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- [00:00]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Harry Littman
Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Littman. It was a week in which Trump played the madman in a military dictatorship. Federal troops raided an entire building in Chicago as if it were some overseas military target. The action panly ignored the Fourth Amendment and subjected the residents, who included U.S. citizens to Trump style justice. Elsewhere, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth summoned top military leaders from all over the world for a meeting in which Hegseth seemed like a cross between a boy playing with his GI Joes and and a low rent motivational speaker. If his speech was meant to rouse the enthusiasm of the assembled generals, it didn't seem to work. And the headline news Democrats and Republicans in Congress were unable to agree on a spending bill shuttering the federal government. Trump promised to use the powers that a shutdown provides him to ransack so called Democrat agencies. But early polls suggested Republicans were losing the blame game, raising the question of whether the majority would look to dig its way out of the stalemate sooner rather than later. To analyze Trump's brass knuckles approach to Democrats in Congress and residents in Chicago, we welcome a banner group of analysts with extensive experience in the ways of government. And they are Senator Barbara boxer, a former U.S. congresswoman and senator from California who represented the state in D.C. from 1983 to 2017. Before then she served on the Marin County Board of Supervisors and was the board's first female president. Thank you as always for joining Senator Boxer.
- [02:15]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Thank you.
- [02:16]
Harry Littman
Jonathan Capehart, the anchor of the weekend on MSNBC and a political analyst for PBS NewsHour. He was a longtime columnist for the Washington Post before leaving this summer after 18 years with the paper. Earlier in his career, he shared in a Pulitzer Prize win for the New York Daily News editorial board. Really, it's so great to see you here, Jonathan. Thanks for joining. It's been a little while.
- [02:44]
Jonathan Capehart
Little while, but thank you Harry.
- [02:46]
Harry Littman
And the redoubtable, the inimitable, the one and only Norm Ornstein, a political scientist, a contributing writer for the Atlantic magazine and co host of the podcast Words Matter. He's also a prolific author and co wrote the great book One Nation After Trump, et cetera, et cetera. Always good to see you, Norm. Thanks so much for joining. You bet, Harry. All right, we're in a weird stage here. Government shutdown. We tape on Friday afternoon, three days into it. Funding expired midnight on Tuesday and by that time no one was really Anticipating a last minute deal and one did not come. And it is shaping up to be a possibly prolonged and very costly, especially for the American people, ugly fight. And of course, the focus in D.C. seems to be about who can pin the blame on the other party. So let's just start with the basic dynamic and each party's argument for blaming the other. What's the overall sort of political showdown that is occurring right now?
- [03:59]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Well, I'll jump in having been through these shutdowns before. This one is very different and I'll explain why I think they are. But this panel is so smart. I'm interested to get their point of view. But from my perspective, this is a shutdown around one issue mainly. Most of the shutdowns I've been involved in have been around levels of spending. But this is quite different. And I think the reason why Democrats have the high ground and looks like the polls are showing that at the moment anyway, is that everybody sees that in this short term budget bill that the Republicans put together, they took care of the billionaires. Oh yes, they made sure they were taken care of. But with a looming emergency on premiums for so many millions of Americans, their health care premiums. Oh that, that can just wait. No, really it can't because right here already in California, the marketplace is coming out and saying to people, pick your premiums. What do you want to have? And they're up. They're up between 50% and 100%. So we are in an emergency. Summing this up, it's a health care emergency. And secondarily we also have a president who won't spend what is legally authorized and appropriated. So those are the two issues where we're dealing with. And it looks like the public gets it.
- [05:32]
Harry Littman
But I mean, typically the public blames the party in power and just more generally they blame the R's for shutdowns. Why do the Republicans think they can make the Dems bear the blame in the public eye for this one?
- [05:47]
Norm Ornstein
I would say the fear that Democrats have is both the bully pulpit that a president has, one that was used effectively when there was a shutdown under President Clinton. And Newt Gingrich shouldered the blame partly because of his own crybaby antics.
- [06:06]
Harry Littman
They put him in the back of the plane and we got a government.
- [06:09]
Jonathan Capehart
Shutdown right front page of the Daily News.
- [06:12]
Norm Ornstein
But it's also the fact that the Republican win machine is far more disciplined and expansive than the ability of Democrats or their talent, frankly, at pushing back. And I will say, just to start, Harry, that I tried very Hard with House and Senate Democrats over the past month to have them every day have a relentless message, they're taking away your healthcare. We won't let them. And we didn't get it until the last couple of days, really, in a very scattered fashion. Now, having said that, I think Barbara's hit on the two reasons, but I would take the second one a little bit further, which is what Republicans have done is pull a bait and switch, even when they've agreed on certain spending levels for programs. It goes out there in a bipartisan way. And then Trump has used his rescission power to go back on that spending, including for pbs, and Republicans have allowed him to do it. And now we have a lawless Supreme Court that's basically turned a blind eye to the illegal pocket rescissions, which basically say the President can cancel spending that's been appropriated and authorized without any input from Congress. So drawing a line saying, even if we get a deal with them, it's not worth anything unless they can get take away the bait and switch part. And I should know, Democrats have asked for some Democrats a written agreement from Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, which he's refused to do. And frankly, if, as Barbara knows only too well, your word is the currency in Congress, John Thune's word is worthless at this point. So we've got that. The Republican argument against this is both we want to do a clean level spending. That's where it is now, which is not true, basically. But it's also over and over again pushing a big lie, which Carolyn Levitt, the press secretary, did again today. Democrats want to spend billions for Trump, it was a trillion on health care for illegal aliens, or as we would call them appropriately, undocumented people. It is false. And that's what they're trying to push on their own voters and on others. And I actually believe Democrats have a very good chance of winning this, however it ends. Because if they had gone along with this continuing resolution and healthcare premiums shot up and rural hospitals closed, they would be complicit, in a sense. And. And it would be easier for Trump and the Republicans to blame them, or at least to have people not realize who was responsible for this by drawing this line. Even if in the end they have to give in and reopen the government before they've accomplished their goals, when those healthcare nightmares occur, it will be far more clear as to who's responsible for them. So I think they did the right thing by far.
- [09:25]
Harry Littman
And I do wanna say, you know, typically, I feel, as a Democrat. I'm a nonpartisan journalist, but a Democrat that so often the Dems, because they believe in government, take on the talking points that are just longer harder to sell. And here it seems the opposite. They're flat out, we wanna save your healthcare. And the Republicans have to do this two step of saying, well, we want to, but we wanna do it later. And plus, they're giving it to illegals. So it does seem to me one instance in which they have the cleaner line.
- [10:00]
Jonathan Capehart
I just want to amplify something that both Barbara and Harry said. Because for me, even last week, two weeks ago, when we were talking about this, Democrats are bringing out the line that we're pushing for healthcare, we're pushing to extend the Obamacare subsidies, and we want something done on rescissions. I zeroed in on rescissions right away because it does not matter what you agree to or what they agree. Whatever deal they come up with, Republicans come up with Democrats. It won't matter because the president and Russ Vogt, the OMB director, have made it clear that they don't care what Congress says about how to spend money or how to do things. And you, you know, I would just go a step further, Norm. I don't think the Supreme Court turned a blind eye to the administration on rescissions. They've sanctioned it. So the Supreme Court has said, go ahead and do it. And so Democrats are fighting on a very real issue. And I'm glad the senator pointed this out, that past shutdowns have been over, usually over spending levels. I can think of the Ted Cruz shutdown where he was trying to get Obamacare repealed. That is a policy stance that everyone and their mama told him is never going to happen. And yet he still pursued it and had to back down. This is a situation to amplify something Norm said, where no matter what happens with this shutdown, no matter what happens in terms of what Democrats agree to, to give the votes to end this shutdown, what Democrats have done right now in talking about this is laying the groundwork for when not only those letters go out at the beginning of next month, but when those premiums start to hit at the beginning of next year, at the beginning of a midterm election cycle, people are going to remember that Democrats warned about this, and now here we are. And so however this turns out, I think Democrats have won in terms of at least bringing the conversation to where they want it, but also reminding people that, you know, it should tell people something. When you have folks like Senator Patty Murray of Washington, she's no far left bomb thrower. She's an appropriator who is out there saying, you expect us to just take your word for whatever deal you want us to agree to, to reopen the government? No. And on top of that, there are no conversations happening aside from the shutdown on any of the appropriations bills needed to actually run the government. So when you hear Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thune talk about, well, if the Democrats would only just vote for the Continuum resolution and then we and have the conversations down the road in the next seven weeks. Well, they don't have any appropriations bills. They haven't talked. There's the ndaa, the big defense bill that they haven't talked about. And you're gonna squeeze in there somehow conversations about Obamacare subsidies. It's ridiculous. So Democrats, I think are absolutely right to have this fight, to hold this fight. A third vote just went down in the Senate. So they're doing absolutely the right thing for the right reason.
- [13:44]
Harry Littman
All right, so two very strong endorsements in the lead up to Tuesday, it seemed much more equivocal. Will they get their heads handed to them? Some were against. But you've got two savvy commentators here who say there's no doubt about it, they did the right thing.
- [14:00]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Well, that makes me really happy because I'm someone who hated government shutdowns and I think this one is right. But I have two quick points to make and see what people think. When you did thumbs down, guess what.
- [14:14]
Jonathan Capehart
It reminded me of John McCain.
- [14:17]
Senator Barbara Boxer
John McCain, when he saved Obamacare, he was the one. Now they're still going after Obamacare. This is their 70th try by trying to make it so expensive to go to the marketplace that people give up. But here's the thing. I wanted to see if anyone agrees with me or thinks I'm off the wall on it. Here's what the Republicans are doing, all of them in the Senate, in the House, Trump people, the press secretary, here's what they say. Look at the terrible things Trump is doing now because of this shutdown. Look, he's got all the power, you guys. Are you stupid? You gave him all this power cuz of the shutdown and he's canceling projects and he's firing workers and it's your fault. Well, here's the thing. He was doing all of that before, right? It's all happening. But here's the thing I think is good for the Democrats and terrible for the Republicans because we are shut down now. People are seeing what he is doing. Before, it was just one of the things he was doing in the background in addition to killing people in fishing boats in Venezuela. But now it's closed down and everybody sees what he is giving to this country, which is firing decent people, violating the Hatch act with all of it, and cutting important job producing projects in blue states. And I think especially the independent voters, keep your eye on them. They hate what he's doing.
- [15:53]
Norm Ornstein
Let me respond to that in a couple of ways. First, Angus King, who's a dear friend and I think a really terrific guy, ended up voting not to shut down and said, I agonized over this, but I can't let Russ Vaught, the head of omb, destroy the rest of government and fire all kinds of people. The reality is not just what Barbara said, that he's been doing this all along, but it's illegal. Everything they're doing now is illegal. We have lawsuits filed by the federal employee unions. The law is clear. During a shutdown, you can furlough, but you cannot fire. And what Vought is doing now, canceling projects which have been appropriated and contracts let legal contracts illegal what he's doing. The second larger point which Barbara alluded to, Obamacare happens to be widely popular now, wildly popular now. People by overwhelming margins don't want premiums to go up. And it's a broader reality of the authoritarian government we face. Not just Trump and his thugs, but the Republicans in Congress. I get sick every time I hear Mike Lee of Utah say, we're a republic, not a democracy. In a republic, you elect your representatives to represent you and they're supposed to be responsive to what the public wants. Almost everything that these people are doing goes against what the public wants and they don't care. And that's because another part of this is they're going to try everything they can to rig the 2026 elections and make sure that no matter what the public thinks, they'll be able to stay in power. This is about power and about greed. And if Democrats can't make that point, it'll slap the American people across the face at some point and there will be a realization that we're facing something unprecedented in our lifetimes and beyond.
- [18:02]
Harry Littman
It is the number one ball we have to keep our eye on. It's a little tricky sometimes because he asserts emergency powers in another area. And if they greenlight it, and as Jonathan and others have said, the Supreme Court might, well, it really gives the prospect of a sort of knight's move into the election area next, you know, July, August and September, I wanted to double back. You know, you had this sort of vicious taunting by Trump, huh? I can't believe you've given me this power in a shutdown. And Vought, too. I mean, they almost. They had to reverse. He seemed too enthusiastic about it. And Katherine Levitt. Oh, it pains him to do this, you say, Norm, it's quite unlawful.
- [18:47]
Norm Ornstein
I've thought that it was the case.
- [18:49]
Harry Littman
That in a shutdown there are certain legal prerogatives for a president and leave to the side the unconstitutionality of doing them just against one party. Seems to me a straightforward. I'm just the lawyer here, but straightforward First Amendment violation. But can you kind of flesh out what greater powers to make trouble Trump and Valt seem to think they have as a result of the shutdown and whether it's something to be concerned about?
- [19:19]
Norm Ornstein
Well, first let's look at what the legal powers are. And president does have some power. In a shutdown, nobody gets paid. We now have in the law a requirement that when employees come back, they get their back pay, although contractors don't. But during that time when they aren't getting paid, many federal workers have to work. When the president designates their jobs as essential for the nation, jobs programs that are not deemed essential, the workers are furloughed and those programs do not go forward. As one example, when we had the shutdown with Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, Clinton said the national parks are not vital interests at this point, and they were closed. And by the way, in a state like Utah, which depends very heavily on tourism for the national parks, the Republicans were the first ones to say reopen the government. But you have some flexibility in that regard. You do not have the power, as Russ Vaught has asserted, the cancel programs. He has the ability to say, we're not going to go forward with those while the shutdown occurs because they're not essential government services. And he does not have the power to fire anybody during a shutdown.
- [20:42]
Jonathan Capehart
Norm is right. What the president and OMB director vote are doing, it's illegal. Absolutely illegal. But also to Norm's point, they don't care. And they don't care because the whole point of all of this is to see how much they can get away with, test the system. So he sends Marines to Los Angeles.
- [21:08]
Harry Littman
Over the objection of the governor, over.
- [21:10]
Jonathan Capehart
The objection of the governor. And the governor sued. But then the court comes back and says, well, yeah, they can stay there until this case wins its way. So the president wins in that regard. He gets the troops on the streets until which time they are deemed illegal. The same thing is happening here right now. As Norm pointed out, it is illegal to say you're going to fire people during a government shutdown, but they don't care because they're going to do it. And then they're daring people to sue them, and then they're gonna wait for the lower courts to come in and say, either you can't do it or you can. Then they will race to the Supreme Court, and in a roll of the dice, which, as we have seen more often than not, comes out in their favor. The Supreme Court, with a 6:3 conservative supermajority, comes back and says that President Trump, it's okay for you to do what you do, which is what he did on rescissions. And one other thing, the president has given away the whole game and actually given opponents ammunition to go into court and really sue him and win. When he says things like, I'm going to go after, quote, unquote, Democrat agencies. There are no Democrat agencies. There are agencies of the federal government. And so how is he going to determine that without going through specific programs that either disproportionately impact states with Democratic governors or states with Democratic mayors? How is that constitutional? But that will be incumbent upon lawyers like you, Harry, to march into court and say, this is some BS and we need some judicial relief.
- [23:05]
Harry Littman
Yes, he is. Again, I think of this as a lawyer, the worst client of all time. You know, in the Comey case, he couldn't make a worse record for himself. And the only other point I wanted to raise, John, is you're 100% right. And this piece of until the courts are doing things, the Supreme Court are doing things that just say, oh, just for now, we'll let him do it. But we're talking about months till it works through the. For now turns out to be the whole game. And they're giving it to him again and again and again.
- [23:37]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Well, I just want to say hooray for Norm and Jonathan on making the case, really, for the Democrats staying strong. What they both have told us and what you have underscored with your legal beagle mind is that Trump is tuning all of these things to us, and we cannot, we cannot do business as usual. And this is coming from me. I am now considered a centrist Democrat. That's a whole other story, because I started out I was the most liberal. Now I'm a centrist. The bottom line is we have no choice. We have to stop this, and the people have to see what Trump is doing. And when Levitt says, oh, you've given Trump the keys to the kingdom, he'll do whatever he wants. Yeah. And now people see it. The fact that he has the bully pulpit, as Norm has stated, that's not a blessing in his case. I agree with Congresswoman Madeleine Dean. He is unwell. He makes no sense. I don't know if you guys saw, you know, what he said to the generals.
- [24:50]
Harry Littman
Enemy from within. Yeah.
- [24:52]
Senator Barbara Boxer
It's not only enemy with. From within. That's a nice way of saying it. What I heard and we all heard is your job is to be violent. Your job is to kill people and you should train in our cities. It's declared war on our people. We have met the enemy and it's us. Are you kidding? So I think all of this was the right thing to do because you can't take them at their word. As Norm said. Oh, we'll talk to you later. No, there's an emergency. Now, you took care of the billionaires. You didn't put that off. Now take care of Americans who work for a living, who need this help or they're going to lose their health care. I think we're in a good place.
- [25:35]
Harry Littman
This is a pressure cooker. We don't have real shutdowns like this in Washington much. And you can be sure it is really feverish in the caucus rooms. What's your sense overall of how this ends?
- [25:50]
Jonathan Capehart
Look, I want a level set for people. I want them to understand that at some point Democrats will give enough votes to reopen the government. It will happen. And I say that to level set because of something that the Senator said when she said, we have to stop this. We're in a situation where I don't see, given the tenor and tone of what's coming out of the White House and the administration, how you quote, unquote, stop this, meaning preventing the premiums from going up. But what I will say is that the Democrats have to try, and that is exactly what they're doing. They have to try to stop this from happening. Here's the analogy, which I hope I can flesh out here you're on a path, and right in front of you, in your path is a mountain lion. And you know there is nowhere for you to escape. You will try to escape. You have to. You have no choice. If that mountain lion charges you, comes after you, are you literally just going to stand there and allow yourself to be mauled? No, you're going to fight. And that is exactly what Democrats are doing. They, they are fighting. And in the end, they're probably going to get mauled in the process in the short term. But in the long term, by taking the stance and bringing this fight and holding strong for as long as they have, despite the conventional wisdom in this town, folks thought they would fold after one day. But by having this fight now, they have planted the seeds in the imagination of the American people so that when those bills, the high premiums start hitting their bills, they will remember that it was Democrats who were fighting to prevent that very thing from happening.
- [27:47]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Well, I disagree. I disagree. I really do. Because here's what I see happening in Duke Corps. I don't know how many days that's important, but Johnson's right about this. Once those bills go out, you have to look at the red states. How many thousands and tens of thousands of folks are going to get hit with these 50, 70, 500% increases in their premium? Huge. You've got to look at how many rural hospitals are going to start to close because of the Medicaid cuts, which we want to reverse. You have to look at how many nursing homes are going to start to collapse. This is going to hit home really hard. So I am not so sure that Democrats are going to fold on this. I think it's very possible that the Republicans come to the table and they take care of this problem. They put it in writing. Whatever the leadership feels is enough for them. I don't think the Dems are going to fold. I think especially if the polls continue, they're amazing. And again, keep your eye out for, for the independent voters who I think are the real deciders.
- [28:59]
Harry Littman
Norm, I have to report to the listeners that when Jonathan was making his point, you were nodding and grimacing along with him. So I think you're on Team Capehart here. Wanna give us your thoughts?
- [29:10]
Norm Ornstein
I'm on the same page, but I will give this to Barbara. I think there are a couple of ways in which this could end, and this may be the most likely, which is between the two of you. Democrats eventually will provide enough votes to reopen the government. And it may be without a deal here once this starts to happen, that's when Republicans are going to beg to go back to the table and they are going to add more to the subsidies for hospitals. They are going to do something to limit premiums, and it might be by Trump ordering insurance companies not to increase their premiums. Whatever it may be, they will respond to that. But Democrats win by making it very clear who's doing this. But the other point here, Harry, that we shouldn't leave without mentioning is the other illegal aspect of this, which is the most blatant violations of the Hatch Act I have ever seen.
- [30:01]
Harry Littman
The senator mentioned that, too. Yeah, go ahead.
- [30:03]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah. So the Hatch act basically tries to keep most people in government from using their governmental positions to pursue political partisan ends. So we have today one of the most outrageous things I have ever seen, which is employees of the Department of Education finding that the department is hacked into their emails so that their personal responses to emails blame the shutdown on the Democrats. And when they go in to reverse that, it happens yet again. We have the great irony that the Justice Department site that talks about how people have to apply the Hatch act to their own behavior is violating the Hatch Act. So they're just doing this stuff with impunity. And it's another example of using the executive bully pulpit even beyond the President, who, as Barbara rightly says, is not well. And Madeline Dean, one of the best members of Congress, by the way, one of my favorite people in the world said it and confronted the speaker with it. But they're using every other element of government. Legality means nothing to these people. The Constitution means nothing to these people. Every other time when we've had right wing presidents, Republican presidents, who violated plenty of norms and laws, they had at least some willingness to abide by fundamentals. And that's gone now.
- [31:40]
Harry Littman
I just want to add as a lawyer, you know, the Hatch act, every administration has always adhered to it, Republican and Democrat. You know, it's got actually has a criminal provision in that, but that's part of what's going on here. It's like contempt of Congress. Who has to prosecute the criminal provision? Oh, that would be Pam Bondi and the doj. So, you know, they're just passing out get out of jail free cards all the way. All right, it is now time for a spirited debate brought to you by our sponsor, Total Wine and more. Each episode, you'll be hearing an expert talk about the pros and cons of a particular issue in the world of wine, spirit and beverages.
- [32:33]
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- [33:36]
Senator Barbara Boxer
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- [33:44]
Harry Littman
Thanks to our friends at Total Wine and More for today's a spirited debate. All right. I really want to move to Chicago. You know, there are some things that just wash over us. The outrages happen and then there are a few that maybe to each of us they may differ which ones they are. But it's like, holy shit, you had agents from all kinds of federal agencies supposedly to do immigration authority, just do an act of war. You know, it's like we might do to try to take out Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. They go into a building in Chicago where regular people live. Even when you hear, I think you mentioned Senator Boxer about the opinion by Kavanaugh that says you can maybe profile and the like, but this wasn't that at all. This was just banging down doors and taking naked children down the street and detaining them. And, you know, some of them are Americans. And the justification was, was this is the word. It's a building that is frequented, frequented by members of Tren de Aragua, which, you know, that we have the whole cluster of legal issues of. Is that the equivalent of a foreign country invading us? Which seems ridiculous, but the brutality of it and the basic application of a wartime footing to citizens of, of Chicago. Maybe as a DOJ guy, I'm a little bit more worked up. General Gotchek, tell us your thoughts about the gestalt that you felt when, you know in reading this news, we have.
- [35:31]
Senator Barbara Boxer
An out of control administration. They're committing heinous acts on peaceful people. They lied. Trump did when he said, I'm going to go after the criminals, the rapists. What he is doing and it's Chicago, he's doing it in Los Angeles. He's going to take those terrible criminals who are waiting in Home Depot parking lots to go to work to provide for their families, many of whom are the children are legal. They're going to the places where these people are showing up lawfully for their appointments, being so careful to check in and knocking their families down to the floor. This is stunning. The only reason he's doing it is because he believes the country is racist. The country is bigoted. The country wants this, and I don't believe that is true. And he's also doing it because he believes the Supreme Court, no matter what, will back him. And sad to say, when they said, yeah, if you've got reason to believe someone's illegal because their skin is dark, that broke my heart. So we have a situation here. And as in all of these things, I believe a couple of things are true. One is, every single day, he wants to divert from the Epstein files. We haven't raised that. I think he's absolutely panicked about it. And he has reason to be panicked about it. Anyone who's looked at photos listened to Lutnick. All of these things, I think every day, every day. He doesn't only do one thing a day. That's crazy. Which he did in his first term. He does six things a day. And we're all worked up, as we should be about this. So the first thing is a diversion. And I'd say the second thing is the deep racism.
- [37:37]
Norm Ornstein
I want to circle back just a little bit to our previous conversation. We're not going to have a particularly long shutdown because all of these ICE people and all of these FBI agents can't go for more than a month without being able to pay their mortgages, pay their rent. And they're going to put pressure on Trump and the Republicans to reopen the government. So it may not be quite as bad as we thought on that front. Every time we see one of these outrages, I put on social media, american Gestapo. But I will tell you, we used to say, you shouldn't use the Nazi analogies. They're now more and more compelling. But I will tell you, the Gestapo that would go into an apartment building where there were Jews, and they would go to the apartments where the Jews were and haul them out. But they didn't go into the other apartments. They didn't break down their doors. If they asked for papers, they would look at the papers and say, okay, you're fine here. They don't care. They have no warrants. They have no constitutional right to unreasonable searches and seizures. They have devastated the lives of American citizens here in Chicago. They've taken these kids and traumatized them permanently. Imagine if you're a little kid, you're hauled out by masked thugs. You're naked, your hands have zip Ties. You're put in a van and separated from your parents for hours or days, or in some instances, it might be permanently. And this is what they're doing. And these are people who call themselves Pro Life. I am sorry, we have not seen anything like this. And when I saw what they were doing there, you know, after, remember, we had this thug who beat up a woman at an immigration court in New York, threw her to the ground, and for a day, the Homeland Security Department said, this is not who we are. Then they reinstated him the next day. They are lawless, they are sadistic, they are anti American, and yet they're getting away with it.
- [39:47]
Jonathan Capehart
I would say they're getting away with it because when he started doing this in Los Angeles early on, you know, we were all shocked. People demonstrated. And then he tried it in other places, and here we are, what, eight months in, and each new place he sends them, it ratchets up from where it started. And so this is incredibly troubling because what I don't think people understand is that, sure, they're doing that to undocumented immigrants and getting American citizens in the process. But I think because a lot of them are brown, black and brown, far too many Americans are not as outraged as they should be because they think this is not going to impact them. But they need to pay attention to the fact that when US Citizens get scooped up in this, that that could happen to them. Whatever happens to that US Citizen or doesn't happen to that US Citizen, if there's a challenge and the courts come back and say, yeah, you can do that to an American citizen, guess what that means? All American citizens are at risk. And right now, all American citizens are at risk. Norm, you said the Constitution means nothing to these people. And we got the clearest articulation of that. When Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said in Memphis just the other day, to the members of law enforcement who were brought in to do something about crime in Memphis, which has been going down certainly over last year, he said to them that they were, quote, unleashed. Unleashed and unhandcuffed. But so what's leashing them? What's handcuffing them? It's called the Constitution, where all sorts of rights that we would have when faced with law enforcement are there to guarantee our rights. And so what we're seeing in Chicago, in Los Angeles, soon to be Portland, Memphis, New York, New Jersey, all over the place, is again, another testing of the system to see what the system can take legally, constitutionally, but also how much the American People are willing to put up with before they say in unison, this is enough. And I'm afraid when it comes to the public piece of this, we're nowhere near where we need to be to push back.
- [42:40]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Jonathan, I want to say to you, I feel a little differently about it. And this is the reason what I see happening in these cities where these God awful, unconstitutional, heinous crimes are occurring by ice. There are protesters and the protesters are old and young and the protesters are black, white and brown and every kind of background. And I see them out there and in some cases they're blowing bubbles at the guard and at the ICE people like we used to do in the anti Vietnam War days. We used to go out there and hand them flowers, put on their bayonets. God, I remember that shows you how old I am. But bottom line is, I think that is reaching the people because this is what I want to say that in many ways, and I am a very positive person, but this is something I think they want. They want all of these protesters to come out old, young, they, the administration. Yes. So that ICE and the National Guard and the police can go after us. Those of us who are saying no, no, no, no, like Jonathan, it's too much. So the last thing I'll say about that is every time I get a chance to talk to a colleague, and I did talk to some who have these ICE people coming in, the National Guard, tell your people whatever they do, don't fall for the bait and kind of make fun of these guys by going out there playing music, having your signs that say we don't need you here, but with a smile on your face. It's going to be hard. What worries me is if they don't do that, then you're going to have him saying martial law. So there's just so many pitfalls in all of this.
- [44:34]
Harry Littman
Yeah, there you go. There's the veteran of the 60s movement.
- [44:39]
Jonathan Capehart
And you know what, Barbara, you're absolutely right that the protests around the country and in these cities have actually been very, they have been very heartening. And so, yes, you are absolutely right on that. I guess where my deep frustration, dare say pain, is that I am old. We are all old enough to remember, but I am old enough to remember, certainly from being here in Washington, to remember that if anything like this had happened in the Bush administration, in the Obama administration, that there would be bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill, that this cannot go on. There'd be hearings, there might be impeachment proceedings, but there would be accountability at the highest level, and there isn't any.
- [45:26]
Harry Littman
I just want to make a quick legal point to you, Senator, which is you. I know how galling it is, the Kavanaugh opinion that suggests maybe they can racially profile. That's none of this. Under their own rules that they say are okay. What they're supposed to be doing is having a quick couple questions if and only if they have particularized suspicion here. They've just completely rappelled into a building who they don't know live there, except they assert that some, sometimes Tran Aralo frequents there and just blow open the doors to everyone. It's a complete violation, even by their own lights. Okay, I just want to take a few minutes to talk about our Secretary of War, not Defense of War Pete Hegseth and his gathering of the senior military leaders for what, I don't know, seemed like something between a pep rally and a lecture. And now that it's come and gone, what was he trying to achieve? What do you take from the Hegseth gathering?
- [46:33]
Norm Ornstein
Pete Hegseth said there are no rules of engagement, meaning no Geneva Convention torture, blow up innocent civilians, no rules of engagement. And that takes us back to Mark Milley, when Donald Trump in his first term said about protesters in Portland, as I recall, why don't we shoot them in the legs? And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, we can't do that. You can't do that, and you can't use us for this purpose. So protesters. Wonderful. I saw a video today of a very calm protester standing, a woman standing, engaging with some ICE people. And one of them put up, it was probably pepper spray, and with her and another bystander sprayed them right in the face and probably caused serious damage to the two of them. When you have a guy who is suspended for a day for brutally beating a woman who had not touched him and then reinstated the next day, when what it says to all of these people is there are no rules of engagement. You can do anything you want. And we know there are plenty of them who will do just that. And what I worry about is they won't need provocation. They won't need people throwing rocks or doing violence themselves. They may manufacture it. I can imagine a bunch of proud boys dressing up with antifa uniforms and going out there to provoke violence so that he can use force, deadly force, and declare martial law.
- [48:16]
Harry Littman
And by the way, we're getting many more ice, you know, going to the point of do they have to identify themselves where there's a proliferation of phony ICE vehicles with people wanting to just kick butt.
- [48:27]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah. At some point a bunch of masked people without any identifying symbols on them are going to go to beat in a door and somebody in a stand your ground state is going to fire. And probably where they, you know, they're happy to use stand their ground when a white guy kills a black guy, no matter what the provocation. But all of a sudden it's going to be, no, you can't do that. But what you have is a phony macho Secretary of Defense trying to show that he's in charge and that he's changing all the rules and, and that all of these military people better listen or their careers and lives are shot. And it's not just the threat that they'll fire you, it's that they'll find a way to take away your pension as well. So they'll court martial you. They'll take away your pension. This is a threat. Not to mention it was just the ego satisfaction of standing up and strutting on the stage like a phony Charlie.
- [49:28]
Harry Littman
Chaplin or like a Hitler in Nuremberg. I'm sorry, since we're going to the, I mean, that gathering of the generals.
- [49:35]
Norm Ornstein
Yeah. But it was also basically saying, you want to commit sexual assault in the military, go for it. We aren't going to allow any anonymous complaints or we aren't going to take this seriously anymore. Despite providing a little bit of lip service. We're going to purge the military of women and African American men who have beards often because they have a skin condition and they're no longer going to be a part of us. And it's also, look how strong I am. I can do all these push ups and pull ups and sit ups and if you, you know, you fat generals, you're not going to be able to do that anymore. We're going to have a macho military. And by the way, one of the things we ought to note here is that the reason that we had some different standards in physical performance is because in the all volunteer military, we were falling way short of our quotas and they had to adjust the standards so we could get enough people coming in. So all of this is not going to create a stronger, tougher military. It's going to undermine national security. This was a farce. And of course, Trump speech that followed was itself frightening and farcical as well.
- [50:53]
Senator Barbara Boxer
I would just say frightening is the word. And I'm pretty thick skinned. I don't get frightened by much. But first, to look at him, this Pete Hexseth He's a preening, power hungry talk show host. He's frightening, but he looked like he was high on his own lust for power. Now, I want to say what really, really got me out of the whole thing. I love the fact that the generals and all these top brass never showed what they were thinking, that they sat there. It really unnerved Trump. But here's what I want to say. When Trump came out after this guy says, you got to shave your beard, you're all fat, you're this, you're that, blah, blah, no more dei, we're done with that. S H I T. I think he even said that word, I'm pretty sure with none of that anymore. Blah, blah, blah. And women, if the women can't do what the men do, they're out. Well, I bet there are women who could beat him. So I want to see that. I'd love to see that. A contest like Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs again, showing my maturity. But here's what I want to say. That just got me. And I wonder if anyone else felt this. Sometimes when I watch things and my heart kind of stops, I know my gut is reacting. So after all this and after. And of course, put together, what Trump said about you're going to practice in our cities, putting that together with what Hegseth said about you're supposed to kill people, you're violent. And then he comes on Trump and says, you got to practice this on the cities. What Hecseth said, and I'm pretty sure I'm quoting him pretty closely, he said, if you listen to all of this and your heart sank, quit, quit.
- [52:51]
Harry Littman
They love exiling people, right?
- [52:52]
Senator Barbara Boxer
He wants to purge and he's telling them in advance. If your heart sank in any of this, if you don't like the fact that you gotta shave your beard and you gotta lose your weight and you can't do dei, what the hell's wrong with that? I mean, really. Then your heart sank. Get out. That, to me, was stunning, because then that will be followed by questionnaires and purges. And once we have generals fighting us in America, this is something we haven't seen before in this country. And God help us, we can't have it.
- [53:29]
Jonathan Capehart
But that's why I thought the reaction of the generals in the room was probably the most heartening display I have seen in a very long time. Especially when what we have gotten used to is the president going to the academies where the cadets are younger, not seasoned, maybe haven't taken to heart quite yet. That they're supposed to be apolitical. And so they're yucking it up behind him. They're laughing. They're cheering at all of his laugh lines. And I think that's what the president was expecting from the generals. But what he got from the generals was the professionalism that they have represented and demonstrated for two centuries. And so I take your point. I think it was you, Senator Boxer, who said that this was a warning. You are gonna be fired if you don't do this. You both made this point that's very chilling. But as an American, to sit there and watch the generals be stoic in the face of all of that, told me that of all the institutions that have let us down since January 20, the high brass of the military, the men and women in uniform who were in that room, they are the ones who are holding strong, at least for now.
- [54:54]
Norm Ornstein
One last point, which is for about 30 years, almost every year, I traveled to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to speak to the Army War College during its graduation week. Hundreds of officers, captains, majors, the next generation of leadership in our military, along with a number of people from foreign countries who would come and during their time at the War College, they would have not classes on warfare so much as classics, philosophy, sociology. They were designed to make these people full citizens, understanding history, understanding much broader things, with a belief that if all you did was train people who could only kill, you would be undermining your defense capabilities and your national security and. And the fundamentals of a constitutional democracy. And I would come away from that with these incredibly bright people who understood this feeling really good about America and about our military. They have not systematically taken all of this out of the military academies. There's no more history. They've taken books, like books about Martin Luther King out of the libraries at the Naval Academy and at West Point. They do not want them to learn anything under Pete Hegseth except how to kill people. And that will include killing Americans. And it's as chilling as anything that we have going on right now.
- [56:25]
Harry Littman
It really is. And I'll just make a very quick point, which is the military as an institution has been the shining example of DEI programs done well, helping the fighting mission of the whole place. What you might want to be the goal of society overall, and for them to trash it there as a special sort of irony. Okay, we are out of time, I'm sorry to say. Great discussion. We just got one minute for our five words or fewer feature, and we're sticking with Hegseth. The question is, you've heard everything, including those that C of fairly stoic generals. What was the door prize for the generals who came halfway around the world for the big Trump Hegseth meeting? What did they get as they left?
- [57:14]
Senator Barbara Boxer
Okay, I'll go Copy of Constitution blacked out.
- [57:20]
Norm Ornstein
All right, mine first is a hat tip to Austin Powers Swedish Penis Enlarger Endozempic.
- [57:29]
Jonathan Capehart
Excellent. Mine is just one peach candle.
- [57:34]
Harry Littman
Nice.
- [57:34]
Jonathan Capehart
And if you don't get it, just go into the Google type in peach candle and SNL.
- [57:40]
Harry Littman
There you go. I'm going straight ahead with Trump 2028 tote bags. Thank you so much to Senator Boxer, Jonathan and Norm. And thank you very much listeners for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and my daily takes on top legal stories. Check us out as well on substack@harrylitman.substack.com where I'll be posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Feds has joined forces with the Contrarian I'm a founding contributor to this bold new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now, linked up with an ambitious project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in, and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Luke Cregan and Katie Upshaw associate Becca Haveian sound Engineering by Matt McGardell, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hamsa Mahadranathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshay Turbailu and Sebastian Navarro. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Delito, llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.