The Young Turks - Frozen Funds

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Comer launches investigation of sanctuary cities, asks mayors to testify. Trump’s FREEZE On Federal Grants Sends Country Into All-Out PANIC. Trump ILLEGALLY Fires Pro-Labor Official. Trump push to use tariffs to pay for tax cuts. Hosts: Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Jank, you're a natural born athlete. Let's see how Earth responds to that. Well, the Young Turks, Janky, Granada, Kisperin with you guys, and Ninja Rabbit, who I participated in the website somehow, donated or became a member, just happened. So here we are from the Ninja Rabbit Studios. My favorite kind of rabbit, to be honest.

Well, fair enough. All right guys, so we got a hell of a show for you guys today. Trump has done more than his average share of bad things today. So we will get to that. And as always, give you the nuance and the actual facts that you need. It's like we do a news show or something. So let's have fun and do it, Casper. Well, before we, you know, talk about the executive branch,

branch, let's do a little pit stop, okay, a little check in with the House of Representatives because it looks like investigations are about to happen. I'm going to terminate all sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals. There's sanctuaries for criminals. Sanctuary cities have been the bane of the GOP's existence. And as a result, Republican Representative James Comer is now launching investigations into sanctuary cities. and has called on four separate Democratic mayors to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to answer some questions about how the sanctuary policies are

playing out in their jurisdictions. Now sanctuary cities, of course, prevent or limit local police from cooperating with federal immigration officials. It's important to know that not all sanctuary city laws are the same. There are some variations. But nonetheless, opponents of these policies, much like you heard from Donald Trump there, mainly argue that sanctuary cities help to harbor undocumented individuals who are committing crimes in these cities, in these states. And so the mayors who have been invited to essentially testify before the House include Michelle Wu, who's the mayor of Boston, Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, who to be

quite honest with you should probably be investigated for other reasons, including his conflicts of interest with the teachers union in Chicago. But I digress. Mike Johnston is another mayor. He is the mayor of Denver. And then finally, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City has been called to testify before the house. Now the letter said 12 states and hundreds of cities and counties across the country have sanctuary policies. However, Comer said the four cities singled out, stand out in their abject failure to comply with federal law. But that's not exactly true. In fact, Mayor Eric Adams in particular is more than willing to play ball with the federal, you know, agencies in deporting undocumented individuals

who are committing crimes in New York City. In fact, he's quoted as saying, this is from August of 2024, people who are violent New Yorkers should not be allowed to stay in our city. What we need to alter are those who are repeat violent offenders. After they serve their time, they should be turned over to ICE and be removed from our city. And here's another example of him saying similar things about their sanctuary policies in New York. Those small numbers that are committing crimes, we need to modify the sanctuary city law that if you commit a felony, a violent act, we should be able to turn you over to ice and have you deported. It is a right to live in this city, and you should be not committing crimes in our city of doing so. Mayor Adams is trying to do the right thing.

The problem is he has a city council that doesn't want him to work with ICE. But he has committed on a couple of things. Number one, he's committed to working with public safety threats with ICE, having his officers with us, shoulder to shoulder to arrest public safety threats in that city because that's what we're going to prioritize. Day one, day one right out of the gate are going to be public safety threats and national security threats. He agrees to me, there's plenty in New York City, wants to make New York City safer. Now that's not the case for the other mayors who have been called to testify before the House. We'll get to them in just a moment.

But, Jank, I think Tom Homan actually makes a good point in regard to the city council. Because if James Comer thinks that the mayor and the mayor alone can unilaterally decide whether or not a jurisdiction is going to be a sanctuary city, he's mistaken. The city council makes that decision. Yeah. Yeah, so I've got mixed feelings on these hearings, and I'm curious what you guys are going to say. We've got a poll in the live chat going here. Do you support sanctuary city policies? Yes, no, or some, but not all.

I'm in that last category. I'll tell you why in a second, but I'm curious what you guys think. That's why I love doing the show live at 6 o'clock Eastern and interacting with you guys. So in terms of these hearings, normally Comer's hearings are a joke. their kangaroo court style hearings. They're not really meant to accomplish anything. They're just meant to, like, harm the Democrats. So has he, you know, grown principles and this was going to be for real?

No, I'm sure he's doing it to harm Democrats, et cetera, right? Now, having said that, the Democrats don't have to be harmed by it. They can go and make their case for sanctuary cities. They could do it. These mayors can and the Democratic Congress people can. And I think there is a case to be made for sanctuary cities, or at least some of the laws in regard to sanctuary cities. So they could actually turn this into interesting and productive hearings and have the whole

country watch and make a case for and against sanctuary cities. And then we could all judge for on our own because that debate is never held in public. It's never, you're right. Almost none of these policy debates are ever held in public. So whether Comer meant it well or not, which he didn't, that's okay. It could be used for well. And by the way, if you're a Republican, you say, oh, I hate sanctuary cities. That also gives you an opportunity to make that case.

I want to understand the nuances between the different cities that will be represented as part of these hearings. And look, I generally speaking agree with you a lot of these hearings, whether they're called on by the Democratic side or the Republican side, it's just all about political theater. It's not about accomplishing anything, but you're also right that these hearings could potentially accomplish something. And what I want to understand are the various nuances in these sanctuary laws, how how similar they are from one another,

how they differ from one another. Because look, I think that there are certain elements of sanctuary laws that should stay in place. So for instance, if someone is in the country and they're undocumented, if they haven't committed any other crime, they haven't had any other issues, nothing should stop them from being able to go to the authorities

if they are a victim of a crime or if they're a victim of domestic abuse. And so, or let's say something happens to them health wise and they want to go to the doctor. Like there needs to be certain protections so these individuals aren't further victimized because of their inability to go to authorities when they need help. However, I also agree with individuals who are concerned about sanctuary laws that essentially help to harbor undocumented individuals who are committing other crimes,

other serious crimes, and we have seen that play out in some of these cities. Yeah, so look, I agree with this. And let me give you a specific example. So if a woman is sexually assaulted and she's an undocumented immigrant and she goes and reports that and they have to ask her if she's undocumented and then they have to turn her in, well then people are not going to want to report crimes, including very serious crimes like that one, which one then will leave the perpetrators out in the open and not prosecuted, not found, not arrested, etc. Everyone loses.

Yeah, everyone loses. That's a terrible idea. So that's one way that sanctuary cities are very positive, okay? Now, on the other hand, they're not wrong that it also protects people who are felons who then get released. And normally if you're a felon, and that's an undocumented immigrant, you should be deported. And so, and if you don't think that they should, okay, that's okay, that's an opinion too. But the overwhelming majority of not just Americans, but even Democratic voters believe they should be deported if they're felons. Right. And undocumented immigrants. So, So that's why I say, well, maybe we should reform it.

I mean, I'm not a big fan of Mayor Adams, but that point he made in that clip we showed you about, you got to at least reform that part. 100%. I totally agree with. And remember guys, also, for the sake of like order and rule, because the feds are going to try to pick those people up anyway. So if the states don't say voluntarily, oh, come to the prison, they're about to be released, you can pick them up.

then then ICE has to do rates. Yes, exactly. And we don't want the rates. And then when they do the rates, they also pick up what they're now calling collateral, people who are undocumented who didn't commit crimes. And that's much worse. So I, you know,

I say nuance because it depends on which exact provision we're talking about. Now the other mayors have decided to double down on supporting and backing their sanctuary policies. So for instance, Michelle Wu, who of course is the mayor. of Boston essentially said to a local television station, WCVB, what we can do is make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents in every possible way, that we are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and having large scale economic impact. And the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, releases

similar statements. This is just one of them. He says, I find it unconscionable that this administration would attempt to create not just division, but fear within our public schools, Johnson said, referring to potential federal raids. Now, so far, there hasn't been any ice raids in any elementary schools, even though there was an erroneous story reported last Friday about that. It turns out that it wasn't actually ice agents who showed up to an elementary school in Chicago. It was actually members of the Secret Service who showed up to investigate a serious threat that was made toward a government official. They never entered the school. They identified themselves, including to the principal, who then went on to claim that ICE was trying to do a raid in the elementary school.

We need to be careful and we need to not instill fear in anyone using these like fake stories because it's unfair to people, right? Like we need to be accurate about what's actually happening on the ground. And in this case, there wasn't a raid in the elementary school. But that's not to say that it couldn't happen in the future. Yeah. So Avengers Dragon 89 on Twitch made a good point saying the federal courts have been clear, that you cannot force states to enforce unfunded mandates. So that's a good extra element here. So if the federal government is going to say, hey, states, you must do X, Y, or Z,

well, then they have to provide the funding for that. So again, here we're consistent when we, when they started busing the immigrants to blue cities, we said, look, I get it, I don't know why the border states have to take all the responsibility for themselves, but the federal government should provide those cities with assistance. Otherwise, it's just dumping it in their lap and that's not really fair. And the same thing for unfunded mandates, including cooperating with ICE. Right. So that's got to be funded as well.

Exactly. All right, well, let's move on to some other news because, well, you got a whole bunch of politicians saying a whole bunch of crazy stuff. When you talk about school lunches, hey, I work my way through high school. I know about you, but I worked since I was, before I was even 13 years old, I was picking berries in the field before we had child labor laws that precluded that. Republican Congressman Rich McCormick, you know, wants your kids to go to work to fend for themselves rather than relying on a free lunch at school.

Now what sparked that statement was a question from CNN anchor Pamela Brown in regard to A new memo from the Trump administration regarding a freeze on federal grants and loans. Now that has led to a lot of chaos, people asking a lot of questions about what this means. But this was sent to various government agencies from the Office of Management and Budget. They announced the move in a two page memo, which said that all federal agencies would be forced to suspend payments. The only exception is for Medicare and Social Security, because that is the third rail of politics. These are incredibly popular programs. And if people stop getting their social security checks, it's probably going to lead to a lot of rage.

But here's the wording of the memo, which was written by acting OMB director Matthew Vaith. The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies. is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day to day lives of those we serve. But much is unclear about what this all means. Okay, so for instance, the memo says that the funding pause, and this isn't an end to the grants entirely, right? This is just a 90 day pause to, I guess, look at where the money from the federal government is going, whether any of it's being wasted. That's the argument that's being used right now. But it specifically says, that it does not include assistance provided directly to individuals, but it also doesn't

clarify whether that includes money sent first to states or organizations and then provided to households. So there's a lot of questions about this. However, this does impact funding for the Democrats' climate and spending law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act. It also impacts the funding for the infrastructure bill, which of course passed in 2021. There's also a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid, with the exception of Israel, which we shared with you earlier on this show. But I don't know what to make of it yet, Jank, because I don't know if it's going to be successfully challenged. I don't know exactly how it's going to impact federal agencies, but what are your thoughts so far? Yeah, no, I'm totally against it. So let's break it down.

First of all, Congress passed these laws. So if you are opposed to the spending, good news, there'll be another budget next year, and that's when you take up those issues, and then you have that debate, and we might lose at this point because the Republicans have the White House, the House, and the Senate, but you do it through a regular process. You don't say Congress passed the law, but I don't feel like following it. That's not within the purview of the executive branch. But as we keep coming back to, really, because the Democrats fired everything they had at Trump, but in totally clownish ways and at all the wrong times, they got no bullets left.

politically. So that means that Trump can just violate the law and there's really not much we could do about it, especially with the Supreme Court decision. So like what are they going to do, impeach him? So you could just break the law over and over and over again. And so here, it's a 90 day freeze. It doesn't affect money going to individuals. And there's a big blowup about Medicaid we'll get to in a sec. So Social Security, Medicare are fine. But it does, And of course all four and eight except as Anna pointed out, Israel and Egypt because Egypt has a deal with Israel. So but let's note that things not going directly to individuals are all blocked for 90 days. Cancer research.

And I can list you a hundred things that are that you would think are totally worthy. Maybe some right wingers would think, no, not worthy. And in fact, I put out a thing today on X and they were like, yeah, cancer research, who needs it? And I was like, I don't know, it feels like we need it. So anyways, well, okay, let me, let me ask you something. I'm getting really sick of us funding the research and development for pharmaceutical companies, including cancer research. And then when a family member of ours gets sick, I have two family members of cancer right now.

They're very close to me. So I'm going through it right now, okay? No cost savings, no nothing. Yeah. Okay, we get price gouged up the, you know what? Yeah. So anyway, I have soured on the. notion that the American people are responsible to fund the research and development of these

pharmaceutical companies. But anyway, that's just a side note. It's not a comment about this action overall. But Anna, look, the correct answer to that isn't, let's stop cancer research. The correct answer to that is if we are then giving that research to a corporation, we should get part of the profits of the corporation. But we're not going to. So, I mean, they keep talking about how, oh, you know, Trump is saying, I want an external revenue service, we're going to charge other countries, it's not really accurate, instead of charging our guys. We're going to get rid of all income tax, but we need revenue otherwise. Well, it would be great revenue from these drug companies if we actually charge them for the research that we're giving to them.

And normally, that kind of investment is worth a lot of money, equity in their companies that the American people can, you know, get revenue from. But we, but we never have a rational answer to things because corporations actually rule us on. They rule the Democratic and Republican parties. So we're never going to get that instead of we're just going to give it away. But overall, it's, there's a lot of things on that list that are very important than the American people. Let's also note for the record here that all the needs of the Israeli citizens are protected. The needs of the American citizens are not protected. Well, they're more important than Americans, according to the U.S. government, regardless of which political party is in charge.

So just accept that and swallow it and be done with it. And I add, you know, look, I think both sides are not happy about that, but all the politicians love it. But if you're a right winger, congrats, you got America's second. I hope we don't fall to third, okay? So, and that's Trump. That's not Biden. That's not any of that's Trump doing that. Okay.

Yeah. So overall, a lot of programs cut that we wouldn't agree with, but you can't freeze it without congressional approval, but he did. Okay, so before I get to the legality of this, I do want to just comment on what you said about Democratic opposition and just how inept they are. Look, Democratic senators held a press conference in response to this today. And, you know, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer just reverted back to the same tired talking points that everyone is fatigued from. No one's buying. Oh, This is what Trump is doing to abide by Project 2025. Okay, listen, what are you going to do about it?

What are the Democrats going to do about it? Okay, enough with the fear mongering. What's done is done? What are you? What is your plan? What is your plan? That's what I want to know. No plan.

They're inept. We're just going to do a super sleepy, uncharismatic press conference about it and move on. Now let's get to the legality of it. According to Bobby Cogan, who's a federal budget expert at the Center for American Progress, which is left-leaning, he says that the president is generally allowed under the law to defer spending for a period of time, according to budget experts. To comply, though, Trump must make clear which budget accounts are frozen. And that's the issue with this two-page memo. It lacks specificity, and because of that, we're running into a bunch of issues. So it's not that

unilaterally decided to end federal funding or federal grants, he did do this pause, which believe it or not, he has the right to do. It's just that he needs to provide specificity in regard to what he's doing and why he's doing it. And it's also worth noting that the OMB also says that the pause must be applied to the extent permissible under applicable law. Not a lot of people are reporting on that portion of the memo, but it's important to know it says that. agencies must immediately report to the OMB any legally mandated actions or deadlines that arise while the pause remains in effect, it said. The temporary pause will provide the administration, quote, time to review agency programs and determine the best uses of the

funding for those programs consistent with the law and the president's priorities. And so the Agencies must submit detailed information to the OMB on all pause programs by February 10th. And look, I want to be fair and just note that while everyone is citing government programs that we think are important, right? School lunches, okay, assistance for college students so they can actually go to college and afford it. Things like that. These are things that we like. We want taxpayer money to be used toward making the lives of American citizens better. But something that also gets a lot of funding, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, for instance. So I looked into this because I was curious, what are the top think tanks in regard to accepting federal government grants?

Get a load of this. I can't even believe this. So this is data from 2019 to 2023. Between those years, the Rand Corporation received $1.4 billion in grants from the federal government. Wilson Center, $51.7 million. Atlantic Council over $8 million. Aspen Institute, $6.2 million. You get the point. Like there is a lot of pork barrel spending.

There are a lot of federal grants being given to either private non-profits or private think tanks. And I think it's worth revisiting whether it makes sense to give all this money, taxpayer money to these organizations. So the Rand one is really strange because sometimes they're considered like almost a de facto governmental organization, but they aren't. So what the hell is that? So they work with the military.

Yeah, and so of course it's more military pork is the real answer. The Heritage Foundation also receives federal government grants. Yeah, so look, the Aspen Institute might do good work, but they're like a very elitist organization. The Heritage Foundation is the guys who did Project 2025. Why are we giving them money? And the Aspen Institute is filled to the room with the richest people in the world. Why are we giving them money? So, and look, so if you want, and maybe there's a good reason.

But we should do that during budgeting, not during, hey, I came into office and I don't like these laws. So I'm just going to, you know, not obey them. I know it's a freeze. I know it theoretically goes back in 90 days, but does it? Because they're using the 90 days to so-called review those programs. And well, you can review those programs during budgeting. But if you're going to review them and end them with that congressional approval, you're clearly breaking the law.

I don't know if the country cares, but you are, right? So, okay, now look, we criticize Schumer's response there. I'm not as tough on his response, but I do have a much better. way to go on this, I think. So Schumer measure Project 2025, that's not unfair to mention because the head of the OMB is going to be the author of Project 2025, an office of management and budget is critical, obviously, in spending. And this was one of the proposals in the office in the project 2025. So that's fair and fine. But what I would have done as well is given two or three specific examples, but not just in this press conference, much more

importantly, every day pound away at cancer research, malaria treatment. By the way, child sex trafficking prevention abroad. Yeah, focus on that. Right? Yeah. That got blocked. So I thought you guys were against groomers, et cetera, school lunches, all these very popular programs. Now, if you want to take an extra step with Schumer and the Democrats would never do, go, why is Trump funding Israel, but not trying to prevent child sex trafficking? That's very, That's very cute, Jank. I know. They would never, ever do that, but it would be very effective.

And they're just giving that away, of course. And so look, there's ways to fight back here that are effective. And you could also point out it's illegal without, I know this sounds funny, but hear me out, without flipping out over it. Because if you go in and you go, oh my God, what the hell is illegal? You're going to do that like 28 times and you're going to wear people out because he's going to do a lot of illegal things. He's already done a couple of illegal things.

So just strategically keep pointing out, not following the law, so I guess there goes rule of law. But it's okay, we Democrats prefer to be the party of rule of law and law and order. And apparently the Republicans think that laws don't matter. Like just, but whatever you do, you've got to pound that message home with effective speakers and representatives. And we don't have that on the left. Yeah, good luck finding that in the Democratic Party. All right, well, I'm going to leave you with this final video because I think it's important to see what Congressman Rich McCormick had to say when asked about ending school lunches because of this federal grant freeze. Let's take a look.

Right now with this freeze, vulnerable populations could be directly impacted. And so my question to you, just to follow up with you, would you support getting rid of, you know, school lunch for vulnerable kids and breakfast and Head Start, for example, and getting rid of childhood cancer research? Do you support that? And what do you say to your constituents? When you talk about school lunches, hey, I work my way through high school. I know about you, but I worked since I was before I was even 13 years old. I was picking berries in the field before we had child labor laws that precluded that. I was a paper boy. And when I was in high school, I worked my entire way through. You're telling me that kids who stay at home, instead of going to work at Burger Canyon, McDonald's, during the summer, should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work.

I think we need to have a top-down review. Think about where kids with a broad brush. How many people got their start in fast food restaurants when there are kids versus just giving a blanket rule that gets all kids lunches in high school who are capable of going out and actually getting a job and doing something that makes them have value. Thinking about their future,

I'm still thinking about how they're going to sponge off the government when they don't need to. That guy looks like such a douchebag, like just on face alone, you would expect him to say. Yeah, I mean, look. You want kids to go, you want elementary school kids to go out and pick freaking berries? I don't believe him for a minute, by the way. Look, again, this is the problem with the Republican Party. If you think the majority of the country thinks kids need to go on an assembly line or maybe a coal mine and earn their lunches and breakfast when they're 13 and that they shouldn't be focused on their homework and

they're studying, but we should force them into factories and plants at that young age so they could earn their lunch, all right, but you're gonna be in the minority. That is not a popular position, and that is not a position I support at all. And so that's the problem with the right wing. They can't help but go massively extreme. Yep. Like if they picked some programs that were problematic, and they, it's just like the advice I gave to the Democrats a minute ago, right? And they, and the Republicans picked the worst of the programs that focused on them nonstop, they would be in a better position, they would become more popular. But once they're into popular programs, well, there's a reason why they're in the budget.

We don't want to cut them, right? Because the American people like those programs. Yeah. So, but okay, go ahead, cut school lunches, see how it turns out for you. So the group, Democracy Forward, had already challenged the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants. a federal judge has stepped in, U.S. District Court Judge in Washington, D.C., has granted the request to pause this order. So our institutions are holding. Yeah, no, that's really important and interesting. Like, can the courts effectively block

the illegal things that he does? And so far right now, that's a really good, positive piece of news that just broke during the show, that for the moment being, they are blocking that illegal order of Donald Trump's. Hopefully, if it gets to the Supreme Court, the Supreme court, the Supreme Court doesn't say there are no laws anymore. So their whole point is to like make sure that the laws are properly executed and enforced. They have, if they just let go of that bare minimum, then we're in total lawless chaos. But for the moment being, the courts are holding. Well, when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about what Trump just did at the NLRB, which is being described as legally problematic to say the least. We'll be right back.

little trouble. All right, back on TYT, Jank, Anna, Jay Dudley and Mark Jacobs, Jay and Mark are American Heroes, who hit the join button below, became TYT members. I found out Ninja Rabbit did become a member on TYT.com. By the way, if you get an annual subscription, it's basically two months off for you. So check that out at tYT.com slash join. Michelle Moody, thank you for gifting 10 young tourist membership. You guys are a beautiful community.

Casper. Donald Trump likes to talk about how much he's looking out for working class Americans. Rhetorically speaking, you think that he's the top warrior for workers in America. But is that really true? Same thing with the unions. That's right. They get their little 5%. They get another 2%.

They get another 3%, 4%, then all of a sudden they're making more money than the people that own the company. Well, Donald Trump's anti-worker roots are unfortunately showing again. in yet another legally questionable move, the president has decided to oust two Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board that he and unfortunately his wealthy allies thought were just two pro worker. Now the first woman he ousted was Jennifer Abruzzo, who is the NLRB's general counsel, a position that actually wields a lot of power in the NLRB. The NLRB general Council has sweeping authority to determine what sorts of cases are prosecuted by the agency, which is responsible for enforcing most private sector U.S. employees right to unionize

or take collective action to improve their working conditions. I want to give you another example of what unions can do in order to protect workers from, let's say, losing their jobs. In fact, I remember prior to Donald Trump getting elected the first time around, there was a Google employee who had written a memo in a Google doc. It was a company-wide memo in regard to what Google could do to increase the number of female workers in coding, for instance. And so some people were offended by what he had to write. He cited studies that indicated that women have certain characteristics that are different from men. They tend to be a little more neurotic, yada, yada, whether or not you believe in those studies. Put that aside. The point is, he ended up

getting fired because his co-workers were offended by it. If you're represented by a union, the union protects you from getting fired over something like that, right? So when Trump got elected, his name was James DeMore. He went to the NLRB to make his case against Google, but Trump had stacked the NLRB with anti-worker individuals who basically told him to get lost, okay? So anyway, I give you that information because I think a lot of people sometimes underestimate some of the government agencies that are specifically put in place to look out for the little guy. There aren't many of them. The NLRB happens to be one of them.

So Bruzzo, who was appointed by Biden, was willing to scrutinize companies for alleged labor violations, which business elites and rich donors obviously don't like. She prosecuted complaints against Starbucks, Apple, Tesla, the New York Times, Amazon, etc. She also went after non-compete agreements and banned mandatory anti-union meetings. Now non-compete agreements have, they're just out of control. So even fast food restaurants have implemented non-compete agreements in order to prevent a worker from taking a job at another fast food company or store where they're offered more money.

So the NORB is important and doing away with some of the actual warriors on behalf of workers in this government agency is a huge problem. The US Chamber of Commerce accused her of blatantly unlawful overreach, yet really failed to cite what they were talking about. And even though she was supposed to serve until July, her ouster was expected. Biden similarly fired Trump's NLRB general counsel from his first term, management side attorney Peter Robb on inauguration day four years ago, a decision that was upheld by a court.

But Trump also fired labor friendly NLRB member, Gwynne, Wilcox, which was not expected, and there are some real issues with his action there. But before I get to it, I want to get your thoughts so far, Jank. Yeah, and I want to get your guys' thoughts. There's a poll in the live chat on this two shows live at 6 o'clock Eastern every day. And so in this one, how concerned are you about these firings, not at all, slightly or extremely? I'm voting extremely for a couple of reasons. Number one, the Wilcox firing is illegal. Here we go again. So, and totally unnecessary, which we'll explain in a second why it's unnecessary.

And even for Trump's purposes. And so MAGA split on this. And I'm fascinated by that because they claim that they're 100% in favor of the average working man. That's like one of the driving forces of MAGA. But I put out a post on X yesterday about making fun of Rand Paul for saying Trump's labor secretary, excuse me, was too pro labor. I'm like, well, she's the labor secretary. We want a labor secretary that works against labor, right? That's what Rand Paul wants.

And again, this is Trump's nominee to serve as labor secretary. Rand Paul came out and said, I intend to vote no on confirming her. Excuse me, guys. So he said there's at least 15 Republican senators that are going to vote no because they don't want a labor secretary that represents labor. They want one that represents corporations. But a lot of MAGA people are saying, no, labor equals union and we hate unions. Why? Why do you hate unions? I'll tell you why, because of Republican propaganda for decades telling you that if you collectively

organize and you get higher wages and better protections for yourself, that you'll hurt their beloved corporations. So you shouldn't. You shouldn't unions are bad and ugly and collectively bargaining is terrible and the workers should get less. they should have less protections and less everything. Why, why? They convince you that, oh, that's why you're gonna lose your job, except that's not why at all. The real reason was corporations cut your jobs

and outsource them to Mexico, China, et cetera, had nothing new with unions, right? Exactly. We're gonna do that no matter what, because it's not close, it's not like, oh, the difference between $15 or $13, those jobs in Thailand now and Vietnam, et cetera, They pay so much less, not close, right?

So my point is, if you're MAGA and you really want to stick up for the average guy, Trump, can you be honest, can you see straight? Trump has been terrible on this issue, except for his Labor Secretary, which we support. You see that that's called being honest and principled, right? But on the NLRB, this is a disaster, so it's gonna make corporations, it's gonna make it so much easier for them to abuse you, to pay you less, to give you less health care, et cetera. Now let's talk a little bit about the legality of getting rid of Gwynn Wilcox.

Because look, for one, there were already enough vacant seats. So Donald Trump could have easily filled one of those vacant seats with a Republican. But that wasn't good enough. He decided to get rid of Wilcox and it seems to be an illegal move. So unlike with the general counsel position, the National Labor Relations Act provides that board members are appointed for five year staggered terms and may be removed by the president upon notice and hearing for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause. Obviously Trump did not cite any specific cause, any example of what Wilcox did wrong,

what kind of malfeasance Wilcox might have engaged in, nothing. Wilcox said that in the letter Trump sent Monday night, he wrote that the NLRB hasn't fulfilled its responsibilities to the American people, and he believes he has the right to remove a board member despite the labor law that says they can only be removed for neglect. Wilcox, though, is not backing down. She intends to fight back, and good for Wilcox, because I don't think the Democratic Party is going to fight back on your behalf. Wilcox says, I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates

It's longstanding Supreme Court precedent. But by getting rid of Wilcox, Trump gave his allies yet another treat, another cookie, more time to essentially not have to deal with the NLRB. There's already vacancies, he's now gotten rid of the general counsel and a Democratic member or a member who's been appointed by Democratic president. So here we are, this is what we're dealing with now. Yeah, it's an interesting tactic. It could be that he just didn't do his homework on it, which is entirely possible and didn't

realize that he has all these empty seats and he could easily control the board either way. It could be that he knew that and he thought, and he knew that it was an illegal action, but he did it because he wanted to show that he's acting quick and he's going to fire everybody and he's taking action. And so his side loves that he's taking action. Wow, if he took legal action, I could understand because our side never takes action. Our side is blocked by the parliamentarian in a non-parliamentarian system. No, I mean, look, the Democratic Party loves to point to all of the convenient excuses for why they can't ever do anything on behalf of their base. I don't get that sense from Trump specifically, right?

Donald Trump doesn't ask for permission. He does whatever he wants. And yes, he gives the impression that he's working hard on behalf of his voters. That's politics, right? I don't like a lot of what he's doing, especially the moves he's making with the NLRB. But whatever, put that aside. I mean, think about how his voters are feeling. They get the impression that he's working hard.

Did we ever get the impression that Biden was working hard on behalf of his voters? I mean, so let's look at it this way. This guy has upsides and outsides. So like Trump says, I'll even break the law for you. And MAGA doesn't mind. So I think that the Democratic voters would mind. Maybe I'm not seeing it's right, but that's my sense of it. And so, but it would be amazing if Biden was like, I don't care what the law says, I'm fighting for my voters.

I mean, I've never seen that from a Democratic politician, at least in my lifetime. I mean, back in the day, FDR, by the way, broke a bunch of eggs to make omelets. He did, right? In fact, at the time, FDR's opponents like to call him a fascist. LBJ broke a lot of eggs to make omelets. But we got the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, we got Medicaid, we got, you know, we fought poverty. And in a lot of ways, one, I mean, we're so much better off as a country today than we were back then, partly because of LBJ's actions.

But we haven't had a strong, my point isn't that the Democrats should come in and break the law like Trump. My point is, wouldn't it be amazing if we had balance where someone comes in and actually delivers for their voters without breaking the law? isn't too much to ask for. And by the way, delivers for their, not just their voters, but overall for the American people and just does popular policies. Right. But neither side actually does popular policies. They just do the extremes or nothing.

Well, speaking of extremes, when we come back, there's a lot in the news today about how Trump is floating the idea of ridding the country of income taxes. But is he being serious about it? We'll talk about that and more when we return. All right back on TYTJ and Anna with you guys. L Smith 2053, thank you for becoming member on the legendary website tyt.com, is it? And Redford Bloth, thanks for donating. We appreciate you guys. And we got more news for you all.

Get a load of this. It's time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing for our nations to enrich our citizens. Does that make sense, right? Does that make sense? Jank, what are your thoughts? Yeah, no, it doesn't. So, well, I'll give Trump credit as usually because it's fair showing up.

America, the external revenue service was catchy. He did that in a couple of speeches, including at the inauguration. Well, we were going to get the money from China and other countries, but we're not. So what they do is they impose the tariffs actually on companies that import in, and those companies that usually pass on most of it to us, and we paid anyway, to the consumers. And so what it winds up becoming is a really regressive tax. So once you get rid of the income tax, which she's now threatened, we'll get to that in a sec. What happens is, then the rich pay a lot less, but the average person who's a consumer pays a lot more in tariff slash taxes. And so it's redistribution of income to the top. And there's one

other giant problem with it, but I'll get to that in a second. So as you heard in that very brief clip, it appears that Donald Trump wants to do away with income taxes and replace it with tariffs. Now, do I think he's actually going to pursue getting rid of federal income taxes? No, I don't think he's gonna do that. I actually think this story is hiding what is likely to happen because Donald Trump is very much interested in extending his tax cut bill from 2017. And in order to do that, you know, he's gonna make an argument, the Republicans in Congress are gonna make an argument that doing this tax cut is totally fine. It's not going to add to the deficit because we have a pay for and the pay for is going to be tariffs.

So let's go through this on a more granular level. So when it comes to revenue for the federal government, they currently generate some revenue from tariffs. That is true, but we're not talking about a lot of cash. We're talking about less than $100 billion annually. Tariffs have accounted for just 2% of annual revenues in recent years. In fact, take a look at this chart, put together by Reuters, which gives you a sense of where the federal government gets the majority of its revenue from. So as you can see, the blue and the green represents individual income taxes and payroll taxes. So the bulk of revenue that the federal government generates comes from those two sources. Corporate income taxes, much smaller, but even corporate

income taxes bring in more revenue to the federal government compared to tariff payments, which is represented by that little red sliver that you see on the graph, okay? So by and large, the majority of revenue from the federal government comes from both individual income taxes and payroll taxes. Okay, now, obviously tariffs would have to increase pretty substantially in order to cover the lost revenue from ending income taxes. Now, the nonpartisan tax foundation estimated Trump's most extreme tariff proposals, A 20% universal tariff plus a 60% tariff on China's exports to the US would raise about $3.8 trillion over the 10 year budget window, falling short of the $4.3 trillion needed to fully

offset the cost of making the expiring tax cuts permanent. Yeah, so that's my second beef with the tariffs, because look, some degree of tariffs could make sense. Definitely, yeah. It's not to say that you shouldn't have any tariffs on any goods. And I think there's a great argument to be made that if a different country, for example, China puts a tariff on us on a certain product, that we do likewise. We just mirror what they do so that we get to parity. And I don't want other countries taking advantage of us. Now, having said that, all this tariff talk is exactly what Anna said. It's to amask the 4.3 trillion and they're about to give away to largely the rich.

And Trump also wants to lower the corporate taxes from 21%, which is already maniacally low to 15%. So more giveaways to corporations. So what he's going to do is he's going to tell his base, oh, that's okay, the tariffs are going to make up for it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that's not going to come close.

Even if he did all the tariffs and they didn't drive up inflation and they didn't get us into a trade war, and they didn't create havoc, they'd still raise about 10% of the money you need to cover those tax cuts. Yes. So it's a trick, guys. It's a trick to try to pass. And you know what Trump did last time.

He added $8.4 trillion to the deficit. And he's going to do it again. And he's going to pretend that the tariffs will save the day 12 years from now. Nonsense. They're not going to save the day at all. And we're going to be so massively bankrupt after we redistributed all the money. to the top. Yeah, and look, it is true that the tariffs that Donald Trump implemented against China in his first term did not lead to inflation. In fact, even the Biden administration

had a debate about it when they were in charge and they realized, oh wow, this actually did not lead to inflation. And they not only kept Trump's China tariffs, they expanded upon them. So I wanted to just kind of make that point. There are some instances where targeted tariffs might make sense. However, if you're going to do tariffs across the board and you're going to do away with the federal income tax, I think that is going to lead to hyperinflation. Not only because the consumers will be forced to absorb the cost of those tariffs, but there's also the issue of money supply, right? If you're not being taxed for federal income, well, then you might have a little more disposable income. More money supply means more inflation. Does it not? Yeah. So look,

those are great points. But on top of that, look, this, Trump does this all the time. He proposes something so extreme, like getting rid of the income tax entirely, so that it appears to be a compromise when they give away $4 trillion to the rich. So he's, they're going to do that anyway. It's absolutely impossible to get rid of the income tax. If we got rid of the income tax, we'd have no money, including for beloved defense and Israel. So there's no way it's going to happen, okay? So just on pork barrel projects alone, they'd never allow it. These guys are all owned by the donors. So the income tax being taken, it's just an outlandish, ridiculous idea.

You should, no one should give it one ounce of credibility. And no, I'm not interested in a compromise where you get all of your tax cuts for the rich and all of your tax cuts for corporations. Now, it doesn't matter what you want, because they're going to get that. They're going to get that. And this is what the compromise is. So Reuters reports that the House Ways and Means Committee included a 10% across the board tariff in its menu of options to pay for extending the tax cuts. It estimated such a tariff

regime would fetch $1.9 trillion over 10 years, according to the memo. Extending the tax cuts Trump passed during his first term and which expire this year would cost $4 trillion to your point, jank, over 10 years, according to estimates from analysts. And so. I just got to say that 1.9 trillion is outlandish. I don't think it's going to come anywhere near that. But even if they got everything they wanted and their dream scenarios happen, they still missed by two trillion. Yeah, exactly. Look, the final thing I'll say about this is, there were some ideas that Trump had on the campaign trail that I would like him to actually pursue. Okay, so for instance, this was a small thing, but I actually think it's a big deal. He had proposed making the

interest on car loans tax deductible. And if you think that sounds outlandish, it isn't. In fact, That was something that consumers were able to do when filing their taxes up until 1986. I don't know why they got rid of that tax break, but if you're looking for tax cuts, I get it, you're gonna look out for your rich buddies. But how about some targeted tax cuts that actually help ordinary American citizens? Yeah, look, we can go on and on earn income tax credit. There's many different ways that you could attack the issue of taxes. And by the way, do it in a way that's popular and, you know, and get more of your proposals through because you've become more popular, but they're not going to go in that direction. They're going to go

an extreme direction because the number one point of the oligarchy that was sitting behind Donald Trump is a collectocracy. I mean, these words, they're not great words. I don't like to use them often. Basically, they're going to rob us, okay? And the donors of the Democrats also robbed us. But then when MAGA thinks that the donors of Trump, Trump won't rob us. I find that to be hilarious. Why do you think they gave him all that money for the general welfare? Because they love MAGA so much. Come on guys, don't be naive. So all those billionaires that were up on the stands during Trump's inauguration, they're all going to docks guts, Turks guts. They're going to save billions and they're going to dump it on your

lap and I don't want any Republican talking about balanced budgets from here on out. They don't want to balance budgets at all. They never have in my entire lifetime. Trump's going to destroy the budget with this again. Their only priority is tax cuts for the rich. All right, well, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about RFK Jr., his confirmation hearing, and more importantly, what a family member of his has to say about him serving in the federal

government. We'll be right back. Super harsh. Yeah.