| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
And you still do it. | |
| Yeah, I can still do it. | ||
| You go check my feed. | ||
| I was doing a kick flip the other day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A few, well, it was a few months ago. | |
| I went to this skate park. | ||
| Tim Poole, who's like this podcast gentleman, does a great program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I went to a skate park and we were able to skate together. | |
| It was kind of fun. | ||
| I started doing it when I was real young. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm still doing it now. | |
| I can imagine the number of skateboarding congresspeople is pretty low. | ||
| I think it's really low. | ||
| Maybe I should start a skateboarding caucus. | ||
| Starting next week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | ||
| On Monday, at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, the first African-American ever elected to Congress from Oregon. | ||
| My mother graduated in 1970 from one of the last segregated high schools in the state and the country rather in South Carolina. | ||
| And I think about all of the opportunities that weren't afforded her, you know, coming out of segregation. | ||
| And I bring that perspective to Oregon, saying, you know, my mom was a rural kid that didn't have a lot of opportunities, but I'm going to make sure that I bring that forth for all of the kids in Oregon. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all next week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| And we are back with David Super, who is a law professor at Georgetown University's Law Center, here to talk about Trump administrations and legal challenges. | ||
| There are the Trump administration, David Super facing several lawsuits. | ||
| Broadly, there are legal questions about the following, revoking birthright citizenship, Doge's access to personal and financial records, reinstatement of Schedule F for some federal employees, establishment of Doge, and the funding freeze. | ||
| David Super, just your reaction overall to all those legal challenges. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This administration has made an unprecedented move to disregard long-standing laws. | |
| It's not surprising they're being challenged. | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Most of these things that you mentioned are flagrantly illegal. | |
| They're only valid if many acts of Congress are unconstitutional. | ||
| And in one instance, they're effectively rejecting a part of the Constitution itself. | ||
| Explain a little bit more about flagrantly illegal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, for example, the Administrative Procedure Act says that when the government makes regulations, it has to put out a draft for public comment and consider what the public has to say to that. | |
| In reinstating Schedule F, they've got a new name for it, but the same idea to strip civil servants of protection against arbitrary firing and political coercion, they simply canceled. | ||
| They disregarded a rule that was already in place that gave those workers some rights. | ||
| They didn't seek public comment. | ||
| They didn't put out any drafts. | ||
| They simply disregarded the Administrative Procedure Act. | ||
| The White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt responded to these legal challenges at the White House on Wednesday when she held a briefing there with reporters. | ||
| Here's what she had to say. | ||
| Many outlets in this room have been fear-mongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House. | ||
| I've been hearing those words a lot lately. | ||
| But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority. | ||
| We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law. | ||
| And they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. | ||
| This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump. | ||
| Quick news flash to these liberal judges who are supporting their obstructionist efforts. | ||
| 77 million Americans voted to elect this president. | ||
| And each injunction is an abuse of the rule of law and an attempt to thwart the will of the people. | ||
| As the president clearly stated in the Oval Office yesterday, we will comply with the law in the courts, but we will also continue to seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions and ensure President Trump's policies can be enacted. | ||
| David Super respond to Caroline Lovitt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a gross exaggeration. | |
| All these judges are doing is enforcing laws on the books. | ||
| And the American people absolutely voted for Mr. Trump to be president. | ||
| But the president, under the laws, the Constitution says the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. | ||
| And they have every right to expect that the courts will insist on that if Mr. Trump does not. | ||
| What do you make of the injunctions by these judges? | ||
| Why do they take that step? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They take that step because the administration is refusing to follow the law. | |
| It's imposing across the board freezes on spending that Congress has directed it to put out there. | ||
| It is effectively disregarding those statutes that say we need to spend money on senior meals and service to homeless youth and things like that. | ||
| And they are taking the position that they're not bound by the law. | ||
| When anyone, you, me, or the president, defy the law, courts will enjoin us. | ||
| Here is the commentary section of the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Ben Klein, who's a congressman from Virginia, Republican, writes, Musk and Doge are doing exactly what Trump told voters they would do. | ||
| And he says, I'm fed up with the scripted outrage and the blizzard of lies. | ||
| He writes this. | ||
| The left has stomped its collective feet because it claims Doge is working in secret. | ||
| However, it fails to acknowledge that it is subject to the requirements of the Presidential Records Act and that the White House has issued regular declarations of its progress. | ||
| Each executive agency's Doge team works in coordination with agency heads to ensure the implementation of the mission. | ||
| Indeed, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has approved Doge's lawful access to unclassified records and systems to facilitate this integration. | ||
| Despite rants from Democrats and media figures, no evidence supports the allegation that Mr. Musk or anyone else has unlawfully accessed or seized sensitive data. | ||
| Any access is strictly regulated, and the role of Does is focused on modernizing outdated systems, not compiling private information. | ||
| The real threat to Americans' privacy has come from an unchecked bureaucracy that has mismanaged data security for decades. | ||
| The reforms proposed by Mr. Trump and implemented by individuals like Mr. Musk are designed to prevent government overreach, not expand it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's cold comfort to people whose personal information, their banking data, their social security numbers are being, by all accounts, transferred to insecure laptops and are available for cyber criminals or for the Russians and Chinese and Iranians to easily hack in and potentially empty out our bank accounts. | |
| What evidence do you have of that happening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's been asserted by the career civil servants who've managed these accounts for decades. | |
| They manage them under Democratic presidents and Republicans. | ||
| There's never been political officials in charge of that. | ||
| They managed them for four years under the first Trump administration. | ||
| We are asking all of you to join us in this conversation this morning about President Trump's first 100 days, his first few weeks here, and the actions that he has taken by executive orders, as well as the efforts by Elon Musk and this Doge Commission. | ||
| Your thoughts, questions, and comments on it. | ||
| Stephen in California, Republican. | ||
| Stephen, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| I'm up first, huh? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How is marriage life treating you? | ||
| Okay, back to business. | ||
| Have you guessed actually looked into the Christian right who seems to be the ones that are behind all these laws or Trump's vision of laws that have been attacking every institution that they're against, | ||
| such as the food aid program because they're giving food to Palestinians and the education program because Bob Jones University was trying to not segregate his schools and was forced to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll take my question offline. | |
| David Super? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know the origins of this. | |
| I'm a lawyer, not a political scientist. | ||
| But I do know that many of the assertions that have been made about the law in the media and in defense of this have been plainly wrong. | ||
| And this does take us away from a world governed by laws and towards one governed by individual whim, which is disturbing. | ||
| Explain that a little bit more. | ||
| What are you referring to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When Congress passes a law saying that we will spend money on something, the president is obliged to carry it out. | |
| But he's been canceling contracts without any authority, at least in some of the contracts, to do so, because he disagrees with the program. | ||
| If he can do that, every president can do that, and we'll have no stability in government, no confidence in laws, and frankly, our Congress won't be all that important. | ||
| Here's the opinion section of the New York Times this morning, their editorial board. | ||
| Trump dares the courts to stop him. | ||
| The editorial board writing this, the U.S. Constitution established three branches of government designed to balance power and serve as checks on one another. | ||
| The Constitution order suddenly appears more vulnerable than it has in generations. | ||
| President Trump is trying to expand his authority beyond the bounds of the law while reducing the ability of the other branches to check his excesses. | ||
| It's worth remembering why undoing this system of governance would be so dangerous to American democracy and why it's vital that Congress, the courts, and the public resist such an outcome. | ||
| Are we facing a constitutional crisis, in your opinion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, we are. | |
| We have one branch of government that is increasingly regarding itself as unchecked by either of the others. | ||
| They're following only those laws that they see fit, which sidelines Congress, and they're savagely attacking the courts, suggesting that judges who enforce laws on the books should be impeached or disregarded. | ||
| This is a constitutional crisis. | ||
| How do you respond to the president and Republicans who say, as you heard from Caroline Levitt, the American people elected us? | ||
| They gave power to both the power to Republicans at both the White House and on Capitol Hill. | ||
| And they are doing what the American people elected them to do and passing the president's agenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If Congress wants to amend these laws to allow the president to do these things, that's entirely appropriate. | |
| But the president is disregarding the laws. | ||
| If they try to amend the laws, that will get public attention. | ||
| Members will have to go on record voting for it. | ||
| The public elected Congress as well as the president, and they elected the previous Congresses that passed the laws. | ||
| No one voted for this president thinking that he was going to be a king. | ||
| They voted for him to be a president as part of our system of checks and balances, and that he's throwing over the side. | ||
| Is it one reason why the president is acting the way he is through executive action is because of the filibuster rule in the Senate. | ||
| And such razor-thin majorities means that it takes more than 60 votes to get his agenda through. | ||
| So in his argument, he has no choice but to do this by executive action. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he has a choice, and that's compromise, which every president has done since George Washington. | |
| The filibuster is still in place in the Senate because every Republican senator who was sitting a few years ago said that it was important. | ||
| And Mr. Trump may disagree with that, but his party overwhelmingly feels that it is important that we have the filibuster so that we can have compromise. | ||
| And why do you think Republicans and Democrats, for the most part, are standing by the filibuster? | ||
| What role does it play? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The filibuster makes sure that all interests in our society are considered. | |
| That a thin majority, Mr. Trump didn't even get a majority of the popular vote. | ||
| He came close but didn't get it, should not completely control everything in the country to the disadvantage of others. | ||
| That we need reason, we need continuity. | ||
| Businesses need continuity. | ||
| They don't want policies changing wildly every four years. | ||
| Roy in West Palm Beach, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Roy, good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| My question for your guests there this morning. | ||
| Anyway, good morning, by the way. | ||
| Yeah, I'm calling from Florida. | ||
| And anyway, you know, back to the education system. | ||
| And, you know, I'm listening to this guy speak. | ||
| I see he's from Georgetown University. | ||
| And my question to him, well, actually, my answer to him is what is going on with the Trump administration. | ||
| You know, he knew ahead of time through the attorneys that he has backing him that what is taking place where he's being rejected with all this stuff because it's being sent to these, you know, low-life judges in mostly liberal states like Rhode Island and so on and so on. | ||
| There's several that are, but Trump already knew that ahead of time before he did these orders and what he's trying to do to help America get back on track of the way it's supposed to be. | ||
| So what's your question, Roy? | ||
| Okay, my question to your guest this morning, okay, everything I've heard from him so far is that how, what's his opinion on the Biden administration and all the things that he tried to do, knowing that they were unconstitutional for giving, you know, loans, you know, for the college kids and all that. | ||
| Okay, so we're talking about Biden's executive orders here. | ||
| What's the difference? | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Biden made many executive orders that he thought were legal, some of which he was right, some of which he was wrong. | |
| By the way, those cases were all challenged in very conservative states. | ||
| So we have Rhode Island challenges for Trump. | ||
| We had Texas challenges for Biden. | ||
| Some of what Biden did was held to be legal, some of it not. | ||
| In one of the cases that your guest mentioned about student loans, the Supreme Court said literally the law would support this, but we think it's just too big a change. | ||
| So there was strong reason in the language of the law. | ||
| The court just didn't think that was enough, which is the court's prerogative to say, but it's very different from what Mr. Trump is doing, which is largely regarding these laws as non-entities, as not binding in any way at all. | ||
| Where do you see the Supreme Court stepping in here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we'll hear from the Supreme Court very soon because we're going to start seeing appeals from the Trump administration within maybe two weeks. | |
| Those appeals will very rapidly get, at least for emergency orders, up to the Supreme Court. | ||
| And we will learn, I think, by the end of April, perhaps earlier, whether the Supreme Court is willing to let this go or not. | ||
| In the New York Times opinion pages, Rosa DeLauro, who is the top appropriator in the House, a Democrat, writes Congress, not Trump, controls the money. | ||
| I want to get your thoughts on what she argues here. | ||
| And she says, Justice Antonin Scalia took aim at supposed presidential impoundment powers in Clinton v. City of New York, saying, President Nixon, the Mahatma Gandhi of all impounders, asserted at a press conference in 1973 that his constitutional right to impound appropriated funds was absolutely clear. | ||
| Justice Scalia noted that two years later, in Train v. City of New York, the court proved Nixon wrong. | ||
| Empoundment is a fanciful attempt to give the president the powers of a king, and it would be a disaster for our republic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Justice Scalia is right about that, as about many things. | |
| The Constitution's system of checks and balances gives the power over the people's money to the people's representatives in Congress. | ||
| And the president is not free to overrule what Congress has done. | ||
| He can veto bills, and this president has vetoed bills, and prior presidents have as well, and that gives them influence on spending. | ||
| But once something's enacted into law, the president is bound by the law, just as you and I are. | ||
| So, where right now do you think this administration has violated the impoundment powers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
By freezing money across the board that Congress is directed to be spent. | |
| Joseph, Flint, Texas, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me on. | |
| This is Joseph from Flint, Texas. | ||
| I'd like to hear the guests' opinion on the risk of civil unrest as a result of the executive branch violating the laws that the judiciary is tasked with ruling. | ||
| I'd also like to guest opinion on how this lawlessness is going to affect our international standing with our international partners on the laws that we have bonded as it results to NATO and everything else. | ||
| It just seems like a complete collapse of rural law, which is, you know, clearly concerning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think there's not likely to be civil unrest. | |
| I certainly hope there isn't because we do have courts and we do have a Congress. | ||
| And this is not the first president who is overreached. | ||
| Courts have reined them in in the past, and I expect they will this time. | ||
| In terms of our international standing, those are laws passed by Congress as well in many instances. | ||
| Those are also binding on the president. | ||
| I have not seen the kind of clear illegality in the president's actions in some of these areas, but I will confess I have not been following that as closely. | ||
| Mary in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I have three questions I would like for the guests to elaborate on. | ||
| The first one is the young men that are going into our private information. | ||
| Their ages are running from 19 to 25, I believe. | ||
| And they are the ones that he hired to go into the information. | ||
| And I want you to elaborate on that. | ||
| The second one is about the fact that he hired these men that work for cybersecurity, which they were fired from because they're hackers. | ||
| That's one thing I want you to elaborate on. | ||
| And the next one is, as an individual citizen, and they're allowing people to go into our personal information, as a personal person that's concerned about my personal information given to these young people and these hackers, do I have a right to sue? | ||
| Those are the three things I would like to elaborate. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Well, the career civil servants that have managed the Treasury Department's checkbook, as it were, for decades and decades, including under the first Trump administration, are subject to extraordinarily severe security clearances. | ||
| They're checked all the time, closely monitored, and heavily trained in cybersecurity. | ||
| The people that are being brought in, we know nothing about them. | ||
| All media reports suggest they're quite young, they're quite inexperienced, there's no indication that they've received training in data security, and this makes many people very much afraid. | ||
| Whatever one feels about the policies that Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk are pursuing, they don't need access to sensitive information to do that. | ||
| Knowing my bank account number will not help them resolve anything about government spending. | ||
| If there's a program that needs to be shut down, ask Congress to shut it down, but don't go into the personal information. | ||
| There is a privacy act that provides some protection against mishandled data that's given to the government. | ||
| I certainly wouldn't presume to offer any individual any advice about that, but in some instances there may be litigation, yes. | ||
| David Super, an administrative and constitutional law professor joining us this morning. | ||
| He's at Georgetown University Law Center. | ||
| Marty, you get to talk to him next in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| I was just calling. | ||
| They're complaining about people getting their personal information. | ||
| And then people from Social Security work from home, and they can do my application or whatever you want to call it, sitting at their kitchen table with all my personal information in their house. | ||
| And that's not a big deal. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Go ahead, Marty, finish your thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But people in a secure place, they're worried about that. | |
| I'm more worried about someone at their house doing it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Do you have any thoughts on that, David Super? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know the details of Social Security's work-at-home procedures. | |
| My understanding is that there are substantial cybersecurity measures taken in these instances, but if there's insecurity, that would certainly be a problem. | ||
| There's no clear information as to how this data is being handled. | ||
| We are hearing reports in the media that things have been copied onto laptops or otherwise moved around, so it may not be in secure locations. | ||
| And as troubling as it is to have one person's information out there, to have millions and millions of people's data out there is very troubling. | ||
| I don't get Social Security, but I sometimes do overpay my taxes and get a refund sent to my bank. | ||
| So my banking information is in there as well. | ||
| And I didn't choose to have them made available to a 19-year-old with an obscene online handle. | ||
| We'll go to John, Florence, Massachusetts, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I was wondering if you were as outraged when John Kerry was an unelected, unvetted official for his climate czar going around the world entering into climate agreements. | ||
| I also, and he wouldn't appear before Congress when they subpoenaed him. | ||
| And I'm also wondering where were all the Democrats and everybody when Biden opened the border. | ||
| And the Supreme Court was controlled by Democrats for 50 years, and you guys didn't have any problem with when you won every case and got every side of the coin that you possibly could. | ||
| It was head, you wins, tails, they lose. | ||
| So I'm just curious how all that happened. | ||
| And Biden didn't follow. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| Is that what the D stands for? | ||
| It's not Democrat. | ||
| It's different, right? | ||
| Because when Biden went against the law over and over and over, trying to do these student loans and getting struck down by the Supreme Court, he just kept going against it. | ||
| But yet, when they told him he couldn't do something on the border, he didn't try again and let it go for four years. | ||
| That was clearly a lie. | ||
| As we've seen, President Trump shut down the border. | ||
| And as for Doge, you're all worried about that. | ||
| It started under Obama, and he had a bunch of tech bros, kids working for him that were 20, 25 years old. | ||
| So stop being an ageist and talking about young people. | ||
| They can't do things. | ||
| Thanks a lot. | ||
| All right, John, we'll get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in terms of the Supreme Court, it's had a Republican majority since 1969. | |
| So I'm not sure what those 50 years you're referring to are, but it has been Republican controlled for a very long time and currently has a 6-3 Republican majority. | ||
| As far as President Biden's student loans, the Student Loan Act is legislation quite complicated. | ||
| He invoked one part of it to forgive student loans. | ||
| The Supreme Court said literally he might be right, but that that was just too big a stretch for the provision that he used or too expansive an action for the provision that he used. | ||
| He then used a different provision. | ||
| He didn't defy the court. | ||
| And when lower courts raised questions about the new provision he used, they obeyed the court orders and did not make the forgiveness. | ||
| Clay in Wisconsin, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I believe that Biden wants the Biden administration and Democrats want political decisions and not constitutional decisions. | ||
| That's why they promised to pack the court or overrule the filibuster. | ||
| The difference between the student loan forgiveness, the Supreme Court deemed that it was Congress's right to spend that kind of money, not the president. | ||
| And the president continued to go to the Supreme Court. | ||
| Like I said, he doesn't want a constitutional decision. | ||
| I love the fact that Trump is questioning and driving some of these ways these institutions are paid for. | ||
| And hopefully the Supreme Court will decide some of these in the near future. | ||
| So thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Well, just to be clear, I have never supported getting rid of the filibuster. | ||
| I've written in the Washington Post and other places about how stupid I thought the Democrats were to undermine the filibuster and how delighted I was that they failed to do so. | ||
| So if your point is the filibuster is important, I could not agree with you more. | ||
| We'll go to Puerto Rico, Democratic caller. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My question is: should we be worried if President Trump will, in fact, try to undermine The three branches of the government, like judicial and whatnot, with more executive orders since he tried to, since he said, don't stop the courts. | ||
| He's not, he said, come and try and stop me. | ||
| Should we be worried? | ||
| I have a great deal of confidence in our Supreme Court. | ||
| I think at the moment we have nine serious justices who are trying to do their jobs as best they understand it. | ||
| They don't always agree with one another or with me, but I think the court will take this matter very seriously. | ||
| And where the president is violating the law or the Constitution, I believe they'll rein him in. | ||
| Richard is in Brooklyn, an independent. | ||
| Hi, Richard. | ||
| Your question or comment here for our guest? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for having me. | |
| I have a question, two questions for your guests. | ||
| And what I want to know is this a democracy or is it a constitutional republic? | ||
| Because the last time I checked it, this is supposed to be a constitutional republic, not a democracy. | ||
| And the second thing is, is it lawful for the Doge agency to do what it's doing to delve into people's personal information, allegedly from what they've been saying? | ||
| Is it lawful for these individuals to do that? | ||
| And what kind of recourse, if it's not lawful, can the people take? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, Richard. | ||
| David Siber. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there is potential recourse. | |
| Indeed, there's already litigation about access to the personal information that people have. | ||
| Courts can absolutely require that all copies that have been made be deleted. | ||
| That's a fairly common order in privacy cases. | ||
| We can hope that they will get it done in time. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| But I am confident that we will have resolutions in the courts that will bring back the power of the law. | ||
| As to the first question, we are a constitutional republic with democratic selection of our officials. | ||
| But part of being a constitutional republic is that we have laws and we don't simply go with whoever won the last election, but we go through an orderly process of lawmaking and discourse. | ||
| We'll go down to Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Tom is a Democrat watching there. | ||
| Hi, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you very much for taking my call. | ||
| My question is, especially in light of what you just said about some of these executive orders have broken the law. | ||
| Well, if they go to the courts and even go up to the Supreme Court, who is going to enforce the laws? | ||
| Because it seems like he's just like what happened in New York last night. | ||
| He's completely taking control of the Justice Department. | ||
| And the Justice Department is the one engaged with enforcing the laws if someone breaks them. | ||
| How are we going to resolve that if he refuses to listen to the courts? | ||
| The courts have a number of means of taking care of this, if necessary. | ||
| No president has ever defied a court order. | ||
| There have been some presidents that have failed to comply because of incompetence, and the courts have dealt with that very severely. | ||
| At one point, an executive agency wasn't allowed to use its email until it came into compliance with a court order. | ||
| So I think there are ways of doing that. | ||
| The Justice Department is now loyal to the president, as they should be, since he is the president. | ||
| But they're also officers of the court with sworn oaths to uphold the law and the Constitution. | ||
| And I'm confident that they will honor their oaths when court orders come down against them. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Dominique in Germantown, Maryland, an independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So, my question is generally just in regards to what are the like legal ramifications and guardrails for if he continues to decide to attack everybody and everything that rules against him, as far as the judges are concerned, and just in regards to the judicial check of power that's supposed to happen. | ||
| And does the does and how might the ruling that came last year sometimes that from the Supreme Court stating that he has this immunity for things that are done while he's in office? | ||
| Does that play a role in any way in the legal ramifications that could possibly happen? | ||
| Like, could he do anything or could he ignore a ruling in any way that might like trigger that? | ||
| Like, okay, in normal circumstances, there would be something that he could get in trouble for. | ||
| And because of that ruling, now, you know, he has this freedom to just do what he wants and act like a king. | ||
| Well, throughout this country's history, we have never prosecuted a president for things that they've done in office. | ||
| We came fairly close with Mr. Nixon, but President Ford pardoned him, and that ended the discussion. | ||
| We've never seen criminal prosecution as part of our checks and balances system. | ||
| We've kept the government stable for over 200 years without it. | ||
| So I don't think the Supreme Court's decision last summer, although I believe it was rather badly reasoned, it's really not a factor in all of this. | ||
| The question is whether the president is going to be ordered to comply with the law. | ||
| If he is, those orders will extend to the people working for him as well. | ||
| And the courts will, I'm sure, not take action against Mr. Trump, but they will take action against officials that defy court orders. | ||
| On these injunctions put forth by judges on the president's actions. | ||
| Mike Lee, senator from Utah, Republican, puts on X, I've been thinking about ways to hold the judicial insurrectionists accountable. | ||
| Perhaps we need a law providing that when someone seeks a nationwide injunction against the government, it must go to a three-judge district court with a direct appeal to the Supreme Court. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think that's a bad idea. | |
| I think getting this to the Supreme Court on major constitutional questions is a pretty good idea. | ||
| These are obviously important cases, and a three-judge district court makes a lot of sense to me. | ||
| We've done that in the past. | ||
| Give us the history there. | ||
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unidentified
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For a long time, we had three-judge district courts for any challenge to the constitutionality of a law of the United States. | |
| If you filed that kind of a case, it would go to a three-judge court, and again, it could be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. | ||
| There were too many of those cases, so we cut it back, and now it applies only in certain voting rights cases, a few other very specialized things. | ||
| But Senator Lee makes a good point that these are important cases and that they may deserve more treatment. | ||
| Joseph, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, Greta, how are you? | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| I just got a couple things to say. | ||
| I don't want to insult your guests, but it's people like him from Georgetown and in that city where you are that think everybody else in the country is stupid. | ||
| You're talking about people's rights being violated because they're looking for fraud and abuse and possibly criminal kickbacks. | ||
| Two years ago, they were going to put the guys that I voted for in jail for bookkeeping error. | ||
| That was okay. | ||
| They went to Melania Trump's son's closet for documents that he had every right to be, to have because he was president after he left the White House. | ||
| And he was going to declassify them. | ||
| That was okay. | ||
| But Elon Musk is looking for abuses and criminal kickbacks, possibly. | ||
| Congress approved money to go to USAD, but they didn't approve money going to people in Guatemala. | ||
| All right, Joseph, I'm going to jump in. | ||
| David Super, your response to that caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I don't think it's useful to relitigate the Trump legal matters that happened before. | |
| Mr. Musk does a huge business with the government, and he's not the right person to be looking for conflicts of interest because he has them himself. | ||
| There are mechanisms in place, there are officials, and unfortunately, President Trump has fired 18 inspectors general whose job is precisely to look for waste fraud and abuse and who have the expertise and the staff to do that. | ||
| So I'm not persuaded that this is a search for fraud because President Trump has disabled the best mechanism to get at it. | ||
| We'll leave the conversation there. | ||
| David Super, law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you very much. | |
| Joining us this morning at our desk is Steve Moore. | ||
| He's the founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and a former senior economic advisor to President Trump. | ||
| Mr. Moore, let's begin with the work that happened on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| The House Budget Committee passed the budget, which is the framework for a reconciliation proposal, meaning a simple majority in the Senate. | ||
| They passed their version of it. | ||
| It differs from the Senate. | ||
| Compare the two. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, first of all, thank you for having me on C-SPAN. | |
| I love C-SPAN and love the job you do. | ||
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unidentified
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Listen, this is going to be a long process. | |
| We're just getting started with this because Congress has to pass both a budget in terms of how much we're going to spend and then also accommodate this Trump tax cut that he wants to make the Trump tax cuts permanent. | ||
|
unidentified
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So there's a big debate. | |
| I'm sure a lot of your viewers have been following about whether it would be one beautiful bill, big, beautiful bill like Trump is talking about or two bills. | ||
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unidentified
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And that's complicated. | |
| Some people in the Senate want two bills. | ||
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unidentified
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The House wants one bill. |