The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Latest Move Officially Brings Autocracy to the U.S.

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

The New Abnormal hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie are alarmed by the arrest of Columbia student and pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents over the weekend. Then, Madiba Dennie, deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes, joins the show to talk about Trump’s recent weaponization of the Justice Department. Plus, author and podcast host Jared Yates Sexton stops by to discuss the alarming authoritarian power grab unfolding before us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

What an excellent show we have today. Deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes, Medeba Denny, is here to give us the tea on interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin and his blatant weaponization of the Justice Department, as well as the latest attempt by right-wing justices to expand Trump's power beyond constitutional limits. Then we'll talk to Jared Yates Sexton, author of the Midnight Kingdom and host of the Muckrake podcast. will join us to break down the authoritarian power grab unfolding in real time, and the state's

escalating crackdown on dissent and why he believes the movement rising and response could ultimately turn the tide. But first, let's have some fun. At one point, I think that it could be said that America was backsliding. Our democracy was backsliding with the reports that came out. America is inching towards autocracy. Well, I'm here breaking news. We've arrived. We've arrived. We're no longer backsliding. We're no longer inching. It is here. And why do I say that? Over the weekend, Mahmoud Khalil, who is a Columbia University graduate, who helped organize Columbia University's protests that wanted to draw attention to the mass killing that is happening in Gaza and in Israel. And we saw the campuses filled with encampments, students wanting to be peaceful, but wanting to use them. their voices and exercise their free speech and their ability to assemble. Well, according to the Trump regime over the weekend, that no longer extends to green card holders or holders of student visas, which Mahmoud Khalil is, because over the weekend, he was arrested by ICE and Marco Rubio,

Secretary of State took to social media to state that he was, yes, indeed, arrested because his ideology aligns with, quote unquote, Hamas. And his U.S. born wife, who is eight months pregnant, does not know where her husband is. The United States is now functioning against our constitution. and for folks that are shrugging and saying, well, it's a green card holder, well, it's a student visa, blah, blah, pop. Just understand that the United States does not have the ability to just designate, just decide that your documents, your legal documents, no longer matter and count. Because if they can call him a terrorist and say that he's aligned with terrorism,

then what they can do is say that anyone who protests, is a terrorist because you don't like their ideology. This is, it is not a slippery slope. We are here. The fact is we have no idea where this man is at the moment is and should be terrifying to everyone. Yes, to all of that. This is clearly illegal, unconstitutional, however you want to call it. This is straight up authoritarianism, as you said.

I think we now know that Khalil is in Louisville. Louisiana, which is apparently a common destination when ICE detains people. There's a big facility down there. But as you said, for a day or so, his eight-month pregnant wife did not know where he was. All of this is just beyond disgraceful. And I want to talk about, you know, you mentioned the aligned with Hamas language. I want to explain what that means to me. What that means to me is there is absolutely no evidence that he is affiliated. with Hamas, because if he were, it probably, or at least possibly would have been legal to do what they did since Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by this country. But then they would have said he was affiliated with Hamas. When they say he is aligned with Hamas, what they're saying is that in their

opinion, he believes things that Hamas believes. They don't say what those things are. They simply say that this is a blatant First Amendment violation because you are allowed to believe things, even if some of those things align with an organization that is designated a terrorist organization, you are perfectly free to believe that or should be perfectly free to believe those things in this country. So the idea that they are using this slippery language because they wanted to slide in Hamas there, because they know how that plays. with a large segment of people, with Jews and with a lot of non-Jews who simply view Hamas as a terrorist organization. But they couldn't because they have absolutely no evidence, because if they had even

the slightest hint of a shred of evidence, they would have just come out and said that he is working with Hamas or something like that. Given the amount of times that they lie, the fact that they couldn't even go there shows you that there is absolutely no evidence. of that. So they had to throw in this word aligned or this phrase aligned with, which is constitutionally and legally meaningless. It doesn't matter. You are allowed to be aligned with Hamas. You are allowed to walk around saying, I think Osama bin Laden is a hero. You are allowed to say these things in our country. It doesn't get you detained. It doesn't get you deported. Whether you are a naturalized citizen, whether you're a green card holder, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

What they are doing is 100% illegal, 100% unconstitutional, 100% straight out of the authoritarian playbook where you take people and you remove them, you disappear them if you want to get 1984 about it for thought crimes. And what really troubles me is how easily they're getting away with all this, Danielle. And how easily because, again, and I really don't care if people are just like, you know, stop bashing on the Democrats. We have more enemies. And I'm just like, because where the hell are they? Because I want to know which one of the New York representatives, where Schumer is going to be, where Gillibrand is going to be, where the New York City members of Congress are going to be in standing up for Mahmoud Khal's rights and how they have been violated. Or are they going to, again, because of the Hamas language, because of their tepidness around a humanitarian crisis, decide that this is not going to be the person that they intervene on their behalf, even though they have rights as a green cardholder in this country. And that, again, it is not just about this person on this issue. It is our ability to protest the right to assemble and the right to free speech that this regime has now violated. The line has been crossed. And if people think that they're not going to come for

them next, or you think that, oh, by virtue of being born in this country, like, oh, I'm good, think again. Everything can be stripped away when you are living inside of an autocracy and a dictatorship. So this is just the beginning. And, you know, and again, I say this is a high alert. if you're looking at this on a color scale, whatever color is beyond bright red is where the hell we are right now, is where we have arrived right now. I want to also highlight the incredibly shameless response by the Anti-Defamation League. Oh, dear God. They put out a statement saying, we appreciate the Trump administration's broad, bold set of efforts

to counter campus anti-Semitism. And this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrated. responsible for their actions. This is beyond disgraceful. This is so dangerous and so wrongheaded. And I can't stop thinking of it this way. Even if you set aside how morally repugnant the actions of this administration are, how immoral the actions of this administration are,

put that completely aside and just look at this from a utilitarian point of view for a Jewish organization to be. sitting here applauding this, applauding the idea that someone can be detained, can be relocated, can be put in a center. You want to call it a camp, call it a camp, because we don't like what they believe. Do you not see where this is headed? I did not mean Nazi as a pun. I just, I heard it as I said it, but I really didn't mean it. But that is where this is headed. And for an organization that is, supposedly supposed to be standing up for Jewish people and against anti-Semitism and against racism and against bigotry to go along with this and not realize that in pretty much every time in history, if the Jews ain't first, the Jews are next. It boggles my mind how ignorant Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL are at this incredibly crucial moment to go along with this fiction that this is in any.

way meant to fight anti-Semitism as if the Trump administration, which is filled with raging anti-Semites, gives a shit about the Jews. Is this not the same group, the ADL, that tripped over themselves to say that the salute that Elon Musk gave on inauguration day at the podium with the presidential seal in front of it was not a Nazi salute? Did they not trip over themselves in order to give that man a pass. Yep. For his abhorrent, disgusting, distasteful, horrible behavior. So no one should be shocked or even consider this group to be a force that is speaking on behalf of, I would say, of Jewish Americans. Because like, come on, come on. You cannot call yourself the Anti-Defamation League and make all of these friggin caveats and think that you're not a joke.

So here we are. I don't. know, Andy, if you don't remember, but the campaign trail. Let's go back in our time machine several months, where every single other word out of Donald Trump's mouth was between tariffs and eggs. He just couldn't get enough of it. Couldn't get enough about how as soon as he was elected, the price of everything was going to come down. Single stroke, he was going to be able to miraculously turn our economy, you know, the economy that was the envy of the world post-COVID and was growing. Jobs were growing. Economy up 2.3% underbite.

Like all of these things were happening. Now, turn around, fast forward, arrive at this spot where Donald Trump has said in a quote-unquote brazen way that we all need to shut up about the egg prices and that he don't want to talk. about it anymore that the egg prices are I guess what it is that they are and when he said that he would immediately quote I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one I think that he confused that with the Dow Jones I think that he confused that with the stock market I will immediately be bringing down stock prices on day one I think that that's where the confusion was because since he has come in, I've gone into my local grocery stores and I have seen egg prices in double goddamn digits. But their response to that is either shut up or go buy

myself a chicken. I wonder where I'm going to keep it on my balcony in Brooklyn. It is absolutely unbelievable how they want to, I mean, we, you know, we keep saying they want to take us back to the 1950s and then some days it feels like the 1850s. I'm starting to think they want to take us back to like the 1650s when everyone was sort of their own farmer. Or back to before we developed sort of, you know, the barter system and then the monetary system so that everyone didn't have to do every job. It's just absolutely unreal. I learned yesterday that sharecropping is still legal. Great, because that goes well in this country. But no, this is Unbelievable. I mean, Trump was reposting a tweet from, or an article from the Daily Caller,

that featured Charlie Kirk. You may know him as Gavin Newsom's best friend. He did a thing called shut up about egg prices. Trump is saving consumers millions. And then Trump, I guess, on truth, social, re-whatevered that. I can't even say re-truth because it's a lie. There's no real point to be gained pointing out the hypocrisy because they don't care. And if they don't care, you can point it out all you want. And you have to. to hope that enough other people care, but we've seen time and time again that Trump gets away with this shit, at least with a large segment of the population. But for him to suddenly be talking about, shut up about egg prices, when that is not just from Trump during the campaign, that's all

we heard from right-wing media. It was either immigrants are rapists and murderers, trans people are sexual predators, or egg prices are high. And that was like. And that was, like, you. And that was like the three things they cared about. And so to now, obviously, they're still going strong with the first two lies, but they are pulling back from the idea that they ever cared about egg prices. And let's make this larger. It's eggs are a symbol. We're talking about grocery prices. We're talking about the price of everything. We're talking about the economy. Trump is tanking the economy. And the eggs are a good symbol of that. And as the kids say, Trump take egg. And, you know, That is what's happening, but it is a good symbol of what is happening to the economy writ large.

The stock market is plunging. We're already looking at tallyatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico that have caused Trump to once again back off his tariffs, at least for another month. We'll see how that goes. And basically, we are, in addition to ruining the economy for us, Americans, we are telling the world, stay away from America. Don't go to America. Don't make deals with America. Don't make treaties with America. America cannot be trusted.

And they are right. They are 100% correct. And anyone that makes a deal with Donald Trump is going to wake up with fleas, as they say. Or measles. Or measles. He is rapidly destroying the very thing that he said he alone could save. I just wonder, because all of the things. things that you just rattled off are a thousand percent true. All facts, not to be trusted,

becoming increasingly dangerous for a number of reasons, public health reasons, with the outbreaks around measles that continues to spread and has cost two lives now one child, one adult. We have a gun problem in this country. When tourists, dollars start going elsewhere, and people start issuing travel advisories like Mexico has already done. Issued travel advisories to the state of Texas. Don't go because of measles. When you start recognizing that no one wants, you know, as the kids say, to fuck with you, right? Because you're diseased and problematic. What, like, our economy. I mean, right now, we are, like, it's not even about what is happening today with the markets or what happens on a day today, it's the fact that we are absolutely being destabilized by this regime. From our geopolitical stance

to our economy, to the global economy, America is destabilizing. And it is ricocheting. That truth is ricocheting all over the place. There's not a point at which you can look to at this moment and say, oh, aside from what Senator Mark Warren said before the joint sessions, oh, well, you have to congratulate him on what he's doing well with immigration. You mean locking up asylum seekers and throwing away the key. You mean building out Guantanamo to put people who are only seeking a better life and are the foundation of our economy into a place for quote unquote terrorists. That's doing well.

Like this is what democratic leaders are thinking about applauding. Meanwhile, like we're looking around and everyone, everywhere is signaling. that America is in a free fall right now. And as I'm looking at the numbers, I mean, the Dow is down over 700 points right now. That's not normal. Erased every bit of gains from November 5th until now. Oh, what happened on November 5th?

Like, come on. So whether or not Donald Trump wants us to talk about eggs or the price of anything or the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are now unemployed, and the prices of everything are going up And now Ontario on top of everything announces this week that they want to put a 25% tax on electricity for the United States. Man, if this is what it feels like to be great again, fuck me.

Like, give me a break. Ed Martin is the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. And he's emblematic of the Trump administration's view that the Justice Department exists to serve as the president's lawyers rather than, you know, upholding the law. Medeba Denny, on the other hand, is the author. of the flat-out fantastic book, The Originalism Trap, how extremists stole the Constitution and how we the people can take it back. She's been a law professor, counsel to the New York City Council Committee on Public Housing, counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program,

and currently is a deputy editor and senior contributor at the excellent legal commentary outlet, Balls and Strikes. Mediba has some thoughts about Ed Martin, and she joins me now. Mediba, thanks for coming back on the show. Thanks so much for having me. Let's start at the top. Who is Ed Martin? Where did he come from? I assume he's been a judge or at least a federal prosecutor for a bunch of years.

One might assume that, but you would actually be mistaken. Damn. He is actually the first person to get this gig in decades who has no experience as a judge or as a federal prosecutor. His whole sort of professional experience before this has been being a right-wing whack job. That includes being a anti-feminist advocate at the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles. He was also working on January 6 cases, representing people who were at the insurrection in court, and then as soon as he became the interim U.S. prosecutor for D.C., dropping all their cases. No conflict of interest there.

Yeah. God. Again, before we get into the details, talk about the position of U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Obviously, there are a number of U.S. attorneys, but the one for the District of Columbia is pretty important, right? Yeah, it's pretty unique being in D.C. Also, it is unique among the U.S. Attorney's offices and that it handles both federal and local cases, since D.C. does not get to govern itself. It has a different amount of power than a lot of other U.S. attorneys offices have, also sort of proximity to the Department of Justice's offices. There is a lot of authority there, and

Ed Martin is using that authority not to actually handle cases about, local issues in D.C. or about like enforcing federal law, but targeting all of Donald Trump's perceived enemies. Before we get into these individual cases that we're talking about here, where did he get this idea that the Justice Department's lawyers serve as the president's lawyers? Because that's not normal, right? It is not normal, no. I guess even if there's no sort of technical, formal independence. The Department of Justice has been treated as an independent agency for decades. The president is not supposed to direct who gets prosecuted. As someone who's like a U.S. attorney, their duty is to the Constitution. Their duty is to federal law. Their duty is not to

the individual person who happened to get elected. But that is not how either Ed Martin or the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, understand the role at all. they have outright told all of the other federal attorneys in their offices that their job is to, like, apply the law as it is interpreted by Donald Trump. Say, you know, uphold the interests of the United States as Donald Trump says what those interests are, which is pretty different from just interpreting the Constitution and applying and upholding federal law. Thankfully, Donald Trump has a firm grasp on the Constitution, so it really is the same thing. So what are some of the things Martin has done since being appointed? He doesn't seem to be a big fan of Chuck Schumer. No, no, he certainly does not.

I was pretty struck by his focus on Chuck Schumer because it was literally his first day in office as interim U.S. attorney. And I do want to specify interim U.S. attorney. This man has not been confirmed to anything, but he loves introducing himself as U.S. attorney full stuff. Right, right. But it's day one, January 20th, and his first order of business is writing a letter to Chuck Schumer about something Chuck Schumer said years ago, actually years ago, treating it as if there were some kind of serious threat. He was referring to a speech that Schumer gave at a rally about reproductive rights. And it was when it was becoming increasingly clear that the Republicans on the court were going to rule as Republicans on the court do with respect to abortion rights. And Schumer said, you know, you're going to pay for these decisions.

Like, you're not going to know what hit you. Like, if you do this, you're going to release the world land. And immediately, there was a right-wing backlash. You had folks like McConnell and folks on Fox News saying, like, how dare you threaten our justices in this way. And so Schumer, you know, immediately walked it back. Like the very next day, he was like, oh, my gosh, that is clearly not what I meant. I was just talking about it.

He's like, obviously I meant public opinion. Like, excuse me for getting a little feisty. I'm from Brooklyn. That was basically what a Schumer said in response. And now years later, Ed Martin reaches out to Schumer's office about those comments, saying, you know, you made these statements that, you know, reasonable people think are dangerous and threatening, even inciting violence. And so I need you to explain these.

I'm opening up an inquiry. And again, as a reminder, this guy is the acting prosecutor. He's working on, like, criminal laws. often. It raises this specter that Chuck Schumer got a little sassy like four or five years ago, and as a result, this guy might bring criminal charges against him. It is deeply concerning. If you're Chuck Schumer, you know, in general, but also thinking if you're not Chuck Schumer, if you're just a regular person who's not a sitting congressman. Yeah. Again, you don't have the kind of resources or, you know, the kind of money or power access. What does that mean?

mean for you if you're just some regular guy with opinions. Does that mean that the weight of the federal government of the criminal legal system can be brought down upon you? And it is very concerningly seeming like the answer to that question is about to be yes. Yeah. And it just makes me think that, you know, the one time Chuck Schumer gets feisty to his right instead of to his left. And maybe this explains why he hasn't really done it since. Like imagine putting in a letter that you felt threatened by Chuck Schumer. I know. I would just have to go someplace else. I couldn't show my face. And then there's Congressman Robert Garcia. Talk about that. Right. Robert Garcia got one of these inquisition letters from Ed Martin as well because Robert Garcia had made statements critical

about Elon Musk talking about how Musk is basically acting as co-president and robbing the government, stripping it for parts. And there's been insufficient pushback a lot of people feel to this. And Garcia said, what the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy. And Martin sent him a letter because of this. Now, he said, you know, sounded like a threat to Mr. Musk, an appointed representative of President Donald Trump, who you call a dick. And so he's, you know, basically like putting in a federal. investigation that he got mad, treating it as if this was a sort of real threat, as if there was some sort of actionable concern. Like, you know, yes, Garcia said this is an actual fight for

democracy. So bring actual weapons to this bar fight. He's talking about a metaphorical bar. Of course. Like this is a common expression that people use. And suddenly Martin is acting like, who can say what he was talking about? Like, there could be an actual physical threat involved. And which is just absurd. It's clearly intended to just stifle any sort of public criticism of Donald Trump, of Elon Musk, of the people around the Trump Musk administration. And once again, you know, Robert Garcia also a Congress member. These are people who are well connected and they are getting these letters basically saying, watch your tell him when you talk about my guy. Yeah, I guess to Garcia's credit, he was pretty defying about this, right? Yeah, Garcia was not having it. He basically immediately got online, fired off some posts and like read and sent out emails to constituents saying, no, we have a constitutional right to

criticize their actions. The Department of Justice should not be trying to silence members of Congress. I would broaden that a bit and the Department of Justice should not be trying to silence anybody. Yeah. Last week, Martin sent a letter to the Georgetown Law School Dean William trainer. Well, I say last week, apparently he first sent it on February 17th, but he misaddressed it, and I'm assuming Doge is going to get the cost of that postage back. So he sent this letter informing the dean that the school needed to eliminate, quote unquote, DEI, saying that, quote, at this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship or employment in our office, who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues

to teach and utilize DEI will be considered. Would it be too strong to say that this is not something a U.S. attorney should be doing? No, that would not be too strong at all. I feel like that is the lightest, most gentle version that you could say. It is egregious. This is yet another instance of Ed Martin using the power of the federal government to, you know, act on these petty grievances and trying to shut down speech that the Trump administration does not like, trying to stifle disfavored speech and only allow ideological conformity. You know, you have free speech to the extent that I agree with you. Otherwise, that speech is going to cost you.

And in this case, you know, Martin is saying it will cost you an investigation. It will cost your students' jobs. It will cost you, who knows what. just really trying to intimidate the dean of Georgetown Law School, which also got to say, like making unconstitutional threats to the dean of a law school is kind of wild to me. For sure. It informs why the dean basically replied pretty promptly saying, this is unconstitutional by rejecting, just rejecting outright Ed Martin's letter,

which, you know, I'm very glad he did because a lot of folks have been sort of compliant. in advance, rushing to go along with what the administration does, even when what the administration's doing is obvious and lawful, because they're concerned about what it would mean for them or those around them. They're afraid about the sort of backlash or repercussions and consequences and think, you know, perhaps the best thing for me is just to do what they want. I will give the hostage takers what they want, and then I'll be okay. But that's not actually how things work.

And thank you or the dean of Georgetown Law School for sort of seeing right through that and just calling out, no, this is unlawful. The government cannot dictate how and what Georgetown teaches. We have academic freedom. We have freedom of speech. We have freedom of association. We can have guest speakers talking about race or whatever the administration means by DEI. It is never quite defined. Exactly.

My understanding of DEI is, I heard you got black people over there. Right. Right. That's a problem. You have a course that says America had slaves. Right. Yeah. That's got to go. Under Martin's interpretation of DEI, basically what it seems like.

Georgetown and the members of Congress we mentioned, again, far from the only ones. These are a small selection of the people who are at risk from the government violating the First Amendment willy-nilly. and just feeling like they can target people who don't think the way they would like them to. Yeah, no, I was glad to see that the dean stood his ground unlike my alma mater, Columbia. Yeah, hard same. Yeah, I really thought his response, it was, I was saying it was one of the most polite, fuck you letters I've ever read, I think. I love that.

I think that's something that lawyers learn to master over time. Yeah, yeah. It would be like, how can I tell this person off, but in a way that, you know, like, uses all my like $5.SAT words. Right, exactly. It doesn't use any language that I wouldn't want my mom to see, but Billy still delivers, gets the point across. Might throw in a Latin phrase somewhere. Yeah, you know, who knows. And Ipsis suck this dixon. Exactly, right. Before we move on, I want to ask you, you brought this up as well, interim, interim, U.S. attorney. So U.S. attorneys have to be confirmed by the Senate, right? Yes. One of many positions in the federal government

where the president is supposed to appoint them, and then they are confirmed with advice and consent of the Senate. Right. So what happens is the president can appoint a person, an interim person, until he gets someone confirmed. But there's nothing that says how long that interim tag has to stay, right? Conceivably, he could be the interim U.S. attorney for four years. That does seem to be part of the playbook. It seems like the Trump administration has been sort of batting that idea around of, well, if we have somebody who maybe couldn't get through a confirmation hearing, what if they're just acting head of this agency for the foreseeable future? And it is, you know, an attempt to make an end run around the appointments clause of the Constitution. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I want to ask you

about something else that happened last week, which is that the Supreme Court declined to vacate a district court order that said U.S. U.S. AID is obligated to disperse payments for already completed work. This goes against the Trump administration's illegal quote-unquote pause of these disbursements. So there was a dissent to this decision by the Supreme Court to decline to vacate. And the dissent was written by Sam Alito and he was joined by Clarence Thomas, Neil Gersuch and Brett Kavanaugh. And you wrote about this in a piece with the headline, four Republican justices stunned Trump isn't a king yet. Walk us through this.

Sure thing. So a few weeks ago, a federal district court issued an order saying that the government could not continue this so-called pause on disbursements. And despite that order being a thing, the government continued to keep those disbursements on pause. There were lots of evidence suggesting that they still weren't releasing these funds that should have been distributed already. And so then a couple weeks after that, the court issues a follow-up order.

being like, all right, dudes, at least pay for the work that was already completed and that should have been paid for, like, weeks ago. Even before the first order went into effect, like, these are past due. They should have been paid ages ago and, like, you're making these people's lives so hard. You got to just pay that right now. Pay it by midnight tomorrow. And so in response to that, the Trump Department of Justice, they all lose their minds. They, like, file, like, emergency orders, asking the Supreme Court to pause that order and to vacate it. Now, the Supreme Court did pause it initially. They did what's called an administrative stay.

But then a few days later, the court came through and said, no, actually, that lower court order stands. Now, since we are now past that deadline that the lower court gave, you guys can work something out, figure out what's reasonable to pay it, but the order generally still stands. I want to make clear sort of how, innocuous this is. We're talking about Congress passing laws saying this money is allocated to this, this purpose. Congress has the power of the purse and it said, this is how we're going to be spending

these tax dollars. And then we had Trump and Elon Musk just randomly say no, despite this being a law that was passed. And so then we had the court come in to enforce the law that Congress passed saying, hey, no, that Congress meant it when they said this is what that money is going for. You can't just decide you're going to take that money and put it someplace else. In response to this, this small thing saying, where the money is supposed to go, that's where it should go, at least pay the part that's overdue. This is what the four Republican dissenters are losing their minds about. And this basically implies that, you know, whatever budget Congress passes doesn't actually mean

anything. Whatever contracts the government enters into, that doesn't mean anything either. The only thing that matters is what the president or, you know, his unelected co-president, Elon Musk, like what they want the money to go to, just like their personal whims. The court is thinking that, you know, it should have been up to them, that it's an outrage. Stunned was the word the dissent use, that the court could tell the administration that, no, really, you got to release these funds. And so it's this really pretty absurd. These are kingly types of powers saying that whatever Trump says goes and that's the extent of it.

It doesn't matter what any other branch of government says. That's not how the Constitution works. That's not how democracy works. And yet, it's what four Republicans on the court are willing to endorse. Yeah, it's wild. I'm old enough to remember when conservatives were appalled by the notion of an imperial presidency and all of that. They were appalled by an imperial presidency when they thought that the imperial behavior

was coming from a Democrat. Of course. If we're talking about an imperial presidency from a Republican, that's a completely different story. You know, then we got to start getting ready for the coronation, you know, find the fanciest crowns. Of course. Yeah.

Yeah. Break out the fine China. Medeva, thank you so much. It's always a great pleasure to talk to you. Folks, if you haven't read the originalism trap yet, first of all, what's wrong with you? Second of all, go read it. It's a phenomenal book. And check out Mediba's work at balls and strikes.org.

Medeba Denny, thank you so much. Thank you. I am so happy to welcome back to the new abnormal, my friend, Jared D.E. Sexton, who is the author of The Midnight Kingdom, a history of power, paranoia, and the coming crisis, which has now arrived. And is the host of the Muckrake podcast and the author of American Rule. Jared, you said the coming crisis as the title of your book, because you, like I, have spent a lot of time trying to warn people of what would happen if Donald Trump, an authoritarian, an aspiring autocrat, an aspiring dictator, became president of the United States again. People kept telling us, no, we made it through the first term. The second term will just be more of the same.

We are seven weeks in. What is your response to that? Well, first of all, Danielle, my friend, we simply have to quit meeting like this. I know. One of the things that has been the most maddening, and you and I have discussed it in the past, is that this was all very obvious. What was happening within the United States of America and around the world, for that matter, that there was an authoritarian movement that relied on white supremacy, patriarchal, reassertion of power and this movement of the wealth class to gain more and more power and

intend to destroy democracy. One of the things that has pissed me off the most is that none of it was hidden. It was completely obvious out in the open, transparent. All you had to do was listen to what these motherfuckers had to say, what they wrote, what their podcast were, what their conferences were conveying. It was all out there in the open. And, there is a part of me that has grown more and more angry about the people who either decided not to pay attention to this or, you know, just sort of mocked it the entire time as if what we were talking about with some sort of a joke or a grift or some sort of hysterical overreaction. And that has persisted for years now.

And it has tamped down exactly what's going on. And now, while we're in the midst of this absolutely. authoritarian tempest and takeover and coup, there are still people who are trying to somehow or another pretend like there is a normality here. When anyone who is willing to look around, open their eyes and actually pay attention, they understand that what we're in the midst of is a gathering worsening crisis. You know, and when you say gathering worsening crisis, right before we came on, news had broken over the weekend and is now bubbling up as this week is beginning of the arrest by ICE agents of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate university student

who he's since graduated from Columbia is a green card holder. But while he was a student, was helping to organize protest, which is the right that is given to us by virtue of the Constitution of these United States, the right to assemble, the right to free speech, organizing protests against the war in Gaza. And now this regime has picked him up from New York, relocated him to the state of Louisiana, where he is at a detention camp. And the Secretary of State has said, Marco Rubio,

that, oh, well, he had thoughts that were aligned with Hamas. Not that he was aligned with Hamas, not that he is a terrorist, but Jared, that he had thoughts, which are not true. And of course, Marco Rubio and his office were not open for follow-up questions because this is obviously an attack on free speech and the right to assemble and a warning shot to those that protests on anything in this country, whether you are a green card holder, a naturalized citizen, or a birthright citizen of this country. What does this set off do you believe?

Well, first of all, fuck Marco Rubio. Come on. And fuck everybody who said that somehow or another, he was going to be an adult in the room and for years that he was one of the good Republicans, what an oxymoron that is. I also want to point out in the midst of all of this for years. What have we heard, Danielle? We've heard that the Republican Party and all the oligarchs around them,

they care about free speech, right? They don't want the deep state rounding up thought criminals and putting them in camps. And what we need to realize, first of all, is that this has always been projection. It's always been what they wanted to do with power. And basically everything you've heard from the conspiracy theory ridden right has always been more or less an outline in a plan of what they would do with power once they grabbed it. This situation, I think, is particularly insidious because it's obviously taking advantage

of political schisms within the United States of America that we've seen for the past year or so in which people were demonizing student protesters of the atrocities in Gaza. And now we're basically being dared to stand down and not stand up for somebody who is protected under the Constitution. And by the way, they threatened to put his eight-month pregnant wife, who is an American citizen, into custody because she was trying to explain his constitutional rights. And what do we see in all of this? It is the type of an authoritarian administrative structure that we've seen an authoritarian administrative structure that we've seen an authoritarian, movements around the world. If anybody is interested, go check out what happened in Brazil in the 1970s, 1980s. For that matter, check out what happened in the United States of America, both at the

beginnings of the 20th century with the first red scare in which they rounded up immigrants and labor union organizers and anybody that they wanted and basically put their asses on a ship and shipped them to the Soviet Union. Or go the war on terror where they created all these extra legal structures so that they could disappear people and quote-unquote legally torture them and keep them from any type of protections at all. This is a line in the sand, and I, first of all, am disgusted by this. Second of all, I am troubled by the fact that this isn't the largest story in the world right now. The United States of America disappeared a person with constitutional protections,

shuffled them through a system to the point where his own spouse and lawyers didn't know where he was for a while. You'd mentioned he's in Louisiana. We think he's in Louisiana. Right. We have no idea. And so all of this is a precursor to the larger problem. And what I want listeners to think about is this. Things are really bad right now and things are really dangerous.

But this is actually the pretense of what is coming. This is the laying of the foundation in which everyone is supposed to be made to feel vulnerable, that they could be disappeared in the middle of the night. That if they protest, they will be labeled a terrorist, terrorist, sympathizer, enemy of the state, whatever they want to pick, whatever rhetorical device or cudgel they want to rely on, that is supposed to keep you from standing up to these people. And authoritarianism gives you three choices. One, you put on the armband and you goose step down Main Street. And hopefully you can, you know, share the spoils of authoritarianism. The second choice is to lock

your door and not pay attention to what's happening outside of it and hope like hell they never knock on your door. And the third is to stand up for what's right and protest it and push against it and fight back and risk being destroyed or disappeared like Khalil. And so what we're dealing with right now, including, by the way, talking about how the military, the National Guard could be used against American citizens, how they're going to use the Department of Justice and FBI against American citizens. And by the way, they've already laid the foundations for shipping Americans to Guantanamo Bay or El Salvador to their hellish authoritarian prison system.

This is about creating capitulation and collaboration ahead of what's happening. And the more ground that we seed to them, the harder and harder it's going to get and near impossible it's going to get to actually push back against this. Those three things that you just lay down, you either put on the armband, you lock your door, or you protest. These are the choices. These are the very real choices that are in front of us as Americans right now. We are seeing, Jared, in some instances, of course, not at all led by establishment Democrats in any which way, shape or fashion. But we are seeing the people, state by state, begin to rise up, whether it is going to and protesting at their local Tesla dealership, whether it is going to their state capital, whether it is organizing in front of the Treasury Department in D.C. or different government institutions, you are seeing people day by day, weekend by weekend, gather and say that this is not right and this will not stand. Here's my fear. My fear and my prediction is that as the weather becomes

warmer here in these United States, as we enter into spring and summer, that America is going to enter its own quote unquote Arab Spring, that the violence, the state sanctioned, government sanctioned violence is going to be through the roof. What are your thoughts about how people have begun to self-organize and how that will expand in the coming months? Well, I'll go ahead, start with the good news, which is that there is a backlash building in this country. And that backlash is being expressed through building protest, building momentum. And the other good news of this is that these assholes cannot hide who they are and what they're doing. The richest man in the world is carrying out an oligarchical coup of our government. We have a president who doesn't know

what day it is most of the time and is completely being overrun and controlled by a group of billionaires who have bought him, bought his administration, and bought his bullshit movement. People recognize that. They're pushing against that. And there's been years now where we've watched people with no formal education or training organizing labor unions against historically powerful corporations and winning against them. That is the good news. The bad news here is, I think your instincts are completely correct, which is as this continues to grow, the apparatus of state power is always going to crack down. This has been in the works for a very long time. And we have seen law enforcement in this country armed like a domestic

army. And on top of that, the surveillance system that was being used in order to, quote unquote, protect us from terrorists during the war on terror, that entire system was created by the tech oligarchs who are now taking over the government. So people need to understand that that weapon inevitably was always going to be turned against us. When you put all those things together with the fact that militias, paramilitary groups and right-wing chauvinistic gangs have been given free reign to not just carry out violence, but also a virtual guarantee from the president of the United States. They, if they get in trouble, they will be pardoned. Yep, yep.

Mixed with a partnership with state power, with law enforcement, which is what we always see with authoritarian regimes, I think that what we're going to watch is there's going to come a crisis point. Another one. There's going to be a crossroads in which state power comes to bear on a small D democratic protest movement. And then I don't know what's going to happen because those are always the moments of truth in which these things either break like a wave against a breaker or that they will go ahead and carry out what they're doing and intimidate people into those options that I talked about a while ago. So what I keep telling people is stop waiting on the Democratic Party to save you.

Stop waiting on the news media to save you. Stop waiting on the institutions that have been corrupted and serve these people to save you. Get together with the people in your workplace and make sure your bosses and administrators understand that you're not going to put up with their bullshit and you're not going to allow them to work with the Trump administration and these oligarchs. Let the people in your community know that you have their backs. Start making connections and inroads because there is going to come a moment of truth. And that window is going to be crucial. and we cannot afford to lose that window.

We have to make a stand at that point. And otherwise, what we're seeing right now is going to be child's play compared to what could come down the pike. I mean, you are a student of history. And you have in so many ways, whether it is in your writings, whether it is on your podcasts, try to say, this is where the parallels lie. This is where we are headed. In using history as our guide in this moment, and you're saying there's either two choices,

Pressure makes two things. Either it breaks or it calcifies into a harder stone. And I'm curious, do you think that this regime has underestimated Americans because, and I say this, Jared, because they have existed inside of their MAGA ecosystem that has told them that there are more people that are for them than there are against them, that have been dictating to them, that the silent majority is the majority, that Donald Trump won in a landslide, that everyone loves that the prices of eggs have doubled and tripled, that everyone loves that the stock market is falling off of a cliff and their 401ks are being erased, that everybody loves that there have been tens of thousands of people that have been fired and lost their jobs and are now

seeking unemployment assistance, that everybody loves that Medicaid and Social Security is being gutted. Do you think that they have gotten high on their own? supply and that they are underestimating the fortitude and the pushback of Americans. I'll tell you this. First of all, you couldn't have put it any better than that because one of the things that's happened here, listen, I am not in the business of giving free advice to authoritarians. If I could give them advice in order to carry out their goals, the first thing I would have told them is, you do not need Elon Musk, one of the most unrestrained, megalomaniacal figures, being the figurehead who's carrying this stuff out. The problem here is that Elon Musk can't

control himself, he can't restrain himself, and had to be at the forefront of this. Mystification, which is one of the processes by which the wealth class and the powerful class controls things, is hiding the truth, right, and hiding it behind veneers of pleasing stories. That's how MAGA got created. It was a wealth class creation that was meant to appeal to a bunch of Americans who didn't feel like they had necessarily representation. It's a faux populistic movement. By bringing in Musk, it's made it abundantly clear. And as the standard of living in the United States of America declines, and for the record, they are intentionally destroying the economy. They're doing it in order to profit and in order to gain more and more power and to pay people less money to do the work of producing their things

and essentially creating a populace that's terrified. All of those things when they come together, There is always an equal and opposite reaction to these types of power grabs. They are already sowing the seeds of their own destruction. The question is whether or not they can get it done fast enough to keep that backlash from happening. So if people are looking for hope, here's the hope. It's obvious now what they're doing. And there are a lot of people who are going to suffer under this who maybe they, you know, went to the voting booths and they voted for Donald Trump and the Republican Party because they felt like they didn't necessarily. have any other choice. Maybe they, you know, got a bunch of propaganda thrown their way, a bunch of

lies thrown their way. The true believers, the cultists, the acolytes, they're never going to leave. These are the type of people that these lies work on. They're caught in a fake religion with Donald Trump. They're not going to be salvageable. They're not going to come over to the other side. But there are millions of Americans that as this gets worse, they're already turning against it. We saw the initial bump with Trump becoming president, and I'm sure you saw the polls as well. His approval rating skyrocketed in the very beginning, and they have already plummeted to historic lows. And the reason is because they haven't hidden any of this. And as the financial and economic and socioeconomic consequences come to bear, you are going to see people turn against this.

And they are going to grow with the other millions of us who see this bullshit for what it is. And at that point, that's when we reach that crisis point. That's when we have the question about whether or not state power is going to win out or whether or not populistic small D Democratic power is going to win out. I keep my money on the ladder. And I think that's what's going to win out in the end. But we need to understand that this is not a fate accompli. We can't keep waiting on 2026 or 2028 because I got bad news for you.

Authoritarians don't respect free and fair elections. So we have to stop waiting for that and create the infrastructure of an actual resistance because it is coming and it is building momentum. Well, Jared, I will say that I, too, agree with you and believe that the people are going to rise up. They are rising up. And I don't think that that changes. I just think that there will be an escalation and violence, which will then incur more

people to rise up. And my hope, and I don't know how long it will be, but history shows us that regimes like these always fall. They always fall and empires always crumble. And I think that they are making a ton of missteps right now that are going to ensure, ensure that that happens quicker than I think a majority of us will have anticipated. And I'm not saying that there's not going to be pain and there's not going to be death and there's not going to be devastation in that time. But I am saying that I believe that they got high on their own supply. I believe that they overestimated their hand. and that it is going to come back to them.

We will leave it there today, but I will be sure to get back to you soon, my friend. Please tell people how they can find you, follow you, and stay up to date with all that you do. Well, it's been my honor as always talking with you, and I appreciate you so much on the work that you do. I'm over at Blue Sky, J. Y. Syxton. My substack is dispatches from a collapsing state where I'm following all this stuff. I have the Muckrakewreck podcast, and welcome to talk with anybody who's interested in continuing. this conversation. I appreciate you, my friend. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy, how are you kicking us off this glorious week with your fuck that guy? I'm going to kick it off with something that happened a few days

ago, but it's sort of of a piece with what I was saying about the Anti-Defamation League earlier this year, sort of. So I want to get into it. Ben Shapiro is now calling for President Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin. Derek Chauvin, you may remember, was convinced. of murdering George Floyd, which he did. And Ben Shapiro has now decided that he needs to be pardoned because Ben Shapiro doesn't believe that he murdered George Floyd. And when I say Ben Shapiro doesn't believe that. What I mean is Ben Shapiro doesn't care that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd because the evidence is overwhelming. I know there are these quote-unquote heterodox thinkers that are trying to prove otherwise. And Radley Balco, who I had on the show,

to discuss this, roundly shot that down and absolutely dismantled their arguments. Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, and he was found guilty of it, and he is currently in prison for it. But Ben Shapiro, I think, doesn't like the fact that a white man was sentenced for, particularly a cop, but just in general, doesn't like the fact that a white man was sentenced for murdering a black man. And again, this is, it's absolutely repugnant. it's immoral, it's everything you want to call it. And then on top of it to where I want to again tie it into what I was saying earlier about the ADL, Ben Shapiro is always held up as sort of, you know, as it the intellectual of the right.

And again, as I said earlier with the ADL, for Ben Shapiro not to understand that every time he backs one of these discriminatory bigoted positions, whether it's anti-gay, anti-trans, whether it's thinking that a white cop who murdered a black person should not be in prison, he shows an abject lack of historical knowledge when it comes to Jews and how we are treated. And I said it all before, so I won't get into that a lot. But I do want to point out that at least as of today, Donald Trump has said he has no intention of pardoning Derek Chauvin. I also should point out that Derek Chauvin is going to be in prison for a long, long time. time, regardless of whether or not Trump pardons him for the federal crimes.

We should also mention that Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire is who published Candice Owens' vile, disgusting lie-filled smear campaign against George Floyd that has all sorts of lies in it. And Ben Shapiro profits off it getting more popular. It exists on his website right now because I'm looking at it as we speak. Yeah. And this is the perfect case in point because Ben Shapiro was more than happy to platform Candice Owens when she was going after other people. He broke with her when she started saying things about Jews.

And again, for him to not realize that it was always going to end up there, for someone who's supposed to be this leading intellectual light of conservatism, just shows how low the bar is to be the leading intellectual light of conservatism. So fuck that guy. The extraordinary place that we find ourselves where this is where Ben Shapiro, and others want, because Elon Musk is also saying that Chauvin should be pardoned. And again, I'm so glad because I was unclear, but I was assuming that there was also a hefty sentence with regard to the state as well as federal crimes. I think it's 22 years understate. Yeah. So the idea

that this would be what you want to hang your hat on, but to be honest, we're in hell. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump. Trump does a pivot on this and invites him vis-a-vis his jail cell to be the next speaker at one of his rallies or the lead-in to the J-6 concert at Kennedy Center. So, like, that's where we are. Fuck those guys. We are in hell, but like Dante, we are fighting to get out. And that's very important.

I just wanted to say that. You know, and I appreciate that, Andy. Okay. All right. Danielle, so who's your fuck that guy? I'm hoping it's someone new. I'm hoping it's someone I've never heard of. I wish that it could be, Andy. I wish that, you know, but the oldies but goodies are really doing double time in their efforts to just fuck over everyone and everything. But I'm

Breeling in Elon Musk. And I know before you say, Danielle, but what could Elon possibly have done? Right? Because he seems like such an upstanding guy. That's just his arm. But what I will say is this. Elon Musk, where are we today, is that he is decided as his dealerships, Tesla dealerships around the country have become a center of protests. Every weekend, there are people at showrooms all over the place in, and not just in this country, around the world. They are using Elon Musk's Tesla showrooms as their gathering points. Elon Musk, of course, course, is hating that because while we're watching his stocks tumble all the way down and in a continuing downward spiral over the last several weeks, he is now turning his attention to

Act Blue. Now, I'm certain that everybody that listens to this show has received at least 27,000 emails from Act Blue, which is where a lot of protests and petitions and all of the things come through Act Blue. And what Elon Musk is deciding and using his right now, as we're currently speaking, his literal broke down social media platform site for is to say that anyone, anyone that has donated vis-a-vis Act Blue should be criminalized, which, I mean, is everyone from Grandma and Grandpa to students to like everybody and their mother has used Act Blue at some point in time to send money to a candidate,

a cause, et cetera, et cetera. So he has made Act Blue now his target and is going after them, is saying that anyone that is protesting his dealerships or basically just protesting in general should be thrown in jail, which goes back to where we were at the top with stripping people of their legal status in this country and just deciding that everyone, is a terrorist because you don't like their ideology and not because they have done anything that would align with terrorism. So Elon Musk has suspended that. And it said if it's Act Blue, if you're protesting in front of my Tesla shops, everybody needs to go to jail. This man is so thin-skinned,

I mean, so thin-skinned to the point that he ran a poll on his own site asking people if they liked him. Like if you couldn't be more of a pick me, pick me, love me, love me, than that pathetic, pathetic tool of a man. So for that reason and 20,000 others, Elon Musk once again, is my fuck that guy. Yeah. And I would just remind our listeners that if you want to know the truth behind how all these Tesla takedown protests started, I just interviewed Alex Winter last week, who is one of the key figures behind this. And he talked about how they launched it out of nothing. He built a raggedy-ass little website and they thought they were going to have 10 people show up. And it turned out to be more than that. And then it just kept spiraling and spiraling. But of course, Elon Musk,

he doesn't want people to understand that this is a grassroots thing. And it's really that people absolutely loathe him. So he has to turn it into a conspiracy. And, you know, dropping George Soros's name is never bad to get in good with your fellow anti-Semites. And yeah, he is, he is one of the saddest people on the planet. And look, this is common, I think, of most narcissists is that they are absolutely the most insecure, scared little people you'll ever meet. And he fits right into that. So yeah, fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.