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Tuesday, April 1st, 2025 Today, Wisconsinites are hitting the polls and casting votes in the state Supreme Court election between Brad Schimel and Jennifer Crawford; The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the Trump administration's request to allow immediate removal of transgender troops from the military; a federal judge has barred the Trump administration from ending "temporary protected status" for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals; a second federal judge barred Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military; a DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email; Treasury Employees Union seeks a court judgment barring the Trump administration from enforcing his order canceling collective bargaining agreements across the federal government; Judge James Boasberg schedules Thursday 3pm hearing in the matter of the deported Venezuelan nationals; Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, was...
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Alison Gill
MSW Media hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Tuesday, April 1, 2025. Today, Wisconsinites are hitting the polls and casting votes in the state Supreme Court election between Schimmel and Crawford. The ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the Trump administration's request to allow immediate removal of transgender troops from the military. Another federal judge has barred the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals. A second federal judge barred Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military. A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email. Treasury employees seek a court judgment barring the Trump administration from enforcing his order that cancels collective bargaining agreements across the federal government. Judge James Boasberg has scheduled a Thursday hearing at 3pm in the matter of the deported Venezuelan nationals. Maureen Le Pen, the French far right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday. D Doge fires. Nearly all the staff at the US Institute of Peace headquarters. And China, South Korea, and Japan are teaming up against Trump tariffs. I'm your host, Alison Gill. Hey, everybody. Happy national trans visibility day. Just want to say that I love you all and I see you. Boy, you thought there was a lot of news yesterday. I think we outdid it today. There's going to be a lot that we have to talk about. I'm going to do a special B block on a piece that just came out in public notice about the leopards eating my judiciary. Right? Judge Roberts being like, oh, yeah, here I'm, I'm going to make you a king. And then, oh, wait, you're coming after the independence of the judiciary. How weird. It's just, it's bizarre that he didn't see this coming. Or if he did, maybe he just decided he would not rule in favor of Trump if he were elected again, even though he helped pave the way for him to be elected again. Anyway, we're going to talk about all of that on the show today. Also, I get to speak with my friends, authors of the book Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. It comes out today. It's by my friends Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes. So you're going to want to check out that interview later in the show. All right. We have a lot to get to today, but first, we have some quick hits. And to make a long story short, too late. All right, Wisconsin, go vote. If you didn't vote early, huge implications in today's election. Specifically, can Elon Musk buy elections. We know he bought the Trump election in November, so let's see if he can do it in Wisconsin. Harry Dunn and I are covering the lead up to today on tomorrow's cleanup on aisle 45. I'm really nervous about the results and the implications of this election, so we'll be keeping an eye on the results for you. And on Monday on Trans Visibility Day. The ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the Trump administration's motion to allow immediate removal of transgender people from the military. Judges Tashima, Owens and Desai, a Clinton appointee, an Obama appointee and a Biden appointee respectively, issued their order Monday afternoon. I imagine this ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court and we will keep you posted. And last week, a second federal judge barred Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military. This is U.S. district Judge Benjamin Settle said that the ban ordered by Trump was blatantly discriminatory, relied on a distortion of outdated data, and ignored more recent evidence about transgender service members. Quote, the government has provided no evidence supporting the conclusion that military readiness, unit cohesion, lethality, or any other touchstone phrases long used to exclude various groups from service have in fact been adversely impacted by open transgender service. That's what he said. He's a Seattle based appointee of G.W. bush and he said this in a 65 page opinion, quote, the court can only find that there is none, meaning zero evidence. Settle concluded the Trump administration cherry picked and distorted outdated data to support the policy. He echoed a similar conclusion earlier this month by U.S. district Judge Ana Reyes, who we've been talking about, an appointee of President Joe Biden based in D.C. this was the thing that Trump appealed to the 9th Circuit, which they denied on Monday. Also on Monday, Judge Chen of the Northern District of California barred Trump from ending the temporary protected status of 350,000 Venezuelans. At issue is whether the court should temporarily postpone actions by Christine Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, taken against over 600,000 Venezuelan nationals who have legal status to reside and work temporarily in the United States. This is from the ruling. The Secretary's actions will shortly strip nearly 350,000 of these residents of their protection under the TPS Temporary Protected Status Program, subjecting them to possible imminent deportation back to Venezuela. Although the Secretary's actions appear predicated on negative stereotypes casting class wide aspersions on their character, insinuating they were released from Venezuelan prisons and mental health facilities and imposed huge financial burdens on local communities. The undisputed record establishes that Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries, in fact have higher education attainment than most US Citizens. They have high labor participation. They earn nearly all their personal income and annually contribute billions of dollars to the US Economy and pay hundreds of millions, if not billions, in Social Security taxes. They also have lower rates of criminality than the general US population. So that's what the judge said. The remaining 300,000 or so are set to lose their status in the fall, though that decision has yet to be formally made. And I'm sure they will sue to stop that as well. Also, Judge James Boasberg scheduled a Thursday 3pm hearing in the matter of the deported Venezuelan nationals. This is the alien enemies nationals, not the TPS nationals, for the Trump administration to show cause why they did not violate the court's temporary restraining orders. Now, I've got the courtroom public number on speed dial now, so I'll be listening in. Again. This is separate from the preliminary injunction hearing set to take place April 8. Also from the Hill, a federal employee union has sued to block Trump and one of his orders that would strip bargaining rights at 18 departments, arguing the president abused a limited national security authority to attack unions. President Trump last week signed an order that directed agencies to terminate already signed collective bargaining agreements and to, quote, cease participating in grievance procedures. The Civil Service Reform act that gives federal employees the right to unionize does have exceptions for national security. But in this lawsuit, the National Treasury Employees Union, nteu, has argued that Trump went beyond that authority, beyond the authority that allows it to use it if an agency, quote, primarily does intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national security work. So well done. Thank you, courts, thank you, judges. All right, it's time to hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right, first up, from NBC's Julia Ainsley. A federal worker accidentally included a journalist on a detailed message in advance of a government operation. While this sounds like the case of the Atlantic's editor in chief being added to a group signal chat by Trump's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed military attack plans in Yemen, it is not. It's what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details, unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a journalist in late January. According to former ICE Chief of Staff Jason Hauser, one former DHS official and one current DHS official, the two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they don't want to endanger their current or future career opportunities. But unlike Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth, who both remain in their jobs, this career DHS employee was put on administrative leave and told late last week that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has largely rallied around Waltz and Hegseth, with Trump on Wednesday calling it all a witch hun. The episode involving the career DHS employee has not been previously reported. Experts say it raises questions about the unequal punishment for inadvertent leakers in the Trump administration. Mary McCord, a former top official in the Justice Department's National Security Division, which investigates the mishandling or leaking of classified, said the two cases should be treated the same way. Quote, both of these are examples of carelessness in the handling of highly sensitive information, the disclosure of which could put US government employees or military members in danger. That's what McCord said, who is now a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Quote, we should expect the signal chat breach to be taken at least as seriously as the DHS employees breach. The DHS employee who was put on leave did not speak to NBC News. The officials who did speak didn't want to identify her out of fear she'd face retaliation from members of the public who are pro immigration enforcement. The DHS employee told colleagues she accidentally added a reporter from a conservative Washington based print publication to an email that included information about upcoming ICE operations in the Denver area, so not classified, and a conservative reporter. The official said the information was not classified but considered law enforcement sensitive because it included the time of day of the operation and possible home locations where targets could be identified. So the signal chat included times of day and locations of military strikes. Realizing her mistake immediately, the employee called the reporter, who agreed not to disclose the information. The ICE operation took place without incident, but another person on the email group flagged the blunder to higher ups at DHS at a time when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan were blaming leaks to the media for lower than expected arrest numbers during the ICE roundups. Days later, the employee was placed on leave pending an investigation. She was asked to take a polygraph test and surrender her personal cell phone, which she declined. She was then notified that the agency intends to revoke her clearance, which could keep her from working in the Homeland Security space again. The employee has 30 days to appeal the revocation. The employee has served in various agencies across DHS since G.W. bush, including during the entirety of Trump's first term. A DHS spokesperson did not respond for requests to comment. The White House also didn't respond. In the signal incident, Hegseth shared details of upcoming strikes on Iran backed Houthi forces in Yemen. That's according to text messages shared by Jeffrey Goldberg, who was included in the chat. Even though Hegseth provided the precise timing of planned fighter jet and drone launches and when bombs would hit their intended targets, the Trump administration has said no classified material was shared in the chat. Hauser, the former ICE chief of staff, said the employee had a reputation for being mission focused and apolitical. Quote, targeting a career official who dedicated her service to protecting public safety and enforcing the law while excusing political appointees who leaked sensitive war plans shows this administration punishes integrity and protects recklessness. That doesn't just betray her, it weakens every public servant who risks their career to do the right thing. That's what Hauser said. It is staggering hypocrisy, he added. He also noted that the career official was put on leave for sharing information that was not classified. Quote, while political appointees leak classified war plans and face zero consequences, this isn't just a double standard, it's reckless and dangerous. One former DHS official told NBC News that the Trump administration should review its handling of the case of the DHS career employee who accidentally emailed ICE plans in light of the new signal chat involving Waltz, Hegseth and Goldberg. Quote, career civilians and military suffer severe penalties for inadvertent mistakes, significantly less serious. That's what the former DHS official said. The inconsistency is appalling. And in a related story from the Wall Street Journal, Trump has decided for now not to fire Mike Waltz for what happened. Despite repeated messages of support by Trump, Waltz has lost sway with the president and the backing of senior aides within the White House, according to officials. Just as the administration struggles to broker peace deals, sure, and faces the threat of further war in the Middle east for Trump, that if they're not facing the threat, they're going to cause it. They've got B2 bombers parked in Diego Garcia Jesus now. For Trump, the official said Waltz's biggest sin was not starting a signal chat to coordinate strikes on Houthis in Yemen. And it wasn't even about posting Israel provided intelligence onto an unclassified network. It was actually about having the Atlantic magazine's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg's number in his phone and inadvertently adding him to the conversation. Trump's anger spilled over into many private discussions last week, including multiple calls with allies in which he unloaded expletives and blamed Waltz for the administration's first big national security crisis. On Wednesday, Trump spoke to VP JD Vance, White House Chief of staff Susie Wiles and personnel chief Sergio Gore about whether Waltz should be dismissed. But on Thursday, Trump let Mike Waltz know in a one on one meeting that the national security advisor would get to keep his job. Trump decided to give Waltz a reprieve during that discussion, according to two officials. He didn't want the media and the Democrats to claim a scalp so early in his second administration. That's according to people close to Trump, as that would admit wrongdoing. One person said that if news of the Signal chat had first appeared in a conservative media outlet such as Breitbart, Waltz would be gone. But the former GW Bush administration official and US Lawmaker from Florida is still navigating a minefield. Get this. Two U.S. officials also said that Waltz has created and hosted multiple other sensitive national security conversations on Signal with Cabinet members, including separate threads on how to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, as well as military operations. They declined to address if any classified information was posted on those chats. And here's what's curious to me We've been saying sounds like Mike Waltz is going to be the fall guy for all this, right? Well, two U.S. officials leaking this to the Wall Street Journal that Waltz had multiple Signal chats sounds like pretext to make Waltz the fall guy. So let's put Mike Waltz up next to a photo of a head of Lettuce and see what happens. All right. Up next from the Post the Trump administration summarily fired the staff of the US Institute of Peace on late Friday night, less than two weeks after forcibly removing the congressionally funded organization's president and installing in his place an agent of tech billionaire Elon Musk's Doge service aimed at cutting the size of government. UCIP employees told the post that between 200 and 300 people, nearly the entirety of the institute's headquarter staff, had been fired. The employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said some employees were offered severance and one additional month of health insurance in exchange for their signatures to waive their right to sue. The Friday night massacre, as the institute's employees were terming the sweeping terminations, is the latest action in what has become a rapid fire of sudden cuts and hostile takeovers across the government and quasi government agencies over the past two months, implemented by Musk and Dogeco this month, you SIP and members of its fired board filed their own lawsuit naming Doge and its representatives Trump and members of his Cabinet. The suit claims the Executive Branch has no authority to dismiss the leadership and staff of the Institute because it was created by the legislative Branch, nor could it take over USIP's privately owned headquarters building. Briefs in the case are scheduled during April, with a hearing near the end of the month. A federal judge has condemned the process through which the administration seized control of usip, but declined the petitioner's motion for a temporary restraining order. That was Judge Beryl Howell. In the latest action, employees were instructed to sign a four page letter ordering them to return all use IT property while agreeing to forego all future claims against the institute. That's the thing right there. It ordered them not to disclose any terms of the agreement in exchange for one month of health insurance and a monthly stipend paid for an unspecified period. Those who refused to sign the letter said will lose all benefits as of yesterday. The termination emails were riddled with mistakes, with employees names, the month of April and even the institute's title being misspelled in places. A telling sign of the rushed and haphazard nature of the operation. Really? Washington Post or is it a telltale sign of the fact that they're fucking idiots? Kenneth Jackson, the DOGE agent appointed at Yusip's new president as yousep's new president, had elevated RIVAS to her position this month after firing the person previously in charge. By Saturday morning, the terminated headquarters staff were already discussing filing a class action lawsuit and were debating whether to sign their termination documents. Rubio and Hegseth have installed a 20something DOGE affiliate Nate Kavanaugh as acting president of the US Institute for Peace, per a filing that's new for Monday. Before Doge took control of usip, the duly appointed president was George Moose, a career diplomat who first joined the Foreign Service in 1967. Now Nate Kavanaugh. Anna Bauer posted a photo of him on Blue sky and he just reminds me of every frat guy I went to college with at asu, not nau, because even the frat guys at NAU had like long hair and were super chill. But it just pisses me off that this little 20something piss ant, date rapey keg stand, beer bong, cornhole fuckface is the head of USIP. He reminds me of like Johnny McEntee. These guys are all just like a faux hawk and a Mitsubishi Eclipse away from being perps on Law and Order svu. It's just, it's infuriating, especially at U sip which does such important work. All right, next up, brilliant art of the deal Dick Bag Donald Trump's tariffs have driven two of our best allies into the arms of China. This story comes from the Global Times. Top trade officials from China, Japan and South Korea exchanged in depth views on the enhancement of trade and investment cooperation, regional and multilateral cooperation on Sunday and reached a broad consensus during the 13th trilateral economic and Trade Ministers meeting among China, Japan and South Korea, which was held in Seoul. Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wendao co chaired the meeting with South Korean Industry Minister Ahn Duk Gun and Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yoji Muto. It marked the first time since December 2019 that the industry ministers of all three nations held a trilateral meeting. The Sunday meeting took place as the US announced plans to impose 25% auto tariffs starting April 2 tomorrow with the increase of external unilateral moves, the trilateral meeting points the direction for the three sides to further utilize their respective strengths in the field of economic cooperation to jointly resist the turbulence brought by the United States. Irresponsible approach, that's what an analyst said, noting that the consensus to deepen economic and trade cooperation reached by the meeting will inject stability into the world now. During the meeting, Wang Wendao noted that the economic and trade departments of the three countries agreed to strengthen cooperation under regional and multilateral frameworks such as the World Trade Organization, RCEP and APEC to discuss accelerating the negotiations on the China, Japan, South Korea Free Trade Agreement. They want to strengthen the supply chain cooperation and dialogue on export control as well as deepen cooperation in the digital and green economies, noting the acceleration of the trilateral fta. That's the Fair Trade Free Trade Agreement. Chen Zay, director of the Research center for Japanese Economics at the Shanghai University International Business and Economics School, said the move will further promote the liberalization and facilitation of investment and trade among these three countries and promote regional integration, which is an important initiative to address the current situation. So one of the advisors, Lou, noted that the US Tariff threat is affecting every country in the world. Under such circumstances, how the three countries can stick together and ride out the difficulties is a key issue. According to Bloomberg, both South Korea and Japan are major exporters of cars to the United States. The US Is also expected to announce a so called reciprocal tariffs potentially affecting sectors including semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. Any impact to chip sales would be particularly damaging for South Korea given they remain a key driver of growth for the export reliant nation, according to a joint media statement after this meeting, the three countries support a rules based, open, inclusive, transparent, non discriminatory multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core. Chen noted that the three countries acting as a locomotive for economic development in the Asia Pacific region have sent voices in support of multilateralism and free trade to the world, and the consensus to deepen economic and trade cooperation reached by the meeting has practical significance. In a way, the US Tariff shock will instead accelerate the process of regional integration, with countries in the region cooperating more closely in trade, investment and industry, as is the case in the EU and also in Asia. Under these circumstances, I believe that the China, Japan, South Korea trilateral cooperation mechanism can provide an example for regional collaboration in the international community injecting stability into the world. Notably, China has always been proactive in promoting multilateral cooperation, contrasting with the United States more protectionist America first policies. China is unswervingly promoting high quality development and expanding high level opening up and is willing to share development opportunities with all countries in the world, including South Korea and Japan. That's what China's Minister of Commerce said during the meeting on Sunday. Just we're creating alliances all over the world and we're not welcome in any of them. Now here's some good news from the Times, though. Marine Le Pen, the French far right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday and immediately barred from running for public office for a period of five years, setting off a domestic crisis in France. The verdict effectively barred the current frontrunner in the 2027 presidential election from participating in it, an extraordinary step, but one the presiding judge said was necessary because nobody is entitled to immunity in violation of the rule of law. Jordan Bardella, Ms. Le Pen's protege and likely presidential candidate in her absence, said on social media, not only has Marine Le Pen been unjustly convicted, French democracy has been executed. Hard right leaders across Europe, including Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, appeared to agree. The verdict infuriated Ms. Le Pen, an anti immigrant nationalist politician who has already mounted three failed presidential bids, murmuring incredible as she briskly left the courtroom before the hearing was even over. Ms. Le Pen, looking grim, told TF1 television that the ruling was a political attempt to thwart her. She said that millions of French people were outraged. Huh? Yeah, auteurs will not be deterred. And she vowed to fight back despite slim chances of legal success. Let's be clear, she said. I am eliminated. But in reality, it's millions of French people whose voices have been eliminated.
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Sound familiar? I'm not going to submit to a democratic denial so easily, Ms. Le Pen added angrily, displaying little of the serenity that she had spoken of before the verdict. An opinion poll on the presidential election published on Sunday gave Le Pen 34 to 37% of the vote. That's more than 10 points ahead of her nearest rival. President Emmanuel Macron is term limited. He cannot run again. The court also sentenced her to four years in prison, with two of those years suspended and the other two can be served under house arrest. She was fined €100,000, which is like 108,000 bucks. Ms. Le Pen's electoral ineligibility is effective immediately. As a result, she will be able to run in 2027 only if she secures a more lenient ruling on appeal, which will be difficult, but not impossible. The appeals process is slow in France, so must be nice. Must be nice, France to have a functioning judiciary and a system of accountability and court that hasn't been bought and paid for. And a constitution that doesn't have more holes than Swiss cheese big enough to park a cyber truck in. Man, je suis Jalu. I am very jealous. All right, everybody, it's time for some good trouble. What are you guys doing? All right, everybody. In honor of Trans Visibility Day, we have some good trouble from our friends abroad. The Jonestown Estate in Ireland is hosting an anti trans conference on April 5 under the guise of safeguarding children. But here's how you can contact them to let them know that platforming transphobia is unacceptable. We will have a phone number and an email along with a link to the event in the show notes. You can email them at info@the johnstownestate.com j o h n s johnstownestate.com so fuck you guys very much and you're safeguarding children bullshit we know is a complete and total lie. So that's your good trouble. That's your mission should you choose to accept it. Happy Trans Visibility Day. Everybody will be right back with an important article that I just read from Public Notice. David Lurie. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages. We'll be right back. Hey everybody. I did not realize how bad my sleep habits were until I got my Helix mattress. My old mattress was fine, or so I thought, but it was made for someone else. But I started noticing stiffness in my lower back. I was. I had so much anxiety I couldn't sleep. I would wake up drenched in sweat. My Apple watches relentless reminders that my sleep was below average started to get started to build in my soul. But Helix changed everything. Their sleep quiz matched me with a mattress that actually supports my body and within weeks the difference was undeniable. My watch shows fewer wake ups, more constant deep sleep. This was a big one. My resting heart rate dropped. Turns out when your body isn't fighting an uncomfortable mattress all night, it can actually rest. Now I fall asleep faster, I stay asleep longer, and I wake up without that foggy I need three coffees to function feeling. So if you're on the fence about upgrading your mattress, take it from someone who waited too long. Helix is worth every penny. Your future well rested self will thank you. So go to helixsleep.comdailybeans for 20% off site wide. 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com dailybeans for 20% off site wide again. Helixsleep.com dailybeans you'll be glad you did. Hey everybody, welcome back. About two weeks ago, John Roberts issued a statement pushing back on Trump and Musk, calling for the impeachment of judges because they didn't like the decisions they were coming up with, namely Judge Boasberg. But you know, pretty much any of the 26 or 27 or 28 different judges that have ruled against him in the last couple of months. And I posted on Blue sky, oh no, I never thought the leopards would eat my judiciary. And you might have heard me say something like, I can't believe Judge Roberts handed Trump a crown and then got surprised when Trump smacked him in the face with it. Well, David Lurie just yesterday on Monday, wrote a piece for Public Notice, John Roberts created a monster. It's about to eat him. And I just wanted to read you some of this piece. And by the way, you should subscribe to Public Notice. It's awesome. John Roberts and his fellow Republican Supreme Court justices not only paved the way for Donald Trump to retake the White House, but encouraged him to seize dictatorial powers upon his return. Now the Trump Court's right wing ideologues appear poised to greenlight many of his authoritarian actions, thereby enabling him to further destroy the foundations of our democracy. But Roberts and his extremist compatriots on the court face one serious problem. Trump also wants the justices to endorse his campaign against the authority in independence of the judiciary, potentially rendering the court into a shameless stooge. As a result, the cost of the Supreme Court continuing to do Trump's bidding may be to undermine the judicial power and authority that Republicans devoted so much effort to obtain. After voting against convicting Trump for his January 6th coup attempt, Mitch McConnell said there was no need for Congress to act because we have a criminal justice system in this country, we have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one. Womp, womp. But Trump escaped such accountability with crucial help of John Roberts. While much has been made of the delays in prosecuting Trump under Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, the players that actually ensured Trump would not be held accountable for his assault on the nation's democracy were the right wing jurists on the nation's highest court who effectively crippled Jack Smith's prosecution through a combination of calculated delay and a ruling that undermined the rule of law. First, the court delayed its immunity ruling for months and thereby held the Trump prosecution in abeyance. Trump's initial assertion of immunity on October 2023 was rejected by the trial court in December of that year, but proceedings in the case remained entirely stayed until Trump's immunity claim was heard and decided by higher courts, a process the Supreme Court chose to drag out despite a plea from the prosecutor for an expedited review. As a result of this likely calculated delay, the Supreme Court did not issue its decision on Trump's immunity until July 2024. Second, when the ruling belatedly arrived, it was an early Christmas gift for the Donald authored by Roberts. The decision not only made it practically impossible for Trump to be tried before the election, but it also granted him far broader ambit of immunity than his lawyers had even initially thought. Asking for Roberts declared that a president enjoys absolute or qualified immunity from criminal prosecution for any action taken in his official capacity. That means that Trump could well avoid criminal consequences for using SEAL Team 6 to murder opponents, a hypothetical that an appellate judge had used as a darkly humorous hypothetical to demonstrate the absurdity of Trump's immunity claims. Robert's immunity ruling not only gutted much of Smith's case against Trump, it also sent a clear if Trump wins the election, he can freely engage in even more egregious crimes, secure the assurance that he would never face criminal accountability. As Justice Sotomayor put it in her dissent, the court made the president into a king above the law. As later events would demonstrate, Trump and his cronies got the message loud and clear. And now this next section, which I love, is called I Never Thought the Leopards would Eat My Face because of my post on Blue sky that said, I never thought the leopards would eat my judiciary. All right, so after Robertson Co. Cleared the way, and Trump won. Last November, the new president took up the Supreme Court's invitation by embarking on a brazenly illegal attempt to take autocratic power and void fundamental rights. Despite the fact that Trump enjoys majorities of Republican yes people in both chambers of Congress, he has devoted little effort to passing legislation during his first month in office. Instead, Trump has followed the model of dictators and ruled by decree, issuing barrages of executive orders in which he has asserted the right to run roughshod not only over fundamental rights, but also to violate the separation of powers. With the help of Musk and Doge, Trump is crippling institutions and programs whose existence is legally mandated by Congress, like USAID and the Social Security Administration. Musk's backpack wearing thugs have even used force and the threat of prosecution to seize the buildings of statutorily independent government agencies that the press president has no legal authority to directly control. Trump is also using extortionate threats to force private persons, institutions including universities and law firms and states and localities to bend to his will. Because Republican congressional leaders, which is in quotes, are completely in Trump's thrall and unwilling to challenge him even when he's harming their constituents, it has fallen nearly entirely on the shoulders of the lower federal courts to place brakes on Trump's illegal seizures of power. According to Steve vladek, to date, 39 different judges appointed by presidents of both parties have blocked illegal Trump actions. There's the number 39. That's what I was looking for. Calling their bluff Having entered office armed with Robert's grant of King like immunity, Trump and his cronies have responded to those judges enforcement of the law with expressions of anger and increasingly ominous threats. As soon as judges began issuing rulings limiting Trump's assault on the Constitution, he and his allies began threatening to impeach the judges for ruling against Trump. In response, Roberts released a statement solemnly declaring that quote for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. This was not the first time Roberts responded to Trump's dismissal of judicial authority and legitimacy. In 2019, Roberts rebuked Trump's attack on an Obama judge for enforcing the nation's asylum laws by stating we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges. What we have it is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. Except for Judge Cannon. I added that now Roberts 2025 statement has already proven to be as ineffective as his 2019 statement. Rather than signaling any intention to back down. Trump shot back by declaring, if Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court don't fix this toxic and unprecedented situation immediately, our country is in very serious trouble. It's clear Trump expects Roberts to follow up his defense of judicial independence by kowtowing to Trump and repudiating the lower court judges who have been enforcing the nation's laws. Trump's confidence that Roberts and company will bend to his will is probably merited, even if stakes for the court have never been higher. I'm not so sure about that. I don't think it's clear that Roberts will keep granting him these okays. But here's the Trump dilemma. As Trumpers have racked up losses in the lower courts, they've begun demanding that Robertson Co. Immediately step in to give Trump license to continue forward with his power grab. For example, the court is now considering an emergency Trump challenge to a ruling staying his illegal effort to cancel millions of education grants because they're purportedly infected with dei, meaning civil rights. Trump has also sought immediate Supreme Court review of whether trial judges properly issued nationwide injunctions against his patently illegal effort to erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution. As he just asked the court, Trump just asked the court to allow him to continue to send Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, one of the dubious pretexts that they're wartime enemies. Somehow, while it's unclear what the court will do in these cases, Trump has good reason to believe a majority of justices will be sympathetic to his dictatorial cause. Robertson, his fellow right wing jurists, have long signaled their partiality to the so called unitary executive theory. This autocratic theory holds that the president has sole authority over the operation of every executive branch entity, including statutorily independent agencies. MAGA leaders have justified Trump's actions on this theory, contending that any statutory limits on his authority to control each and every non legislative and non judicial component of the federal government is unconstitutional and therefore void. If this theory is taken seriously, and it is by right wing ideologues like those on the Supreme Court, then a majority of the court may end up ruling that Trump is not only free to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Trade Commission, as he's already done, but he could also take over direct control of the Federal Reserve Board and personally set interest rates. Yet there's one obvious problem with the prospect of the Supreme Court allowing Trump to move forward with this authoritarian project. The justices themselves could pay the high price of discarding what is left of their own already impaired legitimacy. In recent decades, the court's right wing justices have assumed even greater power for themselves, including by drastically constraining Democratic presidents and legislators and hobbling landmark legislation such as central provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Indeed, McConnell and GOP donors devoted decades and millions of dollars to stacking all levels of the judiciary precisely in order to stifle Democratic elected officials and advance the Republican agenda. Yet the court's own hard right fought seizure of power from the elected branches of the government could well be out the window if Roberts and his colleagues accede to Trump's current demands and give up any pretense of judicial adherence to the rule of law. After all, how can the right wing justices who control the Supreme Court expect a future president, particularly a Democratic one, to accept rulings limiting the exercise of their power from a court that served as the judicial stooge for an aspiring dictator? That's Public Notice. Thank you so much, David Lurie, for writing that. You can check it out at public notice. I suggest you subscribe. It's on substack. All right, everybody, stick around. We're going to be back with a fascinating conversation with the authors of the book Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. It's about the 2024 election. It's written by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes. And that is right after this break. And that book is out and available today. Stick around, we'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. I'm excited to speak to a couple of friends of mine, actually, best selling authors, New York Times bestselling authors have shattered. They have a new book out comes out today. It's called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Please welcome Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes. Hi.
- [39:18]
Jonathan Allen
Hi. Thanks for having me.
- [39:20]
Alison Gill
Hey, it's good to see you, Amy. It's good to meet you, John. You and I go. Well, I don't know if way back is descriptive enough, but far enough back to where we know each other. But it's really great to finally meet you, Amy.
- [39:34]
Jonathan Allen
Thank you. Good to meet you and thanks for having us.
- [39:37]
Alison Gill
Yeah, absolutely. This book is pretty astounding. There's tons of stuff in here that I didn't know previously that we were all just sort of have been since November 5th especially, kind of guessing about. And so let's jump right into it. We can kind of go chronologically here with the presidential race. A lot of folks had said, you know, I don't know if it's the best thing to, to switch candidates three months before an election. And we kind of get really into the weeds in this, in this new book that you, that you all have written. So let's start with, you know, a question that's been on a lot of people's minds about Biden. You know, we kind of all thought he was just going to serve one term and then, and then step aside, but then he didn't. Can you talk a little bit about that? That.
- [40:25]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that a lot of us, I mean, obviously this age situation was something on the minds of all reporters who are covering Biden at the time. We asked, a lot of us, asked the White House about it. There was concern from a lot of people from, from the donor class to lawmakers to even people inside the White House about his age. And would he be able to do, would he be able to continue to be president? You know, I think the White House saw that he had a successful first term, that the economic policies were good, that he performed well at the State of the Union. And I think going into the debate, they needed a moment, if you will, to kind of change the trajectory of the race. He was losing to the former president at the time. And they wanted a way to kind of regain the conversation and to show the pres. What the president could do against the former president. And I think that's where things went awry, obviously.
- [41:33]
C
And if I could just jump in here so folks, get a context. The span of this book runs from that first debate between Trump and Biden through election night. And if I could just add to what Amy says, I mean, what you get as a reader is you get to watch the debate through the eyes of many of the Democratic leaders, not just the campaign staff that are watching it, but you see it through the eyes of Kamala Harris. We take you inside Nancy Pelosi's condo on debate night, where she's watching by herself. She was nervous. She had told Joe Biden he shouldn't debate Trump in the first place. She clearly had concerns that needed. Dunn, the White House advisor on communications who helped do the debate prep, decided not to fly to Atlanta with the debate team to watch the debate in person. She instead went home to her house in the Washington area to watch by herself Jim Clyburn, Al Sharpton. And you kind of watch it through all these people's eyes and varying levels of shock. And one of the things that we write about in the book is there were varying levels of shock from people who had been close enough to him to think that it wasn't such a good idea for him to debate Trump to, you know, people who are in the outer rings of the Democratic leadership and even beyond that, having even greater levels of, again, shock when they're watching this. And ultimately, you know, I think as Biden struggles on the debate stage, they come away with different opinions. But for some of them, this was this, you know, alarm bell moment, the five alarm fire where they're like, oh, my God, we've got like, I had no idea how bad this candidate was. And for others, it started to provide an opening for something they'd been looking for, which was to shake up the race. They obviously thought and hope, or at least hope, that Biden would be able to do that in a positive way for himself instead of a negative one. But for some of them, this created the opportunity to try to replace the candidate at the top of the ticket who was trailing in a static way to Trump for so long. And that's the other thing I think a lot of voters, particularly Democratic voters, didn't really understand heading into that debate was that they were looking at polling that suggested the race was close. But, you know, people who do this for a living were looking at that same polling and determining that he was trailing Trump by enough in enough of the swing states and did not, had not figured out a way to close the gap, that they really did need some sort of major positive change. And they couldn't quite figure out how Joe Biden was going to accomplish that.
- [43:59]
Jonathan Allen
And he had been trailing for a while. Right, John, in the swing states, we have polling that we reported in the book where, you know, outside groups were doing polling in the swing states and showed that Biden was losing in, in all of these states. And they kind of knew that and, and swept it under the rug.
- [44:18]
Alison Gill
That wasn't. We'll get to what happened, you know, with the surprise and shock after election night, because a lot of the folks inside the Harris campaign had seen the polling as more favorable and were surprised by the outcome. How much of the age thing do you think actually might have to do with the media? Because leading up to the debate, we know that this poll was published by one of the firms that did the poll was Fabrizio Lee, who's all over the Mueller report. And then everybody just sort of ran with this, you know, age issue. And then it kind of felt like, I mean, people do bad debates all the time, but it felt like the debate was sort of this a tool, the debate performance was sort of a tool that could be used by people who wanted to push Biden out to, to push him out. Because at, you know, full disclosure, I backed Biden the whole way. And then as soon as Biden dropped out, I was immediately like, it has to be Harris. And then, you know, we have to go from there. I didn't think it was a good idea to push Biden out. But let's talk about leading up to the debate because you had mentioned that Pelosi said and some other folks had advised him not to debate. I didn't want him to debate. And from what I gathered, at least from what you had written about what Pelosi had said is that age or not, I feel like a lot of people didn't want Biden to debate Trump because it would legitimize him as a legitimate candidate and a lot of people didn't see him as such. And that, you know, what happened in the 2020 debate, it was just this, you know, Gish Gallop, but nobody could get a word in edgewise. And, and so that, to me seemed like probably the leading reason. But talk a little bit more about what, you know, about Pelosi not wanting him to debate.
- [46:08]
C
Yeah, it's a, it's a great question, Allison. And look, I think not only do I think, but I know that the argument that she made to Joe Biden was basically the one that you're making, right, that she, that he should not lower the presidency, he should not elevate Donald Trump, that it could be, you know, just a, a muck of a debate. And whatever he was doing in that, it was not right to put Donald Trump on the same stage with him at the same time. Nancy Pelosi is as hard edged and practical a politician as there is in the world. I mean, I, like, I've never seen anyone like her. She's by far the most capable politician I've ever seen. And if Nancy Pelosi thought that Joe Biden was going to beat Donald Trump, even if it was ugly, even if it lowered the presidency, she would have been advising Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump. But it is certainly the argument she used with him. It was one that I think had some resonance with him, even though he decided to debate Trump in the end. And it had resonance because Donald, Joe Biden looked at Donald Trump and said, this guy's, you know, not worthy of the presidency. So she was playing to, you know, to what he believed and I think what a lot of Democrats believe in, truly what Nancy Pelosi believed.
- [47:25]
Alison Gill
I mean, I believe that's what I thought. I, that was my I was like, that's what I was telling everybody. Yeah.
- [47:31]
C
She goes so far as to think to herself. We write about sort of what. What she's thinking is this is going on through the process, and folks who read the book will see we have an author's note at the end and sort of how we do reporting what people are thinking. Sometimes it's something they told us, sometimes it's something that people that they spoke to told us that they had said, or sometimes through documents. But basically, Pelosi's view was, you can't rumble with Trump without coming up with mud. And to the level, her visceral hatred for this guy who she led an impeachment of twice, who made fun of her husband having his head bashed in with a hammer, should not be understated. Her view was not only was Trump bad, but that, like, almost literally, he stunk, and that Joe Biden wouldn't be able to get the stench off of him if they appeared on a debate stage together. And that's just part of the reporting we have in the book about her feelings about. About Donald Trump.
- [48:24]
Alison Gill
Now, Amy, after the debate, talk a little bit about the. The tense moments and discussions between Pelosi and Biden about staying in the race or dropping out.
- [48:34]
Jonathan Allen
Well, it's interesting because, you know, she. I don't think she wanted her fingerprints on this. She's obviously not the speaker of the House anymore. She didn't want to step on the toes of Hakeem Jeffries at the time. But obviously people were looking to her. She was getting a lot of calls from people, and people were flagging her, you know, in, in the halls and saying, we need your help on this. He's going to lose. And so I think she felt, after talking to a lot of colleagues and, you know, she was polling people, even the night of the debate, we have a text exchange in the book where she's asking people what they thought. So, you know, she's very calculating, obviously, and she's taking notes and she's hearing from all her colleagues or a lot of them. And so I think she gets to a point where she feels like she needs to act. And so obviously, she's working the phones and talking to people around him. And I think finally she gets to a moment and we all see it play out where she. She goes on TV on Morning Joe and she has this moment. She obviously knows she's going to be asked about it, and. And she feels the need to weigh in. And meanwhile, people at Biden, at the Biden camp are, you know, losing their minds over, over what she has said. They're taking this, this obviously very, very hard. They thought that she had fired shots and that they didn't know what she was doing. And so, and they, they kind of felt like she was being a traitor all along. And so we capture this, we kind of take you inside in the book, inside the campaign, what's happening. We're focusing also on Nancy Pelosi on set on Morning Joe as she's talking about it. But she's, she's obviously walking a very delicate line here. And she's, she wants to, she's clear and she knows what she's saying. And yet she doesn't want to take full credit for it publicly either.
- [50:37]
C
Her belief on debate night, according to somebody who spoke to her at the time, was that she was worried there was going to be such a bum rush to get rid of Joe Biden that night, that it would ultimately end with Kamala Harris immediately being put into the, into the presidential spot. And she wanted to slow it down a little bit. And so she's got, as Amy saying, she's kind of got pressure on both sides of this, right? She doesn't think, you know, she, she thinks Biden's not doing well, but she wants to make sure that there's not a path back for him. She wants to kind of slow it down just a little bit and try to figure out if maybe they could have a process for an option other than Kamala Harris. She has known Vice President Harris for a long time. They are not close. This is not somebody she wanted to see pushed right into that role or really ever wanted to see pushed into that role. And at the same time, you know, she sees the frailties of Biden. She also believes, I think, to her core that if you're going to try to get somebody to do something, you can't make it obvious. And we were put on this vote, so you can't make it obvious what you're trying to push them to do or they'll resist it. So it's almost this, like this sort of step by step evolution of Nancy Pelosi's role. And I think she would have loved it if some of the other Democratic leaders had stepped up and been willing to leave their fingerprints on the political body, as it were, and none of them did. And so she ends up being the point of that spear. And, you know, it's not. She just keeps prodding Biden. She just keeps moving. You know, he says, I've made A decision or, you know, she goes out her first interview and says we have to determine if it's an episode or a condition. And of course, everybody, you know, at the White House in the campaign freak out about that. What is she talking about? And then, you know, a week later or so, she's saying President Biden has a decision to make. Well, he had already just said that he had made his decision to stay in the race.
- [52:35]
Alison Gill
Yeah, we were all kind of wondering about that.
- [52:37]
C
So everybody's watching this and, you know, I'm sure Pelosi will go to her grave swearing up and down that she had less of a role in this than, than she really did. But I, I think she was, to Amy's point, she didn't want to be the one with the fingerprints on the body. And at the same time, you know, came to the conclusion that there was no way that Joe Biden was going to win this race. And among the people in her ear are colleagues in tight races. You know, she didn't want to see the House and Senate lost. They ended up being fast forward spoiler alert. Republicans want control of the House and Senate anyway. But she, you know, once she determined that those were both likely to go if Biden stayed at the top of the ticket, she needed to help push him out. And at the same time, she felt like trying to push him out too obviously would be problematic. I think we all know, we can all see Nancy Pelosi was the person who, who led on that, whether you liked it or not.
- [53:29]
Alison Gill
Yeah. And whether, and again, she'll take it to her grave whether she was doing it because she wanted to happen or because everyone else that was pushing her wanted it to happen. And she, like, she, like you said, she was trying to slow it down in a sense because she thought there would be a mad rush of all these people who were champing at the bit to get rid of Joe Biden are going to start flooding in and coming forward. And let's take this a step further because in the book you talk about what I was noticing, the two camps of what happens if Joe Biden steps down. The, the, the endorsed Kamala Harris camp and the open primary, you know, ultimate dance off, whatever camp. And it seems like a lot of elite folks, people who work with what's his name, Ari Emanuel, people who like, who work for like, super rich agencies and hedge funds in, in Hollywood, were withholding massive amounts of money from Congress. And I was trying to make all these DOT connections like, and they actually end up doing a lot of work with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and. And that whole group of people. And I was like, why? Why are they so interested in blowing up a campaign three months before an election? That's really weird. But they were withholding their donations from. From Democratic members of Congress. Big money. We're talking like massive amounts of money. And so it was kind of almost like extortion.
- [54:54]
C
Yeah. Not just from the. So both from the members of Congress and from the Biden campaign. So both the direct. The Biden campaign and the major super PAC supporting Biden, you know, Future Forward. And then also these members of Congress as little way, you know, other ways to put pressure on Biden, to put pressure on those members of Congress, to put pressure on Biden, to put members of pressure on those members of Congress, to put pressure on Pelosi, to put pressure on Biden. And I think what you have in the sort of leadership of the Democratic Party is the ones who are closest to the donors are kind of most in favor of, you know, the. What is shorthanded in the book and by some of Pelosi's critics, as her view of he goes, she goes, meaning Biden goes. Kamala Harris goes. We. We get somebody new. And though. So Pelosi and Obama were in that camp. And then you see this other camp, which is sort of, I think, you know, what we would call the. The sort of party establishment types who obviously Pelosi is that sometimes Obama has never been a super big Democratic Party person. But you see the Clintons, you know, stay behind Joe Biden and then move to Kamala Harris. You see the, basically the leaders of the Democratic National Committee doing the same thing. Of course, the president is the head of that arm, so it's not terribly surprising that they go along there. But you kind of see this stack up of the sort of traditionalists who believe in the platform party structure and its rules, going Biden and then moving to Harris immediately. And then this Obama, Pelosi kind of faction, I mean, they're talking to each other and we report on that a little bit in the book. But they are also trying to not be seen conspiring together. And they are very much in that, like, get rid of Biden, get rid of Pelosi, have some kind of mini primary, some sort of, you know, out of not even the West Wing writers could come up with that. This, you know, sort of mini primary that would have worked. And at the same time, these very seasoned politicians love that idea, which is at the same time to your point being Pushed by some of the big donors.
- [56:53]
Alison Gill
We got a couple minutes left here. I want to talk a little bit about some of the more newsworthy parts of this book, which by the way is fascinating read. I recommend everybody check it out to get these perspectives. Some I agree with some I disagree with, some it answers a lot of questions about why I was feeling the way I was thinking about certain things. For example, like the battle. We were just talking about whether we were going to have an open primary or whether we were going to endorse Harris. I was, I was endorse Harris team endorse Harris. But talk a little bit about kind of the aftermath election night. I know that you kind of take the readers inside, like you said, these people's homes where they're watching the debate alone. But also on election night there was a lot of really fascinating, newsworthy stuff here.
- [57:39]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, I mean, we take you into the various camps. What's happening. Kamala Harris had different locations and locales where her people were across Washington. So we take you inside the room, the boiler room, with her top campaign aides and what they're seeing as the results are coming in. And we take you inside the vice president's residence where her closest aides are gathered in a separate room downstairs. She's downstairs, but then goes upstairs for much of the evening and her aides are trying to gather information and tell her what to do. They find out that she's about to lose, long story short. And they call her upstairs and let her know and she's still not ready to concede. She gets guidance from her brother in law not to conceal seed. And she is actually, she's asking all kinds of questions like are we sure have, do we have a final count on, you know, on this? Have we checked everything? So we, we kind of take you into what she's thinking and also how they break it to her that she's losing. And, and that's a really interesting thing as well. And, and we also, you know, I, I think the big thing is that she was surprised and, and Tim Walls was also surprised that they had lost. And we talk about that. We take you inside his hotel room where he's so stunned, he's speechless and she kind of feels the same way. And they're told to go to bed and they'll figure things out in the morning.
- [59:22]
Alison Gill
Yeah, that was a huge kind of almost relief point. It was like a big you're not alone, aha moment because we were all shocked and to, to read that Harris was thinking what the just happened and that Walls was speechless. It's like, okay, okay. Just so. Like the rest of us. Because afterwards, you know, when she came out and gave her speech, everything seemed great and fine, and we talked, the concession happened and all that, and we were like, why aren't they dumbfounded? They were, is what you're saying. They were.
- [59:51]
C
Absolutely were. And you live it through them, as, you know, as they've been saying. As you were saying, Alice. I mean, you read this book and you get the. You. You get that feel of the. The crestfallen moment, you know, where they really, both of them, Harrison Walls, really believed that they were on pace to win. And you get some of that is the sense of the bubble of a candidate on the campaign trail at the end, where you're going to big rallies and you're getting, you know, Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen revving up crowds like you've never seen before. But part of it is the campaign aides were telling them they were going to win. And there's been this revisionist history on podcasts and in other venues from the top brass of what was the Biden campaign and became the Harris campaign, about how they never had any chance of winning. And that's just bullshit. She was even in their own polling, and in fact, they had her winning 270 electoral votes as late as October 10, according to polling that Amy and I report for the first time. And so the idea that there was no chance that Kamala Harris could have won.
- [60:54]
Alison Gill
No. I mean, I was. I was, like, tweeting at the time. I'm no longer on Twitter, but at the time I was tweeting, I was like, has anyone noticed that Harris has stopped saying we're the underdogs in this race and has pivoted to a much more. We're gonna win when we fight. We went, you know, has pivoted to a much more. It's like confidence. Like just this higher level of confidence. And that seems to mirror the timelines of what she. What the campaign was being told in real time in the book, that. In this book. It's fascinating to read it and to. To relive what my brain was going through at the time and to see it all play out in a book in black and white in print.
- [61:31]
C
I think it's. And, Allison, you could probably speak this better than we can, but I think, you know, for a lot of Democratic voters are going to read this, and they're going to be first infuriated, and then they're going to feel some level of catharsis. Because to your point, they're not going to feel alone anymore. They're not going to feel like, was I the only person that saw this.
- [61:48]
Alison Gill
Happen or felt that this was happening?
- [61:50]
C
Yeah, yeah, that watched. That watched, you know, that was basically told something that didn't end up being true. And I think a lot of people are angry about that and they, they should be angry about that and they should be angry about how they watched all this play out. And at the same time, again, I, you know, I mean, I think it's always nice to know you're not alone.
- [62:07]
Alison Gill
Right.
- [62:07]
C
And so I think for a lot of voters and a lot of readers, that, that will be cathartic about this election. The one other thing I want to jump back to just in time if I can, real quick, because I think people are going to find this fascinating. We're the first people to report on the, in depth on the conversation between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris when he hands off, you know, basically ends up endorsing her. And she, and we go sort of minute by minute, there her team was, her family and her team were in her pool house at vice president's residence on the day Biden dropped out, having a secret meeting about what would they do if Biden dropped out in the next few days and they convinced themselves it wasn't going to happen. And while they're having that meeting, Harris is not in the meeting. She knows it's there. She's up in the house and she gets a call from Biden and Biden's like, I'm going to drop out. And we go into that conversation in depth. And I'll leave it at this because I want to leave a little something for the readers there, but let's just say they didn't see exactly eye to eye on what Biden should say and how he should say it. When he got out in the best way to help Harrison, there was a real back and forth between his team and her team and between the two of them on the phone.
- [63:13]
Alison Gill
Yeah, definitely leave that for the readers as a pretty crucial part of the story. And also just really interesting because you also, in the book, you go into detail about how Harris was already prepared. She, she had already thought of this eventuality and she's, that doesn't surprise me at all. She's a very prepared person. I remember during her debate where she, during the, during the, you know, 30 or 60 second commercial break, Trump's like moving his arms around and just sort of looking at the lights and Harris is over there taking notes. Taking notes, Taking notes for the first two minutes and the last minute she's reading her notes and then she's like, all right, let's go. Like, she's a prepared person and this really comes out in this book. So I appreciate you guys coming on today. Everybody, you can get the book now. Like I said, my, my latest favorite thing to do is buy like 10 copies and go put my favorite books into little libraries around town. But you can definitely get this wherever books are sold. It's called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. You give me a text when it hits bestseller status, which I thank you, Alison.
- [64:22]
C
We will definitely do that.
- [64:24]
Alison Gill
Any, any last things that you want to tell potential readers before we let you go?
- [64:30]
Jonathan Allen
I think we're, you know, we're, we're seeing this moment play out right now. Fight is a theme that people really feel viscerally right now you want to fight against. I think both sides want to fight. But I think in this message, as in our other books on the election, you really take away what candidates can do in the future, what they have done. And it's sort of a playbook for the next election and for the future. We're not just talking about the past.
- [65:01]
Alison Gill
Right. Excellent. All right, thank you so much. It was great to see you, John. Great to meet you, Amy. Everybody again, grab it. It's called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. On sale today by the authors, New York Times best selling authors of Shattered, my good friends Jonathan Allen and now my good friend Amy Parnes. I appreciate your time today.
- [65:25]
C
Thanks, Allison.
- [65:27]
Alison Gill
Everybody, stick around. We'll be right back with the good news. Everybody, welcome back. It's time for the good news. Who likes good news? Everyone. Then good news, everyone. Oh man, we do need some good news today. So if you have any good news, please send it to us. Confessions corrections. If you have a pronunciation correction. If you have a shout out you want to give to a loved one or yourself or a small business in your area. Maybe some great activism, community organizing that's happening in your area, we want to hear about it. Also, shout outs to great government programs that have helped you or a loved one. Whether it's Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Section 8, SNAP, WIC, Head Start, great VA health care you may have received or a family member received. We love to hear about that. And of course, student debt forgiveness. And we will read your submission on the air as long as you pay your POD pet tax, which means just attach a photo of your pet. If you're a patron, you can see those photos on the Patreon posts. You can become a patron@patreon.com Muller she wrote, if you don't have a pet, you can attach an adoptable pet in your area. We'll see if we can find them a home. Any animal photo will do if you don't have either of those. And then of course we love of baby pictures. We're also accepting bird watching photos, which could be an actual bird or you and your family and friends flipping off Trump and Musk properties. All right, first up from Lauren, no pronouns. I'm a daily listener of the beans and a weekly listener of Jack Unjustified and even going back to the Mueller she wrote days. I live in Europe where I serve as a principal at an American International school. My ability to actively engage is largely through donations. Five calls and letters to elected officials. I share this with you because you might know organizers that might like this idea. You might remember the not quite successful Hands across America in 1986. Yes, hands across America. I do remember that. Though you were probably in elementary school. We didn't have any drones or social media. But with those I can imagine it being an incredible protest day with something amazing like drone footage and more likelihood of success. With the ability to share locations and where people are needed via social media and the Internet. Getting it to go through as many states as possible would make it even better and easier for more people to participate. Here's the idea. Hands across America 2025 do you believe in free speech? A woman's right to choose, that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are good government programs? Do you believe in due process, rule of law, taxing the rich at least at the same rate as the middle class or preserving democracy? Even if you only believe in one of these things, let's join Hands Across America to show our solidarity. Research shows that it only takes 3.5% of us to force change through protest. We don't have to agree on everything to fight against the insanity together. That's a great idea, Lauren. I'll start pitching that around to some folks. Here's a bird watching photo from New York City in 2021. I have a very similar one. Very beautifully done. Thank you so much Lauren for that submission. Next up, Shannon. No pronouns. I was at the 76ers basketball game for my daughter. She's an amazing musician and was playing with her school jazz band inside the main entrance as people walked in. That's cool. They were great. Very proud of Council Rock south and my daughter. I noticed a table behind me with flags and rainbow stickers and found out it was Pride Night at the game. This table specifically was a few moms who quote, seek to create a caring, just and affirming world for LGBTQ people and those who love them Them. It's for the Chester and Westchester community in Pennsylvania, but thought this would be a good way to get the word out and encourage others to look in their areas for the same. If needed. We will have a PFLAG link in the show notes for you to check it out. And thank you so much for that, Shannon. That's a good little bit of good trouble. Next up from Craig Pronouns he and him Listen to your glorious self today and I'm grateful as always for your support in this nightmare. You glancingly mentioned Kingsley Wilson, the DOD deputy press lackey. Did you know she's worth recognizing as a legendary racist? Like, how can you stuff that much hatred in a young person? Her reputation is key to understanding pretty much anything she says. But in the good news, I was surprisingly satisfying. It was surprisingly satisfying to be out with my people, whom I'd never met in a Tesla takedown event this weekend. Right on. I'm sure you can guess the breeds of our two Scotties that we live with. Okay, yeah, they're Scotties and they're adorable. Craig, I'm glad you got out to a Tesla takedown rally. Those looked like a lot of fun. Next up, Retaviva. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Pronoun she and her I listen to and read a variety of sources, but I only pay for two daily News and political feeds, and I generally consider them ideologically different. So imagine my surprise when they crossed paths today. You reading JVL's Bulwark post about being dissidents on the Daily Beans? I'm calling that good news because I think it signifies that all of us, left, right, center, have ways to come together in solidarity and fight this shit the Trump administration is throwing at us for Podpet Tax. Here's a real life bird beauty that I'm so fortunate to see on a regular basis. Great horned owls are not as rare as you think, but that's another nugget we can live by. Look for something good and you just might find it. Thanks for all you do. We have a great horned owl that lives very close to my I can hear him every night. He's very cool. This is a beautiful photo. I haven't gotten a photo of ours yet. I'm gonna try. Thank you so much for that submission. Yeah, that Bulwark post about dissidents, it was pretty. Pretty spot on, I thought. I think that's the one I read yesterday. All right, next up from Rachel Pronoun. She and her. Hi there, Ag. I'm contacting you with good news. I've contacted before. Teacher in a Title 1 school in Georgia with the Trump voting husband. Ah, yes. Hi, Rachel. He's not maga, but he's been blinded by his own prejudices. My good news, the dam is breaking. A month ago, he was telling me to touch grass. Last week he told me he doesn't agree with all of my points of view but respects my passion. Then yesterday he tells me he's going to blow my mind. He agrees that tariffs on Canada and Mexico are not a good thing and they're causing instability. He's come to this conclusion as he got laid off about two months ago, not the federal mass. And has a cr. Has had a crap time finding work. He won't go over the bridge with me yet that this is all deliberate, but I think he's getting there. I'm heartened and I see this as positive progress. He has an interview today, so wish him luck. Good luck, hubs. I'm gonna include another star pick. My brat Corgi. I love her even when she drives the rest of the house crazy. She's adorable. Look at that beautiful picture. Oh, there's snow. I like to visit the snow, Rachel, but not living it, but this little beauty. Oh, I want to pet the puppy, you guys. Thank you so much for the good news. I needed it today. I'll be back in your ears tomorrow. There's also an episode of cleanup on L45 out tomorrow. And go Crawford, Wisconsin. Get out there and vote if you haven't already. I imagine anybody who lives in Wisconsin that listens to this show probably voted early. But. But I know a lot of people who are really into it and like to go to the polls on the day of. So fingers crossed. This is a big one. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, take care of your family. I've been ag and them's the Beans. The Daily Beans is written and executive produced by Allison Gill with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg. Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarlane with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studio. Music for the Daily Beans is written and performed by they Might Be Giants and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice. For more information please visit mswmedia.com msw media.