Brett (35:09)
Let me talk about first, the authority of federal judges in general and our federal court system. Since the case of Marbury vs Madison, one of the earliest cases of the Supreme Court, our country has had a tradition of something called judicial review, where the federal courts review the constitutionality of actions by the other branches of government. And as part of that judicial review, the federal judges can issue injunctions that can block actions. It goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. And if the executive branch is engaged in conduct that is deemed unconstitutional, or if, if Congress engages in conduct that is unconstitutional and the federal judge, it could go all the way up to the Supreme Court. In our federal system. So rules, our system has always been based on the kind of good faith compliance with federal court orders. Good faith compliance. And as I've said before, Donald Trump not only is a destroyer of businesses, he's a reason. He's bankrupted things over and over again. He is someone who does not engage in good faith. He's someone who has always ripped up contracts his entire life. He's tried to, you know, whether it's stiffing contractors or just not complying with contracts, that's been Donald Trump's M.O. and so what's the ultimate kind of contract as it relates to our country? It's our Constitution. So like other contracts Donald Trump's been able to rip up, he wants to rip up our Constitution. Now, former President Biden had a lot of his agenda stalled, stopped or blocked via nationwide injunctions whereby Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society people, they would run to one judge in the Northern District of Texas, a guy named Judge Matthew Kazmark. The MAGA lawyers would find some jurisdictional hook. They'd go to Kacmerk and then this federal judge in the Amarillo Division in Texas, Texas would issue a nationwide injunction, not just for Northern District of Texas, everywhere, blocking initiatives by Biden to try to help people, whether it was expanding healthcare coverage or forgiving student loan debt, things that actually helped people, the MAGAs would go to block it. They'd go to Kazmark, Donald Trump trying to hurt people. And so now know that Trump is in power and the Trump regime is in power. Lots of federal judges out there, not one. Just a lot of them are saying, hey, you can't overturn birthright citizenship. Hey, you can't fire these probationary employees and say you're firing them for performance reasons when they've actually performed well and they've done everything that was expected of them. And Then defame them. We're issuing nationwide injunctions to stop what you're doing that's hurting people. And the Trump regime hates these nationwide injunctions. They're challenging nationwide injunctions now all the way up to the United States Supreme Court using the cases that involve birthright citizenship that Trump is trying to overturn. And there's going to be briefing in April where the Trump regime is saying, we don't like nationwide injunction. Sure, we used it to screw Biden, but now that it's being used against us, where the Trump regime's trying to hurt people, not tell people we hate it, get rid of it. This is a common theme we see with the kind of right wing. They like it when it helps them. They hate it when it doesn't help them. The only consistency is in both instances, they're trying to screw over the people for the oligarchs. That's one of the things that we consistently see. Now, I wanted to give you all of that framework. So, you know, when I talk about, about this Washington, D.C. judge, Judge Boasberg, and what he ruled and what the hearing was today, you at least have that as background. Let me just give you a little info about Judge Boasberg so you understand you call him Bozberg. Who's this guy Boseberg? He's a federal judge who is one of the top federal judges in all of Washington, D.C. he was the presiding judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Service Court, the FISA court courts from 2020 to 2021, which is a big role to have. So he's dealt with the most classified and sensitive information as a chief judge, federal judge of the FISA courts. And then in addition, he's now the chief judge of all of the Washington, D.C. district Court judges. He's the top guy, the top dog. And he's got massive amounts of experience in dealing with, with classified information, executive authority and how to deal with all of these cases. Very well respected guy. So a lot of groups like the ACLU and others saw that the Trump regime was likely going to invoke war powers under the Alien Enemies Act. So they smartly rushed to court at the end of last week before Trump ever even invoked the war powers. Then subsequently, Trump invoked the war powers. There was a hearing that was held over the weekend and apparently the Venezuelan individuals, who Trump says are gang members, without giving him due process, without them having hearings, without evidence being presented with them denying that they've committed any crimes. Trump put him on planes to go to El Salvador. The lawyers who were Representing them said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is unconstitutional. We need hearings. You can't just pick up people off the street or pick up people and say because you don't like their tattoo or this or that, that they're necessarily gang members and send them to El Salvador, even if they were gang members. By the way, as I mentioned earlier in the show, there's a case called Rumsfeld B. Hamden or Hamden v. Rumsfeld, which the Supreme Court said even as it relates to Guantanamo Bay, when there were terrorists who were being tried post 9, 11, you still had to have some sort of process through these military commissions to make sure that there was some process being offered. You couldn't just declare anybody who you want as a terrorist and then put them in concentration camps. So Judge Boasberg issued a kind of nationwide injunction, an all encompassing injunction that were just basically in order, order that told the Trump regime, stop, in 14 days we'll brief this issue, but you send the people back, we can't have these individuals lost in the El Salvador concentration camp systems, so stop it. So the Trump regime claims that, number one, that was an oral order and not actually in written form. So they therefore don't have to acknowledge or respond to, to courts making oral orders, Which Judge Boasberg in a hearing today said, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You've heard what I said. There's a transcript of it. The second Trump regime argument is that the plane with these Venezuelans who they claim are gang members, was in international waters, so therefore they don't have to listen to what the judge had to say. And Judge Boasberg's like, that's not what the law is either. You still have to listen to federal judges. You should have complied with the order. And then we could have, you know, dealt with this. And so Judge Boasberg is now at a hearing today that just took place an hour, a few hours ago, grilled the Trump DOJ lawyers and said, what the hell are you doing? To which the Trump lawyers were like, we don't have to answer any of your questions. National security. To which Judge Boasberg says, I know a thing or two about national security law. I know my case law. You don't. By the way, you may have remembered that I was the chief FISA judge. So I know this stuff like the back of my hand. Under what authority are you claiming? And you. And if you are going to say national security, you need to make a showing still. You can't just say, oh, we're going to do whatever I, whatever I want. And so Judge Boasberg's given 24 hours for the Trump regime to provide a detailed declaration on everything that happened. Now with that flight we showed earlier of these Venezuelans who are now in the concentration camp system in El Salvador. Meanwhile, you have Trump and Musk attacking Judge Boasberg, posting photos of Boasberg saying, impeach Boasberg. All these spineless Republicans in Congress are saying, get rid of Boasberg. And that's basically the status of where we have now. And we have all of these. We have 200 or so Venezuelans and a lot of them whose lawyers saying, not gang members, not criminals, just people who are now sent there, who, who are now lost in a concentration camp system in a foreign country. Final point, the Trump regime shut down what they were doing in Guantanamo Bay. And remember, in Guantanamo Bay they said they were having the gang members in Guantanamo, but it actually wasn't gang members in Guantanamo. It was actually a lot of nonviolent people and just migrants. A lot of it was just regular hard working kind of migrants who were sent to Guantanamo Bay. So Trump lied about putting them in Guantanamo Bay. So are these the same types of people who they shut down Guantanamo Bay for? They moved them to Louisiana. Are they those people? Are they other people like that who they were sending to Guantanamo Bay? So these are all of the issues that we're dealing with now. I know that was a little bit of a long and wonky discussion, but I think I had to give it a little bit of the, that the legal.
