The Ricochet Podcast - The B (For Baby) Team

Episode Date: September 11, 2021

This week, Ricochet editors Jon Gabriel and Bethany Mandel and yes, her baby (listen closely and you’ll hear him in this podcast) join Peter and James to discuss another maddening news cycle. Our guest Harmeet Dhillon takes us through the latest power grab by the Biden Administration, the means to fight back and the hopes for an Elder in Sacramento’s Governor’s mansion. The Ricochet gang also take... Source

From now on, call me Geraldo. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Listen to the voices of unvaccinated Americans who are lying in hospital beds, taking their final breath, saying, if only I'd gotten vaccinated, if only. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilacs. We've got Peter Robinson, Rob Long's out,

Bethany Mandel, John Gabriel are here. We're going to talk to Harmeet Dhillon about the COVID mandate. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast, episode 560. This is Peter Robinson, and I'm pausing over the number 560 because when Rob Long, who's not here, and I started Ricochet low those many episodes ago, he talked me into doing a podcast, and I was sure it would blow over. It may yet, but it'll have to be at the 561st or later version. Today, 560. Joining me in the absence not only of my friend and co-founder Rob Long, but my friend and co-host James Lilacs is also missing today.

This is what happens when you get to the tail end of summer. Joining me, John Gabriel. Is the B team. The B team. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no. The three of us, Rob and James and I feel the two of you breathing down our necks all the time. We have the obvious topic.

We'll get to COVID and politics and our wonderful guest, Harmeet Dhillon, who will be joining us in a few minutes. We'll get to that. We'll also get to the 20th anniversary of 9-11. But we have to begin with this bethany this is the first time you and i have spoken since you and seth tied my wife and me by having a fifth child now so tell us how you regret it tell us how you've had too many children it was all a terrible mistake. The culture is right. Women should put off childbearing until they're 45 and have, right? All this is true.

You regret it bitterly, do you not? This morning, Seth said, when we have another. And I was like, that's awfully presumptuous of you. I feel like I wasn't consulted. But yes, okay, fine. So what's the age range now how old is the oldest and the seven and she's almost eight and the baby is still very much a baby just what months yeah she's not even two months here let me look tomorrow he's two months old

excellent yeah and he's a delight and currently sleeping in um a rock and play in my kitchen that has been recalled so i'm really living on the edge right now. And I jump back and look at him every now and then just to make sure everything's okay. And how long has it been since you slept through the night? Oh, I'm sleeping great. You are? Oh yeah. Nobody has a sniffle. You don't hear mommy, mommy in the middle of the night. No. So I'm off duty. I'm not. I'm not doing any of the older children's. Seth is on duty for the other four because if I get up, so I sleep really well because we co-sleep, speaking of all the unsafe things I do as a parent. So the baby sleeps in our bed with us and he's just glued to my side.

And if I move, then he wakes up so I can't move so um seth has to handle the other four children and the dog and the dog is actually the worst of the bunch he's he's like a one-year-old springer's stringer poodle puppy who i'm sure you'll hear in the background he's a nightmare the other kids are mostly sleeping okay and his school started what's the what's the covid school situation yeah well so i homeschool and so we started homes's the what's the covid school situation yeah well so i homeschool and so we started homeschooling of like a month and change ago uh and we're taking all because there's like a bazillion t jewish holidays you're keeping all five children home so sort of uh my four-year-old and my two-year-old are doing a part-time preschool program Monday, Wednesday, Friday for three hours a day.

It's amazing. So, I mean, I have most of my kids most of the day, but the three hours a day that they're in preschool a couple days a week, we're like going to Target to buy shoes for the other kids. Like we're doing all the errands and stuff that is hard with all five kids. We get to the 20th anniversary of 9 11 in a minute but one just one more question so here's what i still don't quite get to have five children in this day and age to home school those five children you just mentioned Jewish holidays to be religiously observant. Do you and Seth feel intentionally countercultural? Yes. And that's why, I mean, that's not why I do it.

I obviously do it for much higher, deeper reasons than this, but I love to be a rebel. And so, you know, being a rebel isn't listening to rock music anymore sleeping around now it's having five children at homeschooling so wow um but no i mean yeah we're there's very few people in this boat for sure like where we live um but there's like a total renaissance of this sort of more focused of homes home life um on instagram there's a lot of moms like me but with much more sort of pretty houses and children that they show lighting i don't show my children they like they clean their houses i think i don't know we don't do that um but no i mean there's this whole sort of movement on social media to like highlight big families at homeschool and and sort of glamorize them and they these

people have tons of followers wow wow so that's heartening as far as i'm concerned john i think so too john 9 11 where were you how did you find out? What was your response? Well, just before recording the interview, I actually talked to my daughter. She's in her second year of college now at Arizona State, the Stanford of the West, as we like to call it. But she was just mentioning how in school she never was taught about 9-11. And she was just noticing how odd that was. She was just never. What year is she she is a second year at arizona state so she's a sophomore okay so she was born just after nine

exactly yeah so she has no firsthand memory whatsoever correct yeah and she was just talking to me about it saying isn't that odd i went yeah that's very odd but i remember when they're younger i just thought it was strange they do a moment moment of silence, but that's it. As for me, I, you know, I'm on West Coast time, of course. I was going to drop off my car at a dealer. I'm getting ready, driving there, turn on the radio. One tower's been hit. Just before I got to the place, the second tower was hit. I was just just utterly confused i hadn't seen any images and then i got to the car repair shop and the only people in the waiting room were me and a student from asu who happened to be arabic and he was just sitting there with his head in

his hands and oh really and that was before we knew who did it or anything. But kind of all I could think of is he just realized that his life was going to get more challenging, more difficult. And I was just confused at that point. He was quite upset. So it was very odd. And, of course, the things that people don't remember, too, are just the strangeness. I wasn't anywhere close to the Twin Towers or D, but you just know there were no flights and we're not too far from a flight path. I can usually see when I'm on my nightly walk, planes coming in or leaving off in the distance. And after maybe 10 days, two weeks when they did flights again the first airplane i saw after that if we're watching

all those horrible images was i was driving downtown i was facing a flat glass and steel skyscraper and a plane flew behind it and i kind of panicked it almost drove off the road but it was just the plane was far in the distance um but i was like wow this this has definitely changed life it was a pretty wild experience bethany where were you where when how i was really young um i was a rubber i knew this was coming i was like oh and then're going to make fun of me about how old I am. But at least I remember it. So I actually had a sort of similar weird conversation with my kids this past week, John, that I realized that, of course, they don't know because they're so much younger than even yours. And my kids read, I don't think I have it here, but there's like these books, I Survived.

And it's like, I survived Japanese tsunami. I survived Hurricane Katrina, yada yada and um and there's an i survived book about 9-11 that my kids read um so i was a sophomore in high school in upstate new york and uh they made an announcement over the loudspeaker that uh i think one plane had hit maybe two, maybe two at that point. And everyone sort of listened and they never made news announcements over the loudspeaker at school. So I was kind of like, that's weird. And everyone else just kept on going about their day. Um, I had never been a rural follower and now I'm counter-cultural having five children. So it all sort of goes in the same direction, but I, uh, so I snuck into the teacher's lounge and sat in the back and no one ever noticed me.

And I sat there the whole day watching TV. And I watched the towers fall. I watched the Pentagon get hit. I watched the questions about Flight 93. Where is it? And then it went down in Pennsylvania. And, um, and I sort of remember walking out after the last bell, um, like I, I was in a cloud and everyone's sort of just running around, like no one else had heard anything. No one had cell phones, like no one knew what was going on

and all the teachers knew because people were coming in and out all day. And I came out like, oh my God, you people have no idea, no clue. And I went day and I came out like oh my god you people have no idea no clue and I went home and I got home and it's actually kind of a weird fond memory there's my baby I'll go get him in a second um but I came home and just sobbed in my mother's arms and I just laid on her sobbing for hours and we just watched tv and she died a year later and it's actually like a weird good memory um because that was sort of the last time I had that kind of moment with my mother because I was 16 when my mom died um so um so yeah I mean it really sort of changed my life trajectory I became much more interested in international politics and stuff and it led me to probably where I am now, honestly.

Where are you now? You're talking into a microphone, recording a podcast while we hear a two-month-old mewling in the background. Crying in the other end. I'm going to pause for one second. Y'all continue. I'm just going to get my baby. Of course. So, John, if you think through, what did you tell your daughter that she needs to know about what happened 20 years ago? Ah, we're welcomed now, to my immense relief and to no doubt to listeners relief as well. We are welcome. James Lilacs has popped up. James, thank you for joining us. to you over to you happy to be on how can i how can i join you peter when we are a part of the thing every single week i mean it's a it's

thank you thank you for not abandoning us actually would be more right 9 11 i remember um quite distinctly because it was book release day for me. My book, The Gallery for Gratiful Food, was coming out, and book release days are meaningless. But still, it's kind of fun just to know that today is the official day for that. Who knows? Maybe the New York Times will call. And I was in the shower listening to the radio and wondering why they were repeating the story of the bombing of the World Trade Center for many years before, until I realized what was going on. I sent my wife off to work, and I went downstairs to take care of my daughter, and was crawling around on the floor with a small telephone that kept saying,

hello, hello, as though we were getting this call from some unknown future or entity. And she blithely played away in front of the television set for the entire day while I sat there and watched and recorded and talked on the phone and ripped up columns and paste and gnashed my teeth and wondered what the devil was coming of this. I just had the feeling that we were on the beginning of something very big and very long. And it was a horrible day. It was a dreadful day. And as John noted earlier, because I was listening, the plane started coming in. Unlike John, I live really close to an airport. So I heard them all coming in one by one by one by one,

the entire fleet being grounded in Minneapolis. And after that dead silence, and then after that in the evening, the lone sound of a single jet above patrolling the sky, which was oddly comforting, but it made you feel as if everything in the country was suddenly suddenly quickened to a to a point of of absolute alert um never forgotten it and the just yesterday a couple of days ago i found on on the youtubes somebody had taken some footage that amateur shot on the day that it came down out of their window, propped up a camera, let it roll. And they had upscaled it to 4k. So that had this preternatural clarity to it. And I watched it with the exact same emotions, the belief that somehow this time, they're not going to fall. The horror of seeing the people moving back and forth behind the windows, the sense of unreality when the second plane had the second plane that that hammer blow, that one that

absolutely cinched for you, that beyond a doubt we were in a new world. And the anger, the absolute fury at watching the towers come down. To this day, I watch it and I am incandescently angry about it. And I don't even like the buildings particularly. Remember what Paul Goldberg said about them, that one was banal, but two was was modern sculpture and he's kind of right but at the same time they were they were iconic jay we use the word i hate part of the landscape part of new york and when there was nothing there that empty wound in the sky you just for it would be a year or so before i eventually could get to manh And when I did and walked into Grand Central Station and there was this enormous display of all of the posters that people had put up after 9-11 on street corners, on signs, on poles, whatever, they'd saved them. And there was this long, long wall of missing people that stretched the length practically of the terminal.

And it was just, again, brought you back in a second, everything. You'd pass in the street and you would see a firefighter's memorial to 9-11 with some teddy bear that somebody had added and a couple of guttering candles, and you'd be back in a second. Now, not so much, which is probably healthy in a way. You don't want to make judgments in 2021 based on the emotions you had in 2001, but it never goes away and you never do forget. And I can't believe it's been 20 years. I've just been informed via my little earpiece here that the natural thing to do after telling a tale like that is to do a commercial. And I'm not even going to attend any sort of transition. I think we should just leave that where it was and go on to the fact that,

well, it is 2021. But you know, normal keeps getting redefined. I go to an office now that doesn't have anybody in it. So when I walk from my car to the office, sometimes I'd like to listen to music to pump me up as if I'm going to some party that isn't really there. But when I do that, I want to hear the sounds. I want to hear them with clarity.

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You know, this really is perfect because we have one of the founders of Ricochet and we have two people who came along later and made it an even better place, made it what it is. And of course, uh, refer to John and Bethany and their editorial capabilities. But you know, John,

you wrote that thing after January 6th, that still tars you to this day. And you Bethany, uh, somehow managed to, you know, avoid the, the,

the nasty screaming killer of grandma persona that you have on Twitter. So I should ask both of you. John, how do you deal with the fact that Ricochet is a civil community, but a bumptious one at times? And then, Bethany, I'm going to ask you how you view the difference between the scrum of Twitter and the relative calm debating society that is Ricochet. John, you go first.

I, one thing that I like is I'm used to people shocking though it is that disagree with me. I've usually been a minority political voice wherever I have been in this private sector backgrounds, the Navy and college, of course, being the one student to ask a provocative question from the back.

So I really don't mind the disagreement as long as it is kept respectful. And that's one of the great things about Ricochet is people don't need to troll each other or harass each other. You can just ask honest questions, trying to understand someone's views. The thing that I probably like the most about Ricochet is articles that seem to come and posts that seem to come totally outside of my experience. The history of Khmer culture is one. The one that I always go back to, and it's years old now, the process of laying concrete, what needs to be considered things that i would never even consider and then i'm fascinated about them and then when i'm seeing construction nearby that's the best yeah that's the best advertisement for ricochet it makes

drying concrete drying cement exciting but it's amazing now we always yes now. We have lots of construction around here, and now I study them. Oh, that's what they're doing. Oh, okay, that apartment's just going to have to sit vacant for a while because they just poured this foundation or whatever. So it's just the random bits of information that people are experts in, and it fascinates me. And then you'll get people, yeah, I worked in the Senate for 20 years, so here's my perspective on what's going on with the filibuster. So you just get all walks of life and are presented with perspectives that are not filtered slash neutered by groupthink coming out of the Beltway or Manhattan. It's just people from all walks of life and usually far more impressive than the

talking heads that we see on cable news each night. True. There was a post the other day about the new folks in the neighborhood, somebody who had lived, I think, 20 years in the country and was talking about somebody who else had moved in and just threw it open to people who lived in wide open spaces. And as I read the thread, all of these people that I've been reading for years, turns out they live on 45 acres out there somewhere with a john d little to to mow their their lawn and the rest and it just opened up something else i'd never seen before always something to learn and bethany as i said before you um have a contentious existence on twitter not that you're nasty you're not but your existence really really annoys people who follow you obsessively and tweet responses

to things that everything that you say and have this persona of you so how do you keep uh the equanimity that you have on twitter and not bring it into ricochet which is a much calmer place so one of my favorite things was when i first started writing for ricochet i think before i worked for ricochet um i wrote i wrote a piece and and scott told me you should read the comments and i was like oh that's not a thing i do i don't read the comments that's like punditry 101 you never read the comments but on ricochet you actually do because people are bound to not be jerks and not swing insults and ad hominem attacks and um and reading the comments is now one of my favorite things to do only on ricochet one and only place um well but on twitter i mean you just you kind of just have to filter out everyone who who doesn't follow you because everyone else is crazy.

And one of my favorite things that Carol Markowitz said, she's a columnist in your post. She, she set her settings on Twitter to not see tweets from people who don't follow her because it eliminates the drive buys, which is something that I really like. I suppose. But,

but it's by the same token though, if you did that, you would not be exposed to the breadth and depth of brilliance that is Twitter. You would not have been able to say, as you did recently on Ricochet, you wrote a piece, Texas Taliban and the actual Taliban, in which you said, quote, do you in fact know what the Taliban is? You keep referring to those in Texas who support the new pro-life law as the Taliban. But do you know what it is? I'll give you a hint. They were in the news just last week. I didn't see a post about it. I'm sure you'll get around to it as the proud and brave feminists that you are, end quote. Now, you can't get that sort

of inspiration unless you're on Twitter, where the blue checks and on down say the stupidest possible things. I got it from Instagram. Do you know how much? Instagram. So if I don't tweet something that I've written, it's often because I don't want people who I know in real life to see it. And that was one of the pieces where I was like, I just need to get this out. And hopefully these people follow me on, I know they don't follow me in Ricochet. Hopefully they don't follow me on Ricochet. Hopefully they don't follow me on Twitter, but I just had to get it out because my, my Instagram of all of these idiot feminists who don't listen to this podcast, so I can just open fire who are like, Oh my God, this is the Taliban. And meanwhile, my, I don't get political on Instagram. I think it's,

there should be safe spaces and Instagram should be that. Um, but get political on Instagram. I think there should be safe spaces and Instagram should be that. But I posted on Instagram sort of links to Afghan refugees and about the Marines that died. That was my Instagram content a great deal that week. Not a word from these people.

And then all of a sudden, they are just full of memes they have so many things to say about the news and it's just because an abortion law that they don't understand that they don't like paths in a state that they don't live in and affects literally how do you how do you use your instagram p? Hold on just a moment. Bethany is spectacular. I just would like to make that point. All right. Sorry, how do I use Instagram? I know the idea for some people of having political ideas on Instagram is like going to the one-hour photo booth and arguing about Jimmy Carter, but it's there. What used to be just this anodyne platform for dog pictures

and sunsets and neon signs has now become yet another poisonous means way which we can bore people with our opinions are you on instagram peter and if so okay i am on instagram and in fact but i use it exclusively for dog pictures i mean sunsets would be a huge expansion of my portfolio yeah that's all scott's content is just sunset that's and showing off that he lives in ohai exactly oh look where i live well that must be the name for the blue yeti that's right john well let me ask now that's interesting so is is go ahead you i want to throw this out there to everybody since we mentioned it and you all have instagram accounts do you regard the spillover of politics into Instagram as inevitable and lamentable? Or is it just the fact that we, you know, can we not, can we, are we unable to craft a space that is not poisoned at this point by people's opinions? I think it's regrettable, but totally understandable. But I'm aggressive on Instagram and on Twitter when something annoys me. I don't follow the person and I just don't see it anymore, including many friends.

And it's nothing personal, like especially on Instagram. It's like Twitter, breaking news and politics and sarcastic commentary. And Instagram, I want to see dogs. I want to see dogs i want to see landscapes i want to see my cousin who started a food case yeah yeah my cousin who started a knife company in rural michigan and he has all these cool designs that's what i'm there for and uh when i do post that's the kind of content that i post when i actually leave my house, which happens on a monthly basis. At least I will take photos showing that I've emerged from my cocoon and then I don't post again for another month.

Well, Peter, this is for you. If we were all tempted to just sever ourselves from this because it angers up the blood and it gives you a distorted view of what's going on. I mean, my Twitter feed right now is 99% vaccines, masks, arguing. That's no matter what I follow. And if all of those people shut up about it, nothing would change. So it's not the real world. But at the same time, I run across a post pointing me to Barry Weiss's new sub stack, which has a piece that calls you out, Peter Robinson, because it's about a 17 year old kid this brilliant 17 year old kid who lives in new york who writes this piece about he grew up for religious jamaican parents he is not

woke and considers himself to be lucky as such and you're one of the people that he says he found early on that helped him shape his political beliefs and you're called out also in the twitter feed as to somebody that you should have an uncommon knowledge or we should have here or should be on Glenn Lowry's show. So we can't, I mean, so there is some good to it. We can't just say there's Ricochet and then there's the sewer. It's a complex world you have to curate. And Bethany, of course, you got all the time in the world to curate, right?

I mean, you only have seven kids at the moment, so you probably do your curating between 1150 and 1140, 52. You at least have an excuse to not know how many kids I have. But when I told Scott that I was pregnant again, he legitimately didn't know. I know how many kids you have. I'm kidding you. You have five. Follow the last one.

I put a picture of me and my kids in my Slack picture so that everyone knew how many kids I had. And I feel like it's also like, if I, if it takes me hours to reply, my picture is staring at you and it reminds you why it took me hours to reply. Well, before we depart from the number of children you have to which we keep going back,

by the way, I think so too. However, however, this is the only exchange I ever heard when my wife met Maureen Scalia, widow of the late Justice Scalia, and the mother of nine Scalia children. And my wife said, somewhat in self-defense, I think, she said, Mrs. Scalia, so good to meet you, and I want you to know that I have five children and Mrs. Scalia said oh do you know what I call five children dear

I call five children a good start I love it is that not beautiful sorry go wherever you were going to go before I interrupted you I mean I think that there is a place for politics,

of course. And for arguing, I, I think that every, everyone should just sort of have their respective places and understand what their purpose is. Instagram is for pictures only. Ricochet is when you need to actually have an intelligent conversation.

And Twitter is when you want to yell at people. And I think there's want to yell at people. And I think there's value to yelling at people. It gets your, all your aggression out. I know it has been a wonderful valve for me. You just sort of hit the switch. And whenever my kids are pissing me off,

I'm like, you're an idiot, but on Twitter. So I don't call my children idiots that often. Good for you. Well, here's the thing, though. You know, what we love to do sometimes after, especially after you've spent too much time on social media, is construct an ideal version of the opposition that you believe exists in your head and then argue with them and win. I mean, I do that all the time so that I'm

ready for when it finally comes and it hits me. It's like having, you know, you will read something so spectacularly and wonderfully stupid. There was a Bloomberg writer who had a piece, a series of tweets this week about how we failed to build a new rural identity for America. And, you know, we, the kid's 24 years old. We, and who's this we? It's what he described as the liberal elite that got bullied in small towns and moved to college. And he was just saying, no, no, we should have stayed there. We should have helped build a new culture for these benighted groups.

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slash ricochet five. And we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Joining us now, my friend, Harmeet Dhillon, a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School, and more to the point for our purposes right now, a very determined sewer, not sewer, S-E-W-E-R, sorry, strike that. I mean S-U-E-R, if that's the way to spell it. Harmeet, thank you. Harmeet is a big-time lawyer here in San Francisco. And let's put it this way. She has all the right enemies and sues a lot of them. Last night, the President of the United States took to the airwaves to say that he intends to do something about the 80 million Americans who remain unvaccinated.

And he also said of certain red state governors that if they're not going to help control the pandemic, he would use his powers as president to get them out of the way. Harmeet then tweeted up a storm. Harmeet, from the legal point of view, what did you find so objectionable? Well, I don't think you have enough time in this podcast for me to go through that. of COVID legal indignities ranging from shutting down businesses to shutting down schools to forbidding parents from even sending to their kids to a private school, preventing people in Hawaii from going from one island to the other without some government certificate. And so this is just the latest indignity. And your question kind of presupposes the attitude of a lot of people, which is with all that we put up with here, what's the big deal here?

I already got vaccinated. My boss already requires it. Well, it is a big deal. It is a big deal for the government to be mandating that a needle gets stuck into your arm. It is part of a increasing encroachment on our civil rights the way that this president did it after repeatedly promising not just himself but through his cdc director just in end of july that there would be no federal vaccine mandate is is incredibly disturbing because if the government can use your employer to push uh what is perceived by, even probably on this podcast, as a benevolent social policy, people should get vaccinated. They're going to be able to do it for things that those of us here do not perceive to be as benign. Climate change, number of children people should have optimally. I mean, there are all kinds of things that the government may wish that we simply believe as Americans, we should have a right to decide for

ourselves. And the founders believe that as well. And so using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's emergency provisions, which have very, very rarely been used to claim that somehow suddenly, even though we are a country of more than 50 vaccinated workers much higher than that in places like california that that covet is now suddenly a toxic factor in the workplace that man that that justifies forcing people to either test weekly or shove needles into their arms against their consent. The statute doesn't provide for that. There's no due process in this process. There's no notice and opportunity to be heard in this process. And frankly, there's no emergency at this point. We have a

endemic. We have a disease that we are living with, a foreign virus, not a pandemic. We have a seasonal situation. The president suddenly woke up and said, oh, now we have an emergency. We have no different emergency today than we had yesterday or that we're going to have tomorrow. So my concern here, and I represent many employers who called me, and of course I represent a number of individuals as well, but here employers really have some rights. They have a right to tell the government, we don't want to be in possession of our workers' medical information. That creates liability for the employer. I'm an employer. If I know that Susie is pregnant or that Jim doesn't want to take the

vaccine because he's got MS or something like that, all of a sudden I'm in possession of information that gives me liability when I fire that person for some totally independent reason. So that's a big problem for employers. And I don't want to be the vaccine police. I'm here to do law, file lawsuits, give people legal advice. I'm not here to be the vaccine police. That's not my role. And I resent that being forced upon me. And I have many, many clients, not just conservative, who believe that similarly, it's not their role to get in between their workers and their personal medical decisions. I also don't think it's the government's role. And frankly, I don't think employers should be allowed to do that. I disagree with the EEOC

guidance on this issue, which was the same guidance under Trump as it is under Biden, namely that employers have a right to require employees to get vaccinated as a condition of their employment absent a valid medical and religious exemption. What we are doing in this country with this is we are making a mockery of these laws that allow these exemptions because people are desperate to not get vaccinated if they have not mentally come to terms with it i'm vaccinated i'm sure most of you are vaccinated but if what people are doing to avoid vaccination is coming up with ridiculous and unsupported religious excuses and desperately going around trying to find doctors to certify that they shouldn't get

vaccinated secondly there's 100 million of us Americans, by some estimates, who've been exposed to this virus. So millions of workers who don't need to be vaccinated are being forced to be vaccinated. And there are many physicians who say that people who have some medical issues and who have recently been sick with COVID should not get vaccinated. So this is a blunt instrument that is being used on the American populace for, I think, a fairly narrow problem with people who are resistant to being vaccinated. And it's frankly lazy, where the government can force you to do something as opposed to persuade you through public service announcements or leadership or whatever. They're going to do that every single time. And I don't want to live in that country, frankly. So I think this is a watershed situation

and we have to fight it. Whether you agree about vaccination or not, that's not the issue here. The issue is, can the government use employers to mandate socially beneficial things by force, which is what's happening here. And so, Harmeet, what is, on that question, what's the legal recourse? Who can demonstrate, don't we have to wait for somebody to suffer some sort of demonstrable harm before anyone achieves actual legal standing? How do you fight it legally right now? You don't. No. I mean, when the law comes into effect, so as of today, OSHA has not announced these regulations. It is estimated that next week, OSHA will announce these rushed out regulations, no notice and comment or opportunity to be heard.

And then an employer who decides that they do not wish to be the vaccine police of their workforce or the testing police or incur that liability of expense of paying people for the time of testing or any of that, which in some states like California is way up in the air. Do I have to pay for my workers going to get tested? Probably. Who's going to pay for that? You know, so all of these questions, an employer would have standing because the employer is the one that will get fined if the employer doesn't implement this mandate. I think potentially workers could also have standing, but really it's going to be the employer. Now, what's interesting here,

and something that I've commented about before, is for decades, conservatives have been on the pro-corporate side. Corporations can do no harm. Corporations are humans. Corporations can do whatever they want. Corporations can mandate five vaccinations or whatever. And that's what's led us to this point where you know corporate it's in corporate interests of some corporations

if they're big corporations i'm sure there are big corporations who are losing workers to red states or competitor corporations that are requiring vaccination who went to the president and said hey this is a problem with all this, you know, gosh, darn worker mobility happening and people having choices. I mean, I'm losing workers this way and it's a big headache. I have to compete on this. So why don't you just make it one standard for all? That's easy for a lot of corporations. There's no way that President Biden did this without the blessing of major corporations in the United States. And so I think I think it's really corporations

versus Americans, frankly, at this point. And this is an existential problem. Now, there are many employers, smaller, just above 100, not big behemoth, publicly traded corporations who think this is terrible. And there will be many, many lawsuits. I wish you'd thought about these issues before we talk. So we didn't get these vague, nonspecific replies. My gosh my gosh it's stunning i'm just listening to you and thinking our meat is great our meat is great so here you can ask her anything so here's the thing i mean yes of course the greater the larger the regulatory state the more the more the business will cozy up to the party of the state in order to curry favor but there's something and that's one lesson perhaps that we can bring to the electorate in a newly retooled, rethought Republican Party. But there's something else here.

OSHA, I saw this week, has buried somewhere in its labyrinth of innumerable pages a regulation that gives them a certain amount of emergency powers in certain emergency situations, which makes you wonder whether or not every single regulatory agency has that clause buried somewhere waiting to be plucked out and used at the opportune time. The argument here that we get out of this is should be is that, look, if they can turn OSHA to do this, they can find something. They can find something in any one of these state enforcement apparatuses to work the will without having to pass a law. That's a point we need to make. This may be a rule that they have summoned, but a rule is not a law. That's a point we need to make. This may be a rule that they have summoned, but a rule is not a law. Nobody's voting on this. It's just saying, all right, you got the power,

go run with it. And that's wrong. That's not how we're supposed to be ruled and governed. Well, it shouldn't be. However, I was shocked to learn when I showed up in law school in 1990 in the University of Virginia, having a very, you know, sort of old-fashioned conception of what our government consists of, three branches. There are four branches. Now I would say the media is probably the fifth branch of the government, but there are four branches of government. The administrative state is a growing, you know, cancer on the body of our democracy, and there were judges back in the 90s, Justice Scalia being chief among them, who sounded the alarm about the fact that, for example, the Judicial Federal Sentencing Commission effectively made laws about what the sentences were going to be for people convicted of federal crimes. There was nobody, no legislature who voted on that.

And, you know, that was problematic. But the rest of the court did not agree that that was a problem. And so, you know, here we are now with this edifice. So the challenges to this law are going to be under intra-alia, the Administrative Procedures Act, as well as some other obscure laws. But look, even if you take the most liberal conception of what the CDC, sorry, what the OSHA guidelines provide for, they've only been in the last couple of three decades, a couple of instances of this emergency authorization being used. One was earlier this year for healthcare providers, which has survived legal scrutiny. But the other one was for asbestos regulations, which was enjoined, and that was like three decades ago. So it's actually

very rarely used. And what's going to be troubling for the Biden administration is that the most recent example of a sort of administrative state overreach was the housing situation, the eviction moratorium that they attempted to force through. And the United States Supreme Court slapped it down and said, no, sorry, that's not what that emergency authorization stands for. You can't just sort of override state law this way and seize people's property under the guise of an emergency. But I will say on the other side, this is going to be a very interesting watershed, is like when I went into court challenging the right of the government to shut down churches and schools and businesses and hair salons and nail salons and stuff you did in your own home and moving from one island home of you that you own to another in hawaii i would have thought some judges conservative judges would have been all over that but but whether they were reagan appointees bush appointees obama appointees clinton appointees they all ruled against these issues and cited this very old case i'm sure you

guys have discussed before jacoon v. Massachusetts, which stands for the proposition that the government can do a lot of stuff in an emergency. But the problem with citing that case, and you've seen NPR rely on it and do a very dumb piece about it recently, is that we've had a growing body of scrutiny in our United States Supreme Court that applies strict scrutiny to certain limitations on our rights, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis scrutiny. I would argue that this type of regulation does not even survive rational basis scrutiny, because treating people who have natural immunity, which is clearly superior to vaccine-conferred immunity as unvaccinated and punish them, is ridiculous scientifically. And so, you know, I think that we're going to see some very interesting arguments.

I'm not sure I'm going to make every argument. It'll depend on what clients, you know i think that we're going to see some very interesting arguments i'm not sure i'm going to make every argument it'll depend on what clients uh you know end up going into court next week or the week after that but i think that um eugene volokh did a nice piece i think i saw it earlier today on this issue there are likely to be many many lawsuits all over the country and there's certainly going to be some judge who issues an injunction one of those notorious nationwide injunctions and then we will see a lot of interesting legal maneuvering in the courts. Harmeet, questions about two states. We'll come to California because that's the state that you and I love and hate and love and hate and love and hate. We've had this discussion going on for a long time. That comes next. First, Texas. Is it really out of the ordinary, or am I simply

ignorant about this? Is it out of the ordinary for the Attorney General of the United States to say, Texas, the Texas legislature just passed, and the governor of Texas just signed a law that we in Washington find so offensive that we're going to sue Texas. Of course, I'm referring to the abortion law in Texas. But that feels to me unusual, if not absolutely extraordinary. Am I simply mistaken about that? Does justice do that kind of thing all the time? I think you are mistaken about that. In fact, if you were to flashback two or three months ago, you would have seen similar hype and umbrage with respect to the Georgia, eminently reasonable Georgia voting rights package that sort of moderately tightened up some loopholes. And you

saw Merrick Garland pounding the gavel and pounding the podium and, you know, talking about this being the apocalypse of, you know, justice and minority disenfranchisement, all nonsense, all posturing, and all, frankly, failing in the courts. Those arguments are not winning in the courts. Justice has become very politicized in a one-sided way. I'm sorry to say our side doesn't do that. We do not weaponize justice the way that this side has done that. In four years of, for example, Civil Rights Division under our previous administration, zero was done to tighten up the election laws, to tighten up discrimination against people in the schools on the basis of their gender, entitled mind, and so many other things that could have been done, that should have been done, weren't done.

It's a one-sided, one-way ratchet of weaponization of the doj so um you know whatever with respect to the the texas statute i don't think politically with abortion being the sacred cow of the left that it is they could have done nothing so they did something but and and frankly i suspect that law was going to be challenged by taxi drivers and other people as as fines began to get levied for violation of it. So, you know, it's pretty common on the left for this type of thing to happen. Okay. Okay. Which brings us to California. Four days from now, voting ends in the recall election. And so emote a little bit on Gavin Newsom. But in the midst of all that, give us a kind of critique of the recall procedure.

It is a very strange, but you would not have designed the recall the way it stands now, would you? Well, and don't get too attached to it because it's certainly going to get changed, I think, after this recall election. You know, as soon as democrats can do that they have a super majority in both legislatures in our state but i don't think it's that crazy question number one is do you want this bum out or not and then question is that the way it's worded i guess i don't remember the word yeah i think it's a little bit differently the the bum part i'm summarizing but um you know, I don't think that that's flawed per se. All of a sudden, Democrats are hyperventilating about how a minority of voters can decide this. Guess what? In California and in many other states, a minority of voters decide a lot of elections. A plurality of voters decide a lot of elections uh our gubernatorial our mayoral races in san francisco case of budin got a minority of the votes in san francisco to become the district attorney okay uh you know london breed rank choice voting rank choice voting works that way so

that is actually pretty common in the united states um and you know i what would i have that be have it be rounds of successive voting i mean elections are run off i think it's perfectly i think it's perfectly fine it's not certainly not unconstitutional and i did file an amicus brief as well as a motion to intervene in the legal challenge that erwin chemerinsky had suggested be brought to the constitutionality of the statute somebody did that and the the judge kicked it out with the back of his hand as completely absurd so um so i don't think that i don't think it's unconstitutional or illegal uh i think it's also going to get changed is there any chance that the recall will succeed is there any chance that will get thrown out oh you do oh you think so i thought the polling and the reason last couple weeks the polling was turning in favor of news that's why

you don't read liberal polls in the state or any state the the purpose of these polls is designed to have exactly that effect on you and then most people don't read into the crosstabs of the polls and realize they they pulled 90 san francisco Democrats in line at the farmers market as opposed to, you know, normal people doing their jobs in the Central Valley. You know, so polls depend on who's being asked and what are the questions that are being asked. You know, one of the other things that I think is going to be interesting is how many Republicans vote late in the process. The people who plan to vote in person over the next four days are going to be voting for the recall, according to one poll I did see, for what it's worth, at over 70 percent. But is that enough to make up for the number of people who voted by mail already? Definitely. I voted by mail, and I'm not nuts about it, but at this point, you know, it is a legal way to vote in the state. And so we do like, as a political party switching hats from lawyer to RNC committee woman, we do like to see voters go ahead and vote.

Because with technology now, we know who has voted and who to chase. So because I voted already, I'm not getting phone calls on my phone bugging me to go vote. And if you haven't voted, you're getting those phone calls. It's a practical resource management deal for us. So we like it when people vote early. Harmeet, I have one more question. I'm sorry, about the California recall. And everybody, by the way, John and Bethany and James, you have already learned that if there's only one thing you remember about life, the great rule of life is keep Harmeet on your side. That's what you want to do. Listen, so I've heard half a dozen stories that have the following nature, Harmeet. A friend of mine moved to Austin and did everything he

could, filed every possible form, change of address, remove my names from the voter rolls and so forth because of course he wants to leave no trace of a california existence so that the state of california doesn't come after him for taxes he's been in texas for over a year now he received a ballot sent to him to his texas address two of my children live out of state and have lived out of state this is my story this happened to me i saw these ballots with my own eyes of my children live out of state and have lived out of state. This is my story. This happened to me. I saw these ballots with my own eyes and my children were sent ballots. Do you, is this kind of nonsense within the normal range of incompetence that we would expect to see because humans are humans and polling, sending out ballots across the state as big as

California is bound to involve some error? Or are the shenanigans taking place here? Well, I think the answer is somewhere in between those two extremes. It's not normal and it's not legal. It's a violation of the National Voter Registration Act. And it should have been cleared up. In fact, Los Angeles County, the biggest culprit in this specific type of shenanigans that you mentioned, has been sued by Judicial Watch and entered into a settlement that said it would clean up its voter rolls. So what's happened here is there are at least 10,000 Americans

who moved out of California who have received ballots in this election, and that includes people who's, I mean, Mike, I heard from a lady whose brother died in Afghanistan in the war, and the family has taken steps to remove him from the ballot, and then they get triggered at every election because these idiots keep sending them his ballot out of state where they moved to Idaho or what have you. So this is a very serious problem. And, you know, if you have examples, you know, offline, please have these people contact me because there is likely to be litigation regarding California's refusal to comply with the NBRA after this

recall election. I think it's a very, it's a serious problem. Now, you have to also be assuming from the voter fraud point of view that all these people are going to go commit the crime of voting in a place where they're not supposed to but the warning on the ballot is confusing it doesn't say it's illegal for you to vote in california if you live in idaho it says it's illegal to vote in the same election twice okay well they're not voting twice they're voting one time they may think they have you know like so i think it is very it's a trap for the unwary in fact it would be a crime for those people who have permanently moved to a different jurisdiction to vote. But I think that, you know, California is very sloppy or worse, and that needs to be fixed.

And there are legal remedies for that that will be pursued after this election. I mean, thanks for joining us today. And we look forward to talking to you a few months when we discuss your new role in the elder administration. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. Harmeet, thank you. The people who moved to Texas may be getting ballots, but they have something else. And that's a little bit more money in their pocket because they're not dealing with onerous California prices and taxes and the rest of it.

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go to DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet for a free copy of our donor prospectus. That's DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet. And we thank Donors Trust for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, before we go, a couple more questions for John and Bethany, as long as we have you here i suppose um uh let's see i think we pretty much played out covet i don't think there's anything more that can be said about that unless you guys have something that will change everyone's minds and flip them from the adamantine position that they're in or not i am against covet that's you are against COVID. I oppose it thoroughly.

It's very, very brave of you. So, James, I disagree with you on the sort of idea that us arguing about it incessantly makes no difference. I think we should all become squeaky wheels. And this is my number one how we can get back to normalcy argument um i think we should all become squeaky wheels and fight every stupid thing that we see indefinitely one because it helps again vent unrelated anger about anything that's going on in your life but um i think that people need to hear that. Like the plexiglass at Dick's sporting goods. It's not necessary.

It's not only not necessary. It actually has been proven that it makes it traps the aerosols. So everywhere I go. Yeah. Well, like we, we want maximum airflow. So the plexiglass stops maximum airflow, air movement, whatever.

But I got an email from my kid's soccer league about the fact that they had to wear masks outside. Unbelievable. And I emailed back and I said, yes. That's still going on. Correct. Yes. I don't doubt. Masking children outside.

I got an email just now about something else that was masking children outside and i reply to all of them and i say if this is a condition of our participation outdoors uh this is not something that we will be coming to i i have lines in the sand and i have like a sort of boilerplate response where i link like the new york times like i don't like anything from conservative sites i link it all from the new york times and from sort of more liberal leading places and i say there's no there's not a single case where you can point to outdoor casual exposure as a point of infection um i have like this whole thing and i actually won the battle with my kids outdoor

i'm gonna disagree yeah i disagree with you disagreeing with me i think that's exactly you should do what you're doing i agree with that right i'm talking about the back and forth on on twitter and social media where where people will never be dissuaded in person yes on the in on the lower institutional level yes you can do something i mean i was at the office the other day and somebody had a mask on inside he's vaccinated i said look i i'm double vaccinated and i'm a covet survivor i've had it okay don't worry your blood yeah the virus bounces off my chest like bullets off supermans and so at that point he felt that it was okay to take it off. And this is somebody who's always got the mask on as far as I can tell.

So it was just the two of you? Yeah. Separated, separated by a plexiglass divider at work. Yes. I tire of these things too. And when you can say something and make a difference, yes. I mean, I recently had a conversation trying to convince somebody who was hesitant to get it, you know, why? Well, the FDA hasn't approved it. Well, actually, they approved it this morning. Yeah, I know. And it took work and it didn't work. But you can try again. But on Twitter, on social media, on Facebook, it's just a madhouse of

people screaming at each other with their horse dewormer lines and their covidiots and you know the death santas and the rest of it it's a poisonous place for any sort of persuasion yes that's true although i will say i have formed wonderful relationships with lots of liberals who are also pulling their hair out and i've seen a lot of liberal friends get completely red pilled because of covid because they're seeing all of this. And I'm enjoying watching their red pillization on Twitter. And these would be liberals who, what,

who place a great deal of importance on civil liberties. What, what, what is it? No, these, so mostly their parents and they're ripping their hair out that their kids haven't been in school and they're watching their mental health and their academic success suffer a great deal and they're sort of they're having this window into the left where they're saying like well i know the data this is clearly

not a risk to my child so why is their life being destroyed and they're sort of i can see their wheels turning over the last 18 months of like they're blatantly lying what is happening and then they're sort of like what else are they lying about and i had that moment moving away from the left on israel i i sort of moved rightward religiously and became more interested in zionism and started reading sort of really dry textbooks about Israel and my mind got changed on Israel. And then every subsequent thing that sort of moved me to the right, I was super liberal in high school and college. And then once that glass shattered, it's like a reference to How I Met Your Mother, I sort of started seeing all the lies of the left as what they were. And I think that's what's happening to a lot of them.

Bob Conquest, the late historian here at the Hoover Institution, Robert Conquest, the great historian, Bob Conquest. Bob had a rule of politics. One of the rules of politics, one of the rules of politics was that people are conservative. Everybody is conservative about what they know best. And they know their own family. They know their own children, don't they? Don't they? And when the state reaches in, the state, bureaucracy, power, whatever it is that reaches in and says, oh, excuse me, we're going to keep your children out of school for a year. Doesn't matter whether you voted for Joe Biden, whether you supported Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, you know, that's not good for your child, right? That's the way it works.

And what's crazy to me about what they're doing is that they're harming the children of liberals, mostly, because all of this is happening in blue states. And so in a couple years from now, and even just a year from now, I have a next-door neighbor. He has been bringing his kids to golf practice their entire lives, and his daughters are really talented golf players. And it's catnip for colleges. A young black woman who plays golf unbelievably well. And they do play unbelievably well. Because their father has been bringing them to the course since they were toddlers. And now he's like, none of the recruiters are coming to Maryland.

I can't get my kids recruited. But the kids inxas are getting recruited kids in florida are getting recruited the kids in idaho are getting recruited my daughters who have been working towards this for a free ride at college their entire lives are not getting recruited and so now my next door neighbor is thinking about moving to florida so he can get his daughter who who's, I think, a sophomore, she needs to get recruited next year. And he's like, what am I going to do? I've spent my entire decade getting her this in at college, and it was a guaranteed in for a free ride. And I can see him getting red pill. Or move to Arizona, where it should be. Yeah, I think it's something similar. Yeah, we've had so many people move into Arizona,

especially the California diaspora is definitely taken over here. But COVID and the reaction to COVID, I should say, is very similar to 9-11. I have an older brother, extremely far to the left. We both have the same government teacher in high school, five years apart. He's older than me. And I got a 29, which is zero was crazy conservative. I got a 29.

I was kind of disappointed at that. My brother, 100 would be basically you're the Unabomber living in a cabin. My brother got 96. So this is how progressive he was. And then 9-11 happened11 can you not talk about the like that you know that that's oh yeah that's true that's true a trigger for you yeah but it's um something that just it shows you a different side of reality and my brother started looking back at all the beliefs that he held and also a lot of reading of Tom Sewell before that conversion kind of primed the pump for a big change.

But he's definitely far to the right of me at this point and has been ever since 9-11. And I think you're seeing that a lot with COVID, talking to people, woman who cuts my hair, just people I meet in an apolitical way who I've known have far to the left will pull me aside and just complain about the madness of the one-size-fits-all COVID policy as regards to school. Exactly. And so I think we will be seeing an after effect for years, and it'll go in different ways. You also have more, forgive me for saying this, authoritarian-minded conservatives who will say, wow, the Democrats really have a point here. We have to stamp out these unruly governors and disobedient people. But I think you're definitely seeing a lot more of the apolitical, slightly center-left, just because that's the right thing to do, to vote for the Democrat.

A lot of them are changing their minds. And, you know, this is anecdotal, but the anecdotes certainly are piling up for me. Well, you've used the term red pill. And of course, where does that come from? Comes from the matrix. I think it's interesting that red is the color of communism, dirty commies, but yet it also got associated with our side of the fence, too. So awakening from the false reality into the truth of things, if it's going to be red as in red state and red pill, that's fine by me. It's just amusing that the term has been floating out there now five, six, seven years, the internet. And we have a

new matrix movie coming out in which the people who live in a manufactured tranquilized environment are the ones who are consuming the blue pills all the time. And once again, it'll be the red pill that shocks them into the actual reality. I just can't wait for people to see the new Matrix movie and walk out and say, they stole that whole red pill thing from the internet. Because there are people who will, because there are people who were not around when the first movie came out, just as there were people who were not around when 9-11 happened. Those of us who remember have the burden and the responsibility of carrying all of these things forward into the future. And along with the ideas and greatness of America and the rest of it, it seems like a tough job sometimes. But the more of us, the better.

And Ricochet is a place where you, too, can help make sure that the future remembers the great lessons and glories of the past. And obviously, that's said by somebody who's concluding. So in doing so, I have to tell you, it's been Raycon. It's been Quip, it's been Donors Trust. Support them for supporting us and join Ricochet today. Why don't you make sure there's a place to talk about these things forever and ever. Also, you can listen to the best of Ricochet radio

show hosted by some short guy with a balding pate. It can be found all over stations of the country in Radio America Network. It's our 52nd episode, one year of doing this. Here's to another. Check your local listings to see where we are. And please, if you could go to Apple Podcasts, I know that every podcast host begs you to do so, but we're special because we're really cravenly begging you to do so with absolutely no sense of shame whatsoever. Five stars will help more people find the show,

more listeners, more people in Ricochet, the more voices at Ricochet, it just gets better. So yeah, you can find John and Bethany on Twitter, but you can also find them at Ricochet where you get to see them in more than 240 characters. I'm sure you can see Peter Robinson on Common Knowledge, but you can find him at the podcasts and dipping in now and then at Ricochet as well. It's a community like none other you've seen at the internet. It's what you've been looking for since they plugged the World Wide Web in. I'm James Loddix in Minneapolis. Thanks to John and Bethany, scattered about the country, Peter in California. Rob will be back next week, I hope, and we thank you for listening, and we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet4.

Thanks, John. Thanks, Bethany. James, next week. Next week. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Peter. And a note to one of our listeners, Bill Crowley, this is your crumb. I don't remember how I felt

I never thought I'd live To read about myself In my hometown paper How my brave young life was forever changed. In a mystic cloud of pink vapor. Darling, give me your kiss. Only understand. I am nothing. I am nothing. Around here Everybody acts the same

Around here Everybody acts like nothing's changed Friday night Everybody acts like nothing's changed. Friday night. Club meets at Al's Barbecue. The sky is still. The same unbelievable blue. Darling, give me your kiss. Come and take my hand. I am the nothing in me. guitar solo You can call me Joe Buy me a drink and shake my hand

You want courage I'll show you courage you can't understand Pearl and silver. Resting on my night table. It's just me, Lord. I pray that I'm in. All of this kiss. Say you understand

I am the nothing man I am the nothing man Than the thing we're Ricochet Join the conversation Bethany, your baby boy Is adorable Bethany's baby boy is beautiful You're so f***ing good, James, by the way My God