| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Strong federal law that regulates the collection and distribution of personal information. | |
| So California and about 20 other states have passed privacy laws, but they only apply to the residents of those states and they're not terribly effective. | ||
| Ultimately, we need a federal law. | ||
| One of the major ways to create control of data is legislatively. | ||
| When governments start to control data and limit the power of companies to share or do things with that data, then you get some version of data privacy. | ||
| Every American deserves to know that their personal information is safe and under their control. | ||
| And it's up to the government to allow them to do that. | ||
| It's time to take action by implementing stronger federal laws regulating data collection and handling. | ||
| It's time to take data privacy seriously for a safer and more secure future. | ||
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| Back with us at our desk, it's Tom Fitton. | ||
| He's president of the group Judicial Watch. | ||
| It's been about a year since we've had you on, so for viewers who may not be familiar, what is Judicial Watch? | ||
| What's your mission? | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
| We're a nonprofit educational foundation funded by the public, no USAID funding. | ||
| And we sue the government for documents. | ||
| We sue the government when they engage in wrongdoing. | ||
| For instance, we've been doing work on election integrity, cleaning up voter rolls. | ||
| We've been challenging reparations programs and woke racism, as I call it. | ||
| So we're kind of a conservative version of the ACLU. | ||
| And we are, when it comes at least to open records laws, the number one litigator in the country on terms of government transparency. | ||
| Conservative version of the ACLU, does your mission or your tactics change when there's a Republican in the White House versus a Democrat in the White House? | ||
| You know, if you'd asked me 20 years ago, I probably would say, oh, yeah, things change, but things don't change that much. | ||
| We have to sue the government to get access to information, no matter who's in office. | ||
| You may have support from the president individually on transparency issues, but the agencies are really slow to follow any direction in that regard. | ||
| I joke, the resting state of the deep state is secrecy. | ||
| And all things being equal, they're not going to give you the material. | ||
| How do you get the material? | ||
| You say you sue the government. | ||
| Where do you go to sue the government? | ||
| Well, there's a federal Freedom of Information Act. | ||
| And what happens is you ask for the records, and more or less, you give them some time to respond or not respond. | ||
| And depending on the nature of the response, you can actually go into federal court. | ||
| And then the agency has to come in and defend its withholdings or explain to the court why it is they need more time to respond. | ||
| And so you've got the federal version of that. | ||
| Also, you have the state version of those laws. | ||
| And sometimes the state laws are better than the federal law in terms of ensuring transparency and ensuring a quick government reaction. | ||
| So we sue at the federal level, obviously, mostly, but we have several FOIA or open records lawsuits at the state level as well on election integrity and other issues of public interest. | ||
| What's your opinion of federal judges? | ||
| My opinion of federal judges, the judiciary is a branch of the federal government established by our Constitution. | ||
| It's a separate but equal branch, and it's incumbent, in my view, kind of to get to the point, I think, of the topic here today potentially, for judges to apply the law fairly and neutrally without letting their political animus get in the way of it. | ||
| What is judicial activism? | ||
| Judicial activism is substituting your own personal views for the fair and neutral application of the law. | ||
| And it's a temptation for judges of both the left and the right. | ||
| It's like, oh, well, I know what the outcome of this particular case should be, and I'm going to figure out a way how to get there using the judicial process. | ||
| And that's not the way it's supposed to work. | ||
| You know, you can have a philosophy as you approach issues, but you're really supposed to fairly apply the law without regard to party or partisanship. | ||
| The Washington Post has a story about cases pending in federal courts having to do with Trump executive orders. | ||
| This is the lead graph. | ||
| Unions, civil rights groups, and others are squaring off in court with the Trump administration filing roughly 140 lawsuits over the dismantling of cuts in agencies by Doge, the firings of federal employees, immigration restrictions. | ||
| The challenges have blocked many of President Trump's initiatives for now, while the administration has won a few significant early victories. | ||
| Does that concern you, the number of lawsuits and the number of executive actions that have been blocked via federal courts? | ||
| The number of lawsuits doesn't concern me because I recognize President Trump is engaged in an unprecedented strategy of reform that's really broad and hard to keep up with. | ||
| So it's no surprise that his political opponents or people who think they're being harmed are suing. | ||
| What's concerning is how many judges are kind of what I would, I'm not a lawyer, but I've enough unfortunate experience in litigation with the government is how quickly these courts are interfering with the presidential powers, duties, and responsibilities and granting emergency relief to these individuals in ways I don't think the law allows for. | ||
| So there's this almost panic judicial decision-making that's more political than constitutional in my view. | ||
| And that's what's concerning. | ||
| Everyone has a right to sue within the law. | ||
| But courts are supposed to police requests for relief that aren't really appropriate under the law. | ||
| I want to sue on all sorts of things. | ||
| And the lawyers will say, Tom, well, you can sue, but the question is whether you'll be successful. | ||
| And the problem is the perception is that if you're a conservative pursuing this type of claim against a Democratic administration, you would not get this reaction from the judiciary that is so helpful to the left. | ||
| Now, in the end, Trump may win more than he loses, but the process is the punishment. | ||
| And in my view, you have judges usurping the executive and legislative powers and pausing self-government for months based on a legal pretext to cover a political animus. | ||
| When should a federal judge be impeached and removed? | ||
| When? | ||
| Well, the Constitutional Envisions obviously impeachment for the traditional corruption, bribery crimes, either ethics crimes, kind of obvious ethics crimes, someone taking money for a judicial decision or obstructing justice, the way some judges actually were accused of doing and impeached for and removed. | ||
| And the interesting thing about the impeachment power is that the founders were concerned, not the founders, but Americans were concerned about the Constitution and whether it gave the judiciary too much power. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And in the Federalist papers, they said, don't worry. | |
| If you have a judicial usurpation of the powers of the other departments or the other branches of government, the legislative or the executive, there are a few things. | ||
| They said the judiciary is weak, really can't enforce its powers without the support of the other branches. | ||
| And also you have this complete security of impeachment. | ||
| So impeachment was put in there not just to check corrupt judges in the criminal sense of the word, but judges who act outside their power. | ||
| And there's been really no impeachment of that nature, the kind of impeachment of activist judges, as I would call it, since 1804. | ||
| And there was one judge who was justice who was impeached. | ||
| He wasn't removed. | ||
| But there's only been impeachments for corruption since then, not on activist judges. | ||
| And I think it should be discussed. | ||
| If I were Jim Jordan or the House leadership, I'd be holding hearings on the impeachment power. | ||
| Is it likely to result in anyone being removed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Even impeached? | ||
| Maybe not. | ||
| But I think some of the judges who have been involved here, I think you'll find if they wanted to do a serious impeachment inquiry, a series of rulings, not just one ruling, showing that the judge is activist and doesn't respect his oath to stay within his lane, which is to make judgments based on a neutral application of the law as opposed to basically being a politician in rogues. | ||
| On hearings, I should note the House Judiciary Committee today holding hearing the title, Judicial Overreach and the Constitutional Limits of the Federal Court, examining the judicial powers of the federal court. | ||
| You can look for coverage on the C-SPAN networks for that for this next 30 minutes or so. | ||
| Tom Finton is with us, a man who knows the federal courts very well, president of JudicialWatch, JudicialWatch.org. | ||
| If you want to call in, phone lines, as usual, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in along with that hearing, the House is also going to vote on the No Rogue Rulings Act this week, which would strip individual federal judges of the power that they have been using to have injunctions that would affect the entire country. | ||
| The legislation would allow their injunctions to affect the individuals that come before their court. | ||
| Do you know about this legislation? | ||
| What do you think about it? | ||
| I do know about it. | ||
| The concern is we can always, there's always a way you can construct an argument where or a case where a universal injunction is appropriate, where someone comes in and sues over a federal government program or decision, and the judge says, I need to shut this whole thing down across the board. | ||
| But the problem is there's been what many people, both the left and the right see to the abuses. | ||
| Biden's people complained about universal injunctions. | ||
| Trump's been subject to more universal injunctions than any other president in history. | ||
| And the thinking is that if someone goes and sues, that the person who's suing should be given the relief. | ||
| Like for instance in this Venezuelan deportation problem over the Alien Enemies Act, you had five people going in sue and the judge immediately granted a class action and essentially said no one can be removed throughout the entire country under this proclamation. | ||
| And in theory, everyone who's subject to be removal has to come before my court. | ||
| You know, that's not the way it's supposed to work. | ||
| So there are a few ways this can be checked. |