2467 - Fighting Trump’s Power Grab w/ Robert Weissman, Rohan Grey

Summary

Summary of "Episode 2467 - Fighting Trump’s Power Grab w/ Robert Weissman, Rohan Grey"

The Majority Report with Sam Seder delves deep into the ongoing political struggles surrounding former President Donald Trump’s attempts to consolidate power. In Episode 2467, released on April 2, 2025, host Sam Cedar engages with key figures Robert Weissman of Public Citizen and Rowan Gray, an assistant professor of law at Willamette University, to dissect Trump's maneuvers against governmental institutions and the implications for American democracy.

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1. Wisconsin Supreme Court Victory and Its Implications

The episode begins with a discussion about the significant win by a liberal Supreme Court justice candidate in Wisconsin. This victory is seen as a substantial setback for Trump and Republican efforts to control judicial appointments, especially in swing states.

Notable Quote:

• Sam Cedar (04:08): “The Wisconsin win was massive. It really was a massive win.”

The high voter turnout in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, which saw a 40% increase compared to previous midterms, underscores a growing resistance against Republican strategies to influence key judicial positions through substantial financial backing.

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2. Elon Musk’s Influence in Politics

Elon Musk's involvement in political races, particularly his financial contributions and strategic placements, is scrutinized. The hosts argue that Musk's presence, rather than benefiting Republican candidates, has acted as a liability, leading to unexpected losses.

Notable Quotes:

• Rohan Gray (08:32): “Elon Musk simply is an unpopular guy. He is political poison.”
• Sam Cedar (12:00): “Elon Musk is saying, you got to keep doing this and keep your mouth shut, or I'm going to dump a bunch of money into your district and I'm going to oversee your primary loss.”

Musk's threat to flood primary races with money if Republicans do not align with his agenda has inadvertently emboldened Democratic voters, leading to significant swings in traditionally Republican districts.

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3. Legal Battles Against Trump’s Administration

Guest: Robert Weissman, Co-President of Public Citizen

Robert Weissman discusses Public Citizen's legal efforts to counteract Trump administration moves to dismantle key federal agencies, with a focus on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

a. Protecting the CFPB

The Trump administration, with support from figures like Elon Musk, has launched multiple lawsuits aiming to dissolve the CFPB—a pivotal agency established post-2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from predatory financial practices.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert Weissman (28:20): “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau... has returned more than $20 billion to consumers.”
• Robert Weissman (31:53): “Conservatives courts have made it hard for consumers or the public to show standing.”

Public Citizen successfully obtained a preliminary injunction preventing the termination of the CFPB, safeguarding its ability to continue operations and protect consumers from financial abuses.

b. Challenges in Litigation

Weissman highlights the difficulties in bringing lawsuits against the government, emphasizing the stricter standing requirements imposed by recent Supreme Court rulings. While corporations often have standing to challenge government actions, individual citizens find it increasingly challenging.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert Weissman (34:00): “The Supreme Court has just changed what it means to have standing.”
• Sam Cedar (35:15): “Closing the courtroom doors to citizens is really what they've been up to.”

Despite these hurdles, Public Citizen remains steadfast in its mission to uphold democratic institutions against authoritarian threats.

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4. Threats to the Federal Payment System

Guest: Rowan Gray, Assistant Professor of Law at Willamette University

Rowan Gray explores the Trump administration’s attempts, supported by Elon Musk, to manipulate the federal payment systems, including Social Security, through technological and administrative control.

a. Centralizing Payment Systems

Gray explains how the administration is moving towards a centralized control system within the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, allowing unprecedented control over federal disbursements.

Notable Quotes:

• Rowan Gray (56:33): “The Treasury is really this choke point for almost all payments. It processes 88% of payments in the federal government.”
• Rowan Gray (58:53): “Trump just recently signed an order saying he wants even more. He wants to get the last 12% kind of swept in there.”

This centralization poses a significant threat to the integrity and reliability of essential services like Social Security, potentially enabling the administration to halt payments at will.

b. Risks of System Manipulation

Gray warns of the catastrophic consequences if the payment system is disrupted, including delays in essential services that millions rely on daily.

Notable Quotes:

• Rowan Gray (70:01): “These are people who rely on this stuff. There are not only federal agencies, there are state agencies that rely on these payments going out.”
• Rowan Gray (73:12): “This is part of the back door to the whole government.”

The reliance on outdated systems like COBOL makes the federal payment infrastructure vulnerable to manipulation and instills fear about potential outages affecting vital services.

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5. Strategic Responses and Future Outlook

The guests emphasize the urgency of legal and legislative actions to protect federal institutions from dismantling efforts. Public Citizen aims to maintain the structure and functionality of agencies like the CFPB, ensuring they remain robust against authoritarian attempts to weaken them.

Notable Quotes:

• Robert Weissman (37:20): “We've stopped them from shutting the agency down, We've stopped them from formally firing everyone.”
• Rowan Gray (81:44): “You have to build it in small moats. You build it as a sort of test case.”

Proactive measures, including strategic litigation and phased technological upgrades, are proposed to fortify governmental agencies and prevent the erosion of democratic safeguards.

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Conclusion

Episode 2467 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder underscores the relentless efforts by Donald Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk, to undermine critical governmental institutions. Through incisive interviews with Robert Weissman and Rowan Gray, the episode highlights the resilience and strategies of organizations like Public Citizen in combating these power grabs. The discussions serve as a clarion call for sustained vigilance to ensure the preservation of democratic structures and the protection of consumer rights against authoritarian overreach.

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Additional Resources:

• Public Citizen: Learn more about their advocacy and legal battles at Public Citizen's Website.
• Rust Grey's Paper on Digitizing the Fisk: Link to Paper
• Support The Majority Report: Become a member at JointheMajorityReport.com

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version.

[Sam Cedar]

Of the Majority Report.

[Emma Vigeland]

Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily.

[Sam Cedar]

It is Wednesday, April 2, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Robert Weissman, co president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Public Citizen, waging multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration, including one to save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Also on the program today, Rohan Gray, an assistant professor of law at Willamette University, on Doge's attempt to take over the government's payment system. Also on the program today, liberal Supreme Court justice candidate wins big in Wisconsin in a referendum on how much Elon Musk smells. And Donald Trump and the Republicans in blood red Florida 1st and 6th districts. Democrats run 15 points better than they did just six months ago. Actually five, six. Somewhere around there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Around.

[Sam Cedar]

Putting scaring the bejeebies out of any Republican lawmaker who is in a district that Donald Trump won by less than 10 points. Meanwhile, fearful of a tanking stock market, Trump pushes his tariff announcement to 4:01pm One minute after the stock market closes. That'll do it. I'm very clever. Speaker Johnson adjourns Congress in a huff after Democrats help pass proxy voting for new parents. God forbid. Incompetent National Security advisor Tim Waltz has conducted sensitive national security conversations on Gmail. Cory Burker holds the floor, the Senate floor, breaking Strom Thurman's record as he bemoans Donald Trump.

[Emma Vigeland]

He holds the floor and his bladder, it seems.

[Sam Cedar]

Yep.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is the information I care about. It was over 24 hours. He didn't move or go to the bathroom.

[Sam Cedar]

I did rest. I did rest.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm impressed, honestly.

[Sam Cedar]

Amid massive job cuts at U.S. health agencies, dozens of free measles vaccine clinics to close in Texas, Adam Schiff puts a hold on Ed Martin's nomination to be D.C. u.S. Attorney. That guy Martin is a lunatic. Incidentally, Tesla quarterly earnings tank. And I don't mean the pickup truck, which incidentally, probably you can get a deal on very soon. Senate Republicans look to pass a very unresolved budget reconciliation resolution. All this and more on today's majority report. It is.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hump day.

[Sam Cedar]

It is Wednesday, which is hump day.

[Emma Vigeland]

Also, I guess you said Tim Waltz.

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah, I was gonna say that. You said Tim Walls instead of Mike Waltz.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's Mike Waltz, like the waltz. It took you like, I think two Months to stop saying Tim Waltz in the primary. You got over the hump. And then we have a major scandal involving Mike Waltz. Enter Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor.

[Sam Cedar]

So, I mean, you got it. So.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, that's what I'm here for.

[Sam Cedar]

There you go. Tim, Mike. I mean, where did. Who uses these names?

[Robert Weissman]

Waltz Walls.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, exactly.

[Emma Vigeland]

Who cares?

[Sam Cedar]

Obviously, a little pep in our step today. The Wisconsin win was massive. It really was a massive win. I don't think there was ever a real serious notion that the Democrats would win in Florida's first and sixth, although it was a scary run, I think, for these Republicans there. But they closed the gap by 15 points. And there's a whole bunch of stuff to take from this. But here is Harry Anton breaking down Elon Musk's impact on. On this Wisconsin Supreme Court race. There's a couple of things to keep in mind here. One, the reason why we paid so much attention to this race. Well, of course, Wisconsin's very important and it could impact gerrymandering down the road in Wisconsin.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And unwinding some of this, particularly for congressional districts, which could add a House seat or two coming from Wisconsin, maybe three, I don't know. But it also understand that Donald Trump has been able to, in part to cow all of the Republican lawmakers because of the threat of Elon Musk dumping a ton of money into primary races and running against them. And what Elon Musk just did was essentially send the message that he is toxic and that his money is toxic. And we're going to see. And you add that to what happened in Florida, where after Pennsylvania, we saw the same dynamic team points in Pennsylvania.

[Emma Vigeland]

And that's in that state Senate race. Flip to C. Now, 15 points in Florida, too.

[Sam Cedar]

We don't know if that's going to translate directly into midterm elections because we anticipate a slightly higher turnout. Although the Wisconsin turnout was, oh, my.

[Emma Vigeland]

Gosh, 2.4 million people. That's a 40% increase from the last Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, which was 2023. There are only 3.8 million registered voters. That's incredible turnout relative to a midterm. This is why we like Wickler for DNC chair.

[Sam Cedar]

By the way, relative to the last midterm, it was only 100,000 less voters.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

So, and, and the Wisconsin Crawford won by 250,000. So, yeah, there, there is. This is a bad sign.

[Emma Vigeland]

And even midterms broke the record for the most amount of money spent in a judiciary election in the history of this country and he lost by 10 points. That's the top line.

[Sam Cedar]

We should also add they ran out of ballots in a bunch of places in Milwaukee. I mean, so like this is about Wisconsin is about as bad as it could be for Republicans and just on a sheer numbers basis. But add in this like, oh, it runs counter to what had been being used to discipline Republican lawmakers because Elon now looks like a liability as opposed to, you know, in these elections, as opposed to some type of hammer. So here is cnn.

[Rowan Gray]

Let's start with a little bit of Wisconsin right out of moose bush on Wisconsin. This was a race. Elon Musk spent big in this great race to sway the Supreme Court race there. And he also went to Wisconsin, which may honestly have backfired.

[Rohan Gray]

Yeah, I think it may have backfired. Look, I think if there's one thing we should be taking away from the results in Wisconsin and the polling that we have from Wisconsin, the national. If you are a Republican candidate running in a swing state, you don't want Elon Musk anywhere near you. Yes, maybe you like the money, but you do not want his presence in your state.

[Emma Vigeland]

Why is that?

[Rohan Gray]

Elon Musk simply is an unpopular guy. He is political poison. Look in Wisconsin, his NET Favorable rating minus 12 points. 12 points underwater. That is an even worse number when you look nationally, look at that, it's minus 17 points. So if there's one big lesson to take away from Wisconsin, Elon Musk does not help Republicans when he shows up. If anything, the data suggests that he hurts him. Republicans stay clear of Elon Musk. If you want to win in a swing state, at least in terms of his physical appearance in your state.

[Rowan Gray]

We see in terms of swings in Florida.

[Rohan Gray]

What do we see in the terms of swings in Florida? You know, we were talking about Florida 6 and you can see it here, the election margins, US House district. You know, Donald Trump won the 6 by 30 points last night. What did we see? We saw the Republican Randy fine win by 14. That's a swing of 16 points. But that's not anywhere near the swing we saw in Florida one. Look at that. Donald Trump won it by 37 points. The Republican won last night, but only by 15. That's a 22 point swing. We're talking about an average 19 point swing from the baseline back in 2024 in just a matter of four or five months. These are massive shifts. These are massive shifts to the left. Democrats really have to like this. Even the Republicans added to their majority in terms of what this potentially Means down the road, you take this type of swing, you put it on some swing districts. That's very good news for Democrats.

[Rowan Gray]

Now, all of us who have this certain political sickness over the last 24 hours, we're talking about Kansas. Harry, why are we focused on Kansas?

[Rohan Gray]

Kansas is on my mind and it's not just because I want to go home. Toto, look at this Kansas 4th district election margins. If you go back in time to 2017, what did we see? You know, you remember back in 2016, Donald Trump won the 4th district by 27. And then all of a sudden this ruby red district run, Estes won in April of 2017, but just by 6. Erica, a 21 point swing, very similar that average 19 point swing we saw in those deep red districts last night in Florida. And then you say, okay, this tells us something about the political environment going into 2018 where Republicans of course lost. And of course, generally speaking, we look back, special elections and midterm results. If a party outperforms in a special election since 2005, five out of five times they wanted to win the US House. Perhaps last night in Florida is a sign of things to come.

[Sam Cedar]

And again, and it's so good.

[Emma Vigeland]

Breakdown.

[Sam Cedar]

There you have it. Now look, Donald Trump is a loyal guy. He is not the type of guy who is going to jettison Elon Musk.

[Emma Vigeland]

Throw somebody overboard just because everybody hates him and he can't buy love in these states. And like, it's almost like he smells. People don't want to be around him. It's the kind of guy that just has a bad odor when he walks into the room.

[Sam Cedar]

And on cue, here comes a report from Politico just breaking an hour ago. Scroll down. Trump tells inner circle that Musk will leave soon. Scroll down here. This is just 11:17 a President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his cabinet, that Musk is going to be stepping back in the coming weeks as his current role as governing partner. Ubiquitous, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man. Now here's the thing is that like Musk has done two things. He's gone in and he's tried to break our administrative state. And the other thing, again, like we say, he has been the sort of threat that has been hanging over the head of Republican lawmakers. So they're afraid to go to town hall meetings because they don't want to hear how angry their voters are. But they are also. That's like the rock. And the hard place though, is that Elon Musk is saying, you got to keep doing this and keep your mouth shut, or I'm going to dump a bunch of money into your district and I'm going to oversee your primary loss. But now those people are going like, if he helps me win in the primary, just that him stink around me is probably going to make me lose automatically in the general.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

But I'm more likely to get support if I get through the primary just generically from Republicans. So it changes the calculation. That's the point. And so this is good news. Hopefully it will make that. It will make the budget. And right now in the Senate, John Thune is trying to pass this week a budget resolution which is sort of like the encapsulating legislation that sets up reconciliation. Remember, the Republicans in the House have already voted to essentially cut Medicaid by 6, 7, $800 billion. This budget resolution in the Senate is going to punt all of these different issues so they can just move the ball forward. But, but one of the issues that they also have to essentially punt, they're trying to use a, an accounting fraudulent technique. I don't know what gimmick to pretend that the Trump tax cuts, which are set to expire by legislation, aren't going to actually expire. And therefore they can calculate the baseline for what will be cut in terms of taxes as being a smaller amount going forward, but those taxes will be added in. It's. And they don't think the parliamentarian is going to okay it, but they're deciding that the parliamentarian doesn't have to answer that question.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

That it would be Lindsey Graham as chair of the Finance Committee. And then they're gonna wait and see if the parliamentarian says that's okay. But the point being is they're gonna pass this resolution without any of these things resolved. And this is a lot more complicated today than it was yesterday because they do not have this hammer of Elon Musk threatening anybody running for office. And so this is a big, big win in Wisconsin.

[Emma Vigeland]

Huge. And also just reinforces what the core message of the Democrats has to be up until the midterms next year. Focus on Elon. Even if he's forced to recede into his little, you know, quiet space and just pour money in without being in the public. Because that's what the suggestion is, is they still want his money. They just don't want his toxic personality and face out there all the time. Right.

[Sam Cedar]

So I'm sure Musk will not be.

[Emma Vigeland]

He doesn't have any ego issues at all. So it'll be interesting to See it play. But making billionaires and making him the mascot of the billionaires, the Democrats are taking on, making that the focus is really politically salient and also the right thing to do from a policy perspective. So these two things coming together, it's just a good thing. And can I just read one quote really quickly from Pam Van Handle, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin's out Agami County? I'm honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag. I thought Musk was going to be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don't love everybody he supports. Maybe I have blinders on. Sorry, Pam, you're in a cult.

[Sam Cedar]

That's like waking up the next day and go, wait a second, geez. I mean that win in Wisconsin, I mean they, the, the 40% more people came out for this race than they did in the Supreme Court race, the last one. Now to be fair, that was, that was in 23. I mean there's no Covid, there's no nothing. I mean it is a big deal and we're at midterm numbers for this. It's just nuts, really nuts. In a moment we're going to be talking to Robert Weissman, the co president of the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen. They have about close to, as far as I can tell, almost a dozen cases, maybe a little less against the Trump administration, maybe the biggest being one attempting to save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau right now that election, plus these legal cases are the only thing that's slowing the role of the Republicans. We'll be talking to him in a moment. And then Rowan Gray, an assistant professor of law at Willamette University, who.

[Rowan Gray]

Is.

[Sam Cedar]

Going to talk to us about what's happening with the payment systems Both from the U.S. treasury and Social Security. We'll be talking to them in a moment. But first, a couple years ago we had some neutral around the office because they wanted to advertise and I, I think at the time we said no because we couldn't find anybody want to, to take it. At the time I was like, I don't, I don't need to take it. And Michael at the time was like, I'm not going to take it. And, and then, I don't know, maybe it was two years ago, I started to feel like I'm getting like thinning hair a little bit. Just, I just noticed it, you know, particularly on this side and I'm getting up there. So I started taking neutrophil because it is a 100% drug free and so I was like why not?

[Emma Vigeland]

Why not?

[Sam Cedar]

Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand. It is trusted by over one and a half million people. You can see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in three to six months with Nutrafol. And both Emma and I know women who have taken Nutrafol and had a lot of success with it. Various issues with their hair and Nutrafol understands that thinning hair is different for men and women. They know that a one size fits all approach for hair growth doesn't cut it. So Nutrafol has multiple formulas for men and for women tailored to different life stages. Doesn't matter like postpartum or menopause or lifestyle factors such as like a plant based lifestyle so you can get just what you need. Physician formulated with 100% drug free ingredients, Nutrafol supports healthy hair growth from within targeting key root causes, no pun intended there of thinning things like stress hormones, aging, nutrition, lifestyle metabolism through whole body health. Start your own hair growth journey with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten bucks off your first month subscription and free shipping. When you go to Nutrafol.com enter the promo code TMR10. That's the letters TMR and the number 10. Find out why over 4,500 health care professionals and stylists recommend neutral for healthier hair. Neutral.com spelled n u t r a f o l.com promo code TMR10. That's Nutrafol.com promo code TMR10. Check it out. We'll put the link and the code in our podcast and YouTube description. And also this is another product that I was using for years before they became advertisers here. Super happy about this. People know my love of apples. Yeah, I think they do.

[Emma Vigeland]

Should be well known.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean right behind Social Security. Yes, that, that's basically, I mean people get a sense of basically what I'm looking forward to for the rest of my life. Yes, going on Social Security, eating apples and woodworking and, and woodworking. But when I get apple trees. Really any apple trees, little like shrubs of grass, whatever. I get it from fast growing trees. It is the biggest online nursery in the U.S. they have more than 10,000 different kinds of plants and over 2 million happy customers in the U.S. here's what I love about this. You can go to your big box store, you can try and buy an apple tree. They got four different varieties of apple. Crappy, crappier and crappiest. With fast growing trees, they have a huge selection and they will, their trees don't grow any faster, I don't think. But they will grow. They will send you a five or six foot apple tree. They'll send you other trees too. You can get like a chokeberry bush or you can get, I mean they have so many different varieties of everything. I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, but Korean pear tree and these trees are big enough that within a year you can get, it will fruit in some instances two years out, not a lot of time for that. It will fruit and it comes with a 30 day alive and thrive guarantee. They pack it very well. You don't have to go to the big box store and have all the dirt dump out in the back of your Subaru or whatever it is. Also, you don't even need to have a yard or a lot of space. You can grow a lemon tree, you can grow an avocado tree, you can grow an olive tree or a fig tree. Fig trees are primo and they're also very easy to propagate. But we don't need to talk about that now inside your house. They also have experts at fast growing trees that will tell you what's good for your climate, what you need to do if you're having problems with it, give you tips to plant them on all of it. And they're available 247 this spring. They have the best deals online, up to half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get an additional 15 off their first purchase when using the code majority at checkout. That's an additional 15 off at fast growing trees.com using the code majority at checkout. Fast growing trees.com code is majority offer valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Spring, that's time to plant. I mean fall. There's actually some argument about falling, but.

[Emma Vigeland]

Spring is those two.

[Sam Cedar]

Those two.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, quick break. We come back. We'll be talking to Robert Weissman, co president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Public Citizen. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. Pleasure to welcome to the program Robert Weissman, co president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Public Citizen. Robert, welcome to the program.

[Robert Weissman]

It's great to be with you.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's I just want to start with like a very general question before we get into some of the suits that you've brought. Tell us just a little bit about Public Citizen. Like what, what do you guys normally.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah.

[Robert Weissman]

When we're, when we're not Confronting an unprecedented authoritarian threat.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's basically what happens today.

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah, in those times, we're in the business of trying to take on corporate power. In Washington, D.C. we were founded more than 50 years ago by Ralph Nader. We have a really broad portfolio. We work on everything from global trade to drug prices to consumer financial protection to campaign finance. We litigate, we advocate at specialized agencies like the fda. We do on the ground organizing and more. And we've always been really fundamentally concerned, along with corporate power, with the functioning of a democracy. And that's a different thing now than it was a few months ago.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. You know, I spend every year, usually twice a year, but sometimes once a year I go to a tort conference, a mass tort conference, and interview a lot of litigators who fight corporate power in many instances. And, and as a public. And there is public interest firms that come in not for profits and will take cases that aren't profitable for, you know, some of these lawyers to take. Where do you. Where do you fit in that niche of. I know that you're more oriented towards what government is doing and. But where do you fit in that nich. There's a hole there, isn't there?

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah. Well, what you're describing are cases that are usually brought by consumers, sometimes employees, against large corporations for dangerous products or maybe sometimes for an environmental toxin. They can either bring cases on their own or in these big cases that you're describing, come together either in class actions or things that are called mass actions. And there's a whole trial bar that specializes in bringing those cases. We don't bring those cases at the trial level, which is where you have to amass all the evidence and you're going back and forth about what exactly happened. Our much smaller team focuses on appellate litigation. So after there's been a back and forth and hashing out before a jury or a judge about the facts, then if the plaintiffs, the victims, are able to succeed, the defendants almost always are going to sue. But to sue, they've got to say there's some legal issue here, the judge did something wrong. And that's where we come in. We would often work in conjunction with those lawyers arguing at the appellate level. So not so much before a jury, but before judges on matters of constitutional law or interpreting a statute or something.

[Sam Cedar]

Like that, so facts are settled. And then you guys are arguing either problems that may have existed on the subsidiary court level or interpretations of law that were missed. Well, let's talk about what you guys are doing now. I mean, it's sort of, you know, like you say, we're in a different era than we've seen before. Let's start first with the National Treasury Employees Union versus Russell Vogt. Russell Vogt being the OMB chair, also one of the key architects of Project 2025. He was Trump's OMB secretary in the first administration. Administration. Tell us about this suit. It's brought by a union, but it's specifically about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

[Robert Weissman]

Right. It's about the effort by the Trump administration, which includes, on the one hand, Elon Musk and Doge and on the other hand, Russ Foe, who's probably the most important person in the administration not named Elon Musk to shut down the cfpb. So folks will remember the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by Congress following the 2008 financial crash. It was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, before she was Senator Warren, just Professor Warren back in those days. And the idea was looking back on what had happened in the crash. There's a lot of financial regulatory agencies. Their job is basically to look at the banks and make sure the banks aren't getting too far out of their out over their skis and being too risky. But there's no agency, there was no agency at the time whose primary job was to protect consumers. And consumers were the ones who were really most adversely impacted by the crash. So Congress created this agency in 2010 as part of the Dodd Frank Act. It's been a great success, especially in the last four years under the Biden administration under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, who is probably the most effective consumer champion in government. In the last 50 years, it's returned more than $20 billion to consumers. It stopped all kinds of predatory activities by payday lenders, credit card companies, big banks, student lenders, and more. It had issued recently rules to protect consumers against rip off overdraft fees or having medical debt attached to your credit. Report a lot of really, really good things that have protected consumers. Which is exactly why Russ Bo and Elon Musk wanted to shut it down. Elon Musk had the extra interest of the fact that he's trying to turn Twitter X into a payment processor, which would in fact be regulated by the CFPB if he's able to do that. So he was trying to shut down the agency that would regulate his business. They were going in, in typical Doge fashion, just basically trying to empty the building, fire everybody and all the contracts, and in this case, literally delete every record the agency had ever accumulated representing the workers at the cfpb, some consumer protection organizations, and a person who had a case that the CFPB was handling at the time, we were able to bring forward a lawsuit that has stopped them from being able to terminate the agency.

[Sam Cedar]

The. And we should just say, you mentioned the overdraft fees. The Republicans literally just voted to uncap overdraft fees and allow banks to manipulate the order of your purchases to increase the amount that you've overdrafted and charge you more fees. It's. It's shocking that they could take this vote and, you know, then be so proud of it, but that's what they did. So what. What is different about this case as opposed to, like, stopping what they're doing to usaid? Like, is there not. Do you need to have a specific plaintiff who is specifically impacted here to bring this case as opposed to, like, I mean, they're doing the same thing with the usaid. They're doing the same thing with, like, the museums and libraries. They're doing the same thing with the International Peace Organization. I mean, there's so many different agencies, but you need to have a specific plaintiff. Is that it?

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah, that's right. And we've been doing the USAID case as well. So to bring these lawsuits, you can't just say, hey, what they're doing is illegal, by the way. It's always illegal. It's almost always a violation of the Constitution. To be able to bring the lawsuit, you have to say you are directly affected. That's the idea. People may have heard of that. You have to have standing to bring the lawsuit. And the way the conservative courts have worked over recent decades, it's hard for consumers or the public to show standing. Corporations, by the way, almost always have standing to bring challenges to government action. They say, hey, we're directly regulated. We have standing. The courts agree. So in these cases, it's been challenging, but we were able to do it effectively in the CFPB case by having the employees, but not just the employees, also people, organizations like the National Consumer Law center that uses the research that the CFPB produces, and a person who had a case that was being managed by the CFPB and halted because of the efforts to close the agency down. By contrast, by the way, at the. At usaid, we represented the employees there, and then we brought Oxfam in as a plaintiff as well. But because of the employees were involved, the judge said, hey, this is not really an issue about shutting down the agency. It's really an issue about laying off all the employees. This is an employee issue. You've got to handle it through this administrative process that the government has to deal with employment issues. So that's been a problem we've had in the aid case, but it's not been a problem in the CFPB. 1.

[Sam Cedar]

What is the case? I mean, I assume that there was a. Is. I assume it's not statutory. I assume there was some type of Supreme Court case. But you point out that corporations almost have standing in every case against the government. It seems to me as a citizen, like all of these agencies on some level exist ostensibly for my benefit.

[Robert Weissman]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

And so if they're being undermined, it seems to me I should have standing. Why don't I. I mean, and I'm not just talking about me, obviously.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. But like the CFPB. The CFPB, for example, you said that 20 billion figure in terms of what they've returned. That's been across over 200 million Americans in terms of like how the CFPB has helped them.

[Sam Cedar]

And we don't know how many it's helped just by existing.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

So that, you know, people don't break the law. Like, you know, I mean, so how do I, how is it that I don't have standing?

[Robert Weissman]

Well, you should. We all should. 50 years ago we probably would have, or at least you would have, if, say, an organization like Public Citizens said, hey, we've got lots of members and they're affected. We would have had organizational standing. And that was permitted 50 years ago. But there's been a steady effort to restrict standing on primarily on behalf of corporations. Again, in non authoritarian times, that's the context we're normally talking about this sin. So corporations can always challenge a regulation issued by a government agency almost without fail. And they succeeded in stopping almost every single one that the Biden administration issued. But it's generally really hard for consumers or the public to do it. Not because it should be, but just because of how the law has evolved.

[Sam Cedar]

Is it a statute? Is that statutory?

[Robert Weissman]

The idea of standing is a constitutional concept. And so the Supreme Court has just changed what it means to have standing.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, all right, that's a. Supreme Court has ruled and they've done this in a. And I don't know if it was Concepcion, the AT&T and Concepcion sort of added to it, but there's a, there's a, there's a whole body of law that they have basically been a steady March.

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah. For 40 or 50 years.

[Sam Cedar]

Closing the courtroom doors to citizens is really what they've been up to.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

What is the status of this case? So the, the, this, at the moment, you've got a preliminary injunction against, I guess, Doge from doing what? Like, in all of these situations, it feels like. And in some instances, they've been ordered to rehire the employees, but then they sort of like, well, we're not giving you back pay. In one instance, I think it was at the usda, if I'm not mistaken. And they just make it broadly difficult. Like, this is. This is about bailing water, essentially, isn't it?

[Robert Weissman]

Well, hopefully a little. It's a little more than bailing water. But the point is, right, like, even when we win on these cases, and these are all still early phases, not, not the earliest phase, but preliminary injunction, not a final resolution of the case. In every instance, we're seeing the administration, at best, slow walk the implementation of what a judge tells them to do, and in a lot of instances, go a lot slower than that. But in this case, we've stopped them from shutting the agency down, We've stopped them from formally firing everyone. We've stopped them from canceling all the contracts they have. They've got a lot of outside contractors who do the business of the cfpb. We've stopped them from what we think they were planning to do, which was literally hit a button and delete the entirety of the records they've created over the last dozen years of operation. So that stopped things have been in ferment today. But the short version of a long procedural story is that the government is trying to appeal the decision.

[Sam Cedar]

So, I mean, largely as a strategic matter is like one of your primary goals. And I'm looking at a whole series of cases that you have involving the government or sort of subsidiary elements. Is it just to basically maintain the structure of these things? I mean, obviously, a Trump administration Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not going to aggressively go after banks or fraudsters. I mean, they're just not going to. To the extent that there are people who are still working there who want to, the political appointees are going to be putting the kibosh on that in every way they can come up with. But this is really about, from your perspective, maintaining the structure of these entities so that in the event there's political change, these things will still exist and don't have to be built from scratch.

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah, that's pretty much right. I think what we could say is, you know, in the first Trump administration, they put someone in charge who did at the CFPB who was pretty hostile and didn't really want the agency to do very much. But the agency did continue. It did, for example, maintain its database where it accepts consumer complaints and sort of deals with individual consumer complaints. It did bring some actions against some really extreme fraud cases, including some of the administration now is trying to undo that were brought under the first term. So I think aspirationally we could hope for that and try to maintain that. And that's important a little bit because even that low level of functioning is something and it reduces some of the worst frauds and rip offs and predation that banks and others would do. But also even more importantly, it keeps the structure in place so we have the agency and we can deploy it at its full power when there's a change in presidential leadership.

[Sam Cedar]

What's, is there anything that's like sort of like sending off, I mean, I was going to say is there anything sending off alarm bells? And I would imagine that's all you hear in the office. But are there other things that you're sort of like seeing down the road that you, that are, that you guys have some type of, I don't know, grid in your office, like where it's like, okay, we're at DEFCON 5 now. Like this is gone completely off the rails. Is that, I mean, I imagine that's just like the Trump administration completely ignoring what a court says. It doesn't feel like that we're, they, they have indicated that, that they're going to do that in any circumstance except for maybe immigration side. But even then it sort of feels like they're coming in and they're showing up and they're hemming and hawing about it. But what in your world, what, what are you looking out for or do you see signs of encouragement or are there things that you're worried about going forward?

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah, I think there's a few things. One is, you know, they're still going to try to mow over more agencies. So we just had the carnage at the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this week and there's still other agencies. So, you know, we're going to try to pick up the pieces and defend some of the agencies, the sub agencies inside Health and Human Services that have either been cut so deep that you can't really say it's there anymore or where they're trying to close it down pretty much altogether. For example, one that's not going to get very much attention, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, like the part of NIH that studies worker health and safety, they're trying to obliterate it all together. So hopefully we can keep that part going.

[Sam Cedar]

Now, do you keep that together by basically saying you can't fire these employees. They're a member of union, they're a class of employees. You can't fire them or what?

[Robert Weissman]

Or it's a little bit the employees, but it's even more that the agency has created by Congress and has appropriate direct appropriation by Congress. You can't close an agency that Congress created without Congress doing it. And you can't refuse to spend money that Congress appropriated for a particular purpose. So I guess the next thing is there are some issues that are going to go to the Supreme Court for sure. One is the ability of the President to fire people at so called independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission where there are Democratic appointee or Democratic members of the commission who are supposed to be on so long as they don't engage in some crime, period. And Trump has fired them. There's a number of those instances that's going to get to the court very soon. And then the even bigger issue which you're alluding to is what happens when the President says I'm not going to spend money that Congress appropriated. That's plainly illegal. There's a law called the Impoundment Act. It's prevents the President from doing that. Russ Vote, that guy we were talking about says he thinks that law is unconstitutional. The president has this inherent authority to do whatever he wants to not spend money. That case eventually is going to get to the Supreme Court and it will be a really big deal.

[Sam Cedar]

Would they have to overturn Train v. New and NYC to find the Empowerment Control act unconstitutional?

[Robert Weissman]

They're going to have over. They're going to find the law unconstitutional. So all the, all the, all the subsequent would go, but yeah, the law, they're gonna say the law itself is a violation of the President's inherent power under Article 2. That's, that's their theory. Are you, it's a very kingly theory for what the President should be.

[Sam Cedar]

Are you guys and are they trying to figure out which case you want to bring to the Supreme Court where that fight happens? Right. I mean, I imagine we have an Empowerment Control act implication for half a dozen, maybe more agencies. Do you as lawyers sit there and go, this is the agency and this is the circumstance. This is the case. We want to get the Supreme Court because this one gives us the best argument under that law, you try to.

[Robert Weissman]

Think about it, you don't really have control necessarily. And also a lot of this depends on timing like, does it feel like it's really right? So they've got a year to spend, you know, an appropriations fiscal year to spend the money. If they say they're not, they announce. They don't announce. They just close down an agency at the beginning of the year. Well, they could still spend the money. If you say they're not spending the money, they say, yeah, we're going to do it later on. So there's some timing things, some issues around and they can't. And they can't shift.

[Sam Cedar]

And there's already been a case under the first Trump administration where they shift that money maybe to, you know, build the wall or something. But I would imagine it's a much harder argument to take money from OSHA and build the wall than it is from like the Pentagon and build the wall.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Robert Weissman]

There are a lot of overlapping factors when you have complete disregard for the law as they do. So it's exactly what you said. Another thing that came up in that case and will come up again is, well, what if they declare a national emergency of whatever kind? He's declared a lot of national emergencies so far. So the President has a lot of emergency powers. Is there some constraint on deciding when there's an emergency? How does the emergency thing overlap with the impoundment? So the case may not be completely clean.

[Sam Cedar]

That's what's happening with the Alien Enemies act right now too. Does he have the power to invoke that just willy nilly?

[Robert Weissman]

Exactly. It actually relates to the tariff authority. That's an emergency. He's declared major national. A series of instances around energy issues. So a lot of the stuff to sort of drill baby drill is under the guise of there's a national energy emergency. By the way, the National Energy Emergency Executive Order says we need a lot more energy and it defines energy to exclude solar and wind. Everything else is energy, but not solar and wind.

[Sam Cedar]

So it's really a national energy ish emergency.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Robert Weissman]

A national big oil emergency.

[Sam Cedar]

Lastly, the budget resolution that I should say the continuing resolution, which really not really continuing resolution, but ostensibly that was just passed a week and a half ago. Did that implicate the administration's ability to take money that it had saved by firing, let's say, you know, half the employees at HHS or whatever percentage it is, and use it somewhere else? Like, did that budget bill in any way implicate what you're dealing with here, particularly in terms of the empowerment?

[Robert Weissman]

Yeah, we think the opposite. So now the government has like, you know, the money was running out of time now there's more money to spend for the rest of the of the fiscal year, with some exceptions around the margins. What the continuing resolution did is say it's what it sounds like. It's continuing what we did before, same as it was, and some marginal things. So they have a duty, an ongoing duty to spend money. So they say we're closing aid, but the continuing resolution has more money for usaid. They can say they want to close the cfp. Well, CFPB is all different appropriation wise, but these agencies are trying to close. At Department of Health and Human Services, for example, money was just appropriated for those entities. So we think that makes the case stronger for us.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm glad to hear that. Robert Weissman, co president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Public Citizen, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. When will we hear more about what's happening? I mean, do you know the CFPB like it's a, it's a preliminary injunction. What's the next step on that?

[Robert Weissman]

Well, they're appealing, you know, actually today and asking the appeals court to overturn the preliminary injunction. I think the appeals court's going to decline to do that. We want a really good decision in that case. The judge gave 112 page decision was very specific about why the government was operating improperly. When they said, oh, we're not really closing it down, she went through a lot of detail about how they were when they said, well, at least maintain what the law requires us to do, she cited them saying, well, we can't actually tell you what our statutory duties are. It was also a pretty spicy decision. So we really were happy. It would be hard to overturn that one.

[Sam Cedar]

The first line of the memorandum opinion is cfpb. RIP Elon Musk said that back in February. That sort of, I would imagine, is a little bit damning as to what they see they're doing. But again, Robert Weissman, thanks so much for your work. I really appreciate it. And thanks for coming on.

[Robert Weissman]

Great to be with you. Thanks so much.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thank you.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, we're going to take quick break. We're going to talk to Rowan Gray, an assistant professor of law at Willamette University, about the other thing that Doge has been doing, which is to mess with the payment systems, both the payment system of the entire federal government and at least aspirationally, they want to mess with Social Security payment system. And there's some question as to whether they know the language essentially that is used for the payment system for Social Security because apparently it's a little bit archaic.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, they know. They're just lying.

[Sam Cedar]

We'll be right back after this. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin on the Majority Report. Want to welcome to the program Rowan Gray, an assistant professor of law at Willamette University. You've just finished a paper, or if you just finished it, but relatively recently, digitizing the Fisk. This obviously has to do with or I should say, at least we're talking about these issues right now a lot more because of what we're seeing Doge and Elon Musk attempting to do with the payment system of the entire US Government. But what is I mean, I know what the word digitizing means and the, I'm not sure what Fisk means. What does it mean, digitizing the Fisk?

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, the Fisk, the public FISC is the place where the money comes from. Right. It's not a single location, it's not a single thing. It's more of a concept anywhere where public money comes in and out of the government. That's the fisc. So the term you might be more familiar with is fiscal policy. And that usually refers to spending, taxing, issuing public debt. Right. All the things that is not the central bank, all the things that goes through the budget process that typically basically goes through the treasury, but basically it refers to all federal spending.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. So talk to us about how and I want to get into the specifics of your proposal and what they're attempting to do. But let's just at a 15,000 foot, you know, view, what does that broad payment system have to do with checks and balances and the way that our government is set up?

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah. Well, if you think back to your sort of, you know, sixth grade social studies class, the executive branch is supposed to be in charge of the sword. Right. Enforcing the law. But it's supposed to be Congress that makes the laws initially. And most importantly, it's supposed to be making the laws about how much to spend. This is your classic bumper sticker or, you know, license plate. No taxation without representation. It's not even just a sort of 1780s American revolutionary issue with, you know, Boston Tea Party and all that kind of thing. It goes back to the British parliamentary revolution. It's the sort of first step away from monarchy is that we have our own resources and we, we consent to them being taxed in exchange for a representative parliament. And so having an executive branch that, that is essentially taking over that. Right. Is moving back to a form of monarchy where President Trump is saying it doesn't really matter what Congress says, because I'm the last mile in enforcing the law. I can choose whether or not to spend what they want me to spend or not. I can choose whether or not to, you know, take resources from over here and reallocate them somewhere else, even if Congress hasn't told me. So, in a sense, it's probably the most fundamental form of power grab and, and violation of the constitutional separation of powers we can think of. Article 1 in the Constitution sets up Congress, and it's the sort of basis of which the other powers flow and Trump essentially taking it over.

[Sam Cedar]

It's Article one, and we just mentioned it in the prior interview, the Empowerment control Act of 1974 and Supreme Court case law. You know, New York, I can't even now remember the name of the case. I just had it. But.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, 75. Going back to the 1830s, Kendall v. Stokes. And of course, you never want to find yourself in the same company as Richard Nixon. But. But essentially when he tried to do something similar, which was to cut spending that Congress had said must be spent mostly to black communities as part of the Southern Strategy to steal sort of racist votes away from. From the former old Democratic Party, Congress really threw the book at him and said, when we say spend, you have to spend. And Trump is relitigating that, both both judicially and just practically.

[Sam Cedar]

And I guess while we're here, the Supreme Court also found that the line. Line item veto was also unconstitutional, which is basically similar, at least dynamic.

[Rowan Gray]

Okay, so in that situation, it was Congress who wanted to give up their power. They passed a law, and the Supreme Court still said, no, you can't give delegate this.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah. Kind of similar to the situation that we're in right now as Congress. Okay, is it? But go ahead, Sam.

[Sam Cedar]

With tariffs. Yeah, but. Okay, putting that aside, what does. What does Doge. Elon Musk, what are they trying to do with the system as it is now? Or maybe you can sort of describe broadly what the system, how the system works now, what do they want to do, and then what do you suggest should be done instead?

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, I've been trying to think of a good way to say this in layman's terms, but if you've ever watched, read the book Matilda by Roald Dahl, the Trunchbull, who's the sort of main character, says, my perfect school would have no children. And I think for Trump, what Elon Musk has showed him is that his perfect government doesn't have to have any people. He can fire everybody and just have One big computer. And it's the perfect government that never talks back to him. And so, you know, I don't know the best sort of example. I don't think he's Rasputin, but Elon Musk is serving this sort of wizards role next to the king, showing him how to get the magic kind of potions working. And what he's shown him is that there's this matrix layer underneath the actual government. The actual government is annoying. You have to talk to real people, you have to go through a chain of command, you have to send instructions. They might ignore them, they might slow walk them, they might resist them. But what if you could just ignore all that and go straight to their computer? What if you could just write emails from their email address? What if you could just turn off their bank account? Then you don't even need to care about, you know, whether your underlings are loyal or not because you run everything with one big red button from your computer.

[Sam Cedar]

And I think perspective towards his children too is my understanding. Right.

[Rowan Gray]

I mean, it's, it's must perspective towards everything and it's terrifying. He did this interview recently where he said it doesn't, you know, you try to solve something in the government and you go to this agency and they send you in another agency and then they send you to another agency and then they send you to a contractor and that contractor has a computer. So why don't you just go straight to the computer? And it's a very, it's a very perfect school, has no children vibe to me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. But also the idea of it being centralized. You talk about this in your abstract, in your paper. Can you talk about their efforts to make it more, less dispersed and more centralized under Donald Trump's power, our payment system and structure?

[Rowan Gray]

Yes. And this is almost a sort of victim of history or other circumstances. There are a number of developments over the 20th century to make it more streamlined and more sort of standardized across the government when we spend. And most of it gets pushed through three agencies. Once Congress passes the right laws, if they can get their act together, then it goes through the Office of Management and Budget, which is sort of the President's main agency. And their job is essentially, it's almost like pocket money management. So Congress says, Here's $100 billion for 10 years and they work out how much to give every year to make sure you're not kind of spending it all at once or whatever else. Once you work out how much you're getting for your pocket money allowance, then it's treasury that sort of thumbs up confirms the payments on a daily basis for you. They send the instructions to the Fed and the Fed is the bank. The Fed is the bank account. So there's three layers there. And of those three, the Office of Management and Budgets always kind of been the President's lackey. The Fed is probably the last semi independent entity left in the federal government at the moment. For now, touchwood. And then the treasury is the one that has been really kind of effectively politicized since Trump's return, which is to say the Fed is not going to process any payments unless they get the right instructions from the Treasury. So the treasury is really this choke point for almost all payments. It processes 88% of payments in the federal government. And Trump just recently signed an order saying he wants even more. He wants to get the last 12% kind of swept in there. And. And he has essentially installed Elon Musk and his Doge boys into the part of the treasury that's responsible for processing payments called the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The most important part of the treasury no one's ever heard of, which has for years and for decades been basically apolitical. It's sort of just like an IT system. It just runs in the background and does whatever the instructions from higher up say. But again, Trump has just bypassed all of that and stuck his own person in there, given them sort of master key access to the IT system. And from there he can turn off any payment he wants. So who cares whether or not you are statutorily required to let the USAID operate, or the Department of Education or Social Security. If we want to stop payments, we just press the red button.

[Sam Cedar]

Now, are there. So Doge is in there trying to figure out how they can sort of like both get everybody in the. In the barrel, as it were, and then. And then so that when they go over the waterfall, they're all there. What is, what is the waterfall from them? Like what, what will they do that they will have like a, you know, a bypass button so that nobody at treasury can really do it. It's just like, you know, Stephen Miller sitting in an office next to the Donald Trump. Like, what, what is that? What is the waterfall once they get all the payments in there?

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, there was a. There was, there's a person whose job is to run that sort of very boring operational department in treasury. And there was a person who was there for about 20 years before Trump got elected, and he was the sort of most senior, a political bureaucrat in the treasury and Within a few weeks of Trump arriving, he resigned in a quite sort of shocking fashion, saying, I'm not going to use this power to do things that are not legally allowed. I ignore Congress. When Congress told us that we have to essentially kind of effectuate spending, we're just a middleman. And. And Trump said, no, we want you to sort of shut off spending to agencies. We don't like what they call zeroing out the budget. And so I use the example, if you need the lights on in your agency and someone turns off the electricity budget, you just don't have an agency anymore. You can't use the computers. It's over. So it doesn't matter what's on paper, on the law. It matters whether the money keeps the lights on. And what Trump has been able to do is use the pretext of, quote, unquote, waste, fraud and abuse to shut off anything he wants. Right. I think one of my colleagues, Nathan Tanker, said, do you reckon DI is going to be waste, fraud and abuse? I think we can all make a pretty good bet about what waste, fraud and abuse is going to be coding code word for. But it's this sort of ostensible concern for things that we all don't want. Right. Nobody wants to be sending Social Security to people who are already dead. Is that true? No. Does that give me an excuse to turn the button whenever I want to? On certain demographics? Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

Has there been a legal challenge to specific. We have. We had. Let's put this way. Have we had specific instances of this? And if not, is there a actionable thing that they have done that someone could have brought a case against?

[Rowan Gray]

There are currently two lawsuits. There is a lawsuit by the state attorneys general, and there was lawsuit by others who were affected by the cuts in spending, as well as sort of private actors and others in USAID employees as well. But essentially, essentially, these cases are slow and they go through a set of appeals and they have been temporary restraining orders and things. But there's two problems. One is Trump still controls the machinery in the meantime. So it's sort of like asking someone who. Who has, you know, living in their own house to not use the sink. Are you watching them all the time? Can you stop it? What do you do if they do use the sink? And then the second thing is that even though the courts have said that you can't do certain things, they. They're kind of constrained because on the other hand, the government has to keep running, and they're the only people who are the executive branch. And so they tried to stop the courts, tried to stop sort of Doge external related people from accessing sensitive Treasury IT systems. But at the same time, Trump is allowed to appoint his own Treasury Secretary and his own top treasury officials. And so they can't stop the treasury from running the Treasury. You know, they can't stop the President.

[Sam Cedar]

So if you have your treasury person and Doe shows up and says we want into those things and they go, okay, there's nobody to even report that it's happening on some level, except for maybe a whistleblower or something like that.

[Rowan Gray]

So it's very, very private. It's so secure that no one else can even see what's going on except the people with the clearances. And the court said no, but the court can't stop the Treasury Secretary. So on one hand, yes, you can't send in the new Peter Pan lost boy today, but you could have them tell you what to do and you do it yourself. And no one could really stop that as much.

[Sam Cedar]

Has there been an instance of, you know, the, the analogy, or maybe it was not so much an analogy of like turning off the power in these in an unauthorized fashion or I mean, maybe arguably it's all unauthorized. We haven't really sorted it out in the courts. So they're just going ahead. I mean, this is very much like a facts on the ground type of, of philosophy. We're going to do it and then we'll say we'll, we'll apologize or not apologize later, essentially, is what they're doing. Do we have examples of this?

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, the first is when they got there, they immediately said, we want to use this to go after usaid. And then, and then the Treasury Secretary said to Congress, well, actually that's not, we never did that. And they basically lied. And then the next thing is they said, well, we never gave them right access to the payment system. We only gave them read, it was only review. And that turned out to be a lie. And they said, whoopsie. Oh, we just did a whoopsie. You know, it was a mistake. As though, as though you're supposed to just not have the facts before you testify to Congress about something that serious. But after the judges suspended, issued a temporary order regarding the treasury, they just went and did this for each individual agency. They went and did the next round of computers underneath. And so they have frozen funds at the Department of Education, they have frozen funds at usaid. And of course they are waiting to sort of resume wholesale at the Treasury. And, and I think even if the courts say no, they might start up again. They're waiting to see whether or not the courts kind of let them do it in the long run. And if not, they might just ignore them anyway. But the more important point is once they've learned this lesson that this is where the fight is, it's completely remade the map of where the kind of power is. This is the back door to the whole government.

[Sam Cedar]

We just interviewed the co president of Public Citizen. They're the ones actually bringing the USAID case. They're also doing this with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Some other cases as well.

[Rowan Gray]

Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

For them, they're talking about maintaining the structure of these agencies. Yeah. You know, for lack of a better example, like they're keeping the integrity of the cup, essentially. But what you're talking about is the ability of Trump and Doge and Musk to essentially stop the water flowing into that cup.

[Rowan Gray]

That's right.

[Sam Cedar]

Which is going to have real impact on people and individuals and citizens across the, you know, and not, you know, in other countries too immediately. Not necessarily. I mean, you're doing long term harm to the institutions in these agencies. Because if I'm a scientist and I show up at work and I'm not getting paid, I'm not going to stick around. And four years later, like all these scientists have decided to go into private industry because they can't count on getting a paycheck from this agency. You're also sort of like fundamentally undermining the institution. So they're sort of like, so when people, to get the conceptual understanding of the different ways in which these agencies are being attacked, both structurally, institutionally and then sort of like just on an operating basis with that increasing, increasing the.

[Rowan Gray]

Uncertainty, making it a bad place to work, as you said, making it unclear whether or not the fund is going to be there in three months or six months. And for a lot of people that's, that's just too much mayhem to handle in personal lives. And oh yeah, to your earlier point, you know, National Institute of Health is another one shutting down funding for cancer research, you know, children with illnesses. I mean, it's an amazingly callous move. And the cruelty is the point. Right. The disruption is the point. People, they want people not to trust government. And Vought, Trump's head of the Office of Management and Budget, who was previously head of the 2025 project, has said quite clearly that the point is to throw this stuff into such chaos that.

[Sam Cedar]

People traumatize federal workers.

[Rowan Gray]

He said, exactly. Traumatize federal funders and ruin faith in the government for Everybody else speaking of.

[Sam Cedar]

Ruining faith in the government, the most beloved program, probably widely beloved program we have is Social Security. And the Republican Party has been trying to gut Social Security since the day it was conceived and implemented. You can go Back to the 1936 Republican platform, get rid of Social Security they've been talking about. Musk is out there saying there's all sorts of fraud and waste in Social Security. We know that's not the case. We know exactly how much every time.

[Rowan Gray]

You hear fraud, waste and abuse, think of a minority that he doesn't like and it makes a lot more sense.

[Sam Cedar]

Without a doubt. The big thing is they are going in and now Social Security payment system is not within that payments system that you just talked about, is it from treasury, does it or alongside it?

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, they get processed internally and then the final instructions still go through the same back end process at the Fed. I mean there's sort of one set of bank accounts the government uses and things like that. And for example, things like prepaid debit cards, checks, you know, all the stimulus payments, all that also goes through the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. So it's really the kind of last mile for most public spending. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, so aside from them closing different Social Security bureaus, aside from them pretending that they weren't going to close these bureau's and backtracking and I'm sorry. Well, they're doing. And aside from making it really difficult to verify your identification by insisting now that it's on the phone, they're going to, they're going to increase wait times, they're going to increase people's requirements to get into Social Security agencies, etc.

[Rowan Gray]

And shut up, shut off in person access, you know, those kinds of things. Yeah, just. Just ask your grandmother to go on the Internet will be fine. Exactly. Download the app.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, but what are they doing in terms of the payment system? I've been reading like one of the things they, they clearly don't seem to, they probably didn't understand the first time. And then when they were explained it to them, they simply decided, oh well, we're just going to continue on with this, what we've been saying, which is a lie that we have a bunch of 150 year olds, you know, getting Social Security, when in fact that is just explain to us what that is. That it's a distant, it's a default, but also what they're trying to do and about Cobol or Cobalt, which is the system in which Social Security I guess is the computer language that Social Security uses.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, I mean, I think probably a good analogy here is, you know, if you look back to the 1930s and all the absolute ridiculous smears that were put against Jewish people and others by the Nazis and people said, how could you believe this stuff? Well, of course it's all absurd, but the lie is the point. You have to believe something absurd to justify what you're about to do. And so these things, I think are backwards oriented reasoning. They're things that are convincing for people that are already convinced. They're just giving them a pretext. So part of it is there's this, there's this huge waste, fraud and abuse. There's this huge grift going on and we're finally going put a stop to it. And everybody who's always wanted to cut it goes, that sounds good. And so to your point, one of the examples they provided is that sort of millions of people who are 150 and still receiving money as though there's this secret sort of wonderland of people living the high life on Social Security checks. And it turns out that that's just a computer issue where if you don't put the date in for somebody's date of birth, then it shows up as if they're 150 years old. And this is the kind of thing that could be explained in three minutes if you wanted to hear the truth.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was, it was, Ryan, it was, it was debunked, I mean, really within the first few weeks of the administration. But Musk repeated it yesterday in Wisconsin or two days ago.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, I'm sure it was debunked in the first three minutes of the first meeting when he got there. But then of course, he just keeps going because it needs to be true. So it is, right? Oh, we've got, we've got this problem of, you know, immigrant Mexicans doing crimes. Is that.

[Sam Cedar]

What about the 20 million dead people on the rolls?

[Rowan Gray]

Well, again, I mean, this is, this is. These are people that are either kind of not, not being processed or again, they're actually alive and they look like they're dead because of their ages or whatever else, or they're not actually receiving payments and they just haven't been taken off the rolls. These are all administrative issues. People are not there secretly going to work and letting 20 million mistakes just look like on the screen flashing. You know, it's not, it's not how people work there. These are very, very sophisticated people running highly sensitive systems. So to your earlier question, COBOL is the common business oriented language. It was developed in the United States government in the 50s, and it was pretty much pushed out to private industry. And it's become the standard for banks and most mainframes of large systems. Anything, you know, with the words IBM from the mid 20th century, anything with the RAND Corporation, all of that era, is still using COBOL because it's very stable. It's outdated, but it's very stable. And the truth is it's very difficult to sort of of replace a whole payment system overnight when it's processing millions of payments all the time. And everybody would like to upgrade this stuff. If it was easy, it would have been done. And Musk goes in and says, we'll do it in three months. And it sounds very exciting, but if you remember that the point is to break all of this stuff, then it makes even more sense what he's doing. He's going to come in and tell us he's doing a very good thing. When he fails at that thing and achieves the other thing, he will win. And everybody else is going to deal with the disruption of Social Security. And then the answer will be, you know, we should have privatized this a while ago. I've been saying we should do that.

[Sam Cedar]

Right? It's right.

[Rowan Gray]

It's already broken. So now we should use this opportunity to really fix it the right way and hand it over to Paul Ryan's private, you know, equity buddy mates.

[Sam Cedar]

If COBO was. And in this instance, we are sacrificing some level of efficiency with cobol, some level of dynamic, of dynamic flexibility, I guess, with coble, for the fact that it's rock solid. You can count on it. There is no. I click on Twitter X and it spins and it's down for, you know, a day, maybe, you know, or two, once a quarter, you know, okay, I can't get on for a couple hours. And so I can't, you know, see my memes or whatever it is. What happens if Social Security goes down for two hours, five hours? Like, give us, give us like a perspective, like, what happens. Like, are checks being turned out and mailed and signaled every moment? And if two hours get missed, are there literally like hundreds of thousands of people who don't get their checks?

[Rowan Gray]

I mean, people will die. I mean, the number is. Might be smaller if it's only two hours. But, you know, part of this is, yes, there's processing going on all the time. Certainly people would have to sort of stay overnight and whatever else, work out how to try to fix it all back together. They do have contingency plans again. This is sort of high level, mission critical stuff. After the nuclear regulatory codes and things, keeping the money moving is pretty, and you know, keeping electricity on, keeping the money moving is pretty high up on the list. But the bigger question is what kind of problems would have to take place for it to shut down for two hours, who would have to violate what security, etc. But you know, the checks are going out, but they get processed along the way. Basically it's one big sequence. It's one big list that you're sort of, the computer is working down and, and it's not just Social Security, it's sort of everything in the queue. It's every government payment that's going through. And so if that is to shut down for a while, then it would have to sort of restart the right way. It would have to make sure that the payments catch up. And there would probably be a whole bunch of sequencing issues because remember, payments are going out at the same time as funds are coming in. But there are people that rely on this stuff. There are not only federal agencies, there are state agencies that rely on these payments going out. And so there would be a huge.

[Sam Cedar]

But I'm talking about like Social Security in particular. Like, is it, are they just looking to replace everything or are they looking to replace Social Security as a separate.

[Rowan Gray]

Matter, they're looking to shut down any payments that they want. But again, if you think about Social Security, a number of them go through direct, direct wire transfers, A number of them go through prepaid cards and of the go through checks, whatever the way that you receive it, in order for that part of the government to process that last mile, sending it out to you, they need to know the funds are in the accounts that they have. And so they'd be sitting there waiting, going, we've got, you know, the next batch of checks to go out. Can we send them out? Do we have authority to send them out or not? And they'd be going, well, hold, hold on the phone. And so that would be held up. And because that's held up, there's another set of people that wouldn't be doing something else. And so there's a kind of rippling effect once you break one piece of that process. I don't think it's only Social Security. And I think of all of them, that's one that they are going to be sensitive about. They're still probably going to break it, but that's one that's going to have a direct political impact very differently from something like usaid. So I think they're going to pilot this on the much less popular ones and then really hit the hammer when they're ready with, with Social Security.

[Sam Cedar]

So when we talk about cobol, are we talking about is that the system that is used for all payments or just the Social Security payments?

[Rowan Gray]

COBOL is a language. COBOL is like Java or C. So it's, it's not that it's a certain server, it's that it's the language used across all of them. It's the language used by JP Morgan and, and, and Goldman Sachs for their banks as well. So, so this is used across the.

[Sam Cedar]

Government and, and, and, and if you.

[Emma Vigeland]

View Musk as somebody who wants to turn Twitter, X whatever into a PayPal like system, and his obsession with, with payments means that he has antagonism really probably towards traditional banking generally. And the fact that the, that the treasury is using cobol like JP Morgan, which I didn't know until just now.

[Rowan Gray]

He'S been grinding this ax since 2000 when he bought X.com and tried to convince Peter Thiel to turn PayPal into X.com back then. And they were.

[Emma Vigeland]

What's his specific like rub? Like what's, what's, what's he pissed about about cobol and how does that trace back to. I know this is a little past the scope of your paper, but like with PayPal, what was he mad about as it relates to this kind of stuff?

[Rowan Gray]

It mostly about being left out of getting to make the money. So saying you care about COBOL is just another way of saying I don't like the legacy system and I want to upgrade it. It's not about COBOL per se, it's just the pretext. Just like waste, fraud and abuse is the pretext. Right. I'm an Apple user. I don't like Windows. Are you invested in Apple? Yes. Well, that's a bit convenient, isn't it? Yeah. So coming in and saying, hey, have you met how bad this payment system is, by the way, you should consider giving me a government contract for the new payment system. And the other part of it, which we haven't talked about, that's even more important with Social Security is what is Twitter, apart from the one payment app that he wants to build, it's also Grok. It's also an AI machine. And what makes an AI special is the specialness of its data that it gets to feed on. If it gets to eat a unique diet of data that nobody else gets to eat, it's the most interesting AI out there. And buying Twitter Was a very smart move because of all the different kinds of data out there. That's sort of the political data, you know, that's the sort of cutting edge of the political discourse, whether it's politicians or journalists or weird Twitter or whatever it is. That's a very interesting pot of data to feed the beast. But you know what's even more interesting? All of the sensitive government data that no one else has got access to. So come, come for the quote, unquote, payments reform, stay for the eating the world's data.

[Sam Cedar]

Do we have a sense of whether he's done that? Like. Nope, we don't know.

[Rowan Gray]

No.

[Sam Cedar]

So I mean he's gonna download it.

[Rowan Gray]

All, you know, on the equivalent of a thumb drive. Not, not actually, but, but right. Metaphorically. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And he could have done that already. He could be doing that, that could be part of the project. When Big Balls goes.

[Rowan Gray]

That's right, little nuts.

[Sam Cedar]

His buddy could be doing the downloading as Big Balls is doing the, the, the cutting.

[Emma Vigeland]

But that was the part when they lost ashes.

[Rowan Gray]

Goofy. Yeah, that's right. Send them all in.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, but it seems like they probably already took a lot like that. What you described earlier about that whole back and forth about. Oh, they didn't, they, they didn't have edited access. Oh, but yes, actually they did. That was the period where they were scraping all of that data, it appears to me. And that was when Wired was doing all that great reporting.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, I mean, you know, again, these are the people that lied to Congress. These are the people that put the 19 year old Nazi sympathizer in this most sensitive seat at Treasury. And then when it came out that he had been a Nazi sympathizer, they quietly repurposed into security as if that's a punishment. You know, they've, they've run out of 19 year old white boy right wing hackers apparently. So they have to recycle the same five they've already got. But that says something to me about how much not only trust they're putting in these people, but how much. You know, those people might already have sensitive knowledge about what's going on. But as you say, there was a period where they had complete access to that system. And it's going to take a while to kind of forensically uncover whether they did anything. Because that system is not designed to have five other people looking over at shoulders.

[Sam Cedar]

If you were to update cobol, I mean, if the US government said like, it's time, we need to do this.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Like what would a reasonable amount of time be. And what kind of resources would you need? Because there's a real quality to Elon Musk in this narrow instance, aside from, like, what is self interested in him. But this sort of bugaboo about COBOL sort of feels like, you know, a mad scientist coming in and going like, oh, they thought I was crazy. I'll show you crazy. And then he blows his brains out. Except for, in this instance, it's really the Social Security system. Like. Like, if you were to say, and I imagine there's going to be a time, because Cobalt is like, there's not a lot of people trained in cobol, obviously, because it's an older computer language. And I imagine there's a time we're going to start to update it to COBOL2 or whatever it is.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

What, like, give me a sense of, like, how big of a project that would be.

[Rowan Gray]

Yeah, I mean, it would be a year's long project. It would be a very sensitive project that you would have to have a lot of input from different actors. And, I mean, people often talk about that metaphor of building the plane while you're flying it, but this would be building a plane while you're flying a plane next to it, because you. You have to keep the thing that's already up in the air going while you build the other one. And, and essentially to, you know, the things that I've proposed to try to deal with this are starting somewhere else and building it and letting it grow out. So I. I use that Buckminster Fuller, the futurist, his line, he said, you never change reality by fighting the existing system. You build something new and you render it obsolete. But you have to actually finish building it. It has to actually exist before people will sort of switch over. And you can't shut off society in the meantime and sort of say, you know, come back in three months and hopefully, you know, we haven't descended into barbarism in the meantime. So there is this sort of question of. Of how you build it at the same time. And the answer is you build it in small moats. You build it as a sort of test case. You pick a piece and slowly build it out. You don't just break everything at the same time. And. And the other part of it is understanding which parts of the process are old and sclerotic and in need of reform. Just saying, oh, it's old doesn't mean it's bad. There are things that have been working for a long time. Bicycles are pretty good. I don't. I wouldn't replace bicycles with cars. They're a different thing. And so understanding what we need to get rid of with COBOL is understanding that, that there are. That sometimes sort of simple is beautiful and that the complexity is. It's got its own difficulties.

[Sam Cedar]

Rowan Gray, assistant professor of law at Willamette University, thanks so much for your time today. We'll put a link to your paper on the Fisk digitizing the Fisk, and we will appreciate your time.

[Rowan Gray]

Thank you very much.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thanks, Ron.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, quick break. I'm gonna head into the fun half. Oh, before we do on the free half of the show, we have an introduction to make. We did this yesterday. Didn't we do this yesterday?

[Emma Vigeland]

This yesterday. But didn't we do in the fun half?

[Sam Cedar]

We did in the fun half.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, okay.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. I just want to do a brief hello to Russ in the free.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, hello.

[Sam Cedar]

Hi, everybody. Russ here. All right, we did it. That's sorted. If you want more, if you want more, if you want the inside dope on Russ, you got to go to become a member. You got to become a member and get it. Get all the juicy stories.

[Emma Vigeland]

Follow Russ on Twitter.

[Rowan Gray]

Follow me on Twitter. Russ Finkelstein, the son of Norman Finkelstein.

[Sam Cedar]

That's true.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's true.

[Sam Cedar]

But not that Norman Finkelstein.

[Rowan Gray]

No, not that Norman Finkelstein.

[Sam Cedar]

A different one, right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Different guy, but same name.

[Rowan Gray]

Different politics.

[Sam Cedar]

Slightly different politics, but all of this. There's a lot of. A lot of juiciness in the fun half about Russ. We dropped the tea.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, spilled the tea yesterday.

[Sam Cedar]

We dropped the tea. Spilled the tea. You know, folks, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the. The free show, free of commercials, but you also get the fun half where all the tea on Ross has been spilt.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, and the fun half for people that are watching live on YouTube if you're having any audio issues. Right, Matt, you were saying that if it's people that transition to the fun half.

[Sam Cedar]

Refresh, Refresh. Yeah, bring that up in the fun half.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sorry, Matt.

[Robert Weissman]

Last night, Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights and Dissent came on to talk about the long history of. Of using immigration enforcement as a political wedge going back to The Palmer raids.

[Sam Cedar]

100 plus years ago.

[Robert Weissman]

Turns out that this is a break in case you want to get politically unwanted people out of your country. Glass that we should have probably dealt with a long time ago.

[Rowan Gray]

Check that out.

[Robert Weissman]

Patreon.com reckoning we also talk about Charlie Kirk being against food, food stamps and other sort of assistance like school lunches. So check that out.

[Sam Cedar]

Patreon.com leftrecking Folks, see you in the fun half. Oh, tomorrow I'll be on Patrick BET Davis show, I guess before this one.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. So we'll be watching.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes. I'm gonna have to leave early today and then get on a plane, go down there, stay in the hotel, then go to the thing, then go to the airplane and then come back.

[Emma Vigeland]

Make sure you one sign the lockbox this time to check to see if the toilet's working before you use it.

[Sam Cedar]

It's. It's too institutional there. They don't have like a. Well, we'll talk about.

[Robert Weissman]

That's not some West Virginia crap. They got Miami toilets down there.

[Emma Vigeland]

What does that mean?

[Sam Cedar]

See you in the funnel.

[Emma Vigeland]

Lots of.

[Sam Cedar]

Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second.

[Robert Weissman]

Hold on.

[Sam Cedar]

Hold on for a second. The majority report. Emma. Welcome to the program.

[Rowan Gray]

A Fun hack.

[Sam Cedar]

Matt. Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun hack. No me ke.

[Robert Weissman]

You did it.

[Sam Cedar]

Fun hack.

[Emma Vigeland]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's go, Brandon. Fun hack. Bradley, you want to say hello?

[Robert Weissman]

Sorry to disappoint everyone.

[Rowan Gray]

I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Robert Weissman]

Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, I'm sorry.

[Sam Cedar]

Women talking for a second. Let me finish.

[Rohan Gray]

Where is this coming from?

[Emma Vigeland]

Dude?

[Sam Cedar]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A. Yes.

[Rowan Gray]

All right, Mickey, you see?

[Sam Cedar]

Yes.

[Rowan Gray]

Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Is it me? It is you.

[Robert Weissman]

Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Hello. This may think it is you. You who is you every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Emma Vigeland]

Sports.

[Rowan Gray]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm gonna go to the libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Emma Vigeland]

Gobbledygook.

[Sam Cedar]

We nailed him.

[Emma Vigeland]

So what's 79 plus 21?

[Sam Cedar]

Challenge. Man.

[Robert Weissman]

I'm positively quivering.

[Sam Cedar]

I believe 96. I want to say 857-210-355, 011 half.

[Robert Weissman]

3, 8, 9, 11. For instance.

[Emma Vigeland]

$3,400. $1,900.

[Sam Cedar]

5, 4, $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually.

[Emma Vigeland]

You're making me think less.

[Sam Cedar]

But. But let me say this poop, we call it satire.

[Rowan Gray]

Sam goes satire.

[Sam Cedar]

On top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, look at how we can do it. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know, people just don't.

[Robert Weissman]

Like to entertain ideas anymore.

[Sam Cedar]

I have a question. Who cares?

[Robert Weissman]

Our chat is enabled, folks.

[Sam Cedar]

I love it.

[Emma Vigeland]

I do love that.

[Sam Cedar]

Gotta jump.

[Rowan Gray]

Gotta be quick.

[Sam Cedar]

I gotta jump.

[Rowan Gray]

I'm losing it, bro.

[Sam Cedar]

2:00, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigeland]

Outrageous.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, what is wrong with you?

[Rowan Gray]

Love you.

[Robert Weissman]

Bye.

[Sam Cedar]

Love you. Bye.