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Foreign.
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Welcome to Talking Feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. Followers of this YouTube channel know that I think of the Trump versus Illinois case currently at the Supreme Court on the administration's emergency motion to be potentially a vehicle for the court to greenlight extreme deference to Trump in assertion of emergency powers, which in turn could have manifold repercussions. So I and others immediately stood up and took notice when the court told the parties to submit supplemental briefs on the meaning of a phrase. And at the heart of one of Trump's theories, it was an unusual move that suggested the resolution of the motion could turn on the proper interpretation of that phrase. It was even more unusual because the parties apparently hadn't thought of it. The argument emerged in an amicus brief authored by a Georgetown constitutional law professor and former DOJ official, well known at the court and in Washington circles and an old friend. So it's great to welcome him today, especially because he is sleep deprived from submitting his own new brief late last night in response to the court's order. Marty Lederman is a professor at Georgetown University Law center and has had a long career in and out of government service, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. He's got a deep, deep expertise in questions of executive power, federalism, and separation of powers. Marty, thanks so much for joining. Great to see you.
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Great to be here. This is, this is keeping me awake. I know you'll keep me awake.
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That's our, that's our goal for so many listeners. Look, you've been living inside this issue since the court's order on October 29th. Let's just set it up for everyone, as you might for your students. What, what is Trump trying to do on the ground in Chicago and what legal base seas, I guess I should say, is he asserting?
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Okay, so in three cities, Louisiana, Portland and Chicago, the President has called into federal service members of state National Guards that in the first instance, they're part of the state armed forces subject to governor gubernatorial control. But throughout our history, the Constitution gives Congress the power to call the militia into federal service for particular purposes. And Congress has delegated that authority through the years to the President, beginning in 1792 in a series of statutes. Those statutes, the ones that are most commonly known to the extent people know about some of those statutes, they're in a series of statutes that are colloquially known as the Insurrection Act. And they're collected together now in Title 10 of the United States Code. The ones that exist now, one of them is derived from an 18th century statute. Two of the others are derived from statutes enacted in 1861 and 1871. And there's been a lot of, mostly internal to the executive branch, but controversy about when those statutes can be used in various circumstances through the decades. This got a lot of play in Little Rock in 1957 and in Alabama in 1963, because those were the rare cases in which the President used military forces, both the regular army and National Guards.
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B
And he would have been foiled trying to do it on his own. Right, because the states were so intense.
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In opposition to governors, to Orval Robbus and to George Wallace. But those cases are the most famous because they were federal versus state standoffs. Right? And it was the President taking the Guard out of the control of Arkansas or Alabama and putting them to federal use. But those aren't the norm. The norm, the vast majority of cases in American history, involvement, threats to state and local governance or law, and the governors or the legislatures of a state asking the President to send forces, which since the 18th century, that has almost always been regular army forces, not National Guard forces. I mean, when you think about it, that makes sense because if the state were able to stop the rioting using its own National Guard, they wouldn't need to call them into federal service. So typically it's been the army, but sometimes with the National Guard as well. So like 1992, they haven't been incredibly controversial like when I was growing up in Detroit in the riots of 67, President Johnson, at the request of the governor, you know, brought in the army troops in Detroit to quell the rioting going on there. What's unusual here is two things. First is that the President has only called out the National Guard. And in the case of Illinois, I guess it was going to be predominantly the Texas National Guard, rather than using the army either alone or in conjunction with the Guard. That's historically very unusual. My research shows that the only times that I can fined after the 18th century in which the Guard has been called out for purposes of trying to help enforce Federal law were two cases in 1963 involving George Wallace in Alabama at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and then again in Birmingham later that year, when the army was on reserve and in waiting. But they didn't want to use the army if they didn't have to. The main point there was to turn the Alabama Guard to the federal uses. And Wallace stood down. But with that exception, it is very unusual for the president to use the National Guard and not what I'll call the regular forces and I'll get to that.
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So let me just ask you an instance. You think of where the governor said please come in at least for now to help us sort of. Right. The ship. It was the. In California here post 92 Rodney King verdict. So those were military forces who came in and calmed the waters temporari at the request of, I think Pete Wilson.
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I think so, yeah. Well, 92 was the last time that any president has invoked these Insurrection act statutes. Yeah. And that was at the request of the California governor after the Rodney King beating. So it's been even that, even the request of the governor Insurrection act cases. It's been 30 plus years since that's been done. The other unusual thing about this is that the president didn't invoke the Insurrection act statutes. Instead he invoked a statute that as far as I can tell, has never been used before to actually call forth the National Guard. It was originally section 4 of a statute known as the Dick Act. Dick was the last name of a representative who was instrumental in passing that act back in 1903. And in 1903 this was a very small provision of the act. The principal purpose of the statute in 1903 and an amendment to it in 1908 that we'll discuss was to build up the state National Guards so that they could become a supplement to the army mostly for fighting wars and for, you know, resisting rebellions and stuff. The experience in the late 19th century, especially in the Spanish American war, had been fairly disastrous in terms of using volunteer units that were not well trained, not well equipped, not well disciplined. The army was a much, much more effective fighting force. But so the idea of this legislation in the early 20th century was to Congress to provide the resources, training, discipline, organization of what would be called, come to be called the national, the Federal National Guard, which really just meant the state, for the most part the state National Guards, but when turned into federal service, that they would be much more. One provision of that.
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B
So. Got it. Can I set up a question then? So, and the statute, never invoked before then gives three possible triggers for the use of the powers. And the first, consistent with what you're talking about, Marty, is we're being invaded by, you know, and even the, this administration hasn't tried to say that. And then there are the two. We've I think, seen this. You mentioned Portland and L. A. If there's a rebellion, what does that mean. Right. And I think most people were focused on that. But then this third clause, if the United States is unable but through the use of regular forces to basically keep order. And you, when did you come to have this singular at the time, understanding of what that must mean?
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Yeah, let me pause for a minute. Just.
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Sure, go ahead.
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Because, because you're right that your listeners, your viewers might have heard about the President saying there's a rebellion here. And this is justifiable on the second of the three clauses, which is you can use the National Guard when there is rebellion against the government of the United States. They argue that there is one here. I think that's fairly absurd under any ordinary meaning of rebellion, which is something greater than an insurrection. The President argues so do all judges. On January 6th wasn't even an insurrection. So it's not a plausible thing. And on top of that, and I point this out in my brief in Chicago, the President didn't find that there was a rebellion. He did make that finding in la, but not in Chicago. So here they're asking for deference to a decision the President didn't even make on that. So I don't think that. I doubt there'd be very many, if any, votes on the Supreme Court on the rebellion theory. So that's kind of taken a back seat. The Solicitor General's still relying upon it, but it's, it's not where the action is. Okay. The action is that the President did determine under this third provision, made a determination that in Chicago, the phrase in the statute is the regular forces, where the President is unable with the regular forces to execute federal law, he may call into service the National Guard to help execute federal statutes. So how did I come into this? So the parties in all three places, Oregon, California, Illinois, as you know, Harry, and maybe you've done some shows on this, have had extensive litigation, complex litigation, hearings, trials, opinions, briefs for months on end about whether the situation is severe enough to satisfy the criterion that the President is unable to execute federal law in those places and that parties are arguing about what the standard is. What does unable mean? Does it mean absolutely unable, partially unable, Significant impediment was the phrase. The Ninth Circuit came up with all just incredible resources and litigation and debate about the facts, basically making this a fact bound case based on a standard that the Ninth Circuit, I don't mean to criticize the Ninth Circuit, but kind of pulled out of thin air this significant impediment phrase because it's hard to figure out what Congress meant by unable. Both Extremes seem wrong. It can't be. Can't be any.
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And I'll criticize the Ninth Circuit, if you don't mind, because what it really was devolved into in the administration briefs anyway is just, you know, they're throwing rocks at us and it's hard and people are in fear of their lives. But the obvious retort is, yeah, well, that happens every day with law enforcement and First Amendment activity. It doesn't mean you're unable to make arrests as you're doing robustly, et cetera.
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Right. That's what shows the government's view is too extreme, is that it covers the waterfront. On the other hand, the original view of the plaintiffs, which is it has to be virtual impossibility of keeping. That also seems a little extreme. There's probably something in between. The 9th Circuit came up with something in between. Significant impediment in any way.
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B
And by the way, that's another part of this. Of similar litigation. But here we're in the seventh circle.
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Right? Right. Okay. So since June, all this has been going on. And good textualist that I am, that's partially tongue in cheek, but partially. So this is what I told my students. So in fairness, Harry, you said some very kind things about my expertise at the outset, but I was not an expert in these statutes, and I had, quite frankly, until June of this year, never heard of this provision, this National.
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Guard provision, you and everyone.
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So of course, when the President invoked it instead of the Insurrection act, caught my attention. I'm like, whoa, what is this statute? Where did it come from? And what I told my students is what's really odd here is that all the parties and all the judges in all three of these cases, all three of these states, have become so deeply invested in the questions that they've been litigating and adjudicating and debating and arguing about that it appeared to me that no one was doing what I hope my students will do as lawyers and what any good lawyer should do, and certainly what any DOJ lawyer should do, and that is first look at the statute. I was kidding. To those of you who don't know me, I am not a strict textualist in any sense, but I am a, you know, I'm an alum of the Office of Legal Counsel, and we care a whole lot about the language of the text. Certainly it may not be the be all and end all, but you can't disregard it. You go to it and you ask yourself, where did this statute come from? What was Congress? This is a 1903 statute you guys are arguing about whether ICE can execute federal law. I don't think that's what Congress had in mind in 1903, whether ICE could execute federal law. So I asked myself the sort of question that any OLC lawyer and that I think any good lawyer should start with, but most lawyers forget to do it. I don't think I was doing anything out of the ordinary. It was out of the ordinary, as it turned out, but it shouldn't be out of the ordinary, which is okay, level said here, where did this statute come from? What does it say? What did Congress have in mind? What were they doing? Why isn't anyone talking about 1903 and 1908 since that's when this statute was enacted. And I asked a couple people who know stuff about the Insurrection act back in June, said, has anyone looked into this statute, like what's this about? What does it mean unable with the regular forces? That sure sounds to me like without the military, the standing forces, the regular force, the full time army, you can use these temporary state military forces after you've tried your own. Everyone told me no, there's no writing on it, there's no literature on it, there's very little that's been done on it and none of the parties were paying attention to it.
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B
And let me jump in here because this is really the praise of you supplements the actual story because here we have. This is a really big case, I think for the reasons at least I've tried to argue. And normally if a court is struggling, the Supreme Court, they'll argue back and forth. Maybe someone will proffer an opinion, they'll go through it. But they literally here were so tied in knots and the only place that where the knots were tied were in that sole amicus brief. It's kind of as an aside here sort of beautiful that even in this court can have 99 briefs versus one. But if the one has, you know, compelling reasoning, it's what, it's what counts in a court. But they then come out very unusual, especially an emergency motion and say what's the meaning of this term? And we don't so a that they're all tied up in it, which was hardening in its own sense because they weren't ready to just, you know, give some deference principle. But, but then on these words and they asked the parties for more guidance. Shocking, right? I'm not sure I, I know of a precedent.
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I, I'll be honest with you, like, so let me just tie that to. Yeah. So finally I, I put it aside, it's like, good. You know, we say this is a good note topic. When a student comes in and says, I want to write a paper, what should I write? I'm like, well, why don't you look into what that's.
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When you're a tenured professor for junior would be. I should write about it.
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Because nobody. Because nobody's written about and I'd like to know. So I put it to the side and I kind of kept thinking about it. It was kind of shocked that the parties and the judges weren't dealing with it at all. And then finally the case gets up to the Supreme Court. And the briefing in the Supreme Court's just like the briefing in the. In the lower courts. And I'm like, wait a minute. You can ask the Supreme Court to resolve this question without figuring, without any reference to the statutory language or where it came from or anything like that. Let me do the work. And literally that first brief was the function of research and writing over the course of one weekend. I hesitate to acknowledge that, but it's really true that I didn't have some great background knowledge in this statute. Nobody has looked at that statute in a long time. So I just did.
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B
Although and looked at it. I just want to say from the vantage point of the way the court reports anyway to do statutory interpretation. And they're really, in a sense, you know, been been supplied by you. And now the parties will actually just Illinois with the building blocks to do what they normally do. And they'll need some pretty strong explanation if they abandon that. Let me. If you. If we can. Marty, cut.
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Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just.
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I just want to cut to the chase. So now last night, the parties come in and Illinois had something to say. Liederman had something to say. The US had something to say. They weren't all the same. How are things now set up for the court? And the court in its initial order said replies due also to everyone's argument in a week from yesterday.
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I don't get a reply, but Illinois and the SG will reply to one another and to me if they see fit. And there's a couple other briefs that touch on this question. So here's what's interesting. What I did and what Illinois did, you know, they added to what I presented to the court is effectively. I'll just give the short version. The phrase the regular forces, all three of those words being important, was universally understood for many for most of the nation's history, leading into 1903 and 1908. And for many years thereafter to be a reference to the full time standing armed forces of the United States, in contrast to the militia and volunteers who were part time, who would be called into part time service. That was, you know, chapter and I gave chapter and verse. I gave as much as I could from all three branches. Supreme Court opinions, statutes, congressional hearings, the reports, presidential speeches, blah, blah, blah. I was trying to. Everything I could come up with over the course of a weekend I threw in there. And in this latest brief, I threw in a couple of other. My favorite part of my brief so far is I have a big story about the Battle of Chippewa in the War of 1812, which I've now added to the discussion. And Illinois did likewise. They talked a lot about dictionaries and dictionary terms and the way this is used in statutes and the like. So what's really interesting, Harry, is that in response to this, dozens of pages of examples of this reference to the Army. So the basic argument for your viewers is the president first has to determine that he couldn't execute federal law using the army and everything. That's true. Like if they're overseas fighting a war or something, then you can call into effect the National Guard. But first you have to use the Army. It's an order of operations. State or local act could be used. Then you have to have a statutory authority to use the Army. That would presumably be the Insurrection Act. And if you have that authority and you use them or think you can't use them and they can't do the trick, then you call into place the National Guard. So Trump has not even thought about using the Army. Okay. Pages and pages and pages. The Solicitor General. Do you know how many counterexamples he offers to the dozens that we put in? Zero. Right. He doesn't even try to suggest that anyone ever use this term to mean anything other than the army and the other standing forces. And Stanley argues that this can't be what Congress had in mind. That that would. Yes, he agrees. That would ordinarily mean what this phrase means. It would ordinarily be the Army. But that doesn't make sense here. And he gives reasons. And Harry, you know that good Supreme Court advocates, you can make all the technical and statute and textual arguments you want, but the argument has to sing. It has to resonate with the justices. Common sense really does matter, despite what anyone might tell you. And so if you say it's a good idea in any case to be able to make a case to the justices, the other side has lots of good, nice Technical, formal arguments, it doesn't make sense.
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And that's what they're saying, Right?
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Right. Come on.
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We have a solid principle in this country that you don't have military doing law enforcement and that violates fundamental principles of American law, et cetera. So you see that as having some commonsensical grounding and setting up a pretty kind of, you know, fundamental showdown between what you might call common sense and all the text, history, etc. Or you think common sense is on your side as well.
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So I'll say this, this is what I. For folks who are interested and if you are.
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Still with us, Marty, they're interested.
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That's probably why they're watching this, right?
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Yeah.
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A
You can give them the link to my latest. So I did not have the SG's brief in front of me. But what was interesting was that after I filed my brief and after the court asked for briefing on the question, the Department of Justice filed a brief in Oregon in the Oregon litigation in the lower court, making its case about why this didn't mean the Army a week ago Saturday on November 1st. And that struck me as, okay, that's probably a signal of what the Solicitor General is going to say. I'm sure they coordinated that with the sg. It's got to be what they're saying. There has got to be what the SG is planning to say in the Supreme Court nine days later. He could always change it. They could decide, emphasize certain arguments and not others. But I took the gamble that this will probably be the what they say on November 10th. And I drafted my brief to try to respond to the arguments that DOJ made in Oregon in the district court, in the last five or six pages of my brief. And I say what you would say. You would say, first of all, it doesn't really matter. For whatever reason, even if we couldn't figure out why Congress used a term that everyone understood to mean X, and the Solicitor General hasn't given any counter evidence to that. But yeah, you would. Of course, as a Supreme Court advocate, you want to give an explanation about why Congress might have done this in response to an argument that this just doesn't make sense. Why would any Congress want to require you to use the regular armed forces before you use the localized militia? I will stop to say here, this is not like they're using just the Illinois Militia. They're bringing in people from Texas. So the argument that the local National Guard has more understanding of the situation in Chicago, they've kind of like gotten away from that. Okay. But anyway, I offer speculation because the legislative history, as it turns out, does not have a lot to say. Unless I've overlooked something about why Congress put in this order of operations. State and local government first, then the army, then the National Guard. There's not a lot of explanation. We know that the Secretary of War, the very esteemed Elihu Root, had negotiations with all sorts of interested parties, and then he proposed this order of operations. Congress accepted what the Secretary of War proposed. There's not a lot of explanation that I've been able to find about why. And so it's what I have in the last four or five pages of the brief is some speculation of why a reasonable Congress might have wanted to do this. But I'm candid about it. It's not like I've got evidence of that. I'm just trying to counter the Solicitor General's argument that this is absurd. This makes no sense. Yes, it does. You can imagine why Congress might have done this. Not that that's determinative. And I think Illinois will probably do likewise in their reply brief. If I were them, that's what I would do. I would say you've given us no counterexamples. The text is clear. But this does not lead to an absurd outcome. And here's why. Talking Feds is supported by the Brennan center for Justice. In this new political era, the Brennan center will do what they do, defend the Constitution and the rule of law. They're prepared to fight against presidential overreach and will continue advocating for reforms to resist weaponized government, stop billionaires from corrupting our elections, and ensure every eligible American has the freedom to vote. Stay informed by visiting BrennanCenter.org and I.
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B
Want to say that their brief from yesterday very much tracked your argument, as you know, which Ellie makes sense. Sense. And of course, the administration went the other way. I mean, it sort of had to if it wants to win. It could confess error. But let's. Let me just sort of put it to you. If the court accepts this position, then the administration is back to square one. This effort is completely unwound. And then the question becomes the one that I think they've tried to avoid politically. Neither of your my expertise, but they're actually put to the point of having to invoke the Insurrection act and then actually send real boots on the ground into, you know, US Boots, not Texas boots in the ground, into Illinois and these other places, which especially after some of the misadventures that they've committed here with just ice and National Guard, you know, I think will not be a good look for the administration.
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I have some thoughts about that, although I'm really more interested in what you and your viewers think about that. So if we can hold that for a second. Let me just tell your viewers that there's several possible outcomes here. The first is just that they grant the stay that they're asking for. Right. There's an injunction against the use of the Guard in Chicago. The government is asking the court to stay that injunction to allow the Guard.
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B
To be there, even though their presence is much reduced now from when they first asked.
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A
It's reduced. There's two things, apart from the merits that might cause the court to say this is not the right vehicle for this at all. The first is that I am told there's been. Someone told me that today there was an announcement that the Border Patrol folks are being pulled out of Chicago. It feels. I don't know. I don't know the details, but it sounds like this operation in Chicago is winding down and might go away. That's number one. Might not be. If you're pulling folks out, enforcement people, immigration enforcement people out, why do you need the National Guard? Number two is a very weird thing that happened, which I addressed in a footnote. And Illinois addresses the injunction that the court that the SG went into the Supreme Court to stay was going to expire on October 23rd. On that day, the government itself asked the trial judge, the district court judge, to extend the temporary restraining order not just for another 14 days until final judgment in the case, which could be weeks or months away. The government asked, not the. Not Illinois, not Chicago. The government asked to extend the injunction against it for months. How can they go into the Supreme Court now and say, we need you to undo this injunction that we just had extended until months from now? I don't get it. And I'm curious to see what the SG will say about that in its brief. So the court might think this is the wrong vehicle. Let's wait for California or Oregon as very possible that it will be another case that they'll have to. Okay, that aside. Or they could hold that Illinois is right. I'm right. You need to first make a determination about the Army. And the president could respond to that in two ways. One, he could determine, yeah, the army is unable to help execute the law in Chicago. The SG's brief actually says the court should assume the president's already made that determination. Yes, Variant crazy argument. I think the word I use in the brief is implausible for cock. But you might think of stronger adjectives to use there. It just like obviously he didn't make this determination and if he did, the idea that you would defer to that determination is phantom anyway. You fill in your own adjective. He could do that, but then he'd be really playing with fire because I don't think the courts. How much deference are they going to give him? No, the US army is not up to the task. We need the Texas National Guard. It's just like he could say that. I've seen him say crazier things. Okay. The second is what you suggested. He might even if not in Chicago, then in Portland or LA or some other city. He might invoke the Insurrection act and read it much more broadly than the Department of Justice and the executive branch have ever read it to give him the power to send in the regular army troops. Or it could be another one of the forces Marines to help prevent violence against ICE officials in some other urban city. That would in turn of course raise a slew of legal questions about whether that's legal. I hope it doesn't come to that. These questions about the meaning of the Insurrection act have been not something any courts have had to resolve over the course of our history. It has been common sense and sort of pragmatic interpretation of the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense and the President's for decades on end that has prevented this sort of a broad reading of the Insurrection Act. But everyone in this litigation knows that that might be the end game here. No one quite knows why the President hasn't already invoked the Insurrection Act. You might be right, Harry, that it's thought that you tell me. This is the odd thing to me. In the year 2025, here's three. Yes. In 1785, 1789, 1792, 98. The thing that people were most afraid about because it was the British experience was the uniformed military taking over civilian operations to enforce domestic law. That was definitely disfavored at the framing. It was something the rebels fought against England. Today, the uniformed regular army is hardly the only game in town with military style capabilities and weapons. We live in a world in which not only the National Guard has these capabilities, but federal and local and state law enforcement officials are armed and masked and have military grade weapons which the.
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B
Biggest in numbers is ICE now. That's right.
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A
And the irony here is that I don't know about you, but if I were confronting some young new ICE officials who are trying to keep order, or some Maryland National Guard officials or the U.S. army, the army is not the one I would be most frightened of. It's not something I welcome and it's not a situation that I. It's not a break of our tradition that I would be comfortable with. But kind of the irony here is that we've militarized our ordinary law enforcement in recent decades and they are less disciplined than the US army and they are less.
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B
And they don't know how to do domestic law enforcement.
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A
They don't know how.
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B
The constitutional requirements.
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A
They're interested here is that we're sort of taking these old statutes, these old presumptions and all this and trying to apply it to a world that looks quite different. And you know, a lot of people are very upset about what ICE is doing and for good reason. And it's not clear to me that the Army. I just don't know how that will play. You might be right. It might be politically untenable. You're setting a precedent that's horrible. There might be resistance within the executive branch. Even the stripped down executive branch might be saying, please don't cross this line. We've held this line for over a century. Don't go there. It's a bad. I don't know.
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B
Look, I don't know either. But I do think, as you say, it's these sort of series of more serious progressions. And what is, I agree with you, would be a very bad and notorious development. I'm all about the focus of whether in green lighting it, a court would somehow provide the kind of deference that he could use in all sorts of ways. So here it is put back to, you know, square one. Maybe that's, that's an end for now. I think we're pretty well set up to see what happens next Monday. I haven't had the chance to actually talk with you.
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A
Next Monday is when the reply.
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B
Yeah, and we'll. And we'll see what they're right. I think they say what they're going to say.
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A
Yeah. And I don't know how long.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I will say this and remember, it's.
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B
An emergency application that could come out Tuesday.
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A
Although I think others could have written this brief and should have written this brief that I wrote is that it has taken away the urgency in this case so that it did build in weeks or months of where this injunction is in place and the National Guard is not in Chicago. And as we see things are seem to be developing there so that there's even less need for them going forward. So it has kind of like taken the pressure off the court to rule immediately in the Chicago case. It's given some breathing room. And it could be that the justices are just going to be like, you guys, just ask the court to extend this injunction until the foreseeable future. We'll take our sweet time in resolving this. Talk to us in June. Let's see if we've they could do that or they could take them three days and they could rule on it.
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B
They have, and it sure wouldn't upset them, I think, to have to put it off. The general to me, what's most booing about the order is it suggests they're going to do something like a normal statutory interpretation process, even if they come out the wrong way. If they're not. Remember, the administration's lead argument, even in this supplemental brief, is you can't even look at this. What he says goes and has to define Marty Lederman. I don't it's been too long since I've spoken to you, and I feel I'd be doing my listeners a disservice if I didn't ask you what you're listening to lately, because you are quite the guru on and you and I have attended the 910 Club and a lot of concerts in D.C. yes.
- [38:19]
A
Yeah. It's been many decades since I was a musical guru. I'm an old fart now, and I don't those are consistent. I can't possibly listen to 95 plus percent of the really wonderful music that my students and my kids and, you know, listening to, you know, there's just an explosion of wonderful stuff all over the place. I do have a couple of suggestions. I thought you were going to say let's start talking about bombing civilian boats in the Caribbean, but maybe that's a future podcast. Yeah.
- [38:55]
B
Can we do music about so here's.
- [38:56]
A
What I've been listening to lately. Tell me if you've heard these things and maybe your listeners can give back some suggestions as well. So the two records that have been really grabbing me in the last few weeks while waiting Olivia Rodrigo is in the studio recording her third album. And I'm anxiously awaiting that because I think her first two records are fantastic and she's amazing. But right now, the two records that are most frequently on my proverbial turntable are one is a new record by Katie Crutchfield, who goes by Waxahachie. That's her sort of stage name as a, as a, with a, with a band. She's a wonderful singer, songwriter, and she's just a new album with her sister who's also a musician, Allison Crutchfield and Jake Lenderman of the band Wednesday and their producer Brad Cook. They've named their new band Snow Caps S N O C A P S and I think it's great. And if you like Katie Crutchfield, her last two records as Waxahachie Tiger's Blood and St. Cloud I think are extraordinary, just wonderful. She's a great songwriter, really unusual musician, and she's really at the top of her songwriting and musical peak. And the other is by a band, I guess this is kind of indie, but it's kind of nerd indie from New Zealand called the Beths B E T H s named in part after their lead singer and songwriter whose first name is Elizabeth. And I just think their latest record called the Straight Line is a Lie is an amazing record of wonderful. It's an array of different sorts of songwriting and and power pop and folk and all sorts of other things. And it's really, I think their best record. And I guess the third, which I haven't quite taken to as much as some others, is the band Wednesday, which is a North Carolina band with Jake Lenderman and and Carly Hartzman is their lead singer songwriter and they have a a new record out that's getting a lot of acclaim and that is really pretty compelling. But it's a somewhat bleak it's for those of you who like Bleak Visions of Small Town America, of growing up in small town America, but it's pretty compelling as well. I'd say those are the ones getting.
- [41:27]
B
My quite a lot. It puts the lie to your protest of being too old, at least, because I haven't heard of any of them. But I commit to listening to all three before we speak again, which I hope will be soon. Thank you so much. Marty Lee Jerry, it's so great to.
- [41:44]
A
Finally catch up with you. And at least we're not talking about the use of Lethal Force in the Caribbean. We'll save that for later since it's.
- [41:51]
B
We'Ll save that for later depressing. All right, thank you so much and talk to you.
- [41:56]
A
Take it easy. Harry.
- [42:00]
B
Thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from 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 daily updates on Top Legal Stories. Check us out on substack. Harry litman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Fez has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this 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 and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@Contrarian.com 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 producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McCardell, Rosie Don Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansa Mahadrenathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are out contributing writers. Production assistance by Akshay Turbailu and Sebastian Navarro. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Doledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.
- [44:12]
A
Sam.