Pod Save America - Trump's Very Convincing Body Double

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

The internet enjoys a brief freakout about the possibility that Trump might be dead. (He isn't.) Senators from both parties press RFK Jr. on his dismantling of the CDC and his accelerating war on vaccines. Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein hold a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce that they plan to release a list of Epstein's clients. Jon and Dan discuss the latest news and trace the through-line of Trump's authoritarian impulse from his attack on a Venezuelan speedboat to his renewed threats to strip Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship. Then, Strict Scrutiny's Leah Litman joins Jon to talk about how the Trump administration might respond to a recent string of defeats in federal court. Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com

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slash crooked. There's no safe like simply safe. You hear about it all the time. Maybe you've experienced it yourself. Talking about the news with people in your life is a minefield. Everyone from uncles who are always a little crazy to uncles who seem normal until they got Facebook and are stuck in their own echo chamber. And that's a recipe for conflict. It's a real problem, but our friends over at Tangle News offer a solution. Tangle shows you how the left, right, and center see one major political story each day. It's a tool to help make sense of what the other side is saying and check your own biases. People use Tangle as a trusted source of news that facilitates productive discussions about the big issues without devolving into name-calling spin or bad faith

arguments. Not sure what happens when that is the argument coming from a swap in the media, but that's not my problem. That's Tangle's problem. And it's free so you can try it for yourself and share it with family and friends without having to pay. Head over to readtangle.com to check it out. You can sign up for the newsletter or subscribe to the daily podcast. Welcome to Plaza of America. I'm John Favro. On today's show, Trump's Immigration Crackdown has expanded to droning speedboats and threatening to strip Americans of their citizens. Jeffrey Epstein's victims are planning to name name since the Trump administration is still doing everything it can to prevent the release of the files. The president briefly died over the

weekend. And later I talked to strict scrutiny's Leah Lippman about Trump's judicial losing streak and why federal judges are starting to complain to reporters about John Roberts's Supreme Court. But let's start with the predictable consequences of putting a brainworm-addled animal carcass-collecting vaccine denier in charge of America's health and well-being. Who are you talking about? I'm talking about RFK Jr., Kennedy Skyon. In his short tenure as Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired thousands of federal health workers, severely weakened programs to protect people from things like

heart attacks, strokes, and lead poisoning, canceled a half a billion dollar investment in MRNA vaccines that were being developed to potentially cure cancer, stacked vaccine advisory boards with anti-vax cooks who want to pull COVID vaccines from the shelf and then forced out his own pick for CDC director along with the agency's top doctors and scientists when they refused to rubber stamp whatever recommendations his anti-vax cooks come up with. That isn't even my list. It's me paraphrasing a recent New York Times piece by the last nine directors of CDC who served under Democratic and Republican presidents. Kennedy finally had to answer for all this in front of the Senate on Thursday, where Democrats and at least two Republicans

who are doctors, John Barrasso and Bill Cassidy, came loaded for bear. Here's how it went. Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. Since then, I've grown deeply concerned. The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership in the National Institute of Health questioning the use of MRNA vaccines, The recently confirmed director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired. Americans don't know who to rely on. If we're going to make America healthy again, we can't allow public health to be undermined. Would you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?

I don't know how many died. You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID? I don't think anybody knows. Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths? Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data. You had this job for eight months, and you don't know the data about whether the vaccine saved lives? Mr. Secretary, do you agree with me that the president, that the president deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?

Absolutely, Senator. So let me ask you. But you just told Senator Bennett that the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID. Wait, that was a statement. I did not say that. I would say effectively we're denying people vaccine. Senator Cantwell. I get it wrong.

So good for Bill Cassidy there. Would have been really nice if that Bill Cassidy had checked in with this Bill Cassidy back in February when RFK Jr. was about to be confirmed and he can't. one of the deciding votes. Mr. Kennedy and the administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedentedly close, collaborative working relationship if he has confirmed. Looks like that worked out pretty well for him, and us, huh? Yeah, I mean, it's so, was so obviously predictable from the very beginning. I mean, RFK Jr. has been one thing.

He is a megal, narcissistic, inveterate liar who has been pushing vaccine conspiracy theories for years, and they put them in charge of Americans' vaccine supply, and these people all went along with it. And the thing that's so frustrating is every single one of them, at least Cassidy wrestled with this publicly, but almost to a person, all of these Republicans in private thought this was an insane fucking idea. And they all went along, not just willingly, but enthusiastically because Donald Trump told him to do so. And now we are all suffering the consequences of that of sequoious allegiance to Trump. And this isn't even like, this is the tip of the iceberg. We are not, I mean, there's going to be another pandemic. We're not going to be ready. We're not ready for any kind of

bio weapon that might come our way. We have all of these promising cures that scientists and medical researchers all over the country, both in the government and outside of the government, have been working on. And he's just like a bull in a China shop, just going through cutting funding, firing people, you know, infectious diseases. They're studying at the CDC. Now we've lost the best leadership at the CDC, scientist, doctor. And, you know, all these fucking, I was, of course, we were watching Fox News, of course, through this. And then they cut to the panel afterwards.

And it's Ari Fleischer and Kaylee McEnany and Harris Faulkner. And, you know, they have enough shame to not go in, all in on the vaccine denial. So instead of addressing that, which was the crux of the hearing that even Republicans like Cassidy and Brasso went on, all they could say is, yeah, well, they lied to us about the masks and these Democrats just don't like RFK Jr. They just hate RFK Jr. So that's why they're going after them right now. Okay, what's next? And they moved on, not even addressing the vaccine stuff. Of course they can't, right? They absolutely can. It's an indefensible position. And you said, we're not ready to the next pandemic. We're becoming less ready for several pandemics ago. Yeah, right? We are not, we're not preparing for the threats of the 21st century. We are unprearing for the threats of the 20th century right now. I mean, it is true. I mean, we're talking about this a little later on the show, but it is, like, we are headed in a very, very dangerous place. And props to Cassidy and Barrasso for being the first Republicans in any hearing since Trump was elected again to express any dismay or disagreement with a single thing that a Trump cabinet member has done. But what good is that doing us now? And where were the rest of them? I know. Tillis was there. He was asking a few.

questions that were, I would say they were not as tough as Cassidy and Brasso. There was some other jackass there. I don't even know his name. Oh, Todd Young, Todd Young, who's also can sometimes be a little more, you know, he was asking some questions, but it was more just like, this doesn't seem totally on the up and up. So what do you have to say? And, you know, RFK Jr., he's just got a few, he's got a few tricks whenever he's asked questions like this, which you just heard, right? He's like, I don't want to, I don't want to just talk, I want to argue about the data, right? And then you present him with the data.

He disagrees with the data because he says the data that you show him that takes an opposing view of his is politicized. And then he brings you data from a bunch of cooks that he says is right. And then he says, well, I'm not the expert here, but this data says this and your data has been debunked. So what can I say? What can I say? And it's just all, it's never like, oh, I'm going to take all the vaccines off the shelf. And I'm anti-vax and I'm just going to do all. He never does that, right?

It's always just, you know, he's playing a show. gel game the whole time. It's like arguing with jello. Yeah. Because he never takes the strong position. Then he just vomits up like a surface level set of anecdotes or data. Like I was watching the clip going around today from an interview he did with Lex Friedman last year, I think, where he argues essentially that the polio vaccine killed more people than polio. But he does it in a way that if you didn't know any better, it would you erase, like, like, oh, that might be a good point. That might be a point.

And then he does this whole other, like, this is the narcissism of megalomania is in this hearing. He does this whole like few good men thing or he's like, I'm not out of order. The whole healthcare system's out of order. I'm going to be the person who tells you the truth. And it, like, it makes for good TV, but it does it, it should give you some concern that that is also the person making health care decisions for the American people. Yeah, he knows the buttons to push, right?

which is all he has to do is sit there and be like, oh, was that a defense of the drug industry that I just heard, Senator? And the senator's like, no, I was asking you how many people died of COVID. He's like, so you must be in the pocket of Big Pharma, which Bernie was good. There was a clip of Bernie being like, oh, you took a bunch of money from Big Pharma over the years. Does that mean that you're in their pocket as well? And of course, he was all, you know, offended by that. But yeah, that's one of his tricks, too. And his, just the absolute lie when he was asked about the firing, the CDC director, said, we have to fire them all because America's gotten less.

healthy and therefore I have to hold them accountable. As we learned today in the op-ed that Susan Menares, the fired CDC director wrote in the Wall Street Journal, she was fired because he, she refused to preemptively accept the recommendations of the anti-vax cuck panel that he's put together to be in charge of vaccines in this country. Also, I didn't hear anyone asking this question, but this whole thing is so fucking stupid because he keeps saying, well, I had to fire these people at the CDC because, you know, they fucked up during the Biden administration during the pandemic. First of all, most of them were there in the Trump administration, the first Trump administration. But regardless, he picked the CDC director. It was his person. Yeah. He, like, he, so he fired the person who just a couple weeks ago said, he said her credentials were impeccable, that her scientific judgment, that her, you know, all that stuff was impeccable. She was great. But then she wouldn't accept the anti-vax cooks.

Not even she wouldn't accept them. He basically told her, I will fire you unless you don't accept their recommendations, which. haven't happened yet. Yes. So no matter what they say at the September 17th and 18th meeting, I want you to rubber stamp it. And she said, no, of course not. Like, I have to take the recommendations and then make sure we review them and go through a scientific process. And he was like, no, then you're fired. That's what happened. That's how you should run medicine in this country. So, you know, you all might be wondering, what does the president of the United States think about this ongoing disaster? Here are some highlights from a post of Donald Trump's earlier in the week

before this hearing, quote, it is very important that the drug companies justify the success of their various COVID drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved millions of lives.

Others disagree. With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer and I want it now. I hope Operation Warp Speed was as all caps, brilliant, as many

say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, And why? Question mark, question mark, question mark. What do you make of that? He's just, you know, he's just, he's just a guy watching this unfold. And boy, he would love someone to get to the bottom of this so that the buck can stop somewhere in this country. If only we know where. But like what to any of those sentences mean together? It just it. It means he is, he is struggling with the fact. He's like, on one hand, Operation Warp Speed, even Democrats say it's my greatest accomplice. And I'm brilliant. And then I heard someone, you know, people have been floating another Nobel Prize. I'm trying to, he's trying to collect them all. Peace, whatever, I guess Nobel Prize for medicine, whatever this might be. And so he wants to get this one too. He's like, so on one hand, I kind of like that. On the other hand, the fucking kook faction that put me in the White House, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voters, the Maha Coalition. I got to keep them on board, even though I think they're fucking crazy personally. But, you know, they got me here. So I don't know what to do. Yeah. If you take this literally, which is quite a leap, I would say. But if you were to take it literally, it's something more than just like words vomited up on social media, it probably does speak to the political tension at the heart of this issue for Trump. Because you remember during the primary when Trump brought up the COVID vaccines and he got booed? I think he was in Alabama. And that is the thing that Trump never gets booed. Never. And like you could sort of, we, we, I remember us podcasting or talking or doing something about that when it was. happened. And, like, he was, like, seemed legitimately shocked what it happened. And you can seem like sort of processing it in his lizard brain. And so, like, on one hand, he does know that there is,

as you said, the Kuk faction. There is this element. It's the Maha people. It's the far right anti-vax people. That that, that is a group of people. I think he probably also knows that in most polling, 75 to 80 percent of people support vaccines. Now, while the COVID vaccines are certainly politicized, the rest of them, you're looking at like 90 percent of people who think, the measles vaccine is safe and plan to get the measles vaccine or if they're having it's going to get it. So I think he is sort of like wrestling. He's trying to have it both ways at the same time. But I think the question is being called now because of how public RFK's actions have been. And they're going to be in when people can't get the COVID vaccine this fall.

Right. You know, and then, but what comes next? Because it starts with the COVID vaccine doesn't stop with the COVID vaccine. What happens when the flu vaccine is. messed up next year or they have weird recommendations on MMR or any of the other vaccines. Like it's like this is this is a big issue and it's one that I think people are going to pay a lot of attention to. And again, you know, this isn't about vaccine mandates for COVID vaccine, which got politicized and are unpopular now. This also isn't about like, do you think the vaccine work, the COVID vaccine works or do you

want the COVID vaccine. This is about do you think the COVID vaccine and other vaccines that have been rigorously tested should be available to people who want them? That's all. And if you're going to ask Americans, do you think this vaccine, this medicine that has been approved by doctors and scientists and researchers should at least be available to people? Of course they're going to say yes. Like this is where he's on the absolute wrong. side of public opinion on this, like in a huge way. Because if you walk in with people are going to walk in a fucking CVS and they're not going to be able and it's already happening and they're not going to be able to get their COVID vaccine. And if they are under 65 and not able to

somehow prove some comorbidity or underlying health condition, they're not going to be able to get it. That's going to be, people are going to be pissed about that. And we're now in year three or four, I guess, of people sort of getting their COVID booster and their flu. shot at the same time. Yeah. Like it's sort of just, if you were someone who was getting the COVID bruiser, you'd go to your doctor, they just do both at the same time. You go to CVS and you do both at the same time. And people are going to go in to do that and COVID's not going to be available. They're going to go on that Walgreens website. They're going to try to sign up for it and they won't be able to. Right. And again, this is also just the tip of the iceberg.

We're talking about the COVID vaccine. We're also talking about all vaccines. There's so many other public health issues and issues around protecting people from infectious diseases, outbreaks, there's measles stuff. There's flu. I mean, there's just so many things that are If this is how they're handling that, it's not like they have just a thing for vaccines, though they do. This is how he treats all public health issues, right, which is just whoever I, I don't know, whatever I looked up on the internet and found, that's going to raise some questions for me. So let's get another process going. It's whatever the expert said to do, whatever science said, we do the opposite. There was a quote in the New York Times story about this from the guy who's the director of the Vaccine Center at the Children's Hospital, Pennsylvania.

and you're talking about how dangerous the whole thing is. And he said, science is not becoming a source of truth in this country anymore. And that's very dangerous when it comes to public health. That's where we heard is it. Science is not, is to be debated like who is the greatest basketball player of all time. It's not, you can't, if you can't trust a science, a lot of things collapse pretty quickly, right? Where are we going to stop trusting math now? Right.

I guess that's that was the big lie. We don't trust math then. Now we don't trust science on vaccines. I mean, that's why the BLS person got fired. That's true. So, in case you're wondering where this is going, Florida, the state of, always look to Florida to see how bad it can get, and the rest of the country will probably get there eventually. Florida has announced on Monday that it would be the first date to end all vaccine mandates, all of them. So we're not talking COVID here.

We're talking your kids going to school and there's no more mandate for measles, mumps, rebella, that vaccine. for hepatitis beat, for all the things, all the vaccines that kids are supposed to get as they go to school and adults, they're just going to try to end all mandates for those vaccines in Florida. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is going to insist on vaccine mandates, and California, Oregon, and Washington are banding together to form an alliance to basically become a shadow CDC and keep adhering to the science on vaccines. What do you think? Is this a sustainable model for public health and a nation of 330 million some odd people? I do not, John. I do not think this is sustainable. I think it's quite bad. The entire vaccine system is being cross-pressured in a lot of very dangerous ways. It could cause it to unravel right before arise. So Florida does this, right? And what that generally means in Republican politics, which is really all about keeping up with the Joneses, is that other states are now going to have to prove their MAGA bona fides by doing the same thing as Florida. because only true MAGA patriots would let children die of measles. Like that's how you prove your, prove your fealty to the MAGA brand.

And so you're going to, you know, maybe it'll be Texas next or Oklahoma or just, you know, pick your Republican state. They're all going to start heading in this way. It's going to be a race to the bottom. Then at the same time you have RFK Jr., this anti-vax guy in charge of our vaccines, which is restricting access to vaccines, raising questions about them, which is fueling. both two things at the same time, both anti-vax sentiment against people who were already sort of prone to being anti-vax, but also for very well-meaning people who want to protect their children, they look at what's happening in the CDC, the FDA, HHS, they look at RFK Jr., look at Donald Trump, and they say, how can I trust my newborn baby to get a vaccine, like managed by

these people, right? And those are real questions. That's why I think it's good that the Western states are doing what they're doing so that there is an expert to to go to when I talk to epidemiologists like Caitlin Gentilina, she's talked about the private groups who would try to serve the functions of the CDC and the FDA in making vaccine recommendations. But it is sowing distrust in every direction. And I think it is quite dangerous. And we're already in some parts of the country falling below herd immunity numbers in terms

of vaccines because of this rampant spread of anti-vax conspiracy theories. They are cutting. There's so many. we have you know we we dip into the public health disaster every once in a while on this show and obviously the Kennedy stuff in CDC has has really made it worth talking about in recent weeks but there's so many of these stories of what's going on with health care and it's not just access to health care or premiums or coverage like we always talk about but what has happened to the national institute of health what's happening with Trump going after all of these universities on their research grants

because he doesn't like colleges and universities because, you know, they don't want to be educating people. They're dangerous to educate too many people with all of their, because they do a lot of the medical research in this country through contracts with the government. And as we, I think we brought up on the mailbag episode, Tommy brought up the pediatric brain cancer group that's going to lose federal funding. We got the AI death panels for Medicare that you brought up. So like just the sheer scale of what's happening, like I know that it's like, oh, our kid, Jr., he's doing his kooky thing off at, HHS, but this is like, this is going to be a huge effect on people. Oh, don't forget, we're gutting Medicaid all across the country and rural hospitals will be closing.

That was what, I mean, that was another crazy moment this hearing when, uh, I can't remember, maybe was Mark Warner was asking RFK Jr. If he's like, people need to eat healthier. And he's like, so you need nutritionists, right? He's like, well, how are people going to get nutritionists if you're cutting Medicaid? He's like, there are no Medicaid cuts. We're not cutting Medicaid. It's like, what the fuck are we talking about?

Did you see that when Tommy tweeted about that story with pediatric brain cancer? Oh, that, yeah. Oh, trust me. Did you see? The HHS? The Department of Health and Human Services over the Labor Day weekend. A government agency.

Their official account quote tweeted Tommy's tweet of the New York Times story about the pediatric brain cancer groups losing funding. And they wrote, for 25 plus years, NCI, the National Cancer Institute, backed the pediatric brain tumor consortium. That work continues.

What's changing? We're streamlining. First of all, not a very good. convincing lie or response. Like, how many people do you think the word streamlining is actually going to fool at this point? Like, they should like learn about trolling from their friends at ICE and DHS because this is just a very weak trial. And then it was like, you know, we're expanding and there's going to be stronger research. And then it just says no funding gap, no funding gap.

Of course, there's a huge funding gap. Everyone sees it. It's in the fucking budget. You can look it up. Just progress. Something Obama Pod Bros wouldn't know about. You're trolling a fuck. podcast and about about your cuts to fucking kids brain cancer research you fucking

oh my god i mean it's just worth taking a step back because we all hate the term of a popa pod bro i hate it i've always hated it i've hated it from the beginning but now the official it's now official u.s government policy that were obama pod bros like that is it like the twitter account of as we learned when twitter became a government communications medium is that that counts as like an official statement. So great. Great use of taxpayer dollars, people. Pod Save America is brought to by Bombas.

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Let's talk about immigration. You may be wondering, Dear listeners, how Trump's decision to blow up a Venezuelan speedboat is connected with his desire to strip American-born Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship. Well, you've come to the right place. We're going to connect the dots for you. Just bear with us. Let's start with the boat. The president announced that a U.S. military strike killed all 11 people on a boat in the Caribbean that he claims were Trenda-Aragua terrorists transporting drugs. In the past, our government has chosen to stop boats suspected of trafficking drugs, not blow them to kingdom come. Congress has not declared war on Venezuela. The administration has not provided any evidence that the boat posed an imminent threat to the United States, nor has it offered any legal rationale whatsoever for the strike unless you account this response from J.D. Vance.

Well, I'm sure there's going to be an after report. I mean, the legal authority, and I want to talk about these kids, is that there are people who are bringing literal terrorists who are bringing deadly drugs into our country and the president of the United States ran on a promise of stopping this poison from coming into our country that's what a that's what a Yale law school education gets you right there Dan the legal authority is there's terrorists out there and they're bringing drugs to the country and you've just got to trust us that that's true because we do not have to provide any evidence or any explanation Marco Rubio was down in Ecuador today he's kind of

said something similar basically he's just like yeah they're terrorists we're going to go after him. We're going to blow up more of them. So that clears that up. So we've also, we've moved a bunch of warships to the South Caribbean near Venezuela, I guess in case any other speedboats are out there trying to, thinking about doing anything. A former U.S. official who used to fight drug cartels also towed the New York Times, they think it's more likely that the boat was carrying migrants on a human smuggling run since Trendaaragua isn't known for transporting fentanyl or coke,

and usually drug smugglers don't crowd 11 people into a small speedboat when they're trying to make room for the drugs. I don't know. I'd say all of this seems pretty alarming. What do you think? I mean, the whole thing is so sketchy. So this military strike happens. There's no information about it.

Trump tweets out the snuff video for everyone to see or post-up. Oh, yeah, forgot about that. Yeah. Marker Ruby originally says the boat was headed to Trinidad, which makes sense because Trinidad is like 12 miles from parts of Venezuela. Trump says it's headed to the United States, which is 1,200 miles from Venezuela to the Florida Keys. Small speedboat, a lot of drugs, 11 people.

You'd have to refuel even with the most fuel-efficient speedboat, like five times to get there. So this seems unlikely that this was had the United States. But because Trump posted out social media, that then became the official story the United States was sticking to. And then Mark Ruby went back and said, oh, you know, yeah, United States. Yeah, which is an absurd proposition. Yeah. And there is this incredibly dangerous logic here that is just embodied in what Van says, which is, as the President of United States, we have the authority to declare anyone or anything that we view as a threat to be a terrorist or terrorist organization.

And also, we as the President of the United States have the power to do anything we can to protect America. from said terrorist or terrorist organization. So without consulting Congress, without a vote from the Congress, the American people weighing in any sort of transparency without a war powers report, we are just, we say something as a terrorist, we can blow it out of the sky, blow it all the water, whatever else. I mean, declaring Trennairagua a terrorist organization was the rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to send a bunch of people who, as it turns out,

were not members of Trennairagua to a torture prison in El Salvador. No due process. And that is the connection between what's happening with like, you know, blowing up fucking speedboats off the coast of Venezuela and sending Andre, you know, Hernandez-Ramero to a foreign gulag to be tortured is that this Trendaragua designation, right? So there's a terrorist organization where there's this organization that's like a drug cartel. So it's a gang, right? It's a gang. Now we're going to say it's a drug cartel, even though, you know, evident. for that. We don't know. We know they're a gang

in Venezuela. We know that there's some of them who've had associates, there's some people who have affiliations with Trennairagua who are in this country. The Justice Department has indicted many of them. None of them, by the way, the people that the Justice Department has indicted, have been accused of drug smuggling

from Venezuela or South America, but that's neither here nor there. Because now that the president with his own authority has decided to designate a group, a terrorist organization, now you're right, now that they, now he's His legal rationale is, I can detain anyone who I think is Trende Aragua, I can deport anyone, anywhere, or now I just have the military, just kill them, just blow them up. That's what we're doing now.

And so, and is it, how do we know it's a, is it a U.S. citizen? Is it not a U.S. citizen? The federal government is now making that designation because there's no due process, right, for a lot of these people. They're just getting rounded up by ICE, by masked agents. So do we know if they're a citizen or not? Do we know if they're here legally or not? Do we know if they're part of this terrorist organization that's now a terrorist organization? We don't.

We just have to trust the government. Do they have to provide evidence? They do not. What are the courts looking like? Well, here's what the courts are looking like. Not enough immigration judges. So now this week, we've also found out that the Trump administration has decided to tap military lawyers in the Defense Department to serve as immigration judges.

So that's happening. We also learned that they are now arming the employees at U.S. citizenship and immigration services whose job is actually to issue passports, visas, green cards, all that good stuff. That's their training. They're getting guns now because we want them to join ICE because we're on a recruitment spree because ICE now has the largest military budget of any nation other than the United States, larger than the Israeli Army budget. So that's ICE.

They're on a recruiting spree. So don't worry, in case you were worried, oh, why do they have to go to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to get employees? I thought they were on this great recruiting spree. No, no, they're on this big recruiting spree, thousands of applicants. They're hosting job expos, where people can sign up for ICE. Washington Post went to one of these job expos, started interviewing some people. I don't necessarily recommend reading it, because unless if you want to sleep well at night,

but I will give you a quote from one former MMA fighter turned IT consultant who felt that his career advancement had been stymied by foreign workers, 36 years old. And here's what he told the Washington Post about why he's excited to join Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. quote, I keep seeing these memes where Indians are bragging about taking our tech jobs. So I said, oh yeah, well, I'm going to work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement, and send you home. So this is where we are. Now, if you didn't know all this, and the only immigration news you saw this week was Trump's post

where he once again threatened to strip Rosie O'Donnell of her American citizenship for being, in his words, a threat to humanity which was of course quickly reposted by the official White House Twitter account just to make sure it's an all all government action here we want to make sure that everyone's in on this

is not just the president doing his own thing this is official White House policy that Rosie O'Donnell is a threat to humanity and we're going to again say that we should strip her of her citizenship even though she was born in this country okay you know you might roll your eyes at the post or maybe even you laugh at like what a lunatic president

but he's blowing up boats and he's recruiting violence-loving racists for ICE to his secret police force. So I don't know, maybe Rosie O'Donnell should be nervous. Anyone in positions of power here are going to connect the dots for everyone? Or are we just going to be like, oh, that's a crazy story? I mean, I continue to believe, as I know you do, that we are as a society, as a Democratic Party, the media, everyone is just underselling the threat we're facing right now. And I know the frog in the boiling water metaphor is so cliche at this point, but it's also very apt because it is exactly what's happening.

It's like every single day Trump grabs a little more power. He does something else that would be seen as impossible to imagine in a pre-Trump era. And he like, he just moves it along, right? So it's like, oh, he's just tweeting about taking Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship away. Well, he was just tweeting about using law enforcement to investigate his political enemies. And now he's got searching for indictments on Obama officials, open a criminal investigation to Lisa Cook, the Fed governor today. Even though, according to ProPublica, several members of his cabinet also have multiple mortgages and could be guilty of the same crime they think

she is. But I'm sure, I'm sure Cash Patel and Pambani will get on that right away. And it's just it gets worse and worse and worse. But so many people are just trying, people of positions of power and influence in this country are just trying to survive the moment. for themselves, right? If I just stay quiet, he won't target me. He won't, he won't mess with my media company. He won't take my tax breaks. He won't regulate my company. And it just gets worse and worse and worse. And we are seeing an absolute failure of every break in the system. So because like right now, we're talking about all these horrible things happening, right? There's dangerous stuff that's happening. And what is Trump doing right now as we're recording this? He's having dinner with some of the richest tech

CEOs in the world, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, I think Tim Cook might be there. All the rich tech people are at the White House just yucking it up with Trump. Even if some of them privately think he is a fucking dangerous moron, they can't say that publicly and they can't turn down the invitation because if they do, he might come after them. And this is the thing that like sort of haunts me all the time. So imagine, let's say that Trump announces tomorrow, besides the executive order or whatever else that he is going to start taking citizenship away from a set of Americans, Rosse O'Donnell included, who disagree with them publicly. How many people in the Republican Party would stand up

and say that's too far? How many major CEOs or business figures in this country would stand up and say that's too far? How many people who run media companies would stand up and say that's a bridge too far? How many media reasons would just cover it as politics as usual? what's the line? I can't think of what the line is that Trump would do that this group of elites who've gone along with this so far

will stop and say that's too far. Raised taxes on the rich. I mean, maybe, maybe, but it's like beheadings in the South lawn. Well, and here's that even the Rosie O'Donnell thing surprised me because it's like she's like denaturalization

is a project that Steve Stephen Miller is quite excited about. And denaturalization is basically stripping citizenship from someone who became a U.S. citizen at some point, right? So they were not born here, or maybe they weren't a citizen from birth, but they went through a naturalization ceremony. They're a U.S. citizen, that's it. And it is very rare. And in history, it has been rarely invoked, and it's an arduous process, and you have to either prove that the person is, you know, a threat to the country or they lied on their citizens. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Threat to the country. Right, exactly. What was used during the McCarthy era a couple times for people who were, you know, accused of being communists, right? So they have, which if you've listened, right, used to be radical Marxists, used to be leftists. There's using communists a lot. He's using communists a lot. And this is where I think it actually could happen. Using communists a lot when they talk about Zoran Mamdani, right, who was not born in this country, who was a U.S. citizen, but was not born in this country who got citizenship in this country when I think.

think he was like seven years old. And Zoran Mamdani wins and becomes mayor of New York. And Donald Trump's upset about it. Like the idea that they could start a denaturalization process, which Stephen Miller has said, oh, it was too small in the first term. We got to ramp up the denaturalization. And he's on record saying it. This is not just like, oh, sky is falling. Everyone go fucking look it up. Stephen Miller's out there saying he wants to ramp up denaturalizations. So how many foreign-born people are there in this country who are U.S. citizens. And now all of those people are potentially at risk. And what are you going to say? Oh, well, it's a long process. Yeah, it's a long process. Sure. In normal times, it's a long process with this government. What's it going to go through the court system? Or do we think it's going to go through

some fucking administrative judge here and there and they yank someone citizenship and then someone sues and then it goes to court. And can you get a nationwide injunction? No, you can't for everyone else who's being denaturalized because the Supreme Court said no nationwide injunctions anymore. So now we're just denaturalizing people. And now we're going to start shipping them out of the country. and by the time the Supreme Court says, no, that's fucking unconstitutional. What are you doing? They're already in South Sudan.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I don't know. Any Democrat going to go out there and be like, what the fuck is happening? It's like, I just, I'm, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's so weird.

It's really bad. It drives me fucking insane that we cannot focus on the thing like for more than a couple days, right? And part of it is, I understand, I'm glad everyone was at the thing. the RFK Jr. hearing today. And I'm glad we were focused on that because that is like deeply affects people's health and well-being and we should be all over that. And by the way, they couldn't

all be there and they couldn't all be doing that because there was also another hearing going on at the same time for the nominee for the federal reserve so that Trump can get a majority on the federal reserve so he can lower interest rates, which would fucking skyrocket inflation for everyone else and destabilize the global financial system. So some of the senators had to be there grilling that guy who said, oh, I'm going to keep my White House job if I'm a fucking Fed governor just in case there was any confusion whether he'd be independent or not, though he says he'll be independent or testimony. So, of course. So I get that there's like a lot going on. But this is like not, this is like, we're close to like, you know, taken to the streets and in a big way, in a sustained way and having leaders who are going to be screaming about this from the top of their lungs like every day. I mean, we would hope that's where we would end up. We should. That's where we should be.

Yeah. It is moving much faster than anyone imagined with Trump. But it's also moving much faster that it has in other countries that have transitioned from democracy to authoritarianism. Much faster. You hear. Usually it's a year-long process. Listen, any people who have been to those countries who've studied this, people are like, who he's moving faster than Putin? It took Putin years to get to this point.

And everyone is going along to get along. Yeah, no, it's all, it's, you know, it's, oof. Pod Save America is brought to you by Zbiotics. Let's face it, after a night with drinks. We don't bounce back the next day like we used to. Sure, don't. Boy, is that true? You have to make a choice. You can either have a great night or a great next day. That is, until we discover pre-alcohol, Zbiotic Pre-Alcohol, probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works.

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So Rosie herself said that Trump is doing the denaturalization thing to distract from the Epstein files, As funny as joke as that is, and as cliché as it's become, might actually be true in this instance. On Wednesday, Jeffrey Epstein survivors showed up on Capitol Hill to say that if the government isn't going to release the fabled Epstein client list, they're going to take matters into their own hands. And apparently they've got help on the inside. Here's one of the survivors, followed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massey. Several of us, Epstein survivors, have been discussing creating our own list of names. We will confidentially compile the names we all know we're regularly in the Epstein world.

And it will be done by survivors and for survivors. Reality is if they try to release that list, they're going to be sued into homelessness. And so what my colleague Marjorie Taylor Green volunteered to do, and I volunteered to do as well, is to read that list on the floor of the House of Representatives. As we've always said, Marjorie Taylor Green will save us. Massey was appearing there with Rokana to talk about their discharge petition, which would force a vote on releasing all the files, and it's getting closer to the 218 signature threshold it needs to go into effect. Meanwhile, the story just broke before we started recording, right-wing creep, activist, whatever you want to call him, James O'Keefe, he released one of his patented hidden camera videos. This one was of a senior DOJ official on a...

staged hinge date admitting that if the DOJ ever does release the files any conservative or Republican names will be redacted and the Democratic names

of course will stay in he later sent in an email which DOJ released and tweeted it's like a 30% iPhone notes app sort of message that he was speaking

in his personal capacity and based And this was only based on what he's read in the media. He has no insider knowledge that the DOJ was ever going to do such a thing and redact the Republican names and keep the Democratic names in. I believe it. Yeah, of course. But it is funny that the DOJ decided to acknowledge this.

The Department of Justice official Twitter account decided to acknowledge this in whatever notes app apology this guy wanted to put out. Let's start with the Epstein stuff and what's going on in Congress. What do you think about the discharge petition? Could it work? Mike Johnson seemed to think it won't. Of course, he doesn't want it to work because he's very much trying to do Donald Trump's bidding and stop it. And so is Donald Trump.

Donald Trump and the White House are trying to whip against this and tell Republicans that if they sign this discharge petition, it will be treated as a hostile act. They are very concerned the Trump White House, but whatever is in those Epstein files that they have been through. So that is just something to note. I think it is quite likely that they will get to 218 because they're at 215 now. One Democrat has not signed, it's Eric Swalwell, who has been home because his mother passed away, reportedly. So when he returns to D.C., he'll obviously sign it. There are two Democratic vacancies, one of Virginia, where the election is quite soon, and then one in Arizona, where the elections in a couple weeks.

Both of those are very democratic seats. That would get you to 218. Now, it is still possible. You can take your name off once it's on. So Trump can lobby these people who have signed to take their name off. We have seen these House Republicans declare. Or, you know, don't be taking any boat rides in international waters. Or that.

Or that had not occurred to me, but that's a good point. So we've seen these Republicans declare with great fanfare one thing and then have get a call for Trump to do the other. But the numbers are on their side. And if the discharge position is signed, Johnson really has no recourse. So he's going to have to put the bill on the floor. in relatively soon fashion. He can delay for a while,

but there's no obvious out taking out of it. So it, like, there is, this is, it's interesting, I'd say. It's interesting. So yeah, as I say, let's play this out in the most optimistic way possible, which is, I know, unusual for us. So the discharge petition. Especially today, yes. Especially today.

Discharge petition works. And in 30 legislative days, sometime late fall, we get a vote on this. And then the vote passes because everyone who signed the discharge petition votes yes, maybe even more, and it's enough to pass the House. So then it, we have legislation. Well, then what happens? Then DOJ is compelled. We have to go to the Senate where the Republicans could theoretically filibuster it, I believe.

That's funny. I think, I don't know that to be sure, but I don't know how the provision would prevent them from doing it. So they'd be in a position to, but there be enough Republicans to get you to six? But then doesn't Donald Trump just veto it? I don't think he can... Oh, huh. That's an interesting question.

Right? Is it a legislative... It's a bill, right? What is it, a law? It's a law to compel the Department of Justice. And then Trump says, no. I don't know. I thought the whole thing was...

I thought the whole point of this was to show that Trump wants to cover this up, which... Point made. Yeah, yeah. So it may not end, I guess that it's a really good question of the veto. It may not end. in actually the release of the records, but him vetoing, that would be his first veto,

would be a veto a law forcing him to disclose records related to his relationship with the American's most notorious child sex trafficker would be a moment. That would be a moment. It would be a moment. I think that would get people's attention. Well, well, that would be a moment

where whatever he does that day, that's a big deal, would be to distract from the Epstein files. Yeah, in that case, he is probably to distract from the Epstein files. That would be a big old, big whole sign that he's going to distract from the If I was Rosie O'Donnell, I would

Again, I would not be on a boat In international waters. Yes. That's just one thing I would avoid. All right, one last thing before we get to my conversation with Leah Lippman, we did want to do an in-memorium section for Donald Trump who did pass away for about three days

before sadly rising again, as happened sometimes. Over the long weekend, the internet started blowing up with all kinds of conspiracies about Trump's health, because he had no public events Wednesday through Friday and then took Labor Day weekend off.

There were also plenty of pictures of Trump's bruised hand and swollen cancals. He's got a real cancal issue these days. The fun lasted until Trump appeared on Tuesday and took questions. I don't know, Dan, are you a bruised hand truther? What do you think?

What do you make of the... This was one where I... You know how online I am. Yeah. I had seen a couple things. things, like a couple of jokes about Trump dying or whatever, or where's Trump? And I just didn't dig in and pay much attention because I was, like, trying to spend time with my family over the weekend.

And I was getting texts from friends and other people, like, hey, what's going on with Donald Trump? Do you think there's any truth to this, like, he might have died or you might be sick rumor? And I was like, what the fuck? How is this real? Yeah. I mean, I would say it is unusual for Trump to be out of sight for like six days. that's unusual.

I'm not saying that he was dead. I'm definitely not saying. It turns out he sat down on Friday for an hour with the daily caller to do one of his, so they could fluff him for an hour on one of those interviews, like it's a cabinet meeting. It wasn't in public, though. We don't know. We didn't know at the time.

It's just, like, it's a Labor Day weekend. People, they were curious. Here's where I am on this. I don't think he died. I would just want to make it very clear. I think he is definitely alive. I do say. It's been a body double since last week.

I made this joke that when he appeared, I was like, on Twitter, I was like, the Wonders of AI or something. And people took me quite seriously. Not Republicans thinking that I was being serious. Not that I, right, right. Yes. Not that, like, there weren't like liberal accounts being like, you're right. I see the way his hands.

He's had six fingers. He's not real. It must be an AI, but bad AI. I do think that there is not enough coverage. of our very old, very unhealthy president's health? I think that Bruce's hand is weird. He's fucking bruised hand. Everyone's like, yeah, Joe Biden, Joe Biden.

Here's the thing. My qualms with Biden running for election had little to do with he had a foot thing. And so now his staff's got shoes with lifts or whatever the fuck it was when Biden was shuffling around and he's got the spinal thing and all that. I'm like, I don't get like, that's not what I was worried about. I thought that was all fine. It's the fact that he could barely communicate. Well, those are two separate issues. I think if we are going to have really, really old presidents, because in the late stages

of America, we've decided to embrace gerontocracy, there should be a lot of transparency and accountability reporting about the health of presidents, particularly when you have a president who you cannot trust to tell the truth or disclose information. And so I think it should be a subject of great curiosity for the press. And I know it's hard because real reporters are not allowed to see him very often anymore because the White House has cut off access to them. But I think it should be a really big discussion. I think it's a fair discussion about Biden.

I mean, there is something below the, like, the Republican character, the unfair Republican caricature of Biden of having to mention asleep at the wheel and all of that. But like, if we're going to have these old presidents, it matters a lot, like how healthy they actually are, and the New York people should know, have information about it. And so, like, the bruised hand is weird. The White House should answer questions best rude. Didn't they give us an explanation on the bruised hand? Well, they gave us an explanation on the cancels.

They did. No, I thought it was about, I'm just laughing at cancels. I'm not laughing at your answer there. Trump bruised hands. They might be related. White House explanation. Look at this. Unlike RFK Jr., looking up the safety.

Do you run research people? Frequent handshaking and his use of aspirin. That's what they're saying. Aspirin is a blood thinner. But you really think he shook his hand into that, Bruce? Isn't he a famous germaphobe? He's not a handshaker. Yeah, I was going to say famous germaphobe.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just asking questions. Who knows what could have happened. But I do think there's something underlying this, which is, and this is pure conjecture. But the reaction to it, people getting so excited by the possibility. Like look, there's a couple of reasons for that

We don't have to get into it's quite obvious But to me It's like a symptom of Everyone wanting a shortcut for this to be over Like we used to joke about the hamburger from heaven thing And there is this like Maybe I don't have to march in the streets And organize and do the hard thing about

Trying to win back power from These authoritarian who have taken over The fucking country And maybe we can just hope that That hamburger from heaven It's coming And it's like, you know what? It's just not, that's, that's not the way to pay attention. Don't, don't tune in when you've

heard rumors that maybe Donald Trump is sick and potentially dead. Tune in of all the rest of the news when there's something you could be doing to try to push back on this. And I'm not talking to any of you who are listening, because I know you guys are all paying very close attention, but you all know there's people in your lives who are just sitting around and not paying attention to this shit, who may have gotten a little excited over Donald Trump being dead for just a couple days. Are we chastising non-news consumers right now? Is that what we're doing? Yeah, I am chastising. I am very much chastising really has become, yeah. Here's what I'd say. No matter what your news diet is, if you hear at the coffee shop from a relative in a family group chat that the

president may be dead, whoever that president is, turn on the TV, open the internet, try to find some information. I'm okay with that. Ask your friend RFK Jr. or any of the people in government who are very good sources of information, what's going on? they will tell you. Or any of the many people who cover the White House, who are all crazy influencers, somehow all dating Marjorie Taylor Green. Do you think we have done enough here to allow Elijah to title the YouTube version's episode, Did Trump Die Last Week? Question, question, that's all he's wanted to do. That's all he's wanted to do. So now I think we've done our job. Okay, when we get back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with strict scrutiny's

Leah Lippman. But before we do that, I've got a special guest here to help me make a very special announcement because love it or leave it is coming back to New York City, Eric Adams. Yeah, huge get. We got Eric Adams. We said no to Mom, Donnie. No, we have a big show in New York at the Crown Hill Theater in Brooklyn. It will be the Wednesday after the election, so we'll cover the New York mayor's race. We can't announce the guests just yet, but we have some very cool people lined up. It's going to be a great show. We're going to do that show in New York and then head down for CrookedCon. So go to crooked.com slash events to get the tickets. They just went on sale. Yeah. Friends of the pod subscribers get the best seats in the house and pre-sale access, which is going on now until tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern time. That's what I heard, Love it. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. That sounds great. Remember, the show is Wednesday, November 5th, right after the day after the election. General sale tickets go on sale tomorrow, September 6th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Go get him. Go get him. Go see Lovett and Eric Adams.

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free. That's ziprecruiter.com slash crooked. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash crooked. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Leo, what's up? Oh, only good things. Only good. Right? That's it. Yeah. I think the only good piece of news we got was, you know, Taylor's new album a couple weeks and an engagement. That's something. I'm hanging by a thread, and the thread is the life of a show. girl. I was good to say.

And same. That's it. All right. So Trump administration has been on a bit of a losing streak in the courts over the last week or so. Federal appeals court ruled the tariffs are illegal. Another appeals court rejected Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people. A federal judge ruled that Trump's deployment of U.S. troops to L.A. was illegal.

And then another federal judge just ruled that Trump's decision to freeze billions of dollars in research grants to Harvard was illegal. I'm guessing all of these. end up at the Supreme Court in some former fashion? First of all, I have a couple questions about all of this, but first of all, what's your sense of what might happen there for these four cases? I mean, it's difficult to know. And on some level, I think it depends on factors that we just don't know yet. I think it would be a mistake just to resign ourselves to accepting that this court is just going to give the Trump administration anything it wants. I think that the legal claims against what the Trump

administration has done are extremely compelling. You know, the lower court rulings that you've described were meticulous and careful and really went through all of the facts to describe what exactly the Trump administration was doing and why they are illegal. So, you know, if I had to venture a prediction, I'm nervous about the ruling, about the deployment of troops in L.A. I am less nervous about the ruling on the alien enemy. Act for whatever that is worth. And the other ones, I think, are somewhere in the middle. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, have, has the Supreme Court ever taken up a case regarding tariffs in our lifetime? Like, has anyone tried? Not in my lifetime. What do we know about how they think about

the president's emergency powers around tariffs? I mean, I think the concern is Brett Kavanaugh has been planting some seeds that suggest he is basically creating a gerrymandered exception from the rules the Supreme Court established to limit Joe Biden's presidential power and say, well, that just doesn't apply to the kind of thing that Donald Trump is doing because our rule that, you know, presidents and administrative agencies don't really get to do big things doesn't apply in the area of foreign affairs. So I worry that they're already signed. that they have been gerrymandering the law to give Donald Trump what he is asking. And your concern about the L.A. ruling, is that because the president has sort of broad authority,

whether it's, I mean, I know he wasn't invoking the Insurrection Act here, but he can sort of commandeer the National Guard when he wants and all that kind of stuff? I'm nervous about it for a few reasons. One is, I think the best defense of that ruling is it accurately describes the facts, but this Supreme Court has been all too willing to ignore the facts and just discount the very careful findings that lower courts have made against the Trump administration. The other is that it arises in a context where I am concerned that the wing nuts on executive power like Brett Kavanaugh are inclined to give the president more deference, namely, you know, kind of traditional enforcement functions.

And in that space, I am just concerned about asking the Supreme Court to let stand a lower court ruling that finds on the basis of facts that the president has gone too far. Now, the Harvard cases is different in terms of these sort of, you know, kind of group of enforcement related cases. Harvard's been the only university here to sue Trump over its assault on research funding. others, Columbia, Brown, Penn, have agreed to settle with the administration in some way pay fines. Do you think this court decision should give more universities the resolve to fight back? I mean, I hope it does, and I think it should. I think the legal claims against what the Trump administration has been doing have always been very clear and very powerful. I mean, it's total bullshit that they were doing this, right, to, I don't know, address anti-Semitism.

it's always been an ideological campaign. And they've been quite transparent about this. I mean, Linda McMahon has basically gone around to cable TV and says, well, yeah, this is just allowing conservatives to do all of the things they wanted to do on campus. So, you know, it's these aren't hard cases. I think the gamble and the tough spot that places find themselves in is they look around and they say, we have winning legal claims, right? we are winning in the lower courts, but who knows what those fuck weirdos on the Supreme Court

are going to do? And so it's really hard to bank on the fact that you have a winning legal claim when this court just sometimes doesn't give two shits about the law or facts. Yeah, I mean, there's the question mark over the Supreme Court. There's also timing issues, right? Like, I feel like even if, you know, in the most optimistic scenario, right, if SCOTUS rules against Trump in all these cases, for most of them, with the possible exception of Harvard, it feels a little, like, too little too late. Oh, yeah. Like he keeps doing the bad illegal things he wants to do.

And then ex post facto, we've got a court somewhere being like, that L.A. deployment that happened a couple months ago, that was a big no-no. He shouldn't have done that one. Right. Well, think about the funding cases in particular. I mean, the administration is not releasing these funds to Harvard. They are canceling National Institutes of Health grants. They are freezing Department of Education funds.

What happens if those payments don't go out for a few months or a year? You know, as Justice Jackson wrote in dissent in the National Institutes of Health case, labs are going to shut down, people are going to be fired, studies are going to be thrown out. I mean, animal subjects are going to be euthanized. these aren't things you can just snap your fingers and say that disappears when we ultimately conclude that what they've done is illegal. This is happening in the foreign aid funding case. I mean, the administration has just stonewalled paying out any of its foreign aid obligations, even though it's been months since the district court concluded that their funding freezes and cancellations were illegal. So what's happening in the interim? People aren't getting food.

people aren't getting medicine, and food and medicine are going to waste because there isn't money to distribute them. And that's not going to be fixed if the Supreme Court ultimately concludes, yeah, what you did is illegal and you have to pay out that money that you've now owed for over a year. You would almost think that in some of these cases, it would be valuable to have something like a nationwide injunction that prevents the administration from doing some of this stuff. Silly, silly John. Brett Kavanaugh reassured us that when the Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions, that the Supreme Court would remain willing, able, and available to settle issues on a nationwide basis in the interim when that was called for. You know, I keep

checking my calendar and yet. Yet, and what's going with the birthright citizenship case? Why don't we have a ruling on that yet? Well, so we have several lower courts that have concluded. You know, this order is unlawful and it cannot be applied to anyone. The administration is not moving as quickly to challenge those rulings as they are on other matters. And I think the government is engaged in a lot of really shady and manipulative tactics that basically engineer when and which cases get to the Supreme Court in an emergency posture that if any other litigant besides the government, was doing, they would be sanctioned. And I think the government's chosen timing in birthright citizenship is just an example of, you know, they don't want this one to go up quickly. So they're not taking it. I want to ask you about this Venezuelan boat incident for which the administration has provided zero legal rationale. I know the courts, especially Supreme Court, as we just talked about like to give administrations, particularly this administration, sort of broad deference

when it comes to matters of national security. But even if you believe the administration that they took out a bunch of Trend de Aragua terrorists headed towards the U.S., which is still a stretch because they have provided no proof for that, aren't the implications of just saying that the government gets to decide who's a terrorist and what we do about them fairly terrifying? Yeah, they are utterly stunning. I mean, what if Stephen Miller and whoever else is making decisions in this White House decides there is a terrorist on some flight into the United States? Are they going to blow the plane out of the sky? I mean, it's utterly shocking. There is no possible legal basis for just summarily executing people based on the president's whim. and say so. And yet that is the authority they are claiming. And I just want to, since you brought up birthright citizenship, let's go back to the immunity ruling. You know, when the Democratic appointees warned about a president ordering seal team six to assassinate a political

rival. Yeah, we're getting close. Right, exactly. Exactly. We're not even a year in. I mean, it is, I saw that. I'm like, why isn't anyone, well, also like, who would challenge that, right? Like, who would bring that case that what they did to the boat was illegal? Because, like, who has standing to challenge that? So I think that the family members of people who are executed could conceivably, you know, sue some federal officers for damages. Although the Supreme Court wouldn't allow that case to proceed for reasons that I explained in my federal court's class, but we'll not get into now. Okay. How are we feeling about military lawyers serving as immigration judges?

You know, everyone, everyone knows that immigrant. law is super easy and not at all complicated, and you don't need any training in it whatsoever. Like, you can just pick up a book and you'll be fine. So zero qualms about this whatsoever. Okay, cool, cool. Much like just giving the people whose job it is to issue the passports and the visas, just giving them guns, which we're doing now because we need to expand ice because we're not recruiting enough of the random MMA fighters who lost their jobs and now want to slam people's heads against the pavement. Right, or deploying the military, right, to just engage in normal policing in cities, which, again, they have zero training to do. Cool, cool. I wanted to ask you about an NBC news story that came out today where 10 federal judges went on background to criticize the Supreme Court for issuing the shadow docket rulings where the majority offers. You shady bitches. I love it.

The rulings where the majority offers little to no explanation or rationale for. their rulings. What do you think is going on there? First of all, how unusual is that for a bunch of federal judges to go in background to NBC News? It is deeply unusual. It is striking and it is alarming because it is a sign of how bad the Supreme Court is that lower federal judges are willing to talk to reporters even on background about what the Supreme Court is doing wrong. I mean, this is unprecedented. And I don't say that as a knock against what the lower courts are doing. I think we should take it as a sign of how appalling the Supreme Court's behavior is. You know, it's not just their lack of explanation on the shadow dockets. These lower court judges said, you Supreme Court are enabling the Trump administration's attacks on lower court judges that have precipitated real threats of violence and harassment. I mean, one lower court judge said, somebody's going to die, right?

Like, they are in fear of the consequences of the Trump administration fomenting, right, all of these attacks on judges and that the Supreme Court has had nothing to say about. In fact, they have fanned the flames with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch writing a few weeks ago about how lower federal courts are defying, you know, the Supreme Court's opinions in matters. involving the Trump administration, which could not be further from the truth. And, you know, it's not just these judges speaking on background. You've now had judges write in their opinions in footnotes, like in the Harvard ruling, for example. You know, we just don't think it's that useful for you guys' Supreme Court to be shitting all over us when we try to make sense of your shadow docket ruling. So they aren't just speaking on background to NBC. They're writing it in their opinions. And And these are, again, just signs of how alarming this Supreme Court is.

Why do you think the majority in some of these cases when they give the Trump administration a win choose not to offer any explanation in the shadow docket ruling? If they're so confident that Trump is complying with the Constitution and the law, why not make their case for the public? You know, I think a few reasons. One is, I think on some level, they're not. quite sure why they disagree with the lower court ruling, but they know it has to be wrong. And so they don't bother to force themselves to actually articulate what the reason is.

They just shoot from the hip and go with their gut instinct, which is the problem is the lower federal courts, not the Trump administration. I think some of it might be there's a lack of agreement among the justices about why the lower courts are wrong. I think some of it is to preserve flexibility for themselves. So they don't have to bother applying that rationale in the event that a Democrat becomes president. They didn't explain why Donald Trump basically got to eviscerate the Department of Education. And therefore, they didn't write down on the page the reasons why a Democratic president might be able to eviscerate ICE. So I think there are several explanations, but I honestly think the primary one is they just don't force themselves to identify why.

they think the lower court got it wrong and obviously in some of these cases we've seen uh dissents we've seen some of the liberal judges write dissents someone's willing to do their job right how talk about how you think about like the fine line that they're walking because you've because the liberal justices are writing these dissents they are you know they're in public appearances sort of hinting towards the frustration here without saying too much, like, what must that be like for them, do you think? I don't think they have a fun job right now. I think they are constantly balancing between, you know, trying to maintain some, I don't know, sense of a relationship with their Republican colleagues such that they can actually cobble together a majority.

in some cases. On the other hand, I think they legitimately feel compelled to try to inform the public and warn the public about what lawless hacks their Republican colleagues are. I mean, you have Justice Jackson writing explicitly that the court is engaged in Calvin Ball with a twist where there's only one rule, the administration always wins. Like, they have repeatedly made statements about how their Republican colleagues are in the bag for Donald Trump and the Trump administration. And I just think that like the lower federal judges, lower court federal judges who are talking to NBC on background, they are having to engage in behaviors that are somewhat unprecedented, right, and happening in a different tone and register simply to

get people's attention, right, to understand this problem. Because if you just say, I dissent, I don't know, reasonable argument on the other side, no one's going to pick up on how fucked the Supreme Court is. Wow. I'm going to just read you two quotes that I'll let you cook on. And then just to really get. I'm already at 11. I was going to say just to get you.

I'll get to a 50 real quick. Get to a 50 and then I can send you off. All right. One is from an Obama appointed judge who talked to NBC for the story. Quote, I do sympathize with the predicament the court. court is in, doing a dance with the administration, and particularly, I'm sympathetic to Roberts. The other is in a Politico story, and this is from federal judge Robert Dow, who's also an advisor to John Roberts, I understand. Quote, the problem for our branch is that we have a very

tiny megaphone, and if we use our megaphone too often, we risk losing what I would say is the long game, and the long game is to preserve our independence. Let me start with the second. It's like the guy in the hot dog suit, right? We're all trying to find the guy who did this. Like, you're telling me that the problem is acknowledging that the Trump administration, right, is engaged in this lawless attack on our constitution and democracy. And it's a problem for you to say that. Isn't that your job? I mean, so that's a little bit of there. Also, it's like, what long game? There might not be a game. How long do you think we have?

You know, they're slightly more optimistic than I am, I guess. They're all going to go down in flames and they're going to preserve their tiny megaphone. You know, they're sometimes in my darkest moments, I run a line to myself that runs something like this. As I am hauled off to the gulags, Brett Kavanaugh writes an opinion that says, Ah, but at a later time, now that we have held our fire, we will be able to preserve the rule of law. And yeah, so that's that's that story. The, you know, Obama appointed judge who expresses sympathy for the chief justice. I mean, another part of that quote was that Obama judge saying, I actually do think that

some of the problem is the lower federal courts. They suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. Wild. wild to say. Not to make this a personal attack on you, John, but this is a fairly damning indictment of the Obama administration and the kinds of judicial nominees they were selecting. If they are so out to lunch and committed to this both sidesism, they cannot acknowledge the reality staring at them in the face, which is, right, the problem is an executive branch engage in systemic, systematic, brazen legal violations, not the judges saying that.

I know. It was an era of let's get these judges confirmed with votes from both parties and now not so much anymore. So that you probably get a few clunkers like that. Give me a unicorn while you're at it. Why not? Well, no good news here. But thank you for illuminating what's going on with a lot of these cases and with our

Supreme Court, as you always do, wonderfully and brilliantly on strict scrutiny, which everyone should tune into and subscribe if you haven't already. Leah, thank you so much for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to join us, and I'm glad we could yell about all this. Yeah, anytime, anytime. I'll always get up to a 50. Awesome. Perfect.

Take care. That's our show for today. Dan's going to be back on the feet on Sunday. With a special conversation with the one and only Heather Cox Richardson, check it out. Exciting it. I'm recording it tomorrow. I'm very excited for it. And everyone else.

We'll see you next week. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to Cricket.com slash Friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilic Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.

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