Weekly Roundup: They Don't Want to Govern. They Want to Rule.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 750-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Subscribe to One Nation, Indivisible with Andrew Seidel:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/one-nation-indivisible-with-andrew-seidel/id1791471198
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0w5Lb2ImPFPS1NWMG0DLrQ
In this weekly roundup, Brad discusses President Donald Trump's response to a recent major airplane crash, linking it to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He then explores the implications of the recent pause on federal funding and a proposed voting bill that could disenfranchise millions. The episode underscores the importance of resilience, grassroots organization, and staying informed amidst chaotic times.
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163
Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundy President, you have today blamed the diversity elements but then told us That you weren't sure that the controllers made any mistake?
You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake?
It's all under investigation.
I understand that.
That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
Because I have common sense, okay?
And unfortunately, a lot of people don't.
That's President Donald Trump discussing the reasons.
for the first major commercial airplane crash in the United States in almost two decades.
He blames DEI when asked about how he knows that this was caused by diversity or equity or inclusion, he says, because I have common sense.
Today, I discuss what this means and why it is a segregationist slur, but also a sign that Trump doesn't want to govern, but instead to rule.
We break down the pause on federal funding from earlier this week, connected to what happened in Trump's response to the plane crash, and then move on to a truly terrifying bill that could change how Americans vote forever.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is a Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi here on a what seems like a pretty heavy Friday with you all.
Dan Miller will not be here today.
Dan has a family obligation that has taken him away.
So unfortunately, we've had last week with me only here partially and Dan gone this week.
But we'll be back together next week, and we still have a great show for you and obviously a lot to talk about.
If you haven't heard, we have a new show coming to Access Moody Media, and that is One Nation Indivisible with Andrew L. Seidel.
Many of you know Andrew, constitutional lawyer, author of The Founding Myth, and just an essential voice on separation of church and state, fighting Christian nationalism, and protecting American rights all over the place.
So you can look forward to that show dropping in late February.
We are so excited.
You'll be there weekly, and if you...
Our Swag Premium subscriber, you'll get bonus content from Andrew, too.
And if you haven't signed up yet, you might be thinking, I like you, Brad and Dan, but not enough to pay for bonus content and all the other stuff.
Well, you might want to rethink that because Andrew will be in the mix, too, and you'll get bonus content from him on a weekly basis.
All right, y'all.
This week is a heavy week, and I think you all know that.
I think that there's a lot of you bracing and coping.
On a kind of moment-by-moment basis.
I want to talk today about the plane crash in D.C. I want to talk about the fallout from that and the ways that Trump politicized it.
I want to talk about how that fits into the broader pattern of the week, the pausing of federal grants and funding at the office of OMB, basically the office that distributes the funds that Congress has told the executive branch it will and needs to spend from yesterday. basically the office that distributes the funds that Congress has
And I think something that highlights a thesis that I've been articulating for going on a month now, and that is that the goal is to take us back to the 19th century and to do so by repealing.
I want to start today, though, by saying that I know a lot of you are just struggling.
It seems as if the world is falling apart.
Whether it is thinking about immigration and ICE raids, whether it is thinking about the pausing of federal funding, student loans, research, meals on wheels, suicide, hotlines at the VA, any of those, I mean, any of those myriad of things.
Whether it is mourning the plane crash that happened two days ago.
Whether it's thinking through just a number of issues that pop up everywhere.
Could be Kash Patel.
Could be Pete Hegseth.
Could be RFK. Could be Tulsi Gabbard.
I want to tell you right now, I said it last week and I'm going to say it again before I even start analyzing today.
They want you to feel this way.
That is their goal.
Their goal is for you to crumble.
Their goal is for you to give up.
Their goal is for you to disengage.
That's the goal.
They want to move fast.
They want to overwhelm.
Because when people get overwhelmed, they freeze.
When people get overwhelmed, they flee.
That's what they want.
There is no doubt we are in a new place in the United States right now.
There is no more normal.
We're never going to flip a switch again and just go back to whatever you think normal was.
However old you are, wherever your politics are, whether you think normal was the Obama era, or normal was the Clinton era, or normal was some other time.
That's not going to happen.
And we are in a place where I think we need to mourn the normalcy if and when we ever had it and if and when you feel like there ever was one because nostalgia for that's not going to help us.
But on the other hand, I don't think that right now is the moment to simply say, I give up.
It's hopeless.
If you need to disengage, do so.
And I don't mean to just close your ears and...
And never pop back into the public square.
What I mean is, when you reach the point of being overwhelmed, you've got to do the next right thing.
And doing the next right thing may mean taking a walk.
It may mean playing with your kids.
It may mean calling a friend, watching a rerun of your favorite show.
It may be going to the gym.
I don't know what it is.
There's a quote floating around from Dan Savage about the ways that during the AIDS crisis, he and others would bury friends almost on a daily basis, would fight for political aid during the day because it was hard to get any politician to pay attention during those times, and then dance in nightclubs at night.
And one of the things that Savage says there is that The dancing was the point.
We weren't going to give that up because that's what they wanted to take from us.
The dancing was the expression of joy in humanity.
The dancing was the expression of enjoying existence, resisting the human condition of despair and of nihilism and saying, I'm here.
I love.
I care.
I make meaning.
And that's why we fight.
That's why we mourn.
That's why we bury.
That's why we try.
So they're not going to take that from us.
We're not going to just stop dancing, stop making meaning, stop trying, stop loving, stop laughing.
That's why we do all of this.
So right now, if you need to turn this podcast off and not listen, go for it.
You got my permission.
But you need to find a way to take care of you.
So that you can be with us as we go on this road.
It's going to be a long road.
We're not going to snap back into some kind of like, oh, everyone got it.
He's terrible.
They finally woke up.
Oh, 80% of the country gets it now.
He's a monster.
Okay.
Well, glad that happened.
We'll just impeach and we'll just, yeah, go back to normal.
American society will somehow just, we'll just like flip that switch and pretend none of this ever happened.
Not an option.
It's going to be a long road.
I don't know what lies at the end of that road.
What I do know is, two weeks into it, they want you to give up.
Two weeks into it, they want you to feel like there is no hope.
That it is absolutely beyond anything you can do or anyone else, so you might as well just accept it.
That is what they want.
And I'm telling you right now, we're not going to do that.
And you've got to find a way to get the resources in yourself.
To brace for this.
Not only to help us bury those we lose and to fight for the things that we won't give up, but also to dance and to write and to wonder, to love and to embrace, to imagine.
Like I said, we're going to jump into Trump's comments about what happened with the plane crash.
We're going to then go to RFK and we're going to finish with...
Something along the lines of a voting act that I think is really, really important to be aware of and is going to be a big thing going forward.
You all heard the clip at the top of Trump talking about what happened in the crash at Reagan Airport a couple of nights ago.
And I want to just stop and recognize the human beings who are on that flight.
The people who got on a flight in the Midwest.
Thinking they were going to land in D.C. Folks who were just trying to make a trip.
Some of them really young figure skaters.
Some of them kids.
Some of them set to join the faculty at Howard Law.
Former candidates to be Miss Kansas.
A young black woman.
Sons and daughters.
Husbands and wives.
Friends.
And now they're gone.
And, you know, it's hard, I think, in years and days and eras like the one we live in, especially with the internet, to take stock of that.
But I want to do that for a minute because it's really important to what's next, okay?
If you look at the pictures of those who were lost in that plane, there's nothing to say about blame or politics or anything else.
Those are Americans who got on a plane.
And a couple hours later thought, we're going to land in D.C. And they didn't.
And it's hard to think about.
It's hard not to get teary and emotional, thinking about their lives, because it's tragic.
And I go there because for you and I to think about...
A 13-year-old making their first trip to D.C., saying goodbye to their parents, telling them they'll text them as soon as they land and not making it.
That's pretty tough.
And then you think about what happened after.
You all heard the president when asked about what happened here, and he said it was DEI. And his response to how he knows that, Without evidence, is he has common sense.
Now, Dan and I talked about this two weeks ago, and I'll just remind you of what we said.
When Trump and others refer to DEI as to blame for anything from this plane crash to the LA wildfires to anything else, they are using a segregationist and misogynistic slur.
Let's just be clear.
Because the code for what Trump said is that non-white people and women have been given positions of authority and power, positions that demand great capability, and as a result, there is mistakes and there is this and there is that.
That is the logic.
And let's be very clear.
When he said this, he had absolutely no evidence for it.
He did not point to anything except for, I have common sense.
Friends, this is on par with racist statements going back beyond, before the civil rights movement.
I mean, we can maybe point to Nixon, but I really think you have to go to George Wallace, presidential candidate of 1968, a failed presidential candidate.
You probably have to go back to Woodrow Wilson.
I don't know.
I mean, you can email me and send me the quotes.
I'm sure I'm missing some.
That's fine.
Saying without evidence that this was a matter of DEI is saying that there must have been incompetent people hired, and those people who were hired were women or non-white, and that is why this plane crashed and the kids I just talked about are no longer with us.
When asked if he was going to go to the crash site, he scoffed and said, what site?
The water?
Do you want me to go swimming?
It was a remarkably callous response to what happened here.
And I think there's a couple things to say.
A, this is a reflection of how Trump and Trump's inner circle think of average Americans.
There is no sense of what it means to be an everyday person in the country to them.
No sense of what it means to be an average Joe.
And they don't care.
And you might say, well, did Joe Biden know that either?
And, you know, yeah, I don't know, 50 years in the Senate?
Maybe, maybe not.
There's a few politicians that might, right?
We can point to them.
We can talk about Bernie or we can talk about AOC or whatever.
We can talk about...
Some folks that we admire in local or state government.
Trump and MAGA don't even pretend to try.
They don't care.
They don't care about you.
They don't care about me.
And they don't care about their constituents.
We are not as human to them as they think of themselves.
We're in a different class of human being.
That's their understanding.
The second thing that I want to point out more analytically, and I think that I've really not seen this enough from other commentators, writers, people on Blue Sky, whatever, is that Trump makes these comments in the midst of a week when he and is that Trump makes these comments in the midst of a week when he and his administration paused payments suddenly and drastically So let me run you through a couple of timelines here.
Okay.
On January 20th, after Elon Musk told him to resign, the FAA had...
January 21st, air traffic controller hiring was frozen.
January 22nd, Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded.
January 28th, buyout slash retirement demand sent to existing employees.
January 29th, the first mid-air collision in 16 years.
This is from Greg Doucette.
So what we have, just as it relates to federal aviation safety, is Musk intimidates the director to quit or be fired, and he does, January 20th.
They freeze hiring on air traffic controllers.
Now, I know many of you have heard the reports, and you already know what I'm going to say here.
There's a shortage of air traffic controllers in the country.
During the time of this crash, there was only one air traffic controller working when usually there would have been two.
Now, I'm not saying all of that was a direct result.
I'm not saying this domino led to that in terms of this specific case.
What I am saying is this.
When you think about an administration that has signaled at every turn that they do not believe that expertise and specialized knowledge are needed, that what you need is simply common sense.
That what you need are simply a few superhumans, like Elon Musk and Mark Andreessen, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, the oligarchy, the broligarchy, and the useful idiots who will help them.
They have all the common sense and all of the superpower needed.
And so we're going to do things like basically dismantle.
Like, the apparatus that holds federal aviation safety in place.
We could talk about the FAA. We could talk about the NTSB. I'm not going to go into those details today.
I'm not an expert on those things, and I don't want to get lost in those weeds.
I want to make a general point.
They see these things as unneeded.
Get rid of those people.
A, because they might have opinions that don't agree with ours, and B, who needs them anyway?
If we're going to cut $2 trillion from the federal government...
This is a great place to start.
On the same day that all of this happening, there was senators on Fox News touting the ways they were going to cut $40 and $50 billion from the transportation budget.
So there's a general point here that I think is worth making.
They don't want to govern.
They want to rule.
These kinds of actions, the stripping of every agency, every apparatus, whether it is the EPA, whether it is the FDA, whether it is the FAA, destroying these networks, destroying these systems will lead to a failed state.
It will lead to a place where our government doesn't work.
At least in the ways that it has in the past.
And you're thinking, well, okay, does that make sense?
I mean, doesn't the president want to be popular?
Doesn't the president want people to approve of his job?
I mean, you're probably not thinking this, but we would assume at least somewhere, at least in some Pollyanna way, doesn't the person in charge want to help people somewhere, somehow?
Even give lip service to helping people somewhere, somehow?
And the answer is no.
They don't want to govern.
Governing requires administration and process and paperwork.
It involves working with all these agencies that just are completely spiderwebbed across the country.
It involves so many boring, mundane details with people who have very specified knowledge about things like viruses or pandemics, bird flu.
Environmental protections, what doing this or that to an ecosystem will mean for its wildlife and its natural ecosystem and whatever may be.
All the details from airplane safety to clean drinking water to food and drug approvals and regulations on down the road.
That kind of governance is boring.
It's bureaucratic.
It's mundane.
And yes, I know, sometimes it feels to us like too much.
We got to go spend three hours at the DMV. We got to go through all these government things to get a permit for this or that.
And I'm there.
I think we all know that.
But they want to take all that down.
And I want to make a point, and then I want to follow the corresponding...
Take away.
They want to rule, which means they want power and authority, but they don't want to govern.
So they want to be in charge, but they don't want to be responsible.
They want to be in control, but they don't want to be responsible for making your life better, for making you safe, for making you prosperous, for making you educated.
For helping you to be healthy.
And you can say, oh, Mr. Big Government Liberal here wants the government to do everything for him.
Nope.
I'm just talking about conditions that allow the 400 million Americans to have a chance at those things.
Systems that say, here's the possibility for you to be healthy and educated.
Here's the possibility for you to be secure and protected.
Here's the possibility for you to trust that the water you drink and the food you eat is...
Safe, somewhat safe, something.
They don't want to govern.
They want to rule.
They don't want to be responsible, but they want the power.
And you can see that in Musk and in Trump.
You can see that in the actions.
When asked about what happened here, it is not, I'm going to find the cause.
We're going to bolster.
Federal Aviation Safety.
We want all Americans to be assured that when they get on a plane, they will know they are safe.
That you can travel across this country.
Because those are the kinds of everyday things that millions and ten millions of us take for granted.
And so when you have a government that doesn't want to govern, but instead wants to rule, here's what happens.
You get a breakdown of things you've taken for granted your entire life.
Things that most of us have not spent daily minutes or hours concerned about.
And that could be, and hang with me here, that when you get on a flight, you're relatively safe.
I know there's some of you out there are fear of flying and it makes you nervous and all of that.
I will say I'm somebody who probably in his life has flown.
More than the average person because I used to live abroad and there's years and years of my life where my wife and I lived in different cities because of academic jobs and all this kind of stuff.
And so I've been on planes a lot the last 15 years.
And all the statistics say you're safer on a plane than so many other places, probably in a car.
Whenever I've gotten on a plane, I have never thought, well, this is dangerous, but I have to do it.
This is a risk, but I guess I have to do it.
I have thought, this is probably safer than that one-hour commute people make every day.
That anything could go wrong and things happen, but I don't feel like this is a moment where I'm putting my life kind of in danger.
I really kind of should think about it, you know?
Those are the ways that the federal government...
As flawed and messed up and onerous and bloated and you fill in the blank.
Frustrating, irritating, infuriating, whatever you want to say and whatever ways the federal government interacts with your life.
When it comes to regulation, when it comes to student loans, when it comes to research studies that lead to breakthroughs in medicine, when it comes to having the best university systems in the world, when it comes to Everything from drinking water to our air being way less polluted than it was in the 1970s because of regulations.
When it comes to the national parks that so many of us love visiting in the summertime or anytime, a whole system of places set aside to say this is not for a new Chick-fil-A, but this is a place for, and a housing development, this is a place that is a place we're going to protect as a nation so we can all enjoy it.
And we'll get to it in a minute, but elections are in there too.
Now, last point before I go to break.
They want to rule, but they don't want to govern.
And what that means is, they don't care if your life falls into disarray, and they actually kind of want chaos.
There's a famous clip that I'm going to play for you now of Donald Trump in 2014, talking about Russia and Putin and...
Putin's attacking of Crimea.
And he basically says that the country will get better when there's chaos and people are rioting, and that will be the time.
You know what solves it?
When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster, then you'll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.
If you don't want to govern and you want to rule, There's a way that, A, a failed state helps you with that, and B, the chaos, the helplessness, the confusion, the not knowing what will be available, what knowledge or resources will still be there when they're done.
Are they going to wipe out the entire archives of environmental research?
The entire archives at the Smithsonian or in the National Archive?
What kinds of things will go offline and no longer exist?
What kind of processes won't be available?
What kind of help from the government won't be there?
Well, that helps them because now they feel like, well, you're in chaos and your life is chaos.
The only way to get that back is loyalty to me.
And we're so protected as oligarchs.
We're so protected as rulers who made the military on our side.
We assume at least that we have no real danger.
That's the playbook.
The playbook is not popularity.
The playbook is not to increase approval rating.
It's not to get people to all of a sudden think of MAGA as the best thing that's ever happened.
One out of three Americans voted for Donald Trump, if you take into account how many people did not vote.
The goal is not to say, well, I hope someday that's 50% or 75%.
The goal, as I've said for the last two months, is power and money.
That's it.
These are hungry ghosts.
They don't see the kids on that plane as something to weep over.
They don't see themselves in those families.
They see themselves as different.
And so they don't want to govern for you.
They want to rule over you.
And I'll talk more about that in a sec.
Be right back.
I'm Andrew Seidel, a constitutional lawyer, activist, and author of The Founding Myth and American Crusade, books that explore the relationship of church and state and fight Christian nationalist disinformation.
We're all bracing for another Trump administration.
It's going to be rough.
So let me give you something to look forward to.
My new podcast, One Nation, Indivisible, with Andrew Seidel is launching in February.
I'll be right there with you each week discussing politics, religion, and the law.
We'll be talking with expert guests about everything happening in the Trump administration, the judicial system, and with the separation of church and state.
And here's even better news.
Every week I will drop bonus content.
And if you are a straight white American Jesus premium subscriber, you'll automatically get all the bonus content from my show.
You can sign up today at accessmundi.us.
We'll get through Trump 2.0 together.
Tune in for the debut of One Nation Indivisible with Andrew Seidel from Access Mundi Media.
All right.
In a week that has felt like a year, this is the week that The Trump administration paused all federal grants and so many programs across the country.
So I'm going to read from the Washington Post.
Jeff Stein, Jacob Bogage, and Emily Davies.
The White House Budget Office is ordering a pause to all grants and loans dispersed by the federal government, according to an internal memo sent to agencies Monday.
In a two-page document, Matthew J. Vaith, the acting director of the White House Office Management, of management and budget instructs federal agencies to temporarily pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all federal financial assistance.
The memo, a copy of which has been obtained by the Washington Post, calls for each agency to perform a comprehensive analysis.
And here's the important part.
If you zoned out or in class and you're kind of looking at your phone, here's where you need to listen.
You ready?
To ensure its grant and loan programs are consistent with President Donald Trump's executive orders, which aimed to ban federal diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives and limit clean energy spending, among other measures.
So, abruptly, without notice, without any kind of warning or ramp-up, without any kind of training or guidance, it's just all loans and assistance are paused.
I mean, this affects Meals on Wheels, which helps to feed 2 million folks across the country every day.
It includes suicide hotlines at the VA. It includes so many things.
I'm going to read from a CNN article.
Medicaid agencies were unable to access federal funds for the health insurance program that covers more than 72 million low-income Americans.
National Association of Medicaid Directors confirmed Wednesday it had received word Medicaid would not be part of the funding freeze.
But what would be?
Meals on wheels.
Universities trying to figure out how a funding freeze affects their research programs.
Researchers across the country were told to stop work on grant-funded projects.
These are things that have been agreed upon, that the government already said, here's the money coming for your grant.
For your research.
For things we think are important enough that we have given money for them.
The National Science Foundation.
The Tribal Nations.
Folks in governments across the country, whether it's people being paid salaries or whether it's affordable housing programs.
In Colorado, the Community Health Network.
said that this affected 857,000 Coloradans.
Nonprofits across the country will see absolute devastation.
It will, quote, cut a hole in the already frayed safety net through which tens of thousands of people who depend on nonprofit programs will fall.
That's a quote coming out of Connecticut.
Head Start.
A lot of you know about the Head Start program for low-income children.
From birth to age 5. Serves about 800,000 people.
Some of them were unable to access payment management.
So, friends, we're talking about no warning to programs that help who?
I don't know.
Your grandmother.
Your elder.
Who gets Meals on Wheels because they're old.
They can't cook.
They live by themselves.
Kids who are two or three or four come from a low-income family in the most prosperous nation ever to exist on earth.
Sorry, no warning, no training, no ramp-up, no indication, just you're not going to eat today.
People, Medicaid, who just want a chance to be healthy.
In the most prosperous nation in the history of the world.
People who've worked.
People who've tried.
People who are citizens.
Sorry.
The sick and the young and the elderly.
Hey, we didn't have time to call you and let you know, but we're going to just cut off all that.
And when you get in line, or at least your program heads and their initiatives get in line with the ruler, We'll turn the money back on.
That's the message.
We're here to rule.
Congress has already approved this money.
But you know what?
You need to get in line with the president.
And if you do, we might turn the money back on so that the elderly, the children, and those suffering from health conditions, what Jesus might call the most vulnerable.
I don't know.
Can eat, get care, and generally have a chance to survive and thrive as best as possible.
Now, there were a lot of questions when this happens.
Is this legal?
Is it not legal?
Many of you already know that it's been blocked by the courts, and we're going to have more news next week, right?
Maybe as you're listening to this.
The attitude of the ruler, the wannabe ruler, has been, this is legal because we say it's legal.
And I think this is really important for us to notice today.
A piece by Oswin Swubisang and Andrew Perez at Rolling Stone captures this.
The quote from the president's attorney, Alina Haba.
What your opinion is on what the law is doesn't really matter.
It's what the White House counsel says and what our Attorney General of the United States says.
There's no reference here to the courts.
There's no reference here to prior judgments or precedent.
There's no reference here to Congress.
It is simply what matters is what the White House counsel and the Attorney General say.
That's it.
The White House counsel.
Meaning the president's lawyer.
Meaning the president's right-hand man.
The man whose interest is in the president, not in the American people.
Not in the law.
Not in law and order.
Asked by a reporter at a briefing to explain who advised the president on the legality of telling government agencies that they don't have to spend money that was already appropriated by Congress.
Trump's White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, replied, so White House counsel's office believes that this is within the president's power to do it, and therefore he's doing it.
Here's the message, going back to everything I just said in the first segment.
They don't want to govern, they want to rule.
When asked if and why their actions are justified, Donald Trump doesn't point to...
To evidence when it comes to the crash, she points to, I have common sense and thus I know it was a woman or a non-white person who caused this.
And then asked, well, you turned off the funding for Americans everywhere, including children, including those with serious health issues, including the elderly.
Do you feel bad about that?
Did that seem like a good idea?
Is that legal?
Why would you do that?
The council's office believes that this is within the president's power to do it, and therefore he's doing it.
He has the power to do it, so he's doing it.
Not, this is good for Americans.
Not, we're trying to protect Americans.
We're trying to help you.
We're trying to...
Nope.
This is not a matter of...
Hey, it doesn't seem like it.
I understand there's confusion, but we're actually doing something that will help.
Give us a minute.
Let me refer you to this document so you can read up on what we're up to and you can understand that actually this is something that we think will actually have better outcomes for more other places throughout the country and other times and so on and so in other ways is what I'm trying to say.
Hey, you asked me about this and guess what?
We have a plan and we think everyone's going to end up better for this.
You just got to trust us for a second.
We know it's hard, but bear with us.
That might sound like that manager at work you don't like.
That might sound like your parent.
And that's never easy for us to accept that kind of answer, right?
At least that answer is telling you, hey, I care about you and I understand what you're saying.
I'm trying as a leader to do something different and I do think it's going to end up helping all of us in the long run.
So, it may not make sense right now, and it may hurt a little bit right now, but just like, give me a minute, give me a day, give me a week.
Nah.
He's got the power to do it, so he's doing it.
He doesn't want to govern, he wants to rule.
He is not here to represent the people.
He's here for him.
That's the message.
Loud and clear.
The other thing we should notice here, Is that this is completely and absolutely in line with Project 2025. Friends, I went across the country before the election.
And it was one of those six-month periods where people would ask me, what are you doing this week?
And I'd be like, well, off to Omaha.
And then I'm going to land.
And when I get off the plane home, I'm going to drive to Sonoma.
And then next week, I'm going to go over to Spokane.
And then maybe to Denver.
And who knows?
Maybe up to the Twin Cities.
And down to LA. Why?
Because wherever I went, I told people a couple of things.
I said, A, we're heading to a place where there's an appetite for a monarch or a dictator in this country.
And it's really scary.
And B, Project 2025 is the plan.
And Project 2025 was created by an amalgam of Christian nationalists led by reactionary Catholic thinkers and forces that have been plotting to revolutionize the American government since 1973 when Paul Weyrich started the Heritage Foundation.
And they want an unbound executive who what?
Can do things simply because he has the power.
They want an unbound executive who can tell Congress, you might have appropriated this money.
You might have said that we are supposed to spend it.
You might have said that this is how the Constitution works.
And it is.
Article 1 of the Constitution.
Congress holds the purse.
Congress decides when the budget is approved.
And the president signs the budget.
The money's going out.
It is not within the purview.
Of the president.
To hold the money simply because he thinks there's programs out there that don't agree with his initiatives.
That is not part of his role.
He's not a king.
He's a president.
So this is an illegal move.
Period.
What Project 2025 does is aim to create an executive who is unbound.
Who can do things like this.
And I think...
We talked about Project 2025 endlessly on this show.
You can go to our website, straightwhiteamericanjesus.com, go to Episodes, the Episodes tab, and just type in Project 2025. You'll see episode after episode.
You'll see discussion after discussion.
But in that same article from Rolling Stone, there's a great quote that I think really sums up the attitude.
Of the president and what they're trying to do in this moment.
Now that he's back in power, the Trump administration appears to be operating based on one specific legal principle, towering above all others.
What are you going to do about it?
That quote comes from a conservative lawyer who helped plan Trump's ongoing legal onslaught, characterizing Trumpland's attitude toward and their plans for handling the Democrats complaining about his moves and the activist groups that try to stop him.
Two other sources close to Trump, one of whom worked on the presidential transition team and the other in his current administration, cheered on the president's efforts to cram as many of his policies and orders through in the face of legal experts publicly saying he can't do that. .
Their position is...
We have our own interpretation of the law.
So try and stop us.
If Congress is the branch that holds the purse, then the judicial, the judges, are those who decide the interpretations of the law, for better or for worse.
What are you going to do about it is the attitude, not only To Democrats and activists and all those pesky kids who keep clawing at him.
It's the attitude he has and the attitude that will continue.
And this is where I want to warn you.
And this is where I want you to be vigilant.
To Congress and the judicial branch.
That this was rescinded.
This freeze on federal funds was, at least, let me be careful in my words.
An injunction was put on it by a judge.
We're going to get more news on this February 3rd and 4th.
It's not in place.
It's not in practice as we speak.
Nonetheless, what I see coming is a day when there is a court ruling, there is an injunction.
There is a judicial branch saying no.
There is Congress somehow saying no.
And Trump and the administration saying, what are you going to do about it?
I'm going to do it anyway.
And you know what I've learned?
Is that there's not a lot of Democrats ready for that fight.
They're just trusting that, yeah, what are you going to do about it?
What's next?
And that's where we've got to be ready.
The Constitution is a social document.
It works because we all abide by it.
Just like rules.
You ever stood in line?
If you know me and my wife hates this, I am like a very militant line person.
You get in line.
You don't cut in line.
You don't like jump the line.
I will like embarrass everybody wherever we are.
The amusement park, the movie theater, if we're waiting in line.
You better not cut.
I'm going to call you out.
Make a scene.
Because it's not fair.
Right?
Shout out to my British friends.
The world's leaders in forming a queue.
Just like world-class Britain.
There's just no comparison.
Waiting in line.
Why do lines work?
Social contract.
Social approval.
Everybody decides.
There's a rule.
Whoever's here first.
They get to go first, and then we all get behind them.
And then when the bus comes, we all get on.
Okay.
If we have a president who wants to be a ruler, if we have a president who wants to be a king and is going to say to legislative and judicial branches, what are you going to do about it?
He's saying to us, what are you going to do about it?
It's a failed government.
It's a failed state.
I'm the ruler.
I have the power.
I have all the oligarchs around me with their billions of dollars, and I have the...
The military, what are you going to do about it?
That's called the constitutional crisis.
And this couple of weeks is signaling that that is a scenario we probably need to be getting ready for.
Let's take a break.
Be right back.
All right, y'all.
I want to talk about one more thing that I think is really important.
And again, we need to just pace ourselves.
This is going to be a long time, a long era, a long whatever you want to call it.
The thing that I asked you about last week is, what are you doing for 2026?
In my mind right now, the Democrats should be acting as if business is not normal, refusing to do any business in the Senate.
Any Democrat who voted for any Trump nominee, to me, needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
And I'm not trying to put a purity test on things.
What I'm trying to say is, when I see Mark Kelly, when I see Chuck Schumer, when I see people voting for Trump candidates, when I see people voting for Sean Duffy, the guy, the real-world guy, I'm having a hard time figuring out if that's the path forward to being an opposition party.
Amid all of this stuff, so far the courts have held.
They stopped Trump.
And you know what also happened with this OMB freeze and the federal funds and loans and etc?
Is people pushed back.
And Thea Butler said this on Blue Sky the other day.
People pushed back and they rescinded.
Like grassroots organizations that plan make a difference.
Tom Homan.
Leading, you know, all of these ICE raids, the guy, the deporter czar, has basically been complaining this week that too many groups and individuals and communities in Chicago know their rights and won't let ICE get to where they need to go and so they can't do what they thought they could do.
Grassroots organizations make a huge difference.
Banding together makes a huge difference.
There's so many things that a reader sent me, and actually a bunch of you sent me, articles on this over the last week.
There's one at the New Republic, how to take heart from what really worked in the first resistance.
One of those is grassroots organizing.
One of those is warning people, getting out the information that legacy media and other things have failed to do.
One of them is ignoring a lot of Trump's antics.
He's going to do things that are distracting.
But what I'm going to say now, I think, is something that I will just be thinking about for the long term.
There is a bill that is on the horizon that needs to be resisted with everything we have.
Andy Craig, who works on elections and election law, has been talking about this on Blue Sky.
So I'm going to read what Andy Craig's been saying, at Andy Craig.
The SAVE Act is not just performative trash.
It would radically wreck how our elections are administered.
A lot of things in this area, most state-level bills are bad, but talk of how bad can sometimes get hyperbolic.
This one's not hyperbole.
It would be a complete disaster.
So the SAVE Act would basically disenfranchise millions and millions of Americans because every time you had to register to vote or re-register to vote...
You would have to rely on a passport or a birth certificate to prove your citizenship.
Do you know where your birth certificate is right now?
Some of you are.
You're organized, right?
You're that person.
Good for you.
You're awesome.
You know how many millions of Americans don't have a passport, especially underprivileged Americans, folks without a lot of socioeconomic means?
You know how many people don't know where their birth certificate is?
What if you got married and you have a different name on your birth certificate than you have now?
Here's what American Progress says, Center for American Progress says about it.
These impacts alone would set voter registration, sophistication of technology back by decades and would be unworkable for millions of Americans, including more than 60 million people who live in rural areas.
They believe that this would disenfranchise tens of millions of people.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Andy Craig says, It'd be fair to call the SAVE Act the most anti-democratic piece of election legislation with a serious risk of passing Congress since, maybe ever.
To be clear, it's not we no longer have free elections bad, it's not vote counts are rigged and opposition candidates banned bad, but to call it both crazy administrative chaos and deliberate voter suppression, Would be entirely accurate.
It's well into hybrid regime tactics territory.
Friends, this matters.
This is where you slide into not having elections that are actually elections.
This is where you slide into a place where most people can't vote.
They don't know how to vote.
They're not allowed to vote.
This is where you slide into a place where whatever Fragile, imperfect form of we the people we had.
Whatever, completely not available to everybody in a way that was equal and all of that American history in mind.
This would put us in a place of not having real elections.
And when I talk in the beginning about they want to rule and not govern, they don't have to govern.
If this kind of system is in place, because they can just rule and they can stay in power.
And if you can't have a blue wave in 2026, if you can't end up with 60 Democratic senators and a massive majority, maybe a majority that could override the president's veto in Congress, if you don't have that.
Well, how do you fight back?
And there's a lot of ways to fight back.
I just talked about them.
Grassroots organizations, the whole thing.
Information, etc.
But this is big.
So amidst all of the other things this week, I'm going to mourn people who are on that plane and I'm going to be thinking about them.
But I'm going to be thinking about them in conjunction with a future where we don't have a chance to hold accountable.
The people who create conditions that are not safe and lead to further disasters.
Who cut off funding for the elderly, children, people with health conditions.
Who don't see them as people.
Who don't see you as people.
This is a tough time.
And I know that many of you are hurting.
Trying to keep your head above water.
Please do that.
We need you.
We want to get to a place where as many people as possible can dance.
Where this terrible condition of being human is as tolerable and at times wonderful as possible.
That's why we fight.
That's why we say, no, we're not going to have a ruler.
We're going to have something else.
We're not going to have those in power who don't think we're people.
We're going to have something else.
We're going to reach out to others.
We're going to join into groups.
We're going to find two or three issues.
You can't do everything.
What is it going to be for you?
How are you going to stay informed and help others stay informed on two or three issues?
Immigration, incarceration, reproductive rights.
I haven't even talked about the ban on trans care yet.
Are you going to run for office?
Are you going to run for something?
Are you going to support someone who's going to run for something?
Are you going to be present and make sure things are documented at meetings in your town?
The people who are in charge.
Find your spot.
Find your people.
And when you need to, disengage and take care of yourself.
Because we need you.
Let's do Reasons for Hope.
Aaron Reid, also known as Aaron in the Morning on social media.
Put on Blue Sky that Montgomery County Public Schools come out and tell Trump to pound sand with his executive order telling schools that they have to discriminate against transgender students.
Dear Montgomery County Public Schools community, we recognize news about recent executive orders raises some concerns and questions.
All our children deserve high quality education that fosters both academic excellence and well-being regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, disability, religion, or any other identifying characteristics.
We stand by our community and school system values.
And to summarize, they will not comply with that order.
That's great news.
And we're seeing that kind of thing all over the country.
I've talked to Dan about other instances of healthcare providers basically saying in states across the union, we will continue to administer care to trans minors.
Despite what the president has said in the executive order.
It is also good news that the courts stopped the OMB pause on funding.
That is democracy working.
It may not feel like it.
You may feel like, well, what?
But that's good news, friends.
Those are the things we have to fight for.
That is news.
That is a sign of Actual checks on somebody who wants to be a king.
There's others.
Federal workers are on Reddit and just banding together, sharing resources and figuring out how to basically resist being removed and neutered within the federal government, whatever agency or department they're in.
And it's incredible to see the creativity and the resilience there.
I love it.
I want to encourage you to find good news.
I want to encourage you to put that in the Discord if you're part of it.
I want to encourage you to share that with people and to notice it because we need it at every turn.
I want to thank you all for listening.
I want to thank all of our subscribers for making this show happen.
If you haven't joined yet, we do bonus content almost every Monday, bonus episodes, ad-free listening.
We have 800 episodes in an archive that you can listen to, including many on Project 2025. And a Discord server that is full of discussion and resource sharing and so on.
We'll be back Monday with a great interview on the constitutional sheriff movement and how it is aligning with Trump's vision and what to do about it.
Back Wednesday with It's in the Code and Friday, Dan and I will be back together again.
