The Bulwark Podcast - David French: MAGA Is Making America Less Free

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Marco Rubio is using dubious powers to create a new class of immigrant political prisoners. Meanwhile, DHS officials are bragging about how they're brutally shackling and frog-marching Haitians who came here under protected status. On this American holiday weekend, David takes a "nerd moment" to explain that the Founders always intended our Constitutional liberties to apply to noncitizens as well—including even despicable Milo Yiannopoulos. Plus: How Trump keeps getting away with his illegal ballroom construction, what normie Texas Republicans are thinking about Paxton vs. Talarico, the risks of legal shenanigans after the votes are all counted in November, and an update on the Iranian green card-holders who've now been detained 150 days. Also, Tim is heartily enjoying the LSU ruling ahead of Saturday's game against Clemson.David French joins Tim Miller for the holiday weekend pod.show notes: Follow "Bulwark Takes" for the latest releases over the weekend David's piece on Marco's tin-pot dictator leanings More on the Iranian green card-holders from a local NBC affiiliate in LA Tim's playlist Bulwark LIVE: GOOD FIGHT TOUR with Tim, Sarah, Sam and JVL is coming to the Southeast in October. Tickets are on sale NOW. Head to TheBulwark.com/Events for details and to get your tickets.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. Opinion comments for the New York Times, co-host of the legal podcast advisory opinions, former JAG officer. It is David French. Welcome back, David. Tim, great to see you. Good to see you, too, man. We'll have much to discuss, including ending with your class conversation about just war theory and LSU football. So we'll get to that. I have minor good news for listeners and an appreciation for people that we're calling Katie Britt and others' office. The Venezuelan family had mentioned a couple of weeks ago now, Ed Gariani and Freddy's did finally get out of the Dilley Detention Center, and they were back in Venezuela. I mean, probably the best news would have been if they're able to stay in America. But that's neither here to there.

At least they're no longer in a detention center. Appreciate the audience that engaged on that. Less good news on some of the other stuff related to the detentions. And I wanted to start there. You wrote a Times column this week talking about now, you know, about a year old, the Ramiza Ossarck story, there's a legal ruling about that, that reflected back of that story and talked about just kind of the perniciousness of this policy by the administration. So why don't you

just cook on that? Sure, sure, sure. So let's go back to March 2025, March of last year. And there was this footage that was really, when you knew it in context, was really shocking. It's this young Muslim woman. She's bundled up for the winter and cold weather. And some plainclothes officers come up to her. One of them puts her his hands on her. She screams. Next thing, you know, there are several other plainclothes officers. They kind of gather around her, lead her away, shackler, lead her away. And if that was a video of an arrest for, say, a violent crime, you know, murderer, armed robber, something like that, it would not be a shocking video. It would actually be kind of a benign arrest. I mean, she wasn't thrown to the ground or anything

like that. But then you heard why she was arrested. She was arrested and detained. for deportation because she was a co-author of Tim, what is really a pretty milk toast op-ed? Yeah. I mean, it was anti-Israel. No question about it. You know, it was calling for a Tufts University where she was a graduate student to, you know,

boycott Israel, you know, wanted the school to call what was happening in Gaza, genocide, like very standard rhetoric, like very standard rhetoric. Yeah. She was one of four authors. And immediately the news comes out that she, She was being deported under this relatively obscure legal provisions that give the Secretary of State essentially total discretion to deport a visa holder when the Secretary of State in total discretion decides that they're a serious threat to the foreign policy of the United States. And when I first heard this, I thought that can't be right.

Like even in the Trump administration, like even in the Trump administration. She's got to be texting ISIS or something. Yeah, she's texting ISIS. says she shoplifted, like something else is going on. But no, as the court proceedings unfolded and there was a bail hearing, after she'd been detained for weeks, Tim, for weeks, there was a bail hearing. And the judge in the hearing was like, no, this is, she was detained for co-authoring. Again, this was not an op-ed calling for the violent overthrow of the United States of America.

It was an op-ed engaging in bog standard pro-Palestinian rhetoric, like the most standard. pro-Palestinian rhetoric. It wasn't even written in it in inflammatory way. It's pretty dry, to be honest. And no, in fact, she was, had been detained for weeks for writing an op-ed. And the reason I wrote about this, this incident that occurred in 2025, is because just last week, there was a federal judge in California who struck down the, or issued a declaratory judgment, declaring that the statutes that Rubio had used, were unconstitutional, at least as applied to protected speech. In other words, the government was relying on unconstitutional statutes to deport non-citizens for their speech. And so I wrote about that

for a couple of reasons. One is I'm just getting all of this sort of, you know, Normie Republicans who are desperate for a Normie Republican to kind of unite behind in around 2028. And a lot of them have fixed their eyes on Marco Rubio. Well, Rubio, in his little sphere of influence, has been a bit of a 10-pot dictator. That this is... The worst. I ranked in the worst last week in the cabinet. I mean, this is inexcusable. Like these people, and what we found out is, and what the courts found out,

as that there were factual findings and investigation of all this, is that the administration worked with a pro-Israel activist organization called Canary Mission, got a list of about 5,000 people to further scrutinize who had engaged in pro-Palestinian rhetoric or anti-Israel rhetoric, whittled that down to between 100 and 200 people to target them for further investigation, again, around their political speech. So if you're thinking about this as, wait a minute, could this happen in America? Like, what is happening? You're on the right track. But when the judge struck down these statutes, the reaction in parts of the right was just really volcanic at the very idea that non-citizens would enjoy.

free speech rights, just volcanic. Some people are even calling it the Constitution is a suicide pact. Suicide pact because it lets graduate students write op-eds? I mean, what are we even doing here? I mean, this is- Ben Shapiro, even like in the more mainstream of the right-wing media. Like, he wrote this, you put this. Like, we should deport people who hate America and aren't citizens. The administration was making precisely the correct moves on this front. What the heck? And what was making this particularly pernicious is that if you actually actually read the text of the Constitution. If you read the Declaration of Independence, if you read the founders, sort of the idea that American liberty is for American citizens only was totally

alien to them. I mean, that's just not the way that the United States was envisioned. Well, all of them were born in a foreign country, for starters. Well, I mean, and, you know, it's so funny, Tim, one of the things, I feel like, like, this is my nerd moment. Like, this is the nerd moment. Like, I've been waiting for my whole life. I've loved to read about the debate. around the founding. I've loved to read about the founders my whole life. I've read the federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers, and it was just waiting in a corner, Tim, to like pounce on the right moment in American history to be like, this is all so relevant because it is. You know, what's so interesting is we're refighting a lot of the fights

around the founding. And it's the Trumpist right that is essentially trying to reinvent the founding of the United States to pull, you know, for all their talk. and Trump won the 1776 project and all of their tattoos about patriotism and all of this stuff. A lot of these guys are essentially trying to unwind big parts of the founding to make America less free and more chauvinistic and nationalistic. And more white. But we have, you know, going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, you have been like Thomas Jefferson, principal author of Declaration of Independence, James Madison, principal author of the Bill of Rights, saying,

no, the blessings of American liberty extend to non-citizens who are in our midst. And this is very, very clear. And Jefferson even goes so far as to say, if you are attacking the, quote, friendless alien, the citizen is next. And we have seen this. We have seen this. And we can go into the law of it all. But the text of the Constitution backs this up as well.

The ban on Congress abridging free speech is a blanket ban. It's not for citizens. The Fifth Amendment, which was also another constitutional amendment, the court used to overturn these statutes, protects the due process rights of persons, not just citizens, persons. And so the text of the Constitution, the clear intent of the founders, the Declaration of Principles and the Declaration of Independence, which does not limit unalienable rights to Americans, you know, all men are created equal. All of this is said that from the founding, this idea, that non-citizens in our midst have no rights at all is just, it's just alien. And here we come with Marco Rubio coming in and exercising this really stupid grant of discretion that Congress gave

presidents and secretaries of state years ago, exercising it in the most brutally authoritarian way. And creating literally, Tim, like a class of political prisoners in the U.S. Well, I wanted to bring this up for three reasons. One, I wanted to let you nerd out. two when I did a big rant about Marco Rubio not being the Normian administration last week on the show, I was focusing on his failures in diplomacy, which I think is the main job of Secretary of State, as far as I can tell. But he's got a lot of hats. But I left this kind of aside, the immigration part of it, which is maybe where he's shown his most authoritarian impulses. But the other reason I wanted to bring it up is I mentioned on the show, the story of Mariam Thomas Sebi and her husband and son a couple weeks ago.

ago now, there was an article in the nation. She had written from inside of Dilley Prison, an article from the nation. And I've now been emailing her a little bit. And so I just want to say up front, this story is so insane. It's similar to the Ramesa Ostrick thing that it's like, my source for this is what she is telling me, right? And so is it possible? There's some other thing happening, I guess, but the administration hasn't shown us anything. And now we've seen the administration's track record of doing things exactly like this. So I don't have any reason not to believe her. But I just want to say that. So the story, for the story, for the story, people who missed it the last time I mentioned it.

There was an online smear campaign. This is kind of really similar to the Oztrak story, but instead of being about anti-Israel, it was about, it was kind of the pro-Shah Iranian crowd. Barium-Thomassebi's mother-in-laws or husband's mother was a translator for the Iranian hostage-takers in 1979, before any of the people that are detained were even born. This kind of petition went up online.

They were targeted. They've been detained. They're from California. They were sent to, well, Mariam and her son are in Dilley, the husband's in a different detention center somewhere else. So they've been separated. And the email she sent to me, she says, again, this is her testimony. Our case is the first of any green card holders in the history of the country. The government's taking their legal status away, not because of anything that they have done,

but because of family relationship, the government's presented zero evidence except for this Rubio letter that you have been talking about, David. that Ruby a letter resulted in the attention of her child, a 10th grader, saying that he's a potential threat to U.S. foreign policy. She says he's an average American teenager that's been hard to be on belief by this. The family doesn't even have a speeding ticket to its name, no other crimes. The government hasn't offered them a single pathway out of detention or even out of a country for 150 days. Talked about weeks in the odds trick case. They've been in detention for 150 days. Unbelievable.

unbelievable. Unbelievable. I mean, now again, I will do the caveats. But at some point, this is what happened with the Ostert case is the government has to put up or shut up. In other words, when you go into court, there's got to be evidence there. And what the administration is very good at doing is making sort of sweeping condemnatory statements and then not backing them up with any evidence at all. Like this op-ed, you know, one of the things you're talking about Ben Shapiro's statement and others about people who hate America, you know, Stephen Miller, people who hate America. If you read the op-ed, you would see that she doesn't have a lot for Israel. Right. No question about that.

And as I said in my piece, I disagree with this op-ed. I'm not sitting here defending somebody who's like on my side of an argument. This is somebody who I disagree strongly with the op-ed, but, you know, this is the United States of freaking America. And if you can't debate a Tufts PhD student on this matter, who's the snowflake here? Right. I mean, like, come on. And so here you have a situation where once again, you know, you had this sort of hate America. And then you hate America is not a grounds for what does that even mean?

Who's defining that, right? Yeah. But that's not even. Trump hates America in some ways. And so he's attacked our country and our history in some pretty incredible ways. Yeah. I mean, he's compared us to Putin's right. Russia. I mean, this is the kind of thing that he does. But this sort of idea that you're going to make

these big sweeping declarations and time and time again, not always. Sometimes, you know, we hear one story and then when the evidence comes out, we find out that the person who's being deported did some serious things. You know, sometimes the facts actually align for the administration. But we've seen this movie before, Tim, big sweeping declarations when it comes to put up or shut up in court, they have nothing to put up. And this is something that's very important, I think, to emphasize. We're seeing this, people being detained in tough conditions, detained, imprisoned, when they're not actually accused of a crime. Indefinitely. Indefinitely. That's what she said to be in the email. She's like, I've been in for 150 days. Even if Rubio's detention order was somehow

constitutionally valid, why is a non-criminal spending weeks in difficult conditions in detention when they're not even being accused of a crime? This is, This is something that I think keeps getting glossed over in a lot of our debates. Again and again, you see the administration bragging about the brutal way that it treats immigrants. You see immigrants like being led in humiliating fashion, up airplane steps, bound hand and feet, shackled hand and feet, like criminal defendants coming into a courtroom of people who, you know, armed robbers, suspected murderers, etc., bound hand and feet. and the people who are bound hand and feet weren't even in the country illegally, some cases, where if you're dealing with the TPS deportees,

they were here legally. Right. And now they're being deported, bound hand and feet. On what planet is this not barbaric? I mean, this is absurd. We're treating non-criminals worse in some ways

than we treat certain classes of actual criminals in the United States. Yeah, way worse. It's staggering. Way worse. It's staggering. Another thing that Mariam said in her email to me is like that the conditions like in these metal trailer prisons

they're in are crazy in Dilley. And we've seen that reporting from other people, you know, folks that I've had on the program like Jonathan Blitzer. So it's horrifying. I'm going to keep on this Thomas Abbey's story for people and let folks know if there's anything they can do. But, you know, to your point about the way that, you know, the administration is now acting, one thing that we've been saying recently because it's true is it was like a modest change in

tone in some ways that I thought was kind of pernicious, honestly, from like the gnome to the Mullen DHS, where they were doing less of like the ASMR, you know, immigrant cruelty porn. But then yesterday they're back. This is probably the picture you were just referencing. Mark Wayne Mullen posts a picture of the Haitians, you know, going on to a deportation fight shackled and, you know, talking about how he's keeping the country safe. It's like, these people came to the country legally. They came into the country through a legal process.

like, okay, it's fine if you're going to change the policy. It's not my preferred policy. But to dehumanize them and treat them like criminals and thugs and like threats to the country is disgusting. And was it you, Tim, that tweeted, I can't, no, I think it was Jesse Single who tweeted out that same thing. And it was like every time. And it was like bragging and showing and puffing the chest out about this dehumanizing

treatment of people who are not criminals. Yeah. And then in the bio, first word, Christian. And if this doesn't sum up so much of the quote-unquote Christian activism of the Trump era, it's again and again and again you will see somebody celebrating cruelty. You'll see somebody spreading lies. You'll see somebody engaging in the most vicious speech and cruel speech online. And then you go to their bio and it's like, Christ is king or Christian.

And I mean, this is a bit of a tangent. The long-term damage to, in particular, the evangelical church, is going to be very significant. It's going to be very significant because there will come in time when people will wake up from all of this and in their foggy hangover from all of this cruelty will say, who, what, let us down this path. And the number one answer is going to be the white evangelical church. That's going to be the number one answer, at least from the grassroots up standpoint. Guys, this summer is getting kind of sweaty down here in the bayou. And, uh, Boy, as I mentioned on the show, think about how sweaty it's going to be up in Baton Rouge with all the hot air coming out of the Tiger Faithful as we begin the Lane Kiffin experience.

And, you know, if you're going to be in a sweaty environment, you want some clothes that keep you comfy, keep you from overheating. And one way to do that is with our friends Mack Weldon's air knit fabric. The Mac Weldon Air Nit fabric is super cozy. I've been doing that V-neck tea. I got out of V-neck. I was very big into V-neck T's and the aughts. I was a V-neck-T-man for a while. And then I stopped.

I don't know why I stopped. Maybe there's some forces in the fashion industry above my head that made that decision, or maybe my husband didn't like me in them. I don't remember what happened. But I've been putting the Mac Weldon, air-knit V-necks back on, and I think I look good, and they're cozy.

They've also got, you know, the trunks, the underwear, if you're in the market for that, especially if you get the swamp crotch, we call it down here, if that's a problem for you, I'd look into the Mac Weldon underwear. They got all the different styles. I know you straights like the big old underwear,

the boxers. They got those, if that's what you're into. Mac Weldon's clothes are designed to fit your style and the demands of modern life. They look like regular clothes, but feel like the latest in modern comfort. For over 10 years, Mac Weldon has designed time with innovative menswear

to help you move through the day with confidence even if you're just hanging in your underwear. Don't sweat the heat. Feel as effortlessly cool as you look with Mac Weldon. Go to macwellden.com and get 20% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code The Bullwork. That's M-A-C-W-E-L-D-O-N dot com code the bulwark. I asked you have yelled about this yesterday at an email from a reader that was like,

why isn't there more focus on, you know, obviously Christians should believe in treating everybody with dignity. it's fundamental to the faith, but just kind of as a rhetorical matter, a lot of people that were being deported and that we're treating like this are Christians. Or sending them back to places, you know, I mentioned the story yesterday about the couple that got sent to Guatemala back to this, you know, kind of gang-ridden part of Guatemala they were from, and the two parents get killed and the baby is left there, let an extra bleeding-out mother.

And a lot of cases, like, these are Christians that we're doing this, too. Oh, absolutely. And what makes it even worse, Tim, there is a recent, you know, I've just gotten some information about refugee resettlement for persecuted Christians. Okay. So this is the big pro-Christian administration. So in 2024, the last full year of the Biden administration, there are 29,479 persecuted Christians, refugees permitted to resettle in the United States. That's the highest number since 2016, the last year of the Obama administration. 32,000 persecuted Christians. 2026, Tim.

Four. Zero. Zero. Zero. I even went high on my guess. You went high. Zero. Zero.

And in fact, what we're seeing is persecuted Christians and sometimes being deported back to the places where persecuted them. Yeah, we're doing the persecuting. Actually, it's negative. Zero is too nice to them, really. Zero is too nice. If you count as a negative one for every persecuted Christian, we persecute, you know, the number is deep into the negatives.

This is stunning stuff. I mean, you know, and it really does demonstrate just a total upside down morality right now in which so many Christians are approaching politics, just totally upside down. And to the extent to which they're cheering on an administration that has abandoned Christian brothers and sisters around the globe who are facing unimaginable persecution in some parts of the world, just unimaginable. and like the gates of the United States of America are now closed to them, what are we doing here? Like, what are we doing here? It's sick. And just maybe the prime, most kind of clownish example of this hypocrisy. I'd like to show a video.

It's a gentleman that was so performative in his Catholicism, one of my people, unfortunately, in this case, that he went on to kind of a Christian broadcasting QVC to sell little totems from saints to old ladies. and did a lot of performative religiosity and, and, you know, demonstrated just how Catholic he was. Simultaneous to that, he was tweeting about how he likes to masturbate to ICE detentions. Like, it makes him so excited when immigrants get detained by ICE that he masturbates to it. Unfortunately for him, he was an illegal immigrant in the country and got to experience some of that brutality. And he described it on the Pierce Morgan Show. I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America.

The manner in which they arrest you, they put your manacles, your hands, your feet, chain it together. I mean, like, everybody is arrested as like an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television. I was weeping like an old woman for an hour, and I was like, oh, I really have got to get this out of my system. I think maybe in the past I've been a little bit a little bit blasé when people talked about their trauma, a little bit kind of cavalier when people talked about, you know, stuff kind of lingering with them. But I get it now. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. David.

It hurt more than he thought. Wow. Yeah. You know, Tim, and part of the irony here is this guy, Milo Yanopoulos, is one of the architects of Trump. I mean, this is a guy who you remember, I remember this very well, 2015, 2016. He was the guy running around calling Trump Daddy. He was sort of the clown prince of the alt-right at that time. His star was rising.

In 2017, you know, think of him as like the Tucker Carlson-esque slash Nick Fuentes-esque-style troll of Trump One. Until his star came crashing to the ground in 2018, he's been trying to crawl back into prominence ever since then. He's not a good guy. This is not a good guy. And I tweeted something out that detonated like a small bomb on that infernal website. And I was just like, this is why the attack on empathy is so evil. Because if we have to wait for person after person to actually experience the brutality of this administration before we wake up, then the human cost is going to be staggering. But if instead we can have a modicum of empathy, look at somebody who's being frog marched out of the country in manacles as shackled when they did not commit a crime. And we can't have any empathy for that. Then we're going to guarantee just continued brutality. And when I tweeted that out, I'm not saying Milo's a good guy. Often we learn about brutality from people who are not good guys.

That's who we learn about brutality for them. But it's a perfect lesson. This guy was one of the architects of the destruction of empathy in our culture. I mean, he's one of the chief offenders. Anytime you can tweet about masturbating to other people's misfortune, you're horrific. And then it's an old story, Tim. It happens to you. I don't get one exception in this case.

I don't know what the rules are. Not even one time. No exceptions, Tim. Okay. All right. Well, I haven't done it, but I just wanted to check with you. And then you get to this and you're like, this is the oldest story in the book. You know, that's that old statement, you're reaping.

Ha, ha, ha. Here I go. and then you're sewing. What the heck? What is happening? Yeah. And just this is another example. So people got mad at you as the anti-emathy crowd that was mad at you?

Who was mad at you? Anti-emathy crowd. And then some people are like, how are you giving any credence to Milo's words? He's a clown. He's an evil clown. Well, yeah, he's been an evil clown. But as I was explaining to, you know, some friends of mine who were sort of pushing back on my tweet, I was like, you know, I've spent enough time dealing with civil liberties to know that the canaries and the coles

in the coal mine of brutality are the people who get detained. And a lot of the people who get detained aren't great people. But their stories, many of their stories about brutality are very true. And so you have to be able to hold two things in your mind at once, Milo Yanopolis, evil crown prince of Maga for many years. Also, Milo Unoplas, human being who did not commit a crime and he shouldn't have been shackled like he was an armed robber. You can have those thoughts in your brain at the same time. You got weight loss goals, and now Labor Day, end of summer, it's time to actually hit them. Weight loss by Hems is designed to support you every step of the way,

and now Hymns offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen, so you can lose the weight and keep it off. With Wagoe at Hymns, you lose up to 20% of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. Exercise is important. I'm back in my ladies' weights class. The dang, what do you call it? The landlord, the dang landlord kicked them out of their place. And so they had to go find a new studio.

They were shut down for three weeks. And so if you thought I wasn't looking my best in early August, that was why I went on vacation. Then I came back and I didn't have ladies' weights class. So I just wasn't keeping it as tight. Now ladies' weights class is back. And that's something you should be doing. If you're looking to lose weight,

You do the Wagovi pill, the Wagovy Pen by Hymns, and you do kind of a ladies hit class, and you'll be in good shape then. And it doesn't stop there. Hymns makes hitting your goals seamless by offering access to 24-7 messaging with your care team and an in-app lifestyle and nutrition support. With a range of affordable GLP1 options,

Hymns makes it simple to find a weight loss approach that fits into your world and your wallet. You'll get a treatment plan personalized to you. Ready to reach your goals, visit Hems.com slash the bulwark and get a personalized affordable plan that gets you. That's HIMS.com slash the bulwark. Hymns.com slash the bulwark. Weight loss by Hymns is not available in all 50 states.

Logi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information. Will Govey clinical study information and restrictions. Visit Hymns.com. You talked about the friends you heard from. You occupy an interesting space. I forget who it was. Somebody put together like a list of people whose following is the most balanced.

Yeah. And you were like number three or something. Yeah. So you do, you maintain a lot of my old Republican friends, you know, they lost my number. You know, I've got a handful that I still talk to. And you like basically were like, you still talk to a lot of people that are still Republicans. And then you also have a ton of people in Maguworld that like really deeply hate you. You're hearing from both groups, I guess, in different tones.

All the time. All the time. Yeah. And so even said it just like you can talk about the immigration stuff, but just kind of broadening it out to the state of play. you know, as we kind of had to Labor Day, like head to the midterms. I'm just wondering, like, what you're hearing anecdotally from people in your life about kind of a Trump to, Trump experiment. Has it changed since last year? Oh, yeah, it has changed.

I would say the 180 from December of 2024 to right now amongst sort of normie Republicans is head spinning. Because December 2024, I would think, was the absolute high point because, you know, this was the vibe shift. Kamala lost. She lost narrowly but decisively. It could be narrow and decisive at the same time. In other words, it was an unambiguous loss. So she loses narrowly but decisively, you know, the Republicans feel like, okay, I held my nose for Trump, but look at what I've gotten. I've gotten a defeat of DEI. Wokism is on the run. You know, it's the vibe shift. We've won a cultural battle for the first time in a long time. And then it was by, you know, mid-late

December that you began to see just the, you know, Trump was replacing exaggerated wokeism with idiocracy. It's kind of like the Hague set and RFK and Tulsi appointments and then all of the richest people in the world in the first row of the inauguration. It's kind of like that period where you start Yeah, yeah, yeah. You realize, okay, he's triumphant, but all the warning signs for his looming, the looming disaster were already all there. You know, this was not bringing coming in with Mattis and Tillerson, et cetera. This is coming in with Patel and Hexeth and Noam. And then as these things happen, you began to just see growing and growing and growing discomfort to the point now where nobody that I would call a Normie Republican in my life is at all trumpeting their Trump vote.

They are deeply upset at things like the Ken Paxton, you know, the way in which the Ken Paxton supporters are trying to bully them into continuing to support the Republican nominee, even though he's arguably outside of Donald Trump, the most corrupt politician in America. They're tired of the endless clownery. And then MAGA, in my experience, is doubling down except the fringes of MAGA. Like what you would have thought were some of the most extremist MAGA people, like a Marjorie Taylor Green, they're the ones who are out. Well, because to be on the fringe, you believe some things. You might believe some kooky things, you know, but you believe some things. That's different than a cult. You know, you really have to be able to use a magnifying glass to tell the difference sometimes, but it is, but there is a difference.

Look, here we are at September. Things can change between now and November. But I think if present trends continue, what you'll see, the anecdotal, the anecdata that is all around me, I think the way you would see that reflected is an election. results in the following way. If you get a double-digit or close to double-digit Ossov victory in Georgia, if you get a double-digit or close to double-digit Cooper victory in North Carolina, what you're going to see there is that's your very clear, tangible evidence, that a lot of Normie Republicans are either not Republicans anymore, they're independents, or maybe they're very soft Democrats, or just sort of totally up for grabs, And I think if you're a Democrat, you know, I saw this great, great comment online from Jeremiah Johnson, who's a great follow, by the way, really like his stuff. Me too.

And he's like, look, Democrats, Cooper is in a swing state, arguably a reddish swing state. This is a Trump victory state. He's probably going to win in a swing state by 10. And yet a lot of the Democratic world and media world is going to focus on some DSA candidate who wins a D plus 80 district in Brooklyn, right? The future is with the people who can win in a swing state by five, ten points. That's your future right there. And there are also, I think, the leading edge indicators of the discontent of a lot of Republicans. Not of the base. The base is still going to support Trump if they turn out. But of a lot of the people who previously you would have said, it's going to take a lot for this person to cross the aisle. It's going to take a lot. And so that's what I'm kind of seeing. Do you have any Texas antedatatat for me? Do you have any hopium for a Friday? Do you have any friends who are Republicans? Are like, I'm just, I might have to do Tala Rico. Oh.

Is that a dream? No, I know personally two to three-time Trump voters who are out on Paxton completely, not going to vote for him or vote for Tala Rico. I know Republicans who have, you know, Texas Republicans who've never voted for Democrats who are going to vote for Tala Rico. Now, that anecdotas should not give people too much hopium. I'm very leery of hopium in the state of Texas. It's Lucy with a football with Democrats for a while.

But let me just put it this way. You have one candidate here who is really hustling, who is really trying, who is putting everything into the race, who is reaching out and extending olive branches to centrist Republicans. And you have another candidate who's jetting off to London or Iceland.

I forget where it was with their paramour on July 4th weekend. I mean, it's not just, that Republicans nominated a corrupt guy, they nominated a corrupt lazy guy. You know, so here's Talariko who's doing everything he can do to try to win. Yeah. And you've got Ken Paxton, who's treating it like he is the birthright. It's his birthright to be the senator from Texas and that winning the nomination was all he had to do. And then he's got this army of online trolls who, quite frankly, are doing him no favors by being just gigantic assholes online to anyone

who expresses any doubts about Ken Paxton. And so, look, Tala Rico is well to my left on a number of things. But I will tell you this, if character is destiny, there is no contest in this election. There is no contest in this election. I guess you could take this from a political or legal standpoint, like the Trump ego stuff, I'm going to be talking to Ben Terrace later today, who has a great profile on Trump's ballroom obsession. You know, there's a Supreme Court ruling on the ballroom. The coin is out, and the coin seems like blatantly illegal.

Let's do it from a legal standpoint, because I did this frustrated rant on the next level of Sarah and JVL this week, where I was like, you know, I am not a lawyer. Once you'll start talking about standing, I'm just like, what about what is legal and illegal? And it's like, it is illegal, I would think, for the president to just create a slush fund with going around Congress where he gets to build things and tear things down at his whim. I followed how a bill becomes a law, and it's plainly illegal in the statute that he can't put himself on coins. And yet they're just doing it. And it's like, well, we'll get to it in the 2027 session. That's frustrating to me. It is frustrating to me, but there are also good reasons why this system exists.

So essentially the way the court system exists is if an unlawful action has been taken, it can be challenged only by people who have suffered. a concrete injury from the unlawful action. In other words, otherwise, the courts just get converted into sort of a, almost a third layer of legislature. And a kind of a, well, they're going to be the final say on everything, the unelected judges. So the way that we have narrowed the court's authority over American life is we make sure that if I walk into court, I have what's called a concrete and particularized injury. In other words, this thing has hurt me. And so what's very unfortunate about the case is they had a very weak, weak allegation

of standing, which is essentially this person who comes sort of around like once a month or so thinks that the new construction is like just a giant eyesore. So who would be injured by this, though? You know, it's a weird situation, right? It is a weird situation. But, you know, and to make it even weirder, in some sort of. circumstances, the court has recognized what's called aesthetic standing. So, for example, if you want to go to a national park and see crocodiles or alligators or whatever, and there's a policy that removes all the

alligators, then there has been aesthetic standing. Now, this is something from years ago that the current court majority has never really loved. And so we're in like this transitional period. But the quick answer to that would be, let's suppose somebody makes money from giving White House tours that they can't give anymore would be an example. Or somebody who's... This just seems kind of crazy to me because I guess Congress is the one that has... Like, he's going around the system. You know what I mean? It's weird.

It's not like the way that it's illegal is not... Nobody's being harmed by the coin either. Right. But it's against the law. So... I have a T-shirt that I wear that says, I love the... Constitution. So I take a backseat to no one and like, I love the Constitution. But the founders were not all Jesus. You know, they did not get everything right. And one of the things that they got wrong to our great chagrin is that Madison in particular and others believed that if I was Speaker of the House, I would feel that I had my own independent authority and I'd be pissed if the president started to entree.

upon my sphere of influence, that people will try to grab as much power as they can. And so, therefore, Congress, as Congress, would assert its prerogatives over the president. And he underestimated, and what he got wrong about that was he underestimated partisanship. Partisanship, yeah. So he underestimated that Mike Johnson right now would view his actual threat to his power, not Trump stomping all over Congress, but his. but him resisting Trump stomping all over Congress because then he'll lose his primary, right?

And so this is where we are. So then like if Jeffries become Speaker, but the Democrats don't take the Senate so they can't actually pass a bill to stop it, does Jeffries have standing then? But does Congress have to say, hey, like, can they go and say, wait a minute, he didn't go around? He wasn't, this wasn't funded through the normal funding process.

Yeah, well, it gets very difficult. It does get very difficult because congressional standing is not something that is traditionally necessarily available. It's only available in very specific situations. But I'm not going to say that nobody is out there that has standing over the demolition of the ballroom. I think that that is a little bit bold to say, it's harder to say that somebody would have standing over the coin, for example.

But we're going to be in a situation potentially after 2027 where even if the Democrats only take the House to fund. anything, to fund anything, there is going to have to be a necessity of democratic buy-in. Yeah, God willing, I don't know, they just did a continuing resolution because they don't want to have a shutdown fight. They might wimp out. Well, that's a whole other set of questions. I mean, you know, but the bottom line is we underestimated before 2016, the extent to which the American experiment itself hinges on to at least some degree, the honor system. And I think, Tim, one of the things that we need to do after we get through

this terrible period is we need a period of constitutional reform. We need a period that says, look, the anti-federalists were right about some of the critiques of this constitution. And it is time for us to do something about it. And I've got ideas and thoughts. Here's number one, Tim. Reform the pardon power. If we don't do that, we're idiots. Like, we're just idiots if we don't reform the pardon power is my view. And then number two. Age caps, 28th, 28th Amendment. We have age floors. Why not age caps? Age caps, I think, is a very good idea. Pardon reform is a very good idea. You know, there's multiple ideas right now regarding how we can avoid there ever being another Donald Trump. My dream goal, my wish, I want to change the first sentence of Article 2 of

the Constitution of the United States to jam the president back to. to the box that he was supposed to be in when the country was founded. So if you want to know what the president was supposed to do, you've all lived in, says this very well. My friend, great conservative thinker, the president is supposed to be the steward of the laws passed by Congress. In other words, that's what it means to be the executive. He executes the laws passed by Congress. Article two, though, says the executive power shall be invested in a president, but it doesn't define the executive power. And an anti-federalist writing under the name of Cato back all those years ago accurately said this sentence is vague and inexplicit. Wait a minute.

This is who Cato, the Institute, is named for? No, no, no, no. Cato is not named. Cato, the Institute is named after Cato, the ancient thinker. And so was Cato, the anti-Federalist. So we're going all the way back. Got it. Right.

Okay, that feels right. So you've got a lot of Cato's out there. So this Cato said it's vague and inexplicit. And he was right. It doesn't define the executive power. So what I would want to do is say, a president of the United States shall execute the laws passed by Congress. Totally changes the valence because there you're not saying, what is this executive power? Is it this freestanding thing that grants him independent authority? And this is where so much mischief has been poured into our system is through this concept that there exists something called the executive power.

that is different and apart from executing the law. Yeah. And that's created enormous problems. And I know that's a reach goal, Tim, but look, we will break out of this deadlock at some point. And American history tells us every deadlock breaking requires substantial legal reform or you will go right back to where you were before. And so we have to be thinking about this. I mean, this is an urgent matter. The other thing, let's just imagine what can we do about mass pardons?

Well, because the pardon power is horrifically broad, nothing much. But one thing that you could do is if you did actually break the law jam in 2028, you could impeach and convict every Trump official who takes a preemptive pardon and ban them from federal office forever. You won't be able to prosecute them for federal crimes. But, you know, I think it's important to think about these things because we're going to reneed. If we want to have a healthy democracy, we're going to need a period of accountability and reform.

Amen to that. One way to actually get power to do some of these reforms, you have to win elections. So I do want to do. There's that, Tim. Well, yeah. So there is the political side of that. I'm doing a lot of that next week about what the Democrats should be doing to be more successful on the political side. So let's talk about the legal fighting. There's this big postal

service case. What's your level of alarm about that right now? My level of alarm that the actual postal service regulations will go into effect is low. A lot of people misunderstood the Supreme Court's ruling on this. This was a ruling in essence that said, okay, you brought the case too soon, that the actual executive order just was saying, hey, I'm directing you to create a regulation. Until the regulation exists, we don't know what we're adjudicating. And so now the regulation exists, and it was promptly enjoined. There's actual standing to contest it. The dispute is ripe because the regulation exists. There is no impediment to actually looking at it on the merits. And this is one of those cases where, Tim, I never like to say, it's impossible for the

court to rule for Trump. Let me put it this way. On this point, on the merits of that, I would fall out of my chair and shock if the Supreme Court ruled for Trump on it. What other stuff are you looking at as far as midterms than shenanigans? So the main shenanigans I'm worried about are actually post vote. Yeah, same. I do think it's within the realm of possibility that you would see ICE agents being deployed to polling places, I think, but something that blatant would begin to have some real electoral blowback. It's after. And here's the way I would put it, Tim. Think of it like this way. If you were looking at the Hungarian elections, they could use extreme measures to try to reverse the outcome of an election in Hungary. But if the outcome is so lopsided,

then in that circumstance, you sort of swamp the possibility of post-electoral fraud. So where I am very, very nervous is if you have a situation where, let's suppose the House stands or falls on five or six races. I think we could skip through that. I think they're going to, whatever, we'll see what happens, but the Senate is where this is. And then you end up in a state like Texas where Republicans control the state or Iowa. And that, let's say, Tala Rica wins by 40,000 votes or 20,000 votes or something. Yeah, in the control of the Senate is at stake. Yeah, right.

You will see, I just, I'm getting an issue as close to a promise as I can possibly issue that if the Senate stands or falls on James Talarico in a 0.2%, you will see massive shenanigans, massive. And here's what's particularly dangerous. When you're talking about who is entitled to sit in Congress, Congress ultimately decides who is entitled to sit. in Congress. And so what that means is it gives the political branches of government an enormous amount of room to run if they're going to be intentionally corrupt. And so this is something that I'm

very concerned about. I'm very concerned about the way in which the Constitution gives the final say over who sits in Congress to Congress. But what if one side of Congress is thoroughly corrupted and convinced by electoral conspiracy theories or not convinced but carries them? out anyway because of a mock pure will to power. I think that's a very significant threat for which we are not fully prepared. And I tried to alert people about this with a particular attention to the house because in the house there are abundant opportunities for shenanigans. Right, because all these different districts. Just abundant opportunities. I tried to point this out and had a lot of people saying to me, oh, David, that wouldn't work because the law says A, B, and C. And it's like, I know.

But if you were alive in 2020, you know that the administration will take a law that says A, B, and C, and they'll say it really means D, E, and F. Right. And then try to convince Republican elected officials to follow their warped interpretation of the law, like the Electoral Count Act and the pressure they put on Mike Pence. So I'm trying to highlight what are the laws that exist that are just ambiguous enough to give them room to run on. on to Fox News or room to run onto Newsmax and say, the federal contested election act allows us to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we're off to the races. And that's what I've been trying to highlight.

We do have like the most modest silver line and good news on the Fox front, which is Maria Bartaromo was fired. And the report from Dylan Byers about why that was is that she was trying to pursue a story related to China and the 2020 election voting conspiracies that Trump was pushing in that's prime time speech a couple months ago. This was obviously a sensitivity for the network, given that they had to pay $800 million, give or take in fines for their

lies about the 2020 election. Fox executive sent a text to producers telling them they couldn't go to air. Bartramo took the screenshot and sent it to the White House. She got fired. So maybe Fox behaves a little better this time, I guess. I mean, they have about 787,000

reasons to behave better in the selection cycle. So I hope you're right. Over on the board takes feed me and Sam are going to go through Maria's highlights and low lights just for kicks. Okay, just rapid fire two last things. There was this vote. I was just curious your take on in the House this week. It was the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act was basically amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 that would prevent colleges from having access to certain funds if they participated in a non-expressive commercial boycott of Israel. or if they were obstructing students unreasonably from participating in academic programs in Israel.

I thought this was interesting to ask you about just a free speech guy because as I was reading about this this week, the wording non-expressive boycotts, it stems from this 2022 ruling about how like a boycott saying you're going to boycott his First Amendment, but actually boycotting is not, I guess. I don't know. Well, this issue is so complicated, Tim. Okay, so. So we can't do it rapid fire, you mean? It's not rapid fire. So, for example, boycotting is very often expressive activity, absolutely.

At the same time, national origin discrimination can be very much unlawful. So if your boycotting is resulting in national origin discrimination, so for example, let's suppose you want to hold a conference in a hotel that is bound by public, accommodations laws that prevent national origin discrimination. And you say no Israelis, you know, no Israelis. That's national origin discrimination. And so, you know, and be careful guys who say, well, I want to engage in this kind of national origin discrimination because it's good national origin discrimination. But you engage it in other contexts that's bad. No, no, no, no. If you, if you want like non-discrimination provisions that protect people from discrimination on the basis of

national origin, sex, race, sexual orientation, et cetera. You can't say this discrimination good, that discrimination bad. So I think a lot of these Israel boycotts actually run afoul of non-discrimination law because it's national origin discrimination, if you say. It's interesting because it's just kind of hard to imagine a bill like this past thing. It's like a college was like, hey, we're going to boycott Saudi Arabia. Right. It's kind of hard to imagine Congress having a bill about that.

But I am, let me put it this way. I am a free speech person who also supports our non-discrimination laws. So, and I think that the free speech and non-discrimination laws can and should coexist. Now, on the edges, they will, you're always going to have the rough edges where they rub up chicken. But as a general matter, think about it like this. In the 1960s, there was a guy who ran a barbecue shop, I believe it was called Piggy Park. and he claimed that he had a religious liberty right, a First Amendment right, to exclude black customers. From barbecue.

And that he had First Amendment rights to exclude black customers for eating barbecue. And the Supreme Court said, this is patently frivolous. Your religious liberty rights do not extend to a right to exclude black customers from eating barbecue. Now, same facts. And you say, I want to exclude Israeli customers, national origin discrimination. Yeah, now that's different. Yeah, sure. The coffee shop story.

There's some disgusting things that have you on anti-Semitism. It's just the campus participation stuff. I don't know. It caught my eye this week. That's all. To be continued. I do want to end with the LSU just war theory. You posted this yesterday.

I'm about to teach my law of war class today at Lipscomb. Today's discussion topic of the SEC declares war on LSU football and invades Louisiana and Thomas Aquinas believed the war was just discussed. For people who don't know, LSU is advancing a very noble pursuit. which is that there were some fifth-year seniors that were unfairly discriminated against when they were not aware that the NCAA was going to change the rule and give them an additional year of eligibility.

So these, if your seniors, declared for the pros, but they really weren't good enough to make them the pros. And none of them made it on to any of the teams. But then after they declared, the NCAA changed the rules, and LSU is saying, come on back home, baby. Lane Kippin is here.

We're doing hot yoga. You know, we're yelling really inappropriate cussware chance at the Clemson fans. We need the best defensive linemen possible to make sure that, you know, we have Louisiana supremacy in football. To me, open and shut case, a very noble Louisiana judge that I'm going to be nominating for the Supreme Court if the Democrats ever get in power ruled yesterday that LSU has the right to do this. He was a Baton Rouge judge. Certainly no conflicts there. the attorney on behalf of the LSU players said that the SEC and NCA that were trying to prevent LSU from getting these players were getting served a cold cup of gumbo

and they were going to have to drink it cold. And I don't know. It seems like it seems like an obvious situation to me, David. What say you? Tim, in these last 10 years you have displayed such an admirable freedom from partisanship. You know, you spent years being employed as a Republican, you know, and then you're able to see with clarity who Donald Trump is, and you shed the partisan baggage.

And yet you found her on the shoals of the LSU type football partisan. Come on, Tim, Tim, see this for what it is. This is like bringing in the Hessians to put down the American Revolution. That's what this is like. Mercenary NFL players coming back to try to play college football after they have left school. They have been in the pros. even for just a cup of coffee, just for a short time, Tim. And there's a good reason why the Southeastern Conference is threatening to kick out at LSU.

And Tim, all I'm going to say is, welcome to the Lane Kiffin experience. You are just on the first hill on the roller coaster, my friend. I'm loving it. And so you do think that Thomas Aquinas would approve of the SEC. Some people responded with just, you know, jokes. But some people, like, actually went through the Aquinas analysis. And the most interesting was one of the rules for a just war is it has to come through the lawful sovereign. And they were saying that if the SEC invades, that's like the prince invading, not the king.

The king is the NCAA. So Aquinas would say no to an SEC invasion, but yes to NCAA. Thank you to Thomas Aquinas, STDDB to all the people who disagree with the honorable judge in Baton Rouge. David French, I appreciate you very much. Oh, I heard good news about Nancy, your wife. Yes. Yes. Yeah, she's two years from the end of her treatment, cancer-free,

from a particular kind of cancer where you can't ever say like totally in the woods now and forever, but two years for this kind of cancer is very, very, very, very important. And so getting through that two years that, you know, again, God willing, she remains cancer-free and there's never any guarantees, but the risks really start to fall off the cliff. And we're just very grateful because we think back to three years ago when we got the diagnosis to be where we are today is just miraculous. Thank God. Thank her doctors.

And can I say something, Tim? Please. I'm so sick of people pointing out Muslim Americans who do bad things and try to make them a stand-in for all Muslim Americans. thank God for our doctor who is from the West Bank in Palestine, who saved my wife's life. We love that man. And the idea, the idea that men like him and women like him are not welcome in this country is an absolute anathema.

So I want to give a shout out to my Palestinian West Bank doctor, or Nancy's Palestinian West Bank doctor who gave her the most loving and excellent care you could ever receive. And there are so many countless folks, Muslim folks like that, in and around America, who are contributing like that. And so I just want to say that because I'm so sick of the cherry-picked hatred of Muslims that I'm seeing all over the online world right now. I love them. I'm so happy for your family too, David. So give Nancy our love and thanks for sharing that. And we'll see you next time.

Thank you, Tim. Everybody else, have a great weekend. I'm heading up to Baton Rouge for the Lane Kiffin Experience. I'll see you all on Monday. with Bill Crystal, though. Go Tigers. Peace. Thank you.