wagon. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree. All right. Appreciate the call, Dave. Good, hearing from you.

we'll pick that up a little while. We'll go into the legal world here in just a moment. Mike O'Neill joins me after news on the Bill Myers Show. These statements have not been in the family matters. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Mike O'Neill from Landmark Legal Foundation joins the show. Mike, you say it's actually snowing and looking a little Christmassy in the nation's capital right now, huh? Welcome back.

Yeah, good to be with you, Bill. Yeah, it sure is. I think Virginia is getting a lot of probably not quite West Coast snow or Rocky Mountain snow, but we're getting a little bit here. And it is fun to have a little bit before Christmas time. So we'll take it. All right. Before I dig into your big legal brain here, landmark legal foundation, what do you do?

What is your mission? Sure, yeah. We are a public interest law firm. We rely solely on contributions from private individuals and foundations. We don't take any tax money or any kind of public money. We pursue justice. We pursue separation of powers. We promote liberty. We fight against oppressive government. We fight against government intrusion onto our liberties. And we generally function and want to promote a constitutional conservative outlook for the legal community. Okay. How are you thinking the tariff lawsuit in the Supreme Court that was heard? How do you think that's going to roll? I know it's always difficult to try to take a bet there. But what do you think? Yeah, that's a great question. And it is sitting there.

doing, and I do think that I am guardedly optimistic that there's going to be a decision before the end of the year, because we're talking about some timing in this. You know, it sooner is better in this case. We can't let this percolate all the way until June months and months from now. So I think we're going to get a decision probably by the end of this year. I think it's going to be fairly fractured based on the oral arguments. You heard all of the requisite justice is kind of focused on their own particular area of interest in this case. And I don't think it's going to go well for the Trump administration. I think the bottom line is, I think there is going to be some curbing of his authority or what he's assorted as his authority to

issue these tariffs. I know that, I will say that I know that Chief Justice Roberts is unaware of the practicalities here and the fact that a lot of these cases, these deals have already been made. So it's going to be interesting to see how the court grappled with that. I think that's certainly going to be a factor in it. I don't know whether they're going to state going forward or retroactive or apply this decision retroactively or proactively. I do know that you're going to get a fractured decision. I don't know, but I'm going to guess you're going to get a fractured decision in some ways. I think somebody like Amy Comey-Barrick is really focused on the textual, the statutory authority,

and the words of the text, whether that provides the specific authority. I think you're talking about Neil Gorsuch is worried about kind of the broader implications. He asked a really important question during oral arguments, which kind of indicated where he was positioned. He said, essentially what he asked the question was, is if we grant this power, this emergency power to the president, the power to declare an economic emergency in this context, what's to prevent a subsequent president from declaring something like a climate emergency, and then prohibiting the importation of any gas-powered automobiles, something dramatic drastic like that. So kind of posited on the other side of the political spectrum here. You know, that was an interesting question or statement. from that justice. Which justice? Which justice? Pardon me? Justice. Yeah, you can tell I talk for a living here, Mike. Which justice said that? Which one? That was Justice Gorsuch. Yeah, exactly. So that's one of

the justices who you might be say, okay, you know, the common theme here is that certain justices are more predisposed to Wilford Donald Trump and others are less disposed. Obviously, you've got Kagan, Jackson, and Sotomayor, who don't give President Trump any quarter. And you see that over and over again. But I do think the rest of the justice, the other six are going to look at this and make their decision. Justice Alito had focused a little bit in moral arguments on alternative statutory authority for the president to issue this. So he might say that there, although this particular economic powers act that the president has asserted is it gives him the authority to issue these tariffs, Justice Alito might find, might say, hey, look,

there's other statutes that provide this authority. So each, it's really hard to predict. dick this one because it's the oral arguments were so fractured. Each justice was focusing on a particular aspect. There really is no unanimity in this. But I do think that the big takeaway is that they generally appeared skeptical of the arguments that were proffered by the Trump administration in this blanket authority to issue these kinds of tariffs. So if you are advising the Trump administration right now, it would be don't spend the tariff money because you might have to give it back to Costco, right? I think I would. And I'd also, there is, Again, this is a pet theory I've been positing out there, is there is a role that Congress can plan.

I think if you tailor this to a reconciliation bill, and again, that's assuming that there's enough, the majority of the Republicans or all of the Republicans because the majorities are so narrow are on board with the tariffs, that's another question, is you could, I think you could get this approval through Congress to issue these tariffs because it is a revenue-raising measure and you don't need a supermajority. It's akin to a reconciliation bill. So if there would be the political will there, and that's another – that's a separate question. Yeah, so they could – Congress, if they wanted to, the House, could approve it if it wished to do so, if it wanted to. Yeah, the Senate and the House, as part of a reconciliation bill for the majority to the majority vote.

Do you think they could do that again? Because I don't know if it's ever been done, but it is a revenue-raising measure, clearly, obviously, tariffs are revenue-raising. And so if you attach that to a reconciliation bill, and only under the rules of the Congress, you only need to have majorities. rather than the supermajorities. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And that's the part that always concerned me about the push and the kind of mercurial back and forth on tariffs because constitutionally, revenue raising, rather, is solely part

of Congress's job. That's it. Yeah, that's a great question. And that's an issue now that you ask that question that triggered the issue that was particularly interested to Chief Justice Roberts. And he focused on that, that exact issue. He's like, well, wait a minute. this is a revenue-raising measure. Are you appropriating the power of Congress who has the power

to levy and collect taxes, for example? If you can, remember what he, remember the ACA litigation, the Obamacare, the Supreme Court ultimately approved it and said this is, this is revenue raising. This is akin to a tax. That penalty, if you don't remember, the whole argument is if you don't buy, if you don't buy health insurance on the markets, you subject yourself to a penalty, and everybody argued, well, wait a minute, Congress doesn't have the power to penalize somebody for not doing something under the Commerce Clause, well, the Supreme Court ultimately concluded that that penalty was akin to a tax. And so we know that they have, and that was really kind of ushered in by Justice Roberts. So we know that Justice Roberts has a very broad respect for the Congress's

authority to raise revenue, just exactly what you're talking about. He's more disposed to that. So he might say, hey, look, look at this. This is revenue raising. You guys are appropriating Congress's power. I'm not going to give you the authority to do this. You know, Michael, that's a great point. You know, Michael, there's another, well, there's a gun lawsuit, which is going to be playing out here. I think it was the gun owners of America have filed against the suppressor and short barrel rifle rules and all these other things that you would have to go and get and pay a tax stamp and get the background check and all this other stuff. And they were saying now that the Trump administration eliminated the tax, there is no constitutional authority then to regulate these devices anymore. So, you know, that I'm exactly. I thought that was interesting.

I don't know if you kept up to see the argument pop up more and more because, and then, again, sophisticated practitioners understand the link to the revenue raising measures in some of these statutes and some of these laws. Yeah, so Congress might be able to not ban a suppressor, let's say, which is just a muffler for a firearm, right? But you can then say, hey, you've got to pay a tax to do this. That is within their power. And once the tax is gone, then, okay, what law are you using, right? What authority? Exactly, what constitutional authority can you rely on to pass this law, particularly when you're talking about the Second Amendment, and that elevates everything to a higher level of scrutiny. So absolutely, you have to have a specific, really robust justification to infringe upon your constitutional rights, right?

This case you're talking about your Second Amendment. Indeed. I'm talking with Mike O'Neill once again, Legal Legal at Landmarkleagel Foundation, landmarkleag.org. You can read up on all these sort of things that we're talking about. And now there is this Chevron doctrine, which got really overturned in that case a few months ago. Or was it last year? Was it the Loper case? Loper v. Ramondo. And this was about – and it gave the bureaucracy, the unelected bureaucrats a lot of – a lot of discretion.

And, of course, the unelected bureaucrats, of course, used a lot of that discretion. And, boy, they screw with people, okay. And so this ended up getting taken down a little bit, a notch or two. So it's coming up again next week with Trump v. Slaughter. What is that case about? Because this is a very important case for presidential power, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So what happened was about in 1935, there was a case called Humphrey's Executor.

And this was a case, this is a seminal case in Supreme Court jurisprudence. And this case held that Congress, again, we're talking about, it's funny how we're always talking about the same sorts of things at base, right? Congress trying to infringe on the power of the presidency, the president infringing on the power of Congress. This is all the stuff we do at Landmark, we're talking about separation of powers. So what Congress had done was passed a law that had insulated commissioners in the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, from being terminated by the president. And President Roosevelt had wanted to terminate an individual known as Humphreys. The reason why it's called Humphrey's

executives because Humphreys died and then his estate had petitioned for back pay and say, making the allegation that he shouldn't have been, he shouldn't have been fired when he was fired and that there was some paid dude for his estate. That's why it's called Humphrey's executor. President Roosevelt had tried to fire Humphreys and tried to terminate Humphreys and Humphreys that said, no, you don't have the power to do this because Congress passed the law insulating me from termination for cause. And so, and so that the court, what happened was in the, in 1935 in this case, Humphrey's executor, the Supreme Court said, yes, Congress can pass a law that insulates the heads of these quasi-independent agencies like the

FTC, like the CFPB, like the NLRB from termination from president. So how that has played out over the past 90 years is that, say, for example, I'll just, I'll be frank how it works out. This individual, Louis Slaughter, was appointed originally by Trump in his first term, as a commissioner on the FTC. She was, her term expired during Biden's presidency. Biden reappointed her for another five-year term. President Trump gets re-elected, comes into office, says, Ms. Slaughter, you're not,

you're not on board with the Trump agenda. you were a Biden appointee, I want to terminate your employment. Right. She says, no, no, no, no, no, I'm insulated from employment. I'm insulated from termination, even though I might not agree with your agenda, President Trump. And so this, I'm going to, Trump says you're fired. She says, oh, no, you can't fire me. The case goes up to the Supreme Court to determine whether that previous case,

the executor is still good law. Yeah, you know, and I would just say just my gut. Now, this is just a regular guy. I'm not a legal, legal. And to me, that Humphrey case that you're talking about doesn't sound good. the whole idea of insulating political appointees from any kind of future political appointee or political pressure or, you know, when you were appointed via a political act, you can't be removed by part of a political act.

That doesn't strike me as proper. It would seem to me that whoever's running the executive, whether it's President Trump or President Biden, or if it had been President Kamala Harris, I wouldn't like it. But it seems to me that they should be the ones in charge of hiring these heads, hiring and or firing. Otherwise, what are you the head of as president is what I'm wondering. Absolutely. And then what you're getting at is the executive power is vested in the president. That's Article 2, the Constitution.

It says the sole executive power is vested with the president. And I like to make it brass tax and kind of in an illustrative point here is when you think of Scott Besson, right, the secretary of the treasurer, he has enormous power and authority. He can direct this massive government agencies, the Treasury Department, said all kinds of policies, regulations, et cetera, et cetera. But Donald Trump can wake up in the, you know, at three in the morning and say, you know what, Scott, you're fired. Yeah. And he has the authority to do that, right? And any president should be able to do that, whether I like him or not, right? Right.

Right. So what makes, what makes that commissioners on the NLRB or the FCC special over the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of, state, like Marco Rubio, for example. And so when you think about it, when you contextualize it in that manner, it says, well, of course, the president was elected by the people, look, the only people that in the entire government that all Americans voted for or had the opportunity to vote for were J.D. Vance and Donald Trump. And so we put the president into office to effectuate an agenda as the head of the executive branch. And if you are part of the executive branch, you are on board with the president's agenda. And if you're not on board the president's agenda, obviously,

be, you can resign, or you could be terminated from your employment. You don't have a right to that position. So, but let me, let me just do one quick backup, just to give a little deference to the other side here. The reason, the original rationale behind the Humphrey's executor case, and the purpose of this was to put apolitical experts on these sophisticated commissions that were necessary to regulate sophisticated bodies of law. So if you have FTC, which handles, you know, antitrust things, the, the ideal purpose. Again, and, you know, best intentions are always, you know, you can always see how they play out over the years. But the reason was to say, okay, we're going to put somebody who's

a political who's going to be able to rule justly and objectively on these complex areas of antitrust law and have them be above politics. Well, you know, that's all well and good more talking about in the abstract. But we really know what happens in practice. These non-experts political, politicos get put in here. And their only job is to either, is to slow down or to speed bump the agenda of the president if that president is a political is a political opponent yeah okay and that's just it and this also leads i think to that that permanent deep state if you want to call it the permanent uh bureaucratic folks that end up saying we don't care who's elected president democrat or we're here forever we're lifers you know that kind

thing. And so if Trump v. Slaughter goes in Trump's favor, that lifer syndrome that happens in the unelected bureaucracy might be taken down a notch or two, you think? Certainly, yeah. This is just another, this is just another step to ensuring that the administrative state is not a separate branch of government. You know, it's integrated into the executive branch as it was originally intended and ultimately accountable to the people, not separate and apart from all of us. Absolutely. This is another one. You were talking about Loper earlier in the Chevron case. This is another important case into ensuring that the administrative state is accountable to who, to the president, who is ultimately accountable to the American people.

Got it. Got it. All right. And you don't like what the administrative state is doing to you as a voter. Well, then you can throw the president out next time around. That's the whole purpose of this then, right? That's sort of it. All right. Great explanation of it. We're going to keep an eye. I'm going to be looking forward to hearing about the oral arguments on that case. Do you know when it's heard next week? When is it heard next week? Yeah, Monday morning, so it'll be Monday morning. It'll be, I mean, it's a big one, so it'll be multiple hours.

And we'll get a sense of where the court, the court's probably trending in this direction, again, just to harping back to Loper. We kind of saw Loper coming. You know, there was just cases that were chipping away at that Chevron doctrine. We're also kind of seeing there have been some cases that have been chipping away at Humphrey's executor over the past 10 to 15 years. So we kind of see where it's going. but we're getting a better sense of exactly where the justices stand after oral arguments on Monday. Well, I know what you're going to be doing.

You're going to have your legal bowl of popcorn next to you, right? It's always fun. All right. Thank you very much. Mike O'Neill at Landmark Legal Foundation. Read up on this at landmarkleagel.org. Thank you so much, Mike. Have a great weekend.

Have a great day. Great day, indeed. 658. This is KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.