Will Trump Defy the Courts?

Summary

Pod Save America – Episode Summary: "Will Trump Defy the Courts?"

Release Date: February 11, 2025
Host/Author: Pod Save America, Crooked Media
Guests: Leah Littman (Legal Expert from Strict Scrutiny)

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Introduction

In this episode of Pod Save America, the hosts—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor—delve into the escalating tensions between former President Donald Trump and the U.S. judicial system. The conversation is anchored by recent events suggesting that Trump and his allies might challenge court rulings more aggressively than before, potentially igniting a constitutional crisis.

Trump's Super Bowl Appearance and Gulf of America Declaration

The episode opens with a satirical recount of Trump's visit to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, where he announced the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America." This move, intended to showcase American dominance, was met with widespread ridicule and confusion.

• Jon Favreau [02:50]: "Air Force One is currently in international waters for the first time in history, flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America."

The hosts mock the proclamation, highlighting its absurdity and the negative public reception.

• Leah Littman [05:12]: "I will say, though, if I were to think of the places that would like it the most, it would be that ring of kind of red America... Greater Tampa."

Imposition of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum

Trump's administration has reinstated tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including from allies like Canada and Mexico. This policy echoes his first term's protectionist measures, aimed ostensibly at bolstering American industries but resulting in increased costs for consumers and strained international relations.

• Jon Favreau [20:05]: "It turns out people's views on Trump's tariffs are mixed at best. A new poll shows a slight majority favors tariffs on goods from China, but even bigger majorities oppose tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and Europe."

Brewing Constitutional Crisis: Defying Court Orders

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the possibility of Trump defying judicial decisions. This stems from recent actions where federal judges have restricted access to Treasury Department payment systems by Elon Musk and affiliated entities.

• JD Vance [34:11]: "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."

The hosts express concern over this defiance, questioning the stability of constitutional checks and balances.

Impact on Government Agencies: CFPB and NIH Cuts

The Trump administration, under the influence of allies like Elon Musk, is systematically dismantling key government agencies. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been effectively shut down, hindering its ability to regulate large financial institutions. Similarly, significant cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) jeopardize vital research funding.

• Leah Littman [52:04]: "The NIH budget adjusted for inflation is about what it was at the beginning of the Obama administration."

These actions not only disrupt essential services but also erode public trust in governmental institutions.

The Trump Meme Coin Grift

An investigative segment reveals that the Trump family has profited immensely from a meme cryptocurrency, dubbed the "Trump Coin." While early investors have lost substantial funds, the Trump family and their partners have amassed approximately $100 million in trading fees.

• Leah Littman [63:33]: "At least 810,000 people have lost money on the Trump coin, while the Trump family made nearly $109 million in fees."

This scandal highlights potential conflicts of interest and unethical financial practices within Trump's circles.

Legal Implications Discussed with Leah Littman

Leah Littman, a legal expert from her podcast Strict Scrutiny, provides an in-depth analysis of the legal challenges posed by Trump's actions.

• Leah Littman [35:52]: "Over time, will they become less concerned about those kinds of risks because of rhetoric from JD Vance and because of the actions of the higher level people inside the administration?"

She emphasizes the threat posed by Trump and his allies in undermining the rule of law and destabilizing federal institutions.

Public Opinion and Approval Ratings

Despite numerous controversies, Trump's approval rating stands at 53%, with a significant portion of voters perceiving him as "tough, energetic, focused, and effective."

• Jon Favreau [23:22]: "66% of voters think Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices, though his approval rating is at 53%."

This disparity suggests a complex public perception, where Trump's assertive actions resonate with his base while leaving broader electorates concerned about economic and legal repercussions.

Concluding Thoughts

The episode wraps up with reflections on the potential long-term impacts of Trump's administration on the U.S. constitutional framework. The hosts express apprehension about the erosion of institutional checks and the possibility of a weakened judiciary under sustained defiance from the executive branch.

• Leah Littman [86:54]: "The administration is trying to do all this activist shit inside of these agencies... undermine our system of government, our system of laws."

The conversation underscores the urgent need for vigilance and proactive measures to preserve democratic institutions and the rule of law.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jon Lovett [04:33]: "But are they happy? It seems like it."

• Leah Littman [05:51]: "They're always the victims and they're always whining about how they're being attacked."

• Jon Favreau [32:27]: "You have to do the apples to apples. The cause of America's budget deficit are the Bush tax cuts, the Trump tax cuts, the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid."

• Leah Littman [40:19]: "They are physically scared."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Escalating Tensions: The Trump administration is increasingly clashing with the judiciary, challenging court rulings that impede their agenda.

2. Institutional Undermining: Efforts to dismantle agencies like the CFPB and cut funding to the NIH threaten essential governmental functions and research.

3. Economic Policies: Reinstated tariffs have polarized public opinion, affecting both international relations and domestic consumer prices.

4. Financial Misconduct: The Trump family's involvement in the Trump Coin scandal raises ethical concerns about financial practices tied to political figures.

5. Constitutional Risks: The possible defiance of court orders by Trump and his allies poses a significant threat to the U.S. constitutional system and democratic checks and balances.

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Conclusion

This episode of Pod Save America provides a comprehensive analysis of the current political landscape, focusing on the potential constitutional crisis instigated by Trump's confrontational stance against the judiciary and his administration's aggressive policy measures. Through incisive commentary and expert insights, the hosts highlight the urgent need to safeguard democratic institutions against undermining forces.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Tommy Vitor]

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[Jon Lovett]

USAA.

[Jon Favreau]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm Jon Lovett.

[Leah Littman]

I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Jon Favreau]

On today's show, Donald Trump and J.D. vance hinted over the weekend that they may defy the courts after a few federal judges have started to put the brakes on Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the federal government. We'll talk about the brewing constitutional crisis in a bit, and I'll dig in on the legal issues later in the show with Strict Scrutiny's Leah Littman, who joins us. We'll also talk about how Elon's wrecking ball is putting everything from cancer research to consumer protection at risk. So much so that even some Republicans are starting to speak up just a little bit. Just a peep. And in Case you were wondering whether Trump and his family are still shameless grifters, it now looks like they've made $100 million in trading fees on the Trump meme coin while a lot of investors got screwed.

[Jon Lovett]

But are they happy?

[Jon Favreau]

It seems like it.

[Leah Littman]

Honestly, pretty psyched.

[Jon Favreau]

We are. We are recording this the Monday after what used to be known as Super Bowl Sunday, but will henceforth be known is something else entirely. Thanks to our new king and savior. Here's what was heard aboard Air Force One en route to the big game in New Orleans.

[Jon Lovett]

Air Force One is currently in international.

[Jon Favreau]

Waters for the first time in history, flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America.

[Unknown Speaker]

This is a proclamation declaring today, February.

[Jon Lovett]

9, 2021, as the first ever Gulf of America Day.

[Unknown Speaker]

And we're flying right over it right now. So we thought this would be appropriate. Even bigger than the Super Bowl. This is a big. I love the people of Canada. We have a great relationship. But if they became our 51st state, it would be the greatest thing they could ever do. It would be unbelievable. It would be a cherished state because without the US Canada really doesn't have a country. And if we say we want our cars to be made in Detroit with a stroke of a pen, I can do that. Other things in addition to that would not allow Canada to be a viable country. There's a light over the United States. People are happy. They're more confident. The approval ratings for this country have gone through the sky.

[Jon Favreau]

Is that what it is? It's a light. A light over the United States.

[Jon Lovett]

American people are taking solid shits. They're sleeping through the night.

[Jon Favreau]

Where to begin? Where to begin, guys? I did find it notable that Trump was somehow able to insert himself at the center of one of America's last and certainly biggest monocultural moments. He sat down for an interview with Fox News's Bret Baer, part of which aired before the game. He also became the first sitting president to attend the super bowl, where he was cheered on his way in and left before the second half. What do you guys make of him going and basically just being on our screens and in our faces even more than he was during the first term.

[Leah Littman]

God, so annoying. Just so annoying. Just give me my Super Bowl. By the way, was that the Air Force One pilot doing that announcement? So we're getting a.

[Jon Favreau]

Seems like it.

[Leah Littman]

A uniform member of the US Military in on your political announcement about the Gulf of America.

[Jon Lovett]

Check out this norms fag.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I mean, Apple, Google are changing the name. It's all over the Place. It's an even. It's an even. As he said, it's an even bigger deal than the Super Bowl. And guess what? No one. Everyone thinks this is stupid. This is. Of all the shit that, like the polls, it's not popular, which surprised me. I thought people would be like, gulf of America cool. But it turns out even American voters smarter than that.

[Jon Lovett]

I will say, though, if I were to think of the places that would like it the most, it would be that ring of kind of red America that runs from, like, Clearwater, Florida, through the Panhandle, down through the Down. Down on the Texas.

[Leah Littman]

Greater Tampa.

[Jon Lovett]

I love Tampa, for sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I'd love to know whoever thought of that before this became a thing with Trump. You know, like, I'd love to know the. Someone should do the history. An oral history of how Gulf of Mexico became Gulf of America and a Trump proposal.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, we gotta get that person and the guy who told Seal to become an anthropomorphic singing seal singing about Mountain Dew, and we send them both a Gitmo.

[Jon Favreau]

That was maybe. It was definitely number one for a while, that song in 1994. 93. 94. I can't remember exactly. I was in eighth grade, so I think it was 94.

[Jon Lovett]

It was associated with Batman Forever.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, Batman Forever.

[Jon Lovett]

That's how I know it.

[Jon Favreau]

Then all these years later, 30 years later, 30 years later, he's a seal.

[Leah Littman]

That made me a communist on the spot.

[Jon Lovett]

I haven't considered that. Was it for capitalism. I was making a delicious orange cake based on a recipe by Nigella Lawson, and then I got a text from my father saying, what is this? Which led me to believe that the halftime show had begun. So I did turn that on. And then I went back, once the oranges were done steeping, to making my cake. That's what I did.

[Leah Littman]

Dad's a Drake guy.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. There were a few questions from parents in our home. Is there going to be another Act 2? Is this just. Is it just this guy? Anyway, my thought about, first of all, Trump likes to flood the zone, and he's out there all the time, and that's helpful. And everyone's made that point. And I do think it's a lesson for. For Democrats going forward who are running for president. But he really does seem this time around, like he is more of a king in, like, the ceremonial sense. And, like, Elon now is the prime minister just doing all the work, and Trump is just. He's just posting, talking. He's, like, a little more relaxed. You know, he's he's holding court. He's hosting. You always say he's hosting 7T. And then like, meanwhile, Elon's just running around breaking the entire federal government, eliminating services for people.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, he's free.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm not saying it's the worst model, by the way. Well, like, next, like, I would like to have a Democratic president maybe next time, who is out there all the time and, you know, just talking to the country the whole time. And then there's a whole bunch of people doing the work.

[Jon Lovett]

So we are still very much in the honeymoon phase. And I think this is really effective for a couple of reasons. One point that Dan and Ben made when they were talking, or I think it was a point that Dan made that conversation, was that this, that Trump paid for being Smith with Ben Smith, uh, which is a great episode people should check out. But Trump paid for being compared to Obama. He's now benefiting from being compared to Joe Biden being out there more and active. And we'll get into the politics of all these different moves and what people know is happening, what people don't know is happening. But fundamentally, he looks extremely active. He's everywhere. He's doing things. He seems dynamic. Uh, he seems like he's having fun because I think actually for the first time as president, he is genuinely having fun because he doesn't feel bound by any of the advisors who are telling him the rules that he didn't care about in the first place. Uh, but let's see what happens when there's. There's two ways in which this eventually has to, I think, give one, at a certain point, they won't be able to keep up with their own pace. I'm sure they're thrilled with themselves that the press can't keep up and the Democrats can't keep up. They can't keep up with this. That's the first. And the second is, you know, he called off that first round of tariffs. We are still, he is still able to deny that he is responsible for a plane crashing. Right. Even as he's getting rid of air traffic controller boards. Whatever. So let's see what happens when there start to be consequences for governing or consequences of just reality and the crises that happen to any president. Right.

[Leah Littman]

So, like, let's talk about a comparison with Obama for a second though, because I, I watched this and I thought, why couldn't we have gone to stuff Every time Obama wanted to do something cool, we were told it was a security risk or it was going to be inconvenience. People. And I would just ask everyone to Google Obama and date night. Remember that 2009, Obama and Michelle, they get on the plane, they fly to New York, they go to dinner and they go to a show. Fox News and all the conservative media outlets went insane for weeks about what they did, whether it was out of touch, the cost to taxpayers. I would love to know how much it costs to pack up Air Force One, fly to New Orleans, rename a gulf a body of water, and then leave it halftime, you know, but, like, that's not part of the conversation because of this massive conservative bias that, you know, Fox put on the game. And they interviewed Trump before.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just think he's. Forget about comparing him to either Biden or Obama, like, just aside from that, which are all good comparisons. Just compared to himself in the first term. Right. Which is. I am wrestling with the fact that we. He is. He seems to be having more fun and is in more places and is more culturally accepted and is part of, you know. Right. Fox News is always going to attack everything that a Democratic president does, for sure, but just people who don't tune into Fox or the more liberal parts of the media, but are just normies in the country. You know, you see the super bowl and there's Brad Pitt and there's Taylor Swift and there's, you know, New Orleans and then. And there's Donald Trump, and he's just there and he's part of it with everyone else. And it's also yet, compared to the first term, much more dangerous. And everything he's doing is much more lawless and there are much more consequences. And it just seems there is this sort of disconnect between how he is in the second term and how he appears and how he's being received and what is actually happening. Though I will say that I think.

[Leah Littman]

He always would have been welcome in New Orleans at a Super bowl, to be honest, in the first term. Just in terms of culturally and people liking him and stuff like that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, of course. But I'm just saying, like, it was. I don't know if he was there the first term, there would have been some. I mean, there were companies boycotting stuff. It was a whole different scene there. It was just. It was very, very different. But, yeah, no, I just think it's.

[Jon Lovett]

There's a way. There's. Look, I think it's just, there's a way in which he is right now, like, ascendant and feeling strong and that, like, that crowd feels happy to Happy to cheer him. And then boo Taylor Swift and that, like, everybody knows that that's what's going to happen.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And that's what we're going to do together. And that's part of the fun.

[Leah Littman]

But they booed her because she's dating Travis Kelce and it's half Eagles fan. You know what I mean? Everyone making the comparison, it's like, come on, guys. These are just bitter Eagles fans. They're everywhere. They've done way worse to, like, Santa Claus. They throw batteries.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

He used to get booed more earlier. He used to get booed one of.

[Jon Lovett]

The most unpopular presidents in American history. I mean, he was booed everywhere he went. He was booed at tons of games.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. But I do. I think, like, look at this time in Joe Biden's first year. It was, like, 60% approval, and his staff was, like, pushing around and that he was the second coming of fdr. And it was like, that was taken, you know, somewhat seriously by various outlets. Right. So that's just. I mean, it's true, you know, and when we were sitting there, like, joe Biden's doing great. Look at that. So I guess we'll see.

[Jon Lovett]

And he was. And Joe Biden was in the CA box.

[Jon Favreau]

I think he was in the CA box. Yeah. So we heard Trump once again talking about making Canada our 51st state. Though every time he brings this up, it sounds like it started from, like, joke to maybe he's serious to that one that we just heard. That sounds like a threat. I mean, that was. They. It's good for them to do this. But also, they wouldn't have a country without America. And with one stroke of the pen, I can make sure the cars are made in Detroit, which I didn't mean.

[Leah Littman]

What is he in Mexico invading them? What is he talking about?

[Jon Favreau]

Tommy, how are our. Our poor Canadian friends taking all of this?

[Leah Littman]

They don't like it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Leah Littman]

There was a YouGov poll. 77% of Canadians oppose Canada becoming a part of the United States. Trump also keeps claiming that the U.S. is subsidizing Canada, which he just doesn't understand what a trade imbalance is. Like, we buy a lot of oil from Canada, thus we buy more of their stuff than they buy of our stuff. But it's. It is really pissing people off up there. I mean, there was a sketch on a sketch comedy show in Canada where you had two guys at a grocery store, and they were talking about what products to buy, and one guy keeps scolding the other for buying American things. And replacing it with. The joke is that they're shittier, inferior Canadian versions of whatever it is, even maple syrup. And it's pretty funny, but it went super viral. And then I was talking to a Canadian friend today.

[Jon Favreau]

Sketch comedy in Canada. What's that? Like, the sharp, sharp comedy? Do we like sketch comedy?

[Leah Littman]

They're famously good.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, we. We owe a lot of our Canada. We stole it from them. That's one of our biggest imports.

[Leah Littman]

What was. What was the famous one? This is killing me.

[Jon Lovett]

Kids in the hall came from. But a ton of, like, Jim Carrey, a ton of SNL people. Everybody's from Canada.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, but. But on top of that, like, there was that one clip of Canadians booing the national anthem at, like, a hockey game that went viral. Apparently that's happening over and over and over again at NBA games and NHL games, et cetera. So I don't know. I do also think you have to view this in the context of, like, last week, he announced that we're going to annex ethnically cleanse and then occupy Gaza. We're picking fights with Denmark over Greenland. There's the Panama thing. So, like, whether or not he's serious, he's pissing everybody off.

[Jon Favreau]

And we didn't play it because there was just too much sound to play. But Gaza is another example where he has the press conference, says that they want to own Gaza, doesn't rule out sending troops. The next day, he walks back the troops. The White House tries to walk the thing back. Then he gets asked about it on the plane on the way to the super bowl, and he's like, own it. Like, owning a resort, like, we're gonna own it and develop it. Like, he just. He doubled down.

[Leah Littman]

It is ethnic cleansing. Two million people live there. He wants to push them out and steal their land. That is illegal.

[Jon Favreau]

Also, on the Canada thing, I heard. I saw a piece that last week, Trudeau was caught on a hut mic telling people that, like. Telling people that, like, Trump is serious about Canada and that he thinks that Trump wants their.

[Leah Littman]

They're minerals.

[Jon Favreau]

They're minerals.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, the. The.

[Jon Favreau]

What are we doing? Are we like a. So I would say feudal Lord now. What are we doing?

[Jon Lovett]

It's really hard to. It's, like, hard to think about how to talk with. I saw Tim Miller make this point over the weekend. I thought it was a good one because he pointed out that Trump talking about Gaza in this way. I assume Trump talking about Canada in this way, it's breaking through, right? It's the kind of Thing that gets beyond where conversations around USAID and NIH grants and.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I would hope so.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, the president States talks about annexing the country to the. To the north. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

But, like, so, but then, like, you'll sometimes see from Democrats, I go, like, this is a distraction. Right. And. And, like, I agree. Right. Ultimately, like, like, if. If this is just part of Trump's kind of malign trade war to kind of bully Canada into accepting certain terms, like, it is in some sense a distraction. But I do think it's worth just, like, taking a beat and saying, well, so everyone gets to find out about it. We don't address it because it's a distraction. And so then all the culturally relevant conversations happen without Democrats offering a serious response. Beyond, like, distraction, Distraction.

[Jon Favreau]

That's what we're saying when everyone's like, what is this Gulf of America can't do?

[Jon Lovett]

It's a distraction.

[Leah Littman]

Won't help egg prices come down.

[Jon Lovett]

And, like, it's hard to talk, it's hard to deal with because it's. And it's meant to be. But the answers we seem to offer most often are, like, distraction. Boy, this is crazy. And constitutional crisis. As if, like, if you add the word constitutional, it, like, unlocks a new set of, like, controls. I don't know. But I do think it's worth just being like, hey, like, we really benefit from the fact that the world's largest border is safe and that there aren't skirmishes between us the way there are in the Himalayas, between China and India.

[Leah Littman]

Or Europe or Europe.

[Jon Lovett]

We benefit a lot. Right. That, that, that France and Germany aren't building trenches as often as they used to.

[Jon Favreau]

Or, like, even. Even more basic than that. Canada doesn't want to be the 51st state. It's not popular. No one there wants to join the United States. I thought that as the United States, we believed that people get to determine how they are governed. That seems to be a fundamental value in the United States. What are we talking about anymore?

[Jon Lovett]

And it is true.

[Jon Favreau]

What are we even talking about?

[Jon Lovett]

And it is true that there's nothing in the Constitution that requires people want to become a state before we make them one.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Jon Lovett]

But it's just sort of the way it's often, at least that it's best been done.

[Jon Favreau]

Core values. Right.

[Jon Lovett]

But. But the other piece of this, too, is it's like that. I feel like what's under assault is this, like, this idea of, like, there's a stability premium we pay, and it's expensive in a lot of different ways, but we get a lot for it, right? It's like, it's like we have a Make America premium. And for America Premium you don't have to worry about a war with Canada. And you can kind of trust that there aren't going to be a 19 year old political apparatchik in the payment system. And you know that there's some kind of divide between the military and law enforcement and the political appointees of the government, even if we've not always honored that. And like we can have an extremely trusting relationship which creates a lot of economic benefits for everybody. And now we have these doofuses running around the government being like, what are we paying for? Why are we doing this? What is the value of all this? And our two options right now are to convince people that the benefits of kind of common sense and stability are worth it. Even though you don't feel the pain or allowing these guys to rip things to pieces so terribly that we start to experience what America, how bad America could get. To prove that everybody, I guess that we were right the whole time as we slowly claw our way back, believe me.

[Jon Favreau]

But thinking about a third option and.

[Leah Littman]

I don't know if we have it important Correction. Big balls. Mr. Balls got a job at the State Department. So he's no longer at treasury. This is the doge 19 year old.

[Jon Favreau]

I think they threw him like a goodbye party. The treasury at the, at the systems office.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Hey, take Social Security checks with you.

[Jon Favreau]

Which I imagine, which I imagine being like the seventh.

[Jon Lovett]

The other thing like to point like it's like severance, like just, just turn.

[Jon Favreau]

Your turn people there and then suddenly. Well, I know, I know Big.

[Leah Littman]

I haven't heard season two yet.

[Jon Favreau]

I know Big Balls is different than the other one. Everyone know that, right? That Big Balls was the one who was fired for leaking information.

[Leah Littman]

He's not the racist.

[Jon Lovett]

All Doge Bros. Look the same to you. But the, but like I was also like, just sort of like taking a moment to like think about it. It's like, okay, what is he complaining about? Exactly. Like to Tommy's point, like, we actually, if you take out oil, we don't have a trade deficit with Canada. They buy a ton of stuff from us. We get more out of it than they do. They are our biggest export partner, which means that they are our biggest customer. 17%, 70% of everything the US sells around the world, we sell to Canada. They are. And like, no, I'm glad we've moved beyond a society that believes the customer is always Right. But as a rule, like, you don't, like, fucking try to. You don't, like, poke your biggest customer in the eye over and over again. It's just fucking stupid.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, now we'll see what happens. Because some real news from Trump was the announcement that he's putting 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico. So he did this in his first term. Trump announced similar steel and aluminum tariffs that were meant to target China, but ended up impacting US Businesses that rely on those materials, whether they get them from other countries or not. Trump later carved out exemptions to the tariffs for the rest of his term, and Biden rolled them back even more when he got into office. The tariffs reportedly just went into effect right before we started recording. It's Monday afternoon, and apparently there are no exemptions this time. So I don't know. It seems like these are not just a negotiating tactic. And it's real since they are, they have now been levied, just like the China one.

[Jon Lovett]

Hard for the world to call a meeting.

[Leah Littman]

You know, let's all get together, let's get on a zoom. Yeah, it's a negotiating position, but it is real. You know, I think it's just both, like, Trump has just shown us that he wants to tariff first, ask questions later. I mean, interestingly, that's good, Tommy. The US Stock. Thank you. The US Stock market was up on Monday, so Wall street is kind of brushing it off. They were like European steel producers that took a hit, but, like, I don't know, it's just. It's weird how the economic system is just kind of like, I have the.

[Jon Favreau]

Same reaction to it because the economic. It's like, if you're probably though, it's going to be felt by, like, people who are in these industries, and then consumers will pay higher prices for things that we buy that are made from steel and aluminum that are not made in the United.

[Leah Littman]

But even domestic steel producers, they didn't really increase their output that much the first time around in the first administration after the tariffs were put in place on imports. So it's not benefiting anybody.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And there was. Some of them were interviewed and they were like, I liked his protectionist instincts, but the first time around, it just ended up making everything more expensive.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

It turns out people's views on Trump's tariffs are mixed at best. A new poll from CBS over the weekend about Trump's first few weeks in office show a slight majority favors tariffs on goods from China, but even bigger majorities oppose tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and Europe, maybe because most Americans see those countries as our allies. The poll also shows that 66% of voters think that Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices, though his approval rating is at 53%, with around 2 thirds of voters describing the president as tough, energetic, focused, and effective. What do you guys make of the poll and especially the discrepancy between how people feel about Trump's economic agenda and his focus on lowering prices and how they feel about Trump's presidency overall?

[Leah Littman]

I mean, I think it reflects a lot of what love I was getting at earlier, which is, first of all, presidents tend to have a honeymoon period, and that's just kind of a tough political reality for all of us Democrats as we're trying to figure out how to fight this. And also, as much as I want to throw all of Trump's campaign promises in his face, like, the price of eggs is not down. You have not ended the war in Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera. You said he'd do it in 24 hours. I think most voters get that it was a shtick, and they're going to give him some time to actually get things done. But moreover, like, they just see him doing stuff. He's active. They might not like all of it, but he's doing things, he's taking action, he looks decisive, he's on the tv, he's signing shit and holding it up. No one can read what it says. But, you know, they, I guess, seem to like that so far and, you know, to feel the pain on this stuff. It's going to take some time. Like the, the, the response on should the US annex and occupy Gaza was like 13% in favor, like 47 something opposed, 41% were like, huh? You know, like most people are like, what? You know, And I think over time, if he slaps tariffs on Europe and Canada, if we really do have a military occupation in the Middle east, again, people will not like that. Like the Elon stuff also, I think will not wear that well over time, but it will take time.

[Jon Lovett]

It doesn't wear that well in this poll. In this poll, there's a lot of people who are looking at this and saying, I would like less or none of him, thank you very much. A billionaire interceding and having so much sway over the government, which I also took as a good sign. Yeah, I think we have a lot of ideological criticisms, obviously, with what Trump is doing. We don't like the way that he's doing it. But if you're not thinking about the value of forbearance and the ways in which it has been done in the past and why a government that moved more slowly and deliberately is ultimately more valuable, because over time, we all benefit from that, the safety and security of that kind of a system. Trump is like, he is moving so fast. They are doing a lot. It is not just the perception of it. They hit the ground running in a serious way. It's like, genuinely impressive. Impressive in a dark and sinister way, but it's nonetheless impressive. And if you're turning on the news every day and hearing about all these different things Trump is doing and all the different criticisms coming out of it, you may not like all of it, but, like, in comparison to how people felt about Joe Biden being basically absent, I imagine for a lot of people, it's a welcome change. Even though you're like, I didn't want, like, I was, I wanted the border under control. I wasn't in this for some kind of. For cuts that I don't totally understand. I was in this to get the economy in better shape and prices under control and to feel like I understood what my president was doing. So I think it kind of reflects kind of what we've been talking about.

[Jon Favreau]

I think the normies just aren't paying attention. And the normies are most of the country. And we just had an election where we learned this, where despite billions of dollars being spent to get people to pay attention to the 2024 presidential race, there was still a good chunk of Americans that barely paid attention. They tended to vote for Donald Trump. The Americans who did pay close attention to the news tended to vote for Kamala Harris in these polls. Even, like, you know, his approval rating among Democrats isn't, like, especially high. Right. Like, Democrats are still outraged by Donald Trump. And I think to your point, the energy and he's signing things and he's effect all that, I think that is playing extraordinarily well with the people who voted for him. Right. With most people who voted for him, I think they're excited. I think most people in the country still aren't paying attention. And I do think I buy the approval rating at 53%, for sure. Or at least in that neighborhood. Right. Like, I think these polls are all legitimate. I wish pollsters would start asking more questions about, like, people's views on actions that he's taking or proposals that he's making on some of the, the cuts that are going to happen under the Doge, you know, regime, all this shit. Like, I just feel like asking about presidential approval and what do you think he's like? And is he energetic at this point? I just think it's of limited value right now in the first hundred days and that we actually need to, you know, like, those descriptors of, of Trump. Tough, energetic, focused, effective. Like, yeah, they make sense. I get, I get why people would say that about him. Like, I get why, you know, he's in a honeymoon period. It's the beginning of his term again. Joe Biden had higher approval ratings at this time, too. So it's not super surprising, but you kind of got to dig in because most people aren't paying attention.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, here's the problem, though. Most people are never going to, like, right?

[Leah Littman]

This is never going to pay.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, they're going to pay until they feel effects.

[Jon Lovett]

Until they were saying, well, this is. I think we have to. This is why I think it's about what happens when people start feeling effects. But, like, I do think we should assume that the way people are consuming Donald Trump right now is not going to change that much until a few months before the midterms. Right?

[Jon Favreau]

Like, or, I mean, look, think back to the first term. His lowest approval is January 6th. Everyone's like, obviously, of course, and tied, maybe even lower in one of them is ACA and tax cuts. Because in aca, the country was like, oh, we don't like paying attention to the news, but you know what? We might lose our healthcare and all the other shit that we obsessed about and we talked about on this podcast and everyone else in the media talked about didn't really make that much of a difference in his approval rating. But those things that were going to affect people actually did.

[Jon Lovett]

So we are. So we're waiting for acute moments of focus around big signal political events, either crises or legislative moments. Fine. But what my point is, only that day to day, in between those, this is the kind of Trump we're going to get. A Trump that's kind of everywhere swamping the news. And we need to be able to figure out how to make an argument during those times. Because if we're just waiting for things to either get bad or for them to actually try to pass something terrible, we're kind of just yoked to his news cycle.

[Leah Littman]

And even the people not paying attention, I agree, that's the majority. What they're seeing is Trump at the Super Bowl, Trump doing stuff. And they're like, oh, that's cool.

[Jon Favreau]

That looks Fun or I mean, this is again, the Gulf of America thing just keeps popping up. Or that would be stupid, right? Like, that's something that breaks through because it's so weird and different and what? And like a cultural thing and people are like, I know that's stupid.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah. It's like, is it salient? Like, that's always the question. Oh, I'm sure it's not stupid, obviously. But like, do they care? Are they like, that's fine.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they don't care, but they don't like it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I look, I think, I think about that like that group of people, right? Because like, yes, I think there's Democrats that are inoculated against Trump forever, the Republicans that will love him forever. There's this group of people, independent people. Like when they see Trump saying Gulf of America, when they see him talking about making Canada a state, maybe they don't like it in the moment, but it's also like, it's hard not to imagine the idea of Trump just like out there every day being like a pro America guy is not like there.

[Jon Favreau]

One last thing that we should.

[Jon Lovett]

I just, I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

Before we leave this, like the 66% who think that Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices, that is a big deal. And I, and I want to note this as well because there was a long running debate just on the, on our side of the spectrum about is it the economy, is it vibes with voters being concerned about inflation and high prices during Biden. And there's a lot of people who said, well, no, actually the economy is wonderful. And the only reason that people think that complaining about prices is because they're either partisan Republicans or the media is fucking up. And as soon as Trump wins, oh, it's gonna be different. Everyone's gonna be wonderful. Well, actually, no, Trump has won and 66% of voters think he's not focusing enough on lower prices. And consumer confidence came in last week and it was down.

[Jon Lovett]

So here's what's interesting. I think I agree with you. I think that that will largely be proven correct that it was like not some media fueled or Republican fueled notion. I think that's probably true, but it wasn't headlines. But there's two steps was not the phrasing of AP headlines. But I do think that there is a two step process to this, which is Trump is it. People are correct. It's forget having an impact on Trump is not focused on it. He's not talking about it all the time. He's not thinking about all the time. He's not addressing it all the time. He's actually not doing it the way.

[Jon Favreau]

He'S trying to use tariffs as a substitution, which is a real fucking energy shot.

[Jon Lovett]

Energy. Right. But, like, when Trump wants to hammer something, he wants to hammer something. I think the bigger test is actually when Trump doesn't magically have the ability to lower prices, but starts figuring out a way either to blame people or to declare victory, then what happens? And like, I, I, I think largely, like, this will be proven to be a serious political problem for him. But he has, he has another turn of it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I just, I, I think, I, I think that material people's material conditions are still, they still drive a lot of public opinion.

[Leah Littman]

Hunter Biden gave all those birds the flu, so.

[Jon Favreau]

Hunter Biden.

[Jon Lovett]

Hunter Biden.

[Jon Favreau]

Hunter Biden did. Really?

[Leah Littman]

You didn't read that?

[Jon Favreau]

Is that a thing? You can't surprise us at this point. There's nothing that surprised me saying that.

[Leah Littman]

Canada.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, let's talk about our brewing constitutional crisis that Elon Musk and his Doge bags have started. By the way, I said Doge bags on Thursday.

[Leah Littman]

I'm with Doge bags, too.

[Jon Favreau]

And a source very high up at the Late show with Stephen Colbert alerted me today that actually they did something on Thursday. They did something before we said it on Dogebags. So I just want to say it's all yours. We walk in your footsteps, and I'm glad we're on the same page.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, I think we just wanted to get away from calling everyone bros.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, that's right. Because it's sort of. Because no one's. No one.

[Jon Lovett]

Our culture is not your costume.

[Jon Favreau]

No. No one's ever called this pod bros in a complimentary way.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't know how many.

[Jon Favreau]

Never been complimentary.

[Jon Lovett]

How many, how many skirts I have to wear, how many lockers I had to get shoved into to stop being called a fucking bro?

[Jon Favreau]

Not enough. So what is my wearing them and getting in those lockers.

[Jon Lovett]

Unbelievable.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, on Monday afternoon, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration hasn't fully complied with multiple orders to unfreeze federal spending. That followed a ruling on Saturday that Doge can't access Treasury's payment systems. Only trained civil servants are allowed. Elon and Magaworld are furious over this ruling. Elon called for the judge to be impeached. Also proposed annual elections to eliminate the worst judges. I don't know if you know, that's his new thing, but the most alarming reaction, I think, came From Vice President J.D. vance, who tweeted, quote, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. When Trump was asked about this by Bret Baier during his Fox News interview and then again on Air Force One, here's what he said.

[Jon Lovett]

19 states attorneys general filed a lawsuit.

[Tommy Vitor]

And early Saturday, a judge agreed with.

[Unknown Speaker]

Them to restrict Elon Musk and his.

[Jon Lovett]

Government efficiency team Doge from accessing Treasury Department payment and data systems.

[Unknown Speaker]

They said there was a risk of irreparable harm.

[Tommy Vitor]

What do you make of that? And does that slow you down on what you want to do?

[Unknown Speaker]

I disagree with it 100%. I think it's crazy. And bottom line, you say you trust him, trust Elon. Oh, he's not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He's so into it.

[Jon Favreau]

JD Vance said judges aren't allowed to control the executive power. What's your take on that?

[Unknown Speaker]

But we're going to see what happens. We have a long way to go, and we're talking about fraud, waste, abuse. And when a president can't look for. For fraud and waste and abuse, we don't have a country anymore. So we're very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling.

[Jon Favreau]

Small thing there, but when Trump was talking about Elon and he was like, I don't know where he finds the time for this. I know it just betrayed just a hint of he. Trump always is very good about, like, I know where the American people are. I know what you're thinking. You're like, what's going on with this guy? I gotcha.

[Leah Littman]

You know, he finds the time. Not parenting. You gotta have a lot of kids and you see them as little as possible. That's how you free up all your time for doging.

[Jon Lovett]

Not the first. Not the first dad to stay late at work because he doesn't like his family and won't be the last.

[Jon Favreau]

Trump's also like, I mean, there's no bigger poster than Donald Trump. And he's probably like, this guy is posting even more than I am.

[Jon Lovett]

He's just in awe. He's like, this is magnificent.

[Jon Favreau]

So I talked to Leah about all the legal implications of this, which you'll all hear in a little bit, but just a little spoiler for you guys. Even though judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, guess who decides what constitutes the executive's legitimate power?

[Jon Lovett]

Well, sure, I, like, had this moment.

[Leah Littman]

South Africans.

[Jon Lovett]

I had this moment over the Weekend. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Jon Lovett]

I had this moment over the weekend where I was just sort of like, I can't believe I have to, like, go back and try to remember what the fuck Marbury versus Madison was about.

[Jon Favreau]

I did, too.

[Jon Lovett]

And I was like. I was like, I literally. What did Andrew Jackson.

[Jon Favreau]

I went into ChatGPT and I was.

[Jon Lovett]

Like, grace, fucking Grace. Go to a different oligarch to get your answers to how to fight this oligarch's fucking stolen IP machine is going to help me figure out the answer how to fight this other oligarch.

[Jon Favreau]

I said this on offline, but part of it is Google sucks these days. And so I actually asked Jeffrey, I'm like, can you give me a copy of the Constitution? I thought that was going to be faster than Googling. And it was.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, wow.

[Jon Favreau]

I actually read because I'm like, all right, what does Article 3 actually say? And then I. Yeah, the whole thing. It's. Believe me, Robert Bertiver.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jon Lovett]

The. But so I guess, like, I like, I am curious what Leah has to think about this. And I do think some of this is posturing and some of this is what presidents of all stripes and all administrations have said, some version of these courts. I am a constitutional officer. I have the right to say what I believe the Constitution is to be. And they are not the sole arbiters of what's in the Constitution. But to me, like, some of this is negotiating, right? They are sending a message to courts to trim their sails and to be mindful that they're not afraid to push it to the limit. The point that Liz Cheney made this point, several other people made this point, which is you don't just get to ignore court rulings you dislike. You have to appeal them. Now on a lot of issues, that's what they're doing, right? They are appealing, including this one. Including this one. And so they are appealing them. They are seeming to have some respect for the process, though there are some signs that that is, if not fragile, temporary. Like different memos from legal officials inside the DOJ and other parts of the administration explaining why this court ruling doesn't need to be followed in certain ways. To me, I, like, have two broad categories that I'm concerned about. One is they take a signal case, they take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court rules against them, and they violate it. Either they violate it explicitly or they violate it implicitly by putting some kind of a legal. Just some kind of way of making. Of claiming to abide by, about actually ignoring it very Worried about that. That is terrifying. Day to day. What I've been thinking about is, you know, Trump is trying to do all this activist shit inside of these agencies. That's his prerogative as president, right? To put people in place. They're going to execute what he wants them to do. And inside these agencies, they're putting in place Trump loyal lawyers. Some of them are going to be better than others, some of them be more conservative than others. Conservative, small C. And the question is how, how much are those lawyers, the outside of the spotlight in the day to day work, grinding work of these agencies? How much are they going to worry about legal challenges from state's attorneys general, from outside advocates and groups, from individuals, from employees? How much are they going to make decisions the way previous administrations would have in one way or another, being guided by the fear of lawsuits? Because they know practically they just can't fight everything all the time, all at once. They have to make decisions about where they're going to push harder and where they're going to be willing to not take legal risk. And what I don't know in watching this right now is over time, will they become less concerned about those kinds of risks because of rhetoric from JD Vance and because of the actions of the higher level people inside the administration? I think right now we don't know. And that's really nerve wracking because that daily check on the power of the, of the administration, that kind of risk aversion of lawyers is like really, really, really important.

[Leah Littman]

The slightly optimistic version of this, and I don't share this view, really, is that there was sort of a willful or maybe accidental misreading of what the judge said because it was a little bit sloppily worded or confusingly worded. And some people were interpreting his ruling as saying even the Secretary of the treasury did not have access to the treasury payment system, which is like kind of self evidently ridiculous. I think what he actually meant was the Treasury Secretary could not give unauthorized people access to this payment system within Treasury. And you're right, like fight it out in court. But I think my takeaway from this, which drove me nuts, is that Trump, J.D. vance, Elon Musk, even like the far right fringe like Alex Jones, it doesn't matter how much power they have, they can have the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, social media, they are always the victims and they're always whining about how they're being attacked and it's unfair and like going after these judges and it just, it Drives me crazy. And I'm just hoping, hoping that they will rub voters the wrong way just to hear them bitching and moaning all the time.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, they have vanquished Congress. Right. Congress has given up any kind of resistance to the President, truly just abdicated power because it's controlled by Republicans. And so they've got Congress and you know, they're feeling pretty good about the country and where public opinion is. And I think they have decided that the judiciary is the last obstacle, the last villain left.

[Jon Lovett]

You bet. You missed one. Which is the media, which they now view as an unnecessary, sort of like a kind of ignorable component.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Jon Lovett]

Adding that for sure, just for sadness's sake.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And some of that is, look, the, you know, the attacks on the media, but some of it is just the balkanization of the media, which we've talked about a million times. So, yeah, definitely, word balkanization.

[Jon Lovett]

Shame on you, Trump's president.

[Jon Favreau]

It's fine. And so they're going to. It's interesting, there's two tracks here, right. There's the legal track where right now they are trying to come up with an agreement, the defendants and the plaintiffs here, and trying to work out who gets access all this. And the judge was like, I'll give you till Monday night, you can do that. So it's proceeding along normally. Right. But the public relations component of this, the messaging component is everyone in MAGA world and Doge world and everything just attacking the shit out of these judges and saying that they're corrupt and they're awful and we shouldn't. Elon Musk being like, we should vote judges out. I mean, it's. So the danger to me is maybe not necessarily in what happens in this individual case. Right. Although maybe it is. But the now we are turning, turning the guns toward the judiciary system and turning everyone's fire towards the judiciary system on the right and on the. And like that's where I think it's dangerous.

[Jon Lovett]

I think it's, Look, I think there's, I mean, judges have been murdered. Yeah.

[Leah Littman]

I would add to this physically scared. Mitt Romney talked about they are physically scared.

[Jon Lovett]

I think that's real. I think that they are being cowed into making more, less far reaching rulings.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep.

[Jon Lovett]

But then you look at Elon, it's just also some of this just like, God, the combination of just like the malevolence but the idiocy. It's like they should be impeached. And it's like, do you know that that word is just to launch a trial you understand that the Senate won't convict. Have you thought about this? Did you not care? Just firing off notions in a fit of pique. Cuz these judges will not be removed. There's no 2/3 vote.

[Jon Favreau]

Willful ignorance. He doesn't care. He's like, I'm smart about rockets and cars and so I must be smart about everything else. And if I don't know about it.

[Jon Lovett]

Who the fuck cares if I don't know, it doesn't matter if it's not important. And actually it shouldn't be important.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Jon Lovett]

It's embarrassed. It's embarrassing that you care about that. The other, like, there's this back and forth between Elon and. And Lawrence Summers, who was Treasury Secretary, among those several treasury secretaries that wrote in the New York Times declaring that democracy under siege because of what they're.

[Jon Favreau]

Doing and like institutional move of the week.

[Jon Lovett]

And then, yeah, sure. And then like institutions defending institutions inside of creaking institutions. But the. Yeah, institutions in institutions getting institutions.

[Jon Favreau]

But the Atlantic was like, damn, we.

[Jon Lovett]

Should have got that by line, God damn it.

[Jon Favreau]

Just the Atlantic from the New York Times.

[Leah Littman]

That's a one off at a way we eat.

[Jon Lovett]

But watching them go back and forth, it's like Elon. It's just like kind of falsehood that he probably believes, you know, like, if we don't get this out of control, spending under control, America will be bankrupt. And it's like, well, first of all, no, actually, if we don't get USAID under control, we'll be fucking fine. Because that's not where spending is. And also, okay, let's say there is fraud, you know, there's this little bit of like, Summers has to do this, Larry Summers has to do this, where he goes like some version of like, I love your passion, hate fraud myself. And it's like, if you, like, if you show up at a police station and say, I was really worried about crime in my neighborhood, so I arrested some people. They're all in my trunk. The cops aren't like, love your passion. They're like, you're arrested because that's not how we do it.

[Jon Favreau]

The cops are like, I also think crime is important. Just let you know.

[Jon Lovett]

Thank you so much. Like, I don't want you to think that we don't respect how much you take crime seriously, because we do too. You'd be like, are you insane? That's not how we do this. And like this idea that, like, because there might be fraud somewhere in the government, you can send a group of fucking neophytes deep within the bowels of government. To cut off into a payments is absurd on its face anyway. We have to, like, indulge this idea that, like, now we all take stopping waste, fraud, and abuse very seriously.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, no, I saw.

[Jon Lovett]

You know, I don't think he's saying the wrong thing.

[Leah Littman]

I think it's the right messaging.

[Jon Lovett]

Like, I know. Me too. I'm not. It's my own.

[Leah Littman]

This is my own. Was doing this earlier. It's like, you don't want to seem like you're opposed to government efficiency, but obviously now they're just rampaging through, like, the government Venmo and shutting shit off left and right.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just lamenting our situation.

[Jon Favreau]

Me too. No, I love it. I felt the same way because I've seen the messaging memos and it's like, you know, the young, young people, Gen Z, they like Doge and what Elon's doing because, you know, they don't see. They see government as sclerotic and inefficient and they like the move fast and break things ethos, and they want to get stuff done and they like the results. And it's like, yeah, we. Yes, of course. We all want that. We all know that government is slow. We all know the government can be inefficient. We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated. We all worked in the fucking White House. We tried to reorganize the government. We tried to find efficiency. It's hard to do.

[Jon Lovett]

And honestly, some of this is pretty annoying because it's some of the stuff we should have done.

[Jon Favreau]

Right? Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

You could do some of this.

[Leah Littman]

You just got to talk Shenzhen. You're like, I could dig these doja cats.

[Jon Lovett]

Okay. That was horrible. Oh, no, that was fucking horrible.

[Leah Littman]

They got good vibes.

[Jon Lovett]

Jesus Christ.

[Leah Littman]

They're just not going about it the right way.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. I'm gonna throw a no cap on the other. No cap. Fuck.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway.

[Jon Lovett]

Fuck.

[Jon Favreau]

This is why we're losing the. Yeah. The technology in the federal government, at least when we were there, sucked.

[Leah Littman]

It was gateway computers.

[Jon Favreau]

Gateway computers.

[Jon Lovett]

Remember healthcare.gov, gateway computers?

[Jon Favreau]

You had no. There was no service in the basement of the West Wing. You couldn't use your phone because there was no service. The gateway computers. So you just had to sit there.

[Jon Lovett]

Five bars of the oeob, though.

[Jon Favreau]

But anyway, the fact that you're right that. The fact that you have to do that now, all of that throat clearing before, you're like. But you Know what? It is bad that when everyone has signed off on a payment, Congress has mandated it by law and everyone's fine with it, then some random 19 year old racist maybe was 26 year old.

[Leah Littman]

Big balls is not racist.

[Jon Favreau]

26 year old, thank you. 25 year old racist. Whatever. He was the guy who thinks that all the Indians should either go back to India or be automated out of a job. Sorry, that. That guy. Yeah. They're in charge of just cutting off payments now. That's what we, that's, that's how we fix waste and fraud.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, the reason I bring it up is only because, like, I do think, like, as we talk about how to talk about this part of it is that like we have a, like there's a, there's a lot of ways in which we're kind of doomed to speak this way right now because we all kind of understand that there's a lot of people that just don't trust Democrats at all. And so like we, we have, we have this like extra step we need to take to kind of like, I don't know, figure out over time to claw back some credibility. But like Trump doesn't have to do that when he talks about a Democratic prerogative. Right? He's like, no, they're making some good points. No, he just says they're fucking criminals.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

Well, the Post Washington Post had a pretty eye opening piece about Elon's big picture plans. They quote an anonymous US Official as saying, quote, the end goal is replacing the human workforce with machines. Everything that can be machine automated will be. Yeah, it seems like that DOGE is also trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or cfpb. Newly confirmed OMB Director Russ Vogt installed himself as head of the agency and immediately shut down the building, told staff to stop pretty much all of their work and suspended its funding. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health, or nih, announced on Friday that it would be making huge cuts to the grants they provide scientists, researchers and universities to come up with all kinds of scientific and medical breakthroughs. The spokesperson for DOGE called this quote, doing away with liberal DEI Dean's slush fund. The former dean of Harvard Medical School, who was not a squishy liberal, said the move would cause, quote, harm and chaos and that, quote, a sane government would never do this.

[Jon Lovett]

Ha. That's correct.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that is very true. Even Senator Katie Britt, a Republican who flew with Trump on Air Force One on Sunday and whose state hosts major research institutions, told a local reporter the next day that, quote, this is a great quote, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order not to hinder life saving. Groundbreaking research at high achieving institutions like those in Alabama. That's a correct. She really stepped out of line there. That's pretty courageous. That's bold.

[Leah Littman]

Made me think of her State of the Union response.

[Jon Lovett]

Simpler times screaming at us.

[Jon Favreau]

Now she's like, oh, you're losing your state's largest institution. They're getting gut budget cuts. And she's like, ah, we might need a smart targeted approach. Not even like the one that we have. She didn't even say this approach is wrong and we need a better one. We just, just. We need a smart targeted approach. Everyone. Thanks Katie. Just want, everyone just want to flag that. And right before we started recording, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the NIH cuts. So we will now see if the Trump folks appeal that ruling. So we know that most voters generally support cutting government waste, trimming federal budget. It does seem to me like gutting cancer research and a consumer watchdog that takes on big banks and credit card companies is potentially the first like really unpopular fight that DOGE has picked. What do you guys think?

[Leah Littman]

Pick this fight. I am shocked by how stupid this is. I mean what NIH is saying is that grant recipients can spend only 15% of their grant money on so called indirect costs. But indirect costs are the building where you work, maintenance for your lab, the microscope support staff that help comply with safety regulations. And like the, the big, you know, like evil DEI institutions like Harvard, they could probably eat that 15%, they can deal with this. But the smaller research institutions at smaller schools, they're just going to get forced to shut down. And that's why you're hearing Katie Brittle weigh in on this. Although that fucking moron Tommy Tuberville is like, I support the DOGE cuts and everything they're doing, but he doesn't know where he is. It's not just a long term.

[Jon Lovett]

He also hated the halftime show.

[Leah Littman]

It's not just.

[Jon Lovett]

That's also from that same interview, I.

[Leah Littman]

Believe it's not just the long term impact on medical research and finding cures and all the things we want, you know, medical research to do it. The University of Alabama at Birmingham is the largest employer in the state.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Leah Littman]

So this is going to like ripple out into their economy in a big way. And also it's not like the NIH budget is some runaway fiscal disaster. The, the Bulwark reported that the NIH budget adjusted for inflation is about what it was at the beginning of the Obama administration.

[Jon Lovett]

The we we spent. Look, this is, this is part of the problem too, of the like. This is obviously not considered a distraction according to the experts, so we're allowed to talk about it. But this is the problem where we're like, you only. You're only supposed to talk about things in the prescribed, correct ways because you never get into, like, the deep substance of the argument like this, I imagine. Like, you're not like, for example, like, hey, Bunsen burner, overhead costs not a problem. This was not a problem. We had overhead costs for scientific research. Scientific research that can be described as being silly. This is just not a problem. America has some. Some money that goes towards scientific research is going to come to nothing. That's the point of it. That's why you do experiments. Some of it doesn't work. Some of it sounds silly and then leads to amazing and magical things.

[Leah Littman]

Like if you were starting a rocket company and some of the rockets exploded in the air and reached the moon.

[Jon Lovett]

If you're not, listen, if you're, if you're making every flight at the airport, you're going to the airport too early. And if all your scientific research is producing positive results, you're not taking enough risks on scientific research.

[Leah Littman]

Isn't that from Larry Summers? Isn't that.

[Jon Lovett]

That is a Larry Summers thing. Yes, that's. And I've heard that from him in person, which is that I was thinking.

[Jon Favreau]

Over the weekend that I would love someone to describe to the. The Doge Bags in Elon that they have found this loan guarantee for this green New Deal DEI car company that we need to cut immediately. And it's basically just the Tesla loan. What we did see what happens. They would have killed it.

[Jon Lovett]

Sam Stein at the Bulwark. We're really Bulwark freaks today. But he had a story that basically a lot of these Republican Congress people who are not saying anything publicly, their constituents, some of whom are federal employees, others just have concerns about what's happening in their districts, are getting letters from Republicans saying, I too, am concerned about the way in which this is being implemented. I, too, have concerned about the freeze. I too, am worried about the. Your privacy. And there was a Republican member of the House today that I think one of the. For the first time making the point that, that Congress's approval on certain decisions isn't just a good thing to have or a nice thing to have. It is a legally necessary thing to have, whether it's cutting budgets or eliminating the Department of Education, that the president simply does not have the right to do anything. So I do think that, like, the first step Is not like. I agree with you that Republicans in Congress have largely just sort of given up, but I think we have to just continue like that. There are gonna be some places where normal politics is still working. And those letters to me are a sign that, like, there are Republicans in closely divided districts that are worried about this shit, that are worried about losing their jobs. And that's important. That's good. That's a good thing.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, you know, is Katie Britton any danger in Alabama? Maybe not. But there's this woman who is a research professor at University of North Carolina, and she was posting over the weekend, this could, like, decimate their children's hospital, their outpatient care. She said, the first canceled grant hitting our department that I've heard of was for new interventions supporting NICU patients and parents. These are like newborn babies in the icu. Like, just the idea that this, like, the damage that this is gonna cause. And I do think, you know, Thom Tillis, he's up in 2026. He should fucking care about that. He's in North Carolina.

[Leah Littman]

Represents the research triangle.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, but I do think that everyone's like, what do we do? What do we do? I think elevating more of these stories as we find them. And I would suggest, like, everyone out there who has these stories, whether it's about medical research, whether it's about any of the other. The funding freeze that has been unfrozen but is not really unfrozen, and Head Start programs, people are still having problems with, like, just, you know, you gotta tell your stories and pass on the stories. Send your stories in. Because I do think the more we make this about the people who are feeling these effects or who are worried or who are experts in these fields, scientists, the teachers, all these other. Instead of just federal bureaucrats, which of course don't have the best approval rating, then the more it's going to hurt.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. The other part of it, too, is politically. Yes. Well, both. But the Inflation Reduction act freeze is starting to hit farmers who decided to take a chance on one of these programs. Right. There's all kinds of conservation programs that involve required investment. They made the investments, and now all of a sudden, they're not getting the payments they expected. It's risking their farms, it's risking their family's livelihoods, and that's a real consequence. And there are plenty of partisan people who are pretending it's actually not Trump's fault or trying to elide the fact that it's a political decision made by Trump and that it's the government that's failing them. There are a lot of, I think, people that want that to be the case. Even though everything, on some level, everyone understands what's going on here. And, like, you can't deny, like, there's only so much Trump can do to deny that reality. And so making sure people understand that reality is really important. There's other. One more point I wanted to make about this, which I'd like is like, how do we talk about the fact that they're doing this? You know, cfpb, one of the most effective government agencies, done incredible amount of good.

[Jon Favreau]

$800 million budget, by the way, and $20 billion returned in, like, eggs. The consumers.

[Jon Lovett]

Exactly what you would want. Government not perfect, makes mistakes, I'm sure. But, like, exactly what you would want. Your government just a tribune for working people against the rapacious giant financial corporations. Trump has sent all those people home. They're still getting paid. So Donald Trump's cost efficiency is. He's basically given a snow day to federal officials because he. Because they don't like certain parts of what the government is doing because they.

[Jon Favreau]

Attended a diversity training in 2014 somewhere.

[Jon Lovett]

And so right now, the American people are paying government workers, workers to sit at home instead of go after big banks, try to cure diseases, try to prevent diseases in foreign countries, whatever it may be. Those people are still getting paid in their houses. Like, I do not understand that. To me, worth mentioning, at least they're.

[Jon Favreau]

Not tainting our federal government with their wokeness.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Leah Littman]

Doing all the more woke eyes of that DEI attack is so pathetic. This also, it is entirely out of the Project 2025 playbook. And I do think it helps to remind people of.

[Jon Lovett]

I saw people referring to the halftime show as a DEI halftime show, which is, I think, calling, which is sort of drawing a little too much attention to what the word DEI is really standing in for.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, now. Yeah, no, now it's just any person of color or woman who has any kind of position of authority or influence is dei. That's just. That's the new thing now. Yeah.

[Leah Littman]

Benny Johnson, the TP USA plagiarist, tweeted, hey, NFL, it's Trump was elected. We're not going to pretend we like bad halftime shows anymore. And I was like, yes, people famously never complain about the halftime show. So Twitter was invented for you.

[Jon Lovett]

I really.

[Jon Favreau]

It is. Going back to your point, though. They're. They just, they.

[Leah Littman]

They're the victims all the time.

[Jon Favreau]

If they can't. If they have nothing to complain about, they have Nothing, you know, if they can't be, if they can't complain about how they've been put upon, you're in charge. They have. You're in charge of all the money, all the power. Two last things here, both related to worthless coins. Trump announced that he was ordering the Mint to stop producing the penny on the grounds that it costs, well, more than a penny to produce them and no one likes dealing with them. Our future 51st state, Canada, banned the penny in 2014. Everything seems to be fine there, except for the fact that America's going to take it over. Separately, the New York Times did an investigation into the Trump meme coin and how early investors in the Trump family made millions from the meme coin while everyone else lost tons. Let's start with the penny. Love it. Thoughts on the demise of the penny.

[Jon Lovett]

Shocker. I have previously held deep thoughts about this, which is not only so obviously people are pointing out that the penny costs 4 cents to make. That's obviously stupid. Nickels cost 14 cents to make. Now, yes, probably a percentage. The penny is more expensive per penny, but just for each nickel, it's a 9 cent loser. Here's what we should do.

[Jon Favreau]

Everybody get rid of the nickels too.

[Jon Lovett]

What we should do is we should go what we have now. You have to go a little bit further. Just you stick with me.

[Jon Favreau]

Don't take my quarter.

[Jon Lovett]

We need, we should go from penny, nickel, dime, quarter and we should be moving to a 10 cent piece, a 20 cent piece and a 50 cent piece. That is the correct denominations. And then all prices should no longer be to the hundredth place, they should be to the 10th place. That is the answer. Trump is doing a kind of compromise, but leaving the dumb nickel in place, which has the most overrated founder on it, who is Thomas Jefferson. Now here's what's interesting. Until 1857, there was a half penny. That was when we had the half penny. Then the half penny was gotten rid of. So the penny's been our smallest denomination for a very, very long time. From 1913 to 2024, inflation has increased the value of the dollar by 30 times. Right. Which means if the penny was the lowest denomination in 1913, we could get by with a 30 cent coin today. Right. I don't think that's necessary. But we should go to a nickel, a 20 cent piece and a 50 cent piece. That's the answer. And that's what. That's how Democrats can have their own positive agenda.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, if you pass that idea along to Elon and the in the Doge bags.

[Jon Lovett]

I might.

[Jon Favreau]

You might end up being in charge of the U.S. mint. They might put you, you might be able to mint all the money yourself.

[Leah Littman]

Could be there in Norman Minetta.

[Jon Lovett]

I'll get in there. I'll get in there and I'll put an op ed in about. You'll never.

[Jon Favreau]

Norman Mineta.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, he was a token lib in a conservative.

[Jon Favreau]

I thought he was the Transportation.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, yeah, he was Transportation, but he was the token. He was a token Republican. Republican in a Democratic administration. Who would I be?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Leah Littman]

Ray LaHood. Sorry.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, yeah. No, but who would.

[Jon Favreau]

The Tulsi Gabbard.

[Jon Lovett]

Who's the Tulsi Gabbard?

[Leah Littman]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

RFK Jr.

[Jon Lovett]

I have a lot. Listen, I got a lot of good ideas and I, and I, and I can, and I can show myself able to work with some pretty bro guys.

[Jon Favreau]

The whole thing would save you like $80 million. The penny thing. This is a very. It's like fucking. It's.

[Jon Lovett]

No, no, the penny's billions. The pennies.

[Jon Favreau]

But I was, I thought that. I read that the savings was 80 million.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't know. I don't know how they're, how they're, how they're netting that out.

[Jon Favreau]

85 million each year.

[Jon Lovett]

Huh?

[Leah Littman]

It is funny. Elon's just raging about these small sums of money and little changes and he gets 15 billion in contracts from the US government.

[Jon Lovett]

I'll tell you something. Here's the mistake, by the way. Obama, we mint 3 billion pennies.

[Jon Favreau]

OK?

[Jon Lovett]

That was where my mistake is.

[Jon Favreau]

Obama wanted to do this. Obama expressed his support for this in a, in a 2013.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Got cowed by the fucking deep state.

[Jon Favreau]

And he said, he said this is not going to be a huge savings for government. He was right. But anytime we're spending more money on something that people don't actually use, that's an example of something we should probably change. He should be in Doge. Huh? Look at that guy wanting to cut costs.

[Jon Lovett]

Leave, leave a hero. Live long enough to become a villain.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know how that whole thing went down. I remember, I think Cody Keenan, speechwriter, after we left, was like on this very podcast once telling us about how there was a request to get it into the State of the Union. The penny thing. Yeah, it was like a whole thing. I'm sure some. The Deep state probably killed.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, there's, there's a, there's a. I think there's like a. There's a, there's a, there's a few. There Was a couple hiccups. There's an Illinois problem.

[Jon Favreau]

I think the nickel thing comes up.

[Jon Lovett]

The nickel thing comes up. There's a, there's a, there's lobbyists involved. You know, government doesn't work.

[Jon Favreau]

Tommy, tell us about, you know. Well, you know who it works for. Works for Donald Billionaire Elon Musk. Tell us about the shitcoin. The Trump shitcoin.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, I mean, there was a report over the weekend in the New York Times. Let me back up. You guys might remember just before the inauguration when Donald Trump announced the sale of a meme coin. Trump coin. I think it was the next day Melania announced the sale of her Melania coin. So the price skyrocketed. Then it fell. People accused him of a rug pull. It was this whole kind of weird grifting thing that was happening on the sidelines.

[Jon Lovett]

A rug pull is basically you launch the thing, the price skyrockets, you get out when it's high and then the whole thing falls apart.

[Leah Littman]

Yeah, you own most of it, you market it heavily and then you sell a bunch of your shares of whatever the thing is. And the people who bought in late get screwed. And the people who own them early make a lot of money. Kind of like the Hawk to a Coin. For those who are big fans of the Hawk to a Coin podcast, the New York Times over the weekend reported that as of last week, at least 810,000 people have lost money on the Trump coin. But the Trump family and its partners have made nearly $109 billion in fees because they get paid every time you buy and sell it. Also, the Trump, a Trump owned business owns 80% of the supply. So if they wanted to sell a bunch of their coins, they could make a lot of money. Also there's all this shady shit that was happening. There was some mystery account that bought millions of Trump coins just minutes after they were offered for like, you know, 19 cents or whatever and then flipped them for a profit of what they think is about $109 million. So it is just this massive grift happening in plain sight. And it kind of ties into our CFPB conversation earlier because getting rid of the CFPB means you're going to have small community banks regulated by a different set of regulators. Big banks no longer have a regulator because they're all regulated by the cfpb. And then you have these, this proliferation of bank like companies that provide bank like services but are not backed by the fdic. There's no deposit insurance and aren't regulated well. So it's just like the wild, wild west of like blockchain, you know, mumbo jumbo bullshit.

[Jon Favreau]

But the, do the big banks still, they're still regulated by Dodd Frank stuff, right?

[Leah Littman]

They are, but Dodd Frank pushed all the regulatory authority to this. A lot of, a lot zombie set of laws without an agency to enforce it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, there's a lot of the consumer protections run out of cfpb. And if that's, if the CFPB is no longer enforcing those laws, the other agencies that have purview over the banks don't suddenly pick up the slack. They are not in charge with those. They do a lot of the other systemic regulations.

[Jon Favreau]

But don't worry, they also want to get rid of the fdic. So that's, that's their.

[Leah Littman]

Oh, that's a good.

[Jon Favreau]

That's on their, that's on their agenda as well.

[Leah Littman]

But even, even in just sort of normal, a normal year, the CFPB would modify rules to account for inflation or when the pandemic hit, they made a bunch of changes just to account for the economic shock that was happening. And now there's, there isn't a agency to exist to do that.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, the other thing too is these, like, financial institutions are raptors testing the fences and they see this happening. And no, I think a lot of the more serious and big financial institutions are not. Some of them do just explicitly break the law as they see fit. But in most cases, what they'll do is be like, huh, that thing we were going to maybe try, but we're afraid the CFPB might stop. Let's just fucking go for it. Let's offer a new product that has lower interest, but not tell our customers about it so they don't accidentally have more interest. Like there's a bunch of shit that these banks can pull.

[Leah Littman]

Yes, well, it's like little stuff. Just like one example is like overdraft protection. Like, I remember I was standing outside the Iowa Obama for America office and screaming at bank of America because they had let me buy like seven coffees and overdraw my account every single time and then charge me a courtesy fee of like 25, then escalated to $35 each time. Rather than just being like, bro, you have no money and cutting off the transaction, not letting it through. And apparently the cfpb, when it was created, there was someone who worked at a bank talking about how their institution kind of reformed their ways of, of, you know, charging those fees because they were worried the CFPB was going to come after them. So the Mere existence of this agency was protecting consumers. And now it will just be gone.

[Jon Favreau]

I got hit with so many overdraft fees when I was a Senate staffer. Not making a lot of money happen all the time. I am just thinking about Donald Trump and Melania launching a shitcoin. They made them $100 million while a bunch of people got screwed. And then there is that professor at UNC who's like, oh, you know, we're just, we're trying to do research to make sure we can keep babies alive in the nicu, but no more. Can't do that anymore. And then the fucking like $2 malaria nets that we're not sending to protect kids in Africa anymore because we've destroyed USAID and the $400 million in food assistance that is now that people are just going to starve. And they're like, what the fuck?

[Jon Lovett]

Well also it's like even just do that, do like the apples to apples. Right now they're figuring out how to extend the Trump, like what is the cause of America's budget deficit? The cause of the American budget deficit are the Bush tax cuts, the Trump tax cuts, the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. That's it. Wokeism and wokeism. But like fucking, you know, dei, expensive chemical showers at the fucking scientific institute is not our problem.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's all the, it's all the money we're spending to turn. Turn animal. Tran. Animals trans.

[Jon Lovett]

Too many. Too many.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, that's what, that's what, that's what, Senator?

[Jon Lovett]

Too many non binary frogs in India.

[Jon Favreau]

That's the problem. All right, before we wrap, we do.

[Jon Lovett]

Have a couple of news stories that broke while we were recording. Trump has signed an executive order to bring back plastic straws.

[Leah Littman]

Gotta love it.

[Jon Lovett]

Honestly, why did you give him that?

[Leah Littman]

Liberals, you know, paper straws, you know, unpopular opinion. Fuck plastic straws. It's stuck in turtles noses. Come on, suck it up. Use the paper.

[Jon Lovett]

We've been. There's cellulose straws. Paper straws. Terrible.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm going to do the centrist position.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh my God. You don't need a straw.

[Jon Favreau]

I know, I'm fine. I like the paper straws. The no straws. The no straws at all.

[Jon Lovett]

You like the paper straws.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't want no straws.

[Jon Lovett]

I want straw. We have more news.

[Unknown Speaker]

The Justice Department reportedly is going to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

[Leah Littman]

Fuck off.

[Jon Favreau]

Which I'm so down. That one.

[Jon Lovett]

No, that one was coming.

[Jon Favreau]

If you're a criminal, but you, you say nice things to Donald Trump. You're not a criminal anymore.

[Jon Lovett]

I want to go find my prediction that he's going to end up as Homeland Security Secretary. I just want you to go. I predicted that last year.

[Leah Littman]

I see you, Kristi Noem.

[Jon Lovett]

And Trump has pardoned Rob Blagojevich.

[Leah Littman]

Oh, okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow, that was a blast from the past.

[Jon Lovett]

Didn't he commute him at all? Did he already. He did commuted him. He commuted him in the past. So this is just kind of wiping the record clean. He's on the Apprentice because he let him out. He let him out.

[Jon Favreau]

What is this? At least one dead after two jets collide on a Runway in Scottsdale Airport in Arizona. The air travel, guys.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I'll be driving around the country on a bus, guys.

[Jon Lovett]

Adrian, what else you got?

[Leah Littman]

Any news?

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, we've got a lot. If you check it out, there's a.

[Jon Lovett]

Lot of what Trump said. Yes, if you had to. PSA news monitoring.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, I see. Yeah, he's looking.

[Leah Littman]

We can't do the press conference.

[Jon Favreau]

That's. No, that's too much.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a lot.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what? Tune in. Dan and I will cover some of this on Friday.

[Jon Lovett]

Everyone else, more as the story develops.

[Jon Favreau]

Everyone else, enjoy your Tuesday. Okay, when we come back from the break, you're gonna hear my conversation with Strict Scrutiny's Leah Lippman about how the courts might or might not be able to stop Trump and Musk. Two quick things before we do that. Crooked Media Reads is proud to be publishing Woodworking, the fantastic debut novel from Yellowjackets writer and culture critic Emily St. James. It is out March 4. The story follows a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows, one of her students. Woodworking is your. It says right here, woodworking is your much needed breather from everything else. Yeah, that's good.

[Leah Littman]

Actually.

[Jon Favreau]

I remember when our CEO Lucinda first read Woodworking as we were thinking about, like, do we want this to be part of Crooked Media Reads? And she was like, read it in a day and was like, this is one of the best.

[Leah Littman]

Literally read it.

[Jon Favreau]

She, like, wouldn't stop talking about it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. I also do think, too, like, think about, like, what, how much trans attention you see on, like, Fox News versus how many trans people you see on Fox News. And the answer is none, ever. And, like, this is just like, the term woodworking is like, the description of this character's experience of being trans. And I think it is worth spending time thinking about the perspective of trans people because so often they are objects of our debate.

[Jon Favreau]

And look at this. If you're in la, Lovett and Emily are gonna have a conversation about woodworking and a book signing at Skylight books on Friday, March 7th.

[Jon Lovett]

Hell yeah. Love Skylight Books.

[Jon Favreau]

You can. Where is Skylight Books?

[Jon Lovett]

It's in Los Fields.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, okay, cool. You can learn [e-mail] books. And speaking of LA events, love it or leave it records live every week here in LA. 12 new show dates from now through [e-mail] events.

[Jon Lovett]

We are having such a good time at these live shows. Come say hi. We have some really big guests lined up and you just. The stuff we cut, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

[Jon Favreau]

Where do people get tickets?

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, crooked.com events.

[Jon Favreau]

There you go. When we come back, Leah Lippman. Pod Save America is brought to you by Policygenius. Talk about the importance of planning for the future and ensuring your legacy. What financial life goals do you have? Just getting to the end, you know, sharing any planning tips that could resonate with your audience. So here's the thing. Planning for life insurance is important and no one ever wants to think about it. But you know what? Think about your family. They're gonna. They're gonna need life insurance. They're gonna need you to have life insurance. More specifically, you bet. So you should plan early. Protect your family by securing their future with life insurance from policygenius. Policygenius makes finding and buying life insurance simple and ensures your loved ones have a financial safety net they can use to cover debts and routine expenses, or even invest that money to earn interest over time. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams. I got life insurance. You know, again, I thought it was like, important to put off. Don't want to do it, didn't want to think about it. And then you get it. You're like, oh, yeah, that's. It's a good idea.

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[Jon Favreau]

Joining us today, our friend Leah Littman from the best legal podcast on the planet, Strict Scrutiny. Welcome back.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thanks for having me on this joyous.

[Jon Favreau]

Occasion with your look at your book behind you. For those of you just listening, Leah has a new book coming out. It's called Lawless. You want to give us a little quick plug?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So subtitle will kind of give you a sense how the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes. Basically, how the Court is just implementing the worst parts of the Republican Party's platform, targeting different groups that aren't part of the modern Republican coalition and doing so by just declaring their feelings, their hurt feelings.

[Jon Favreau]

Quote the law and when is it out?

[Unknown Speaker]

It is out, May, but you can pre order it now.

[Jon Favreau]

Go pre order it. Everyone do it now. Speaking of bad vibes, I want to start by teeing you up to respond to something that I just know you have strong feelings about. Here's the headline. Trump is testing our constitutional system. It's doing fine.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh my God.

[Jon Favreau]

I knew. I know. The piece is by Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman. And here's the part I'd love to hear your thoughts on. Quote, Trump, who did not ignore court orders in his first term, is unlikely to defy a judicial decision, no matter how conservative the justices in the Supreme Court majority might be. Their primary identity comes from their role as interpreters of the Constitution and laws. They might tolerate a lot from Trump, but they won't tolerate defiance of the authority of the judiciary. What do you think? How's your blood pressure?

[Unknown Speaker]

So for those of you not watching the video. My eyes are literally bugging out of my face at this point. This is why you should go to Michigan for law school rather than Harvard. Side note one, the idea that everything is working, the system is working, is just so divorced from reality, it is difficult to relay that. I mean, even if courts are striking down some of what Trump is doing, the damage he is wreaking on the infrastructure of the federal government is profound. Right? Like scaring away all of these civil servants, letting these doge whatevers like infiltrate the Treasury Department. These are things that have already happened and that courts are not going to be able to claw back. And so, so that's just like a first step. Now, the idea that Donald Trump is just going to respect all of these court orders aged really well over, like seven days, let's say, as his vice president, right. Took to the media floating the idea that he had floated four years earlier. Right. If you had bothered to be remotely online when he was suggesting that Donald Trump fire every member of the civil servant and basically tell the Supreme Court, you know, you made your decision, try and enforce it. And they are already floating. Right. As he did previously, the suggestion that they weren't going to obey various court orders that told them, no, you can't do wildly illegal things. So I can't say the system is working super well right now is kind.

[Jon Favreau]

Of the tldr JD Vance's tweet, and we'll get into the case in a second. But his tweet, the money line was judges aren't allowed to control the executives legitimate power. Now, I didn't go to law school, nor did I even take the LSATs and get a good score like John Lovett, but I guess that is maybe technically true and that if the power is legitimate, they can't control it. But, like, who decides if the power is legitimate?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, so this isn't even a question about courts being in a position to decide all of the questions in our legal system. It is about the fact that the executive branch is subject to the law. And in these cases, that law is really fucking clear. It is directly compelled by the lawmaker in our constitutional system, Congress, who told the executive branch, like, no, you don't just get to not spend whatever money you don't like. That we appropriate or write the Constitution is unusually clear, like in the case of birthright citizenship. So this is an instance where it's not about courts being good or awesome or constitutional caretakers, it's just about whether the executive branch is subject to the law. And there are so many foundational court cases that obviously tell presidents to not do things or to do things right. Like one of the biggest presidential power cases is case called Youngstown where the Supreme Court told President Truman, no, you can't just seize the steel Mills. And J.D. vance, of course, has been praising Supreme Court decisions that told Democratic presidents they can't do things. Like for example, the immunity ruling that let Donald Trump get off scot free for attempting a coup first time around. He was describing that as a massive win, right, for the rule of law, even though that decision told the executive branch, you cannot prosecute a former president for official acts. So he knows, right. This is horseshit. And yes, right. It is wildly inconsistent with basic premises of our constitutional system.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm not gonna ask you to like, predict what the Supreme Court might do, but, like, how do you think JD Vance's tweet or his view of the power that the executive holds will land with even this Supreme Court? And I'm thinking particularly of like Roberts, Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, like, who knows what Alito and Alito and Thomas are probably like, yeah, you're right. You got it. We'll just, we'll go on vacation on our private jets.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So a few things, I don't think it is going to hit well with those guys. And it's not going to hit well for any number of reasons. One is that J.D. vance is essentially claiming the power not just of Congress, right, to make laws, defies laws, but here, the power of the courts, right, to again, enforce laws that Congress has made. And these guys on the Supreme Court, they are judicial supremacists, right? Like, they think they have the power to decide all things. And so having some weird dweeb like JD Vance tell them, right? Like, no, you don't actually get to have your fingers in all the cookie jars is not going to go over well with them. And so I don't think, right, they are going to be cool with this. And there are going to be certain cases where, again, the law is just sufficiently clear, whether we're talking about federal statutes or the Constitution. And what the Trump administration is trying to do is just wildly destabilizing in other ways. Like where you had the executive branch saying, we're not actually going to spend federal money that Congress has appropriated. Like, that's horrible for the rule of law, like, even for finance bros. Like, it's bad when the federal government doesn't pay out money that Congress said it would. So it's not even like this is a big conflict of interest for them when they're thinking about rule of law. And like my rich friends.

[Jon Favreau]

So the ruling that seems to have really set them all off in MAGA world over the weekend came from U.S. district Judge Paul Engelmer. In response to a lawsuit brought by state attorneys general over access to the treasury payment system. The judge issued an order that said only career officials who've had the proper training can access the system, not Elon and the Doge bags. And some Trump folks interpreted the ruling to mean that even Treasury Secretary Scott Besant wasn't allowed to access the system, though it seems like, at least as of this recording, then, another federal judge has given the Department of Justice and the state AGs some time to work out an agreement over who gets access to the payment system. And the DOJ says that so far they are, despite JD Vance's tweets, they are abiding by the order. Is this a case where the actual legal process looks different, or at least I wouldn't say it's proceeding normally, but is at least proceeding on a different track than the political conversation?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So the legal process is proceeding differently, I think, in at least two ways. One is the legal system is attempting to deal with something that is in many ways unprecedented, like the systematic, unconstitutional and illegal acts that this administration is doing. And so they are trying to craft these orders right. Quickly, because what they are doing, right, if allowed to go into effect, is just going to have these immediate, profound consequences that would be difficult to reverse. And so they are being forced to proceed on a pace that is a little bit different than the average legal process. And, you know, at a volume that, again, is a little bit different. And yes, right, they are figuring out exactly the scope of their orders that they are having to do, right. On a pretty tight timeline that isn't usual for courts. And that's because the administration put them in this position. And so I do not take what the administration is telling courts or doing in courts to evince a position that they think they can deny court orders. Right. They are not telling courts that. Right. They are saying they are in compliance. And all of the litigation and disagreement is about what exactly these orders require right now and how courts should modify them. The other conversation is happening more in the public sphere and political sphere. And of course, that's a huge, right, warning sign, because who knows, right, whether it will sift into the former. But it does seem like, at least for now, right, they are not adopting the express position that, like, fuck it, let's just do it and be legends. And that's something yet, right? Exactly. Yet.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, on that note, like there, there are some actions the Trump folks have taken, like birthright citizenship, right. Which seems obviously illegal or unconstitutional enough that it feels like they are just throwing them out there on the chance that maybe they get five justices to agree with them at some point or they just want to throw it out there, right. Just flood the zone. Then there are examples like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, right. Which is they know it is against the law to just eliminate an independent agency that was created by Congress. So instead they just put Russ Vogt, the new OMB director, in charge and like told everyone to stop working. How much functional dismantling of the federal government do you think they can do within the bounds of the law?

[Unknown Speaker]

They can do an immense amount. And that's part of why I just went ballistic when you read the title of the op ed that talked about the system working. Because even if, again, courts are striking down everything that is illegal, even if, right. The executive branch adheres to all of those decisions, there are still many, many things they can do to hollow out the federal bureaucracy. Right. Like if they put all of these administrators on leave, if they say we're just not going to bring any new cases under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, right. They are just going to allow consumer fraud to run rampant. They're going to cause people to leave the administration and administrative state and it is impossible to quickly build back up that infrastructure. Right. In the next competent, sane administration. And so that's part of why, like, we are in a constitutional crisis, whether or not the executive branch refuses to comply with court orders because, like, they are using their power to basically undermine our system of government, our system of laws, trying to do it in any number of ways, some of which might be legal. Right. Some of which might be not. Some of which courts are going to be able to stop and some of which courts aren't. And inevitably, when courts strike some of the more outlandish, obviously illegal policies down, I worry that that is going to give the administration cover and the court's cover to let other things through because it is going to present a facade of the system working. Right. And the court will look like an independent check on an executive branch that again, even if it respects court orders, is acting in ways that are absolutely antithetical to a functioning constitutional democracy and the rule of law.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And as you point out, at some point the fact that government services that people depend on and benefits will be so disrupted Whether or not a court decides that the administration took an action that was illegal or not, like the results seem like they could be similar.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right? Exactly. So if, for example. Right. There's some uncertainty about whether the federal government is actually going to give out these payments. You know, there are some organizations that run on a paycheck to paycheck, disbursement to disbursement basis. People's healthcare will be interrupted, childcare. Right. Is going to be disrupted. And even if a court stops that later. Right. That is not going to undo the immense harm that people will already have experienced and that the administration is already going to be unleashing on all of us.

[Jon Favreau]

Obviously, the Supreme Court has an expansive view on executive power, at least when it comes to Republican presidents named Donald Trump.

[Unknown Speaker]

Ding, ding, ding.

[Jon Favreau]

What do we know so far about their views on how much power the President can wield over the federal government, particularly civil servants, and spending that's been appropriated by Congress?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So I think those might be two areas where the court's views could diverge because I think the Republican justices have evinced the view that presidents, in their view, should have the power to fire most people kind of within the executive branch, or at least a lot of people. And so even though the law is right now that Congress can protect civil servants, right. The civil service, they can say the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and whatnot can't be fired, you know, without good cause, there is a decent chance that the Supreme Court will overrule those cases and change the law to allow Donald Trump to exert more control over the federal bureaucracy. Now, on the issue of spending, I think that that is an instance where the court, or at least a majority of the justices are probably going to say, no, presidents don't have the unilateral power. Right. Just to decline to spend money that Congress has appropriated. The constitutional text is clear, right. Congress has the power of the purse. Right. This is not ambiguous. This is also clear from federal law. You know, after Richard Nixon attempted to impound federal funds that Congress had appropriated, Congress wrote a law being like, no, knock it off, you can't do that. So these things are all pretty clear. And so I think those might be two spaces where the court diverges. And again, that gets back to your point where that still gives the executive branch an awful lot of power to unleash a lot of havoc. Because if they replace, right, the civil service, right. Civil servants with a bunch of like 19 year old douchebags and like whatever else they're planning, right. Like, the operation of the federal government is going to be vastly undermined.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, let's go to the dark place for a second. You may be like, we haven't been in the dark place yet. I know.

[Unknown Speaker]

Curious where this is going.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I've heard some people say, okay, in the minds of the Supreme Court, they must be thinking, okay, if Trump just refuses to comply with a ruling or defies a court order, like, what recourse does the Supreme Court have? And if they think that the answer is not much at all, will they, in advance, be wary of delivering a ruling that they think Trump will defy? In which case it's functionally the same thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. So a few things. There are some things that they can do, right? They can try to hold officials in contempt. That involves basically sending out the U.S. marshals, right, to haul these people, you know, before the court and potentially in jail. Slight problem with that is who controls the US Marshals. Right, Right. The executive branch. Second is, I think they can hope, and I think that they should hope that there are enough people in Congress and elsewhere who would be so horrified by the idea that the executive branch would not comply with an order, telling the executive branch, right, just to comply with the law, that this could actually lead to a fissure, you know, within the Republican coalition and lead to some internal checks within the Republican Party, which seem to be, you know, the only or a particularly important mechanism of pushing back on Donald Trump. And so those are some possibilities. But I think it is a very real risk that the court is going to look at all these cases and wonder, which ones is he not going to listen to us on? And in fact, like, if you go back to one of the very earliest, most foundational constitutional cases, Marbury versus Madison, right? That is the case where the Supreme Court said we can declare an act of Congress unconstitutional and decline to enforce a federal law. The federal government, they didn't even, like, show up at the Supreme Court to defend their position. And Chief Justice Marshall and the other justices were rightfully wary about whether the executive branch would comply with the decision. And so, you know, he kind of wrote it such that he didn't actually require the executive branch to do much at all, even in the course of reaffirming the court's power. And so I think what you are positing is a very real concern that the Supreme Court is going to be worried about whether this executive branch is going to comply with all of their court orders. And so maybe they would budget their capital or at least ask you Know, on what issues would a decision, you know, striking down what the administration has done allow us to kind of be aligned with, let's say, Republican senators or super majority of the American people. And maybe, you know, that is an issue or a lens that they are approaching these cases with.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, there's a recent potential example of this, even though it may seem smaller scale, which is like, it seems like the Trump and the DOJ are just ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling on the TikTok ban, which is like, they've given themselves an extension to get some kind of a deal done. The law says an extension is only allowed if there are already, quote, binding legal agreements in place for TikTok to divest of Chinese ownership, which there are not. There is not a deal in the offing they have. They're not just figuring out, crossing the T's.in the eyes, negotiating, and need an extension for that. So is that right, first of all? And, like, why does no one seem to care about this?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So it's so weird. There isn't a deal because we were told Donald Trump is the consummate dealmaker, best dealmaker, work this shit out immediately. So I actually think that example is a little bit different than the worst case scenario we were talking about, because the Supreme Court, in that decision, what they said is, this law is constitutional.

[Jon Lovett]

Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

They did not purport to require the president to do something or prohibit the president from doing something. And so the president is not technically in violation of the court order. Now, what he is in violation of is the federal law itself. Right. What Congress has said, and that's, you know, going back to what I was suggesting earlier, like that, too, is a constitutional crisis. Like, presidents do not have the power just to say that federal law is optional. Right. Like, no one has to listen to that one. Right. That's a problem, too. But it's a little bit different than the situation we're imagining, which is whether he would actually defy a court order.

[Jon Favreau]

And no one has brought suit saying, hey, this is a law. The President is not in compliance with this law. What are you gonna do about it? Like, that just hasn't happened yet. Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Jon Favreau]

Obviously, a lot of Americans aren't paying much attention to what Trump's doing to the federal government. And I'm sure one response from people to Trump trying to fire government prosecutors, lawyers, FBI agents who aren't loyalists. Well, maybe that's bad, but, like, you know, he's the president. Maybe he should get to hire the people he wants. Can you talk about why what's happening specifically at DOJ and FBI should alarm someone who doesn't happen to be on Trump's enemies list.

[Unknown Speaker]

So the Department of Justice is, you know, reportedly instituting, right, these loyalty tests, right? Asking people, you know, do you believe the 2020 election is stolen and whatnot and using that as kind of litmus tests. And I think it is extremely dangerous, right, to have a federal law enforcement apparatus that is all loyalists, right? No. People who are going to provide any measure of dissent or counter views or any sort of independent views. And again, I think you just have to look at how the federal government has been operating until now and what they are doing with the Doge Bros, right? Like, do you want them to be able to replace the people who have insured your Medicare payments, right. Are issued. The people who are ensuring, right. That the Medicaid system is functioning. The people who are ensuring, right. The child care centers get the support that they need. The people who are ensuring that student loan payments, right. Actually are forgiven, like where allowed. The people who are insuring, right. You can actually pay your taxes online, right. Those are things that federal bureaucrats do. And if you replace all of those people with a bunch of hacks, right, who don't believe in government, right. And are like freshmen at Northeastern who go buy big balls, like, those things are not going to get done. Like when people who are 18, like they can't even get up at 8am in the morning, right. Like, these are not the people, right. That you want running the basic services that allow all of us to function and live our lives.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Or, you know, when they say things like, oh, don't worry, we're gonna replace all of the Indian Americans with AI and send them back and normalize Indian hate, you know, it might cause you to wonder, are they going to prioritize government services for certain people and not others?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, indeed, you might wonder that. And you know, that's part of what we are seeing, right? And worried about when you look at what Doge and they are doing as far as, you know, whittling down parts of the federal government. They have disbanded, you know, portions of the Department of Justice that were designed to go after Russian oligarchs, right. They have disbanded, right. Parts of the Department of Justice that were designed to go after major corruption. And you know, they are suspending investigations into, for example, like what Elon Musk is up to at like SpaceX and his other companies. So. So yes, right. Again, if you put in a bunch of hack loyalists into the federal government. They are not going to be applying the laws equally. They are not going to be providing benefits equally. And that, too, is, again, just antithetical to how our system is supposed to work.

[Jon Favreau]

Last question. Maybe the worst thing Trump did over the weekend doesn't even have to do with the law.

[Unknown Speaker]

I know what you're gonna say.

[Jon Favreau]

He said he was rooting for the chiefs, praise Brittany Mahomes, only to then attack Taylor Swift for getting booed by Philly fans. I mean, I just feel like it was a real bummer of a postscript on the ERAS tour. Just this whole. The way. The whole way everything ended.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was. And yet I am choosing to take a longer view of this.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, good.

[Unknown Speaker]

Because one of the last people Taylor Swift got into a major feud with was Kanye West. How's he doing now? Right? I'm just waiting for him.

[Jon Favreau]

He had a tough weekend.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly. I'm just waiting for her to, like, pull a Kendrick Lamar on him as her Drake.

[Jon Favreau]

And yeah, maybe, maybe Reputation. Taylor's version, when it comes out, will have some of the, you know, the original was a. Was a sort of a Kanye Kim thing. Maybe this will be. This will be Trump.

[Unknown Speaker]

Or this is the secret hidden album Karma, right, where she just unleashes karma on him.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, see, we needed to end this with some hope and optimism. Leah, thank you so much for joining us, as always. And everyone, go pre order Lawless. It's out in May. And then of course, if you're not already, listen to Strict Scrutiny every Monday.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thanks.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our show for today. Thanks so much to Leah for joining us. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Bye, everybody. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the pod [e-mail] friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Reed Churlin is our executive editor and Adrienne Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madelyn Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pelaviev and David Toles. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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