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Dec. 13, 2024 - Blood Money

21:57

The Keep 9 Amendment and Stopping Marxism - Blood Money Episode 172

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	Blood Money Talk Today we have a very special guest, Roman Bueller, here to tell us about a very important topic.
	How are you doing, Roman?
	Really glad to be here.
	It's a wonderful Christmas season, but lots to do to save the country.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, we've been all relieved that the election went in the direction of America first, but this is where the hard work begins.
	And you are somebody that is definitely thinking about the future at stake right now.
	So tell us a little bit about what you are working on and why it is so important that this is top of mind.
	Well, the American people just spoke loud and clear, and they elected a president who wants to preserve a constitutional-minded Supreme Court.
	The American people rejected a candidate who said that she wanted to turn the Supreme Court into a puppet of politicians.
	And so now our mission is to preserve the independent Supreme Court that has been created over the last few years and that the Democrats basically want to undermine.
	We know that the next time the left wins a majority, their major interest groups will demand that they pack the Supreme Court, meaning that they will add new justices to create a progressive majority on the court.
	And in addition to the disaster that it would be on a policy level, it would be an even bigger disaster because what America needs is a court that will curb the abuse of power by politicians in Washington and Not a court that will rubber stamp them.
	So, the coalition that I work with has built a network of 200 members of Congress, more than 800 state legislators.
	For a very simple amendment to the United States Constitution called the Keep Nine Amendment.
	The Keep Nine Amendment simply states the Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices.
	That's all it says.
	And our mission is to persuade two-thirds of Congress to propose it and three-quarters of the states to ratify it so that it becomes a part of the United States Constitution.
	And in the future, politicians can no longer threaten to manipulate the number of justices for political advantage.
	Could you tell us a little bit about the history of the Supreme Court?
	How many justices has normally been?
	Why nine is the right number in order to avoid, you know, tyrannical things like what you're talking about?
	Right.
	Well, so for the first 75 years of the American Republic, the Supreme Court was habitually manipulated for political purposes.
	Jefferson increased the number of justices.
	Jackson increased the number of justices.
	The Republican majority under Lincoln increased the number of justices, decreased the number of justices, and then increased it again.
	And after 1869, people said, no, this is not the right approach.
	We need a court that has a stable membership that cannot be manipulated by whatever political party is in power.
	So for the last 150 years, a tradition has grown up in American politics.
	That the Supreme Court will remain at nine justices.
	And many years ago, Franklin Roosevelt tried to upset that tradition.
	He did not like some decisions of the Supreme Court.
	He thought it interfered with his agenda.
	And so he famously tried to pack the Supreme Court.
	And the American people overwhelmingly rejected that idea.
	Even members of his own party attacked him.
	And it really ended a phase of his administration.
	His political popularity never recovered.
	So people thought, well, gee, you know, Roosevelt tried to pack the court.
	He's the most popular president of his time.
	The court is safe.
	But in recent years, the left has begun to attack and undermine the reputation of the court because they don't like some of its decisions.
	Now, Throughout American history, decisions of the court have always been unpopular.
	But the left is not just attacking the court's decision-making.
	The left wants to fundamentally transform the institution from one that where justices once appointed are independent from one that is basically controlled by the majority party.
	And we can see where this kind of thinking leads if you look at what happened in Venezuela.
	Chavez and now Maduro have expanded the Supreme Court in Venezuela to like, I think it's 35 members, because they want absolute control.
	And that's what the left wants.
	They want absolute control.
	So the tradition is now breaking down, and we need to strengthen the protections that preserve the independent Supreme Court.
	So, okay, so What are the measures that people would have to take?
	So would this take a Keep Nine amendment?
	What are the measures that people would have to take to help out to make sure that something like this is ratified?
	So the Constitution provides that amendments, and there have been 27 of them have been done this way.
	Amendments have first to be proposed by two-thirds of Congress, and then they have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
	Now, that's extraordinarily difficult and it's designed to be difficult.
	But if you look at the history of amendments in our memory, you have a woman's right to vote, you have prohibition, you have repeal of prohibition, presidential term limits, you have the 18-year-old vote.
	All of these amendments had a couple of things in common.
	They were very simple, easy for voters to understand, they were enormously popular, and when they became widely known, public pressure forced their adoption.
	So to get the Keep Nine Amendment done, we have to do several things.
	The first thing we have to do is we have to unite Republicans in support of the amendment.
	And we are well on the way to doing that.
	There are more than 200 members of Congress, 200 Republican members of Congress, who support the amendment.
	We need to get every one.
	The second thing we need to do is we need to put enough pressure on Democrats so that we get a third of the Democrats.
	Because you get all the Republicans and a third of the Democrats, you have two-thirds of Congress.
	Now, that's a more difficult process, but we're very greatly helped by the fact that this organization, the Keep Non Coalition, the organization that leads this effort, was founded by a Democrat, former Attorney General of Virginia, Andy Miller.
	It is now led by two former state attorneys general, an independent, Paul Summers, from Tennessee, and a Democrat, Stephen Rosenthal, from Virginia.
	And the first member of Congress who introduced this amendment back in 2020 was a Democrat, Colin Peterson.
	So we have to persuade Democrats That checks and balances on the abuse of power are a good thing, now that Republicans are in charge of all three branches of government.
	Or, yes, the House and the Senate and the White House.
	We believe that it is possible to persuade Democrats that it is a good idea.
	The third thing we have to do is we have to make the Keep Nine Amendment a household word.
	Everybody in America knows they've heard of the Patriot Act.
	Everybody in America has heard of Obamacare.
	We have to make the Keep Nine Amendment as well known as those pieces of legislation so that when a candidate or an elected official says, well, I'm not for packing the Supreme Court, They have to answer the question, where do you stand on the amendment to ban it?
	And a candidate who says, I'm not for court packing, but I don't want to ban it, sounds a lot like the guy outside your house who says, well, I'm not a burglar, but I don't want to outlaw burglary.
	You know, you call the cops and you lock your doors.
	So if we can make the Keep Nine Amendment widely known, we will develop the public pressure that will force both Democrats and Republicans to support it, and we'll get it done.
	So that's kind of a brief summary of what we have to do.
	Now it's interesting that it was a Democrat that first wrote this.
	What's the story behind that?
	So when we first started talking about, this was back in 2019, we first looked and we saw the chatter on the far left about packing the court.
	And so we started talking, well gee, we can't stop packing the court by winning elections because sooner or later the left is going to win an election.
	If you look at the last hundred years, There's never been a period more than 15 years between times the left has had control of the Congress and the White House.
	So we knew then that we needed a constitutional amendment that would take away the power of politicians to manipulate the court, no matter who was in charge.
	But we knew that we could not succeed unless we found Democrats to be involved.
	And so it took quite a while, but we did finally find Andy Miller, who had been a Democratic Attorney General in Virginia, had been the Democratic candidate.
	For Senate in Virginia had only lost by a couple of percent of the vote.
	He agreed to lead this effort, and he built a team of 15 former state attorneys general, about half of whom were Democrats, half Republicans.
	And then with that team, we found a congressman by the name of Colin Peterson from Minnesota, who was at the time the chairman of the Agriculture Committee.
	And he agreed that court packing was a bad idea, and he agreed to lead the amendment.
	And that's how we got this started.
	And then as we built out our coalition, Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, agreed to lead this effort in the Senate.
	So when we started, we were led by a Democrat in the House and a Republican in the Senate.
	That's awesome.
	That's awesome.
	You know, when we're talking about this, we're discussing how all of our agendas to preserve freedom, I mean, we're all grossly underfunded.
	What you guys have done was pretty much grassroots, more or less.
	Tell us a little bit about how you were able to take this brilliant idea and, you know, without much, you know, I mean, all the bad guys seem to be really well funded, but without much support, I mean, you guys seem to have gotten a lot of support.
	Without much financial support, you seem to have gotten a lot of support.
	Well, we're really aided, I think, by three things.
	One is that in 2020, it became really apparent that the left wanted to pack the Supreme Court.
	There was language in the Democratic platform.
	When Joe Biden was asked, where do you stand on court packing?
	He wouldn't answer.
	He said, I'll tell you after the election.
	That was a signal to most people that Joe Biden was not reliable in court packing.
	And so we had the wind at our backs.
	People understood that this was a real threat.
	The second thing is we were very, very fortunate in having Ted Cruz, who has long been a leader of For constitutional principles.
	And in the House, we had an extraordinary sponsor starting in 2021, a congressman from South Dakota by the name of Dusty Johnson, who everybody likes.
	And so by the end of that Congress, we had 183 House Republicans and 20 Senate Republicans.
	And the other thing we had going for us was an incredible grassroots network around the country.
	And we had groups like Eagle Forum.
	We had the Tea Party Patriots.
	We had, most importantly, we had the National Federation of Republican Women.
	And they have 60,000 grassroots members across the country, and under the leadership of Ann Schockett, who was their president at the time, they made this one of their top three priority issues, which was a huge help to us as we built out the grassroots network.
	And so with those kinds of partners and many other groups as well, we were able to reach members of Congress where they lived, in their districts.
	We never had a high-paid lobbyist in Washington.
	We were able to do this at the grassroots.
	The other thing that happened that What's really extraordinary is that we were able to persuade state legislators to take a lead in their states, and we had 19 state legislative chambers.
	We've had, so far, past resolutions urging Congress to propose the Keep Nine Amendment, and so the combination of having We had a number of governors, a number of state attorneys general, and other statewide elected officials join the effort.
	The Republican National Committee endorsed the effort.
	And there were some groups that, you know, really put in a lot of, you know, a lot of work on the congressional side.
	Rick Manning at Americans for Limited Government did an incredible job.
	And groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform Very cool, very cool.
	Is there anything that we haven't discussed thus far that's important to mention for the viewers regarding the Keep Nine Amendment?
	You know, viewers of podcasts like this are constantly asked for their help to do things to advance the cause.
	And first is, you know, people ask, well, what can I do?
	You know, I'm not a congressman.
	I don't know anybody.
	How can I make an impact?
	And our message is really simple.
	There are four things that you can do.
	Number one is you can pick up the phone and you can call your members of the House and the Senate.
	You may know that if you call 202-224-3121, you can be connected to any member of Congress.
	And if you don't know your member of Congress, tell them your zip code and they'll give you one.
	And you can call your House member and your senators.
	And so our message is call your members of Congress and ask them if they've supported the Keep Nine Amendment and if they are talking about it.
	And if they're talking about it, tell them to send you copies of the press releases and the articles that they've written about it because you want to see them.
	So reaching out to elected officials is the very first thing.
	By the way, if you finish reaching out to your members of the House and the Senate, you can also reach out to your state legislators and governors and attorneys general.
	The second thing that people can do is they can help spread the word.
	Our polling shows that by a two-to-one margin, voters would favor the Keep Nine Amendment, which simply says the Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices.
	It's just common sense.
	So, you know, if you are on social media, spread the word on your social media channels.
	If you call talk shows, call the talk shows and ask them to talk about Keep Nine.
	If you listen to podcasts, Give feedback to the hosts of your podcast saying, we want to hear more about this Keep Nine Amendment.
	If you read articles online, go to the thread and type in comments that mention the Keep Nine Amendment to ban Supreme Court packing.
	So that's the second thing is spreading the word.
	The third thing you can do is encourage other people to do those two things, to call elected officials and to spread the word.
	And the fourth thing you can do is if you really want to be involved or learn more about this, reach out to us.
	Two ways to do that.
	One, you can email me at leaders at keep9.org.
	And nine can be either spelled out or it can be in the numerical form.
	Leaders at keep9.org.
	And we have a conference call.
	for grassroots leaders from around the country every wednesday night at 9 pm eastern and so if you are interested in learning more about this effort and meeting some of the people who are involved who've done some of these grassroots things over the last few years you're welcome to email me at org i can send you the codes for the conference call and you can invite your friends this is going to be we hope this will be One of the legacies of this new Trump Republican
	era.
	We have got to do things in this era that last beyond the four years Of the next administration.
	We've got to do things for the next generation, not just for the next few years.
	And preserving the legacy of a constitutional-minded Supreme Court may be one of the single most important things that we can do.
	And, you know, if your issue is, the issue you care about most is election integrity, you can't have election integrity without an independent Supreme Court.
	If your issue is protecting the unborn, you can't protect the unborn if the Supreme Court becomes a puppet of politicians.
	If you want to protect religious liberty, you can't protect religious liberty if the Supreme Court is merely a rubber stamp for politicians.
	If you want to stop the abusive power of regulators, we can't let the Democrats take over the Supreme Court and repeal the recent decisions that have curbed the abusive authority of federal regulators.
	If you care about parental control of schools and school choice, that also depends on having an independent Supreme Court.
	If you care about Second Amendment rights, That also depends on having an independent Supreme Court.
	So I could go down the list of major issues that are important to the future of this country and the one thing that almost all of them have in common is that they require an independent Supreme Court that is not controlled by politicians and that the left can't twist into a tool for imposing their woke values on the country.
	So my message is, whatever issue you care about, the Supreme Court is an important one.
	And if you're interested in getting involved in this effort, consider reaching out to us at leaders at keep9.org, joining our conference call on Wednesday evening.
	Go to our website at keep9.org and you can learn more.
	You know, I have to ask this since we're on the topic of our, you know, essentially our judicial system.
	You know, we've seen throughout this whole last, you know, 48 years a lot of weaponization of the judicial system, a pretty lowly rated branch of government.
	I mean, is there a fix to that?
	Is that something that's of concern to you guys?
	Well, one of the things that's really terrifying is the recent trend to use the judicial system as a political weapon.
	Fortunately, at the top of the pyramid, at least at the federal level, we have a Supreme Court that has resisted that trend.
	I think it's very dangerous when a Justice Department goes out And decides to target a politician they don't like who might run for president.
	And that's not something we should tolerate in this country.
	And it's hard to, you know, we don't have any control.
	If the Democrats win another election, we don't have any control over who they're going to put in as Attorney General, just as Democrats don't have a whole lot to say about who President Trump is going to put in as an Attorney General.
	But what we can do is make sure that there is an independent Supreme Court So that if there are cases that are brought before the court and they don't have merit, that the court can make sure that they don't go forward.
	And so resisting the tendency to politicize the judicial process requires an independent Supreme Court.
	And frankly, that independent Supreme Court is at great risk the next time the left wins control of Washington.
	They so badly want to control all three branches of government so that they can wield absolute power that if we don't get this amendment done before the Democrats next win control of Washington, the consequences are going to be truly catastrophic.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Very important.
	Very important stuff to keep in mind.
	For the viewers out there, you know, Roman, could you send me an email with all those links so we stick them below?
	Yes.
	Awesome.
	Awesome.
	So for the viewers out there, all the information is below in our descriptions.
	Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Blood Money.
	Make sure you check out AmericaHappens.com for all of our latest content.
	And I will see you all on the next episode of Blood Money.

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