David French: MAGA Is Making America Less Free

0:00Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. I'd like to welcome back to the show, opinion comments for the New York Times co-host of the legal podcast advisory opinions former Jag Officer. It is David French. Welcome back, David. Tim, great to see you. Good to see you too, man. We'll have much to discuss, including ending with your class conversation about just war theory and LSU football. So we'll get to that. I have minor good news for listeners and an appreciation for people that were calling, Katie Britton, others office. The Venezuela and family had mentioned a couple of weeks ago now at Gariani and Freddy's, did finally get out of the Dilly detention center and they were back in Venezuela. I mean, probably the best news would have been if they were able to stay in America, but that's neither here nor there. At least they're no longer in a detention center. Appreciate the audience

1:00that engaged on that. Let's good news on some of the other stuff related to the detention. So I wanted to start there. You wrote a Times column this week talking about now, you know, about a year old, the remains of Ostrich story. There's a legal ruling about that that reflected back in that story and talked about just kind of the perniciousness of this policy of the administration. So why don't you just cook on that? Sure, sure, sure. So let's go back to March 20, 25 March of last year. And there was this footage that was really, when you knew it in context, was really shocking. It's as young Muslim woman. She's bundled up for the winter and it's cold weather and some plain clothes officers come up to her. One of the puts her his hands on her. She screams, next thing, you know, there are several other plain clothes officers. They kind of gather around her leader away, shackler leader away. And if that was a video of an arrest for, say, a violent crime, you know, a murderer, armed robber, something like that, it would not be a shocking video. It'd actually be kind of a benign arrest. I mean, she wasn't thrown to the ground

2:03or anything like that. But then you heard why she was arrested. She was arrested and detained for deportation because she was a co-author of Tim. What is really a pretty milk toast op-ed? Yeah. I mean, it was anti-Israel. No question about it. You know, it was calling for a tough university where she was a graduate student to, you know, boycott Israel, you know, wanted the school to call what was happening in Gaza, genocide, like very standard rhetoric, like very standard rhetoric. Yeah. She was one of four authors. And immediately the news comes out that she was being deported under this relatively obscure legal provisions. They give the secretary of state essentially total discretion to deport a visa holder when the secretary of state in total discretion decides that they're a serious threat to the foreign policy of the United States. And when I first heard this, I thought that can't be right. Like even in the Trump administration.

3:05Like even in the Trump administration. She's got to be texting ISIS or something. Yeah. She checked the ISIS. She shoplifted it like something else is going on. But no, is the court proceeding sonfold and there was a bail hearing after she'd been detained for weeks, Tim, for weeks. There was a bail hearing. And the judge in the hearing was like, no, this is, she was detained for co-authoring. Again, this was not an op-ed calling for the op-violent overthrow of the United States of America. It was an op-ed engaging and bog standard pro-Palestinian rhetoric. Like the most standard pro-Palestinian rhetoric. It wasn't even written in in inflammatory ways. Pretty dry, to be honest. And no, in fact, she was had been detained for weeks for writing an op-ed. And the reason I wrote about this, this incident that occurred in 2025 is because just last week there was a federal judge in California who struck down the or

4:05issued a declaratory judgment declaring that the statutes that Rubio had used were unconstitutional, at least as applied to protected speech. In other words, the government was relying on unconstitutional statutes to deport non-citizens for their speech. And so I wrote about that for a couple of reasons. One is I'm just getting all of this sort of, you know, normy Republicans who are desperate for a normy Republican to kind of unite behind around 20, in around 2028. And a lot of them have fixed their eyes on Marco Rubio. Well, Rubio, in his little sphere of influence, has been a bit of a 10-pot dictator. This is the worst. I went to the worst last week in the cabinet. This is inexcusable. Like these people, and what we found out is, and what the courts found out, as there were factual findings and investigation of all this, is that the administration worked with a pro-Israel activist organization called Canary Mission, got a list of about 5,000 people to further scrutinize, who had engaged in a pro-Palestinian rhetoric or anti-Israel rhetoric.

5:12Whittled that down to between 100 and 200 people to target them for further investigation. Again, around their political speech. So if you're thinking about this as, wait a minute, could this happen in America? Like, what is happening? You're on the right track. But when the judge struck down these statutes, the reaction in parts of the right was just really volcanic at the very idea that non-citizens would enjoy free speech rights. Just volcanic. Some people are even calling it the Constitution as a suicide pact. Suicide pact, because it lets graduate students write op-eds. I mean, what are we even doing here? I mean, this is so- Ben Shapiro, even like in the more mainstream of the right wing, he wrote this, you put this. We should deport people who hate America and aren't citizens. The administration was making the precisely the correct moves on this front. What the heck? And what was making this particularly pernicious is that if you actually read the text for the Constitution, if you read the Declaration of Independence, if you read the founders, sort of the idea that American liberty is for American

6:17citizens only, was totally alien to them. I mean, that's just not the way that the United States was envisioned. Well, all of them were born in a foreign country for starters. Well, I mean, and you know, it's so funny, Tim, one of the things, I feel like, like, this is my nerd moment. Like, this is the nerd moment. Like, I've been waiting for my whole life. I've loved the read about the debates around the founding. I've loved to read about the founders my whole life. I've read the Federalist papers, the anti-Federalist papers, and was just waiting in a corner, Tim, to like, pounce on the right moment in American history to be like, this is all so relevant because it is. You know, what's so interesting is we're refighting a lot of the fights around the founding. And it's the Trumpist right that is essentially trying to reinvent the founding of the United States to pull, you know, for all their talk in Trump 1, the 1776 project, all of their tattoos about patriotism and all of this stuff. A lot of these guys are essentially

7:18trying to unwind big parts of the founding to make America less free and more showvinistic and nationalistic. And more white. But we have, you know, going back to the alien and sedition acts in 1798, you have been like Thomas Jefferson, principal author of Declaration of Independence, James Madison, principal author of the Bill of Rights saying, no, the blessings of American liberty extend to non-citizens who are in our midst. And this is very, very clear. And Jefferson even goes so far as to say, if you are attacking the quote, friendless alien, the citizen is next. And we have seen this, we have seen this. And we can go into the law of it all, but the text of the Constitution backs this up as well. The ban on Congress of bridging free speech is a blanket ban. It's not for citizens. The Fifth Amendment, which was also another constitutional amendment that court used to overturn these statutes, protects the due process rights of persons, not just citizens, persons. And so the text of the Constitution, the clear intent of the founders,

8:26the Declaration of Principles and the Declaration of Independence, which does not limit unalienable rights to Americans, all men are created equal. All of this is said that from the founding, this idea that non-citizens in our midst have no rights at all is just alien. And here we come with Marco Rubio coming in and exercising this really stupid grant of discretion that Congress gave presidents and secretaries a state years ago, exercising it in the most brutally authoritarian way. And creating literally Tim, I could class of political prisoners in the US. Well, I want to bring this up for three reasons. One, I want to let you nerd out. Two, when I did a big rant about Marco Rubio not being the norway administration last week on the show. I was focusing on his failures in diplomacy, which I think is the main job of Secretary State as far as I can tell. But he's got a lot of hats. Yeah, yeah. But I left this kind of aside, the immigration part of it, which is maybe where he's shown his most authoritarian impulses.

9:27But the other reason I want to bring it up is I mentioned on the show, a story of Mariam Thomas-Sabbie and her husband and son a couple weeks ago now, there was an article in the nation. She had written from inside of Dilly Prison, an article from the nation. And I've now been emailing her a little bit. And so I just want to say up front, this story is so insane. It's similar to the remains of ostrich thing, but it's like, my source for this is what she is telling me, right? And so is it possible there's some other thing happening, I guess, but the administration hasn't shown us anything. And now we've seen the administration's track record of doing things exactly like this. So I don't have any reason not to believe her, but I do just want to say that. So the story for people who missed the last time I mentioned it, there was an online smear campaign. This is kind of really similar to the ostrich story, but instead of being about me in the Israel, it was kind of the pro-shah Iranian crowd. Very much of the time I said, he's mother-in-law or husband's mother was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979 before any of the people that are detained were even born.

10:29This kind of petition went up online that they were targeted. They've been detained. They're from California. They were sent to, well, Mariam and her son are in Dilly. The husband's in a different detention center somewhere else. So they've been separated. And the email she sent to me, she says, again, this is her testimony. Our case is the first of any green card holders in the history of the country. The government's taken their legal status away, not because of anything that they have done, but because of family relationship, the government's presented zero evidence, except for this rubio letter that you have been talking about, David. That rubio letter resulted in the attention of her child, a 10th grader, saying that he's a potential threat to US foreign policy. She says, he's an average American teenager that's been hard beyond belief by this. The family doesn't even have a speeding ticket to its name, no other crimes. The government hasn't offered them a single pathway out of detention or even out of a country for 150 days. Talk about weeks in the ostracase. They've been in detention for 150 days. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I mean, now again, I will do the caveats. But, you know, at some point,

11:38this is what happened with the ostracase is the government has to put up or shut up. In other words, when you go into court, there's got to be evidence there. And what the administration's very good at doing is making sort of sweeping, condemnatory statements and then not backing them up with any evidence at all. Like this op-ed, one of the things you're talking about, Ben Shapiro's statement and others about people who hate America, you know, Steven Miller, people who hate America. If you read the op-ed, you would see that she doesn't have a lot for Israel. No question about that. And as I said in my piece, I disagree with this op-ed. I'm not sitting here defending somebody who's like on my side of an argument. This is somebody who I disagree strongly with the op-ed. But, you know, this is the United States of freaking America. And if you can't debate a tough PhD student on this matter, who's the snowflake here, right? I mean, like, come on. And so here you have a situation where once again, you had this sort of hate America. And then

12:40you hate America is not a grounds for, what does that even mean? Who's defining that, right? But that's not even... Trumpates America in some ways. He's attacked our country and our history in some pretty incredible ways. Yeah, I mean, he's compared us to Putin's Russia. I mean, this is the kind of thing that he does. But this sort of idea that you're going to make these big sweeping declarations. And time and time again, not always. Sometimes, you know, we hear one story, and then when the evidence comes out, we find out that the person who's being deported did some serious things, you know, sometimes the facts actually align for the administration. But we've seen this movie before, Tim. Big sweeping declarations when it comes to put up or shut up and court, they have nothing to put up. And this is something that's very important, I think, to emphasize. We're seeing this people being detained in tough conditions, detained, imprisoned when they're not actually accused of a crime. Indefinitely. And definitely. That's what she said to me in the name of us. She's like, I've been in for 150 days. Even if Rubio's detention order was somehow constitutionally

13:45valid. Why is a non-criminal spending weeks in difficult conditions in detention when they're not even being accused of a crime? This is something that I think keeps getting glossed over and a lot of our debates. Again and again, you see the administration bragging about the brutal way that it treats immigrants. You see immigrants like being led in humiliating fashion, up airplane steps, bound, hand in feet, shackled, handed feet, like criminal defendants coming into a courtroom of people who, you know, armed robbers, suspected murderers, et cetera, bound, hand in feet. And the people who are bound, hand in feet weren't even in the country illegally, in some cases, where if you're dealing with the TPS deportees, they were here legally. And now they're being deported, bound, hand in feet. And what planet is this not barbaric? I mean, this is absurd. We're treating non-criminals worse in some ways than we treat certain classes of

14:46actual criminals in the United States. Yeah, way worse. It's staggering. Way worse. It's staggering. Another thing that Mariam said and her email to me is that the conditions in these metal trailer prisons they're in are crazy and daily. And we've seen that reporting from other people. You know, folks that I've had on the program, Jonathan Blitzer. So it's horrifying. I'm going to keep on this time of study story for people and let folks know if there's anything they can do. But you know, to your point about the way that the administration is now acting, one thing that we've been saying recently, because it's true, is it was like a modest change in tone. In some ways that I thought was kind of pernicious, honestly, from like the gnome to the mullin DHS, where they're doing less of like the ASMR, you know, immigrant cruelty porn. But then yesterday they're back. This is probably the picture you were just referencing, Mark Wayne Mullen posts a picture of the Haitians, you know, going onto a deportation fight shackled and you know, talking about how it's keeping the country safe. That's like, these people came to the country legally. Yeah,

15:50came to the country through a legal process. It's like, okay, it's fine if you want to change the policy. It's not my preferred policy. But to dehumanize them and treat them like criminals and thugs and threats to the country is disgusting. And was it you, Tim, that tweeted, or I can't, no, I think it was Jesse Shingal who tweeted out that same thing. And it was like every time. And it was like bragging and showing and puffing the chest out about this dehumanizing treatment of people who are not criminals. And then in the bio, first word, Christian. And if this doesn't sum up so much of the quote unquote Christian activism of the Trump era, it's again and again and again, you will see somebody celebrating cruelty. You'll see somebody spreading lies. You'll see somebody engaging in the most vicious speech and cruel speech online. And then you go to their biome. It's like Christ is king or Christian. And I mean, this is a bit of a tangent. The long term damage to in particular, the evangelical church is going to be very significant. It's going to be very

16:56significant because there will come a time when people will wake up from all of this. And in their foggy hangover from all of this cruelty, we'll say, who, what, let us down this path. And the number one answer is going to be the white evangelical church. That's going to be the number one answer, at least from the grassroots up standpoint. Guys, this summer, it's getting kind of sweaty down here in the bayou. And boy, as I mentioned on the show, think about how sweaty it's going to be up in Baton Rouge with all the hot air coming out of the tiger faithful. As we begin the lane, kiffin experience. And if you're going to be in a sweaty environment, you want, you want some clothes that keep you comfy, keep you from overheating. And one way to do that is with our friends, Mack Weldon's air knit fabric. The Mack Weldon air knit fabric is super cozy. I've been doing that V-neck tee. I got out of V-neck. I was very big into V-neck

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18:59Mack Weldon.com and get 20% off your first order of 125 bucks or more with promo code double work that's m-a-c-k-w-e-l-d-o-n dot com code the board. I asked you if you all met this yesterday, an email from a reader that was like, why isn't they're more focused on, obviously, Christians should believe in treating everybody with dignity, it's fundamental to the faith, but it's just a rhetorical matter. A lot of people that were being deported and that were treating like this are Christians. We're sending them back to places. I mentioned this story yesterday about the couple of the goth sent to Guatemala, back to this gang-ridden part of Guatemala that are from and the two parents get killed and the baby is left there, let next door bleeding out mother. In a lot of cases, these are Christians that we're doing this to. Oh, absolutely. And what makes it even worse, Tim? There's a recent, I've just gotten some information about refugee resettlement for persecuted Christians.

20:03Okay, so this is the big pro-Christian administration. So in 2024, the last full year of the Biden administration, there are 29,479 persecuted Christians, refugees permitted to resettle in the United States. That's the highest number since 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, 32,000 persecuted Christians. 2026, Tim. Four. Zero. Zero. Nine went high on my guess. You went high. Zero. Zero. And in fact, what we're seeing is persecuted Christians and sometimes being deported back to the places where it persecuted them. Yeah, we're doing the persecuting. Actually, it's negative. Zero is too nice to them. Zero is too nice. If you count as a negative one for every persecuted Christian, we persecute the number as deep into the negatives. That's just stunning stuff. I mean, and it really does demonstrate that just a total upside down morality right now, in which so many Christians are approaching politics, just totally upside down.

21:07And to the extent to which they're cheering on an administration that is abandoned, Christian brothers and sisters around the globe who are facing unimaginable persecution in some parts of the world, just unimaginable. And like the gates of the United States of America are now close to them. What are we doing here? Like what are we doing here? It's sick. And just maybe the prime most kind of clownish example of this hypocrisy. I'd like to show a video. It's a gentleman that was so performative and as Catholicism, one of my people unfortunately, in this case, that he went on to kind of a Christian broadcast in QVC to little totems from saints to old ladies and did a lot of performative religiosity and demonstrated just how Catholic he was. simultaneous to that, he was tweeting about how he likes to masturbate to ice detentions. Like he makes him so excited when immigrants get detained by ice that he masturbates to it. Unfortunately for him, he was in a legal immigrant

22:13in the country and got to experience some of that brutality. And he described it on the pier's Morgan show. I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality as an America. The manner in which they arrest you, they put your manacles, your hands, your feet, chaining together. I mean, like everybody is arrested is like an MS-13 gang member and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television. I was weeping like an old woman for an hour and I was like, oh, I really have to go to get this out of my system. I think maybe in the past I've been a little bit, a little bit blasmy when people talked about their trauma, a little bit kind of cavalier when people talked about stuff kind of lingering with them, but I get it now. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. David, it hurt more than he thought. Wow, yeah. You know, Tim, and part of the irony here is this guy, Milo Yanopoulos, is one of the architects of Trumpism. I mean, this is a guy who you remember,

23:15I remember this very well 2015, 2016. He was the guy running around calling Trump daddy. He was sort of the clown prince of the alt right at that time. His star was rising. In 2017, you know, think of him as like the Tucker Carlson-esque slash Nick Fwentes-esque style troll of Trump one until his star came crashing to the ground in 2018. He's been trying to crawl back into prominence ever since then. He's not a good guy. This is not a good guy. And I tweeted something out that detonated like a small bomb on that infernal website. And I was just like, this is why the attack on empathy is so evil. Because if we have to wait for person after person to actually experience the brutality of this administration before we wake up, then the human cost is going to be staggering. But if instead we can have a modicum of empathy, look at somebody who's being frog marched out of the country in Manacles as shackled when they did not commit a crime. And we can't have

24:22any empathy for that. Then we're going to guarantee just continued brutality. And when I tweeted that out, I'm not saying Milo's a good guy. Often we learn about brutality from people who are not good guys. That's who we learn about brutality from. But it's a perfect lesson. This guy was one of the architects of the destruction of empathy in our culture. I mean, he's one of the chief offenders. Anytime you can tweet about masturbating to other people's misfortune, you're horrific. And then it's an old story, Tim. It happens to you. I don't get one exception in this case. I don't know. No exception. No exceptions to. I haven't done it. I just wanted to check with you. And then you get to this and you're like, this is the oldest story in the book. You know, that's that old statement. You're reaping. Here I go. And then you're sowing. What the heck? What is happening? And just this is another example. So people got mad at you as the anti-empathy crowd that was mad at you. Who's mad at you? Anti-empathy crowd. And then some people are like, how are you giving any credence

25:26to my love's words? He's a clown. He's an evil clown. Well, yeah, he's been an evil clown. But as I was explaining to you know, some friends of mine who are sort of pushing back on my tweet. I was like, you know, I've spent enough time dealing with civil liberties to know that the canaries in the coal mine of brutality are the people who get detained. And a lot of the people who get detained aren't great people. But there are stories. Many of their stories about brutality are very true. And so you have to be able to hold in two things in your mind at once. Milo Unopolis, evil crown prince of Maga for many years. Also Milo Unopolis, human being who did not commit a crime and he shouldn't have been shackled like he was an armed robber. You can have those thoughts in your brain at the same time. You got weight loss goals and now, Labor Day and the summer. It's time to actually hit them. Weight loss by hymns is designed to support you every step of the way. And now hymns offers access to an affordable range of FDA approved GLP-1 medications

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28:30All the time. Yeah. And so even said it just like you can talk about the immigration stuff, but just kind of broadening it out to the state of play, you know, as we kind of had Delabour Day, like you had to the midterms. And just wondering like what you're hearing anecdotally from people in your life about kind of a Trump two Trump experiment has it changed since last year? Oh, yeah, it has changed. I would say the 180 from December of 2024 to right now, amongst sort of normy Republicans is head spinning because December 2024, I would think, is the was the absolute high point because you know, this was the vibe shift, Kamala lost, she lost, narrowly, but decisively. It could be narrow and decisive at the same time. In other words, it was an unambiguous loss. So she loses narrowly, but decisively, you know, the Republicans feel like, okay, I held my nose for Trump, but look at what I've gotten. I've gotten a defeat of DEI. Wokeism is on the run. You know, it's the vibe shift. We've won a cultural battle for the first time

29:30in a long time. And then it was by, you know, mid late December that you began to see just the, you know, a Trump was replacing exaggerated wokeism with idiocracy. It's kind of like the Hague Seth and RFK and Tulsi appointments and then all of the richest people in the world in the first row of the inauguration. It's kind of like that period where you start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You realize, okay, he's triumphant, but all the warning signs for his looming, the looming disaster were already all there. You know, this was not bring coming in with Mattis and Tillerson, et cetera. This is coming in with Patel and Hague Seth and Nome. And then as these things happen, you began to just see growing and growing and growing discomfort to the point now where nobody that I would call a Noremi Republican and my life is at all trumpeting their Trump vote. They are deeply upset at things like the Ken Paxton, you know, the way in which the Ken Paxton supporters are trying to bully them

30:33into continuing to support the Republican nominee, even those arguably outside of Donald Trump, the most corrupt politician in America. They're tired of the endless cloutery. And then MAGA in my experience is doubling down except the fringes of MAGA. Like what you would have thought were some of the most extremist MAGA people like a Marjorie Taylor Greene, they're the ones who are out. Well, because it to be on the fringe, you believe some things. You might believe some cookie things, you know, but you believe some things. That's different than a cult. You know, you really have to be able to use a magnifying glass to tell the difference sometimes, but it is that there is a difference. Look, here we are at September. Things can change between now and November. But I think if President trends continue, what you'll see the anecdotal, the anecdata that is all around me, I think the way you would see that reflected is an election results in the following way. If you get a double digit or close to double digit, a soft victory in Georgia. If you get a

31:39double digit or close to double digit, Cooper victory in North Carolina, what you're going to see there is that's your very clear tangible evidence that a lot of normy Republicans are either not Republicans anymore, their independence, or maybe they're very soft Democrats, or just sort of totally up for grabs. And I think if you're a Democrat, you know, I saw this great, great comment online from Jeremiah Johnson, who's a great follow, by the way, really like his stuff. Me too. And he's like, here, look Democrats, Cooper is in a swing state, arguing a reddish swing state, this is a Trump victory state. He's probably going to win in a swing state by 10. And yet a lot of the Democratic world and media world is going to focus on some DSA candidate who wins a D plus 80 district in Brooklyn, right? The future is with the people who can win in a swing state by 5, 10 points. That's your future right there. And there also, I think, the leading educators of the

32:40discontent of a lot of Republicans, not of the base, the base is still going to support Trump if they turn out. But of a lot of the people who previously you would have said, it's going to take a lot for this person across the aisle. It's going to take a lot. And so that's what I'm kind of seeing. Do you have any Texas anecdote for me? Do you have any hope for Friday? Do you have any friends who are Republicans who are like, I'm just, I might have to do Tallariko. Oh, there's not a dream. No, I know personally two to three time Trump voters who are out on Paxton completely not going to vote for him or vote for Tallariko. I know Republicans who have, you know, Texas Republicans who've never voted for Democrats who are going to vote for Tallariko. Now that anecdotes should not give people too much hope, I'm very, I'm very leery of hope him in the state of Texas. It's Lucy with a football with Democrats for a while. But let me just put it this way. You have one candidate here who is really hustling, who is really trying, who is putting everything into the race, who is reaching out and extending all of branches to

33:44centrist Republicans. And you have another candidate who's jetting off to London or Iceland. I forget where it was with their, you know, their paramour on July 4th weekend. I mean, it's, it's not just that Republicans nominated a crept guy. They nominated a crept lazy guy. You know, so here's Tallariko who's doing everything he can do to try to win. Yeah. And you've got Ken Paxton who's treating it like he is the birthright. It's his birthright to be the senator from Texas and that winning the nomination was all he had to do. And then he's got this armly on bond line trolls who quite frankly are doing him no favors by being just gigantic assholes online to anyone who expresses any doubts about Ken Paxton. And so look, Tallariko is well to my left on a number of things. But I will tell you this, if character is destiny, this there is no contest in the selection. There is no contest in the selection.

34:45I guess you could take this from political or illegal standpoint like the Trump ego stuff. And we talking to Ben Terrace later today. There's a great profile on Trump's ballroom obsession. You know, there's a Supreme Court ruling on the ballroom. The coin is out. And the coin seems like blatantly illegal. I guess like let's do it from a legal standpoint because I did this frustrated rant on the next level with Sarah and JVL this week where I was like, you know, I am not a lawyer. Once you start talking about standing, I'm just like, what about what is legal and illegal? And it's like, it is illegal, I would think, for the president to just create a slush fund with going around Congress where he gets to build things and tear things down at his whim. Like I followed how a bill becomes a lot. And it's plainly illegal in the statute that he can't put himself on coins. And yet they're just doing it. And it's like, well, we'll get to it in the 2027 session. That's frustrating to me. I hit his frustrating to me, but there are also good reasons why this system exists. So essentially the way the court system exists is if an unlawful action

35:48has been taken, it can be challenged only by people who have suffered a concrete injury from the unlawful action. In other words, otherwise the courts just get converted into sort of a, almost a third layer of legislature and a kind of a, well, they're going to be the final say on everything, the unelected judges. So the way that we have narrowed the court's authority over American life is we make sure that if I walk into court, I have what's called a concrete and particularized injury. In other words, this thing has hurt me. And so what's very unfortunate about the case is they had a very weak, weak allegation of standing, which is essentially this person who comes sort of around like once a month or so, things that the new construction is like just a giant eye sore. So who would be injured by this though? You know, this is a weird situation, right? It is a weird situation. But you know, and to make it even weirder, in some circumstances,

36:50the court has recognized what's called aesthetic standing. So for example, if you want to go to a national park and see crocodiles or alligators or whatever, and there's a policy that removes all the alligators, then there has been aesthetic standing. Now this is something from years ago that the current court majority has never really loved. And so we're in like this transitional period. But the quick answer to that would be let's suppose somebody makes money from giving White House tours that they can't give anymore would be an example or somebody who's this just seems kind of crazy to me because like I guess Congress is the one that has to like he's going around the sister. I don't know what I mean, it's weird. It's not like like the way that it's illegal is not nobody's being harmed by the coin either. But it's against the law. So I have a t-shirt that I wear that says I love the Constitution. So I take a backseat to no one and like I love the Constitution. But the founders were not all Jesus. You know they they did not get everything right.

37:54And and one of the things that they got wrong to our great chagrin is that Madison in particular and others believed that if I if I was Speaker of the House, I would feel that I had my own independent authority and I'd be pissed if the president started to intrude upon my sphere of influence that people will try to grab as much power as they can. And so therefore Congress as Congress would assert its prerogatives over the president. And he underestimated and what he got wrong about that was he underestimated partisanship. So he underestimated that Mike Johnson right now would view his actual threat to his power not Trump stomping all over Congress. But him resisting Trump stomping all over Congress because then he'll lose his primary. Right. And so this is where we are. So they're like if Jeffries become Speaker, but the Democrats don't take the Senate so they can't actually pass a bill to stop it. Does

38:58Jeffries have standing then? But does Congress have to say, hey, like, can they go and say, wait, we didn't go around. He wasn't this wasn't funded. There's a normal fund. Yeah. Well, it gets very difficult. It does get very difficult because congressional standing is not something that is traditionally necessarily available. It's only available to like very specific situations. But I'm not going to say that nobody is out there that has standing over the demolition of the ballroom. I think that that is a little bit bold to say it's harder to say that somebody would have standing over the coin, for example. But we're going to be in a situation potentially after 2027 where even if the Democrats only take the house to fund anything to fund anything, there's going to have to be a necessity a necessity of Democratic bias. God willing. I don't know. They just did a continuing resolution because they don't want to have a shutdown fight. They might wimp out. Well, that's a whole another seven questions. I mean,

39:58but the bottom line is we underestimated before 2016 the extent to which the American experiment itself hinges on to at least some degree the honor system. And I think Tim, one of the things that we need to do after we get through this terrible period is we need a period of constitutional reform. We need a period that says, look, the anti-federalists were right about some of the critiques of this constitution. And it is time for us to do something about it. And I've got ideas and thoughts. Here's number one, Tim. Reform the pardon power. If we don't do that, we're idiots. Like we're just idiots if we don't reform the pardon power is my view. And then number two. Age caps, 28th, 28th amendment. We have age floors. Why not age caps? Age caps, I think is a very good idea. Pardon reform is a very good idea. There's multiple ideas right now regarding how we can avoid

40:58there ever being another Donald Trump. My dream goal, my wish. I want to change the first sentence of article two of the Constitution of the United States to jam the president back into the box that he was supposed to be in when the country was founded. So if you want to know what the president was supposed to do, you've all of them says this very well. My friend, great conservative thinker, the president is supposed to be the steward of the laws passed by Congress. In other words, that's what it means to be the executive. He executes the laws passed by Congress. Article two, though, says the executive power shall be invested in a president, but it doesn't define the executive power. And an anti-federalist writing under the name of Kato back all those years ago accurately said this sentence is vague and inexplicit. Wait a minute. This is what this is who Kato the institute is saying. No, Kato is not named Kato. The institute is named after Kato the ancient thinker and so was Kato the anti-federalist. So we're

42:02going all the way back. Right. Okay, that's right. You've got a lot of Kato's out there. So this Kato said is vague and inexplicit. And he was right. It doesn't define the executive power. So what I would want to do is say a president of the United States shall execute the laws passed by Congress. Totally changes the valence because they are you're not saying what is this executive power? Is it this free standing thing that grants him independent authority? And this is where so much mischief has been poured into our system is through this concept that there exists something called the executive power that is different and apart from executing the law. Yeah. And and that's created enormous problems. And I know that's a reach goal, Tim. But look, that feels challenging. We will break out of this deadlock at some point. And American history tells us every deadlock breaking requires substantial legal reform or you will go right back to where

43:03you were before. And and so we have to be thinking about this. I mean, this is a this is an urgent matter. The other thing, let's just imagine what what can we do about mass pardons? Well, because the pardon power is horrifically broad, nothing much. But one thing that you could do is if you did actually break the law jam in 2028, you could impeach and convict every Trump official who takes a preemptive pardon and ban them from federal office forever. You won't be able to prosecute them for federal crimes. But you know, I think it's important to think about these things because we're going to renead if we want to have a healthy democracy. We're going to need a period of accountability reform. Amen to that. One way to actually get power to do some of these reforms you have to win elections. So I do want to hear that. There's that Tim. Oh, well, yeah. So there is the political side of that. I'm doing a lot of that next week about what the Democrats should be doing to be more successful on the political side. So let's talk about the legal fighting. There's

44:07this big postal service case. What's your level of alarm about that right now? My level of alarm that the actual postal service regulations will go into effect is low. A lot of people misunderstood the Supreme Court's ruling on this. This was a ruling in essence that said, okay, you brought the case too soon that the actual executive order just was saying, hey, I'm directing you to create a regulation. Until the regulation exists, we don't know what we're adjudicating. And so now the regulation exists and it was promptly enjoined. There's actual standing to contest it. The dispute is ripe because the regulation exists. There is no impediment to actually looking at it on the merits. And this is one of those cases where Tim, I never like to say it's impossible for the court to rule for Trump. Let me put it this way. On this point, on the merits of that, I would fall out of my chair and shock if the Supreme Court ruled for Trump on it. One other stuff you're looking at

45:10as far as midterms than shenanigans. So the main shenanigans I'm worried about are actually post vote. Yeah, same. I do think it's within the realm of possibility that you would see ice agents being deployed to polling places. I think, but something that, something that blatant would have begin to have some real electoral blowback. It's after. And here's the way I would put it, Tim, think of it like this way. If you were looking at the Hungarian elections, they could use extreme measures to try to reverse the outcome of an election in Hungary. But if the outcome is so lopsided, then in that circumstance, you sort of swamp the possibility of post electoral fraud. So where I am very, very nervous is if you have a situation where, let's suppose the House stands or falls on five or six races. I think we could skip through that. I think they're going to, whatever we'll see what happens, but the Senate is where this is. And then you end up in a state like

46:13Texas where Republicans control the state or Iowa. And that, let's say, Tallerico wins by 40,000 votes or 20,000 votes or something. Yeah. In the control of the Senate's at stake. Yeah, right. You will see I just, I'm getting issues close to a promise is I can possibly issue that if the Senate stands or falls on James Tallerico in a point two percent, you will see massive shenanigans, massive. And here's what's particularly dangerous when you're talking about who is entitled to sit in Congress. Congress ultimately decides who is entitled to sit in Congress. And so what that means is it gives the political branches of government an enormous amount of room to run if they're going to be intentionally corrupt. And so this is something that I'm very concerned about. I'm very concerned about the way in which the Constitution gives the final say over who sits in Congress to Congress. But what if you know one side of Congress is thoroughly corrupted and convinced by electoral

47:18conspiracy theories or not convinced but carries them out anyway because of a Machia pure will to power. I think that's a very significant threat for which we are not fully prepared. And I try to alert people about this with a particular attention to the House because in the House there are abundant opportunities for shenanigans. Right because all these different districts just abundant opportunities. I tried to point this out and had a lot of people saying to me, oh David, that wouldn't work because the law says A, B and C and I take I know. But but if you were alive in 2020, you know that the administration will take a law that says A, B and C and they'll say it really means D, E, and F. Right. And then try to convince Republican elected officials to follow their warped interpretation of the law like the Electoral Count Act and the pressure they put on Mike Pence. So I'm trying to highlight what are the laws that exist that are just ambiguous enough to give them room to run onto Fox News or room to run onto Newsmax and say the Federal

48:24contested election act allows us to blah blah blah blah blah and then we're off to the races. And that's what I've been trying to highlight. We do have a like the most modest silver lining good news on the Fox front which is Maria Barteroma was fired and the report from Dylan Buyers about why that was is that she was trying to pursue a story related to China and the 2020 election voting conspiracies. The Trump was pushing and that's prime time speech a couple months ago. This was obviously sensitive to the network given that they pay $800 million give or take in fines for their lies about the 2020 election Fox executive sent a text to producers time in the couldn't go to air. Barteroma took the screenshot and sent it to the White House. She got fired. So maybe Fox behaves a little better this time I guess is uh I mean they have about 787,500,000 reasons to behave better in the selection cycle. So I hope you're right. Over on the board takes me and Sam are going to go through Maria's highlights and low lights just for kicks. Okay just rapid fire too. I think there's this vote. I just curious your take on

49:30in the house this week. It was the Protect Economic and Economic Freedom Act was basically amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 to make that would prevent colleges from having access to certain funds if they participated in a non expressive commercial boycott of Israel or if they uh were obstructing students unreasonably from participating in academic programs in Israel. I thought this was interesting dash you about just a free speech guy because as I was reading about this this week the wording non expressive boycott stems from this 2022 ruling about how like a boycott saying you're going to boycott his first amendment but actually boycotting is not I guess I don't know. Well this issue is so complicated Tim okay so we can't do it rapid fire you mean it's not rapid fire so for example boycotting is very often expressive activity absolutely at the same time national origin discrimination can be very much unlawful. So if your boycotting is

50:35resulting in national origin discrimination so for example let's suppose you want to hold a conference in a hotel that is bound by public accommodations laws that prevent national origin discrimination and you say no Israelis you know no Israelis jets national origin discrimination and so you know and be careful guys who say well I want to engage in this kind of national origin discrimination because it's a good national origin discrimination but you engage in other contexts it's bad no no no no no if you if you want like non discrimination provisions that protect people from discrimination on the basis of national origin sex race sexual orientation etc you can't say this discrimination good that discrimination bad so I think a lot of these uh Israel boycotts actually run a file of non discrimination law because it's national origin discrimination if you say it's interesting because it's just kind of hard to imagine a bill like this passing if like a college was like hey we're gonna boycott Saudi Arabia right it's gonna far do imagine that's Congress having

51:40a bill about that but I am I am let me put it this way I am a I am a free speech person who also supports our non discrimination laws so and I think that the free speech and non discrimination laws can and should coexist now on the edges they will you're always going to have rough edges where they rub up chick but as a general matter think about it like this in the 1960s there was a guy who ran a barbecue shop I believe it's called Piggy Park and he claimed that he had a religious liberty right a first amendment right to exclude black customers from barbecue and that he had first amendment rights to exclude black customers from eating barbecue and the Supreme Court said this is patternally frivolous your religious liberty rights do not extend to a right to exclude black customers from eating barbecue now same facts and you say I want to exclude Israeli customers national origin discrimination yeah now that's different yes sure the coffee shop story like there's some disgusting things to have your nature so it's just the campus participation

52:44stuff I don't know I caught my eye this week that's all to be continued the I do want to end with the LSU just just worth there you posted this yesterday I'm about to teach my law of war class today at Lipscomb today's discussion topic of the SEC the course war on LSU football and invades Louisiana with Thomas Aquinas believe the war was just discuss for people don't know LSU is advancing a very noble pursuit which is that there were some there were there there are some fifth year seniors that were unfairly discriminated against when they were not aware that the NCAO is going to change the rule and give them additional year of eligibility so these if your seniors declared for the pros but they really weren't good enough to make the pros and none of them made it on to any of the teams but then after they declared the NCA changed the rules and LSU saying come on back home baby main campus here we're doing hot yoga you know we're doing we're yelling really inappropriate cuss were a chance at the Clemson fans we need the best defensive

53:48lineman possible to make sure that you know we have Louisiana supremacy in football to me open and shut case a very noble Louisiana judge that I'm going to be nominating for the Supreme Court if the Democrats ever get in power rule the yesterday that LSU has the right to do this he was a batten ruse judge certainly no conflicts there the attorney on behalf of the LSU players said that SEC and NCA they were trying to prevent LSU from getting these players were getting served a cold cup of gumbo and they were going to have to drink it cold and I don't know so seems like seems like it's not going to be a situation to me David what let's say you Tim in these last 10 years you have displayed such an admirable freedom from partisanship you know you spent years being employed as a republican you know and then you're able to see with clarity who Donald Trump is and you shed the partisan baggage and yet you founder on the shows of the LSU tight football partisan come on Tim Tim see this what for what it is this is like bringing the Hessians to put down

54:54the American Revolution that's what this is like mercenary NFL players coming back to try to play college football after they have left school they have been in the pros even for just a cup of coffee just for a short time Tim and there's a good reason why the southeastern conference threatening to kick out LSU and Tim all I'm going to say is welcome to the Lane Kiffin excuse you are just on the first hill on the roller coaster I am loving it and so you you do think that Thomas Aquinas would approve of the SEC some people responded with just you know jokes but some people like actually went through the Aquinas analysis and the most interesting was one of the one of the rules for a just wars it has to come through the lawful sovereign and they were saying that if the SEC invades that's like the prince invading not the king the king is the NCAA so Aquinas would say no to an SEC invasion but yes to NCAA thank you to Thomas Aquinas STC to all the people who disagree with the honorable judge

56:02in Baton Rouge David French I appreciate you very much oh I heard good news about Nancy I value your wife yes yes yes two years from the end of her treatment cancer-free from a particular kind of cancer where you can't ever say like totally in the woods now and forever but two years for this kind of cancer is very very very very important and so getting through that two years that you know again God willing she remains cancer-free and there's never any guarantees but the risks really start to fall off the cliff and we're just very grateful because we think back to three years ago when we got the diagnosis to be where we are today is just miraculous thank God thank her doctors and can I say something Tim please I'm so sick of people pointing out Muslim you know Muslim Americans who do bad things and try to make them a stand-in for all Muslim Americans thank God for our our doctor who is from the West Bank in Palestine who saved my wife's life we love

57:07that man and the idea the idea that men like him and women like him are not welcome in this country as an absolute anathema so I want to give a shout out to my Palestinian West Bank doctor or our Nancy's Palestinian West Bank doctor who gave her the most loving and excellent care you could ever receive and there are so many countless folks Muslim folks like that in and around America who are who are contributing like that and so I just want to say that because I'm so sick of the cherry-picked hatred of Muslims that I'm seeing all over the online world right now I love them I'm so happy for a family too David so I'll give Nancy our love and thanks for sharing that and we'll see you next time all right thank you Tim everybody else have a great weekend I'm heading up to Baton Rouge for the lane kiffin experience I'll see y'all on Monday with Bill crystal though go Tigers peace

58:28up we are we call it that book the board daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper associate producer Anzali Skipper and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown