← The Preamble
The Preamble
Government Shutdown, White House Renovations, and Stoic Virtues
00:41:12
Sharon kicks off The Preamble with Ryan Holiday to explore how Stoic wisdom applies today, and answers your most pressing questions, from the government shutdown to ICE’s controversial tactics.
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- [00:01]
Sharon McMahon
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Go to quint.com Interesting for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Interesting to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com Interesting hello friends. Welcome. So great to see you. And welcome to the very first episode of the Preamble podcast. Of course, this is not the first podcast we've ever done. Perhaps you've seen our more than 400 episodes of here's Where It Gets Interesting. And the Preamble is just a new iteration of podcasting to meet your needs. It allows us to make sure that we are meeting this very politically fraught moment, one in which people are feeling a tremendous amount of anxiety and the questions seem to be nonstop. So I'm glad you're here. I'm Sherrin McMahon and this is the Preamble where facts find context and hope still has a home. The last few weeks have been a huge whirlwind around here as we have been working to get this show up for you and also working to relaunch the Preamble as a new weekly magazine. It has been a lot of 18 hour days, it has been a lot of caffeine, it's been way too many cups of coffee and late nights and 2am conversations on Slack as we are trying to edit and upload and reformat nearly a dozen new pieces on thepreamble.com and I would love to have you check it out. It is absolutely beautiful. It's gonna land in your inbox every Thursday morning and we are so excited about everything that lies ahead. We also want as much information to be free as humanly possible. If you would like to become a paid subscriber that gets you access to a bunch of fun perks like being able to submit questions for this show, we want the really good work we're putting out into the world to be as accessible to as many people as possible. So head to thepreamville.com and see the entire new site redesign, which is essentially like taking a team of civil engineers, setting them next to a bridge and saying, you have two weeks to reconstruct a new copy of this exact bridge, except make it more beautiful. Go. And the engineers were basically like, let's get started. So it has been a huge lift and we're so excited about where it's headed. I want to give you a little bit of a preview about what to expect in this podcast. Every week we are going to have a weekly guest. We're going to be talking about some of the top issues of the week. But one of the things I've been hearing from you is that you want more places to be able to get your questions answered. Anytime I put up a How can I help? Question box on social media, I receive thanks thousands of questions and of course only have enough time to answer so many of them. So this podcast is hopefully going to be an even more important way to be able to directly answer some of your questions. I know it's easy to google for things, but sometimes Google leads you to the wrong answer or you simply do not have time to read 5 articles to try to flesh out exactly what you're hoping to find out. So if you have questions that you would like to have answered on this show, you can head to thepreamble.com, click on podcast and there is a way to submit your questions there. Each week we will select some and you can come back next week to see if we picked your question to answer. Our guest this week is New York Times bestselling author and my friend Ryan Holiday, who has a new book out called Wisdom Takes Work. I cannot wait to share this conversation with you. So let's dive in and then meet me back here and we're going to get into some of your questions. You know, in my house, our dogs aren't just dogs, they are family. And honestly I'd say they probably run my house most times and I wouldn't have it any other way. I do just about anything to keep them healthy and happy and that's why I wanted the very best for them and I switched to Ollie. Ollie makes fresh produce protein packed meals with real human grade ingredients. They've got five delicious recipes all slow cooked for top nutrition and the difference in their excitement at mealtime, like the tap dancing that they do, was instant. Ollie's meals are crafted by vet nutritionists and culinary experts, perfectly portioned and they come in easy packaging with a scoop and a storage container so there's no fridge stink. Plus their app lets you tap into on demand health screenings and keeps innovating with new recipes based on real data from their pup community. Since starting Ollie, my dogs have had more energy, softer, shinier coats and I've noticed they actually finish all their meals. Sometimes they used to get distracted and like go chase something and now they actually want to finish eating. No picky eater drama. Your dog's well being starts with their food and that's why Ollie delivers fresh human grade food that your dog will love. Head to ollie.com Sharon, tell them all about your dog and use code Sharon to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box. If you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O l l I e.com Sharon and enter code Sharon to get 60% off your first box.
- [07:39]
Dr. Mary Claire Haver
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board certified OB GYN and menopause specialist. My new podcast, Unpaused is the place for bold, unfiltered conversations about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Every week I sit down with medical experts, cultural icons, and powerhouse women to talk about what really matters your health, your power and your future, recovering hormones, identity, finances, relationships and so much more. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow unpaused with me Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [08:17]
Sharon McMahon
Support for here's where it gets interesting comes from Sixpenny Home is many things. It can be chaotic, it can be joyful, and at times it can be serene. Choosing beautiful pieces to live with is a thoughtful way to turn your home into a space you love. Sixpenny is reimagining luxury at home with extraordinarily comfortable slip covered furniture for living, dining and sleeping spaces, plus distinctive tables and accent pieces. Their furniture is completely customizable and made by hand at their own factory using all natural linens and cottons, lofty cushions overstuffed with ethically sourced feathers or recycled fibers, all without the use of harmful chemical coatings. Bottom line Sixpenny furniture is both high quality and high value and since launching in 2017, Sixpenny has been featured in Architectural Digest, the New York Times, Wirecutter, Time and more. You can visit sixpenny.com Interesting for a leisurely browse through their impeccably designed pieces and perhaps even order yourself some free swatches. That's S I X P e n n y.com Swatch Interesting. I'm joined now by Ryan Holiday. He is a number one New York Times bestselling author. He's written nearly a dozen books, including a series on the Stoic virtues, and his latest book, Wisdom Takes Work is the final book in that series. He also writes a super popular newsletter and has a devoted social media following. Ryan says that wisdom is the most elusive but the most essential of the four Stoic virtues. The others being courage, discipline and justice. Ryan, thanks for being here. I am really excited about Wisdom Takes Work.
- [10:07]
Ryan Holiday
Thanks for having me.
- [10:08]
Sharon McMahon
First of all, if somebody is not familiar what even are Stoic virtues and why do we want them?
- [10:14]
Ryan Holiday
Yeah, they're called the cardinal virtues, just like in Christianity, not because they have to do with a cardinal. Cardinal comes from the Latin cardos, which means pivotal or hinge. So the idea is that these are the virtues that a good life, a good world depends on. So courage, as you said, temperance or self discipline and then justice, which is what we call ethics, and then wisdom, which is sometimes rendered as prudence. I sort of define it as like knowing what's what. So if we think about the virtues, they are all separate and but interrelated. It's impossible to remove one without rendering some problem with the others. And so that's the series that I've been doing. I started with courage and then discipline, then justice, and now wisdom, which I think is in some ways the most important of the virtues because it determines what the others look like. How do you know what to be courageous about? How do you know what's right or wrong? Obviously, all this comes down to your ability to practice what we might call discernment.
- [11:15]
Sharon McMahon
Why is it so important for you to study and write about these topics? You've dedicated a good chunk of your adult life to this endeavor.
- [11:24]
Ryan Holiday
Yeah.
- [11:24]
Sharon McMahon
Why is this important to you personally?
- [11:27]
Ryan Holiday
Well, when I first came to stoicism, I was 19 or so years old, and I think what I was struck by is the idea that for thousands of years, people have been asking the same questions, struggling with the same things, and that there is this framework, this system, stoicism being a 2,500-year-old philosophy that's really dealing with very practical questions. A lot of people think philosophy is going to be abstract or theoretical or, you know, riddles that they can't understand. But to read something like Marcus Aurelius Meditations, where you have the most powerful man in the world talking about keeping his temper in check or why he should get up early instead of staying in bed all day, you know, asking questions about what we owe each other. Here you have, again, the most powerful man in the world, referring to the idea of the common good something like 80 or 90 times in meditations. And so I was just struck by this idea that it's this sort of toolkit for living a very good life. And yet I hadn't been taught about it at school. I'd never even heard of it. And I think what's excited me and what keeps me going is that I get to take these ideas and make them practical and accessible and interesting to people in the modern world. So it feels like I'm part of this very long chain or this very long tradition. I think that really excites me.
- [12:48]
Sharon McMahon
What would you say to somebody who feels like what some white dudes in Europe were thinking about thousands of years ago does not concern me. It's none of my business, and it doesn't impact my life today.
- [13:02]
Ryan Holiday
You know, it's funny. Stoicism, the founding story of Stoicism, is about this man named Zeno. Zeno was an Athenian merchant, and he suffers this shipwreck, and as he washes up in Athens, penniless, you know, starting his life over from scratch, he is Walking through the Athenian agora, which is the marketplace, and he hears this guy reading some lines from Socrates. And in this moment, a prophecy that he had heard from the oracle at Delphi, the temple of Apollo, suddenly makes sense to him. And what the oracle had told him was that the secret to wisdom was having conversations with the dead. And he thinks, you know, what could that mean? Until he's there in the marketplace, and he hears someone reading from Socrates, who is dead, and he realizes that books are a way to have conversations with the dead. So, yes, it could seem a little silly that we are taking life advice from people who lived 2,500 years ago or 2,000 years ago. On the other hand, it's magic, right? It's magic. These people lived centuries and centuries and centuries ago, and yet they were fundamentally human beings who dealt with fundamentally human problems. All of the same evils and wonders of the world existed then, and they figured some stuff out, and we can have a conversation with them. And to not read about what was happening in the past seems to me to be sort of neglecting this superpower. And look, I've been talking about Marx, Aurelius, who's obviously very powerful. And so sometimes you go, what do a bunch of rich, old, dead white dudes have to say about anything? But there's some descriptions that have Zeno hailing from Africa, so maybe he wasn't white. You have Marcus Aurelius, favorite philosopher, who's Epictetus, who's a slave. When we think of the Romans, we think of Italy. But Rome was the entirety of that continent. It stretched from Turkey to Africa, and it encompassed the full social spectrum of rich and poor, abled and disabled, male and female. And so there's just an infinite amount to learn from these people.
- [15:05]
Sharon McMahon
Why is wisdom the most essential virtue to you? You mentioned earlier that you need wisdom to be able to practice all of these other virtues. Well, yeah, but what actually is wisdom?
- [15:19]
Ryan Holiday
Well, it's a hard one to define, right? And I think if you think it's easy to define, you're probably missing something. There's also. There's also something elusive about it in that the more you learn, the more you learn how little you know and how much left there is to learn. So there is something about wisdom that you don't actually possess. And one of the reasons I wanted to build a book around the sort of work of wisdom, as opposed to the secrets of wisdom, let's say, is that I want people to see it as a method, what we perceive as wisdom, like, when you Meet a wise person that is a byproduct of work that they did, a life they have lived, things they have read, people that they have talked to, questions that they have asked. I think one thing we can say for certain about wisdom is that you're not born with it. Right? It is not an accident. It is not luck. Now, some people are born smarter than others, but wisdom, I think, is a result of something quite different. And even this idea where we sometimes equate wisdom with age, there are a lot of very foolish old people as well, right. It is not for certain that if you live a long time, you will acquire a lot of wisdom. A lot of people managed to spend a lot of time on this planet and learn very little. So wisdom has to be this sort of set of practices, this way of thinking about things. And then, yeah, it obviously determines how the other virtues are put into practice. Like, let's say you are really good at courage. Like, you are a very courageous person. You don't pay attention to dangers. You have the ability to sort of push past fear. But in pursuit of what? Pursuit, right. What is the right amount of courage? In what situation is discretion the better part of valor? So wisdom has to be this sort of moderating, informing force that shapes and directs the other virtues as to where one ought to go.
- [17:09]
Sharon McMahon
You talk in your book about examples of people in history that you think illustrate this virtue of wisdom. Can you give me an example of one? And what do you think makes them wise?
- [17:22]
Ryan Holiday
I conclude the book with Lincoln, who I think is sort of the complete man, if you will, who embodies all four of the virtues, really. But what's fascinating about Lincoln is his sort of self education at the beginning of his life, which he then sort of fuses to this kind of moral wisdom, this sense of what is truly right and wrong. And then he marries that still to this kind of political savvy. The ability to bring that unerring sense of what's right and wrong into the actual world. My favorite scene from Lincoln's life isn't this stuff about him walking miles and miles to get books. That's one thing, right? That's the curiosity of being a young man. But after he's elected president and the Civil War breaks out, there's a scene where Lincoln sends for books about war from the Library of Congress, which he had, by the way, actually also used when he was in Congress. His legal understanding of slavery. The argument that he makes, which ultimately culminates in the Gettysburg Address. The argument that he makes about slavery is A result not just of his sort of gut intuition about the right and wrongness of slavery, but but his profound understanding of what the founders had believed about slavery. It's his legal mind that he shapes based on these documents. You know, he's studying congressional transcripts and books and laws that have been passed. So Lincoln as this penultimate figure, someone who is both smart and ambitious, but also just and right and then strong and determined, he's sort of the ultimate figure of the book, this sort of great man of history. The more I read about Lincoln, the more I am amazed about him as a person in almost every facet.
- [19:13]
Sharon McMahon
He is such an interesting figure. I also am very amused by the fact that when George Washington was appointed to lead the American Revolution, essentially he did the same thing. He went to a bookstore and got a book on how to be a general.
- [19:27]
Ryan Holiday
Yes.
- [19:27]
Sharon McMahon
And of course, George Washington had many personal foibles, that goes without saying. But here are the rest of us thinking that these great figures of history had some kind of hand of God type wisdom bestowed upon their heads. And yes, as you said, they're intelligent, but no, they actually had to go to a bookstore or write a letter to obtain the how to knowledge of how to put this out into the world.
- [19:56]
Ryan Holiday
Yeah. And Truman, I think, is another classic example of a sort of self educated president. He's given a copy of Plutarch's Lives as a young man. He convinces his father to buy it for him. And he would say that as President, you know, nine times out of 10, when he was struggling with something, he would turn to the pages of Plutarch and find the insights about what he was dealing with. And his famous line was, there's nothing new in the world but the history you do not yet know. And so the idea of needing to be a student of history even as one makes history is a really beautiful idea. And I think of Lincoln not just reading books from the Library of Congress, he reads a book by Henry Halleck, who is the chief of staff to the Union Army. He's so far behind at the beginning of the Civil War, he's reading books from people who work for him. And yet he is ultimately this sort of preeminent strategist who sees how the Civil War can be won. So not just as he learned, but he learns better and is able to see further than the so called experts because he has both the sort of book smarts and the street smarts. You know, the famous dichotomy. He combines the two together with the other virtues. And we wouldn't be here right now had he not done that.
- [21:16]
Sharon McMahon
What do you think some of the biggest challenges are for all of us in this moment as we think about these stoic virtues, as we think about courage and wisdom? You have said before that you think as a society, we honor speed but not reflection.
- [21:32]
Ryan Holiday
Yes.
- [21:32]
Sharon McMahon
I'm curious, number one, if you think that's a uniquely American virtue, and number two, what exactly does that mean that we honor speed but not reflection?
- [21:42]
Ryan Holiday
Well, as we talk about wisdom, I think sometimes people confuse wisdom with information, right? So we live in a time with abundant access to effectively unlimited information. We have more information than presidents had even just a few years ago. And in some respects, this is a great bounty. It's also an incredible curse. Wisdom, to me, is not. I know a lot of facts, but it is knowing what these facts mean, being able to place them in their context, and then, of course, being able to discern what one ought to do about them. And so I think that the trap that we face is, how do we make sense of all this stuff that's coming at us? And so, in some ways, being able to be disciplined about what you don't know, about what you don't follow is really important. I'm sure you see this with your audience as well. It's like social media can either make you smarter or it can make you a lot dumber. And knowing what to follow and what not to follow and how to sort of cultivate an information diet, like your actual diet, that keeps you healthy as opposed to fundamentally unhealthy is really the challenge of our time. And it's just so easy to follow what is happening now, when really what we ought to be cultivating is a sense of what has happened historically. Right. What humans do and the larger context of what these things mean. I think that's really the challenge. We chase too much breaking news, and we lack the historical sense that Truman was talking about in the way that the past helps us understand the present and the future.
- [23:16]
Sharon McMahon
What's at stake if people do not develop or cultivate or work on this virtue of wisdom? Because it's not a destination. You have to learn it. It's something you will work on your entire life. But what's at stake if we don't spend any time mastering it?
- [23:34]
Ryan Holiday
Everything, I think, is at stake. Epictetus used to point out that in Rome, only the free were allowed to be educated. But he said this is precisely wrong, because he said only the educated are free. And so when we think of education and freedom, we don't just mean literal freedom, but we mean freedom from being misled. We mean freedom from being distracted, freedom from being manipulated, freedom from being enslaved to certain things that you have to be able to rise above. And so I think wisdom is not just, you know, necessary in a democracy where a lot falls on the individual citizen, but it's also necessary for a thriving and good life where to know what's. What is what allows you to chase the right things and tune out the wrong things. And I think too many people sort of just take things on trust, or too many people don't have the perspective or the information that they need to make the right choices. And so wisdom then is this critical skill, both I think practically and philosophically, for living.
- [24:41]
Sharon McMahon
Well, last question for you.
- [24:43]
Ryan Holiday
Okay.
- [24:44]
Sharon McMahon
What is one thing that listeners can do to become more wise today?
- [24:51]
Ryan Holiday
Ooh, that is a great question. I would say one thing is, you know, the ability to ask good questions is essential in the pursuit of wisdom and not being afraid to ask questions. You know, they go, there's no such thing as a dumb question. But being able to say like, hey, I don't understand, what does that mean? Or how does that work? Is obviously an incredibly powerful force. I think at the end of the day, I would tell everyone to read more books. We're talking on a podcast. I do think podcasts are great. But podcasts, social media, turning on the news, reading on your phone, none of this is a substitute for disconnecting and sitting down and reading, having a conversation with the dead, communing with the wisest people who have ever lived. You've done a book. You love books. You know how many books go into each book, right? And so there is just no form of wisdom or information more distilled down or valuable than what goes into a book. And there have been books that we have been reading for thousands of years for a reason, right? Because they are so powerful and so important. And to not exercise this superpower is just the craziest thing in the world to me.
- [26:00]
Sharon McMahon
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Sharon McMahon
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- [27:49]
Sharon McMahon
Mounting tensions on Capitol Hill as the government shutdown drags into Senate has once again failed to advance a bill that would pay federal workers and military members during this stalemate. We are now many weeks into a government shutdown with very little end in sight. And so many of you have been wondering, like, how long can this go on? What is even going to happen? And there are very real arguments to be made on both sides of the political aisle. On the Democratic side, we have people who have very real and legitimate concerns about the affordability of health insurance, that the current budget bill, as it exists, is going to cut Medicaid funding for many people who need it. And it is also going to be eliminating large numbers of credits that help people pay for private insurance. That's a legitimate concern. The affordability of healthcare in the United States. Let's not pretend that it is affordable because it's not. So that's a very real societal issue that you can understand why some members of Congress want to grapple with. On the other side of the aisle, you have a group of people who are saying, no, we passed the budget. We're not going to just shut down the government and play a bunch of games and be held hostage by your demands. So reopen the government, sign off on our bill, and then we can have some conversations about what we should do about health insurance. Of course, Democrats are saying to Republicans, we have no confidence that you will actually engage in good faith discussions about health insurance subsidies because we have such a small amount of political power in the federal government. Right now, we're going to use every lever that we have, and every lever is actually one lever. Shutting down the government is basically the lever that Democrats have right now. And what we can't forget in this fight between Democrats and Republicans is that there are actually millions of people whose lives are being directly impacted by this government shutdown. Millions of people who are federal employees, who are active duty service members, who are going to be missing a paycheck, who have been furloughed, many of whom have been laid off. With more layoffs apparently coming. You have some people, like air traffic controllers and members of TSA who are working for free. Nobody's paying them until the government reopens. But meanwhile, they are essential employees and have to continue to show up to doing their jobs. And most Americans, let's be honest, most Americans cannot afford to just skip paychecks. That is simply not the financial reality that most people in this country live under. So I wanted to take just a quick minute to talk about if you are a federal employee or you are being impacted by this government shutdown, what you can do if you need help in this situation. The first thing is that many banks are willing to pause your mortgage payments through a special program. Interest is still going to accrue, but you can check with your bank and see if they are participating in a program like this. And many of them actually are. It won't affect your credit and like I said, interest will still continue to accrue, but it might allow you to put a pause on making mortgage payments until the shutdown ends without it showing up on your credit as a missed payment. And the same is true for car loans. A bank would, generally speaking, rather know, listen, I work for the federal government. I'm not getting paid. Can I skip this month's payment and still pay interest on it and then get caught up later? They would rather know that than to just have you miss a payment altogether. You can request a forbearance for your student loans. Now, I'm not saying that any of these solutions are perfect and that we should cheer for all these solutions. I'm simply trying to offer a couple of suggestions for what you might be able to do if you are finding yourself impacted by the shutdown. Some mobile phone carriers are offering payment deferral options as well because many of us use our phones for work or for looking for work. The same might be true for some personal loans. The best thing you can do if you're in this situation is to get in contact with your lender, you might be able to collect unemployment. You should look into whether or not you are eligible through your state unemployment agency. And then you can also contact the three major credit bureaus like Equifax, Experian, TransUnion to let them know what's happening. They can add a note to your credit and lenders will see that when they look at your files. And also you might consider pulling your credit report now. So if your credit is affected by all of this, you can explain what happened later. The next question y' all have been asking is about why speaker of the House Mike Johnson is refusing to seat the newly elected Representative Adelita Grijalva. She won a special election in the state of Arizona, replacing her father, who passed away. She was elected on September 23rd. Today is October 27th, and Johnson has said he is not going to swear her in until the Senate votes to reopen the government. Now, again, Mike Johnson is not in charge of the Senate. Representative Elect Grijalva is not in the Senate. This is actually not dependent on the Senate reopening in any way. And the Attorney General of the state of Arizona has actually filed a lawsuit trying to force a court to compel Mike Johnson to swear her in because what he is doing, the attorney General says, is depriving residents of her district in Arizona of representation to which they are constitutionally entitled. Now, Mike Johnson is saying things along the lines of Grihala can go serve her constituents. She can answer the telephone. She can engage in listening sessions to see what her constituents need.
- [33:40]
Ryan Holiday
Instead of doing TikTok videos, she should.
- [33:42]
Insight Software Advertiser
Be serving her constituents. She could be taking their calls. She can be directing them, trying to help them through the crisis that the Democrats have created by shutting down the government.
- [33:49]
Sharon McMahon
And if you have followed Grijalva's office on social media, you can see that she has made a couple of videos refuting this. Yes, I have access to an office.
- [33:59]
Dr. Mary Claire Haver
But it's kind of like someone saying.
- [34:01]
Sharon McMahon
Here'S a car and it doesn't have.
- [34:03]
Dr. Mary Claire Haver
An engine, gas or tires.
- [34:06]
Sharon McMahon
So in the office, we have several desktops.
- [34:10]
Dr. Mary Claire Haver
They have an administrator passcode.
- [34:12]
Sharon McMahon
I don't have that. All of the things that are afforded to actual members of Congress cannot be given to her, like how to get into the computer system until she is actually sworn in. So will a court require Mike Johnson to swear in a member of Congress? This is a very interesting question, but perhaps the bigger and more interesting question is what does that say about the future of Congress if people who are in leadership in Congress get to choose the members of Congress instead of voters choosing the member of Congress, that is a backsliding away from Democratic norms. If leadership gets to say, we are not going to swear you in for no reason other than we don't wish to, that puts us in a sticky situation. A very, very, very hot topic on yalls minds is about the East Wing of the White House. Now listen, I've been to the White House a bunch of times. I have a big affinity for the White House. And y' all know that I am a history buff. I love the history of the White House. It really is the people's house. The President does not own the White House. No president owns the White House. The President gets to live in the White House because we let them. The White House belongs to the American people. It does not belong to the president. Now, have presidents over the years engaged in construction projects? Absolutely, yes, they have. They have gone to Congress. They, they have said, hey, we're having some trouble over here and we would like some funds to be able to make sure this building doesn't fall down. That's exactly what happened. When Harry Truman was president, there was so much deferred maintenance on the White House that it had become structurally unsound. And the White House underwent a massive renovation. So massive that the Trumans had to move out of the White House and live at Blair House, which is across the street from the White House. And that took years. Almost do a gut renovation of the White House because the structural issues were so significant that this was not a like, slap some coats of paint on and add some extra weather stripping around the windows. It was a gut renovation. So it is absolutely true that there have been construction projects in the White House over the years. The east wing was added in 1902. It was renovated. The second floor was added in the 1940s. But there has not been a situation in which a president has sort of unilaterally decided, we're going to get rid of that wing of the White House. With no congressional approval, no congressional appropriations. Sought funding from a variety of donors, many of them corporate donors who do business with the federal government like Palantir, and individuals like the Winklevoss twins and a current cabinet secretary, all donating private funds to be able to build what has now ballooned into a $300 million, 999 seat ballroom.
- [37:21]
Ryan Holiday
It'll be built over on the east side and it will be beautiful. It'll be views of the Washington Monument. It won't interfere with the current building. It won't Be it'll be near it, but not touching it.
- [37:35]
Sharon McMahon
Having been to the White House a number of times, I can also tell you something else. It does not have good entertaining space. It was never intended to have 999 person conferences or balls. That was simply not the nature of entertaining when the White House was being constructed. So there was, you know, a lack of foresight of what happened in the country, you know, 200 years in the future, because who can see into the future? So two things can be true at the same time. One, the White House does not have any large ballrooms and entertaining space. And when we have state dinners, they have to host them in tents on the White House grounds. That can be true. It is also probably true that many presidents have said, I wish we had some larger entertaining space here. That can be true. And this also can be true that presidents do not own the White House. And this is supported across the political spectrum from left to right. Nor does the American public at large think that presidents should be able to treat the White House as though they own it. Now, we're not talking about redecorating the private residence. We're not talking about, you know, choosing their favorite picture above the mantle in the Oval Office. But to be able to destroy a portion of a historic building that does not belong to them really rubs a lot of Americans the wrong way. The current administration has not received any kind of approval for the ballroom project. The White House is governed by a couple of government agencies, including the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service. Again, it is owned by the United States of America, not by the President. It's a historic landmark. And the administration says that it doesn't need any approval to rip down the East Wing of the White House because federal agency rules, they say, give a president broad authority to remove or clear structures on White House grounds without prior sign off. But previous projects have required formal review under federal preservation laws to ensure that historic standards are being met, to make sure that we are keeping as many of the important elements of a building so that we can preserve its history for the future. So none of that appears to have been done. And then additionally, we're running up against the issue where there was a misrepresentation about the type of project and the scope of the project. Initially, not long ago, the White House said the construction of the ballroom will not have to interfere with the East Wing. Then it turned into, we are just going to have to do a little bit of work on the East Wing. We're going to renovate modernize the East Wing. And now, just a few days later, it has turned into, no, no, we're ripping down the entire East Wing. I know many of you are going to ask, what can be done about this? It's one of those very tricky legal situations where the administration has just chosen to move forward with asking for forgiveness rather than permission, thinking by the time anything legal would happen, we will be done. They will not be able to stop us from doing any of these things. So I hear you that this is of great concern to you. And I also hear that it seems as though there is little that can be done in this moment to stop the construction from moving forward. And this brings me to the final question of the day. I have received probably a thousand of the same question, can ICE do what they're doing? Put in another way, people want to know, is it legal for ICE agents to arrive in an unmarked vehicle wearing masks and not identifying themselves? And isn't that setting up the potential for a similar group to pose as law enforcement and to actually carry out kidnapping who actually do not have any right to snatch somebody off the street? How are we supposed to know if we are being legitimately arrested for something? This is a question that people have been sending in for months. So let me give you a few facts. The first one is that it is actually legal for federal agents to use unmarked vehicles. You know, there are some internal policies about when to use an unmarked vehicle versus a marked vehicle, but often they are using unmarked vehicles and it is generally legal for them to do so. The second thing is they are required by law to identify themselves as immigration officers when they are making an arrest. But here is the caveat. They only have to identify themselves as an immigration officer when it is, quote, practical and safe. That is what the law says, practical and safe. Now, you are correct in assessing that what constitutes practical and safe is going to vary by interpretation. One ICE agent is likely going to say it wasn't practical and safe for me to say it. Then there's a crowd on the street and they were all filming me. And it wasn't going to be practical and safe for me to tell you who I was in that moment. So the words practical and safe do leave a lot of room for interpretation. But at some point, they are required to identify themselves as immigration officers. They are not legally required to provide their names. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill, AB627, that requires ICE agents to stop wearing masks.
- [43:11]
Ryan Holiday
If you're going to go out and you're going to do enforcement provide an id, Tell us which agency you represent, provide us basic information that all local law enforcement is required to provide.
- [43:23]
Sharon McMahon
The Trump administration is currently directing ICE to ignore that law because there are potential legal challenges at play here. The acting ICE director, whose name is Todd Lyons, said earlier this year, quote, ice officers were doxed. People were out there taking photos and posting their pictures with their names online where they were receiving death threats. So I'm sorry people are offended that they're wearing masks. But I'm not going to let my agents go out there and put their lives on the line, put their families on the line, because people don't like what immigration enforcement is. So to recap, yes, they can use unmarked cars. No, they don't have to give you their name. They are required to identify themselves as an immigration officer as soon as it is practical and safe. And there are legal questions about whether or not it is permissible to wear masks. And I think we're going to see a showdown in the state of California about whether or not state law about how federal officers act in the state supersedes policy directive from the head of ice. So this is definitely one of those. Stay tuned and I'll keep you updated. Situations. That's it for today. There's so much happening. I know we could keep on talking for an hour, but I really wanted to make sure that I was answering your most pressing questions. Thank you for joining me today and I will see you next week on the Preamble. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. Thank you for listening to the Preamble podcast, Sharing, liking subscribing, Leaving a review all help podcasters out so much. If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd love to see you on the preamble.com where you can submit your questions for us to answer next week. I'll see you again soon.
- [45:21]
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