Weekly Roundup: A Majority of Americans Think Trump is a Dangerous Dictator
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Brad and Dan discuss Donald Trump's recent interviews, highlighting concerns about his mental acuity and decisions on immigration policies.
They analyze new data from PRRI, revealing that a significant portion of Americans view Trump as a dangerous dictator while also detailing public sentiment on Trump's first hundred days in office.
The guys also explore a Supreme Court case from Oklahoma regarding the funding of a Catholic charter school and its implications for the separation of church and state.
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Axis Mundi We had some tattoos that are interpreted that way, but let's move on.
Wait a minute.
Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry.
He did not have the letter M-S-1-3.
It says M-S-1-3.
That was Photoshopped.
That was Photoshopped.
Terry, you can do that.
Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime.
You know, you're doing the interview.
I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay.
I picked you, Terry.
But you're not being very nice.
He had MS-13 tattoos.
We'll agree to disagree.
I want to move on to something else.
That's President Donald Trump talking about the tattoos on the knuckles of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was sent to the famous El Salvadoran prison because of an administrative error and whom the Supreme Court said that the presidential administration must facilitate his return.
It's clear in the interview that Trump thinks those were real and not photoshopped.
It's not even clear that he knows what photoshop is.
It's a clear sign of his mental state at the moment.
Today we dig into the interview, but we go further by looking at new data from PRRI about how Americans feel about Trump's first hundred days.
There's good news.
A majority of Americans view Trump as a dangerous dictator, but there's also bad news.
In addition, we talk about a case at the Supreme Court out of Oklahoma that would lead us to the first religious charter school.
It's a dangerous step into dismantling public education as it was designed in the United States and leading us towards taxpayer-funded religious education.
I'm Brad Onishi and this is Straight White American Jesus.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Great to be with you on this Friday.
I am
Brad Odishi, and I'm here, as always, with my co-host.
Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Good to see you, Brad.
I think we're both, like, in sort of zombie phase, so we'll see how it goes for everybody.
That was a very languid, you know, recitation of your name, I just want to say.
Like, you know, it was like, I got invited to this panel, I don't really want to be on the panel, so that was...
It's like when we do stuff, and I feel like I know you reasonably well at this point, and there's multiple Brad Onishi's that can show up, and I can spot the one that's like, all the outsiders think I'm really engaged and attentive to this,
and I wish I was somewhere else, that Brad Onishi, like nobody else can.
Instead, I just was like...
I do want to be here.
Let me be clear.
It's just been a long journey today to get to right here to record this.
Here we are.
We're going to jump in here in a minute.
One of the reasons you're tired is because you're just living your best life.
You went to a metal show last night.
We're going to, I think, post some pictures for subscribers here.
At some point, when you're ready to break the internet, we will post Dan in full metal concert garb.
I had one last weekend that I went to with the kids, and my 11-year-old did his first ever crowd surfing.
That was his...
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
And after a lot of discussion and making sure that that would be safe and so on.
And then one last night, so yeah.
You're doing it.
All right, y 'all.
Here we go.
We're going to talk about these Trump interviews from this week.
That'll be kind of just a segue, an entree into the new PRRI survey that was just released this week and really gives us a window into where the country's at when it comes to Trump's first hundred days.
I think there's a lot of good news and a lot of bad news, I'll be really honest, and we'll break that all down.
And then we'll go to the Supreme Court and talk about the Oklahoma case and the question of the first religious charter school in the nation, which would be an online Catholic school.
And what we see happening there.
So that's what's on the menu for today.
We can't cover everything.
There's way too much going on in the world, but we're going to do our best to get to focus on these things and provide some insight.
So you all just heard the clip at the top.
Donald Trump seemed to think in the interview that the tattoos on the knuckles of Kimar Abrego Garcia actually said MS-13, like the letters MS-13, that they were not symbols or some sort of code or...
You know, Fox News hosts who are somehow experts in El Salvadoran gang, you know, ciphers.
So to me, Dan, this was a window into Trump's mental state.
I want to play one more clip.
This is a separate interview he called into.
Stephen A. Smith is asking a question.
Stephen A. Smith is known for being the kind of ESPN guy.
But Stephen A. Smith asks about Harvard.
And just take a listen to what Trump says in response.
Mr. President, thank you for your time.
It's interesting that you brought up Harvard because when people think about Harvard, what they're basically talking about is they're asking, what do you say to those who view your actions as an attack on academic freedom rather than a defense of fairness?
What do you say to that?
Well, I say this.
We had riots in Harlem, and frankly, if you look at what's gone on, and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard.
They happened to be on my side.
You know, I got a very high black vote.
You know that.
Very, very high black vote.
It was a very great compliment to me.
I did criminal justice reform.
I did opportunity zones for one of the greatest economic deals ever for the black and Hispanic community.
I got tremendous.
They agree with what I'm doing with respect to Harvard.
So Trump clearly thinks that Stephen A. Smith is, for some reason, talking about Harlem.
I don't know if it's because Stephen A. Smith is black, but...
I don't know why you would think Harlem is what he was asking about.
It doesn't really make any sense.
I have a lot to say here, Dan, but I'll just throw it to you.
There's just a lot of fodder here for those of us who think the president's mental state is not optimal at the moment.
Yeah, I mean, let's pick up on the tattoos thing.
In the TV interview that he did, he was asked sort of, you know, images and like, if he thought images of that might have been photoshopped and things like that, again, about the authenticity.
And or interpretation or decoding of these tattoos.
And of course, what he does is he doesn't address it at all.
Instead, in the TV interview, he does that thing he tries to do to deflect.
And basically, just as the interviewer is getting a big break by interviewing him, it's kind of like, how dare you ask me this and suggest this?
Like, you're lucky I'm here.
You're lucky you get to talk to me kind of thing.
That's the sign, among other things, like, aside from the fact of, like, yeah, does Trump actually understand some of these things that are driving, supposedly driving the policy?
Like, who does he have coming to him and saying, there are these tattoos and here's what they mean, and, like, what are they showing him?
What are they telling him that it means?
Like, you know, I think of things like, I don't know, the gang units in law enforcement and things like that, and people who spend decades of their life Immersed in these subcultures, having to learn how they operate, having to learn what the code is, how to decode certain things and so forth.
And then you've got Trump, who's this grandpa-aged figure who doesn't seem to even get what they are.
And he's asked, he's like, basically, did you have any concerns that these might be kind of doctored photos?
Sort of conveniently like, oh, we know he's part of MS-13 because he has MS-13 on his knuckles.
Seems a little bit, you know, on the nose, whatever.
And instead, he just, you know, deflects from that.
That's a sign, number one, of Trump and his narcissism and how dare you question me.
But it's also a sign, almost always, as we know from interactions with just regular people in our lives, you get those people who will never answer a question, who always deflect, and you start figuring out that they don't actually have any, like, real reason for what they do or that, you know,
they can't defend their positions and so forth.
You had that same kind of thing.
The stuff with Harvard, I mean, the Harvard thing is such a big story.
Such a, like, supposedly central part of the Trump administration wanting to bring, you know, elitist universities to heal and so forth.
And, you know, you had Columbia, which just basically, like, did what Trump wanted and Harvard didn't.
And so all the stories I read about, you know, the Trump administration being like, we're going to come back harder.
We're going to really try to break them.
All of this.
So it's like an obvious question.
The context is clear of what we're talking about.
And he goes to Harlem?
You're like, alright, dude.
That was weird.
As you say, there's no good reason.
Either you're not tracking the conversation.
That's a problem.
Or because you're talking to somebody who's black, you somehow think he's talking about Harlem.
That's also a problem.
It's like...
It's like, take your pick, which one of these is, you know, a regular person, if Harlem came up, be like, I'm sorry, what are we talking about?
Like, if you misheard or something, you'd be like, you know, but you start talking about things like withholding funds and stuff.
It was ridiculous.
Yeah, there's so much to say here, but I think there's two things that I just want to focus on, and then we can go to the other interview that really was a big splash this week, which was in the Atlantic, a written interview.
Trump...
Trump, the Harlem thing, makes me question his mental acuity.
Yeah.
Because, like, Dan, this show is, you know, we cover a lot of topics here, but something we focus on often is Christian nationalism, you know, Christianity writ large in the United States.
And if you said Christian, and I didn't hear you, and I was like, you know, you're right, Dan, Christian Slater was a really popular actor in the 1980s and 90s.
Very attractive man.
Who made a big splash for a while and then whose career seemed to drop off.
He'd be like, Brad, this is about Christian.
What's going on?
Are you okay, man?
The trick is, the reason it would stand out is because when you mishear something, you usually tie it in in some way that's relevant to something else.
When it's completely out of left field, no connection at all, you're like, dude, you've got no idea what we're talking about, do you?
Yeah.
So if you suddenly thought I was talking about Christian Slater and not like, I don't know.
Something else.
You thought I said something about Catholicism and not Christian nationalism, like another C word or something that we talk about.
Like, that would make some sense.
But, like, it's just so arbitrary and bizarre that you're like, I don't think you know kind of what in the world is going on right now.
So I think that's one, the mental acuity.
But then I think, and this is, it's not unrelated, but the second one is when he thinks those tattoos are real, it goes right to what you just said.
It confirms...
Something I've been afraid of for a long time, which is that Trump is mentally so far declined that now the most loyal soldiers in his orbit are really running the circus.
And that means, ostensibly, Stephen Miller.
I think it means Russell Vogt having a kind of, you know, a very behind-the-scenes role as a mastermind.
But the one that comes to mind for me is Stephen Miller, who's increasingly out front.
He's on TV often now.
And he really seems to be somebody who is really envisioning the ideal implementation of these, like, inhumane immigration policies and the trade wars, etc.
I'm just imagining Stephen Miller and a cadre of others approaching the president and saying, look, it's on his knuckles, President Trump.
Like, there's no question.
And the 80-year-old Trump being like, yeah, there it is.
I mean, it's really scary to think that the most powerful man in the world believes these things and seemingly has no understanding of what it's.
And it's really sad that Terry Moran was just like, let's agree to disagree.
Like, if this was a real interview, he'd say, do you know what Photoshop is?
Do you know what that means?
Do you understand why, you know, what you're saying is really,
Wildly inaccurate and does not correspond to reality, but none of that happens here.
And it's frightening.
Well, and so the thing is, to me, like, even if it's not mental acuity questions, I think those are there.
It's already the narcissism that drives him.
He's already convinced that all these people are bad and evil and need to be deported and whatever.
So he's already predisposed that somebody can come to him with any evidence they want, because he's not actually looking for evidence.
He's looking for confirmation of what he's already positive is the case, because he can't be wrong and whatever.
So you add these other factors on, and you get a kind of inception sort of thing of like, well, who's planting the ideas?
Who is the one planting it in Trump's already narcissistic, self-centered, I-can-never-be-wrong-my-gut-is-never-wrong kind of mind to basically suggest these things to him enough that he takes them on as his own, and then it's a simple matter.
He said more than once in some of these interviews, and I can't dig through them and find out exactly where now, but...
Multiple times, like, I'm just doing what my attorneys tell me I can do, kind of thing.
I'm like, no, you're doing what you want to do, and you are listening to any attorney who can manufacture a reason to say, yes, the Alien Enemies Act will work.
We can do that.
Here's a way that we can.
You went to them and said, find me something that lets me expel all these people.
Without due process, because that's what they don't want.
They don't want a slow process.
They don't want to have to give reasons.
They don't want exactly what is happening in the courts as they're like, you've got to put the brakes on this.
And yes, you get to control immigration and borders and so forth, but people have a right to due process.
They have a right to challenge that.
They have a right to question your reasoning, etc., etc., etc.
So he's looking for anything he can to already do what he wants.
And so now if you have these trusted individuals in his life who can then just...
Tell him what it is that he wants.
I think it just builds on those already pre-existing things.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, no matter how you look at it, it's not a good situation because Trump has never needed to be convinced that all these people are terrible and so forth.
And so if you have people who are now really preying on that, I think that tells us a lot about where we're at.
And I don't want to spend a lot of time on this because it's not really helpful at this moment.
It's not going to do anything and it's not going to change anything.
There's other places that we should spend our energy and our time actually trying to change things.
But, Dan, can you imagine?
Can you just imagine if Joe Biden was the guy saying things like this?
If Joe Biden was the guy that thought something that was clearly photoshopped wasn't?
If Joe Biden said, well, I can't do that, my lawyer said I can't.
Do you know what...
Everyone from Fox News to Joe Rogan to the entire right-wing media ecosystem would say about that.
I mean, what every manosphere alpha male would say about, you're not allowed to do, you got to listen to your little lawyer, Mr. President.
Do you know what that, like, where is the narrative in the New York Times?
Where is the narrative in the mainstream media that's like, Donald Trump is clearly not mentally fit to be president?
Like, and I know it's not going to happen.
Biden or others don't get covered the same way as Trump, and we're not going to change that.
This is not 2016.
I'm not going to relitigate it.
I just wanted to bring it up quickly.
What are some things from The Atlantic or anything else you want to talk about with this before we break and get into PRRI?
Well, one of the things I want to talk about is another public statement that Trump made.
It was a cabinet meeting that was televised, I think, very obviously intended for mass consumption.
And this is the same.
A lot of people have heard this by now.
He's been confronted multiple times by everybody about the effects of tariffs.
The effect on the stock market, on people's retirements, on all these things.
And will it make prices go up?
And he keeps just trotting out that line that like, no, China's going to pay for it and so forth.
But he made that weird statement where he said people, you know, how do you say it?
He said that kids might have to have two dolls instead of 30. And they might have to pay a couple extra bucks for those.
And that struck a lot of people as weird.
And it was for a lot of reasons.
But I...
I think what it tells us, and this is how so much of these interviews were, and it encapsulates this, is where his actual mindset is.
And here, not even just set aside the questions of mental acuity and so forth.
This is just the elitism of this billionaire and the elitism of a cabinet full of billionaires and the elitism of everybody sort of advising him.
Number one, it trivializes the concerns.
People have concerns about costs going up and all these kind of things.
And he's like, yeah, kids might have fewer toys.
It's like, okay, really?
That's your example?
Not the dude who's like, I don't know, driving a 15-year-old car and has to commute to work and has to be able to get some other vehicle that'll work better.
Or the woman...
HVAC?
Yeah, whatever it is.
Somebody who drives for work.
Somebody's got to take their kids to work.
Somebody who doesn't have...
Child care and has to be able to, you know, get their kids to where they need to go.
All of those kind of things.
Another news item that came out is as of midnight, well, midnight last night or beginning of today, there was a loophole that was closed by Trump on so-called the de minimis loophole, which is like something like goods that are like worth less than $800 weren't subject to tariffs and so forth.
And now they are.
This affects lots of sellers like Timu and others, specifically from China and so forth.
But I came across an article that pointed out that said 48% of those Timu purchases go to the poorest zip codes in the U.S. And what they were looking at is people who think that's why they shop on those sites is because they can't afford other sites.
It's an affordability issue.
So what does Trump do?
He closes that loophole.
People who are saving money and using these sites and looking at these, not because they've got nothing better to do.
Not just because they're trying to save a couple bucks, but because they can't afford not to do that.
And so when he makes this trivializing statement about toys, when he closes this loophole, he presupposes this notion that everybody's just got discretionary income and that's what this is going to affect.
It's not going to affect real people in concrete ways.
We've talked about, lots of people talked about retirement savings disappearing and so forth.
Trump doesn't need retirement savings.
His cabinet doesn't need retirement savings.
They don't care.
What's happening to 401ks?
Because that's not where they get their money.
And it showed all of that.
And if you go through these interviews and look at how he responds to tariffs and so forth, just the endless playing down, the fact of it, the now appealing to the receding horizon of, well, it's going to be tough for a while, but it'll be great.
Just wait.
He said day one, prices would go down.
He said that.
We've been waiting three months now.
Everything's going the wrong direction.
Now we're blaming Biden.
Not just blaming Biden for last quarter, but he now says this upcoming quarter will also be Biden's responsibility.
Somehow, that's a theme that carries through these interviews that I think it's just this callous disregard for real people.
And he was asked, last point I'll make about this and throw it for some of your reflections.
He was asked about, you know, what do you think about people who are being hit by this, who don't support this, who might have voted for you?
And there's lots of data.
There are people who voted for Trump on the economic grounds who don't believe that it's working.
And he said, well, actually, they did approve it because they voted for me.
Just this refusal to recognize that he has any obligation to anybody, including people who voted for him, they just gave him a blank check.
He's going to cash it.
And just the callous disregard for regular people, I think, was really apparent.
I want to stay on that last point just real quick.
You know, there is a consistent message from this administration that you voted for me, therefore what I do is legitimate, is lawful, and is something you want.
Like, that one...
You know, the vote was a kind of permanent show of my ability to rule by fiat.
And one of the things that some of the religious monarchists argue, and what I mean by that is there are people in this country who argue that the executive branch should be something akin to a monarchy or an unchecked executive, an unbound executive.
You can see this running throughout Project 2025.
Which I've maintained on this show for a long, long time, is a very Catholic-infused document.
But the common good Catholics that J.D. Vance listens to, the Adrian Vermeules of the world, the Patrick Deneens, others in that orbit, one of the reasons they always give that we shouldn't be afraid of having an unbound executive in the United States is that the executive is always afraid of losing either their popularity so they won't be elected again,
or...
Their presidential legacy so that people will remember them poorly, a la Jimmy Carter or a la, you know, whoever it is, William McKinley or, you know, you name it, Hoover.
And Trump is, once again, the exception to the rule.
He doesn't care.
Like, he doesn't believe that he's not popular.
It's not that he doesn't care.
I think he just, there's times he's just, like, doesn't believe anything that's actual reality.
But more to the point...
If you read the Atlantic article, he thinks his whole legacy is destruction and shattering and destroying.
And he has no real experience with everyday Americans.
One of the reasons you don't elect a narcissist is because he acts like a narcissist.
But one of the reasons you don't elect a billionaire trust fund baby is because they don't know what it's like to be a public school teacher.
To be driving in February in the Northeast or the Midwest and your car gives out and it's eight degrees.
You don't have money to fix your HVAC.
You don't have money to get your kids a new coat.
You don't know what you're going to do because your kid needs a special program, but you don't have the money for it.
You know, buying eggs, buying meat, buying Christmas presents.
He doesn't care.
And so what I'm driving at here is some of the arguments you're going to hear people make about having an unchecked executive fall apart with Trump because he doesn't actually care about anyone else, including his legacy.
Like, I've maintained for a long time, Mike Pence would be a terrible president because he would be so cruel along the classic Christian right lines of gender, abortion, sexuality, etc.
But Mike Pence would go to bed at night worried about Mike Pence's legacy.
Am I as good as Ronald Reagan?
Am I as good as Ronald Reagan?
With Trump, you don't have that.
The final thing I'll say, and then we really do need a break, is you see in, you know, everything we're talking about here with the tariffs.
We're about to enter a new phase.
So you talked about folks who are struggling with basic needs, whether it's food, whether it's rent, whether it's getting new clothes for their kids for winter, whether it's getting that car fixed that you need to go on your hour-long commute.
I saw some posts last night from people who I would call middle-class, upper-middle-class, like somebody who bought a suit, Dan.
And it was like a $400 suit, which, you know, that's $400, a lot of money.
But, you know, it wasn't a $4,000 suit.
It wasn't a whatever.
But it came from England.
And the final price on the suit was not $400.
It was $800 because of tariffs.
I saw another, like, TikTok from a woman who, like, was going on a trip.
And she wanted to have a new bathing suit.
And I think it was $58 when she bought it from England.
And it ended up being, like, $148.
And that is the reality.
Like, even people who we would consider middle class, who have a little bit of that, like, discretionary income, they can go buy that new bathing suit or that new, you know, sport coat.
They're going to get priced out, too, because it's like, yeah, I can afford $400.
I can't afford $800 for this.
I can't spend $200 on a bathing suit.
I can spend $58 on a bathing suit?
Sure.
Not $200.
Do you think any of the oligarchs around Trump have ever...
Have they ever faced anything like that?
Have they ever had to, like, make not only decisions about the HVAC and fixing the car, but also just like, yeah, I thought we were going to go on vacation as a family, but we can't because everything, you know, costs so much.
Or I thought I was going to buy my kids new clothes for summer, but I can't because fill in the blank.
So that is all coming, like, this week.
Like, we're going to see that this week.
Like, we're going to end up in a much different marketplace, like, by the time you all listen to this.
We will see.
What happens there?
Any final comments?
Just a final one briefly.
You know, you've talked a lot about empathy, the sin of empathy.
I'm going to start a podcast, you know, a series on it's in the code on this.
Both empathy and sympathy.
I don't want to get into the distinctions between those.
But when you say he doesn't care, remember that right now on the right, that's a good thing.
Because caring about other people is a problem.
The problem with America is apparently that we care too much about each other.
And so we need to stop doing that.
So that vice becomes a virtue.
And again, just reinforces the echo chamber he exists in, reinforces all the cycles that you're talking about of people being out of touch and so forth.
When not caring about other people or taking into account is a positive virtue for a ruler as he envisions himself, this is the kind of behavior that you get.
Yeah, and Dan's talking about a series I did on the sin of empathy as it's being developed in right-wing Christian circles.
You can look that up on our feed from March.
And I did three episodes on that.
We also did a bonus episode that got into that as well.
So check that out in our feed.
Let's take a break.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, let's roll right into the PRRI survey and it'll really kind of dovetail on what we just talked about with Trump and with tariffs and with poll numbers and et cetera.
So I think this is a good news, bad news situation.
And I'll throw out some ideas here and then I'll let you...
Jump in with some things you've got from this survey.
So PRRI, the Public Religions Research Initiative, just released this, and it's about how Americans are feeling after Trump's first 100 days.
The thing that sticks out, they got all the headlines, if you Google it, if you look it up, is 52% of Americans believe that Trump is, quote, a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited.
So this is good news, and I'll try to come back to this good news at the end so we sandwich it, but...
Over half of Americans believe Trump is a dangerous dictator.
Not that he's making bad decisions, not that he's done things they disagree with.
It's 56% of independence, which is a lot when you think about independence.
44% believe Trump is a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America's greatness.
Now, that's...
Like, yes, it's good news.
People are waking up to the fact that Trump wants to be a dictator.
You're seeing the protests.
Mayday just happened.
We've seen them all over the country.
It's forming.
Whether or not the media is covering it, etc., it is forming.
44% is a lot, Dan, who think that Trump should be given the power, quote, to restore America's greatness.
That's a lot.
I'll quote from the executive summary here.
Actually, I'm quoting from Robert Jones, the president of PRI's Substack.
He says, as PRI has consistently found in other surveys, there is a stunning ethno-religious divide in support for Trump.
Most white Christians say Trump is a strong leader who should be given power.
He needs to restore American greatness.
But most in other religious groups, non-white Christians, Jews, other non-Christian religions, and the unaffiliated believe Trump is a dangerous dictator who should be limited before he destroys American democracy.
So these are familiar breakdowns if you've been following PRI's work and what we talk about in the show.
But white Christians remain where they've been, which is directly behind Trump.
And the one's willing to say, yeah, let him do what he needs to do to restore the country.
There's so much other stuff here we can talk about.
I'll throw out one more and then I'll let you jump in.
He's underwater on job approval and personal favorability.
So 54% of Americans disapprove of the job he's doing.
43% approve.
However, 85% of Republicans are on board.
They do approve.
This factors into stuff we've talked about already and other polls that have come out.
But among...
Among white Christians and supporters of Christian nationalism, a majority approve of Trump.
Again, the people behind him are those who score as Christian nationalists and those who identify as white Christians.
No more than 35% of any other religious group approve of the job Trump is doing.
So if you are in any other religious group other than a white Christian, there's a two-thirds chance, but probably more, that you are not on board.
What else you got, Dan?
I kind of want to tie in with some of this because one of the things that's striking and not surprising at all for anybody who follows any of this is the partisan divide in these numbers.
So you'll read these and it'll be, you know, as you say, 54% who disapprove or whatever, but then it's like 85% of Republicans or whatever.
Whatever the numbers are, it's always that like some super, super small amount of Democrats support him and super high number of Republicans do or just flip the issue and it's the opposite.
That partisan divide.
And we know this from the election.
We knew this coming into the election, that there's a part of the electorate, the MAGA faithful, who are always going to vote for Trump.
There is literally nothing that could convince them not to do that.
And a large portion of the electorate who are always going to vote against Trump, and there's nothing that could have happened to probably convince them to vote for Trump.
And we know as more and more things have developed out of, you know, following up after the election.
That you did have a group of people, a group of voters who really did swing this and largely on economic grounds and so forth.
So something that this survey looked at that I found of interest was a notion on voter remorse and people who didn't vote.
And I thought that that was telling.
And so I'm looking at the report, the section on voter remorse, and it says 3 in 10 Americans voted for Trump, about 30%, and a similar share voted for Kamala Harris, 29%.
A lot of Americans didn't vote who could have voted, and it does show how close it is.
Again, we've talked about this.
The GOP and Trump like to talk about a mandate that they supposedly have.
He won 49% of the vote.
He did beat Harris, but it was 30% of voters to 29% of voters.
But it says 4 in 10 Americans did not vote, and so there were a large number who didn't.
And then it says nearly all Harris and Trump voters are satisfied with their vote.
That makes sense.
The people who voted for Harris, I guess if they had to do it again, they would do it.
The people who voted for Trump, if they had to do it again, they would do it.
But then it says among those who did not vote, 56% say they're satisfied with their decision, while 31% express regret.
So I found it telling, you know, when we talk about where Trump is and favorability and so forth, this notion that a third of people who didn't vote regret the decision not to do so, which I think communicates they're not happy with where Trump is.
But I cannot help, Brad.
And I know there were real concerns and real issues, and I'm not trying to completely discredit those.
But some of the people who said, we're going to protest this election by sitting it out, we don't think Harris does enough and so forth.
And I had conversations with people and say, but I...
I'm sorry, but I think The prospect of a second Trump term is worse.
I think that's the greater evil.
If these are our options, I think the bigger problem is this.
And I look at those numbers and I cannot help but think that some of that 31% are people who chose not to vote as sort of a protest or, you know, whatever.
Maybe they thought Trump was going to do things, they didn't want to pull the trigger on him or whatever.
He won a percentage point in this election.
Could have done a lot.
And you've got a third of people who didn't vote.
A third of the 40% of total voters who didn't vote who say that they regret that decision.
That weighs heavily on me.
And I think that that was a point of this survey that really struck me.
All right.
I'm going to do some math here.
And it's going to get weird.
Go to it, humanity's guy.
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Man with degrees in religion, philosophy, and theology about to do math.
Here we go.
Okay, so one thing you said, and I want everyone to listen up.
Like, if you're drifting off, if you're driving to work, if you're like, just listen up for a minute.
Trump got 30% of the vote.
Like, meaning 30% of Americans.
Okay, that's what I mean.
Voter-eligible Americans.
Americans eligible to vote.
Less than a third of them voted for Trump, and he's our president.
Okay.
And it's almost identical for Harris, of course, with a couple million less, a little bit less.
Okay.
What we're talking about is a man who was elected by basically 30%, one-third of our population.
So that's really something to hold of.
Now, second, you've got 40% of Americans who did not vote.
And a third of those, Dan, of that 40% is like, I wish I really would have.
That's something like 12% of the population, right?
Correct me.
I don't know if I'm going to get emails or not.
I was doing the math in my head as I was reading it.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
So you're talking like more, like one out of 10 Americans who are like, I wish I would have voted.
And you're rightfully pointing out, and I think it's a good point, like the people who sat on protest, the people who said there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.
I'm sitting out for this reason.
I'm sitting out for that reason.
Okay.
I'm thinking of the people who don't vote just because they don't feel like they should or there's any reason to.
And I'm looking at the Democrats and I'm like,
Do you understand the chance you have here?
Like if a third of those who didn't vote regret it, ostensibly because they see what's happening in the country, do you not see that if you were not invisible, you could go harvest a whole new voting block of people who are so scared of what is on
the horizon for this country?
But we don't see that happening.
I just think that's really, really important to point out.
It's like, the man only got one out of three Americans that vote for him, but part of the reason he won is because four out of ten Americans ostensibly didn't vote, and a lot of them are now like, I should have.
Well, where is the ground game, the grassroots, the candidates, the party that's like, get into the system, get into the political current for the first time, and we're going to defeat this guy and institute a new chapter in the American.
I don't see it with Bernie and AOC accepted and J.B. Pritzker out here doing a pretty good job and Pete Buttigieg going to the manosphere.
I'll give you all kudos.
You all are doing that.
But largely, you know, we've got Gavin Newsom doing whatever he's doing on his podcast.
Gretchen Wittner is apparently now super happy to appear with Trump, has done it twice in the last couple of weeks.
That part's discouraging.
So I'll put that there.
I will, just on this, like, regret theme, I will note that most notable, this is Robert Jones writing, one of the groups that had a notable, like, change of heart are Hispanic Protestants.
And this is a group we talked about a lot.
We talked about Latino voters a lot in the run-up and in the wake of the election.
But he is down among Hispanic Protestants 20 points since the election.
There's a thing there.
And I've talked a lot with scholars of Latino Christianity, Pentecostalism, Charismatic Christianity, about Latino churches.
And on one hand, they've tried to say, look, you've got to understand that immigration may not sway this group in ways you expect.
On the other hand, I think what we are seeing with ICE and the deportations and the cruelty is having an effect.
Now, I don't know for sure.
I don't know.
I don't know why 20%, there's a 20% decline in support from Hispanic Protestants.
I'm guessing, I'm hypothesizing that immigration has something to do with that.
But I just think that's one group that has found themselves to also regret their vote in some form.
So, a couple points here, but one to just dovetail on that that you just said.
I think that one of the things that's happening is, those of us who are critics of Trump, always said...
And of MAGA world, they don't like immigrants, period.
Non-white immigrants.
And that's who they want to get rid of.
And what we were always confronted with, no, no, no, no, no, we're talking about dangerous immigrants.
We're talking about criminals.
We're talking about violent offenders.
These are the people we're talking about, the worst of the worst.
And of course, what we have seen in this first hundred days is they're going after everybody.
They're going after people who are, they consider to be political enemies.
You've had U.S. citizens deported with children with parents and so forth.
Without any kind of due process or clarity that this is what the parents requested, you know, different kinds of complex things like that.
And I've got to think, if I'm hypothesizing that that's a piece of this as well, that this isn't just about closing the border, fine, increase border security.
But it's not just about getting rid of dangerous offenders.
It's about we want a whiter country, and so we're going to try to get rid of as many non-white people as we can.
And I've got to think that that starts to resonate with people who, you know, really believe that that that rhetoric that it was about the worst of the worst and so on and so forth.
Shifting from that, another piece that I think is of interest.
We talked some last week about why, in my view, part of why Trump has made the push that he's made for this shock and awe, executive orders, this weird notion.
I'd have to look historically at when people first started talking about the first hundred days.
It's this kind of arbitrary number of, you know, whatever.
But I made the, throughout the point that I don't know that Trump has the staying power on some topics and issues to kind of go more than 100 days.
He really thought he'd just come in and wave his magic wand and fix it and things aren't fixed and so forth.
I think all of that relates for me in this because there are a couple other things.
And so I'm reading the executive summary of the thing.
It said very few Americans endorse expanding the scope of executive power.
Whether that includes suspending congressional elections or allowing presidents to serve more than two terms, few Americans think the president should be above the law.
And, you know, it talks about this.
They are small numbers.
Only 17% of Americans agree that if Trump can't get our country out of crisis, he should postpone the midterm elections.
You know, really extreme sorts of things.
The next main point was that Americans remain strongly committed to our system of checks and balances, strongly disagreeing that the president should ignore the actions of Congress or the Supreme Court.
The reason I think that that's relevant is I think there's one form of logic that would say, well, why is Trump doing all this then?
If so many Americans are opposed to extending executive power and to maybe disregarding the courts and whatever, why is the administration doing that?
My answer is, because so many Americans oppose that.
This is part of the reason you have this sprint, this kind of blitzkrieg effort to do as much as possible.
To do as much damage as possible.
We talked about the breaking and the shattering.
To have Doge come in and fire as many people as possible.
To have as many executive orders as possible.
To do all of these things is precisely because the administration knows that all of these things are true of the American people.
And they're trying to bypass that.
They are trying to do as much as they can before the system has a chance to kind of rebound against them.
Before...
Congressional leaders have to start, and not just congressional leaders, but people in Congress and the Senate have to start looking at midterms and saying, oh, this is really bad.
There are articles this week about, gee, guess what?
All the doge cuts are starting to really, really hit red states and especially impoverished areas in red states.
Just wait until there's nothing on the shelves in red states going back to the tariffs.
I mean, that's coming soon.
Yeah, wait until Dollar General is like not, you know, it doesn't have anything.
All of these kinds of things.
Courts trying to catch up.
Even SCOTUS catching up.
All of these.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is I think some people have this exactly backwards when they're like, why isn't this popular perspective?
Why isn't this a counterbalance against Trump?
One is the partisan divide.
We've already seen that.
But I think the other one is that it's precisely because for Trump and the Trump administration, this is why they need to do it this way because they know they don't have popular support.
So to do what they want ideologically to do, they have to just go out and do it.
As quickly as they can before the system can rebound, certainly before midterm elections.
And I think that's why we've seen so much in the first 100 days, and especially now as we're beginning to see that rebound effect.
Okay, I want to do one more before we take a break, and it goes back to the immigration theme that you talked about there.
So Robert Jones writes this about the data.
He says, few Americans believe the racist Great Replacement Theory or support Trump's plans to establish militarized internment camps to facilitate mass deportations.
Thanks.
Only one-third of Americans agree with this statement.
Here's the statement.
If you're not listening, listen up, okay?
Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.
Okay, so immigrants are invading.
That's how that starts.
Immigrants are invading.
Do you agree?
Immigrants are invading.
Do you agree?
And they're replacing our cultural and ethnic background.
33% agree with that statement.
The reason, you know, and I've had Robert Jones on this show multiple times.
Robert Jones is a colleague and a friend of mine, and I have nothing but respect for Robbie and everything he does.
So this is a disagreement I have with his interpretation.
It doesn't demean my respect for his work and what he does.
I just don't like that word for you.
I just don't.
I don't like it.
Do you know why, Dan?
It's because we just established 10 minutes ago that Trump won This election on the back of 30% of Americans who can vote.
77 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.
Out of 258 million eligible.
30%.
So when 33% are like, yeah, immigrants are invading and replacing our cultural and ethnic background, the core belief of the Great Replacement Theory, that translates to like 80 million Americans are like,
yeah.
Speaks to the fact that all those places Trump is underwater.
Tariffs, trade, all the stuff with running for a third term, separation of powers.
You can see he's underwater, underwater, underwater.
The place where he's closest to even is immigration.
And I tried to make this case on Monday.
We've tried to make it on the show.
Immigration is still the place where you can grab that moderate, suburban, like, not really in the politics person and scare them easily.
Hey, do you want these people coming across here and giving your kids fentanyl?
Do you want these illegals coming over here and destroying our schools and our communities?
Well, I don't think you do.
So, you know, you person who doesn't really care about politics, you're into, like, the internment camps.
We've got to beat these people in camps before we can get them out of here.
35% of Americans agree the federal government should place immigrants who are in the country illegally in internment camps, guarded by the U.S. military.
This comes on the back of Trump signing the executive order where he says he's going to strengthen and unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens.
And it really does sound like seeking the military on the public.
So, I just don't agree with Robbie here that this is a few.
This is like a lot.
And, right, if you have 18% of the U.S. population who supports something like, you know, another issue, Whether it's separation of powers, whether it's tariffs, that's one thing.
When you have like 80 million Americans that are like, yeah, immigrants are invading and they're destroying the country.
That's not good news.
That's not like, oh yeah, it's only a few bad apples who think this.
This is like many, many, many, many, many Americans.
And it's more of a percentage than voted for Trump and got him into office.
Yeah, just to jump into that real quick.
The way I often try to, because you hear these numbers and percentages and so forth, that means, you know, obviously Americans are not evenly distributed in their political views.
But if they were, it means like one out of every three.
Like voter-eligible Americans.
That's a lot.
It's a high percentage.
So it's like a lot and a little.
It's like it's not close to a majority.
But it's like a lot of, it's 80 million people.
It's a significant minority.
That's how you would describe that, not just a few.
And I'm with you with all the respect for Robert P. Jones and all of that, and agree, and, you know, he gets that.
It's just, I agree, it's a frightening number, and I think you really put it in perspective well to say it's a larger number of Americans, a larger percentage of Americans than who actually voted for Trump.
And that's the way to say this.
Those views are not limited to Trump voters.
They are not just MAGA views.
They are not just fringe views.
They're significant, and they cut more widely than we would think.
And I think that the last telling point about that is how inflammatory that statement is, that immigrants are invading the country.
It's something that pollsters do.
You write the question in a particular way, and then people fill in or respond with, you know, agree, strongly agree, disagree, whatever.
I think that's an intentionally, like, pretty intense inflammatory question.
There are people who would answer yes to a less inflammatory question.
In other words, that question is going to weed people out.
If you had people who said, I'm uneasy about the number of immigrants coming into the country or something like that.
Are you uncomfortable with the amount of immigrants?
Yeah, you're not using words like invading and, you know, whatever.
Something softer.
Replacing.
There are more people who are going to say, well, yeah, I'm a little uneasy about that.
I'm not comfortable about that.
Or it makes me feel weird in the grocery store.
I say, look, everybody's speaking Spanish now.
You know, whatever.
Whatever those kind of cultural discomfort things are, that number of people is higher than this number of people is going to be.
So I think it's even more significant that the question is posed.
And it's not a criticism of that question.
I understand why the question is phrased that way, to really get at the kind of hardcore people who think that.
The point is just...
There are people who are probably going to vote the same way they do on immigration, on immigration alone, who might not say something so inflammatory.
And that's a reality as well.
Yeah, the immigration issue is the place the Trump administration knows it can tread water.
If it's underwater in other places, tariffs are going to destroy them.
They're not going to be popular here.
Give it a week.
Give it a month.
It's going to get worse.
When it comes to immigration.
And I would not be surprised, Dan, to see as the tariff stuff gets worse and worse and worse, to see Tom Homan arresting.
Like, we haven't talked about it.
And we should, I mean, what are we supposed to do?
Talk about 18 stories a week in an hour?
I mean, they arrested judges.
I mean, they're arresting judges.
So are they going to arrest Sanctuary City mayors next?
Are they going to arrest Sanctuary?
State governors next.
That's where we're headed.
Tom Homan has already foreshadowed that.
As the tariff stuff goes south, they're going to look for other ways to keep up their approval, and immigration is where they're going to try it.
Let's take a break.
All right, Dan, run us.
We've talked about this on the show before, but we have new developments in the case out of Oklahoma that is at the Supreme Court.
Run us through a little bit of that, and we'll talk about what's going on.
What we're talking about is a charter school in Oklahoma, Christian charter school.
So charter schools are sort of privately run but publicly funded.
So they live in this kind of weird space between public and private.
So that's the point.
The issue is the public funding.
Charter schools normally get public funding, but private Christian schools normally do not for constitutional reasons.
And so it's made all the way to the Supreme Court, Oklahoma, arguing that there should be...
And we don't know.
The court appears sympathetic to allowing that, is the way that people will describe it.
It's worth noting that Amy Coney Barrett has recused herself from this, so there could be a tie decision, in which case lower court orders would stand.
Lower court orders have barred.
The use of state funds to support this on the grounds that, in case people want to know why, and this is going to be important in a minute because I'm going to talk about our friend Brett Kavanaugh, the reason that this is important is because it's basically considered, you know, is that a state sponsorship of a Catholic church,
of the Catholic religion, if you're using tax money to support it?
And so this was there, and why do they say they appear ready to do this?
Well, Alito and Kavanaugh, surprise, surprise, clearly support this.
But I want to just highlight part of what Kavanaugh said.
This is a quote.
I think I'm taking this from Politico and their quotations from opening arguments.
He said this.
He said, quote, You can't treat religious people and religious institutions and religious speech as second class in the United States.
And when you have a program that's open to all comers except religion, that seems like rank discrimination against religion.
They're not asking for special treatment.
They're not asking for favoritism.
They're just saying, don't treat us worse because we're religious, end quote.
So here's the thing.
When Brett Kavanaugh says you can't discriminate against religious organizations, yes, you can.
And so we know I'm a staunch church-state separation person.
Andrew Seidel is a kindred spirit with us and talks about this in things related to the show and his podcast and so forth a great deal.
That's exactly what separation of church and state does, is say, we're going to discriminate against religious organizations.
You want to put it that way, Brett Kavanaugh?
Fine, put it that way.
We're not going to support any of them.
That's what it means.
That way it doesn't look like the U.S. is playing favorites with religion.
You also had Neil Gorsuch, who brings up a point, and this is a real point, and said to the defenders of the people arguing for Oklahoma, and said, well, are you afraid that if you get federal dollars, then you're also going to get more federal oversight and so forth?
It's another piece of the traditional notion of separation of church and state, is it also keeps the government from intruding into religion, but it also keeps religion from dictating government, from the government basically becoming a religious tool and so forth.
And so Brett Kavanaugh, in my view, has this exactly backwards and knows he has it backwards when he says, well, we're treating them as second-class citizens.
They're not asking for special—they are asking for special treatment.
They're asking for treatment that violates the First Amendment.
In my understanding, in the Jeffersonian understanding of the First Amendment, that's really clear.
You had, and again, in the weird world that we live in, John Roberts could well be the deciding vote here.
And he's the same John Roberts who has penned three recent
that have weakened the traditional separation of church and state.
In 2017, he wrote the decision requiring Missouri to pay for playground resurfacing at a church school.
Maybe not sound like the biggest deal, but using public funds to deal with resurfacing a playground at a Christian school.
And then in 2020 and 2022, he penned the decision that favored parents seeking student aid and tuition assistance for Christian schools, public student aid and assistance.
So, guess what three case laws, Brad, the Oklahoma people arguing for this cited.
They cited those three opinions penned by Roberts to say that you've essentially weakened these separations.
Here they are.
We don't know where this is going to go.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Roberts votes against this to have a tied court, to allow the lower court order to stand.
And then he gets to wash his hands of it and basically say the Supreme Court didn't actually do anything.
We didn't actually weigh in.
I think it gives them an out because that's what would happen if you had a tied decision.
But this is a case people have been watching.
We've seen the erosion of that understanding.
Brett Kavanaugh makes this statement about discrimination and so forth.
I've got some thoughts on some things Alito said.
If there's anybody I like less on the Supreme Court than Brett Kavanaugh, it's probably Alito.
But I'll throw it to you for your thoughts on this as we sort of keep an eye on it.
Clarence Thomas is still alive, Dan.
Okay.
But Clarence Thomas rarely says anything during opening arguments.
Whenever the decision comes out, Thomas will say something, but Thomas is usually quiet during opening argument.
You're right.
Okay.
A couple of thoughts here is the key here.
Roberts did indicate in this that he was looking at this in light of Fulton...
Versus City of Philadelphia, which is a case about religious adoption and Catholic groups being able to be part of adoption agencies in the City of Philadelphia.
And basically the City of Philadelphia is saying, we're not going to allow you to be a contractor because you won't place children in same-sex homes, like homes with same-sex partnerships and marriages.
In that case, the idea for Roberts was, well, they're contractors and this and that.
So he seems to be thinking along those lines.
So there is a world where one a lot of people think is coming, where actually Roberts decides to go with Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas on this.
I think one of the things, I mean, I don't know if I'm going to steal your thunder here with Alito, but one of the ways Alito seems to be looking at this is he goes on this whole diatribe about how...
You can have a charter school that teaches that being LGBTQ is, quote, a perfectly legitimate lifestyle, but you cannot have a Christian school.
And this is a perfect encapsulation of how Alito is a religious fundamentalist who has bought the idea, and there are many out there, including some of those Catholics I talked about 40 minutes ago, who are law professors and philosophers.
That it is impossible to have a worldview that is not religious.
That even if you're an atheist or a liberal or somebody who believes in the Enlightenment, you are religious because you have ultimate principles.
And we can debate that.
But what he's doing is basically saying, you're teaching that being gay is okay.
Or you're just, I don't know, gay kids are allowed at your school and not discriminated against, I think is probably also a thing.
I don't know what schools are actively teaching.
You know, that it's a perfectly legitimate lifestyle.
A, lifestyle is the wrong word, etc.
The more important point, though, is for him, this is like, well, how come you can get government money if you think that, you know, gay kids at your school isn't a big deal and you don't discourage them from being gay?
But you can't get money if you are a Catholic organization and have a religious worldview.
So I just want to jump in here.
You're on, I think, a really good point here.
And I think there, you know, I talk and it's in the code sometimes about the bait and switch kind of maneuver.
And this is one of them.
This is the so-called viewpoint diversity argument.
There should be a diversity of viewpoints.
And why are you opposing a diversity of viewpoints?
You only want one viewpoint.
But what they're doing is they're swapping religion in there.
Because the reality is, in the United States, outside of conservative religionists, there's almost nobody who opposes queer rights.
At least if you're talking about gay people and lesbians, transgender issues have become less popular over time.
That's a different issue.
But the point is, there isn't a wide array of diversity of viewpoints outside of religious circles.
So yeah, sorry Alito, the fact that it is within religious circles that those perspectives are being articulated means it's a religious position, it's a religious teaching that would then be advocated by the state.
That's why.
So this isn't about...
Like, he's phrasing it as if it's just about a diversity of viewpoints.
You just don't want a diversity of viewpoints.
You're trying to only fund the viewpoint you agree with.
Yep.
And he's sort of, like, masking the religious component and being like, oh yeah, by the way, the only people who teach this other thing are religionists.
The only way for it to make it in the schools the way we say it is, is to allow religious indoctrination in the schools.
And that is what...
In my interpretation, and that of a lot of other people, the First Amendment is supposed to prevent.
So I think, and I don't know if I'm being clear about that, but for me, that's part of the bait-and-switch thing.
It's the same thing with Kavanaugh being like, you're discriminating against religious people.
Like, no, we're just like, the Constitution says you can't have a state sponsorship of religion.
These are state-funded institutions.
That's what that would amount to.
So it's like they try to kind of take, ironically in a way, to take the religion piece out of it and make it sound like...
There's a different motive here.
Well, it's DEI.
They want diversity, Dan.
They just want a different kind of diversity.
I mean, this is...
Right?
This is DEI.
Yeah, they're all opposed to diversity if it's racial.
But if it's viewpoint diversity, then all of a sudden they're supposed to be all for it.
What?
You don't want the diversity of having these religious groups in?
You won't include them?
You won't give them a place at the table?
Equity?
Okay.
I want to say real quick, I know we're out of time.
We have secular public schools and not sectarian public schools for a reason, but I want to decode something for you all before we leave today.
Secular is often conceived of as non-religious.
Oh, you're secular, meaning you're not religious.
Secular means universal in this case.
And what I mean by that is, if a school is secular, it is not holding a certain religious worldview such that Whoever you are in the school, the neighborhood elementary school, you are not judged according to the worldview of any Christian tradition,
any Hindu tradition, any Buddhist tradition.
Secular means universal.
It means that when you show up at the school, you are a human being with all the rights and liberties of being in the United States.
And as secular, it is public because it's open to everybody.
And that could mean your sexual identity, your gender identity.
That could mean your immigration status.
Whoever you are, you come to this school, and it is a secular school, meaning it's a universally accepting school.
You are not judged by race, creed, gender, sexuality when you come here.
We're going to educate you in what?
The American experiment.
Public schools are the place where you ritualize American pluralism, American democracy, and American difference.
It's where you learn, right?
What it means to go to school with your neighbors who are not like you, who have a different way of life in their home, a different religion, a different ethnicity, different foods, different immigration stories, different whatever, different family structures.
And so when you start to attack the idea of a secular school, to me you're attacking not the idea of non-religion, you're attacking the universality.
The United States is supposed to be this place where everybody can pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
And if the schools that we fund with our taxes are based on Catholic doctrine, that is no longer true.
That's a major issue for me.
So, final thoughts and then give us your reason for hope.
I think, just to say that I think that that's the issue.
The goal is government neutrality toward religion.
And you just can't do that if you're favoring particular religious traditions.
Especially Christianity.
And we know that on the right, when they talk about religion, they mean Christianity.
They're not talking about funding an Islamic charter school.
They're talking about funding a Catholic charter school and think that that's really important.
My reason for hope comes from talking about DEI article this week about a lot of evidence, and there's social scientists who are looking at this and others, that...
Even companies that have officially rolled back DEI initiatives are not doing so in practice.
And I've wondered about this.
There's beginning to be some scholarship about this, that essentially a lot of companies are telling the administration what they want to hear, but that in practice, many of their hiring policies, training policies, and things aren't different.
And people on the right recognize this as well, and they want to go after those companies.
But there's an example here.
It was a survey by the Littler law firm that found that only 8% of business leaders are seriously considering DEI changes.
And that nearly half said there are no plans for new or further rollbacks.
There's a part of me, again, hope, not assurance, but hope, that a lot of companies that have basically stopped talking about DEI, about trying to be more diverse, about trying to be more equitable, are in practice still aiming at those as goods to be,
you know, as good things to try to work toward.
And so I took hope from that this week.
My reason for hope is that Trump-appointed judge has basically ruled that Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was not valid and that it needs to be stopped.
So I'll just read here.
Fernando Rodriguez, Southern District of Texas, basically said, the president, and I'm quoting now, the president cannot summarily declare that a foreign nation or government has threatened or perpetrated an invasion.
He's basically like, you can't just say that...
Venezuela invaded the United States.
Like, on what ground?
Where is that coming from?
Allowing the president to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA and then summarily declare those conditions exist would remove all the limitations to the executive branch's authority.
He's basically like, if you can just declare anything an invasion, you can invoke the Alien Enemies Act, and you can, you know, to me, I'm looking forward.
It's like, you can also just...
As many dictators have in the past, say, oh, we need martial law because we're being invaded or because of unrest socially and internally, blah, blah, blah.
This is good news.
We'll see what happens next.
We'll see what's going on.
There's other good news about folks being released from prison or from detention, I should say, and others.
But, you know, we'll see what the reaction is to this.
There's more happening than we can cover today, folks, but hopefully you found some insight in our discussion of what's happening with PRRI in the Oklahoma case.
We'll be back next week with, I'll have an interview coming from Oklahoma.
That is with Mickey Dollins, a state rep there, who talks about ways to get involved in local politics and to fight back, especially if you're in a red state.
Dan will have it in the code and we'll be back for the weekly roundup.
We will also, on Thursday, air our event with Leah Payne that happened yesterday.
Some of you tried to get in and couldn't.
We had, basically our room was overflowing and we hit our cap, so.
If you tried to get into that, that's why we'll do another one soon.
