Transcript
Alison Gill (0:00)
MSW Media. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Today, the Supreme Court is allowing DHS to reinstate Secretary Kristi Noem's order ending temporary status for Venezuelans, resulting in the single largest mass illegalization event in U.S. history. Judge Beryl Howell is going to stop Trump from dismantling the US Institute of Peace. A top CBS executive has resigned amid Trump's political pressure. House Republicans managed to get the billionaire bailout bill out of committee and and the far right Romanian candidate for president has lost his election. I'm your host, Alison Gill. Hey, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Today, I'm going to be talking with senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientist and former DOGE or USDS employee Marici Vinton. And you do not want to miss that discussion. Dana's still out, but a little bird told me she's actually coming back early, that she'll be back tomorrow. So thank you for sticking with me solo while she does her incredible acting, activism and community work. Also, the top executive in charge of CBS News resigned Monday in protest amid Trump's intensifying political pressure against CBS News. And here's the thing. Her name is Wendy McMahon, and she alluded to a challenging past few months in a farewell memo to her employees, saying, it's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It's time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership. While McMahon didn't address Trump's legally dubious lawsuit against CBS in the memo, the suit has been top of mind in recent months. McMahon has publicly stood up for the news division while its parent company, Paramount Global has sought to settle with Trump while trying to win administration approval for its pending merger with Skydance Media. So you're avoiding all that drama by listening to the Daily beans. We will never capitulate to Trump. I will never step down, and I will remain forever independent. And the reason we can do that is because of our sustaining members. So thank you. This show is always free, but if you'd like to support us, you can do that by going to patreon.com mullershirote and if you join now, you can hop on our Mega Happy Hour Zoom Call cocktail mocktail extravaganza this Friday at 7pm Eastern, 4 Pacific. You can interact with not just me, but this Friday, Harry Dunn will be there from cleanup on aisle 45, and Andy McCabe from unjustified will be there and Dana Goldberg's gonna ju so they'll all be there this Friday, 7:00pm Eastern, 4 Pacific. Plus when you sign up for Patreon, you get these episodes ad free. You get them early, you get pre sale tickets and VIP access to live events. Again, it's just three bucks a month. You can join@patreon.com Mullershirerote so thanks to our thousands and thousands of sustaining members, we could not do this without you. All right, everybody, we have a lot of news to get to. Well, let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right. First up from NBC, the Supreme Court on Monday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke special legal protections for thousands, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants which could pave the way for them to be deported. The high court granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration, meaning officials can move forward with reversing a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration to extend protections for almost 350,000 Venezuelans under the federal Temporary Protected Status program, or TPS. The brief order noted that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application and litigation will now continue in the lower courts. Quote, this is the largest single action stripping any group of noncitizens of immigration status in modern US History. That's a helon arulanthem. That's one of the lawyers representing the Venezuelan plaintiffs. It was, quote, truly shocking that the Supreme Court authorized the move without giving the case more consideration, he added. And Aaron Reichland Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said on blue sky that 350,000 people woke up this morning with legal status, living and working here. With official permission, they'll go to bed as undocumented immigrants facing deportation. Next up from the Times, the House Budget Committee late, late Sunday night reviewed President Trump's stalled bill to cut taxes for billionaires and Medicaid and SNAP and other earned benefits after a handful of FISC conservative Republicans relented to allow it to advance even as they continue to press deeper for reductions to health and environmental programs. The vote signaled a temporary resolution to a remarkable revolt from a group of hardliners on the panel who Friday joined Democrats in opposing the bill in committee, tanking it over concerns that it didn't do enough to rein in the nation's ballooning debt. On Sunday, after a weekend of intensive negotiations with House Republican leaders and White House officials, they switched their votes to present, allowing the measure to move forward without lending their support. It sent the bill past a crucial procedural hurdle, but indicated that there was still major trouble ahead for the package, which Speaker Mike Johnson said he wants the full House to consider before Memorial Day. And something you may not have known. This is from the Associated Press. Tucked deep in the thousand plus pages of the multi trillion dollar budget bill making its way through The Republican controlled U.S. house is a paragraph that curtails the court's greatest tool for forcing the government to obey its rulings, the power to enforce contempt findings. That's hidden in there. So among the cuts to our earned benefits and among the tax breaks for billionaires, we have this curtailing of contempt proceedings in court. That's interesting. No wonder they had to do this at midnight on a Sunday night. That's sneaky. Republican President Trump raised the stakes again Friday when he attacked the US Supreme Court for its ruling barring his administration from quickly resuming deportations under the Alien Enemies act, saying the Supreme Court won't allow us to get criminals out of our country. That's untrue. The Supreme Court is not allowing you to disappear people without due process. You can still get people out of the country by giving them due process under multiple statutes. Just you can't just disappear them and kidnap them and render them to a foreign prison, at least temporarily. The Supreme Court still has yet to rule on the legality of the Alien Enemies act case. And if you listen to the latest episode of Unjustified with me and Andy McCabe, we talk all about that. The most intense skirmishes have come in the lower courts with the Trump administration. One federal judge has found that members of the administration may be liable for contempt after ignoring his order to turn the planes around on March 15. Trump's administration has scoffed at another judge's ruling that it facilitate the return of Abreco Garcia. That's judge senior court. In other cases, the administration has removed immigrants against court orders or had judges find that the administration is not complying with their directives. Dan Bongino, now Trump's deputy director of the FBI, called on the president to ignore a judge's order in one of Bongino's final appearances on his talk radio show in February. But we also have some good news from the courts today. From the Associated Press Federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with dismantling the United States Institute of Peace, an organization taken over in March by Elon Musk's so called Department of Government Efficiency. This is US District Court Judge Beryl Howell. She ruled that the think tank, which was created and funded by Congress to focus on resolving violent conflicts around the globe, was taken over illegally by Doge through blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local federal agencies. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by the organization's former board members and president had maintained that the Institute of Peace was established by law as an independent, nonprofit organization. The plaintiffs also argue that the firing of the board members did not meet any of the steps required by the law that created the organization. The move also did not go before any of the four congressional committees that have oversight over the U.S. institute of Peace. In her ruling, Howell cited the uniqueness of the organization, saying, quote, the president second guessed the judgment of Congress and President Reagan in creating UCIP 40 years ago and the judgment of every Congress since then, including in 2020 in appropriating funds to USIP when he deemed the organization to be unnecessary three months ago in an executive order. In reaching her opinion, Hal concluded that usip, quote, ultimately exercises no executive branch power under the Constitution, but operates through research, education, teaching and scholarship in the sensitive area of global peace. In creating this organization, Congress struck a careful balance between political accountability on the one hand and partisan independence and stability on the other. As such, she says, the Constitution makes clear that the president's constitutional authority only extends as far as Article 2. But even Article 2 does not grant him absolute removal authority over his subordinates under current binding case law precedent. How had denied two requests by the same plaintiffs for restraining orders, one to halt the firing of the board and another to stop the administration from taking over the headquarters. And that ruling came after she held the status hearing and learned that Doge installed leadership had already initiated and completed the transfer of the headquarters before the plaintiffs could even get to court. Hal equated the quick action to a bull in a China shop. And we also have some more good news from CNN Romania's pro European Union centrist presidential candidate Nikosor Dan I hope I'm saying that right. Let me know if I'm not Won the country's election Sunday, defeating his ultra nationalist rival in a very shocking upset. With 100% of the votes counted, the centrist candidate won nearly 54% of the ballots cast, a clear win over hard right candidate George Simeon, who is a fan of President Donald Trump. Simeon, who opposes providing military aid to Ukraine and is critical of the eu, looked on track to win the election after he swept the first round on May 4th. But Dan gained ground after trouncing Simeon in a televised debate while addressing a crowd of his jubilant supporters on Sunday, Don said that the vote proved the incredible power of the Romanian society. That's according to Reuters, and also said elections are about community in today's elections, a community of Romanians who wanted a profound change in Romania won. That's what the 55 year old mayor said. He also encouraged his supporters to have patience, saying a difficult period lies ahead but necessary in order to balance the economy of this country to build the foundations of a healthy society. Dan, who is currently the mayor of the capital Bucharest, is a strong supporter of Romania's NATO membership and has pledged to continue to provide aid to Ukraine, which he sees as key to Romania's own security against the threat from Russia. He also campaigned on a promise to crack down on corruption. Simeon conceded defeat in a video posted on Twitter Sunday night, despite calling himself the new president earlier that day. But he also vowed to continue to fight alongside the sovereigntiest patriots and conservatives around the world. He still captured the support of Romania's diaspora, one of the largest of any country in the world. About 60% of the diaspora voted for Simeon on the first round, but since then he spent a lot of time outside Romania, traveling to Austria, Italy, Poland, Belgium, France and the UK in an effort to win voters abroad. Now this election comes five months after the result of the original vote, which saw former far right outsider Kalyn Giorgescu surge in popularity and it was annulled over allegations of Russian interference. Gorgescu was later banned from this month's rerun after being charged with various crimes, including founding a fascist group. More than 10 million Romanians cast their vote in Sunday's election, which was widely seen as a choice between east and west and a litmus test for the rise of Trump style nationalism in Europe. An array of European leaders congratulated Dan on his victory, including France's Emmanuel Macron, Poland's Donald Tusk and Moldova's Maya Sandu. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also applauded Dan's historic victory in Romania's role as a reliable partner to Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed her eagerness to work with Dan as he becomes the country's new leader, saying the Romanian people have turned out massively to the polls. They have chosen the promise of an open, prosperous Romania in a strong Europe together. Let's deliver on that promise. On Sunday, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign affairs spokesperson Andriy Ternia said that the hallmarks of Russian interference were seen in this election. Quote a viral campaign of fake news on telegram and other social media platforms is aimed to influence the electoral process. This was expected and authorities debunked the fake news. Now Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded by questioning the integrity of the election. Quote, it's impossible to interfere in something like that only to get smeared in it. So don't smear anyone else with your electoral mess, she asserted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added on Monday that, quote, the elections were strange, to say the least, and criticized the earlier removal of the far right candidate, the one that got charged with crimes. So well done, Romania. I'm glad our loss in November can be a beacon for the world, and I hope that we take back our house in 2020. All right, everybody, it's time for some good trouble.
