Ralph welcomes Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein to analyze Congress' abdication of power in the face of President Trump and Elon Musk's actions to dismantle the federal government, and whether any of it is legal. Then, Ralph is joined by Norman Solomon from RootsAction to discuss the new Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, and whether we should be optimistic about his agenda for the Democrats.

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

What I think shows the clear (what I would call malignant) intent, is even though he has Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, he's never contemplated going back to Congress and saying, "Hey, I want you to do X. I want you to do Y. We need to do this in the proper way."

Bruce Fein

[Trump’s] boogeyman is DEI. So he claims that a crash between a helicopter and airplane in Washington, D.C. is a DEI problem. Of course, it's amazing that somebody who has such contempt for meritocracy with his own cabinet appointments suddenly blames, “Oh, well, DEI, it's watering down standards.” Well, he doesn't have any standards himself, so it's kind of ironic there.

Bruce Fein

Impeachment is not a criminal prosecution. Impeachment is what Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention said— it's the civilized substitute for tyrannicide…And if you're impeached, it's because you have undertaken attempts to subvert the Constitution so the people no longer view you as a trustworthy steward of our liberties and the rule of law. That's what it is. You don't go to Siberia, you don't go to the guillotine, that's it. And there have been, of course, many federal judges (probably as many as a dozen) who've been impeached, removed from office. And you know what? They still survive. There's not a graveyard of them…So this idea that impeachment is somehow some enormous volcanic eruption on the landscape is totally misleading and wrong.

Bruce Fein

There are two informal checkpoints I want to run by you. [Trump] is afraid of the stock market collapsing—and it could well collapse because chaos is the thing that really gets investors and big institutional investors scared. And the second thing he's afraid of is a plunge in the polls, including among Trump voters who represent families that have the same necessities for their children and their neighborhood as liberal families.

Ralph Nader

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and his newest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.

Especially when there's not a Democrat in the White House, the leader of the Democratic Party de facto is often the chair of the Democratic National Committee. And we now, of course, have the Democrats in minority in the House and the Senate. Biden's out of there in the White House. And so, really, it falls to the chair of the DNC to ostensibly at least give direction to the Democratic Party. And we've suffered for the last four years under Jamie Harrison as chair of the DNC, who basically did whatever Biden told him to do, and Biden told him to just praise President Biden. And we saw the result, the enabling process from the DNC was just a disaster for the Democratic Party and the country.

Norman Solomon

Literally and figuratively in a sense, there needs to be a tearing down of the walls that have been surrounding the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Activists (thousands of us, really, in recent years) have discovered and rediscovered that the DNC is like a fortress. They have the moat, the drawbridge is locked, and we can't even get inside to have a word in edgewise compared to the lobbyists and those who are running the DNC. This is really just remarkable, how difficult it has been for strong Democratic Party activists, if they're not on the DNC (and even if they are, quite often) to get a word in edgewise for the corporate-oriented so-called leadership of the DNC. That might change now.

Norman Solomon

Alfred Bridi is a U.S. immigration attorney associated with the law firm Scale LLP who specializes in employment- and family-based immigration law. Prior to joining Scale LLP, he practiced law at major international law firms and also worked with leading international organizations on global migration and transparency issues.

These executive orders and these executive actions have really created a tension in terms of enforcement officials trying to understand what these mean; in terms of the judiciary and and legal activists contesting a lot of the foundations and the arguments made; in terms of our legal system and our constitutional rights; and I think more than anything, they have had a signaling effect to ordinary Americans and immigrant populations that, “You're not welcome here, and we are going to come after you.” And I think the difference that we've seen is a broadening of the enforcement net and a removal of any sort of refinement or targeting. We've seen American citizens and military veterans being arrested and detained. We've seen Indigenous people being detained. And it's created a sense of terror and panic across the country that I feel is absolutely deliberate, and in line with the campaign promises of this new administration.

Alfred Bridi

News 2/5/25

1. The New York Times reports President Trump has ousted Rohit Chopra, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who was “known for his aggressive enforcement and expansion of consumer protection laws.” During his tenure, Chopra cracked down on junk fees, particularly bank overdraft fees, and sought to remove medical debt from individuals’ credit histories. As the Times notes, Chopra “improbably hung on for nearly two weeks [after Trump took office, and]…used that time to impose a $2 million fine on a money transmitter and release reports on auto lending costs, specialty credit reporting companies and rent payment data.” In his letter of resignation, Chopra wrote “With so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, agencies like the C.F.P.B. have never been more critical,” and “I hope that the CFPB will continue to be a pillar of restoring and advancing economic liberty in America.”

2. In more Trump administration staffing news, AP reports the Senate Finance Committee voted 13-14 along party lines Tuesday to advance the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician by trade and member of the committee who expressed grave concern over Kennedy’s stances on vaccines and other health-related matters, said during the hearings “Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me.” Ultimately however, Cassidy voted “aye.” Kennedy’s nomination will now advance to the full Senate, where the GOP holds a comfortable majority thus almost ensuring his confirmation.

3. Speaking of Trump and health, CBS is out with an update on the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio railroad disaster. According to this report, Vice President JD Vance visited the crash site on February 3rd and vowed that the administration would hold Norfolk Southern accountable for “unfilled promises of settlement money and training centers.” That same day, residents of East Palestine filed a lawsuit alleging that Norfolk Southern’s actions resulted in the wrongful death of seven people, including a one-week-old baby.

4. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has successfully negotiated a month-long delay of Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs. According to CNN, the deal reached between the two North American heads of state includes Mexico deploying 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border to help stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., while Trump has reportedly agreed to help end the deluge of American guns moving South. In her regular Monday morning press conference, Sheinbaum said “For humanitarian reasons, we must help the United St...