← Main Justice
Main Justice
Honoring Veterans Day
01:01:50
The cruel and winding road of the SNAP benefits case. And Tess Bridgeman on the legality of lethal boat strikes in international waters.
Loading summary
Transcript100 lines
- [00:00]
A
Whenever I need to send roses that are guaranteed to make someone's day, the only place I trust is 1-800-flowers.com with 1-800-flowers. My friends and family always receive stunning, high quality bouquets that they absolutely love. Right now, when you buy a dozen multicolored roses, 1-800-flowers will double your bouquet to two dozen roses. To claim this special double roses offer, go to 1-800-flowers.com sxm. That's, that's 1-800-flowers. Com sxm.
- [00:30]
B
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk, crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:54]
A
Of $45 for 3 month plan, $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra cement mobile.com.
- [01:13]
B
Hello and welcome to Main Justice. It is Tuesday morning, November 11th. I'm Andrew Weissman and I am here with Mary McCord. Hello Mary.
- [01:23]
C
Good morning and happy Veterans Day.
- [01:25]
B
Andrew, you know, I was thinking about that today.
- [01:28]
C
Well, I mean, I'm so proud of all the veterans that have been standing up and speaking out about things, including some of the things that we're going to talk about today. Not only the deployments of the National Guard domestically, but also the strikes on international waters and frankly, just in support of democratic processes and elections. We've seen a number of veterans groups and veterans families really being involved civically. And I am so grateful not only for their service but also for what they're doing in continued service to the country.
- [02:01]
B
Yeah, I thought about on a personal level, my dad was a veteran and served as a doctor in the Army. He passed away several years ago. So it's a time to really think about just how much we owe people who were willing to sacrifice their, their lives for the country and are just such a great model and you should do it all the time. But it's great to have a day where you can sort of stop and think about it. And yes, it does relate to what we're going to talk about. But even apart from all of that, it's just a great time to give thanks and remembrance with that. Merritt, you mentioned that we're going to relate to things that we're going to talk about. So what are we going to talk about?
- [02:43]
A
Yes.
- [02:44]
C
So we are going to start out with two big, big deal cases that are brewing on emergency motions in the Supreme Court right now. The cases involving the attempted cutoff of SNAP benefits as we talked about last week. And we had a flurry of activity over the weekend, including briefs filed both last night and this morning.
- [03:02]
B
You know, America likes to say they're the richest country in the world and that one in eight people are eligible for SNAP benefits. Leave aside partisanship, leave aside the law here, leave aside the cruelty of not giving these funds out. What does it say that we're not prioritizing hunger as an issue? It was. It's a remarkable thing. So we'll catch everybody up on the litigation there and where it stands. You mentioned it's one of two cases. That's right.
- [03:36]
C
Brewing with filings last night. The other is, of course, the motion to stay the injunction against the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois, where we talked last week about the briefing on what the term regular forces means. And we'll talk about both of these. And then both of these are things that I think in many ways are examples of the judiciary taking action to say what the law is. And then Todd Blanche responding by saying we're at war with the federal judiciary. On the same day that Todd Blanche gave a speech at the Federalist Society meeting in Washington, D.C. on Friday, a longtime Judge Reagan appointee Judge stepped down so that he could speak out. And to think that both of those things happened on the same day, I think that's remarkable. I haven't seen anything like that in a very. Well, really in my lifetime.
- [04:27]
B
Then we have a very special guest. Tess Bergman is returning to speak to us about what is going on with the legal justification from the White House in terms of these drone strikes on boats and will catch people up on both what is happening, like who is being killed. But the White House has a new seeming legal argument and we really couldn't think of anyone better than Tess to talk to us about that.
- [05:03]
C
Yeah. So we will look forward to that. And you know, there have been efforts on Capitol Hill for Congress to step in and say, no, we're not authorizing this. And those have failed in the Senate by very close votes. And so we'll learn more about all of that. But should we dig in with Snapshot, we start by first. We've seen a lot of crazy and rapidly moving series of events, frankly. But this one I think is probably a little bit hard for people to keep up with. And in some ways, the details of each TRO are not important. But in a way to get to where we are, there's a little bit of table setting here.
- [05:37]
B
Yeah, there's a lot of back and forth with the Supreme Court. But, I mean, I do think it's worth just where are we right now? Where we are is that this is really teed up for the Supreme Court to make a decision about are they going to issue some kind of continued administrative stay or an actual stay. But the lower courts, both the district court and the court of appeals in the First Circuit, have said that there needs to be funding going forward. All of this may become moot if the shutdown is resolved. But the big picture here is, why wouldn't you want to fund this? Congress did, in fact, create a fund for emergency use. The Trump administration in the first term took the position that that fund was available for purposes like this. And then they kind of did it about face. And when you read the lower court decisions where they weren't really planning ahead, and at times they seem to decide, okay, now we, we're going to get our ducks in a row. And then they say, you know what? We're not going to fund this completely.
- [06:52]
C
Yeah. And that's where I think it gets tricky, and I think that's where it might have lost a lot of people, because what happened a week ago is, you know, one of the two judges that had cases challenging this proposed discontinuance for November, one of the two judges gave the government two options, right? It was fund partial payments for November using this contingency fund that you were just referring to, and do that by November 5th. But go ahead and exercise your discretion to then dip into another fund. It's a fund that the Department of Agriculture has some discretion to use for other emergency purposes. Unlike the contingency fund, where the court said, there's no discretion here. You have to use it. The court recognized there were discretion in this other fund and said, if you want to just make a decision to use that other fund and fund everything in total, then you need to do that even quicker by November 3rd. And the reason he gave them more time to do partial payments is because partial payments involve some administrative, bureaucratic, logistical difficulties, because you're changing the amount of money that each person is going to get. The government chose the partial payments, but then just didn't get it done on time. Just didn't get it done by November 5th. And so the parties went back to court on the 6th and said the government's in violation of your order. District court judge and the district court judge then did two things. He said, you're in violation of my order to make these partial payments by November 5th. So I'm going to order you now to make the full payments, to use that money from the fund that you normally have discretion over and make full payments right away. The second thing he did is he said, I'm going to issue a separate TRO saying your decision not to use those discretionary funds was arbitrary and capricious. And I'm ordering you to do that. That's when the government went up to the First Circuit, sought a stay, first an administrative stay and then a longer stay. The 1st Circuit denied the administrative stay. This all happened on Friday. The government goes up to the Supreme Court, seeks an administrative stay and a full stay there. And this is where Justice Jackson on Friday night said, going to grant this administrative stay to give the First Circuit time to actually rule on the stay and that the administrative quickly. And the administrative stay, I think she said, would expire 48 hours after the First Circuit rules on the stay. And this bought some time, although time is actually detrimental to the recipients of SNAP who are not getting it. I'm not going to say that's Justice Jackson's Fault or the 1st Circuit's fault or the district court judge's fault, because remember, the US Government at any time could just comply with this order rather than fighting the order. And so the First Circuit then on late Sunday night in a lengthy opinion, denied the stay. But what they did is they said, we're not going to reach that question about arbitrary and capriciousness in the government electing not to use its discretion to pull from this discretionary fund. But we are going to say that what the district court did in terms of enforcing his order by saying, you've got to fund fully the SNAP benefits, we're going to uphold that as the plaintiffs having likely success on the merits there, and we're not going to stay that. We are now back in the Supreme Court briefs filed last night and this morning. And the last thing I want to say before obviously getting your reactions is the government's brief and the brief of the plaintiffs are so different. The government is a very, very short, basically complaining that the federal judiciary should not be involved in this at all, that the federal judiciary is actually in some ways interfering with Congress, ending the shutdown and should sort of stay out of this, and that everything that the First Circuit did to deny the stay was wrong because the federal district court was wrong from the Beginning. It was a very, very sort of complaining, focused brief, I thought. Whereas the plaintiffs, they file. I mean, it's 11 pages, double spaced. It's a very short missive by the federal government saying, back off.
- [10:56]
B
Back off.
- [10:57]
C
Yeah, back off, back off. Literally at the 11th hour, the court's orders inject the federal courts into the political branches, closing efforts to end this shutdown. But the answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority. The only way to end this crisis, which the executive is adamant to end, is for Congress to reopen the government. Now, that is not the way law works.
- [11:20]
B
It's also such a political brief. I mean, it takes it out of context in terms of there was no prospect. We're in a different moment now than when this case was brought.
- [11:31]
C
That's right.
- [11:32]
B
I wanted to focus on something because there is a good chance if the shutdown does go away, that the SNAP case, the legal issue, will become moot. But it is still something so worth remembering because of what we started with in terms of the number of people on SNAP and the government's position with respect to food to keep people healthy and alive. I'm going to read a couple sentences from the circuit opinion to give you a sense of our government. I leave to you to decide whether this is incompetence or whether it is cruelty or some amalgam of the two. Here's the quote. According to the record here, USDA did not take any steps to prepare to make partial payments either before or after the shutdown. Instead, it only acted after it was ordered to do so by the District Court on October 31st. During this litigation, the record reflects that before early November, USDA did not even perform the calculation to determine what percentage of November benefits from could be paid with the contingency funds, unquote. Who does that? That's the question here. And, you know, it's interesting, the more I do this with you, Marian, the more I first react in terms of the policy and now the legal part, because I find it so hard to wrap my head around the policy position. And you and I have both served in so many different administrations, Republican and Democratic. I can't think of this being the policy that you would choose to do. Yeah, let alone. I mean, people make mistakes. But here, I mean, when you're dealing with something like food, the idea that you would be this cavalier or this is really just a mistake. I mean, their heads would roll. If this was a mistake, it would be who's responsible for it and how do we make sure this never, ever happens again? So it bespeaks of, as you said.
- [13:37]
C
A callousness and especially juxtaposed against the things that the executive branch is finding ways to pay for. Right. I mean, there's been no dampening or lessening of the ICE activity that's going on. That seems to be just ramping up even while we're in a shutdown. Right. There's been other movements of money during this shutdown to make sure other priorities of the administration are being covered, but not the priority of people eating. And this is not a red issue or a blue issue. This is a human issue. So I totally agree with you.
- [14:10]
B
Should we turn to. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things we talked last week about, your colleague Marty Lederman having flagged the issue about regular forces, and it's key language because there's a provision that is relied on by the White House to say that we are not able to control the situation in X place, whether, you know, Chicago, Portland.
- [14:34]
C
To enforce United States law.
- [14:37]
B
To enforce United States law. With the, quote, regular forces. And Marty Liederman wrote an AMCUS brief, which the Supreme Court picked up on and said, I want the parties to address this. Was that regular forces, according to Marty. And they're now two amicus, because he filed a supplemental. That is just a wonderful read. It is both devastating and charming. He basically says this was a defined term of art, that regular forces refers to the military. What is the import here? It's that if Donald Trump has not first tried to even use the military, he cannot call in the National Guard. And he goes through the history, he gives more examples of it that are really spectacularly interesting. They're wonderful quotes from people referring over and over again, including people who are involved in the promulgation of a predecessor statute, the statute that is the predecessor to the one we're dealing with now, where they talk about regular forces under.
- [15:41]
C
The command of the president.
- [15:43]
B
Right, exactly.
- [15:44]
C
Those words used to be in there. Yeah.
- [15:46]
B
And they have a foreign adversary saying about our military, oh, these are not a ragtag group. These are regular forces. By God. That's one of the quotes.
- [15:56]
C
Great quotes.
- [15:56]
B
And so the point is, if the president hasn't tried to use the, quote, regular forces, the military, he can hardly call in the National Guard and get help from the state resources when he has and exhausted military ones. As you said, I think quite aptly last week, this is something that I think now, having read the submissions from the government and Marty's brief, this seems like a very strong argument that Marty has latched onto. And it does give, to use your phrase, the Supreme Court, an off ramp to say that you really do not qualify under the congressional statute to invoke it because they set certain criteria and you have not met it.
- [16:39]
C
Yeah, and we'll have more to say this because there's more briefs due next Monday, but I do want to just talk about the argument in the government's brief that was filed. So the government and the state of Illinois were both ordered to brief this regular forces issue. As you said, the government starts out by making an argument, trying to rely on text and history, that regular forces means federal civilian law enforcement, which, by the way, if you went back to the history, you know, there really wasn't a federal civilian law enforcement historically, way back at the founding. But anyway, putting that aside. Yeah, putting that aside, they do that argument, but then they move into an argument that I actually find is even more extraordinary. The federal government is coming in and saying, give deference, either don't review it all or give total deference to the President. And here's what they say about this. They say, even if regular forces might mean the regular military first, the President didn't specify who the regular forces were when he issued the orders to federalize and deploy the National Guard. And it says courts must presume that he also considered the standing military in making the determination that he was unable with the regular forces to enforce federal law. Okay, I hear you chuckling.
- [17:54]
B
Yes, because it's chuckling. So it's, it's so insane. His lawyers took the position that you didn't have to consider that. But what the President just decided to consider it, even though his own advocates were saying, this is not anything at all you have to do. We're supposed to presume. I mean, it's so ludicrous.
- [18:14]
C
And he says, you know why you presume it? Because of the presumption of regularity, which we have talked about at length, including with our good friend Ryan Goodman, who put together on just security, entire composition of examples where courts have been like, no, no, no, no, no. You really don't get the presumption of regularity here. But because of this presumption of regularity, we should assume the President thought, hmm, could I have done this with the standing army? No, I don't think so. So now I'm going to use the National Guard anyway. We will see. I wish I was writing the responsive brief to that, actually, because that would be a fun one to write. And we will come back to this in a week after we see those responsive briefs next week. And I shouldn't make light of this. I mean, that is just worth a chuckle because this is serious stuff that's going on in the states. And we do know another thing that has happened is in Oregon. Remember, this case in the Supreme Court is about Illinois. In Oregon, Judge Immerget, she had consolidated her hearing on the preliminary injunction with her hearing on the merits, like the final trial. And she issued this one was a very lengthy ruling last week saying, nope, you have not shown that these predicates for federalizing and deploying the National Guard have been met. My injunction is a permanent injunction. So lots going on in this, in this space.
- [19:30]
B
Two very quick thoughts before we break. One, the reason I think it's so great that you point this out in the Supreme Court is because this isn't just saying presumption of regularity. This is saying, you know what, when we say do it, you just do it. This is not saying there's a presumption of regularity. There's no way that the president made the finding that was necessary or could have made the finding that was necessary given the legal position of his own lawyers. And so it's not even a fig leaf. I mean, this is just magical thinking. So it is really one that needs to be shot down by the Supreme Court. Second, with respect to the decision by Judge Immerget, it is notable that she repeatedly finds and calls it out that she does not believe the testimony before her. She says that she heard from the federal government. And I'm going to just read one thing from her on page 44, quote, the court does not find this testimony to be credible, unquote. Those are incredibly strong words. And I think it relates so much to both what we're seeing in the Supreme Court, the argument that you just referenced, and then what we're seeing here. It's going to be a great segue to our discussion about Todd Blanch and his saying there's a war on his part on the judiciary. So let's take a break and come back and talk about that.
- [20:57]
C
We'll talk about that. Yes.
- [21:05]
B
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [21:29]
A
Of $45 per three month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.
- [21:35]
B
See mint mobile.com Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Redick. You know what's more nerve wracking than waiting for qualifying results? Waiting for the green flag to drop.
- [21:42]
A
Instead of pacing, you rev up with.
- [21:44]
B
Chumba Casino's weekly new releases. It's like a fresh set of tires for your brain. Play for free@chumbacasino.com let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Voidware prohibited by law. CT&C's 21+ Sponsored by Jumba Casino Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business? Think again.
- [22:03]
A
With TikTok ads, we went from 250,000 downloads to over a million downloads in less than a year. I'm Eve. I'm Anam and we're the co founders of Alinea.
- [22:11]
C
Alinea Invest is an investing app for Gen z.
- [22:14]
A
We run 50 new ads per week with three variations thanks to TikTok Smart plus campaigns. If you're not advertising on TikTok, you're missing out.
- [22:23]
B
Drive more app downloads only on TikTok. Head over to get started.TikTok.com TikTok ads.
- [22:34]
C
Welcome back. So we've teed this up a couple of times. Let's get into it. It was last week at an annual Federalist Society conference here in Washington, D.C. where Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke. He's in a room full of conservative lawyers, including young lawyers, probably people there from different law schools. And he put out a call, right, for them to come potentially work for the Department of Justice. But the context in which he did so, it just was to me really shocking. He urged young lawyers to join the administration's, quote, war against, quote, rogue activist judges.
- [23:14]
B
You know, I listened to the whole thing because I really wanted to be fair and I wanted to be able to hear everything he had to say. And here is my issue on this issue and on so many of the things that he talked about was that and to be fair, you know, in these kind of speeches, you can't address everything. You can't address all of the worst case scenarios against your position. But when you're going to use language to your point, like a war on the judiciary and activist judges, the case that we just talked about, Judge Immerget is a Trump appointee in the Abrego Garcia case. Judge Wilkinson from the 4th Circuit is one of the leading conservative lights revered by people People in the federal society. And I have no problem with different legal positions, different philosophies. But you have to wrestle with that. You cannot just say they're all activist judges who are rogue, you know, MSNBC diehards who are going to somehow be untethered to the facts on their end. I mean, you have judges of all stripes who are pushing back, saying that you're violating the law. They're entitled to say, I think they got their decision wrong, and to go to the Supreme Court. But, yes, to say you have a war on them does not deal with the facts. And that was sort of. You really got this siege mentality from Todd Blanchey talked about. They accused me of weaponizing. They weaponized. Well, you know, let's assume that the quote, they weaponized under the Biden administration. That doesn't mean you don't have to wrestle with what you are doing. He didn't address. I'm not surprised he didn't. But Letitia James's case, or James come. I mean, I didn't feel like he was dealing with the facts on the ground and instead was using such incendiary language for what it means to be a country governed by the rule of law, where you are the number two person in the Department of Justice and a role model for people in the department and for the country.
- [25:21]
C
Yes. And it ignores, you know, what is the role, like you said, rule of law. What is the role of the courts. Right. The Supreme Court has said since Marbury Madison that it is the role of the courts to say what the law is. And what he is chastising and attacking judges for doing is exactly what judges were meant to do, say what the law is. And like you said, he can dislike it, he can disagree with it, but, you know, he's calling judges more political or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or district attorney, and that a group of judges are repeat players. And even he talks about so using this overly political language, liberal throughout, as though that's some sort of evil. Right. I mean, judges, regardless who appointed them, it's their job to apply the law as they interpret the law. Yet he says even in liberal appellate courts, where we have judges that are much more stronger on one side of the aisle than the other, we are routinely getting stays and getting reversals. So he's then appealing to how the Supreme Court has intervened on the emergency docket to try to prove his point. And, you know, he's got something there in the sense that the Supreme Court has intervened in many, many cases, but that does not mean that the judges below were act acting in a political way or making rulings that were unfounded. In fact, I'd say just the opposite. The criticism is that the Supreme Court, when it is coming in and staying injunctions below, is oftentimes doing so in the reverse of protecting the status quo and instead upending the status quo with these cases and with no explanation. And, you know, moving on from this to the resignation of Judge Mark Wolf in Massachusetts, a federal district court judge. He's now free to speak publicly. But we know a number of judges, even in the course of, you know, ruling on matters before them, have in their opinions included their own sort of criticism might be too strong, but disappointment or sort of like flailing in the face of a Supreme Court that is staying things without explanation and sort of calling out the Supreme Court like, look, you're saying that we're not obeying, you know, some of the things that you're telling us to do, but you're staying cases without explanation, without opinions. So we don't know how to respond to those things. You're not establishing what the law is. And I think it is definitely not a war. But we are seeing an escalation of attacks, at least by this Department of Justice on judges and also members of Congress. Right. Members of Congress have threatened things like impeachment of judges based on their opinions. Something that if we take ourselves all the way back to early in this administration, I think maybe it was March, although I could have the date wrong, when first there were noises made about impeaching Judge Boseberg in the D.C. district Court after his Alien Enemies act rulings. We saw the Chief justice himself say, impeachment based on a judge's rulings is not appropriate. That's not what impeachment is for. And so, you know, this is something that has been escalating. And I think one of the reasons that Judge Wolf resigned, I mean, he penned a long essay, personal essay in the Atlantic, which we can maybe put in the show notes, that is actually titled why I Am Resigning. A federal judge explains his reasoning for leaving the bench. And he talks about many of the things we've just discussed, including also the sort of political prosecutions that have been brought, as well as the sort of the dispensation and dropping of investigations against those who are close to the president or want to curry favor with the president. And he talked about the threats on judges that have come from a lot of the rhetoric, the physical threats to themselves and their families.
- [29:03]
B
So, Judge Wolf, people should know is a longtime federal judge in Boston. He was appointed in 1985 by President Reagan. He has senior status, meaning that by resigning he is not opening up a new position. It's like retirement, except you get to sort of do whatever you want. You can hear as many cases as you want, et cetera.
- [29:25]
C
Yeah, they still sit and hear cases.
- [29:27]
B
Yes, right, exactly. And at the moment that you take senior status, that's when the position opens up for a replacement. Here he was already senior, so he stepped down. This really fits very much though. Something that we're continuing to see dealing with the rule of law is the President's use, and some might say, like may, misuse of the pardon power. We don't have time to go through it in detail, but one of the things that happened this week was pardons given at the federal level. Remember that presidential pardons cannot operate to excuse state crimes. It can only operate with two past federal crimes, whether prosecuted or not prosecuted, but only at the federal level. People who were alleged to be and at times convicted of involvement in the so called fake elector scheme. Probably the most prominent person who was given a pardon was Rudy Giuliani. Remember, the state level cases all remain to the extent they were there or somebody pled guilty at the state level. I just wanted to take a moment to point something out because I don't think people understand that this is an example of something that is lawful but in my view outrageous because the President has pardon power and it is extremely broad under the Constitution. And you know, in my view we've now seen a reason that it would be good to have it fixed. But I was looking back through the pardons just in this term and there's sort of a remarkable confluence of pardons because you have enormous number of pardons going to people who. It's part of sort of a whitewash. It's sort of everyone who participated in.
- [31:06]
C
January 6th by watching of history, right?
- [31:08]
B
Yep. Everyone who participated in the fake elector scheme. So that's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.
- [31:15]
C
Yes.
- [31:15]
B
You also have though people who were prosecuted and convicted of political corruption. It was remarkable to me. George Santos, Glen Casada, Jeremy Hutchinson, Alexander Sittenfield, John Rowland, Michael Grimm, Scott Jenkins, Rob Glagojevich, all have crimes related to elected office or public office. All of them were wiped out. A series of crimes related to people who were violating the Freedom to Access to Clinics act received pardons. Enormous number of CEOs, the head of Silk Road, which was alleged to be a huge source for money laundering and for funding narcotics trafficking. Narcotics trafficking or even terrorism, that person was pardoned. The head of Binance crypto, Chen Peng Zhao, also received a pardon. And so the confluence of people allied with your political interests doing your bidding or aligned with your political bidding, public corruption cases where isn't that what we want to be prosecuted? I mean, ask yourself why? Why would that be what you would choose? And then finally, the New York Times has done a very good set of stories about the people who have been pardone who continue to recidivate. And so one of the people is Jonathan Braun, who after he was pardoned, is now being prosecuted and investigated with respect to a whole series of crimes, including sexual assault. And I mean, things that are just so heinous. And to be clear, what is missing here is the reason you have a pardon attorney and a pardon office is to sift it through so that you are making decisions that are fair to, to everyone who is applying it is not being based on politics or money.
- [33:12]
C
Or personal favor to the President.
- [33:14]
B
Obviously people can make mistakes, but you are trying to weed out the people who are likely to recidivate. And so we just don't have that process at all. And so the sort of lawlessness that we're seeing is in many ways being fomented and encouraged by, even if it's not intentional, which, you know, I think there's a good argument it is that that is what happens when you give pardons to this array and in these areas.
- [33:40]
C
Yeah. And we've seen several crimes committed by people who were pardoned for January 6th as well, just to your point. And you know, right now the pardon attorney, let's not forget, is Ed Martin, who is also simultaneously the head of the Weaponization Committee or whatever it is, task force at the Department of Justice. Those two things alone. One person wearing both of those hats is a little bit alarming when you see the types of pardons that are being. But there's no indication that the process that you and I are both so familiar with of the careful vetting and looking to see whether a person is deserving of a pardon, no indication that's happening at all. It seems like the President's just making decisions about who he wants to pardon for his own personal reasons, and then it is getting done through Ed Martin. So so much more we could say about that, but it is time to turn to our guest.
- [34:30]
B
Yes. Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk to Tess Bridgman. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if You've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [35:06]
A
Of $45 for 3 month plan $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first 3 months only then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.
- [35:11]
B
See mintmobile.com Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business? Think again. We've generated over 100,000 leads which has converted into over 40,000 sales for our pet insurance policies. My name is Trey Farrow. I am the CEO of Spot Pet Insurer. TikTok's Smart Plus AI powered automation takes the guesswork out of targeting, bidding and optimizing creative. If I can advertise on TikTok, you can too. Drive more leads and scale your business. Today only on TikTok. Head over to get started.TikTok.com tiktokapps Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Reddick. You know what's more nerve wracking than waiting for qualifying results? Waiting for the green flag to drop. Instead of pacing, you rev up with Chumba Casino's weekly new releases. It's like a fresh set of tires for your brain. Play for free@jumbacasino.com let's Chumba. No purchase necessary VGW group void where prohibited by law CTNC's 21+ sponsored by Jumba Casino.
- [36:11]
C
Welcome back. As promised, our good friend Tess Bridgman is with us. Some of you will recall us discussing the Iran strikes earlier this year and we're on a topic of strikes again. But it's a different type of strike strikes. But for those who don't know Tess, Tess is the co editor in chief of Just Security. And you know, Andrew and I refer to things that Just Security publishes all the time and in fact we've already done that once today. She is also a visiting scholar at the NYU Law School's RIIS center on Law and Security where she created the War Powers Resolution Reporting Project, which is particularly relevant to today's topic. But I know Tess from meeting her when she was serving in the White House as a special assistant to the President. She had a whole bunch of titles, but really she was like, like in the legal office that served the National Security Council. And so decisions like drone strikes were decisions that that office was responsible for providing legal Advice on. Now, there are other lawyers too. The lawyers group that we've talked about, which is the lawyers from all of the national security agencies and the intelligence community and the Office of Legal Counsel that like to come together and offer legal advice. But the legal Counsel's office within the White House is hugely significant to these types of decisions. So there's really nobody better to talk with us about the strikes that we are seeing now for, gosh, two months, just yesterday, two more strikes, six more people killed. Were over 75 people at this point have been killed and started out in international waters in the Caribbean and now it has progressed to also the Eastern Pacific.
- [37:49]
B
So, Tess, to make you comfortable with your prior government role, let's do a level set. What is supposed to happen if these were considered to be hostilities? What's sort of the normal rule, and what can the President do? What kind of reporting should the President make with respect to Congress? And then what happens if Congress does or doesn't act? And then we'll talk about sort of what's actually going on because the White House seems to be doing something quite different than what would be the norm.
- [38:20]
A
It's really great to be here with both of you. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to talk with you, unfortunately, about a subject that is really serious and not going in a good direction. So the question. Well, compound is a good one, Andrew, and we can jump in there. So look, if we're talking ordinary course, before this campaign began, there would have been a really serious evaluation of whether the President had authority to engage in it under domestic law, whether it was lawful under international law, and the really serious prospects of violating domestic criminal statutes like the murder statute, which applies extraterritorially and in international waters, putting service members at risk of being involved in conspiracy to commit murder, engaging in extrajudicial killings. All of those issues would have been surfaced and quite frankly, this would have been quashed. No strike ever would have been taken. But let's put that in a box for a minute, because I take it that your question is if we're in a place where there was a lawful basis to be taking strikes and the President did decide he had authority, you know, based on the advice of Counsel under Article 2 of the Constitution, because Congress hasn't authorized this and hostilities began that way, which has happened many times before, and we can get into precedents later. So say we're in that world and the first strike happens on September 2, within 48 hours under a statute called the War Powers Resolution that you Just referred to. And this statute was passed right in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Congress being extremely frustrated that they couldn't get Nixon out. Right. And there was a secret bombing campaign going on in Cambodia that was also one of the kind of abuse of authority type executive actions that led to this big framework statute that said, no, we need to rein in executive branch practice around dropping bombs when we're not even aware, let alone having authorized it.
- [40:11]
B
Tess, can I just interrupt you just to make sure people are. The power to declare war belongs to Congress. So that's why Congress is able to pass this statute to say, you know, you may have to do something President, but we're like, you may have to take some immediate action in some unusual circumstances, but we're going to cabin that in certain ways.
- [40:31]
A
That's right. And it's always been understood that not only does Congress have the power to declare war under the Constitution explicitly, but there are a host of other war making and war related powers that are given to Congress explicitly in the Constitution. We could go through a dozen examples, but it's the power to police the lines up to war and to fund the military and all the other things that make war happen. All of that is actually vested in Congress. So I'm glad you paused on that, Andrew. It's really important as a baseline now what, what the President has under Article 2 is the authority to be commander in chief of the armed forces. And that was time of the founding seen as kind of an operational title. It meant in battle you actually command the troops. Now, going way back, there's always been some understanding that in a situation of true emergency of the United States has been attacked or is imminently being attacked, Congress may not even have time to come back into session. Right back then they would have had to ride horses to do so. So you need to think about that kind of real emergency situation. It was always understood that the President would have authority to defend the nation from attack in extremist emergency situation. That is what has been stretched and stretched and stretched ever since by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.
- [41:48]
B
In spite of the fact that technology would suggest that a reason to shrink that because people can not just take planes, but they can get on zoom calls like we are right now to. In other words, you would think technology would be working against that. The exigencies that existed in the 18th century are one that obviously can exist, but they are reduced in terms of scope obviously depending on the emergency.
- [42:15]
A
That's right. And look, we're not a small defenseless nation. The Fact is we're not getting attacked domestically very often. This just isn't a situation that's arising. So most of the instances that we could look at in the past century, but certainly in the post World War II era. Right. Of the United States choosing to use force based on the President's unilateral authority without Congressional authorization. Most of those involve situations where it'd be hard to claim the United States is actually being attacked, at least not on our soil. Right. But there are a host of them where it's sort of in the reasonable minds can differ, but it's probably acceptable to think about it is still within the President's authority. They're in situations like we need to rescue nationals abroad or we need to protect an embassy. Right. We need to evacuate people as a civil war is breaking out. And there hasn't been great debate about those in the modern era because they're within that reasonable kind of penumbra. If we want to use legal terms of what the Constitution might be thought to allow the President to do on unilateral authority without Congress having acted, it's only in the last couple of decades that that's gotten expanded even further. And we talked about this when we talked about the Iran strikes that that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel now famously has this two part test that's been employed for a while now that they ask, can the President act unilaterally? Well, part one, is there a sufficiently important national interest being advanced? And part two is the kind of use of force being undertaken in its nature, its scope and its duration, the kind of thing that we think would constitute war as the Constitution conceives of it, which would require Congress then to declare it. And that has been understood in these series of OLC memos to essentially be a big ground war with, you know, U.S. troops on the ground, risk of escalation, taking casualties, that kind of thing.
- [44:06]
B
All we'll see is Office of Legal Counsel, the sort of legal gurus at the Department of Justice, who the Executive branch turns to for sort of almost the final word on these subjects.
- [44:17]
A
So the key kind of understanding now in the Executive Branch is that if those two parts of the test are met, sufficiently important national interest and not amounting to war in the constitutional sense as they've laid it out, then the President can act unilaterally. I should pause here to note that that's not Congress's understanding of the scope of the president's unilateral Article 2 authority. That's the Executive Branch's understanding, Congress need not acquiesce in that. And courts haven't had to look at the question because issues of the use of force usually get dismissed on all kinds of threshold grounds. So that's an Executive Branch understanding of the scope of that authority. It has gotten broader and broader over the years and it doesn't amount anymore to a question of are we under attack now? Break. Break.
- [45:01]
C
Yeah.
- [45:01]
A
Put the Constitution aside. Say the President already has authority or has claimed Authority under Article 2, totally separately from that. There's this statute called the War Powers Resolution, and it was passed in 1973 to say, look, even if the President has acted unilaterally within 48 hours of hostilities or imminent hostilities, and we can get into what that keyword hostility means in a minute, the President has to report to Congress on the action that's been taken, the purpose of it, the likely duration of it, what authority he's acting based on. Right. And then really importantly, that report within 48 hours of hostilities or imminent hostilities starts a clock that we call the 60 day clock because within 60 days of that report or the date the report should have been submitted. Right. So Congress thought about this. What if the President doesn't comply, this clock ends and the use of U.S. forces in those hostilities or imminent hostilities has to end and the U.S. you know, armed forces need to be withdrawn from that situation by operation of law. Congress need not take a vote. There's no further action that needs to be taken for that 60 day cutoff to come into effect. And the only way around it essentially is if Congress affirmatively authorizes the action within those two months. And the idea was, look, there will be situations of the need for self defense where the President has to act. But if we're going to war, if there's going to be this kind of use of US Armed forces in a situation that Congress really should be authorizing in order to fulfill its constitutional role, then there's going to be a break on the President and we're going to require some transparency. That's the reporting. And then it's going to have teeth through the withdrawal provision. There were other provisions that were meant to add additional teeth that we can talk about later that have sort of fallen by the wayside, but that's kind of the core framework. And so right now, when you, when we're thinking about these vessel strikes in the Caribbean, we've got the President arguably violating Article 2 because he's claiming the constitutional authority to engage in extrajudicial killings. That's Never been claimed before. We're violating international law because there's no basis to be using force in self defense. And now that it's been more than 60 days from that first strike and we're in an ongoing military campaign that the President is calling an armed conflict, we're violating the War Powers Resolution as well. Because that 60 day clock has already run.
- [47:20]
C
You're going exactly where I wanted to go. Because it feels like there's a real internal inconsistency here in what the White House is claiming or the Department of Defense is claiming, because I refuse to call it the Department of War. Only Congress can call it the Department of War. So the President started out, remember at the very beginning there was a document that we all got to see that said that this was. The President directed these strikes because pursuant to the law of armed conflict. Right. That he needed to use force in self defense because of these attacks by these designated cartel terrorist organizations and that this was an armed conflict conflict. Now, as I understand it, after having initially provided War Powers resolution notice, the 60 days would have expired more than a week ago. As I understand it, the President's position now is these are not hostilities. And because War Powers Resolution pegs the notice and the clock to hostilities, we don't have to comply with that. Can you have an armed conflict that is also not hostilities? Does that, that make sense?
- [48:27]
B
And what does the statute say? Like, does the statute define it, the word hostilities? I know the answer, but I think it's useful for people to know. Is there a definition that Congress provided? And what is the White House's argument? I would assume that when you think about war powers, war is one thing, but this seems deliberately to have ratcheted this. What is required of the executive to something less than war to hostilities. What is the argument for why this is not hostilities?
- [48:59]
A
Great question. So let's jump in first with the unfortunate fact that the War Powers Resolution does not define the word hostilities. So this question has been debated for decades now, and there's mixed and muddy executive branch practice. But going back as far as 1975 when the Ford administration was first trying to figure out how to comply with this statute, there was a memo to Congress that basically said hostilities is a situation in which units of the US Armed forces are actively engaging in exchanges of fire with opposing units of hostile forces. Now that doesn't actually accord with what Congress was thinking when they passed the law. And we know that because they create a record. Right? So in the Congressional Record you have things like the House report for the statute that was written prior to its enactment. And that's where you should look to understand what a term in a statute means. Right. You don't look at the post enactment practice of the executive branch. You look at the pre passage legislative history in Congress to understand what a word means in the text. And there's actually something really illuminating in that text. The House Foreign Affairs Committee report on the War Powers Resolution says the word hostilities was substituted for the phrase armed conflict during the drafting process because it was considered to be broader in scope. In addition to a situation in which fighting has actually begun, hostilities also encompasses a state of confrontation in which no shots have been fired, but where there is a clear and present danger of armed conflict. Right. So there's no way to reconcile that with what the executive branch has been claiming. That requires active exchanges of fire.
- [50:40]
B
And can I just again turn to this issue of, of. Well, one, the history. If it's coming into effect because of Vietnam, where we were doing unilateral bombing in Cambodia, that to me helps inform what it should be doing. But also there is something anachronistic about this idea that it only has to do with a back and forth, only if there's an ability to have this back and forth, because that is not how modern warfare is working these days. The idea that you can have drone strikes and say under a theory that hostilities has to include, it's like it takes two to tango. That is not what happens with drone strikes. And to me it is. If you go down this road and tell me if I'm being too alarmist. But if you go down this road, why not just have drone strikes in the United States?
- [51:31]
A
Right. It takes most of modern warfare off the table, to be honest, except for the exceptional large ground confrontation. But to be clear too, and I think this is important for our understanding of what Congress was trying to get at, it's not just hostilities that requires a report and it's not just hostilities that triggers the 60 day cutoff. It's also imminent hostilities. Right, Right. A situation where there was going to be a clear and present danger of a confrontation in which no shots have been fired. So they're really trying to police the slippery slopes that lead to hostilities. And over time, to be fair to executive branch practice. Right. There has been a long practice of reporting one off strikes over the horizon strikes, drone strikes. Right. So Clinton reported Tomahawk missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 98. There was no chance of retaliation. Right. Against the United States there. Obama reported strikes against Houthi radar facilities in Yemen in 2016. The first Trump administration reported strikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018. Those were launched, if I remember correctly, from the Mediterranean raid.
- [52:32]
B
They reported this.
- [52:33]
A
And they reported this exactly. If it was hostilities on September 4th, it's hostilities on November 3rd. And you just can't get around that. It's the same word in the statute. If you interpreted the action that you took on September 2nd, if you looked at the statute and you said, yep, that's hostilities, got to submit a report, it's definitely still hostilities. When you've been engaging in an ongoing campaign of those kinds of strikes, which you're calling an armed conflict right now, unfortunately. And we can get into this if you want. There's precedent for that kind of switcheroo. That's what the Obama administration did in Libya in 2011. I think the most important thing about that was it was resoundingly rejected.
- [53:09]
B
Right.
- [53:10]
A
Congress pushed back hard. If anything is hostilities, it's this. You're engaging in an extended air campaign, right, where you have been dropping bombs for more than two months. And there was a four factor test that the executive branch put together. And it did rely on past executive branch practice saying the bit about exchange of fire being important, about exposure of US Forces to harm, and they said, look, all of that is really limited here. They said the military means being used by the US Are limited. And they leaned really hard on the civilian protection mission being legitimate, basically substituting legitimacy for lawfulness, in my view. And that's one of the things where you have a big difference here. Right? So certainly there's no claim to moral authority with these vessel strikes in the Caribbean. It's not a civilian protection mission. It's extrajudicial killing the risk to US Forces. Also, I think arguably it's not going to be coming from those defenseless boats themselves, in which, as far as we understand it, no one is even armed on board. But this is happening in our region, right, just off our shores. And so the idea that there could be a risk, I think is something that should factor in. But also in the Libya context, right, There was no claim that the United States had suffered an armed attack and was already in an armed conflict. That's what the Trump administration is claiming here. And that's what beggars believe, the kind of idea that, that we've suffered an armed attack and we're in the middle of a non international armed conflict with 24 different organized armed groups. That claim doesn't sit with the claim that these aren't hostilities that Just, it just can't be the case. And that's why we need to see a strong bipartisan pushback from Congress.
- [54:46]
C
So I want to take us back to where you started when you referenced what's happening as murder. And you and I wrote some proposed questions for the Attorney General back when this all first started about, you know, hey, have you advised anything about whether. Whether this is murder or not? And one of the things that concerns me, Tess, and I know it concerns you because we've talked about it, is that the highest level lawyers in our U.S. armed forces, the JAGS Judge Advocates General, have been fired. They would normally be advising the Department of Defense about the legality of proposed actions, in addition to the other lawyers we have talked about who have weighed in. And the President does now have his selected person as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. It has been reported that the Office of Legal Counsel has written an opinion that finds that these strikes are legally justified. That opinion has not been made public. We aren't able to scrutinize that opinion. We kind of get bits and pieces. Initially, I guess it was briefed to just Republicans on the Armed Forces Committee. Now, I guess some Democrats have been briefed. But still, this hasn't been made public. But what the impact of an OLC memo saying that this is lawful is on those soldiers who might otherwise be exposing themselves to criminal liability is essentially, and I think Jack Goldsmith recently wrote about this, is to kind of give them immunity because they can say, we were relying on a legal opinion. So putting these things together, you fire the JAG lawyers who might have advised otherwise, you put your selected, you know, political person into a position to write an opinion that, you know, we haven't seen publicly, but legal scholars such as yourself and many others, there is no domestic or international legal basis for this. Yet you're now taking that murder really kind of off the table by creating this legal opinion. How much of a problem is this, Tess?
- [56:48]
A
It's a problem of our time that I think we'll look back and say was defining, and we'll wish people had paid more attention to it. Look, this is. Is the President of the United States claiming that he has the authority to use the military to kill outside of the law, right? Outside of any domestic or international legal framework that we would recognize. And you have former uniformed lawyers stepping up, saying that, which is something that folks should really be listening to because they've been in that situation. They've seen the pressure of being in an operational context. And the phrase that Jeff Korn used. Right. Was this isn't pushing the envelope, it's shredding it.
- [57:26]
C
It.
- [57:26]
A
There's no plausible basis that these killings are lawful. So what you're left with is service members who at some point in the future, if there is criminal accountability here, are going to be trying to rely on a superior order's defense. Right. Which is tricky when the order itself is manifestly unlawful, which is the one reason, you know, it's. Is the place where that defense doesn't apply, let alone what might happen in foreign jurisdictions.
- [57:52]
C
Right, right.
- [57:52]
A
Elsewhere. But I'd like to focus not on the service members, but on the people who are ordering this campaign and orchestrating it. So I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the service members have been put in this awful position.
- [58:03]
C
Yes.
- [58:03]
A
Where accountability needs to come in is the people who have authorized, planned, coordinated this campaign. And I will say we made a big mistake not holding the people who authorized and coordinated the torture campaign accountable during the Obama years. We've set, I think, a really unfortunate precedent that what that looks like is political retribution rather than upholding the rule of law. It's time to get past that. The rule of law requires accountability for this kind of thing. And look, you just can't use the military for an unlawful killing spree. What that does to the United States is reputation, to our ability to say we uphold the rule of law. What it does to those who serve, who wear the uniform right on behalf of our nation. It's unforgivable. So there. There needs to be real accountability, regardless of that OLC memo, which, by the way, it's an executive branch view that. That provides this sort of immunization.
- [59:00]
C
And that's another point. Right. These are things are hard to challenge in court because Congress could bring a challenge in court. Congress has authority to bring litigation. But it can't be just a few members of Congress. Right. And right now, now, I know we'll finish up with just what is Congress doing? But if they're not doing it, the only other people that have obvious standing to sue would be survivors or victims, families. Because a court ruling could definitely change the calculus about the OLC opinion. And if to the extent that military officers who are planning and carrying these out are relying on that OLC opinion, court opinion, now, maybe it would have to go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Court could change that calculus, but that is a tough thing to do when you're killing people in international waters.
- [59:46]
B
So, Tess, I have a final question for you and I think your comments, by the way, about accountability and what we're doing with respect to the military, it could not be said on a more appropriate day. This is Veterans Day. And so that is not, I think, lost on anyone. Just this sort of credit cur from you about what we need to be doing. You had made reference to that when the Obama administration did something that Congress really objected and you said this is, no, this is not what we intended. What is happening now? Where are we in Congress? I know there was activity this past week. What happened and what do you think the prospects are for Congress standing up here?
- [60:31]
A
Yeah, so the, the pushback against the Libya operations in 2011 was to some extent bipartisan, but unfortunately they didn't have the votes, just as this Congress doesn't have the votes to actually bring an end to what they viewed as an unlawful continuation of the hostilities in Libya. And here we have a situation where I think unfortunately the party lines are even more hardened, as we all know. And there's another mechanism that's provided for in the War Powers Resolution that gives Congress the ability to pass a resolution requiring the withdrawal of armed forces at any time, whether it's during that 60 day window, after that 60 day window, anytime. Unfortunately, changes in the law that we don't have time to get into have made it harder for one of those resolutions to actually be enacted. And now it would go to the President for signature or veto. It's obviously a veto in these circumstances. So you need a super majority to override a veto to use this mechanism in the War Powers Resolution. Now, which was intended to require a simple majority in both chambers, but we have still privileged kind of rules of process that bring these things up for a vote faster than other kinds of votes. And we've seen two of those. So a couple of weeks ago we saw a vote under the War Powers Resolution requiring the termination of the use of armed forces for these vessel strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Unfortunately, that vote failed and it didn't get Republican support. We then had a second one in response to all the saber rattling and the buildup with respects to Venezuela and the threats against the Maduro government. And that one was sponsored not just by Cain and Schiff on the Democratic side, but also by Senator Paul, who has very strong and I think well founded views about Congress's role in this area. And that was a vote to prohibit the use of US Armed forces in an attack on Venezuela or in or against Venezuela. That did get a little bit more support, but not nearly enough to pass so the realm that we're in now is Congress needs to be using its traditional oversight tools. They need to be thinking about funding cutoffs if they could get the votes. But absent that, they need to be exercising more serious oversight. We need hearings. We need high level people in the chair. Right. We need requests for information to be answered. And we need to think about very, very carefully, kind of what is the series of steps that would be needed, right, to show exactly the situation that our service members are being put in. Because as you said, Andrew, I think if anything should resonate with the American people, right. It's the abuse of our military in this way. It should be seen as unconscionable. And that's something that Congress should be shining a spotlight on. It's also reckless, you know, a waste of funds. All the other things tarnishes our international reputation with Gohan. So, you know, Congress needs to be shining a spotlight on all of those things through hearings, through information requests, through all the traditional tools of oversight, until they can get the votes to actually rein this in through funding cutoffs or otherwise.
- [63:29]
B
Well, Tess, let me just say one thank you so much for your expertise, your opinions, your insight about what you think should happen. For people who are listening to this, who want to know more and read more, you certainly can go to Just Security. I know we sound like a broken record record, but there actually is a recent piece addressing these issues and it's written so that everyone can sort of understand it. And so you will have that. And Tess, I cannot thank you enough on Veterans Day to come and speak to us about a topic that could not be more serious for our country. It could not be more serious in terms of the rule of law. Thank you so much.
- [64:14]
A
Thank you for having me and thank you for taking the question seriously.
- [64:17]
C
It was fantastic, Tess.
- [64:18]
B
Thank you, Mary. That was so fantastic on Veterans Day. I can't think of a better way to honor our country. And I want to thank everyone for listening and staying engaged. Remember, you can subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC originals ad free. You'll also get subscriber only bonus content like our conversation just out on Friday with Carol Leonig and Aaron Davis on their new book How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department, which was also a really terrific conversation and a terrific book.
- [64:57]
C
This podcast is produced by Vicki Virgolina. Our associate producers are Iggy Monda and Rana Shabazzi. And our intern is Colette Holt, Bob Mallory and Hazik Bin Ahmad Fared are our audio engineers, Katie Lau is our senior manager of audio production and Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio.
- [65:19]
B
Search for Main justice wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.
- [65:31]
C
Foreign.
- [65:39]
B
Hey, Riley herbst here with 2311 racing, waiting for the bus, staring at traffic crawl hard pass. I rev up Chumba Casino instead. Fast spins, blazing winds, all fun. No downloads needed. Why let the clock drag when you can let the reels spin? Next up stop jumbacasino.com let's jumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Void where prohibited by law. CTNC's 21+ sponsored by Jumba Casino.